"...We're two sides of the same coin, aren't we?"
The whispered confession falls clumsily out of Pure Vanilla's mouth, almost dragged out, bitterly sweet and strange on his tongue. The words are addressed to his own stained candy glass visage, spilling tendrils of bright blue light across the Solarium of Unity despite the almost suffocating darkness invading the rest of the space.
He knows this isn't really the Solarium of Unity, and he knows he isn't just speaking to a window. The lurking shadows, thick like molasses and blinking every once in a while, give that away. Even if it didn't, there is a haziness here that exists only in dreams, and a lack of the deep tiredness that has been plaguing him as of late.
"Oh, are you finally ready to admit that?" Sure enough, Shadow Milk Cookie's voice comes from all sides, far too cheerful. The candy glass melts and warps before him, the blues darkening until Shadow Milk stands in his place, far more detailed than the artisan silhouette he replaced. His grin is mocking as he looks down at Pure Vanilla, who cannot help but feel uncomfortable at the sight of their appearances blurring together like that, even though he had been expecting something along those lines. "Too bad though – you can't admit something that's wrong!"
"Huh?" It catches Pure Vanilla by surprise. It had been difficult emotionally, but logically straightforward to admit they were two sides of the same coin. He couldn't imagine how that could be wrong, and acting upon an old habit from his student days, he finds himself frantically unravelling that conclusion in his head again to figure out the issue.
Shadow Milk doesn't give him the chance, tutting as he shakes his head in mock disappointment. "You must have a brain in there, can't you use it?" He laments theatrically, contorting himself into an odd shape against the edge of the window pane. Then, again barreling on before Pure Vanilla can reply, "Look, think of it like this. To say we're two sides of the same coin means that we have similarities, even if we are otherwise opposites. That is true to an extent, but it makes our differences sound way more clear cut than they actually are. It may be easier for you to believe, but we aren't really opposites. That would imply I am not whole, and I can assure you, Soul Jam aside, I am just as I always was!"
Ah, so it's a matter of wording. Pure Vanilla isn't sure why he is entertaining this - no, it's because he doesn't want to give Shadow Milk the satisfaction of turning away from the truth. Even now, Shadow Milk's eyes squint cheekily at him, daring him to try and end the conversation.
"Then... we are made of the same components in a different composition." Pure Vanilla tries, a little frustrated with his own hesitance, but it is difficult to tell how Shadow Milk wants him to answer when he isn't making it blatantly obvious.
"So close!" Shadow Milk sighs dramatically as he snaps his head to the side so sharply it makes Pure Vanilla wince, imagining the cracks that would cause on any other Cookie. "But you're relying on technicalities. It's much simpler than that."
It dawns on Pure Vanilla, then, exactly what Shadow Milk is aiming for, the realisation making his insides crawl. He doesn't have to say it, not really, but he isn't sure what Shadow Milk will do if he doesn't, and he unfortunately doesn't have the ability to wake himself up on command.
So he takes a deep breath, fidgeting with his staff as he says, even less than a whisper yet twice as loud. "We're... We're the same. Is that what you wanted me to say?"
"Ding-ding-ding!" Shadow Milk trills, suddenly reaching through the candy glass to grip the window frame and lurching forward across the threshold, leaving a mess of shattered glass behind his head like a halo. It startles Pure Vanilla, who instinctively shifts his foot back, only to be instantly locked in place as the reaching shadows soldify around his legs, its eyes winking up at him playfully. His grip on his staff tightens, willing it to shed its light, the beginnings of panic stirring within him at the restraint. The staff does, but the shadows seem to eat the light without a problem.
Pure Vanilla is so distracted by the shadows that he doesn't notice Shadow Milk's hands until they grab his face. His heart jumps in alarm, and his eyes dart up to find half of Shadow Milk leaning down out of the window, far too close. He is grinning at him, wide and self-satisfied, and his hands are cold and harsh. "See, I knew you had a working brain! Yes, the right answer is that we are one and the same."
He pinches and pulls at his cheeks, and Pure Vanilla tries to cringe away, tries to manuver his staff between them. It doesn't work, if only because hands emerge from the darkness to anchor his staff too.
"But that isn't true." Pure Vanilla mumbles when he isn't able to wiggle his way out and Shadow Milk still shows no signs of stopping, hoping the argument will make him lose interest in his face. "I admit that there are similarities between us, but we aren't really the same."
Shadow Milk pauses, his grip tightening until it borders on pain, and for a moment, Pure Vanilla thinks he may have miscalculated.
But then Shadow Milk snickers to himself, releasing his face entirely and pulling back, his hands resting lightly over Pure Vanilla's shoulders. The brush of weight keeps Pure Vanilla from relaxing, but it is a bit of added distance, at least.
"Aren't we? Well, you are the biggest liar, so I should have expected you would lie to yourself too." Shadow Milk hums, almost sounding delighted at this turn in conversation. It unnerves Pure Vanilla, because he had assumed his disagreement would annoy him.
Instead, Shadow Milk smirks, his many eyes glinting gleefully at him. "Listen carefully, Vani, because here's the truth." He says, his voice dipping into a wicked purr that seems to shudder through Pure Vanilla's whole body. "All the things you hate that I have done, you have the capability of doing too. After all, you've already used people for your own gain, haven't you?" Shadow Milk leans closer with a condescending lilt to his words, shifting his hands so he can wrap his arms loosely over his shoulders, and Pure Vanilla freezes under the touch. "Oh, I know you think it was necessary, but you still sent those naive, tiny Cookies off to carry out your errands for you, regardless of the dangers. That's only a few steps behind what I've done, you know, making people dance to my tune. The only difference between us is severity and time."
The words sink heavily to Pure Vanilla's stomach, not quite true but not quite not true, and he feels a little lightheaded, fingers twitching against his staff. Maybe it's because of that, or maybe it's because of his discomfort from the close proximity, but he finds himself distracted by the way Shadow Milk is talking. He carries his usual air of showmanship, but it is nowhere near as exaggerated as during his brief takeover of the Faerie Kingdom. With his insistence of specificity, his mention of technicalities, his structured method of explaining things, he almost sounds like a–
"We are the same," Shadow Milk repeats, tilting his head to the side, the glow of his eyes burning holes through Pure Vanilla, "and one day, you'll end up just like me."
A scholar.
That makes sense – at some point, his virtue had been Knowledge, and nobody seeks it out as fervently as a scholar – but it still feels like a surprise. Pure Vanilla had always known that Shadow Milk was different, once, but only in the sense that the fact existed in the back of his mind.
"No rebuttal, hmm? Are you ready to accept that?" Shadow Milk asks smugly, slightly impatient with Pure Vanilla's lack of response, but mostly watching him expectantly, as if waiting for a bomb to go off.
Pure Vanilla has never thought about what Shadow Milk might have been like, before he became like this. There was no reason to even consider it. But now, he can't help but wonder, because while he cannot imagine this chaotic, brutal Beast, this great unknown evil, as anything else – Shadow Milk still carries echoes from a past life that he doesn't seem to notice enough to hide with his lies.
"...If we are the same," Pure Vanilla finally scrapes his thoughts together enough to reply, carefully, "then doesn't that make the opposite possible too? That, one day, you will become like me and return to the light?"
Shadow Milk blinks once, his face falling blank. He blinks again, all of his eyes in quick succession.
And then he throws his head back and laughs, the movement jostling Pure Vanilla in the process with his arms still firmly around his shoulders. It sounds unhinged, ricocheting across the room, but it is openly amused. It makes Pure Vanilla antsy, especially with how it rings in his ears like an explosion from their closeness.
He wonders if Shadow Milk's laugh was different, before everything. It must have been. He wonders what it sounded like, and immediately realises that he's being ridiculous. The realisation that a before exists seems to have opened the floodgates in his mind, and now thoughts of hypotheticals can't help flitting in.
"You say such silly, silly things." Shadow Milk bites out offhandedly as his laughter winds down, the lingering remnants still dancing on his tongue. Without warning, he pulls Pure Vanilla even closer, the darkness that had been keeping him in place swirling and shoving him forward. Pure Vanilla gasps, the sound catching in his throat, and one of his hands fly off his staff to reach for something to steady himself on. It finds an edge of shattered candy glass, flinching back and falling down to scrabble against its smooth, intact surface.
Shadow Milk is giggling at him and Pure Vanilla is mortified, horribly so. They are far, far too close, Shadow Milk's face taking up the near entirety of his vision and their upper bodies almost pressed together. It feels claustrophobic, which should be impossible in such a wide, open space.
Shadow Milk makes matters worse by pressing their foreheads together, the gesture weirdly tender and doing nothing to make Pure Vanilla any calmer. His bright blue eyes look directly through him, dissecting him piece by piece.
"Why don't you cut down the Silver Tree and find out?" Shadow Milk coos, his voice overlapping with the Light of Truth's in a deeply unsettling way. His presence is overwhelming.
Pure Vanilla's eyes flicker downwards to escape his piercing gaze, and finds their chests so close that their Soul Jams are overlapping. Overlapping, and not touching, because Shadow Milk's Soul Jam seems to fizzle out of existence where the other makes contact with it, as if it were an illusion. Behind it is an empty space, black as the abyss. With the way they are lined up now, it is obvious that Pure Vanilla's Soul Jam would fit perfectly into the crevice with a little turning. He knew that already, but it still feels strange to see it.
Pure Vanilla sighs, a long, thin, shuddering sound. "...You didn't truly believe that would work, did you?"
In the edge of his vision, Shadow Milk smiles tauntingly, all teeth, but he doesn't say a word.
And Pure Vanilla wakes up, off kilter, exhausted and oddly cold.
[next]
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Star Hunter's line-up for 2023 (and 2024) was exactly what they'd previously announced and tbh that made sitting through the whole thing actually quite enjoyable and to the point - even if I had to watch the livestream on facebook (apparently it's on youtube too but it's on madan.fun's channel so I didn't know until later).
Now Star Hunter is slowly uploading the pilots for the 5 new series and 2 movies they announced and I've had some time to make up my mind about them.
TRUE MOON | เดือนหลงเดือน
Star Hunter wouldn't be Star Hunter without their uni BL and campus moons, so this is probably as straightforward as it gets: Poor boy hates rich boy but then they fall in love and have to overcome many obstacles. Personally, I'll never get tired of uni BL so I'm ok with this.
CITY OF STARS | เฟื่องนคร
Star Hunter has unlocked a new trope: actor/manager BL - but this one comes with a twist: While one of them is an actor, the other guy has been tasked to... tbh I'm not even sure because the subs on the livestream were wonky and they're missing in the yt vid. The other one's a programmer for an app and apparently the actor's so famous that he breaks the app so the programmer gets sent to Thailand for few months (he's the only Thai dude in the whole company, you see) to somehow fix the problem. Oh, but also the actor is his neighbour? And then his manager gets sick so the programmer has to step in. Love ensues. Sounds good, I'm in.
SUNSET VIBES | เพียงชลาลัย
This is the new mosbank series we've been waiting for, and from the whole presentation it's clear that mosbank is now Star Hunter's new main attraction. The series itself is really intriguing. For one, it's beautifully filmed, with beautiful and almost traditional-sounding background music. It starts with a one-night-stand that quickly turns into "oops I got railed by my new boss the night before I started my internship" - but there's a mystery twist right at the end. According to what Mos said during the short presentation it's got something to do with Isan (Northeast Thailand) folklore and possibly past lives so this is going to be really good (I am completely unbiased of course).
BIG DRAGON THE MOVIE
I'm still not sure if this is replacing season 2 or a movie cut of the first season with extra scenes. My Thai is limited and all I know is that season 2 was mentioned (and Tao's actor was there). But anyway, the movie seems to expand on what happens in season 1, with a couple of extra scenes set in the past and the future, so even if we don't get a season 2 this is still going to be a treat.
FLIRT MILK | รักรสนมจืด
Ok so this one could be Star Hunter's wild card. It's a cute and chaotic BL set at (where else) university. Awkward boy meets another awkward boy and they're super different but obviously attracted to each other. But because they're so different they individually decide to change for their crush. Well, personally I hope they change back because they're really cute the way they are and also there's a severe lack of glasses in Thai BL.
ACADEX THE MOVIE
This is not a BL but it might have BL elements, I guess? Idk, the trailer didn't come with subs. From what I could gather the genre is young adult set in some kind of magical school with different houses and some sort of competition. ISBANKY is in this and tbh he's the main reason why I'm even interested in this.
LOVE SENIOR | พี่ว้ากคะ รักหนูได้มั้ย
I was right! This is the GL version of GEN Y that you've been waiting for. It has cute engineering students! It has freshie contests! It has freshie week hazing rituals! It has cute girls in red engineering shirts that kiss! It has strict seniors falling in love with extremely cute freshies. And it probably has lots of unnecessary drama too, just for good measure.
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