#i really just sit and wonder like….would kms fix all this

[fandoms--fluff]

Hi I was wondering if you could do more Damon and Stefan Salvatore x teenage sister reader you’re so great at writing and I loved the other one you wrote <3

Meanie

Flufftober, October 21st

Teenage Salvatore sister reader x Stefan Salvatore x Damon Salvatore

Warnings: swearing

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What are you doing?" Stefan leans against the doorway of the kitchen. You're mixing cookie dough in a bowl, except the dough has some strange lumps in it.

"Baking" You look up at him before frowning at the weird consistency in the bowl. The rest of the countertops are a mess, covered with flour, sugar, and some chocolate chips that haven't made it into your mouth surprisingly.

"Are you sure about that?" Stefan raises an eyebrow. "Shut up" you grumble before pushing the bowl away.

"How about setting a place in rule for y/n to never use the kitchen. Ever" Damon walks into the room.

"Hey!" You exclaim, crossing your arms. "He's not wrong" Stefan winced at your stone cold face. "Fine! Have fun cleaning up" you walk out of the kitchen.

"What if I just grounded her" Damon takes the cloth and begrudgingly starts to wipe the counter. "There's only one thing you haven't considered about that" Stefan throws the contents of the bowl into the trash.

"Oh? And what's that" he raises an eyebrow to his younger brother. "She spends ninety percent of her time in her room" Stefan tells him while putting some ingredients away in the cupboards now.

"Right. She hates being around people. Which makes it the perfect punishment" Damon smirks, a plan clearly starting to take place in his mind.

"She's going to kill you" Stefan yells to him as he walks away.

Damon just shrugs as he makes his way up to your room.

Without knocking he enters your room. You're laying in your bed, one of Stefan's diaries in your hands. "Reading one of our brothers private things I see" Damon sits on the foot of your bed.

"Oh please, like you haven't read them all either" you fix him with the same look and place the diaries to the side. "Fair enough."

"I have a surprise for you. Not the best, but maybe it'll teach you a little lesson. And maybe a bit of people skills" Damon stands and walks closer to you. "What are you ta- hey! Put me down, Jackass" you yell as Damon lifts you up into his arms.

He carries your squirming body all the way downstairs, and makes his way to the front door. "Really, Damon?" Stefan sighs as he walks in to the hallway, not thinking he would actually follow through.

"Yep, brother" Damon smirks, reaching for the doorknob. But before he could, you swung one if your feet and smashed it against his arm, pushing yourself out of his grasp. You quickly then kneed him in the gut and swiftly snapped his neck with your hands.

Stefan slightly smiled, knowing Damon had it coming for him as he walked into the livingroom and sits on one of the couches.

Not long after you join him. You sit beside him and cuddle into your big brother's side. "Damon's mean! He tried to make me go talk to people" you pouted before nuzzling your head into him.

"I know, he's horrible isn't he?" Stefan played along, smile resting on his face. "Mhm" you agreed, pout still playing on your lips.

You stay snuggled up next to your big brother until your other big brother wakes. Then you hild km tighter to Stef and use him as basically a personal shield when the times come.

#stefan salvatore #damon salvatore #stefan salvatore x sister reader #stefan salvatore x little sister reader #stefan salvatore x female reader #stefan salvatore x reader #stefan salvatore x vampire reader #damon salvatore x sister reader #damon salvatore x little sister reader #damon salvatore x reader #damon salvatore x female reader #damon salvatore x fem reader #cute #fluff #imagines #thevampirediaries #fanfic #writing #theoriginals #legacies #cuddles

[starlightkun]

➥ word count: 28.9k ➥ warnings: cursing, side character makes one (1) kms joke (“walk into traffic”), probable overuse of the word skeeze for a couple scenes ➥ genre: angst heavy at the beginning then fluff, science fantasy au, soulmate au (red string), speculative fiction, star crossed lovers, a little mystery-ish, artist sungchan ➥ author’s note: omg i’m sooo excited for this one! had a lot of fun with the worldbuilding and such, and as always, with characterizing sungchan. unfortunately due to tumblr’s 1000 block limit (which was created to hurt me personally), i had to do some modifications to this in order to make it fit (i was like 150 blocks over and really didn’t want to split it into two parts for no reason). if you want the authentic, unadulterated experience with original formatting and one extra scene, i highly, highly recommend reading it on ao3

To your horror, the string completed itself, connecting seamlessly to the pinky of the stranger in front of you. The young man looked at you with wonderment, a wide smile coming to his features, brightness and recognition in them. He opened his mouth, presumably to say hello, or whatever soulmates did when they met, but before he could utter anything, you dropped the book and took off at a run.

Humming along to your music, you watched the city pass by, felt the bus start and stop, and were vaguely aware of the same passengers as always getting on and off. You took the same bus every day, Monday through Friday, as you had for the past two years, since you’d been promoted and moved to better accommodations that you could afford with your new pay.

There were regulars on your commute, such as the elderly couple who got on one stop after you on the first Monday every month, and got off at the stop that you knew was closest to the art museum. They sat in the row behind you, and explained to you once that they had been passholders at the museum for years, and that was when new exhibits were rotated in. Or in the front of the bus, a pair of sisters that you had inadvertently seen grow up over the years, who got on some time before your stop, and got off two stops before you in the morning, close to a nearby private school. You could sometimes hear the older one helping the younger with homework, or making last-minute fixes to her hair or uniform.

There were of course lots of office workers as well, who all rushed on and off the bus with promptness at their stops. You recalled fondly the primary school teacher who used to sit next to you, young and always dressed in fun, colorful prints. She had blurted out one morning that she was pregnant, and you were the first person she was telling, even before her husband. She didn’t know how to tell him yet, but was so excited and had to share the news with somebody, even a stranger that she only knew for a few minutes a day on the bus. You’d watched over the months as she started to show, then told you one morning she was just going on a short maternity leave to have her baby boy but would be back sooner than you’d know. She never got back on again. You hoped her son was beautiful and healthy, and still thought of them every so often when you’d look up and pass by her stop.

And then there was you. You sometimes wondered what they thought of you, if any of them did. It would be strange if they didn’t have at least a passing opinion of you. Not because you yourself did anything remarkable on your daily commute. You got on, took the same seat every day, listened to your music with your headphones in, and got off at the same stop. But no matter how normal your routine was, how quaint your occasional conversations with your fellow commuters were, there was something that set you apart.

As signified by the strawberry red jumpsuit you donned five days a week, you worked at The Soulmate Factory. It was technically called the Bureau of Interpersonal Affairs, but everyone just called it The Soulmate Factory, even the employees. Not the most popular place to work, but the work that was done there had to be done nevertheless. All Factory employees were ineligible for matching, in order to maintain the integrity of the Bureau’s image. Your family could never understand why you’d accept a position there; never getting a soulmate of your own, never getting the one person destined for you. But you didn’t see it like that. It’s not like you could never fall in love, find a partner to spend your life with, or be fulfilled in any millions of other ways.

The bus jerked to a stop again, and the doors swung open. You stood up and hurried off. You were the only passenger to depart here, as usual. A building loomed in the distance, all flashing windows and pink marble. Following in a few other coworkers in matching red jumpsuits, you hurried up the stairs, catching up to a familiar head of hair on the way up.

“Morning, Jaemin!” You chirped, nudging his arm with yours as you fell into step with him.

“Oh, hey, Y/N! Morning!” He offered you a bright smile, stepping off at the same floor as you and walking over to your neighboring desks.

“Hey, did you ever read that book I leant you?” You asked, dropping your backpack off at your desk before heading for the breakroom together. There was always a quiet buzz in the morning that you liked, when everybody was still mellow from waking up, but excited to start the day.

He hissed regretfully, a sheepish smile already coming to his face, telling you everything you needed to know, “Well...”

“You haven’t touched it since the day I gave it to you.”

“I’m going to! Promise!”

“It’s coming up on my re-read list,” you warned him, starting a fresh pot of coffee. “I only have like four books ahead of it. That gives you like, four weeks max.”

“You need to rot your brain with some TV or something.” He shook his head teasingly, reaching up into a cabinet and pulling down a box of cereal.

“Hey, isn’t that—”

“Na Jaemin, if you value your life, you’ll put that box down now.” The stern voice of Huang Renjun cracked through the air.

Jaemin turned around, hiding the box behind his back as he offered your other coworker a sickly sweet smile. “What box?”

“Come here, you son of a—”

“Hey, let’s not commit homicide before the weekly agenda meeting, maybe?” You suggested loudly over their squabbling, as Renjun had just grabbed Jaemin by the collar. “Because I’m pretty sure if you kill Jaemin, they’ll just reassign you his work, Renjun. Might want to see what your workload is like first.”

Renjun yanked the box of cereal out of Jaemin’s hand then, holding it to his chest protectively and scowling. “Fine. You better hope that you’re on data synthesis, Jaemin.”

He walked out still clutching the box to his chest.

“He’s just going to eat it dry by the fistful, isn’t he?” You sighed, starting to pour yourself a cup of coffee.

“Definitely,” Jaemin confirmed. “And I’m suddenly really wanting to do some data synthesis this week.”

After getting dismissed from the weekly agenda meeting—during which Jaemin was assigned data synthesis, and Renjun got profile compiling—you headed back to your desks. You weren’t assigned anything because your job was the same every day. You were on a very specific career trajectory at The Soulmate Factory after showing promise in the typical six months of entry-level training for new employees. Following those six months, your fellow trainees went on to start their jobs, while you went through an additional two and a half years of specialized training for your position: matchmaking.

You didn’t sit down at your computer when you got back to your desk, simply placing your nearly empty coffee cup on it before taking off down the hall to the room in which you actually did most of your work.

Swiping your badge at the access panel, the door clicked to unlock, and you pushed it open. There were a couple of other matchmakers already in there, who didn’t offer you a single glance or any indication that they were even aware of your presence. Sitting at your station, you were face-to-face with a quaintly archaic-looking computer. Compared to the newest monitors at every desk in the main bullpen, which could display images in a resolution so crisp it was hard to tell the difference between that and real life, the small, square glass and pixelated text that was in front of you seemed so out of place. But this was the system. Pressing the Enter button on your keyboard, your screen came to life, already giving you your first match.

N!#83LPd5D4ZR$PYQ^KLT6WnY##4GYVm74v^f@96#q#hheeRYgLLf3Ft9KQw

‘Matchmaker’ was a misnomer, really. You didn’t set people up to be soulmates whatsoever. The computer gave you the results, all you did was read them. Take the seemingly random string of letters, numbers, and characters, and parse out the meaning. Your training consisted of watching other matchmakers work, then trying your hand at doing some on your own, being told that you were wrong or right, with no explanation as to why either way—until you stopped getting them wrong. And whenever it would be your turn to train a matchmaker, that would be exactly how you’d train them. Because there was no way to tell them what exactly you were seeing, or how to do it. They just had to do. The longest part was looking up the profile numbers in the program, selecting them, and sending off the match results. As soon as you submitted that one, your next match came up.

jkD%NVSC3%JCacN%vWS5#k!Z4GqGW#ZfMyqGUfc@wQT5L5vK2uWU5N*5Lg&6

Your body moved as if by itself, in understanding with the machine, the program. The matchmakers often talked about entering a sort of trance when working, becoming one mind with the computer, completely unaware of their surroundings, time, or bodily needs. Only the next match. That’s why all of your screens had to be simultaneously forced into a shut-off at lunchtime, or else none of you would take a lunch break, then again at the end of the workday.

Blinking a few times to readjust from the hours spent interfacing with the program, you looked around you at the other matchmakers slowly getting up from their seats as well. With a sigh, you stood up and shuffled out after them. Jaemin was still at his desk when you got back to yours, fervently clacking away at his keyboard. You grabbed your coffee mug, went to wash it out in the breakroom and set it up to dry, then returned to your desk. Swallowing in an attempt to wet your dry throat, you asked him, “So how was your thrilling day of data synthesis?”

“Not over yet,” he groaned, scrolling down in his spreadsheet. “Hey, wait up a minute, would you?”

Checking the time on your watch, you nodded. “My bus doesn’t come for another twenty-five. They let us out early again.”

“Yeah, I heard the Director on the phone to somebody a while ago. He sounded pissed. Apparently, there’s some concerns over the Factory’s energy usage. They must be cutting you guys a few minutes early every day to try to help since you still use old hardware, right?”

“Mm,” you hummed thoughtfully. “Yeah, could be.”

“You’d think we’d be the one agency that wouldn’t be hit with budget cuts,” he scoffed, clicking a few things before his monitor displayed the login screen again. He spun around in his chair, giving you a wide smile. “Alright, ready?”

“Sure.” You grabbed your backpack from your seat. Jaemin and you headed down the stairs, awash in pinks and oranges from the sunset streaming in from outside.

“So, I already know what the answer is going to be, but I have to be able to say that I asked, alright?” Your coworker began, making you scrunch up your face in confusion. “My sister wanted me to ask if you’ve done hers yet? Na Minhee?”

You sighed, “Jaemin, you know I don’t know any of that—” “I know—” “—it’s all just… stuff. And you’ve compiled profiles, those are completely anonymous.”

“I know, I know,” he reassured you. “I just needed to be able to tell her that I asked, and that’s what you said. She wouldn’t take my word for it.”

“She’d know if hers has already been done, anyway.” You held up your hand, wiggling your pinky finger. “Why ask you?”

“Because she’s impatient.”

“Well, I can’t help her.” You shrugged. “It’ll happen when it happens.”

“I’ll tell her that. Thanks!”

“Yeah, no problem, dude.”

“When does your bus come?”

You checked the time again. “Fifteen minutes or so.”

“You want me to wait with you?” He offered, looking around the empty bus stop. “Kind of dark.”

“I’m alright, thanks. Go break your sister’s heart, champ.” You gave him a mock punch on the shoulder.

On your own again, you took your phone and headphones out, popping one earbud in your ear as you went to choose your playlist. As you scrolled, tapped, and swiped through your phone to try to pick the perfect song, some fuzz fell from your jumpsuit onto your right pinky finger, and you absentmindedly shook it off as your focus stayed on your music library. But it was stubborn, and the red fleck didn’t budge. You wiped the digit on your pants, eyes on where you had finally gotten the perfect choice, the song starting up as you lifted your now-clean hand back up.

Except it was still there. You looked at your hand for the first time, really looked at it, and felt your stomach drop. A thin, bright red string, the same color as your jumpsuit, was tied around your right pinky finger, just above the juncture where the finger met your hand. The string hung off in the air, becoming transparent and disappearing altogether less than a finger’s length away. You turned your hand over, palm to back to palm to back, and the string moved with it, the end fluttering with each of your movements. Stupidly, you tried to grab it, as if to pull it off, but when you took hold of the silken thread and gave it a yank, it didn’t budge. For a split second, amputation came to mind, but you quickly pushed those thoughts away. There were stories of people losing fingers or entire limbs and their strings reappearing on the other hand, or in new places altogether if they had no hands at all.

You looked around for any of your coworkers. Nobody else except the two people on either end of the string could see it, but you still didn’t want anybody to be observing your behavior, and then have to try to explain said behavior right now. It was easy to explain why you were doing what you were doing—you just got a red string; but not how—you weren’t supposed to get one. Ever. The area around you was empty, the majority of your coworkers driving, taking the subway, or not having left work yet. You looked over your shoulder, at the pink marble building looming in the distance.

The squeal of brakes and hiss of compressed air as the doors of a bus were flung open made you turn around. Rushing up the steps onto the bus, you then plopped into your usual seat, keeping your backpack on your lap and instinctively tucking your right hand between the bag and your body to keep the string hidden. You didn’t know who could possibly be your soulmate now, you had to be vigilant. You didn’t relax until you were safely tucked away in your apartment, door locked behind you, no plans to see any other humans for the rest of the day.

The next morning, you kept your right hand hidden away as much as possible on your commute, in your pockets, behind your bag, under your thigh. You didn’t feel remotely safe until you were in the matchmaking room, at your station. Even then, it took you longer than normal to stop from looking at your pinky and actually focus on the first match up on your screen. Once you had, everything else faded away like usual, and you could only think about reading the matches.

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At lunch, you typically would’ve taken your packed lunch to a nearby public park to eat, but that was too risky. So you took it to the breakroom, sitting at the small table and taking out one of your books from your bag. A few other coworkers came in and out to use the microwave or retrieve their own lunch from the fridge, but nobody bothered you as you read. You finished your food rather quick, and found yourself a bit too distracted to focus on your book. The red string on your finger was back in the forefront of your mind. Checking the time, you saw that you still had over half of your break left. With a sigh, you shut your book and walked back over to your desk next to Jaemin’s.

The floor was pretty empty, only a couple of your coworkers left who either took early or later lunches. You turned on the desktop computer, waiting for it to start up before quickly signing on. Opening up the program where profiles were compiled to be fed into the matchmaking system, you chewed on the inside of your cheek thoughtfully, clicking around on the controls. During the basic training you’d received over five years ago, you’d been shown how to compile and enter a profile into the database, and you obviously searched them up from your matchmaking station. But these were all profiles that hadn’t been matched yet, that didn’t have red strings. You needed to get into wherever the profiles that had been successfully matched were. If they were kept somewhere at all.

After poking around some more in the application, you determined that either you didn’t have the technical know-how to access that information, the administrative access to do so, or that information wasn’t stored in the first place. Exiting out of the program with a sigh, you dropped your chin into your palm, scrunching your eyes and nose up as you continued thinking. It felt like it was right there, right on the tip of your tongue, but you couldn’t grab it for some reason. The weekly agenda meeting, something about the weekly agenda meeting—Jaemin was assigned data synthesis. They compiled information on all kinds of stuff regarding matched soulmates: average time to meet after the strings appear, get married, have kids, how many kids, length of time they’re together prior to death, the list goes on. That couldn’t come from nowhere. They had to keep track of soulmates somehow, right?

You quickly opened the Internet browser, going to the Bureau’s website and finding the ‘Studies and Statistics’ page. All of the things you were thinking about were there, complete with fancy little graphics. It didn’t tell you anything about where this stuff was stored internally, but this meant that it had to be, somehow, somewhere. Which meant that your match had to be somewhere, and if you could just find it, then you could—

What? Undo it somehow? It had to be possible. But first you had to find out how it happened in the first place, which meant laying eyes on the match itself, at least. You needed some kind of starting point, and that felt like as good as any.

At the end of the day, the matchmakers were let out early again, and you waited up at your desk as Jaemin was still working. He looked over his shoulder at you curiously. “You need something, Y/N? I don’t have your book, sorry.”

“No, I have a question. But you can finish your work first.”

He made an interested noise, and turned back to his screen. After entering a few more things into his spreadsheet, he pressed save, then exited out with a satisfied groan. He shut down his computer and leaned back, audibly cracking his back. “Fucking finally! If I ever have to look at another number again, I’ll walk into traffic.”

You chuckled as the two of you set off. “Data synthesis that bad?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed one of his eyes. “Anyway, what’d you want to ask me?”

“It was actually about data synthesis…”

“No!” He whined, shaking his head fervently.

“One question! One question!” You begged.

“Fine…”

“The data that you use, how do you get that? Like, where do you get it from?”

He looked at you, squinting with confusion. “From soulmates that have already been matched?”

“Then the Factory keeps records of matches after the strings have been triggered.”

“Yeah, we do.”

“Where? Is it a separate database from the one that you enter new profiles into? Or is it part of the matchmaking program?”

“I mean, it’s probably its own thing? I don’t know, I get the numbers in my data synthesis project assignments. If I need more, or something different, I tell the project manager and he gets it for me.”

“Huh.” You kept the disappointment off your face, as well as curiosity. While he didn’t know a lot, what he didn’t know actually was helpful to you. “Okay, thanks.”

“That was more than one question.”

“Right, sorry.”

“What’s going on? Why the interest in data synthesis all of a sudden?”

“Just curious, since you guys seem to hate it so much.”

“It’s… mind-numbing, to say the least.”

“Here’s hoping next week you’re on profile compiling.”

“Fingers crossed,” he sighed. “Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, Y/N.”

The next few days passed without incident. Your intervals of snooping around on your desktop computer during your lunch breaks were fruitless in finding wherever completed matches were stored, and soon it was Friday evening, and the work week was over. Not even a crisis like this could make you work late on a Friday. You realized when you got home that you were out of groceries, and ordered delivery to your apartment. Can’t risk someone at the restaurant being your soulmate.

Saturday morning you woke up and left early to go grocery shopping, hopefully before most anybody would be out and about. Well, before one person in particular would be awake—your soulmate. Only problem was, you didn’t know who that was, so you had to avoid pretty much everybody. As you walked through the streets keeping your hands crossed and tucked under your arms, you kept your head down, eyes focused only on your feet. If you couldn’t see anybody’s hands and couldn’t possibly see a red string, hopefully they wouldn’t see yours.

Except as you rushed through the streets, you passed by your favorite small bookstore, with its doors wide open, and a sign out front on the sidewalk advertising a huge sale, 70% off a table of books right by the doorway. You couldn’t help but stop—just for a second—to check it out, spotting a title by one of your favorite authors that you’d been meaning to read but hadn’t yet. Picking up the book to look at the price and turning it over in your hands to skim the blurb on the back, you were barely aware of the sounds of some young men playing with a Frisbee at the park across the street, their yells fading into the din of the waking city.

That was, until the purple, plastic disc came skittering across the pavement to a stop right at your feet, and a tall man jogged up after it, still calling to his friend over his shoulder, “Nice aim, Anton! You almost took this poor woman’s head off!”

You missed what his friend said in response as you were already looking up from the Frisbee with the intent to tell him that you were quite alright, then your eyes got caught on a thin red loop around his pinky finger. Snapping your gaze down to your own hand, which was still holding the book, then back to his as he stood now right in front of you, your eyes widened with alarm.

To your horror, the string completed itself, connecting seamlessly to the pinky of the stranger in front of you. The young man looked at you with wonderment, a wide smile coming to his features, brightness and recognition in them. He opened his mouth, presumably to say hello, or whatever soulmates did when they met, but before he could utter anything, you dropped the book and took off at a run. You sprinted away, turning down streets at random, until your legs were burning and you had a stitch in your side. Ducking around another shop, you hid behind the building to catch your breath, sure that you had lost him. Your heartbeat was thudding loudly in your ears, and you habitually tried to shake off that stupid, pesky red string again.

“Look—” A voice suddenly registering right over your shoulder made you jump and scramble back. The man had found you, holding his hands out in front of him like he was trying to calm a wild animal or a spooked horse. His chest was heaving as he was as out of breath as you were (presumably from running after you). There was a bewildered, confused look in his wide eyes as he kept himself between you and the only way out of the alley you had unintentionally backed yourself into. “I don’t normally chase women through the streets, sorry.”

You stayed silent as you looked between him and the exit. The red string hung between you, painfully obvious.

“I just… wanted to talk, you know,” he continued, gesturing to said string. “I’m Sungchan.”

You shook your head, clenching your jaw tightly to avoid making any kind of sound.

“What?” He tilted his head. “You… won’t tell me your name?”

You stared at him, unmoving.

“You know what, we got off on a bad foot, and clearly this is not a good time for you.” Sungchan stepped away from the alley entrance entirely. “Bye for now.”

Taking hesitant, shuffling steps, uncertain that he was actually going to let you leave, you kept your eyes laser focused on him until you were out of the alley, at which point you promptly booked it down the road again. You didn’t stop until you could no longer breathe, your legs shook and threatened to give out any second, and you had tears streaming down your face from the wind blowing into them.

That day you looked up how to get rid of a red string. You knew it was stupid, impossible to do at home. You literally worked at The Soulmate Factory, you were a matchmaker, for fuck’s sake, you were the one giving them out in the first place.

None of it worked, of course. Not meditating, praying, attempting to light it on fire, soaking your finger in a mixture of various oils and herbs from your spice cabinet, scrubbing really hard with the coarse side of a sponge, or crying for thirty minutes straight (that last one was just you being frustrated, no Internet listicle or sketchy guru suggested that). It was still there after everything, as pristine as when it appeared less than a week ago. Less than a week ago. Much faster than average, according to the statistics that you had just looked up the other day. The average time from getting the red string to meeting was seven months and eighteen days, with some taking several years. And yours just had to be within five days. You felt like you could cry again, if you didn’t already have a throbbing headache from how much you had done that earlier.

Now, you were sitting under the spray of your shower, holding your knees to your chest, trying not to look at it. You couldn’t look at your finger, at the red string, but if you closed your eyes, you just saw his face—Sungchan.

On Monday, you continued your investigation with renewed vigor. When you swiped into the matchmaking room, you didn’t go to your station, instead you headed for the back, where there was a short flight of stairs up to an office. Knocking on the door, you waited for the familiar voice inside to beckon you in.

“Come in.”

Pushing your way in, you nodded politely to your supervisor, “Good morning, Ms. Kwon.”

“Good morning, Y/N.” She brought her hands down from where they had been poised over her keyboard to rest in her lap. “How are you?”

“I’m well,” you lied. “How are you?”

“Fine. What brings you to my office this morning?”

“I… have sort of a weird question, if that’s alright.”

She gestured to the two chairs opposite her. “Of course.”

You sat in one, making a conscious effort to keep your knee from bouncing nervously.

“What is your question?” She prompted you.

“There’s never any mistakes, right?”

“Mistakes? No, you’re all trained right.” Ms. Kwon arched an eyebrow. “Do you think you’ve made a mistake, Y/N?”

“No, not the matchmakers. I mean… the computer does whatever it does with the information it’s given, right? That we collect?” You took a deep breath, preparing yourself for what you were about to say. “What if… it gets the wrong information? Wouldn’t it all be wrong if it’s given the wrong stuff in the first place?”

“The profiles we compile are extremely rudimentary, and that isn’t all the information it uses. The computer does more than we can ever know.”

“But what if… there’s an extra profile in there that was never supposed to be in there?”

“Like a person that doesn’t exist? How would a fake person even get created in the first place?”

“No I mean like—You know how Factory employees are taken out of the program? What if somehow, someone got missed? Like, their match happened right before their first day or something crazy. So they got matched up when they weren’t supposed to.”

“I’ve never heard of that happening.” She shook her head, leaning back in her seat and crossing her legs at the knee. “As soon as we receive someone’s application, their profile is removed from the program. If they’re not hired, their profile is put back in. If they are hired, the data is permanently destroyed.”

“Where’s it stored when it’s temporarily removed during the application process, then?”

She didn’t answer your question, her face turning concerned instead of simply confused as before. “Y/N, what’s going on? Do you know of a Factory employee who’s been matched up?”

You shook your head, trying not to deny it too quickly or with too much fervor. “No, I just—Got a brain itch about it, I don’t know. Seems too… uncertain.”

“I can assure you, no Factory employee has ever been matched up. Accidentally or otherwise,” she replied smoothly, a reassuring smile coming to her features. “You can rest easy; no mistakes are made here.”

“Can you just… answer my question? Please?” You pleaded, picking at your nails to avoid messing with your pinky. “I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

“Alright, to soothe your brain itch,” she agreed, sounding amused. “It’s another list in the profiles database that we import into your matchmaking program, except only personnel with a certain clearance can view, add, and remove profiles from the list. Once a round of interviews has been completed, the applicants on the list are either marked as hired or not. If they’re marked as hired, their profile information is permanently destroyed upon their first day of training. If they’re marked as not, it’s returned to the main database that everyone has access to.”

“One more thing?”

“Sure.”

“Once a match is made, where does that information go? Like, the reports, the profiles, is it stored anywhere?”

“We maintain all of those records in another program. Those with higher clearance have access to it, for security purposes, since profiles are de-anonymized in it. Data synthesis uses them for reports frequently.”

“Okay, thanks.” You offered her a feigned, relieved smile, then tacked on a quick fib, “Just wanted a little refresh, in case we got any new hires anytime soon.”

“Already looking to train, Y/N?”

“Oh, maybe…” You laughed nervously, as if shy about being caught with your eye on a promotion already and not anxious from having to discretely interrogate your supervisor.

“You always were ambitious. And wanting to learn more about the program and the Bureau… I like it.” Ms. Kwon nodded her approval. “Feel free to ask about any other brain itches you get, okay?”

“Right, thanks.” You stood up, giving her a polite bow. “I should get to my station. Thank you again, ma’am.”

As you hurried down to your matchmaking station, you easily came to the realization of what you’d need to do next. There was no way you’d be able to just wait until you were promoted to a position with high enough security clearance for the post-matched program, that sounded like it would be people of Ms. Kwon’s position and above. You’d have to get into the program using one of their access points. Somehow. But you didn’t have time to brainstorm a plan for that at the moment, you had matches to read. You sank down into the comfortable, posture-saving chair, and let your mind mesh with the computer as the first one loaded up on the screen.

The next day, you waited at your bus stop, leaning against the shelter and eating your apple one-handed. Pedestrians would occasionally pass by, but your area was mainly young families, so most residents drove their children to daycare or school, then either returned home, or went to work themselves. There was the occasional parent who would jog by with a stroller, or pulling a stroller hitched to the back of a bicycle, but for the most part it was just you and your apple, which you were nearly done with. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw a lone jogger approaching, and took a step back to allow him to pass, eyes still down on your phone and apple as your bus hadn’t arrived yet. Except this jogger slowed to a stop in front of you. You followed the red string from the hand that held your apple core up to a somewhat familiar face, looking down at you in mild confusion.

He was admittedly sweatier now, pieces of hair curling and sticking to the skin at his hairline, and his t-shirt sported a damp spot starting at his collar going down the middle of his chest. But this was definitely Sungchan, as signified by the red string connecting your right pinky to his left. He lifted the hem of his shirt to quickly pat drops of sweat away from his face and took one of his earbuds out as he offered you an easygoing smile.

“Hi. Feeling better?” He asked, his tone light and teasing.

“Why are you here?” You practically snapped. You thought you’d be safe at your bus stop of all places, which you were at every day. You knew your neighborhood, the people on your bus, but he still somehow showed up. “I-I take the same bus every day, at the same time, and I’ve never seen you jogging in the morning!”

“Oh, yeah, I stayed at my sister’s place last night, she lives around here.” Sungchan casually gestured over his shoulder at the general vicinity. “So I had to take a different route than normal for my morning run. You live in this area?”

You stared at him, jaw clenched.

“Sorry, probably sounded a little weird asking you that, huh?” He laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Uhm, it’s just that you said you’re at this same bus stop every day at the same time, so I figured you, uhm… never mind. I’m Jung Sungchan, I realized I didn’t properly introduce myself last time. I’d offer my hand or hug you or something but I’m a bit sweaty…”

Taking a deep breath, you tried to think of how to politely phrase the everything you had to tell him, but he just kept talking.

“I’d like to uh, you know, know your name, too. Since we’re uhm, you know… soulmates? And uh—”

“Sungchan!” You cut him off, and he immediately shut his mouth. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know my name.”

“What? What are you talking about? But we’re—”

“I’m not supposed to have a soulmate!” You gestured wildly to your uniform. “This was a mistake! An error! I’m sorry. This shouldn’t have ever happened. I’ll get it fixed, okay? I’ll figure out how to undo it, and make sure you get put back in.”

He frowned thoughtfully. “I thought the Factory didn’t make mistakes.”

“The computer doesn’t. But somehow, somebody must have put a paper in the wrong stack, or not deleted something when they should’ve, I don’t know! But I’ll fix it.”

The bus finally arrived then with its usual screech of brakes and hiss of the pneumatic doors, and you stepped away from Sungchan towards it.

“I have to go.” You told him with finality, tossing your apple core in a nearby trashcan and boarding the bus without waiting to hear if he had something else to say.

Without having to avoid the entire world now, you actually took your lunch today. But as soon as you stepped outside of the building and turned from the front doors, you spotted a familiar tall figure standing awkwardly off to the side, no longer in sweaty running gear. You made a beeline for Sungchan, grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him to the most secluded corner of the open space as you could, away from all your coworkers who were heading off to take their own break.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” You hissed at him, constantly glancing around to make sure nobody was close enough to hear you two.

His face did look genuinely regretful, though exasperated at the same time. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know how else to find you.”

“Why are you trying to find me?”

He held up his left pinky. You pushed it back down. “I’m working on it!”

“No, I—” He let out a frustrated groan, rubbing his face. “Can we like… I don’t know, talk, or something?”

“Why?”

“Don’t you think I should get a say in you undoing this?”

You inhaled sharply. “You’re right, Sungchan. I’m sorry. We should talk.”

“Finally, thank you.”

Checking the time for a moment, you then offered, “I have fifty-five minutes left of my lunch break. Do you want to join me?”

“Sure, sure.”

You led him away from The Soulmate Factory, along a familiar path. There was a riverside public park nearby, and on days when you packed your lunch, and it was nice out, you would eat outside.

Sungchan broke the silence, “Will you ever tell me your name?”

“Y/N. Y/L/N Y/N,” you informed him flatly. “Happy?”

“Y/N,” he repeated, as if savoring your name. “Okay, thanks.”

The park was only a couple minutes’ walk, and you had a very specific destination in mind once you two got there.

“I packed a lunch today, sorry,” you said quietly, sitting down on the wall overlooking the river, your feet swinging in the air.

Sungchan sat down next to you. “That’s fine. I can grab something later.”

Opening your lunch bag, you grabbed your sandwich and held out half to him. He accepted it gingerly. “Thank you.”

“I haven’t figured out how to undo it yet, but I can enter a profile into the program easy, so once I do undo it, don’t worry about me putting you back in. You’ll be all set,” you reassured him, taking a bite.

“You’re still talking like this is a done deal. Undoing it.”

“I’d be fixing someone’s mistake, Sungchan. That’s what you do at work. When you see a piece of paper is misfiled, or a decimal is in the wrong place, or a typo on a presentation, you fix it, even if you didn’t do it.”

“It’s just… human error?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all that’s happened here, you think?”

“Whoever was supposed to take my profile out didn’t for some reason, and the computer got it when it wasn’t supposed to,” you confirmed emphatically.

“How does it work, the program? And the profiles, and the computer? All of it?” He questioned.

You gave him as simplified of a version as you could, “Profiles and a bunch of other data points get put into the program, which imports them into the computer. The computer spits out the resulting matches, I—we, matchmakers read them and submit the match reports, triggering the red strings.”

“So it wasn’t given any incorrect information about you or me? Nobody tampered with the system to force it to match us, or falsified a match?”

“No, you can’t do that. It’s impossible.”

“The only hiccup, in your opinion, was that it was given your data at all.”

“Yes, Factory employees aren’t allowed to—”

“Whose rule is that?”

“The Bureau—”

“So, it’s literally just bureaucracy?”

“I like my job,” you huffed, frustrated that he wasn’t seeing the blatantly obvious mistake that had happened. “It’s a rule for a reason. Factory employees are taken out of the program so the public doesn’t think employees are rigging their matches.”

“Can’t rig your soulmate if you don’t get one,” he scoffed.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“You say that like having one would be the worst thing in the world!” Sungchan replied incredulously.

“It is for me! Because do you know what would happen if people at the Bureau found out this happened?” You looked at him with wide, pointed eyes. “Just losing my job would probably be the best outcome. And who knows what would happen to you!”

“But—”

“I’m sorry, Sungchan. I’m sure you had imagined all of this, your red string, and the person at the other end of it, going a lot different. And I’m sure it will, when I fix everything.” You stood up, cutting your conversation and lunch short. “Don’t come to my work again, okay? For both our sakes.”

“Yeah, okay. Sorry,” he muttered, looking out at the water.

Back at the Factory, you finished eating your lunch at your desk, then shuffled back to the matchmaking room. After swiping in, you realized that you were pretty early, the first one back. Curious, you peered up at Ms. Kwon’s office. She was in there, of course. No way would you be able to attempt to use her computer to access the higher-clearance data. You sank into the chair at your station with a deep sigh. Drumming your fingers along the desktop, you let your eyes flutter shut. You’d have to wait for the others to get back from lunch for the power to be returned to the screens. In the meantime, you could just ruminate.

“Y/N?” Ms. Kwon’s voice came from the direction of her office. “Back so soon?”

You opened your eyes back up, turning to look at her. You nodded sheepishly. “Quick eater…”

“I feel like I’ve seen you in the breakroom with a book before. Nothing today?”

“Forgot it at home.”

“Alright, well… have fun, I suppose.” She turned to go back into her office.

“There’s no way to undo a match, is there?” You blurted out, stopping her in her tracks. She turned back around to look at you curiously as you continued, “Once we press submit on the computer, that’s it?”

Ms. Kwon cocked her head, leaning against the railing at the top of the stairs. “You should’ve been told this in training… No, there isn’t a way to ‘undo’ a match. We aren’t even matching them, just reporting on what the computer says. All the reports do is trigger the strings. The two people are soulmates regardless of the computer. We just intervene so they can find each other.”

You gulped and nodded. “Of course. I knew that… I… I don’t know. Thank you, Ms. Kwon.”

“Another brain itch?”

“Yeah, I guess,” you forced out a couple of chuckles to cover up the dread you felt on the inside.

“Alright. Remember, ‘The Soulmate Factory’ isn’t very accurate. We don’t make soulmates here, they’re already out there.”

“Right, yeah. Terrible nickname, huh?”

She shrugged. “It’s cute. Good for branding. I’ve got a few things to work on, unless you have any other burning questions for me?”

“No, Ms. Kwon, that’s it. Thank you, again.”

“No problem, Y/N.” And with that, she retreated into her office once more.

Dragging your feet back out to your desk at the end of the workday, you chewed on your bottom lip, contemplating pretending to have extra work so you could stay late and try to sneak onto Ms. Kwon’s computer to access the matched profiles. But her office was behind a door with swipe access, it would log that you swiped in after hours. A digital breadcrumb trail.

“Hey,” Jaemin got your attention as you sat in your chair and stared at your screen. You spun your chair around to look at him, lifting your eyebrows in a silent question. “Who was that guy?”

Your blood turned cold. “Huh? Who? When? What guy?”

“Oh now that wasn’t suspicious,” he snorted. “The guy that was waiting for you at lunch whose ass you looked like you were about to kick.”

Oh God. Jaemin saw Sungchan. Who else saw him? You had to assume everybody. You stood up from your chair hastily, fully intent on running away. “Just—Nobody, it doesn’t matter.”

Jaemin gasped, then dropped his voice, “Y/N, you didn’t...”

“Didn’t what?” You squeaked, now ready to stick around. You had to know what he knew, which was obviously the truth.

“You totally did.” He shook his head, clicking his tongue. “Never a good idea, getting involved with people who are destined, even if they don’t have their string yet. Because one day they will.”

Of course. He thought, perfectly reasonably, that you had dated, slept with, done something with somebody who was going to get their red string someday, while you would remain without it forever. You swallowed down your sigh of relief, and instead crossed your arms over your chest, quickly switching trains of thought to follow this new cover story.

“And that’s what I told him, Jaemin, I swear,” you whispered insistently.

Your friend finished up and switched off his desktop then, giving you a frank look. “How many times, Y/N?”

“I told him like a hundred times—”

“No. You know what I mean.”

You hurried down the stairs, Jaemin right with you, rolling your eyes as you tried to think of a number that wasn’t excessive, but messy enough to possibly warrant a guy turning up at your work. “I don’t know... a few! A girl’s got needs, Jaemin!”

He chuckled and shook his head again, pushing the front door open for you. He turned suddenly, grabbing you by the shoulders and spinning you around to face the building with him, then gestured grandly up and down the entirety of The Soulmate Factory. “A whole ten floors to pick from, Y/N. No messy red strings to worry about after.”

“Yeah, just awkward encounters at work,” you scoffed.

“I heard Park Jisung on the second floor thinks you’re cute.”

“What is this? Middle school?” You elbowed him to get him off of you, ducking out from under his arm and taking off towards your bus stop at a speed walk.

He easily kept pace with you. “I’m just looking out for you. Rule Number 1 of dating with no soulmate: Stay away from people with one.”

“Uh-huh, noted,” you replied shortly. “You done?”

“Are you?”

“Yes! God!”

“Alright.” He was still grinning, clearly finding the whole scenario amusing overall. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Bye, Jaemin.”

A couple nights later found you rooting through the frozen section of a corner store. You’d gotten home from work after yet another day of getting nowhere with this stupid red string and had wanted nothing more than to wallow in misery with a pint of ice cream. Except you had none in your freezer, and your usual corner store was out of your favorite flavor, so you had to go to one several blocks over.

After paying for the ice cream and grabbing a plastic spoon from the available utensils, you hurried out of the shop. Turning sharply onto a side street to take a shortcut back to your apartment, you nearly tripped over somebody sitting on the sidewalk curb, their feet in the street. They were wearing a hoodie with the hood up, and you jumped back as you went to apologize. Then they looked at you over their shoulder, and you stopped your apologies, flabbergasted and a little pissed off at the universe at this point.

“Oh my god, again?” You stared at Sungchan, eyes bugging out of your head.

“Okay, ouch,” he retorted. He had his own pint of ice cream and plastic spoon in hand, about two-thirds of the way done.

“Sorry, I was just… I wanted to drown my sorrowsin ice cream alone.”

He turned away from you, resting his arms on his knees as he went back to looking down at the pavement. “Well, I’ve got dibs on this street corner for sadly eating ice cream.”

You winced. “Sungchan… I’m…”

Sorry? Was that it? Not for wanting to undo the string. Sorry that this all happened to him in the first place, and that he was now sadly eating ice cream by himself on a street corner? Absolutely. Even though you wanted to remove your red string that connected you two as soulmates, you still felt for the guy as a person, and you felt bad just leaving him here. In a different set of circumstances, you could see the two of you being friends. Against your better judgment, you sat down next to him on the curb, opening your pint of ice cream. He looked at you suspiciously out of the corner of his eye, and you caught a glimpse of his damp, bloodshot eyes in the light of the streetlamp above you two before he focused them back down on his own ice cream.

He shoveled a spoonful into his mouth before speaking again. “We’re going to keep running into each other, don’t you get that?”

“Yeah, I know, the string always gets tighter again. But I didn’t think our string would be like a fucking rubber band.” You shook your head, licking the lid of your container clean. “Honestly, this is kind of ridiculous.”

There was a moment of awkward silence as he ate another bite of ice cream.

“The computer doesn’t make mistakes.” He stated bluntly. “That’s what you said the second time we met. Do you actually think that? That what goes on in there is making soulmates? Finding them? Whatever.”

“I-I mean, yeah.” You carefully carved out your first spoonful from the pristine surface. “We do analytics and data gathering post-matching and… yeah, it works.”

He was quiet as you took your bite of ice cream into your mouth.

“Then we’re soulmates.”

You couldn’t swallow quickly enough, mind reeling at you tried to think of anything to say. “But my profile—”

“Whatever may have happened before the computer got our data doesn’t fucking matter, it still did all the same stuff that it does when giving you all the matches that you read,” Sungchan cut you off, and you saw a fresh tear catch the light as it rolled down his cheek. “And it figured that we were soulmates. But suddenly you’re doubting it? Suddenly it’s not right? What’s so fucking special about you?”

“I…”

“Has somebody’s profile even been through the computer twice? Ever? And you want to just stick me back in there. What if it rejects me because it already processed me once? What if I don’t get another match? What if it breaks the whole damn program? The whole fucking Factory?” He wasn’t yelling, but his voice was strong and hoarse at the same time, and you froze up as you felt the anger and hurt in him.

You didn’t have an answer for him. You always had an answer. You always knew, at work, when reading the matches, you just always knew, but you didn’t now. You had nothing, it was all blank, empty in your mind. You swallowed thickly, staring at him as he looked over at you furiously. White hot shame and guilt made your skin prickle.

“I don’t know,” you admitted quietly.

Sungchan put his pint down on the pavement, then covered your hands with his. Even as you held onto your ice cream, you could feel that his skin was colder than yours. “I’m trying to understand you, Y/N, but this isn’t making any sense to me.”

“I thought I’d have a choice,” you told him shakily, slowly pulling your hands away. “I thought I’d be able to choose…”

He blinked, and his face twisted up with pain as he took his hands back. He grabbed his nearly empty carton, standing up and blotting out the lamp light as he towered over you.

“Trust me, you’ve got a choice. A big one.” He sighed bitterly, tossing his container in a nearby trash can. “I’ve said my piece. Goodnight.”

“Where are you going?” You called after him as he started down the sidewalk.

“Somewhere. When you’re ready, you know how to find me.” He lifted his left arm up and waved his hand, his end of the red string fluttering back and forth in the air with the movement.

You watched him continue to walk down the street, not slowing down or looking over his shoulder once. It was only when you could no longer see him that scalding tears welled up in your vision and stung your eyes. You didn’t bother wiping them away as they streamed down your face and fell onto your shirt, leaving dark patches in their wake. Despite the ice cream being your original intent for coming out, you suddenly didn’t have an appetite, burying your face in your arms to cry alone on the curb.

What’s so fucking special about you?

Sungchan’s words were still in the squeal of the bus brakes in the morning, and the hum of strangers’ conversations, and the shuffle of leaves as the wind shook tree branches. You stared at the grooves of the hardwood floor in the breakroom, hearing his voice in the gurgle of the coffee machine as it ran on the counter behind you. You didn’t even need your usual morning cup, still wide awake, as you had been all night. Fingers snapped in front of your eyes, and you lazily dragged your gaze up to the owner of the hand, Renjun.

“You look like shit,” he deadpanned.

You took a long, deep sigh, not even having enough in you to react to the comment as you usually would. “Do you ever think about your soulmate, Renjun?”

“Uh… no?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Because I don’t have one? Remember?”

“I know, Factory employees get taken out of the program. But doesn’t that mean that the computer is really working with incomplete data or whatever? Since it doesn’t actually have every single person in there?”

He crossed his arms over his chest as he seemed to think about this for a moment. “I guess.”

“If we were all in there, we’d get matched up with somebody. Our soulmate. We’re not all in there, but whoever we would be matched with still is. So they just… get their second-best match?”

“What is it that matchmaking lady always says? ‘The computer does more than we’ll ever know?’”

“Ms. Kwon?”

“Yeah, her.” He nodded, turning around to get his cereal down from the cabinet. He answered your question over his shoulder, “No, I’ve never thought about this, Y/N. But you have clearly been doing a lot of thinking about it.”

“Too much,” you groaned. “My head hurts.”

Your coworker’s voice was a bit softer as he offered, “You, me, and Jaemin—Drinks after work?”

After work you ended up on a rooftop bar with Jaemin and Renjun, nursing your second beer of the night as you stared out at the lights of the city. The two of them were chatting about some movie that was coming out this weekend that they were interested in, and all three of you had your feet kicked up on the ledge of the rooftop.

In a lull in their conversation, a finger poked your head from the left. “What’s wrong?” Jaemin asked.

You sighed. “It’s… ugh.”

Another finger poked the right side of your head. “Come on,” Renjun insisted. “You’ve been weird all week.”

You took a swig of your drink, then let out another deep sigh. “Why did you guys start working at the Factory?”

“What?” Renjun scoffed lightly, as if he couldn’t imagine why you’d even ask that.

“Why did you start working at the Factory?” You repeated. “I mean, accepting a life without a soulmate.”

“My parents met at the Factory, actually,” Jaemin said.

“Wait, really?” You turned to him curiously. You knew that Factory employees dating each other wasn’t off-limits, and theoretically that meant they could settle down and have lives sort of like soulmates, but you’d never heard much about it actually happening.

“Yeah, they weren’t soulmates. So it was one of those things where, I don’t know, I got to grow up knowing that there was another way to live.” Jaemin shrugged casually. “I didn’t even really think about the no-soulmate thing when I applied, they just always talked about how much they loved their jobs, it sounded like a cool place to work.”

“I applied at a bunch of different places, this is the first one that called me back,” Renjun gave his own answer.

“Why did you start working here?” Jaemin turned your question back on you.

You tapped your fingernail against the side of your bottle. “Pay’s not bad… And I didn’t… hate the idea of having a say in my love life, you know? Instead of this string showing up one day and telling me who I’m supposed to be with forever. Getting to choose on my own.”

“Sounds like you don’t think the computer knows what it’s doing,” Renjun snorted.

“No, it does! It does! I just… didn’t mind the idea of never knowing.”

Jaemin furrowed his brow curiously. “What do you mean?”

“Like… I can wake up tomorrow and have cereal, or eggs, or buy breakfast on my way into work. There could be someone new on my bus in the morning. I can get a haircut, or dye my hair. It could rain tomorrow, or be sunny, or overcast. Life is always in flux, always changing, new, different.”

“Knowing who your soulmate is, would be too… certain?”

“Some people like having that constant in their life,” Renjun pointed out. “Or so I’ve heard.”

“I don’t know, like what if you get your soulmate and they kind of suck? Then you kind of have to ask yourself what did you do to deserve someone who kind of sucks? Because that’s literally the best you can do,” you ranted, gesturing around to the night sky with your bottle. “At least without a string, there’s always a chance that there’s someone better out there.”

“Ah, you’ve got the Boy Scout mindset,” Jaemin said knowingly. “Just in case. Just in case it rains, I’ll bring an umbrella. Just in case whoever you’re seeing now kind of sucks, you can always try again.”

You crossed your arms defensively. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, since you don’t have a string.”

“Very polite way to say she has commitment issues, Jaemin,” Renjun snickered.

“Rude!” You smacked his arm with the back of your hand.

He wasn’t dissuaded by your minor battery, however. Bringing his two feet back down to the ground, he leaned his elbows forward on his knees and looked over at you, “Sounds like to me, you want infinite second chances. Just in case.”

“There’s only so many of us at the Factory, really,” Jaemin pointed out. “Wouldn’t a soulmate actually be infinite second chances? Since you know you’re destined to be with them, you can kind of mess up as often as you want?”

You frowned, thinking of Sungchan walking away from you. “You really think so? I mean, they’re still a person. Wouldn’t they stop putting up with you after so long? Even if they were your soulmate, I’m sure being alone would be better than having a shit soulmate.”

“Well, then you have to ask: What is a soulmate? Just the best you can do? Or someone who’s going to make you better? Is there such a thing as a shit soulmate?”

“There has to be, right? There’s bad people, and those people have soulmates.”

“Are they bad forever? Are they bad people to their soulmates? Or do they also have shit people for soulmates? So, relative to each other, they don’t even realize that they have a shit soulmate?”

“My head hurts again…” You groaned, pressing the heels of your palms against your temples.

A long silence passed as you three each finished off your beers. Renjun shrugged and leaned back in his chair with a satisfied grunt. “Thank God we’ll never know, huh?”

Your Saturday was spent walking. Walking all over town, from your apartment to your bus stop, to the park where Sungchan had been playing Frisbee before, to the corner store where you’d last seen him, and everywhere in between. You kept your head on a swivel, straining for any sign of his tall head over the crowd. But you couldn’t see him anywhere.

When you finally gave up mid-afternoon and went back to your apartment for a late lunch, you knew that you were actually relieved that you hadn’t found him today. If you had ran into him, you didn’t even know what you’d say, where to start, where to end, what to say in the middle. Your head was a jumbled mess, simultaneously too full and too empty. There was no way you’d be able to articulate a single comprehensible word when you yourself didn’t know a shred about anything that you were thinking or feeling.

Sunday you were kept busy with Sungchan’s lingering question. What’s so special about you?

In the moment, it felt like he was asking why you thought you were special enough to be exempt from something that everyone else experienced: getting a red string and finding their soulmate. But as you went about mindless chores in your apartment, doing the dishes, folding laundry, you thought about him.

What’s so special about Sungchan? What would make him your soulmate? And you wondered if he was asking himself the same questions about you.

Monday morning you almost missed your bus. You’d been so distracted going about your morning routine that you ran straight from your apartment building onto the bus, the doors closing right after you. The elderly couple was on today, and you plopped into your seat in front of them, offering them a breathless smile and greeting.

“Tough morning, dear?” The woman asked you knowingly.

“Oh, a bit,” you laughed. “Tough couple of weeks, honestly. But I’ll make it. What’s the new exhibit for this month?”

“It’s a contemporary artist who does large-scale mixed media collages,” the husband explained.

“That sounds so cool! Is there a particular theme for the collection on display or it more eclectic?”

“Oh, we don’t read up much before,” she said with a shake of her head. “We like to go in blind, no presuppositions or expectations, good or bad.”

You continued chatting about the museum with them until their stop to get off, and watched fondly as the man helped his wife up, the both of them bidding you farewell before departing. As the bus peeled away, you were able to glimpse them starting arm-in-arm down the sidewalk together.

After dropping your backpack in your chair, you headed towards the breakroom, where you found Jaemin hunched over something at a counter, his back to the door.

“Renjun’s cereal?” You surmised immediately.

He jumped in place, turning around clutching his chest. “Fuck! You scared the shit out of me, Y/N! Don’t sneak up on a guy like that!” He did in fact have a familiar box in his hand, clearly having been pouring some into a cup.

“I wasn’t sneaking. You just flipped out because you know you’re being a little cereal thief right now.”

He quickly closed up the box and put it away. “There. Like it never happened.”

“Why don’t you just bring your own box of cereal?”

“It just tastes better if it’s free.”

“Stolen.”

“Synonyms.” He grinned slyly, shooting you a wink as he walked out.

As you were milling about, trying to gather everything to start the first pot of coffee, Renjun entered, heading straight for where his cereal was stored. You watched out of the corner of your eye as he grabbed it, froze midair, and tested the weight of it in his hand.

“Na Jaemin…” He hissed, slamming the container onto the counter.

“Suggestion—” You announced, turning around to look at him with your arms crossed over your chest. “Keep the cereal at your desk instead of leaving it here unattended where he steals it all the time.”

“I never keep food at my desk. What if it attracts ants?”

“Padlock.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You may be onto something there…”

Renjun wandered out of the room, still musing over this with the cereal box tucked under his arm. You realized you didn’t really want a cup of coffee and put the empty coffee mug away.

The weekly agenda meeting was short and sweet, and you were slow to follow the other matchmakers down the hall after. You were the very last one to swipe in, and to take your seat at your station. Everyone else was already reading their matches, but you just stared at your blank screen, not even turning it on yet. At some point, two weeks ago, someone in this room, one of your coworkers—or maybe even you—had read a match result, looked up a bunch of numbers, and submitted a match report that had changed your life forever. You listened to them clacking away at their keyboards, dozens more strangers’ lives being irreparably altered like yours was.

“Y/N?” Your name was called from across the room, and you whipped your head around to look over at Ms. Kwon, standing in the doorway of her office. She gestured for you to come over. “A moment?”

“Oh, of course, ma’am.” You rushed to stand, hurrying up the stairs and following her into her office.

She closed the door behind you, sitting back down behind her desk, and offering the chairs across from her for you. You nervously took the one closest to the door.

“Is everything alright with you?” Your supervisor asked gently. “You’ve been sitting at your station for the past fifteen minutes and haven’t turned the screen on…”

“Sorry…” You winced, self-conscious as you pictured Ms. Kwon watching you stare at a blank screen for fifteen minutes. “I’m uhm… I…”

“Have something on your mind?”

“It’s worth it, right? Giving up your soulmate to work here?”

Ms. Kwon took your question in stride, folding her hands together over her desk as she answered, “It’s good work that we do here, Y/N, don’t get me wrong. Necessary. But choosing to live without a soulmate, that’s not a noble sacrifice on our part. We’re not any better than anybody else because we choose to work here and they don’t. I don’t know a single executive here who would talk about it like that.”

You could feel all façades slip off your face, your eyes widening slightly and your mouth parting, though no sound came out.

At your apparent speechlessness, Ms. Kwon continued, “We’re not... monks or nuns taking some holy vow, Y/N. It’s morally neutral. Neither good nor bad. It just is.”

A split-second of rage burst inside you. “Then why would any of you choose it? Why would anybody go without a soulmate?”

“Why did you?” She asked you calmly.

“I... was afraid to know,” you admitted quietly.

“Everyone here is sort of like that. They have some other reason. It’s usually not a good one, but they never have to confront it. Ever.”

“So the Factory... is the easy way out?”

“Y/N, listen to the words I’m telling you: It is neither good nor bad to choose to work here. It just is.”

“Is it good to have your soulmate, then?”

“I am not the arbiter of good or bad in your life. I’m just your boss,” she replied, sounding a bit tired now. “Look, you’re very smart. That’s why you were chosen for matchmaking. But I’m urging you to stop this line of thinking here. This is how you end up—”

“I’m resigning,” you declared, and suddenly all of the noise in your mind was quiet.

“That is what I was afraid of,” she sighed. “May I ask why?”

“I… have a soulmate.”

“Of course you do.” Ms. Kwon smiled placidly. “All of us at the Factory do. But quitting now will not put your profile back in to get matched with them.”

“No, I—I was matched. Somehow, I don’t know how, but… I have a red string, Ms. Kwon.” You held up your right hand, pointing to your pinky, even though you knew she couldn’t see it. You couldn’t help but laugh at the sudden lightness of your shoulders. “I have a soulmate, and… this is just a job. It’s a good job, and I love it. But there’s other jobs. I don’t have another soulmate.”

She was quiet for a moment, simply looking at you intensely. After a moment, she reached out to hover her hands over her keyboard. “Would you mind if I took just a moment to confirm? It’ll take less than a minute.”

“Sure, go for it.”

Ms. Kwon quickly typed away and clicked a few things on her mouse as you quite literally twiddled your thumbs over your lap. Just a few seconds later, she took her glasses off, rubbing between her brows as she let out a deep sigh. “So it seems you have been…” She sat back in her chair. “Have you… found them?”

“Uhm, yes, ma’am,” you nodded awkwardly.

“This is why you were so interested in undoing matches as of late, I presume.”

“Yes… but not anymore.”

She sat there for a few more moments, eyes closed, before putting her glasses back on and sitting up straight again. “I accept your resignation, Y/N. With a heavy heart, might I add.”

“That means a lot, Ms. Kwon.”

“There will need to be an investigation.”

“I figured.”

“I expect full cooperation from both you and your soulmate.”

“Oh, uh, sure, sure.”

Ms. Kwon looked at you oddly. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“We’re not… exactly… friendly… right now…” You admitted quietly. “And it’s completely my fault…”

She let out a few soft, wistful chuckles. “He didn’t take too kindly to you attempting to ‘undo’ your string, did he?”

“No, he didn’t.” You shook your head, biting the inside of your cheek regretfully.

“The string will tighten again, Y/N,” she reassured you, her voice kind. “The computer doesn’t make mistakes.”

“Right. Thank you, Ms. Kwon.”

She cleared her throat, becoming formal and businesslike again. “Provided the investigation turns up exactly what I think it will, I’ll also write an excellent reference letter for you, if you would like.”

“What do you think the investigation will turn up?”

“A mistake. Something was misfiled. A paper was put in the wrong stack. A name left off an email. I don’t think you tampered with the program somehow to put yourself back in. Did you?”

“No, ma’am, not at all.”

“There we go.” She shrugged. “Do you have anything else for me?”

“I get my severance pay and all that, right?”

“Of course.”

You stood up, set your key card on the desk, and shook her hand before leaving her office, walking right out of the matchmaking room as the others kept at it at their stations. Making a beeline for your desk, you could see several heads of your coworkers popping up to peer at you curiously before looking back down at their computers. One remained up and focused intently on you from further down your row, Renjun.

As you stopped next to Jaemin and opened your backpack at your desk, he took his headphones off to turn to you. “Uh hey…?”

“Hi,” you replied cheerily, beginning to grab personal possessions off your desk and load them into your bag.

“What are you doing?”

At this point, Renjun had stood up from his desk and stalked over to you two, eyes wide as he took in what you were doing. “What’s going on?”

“I quit!” You informed them, not being particularly quiet about it.

“What?!” “Seriously?!”

“Seriously,” you confirmed, unplugging the receiver for your personal wireless mouse, and putting it back inside said mouse, before chucking the whole thing into your bag. “Resigned. Quit. Handed in my zero day notice.”

“Why? I thought you loved this job!” Renjun sputtered out, his hands on his hips.

“Yeah! Like, I thought you were going to be Director one day!” Jaemin nodded. “What happened?”

You looked around the wide-open bullpen, still having enough tact to not want to blab about your string in front of everybody. Zipping up your backpack and throwing one strap over your shoulder, you asked your friends innocently, “Walk me out?”

They practically dragged you down the stairs, flanking you on either side, none of you saying a word until you were outside.

“What’s going on?” Renjun demanded as soon as the front doors closed behind you. “Is it something we need to know about? Should we be looking for other jobs?”

“Did you ask for a raise or something and they wouldn’t give it to you?” Jaemin asked. “Or a promotion? Or—”

“No, it’s nothing like that. You guys are fine,” you promised them, lacing your two hands together in front of you. Taking a deep breath, you admitted, “I have a red string, and I found my soulmate.”

Their jaws dropped, and they looked at each other, flabbergasted, then at you, then each other again, then stared at you. Renjun was the first to shake himself out of his stupefied state, “How did that even—”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know how much I can even say until the Factory finishes their investigation, so…” You trailed off. “Yeah, that’s why I quit. And Ms. Kwon didn’t ask me to stay.”

Jaemin’s eyes widened comically as he pointed at you accusatorily. “The guy at lunch, was he your—”

“Yeah, that was him.” You rubbed the back of your neck nervously. “Anyway, you guys can’t say anything to anybody else at the Factory, okay? Just let management handle this however they want to. Keep your noses out of it.”

“So what are you going to do now?” Renjun asked.

“Uh… try to find him? Again?” You said sheepishly.

“You lost him?” Jaemin asked in disbelief. “Like, in a well or something? How? What?”

“We kind of had a fight… Let’s just say the ball’s in my court, and I don’t know how to play.”

He patted you on the back. “You’ve got this, Y/N.”

“Thanks,” you nodded to him gratefully. “I should let you two get back to work now. Thank you both, again, for being the best work buddies a girl could ask for.”

“Hey, don’t talk like you’re going off and dying,” Renjun scoffed, poking the right side of your head.

“Yeah, we’re your real buddies, too.” Jaemin poked the left side of your head. “I still owe you your book.”

“You two have got to make sure you don’t kill each other over cereal in the mornings on your own now. I won’t be there to referee,” you warned as you took a step back, facing them.

“As long as Jaemin keeps his grubby mitts to himself, no problem.” Renjun nodded.

Jaemin grinned. “No promises.”

You laughed, going in to give each of them a hug. “Bye, guys. I’ll see you around.”

And you proceeded to walk. From the riverside park near the Factory, to the curb where you’d eaten ice cream together, to your favorite bookstore. You walked until your feet ached and your stomach growled, and even after that. You found new parts of the city that you’d never seen, never had any reason to go to before. As you came up to a street of small shops, you peered into each window carefully as you passed by. Your feet skidded to a stop all on their own and your heart leapt to your throat as you inadvertently made eye contact with a patron right on the other side of the glass of one store. The exact person you’d been looking for.

While Sungchan froze in place, you ran for the entrance to the shop, throwing open the door and ducking around shelves and displays to find him still glued to the same spot, staring out the window at the pavement where you used to be. You grabbed his left hand with your right, watching the string complete itself, and pulled him around to face you.

“Sungchan!” You said his name breathlessly, a relieved smile on your face. “Found you!”

“Y/N…” His voice was guarded, uncertain, gaze trailing over your red jumpsuit that you were still in. “Are you… on your lunch break?”

“No, I uh, I resigned this morning,” you told him, not an ounce of remorse in your tone.

His eyes widened, and his demeanor immediately changed as he looked down at you with concern. “What? You didn’t have to—Y/N, what happened? Oh my god, what are you going to do?”

A throat was very conspicuously cleared from nearby, and you snapped your head over in the direction of it, spotting a group of several guys leaning against shelves further down the store, a few trying to look busy and not like they had just been listening to your conversation. One stood at the front of them, looking directly at Sungchan.

“Oh, sorry, guys,” Sungchan waved them off. “Go on without me, okay?”

And with that, he set down the merchandise he had been browsing—which you were now seeing was a stack of old magazines; it looked as though you were in a thrift store of some kind—and pulled you out the door by the hand. Just a little ways down the street was a bench overlooking the river, and the two of you stopped there.

“I wouldn’t have been able to keep working there with a red string, Sungchan,” you explained. “If I didn’t resign, I would’ve been fired whenever they found out. I wanted to tell them myself.”

He frowned. “When I said you had a choice…”

“I chose to keep the string, and stop looking for a way to undo it. I know that’s what you were asking me.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask…” he sighed. “What made you change your mind?”

“A lot of different things, but… I think realizing that I’m not that special.”

“Y/N, I—”

“No, I mean, I kind of had this complex about working at the Factory. Thinking that it was some sacrifice for the greater good, me giving up my soulmate so I could help other people find theirs. But like… it was just a job.” You laughed at how ridiculous that sounded now, even just a few hours after resigning.

Sungchan smiled a little at that, but still looked pensive. “So what are you going to do for work now?”

“I don’t know,” you admitted quietly, but couldn’t keep the giddy grin off your face. “That’s really scary… but it’s kind of exciting, in a weird way, right? I’ve had the same job since I got out of school, and now I can do anything.”

“We’ll find you a job. That’s like, Priority One, okay?” He reassured you. “We’ll do some brainstorming, find some job listings, we’ll figure something out.”

“We?”

“Yeah?” He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m not leaving you out to dry after all this.”

“Thanks, Sungchan.” You fidgeted with your fingers, eyes gracing over the finished red string again. “And uh, if that’s Priority One, then Priority Two is probably going to have to be the investigation.”

“The what?”

“The Bureau has to investigate how this even happened, our match. Me resigning was just the beginning, not the end. They’re expecting our full cooperation.”

“What are we going to have to cooperate with, exactly?” He crossed his arms.

“They’ll probably just want to ask us some questions. Me more than you, since I’m the one who actually worked there. Ms. Kwon—my old boss—made it sound like it’d be more a formality than anything else. I’m sure they’re already auditing all my match reports for the past two years, and looking through my key card log, and going through my computer as we speak.”

“Alright, yeah. Fine.”

With his agreement, the two of you were quiet for a moment, and you felt an air of uncertainty. You’d found each other, you were soulmates, you weren’t trying to undo your string anymore, and yet you were still practically strangers. Where did you go from here?

“So… what’s your favorite color?” You asked.

“What?” He blinked, seeming confused at the sudden change in topic.

“I don’t know anything about you…” You said quietly, feeling your skin get warm with embarrassment. “I don’t know, that’s just the first thing that came to mind. Forget it, it was stupid.”

He chuckled and answered anyway, “Purple. My favorite color is purple.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“What’s yours?”

“Pink. Uh, cotton candy pink, specifically.”

“That’s good. That’s really good.” He was still laughing, more than your awkward question warranted.

“Okay, what’s so funny? Other than me being stupid.”

“No, I’m not laughing at you, it’s just…” He reassured you, trailing off as he seemed to be trying to put his thoughts together. “There’re all these books, and magazine articles and stuff, you know. 15 Things to Not Do When You Meet Your Soulmate. 10 Best Opening Lines for Meeting the One. I Met My Soulmate and It’s Awkward: Now What? How to Get Over First Meeting Flutters. And you’re nothing like that. You’ve probably never even read anything of that sort of stuff, have you?”

“No…” You shook your head, then squinted at him suspiciously. “Have you?”

He held his hands up defensively. “Well, call it morbid curiosity—”

You couldn’t help but giggle, attempting to cover it with your hand, having the perfect image of him lying on his bed on his stomach, legs kicking up behind him as he scrolled on his phone late at night reading cheesy internet columns about love.

“And that’s funny, yeah, okay. I didn’t fool you with the… yeah.” Sungchan laughed again, this time at himself, and you were quickly starting to think that it might be your favorite sound.

“It’s cute, it’s cute!” You promised. “I’m uhm, sure me running away really threw a wrench in whatever great opening line you had planned.”

“Yes and no.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “You were really pretty, and when I looked at you, I suddenly forgot every word I knew. And then you ran away, and I was just confused at how I had messed it up before opening my mouth.”

Your body burned on the inside and outside twofold from him simultaneously saying you were so pretty it made him speechless, and also the shame at how stupendously you had fucked up your first meeting. You squeezed your eyes shut, covered your face with both hands, and shook your head as you groaned out an apology, “Oh god, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine, really— Helped snap me out of it, you know?” He chuckled, and you were glad he could at least see some humor in it now. “Looking back now, completely understandable for you to do that. Sorry again for chasing you through the streets, I’m sure that didn’t help.”

“Also understandable on your part,” you said. Before you could scramble for another thing to ask Sungchan, your stomach rumbled loudly, and you cringed, knowing full well that he had definitely been able to hear that. “Sorry…”

“I was supposed to grab food with the guys anyway.” Sungchan stood up. “Let’s get you something to eat, hm?”

You followed him to a small café a couple streets away, and after grabbing your food, you two sat at a table outside. “So what do you do? For work? Or are you a student? You know quite a bit about my old job, but…”

“Oh, I’m an artist.”

“What kind? Like, what medium? Is that the right way to ask that? I guess I’m asking what kind of stuff you make?”

“Don’t worry, those were all good questions. Different questions, but good.” He smiled warmly, taking a sip of his drink before answering. “I mostly focus on making mixed media collages. Sometimes I source my materials from other places, but sometimes I make it myself. Take my own pictures, paint it myself, put the clay on myself. Just depends. So I work with a lot of different materials and mediums, too.”

“Oh!” You immediately thought of the couple you talked to on the bus that morning. “You should totally check out the art museum on 2nd this month! I heard they have an exhibit showcasing mixed media collages. I haven’t been, but there’s this couple on my bus in the mornings who goes every month, they told me about it today.”

“Did they say the artist?” He asked mildly, picking at his food with his utensil.

“No, they don’t do any research before, they like to go in blind.”

“Yeah, uhm, that’s my exhibit,” he practically whispered the last two words behind a napkin as he wiped his mouth with it, looking down at his plate. His ears were bright red, and he grabbed his drink to take another long sip.

Your eyes widened. “Wait really?”

“I understand if you think I’m lying, it’s on the exhibit webpage on the museum website, but yeah…”

“Sungchan, that’s so cool!” You exclaimed, even as you brought out your phone to bring up the website. Not because you didn’t believe him, but just because reading the headline of how the museum was proud to feature ‘New Local Artist Jung Sungchan’ in an exclusive exhibit was practically surreal. He, however, still couldn’t seem to meet your eyes. “Why do you look like you want to die?”

“I didn’t want to use my real name, but my… manager thought it would be a good idea. And obviously I had to tell you.” He rubbed a hand over his face, making everything from his forehead to his neck pink. “I just hate people looking at my art and thinking they know me. They can look at my art all I want, project onto it, feel from it, call it stupid, say they could have done better, I don’t care, I just don’t want them to know it’s mine and think they know me because of it.”

“Who’s your manager that made you use your real name? Don’t artists use pseudonyms sometimes?”

“My sister’s husband. He’s good at his job, and he’s done a lot for me. I’m really thankful for him, honestly. It was more like when I was first starting out, he thought that using a pseudonym would make me seem sort of pretentious. People would like a regular guy a lot more.” Sungchan sighed. “I agreed, and have regretted that decision with every art show I’ve attended since.”

You nodded slowly, tapping your fingers on the tabletop in a rhythm as you thought. “So… why do you think you make art, then?”

“I have to,” he shrugged. “Not making art would be worse. People connecting with my art… I like that. But I don’t like when they try to assume things about me because of my art. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, it does,” you assured him. “Death of the collagist.”

His face cracked into a grin. “Exactly.”

“Would you mind if I went to your exhibit sometime?” You asked. “You totally don’t have to come, I’m sure that’d be weird for you. But I’d like to go see it, and not make any assumptions about you at all.”

“It’s a public museum, I can’t stop you from going.”

“Well, yes… I don’t know, it’s still your art, and I’m not just a member of the public, am I?”

Sungchan’s eyes held a softness as he looked at you across the table, and he shook his head. “No, you’re not just a member of the public to me.”

“And you’re not just some random artist to me,” you responded.

“I wouldn’t mind if you went, on one condition.”

“Mm?” You prompted, expecting it to be something along the lines of ‘don’t tell me what you think’ or ‘don’t ever mention it to me.’ Nothing at all in the realm of what he actually requested.

“I go with you.”

Your eyebrows shot up. “Wait really?”

“Really.”

“Okay, yeah, of course!”

“Then it’s a date.”

You nodded, suddenly feeling shy at him calling it a date, turning your eyes back down to your food. “Yeah, okay. A date.”

You ended up spending the whole day with Sungchan, just getting to know each other. And browsing online job listings for you—turns out he wasn’t kidding about that being Priority One.

He used revising your résumé as an opportunity to learn more about you. Education—Oh where did you go to school? What did you study? Which devolved into you two telling stories about classes you liked, professors and teachers you loved and hated, and old school friends. Work Experience—So what actually was your official title? What were your job responsibilities? Which led to you fondly reminiscing in your times at the office with Jaemin and Renjun, talking about your training to be a Systems Analytics Specialist, and his disbelief in how exactly you even did your job. It was when you got to the Skills portion that you balked a little bit. It felt like your only skills were specific to the Factory: reading the matches from the computer, inputting match reports, keeping Renjun from killing Jaemin over a box of cereal. Sungchan helped you get a bit creative with your technological experience, creative thinking, quick learning, and conflict resolution skills.

As he walked you back to your apartment after getting dinner together, you were still asking him your never-ending stream of questions. “So what were you supposed to be doing with your friends today?”

“I was collecting.” He craned his neck up, and you followed his line of vision to look up at the few specks of light in the sky that you could see against the brightness of the city. “Gathering materials for collages. Thrift stores are pretty good for old magazines, books, newspapers, photo albums, all kinds of stuff. The guys were tagging along, they wanted to get lunch and do some shopping too.”

“Oh. Sorry for taking you away from them.”

He gave you a funny look. “No.”

“What?”

“No, you’re not going to apologize for that.”

You blinked at him in confusion. “Uh… I think I already did?”

He stopped you two in the middle of the sidewalk, devoid of other pedestrians, holding your eye contact very seriously. “Thank you for finding me today.”

“Oh,” you chuckled nervously. “You’re welcome. Thank you for… everything else about today. The look on your face when I found you—I was sort of afraid that you were going to run this time.”

He laughed, continuing to walk again. “Did I really look like that?”

“Through the window, yeah. When I came in the shop, though, it was more like… you thought you were dreaming. Like you were going to pinch yourself at any moment, just in case. Or you thought I was pranking you.”

“Well, you’ll have to understand why I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high; all our previous meetings didn’t quite have fairytale endings.”

“No, they didn’t,” you agreed.

“But this time felt different. So I let myself be a little hopeful,” he admitted with a grin, nudging your arm with his. “And I was right.”

“How’d you figure that?”

“You didn’t act like finding me was a terrible inconvenience, first.”

You winced. “Mm-mhm.”

“And the smile on your face when you ran in and grabbed my hand.”

“What about it?”

“I’d never seen you smile before that.” He then added a teasing, “I didn’t know if you could.”

“Hey! I wasn’t that bad.”

He snickered, affectionately bumping his elbow against yours again. You rolled your eyes, smiling as you elbowed him back. You arrived at the main entry to your building soon, and you stopped there to say goodbye to Sungchan. He looked between the door that you were standing in front of, and the familiar bus stop just a few meters down the road, well within view.

“Oh wow, it must have really freaked you out when I jogged by your stop, huh?” He commented, scratching the back of his head.

“Yeah, you can imagine the ‘ready to fistfight the divine universe’ energy I had in my body at that point.”

He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Pretty sure I witnessed some of it, too.”

You looked longingly at the bus stop, holding yourself, and sighed. “It’s going to be weird not getting up and going to work tomorrow.”

“So what are you going to do tomorrow? With no work?”

You passed a bubble side to side in your mouth as you thought, then shrugged. “Sleep in?”

“Great way to start the day.”

“And then… send my résumé to some of those places we found?”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Probably read outside somewhere if it’s a nice day?”

“Ooh, sounds nice.”

You dug your toe into the ground. “I don’t know, what are you doing?”

“Sleep in, and I promised Shotaro I’d help him with this thing, but then… if you don’t mind the company, I think reading outside sounds pretty lovely?”

“What are you helping Shotaro with?”

“Taking Instagram pictures.”

You let out a short round of giggles. “I’d like to spend time with you tomorrow too, Sungchan. Just let me know when you’re done helping Shotaro with that thing.”

“It’ll be the quickest photoshoot he’s ever done in his life.”

“No, still do it right!”

“It’ll be right, just quick.”

You shook your head disapprovingly, but the fond smile on your face very obviously negated that sentiment. “Goodnight, Sungchan.”

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

And with that, you unlocked your building door and gave him one last wave over your shoulder before closing and locking it back up behind you. Alone in the stairwell, you let out a sigh of contentment.

The next morning, you slept in on a Tuesday for the first time in a while and didn’t put on your red jumpsuit after getting out of bed. Instead, you shuffled out to your kitchen and made yourself breakfast, which you slowly enjoyed with a cup of tea. After taking your sweet time in a nice hot shower, you got into a t-shirt and pants, and sat on your couch to start sending in applications to new jobs. As you typed on your laptop, you’d catch the occasional flash of the red loop around your pinky finger, but instead of filling you with you dread or apprehension, it now made you smile a bit, and push on with your task, knowing you had someone right there in your corner just on the other end of that string. After a couple hours of filling out applications, searching through more prospective job listings, and finding a few new ones that had been posted since you and Sungchan looked yesterday, you deemed that to be plenty for your first morning of job hunting. It was nearly lunchtime, and you hadn’t left your apartment yet. Looking outside, you saw that it was sunny, with a few passing clouds creating occasional patches of shadow, and breezes gently rustled the leaves on the trees. A perfectly lovely day.

Gathering up a couple books, you packed a light going-out bag, then headed out. As you passed your bus stop, you thought of the regulars on your morning commute, and wondered if they noticed your disappearance this morning, and if they thought anything of it, like you thought of the primary school teacher sometimes. You hoped the sisters got to school okay, and that the elderly couple liked Sungchan’s exhibit, and even that the office workers who you had never spoken to had good days at work—not too terribly stressful. As you had just arrived at your destination and picked out the perfect spot to read, your phone buzzed with a text.

[sungchan: done! with a satisfied customer, might i add]

[you: oh good! i’m done with my applications for the morning too! out reading right now]

You sent your location, then took your book out as there was another buzz.

[sungchan: omw :) ]

You were so caught up in the chapter you were reading that you didn’t realize Sungchan had arrived until he set his bag down next to you. You jumped a little bit, closing the book on your thumb as you clutched your hand over your heart, which was now beating wildly out of rhythm.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to give you a scare.” Sungchan didn’t look that sorry, as he had a clearly amused smirk on his face as he looked down at you. “I did call your name.”

“It’s alright, sorry I didn’t hear you.” You waved off his apology, then nodded to the spot beside you for him to sit down. “Lovely day out, huh?”

“It is,” he agreed, stretching out his long legs as he settled in against the large tree trunk. He reached into his bag, and you looked with intrigue at what book he was going to read for today.

You perked up with interest as you recognized the cover immediately. “Oh, I’ve been wanting to read that book! I love that author. Just haven’t picked it up yet.”

“Yeah it uhm—” he cleared his throat awkwardly. “It was the book you were looking at when we met. The one you dropped.”

“You…”

“I didn’t know how long it was going to be until the next time I saw you, so I went back and bought it. You know, sort of hoping I could learn something about you in the meantime.”

“And in the meantime, I was scheming to undo our string…” You muttered, eyes falling to your lap.

“Which you, no offense, failed at,” he clicked his tongue and elbowed you teasingly. “I’ll speedread so you can borrow it after me, okay?”

“No, read it right! That author’s so good, you’ll miss stuff!”

“I’ll read it carefully! Just also super fast.”

“Those are literally antonyms when it comes to reading!” You insisted.

“You’ve never seen me speedread then.”

You smacked your open book over your face, despite knowing that he was joking. “Oh my god…”

Two weeks later, and you and Sungchan were going to The Soulmate Factory for your interviews. You were sort of surprised it had taken them this long to talk to you, but at the same time, that it was happening this quickly. It felt weird going to the Factory not in your jumpsuit, but you knew that would’ve been possibly the worst choice. So you instead put on something nice, presentable, but not overly formal. After all, it wasn’t your job interview again. Sungchan was wearing a button-up shirt, a stark contrast to the rather casual attire you’d always seen him in before. As the two of you entered the lobby of the Factory, you could see him looking around at everything with an air of suspicion.

You stopped at the front desk, giving the attendant a polite smile and starting to introduce yourself, despite having just been colleagues a few weeks ago, “Hi, uhm Y/L/N Y/N and Jung Sungchan, here for a 9:00 appointment with Ms. Kwon?”

“Of course,” she nodded, looking between you and Sungchan with a strained smile of her own. “You… two can have a seat. I’ll let her know you’re here.”

Leading Sungchan over to sit on a settee nearby, you looked around, taking a few deep breaths as your knee bounced up and down nervously on its own. You had gotten the two of you here fifteen minutes early, so you already knew that you’d be waiting for some time.

“Why did she say it like that?” He hissed to you under his breath.

“Say what?” You whispered back, looking at her out of the corner of your eye to see if she was listening, but it looked like she was taking an incoming call.

“You two can have a seat.” He repeated snidely. “And the way she looked at us? Looked at you? Like we’re the weird ones for being soulmates?”

“I told you, Sungchan, there’s a reason Bureau employees don’t get soulmates. People will think I rigged it somehow. Even other employees.”

“You said it was impossible for you to have messed with it. Shouldn’t they of all people know that?”

“Well, with me being a matchmaker…” You tried to think of how to succinctly sum this up without telling Sungchan too much stuff that he wasn’t supposed to know right before his interview. “Even other Bureau employees don’t know what goes on in the matchmaking room. I’m sure there’s been rumors since I’ve left.”

“But you didn’t do anything. What’s the point of working here if you’re just as bad as the people who don’t?”

“They also probably think that when this gets out I’m going to give the Bureau and the employees here a bad rep, make the public distrust them for a while. Even the employees that don’t think I did anything will probably hate me at least a little for that.”

“Well I still don’t like it,” he huffed, resting an arm along the back of the furniture behind you.

“You’re allowed to not like it. I’m just saying there’s not much we can do about it.”

He proceeded to focus his hater energy on making comments about the décor being tacky, and you couldn’t help but giggle quietly and join in. You never really thought about it much before, but being called The Soulmate Factory and having a color palette of red, pink, and white was a bit much. You two also had a small game of how many “subtle” red lines you could find in the designs of decorative throw pillows, rugs, carpeting, and pieces of abstract art on the walls. Finally, you heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and looked up to see a somewhat familiar face. It wasn’t Ms. Kwon, as you had hoped for, but Lee Jeno, one of the executive assistants that you often saw when he was sent down from the ninth floor on important errands by his bosses.

“Jung Sungchan?” He called, looking directly at Sungchan.

“Yeah, that’s me.” He lifted his hand that had been resting on his leg between pointing out tacky décor. He ushered you up with him with the hand that was behind you on the couch. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

“Sorry, just Mr. Jung right now,” Jeno clarified with a slight wince.

Sungchan looked like he was about to argue, but you patted his arm reassuringly. “It’ll be fine, Sungchan. I’ll see you in a bit, okay?”

He sighed, giving your shoulder a squeeze. “Alright, fine. I’ll be back soon.”

“Be good.”

“Always am.”

You watched him follow Jeno up the stairs, Sungchan casting you one last glance over his shoulder before the two of them fully disappeared from your view. It was then that you finally sat back down, and started chewing on your thumbnail.

Only fifteen minutes later Jeno came back down the stairs. Alone. “Y/N?” He addressed you more casually.

You stood up and didn’t hide the concern on your face as you looked around behind him. “Where’s Sungchan?”

“Mr. Jung has been moved to another waiting room. You’ll see him after your interview.”

Letting out a breath, you tried really hard not to shoot the messenger as you responded. “Fine. Lead the way, Jeno.”

The fact that you were going up the stairs and not to the elevator was interesting. You must not be going to his bosses’ floor, unless they wanted you to collapse on your way there.

“It’s good to see you again, by the way,” your former coworker said quietly. “I had to hand-deliver a memo to Ms. Kwon the other day and the matchmaking room was weirdly empty without you at your station.”

“Thanks.” A smile tugged at the corner of your mouth. “I wouldn’t have even noticed your presence if I was there but… it’s nice to know that someone noticed my absence.”

“Well, we did our intro training together. You don’t forget those people.”

“No, you don’t,” you agreed. “Us, Jaemin, Renjun, Donghyuck in Budgeting.”

“Is it nice? Your life now? Don’t tell me anything specific, I can’t know.”

You laughed. “I haven’t lived much of it, honestly. I’ve only been gone a few weeks.”

“That’s true. There’s just been so much that’s happened, it feels like a lifetime.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“But has it been good at least? Overall, you think?”

“Yeah, it’s good, Jeno. He’s good.”

“Of course he is. The computer never makes mistakes.” And with that, the two of you stopped in front of a conference room on the second floor. He nodded politely to you. “This is where I leave you. If I don’t see you again, I wish you the best, Y/N. With everything.”

“Thank you. Bye, Jeno.” You smiled at him, knocking on the door as he pivoted on his heel and walked down the hall.

“Come in.” Came a familiar voice from within. Opening the door, you saw two figures stand up from the small conference table. Ms. Kwon, and a man who wasn’t familiar to you at all.

“Y/N, hello,” Ms. Kwon nodded to you. She didn’t even let you open your mouth to greet her back, gesturing to the man with her. “I’m not sure if you ever had the pleasure to meet AD Yang of Risk Management while you were here.”

And in one curt sentence, she had told you everything you needed to know about the situation: This was the assistant director of the risk management department at the Bureau, aka the legal department, which meant that this was serious serious, this would not be some quick interview to check off boxes, and she had only been let in because of her job title and as a professional courtesy to her, she wouldn’t be in control of the processions. But most importantly—she was on your side, for whatever that was worth. And honestly, it was worth a lot to keeping your composure as you turned to face the man.

AD Yang was deceptively young, you wouldn’t have pinned him as being as high up in the Bureau as he was just by looking at him. He only looked to be maybe ten years older than you, not a touch of grey in his pristine black hair, and only a hint of the beginning of worry lines on his forehead. He wore a suit, as all Bureau Executives did—it was only the lower level workers like you who wore the red jumpsuits—though his looked just a little too big on him, and his red tie was a little loose and slightly crooked, as if he still hadn’t mastered tying it yet. Both these things only aided in making him look younger and inexperienced. But the air of caution Ms. Kwon had about the whole situation immediately let you know not to underestimate him. You were thinking maybe his dress choices were intentional, so people would do exactly that, let their guards down around him.

AD Yang offered you a practically boyish smile as he held out his hand across the table, which your former supervisor hadn’t even done. You gingerly shook it as he introduced himself. “Please, just Mr. Yang is fine. Ms. Kwon is always so formal, you know. And I’ll call you Ms. Y/L/N, so we’re all on the same level here.”

You nodded.

“I don’t think we ever did have the pleasure to meet, Ms. Y/L/N,” Mr. Yang kept talking, his tone conversational. He then said as if it were a joke, “People usually only see me when they’re in serious trouble, you know?” He laughed, the only one to, then reassured you, “That isn’t what’s happening here, don’t worry. We’re just going to ask you a few questions, then you and Mr. Jung can head on out and off to your new life together, okay?”

You nodded.

“So, why don’t we sit, hm?”

The three of you took your seats, the two of them on one side of the conference table, you on the other. Mr. Yang took a moment to shuffle his papers, then smacked his hand to his forehead as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “I’m sorry, would you like some water, Ms. Y/L/N?”

“No, thank you.”

“Alright, let’s get started then.” He reached for a small device in the middle of the table. “I’ll be needing to record this conversation. Is that alright, Ms. Y/L/N?”

“Sure, yeah.” Not like you could really say no.

“Great.” His boyish smile disappeared as soon as the recorder clicked on. He started by listing off the date and time, then addressed you. “This is AD Robert Yang, interviewing Ms. Y/L/N Y/N. Also present is Ms. Kwon Siyeon, Supervisor of Systems Analysis and Reporting. Ms. Y/L/N, you are aware that I’m recording this conversation, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Yes.”

“A few formalities before we begin: Since I have the recording going, I ask that you let me finish my question before you answer, even if you think you know what I’m going to ask. Cross-chatter is a bit difficult to parse out when you have to listen back to it.”

“Okay.”

“I also want you to answer everything aloud. No nodding or shaking your head, or ‘uh-huh’ or ‘nuh-unh.’” He showed the motions as he did them, and you could tell he had done this spiel many times before. “The non-verbal cues don’t translate great in an audio format.”

“Will do.”

“Thank you.” He cleared his throat, clicked his pen a couple of times, then looked up at you to begin with his first question. “Now, can you tell me how long you worked at The Bureau of Interpersonal Affairs prior to your resignation?”

“About five years.”

“Do you remember when your first day was?”

“Of training or on my own?”

“Training. After being hired.”

“Probably… spring five years ago. May, after I graduated.”

“Okay, good, good. And so you were hired, did your six months of standard training, right?”

“Right.”

“Then what happened?”

“I did more training to be a Systems Analytics Specialist.”

“How much?”

“Two and a half years.”

“So three years of training total, then you got to start on your own as a… Systems Analytics Specialist.”

“Yes.”

“I believe the other name for that position is matchmaker, correct?”

You bit down on your tongue to keep back an eyeroll. All of you in this room had to be aware that he was feigning ignorance right now. He might as well have asked if the Bureau was also sometimes called The Soulmate Factory. “Yes, we’re often called that as well.”

“More than Systems Analytics Specialist?”

“Yes.”

He jumped topics. “So why did you start working at the Bureau?”

“It sounded like a good place to work.”

“How so?”

“It seemed like the Bureau did good work. Helping people find their soulmates.”

“And you didn’t want to find yours?”

“I was willing to give that up for something bigger than me.”

“Did you join the Bureau with the intent of manipulating your soulmate match?”

“No.”

“Did you sign up to be a matchmaker with the intent of manipulating your soulmate match?”

“No. I didn’t sign up to be a matchmaker in the first place.”

“You didn’t?” He arched an eyebrow curiously.

“No.”

“How did you become a matchmaker?”

You glanced over at your former boss. “Ms. Kwon chose me at the end of my six months of basic training.”

“Why you?”

“I don’t know.” You shrugged.

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“You agreed to two and a half more years of training for a specialized position that doesn’t even recruit one new person a year without being told why you were suited for that position?”

“Yes. I was young and it paid better. I didn’t need to know.”

“When you were working as a matchmaker, were you ever asked by friends or family to manipulate their matches in any way, shape, or form?” He switched topics again. You weren’t sure if he was trying to disorient you, or if he simply decided that he was done with that line of questioning and wanted to move on with the next one.

You opened your mouth to say ‘no,’ then suddenly thought of the sisters on your bus in the mornings, recalling a day when the younger one had been crying as you got on, and her sister stopped you specifically. Tilting your head, you replied, “I once pinky promised a little girl that I wouldn’t match her with this smelly boy in her class. Does that count?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes.”

He made a show of scribbling something down on his notes, of which he had already filled up the first page of a large legal pad. AD Yang flipped to the next page as he announced, “I’m going to skip forward a little in time. When you found out you had the string, what did you do first?”

“Went home.”

“Went home?” He repeated.

“It showed up after work. So I went home.”

“Where were you?”

“The bus stop outside of the Bureau.”

“Around what time of day was this?”

“Between five and five-twenty.”

“That’s a pretty specific time frame. How do you know that?”

“It was after work ended but before my bus showed up.”

“So the Bureau was still open, then. There were still people inside that you could have reported this to, such as Ms. Kwon here?”

“I don’t know if there were people in the building, and certainly not if Ms. Kwon specifically was still in the building, since I was outside and could not see inside of the building,” you answered frankly.

“Right, of course.” He gave you a close-lipped smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Do people usually stay after five here, at the Bureau? To your knowledge?”

“Some people, sure, on some days.”

“So, it would have been a good guess, that there would’ve been somebody inside, when you realized that you had a string?”

“Possibly.”

“Then why didn’t you go back inside?”

“Honestly, I panicked,” you admitted, closing your eyes for a moment as you thought back to that night again. “I thought it was impossible for me to get one. I thought I might’ve been able to figure something out on my own.”

“Figure something out? Like what?”

You opened your eyes and gave a half-hearted ‘I-don’t-know’ gesture with your hands that had been resting on the tabletop, despite his prior instructions to keep non-verbal cues to a minimum. “Like what happened, what went wrong.”

“And did you?” He prompted.

“No. I didn’t.” Not even a little bit.

“And is that when you told Ms. Kwon? When you gave up?”

“No.” You told her when you decided you wanted to keep the string. Not because the dead-ends had frustrated you.

“Why did you tell her? Why not continue your renegade investigation?”

“You’re asking me why I followed proper protocol?”

“I’m trying to piece together what happened. All the events that happened, and exactly in what order. What happened that caused you to tell Ms. Kwon at the time that you did? Did you even tell her? Or was it found out? I’ve been assuming, I’m sorry.”

You narrowed your eyes slightly, but consciously relaxed your face back into a pleasantly neutral expression. Ms. Kwon would have obviously had to do her own report including all of the details of your conversation with her. He should know all of those particulars. Was he trying to catch Ms. Kwon in a lie?

“Yes, I chose to report it. Because I had done some self-reflection. And I don’t think there’s anything further to be said that is of import for the Bureau to know.”

There was a moment of still air as he held eye contact with you. Out of the corner of your vision, you saw Ms. Kwon’s lips part, as if she were about to say something, then she closed her mouth again, waiting. Mr. Yang cleared his throat.

“Sorry to jump around like this, I’m sure it must be disorienting, but I’m going to go back in time now.” He was very clearly not sorry at all. “Did you know Jung Sungchan before this incident?”

“No.”

“Had you ever met, seen, or heard of him in passing?”

“Not to my recollection, no.” Sure, you could have walked by him on the street before, but you had no way to know that.

“It’s my understanding that he’s an artist, you may have seen some of his work? Heard of him that way?”

“No.”

“So there was no reason that you would have wanted to manipulate your match with him?”

“No.”

“How soon after getting your string did you meet Mr. Jung?”

Now you felt like he was messing with you. “You have that data.”

“I’m asking you.”

“The string appeared on Monday evening, we met that Saturday morning.”

“So, less than a week?”

“Yes.”

“Quick.”

“I suppose,” you replied noncommittally.

AD Yang hummed a single note in the back of his throat as he looked over one of his papers, then his sharp eyes were back on you. “How many times did you meet before reporting your string to Ms. Kwon?”

You had to take a moment to think before answering. “Four, including the first meeting.”

“I’d like to return to your job, for a moment. Now, I have Ms. Kwon here with me not only because she was your boss, but because I obviously have no clue what goes on in that room when you guys work with the computer. Really, from what I’ve heard, it’s some incredible stuff. So she’s kind of here to help me out in case I go way off the mark with what I’m asking you with some of this.” He let out an imitation of a nervous laugh, grabbing a piece of paper from his stack. He pushed it over to you, asking, “Now, can you take a look at this for me?”

It was a nearly blank piece of copy paper, except for one long string of characters printed across it.

jkD%NVSC3%JCacN%vWS5#k!Z4GqGW#ZfMyqGUfc@wQT5L5vK2uWU5N*5Lg&6

“What do you see here, Ms. Y/L/N?” Mr. Yang questioned.

You looked up from the paper, having to consciously choose not to slip back into reading it and instead focus on the conversation at hand. “It’s raw match data from the computer. This is one match.”

“Does it look familiar to you at all?”

“I mean, it looks like every other match I’ve ever read.”

“So you don’t remember reading this specific match at all?”

“No, I don’t remember reading this specific match.” You didn’t even need to look at it again. Of course you didn’t remember it, they were all just a bunch of stuff that you read practically in a trance, there was no way you’d be able to remember any of them.

He grabbed another paper from his folder to show to you, a clipping from a spreadsheet of some kind, several columns showing a date, time, and eight-digit code that was unfamiliar to you, except for the letters appended to the end of it—your initials.

“According to our audit logs, this match was read at, and the match report submitted from, your station in the matchmaking room.”

“Okay.”

“Is it safe to assume, therefore, that you submitted the match report?”

“Was it during business hours?”

“Yes.”

“Was I swiped in?”

“Yes.”

“Did Ms. Kwon see me at my station during that time?”

“Ms. Kwon?” Mr. Yang prompted her without breaking eye contact with you.

“I do not have specific recollection of this day, so I cannot say in the affirmative or the negative,” she spoke for the first time since you had entered, and you had to suppress your smile at her response.

The man lifted his arms up and then down in a sort of ‘oh well’ motion. “We don’t know.”

“The electronic data does make it seem likely that I read this match and submitted this match report,” you finally said.

“This is your match with Mr. Jung.”

You tried not to show your utter shock on your face—you knew he wanted to get some kind of reaction from you—but you couldn’t help the sudden jolt forward in your seat as you went to pull the piece of paper closer to you again, your eyes drinking in the characters once more.

jkD%NVSC3%JCacN%vWS5#k!Z4GqGW#ZfMyqGUfc@wQT5L5vK2uWU5N*5Lg&6

There was still no way for you to distinguish specifics, but just knowing that somewhere in this seemingly meaningless string of nonsense was you and Sungchan, you kept rereading it, desperately wishing for it to feel special now.

“And how do you read the matches? Walk me through the process.” AD Yang’s voice brought your focus back to the present.

You exchanged a knowing look with Ms. Kwon. “I really can’t…”

“Trade secrets?” He said humorously. “It’s alright, I work at the Bureau.”

“No, I mean, it’s impossible to describe. I can’t tell you what I’m reading or how I know. I just do.”

“Then how do you know it’s right?”

“Because it is.”

Ms. Kwon stepped in then, “Mr. Yang, I’m advising you that you are getting close to questioning the computer and the program itself, not Ms. Y/L/N.”

He held his hands up in a sort of surrender. “Well that is certainly what we are not here to do, hm? Let me just take a look at my notes, and make sure I’ve covered everything. Should only be a few more minutes of your time, Ms. Y/L/N.”

AD Yang kept you in there until you started watching the sun begin its journey downwards in the sky. At some point, you started going in circles, and you knew he was just trying to catch you in lies, or confuse you, or get you to admit more than you had before out of exhaustion, or in hopes that he’d let you out. But you gave no different answers, no contradictory or new information, and you knew he’d eventually let you out. After all, there was no proof anywhere that you had done anything wrong, because you hadn’t. The most they could really get on was not telling someone at the Bureau sooner when you’d gotten your string but what could they actually do? Fire you?

When Mr. Yang finally declared the interview over, and turned the recorder off, you had to keep in your groan of relief. Instead, you maintained your composure, standing up when they did in order to shake their hands.

“Thank you very much for your time, Ms. Y/L/N. I do apologize for taking so much of your day, that had not been my intention,” Mr. Yang once again laughed as he shook your hand. “But this was very helpful, and I promise, yours and Mr. Jung’s answers are going to help us here at Bureau improve the way we do things in the future.”

“Right. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Yang.” You nodded politely to him, then turned to your old boss, a genuine smile coming to your face. “It was good seeing you again, Ms. Kwon.”

“Jeno had something to do, so I’ll show you out, Y/N.” She informed you, gesturing to the door.

The two of you were quiet as you walked through the halls of the second floor, until you finally reached a small waiting area on the other end of the building, made up of only a few uncomfortable-looking armchairs. Sungchan was the only person there, slumped down in a chair and bouncing his leg as he cracked his knuckles. He looked up when he heard footsteps, jumping to his feet as soon as he saw you, and while you would’ve felt a little weird about running in an office, he clearly didn’t care, taking just a few long strides to reach you and wrap his arms around you.

“God, Y/N! There you are! What the hell? Why the fuck did they keep you so long? They wouldn’t tell me anything, just that you were still being interviewed and I could either leave or keep waiting. I wasn’t going to leave but—”

“I’m fine, Sungchan, I’m fine,” you reassured him, hugging him back despite the slight awkwardness you felt with Ms. Kwon still definitely being right there. “We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

He didn’t say anything else, just kept holding you as you turned around in his arms to address Ms. Kwon.

“Uhm, we’re good to leave, right? Do you need anything else from us?”

She was clearly fighting back a smile as she replied, “I ask that you wait just a little bit longer, okay?”

“Okay, sure,” you nodded. “What is it? Something for me to sign? An NDA or something?”

“Just a moment, okay?” And with that, she left.

“God, I fucking hate it here,” Sungchan grumbled into your shoulder. “Let’s just go, whatever NDA or whatever the hell they want you to sign is going to suck and be coercive as shit and not worth it. It probably won’t even be enforceable or whatever.”

“I can’t even tell how much of that is even good or bad legal advice. I think all of it was probably bad?”

“It’s definitely going to be written by that fucking skeeze who interviewed you for like seven hours straight, which means it’s going to be bad.”

“What if it’s stuff for my severance pay and benefits? Ms. Kwon also said she’d write me a letter of rec if the investigation went well—”

“Y/N!” “Y/N!” You were cut off by two familiar voices calling your name from down the hall, and whipped your head around to look, your jaw dropping in disbelief. Jaemin and Renjun were rushing towards you, waving all four of their arms wildly, as if you could miss them. You squealed, darting over to them and throwing your arms around their necks.

“Oh my god!” You laughed as they hugged you tightly. “I wasn’t expecting to see you guys today!”

“We were specifically not told when you were coming,” Renjun admitted. “I even got blocked out of the Executive calendars for the month.”

“Ms. Kwon just came and got us,” Jaemin said. “Though, word had already spread.”

“Are you sure you want to be seen with me?” You double-checked, looking around despite being in a rather empty corner of the building. “I don’t know what people have being saying, but based on the less-than-warm-welcome we got at reception, it doesn’t seem like it’s been good.”

“Do we want to be seen with our friend?” Renjun poked the right side of your head.

“Duh.” Jaemin poked the left side of your head.

“Yeah, I didn’t miss that.” You scowled at them.

“It’s so weird seeing you in normal clothes,” Jaemin commented, making you really look between their jumpsuits and your blouse and pants.

“It’s still a bit weird being in normal clothes,” you sighed.

“So… you going to introduce us?” Renjun nodded to where Sungchan was still standing awkwardly by himself in the waiting area.

“Yeah, come on!” You grabbed them by the arms to drag them over. Sungchan looked up from where he had been busying himself with a loose thread on his dress shirt, eyes landing expectantly on you. You let go of your friends to loop your arm with his. “Sungchan, this is Jaemin and Renjun, we used to work together. Jaemin’s desk was next to mine out in the bullpen, and Renjun was a few desks down from us. Guys, this is Jung Sungchan, my soulmate.”

You could hear your voice pitch up with giddiness as you introduced Sungchan in that way, and watched as his face relaxed into a smile as soon as you had called him your soulmate. He offered his free hand out to the other two.

“Nice to meet you guys,” he said sincerely. “I’ve heard good things from Y/N.”

“Then she must’ve been talking about a different Jaemin,” Renjun snorted.

“And a different Renjun,” Jaemin agreed.

“So, what are the wild theories about how I did it?” You asked. “Not the official one, I know you two don’t know that. But the breakroom gossip, the water cooler chat, the cereal death match chatter.”

“Rumor has it…” Jaemin lowered his voice and leaned in conspiratorially. “You were desperate to reunite with a long-lost childhood love and that’s why you applied to be a matchmaker.”

You snorted. “Cheesy.”

“I heard one about Ms. Kwon being in on it because you’re her secret daughter,” Renjun grinned.

“Ooh, that one’s good.”

“With someone with a string.”

You mock gasped. “Scandalous.”

Jaemin added, “I heard a version sort of like that, but you were Ms. Kwon and the Director’s secret daughter, which is obviously how you had enough pull to get it to happen.”

“Then how did I end up with my parents? Did they pay them off to adopt me?” You frowned, trying to figure out this bonkers drama plot of your fake life.

“Get this…” Jaemin paused for dramatic effect. “Your dad is the Director’s secret brother. So your parents are actually your aunt and your uncle.”

“I should’ve thought of that!” You shook your head, laughing.

“A lot of people don’t think you did anything, though,” Renjun assured you. “Seriously, most of the stuff I’m hearing is people being surprised that it hasn’t happened before.”

“That’s good to know.”

“PR is going to have a hell of a time,” Jaemin chuckled.

“Sucks to be Mark Lee right now, huh?” You grinned.

“Oh, I know that man has been sleeping under his desk for the past two weeks.”

You wrinkled your nose. “God, the seventh floor has got to be fucking rank by now. Please tell me Jeno and Donghyuck have at least been making him go home to shower.”

“Chenle did.” Your friends said in unison, making you burst into laughter at the mental image.

“God, I would’ve paid money to see that.” You chuckled. As much as you loved seeing your friends again, this wasn’t where you belonged anymore, and you had skipped lunch in that unnecessarily long interview. So with a sigh, you announced, “Anyway, it was so good to see you guys again, but we need to get going, and I’m sure you have work to finish up.”

“Unfortunately,” Renjun sighed.

“We’ll get drinks—dinner and drinks, the usual place—all four of us,” Jaemin declared as he went in to hug you goodbye. “Okay?”

“For sure,” you agreed with a grin. “You still need to give me my fucking book back, Na Jaemin.”

“He’s just a fucking thief!” Renjun complained as he went to hug you as well. “Bye, Y/N. See you again soon.”

The guys all exchanged a final wave and ‘nice to meet you,’ before your former coworkers headed back. You looked up at Sungchan, about to ask if he was ready to go, and saw him already gazing down at you thoughtfully.

“What?” You asked instead, furrowing your brow.

“Now I get how you could stand working here for five years.” He rubbed your back. “It wasn’t the Factory itself; it was the people you found here.”

“W-Well yeah. I liked my coworkers. But I also liked my job.”

“Yeah, but I like my job too, and I work alone at my studio. I like that. I prefer that. If I had to make small talk with a bunch of different people all day on top of doing my job, I think I’d start biting people,” he explained. “You didn’t just make small talk, you made friends.”

“I guess I’m a people person,” you shrugged, never really thinking about something that was so normal to you. “Is that weird?”

“No, it’s good. Just want to make sure you have people around that you like at your new job too.” He wrapped an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close to him. “Now come on, if your lunch in there was anything like mine out here, then it was approximately four saltine crackers and some water.”

“Where are we going to eat?” You asked as the two of you headed towards the stairs.

“I live nearby. I want to talk about whatever the fuck that skeeze did in there for seven hours.” His voice was tense again at the mention of the interview. After a beat, he tacked on almost nervously, “If that’s okay. We can go somewhere else if you want.”

You encircled an arm around his waist as the two of emerged into the empty courtyard. “Your place works for me. I agree, we shouldn’t talk about that out in the open.”

Despite Sungchan both picking you up and walking you home from seeing each other many times over the past couple weeks, you had yet to actually be in each other’s homes before. You hadn’t even seen the outside of his place. You knew the general area of where he lived, as he had mentioned it while giving context for some stories he’d told you. The two of you also hadn’t been this… touchy before. Whenever you saw him, it always felt sort of like you were hanging out with a friend, if you ignored the string. You didn’t hug hello or goodbye, didn’t hold hands, nothing other than the little teasing elbow digs. It never occurred to you to really bring it up to him before, that technically, according to Bureau statistics, you two were taking it slow, because that would be a fucking weird thing to say—and also, you didn’t mind. You didn’t mind doing this at whatever pace it happened at.

But now, all of this all at once, it was making you a bit dizzy. In a good way, if that was possible, but still off-kilter.

Sungchan stopped in front of the door to a townhouse in a long row of townhouses, each one with a different, colorfully painted door. His was pistachio green. When he finally opened it up and pulled you in by the hand, you immediately started looking around with eager eyes. He said he hated people looking at his art and making assumptions about him, but he said nothing about his home.

“Kitchen, living room, and laundry room are on the first floor, bedroom and bathroom are on the second,” he told you over his shoulder, taking you through a narrow entryway before emerging into the connected living room and kitchen area. You already knew his studio was at a different location from his home due to the sheer scale of the pieces he made.

His walls were all filled with art, but you immediately figured it wasn’t his. They were drawings, paintings, doodles on napkins, anything and everything. It looked like dozens, maybe even hundreds of different artists in all sorts of styles. Some professional, but most clearly not.

“Everyone who comes to my place has to pay,” he explained. “They owe me a piece of art.” Walking over to the very first wall that your eyes would see upon entering, he pointed to a piece of copy paper with random crayon scribbles on it that was displayed dead in the center. He grinned. “Not even babies are exempt. My nephew.”

“What happens when you fill up your walls?” You asked curiously, following him into the kitchen, which had even more art.

“Guess I’ll have to find a bigger place with bigger walls.” He seemed to be searching for a specific piece, then pointed to a small napkin drawing of seven cartoon heads grinning. “Sohee. Guy said he couldn’t draw then busted that out after some soju. With a pen! I know you haven’t met the other guys, but it looks just like us. Guess which one’s me.”

You hummed thoughtfully, then pointed to a face in the top left.

“Yep!” He beamed proudly, as if it had been his own drawing. He started naming all the other guys in the drawing. “Shotaro, Wonbin, Sohee, Seunghan, Anton, and Eunseok.” Then, he drew your attention to what looked like an invoice for air conditioning repair services, with a pencil sketch of an older woman in the corner of it. “A/C repair guy. Just pulled that out of nowhere. It’s his wife, they met when he went up to her in public saying she was so beautiful he had to draw her. That was before they had their strings. He said he just knew, would’ve known without the string anyway. His art didn’t take off, hence why he was my A/C repair guy.”

“So is it a piece of art every time a person comes over, or just one piece of art, and that’s the toll paid forever?”

“One piece of art per person, debt is cleared forever,” he clarified, opening his fridge to root around in it. “I’ve had some artist friends defer their pieces for future visits because they wanted to make a proper, good piece. You know, put real time into it.”

“It’s good, Sungchan,” you grinned, still looking around at more of the art on the walls. “I love it all.”

“I know, now I don’t have to worry about my furniture matching my décor.”

“Yeah, but it’s also…” You breathed in happily as you tried to figure out how to say it. “You called me a people person earlier. You are too, just in a different way.”

He looked around doubtfully. “You think so? I literally said I would bite people if I had to talk to them. I don’t know if my people skills are really up to par for being labelled a people person.”

“Your entire house is wallpapered in art from just ordinary people that you’ve met. Your friends and family, an A/C repair guy. Call me crazy, but I think you like people.”

“Huh. Never thought of it like that.” He grabbed a few more things from the fridge, then the pantry. “Anton just calls it a weird powerplay, and one time Eunseok said he thought I like ‘asserting my dominance.’”

You laughed, “Maybe you’ve just got weird friends if they think you asking them to make you art is you trying to dominate them.”

“Not going to argue with you there.”

“Can I defer my art to another visit?” You requested. “I mean… I’ll probably be over more than once, right?”

He smiled softly. “Probably. And sure, you can defer. But you’re not getting out of it just because you’re my soulmate. If anything, I think that means you definitely owe me something I can point to when people come over and say, ‘my soulmate made that one.’”

After getting a quick and simple lunch together, you and Sungchan took it to his living room to eat, as he didn’t have a dining table. You sat with your back against the arm of the couch, facing Sungchan as your legs were criss-crossed under you.

You started, “So, what did AD Yang—” “Who?”

“The guy who interviewed us? The man with Ms. Kwon?”

“Oh, the skeeze.”

“Yeah. So what did Mr. Yang—” “Who?”

You rolled your eyes, fighting to keep the amused smile off your lips. “So what did the skeeze ask you? I want to know that first, before we talk about mine. Because like, when I think about the amount of time it took Jeno to walk you up there, introductions, goodbyes, then for Jeno to take you to the waiting room, then come get me… I mean, that whole time was like fifteen minutes. So you probably only talked to them for a few minutes, right?”

“Yeah, I mean, it was just a bunch of stuff they probably already knew.” He shrugged. “When did I realize I had the string? When did you and I meet? Did I know that you worked at the Factory when we met? When did I learn that you worked at the Factory? Did I know you before the string? Did I know anybody else at the Factory who could have manipulated the match for me? Then… that was it.”

“Makes sense. You didn’t have any ties to the Factory other than me.”

“So what the fuck happened in there that the skeeze thought he needed to take seven fucking hours?”

“I don’t think it would have taken that long, except…” You scratched your head awkwardly. “I’m the one who read our match and submitted the match report.”

Sungchan’s eyes widened. “Wait, really? But how did you not— Don’t you look that stuff up?”

“Reading the matches, and looking up the profiles, it’s all anonymous. It’s not like I saw it and my brain read it as ‘Jung Sungchan and Y/L/N Y/N.’ It was just… sort of like, the impression of profile numbers, I guess? It was like any other match to me, there was nothing special about it to me.” You screwed your face up as you desperately tried to both explain the matchmaking process to someone who had never been near the process at all, and as you tried to recall anything about that specific match at all, which you of course couldn’t. “And the profile numbers when I looked them up, it didn’t show me names or pictures, or any sort of identifying data when I would do that. It’s all completely anonymous, for good reason.” When you opened your eyes again, Sungchan was still staring at you, and your stomach dropped as you realized what you had just said. “Sungchan, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not that you’re not special, of course you are, but when I would be matching, you’re sort of not yourself and—”

“Woah, woah, sorry, I didn’t mean to zone out and make you worry like that,” he apologized, setting his bowl aside and turning to fully face you. “I was just thinking… How many people get to say that their soulmate was the one who gave them their own red string? Like, that’s so cool.”

“Uh… nobody? We’re probably the only ones.”

“Exactly. It doesn’t matter if it felt special to you in that moment or not. Because it still was. I mean, did it feel special when you decided to stop and look at that book at the bookstore? In the split-second that you made the decision?”

You shook your head. “No, I just, wanted to look at the book.”

“And me running after the Frisbee when Anton missed for like the sixth time that morning didn’t feel special in that second. But both of those things were, because it took both of them happening at the same time for us to meet.”

You chewed on your bottom lip, looking down at your food, then up at Sungchan. Setting your bowl aside as well, you then asked, “Is that what a soulmate is, then?”

“What? A Frisbee nearly hitting you in the face?”

“No,” you chuckled. “I mean—Jaemin, Renjun, and I were talking one night, and we were debating about what a soulmate really was. I was in an existential spiral over our red string, they were having a fun little philosophical discussion. They didn’t know about the string yet. We couldn’t decide if a soulmate was just the best that you do, or somebody who would make you better, or infinite second chances.”

“So what do you think a soulmate is now?”

“Someone that makes all the nooks and crannies in your life special, even if they wouldn’t usually be. Just by being there.”

Sungchan absolutely beamed, nodding enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah. I… like that.”

“What do you think a soulmate is?”

“I’ve always figured every pair of soulmates needs something different from each other,” he replied. “And I think you figured out what we need from each other. To make all the nooks and crannies of our lives special just by being there.”

“Okay…” You agreed softly, a fond smile coming to your lips as he offered his hand out, palm out. You set your hand atop his, your chest squeezing your heart at the same time Sungchan squeezed your hand.

“Now… tell me everything that fucking skeeze said. Everything you can remember.”

“Oh my god, Sungchan.”

“You were in there for seven hours, Y/N!”

“He asked me the same one and a half hours of questions like five times. I was going to start biting people by hour three.”

[sungchan: omw :) ]

[you: okey!]

[sungchan: :( ]

[you: okey! :) ]

[sungchan: :) ]

Laughing to yourself at Sungchan’s attachment to emoticons in texts, you grabbed the last few things that you’d need for your date today. It was the last week that his exhibit was available at the museum, and between your hectic schedule of interviews, and phone interviews, and callback interviews for jobs, in addition to his own schedule, this was finally the day that you two had been able to arrange to go together. A few minutes later, your phone lit up again.

[sungchan: outside :) ]

[you: omw down <3 ]

You saw him start typing, but then he stopped, presumably figuring that he’d be able to tell you whatever it was to your face in thirty seconds. Rushing down, you threw open the front door already with a smile that only grew tenfold as you looked up at Sungchan.

“Hi!” You greeted him, locking up behind you before giving him a hug.

“Good morning.” He readjusted your jacket, pulling it more snugly around your collar for you. “You going to be warm enough in that?”

A cold snap had come through last night, dropping the temperature and forcing you to get your fall wardrobe out early. You raised an eyebrow, looping your arm with his to pull him over to the bus stop to wait. “The museum is heated inside, isn’t it?”

“Well yeah…”

“Then I think my biggest problem would be having to carry a heavy jacket around the museum the whole time.”

When the bus arrived, you were just a bit disoriented by there being completely different passengers—after all, it was a different time of day than your previous daily commute, and you and Sungchan went to sit in a different row. You took the window seat, always loving to watch the passing scenery, and to give Sungchan the extra leg room of the aisle. As the bus took off, you squinted, unable to see much through the fogged-up glass. Sungchan reached a hand past you, and you watched with interest as he drew a heart in the condensation on the window. You giggled and took your own pointer finger to the empty space in the heart, carefully tracing out JSC, then your initials, then a plus in the middle, feeling very much like a preteen doodling on your math homework.

When you looked back at him, you saw that his ears were pink, and you weren’t sure if it was from the cold or not, but he grabbed your right hand with his left, both of your index fingers still a bit chilly from drawing on the window. He rested your linked hands on your lap, and though you couldn’t quite see it from this angle, you knew that the string that connected your pinkies was complete. You leaned your head on his shoulder to look out the window, through the lines made with your little heart.

At the art museum, you excitedly stuck your visitor sticker to your shirt before pulling Sungchan in further by the hand. You looked up at the huge skylight in the main atrium, providing an abundance of natural light on a large abstract sculpture in a bold orange color. “It’s beautiful in here.”

“Have you ever been to this museum?” Sungchan asked curiously as you stopped to watch a cloud pass over the skylight.

“No, I haven’t,” you replied quietly, turning your gaze down to the sculpture in front of you. “I’ve lived here my whole life and it’s one of those places that I’ve always been meaning to go to but, I don’t know, I just haven’t yet.”

“Yeah, I’ve got some places like that,” he said in understanding. “Let’s make a list, both of us. And we’ll cross them off together.”

“Okay, yeah.” You smiled at him, squeezing his hand. “Together.”

Sungchan’s exhibit was in the first gallery past the lobby atrium, and you two had gone at a pretty perfect time for it to be empty of everybody except the docents. You came to a stop as soon as you entered, unsure of where to put your eyes first. When you heard large-scale mixed media collages, you weren’t sure if you had really processed how large ‘large-scale’ was. The gallery was probably fifty meters across, the longest wall being taken up entirely by one single piece. There were only five pieces total in the gallery, one on each wall and one suspended in the middle of the room. You were sure that you could spend hours just looking at one of them.

You decided to start at the one closest to you, and work your way towards the back, where the entrance to the next gallery was. There was a plaque with information about the piece and the artist on it, which you entirely discarded. You commented on things you liked or found interesting as if you were just talking to yourself, not expecting Sungchan to respond at all. And truly, you were just talking to yourself, mostly gasping and muttering all of these things under your breath with delight—after all, you were in a museum, you had to use your inside voice. He’d sometimes chuckle or hum with interest, but that was the extent of him engaging with your commentary, just following you as you slowly trailed down the pieces, then sometimes jumped back to a place that you had already looked over as you made a connection, then went down again. Until you finally made it to the behemoth piece.

Despite being the largest, it had the most fine detail, the smallest individual parts making it up. And that almost felt intentional. Part of you wanted to ask Sungchan that, but you bit your tongue. Instead, you raked your eyes over every square centimeter, drinking in as much as you possibly could. The docent who was standing in the corner switched out while you were looking over that piece, and for a brief second, you wondered if any of the employees had recognized Sungchan. It had never occurred to you that random people on the street would, but in the art museum where he quite literally has an exhibit displaying his art, under his real name… If they did, nobody had made any indication as to such.

Then your attention was sucked back in by the collage in front of you. By the time you were finished, you weren’t sure how much time had passed, only that your feet hurt. You didn’t say anything to Sungchan, only gave his exhibit one more proud look before turning the corner into the next gallery. This one had a dark, heavy curtain dividing it from the rest of the museum, and you immediately knew why. There was a sign at the beginning, the letters lit up so you could read it: ‘The Beauty of Light’

The building’s main overhead lights were completely out, so that the only light provided was from a few along the floor so you could see your step, and the exhibit itself. There were mirrors, glass panes, and colorful lights set up all around the room, refracting all sorts of seemingly impossibly arrays of colors and designs along the surfaces.

“Woah…” You breathed out, reaching out to catch a rainbow on your palm, immediately laughing with wonder.

“It’s interactive,” Sungchan informed you, adjusting the equipment making the rainbow so that there was a whole starburst of rainbows all across you.

“Okay, that’s really fucking cool.” You could feel the huge grin on your face.

“I really didn’t want to see you reacting to my art, actually. I usually hate seeing people looking at my works.”

You looked up at him, confused. “Then why did you want to come with me?”

“I knew they had this exhibit here, and I knew I had to be there when you saw it.” He moved the glass just a bit more, and you weren’t sure where the rainbows had ended up now, but he seemed satisfied as a tender smile came to his lips. “Beautiful.”

“It’s incredible,” you gushed, looking around the room at more of the cool effects being done with lights, then back to Sungchan. You held your hand out towards him, and he walked out from behind the equipment, taking your hand again. Now that he was next to you, some of the rainbows were sticking to his skin and clothes, and you couldn’t help but smile as one caught on his nose.

“Thank you for bearing through the horror of seeing somebody see your art to experience this with me,” you half-teased, swinging your linked hands. Though your words were exaggerated, your sentiment was sincere.

“I said I usually hate seeing people look at my works, but I liked watching you in the exhibit. It didn’t feel like you were performing for me,” he said with a grin. “I could probably watch you watch paint dry.”

“You’re being hyperbolic,” you scoffed.

“I’ve got some paint at my place, want to find out?”

“As thrilling as that sounds, maybe later,” you snorted. “I’m not done with the beauty of light.”

“Hey, no complaints here.” Sungchan ran his thumb over your cheek, still looking down at you with an unbelievable tenderness in his gaze. “Hm…”

“What?” You whispered, your voices suddenly sounding too loud in the empty gallery. The docent had stepped out, and another hadn’t come back in. It was just you and Sungchan in this room.

“Tried to wipe the rainbow off your cheek…”

“Let me guess, didn’t work?”

“Well, it did, kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“Moved to your mouth.” He traced the bottom line of your bottom lip with the very tip of his thumb, and you felt like you weren’t breathing, waiting for him to do something, anything.

“Sounds like a problem.” You put your hand over his, pushing it to your face so he was cradling your cheek.

Sungchan was smiling as he kissed you, you could feel it in the sweet press of his lips to yours, the soft tilting of your chin up to meet his. You squeezed the hand down by your side even tighter. He broke the kiss as gently as he had started it, still smiling down at you. You suddenly shot up to your tiptoes and wrapped your hand around his neck to pull his head down so you could peck the bridge of his nose, giggling when you had released him and he stood back up with a confused but affectionate look on his face.

“And what was that for?” He asked with a chuckle.

“You had a rainbow on your nose.” You told him very seriously. “We’ve established that you have to kiss them off, obviously.”

“Well in that case—” He proceeded to kiss your forehead, cheek, hair, and mouth again in quick succession.

You were laughing, your entire body buzzing from head to toe as you leaned against him both in a bid just be closer, and also because you felt like your knees might just give out. When you heard footsteps enter the gallery again, you bit your lip to stop your giggles, and Sungchan left you with one more fleeting peck to your temple before standing up straight and bringing you over to the next area of the exhibit.

Groaning and sleepily rolling over onto your back, you were vaguely aware of the fact that you had rolled directly back into someone’s chest, and contentedly snuggled further into your position. An arm snaked around your waist, pulling your hips flush to theirs, and you smiled to yourself as you started drifting back off to sleep.

“Y/N?” Came a low rumble of your name from behind you.

You were nearly asleep again, and decided to just pretend you didn’t hear him.

“Baby?” He whispered, a little louder.

“Shh, Sungie,” you hummed. “Still sleeping.”

“Y/N…”

“Sungchan, my love, shut the fuck up and let me sleep.”

Deciding your discussion was finished, you rolled onto your front again and pushed your face into your pillow. He just followed you to that side of the bed, and you felt the pillow dip as he rested his head on it as well. Sungchan ran a hand up and down your spine, the covers dropping lower with his movements.

Realizing that he wasn’t going to be letting you sleep in today, you lifted your face out of your pillow and propped yourself up on your elbows to glare at him. “What is so important that I can’t sleep in on a Saturday when I don’t have to open?”

“You said you wanted to go to that breakfast place, and it closes in an hour,” he informed you quietly, face reminding you very much of a guilty puppy in that moment.

You looked at the time on his bedside clock, and flopped back down with a groan. “Well it’s too fucking late now. Next week.”

“Sorry, baby.” He squeezed your shoulder. “I would’ve woken you up sooner, but usually you’re the one who wakes me up for this kind of stuff. I just woke up a couple minutes ago.”

“Mm, it’s okay, Sungie,” you sighed and turned onto your back, offering him a sleepy smile to let him know that you weren’t mad at him at all. Now in a particularly lovely and warm patch of sunlight, you couldn’t imagine even getting up to go to the bathroom, much less a restaurant. “I think my sleep schedule from working at the Factory is finally gone. My body isn’t used to getting up for a nine to five anymore.”

“Oh, hold on.” He reached for his phone off the nightstand, and you immediately knew what was coming based on his change in demeanor. With a half-resigned, half-endeared sigh, you threw an arm over your face to hide it as he stood up to start taking pictures of you. He called for you with a slight whine in his voice, “Baby…”

“I have bedhead and morning breath, Sungie.”

“You can’t tell if you have morning breath in a picture.”

“And the bedhead?”

“So? Prettiest bedhead I’ve ever seen.”

“Subject gets to decide if you see her bedhead.”

He was quiet, but his pout was deafening as he continued taking pictures of you laying in the morning sunlight.

“Actually…” There was a curl of a smile in his tone as he plopped back down on the mattress. “I like it. Reminds me of those Baroque statues of Greek goddesses.”

You dropped your arm from your face and shuffled closer to be able to peer at his screen. The similarity of the pose was uncanny, but it also reminded you of something else.

“Or Ophelia…” You snorted.

“She doesn’t have an arm over her face.”

“Yeah but like, the general vibe, you know?”

He laughed, sinking into the pillows to make a few minor edits to the color toning. You settled your head on his chest to mindlessly watch him work, knowing that at least one of these photos would be printed out and added to the wall.

When you had admitted to him one night that you felt a lot of pressure over what piece of art to make him to put on his walls as part of his house rule, he suggested that the two of you make one together. So far all of his guests’ art had been relegated to the first floor, so the walls of his bedroom were entirely blank. Starting in the middle of the largest wall, above the long side of his bed, you two had begun a collage. Adding pictures that you two took of each other, pictures other people took of you two, pictures you took of places that you went on dates together, and any miscellaneous thing from your time that had acquired fond memories and Sungchan could figure out a way to stick to the wall. It had slowly started growing, and sometimes you liked to just lay in bed and look at it. One time you’d asked Sungchan what he was going to do when he moved out of this place, and he’d said cut out that section of wall and take it with him. At the time, you had laughed, but now you weren’t so sure it was a joke. Honestly, they could just put more wall in, right?

“There,” Sungchan murmured with finality, and you heard his portable photo film printer start whirring to life from his desk in the corner.

“Put it up later,” you requested, wrapping an arm around his middle and burying your face in his neck. “Don’t want you get up…”

“Fine by me.” He hugged you to him tightly, readjusting you so you were practically on top of him. “Are you on the afternoon shift or the closing shift?”

“Ahrin had her sister’s wedding today, so I’m doing afternoon and closing.”

“God, nobody else could take her shift?”

“I needed the money,” you shrugged. “Severance pay is gone and amazingly, part-time bookstore clerk doesn’t pay as well as full-time matchmaker at the Factory did.”

You’d been having a difficult time finding a job since quitting the Factory. Despite companies and organizations seemingly tripping over themselves to want to interview you, it was crickets when it came time to actually follow through after that. Even with your immaculate letter of recommendation from Ms. Kwon. At most of the interviews, you got the distinct impression that they just wanted a chance to meet the Factory employee who “rigged it,” and not actually interview you. After all, who would want such a dishonest and untrustworthy employee at their company. The only place that had offered you a job was your favorite bookstore by the park, which you were more than grateful for.

“I told you, you can live here,” Sungchan reminded you gently.

“I already practically do,” you retorted. “But I still have a lease on my place, and have to pay whether I’m here seven days a week or not.”

“Then why don’t you cut your lease? Isn’t there an early leave payment or something? That has to be cheaper than continuing to pay for the next however many months when you don’t even live there.”

“I—” You swallowed thickly, your voice getting smaller. “You really mean that?”

“Of course I mean that.”

“Me actually moving in?”

“Yes, you actually moving in.”

“Okay.” You beamed into his shirt. “I’ll look into the early leave payment.”

“Send your lease to Jihun to look over,” he suggested, referencing his sister’s husband.

“He’s not a lawyer.”

“No, but he’s got a couple. And he’s good with contracts and haggling. Bet he can get that fee payment cut in half.” You lifted your head, about to argue with asking for favors like that, when Sungchan cupped your jaw and tilted your chin so you were looking right at him. His red string hung in the air just in the corner of your eye. He held your gaze steadily. “It’s what family does, Y/N.”

“Okay,” you murmured, nodding against his hand. “Yeah, family.”

He pulled you forward and up to crash your lips together, his fingers tangling in your hair, and your hands flew to his chest to keep yourself upright. You felt your love for him filling every nook and cranny of your body, and you knew it was something special, because it was yours.

➥ masterlist

#sungchan x reader #riize x reader #sungchan imagines #riize imagines #sungchan #sungchan imagine #riize imagine #nct x reader #nct imagine #nct imagines #jung sungchan #i: sungchan #f: tsf #writing #text #mine #bias tag #*100 #*200

[catnherthoughts]

not doing too well 3/6/23

how wonderful my life is. i get to go through all of this all on my own. i don't think i've ever felt this alone before. yes, i can talk to my friends about my issues but at the end of the day they don't care that much. they can't care enough to fix it. it's whatever, we ball i guess. he walks around and goes about his days. i bet he doesn't even think about me. wow. he just used me for sex. he could have just said that. why lie to me? why manipulate me? i don't think you're a good person anymore. i'm not sure i want to be a woman in business anymore. i'm not sure if i want to be a woman in this world anymore. i don't feel the overwhelming urge to keep living. what is the point? we have no clue tbh. no one knows. i don't feel like there is a point in me being here. then again, if i was meant to kms then one of my 8 suicide attempts would have worked. maybe 9th time is a charm. i am simply so sick of being alive. i do not want to do this any longer and i've been saying this for yearsssss now. just because i'm not ruining my life, im passively going through life day by day, i somehow got into college and am sitting in my macroeconomics course with a 3.3 gpa. i haven't done anything wonderful to continue living, i've just been passing by. i say to myself "lets just get through today and then you can sleep" or "just get through this week and then we can have fun this weekend". whatever. i always find myself becoming a bit nihlistic when i feel suicidal. "it doesn't matter" i chant. because it really doesn't. if someone who doesn't really want to live can get this far then does it really matter. i feel like shit, probably look like shit, and I just want to sleep forever. yet, i have midterms to study for. maybe if i fail my midterms i'll kill myself. oooo. yum. maybe i've jsut been letting life slip past me. i've been staying up really late and waking up mid day. weeks go by so quickly. i wonder who i even am anymore. also i'm sick! coping by kissing frat men is not the way to go. i hope they're not counting on me to be larger than live. live is already large enough to exist in. i hope they don't see me as a person who has it all. the perfect woman. take my spot. take my soul. i am disposable to those who know my all. im shaking. maybe its the coffee? who knows. im a cluster of energy walking through the world. maybe the angel prophecy of cat***** ******** created by someone who once loved me is true. she also left. this is a cruel worldd. the punishment i recieve has to be deserved. if im alive to be beaten down then im ready for the final punch. maybe i can be loved in death. my mom loves me? does that count for something. jesus that woman doesn't even know me. im shaking so much. why did i drink coffee? i wanted to be cool and have energy and be the one ppl envy w my dunkin cup. now my tummy hurts. man. i wonder what my therapist will say today. this is kind of a life or death meeting. maybe she'll give me some words of wisdom that will make me think this life is worth living. its either that or i die. i don't really like passing through life. yk being alive its not too fun. i don't like having to do schoolwork. although i kinda like this class. i should've come to this more often. being up before noon is so odd. its 10 am and im fully awake and i'm living. so many different people exist. i don't think a single one of them can love me. i look so bad today. i dont give sexy like usual, im giving depression. i wonder if when he saw me yesterday he knew i was down. i wonder what to do. how do people go on? these scars of this man might always be on me. that's sad. i feel nauseous. I wish i was a better person. maybe then i wouldn't be so sad. if i was like this girl who is sitting in front of me, with an assignment tracker.someone who goes to all of their classes. she also looks pretty. maybe wasting away my life by sleeping until 3 pm is not the best thing. i hope they're not counting on me. god i really hope they're not counting on me.i can barely do this for myself let alone live up to whatever ideals people have.

Tumblr dot com has it out for me i think. what if i wanted to have a fat blob of text? huh? anyways im currently in my class about close relationships along the lifespan and im talking to my roomie about how we've been in a mutual depressive episode. i miss being loved. i had a dream about her and it felt so nice. to kiss. to cuddle. i wonder if i had love if i'd crave it as much as i do in it's absence. the insane hyper fixation i have on it. i could fall in love with many people. its not like im not desired. is it sad that i wonder what he would do if i died. if the worst is true about this relationship, maybe he'll be like lol damn that crazy got the limited edition wap. im sorry. coping. i think i dragged my roomie into my spiral. sorry girlypop. i don't think this is being taken seriously. like yeah my friends know im suicidal but i don;t think they know how serious i am. taylor pyka i don't have a plan to kill myself don't send me away. i miss the gym. i should go to the gym today. is it too much to ask for a boyfriend? maybe. somehow i got reminded of hoodies and went to look for an old text from him. "are you trying to steal my sweaters miss :)". what happened. where did his love for me go? maybe i was just there to pass the time. there is a guy with a very interesting beanie on. he seems like a good man. who knows maybe he also manipulates women? i should not be mean to this random man. he looked back over. who is this man? whatever he doesn't exist. i don't like how im awake. vomiting vomiting vomiting. thinking about how he pushed my hand away that one time. why does he exist. how does he affect my karmic cycle. i miss texting him. he was such a cutie. now he doesn't exist. you will never find the same person twice, not even in the same person. i wonder if anyone has ever had a crush on me. i can't imagine someone thinking of me in a way like this.

those were my thoughts before i went to therapy slay for 3/6

[reedalert]

Unspoken

Requested by: anon

Pairing: Julian Bashir x reader

Prompts:  “Don’t be scared, I’m right here.” + “Come cuddle.”

Word count: 1119

Notes: so yeeeeeah, this was requested a while ago, before my life became the absolute mess it was, but hey, I’m finally getting it done? Dear anon, I’m sorry and I love you! But also… 1000+ words… I kinda snapped

It was rare for you and Julian to go on an away mission together, but every time it happened, it proved to be an interesting journey.

Being the chief of security of the station from Starfleet’s side and Odo’s right hand person, your work often involved long walks around the promenade, when you weren’t sitting in your office. Those walks, more or less, ended in you wandering into the Infirmary, for a friendly chat with the ever-cheerful doctor Bashir. Over the course of your time spent on the station, he had become one of your good friends. It was no secret that the two of you were particularly fond of each other, there was even speculation going around the crewmembers that there was something more between the two of you. In reality, it was nothing more than friendship, but everyone was wondering how long that was going to last.

You were sent to check up on a research team stationed on a remote planet. Because of the dense ash cloud produced by the planet’s irregular volcanoes, communications with the scientists was cut off and the transporter was rendered useless. The only way to reach them was the way they got there: landing a shuttle through a thinner part of the cloud and hiking 25 km to reach the research site.

After packing all the supplies and loading them onto the runabout, you set off. You tried to relax on the way there, since you knew there was a difficult two-day trek waiting for you on the planet.

“So, it’s just you and I.” He said, as he leaned back on his chair.

“Seems like it.” You giggled.

Even though it was certainly not the first time the two of you were alone, this time it felt different. Maybe it was because you knew there wasn’t a crowded station around you and nobody count interrupt you. There were butterflies in your stomach, but you couldn’t tell if it was because you felt awkward, anxious or excited.

Julian finally broke the silence.

“Captain Sisko couldn’t have found a better pair to send on this mission.”

You both laughed.

“Well, we knew that not only would we get it done, we’d also have fun along the way.” You remarked.

Silence fell again as you both smiled, but looked away from the other.

“You know, we make quite a good team.” It was your turn to speak up.

“We really do.” You could see that there was a spark in his eyes he desperately tried to hide. “We could be more than that, too.”

For a second, you made eye contact. There was longing in both of your gazes and there was just a step separation you. You thought he’d make the first move. You wanted him to make the first move. But he was waiting on you.

“We already act like a married couple sometimes.” You said when you felt like the tension could be cut with a knife and you needed to divert the subject. Again, you both laughed, but this time it was a painful, forced chuckle. You both quickly erased the moment from your memories, in an attempt to not ruin the whole trip because of it.

You ended up having one of your usual, never-ending conversations about life, each other, and the hour-long journey seemed to fly by. You had a great connection, that was undeniable, and both of you could see it, feel it. Just when you were having the most fun, the computer warned you that you reached your destination.

You carefully landed the runabout in a small field. You took all the equipment and began your hike, while continuing the banter with the doctor. You trekked through the plain, wandered through a forest and then began climbing a mountain, on the other side of which was the research site.

At dusk, it was time for you to find shelter for the night. You spotted a cave nearby, so you and Julian decided to camp out there.

The cave was dark and damp. You had been briefed about the conditions on the planet’s surface, you knew what to expect, but the thought of entering an unexplored cave still unsettled you, but you were used to this, as a security officer. Julian, however, wasn’t necessarily known for his bravery. Of course, he’s a passionate individual, always ready for action in his own field of expertise, but is he fearless? Definitely not.

As you entered, you noticed he began trailing behind. You glanced back, seeing the slight fear in his eyes.

“Don’t be scared, I’m right here.” You chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.

“I’m not scared!” He retorted. “I’m just making sure… nothing follows us in.”

“My knight in shining armor!” You flash him a coy smile as you skip walking.

“Don’t make fun of me!” He turns towards you and sees that you’re much farther ahead. “Hey, wait up!”

You finally found a good spot for camping. You set your gear down, made a small fire and ate. Soon it was time to get some sleep, you both knew there was still a long way to go.

It was not your first time sleeping in a standard issue sleeping bag on cold stone. It was never comfortable; no fabric could make the floor feel less hard. But somehow, this time you thought that could be easily fixed. After half an hour of twisting and turning in your own makeshift bed, you sat up and called out to Julian:

“Come cuddle.”

It was no surprise that he was already half asleep, you were certain that man could fall asleep anywhere, anytime.

“Hm?” He stirred.

“Alright, alright, I’ll invite myself in then.”

You stood up, quickly tiptoed over to him and snuck into his sleeping bag. That was the moment he woke up and realized what was happening. You had a content smile on your face as you closed your eyes and snuggled into his chest.

He took a second to register your presence. He stared at the peaceful expression on your face. The sight of you brought so much joy to him that he suddenly forgot that you woke him up. He forgot about the freezing temperatures, the icy cave surrounding you. He was just happy that in your frustration and exhaustion, you decided, to hell with protocol, and make the first move towards what could be an actual relationship between the two of you.

“You’re right, we do make a good team.” He whispered, but you were already fast asleep in his embrace.

He placed soft a kiss on your nose, careful not to disturb you and settled to join you in the comforts of dreamland.

#star trek #star trek deep space nine #star trek deep space nine imagine #Julian Bashir #julian bashir imagine #julian bashir x reader

[ladyc0312]

A Jikook Guide to RunBTS: 30-39

One general trend to point out that’s true pretty much all series long, but was particularly noticeable to me starting around these episodes - JK and JM end up next to each other an unusually high percentage of the time when the guys choose where they're standing / sitting. Like, I initially thought I was only noticing it because I was primed to notice KM stuff, so I started tracking some other random pairs for comparison, and there’s no contest. 

Also, this is when the show started really hitting its groove. I’d seen nearly all the Run episodes before going back and rewatching for this guide. There were some I rewatched at 1.5x speed and others I happily rewatched normally. There are many more of the later starting around here.

As usual, let me know if I’ve missed anything or should take another look at something!

Ep 30 "The Variety Show of Memories Part 1" 

(Ep: 4 / KM: 1)

The ones with dancing, games, sleepy Kookie, and the tomato song that will embed itself in your brain 

20:00 - JK picks Jimin for the quiz challenge without using honorifics. Jimin calls him out for it and JK jokes back, then actually apologizes.

BEHIND 5:47 - JK is the only one to clap when Jimin does a funny dance 

Ep 31 "The Variety Show of Memories Part 2" (Ep: 5 / KM: 0)

None. But seriously, guys, this episode is a must-watch regardless. 

Ep 32 "Take Care of Santa" (Ep: 3 / KM: 1)

The one where everyone runs around like crazy in Santa hats with pig balloons as J-Hope not-so-secretly tries to steal them

9:08 - Jimin spots JK hiding in a tunnel and crawls in to talk to him despite suspecting that he's the thief 

27:50 - Jimin asks JK for the balloon he opened up to make his voice high with helium gas. JK gives it to him and they both say goodbyes in high-pitched voices at 28:14

Ep 33 "BTS and Manito Part 1" (Ep: 5 / KM: 3)

The ones where the guys jump for pictures, cheat at puzzles, and give each other gifts

1:59 - Jimin laughs a little when he sees that he's chosen JK as his Manito 3:56 - Jimin asks "Jungkook, why are you so cute?" and for some reason the on-screen text emphasizes this by popping up under Jimin's face saying "Jimin finding Jungkook very cute" 10:01 - Jimin comments on how high JK jumped and the on-screen text continues to call him out by tagging him as "amazed by Jungkook's jumping skills" 11:06 - Jimin singles out JK for praise for another good photo (on-screen text: "so hilarious") 12:00 - Jimin tells JK that he wants to give him a point for his acting, but his shoulders didn't make it into the shot 14:10 - Jimin AGAIN compliments JK (maybe he felt bad because he judged him as not properly in the picture the prev round) and the on-screen text wants to make sure we know Jimin is "amazed" I really can't tell if whoever writes this stuff is onto Jimin or is just also in love with JK, but I find the constant commentary hilarious either way 16:06 - Jimin gets JK to try to coordinate photo-bombing RM's pic BEHIND 5:05 - When JK is taking pictures of the posed photos he finds funny, takes two of Jimin (and you can see he's zoomed in on Jimin's face in both) while laughing adorably

Ep 34 "BTS and Manito Part 2" (Ep: 5, KM: 3)

8:46 - JM & JK decide to work together as a team to solve the puzzle

11:54 and 14:46 - JK and JM playfully grab and shove each other a bit to get to the mic first

15:41 - After Jimin and JK get bingo at the same time, they high five and Jimin comments "there's something about us"

15:55 - Jimin has moved his chair so he's sitting super close to JK and has seems to have his hand on his back for an extended period of time

23:27 - When they say Jimin failed his manito mission to make finger hearts with JK, they do it together and pose cutely here. Then, JK reminds JM that he actually did it successfully when the main cameras weren't on them by talking with JK about how different people make finger hearts. Jimin shakes JK's hand in thanks for the validation. 

24:17 - It's quick, but you can see Jimin tapping JK to make a comment to him while the focus is on Jin.

25:53 - Jimin makes a comment about being a calico cat after JK has opened Jimin's manito gift and seen that it's a cat lamp. I mention it because I've seen some people connect that to "Serendipity" being a jikook thing, which I buy generally but, in this particular instance, Jimin had no way of knowing which member his present would end up going to.  BEHIND 2:38 - JK does a joking imitation of acting out a food and Jimin playfully slaps him on the arm 3:41 - The same thing happens again when JK makes another funny face

Ep 35 "Kimchi Battle" (Ep: 3, KM: 3)

The one where, as you’d expect from the title, BTS makes kimchi

1:12 - JK taps Jimin on the chest when they say he can call his mom for help 1:23 - JM has his arm around JK's shoulders for a while and then moves his hand down to his lower back at 1:38 11:24 - JM has JK smell something gross and is impressed when JK has no reaction 16:38 - JK goes over to taste and compliment JM's kimchi and gets scolded by Suga for having his back to the camera 18:03 - JM watches closely as JK mixes the kimchi and the others compliment his arms 18:21 - Jimin continues staring at said arms 19:21 - Still staring 20:19 - More staring as the others all compliment JK's arms again 21:16 - Guess who's still watching JK? This time JM looks particularly impressed when JK lifts a heavy container 21:38 - Even the on-screen text has noticed the staring at this point and captions this "looking sweetly at Jungkook" 23:23 - Jimin tells JK the kimchi won't taste good yet because it's too fresh and looks at him affectionately, then compliments how good it looks.  24:38 - JM compliment's JK's kimchi again. He really seems much more invested in JK's work than his own this ep BEHIND 0:44 - JK claps for the slate and JM hits himself over his heart right after, making JK (and no one else) laugh 5:52 - Jimin wipes the sweat off JK's neck as he works on mixing the kimchi. When Jin does the same for JK's forehead right after, Jimin says that they look like two brothers and it looks like Jin's hating what he's doing.

Ep 36 "Kimchi Wars" (Ep: 3, KM: 1)

The one where the above kimchi is used in a cooking competition 

None. JM and JK cooking together on the same team is cute, but everyone is cooking together, so there’s nothing uniquely jikook in the episode itself. BEHIND 5:10 - JK starts clapping a beat and JM joins in with his tongs and dances 6:35 - As JK films some of the food, someone (not quite sure who) comments that they've never seen any of JK's work except for when he went on vacation with Jimin

Ep 37 "BTS Marble Returns" (Ep: 1?, KM: 1)

The one in this set that I have absolutely no memory of 

5:41 - When JK loses and rolls around in annoyance, Jimin comments twice how cute he is

Ep 38 "Spin BTS" (Ep: 3 / KM: 3)

The one where they play a bunch of strange games while Suga is dressed as Chimmy  

2:33 - JK smiles at and compliments JM's penalty suggestion

4:47 - Before starting this game, JM said that he wasn’t good at games requiring strength. Here, JK points out twice that Jimin isn't being moved by the ropes 

5:42 - JK compliments Jimin at the game again, saying he's like a bull 

7:05 - Despite being on Jin's team, JM goes over to watch JK complete his puzzle

10:02 - After JHope identifies a sound as Jimin sneezing, JK says he was going to say that too and grabs Jimin's arm to ask him if he knew

11:33 - One second clip of an interaction that starts with JM putting his hand near JK's face, but it's cut off

21:30 - When other members are practicing imitating people, JK tells them to do Jimin next

BEHIND 5:50 - When asked to guess why Jimin made an upset noise, both Jimin and Jin guess (wrongly) that it had something to do with JK

Ep 39 "BTS Golden Bell Part 1" (Ep: 3, KM: 3)

The one in which JK learns that he far prefers being a competitor than an MC

1:14 - After JK announces that he's offering up his computer as the prize, Jimin turns around and gives him a quick side hug

1:29 - After they decide JK will be the MC and it's clear JK is nervous about it, Jimin starts fixing something on JK’s uniform and pats him on the shoulder while advising him how to deliver some of the words. He also seems to remind him to ring the bell at 2:24

2:52 - JK and JM stand super close when he asks him questions, to the point where the on-screen text asks "Must you stand so close?" at 3:05

3:50 - This may be reading too much into things, but Jimin's body language and the way he's not smiling like the rest of them made me wonder if he was annoyed about them taking the MC role away from JK...

7:55 - While celebrating his team's win, JK dances over to Jimin, who smiles and gives him a high-five even though the other members of Jimin's team are unhappy about losing

16:36 - When JK accidentally calls out his own name instead of someone to challenge, Jimin walks over and hugs him while laughing

BEHIND 0:56 - JK and JM joke around together 5:40 - Slightly different angle of the 16:36 moment above

#jikook #kookmin #run bts #jikook guide to run bts

[waokevale]

Slight panic attack,

Porcelain Face - Chapter 5

WARNING: Lilo&Stitch 2 spoilers (If you haven't watched it before)

-"So how about we go inside? Have you ever been to a porcelain store before, paper-boy?"

The guy in grey apron asked as the three of them walked into the warehouse of the shop.

-"Nope, and if you want to talk to me with a nickname it's actually cardboard boy." Virgil replied.

-"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, what's your name by the way?" The guy asked, a little nervously from the awkwardness of this conversation so far.

-"Its Virgil" The cardboard boy replied.

-"That's a lovely name you got there kiddo! I'm Patton! I'm the son of the owner of this store, cool right?" The guy so-called Patton said in a cheerful tone.

-"Yeah, yeah. Skip it, that's amazing that you guys finally know each other now but haven't we brought Vee here for a reason???" Ethan rolled his eyes.

-"Ooooh! Yeah! Explanations!" Patton finally replied.

-"Not ALL of the explanations, Pat." - the porcelain boy raised his voice a little with stress and worry.

The older one nodded quickly.

-"Soo.....Do you want to know about your mask?"

Virgil and Ethan both looked questionably at him.

Virgil's expression on his cardboard face obviously said that he indeed wanted to know more about it and the other boy was just waiting for the bomb to explode.

-"Well...I know it's magic but I don't know exactly where it came from, hehe...." Patton laughed nervously, scratching his cheek.

Ethan facepalmed his head then, Virgil though looked pretty confused and disappointed.

-"Guess we're staying here for the rest of the school time...right?" Virgil said, wanting to change the subject, what's the point of asking questions anyway if they won't tell you the answers.

-"Oh no no no! You're not staying in THIS place.

It's only for fixing Dee over here." he said pointing at the porcelain boy

"How about going to the cafe?" Patton suggested getting a glare from the porcelain boy for the nickname that was used in front of Virgil again.

-"You change your mind pretty quickly."the cardboard boy said.

-"Not wanting to be rude of course."

-"Nah, you're not.

He's just like this confused mom friend even if he declares himself a dad" Ethan simply said making the usually bubbly person huff in annoyance before smiling again and saying:

-"Welp, I may act like that sometimes but I do not have a feminine face like you, dear cousin." The older boy smirked as the younger one with heterochromia gasped offended.

-"That's not my fault! Let's just go to the cafe!"

Virgil giggled at their funny relationship, they got along pretty well. 

It was a shame for him to be honest to not have any cousins or siblings....It felt so...lonely.

After they appeared at their destination Patton asked the boys what they wanted to get, since he was the one to buy the stuff.

Virgil wanted to deny but he looked at Ethan instead remembering he didn't eat.

Apparently Ethan forgot for a second as well before getting "angry" again.

-"I can't- You bastard! How dare you Patton?! Right in my face?" The porcelain boy exclaimed as both of them knew what he was talking about, they both laughed. 

-"Your loss. Virgil will get your food then!" Patton simply said as Ethan crossed his arms, pretty pissed off at his miserable non-human being.

-"No, no I don't-"

Virgil tried explaining as Patton gasped before heading closer to the boy and whispering:

-"Please don't tell me you don't eat too."

-"No, it's just I don't want to inpose, please-" Virgil tried saying but Patton kept nagging him until he finally sighed in defeat and agreed.

As Patton went to buy the food and drinks there for a moment was  silence between the two of the other boys until Ethan finally spoke up.

-"Sooo...You're really not ashamed of me being...you know?" He asked as the other boy shook his head pretty fast it could even fall of his neck.

-"No! Of course not! You're wonderful!" He tried defending the other who smiled softly at him.

-"Are you busy tonight?" The porcelain boy asked.

-"N-no? Why do you ask?" Virgil said.

-"Then I'm inviting you over! You can finally meet my queer-platonic mums!" He said exitedly before flushing in embarrassment for saying it out loud."

-"R-Really? They won't mind?" Virgil asked again, a little more shy this time but still with hope in his voice.

-"No, but there is another problem with them that you need to just ignore..."

-"What???" Virgil became a ball of confusion at this moment.

-"They ugh....Think we are a couple? How do you say it....They...ship us?"

-"What???? And why would I be a bout-" Virgil asked with an inside joke.

-"Well, it's not exactly a bout...."

-"I know what it means, dummy. I'm just playing with you to make it sound less awkward."

-"Well, that didn't help-" As Ethan was in his mid sentence he got cut off by Patton who just came back with the food."

-"DA FOOD IS HERE!" Patton happily exclaimed.

With that sentence The boy in vitligo did some hand gestures to Patton, probably the sign language as the boy in glasses glared at him and used the sign gestures back.

Ethan: "F-U-C-K O-F-F P-A-T" 

Patton:"L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E" 

-"What were you saying????" Virgil asked but instead of answering Ethan took the muffin from Patton's plate who clearly yelled at him as he  shoved it in Virgil's face.

Unfortunately it didn't go through his mask as it was intended to.

Instead it made Virgil very uncomfortable.

-"Guess it broke, huh?" Ethan said.

-"I'll eat it later you idiot! Don't shove it in my mouth here if I can't eat it!" Now Virgil was really pissed at the other boy who now tried to apologize to him the best he could.

And it finally worked.

-"How about we go to Dee's house?" Patton suggested.

-"I already asked him that before, he agreed."

-"Yey!" Patton replied still as happy as ever.

-"But I need to get my things first-" Virgil said worriedly.

-"Oh right!" The both of them said in unison.

As Patton drove him off to his house to get his things.

His parents weren't home as usual....

After 10 bare minutes of packing he came back and popped in the car next to apparently Dee.

-"Why aren't you sitting next to Patton in the front sit?" Virgil asked curiously for why the other boy was sitting here when there was an empty sit in the front.

-"He knows why." Patton exclaimed rolling his eyes as Ethan stuck his tongue out at him.

-"Okay then..." The cardboard boy awkwardly replied.

After 10 minutes of driving or so, because Patton couldn't drive faster that 50mph.

[Ethan always woke up pretty early and run 5 km like it was nothing]

When they finally arrived Ethan went to knock on the door as he said:

"Mom C! Mamma D! I'm brought Pat and Virgil home!"

-"Pfff..Mom C, Mamma D?" Virgil said

-"Shut up" Ethan replied as two woman in the age of 30 or close came to the door.

One had light curly hair dyed the color red and as the author would describe African eyes as they were green with a big patch of hazel in the middle.

She also appeared to have a lot of freckles on her face.

She as well as Patton wore an apron but not for painting though as for cooking.

The other one looked more tomboy like, one could say.

She had pretty short but not too short dirty blonde hair, torquise eyes and a literal face of a duck.

She wore a black hoodie and stripped shirt under it, also having trainers and ripped jeans.

-"How's our not-born-from-either-of-us gay son doing?" They both said in unison as he sighed, Patton though giggled and Virgil just rolled his cardboard eyes playfully.

-"Ooooh! Is this your boyfriend you've been talking about?" Mamma D (Dominique) said.

-WHA-NO! HE'S NOT MY BOYFRIEND MOM!"

Ethan yelled, his face being the color of a tomato at least.

-"Not yet" Mom C (Caroline) said looking at a wall and winking to it. 

[She breaks da fourth wall]

-"God..." Dee whined tiredly.

-"Auntie Caroline and Dominique are funny aren't they?" Patton exclaimed.

-"Um....." Virgil was almost silent, as he as well as Dee blushed madly.

-"Anyways, we are going to my room, what's for dinner?" Dee asked, not caring that he himself didn't eat, since the other two on the other hand did.

-"Mac n Cheese!" Dominique yelled.

-"Mmmm, my favorite!" Patton happily cheered.

-"God, I wish I could eat....It always looks so good..." The porcelain boy mumbled not expecting the comforting pat on the back from his hooded friend in the mask.

-"It's fine, though. I'm used to this torture." The boy exclaimed this time louder.

There was a moment of silence before Ethan asked both of them:

-"Hey guys, what do you want to play?" He said pointing at a giant stock of board and video games.

-"Jenga!" Patton exclaimed

-"Monopoly..?" Virgil said unsurely.

-"Virgie NOOOO I don't want to lose you!" Ethan whined holding the paperboy's hands with the pleading yet fake sadness on his face pretending to be dramatic again making the smaller one giggle.

-"Aww you guys are cute." Patton said, adoring the other two who flushed and moved away a few inches.

After some time of playing board games like dungeons and dragons, Jenga, Uno and Hot Patt-tato they were loosing up for a movie.

-"Oh, oh! Let's watch Bolt!" Patton yelled exitedly.

-"I'd rather watch Jungle Book, It's more classic." Dee criticized

-"What about...Lilo & Stitch?" Virgil suggested, still pretty shy though.

-"which part? I have all four, plus the series." Dee exclaimed.

-"Um....Maybe the second one?" Virgil said.

-"Okay then..."

When the dinner was finally ready they all stopped the movie to eat, except Ethan who didn't want to wait for them here and later getting teased on by Dominique and Caroline, Dee left, offended and flustered, then Virgil and finally Patton.

They got to the part in which Stitch couldn't control himself anymore and screwed stuff up, him and Lilo had a fight and later on Lilo went to play a role without him as he was even more broken.

This scene made them all sob, but not as much as when Stitch was put into the fixing machine as everyone thought it was too late for him.

Now they all fully cried. What was the most surprising was that it wasn't Patton who cried the most at the scene but Virgil. 

Both Ethan and Patton tried to comfort him after watching the part.

Though there was happy ending so nothing really bad then..

-"Virgie, why did you pick a movie which would make you cry so much?" Ethan asked worriedly.

-"I just...wanted to see this part again...For some reason.."

-"Okay then..." The boy in vitligo signed.

-"Oh! Son, it was very nice to meet you and I'd be glad to adopt you as my own." Patton said with a loving stare at the masked boy.

-"Ummm....What?" Virgil asked, pretty confused now.

-"Shh..You're my baby now."

-"...Eth?" Virgil tried asking for help but none came since Ethan just gave the "shrug it off" motion.

After some time of eating snacks and talking, the porcelain boy checked the hour.

-"Oh shit we should probably go to sleep, guys."

-"Language, Dee." Patton rolled his eyes tiredly.

-"But it's only 2 AM in the morning?" Virgil asked as the other two gave him an unbelieving stare which made him regret saying this out loud.

-"Bed. Now" both of them said at the same time.

-"Nooooo" Virgil whined as he was being pulled by them to bed.

-"But my Tumblr-" he tried defending himself but for no use.

-"It won't fly away. Now sleep!" Ethan said in a worrying yet stern voice.

-"Um...I sort of have problems with that."

-"Shouldn't you put your mask away first? It's probably hurting your face no-" Patton asked yet being cut off by the younger boy in the cardboard mask.

-"NO!" Virgil yelled but put his hands to his mouth and gasped at his sudden outburst.

-"I'm so sorry, I- I didn't mean to-" he cried as Ethan came closer to him.

-"It's not your fault, it happens sometimes to every one of us. 

Now do you want me to sing you a song? Maybe it will help you sleep, I don't know...."

The smaller boy nodded without any hesitation even to his own surprise making Ethan chuckle a little as he began to sing Welcome to Wonderland by Anson Seabra.

Which actually worked as his wonderful siren like voice lulled the cardboard boy to sleep.

They both then fell asleep on the porcelain boy's bed as Patton just signed, peacefully this time and went to the living room.

.

.

.

.

.

-"VIRGIL WAKE UP, WE OVERSLEPT!" The voice broke the amazing silence as the boy in the bed hissed lazily not caring.

-"Virgil please, we need to go! Or I'm taking your mask off." Ethan fake-threatend.

Virgil then suddenly flicked from the bed "energized as ever"

Or rather anxious as ever.

As they both sat in the car and run as fast as they could to the classroom...

And there was a new student.

#ts patton #ts virgil #ts deceit #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides au #patton sanders #virgil sanders #deceit sanders #sympathetic deceit #sympathetic virgil

[missbeautyandherbeast]

Nightmares

Raphael X Biker!Reader

Part One     Part Two

Summary: Tomorrow arrives at your doorstep... but Raph doesn’t. Instead another brother does that leads to a perilous night out. 

A/N: Woo! Part three! This one is a bit more angsty but cute and well, who doesn’t love some good angst? I love you guys so much and all of the feedback that you offer. Always keep fighting. 

Tags: @brightlotusmoon @boatloadsofheart @legandarybeauty@crazywritingbug @bitch-kms @ravn-87 @just-a-casual-fangirl-011@unicornjoos @stuckoutsideofthebox @ilikestuffproductions@whygz @coffee-addicti@sugarspooks15@leslieebee@serperiorkb@blossom-skies@fantastical-67impala-fangirl@coresan @big-banging-red@iceprincess2019 @raphaeladdict @thirstyforvenom@merindagriese @depressedemo-152 @bengewatch @corabmarie@bitemebro522 @tmnt-queen @muleka-loka @violet-sky-96 @curadopordeus @artemismohr18 @thewhisperpen@xjupitermoonsx @bisexualbumblebeesstuff@merindagriese@oceans-daughter-3 @dixonreedusfangirlforever @shanidenise @thegayestfish441 @lovelyyroseee @yourlieberhoe @dolphincommander @molzies-fanfics @fuzzy-panda @msmcsmutt

Music played softly as it rained again, and I waited by an unlocked window. Some part of my memory knew that he would be here, though I couldn’t tell what the truth happened to be or what happened to be a dream. It all seemed like a dream to me. A wonderful dream.

A knock interrupted my thoughts as I opened the window, expecting one turtle and getting another.

“Leo?” I asked curiously. “What’s... why are you here?”

“Is Raph here?” He demanded; his eyes swept my apartment not even looking at me as he talked.

“No?” I frowned. “What the hell is going on?”

“Raph went out tonight and he hasn’t been back, and I assumed he was here.”

“No,” I shook my head, fear growing in my chest for my lost rider. “Give me a minute, I’ll help you look,” I arrived at the conclusion.

“You can’t. Not in this weather, it’s not safe,” Leo scolded. “You stay here.”

“Damn it, Leo! I can do what I want when I want, and you know you need me out there! You know I know him better!”

Cold blue eyes met mine, but I dug my heels in. Nothing would sway me from this. Looking for Raph became my number one priority.

“Meet at the alley in twenty minutes. Donnie will get you connected with the rest of us.” Leo didn’t meet my eyes as he ducked out the window. “And whatever happens to you is not on me.”

With that he vanished.

“Gee, thanks,” I mocked at the window and quickly changed for the ride ahead, my anxiety racing out of control as I muttered to myself the questions that I needed answers to. 

The one above them all: Where was Raphael?

I didn’t enjoy riding in the rain, it was cold and wet and hurt if you went fast enough, but I’d do it for him. Anything for my reckless rider. Sliding my helmet on, I sped off.

I arrived at the alley way and like Leo said, Donatello stood, equipment in hand.

“Hello,” He greeted, stammering slightly, “This will connected to your com system that you have set up and will pick up our radio frequency,”

I unlatched my helmet and handed it over, running a hand through my hair as the rain started to soak it through.

“Do you have any idea where he would be?” I asked as the turtle in purple worked quickly.

“Your guess is probably better than mine,” He muttered. “I figured that you would be the first place he went to after fighting with Leo,”

That was new information. That Leo conveniently left out.

“Fighting with Leo? About what?” I pressed, urgently. “Please Donnie this is important. If I’m going to find him... I need to know what happened.”

_____________________________

“You’re not going out tonight. There’s no need.” Leo stood in front of his brother.

“Get out of my way Leo,” Raph muttered. “I’ll be fine,”

“It’s too dangerous!” Leo shouted.

“And since when do you care whether I get hurt or not? Since when do you stop me from going out? Who do you think you are?” Raph stalked up to his brother agitated.

“Since you met her.” Leo answered coolly. “She’s dangerous,”

Raph scoffed and almost laughed as he paced away, growing more aggravated as each second passed.

“She’s not dangerous! Are you fucking kidding me!?” Raph pulled out his sais: a reflex. 

“Even now, she’s turning you against me,” Leo circled with his brother, keeping a distance.

“No, I’m pretty sure you’re doing that all on your own fearless,” Raph snarled. “So, don’t you dare go blaming her,”

“You think she actually wants to see you Raphael? We don’t belong in her world and she doesn’t belong in ours,” Leo hissed.

“Oh yeah, and it was okay for you to go after Karai! Sure! That makes total sense!” Raph roared.

“Karai was forced into our world! Are you really selfish enough to make her belong in ours!?” Now Leo had his blades drawn.

“We don’t belong anywhere Leo! But she’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to belonging, even when it’s with you three,”

“We are your family!” Leo shouted.

“Then fucking act like it!” Raph yelled, fighting back tears.

He had to get away. He had to get to you. You would know what to say, or at least what to do... or maybe you could give him solace from it all.

So, he took off and didn’t look back.

 ________________________________

I stared at Donnie in shock as he handed me back my helmet after testing it. 

“And Leo had the nerve to...” I growled slipping it back on.

“He went to apologize,” Donnie tried to soothe my fury.

“Oh, I’m sure he did,” My voice dripped venom through the comm.

“Yo! Y/n!” Another voice chimed in over the headset in my helmet. It had to be Mikey, the only brother I hadn’t met face to face yet.

“Hey Mikey,” I gritted out, taking a left down Jefferson.

The wind and rain picked up step, making it hard to see. But I had a good idea of where I was going, a few ideas actually.

I sped to the tunnels, slowing as I reached the outskirts, killing my engine and slipping of my helmet.

“Raph!?” I called into the hollow caverns.

No response. I growled and dove back out into the storm.

“Do you guys see anything!?” I demanded over the intercom.

“Nothing,” Leo’s voice held an air of calm and collected.

Oh, I was so going to punch him in the face next time I saw him.

My next destination located itself in the middle of the Brooklyn bridge. Raph and his bike were nowhere to be found. Huffing, I set off again.

“Come on Raph,” I muttered. “Where are you?”

My hope waning, with one more spot left on my mental checklist, I turned carefully and headed towards the outskirts of the city. To a place Raph had never been. A road I had taken what seemed like months ago, leading him out of the city lights.

The city ways quickly became dense forest.

“Come on Raph, please,” Tears of fear and worry started to blur my vision. “Please, come back to me,”

I slowed my bike, having to. Through the rain and my tears, there was no other option. On the side of the road, I got off my bike, and took off my helmet, leaving them on the side of the road as I started to keep walking down the dark road.

“Raph!”

Stupid seemed like a good word to describe what I was doing.

Soaked to the bone, my tears fell freely.

What was I doing?

I was alone on a road, with no hope of finding a way back until the rain cleared, looking for someone who didn’t want to be found in the entirety of New York and I had nothing to go on.

“Please,” I begged to no one. 

“Y/n!?”

I almost dropped in relief. 

“Raph?” I called.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” He was beside me instantly, his figure shielding the rain that seemed to be coming in sideways with the wind.

_________________________________

“What are you doing out here!?” She shouted back. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere! Why... what the hell were you thinking!?” Her voice sounded raw as tears mixed with the rain.

“You’ve been looking for me? In this? Y/n, were you seriously riding in this!” Raphael’s voice rose.

“What else was I supposed to do! Leo came to me; said you were gone! Then Donnie told me about what happened and God Raph!” Trembles racked her frame as she continued to yell. “Do you know how worried I’ve been!? How scared that something happened to you!?”

In a desperate attempted to stop shaking, her arms wrapped themselves around her frame. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and hold her close, to give her comfort.

He never thought that she would care enough to come out looking for him. Or why the hell Leo would go to her of all people.

“I’m... sorry Y/n,” He mumbled, barely audible above the howling wind.

“Please, come home,” She shivered. He could see her paling and her lips turning blue.

“No, we’re gonna get you home, and dry, and warm,” Raph, against his better judgement again, picked her up and walked over to where her bike waited.

Sitting her in front of him, helping her with her helmet, he tore off down the road, back to the city. Back somewhere where he could get her warm and safe.

__________________________________

Whimpers let my lips against my will as I shuddered from the bitter cold. I could hear voices over the comm, but the words didn’t make much sense... not that I paid much attention.

Every cell in my body was screaming to get warm, and fast. I barely processed the effort it took to stay on the bike until Raphael pulled up to my apartment complex.

With head he lifted me and climbed the fore escape, forcing my window open.

I collapsed in the warmth, against him and his warmth. His face was fuzzy... everything was fuzzy. I tried to blink the haze from my eyes, but soon my eyelids were too heavy to reopen.

__________________________________

“Donnie get over here and fix her,” Raph hissed into his comm. 

“Raph?” The three brothers all responded.

“Yes. Donnie, she passed out from being in the rain and cold too long and I need your help,” He growled, trying to keep his panic and worry to a minimum.

He had already stripped her riding jacket, shoes and socks, and currently, he cradled her in his lap cocooned in her throw blankets. Anything to give her warmth.

Donnie was ducking in through the window in minutes, and his brother looked at the limp girl in his arms and got to work. Taking her pulse and checking her vitals, Donnie seemed to relax.

“She’s in a stable condition, just a bit of hypothermia. What you were doing is what you should have been and need to keep doing until she wakes up and can shower and get dry clothes,” Donnie spoke softly.

Raph nodded, and his brother neared the window, hesitating slightly before ducking out into the driving rain.

Raphael held her closer in his arms as he moved to sitting on the floor, trying to keep himself together. He didn’t want to lose her, not like this. And he didn’t want to admit that maybe Leo was right... she didn’t belong in his world; she could get hurt... or worse.

But her eyebrows furrowed as her eyes fluttered open, and he knew that there couldn’t be any other place that he belong except right there.

.

.

Like my stuff? Here’s my masterlist!

#tmnt #tmnt raph x reader #tmnt raph #tmnt raphael #tmnt raph 2012 #tmnt raphael x reader #tmnt leonardo #tmnt leo #tmnt leo 2012 #tmnt mikey #tmnt michelangelo #tmnt mikey 2012 #tmnt mikey 2016 #tmnt donatello #tmnt drabble #tmnt Donnie #tmnt angst #tmnt fluff #tmnt x oc #tmnt x you #TMNT x reader #tmnt x y/n #tmnt x #teenage mutant ninja turtles #teenage mutant ninja turtles 2016 #teenage mutant ninja turtle imagine

[schlepped]

Warm In Winter

Hi. So yeah, before his birthday is over, I would like to post a birthday one-shot of Double B because i miss them a lot. 

English is not my first language so there might be grammatical errors. hope you enjoy it!

- - -

On one of the meaningful days for Hanbin, he scoffed as he found himself working on some paperworks. He should’ve spent the day like any other weekend he always been, cuddling up with Jiwon while watching movies together, but the funny thing is both of them need to work on something.

Not fair, he thought to himself. But he finishes his work a little earlier than he had expected and he’s watching the gray sky with flashes of lightning dancing vigorously through his office window while holding a paper bag that contains the newest so-called-zombie-apocalypse-game-that-only-Jiwon knows what inside the bag. He’s been whining for the past few weeks about how much he wanted the video game.

“He’s going to like it,” he mumbles.

He steps out of the building with drizzles pouring down from the sky, making small droplets on his light blue shirt then turns into a heavy rain within seconds making him rushing to the nearest bus stop while hugging the paper bag to make sure it is safe without any watermarks on it.

Rain. Hanbin never really like the rain. He doesn’t hate it but he doesn’t like it either. Like if there was a parameter to measure his liking for rain then he would have placed in the middle. He’s not good at resisting cold—thanks to the rhinitis—Winter December’s breeze is sure is cold, with -4 Celsius degree and 8 km/hr wind velocity, it’s cold enough for Hanbin staying outside.

He pulls his phone and finds there are no new notifications and an alert of low battery on his screen. He sighs while looking at the 7% on the upper right side of his phone. Hanbin grows in anxiety as there is no sign of Jiwon to pick him up leaving him restless with his battery slowly decreasing to zero.

***

On the other side of Seoul, a man is rushing to start an engine of his loud-monster, a Ford Mustang GT in the basement. Worriedness etched evidently on his face as he hears a voicemail answering his call instead of the owner.

The road is wet, with loud thumps of rain droplets falling on his car windshield like a clockwise ticking. He sees Hanbin standing alone at the bus stop as his cars slowly getting closer and stops right in front to call him.

“Hanbin!” He shouted and a smile appears on Hanbin’s face as he hurries into his car.

The smell of rain welcomes him when Hanbin opens the door and there he is, sitting awkwardly hugging a paper bag on his arms.

“Hi.” He said shyly.

"Hey."

Jiwon looks at him for a moment before turning away, trying to reach a hoodie with his long hand in the back seat. “Open your shirt.”

“Huh? My shirt? All of sudden?”

Hanbin is flustered, but then realizes what he meant by opening his shirt when Jiwon throws him a hoodie on his lap.

“Your shirt. It’s wet.”

“Okay. But please look somewhere else.”

Jiwon turns his head into another direction but Hanbin knows he’s smiling smugly on the other side, “what? I’ve seen all the parts of your body. Just open.”

His cheeks feel hot at the moment Jiwon said his first sentence. Even though it’s true, Hanbin himself still finds it amusing and embarrassing at the same time. But he still pulls his shirt up when he knows Jiwon sneakily peeking on him.

“I said don’t look!”

“Okay! Okay! I won't look!”

Jiwon’s apartment is…. messy like the usual. Nothing new. A pair of dirty socks in the doorsteps, clothes hanging on the sofa. They’re necessarily “Jiwon” thing.

They straightly go into Jiwon’s room and he pulls a t-shirt and a boxer from his drawer and put it on the bed.

“You can take the shower first.”

Hanbin nods and Jiwon walked out, closing the door behind him and just like that, Hanbin is left alone in his room. No matter how much he’s been into his room, a strange feeling still lingers on him since it is Jiwon’s private area. He doesn’t want to invade much so he goes to take shower right away.

Scrolling through his phone while looking up to some weird yet funny memes, Jiwon finds Hanbin standing on the door edge.

“Hey. You’re done? And by the way, are you hungry?”

“Yeah. I’ll make the dinner, you can just go shower.”

The dinner is served by the time Jiwon steps out of his room, rubbing his hair roughly with a dry towel. It’s just two over-cooked instant Ramen and two cups of hot water to warm themselves on this rainy night.

Small talks hovering while they eat their dinners, like how was their day and stuff. It went so quickly. The next thing Hanbin knows, they’re sitting on the sofa, watching La La Land on Netflix.

“You’re not going to your Mom’s. That’s new.”

Jiwon looks at him, “Yeah. I just wanted to spend the day with you tonight.”

“Do you really think it would be okay?”

“Why it wouldn’t be okay?”

“I feel like I ruined your family traditions.”

Hanbin swallowed his saliva. Hard. He knows this will start an argument but before he even back to the reality the words already slip out of his mouth and he feels regret after seeing a flash tense on Jiwon’s face.

“Hanbin. Why you always think like this? Even though I don’t get to celebrate it with my family, it’s just for this year only. And it’s my day. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. I get to choose whoever I want to spend my day with and I choose you. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

“It means everything to me. It’s just, I don’t want to get in the way… I… you know.”

“Okay. You need to stop to think everything is your fault. You’re not ruin anything. This is purely my choice. I choose you to be my partner on my birthday. So what? I spend my time with my family every Sunday. I gotta have time to spend with you too like we always do every Saturday. And for some reason, God puts December 21 on Saturday. So it’s our day. I don’t want to hear any complaints from you. Can we just focus on the movie?”

Hanbin goes silent. His mind is processing every word coming out from Jiwon’s mouth. Slowly building his thought that he’s the one Jiwon chooses to spend his time with on this day.

“For the sake of this argument, let’s just say that I’m Ash Ketchum and wants to spend his day with his lifetime partner Pikachu. Alright?”

A smile cracks on Hanbin’s face. “Now you’re saying that I’m Pikachu? Can’t believe you’re using Pokémon to get on this.”

“There’s no other way. Besides Pokemon is the only thing I remember since there was Pokémon on TV this morning.”

“You’re weird.”

“That’s one way to say it, Hanbin.”

Jiwon leans his face close and the next thing he knows, he’s kissing Hanbin’s soft lips gently. Like a Japanese cotton sponge cake, his lips taste sweet and soft. The kiss grows intense as he slips his hand underneath Hanbin’s t-shirt tracing his skin softly, giving a sensual tension for Hanbin to let out small gasps between the kiss.

His hand slowly going lower and lower towards the V area outside his pants, stroking it slowly and bitting Hanbin’s lips at the same time. One at the time, clothes are scattering on the floor leaving Jiwon and Hanbin only on their pants, both panting while resting their foreheads on each other.

“Do you want me to go down?” Jiwon asks cautiously, biting his lip.

Hanbin nods, “yeah. Please.”

Jiwon kisses him on the neck, slowly leaving kiss marks all over his neck as he goes down to the torso reaching down to his ‘Nihilism’ tattoo. And his hand opening the zipper while pulling it down and stroking Hanbin’s cock through his underwear.

A loud moan is echoing the room followed by heavy breathes and long gasp, and Hanbin’s begging for him to go inside. Touching it for real, skin to skin.

He slips his finger inside Hanbin’s panty and finds his boner on its position, tense as ever. He rubbed it slowly, occasionally messaging it. Shivers strikes down to Hanbin’s spine as he feels he’s about hit his limit.

“Ah! Shit! Jiwon I’m about time to-“

“Shh. Hold it for a second.”

Pulling down his underwear, Jiwon goes closer to his boner to suck it up and twist it with his tongue. And a moment later he hit his limit as cum flushes out.

Hanbin tries to catch his breath before fixing his position and looks at Jiwon in some-kind of expression Jiwon unable to apprehend.

“Do you… want me to do it too?”

He’s slightly taken aback at his blatant question, but nods. They’re switching places with Hanbin’s on top and he’s on the bottom.

Jiwon lets a small moan out of his mouth as Hanbin pulls his pants down, looking at his tensed boner. He plants light kisses on his cock, before kissing it more gently and rubbing his balls with his hand.

Never once he thought Hanbin will be this good at sucking. He’s almost blackout when his tongue twists his cock and thrusting it in and out of his mouth. He becomes speechless as the minute goes by, but every minute feels like a year.

This feels like a heavenly punishment yet the best gift he’s ever received this year.

“FUCK!”

Hanbin stops, looking up at Jiwon with his big doe eyes and it makes Jiwon desperate as he wants it more and more. Why the hell did he stop when he knows he enjoys it?

“Do-don’t stop.”

He smiles before continuing sucking his cock while giving hand-job by rubbing and messaging his balls gently. Jiwon finally comes to his limits with his cum flushes out on Hanbin’s mouth along with Jiwon’s long moan echoing across the room.

Hanbin pecks his lips while lifted strands of hair from Jiwon’s face.

“Fuck. That was- amazing.”

“Amazingly bad or?”

“It was amazingly good.”

Hanbin gets up and pulling up his pants, then goes to the pantry. He gives Jiwon the paper bag he was carrying with him since he’s still in the office.

“I’ve been wondering what is this.”

“Open it. It’s a present. I know you like it so just open and tell me what do you think about it.”

He opens the gift box and his face lits up when he sees his most-wanted video game placed inside the box. “God! I can’t believe you got me this. Are you serious about this? Don’t you hate it when I play video games and started ignoring you? Whoa… you’re really amazing. Still can’t believe you give me this for my birthday.”

The way his talk started to turn into rapping makes Hanbin chuckles softly. Child-like smile, with his voice pitched-up, he is really excited about getting that video game. He knows the consequences by giving it as a present, but there’s nothing more that makes him happy than seeing him happy.

“I’m going to take it away from you if you’re going to ignore me.”

He pouts, “No way. I’m going to hide this really well so you won’t find it.”

Such a big baby, he laughs at his own thoughts.

“What? What?! Why are you laughing?”

“Nothing. Just.. you know, you’re such a baby.”

“Well. I am your baby.”

“Yeah. A big one.”

#double b #yay its been a while since i write something so this is a big achievement #kim jiwon #bobby ikon #b.i ikon #kim hanbin #ikon #ikon smut #warm in winter #oneshot #bxb

[survivingcapitalism]

A Canadian Postal Worker’s Comments on the Strike

Hi.  

I am a postal worker and would like to take a moment of your time.  Unless you have been living in a cave in the mountains of West Virginia you will have no doubt heard that Canada Post and its employees are in the middle of contract negotiations and currently engaged in limited strike action.  The limited strike action I speak of is the rotating strikes and a refusal to work overtime.  These are designed to cause a slight delay in the mail stream that impacts management more than our customers, and to our customers, I am sorry for any slight delay you may experience but there is a reason why we are doing this.  

Part of the nature of the current conflict is that not only are our issues complex but so is the workforce itself, and by that I mean it is incredibly diverse.  Not only are we trying to negotiate 2 different contracts at the same time, but these contracts cover both RSMC and city workers which include both inside and outside workers, temporary employees, maintenance workers in addition to people who's job can be a combination of more then one classification.  Of course wages are an issue as they are with anyone and I wont pretend to say we wouldn't like a raise, however it is the working conditions that are much more important to us and something almost no one understands unless they work here.  Everyone can see how hard roofers and nurses work, but when you do the job, you gain a completely different understanding of what they go through.  

 Did you know that Canada Post does NOT receive funding from the government? There is a good chance you didn't.  All of Canada Post's revenue comes from the selling of stamps and shipping fees. We are self sufficient.   Even if you did know this, you might be surprised to know how many people do not know this.  

One of our major issues deals with staffing for both inside and outside workers.  There are many RSMC's in the country that still have to find their own replacements.  That means if you want to take a vacation, or get sick or injured that YOU have to find someone to sort and deliver your route.   Can you think of any other business like that short of being an independent contractor?  Keep in mind these are not contractors but Canada Post employees. If you cant make it to work for what ever reason, does your boss tell you it's your responsibility to find someone to do your work?  Canada Post has also agreed to a minimum staffing ration of permanent employees to temporary employees.  They have been ignoring this ratio for several years now.  

Staffing issues in general are also at the heart of the forced overtime issues.  Although many inside and outside (letter carrier) workers regularly volunteer for overtime it is the outside workers that are also FORCED to do overtime. This means that unless you have medical documentation stating that for health reasons you cannot do the overtime, you are forced to do it or face disciplinary action.  Did you make prior commitments for when you thought you would be off work such as picking up kids from daycare, or school or making a dentist or Dr. appointment?.  To bad, you have to change your life at the last min.  That being said, sometimes things happen that are beyond everyone's control, but I think you can agree that this shouldn't happen on a regular basis and there can be a better way to meet all of our customers delivery commitments.  

When it comes to being a temporary employee, I think most of us have been there, working mostly contract jobs or seasonal work.  The difference at Canada Post is that you just sit at home waiting for a phone call.  Most people will go months without getting that phone call for some work.  You might also work this week, but not the next 3 weeks, or at times, you may work for most of the year full time.  You never know.  You only get a call if and when they want you.  This makes it very difficult to plan out any sort of life.  Will you need a babysitter tomorrow?  You probably wont know until the very last minute of that day.

You may have heard the term “overburdening” mentioned by the union in the news but what does that really mean?  For letter carriers anyways, what that means is the overall work load and how the job is preformed.   Canada Post to their credit were at the forefront of job efficiency measurement at a micro level.  This is a very fancy way to saying every part of a letter carriers job was measured decades ago.  Every foot of distance on our route, every stair, gate, door, etc. is counted and assigned a time value.  Even how many letters per min we are supposed to sort is built into our day.  Part of the problem is sometimes these values go missing and so do not get counted in the making of new routes.  A more significant issue is that this system has not really been updated in decades despite the nature of how we do our job has changed a great deal.  

Nearly everyone will agree the number of letters we write and send each other has been in decline for a long time, but think of how many offers you get from your bank, or the dealership where you bought your car or some other business looking to make you a customer.  We still deliver all of those things yet most are not used in the calculations used to determine the size of our routes.  This has caused the size of a letter carriers route to grow dramatically.  Many routes are 3 times the size they were 20 years ago.   A letter carrier typically walks 20 km a day (5 days a week) and up and down 3000 to 5000 stairs while carrying the mail, flyers and packets/parcels for over 100 houses at a time.  This is a key reason why the injury rate for postal workers is 5 times higher then any other profession.  It is also a reason why letter carriers have more back, knee, hip and foot surgery then anyone else.  One simple fix to this would be to make the amount we deliver at one time less, such as 50 houses as opposed to 100 houses.   The opposition to this is because adding even just 6 extra stops would mean having to make the route shorter by 12 min (we get 2 min per loop stop to load up our satchel with mail).  I sounds like such a simple fix, and it is, but yet Canada Post says no. Part of the reason is that it would require updating and fixing 18,000 routes from coast to coast. An easy fix, but time consuming to implement and it is apparently less expensive to pay out disability cheques then to fix things.  It is also much easier to make someone do more in the same amount of time and reduce jobs.  In the end, it would also require hiring more employees but I guess they think it is such a horrible thing to employ people.  

The subject of the multiple bundle delivery method as a health and safety concern has been an ongoing fight with little change despite several arbitrator rulings in favor of the employees.  In order to fully explain the situation would require an essay unto itself but any letter carrier will gladly take the time to talk to you about it.  All you have to do is ask.

 On top of the mail and flyers, are all the things we deliver to you that you ordered from places like Amazon, or Allied express or Wish.  Delivering those items as well as the use of our scanner have almost no time value associated with them.  Despite every part of our job being measured to the second, the system has not been updated to properly include our new duties.  We are simply required to do them. If we do not get all of the work done, we get questioned as to why with very little concern to things such as the weather conditions and can face disciplinary action.  

This is a very simplistic overview of some of the issues currently being fought at the negotiating table, and I would hope it peeks your interest enough to ask your postal worker for more information.

We are your brothers and sisters, your neighbors and friends and in the end we simply would like to do our job feeling more like a person and less like a machine. 

We want to work and we love our job.  We love to be greeted by that lovable furball that wants to lick us to death when all we seem to have for you is a pizza flyer.  We wear our uniform with pride and in the end only want to be able to go home happy and injury free and not feeling defeated and broken, wondering how we will make it through tomorrow.  

Thank You for your time.

(Copy Pasted from Brother Arlyn Doran)

#cdnpoli #strike to win #labour #labor #Canadian Postal Strike #Canada Post

[maxfieldparrishes]

Fanfic Request: Shinji/Asuka; Asuka running on a treadmill while connected to a heart monitor as part of a stress test; the stress proving too much for Asuka's heart, resulting in a massive heart attack and Shinji must revive her. Feel free to tweak this to your liking.

Pilot 002 showing signs of cardiac distress. Further observation and investigation needed. 

XX/XX/2015

Ritsuko Akagi

Pilot 002 continues to exhibit cardiac arrhythmia. Stress test scheduled for XX/XX/2015.

XX/XX/2015 

Ritsuko Akagi

Asuka had been whining her way down the hallway, holding on to Kaji’s elbow, upset at missing her class’s meager excuse for a field trip. Kaji ignored her for the most part, daydreaming, until Misato’s legs flashed out of a nearby doorway and he stopped in his tracks. 

“I told you, I’m fine, so can I please go with Hikari–”

“Um,” Kaji said, distracted by the way the ends of Misato’s hair fluttered against her shoulders, while Misato narrowed her eyes and hissed “No. You need to be tested, Asuka. Or would you rather we gave Unit 02 to someone else?” 

Asuka pouted but declined to protest further, stuck and smarting under Misato’s stern gaze. Her own gaze landed on Shinji, slouching half-hidden in Misato’s shadow, looking awkwardly to the side like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Finding herself suddenly and irrationally annoyed by his presence, she huffed “Fine!” and made her way down to the lab herself, stomping the entire way.

Stress test XX/XX/2015

00:00:30 - 3.0 km/h. Heart rate normal - 110 bpm. 

“–add another thing to my to-do list, why don’t you–” 

“Ritsuko, it’s not like we planned this or anything–” Misato crossed her arms and sighed, tilting her head to see around Ritsuko’s clipboard, Kaji leaning lazily against the wall. 

“Can you all take this somewhere else?” Asuka interjected. “I’m trying to walk here! You’re skewing my results!” 

All three adults–Ritsuko, Misato, and Kaji–turned to look at her, Ritsuko exasperated, Misato thunderous, and Kaji drily, but they did as Asuka asked and left, sniping and letting the lab door slam behind them. Or, rather, behind Kaji, as he followed the women out, leaving Shinji sitting and watching Asuka at the treadmill. 

Stress test XX/XX/2015

00:01:45 - 4.5 km/h. Heart rate normal - 116 bpm. 

“What are you looking at?” she snapped. 

Shinji only managed to stutter out “I–” before Asuka sighed and cut him off.

“I’m glad they’re gone, their bickering was bothering me. Now how is any of this accurate? But I can’t stop because they won’t let me,” she said, and the bite in her voice was enough to make Shinji perk his head up. 

“I’m sure they’d know if they were skewing it,” he said. “Why don’t you trust them, Asuka?” 

“Why do you?” she asked, as the speed of the treadmill increased, and she broke into a slow run, ponytail bouncing. 

“Well, they care, don’t they?” Shinji said. “If they didn’t you wouldn’t be here. They want to make sure that you’re okay.” 

“Did you ever bother to wonder why they care? Think, Shinji. Use your brain for once. What do we do?” 

“We pilot Eva–”

“Yeah, we pilot Eva. What can’t I do if my heart is messed up?“

“Oh.” He sees her point now. 

“It’s not that they care about me, it’s that they need me to work. I’m a machine they need to fix. Ritsuko wishes I could be taken apart and what’s broken fixed or replaced. Misato just wishes I was gone.” 

Stress test XX/XX/2015

00:05:48 - 9.7 km/h. Heart rate increasing. Commencing observation.

“No, she doesn’t wish that. That isn’t true, Asuka. Misato cares about you.” 

“She doesn’t like me,” Asuka said, softly, and for a minute Shinji takes the gentle bitterness in her voice as an affront to himself. Misato is not his mother, but she has taken him in, advocated for him, seen to his needs. He’d do anything for her, if it meant that she would ask him how his day was, every day. If she’d sit down to dinner, down a beer or five, and smile at him over her chopsticks. “She likes you.” 

Asuka’s grip tightened on the bar of the treadmill as Ritsuko, sitting rapt in her chair behind the two-way mirror, pointedly ignoring Misato in favor of the monitor with Asuka’s electrocardiogram on it, increased the speed further. 

Stress test XX/XX/2015

00:07:52 - 11.8 km/h. Heart rate increasing. Observation continuing. 

“Are you all right, Asuka?” He’s trying to ignore what she said. It’s not true that Misato doesn’t like her. It’s not. 

“I’m fine,” she snapped between breaths, “now shut up.” 

Stress test XX/XX/2015

00:08:45 - 13.2 km/h. Heart rate increasing. Observation continuing. 

“Asuka, are you sure you’re okay?” 

“Stop talking.” 

Should he be worried about her panting? 

Stress test XX/XX/2015

00:10:30 - 14.6 km/s. Heart rate increasing. Electrical impulses irregular. Maintain present speed.

Shinji wonders if he really should be worried. She clutches both bars on the treadmill as she pushes herself to keep up with the belt, and her face is pale and clammy. 

“Asuka–”

“No,” she gasps. “Stop.” 

“Asuka, really–” he says as she takes the bars in her iron grip and sways forward, but keeps on gasping and running, her form gone sloppy. 

Stress test XX/XX/2015

00:11:27 - 16.0 km/s. Heart rate increasing. Electrical impulses irregular. Supraventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation suspected.

Asuka crumples in on herself like a doll, hits the belt of the treadmill, and goes flying into the back wall with a loud thud. 

Shinji runs over and finds her breathless. He puts an ear to her chest, and, hearing nothing, immediately begins to pound on her chest. Where is Ritsuko, or Misato, or even Kaji? Are they just watching from behind the mirror, letting Asuka die on the floor? 

He tries to remember the CPR he’s been taught. Thirty compressions, two breaths, that’s all he’s got. Shinji puts Asuka on her back and begins to press down hard on her breastbone, counting out loud, trying to shout for help in between pushing her chest down and checking for breathing. 

He’s on his second round of compressions when the door and Kaji sprints into the room, followed by Ritsuko, and lastly Misato. 

“It’s okay, I’ve got her,” he says as he pushes Shinji out of the way, taking his place as Ritusko comes with the defibrillator in her hands.

Asuka starts sputtering to life a few short seconds later, as Ritsuko yells at Misato to call the medics and she stands watching, dazed. 

Through the clamor, Asuka meets Shinji’s eyes. She gives him a nod, and in return, he gives her a genuine–really, a genuine–smile.

Stress test XX/XX/2015

Pilot 002 went into cardiac distress during test. Recommended protocol: cardiac ablation.

Ritsuko Akagi

#anonymous #asushin #here you go anon! i am very tired and somewhat off my game but i did try #asked and answered

[chrysaliseuro2019]

The Road to Nowhere

Next day we had no need to rush. We had our wheels and also breakfast so a leisurely start. A good sleep also needed after the disrupted one of arrival night. We headed off around 11.30. The bike roared into action and fully helmeted we were pretty upbeat about this new mode of transport. It was taking the years off us. A few jerks and jolts but getting the hang and it was a beautiful day. We headed off to the same end of the island we went to the previous night but this time in search of the more secluded beaches only accessible if you have transport.

View was magnificent everywhere as the road is high up overlooking the sea at times in both directions of the island which is pretty narrow and only about 10 kms long. We had a beach in mind and the navigator spotted a sign to it down a track which was wideish but certainly off road. No prob this bike can handle most things and the 4WD up our sleeve if needed. Pretty soon the track started to narrow the rubble turned to rocks and the little stone wall on either side got uncomfortably close. We were also on a fairly steep incline. Nervous words were exchanged, a sense of déjà vu crept in (another blind alley? - it’s happened again! - could this navigator get lost in a one way street?) Of course these were unexpressed thoughts (by me) and we decided we had to go back the way we came.

This was easier said than done. We had reached a slightly wider little spot but it was not much more than bike width and we were pointing downwards - lets say at 25-30 degrees. Needed to back up a bit and try and do a 180. I hit reverse and the wheels spun as we inched backwards before the bike stalled. And, of course, couldn’t get it going again after several tries. Took it out of reverse into neutral and various other ploys. All 3 brakes on. Hmmm. What now, stuck on a track about 100 metres from the main road but 3-4 kms to nearest town and stinking hot. We tried calling bike HQ but phone reception not good. Then we made contact and they said they would come to the rescue. yeh!

Liz walked back up the track to stand by the main road and wave to the rescuers as it was difficult to describe where we were (eg look for a track about 3kms after town). She stood in the shadow of an old truck which was handy and after a while started to wonder if people driving by were mistaking her purpose. In some European countries ladies of the night (and day) will stand on the open road touting for custom. We mused what the passing drivers might have thought - “what the heck’s going on in that household”. Anyway no one stopped and no sympathetic 5 euro notes flew out of any windows.

Meanwhile I was reading the small print on the hire agreement we had signed. It indicated that if you took the bike down stony tracks and had a prob you could be up for a 130 euro payment. This was a bit odd because they pretty much encourage you to do just that by talking up the 4WD and saying you will have no prob getting to this beach or that off road. But anyway didn’t fancy forking that out.

After 30 mins or so the very friendly guy with his mate from the hire company rolled up, put us at great ease and said no prob we would rather you called us out, it will be easily fixed. They also advised that what we had taken was a walking track. The correct turning was about 200 metres further on.

Of course they started the bike up straight away. Apparently, though looking like it was in neutral, it was stuck in reverse as that’s where it had stalled. Also though all brakes on, one had to be physically held while starting the bike. They whizzed a bit further down the track did a Uey with consummate ease and handed us the bike back. All parties were pleased. We got out of of a pickle and certainly they did the Uey which made life a lot easier and I think they preferred that also as the track was pretty steep and we might have had a prob. No additional charge by the way.

We happily set off again as they waved us goodbye and found the correct turning for our beach which initially at least was a sealed road. So close. (Dis)Honours were probably even. The navigator (who is pretty good at keeping us on the right route the vast majority of the time interspersed by the odd seismic detour) had led us down the road to nowhere though fought a rearguard action that I had agreed to this route. I couldn’t start the bike up but I reckon she was providing advice on possibilities also. So relieved were we though to get out of this schmozzle with relative ease that point scoring and recriminations were put aside (for once). At least to this point (mostly).

The beach we found was small, pleasant and secluded. We did not have a beach umbrella so sat on towels and it really wasn’t too hot. A couple of guys sitting beside us who sounded German though spoke mostly in English were probably up for a chat but we never quite got that going (though were to later). Water was lovely. A really nice cove and we spent perhaps an hour and a half there. Needed lunch and headed back to the nearest town. Found a great little taverna up on the hill with view out to sea and had stuffed peppers with crusty bread for lunch. Bliss.

Back on the bike and we headed for a different beach. Again off sealed road. The road, though steep and gravelly, was pretty good and the bike had no problem handling it. This beach was quite attractive though things had heated up being mid afternoon and we sat under some trees in an area that wasn’t quite as picturesque. Still nice way to wile away the arvo.

The bike had to be back at 7.00pm so around 5.30 we got back on retraced our steps up hill and down and determined to go to the other end of the island where the port and several beaches were. A possibility that we would visit them by bus the following day. The beaches that we could get to were fine but probably not better than the first one we had been to today. Apparently the best beach had to be accessed by boat. Final run around on the bike and it was great. A real sense of freedom and fun to drive. The hire team ran us back to our hotel which was handy so we didn’t have to climb the hill.

Dinner that night was quite late by the time we had showered and fossicked around. We sat down around 9.45 and weren’t eating till gone 10.00pm. Liz had stuffed eggplant which she really enjoyed and I somewhat rashly went for the beef stifado. A tender casserole accompanied by roast potatoes Greek style so soft and cooked in the stew. Absolutely fantastic dish but it did sit pretty heavily that night. We saw the same waiter the next day who asked me about it and said they normally eat that around 4.00pm to allow it to settle. Still it was great.

Walking home around 11.30pm we bumped into the two guys from the beach. Turns out one was German and the other Greek. They lived in Oslo and seemed to be partners. Both very dry and amusing particularly the Greek guy who had us in fits describing their visit to Australia which they really loved. He mused about the dangerous animals everywhere you go. “Why are you trying to kill your visitors?” -spiders, dingoes (they had been to Fraser Island), snakes, crocodiles or sharks they even got a shock when they saw the size of the flying foxes. Apparently a huntsman spider had taken residence above their doorway somewhere and they used to look up to see if it was still there and then run through the door. This was all delivered in showman style and he was very engaging. We headed off home chuckling away.

Another eventful day. As my old boss used to say you wouldn’t be dead for quids.

[pearlyfuckingdolores]

101 reasons why im not going to eat for 20 days:

1. I am fat. I am just so fat and ugly. 

2. when im skinny I will be able to wear WHATEVER I want 

3. I cant leave my bed when I am this fat, I will finally be able to go out and enjoy myself in the summer. 

4. my birthday is coming up and if im not skinnier than I was last year then im going to kms

5. finally people will be able to lift me up without me weighing a tonne

6. I will have more defined cheek bones

7. I will be able to walk in front of people without them looking at me and thinking how fat I am

8. I will look like I don't eat

9. everything will be okay when im happy 

10. I cant be fat and happy, that dosent exists 

11. I will look so good in mini skirts and little dresses 

12. people wont be calling me ‘healthy’ looking 

13. I will look scarily skinny if I don't eat

14. eating only makes me sad so why the fuck would I ever eat? 

15. ill drop so much weight so fat, and everyone will wonder how I done it so fkn well 

16. I wont feel ugly under my skin

17. it will motivate me to go longer without eating 

18. I will be happy 

19. I will be able to leave my bed and go into school everyday without having to worry about how fat I look

20. people will think I finally look skinny, I wont be the fat girl anymore 

21. my vison will be blurry when I stand and I will be faint all the time, I love that feeling 

22. I will always be weak and have no energy, I love feeling like this coz it means im doing something right 

23. I will finally be HUNGRY. im never hungry now coz I always eat like a fat pig, hunger is a sign of success.

24. I will finally be at my first goal weight 

25. my goal for my birthday is 45kg 

26. I wont be sad 

27. I will be closer to looking like my thinspo 

28. I will be able to wear a bikini

29. I will have a much bigger thigh gap

30. my stomach wont look all fat and disgusting 

31. my thighs wont look fat when I sit down (and they wont look fat when I stand either but yh) 

32. all my clothes will be baggy on me

33. I will feel motivated to loose more weight 

34. my fingers will be boney and slim

35. I will be able to wear rings on my slim fingers without them looking like fucking sausages 

36. my arms will be boney and skinny 

37. you will finally be able to see my rib cage 

38. collar bones showing 

39. hips bones showing 

40. I will have a teeny tiny stomach and waist

41. I wont be the chunk friend anymore 

42. I will be the skinniest out of all of my friends 

43. I will feel confident and beautiful 

44. everything about me will be small 

45. my face will be more defined, no more double chin ! 

46. I will look skinny in everything I wear

47. at the end of the day I will still look skinny 

48. I wont be a sweaty pig anymore 

49. I wont feel fat hanging off me 

50. I will be able to stick my hand through my thighs without it touching them

51. I will look like a model 

52. everything about me will be perfect, I need perfection ! 

53. I will feel so cleansed and fresh after the fast

54. april is a binge free month so im going to really be sticking to this diet 

55. if other people can do it, then why the fuck cant I?

56. I want to be the best at not eating, I want to win 

57. I don't want to feel like a beached whale 

58. I will be able to wear baggy clothes and oversized jumpers without it making me look even bigger, it will look cuuute 

59. I wont have the urge to binge anymore 

60. it will just make me more and more determined to get to my goal 

61. I will finally reach my first goal weight maybe even better it if I do 20 days with no food and I will finally be out of this binge purge cycle that im In 

62. I will be able to wear all the cute dresses I brought for summer 

63. I will be able to wear crop tops and bralettes without my fat body hanging out 

64. I wont want to die anymore

65. I wont cry myself to sleep at night 

66. I wont feel uncomfortable in my own body 

67. I wont feel trapped 

68. I will be able to go out everday in my summer holidays and be enjoy myself, whereas if I eat I will spend every day crying in my bed about how fat I am and nothing will get solved 

69. PROM PROM PROM PROM PROM PROM !!!!!! I need to be 40kg for fucking prom

70. im just going to end up ODing if I don't get to my goal weight coz this just sint fun anymore 

71. I will be able to wear the cute jackets I brought myself 

72. starvation is success 

73. I wont look fat in pictures 

74. I want to be a model, I cant be a model if I look like this 

75. beauty might take pain but im strong and I have determination. I will get what I want and I wont let anything stop me 

76. im not going to let fat beat me. im going to beat obesity. 

77. if not now then when? 

78. if I don't stop eating now, im just going to keep piling on the pounds and its only going to make it harder and harder for me to get to my goal weight.

79. its so close to summer now, I need to loose the weight before it gets too late 

80. im so fucking sad being like this, living inside this fat body just feels so fucking painful and id rather be dead. but if I do something about it then I wont have to feel like this. 

81. I will be able to fit into size 0 

82. I wont be able to grab all my fat into my hands, it wont exist coz ill be skin and bone 

83. no body likes me when I look like this. I look like a oaf, chunky lumpy and fucking huge 

84. I want to be able to wear skimpy clothes and not have to cover myself up in trackies forever 

85. if I don't fix the problem now, then its never going to get fixed 

86. im scared if I don't get really skinny really soon then ana might leave me and if she does I wont have the motivation to loose weight quick enough 

87. I will be the thinspo, instead of the fat girl looking it 

88. I wont have to keep doing this, crying myself in my room on my own coz im too fat to go out and be seen by anyone 

89. no more bloating 

90. I have wanted to be skinny for my whole life, but iv only wanted that calorie packed food for 5 mins. so why eat it? 

91. I will be able to wear leggings and anything fitted without it making my body looking fat and ugly 

92. skinny girls are pretty 

93. I will be able to fit my hands round my legs and arms 

94. I will feel amazing in my new body 

95. when I see people who I haven't seen in a while they will be so shocked at how much weight iv lost 

96. the satisfaction of getting on the scales and seeing how much weight iv lost 

97. I will be the best ana if I can fast for 20 days 

98. it will be my longest fast yet and I will feel so proud 

99. each pound that goes down is my happiness going up

100. I don't want anything more for myself that to be skinny 

101. EVERYTHING WILL BE PERFECT IF I HAVE CONTROL AND BE STRONG - RESIST OR REGRET 

[timjohn5]

Freezing Moon - cap 3  Finally Finland FLASHBACK DEAD ON The day after my dream with Øystein I got up early from bed, I had my breakfast and I put on a simple clothes to stay in the same house. I figured I'd fix my bookcase. I walk into the living room and downstairs in front of the bookcase and there I stare at it for minutes before finally sitting on the floor and picking up a book that Øystein had given me days before that happened. The clock above my head was ticking, ticking and it kind of irritated me more than I'd ignore. I take some money bills from my pocket, from my sweatpants, and put them into the book and then return it to its place on the shelf. I'm taken from my daydreams when I see an envelope being placed under the door. I hurry up and pick up the envelope I had known so well these past few months. I open the envelope that in its verse contained my name, my address and a postage stamp from Norway. When I open the letter and smooth the white sheet I see written: "In 1990 a captain is brutally abandoned on an island. He stayed there for awful 3 years. He would rip his deer's neck and drink his blood thirsty until there was nothing more vital in the animal. The captain after these years was saved by chance by fishermen who went to the island behind treasures. Some are lucky. When brought back to his hometown, he was arrested and without conditions of freedom. " That was all there was in the note. I automatically close the letter and place it with envelope inside my bedside table along with the more than 200 letters with these messages. FLASHBACK DEAD OFF Euronymous packed his suitcase while I was lying on his sofa studying for an important test. He throws himself at my side putting the suitcase on the floor and hugs me as he can because of my position. He was properly changed and ready to leave the house, but before he wanted to say goodbye to me. "I'll miss you by the time I'm out." - He says holding me tight. "It's just one night and you'll be back soon." I answer without looking at him. "What will you do until I get back?" "I do not know, maybe I'll be right here." Maybe I'll go for a walk in the woods, see the moon. I like the moon you know it. Or I can do a review of my stories. - I can quit if you want. I can say that I am terribly ill and could not travel. Øystein says giving a kiss to my back. - For Euronymous drama is just one night. Just go before I kick you out! - I'll call you tonight. - OK Alright. - I answer and he makes a warm affection in my ear before getting up and picking up his suitcase. "Have a lot of fun over there." - It's a meeting about things found at sea ... I'm anxious. ... The morning after your trip I go to the library early to find out what is so interesting about the excavations in Finland. I was distracted reading a book about the country that did not notice the arrival of a boy right in front of me who sat down putting his backpack on his side and staring at me. - Finland? - the kid asks smiling at me as I notice the book I was holding. "Yes Finland," I say, smiling, and he seems to know the country. - That's awesome. "Then he gets up and leaves without another word. I thought it strange, but I do not say anything. A day later in Øystein's apartment, he had returned and I was now in his shower while he packed his bags for the trip to Finland. I lathered as he paced back and forth taking things to pack. "I brought things for the trip to Finland. Repellent against the insects that have too much there ... cold clothes because it's very cold there like here. Some food because I do not know what's in the restaurants there. "Euronymous walks into the bathroom and sneezes at the stinking repellent on me and walks back into the living room. - And your meeting like it was love. I say taking the foam out of my eyes. "It was wonderful and everyone was thrilled with me there. He said happy. - Look, look at these things and see if you like something you have here. We can venture out there and do wonders in those two weeks. Do you have hiking boots on the mountain? Øystein looked like a grown child running around with things in his hands. I finish my bath and dry myself by wrapping the towel around my waist and moving to the living room. He was wearing a long black fur coat in his hands. Hiking boots on the mountain? I say and he smoothes his coat. "This is important for us to walk through. It is full of mountains and does not walk to dead tennis. Wear this, my love! I put on the jacket and it was really very warm and soft. He finishes helping me with his coat and looks at me satisfied. As I turn to look in the mirror Øystein grabs me from behind smiling at my ear causing me to shiver with pleasure. - That's for when you're wet. - He says by running his tongue over the earlobe. "He would thank me, I swear." Did you bring dollars and Norwegian money with you? "Yes, everything is stored in my bag." I say kissing his mouth. My tongue asking for passage he granted very willingly. "Did you work hard while I was gone?" - Euronymous asks as he returns to his duties and I use to dry my wet hair. - Yes a little, not much ... I met someone very enthusiastic about Finland, but he disappeared. - Ah !? It is and who would it be? Øystein asks, and then I sense a moment of risk. His, jealous knocked on the door and he could barely disguise. - Someone in the second year. I say, leaning on the kitchen table after I finish drying my hair with the towel. Lauri approached me in the library. That does not bother you, does it? - No way. - He speaks the most I see that bothered him. - It matters ... - Toothpaste, brushes, socks ... -Ah! Opportunity appeared then ... I think we should be honest and sincere with each other. "I'm closer to him than he's bent, still packing the suitcase." I try to kiss his neck and then I'm hit with a punch that hits my mouth. Tombo to the side the sooner I recover, placing the hand on the face with the impact. Øystein might be soft, but he was too strong for his size. I go to him and we fall to the ground rolling on all sides. Soon he can hold me by holding my neck. Euronymous rolls around reversing our positions and realizes the mistake he made. He comes off me, rolling to the side and lying on the cold floor of the house. We spent a few minutes recovering our breath ... "Should I have left you uncertain?" Øystein is breathing deeply, and even as he lies down, he looks at me from the corner of his eye. "I do not think I should have told you my feelings." Sorry he sits down beside me putting his hands on his face and I realize that I had provoked him and resulted in that punch. I try to fondle her on the back, but he pulls my hands away and then gets up from the floor. A day later and I do my last tests in the college, leaving that day of the aggression aside. I struggled to continue to love Øystein Aarseth, but the things between us were cooling down gradually ... What I most wanted to do was to go to Finland with Øystein. I could not, hurt him. ... Finally the big day arrived and after a few hours by plane, we arrived in Finland. We got off the plane and soon a car was waiting for us with a super redhead woman driving and talking some instructions to us. - 2000 km of pure ice on all sides ... Water in the rooms of the ship. The only entrance and exit is by air or sea. This road starts from this side and ends where I'm going to leave them to catch the ship. - The woman said without stopping looking at us in the rearview mirror of the car. "Look how magnificent, a road that leads nowhere, great, Øystein! Euronymous does not answer me I turn to the other side watching the mountains in front of us in the distance covered with ice and the moon wanting to appear in the middle of the mountains. When we get to the hotel the car is parked and we get off getting our bags and entering the luxurious five star hotel. - Good morning gentlemen. - Says the guy who carries the bags displaying that smile that to me was more false than it appeared. - Welcome to Sweet Dreems! - Hello, gentlemen, I hope you enjoy your stay in our hotel. Can I see your reservation? The receptionist says. "Ah yes, I have reservations in the name of Øystein Aarseth. - Euronymous says handing in his hotel card and his credit card. I watched as the attendant looked at the computer monitor. The hotel was beautiful and seemed to be the most luxurious in the area. The walls were white, hospital-colored, with turquoise details and a few other decorations like vases and paintings on the central wall of the hall. I leave my reveries after Øystein registers and his reservation is accepted. We went to the room and soon the baggage handler came behind us. We entered the most beautiful and expensive room I have ever had the pleasure to put my eyes on. As at the entrance the walls were white with turquoise accents and an E-N-O-R-M-E double bed in the center of the room, next to a minifrigobar. I make a point of opening and there I find two bottles of rosé wine Wongraven Senza compromesso. After opening a bottle of those I picked up a cup that was above my head in a type of cup holder. I fill two cups delivering one, to Øystein after he finishes taking off his black fur coat as well. I hold the cup to him who grabs it and gives it a generous sip. I get excited and take a long drink too, savoring that delicious wine. - Here's a nice view. - I say excited for Øystein. - Yes, you do. There was a change in plans. Øystein says, picking up his small personal hygiene bag and taking it to the bathroom. I sit on the bed and pull out my suitcase, too. - How do you change the plans? Why this now. "I'm just packing my things in the hotel wardrobes. - A speaker decided not to appear and this will make things a bit difficult. - He gave up what? - Of the whole trip, he just had not seen. Øystein says, returning to his room. - And the next cruise is tomorrow so I'll have to repay it. "How many days had she been gone?" I ask him already irritated. I think about five days. Øystein speaks softly. He did not want me to get angry, but it was too late. - Fuck who gave five fucking days? Why did not you tell me this before? I ask, picking up the bottle and drinking almost the whole of it in one swallow. "I'm sorry I only knew it now. I got a message and I can not say no. You are an important customer. They were desperate, I could not say do not forgive me. "I can not believe this, Øystein. You bring me here and I come from all the goodwill of the world and it was to spend these weeks together and now you do FUCK. "I'm already out of bed, getting out of bed." "You can not leave me here alone in this end of the world that I do not even know. I already know! I'm going with you on this cruise. - Can not. It has no place because it is already complete. You can have fun if you stay here. Go take a walk, look at the shops in this town and I'll be back soon. Euronymous approaches me and gives me a kiss on the mouth. I try to push him away sooner to the sweet taste of the wine that is on his lips. After the moment of anger passed, I stared at Øystein and without blinking, he ran his hand over my ass and said I was drooling. He told me to turn around, and I saw him lying on the bed, naked and with his cock as hard as an iron rod. I was excited and shaken. - Come here! - He said. - Not! I said yes. Ah! Yeah, are you going to make it sweet now? I know you do. Let's enjoy it while I'm here and after I come back yes we'll enjoy the city together my love. Come on, give a suck here! - He said smiling with ease and debauchery. Trembling, red with rage, and dying with excitement, I still tried to resist saying that it was wrong for him to lie to me. Øystein stood up, took my hand, without my denying it, and set it firmly on his huge limb. I tried to pull it off, however, and he held it tightly over his hard throbbing cock. Then he let go, and I kept holding on and massaging slowly. He told me to kneel down and put his cock in my mouth. I sucked with a huge hunger, swallowing everything, despite the size and thickness I always took care of the message and he enjoyed happy. He told me to lie face down on the two pillows that were luxuriously placed on the bed so that my butt would be in position for him to penetrate me. Then he opened the drawer of the bedside table, took out a lube, had me put it on his cock, passed my entrance, and walked in very slowly. We took a lot of time in that mete, it gets hot, even because I cried, moaned and screamed horny. Minutes after he started penetrating, I already had spasms through my body. For a full time sex of variations of positions and places without leaving the suite. It was a wonderful and unforgettable evening. Even in bed, in the whirlpool, in the carpet of the small room and in the shower. In the end, it was past 11 pm. I confess that the excitement I felt was unimaginable. I entered so hard in an orgasm that I enjoyed without touching my limb. Øystein gave me a pleasure that no other woman could give me. And while I enjoyed, moaned, and shouted calling for him with every thrust, he thrust harder and moaned with pleasure as well. After minutes he enjoys in my interior and enjoy dirtying the bed of red sheet. We ended up sleeping in a hug. The next morning I found myself standing in front of the wharf where the ship of the Øystein cruise ship would leave. I was leaning against a railing when he appeared smiling and leaning there beside me. "How do you feel today, my love?" He asks, smiling at me. "Well, I'm fine, even though I'm still mad at you, but I'm fine. I say kissing his nose. "Here, take this while I'm gone. It had served you more now than it did me. - Euronymous extends his black leather jacket. This jacket was the one he never took from his body. It looked like he had been born stuck in it. Finally he would give that jacket to me. I take it from his hands and he gives me one more passionate kiss before turning his back and heading towards the ship and hop on board.

#Euronymous Dead DeadMous ♥

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All of the allegorical chapter intros from Warped Passages

Entryway Passages: Demystifying Dimensions

“Ike, I’m not so sure about this story I’m writing. I’m considering adding more dimensions. What do you think of that idea?

“Athena, your big brother knows very little about fixing stories. But odds are it won’t hurt to add new dimensions. Do you plan to add new characters, or flesh out your current ones some more?”

“Neither; that’s not what I meant. I plan to introduce new dimensions--as in new dimensions of space.”

“You’re kidding, right? You’re going to write about alternative realities--like places where people have alternative spiritual experiences or where they go when they die, or when they have near-death experiences?* I didn’t think you went in for that sort of thing.”

“Come on, Ike. You know I don’t. I’m talking about different spatial dimensions--not different spiritual planes!”

“But how can different spatial dimensions change anything? Why would using paper with different dimensions--11″ x 8″ instead of 12″ x 9″, for example--make any difference at all?”

“Stop teasing. That’s not what I’m talking about either. I’m really planning to introduce new dimensions of space, just like the dimensions we see, but along entirely new directions.”

“Dimensions we don’t see? I thought three dimensions is all there are.”

“Hang on, Ike. We’ll soon see about that.”

*Questions I’ve actually been asked.

Restricted Passages: Rolled-up Extra Dimensions

Athena awoke with a start. The previous day she had read Alice in Wonderland and Flatland in order to seek some inspiration about dimensions. But that night she had the strangest dream, which, when fully conscious, she recognized as the result of having read the two books on the same day.*

Athena dreamed she had turned into Alice, slipped into a rabbit hole, and met the resident Rabbit, who had pushed her out into an unfamiliar world. Athena had thought it a rather rude way to convey a guest. Even so, she had eagerly looked forward to the upcoming adventure in Wonderland.

Athena was in for a disappointment, however. The resident Rabbit, who was fond of puns, had sent her instead to OneDLand, a strange, not so wonderful, one-dimensional world. Athena looked around--or, I should say, to her left and right--and discovered that all she could see were two points--one to her left and another to her right (but in a prettier color, she thought).

In OneDLand, all the one-dimensional people with their one-dimensional possessions were lined up along this single dimension like long, thin beads strung out along a thread. But even with her limited purview, Athena knew there must be more to OneDLand than met her eyes because of the outrageous din that met her ears. A Red Queen was well hidden behind a dot, but Athena couldn’t miss her strident yells: “This is the most ridiculous chess game I have ever seen! I can’t move any pieces, not even to castle!” Athena was relieved when she realized her one-dimensional existence shielded her from the wrath of the Red Queen.

But Athena’s cozy universe did not last long. Slipping through a gap in ONeDLand, she returned to the dreamworld’s rabbit hole, which had an elevator that could take her to hypothetical, other dimensional universes. Almost immediately, the Rabbit announced, “Next stop: TwoDLand--a two-dimensional world.” Athena didn’t think “TwoDLand” a very nice name, but she cautiously entered all the same.

Athena needn’t have been so hesitant. Almost everything in TwoDLand looked the same as in OneDLand. SHe did notice one difference--a vial labeled “Drink me.” Bored with one dimension, Athena promptly obeyed. She quickly shrank to a tiny size, and as she became smaller, a second dimension came into view. This second dimension was not very big--it was wrapped around in a fairly small circle. Her surroundings now resembled the surface of an extremely long tube. A Dodo was racing around the circular dimension, but he wanted to stop. So he kindly offered Athena, who looked rather hungry, some cake.

When Athena ate a morsel of the Dodo’s dreamcake, she started to grow. After only a few bites (she was quite sure of this, as she was still rather hungry), the cake very nearly disappeared; all that remained was a very tiny crumb. At least Athena thought there was a crumb, but she could see it only when she squinted very hard. And the cake wasn’t the only thing that had vanished from view: when Athena returned to her usual size, the entire second dimension had disappeared.

She thought to herself, “TwoDLand is very yodd indeed. I’d best be getting home.” Her return journey was not without further adventures, but those will be kept for another time.

*Or perhaps this story is a result of my having begun my education at the perhaps questionably named Lewis Carroll School, P.S. 179, in Queens. 

Exclusive Passages: Branes, Braneworlds, and the Bulk

Unlike the studious Athena, Ike rarely read any books. He generally preferred playing with games, gadgets, and cars. But Ike hated driving in Boston, where the drivers were reckless, the roads were badly signposted, and the highways were invariably under construction. Ike always ended up stuck in traffic, which he found especially frustrating when he could see a nearly empty freeway overhead. Though the empty road would be tempting, Ike would have no way to quickly reach it since, unlike Athena’s owls*, he couldn’t fly. For Ike trapped on slow roads in Boston, the third dimension was no use at all. 

[*nb: owls are mentioned in the chapter body:]

When you peg someone as one-dimensional, you actually have something rather specific in mind: you mean that the person only has a single interest. For example, Sam, who does nothing but sit at home watching sports, can be described with just one piece of information. If you felt so inclined, you could picture this information with a one-dimensional graph: Sam’s proclivity to watch sports, for example. In drawing this graph you need to specify your units so that someone else can udnerstand what the distance along this single axis means, such as the number of hours Sam spends per week watching sports on TV. (Fortunately, Sam won’t be insulted by this example; he is not among the multidimensional readers of this book.)

When we describe most people, however, we usually assign them more than one, or even three, characteristics. Athena is an eleven-year-old who reads avidly, excels at math, keeps abreast of current events, and raises pet owls. You might want to plot this too (though why, exactly, I’m not really sure). In that case, Athena would have to be plotted a s point in a five-dimensional space with axes corresponding to age, number of books read per week, average math test score, number of minutes spent reading the newspaper per day, and nubmer of owls she owns. However, I’m having trouble drawing such a graph.

“Hey, Athena, is that Casablanca you’re watching?”

“Sure is. Want to join me? This is such a great scene.”

You must remember this, A kiss is just a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh, The fundamental things apply as time goes by.

“Hang on, Ike. Don’t you think that last line’s a little weird? It’s supposed to be so romantic, but it almost sounds as if it’s about physics.”

“Athena, if you think that’s strange, you’ve got to hear the opening verse of the original:”

This day and age we’re living in, Give cause for apprehension, With speed and new invention, And things like fourth dimension, Yet we get a trifle weary, With Mr. Einstein’s theory...

“Ike, you don’t really expect me to believe that, do you? Next thing I know you’ll tell me Rick and Ilsa escape into the seventh dimension! Why don’t we forget I ever said anything and just sit back and watch the movie?”

[nb: actually true]

Relativity: The Evolution of Einstein’s Gravity

Icarus (Ike) Rushmore II couldn’t wait to show Dieter his new Porsche. But as proud as he was of his car, he was even more excited about his Global Positioning System (GPS) that he had recently designed and installed himself.

Ike wanted to impress Dieter, so he convinced his friend to drive with him to the local track. They got in the car, Ike programmed in their destination, and the two of them set off. But to Ike’s chagrin, they ended up in the wrong place--the GPS system didn’t work nearly as well as he had thought it would. Dieter’s first thought was that Ike must have made some ridiculous error, like confusing meters and feet. But Ike didn’t believe he could have made such a stupid mistake, and he bet Dieter that wasn’t the problem.

The next day, Ike and Dieter did some troubleshooting. But to their dismay, when they went for a drive, the GPS was even worse than before. Ike and Dieter searched again for the problem and finally, after a frustrating week, Dieter had an epiphany. He did a quick calculation and made the startling discovery that without accounting for general relativity, the GPS system would build up errors at the rate of more than 10 km per day. Ike didn’t think his Porsche was fast enough to warrant relativistic calculations, but Dieter explained that the GPS signals--not the car--travel at the speed of light. Dieter modified the software to account for the changing gravitational field the GPS signals had to pass through. .Ike’s system then worked as well as the readily available commercial variety. Relieved, Ike and Dieter began to plan a road trip.

Quantum Mechanics: Principled Uncertainty, the Principal Uncertainties, and the Uncertainty Principle

Ike wondered whether Athena was making him watch too many movies or Dieter was talking too much about physics. But whatever the reason, the previous night Ike dreamed he met a quantum detective. Dressed in a fedora, a trench coat, and with a stone-faced expression, the dream detective spoke:

“I knew nothing about her except her name, and that she was standing there before me. But from the moment I set eyes on her I knew Electra* would be trouble. When I asked her where she came from, she refused to say. The room had two entrances, and she must have come through one. But Electra whispered hoarsely, ‘Mister, forget it. I’ll never tell you which.’

“Although I saw that she was shaking, I tried to pin this lady down. But Electra paced frenetically when I started to approach. She begged me to come no closer. Seeing she was agitated, I kept away. I was no stranger to uncertainty, but this time it had me beat. It looked like uncertainty was going to stick around here for a while.”

*The name refers to the electron, not the character in Greek mythology.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics: Matter’s Most Basic Known Structure

Of all the stories she had read, Athena was most thoroughly perplexed by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea.” The story tells of a Prince who searched unsuccessfully for a suitable princess to wed. After he had searched in vain for weeks, a potential princess arrived by chance at his palace, seeking shelter from a storm. This soggy visitor thereby became the unwitting subject of the Queen’s litmus test for princesses.

The Queen prepared a bed, which she piled high with mattresses and eiderdown quilts. At the very bottom of the pile she placed a solitary pea. That night, she showed her visitor to the carefully prepared guest room. The next morning, the princess (as indeed she proved herself to be) complained that she had not been able to sleep at all. She had tossed and turned the whole night, and found she had actually turned black and blue--all because of the uncomfortable pea. The Queen and Prince were convinced that their visitor was truly of royal blood, for who else could be so delicate?

Athena turned the story round and round in her head. She thought it fairly ridiculous, even the most sensitive of princesses, would ever have discovered the pea by lying passively on top of the pile of mattresses. After many days’ deliberation, Athena found a plausible interpretation, which she rushed to tell her brother.

She rejected the common interpretation that the princess proved her royal nature by demonstrating delicacy and refinement with her sensitivity to even something as minor as a pea under a pile of mattresses. She offered an alternative explanation.

Athena suggested that when the Queen went away and left the princess alone in the room, the princess threw decorum to the wind and gave vent to her boisterous youthful nature. The princess ran around and jumped up and down on her bed until she was exhausted, and only then lay down to try to sleep. Through her rambunctiousness, the princess compressed the mattresses so much that for a brief moment the pea stuck out like a sore thumb and gave her a small bruise. Athena thought this princess was still rather impressive, but found her revisionist interpretation much more satisfactory.

Experimental Interlude: Verifying the Standard Model

Ike once again dreamed he met the quantum detective. This time, the sleuth knew what he was after--and he had a pretty good idea where it should be. All he had to do was wait--sooner or later, if he wasn’t mistaken, his quarry would appear.

Symmetry: The Essential Organizing Principle

Athena uncaged three of her owls and let them fly around. Unfortunately for Ike, he had left the top of his convertible down that day and the curious owls flew right in. The most mischievous of the owls pecked at the car’s interior and ended up tearing it a little.

When Ike saw the damage, he stormed into Athena’s room and demanded that she watch her owls more carefully in the future. Athena protested that her owls were almost all well-behaved and she need only keep an eye on the bad one. But by that time the owls were back in their cages, and neither Ike nor Athena could identify which one was guilty.

The Origin of Elementary Particle Masses: Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and the Higgs Mechanism

The stricter enforcement of speed limits made long-distance driving a nightmare for Icarus III. He longed to race as fast as he pleased, but police pulled him over nearly every half-mile. The cops never bothered with dull, neutral cars, but harassed only the lively, turbo-charged vehicles, like his own.

Ike resigned himself to driving only short distances, since that way he could avoid the police altogether. Within the half-mile-wide region around where he started, police never interfered and he could always drive impressively fast. Though the Porsche engine’s force was unknown outside his neighborhood, closer to home it became legendary.

Scaling and Grand Unification: Relating Interactions at Different Lengths and Energies

Athena often felt like she was the last to be told anything interesting. She didn’t even hear about Ike’s adventures with his car until after he had owned it for over a month. And she didn’t learn them from him directly--she learned about them from a friend of hers who had heard about them from Dieter’s cousin’s brother, who had learned about them from Dieter’s cousin, who had heard about them from Dieter.

Through this indirect route, Athena was told Ike’s remark, “The influence of forces depends on where you are.” Ike’s uncharacteristic pronouncement completely mystified Athena until she realized that the message must have been distorted along the way. After thinking about it for a while, she decided that Ike’s real remark must have been, “The performance of Porsches depends on the model of the car.”

The Hierarchy Problem: The Only Effective Trickle-Down Theory

Ike Rushmore III came to an ignominious end when he drove his resplendent new Porsche into a lamppost.  He was nonetheless happy in Heaven, where he could play games all the time. He was a gambling man at heart.

One day, God Himself invited Ike to a rather strange game. God told him to write down a sixteen-digit number. God would roll the heavenly isocahedral die. Unlike a normal, cubic die with six sides, this die had twenty sides, with the digits 0 through 9 written twice. God explained that He would throw this die sixteen times and construct a sixteen-digit number by listing the results, one after the other. If God and Ike came up with the same enormous number--that is, if all the digits matched in the correct order--God would win. If the numbers weren’t exactly the same--that is, if any of the digits failed to match--Ike would defeat God.

God began to roll. The first side that came up was the number 4. This agreed with the first digit of Ike’s number, which was 4,715,031,495,526,312. Ike was surprised when God rolled correctly, since the odds were only one in ten. Nevertheless, he was pretty sure the second or third number would be wrong; the odds of God’s rolling both numbers correctly in succession was only one in a hundred.

God threw the first die for a second and then a third time. He rolled a 7 and then a 1, which were also correct. He kept rolling until, to Ike’s astonishment, He had rolled all sixteen digits correctly. The chances of this happening randomly were only 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000. How could God have won?

Ike was a bit angry (one can’t get very angry in Heaven) and asked how something so ridiculously unlikely could have happened. God sagely replied, “I am the only one who could expect to win, since I am both omniscient and omnipotent. Howeer, you must have heard, I do not like to play dice.”

And with that, GAMBLING FORBIDDEN was posted on a cloud. Ike was furious (of course, only a little). Not only had he lost the game, but he’d also lost the right to gamble.

Supersymmetry: A Leap Beyond the Standard Model

When Icarus first arrived in Heaven, he was directed to an orientation seminar where the authorities explained the local rules. To his surprise, he learned that right-wing religious groups were essentially correct, and family values were indeed a cornerstone of his new environment. The authorities had long ago established and traditional family structure premised on the separation of generations and the stability of marriages; a top would always marry a bottom, a charmer would always align with a strange bird, and an uptown girl would always marry a downtown cool cat. Everyone, including Ike, was satisfied with the arrangement.

But Ike later learned that the social structure in Heaven had not always been so secure. Originally, dangerous energetic infiltrators had threatened the hierarchical foundation of society. In Heaven, however, most problems can be solved. God had sent everyone a personal guardian angel, and the angels and their charges had heroically worked together to avert the threat to the hierarchy and preserve the ordered society that Ike could now enjoy.

Even so, Heaven was not entirely safe. The angels turned out to be free agents, with no contract binding them to a single generation. The fickle angels, who had so bravely rescued the hierarchy, now threatened to destroy Heaven’s family values. Ike was appalled. Despite Heaven’s well-advertised attractions, he was finding it a surprisingly stressful place.

Allegro (Ma Non Troppo) Passage for Strings

Fast forward a millennium.

Icarus Rushmore XLII was trying out his new Alicxvr Device, Model 6.3, that he had recently purchased from the Spacernet. (Icarus III’s interest in speed and gadgets had apparently been passed down through many generations.) The Alicxvr was designed to let the user view things of any size, from the very small to the very large. Ike was pretty sure that most of his friends who had purchased the Alicxvr Device would first try the large settings, of many megaparsecs, so they could see into outer space beyond the known universe. But Ike thought, “I know just as little about what is happening at extremely tiny distances,” and decided to investigate a miniscule scale instead.

However, Ike was an impatient sort. He couldn’t be bothered to read the extensive instruction manual accompanying his device and instead decided to plunge right in. Blithely ignoring the red indicator overlapping the smallest sizes, he adjusted his dial to the 10 -33 cm setting and pressed the button labeled “Go.”

To his horror, he found himself space-sick in a wildly oscilllating, precipitous landscape filled with strings. Space was no longer the smooth, anonymous background he was accustomed to. Instead it was jiggling rapidly in places, heading into pointy sections in others, or wandering off into loops that pinched off or later rejoined the surface. Ike fumbled desperately for the “Stop” button and only just managed to press it in time to return to normal with his senses intact.

After recovering his stability, Ike decided he probably should have read the manual after all. He turned to the “Warning” section and read: “Your new Alicxvr Device Model 6.3 works only for sizes larger than 10 -33 cm. We have not yet incorporated the latest string theory developments, whose predictions physicist and mathematicians connected to the physical world only last year.”

Ike was very disappointed when he realized that only the newer Model 7.0 included the latest results. But Ike then caught up with the most recent string theory developments, souped up his Alicxvr, and never got space-sick again.

Supporting Passages: Brane Development

Ike Rushmore XLII decided to dive down once again to the miniscule Planck scale. Happily, his souped-up Alicxvr worked perfectly and he smoothly arrived in a ten-dimensional universe filled with strings. Eager to explore his new environment, Ike cranked up the hyperdrive attachment he had purchased from Gbay. He watched with fascination as strings collided and tangled in mesmerizing ways.

Although Ike worried that the Alicxvr might break down, he was curious to learn more about this novel world. So he increased the pressure on the hyperdrive lever. At first strings collided together even more frequently. But when he cranked up the lever still more, he entered a new, completely unrecognizable environment. Ike couldn’t even tell whether spacetime was intact. But he kept cranking up the hyperdrive, and, strangely enough, emerged unscathed.*

However, his surroundings were now quite different. Ike was no longer in the ten-dimensional universe he had started off in. He was instead in an eleven-dimensional universe filled with particles and branes. And, odd as it seemed, nothing in this new universe interacted very much. When Ike looked back at his controls, he discovered the hyperdrive lever had mysteriously reset to low. Confused and rather exasperated, Ike cranked up the lever once again, only to find himself back where he started. When Ike checked thee controls, he discovered that the hyperdrive lever was once again back at low.

Ike thought his Alicxvr was probably malfunctioning. But when he checked his up-to-date manual he discovered that his device was operating perfectly--high hyperdrive in ten-dimensional string theory was the same as low hyperdrive in an alternate eleven-dimensional world. And vice versa.

The manual didn’t say what should happen when the hyperdrive wasn’t very low or very high, so Ike entered the spacernet and put himself on the wait-list for an improved version that would solve the problem. But the Alicxvr designers promised only that the release date would be some time within the millennium.

*Actually, according to the duality we learn about in this chapter, even the probes used to study a given version of string theory change character when the coupling becomes strong. So if Ike really was part of the string world, he, too, would change.

Bustling Passages: Braneworlds

Icarus III was becoming increasingly disillusioned with Heaven. He had expected it to be a liberal, forgiving environment. But instead, gambling was prohibited, metal silverware was forbidden, and smoking was no longer allowed. The most restrictive constraint of all was that Heaven was stuck on a Heavenbrane; its residents were forbidden to travel into the fifth dimension.

Everyone on the Heavenbrane knew about the fifth dimension and the existence of other branes. In fact, the righteous Heavenbraners often whispered about the unsavory characters sequestered on a Jailbrane not too far away. However, the Jailbraners couldn’t hear any of the slander that Heavenbraners spread about them, so all remained peaceful in the bulk and on the branes.

Sparsely Populated Passages: Multiverses and Sequestering

Despite its explicit prohibition on the Heavenbrane, Icarus III ultimately returned to gambling. After ignoring repeated reprimands, he was sentenced to confinement on the Jailbrane, a distant brane separated from the Heavenbrane along a fifth dimension. Even after he was sequestered on the Jailbrane, Ike doggedly tried to contact his former buddies. But the distance between their two branes made communication difficult. He was reduced to flagging down passing bulk mail carriers, many of whom ignored his entreaties altogether. The few who did stop always conveyed his messages to the Heavenbrane, but at a frustratingly leisurely pace.

Meanwhile, back on the Heavenbrane, disaster loomed. The guardian angels, who had so bravely rescued the hierarchy, had no respect for the other residents’ family values and were on the verge of creating intergenerational instability. Heaven’s fallen angels considered all pairings acceptable and encouraged everyone to mix with a trophy partner from another generation.

When Ike learned of the threat, he was aghast and he resolved to redeem the situation. Ike realized that by using the slow and deliberate manner with which he was constrained to communicate with the Heavenbrane, he could judiciously feed the massive egos of the unruly angels living there. Thanks to Ike’s helpful intervention, the angels stopped threatening the social order. Although Icarus III still had to serve his sentence, the relieved residents on the Heavenbrane honored him forevermore in urban myth.

Leaky Passages: Fingerprints of Extra Dimensions

Athena had to admit that she missed Ike. Even though she had often found him annoying, she was pretty lonely without him. She was looking forward to spending time with K. Square, an exchange student who was planning to visit. But she was appalled by the closed-mindedness of her neighbors, who were all apprehensive about K. Square’s arrival. It didn’t matter that he spoke the same language and behaved the same way as everyone else. In the current climate, K. Square’s foreign origin alone was enough to make them wary.

When Athena asked her neighbors why they were so anxious, they replied “What if he sends for his heavier relatives? What if they’re not so well behaved as he is and stick to their foreign laws? And when they all arrive together, what will happen then?”

Unfortunately, Athena heightened their suspicions by telling them that K. Square and his relatives couldn’t possibly stay long in any case, since they were all very unstable and the K. Square family could visit only during the commotion of energetic gatherings. Recognizing her unfortunate choice of words, Athena reassuringly added that the foreigners would stick to local laws during their brief and exciting visits. Convinced, her neighbors then joined her in welcoming the K. Square clan.

Voluminous Passages: Large Extra Dimensions

Now that K. Square’s visit was over, Athena spent a lot of time at the local Internet cafe. She was exhilarated by her recent discovery of some mysterious new websites, the most intriguing of which was xxx.socloseandyetsofar.al. Athena suspected that these suggestive sites were a consequence of the recent AOB (America On Brane)/Spacetime Warner multimedia merger, but she had to go home before she had time to investigate.

When Athena arrived at her house she rushed to her computer, where she once again sought the exotic hyperlinks that had been so readily accessible at the Internet cafe. To her frustration, however, CyberNanny prevented her from reaching the forbidden dimensionally enhanced sites.* But by cloaking her identity with her secure alias, Mentor, Athena vanquished her cybercensor and succeeded in finally returning to the mysterious hyperlinks.

Athena secretly hoped that K. Square had sent her a message that was hidden in a webpage. But the sites were not easy to understand, and she managed to pick up only a few potentially meaningful signals. She resolved to study their content some more and hoped the merger--unlike the other merger with a similar name--would last long enough for her to figure them out.

*Physicists post their papers on a website that begins with “xxx”: check out xxx.lanl.gov. Internet filters have occasionally forbidden access to this site as well.

Warped Passage: A Solution to the Hierarchy Problem

Athena awoke with a start. She had just revisited her recurring dream, which had again begun with her entering the dreamworld’s rabbit hole. In this episode, when the Rabbit announced, “Next stop, TwoDLand,” Athena ignored him and waited to hear the choices that remained.

At the three-spatial-dimensional stop, the Rabbit announced “If you lived here, you’d be home by now.” But he refused to open the doors, despite Athena’s pleas that she did indeed live there and very much wanted to return home.

At the next stop, uniformed six-dimensioners tried to enter. But the Rabbit took one look at their inordinately large girth and abruptly closed the doors, saying that they couldn’t possibly fit. They quickly departed once the Rabbit threatened to cut them down to size.*

The elevator continued on its extraordinary journey. When it stopped again, the Rabbit announced, “Warped Geometry--a five-dimensional world.”** He gently pushed Athena towards the door, advising her, “Enter the funhouse mirror--it will take you home.”

Since the Rabbit had mentioned a fifth dimension, Athena found this highly unlikely. But she didn’t have any choice but to enter and hope the tricky Rabbit was right.

*As we saw in Chapter 18, extra dimensions can be uniform, large, and flat. The Rabbit is skeptical about this idea. **This counting includes a dimension of time.

The Warped Annontated “Alice” ¹

Athena stepped out of the dreamworld’s elevator into the warped five-dimensional world and was astonished to see only three spatial dimensions. Was the Rabbit playing games, pretending to take her to a world with four spatial dimensions when in fact there were only three? What a funny way to travel to what looked like an ordinary world!²

With great gallantry, a local received the puzzled new arrival. “Welcome to Branesville,³  our glorious capital. Permit me to show you around.” Athena, who was tired and confused, blurted out, “Branesville doesn’t look all that special. Even the mayor looks completely normal,” although she had to confess, she wasn’t entirely sure as she had never seen a mayor before.

The mayor to whom Athena referred had arrived accompanied by the Cheshire Fat Cat, his Chief Advisor. The Cat’s job was keeping tabs on everything in the city, which was greatly facilitated by his skill at catching people unawares--especially surprising in lgith of the Cat’s enormous bulk. The Cat loved to explain that he owed this skill to his ability to disappear into the bulk, but no one ever understood what he meant.⁴

The Cat materialized next to Athena and asked if she would like to accompany him as he made his rounds. He warned her tha she had better be comfortable ith bulk, to which Athena eagerly responded that her favorite uncle was in fact very, very fat. The Cat looked skeptical, but agreed to take her along. He offered Athena cream cake with butter frosting, in which she happily indulged. And off they went.

Athena wondered what it was she’d eaten. She now appeared to be on a four-dimensional slice of a five-dimensional world, and as far as she could tell, she was no thicker than this thin four-dimensional slice. She exclaimed, “I am like my paper doll! But whereas Dolly has two spatial dimensions in a three-dimensional world, I have three spatial dimensions in a four-dimensional world.

The Cat grinned sagely and explained, “You are now conscious of what I like to call The Bulk. You are still in Branesville, but will be leaving (and growing) momentarily. Branesville is in reality part of a five-dimensional universe, but the fifth dimension is warped so discreetly that Branesville residents are completely unaware of its existence. They have no idea that Branesville is the border of a five-dimensional state. You too mistakenly concluded on your arrival that there are only three spatial dimensions. The new Athena, untethered from the brane, is free to travel out into the fifth dimension. May I suggest for our destination another village called Weakbrane, at the other edge of the five-dimensional universe?”

What a strange five-dimensional journey it turned out to be. After leaving Branesville, Athena found herself moving in another dimension, and growing as she did so.⁵  When the observant Cat noticed the confused look on Athena’s face, he reassuringly explained, “Weakbrane is close by and we will be there very soon.⁶ It’s lovely, but don’t be alarmed when you see that, like the Branesville residents you encountered, Weakbrane residents scoff at the notion of four spatial dimensions. You, who can see out into the bulk, will see a huge shadow on Branesville, ten million billion times bigger than the one with which you started. Almost everything else will seem to you and to them to be entirely normal.”

But upon her arrival in Weakbrane, Athena noticed one other thing. The four-dimensional graviton had quietly accompanied the travelers on their journey and was softly tapping on her shoulder. He touched her so extremely gently that she had barely noticed.⁷

But she couldnt’ ignore the graviton when he launched into a litany of complaints. “Weakbrane would be so exciting, were it not for the superior influence of the entrenched hierarchy. The strong, weak, and electromagnetic armed forces on the Weakbrane permit me only the most feeble strength.” The graviton whined how everywhere else he was a force to be reckoned with, especially in Branesville, which is ruled by an oligarchy with comparably strong forces.⁸  Weakbrane, where gravity was the most suppressed, was the graviton’s least favorite place.⁹ The graviton turned to Athena in hope of enlisting her in his plan to wrest power from the reigning authorities.

Athena thought she had better leave immediately and looked around for the rabbit hole, but couldn’t find it. She did find a white rabbit, whom she expected to be an efficient guide. But the Weakbrane rabbit had an alarmingly sluggish gait, and kept repeating how happy he was that his date would wait.¹⁰ Athena realized that this rabbit wasn’t going anywhere, so she found a more anxious rabbit she could follow, and worked her way back home. Once she understood the physics implications, Athena enjoyed her dream enormously--though it should be noted that she never again ate cream cake.

¹ This title borrows from Martin Gardner’s delightful Annotated Alice, in which he explains the wordplay, math riddles, and references in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. ² The brane itself is large and flat and has only three spatial dimensions. Only gravity makes contact with the additional dimension. Remember that the five-dimensional space has four spatial dimensions (and one of time), whereas the brane has three spatial dimensions. I’ll still call time the fourth dimension, and I’ll call the additional dimension the fifth. ³ Branesville is the Gravitybrane. ⁴ The Fat Cat, unlike Branesville residents, is not confined to the brane. ⁵ Everything is bigger and lighter near the Weakbrane. Athena’s shadow over Branesville grew as she got closer to the Weakbrane and further away from the Gravitybrane. ⁶ The fifth dimension does not have to be very big in order to solve the hierarchy problem. ⁷ Gravity is feeble on the Weakbrane, where the graviton’s probability function is so small. ⁸ On the Gravitybrane, gravity is no weaker than the other forces. ⁹ The petulant graviton is complaining that on the Weakbrane, gravity is much weaker than the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. Gravity would be much stronger (and have a strength closer to that of the other forces) closer to the Gravitybrane. ¹⁰ Things are bigger and time is slower on the Weakbrane.  The rabbit’s laxness is accounted for by rescaling time. 

Profound Passage: An Infinite Extra Dimension

Athena woke up with a start. Her recurring dream had once again taken her down the rabbit hole. This time, however, she asked the rabbit to take her straight back to the warped five-dimensional world. Athena arrived back in Branesville (or so she thought). The Cat soon appeared, and she eagerly turned to him, anticipating her dream cake and a delightful excursion to the Weakbrane. She was sorely disappointed when the Cat told her there was no such thing as Weakbrane in this particular universe.*

Athena didn’t believe the Cat and thought there must be another brane further away. Proud of herself for understanding how, in the warped geometry, further-away branes had weaker gravity, she decided it was probably called the “Meekbrane” and asked the Cat whether she could go there.

But once again she was in for a disappointment. The Cat explained, “There is no such place. You are on the Brane; there are no others.”

“Curiouser and curiouser, thought Athena. This clearly wasn’t exactly the same space as before, since it had only a single brane. But Athena wasn’t ready to give up. “May I see for myself that there is no other brane?” she asked in her sweetest tone.

The Cat strongly advised her against it, warning, “Four-dimensional gravity on the brane is no guarantee of four-dimensional gravity in the bulk. Once I nearly lost everything but my smile there.”

Athena was a cautious girl, despite her many adventures, and she took the Cat’s warning to heart. But she often wondered what the Cat meant. What did lie beyond the Brane, and how would she ever know?

*The geomery of this chapter is warped, as in the previous ones, but now there is only a single brane--the Gravitybrane. Although this means that there is an infinite fifth dimension, this chapter will show why this is perfectly fine with the warped spacetime. 

A Reflective and Expansive Passage

Ike XLII as ready to live large. He wanted to test the Alicxvr’s ultra-high settings of many megaparsecs, with which he could explore places beyond the Galaxy and the known universe and experience distant regions no one had ever seen before.

So he was thrilled when the Alicxvr took him to distances 9, 12, and 13 billion light-years away. But his excitement diminished when he tried to go farther and his signal strength fell precipitously. When he aimed for 15 billion years, his exploration aborted completely: he no longer received any information at all. Instead, he heard, “Message 5B73: The Horizon customer you are trying to reach is beyond your calling area. If you need assistance, please contact your local long-distance operator.”

Ike couldnt’ believe his ears. It was the thirty-first century, yet his Horizon service still provided only limited coverage. When Ike tried to contact the operator, a recording said, “Please stay on the brane. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” Ike suspected that the operator would never respond, and was wise enough not to wait.

Extra Dimensions: Are You In or Are You Out?

Athena’s dreams about OneDLand, branes, and five dimensions were passed down for generations. When Ike XLII heard them, he wanted to check whether there was any truth to her stories. So he took out his Alicxvr and went down to a very small scale--not so small that strings would appear, but sufficiently small to check whether there was a fifth dimension. The Alicxvr answered Ike’s question by sending him off to a five-dimensional world.

But Ike was not completely satisfied. He remembered the bizarre things that had happened earlier on when he had fooled around with the hyperdrive option. So he once again cranked up the hyperdrive lever--and once again, everything changed drastically. Ike couldn’t identify a single familiar point. He could tell only one thing: the fifth dimension had disappeared.

Ike was mystified, so he searched the spacernet to see what it could tell him about “dimensions.” He waded through numerous sites that he recognized from his more embarassing spam, but soon realized that he’d have to refine his search. When he still couldn’t find anything definitive, he conceded that he wouldn’t know the fundamental origin of dimensions any time soon. So he decided to turn his attention to time travel instead.

(In)Conclusion

Icarus Rushmore XLII used his time machine to visit the past and warn Icarus III of the disaster that awaited him should he continue driving his Porsche. Ike III was so astounded by his visitor from the future that he heeded Ike XLII’s warning. He traded in his Porsche for a Fiat and subsequently led a full, contented, and slower-paced life.

Athena was ecstatic to be reunited with her brother, and Dieter was happy to see his friend, though both of them were confused since it seemed as if Ike had never left. Athena and Dieter realized that the time travel that Ike reported to them was pure fiction. Even in dreams, the Cat never looped through time, the Rabbit never reached a stop with extra time dimensions, and the quantum detective refused to contemplate such odd behavior of time. But Athena and Dieter preferred happy endings. So they suspended disbelief and accepted Ike’s fantastic story all the same.

#lisa randall

[harderstateofmind]

my story

this will be a long blog post

I've come to the conclusion that this blog is a loose collection of thoughts and feelings I’ve had through months, mostly based on my memories and how I experienced past events. so it lacks context. so this post is effectively my story, something that may or may not back up previous writings

I've been mostly an introvert ever since I could remember, but I soon realized that I had to break that chain. first real chance to do so was when I was 17/18.

at the end of my adolescence I had met this short, unruly haired girl that made my world spin around a bit. she had a lively character and was basically half French, a tad bit sassy, cute and, to be fair, well built. I got along well with her, and tried to care for her, but I was essentially an idiot with good intentions and terrible practice. it is funny to look back on that now and figure out that I could have done so much differently. at some points she deserved better from me. I got to a point where I was either fed up of waiting that she broke up with whoever she was seeing at the time or fed up with waiting that she’d notice my advances. I should have handled the situation differently, but I knew no better. I remember clearly a day where she was being really cool and lively with me, but I was so pissed I couldn’t get any further with her that I just looked at her with the worst face imaginable and she obviously sent me to hell. 200% my fault. I also had the chance to tell her how I felt. 400% my fault for shutting the fuck up. to my defense, she was seeing someone else then... someone who had texted me with threatening words back then, which was hilarious, as I did not represent any danger. I wouldn’t touch her while she was with him.

I still love her, but in a different way - she’s taught me that you can love a person in many, many different ways. there’s all sorts of love - the romantic one, the one you have for your family and the one for your friends are probably 3 of the “top” categories for that. sometimes loving someone is feeling really happy when that person is really happy, even if that implies the fact that said person is seeing someone else. that is the case now and she seems really happy with the guy. I hope he treats her well for many, many, many years. loving her is feeling happy for that, and that’s just the kind of love she needs from me, and honestly, from anyone else.

even if she was single... she’s departed so much from the style and the sort of girl she was when I loved her, in the romantic sense of the word, that I’m not sure if we’d match at all. she’s become those sort of influencer styled Insta bloggers with stories about clothes and make up. I’m not saying this in a negative way. she’s still really cool. it’s just different from the girl I used to hang out with. I wonder what she thinks of me, especially when I text her (b-day’s and such occasions) and when I react to her stories. she doesn’t always reply/react back which I perfectly understand.

I hanged out with her at school for a year, and then it was University. I spent about two more years thinking about her. We saw each other once or twice in that period, and spoke from time to time via text. and that was all. we eventually lost touch as time went by.

by that time I had realized I couldn’t keep thinking about her indefinitely. but I couldn’t stop doing so, thus I needed a little help. and I had decided that that “help” would be trying to find someone else.

I basically started forcing myself to hang out with girls from my course. I started texting them often, many of them, just trying to find something with anyone. I wanted to fix my life. I wanted a girlfriend.

eventually I met this girl who was really ‘chic’, for a lack of a better term. she was about my height and had long, straight dark hair which I loved. she was thin and didn’t have much going for her in terms of being well built. but she dressed well. she was stylish and I liked that. tried to speak with her, but I wasn’t really into her, I had my mind on the unruly haired French cutie. so I quickly got tired of that (and eventually found out that she already had a boyfriend all along, and nobody knew! weird). I also spoke with this funny girl from far away for a while, but wasn’t really into her either...

In all this process of throwing clay to the walls to see if it stuck in any of it, I found this girl that sat in the back of the class with her iPad and had that brown wavy hair, soft skin, beautiful eyes and dressed well. she was quiet, shy and only spoke to her friends, a few other girls from that class. and to be fair she was extremely well built to the point that it was a bit difficult for her to hide her attributes (please don’t call me sexist. I am being realist. I was not ill intentioned. I never was towards any girl. I’m effectively looking for a real connection before the physical part, I always have - those who know me in real life are well aware).

one day I sat next to her at the last week of a term, we had some small talk and she told me she’d be doing an exam for that class, because she had failed.

I spoke to her a couple more times and then classes ended. I had some friends doing that very same exam so I remembered her when they texted me saying how the exam was. so I texted her to ask how it went... and that was the start of a beautiful love story that ended tragically.

I spent half my summer texting her. for the first time I felt a woman was actually reading/listening to what I told her. I had learn that she was extremely cultured, she was a novel writer in her free time and was blessed with an INSANELY BEAUTIFUL and amazing voice. she was an absolute natural talent. she was also sweet and lovely.

i had fixed a date with her mid summer to go to the cinema. we watched the Steve Jobs movie (she’s a massive Apple fan just like me) and had dinner afterwards. it all went well. but it was all a bit too quiet during dinner. so I thought she wouldn’t want to see me again... until we met again about a month later. I took her to the beach. to my ‘special place’, in Gaia. I walked with her for a few km’s and it was ~2hours filled with good conversation that felt like 5 minutes. in the end, I took her home. I stopped the car near her place, looked at her and told her “I hope you had enjoyed this short bit”. time stood still as she looked at me without saying anything. a minute later she just said “yes, it was great” and left the car. according to her that was it. that sentence I said clicked on her mind. and she had already clicked on mine way before. so it didn’t take long before we kissed and that was it.

we dated for almost three years. I knew many things about her. her talents signing, and cooking. her struggles with anxiety. the absolutely insane, enticing and fun woman she turned in to when she was horny, which was the absolute opposite of her “normal” looks. the gamer that lived inside her. the witty personality and the way she won every argumentation against me using amazing logic. I met her family. she met mine.

that was it. the endgame. I was done. my life was there. or so I thought. I thought I’d be with her for life. she was my one and only, my world was her, everything gravitated around her. I woke up and texted her, I did the same before going to sleep. I tried to be with her, and talk with her constantly. I basically half lived at her place for a few months. I learned many things. how to be thoughtful towards woman, how to treat them the best way possible, how to be sweet. she taught me many things from the psychological and physical standpoint. I was unemployed, without any money, but as happy as I could be. I was never that happy ever.

one day there were no texts anymore. no calls. no nothing. radio silent. her family said all was fine, but it seems she didn’t want to meet. I wanted to go after her, but didn’t knew where she was. that was it. the end, without a closure. I lost myself in life. 6+ months went by in a heartbeat. I spent them sitting in the floor of my room listening to Hardstyle, the only thing that kept me connected to life (as it always was through the years). I had the help of two very special people who which were pretty much the only people I connected with during that period. people that Hardstyle had brought to me

after this time I got a job, a clean shave and I had to turn my life around. and when I say that, I meant it. an absolute 180 degree turn. I was 100% into Hardstyle then, so I turned it up to 110%. at that time I started meeting people that music had brought to me

but inside me there was pain. I did not understand why someone who was the world to me suddenly didn’t care (I learned later that she was hospitalized and had many issues, that I was not made aware of. I could have supported her. but that was in the past, and I couldn’t change it. I thought she got tired of me. which may be partially true, to be honest). so I had to clear that away, as I had cleared the French cutie from my mind. but it seemed impossible. I was 25 at that point and I thought for many months that I wouldn’t be able to love again.

but then life surprised me, and threw the third person that meant the world to me. she’s about my height, with a cute round face and the sweetest smile and deep, penetrating eyes. she looked sporty, and despite not being that well built, she does make a stand wherever she is.

she is (or at least was - I’ve not had contact with her for more than a year) a fun person in group, open to speak with anyone, but extremely closed in private, and not just with me. quoting someone that was at some point part of my journey, “it seems she just has a wall covering her from everything else”. there was always something dark and deep hidden behind those eyes that intrigued me. with time, I've learned that it was sorrow as well - she had been poorly treated by men.

funnily enough, she lives less than 10 minutes away from me by foot, but the first time I met her (because of Hardstyle) was due to the fact that we both attended an event 300+km away from our hometown. I did not bother much with her at first. after all, she’s not very catchy to the eye in what concerns physical attributes, and I had never seen her. but she was cute, so I gave it a shot without expectation, and what I saw surprised me beyond measure. she is extremely polite, thoughtful, an amazing woman and she listened to the same things I did.

we both were in a group that started getting together because of the love for the harder styles. one day we decided to eat out but had to leave early to drop one of us at the train station. due to the fact that I had given her a ride back and forth, and it was early when we returned, I had asked her if she wanted to grab a cup of coffee, to which she said yes. we spoke for ~3 hours and went home because it was really late. I had become attached to this girl there and then. not only she had the qualities above, she also loved to eat out and try new places, like myself. I was enticed by her presence and her charismatic personality. she’s witty as well, which I really appreciate

what happened next, neither I can really explain. it all went by so fast, and it is still so fresh in my head... but apparently this girl didn’t want anything to do with me or anyone. I chased her for months, more and more. I tried to show I cared for her. I was there every time she needed someone. I tried to text her, call her, make her feel important. sometimes she seemed to appreciate it. other times, not really

due to this, the group we were in basically broke up with me. they’ve managed to isolate me outside. I’ve lost a big friend of mine that I’ve not yet got back despite the major efforts

the truth is, someone in that group constantly humiliated me for attempting something with this girl. bottom line is, I’m impenetrable as fuck in what concerns these things, but they did got to me a bit in the end. I could withstand high amounts of pressure, but I eventually broke down when they disappeared. funny story is, I was the one accused of disappearing, which is untrue. but that’s a story for another post

I’ve spent another half a year thinking about this girl until I looked back and realized I just had to do what I’ve always done - skip it by doing the impossible mission of putting someone on top of her in my mind

that’s how my mind always worked - in order to shut up “noise” inside it, I had to find something that made MORE “noise”

so I did what I thought was right at the time, but I’m not sure now if it was the best... I basically looked for girls with the same interests on social media and texted pretty much all of them. out of this universe, I eventually kept texting more or less frequently 2 or 3 girls

I’ve come to the conclusion of 3 things. first is that I’m probably trying too hard. second is that in the process I’ve discovered good people in the community, both women and men. I’ve started being more open, and even nicer with people. so from something that probably wasn’t the best, I’ve managed to return with a positive outcome

third is that I shouldn’t force myself to find a lover. truth is, I still think a lot about my ex and a lot about the girl from my hometown. but instead of trying to fight those memories, I’ve started embracing them so that it doesn’t hurt. in addition to that, I know what I want. and if I cannot have what I really want, might as well not have anything

summing up to that I’ve recently found out that someone I consider highly is really interested in one of the girls I usually speak with and I thought... “screw it, he seems really into her, so I’d prefer seeing him with her than myself”

and now here we are. so what’s up? literally nothing. and honestly, that doesn’t really bother me as it did. yes, I’m still extremely worried I’ll be alone for life. I’m rather alone as is. no girlfriend and no friends that I truly connect with are close to me. but we’ll see what’s up tomorrow, and if tomorrow isn’t good, or brings no improvements, there’s always the next day

so you’ve went through all this and you ask... “so why is your story based on women?”. it’s simple. it was always my biggest priority. why? I have no clue. I always wanted to be a father from very early on, and build a family. maybe because I come from a destructured family I want so hard to build mine... I dunno. there’s got to be some kind of explanation I do not have the key for

this post is already too long and it highlights pretty much every reason why this blog exists. so I’ll leave it here, finishing up saying I’ve had my fair share of negative karma. yes, I’ve reacted negatively some times. but somehow I’ve built this huge pile of negative karma mostly for reasons that were not my fault... and I do worry what will happen when karma re-equilibrates in this world. those that did me wrong will get fucked up beyond measure and I don’t want that. I want everyone to be ok. I want a karma balance without the “momentum” that’s required for this balance to be restored. because someone will always be on the “bad end” of this movement. trust me, I’ve been on that way to many times, so I know how it’s like... and I don’t want anyone to go through that.

peace