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hotchley · 3 years

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the waiting game

Lol, my laptop is at 2%. Look, I’ll be back in an hour to do my masterlist, I just really, really need to get this done because it should’ve been done many months ago.

It’s fine. Umm... yeah, nothing else to say :)

Trigger Warnings: child abuse, references to child abuse, death threats from a parent, bombings

read on ao3!

Jason Gideon always told new recruits that certain things about their jobs got easier with time and experience. He told them their hands would remain steady when they fired a gun and that the noise would not always make them flinch. He told them they would get used to late-night calls and sleepless nights. that they wouldn’t always find it so difficult when the people they loved walked away, unable to handle not knowing what was going to happen.

A lot of things about their job got easier.

The waiting game only got harder.

Because you learnt things

Gideon had been on the team longer than the other members put together. he knew what happened when each of his members ended up in the hospital. He’d made a point of taking Reid each time, just so he could be sure his order of events was correct.

Adrian Bale meant he’d had six less agents to remember.

That was supposed to have been the last time Aaron Hotchner ended up in the hospital, unconscious and barely breathing. Gideon had vowed to himself that no matter how difficult it was, Hotch would make it home to Haley and Jack every night.

But he’d failed.

Aaron hadn’t wanted Elle going home. he’d taken her to the same hotel Haley was in. Elle had felt a little uncomfortable being in the adjoining room, but her discomfort quickly faded. Haley seemed used to looking after Aaron’s second family and Jack was still willing to be held by strangers.

He’d swung by her place to make sure it was safe.

It hadn’t been, but he was the best shot in the BAU. No, not just the BAU, the entire Quantico building. He was so good that when he demanded that they passed Reid with flying colours, nobody questioned him.

There had been- in his words- a small scuffle but he was fine.

Everyone was too exhausted to argue or even notice. But Gideon knew he should’ve said something. He’d known Aaron Hotchner since he had been dragged in by David Rossi, somehow bright-eyed and cynical at the same time.

He should’ve known Aaron was more hurt than he was willing to let on. He always was. and he should have realised before he sent him into another building that contained an innocent civilian and somebody that they couldn’t really profile. Somebody that they couldn’t plan the endgame of.

It felt like Adrian Bale all over again.

Only everyone had known Aaron was going to survive the moment he pulled the oxygen mask off his face, demanded to know who was representing Bale in his trial before passing out again.

Now... none of that could be confirmed.

He hadn’t been able to stay conscious enough to ask for Haley.

“Tell me what happened,” he asked again. Morgan and Reid had refused the other six times he’d asked them. Six hours Hotch had been in the hospital. He still wasn’t awake.

“Gideon this isn’t going to help anyone, least of all you,” Morgan sighed.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“He was carrying Rebecca out of the building because it was on fire. Then he suddenly dropped her on the grass and keeled over, one hand pressed to his side. Morgan grabbed Rebecca, got her out. I tried to help Hotch, but he told me to run. And I did. And then the building exploded and-”

And that was when he’d got the phone call from Reid. Morgan had phoned the ambulance the moment Hotch fell. Reid had phoned Gideon, barely able to string two sentences together. It was as though his eidetic memory and IQ had just been taken from him.

Reid looked away, unable to say another word. His cheeks were stained with tears, his foot-tapping the only comfort he was able to provide himself.

“He wouldn’t have got hurt if I’d gone home,” Elle whispered.

“You can’t blame yourself,” JJ murmured, but she sounded distant. Like she was trying to stay in liaison mode but couldn’t. She hadn’t even been with the BAU for a year the last time Hotch had ended up in the hospital. She’d been terrified then. Now she just looked tired.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” Gideon added, wishing he could see what was going on. But the door to the room Hotch was in had been closed, the curtains pulled around. “If you’d gone home, in the state you were in, you wouldn’t have won. It’d be you in there, and Hotch would be pacing outside blaming himself.” Besides, he thought to himself. The only person that should be blaming themselves was him. He was supposed to have Hotch’s back. He was the one that was supposed to be able to read all his tells without even having to try and profile him.

Hotch was still in surgery. In all the cases that had ended with Hotch landing himself in the hospital, the surgeries had been minor. When Adrian Bale had struck, he’d spent four hours in surgery. In Gideon’s opinion, the injuries sustained from that had been more serious.

Hotch had been in surgery for six and a half hours. That didn’t fit the pattern. It didn’t fit the pattern and Gideon knew this time that it wasn’t a good thing.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself either,” a soft voice said from behind them.

“Haley,” he whispered.

Haley gave them all a hesitant smile. It was clear she’d been sobbing and was only being held together by the thinnest thread. “How are you all holding up?”

The laugh Garcia let out was slightly hysterical. “Mrs Hotchner, we’re not important. You are. So is your husband. How are you doing?”

The corners of her mouth turned downwards. “I don’t feel like it’s hit me yet. I’ve known for a very long time there’s a chance he won’t come down and I’ve always prepared for that, but it just doesn’t feel real. I keep expecting him to walk out that door with his arm in a sling and a goofy smile because of the pain medication.”

“We’ll be here when it does hit. And we’ll help in any way we can,” JJ promised.

Haley nodded, shaking as she wrapped her arms around herself. “I know. Aaron always said that he wasn’t afraid of dying. Not when he knew his team would be there to tell Jack stories and stop me from resenting the only piece of him that I would have left.”

“Where is the little one?” Morgan asked, both to lighten the mood and to change the subject. They’d never realized how much Hotch loved them all. How much he trusted them.

“With my sister. We didn’t- after Boston- oh my god, it’s just like Boston isn’t it? He’s going to, he won’t- I-” she whimpered, the dam finally breaking.

It was Garcia that reacted first. It was a stark contrast, Penelope’s brightness against the subdued pastels of Haley’s pajamas- and Gideon wanted to be sick, she must have been ready to go to sleep when she got the phone call- but it was needed.

When Garcia pulled away, not quite letting go, Haley wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry. It’s just, after Boston, we agreed that Jack- we hadn’t picked his name then, god it feels like yesterday, that we wouldn’t let him see us in the hospital. We wanted to let him believe his parents were invincible for as long as possible.”

Gideon knew that promise. he also knew that Hotch had promised to step down once Gideon returned. He had been selfish when he’d asked him not to.

“He’ll make it out,” Elle said.

She hadn’t witnessed Adrian Bale’s attack on Gideon. That’s how she was able to stay so positive. But everyone else had. They’d watched as twenty-two civilians had been taken hostage, as Hotch had gone into the building to try and negotiate with him, despite Gideon explicitly forbidding him to do so because Haley was waiting at home for him.

That was the one and only time Hotch’s anger had been directed at a member of the team. His eyes had darkened, his voice pitched lower than they’d ever heard it. He’d looked Gideon in the eye, no longer the scared recruit, and told him to go fuck himself.

He’d walked into the building. Without a vest. The only weapon being the gun in the holster that was attached to his belt. One of the hostages had been forced to take it from him. Aaron had given them the same encouraging smile he gave to all the victims they saved, to all the distraught family members that were scared of being the cause of their loved one’s end.

Adrian Bale had taken one look at him and laughed. That had thrown Hotch off. He had thought that seeing the lead profiler of the elite BAU team would make him sweat and give him what he wanted. He said as much.

Adrian Bale said that when he looked at Aaron Hotchner, he didn’t see the lead profiler or bad cop. He didn’t see the head of the Seattle field office or one of the best shots SWAT had ever seen. He didn’t even see the hotshot prosecutor he’d began as.

Aaron asked him what he did see.

Bale’s response haunted everyone. He said he saw a boy too afraid of his own feelings to ever truly love anyone. He said the only reason Hotch had walked in was because he was too much of a coward to leave his pregnant wife but if he died in the line of duty, well that was different. He said Aaron loved Jason Gideon and all he wanted was his approval.

The camera was grainy, but the tremble in Aaron’s hands was unmistakable.

Morgan had tried to run in. It was Gideon’s arm that had stopped in. It was Gideon that had said they needed to wait to get Hotch out. It was Gideon that had misread Aaron’s body language and sent six of his best agents in.

They didn’t need eidetic memories to have the look of complete fear on Gideon’s face when Hotch was blown away branded in their brain forever. Or the scream he’d released when they finally uncovered the body, the rise and fall of his chest barely noticeable. Or to remember how Haley had arrived two days later because of problems with flight bookings, face devoid of any colour, the swell of her stomach a stark reminder of everything that would be lost if Hotch didn’t pull through.

Elle Greenaway only knew SSA Hotchner: the man that stared down unsubs, barked orders at everyone, carried a back-up weapon because he was just that good and never smiled. She didn’t know him as Aaron, the man that hated hospitals so much that every time he regained consciousness, the doctors had been forced to sedate him for his own benefit. Or that the only person that had been able to touch him was Haley, his mouth trying to form her name but never making it past the first syllable, despite all his years of spinning stories to a jury.

Or that the only reason Hotch carried a back-up was because very few people would notice it was there. John Blackwolf had thrown him off, made him doubt again. Gideon had found it difficult to convince him everything was fine, so he didn’t. He just dropped him home to Haley and watched from his car as Hotch became Aaron, falling apart in Haley’s arms.

“I know,” Haley whispered, pulling Gideon from his memories.

“Would you like anything to drink? I can go and grab you a coffee if you want,” he said, needing to do something other than watch his team fall to pieces. Aaron was the one that sat and reminded them they were human, that it wasn’t their fault. It was the reason they would call him mom. Gideon was just there.

Haley shook her head. “I want you to be here. In case you’re needed.”

Because of course he would be. Haley Hotchner was Aaron’s wife, so she was automatically listed as his medical proxy. But Aaron never wanted her to be burdened by his job any more than she already was. Which meant if something happened in the field. the doctors were to automatically defer to Gideon. Haley was consulted if it was something non-case related.

“Of course,” he said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Excuse me? Are you all here for Aaron Hotchner?”

“Yes,” Haley said, the first to find their voice as the profilers tried to work out whether the news they were about to be given was good or bad.

“He’s out of surgery, there were no complications there and we’ve got him through the worst of it. But he’s still not woken up, and his breathing is shallow, hence the reason we haven’t taken him off the ventilator yet. So as much as we want to hope for the best, I want you to understand there is a chance he may not make it. His body has been put through a lot in the past year.”

Gideon did not want to think about every injury Hotch had been forced to suffer through since returning. The collar of his shirts had never quite hidden the bruised skin where Perotta had touched him.

“Can we see him?” Haley asked. She looked so young. So vulnerable. Gideon swallowed. She’d never been forced to hide her emotions the same way Hotch had. She’d never been afraid of being profiled. He doubted she ever had been, Hotch was too honourable.

“My colleagues are still treating him. I think it’d be better if we waited until he woke up. You should all get some rest, you look exhausted.”

Haley shook her head. “I’d like to be here.”

“Of course,” the doctor said, turning on their heel and walking away again.

“I’m just going to phone Jessica and ask her to keep Jack for a little longer,” she said, voice trembling.

Everyone nodded and chose not to comment when Haley vanished for ten minutes, returning with red-rimmed eyes.

“He trusted me to save his life when I hadn’t even passed my gun qualification,” Reid said suddenly.

“I know. He told me about that. He said he knew you could do it, that it would just take a bit of a patience and maybe an extremely stressful situation. Apparently, you do your best work under intense terror. Not that he wanted the two of you to end up hostages He also blamed himself when you didn’t pass. Thought he’d scared you so much when you were practicing that you got in your head and just forgot everything, even though that’s impossible,” Haley responded.

Reid’s head jerked up in response. “He actually said that to you?”

Haley nodded. “He tells me about all of you. He sees Sean- you met him didn’t you, yes you did- in you. You’re both young. Got the whole world to explore and yet you chose to do the one thing nobody expected.”

“I bet he always has bad stories about me,” Morgan teased.

“He trusts you. More than you think he does. And he wants you to trust him as well. He doesn’t listen when I say you do; you just show it in a different way. All you profilers show things in a different way. That’s what I’ve learnt. That there are some things you will never see the same way.”

“What does he say about me?” Elle asked, genuinely curious. She’d only met Haley in passing; the day they bought Jack in. And the time they’d spent in the hotel could hardly count.

“A lot. He’s scared this job is going to take your sense of humour away. He thinks that you’re going to wake up one day and hate him for letting this job consume your life. He worries about all of you though.”

“He worries about all of us?” that was JJ.

“Of course. He thinks that he’s taking your chances at happiness away from you by calling you in at ungodly hours, disrupting your vacations, making you look at what happens to happy couples and innocent children- I really shouldn’t say anymore I just always assumed you knew.”

“We don’t profile team members,” Elle said, slightly defensive.

“I didn’t think you did. I just assumed he spoke to you,” Haley said, but there was no accusation in her tone. Just the smallest amount of surprise and confusion.

The members of the team started staring awkwardly in various directions, suddenly aware of how little Hotch actually shared with them. Only Morgan had even known Sean existed, and that was only because he’d knocked on the office door that one time.

Loud shouts from the room Hotch was in drew their attention. Everyone immediately stood, Haley and Jason moving forward so they would be the first person the doctor spoke to. They were too far away to determine the specifics of the conversation, but from the volume and range of voices they could hear told him it was a group of doctors and nurses.

The shouting stopped soon after though, and Gideon immediately knew that the silence could only mean that Hotch had been sedated. A part of him was glad the other man had woken up, but he was mostly wondering it that was the last time it would happen.

A few minutes passed. Garcia was humming to herself. Morgan was sat, staring at the wall, eyes glazed over as he ran through every moment that led up to the explosion. JJ was biting her nails. Gideon wanted to tell her to stop but he couldn’t. That was what Hotch did. Haley tugged her hand away and grasped it. Elle placed her hand on Reid’s knee. He stopped tapping his foot, looking up at her with the same confused look he wore when someone referenced pop culture. Elle smiled slightly. Gideon stood to the side. He didn’t deserve them.

The same doctor as before exited the room.

“He keeps asking after his father,” she said.

Haley immediately jumped out of her chair and went over before Gideon could get a single word out. Hotch had never mentioned his father after ending up in the hospital. Sometimes he asked if Sean was safe. Most of the time he asked for Haley. Never once had he mentioned his parents. Jason did not know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but despite every part of him wanting to hope, he knew he was aware of the answer and that he was just too cowardly to admit it

“You have to let me in there,” she said.

“Mrs Hotchner with all due respect-”

“No. I know my husband’s medical history. You can’t keep sedating him, not when he needs to be conscious to answer your questions and not when there are only so many drugs his body can handle. But he isn’t asking after his father because he loves him. He’s asking where he is because he thinks he needs to work out how much more time he’s got before he needs to start pretending again. Let me in there, and he’ll cooperate.”

The doctor seemed to understand that there was no way they’d be able to win that particular battle. They sighed, then extended one arm to the door. Haley ran into the room, everyone else congregating outside.

“The painkillers will wear off in a few minutes,” the doctor told them all.

Haley nodded, immediately going to kneel beside Hotch’s bed, gently taking one hand and holding it tight, He was paler than anyone had ever seen him. His stomach was a mess of bruises and burns, some recent, others marks from a childhood that never should have happened.

Gideon watched, tears forming in his eyes. Hotch looked younger with his eyes closed. The pressures of the year seemed to fade, only to be made even clearer by the damage not covered by the hospital gown.

“Why isn’t he waking up?” Reid asked, five minutes later. His voice was shaky.

Haley’s grip tightened minutely. “Baby?” she whispered.

Aaron didn’t move. His heartrate remained steady, the beeping of the monitor the only sound that filled the room.

The doctors and nurses were preparing to do the rest of what they needed to do. Gideon felt his own heart slowing down. Aaron’s heart was beating but his eyes weren’t opening and the rise and fall of his chest was a shallow as when they’d first found him after Bale and none of this fit the pattern-

“I didn’t mean it, I swear, none of this was supposed to happen-” Aaron murmured, head rolling to the side.

Haley gasped and let go of his hand, just for a moment, before she realised what she’d done and grasped it again. “Aaron?”

Aaron’s eyes fluttered open. He struggled to keep them like that. “Where am I?” he whispered, southern accent coming out slightly.

That fit the pattern of his recovery.

“Mr Hotchner, you’re in Lockhart Hospital. Can you tell me your birth name and date of birth?” a nurse asked, voice firm but gentle.

“Hospital? No, I can’t be in the hospital, he’ll find me. He said he’ll kill mama and make me watch but I swear I didn’t come here myself, where is he, I can’t let him hurt them, I can’t-”

One of the members of staff prepared an injection.

“Don’t,” Haley warned, shifting closer to him.

“Mrs Hotchner-”

“Just a moment. I promise. Hey sunshine. It’s me. It’s Haley. You’re safe, I promise. He can’t hurt you. He’s dead now. He’s not here, and nobody is going to hurt you. Everybody just wants you to get better. Your team are here. You remember them right? Agent Gideon, Doctor Reid. Garcia and Morgan and JJ and Elle? Yes, you remember them. Well they’re all waiting for you to recover because they love you. I love you too. And nobody is going to hurt you. Do you understand?”

“Haley?” Aaron whispered.

Haley nodded. “I’m right here sunshine. And I’ll be right here when you’re ready to recover. So take a deep breath with me, that’s so good, I’m so proud of you sunshine, just keep doing that. Are you going to close your eyes? Okay. Just please wake- when you wake up, remember that you’re safe. Can you do that for me?”

“Safe,” Aaron repeated as his eyes closed, unable to take the pain he must’ve still been in.

Haley didn’t let go of her husband.

One of the nurses tapped her shoulder then quietly asked if she’d be okay waiting outside as they prepared the room for the next time he woke up, as they were no longer keeping him sedated and he seemed to be breathing himself, which meant they could move on.

Haley nodded and let go of Hotch’s hand. When she faced the team, Garcia immediately embraced her, and she started crying again.

“Let’s go back to the waiting room,” Gideon said, unable to handle the sight any longer. Garcia didn’t let go of Haley, choosing instead to wrap her arm around her as they left.

“When Aaron was seventeen, his dad broke his arm and then refused to let him go to the hospital. He passed out in the middle of a lesson the next day and the school were forced to call an ambulance. He didn’t become coherent till they got there, and he wouldn’t stop screaming. I’d snuck in and was the only person he wouldn’t flinch away from,” she said once they’d all sat down.

Elle’s jaw dropped. Garcia started crying herself. Morgan looked away. JJ and Reid grabbed each other’s hands. They’d all assumed something had gone on in Hotch’s childhood- he never spoke about his family, he was always rougher with unsubs that they profiled as being abusive fathers- but there was a difference between making the inference and hearing it from the person that knew him best.

“He’s lucky to have you,” Jason commented.

“Allowing him to feel his emotions and letting him know that he’s safe is doing the bare minimum,” Haley said.

He didn’t have a comeback to that.

Thirty minutes passed before the doctor came back. It was good news. The profilers could tell.

“He’s awake and stable enough to receive visitors now,” they said.

Everyone jumped out.

“Go on,” Gideon said to Haley, who dashed into the room and hugged her husband.

He made a small sound of discomfort, but still tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Hi Haley,” he whispered.

She laughed, sitting on the bed beside him. “You’re okay.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

The rest of the team filed into the room. Reid looked ready to cry again.

“Spencer, you cannot blame yourself. I told you to run because I wanted you to, and if you hadn’t, I’d be furious at you for always trying to be the hero. Elle, the same goes for you. I took you to the hotel. Nobody asked me to go to your house, so stop looking at me like I’m about to break. I’ll be fine,” he said.

Hospital painkillers had always made him lose his filter.

Garcia started laughing. “I’m sorry, it’s not funny, but sir your accent is coming through and it’s so hard to take you seriously when you’re laid up in bed with your hair all mussed and your accent but you’re still trying to tell them off and, it’s just, it’s confirmation you’re going to be fine.”

Hotch gave her a grin. Haley ran her hand through his hair, messing it up further.

“Thanks Hotch,” Reid said. He rocked on the balls of his feet for a few moments before muttering something that sounded suspiciously like fuck it and he too went and hugged Hotch. Haley shifted slightly. Hotch raised his arms to wrap around Reid’s back.

“Everything will be fine,” he whispered. “I promise.”

Reid pulled back with tears in his eyes but a smile on his face.

“No more close calls like that. You hear me?” Morgan chastised, patting Hotch’s shoulder.

Hotch rolled his eyes. “You aren’t the boss of me Morgan. I’m the boss of you.”

“Aaron,” Haley said.

He blushed, making everyone laugh. “Fine.”

The women of the team came over. Elle gave him a quick one-armed hug, whispering in Spanish so the rest of the team didn’t understand. Hotch wiped his eyes when she went to stand by the others. JJ hugged him gently, saying that he didn’t get to terrify them like that because he was mom and they needed him. Garcia’s heels made a comically loud sound as she walked over to him.

“You are the most self-destructive unit chief I know. But you’re also the most handsome, loving, sweet one as well. And I know you won’t stop putting your life on the line for our baby genius and chocolate thunder so let’s compromise: you can do dumb and reckless things but you’re not allowed to complain when we pamper you afterwards, okay?”

Hotch blinked a few times. “Sure Garcia.”

Garcia hugged him again, pressing a kiss to his forehead that left a pink mark behind. Haley laughed, which led to the analyst immediately shuffling over to the rest of their rag-tag family.

Gideon watched from the doorway as the rest of his team and Haley sat with Hotch, laughing and joking. He couldn’t bring himself to walk in there and comfort Hotch. Not when it had all been his fault. The team had saved an innocent girl. Hotch had pulled through again. There was a high that came with that, and he wasn’t about to ruin it for any of them.

But what happened when the high ran out?

Elle would realise her leader wasn’t the stoic man she once thought he was. Spencer and Derek would be forced to help Hotch pour his coffee and climb the stairs to his office because he couldn’t do it alone but he didn’t want to ask. Garcia would go home to an empty apartment, wondering which one of her family she’d almost lose next. JJ would have to deal with the media fallout of the case.

Haley would hold her husband, wondering how much more he would be able to give to his job before he broke. Before it broke them. Aaron would have more scars that he’d never be able to recover from.

Gideon would be forced to watch as they all returned to work, scared fractured but incapable of walking away. David Rossi had always said there would be people waiting in the wings to take over, but Gideon didn’t agree. Only the people that had seen the depths of depravity were willing to put themselves through the horrors of profiling.

Aaron looked up and met Gideon’s eyes. He looked terrified.

Gideon smiled. He had to.

But he knew.

He knew Elle would break. He could see she was already struggling with the guilt. He knew that one day, probably soon, he wouldn’t be able to look at his team without seeing their scars or the people he’d failed.

He knew Haley wouldn’t be able to handle her husband’s job forever.

Jason Gideon knew that each member of his team would fall in their own way. He did not know whether or not they would be able to get up. He did know, however, that it would be another round of the waiting game.

And it would only get harder.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fic #oh my god i'm so glad this is done #right #once my laptop is charged #because it is at one percent #i will do my final masterlist #aaron hotchner #sumayyah writes cm

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chrysalizzm · 3 years

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i uh. realized people follow me now because of uh. you’re human tonight on ao3 asdjgfs

i have content!! behind the scenes content as promised. i do outlines for my fics as a general rule of thumb just because i personally can’t write things to a satisfying finish if i don’t Do That, and so - here are my chapter/plot outlines for you’re human tonight ^^ (i have no idea if this is interesting content or not i thought i’d put it out there because i think outlines are kinda fun hhhh)

chap 1 fundy

subtitle: an inkling

fundy makes an iron golem gone wrong, dream makes it go boom

chap 2 purpled

subtitle: uh oh social interaction

purpled shelters a fugitive, gets his house explosion-proofed as thanks

this is probably gonna be the only chapter with a funny title hh oh well

update: it’s not and i’m pleased with myself for branching out with my dry humor

chap 3 sapnap

subtitle: dust to dust

sapnap’s dying via wither effect, and he knows respawn’s around the corner but goddamn if it doesn’t hurt til then. dream skids in around the nether fortress corner, drops all his weapons cradles sapnap’s head in his hands, has always taken death much harder than anyone sapnap’s ever met. at the last few seconds, when death creeps up like a shroud, dream starts to hum to him hoarsely, pressing his forehead to sapnap’s, and in the final moments sapnap doesn’t hurt at all. the last thing he hears is dream whimpering. he visits dream’s bunker the next day, knocks on the door over and over, but there’s no sign of life there. sapnap shrugs, bites his lip out of guilt for forcing dream to sit there watching him die (if temporarily), and moves on.

the chapter that introduces dream’s primary ability of soothing hurts. put a lot of emphasis on the fact that sapnap ached up until the moment dream started humming, because for dream to do that is pretty frivolous considering once sapnap died he’d respawn and the hurt would just disappear but dream wanted sapnap to have a peaceful last few seconds. emphasize how abnormal it is that withering stops hurting.

chap 4 ponk

subtitle: beaches dry of sugarcane

dream visits ponk after george burns down the first tree. when ponk arrives to the second tree to move in, he realized dream made the tree flourish, grow healthier and bigger.

chap 5 sam

subtitle: fuck this shit i’m out (edit: the official subtitle is “oh god oh fuck”, i changed it last-minute)

dream picks sam’s brain for manhunt strategies while the latter is mining for redstone. sam stumbles upon a spawner and reels back, trips, nearly misses the moment dream sweeps him behind him and his eyes flash beneath the mask and when sam gets back up, dazed, there’s nothing but the splay of cobwebs all over the walls.

chap 6 punz

subtitle: lines drawn

in an unrelated skirmish, punz drives his sword up to the hilt in dream’s chest, relying on respawn for dream to not feel any pain and for punz to get paid. dream doesn’t die. this is understandably alarming.

can we get some funnies in chap? just a few laughs?? a lil funny for mr luke punz man?

can we get some panicky dry humor for real tho because punz strikes me as someone who copes with morbid humor and dream spluttering up blood is def a situation that punz would not know how to deal with

chap 7 wilbur

subtitle: so about that date

wilbur makes platonic moves on dream while dream fake texts his fiance under the table. wilbur also accidentally vents to dream about his little brother tommy and how afraid he is that tommy will get himself hurt for how reckless he is. dream siphons some of his anxiety from him, smiles as they depart from one another. wilbur notes that dream is shaking when they leave.

chap 8 skeppy

subtitle: get wrecked noob

dream walks skeppy through some pvp. when skeppy demands a rematch w tommy and gets a lil stage fright kinda sorta thing, dream siphons his anxiety and his nerves and goes full soccer mom with bad and skeppy loses 5-2 but like!! he won!! against tommyinnit!! HH

is there any mental image nearly as powerful as dream wastaken, the soccer mom

chap 9 jack

subtitle: mandatory volunteering

after tommy goes on another one of his destructive rampages lmao, dream enlists jack, newest-comer, to help him rebuild stuff bc underclassmen have to do whatever upperclassmen tell them to do thems just the rules. after rebuilding a statue near the community house, dream pats it fondly, and when tommy sneaks back to set in on fire for shits and giggles, he finds that it’s fuckin fireproofed AGAIN

rebuild efforts, i promised monuments rebuilt so thats what theyre gonna fuckin Get

chap 10 antfrost

subtitle: twist the knife

ant on what ends up being an unpublicized manhunt: dream stops the manhunt because he’s triggered a raid and by the time the hunters get there, alarmed by the screaming and the fire and dream’s unresponsiveness, the villagers are all dead and there are raider corpses everywhere and dream is lying near the bell on his side, whimpering. (what the hunters don’t know - dream tried to fight off the raid but was overwhelmed and witnessed the village get slaughtered, he took the pain of the villagers that weren’t dead but were dying.)

segment: There’s a reason they do the manhunts, and it’s not just for them to horse around and try to kill one another for a few days. Antfrost is the newcomer but he’s always been good at reading people and from the outset he knew that Dream was someone filled to the brim with the restlessness that characterizes humans, that never-settling wanderlust, and his brain works too fast for the rest of his body sometimes, and he just needs an outlet. It’s part of why he eggs Tommy on in their little war games, why he holds onto those discs even though he doesn’t need them, why he gets that delighted look on his face when someone tells him that Tommy’s griefed them or stolen from them or otherwise ruined their morning. Antfrost thinks the only times he’s ever really seen Dream silent, Dream waiting, Dream unmoving, are when Dream is

chap 11 karl

subtitle: head in the shallows

karl, sapnap, george, and dream have a sleepover after mcc 11. karl, nearest to dream, wakes up when dream starts tossing and turning from a nightmare. when he tries to shake dream awake, dream’s eyes fly open and he slams his fist into the wall behind him and the earth, the literal earth, the entire slab of it, shudders like an earthquake. sapnap and george sleep like the dead, so it’s just karl and dream staring at one another. finally karl asks, concerned, “do you want some tea or water or anything?”

chap 12 hbomb

subtitle: a maid’s burden

“i want to dress up as a maid for fundy,” says hbomb with false bravado. fundy’s fiance levels a very impassive look at him for an awkward minute or two and just when hbomb thinks he’s misread dream and fundy’s relationship dream says “i’ll get you a wig” and the entire chapter is just dream idly twisting the fabric of reality to get hbomb the items he needs to put the outfit together

pranks, i promised pranks, theyre gonna get pranks

chap 13 alyssa

subtitle: message in a bottle (edit: official subtitle is “ship in a bottle”)

alyssa’s leaving, at least temporarily.

alyssa tells dream it’s getting dangerous on his server, doesn’t relish the expression that brings to his face, but he holds her hands and nods and bids her safe journey. when alyssa returns, running for something (later we’ll learn she had heard that dream was bad, that he might be dying), she finds that her house is completely inaccessible by everyone save her, placed in complete stasis by someone.

start of the chapters leading up to festival arc. build unresolved tension in this one.

chap 14 niki

subtitle: life doesn’t discriminate

wilbur and tommy are relentless, they waste no time; niki is willing to wait for it.

the night before the duel, she goes to dream and holds a sword to his throat and demands he call it off, even though she knows it’ll mean little because of respawn, tells him she won’t stop hunting him down until he gives up l’manberg. dream smiles a little sadly and pats her hand and her fright, her rage, it simmers back down, and the anger that had swarmed her and made dream out to be the devil dies down until it’s just her friend, who was playing along with tommy til it got serious and he got cocky, who’s just as in over his head as she is, and maybe niki’s soft but she likes that about herself, that she’s always the first to forgive. niki is looking at the healing cut on dream’s neck, uncovered by any bandages, when dream shoots tommy, a clean shot that causes no suffering.

a long chapter, probably. i think at some point in this i want to mention niki’s respect for dream for apologizing during the first pet war, for not letting things get any bigger until fundy came back. some parallels can be drawn here - that dream let the fire die down in the initial stages of the pet war, that dream won’t let go of the l’manberg war now, and it occurs to niki that she doesn’t know dream nearly as well as she thinks she does if she expected him to act exactly the way he did during the pet war. she’s got what she’s wanted - dream’s remorse, proof of dream’s humanity - even though it’s not in the form niki wanted it.

chap 15 eret

subtitle: crown of thorns

the king in name only consults with the true leader.

they’re both upset about pogtopia’s exile, eret arguably more so because they think their early betrayal of l’manberg somehow butterfly-effected into the current dumpster fire, and as they talk eret works themself into a full panic attack reflecting on things that were, things that could’ve been - and the tide washes out all of a sudden, and eret’s left with the same looming hollowness they’d been feeling before, no dregs of the panic, they’ve never had a panic attack that left them feeling normal after - but dream is now wheezing like he’s about to die and eret immediately walks him through the panic attack, levelheaded even as they’re confused out of their mind.

chap 16 quackity

subtitle: water to blood

quackity is a snake in the grass.

quackity at schlatt’s side during the few weeks of his presidency. he knows schlatt from before, has been his friend, so he knows when his friend is acting off. the cynical, straight-faced humor is still there, his completely bland delivery and brazen showmanship, but it’s twisted to the left somehow, to make it so that those qualities that make up his friend have rotted, hurt people. quackity eventually goes to dream after schlatt first overdoses with a lot of questions, maybe even to confess that his allegiance has begun to shift because he can’t go to pogtopia and he can’t go to schlatt - and dream just gives him a long, sad look before lightly patting quackity’s shoulder and says “i can’t guarantee anything - just that you’ll be safe” and shooing him off and as quackity heads back to manberg he realises all the hostile mobs are avoiding him like the fucking plague.

it’s big q!!!! fattest ass in the cabinet!!!!! pog!!!

fun fact this chapter’s subtitle was almost “chekhov’s gun” until november fucking 16th of 2020

chap 17 tommy

subtitle: most disputes die and no one shoots

tommy learns how a legacy dies.

a compendium of tommy watching the madness consume wilbur. it needs to be emphasized in this chapter that wilbur becomes an entirely different person when they’re ejected from manberg, that he becomes obsessed with the legacy he’s created and watching it crumble is what twists him; when dream gives tommy his crossbow, tommy, out of desperation and a need to have an older sibling again, asks what’s wrong with wilbur; dream’s face hardens and he asks tommy to take dream to wilbur. it’s a terse meeting, the only one they have before techno and before wilbur completely loses it and demands the tnt; wilbur says a lot of things tommy doesn’t understand (it’s complex mythological jargon hinting at dream’s status as a god but could be misconstrued to refer to dream’s status as simply the world owner) and at one point wilbur sneers, “are you trying to play god, dream?” and dream lurches forward and grabs wilbur by the wrist, and there’s a completely silent moment where tommy feels the air suck out of his lungs and there’s an off buzzing in his ears and he fancies he hears something that sounds, just a bit, like dream, whispering desperately wilbur wilbur wilbur it’s me it’s me listen listen listen then a shrieking, acrid wave of no and tommy reels back and when he looks up dream has staggered back, his hand to his mouth, blood dripping from somewhere beneath his mask, sounding like he’s gagging or maybe he’s sobbing, as wilbur shrieks in a voice that is entirely not his “get out get out if i can’t have l’manberg...” and tommy understands, finally, as dream sprints out. that’s not wilbur.

a distinction needs to be made perfectly clear in this chapter, as with schlatt’s chapter: it’s not them. they’ve been twisted out of control by something bigger than them, something that wants to toy with the young god running an oasis of peace for his people. it doesn’t need to be outright said in this fic; in another we can delve into the madness and who did it and why. for now, just make it clear it’s not explicitly anyone’s fault.

chap 18 techno

subtitle: colosseum

dream had to let techno in first, you know.

techno and dream have interacted often - the duel, the championships, they’re friends more than acquaintances now. but techno was called in by someone wearing his brother’s face that he honestly doesn’t recognize from his voice and when he arrives at spawn, before tommy fetches him, he sees dream sitting cross legged waiting for him and they talk about the situation, dream giving techno a quick brief. when tommy comes, crying “techno, this way, this way to pogtopia”, and crossbow bolts are being fired at techno, dream gives him a lil wave goodbye (or what techno thinks is a lil wave goodbye but what actually turns out to be putting a swiftness effect on him).

“that’s not my brother, dream,” says techno, and dream’s mouth wobbles and he says, hoarse, “i know.”

techno Suspects, but only knows that dream has world-manipulating powers and thus standard minor god powers. he doesn’t let dream know he suspects.

chap 19 bad

subtitle: run devil run

bad trusts dream, perhaps against his better judgement.

dream comes to visit bad and skeppy on neutral grounds in the interim leading up to the festival that everyone on the server is side-eyeing and side-stepping. bad considers his friend and the owner of the world as he gives dream an impromptu tour through the escape route he and skeppy have dug out, wonders with a little reproach how dream could let things get to this point, then, soft, gentle as always, acknowledges that dream is only human kindly. when he says that, though, dream’s face crumples, as though those words hurt him more than any criticism bad’s given him in the time he’s known him, as though bad had driven a blade into his heart, and bad doesn’t understand but he lets dream run away from that. when a small flock of creepers explode over the tunnel the night before the festival and bad grumbles that he has to fix it, he learns dream left him with a fortified escape tunnel.

a/n: i’m sure the irony isn’t lost on you.

chap 20 tubbo

subtitle: cadmean victory

what say the sacrificial lamb?

tubbo is coming to terms with the fact that he might not make it out of office in one piece and it’s not his first time respawning but the older members of the server always, always did their best to shield the younger ones from death. he runs into dream by complete coincidence while he’s avoiding pogtopia (mostly wilbur) and manberg (mostly schlatt), caught between two strangers wearing his friends’ faces. he looks at dream, who looks back at him impassively, and tubbo starts to cry, because it finally hits him that even with his death and respawn nothing will be fixed, nothing can change, the poison’s run too deep into the veins of dream’s beautiful little world and now nothing can be right anymore and it feels like he’s shattering into tiny, aching shards - and then dream kneels before him, takes his hands, presses his forehead to them, sighs like his heart’s breaking, and tubbo feels a small calm thread back into him as dream stands abruptly, jittery. dream, with hands that shake, grips tubbo’s shoulder, hovers for a second, then his head jerks up and he bolts into the forest, clambering up a tree with admirable ease and disappearing away into the leaves as schlatt suddenly emerges from the bushes nearby with a joyous, plastic “hey! tubbo!”

chap 21 george

subtitle: lantern burns low

a moment in the night; george is visited by a specter.

dream comes, pale, and asks george if there is anything wrong, is everything okay with you? takes george’s caught-off-guard face in his hands and says george george george, are you - and george catches a glimpse of dream’s powers (is he safe safe does he hurt no but fear but anxiety there are dregs hush now quiet now he is safe all quiet quiet quiet he’s safe) and he says, stricken even as the constant thrum of nervous energy he’d kept with him fades out, “dream what was that,” and dream presses his hands to his mask where his eyes are and says, despairingly, “they don’t get to have you too,” and staggers back out.

george is the first person dream overtly “comes out” to. this is also why george doesn’t see dream til the festival.

chap 22 schlatt

subtitle: the empty throne

dream visits schlatt in his office.

schlatt, possessed by madness, has no idea what he’s saying but it feels right, it’s exactly right, everything is in his hands, and when dream approaches, his hands facing up, is he there is he there yes yes yes tainted polluted this is twisted this is madness madness madness dream reels back, shaking, and schlatt leans in and leers, not even knowing what he’s saying, “you can’t even fix it, young god,” and relishes the way all the color drains from dream’s face.

chap 23 dream (edit: this monster ended up being split into three for pacing purposes and also if i left it together it was gonna be. h. 14K WORDS. also the drama of a cliffhanger at what most people thought was going to be the last chapter was too good to pass up don’t @ me

subtitle: do you feel like a young god?

running, running, running again

finale!! dream takes everyone’s old hurts into himself, takes the madness from schlatt and wilbur, promptly passes the hell out because no one should be doing that, wakes up, gets the shit hugged out of him, and explains a little, and gets told that he’s loved over and over.

i uh! take questions! i like talking about this story, there’s a lot i still want to show, and even apart from that i just really love mcyt haha

#mcyt #young god #chrys writes #you're human tonight #yg meta #long post

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broken-heroes-and-potatoes · 4 years

Note

hello hello!! i'm here to send some requests 💖maybe some Bakugou, Tamaki and Hawks best friends to lovers headcanons? good luck with your blog !! 🥺👉🏼👈🏼

Thank you so much senpai @bnha-imagines-forall for the shout-out and for the interesting request too, to be honest I have no idea what this is..I don’t think that’s headcanons though’ I hope it’ll be okay nonetheless, don’t hesitate to tell me how I can improve! #toomuchpressure

Katsuki Bakugo

- Being friend with Bakugo is already a big thing, I mean, being upgraded from despise/indifference to tolerance isn’t something Katsuki grants to everyone, so you probably passed some ‘unconscious tests’ throught the early steps of the relationship.

- First of all, you intrigued him, pricked his curiosity whether because of your quirk or your personnality, you immediately caught his attention and even with that, he was definitely not the one who will approach you. He [im]patiently watched from afar, listened to other talk about you, studying your every moves from the corner of his eyes. [spoiler alert, he ended up doing the first move because you took too damn long to give him attention.]

- He had everyone recognitions for his strenght and abilities, but he couldn’t really understand why it bothered him that you never showed him yours, not that he needed it anyways.. but still.

- You ended up hanging with him because of your friendship with Kirishima and even if you he gave you the cold shoulder at first, he quickly accepted you and, to the surprise of his closest friend, undertook friendly actions so you’ll feel at ease around him.

- Bakugo being Bakugo, you often get into passionate and, sometimes, sterile debates with him ‘cause of how stuborn he’s, it usually ends in screams and shouts, or pillow thrown at each other. Whatever, it stimulates him, and more important, no matter what, you still sticked to his side supporting him even when he was in despicable states and you’re defintely worth of his trust and respect because of this.

- You challenge him and it’s what drag him into you, not necessarily on a fighting level, but on a daily basis of every single aspects in his life

- On the other hand, you assure a kind of balance, appeasing him when he can’t go down from a high frustration and he realized that as things progress his feelings evolved too.

- You are one of the only person he never pushed away (too harshly at least), the one he thinks of before falling asleep, the one he felt the ‘need’ to be with when he has something happy to share or when he’s feeling overwheelmed by negative emotions

- He’s an emotional constipated boy, but when he pulled all the pieces together and understood what those...unwanting feelings was, it angered him to no point. You never thought a grumpier Katsuki could exist? Say no more. He’s on edge and fuming at everything and everyone. Midoriya breathing next to him? He nearly blew his head off His pen stopped working? He exploded it like confettis.

- Once he was aware of it, he can’t get it out of his mind and it pissed him off, the only logical option he came up with? Avoiding you. And when you try to act as usual? Ignoring you.

- The fact was that the thing he could least bear? Himself. For feeling that way, for realizing it, for being distracted and affected by something so trivial, for hurting you.

- One night when he couldn’t fall asleep because of the situation, turning and tossing in his bed, he angrily thrown off his sheets on the ground, storming off of his room and frowning while taking the direction of yours with a determine step.

- He knocked [BANGED.] on your door, not giving a freakin’ care that it was past midnight, and when you opened it slightly panicked in your nightie, rubbing your eyes, he just blurted out nonsens and the only words you grabbed were «can’t stop thinking about you – it pisses me off – I miss you – in love with you» ponctuated with some ‘shit’ and‘fuckin’ here and there.

- When he finally shut his mouth, his ears turned bright pink, stupor painted his face and as he was about to leave the same way he arrived, you grabbed his wrist to prevent him to vanish and dropped a quick clumsy kiss on his lips.

- His brain freezed, his eyes wide opened, he didn’t know how to react, not even realizing he woke the entire floor with his shouts.

Tamaki Amajiki

- He’s one of most the complicated person to reach, whether physically or emotionally, so it would take YEARS to make him accept that 1 – He can Love someone 2- He deserves to be Loved too

- Tamaki is a fragile little cinnamon roll that shouldn’t be pushed too much, it’s like sitting into bushes and wait to take wild animals in pictures. Patience and delicacy are required along with silence and empathy.

- If you both knew each other since elementary school, he would develop the same bond and dependance he has with Mirio, a solide relationship based on trust. But he would burried deep down his feelings so you would never discover his love to you, neither do he.

- If you met at U.A, then he would accept your presence only because Mirio and Nejire included you without his opinion to the group. If they do so without really consulting him, it's because they both know you could get along and won’t go beyond the pale and impose yourself on him.

- Either one of the other, he would very slowly open up to you, studying you at first, and leaving each time you sat next to him. Then he would accept that you could speak to him, sometimes he would even answer and to finish, he would talk to you and ask for your advices.

- If you’re lucky enough, you’ll be able to put your hand on his shoulder or brush his arm with yours after a few months!

- There’s something pretty reassuring about you, something that makes him feel at ease, almost confident when you’re around, the way you make all of those impossible things for him look so easy and smooth, and the bravery you show to accomplish little things in your life, even if it costs you a lot of courage to do so. He admires your convictions, the way you fight for what you love and what you believe in..

- He likes the fact you consider his feelings and apprehensions and don’t push him too much as much as you tend to help him find solution and don’t go and do the thing for him.

- You enlighten a path for him, guiding him throught the shadows of his emotional blinders, and help him make few steps in this horrific world. And he needs nothing more to fall in love with you.

- It was crystal clear for everyone to the point some people thought you were already dating, everyone except two persons, Him, and you.

- How he blushes each time you smile to him, how he searches you around when he losts sight of you, and how his own innocent smile gained his lips when you joke with him.

- Your two friends tried, REALLY hard to get you together, to help him realize and open up his feelings, to arranged some date between the two of you while hidding to spy in the background.. but nope.

- When Mirio couldn’t bear it anymore, he took him under his arm to have an adult talk and it rang in Tamaki’s head like a bell.

- Thinking about it, the warm in his chest, the goosebump on his arms and the way he, sometimes [often], wanted to keep you close and don’t let you go after an afternoon by your side.. Mirio’s words do made sens.. and it was freaking him out now.

- A trap later settled into one more arranged date, he couldn’t look at you in the eyes, nor focus on what you were saying. You were so… and he was.. No. You definitely deserved better and there were no chance..

- «Are you.. okay Tamaki?» His heart was about to exploded when you got him out of his thoughts with the sound of his name, eyes wondering on your face in panic, what where you saying ? Why does he have to act like this, why do you look so sad? He’s already a terrible friend, how could he be a good boyfriend to you

- «No, it’s- it’s okay, I should have know you're not returning my feelings, I’am sorry I misread the signs-I .. I hope we can still be friend?»

- Tamaki thought he was about to faint when he heard you, wobbly legs, buzzing ears, blurry vision, he couldn’t think straight, but the tiny bit of reason in his head push few words to escape from his lips before he black out from the pressure. «I love you.»

Hawks - Keigo Takami

- This cocky Bastard had won your heart for ages but you kept it to yourself because you knew it was just a game between the two of you.

- You had to admit he was a pretty cute guy when you both met and began to work together, but this smart ass deserved some slaps on the head from time to time and it was a charm that would drag you to him even more.

- You were like an elusive target to him, reproaching his nonchalance and laid back attitude, spending your time pushing him away and resisting to his teasing demeanors.

- Despite the constant lazyness he tends to wallow in, he took it as a challenge and he put a point of honor to make you abdicate.

- [Un]fortunately, after months of playing with your nerves, he got caught at his own game and he was the one to fall deeply for you.

- You also fell for him hard, and quick after you two became friends, it was some kind of funny fight at first, a pleasant banter between two grown persons, he was throwing flirty comments your way and you answered to him with a wink accompanied by snarky remarks.

- Beyond that, the two of you created a really healthy bonds, he knew in a sec’ when something’s wrong and dropped anything he was doing to cheer you up, leaving all of the challenge out.

- He would took you on the roof of his building to watch a reassuring movie outdoor, your favorite snacks prepared, even if he would never admit that he fly throught the whole city to find them.

- It surprised him how much he remembered useless things when it comes to you, how many sugar you put in your tea, how your mustard scarf look good on you and how the tint of vanilla in your perfurme get along perfectly with the natural one of your skin.

- He also noticed the changed in his feelings toward you, for example, he was annoyed to the tips of his wings when Best Jeanist proposed to accompanied you to chose a new jacket to welcome spring and you seemed utterly happy about it.

- Whether for you or for him, it was more and more difficult to accept the situation when you realized how the feelings had settled down and there was no way to back off now that the relationship always been like that.

- He tried to didn’t take it seriously, but he liked this..thing.. going on between you too much, could he call it an addiction? He didn’t like it but, Maybe. Anyway, he would take the risk to confess even if it means not coming out unscathed

- Being an organised and clever guy didn’t help him much because each of is attempts to wooed you failed as you took it as the natural behaviour he developped toward you.

- And God knows how he gave it his best, he made it clear to call it «A DATE», he offered you flowers carefuly picked with his feathers while you were both sitting in a meadow as the sun set, he was neatly dressed and if you squinted a lot, he even did something to his hair!

- You wished all of this could be true but you refused to believe in it, because the fall would only be harder, proof with how hard the pain already thundered in your chest.

- When he leaded you home that night, you felt as if you didn’t wanted him to go, it wasn’t the first time, but right now, you would have given everything you could to keep him by your side. You anxiously turned to him once you reached the door, no word were needeed for him to understand what was going on in your mind.

- He approached confidently, shielding you both with his wings, his gloved hand on your cheek before you could react and his mouth on yours in a chaste kiss. You felt a smile crept on his lips when you put enough pressure to return it and he pulled away slowly.

- You plunged into amused golden eyes when his breath tickled you in a whispered words «I won», he laughed against your lips, trying once more to steal a kiss as you pushed him away gently, not-so-nice words leaving your mouth.

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a-coda · 3 years

Text

Advent of Code

As a child, advent calendars always added to the sense of anticipation in the lead up to Christmas. In my day you would be lucky to get a small picture behind each of the doors. These days, children expect chocolates or sweets. My wife has once even had a "Ginvent Calendar", with gin behind each door.

This year I marked Advent by having a go at the "Advent of Code" which has Christmas-themed programming puzzles posted each day. Most days are in two parts, with an easier puzzle followed by a harder one. Traditionally, I've posted a (mostly ignored) programming puzzle to our development team each Christmas. Last year I just recycled one of the Advent of Code puzzles, but this year I suggested we attempt the whole thing. The puzzles are so well thought out, in comparison to my efforts, that it seemed pointless to compete.

In the end, several of the team had a go. Some of the puzzles were harder than others, but I managed to solve them all by Boxing Day. What follows are some personal anecdotes from the various days with some general thoughts at the end. Note that there are some spoilers and the notes won't mean much if you've not done the puzzles. So in this case just skip to the end.

a sum-finder. I implemented the search tree via recursive calls. I drifted into using Python right from the start. It just felt like the easiest way to hack the puzzles quickly. In the past I had thought about using the puzzles to learn a new language. A colleague had done that with Rust in a previous year. Despite these good intentions, expediency took a firm hold. That said, in several puzzles I would have liked immutable collections or at least Lisp-style lists.

a pattern counter. Not that interesting except patterns were emerging in the programs themselves. Regular expressions got used a lot to read in the puzzle data. I learnt about things like match.group(1,2,3) which returns a tuple of the first three match groups, so you don't have to write (m.group(1), m.group(2), m.group(3)).

a grid tracer. The first interesting one because it was unfamiliar. Some other patterns started emerging: problem parameters got promoted to command line arguments, and data structure printers got hacked to help debugging. These two were often added between part 1 and part 2 of each problem.

a data validator. This felt like a bit of a slog. It was mostly about capturing the validation rules as code. Even though I made a point of reminding myself at the start that re.search doesn't match the whole string I still forgot it later. Duh.

an indexing problem. I patted myself on the back for realizing that the index was a binary number (or pair of binary numbers as I did it). At this point the solutions were still neat and I would do a little code golfing after the solution to tidy them up a bit and make them more concise.

another pattern counter. Pre-calculating some things during data reading kept the later code simple.

a recursive calculator. This was one of those puzzles where I had to reread the description several times to try and understand what it was asking for. It entailed a slightly tricky recursive sum and product, which was again made easier by creating more supporting data structures while reading the input data.

an interpreter. Probably my favourite individual puzzle because it was so sweet, especially after a bit of refactoring to make the language more data-driven.

another sum-finder. I found I didn't particularly like these.

an order-finder. This was the first one that made me pause for thought. An overly naive search algorithm from part 1 hit a computational complexity wall in part 2. I beat the problem by realizing that the search only had to be done on small islands of the data, but a colleague pointed out there was a better linear solution. The code was starting to get a bit ragged, with commented out debugging statements.

the game of life. The classic simulation but with some out-of-bounds spaces and some line-of-sight rules. It helped to print the board.

a map navigator. I liked this one even though I forgot to convert degrees to radians and that rotation matrices go anti-clockwise. I even introduced an abstract data type (ADT) to see if it would simplify the code (I'm not sure it ever did - I mostly used lists, tuples, strings, and numbers). The second parts of the puzzles were starting to get their own files now (usually bootstrapped by copying and pasting the first part's file).

a prime number theorem. I actually got stalled on this one for a bit. It eventually turned out I had a bug in the code and was missing a modulus. In effect I wasn't accounting for small primes far to the right. I left the puzzle and went on to complete a couple of others before coming back to this one. I checked what I was doing by Googling for hints, but in the end I had to take a long hard look at the data and find my own bug.

some bit twiddling. Part 1 felt like I found the expected bitwise operations, but part 2 felt like I was bashing square pegs into round holes.

a number sequence problem. Another pat on the back, this time for keeping a dictionary of recent occurrences and not searching back down the list of numbers each time. Another recurring pattern is evident: running a sequence of steps over the data. I liked to code the step as its own function.

a constraint solver. A nice one about labelling fields that satisfy the known constraints. Half the code was parsing the textual rules into data.

another game of life simulation. This time it was in more dimensions. I generalized from 3 dimensions to N instead of just doing 4. This made it more of a drag. I started naming auxiliary functions with placeholder names (social services should have been called). Also, I tacked on extra space along each dimension to make room at each step. This felt very ugly. I should have used a sparser representation like I did for day 24.

an expression evaluator. I used another actual ADT and wrote a simple but horrible tokenizer. The evaluator was okay but I hacked the precedence by inserting parentheses into the token stream. Don't try this at home kids.

another pattern matcher. Probably my biggest hack. My code compiled the pattern rules into a single regular expression. This was cute but meant the recursive rules in part 2 needed special treatment. One rule just compiled into a repeated pattern with +. Unfortunately, the other rule entailed matching balanced sub-patterns, which every schoolchild knows regular languages can't do. Perhaps some recursive pattern extensions might have worked, but I assumed there would be no more than 10 elements of the sub-patterns and compiled the rule into a large alternative of the possible symmetrical matchers. Yuck.

a map assembler. I did this one the most methodically. It had proper comments and unit tests. Overall it took the most code but perhaps it was just dealing with all the edge cases (ba dum tss). But seriously, it seemed to take a lot of code for rotating and flipping the tiles even after knowing how they must be connected. So probably there was a better approach. It was still satisfying the see the answer come out after all that work. Curiously, this one involved little debugging. I wonder if perhaps there is some connection between preparation and outcome?

a constraint solver. I tried a dumb approach first based on searching all the possible bindings. That didn't look like it was terminating any time soon. So I reverted to a previously successful technique of intersecting the associations and then then refining them based on the already unique ones.

a recursive card game. This card game playing puzzle seemed to be going okay, but the real data didn't converge for part 2. Had a quick Google for a hint after battling with it for a while, and the first hit was from someone who said they'd misread the question. Sure enough I had too. My recursive games were on the whole deck instead of the part dictated by the cards played. Duh. The description was clear enough and included a whole worked game. I just hadn't read it properly. It still seemed to need some game state memoization to run tolerably fast.

a circular sequence. Took three attempts. A brute force approach using an array was good enough for part 1, but no way was it going to work on part 2. Even optimizing it to use ranges was still 'non-terminating' for the array-based solution. So I Googled for a little inspiration and found the phrase "linked lists" and slapped my forehead hard. I switched to a dictionary of labels to labels and the solution popped out very easily, without any further optimization. Embarrassing. Was it time to ceremonially hand in my Lisp symbol and fall on a sharpened parenthesis?

another game of life. This one sounded neat because it was about a hex grid, but I didn't know how hex grids are usually indexed. So for the first time I did a little bit of general research at the start. Turns out there are a bunch of ways to index a hex grid. I opted for using 3-axes as that seemed natural despite the redundancy. The map itself was just a dictionary of locations. I should have looked up how to have structured dictionary keys in Python (implement __hash__) but I couldn't be bothered so I (look away now) serialized and deserialized the locations to and from strings. I still had a bug which I couldn't find until I hacked a crude hex board printer and realized I wasn't carrying the unchanged cells over from one iteration to the next.

a cryptographic puzzle. Came out quite short but only after some faffing around. Main trick seemed to be to keep the transformation ticking along instead of recalculating it from scratch each time. There was slight disappointment (tinged with relief) that there was no part 2.

Some general lessons I felt I (re)learned:

Read the questions very carefully, then reread them.

Try and use terms from the questions. Don't invent your own terminology and then have to map back and forth.

Make the trace output exactly like the examples to help comparison.

Next time I'd consider using BDD to turn their examples directly into tests. Next time.

Try the problem for a while by yourself, then think about it offline, and only then Google for hints.

Next time I'd consider using some form of source control from the start, or just a better set of file naming conventions.

Regular expressions go a long way, but can then they can get in the way.

Next time I'll consider doing it using a language I'm learning.

Sometimes when you get stuck you have to start again.

During some low moments it all felt like make-work that I'd inflicted on myself, but in the end it was a nice set of training exercises. I'd encourage others to have a go at their leisure.

"Practice is the best of all instructors." -- Publilius Syrus

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mostlycompetentwriter · 4 years

Text

It’s All About The Game- Part 2

Sophomore Year

Pairing: OC x Seo Changbin (Stray Kids)

Genre: High School AU, Enemies to Lovers, Sports Fiction (basketball, man!)

Warnings: None (at least for this part)

Word Count: Almost 11,000

Summary: Despite her hesitance, OC allows Changbin to become a regular mainstay in her seemingly normal high school life. But who is she to turn down someone willing to become friends? However, perhaps OC completely misread the situation because it seems like Changbin wants more than just friendship. The problem is OC has no idea how to handle his advances.

Notes: Yes, I waited until the very last day in December. New Years Resolution: Post at more appropriate times.

August

Message from Han Jisung:

I’m coming home today

My fingers trembled with excitement as I typed out a short reply, eager for the opportunity to see Jisung again after an entire summer waiting for his return. My only saving grace came in the form of the well-intended letters he sent in the mail from his campsite up north, talking about all the activities his older, and overly enthusiastic, camp counselor was forcing him to join. The letters made me laugh as I held them tightly in my hands, seeking out his familiar words as I found myself inadvertently experiencing his adventures with him, vicariously living through Jisung’s expertly crafted stories. They stood in stark contradiction to his contributions: various postcards from the expensive European cities his summer league basketball team were visiting to participate in tournaments.

London

I won MVP in the tournament again.

Berlin

You’d be impressed with the game I had today.

Paris

I miss you, Reynolds.

I was beginning to think Changbin actually genuinely believed I wanted to hear about all the places he visited while I was stuck in our boring hometown. In actuality, I managed an impressively over dramatic eye roll each time I found another card in my mailbox. Unlike Jisung’s meaningful letters, Changbin decided to only think about himself, as per usual, and it was already difficult knowing that we now shared a tentative friendship.

As for myself, in addition to the thrill of Changbin and Jisung’s mailings, I tried my best to enjoy my summer vacation. For example, I often joined Felix, Minho, and Hyunjin at the park to play basketball, even if it was devastatingly sad to explain basic fundamentals every time we tried to play 2 on 2. I also took the initiative of studying relentlessly for my PSATs, knowing I would be grateful for the advantage later on when I was actually forced to take the dreaded examination just for a shot at a decent University. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, I started learning how to drive from my father. Unfortunately, I was proving to be a pretty lousy motorist, often forgetting to even put the car in drive before my eager foot pressed down on the gas pedal.

In conclusion, it was a lousy summer and I was more than ready for school to start back again, even if that meant dealing with Seo Changbin for another year.

“Jisung!”

I watched with barely contained excitement as Jisung finally located me sitting at the bar of the restaurant he recommended. A wide smile broke out across his face, eyes lighting with mischief as he joined me on the narrow bar stool next to my own. “I didn’t know it would be this crowded,” Jisung said, studying the masses of students occupying the surrounding booths and tables.

“School starts back soon,” I said with a shrug.

“I kind of like it,” Jisung said, leaning in closer. “How was your summer?”

“Boring,” I groaned, dragging my water closer. “I’m supposed to take Driver’s Ed soon and I’m already convinced of tragic failure.”

“Tragic?” Jisung chuckled, sandy-colored bangs falling into his eyes. “Have you been practicing?”

“Almost every day,” I lamented.

“Maybe I could help you?” Jisung suggested. “I think it’s about time you chauffeur me around instead.”

I glared at him playfully. “Is that so?”

“Look, Kayda,” Jisung grinned, “it’s not so hard once you get the hang of it, and I happen to make an excellent teacher.”

“You don’t understand what you’re dealing with,” I groaned, wincing as I remembered my father’s furious expression after running into the trash bins situated at the edge of the street for pickup.

“We can start this weekend,” Jisung suggested.

I studied him carefully, trying to figure out if he was being serious. “Are you sure?”

“Why not?” Jisung shrugged. “I had a pretty boring summer too.”

“Your letters didn’t mention that,” I joked, unconsciously moving in closer to him, our shoulders briefly brushing together.

“There wasn’t anyone to talk to,” he said. “I didn’t like the other kids in my cabin. They were obviously not interested in camp formalities.”

“Camp formalities?”

“And decorum!” Jisung shouted, ignoring the way some of our classmates glared at his outburst. “I’ve never seen such blatant disregard for the rules.”

“What? Did they stay up after curfew?”

“Well, I did that too,” Jisung said, earning him an eye roll in return. “I’m talking about the fucking.”

I nearly choked on my water, gaping at Jisung with wide eyes. “Are you serious?”

“It’s an old cliche,” Jisung went on as if he wasn’t openly discussing such a taboo activity in the middle of a public restaurant. “Camps always make teenagers extra horny.”

“And were you participating?” I dared to ask him, surprised by the little flare of jealousy that briefly ruined my previous smile.

“I made good use of my hand,” Jisung said, grinning brightly while I blushed in response, finding words incapable of describing the unusual embarrassment of hearing him talk that way.

“What’s wrong?” Jisung continued because he definitely knew that his comment had left me flustered. “Are you alright?”

I waved him off, finishing off the entirety of my water as I tried to flush out the brilliant red undoubtedly coloring my cheeks. “It’s fine.”

“Ugh,” Jisung grimaced, attention refocusing on something behind me. “Your stupid boyfriend is here.”

“He’s not my-” I trailed off as soon as I realized that Jisung was talking about Changbin, having been relentlessly teasing me about his sudden interest since the basketball ordeal in the park. He was obviously looking for a rise which I refused to give him as I turned around to make eye contact with my life’s biggest nuisance.

“Reynolds!” Changbin loudly announced, commanding the attention of the entire restaurant.

“He knows how to make an entrance,” Jisung grumbled, appearing unusually downtrodden as we both waited for Changbin to approach, Felix and Minho hanging behind.

Changbin sat down next to me, immediately relaxing an arm casually against the back of my chair. I glared at the intruding limb, but Changbin didn’t take notice, far too busy signaling for our busy waitress as if his needs were more important than the rest of the restaurant’s patrons. “Did you order yet, Reynolds?” Changbin asked, eyes scanning the menu as he started listing off his demands to the poor waitress scrambling to write everything down.

“I ate before I came here,” I said, meeting Jisung’s gaze entreatingly as if he could possibly do anything to stop Changbin.

“You like fries, right?” Changbin asked, looking up at the waitress. “Did you get that?”

The waitress patiently nodded her head, bowing slightly when Changbin dismissed her. “Did you get my postcards, Reynolds?” Changbin asked, waving off his friends after they extended an invitation to join them at an open table.

“I got them,” I offered shortly, sighing as I realized that Changbin’s return, more so than Jisung’s, certainly meant that our cherished summer vacation was truly over.

Changbin smirked. “Were you impressed, Reynolds? We went to 9 different cities in Europe.”

“Congratulations,” I muttered, frowning when Changbin ignored my sarcastic comment in exchange for the soda the waitress had brought for him. I quickly turned to Jisung. “You can get us out of here right?”

Jisung pursed his lips, bouncing his fingers against his chin in faux consideration. “I don’t know, Kayda, it’s kinda funny to see you like this.”

I glared at him, inwardly groaning when Changbin tapped on my arm, a silent demand for my attention. “I didn’t know you were here, Han,” Changbin said, scoffing slightly at the older boy.

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

Changbin narrowed his eyes. “I heard you were gone this summer too.”

“My dad forced me to go to a summer camp,” Jisung said, seemingly unbothered by Changbin’s obvious hostility.

Changbin moved in closer to me, nodding his head at our waitress when she dropped off an order of fries. “Here, Reynolds,” Changbin said, tone much lighter as he pushed them in my direction.

I rolled my eyes at him, but Changbin didn’t seem to notice. Jisung grinned, but the smile was far less authentic than usual. “When do you want to start your driving lessons, Kayda?”

“Driving?” Changbin turned to me instantly. “You asked Jisung to teach you?... I could’ve done it.”

It was almost laughable to see Changbin’s pouty expression, snatching a fry from my tray. “Jisung already has his license,” I pointed out.

“I get mine soon!” Changbin retorted.

“She’ll learn better from me,” Jisung said, already in the process of pulling out his wallet. “I have to help my mom this afternoon. I’ll see you at school, Kayda.”

I tried not to protest, offering Jisung a delicate wave as I watched him the entire time he left the dinner, pushing his way through the lingering crowd of students. “What’s his problem?” Changbin snorted, crossing his arms over his chest in a defensive manner.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked Changbin, ignoring his question.

“I didn’t,” Changbin said, smile slowly returning. “But I’m glad I saw you, Reynolds.”

Despite his attitude and clear dismissal of Jisung, I couldn’t help the way my heart fluttered at his earnest declaration.

September

It was almost comical, slowly watching Jisung’s enthusiasm fade away the longer he attempted to coax me down the street in his beat-up Ford. Of course, Jisung had every right to be frustrated, especially considering how long his impromptu lesson had been progressing. At this point in time, I was deemed a lost cause and I was thoroughly embarrassed by my ineptitude.

“You don’t have to press the gas so hard,” Jisung gasped, clutching tightly to the safety bar above his head.

“Sorry,” I murmured quietly, ashamed that I couldn’t understand something so simple.

Jisung cleared his throat. “You did warn me.”

I sighed, bouncing my forehead against the steering wheel. “I don’t know why it’s hard for me.”

“Everyone learns at their own pace,” Jisung tried to reassure me, but his words had little effect on my failing confidence.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We can stop for the day.”

“Kayda,” Jisung tried again, reaching for me across the console, but I brushed his hand away, unfastening my seatbelt before grabbing the door handle. “You did fine!” Jisung insisted as he hurried to catch up to me.

“I might as well ask my neighbor if she’ll keep driving us,” I said, pausing outside the door to my house. “I’m sorry about today. It wasn’t that fun.”

“I had a blast,” Jisung said, whining when I slapped his arm.

“You don’t need to lie.”

“Seriously, Kayda,” Jisung said, shuffling forward with slight trepidation. “I like hanging out with you.”

“Even if I tried to kill us?”

“We were never in danger,” Jisung scoffed, playfully moving in to ruffle my hair.

“Hey!” I protested.

“Keep practicing,” Jisung said. “Promise me you won’t give up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I huffed impatiently.

“Kayda...”

“Fine,” I relented. “But it’s your fault when I crash.”

The following day at school, I walked into my first-period class while mindlessly adjusting the buttons on my coat sleeve. My thoughts were occupied, which probably explained why I was so caught off-guard when I first heard his voice. I startled in the doorway, eyes growing wide when I realized Changbin was sitting at my usual table at the back of the room, a smirk pasted on his lips.

I clutched tightly to the shoulder straps of my bag, watching Changbin pull out the chair next to him, a clear invitation. I rolled my eyes but unwittingly started for the back of the room, ignoring the expressions of shock and confusion on my classmates’ faces. “You could make a bigger scene next time,” I grumbled, tossing my bag into the floor as I slouched down next to Changbin.

“You’re not more excited to see me, Reynolds?” Changbin smirked. “I transferred into this class just for you.”

“Great,” I droned sarcastically, impatiently urging the clock to move faster.

“Seems pretty boring,” Changbin remarked, fingering the edges of his brand new textbook, a stark contradiction to my well-used offering.

“I need it for my academic cluster,” I said, trying to ignore the way his arm fell across the back of my chair.

“Basketball workouts start soon,” Changbin reminded me as if I could have possibly forgotten.

“I know.”

“And as friends...” Changbin trailed off, raising one questioning brow, “some of my teammates and I spend time practicing at the park on the weekends.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“You should join us, Reynolds.”

I eyed Changbin cautiously. “Why?”

“Because,” he enunciated, gazing at me entreatingly, “we’re friends, right?”

“So you say,” I muttered, tersely bouncing my leg under the table, anxious for our teacher to arrive and end this mundane conversation.

“Saturday afternoon,” Changbin said, nodding in satisfaction. “I can pick you up around noon?”

“I don’t remember agreeing to this.”

“Well, consider it an open invitation.”

“That I decline.”

“Reynolds,” Changbin whined, “Felix will be there.”

“I didn’t know Felix was on the basketball team,” I said, growing more and more self-conscious of the way his fingers would occasionally graze against my spine.

“It’s more of friendly competition.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, but peer pressure isn’t cool.”

“You’ll love it, Reynolds.”

I sighed because his reassurances weren’t inciting the excitement he was probably hoping for.

Message from Seo Changbin:

I’m outside, Reynolds.

“Mom, I’ll be back before dinner,” I called out into the kitchen on the way out the door.

As promised, Changbin was waiting in his car. “Reynolds,” he greeted me when I was situated inside. “You should start answering my messages.”

“Yeah,” I scoffed, fastening my seatbelt. “Let me put that on the list.”

Changbin grinned, leaning back in his leather seat as he turned on the radio. Both windows were rolled down, allowing fresh air to circulate through the car. It was still hot, but the breeze helped counter the sweat starting to perspire on my skin, even if it was a bad combination with his expense seats.

“No AC?” I muttered.

“Nature isn’t enough for you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I grumbled, frowning at the way he laughed at the expense of my comfort. Thankfully, the drive wasn’t very long and we finally pulled into the parking lot a mere fifteen minutes later.

“You ready, Reynolds?” Changbin teased, choosing to ignore my glare as he started up the well-worn path to the courts where everyone else was already waiting. I hesitantly followed his footsteps, only allowing a reluctant smile when I saw Felix and Hyujin talking together with two unfamiliar faces. “This way,” Changbin suddenly directed, pulling me towards the group of boys with a surprisingly powerful grip. “This is Seungmin,” Changbin said, patting the boy in question roughly on the back. “And Jeongin.”

“Hi,” Jeongin offered, an adorable smile permanently in place as he politely welcomed me.

“They’re both Freshmen,” Felix explained. “They’re trying out for the team this year.”

“Oh,” I nodded quickly. “Good luck, then.”

“They don’t need it,” Changbin scoffed, teasingly ruffling Jeongin’s hair to which the younger boy protested half-heartedly.

“Let’s pick teams,” Felix said, nodding at Changbin. “You can go first.”

Changbin took a step back, calling out for the other players. I lingered close to Felix, weary of the other boys joining our group, especially when it became clear that I was the only girl invited to play. Changbin rubbed his hands together, making a show of perusing his options. I rolled my eyes since it was obvious he would pick one of the older and more experienced boys. Yet, despite my absolute certainty, Changbin proved me wrong once again when his eyes landed on me. “Come on, Reynolds.”

I did my best to avoid looking completely stupefied while I ordered my feet to start working, falling behind Changbin while he and Felix continued rounding out their respective teams. “Again?” Hyunjin whined when he and Minho were the only two players left.

“I pick Minho,” Changbin said, smirking at the furious look Hyunjin wore as he stormed over to Felix’s side. “Let’s play!”

The sun was starting to set by the time everyone agreed to end the last game. I breathed out heavily, hands behind my hand as I tried to pull in more oxygen for my suffering lungs. It was difficult work keeping up with nine competitive teenage boys, but I was proud of my efforts, especially when it seemed like I was holding my own surprisingly well. “Not bad, Reynolds,” Changbin remarked after our team secured our first win courtesy of my well-timed jump shot.

“I’m surprised you passed it to me,” I admitted because, quite frankly, Changbin seemed to go out of his way to include me in every play.

“You’re better than you give yourself credit for,” he said, winking at me playfully before lining up at the half-court line to start the next game. By the end of our session, my team had won 3 out of the 4 games we managed to play under the remaining sunlight. And I’m half-way convinced that Changbin missed the final three on purpose just to allow Felix’s team one victory, even if it meant listening to Hyunjin brag about their superior endurance.

“How considerate,” I remarked to Changbin after the play.

He threw an arm around my shoulders to which I wrinkled my nose and complained about the proximity. “I’m a nice guy,” Changbin said and I despised the way I leaned in closer, an unconscious movement. “Ready to go home?” I managed a nod, ignoring the way he laughed at my speechlessness.

I trailed behind Changbin as we walked to his car, pausing at the trunk to throw in our gym bags. And my eyes widened in surprise when Changbin reached down for the hem of his t-shirt, pulling it over his head before tucking the drenched fabric into the waistband of his gym shorts. “What?” Changbin questioned, frowning at the obvious way my mouth gaped open.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, looking away despite how difficult it was proving to be with Changbin growing even closer.

“Good game, Reynolds,” Changbin said, and I did my best to avoid looking at his bare chest.

“R-right,” I stuttered, blinking rapidly. “It was fun.”

Changbin’s resounding laughter was surprisingly endearing, eyes following me the entire time I entered his car.

October

Autumn was approaching which meant the days were growing shorter while a frigid cold was starting to settle, leaves falling in delicate shades of red and orange. The change in season was always expected, and I appreciated the break from the unforgiving summer months, the sun bearing down as I was often forced to retreat inside for fear of an unpleasant sunburn. But the weather wasn’t the only thing changing recently, and I knew something was wrong with Jisung, but he refused to tell me anything. “Everything’s fine,” he often reassured me, but the sentiment didn’t quite reach his eyes and his smile was forced as he talked to our other classmates.

I wanted him to trust me more, to willingly tell me whatever it was that was weighing heavily on his heart. And I did my best to find the answers, meeting him in the afternoons after school, hoping to show him that I was a reliable confidant. Yet, each subsequent day flew by with no promise of the conversation I desperately wanted.

And this afternoon, in particular, was proving to be no different.

“I’m a better choice than your neighbor, right?” Jisung asked as he drove us to my house.

I nodded as an acknowledgement, too tired to offer a coherent reply, a result of morning basketball workouts that drained my energy right along with regular classes. These days, Jisung had started taking me home from school as opposed to my neighbor. I was glad for the change, especially since it meant I could spend some time with Jisung.

“Tired?” he asked and I offered a delicate yawn.

“Basketball is tiring,” I said, pulling myself away from the window to look at Jisung. “You seem tired too.”

“There’s a lot going on,” Jisung offered vaguely and I pursed my lips as I considered his vague response.

We were both quiet for the remainder of the drive, and Jisung pulled into my driveway with a loud sigh. “Let’s stay outside.”

“Okay,” I agreed, watching him carefully now because I could always tell when someone was feeling burdened by an unpleasant truth. Nonetheless, I took Jisung to the backyard where I stole some blankets from the basement and spread them out along the grass. Jisung sat down on top of the worn fabric, fingering the holes at the edges before reaching out to pluck a sunflower free from its stem. “You don’t seem as happy these days,” I remarked, studying the way Jisung’s fingers brushed across the delicate petals of the flower he held.

“What makes you say that?” he asked, face shadowed by the way the sun hits the side of his profile.

“Nothing,” I said softly. “Do you want to do some work?”

“Will you help me with my essay?”

“Only if you promise me a massage because my shoulders are dying.”

“Deal,” Jisung agreed, managing a smile while he reached for his bag. Together, we worked diligently in the backyard as we attempted to conquer our matching piles of homework. Basketball was a recurring distraction, often forcing me to stay up late at night to complete assignments since I lost time during the day to work on essays about dead poets.

“You’re not as talkative,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

“It’s my mom,” Jisung said and I was surprised by his willing openness.

“And?”

Jisung picked another sunflower, holding it up to his eyes as he twirled the delicate stem between his elegant fingers. “She’s dying.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that and a painful silence fell between us.

November

Basketball tryouts were proving to be a substantial blow to my meager social life. I could barely find time to talk to Jisung, and I never forced him to wait for me in the afternoons anymore because tryouts could continue for hours. In the meantime, Changbin was more than willing to drive me home, especially since he liked to flaunt his shiny new license around school for everyone to notice.

But I missed my drives with Jisung, and I missed the way he always seemed to make the days a little less stressful. I wanted to talk to him, and I knew my best opportunity would be this coming Friday because tryouts would end early and I could ask him to wait for me in the parking lot without feeling guilty. Of course, telling Changbin about my change in transportation was a dramatic affair. “Why not, Reynolds?” Changbin pouted, blocking me at my locker after our shared morning class despite my attempts to evade him.

“I have something else to do,” I said, wishing he could be more amiable for once and just let it go.

Graciously, the bell for classes proved to be a wonderful distraction and Changbin reluctantly allowed me to flee quietly to my Chemistry class without any more protest. For the remainder of the day, I could only focus on the clock, urging the stubborn minute hand to move faster. All I had to do was finish out tryouts successfully and I could finally have some time with Jisung.

The afternoon bell rang loudly in my ears as I hurried to the locker room, changing into my practice clothes quickly. Of course, such rapid preparation wasn’t entirely necessary since I still had to make it through the last day of tryouts, but my mind was somewhere else. Even so, my impending meeting with Jisung didn’t inhibit me from doing my absolute best, breathing out heavily as I scrimmaged with my teammates, ignoring the watchful eyes of my coach as she studied our plays.

By the end of practice, I was more than ready for the stress of tryouts to be over with because I was exhausted both mentally and physically. Thoughts of Jisung didn’t help, which had returned full force now that my attention wasn’t occupied by basketball. Instead, I impatiently tapped my foot against the court as I waited for coach to announce final cuts.

“Okay,” coach said, carefully posting the team roster to the board outside her office. “For those of you who made it, I’ll see you Monday afternoon.”

Normally, I was never one to rush to the front to see my name, but Jisung was waiting which meant my sharp elbows were now a weapon to help me fight to the roster. I breathed a silent sigh of relief when I found my name near the top, quickly shoving my way back through the crowd of my potential teammates.

I practically sprinted to the parking lot, ignoring the ache in my thighs courtesy of detestable shooting drills. But I smiled through the pain when I saw Jisung already inside his car, eyes watching me carefully as I ran the rest of the way to where he was parked. “I’m guessing you made the team,” Jisung teased after I was settled inside.

“Oh, yeah...” I trailed off, finding myself unable to tell Jisung the real reason behind my enthusiasm.

Jisung smirked, switching on the ignition before carefully navigating us onto the main road. “You said you wanted to talk?”

I nodded, taking a deep breath to settle my nerves. “I wanted to apologize.”

“Apologize?”

“For my reaction when you told me about your mom,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t really know what to say.”

“It’s okay,” Jisung said gently. “Most people don’t.”

“Is she okay right now?” I asked cautiously, keeping Jisung’s profile in my peripheral vision.

“You can come home with me,” Jisung suggested, eyes still trained forward. “To see my mom.”

I nodded without an ounce of hesitation. “Okay.”

I had never been to Jisung’s house before so my eyes were wide as I took in the simple one-story building, walking up the front porch steps to wait as Jisung wrestled his key in the lock. “She’s probably in her room,” Jisung told me, quietly leading me through the small living room and down a narrow hallway.

A door at the end was slightly ajar, and Jisung ushered me closer as he allowed me to walk inside first. “Hey, mom,” Jisung said, greeting the frail woman sitting up against a tall mountain of pillows. “Do you need anything?”

The woman shook her head, hollow eyes leaving Jisung to find me standing nervously in the doorway. “Who is this?”

Jisung smiled and encouraged me closer. “This is my friend.”

“What’s your name?” his mother asked, smile brighter than anything I had ever seen before. The only thing comparable would be Jisung himself who always proved to be an endless supply of the purest kind of light.

“Kayda,” I said, uncharacteristically shy.

“You’re beautiful,” she said, urging me closer while glancing over at Jisung who was now busy pouring water at the nightstand. “My son is very lucky.”

My cheeks heated as soon as I understood the implications of her observation. “Oh, I-”

“-Mom,” Jisung quietly interrupted, handing his mother one of the glasses. She accepted it gratefully, offering me a playful wink which only made my smile fall completely.

“I hate Mondays,” one of my new teammates muttered as she lounged on the bleachers with me after the conclusion of a brutal practice session.

“Tell me about,” I said, staring up at the ceiling. After meeting Jisung’s mom, I had returned home with a heavy heart, unable to find the courage to tell her that Jisung and I weren’t anything more than friends.

“Seo Changbin,” my teammate sighed and I instantly turned my head, watching the boy in question enter the gym with his friends. “Aren’t the two of you dating?”

“No,” I muttered out tersely, resuming my observation of the ceiling even though I could feel Changbin’s gaze from across the court.

And it was only a moment or two later when I heard his voice. “Reynolds,” he said, grinning down at me as he climbed the bleachers. My teammate let out a tired sigh, studying the two of us before allowing us the privacy that I didn’t really need. “Is this comfortable?” he asked, taking my teammate’s spot as he spread his 5’6’’ frame across the bleachers.

“It’s fine,” I said dismissively.

“I saw you guys practicing earlier,” Changbin said, never one to take a hint even if it was waiting right in front of him.

“Did you?”

“You looked good out there, Reynolds,” Changbin said, reaching up to tap his fingers on my thigh. “You’re faster than everyone else.”

“Gee, thanks,” I muttered, wondering if it would be too obvious if I sat up to leave...But that might be too abrupt.

“Are you sticking around for our practice?” he asked with a hopeful tone.

“I’m going home with my neighbor,” I said.

“You should stay one time,” Changbin continued. “I learned a lot about basketball just by watching games on TV with my dad.”

I frowned because I did the same thing. “Aren’t you supposed to be with your teammates?”

“Not yet,” Changbin said. “This is my special way of building anticipation.”

“Isn’t that too arrogant?”

“It’s called confidence,” Changbin said instead. “You’ll be leading your team too, especially if you keep improving.”

His comment was surprisingly touching. “Is this what you tell all your friends?”

“Just the ones who deserve it,” Changbin said earnestly, allowing a relaxed sigh. “You know, Reynolds,” Changbin grinned. “I think you’re the best player on the Varsity team.”

His words were unexpected and I was caught off-guard by my own smile. “Why is that?”

“There doesn’t need to be a reason,” Changbin said. “I’ve watched you play before.”

“Is that so?”

“Of course,” Changbin said, turning his head slightly to meet my gaze. “But

I think that some of your teammates are jealous.”

“I know they are.”

“If they give you any problems, you let me know,” he said, holding up his pinky for me which I allowed to wrap around my own, sealing his promise.

December

I found Jisung lingering outside my first-period classroom, arms folded over his chest as he leaned against the doorway. It was obvious that he was waiting for me, so I carefully made my way through the crowded hallways to anticipate his forthcoming dialogue. “Kayda,” he smirked, nodding his head in my direction. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“My neighbor was late this morning,” I said. “Something about an argument with her sister.”

“You won’t have to worry about that when you get your own license,” Jisung said, managing a ghost of his alluring smile.

“I know,” I grumbled because my driving ineptitude was still a sore spot of conversation. “Did you need to talk?”

“I have something to ask you,” he agreed, demeanor shifting as he suddenly appeared a lot less eager than before. Uncertain. “It’s a lot to ask of you.”

I squinted my eyes, suddenly curious. “Well?”

“My mom has a lot of family in the mountains,” he said, eyes searching mine slowly. “But it’s been kinda hard this year to get together, especially since my mom’s diagnosis.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured softly, to which he attempted to shrug indifferently, even if the emotion was evident in his expression. “We usually visit around Christmas.”

“You can’t go this year?” I guessed, trying to empathize with Jisung’s circumstances.

“That’s not it,” Jisung said, gazing at me entreatingly. “I want you to come with us.”

I paused at the request, trying to understand the implications. “Why?”

“You make things easier,” Jisung said and I softened immediately at his words.

“I’ll ask my parents,” I told him, suddenly feeling an intense desire to satisfy his request. “I’m sure they won’t mind.”

“Thank you, Kayda,” Jisung smiled and it was the type of all-encompassing sunshine that always managed to warm my heart.

Basketball practice was excruciatingly difficult that afternoon. Our coach was preparing for this weekend’s basketball tournament, an annual precursor to winter vacation that both students and players alike looked forward to with anticipation. Our school was always expected to perform at the highest level of athleticism, frequently moving through the tournament bracket to the final round of scheduled play. It was a cherished tradition that always managed to fuel my coach’s desire to include as many sprints in a single session as one could manage before players were forced to rush to the bathroom to lose whatever food was still in their stomachs.

“Nice job, ladies,” she nodded at the end of our time. “I want everyone at the gym early on Saturday.”

A dozen or so nods of agreement before we were officially dismissed. Which meant the boy’s team immediately started for their turn at the court, leaving a few of my fellow players flushed with nervous giggles. It also meant the arrival of Seo Changbin who never missed an opportunity to grace me with his presence. “Reynolds,” he said, panting a little from his brisk jog over. He had learned that I tried to leave practice early, stuffing my belongings into my gym bag in the hopes of escaping before he had a chance to utter a single consonant of my last name. “I’ve been trying to find you all day.”

“It can’t be that difficult,” I huffed. “You memorized my schedule.”

“But this is important,” he said while hurriedly shuffling through the small binder in his hands, finding the appropriate form. “I’m doing a co-ed basketball camp over break,” Changbin said, forcefully shoving the paper at me. “You could always come too, Reynolds.”

I smoothed out the crinkled sheet, reading across the invitation. “Where did you find this?”

“Coach showed it to me,” Changbin said. “But I thought of you.”

“How considerate,” I snickered before quickly remembering my promise to Jisung. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go.”

“Oh,” Changbin responded, face falling as he rocked back and forth in front of me. “That’s okay, Reynolds. I guess I’ll see you after break instead.”

I watched him carefully because I didn’t like the way my heart broke a little at his simple acquiescence.

Jisung came to pick me up early at my house on the morning of our scheduled trip to the mountains. My entire body was still sore, muscles screaming in agonizing protest as I forced myself to grab my bags and trudge down the hallway. My mom greeted me in the kitchen, handing me a couple of Ibuprofen which I gratefully accepted.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had been in so much pain. And I didn’t know if it was entirely due to the demanding tournament in which my team had finished runner-up or the fact that Jisung was taking me to see his family like we were something more than friends. I mean, doesn’t it qualify as relationship-status when the attractive guy who frequently treated you to frozen milkshakes takes you home with him?

“You look nervous,” Jisung remarked, appearing entirely at ease behind the wheel of his car.

“Maybe a little,” I said in return, refusing to offer more details.

“Why?” Jisung asked. “It’s just my family, Kayda. I promise we aren’t ruthless drug lords or something.”

“I’d hate to understand how your mind works,” I said, gazing out the window because the land had transformed around us, smooth plains turning into rising hills- a series of dips like a roller coaster.

“You should know by now,” Jisung said, smirking. “I’m kinda weird.”

I scoffed at the comment. “I think your problem is the missing filter between your mouth and brain. Do you ever think about what you’re going to say?”

“No,” Jisung shrugged. “But sometimes you don’t either.”

“Really?” I immediately questioned. “This coming from the guy who swore that he saw a shark swim upstream in a freshwater river coming home from his last excursion to New York’s Comic-Con.”

“Point taken.”

Message From Seo Changbin:

You know they make this thing called FaceTime, right? Anytime you want to see my pretty face, you know what to do.

Jisung’s family cabin was modest, but that didn’t take away from the beauty surrounding the two-story structure. The woods were gorgeous with the faint remnants of snow blanketing the ground, melting into cool rivulets that flowed steadily between makeshift canals. The sun filtered through the trees to throw an interesting contradiction of light and shadow over the empty foliage.

“Well?” Jisung prodded, pulling me closer by my shoulder. His coat brushed against mine, rustling the fabric between us.

“It’s nice,” I said, studying the picturesque-sight while Jisung led me to the front porch, stomping his boots off on the crusty welcome mat faded and worn from years of use.

I swallowed hard when the door opened and an elderly woman stepped outside, letting out an impossible shriek as she went to collect Jisung’s puffy cheeks between wrinkled hands. “Jisungie! So handsome.”

“This is my aunt,” Jisung said, cautiously pulling back from the hands holding him hostage. “Merida, this is my friend, Kayda.”

“Hello,” I said, holding out a hand in greeting which apparently catalyzed an even stronger reaction from the woman whose arms constricted around my middle without so much as a warning.

Jisung was visibly embarrassed as he offered me an apologetic look. Meanwhile, I struggled to figure out what I needed to do with my hands as Merida commented on how long my hair was. “I used to have long hair,” she said, finally releasing me. “Yours is so beautiful!”

“Oh, thank you,” I managed, wincing when she let out another squeak, grabbing my hand because she desperately needed to introduce me. “Everyone! Come meet, Kayda!”

I struggled to locate Jisung while I was moved from person to person, matching names to the faces of various aunts and uncles, grandparents and grandchildren, and those rather annoying cousins who promised me that they were a lot better than Jisung. I frowned at their blatant rudeness but chose not to comment because I didn’t want to say more than necessary. Because this was Jisung’s family and, whatever our relationship now meant between us, I didn’t want to leave a poor impression.

Jisung’s mother found me last, situated in an upright position on a bed in one of the upstairs rooms. “Kayda,” she murmured softly, grabbing my hands between hers and ushering me onto the bed. “How was your trip? Do you like the cabin?”

“It’s lovely,” I told her, glancing up at the sound of a creaking board, relieved to see Jisung standing there watching the two of us.

“We’re not old fashioned you know,” his mother continued, a conspiratorial smile on her face. “We can let you two share a room.”

“Mom,” Jisung whined, saving me from any further surprises by graciously excusing the two of us. “Sorry,” he whispered to me in the hallway. “They’re just really excited.”

“It’s okay,” I said, even though I did feel a little irritated that Jisung hadn’t bothered to prepare me more.

“We don’t have to share a bed or anything,” Jisung said. “I can sleep on the air mattress.”

“Thank you,” I said, glancing back at the closed door. “Do you want to see her alone?”

Jisung nodded. “You can stay in our room for now.”

I waited until Jisung had closed the door behind him before mustering up enough courage to ask one of his rude cousins to show me where I was staying.

Message to Han Jisung

Where are you?

Message from Han Jisung

Outside.

The leaves crunched loudly beneath my feet as I walked across the front lawn, searching for Jisung. His response to my message had been vague as if he really didn’t want to be found, but that only worried me for his well-being. The sun was setting low against the backdrop of the mountain peaks, breaking the rays of light in dramatic patterns. I inhaled the crisp, cold air with a satisfied sigh, stuffing my hands in my pockets to prevent my fingertips from growing numb. In actuality, I quite liked it up here, admiring the simplicity of the natural splendor. Maybe I could move to the mountains one day in the future, living in a cabin like Jisung’s because it was quite nice compared to the city.

I paused at the edge of a trail, squinting against the dying light. Even if my eyes were not made to accommodate easy viewing at night, I could still make out Jisung sitting at a wooden picnic table alone. I glanced back at the cabin, noting the light on over the porch before walking down the path, careful to mind the jutting rocks and arched roots rising from the ground.

“Jisung?”

His voice was hoarse, tears still discernible even if everything else was losing focus. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have a reason to be.”

I climbed onto the bench next to him, leaving very little space between our bodies. Jisung sniffled as he leaned in closer to me, watching the sunset against the backdrop of the skeleton trees.

“Is it your mom?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded because there wasn’t anything left to say.

Message from Seo Changbin:

We can still have conversations over break, you know?

Jisung and I eventually made our way back inside the cabin once the sun was completely gone, leaving the half-moon at its post. “You’re so cold,” Jisung said, curling his fingers through mine.

My limbs were stiff, joints aching as I followed Jisung back up the trail, drawn to the light of the cabin like a delicate moth. “Are you okay?” I asked, the question lingering between us while Jisung opened the door.

“I will be,” he whispered in return.

“I’m always here,” I told him, anxiously worried that Jisung might break down at any moment, and I didn’t think I could handle that. Because Jisung was sunshine, and I was the desperate tree growing at all sorts of angles just to feel his light.

Our room was relatively small and Jisung’s cousins had taken the air mattress earlier despite my condemnation. “We can share the bed,” I said, tone uncertain as I pulled back the sheets.

“Yeah?” Jisung said, watching me as I threw off my coat before making myself comfortable on the bed.

“Come on,” I ushered him, holding up the sheet and allowing Jisung to lie down next to me.

“Thank you, Kayda,” Jisung said, nose brushing mine from our close proximity. “You’ve done a lot for me.”

“Well, you had to suffer through my bad driving.”

Jisung chuckled and I savored the sound, the deep rumbling from his chest which was crowded against my hands. “You mean a lot to me.”

I froze next to him, eyes trying to make out his features in the dark room. But Jisung remained a mystery, an imperceivable canvas which was growing closer with every thunderous beat of my heart. His breath was warm, short pants from his mouth which cooled against mine. Jisung’s lips were incredibly soft, a stark contrast to the unwavering grip his fingers kept as they dug into my jaw to direct my movements. I trembled at the first touch, the smooth caress of his tongue against my bottom lip, a sensual question which I answered by parting my lips for him, allowing him access to the deepest parts of me that only his rays could touch. My eyes fluttered open, able to make out his own now that we were in such intimate proximity. Jisung’s gaze was filled with adoration and I could so easily lose myself in an earnest gaze, but that was impossible to do when all I could think about was Changbin.

January

Message from Seo Changbin:

You ignored me over break, Reynolds. Can you at least spare some time at school?

January was one of those impossible months to predict because it was either even colder than December or manageably warm which was still problematic since Climate Change was an ever-present threat. I woke up that morning and checked the temperate, deeming it to be somewhere in between those extremes. I had arrived home sometime over the weekend which meant my bags were still unpacked and I had no idea where my new gloves had disappeared.

I was running late for class when I finally arrived at school thanks to my mother who had the day off. I stopped by my locker to briefly exchange textbooks, erroneously almost leaving my homework stuffed into the bottom of my three-ring binder. “Reynolds.”

I groaned when I heard the familiar husk to his voice. “I’m late.”

“Is your phone not working?”

“It’s fine.”

“Well,” Changbin said, “if you had answered, then I wouldn’t need to here.”

“You still don’t need to be here.”

“How was your break?” Changbin asked, refusing to acknowledge my comment while standing against the lockers next to mine.

“Cold,” I said, refusing to even acknowledge the issue of Han Jisung and the kiss we shared in his tiny cabin bedroom.

Changbin sighed wistfully. “I told you, Reynolds, you would have had a better time with me.”

I chose to scoff at his comment. “How would you know?”

“I’m insulted, Reynolds,” Changbin said, fanning his fingers out against his broad chest. “You would’ve loved the camp. The arena is really nice at Christmas.”

“Just as friends,” I said, watching Changbin from the corner of my eye. “You’re making this sound romantic, Changbin, considering the fact that we’re only friends.”

Changbin’s eyes dropped from mine. “I know that, Reynolds. You like to remind me every day.”

I slammed my locker closed, feeling something akin to guilt. “Sorry.”

“Did something happen, Reynolds?” he asked, peering up at me cautiously like he knew he was overstepping our boundaries.

“Nothing happened,” I said quickly, stepping around him because I suddenly really needed to go to class and Changbin was crowding me.

Avoiding Jisung was becoming something of a habit, peeking cautiously around corners, staggering into class at the last minute in case he might be waiting in the doorway. And I know it was terrible to ignore Jisung, but I still had no idea how I could possibly talk to him after the kiss. Coincidentally, it only drove me closer to Changbin who was perfectly willing to drive me home after school or invite me out on the weekends. I quickly came to the conclusion that I was using Changbin to fill the places in my life that Jisung had previously occupied, not that Changbin minded in the slightest.

“Your house?” I questioned into the phone, my hand pausing over the popcorn bowl waiting between my legs. Recently, I had started to accept his incoming phone calls and even dial his number a time or two because Changbin was actually quite useful when it came to Algebraic Equations.

“Why not?” Changbin returned. “I have a lot of cool games we could try.”

It sounded like it meant a lot more to him, but I didn’t bother looking past the surface. “Will there be food?”

“Is that a yes, Reynolds?”

“Changbin.”

“Whatever you want, Reynolds.”

“Are you picking me up?”

“Give me ten minutes.”

Changbin’s house was fresh out of the Notebook, an old-school antebellum mansion that probably cost more than the entire town. And because it was Changbin’s house, I got to hear a thorough backstory concerning its history, meaning Changbin’s great-great-grandfather or whatever had likely never anticipated someone like me stepping across the marble-tiled floors. “What do you think, Reynolds?” Changbin asked, looking at me like my answer might change his entire life which was ridiculous because Changbin had probably impressed plenty of people.

“I like it,” I said, perhaps making Changbin’s entire year if the impressive smile he wore was anything to go by.

“The game room is upstairs.”

And it took up an entire section of the house, resembling some kind of futuristic arcade where a quarter in the machine meant relaxing in fine luxury chairs while playing an unreleased version of Final Fantasy with an espresso in hand. “Want anything?” Changbin asked from the bar.

“Surprise me,” I said, running my fingers against the side of the air hockey table that was spotlessly clean.

“What do you want to play?” Changbin asked, handing me a glass of water. A simple exchange that nonetheless meant a whole lot more to me than I thought. Suddenly, I was far too excited, surrounded by Changbin’s extravagant wealth.

“Everything.”

February

When Jisung was absent from school for an entire week, I knew something was wrong. Yet, no matter how many messages I directed to his phone, a response notification never lit up my phone screen. Was it partially my fault? Since I had done a remarkable job of avoiding him for an entire month.

“Why do you look so down?” my teammate asked as we lounged together on the bleachers, a regular occurrence.

“Jisung hasn’t been answering any of my messages.”

“I didn’t think you guys were friends anymore.”

“Oh,” I said, clearing my throat. “What made you think that?”

“Haven’t seen you together since Christmas break. Figured you probably came to your senses and started fucking Changbin.”

“I’m not dating Changbin,” I said, but there was a little less venom behind my usual conviction. “Jisung and I weren’t a couple anyway.”

“Well, maybe he has something else on his mind.”

“I guess.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, even if your little love triangle was super entertaining to watch.”

“There’s no love triangle.”

“Personally, I’m rooting for Changbin to win but a couple girls on the team are thinking that Jisung is the endgame for sure.”

Had my life really become so complicated?

February 14th was a rueful day and I despised the commercial aspect to a holiday that had no real purpose in existing. Nevertheless, I wasn’t entirely negative because starting tomorrow, Walmart’s candy would be on sale and I could buy enough to last me until Easter.

Of course, for a lot of other people, Valentine’s day meant a lot, especially those mushy couples who probably secretly loathed one another and the idea of parting with more than 20 bucks for flowers. Still, I guess there was some merit in showing affection for someone you cared about. Sadly, I didn’t really know what that meant since I never got the experience.

I arrived early to class, a change of pace which meant I was sitting alone at my usual table with Changbin. Perhaps he wouldn’t show up at all, deciding to stay at home simply because of a sudden whim’s notice. And that would be perfectly acceptable to me, but I could never get so lucky.

“Reynolds,” Changbin said, standing behind me at our table and I didn’t have the strength to push him away.

“What?”

“It’s Valentine’s day,” Changbin reminded me, gently depositing a single red rose in front of me.

The gesture was surprising and it elicited a strange reaction because I couldn’t stop myself from touching the smooth petals. “Really?”

“Let’s go for milkshakes after school.”

I smiled because I actually loved the idea and couldn’t believe Changbin wanted something so simplistic. I was half-expecting a giant display of balloons waiting for my outside or a banner draped across the front of the school with my name written in big bold letters. But I got nothing like that and it was incredibly touching. “Okay.”

Jisung came back the next week and I could no longer find it in me to avoid the inevitable. I cornered him after class one afternoon, clutching tightly to the straps of my book bag. “Jisung.”

He turned around with a start, eyes widening in obvious surprise to see me standing there. “Kayda?”

“You were gone last week,” I said, glancing up at him sheepishly. “Is your mom alright?”

Jisung sighed, shoulders falling as his entire body seemed to collapse under the weight of his burden. “We had a scare, but she’s back home now.”

“I’m glad,” I told him sincerely. “Neither of you deserve this.”

“It always happens to the best people,” Jisung said, somewhat bitterly as he closed his locker door.

“I’m sorry for avoiding you,” I said, flushing at the apology. “I didn’t know what to say after what happened before.”

“You mean the kiss?” Jisung guessed, eyeing me curiously. “Did I do something wrong?”

“It was unexpected,” I said. “Since we’re just friends.”

Jisung took a long time to respond and I grew more and more anxious as I waited for his response. “I understand.”

But his tone was cold.

March

Message from Seo Changbin:

Come over, Reynolds.

“You’re heavy,” I complained, pushing against his shoulder as he leaned more of his weight against mine.

Changbin laughed, seemingly amused at my struggles. “I like you though.”

I huffed loudly, allowing him to lay his head in my lap, gazing up at me with mischievous brown eyes. “Do you even want to watch the movie?”

“I’ve seen Fast and Furious,” Changbin said, eyeing the movie from the corner of his eye with disinterest.

“Why did you recommend it, then?”

“Because you wanted to see it,” Changbin said. “But you can watch this in real life, anyway. I can take my car down to the track.”

“Good for you.”

Changbin smirked, tongue-in-cheek as he returned his attention to me. “Learned how to drive yet, Reynolds?”

I frowned. “No.”

“It’s not hard,” Changbin said. “Didn’t Han Jisung teach you?”

His tone was bitter. “He tried.”

“Probably not hard enough,” Changbin said, lifting himself up from my lap. “Do you want me to try?”

“I’m impossible.”

“Well,” Changbin grinned, “I kinda like a challenge.”

Changbin’s car was far too expensive for my inexperienced hands and I was shivering as I started the ignition. “Relax, Reynolds,” Changbin said from the passenger seat, appearing entirely at ease.

“What do I do?” I asked him in a panic, but Changbin merely reached down for the gear shift.

“Put it in drive.”

My fingers were shaking, tightening with a vice grip around the poor instrument. My foot was pressed down hard against the break, mind blanking the longer I questioned myself, especially with Changbin watching me. “I’m sorry,” I said, taking a deep breath as I pulled the gear shift back, letting off the brake to press down on the gas.

The car immediately lurched backward and I panicked, applying even more pressure to the gas pedal before realizing I had put the car into reverse instead of drive. The resounding sound of the mailbox behind me snapping beneath the weight of Changbin’s fancy sports car was impossibly loud. I fought back tears as I apologized repeatedly, managing to put the car back into park as I studied the ruined mailbox in the side view mirror.

“So what, Reynolds?” Changbin shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the destruction.

I looked at him in disbelief. “You can’t seriously be okay with that?”

“It didn’t hurt anybody,” Changbin said. “If you start to worry about everything you do wrong, then it’s even harder.”

I held tightly to the steering wheel. “Should I try again?”

“Why not?” Changbin shrugged. “This is more fun than I was expecting.”

“Driving isn’t supposed to be fun,” I said. “It’s serious.”

“Kayda, you sound like one of those scary-ass educational videos they make us watch in Driver’s Ed.”

“And?”

“Try to enjoy it more,” Changbin said. “You don’t have to be so tense when you’re driving.”

I let out a deep breath, my hand reaching back down for the gear shift. I relaxed a little when I felt Changbin’s hand on top of mine, guiding me through the movements as the car started to roll forward. “Is it too fast?” I asked, failing to keep the panic from my tone.

“You’re doing great, Reynolds,” Changbin said, leaning over to steady his other hand against my splayed out fingers on the wheel. “There’s nothing difficult about it.”

I was trembling now for a different reason, but Changbin didn’t need to know about that.

April

Jisung was ignoring me, which meant I had to ask Changbin to drive me to my scheduled test, anxiously fidgeting in his leather seat during the entire drive. I had no time to worry about Jisung, even though I was deeply hurt by his indifference. Instead, all I could think about was my driving test and how horrible it would be to fail the computer questions because they were probably the easiest part.

“You worry too much, Reynolds,” Changbin remarked, pulling into the parking lot of the DMV.

“I can’t help it,” I told him.

“If I can pass this, then you can,” Changbin said. “You’re way smarter than me.”

“I don’t think it has much to do with intelligence,” I said, rubbing my hands together as I carefully opened his car door.

“Don’t think too hard then,” Changbin grinned, faintly protesting when I reached across the console to smack his arm.

“What’s wrong with you! I’m having a small panic attack.”

“Yeah? Should I take you to the hospital?”

“You’re just asking for it,” I snapped, huffing indignantly when he started laughing. A nasal affair that would normally make me cringe.

“Why?” Changbin asked. “You know what your problem is, Reynolds? You take everything too seriously. Just relax for once.”

“But what if I fail?” I whined miserably.

“Then you take it again,” Changbin said. “I promise I won’t hold it against you forever.”

“I really hate you right now.”

FLASH!

I blinked my eyes, trying to rid my vision of those annoying black spots courtesy of the camera flash. Meanwhile, the obviously indifferent clerk clicked away at his computer screen. “Congratulations,” he said, tone completely void of any life as he handed me a tiny square of plastic.

I couldn’t find it in myself to be annoyed with the DMV employee. After all, I was 90% sure that such an attitude was written in their handbook. But it really didn’t matter because I was holding my permit and it wasn’t some sort of crazy dream I had last night.

“Thank you,” I told him sincerely, even if the sentiment obviously meant nothing to him as he called for the next person in line.

I mustered just enough patience to walk at a normal pace through the musty office building until I was outside, finding Changbin leaning against the side of his sports car, sunglasses covering his eyes. The sight of him, however, broke down every last bit of self-control I had previously tried to maintain. “I passed!” I squealed, holding up my limited learner's permit for his eyes to see, desperately wanting to show him.

Changbin smirked as he took the permit from me. “What did I tell you, Reynolds? It’s not that hard.”

“You helped me so much,” I said, overcome with emotion, looking at him and, for the first time in my life, seeing past the arrogance and wealth, sarcastic comments and designer clothes. “Thank you.”

Changbin nodded, rolling his shoulders back as he took another step closer. “I get an award, right?”

I gave him a questioning look, rolling my eyes when his finger tapped against the side of his cheek. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s not a big deal, Reynolds,” Changbin whined.

I could always blame it on my mood, optimism bright as I grabbed Changbin’s shoulders to hold myself steady as I pressed my lips to the spot he had indicated. “Happy?”

Changbin didn’t respond, considering me with an expression that held a thousand different possibilities. His fingers were cold as they curled around my neck, thumbs digging into the skin at the base of my jaw. But his lips were warm, tentatively testing mine as he kissed me for the second time, leaving me with nothing but thoughts of Seo Changbin as I tasted spearmint gum when his tongue muscled its way inside.

May

Summer vacation meant classes were more trivial than usual, suffering through mindless lectures that meant nothing now that exams are over. But the school board insisted we stay until June. “Jisung’s ignoring me,” I told Changbin at lunch, locating the boy in question eating alone across the cafeteria.

Perhaps in the past, I’d never openly tell Changbin about any of my worries, but I was comfortable with him now and we understood each other a lot more than we did in the past. And he knew how much Jisung meant to me, although in a much different way than what I shared with Changbin. “Give him time,” he said, one hand on the back of my neck, massaging circles into the skin.

I shifted closer to Changbin, unconsciously seeking his warmth. “He’s going through a hard time alone.”

“He’s got family,” Changbin reminded me, gently pushing my tray closer. “But you need to eat, Reynolds.”

“That’s disgusting,” Felix quipped, turning his nose up at the two of us like he was too cool for such displays.

“Don’t be jealous,” Jeongin said, giggling like he was enjoying teasing Felix.

“Is it official, then?” Minho asked, leaning across the table despite Hyunjin’s attempts to move him out of the way.

“You don’t have to put titles to everything,” I told Minho.

“That’s just a bullshit excuse,” Minho argued, insistent as he eyed the two of us up and down. “Well?”

“We’re together,” Changbin said, hand settling over mine. “Will that satisfy you?”

“Very much,” Minho nodded, sitting back to whip out his phone. “The school’s gossip site needed some more drama.”

“There’s no drama,” I grumbled, glaring at Minho as he hurriedly typed away on his tiny phone keyboard.

“There always is,” Hyunjin said with a dramatic flourish of his hands. “Minho makes sure of it.”

“Stay out of my relationship,” Changbin warned Minho, even if the older boy appeared completely undeterred by Changbin’s threat.

Changbin was unusually quiet after school that day, clutching tightly to my hand as he walked us to his car. “You’re never like this,” I said, rolling my eyes playfully when he opened my door.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Changbin said. “This is how I always act.”

“Sure,” I said, waiting for him to start the car before continuing. “I think you have something to tell me.”

Changbin tensed at my words. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re too easy to read,” I teased him, laughing when he threw me an unimpressed look.

“Do you want some music as a distraction?” I said. “Fill up the awkward silence while you find the confidence to ask me what must be a very difficult question.”

“And you think I’m rude,” Changbin grunted, even as his hand quickly started to mess with the radio display.

I pulled my phone from my pocket, finding Jisung’s contact even if it was a futile affair to get any sort of response from him lately. His texts were few and far in between and he usually only answered if I asked about his mother. But I genuinely cared about his family because Jisung was important to me and I desperately wanted things to resume normally between us. I couldn’t help but think that my new relationship status with Changbin might have a lot to do with his silence.

“Should we just text each other?” I asked Changbin when we pulled up to my house.

He killed the engine without a word. “It’s nothing bad.”

“I figured that,” I said, turning around to face him. “You have my undivided attention.”

Another beat of silence passed between us and then...“I’ll be gone for the summer,” Changbin admitted, glancing up at me nervously. “And it might be too soon to ask this.”

“What do you mean?”

Changbin sighed, running his fingers through his black hair. “You could come with us, Reynolds. If you really wanted to.”

“On your vacation?”

“It’s more like a get-away,” Changbin grinned. “But you can think of it like that.”

I considered him carefully because I knew Changbin was always serious when it came to me. “You’re right, it might be too soon.”

Changbin sighed but didn’t appear too downtrodden. “It’s alright, Reynolds. We’ll go as slow as you want.”

“I’d like that,” I said, allowing him to lean across the middle to kiss me to his heart’s content.

June

Message to Han Jisung:

What happened?

#stray kids #stray kids fanfic #seo changbin #seo changbin fanfic #enemies to lovers #han jisung

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tessatechaitea · 5 years

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Wonder Twins #5

Jayna just punched straight through her brother's butthole.

If you're a being who turns into water, your dick and butthole don't just disappear, right? They just become part of the water! So I'm almost certainly correct in my comment on the cover. Hopefully Mark Russell will explore this topic in a future issue. Until then, I'll be certain to tell everybody I know that Jayna basically fisted Zan. Luckily for the Wonder Twins, I don't know many people and also they are fictional characters. This issue is called "Magic and Games." I think. It will probably take me less time to read this entire comic book than it took me to puzzle out the word "Games" in the font used for the title.

Sure, you can see it now that I already told you what it was! But it was difficult before I worked it out! Although I still wouldn't be surprised to learn the title is "Magic and Galljes" or "Magic and "Gaines" and that the second word is somebody's name.

Usually I don't comment on Mark Russell comic books because to comment on a Mark Russell comic book, you should probably be smart and serious. Sure, he's having fun and writing an entertaining book that I can easily use to make jokes about fisting incest! But he also writes sensitive stories about social justice and systemic bias and ethical dilemmas in changing times and, well, other stuff that I'm too dumb to even discuss in the most general terms! He's a smart guy which is why I hate him with a burning passion! But it's a good hate! It's the kind of envious hate that pushes me to my own Emerald Twilight! I probably won't wind up destroying an entire town and ruining my reputation and becoming the most vilified hero in our universe but I almost certainly will eventually become the avenging spirit of God judging everybody around me! Wait, I think I already am that! Whatever my point is, it's that Mark Russell writes good and I'm too weak to not despise him for it. Polly Math has just won first prize at the science fair because her last name is Math. I guess Sandra Science didn't compete this year so Polly was the obvious next choice. Jayna wins second place because her project on fucking hot guys while being a nerd in high school fell apart when the guy she attempted to science fair fuck turned out to be a villain. It's also possible I'm confusing story lines but you have to expect that kind of thing! I'm not spring chicken! Remembering details between chapters that come out a full month apart has been nearly impossible for the last twenty years! I shouldn't make fun of Polly Math's name because I have a name that people always try to make jokes about too. It's not Grunion Guy! You can probably find it if you do even the smallest amount of Internet research! I'm not going to help you though because I don't want to get called a Deaf Chef anymore! Polly is upset that her father is working with Lex Luthor and the League of Annoyance. But Jayna has a plan to fix things! I bet her plan is to turn into a giant tortoise while Zan turns into an ice dildo and...wait a second! Why am I giving out good ideas that Mark Russell will just steal in a few issues?! Better to not speculate on things! Also, I mean, the cover shows Jayna going with the shark plan.

Okay fine! I'm finally interested in Fox News!

The most disturbing thing about people who watch Fox News is that they ignore five hundred other channels that are showing entertaining things on their television at the same time! Who chooses that shit over Comedy Central or the Game Show Network?! I haven't had cable for nearly twenty years and whenever I'm staying somewhere with cable, it's locked on the Game Show Network 24/7! Who the fuck chooses to watch state propaganda over old game shows?! Fucking psychopaths, that's who!

Polly Math's father wound up working with Lex Industries because only Lex Luthor hired African Americans, I guess? Hadn't he heard of STAR Labs?! Maybe Silas Stone and Sarah Charles fulfilled their quota?

I might be misreading this scene but I don't think I am because the white guys with white guys playing golf pictures behind them seem interested in Filo Math if he's Norwegian (so, you know, totally white!) and then when they meet him, they don't want to hire him. It could be that they really are concerned with his specialty! What could that be?! I mean, it can't be any worse than Silas Stone's specialty of turning his son into a cybernetic example of the castration of the black male in America! That's a really terrible specialty! Although Sarah Charles seemed to be pretty into it. See?! This is why I can't review a Mark Russell book! He's making a great point about the systemic bias inherent in corporate hiring practices and I'm not taking it seriously! I mean, he isn't either, really? He's being light-hearted while still making a good point. Which is what I've done, I think, in my comment about Cyborg's lack of a penis! The Scrambler wants to play a trick on society. He's a magician that believes people are frightened of magic and only like the part where everything is normal again. Magician: "Is this your card?" Audience Member: "Why yes! Thank God you picked my card! I was worried I was going to have to live in a world where my card wasn't picked!" Maybe I'm not comprehending his point. Anyway, The Scrambler wants to do a trick where things don't ever go back to normal! He's a monster! Imagine picking the Three of Clubs and nobody ever showing you the Three of Clubs ever again! Ugh, I'm feeling faint. To save Polly's Dad from definite prison time (or possibly, if Superman shows up, an eternity in the Phantom Zone. As if Superman can be bothered with Earth's judicial system! Pshaw!), Jan has challenged the League of Annoyance to a duel at the zoo. I guess if she wants to stress out all of the animals there with a big battle, who am I to judge? I mean other than being the real life version of Hal Jordan's Spectre, of course! At the zoo, Jayna recruits a bunch of Australian animals to help fight which goes as spectacularly as you can imagine it would. And what I mean by that is that a koala is blown to bits. But I guess that's worth it in the grand scheme of getting Polly Math's father to stop working with the League of Annoyance. It's like that philosophical conundrum about an ant that sacrifices its life for even the tiniest amount to better the world. It's just an ant! It practically owes it to the universe to die for nearly nothing! What does this koala bear expect? It should get to live in luxurious confinement at the zoo and not die for a trivial reason? Stupid koala bear. Go fuck yourself, you selfish bastard. The Wonder Twins defeat two out of three of the League of Annoyance members at the expense of just one koala's life and the bruised jaw of an innocent kangaroo. The third member, some woman with a Kryptonian cell phone whose name maybe I should remember, gets away to go regroup. Sylvia is a racist that joined the League because she didn't like the demographics of her small town changing. She's startled by Filo entering the League's headquarters to pack up his stuff and winds up zapping him like she zapped the koala. Okay, I guess the koala isn't as dead as I first thought. I should have realize a Kryptonian phone is probably sending everything to the Phantom Zone. So once again, I, the Grandmaster Comic Book Reader, was correct when I speculated that the worst that could happen to Filo was prison or the Phantom Zone! I'm the smarterest! Sylvia is caught on camera zapping Filo Math and then messes up in an interview when she kind of admits to having maybe zapped more than one black person with her phone off-camera? It's a real public relations nightmare!

But Lex can fix it! His greatest strength is turning public relations nightmares into public relations wet dreams!

Lex News turns Cell Phone Sylvia into a national hero. Because anything is excusable if you just say how scared you were! I mean, as long as you're white! It's scary being white! Sometimes you have to kill people with your legal gun while standing your own ground after confronting somebody for the most inconsequential reasons! It's just the way the world works! At least in America! Happy 4th of July! Just in case some readers weren't smart enough to get that everybody blasted by Sylvia's phone went to the Phantom Zone, Mark Russell supplies us with an image of Filo and the koala and a bunch of Sylvia's other victims (hmm, all black! But that's probably just a coincidence!) in the Phantom Zone. Polly, at the end of her rope with doing the right thing in an unjust world, decides to contact The Scrambler. I can't wait for her big magic trick to fix the world! The Scrambler's big trick to fix the world is to threaten to scramble everybody's identity. Everybody's minds will switch around so that they're now in different bodies. That means the powerful might wind up being the poorest people in the worst poverty. And the only way he won't do it is if the powerful fix the world in thirty days. Seems like a good plan! Except I'm curious to see how they fix it. Most people's ideas of fixing the world rely on the current world still existing somehow. So the fix is handicapped from the beginning by needing to be built on the ruins of the old system. To truly make a new system that works, the old system must be completely razed to the ground. But nobody has the stomach for that. So we make exceptions and compromises, building the new structure on top of a rotting foundation. It's why DC's Universe fixes always fail. They rely on making things new and better but need to remain rooted in the past. Crisis on Infinite Earths was built on a world that still contained members of Infinity Inc. who suddenly didn't fit in the world anymore. So DC then had to do Zero Hour which told new origin stories but still refused to throw out everything that came before to simply start again. Even The New 52, which people hated because they felt it did exactly what I suggested (razing the shit to the ground), didn't work because, I believe, it didn't go far enough! It still accepted Superman had died. It still accepted all of Green Lantern's past. It still contained a Batgirl who was shot by Joker and became Oracle. It was still the DC Universe but with arbitrary and subtle changes that made no real difference except the jettisoning of a ton of history. So it didn't work for anybody! Um, anyway, my initial point was that real life political structures and social dynamics and economic systems can never really be restructured in a meaningful way because they have to kowtow to older ways of thinking and doing things. The comic book stuff was just easier to write about! I'm sure Mark Russell will figure it out! Or he'll just have The Scrambler and Polly Math arrested and nothing will work out like it should and it will just be the punctuation on the idea that everything fucking sucks. Yay! Wonder Twins #5 Rating: A+. Come on! Everything Mark Russell writes gets an A+! It shows how smart I am!

#Wonder Twins #Mark Russell #DC Comics #Comic Book Reviews

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thankyoumskobayashi · 5 years

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I just misread an earlier part of TGCF (CH.~41-50) and it said that E-Ming was rumored to have been made with the blood of innocents. However, knowing Hua Cheng, I wouldn't be surprised if that scimitar was made with the blood of the cliquey martial and literature gods who made fun of Xie Lian (and were subsequently murdered simultaneously by the demon king Crimson Rain Sought Flower). Knowing now from recent chapters how many boundless oodles of power Hua Cheng has, only a sword made from the remains of gods themselves would be able to handle that much strength without shattering under the power of its master.

And from the perspectives of the rest of the gods in the heavens, the ones who died were "innocent" because these gods don't consider "making fun of Xie Lian" to be a criminal offence. However, a certain idiot prone to falling (both physically & metaphorically) DOES consider that a criminal offence, one for which he Can & Will mete out punishment.

I think it's cool how MXTX explores reframing narratives through misunderstandings, mindsets, and cultural paradigms. This one event can be analyzed from multiple characters' perspectives: "Crimson Rain Sought Flower challenged all the martial gods and all the literature gods to a contest. Everyone except Xie Lian's former assistants participated and all of them lost their lives as a result of being humiliated and reneging on the wager." Hua Cheng, the one setting the wager and doing the killing, probably saw it as dealing with useless trash. Those gods themselves must have seen it as injustice. The newer gods in the heavens don't know Hua Cheng's motives, so they consider him capricious and dangerous. They regard him with fear, and attempt to pass along that fear to Xie Lian, who hasn't been to the heavens for hundreds of years and therefore doesn't know any of the news or gossip.

It's also interesting to see Xie Lian's opinions grow as he meets Hua Cheng first, then listens to hearsay afterwards. He gets to know Hua Cheng, and sees him as a carefree, knowledgeable, generous person who likes to joke around. Then he is told that Hua Cheng is a capricious and dangerous person liable to turn on you at any moment. His motives are shrouded in mystery. However, these rumors end up slam-dunked in the garbage by Xie Lian because he sees Hua Cheng differently than the rest of the gods in the heavens. Hua Cheng is generous towards and protective of him, to the point of actually fighting well when he defended Xie Lian against Pei Su and the snakes. He fought seriously that time, according to Xie Lian, not allowing a single scratch to land on the Flower Crown Prince.

The play that was performed at the Lantern-counting festival which depicted the blossoming romance between Hua Cheng and Xie Lian probably baffled some, but perhaps some of the gods now believe that Hua Cheng and Xie Lian are in love. I just realized this play might have been written by Wind Master, who saw those two get stuck together with RuoYe during the sandstorm lol

Anyways, I forget where this was supposed to go, but maybe it doesn't have a point so I can write whatever I want. Hua Cheng could have future sight which is why he warned Xie Lian to avoid Wind, Earth & Water Masters, Ling Wen, and the rest of the Heavens for a time. He could be haunted by visions of Xie Lian getting falsely accused & slandered again. We already know this is the worst torment to him, he admitted it during the dice game which was a ploy to test if Earth Master was the Reverend of Empty Words. After this each paragraph is its own idea. They aren't always connected, except through my own convoluted train of thought.

Even though Hua Cheng set his Divine SkypeTM password to something super lovey dovey and/or horny I bet he can communicate telepathically with E-Ming.

After Xie Lian gave Hua Cheng his bamboo hat when they were planting rice, I bet Hua Cheng was hyped up on "he gave me his hat to show everyone that I'm his" energy. He was probably annoyed that these lowly mortals were harassing his love about the Demon King's relationship status and sauntered over to say "I'm already married." But he was silently adding after that, "in my heart...."

After Hua Cheng denied that whole business about having a lover, Xie Lian smiled and told him, "you liar." Mind you, this is after that scene in the QianDang Temple where Xie Lian holds up the white flower that Hua Cheng once made a symbol for him, and asks "This is the flower you are pursuing, right?" Hua Cheng is under the impression that Xie Lian is aware of his romantic intentions towards him. So he goes, "yeah that thing about me having a lover is a lie. I just haven't won them over yet." Not realizing that Xie Lian is still hurt about the joking about marriage thing from the other day.

From Hua Cheng's perspective, that joke was only considered a joke to lessen (for him) the pain of not being immediately engaged to Xie Lian. He was probably trying to see if Xie Lian was into him or not, gauge how he was doing at winning his lifelong crush's affections. Since Xie Lian has been a depressed wanderer for literal centuries, the concept of getting married and having someone to live with must be something he fundamentally believed wasn't for him. Besides, there was that whole "being the laughingstock of the heavens" thing, so he probably internalized the idea that no one would ever want him.

Hubris was Xie Lian's tragic flaw, and for that he paid with his country, the existences of every place he loved, his family, his people, his temples, his reputation + corresponding godly powers, and most importantly, his confidence. He learned humility the hard way, and now hesitates to trust other people. These are mental health problems Hua Cheng can encourage him to overcome, but ultimately the hard work must be done by Xie Lian.

Another thing working against Hua Cheng is the fact that Xie Lian is so old. Hua Cheng is as well, probably around 790 years to Xie Lian's 800, but that is not what I mean by that. Xie Lian being so old means he's gotten used to meeting people, living with them for a while, and then moving on in life as he wanders away or they kick him out or something. He considers Hua Cheng's presence an unlikely yet welcome one, but doesn't expect him to stay in his life for very long. Unless this is addressed directly in words by Crimson Rain Sought Flower, I foresee Xie Lian continuing to act like Hua Cheng is an extended houseguest when the latter believes "I live here." Even if they do end up moving to another small shrine.

Speaking of shrines, Hua Cheng never promised Xie Lian to build him shrines but did anyway. In contrast, the humans who were saved by Xie Lian end up making empty promises of shrines and such. However, Hua Cheng not only built him a shrine, he made a huge fuckin' Sword Collection just to impress Xie Lian because of the one time he got lectured on swords by Xie Lian. I haven't reread that part recently but I know the gist of it was "swords don't seem like your thing so you should use a scimitar instead that'd work really well for you." Boom: 800 years later Hua Cheng wields a legendary scimitar, E-Ming. In the times when Xian Le was still around, Hua Cheng listened to Xie Lian on everything except "forget about me." Because that would have meant ignoring Xie Lian's earlier request, "make me your reason for living." If Hua Cheng had ignored that previous request, which was filled with genuine concern for his wellbeing, he would have had no reason to live and probably would've met a miserable end. But instead, he determined to follow Xie Lian to the godly realm - by becoming a god himself. Probably a martial god, too. He had to be exactly like his hero.

Speaking of being just like his hero, I have some thoughts on why Hua Cheng didn't accept Xie Lian's offer to live at the Palace. One might think it's primarily because Qi Rong would attempt to kill him again but I bet that was simply a minor extra reason. The main reason he didn't stay at the Palace was bc Xie Lian wasn't there most of the time, either due to Crown Princely duties or cultivation at the mountain temple. Hua Cheng, even as a kid, wanted Xie Lian to pay attention to him. Hearing "live for me" was probably as much of a lifeline because Xie Lian was paying attention to him at that critical moment, an equal reason I believe to the content of the message Xie Lian gave itself. "Being encouraged by someone you look up to is a wonderful feeling" is a message MXTX also put in MDZS, when Wei Wuxian encourages the Cloud Kids during the Yi City arc. And the timing of that encouragement holds just as much weight for Hua Cheng as having his hero give him a reason to keep living.

And that reason, as was evidenced by Hua Cheng's descent from godhood to becoming a Supreme Level Demon (I think they're the strongest/rarest type? There were 4 categories mentioned in the beginning. Below Supreme is Menace), is to become strong enough to protect the love of his life. The first thing Hua Cheng did once he crashed the Volcano Party to become the strongest Demon was challenging all the gods in the heavens to the wager and killing them once they lost and didn't uphold their ends of the bargain. He was full of the same wrath that Xie Lian was filled with during his second ascension- that time Xie Lian ascended to the heavens, started an all-out brawl in Jun Wu's courtroom, and then got kicked/demoted after like 5 mins. So people were making fun of Xie Lian after this event too, and Hua Cheng, filled with righteous anger that NO ONE in the so-called "just" heavens was standing up for the love of his life, decided to take matters into his own hands. (I think one of the two assistants in the beginning mentions Hua Cheng became a Demon Supreme after Xie Lian's second ascension and before his third ascension, but I just didn't remember it until now.)

If Hua Cheng was a meme, he'd be that "I've only known Xie Lian for 800 years, and if anything happened to him I'd kill everyone in the heavens and then Qi Rong."

Because he knows if something happens to HIM, Demon Lord Supreme, there will be a power vacuum and Xie Lian's safety won't be guaranteed. Ok so that's abt it. Sorry to everyone on mobile, I threw a readmore in there but you wouldn't know that as you have to scroll through all of this rambling.

#tian guan ci fu #time for my nightly essay #thanks to mo xiang tong xiu for writing her novels and everyone who takes the time to read these #you're amazing!!#spoilers up to chapter 114 discussed here

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rhiannonfrater · 7 years

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Sansa and Arya - Season 7

So...(insert Spoiler Warning here) one of the most discussed and vilified storylines in Game of Thrones Season 7 is the relationship between Arya and Sansa Stark. People completely lost their minds over this storyline, claimed it was out of character, etc.

I disagree.

Let me explain.

First off, we have two sisters who never really got along.

Sansa was destined to be queen of the Seven Kingdoms due to the arrangement her father made with King Robert. Her future was set in stone and she spent her entire life up to the age of 13/14 preparing for that role. Arya even makes fun of her for always knitting in her room while the other children were playing. It’s no surprise that Sansa dreamed of a fairytale like future with her handsome king in the Southern Kingdom when this was her sole purpose in life from a young age.

Sansa discovered that darkness behind that dream while traveling with Joffery and his family to the Southern Kingdom. She learned quickly she wasn't very well equipped to deal with the cruel games of the court when her dire wolf was put to death. Sansa was an innocent among vultures. Though portrayed as very naïve and a little dumb, she learned to keep her mouth shut and endure. This became very important to her survival, especially after the death of her father.

Sansa holding her tongue and observing the game is what kept her alive while dealing with the very deadly Lannisters. Yes, she was afraid, but she was also wise enough to see where others had gone wrong (like her father) and lost their lives. Observing her, Tyrion realized this truth about her and respected her for it. Cersei even recognized it and started to fear Sansa.

Sansa's ability to learn, adapt, and wait out her enemies for the right time to move is what kept her alive until she escaped the Boltons. This also helped her when dealing with a brother (Jon) who couldn't see past the girl she’d once been and understand her worth as his adviser. She won the Battle of the Bastards and Jon won the throne because of it.

That anyone ever questioned Sansa’s loyalty is surprising to me. Sansa had demonstrated her great love for her family, Winterfell and her people. She'd learned in the Southern Kingdom what was truly important to her. That's why she props up Jon even though she knows she's the better ruler. That is why she questions him when he makes foolish choices that might put him and the Northern Kingdom at risk. She believes in Jon, but she knows he needs her to rule wisely.

Arya, as the second daughter of Ned and Caitlyn Stark, wasn't betrothed to royalty. Political marriage didn't influence her childhood, or shape her life. Her father was indulgent with her, allowing her to pursue (on the sly) her tomboyish interests such as secret sword lessons. Of course, he was probably hoping she'd get it out of her system before she was older, but Ned definitely empowered Arya in a way he never empowered Sansa.

From the moment her father died, Arya was basically on her own. Her wits and her fighting abilities got her through difficult times. Though she did bide her time in trying to kill Tywin Lannister, she wasn't very good at court intrigue and failed in that endeavor. The Hound taught her to fight and be truly ruthless. She learned how it felt to kill. Her time with the Faceless Men taught her how to wield their magic and assassin skills, but also revealed just how strong she really is. She survived against all odds.

Arya's “to kill” list falls by the wayside when she hears her favorite brother is back in Winterfell. She returns home to be reunited with Jon, but instead discovers two other siblings have survived, too. Arya recognizes that Winterfell is not exactly a safe place. The guards definitely need to be disciplined and, more worrisome; Littlefinger is looming in her sister’s shadow.

The conflict between the two sisters that follows made total sense to me. They don't KNOW each other. The last time they interacted, Sansa was besotted with Joffery and her future role as queen while Arya was a strange little sister who wanted to be a knight. Though sisters, they were raised completely different and often saw each other as adversaries. This is evident in Arya’s mocking of Sansa’s handwriting and clothing. Current circumstances surrounding them only seem to reinforce they're the same people they were as children. Sansa is the Lady of Winterfell, a role she likes, and is advising the King of the North. Arya, the weird little sister who wants to be a knight, has a list of people she plans to kill and a bag full of faces. They're both still on totally different paths.

Littlefinger immediately sees the potential of the situation. If he can set the sisters against each other, he can force Sansa to make a move that will destroy her relationship with Jon and end up installing her as Queen of the North with Littlefinger at her side. He immediately puts his plan into motion. Aware that Arya is watching him, he has her find an incriminating letter Sansa sent under duress. This only seems to reinforce to Arya that Sansa has always thought of herself first before the family, and might be doing the same where it concerns Jon.

Arya confronts her sister, demanding to know the truth. Some people argued this is out of character. I don't. Arya is not one to mince words. Sansa married two enemies of the Starks and was in the Southern Kingdom for a very long time. She's learned to play the Game of Thrones better than anyone else in her family. Arya wants to make sure that Sansa is on Jon's side because she disagrees with Sansa's way of ruling in the aftermath of Jon's departure. Her sister is more willing to let opposing forces speak out and then deal with them instead of ruling with an iron hand. Arya wants for Sansa to crack down on everyone, and sees her reluctance. Does this mean Sansa is undermining Jon so she can be Queen?

Of course, Sansa IS on Jon's side, but she's frustrated that he doesn't value her advice. Sansa saw her father and brother die because they made the same mistakes Jon is making. Jon acknowledges she's probably right, but still leaves his Kingdom. Of course, Arya doesn't understand any of this and misreads this internal conflict.

Their argument on the balcony is all about their past. It's all about how they were both powerless to save their father. It's about their terrible lives after his death and how they have played very different roles. Sansa is right when she tells Arya she wouldn't have survived what Sansa endured. Arya's anger and outbursts would have gotten her killed very quickly. Of course, the opposite is true, too. Sansa would not have survived being a street urchin or ended up a trained assassin. Arya is angry at her sister for not acting as she would have. Sansa is angry at Arya for not understanding what she endured. This all makes sense. This is their OLD childhood arguments rehashed.

Littlefinger swoops in afterward to try to make Sansa even more afraid of her sister, and I think it worked to some degree until one pivotal moment.

With the door to her bedroom open behind her, Arya confronts a horrified Sansa who just discovered the bag full of faces. She proposes they play a game.

"I ask you a question, and you try to make lies sound like the truth," Arya says (this is IMPORTANT). "If you fool me, you win. If I catch you in a lie, you lose."

Instead of answering Arya's question, a frightened Sansa asks Arya a question. This is VERY IMPORTANT. Now Arya must LIE to Sansa and make it sound like the truth. So Arya LIES. She basically threatens her sister's life and threatens to take her face and wear her pretty dresses. (Arya has made it clear in the past how much she hates Sansa's clothing). This is her way of saying to her sister "I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY."

During the telling of this lie, Arya takes the dagger that Littlefinger gave Bran. We're supposed to see this as her threatening Sansa, but she's not. She's telling Sansa a LIE, with the door open behind her, and holding Littlefinger's dagger. She ends her LIE by handing her sister the dagger, handle first, then walks out leaving Sansa looking relieved.

Arya leaves the door open because LIttlefinger has spies everywhere. Their confrontation will be reported to him. But she LIES to Sansa and hands her the dagger as a sign she is lying. She hands it to Sansa with the blade pointed at herself. Littlefinger is aiming his dagger (manipulations) at Arya.

Remember what Sansa said to Bran when she saw the dagger Littlefinger had given him? The dagger that started the war of the Five Kings?

"He's not a generous man. He wouldn't give you something unless he expected something back."

This is Sansa's wake up call. Littlefinger is taking the normal conflict between two sister's getting to know each other again and making it something more. Arya realizes that Littlefinger is playing them off each other and gives Sansa the clues. Sansa then begins piecing it all together. Sansa has had Littlefinger's number since last season. She’s been giving him the evil eye since before Jon became King. She has known Littlefinger is trying to manipulate her all along and held him at arm's length. In fact, before he started trying to play Arya and Sansa off each other, Sansa had been downright rude and contemptuous to Littlefinger.

After the Lie Game with Arya, everything Littlefinger says to Sansa confirms her suspicions. She says as much during the trial, repeating his words back to him. "Sometimes when I'm trying to understand a person's motives, I play a little game. I assume the worst."

Littlefinger instantly realizes that Sansa saw right through him. Especially when she finishes, by saying, "What is the worst reason you have for turning me against my sister?"

By the end of the season, it’s clear the sisters have put their past behind them and created a new sisterly bond. They get each other now. Arya acknowledges she would have never survived like Sansa. Sansa has played the Game of Thrones and has won over some worthy adversaries.

Which brings me to people consistently underestimating Sansa throughout the show. She was a child when the show started and now she's a young woman. She has had years of learning from the best players of the Game of Thrones.

And as she said herself, "I'm a slow learner,it's true. But I learn."

#game of thrones #got meta #sansa stark #Arya Stark #long post

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smorebin · 7 years

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Take My Wasabi| Pt 1

Okay so this whole thing is based on exactly what the title says “Take My Wasabi and it is dedicated to the lovely @taecup who misread a text for this. But the line hasn’t even been said yet so forgive me. It should definitely be in the next chapter. So enjoy

Genre: Fluff/Angst

Word Count: 8.4k (MOM YOU SHOULD BE PROUD OF ME)

Warnings: -

Summary: What happens when Yuta beats Doyoung to the draw, once again?

“Just give the poor guy a chance.” Your friend told you as you complained about how the school’s new international playboy, Yuta Nakamoto, chose you as his next target. For what she saw it as, it was just some cute guy pining over you, not the self-conceited jerk dropping hearts like they were dead flies, who though he was king of the campus. To be fair though, she didn’t attend the same school.

“But it’s not like that, he is the only guy in a five mile radius that makes me want to punch out all four of his front teeth, but he’d still probably look good so what’s the point.” You lied down next to her on the bed.

“See, you think he is good looking!” She shouted in triumph.

“Of course I can’t deny someone’s physical attractiveness. But, I can detest their personal likability as much as I want. “ You turned your head on your pillow on your pillow so you were facing her.

“I still don’t see the problem with a measly date. Let the guy treat you then be done with him.” She raised her eyebrows.

“I’m not as dishonest as you, pabo.” You flicked her forehead. “I’m not going to go out with anyone unless I genuinely like them.”

Well, that was a week ago. Here you were standing in front of your locker looking at the large bouquet of flowers sitting inside of it, with a smirking Yuta behind the open door. Shutting the door on the bouquet, you turned to face the Japanese man. Surprisingly, he quickly stood up and interlocked his hands behind his back. Most of the times he came by your locker to ask you out (for the, you lost count after the 57th, time) he was leaning back, smirking, thinking he had finally caught you in his trap of devious smiles and pretty gifts. But this time he seemed actually attentive to your answer, maybe that’s why you said what you said next.

“Downtown movie theaters, 6 pm, I’ll buy tickets, you handle food and drinks. I have to be home by 10 so don’t make it last longer than that.”

That was 2 days ago. Now you were sitting in front of the theater wit the tickets in hand, waiting for him to show up. Glancing down at your watch you noticed Yuta was already fifty minutes late, and for some reason you seemed slightly disappointed. Maybe because it was your first time out with a man excluding your family members. Maybe because it was your first time being stood up. Maybe it was because part of you was hoping Yuta Nakamoto was serious about pursuing you. But you didn’t give up hope on the black haired man showing up until he was actually two and a half hours late. Finally you went home and fell asleep with an even worse impression of Yuta Nakamoto than you did to begin with.

The next day at school you wished to act like nothing happened when you opened your locker to find no grand gift or statement of apology. To be honest, you didn’t even want to open the envelope you found sitting on top of all your books. You knew it would be a simple letter explaining how he had to use you to win some bet he couldn’t stand backing down from, or worse, watched you wait for him because he was just satisfied in knowing he won you over.

Just as you were about to open it and face the truth of the situation, Doyoung came by and jokingly slammed your door shut. Looking down he saw you holding the unopened envelope in your hands. He also noticed the apprehensive look plastered across your features. He quickly grabbed the envelope and turned away from you. Once the paper left your hands, it snapped you out of your inner turmoil.

Rounding him, you reached for the envelope, which he help well above both of your heads. “You jerk! Give it back Doyoung!” You cried, hitting his chest.

“Why? It’s not like there’s a confession in here or anything. It’s probably just your test scores which you’ve never stopped bragging about so now I am just going to be the one to see them first.” He chuckled at your child-like behavior of slapping his chest.

“They aren’t test scores Doyoung! Give it back!” You jumped trying to reach the small package. Still he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Anyways, why would it matter if he found out, it’s not like he had purchase on you, much less a crush, if anything at all. He would just be upset that you gave into Yuta’s trap, right? Even after that he would probably sit on top of the school walls with you and let you rant about how much you hated Yuta Nakamoto, right? So, you gave up trying to grasp the letter. Once he noticed you bringing down your hands, he did the same, still hesitant that you would try and grab it. He finally let the envelope drop in front of his face. He quickly ripped it open and pulled out the contents.

His eyes widened when he realized what it was,and as he continued to read, his spirits seemed to fall to the point he couldn’t continue reading. Doyoung’s arms dropped to his side and he let the paper fall from his hands onto the floor, without a world he turned and walked away from you. As he seemed really affected by the contents of the letter, you cautiously picked it up.

“Dear Y/N,

It’s my fault. It really is. I was an idiot, and one that let you follow him into this. I saw you waiting there for me last night and I couldn’t do what I had said I would. To tell you the truth, and you probably already assume this, but I made I bet to prove I could get you within a week’s time. But seeing you waiting for me, I couldn’t bear to play with your emotions even though my name is practically the brand of this sort of game at this point.

I hope you didn’t wait too long, for me that is. You should’ve at least enjoyed the movie without my presence there. I’m sure it was a great one. If you didn’t maybe we could start over and I ask you out properly. But I guess I will understand if you want me to never talk to you again. I hope that isn’t the case though, I couldn’t stand having you ignore me over this.

Just know that I truly like you Y/N, I REALLY like you. But I have no expectations for you to like me back, not in the slightest. With my reputation, and with what I have put you through these past couple of days, and this letter right now, I probably seem like the biggest douchebag in the entire world, don’t I?

Since this is long already, and I am probably making the biggest fool of myself for repeating the same concept of apology over and over again, I want to work up the courage to apologize to you in person. Right now, I think I would make a bigger fool of myself that way than through this letter. Just… meet me under that big cherry blossom tree you read in every chance you get, this way I can apologize in front of you.

Love,

The guy who seriously screwed up.”

You were about to throw the letter into the trash when a girl, maybe a grade two, came up to you.

“Doyoung… Doyoung-sunbae… Yuta-sunbae… courtyard... fight….” She let out between labored breaths.

“Wait, Doyoung is fighting with Yuta right now?” She shook her head violently, still gasping for air.

You quickly left her behind and ran to the courtyard, only to see Doyoung having Yuta pinned against the wall. It was no secret, the rivalry between the two, but it was merely only desire to beat the other in anything they did, but to see the usually docile and quiet Doyoung have his opponent pinned roughly against the wall, Yuta must have definitely done something to set him off.

As you got closer, pushing your way through the forming crowd, you were able to make out parts of their heated argument.

“You knew. You knew and you still thought that it was okay to play your stupid game.” Doyoung spit in his face.

“It’s not like the player I was after was yours for the taking in the first place.” Yuta cocked and eyebrow and shot back at him. He didn’t even seem fazed by the high possibility of Doyoung raising his fist to have it collide with his face.

“There’s this thing called respect, asshole, and to know your place. You knew what I was going to do and you just had to take the chance and screw it up.” He jabbed his finger into Yuta’s chest, punctuating the last three words.

“That’s the price you pay for being a coward.” He smirked and rolled his head to the side. “At least I have the guts to go after what I want, not worrying about what was in my way. She’s so naive, I knew a couple bouquets and well written letters would do the trick. Plus, she would look good on my arm, don’t you think? That comment broke Doyoung’s last straw and his free hand flew up and landed down right on Yuta’s cheek, tossing his head to the side. With the change of angle, it brought you into Yuta’s line of vision and something changed in his eyes. He suddenly jerked back up and looked into Doyoung’s eyes. “I like her,I really do. It’s just really fun to get on your nerves. But the thing is, I’m sure she’s heard what this fight is about at this point, and, is she even aware of your feelings for her? Or do you just stay in the friendzone because you don’t want to lose her?”

“She’s got a lot going for her right now, much less a boyfriend, so I keep my distance, which I advise that you do the same, or else the red mark will turn into a black eye, understood?” Doyoung backed off Yuta, letting him stand on his own without his back pressed painfully against a wall. For the second time today, Doyoung walked away from an important scene. Your first thought was to run after him, but Yuta slid against the wall and held his cheek after the crowd had dispersed.

Doyoung was never able to control his strength.

You walked cautiously over to where Yuta’s figure was leaned against the wall. “Did he hit you hard?” You crouched down to his level.

He quickly straightened up and looked you in the eye. “I’m fine, why aren’t you chasing after him?” He glanced in the direction Doyoung walked off in.

“He needs time to cool down, do you want to go to the nurse?” You asked, turning the tables back to him.

“I’ll be fine.” He smiled and poked his cheek to prove it, which ultimately backfired, once he poked it, his face contorted into a wince and small whine left his lips.

“You’re going to the nurse.” You stood up and held out your hand for him to grab. Once he had stood up himself, he didn’t let go of your hand.

“You’re old enough to walk on your own, your not a kindergartener nor are your legs or hand injured.” You pulled your hand gently out of his grasp.

“Sorry, I just thought you were showing some sort of emotion for me.” He let his head hang down.

“I am, it’s called empathy, you just got beat up by my best friend, I’m apologizing for him.” You said, and continued walking the way to the nurse’s office.

Catching up to you, he asked “So what made you two become friends in the first place?”

“Simple really, I was new in town and he was the goody-two-shoes of the block, he was the person who came and helped my family unload the moving truck, and invited me to hang out with him, and walk to school with him, he showed me around the campus, you know, the whole nine yards. He was the one kid in class that was willing to be nice to the ‘foreign kid’, and I really appreciated that.

“Wow, sounds like you go way back.” He muttered. Just then you both walked into your destination. The nurse looked up at the both of you.

“He ran into a door as it was opening from the other side and his cheek is red and still hurts, can you give him ice please?”

“Sure hun, just have him go sit over there.” She got up from the desk where she was sitting and rushed over to the freezer with ice and you made Yuta sit down. While she was busy preparing the ice pack, he turned to you.

“Why did you tell her that I was ran into a door when you clearly know that I was in a fight?”

“Did you want the demerit points? It would probably only further you to your suspension.” You gave him the ‘you’re an idiot’ look.

“Oh.” Was his only answer. Just then you phone ringed. Pulling it from your pocket, you saw a text from Doyoung.

Hey, can you meet me at the playground? You know, right behind the big slides?

You quickly texted him back.

Sure, we probably need to talk anyways.

Looking up from your phone, Yuta gave you a curious look. “He asked you to meet him didn’t he?”

“Yeah, I have to go, stay here till the redness goes away okay.” You called out to the nurse that you had to leave.

You rushed to the playground that was on the opposite side of the street that the school was on. You remembered when some older kids were picking on you behind the slides and Doyoung came and punched the first guy square in the face, since then, it had been the place that you and Doyoung would meet whenever something was on the other person’s mind.

You approached the slides and you saw Doyoung drawing what looked like miscellaneous patterns in the sand but when you got closer you realized it was hearts, but when he noticed you walking towards him, he quickly erased them from the sand.

You sat down next to him and said the first thing that was on your mind. “Why did you hit him?”

“Because he found out something he shouldn’t have and he decided that it was okay to act on something that wasn’t his decision.” He glared down at the ground.

“Come on Doyoung, I’m your best friend, you seriously don’t think that I know that it is more than something than that? All you two usually do is bark nonsense at each other. I’ve never seen one of you two make the move to bite until today.” You put your hand on his shin. “If you need to vent about how much of an idiot and how clueless he is and how he thinks he rules the world, then I am here to hear you out.”

“It’s not that Y/N!” He almost shouted. He rested his head in his hands, his fingers slightly pulling at his hair. “Listen, I… I can’t tell you what set me off, yet. I can’t tell you yet. It’s not right for me too with what has already happened.”

“Doyoung, I was there when you had him pinned up against the wall, I know it was more than something you can hold in. A player, a game? Your’s for the taking? What was all that about.” You asked him as he lifted his head.

“Does it even matter? It’s not like he hasn’t already taken that away from me too.” He looked at you. “Why didn’t you run after me after I left if you were there?” He gazed into your eyes.

“I took the guy, who’s head you sent reeling, to the nurse’s office, I know how you are, you needed time to cool down before you could talk to anyone.”

“He deserved to go reeling.” He shook his head.

“Doyoung, you keep telling me that, yet you won’t tell me what is actually going on, I can’t help you if I don’t even know what’s wrong in the first place.” You pleaded with him.

“Do you really want to know what’s wrong? You promise me that it won’t change anything between us?” He started into your eyes, with the sincerity and slight frustration in them, it almost looked like he was gazing into your soul, looking for the truth within it.

“When has anything you told me come between our friendship? You know I would never give it up for anything in the world.” You gazed straight back at him.

“Maybe that’s the problem.” He sighed, not dropping the gaze he so intensely held.

“That I don’t want anything to become in between us?”

“That you only think of me as a friend after I have tried to tell you how much I love you countless times, and after that I tried to hide those feelings so that you don’t disappear from my life forever and that I try and tell myself that I am okay seeing you be with other people but when I read that letter I thought that I finally lost my chance and what was worse was that I was talking to someone about that I was going to finally confess my feelings and that jerk overheard me and that was when this whole game started and knowing that he was just trying to play you was even worse and I had no choice but to sit back and watch. I just wanted to be the one to finally hold your hand and make you happy and take you out to that stupid little sushi place you love so much and have study dates and you force me to work and why didn’t I have the guts to tell you before all of this started?” He let out all in one breath, running his sentences together.

After listening and processing all he said, your hand slowly dropped from the place where it rested on his shin.

“See, I shouldn’t have told you, I should’ve just protected you from getting hurt on the sidelines, I should’ve done something when I saw Yuta first trying to win you over, I should’ve-” You cut him off.

“You should’ve told me a long time ago Doyoung, but, I… I need time to think all of this through. So much has happened this week, this conversation isn’t over, our friendship isn’t over, and… I just need a breather okay?”

“You… you aren’t turning down my confession are you?” His head finally dropped, breaking the stare down that was taking place.

“I don’t know what I am doing right now, okay? I’m not leaving you alone though.” You started standing up, gently throwing out your hand for him to take. Once he grabbed it, he stood up with you, also not letting go of it, making him the second person to do that to you today. For some reason, you didn’t make a move to release yourself from his grip. Something about his hand holding yours had a different effect than Yuta’s did. Doyoung’s enveloped your’s completely, something you hadn’t noticed before, but it felt comfortable. Yuta’s was more proportioned to yours, seemingly easier to interlock fingers but, it was more awkward on your part.

You started leading him back to the school campus, and once you were both back inside the school grounds, the bell had rung, signaling the beginning of break. During this time you would usually go meet up with Doyoung under the large cherry blossom tree and you would force him to read to you, but you didn’t want to go there anymore, at least not today, instead you directed him to the wall on the far side of the school.

“We just came back to campus, you aren’t planning on ditching the whole day are you?” He looked questioningly at the wall.

“Nope, we are going to sit up there and you are going to listen to me rant about all that is wrong in the world and not talk once.” You chuckled.

“And if I don’t want to?” He poked your side.

“Then I guess we can’t be friends anymore.” You joked back. Just then, you reached the wall. You first threw your backpack up and over as the land was only slightly shorter than wall on the other side. After Doyoung had thrown his backpack over as well, he latticed his fingers together and let you put your foot inside of it, helping you scale the wall. Though it was still awkward between you, it was such a routine that was even more awkward without it.

Once you were sitting up on the ledge, he back up a little bit and raced to the wall, jumping at the last second so his hands could brace the edge and push himself up.

“So what do you want to talk about? We have a full hour.” He looked down at his watch.

“I don’t know, I was going to rant to you about Nakamoto but I’m deciding against that right now. I was going to talk about us but I’m still processing everything so that is out of the question. We could talk about dramas but you are probably tired of hearing me fawn over Song Joong Ki and Park Hyung Sik so I will let you be on that subject.” You groaned. “Why does this have to be so hard, it was so much easier when I was ignorant to the world.”

“Ignorance is bliss, but bliss is short lived.” Doyoung commented, leaning back on his hands, facing you. “Speaking of short lived bliss.” He glared down at the dark haired boy walking towards your direction.

Looking down, you noticed who he was talking about, Yuta was walking towards the both you, but would stop every few seconds, hesitating, as if thinking about what to say when he arrived. The first thing you thought of was, he really is cute when he is hesitant, but you quickly shook the thoughts away as he finally approached you. Looking up at you, he started to blush, bringing back your previous thoughts.

“Would you mind talking with me?” He asked, completely ignoring Doyoung’s presence, which was probably better off for the both of them.

“I’m kind of busy right now Yuta.”

Doyoung, actually cut in, “Go with him, it’s not like we were getting anywhere up here.” He turned his head away from you as he spoke. For some reason it pissed you off that he was acting like this. You understood that this was how he reacted and processed information. That he would give everyone the cold shoulder and focus on other things until he knew what he wanted to do to try and solve the problem at hand. But it really pissed you off that the one time that you were willing to try a work through something with him involving confrontation, and especially confession, that he wanted to act like a betrayed middle schooler with hormonal issues. It pissed you off that he blew off the lid at not only Yuta but you as well, without trying to clean up the mess afterwards, without thinking about what would happen before he acted. It pissed you off that after confessing, he didn’t even seem to want to hear your answer.

“Fine.” You replied curtly, jumping down from the wall, without waiting for one of them to help you down.

Once your feet set foot on solid ground again, Yuta looked down and you and smiled “Thanks for talking with me.”

“Like he said, it’s not like I am getting anywhere with him right now anyways.” You glanced up and Doyoung, who was still turned away from the both of you.

“At least he is still your friend… I mean, you practically hated me before this, and I’m sure you hate me even more know.” Yuta casted his gazed to his shoes.

“I don’t… I don’t hate you okay? Everything is just confusing. I don’t know who to believe any more and as much as I want to work this out and then leave it in the past, it seems to keep coming back to haunt me and it’s only day one. I’m honestly just so confused right now.”

“How about I make it simple then.” He asked, definitely more courageous than he was mere seconds ago.

“And how can you do that Yuta?”

“I like you. Doyoung likes you. Choose.” He said rather flatly.

“How does that make this any more simple Yuta?” You shook your head. “It only makes it more complicated. Much less that I can’t seem to escape either of you.” You said, when your conscience cut in. But there is one that you don’t mind sticking around. You quickly shook yourself of the thoughts.

“How does it make it more complicated? I told you flat out what was going on, and have confessed my feelings to you over three times and you still can’t make a decision?” His eyes pleaded with you.

“Do you even understand that no matter how many times you tell someone that you like them, that doesn’t mean that they will like you back? Do you realize that even after telling someone something like that three different times, when someone else only told you once, it doesn’t mean that you automatically win the fight? Do you realize that fighting in front of the person you are trying to win affection from makes you both seem worse in her eyes? Do you realize that people you already had connections to beforehand are the people you are going to stick by in the end, no matter the decision you make?”

“But I did have a connection to you before all of this happened…” He trailed off.

“A connection you broke three years ago Yuta, grow up. Doyoung has been with me since I moved to Korea, he has been with me on the first day to every school I have been to. He has been with me through every heartbreak, including your own. And no matter how much he pisses me off and gets on my nerves and fights with people and hurts himself, he has still been the one to be there at the end of the day and listen to every stupid problem or rant I have told him. So what connection do you think wins this round.”

You picked up your backpack that was previously on the ground and pushed past the tall man without another word. Maybe it was best to avoid both of them until you were able to sort yourself out.

With 30 minutes left to the break, you walked over to a bench and sat down, resting your head in your hands, trying not to think about anything in the moment led you to think about everything.

Yuta was the new, shy kid at school during freshman year, he barely spoke Korean and he didn’t understand certain honorifics and such, it was hard for him in school as it was and the learning curve of a different language challenged him even more. You understood him, you related to him, you pitied him, and that was your biggest downfall.

When he first came to the school, he was barely fluent in Korean, much less English, which was the class period you had shared with him. You were fluent in both Korean and English, coming from a family that spoke English but moved to Korea while you were still young. This made you the prime candidate to be his English tutor, which at the time, you were more than willing to be.

He was ignorant, he didn’t understand the importance of being able to speak English.

~Flashback~

“Yuta… can you please just explain to me the word ‘syntax’?” You practically begged him as he leaned back in the chair.

“What does it even matter? I suck at Korean, so what makes you think I can even come close to understanding English?” He asked, letting the legs of the chair fall back to the floor with a bang.

“It matters because it is practically required if you want to find a liveable job in Korea!” You let out an exasperated sigh, you had been fighting with him for the past twenty-five minutes, still getting nowhere.

“It’s useless then, I plan on moving back to Osaka as soon as I can get out of this hellish place.”

“You won’t be able to do that if you don’t pass this English class, Yuta.” One more comment and you were leaving the empty classroom and telling Mr.Choi that he would have to find someone else willing to tutor Yuta.

“What do you want to do once you can leave this hell hole?” The question took you off guard.

“If I answer it, will you answer my question?” He nodded eagerly. “I want to be a linguist. I know three languages, learning a fourth, and I love history, so I thought it would be a good career.” You sighed. “Now what is the definition of ‘syntax’?”

“It’s the study of the correct form of a sentence in English, where certain phrases and words go within it.” He answered with definity, slightly pissing you off that he wouldn’t answer the question to begin with.

After you went through the rest of lesson and you were about to leave, he called out after you. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

Turning back around, you glanced at the smirk on his face. “What kind of a deal?”

“A simple one, really. Every day that you tutor me, I get to ask one question, and of course you have the right to deny answering it, but then I get to ask a different one. After I ask the question, and get an answer I am able to believe, I’ll listen and try my hardest in every lesson you give me.”

“I think you have yourself a deal, Yuta Nakamoto.” You smiled, turning back around to leave.”

~End of Flashback~

That’s how it was, every day you would walk in and set down the materials he had to learn that day, and before you started working, he would ask a sometimes random question, other times building on questions he had asked before. To be honest, you started enjoying him wanting to get to know more about you, and you started asking him similar questions.

From there it was appropriate to say a weird sorts-of relationship, playful but benefiting to each of you. And one day Yuta decided to finally act on what was going on between you and asked you out to a movie date, of course you said yes. To be honest, you were more excited than you should have been, which was why what happened next hurt more than it should have. You were waiting outside of the theatre, waiting for Yuta to show up, when out of the corner of your eye you saw a familiar flop of midnight hair. Turning to your left you saw Yuta laughing with another girl, with his arm slung around her shoulder, with him kissing her cheek before you started walking in the direction of the theatre, leading you to assume he was leaving one date to head to another.

You quickly left the scene and made up a quick story to try and explain why you stood him up when you talked to him the next day. And you did, the worst is that he didn’t seem even the slightest bit of upset when you lied through gritted teeth of your brother breaking his arm and having to go to the hospital with him, he blew it off and said that you could make it up another time, not like you would make the same mistake again.

The next day you went to Mr. Choi and asked him to excuse you from being Yuta’s tutor. Luckily, during the time that you had been working with him, he managed to raise his grade to a passing one. The one person who was there for you during the foolish heartbreak you felt, was Doyoung. He even threatened to go beat him to a pulp but you wouldn’t let him. If you remembered correctly, that was what started to horrible rivalry between the two. Before that, Doyung was happy that you had found a friend in a foreigner like he had with you, but the second that he had learned what happened, he swore that he could never look at Yuta the same. One could say that, that day was the beginning of Yuta’s famous playboy reputation. It seemed like the language barrier wasn’t stopping him from fooling everyone.

Now here you were, sitting on a lonely park bench, trying to figure out your feelings for the person who broke you heart in a foolish situation 3 years ago, and the person who helped you through much worse than just that. Your heart said one while your mind was somehow still split between the two. Just as you were trying to force yourself to come to a decision, the bell for homeroom rang.

Heading to class, you decided to let your lessons consume your mind until you had to force yourself to come to conclusion. After throwing yourself into your last 3 lessons, you left campus as soon as you could, not waiting for Doyoung like you usually would.

This lasted for about 2 weeks, ignoring both of them,heading the opposite direction if you saw them heading your way, ducking out of sight if you noticed them too late. It wasn’t just Yuta or Doyoung that you were ignoring, your family started noticing it too, how you would lock yourself up in your room, no longer the happy virus that always brought a smile to their faces after a long day at work. One day, your mom entered your room to see you with your knees to your chest, arms wrapped around them, staring at an old polaroid of you and Doyoung. You were on his back, arms wrapped around his neck, legs about his waist. He was doubled over in half laughter, a fourth pain from you suddenly jumping on his back, and a fourth surprise. You both had large smiles on your faces, all because it was your first chance to go on vacation together. When you think about it, this was one of happiest memories period. He really was your rock.

“Honey, what’s going on?” She asked, sitting down along the bed post with you. “Something’s obviously bothering you, I haven’t seen Doyoung around in quite a while, and that’s not like him… is he okay?”

“I don’t know..” You sighed, twirling the polaroid between your fingers. “I haven’t talked to him for two weeks.” You said, glancing towards her. You heard a small gasp escape her lips.

“That… that’s not normal, Y/N. Usually I can’t get you to shut up about something he said or did, now you haven’t even talked to him in two weeks?” She scooted closer to you, “did you two fight?”

“Not… not necessarily?” You leaned back. “It was more like he punched a guy at school, then confessed to me, then tried to talk to me, then the same guy came to talk to me and he kinda shut down.”

“Can I ask you one thing?”

“When has my answer ever stopped you in the first place?” You smiled.

“Never.” She stuck her tongue out. “You like Doyoung, don’t you?”

“Of course I like Doyoung, he is my best friend! He has been there for me through thick and thin. He has beat up bullies for me, and been beaten up by bullies for me, he helped when when I still didn’t quite understand the language. He bought me countless lunches when I foolishly forgot mine. He’s tutored me when I didn’t understand a concept. He has really done everything for me. He even paid fully for a vacation for us last year. I even remember how many times he turned me down to hang out because he had work, I was so upset, then he surprised me with that once he had paid it all off.”

“No, I’m asking you if you are interested in him as a man, not as a friend. Because it really seems like you are, and during the beginning of secondary school for you both, your father and I were actually convinced for a long while that you two were dating.” She let off a weak laugh.

“I guess we do seem that way, but why am I only viewing it like this now? Why can’t it go back to the way it was when I was obliviously happy for way things were between us?”

“Maybe because it’s time that you acknowledge what you felt for such a long time?” She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, look around your room, there’s not a crack or crevice that doesn’t have his influence in some way. You even have his clothes here because of how often he stays over. The amount of photos pasted on that corkboard is more than your father and I have taken in over 30 years of marriage, you have even more on your laptop. A selfie of you two is your lockscreen and another one is your wallpaper. He PAID for a vacation for the two of you to Jeju Island, and even asked me if it was okay if he took you alone. When he was raising money for the trip, you went and sat idly behind the clerk’s counter for hours on end because ‘you didn’t want him to be lonely’. Honey, you two have acted like a couple for years.”

You smiled looking over at the photos of the two of you in Jeju Island last summer, from candid photos of the each of you, to silly selfies, to posing on top of Hallasan Mountain after reaching Baengnokdam Lake. On the photo in the center, after you had reached Baengnokdam Lake, you had stopped a fellow hiker to take a photo of the both of you.

~Flashback~

“Doyoung… how much farther?” You had probably been complaining for the past 10 minutes.

“Y/N! You were the one who always told me that you wanted to hike Hallasan and now you are asking me how much farther?” He laughed heartily, stepping off the trail so both of you could take a break.

“You didn’t have to surprise me with a trip to Jeju! You should have warned me so that I could work on my fitness beforehand...” You trailed off, pouting.

“It’s all steady ground from here on, probably another 5 minutes.” He smiled.

“Ahhhh, no matter how much I complain, I really wish it would never end.” You turned around to look across the island, you closed your eyes, breathing in the fresh air, still not used to the difference from Guri.

“Such the weird one you are.” He ruffled your hair before you opened your eyes, you heard the click of a shutter.

“What did you take a picture of?” You turned back around from the scenery.

“You.”

“Why? I’m sweaty and ugly right now.” You frowned. He waited for the camera to deposit and started to shake it so the photo would show.

“You looked fine.” He shook his head, chuckling. Once he had finished shaking the polaroid, he put it in his backpack and stepped back onto the trail. Not long after you both continued with the hike, you reached Baengnokdam Lake.

“Waaahhhh. It’s so pretty, Doyoung!” You smiled, leaning against the railing that encompassed the crater’s edge. You thought he mumbled something under his breath, but wasn’t quite able to catch it. “We need a picture of us together!” You glanced over at him, leaning on the rail by your side.

“We can take a selfie?” He offered, pulling both of your phones and the camera from his backpack.

“No, I want a proper photo, a cute one, we just need to find someone else to take it.” You snatched the camera from his grasp. “I want to remember this moment the right way, not with some blurry selfie that cuts out half of our faces.”

Glancing around, you noticed a middle aged woman who just finished taking photos of what appeared to be her family, walking over, you tapped her on the shoulder. “Hello, I was wondering if you wanted me to take a photo of you with your family for you? Then afterwards maybe you could take a photo of us?” You pointed behind yourself at Doyoung, who was already approaching the scene.

“Oh thank you dear! I would love to help take a photo of you two together.” She smiled and handed you her camera, then rushing over to her family, straightening her kids clothes and grouping them back together. After five or so pictures, she left the group again and asked you where you wanted the photo.

“Do you mind if we take one overlooking the lake and then another one overlooking the rest of Jeju?”

“Not at all, dear.” She smiled warmly again, moving back to let Doyoung slide in next to you. Once he was closer, he wrapped his arm around you, pulling you into his chest. The woman quickly snapped a photo, then let you move to the other side of the railing that overlooked the rest of Jeju. This time Doyoung moved behind you and wrapped his arms around your neck and rested his head on your’s. After she had snapped another photo, he moved from behind you and bowed to her, thanking her for taking the time to take the photos.

“No problem, I love seeing young couples having fun and getting active. Plus such cute couples at that.” She smiled and nudged Doyoung’s arm.

“Oh, we’re not together, ma’am.” He blushed, looking back at you, gauging your reaction.

When you blushed as well, upon hearing her comment, he quickly bowed again and thanked her once more and she turned around and retreated back to her family after apologizing for assuming you were a couple.

“I’m sorry about that… maybe I shouldn’t have done those poses.” Doyoung looked down at his feet.

“You’re fine, Doyoung. Plus the photos are super cute, so who cares?” You went up and hugged him reassuringly. No matter the strength Doyoung possessed, he never seemed to show it around you unless absolutely necessary. It was like he mellowed out when you were around.

“You sure?” He looked down at you after you pulled away from the hug.

“Positive.” You stared back up at him until a thought came to your mind. “I’ll race you back down!” You shouted, turning around and running. Soon enough though, he was hot on your heels and a few moments later he had passed ahead of you. Looking over his shoulder, he stuck his tongue out, trying to egg you on. Not watching where he was going, he tripped over a rock causing him to fall to the ground with a loud thud. You quickly rushed over to him and when you stooped down to check to see if he was seriously injured he burst out laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” You cried, looking at him incredulously.

“I honestly don’t know.” He continued laughing, looking down at his ankle.

“I can’t believe you.” You said, tenderly grabbing his ankle, touching certain spots to try and get a reaction out of him. “Does it hurt?”

“I think my ass and my pride hurts more than my ankle Y/N.” He chuckled again. “Now come on and help me up, I need to finished beating you in this race.” He stuck his hand out for you to help him up off the ground.

“Um, no. We are not racing anymore, what if you fall again and hurt yourself?” You hoisted him up off the ground with both arms.

“Always such a worry wort, always trying to ruin my sense of adventure.” He pouted in feigned disgust.

“Ya, me being a worry wort is probably why you are still alive today. Remember if it was during the Joseon period, you would have to marry me.” You joked.

“Maybe I will now that you mentioned it, dear life saver.” He joked back, and before you knew it, he lifted you in a bridal position and started walking back down the mountain.

“What the heck do you think you are doing?!” You asked him, banging your fists on his chest.

Not even flinching once, he responded. “Instead of marrying thy fair maiden, I must at least repay her for her deeds, for which I will carry her down the treacherous mountain.” In a horribly fake accent, too. As you continued to bang on his chest, he didn’t even flinch, and continued walking down the trail. Eventually, you decided to give up and let him carry you the rest of the way down. You both received some side-eye glances from other hikers, awww from older men and women and one little girl even tugged on Doyoung’s jacket asking if he was a prince. Of course he had to play along and told her that he had to carry the beautiful maiden down the mountain before he could call her his own, and you did too, which seemed to make her day and as she ran back to her family, she smiled bright, which was exactly what he had hoped for. Finally, and hour or two later, he reached the bottom of the trail and let you stand on your own feet again.

“You are the cheesiest person I know, you know that right?” You glanced at him as you both walked back to the motorcycle he rented just for the occasion, which reminded you of all the money he saved up so he could take you on the trip. “Tell me again why we are taking this trip.”

“I don’t know really, I just remember us always talking about how we wanted to visit Jeju together and this seemed like the perfect time and your parents were okay with it and so were mine, so I started saving money and here we are.”

“Okay, it’s official, you really are the cheesiest person I know.” You laughed as he handed you the helmet. “But it’s gonna mess up my hair!”

“And I don’t care!” He chuckled. “The safety of my best friend is more important than whether or not she looks good with helmet hair afterwards. You would think you would learn by now with how much you ride with me back in Guri.” He shook his head playfully while he slipped his own helmet on.

“You’re lucky I value my own life as well.” He chuckled as you sat behind him on the motorcycle, wrapping your arms around his waist as he revved the engine.

~End of Flashback~

You were snapped out of your daydreaming because of your mom yelling up the stairs that there was someone at the door for you. It wasn’t Doyoung, because he would know better than to come talk to your right now, knowing that you both needed space before you talked about what happened. It wasn’t your only other true friend because she was away visiting family in Gwangju, which was 4 hours away, and that’s by flight. So that left only one other person, and it was the one person you wanted to see the least, at least you had a nagging want for Doyoung to come by and try to apologize.

“Tell him I’ll be right down.” You called, collecting your thoughts together as you walked down the stairs. Once you reached the front door, it was easy to see the mop of silky black hair through the crack made by your mom trying to keep the dogs from running out the door. When you approached behind her, you told her you would only be a little while outside, and shut the door behind you.

“What do you need Yuta?”

“Nice greeting from someone who has been ignoring me for the past two weeks.” He grumbled.

“And what did you think you would get? A welcome home banner? I was ignoring you for a reason.” To say you were upset that he showed up at your house as an understatement.

“I just wanted to apologize for what I did, I never got a chance to.”

“An apology for which incident? Provoking my best friend to hit you? Or maybe trying to talk to me while I was trying to fix one of the most important relationships in my life? Oh wait! Was it the one about undermining the mental stress I am going through with this and pushing me to make a decision on the spot? Ooooo, it’s probably the last one, I bet. Well here’s news to you buddy, I’m the one person in the entire world who probably doesn’t want you tailing her feet at this moment.” You cocked your head, waiting for him to respond.

“I- uhhhh- I’m sorry. I really really, am sorry, is there anything I can do to take back what I said? I’m just frustrated with this whole thing. All I know is that I really like you Y/N and that I can’t lose to that hot-headed jerk.”

“You just added another apology to the list.” You gave him a solemn look before walking back inside and shutting the door lightly. The only thing you didn’t realize is that another person was 10 steps away from your driveway with flowers in hand and had watched the whole scene, emotions bubbling up inside. Confusion being evident, but more than ever, the frustration of being beaten to the task once again.

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ts-nightingaleislands · 4 years

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Episode #6- “so here i am not getting any strikes.”- Vincent

TIM IS GONE!! That sneaky mother fucker. Am I allowed to curse on here? I will be taking credit for that thank you very much. So Chris was busy most of the day, but came back online about 15 min before tribal. We were the swing votes between Tim and AnnMarie. We decided that I would vote for AnnMarie to make it seem like I am with them, and Chris would vote Tim and claim that he didn't see the change. Kyle wants to know why Chris would vote Tim, and I told him that AnnMarie must have gotten to him. Hopefully we can convince them that she was the mastermind behind it. We shall see.

WHAT THE FUCK!!! I didn't see that coming at all. I thought for sure I was going home or at least getting some votes. Guess the game really is just starting :)

Well that was radical, I had to pretend I was off before this tribal when I was on for a half hour with Gwen. Here I learned the vote switched from Liam and Tim to AM and Tim and it made my decision easier, I didnt wanna do Tim so early but I do like AM more and feel like I dont need the shield in him to make it far. It is kind of funny that had this switch not happened, Tim would probably be here. Regardless, now is the time for damage control

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Now that its the morning after I've done some thinking. My next step is going to be to ignite Petrel people to come together. I would love for us to win out til merge and keep Austin as a number, but we have to look at the bigger picture and until I see otherwise, that picture involves what's best for me and my allies, which seems to be getting Noah/Cheatham out. So I want to spend the next bit getting everyone feeling comfortable with each other again. I'm pretty sure there are people who will think I'm playing the middle, but I will stand by the vote on Tim instead of AnnMarie.

if the hosts had edgic i'd be incentivized to write more confessionals but unfortunately they only incentivize us by giving strikes for not writing any. so here i am not getting any strikes. so i won the hero challenge against annmarie, continuing thrush's win streak which is definitely about to end. the challenge is live endurance, and we are bad at that. but we've voted out the inactives so maybe not this time? one thing which i found weird was that at the reward, we were given the option to forfeit to get the results of a tribal. annmarie, who had just received 4 votes, didn't take it. tbf maybe i misread the rules and she couldn't, but that felt weird to me. i've spoken a bit with steven again, and i do not see myself going very far with him like with noah/austin. not in a cheatham way where keeping him around would be actively detrimental, but in a neutral way. also i like how my cfs are 50% perfect grammar/syntax and 50% forgetting that the caps key exists. it makes the game of reading a cf and trying to figure out who wrote it much more fun!

Kentucky Fried Austin's mist is so strong! Kidding but I am feeling like I prefer Austin staying as opposed to Kyle since it seems Kyle's heart isnt in this as much. Not to mention the way he performed in the challenge was a bit of a red flag to me.

The status quo has returned to normal, Thrush has returned to tribal council. Petrel's strategy of not sleeping won over Thrush's strategy of sleeping before beginning, apparently. I still want to vote out Cheatham, but I was a little worried because everything was a little too convenient, almost as if it fell perfectly into place. Then I realized that if Cheatham knew he was in trouble and played an idol, he wouldn't take me out. Noah is a much bigger threat in my opinion, so any surprise idol plays would likely see him go. Steven is on board, making the plan 3-2 if everything goes as expected because Amy has to self-vote. Will it go right? I sure hope so. But worst case scenario, Noah is idoled out. I mean, that would be terrible, but I'd have three more days to plan something then, so I really don't see myself being in a ton of danger tonight. this is probably my last cf

We won again! I'm still a little confused & annoyed about our tribal council because I was completely left in the dark about the AnnMarie votes, but I guess it ain't too big of a bother since I survived with no votes against me despite what I was told! I hope we merge soon because I'm so ready to take this game to the next level ya have no idea.

Man that last tribal was crazy. So I pretty much constructed the target and I had a good control of the game. However Chris voted Tim out because he wasn’t active in the last 2 hours to see the plan change. In theory I was the person that wanted Tim out so it wasent so bad but I voted Annemarie out and that put me and Gwen in jeopardy. So winning this immunity was crucial. I just hope that my relationship with Chris and Gwen are still very solid. I have Kyle in my corner we just need one more. I seemed very well liked so I don’t think I have to worry but I am nervous going to my next tribal but I do think I have a great grasp of this tribe.

I really still don't know how I wanna play this game . They are alot of good people here but I just don't know who to really trust yet. I hope a merge happens soon just so I can check in with my old tribe .

Kinda exhausted that it’s my name being brought up as the back door every fucking week. At least I have Noah who just tells me stuff. I don’t wanna act like he’s doing EVERYTHING because y’all should hear the stupid shit he brings up and i’m like “No that’s stupid”. But I honestly just expect to go to tribal and try and figure out a way to not get voted out. This idol doesn’t even make me feel safe since I might not even get to use it. I just hope we merge soon and there are more targets than just Cheatham. Mwah

well, steven is now on our tribe so it consists of me/vincent/noah/steven/cheatham. this round the plan is to vote out cheatham bc he has an idol. but everyone else will make him think that they are voting for me so that he doesn't play it. if everything goes according to plan, we will flush and idol and ill lose someone thats been coming after me for a while now

Yeah, my head is currently more cluttered than a kitchen sink so I don't have a lot to say.... but... Still really, really hoping that I can make something work with Austin and AnnMarie! I trust AnnMarie fully, Austin is still slightly questionable! I tried to get Kyle in on it too but he ignored me so...rip! I did get word not though that Liam wasn't super happy about being left out of the last plan though, so maybe we can pull him in. If we have to go to rocks at any point....I'm not scrrrrd!

AAAAAHHHH!!! just thinking back to tribal council makes my heart pound again. I was betrayed, oh my. Most everyone who was working with me changed up THEIR plan and decided to vote for me instead. Chris saved me, but I am not particularly fond of liars. Gwen, bless her heart, is very very very sneaky. Knows exactly what to say to not make herself seem guilty. Tim is gone, and that was the only thing that went according to plan. I now know where my relationships stand with my tribe mates, and things aren't looking good. I am working with Sarah and Austin now, but no one else. I fear that I am now on the bottom. Oh well! I will probably put in another confessional to go more in depth to what happened

Well we lost the challenge. Me and Noah kind of dropped the ball, leaving Vincent to fend for himself. He obviously couldn’t carry the entire tribe, even with the reward advantage(which he also won), but props to him for the valiant effort. So we’re going to tribal tonight. My streak of being the longest player to not go to tribal is finally coming to an end. I’m excited and nervous at the same time. Luckily the plan I’m apart of if pretty much guaranteed to work, so...(bye bye Amy). Hope every thing works out.

Things have calmed down since the tribal council. We won immunity again. I can't believe I posted every 5 minutes for 12.5 hours. Am I a crazy person? Probably. Did I have fun? Yes. And i got to bond with Austin so that is good. Chris and I are talking about ways to do damage control with the AnnMarie and her allies. I wish I could just tell her that I knew where all of the votes were going and that I knew she would be fine...that Tim would go home. But I can't risk her exposing that to Rizo and Kyle. So we are just going with the story that Tim told us last minute that he was targeting us and that one of us would go home if we didn't vote AnnMarie. Since Chris "didn't get online in time" it makes sense that he didn't see Tim threatening him. Fingers crossed this works! I hope we don't have a tribe swap. That could mess things up, depending on who gets switched on to each tribe. Please please please, no tribe swap!! :)

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3 votes Amy, 1 vote Cheatham.

#annoucement

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torentialtribute · 5 years

Text

SPECIAL REPORT: The tricks and tactics that turned England from woeful chumps to world champs

Andrew Strauss pauses when he considers his decision to stay with Eoin Morgan more than four years ago.

The 2015 World Cup was a well-known disaster for the English game, but knee crampism from the then ECB cricket director would have made it worse.

Strauss knew that Morgan, who had taken over captain capacities from Alastair Cook, not long before the tournament, had not had time to implement his vision.

Eoin Morgan raises the booty of England on cricket revolution those years in the making Eoin Morgan lifts the booty of the English cricket revolution that has been in the making for years

He also knew that a major change would be England's only way to cycle to disrupt World Cup shame. And I knew Morgan knew.

& # 39; I was very clear that a break with the past was needed & # 39 ;, says Strauss. & # 39; We must be aggressive, bring the game to the opposition, try to develop match winners.

& # 39; If you want, you need a captain who embodies that and can be a role model – and that was Eoin.

& # 39; What I didn't realize was how fantastic I would be with that group.

Less than a week after the miracle at Lord & # 39; s, where Morgan became the first English men's captain to cancel the 50-over World Cup, there are still details of a dressing room that leaves nothing to chance in their attempt to make champions smile in a four-year cycle. The details say a lot about Morgan's leadership.

<img id = "i-4a5add195f24abdd" src = "https://ift.tt/2LxNJ6e image-a-23_1563568564031.jpg "height =" 461 "width =" 634 "alt =" <img id = "i-4a5add195f24abdd" src = "https://ift.tt/305gPND /19/21/16265982-7265965-image-a-23_1563568564031.jpg "height =" 461 "width =" 634 "alt =" <img id = "i-4a5add195f24abdd" src = "https: //i.dailymail. co.uk/1s/2019/07/19/21/16265982-7265965-image-a-23_1563568564031.jpg "height =" 461 "width =" 634 "alt =" Morgan is talking at the press conference during the 2015 Cricket World Cup in his hand during a press conference at the 2015 Cricket World Cup "

Morgan has his head in his hand during a press conference at the 2015 Cricket World Cup

He is a player who is able to combine the broad brush strokes with the smallest details – what the English rugby world cup-winning head coach Sir Clive Woodward the & # 39; one-per -man & # 39; named

After Morgan & # 39; s party lost to Sri Lanka and Australia in the group stage, team analysts led by Cambridge math graduate Nathan Leamon looked at two areas that needed improvement.

The first was the issue of single people: simply England was leaking too much.

& # 39; We would be too comforted "or that we were comfortably chasing 300," Leamon says.

& # 39; If it is 350 to play 350, a single is a win. If it is played 240 times 240, the single is a defeat. So we had to reorganize. The fielder had to leave the ring and put pressure on the singles.

& # 39; The bowlers had to hit hard lengths, and not just use variations and slower balls.

England immediately put the plan into action in the first of their must-win group games, against India in Edgbaston, with only 28 in the first 10-over powerplay.

The second concern was that too many runs were given away behind the square. In particular, the third man and the fine leg were beaten on the inside – a beast of the former English coach Duncan Fletcher.

England failed to leave the group stage such as loomed above Morgan's captain

Against India, the field players

against India, the fielders behind square adjusted their positions. Shots previously flown for four were now converted into one or two cases.

These two details are characteristic of a side that has constantly evolved, although suggestions were a team of biffers, incapable of nuance.

] Asked about Sunday's World Cup final, at which point he thought England could go all the way, Joe Root returned to the very first game of the Witball Revolution, against New Zealand in Edgbaston in 2015 , when they cracked 408 for nine – their first time through the 400 barrier.

But that was the moment when the potential of England became clear, there would be enough obstacles.

Perhaps the most telling was in Cardiff in 2017, when England had misread the field in the semi-final of the Champions Trophy against Pakistan and was lost by eight wickets. Gung-ho was gone, replaced by old-fashioned tentativeness.

& # 39; Losing that game was probably the best thing that happened to us & # 39 ;, says Paul Farbrace, then assistant coach of England. & # 39; It focused our mind. We could not go backwards. "

Inevitably perhaps. The nightly outing in Bristol that led to suspensions for Stokes and Alex Hales may have helped England off course. Instead, they restored Jason Roy as an opener.

Then Hales was defeated shortly before the World Cup when news broke of two failed drug tests.

Four years later, England pulled off one of the most remarkable World Cup-winning campaigns " England won one of the most remarkable World Cup-winning campaigns "

Four years later, England drew one of the most remarkable World Cup-winning campaigns.

<img id = "i-cd2f8c26ab913455" src = "https://ift.tt/2SnXGUc" height = "420" width = "634" alt = "Through the narrowest margins, England pulled the historic super over m New Zealand win "

England crossed the historic super to win New Zealand through the narrowest margins" England pulled a historic super over victory to beat New Zealand

For seniors, it was the straw. At a team meeting in Colombo for Christmas, the team had established itself in the mantra of & # 39; courage, unity and respect & # 39 ;.

& # 39; I don't like meetings & # 39 ;, says Hales, they thought, had set themselves on the move.

It was a rare gathering for a team that relied on mutual trust and understanding. Morgan. & # 39; We had one four years ago for the Edgbaston match against New Zealand, and another one in that series when we were blown out in 50 overs. But they were more about confirming our beliefs. Everyone bought them. & # 39;

Instead, much of the decision-making took place between Morgan, Strauss, head coach Trevor Bayliss, and Farbrace, who says: & # 39; We would seep messages into the team. After 18 months the players started repeating them again and they felt like they were their ideas. It worked very well. & # 39;

Hales saw & # 39; aberration was expensive when Roy hit a hamstring in England's fourth World Cup match against West Indies in Southampton, drove James Vince into the opening slot and robbed England of the early days.

That plan was formulated in 2015, when a new game regulation meant that a fifth fielder could fall the last 10 overs from the inner ring. Ben Stokes (right) was one of England & many heroes during the campaign this summer "

] Ben Stokes (right) was one of England's many heroes during the campaign this summer "

Ben Stokes (right) was one of England's many heroes during the campaign this summer

The implication was clear: unlike the old one orthodoxy, scoring would now become more difficult as turns took place, not easier. The time to check in would be the first power play.

Roy's return, despite not being 100 percent fit, was allowed to return to Plan A before the India match – with amazing results. He and Jonny Bairstow added 160, then 123 against New Zealand in Chester-le-Street, followed by 124 in 17.2 surpluses in Australia's semi-final destruction.

But the all-guns-burning tactics had repercussions. In the case of early wickets, England knew they had to braid deeply. Where they had previously picked three or four absolute bowlers, they were now wary of a long tail.

Then there were overs 11-40, the period between one and the other initial thrash and the last hold.

When innings throughout the World Cup ignore the traditional theory of doubling the 30-over score The logic of England – that the hard work had to be done from the start – was justified. And on slower surfaces, every late line for runs had to be beautifully timed.

World Cup trophy for a group of young fans "

Captain Morgan shows off the World Cup trophy to a group of young fans

Root was considered the best referee for a field. & # 39; I would say that if we try to get 290, we might be there 310, but if we try to get 350, we can blow up & say, "Leamon says." There was more control over the approach;

England spent the two years between the Champions Trophy and the World Championship and insisted they had learned from Cardiff, but when they fell back in the modest pursuit of 233 against Sri Lanka, it seemed as if they had learned nothing.

But deep down They knew they had changed.

& # 39; I think much of it was about the players who stay true to themselves & # 39 ;, Farbrace says. . & # 39; They would do it the way they wanted to do it. & # 39;

When Roy returned from deep midwicket on his way to Jos Buttler's gloves on Sunday at the last ball of New Zealand, it was clear the conviction had paid off.

Yes, England enjoyed happiness. But nobody could say they didn't deserve it.

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#SPECIAL REPORT: The tricks and tactics that turned England from woeful chumps to world champs"

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survivormuxloe · 5 years

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Episode #5: “sushi + running isn’t the best combo.” - Mo

Sad to Linus quit honestly. Hope he’s alright but yeah that sucks.

So Linus just quit. It’s unfortunate and slightly annoying that we had another’s person quit. Especially since we had players like Jose and Jaylen who actually wanted to play. But then again I’m just trying to get the crown so I can’t really complain when someone else falls. Final 14 so I’m expecting merge to happen in the next 4 tribals.

Alright so hey I'm a bit late but since we last left off we were heading to tribal, at that point I was actually thinking Jose likely had an idol since you know.. throwing two random names 30 minutes before tribal when you know you can't get the numbers is a very idol-ish thing to do. So me and Tobi decided to vote Mo just in case an idol was played and both of them voted together. But actually at the end of the day Jose voted Mo and Mo well he didn't show up LMAO, which was actually bad because then his self vote would make it a 4-4 tie and while I think voting jose out after that would've been achieavable I would rather not give him the chance to fight. Luckily Mo showed up and voted him so that was it and he prob didn't see it coming but hey the lad was took it well so kudos to him.

So right after that the hosts pulled a sneaky on us and the live challenge was actually a swap (bragging rights I predicted it yay...look at me predicting a swap at f15 I'm so smart....)

And for once luck was on my side since I'm still on mercia alongside Felix David and Mo. With Wes joining us from the other tribe. Now I did vote Mo but maybe he doesn't think it was me? I mean tbf after he didn't show up at tribal I scream_messaged him to vote for Jose so who knows. But either way we have the inmense unit of David with us and Wes who I barely know from another org I'm playing at the same time so there's that

And then ofc Felix the crazy german god bless his soul he saved us this week from going to tribal <3

And as I write this Linus has quit the game so I guess that's 2 out of 2 for wins that I really didn't get to enjoy but oh well. At least this gives Michael and Dani a chance over at that tribe now that it is 2-2. As for Tobi well he carried his own new tribe in that challenge so hopefully he can overcome that 4-1 disadvantage in case they go to tribal.

So puzzle challenge, okay let’s get on it. Wanna win it cause my og tribe are such an unknown. I want to work with tobi. But he will do what he needs to do to stay in. So my paranoid ass is conviced that my og tribe ain’t talking to me cause they want me out. Idk I’m being stupid but ahhh.

Here i am, losing the challenge, feeling a little sorry for myself because i'm like ok it's me i'm going. Then BOOM Linus quits and as much as i wanna be like oh buddy no you should stay it might get more fun i also wanna be like lol bye bye because now instead of getting voted out 3-2 me and Dani can now tie the vote should we go back to tribal which is obviously better than nothing. I'm bad at puzzles but im just gonna try my absolute hardest because i refuse to be Denise Stapley and go to every tribal council.

uhm so the immunity challenge is puzzles... great loll im legit so trash at puzzles and if we lose again ik it's gonna be bc of me ): i'm gonna try my best and not flop but i cant even enter the puzzles so idk whats gunna happen

Somehow I obtained 2 idol clues by sheer luck and honestly it's what I deserve in this game. I'm still debating if I even want an idol so I shared my clues with Jones because I wouldn't mind if she had an idol. But anyways there have been 2 quits which sucks but the only benefit is that now I at least will get 14th in this game.

lol we’re gunna lose again. but i aint going home america.. know that!

So I’m nervous my time might cost us the challenge but do you know what I’m not nervous about.... going home bc I have Dani loyal to me and me to her and also mr Scott and myself have established a f2 alliance named “crumpets and bagpipes” (name subject to change) so yeah hopefully I’m going nowhere hehe

SO IDK HOW I DO IT but people just kind of give me clues and answers to their idol puzzles. SURE I asked Scooty how he was doing for his results, but I never even asked Madison about her clues and she's just kind of,,,,giving them to me? and I love it <3 <3 <3 WELL ACTUALLY I TAKE IT BACK. I LOVED IT UNTIL I FOUND OUT THE FUCKING IDOL WAS TAKEN ALREADY. I was searching the playroom today and WHAT DO YOU KNOW "there was something there but it was taken" and I want to actually PERISH LIKE HOLY FUCK I WAS ACTUALLY!! SOOOOOOO CLOSE!!1!11 but yeah hopefully Linus didn't have it and quit with it I'll actually beat his entire ass

So like... after my amazing comeback last immunity challenge,, WHICH BY THE WAY FUCKIN WAS FOR NOTHING BECAUSE LINUS QUIT LIKE WHY DIDNT HE QUIT BEFORE THE DAMN CHALLENGE AND NOW I OUTED MYSELF AS A CHALLENGE THREAT... stupid..,, we flopped in this one like... madison and jones flopped hard kdjhflksdjfhs like did they even try.. now im in a peculiar situation.. the great thing is that rhys and ryan actually asked me to be a part of a three man alliance (im obv at the bottom) and like im definitely using this to my advantage and hopefully get out of this tribal!! im expecting at least one vote from madison which is natural but like im gonna fight tooth and nail to get out of this!! idc who i have to throw utb to get by but i'll do whatever it takes

HELL YEAH TO MERCIA FOR WINNING ANOTHER IMMUNITY. It feels so good to have come clutch again, especially after a scare from Mo, who didn't do the right puzzle. -.- ugh that pissed me off so much, especially with so little time left to do it. But Ahrre and I DESTROYED everyone else who did the hard puzzle so I can't complain.

Also, a new development. Ahrre and Felix seem to trust me SO much that they wanna share their idol guesses with me, which is fine with me considering I trust them the most on this new tribe. I feel it, omg I feel like I'm SO close to getting that idol and if I find it, it puts me in a huge power position. So I need to find it before these guys.

This was probably the most stressful round for me. So let’s go through the series of unfortunate events

1. I misread the post and I was doing the easy puzzle the entire time when I thought I was doing the hard puzzle. I took a picture on my phone with my score and my name in the search bar.

2. I hangout with my friend, we go get sushi and I buy some macaroons and then we chill in a Starbucks while we play Pokemon Go.

3. I submit my photo at 5:45 PM 15 minutes before the dead line only to get told that not only would the photo not of counted because I didn’t have the date and time in the photo. But I was also doing the wrong puzzle.

4. My scrawny out of shape ass sprints home and it was the kind of thing where like I was coughing because I ran too much.

5. Now I have to do the more difficult puzzle in 20 minutes. I didn’t get the chance to practice before hand, I feel like shit, I’m still coughing and I think I’m going to puke because sushi + running isn’t the best combo.

6. I don’t submit on time, and not only that I don’t abstain on time either. So I get a strike. The amount of fucking despair and sadness I felt as I was rushing through the puzzle only to realize I was too late even after getting granted an extension. It was so awful.

Well, sad linus left but the good news is we won immunity by three minutes! Michaels time was a MESS because we could’ve gotten first if he did better but that’s alright we got second so that’s good. I like my remaining tribe mates so I hope things stay good ❤️

Aye so we've won another challenge after the swap yay! it's almost as if my shitty luck was detrimental during luck based challenges. wh would've thought...

Now we won even though Mo didn't submit and his time was more than the rest of the tribe combined lol but it's ok cause we won anyways, albeit David got a bit pissy about it and Mo told me about it but eh hopefully it's nothing.

Talking about david I decided not to sit around all day even if we're not going to tribal. Since I'm lucky to stay in the same camp I was before the swap I might as well try and find that damn idol if it hasn't been found already. So I decided to coordinate idol guesses with him and Felix which payed out because when we won the reward today he shared it with me (or at least a part of it unless he's lying) and he made a chat with me and felix so I guess now we're in an alliance, so there's that.

As for the other tribes well I hope Tobi can pull something out of the bag and not die this week, maybe he can get madison who has been pretty lackluster at challenges but either way I'm not gonna be holding my breath.

so today Rhys n I made an alliance with Tobi so that's a thing... and then later in the day we ended up losing immunity -___- which is ass because someone literally striked and got 45mins for a puzzle we still lost jalfkdjf like wig ok! I hope this alliance sticks but idk i gotta see what the waters feel like tomorrow... thank rihanna i have an idol it makes me feel like i have some security in this game hehe

Do you hear that? The birds are singing, the sky is blue and the sun is bright because YA BOI FINALLY WON IMMUNITY. Ugh I love winning immunity I’d scream if I had to go back there it’s ugly

Okay. So here is the tea. We lost.

I have an alliance between me Ryan and tobi. So fingers crossed that’s all good, and Madisin should be an easy boot.

However, I feel uneasy as when I woke up I had no messages from anyone on my tribe about tribal. Which is scary as I thought people would’ve been trying to push for w certain person making sure it wasn’t them. Apparently not, or maybe it’s me?. I know I’m a paranoid mess but I’m like 40% worried.

Okay this is post swap and this is a kind of sort of bad, I was swapped into a tribe were I believe I am only member of my og tribe, but we seem compontent at challenges (at least the rest of them do). Plus one person (Ahrre) I kind of sorta know so hopefully I can make something work and get past this.

Lewis quitting sucked since I actually knew him from an alias game a long time ago.

Let me know if you need a longer confessional.

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hmm Madison is definitely the obvious choice to vote out from Sweyn rn... she's exuded the bare minimum of activity and i dont think we've had a genuine conversation in pm's or at all thus far; plus she did the worst in the challenge. I know from Scott that Jones got close with Madison on og Sweyn so that is something on my mind, but I think she would be ok letting her go ultimately; not too sure but I'm talking to her now so we'll see. If our tribe loses again it's gonna be ugly because i would hate to vote Jones out, she's a queen

Hey guys, its me... Hannah Baker. We had a tribe swap last round and I was shook at it being 3-2 with me being in a minority technically if we’re talking number wise. But, Scott said something interesting to me, saying that he thinks its funny that I would go home over Michael which is kind of reassuring. We lost the challenge and Linus decided to quit and I was like ok mood??? We won the challenge after thank god and I won’t be going to yet another fucking tribal. I really like Michael and Scott and I think if we were to lose again, we could vote out Malik. I’m hoping I can make the merge here but I guess we’ll see. Xoxo

god.. pls vote out madison u fucking fucks LMAOAOAOAOOA. liek im good terms with everyone on that tribe so its rly ugly that theyre going to tribal.. but uhm. hopefully its madison that goes bc i dont want to talk to her or wes at merge loll

like i can be social. dont get me wrong.. but like i cant do it with awkward unsocial people.. communication is a two way street after all

Madison is voted out 4-1.

#episode #royallyyours

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i-am-very-very-tired · 6 years

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She approached him because she recognized his camera flash — Aziz Ansari was taking pictures at the 2017 Emmy Awards after-party with a film camera, not a digital one. “I stood up, and I’m like tipsy at this point and feeling really confident. I’m in a gown, and I walked up to Aziz and said, ‘What’d you just shoot with?’”

Grace is a 23-year-old Brooklyn-based photographer, then aged 22. We are not using her real name to protect her identity because she is not a public figure. She says Ansari brushed her off at first, but after he realized they both brought the same kind of camera to the event, an old model from the 80s, he was impressed.

They flirted a little — he took two pictures of her, she snapped some of him — and then she and her date went back to the dance floor. “It was like, one of those things where you’re aware of the other person all night,” she said. “We would catch eyes every now and then.”

They ran into each other one last time, right as Grace was leaving. At Ansari’s suggestion, she put her number in his phone.

When her plane landed back in New York the next day, she already had a message from him. They exchanged flirtatious banter over text for a week or so before he asked her to go out with him on Monday, September 25.

The date didn’t go as planned. The night would end with Grace in an Uber home, in tears, messaging her friends about how Ansari behaved. Babe spoke to the first friends she told about it, and reviewed the messages on her phone.

The day after the incident, she wrote a long text to Ansari, saying: “I just want to take this moment to make you aware of [your] behavior and how uneasy it made me.” To that message, Ansari responds: “Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”

The mobile phone number from which his texts to her were sent matches up with his details on a searchable public register.

We spoke to Grace last week. When we met, Ansari had just won Best Actor for his Netflix show “Master Of None” at the Golden Globes, where he declared his support for the fight against sexual assault and harassment by wearing a “Time’s Up” pin on the red carpet.

Grace said it was surreal to be meeting up with Ansari, a successful comedian and major celebrity, and she was “excited” for their date.

Before meeting Ansari, Grace told friends and coworkers about the date and consulted her go-to group chat about what she should wear to fit the “cocktail chic” dress-code he gave her. She settled on “a tank-top dress and jeans.” She showed me a picture, it was a good outfit.

After arriving at his apartment in Manhattan on Monday evening, they exchanged small talk and drank wine. “It was white,” she said. “I didn’t get to choose and I prefer red, but it was white wine.” Then Ansari walked her to Grand Banks, an Oyster bar onboard a historic wooden schooner on the Hudson River just a few blocks away.

She said it was a beautiful, warm September night. They discussed NYU, comedy and a new, secret project he was working on, but she says she did most of the talking.

Grace says she sensed Ansari was eager for them to leave. “When the waiter came over he quickly asked for the check and he said like, ‘Let’s get off this boat.’” She recalls there was still wine in her glass and more left in the bottle he ordered. The abruptness surprised her. “Like, he got the check and then it was bada-boom, bada-bing, we’re out of there.”

They walked the two blocks back to his apartment building, an exclusive address on TriBeCa’s Franklin Street, where Taylor Swift has a place too. When they walked back in, she complimented his marble countertops. According to Grace, Ansari turned the compliment into an invitation.

“He said something along the lines of, ‘How about you hop up and take a seat?’” Within moments, he was kissing her. “In a second, his hand was on my breast.” Then he was undressing her, then he undressed himself. She remembers feeling uncomfortable at how quickly things escalated.

When Ansari told her he was going to grab a condom within minutes of their first kiss, Grace voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’” She says he then resumed kissing her, briefly performed oral sex on her, and asked her to do the same thing to him. She did, but not for long. “It was really quick. Everything was pretty much touched and done within ten minutes of hooking up, except for actual sex.”

She says Ansari began making a move on her that he repeated during their encounter. “The move he kept doing was taking his two fingers in a V-shape and putting them in my mouth, in my throat to wet his fingers, because the moment he’d stick his fingers in my throat he’d go straight for my vagina and try to finger me.” Grace called the move “the claw.”

Ansari also physically pulled her hand towards his penis multiple times throughout the night, from the time he first kissed her on the countertop onward. “He probably moved my hand to his dick five to seven times,” she said. “He really kept doing it after I moved it away.”

But the main thing was that he wouldn’t let her move away from him. She compared the path they cut across his apartment to a football play. “It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following and sticking his fingers down my throat again. It was really repetitive. It felt like a fucking game.”

Throughout the course of her short time in the apartment, she says she used verbal and non-verbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was. “Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,” she said. “I stopped moving my lips and turned cold.”

Whether Ansari didn’t notice Grace’s reticence or knowingly ignored it is impossible for her to say. “I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored.”

Ansari wanted to have sex. She said she remembers him asking again and again, “Where do you want me to fuck you?” while she was still seated on the countertop. She says she found the question tough to answer because she says she didn’t want to fuck him at all.

“I wasn’t really even thinking of that, I didn’t want to be engaged in that with him. But he kept asking, so I said, ‘Next time.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, you mean second date?’ and I go, ‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ and he goes, ‘Well, if I poured you another glass of wine now, would it count as our second date?’” He then poured her a glass and handed it to her. She excused herself to the bathroom soon after.

Grace says she spent around five minutes in the bathroom, collecting herself in the mirror and splashing herself with water. Then she went back to Ansari. He asked her if she was okay. “I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,” she said.

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She told babe that at first, she was happy with how he reacted. “He said, ‘Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun.’ The response was technically very sweet and acknowledging the fact that I was very uncomfortable. Verbally, in that moment, he acknowledged that I needed to take it slow. Then he said, ‘Let’s just chill over here on the couch.’”

This moment is particularly significant for Grace, because she thought that would be the end of the sexual encounter — her remark about not wanting to feel “forced” had added a verbal component to the cues she was trying to give him about her discomfort. When she sat down on the floor next to Ansari, who sat on the couch, she thought he might rub her back, or play with her hair — something to calm her down.

Ansari instructed her to turn around. “He sat back and pointed to his penis and motioned for me to go down on him. And I did. I think I just felt really pressured. It was literally the most unexpected thing I thought would happen at that moment because I told him I was uncomfortable.”

Soon, he pulled her back up onto the couch. She would tell her friend via text later that night, “He [made out] with me again and says, ‘Doesn’t look like you hate me.’”

Halfway into the encounter, he led her from the couch to a different part of his apartment. He said he had to show her something. Then he brought her to a large mirror, bent her over and asked her again, “Where do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me to fuck you right here?” He rammed his penis against her ass while he said it, pantomiming intercourse.

“I just remember looking in the mirror and seeing him behind me. He was very much caught up in the moment and I obviously very much wasn’t,” Grace said. “After he bent me over is when I stood up and said no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this. And he said, ‘How about we just chill, but this time with our clothes on?’”

They got dressed, sat side by side on the couch they’d already “chilled” on, and he turned on an episode of Seinfeld. She’d never seen it before. She said that’s when the reality of what was going on sank in. “It really hit me that I was violated. I felt really emotional all at once when we sat down there. That that whole experience was actually horrible.”

While the TV played in the background, he kissed her again, stuck his fingers down her throat again, and moved to undo her pants. She turned away. She remembers “feeling in a different mindset at that point.”

“I remember saying, ‘You guys are all the same, you guys are all the fucking same.’” Ansari asked her what she meant. When she turned to answer, she says he met her with “gross, forceful kisses.”

After that last kiss, Grace stood up from the couch, moved back to the kitchen island where she left her phone, and said she would call herself a car. He hugged her and kissed her goodbye, another “aggressive” kiss. When she pulled away, Ansari finally relented and insisted he’d call her the car. “He said, ‘It’s coming, but just tell them your name is Essence,’” she said, a name he has joked about using as a pseudonym in his sitcom.

She teared up in the hallway, outside his place, pressing the down button on the elevator. The Uber was waiting when she left the building. He asked if she was Essence, she said yes, and then she rode back to her Brooklyn apartment. “I cried the whole ride home. At that point I felt violated. That last hour was so out of my hand.”

Babe asked Ansari’s representatives if they wanted to respond to Grace’s account but they have yet to do so. [Update – 10:02pm, January 14: Ansari has released a statement, which you can read in full here. In it, he acknowledges that they “engaged in sexual activity” but says “by all indications [it] was completely consensual.”]

Grace compares Ansari’s sexual mannerisms to those of a horny, rough, entitled 18-year-old. She said so to her friends via text after the date and said the same thing to me when we spoke.

But Aziz Ansari isn’t an 18-year-old. He’s a 34-year-old actor and comedian of global renown who’s probably done more thinking about the nuances of dating and sex in the digital age than practically anyone else. He wrote a book about it, “Modern Romance”, and it was a New York Times bestseller. Ansari built his career on being cute and nice and parsing the signals women send to men and the male emotions that result and turning them into award-winning, Madison Square Garden-filling comedy.

Most people first saw Aziz when he was Tom Haverford, a Parks and Rec fan favorite whose absurd, hilarious phrases were made to be memed. Who hasn’t said “treat yo’ self” once or twice? At that time, he branded himself as the witty, woke alternative to the stereotypical douchebag bro. His early 2010s routines paint him as the kind of guy who strikes out because he actually respects women.

And then, as he rose to prominence, he focused less on his own sexual disenfranchisement and more on pressing societal issues like racism and sexual assault, a move that’s earned him tons of praise. Refinery29 called him “a certified woke bae.”

In the second season of “Master of None”, one episode introduces a macho TV food guy called Chef Jeff, who gives Ansari’s character Dev a huge career opportunity before being accused of sexually inappropriate conduct by a bunch of women.

Discussing the storyline, Ansari said he wanted to examine what happens when much-loved characters are revealed to be creeps, making all those around them who don’t speak out complicit. “So it was like, ‘Okay, what if this is one of those types of guys and we just get the audience to love him? And then pull the rug out from under them at the end and reveal that he’s actually not a good dude?’”

Speaking to babe, Grace mentioned the glaring gap between Ansari’s comedy persona and the behavior she experienced in his apartment as a reason why she didn’t get out earlier. “I didn’t leave because I think I was stunned and shocked,” she said. “This was not what I expected. I’d seen some of his shows and read excerpts from his book and I was not expecting a bad night at all, much less a violating night and a painful one.”

In the Uber home from Ansari’s apartment, Grace texted a friend: “I hate men.” She continued: “I had to say no a lot. He wanted sex. He wanted to get me drunk and then fuck me.” She texted another friend after she got back to her apartment, “I’m taking a bath I’m really upset I feel weird.”

Grace’s roommate, who babe has spoken to, didn’t see or talk to Grace until the morning after. The roommate asked how it went right away. “She said, ‘it was awful. It didn’t feel good at all.’” Grace filled her roommate in on the details later. “I guess it ended up getting really fucking weird, really fucking quick,” the roommate said. “She was really shaken up about it.”

Another friend, who Grace texted on the way home from Ansari’s apartment and spoke to the day after on the phone, told babe she was “so upset.”

Grace says she spent the next day groggy and miserable. When they asked, she told her coworkers that the date had gone poorly. She also reached out to her friends, who helped her craft a message to tell Ansari how she felt about the date. But he reached out first.

“It was fun meeting you last night,” Ansari sent on Tuesday evening. “Last night might’ve been fun for you, but it wasn’t for me,” Grace responded. “You ignored clear non-verbal cues; you kept going with advances.” She explains why she is telling him how she felt: “I want to make sure you’re aware so maybe the next girl doesn’t have to cry on the ride home.”

“I’m so sad to hear this,” he responded. “Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”

Those texts were the last Grace had contact with Ansari. And that night in his apartment was the last time she saw him, until she watched him win big at the Golden Globes.

Grace says her friends helped her grapple with the aftermath of her night with Ansari. “It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault,” she told us. “I was debating if this was an awkward sexual experience or sexual assault. And that’s why I confronted so many of my friends and listened to what they had to say, because I wanted validation that it was actually bad.”

For Grace, the Golden Globes brought the events back to the forefront of her mind. “It was actually painful to watch him win and accept an award,” she said. “And absolutely cringeworthy that he was wearing the Time’s Up pin. I think that started a new fire, and it kind of made it more real.”

She told babe: “I believe that I was taken advantage of by Aziz. I was not listened to and ignored. It was by far the worst experience with a man I’ve ever had.”

Ansari has now released a statement denying sexual misconduct.

He said: “It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned.”

Update: Ansari’s full statement:

“In September of last year, I met a woman at a party. We exchanged numbers. We texted back and forth and eventually went on a date. We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual.

“The next day, I got a text from her saying that although ‘it may have seemed okay,’ upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable. It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned. I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said.

“I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture. It is necessary and long overdue.” – Aziz Ansari

Contact babe on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, or email us at [email protected].

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