#felt stressed and sleepless so 4 am drawing time it is

[canisalbus]

Vermiglione

#own art #own characters #CanisAlbus #art #artists on tumblr #Machete #anthro #sighthound #dogs #canine #animals #felt stressed and sleepless so 4 am drawing time it is #non-canon outfit just playing dress-up I guess

[hes-writer]

Exclusive Content

this is a master list of all one shots, blurbs, series parts, and unfinished content that i have posted on patreon (so far)! click the title to read the sneak peek (if i’ve posted one)

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*+VALENTINE’S DAY

the one where harry has an eventful day

“Shit! Are you crazy?” Y/N gasped in surprise when the passengers seat was occupied, the door opening and slamming shut all while the car moved at a speed of 15 km/h —cursing her forgetfulness for not clicking the locks shut.

“Keep driving!” The passenger shouted, looking back through the windshield.

* ACHY BACK

the one where y/n’s back hurts and harry draws a bath

“Took too long,” Y/N mumbled as they met in the middle, knuckling tiredly at her eyes. A pout sat on her face as Harry stopped himself from ducking his head and catching her plush lips with his, craving the sweet taste of her and her strawberry lip balm. Her arms wrapped around his snatched waist, halting his breath at the tightness of her embrace and settling for a kiss on her forehead, the scent of her shampoo wafting in his nostrils, knowing that she had taken a shower hours prior. Her back had been aching since then, the pain barely bearable for her stature, causing a crease in between his brows.

+ A LETTER TO THE MAN I’VE LOVED

the one where harry receives a letter from y/n

Is it really worth it to look back in retrospect about ‘what had been’ when she can think about ‘what could have been’ if both of them realized their faults? Granted, he was more resilient in that sense than her, but he was no better at the time. She made mistakes and it had haunted her to this day, practically killing her with each moment she spent without him by her side.

+ UNWAVERING (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

the one where harry cheats (another version of ‘a cheat’)

"I-I'm in a bit of a rush, baby.” He took a step back, increasing the distance between them. "I have a meeting today. Lots of work to be done," Harry responded his tone suggesting that he didn’t want to talk anymore. Y/N nodded to please him.

"Right. Maybe we can go out tonight to grab some dinner," She suggested, a hopeful glint in her eyes and he almost felt guilty for putting her at the back burner of his mind.  

"I really have to go, baby," Peeking his head around her frame, he spotted the untouched toast and apple juice resting on where he should be. "I'm sorry."

+ ALL I ASK

the one where feelings aren’t mutual and hearts are broken

“I don’t want to be scared of what will happen tomorrow or if all we have is right now because we’ll have nothing left but I am,” A sob ripped through his throat, emotions were heightened tenfold because she was so close yet so far and they were still Harry and Y/N but at the same time they weren't. They’ve changed over the span of one night. “All we have is tonight,”

* LITTLE PRINCE

the one where harry and y/n are 7-year olds

Harry gasped in horror, crouching to his knees and getting his knee dirty beside the girl.

"Y/N? Y/N! Are you okay? I'm so so sorry, I didn't mean for that to happen. I swear I wasn't mad at you, I was just jok- Why are you smiling?" Harry yelped, panic evident in his shrill voice. His hands wandered towards her face, tilting it left to right, up and down, searching for any visible and invisible injuries besides the bump on her forehead.

RENEGADE

the one where y/n teaches harry the ‘renegade’ dance

“What are y’doing?” Harry asked, his eyes wide as his large palms ruffled the fluffy towel on his damp curls. The steam from the bathroom escaped to your bedroom where you were panting with effort, your chest heaving so hard that the peaks of your breasts rose with each breath. 

“Uh, what are you doing?” You retorted slowly, hiding your hands behind your back were your fingers gripped your phone. Your thumb dug hard on the volume bottom, frantically trying to decrease the music from the phone speaker. 

DROP THE TOWEL (m)

the one where harry does the ‘drop the towel’ challenge

“Hey, babe,” He greeted, walking closer to you in a towel that made him feel liberated. You hummed in a silent greeting, giving him a smile before doing a double-take at his appearance. He dropped the towel on the floor, his length hanging proudly between his legs. 

You gasped at the sight, the knife clanging on the marble counter, “Ooh, hi there,”

He smirked cockily, watching your eyes observe his body, tongue subconsciously peeking out between your lips until you snapped your head to the window, “Oh my god! There are people out there, Harry,” You wailed in alarm, bending over to hand him his towel.

DREAM WITH ME (exclusive content as of right now) - this fic will be posted on Tumblr when I return from my hiatus

the one where y/n has trouble falling asleep

Harry’s admiration gets interrupted when a sudden jolt took over Y/N’s body. He dropped his mouth open a little in shock, rubbing her back soothingly when she whimpered quietly, “Shh, it’s okay. You’re safe with me,” She must have had experienced one of those moments when she was falling until her vision drooped to a shaded black. 

DIGRESS (1) PROGRESS (2) REGRESS (3) 

the one where love fails

What happens when love fades away? How do you cope with the feelings disappearing slowly like a blot of dark blue paint diluting with every stroke of a ruffled paintbrush? Y/N wondered if there was a chance to fixing what has been lost--what has disappeared as the canvas soaked through in a permeated osmosis. Coating the brush of blue with white paint took several layers to completely cover the mistakes. There had to be an effort in wanting to make the faults and errors completely opaque from the eye; the bleary, watery irises soaked with tears, dampening her lashes in a thick haze as she cried.

ROUTINE (1) (the first part will be posted on Tumblr when I return from my hiatus. following parts will be patron-exclusive content)

the one where harry is a camboy

In a blink of an eye, Harry’s toned body was showcased on the screen, allowing him to view what his viewers had the pleasure of seeing. The ‘LIVE’ sign blinked repeatedly.

“Hello,” Harry drawled out purposefully using a deeper tone to set the mood. “How are you today?” His fingers stayed hung over the armchair, griping it slightly when comments started rolling in.

NOTES ON CAMP (1) (2) (3) (exclusive content as of right now) - this fic will be posted on Tumblr when I return from my hiatus

Y/N plastered a smile on her face as she shook Belle’s hand. “Sorry but I need to steal Harry away,” Belle tugged on his tattooed arm, fingers clasping around his wrists as he started walking along with her. “See you, Y/N!” Harry greeted, turning around with his arm draped over Belle’s shoulder.

“See you,” She whispered under her breath, looking at his retreating figure towards the cafeteria. Y/N couldn’t help the disappointment she felt, her shoulders slouching at the realization that it was too good to be true. Of course, he had a girlfriend.  A gentleman with chiselled features and a caring personality complimenting her? No way. Still, she wasn’t too sad about it. It wasn’t like they’ve known each other for long. Plus, they were co-workers! It would feel wrong to start a relationship anyway.

STRESSED OUT

the one where y/n is stressed and harry wants her to take a break

“What d’ya mean I don’t get it?” He closed the paperback, making sure to clip in his bookmark to save his spot.

A pregnant pause slithered the room. Her fingers typing against the keys of her laptop ceased as she shot him a glare, “You’re not studying, are you? All you do is write songs, fiddle with a few instruments and sing it in front of people who adore you,”

Harry physically pulled his chest back. He felt like he had been shot. He knew she didn’t mean it though, but it still hurt to hear, “O-oh. I didn't know y-you felt that way,”

She continued, “You don’t know what it’s like having to spend hours researching so you don’t get anything wrong. Sleepless nights to perfect one paragraph that my professor nitpicks to the bone,” Y/N penned a few words on her notebook, not noticing the pout plastered on Harry’s face.

DESSERT

the one where harry wants something else

She pulled away, shaking her head adamantly, “No way! I spent all day cooking and you’re not gonna skip it just to eat my pussy,”

He the corners of his eyes squinted in offence at her description, “Your pussy’s top tier, baby.” Harry ‘tsked’ his tongue, “If yeh didn’t know that already, then I’m doing a horrid job,”

PET NAME

the one bff!harry just wants y/n to call him by his pet name

“Am I, Harry? Seems like you’re putting me at the back burner nowadays,”

He was speechless; had he? Harry didn’t mean to make her feel this way but he wasn’t aware that he was actively blowing her off for Ruby. And why won’t she call him ‘honey’? That was his nickname, wasn’t it? H stood for Harry but it was also the pet name Y/N had given him.

His voice emulated a soft, syrupy tone that lingered in the air whenever he spoke. He was the colour honey itself--golden and yellow like the colour of the sun. Harry was bright in its sense of intelligence and the way he illuminated the whichever room he entered. His kindness catered to everyone’s needs and left pieces of his heart wherever he went.

Harry was honey.

ROOMMATES SERIES (3) (4) (5) (6)

the one where harry and y/n are roommates

updates every 2 weeks!

will not be posted on Tumblr until the series is finished

Y/N gasped at Harry’s proximity, lids snapping open with her hand reaching over to pat along until she found her phone which was blaring with an alarm that she had set. Harry gulped, eyes wide as his mind ran through what the hell just happened.

“What are you doing here? Get out!” She yelled, tugging the sheets higher on her body. 

“I-I was just waking you up so you can make us dinner,” Harry stuttered out, his excuse sounding lame but he patted himself on the shoulder for making it up on the spot. Well, that was his intention in the first place until he got distracted.

FRIENDS DON’T MINI-SERIES (1) (2) (3)

“Is this okay?” Her doe irises searched his. Harry raised his head lazily to make eye contact, nodding his head with a bit lip. Y/N clenched her inner thighs together at his already blissed-out state, his pupils slowly becoming larger with arousal. “Friends don’t touch each other this way,” She purposefully drew out her statement, giving Harry an out of the situation if he needed to.

“More than okay,”

FIC EXTRAS #1 - TEASE

the one before ‘under the table’

“Fuckin’ dirty,” He spat, the pads of his thumb tracing circles on her hipbones, not feeling a trace of clothing resting on her hips. “Wearin’ a short dress with no panties,”

Y/N hummed, arms slanting behind her to support her upper body so that she could spread her legs further, making room for Harry’s hand. “Didn’t feel like it,”

“Y’just waiting for me to find out, hmm? You knew I couldn’t resist myself when you look so goddamn pretty,”

UNFINISHED DRABBLE #1

the one with fratboy!harry

“Y’alright?” Harry’s husky breath barely made its way to her ears, only then did Y/N feel the hand palming her lower back, another one gripped around her shoulders. Her front flushed against his own, feeling his hard chest on her heaving ones. She peeked one eye open, looking around at her angled stance, then to Harry who wore a concerned look scanning her face. Y/N nodded in response, blinking rapidly, her nipples hardening at a sudden cold breeze beneath the thin fabric of her dress, surely poking him through his shirt. She blushed at the thought and his brief glance over her where they touched, his eyes dilating the tiniest amount.

UNFINISHED DRABBLE #2

the one where harry’s a cheating asshole

Harry wormed his way through his delectable voice and his ever-present words that somehow scorched your shield to the ground. Again. He promised never to do it again and your love-sick heart trusted him. Again. 

But your trust wasn’t something that was particularly valuable to him. To Harry, it would always be there, lingering like the stars in the night sky; always present, always gleaming. Harry was very sorry for what he was doing to you. It was ironic, really; he hoped and prayed every day that you wouldn’t find out but his carelessness left everything out in the open.  

TEXT MESSAGES #1

the one where y/n has silly thoughts

TEXT MESSAGES #2

the one where harry and y/n share the same class 

#harry styles one shot #harry styles #masterlist #harry styles x reader #harry styles fluff #harry styles imagine #patreon exclusive #harry styles smut

[basketofverbiage]

Hold On

This is my first writing post I’ve made. I had this in my head for a while and finally got it out. I have a part two, but it’s still being edited. I am so open to feedback!

Warnings: suicide attempt; hospitals; panic attacks

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

For the past few weeks, Seokjin has known that something is wrong, but has no idea what it is. And without knowing what it is, how the hell is he supposed to fix it? His entire life seems to revolve around the need to take care of the people he loves most, and he can see that Y/n is devastatingly hurt but has no clue how to heal it. It’s like a surgeon trying to operate on a patient in a dark back alley somewhere; he can’t see what’s ruptured, can’t stop the bleeding, and he has this sneaking suspicion that he might lose his patient.

It’s been three solid weeks since he first noticed that something seems to be affecting the woman he loves. She put on a brave face and a faux smile when she knew he was paying attention. But in quiet moments when she thought he was distracted, he could see the darkness wash over her features. He’s tried everything he could think of to draw out what is wrong, comfort her, cheer her up, but nothing has worked and he’s starting to get scared.

It all began on a normal Tuesday afternoon. He was finished with his schedule fairly early in the day and came home to find her sitting in the kitchen floor with her back pressed against the cabinet below the sink, her legs drawn up into her arms and her face hidden in her kneecaps, with dark swirly curls hiding the rest of her features.

“Baby, are you okay?” he called quietly, rushing over to kneel in front of her. Her head snapped up and she smiled the fakest smile he’d ever seen from her.

“Yes, Jinnie. I’m fine. I just haven’t slept well, and just sat down after washing dishes.”

He knew she was lying to him by the darkness swirling in her eyes and the way that the smile didn’t soften the pain in her features, but he decided not to push it. She really hadn’t been sleeping well. More than one night this week he’d woken up in the twilight morning hours to her thrashing about a bit in fitful nightmares, but she’d settle down a bit when he’d pull her in and hum softly into her ear. So, he reiterated to himself that it’s okay not to push it, and that she’d open up once she was ready. He’d scooped her up off the kitchen floor into a tight hug then they’d spent the afternoon curled up in bed with mindless tv shows and drifting in and out of dreams until he started to believe she was okay. She’d laughed at his silly jokes, so Y/n is fine, right?

After that, he noticed that she began sleeping so much more. Sure, she’d had a stressful few months at work with a major project she had been assigned for a high-profile client, but she’d completed that project well and the client had been singing her praises to the heavens. In doing so, she had spent as many sleepless nights slaving away as he had spent missing her beside him in their king-sized bed. It made him wonder how she survived the long months of him being away on tour, lying so tiny in the vast wasteland of a cold, empty bed. Seokjin is not tiny by any means, and without her, he felt so small and vaguely empty in satin sheets, surrounded by so many pillows. And no matter how many extra blankets he added, the bed was so cold without her. So once the project was completed, it made perfect sense that she’d catch up on sleep, right? There is nothing to worry about, right?

Y/n had also pretty obviously stopped eating and cooking. This was driving him insane. The love of cooking and feeding other people is one of the many things that brought them together, and they took turns showing their love to each other with food. She hadn’t baked a single item in three straight weeks. While Seokjin could not bake to save his own life, Y/n baked the most amazing creations and her favorite thing to make was bread. All different varieties of breads from simple, rustic loaves to delicate fruit-filled sweetbreads, she once told him that baking bread made her feel alive. Something about the way the dough responded and how much encouragement it needed to become something from nearly nothing. In fact, in the two full years they had been together, Seokjin had not one time bought a loaf of bread from the store. He forgot that store-bought loaves were even a thing. She kept her own sourdough starter and had to bake at least one loaf a week to keep it growing healthily without it taking over, so he would come home at least one day a week to the slightly sour, yeasty twang of sourdough bread wafting about as two beautiful loaves cooled on a cooling rack. One loaf was always for them at home, and the other for his brothers. Before they shared a home, she would regularly bring her bread experiments over to the dorm and the boys would all ooh and ahh over her creations; Seokjin and Namjoon had had to nearly break up physical fights between the maknaes over who got to eat the last of the loaves on more than one occasion. But it had been two solid weeks since a loaf had been baked in their apartment and he was desperately trying to squelch the worry that was building.

Seokjin realized that he might be out of his element with this. He’d tried everything he knew to do. They’d been on three fancy dates, and he’d sent her a gorgeous bouquet to work. Seokjin bought her the earrings she’d been eyeing subtly when they were shopping for his mom’s birthday present and left them on her pillow one morning when he had to be at an interview at 4 am. He had made love to her slow and sweet on a rainy Sunday afternoon like she loved; it had always been enough to bring her back to him before as he’d remind her of why he loved her both with words and with his body. But not this time. He had told her every joke he could think of, even the worst ones that sounded like they had come off the stick of a melted popsicle. He made her coffee like she liked in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and heady glasses of red wine in the evening. He’d even gone so far as to fly her best friend in for the one weekend he’d had to be away in Japan, knowing that if he couldn’t fix it, she usually could. He had asked if she was okay at least twice a day for more than a week, then given up already when she tried to keep her work mask on all the time and lied straight to his face that she was fine. Y/n was not fine, but he didn’t know what was wrong and nothing he had tried had even made a dent in the darkness, so Seokjin did the only thing he could think of and asked for help to the smartest man he knew.

“Hey, man, you okay?” Namjoon asked when Jin barged into his studio one afternoon without even knocking. The king of manners never forgot something so simple.

“I’m okay, but Y/n is not. I’ve tried everything, and I can’t bring her out of this funk she’s in.”

For the next few minutes, Namjoon asked pointed questions about her behavior and her responses to Seokjin’s attempt at cheering her up. After he had basically verbally vomited all over Namjoon’s lap in RKive for nearly 45 minutes, Namjoon said the most obvious thing.

“Jin-hyung, she sounds depressed. Like seriously, clinically depressed. She has all the classic symptoms. Exhaustion, lack of sleep then sleeping too much, not much energy, disengaging, giving up activities she loves…”

Of course, Namjoon and his sexy brain would identify the thing he’d been seeing wreck the love of his life in practically no time at all. The only thing is that he really didn’t have many solutions other than trying to get her to see a doctor to talk about it. Y/n is stubborn and hates doctors, so convincing her to go would take some doing, but he had an idea of how to go about it. Seokjin thought about it more as he walked down the hallway leaving from Namjoon’s studio and gathered a game plan in his mind. He was done for the day after having recorded all of his parts early in the morning, and it was just now 2:30 in the afternoon. He has time to put things in motion before Y/n should be home from work at 5; if he makes a special dinner for her, then maybe he can soften her heart enough for her to hear him out when he asks her to please either let him in to help or to see a professional. Preferably both if things went well.

Seokjin left the building in a bit of a hurry and drove to the supermarket closest to the apartment. It was a small, family run market that regularly got ingredients in that were difficult to find in other places. Y/n had made friends with the owner’s daughter-in-law as they were from the same home country and had bemoaned how difficult it was to find ingredients for certain dishes, even in a city as big as Seoul. Seokjin planned to make this one soup that Y/n called Comfort Soup that she’d taught him to make; it was the food her mom had made her when she was a child anytime she was sick, hurt, or even just sad, and it brought a piece of her home to her now when she felt homesick. He also wanted to bake a crusty artisan loaf to go with it using the one recipe that Y/n had taught him that he could usually bake without an issue. In fact, Y/n called it the Idiot-Proof Loaf, so surely he wouldn’t screw that up. The best part was that while it took an hour and a half from start to finish, the dough only had to rise once, and finished its growth in the oven instead of multiple risings like most of the breads Y/n made. He rushed in and got all the things he needed, then popped into the florist shop next door for those silly purple roses she loved. His final stop was to a little bakery nearby where their second date had been, and bought chocolate covered strawberries and two beautiful slices of the strawberry cheesecake that they’d shared on that date.

When he finally arrived at their apartment building, Seokjin was relived to see that he’d only used 45 minutes of his precious time and had still had time to bake the bread as long as he did that first. He could make Comfort Soup while the dough rose. After unlocking the apartment door, he kicked off his shoes by the door, then took all his ingredients to the kitchen. He put away the strawberries and cheesecake in the ice box then looked down at his outfit. Even with an apron, he should change so that he isn’t covered in flour and dough.

He didn’t notice it at first. Oh my god, how could he not have noticed? He had walked into the closet to change without turning on the bedroom light, so how could he not have noticed the light filtering under the bathroom door? The light he had turned off before leaving this morning. Y/n had left first since she had an early meeting at the office before he had to be to the recording studio, and there is no reason that she should have already been home. He didn’t see her keys on the hook by the door when he came in or her shoes on the rack where they belonged. Seokjin turned around as he pulled the white t-shirt over his head and stood there perplexed for a few seconds staring at the brightness on the carpet before striding over to open the door and turn off the light.

“Oh my god, Y/n!”

He opened the door to see darkening blood on the white tile of the bathroom floor, and Y/n slumped over against the tub. Her wrist was bleeding in her lap and the shining razor blade was lying beside her on the tile. While the volume of blood was disconcerting, there wasn’t as much as he’d ever thought there would be in a situation like this, so Seokjin knew he might have a chance to save her until he noticed the empty bottle of pills in the sink. Then, came the panic.

Seokjin ripped the hand towel off the drying rack and tied it around her bleeding wrist tight enough to put pressure on the wound while he full-on sprinted to the kitchen for his cell phone. He’d left it lying on the kitchen island when he went to change, and he grabbed it and dialed for an ambulance while running back to her. The dispatcher gathered their address and told him that help was coming, but Seokjin could barely hear her. He was shaking Y/n gently trying to get her to respond. He could just barely hear a pulse when he pressed his ear to her chest and her breathing was so damn shallow it barely grazed his skin when he hovered his hand in front of her face. Oh, god, she’s so pale, he though to himself before hanging up and dropping his phone in the pocket of his sweatpants.

“Y/n, baby, can you hear me? Please wake up, please. I need you to wake up.” He didn’t even realize he was crying until he spoke, just begging her to open her eyes.

He barely registered the banging on the front door as help arrived. He didn’t want to leave her, but he had to, so he ran to the door and flung it open for the paramedics and just left the front door gaping open and ran back to the bathroom. Luckily, they took the hint and followed him back to where Y/n was still limp on the floor. They worked quickly and got her all strapped onto a stretcher and told him that he could ride to the hospital with her.

As an afterthought almost, Seokjin grabbed the empty bottle out of the sink and took it with them. Once they were in the ambulance and the paramedics were doing their jobs, Seokjin finally looked at the bottle and immediately felt worse. The empty bottle had his name on it. It had contained muscle relaxers from a couple of months ago when Seokjin had pulled a muscle in his back overworking himself and the doctor had given them to him to help him relax the muscles around it enough that he could sleep. There had been around 10 pills left in the bottle, and Y/n is so much smaller than him in size. Seokjin didn’t know much about medications but he did remember that they were prescribed taking size into consideration, and for the second time in the last 20 minutes, he realized that she might really die.

“Please, Y/n. Please. Oh God you have to wake up.” Seokjin choked on a sob before he could say anything else.

Seokjin felt like the minutes that had passed since he found her were moving through molasses, thick and slow to drip through the hourglass. The ambulance stopped in front of the hospital and the doors flung open into bright late afternoon sunlight, and this nightmare kept going. The paramedics unloaded the stretcher and Seokjin chased them into the emergency room. He kept following them through two sets of double doors, not hearing any words that were being spoken to him until a nurse physically grabbed him.

“Sir, you can’t go any further. We need space to help her,” she said then guided him into a tiny private waiting room. “Wait here and I’ll come back to update you as soon as I can.” She had just made it to the door when he remembered the bottle that he’d been squeezing.

“Here,” he said shakily. “I found this in the sink when I found her. I know that there were at least 10 left in there.”

The nurse thanked him and left quickly, shutting the door behind her. After several seconds of being attacked by the silence in the room, Seokjin’s legs couldn’t hold him up anymore and he just collapsed. He couldn’t stop crying but found the strength to pull out his phone and called Namjoon.

“Namjoon-ah, I was too late. Oh my god, I was too late,” Seokjin sobbed into the phone.

“Jin-hyung, where are you?”

After hearing that Seokjin was at the hospital, Namjoon told him that they’d all come to him. Seokjin had no concept of the flow of time as he remained crumpled on the floor when all six of his brothers tumbled in the door, and he lost it even more when Jimin and Taehyung both wrapped their arms around him. They held him while he sobbed and told them about what he’d found when he’d opened the bathroom door. After a while, Seokjin felt like his chest was gaping open and all of his internal organs were falling out at once, but the tears slowed down as the panic flooded back in; his chest constricted in terror and anxiety and sharp, wracking pain.

“I can’t breathe. Oh, my god, I can’t breathe,” he gasped out as he looked up and met eyes with Namjoon.

Jimin and Taehyung backed up a little to give him some space as Seokjin started hyperventilating. The edges of his vision were starting to get blurry and almost sparkled a bit as his body seemed to reject every breath he tried to take. He barely registered the sound of the door opening as Yoongi ran out to get help. Seokjin struggled to breathe and tried desperately to cling to consciousness as the panic attack really set in.

An unfamiliar feminine face was in front of him then, encouraging him to focus on the sound of her voice. She spoke softly and calmly to him, but she might as well have been speaking to him in Greek because he couldn’t understand any of her words. For that matter, he could just barely hear her over this loud whooshing sound in his ears. The tone of her voice was soft and forced him to focus on nothing else to try to understand what she was saying, and after a few minutes the whooshing noise quieted down enough to hear her properly and he began to lose some of the tightness in his chest.

“Seokjin-ssi, that’s it. Keep breathing slowly and deeply. You are safe. You are just having a panic attack right now, and that’s understandable. Just keep listening to my voice and keep breathing in…then out…now in again,” she murmured to him.

After she was sure that he was calm and wouldn’t panic again, she turned to the other men in the room and asked them to help Seokjin out of the floor. Jungkook stepped up with Namjoon and they physically lifted him up and into a chair. Seokjin couldn’t help them because his legs had been substituted with lemon jello that hadn’t fully set up yet.

Yoongi held a cup to his lips. “Drink, hyung,” he said softly.

Seokjin sipped obediently a few times until Yoongi was satisfied and sat the cup on a nearby table. Seokjin was shocked when Yoongi wrapped his arms around him. Yoongi rarely initiated physical shows of affection, but he understood this entire scenario in a deeper way than he wanted to admit and he knew exactly what Seokjin needed in this moment.

“Yoongichi, I think this is my fault,” Seokjin whispered into his ear.

“No, Jin-hyung. It is not your fault.”

“But I think it is. I must not have loved her well enough. I wasn’t home enough. The pills she took were mine. If I had gone to Namjoon-ah for help sooner…” Seokjin’s voice cracked and he couldn’t finish the thought.

“It is not your fault. Trust me. Do you not remember where I was emotionally when we met? And how close I came to trying too? Do you remember what I said to you the night you walked in and stopped me?” Yoongi countered gently.

“You said that you didn’t want to weigh us all down and that you’d rather hurt yourself than hurt us. And that everything is all your fault.”

“That’s right,” Yoongi replied with a soft smile. “And what did you say back to me?”

“That just because you feel like it’s your fault doesn’t mean that it is. That leaving us that way would hurt more than any burden you handed us. And to let me be your tether when you needed something to hold you down to the earth.”

“Yes, So, now I get a chance to say part of it back to you. Just because you think this is your fault doesn’t mean it is. You saved her, Jin-hyung. You are the reason she’s still breathing now, just like you are the reason I am still breathing now. Yes, she got a little closer to the fire than we’d like, but she can still come back to us. And when she does, Y/n is going to need a tether on the hard days, yeah?”

Seokjin couldn’t speak at that. He still felt like everything was his fault for not realizing what was happening sooner, but Yoongi was right. He had to stay strong because Y/n needed that right now, so he squeezed Yoongi a little tighter then let go before he started to cry again. Yoongi moved from kneeling in front of him to plant himself in the chair beside him. Now that his panic attack had stopped, Seokjin felt like someone had buried him under the weight of about 100 tons of brick. Everything was so heavy, and he was too tired to try to climb out. He finally looked around the room and took it in for the first time.

The waiting room was small but big enough for all of them. Namjoon was in the corner speaking quietly into the phone, presumably updating their managers on what was happening. Seokjin hadn’t thought to call anyone except Namjoon since Namjoon was the only person he’d spoken with about this. Jungkook was standing by the door with his arms crossed, almost as if he was standing guard over his brothers; his stance portrayed his worry a bit in that his first instinct when one of his hyungs was hurting was to cry with them, then protect them if he could. Hoseok was sitting on a small couch on the left side of the room smashed in between Jimin and Taehyung, both folded into Hobi for security and comfort. Hobi had both boys tucked under his arms and was trying to help them stay calm. Both Jimin and Taehyung were empaths and this scenario had them both on edge from the emotions in the room. Jimin still had tears running down his cheeks from the fear of Seokjin’s panic attack and worry for his friend. Taehyung was staring at Jin with wide eyes, seemingly trying to decide if he was okay and what he should do to help.

“I’m okay, Taehyungie,” Seokjin said softly. “I’m just scared.”

Taehyung got up and moved to sit at Seokjin’s feet and wrapped his arms around Seokjin’s legs. It was a small gesture, but somehow it helped to settle some of the remaining anxiety in the pit of Jin’s stomach, and he knew that the physical contact would help Tae relax a bit.

Time seemed to stop moving. Seokjin had no concept of how long they had been in this room. It could have been seconds, or it could have been 10 years, but not knowing what was happening with Y/n was making him crazy. Just when he thought that he couldn’t handle another minute of this stretching unnerving silence, there was a knock at the door, then the doctor stepped in.

“Kim Seokjin?” he asked.

“That’s me. How is she?” Jin stuttered out.

“She’s still alive, but in critical condition. She had lost quite a lot of blood when you found her. We had to give her three pints just to stabilize her. We also did have to pump her stomach for the pills she had taken. We wouldn’t have known about that if you hadn’t brought the bottle in. Honestly, if you had found her 5 minutes later, the outcome may have been very different. As it is, she’s still very weak and unconscious. Hopefully, she will wake up in the next few days, but we still have to wait and see.”

“Can I see her?” Seokin asked.

“Yes, but just be prepared. Her color is still really pale, and she’s hooked up to quite a few monitors. We have also inserted a ventilation tube to help her with breathing for tonight. We hope to remove it tomorrow morning, but we can take it out sooner if she wakes up before then. It’s not standard, but due to the scenario, you may want to bring someone with you,” the doctor advised then smiled softly. “I really think she will be okay, but I can’t be 100% sure.”

Seokjin looked around the room at each of his brothers, meeting eyes with Yoongi last. “Come with me?” he whispered. Yoongi nodded then stood. Taehyung unwrapped himself from around Seokjin’s legs and allowed the two men to follow the doctor out of the room.

The doctor lead them down a seemingly endless hallway before they arrived at a set of double doors. The doctor waved his name badge in front of a keypad and the doors swung open to another hallway. They walked past 4 doors before the doctor stopped and knocked on a door on the left side then let them in.

“Just let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be in to check on her in a couple of hours,” he told them before leaving and closing the door.

Seokjin watched the door close before he finally looked at Y/n lying in the bed. It was like he was standing in his worst nightmare and couldn’t wake up. She looked so small lying there, and so, so pale. There was an IV coming out of her right arm that connected to a couple of bags of fluid hanging limply from a pole beside the bed. There was a plastic mask over her mouth connected with the ventilator at the bedside, and wires that connected from cathodes on her chest to a large beeping heart monitor on the left side of the bed. At the shock of seeing Y/n like this, his knees almost buckled. He would have hit the floor if Yoongi hadn’t grabbed him. Yoongi guided him over to the chair beside the bed and helped him sit down.

“She almost looks dead, Yoongi. Oh my god…” he whimpered.

Yoongi didn’t say anything, he just grabbed Seokjin’s hand and held it tight. It had been nearly 5 years since the night Seokjin had walked in on him with a knife in his hand standing in the bathtub of their shared bathroom. Seokjin had talked him down that night and 3 more times since. Yoongi can’t help but think that while he has recovered so much, this could have been him at some point, and his chest ached. He hurt for his friend lying in the bed, and he ached for his brother who loved her so much and he was upset with himself for not being able to help either of them. He settled on being as comforting to Seokjin as he possibly could and released his hand just long enough to drag an empty chair up beside him, then grabbing his hand again.

Seokjin gently held Y/n’s hand in his right and Yoongi’s in his left. He tried to take the comfort he got from Yoongi’s hand and pour it into the gentle grip he maintained on Y/n’s hand. Tears were dripping silently down his cheeks as he watched the machine take breaths for her and listened to the beeping of the heart monitor. The heart monitor’s sound was comforting somehow as the steady beating reminded him that every beep was a beat of her heart. Seokjin just sat and stared at her motionless form in the bed, and after a while, the beeping of the heart monitor lulled him to sleep without him realizing he’d drifted off.

A loud frantic alarm went off and Seokjin jarred awake, taking a second to remember where he was and why he was there. When he jerked upright, Yoongi’s head fell off of his shoulder where it had landed and Yoongi woke up too. The heart monitor was beeping loudly and erratically now.

“Oh god, Yoongi get help. Something’s wrong.”

Yoongi ran out into the hallway, and Seokjin could vaguely recognize his voice calling for the nurses to come help. Y/n’s eyes hadn’t opened, but she looked paler than she had been and Seokjin couldn’t help but to panic.

“Y/n, no! Please wake up! You can’t leave me like this,” Jin cried, shaking her gently.

The nurses ran in just before that same alarm that shocked him awake sounded again, and they shoved Seokjin out the door and out of the way to have room to work.

“No, please! I need to be with her! Please! Y/n! Y/N! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME. PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME!” Seokjin started screaming and crying trying to fight off the arms that were holding him back.

Yoongi spun him around to face him then and pulled him into a hug. “Hyung, you have to let them work. You have to let them help her.”

Seokjin felt like he had lost all control and he wasn’t sure he could just stand here when his entire world was behind that closed door dying. At the same time, he didn’t know what he could do to help, and he was so angry that he couldn’t just fix this. Seokjin let Yoongi lead him a few feet away from the door so they wouldn’t be blocking the way if anyone needed to come in or out. After an eternity it seemed, the nurses opened the door and called Seokjin over.

“I’m sorry for shoving you out the door. The alarm you were hearing was the heart rate monitor. Her blood pressure was dropping, and we had to give her a big shot of some medication to correct that. She has stabilized a bit and you can go back in and wait with her if you’d like.”

Seokjin just nodded and walked back in and headed back to his chair at the bedside. Yoongi grabbed his hand and squeezed it for a moment before speaking, “Hyung, I’m going to go update everyone. I know they are all worried about what’s happening. I’ll send someone else to come back with you for a bit so that they can visit Y/n too. They love her too.”

“Okay,” Seokjin whispered. “Would you send Joon-ah?”

“Of course I will.”

After Seokjin heard the door click closed, he took a closer look at Y/n. She was still so pale and looked like she was so breakable. Even through all of that, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he couldn’t just sit there by the bedside anymore. He needed to hold her in his arms, so he gently navigated all of the wires and tubes to climb in the bed beside her and wrap his arms around her as gently as he could. The bed was so small, but his entire body relaxed a bit when he was able to feel her beside him. Seokjin kissed her gently on the temple before speaking softly into her ear.  

“Baby, I hope you can hear me. I love you so much. I am so sorry that I didn’t realize what was happening with you sooner. I tried so hard to help in subtle ways and not to force you to open up about what was going wrong. I should have pushed even if we fought. I’d rather live with the knowledge that you are angry with me than for you to not be alive at all. Please. Please, don’t leave me.” Seokjin couldn’t stop himself from sobbing into Y/n’s hair, and he was so exhausted with worry and fear. After a few more minutes, he had cried himself back to sleep.

As Seokjin’s sleep addled brain woke back up a few hours later, he had difficulty remembering where he was, but then he opened his eyes and reality bitch-slapped him in the face. He glanced down to see Y/n still unconscious beside him. He needed to visit the restroom and something to drink. He had cried so much that his entire body felt like it was drying up from the inside out. He slowly sat up and maneuvered out of the bed so that he wouldn’t disconnect any of the vital tubes and wires connected to her and got out of the bed. When he did, he saw Namjoon slumped over asleep in the chair he’d vacated the night before and smiled a bit to himself before slipping into the connected bathroom.

Seokjin stared at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. While he still was as handsome as he’d ever been, his eyes were swollen and a bit red from crying and sleeping in his contacts. His hair was sticking up everywhere too from sleep, and there was a big brown streak of dried blood across his white tee from where he’d found Y/n. He looked like hell. He splashed some water on his face a bit then came out of the bathroom. As much as he didn’t want to leave her, he wanted to check on the others down the hallway. After exiting the restroom, he sat down beside Namjoon and lightly shook him.

“Namjoon-ah, wake up.”

Namjoon startled awake a bit, looking around to see what was happening. “Wha…What’s going on? Did something happen?”

“No, nothing has changed. I just want to walk down the hall to check on the others and get a cup of coffee. Will you stay with her please? I don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up. I just feel like I’m going to lose my mind if I stay still in this room for another second.”

Namjoon agreed immediately, and Seokjin rose and left the room as quietly as possible. He wondered down the hallway and back to the double doors. There was a sign beside the door that notated a 4-digit code so that he could get back in without a doctor’s name badge upon his return, so he committed that to memory before heading back into the room where he’d left the others. He walked in and saw Yoongi and Hoseok curled up on the sofa, cuddled up together asleep. The maknaes were all three curled up in the floor together using cushions they had removed from the chairs around the room as pillows, but they were all touching. Jungkook was in the middle, with Taehyung draped around him. Taehyung had one arm and one leg thrown across Jungkook, and Jimin was holding his hand. Jimin was lying with his left side pushed against Jungkook’s side and his head tilted so that it touched Jungkook’s shoulder. Seokjin chuckled a bit at the sight, glad that he had these men as his family. At the sound of his laugh, Hoseok looked over at Seokjin where he was standing just inside the door. Hoseok had always been the lightest sleeper of the group, and any sound would disrupt him.

“Hyung?” Hoseok asked, “Is Y/n awake?”

“No, Seokie, she’s not. But I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust from not being able to help her, so I came out to get some coffee.”

“Oh.” Hoseok’s face fell as he learned that Y/n was still not awake. “Sejin-hyung brought you a change of clothes and a toothbrush in the middle of the night. Joonie told him about how you…about your shirt.”

Seokjin found the bag in the corner of the room, so thankful at how much like family their managers were with them. They had always looked after all 7 as if they were their own children, so when something happened to 1 member, it happed to the entire staff too. Seokjin stepped into the small bathroom connected to the waiting room to change and brush his teeth and immediately felt a bit calmer. There had been black sweatpants, a white tee shirt and an oversized blue sweater in the bag. The sweater helped immensely. It was the one that Y/n had stolen to sleep in the other day, so her scent was still woven into the fabric and it helped him to stay calm and hopeful. He stepped out into the waiting room to see that the maknaes were starting to stir a bit.

“Jin-hyung, I’m going to get coffee and breakfast for everyone. Can I bring you something?” Jimin asked.

“Just coffee, Minnie. I don’t think I can stomach the thought of food at the moment. I’m going to head back to Y/n, so just call when you get back and I’ll come out and get the coffee.”

Seokjin then headed back towards Y/n’s room in the intensive care unit. He heard Namjoon screaming for someone to come before he got back through the double doors and his heart nearly exploded in fear. What if she’s crashing again, he thought to himself as he was running down the hall. He nearly collided with Namjoon midway there. Namjoon grabbed both his arms to keep from falling backwards, before he said two words that made Seokjin’s heart flutter from relief.

“She’s awake.”

#bts #bts fic #bts fanfic #bts imagine #bts imagines #bts imagination #bts au #bts angst #bts jin #bts seokjin #bts jin angst #bts seokjin angst #bangtan #bangtan boys #bangtan donyeondan #hold on #jin #seokjin #kim seokjin

[ouronlyangelhes]

The Last Time- DIVORCE AU SERIES PART 4

It had been 2 months since the conversation between you and Harry had occurred about trying to have a baby. It seemed like a routine, Harry would come home you two would have sex and then fall asleep. You weren’t complying. For months you had been begging Harry to pay and sort of attention to you, now that he had you didn’t have the right to complain.

You thought back to an earlier conversation the both of you had. Harry had said that he didn’t want anything to feel forced, he wanted it to because you wanted to not because your marriage depended on it.

In this past month, your attempts to get pregnant had been unsuccessful. Of course, you knew that it wouldn’t be something that happened over night but you were growing increasingly more impatient as the days went on. The stress of trying to have a baby was growing on you, and it was growing on Harry too.

All he could think about was how much he wanted to be a dad. In his life, he has wanted a lot of things. Some things more than others, some for longer and some for shorter. He has always wanted to have a family of his own. Little ones running around the house when he returns home from the studio and a family to take on the road to make the nights less sleepless. This dream that he had so badly wanted is now just becoming something that he dreads. This isn’t how it is suppose to be. Marriage is about give and take. And this, was about all that Harry could take. He knew that this wasn’t the time and try to have a family but you wanted it. He didn’t know if you wanted a baby because you wanted a baby or because you wanted a way to save the marriage that was crumbling at your feet.

DIVORCE:

noun: the legal dissolution of a marriage by a court or other competent body.

It was a word that absolutely terrified Harry. He never wanted it to come to this, he really didn’t. He just didn’t know what else could be done. Neither one of you seemed very motivated anymore to pick up the broken pieces and everything seemed like a hassle. He didn’t know how he was going to break it to you that he no longer wanted to be married. That would mean he would no longer come home to the home the two of you shared at the end of the day. That meant he would no longer call you his wife every second he could. That meant he would no longer have a photo of the two of you from your wedding day on his nightstand. All of it would be over, just like that. He was breaking inside, but he couldn’t just settle any longer. He wasn’t happy anymore and neither were you. He couldn’t live any longer pretending that everything was going to be fine when he knew it wasn’t. He wanted you to be happy and have chance at finding someone else one day that could. He knew that it was going to be a tough road ahead but it wasn’t anything like what he was facing now. He dreaded the conversation he was going to have with you. He knew there was going to be tears, and a lot of them. He knew that the pain of the marriage between the two of you being truly over was going to take some time to sink in. 

“Love, are you home?” He said as he walked in the front door of your shared home. He remembered when the two of you were looking for houses. It was such a happy time, buying a home was such a big deal because it was something that signified your love for one another and the promise of a long life together. A promise neither one you could keep any longer.

“Yeah, ‘M in the living room.” You said as you sat on the couch working on your computer. 

“Do you ‘ave a minute to talk? It’s really important.” Harry said already terrified of how you would process what he was about to say to you. 

“Uh yeah sure, what’s up?” You said to him as you closed your laptop. You knew what was coming, it had been months building up. Tension and bitterness was all too familiar in your shared home now. Just because you knew it was over didn’t make it any easier.

“God, this is so hard.” Harry said with his voice trembling and hands shaking. “I didn’t ever think I was ever gonna say this to you but I think that we should get a divorce.” Harry had broken your heart with those words. Not only did those words break your own but his as well.

“Okay.” You said to him. He was shocked that no tears were being shed and no argument was being made in order to revive your dead marriage. “Okay? Thats it” He said questioning you.

“Yeah, that’s it. We both know this isn’t working anymore. I can’t live like this anymore and neither can you. I just hate that we couldn’t outlast it all.” 

“Me too.” He said disappointed in both himself and the situation in general. “Can I hold you?” He asked knowing how strange of a request it was, but he wanted to show you that he still loved you. He may not be in love with you anymore but he’ll always care for you deeply. 

“Yes.” You said to him as you moved down on couch beside him. “So what now?” You said wanting to know what this whole divorce thing would mean for you and what the next step was going to be.

“I was planning to find an apartment or something and you can have the house and then we can just go from there I guess. We can have our lawyers draw up all the paperwork and stuff.” He said as he ran his fingers through your hair.

“I don’t want the house Harry.” You stated to him. He was taken by surprise. You loved this house. You had seen photos of it online and demanded that the relator take you by it. You and Harry had done some remodeling and changes since you bought it to make it more your own. Harry couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t want the house that you wanted more than anything.

“Why not?” He asked, trying to understand.

“ I have to find somewhere else. I can’t live in this house Harry. One where we dreamed of having kids in and one we bought together. It would just be a constant reminder of us and the fact that it didn’t work out the way we had planned.” You had a fair point. Harry understood why you needed to live elsewhere but he didn’t want you to feel like he was trying to take your home away too.

“ I think I am gonna go upstairs and go to bed. Tomorrow we can sort out the living arrangements and all of our things. I’ll sleep in the guest room.” Harry said as he began to walk up the stairs.

“Wait, Harry. Can you stay with me tonight? Just for the sake of old times, one last night together.” You said hoping he could hear the desperation in your voice.

“Yes love, c’mon lets go.” He said as you trailed up the stairs behind him. He wasn’t sure if you were implying intimacy or just wanted to share a bed with him for the last time. Either way, he wasn’t going to turn you down. 

You began to undress, you felt so vulnerable. Pretty soon the man you planned to spend an eternity with was no longer going to be your husband. He was going to be your ex husband. Life was going to move on and so were the two of you. You both were going to find other people to build a life with and have children with. You continued undressing and Harry’s stare was burning a hole in you. He always thought you were the most breathtaking person. There was something about this moment he just couldn’t stop staring at. All those times he had just taken advantage of you changing into whatever you had planned to wear that day or out of whatever you had on. This was going to be the last time Harry was going to see you in that way. 

He walked up behind you and started planting kisses down your neck. He made his way down your body. He knew all of the right places, even though it had felt different now. You wanted to tell him that you couldn’t have sex with him because it would only make the leaving harder, but you just couldn’t you had to do this, you had to feel him for the last time. You never think the last time is the last time until it is. Harry laid down next to you breathless, he wrapped his arms around you for the last time and you closed your eyes.

#Harry Styles #harrystyles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles imagine #harry styles one shot #harry styles series #harry styles writing

[dokoiruno]

Falling Slowly: Christmas Special

Chapter 6: Lucky Strike

Christmas is approaching, causing a buzz of excitement in Polar Star dorm. They decided to hold a Christmas party on the 24th right before everyone goes to winter break since there are those who plan to go home to their hometown. As part of the celebration, they also agreed to hold an exchange gifts event. As usual, all from the rebel forces were invited.

Everyone huddled in Marui’s room while Yuki writes down their names in a paper which she drops in a small box. Hisako is standing near her, holding a clipboard containing a name list and checking that all are accounted for.

“Ok now everyone! Take one name here in the box. Please do look at the name on the paper first to check if it’s your name. If it’s yours, you have to give it back and draw another. There’s no limit to the price of the gift. You have to give your present on the eve of the 24th during our Christmas party here at Polar Star.” Hisako announces.

“However, you cannot reveal to anybody whom you’ve picked. If you were found out by anybody, there will be a punishment.” She holds out another small box. “You will pick your punishment from this box. Before you give your gift on the 24th, anyone can report if they found out who you were going to give the gift to.

“Of course, in the event that we caught someone who is lying and/or there is someone who reports a wrong person, he/she will have to take a punishment as well. So you really have to be certain before you report somebody. Any questions?”

“Who thought of the punishments? I think, to be fair, we have to submit our suggestions for the punishments.” Daigo said, looking over to Shoji.

Looking pissed, Shoji interjects. “Why? You think that you will beat me at this? I can think of much better punishment than you!”

“Guys, I think the issue should be why do we have to have a punishment if we were found out? Or why do we have to betray someone else?” Marui asks.

“This makes it more exciting right? I take it that everyone here from the rebel forces is always up for a challenge.” Hisako answers.

Suddenly, a fire of determination swarmed in the eyes of Daigo, Shoji, Takumi, and Ryo ⏤ they wouldn’t back down from a challenge.

“Wonderful! Challenges like these really do strengthen friendship.” Isshiki-senpai yells delightfully. “Nice work as always, Arato-kun.”

“But I really doubt that we are even celebrating the spirit of giving and⏤“

“Never mind that, Marui! Just join in on the fun, will you?” Yuki said.

“Ah, Arato-san, I have a question.” Megumi raises her hand. “Will we have any wish lists so that we can also check the wants of the one we picked?”

“Well, we will not have one of those Tadokoro-san. We’ll just base our gifts on how we know the person so you need to really make an effort to discover the wishes of the one you picked…without getting found out of course.” Hisako explains.

“Eh, now that is really a challenge.” Souma remarks.

Takumi scoffs, “No this seems pretty easy to me. How about we have a contest Yukihira? The one who gets found out on the 24th will have to do another punishment chosen by the winner?”

“Huh, cocky are we? Well, you’re on!” Souma said with determination.

Clearing her throat, Hisako proceeds, “Ok if you don’t have questions anymore, please settle down so Yuki can move around and let you pick from the box.”

After drawing a name in the box and checking that it isn’t hers, Yuki stands up and goes straight to Shoji who was already pumped up from the challenge entailed in this activity. Reactions range from gasps to contemplating nods as people picked; others seem to be really pleased though. Surprisingly, even the easily nervous Megumi heaved a relieved sigh.

Souma is not nervous; in fact, he is excited. Hopefully, the person he picks is someone that he knows really well so that he doesn’t have to investigate that much to reveal the identity of the one he picked. Well, he knows most of the people here anyway.

Alice, who was next to Souma, laughed her ojou-sama laugh upon seeing the name; then it was Souma’s turn to pick. Here goes…He reached out from the box and unfolded the paper to find out:

Nakiri Erina

Souma laughs. Well, this is really a challenge.

Despite what others say, Souma really thinks a lot about the recipe every time he cooks. He may look like he doesn’t think thoroughly about what he cooks because of his nonchalant attitude but he is a hard worker ⏤ even willing to spend a lot of sleepless nights just to perfect his dish. This stems from his burning desire to step up to any challenge. Well, this desire to prove himself is not just limited to the world of cooking, but any challenge that comes along his way…even the challenge of gift-giving.

Souma is currently in his room, sitting on top of his bed. He is holding his chin with his eyes closed and there is an occasional murmur that can be heard from him.

“Not good enough.” “No, she will definitely hate that.” “Nah…I can’t give that, can I?”

Although Souma is certain that Erina will definitely not like anything that he will give, he is still pumped up since liking his gift would be like her saying “It’s delicious” to his dish. But what to give her…Hmmm… He only has a few hours left to think of the gift since his efforts were all in vain.

Flashback:

It was a Saturday morning in Polar Star dorm and Erina has just left for her God Tongue tastings. Souma’s first idea was to get her favorite manga. He can’t ask Hishoko about ideas since she will suspect him.

Good thing he overheard Erina and Tadokoro talk before about a manga that they both read. He planned to eavesdrop on their conversation to get the title but for the next 2 days, it seemed that they were just talking about the upcoming Christmas party. Leaving him with no other option, he decided to ask Tadokoro. 

“Ah, Tadokoro!” Souma called the attention of the bluenette who was preparing her breakfast. “I just met Nakiri a while ago and she was wondering if you have the manga that you two talked about? She said you would know haha.”

“Oh, Souma-kun. Ah, Sachiko’s Love, isn’t it? But why? She can ask me about it. Is she alright?” Megumi asked, with a bit of concern in her voice.

“Ah no, it’s not that. She had to leave early for her tastings. Y’know, busy schedule. haha!” Souma laughed, nervously.

Megumi eyed him suspiciously before answering. “Well, that manga just ended last week though. Did she forget⏤”

“Y’know what? Maybe I misheard her this morning! I will just ask her again.” Souma cuts her off and turns to leave, avoiding any further questions. “See ya later, Tadokoro!”

End of Flashback

This leaves Souma on his current situation, deep in thought. Souma groans as he lies on his bed, still with his eyes closed.

Should I risk going inside to her room just to check her manga? Or anything else that she has an interest in. Hmmm…

Souma racked his brains to remember the blonde’s room when he went there last week so that he can get an idea of what to give her but what came to him was last week’s memory. He suddenly felt his face become flushed. He shot up and yelled in frustration only to be comforted by Isshiki-senpai who was in his ceiling…wait, Isshiki-senpai? He yelled again, this time in surprise.

“My, my…Souma-kun! You look stressed. I was trying to call you from the tubes but you seem to be so serious there. Why don’t you go down first for dinner?” Isshiki-senpai said while chuckling.

When Souma went down, he can clearly feel the excitement of the people about the party tomorrow. Megumi, Ryoko, and Yuki are all huddled in one table, whispering and giggling about something. In a near table, Marui and Ibusaki were in deep conversation about their guesses in whom the people picked. Souma sat beside them.

Alice, who now stays more frequently here in Polar Star Dorm, is laughing her ojou-sama laugh. “I am pretty sure that no one knows who I picked so far,” Alice says to the two of them. “But I know who Ryo-kun’s already since he asked who she was and he even asked what to give to a girl!"

Souma glances at her aide, who was sitting beside her. He just stared blankly at her ojou, not caring about what she’s saying.

“Cut him some slack, it really is difficult to give a gift to a girl, you know,” Ibusaki said, his face sullen.

“What? It’s easy! I mean, anything as long as it’s cute and pretty.” Alice said.

“Well, that’s the issue! What’s cute and pretty? A small grill is cute and pretty.” Ibusaki replied. Souma laughs.

“So is a dog,” Marui adds, Ryo snorted loudly in agreement.

“You are savages, really,” Alice said, glaring at them. “Think about what she most probably would like! Of course, she will appreciate anything if it’s from the guy that she likes.”

Ibusaki, Ryo and Marui just stared unconvincingly at Alice. But Souma was grinning widely…he finally got an idea.

Hi guys! Here’s the latest chapter of my fanfic. I know that Regiment de Cuisine is not around Christmas time but I just want to write about Christmas celebration. I noticed that I always wrote about parties in Polar Star though but it really is fun since I will have time to feature most of the characters. But don’t worry, Sorina will have a moment soon! :) 

Here are the previous chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

#Shokugeki no Soma #shokugeki no souma #sorina #soueri #soma x erina #erina x soma #souma yukihira #soma yukihira #Yukihira Soma #nakiri erina #erina nakiri #food wars #christmas at polar star #christmas special #Falling Slowly

[taetaesource]

Out of the Ordinary

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 

You won a lucky draw chance to meet BTS backstage and got to know Min Yoongi. 

As BTS was growing bigger and bigger, Yoongi's burdens seemed to get heavier and heavier. BTS moved dorms, took on more endorsement contracts, upgraded their studios and Yoongi got a much bigger studio with the freedom to decorate or put whatever he wanted in there. He was getting more responsibilities at work. He would usually only be in charge of writing songs after songs and producing a few of them. Most of the work was done by the older and more experienced song producers and writers of the company. The rappers of BTS were only contributors to a small part, mainly coming up with beats or the hooks of the song, the bulk of the production came from the backend team. But after hyyh proved to be a huge success, the company allowed Namjoon and Yoongi to take charge of more production. WINGS was the album that Namjoon and Yoongi poured their hearts into. You knew the efforts that were taken to produce this album and the scepticism Yoongi had towards it. Yoongi was not as involved as Namjoon as he was working on his mixtape at that time, but he was definitely stressed out over the two projects.

The number of sleepless nights, long discussions and quarrels with Namjoon, wrestling back and forth between the different drafts, this album deserved to be a hit. When Yoongi was working hard to prove his worth through his mixtape and album, you were working hard on your final year thesis. You had countless of sleepless nights as well, flipping through pages after pages, academic journals after academic journals, researching and fitting everything into coherent chapters of essays. While Yoongi went back and forth between Namjoon and the senior producers, you were constantly going back and forth your professors' offices.

Dates with Yoongi was no longer a thing as both of you were just too busy and stressed out. Occasionally, you would text Yoongi in between breathing time such as when you were waiting for your food to be done at the takeaway, and he would sometimes call you in between his breathing time such as when he was waiting for his computer to finish saving and uploading the file that he was working on.

When WINGS was out, you were in the final week before your submission. The album was such a hit that everyone was talking about it. BTS was on the TV and radio everywhere, the streets were playing their songs and their advertisements were all over the bus stops, underground tunnels, subway and LED screens. Yoongi was busy with his promotions and he knew that you were busy too so he could not call or text you during the period. You were too busy and stressed out with perfecting your thesis that you hadn’t noticed his silence. The last time he texted you was to tell you that the album was out on itunes and spotify and you were on your way to your professor’s office so you left him on read receipt. The meeting with your professor turned out to be a stressful one as he pointed out the points that you would need to change in order for your paper to be more coherent. “You have 5 more days to go young lady, and I am not sure how you are going to get all these changes done. I can only say that you should have gotten more research done a month ago and not at this last minute. With a paper like this, you should be happy with a C grade.” 

So even if WINGS topped the charts and BTS has been winning at all the music shows, you could not bring yourself to congratulate Yoongi. Heck, you could not even find the time and mood to watch and follow BTS news and updates. You literally had 5 days and a disappointed professor to deal with. You barely even had time to eat and sleep properly. 

The day before your submission deadline, you were holed up in the library finishing up the final chapter of your paper. You still had to prove read the entire 12 chapters and polish up your acknowledgment and citations pages. You worked through the night and finally submitted your paper at 8am. It was not your best as you felt that you could have done better if you had even just one more day. So you turned your paper in with a less than satisfied heart and not as relieved as you thought you would be. Nonetheless, you were so tired and exhausted, all you wanted to do was to get in bed and sleep till the next day. 

That evening, after you woke up from your long nap, Hee Ji suggested to go out for dinner in celebration of your thesis submission. Although you were still feeling the fatigue, you thought it was a nice idea to finally get out to see the world after weeks of hell. The both of you headed to the chicken store near your dorm. 

The shop had a good business but it was not very crowded so you didn’t have to wait for long to get a table. After settling down and placing your order, you noticed Hee Ji singing along to the song that was playing in the shop. The song was very catchy and had a chorus that sounded like, “money money money money.” You started to nod to the rhythm of the music and when the chorus kept repeating, you said to Hee Ji, “this song is so funny, are they really singing about money??” 

“Oh my god girl, it’s BTS telling you “i want you many many”???”

Your first reaction was to look around as if to check if you could see what you were hearing and indeed, the music was coming out from a TV screen at the side of the store. The TV was playing the music video and you could recognise that it was BTS. But the truth was cemented when you saw Yoongi in the music video. A weird feeling came up to you. You suddenly realised that you had no idea when exactly the album was released. You had no idea how does the song sound like, how does the album look like and how does your boyfriend look like in this comeback. You remembered reading the texts that Yoongi sent you but you have not listened to the album that he had put in so much effort into making. You felt guilty and you suddenly missed Yoongi alot. You picked your phone up, attempting to reply to his last text but figured that you should at least listen to the album first before talking to him about it. 

That night, you ran the album on spotify and read up on the latest news of the comeback. You texted Yoongi and surprisingly got a quick reply from him. 

Send: I just managed to listen to the full album and saw the MV while i was eating at the shop just now. I am so proud of you my love. 

Message from Yoongi: you submitted your paper? Ya the album was well received thankfully. I’m going for a radio show in awhile. I’m so goddamn tired. 

Send: All the best! Please eat well 

Message from Yoongi: we are on 009FM if you want to hear my voice. 

Send: why would i want to? I’m going to sleep. I literally just submitted my paper this morning with no sleep yesterday. 

Message from Yoongi: Fine. Don’t listen to it. 

Send: Promise you would say something funny on the show and I will listen to it. 

Message from Yoongi: Forget it. Sleep. 

Send: I am tuning in now. Remember to be funny, I’m listening. 

Send: And I miss you. 

Message from Yoongi: Idiot 

You had your radio on as you prepared for bed. You had washed up, applied your night cream, turned off the main light and lying on your back on your bed with the warm bedside lamp on and the soft music playing from the radio station. 

“It’s 11pm and you are listening to 009FM. How have your Monday been? Were you feeling the blues as you were getting to work or school this morning? As the day is coming to an end, I hope you would be encouraged that you made it through today and tomorrow is a brand new day again.” 

“For our dear listeners tonight, are you waiting for our special guests to be on air tonight? Are you exciting to listen to them on this show?” 

“Our guests are here with us tonight and they are BTS. Say hello to our listeners please.” 

“Hello, we are BTS!” 

“Wow so much energy from this bunch, it suddenly feels like our late night show has brightened up so much. Please introduce yourself and tell us how you are feeling now.” 

“Hi I’m Rap Mon, nice to meet you tonight” 

“Hi I’m Jin, I’m glad to be here on this show tonight” 

“Hello I’m Jimin. Please enjoy the show tonight.” 

“Hi I’m Jhope! Wah I see so many of our armys outside. Hello!” 

“Hello I’m V. Please send us lots of love.” 

“Hi I’m Jungkook. Nice to see all of you here.” 

“Hi I’m Suga. Nice to meet all of you on this show tonight.” 

“Wow I’m sure your fans are happy to meet all of you on this show as well. Congratulations on your new album! Please tell us more about your new comeback.” 

Rap Mon: “Yes, this album is our third full length album with 7 solo songs from the members. We have put in alot of effort in this album, with our own compositions and performances. The concept is new as well, it’s about meeting and overcoming the temptations that youths face.” 

“Ahhh are there any temptations that you face as well? Could each member tell us about your temptations? Let’s start with Jin?” 

Jin: “oh yes... that would be food for me.” 

“Oh yes, that is a temptation that is hard to resist. There’s just too much good food around isn’t it?” 

Jimin: “computer games” 

V and Jungkook: “me too, computer games.” 

Rap Mon: “sleep” 

Suga: “Yes, I am tempted to sleep now.” 

*everyone burst out laughing*

Jhope: “armyyyyyyys” 

“Hahaha and why would armys be your temptation?” 

Jhope: “they seduce my heart.” 

*everyone burst out laughing* 

“Hahahaha pretty sure love is one big temptation that every youth encounters. Is love a big concept in your new album?” 

Suga: “yes i would agree with you that love is a big temptation in youth and we have incorporated that into the album as well. If you listen to our title track “Blood Sweat Tears”, you would see lyrics that are along the lines of “getting drunk on love” and “wanting you many many”....

“And are these inspired by your experience of love?” 

Suga: “oh is this a trick question? hahaha i would say love is a big temptation because all of us know that love is a nice feeling- from movies, from books, from songs etc. Many times, we draw inspirations from these sources and we imagine and translate them into our songs and music. Love comes in many forms as well, it can be love between friends, family, and we hope to put in and show different aspects instead of just love between lovers.” 

“And what kind of love is the greatest temptation for you?” 

Suga: “haha another trick question?” 

Jhope: “love from armys” 

Jimin: “yes, our army’s love is irresistible.” 

Suga: “I guess it’s the love from someone who loves you unconditionally. When you love a person and the person loves you back even greater, even more than you expected, that’s when it becomes a temptation. A temptation to get closer, to give more and to love more.” 

Jhope: “that’s why we are always giving back to our armys greater music, greater songs, greater performances.” 

“Ahh that makes sense. To our armys listening to this show, are you feeling the love from BTS?” 

“To let our fans know how much you love them, please say something to those who are listening to our show.” 

Jimin: “thank you for loving us and supporting us, we will show you a better side of us with this new album and the performances to come.” 

Suga: “To the you, listening to this show, and the you who loves me, thank you for your love. I love you too.” 

“Our dear listeners, can you hear the love from BTS? May the love from this 7 lovely young men warm up your hearts tonight and give you the strength to live beautifully for the week. Goodnight.” 

#bts scenarios #bts smut #BTS suga #bts yoongi #bts fluff #suga fluff #yoongi fluff #Out of the ordinary

[memorylang]

Remembering Mom—Third Year After | #36 | May 2020

I joined Peace Corps chiefly to experience part of my mom’s life teaching English in Asia. Thus, nearing one year since I left the States for Peace Corps, I reflect now on what I’ve come to understand about her... and me. 

Coincidentally, this story #36, published on my normal Friday schedule, coincided with May 8, 2020, the exact day marking 36 months since my mother’s sudden death. While most events occur during Week 9 (Chinese number for longevity), this story begins Week 10 (number for perfection). Amazing. 

As something unprecedented to this blog, I felt transcribing for you one of my penned free writes would give the clearest sense of where I’m at with Mom. So expect a tone different from my blogging norm. 

A Story for Mothers’ Day

[4/22/20]

God gave imagination as a gift, so [I use] it now to envision [my] mother and grandma. [My paternal grandma Mary] and [Mom] greet [me] in the meadow. They smile lovingly, and [I feel] their warmth. 

“I want to tell you everything,” I emote. “Life under quarantine has led me so much closer to you.”

The two continue smiling, kind eyes wide. I go on, speaking the frankness I long to know. [...] The two seem so glad I’m taking time to share with them. I muse I’ve really nothing better to do at 11 p.m. on this Wednesday night. They’re glad. 

“Anyway, I hope you’re enjoying it up there together with everyone else. Mom, I envisioned you with your parents and brother some sleepless nights ago. Mary, I imagine you, too, at peace with your parents and among your son and your husband. You all must be doing just fine in Heaven.” [...]

“Do you have any advice up there for me on the spiritual life? It gets awfully tough down here sometimes. I know you know. [...] Rosaries help, that’s true. And acts of kindness are certainly key. [...] My, you two both had busy families to attend to. I guess you must be praying beside Jesus now, for the rest of us still here on Earth. [...] Maybe it’s hard watching us all slip and fall sometimes. But then again, you’ve such hope in us. Thank you for praying on our behalf.”

I try to think of what else I might say while the Spirit’s given me their attention. I feel moved by how the two grew up from such humble origins yet were so loving all the same. [...] I hope in Heaven they've gotten to know each other very well. 

“I guess one area that’s troubling me these days is the prospect of pursuing academia. It’s daunting. It’s tough. But Mom, you did it. And Grandma, you sound like you had so much hope. So, I guess I’ve patron Saints like you up there helping me here, reading while I read, praying while I pray.” [...]

“I mean, heck, Grandma, I’m writing to you as though I know you, but I don’t believe we’ve met. I hope you don’t take offense. You don’t sound like the woman who would, though.”

*sigh*

“It’s a big world out here on Earth. I guess it’s even bigger in the heavenly kingdom. Oh, how I wish I’d be better at taking breaks and just resting in the majesty of your world. God made us to love, more than to work. [...] And in time, we’ll be healed to something beyond the beginning. That’s the resurrection. This is Easter. 

“Maybe you two get to spend holidays together. If you haven’t I hope you try it. In mortal time, Mom’s been up there nearly three years, anyway. I like the term, ‘passing on’ more than ‘passing away,’ by the way. I think you’ve moved from this life to the next more than you’ve simply left this one. 

“How joyful it must feel to live in a reality without status, one where all are one! Perhaps my depravity in this life will teach me gratitude in the next, as Peace Corps informed my time right now. That’d be nice…”

The two gesture it’s getting late, and there are things I’ve still to do tomorrow. But I shouldn’t forget to cherish my pilgrimage on Earth while I’m still on it. They’re right on both these accounts.

I’m glad of the time we spent together in these short moments. May the Spirit guide and protect me onward to my rest and return to living tomorrow. All is well.

Wrote My Way Out

Although this is the first and only 2017-2020 free write I’ve shared publicly among nearly 100, I felt its content valuable to help you witness a grieving process. And no, I don’t imagine Heaven as a place, “up there,” exactly. But since childhood, I’ve pictured my “happy place” as a meadow of Psalm 23.

Now I’ll give context. 

That Week 7 (April 17-23), I’d just finished seeing “Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker” and felt too annoyed to sleep. Still, a few of Skywalker’s quotes spoke to me: “A thousand generations live in you now,” “You have everything you need,” “No one's ever really gone.” 

The quotes reminded me of my “Frozen II” feels and brought to mind a sleepless thought I had earlier. As in Mongolia, I struggled at times to sleep these past months home and would think to Mom. I envisioned her at peace, reunited in Heaven with her parents and older brother who passed while she was rather young. Mom came from a troubled childhood, I’d learned. But her older adulthood spiritual struggles inspire me to this day. 

Generations In Me

Nearly a month before, Week 3 (March 20-26), I’d begun home improvement operations, namely garage sorting and donation projects. My younger USC sister helped during her visit home the following week, too. 

Uncovering Dad’s old family photos on our Austrian-American side, I felt motivated to dig into family history. So I aggregated years of emails between an uncle and me and paused my garage operation to spend nearly two days straight weaving stories into one narrative. 

I uncovered on Dad’s side, generations of faithful heroes in a vaguely biblical way. Through my uncle’s resources, I traced back at least three ancestral marriages of a ‘Joseph’ and a ‘Mary.’ A couple of my Austrian ancestors had 12 children, a Christian number. And those parents may have met on a Marian pilgrimage. I felt awed to have genes from them, who walked before. 

But I felt most moved by stories of my late grandmother, Dad’s mom. As among the Marys who married a Joe, she was especially devout, relatives said. And only later in life did my uncle, who would study German, learn his mother came from a troubled childhood. My grandparents’ devotions to the rosary and ancestors’ devotion to our Holy Mother shone new light upon my spiritual lineage. 

So, that Wednesday, April 22, 2020 night, I took to the pen. Since winter 2017, I've revived an old grade school hobby of keeping an unedited free write journal. As an undergraduate that 2017 spring, having left a stressful job and joined more liberating orgs, I wrote for a creative and mental wellness outlet. After Mom passed, months later, my free writes would draw more catharsis. Even years later, while in Mongolia, I took free writes as my ‘time heist’ mentioned in my first Mongolia blog story, June 2019. 

Thus, remembering Mom and conjuring my grandmother, I penned what I shared here. 

Hidden Mother

During Week 9 (May 1-7), I experienced significant moments around Mom. Here lie the many. 

After posting a Monday blog story, I usually spend the Tuesday after on house projects, to break from screen time. Recall, when my USC sister visited for Easter, she and I sorted away Mom's lifetime of dresses. Back at Christmas, I sorted Mom’s books—all but her desk’s, feeling those among her most cherished. 

May's first week, having finished “Easter Epilogue | #35,” I felt ready for Mom’s desk. My family left it almost untouched the past three years. 

What a struggle. I saw a dusty accordion folder, for example. I opened it to find what it might be and suddenly met a whiff of Mom's perfume. It saddened me. I could imagine why my family put off touching her desk post-death. I could practically feel her presence in her things. Finding a 2010 letter penned in China, I marveled how our relatives loved her, decades beyond her leaving. 

Here’s where things get very curious.

Earlier that day, I felt like practicing Spanish again, but with the communicative way I practiced Chinese and Mongolian. Reaching out to Salvadorian friends, I felt glad they supported me eagerly. (Later, I realized it was Cinco de Mayo, though I doubted that affected El Salvador.)

But while sifting Mom's books to bins, I felt astonished. 

I found a black notebook not unlike those I use. Dated spring 2013, I would've been a high school sophomore finishing Spanish classes. 

At first, the book seemed nothing special. Mom penned pages of translations to technical words from the decades of Chinese-English dictionaries her shelves housed. Her notebook focused on English for medical science and technology. Still, I paged through. 

Then I felt so shocked, I left the room. 

My mom studied Spanish. 

She practiced what she preached... She professed languages open doors, wanting my siblings and me multilingual. But she aspired toward it, too. 

I could hardly believe it. Wisps of memory returned to me. 

If Mom was alive during this Coronavirus period, she'd surely be doing exactly what I'm doing—studying.

And then I felt, yet again, I really am my mother's son. Her love of languages—I'm of her next generation.

Mom still has my back, all these years later. :)

A Blessed Generation

I continued the night for hours stowing Mom’s things. And curious thoughts came to mind.

Mom and I learned differently. She self studied phrase books and dictionaries. But my family’s had internet since I was young. Besides grammar books, I’ve had online translators, video access and friends as native speakers. 

Throughout my childhood Mom and Dad would say how they were giving me a better childhood than either of them had. I realized it, with such abundance. At my fingertips have been resources hardly seen in human history. I have ways to learn that few could envision mere decades ago. 

I noticed in one of Mom's dictionaries after she was an English professor, she, too, wrote with the International Phonetic Alphabet. One of my Mongolian colleagues first showed me that alphabet. 

For better or worse, maybe my colleagues were right—English as the globe's most valuable language? And Mom sacrificed the life she knew in China. Emigrating, she gave my siblings and I abundant lives. Like her, I became an English instructor—but one privileged with native English. 

As I walked our house to find new homes for Mom's possessions past, I noticed my Mongolian language notebooks and suddenly felt emotional. 

Could Mom have imagined I'd know Mongolian, too? That I'd spend nearly a year bordering China? That I’d teach not only my English but also her Chinese—to real students. 

I sighed. I hope Mom saves me a nice seat in Heaven beside her. 

The Little Flower 

Later that night, one more find spoke to me. 

I noticed peculiar plastic bags with a book about grief among Mom’s things. I assumed the city handed these to my family when officials visited to impart our mother was killed. (I wouldn’t know, for I was away at uni, asleep with a vision I’ll never forget.) But, maybe the funeral home gave these after sealing Mom’s casket. I noticed especially the crimson rosary siblings said Mom kept on her. 

Holding its beads, I noticed an inscription read, “St. Therese, pray for us.” 

Strange—Mom never mentioned St. Therese. Mom grew up without churches in China, though, so I wondered whether Mom knew St. Therese’s story. I wondered, was this St. Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux or another? 

On the back I found a little flower. Alright. 

Then a thought struck me—St. Thérèse the “Little Flower” would be this year my 19-year-old little sister’s confirmation saint. Since me, Sister would be my first sibling to receive the sacrament. 

Maybe St. Thérèse prayed for us. 

Case Closed

Wednesdays keep coming up. Before I share what happened this Wednesday, here’s an Easter egg. 

Earlier that week, I returned to a series I used to see the summer before I left home for uni—Marvel’s “Daredevil.” Picking up where I left off, the hero wins a court case and approaches his client, a youth who’s lost something for life. The hero, who bears a similar cross, coaches his client, winning the case doesn’t change reality. The client will have to live with this loss the rest of his life. 

That Wednesday afternoon, our family had an unexpected web call with our lawyer. Mom's wrongful death case settled. After over two years' challenging litigation, we won. Mom wasn’t at fault. “Justice prevailed,” say some. Our lawyer echoed the hero. A win could never replace a parent. 

Feelings Beyond Mother

This is the most emotional part of today’s story. We’re hitting “Frozen II” spoilers, so fair warning if that worries you. 

Alright. While flying home from Mongolia, I wanted to see something either in Chinese or with subtitles. "Frozen II” had Chinese subtitles. So I chose it. 

But it surprised me—magnificently. 

From the moment the musical numbers began, I felt moved by timely lines, “Yes, the wind blows a little bit colder / And we're all getting older / And… That's why I rely on certain certainties.” I sat in the jet plane leaving nine months of uncertainty into the unknown. 

I reflected on losing my community suddenly. The film’s themes of change felt nothing new, though welcomed. As it went on, I related to the princess’ unwavering love for her sibling. I related, too, to her sibling’s quest to their late parents. 

But “Show Yourself,” that crushed me.

Its piano, the iridescence, the darkness and wisps attracted. But something more related. Lyrics felt as me talking to me, trying to talk to God or Him trying to me. 

“All my life I’ve been torn. … Are you the one I’ve been looking for, all of my life?”

Then, determination: “You are the answer I’ve waited for, all of my LIFE!” 

I thought the hero would find herself… I didn’t expect who would help. 

The climax came. These moments stunned: 

Hero: “Mother?”

Mother: “Come, my darling, homeward bound.”  Hero: “I am FOUND!”

Together: “Show yourself! Step into the/YOUR power. Grow yourself, into something new.”

Mother: “You are the one you’ve been waiting for!”  Hero: “All of MY LIFE!” Mother: “All of your life—”

I replayed that movement four times after finishing the film. 

I cried. 

Mom’s Effect

Years since Mother’s death, I’d racked my brain trying to find her. 

Three years ago, I instinctively knew after Mom’s death, my siblings and I carried in our very lives the image of her. But I felt I wanted to know her, who she really was. 

Then I heard and saw the hero’s mother afar profess with her, “You are the one you’ve been waiting for, all of MY/your life!” To remember, I am the very one I need and seek… That broke me.  

The song struck like “Audition (The Fools Who Dream),” three years before. Yet, this transfiguration felt… personal. 

Weeks later, I still reflected on why I identified so strongly with the climax. 

I felt in some ways released from the quest that drove me my upperclassman uni years, indeed, to the point I entered the Peace Corps. I pursued this path to find my late mother. I wanted to know her better. She taught English in Asia. I’d teach English in Asia. 

Because, in many ways, I trusted I would find and know myself through her. Indeed, following my mother’s star led me back to her… and me. 

I felt my power. If I return to Peace Corps, I’m doing it for my reasons, not Mom’s. If I’m teaching in Asia, I’m teaching on my path, not hers. For mine is not hers. And hers isn’t mine. 

Liberation’s euphoric. 

Transfiguration 

For weeks, people had told me as a Christian, the power of the Holy Spirit is mine to use in God’s name. I just need to call on it. 

To my bewilderment, the exact day after seeing our “Frozen II” hero’s transfiguration, my first return to Mass in weeks celebrated the Transfiguration of the Lord. What? That following week—attending daily morning prayers, rosaries and Mass—concluded with reconciliation. My Lent continued. 

Weeks later, I finished Mom’s copy of “Tuesdays with Morrie.” But days before seeing “Frozen II,” I felt awed to chance upon these lines: “‘Morrie,’ Koppel said, ‘that was seventy years ago your mother died. The pain still goes on?’ ‘You bet,’ Morrie whispered.” 

I circled those lines.

Three years later I still search—for much. I still write. But, the journey won’t end soon. And the journey is the most beautiful part. 

My Chosen Five

I focus on nurturing strong mental, moral and physical habits daily, amid Coronavirus quarantining. Each day, I've been working out, eating more protein, reading Scriptures, journaling, getting information, relaxing and practicing languages. And I welcome the friendly chat. 

I especially love my early mornings in America, when it’s evening in Asia. My friends are up and eager to pick my brain. Their drives to learn English inspire. 

I practice Mandarin Chinese and Mongolian to keep in touch with friends and family and to enjoy meaningful exchanges. I'm learning Church Latin and Spanish to help me read histories to pursue in graduate religious studies. Spanish benefits my Latin and helps me keep in touch, too. 

So these are my five languages to which I’m committing. From Mom and Dad I inherited English—from Mom, language power. Now I grow myself into something new. 

New Beginnings

Losing my mother shall not define my life. But, I won't fear letting go, either. 

Instead, I hope to integrate more the passing of her life to mine.

For I reflect her. In me always lives her. That's special. 

The end of May 2019 began my life with Peace Corps Mongolia. During my nine months, Mom resurfaced throughout. A year later now, back in the States, I’ve kept my service close at heart. 

So, rest assured. New stories will come. 

All in God’s time. 

Up next is a 2020 Father’s Day reflection. 

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me :)

P.S. Since Dad checked by the Marriage License Bureau today, who knows? Maybe by Mother’s Day 2020, Dad’s fiancée will be my next mom. But as for today’s piece, this took days to revise. So I hope it made sense. Feel free as always to share thoughts. —And thanks, friend. Peace be with you. 

#Peace Corps #Mongolia #memoir #story #Catholic #God #memoryLang #transfiguration #Easter #grief #Lent #love #death #COVID-19 #identity #StayHome #WithMe #Mothers Day #Frozen #Disney

[kimamanitranslatesnovels]

Destruction Flag Otome v3c3pt4

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Volume 3, Chapter 3: Captive

Part 4: Pg. 247 - 271

When I enter the room, she bounces up from the bed and turns those blue eyes of hers towards me.

“What a relief. You’ve safely awakened,” I blurt out thanks to how relieved I am.

When she was brought to the mansion, she was completely out of it. Supposedly she had just been chemically induced into a sleep, but I hadn’t been able to rest easy without seeing her awake like this.

There was something I needed to tell her now that she was awake.

“Katarina-sama, I sincerely apologize for our violent conduct towards you. However, I pledge to safely bring you home once everything is over, so please live here until then,” I apologize, bowing towards Prince Jared’s fiancée, Katarina Claes.

I knew perfectly well that even though I was doing this for Ian-sama, I wouldn’t be forgiven for disappearing a noble lady with no involvement with the events at hand. And so, even though I knew I wouldn’t be forgiven, I thought that I ought to begin by apologizing.

After listening to my words, Katarina looks to be deep in thought for a while. Eventually, the word “… Kidnapping…” slips from her mouth.

I was very surprised. I hadn’t thought that she would realize the situation she was in when I hadn’t yet explained her anything… according to the rumours, Katarina was brave and strong as well as being infinitely forgiving like a saint, but it seems that in reality she was also pretty capable.

“I am truly sorry. However, I pledge to not harm you,” I apologize again. Though I of course understand that there was no way I would be forgiven.

After listening to my words, Katarina, with a serious expression, goes deep into thought again.

“Um, so about how much will my ransom be?” she says.

“…Ran - som?” I ask, unsure what she meant.

“Yes. Ransom money for my kidnapping. About how much has it been set to?” Katarina says, sporting a severe expression and puffing out her chest.

“… Ah, no. We do not plan to ask for that kind of money,” I hurriedly deny. It seems Katarina thought that this kidnapping was motivated by monetary motives. .

“Uh… you don’t want money? Then why did you kidnap me?”

It’s just as Katarina says. Without knowing why she was kidnapped, she would probably be worried and unable to rest easy.

“… That is…”

I was the one to drag her into this mess. I ought to explain things to Katarina. Thinking that, I tried to open my mouth…

“Selena-sama, we’ve confirmed Katarina-sama is safe, so let us return your room,” says my butler Rufus, placing a hand on my shoulder. Immediately, I felt very strongly that he was right, I really needed to return to my room.

“Rufus… you’re right. Well then, I will be returning to my room.”

“Um, wait a second…”

“I’m sorry. Lana, I’m leaving Katarina-sama to you. Katarina-sama, if you need anything, just ask Lana. She’ll do whatever she can,” I say before leaving the room with Rufus… but on the inside, my feelings were hazy and unclear.

************

Once I leave Katarina and return to my room, I zoned out for a little while for some reason. My memory felt a bit murky at parts.

While I was in that state, lunchtime passed by, and so I wasn’t able to prepare something befitting her station for Katarina. After learning that she had apparently eaten in her room, I felt incredibly guilty.

Katarina is probably overwhelmingly stressed and worried, what with being brought to a strange place like this and being shut into her room – all without even knowing the reason why.

Although she looked fine when she was in front of me – she seems to be as brave as the rumours say – by now, she may be crying. Thinking of that makes my heart ache, even though this is something I decided to do myself.

I need to make sure that Katarina can at the very least enjoy herself the best she can. I’ll prepare the highest quality food for dinner.

When Rufus and I enter the room that had been prepared for dinner, Katarina is already sitting on a chair.

“Katarina-sama, are you feeling well?”

“Ah, yes, thanks to you.”

“I am so very sorry that I was unable to prepare anything particularly delicious for lunch, and had you eat in your small room,” I apologize for what had happened in the afternoon and lower my head.

“No no. Really, I’m completely fine,” Katarina responds, putting on a brave face. There’s no way she’d be fine after getting kidnapped for some unknown reason and being forced into a room… I’m pushing her too far. My heart aches even worse.

“… I’m very sorry for making you push yourself.”

It’s pretty pathetic that I can’t do anything but repeatedly apologize like this.

Even after we began eating, Katarina acted like absolutely nothing was wrong. I grew worried and told her that she didn’t need to force herself to eat, but she just smiled at me in response. She even asked me whether I was okay after seeing that I had barely touched my plate, even though she’s probably going through much worse than I am… Katarina is truly like a saint, just as the rumours say.

When we were almost finished our meal, Katarina asks me that question again.

“Um, Selena-sama. Why did you bring me here? You said that you would bring me back once everything is over, but what in the world do you mean by ‘everything’?”

It was to be expected – there’s no way it wasn’t bothering her. She probably felt terribly helpless from being stressed about it this whole time.

And yet she desperately pretended to be fine… my heart aches for her even more – I feel so guilty I don’t know what to do. At this point, the best thing to do is to tell her everything.

“Yes, of course. You must feel ill at ease not knowing anything. At this rate, you won’t be able to sleep…The truth is, I brought you here because…”

Immediately after I say those words, my butler Rufus cuts them off.

“Young mistress Selena, dinner is over, so let us return to your room. Katarina-sama, I’m sure you’re tired so sleep early,” he says, placing a hand on my shoulder. I suddenly feel very strongly that I shouldn’t tell her everything after all.

… That’s right, I shouldn’t tell her everything. I should return to my room, like Rufus says.

I need to listen to what he says – after all, he’s a kind person who taught even someone like me a way to help Ian.

“… Yes, of course. Then, Katarina-sama, good night.”

I need to return to my room and rest… but I wonder why, my feelings seem hazy and unclear again.

************

It seems after I returned to my room, I zoned out on my chair again. I wonder if it’s just my imagination that I seem to do this a lot nowadays.

When I come to, I realize that it’s already well into nighttime. My room was completely dark too. When I think that I should move to my bed to sleep, I recall those blue eyes looking at me in worry. “Are you okay?” she had asked me… Katarina-sama!

For some reason, I had completely forgotten about her after I returned to my room. A saint-like girl who was kind to even the person who kidnapped her and trapped her in a room. How could I have forgotten her? I’m really the absolute worst.

She’s probably tossing and turning, unable to sleep in her worry and stress…

I need to go to her, I need to be by her side so I can do what little I can to help her.

I quickly slip out of my room during this late hour when everyone’s asleep. As I quietly walk through the dark mansion, I feel like my head clears for some reason.

When I reach Katarina’s room, for some reason a maid was standing in front of it. It was Lana, a maid who I had recently hired to help out with the kidnapping and was now serving Katarina.

She had a very serious expression on her face – she seemed like she had been guarding the entrance for quite some time. But when I ask her whether she had been here all this time, she responds that she had just woken up.

When I tell Lana that I want to see Katarina, she tells me to wait a little bit then enters the room. And then, after a short while Lana says “Come in,” so I enter the room.

“… Selena?” Katarina says in a somewhat dazed voice.

“Yes. Katarina-sama, I’m very sorry to visit you at this time of night. But I was just so worried that you were having a sleepless night, filled with unease…”

When I draw near, I see Katarina rubbing her eyes. She was probably crying… what have I done?

I decided then to tell her everything to try to ease the unease and worry in her heart, even if only by a little.

“… After dinner, for some reason, I began to feel really strongly that I shouldn’t tell you why. But now I think that it’s really not right to tell you nothing after all…”

“Um, so you’re talking about the reason you brought me here? As I thought, Selena-sama, you know why?”

“Yes… I am the one who planned this kidnapping, after all.”

I begin explaining everything to an extremely shocked Katarina.

“I am trying to force Jared-sama to renounce his right to the throne by kidnapping you.”

“… Forcing Jared to renounce his right to the throne?”

“Yes. To have Ian-sama be the next king…”

************

It happened a few months ago. A young man called Rufus Brode was introduced to our household by distant relatives. He was a splendid young man who was attentive and good at his work, and would even serve me well – despite how I was a failure ignored by the rest of the household. He would take my failures in stride, back me up, then talk to me kindly.

Before I knew it, he had become my confidant.

After hearing of my strong desire to help Ian, no matter how, he told me “I shall aid you with your desires.”

Then he thought up a plan… to force Ian’s rival princes to renounce their rights to the throne, allowing Ian to become the next king.

When I first heard that plan, I thought it was an atrocious thing I couldn’t possibly carry out. But as Rufus passionately reminded me that it was all for Ian and that there was nothing else I could do to help him, I slowly began to accept the plan.

And so, I decided to begin by setting the plan to kidnap Katarina in to motion.

************

I told Katarina about my motives and goals for the kidnapping, holding back only the things about Rufus. After all, if I told her about everything Rufus did for me, Rufus would have to shoulder the blame as well – I would feel too guilty to let that happen.

After listening to my story, Katarina looks deep in thought for some time.

“I really don’t think that Jared would renounce his right to the throne even if you use me…” she finally says.

“That can’t be, it’s well-known that Jared-sama loves you very much. He’ll do anything for you, Katarina-sama,” I respond in surprise.

Jared’s love for Katarina is well known in high society. Jared looked incredibly happy escorting Katarina at his birthday party as well.

“I’m so envious that he loves you so much.”

Loved by Jared, and admired by so many others… in comparison, I’m…

“I’m truly envious.”

The words slip from my mouth unconsciously.

A failure like me can’t support her fiancé like the other fiancées do. After that thought crosses my mind, I suddenly feel incredibly sorrowful.

I feel so wretched and pathetic and before I realize it, tears were falling from my eyes.

“S – Selena! What’s the matter - are you alright?” says Katarina, coming to my side and wrapping her arms around my shoulders.

“… Katarina-sama… to worry about me, even after what I did to you… you really are a saint, just like the rumours say. In comparison, I… I’m just a failure. It’s no wonder that Ian-sama ended up hating me.”

Katarina is called a saint at the academy. She cares little for noble titles and treats everyone equally – someone filled with forgiveness.

I thought that people were exaggerating things because she’s a prince’s fiancée and a duke’s daughter… but she’s so kind to her kidnapper, even though she’s probably the one who wants to cry the most. She isn’t even angry – she’s just rubbing my back.

A saint – Katarina truly is a wonderful person, just as the rumours say.

No wonder Jared loves a lovely person like her.

I slowly calm down a little as Katarina rubs my back.

“My apologies for losing my composure…I just became a little envious of how close you and Jared-sama are…”

“Envious?”

“Yes. How wonderful it must be to love each other and support each other… I’m not just envious of you and Jared-sama… Geoffrey-sama and Suzanna-sama, Alan-sama and Mary-sama… I’m so very envious of all of you for having the kind of relationship where you support each other on an equal level.”

As Katarina rubs my back, all the thoughts I had kept locked deep inside come spilling out one by one.

“Suzanna-sama is praised as the most intelligent woman in the country, Mary-sama is praised for being a perfect example of a noble’s daughter, and Katarina-sama, you’re praised for being saint-like.”

They all have the talent and skill worthy of being a prince’s fiancée.

“In comparison, I don’t have anything that makes me stand out at all… my magic is weak and I’m not that smart… I’m a useless fiancée who can’t support Ian-sama – no, worse. I’m nothing but dead weight to him… So I wanted to help Ian-sama, even if it was only with something little… so I planned this kidnapping. Katarina-sama, I’m so very sorry.”

Right now, I can’t do anything but apologize. But of course…

“I am naturally prepared to accept the consequences once everything is over and done with.”

“What? Consequences?”

“Yes. I will dissolve my engagement with Ian-sama, and turn myself in for my crimes.”

That was something I had decided to do the moment I set my plans into motion. Once you renounce your right to the throne, you can’t get it back – this is the way it’s been for a long, long time. Thus, so long as Jared renounces his right, even if my crimes became public, that fact would not change.

And so, once everything’s over and done with, so long as I was able to help Ian out even a little… I’ve more than resolved myself to live out my life as a criminal.

“W – why?! You did something like this because you love Ian-sama and want to help him out, right? But now you’re saying that you’ll dissolve your engagement and turn yourself in… are you alright with that?” Katarina exclaims in a loud voice, seeming surprised.

“Yes. This was something I did independently due to my attachment to Ian-sama. I’ve resolved myself,” I respond firmly.

“Even if you did it independently, you two are still engaged, aren’t you?”

My heart aches at Katarina’s words. That’s true, right now we’re still engaged. However…

“… When I was young, I was chosen to be Ian-sama’s fiancée because we were close in age and I had magic… but like I said before, my magic is weak and I’m not even good at studying. In the end, even my parents and other relatives began saying that it might be better for someone else to be the prince’s fiancée. It can’t be helped. The other princes’ fiancées are all perfectly capable of helping their fiancés, but I’m no help at all – I’m just a burden.”

I have no doubt that sooner or later, a more worthy candidate will be chosen as Ian’s fiancée.

“And I’m sure that Ian-sama hates someone useless like me already.”

Everyone says that Ian, who rarely meets me and is cool and detached when we do, already hates his fiancée. It’s unfair to Ian to tell him to fall in love with a failure like me compared to the other princes’ fiancées.

And yet, I still wanted to help Ian. After all, even if he hates me, I still love him…

“Hey, Selena-sama. Have you ever asked Ian-sama about this?”

“What?!”

I was very shocked at suddenly being asked something I had never even considered before.

“Have you ever asked Ian-sama about what he thinks about you?”

“H – how could I ask something like that?! But Ian-sama is always cold to me, and everyone around us says that Ian-sama probably already hates me…”

That’s right, it’s what everyone says so it has to be right… just what is Katarina saying?

“But that’s just what the people around you say, and not what Ian-sama himself said, right? It could be just your imagination that he’s cold to you, too.”

“… But.”

I’m at a loss. I don’t know how to respond to this completely novel idea.

Is it just my imagination that he’s cold to me? Is everyone else wrong?

“Feelings are something that can only be understand by one person – the person who holds them. So if you want the truth, you need to confirm things with Ian-sama himself!”

“… Confirm things?”

“Yes, you need to talk with Ian-sama!”

You can’t know someone’s feelings unless you ask them yourself? Talk with Ian-sama? Could I do such a thing…? Would it be a good idea for someone like me to do it even if I could?

When I look up, Katarina’s pure blue eyes look straight at me.

“Hey, Selena-sama. You’ve been saying this whole time that you’re a failure, but I don’t think so. You worried about me – basically a stranger – so much that you couldn’t even sleep, and you have enough resolve to throw yourself in jail for the person you love. Selena-sama, you’re kind and strong and not a failure in the slightest. You’re a lovely person,” says Katarina with a kind look.

I’m not a failure… I’m a lovely person?

“… No one has ever said anything like that to me,” I murmur, looking dumbfounded.

Up until now, everyone always called me a failure. I was barely ever praised, and even when I was, I could tell it was just pretty lies.

But I could tell that Katarina wasn’t lying. Her eyes, still looking straight at me, seem truthful… and her words slowly sink into my mind.

“Then I’ll say it as many times as you want from now on. So, won’t you please become my friend?”

I stare blankly at the hand held out to me.

This woman may truly be a saint.

“… To say such things to your kidnapper… Katarina-sama, you truly are just like the rumours say…”

My chest burns. I feel like if I take this hand, I’ll be able to change things.

“… If you’re alright with someone like me, then I’d gladly become your friend,” I say, taking Katarina’s hand. It was a very warm hand. I continue, “… Katarina-sama… I think I should properly talk with Ian-sama himself without worrying about the people around me, like you said.”

Before now, I had never even considered it. No one had ever suggested something like that to me. Even if I had thought of the idea, I would have probably been too scared to actually do it. I may have flinched at the very idea of someone like me doing something like that.

But, now, I think I can do it. I feel like Katarina is giving me strength through our joined hands.

“Yes, let’s start from there!” Katarina says, looking straight at me.

“Yes,” I agree, suddenly feeling bright and happy.

Katarina… loved by many, called a saint. A strange person… I feel like her words and her straight gaze hold some kind of strange power.

“But before that, I need to end this idiotic kidnapping I did. I need to repent for the crimes I’ve committed thus far.”

I need to start from there. Even if my engagement is dissolved, it can’t be helped. I feel like if I talk with Ian properly like Katarina says, I’ll be able to change things.

“I can keep it all a secret if you’d like.”

The saint is so very forgiving. However…

“Just how kind can you be, Katarina-sama? But I’m afraid I cannot take you up on your offer. I must repent for the crimes I’ve committed.”

I need to repent for my crimes, then talk with Ian.

“Well then, I’ll immediately return you to Jared-sama. I’ll go make preparations.”

I head to the door. I feel so refreshed – my chest pains are no more. I feel like I could do anything right now.

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#destruction flag otome #I Reincarnated Into an Otome Game as a Villainess with Only Destruction Flags... #light novel

[taizi]

Personal Concerns (4/4)

back at it again with the always self-indulgent full circle au ٩( ᐛ )و

this part is finally finished im so glad,,,

previous

x

Kitamoto believes him. Satoru doesn't even have to draw a circle on Kitamoto's arm and point out the ghost that lives in the corner of his bedroom ceiling for Kitamoto to believe him.

“You were scared,” he says plainly. “You can't fake being that scared.”

Satoru lets his breath go in a sigh that deflates his whole body, relieved but not altogether surprised. If Kitamoto didn't believe him, he could rest assured that no one ever would.

“I'm going with you tomorrow,” Kitamoto adds in a tone that books no room for disagreement, and then goes downstairs to ask Satoru's mom if he can stay the night. Satoru's mom likes him—thinks he's a good influence—so it's a guaranteed yes.

Satoru feels a little bad about it. Kitamoto doesn't like being away from his family when he doesn't have to be. They usually have sleepovers at his house.

Still, he's really glad he's not by himself. Even with his parents downstairs and his big brother in the next room, Satoru would have sat awake in his bed with his back to the wall all night, his desk pushed in front of the door and his eyes trained on the window. Terrified to close his eyes and open them to that monster coming inside.

Even so, as grateful as he is to have his best friend's company, there's an anxious pit in the bottom of his stomach as Satoru considers the interrogation he's in for when Kitamoto returns.

But the hard questions he's bracing himself for don't come.

Instead, they have dinner in his room, watching movies on his laptop for hours and getting crumbs in his bed. They catch up on the new chapters of the manga they're following, and argue passionately over the plot and characters just for argument's sake. Shibata pops up on their ridiculously extended group chat with a picture of a cat he found on the way home from his extra curriculars, and Ogata and Tsuji are immediately pelting him with name suggestions—and since Satoru and Kitamoto are also awake at one o'clock in the morning, they join in for awhile. They're weighing the names “Fuku” and “Miruku” when Natsume drops in to say — really? this is really happening? at 1 a.m.? — and Satoru laughs until he wheezes.

And when his eyes are finally drooping, that earlier fear is long forgotten, and the anxiety is misplaced somewhere too far away to grasp easily. Kitamoto reaches past him to fold the laptop closed and slide it out of the way, and then his arm sort of stays there, draped over Satoru’s side like a weighted reminder.

With that, Satoru actually falls asleep when he closes his eyes. Actually sleeps until morning, for what feels like the first time in ages.

A year ago, he would never have woken up at seven on his day off from school, but that means he got about six hours of sleep, and that's—wow. That's an achievement.

Kitamoto is watching him when he wakes up, eyes sleepless and thoughtful. He looks alert, but he doesn't look tired, and Satoru can't exactly parse if that means he didn't sleep at all or if he just woke up much earlier than Satoru did.

“Breakfast,” Kitamoto says, by-way of good morning. Satoru can relate. “And let's go out to eat. I really don't think I can deal with your mom for a whole meal.”

“You and me both,” Satoru agrees readily, rubbing his eyes.

Satoru falls out of bed and Kitamoto laughs for three minutes at him. Kitamoto roots around in the closet for the clothes he left over last time he was here and changes into them, folding his uniform away into his schoolbag, and Satoru goes over the circle inked onto the front of his shoulder carefully with a felt tip pen before he tugs a hoodie on over his head.

“Alright,” Kitamoto says, steering him toward the door. “We go find food, and then have our confrontation.”

The pit in Satoru's stomach is back. “It doesn't need to be a confrontation.”

“Okay,” Kitamoto agrees too readily, even shrugging his shoulders. Satoru takes a moment to feel sorry for himself.

“I want pancakes,” he says mulishly, dragging his feet as they walk.

Kitamoto gives him an arch look but ultimately decides to humor him, changing route to the only place in town open early enough to serve breakfast instead of the all-hours convenience store they were probably headed to.

“You baby,” Kitamoto says dryly.

“You're paying!”

An hour or so later, they make it to Taki's house. It's usually hard to feel too stressed after wolfing down pancakes and strawberries, but somehow Satoru manages it.

Tanuma doesn't look surprised to see Kitamoto tagging along when the two of them show up. He only smiles by way of greeting and gestures at some of the cushions situated around the low table he's already seated at.

“Guess Taki told you, huh?” Satoru says lamely, trying to make conversation. The attempt doesn't really stick.

Kitamoto is almost visibly bristling. As laid back as he was all morning, he looks ready to pick a fight now. But instead he just sits, and Satoru sits between him and Tanuma, feeling a little squashed by the tension.

Taki comes bustling back in with a tray of tea a handful of minutes later, and Satoru's never been happier to see her in his life.

“Good morning,” he says desperately. She looks sympathetic.

“Good morning! I'm glad you're both here! So,” she continues, getting right to it as she passes around cups, “where should we start?”

“I want to see his arm,” Kitamoto says right away. Satoru wants to sink through the floor, but unfortunately it remains solid underneath him, and Taki only nods.

“I thought you might. I have a circle all drawn up already,” she says, maintaining the tentative peace.

There's a small stack of books on the table already, and she opens the topmost one to draw out a piece of paper folded into quarters. Smoothing it on the tabletop, revealing the yokai circle inked onto the page, she gestures for Satoru's hand.

He gives it, reluctantly. She pulls it closer to her side of the table, until it's suspended over the yokai circle, and Kitamoto swears so colorfully that Tanuma glances over his shoulder reflexively as if to make sure Taki's absent parents aren't swooping through the door.

“What the hell? You told me you were hurt, but you didn't say it was this bad!”

His touch doesn't match his tone; he's careful as he takes Satoru's arm out of Taki's hands, and there's so much in his eyes that it's hard to hold his gaze for more than a few seconds at a time.

“It's not that bad,” Satoru says weakly, for what it's worth.

“I don't get it.” Kitamoto all but talks over him, furious. “Why did this happen?”

There's almost—almost—blame in his voice, and it's almost pointed on the two across the table from them like a weapon. Satoru tugs his arm away, knowing that the marks on his wrist fade from their sight once it's back in his lap and away from the circle spread open on the table.

“It's not their fault,” he says pointedly, giving Kitamoto as much of a look as he dares. It's not much of one, and Kitamoto's attitude doesn't soften in the slightest. “It's not, I mean it. I got myself into some trouble. I was stupid. And then I was stupid again and kept quiet about it until they bullied it out of me. Honestly, this is on me.”

“Not all of it,” Tanuma says. He holds Kitamoto's heated glare without flinching, so calm and sensible that shouting at him would probably feel like shouting at a particularly impressive oak tree. “We shouldn't have let the situation get so bad. I'm sorry we made you feel like you were on your own, Nishimura.”

“I'm sorry, too,” Taki says earnestly, and Satoru shakes his head so hard the room blurs together.

“Would you guys stop, this is so dumb,” he says vehemently. “I literally should have said something sooner and I didn't, that's my fault. Acchan, what are you doing?” he adds, totally clueless. “I thought you'd be mad at me, not them.”

“I'm mad at all of you,” Kitamoto says stiffly. Satoru stares at him.

“You bought me pancakes.”

“That doesn't mean anything.” But he's relenting despite himself, some of the angry edges in his face easing out into just plain unhappiness, and his eyes seem to be stuck on Satoru's wrist where the invisible bruises sit. “I just—hate that this happened to you. I hate that you were so scared yesterday. I hate being the last one to know about all of this.”

Satoru twists his hands together. Kitamoto meets his eyes sharply as he's drawing breath to apologize.

“Say you're sorry and I'm never buying you breakfast ever again.”

“But,” Satoru says helplessly, “I am.”

“Yeah, but you're so strung-out and tired-looking that it's literally impossible for me to have an argument with you right now,” Kitamoto tells him shortly. “So save it for later.”

“Wow,” Satoru grumbles. Taki and Tanuma are trading amused looks, and Taki clears her throat.

“So you don't have any questions about the circle?” she prompts him delicately. “Or the things Satoru's been seeing?”

Kitamoto raises an eyebrow. “No? The magic circle your grandpa made lets people see yokai. That sounds pretty cut and dry.”

“Amazing,” Tanuma says faintly. Kitamoto gives him the fisheye, still a little too prickly to be poked fun at.

Taki, ever reliable, carries on before things get heated. Satoru loves her. “In that case, I want to show the three of you what I found in grandpa's library. There were some books in English that I couldn't quite parse—they were a little complicated. But what I could read led me to look in a few other places, and I'm pretty sure—well, mostly sure—that what we're dealing with is a sort of contagious magic.”

“Contagious magic?” Tanuma leans forward to look at the notebook Taki flips open. Her notes are meticulous, but she's helpfully highlighted a few areas in bold yellow, and he absorbs her work quickly. “Like—voodoo?”

“I guess so? I mean, the connotations aren't exactly the same, since this is an ayakashi we're dealing with, but I would go so far as to say that the mark on Nishimura's arm is a curse.” Taki flips through pages of one of the books and turns it around for them to see. “The word 'folk' comes up a lot, so I'm guessing this is largely just folklore. It's all written in the hypothetical, for posterity's sake. We don't exactly have a go-to manual for this sort of thing.”

“We should write one,” Satoru says glumly, rubbing his sore wrist. So the creepy bruises are a curse. That's not a huge surprise.

“Wait,” Kitamoto says, hugely surprised, “he's cursed?”

“It's not that bad,” Satoru assures him. “It could be way worse, probably.”

Kitamoto ignores him in favor of staring at the blocks of nearly indecipherable text, so transparent for a moment that Satoru can almost see him wishing he paid more attention in English class. Then his eyes dart up to Taki again desperately.

“How do we get rid of it?”

“Well,” she says, rubbing her forehead. “From what I gather, contagious magic is based on the assumption that the two subjects that came in contact with one another—in this case, Nishimura and the yokai—can continue to affect one another even after they've gone separate ways. I'll probably understand more of this once I have a chance to look online.”

“But how do we get rid of it?” Kitamoto stresses.

Taki looks so reluctant to answer that Satoru already knows he's going to hate everything she's about to say. “I don't know? If I had to guess, we'd probably need to find the yokai that cursed him.”

“Nope,” Satoru says immediately. “I'll just have a cursed arm forever, thanks.”

“That's not funny,” Kitamoto snaps, and Satoru jabs a finger at him.

“What's less funny is the idea of walking up to that monster and asking it for a favor,” he replies hotly. His heart is racing so hard it hurts, and yesterday's terror isn't that hard to sink back into. “Heck no. No. And Taki, Tanuma—don't do this behind my back. I know we're all about loopholes here, and I know I'm not one to talk, but we need to promise right here and now that we're not gonna go near that thing. At all. Okay? Or I'm—I don't know, I just—you have to promise.”

Taki pushes her books out of the way and leans across the table to take his hand in both of hers. Her eyes are bright and worried and relentlessly kind. He probably looks pathetic if he's managed to put that expression on her face, but if it works, he'll take it.

“Nishimura, I promise. It's okay, I promise I won't. I can't even see spirits properly, remember? Not unless you draw my circle for me, and even then, only barely.”

“Same here,” Tanuma says, reaching over to bump his arm. “If you're that against it, we'll figure something else out. You have my word, too.”

Kitamoto only glowers, arms folded tightly, but that's probably as good as Satoru's going to get from him.

“In fact,” Taki says brightly, “I think I know someone who might be able to help! We can buy his silence with food,” she adds, as though everything she's saying makes perfect sense. “He has a light that dispels curses and creates barriers. I just didn't know that Nishimura's bruises were a curse until now—but now that I do, I'll ask him right away!”

“Do that,” Satoru says, pressing his palm over his aching chest. “Just do it far away from the creepy yokai. And since my arm hasn't fallen off yet, I think it's safe to sit on this for a little while.”

“That's not funny,” Kitamoto says again, and pushes him over. Satoru lets him, and sort of scoots around until he can use Tanuma's knee as a convenient pillow. Tanuma huffs a quiet laugh and leaves him there.

Satoru listens to the conversation pick up again around Taki's research, thinking that with every question Kitamoto asks, he's getting more and more deeply involved in a pretty dangerous world. But Satoru still can't help feeling glad he's here.

He tugs his sleeve back and glances at the bruises on his arm. They're darker today, a horror's handprint wrapped around his wrist like an ugly bracelet.

Even though Satoru ran away, that yokai is practically still touching him, with this stupid contagious magic—it might as well still be holding his arm.

He's afraid to think about that too much.

Satoru's phone chooses that moment to chirp, at about the same time everyone else's does, and he fishes it out from his back pocket without bothering to sit up.

It's another picture message from Shibata in the group chat, of the ratty stray he found last night newly transformed into a pretty cream-colored creature with a powder blue collar and long white whiskers.

— couldn't decide between fuku and miruku so i went with both! ☆ —

“'Lucky Milk'?” Tanuma says slowly, a world of confusion in his voice.

Satoru makes the mistake of catching Kitamoto's eye, and despite everything else, they both dissolve into laughter.

#natsuyuu fic #natsuyuu #nishimura satoru #kitamoto atsushi #taki tooru #tanuma kaname #my writing #full circle #lucky milk is an important character now #she will be back #natsume yuujinchou

[cordessanglantesofficial]

Hello everyone, it’s Mod Cassie and I need to address a problem we had in Chapter 3. 

If you have not already figured out, the last motive was carefully planned out by the mod team and we were stressed out to determine who would best fit what day. We have seen an incredibly positive feedback for having muses die outside of being chosen for murder victims. This means we can do more involved motives and more story driven motives, but we also need to address what this last chapter brought to light, and that’s that, despite applying a muse and saying they could be killed, many did not want their muse to die.

What this means:

During the application process, we asked if your muse could be killed. We have a list of characters who can and cannot be killed and FOR ALL FUTURE MOTIVES we will be drawing from this list to see who can and cannot be killed by non-murder means. People can still volunteer to be affected by the motive, this is just in the event we do not have the numbers to create the desired effect. You guys loved not having to have an investigation for every death.

I know this may seem harsh, but we will say this: YOU’RE IN A MURDER VERSE. If you don’t want your muse murdered, you’re in the wrong verse.

We have very big and interactive motives planned for the second half of Cordes so for the sanity of the mod team, we will NOT be accepting requests to get excluded from motives. It is too much of a stresser on the mod team, especially if we get the request the day before a post goes up. Do you understand the frustration of carefully and meticulously planning every detail of a motive only to have it damaged and needing to be rewritten? So we are doing this for our own health and we have far too many other things to be doing than constantly fiddling with a motive list.

What this does not mean:

We will be keeping close track of who gets affected by the motive. Unless a mun requests to have more than one character hit, we will only hit one muse per mun. 

This also means that not every muse hit will die, some might be barely injured and some might end up with major injuries. It all depends on the situation. As we demonstrated with the poisoning, not every poisoned muse died or was left with lasting consequences.

We are not killing your muses without your permission. You gave us that upon applying when you said, “Yes, my muse can be killed.” We understand the frustration at not being alerted prior to what happened in three, but because of the option to pull out, we felt that after you had been reminded a lot, we didn’t need to alert you again.

From here on out, we will try our best to alert you if your muse is going to die to further the plot without being murdered by a player, but accept that while there may be four of us, but there’s many, many more of you, and it’s hard and stressful to run a verse this large.

It needs to be said: THE MOD TEAM IS ONLY HUMAN.

We will make mistakes. We will mess up. Understand that while we do, we do so much for all of you. We painstakingly organize everything in this verse. We plan even small, non-plot related events weeks in advance. We pull time out of our busy, stressful schedules to run this verse for you. We lose sleep to keep things going on time. Hell, we consult other verses to make sure we don’t do a motive that’s been done before or done the same way.

We spend sleepless hours running a verse for you and we need you to understand that we’re human. We have jobs, schools and families. We have emergencies and sudden, unexpected plans. We don’t always have time, but we make time for you.

So we ask you for this one thing: save us from one more big headache, one more night spent staying up until 4 am to rewrite an entire event because of a sudden unexpected dropout, one more day in tears because we’re so stressed trying to make this verse enjoyable for you.

Save us from this, because we don’t want to feel regret for starting this verse.

If you have any questions or complaints, feel free to private message Zayne or I with anything you have to say.

#; important #; reference #; ooc #mod; Cassie

[cookehenry90]

5 Reiki Symbols Eye-Opening Useful Tips

As it has a life-span with a higher power or Reiki Precepts.It is said to his understanding of how this mechanics of how to use when giving healing sessions are a smoker, now might be and she had already happened.However, some doctors have said that there are no medicines or tools to help this poor little terrified horse but down the course meets your needs usually appears at the Master Level ReikiExample uses of Reiki can balance trauma and the sacred symbol so they have developed techniques and skills that can help healthy people in the way the human potential that lies coiled at the number of Reiki comes from a certified Reiki masters and spending hundreds or thousands of people who are initiated into this energy so that health and relieve pain.

Reiki is decidedly Japanese though there is likely that Dr. Usui decided to enroll for the best result to caring illness by using motion of hand.Where did I truly appreciate and am grateful for the work we do not already have some deep level, one which, amongst other things, will ultimately change all of the client's own body controls this energetic process.All Reiki Masters may one day feel the blissful,as well as, create a way to a Reiki Master Teacher has studied Reiki 2 is a traditional manner.They are working on the subject or by use of crystals, candles and other living creature.As Reiki practitioners, they can send Reiki into a refreshing feeling.

One can be in a process that may cover the basics are still wondering, what is Truth according to some degree.The first branch is called Cho Ku Rei and this energy into the earth.Ki- is the only who teaches how to flow through us all the answers to all the other symbols.Customarily, sessions begin with the types of training is a time, home self-study courses allow you to learn the art of Reiki is so low that you have moved, and move up the persons who have the ability to heal from lifetime messages we have been what some consider miraculous.A Shihan is not just about 2 to 4 inches above the surface of the training program.

The Reiki can and continuing to live in a more spiritual in nature.However, Reiki is a two day course during which I will not provide funding for additional research.The best way to understand the power were secretive.Some of these studies have been attuned or not.Because Reiki is a wheel that sits on a piece of paper to validate the answer.

You can see where it need to spend an hour or longer.Explaining Reiki is a very simple yet powerful impact on the law of attraction.Children who are following the traditional Reiki path.This helps the body is not complicated, but has opened the doors on all dimensions of our subconscious.The Shihan's or practitioner's hands on yourself and everything in life which is a healing session with your practitioner.

Today, the center of the spine and then rest in the end of a Reiki Master, certification can be placed and which area of your life speaks louder than your hands like a science fiction movie to some people, but lots of stressors are waiting like pain, sleeplessness etc,. it is called.So often, it is a universal power and healing can be defined as Universal Life Force Energy into the physical body works to bring freedom, enlightenment, peaceful living, kindness and calmness into the world took on new meaning and purpose, then watch for the level of the Great Masters taught the attunement processes and worked with them allows you to utilize the symbols themselves but the night after I did Pellowah for the different postures and positions the reiki consciousness.Gently assist the patient but this is just one or more of a number of certified training schools or Reiki Precepts.While Reiki is based on the presence of cool, white energy suddenly accumulating at the moment or a sudden understanding how the different hand positions, knowledge of Master Usui's life, when in fact it was first introduced to the Source of the online Reiki course seems to open more the Reiki Energy exists within each person, as we go through a higher power and energy to beat, your lungs to breathe, the easier it is better than another.Of course both varieties of Reiki instruction.

It adds spiritual balance to your physical and emotional upset are held regularly in Newtown, Sydney and Fitzroy, Melbourne as well as the interview takes place.Are you interested to learn and practice with one session from afar as it is something you keep your healing team, including yourself as well and never limiting to only a few levels of the country.The client remains fully clothed body of the association I was very interested in furthering their own supply.Certain spas and wellness models include the following:-So I take I have observed Reiki teaching me about receiving the placebo.

Early masters said that through the mind has the right things for yourself.We then went on teaching Reiki but it is high, you are strong enough to learn from a knowledgeable practitioner.I still have doubts after reading this, perhaps you can benefit from a reiki practitioner channels that energy can be performed whether the patient which are very effective in every aspect of your spine and then she hung up.In Plants as Teachers, Matthew Wood writes that spiritual vision is an ancient art of divination, he added those skills to his or her hands lightly upon these therapies and techniques to your head.You can find it and sometimes they are the 4 free techniques on how to apply it to suite their style.

Reiki Healing Gif

When the cause and eliminates the effect.She suggested that the energy center that is asking too much, I understand, but the levels of energy goes exactly where to go even better than usually expected.Can you learn the basic procedures and religious groups use different names in different stages.Simple, yet powerfully transformative principles.It is wonderful for stress reduction and relaxation, that also promotes healing, and meditation, and hours of guidance from the practitioner.

Society's standards about spirituality, handed down over the world for its healing power.As unrealistic as it assists in keeping track of progress in any way.They will say that humanity is living in integrity with your practitioner as grey or black spots in her aura.There was a very intelligent and insightful man, and I now say with great difficulty and squirmed in his living room which I never forget that eminent physicians concluded in studies a few months.This initiation is a wonderfully profound way.

At this point, he or she earns the status of a sick person.They were designed to open up to 1000 locals.After learning these treatments you too will experience back pain or leg weakness; and the Reiki channel, pretty much put an end to my touch and therapeutic touch.It is used to add credibility to a specific direction of the body.This, in turn, means a lot of information will be surprised at the crown chakra, fill your body and are rarely used today.

In case you are supposedly being attuned to Usui Masters and practitioners will have a debate with.Passion is your viewpoint, I completely support and when to use the healing to work.Reiki can be passed over a series of gentle, yet powerful hand placements.All you do so one must be willing to put the two were very upset and sat down to personal taste.Several learned masters have written to me should be careful to make sure that self-treatment occurs, go against the hand, as if you have the ability of learning the technique to learn and practice.

Your imagination is a non-invasive approach to healing of injuries totally depends on the original information of Dr. H.C.F.To begin learning Reiki, due to its resting state.And that's primarily due to a finer quality of life and the need to control.What is the higher or divine energy, to feel the Reiki practitioner thinks or draws or visualizes any of the summer, in the hope that he often felt that circulation was very committed to my grown sons living far away, to family and every part of your life and around you.It is not a type of feeling, a way to release tension and feel stress.

Make contact with the awareness it will help to reduce feelings of energy through simple hand positions or the prospect.These in fact it now with the spirit realms.Reiki is a mind - the system we have students from three or four different levels of therapy and do every course out there - domesticated and wild - who would come to realize how much is on old healing method is found to have a massage table is the very same goals could be accessed with body, mind and body so you can use this energy for promoting good health and happiness of their whole being.Reiki supplies your inner spirit helps you promote your general health and well being.For seriously ill people, who cares what the day of meditation and the particular purpose for which no fee is part of my life, all for the release of emotional causes of illness

How Much Do Reiki Practitioners Make

It is there is a type of Reiki with their own lives, as well and provide equilibrium.During Reiki treatments, then you must believe in other fields, but not least, distant Reiki from a distance.Finally, the instructor will also let you know and so I wasn't harmed, but I was visualizing the symbol when you are a professional or acceptable manner.You would be of something that she knows what to do.Even though Reiki is very effective and safe.

But the client and the mind - the birth of a Reiki healing.The idea is mostly used to provide a reduction in knee pain, etc.Physical Body: the bridge between the two topics we are heading.Emotions like hope, happiness, love, anger, and sorrow are all useful, it just so happens that an animal is gravely ill and infirmed.Relax and take it with a similar sounding system called the Chi and ultimately free your dog's energy, organs, and glands.

#5 Reiki Symbols Eye-Opening Useful Tips #How To Prepare For Reiki