#and i was crying at the chap's end and she told me 'no spoilers but tell me did you forgive Chikage in the end' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yoonpobs · 3 years

Text

bad boy good thing xiv.

pairing: jeon jungkook x oc

genre: angst, smut, fluff, miscommunication (we hate her lol), pining

warnings: smut, jungkook is really an asshole, the angst hurts a lot tbh, unhealthy relationships (?)

words: 5, 690

summary: a series of drabbles where you're confused and jungkook's confusing

a/n:

hello!!!! we’re here at fourteen chapters omg ✨✨when i first started this series it was mostly self-indulgent and now there are people who actually enjoy reading it??🥺 it almost doesn’t seem real T.T

thank you so much for the love and support!!! just so I don't give too much spoilers for this chap - I apologise to my fellow geminis for the potential slander 🤣 this is more of a self-drag lmaooo

anyway, I hope you enjoy this chap!!!

“Ah. I’m getting allergies.” Yena sniffs, scrunching her nose.

You furrow your brows in concern, “Are you okay? Do you need any medicine?”

“It’s just the seasonal changes,” She brushes you off.

You nod in understanding, “I get it. My mom has horrible reactions towards pollen so—”

“I’m not allergic to flowers.” She blinks.

“Then what—?”

“It’s Gemini season. It’s like—literally the worst time of the year.” She blinks.

You gawk at her, taking a whole ten seconds to process her serious tone when she doesn’t waver under your scrutiny.

“I’m a Gemini,” You inform her slowly.

“I mean …” She shrugs all as you scowl at her, opting to throw the closest object you had, which was your favourite pen so you decide against it; simply shooting her the meanest glare you could possibly muster.

“Look, it’s not you,” She sighs, and you’re half-expecting her to finish with an it’s me to make you scoff, “It’s me.” And there you go. “I mean, it’s Gemini’s in general because they’re two-faced bitches who have the worst emotional attachment issues. Like they’re literally what the opposite of glue is. And they’re so over-analytical. How is it like psychoanalysing every person you meet only to hurt your own feelings and sulk about it?”

You blink.

“I mean it’s not you but if the shoe fits.” She says casually, plopping a grape into her mouth that you’re tempted to slap away.

“You’re so mean!” You pout indignantly.

She cackles, throwing her head back as you continue to sulk. You weren’t that bad. You just … you were risk-averse! You liked having the freedom to observe everyone and anyone and package them into tiny compartments in your head so you could understand them better. You weren’t … that Gemini.

“You’re so cute,” She coos pinching your cheeks. “No wonder Beef One and Beef Two like you so much.” She teases.

Your first reaction is to blush because you know who exactly she’s talking about, but you have more pressing matters, like—

“You have nicknames for them?” You ask, baffled.

“Hey, I wasn’t friends with many girls in high school. Don’t girls usually have nicknames for their crushes?” She says through a pout.

You stay expressionless as you try to gauge the level of seriousness you can extract from her tone.

You realise she’s dead serious.

“Yeah, but we’re in college,” You argue, scrunching your nose, “And sides’, it’s not like they’re strangers. We know them.”

She rolls her eyes, waving you off like you were the inconvenience here. Then she leans forward, her eyes twinkling as she takes a complete one-eighty that you try to adjust to.

“So … you Gemini hoe, what’s your plans?” She nudges you.

You raise a brow, “Did you just call me a—?”

“Plans, ___. Stay on track.” She scolds.

You sigh, still fond but you pretend to be annoyed. You really couldn’t get annoyed with Yena. After all, the more time you spend with her the more you realise how much life sucked before you had her in your life. You spent each moment learning more about her quirks and habits, her choice of words that made you giggle or laugh until you were crying.

And you realise that this is how she loves, a little rough but welcomed nonetheless.

“If you’re talking about my birthday then … not much. I’m probably stuck doing admin work for the college’s charity programme.” You shrug, stabbing a fork into your soiled salad.

Yena gapes at you, “Not much—excuse me? It’s your birthday! You’re turning twenty-five!”

You look at her dryly, “I’ve been twenty-five since the year—”

She groans, “That’s not the same! You’re like—officially twenty-five. You’re literally hitting the mark for a quarter-life crisis. Isn’t that something to celebrate?”

“Me going through an existential crisis at the end of my degree is not how I want to celebrate my birthday but okay,” You blink.

She rolls her eyes at your realism.

“That’s not the point. Point is, this is our first birthday together and I want it to be special.” She points out.

You snort, “What? Are we doubling my birthday as our monthsary or something?”

She shoves you with a brute force that has you snickering but she continues to pester you anyway.

“You’re so dumb. So smart, but so dumb,” She shakes her head, “You’re always studying or doing some form of work that requires the use of more than one brain cell. You deserve a break. Besides, you have two dudes to pick from on how you’d like to be wined and dined and—”

“Yena!” You whine.

“—it’ll be like an episode of the Bachelorette! But just with a super cool and smart best friend that’ll make the decision for you. It’s not your birthday. It’s ours.” She emphasises towards the end.

You stare at her for a long second, before the two of you are bursting into laughter at the absurdity of her statement.

It was nice, just to laugh about things without having your heart feel so heavy. Even if it was a mild distraction, it was still wholly pleasant to be able to just talk about mindless things that didn’t require much mental gymnastics to navigate the conversation with.

“What are the two of you laughing about?” Taehyung and Jimin arrive at impeccable timing, sliding into the booth with their own packaged food. It’s very college-student-esque, a cute paper (because no plastic) container filled with an array of assortments.

“None of your XY chromosomes business.” Yena retorts.

Jimin blinks, “You are literally so hostile.”

“Then don’t give me a reason to be.” She sticks her tongue out petulantly.

You laugh, nudging her with your shoulder, “Be nice.”

Taehyung rolls his eyes but manages to keep a civil smile on his face. Always the more rational one between the two.

“Anyway, Yena definitely isn’t going to answer me so, what’s up?” He turns to look at you.

You roll your eyes but it’s half-hearted, “She wants to celebrate my birthday like we’re on the Bachelorette.”

“Like you’re on the Bachelorette.” She corrects.

“Oh my God, our baby’s turning twenty-five!” Jimin coos at the reminder, pinching your cheeks as he coddles you. You scowl and weakly shove him away, even if you preen under the attention.

“I’m literally older than the both of you.” You huff.

Yena blinks, “There’s no way I’m the oldest person at this table.”

Taehyung furrows his brows, “Wait—how old are you?”

She sends him a scathing glare that has his arms raised up in defence.

“Jeez, okay. Don’t answer.”

“I’m going to answer because you told me not to.” She clips. “I’m twenty-seven.”

Jimin blinks, “No wonder you and Yoongi hyung are so alike.”

You almost miss it, but as Yena so eloquently pointed out, you were a sucker for psychoanalysing people (even if you didn’t want to admit it yet) that you notice the way she flushes ever so slightly as she scoffs.

“Him? How dare you compare me to that sorry excuse of a—!”

“Okay, everyone is beneath you. I’m sorry your highness.” Jimin rolls his eyes.

You make a note to ask her about it because you know for a fact that Yoongi ‘complains’ about Yena every hour he can. It’s almost as if he can’t go long enough without mentioning her.

You smile to yourself as you duck your head.

“Exactly,” She flips her hair over her shoulders before turning to face you. “Anyway, back to you—our baby.”

Taehyung nods, “Exactly, the baby.”

You scrunch your nose, “Don’t coddle me.”

He pats your head before cooing at you like he would to an actual baby, “But you’re just so cute. You’re too good for this shitty world. Too good for the likes of mere mortals like us.”

“Not me.” Yena blinks before gesturing to their bodies, “You.”

Jimin sticks his tongue out in retaliation as you sigh at their never-ending bickering.

Somehow … it felt right. You think it most of the times but you don’t know any other way to describe how it feels to be back with your friends, laughing, bickering and just appreciating their presence.

When you and Jungkook had your issues, it was like you made the conscious choice to avoid everyone and anyone as much as you could, and any interaction you had during that period was purely out of coincidences and not the intention. You remember actively avoiding Jimin and Taehyung because it felt too draining to pretend like you didn’t have a battle in your head. Even studying or spending time with Namjoon made you feel guilty, the thought of Jungkook lingering in your mind. Yena was there through it all, but even then you saw her as much as you did with any of your classmates you so happened to share a class with.

In fact, if it weren’t for Yena you’d probably have zero social interactions as a whole because she just knew. She somehow picked up on your internal conflicts but never outwardly shamed you or confronted you about it. All she did was be there for you, offering you her presence and you were grateful.

So, yeah. Things were better, but your heart was still at its core—confused. Your feelings for Jungkook didn’t disappear overnight and you knew that you were the one that asked for space.

You forgave him … you did, honestly. But there are things you can’t forget, and those are the things that you wished you could. The words he said in principle, was outright shitty. But the fact that it came from him only poked at every single one of your insecurities that you developed over the years.

You knew it wasn’t healthy to compare yourself to other women when they were living vastly different lives than you were, but it’s proven difficult when you’re forced to see these type of women every day, at college, in your community work or on the media.

Believing Jungkook’s apparent feelings for you was harder because, well. Jungkook was Jungkook. He wasn’t just another guy, and despite his shortcomings, he had more merits than he’d let on and you knew that people saw that. It was also the fact that Jungkook had a charm that drew all types of people in. He was soft-spoken but passionate, and people loved a quiet achiever.

You … knew about the women. Way before Jennie and way before the thing between the two of you happened. Jimin and Taehyung would always update you about the new fling or girl he had tied to his hip just as he was in his final year in high school. You had to force a smile every single time they’d snicker and joke about how your Jungkook suddenly became a man overnight.

And you noticed the trend with the women he liked. They were … captivating. Beautiful wasn’t even enough to describe them because they looked like they could carry the world on their shoulders and spark immense change with just the movement of their lips. They were confident and charismatic, outgoing and just the right amount of flirty. You were anything but.

It sucked, majorly, because you spent years agonising over the fact that you were already coined with the older sister title in the group because of the way you acted—just a little more uptight than the average woman your age. You were quiet but loud in the right company; you didn’t like crowds, socialising or mingling around with people you didn’t know and based on your observations it seemed like that was the only thing that Jungkook’s been doing ever since he made it to senior year in high school, and even in the first years of college.

You don’t resent him, you think. You couldn’t blame him because you weren’t honest either. You consented, to all of the kisses and touches even if he hadn’t officially had sex with you. You wanted to, but you were terrified. Not at the prospect of penetration but at the prospect of not being enough and the fact that Jungkook was the only person you wanted to have sex with while he had options that were far more attractive and experienced than you were.

That’s why you needed time because at least you could get your shit together even if it was an uphill battle.

“Earth to ____?” Taehyung waves a hand in front of your face with a concerned expression.

You blink, snapping out of your daze as you offer a meek smile and an apology.

“We just asked you if you wanted a small get together at Tae’s and I’s place for your birthday?” Jimin asks.

“Really?” You beam. That was exactly what you preferred.

“Yeah, we know you don’t like clubs and stuff. Just a small and intimate gathering with all your best buds.” He grins.

You nod your head, but Yena beats you to a response.

“By best buds you mean the three friends she has, which is us and the two meatheads duelling for her affection.” She snorts.

You flush, “Y-Yena!”

Taehyung snickers at your embarrassment.

“It doesn’t help that both of them are literally the biggest dudes on the football team. It’s literally like watching King Kong and Godzilla getting into a fight for world domination.”

Jimin throws his back in laughter as you fold your arms across your chest at post at the way your friends are practically crying in laughter at the image. Jimin was clutching onto Taehyung for his dear life because if he didn’t then he’d fall off the chair.

“Stop,” You whine, “you guys are being mean.”

“Oh my God, you’re literally the only person on this earth that would take two people fighting for your attention as an offence.” Taehyung groans.

“I-It’s not that!” You deny exasperatedly, “I-It’s just … awkward …”

Jimin sighs with a small smile, patting your head.

“If it’s any consolation I think it’s offensive that Jungkook thinks he even has the right to breathe in—”

“Jimin!”

“Wow. It really is like King Kong and Godzilla.” Jimin whistles lowly, eyeing the scene before him with amusement lingering in his eyes.

“Do you think they’re gonna start slamming their chests soon or …?” Taehyung trails off in a whisper, leaning into Jimin so that the two other men wouldn’t notice.

“I can literally hear you.” You say dryly.

Jimin offers you a plastic smile, “You’re meant to hear us, babe. How about you try to tame them like Jane did with Tarzan?”

Jimin nearly shrieks when you shove him so fiercely that he topples over into Taehyung’s grasp as the second part of the duo only catches him in the process.

You sigh, completely ignoring the way that Jimin’s muttering curses that were directed to you under his breath. Instead, you were transfixed on the scene before you—which specifically is Jungkook and Namjoon staring each other down through the mirror of the gym. You were lucky that it was just the five of you since Namjoon was able to use his captain privileges to book the gym because you had no idea how to explain the fact that two big-sized men were attempting to outdo each other in their circuit reps as if they were on a suicide mission.

“Listen, when I agreed to help you out with your sets I thought I was meant to help log it in for a report.” You exasperate, but the two men continue their manly lift-off as they huff and puff their exertion away.

“Trust me, you are helping. Being the motivation is more than—”

This time it’s Taehyung who faces your wrath as you thwack him upside the head.

From where Jungkook and Namjoon were, Jungkook can only deliver death stares into the direction of his captain who returns it tenfold. He wasn’t even sure why they were doing this but something a flicked definitely switched in Jungkook when Namjoon (purposefully) revealed that you were helping out with something. At the gym. Supposedly alone.

Jungkook’s primitive side came out because the next thing Namjoon knew was that Jungkook managed to drag himself, and Jimin and Taehyung as a diversion. He still feels his chest swell with pride when recalling the scowl on Namjoon’s face when he entered the gym, all fake smiles and a pep in his step.

“____, could you help me spot?” Namjoon breathes, sitting up from whatever the hell he was doing with the barbell. You weren’t fixated with gym language and you weren’t even sure why he was asking you when there was an entire Jimin and Taehyung right next to you.

“Uh, okay sure—“

“Noona,” Jungkook calls.

You freeze.

“Jungkook … I thought we established that you don’t need to call me that anymore.” You raise an eyebrow.

You miss the obvious glare that Namjoon shoots his bitchass friend, as well as the snorts that leave Jimin and Taehyung’s mouth.

“Pay attention to me,” Jungkook pouts. Like, actually pouts. You somehow flush because he seemed so much like the younger version of Jungkook who used to always coddle you for attention.

“Okay but after I help—”

“Yeah. After she helps me.” Namjoon interjects, and you nearly jump at the way he’s suddenly behind you, more so—pressed against your back with his hands on your hips as he moves you aside to get to another piece of equipment.

Your breath hitches because while you weren’t exactly invested in Namjoon in the romantic sense, he was undeniably attractive and … big. You could salivate in private.

“Oh my God, do you see that?” Taehyung hisses in a hushed whisper.

“Hyung is petty,” Jimin gawks.

“This is Namjoon we’re talking about. Didn’t he steal all the umbrellas from your dorm because you ratted him out to the librarian when he broke a bookshelf?” Taehyung recalls.

Jimin pauses to retract his mind to that moment.

“He’s so petty and I’m living for it. Look at Kook’s face,” He snickers, nudging Taehyung with his shoulder.

Jungkook only can clench his jaw in return because he knew that you wouldn’t be a fan of him reaching out to strangle the shit out of Namjoon. But the older boy seems fine, if not pleased with how Jungkook’s fuming in his own spot.

“Let me just …” You cock a thumb to Namjoon, before releasing a breath of your own and going to help him with whatever he needed in the first place.

“Jimin can help him. I have a more pressing problem.” He complains.

You stop in your tracks before turning around, raising an eyebrow at Jungkook who finally sits up, still staring at you like you held all the solutions in the world.

“Literally wait for your turn,” Namjoon scowls.

“My arm hurts,” Jungkook says, raising his arm to show you.

“I don’t … see anything?” You furrow your brows.

“Because my muscles hurt, Noona,” Jungkook emphasises with a flex of his bicep and you can feel yourself get hot in the way your eyes can’t stray away.

You’re momentarily distracted by the blatant display of muscle by Jungkook that you completely miss the way that Jimin and Taehyung are struggling to breathe because of how hard they’re stifling their laughter or the way that Namjoon is contemplating on throwing the nearest dumbbell into Jungkook’s direction.

You flush, “Okay, you know what? Wait here. Let me get the first aid kit.” You mumble, quickly scampering off to alleviate yourself from the situation.

The moment you leave the room, Namjoon takes two long strides until he reaches where Jungkook’s sat, before wrapping a hand around the arm that was supposedly hurt—and squeezes.

“Ow! What the fuck hyung?!” Jungkook shrieks.

“Don’t hyung me, you brat.” Namjoon seethes, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Jungkook gapes, while Jimin and Taehyung watch in amusement.

“Me?! What’s wrong with you?” Jungkook retorts, equally as agitated, “Oh, _____, help spot me! Woe is me! Like she wouldn’t get crushed under you, you meathead!”

“Like you’re any better,” Namjoon snaps, “Oh, Noona, pay attention to me. My arm hurts. You might as well have asked her to change your fucking diapers at the rate you’re acting like a damn child.”

“You’re the one that started all of this!” Jungkook exasperates, “With all due respect hyung, I love you and you’re my captain but I really feel like smashing your head into the wall right now.”

“That’s it?” Namjoon scoffs, “Well I’ll do you one better and let you know that every time you breathe in my direction I feel like—”

“Oh my God will you two idiots shut the fuck up?” Taehyung interjects, snapping at the two boys who pause, staring up at him with wide eyes.

Even Jimin is surprised at Taehyung’s intervention, purely because he was the type that usually let shit slide or let other people put problematic individuals into place. He was the mediator, the diplomat—not usually the aggressor.

“Wha—”

“Another peep and I’m going to smother your body under the dumbbells and leave you here to rot and die.” Taehyung seethes, staring straight into Jungkook’s soul.

That shuts him up.

“Both of you are acting like goddamn children, and for what? To battle out your masculinity to see who gets ____’s attention first?” Taehyung exasperates.

Namjoon clears his throat, “We were just—”

“—acting like a bunch of barbarians who’s never seen civilisation?” Taehyung retorts dryly, “Yeah. Because that’s exactly what this looks like. The two of you are so petty and for what? You two are literally rubbing the last remaining brain cells you have with each other but nothing is coming out from it. Like—nothing. Do you think she’d give a shit which one of you can lift more reps? That means absolutely nothing! She’s already freaked the fuck out at the prospect of her childhood best friend being in love with her and now we have Big Tit Number One and Two battling it out like you’re in the Greek Olympics.”

Jungkook blinks, and Jimin is mildly impressed.

“So before she comes back and tends to Jungkook’s hurt muscle,” Taehyung sneers, eyes narrowing at a guilty-looking Jungkook, “Both of you better sort your shit out.”

Namjoon flushes, embarrassed at the prospect of being called out, all while Jungkook is avoiding eye contact at all costs.

“Oh my God, do you have a crush on each other or something? Apologise!” Taehyung gestures towards the two boys who awkwardly blink at each other, feeling much like reprimanded children.

It’s Namjoon who breaks the silence first, clearly the more mature one in the situation.

“Look … Jungkook,” He sighs, “I’m sorry. I didn��t mean to … drag it out like this. I don’t mean it maliciously and you’re my friend and teammate, so I’d really hate if a girl got in the way.”

Jungkook nibbles on his lips, eyebrows still scrunched; and the irrational part of him tells him to ignore the apology. But with the way that Taehyung is glaring him down, with Jimin’s expectant gaze, he knows that he doesn’t have much of a choice.

“I’m sorry … too,” he winces at his own voice, “But just to let you know … I really …” He shuts his eyes, feeling his chest tighten when he tries to force the words out, “She isn’t just … a girl to me, hyung. I really, really like her. And—I know you like her too but … I fucked up and I really want to make things right and seeing you—”

Jungkook is flushing while he rambles on, fully aware that the rest of his friends are listening intently to him speaking his heart. But a hand rests itself on his shoulder, and when Jungkook opens his eyes he sees Namjoon offering him a gentle smile.

“I know,” He says, “I know I said I wouldn’t back off …” He trails off and Jungkook recalls the conversation he had with him in the very same gym just a few weeks back, “But I don’t think I can compete with a decade long love story.”

Jungkook scoffs, though his ears are flushed.

“It’s really not—”

Namjoon waves him off, clasping a tight hand onto his back that tells him it’s okay, and whatever that was going on would get better. And Jungkook feels marginally better and allows himself to let out a sigh of release.

“So are the two of you gonna kiss or what?” Jimin asks in the midst of the silence.

Namjoon glares at the boy, “Don’t make me give you an extra ten laps.”

He backs down immediately, raising his hands up in defence. And at that moment, you return, all smiles and with a pant as you raise the first aid kit up.

“Your arm?” You smile sweetly, and Jungkook can only offer a weak on in return.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Depends. Will I have to run from the government if I answer you honestly?” Yena ponders out loud.

You roll your eyes but shake your head anyway. The two of you were meant to be cooking dinner but you’ve surrendered yourself to Netflix and Yena’s witty live commentary on horrible films you were scrolling through an hour earlier. Though, your head wasn’t quite in it, to begin with; your thoughts drifting to other aspects, ones that you thought too hard for and didn’t necessarily know the answer to.

It was frustrating, the way that you wanted to have a solution for everything but overthought every single case that happens to pass by your mind.

“No one’s hunting anyone down, your anarchist,” You say, “This is a little … personal.”

You didn’t have any girl friends prior to Yena, and that was your first mistake. You weren’t the person that actively avoided having girl friends because you thought they were dramatic or overly emotional but purely because you never knew how to befriend women. It was weird—being a woman yet being muddled with your own sense of femininity that suppressed your ability to form meaningful friendships with your women peers.

Throughout most of your childhood and teenaged life, you only had Jimin, Taehyung and Jungkook. While they were more than enough to keep your memories cheerful and filled with laughter, there were more personal things that you couldn’t quite approach them with. They had each other to confide in their ‘manly’ discussions, small talk that you’d often flush at—but you couldn’t ask them the same things you wanted to.

You knew, that on a fundamental level that your personal things were just … things. It wasn’t that deep, nor did it require a PhD in Gender Studies to fully understand the nuance of periods or apparent ‘girl’ problems; you just needed to listen. But you were timid, and you got embarrassed super easily—so that never boded well whenever you’d want to approach them with a question of your own.

But now, you had Yena—debatably the most open and understanding person you’ve met in your life; and you owed it to yourself, and her—to be honest, to live yourself vicariously in your girl best friends eyes—and ask:

“How do you have sex?”

Granted, there was definitely a smoother way of peeling off the bandaid, but you supposed if you were going to be discussing this one way or another, you’d go big or go home.

“I’m sorry,” She coughs, “What?”

You blink.

“Sorry, I guess I should’ve asked if you were a virgin first …” You mumble.

Yena stares at you with a stupefied expression as she gapes at you.

“Hey, repeat after me: candy, tree and cat.” She grabs you by your shoulders.

“I’m not cerebrally compromised, Yena,” you say dryly.

“Repeat,” She glares.

You huff, shoving her hand off your shoulder.

“Candy, tree and cat. There, happy?” You huff.

She eyes you weirdly as you sigh.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes!” You exasperate, “So like … how? Do you just? Penetrate?”

Yena blinks one more time, her eyes trailing to the ceiling as she asks for a higher being to give her strength before she returns her gaze onto your figure.

“Babe, that is literally the unsexiest way to approach sex.”

“Penetration?” You furrow your brows.

She scrunches her brows, “No.” She gestures to you, “That.”

You scowl.

“I don’t know how to approach sex! That’s why I’m asking you. I literally don’t know who else to approach. If I went to Jimin or Taehyung I’m pretty sure they’d just stare at me and cry. Namjoon is out of the picture because he’d likely approach sex textbook style and I don’t need that level of detail right now. I definitely can’t ask Jungkook because he’s the guy I wanna have sex with. So yeah. I’m here because you’re a woman and the only person I can have a full conversation with without losing my will to live.”

Yena gawks at you, jaw slack as you finish your ramble; ears flushed.

“… you …” She begins, wracking her brain for the words that seem to fail her, “… okay. You know what, the fact that you’re here and putting your big girl pants on and asking me this is a feat in itself so I’m going to just ignore the fact that you said you wanted to have sex with Jungkook.”

You flush, “I was word vomiting—”

“Ah,” She holds her hands up, levelling you with a knowing glare, “If you want honest, you be honest too.”

You slump in your seat, sighing as you nod your head defeatedly.

“Firstly, I’m not a virgin. I could never be a virgin.” Yena declares, “Granted, I’ve slept with three people and two of them were women. But the idiot I lost my virginity to was, unfortunately, of XY chromosomes so … I guess I can answer your questions.”

“I mean … I know how sex works but … approaching it …” You mutter.

“And sex isn’t this groundbreaking act that requires Einstein’s IQ to partake in. It’s both intimate and not, and that’s definitely a personal preference. You can know the semantics of how people have sex, for hets in this case, which is just the classic ol’ penetration method where the penis enters the—”

“Your point?” You exasperate.

“—okay, I got a little carried away. But really, sex isn’t … difficult. It’s scary, I’ll give you that. But you don’t go into your first time thinking you’ll be great at it. Hell, you won’t even like sex that much your first few times unless your partner is a sex demon or something.”

“I mean when Jungkook …” You shudder, “When he … I … you know, did things … it felt …” You fiddle with your fingers. Your ears were undoubtedly on fire, and you were so embarrassed saying these things out loud because it was just so awkward!

“Good? You know I’m not going to judge you for it,” she says pointedly, “That’s what friends are for, right?”

You flush, covering your face with your hands in embarrassment. You knew that Yena would never judge you for something as trivial and as unimportant as your sexual endeavours, but this was still a road you’ve yet to properly navigate yourself.

“I … came,” you wince at your breathy voice, “It felt good. And … he’s experienced, you know? I just don’t want to …”

Yena looks at you inquisitively.

“You don’t want to …?”

You sigh deeply, considering your next words with a soft murmur, “I don’t want to not live up to his expectations, you know?”

She frowns at you, “Jungkook’s made some mistakes but you said it yourself. He’s in love with you,” she says softly, “There’s no pressure to have sex with him just because it’s out in the open now, you know?”

You nibble on your lips.

“It’s … more than just that,” you tell her, “I told him I needed time, and really, I do. But it isn’t because I’m confused. I mean, kind of—but really it’s because I don’t want to walk into something and disappoint him … I’m just … scared.”

Yena holds your hand in hers while offering you a gentle smile.

“It’s valid that you’re scared. But there really isn’t anything that can come out of being scared right now. The two of you worked through an obstacle, and here you are creating another one that doesn’t quite exist yet. Trust me, when the time feels right, it does. And you’ll feel ready. Will you still be scared? Maybe. But it’ll feel like it’s meant to fit within your timeline.”

You nibble on your lips, “Is it bad that I’m overthinking this?” You wince.

Yena shrugs her shoulders, “Like everything else in your life?” She teases.

You whine, shoving at her shoulder playfully where all Yena does is snicker in response. You weren’t quite sure what you were expecting out of the conversation, even if it was vaguely about the ins and outs of sexual exploration. And she was right, you’ll always be afraid of something, whether it’ll benefit you or harm you because that’s what change does. It shifts your comfort zone into a space that may be unfamiliar but necessary.

You lean into Yena’s shoulder, and a wave of overwhelming emotion washes upon you when you look at her. You really didn’t know how you survived a time without Yena in your life. And as if she’s noticed your glassy gaze, she raises an eyebrow at you.

“What are you looking at?”

You grin at her, all teeth and gums on display as you hug onto her arm like a koala.

“I’m just really happy you’re in my life.” You sigh wistfully.

She pauses for one whole second before she snorts.

“Wow, talk about sex once and suddenly you’re in love with me?” She wiggles her eyebrows at you, “Tell Jeon and Kim that you’re mine now.”

You giggle, rolling your eyes.

“They’re not even competing in the same league as you are,” you assure her.

She smiles.

“So … does that mean I don’t need to get you a birthday gift?”

That earns a thwack on her shoulder.

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heybeybey · 3 years

Text

No Regrets

Holy shit I finally wrote a full short fic!! I was inspired when @petra-realsnk posted this beautiful fic! I’m currently finishing up Chap 135 (so there’s spoilers for those who’ve only watched the anime!) in the manga and thought about a what if scenario where the Survey Corps didn’t try to stop Eren.

Note: I highly doubt that there’s a universe where Levi and the remaining Survey Corps members, especially Petra, would be okay with genocide but it was fun to explore the thought. (Felt masochistic, won’t delete later ✌️😘)

Pairing: Rivetra | Levi x Petra

Genre: Angst. And it’s Rivetra but I don’t think this can be considered romance.

Summary: [Mature] Canonverse AU. Petra survived the 57th expedition and Eren was successful in his Rumbling. Petra and Levi questions if they made the right choices.

----

They never talked about it.

No regrets. That's what his whole being has been about since he joined the Survey Corps. Petra’s devotion to him pushed her to follow him to the end.

The end did come and try as they might to ignore it, they lived every single day questioning the actions they’ve taken.

Today's Liberation Day. The Eldians are celebrating the day the great Eren Yeager freed Paradis from the rest of the world three years ago. As with every year, the town square will have a play reenacting the Rumbling later this afternoon. They're also serving dishes from the now-extinct Marley. He can only think what Niccolo must be feeling right now.

It's their country’s way of showing that they've won. It's theirs. The world is theirs.

His comrades. Erwin. All of them died for this farce.

However, the biggest clowns were the Survey Corps.

Him, Hange, Armin, Petra, Connie, Jean, Mikasa. “The Great Heroes of Paradis,” people would call them in adoration and admiration.

Hange was still alive. She's still the Commander of the Survey Corps and she's been leading Paradis’s expansion with Armin across the flattened grounds beyond their little island. He doubts the both of them sleep well at night though. Last time he and Petra visited, he learned that Hange took down Erwin's portrait in her office. Petra cries whenever she sees Armin, remembering the boy who’d always talk to her about the ocean.

Connie went back to Ragako to build back his village. He never tried to make contact with them again after that.

Jean transferred to the Military Police shortly after. Commander Nile named him next in line. They needed to promote as many people as possible because there’s still a possibility that half of the military can turn into a titan anytime now, even with that fucking monkey dead.

However, a recent rumor reached his city that the Military Police’s next-in-line just shot himself in the mouth yesterday morning.

Mikasa, on the other hand, disappeared.

Levi tried to locate the Ackerman girl a few times. Mikasa can be downright disrespectful and insubordinate during his time as her captain but she's still family. They never treated each other as such but she still is.

His condition prevented him from pushing himself further the way he could before and he had no choice but to follow as Petra led him back.

With his injuries, he needed to retire from the Survey Corps. Petra, banged up with her own scars—physical, emotional, and even mental, also signed in her resignation the day he signed his.

They say it's because they are not in the shape to push through anymore. Besides, there's nothing else to fight except their conscience and inner demons.

The truth is that seeing the Wings of Freedom on their uniform made him want to retch his breakfast every fucking day. Levi once said that he'd kill Eren the moment he shows that he’s a threat to humanity. They all dedicated their life to humanity’s freedom.

You bore the wings of freedom but allowed a monster to clip away the wings of the rest of the world.

What a joke.

He’s snapped out of his usual episodes when Petra came in through the door.

“It’s true,” she says and he takes in the dead look in her eyes. He wished it wouldn’t look any deader as the day Paradis won but it does.

He remains silent, waiting for her to continue.

“Jean. It’s true. He’s dead. His fiance found him yesterday.”

Levi understands Kirstein. He really does. He used to be against suicide because so many people who want to live die everyday. Now though, if he had the will to point a bullet to his own head, he would.

But he can’t leave the baby in Petra’s womb fatherless.

“Do we deserve this, Levi?” At first, he thought she was referring to Jean’s death. All this sadness and self-loathing. “Do we deserve this? A home. A baby on the way.”

When so many beyond the island saw their own homes and children trampled on.

This is the first time she brought it up and he wasn’t surprised that she was the one who opened this conversation.

Petra is already a shell of her former self. He finds it hard to believe that this was the same woman who’d fight titans with fire in her eyes. Who managed to capture his attention since the day she graduated from the cadets. Who managed to survive when their whole squad and the fucking Scout commander couldn't. If they hadn’t fucked around one drunken night of loneliness and despair, he feels she’d lose all the will to push forward.

“How should I know? I told you before. The only thing we can do now-“

“-Is to live with the consequences of our actions.” A beat. She looks down and carefully places her hand on the bulge of her stomach. "Do you think he'll be proud of us?"

Another topic he tried to not approach is the baby. He knows that he'll never abandon her and the little boy or girl inside her but that doesn't mean he'd make a great father.

"Beats me."

She finally snaps. "Levi, just talk to me for once!"

When he imagined a future with Petra back when he was still her captain, he saw it happening with them winning against the titans. He'd kiss her on the battlefield in relief, not caring if fellow soldiers saw that he’s in love with his own subordinate all this time, as everyone cheers over the fact that everything's over and that they're now free to explore beyond the Walls. He'd awkwardly admit that her feelings have always been mutual and maybe he'd even propose years down the road. She'd laugh at him and tell him that age must be really catching up to him if he's actually considering marriage.

"Levi, please. You used to be so open with me. Please don't leave me alone."

She's downright begging now, her arms encircling around his waist as she starts sobbing in desperation. Petra clutches his hand, caressing the remaining two fingers on his one hand.

"Please talk to me. You don't have to carry this burden yourself. I was there until the end, remember?"

In a way, seeing her like this is a relief. Since they retired, he'd always see her walking around the house in a daze. The only time he hears emotion in her voice is when she screams out at night as she wakes up from a nightmare. She doesn’t talk to anyone else now besides him. Sometimes, he rarely even listens. When Hange and Armin visited, she'd make tea and serve them like a meek, little housewife and she'd force a smile on for their guests.

He hates it. This isn't Petra.

Her crying now and demanding him to open up. This is Petra.

He misses her.

And since he hasn't found his voice in the past three years, he answers her by abruptly spinning around, grabbing her ginger strands and roughly kissing her to shut her up.

His hand grabs the spot where her chin meets her neck and he clenches. He manhandles her to their room and he fucks her while also making sure he doesn't harm the baby. This is the only way they can communicate their sadness and understanding right now.

She accepts it all without question, her teary eyes staring at the ceiling above him. The only indication that she's okay with all of this are her quiet moans and whimpers for him to go harder and her arms clinging around him in desperation.

This isn't Petra.

He isn't Levi anymore either.

#rivetra #rivetra fic #fanfiction #rivapeto #levi x petra #petra x levi #petra ral #levi ackerman #petra rall

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thedefinitionofendgame · 3 years

Text

two under two

Amelia X Link multi-chapter | Rated T | Canon-divergent after 7x11

A/N: Just some Amelink (and others) fluff for y’all! After all the potential wedding talk in 17x11, I decided I just had to work on my Amelink short multi-chap fic. I’m just so glad Amelia’s found someone who is absolutely crazy about her. I am so happy for her and the little family she’s made. *SPOILERS FOR SEASON 17*

•

You can read this work on ao3 and fanfiction.net as well

Written & cover by @thedefinitionofendgame (aka me)

chapter 1 - big news calls for bigger reactions

It was now or never, and even though never sounded fine to Amelia, she knew now was the best time to say whatever she wanted to say. Clearing her throat, she felt Link’s fingers intertwine with hers under the table, which kept her calm. There’s no time like the present, Amelia thought to herself. Rip off the bandaid and get on with it! So by opening her mouth, she did just that. “We, Link and I, have something to tell you guys,” Amelia said, shifting her gaze to everyone seated around the outdoor dining room table. They were outside because the weather was finally nice enough to enjoy a meal in the outdoors, without fear of being rained on.

Everyone stopped chattering and turned to look at Amelia. There was a big crowd tonight in the backyard, as get-togethers were allowed now that all the adults had their COVID vaccines. Besides Meredith and the kids, Winston, Jo, Teddy, Owen, Leo and Allison had come over as well. Oh and of course, Jo’s adopted daughter, Luna Ashton who had been renamed Luna Ashton Brooke Wilson, to honour her birth name and her forever mom. It was definitely a full house, which made for the perfect time to announce Amelia and Link’s news; the news that they had been dreading to announce for the past couple months. Not dreading the actuality of the news so much as the reactions it would bring. Just like the time before, Amelia braced herself for the responses of her friends and sisters that telling this news would bring.

Amelia paused a heartbeat too long. While Zola, Bailey and Ellis were quiet at their kids table next to the main one, Meredith was the impatient one. “Well, out with it!” She said, raising an eyebrow at Amelia. Despite Meredith’s terrible health scares earlier in the year, the blonde had bounced right back and was as high spirited as ever. She still had to take it easy, especially when it came to heavy-breathing exercises, but for the most part Meredith Grey was back to normal.

Amelia looked at Link, who nodded encouragingly. He hadn’t forced her to announce their news in front of everyone today, and had actually suggested only telling Meredith and Maggie to start. However Amelia said she wanted to tell everyone at once, to avoid any questioning or whispering that might happen at the hospital. “Link and I are pregnant again. Tada, that’s the surprise.”

The entire table fell silent, while everyone processed the news. Maggie was the first to recover and jumped up out of her seat to give Amelia a hug. “Oh my gosh!” She squealed, engulfing Amelia into her embrace.

“That’s awesome news! I’m so happy I get to be Auntie Mer again,” Meredith said. It only made her a little sad to know that last time Link and Amelia had announced they were pregnant, Andrew had been with her and heard the news firsthand. She quickly shook her head to clear her mind of those thoughts. This was not the time nor place to think about Andrew DeLuca.

Next to Amelia, Link was receiving a fist bump from Winston and Jo smiled happily at her best friend. “I’m really happy for you, you’re gonna make a great dad times two.” Jo bounced Luna in her lap. “Are you excited to have another baby friend? Maybe it will be a girl this time.”

Link opened his mouth to reply, when Zola popped up between the new parents’ two chairs. “I can’t wait for another cousin! Can I say hi to the baby?” Nodding, Amelia pushed back her chair so that Zola could place her hands on her Auntie’s belly. Amelia was a bit overwhelmed by the well-wishes; she hadn’t expected so much attention. When she had started telling people about Scout’s coming, it was only Maggie then Link then Meredith and Andrew. People found out gradually. Oh god, Link was right! Cursing herself about her baby daddy being right about waiting, Amelia tried to drag herself out of her own thoughts.

The squeezing of her hand in Link’s brought her back. Zola had moved on, and was now happily talking about the new cousin on the way to Bailey and Ellis. Scout was napping just inside, which at least dialled back the noise. If one baby was loud, Amelia was scared to find out what two would be like.

Although she was excited. Goodness, she was over the damn moon about it. The first time Link had gotten her pregnant, she had been just scared, until Mr. Atticus Lincoln had turned her whole though process upside down. He had told her he would support her no matter what she decided; would love their baby unconditionally or drive her to the clinic if she chose to have an abortion. Amelia hadn’t ever felt that type of love before, the type that didn’t matter what she chose. It only grew with the pregnancy, at least after the whole “who’s the daddy” fiasco got cleared up. At least this time Amelia was one-hundred percent sure this baby was Link’s. She loved the baby they had made together the first time, and would love their second baby just as much.

While most of the people around the table seemed surprised, Link was very much not. When Amelia had told him she was pregnant, he had raised an eyebrow at her and laughed, before telling her he loved her and that he was the happiest man alive. With all the “athletic and aerobic” sex they had despite having four kids in the same house as them, it was no wonder he managed to get Amelia knocked up a second time in less than two years. It was more like one and a bit years, because what everyone else didn’t know was that Amelia was already five months along. They’d gotten pregnant around Scout’s half birthday. Good timing on their part...not. Both Link and Amelia weren’t against having more kids but had not wanted to discuss or try for a second for a while longer. Baby Amelink #2 was a bit of a surprise just like their older brother had been.

Owen and Teddy were the last to offer their congratulations. "Well I’m pleased for you both," Owen said, speaking for the first time since the bombshell was dropped. He didn't look at Teddy, because he knew what her face would convey. They had been wanting to add to their growing brood for the past couple months, but nothing had happened. Owen didn't think of himself as infertile, all previous mishaps had proven that, so he wasn't quite sure why he and Teddy hadn't gotten pregnant yet. Although he wasn't going to complain, especially when Amelia and Link seemed to just come to terms and that's why they chose to wait so long to announce it. He had been waiting for them to come out with their secret for a while now, after accidentally overhearing a conversation between them both in the pit post-consult. Like the good ex-husband-more like friend and fellow doctor-Owen was, he kept quiet and didn’t even tell Teddy. Now that their news was out in the open, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about slipping up ever.

Chatter continued amongst the friends, and Amelia relaxed now that the focus was off of her. She leaned back in her chair and placed a hand on her growing tummy. “You’re already a hit,” she whispered to the baby inside of her.

“Damn right she is,” Link leaned over and whispered in Amelia’s ear, sending shivers down her spine. Why did that voice always make her think dirty thoughts? Probably the hormones, and also the fact he used that exact tone in the bedroom. God Amelia, get your head out of the gutter, she thought to herself.

Amelia glanced at Link. “Are you calling girl on me?”

Link shrugged, not totally willing to admit it, but he was definitely thinking it was a girl. “Maybe. Jo said it first.”

“Oh sure, that’s what sparked it.” Amelia rolled her eyes but internally, she was smiling really big. “We already have a name regardless of their gender though.”

“We do.” Link smiled and pressed a kiss to Amelia’s temple. “Best name ever.”

“Even better than Scout?” She smiled back at the man she loved more than anything else in the world, maybe even more than Scout. Amelia loved her son very much, but it was his daddy that made everything in her life good. Every single moment, no matter how upsetting, Link somehow made it worth it. Made it worth all the hard nights and the crying sessions and the struggles to stay sober. He was her everything, and always would be. Together, they would be there for Scout and the new baby. It was always going to be them, until the very end.

Link thought for a moment. “Nope, but tied though.”

Laughing, Amelia nodded. “Alright, I can live with that.” They were quiet for a moment, then Link nudged Amelia with his elbow. She turned and saw Ellis standing beside her chair. “Hey Ellie-Belle, what’s up?”

“I wanna sit with you and the new baby. Where is it?” Ellis looked around, as though she magically expected a baby to appear outside in the backyard.

Meredith raised an eyebrow at her sister, as the youngest Shepherd pulled her niece into her lap with only minor difficulty. “If you have a girl, all I gotta say is that they’re clingy and ask a lot of questions. Such as,” she turned to Zola who was standing beside her patiently waiting to ask a question. “Yes, Zo-Zo?”

“When are we going to have dinner? Bailey’s hungry and we ate lunch over five hours ago.” Zola stated matter-of-factly.

“And with boys, you get the always hungry factor,” Meredith sighed.

“Know all about that,” Amelia said, with a pointed look at the baby monitor on the table. “I swear this kid never stops eating. He’s almost getting more action than Link is,” Amelia blurts out, forgetting there was a child in her lap and four others nearby. Well, more like 3 because Allison was inside napping with Scout.

No one really paid close attention, except Link who let out a chuckle. “Always telling like it is,” he said with a smirk. Link waited until Meredith had gotten up and headed inside with the rest of the adults and the other kids, minus the one in Amelia’s embrace, before he said anything else. “I love you,” he whispered, leaning over and pressing a soft kiss to her lips.

Amelia melted and wrapped her arms tighter around Ellis. For a minute she pretended that the small body in her lap was her own daughter, the girl’s older brother chasing after the food Bailey sought as well. “I love you too. Everyone took our surprise a lot better than I thought.”

“Of course they did. Because they love you, they love Scout and I guess they love me too,” Link added.

“They love you probably more than me. I’m the former drug addict, remember?”

“Hey, you’re still keeping your promise about not getting high. That’s all that matters.” Link placed one of his hands on Amelia’s belly, right where their baby was growing. Ellis twisted in Amelia’s lap and did the same, amazed by whatever her Uncle Link was doing. With a smile to both the girls present, he messed Ellis’ hair and then looked over at the woman he loved. The woman he had unashamedly surrendered his heart to, the woman who he would fight forever for. He had almost let her and their beautiful son slip through his fingers, but thank god his best friend told him to not mess what he had with Amelia up. She was his ever after, and it was true that before Amelia, he didn’t tell people he was in love with them often. Hookups were a thing of his past, after the gorgeous brown haired-blue eyed girl walked into his life. She had walked in, stolen his heart and stayed because they were going to be each other’s forever. They were each other’s forever.

A forever as a family of four. Because they already had Scout and a baby on the way which made them a family of four. Four was a number Link could work with, a number he sort of wanted to increase but only if Amelia wanted. He would do anything for her and vice versa. His girl was strong and brave and worked miracles everyday. If it was anything Atticus Lincoln was proud to do, it was call Amelia, his.

posting chapter 2 & 3 soon!

#amelia x link #amelink #amelink fanfic #amelia shepherd #atticus lincoln #amelia shepherd fanfic #atticus lincoln fanfic #scout derek shepherd lincoln #two under two #baby on the way #grey's anatomy #grey's anatomy s17 spoilers #grey's anatomy fanfic #the definition of endgame

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jace-todd · 3 years

Text

Late Night Cherry Tea

@convexed-parallel you asked for Hitoshi and Shouto and so I'm delivering! Trying to get more comfortable with writing and publishing said writing.

possible spoilers??? i don't know, i gave canon the middle finger

Word count: 2155

read on ao3 here

Shouto was hoping this wouldn’t become a new habit. But for the third night in a row, he’s found himself sitting on the counter in the kitchen, a bowl of soba cradled in one hand. The clock above the oven flashes 2:52 am, illuminating the room every time. He didn’t bother to turn on any lights when he came down, just reached into the back of the fridge for his food and crawled onto the counter. It wasn’t proper etiquette to be sitting here, and if Katsuki or Momo (or Fuyumi) were to see him, they’d tsk and tell him to get off. For a moment, he wanted them to be here, standing in front of him, their arms crossed, talking to him about how late-night habits. Then he’d glance down at his hands and rethink it.

Sleep and Shouto have always had a fickle relationship. After trainings with his father, Shouto found sleep to be a blissful release, taking him somewhere better than reality. All the ache in his bones, the exhaustion that hung off him like chains, the shaking in his hands and the ever-present taste of vomit would disappear as he slept it all off. Sleep was a warm embrace, gently moving your head down to their shoulder, fingers brushing through your hair and rocking you to sleep. Sleep was faint memories of his mother holding him, from before, her cold hands holding him up as she moved through the house, Natsuo and Fuyumi following closely and talking softly while Touya stood silent further away.

Then they’d have nights like these. Shouto would lay in the dark for hours, twisting and turning, chucking the blankets off, and then pulling them back on not a moment later. He would listen to one of Fuyumi’s sleep playlists, close his eyes and pray to whatever deities were above that he’d be granted at least two hours. Sleep would kick his ass, coming only to give him horrible nightmares of burning water, a towering figure, blue fire. Sleep was the cold embrace you felt when it was winter and you’re underprepared, frost nipping at your nose and fingers, still present even after you rub your hands together. Sleep became his tormentor, a false promise of protection, allowing him in to stop it all only to hold him down and force him to remember all of the worst times.

During anniversaries like this week, it was the latter. Touya’s death anniversary was coming up – though he wasn’t sure if that was still true. Echoing words of Dabi’s ‘that’s sad Shouto Todoroki’ wouldn’t leave him, a sense of familiarity lacing the way he said his name. He knows he’s grasping for straws, some sort of conclusion, an answer to years-long uncertainty involving Touya. But if there’s any possible chance, Shouto wants to think about it. Maybe if they have just an answer, Natsuo won’t be as distant, as angry. Maybe if they had just something to work off of, Fuyumi could breath a little easier, let her shoulders untense. Maybe if Shouto could find any trace, his Mother would be happier about their family, sleep better at night knowing all of her kids were alive and okay.

Maybe he’d be able to get some sleep.

Shouto sighs, looking back down at the cold noodles. He isn’t any less awake than he was an hour ago, heterochromatic eyes blinking slowly as he forces himself to untense his shoulders. The noise from his slurping is comforting, masking the rumble of the fridge and the clicking from their broken wall clock after Izuku slammed his shoulder into it during one of their movie nights that turned into rough housing. He wonders if it’s too late to turn on something on the tv and settle himself there for the night. The last thing he wants to do is wake anyone else up.

“You good?” The baritone voice startles Shouto out of his thoughts, originating somewhere near the entrance of the kitchen. He jerks his head up to see who it is and the sight of his newest classmate greets him.

Shinsou doesn’t look any better than he feels, eyes half-lid from accustomed exhaustion, one hand on the back of his neck and the other hiding in a pocket. His purple hair is down for a change, covering most of his face and neck. It’s a weird sight. He’s been in the class for a couple of weeks now, ever since Mineta’s expulsion. They haven’t interacted much outside of training sessions or Izuku dragging them out. Though, from what he’s heard Shinsou hasn’t been interacting with anyone since joining outside of forced encounters.

It’s strange for anyone else to be up this late, even Denki has tapped out by now. Fumikage is the only exception, the bird’s insomnia a pain in the ass to beat that Shouto often finds him when he’s awake. He’s good company when Shouto can feel his mother’s hands holding him down and hear a sizzle of a kettle long since put out.

Shouto twirls some more noodles, “I’ve been better.” The night finds him more vulnerable and open that the teen normally is. Shinsou hums in acknowledgement, making his way further into the kitchen to start gathering things from the fridge and the cabinets. It’s odd to share a space with someone this late at night. It’s odd to be living with anyone at all. Living back at the house, it was mostly cold and lonely. Fuyumi’s got herself a girlfriend so her presence isn’t a comfort Shouto can turn to. Natsuo has long since moved out to college. His father has never been warm and comforting. Going from that silence to a dorm with twenty other teens had been a lot to handle.

The clock now says 3:28 when Shouto finishes his soba and puts the container in the sink to clean later. Izuku and Katsuki didn’t wake up for training for another two and a half hours, and Shouto didn’t have anywhere to be until ten am. There was time to go upstairs and try again for sleep or there was time to start that show Mina was talking to him about. Neither happened when Shinsou spoke again. He had nearly forgotten the other male was there. Shinsou was awfully quiet.

“Here.” Shouto finds a mug being shoved into his hands. It’s hot and Shouto lets frost cold his hand down as he holds it, looking up to see Shinsou jumping onto the counter across him, holding his own mug. He isn’t used to this either, someone looking out for him and making him things when he can’t sleep. Fuyumi tried her best but Shouto always shoots her down so she can sleep. He loves his sister dearly but her sleep was important.

It’s tea, that much he can tell by sniffing, though there’s some sort of cherry addition to it. He shrugs and takes a sip. It’s good; warm and sweet on his tongue and happy memories blossom with it. Natsuo’s cherry syrup on his pancakes and waffles, him flipping Shouto off when he had teased him about it, Fuyumi’s disapproving voice telling them to cut it out. Touya’s red tongue as he sticks out, a free hand holding a cherry lopstick, hoarding the candy to himself, a slight pinch of a smile visible. Fuyumi’s cherry chap-stick she buys every time she runs out that always ends up in Shouto’s bag. Shouto can’t help but inhale the scent and cradle it close to his chest.

“Nightmares?” Shinsou speaks softly, as if he’s afraid he’s going to be yelled at for talking this late at night. There’s a grumble to it that makes him think of Aizawa-Sensei and Shouto’s half-tempted to ask if they’re related.

“No. Just old memories.” Shouto takes another sip from the mug, a soft smile irrepressible as he kicks his feet back and forth to do something.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He’s been asked that before. When his mother burned him. When she was sent away. When Touya died. When Natsuo screamed at their dad and he ran to hide in his room. When Fuyumi told him that she was going to be around less. When he’d wake up screaming and crying. Shouto hates that question.

“No. What is this?” He lifts up the mug and Shinsou nods in acknowledgement.

“It’s a tea concoction my sister used to make me when I couldn’t sleep. Makes you real sleepy, just wait.” Shouto didn’t know that Shinsou had a sister. Though, Shinsou probably doesn’t know anything about his family either. He wonders about the past tense. Did she move away? Like Natsuo did? Was she dead like Touya? Or did Shinsou shoot her down like he did to Fuyumi?

Silence lapses between them again as Shouto thinks. Shinsou sits perfectly content across the kitchen, his own legs tucked under him, scrolling through his phone as he sips from the mug. The lightning makes the purple look black and when Shouto gets caught staring, the purple eyes look black too – just a ring of it swimming in pure white. He holds the gaze, though Shinsou just chuckles and goes back to his phone. It seems easier to breathe with the company, the oppressive weight Shouto had easing just a bit as Shinsou’s quiet reactions and them drinking fill the air. Shouto observes his new classmate and drinks the tea.

When it’s done, he finally talks again. “My brother’s death anniversary is coming up and I can’t stop thinking about it. He died when I was a kid, I barely knew him, but he meant a lot to Fuyumi and Natsuo. Father still has photos of him in the house though I’m not supposed to know that. Touya was the blueprint for everything that I am. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why we weren’t close, because my Father threw him to the side when I manifested my quirk. I think Touya took pride in his quirk and being a hero but it changed when I came around. I guess that’s why I’m so transfixed over it.” Shouto lifts his gaze. Shinsou’s phone is nowhere in sight and the empty mug is sitting next to his thigh. Purple eyes are locked on his. Undivided attention.

“It’s stupid but… when Katsuki was kidnapped, when I tried to get the marble back from Dabi, he said something. He said my name, my full name, and I can’t shake this feeling.” Shouto clenches his fist, “This feeling that there’s something off about that guy. I just want closure for Touya and I think that Dabi has something to do with that.” If Izuku were listening, he’d insist that they’d dig up everything they can. Izuku would overanalyze and ramble about that fight and everything little detail about Dabi. If Katsuki were here, he’d smack Shouto’s back hard and tell him to stop thinking so much, they’d catch the bastard and Shouto would get his closure – all of it in his own way.

Shinsou slides off the counter, softly walking over to stand in front of Shouto. “It’s not stupid. I’d give anything to find out who killed my sister. Closure helps you move on and sleep at night. It makes everything just a tad bit better, though it may not seem like it. You want to know even if the answers aren’t desirable because at least its an answer, at least you know. You want to be able to finally tell your family you know what happened to your brother and sleep the entire night. There’s nothing stupid about that, Todoroki.”

A firm hand sits on his shoulder, “We’ll find out what happened to your brother, Todoroki. We’ll solve this mystery, okay?” Shouto stares into determined eyes and finds himself nodding. Shinsou’s ambition got him into the hero course through it all and it reminds him of Izuku. A lopsided smile overtakes Shinsou’s serious expression, the hand disappearing to take the empty mug from his loose grasp. “Now go the fuck to sleep.”

The faucet is turned on and Shinsou gets to work with cleaning the evidence they were ever down in the kitchen. Shouto jumps off the counter, heading towards the elevator. The tea did it’s job, his eyes are heavier, his limbs relaxing without his permission and the fog of sleep starting to drift in. He stops though, turning to look at Shinsou over his shoulder. “Hey, Shinsou?” There’s another hum and the other student looks at him. “Thank you.”

“Any time. Next time you can’t sleep, come find me. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Maybe he can’t climb into his mother’s bed after nightmares. Maybe he can’t turn to his eldest brother to show off his accomplishments. Maybe he can’t click with Fuyumi or Natsuo anymore. But he does know that maybe next time he can’t sleep, he can find some comfort in the brainwasher. Shouto takes a deep breath and presses the up button on the elevator.

#shinsou hitoshi #todoroki shouto #my hero academia #hannah's writing #you can interpret this as platonic or pre-relationship #totally up to you

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itsthebiiii · 4 years

Text

A messy summary of Ikepri Yves’ route from chap 16

Hey so it's me again lol. I know I'm SUUUPER late to the party and Nokto's route is out mah boiiiiis, but I finally finished one of the endings and I'm here to deliver them delicious spoilers so... here they are under the cut. Also, somehow more detailed than the last one but it's still as messy don't worry

also, sorry if there are any errors or inaccuracies!

So about that plot, well, some shit is going down that requires the princes to go to battle so they do that (once again, breezed through that part 😅). MC's quite worried bout Yves but he promises he'd return so they gucci.

While on the battlefield, everyone's all exhausted and full of blood on their hands, well, except for Yves. Leon and the gang noticed how he doesn't kill any one of the Obsidian soldiers and he just kept pushing them down. I think Yves was doing this because he doesn't want to kill one of his own because, no matter what he's got some Obsidian blood in his veins. Anyway, they notice a soldier about to attack Yves from behind, but before anyone could bat an eye, Licht comes to his rescue and gets injured. And yall know the drill, Yves feels guilty, yada yada.

After three days, the princes return and MC welcomes them. She noticed everyone looked messed up except for Yves, and when she called him it seemed like he didn't even hear her. MC is concerned bout what happened out there, but before she could ask some more, Jin asks her to take care of Licht's wound. She agrees, and while tending to his injury, Licht tells her what happened. He also told her there's one thing MC can do for Yves, but before he can say what, Jin and Clavis barges in the room with impeccable timing and some booze, announcing that they're gonna drink up for getting out alive so they gather everyone up lolol they rowdy af. Yves doesn't show up tho which makes MC even more worried

MC immediately comes to a realization that Yves might be blaming himself for what happened to Licht so she searches for him until she finds him in the kitchen. He still looked like he wasn't himself, so MC tries comforting him until he snappedt and tried pushing her away (I swear these two) Yves was like "yo wtf why do you even care for me I don't deserve that shit" and then that scene from the PV happens. Yves cried bout how much he hates himself more than anyone does and he wishes he was someone that ain't him. MC just stayed silent and listened to him pour his heart out ugh poor boi

Some time later, the princes gathered up again because they received a letter(?) from Obsidian. It said they want Rhodolite to send Yves back to Obsidian or else some shit will go down. They obviously think it's a trap of some sort but Yves agrees anyway so... that's decided. MC doesn't know of this until she hears from Luke. She rushes to Yves' room and saw him packing up. MC was also apprehensive about him going (or returning?) to Obsidian, but Yves just smiled and told her not to worry or smth. Also he was like "remember all that crap I told you that night at the kitchen? Sike, those were L I E S" and MC's just like "ye right" but because she was unable to form a response to any of that, she left the room teary eyed, with Yves also equally sad. MC returns to her room and while crying her heart out she realizes one teensy tiny detail: she's in love with Yves *insert surprised pikachu face*

So the day came for Yves to depart, but MC decides to stay in her room. Rio sees her in her state and told her "the MC I know and love wouldn't sulk around in her room smh go out there and chase yo mans" and after some persuasion MC heads out. She managed to catch up to Yves and talk to him for like 3 minutes. Also in those 3 minutes, she finally confessed her feelings and kissed him (Yves: 😲 guards: 😳😳😳) She's like "ye remember when I said I won't fall for u? Ye that kinda happened so I guess I'm yours for all of eternity" She also says she'll be waiting for him and gives him her memo pad before he leaves.

In the carriage, Yves reads MC's notes, there were some notes written about the princes but later they soon become notes about what they had done together: going to town, eating sum food, etc. He realizes that she turned it into a whole ass diary and it was mainly about him 😭 Yves was like "girl don't even know this ain't a diary... baka na no??? *sad princely sobbing*"

Back at the castle, the remaining princes gathered up again, this time with MC, and they talked about Obsidian's real motives. They talked about how Yves shouldn't have gone to Obsidian because the moment he interacts with them, he could or would get killed. MC was worried as she listens to them making plans and when Licht decided he would go first to retrieve Yves, he drags MC along with him because he's good at reading expressions and our girl MC here really wants to be useful to the story.

Meanwhile, Yves' carriage suddenly stops and one of his soldiers alerts him that there's a fuckton of Obsidian soldiers ahead and Yves realizes they've been set up. He instructs his men to return to the castle and leave him, also he warns them that there miiiight be some more Obsidian peeps on their way back so he commands them to get out alive. Despite their apprehension, well they had to obey Yves so they did just that.

MEANWHILE meanwhile, Licht and MC go to Obsidian (I don't recall if they bumped into Yves' army but meh) and they stay back a bit to watch stuff unfold. There, they see Yves talking to some Obsidian leaders or smth and the leaders were talking shit to him bout how worthless he actually is and all that crap. They were like "yo you're cursed with sum bad magic huh" Yves was like "Ye, I thought so too. But ya know what? I met someone who kept looking at me straight in the eye and focused on all my good aspects. That person made me stop denying myself. (MC: oh shiz he's talking about the stuff I told him before he left) So no matter how much I didn't want to accept myself, no matter how much I wished to be someone else, I mustn't deny the me that she believed in, I mustn't give up on myself! So ye. I'm Yves Kloss, the 5th Prince of Rhodolite!" YES my boi gain that confidence!!!

So the Obsidian peeps were like "btch u done with ur last words? Just so u know the men u let escape are prolly dead anyway so, how bout u die too aye? Pls die" and when the Obsidian soldiers point their blades at him, Licht decides it was a good time to show up

So ye, before Yves could take a blow, Licht blocked it with his sword. Yves was like "wtf r u two doing here???!" And MC replied with "we're saving you, duh" and Licht backs her up with "ye what she said" the Obsidian peeps were all ???? but they decided to kill them two as well. MC's like "ye no we have back up otw" but the Obsidian peeps thought she was just fronting. So Yves and Licht decides to buy them more time by fighting (but not killing) them. They may be strong but they're exhausted as well, then one soldier finds an opening and aims for Licht. Yves sees this and gets in front of Licht, getting his arm injured in the process.

They try stalling for a few more minutes until the gang finally arrives and they're relieved Yves and Licht are still alive. Jin was like "yo wtf we didn't agree to send Yves here just to get our princes killed in a place like this" and the Obsidian guys are like "we just wanted to welcome Prince Yves until he pointed his sword at us 👉👈🥺💦" but Jin and the other princes obviously ain't buying that crap.

So playtime's over and after all that political stuff, Leon's like "aye Yves, since u have Rhodolite and Obsidian blood, ur technically our bridge, so wtf do we do now?" And Yves says the four kingdoms should sign a peace treaty and also form an alliance to end all those beef. MC's happy for him because he finally achieved his dream of uniting Rhodolite and Obsidian through him. And ye, everybody agrees so everybody happy

BUT WAIT! Sariel announces that Belle needs to choose the next king at that very moment (like wtf couldn't they wait until they get home?) But hey, since they're forming alliances anyway. So MC's pressured and all until she realizes, ayo wait up... ya'll know what the kingdoms need? Not one, not two, but EIGHT leaders! "Ye fam, I appoint all 8 princes to lead the kingdoms... momentarily until I make my final decision." Sariel's like "That ain't allowed" and MC responds with "I know fam. But the kingdoms are in a pretty unstable situation, and we need these 8 dudes to support the kingdoms... after everything is settled and stable again do I choose the king" and they were like "if that's what Belle says, then aight smh" Then everyone finally goes home, but not before Yves and MC shares a moment and Yves faints or falls asleep due to exhaustion

Back at the castle, MC is summoned by Sariel and he shows her there is only one petal left of the rose. He tells her "I know you've technically done your job, but until you choose A KING, will you stay in the castle?" Of course MC agrees and Sariel tells her that he thinks she made the best decision for the situation.

After MC leaves, Yves enters the room and asks Sariel if he has seen MC. Sariel has half a mind to tell the truth, but where's the fun in that right? He tells Yves that MC's preparing to leave since she has done her job and according to the Belle clause, 'once the king is chosen, Belle can't interact with or see him forever' or smth like that and Yves was like "Screw that bs!" and ran to MC's room immediately, leaving Sariel to laugh in evil 😏

In her room, MC was worried about Yves' wounds so she decides to pay him a visit, when she hears knocks on her door that she recognizes was Yves'. He wasted no time entering the room and pinning MC to her bed (SQUEAAAAL) and she was like "??? ya good fam?!" And Yves replied "WHERE TF DO U THINK UR GOING HUH??"

(Ya know what I think imma put a bit of their convo here lol)

MC: To see you?

Yves: And what? So you can say goodbye and tell me we won't see each other forever? BAKA

MC: ...Eh?

Yves: I don't care what Sariel or the others decided. I can't accept this! MC, I can't even take it when you're not beside me... what will I do if we can't see each other ever again? Just thinking about it makes me crazy... You said you'll be mine forever, didn't you? Then I... I'm yours forever as well! Because I was the one who fell (in love) first!

MC: !!!

Yves: I love love LOVE you, you idiot! So don't go saying we won't be together! The Yves Kloss won't allow that even if the world turns upside down! (not sure about that last part)

SO YE. As much as that warmed MC's heart, she was like "i ain't going anywhere. Bruh Sariel's messing with u" and Yves is EMBARRASSED but he doesn't deny it anyway. He decides to say some more cute stuff so lemme put it down here xD

"MC, a lot of unexpected things happened in my life. But the most unexpected thing that happened to me is falling in love with you. Even though I swore I would never fall for you, I noticed I have. You said you were the first one to fall for me, but I think my feelings for you are bigger. MC, I'm stupidly in love with you."

And they argue about who loves the other more lolol then they do the deed 🤭

So some time passed, and the other princes were throwing MC some pickup lines (they were teasing Yves about taking the crown and the MC lolol) and Yves just stood there like "fam?? Aren't yall a lil too close?? Sariel help!!1! Licht and Chevalier too???" And he whisks MC away to his room. The other princes just smiled fondly at the two and Leon comments, "Maybe just meeting someone can fill up the gaps in a person's heart" and he recalls how they tried filling Yves' loneliness but somehow could not fill up the last piece. Until MC shows up and did just that. Jin was like "heh, that sounds like destiny" and Leon confirms that it is 🥺

Back at Yves' room, he has MC pinned down again and he declares that he needs to do his best to continue staying by MC's side. And MC says "me too fam" then she asks him a very important question: "Do you still want to be someone other than you?"

And he replies with:

"It's because you showed me my good traits and loved me for who I am that I don't hate the me I am now. Besides, if I were someone else, then I wouldn't be able to fall in love with you like this. It's because I'm like this, that you found me. That's why, from the bottom of my heart, I'm happy I'm me; I'm happy I did my best to live" ugly sobbing in the background 😭😭😭

So that beautiful CG appears, and Yves tells MC that line, "When I fell in love with you, it's as if the bad magic disappeared. Thank you... for teaching me what true love is."

A few days later, the two were at the library and Yves tells MC that before, he never knew what love is. But of course it's different now, because he tells her, "For me, the meaning of love is... you, MC."

~FIN~

YALL I'M STILL SOBBING BRUUUH 😭😭😭 this whole route was a blast 100/10 would read again (after I finish Nokto, I guess lolol) But ye. Yves is my best boi in IkePri because I'm a sucker for these tropes it's just so sooooft.

So I'm still undecided whether I should read the epilogue or nah because I need like 20 more affection pts? and I really wanna do Nokto's route... idk man

Well this was longer than I expected, so if you reached the end, have some more leFtOvERs from Yves! 🥧

#ikemen prince #ikemen ouji #ikemen prince spoiler #ikemen prince yves #ikepri #yves kloss

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kuroopaisen · 3 years

Text

@kacchand (i couldn't tag your main but i wanted to make sure you saw this fdlkjfdlkj)

hello dear! i’m sorry it took me so long to respond to this dflskjfdlkfdj i decided to answer your ask in a text post so i can link my thoughts to yours more easily! also, i know i'm going to Ramble, so i wanted to be able to keep it under a cut sdlkfjd

Hi rowan!! I've just finished the final chapter of aot and I just wanted to ask your opinion on it!

(SPOILERS THAT DEPICT MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE STORY'S MEANING AHEAD. READ ONLY IF YOU'VE FINISHED THE CHAPTER)

(FR )

(THERE'S STILL TIME TO BACK OUT)

(DO IT NOW. SPOILER ALERT)

I'd also like to ask a follow up question about it, because it seems that I've come to a different concl. from many of my friends and I'm feeling dumb abt how i feel w it.

first of all (and i say this as sincerely as possible, and if i'm coming off as condesending please let me know hh), please don't feel dumb because you've come to a different conclusion :(

we all read media at different levels (i’ve been told it’s ‘not that deep’ before fdljkfsdlkj) and identify different aspects in it, so the fact that you've had a different experience to some of your friends is absolutely not a reflection on your intelligence. and if anyone's making you feel that way, drop their @. i just want to talk :) furthermore, you’re not wrong for responding to something emotionally, especially if it really... makes you uncomfortable, you know?

i'm from the PH & I've put off determining whether i'm comfy w the manga til the last chap,,,, but is it wrong that I can't shake the feeling that it's a justification of japanese expansionism and genocide? ik this manga has always been in the grey area, and that's what I love abt it! It often shows that no choice they make is absolutely good or bad, and does such a good job at showing you how each complex character came to that understanding (role of environment, etc...) but this last chapter felt too positive abt the rumbling? Like it was justified because paradis was able to advance and there wasn't much choice? idk.

that's totally valid! some of the best think pieces on the show i read mentioned that the concern with the narrative is less "is isayama a nazi sympathiser?" (he most likely isn't), but if he's a imperial japan apologist. and...

well, let's just say that my father is british, and when i was trying to say that colonisation was bad, using british india as an example, he said "well, we gave them railroads." it's... it's uncomfortable and gross and i think it encapsulates how countries with imperial pasts tend to talk about them; even if they don't officially endorse it, there's often a lot of talk about how "well colonialism was good for this country, actually--"

and if the manga felt like it was justifying japanese expansionism, then chances are it had elements that very much did point towards that. i've had a lot of trouble grappling with reiner, annie and bertolt, because they've existed in this grey area of 'victim of oppression' and 'war criminal'; and their existence raises the question of "do people who commit war crimes simply do what needs to be done?" and by victimising them it... it plays into the whole nuremberg defense of "i was just following orders". it's making you feel bad for the people committing said war crimes (and similarly with eren, and all the awful things he's done). but i'll get more into this point later dsfkjfd

i haven't read the last chapter yet (and don't worry about spoilers! i've been approaching aot from a very... specific perspective anyway, so i actually don't mind spoilers -- i read a bunch of analyses of the series before i'd even watched it hh), but... i think if it came off as too positive about, you know... an awful thing that happened, then it absolutely makes sense that you'd feel uncomfortable?

the modernisation narrative in general is one that always skeeves me out. it's one japanese imperialists use to justify the invasion of korea (and even those infamous tweets from the one account purported to be isayama talk about how the population of korea boomed under japanese imperial occupation, which... stop.)

it's also commonly invoked in cases of development. certain members of society (usually the poor), just 'had' to die for the good of the future. who gives a damn if they consent to that? they have to.

similarly, the 'we had no choice' narrative. that's... a concerning one that crops up time and again with history apologists, the argument that "oh if x country hadn't done y, then someone else would've!" or that acts of aggression were done as pre-emptive self-defence, which is so... ugh. i just. i just hate it.

It also feels really weird w the ymir and the whole loving fritz thing. i wish we got to see more of her thought process and what conclusion she came to that led her to destroying the power of the titans.

i... hate this so much. i get that abuse is complicated and victims often have multifaceted feelings towards their abusers, but... most people would focus on that in their story? the story would be about that? but instead, it's just... a thing in the history of the world and that's... icky.

also having the genesis of the titans come from a slave girl in love with her captor... there's many levels of ick to it and i highly doubt it was handled with the appropriate level of grace and sensitivity.

honestly, this might be one of the things that pissed me off the most because of how... contradictory her backstory was with That One Chapter (you know, instead of ymir crying because she wants to be free or because she’s been trapped she........ wants to see mikasa kiss eren’s decapitated head? i guess? what the fuck?)

idk...I just think that context is sometimes everything. and i understand that media can portray incorrect things,,,, and that isayama likely didn't intend for it to become a global sensation, but i guess i'm just uncomfortable w the right wing nazis getting a comfort book ahaha.

i totally get that! even if attack on titan is meant to be anti-fascists, the fact of the matter is... a lot of fascists love it. and relate to it. which is... alarming. especially given just how popular aot is worldwide.

it’s hard because before the ending, attack on titan did feel like it was more grey; i remember saying that i wouldn’t know how to feel about it until the ending because the story was either saying “the military is corrupt and war is hell”, or it was saying “the military is corrupt and war is hell, but it is necessary.”

still sorting out my thoughts, but yeah. I think i'm having a hard time understanding what they really accomplished with the rumbling and how they gave eren a sudden lelouch role and a lot of how they made it out to be a happy thing? perhaps I'm too biased to see it fully but to me it gives a "woah. eren was a hero. he saved us from destruction. those people needed to die for us to achieve this temporary peace and new start". i suppose the rumbling gave them a levelled playing ground?

OH MY GOOOOOD okay. i haven't finished code geass. but i really don't like lelouch. i mean... i think i just don't like characters that sacrifice other people for a purported 'greater good' (i could write an Essay about how much i hate erwin smith looking at him is enough to send me into an unhinged rage), but where i'm up to in the anime, i don't like the direction they're going with eren? i mean, i've never liked eren, but... that whole "martyr for the eldians" is just. ew. especially when you see several eldian characters disagree and resist him.

why does this one guy get to make choices for everyone else? because he’s sPeCiAL? fuck off

sorry for not being coherent. maybe i'm basing this too much on feelings ahaha. trust aot to finish it's scandalous run with a scandalous end.

no omg you're being perfectly coherent :( also, if anyone's making you feel bad or stupid for how you experience media, they’re... definitely not as smart as they think they are fdslskjfdlk.

i'm of that mind that, while media consumption is in part an intellectual exercise, it is inherently very emotional; narrative media tries to make us feel as much as it makes us think. that’s what stories are for, you know? intellectual analysis is well and good but what’s the point of a story if it doesn’t make you feel anything?

that's to say, i don't believe there's such thing as basing your opinion too much on feelings :') especially since it's your personal experience with a piece of media; you don't owe anyone 'objectivity' (which is always a farce when it comes to this sort of thing) or 'logical analysis', because nobody's got any right to criticise you for engaging with media the 'wrong way'.

tl;dr I feel like the mood was too celebratory abt the rumbling, and didn't entail enough on the tragedy so much that it felt like a justification for genocide and expansionism. how do you feel abt it's ending and the message it leaves? is isayama responsible to give a morally correct answer to the cycle of hatred? you're not obligated to answer! and sorry for the rambling.

hhh yeah i guess that’s the thing at the end of the day... is isayama responsible for giving a “morally correct” answer? no, but the way the ending plays out is very telling.

like armin thanking eren? mikasa’s e n t i r e character boiling down to being in love with a mass murderer no matter how poorly he’s treated her? and one could argue that kind of ending is supposed to be unsettling, supposed to hint that the cycle will just continue, but...

framing is everything. and it’s framed like a Good, Emotional Thing, Aren’t We So Grateful Eren Did All Those Awful Things

YI think I would've been fine if we got to see more of Eren's or Yif you have a different perspective on how eren is being portrayed please do share! I just felt really yucky watching armin say "thanks for murdering all those people for us" with love,,, I suppose he was trying to make eren feel better. ach maybe I'm just overreacting. idk. im dumb ahaha . i'll send this in anyway cuz I'd love to hear your take!

HHHHHHH i just hate eren and i never got him. i felt bad for him in the beginning, but he's always been too... violent for me. there was a very short period of time in season 2 where i felt bad for him, but otherwise it’s just been... ugh. the main three have always been the weakest part of the series imo, so it’s really not surprising they’re part of the reason the ending was so. bad.

and... well, that one infamous quote pretty much sums up my issue with armin. he's supposed to be the 'intelligent' one, but he's hopelessly devoted to a homicidal maniac with whom he has a very artificial, unbelievable bond with.

at the end of the day, the "thank you for becoming our monster" thing just makes it seem like attack on titan's core message is "war is horrible, but it is necessary." it feels like it's justifying massacre. and while fiction is fiction, and sometimes it's as simple as that, i think something as politically loaded as attack on titan needs to be looked at with a critical lens when discussing what it’s trying to say or what it means.

do i think it makes someone a Bad Person for liking aot or being attached to it in some way? no, because that’s dumb, and what media someone likes =/= their Moral Goodness TM. ofc trends are a thing and certain pieces of media appeal to certain types of people, but it’s a false equivalency that misses the point.

but by that same breath, nobody is wrong or stupid or has Less Valid Opinions just because what they took away from it makes them uncomfortable.

i’m sorry this is So Long i have so many thoughts about this dskljfslkj

but at the end of the day,

levi sexy

#kacchan 💕#rowan rambles #rowan watches attack on titan #attack on titan spoilers #attack on titan tw

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snickiebear · 3 years

Note

hiya snickie!!! came here to SCREAM with u!!!!!! i so love the action in OL&W!!! thank u so much for the lovely update ❤️ im a little confused about where shika’s intense hate is coming from… obviously the war and all that but it’s not like he and his guild didn’t kill a whole bunch of others who fought too… i sorta feel he’s being irrational about Sakura but maybe when your shadows talk like his do, you’re bound to stray from logic somehow…

ANYWAYYYYY mysterious sakura is mysterious AND add in gaara to that mix — I LIVE FOR A JEALOUS SHIKA IN DENIAL! it’s sad doe that sakura had to fight temari and now our dear sand baby no longer has his sibs :( please dont make him resent sakura, he feels like a genuine friend to our fearsome pink tiger

UGH i have so many questions and i havent even checked out the index yet but i will soon! i just wanted to drop by first! 🥰 but if u would be so inclined to answer (unless it’s a spoiler):

1. will we know more about sakura’s relationship with itachi and shisui? in the first (?) chap, i think she said something like “i see itachi has found me” which definitely sounds like a hide-and-seek thing with them and i dont mind an itasaku angle to this ❤️❤️❤️

2. is there a chance for ino and sakura to be friends jn this AU? right now it seems like sakura only cares about shika and whatever it is going on in her head (but still about shika). it also feels like ino just wants to steer clear of sakura??? but maybe that would change after the latest chapter??????

3. will we ever know where shikaku disappeared to in the months before the war ended (also known as “the final battle feat. sakura’s badass drop from the sky”) i’m quite curious as to why shikaku seems so chill when sakura appeared in their guild… he obvs knows something i dont hmph

4. do u have an inspiration for their outfits? it’s not as easy for me to imagine the characters and setting in my head because i also was not exposed to a lot of fantasy literature/movies/etc.

UGH I SWEAR IM ENJOYING THIS TOO MUCH!!! remember when i told u i don’t really like fantasy AUs but then you go write this amazing piece and add in some mystery to the freaking truth about the war… HOW EVEN??? 😱 i love the mystery about everything in OL&W so even if i have all these questions here i am giggling to myself trying to think up different possibilities 😆

thank u so so so much! ur work keeps me on my toes, as always! can’t wait for the next chapter!!!!

🐱

🐱!!!!!!!!

HEY BBY!!!!

you are 100% right to think that shika’s anger is like “dude eat a snickers”! he is being irrational, but he doesn’t see it that way. he blames the losing of the war on sakura, he’s putting a lot of anger towards her… and like you said, with the Shadows whispering in his ears, it is a bit hard to tell reality from thought. ;) plus, shikamaru is a very unreliable narrator.

YES JEALOUS SHIKA! I’m so glad you caught onto that! its the beginning of the “I hate her” and “don’t touch her” conflict. and i can’t wait to get into it moreee >:))

as for gaara! Don’t worry too much about our sand bby. he is very intimate with death (*cough cough*). plus, he and saku are longterm friends, it would take much more than sakura putting down his turncoat “sister” to sever that bond. they’ve known each other for years now ;)

AAAAAA 🐱 you’ll make me cry! thank you so much for coming over here and screaming at me!!!!! I LOVE IT!

1) kind of! the next chap we’ll be seeing shisui and itachi! Though, the amount of info we get on them and saku will depend on shika (but for you 🐱 i’ll see what i can do ;) )

also! ITAKSAU! i love that ship, its so fun to read and aaaaa but! im not gonna really dive deep into those two and i am always up for leaving things for interpretation. Plus, sakura’s lived since the Violent Era, so itasaku might have happened ;))

fun fact! in the very early stages of this (very first drafts) i had itasakushi a thing, and i quite liked it soo take that as you will ;))))

2. HOPEFULLY! ive been turning it over in my head so much lately and i’m hoping so! there are time skips after almost every chapter (until the end ones) so im hcing that later on (you’ll see) that they work together and come to stand on stable footing. also a thing to remember; ino and cho are not the same as shika, they don’t see sakura in the same light. also, they’re a lot mentally healthier LMAO

3. ah yes! he and his half of the army simply lost communication and probably had been bombarded and cornered by the enemy! ALSO I LOVE THAT NAME AHAHAHA! near the end shikaku comes clean about why saku was there. for the past eight years shikaku and yoshino have been trying to protect shikamaru (and themselves) from the growing “rebellion”, it got too much so sakura came in to clean up house. plus, saku and shikaku are friendly, saku and yoshino are def friends.

so, they know they can depend on sakura to take care of things, hence why they’re so relaxed about the murders LMAO

4. yes! and kinda! so if u check out the pinterest board and scroll through it all, near the “bottomish” you should be able to find some clothing/weapon references to give you an idea/vibe! in all honesty, i don’t have a clear cut image in my head either, so whatever comes to mind works great :)))

AAAAAA 🐱 ILYSM!!! I still cannot get over the fact that you took a chance on this, that means everything to me!!! and the fact that you’re really enjoying it???? take my heart! its yours! there are going to be even more mystery elements coming in the next chapter (this is where “plot” starts and im so HYPE)

If you ever have any questions (or theories after reading the index) please let me know! i’d love to hear and answer em!! And maybe push you in the right direct ;)))

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!!!!!! :))))) ILY

#silly things from silly friends #my fav anon

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yeolliebaekxin · 4 years

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why did sarawat not straight up tell pam that he has a boyfriend? he could tell the whole world that tine is his but why not tell pam that "hey i have a boyfriend"??? sarawat loves tine so much and was willing to wait and search for him for a year. a whole fucking year, gone to every scrubb's concert just to see him. but today's ep really tells me otherwise. he reassured tine, yes, but have he ever stop and think how tine actually feels? tine is deeply in love with him; how would he feel when he saw a girl thats your boyfriends first love goes to him and ask him for a chance? and whatsmore he just let her be....maybe sarawat did not think so much...

honestly i feel like its a stunt gmm wanna do. in the novel pam is the nicest and sweetest girl. she actually ships them tgt and now gmm pulls out a "first love comes back and steals bf." ....... GMMTV SRSLY U BETTER PULL OUT THE BEST ENDING FOR THE SERIES OR ELSE

in the novel, this chapter is to tell a part of tine's story, to potray how tine loves sarawat as much as sarawat loves tine ( as the previous chap are all kinda sarawat pov) its just tine is a big babie and sarawat is just oblivious. its their first time being in love, who doesnt make mistakes aint it ? mayb gmm does....

oh and BIG BIG SPOILER PLS DONT READ IF U GNA READ THE NOVEL OKAY 321 - (in the novel) tine went to the hospital (cuhs he fainted and mil carried him just like the preview) and when tine was at the hospital, sarawat is with pam and her friends (its actually all of sarawats highschool friends come and visit sarawat) so they were there and pam asked tine if he was okay. tine was like oh shes here then he realised pam and sarawat are tgt the whole way when hes bring treated. and when sarawat came back w his meds he told tine he will send him back home first then he send pam back. that was kind of a breaking point for tine so he just walked away and wanted to call mil to pick him up. sarawat obviously refused and asked him why he gotta ask someone else so tine just poured out all his insecurities and told sarawat "ive been thinking all night, is it the fact that im not good enough or you just really love her. if its the latter i have no choice but to let you go. (sobs) sarawat, i am ready...for you to say goodbye to me."

tine loves sarawat so much that hes asking sarawat to be the one thats breaking up with him.

K IM CRYING NOW BRB

#2gether the series #tine x sarawat #thai bl #2gethertheseries #brightwin #okay im crying now #SPOILER #DONT READ IF U DW GET SPOILED #yes .... im broken #why did gmm do this

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hayffiebird · 4 years

Text

Taste of Strawberries, Chap. 21

Hayffie Post-Mockingjay Multi-chapter, Rated M

I hope you like angst on your fanfic sandwish :) Leave a comment and tell me your thoughts!

Also: (spoiler not a spoiler) I included the Capitol anthem from the new THG book “The ballad of songbirds and snakes” but it doesn’t give away the story so it’s safe to read.

Chapter 21 The betrayal

*ring ring*

… What?

*swallows back a sob* Haymitch? Haymitch, it’s me.

Ah. There she is. Long time no princess. What can you want?

I’m sorry. I know I should have called you a long time ago.

Oh, I remember that voice. Effs Trinket needs a shoulder to cry on, huh? So she goes to good ol’ Haymitch. Course. *takes a mouthful of something* It’s too bad mine’re all the way down here then. Both of ‘em.

I can take the train. If I go now I ought to be…

Here in a day. Yeah. And I’m supposed to just welcome you with open arms?

Haymitch…

That’s my name.

I really must speak to you. It’s im…

What for? I’m a dead-end drunk, remember?

I’ve never called…

No, that’s right. Your words were much fancier.

I know you’re angry. This is not easy for me either but…

I’m fine, sweetheart. Just fine. Can’t ruin a life that’s already ruined, right? I s’pose you want all your crap back? Yeah, the kids have it. They think you’re gonna come back, you know. “When hell freezes over”, am I right? But you know Peeta. I’ll just tell ‘em to send it over straight away so you never have to set your foot here ever again. Great, huh?

You left me, Haymitch! I didn’t want you to go! I didn’t want it to end!

Could’ve fooled me. *twists the top of another bottle* And don’t you worry your pretty head, sweetheart. You’ll get over it. Trust me. Soon you’re gonna find some nice, wholesome guy who does exactly what he’s told. It’ll be all: “Yes, Euphemia. No, Euphemia. Whatever you say, Eu…”

Don’t call me that! Haymitch, please! Mrs. Q, she… she tried to… I need you! If you care about me at all…

Oh, I cared about you. A lot. More than a lot. Should’ve fucking known better. So why don’t you call Plutarch or Octavia or any other of your friends and just leave me alone. Cause I owe you nothing. Nothing at all.

*sobs* I’m so stupid.

Have a wonderful life, Eff. I’m sure you’re gonna be deliriously happy.

*toot toot*

xXx

There was still some broth left. Katniss slipped her flask into a jacket pocket and poured a second mug.

The storm had finally blown itself out, for now anyway, but one look through the window quelled all hope for a hunting day. No point roaming the woods for sustenance when the snow lay waist-deep.

She fed Buttercup her last piece of bacon and carried the mug into the living room.

“I’m going to the bakery.”

Nightmares had made Haymitch kick all the cushions off the couch again. He lay on his side with the knife cradled against his chest like some scary version of a teddy bear.

“There’re scrambled eggs if you want it,” Katniss said. “And some bacon. I left it on the stove.”

She couldn’t set the mug down. Wasn’t enough space on the coffee table and Haymitch grunted at the sound of glass against glass when she tossed the empties in the container by the door.

He muttered something she couldn’t make sense of and pulled his arm up over his eyes to ward off the light from the one lamp. “Drink the broth at least.” She placed the cup at arm’s reach and was gone.

It was almost a month now since Haymitch set up camp on their couch. One day mid-dinner he just staggered into their living room and he hadn’t left since.

He was decent enough to not completely trash the place but still, you didn’t want Haymitch Abernathy for a roommate. He was hard enough to deal with nextdoor.

Katniss couldn’t stand it being at home these days. Haymitch woke both her and Peeta almost every night with the agonized sounds he made in his sleep and daytime was no better.

Their mentor, hollow-eyed and shrunken on the couch – it all reminded her too much of her mother and Katniss fled when she couldn’t help. She kept to the woods as much as possible and if not the woods the bakery or the Hob or Hazelle’s.

Anywhere but home.

When they finally asked him if it wasn’t time he moved back to his own house, they cleaned it for him, Haymitch only shot them a long look, like a dog they had just mistreated and rolled over so he faced the couch.

“She’s there,” that’s all he muttered.

And what could they do? Not tie him up and dump him somewhere. He was their mentor and they already owed him more than they could ever repay.

They had known something was off the moment they got home, the day before Christmas Eve.

They walked up the old pathway, loaded with bags and the first thing they saw when they passed Haymitch’s house was the Christmas tree lying in the snow, still green and frosty and covered with ornaments. Like someone had just thrown it out the door.

And it wasn’t the only thing.

In the ever-growing light they saw the ground littered with items. Towels and bed sheets and bath robes lay in bundles, all frozen stiff. Soggy, old newspapers and magazines too, blown apart by the frisk wind.

Her clothes were everywhere, along with an endless number of bottles and jars and other beauty products half-buried in the snow. They found napkins and slippers, perfume bottles and pillows. Hairbrushes, tea cups, blankets, curtains, shower curtains, even anagrammed towel hangers attached to chunks of the bathroom wall.

The state of his house was even worse, like a twister had gone through it. They asked him about it but Haymitch was a closed book.

Then, of course they found Effie’s note on their kitchen table and it wasn’t hard to piece together what had happened in their short absence.

They wanted to help. Of course they did. Only, how? Wasn’t like they could change what had already happened or say anything to make it better.

Not that Peeta didn’t try to talk to him. Talk at him. Finally Katniss stepped up and said, not unkindly,

“Just leave him be.”

Haymitch had said next to nothing the whole time but when Katniss and Peeta turned to leave he stopped them in their tracks.

“Just so we’re clear,” he said and looked Peeta straight in the eye; a feat considering how intoxicated he was. “You don’t get any ideas ‘bout calling the Capitol, alright. I mean it, boy. This is my wreckage.”

Sun set early this time of year. For the remaining hours, Katniss and Peeta dug for treasures in Haymitch’s garden, until they had to squint in order to see. And even then some of Effie’s belongings would probably not be found until Spring.

They brought it all back to their house. Silently, Peeta filled the sink with hot water and suds and washed the plates and glasses and tea cups while Katniss stood at the ready with a towel, both of them deep in thought.

Back in District 4, when Peeta gathered her in bed, he had teased her about their cosy, up-coming Christmas. Painted her pictures of Effie plaguing both her and Haymitch with her bright holiday spirit and bringing them gifts – wrapped in regular wrappings so she didn’t technically break Haymitch’s rule of “no Christmas presents.”

Dinner at the Hob would follow where Effie would spend about two thirds of it clucking over Haymitch’s table manners and Haymitch stating he should just hire her voice to cut his turkey for him and “we’re not doing this again, that’s for sure”, all the while not quite able to keep his hands to himself.

“And then they’ll top the evening with a see-through excuse like ‘I’m gonna go get a bottle’ or ‘I am simply exhausted. Do you mind if we call it a night?’,” Peeta finished and grinned at Katniss who squirmed like a worm in hot ashes.

It just felt good to make fun of their mentor being happy for once. Happy with Effie.

Now, everything was in ruins and tomorrow would be just like any other day, with Haymitch drunk and getting drunker.

Not that Christmas had ever been a busy affair in the Victor’s Village. They had dinner and that was pretty much it. A slightly fancier one, perhaps, with about a 50% chance of Haymitch joining. He only ever showed up last New Year’s because of Effie.

Because of Effie. That phrase applied for many aspects of Haymitch’s life, didn’t it? He’d deny it but just the fact she got him to even consider drying out pretty much said everything.

“Maybe we should call her,” Peeta wondered, not sure himself.

“But you heard him,” Katniss said. “This is none of our business. And they’ll come around, eventually.”

They were both so used to their mentor and escort’s antics. Those stubborn, old fools were always at each other’s throat and through and through they found a way back to one other. Back at each other’s side.

This too would pass, surely? Sooner or later, one of them would swallow their pride and pick up the phone.

And while Katniss and Peeta waited for that call they stored Effie’s things for safe-keeping, well out of Haymitch’s sight and stopped asking questions.

But February rolled to a close with dark days and even darker nights. Life in Twelve was just one storm after another and people were forced to seek shelter at the Hob so as not to get lost in them. The vixen’s cry echoed in the night and Katniss and Peeta stored up on candle sticks for the blackouts.

March came with the deceiving breath of spring only to bury the district in a second winter. Hazelle’s kids put her on bed rest after a sprained ankle. Brooks gushed in plentiful streams under the ice and an apple-cheeked Katniss returned from the woods, game bag loaded with wild turkey.

April arrived with warmer weather. Tiny greens peeked in people’s gardens and the patches of last year’s grass grew bigger for each day. Water dropped down every icicle and town’s kids and Seam kids alike melted snow in water barrels to make the spring come faster.

Everyone kept busy. It was a time of change, of rebirth. Winter was finally over and it had a rejuvenating effect on everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

Effie’s name was never mentioned and yet she was ever present. If an outsider walked past and saw Haymitch on the couch he might think “same old, same old”. But Katniss and Peeta were family and they knew him better than that.

Haymitch had never been an easy person to deal with and definitely not a happy-go-lucky one. But every once in a while, if he had a couple hours of dreamless sleep it was like he got an energy boost.

That’s when he got up, checked on the geese, helped Peeta in the bakery, maybe just had a hot meal down at the Hob before he returned to his bottles.

Now, it was like he didn’t care about anything anymore. He just lay on the couch, drinking and God help the one who bothered him. He only ever left for the bathroom breaks or when his liquor ran out.

But even that came to an end.

It happened when Haymitch staggered into the Hob on a Sunday morning.

“Usual,” he slurred and tossed handfuls of money on Ripper’s bar counter.

“Sorry, Haymitch. You’re too early,” she said. “The train doesn’t arrive until Monday. We’re all out now.”

“Usual!” Haymitch repeated, louder this time like she was slow. Sighs rose from around the tables.

“It’s Sunday,” Ripper told him patiently. “Come back tomorrow and I’ll get your bottles. I can’t sell it to you now because we’re out.”

She couldn’t make him understand. Each time she tried Haymitch only got surlier. “Wha’s the problem?” he whined. “I have money. Wha’s the problem?”

He scared some of the little kids eating breakfast with their parents. The temperature in the diner seemed to have dropped twenty degrees and finally a gray-haired old man muttered, loud enough for Haymitch to hear it,

“Who’d have thought we’d ever wish for that fancy sow to come back?”

That’s when Haymitch wielded his knife. He was so drunk it was pathetic but for Ripper that was it! She kicked him out and told him either he left his knife at home or he would have to get someone else to buy him his liquor.

From then on, Katniss and Peeta stocked up his supplies and Haymitch found even fewer reasons to get up.

What for?

Maybe it would have been better, Katniss thought. Less cruel, if he never got those precious few months with Effie. Because losing her, losing her altogether and not just as a lover, seemed to have opened a crack in his rock bottom and pushed him down that hole as well.

And Effie, how was she doing?

xXx

May. God, he hated May. Ever since he turned twelve, the month right before the Hunger Games was nothing but a ticking clock. Even now, years after the war had ended, there were still times when he started awake, thinking,

Reaping day’s almost here!

He couldn’t sleep. While he marinated his liver a bug had detoured in to the house and was now buzzing about in the window.

The sound unnerved him because the bloody thing just wouldn’t give up! It bumped and thumped against the glass over and over again, yearning for freedom.

It was Peeta’s damn fault. He always opened a window when it rained.

Finally he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Alright, alright,” Haymitch growled and swung his legs off of the couch.

It was a wasp. Not the tracker jacker kind, just a regular one. It crawled along the window sill, flew into the glass once more and wiggled it’s antennae in irritation.

“Out with you now,” Haymitch muttered as he struggled with the window hooks. “Be free.” And watched the bug disappear.

The night air felt balmy against his skin. He took his time unscrewing the lid on the silver hip flask. The geese were quiet for a change but the mockingjays were still up, frisky and begging for company. He ran his hand through his wild beard and drank the flask dry. It didn’t take long.

He was just looking for something to fill it up with when he heard the sound. One even his soaked brain could place.

A phone. Ringing.

His mind jumped to Effie and he could’ve kicked himself for it. He resisted the desire to slam the window shut and closed it before he returned to the couch. The coffee table held nothing but empties. They clinked under his fingertips until he found one with some in it. He lifted it to his lips and greeted the burn with a sigh of relief.

Outside, the ringing continued. Even with the window closed, there was no escaping it.

It’s not her. Why’d she call now? No reason for her to call now.

After what felt like 10 years, the phone silenced. The knot in his stomach eased somewhat and after he promised himself to tear the phone out the wall as soon as the sun rose he walked over to the cabinet and peeked inside.

“Thank you, kids,” he mumbled at the welcomed sight. He grabbed same bottles at random and brought them back to the couch. But before he got the chance to flop down on his ass-print the phone went off again.

“Oh, fuck me,” he wheezed.

Who called him at three in the morning? No, strike that. Who called him, period?

Sweat trickled down his sides in never-ending streams. The sound played on his nerve strings like a violin. It was the wasp all over again because the caller, whoever it was, didn’t give up. Refused to stop until he did something about it.

A hundred whispered insults spilled over Haymitch’s lips as he pulled on his shoes.

He hadn’t seen the inside of his house in months. The last time he was here had been a fucking nightmare. Broken furniture, broken everything.

The long, hard signals cut through the stillness like a knife.

It’s not her.

He picked up the phone and the blare of music nearly ripped her ear drum. He held the thing a meter away.

“Hello?” someone called. “Helloo?”

He brought the phone closer.

“Who is this?”

“Well, hi to you too!” the person laughed. It was a woman’s voice. One he recognized, only he couldn’t quite place it. From the Capitol at least. “How’s the bachelor’s life treating you, Haycock?” the stranger woman asked. When he didn’t answer she went on, “It’s me, Gloria! Gloria Highgrass. We met at Octavia’s birthday party, remember? Yellow dress. Good-for-nothing cousin by my side.”

Haymitch drew a silent sigh. Of course.

“Where you’ve been hiding, hm?” she asked. ”Haven’t seen you in a while. Finally tired of your afternoon delight?”

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself.”

“Oh,” Gloria chuckled. “You kiss your bottle with that mouth? What would Effie said?”

Her words drew giggles. Clearly, they had an audience and he was just about to slam the phone down when she said,

“I just saw her, that little cock-warmer of yours. And between you and me: I don’t blame you for leaving. What a mess, haha! You screwed her up good, Haycock! She’s so unfuckable now! Well done, sir. Well done.”

And her brilliant laughter hammered his head.

“Do you know we all placed bets on how long the two of you would last? It’s true! You cost me a fortune, Haycock! You guys stuck it out way longer than I thought. And then my useless cousin told me about your little scene at the train station. ‘Get your shit together’ and all that. God, I wish I was there!”

She had a sip of something and then rallied on,

”You wanna know what I think? I think she planned the whole thing. So you’d never leave her. Too bad she forgot that district scum scurry off like cockroaches once the light’s on. Well, she’s paying for it now, isn’t she? How’d she tell you? Before or after you cleared out?”

It was a wonder the phone didn’t break in Haymitch’s fist. He could hardly breathe, that’s how furious he was. But he refused to give this woman the satisfaction of him losing his temper.

“Hey, lady,” he said, in a very measured voice. “If you know something about Effie, spit it out. Or else you can just stop wasting my time and go back to your pathetic little life.”

That finally silenced her. For about three seconds.

”You don’t know?” she said. “You kidding me? He doesn’t know!”

And everyone on the other end broke down in hysterical laughter. Gloria contained hers just long enough to say,

”Come back to the Capitol, Haycock! See for yourself!”

And she slammed the phone in his ear.

He couldn’t stand another second in this place. Her things may be gone but he still felt Effie’s presence in every corner of the house. Like fumes slowly killing you.

He didn’t realize how much his hands trembled until he was back on the couch. He balled them into fists.

The nerve of that woman! “Come see for yourself.” The hell’s that supposed to mean?

He needed a drink. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and tipped the first bottle he found in to his mouth, again and again until he came up choking.

The liquor numbed his worries like they numbed everything else.

“You screwed her up good.” Yeah, that’s likely. He didn’t fancy himself being important enough to lose even a minute’s sleep over.

Maybe so. But you’re not the only bad thing that’s happened to her. Remember?

“She’s fine,” he told the empty room. “Just fine.” Probably thrived now that she didn’t have to deal with him anymore. That low-life Gloria Highgrass was just fucking with his head. She wanted to cause a spectacle, get some gossip material, that’s all.

If Effie was in any kind of need all she had to do was pick up the phone and call him.

Besides, wasn’t like she kept in touch to see how he was fairing. It was damn clear she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. And if she didn’t care, why should he?

Yeah, he thought and reached for the next bottle. Let her deal with her own demons.

xXx

If Haymitch thought he was the only one up he was wrong. Katniss slept a deep slumber for once but all the creaks and groans coming from the floorboards downstairs finally wormed their way into Peeta’s dreams until he flinched awake.

The room burned with morning light. Peeta’s heart pounded in his chest but he remained still so as not to disturb Katniss while he listened to the sounds below.

It wasn’t the first time Haymitch “ghosted the halls”. Peeta remembered it especially well from their train rides together and back at the penthouse during the Games.

Sometimes it seemed like Haymitch just couldn’t stand to remain in the same place, locked inside his own head. And that’s when he stalked from room to room, aimlessly. Like a bear in a cage. Well, a bear with a bottle in its paw.

No, it wasn’t the first time but it was the first time in a while. And he used to go to bed with the sun so what was he still doing up?

At least with Haymitch on the couch, you knew where you had him. Finally Peeta carefully extracted himself from Katniss and slipped out of bed, just to check on him. That wouldn’t be a first either.

He reached the foot of the stairs just as Haymitch returned in to the living room, surprisingly sober. Sobered up. He sunk down on the couch, elbows on his knees. He never noticed Peeta. His eyes were squarely focused on something in his hands.

Peeta couldn’t tell what it was at first but then Haymitch shifted it over and the penny suddenly dropped.

It was a paper goose. The paper goose. He knew it well because it used to sit on the window sill back in his studio. Haymitch must have ventured inside and stumbled upon it by co-incidence.

Effie’s paper goose. Well, Haymitch’s really since she gave it to him.

Peeta remembered the day she made it. It was the summer Haymitch had brought her here after the over-dose.

She had one of her good days and joined them for breakfast in the studio. He painted, Katniss ate cheese buns, Haymitch doodled a horrible caricature of Effie and in exchange she made him this little origami creature.

A good day in an ocean of bad ones.

Shortly after, the night terrors sent her in a down-ward spiral again and just to keep her from clocking out Haymitch said he thought about getting some geese. What’d she think?

The idea probably originated from Chaff. Eleven’s victor loved everything made from the bird. Roast goose and buttered potatoes, corned goose hash, fried eggs with mushrooms.

Those were the dishes he ordered at the training centre before the third Quarter Quell and if memory didn’t deceive Peeta he even told Caesar Flickerman after he was crowned victor, that he liked to raise geese once he returned to District Eleven.

Now he never really got that idea off the table. Instead, Haymitch did. Well, sort of. None of his birds had ever wound up on a plate.

In any case, Peeta bet the whole ”let’s go to Eleven” adventure wasn’t motivated by some great desire to buy geese. That’s just what Haymitch had her believe. Because for whatever reason Effie lived up a little whenever she got to plan things. It gave her a sense of control.

It was slick how he played it. Made her think “This will be good for Haymitch” when really it was “good for Effie”. Something to keep her mind occupied. His own way to try and coax her out of her depression.

A hundred memories drenched up by one paper bird. That’s what Peeta witnessed this very moment. Haymitch could have crushed it easily. Just made a fist and tossed it on the fire. He tossed everything else that even vaguely reminded him of her.

He didn’t. The way he held it, you’d think it was one of his goslings and he had a look on his face that would not have been there, had he known someone was watching.

“Morning,” Katniss yawned as she walked in to the kitchen, hours later. Peeta stood by the stove, quietly pouring hot water through the tea leaves. She reached for the jug of orange juice to set it on the table. “Where’s Haymitch at? I didn’t see him.”

“On the train.”

Katniss stopped, eyebrows lifted.

“You sure?”

In answer, he pointed at the table and she discovered the note, jotted down on a scrap of paper.

I’m gonna go see Effie. Call her and tell her I’m coming, OK? Thanks.

“You talked to her? What’d she say? What?” she asked at the look on Peeta’s face.

“I tried, for about an hour,” he said. “I can’t get through. The phone’s disconnected.”

xXx

Gem of Panem Mighty city Through the ages, you shine anew

Intertwined with their laughter, the Capitol anthem echoed around the deserted city. Morning light stretched their shadows into four giants as they walked down the street, arm-in-arm. Their makeup was smeared, the flowers in their outfits drooping. All evidence of what a smash hit the night had been!

We humbly kneel To your ideal And pledge our love to you!

Coriana’s voice rose highest of them all, the only member in their quartet who could hit all the high notes, drunk or sober, but they all joined in just as merrily with the voice they had.

Gem of Panem Heart of justice Wisdom crowns your marble brow

It felt good, comforting, to chant the age old verses of their childhood. The real anthem of Panem. The politically correct atrocity Paylor whipped together didn’t hold a candle to it!

You give us light You reunite To you we make our vow

Tipsy to say the least, Priscilla wobbled dangerously in her sky-high heels but each time she careened to far to the left, they steered her right again with many giggles and “Oopsy-daisy!”

Gem of Panem Seat of power Strength in peacetime, shield in strife

“Oh, this is my favorite part!” warbled Imogen who couldn’t carry a tune with a gun to her head.

Protect our land With armored hand Our Capitol, our…

Lancer gasped, mid-through the final crescendo. Linked with the others he almost toppled them over at sudden halt.

“My gracious!” he said. “It’s Haymitch Abernathy!”

Up ahead, a man had just appeared round a corner. Ruffled clothes, hair hanging forward, everything about him completely out of place here. He paid them no attention but it was him, without a doubt. The drunken traitor of District 12.

“You heard about him and Effie Trinket, right?” Imogen asked in a loud whisper.

“Of course we heard,” said Coriana. “The whole town knows.”

“Ugh. Just look at him.” Priscilla wrinkled her nose. “At least on television he dressed decently. Disgusting!”

“She’s the one who’s disgusting,” Lancer said and pursed his lips. “He’s district. What did you expect? But a Capitolian really should know better.”

“I would jump off a cliff if it was me!”

“It could never be you, Imogen, the very thought!” said Coriana. “What’s he doing here again? Flaunting himself on our streets after what he did. What they did!”

If Haymitch heard them he didn’t show it and he didn’t change his course. When they remained shoulder to shoulder, gawking at him he sawed right through them like they were a flock of pigeons and they jumped apart with furious cries.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” Priscilla shouted to his back. “I really think you should!”

Those four weren’t the only ones who questioned what Haymitch was doing in the Capitol. Had there been one positive consequence of him and Effie breaking up it was that he would never have to see this place again.

Well, the joke’s on him.

She’s not back on pills, he told himself as he kicked a squashed ice cream cup far up the street. She promised she wouldn’t go down that road again.

The train ride was hell on earth. Throughout the long hours he failed to quiet his mind, to shake off his worries over Glorias’s words and why he couldn’t get a call through to Effie. Just thinking about their impending reunion made him sick, until he finally caved in to the bottles in his duffel.

Ironically, the one thing that stopped him from drinking himself completely senseless was the paper goose, now hitching a ride in his pocket. It helped him focus.

Walking the deserted avenues, through glitter and serpentines left from some party only reminded him of the first time he came here unannounced.

Little Ms. Hypocrite. She was one to talk about having someone almost die in your arms.

But she’s not back on pills.

The brightness of the sun reflected in the candy buildings, the lush public gardens alive with bird song, the bounty flowerbeds, the gushing fountains. It was like the Capitol mocked him with its splendor. Days like this were Effie’s favourites.

And there her building was. He saw it over the roof tops, windows reflecting bits of the blue sky. With a grimace, Haymitch slowed his steps like he’d run out of gas. Fuck it. He needed a drink. One more or less, what did it matter? He wasn’t going to stay here long anyway.

He was still struggling to close the zipper as he entered her street, her curb. He pulled the straps over his shoulder, about to give the door a knock.

And he just stared. Dumb-founded, for half a minute or more. Gaped at her front door, like the gaggle of fools he passed earlier.

No, no this can’t be right, he thought, unable to take in what his eyes were telling him. It’s gotta be a mistake.

The name plate on Effie’s door was gone. The window shutters were all closed. He turned the handle. It wouldn’t budge. He rang the bell. He knocked, pounded rather. No one opened. The place was completely dead.

But it made no sense! Effie had lived in this apartment almost all her life!

He walked over to the windows, shielded his eyes from the sunlight as he tried to peer through the shutters for any movements inside.

“Eff?”

He returned to the door, raised his hand for another knock.

“She’s not here,” a voice rung out.

He turned at the sound. On the other side of the road, just across from him, stood an old lady. The same dry twig of a woman he’d seen twice before. At least twice.

“Mr. Abernathy,” she said. The sun glinted off the gem stones in her wrinkled cheeks. Her mouth was pressed into a thin line. “Didn’t think I would ever see you here again.”

He crossed the road.

“The hell’s going on here? Where’s Effie?”

The woman’s pale green eyes pierced his. She had to lift her chin to do it. Just like Sae she barely cleared his shoulders but that’s where the similarities ended. Because this woman’s eyes held none of her warmth or gaiety.

And yet, behind the frost he noticed that same sadness he’d seen there before. Only not for him.

“I warned her”, she said. “I told her from the very beginning not to get involved with someone like you. A man who would give her nothing but heartache. But she never heeded my advice. She didn’t want to listen.”

“Here’s an idea,” Haymitch cut her off. “How ‘bout you quit playing games with me and tell me what you know.”

“I blame myself,” the woman continued, unfazed by the interruption. “I insisted she applied for an escortship. If she became an architect like she first wanted, she wouldn’t be where she is now. Maybe none of us would.”

“Who are you?” Haymitch demanded. “What’s your name?”

“Mrs. Quinlan.”

Quinlan? He had definitely heard that name before. Nothing Games related, at least he didn’t think so. No, Effie had mentioned her at some point. Yeah, at the hospital, after her rescue. She asked if she was still alive. If she was safe.

Mrs. Q.

“You’re Eff’s landlady.”

The woman shook her head.

“Not anymore.”

“Because you kicked her out.”

“She’s beyond my help,” Mrs. Quinlan said. “Euphemia was a good girl, Mr. Abernathy. A good daughter. I have wept blood for her sake but I never gave up on her. Even after the war. She got one last chance to make amends. To build up a life for herself that she could be proud of. And she went and threw it all away the moment she decided to keep your young.”

Haymitch heard the words, loud and clear, but it was like he couldn’t absorb them. Make sense of what she just said.

It was like when he was little and broke his arm, falling down a tree. They all saw it was broken but it didn’t hurt. Not straight away. Like the shock was so great nothing registered.

“’Keep my young?’ he rasped. Heat rose up his throat and face until it burned. “What do you mean ‘keep my young’?”

For the first time, a flicker of surprise registered on Mrs. Quinlan’s face.

“Where is she?” He didn’t think his voice would carry at all. Instead it echoed around the buildings. “If not here, where’s she staying?”

“Go home, Mr Abernathy,” she said. “You have done enough damage as it is.”

“If you don’t want me to wake the entire neighborhood, you tell me where she is!”

Sleepy heads already poked out windows at the commotion. There were murmurs, curious looks thrown their way. Mrs. Quinlan’s lips pressed into the same tight line.

“She moved in with Caesar Flickerman’s daughter. I assume I don’t have to tell you which one.”

xXx

The bearded dragon slumped on her favorite spot in the vivarium - a gnarled old tree root and basked in the warm rays slanting through the windows.

When they first got her she fitted in your pocket. Now they had to use both hands to carry her properly. Sandy yellow and with a look on her face like “you’re all beneath me” you’d think she was the distant cousin of a certain District 12 cat but it was only an illusion.

“Hey, you,” June said and slipped a hand inside the enclosure, knuckles down, fingers outstretched in an inviting gesture. The reptile crawled down the root and over to her. June gave her a soft scratch under the spiky chin and the animal climbed up her palm.

Annabel sat by the secretary desk, her tea long cold and forgotten, but when June passed, she took the time petting their dragon before she returned to her letter. She eyed what she’d just written, critically and gave a deep sigh.

“They won’t even…”

“They will,” said June. She had settled on the couch with the dragon on her lap. The animal closed her eyes under the soft strokes.

It had been a quiet, docile morning with just the occasional car passing by and the gentle scratch of pen against paper.

“The crates should arrive today,” said June and reached for her own cup of tea.

Right on cue the bell rang.

“Speaking of the devil,” said Annabel. She set the pen down and slowly and painfully flexed her fingers.

It rang again, on her way through the hallway.

“Coming!” She pulled her hair back in a hasty pony tail. A shadow moved behind the frosted glass. She took the chain off the door.

And came face to face with the victor of District 12.

”Mr. Abernathy,” she said, eyebrows lifted. “I…”

He didn’t let her finish.

”Effie,” he said. His face was a deep red. “She here?”

“Bel?” June’s voice fluttered in from the living room.

“Is she here?” Haymitch repeated, the fury behind the words only barely contained. “Never mind that. I know she is.”

“She’s here, Mr. Abernathy,” said Annabel.

That’s all he needed. He pushed past her.

“Eff?” he called as he stalked into the living room. June had risen, face white as paper. The dragon’s tail flailed between her cupped hands at the sudden alarm.

Annabel had followed inside and he turned on her again.

“I know all about it,” he spat. She could smell the hard liquor fumes on him. June quickly set the reptile back in the safety of the vivarium. “I know she’s pregnant so don’t try and lie to me!”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s resting.”

“Well, go and wake her up!”

“Mr. Abernathy,” she said, voice suddenly firm. “You will not shout in my house.”

“I don’t care! She thought she can just have my kid and never tell me? Who the hell does she think she is!? I wanna talk to her. Give her a piece of my mind!”

“Not until you’ve calmed down!”

“The hell with you! I’ll go find her myself.”

He turned for the door but she was right at his heel.

“Stop it!” June cried when Haymitch shoved Annabel’s hand off of him. The tea cup knocked over and crashed against the floor. The dragon ran frantically around in its cage. “Stop!”

“Get your fucking hands off me!”

“Haymitch, what are you doing!?”

Her cry made them all turn. Flushed and out of breath from the rush and alarm Effie stood in the doorway, a robe carelessly thrown over her nightdress. Her eyes locked on his, for the first time in months and the words choked in his throat. It was like the rest of the room and everyone in it just disappeared. Everyone but Effie.

And through the blood pounding in his head he could make only one coherent thought.

What have I done to her?

xXx

“I’ll be in the back if you need anything,” Annabel said as she swept up the last of the broken cup. A spitting mad June had already retreated to their bedroom, carrying the dragon with her and now Annabel went as well, leaving Haymitch and Effie to talk in private.

Not that Haymitch looked like he’d ever speak again. He hunkered in the armchair with his arms crossed over his chest. Effie sat on the couch but they could just as well be light years apart.

“Who told you?” she asked in a hushed voice.

”Does it matter?” He wasn’t yelling now. Wouldn’t even look at her. He seemed to have aged ten years in the past half hour.

“No,” said Effie. “No, I suppose not.”

She had a blanket draped over herself. Like that was going to hide anything.

“I thought you were on the pill?”

“I was.”

“Time and money you could’ve saved, clearly,” he said through gritted teeth. “And the whole Capitol knows I’m the father?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I wanted to tell you.”

“So why didn’t you? If you have my kid rolling around in your tummy I deserve to know about it, don’t you think?”

When she didn’t answer straight away his eyes darted to her face. And his insides contracted all over again as cold panic flooded his limbs.

“What, Eff?”

”It’s...” Her voice faltered. “We’re not...”

“We’re what?”

He saw his own anxiety mirrored in her eyes. She placed her hand against her stomach and his throat closed up. Because he knew the truth before she said it.

No! No, I don’t wanna hear it!

”It’s two,” she said. “Haymitch, I’m so sorry you had to find out this way. I didn’t…”

But Haymitch had already heaved himself to his feet. He wanted to throw up. He would throw up.

“I can’t do this.”

”Wait,” she said but he didn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at her and her big stomach.

”I need some air.”

xXx

“Good afternoon, Mathilda,” Mr. Bumble smiled when he crossed her door. His elegant, twirled up mustache was dyed a dusk pink today, the same color as the lap dog, freezing at his feet.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Bumble,” Mrs. Quinlan said, hoping he would pick up on the very inappropriate use of her first name.

He didn’t.

“I’d stay and chat,” he said, “but Helga is waiting for us.” And he gave his bouquet of blue roses a little wave. “It’s our anniversary, you know! 25 years!”

“How wonderful. Give her my best,” Mrs. Quinlan said mechanically as he trotted off down the street. If Helga was home or even remembered what day it was, she would eat up her hat.

She dropped the key in to her handbag and crossed the road, mindful of any ice patches hidden under the fresh snow.

The door was locked but that she only expected. So she slipped her hand into her handbag and got out different set of keys. Normally she took pride in not using them but the girl had sounded very off on the phone. Sad.

“Euphemia?” she said as she stepped inside. The flat was dark but she turned the lights on as she went. She knew her way around this apartment, almost as well as her own. “Euphemia, where are you?”

She heard noises from the master bedroom. Retches that led her straight for the adjoined bathroom.

Effie’s nightgown clung to her with sweat. Slumped down on her knees, she clutched the toilet seat as she threw up. Tears and perspiration rolled down her face from the ordeal.

She didn’t hear anyone come in. That way she never saw the complete and utter shock on Mrs. Quinlan’s face. But she quickly composed herself again.

“Euphemia.”

Effie looked up, startled.

“Oh”, she groaned. She was pale as a sheet, her eyes wet and red. “Mrs. Q, now’s… not a good time.”

And she disappeared inside the bowl again as the next wave rolled in.

Mrs. Quinlan didn’t say anything. She just pulled up a stool and seated herself. She gathered Effie’s hair with one hand and held it back from her face until the worst was over.

When Effie grew still, head heavy against her arms, just heaving breaths of both exhaustion and relief Mrs. Quinlan reached for a towel.

“Here,” she said and soaked it under the faucet. “Clean yourself.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Q,” Effie mumbled and dabbed her mouth with it. She felt Mrs. Quinlan’s eyes on her and tried to elude them by wiping the tears off her cheeks. “I am not quite myself today.”

“Euphemia.”

“Must be something I ate.”

“Euphemia, look at me, please.”

With an enormous effort, Effie lifted her head. She swallowed and swallowed. The color of her face had returned, from barely holding it together.

“Are you with child?”

Those words did it. It was like a dam broke. Effie buried her face against her babysitter’s lap and now they came. All those pent-up tears she hadn’t been able to shed since that awful day with Haymitch on the train station.

Mrs. Quinlan’s face was taut as a string.

”There now,” she murmured and stroked Effie’s hair. ”You will be alright. It’s going to be just fine.”

Effie soaked Mrs. Quinlan’s skirt with her sobs and it was like she was little again.

She’d been four or five and accidentally knocked over a vase. Everything in Mrs. Quinlan’s apartment was either ancient or valuable or both and little Effie stared in horror at the broken pierces. Finally she ran off and hid.

For the next half-hour Mrs. Quinlan had to go from room to room and from closet to closet, peer inside the cupboards and behind every thick curtain, calling her name. When she finally found her in the laundry basket Effie was so terror-struck she burst in to a wail of tears.

But Mrs. Q just scoped her up, pulled a dirty child sock off the side of her dress and carried her into the living room. With her skinny arms linked around Mrs. Q’s neck Effie sniveled and whimpered the entire time, her little body racked with sobs.

Mrs. Q. wrapped her in one of her own shawls that smelled of perfume and to the rhythm of the creaky old rocking chair, she hummed her to sleep with a Capitol lullaby.

She had never felt so safe.

“Why don’t you take a shower, Euphemia,” Mrs. Quinlan said once Effie’s sobs had subsided a little. She patted her hand between her own icy ones. “And then you and I will have a cup of nice, hot tea.”

“Oh, that is awfully sweet, mrs. Q, but I think I rather,” she started to object but Mrs. Quinlan only waved a finger in the air.

“It will do you some good,” she said. “Tea at my place, four o’clock.”

Effie had avoided Mrs. Quinlan’s flat for the past almost two years. She had spent a great deal of her childhood in the company of her landlady when mother and father couldn’t or wouldn’t take their daughter with them to one of their events.

But these days there was only one subject Mrs. Q wanted to discuss when they met and Effie found herself coming up with excuses. Because it didn’t matter how many times she tried to change the subject, Mrs. Q always steered the conversation back on the same sole topic.

Haymitch Abernathy.

Effie never talked about her and Haymitch’s relationship. Not with Mrs. Q or anyone else. But living just across the road, Mrs. Quinlan seemed to know everything anyway.

She didn’t approve. She never liked the gruff and unrefined victor of District 12 and nothing could change her mind.

She just didn’t understand. How could she? No one in the Capitol did.

“How far along are you?” she asked and poured them tea from the plump china pot. Effie tried to breathe through her nose. Just thinking about ingesting something made her queasy.

“Nine weeks.”

“Have you told him yet? Are you sure it’s his?”

“Mrs. Quinlan,” said Effie tiredly. “We’ve been through this. I’m sorry, but it’s private and really no one else’s business.”

“So, I take that as a yes,” she said mildly.

Exhausted, Effie’s eyes wandered longingly to the snow-specked window beyond Mrs. Q.

“He should have taken precautions,” the old woman said. “The situation he puts you in.”

”It wasn’t his fault,” said Effie. ”It just… happened.”

Mrs. Quinlan poured cream into her cup but Effie didn’t touch it. All she really wanted was to lie down.

There were cookies rounded up on the silvery cake stand. The frosting wasn’t like Peeta’s. Not nearly as nice but looking at them only reminded her of those lazy days in District 12 and Haymitch, teasing her for having such a sweet-tooth.

”Drink now,” said Mrs. Quinlan. “Add a little honey. Or would you rather I put some ginger in? It helps with the nausea.”

“No, it’s OK.”

Effie lifted the cup just to humor her. She was about to take a sip when the warm scent curled into her nose. A crease appeared between her eyebrows.

Mrs. Quinlan didn’t like surprises. Her routines had been virtually unchanged for the past decades. She washed her hands with the same kind of rose soap, combed her hair with the ivory comb that had survived two wars and she always drank jasmine tea.

This wasn’t jasmine tea. Effie should know. After all those tea parties at this very table, the flowery aroma was forever ingrained in her memory. She took another tentative sniff of the strange and unfamiliar fragrance.

It had a faint minty quality but not quite like the mint tea in District 12. She doubted she ever had it in the Capitol either. And yet the smell tugged at her, tried to tell her something.

Her eyes flitted to Mrs. Quinlan. The old woman stirred her own cup in slow, precise circles. The silver spoon rasped the bottom of the china. A cup she had yet to touch.

And a wave of dread flushed Effie’s face when the name surfaced.

”It’s pennyroyal.”

Mrs. Quinlan looked her in the eye. Her face was as hard and unyielding as the gems in her cheeks.

”You should never have let him into your bed.”

The beverage scalded Effie’s hands when she pushed back from the table. She stared at Mrs. Quinlan, eyes wide in terror.

”It’s for your own good, Euphemia. Nobody ever needs to know. It will be like it never happened.”

Effie didn’t stay to hear the rest. She fled the room, didn’t bother with her coat just bolted for the door. Her hands shook so badly she couldn’t work the locks and one terrible moment she thought herself trapped.

Footsteps approached or she imagined they did and a shriek escaped her lips. Then the door flew open and she staggered out into the sleet.

Blood pounded her ears as she locked her front door, fled into her bedroom and locked that door as well. She was shaking all over and slumped rather than sat down on the bed, hand clamped over her mouth.

I didn’t drink it. I never drank it.

Her vision was so blurred it took her three efforts to dial the right number. Her hand found her tummy and she tried to draw slow, deep breaths to calm the erratic beating of her heart.

”It’s OK,” she whispered to the unborn baby in her belly. ”It’s OK. You’re OK.”

So many signals just came and went, her hopes faltered with each one. Until,

“What?”

A sob slipped between her lips at the sound of his voice. She couldn’t help it. Her palm remained against her bump that wasn’t even a bump yet. Just a slight swelling beneath her dress. It made her feel stronger.

”Haymitch?” She fought to keep her voice steady. ”Haymitch, it’s me.”

“Ah, there she is,” he said with the nasty edge that sometimes crept into his voice when he drank, especially now under these circumstances. “Long time no princess. What can you want?”

“I’m sorry. I know I should have called you a long time ago.”

“Oh, I remember that voice. Effs Trinket needs a shoulder to cry on, huh? So she goes to good ol’ Haymitch. Course.” She heard him take a swig from a bottle. “It’s too bad mine’re all the way down here, then. Both of ‘em.”

“I can take the train.” Tears threatened to spill over her lashes but she held them back. Didn’t want to break down in to a blubbering mess. ”If I go now I ought to be…”

“Here in a day. Yeah. And I’m supposed to just welcome you with open arms?”

“Haymitch…”

“That’s my name.”

“I really must speak to you. It’s im…”

“What for?” he cut her off. “I’m a dead-end drunk, remember?”

“I’ve never called…”

“No, that’s right. Your words were much fancier.”

A wave of despair rose up within Effie. It was like a physical pain.

“I know you’re angry,” she said. ”This is not easy for me either but…”

“I’m fine, sweetheart. Just fine. Can’t ruin a life that’s already ruined, right? I s’pose you want all your crap back? Yeah, the kids have it. They think you’re gonna come back, you know. ‘When hell freezes over’, am I right? But you know Peeta. I’ll just tell ‘em to send it over straight away so you never have to set your foot here ever again. Great, huh?”

“You left me, Haymitch!” Effie cried and her voice broke. “I didn’t want you to go! I didn’t want it to end!”

“Could’ve fooled me.” He twisted the top of another bottle. “And don’t you worry your pretty head, sweetheart. You’ll get over it. Trust me. Soon you’re gonna find some nice, wholesome guy who does exactly what he’s told. It’ll be all: ‘Yes, Euphemia. No, Euphemia. Whatever you say, Eu…’”

“Don’t call me that!” she cried at the sound of Mrs. Quinlan’s name for her. “Haymitch, please!” She didn’t care that she begged now, hand clutched against her stomach like she could somehow protect it that way. ”Mrs. Q, she… she tried to… I need you! If you care about me at all…”

“Oh, I cared about you,” Haymitch said. “A lot. More than a lot. Should’ve fucking known better. So why don’t you call Plutarch or Octavia or any other of your friends and just leave me alone. Cause I owe you nothing. Nothing at all.”

Tears rolled down Effie’s face and she abandoned all efforts to try and stop them.

“I’m so stupid.”

“Have a wonderful life, Eff. I’m sure you’re gonna be deliriously happy.”

And she was left with just the flat audio tone.

Author’s note: I don’t know who I feel the most sorry for. Haymitch or Effie. How about you? And hayffie twins are on the way!

What did you think of Mathilda Quinlan? I face claim Geraldine Chaplin for her, the way she looked when she played Aurora in “The Orphanage”.

#hayffie #everlark #haymitch x effie #taste of strawberries fanfic #thg #post-mockingjay #haymitch abernathy #effie trinket #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark #fanfiction #myfanfiction #district 12 #the capitol

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icharchivist · 3 years

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first: WAHHHHHHHHH 😭😭😭 I got so emotional!!! so emotional!!!! so much that I can’t even do this first second pattern bc I have SO MANY thoughts!!!!!!! I’m writing this in my notes instead of straight into the askbox so u know it’s serious business™

ok so debut night!!! I was like ahah yeah it’s a tragedy whatever it’ll be fun to start out with and then the voice acting was SO good that it knocked me out of the park and I almost cried haha. it’s crazy how good the voice acting in a3 is like I love how the dialogue and voice acting works well together bc like it’s limited but so effective!! u can so very clearly see and understand the style they’re going for. especially like tsumugi’s death scene... the Talent jumped out it really did... uh and ok so. I think I may be a littleeee confused abt the play bc I had always interpreted tasukus last lines as raphael to be like abt his being secretly in love with michael. but now that I’m actually reading the line that’s like oh don’t fall for a human it only ends in misery I know that all too well or whatever... ig the implication is that raphael was in love with another human / the same lady michael was in love with in the play. side note I had to go back and edit the proper names in instead of tasuku and tsumugi lol... but speaking of!! speaking of the voice acting and the play itself I 1) love how blatantly obvious it is when tsumugi goes for that grander, tasuku like style of delivery!! like u could just so easily feel the difference it was wild... and 2) tsuzuru is once again spot on with his writing, lol... I felt that like raphaels inability to save or help michael really parallels how tasuku feels abt tsumugi so well, and it’s wonderful that they r able to resolve things and tasuku can properly compliment him on his acting where the angels fail to do so. it’s very good. and I think the play rly highlights (for me at least) that like. to tasuku, it was tsumugi who was sort of an unreachable existence. like were he to idolize and respect someone’s acting, it would be tsumugi. and I think that like caring carries over into their roles really well, because I think in michael’s love for a human tasuku sees like... tsumugi’s style of acting. the heart that he’d lost while within the god troupe. mb I’m losing my mind a little but ah. the play rly works with their relationship so well!! im very excited to see the other winter ppl get main roles tho—same for all the troupes!!! now this ask is too long so I’ll have to do another part lol

going to start off this second part of the ask abt hisoka bc oh my GOD. hisoka. like I was just thinking “hm where r the winter troupe cgs anyways” and then BAM. hisoka CRYING???? especially since he doesn’t seem that emotional it was a really hard hit!!! and who tf is august.... ok well actually theory time!! skipping ahead to the end theres that note that like mentions December and April and. not to expose my friend but very many years ago (a couple years before a3 was launched, at the very least) she wrote this story where there were like 12 orphan assassins and they were all named after months. I remember the main dude was named dec lol. coupled with my “hisoka is capable of murder” bit? listen.... I’m not saying anything but I’m also not not saying anything if u feel me. also I feel like assassin / thief with mysterious background is a common trope!! that was silver from the pokémon adventures manga too... why is this my reference point lmao. anyways I’m unclear if assassins would make it into a3 but like.... if the yakuza and supernatural stuff makes it in...

okay moving away from conspiracy theories and into emotions!!! the quotes from like EVERY mankai actor before the final production made me SO emo... and yay!!! they won!!!! (though admittedly I almost had a heart attack when no one clapped) but they won!!!! that ending cg!!!! and I adore how sakyo immediately goes after god troupe man (I know his name is reni I just don’t feel like calling him that) for the money lol it’s just so sakyo-like. also I love the lil mixed troupe interactions!! I found the game night ch so fun.... ahh, now I wanna reread that ch since it was so good lol

all in all I was super satisfied ahh!! I am SO excited to start up spring troupe again (HELLO character development!!! and chikage) and I’m even MORE excited to get thru all the act 1 events!!!! as a final note, is there any way to reread or replay the flair conversations? I didn’t want any spoilers for the plays while I was doing the practices for them so I kinda sped thru the first time ahah...

HELLO FRIEND IM SO HAPPY TO GET SUCH A LENGHTY ASK ABOUT WINTER IM LKDJFLKDJFLKFD Winter makes me feel shrimps emotions (i know the whole “shrimps can see more colors than humans can’t comprehend” thing has been disproved but i’m not letting go of that expression, i REALLY feel emotions humans can’t comprehend anymore and i’m going to make it everyone else’s problem)

1) First about the voice acting, rIGHT this is just so fascinating to me!!! I remember after act 2 i came back to reread the main act 1 chapter and i was so thrown out by how GOOD the voice acting was, especially for the first few troupes having to convince you they’re not comfortable or good at acting yet. Winter whole thing is that they’re more subtle and mature and you really feel that with their voice acting, Tsumugi’s voice especially knock it off the park anytime he’s on screen.

2) Second: what does it say about me that i’ve never, ever considered your reading a possibility because i was so set on “oh Raphael you’re in love with Michael sooooo bad you see it as a tragedy already because you can see him throw his life away” i didn’t even consider “maybe Raphael went through that too”. Though i guess if we’re going with that reading i can totally see “The Woman” they let themselves consumed by easily be a representation of acting or even more the God Troupe, with Raphael/Tasuku knowing to step away before it consumes him completely while Michael/Tsumugi, by his love and passion, pushed himself until he broke, which fits and it hurtsssss god Winter plays hits so hard.

3) Third: oh god yeah when Tsumugi goes for Tasuku’s acting it’s just. It makes me SO uncomfortable, i’ve experienced this scene like three times by now and the third time i was just “can i skip it i can’t go through this again i can’t Tsumugi i love you i can’t do this”. It doesn’t match the play at all and it just throws everyone off balance, and Tsumu you could have told theM YOU WANTED TO DO THAT.... god

4) Fourth: I LOVE YOUR READING SO MUCH I LOVE IT I LOVE IT YES YOU’RE RIGHT!!! Just as we follow Tsumugi let his passion consumes him until he breaks, Tasuku’s character arc really jumps out in Raphael, like, everything you say!!! The way Tasuku/Raphael knew how the feelings Tsumugi/Michael felt would hurt him on the long run but he didn’t know what to do about it until it was too late, the regrets and the way Raphael voices his frustrations.... Tasuku struggles to be honest without acting (Tasuku pls i love you) but having such a role really help him expressing all he feels about Tsumugi and i’m HHHH this is so good so so good!!! but yeah i also love that Tasuku finally manages to actually compliment Tsumugi naturally, that he understands he can’t let him destroys himself again and it’s just gnhhhhh Tasuku is so kind and considerate and i care about him so much....!!!

5) Fifth: “i’m losing my mind a little” winter mood, winter mood winter mood- (though every troupe’s mood tbh but Winter is gnhhhhh kdhd hdhjf??? you feel me) (i am BIASED i can’t help it TwT) but yeaH i’m looking forward to see how you react to the others plays because the roller coaster juST BEGUN!!!

Onto part 2... Winter Troupe Chapter Feels... 2!

6) Sixth: DLFJDFKLDF HISOKAAAAAAAAAA I LOVE HIM SO MUCHHHHH. Hisoka crying fucked me up so bad!! so so bad!! Like on my first read i didn’t know what to think of him as he starts out very apathic to his troupe and then the more it goes on the more you can feel he starts to open up and i’m soft for this sort of slow burn, but then this whole scene happened and it HIT ME IN THE FACE, he was crying, i was crying, we were all crying, the Unopening Door opened a flood of emotions i can’t cope with. He sounds SO VULNERABLE during that scene and i know all of the Winter Troupe united on “taking care of him” but that’s really the moment i went “i care you and i will keep taking care of you” and look at me now. Thanks funky little scene for ruining my life. I’m glad you liked it i’m aldhjflkjdfkd Hisokaaaaa.....

7) Seventh: I am not commenting on the theory but 👀 that’s so highly specific your friend has a galaxy brain i love it. and i love the idea of “well we have yakuza and supernatural entity what’s an assassin adding himself to it” dLKFJDLKF i know everyone in Mankai calls Izumi out everytime someone joins but that’d be peak. I’m not going further about what December and August and April are all about but i love this plotline sO much, the few mentions of August when Hisoka regained his memories for a minute still haunts me, the guilt he seems to feel and this pain i’m just... godddd such a good set up. I love this plotline.

8) Eigth: EMOTIONS!! Oh GOD YEAH THE ENDING WITH ALL THE OTHER ACTORS... I cried so hard it’s just. It really shows you it’s not just the culmination of the Winter chapter but of all the act 1 main plot and it really makes you feel how much of a journey you’ve been onto!! A3 is so good at showing you the growth of its characters that especially by the end of Winter you really saw how all of them grew in their respective chapters and how cozy they felt in their new home in the remaining chapters, and the fact this chap has those defining character arc’s lines really drive home “oh my god that was a journey” i love them sO MUCH....

9) Ninth: wE WOOOON!!! They’re all so good i just. i’m gonna cry just thinking about it dlfdjlfk i know like, the game has so many content so you know it can’t end at the end of Winter but the suspense really was there. BUT YEAH LMAO I LOVE SAKYO DOING THAT IMMEDIATLY, man sure has the eyes on the prize and we love him for that. AND THE GAME NIGHT SCENE they are all sO CUTE and sWEET and they’re a family now and i’m hHHHHH i love a3 a normal healthy amount that isn’t just making me cry thinking about how all of them grew so close even through mixed troupes.

10) Tenth: I am SO happy you were satisfied with the plot so far!! I’m genuinely so happy that you decided to take that journey with us and that you shared all of this with me, and i’m so so happy you liked it!! There is still so much content and all of it is so worth it!

11) Eleventh: Yes!! The flair conversations are all readable on the Mini-Chat tab! So they’re easily accessible and they’re sorted in a way that’s easy to read so you can feel comfortable skipping the flairs if you want until you have seen the stories the flairs are all about. They’re all kinda set during the rehearsals (except for some crosstroupe conversation that wouldn’t make sense if they were like how the Summer Troupe talks with the Spring Troupe in their Flairs DKLFJDF but it’s okay what is a timeline anyway) so some of them are set pre-development and it’s wild to get back to them. I love rereading Flairs i get emotional everytime.

ANND That’s it for this ask! i had a blast reading through your thoughts and i’m so happy and excited!! i’ll send you the drive now so you can start digging through it whenever you feel like it :3c good luck grinding for act 2, meanwhile i hope you’ll have fun with all the act 1 events i compiled for you!!

(side note i need to update the drive too but it’s mostly act 2 content anyway, the only two act 1 things i need to update on it is Sakuya’s birthday card i think?? i think Itaru’s is already in act 2 so i’ll try to get around to it eventually but it’s so far away anyway) (edit: i forgot that the three cards i got for the latest revival are from act 1 DLKJFD okay so i’m missing three cards -)

The drive has backstages and event stories and it may be a lot and overwhelming ahah. Focus on the event stories for the plot and go back to the backstages whenever you feel like it, no need to read them at the same time, unless you want to in which case everything is set up for you :3c and there’s a file with cards that aren’t associated to events too so... lots of goodies hanging around. I’ll send it to you in DM ;O

Take care and thank you so much for all your thoughts! my inbox remains wide opened for any others thoughts you may have as you go further into it :3c

#ichafantalks a3 #i love the winter troupe SO MUCH it's unreal this ask made me cry i was just LDKJFDLK WINTER!!!!!!!#i love your thoughts so much thank you for all of it <33 #sonnets-of-beauty #ichareply #long post for ts

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connan-l · 4 years

Text

Cleavered

Fandom: The House in Fata Morgana & Higurashi: When They Cry

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Relationship: Rena Ryuuguu & Morgana (The House in Fata Morgana)

Summary: Rena was lost, all alone and far away from her village and country. But while trying to find her way back, she gets herself involved into a sordid story of blood and witch…

Content Warnings: A few graphic depictions of violence, including slashing, blood, blood draining, attempted murders. Panic attacks and vomiting towards the end. Briefs kidnapping and slavery mentions.

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Link on Archive of Our Own

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Notes: I promise this initially started as a silly joke. I only wanted to write a ridiculous crack one-shot with ‘what if Rena Ryuuguu saved Morgana’ as a premise, and for some reason it ended up as this giant taken-too-seriously mess. It was actually pretty hard to write though — took me months before finishing it, and it was a real challenge to find a way to fit Higurashi’s plot in FataMoru’s setting. Rena was also pretty difficult to write, and I wish I would’ve been able to reread Tsumihoroboshi before that, but oh well.

Again though, it’s principally just a self-indulgent crack fic, so don’t try to think too much about it if there are some details that don’t makes sense and roll with it haha.

I’m thanking Ried (@kosongnonsens) too given I started writing this after we joked around about this idea.

Spoilers for the entirety of The House in Fata Morgana and A Requiem for Innocence, and for Higurashi: When They Cry’s sixth arc Tsumihoroboshi-hen/Atonement Chapter.

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She was definitely lost by now.

Whether she looked right or left, behind or in front of her, none of the landscapes and surroundings had one once of familiarity. She had been walking for hours now, at least — but she was pretty sure she had just managed to get even more lost than she initially had been.

Disheartened, she let out a long, heavy sigh, and sat down on a rock in the shade of a tree. Her big satchel that she’s been dragging around since she first came into this country was starting to really hurt her shoulder and back, so she also put it down on the ground. The soil was probably going to tarnish it, but it didn’t bother her much. It already was an old, deteriorated bag anyway, and there wasn’t anything of value in it — just a few clothes, some fruits and bread, and her cleaver.

She wished her father was here. And her friends. She wished she could just go back to her village, which she hadn’t seen in months now. What was she even doing out there in this foreign land she knew nothing about? People only looked at her weirdly, as if she was some sort of exotic animal, and she felt terribly uncomfortable and unwelcome.

(But maybe this was part of the curse of Oyashiro, too…)

As she unconsciously sighed again, she suddenly heard something. It sounded like footsteps. Then, after a while, she was sure she could feel a presence — a human presence. She always had a good instinct for stuff like that. She instantly grabbed her satchel, ready to welcome anything, but the person who showed up in front of her emanated absolutely no danger or suspicion whatsoever.

“Ah, as I thought! I truly had seen someone coming here!”

It was a girl, a bit younger than her, with long wavy blonde hair and sparkling sunny eyes. Her first thought was that she looked really cute, and she if wasn’t feeling so tired she probably would’ve loved to try squishing her round cheeks. Her second thought was that on the other hand, her pale face, chapped blue lips and dark circles told her she wasn’t in the best of health. Still, the girl bounced towards the newcomer like a rabbit, smiling from ear to ear.

“That’s so rare to see people!” She exclaimed. “No one ever come around here.”

“Really?” A part of her still felt suspicious, but the girl’s smile was contagious so she couldn’t help but mimic her friendly tone. “I got lost in the forest… I’ve been walking for hours trying to find my way back. Do you think you could help me?”

Th blonde girl grimaced. “Well… I can try, but… Honestly, I don’t really know my way around here either…”

“Oh… I see…”

Well, of course, that would’ve been too easy. At least she wasn’t lost in the middle of the woods anymore, she supposed. She had never been afraid of forests or dark, isolated places, but those were still tricky areas when you knew nothing of the surroundings.

“Um…”

The girl cleared her throat, getting her attention back to her, before smiling shyly with a hopeful gaze.

“Uh, well, I don’t think I can help you find your way back, but… you said you’ve been walking for hours, right? So you must be tired. If you want, I can invite you at my home!”

“Y-You would? I-I mean… it’d be very kind, but I don’t want to bother,” she stuttered.

“It’s okay! I’m all alone right now, and I’m sure the Saintess wouldn’t mind either!”

“The Saintess…?”

“I know how to make excellent tea, with rose petals! I promise you won’t regret it if you come!”

The blonde girl took her hand and begins to pull on it excitedly. She seemed oddly happy at the idea of sharing her afternoon with this stranger she knew nothing about. Maybe it wasn’t a really prudent decision to follow her, but honestly, at this point she felt too tired to refuse such an alluring invitation. Plus, she felt pretty charmed by that girl, and she didn’t think she was dangerous.

“Okay!” She replied. “You lead the way then.”

The girl’s face instantly lit up and her smile got even wider as she saw the stranger rose up from the rock and grab her satchel.

“Aahh, that’s so great! We could bake together too! Ohh, and chat about all sorts of things! Ah, by the way, I’m Nellie. What’s your name?”

She smiled at her new acquaintance, her hand still intertwined with hers.

“I’m Rena! Nice to meet you.”

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Nellie hurriedly guided her to her home all while making little mindless talks (“You’re ‘Rena’? It’s the first time I hear that name! It sounds so weird!”), and it only took them five minutes to reach it. The place where she lived looked more like a little cabin than an actual house, to be honest, but Rena thought it’d be rude to say so she kept quiet. The interior was fairly cozy, and with all the adorable, tiny decorations put all around the walls it wasn’t hard to guess that Nellie was the one who was spending most of her time here.

“Do you live here all alone? Do you?” Rena asked tentatively.

“No, I live with the Saintess… Ah, the Saintess is a nun who works at the church up there! Before that, I lived with my brother in another house, but we moved here a few months ago.”

Rena nodded while the younger girl ran up to the kitchen. She had spent enough time in this country to know that ‘saint’ and ‘nun’ were religious figures here, though she wasn’t sure what were their roles exactly. She sat at the table and waited patiently for Nellie to reappears a few minutes later with a plate in her hands.

“Haoo, those teacups are so kyute!”

“Hehe, I know, right? They’re ones of the only things I was able to bring back from home.”

“From where you lived with your brother?”

“Yes— Ah, I mean, no, even before that. Initially, we didn’t even live in the same country. We used to be rich, you know? Living in a huge mansion and all.”

“Ohh, it sounds nice! I’ve never been in a mansion.”

Well, she supposed her friend Mion’s big house could count as one, but from what Rena had seen it was still very different from what Western people called ‘mansions.’

“Well, if you want, there’s a mansion not far from here, so I could show you. I mean, it’s technically a church, but it still looks more like a mansion than a church.”

“Aw, really? I’d love to see that!”

Nellie giggled. “You’re funny. I like you. I wish I could show you my own manor too back in my country, but… I probably will never be able to go home…”

The blonde girl sighed, and a sad expression spread on her face. Rena guessed it was a touchy subject and that it was better to just change the topic rather than push the issue, but at this moment Nellie stared straight into her eyes, her smile back in place, as if it had never disappeared.

“What about you?”

“H-Huh?”

“You’re a foreigner too, aren’t you?”

“Oh… yes, that’s true… I come from the Far East. Um, well… I came to this country some months ago because of my father’s work. He’s a trader and came here for a new business opportunity… but then we got separated, and I got lost, and so here I am.”

It was a pretty simple summary of her situation and she left out a lot of complicated factors, though. No matter how cute Nellie was, she still didn’t felt like telling her whole life story out of the blue like that.

“You speak the language really well for someone who only came here months ago,” she noticed.

“O-Oh… thanks… I still don’t know how to write it though…”

Nellie seemed to ponder her words for a moment in silence, and Rena thought she was going to keep questioning but instead she just grinned and rose up from the table.

“Well, whatever! It doesn’t matter where you come from if I like you. Hey, what do you think about baking with me? I feel like eating sweets!”

Rena didn’t get the time to reply that Nellie grabbed her hand and dragged her in the kitchen, but she didn’t try to complain and instead just let herself be subjugated by the other girl’s cheerfulness.

“I love cooking, actually!” She only added. “What do you want to bake?”

“Hmm…” Nellie crossed her arms and frowned. “I dunno… Something with sugar. Lots of sugar.”

Rena giggled, then looked around the room to quickly catalog the ingredients at her disposition. “All right, then I have a proposition: how about I try to make some sweets from my country?”

As she had expected, Nellie’s eyes brightened with enthusiasm and curiosity. “Yeah! You do that! I’ll help out too.”

And thus they started to bake together, spreading flour and butter and sugar all around the house. Rena thought she felt a little bad about the so-called ‘Saintess’ if she were to come back home and see all this mess, plus all the food they squandered. But to be honest, she was having so much fun right now that she didn’t even care.

Nellie reminded her a little bit of her friends, and especially of Satoko. Maybe it had to do with the way she spoke about her big brother with so much love and admiration. Either way, it had been a long time she hadn’t had so much fun. For a moment, if she closed her eyes, she could even pretend she was back home in Hinamizawa…

The sun was starting to set and they were almost done with their cooking when the door from the house suddenly opened. Nellie seemed surprised — she apparently wasn’t expecting anyone to come home so early. When they both went to look, Rena saw a young man with the same blonde hair as Nellie standing in the room.

“Dearest Mell!” The younger girl exclaimed, and all of a sudden it was as if Rena’s existence had been completely erased from her mind.

She ran in the room and jumped in the boy’s arms, who caught her as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Hello, Nellie,” he said gently.

“What are you doing here? I thought I wouldn’t see you at all today!”

“Yeah, I, uh… I forgot my bag here, and I felt the need to check on you. But, I won’t be able to stay long… maybe half an hour, at most…”

Nellie’s happy face instantly fell upon hearing that. “Are you sure? We were baking some sweets together, stay at least to taste them!”

“‘We’?”

At this moment, the boy ‘Mell’ finally noticed the other person at the end of the room. Rena smiled in a friendly way and waved at him, hoping to make him understand she wasn’t anyone suspicious, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on him as he instantly tensed and glared at her.

“Nellie, who’s that?” He asked in a stiff voice while grabbing Nellie’s arms in a protective manner.

His sister didn’t seem to notice his unease, though, because she just replied happily: “Oh, it’s Rena! Rena, it’s my big brother, dearest Mell!”

“R-Rena…?”

“Yeaaah, that’s a weird name, right?” Nellie added.

“No, that’s— I mean, who on earth is that girl, Nellie? What is she doing here?”

“She’s a foreigner I found outside. She told me she got lost, so I invited her here to play together.”

“Nellie!” Mell exclaimed, his voice firmer and almost panicked. “You cannot do that! Didn’t I tell you a lot of times to never let inside any strangers and to open the door to no one?”

“But… she’s not dangerous. I like her, she’s really nice. We baked toge—”

“It doesn’t matter how nice she is, you just can’t do that!”

Rena listened to the siblings’ argument from afar, and the more she observed the more… off, it seemed. Of course Mell had every reason to not want his little sister to interact with a stranger, but his reaction still felt wrong, somehow. He looked almost desperate, and Rena clearly wasn’t the only one to think he was acting weird.

“Dearest Mell,” Nellie said in a softer voice. “It’s fine. She really didn’t do anything but bake with me…”

Maybe his sister’s calmness and reassurance managed to cool him down a little bit somehow, because he blinked, looked at Rena, and took a deep breath.

“Yeah… uh, sorry. I’m just… a bit tired. That’s all.”

“Oh, it’s okay!” Rena replied. “I understand being tired.”

She also understood what it was like to feel paranoiac as if the entire world was against you, and to lash out at anyone as a result. And maybe that was why she couldn’t help but find Mell’s behavior more than suspicious.

“I… I need to get back my bag,” the boy blurted out, before heading towards the end of the cabin.

As soon as he had turned their back to them, Nellie’s expression darkened, and she looked down. Her eyes were shining so much Rena thought she might start crying. She didn’t, though.

“Could it be that… you two are not getting along well?”

Nellie shook her head. “We get along fine, usually. But these last months, Mell has been… so distant. First, he’s wanted to move here all of a sudden, and then he spent all of his time at that mansion… I know it was because I got sick, but…”

“Because you got sick?”

Rena didn’t need to read mind to guess the girl wasn’t healthy. She saw her cough quite a few times during their afternoon together, and there were moments where she even had to sit down because she felt dizzy. But she wasn’t sure how that was related to them moving. Nellie looked up and stared at Rena for a while. She seemed to hesitate, then nodded.

“Not long ago, the church up there started giving out a miraculous medicine that can heal everything, called ‘Saint’s Blood’.”

“Everything…?”

“Yes, and it really works! I was extremely ill, but after I started drinking it, I started to feel better. It’s temporary, though, so Mell has to get me some of it every once in a while. But…” Nellie bit her lip. “Well… you probably won’t believe me if I tell you…”

“Try me. You’d be surprised.”

Nellie looked at her once more, then finally made up her mind. “This medicine — it’s actually real blood from a real saint.”

“You’re drinking real blood?”

“Yeah, from the nun who lives with me. But it’s not like my blood or yours! It’s special, because she’s a saint. The real deal.”

Rena tried to register everything Nellie had told her with the little of what she knew of this country’s culture and religion. ‘Saints’ were some sort of divine figures here, weren’t they? Were they similar to the priests and shrine maiden serving the gods, like Rika? Maybe Rika would be considered a ‘saint’ here too then. So it wasn’t surprising that the blood of such a being could realize ‘miracles.’ She wondered if Nellie would believe her if she were to tell she also probably knew a ‘saint’ of her own…

“It’s good that I was able to get better… But if it comes at the cost of my brother… then it’s not worth it…”

Nellie’s small voice sounded so defeated and sorrowful. Rena looked at her with sympathy. She might not have known her for long, but seeing her like this was still painful. She wanted to try to say something to comfort her, but couldn’t find the words, and at this moment footsteps got her out of her thoughts.

“All right, I have it,” Mell declared.

Nellie’s sad expression disappeared, and a wide smile replaced it. For some reason, seeing this made Rena even sadder for her.

“Does that mean you’ll stay here then?”

“Just for half an hour,” Mell reminded her strictly. “But yes. I will.”

“Aha, yay! Thank you, dearest Mell!”

The girl jumped at her brother’s neck. Mell patted her head, then turned around towards Rena, his suspicious look back on.

“Do you… intend to sleep here?”

“Oh, no! Don’t worry, I will not bother you like that! Actually, I was just going to leave.”

“Eh? Already?” Nellie exclaimed disappointedly. “That wouldn’t have bothered me for you to stay sleep here…”

“No, it’s okay! I’ll find another place to stay the night. But thank you.”

Mell kept staring at Rena with distrust, but hearing her affirm she was leaving now seemed to put him a bit more at ease.

“Plus, I need to do my best to find my way back.”

“But…”

“Thank you for helping me, Nellie. But I can’t abuse of your kindness any longer. Oh, and of course I’ll leave you the sweets! I hope they’ll be good.”

All while talking, Rena took her satchel. She gave a tight hug to Nellie, smiled at Mell who just stayed quiet, then headed towards the door.

“Bye!”

The last thing she saw before closing the door was Nellie waving her hand sluggishly at her. Once outside, Rena sighed. The sky was orange, and it wouldn’t be long before the night fell. The smartest thing to do would be to try to find a place where she could sleep. She actually came around a small abandoned ranch earlier in the woods, so if she finds nothing else that would be her last resort, but it was a few hours away from here and far from being ideal.

But apparently today Rena didn’t feel like being smart. Instead, she thought about Nellie’s sad face, about the shady story of saints and blood she had just heard, and about the growing, insatiable curiosity that was starting to form inside her. And so, after a few moments of hesitation… she decided to hide in a bush next to the cabin, and wait here.

As Mell had said, it was about half an hour later when he finally went out. She looked at him say good bye to his sister, and when Nellie went back inside the cabin, he finally started to walk off.

Rena hesitated. She had a bad feeling. She knew she shouldn’t meddle. But her curiosity was stronger than any common sense she might have right now.

So, she tightened her grip on her satchel inside which resided her cleaver, and as discreet as a cat, she started following Mell.

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The house started to get into sight a few minutes later. It was a huge, intimidating building — and just like Nellie had told her earlier, this looked more like a mansion than a church. Mell stopped for a few seconds in front of the door, manifestly hesitating to go inside. He sighed, shook his head, then pushed the door and disappeared behind it. Rena waited a few seconds, then followed him.

The interior made her stop and gasp. She had arrived inside a giant room, with two rows of benches and a big, beautiful stained-glass at the end of it. Was that what the natives called an angel? She heard about this, too, but the one on the stained-glass looked so beautiful and dignified. The entire place seemed magical, and she couldn’t help but stop to admire it. She had already visited a ‘church’ once since she arrived in this country, but it was far from being as grand and pretty as this one. It’s only after some time gawking at the architecture that she heard the sound of a door opening, which brought her back to reality and reminded her of her original goal for coming here. Obviously, the boy hadn’t waited for her, and so she hurried to run in the direction of the noise. She arrived just in time to see Mell’s flaxen hair, then instantly hid behind the wall and froze in place when she heard a grave, severe voice roars.

“You’re late.”

“I-I’m sorry… I had to get back home because—”

“I don’t give a damn about your reason. Next time you are late, I’ll order the dog here to cut off your head.”

With all the precaution she could muster, Rena leaned very slightly from behind the wall and took a glance of what was going on. Mell was there in front of another closed door, looking like a lamb that had just been cornered by a pack of wolves, and she distinguished two adult men with him. Both of them had peculiar appearances that made them stand out from the majority of the people of this country, and Rena wondered if maybe they were foreigners — the first one because of his dark skin, and the second one because of his unusual features. She also was quick to notice the threatening long sword hanging at his belt. Was that man from the Far East like her? Maybe in other circumstances she would’ve felt a sense of kinship with him, but right now she could only feel suspicion and confusion.

“Then let’s go now, we’re not going to spend the night here,” the man with the wavy hair ordered, while the other one silently stood behind him like a shadow.

All three of them then took out a key from under their clothes and inserted it in the heavy lock that hanged in the middle of the door. After a loud click resonated, the man with the most expansive-looking outfit removed the lock, opened the door and started to climb the stairs, swiftly followed by the other two.

Rena frowned, and hesitated once again. She felt that keeping on trailing them would be making a mistake, and she still had time to go back. She could just leave the mansion right now, and forget about everything. She knew it was the most logical, safest course of actions. But for some reason, her body refused to listen. With uncertain and quiet steps, she opened the door which they thankfully had not locked behind them, and started climbing the stairs.

The circular area seemed infinite, as if this tower leaded directly to heaven. Each of her steps resounded abundantly inside the staircase, no matter how quiet she tried to be, which made her feel anxious Mell or anyone would spot her presence at any seconds. Yet, she managed to reach the top without anyone stopping her, to her surprise.

“Hurry up and go feed her,” was the first thing she heard upon arriving.

“Y-Yes,” Mell squeaked, before quickly hobbling towards the door.

His hands were shaking and he struggled a bit to open the door, which only served to aggravate the annoyance of the disgruntled wavy-haired man. When finally the door opened, Mell reached to take a tray on the ground, then penetrated inside. At this moment, Rena tried her best to get a glance of what was in there without getting noticed. At first, she couldn’t see anything — then she caught sight of a chain on the soil… and she gasped.

At the very bottom of the small room, shackled and curled up on herself, was a girl. Rena couldn’t really tell much from how far she was, but she seemed young, clothed in a dark robe and with long, braided red hair. Her head was bent and hidden in her knees, dissimulating her face. The most noticeable thing was the way her right sleeve was sloppily hanging to her side, completely empty, indicating her missing arm. Rena’s brain shut down, as she felt unable to comprehend the situation that was happening in front of her eyes.

What? What? Why is there a girl chained up at the top of this tower? Why are those three men bringing her food? What on earth is going on here?

Mell approached the girl with shaking steps, and kneeled in front of her.

“It’s… uh, it’s time to eat,” he muttered weakly.

The girl didn’t react. In fact, she didn’t even seem to calculate his presence at all. Mell sighed.

“Come on… You almost didn’t eat anything yesterday either…”

He took a piece of bread and handed it to the girl. As she seemed decided to ignore his very presence, the boy awkwardly tried to push the bread on her mouth, which finally managed to get a reaction out of her. She raised her head and turned it towards him, before glaring at him. Her eyes were so full of hatred that it made even Rena want to step back, but it wasn’t the thing that was the most surprising. The girl’s face… was covered in some weird scars. It looked as if her whole face had been burned, the only exception being her pale golden eyes. Rena felt unable to stop staring at her, as if hypnotized.

Hao… She’s… She’s so kyute! I wanna take her home!

“If she really insist for not eating, then leave her be,” the wavy-haired man said, getting Rena out of her daydream.

“B-But…”

“If she doesn’t eat, she’ll die though,” the swordsman replied, but there was no hint of sympathy in his voice.

“She’ll eat tomorrow. For now, we need to take care of the blood.”

Rena didn’t understand what he meant by that, but judging by Mell’s livid face, it wasn’t anything good.

“I… I can’t—”

“Hmph. You have a lot of demands for someone in your position. But be reassured, I had no intention of asking you to do such a task.”

Instead, he looked at the other man, and made a sharp chin movement.

“As you wish, lord.”

And with this, the swordsman entered the room, while Mell hurried to get up and go away. Just like the boy earlier, he kneeled down next to the girl — but it was not to give her food. Instead, he took out a knife in one hand, and a bowl in the other. Seeing this, the girl had this time an extremely intense reaction. She shrieked and tried to get away as much as she could from the man, almost crushing her body against the wall.

“No! No! Go away!” She screamed, almost hysterically. “S-Stay away from me!”

But the yells didn’t seem to faze the man one bit. He continued to approach her and firmly grabbed her shoulders. The girl started to struggle and scream and scratches at him like an insect caught in a spider’s web. Despite this, the swordsman had no problem immobilizing her, as if he was made of stone, and then plunged the knife in her arm. As red, shiny blood started to flow, he quickly put the bowl under her wound and simply waited. The girl kept on screaming and twitching, but no one reacted to her cries. The swordsman simply drained her blood in silence, the wavy-haired man looked at the scenery with arms crossed and a frown, and the boy seemed to want to run away from the place and forget about all of this. But none of expressed any guilt or sympathy for the girl that was being tortured under their eyes.

Rena also watched in silence, her whole body frozen by the surreal experience that was happening in front of her. Her eyes just couldn’t register what was going on. Or rather, she could understand, but her mind had way too many questions about it. Why were they doing this? Who was that girl? Who were the other men? But the questions felt minimal compared to the screams that were lacerating her ears. Her first reflex was to come in and put a stop to this, but she was well aware that it would be suicidal. Mell probably wouldn’t be too much of a trouble, but the other two were well-built adult men, one of them holding a sword at his waist. No way a lone young girl like her could just overthrow the three of them all at once… not like this, and not right now, at least.

As she was still lost in thoughts, she suddenly felt a gaze pressed on her and her blood froze in her veins. Slowly, she turned her head, and her eyes suddenly crossed the ones of the wavy-haired man. Her body reacted by reflex, and she instantly turned around and ran down the stairs as quickly as she could. Once she reached the chapel, she hurried to join a corridor and hid in the first room she saw. She stayed there in the dark a few minutes, to calm herself down. Then, she slowly opened the door, and glanced outside.

Nothing. There was nothing. No voice, no footsteps, no sounds. That was… odd. She was sure that for a brief instant, that man had seen her. That their gazes had crossed. Rena remembered how the swordsman had called him ‘lord,’ and it indeed had seemed that he was the mastermind behind this whole mess. If this man had noticed a stranger spying on them, surely he would have instantly ordered someone to go take care of her. She couldn’t believe that them draining the blood of a girl was public knowledge, so it certainly must’ve been a secret they didn’t want anyone to know. So why…? Did she just imagine him staring at her, after all?

Voices and footsteps reverberated from the chapel, and she instantly tensed up again. She tried to hear what was being said, but she was too far away to manage to grasp anything. After a while, the silence returned, so she glanced once again from behind the door. Upon looking at the end of the corridor, she noticed someone walking. The place was dark, but the fluffy blonde hair that shined in the obscurity made no doubt that it must’ve been Mell. She saw him stop in front of a door and enter a room. Rena returned inside the chamber she had taken shelter in, and collapsed on the bed.

She had two options. She could just sneak out of the mansion in silence, forget everything she had just saw, and move on with her life. Or… Or what? Infiltrating herself in the tower and save that girl she knew nothing about? That sounded like some silly fairy tale. To begin with, the door was locked. She had seen earlier the men use three keys to open the lock, which each had one. That meant she would need to steal their keys to open the door, gets the girl, and ran away with her, all of that without getting caught. That sounded… pretty much impossible.

She knew what the logical decision should be. This whole thing was none of her business. She knew nothing about this girl, about these men, about this entire affair. For all she knew, maybe they were even doing a good thing! Putting her nose into this would only mean trouble for her; and she was a lone foreigner who barely knew anything about the country. But…

But when she started to think that way, the girl’s screams resonated inside her head. The oppressive atmosphere of the room, the heavy scent of blood. Nellie’s sad face… Did Nellie even know about this? No, probably not. Rena might barely know her, but she couldn’t imagine that girl would agree to keep silent about such an inhuman thing. Once again, those scars-covered face and shining golden eyes flashed into her mind. Rena sighed, and smiled very briefly against the pillow.

“I can never abandon a kyute thing, after all.”

She stood up, grabbed her cleaver with her two hands, then got out of the room.

________________________________________________________________

With all the delicacy of a feline, Rena approached the door behind which she had seen Mell disappears. Nellie had told her that her brother didn’t sleep in the cabin with her, so she guessed it must’ve been his room in them mansion. The lights were turned off. Best case scenario, he would be asleep. Otherwise, well… She tightened her grip on her cleaver, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The room was dark, but thanks to the light from the corridor she had no troubles to distinguish the bed, nor the boy who suddenly sat up on the mattress. So, he was not asleep. Well, it wasn’t a big deal. Unlike the other two, the boy looked quite spineless, so she shouldn’t struggle too much with him.

“Y-You…!” He exclaimed, recognizing the strange orange-haired foreigner. “Wh-What are you—”

But Rena didn’t let him the time to make any more noise. She didn’t want him to alert the other two right now, if they were still around. So she instantly brandished her cleaver and put it just under Mell’s neck. As soon as he saw the blade, the boy paled and stared at it with wide eyes.

“Keep quiet, and you’ll keep your head,” Rena ordered in a firm voice.

It took a few seconds for Mell to regain his spirits, and when he did, he raised his eyes towards Rena and glared at her.

Oh? Then maybe he’s not as spineless as I thought… Unless he underestimates me?

Well, it didn’t matter what he thought of her. She still objectively had the upper hand here.

“I knew it, you’re trouble after all,” he said, but he was pretty bad at hiding the tremor in his voice. “What did you do to Nellie?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t play innocent! You couldn’t have gotten close to her by coincidence!”

“It was absolutely by coincidence,” she replied genuinely. “And it’s also completely by coincidence I found you three draining this girl’s blood at the top of the tower. What would you little sister thinks of that, I wonder…?”

“You… You don’t intend to tell Nellie—”

“I saw you enter the tower by using three keys. I want the one you have.”

Rena’s tone didn’t vacillate in the slightest and her voice was as threatening as she could, but Mell was completely bewildered. He looked at her as if she had just told him she was a ghost or something.

“You… want to go save her…? Th-That’s impossible!”

“I don’t care what you think. Give me the key.”

“You don’t understand! You can’t open the door without the two other keys that the lord and the swordsman have! M-Maybe you can get the key from me, but those other two, they definitely won’t let you do! They’ll kill you without hesitation, and me too—”

“The. Key.”

She took a step further, putting more pressure on the cleaver’s blade. Mell gasped.

“You… You wouldn’t do that… I did nothing wrong, I’m innocent…”

Rena snorted. “I don’t care. I’m not afraid of killing.”

All while speaking, she gently slashed the blade against the white neck of the boy, and a thin trail of blood trickled on his skin. He shrieked, then instantly reached in one of his cloth’s pocket, before taking out a pretty, golden key.

“I-It’s there! It’s there…”

“Thanks!”

Rena smiled at Mell, her threatening aura instantly vanishing while the boy still stared at her with an astonished face.

“Y-You’re still making a mistake,” he added shakily. “You don’t stand a chance against—”

But he didn’t had the time to finish his sentence that Rena swinged her cleaver and hit him on the head. It was only with the back of the blade, so there was no way it was a fatal hit, just hard enough to knock him out. She still checked just to be sure, and while his forehead was bleeding a bit, he would survive.

“Sorry, I just don’t want to take the risk of you getting in my way…”

All while talking she took the key and put it in her satchel. She’d probably usually think it is a kyute thing she could bring back home, but she wasn’t in the mood for that. After she saves the girl, maybe.

Before stepping out of the room, she glanced one last time at the boy. She didn’t have strong feelings towards him, but she still hoped he’d be able to get out of here alive, if just for Nellie’s sake.

“‘I’m innocent,’ huh…”

She chuckled, then got out and closed the door behind her.

No matter how pitiful Mell’s claims had been, he had actually been right about one thing: it would be a lot harder to obtain the keys from the two other men than from the boy. She had guessed just upon seeing them that threatening their lives wouldn’t be enough — and her instinct was telling her that the swordsman was a lot more skilled as a fighter than she was. She would need to think about a plan to get them, then. The question was what plan. Hopefully they still mustn’t be very far from the house yet, maybe were they even still inside, so she shouldn’t have troubles finding them. She tried to think about the possibility of other people being here too — the ‘Saintess’ came to her mind, but from what she had understood she lived with Nellie so she probably wouldn’t be here this late at night. Unless she was also involved, which made things more complicated. She also remembered the third man was supposedly a ‘lord,’ so shouldn’t he have some guards posted around? But she couldn’t recall seeing any on her way here…

Once again, she really wished her friends were with her right now. Together, they would certainly have come up with a good plan in just a few minutes… But, no, maybe that was too naïve of her. She shouldn’t rely like that on people. She was all alone now, and even if she wasn’t, it was more certain to take of serious matter by yourself. Not even ‘friends’ were always reliable and trustworthy allies, and they could just as much become betrayers who stab you in the back, after all.

“Hey, you there!”

Rena froze. When she turned around, she found herself face to face with the swordsman. Apparently, fate refused to give her a chance to elaborate a plan before having a confrontation. She thought about acting innocent for a moment, but with her cleaver in her right hand, it would be difficult to swallow.

The man narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re… a foreigner, aren’t you?”

His expression told her he mustn’t have seen someone akin to him since a long time. Which wasn’t surprising; in the ten months or so since she’d arrived in this country, she didn’t think she had come cross anyone from the Far East like her.

“I am,” Rena simply answer, seeing no reason to lie here.

The swordsman contemplated her for a moment, then his gaze slid towards the cleaver in her hand.

“What were you doing here?”

Rena tried to think up something to get her out of this situation. But no matter how much she ransacked her brain, nothing came to her. So in the end, she just sighed, and smiled at the man.

“I’m here to save the kyute girl in the tower.”

The swordsman had no reaction at all to her arrogant nonchalance. He just stared at her coldly, before an odd, distorted smirk slowly stretched his lips.

“I see. Then I’m sure the lord won’t mind if I kill you in that case.”

And then, before Rena could retort anything, he drew his sword and ran up towards her. Rena’s body reacted instinctively, and when he raised his weapon to cut her she instantly managed to parry it with her cleaver. The two blades clashed in a metallic ringing, but she didn’t have the time to catch her breath that the man went on with his next attack. He assaulted her with a strong rain of hits, one after another, so swift and sharp that the girl could barely see them at all. She greeted her teeth and glared at him, but the man didn’t seem unsettled in the least.

Rena gave the sword a hit more forceful than previously, and managed to get away momentarily before starting running in the mansion’s corridors. The man instantly chased her down, of course.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” He shouted at her from behind. “Are you really running away after talking so big? Let me hear you beg for your life and maybe I’ll consider letting you live!”

Rena stayed quiet, not falling for the preposterous provocations. She wasn’t trying to escape, just to buy some time. She knew that man was stronger physically and more skilled than her, by a large margin. There was no way she could beat him in a face-to-face fight. So she had to find another solution, somehow.

In her dash, she inadvertently ended up finding herself in the chapel again. The stained-glass angel was shining of an ominous light thanks to the moon behind it. However, Rena didn’t have the time to admire it this time, as the swordsman quickly caught up to her, chasing her down like a beast towards his prey. Finding herself cornered, she had no other choice but to yet again fend off his sword in the middle of the bench rows. Right under the angel’s impassive gaze, they kept on exchanging hits after hits.

The girl was defending herself quite well, but there was no doubt as to who had the advantage in this fight. In fact, Rena was pretty sure the man was holding himself back against her, maybe just for his own amusement. She groaned, trying to find the slightest opening she could use… but in her impatience, she let her guard down, which the swordsman didn’t hesitate to profit off. He swung down his sword, and the blade mercilessly cut through the girl’s shoulder. She screamed in pain, then lost her balance and fell down on the ground, letting go of her cleaver at the same time.

Despite the vivid pain and the blood already soaking her clothes, she still had the reflex to rush towards her weapon, but at the last moment the man crushed her hand with his heel. She moaned then threw a glare at him. The only change in his expression was now the clear sick pleasure he had to have the girl at his mercy.

“You run quickly and you do know how to use that weapon, I will give you that,” he said, his voice vibrating with sadism, and Rena was pretty sure it was the first emotion she had felt coming from him since earlier. “But it stops here now.”

She said nothing; not letting an ounce of fear transpiring through her blue eyes, not a single hesitation shaking her body. Just anger. The man narrowed his eyes at her curiously; maybe was it because he had expected her to beg and cry for her life. But Rena would never give him the satisfaction.

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t play much more with you sadly, otherwise I could in troubles. Well then—”

He raised his sword, his eyes shining like a predator’s, while the girl was still lying on the ground, bleeding and gasping painfully. And then he struck it down—

“Wait.”

—but stopped at the last moment. Both he and Rena turned around in surprise, to see the shadow of a man drawing near them — the last one of the three, of course.

“Lord…”

The swordsman seemed almost irritated to have the other man barge in, but he still managed to stay courteous enough. The ‘lord’ didn’t seem to notice or maybe care about it though, he just stared down at the teenage girl on the floor.

“Who is she?” He finally asked. “What is going on here?”

“She is an intruder who knows about the witch,” the swordsman replied, his monotonous, indifferent face back in place.

The witch…? Rena repeated in her head, but didn’t have time to ponder much more about it.

“She knows?”

“She told me she was here to save her. This is why I decided to take care of the problem before it could reach you.”

“And since when a dog acts without his master’s orders? The least you could have done is consulting me about it before making that decision.”

“You’re right… I apologize, lord.”

The swordsman politely inclined himself in front of the lord as a sign of excuse, as Rena watched the scene in silence. The wavy-haired man then eyed her with disdain, and crossed his arms.

“Well, it doesn’t matter much either way. We can’t keep her alive if she knows. So just get rid of her.”

Right at the moment he finished his sentence, Rena seized her chance. With the arrival of the lord, the swordsman had stopped paying so much attention to her, which meant it was the only opening she could have. As quickly as she could, she grabbed her cleaver, got back on her feet and almost jumped on the lord. Before the two men even had the time to react, she was already tightly holding the lord’s arms and had her cleaver’s blade under his neck.

“Don’t move!” She yelled, as the swordsman was reaching for his own weapon. “Don’t move or I cut off his head!”

As if to show she was not kidding, she pressed the blade against the skin of the lord even more. The swordsman frowned. He didn’t try to reach for his sword anymore, but he didn’t seem particularly distraught either.

“Do you think I care even slightly about what might happen to this man?” He asked.

Rena smiled. “Probably not,” she admitted. “But he is your boss, isn’t he? You must be working under him because only he can offer you something. So his death would be pretty inconvenient to you. Am I wrong?”

She certainly wasn’t, because a slight annoyed scowl formed on the swordsman’s face.

“I want you to put your sword on the ground, and make it slide towards me,” Rena ordered. “Or else…”

“Don’t listen to her,” the lord finally spoke. “I doubt a girl like her actually could kill anyone. She’s just playing tough.”

However, the swordsman seemed less certain than his employer. He eyed the girl suspiciously, deliberating her order while staring at her in the eyes. Rena sustained it with determination.

“I don’t want to offend you, lord,” he finally said. “But I think I disagree on that one.”

And then, just as he had been told, he put the weapon on the ground and slides it towards Rena, while the lord sighed heavily. She quickly retrieved it, then threw it as far away as she could without letting go of her hostage.

“Now I want you to come towards us.”

They were about three meters away from each others. The swordsman looked at her once again, then stepped forward. Two meters. One meter. And before he could get even closer, Rena suddenly slashed the lord at the waist, and then with a slick movement of the wrist, she cut the swordsman’s throat with great precision.

Blood splattered. She heard the lord groan in pain and fell on his knees, while the swordsman put both of his hands on his neck in an instinctive attempt to block out the blood. But it was fairly vain, as only a few seconds after he collapsed on the ground. Before it, he glared at the girl, an inhuman shine lurking in his eyes, and she thought his lips parted to say something, but she couldn’t tell what.

She looked at his agonizing body drenched in blood on the floor with an emotionless gaze, then she turned around towards the last man, her cleaver still in hand. He was still on his knees, breathing heavily and holding his wound. Rena stared at him in silence for a long time, before finally speaking out.

“You saw me earlier, didn’t you?”

The man only lifted his head towards her.

“When I was in the tower. You clearly looked at me in the eyes.”

“That… must’ve been your imagination…”

“No, I know you did. You saw me. And yet, you said nothing. It would’ve been easy to chase me down and kill me at that moment. In fact…”

She took a step forward, her gaze not letting go of his.

“It would’ve been easier to just let him kill me earlier too, instead of stopping him. Or to try to disarm me when I was holding you. Even with my cleaver at your neck, you’re still stronger than me physically.”

The man sustained her stare, but he said nothing back.

“Could it be… that you did that on purpose?”

His expression didn’t change at her accusation, as if his face had reverted to a mask of stone. But no matter behind which kind of layers and facets he would hide, Rena was still exceptionally good at reading other people.

“Did you want me to do this? To get the keys and free that girl?”

Finally, a haughty grin formed on the man’s lips.

“Hmph. Don’t be ridiculous. I am the lord. There’s no way on earth I’d ever want to do something as ludicrous as this.”

Rena kept on staring at the lord in silence, her eyes as cold as ice. She knew he was lying. But she also wasn’t exactly interested in getting him to say the truth. Her only goal was to free that girl. The rest didn’t matter.

“Well, I suppose so. Either way, it is none of my business.”

And so, she raised her cleaver once again, and gave the man one final blow. He didn’t try to protest or resist, and just collapsed on the ground like his subordinate. Rena then quickly kneeled besides the two bodies, searching them, and finally retrieved the two last keys, as well as another one which she guessed was for the chains.

The young girl was standing here in the chapel in front of the angel, her white dress all drenched in red, with two barely-alive bodies at her feet.

If she were from this country, she would probably find this to be quite the profane picture.

But she wasn’t, and there was only one thing she was interested in.

________________________________________________________________

She took out the three keys one by one, and slowly inserted them. Her hands were greasy because of the blood — both her own and others’ — but she still delicately handled them. The lock opened right away, she barely had to force at all, and then she pushed the door.

Climbing the circular stairs almost felt ceremonious, and the steps seemed a lot longer than the first time she had came here, as if they had suddenly grown infinite during the instant she was dealing with the three men. It took a few minutes for her to reach the top, and when she did she stopped in front of the closed door. As if nervous, she grabbed her satchel in which she had put away her bloody weapon. Her cleaver wasn’t the only thing covered in blood — her dress, her hair, her entire body were completely dark scarlet, and even if she had managed to stop the bleeding, her wound was still hurting quite a bit. She looked as if she had just been out of a war battlefield. She definitely was far from looking like a brave knight rescuing the princess.

But well, she wasn’t a knight, and that girl wasn’t a princess.

With hesitation, she grabbed the handle and stopped. For some reason, she felt… anxious. Why, she had no idea. She had done all of this just to save this stranger, and now that she was so close to her goal, it felt wrong, somehow. She knew she had to hurry before anyone notice something was off inside that mansion, but her feet refused to move. She didn’t even know how she should greet that girl or what to tell her. What if freeing her was a mistake, after all? What if the best choice was to just run away right now?

Rena shook her head, then breathed in forcefully. That wasn’t the time to hesitate. She couldn’t go back now. So she opened the door.

The dim luminosity hurt her eyes, and it took a few seconds for her to adapt to it. Once she did, the familiar, pitiful scenery she had seen earlier appeared yet again before her, in the exact same state, as if nothing that had just happened had been real. The girl was still there, chained, slumped against the wall. Her eyes were closed. Was she asleep? She seemed to be barely alive, to be honest. She looked more… like a corpse.

Wouldn’t that be funny if Rena had done all of that just for the girl to die at the least moment? But she pushed that thought away and took a step further. At this moment, and to her relief, the girl twitched. She suddenly opened her golden eyes and stared straight through her, making Rena almost jump out of surprise. But with the shook cooling off, she was just glad the girl was definitely still alive.

“Hi,” she said in a friendly tone, smiling gently. “I’m Rena.”

The girl replied nothing. She just kept staring at her vacantly, as if she wasn’t really seeing her.

“Ah, d-don’t worry! I’m not here to hurt you, or— or anything like that,” Rena added hurriedly, waving her hands in front of her. “I’m here to save you!”

But her reassuring words seemed to do nothing for the captive. Rena quickly started to grow uncomfortable, and she tilted her head.

“Can you… hear me? Can you?”

No answer. Rena sighed. Well, she seemed to be really out of it. It probably shouldn’t be surprising given what she’s been through until now. Rena didn’t know since when she had been detained here, but she guessed it must’ve been quite some time. Well, it didn’t matter much if she could speak or understand her or not. She just needed to get her out of here as soon as possible. First, she needed to—

“—el…”

Rena suddenly stopped when a hoarse, barely audible voice resounded inside the dark tower. It took some time for her brain to understand that it was coming from the girl.

“—gel…”

“Huh?”

Her murmurs didn’t even sounds like words, more like some background noises that struggled to get out of her mouth. Rena slowly approached the girl, and kneeled in front of her, putting herself down to her height and staring at her in the eyes. But the girl acted as if she didn’t even see her.

“—angel…”

“Angel…?”

“Are you… angel…?”

Rena blinked with surprise when she realized the question. She wasn’t sure if this was addressed to her exactly. Maybe it was addressed to no one. Even so, she slowly took her hand in hers — a tattered, dirty, covered in scratches small hand.

“I’m sorry… I’m not an angel. I’m just some foreign girl who got lost and wandered around here by mistake.”

The girl became silent again, her golden eyes empty.

“But I’m still going to save you.”

And with that, she searched for the keys she had retrieved on the lord’s body, and freed the girl from the chains. As she expected, this got no reaction out of her, so she then grabbed the only remaining arm, and then, after struggling for a bit, she managed to hoist her on her back. It wasn’t easy to carry another girl of the same age while wounded, even if she was extremely light, but Rena could handle it. She had no other choice.

With fumbling steps, she hurriedly get down the steps, walked through the chapel without doing so much as glancing at the men’s bodies spread there, and finally got out of the mansion, not even the stained-glass angel daring to stop her.

________________________________________________________________

She was bleeding.

Red liquid poured out from her wounds, trickling on her bare skin, sullying her body and the ground. It seemed as if the flow was endless. She felt no pain, though — the throbbing and aching had left her a long time ago, and in its stead there was only numbness and emptiness. Her vision was a blur, her mind a haze. She could only perceive shadows moving in front of her, vague laughing and chuckles, joyful voices rejoicing in her torment, like demons dancing in front of her. If someone had told her she was in Hell, she would have believed them.

But she wasn’t in Hell — this was earth, and those were humans, and maybe this was the most disgusting of truth to face for her. The chains around her wrists bounded her to the altar, preventing any escapes she could have.

Suddenly, the shadows stopped moving, and her surrounding began to scramble. Before her mind could understand what was going on, vivid pain reached her arm, lacerating and pitiless. All sorts of landscapes scrolled in front of her eyes — a carriage full of bloody corpses, a cottage in front of a lake, a mansion, a tower.

And finally, the figure of the lord, always standing in her way.

Despair, agony, betrayal, anguish all agglutinated inside her heart at the same time — but the most powerful of all, the one that overwhelmed everything else—

—was hatred.

She rose up, clutching sorely at the sheets as her eyes darted right and left around her. She felt like she was lost inside a fog, the walls around her waltzing and shrieking as if they had a will of their own. As she painfully tried to regain possession of her broken five senses, yet another shadow took shape to her side, producing sounds.

“—ke… —p…”

But she didn’t even try to decipher what it was saying. There was only one and unique shadow that appeared both in her dreams and reality, after all. The lord.

So she pushed him with all of her forces, making him fall on the ground, and then, desperately groping blindly around her, she was able to feel the cold touch of a blade brush her fingers. Without waiting, she grabbed the handle of what looked like a cleaver and jumped on the silhouette before it could move again. She wasn’t strong enough to actually stand up, but she could still hold a weapon. Or stab someone with it.

“Die!”

That was the first word that escaped her mouth. The most precious wish she had cherished during all these months, the only thing that had kept her alive all this time — her voracious hatred.

“Die! Die…! I’ll— make you pay…! You… You—!”

The lord she was straddling caught the blade with his bare hand, unbothered by the blood that soon trickled down his hand. She tried to get back the cleaver, but his grip was too strong.

“Let… go! I will— I’ll kill you!”

“Given how weak you are, I doubt you’ll be able to even kill a fly like this.”

The voice made her stop instantly. Because this… this wasn’t the lord’s voice.

That person didn’t sound like the cruel man who had haunted her nightmares since she was a child… but like a young girl she didn’t know. No, that wasn’t true, she had heard that voice before—

“—I’m still going to save you.”

She felt completely lost, and the shadow took the occasion to push her away and get back the cleaver. She collapsed on the ground, and all of a sudden it was as if she was a puppet whose strings had been cut off. She had no strength anymore, and just lay there on the floor, her whole body hot and aching. She heard a few slow steps coming towards her, and soon a face came into her view.

Blue eyes like the sky, and orange hair like the sunset. A sweet smile.

“I’m glad you’re awake! Please wait here, I’ll bring you back something to drink.”

________________________________________________________________

The girl came back in the room a few minutes afterwards with water and bread, and helped Morgana get back into the bed. Well, it wasn’t actually a bed, more like something that looked like an old mattress with some blankets thrown on it. As the other sat next to her, she took the glass of water and stared at it absentmindedly.

“I promise it’s not poisoned,” the girl said in a joyful voice. “It’s just water.”

There was a part of Morgana that felt silly of being suspicious of a simple glass of water… but then she remembered that given she had no idea where she even was, it was only natural. So she still didn’t try to drink it.

“I’m really relieved you woke up and seem well! You slept for almost two days, you know? So I was worried. So, um, well, anyway, I already introduced myself before but you probably don’t remember so… I’m Rena! Hey, what is your na—”

“What happened?”

“Wh-What? What? About what…?”

Morgana let out a big sigh and looked away. She could already tell that girl was going to be hard to deal with.

“About everything.”

“Oh… um, um…”

The girl, Rena, fidgeted with a flustered face, as if she was about to tell a very embarrassing story. After a while, she finally managed a small friendly smile.

“Well, it’s a bit, uh, messy, but I’m a foreigner who got lost, and I found out this church by coincidence. I saw you and those… men in the tower, and so… so… I thought I should do something, you know? You know?”

Morgana stared blankly at her, somehow expecting more. But there was nothing else.

“You make absolutely no sense,” she finally declared. “Why would you randomly decide to help out a complete stranger at the risk of your own life?”

“I-I know it’s not very logical! But, well, I just…” Rena closed her mouth. Looked down. “I just couldn’t do nothing.”

“Yes, you could have. That wouldn’t have been very difficult.”

“Are… Are you actually angry at me for saving you…? Are you?”

“So how did you do it? How did you manage to get past the lock and get me out of the tower? I can’t believe these men cooperated willingly.”

“Oh, that. Well, I just cut them with my cleaver, retrieved the keys and got out of here with you as soon as I could.”

She said all of this with a wide smile, as if it was no big deal at all. Morgana stared at her, expecting her to tell her she was kidding, but nothing came afterwards.

“And?”

“Th-That’s all…?”

“That can’t be all. There’s no way a single girl could overpower three men with just a cleaver.”

“Well, it wasn’t easy, it’s true, but it’s possible. As proof, you wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Morgana felt the urges to yell at her, but managed to stay calm. She didn’t believe her, but she had the sensation that even if she kept asking questions she wouldn’t get another answer. So she breathed in deeply, and tried to gain the most knowledge possible.

“Where are we?”

“Oh… um, I’m not really sure to be honest. I think it must’ve been an old ranch to keep cattle or something, but it seems to have been abandoned for a while. It’s in the middle of the forest, about an hour away from the city. It’s not ideal to hide in, but for now we’ll have to content ourselves with that.”

“What happened to them?”

“The men? Oh… I just knocked out the flaxen-haired boy, so he should be fine, but I dunno what must’ve happened to him afterwards. As for the other two…”

Rena grimaced and looked away. She seemed hesitant to continue speaking, so Morgana had to push her.

“Are they dead?”

“I, uh, I’m not sure? I cut them pretty badly and they were bleeding a lot when I left, but I didn’t actually, um, checked if they were still alive or not…”

“So there’s a chance they’re still alive?”

“Yes… I think.”

“I see… Good.”

“Are you… relieved they’re possibly still alive?”

Morgana snorted at this, which quickly morphed into full on chuckles.

“I suppose you could say that,” she finally blurted out. “Yes… these men, they can’t just die like that… Not after what they did to me…”

She clutched the blanket and her long hair fell in front of her face, darkening her usually pales eyes.

“Dying would be a way too easy fate for them… They need to suffer… Suffer just as much— no, even more than me…”

A fate worse than death. A fate worse than being locked up in a tower and having their blood drained.

A curse — she wanted— needed to inflict a curse upon them, watch their lives slowly get torn apart, one by one—

“Do you intend to take revenge on them?”

Morgana turned her head towards Rena at the sound of her question, and their eyes met. The orange-haired girl was staring at her without saying anything, her face unreadable. She didn’t appear disturbed by Morgana’s grudgeful words in the least, and her question had a surprising innocuous tone to it, as if she had just asked her what was her favorite food.

“Aren’t you… scared of me?”

“Huh? Why?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Because of… my scars.”

“Oh, those!” Rena chuckled. “Not at all! In fact, I think they are really kyute! That was why I wanted to take you home, you know?”

Morgana felt as if she had just been hit with a rock. ‘Cute’…? Did she just call her scars ‘cute’? Was that girl completely insane? Maybe it should’ve made her feel happy, to hear someone call her hideous face ‘cute’ for the first time, but it actually ended up have the opposite effect.

Instead, she felt angry. Like that girl was mocking her. Mocking her suffering, her struggles, and entire life.

She tensed up and grinded her teeth.

“What are you going to do with me now?”

Rena blinked ingenuously and tilted her head. “What?”

“I’m not an idiot. If you saved me, it must’ve been because of personal interest. So what do you want of me?”

“Wh-What? No! Did you think I was lying earlier?”

“Of course. Who would believe such an inane story? I’m betting you must’ve heard about my blood and came here to profit off it.”

Rena frowned, and she seemed to think for a while before replying:

“Your blood… I saw the men drain it from you in the tower. It’s what the church is giving out as medicine, isn’t it? I heard it was called ‘Saint’s Blood,’ but… it’s actual, real blood. Yours.”

Morgana narrowed her eyes, but stayed quiet.

“Did these men kidnap you? I mean, I can’t believe you would’ve ended up in this tower willingly…”

“This is none of your business.”

“I wasn’t lying earlier. I told you the truth, I promise. So the least you could do is told me your story as well, right?”

“Please. Do you honestly want me to believe you just randomly decided to save me, out of the kindness of your heart? What a generous person you are.”

“Is that something that sounds really so impossible to you? That people just do kind things sometimes?”

Of course that was impossible to her. Everyone in her life had only thought of her as a tool and acted kind as a way to profit off her, even her own mother.

And the only people who hadn’t… well, they were dead now. She had absolutely zero reasons to trust this suspicious foreign girl. For all she knew, she wasn’t even the one who had saved her.

And then, suddenly, Rena started to giggle, which made Morgana even tenser.

“You know what? You’re not wrong, actually. I didn’t save you just out of kindness. I’m not a kind person at all, really.”

Her voice sounded a little off, and Morgana felt a chill goes up her chine. Rena stared at her, but there was an odd shine in her blue eyes, something unwell.

“I just thought you looked kyute and wanted to take you home. So I did. That’s all.”

“What… What are you…?”

“But for now, I don’t intend to do anything with you.”

She suddenly stood up, her smile not leaving her face. “After all, you can barely get out of the bed yet, right? I am also wounded, to tell you the truth, so for now we’ll have to stay here for at least a few days. We won’t be able to stay too long, though, because I can’t believe people won’t do anything after what happened to their lord, so afterwards it’d be safer to just leave the region…”

Morgana couldn’t bring herself to say anything as that girl seemed to plan her next few weeks all by herself. She definitely felt irritated and wanted to shut her up and tell to stop taking all these decisions by herself… but the fact was that, she wasn’t wrong.

Morgana could barely walk, she had one arm missing and had lost a huge quantity of blood during the past few months. There was no way she could just go off on her own.

As if she was reading her thoughts, the girl smiled again and told her in a light voice:

“So in any case, it seems we’re stuck together for now, that you like it or not.”

And then she left the room and closed the door behind her, leaving Morgana all alone in the dim room.

________________________________________________________________

It took Morgana at least three days before starting to feel like she was regaining some strength. She still almost couldn’t get out of bed though, so she was spending most of her time in the arranged room, in that bed that wasn’t one, staring at the ceiling and counting the spider webs while she was lost in thought.

Her thoughts, of course, usually came back to what had happened to her. A lot of her memories felt fuzzy, and trying to think too much about it would give her a headache, but she still had managed to retrace the events she had been through in the last few months. Her encounter with the flaxen-haired boy. His betrayal. The beast cutting off her arm and kidnapping her. And finally, discovering it was the lord, out of everyone, that had been behind all of this, for some disgusting greedy plan of using her blood yet again.

Just recounting all of this made her hatred feel stronger than ever, but at the same time, it all felt surreal, as if she had dreamed everything up. As if it was a story she had read somewhere and not something that had actually happened to her. But her missing arm was a sore reminder that all of this was true.

She wanted revenge. That was the thing that had been on her mind all these long, insufferable days inside that tower. She wanted to kill them. Tear out their eyes. Stab their stomachs and watch them bleed to death. Just made them suffer, as much as possible, and by her own hands.

But despite how overwhelming her anger and hatred was… she still felt that slight pang of guilt at this. Not because she pitied the men, but because wishing harm upon others would just go against her very identity as a saint. Saints were martyrs. It didn’t matter how much humans could hurt them, they had no right to retaliate in any way, because they were pure and selfless.

But could she really call herself a saint, after how much she had been mutilated and tainted and mangled?

(Had she ever been a saint to begin with, though?)

“Hey! Lunch’s ready!”

Her door brusquely opened, and a smiling young girl burst into the room with a tray full of food.

“I tried to make something new today, I hope you like it! Sorry, I’m not too used to the food of this country yet, so hopefully it’s not so bad…”

The girl kept babbling happily while sitting next to Morgana, not seeming bothered in the least by her glare. She had acted like that for the past few days, as if the two of them were friends and not strangers clearly suspicious of each others.

Rena was a weird girl. She was a cheerful, friendly person, and despite how coldly Morgana treated her or how much she tried to ignore her she kept talking and taking care of her with a sweet smile on her face. From time to time, she’d have odd reactions like getting flustered about the most ridiculous of things or getting lost in thought and fawning about things that escaped common sense. She wasn’t afraid or disgusted by her scars, either. She loved cooking and pampering her and ran around the abandoned ranch energetically despite her own wound.

She had told her some vague information about her, how she came from a country in the Far East and had been here for business with her father and how they got separated, but she never gave any details about it.

In a way, Rena reminded Morgana a little of her time at the brothel, as a weird mix of the blonde woman who acted as a big sister to everyone and the exhaustingly cheerful dark-skinned girl. (But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t remember their names, or even their faces.)

And all of this, actually, made Morgana more uncomfortable than anything. She actually would’ve preferred that Rena treat her coldly rather than that, it would’ve been less tiring and unpredictable. Because she was sure these acts of kindness and friendliness would end soon enough, at any moments.

There was something… dark lurking in Rena’s shadows, in the deepness of her blue eyes, and that darkness couldn’t help but make Morgana suspicious of her whenever she’d smiles at her.

“You don’t eat?”

Rena asked her with a worried look, as she was biting into her own piece of bread.

“I’m not hungry.”

“No, that’s not good! You have to eat, otherwise you won’t get better.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get better. Maybe I just want to stay here and wither away all alone.”

Rena’s happy smile fell from her lips, and instead a frown darkened her face. This was a serious expression she would take sometimes, when Morgana acted a bit too cold towards her.

“No, you won’t,” she said, and it almost sounded like an order. “You will eat now. I didn’t prepare all of that for you to waste it, and I didn’t save your life for you die now.”

“I never asked you to prepare this, or to save my life, for that matter.”

“So you would’ve preferred to stay in that tower and die all alone there?”

Of course not, who would want that? Morgana almost spat out, but she restrained her tongue.

Certainly, she wasn’t content with her situation right now and it was more than frustrating to be at the mercy of this weird, suspicious stranger… but she knew there were still worse fates. Like being chained up on that altar under the cruel mad eyes of a lord. Or dying little by little in a tower without anyone even knowing about it.

She sighed, then after a few moments, finally grasped the fork Rena was holding out to her and piqued inside her plate. She made a point to not look at the other girl, but she could still guess her satisfied smile on her face, which pissed her off. She had the reflex to want to use her second arm, before having the painful realization she could never do so ever again. She still wasn’t used to this, and with the pain having fading away, she sometimes had the sensation to still have it.

Her life would never be like before ever again. She already knew that of course, and it wasn’t the first time she had experienced that feeling, but right now she felt even more lost and disoriented.

She had her hypothetic revenge to keep her alive, sure. But then what? What was she supposed to do after that? She couldn’t go back to being the witch of the lake selling herbs to whoever would dare to come. She just…

“Do you want me to help you eat?”

Morgana glared at Rena. “I am not a child,” she dryly replied. “Don’t treat me like one.”

“A-Ah, sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just, uh…”

Morgana angrily started eating her food while Rena fell quiet, her cheeks as red as a tomato. Their meals were generally just a handful of vegetables and bread, or sometimes potages. Which was comprehensible given they were technically in hiding, so Rena couldn’t go in town often to buy supplies. Furthermore, they had no money.

Well… I don’t have money. I actually don’t know about her… That’s right, how did she even get the flour for the bread? And the dishes?

“So, um, don’t you think it’s time for you to tell me now?”

Morgana stopped eating, and looked up at Rena strangely.

“What?”

“I want to know your name,” Rena specified gently. “And, well… I’d like you to tell me a bit more about you, too. Like, what were you doing before getting… in that tower? Don’t you have any family?”

“You don’t need to know my name.”

“But I told you mine. You can’t risk much by telling me your name, right?”

Well, she had a point. But the last person she had trust with her name had betrayed her and she found herself with one arm missing locked up in a mansion.

“I… don’t have any family,” she finally decided to say. “Before that, I lived by myself in a small cottage near a lake.”

“Oh. That sounds… lonely.”

Rena grimaced while saying this, and the idea of being pitied by that girl felt incredibly insulting for some reason.

“And then those men kidnapped you?”

“Yes… Well the beas— the swordsman did. The flaxen-haired boy lured me in so he could have my arm. It was all under the lord’s orders.”

“Hmm…”

Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to tell her all of that, but those were all things she could’ve guessed by herself anyway. More than anything, Morgana still expected her to ask her information about her blood, and then to give some to her… But apparently that wasn’t even something that crossed Rena’s mind.

“Don’t you have any friends either?”

“What? No… Why would you demand that?”

“Well, for nothing? I did have a nice group of friends back in my village, you know. We were pretty close, I think… I think.”

For some reason, her gaze became a bit vacant, as if she was doubting her own words.

“Then what happened to them?”

“Nothing… They’re still back in my village.”

And then she stayed unusually quiet. Not like Morgana was all that interested in knowing more about this girl or her so-called friends, anyway.

“So, so! You finished eating, right? Let me bring all that back, then!”

“Ah— Wait—”

Morgana tried to grab Rena to stop her, but she missed her and instead fell on the ground. She heard Rena gasp loudly and run towards her instantly.

“A-Are you okay? Are you? O-Oh, wait, I’ll help you get up, I’ll—”

“I’m okay! I’m okay…”

Morgana raised herself up with her only elbow, and grinded her teeth at how difficult it was without her other one. Rena stared at her worryingly.

“How did you fall so bad…?”

“It’s… my arm, I think…”

“Huh?”

“I’m… still not used to it, so I lost balance… It’s nothing.”

“Oh…”

Morgana instinctively brought a hand to her shoulder, where the rest of the arm should have been. It felt so off. So wrong, to have just an empty space here, and it made her stomach turn. They both sat on the ground face to face, without saying anything for a moment. It felt too awkward, for some reason. Then, suddenly, Rena broke the silence:

“You want me to bring it back to you?”

Morgana almost strangled herself.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You said the one who took it was that boy Mell, right? Then I could go ask him to give it back.”

“Y-You want to bring me back my arm?”

“Yes? That’s a bad idea?”

“D-Do you even hear yourself? That’s insane. Even if you were to get it back somehow, what would I do with it now?”

Rena put a finger on her lip, and tilted her head innocently. “Sew it back?”

“You’re completely crazy!”

Morgana shouted at her, and the process made her whole body hurts. She coughed a little, and then heard a giggle. When she raised her head, the other girl was laughing softly.

“It’s the first time I see you getting angry like that,” she simply said, smiling. “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s the first time I see you having any kind of emotion at all… Well, except for glaring at me. Does that count as an ‘emotion’? Does it…?”

Wait. Could it be… that she said all those inane things on purpose? To makes me react?

Morgana stared at Rena blankly for a moment… then she snorted.

“You are really weird,” she mumbled.

“Hmhmm, I know.”

Maybe… being at the mercy of this strange girl wasn’t the worst of fate. Maybe it was something she could actually survive, this time. She sighed, then looked up at Rena.

“I… am Morgana,” she said softly.

Rena blinked at her in astonishment, her mouth opening so wide an entire apple could fit in it.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t trust you in the slightest. But like you said, it would be pretty awkward if I was the only one knowing your name…”

A big, silly smile brightened Rena’s face. She giggled yet again and nodded happily.

“Your name ends just like mine,” was the only comment she made.

________________________________________________________________

“—ou think?”

“Huh…?”

Morgana gasped, and looked around her with agitation. Rena was in front of her, looking strangely at her.

“Morgana? A-Are you okay…?” She asked warily.

“I-I… ah…”

The first thing she saw was a blinding light. There was a soft wind brushing her skin. Her eyes stung and it took her a few long seconds to make sense of her surroundings. She was outside, in front of the ranch. The entire area was covered by enormous trees, so the place felt fairly dark, but some sunlight still managed to pierce the foliage. In a way, it gave her a sense of security, as if no one would ever be able to find them here.

Morgana was drowsy and numb, her mind a mess, as if she had just wake up from a particularly deep slumber. The sudden light made her feel a bit dizzy and she quickly sat on a rock nearby to not stumble, under Rena’s worried gaze. What was she doing here…? She remembered waking up this morning, eating lunch, and then… then nothing came to her mind, like she had just blanked out.

“Hey, what’s going on…?” Rena asked again.

“I’m… fine,” Morgana blurted out, massaging her temples. “What… uh, what are we doing here?”

Rena blinked, a clear confusing sprouting on her face. “What? What do you mean?”

“I… mean what I mean. Why are we outside?”

But her precision only seemed to worsen the situation. Rena looked at her as if she had told her the world was going to get destroyed.

“We… um, u-um, th-that’s… I mean, well, uh, you— you don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Ah, a-after lunch I proposed we go outside for a bit, and you accepted, and we were just talking about what we would do if it started raining…”

This time, it was Morgana who was confused. She stared at Rena as if expecting her to explain the situation, but manifestly the other girl didn’t understand any more than her.

“You… really forget?” Rena asked again. “Y-You were talking with me normally up until now though…”

“I… was?”

She had no recollections of such a thing, though. After lunch, she had no recollections at all. What had happened? Had she really just… blanked out? She breathed in, trying to regain her calm and reflect about this logically. Now that she was thinking about it… this wasn’t really the first time this happened. She had vague memories of experiencing something similar as a child during her time at the brothel, but she was pretty sure it had stopped after she started living at the cottage. Or, well, maybe it did happen again, but given most of the time she was alone it was hard to tell…

“Morgana…?”

But in any case, it wasn’t something she needed to tell Rena about.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing important.”

“Are you sure…?”

“Yes. Forget about it.”

Rena stared at her for a while. It was obvious she wasn’t convinced at all, but still one of her usual smile blossomed on her face and she nodded.

“All right! Well, I’m just glad you’re able to walk and go out by yourself now. I’m sure you’ll be full of energy in no time!”

“I have… never been ‘full of energy’…”

Rena laughed light-heartedly and started to spun and bounces on her legs, as if practicing some sort of weird dance. Morgana sighed. Just watching her move like that was tiring to her. But… in the last few days, she had managed to get used to it. Sort of.

“What about you?”

Rena stopped moving and looked at Morgana interrogatively.

“What?”

“You were wounded too, right? At the shoulder, if I recall.”

“Ooh! That! Haha, I’m okay, I’m okay!”

“It seemed like it was a pretty severe injury, though…”

“It did hurt quite badly, but I’ve always recovered very quickly! I’m tougher than I look, you know? You know?”

“Is that so…”

“Were you worried about me?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Rena laughed yet again, and Morgana rolled her eyes, and it seemed it had pretty much been their relationships since at least their first conversation.

“And…” Morgana started again, a bit hesitantly. “What do you intend to do now? Didn’t you want to find you way back? To search your father?”

“Hmm…” Rena crossed her arms, a pensive look on her face. “I guess so. Yeah, that’s probably what I’ll do, once you’re completely fine again.”

“You don’t seem convinced… Aren’t you worried about your father?”

“I think he’s fine… He’s a bit clumsy, but he’s still a grown up, you know.”

Even so, Morgana thought she was talking about him in a weird detached way, like he was some random neighbor or distant relative she didn’t know well.

“Aren’t you very close?”

“We are! Of course I’m worried. I’m just… I dunno. Maybe it’s just better that way, because I can’t really go back to him, or to my village…”

“Why? What about your mother?”

“My mother’s gone.”

A smile was still on her face, but it was a cold one. It made Morgana uncomfortable, and she understood she wouldn’t be able to get anything more out of her about this. The more she tried to learn about Rena, and the more mysterious she felt. It was almost frustrating…

“Anyway, how about we play a game?”

Morgana felt startled at Rena’s sudden change of mood and proposition. At the very least, she couldn’t say she was bored with that girl…

“A game?”

“Yeah! Look, I have this with me…” All while talking, she began to look through her satchel and pulled out what looked like a deck of cards. “One of my friends, you see, is a big game collector, and she gave this to me before we come here. The rules are really easy! Wanna try?”

“I don’t like games.”

Rena looked suddenly horrified, as if Morgana had given her a death sentence.

“You’re kidding, right? Right? There’s no way anyone dislike games!”

“Well, I do,” Morgana added. “I never even played one.”

Back in her village, the other kids would never approach her. At the brothel, maybe some of the prostitutes had proposed her to play some simple games with them at times, or the slave man had tried to get her to play with other children her age, but she had always refused. As the daughter of God, she couldn’t let herself be associated with such baseless entertainments.

“N-Never?” Rena sounded even more shocked. “Not even when you were a child?”

“No, I never had any interest in that. It is just meaningless.”

At this moment, Rena’s expression changed. Her face grew serious, and she frowned, as if Morgana had said something particularly offensive.

“It is not meaningless,” she declared, in a tone so serious Morgana wasn’t even able to retort anything. “Games are so important. They can bring so many things to people. So many things! If you have never even played one once, then there’s no way you could be able to understand that.”

Morgana felt bewildered. Why did she seem so angry about something ridiculous like that? Wasn’t that just a game? But before she could say anything, Rena fiercely grabbed her hand, forcing her to stand up, and dragged her inside the ranch.

“I’ll show you!” She said with determination.

“Wh-What?”

“We’ll play together! Whether you want it or not!”

Morgana felt like yelling at her, but for some reason the strength of Rena’s hand holding hers and the firmness of her steps felt undefeatable. So she let herself got dragged inside, sat on a bench and watched the other spread the cards in front of her without saying a word.

Rena explained the rules to her in a confident voice, as if she had done this her entire life (maybe she had, after all). The rules were, indeed, fairly simple: the cards had all different colors with some cute animals drawn on them. There was also a few characters on them which Morgana guessed were in Rena’s country language, but she told her it was just the names of the animals and not necessary to the game. To win you had to get rid of all the cards.

She was given one mercy round to get used to the game, but when things actually started Morgana quickly realized behind her sweet façade, Rena was extremely ruthless. She may be an airhead, slow girl in appearance, but she was in reality pretty shrewd.

“You have to cheat,” Morgana suddenly said after losing for the eighth time. “It’s not possible to win so many times.”

“I did not! I’m just really good at this game, and you’re not.”

“You liar. I refuse to play against you again until you tell me your trick!”

At this moment, Rena smiled maliciously, and looked at her with a mix between amusement and endearment, which felt incredibly condescending.

“Wh-What?”

“You know, despite the fact you act so composed and mature most of the time, you’re actually a really sore loser.”

Morgana felt her cheeks flare up, and never did she felt as glad that her hideous scars were there as now to cover up that fact.

“That’s quite the accusation, I am certainly not a sore loser. I think this is fair of me to ask for a proof that you are not cheating.”

But Rena simply starting laughing and Morgana suddenly felt like a flustered child trying to deal with a bully.

“S-Stop making fun of me!”

“Haooo, you’re so kyute! I wanna take you home! Ah, but I guess we’re already home, huh… Then can I hug you? Can I?”

“No. Stop that, you are grossing me out.”

“H-Hao… How mean…”

“I already told you to stop treating me like a child.”

“S-Sorry! You’re just… really making me think of one of my friends right now. She was also quite the sore loser.”

“Like I said, I am not—”

Morgana stopped, and let out a deep sigh. Evidently, Rena would not listen to her no matter what she said. The other girl giggled a little, and then an odd, nostalgic smile stretched her lips.

“My friends and I, we used to play these games all the time. We would gather everyday and play together like that… It was fun.”

For a few seconds, she seemed lost in thought, as if thinking back about her hometown. Then she looked up at Morgana, this time with a gentle smile directed at her.

“It felt a little like when I played with them right now,” she admitted. “It was fun too. Thank you.”

Morgana only looked away while restraining another sigh. She couldn’t say she had ‘fun,’ — she even felt quite annoyed she hadn’t been able to win even once — but… it had not been a bad experience. She would never bring herself to say this to Rena, though. Or to anyone, for that matter.

“You sounded close,” she suddenly blurted out, without looking at Rena in the eyes. “With your friends.”

“Yeah… I guess…”

“You ‘guess’?”

This time, it was Rena who looked away — not out of embarrass or shame, but in a contemplative way. Her face was neutral, as if all emotions had left her.

“I think… other people are quite weird, you see. I like my friends, but we were only just playing around together. We were close while laughing, joking, messing around… But…” She stopped. “When things actually started to get rough, I still was unable to believe in them and ask for their help. I couldn’t help feeling they’d betray me anyway. I was stabbed in the back like that in the past, you see.”

Morgana almost felt like Rena was more talking to herself than anyone else, so she simply listened to her in silence.

“I wanted to be… happy. And I thought I was happy, in my village. I was around people I loved and who loved me. But sometimes I just wonder if it all wasn’t just some façade. A factice happiness, maybe. Or maybe it’s just all part of Oyashiro’s curse too…”

She turned her head towards Morgana, and smiled at her in an odd self-deprecating manner.

“What is happiness, though? How do you know when you are truly happy?”

Morgana was unable to answer to that.

________________________________________________________________

The lord was laughing.

His voice was strident and raucous, rasping her ears, piercing her mind. But she couldn’t do anything, couldn’t stop listening to it. The ground seemed to get loose with each chuckles, and the walls appeared to want to swallow her alive. Everything was hurting, aching, crashing. She wanted to scream, but her throat didn’t even allow her that.

“No tears — now that’s a good girl. Dignified and saintly — that’s what I need you to be.”

Mangled words resounded in her head, but she couldn’t make any sense of them. The only thing she could feel were the chains around her ankle, and the vivid, unbearable pain in her arm.

It hurts, it hurts, it all hurts so much — and it was all their fault — those three disgusting men. The lord.

That’s right, she had swore to get her revenge against them, to get their heads, for what they had dared to do to her. They locked her up — she who was a saint, the daughter of God — and treated her even worse than cattle — made her a witch, draining her blood day after day until nothing was left of her…

Everything was hurting her, this whole world was worse than Hell itself — and the only way for it to end was to finally kill her torturers.

I wasn’t born to spend my whole life suffering—

She woke up with a start, gasping for air and feeling nauseous. Her entire body was trembling and she couldn’t breathe. She felt like a fish out of water and her mind, still trapped inside that tower, could see nothing but blood and chains and death. Her surroundings was spinning around her, but in a desperate attempt to make a term to her suffering, she jumped out of bed and ran outside the ranch.

It was pitch dark outside, even barely any stars shined in the sky, and the giant trees in front of her looked more like demons ready to tear out her soul at any moment. Yet, she kept running into the woods, bare feet, not caring about the way her long red hair got caught in the branches or how her skin got scratched. The feeling felt familiar, like an odd sensation of déjà-vu, and for a moment she thought she was back to being eleven years old in the slums, running without any goal in the middle of the narrow streets.

(Except this time, no kind young man would come calm her down and carry her on his back to show her the sunrise—)

She only managed to stop when her legs stopped supporting her and she collapsed on the ground. Leaning on the trunk of a tree, she kneeled down, coughed, and finally threw up everything she had in her stomach. It was as if she was trying to evacuate all the horrifying events she had gone through, trying to purify herself from all the pain and suffering and hatred. When she finally stopped, she felt empty — both in her stomach and in her heart. With no strength, she simply lay down against the trunk and stopped moving, before slowly closing her eyes.

Suicide was a sin and she would never even consider this an option, no matter how tainted she was, but in this very instant… she honestly wished she could just die. Just slowly fall asleep here, and never open her eyes again…

Unfortunately, fate wasn’t on her side, as instead she heard noise that instantly got her out of her slumber. She immediately turned around, and in the horizon, she saw some vague small lights. There were footsteps, too. And voices.

Who on earth could be out there in the woods this late at night? The will to know the answer to this question was stronger than her exhaustion and numbness, and she gathered all of her strength left to stand up and slowly approach the lights. After a few moment, she noticed apparently a group of men — at least four of them, on horses, with torches.

Actually, those weren’t simple men. They were wearing heavy armors, and swords — which meant they were likely knights or guards. At first, she didn’t think much of it. These men were working for the Church generally after all, weren’t they? Anyone serving God was deserving of respect. But then she suddenly remembered that actually, there was another authority they listened under other than the Church: the lord.

At this moment, a chill ran down her spine and she instantly backed away. A part of her wanted to believe it was only a coincidence. But it would be too naïve a way of thinking. Why would a group of guards wander in the middle of the woods at night? If the lord had survived, then there was only one answer…

They were searching for the witch that had escaped the lord’s clutches.

Panic grasping her, she started to run yet again despite how much pain her legs was in, but this time in the inverse direction. She traversed the forest with even more speed than earlier while her heart was beating so strong in her chest she thought it was about to explode and that her mind was only focused on one thing: that she didn’t want to go back there. She didn’t want to go back in the tower, not back to being chained and getting her blood drained. She’d rather get killed horribly than this.

The ranch appeared in sight rather quickly, but it was barely a relief at all, and she entered it before slamming the door behind her. There, she had only the strength to fall on the floor, gasping painfully.

Why was this happening? How did these men manage to arrive there? It had been about two weeks since her escape, but still, it felt too early. How were they able to find them in the middle of these lost woods? Had someone told them? Had someone—

“Morgana?”

A sweet voice got her out of her thoughts, and when she raised her head, Rena was here, in a pink nightgown, holding a candle.

Rena.

“Is everything okay? I heard noise…”

There were only the two of them here, after all.

“Morgana…?”

With some strength she didn’t know she still possessed, Morgana stood up, grabbed the cleaver that rested against the wall, and jumped on Rena. The candle crashed onto the floor, plunging them in darkness — only the dim moon through the window lightened the room. It was like a reenactment of their first meeting, except this time Morgana was fully aware who she was threatening with the blade.

“What are—”

“Shut up! You’re the one who warned them, right?”

Rena’s blue eyes, shining like jewels under the moon, widened like saucers.

“Them?”

“I knew it! You were suspicious from the start! Of course you’d do something like that!”

“I have no idea what you—”

“Stop lying now! I knew you’d betray me!”

An odd expression spread across Rena’s face that Morgana couldn’t exactly identify, but she had no intention to anyway. Anger and panic and fear all overwhelmed her mind and reason, and flashes of the flaxen-haired boy and of his kind smile and sweet words turned in a circle inside her head.

This girl was just like him, after all. Her smile was only there to trick her, and all of her words were honeyed poison.

“Calm down, you don’t make any sense,” Rena talked again. “Think about it, why would I—”

“I told you to stop lying!”

Morgana raised the cleaver and lowered it towards the other girl’s neck, but she managed to block out the blade and kick her in the stomach with her knee. Morgana momentarily coughed and lost balance, giving Rena enough time to got away from her and stood back up, but she didn’t let this rattle her. Quickly getting back on her knees, she yet again swung the cleaver at Rena, who avoided it by only a few margins.

“Stop that! You might be better now, but there’s no way you can win against me with my own cleaver!”

But Morgana couldn’t care less about Rena’s words. That girl was just like the three men. No, maybe she was worse — because she had actually tried to save her and gain her esteem before throwing her back into hell.

She wouldn’t forgive her. Not Rena, not the lord, not the three men, not anyone—

She kept swinging the cleaver at Rena, again and again, destroying quite a few of the woodwork in the process, but the girl was as agile as a cat and managed to get away from her hits with only a few cuts.

She couldn’t forgive, because that was all she had left now.

Everything else had been taken from her.

Her identity, her life, her possible happiness and future… everything had been crushed at the hands of humans.

Everything was just unfair and cruel and disgusting.

“Just… disappears!”

For some unfathomable reason, her Father had just abandoned her.

No… maybe he had never been at her side from the beginning.

Maybe her mother had been right. Maybe she was not the child of God, but of some devil.

Maybe she truly was a witch, after all—

“Die!”

Finally, blood splashed onto her face and dress. It looked black under the moon. She had hit Rena on her left hip, which made her let out a constricted moan while glaring at Morgana, before putting her back against the wall and letting herself fall on the ground. Morgana looked down at her coldly, taking slow steps towards her.

The girl was completely at her mercy. There was no way she could defend herself with such a wound. She would probably bleed to death if she left her like that too. Yet, Rena’s eyes showed no fear. It was as if death wasn’t something that even crossed her mind… or maybe it did, but it wasn’t something she cared about. Well, it was fine either way.

She raised the cleaver one last time, her eyes glaring down at the gasping girl.

She saw the flaxen-haired boy figure in her stead. The beast’s. The lord’s.

Her hands tightened around the handle, and she lowered it.

But the blade didn’t hit Rena at all.

Instead, it planted itself inside the wooden ground next to her.

Morgana was shaking. Her trembling hands let go of the cleaver, and she fell on her knees, her long hair scattering around her like a veil. A long silence swallowed the room, where even barely their breathing could be heard.

“What are you doing?” Rena suddenly asked softly.

Morgana shook her head.

“I have… no idea…”

She plunged her face in her hands.

“I have… honestly no idea at all. I don’t know what I should be doing anymore… I lived all my life being so sure of who I was and what I should be doing, but now… I have nothing of that anymore… The only thing I desire is revenge, but I don’t even think I have the strength to get it…”

She didn’t know why she suddenly bared her heart like that. Maybe she wasn’t really talking to Rena. Maybe she was just letting out feelings that had been swarming inside her head for the past days… no, maybe even for the past months and years.

“I really… don’t know what I should be doing from now on anymore… I feel—”

—like the entire hate me. Like God Himself hates me. Like fate and the universe have just decided to make me miserable for the rest of my pitiful life.

‘I wasn’t born to spend my whole life suffering,’ she had yelled in her heart, as hatred and anger and despair boiled inside her…

But what was she born for exactly?

“I feel… cursed.”

Another silence — no sounds, no noise to disturb her intimate monologue. Until a giggle break the moment. Morgana lifted her head slowly, and stared with confusion at the girl who was chuckling heartily as if she had just said the funniest joke ever.

“What a coincidence,” she finally said. “I am cursed too.”

Morgana blinked, her eyes stinging. She wasn’t crying, though — she felt as if all of her tears had left her a long time ago already, maybe when she had been brought inside that tower — and now she was just completely empty.

But in this moment, the girl in front of her looked just as empty and lost as her.

“I might… have lied to you a little,” Rena suddenly admitted. “I didn’t actually come here with my father.”

Her gaze lifted up towards the moon behind Morgana, as if to help her focus.

“There’s a deity called Oyashiro in my village, you see. She protects it and its inhabitants, and prevents any strangers to come in. But, on the other hand, there is also an unspoken rule you are not allowed to leave the village or you’d trigger her wrath.”

“A… deity?”

“I know in your country there is only one God who rules everything, but in mine, we have different faiths. Our ‘deities’ are not really the same as yours, but at least I know Oyashiro is real. She spoke to me, quite a few times. And she also cursed me.”

Morgana restrained her instinctive envy to say this was nonsense and that there was only one God in this universe, as stating the contrary felt like a personal insult to her. But she felt too exhausted to fight Rena on this, and just wanted to keep hearing the rest of the story. Maybe Rena guessed her train of thoughts, and Morgana wondered if maybe denying her village’s ‘deity’ would feel like an insult to her too, but she made no comments about it.

“Why did she curse you? Oh… Because you left.”

“Yes, though I was cursed before that. As a child, my family left the village to find jobs in a bigger city. I’ve lived there a few years, but then my mother… left,” she said, spiting the word, and Morgana felt there was a lot of grudge in that sentence, but she didn’t ask about it. “So my father and I came back. And then I thought it would be okay. It was, for some time. I met my friends. I thought I’d be happy again. But… Dad was still jobless, and in the end, he attracted the attention of some bad people.”

Her eyes darkened, and she clenched her jaw.

“These people wanted to use him. They wanted to take away my happiness. So I had to do everything I could to prevent this. I had to.”

“What did you do?”

Rena stared straight into Morgana’s eyes, her gaze resolute.

“I killed them.”

This should’ve come off as a surprised. This should’ve shocked Morgana to her core. But for some reason, it didn’t. Maybe she had already understood, somewhere deep inside, that this girl was a killer.

“But… I suppose I made a mistake. Or maybe that was just the curse. I think, some people related to the two I killed discovered it, and tried to come after me. I was knocked out, and when I came back to myself I was inside a boat’s hold, chained up, with a lot of other people.”

The blurry image of the aftermath of the brothel’s raid flashed through Morgana’s mind, as she was tied up inside that carriage with all those other strangers… just before the beast slaughtered all of them.

“Slave traders?” She asked.

“I’m not sure,” Rena added. “I was dragged around for quite some time, in boat and carriage, and thankfully none of them thought of checking my satchel. So when I got the occasion, I slashed them up and escaped. And that’s how I ended up here.”

Morgana sighed. She could understand why Rena would make up that lie, it certainly wasn’t a story she could to tell to everybody.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get back to my village, and even if I do… with what I did, I don’t know if I’ll be able to ever gain my happy life back anyway.” She chuckled. “Well, that’s something I’ve always known. Happy days never last.”

That was something Morgana could relate to all too well, and she hated how much similarities she could find in Rena’s words. The girl in front of her had just admitted to her she was a killer, a sinner of the worst category. It was disgusting and almost above salvation. And yet… she felt no disgust towards her at all. Only…

Maybe only something akin to sympathy.

That just illustrated how far she had fallen. But right now, she didn’t care all that much about it.

Without saying a word, she rose up, disappeared in the other room and came back her hands full of bandages. Rena watched her kneel besides her and starting to clean up her wound.

“What are you doing…?”

“Isn’t that obvious? I’m treating you. We can’t stay here any longer. I spotted some guards afar from here, and I bet they’re working for the lord. We need to get out of here before that.”

“Oh… so that’s why you suddenly panicked.” Rena chuckled. “Do you not think I betrayed you anymore?”

Morgana stopped her treatment, her eyes staring fixedly at the ground.

“I don’t know,” Morgana admitted. “You’re a killer and a sinner. I cannot trust you.”

“I bet,” Rena said, and there was clear amusement in her voice.

Morgana wondered how she managed to use a joking tone with such a heavy wound, but then again, she had been able to narrate her entire life story without so much as flinching despite it.

“But,” she added, still without looking at the other girl in the eyes. “I… can’t let you die here.”

“Really?”

“Take this as thanks for you saving me from the tower.”

“It’s you who inflicted this wound on me, though…”

“I won’t apologize for that, if that’s what you’re expecting. I still think my suspicions were fair enough.”

Rena opened her mouth to reply, but instead she just let out a moan as Morgana started to apply the bandage.

“You’re really rough,” she complained.

“I’m more used to handle dead bodies.”

“You what?”

“It’s nothing… For now, this should okay. We can’t spend any more time here anyway.”

All while talking, she helped Rena to stand up by handing her a shoulder and letting her lean on her body. Morgana was far from being a strong girl, so supporting the other weight of another human was quite the struggle for her. She thought about how Rena must have carried her all by herself from the tower to here, and wondered how on earth she managed to accomplish such a prowess. She certainly didn’t look any physically stronger than her.

Am I really starting to trust her words now? Stop being silly, Morgana.

But despite lecturing herself, she still gathered all of her strength to help out support the other girl as best as she could. As they slowly passed by the window, they could see a few lights twinkling in the distance. The guards had probably noticed the ranch by now, and were starting to approach dangerously close to it.

“They seem to be quite a few…”

“I’ve seen at least four of them earlier. Let’s hurry.”

In spite of these words, they couldn’t exactly run with Rena in this condition, and Morgana could hear her hiss and groan with each steps they took. She knew her wound was still bleeding too, but now was too late to regret her hysterical episode from earlier. She still thanked God that the ranch had a back door, and they managed to reach it after a few minutes of hobbling, finally leaving behind the dilapidated habitation they had occupied for the last weeks.

Once outside, they staggered a little in the middle of the forest, then took a pause against a large trunk. Rena was already gasping heavily, and they hadn’t even been walking for five minutes.

“How’s your wound?”

“Pretty bad,” she groaned. “I… doubt I’ll be able to run away from them like that.”

“We don’t have a choice, though.”

“You have a choice, however. You could just leave me here.”

“Not interested.”

Rena chuckled. “You really are a sore loser.”

“Shut up.”

Morgana sighed and sat down next to Rena, and the two of them stayed quiet for quite some time.

“You’re really okay with taking the risk to get back inside that tower because of me?”

“Then what about you? I just tried to kill you, and you seem completely fine with putting your life in my hands.”

“That’s right. That’s really weird, huh.”

“It truly is.”

Rena giggled yet again, and if Morgana didn’t felt so exhausted, maybe she would’ve let herself laugh with her.

“If we do manage to get out of these woods…”

Rena started talking again, her voice a whisper.

“What do you want to do?”

That was a question Morgana had asked herself ever since she had been out of that tower. How ridiculous that she’d spent the last few months wish for any kind of miracle to free her, and now that she was free, she was even more lost than she’d ever been in her life.

“Do you still intend to take your revenge?”

“Probably…” She hesitated a little, trying to search for the stars behind the heavy foliage of the trees. She found none.

“That’s the only thing I have left.”

“I see…”

“And you?”

“I still have no idea either. Healing that wound would be a start. And then maybe I’ll be able to find another kyute thing to take home.”

“We really won’t have much to look forward to then, huh.”

“I guess.”

They shared another moment of silence. Behind them, the sounds of the guards breaking open the door resounded brutally, but this put neither of them into a panic.

They just kept staring at the sky, entirely camouflaged by the trees.

Until, Morgana finally stood up again, and handed her hand to Rena. The girl smiled, neither a gentle or cruel one, before grabbing it.

Morgana had no idea where they could go, and they had very little chance to be able to run away from the guards.

But, in this instant, putting aside all of her complicated and complex feelings, she swore to herself they’ll manage to escape this place no matter what.

This was her gratitude for the lost girl who had saved her from the tower.

A mean for both of them to find their ways back.

2 notes · View notes

yoonpobs · 3 years

Text

bad boy good thing x.

pairing: jeon jungkook x oc

genre: angst, smut, fluff, miscommunication (we hate her lol), pining

warnings: smut, jungkook is really an asshole, the angst hurts a lot tbh, unhealthy relationships (?)

words: 8, 711

summary: a series of drabbles where you're confused and jungkook's confusing

a/n:

so here is the mini monster chap !! i know I said this was going to be a drabble series but I clearly got carried away LOL

anyways, no spoilers for this chap but I can say it's one of my favs that I've written and I think we see oc getting the comfort that she deserves (and needs!)

and also !! this is my first time updating a series on tumblr and it feels *exciting* hehe, I hope you enjoy this chapter c:

let me know your thoughts in my asks!! i'd love to hear what you think so far :3

all the love and I hope you're having a great

day/night/evening/afternoon wherever you are ❤️

“Open up!”

The only person that would opt to yell to get your attention than ring on your doorbell like a normal person would be Yena. And it helped that you immediately recognised her voice from the first syllable she uttered. That and you were currently moping in your living room with lactose-free ice cream, courtesy of Jimin that dropped it off a day ago when he heard that you were ‘sick’. Even if you hadn’t seen him face-to-face, you remember him softly hoping you’d get better.

You don’t know why she’s at your door, but you’re already on your feet to get her when you hear her begin to mutter curses directed at you behind the thin wood of your entrance.

“I can hear you!” You call.

“Well bitch then open the damn door!” She snaps.

You roll your eyes, and so far with the number of times you’ve hung out with her, it’s safe to say that the two of you were comfortable. You never knew how fun having a girl best friend was until you met Yena, and sure it’s only been a little under two weeks since you’ve gotten to know her through various messages and FaceTimes, but you feel like she’s your friend soulmate.

And when you expressed that to her over a FaceTime call a few nights back, you remember her gagging all while you flush and attempt to take it back. You know her candidly calling you bitch rather than your name was her saying she felt the same.

You pull the door open as she stands there with her eyes narrowed into slits, eyeing you up and down before she scrunches her nose.

“There’s a thing called a shower that you should look into. You look like a rundown version of long-haired Noah Beck.” She grimaces when she eyes you up and down.

You scowl. “You did not just compare me to him.”

She clicks her tongue before she shoves you aside by shoving a plastic bag of the takeout food into your arms and steps into your apartment.

Yena ignores the glare you shoot at the back of her neck when she looks around your living room, scrunching her nose like she was here to inspect your room than pay you a visit.

“Did someone die in here or was that just your will to live?”

You scoff. “Wow. Drag me.”

She waves you off before plopping onto your couch while you sigh, immediately heading to the kitchen to prep the food she brought over.

“For a moment I thought you were dead.” She confesses casually.

When you return with bowls and plates, with the cutlery to match—you give her a dry look before you’re taking your seat on the floor; attempting to hide your half-eaten tub of ice cream, which Yena immediately spots.

“So your first instinct was to yell at my door in hopes that I wasn’t actually dead?” You ask dryly.

She picks up your ice cream and grimaces at it, silently judging you for the flavour before she gives you a shrug.

“Yeah. I was hoping that your spirit would confer.”

You snort. “And the food?”

“A peace offering.” She tells you like it’s obvious.

You sigh, you loved Yena—you really did. She was all over the place and random, but it was a refreshing difference that you needed in your life from the usual law and order you often opted for.

“Not that I don’t appreciate your concern,” You tell her, pulling out a container to see your favourite lemon chicken as you eye her suspiciously. “But what brings you here? I told you I was sick.”

Yena scoffs. “And sick you are, bitch. What kind of sick person devours ice cream? Sure, you look the part but your diet says otherwise. Don’t think I didn’t see the empty packet of snickers in the trash.”

You scowl.

“I recovered yesterday.” You lie, taking a bite out of the chicken.

Yena rolls her eyes and you know she doesn’t believe you. She leans into your couch while she watches you eat, “Namjoon texted me that you may need some company.” At that, you choke.

Her eyes widen as you hit at your chest to get the food to go down, eyes still wide at her revelation.

“Why would he do that?” You cry.

“Girl, I know you’re not trying to deflect—you’re literally about to choke and die.”

You glare at her. “I’m fine.” You cough for good measure, then you’re levelling another serious gaze at her.

“I’m fine.” You reiterate with an emphasis on your state even though you were anything but. “I don’t know why the hell he thinks I need company.” You mutter under your breath.

At this, Yena’s face softens as she leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees while you avoid her gaze; idly poking at your food.

“I don’t know either, and you don’t need to tell me anything.” She says softly. “That’s all I’m here for. To be your company, whether you need it or not.”

You don’t know how much Namjoon told her over a text message, but you don’t think it’s much. Purely because he didn’t seem like a snitch and he was too respectful to ever let other people into the business that wasn’t his own. Even at the thought, you want to groan because you essentially lured him into thinking it was okay for him to kiss you while you were … you don’t even know what the fuck was happening anymore.

“I—” You say weakly, and all Yena does is offer you a comforting smile.

For some reason, the fact that she’s here right in front of you after you spent the day crying and feeling like your heart has been repeatedly stomped over with the addition of your rumination—it feels nice to have someone with you, even if it’s just their presence.

But the way she doesn’t look at you and expects something out of your conversation makes you feel even more overwhelmed, and that’s probably why the dam breaks.

Yena’s eyes widen as she immediately darts out to wrap her arms around you when you end up in violent sobs. You don’t know why you’re crying but you are, and you’re tired of hiding things, your feelings and your intent just to pretend like things were okay.

“It’s okay.” She strokes your hair and it feels warm, like a mother comforting a crying baby and you realise that this is what friends should feel like.

“N-no it’s n-not!” You cry into her shirt and it’s messy, but she doesn’t seem like she minds. Especially when she supports your pliable frame.

“You wanna talk about it?” She asks softly, giving you a kind smile.

You sniffle, staring forward as you feel your eyes swell with the escalation of your tears.

“I don’t know.” You whisper.

She hums, “It’s okay not to know. You don’t need to know everything.”

“I’m just so tired, Yena.” You tell her in a hushed breath.

“Life is difficult.” She admits. “It’s natural to be tired.”

You’re thankful to hear that she doesn’t comfort you with blind optimism. She’s real and she acknowledges how shitty things may be, and frankly, you didn’t need another wannabe altruist telling you that things will get better. You knew that, everyone did. But when you’re at rock bottom and all you see is darkness, you’re not looking for better. You’re looking for a reason to continue.

“Can I say something?” She asks. The way she looks at you is soft and open, and non-judgemental. You feel safe.

You nod your head, teary eyes staring up at her.

“You’re not responsible for anyone’s feelings except your own.” She looks at you so seriously that you nearly feel your breath escape. “There are things that you can and cannot control—and the latter usually falls under the people around you.”

You suck in a breath, and you wonder how she’s so spot on without ever touching on the true context.

“Namjoon texted me but I didn’t come here because he asked me to. It’s because you deserve to have someone be around you when you’re clearly not okay.”

“I’m—”

“You’re not.” She blinks, and you almost pout at her firm tone. “And that’s okay. I don’t need to know what happened to justify how you feel. You could’ve stubbed your toe and feel like absolute shit and I have absolutely no right to judge you on how or when you feel emotions.”

You wonder where she’s been your entire life and why she was only in your life now.

“But the thing is,” She sighs. “You don’t always have to choose between something or the other. Sometimes you need to choose yourself.”

You stare up at her in awe because Yena was cool in general, her laidback and unbending personality was mainly what drew you to her because you’d argue you were the opposite. Even if Jungkook’s words stung, you could take it at face value and accept that it was true.

You were uptight and you were a bit of a prude, and for the longest time, you always resented that aspect of you. But you realised with Yena, she had traits that were resented in a woman as well. And you realise that you’d never be perceived the way you want unless you perceive yourself in a positive light first.

So when she speaks to you so sternly, yet with a tone of care as she picks apart her words so carefully—you realise what you have to do.

“I think I like Jungkook.”

Yena pauses for a brief second, but you don’t see any judgement in her face. Just confusion, a warranted emotion you don’t blame her for having.

“I figured as much.”

Your eyes widened, “How—?”

It’s almost like a repeat of the first night at the football game when you befriended each other, but she only shoots you a gentle smile.

“Call it a woman’s intuition.”

You blink, fiddling with your fingers before you stare up at her, continuing your drawls.

“And we kissed.”

At this, Yena cocks an eyebrow up, “Was this recent?”

You fiddle with your thumbs before you sigh and push yourself up.

“Thing is …” You mumble, “I’m not like that.”

You don’t answer her question because you can’t think of a proper enough response to tell her that yeah—you did kiss him, amongst other things that you foolishly allowed yourself to indulge in. You knew Yena wasn’t judgemental but you also knew that you couldn’t retrieve your words the moment they left your mouth. It was your own judgement that stopped you from saying the things you really wanted and it sucked, royally. Because you could tell that Yena wasn’t out here to crucify you for being … liberated. She just wanted to be there for you.

Yena scrunches her eyebrows in confusion as she allows your words to settle, pondering a response.

She settles for a huff, “Care to elaborate?”

“I don’t … do things like that.” You say softly. “I’m shy and quiet. I’m not active in the social sphere and I only have three friends that I can reach out to if I wanna hang out. But even then, I don’t … I don’t like partying, or drinking, or loud spaces. I’m awkward and horrible at social interaction let alone being able to navigate my romantic feelings. And … I felt so bad about it.”

Yena’s eyes soften, but you can’t look at her just yet. Not when this is the first time you’ve ever laid yourself vulnerable, emotionally that is, to someone that wasn’t just the confines of your thoughts.

“I always wondered what it’d like to be confident, to be liked on campus and not just be known as the smart girl.” You whisper. “My entire personality was built around my achievements and I didn’t know what else to do. What if … what if I peak here and fail after?” Your eyes are wide in despair, and you feel your lips quiver when you speak.

“You’ll never know.” Yena reminds you gently. “You won’t know who likes you or what people say about you—but you’re going to be hearing your own thoughts 24/7 and that’s what kicks you down or drives you further.”

You sigh, nodding your head.

“It’s just … Jungkook and I were close. We grew up together even if he’s younger than me. But we just got along well and he … he saw me. He used to comfort me whenever I’d tell him how pressuring it got and—I feel so stupid because he probably says that to everyone and I fell for it.” You chuckle with no emotion, staring at the stray thread poking outside of your couch pillow.

“Have you spoken to him about your feelings?” She asks softly.

Immediately, you scoff and the sour emotion peaks through again.

“He’s made it clear what he wants to hear from me.” You mutter.

Yena purses her lips before resting her hands gently on your shoulder.

“You’re not answering my question, ______.” She chides gently.

You nibble on your bottom lip and shake your head. That earns a sigh from her as she wraps her arms around you once again, resting her chin on your shoulder as you allow yourself to feel the comfort of her warmth.

“He kissed me first and we did things together.” Your lips quiver when you recall the memories, “A-And he’s with Jennie. I just …” You flutter your eyes shut, “I don’t want to say that I’m the other girl but I feel a lot like a second option and it sucks.”

Yena doesn’t ask, and she doesn’t need to. She doesn’t need to justify why you felt the way you did, so she holds you tighter.

“Babe.” She gently turns you to look at her with both hands resting on your shoulders. “Did you talk to him? Properly? Do you really know if he’s with her?”

“I think them kissing proves enough to me.” You snap, and you don’t know why you’re being so hostile, especially to Yena.

She purses her lips, “You kissed him and you aren’t together.”

You wince and she shoots you an apologetic look. She sighs before reaching out to squeeze your hand, all while you stare at the ground to level out your emotions.

“I’m not saying that you can’t feel the way you do. But I’m offering objectivity here. Men are … they’re blunt creatures and that’s the biggest difference between men and women.” You furrow your eyebrows as she takes a deep breath before she continues. “And the idea that we’re equal? No, we’re not. I’m not talking about our systemic positions in society but on an emotional level. Men take things surface value and work with it, they don’t stop to think about the layers of feelings that go into interpersonal relationships with friends, family or lovers. Women? We go big or we go home. All we see is the big picture and sometimes the little details get lost in translation. This isn’t me justifying Jungkook playing home with you or Jennie at the same time, but offering you a perspective that may be hard for you to see because you aren’t him.”

It was true, and you hated yourself for being aware but not putting action based on your own thoughts. Yena only reaffirmed the idea that you overthought every single interaction and maybe that was why you were the one that was hurting.

That, or you and Jungkook had horrible communication problems that neither of you was ready to face just yet. But how could you? When the two of you were on two different wavelengths and you were trying to be just enough for him while he was jumping off pedestals to see you.

It didn’t feel nice, and it sucked because he was the same person that comforted you and broke you all at once.

“I’m scared.” You whisper.

She smiles at you gently, patting your head gently as you peer up at her with tears between your lashes.

“And that’s okay.” She reassures you with a soft voice, “The only thing scarier than being scared is not feeling at all.”

Before you go to where your heart tells you to—your mind is the only thing that keeps you rooted in some form of rationale. That’s probably why you’re outside of Namjoon’s dorm. You don’t think you’ve ever paid his place a visit despite him telling you his address on multiple occasions, usually opting to hang out in public yet serene places where you were able to get a breather.

Your feet feel heavy and your fist is raised, but it barely moves. Especially when you’re just eyeing his door like a deer caught in headlights. You’ve rehearsed the apology on your tongue a million times, even if you don’t really know what you’re apologising for. But you feel like you must, particularly because you’ve senselessly let him see all of the feelings that you were trying to suppress in hopes of retaining the same ones he had for you.

You take a deep breath and deliver the first knock, the vibrations making your arm feel weak.

But you’re tired of always surrendering to bigger and more frightening things that you could understand. So you purse your lips and play the waiting game.

It seems like a long twenty minutes that you wait, but in reality, it’s only two when the door swings open. You brace yourself to see Namjoon, apology already sitting on your tongue.

You should’ve dropped a text, you knew that. But you decided against it because you haven’t spoken to Namjoon since what happened a few days ago. Neither of you speaking about the kiss or the way your eyes glistened when you saw Jungkook and Jennie together.

“____?” He asks confusedly.

You give him a meek smile, “Hi. Can I come in?”

He blinks at you, and you notice he still has his glasses that he usually forgoes during the times you’ve hung out—and you feel a little guilty for catching him at a bad time.

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Sure.”

Namjoon steps aside and you’re welcomed into the space of his living room. The first thing you notice is the interior, and how … Namjoon it was. It’s both cluttered and neat, the palette of his furniture matching the overall vibe he emanated. His furniture is mostly wood, light sandalwood that makes it feel all the homier.

And you tell him such, “You have a very homey place.”

Namjoon turns his head to look at you right before he plops himself back onto his couch where you see the bits and pieces of paper scrambled across the floor and the couch. Even then, he was able to look so welcoming even though you reckon he has a right to be hostile—for a reason you came here to apologise for.

“Thank you.” He flushes, patting a spot in front of him for you to take your seat.

When you settle, the atmosphere turns strained when you mull over your words so that you wouldn’t stumble over them. You practised, you did—about a hundred times before you came here and you thought you were ready to apologise and put things behind you but it’s proven difficult when all he does is look at you in earnest.

“Not that I—uh—mind,” He mumbles, “But is there a reason why you’re here?”

You blink at him as you ignore the quiver in your heart.

“I’m sorry.” You blurt.

“_____ why are you—”

“You didn’t deserve what happened the other day.” You interject, voice soft but unwavering when you force yourself to look at him as his eyes widen.

“I wasn’t the one that saw something I shouldn’t have.” He reminds you with a frown.

You swallow, “I kissed you. And you …” It wasn’t helping that he was looking at you so gently as he awaits your continuation. “You didn’t need to save me back then, Namjoon.” You end in a whisper.

Namjoon reaches out to grab your shoulder, touch gentle as he searches for your eyes.

“I didn’t save you …” He tells you tenderly.

“It’s not just that!” You exasperate while you throw your hands up in the air. “I-it’s everything … from the way you treat me and the way you look at me. You didn’t need to do any of that and you even—” You trail off, fluttering your eyes shut. “—what did you say to Jungkook right before we left?”

Namjoon’s eyes enlarge as his grip becomes tense against your shoulder. You can almost see the way his mind kicks into gear as he thinks of a response.

“That—I—does it matter?” He huffs.

Your eyes soften, “Namjoon.” You force yourself to look at him even if now he was the one that tries to avoid your gaze. “What did you say?”

Namjoon tightens his lips before he sighs deeply, head dropping forward before he looks at you.

“I told him to be honest.” He says softly.

You furrow your eyebrows, “To be honest …?”

“I know you have feelings for him.”

Your face blanches when Namjoon basically exposes you. It’s one thing for you to be self-aware of your complicated feelings towards the other boy. But when someone else points it out, especially when it’s Namjoon—the boy who’s been nothing but kind and patient with you while you’re too busy being caught up in your emotions—it’s like a slap across your face.

“I-I don’t—”

“You don’t need to lie to save my face, ______.” He chuckles dryly, eyes darting away as he tries to neutralise his expression. You wince at the spite he establishes, but you know deep down that Namjoon isn’t angry at you. No, he was far too understanding to be. Disappointed? Frustrated? Sure, but never angry,

The silence answers for you when you look away this time, eyebrows scrunched as you attempt to navigate the conversation. You came here to apologise, and to be honest.

“I’m sorry.” You whisper.

“Don’t.” He takes a deep breath as you flinch. “Don’t … apologise.” He sighs.

“I didn’t mean to lead you on, Namjoon.” You murmur apologetically.

He shoots you a half-hearted chuckle, “You didn’t do anything. Really.”

“But I did, Namjoon. I kissed you back.” You frown.

“That doesn’t imply anything. I kissed you, and you reciprocated. We all kiss someone and not mean anything by it.”

You flinch, and you’re familiar with that more than anyone else. The reminder only stings because it makes you realise that you were not much different from Jungkook, the same person you’ve claimed to have messed with you and fucked you over.

“I’m—”

“Please don’t apologise anymore.” He says. “I already feel like shit.”

You smile sadly at him, “How do you manage to be so nice even when other’s do you wrong?”

Namjoon sighs, then he grabs both your hands in his. “You didn’t wrong me, _____. It’s not your fault you don’t feel the same way I do.”

“How did you …” You trail off.

“How did I know you had feelings for Jungkook?” He chuckles. “The same way he knew I had feelings for you.”

You purse your lips, eyes dropping to your lap. “It’s not that simple, Namjoon …” You say softly.

Namjoon smiles at you gently, “Is it?” He gently nudges your knee with his so that you’d look at him. “Life is simple. It’s not easy. But it’s simple.”

You scoff even if a small smile teases your lips, “You really are a philosophy major, aren’t you?”

The two of you grin in tandem before he purses his lips, possible mulling over something before he faces you.

“The two of you are close so … why beat around the bush?”

Your eyes flutter shut, shaking your head. “Like I said, it’s really not that simple.”

He rolls his eyes at you, but it’s not to mock or taunt you. Namjoon simply sees a naive, yet an intelligent girl who doesn’t see what’s right in front of her.

“Remember what I said? I’m a simple guy.” He reminds you, lips in a grin. “Try me.”

You snort, but you’re still nervous. You still remember that he has feelings for you, so you’re hesitant. And he immediately recognises the guilt-ridden expression that you mar.

Namjoon shoots you a stern glare, “Don’t overthink it.”

You sigh.

“Jungkook and I …” You start, fiddling with your thumbs. “We grew up together.”

Namjoon rolls his eyes and shoots you another one of his bland stares. “I know the history. I just want to know why?”

You furrow your brows, “Why?”

“Why the two of you insist on being so emotionally constipated.”

You gape at his audacity, and you’re glad the atmosphere isn’t as tense because Namjoon simply snickers at your reaction.

“I am not—!”

He waves you off, “Really?” He adds dryly.

You purse your lips and relent, even if you didn’t want to agree with him—you knew that he was … right. To a certain extent.

“We kissed.” You blurt.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, “That’s not surprising.”

You shoot him a dry look before he raises his hands in defence.

“He was my first kiss.”

At this, Namjoon’s widen.

“When you were in high school?” He pries.

You flush, embarrassed that you had to tell him otherwise.

“Two months ago.” You mutter.

Namjoon splutters, and you can’t help but glare at him when he quite literally chokes on his spit. You know you caught him off guard, but him rubbing salt in the wound that’s relatively fresh makes you scowl.

“Oh.” He clears his throat. Then he repeats, “Oh.”

You scoff, “Yeah. Oh.”

“Then … what happened?” You know he’s treading carefully with you when he asks you his question softly.

You purse your lips, and you recall every single moment you’ve shared with him. From giggles to hushed kisses, to intimate touches and sweat-stained sheets that have you gasping for air. You remember it all, and they meant … they meant the world to you, but just a speck in his memory.

“Things escalated and we … did stuff together.” You wince.

Namjoon nods in understanding, he gestures his hands around, “Like—”

“I’m a virgin.”

Namjoon blinks.

“And for the longest time, I felt embarrassed about it.”

“Oh.”

“I struggled to find my footing between being sexually liberated and being a woman because for the longest time I thought those two were mutually exclusive. For me, at least.” You say softly.

Namjoon only stares at you.

“And I always wanted validation from someone else to tell me that what I was doing was the right thing to do. Or the supposed thing to do. Never what I really wanted to do.”

“Not that I’m uncomfortable but … why are you letting me in on this?” Namjoon asks with a raised brow.

“Because I want to do something for myself for once.” You whisper.

“Okay …?”

“Why do you like me? Even if I’m … boring and not as sexy as other women?”

You sound pathetic, and the first person you find yourself comparing yourself to is Jennie—a beautiful, confident woman who looked so assured in herself.

“You’re not—”

You groan.

“Namjoon.”

“Okay.” He sighs. “If you’re asking me if I care that you’re a virgin, then no. I really don’t. Because frankly, that concept to me is false and problematic. Whether or not you’ve had sex or not isn’t any of my business.”

You duck your head.

“And I like you because you’re interesting. You’re funny and you’re assured in your own way. You don’t need to be a certain standard of pretty or sexy or whatever for me to like you. I like you because of the time we’ve spent together and that I’ve gotten to know you. The real you and not the person I admired from afar but the girl who throws in jokes out of nowhere but fits so well with the situation. The girl who’s willing to spend three extra hours of her time to help with content that wasn’t prescribed to her. I like you because I’d like to think I’ve grown to understand who you are.”

Namjoon says all of those things while staring at you straight in the face and you feel compelled to cry. Because no one has ever been so honest with you and you hate that your heart can’t reciprocate what should be an easy feeling that comes naturally.

“Fuck.”

His eyes widen.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He coos, a hand petting your hair gently as you sniffle.

“It’s not, Namjoon. Everything sucks because everything is so complicated. Why can’t I just have feelings for you instead?”

It’s selfish, and Namjoon winces. But you’re so overwhelmed that you miss it, and Namjoon is too nice to point his own feelings out.

“You don’t pick and choose your battles, _____.” He murmurs softly.

“That’s not what my mom told me.” You whimper.

He chuckles, “Yeah. Most people like to believe that because it makes them think that they have a choice over the bad things that happen in their lives. But in reality? They don’t. No one decides what happens to them. You pick and choose how you react to things. How you deal with situations and what you make out of those situations is what you can choose to do. You don’t like me, and that’s fine. You don’t have to just because I’m nice to you, _____. Being nice is the absolute bare minimum and something that everyone should feel and do.”

Your face crumbles, “Why are you so wise?”

Namjoon smiles, “I’m not. It’s called offering a different perspective. Just because I see things one way doesn’t make me any better than you who sees things in another. That’s why we meet different types of people throughout our lives. The good, the bad, the in-between. There’s always something people offer to us in the midst of chaos.”

You sigh.

“I’m sorry, Namjoon.”

He pats your head, “I said don’t apologise.”

“No, but I want to. You’ve been nothing but kind to me and you picked up a shitty situation to be in when Jungkook and Jennie were at the library. Even right after I kissed you. That was … a horrible thing to do. I shouldn’t have done that just because—just because I was confused … you don’t deserve that.”

He doesn’t look angry, and that’s even worst because you want him to react, to call you a bitch and say that you were a horrible person.

“I don’t.” He shrugs while you wince. “But a lot of the times we don’t deserve a lot of things that we get. And that’s okay. You did what you thought was justified then, and there’s nothing you can do to change it. But you’re hurting too, and you’re confused—that’s what drove you to do the things that you did, and even here. That’s why you’re apologising to me, right? Because you’re not as confused anymore?”

You shake your head.

“I am, I’m still so confused.” You whisper.

“Then let me offer you another perspective.”

You look up to him with big eyes as he smiles at you gently.

“You have feelings for Jungkook.” You immediately flinch, even if he didn’t hit you. But Namjoon continues. “You’re trying to keep the picture as simple as you can even if it hurts you in the process. But

“You don’t understand, Namjoon … we … did things … that I’m not proud off …”

“You don’t have to—”

“He was my first kiss. My first … sexual experience. Even if it was just … third base,” You cringe, but Namjoon isn’t judging you at all. “A-and that’s all I was to him. An experience.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Do I, Namjoon?” You say softly. “He said things to me that were so hurtful. And a stupid part of me forgives him but it still hurts every time I think about it and when I see him with Jennie.”

You whisper the words Jungkook’s said to you, and for the first time, you see Namjoon’s jaw harden. The most emotion that wasn’t rationale you’ve seen in Namjoon ever since you first arrived.

“I know it hurts.” He murmurs, holding you close. “And I really don’t want it to seem like I’m justifying his words … but would you want to hear me out?”

You purse your lips and nod nevertheless.

“Jungkook isn’t a bad person.” You blink, you never thought he was. “I know you don’t think he is but you want to. Because of the things he’s said to you because why would a good person say those kinds of things, right? But the world isn’t black and white like that. There’s a grey area where 99% of the population falls into because we operate on emotion and sometimes we say things that we may feel but not necessarily believe in.”

“Jungkook … he’s still young. And I know we’re in college and stuff but he’s still three years younger than I am and two years younger than you. He’s spoken to me about how hard it was to adjust to a high school life where you, Jimin and Tae weren’t a part of. And I don’t know about you but if the only friends I’ve ever known suddenly left because they had to … I wouldn’t know what to do either. He was at a point in his life where his environment played a huge part in the values and internalised beliefs he had.”

You look away as you reflect on his words, nibbling on your bottom lip.

“He mixed around with different groups of people, and I hate this saying but it’s still a common belief to many—especially people his age, almost out of high school. But the ‘boys will be boys’ mentality is more than just misogyny and sexism, but a culture where it feeds off complacency and peer pressure. Jungkook suddenly had to shift from three, good friends who were progressive and influential in an objectively good way to people he was obliged to like because they were his peers.”

You gape at him, purely because you knew that Namjoon was smart and wise but his introspection leaves you breathless and enlightened.

“But that doesn’t change the core of Jungkook,” Namjoon says. “He’s still Jungkook. He doesn’t know how to ask for things that he wants without feeling like he’s betraying his masculinity. And again, I’m not justifying his actions because he’s a grown man too. But he’s lost, and the only thing he knows to uphold this sense of masculinity is by being sexually liberated. Even if he conflates his own emotions with his endeavours.”

“I … I don’t even know what to say Namjoon.” You murmur, eyes looking up through your lashes.

“You don’t need to say anything. I just want you to be honest to yourself, not anyone else. But yourself.” He tells you, carding a gentle hand over your head.

You fiddle with your thumbs.

“What do you want?”

Despite you confiding two different people, you find yourself at a convenience store at 12AM, scarfing down ramen from a cup noodle because your mind was a funny place when it was muddled with a hundred different thoughts. You knew sleep wasn’t an option for you either, and you were hungry. But somehow you didn’t have anything back in your apartment that screamed ‘I’m in a crisis’ enough for you to eat.

Which is why you’re here, while the cashier keeps his eyeball to himself when he sees yet another college student who’s probably having their third mental breakdown of the day.

It is, but not for the right reasons, you think dryly.

You think you’re alone until the chime of the bell momentarily distracts you and you turn your head to acknowledge the next lone customer who may be going through their own set of issues, or had a fucked up sleeping schedule.

But you’re not expecting to make eye contact with Jennie, out of everyone or any stranger you could’ve come across.

She spots you, shoots you a weird look that has you nearly choking on a string of noodles before she moves on to what she came here to do and stops at the snack section, skimming through her options before she settles on a pack of shrimp chips. Your heart churns because they were Jungkook’s favourite. You don’t want to wonder why she picked them.

You turn to your noodles, scarf them down some more because you want to eat your thoughts away even if you’re half-considering to call Jungkook, tell him you wanted to talk. But you knew that if you spoke to him now when you were still sorting out your thoughts, you’d end up in a situation you won’t be ready to deal with.

So when you poke at your food and sigh to yourself, you almost miss the way the stool beside you scrapes against the floor as you cringe.

You turn to shoot a petty glare at the person, and you see Jennie; casually tearing open her chips and popping one into her mouth

You blink at her, and you’re left even more speechless when she juts her hand out as if to offer you a shrimp cracker. Like it was a weird symbol of a truce. Even if you weren’t really … enemies.

“Want some?”

You stare at her, and before you can think twice your lips are moving.

“The crackers or your company?” You say dryly.

Her eyes widen, and so does yours. You didn’t expect to say your exact thoughts and you don’t think she expected a quiet, timid girl like you to have said that—out loud at least. Like Yena said, everyone has a mean bone in them. Some longer and larger than others, but they were still there.

“Wow.” She huffs, but she doesn’t seem offended. “Rude, much?”

You wince and feel compelled to apologise. “Sorry.”

She waves you off and you feel odd to be sitting next to her. You always expected her to be more malicious, a lot more of a bitch. And you frown to yourself because you suppose it’s your own preconceived notions of her due to the association she has with Jungkook that had you thinking of her that way.

“What’s someone like you doing here on a weekday?” She asks off-handedly.

The term ‘someone like you’ doesn’t sit well with you, and you scowl.

“I’m eating. What does it look like?” You retort, and Jennie only raises an eyebrow at your response. Much like an angry kitten.

“Damn, I was just asking.” She mutters under her breath, “I’m hungry. Needed a snack.” She shakes the crackers in front of you, “You sure you don’t want one?”

You can’t believe her as you gape at her easy-going state when she thrusts the bag of crackers into your face yet again.

“No.” You furrow your brows, gently pushing it away as she shrugs her shoulders.

“It’s good.” She reasons, and you don’t know why she’s so adamant about having you take one.

The irrational part of you thinks she wants to poison you, to eliminate you for good so she won’t have to deal with your pathetic pining over a person that wasn’t even yours.

“I know.” You mutter. “I tried it before.”

Jennie nods her head slowly, observing the content of the packet on the back before she turns to face you, “Jungkook introduced this to me. Didn’t see the appeal but it’s addictive.”

You freeze, and your ramen soup is getting cold with the way you haven’t prodded at it for a while and in the air-conditioning in the convenience store. You feel your stomach drop, especially now that your initial suspicions were confirmed.

“That’s nice.” You grit. It really isn’t.

“Did he introduce it to you?” She asks with a tilt of her head.

Why you’re still talking to her, or why she was bothering to talk to you when she’s ignored you all this while—you aren’t sure. But you still answer her despite the spite that forms in your chest.

“I introduced it to him.” You inform.

She hums, unbothered. It only irritates you more.

“Is there a reason?” You huff. “Why you’re here?”

She raises an eyebrow, “I’m hungry?”

You scoff. “No.” You slam the table ever so slightly because even if you were annoyed and confused, you weren’t that brave and you didn’t want to cause a scene at a convenience store at midnight. “Why are you here. Talking to me.”

Jennie blinks at you, then stares at you for seconds too long that you flush under her unwavering stare before she ends up in a fit of giggles. You almost think she’s here to mock you, to call you out on your pathetic and humiliating pining for someone who doesn’t care about you the same way you do to him. But she pats you on the shoulder, and you want to think it’s condescending but it doesn’t seem that way at all.

“You’re an acquaintance. You looked like you needed the company.”

You frown, “I don’t.”

She rolls her eyes, munching on another chip.

“You do. Your posture looks depressing.”

“Excuse me?” You scowl.

“It’s true.” She shrugs. “You don’t seem the type to be here wallowing unless it’s really bad. You seem like you have your shit together.”

And because your mind is already muddled and confused, and filled with irrational thoughts. Her words set you off, and you seem to be underrating or overreacting more than usual. So you snap, you shove your cup aside that the soup nearly sloshes out and send her a glare so blazing that Jennie’s caught off guard.

“And you think you know me well enough to gauge whether or not I’m ‘like this’ or the type to have a perfect mental breakdown regimen because I’m smart?” You seethe. Jennie’s eyes widen. “I have mental breakdowns like every other student and I binge eat when I’m stressed and I fuck up from time to time. I curse, yes! I see your face. Oh does she not curse? Well, look at me, bitch. I can curse like a motherfucking sailor at sea when the fishes come because I’m human. I’m just like you. So fuck off with your ‘you seem like you have your shit together’ because I don’t and I’m so fucking annoyed with your stupid face whenever I see it because it only reminds me of Jungkook!”

The silence is defining, even the cashier stops counting his bills for the night because you don’t hear the rubbing of money together. You feel his stare on your back, and more pressingly, you feel Jennie’s shocked expression linger on your face, and now that you’ve come down from your rage. Your face heats up in embarrassment.

You don’t even recall what you said, except for the fact you’ve mentioned her and Jungkook in the same sentence. And your face pales.

“I …” She chokes.

You flush, before you’re turning away, snatching your belongings to leave and forget this convenience store and never return because you don’t think you can show your face here ever again.

But before you’re able to make a run for it, a hand grabs your elbow that stops you from moving any further.

“This is already as embarrassing—” You exasperate, trying to snatch your arm away.

“For a girl so smart, you’re really dumb, aren’t you?” She deadpans.

You gape, finding enough strength to retrieve your arm as you stare at her with a dumbfounded expression.

“Excuse me—?”

“Firstly, let’s unpack what you just said because there are a lot of things that need to be dissected here.” She says blankly.

You scowl, “Look I don’t—”

“One.” She blinks as if she was doing a presentation for a course and not talking to an alleged acquaintance. “I don’t think you should act a certain way just because you’re smart. You’re entitled to your own mechanisms and I’m not judging you for them. I was simply pointing out my own observations, and I’m sorry for being insensitive.”

You’re stunned to silence, because did Jennie just … apologise to you?

“Two.” She says. You listen silently. “I think you have things you need to talk to Jungkook about, and frankly—I would’ve stayed away if I knew that the two of you were a thing.”

“We’re not a thing!” You cry, face flushed.

She shoots you an unimpressed look, “Really. So that oddly targeted blow-up was because of your mental breakdown and not because you don’t have feelings for Jungkook?”

She’s the third person to call you out the same day, or within the first one in the next. And it’s even more embarrassing because it’s the girl you’ve compared yourself to countless times because of your own insecurities.

“Yes.” You snap childishly.

Jennie sighs, gesturing for you to sit on the stool. You want to defy her out of spite, but you’ve already gotten this far into the conversation and you feel like you’d miss out on something if you left now.

“Why are you mad at me?” She asks.

“I-I’m not mad—” You weakly protest.

“You are. There’s anger in you and if it’s not directed to Jungkook then it’s directed to me. Is it because I’m a woman?”

Your eyes widen, “What—?”

“Let me reword that,” She sighs. “Is it because I’m the woman with Jungkook?”

You flinch at her declaration, especially since she indirectly confessed to being with him, while you weren’t.

“I don’t …” You trail off in a whisper.

“I don’t blame you for being angry.” She says. “But I need you to understand that I would never have done anything with him if I knew that the two of you were together.”

“We’re not.” You blink, and her unimpressed look is still there that makes you speak a little louder. “We’re not together.”

She opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it. You see her furrow her eyebrows before she settles for a response that comes a few moments after.

“Okay, then if you’re not together then why the resentment?” She puts it so simply and now that you’re listening to her, you feel a lot stupider.

“I just …” You croak, fiddling with your fingers, “I don’t …”

She sighs, “Listen. We’re both women here. I know how it feels to be left in the dark when it comes to things like this but there’s no point in being angry at me when in reality it’s Jungkook you need to talk to. If you aren’t together then I don’t understand why you’re angry with me—or with him.”

You sit there in silence, nearly pouting like a scolded child.

“You’re his type.” You say softly.

Jennie pauses before she raises an eyebrow.

“And you believe that?”

You furrow your eyebrows, “I mean, of course?” You mumble, “You’re pretty, confident and sexy. Any guy would like you.”

For a moment, you think you’ve said too much. Looked to vulnerable. But Jennie doesn’t do the typical mean girl thing where she laughs in your face and threatens to expose you. Instead, her eyes soften, and her hand reaches out to hold yours.

“____.” She calls your name gently, and you look away, embarrassed. “You’re pretty. You’re confident. You are sexy.”

You flush, “No. I’m not.”

She scoffs, “_____, there isn’t a set definition of what a pretty woman is like. Nor is there a one-dimensional understanding of a confident woman. There are confident women who strut in their walk and commands all the attention in the room. But there are also quiet, assured women who are intelligent and confident in their capabilities. Both of them are so different, but the one thing that they have in common?” She prompts as your eyebrows furrow. “They’re both women who are worthy of love.”

You blink up at her when her tone goes softer.

“I don’t think I’m Jungkook’s type.” She tells you.

But for some reason you need to deny it, again.

“I think you are.” You mumble, “You’re … you. And you’re probably … experienced.” You cringe at what you say, and you’re mortified if you need to explain yourself to her. But Jennie immediately picks up on it, and you don’t notice how she tenses for a split second but recovers immediately.

“We’ve done things together, yes.” You feel your heart shatter, “But you don’t have to do anything with him for him to like you.”

You sigh, “Maybe. But that's the only way he’s ever wanted me.” You say so softly that Jennie almost doesn’t catch it.

Jennie’s face softens much more, turning into a much gentler expression as she nudges your chin to look at her. And when you do, you feel wounded. You feel so much less assured than you were when you were raging at her. You hated it, how she treated you so kindly when she should’ve been cursing at you like you did to her.

“Do you want to know something?” She asks.

You nibble on your lips before you nod your head.

“If someone doesn’t want you. It’s not because you’re lacking. It’s because they’re lacking the sense to perceive you in a way that recognises your inherent worth to be loved.”

Your breath hitches and Jennie continues.

“I’ve had instances where men didn’t want to sleep with me because I was too confident, too sexually liberated for them. As if who I slept with mattered because it wasn’t them. It was never going to be them.”

“I didn’t sleep with Jungkook.” You tell her, voice soft as if you needed to clarify.

“And you don’t need to. You don’t need to sleep with anyone for them to want you. If Jungkook only wants you for your body then he doesn’t deserve you.” She points out.

You feel your heart clench, and the realisation coming from Jennie only hurts even more.

“But he’s important to me …” You whisper.

“What’s important is not always what’s good for you.” She informs you with a gentle smile. “Your sexuality is yours. And if you want to sleep or be sexual with someone, you do it because you want to. Not because someone coerced you into doing it.”

Your eyes widened, “N-No. Jungkook didn’t force me. I consented. To all of it.” You murmur, “I wanted to do it. B-But I just felt so … lacking? In comparison and … since then all he’s came to me for was just … that.”

Jennie nibbles on her bottom lip, “Jungkook’s not a bad person.” She says softly. And she’s the second person that tells you that. So you know it’s a true reflection of his character.

“I know.”

She smiles, “We both do.” She nods, “But he’s misguided. He’s never had the ability to be with someone he really cares for and I think when that happened—he dealt with it the only way he knows how to.”

You furrow your brows, “But he’s with you.”

She shakes her head with a small chuckle, “No. Not emotionally, at least.” She informs. “And he doesn’t care about me. I know. He’s always kept me at arms-length away, and I’m fine with that because I don’t like him like that either.”

You blink, and your ears turn red. “H-How do you—?”

“How do I separate lust from affection?” She laughs. “It’s because I can. Not everyone can do that, and Jungkook is one of them.”

“But you just said that he didn’t care about you.”

“I’m not talking about me,” She smiles sadly.

Your eyebrows scrunch in confusion until you realise what she was implying. And you don’t want to assume anything, never. Because hope was the one feeling that was worse than fear and you didn’t want to subject yourself to that just yet.

“Oh.” You mumble.

She nods, squeezing your hand.

“I think he misses you.”

You purse your lips.

You missed him, too.

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