#but I live in the US south so we say it in 3

[skamenglishsubs]

Subtext and Culture, Young Royals, Season 3, Episode 6

Out here in the real world it's been a week since the cliffhanger ending of episode 5 where Simon broke up with Wilhelm, but in-universe it's just the next day, and Wilhelm is being comforted by Felice.

Subtext: This entire episode is incredibly meta, there are so many times characters say things that reference earlier seasons or episodes, or the entire series as a whole. This is the first time, and Felice is saying what we're all thinking. IS IT REALLY OVER?!? 😱

Blink and you miss it: Felice gives Wilhelm her sunglasses and dries his tears so he can hide the fact that he's been crying. Also, look at that gorgeous Swedish summer. It is so pretty.

Culture: The third-years are painting the banners that go on the trucks on graduation day.

Culture: They're also signing each others' student hats, which is a common tradition. You can just sign your name or write something funny or do whatever.

Culture: This car is what we in Sweden call a sossecontainer. It's an old 90's Volvo, it's square, it's ugly, and it was pretty cheap and reliable, so it was very common and popular among working class and the lower middle classes. It was never a high-status car, so it perfectly illustrates the Eriksson family.

Subtext: Oh look, another throwback to season 1 when Sara argued with Simon about their dad, and said that he should stop giving people second chances.

Culture: Oh look, another poem by Karin Boye. This time it's Eternity, a poem about cherishing your time with your loved one, and the text is about how good times feel like an endless summer, which is what it certainly looks like for the kids and their teacher in the lush landscape. But just like in the poem, their endless summer is about to end.

Culture: This is pretty much exactly the reason used when real-world Lundsberg was temporarily closed.

Culture: And Wilhelm isn't wrong, the shitty traditions are in the walls of the place, it's always been like that, and it's always been upheld by everyone involved with the school, parents, teachers, staff, and students.

Subtext: Since this is the last episode, let's prepare the viewers to say good bye to the show, and let's do it with a little montage of students crying and taking their stuff down and emptying their rooms.

Culture: This is a 100% factually true statement, Göteborg is the worst city in the world. Source: I'm a native Stockholmer, and you just have to trust me on this, ok? Look, it's just common sense, alright? Don't listen to people from Göteborg, they're just jealous they're not living in the glorious capital. Also, they talk funny. And they have no sense of humour! And everyone is named Glenn or something.

Culture: I don't think they're referencing an actual school here, and the current Norwegian royal children went to school in Norway, not Switzerland. But the current Danish crown prince went to some boarding school in Switzerland for a while, but then he went to the Danish elite boarding school Herlufsholm. However, it was rocked by a bullying scandal in 2022, so they had to pull him out of that one and deny all knowledge of the events. Feels familiar?

Culture: Solliden is the private summer palace of the real-world Swedish royal family located on Öland, an island off the south-east coast of Sweden. The show has consistently stayed away from every likeness with the real world, but I guess they couldn't be arsed making up a fictional summer palace for the YR royal family so they went with something familiar.

Subtext: Farima is talking about the problems of finding a new school for Wilhelm from an academic perspective, but he's just thinking about how this means he won't be close to Simon any longer.

Culture: Vincent and the boys are pouring one out for Hillerska. It's a way to toast a dead friend, or in this case, a place.

Blink and you miss it: August places a king chess piece on the table before telling his friends that he's Wilhelm's reserve and might be king someday.

Subtext: And he's still so blinded by the glamour of it, despite everything. Thankfully, his friends can bring him down a couple of pegs.

Blink and you miss it: While Wilhelm is returning Kris, the book from last season, the second book in the pile is a book by Kjell Westö, Den Svavelgula Himlen - Yellow Sulphur Sky. It's about a working class kid in Finland becoming friends with his upper-class neighbour family, and his struggle maintaining a relationship with the girl of the family because of their class differences. Slightly on the nose there, show.

Meta: Henry interrupting our boys at the worst possible time is just a running joke at this point. How many times has it happened now? Four times? Five? Read the fucking room, Henry!

Subtext: Last chance to have a party together, but also last chance to see Simon, "maybe ever". Oh no, we have to start preparing for a sad ending!

Culture: Red solo cups are not a thing anywhere outside the US really, but you can buy them as a gag gift in Sweden, because to us they're just a weird movie prop we've seen American movies. Every other party scene in the show has featured regular plastic cups.

Culture: Drinking with the teachers?!? Yeah, sure, why not, everyone is an adult.

Subtext: Emo outfit? ✅ Sitting on the floor? ✅ Full of self-pity? ✅ Exaggerating the catastrophic state of his world in the way only a 17yo disaster boy can do? ✅

Meta: Another throwback to how Wilhelm was referred to as the party prince back in season 1.

Blink and you miss it: Felice hides the wine bottle behind her back before Malin comes in. She knows, Felice. Malin knows everything.

Meta: Another throwback to when Wilhelm was eating the dirt at the very same football field that disaster emo boy Simon is now sitting at together with his friends, who are trying to convince him to go to the final party.

Subtext: This time, August isn't just sorry that he got caught, he is genuinely sorry for everything he did to Wilhelm. He in turn forgives August, and we're all getting closure for this plot point.

Meta: Hey, hey, hey guys, do you remember that scene in season 1 episode 1 when Sara helped hold Felice's hair while she was throwing up? We're doing a throwback here!

Meta: Hey, hey, hey guys, do you remember that scene in season 1 episode 3 when Felice told Sara that maybe you don't have to speak the truth all the time? Well, Sara still doesn't understand why you would lie, but this time she's right, Felice was right to tell the truth.

Blink and you miss it: Stella and Fredrika are making out at the party, Felice saw it, and is making a very funny face. This is also why Stella rudely rejects Rosh, because of course she's gonna choose Fredrika, Rosh was just a distraction to make her jealous.

Subtext: Vincent is talking about Nils, who just came out, but August just saw Sara, and that's the whoever he wants.

Subtext: But despite saying that he doesn't care about anyone else seeing them, he still ducked behind a stack of pallets for this conversation.

Meta: This is a brutal Fleabag reference.

Cinematography: This scene is overwhelmingly lit in that sickly greenish fluorescent hue, but there's golden light coming from somewhere, so Sara and August share one final kiss in that golden light. But there's not enough of it to go around, not enough for their love to last, so August is left standing there alone, and all the golden light is gone.

Cinematography: Wilhelm and Simon left the party sometime after midnight, this is supposed to be a very early morning summer sunrise, and our boys are just gonna be bathed in the golden light throughout the entire scene. Gods, it is pretty.

Meta: Hey, hey, remember that scene in season 1 when Simon was singing that song, and Wilhelm instantly fell for him?

Meta: Hey guys, remember that scene in season 1 when they were discussing welfare politics in class and Simon threw shade on Wilhelm? This is a throwback to that.

Cinematography: Just fucking look at this shit. What a nice view. The nature and the sunrise is pretty, too! Going naked into the water? Yeah, that's a rebirth metaphor as well. Lisa said so!

Subtext: This entire scene is basically Wilhelm trying one last time to get Simon back. They said they weren't gonna, but he's trying anyway. They're talking about that politics class where Wilhelm couldn't speak up because he was "not allowed". So he's still bound by his royal duties, which is why Simon broke up with him last episode.

Subtext: And since Wilhelm is still stuck, he's left on dry land, while Simon swims away from him, free. Guys, I'm thinking we're actually gonna get a sad ending! This does not look good! 😭

Blink and you miss it: Stella and Fredrika are sleeping in the same bed and making out the morning after, and millions of #Stedrika shippers are rejoicing! Yay, fanservice!

Blink and you miss it: Walter is helping Henry up after he passed out in the grass outside after the party, and millions of #Walty shippers are rejoicing! Yay, fanservice!

Subtext: The last photo Wilhelm takes down from his wall is the one with him and Simon, because that's the most important memory of this place.

Blink and you miss it: Wilhelm shuts off his red lightstrip in his room. Those lights have typically been a symbol of his love for Simon, but he's turning it off. Sad ending confirmed.

Meta: Listen, it's a lovely little song that Simon wrote for Wilhelm, but it's 100% fanservice, it's referencing events in the show that Simon actually didn't witness, and it's even referencing the soundtrack to the show itself! I mean, come on! And we're getting yet another sad boy Wilhelm montage of him moping around Hillerska with his earbuds.

Subtext: Remember how the frog snowglobe was a gift from Erik, who in turn got it from their grandpa, the king? It's so obviously a symbol of the monarchy, but Wilhelm is dumping it in the trash. Are we... Are we not getting a sad ending?

Cinematography: The shot of the flag being raised is cut off at half mast, which is a pretty universal symbol for mourning. Oh ok, we're back on track for a sad ending.

Subtext: This is the first time this season that Simon speaks Spanish with his mom, and the first time in the entire series that Sara does, which shows that they're fully themselves again, they've pulled themselves out of the Hillerska world.

Culture: The graduating students are having a champagne breakfast before the graduation ceremony, that's also very common in Sweden.

Subtext: Felice and the rest of the choir decided to have a little rebellion and not sing the boring old Hillerska song, and instead the new improved one that Simon made last season. No-one told him about the switch though, which is why he's so surprised.

Culture: After the ceremony, the graduating students will run out of the school to find their parents and family and friends, who are waiting for them, usually with a big sign with the most embarrassing baby picture they could find of them.

Blink and you miss it: August's mom and stepdad have also made a huge sign with an embarrassing picture of August Malte as a kid. Adorable.

Lost in translation: The queen is saying "lilla gubben", which literally means "little old man", a very common term of endearment in Swedish families. The show has been pretty consistent in that Wilhelm's family are all using normal words, just like any other family would. So it's pretty funny that despite everyone else using titles and styles all the time, to Wilhelm, his parents are simply "mamma" and "pappa", as if he was a regular kid.

Subtext: As a graduating student you get little gifts from your family, flowers, champagne, stuffed animals, all with a blue-and-yellow ribbon so you can hang them around your neck. August is family, so the Queen gives him one as well. Of a frog with a crown. Which is a symbol of the monarchy in the show. Wilhelm threw his frog in the trash, August is getting a frog from the Queen. I think there might be symbolism here! I think we're setting up August to become the next king! Do we dare hope for a happy ending?

Cinematography: Just fucking look at this shit. The composition, the contrast, the height difference, the distance between them. It's so pretty. And they're talking about how good it was while it lasted, just like how a TV show with a sad ending can still be an amazing experience. Hint hint.

Subtext: We're saying our goodbyes, Wilhelm and Simon are saying goodbye to each other, Wilhelm wishes Simon a nice summer, just like how Simon wished Wilhelm a good Christmas back in season 1, and just like back then, they both understand that they love each other, but can't be together.

Cinematography: And then Simon exits the scene, again, leaving Wilhelm standing there alone, again, having seemingly chosen his family and royal duty.

Culture: It's common to either rent a truck as a large group of students, or to be driven in a flashy car alone or with a friend. The two girls in the centre are sitting in a very nice Aston Martin, while a bunch of their classmates are on a truck. I can't make out the full text on the banner, but I think it says something like "Lock up your sons because tonight we become like animals".

Culture: Svensson is a very common Swedish last name, so to "be a Svensson" basically means that you're super average and mediocre, you're like everyone else. Whereas these elite kids are used to having everyone else bow and scrape for them, so that message is on brand.

Cinematography: We're in the car, it looks like the ending of season 1, and we're doing a close-up of Wilhelm's face. We're ready for the fourth-wall-break of him staring sadly into the camera, having been once again broken down by the system and not getting the boy. We've said goodbye to everyone, roll the credits, start your crying...

Cinematography: ...except the show isn't ending here. We're having an honest conversation between Wilhelm and his parents for the first time. Because every other time he's said that he doesn't want to be crown prince of the next king, he's been angry or upset, he's been threatening, and definitely impulsive. But he's never wanted any of it.

Cinematography: His parents let him go, they open the door to their van, Wilhelm exits, and the show turns up the volume of the soundtrack. "Energetic music" my ass, it's the Harmony theme! It's the main theme of the entire show playing as Wilhelm runs away.

Subtext: Oh, yeah, August sees him run away, and understands that he's next in line now. Sorry buddy, sucks to be you, but never mind that now. RUN, WILHELM, RUN!!! GET YOUR MAN!

Cinematography: The shows turns into the most perfect rom-com, with Wilhelm chasing down Simon's car through the incredibly lush and green Swedish summer. He catches up to them, tells Simon that he ditched the crown for his own sake, and asks if it's really over between them.

VAD FAN TROR DU?

As if the soundtrack wasn't triumphant enough, it now starts playing As Long As you Are Here as they throw themselves in each other's arms. Happy ending! They're crying, I'm crying, we're all crying! 😭

Cinematography: A montage? With all the best scenes between our boys from the entire show? With the text of the soundtrack perfectly matching the montage? I should be outraged at how cheesy this is, but it is perfect. Perfect. I love it. I swear, this fucking show.

Subtext: Finally we are at the true ending of the show. Wilhelm has managed to escape Hillerska, him and Simon and Sara and Felice have all escaped the hierarchies, the expectations, the duties, and the toxic environment of the school. He arrived in a Ferrari, and is now running away with his boyfriend and friends in a crappy Volvo station-wagon. The stiff suit jackets are gone, they're all in white, his hair is ruffled in the wind, and for the last time ever Wilhelm looks into the camera. And he smiles.

He is finally free.

#young royals #young royals subtext #young royals analysis #young royals season 3

[vsaintsin]

Writeblr Re-Intro

Yo! I'm V Saintsin. Or V or Vin or Saintsin or whatever you want to call me that sounds right on your tongue. I'm a self-proclaimed Social Media fumbler who got a late start to the party and has never quite figured it out. I hate how hipster and edgy it sounds to say "I'm bad at social media" but like I used to work with some people who actually managed the social media accounts for the business we worked for and there were rules and whatnot and damn, I think online media is just not my medium. That being said, here I am! Hah

I'm an author and general mess who's hoping to be the miracle man (somebody who makes a living writing silly little stories). I do use a pseudonym but please hear me out when I say I didn't realize how edgy it sounds, it just has some sentimental value to my personal life. I'm so sorry that I sound like I'm in my emo phase HAHA

About me -

He/Him Transguy from the American Midwest (arguably the south, depending on who you talk to, but the older people still say "Sodi-pop" and "ope").

I'm dysautonomic, bendy, permanently sleepy, and a survivor of Crappy Doctors Who Suck At Doctoring.

I like DnD, Pathfinder, Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk, Dragon Age, and other things in that vein.

I do make art of my stories and characters (Tablet is currently not working so I'm in a dry spell).

My writing background is predominantly ancient, dusty RPs from as far back as the foopets days and fanfic writing on Quizilla - I am an old and wizened elder of the net.

My formal education was music performance and behavioral neuroscience, I don't really know how I got where I am.

This is not my first rodeo with tumblr but it is the first time I have anything to SAY instead of just lurking.

In the event of malfunction, you can put me outside for 5 minutes and I'll probably factory reset.

My existence as I know it hinges on a massive number of sticky notes plastered throughout my room.

What I'm lookin' for -

Idk, whatever? I'm down for most things. Did you write it? Cool, let me see. I'm not too bent on genre or anything, just fascinated by the art of storytelling.

A bit tentative with fanfiction but that's just because if it's not a fandom I'm familiar with I am rather clueless about what the hell is going on and if it's a fandom I am familiar with I HUNT DOWN THE DEEP LORE.

I like art a whole lot, including fanart. Also art advice, love seeing things from different perspectives and learning something new.

Mutuals, really, for any reason. Building better connections on here, getting to know people. I am hideously bad at this but I try.

What I write -

Science Fiction with heavy subjects that matter to me - trigger warnings on a story-by-story basis.

High Fantasy (eventually books I think?) characters and their backgrounds for DnD and Pathfinder - I have been tempted to share these to help people get ideas or just for free use?

Things that I delete because I have crippling imposter syndrome and publishing makes me nauseous (doin' it tho).

Stories that I hope will make people feel less alone or that people could relate to, stories that I wish I had when life was worse and I was reaching out for anything I could find to keep me afloat, stories that try to be critical of things that SUCK in a way that's any helpful.

Lots of curse words and cussing (that's just how people talk 'round here), dubious science, things that I hope might make you cry but in a good way though.

Character-Driven stories that revolve more around the development of the person and less around the plot itself if that makes sense.

I've put blurb things below for my primary project/series which features a grumpy, queer, 37-year old chain smoking Frenchman and his misadventures with life and love and unbridled rage. If any of that sounds cool stick around and hang out? (This part is a plug bc I did a thing and I'm proud of it) And if my books sounds interesting the first one is 99 cents on Kindle and you just need a phone and a free app to read it!

THE SECRET OF LIFE (Published) - Sci-Fi/Psychological Thriller, Bi M Lead, Lovers to Enemies, AI but the oldschool cool kind not the real world thing that's stealing our future

Carlisle-Trystan Antoinette is a mercenary on a hard road, navigating life and death itself in an infinite cycle started by powers above his understanding. He has one mission - warn The Dianican Space Station of the coming threat and put a stop to a war that would encapsulate the whole of the Sol System before it can ever begin. Unfortunately for Carlisle, reality is a tenuous thing, made up only by our understanding of it. At least, according to his Psychiatrist, who tells him that there is no war, that he was never a mercenary, and that what Carlisle is experiencing is a severe but manageable psychotic break. Stripped of his combat enhancements, his bio monitor, and everything he's every known, Carlisle has a decision to make. Does he give in to the thoughts and memories, so real that he can almost taste them, or does he live a life of comfort and ease, returning to a husband and daughter that he left behind?

TWs: Domestic and War Violence, suicide, rape, medical trauma, grief, drug use

THE SILENCE OF ANGELS (Due July '24, TSoL 2) - Betrayal and Rage, Learning how to love again slow-burn romantic subplot, Learning how to Dad, A general inability for any one thing to just go right

(Quick Rough Blurb that offers no spoilers for TSoL) Making connections isn't easy for somebody who's accustomed to burning bridges. Isolation has always been Carlisle's mantra for surviving his life. Playing a role comes second nature, pretending to be the man that everyone else wants to see in him. When an old friend is murdered Carlisle finds himself as the primary suspect with all evidence pointing to him so clearly that even he calls to question what he is capable of. Unwilling to believe that he could commit such a heinous crime, Carlisle sets off to find the truth of his friend's death - was Carlisle framed or does he truly have the capacity to bring such harm upon those he loves? Old and new bonds will be tested, faith broken, and the future of everyone called into question as lines are drawn and sides are picked.

TWs: Violence, mentions of SA, graphic character death, more grief, more death

I don't know what else to say... Later!

#booklr #lgbt fiction #writeblr #writeblr intro #authors

[dubiousdisco]

oh yikes so bolsonaro tried to kill off the amazonas people with covid and lula/alckmin is gonna kill us with poverty, i see

#remember kids no politician wants you to live #:( #we're going back to sewing our clothes back together until it becomes the ship of theseus I see #especially if the country has been telling the rest of the world that there's no “civilized” people in your state #only salvages and terra nullius yet somehow there's a whole ass factory and it's been the capital of the country at some point #and the índios don't count it seems #i hate living here <3 just kill us already babes #xandão stopped bolsonaro from doing it saying it ruin our lives but he's letting lula/alckmin do this #really only cared about this because it would help bolsonaro be more popular with the south i hate politicians so fucking much #we will be able to eat less and have less leisure but people who earn less than us and depend on the zona franca??? they're screwed

[inkskinned]

i love finding out how big this world is. my girlfriend has only visited boston a handful of times, but i grew up here. i told her we'd be going to do the tourist traps in salem, and she said - which salem?

to be fair to her, there are a lot of other states that have a town named "salem." and i think there's some evidence that the witch trials actually happened in what is now called Danvers. but the thing is - she thought "salem" was like, a made-up thing. there wasn't actually a salem, massachusetts - like there isn't a gotham city.

they don't talk about it that much where she grew up, is the thing! and this made me laugh. a week ago she was talking about her hometown and said something akin to "well the museum's kinda like the one in richmond," and i had to explain i still had no frame of reference for what the hell this museum was like.

i love finding out what knowledge i take for granted. i used to live with 5 other women. 3 of them were from south korea. they had to take, like, a solid fifteen minutes to explain their birthday system to my gay math-blind ass, laughing as they did.

that same month, our roommate from denmark taught me the danish word for wreath by accident - she'd been talking about decorations, used krans, and i'd been able to figure it out through context. i just picked it up and kept talking. our entire house used krans as the word. she came home and slammed the door one evening, mock-angry, shouting: you motherfuckers! it's a - a wreath!

and how often do you use certain words, anyway! i am cuban, so i was raised with certain spanish words sort of sprinkled in there; but never how you'd think. in middle school i asked someone to pass me the recogedor - in a completely american accent, like i was speaking english. i hadn't registered it as a spanish word. i mean, how often in school do you actually use the word "dustpan" - i'd only ever heard it in the context of cleaning my house.

there are places that you grew up that you, just, like, know. that you assume everyone knows. there are things and people and "common knowledge" that you have that, just, like. doesn't exist for me. i don't know what you call your public transportation system, but in boston we call it "the T". our train cards are called charlie cards because of a song where a father accidentally abandons his family, which was written because our system of transportation. in boston, most people would snort and say everyone knows that, kid.

i think you and i should go on a long walk - it's getting dark early these days and we need any sun we can manage. tell me about the first time you saw snow. tell me about the stuff everyone knows about your home. tell me about the cities "everyone's been to," about the food "everyone's already tried." who knows. maybe it will feel nice to you - watching someone learn about it for the very first time.

#spilled ink #warm up #4/10 #loved this interaction with them tho i have to be honest.

[lilyginnyblackv2]

Social Issues that Help with Understanding Buddy Daddies

Here are some political, social, and cultural aspects of Japanese culture that I think is important to keep in mind when watching Buddy Daddies. Please note: this is a super long post, with lots of pictures. 

1. Human Trafficking - Slave Labor

In Episode One, we learn that Miri’s birth father was involved in labor based human trafficking involving Southeast Asian individuals. This is currently a very big issue in Japan, since Southeast Asian immigrants (among others) are viewed as a cheap labor option and usually experience slave labor like conditions.

From The United States Department of State website:

Men, women, and children from Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and Africa travel to Japan for employment or fraudulent marriage and are subjected to sex trafficking. Traffickers use fraudulent marriages between foreign women and Japanese men to facilitate the entry of women into Japan for sex trafficking in bars, clubs, brothels, and massage parlors. Traffickers keep victims in forced labor or commercial sex using debt-based coercion, threats of violence or deportation, blackmail, confiscation of passports and other documents, and other psychologically coercive methods.

2. Drugs in Japan

When I was living and working as an ALT in Japan, two ALTs (in a different district, but within the same company of my own), got caught with drugs. It was a big deal and ended up in the newspapers. The company I worked for had to do a lot of PR work with the elementary and junior high schools that they had contracts with, to ensure that the contracts would remain. As for me and the other ALTs? We had to sit through like five separate meetings within like two months about drugs and drug laws in Japan. 

The barebones takeaway is that, in Japan, weed is viewed as being on the same level as hardcore drugs. Charges can be steep and strict. Even just knowing that someone has drugs, and you don’t say anything to law enforcement about it, can get you in trouble. There is a grey area with drugs, which is stuff like bath salts and the like. Since the selling of things like that cannot be prohibited, so they are easily accessible to the public. 

Japan still has a very “90′s D.A.R.E.” approach to drugs. It’s catchphrase is 「ダメ。ゼッタイ。」or “No! Never.”

(Image from a Web Magazine called Nagasaki Press.)

When celebrities are caught with (what’s usually) weed, it can basically be the end of their careers, since recreational drug use of any kind (excluding alcohol, of course), is still negatively looked down upon in Japanese society. This is why it is still heavily left in the hands of the yakuza and drug kingpins, etc. Though there has been a recent increase in protests and ideology surrounding the idea of legalizing weed. Still, not much acceptance for recreational use is likely to come yet. However...

There may soon be some revision to the laws, which will allow for medical use:

Legislation changes scheduled for 2023

In 2021, the MHLW established an expert committee to review the Cannabis Control Act, and it is expected revisions will be proposed in a bill to be submitted in 2023. This will most likely allow for the use of medical cannabis. 2022/12/02

From: Euromonitor

So, something to keep in mind when Kazuki talks about a drug kingpin here is that this drug kingpin is likely not just dealing with super, hardcore drugs, but also softer ones too, like weed.

3. Child Protection Squad

There is this misconception in Japan that really young kids, like Miri’s age, can just roam free all around Japan and no one will find it odd. In Episode 1, we do see Miri roaming around the city without anyone really taking notice, but she also wasn’t in an area where there would be people that are trained to take notice.

In the above image she is at a park, which is likely close to a school somewhere. The man that approaches her here has a band around his jacket sleeve that says こども見守り隊 (kodomo mimamori-tai), which gets translated to “Child Protection Squad.” Basically, these are like crossing guards, in a way, because they do play a similar role to that, but they also do more than that as well:

(Image from the Japanese website: Nice Senior).

This people basically ensure that kids stay on the right paths on their way to school. Most of the time, when elementary school children head off to school, they will go in groups (with the 5th or 6th graders being the leaders) and there will often be older people outside their houses on their way in, keeping an eye on the children to make sure they get to school okay. 

And that’s talking about elementary school aged kids. For ones that are around Miri’s age, usually the parents (mostly mothers) will bring them by bike:

Or they will get picked up by a bus:

This one looks pretty boring in comparison to some others you might see though, like these:

(Image from the Hiyoshidai School Website)

Sometimes the daycare workers will also take them on little excursions outside using big strollers for the kids to travel around in:

(The image is obviously from a stock photo site called fotostock, but yeah, I’ve seen these before when I lived in Japan).

But a little toddler just sitting on her own at a mostly empty park with just a guy sitting at a park bench nearby watching her? That would raise attention and an eyebrow from someone who is essentially a crossing guard and whose job is to ensure the safety of kids as they travel to and from school. 

The rest is under a Read More.

4. Police in Japan

I saw a comment somewhere (maybe it was over on Youtube) about how the cops are portrayed here in Buddy Daddies. The comment was basically that Japanese cops wouldn’t be that aggressive with a child. But, well, cops in Japan have issues like everywhere. Though, the main issue with cops recently has more so been with racial profiling:

(Excerpt is from a Japan Times article entitled:  60% of people with foreign roots questioned by Japanese police, survey finds).

Of course, this situation is different from the one we see happening with Miri, but the Japanese police have issues with corruption too. So this happening wouldn’t seem too out of the realm of possibilities to me. The anime Tiger & Bunny 2 Part 2 also recently had some moments in the season where there was some anti-cop (ACAB-type) sentiments expressed by a character (though that series is also meant to take place in a city based on NYC).

5. Issues Surrounding Reproductive Rights, Contraception, and Abortion

“Took advantage of me” is fairly vague wording, but considering the type of guy he was, and the fact that Miri’s mother is caught in another abusive relationship, it wouldn’t surprise me if Miri’s conception wasn’t fully consensual one. People like to talk about how safe Japan is, but Japan has a lot of sexual violence that goes unreported: 

(From an article entitled:  Many sexual violence victims in Japan do not report assaults to police, support groups: survey - The article was posted on November 24, 2020 over on The Mainichi news website).

There is a lot of societal pressure in Japan, that can cause a lot of judgement as well. Especially around issues of reproductive rights. From a Japan Times articles entitled:  Pandemic provides an opportunity to improve access to contraception, posted on January 30th, 2022, we can get a little insight into the issues surrounding contraceptives:

The article also talked about the judgement that can come with contraceptives. The last line also talks about abortion, which comes with its own set of issues in Japan:

(From The Japan Times article: Abortion legal and apolitical in Japan, but cost and consent present barriers)

So abortion was likely an option that Miri’s mother didn’t think was really viable, especially in her situation.

7. Being a Single Mother in Japan, Adoption

In Ep.3 we hear Kazuki parroting a lot of the stuff you usually hear when it comes to women in children, like it is meant to be a natural and innate thing. There is a societal pressure for a woman to give birth and care for the child, even when they aren’t in the best situations to do so. Miri’s mother was, for all intents and purposes, a single mother. Since I doubt the abusive man she is currently with had any hand in helping Miri.

Being a single mother anywhere can be a big challenge, but especially so in Japan. Some issues that single mother’s face in Japan, according to the article “Why Most Families with Single Mothers in Japan are Living in Poverty” from a site called The Borgen Project: 

From that same article, we learn that joint-custody and child support doesn’t exist in Japan. So Miri’s mother was likely under a lot of societal and financial stress, along with possible Post-Partum Depression, and (also probable) burnout. This doesn’t mean that her behavior or attitudes are okay, but that they are likely a result of a failed system. 

I’ve seen some people bring up adoption, but adoption doesn’t automatically mean that a child will have a better life either. My grandfather’s mother was force to give her children up to the state, so my grandfather spent a good chunk of his life in an orphanage. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. And the probability that Miri would have been adopted had her mother gone through the actual system is, sadly, extremely low. From an article entitled: “The state of orphans in Japan and how to help” found on the site Zenbird.Media is this bit of information:

And even if Miri had been in an orphanage, Misaki (Miri’s mother) would still be her legal guardian. 

So an option like that would be unappealing for Misaki, because she doesn’t want anything to do with Miri. 

7. LGBT+ Individuals Being Viewed as “Not Productive”

Finally, we have the last thing I briefly want to talk about. The main backbone of Buddy Daddies, which is these two hitmen taking care of a child. Last year, a Japanese politician was in the news because she retracted some previous statements she made in 2016 and 2018. We are going to focus on her 2018 statements, which were:

Her comment received a lot of backlash and was big news. Her retracting her statements also brought a lot of news and talk too. The above information comes from The Japan Times article: “ Japanese lawmaker retracts past remarks on LGBTQ and other minorities.” Her other comments are awful too, but it should be noted that her one about sexual-minority couples stems from the issue of Japan’s declining birthrate. Even though many people in Japan are supportive of LGBT+ rights, there are people that hold a similar viewpoint as this. 

Buddy Daddies is pretty directly challenging this ideology, especially with how they have been handling things. So that’s pretty cool and revolutionary in its own way. It makes me interested in seeing how this continued topic as well as any future social issue topics will be handled or touched upon in Buddy Daddies.

If you read this all until the end: thank you so much! I put a lot of work into this write up and I hope it can help (I learned some things too while researching!).

#Buddy Daddies #Kazuki Kusuru #Rei Suwa #Miri Unasaka #Misaki Unasaka #social issues in Japan #long post #meta post #image heavy post

[kakiastro]

2024: The Year of the Dragon

Well, we made yall! This was a 7 ruled year, ruled by the Moon, Neptune, and South Node. This year had us all deep in our feelings. So many people had their first spiritual awakening, others psychic gifts has strengthened. This year was teaching us on how to listen to our intuition. If you’re a creative, then this year was really the year ideas and projects came to you. With the moon here, so many people started their own families, so many woman in my personal life had babies this year lol. Our family dynamics changed, our homes may have changed. Lots of early life/past lives issues smacked us in the face this year, a lot of people started their healing journey.

This year is an 8 ruled year.

8 rules over the spiritual and materialistic world. 8 is balance, it means you need to balance being in our world and the spiritual.

8 is also an infinity symbol, hence why is it’s a loop. What loops(patterns)have you been stuck in? This year will show you that and what loops you need to get out of

8 also have a deep love for humanity, so I personally expect more protest against wars, those who are really suffering in our world. There’s going to be a strong empathy pull. Make no mistake though, the number 8 also rules over authority, social status, ego, inner strength and wisdom. While there’s a lot of love, there’s going to lots of people having unchecked egos so be careful of that. Listening to others opinions(whether you agree or not) will be a collective lesson.

The number 8 is ruled by Saturn and Capricorn. This is a Saturnian year. So to my fellow Saturnians/Capricorn placements/10h, we are the first in line the classroom (earth) this year lol.

Saturn is in Pisces, so fellow Caps, and everyone really, I feel we are going to continue being in our feelings and will begin to open our hearts to others. Capricorn is a reserved sign, doesn’t really show outward emotions, they would rather cry in private or in the shower😅. Not this year LoL, this year is teaching us that it’s okay to not be okay, it’s okay to be open about it as well. We will meet people who will show us the magical side of life. Saturn is a realism and pessimistic sign, but Pisces is the sign of hope, magic and fantasy. Remember, Pisces is also co ruled by Jupiter which is currently in Taurus. What is success to you? Is this success to you because this is what you were taught or is this what you really want? These are the type of questions you will be asking yourself.

8 is the number for Karma as well. Karma isn’t what many people think it is lol. Karma isn’t just some revenge type of thing lol. Also, Karma isn’t always bad either so get that out your mindset as well. Bad things happen to good people all the time, you being a good person doesn’t exempt you of messed up situations. If anything, it’s to make you become more empathetic and self aware of the bad things. Karma can be good as well

The etymology of karma is from the Sanskrit meaning “Action, Effect, Fate”

Karma is what you do that will cause a ripple/effect that can change your fate.

Example:

1. You get into a relationship and everything is going great for a year. Then you discovered your partner cheated. Your hurt and say “karma will get him and I can’t wait to watch.”

2. Months go by and you see your cheater ex is in a new relationship, treating this new partner better than you. You start thinking “karmas not real because if it was, why are they living the good life?” Meanwhile, you’re still picking up the pieces to heal but you’re healing is the key word.

3. Little do you know, your ex had cheated on you with someone who’s only using them and they end up getting cheated on. It wasn’t because of you, know they created that ripple for themselves. They let there ego and lust dictate there actions. If they would’ve had any control, they would’ve known not to do this so the Universe/God let the domino fall. They may end struggling with their career, health, spiritually to teach them to grow and learn. Now will they? That’s up to them. Just because someone appears to be doing well from the outside doesn’t mean that they really are or going to be.

4. You’ve done your healing and now know what you want and the red flags to look out for. You end up in an actual healthy relationship. A friend of yours suspects her partner of cheating and asked for your advice. Because you went through this, you know the signs. Because of this, you helped her. See that domino effect lol

That was long but I hope that makes sense you all! I have a mercury Rx in my chart so my thoughts go everywhere lol.

One of the first biggest events of 2024 is that Pluto enters Aquarius

Dates: January 20th - September 1st

Then: it will go back in Capricorn for the last time in our lifetime in September 1- November 20th.

Finally: it will go into Aquarius November 20th, where it will stay unto 2043. Y’all this is a 20 year transit!! So many changes are about to happen

I’ve already made a post about this transit, you can read it here!

2024 is the year of the dragon, in the element Wood.

Dragons are seen as honorable, strength, success

Wood represents vitality and creativity

-this is good year to pursue your goals and if you’re consistent, you will achieve success.

Eclipses

First Lunar eclipse will be on March 25th.

It will be in the sign of Libra! Which is where South Node currently is as well. Relationships with our family and within our home will be highlighted. The house that Libra rules in your chart will tell you how this will

First Solar eclipse will be on April 8th

It will be in the sign of Aries with NN being in it. Setting new goals for yourself, starting something new in your life, be bold and brave.

2nd Lunar eclipse is in Pisces on September 17th. Hello feelings lol! Pisces will have us sit alone and think about our most hidden thoughts and they will be highlighted. This is a good time for spiritual growth.

2nd Solar eclipse is in Libra on October 2nd. Relationships will be the hot topic for 2024. I predict so many people are going to be breaking up, finding love, having new friendships, family relationships are going to be changing, collaborating with people, justice, fairness will all be themes

Mercury Retrogrades will be in fire signs this year

First Mercury Rx is in Aries on April 1st-25th. Thinking and planning your goals, making sure everything is in order.

2nd Rx is August 4th-28th in the sign of Virgo and Leo. It’s giving say it with your chest energy but not too much lol. Be brave with your thoughts but try to think rationally as well.

3rd Rx is November 25th in Sagittarius. Time for us to reflect on our ideals that we’ve learned. Look at different philosophies point of view

Another big Astrological event is the Jupiter-Uranus in Taurus conjunction on April 20th.

Jupiter is the planet if expansion, higher learning, traveling and religion

Uranus is the planet of change, science of medicine, innovation and rebellion.

Taurus is the 2nd sign of the zodiac and it rules over our finances, self worth, our possessions, food, beauty, nature such as forest and trees.

What do I predict with this transit:

-huge breakthroughs with regarding medicines and innovative discoveries

-something dealing with travel or immigration

-I suspect some type if change regarding the church or how people view the church (pastors, priest etc)

-something dealing with our food and us being more aware about our own dietary choices. What’s not good for us and what goes in our food basically

On May 25th, Jupiter leaves Taurus and enters airy sign Gemini. It will be in Gemini until 2025

The best way to describe this transit is communication!!! Remember Jupiter expands everything so we will be more open about our thoughts and standing on business on what we say! I feel there’s going to be a huge influx on the dire need to want to go back to school and learn new things. Big cars are going to the thing everyone will want to have! If you’re a writer, this can be a good year to write that book and get it published, all the way up until 2025 at least.

Mars Go Rx December 6th- February 23rd 2025, in the sign of Cancer and Leo!

This is poignant because Mars only go retrograde every 2 years! The last Rx was 2021-2022 ish and it was in Gemini

With it switching from water and fire, emotions will be be high. Really check your emotions during this time, this can be a good time to sort your home out, being motivated to start something like a creative outlet.

As you all can see, this is going to be an eventful year but I’m wishing you all happy and memorable one! To those who’ve been following me this year, I just want to say thank you! thank you! thank you!

With love and gratitude

-kaki

#astrology #astrology community #knowledge #love astrology #astro observations #advanced astrology #birth chart #kakiastro #2024 astrology #astro transits #tropical astrology

[astrologydayz]

ASTRO EVERYTHING NOTES💘

Planets/asteroids/points aspecting Vertex = 3°ORB MAX, unless it’s a minor aspect, then it’s 2🩷!

VERTEX is fate. In SYNASTRY = whatever that's conjunct your Vertex, will be brought2yo ass by that person! Either by being with them, or just by knowing them. No matter what. If it's something "good", amazing!! If it's something like Chiron?? U Betta run, and u betta run fast🗣. Watch out for Medea - 212 in synastry!!! This asteroid is about EXTREME REVENGE!!!🩸

If you're a woman, and another woman is jealous of u/hates on u in public or in "secret"= check out if their BML is conjunct something in your chart!!! It's something I've seen4years. BML aspects are prominent in a synastry chart with a woman who's jealous of u/hates on u/"fake friend". Which is not surprising, actually. BML Is also where u feel the most "left out"/"exiled"2. So it makes sense, that you'll feel jealous of a woman who has all of those things u never had/Will have. just her living nice, & comfortable with whatever it is you're struggling with/struggling2get. Let's say someones BML is conjunct your Venus = they'll be jealous of your lovers, relationships/material things u own/your money/your art - if your job is Venus related - singing/modelling/dancing/working with beautiful things - Venus work)/because of the love u give out/or because YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL!! Always look at house/s/sign/s & both natal charts!! That will reveal everything!😘

WOMEN with Mars conjunct/square/quincunx BML usually get a lot of hate from men, because they won't put up with shit! Men are intimidated, but sexually attracted 2 them because of the "I don't give a fuck, I'll say&do what I want attitude"💋. They can also have a lot of pent up rage, when it comes 2 men and their experiences with them. Men can have "used, &abused" them. Many men won't have the guts 2 go for her, hell, they can’t even look her in the eyes 4too long. And she's completely fine with that. She c those men as weak, anyway.

MEN with Venus conjunct/trine/quintile Jupiter. Can get a lot of sexual attraction from women!!! They’re talented when it comes 2 gaining female attraction - and they know it. They naturally excude this magical appeal, that women can’t stand for.

MEN with Moon conjunct Chiron have a very deep scar, when it comes 2 their mom. Their mom was highly likely not really “there" 4 them as a child, especially emotionally. Their mom usually also had to take care of someone else/or something else. They didn't get the mothering love&care they needed from her, so now they go around with, let's call it a 'grudge" towards women. They want to hurt women/their partners, like they've been hurt. & the next problem is that it's all in the back of their subconscious, they're not even "really aware of it". So Until they acknowledge their pain&hurt = They'll keep on projecting their mommy issues onto their partner&keep on hurting themselves❤️‍🩹.

Venus conjunct/trine South Node in SYNASTRY = lovers/married in a past life! They have karmic lessons that needs taken care of, look at house/s, sign/s & both natal charts! Borderline physical attraction between them, &deep deep love&appreciation4each other. SN is typically the one 2 recognise Venus 1st! Venus is usually also South Nodes ideal type. South Node 2 Venus - “I’ve been looking for you for way too long", “we belong together, you and I”, "we're soulmates, I just know it”. Mars conjunct/trine South Node in SYNASTRY = sexual partners from a past life! That's why they're so comfortable with doing sexual things together in this life, when they finally get into it👅. SN knows EXACTLY how the Mars person's body should be devoured/touched. SN is instantly attracted 2 Mars! Karmic lessons here2!!! Look at house/s, sign/s & both natal charts 2 see what kinds of lessons. South Node loveeees the Mars persons body2!! Kinda ideal. And again, South Node is typically the one that recognises their partner 1st - "your touch feels familiar"🫦.

Venus conjunct/trine/quintile Black Moon Lilith In SYNASTRY = crazy sexual attraction because of their intense differences. They can be from two different countries/or one could also "have it all", and the other one? Not so much. It can also show a secret, passionate love affair, between two married people🔞. Or one is married, & the other one isn't. Venus can get obsessed with Lilith pretty quickly - Wanting 2know everything, nothing left out. Venus NEEDS 2 be with Lilith, A LOT. Which is a little dangerous, as Lilith is free & doesn't like it when people try2 control her.

Jupiter conjunct/trine/sextile/quintile Vertex in a NATAL CHART can show fated fame/success! Either material, or spiritual success✨🍀💚.

Neptune trine/sextile/quintile Vertex in a NATAL CHART = a bohemian kind of lifestyle, never really "settling down in one place". & they'll have fated meetings with artistic/creative, or spiritual souls throughout their journey, who will help them achieve their dreams!!!💙

WOMEN with Black Moon Lilith conjunct their Vertex will be put in a lot of "Lilith situations". Like them being in situations where they feel abandoned/alone/ - them being the other woman - getting hated on because of it/being sexualised a lot by men/men testing their boundaries/fighting for their rights - won't bow down2anyone/people trying to undermine them. Most of the time, these women won't put up with anyone trying2 tell them anything. They're independent, &have no problem with being alone💋.

Your ASC in synastry is what u immediately think about someone!!! If your Lust asteroid - 4386 is conjunct someone's ASC = they would have hard time controlling themselves around u/wants 2 rip your clothes off, A LOT. NOT the other way around. IT'S THEIR 1ST HOUSE, NOT YOURS BABE😘. It's something that's always "in your face", 4the ASC person. Venus conjunct ASC IN SYNASTRY = ASC person will find the Venus person beautiful af/VERY physical attractive, as I wrote! "beautiful painting", "are you even real?", "you're the most beautiful person I've ever seen", things like that! Mars conjunct ASC IN SYNASTRY = ASC person is REEEEEAAALLLYYYY sexually attracted 2 Mars persons body/physical looks😽. Sexual chemistry, can be crazy here🫦.

Eros - 433 conjunct ASC in SYNASTRY = Asc person is sexually attracted2 Eros person from first meeting👅 - "Can't keep their hands 2themselves"🔞.

THANKS4READING BEAUTIFUL!!! I APPRECIATE U& Wouldn't do this without you🖤.

#vasteroids #astro notes #black moon lilith #astrology #astro observations #astrology notes #astro community #venus #synastry #astrology observations

[hiraya-rawr]

lover from another nation ~ hcs .

characters !! all the genshin men i could think of rn...

note !! it's been a while since i've written hcs for a lot! aaaah just some thoughts i had today (i had a few culture shocks here and there when i met up with new friends hahahah)

~ m o n d s t a d t ~

grabbing zhongli by the hand to dance and sing in the middle of the square because mondstadters live for the festivities! he quickly learns to freestyle dance along with you, moving with the crowd and cheers and wine. (remember that Tangled scene? yes)

kaveh wasn't sure how to react the day you ordered hard liquor on your first date. sure, your freedom and love for a good drink is one of the things which made him fall for you but wow– are you really gonna down that many glasses on a date? what do you mean you're still sober?

ayato finds himself in love with the way you sing. it doesn't follow the rules of inazuman opera at all; it's much more freeing (much like how his house help sings as he does chores) and you'd tell him stories and the history of your homeland in the form of songs. no mondstadter could ever forget the songs they grew up listening to!

heizou being almost appalled by your rather... robust and reckless nature. you don't have any backup plans whenever a situation goes south, you simply hold his hand, smile, and say "we go where the wind blows!"

~ l i y u e ~

diluc having chopsticks as part of your dining utensils because sometimes, you're more comfortable eating with it (let's not forget often having rice on the table! he must learn the joys of garlic rice with his steak <3)

dainsleif stays by your side as you offer incense and fruits to your ancestors. he whispers quiet prayers, bows when you do, and helps you clean their altars. he finds solace in the familial piety of liyuens– it makes him wish he could honor his ancestors with the same kind of peace as you do.

kazuha getting tongue tied over the language being so similar to inazuman but also so different– why are some of the characters the same? why are the meanings different? there's a bit of miscommunication in the start, but you both find your own ways to understand each other when words fail.

we all know gorou has always wanted to climb the mountains of liyue and you made it possible! meeting him by the docks and touring him around your home nation, you made sure to pick hiking routes with the most scenic spots, even managing to tour him around the jade palace and the floating lone island.

~ i n a z u m a ~

kaeya has no idea how you sit on the floor while being comfortable. you've made him sit with you once while reading a book, after that, his bones ached for days! shaking every time he stood back up!

albedo met you in the irodori festival- he painted you for practice and spark between you started. the long distance was difficult at first, but his long letters always had a little drawing of you and you'd send back the scent of cherry blossoms. klee would also send you letters, asking you to come visit soon!

childe loves a new fighting style; like most sword users in inazuma, you followed the raiden shogun's teachings– swift, efficient, and at one with the sword. he loves how you fight and it's often how you end your dates!

cyno was almost confident that you were playing a prank the day you said you'll make him your specialty and you showed him a platter of raw seafood. it's "sashimi and ngiri" you say, and he waited for you to explain the pun of your joke. it wasn't a joke.

~ s u m e r u ~

thoma is quite used to mondstadters and inazumans, two very different cultures, then he meets you and your sumeru upbringing! you show him how to cook foods that can be eaten with hands, and your menu is often so colorful he can't help but admire it!

itto doesn't really understand the study culture of sumeru, but he totally supports whatever it is you're talking about and tries to add in comments (his comments don't exactly make sense though...)

scaramouche, in his "path of redemption and healing", unwillingly gets involved with you as you show him around the beautiful parts of sumeru! you argue that he needs a different, better outfit with a color scheme that matches his vision. he insists that the hat stays. you tell him he looks like an aranara.

~ s n e z h n a y a ~

al haitham was almost concerned the day you got a heatstroke after being in the desert for no more than a few minutes. snezhnaya has prepared you for harsh weather, but never the heat. soon enough your lover is carrying around heatstroke-first aid packs just for you.

bundling up tighnari's fluffy ears before setting foot in snezhnaya because you just know the cold would practically freeze them off. his tail also gets wrapped and bundled warm in the large coats you wear, protection from the harsh snow. he says he looks like a big lummox.

note !! alright, choose your favorite dynamic! i personally think mondstadters with liyue/inazuma would be interesting maybe because i want to force feed them the joys of rice...

// if i misinterpreted a culture then umm... just know it wasn't intentional and let's consider it a real thing in teyvats culture 🫣😎

commissions || general m.list

taglist !! @absolut-wildflower @boundedbyfate @sadlonelybagel @eissaaaa @ladycoleigh @nejibot @milkypompon @bloodreaper08 @irethepotato @x-zho @roriver @mich-cola @mxsomn @ackrylik @nicebonescomrade @starforecasts @stygianoir @yuminako @eccedentesiast-sapphic @nebulaera @nuttytani @klutzkat @stygianoir14 @shizunxie @bluriie @aestellia @abyislan08

#genshin x reader #zhongli #genshin #genshin hcs #genshin fluff #genshin impact #zhongli x reader #ayato #ayato x reader #heizou x reader #diluc #diluc x reader #dainsleif x reader #dainsleif #gorou #gorou x reader #kazuha #kazuha x reader #kaeya x reader #albedo #albedo x reader #childe x reader #cyno x reader #thoma x reader #itto x reader #scaramouche x reader #al haitham x reader #tighnari x reader #kaveh x reader #al haitham

[kyoukamybeloved]

Yet again, Chuuya wouldnt get out of my sight today. I wish he would get out of my sight. Needless to say, I don't want to have to look away first.

more soukoku webweaves: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9

this is the tenth soukoku web weave of mine and I made it on my birthday when I was in a real taylor swift mood so enjoy this skk and swiftie brainrot

creds :

love lines - Olga Broumas// art by @taxolotl // exhibits from the water american museum - Natalie Diaz// peace - Taylor Swift// cowboy like me - Taylor Swift// art by @twilicidity // wishbone - Richard Siken// art by @liyv // spellbound - Ophelia Silk// love opened a mortal wound - Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz// david foster wallace// high infidelity - Taylor Swift// the archer - Taylor Swift// we were that joke - Gregory Orr// art by @taxolotl // litany in which certain things are crossed out - Richard Siken// is it over now? - Taylor Swift// the story of us - Taylor Swift// the becoming of Noah Shaw - Michelle Hodkin// art by @thornedarrow // south and west - Joan Didion// art by @lotus-pear // wishbone - Richard Siken// long live - Taylor Swift// ivy - Taylor Swift// portrait of a boy with grief - Wale Ayinla// the chronology of water: a memoir - Lidia Yuknavitch// art by @thornedarrow// Andrea Dworkin// bigger than the whole sky - Taylor Swift// ‘tis the damn season - Taylor Swift// a love letter to a dead thing - Layana Clouet// art by @twilicidity// art from @/mizumoe_ on twitter// august - Taylor Swift// is it over now? - Taylor Swift// souvenir - Warsan Shire// don’t blame me - Taylor Swift// cruel summer - Taylor Swift// the waves - Virginia Woolf// art by @carrotkicks //

tags:

@philzokman @dinosaur-mayonnaise @amagami-hime @the-gayest-sky-kid @galaxitic @ghostsinacoat @gorotic @lotus-reblogs @vivid-vices @zamxii @autistic-ranpo @pendragonstar @sskk-brainrot @oatmilkbasic @underthetree845 @thesunshinebard @whiteapplesandblackblood @sigskk @pastel-paramour @vinylbiohazard @jacuzziwaters @sommmee @evermorehypewoman

#dont flop ill cry #bsd #soukoku #skk #bungou stray dogs #chuuya nakahara #dazai osamu #izzie posts #dazai chuuya age fifteen #bsd fifteen #stormbringer #bsd stormbringer #teen soukoku #bsd skk #skk angst #skk fluff #nakahara chuuya #soukoku bsd #teen skk #bsd soukoku #skk webweave #bungo stray dogs #bsd double black #bsd light novel #dazai x chuuya #web weaving #chuuya angst #dazai angst #skk quotes

[pennyblossom-meta]

A short study on the origins of Gale Dekarios

Going through some game information and Forgotten Realms lore, I found some interesting tidbits about the possible origins of Gale and the Dekarios clan. So, what do we know?

After finding Tara in Act 3, there's a dialogue tree (as of yet still bugged 08/12/2023) where Gale tells us that his surname comes from his mother, Morena Dekarios.

Gale: (...) Courtesy of my mother, the inimitable, dare I say it, sometimes unavoidable, Morena Dekarios.

There isn't much to go on from this. Other than a brief mention that Gale's parents denied him a kitten, we don't know where his father is or what happened to him. Indeed, the surname Dekarios could be inherited from Gale's mother or even his father's side — and for the latter we can assume Morena took on the surname sometime after marrying Gale's father, thus becoming her son's main reference for the rest of the clan upon her husband's absence/death.

That being said, I can't find anything about the Dekarios surname within DnD lore. What we do know, is that Gale's clan is scattered far and wide, perhaps even beyond the Sword Coast.

We also know that Gale is of full human heritage, at least from his closest ancestry.

Now, let's dig in a little deeper.

There are several human ethnicities throughout Faerûn.

As of DnD 3.5, there are seven major ethnic groups widely recognised: the Calishites, Chondathans, Damarans, Iluskans, Mulan, Rashemis, and Tethyrians.

However, as of DnD 5E, the Player's Handbook adds that there are actually nine major ethnic groups in Faerûn, including the Shou from Kara-Tur and the Turami who are native to the southern shore of the Inner Sea. In 3.5E, these groups just receive a brief mention, while in 5E there's more of an attempt on expanding their lore.

Note: If you're interested in knowing more about the different ethnic groups in Faerûn, I would suggest reading the Forgotten Realms: Races of Faerûn (2003), the 3.5 Player's Guide to Faerûn, the 5E Player's Handbook and the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

Here's a useful map of Faerûn from 3.5E.

It's actually the 3.5 Player's Guide to Faerûn and Forgotten Realms: Races of Faerûn that gives us more in depth information about which communities have a major presence in different areas of the Sword Coast.

For example, while Gale and his mother live in Waterdeep, we don't know whether they moved to the city when Gale was a child or, perhaps, his parents always lived there. Perhaps generations of Dekarios lived in Waterdeep — including Gale's aunt Agnes.

Without further information, it's possible that the Dekarios clan even has their ancestral roots beyond the Sword Coast. Who knows?

According to 3.5E, the recommended human subraces in The Sword Coast are the Illuskan and Tethyrian.

In Waterdeep, it's the Chondathan, the Illuskan and Tethyrian.

Given what we know of Gale, lorewise, what would be the most accurate ethnicity for the Dekarios clan? Let's see what the handbooks say about the three major groups in Waterdeep.

--

The Chondathan

Races of Faerûn (2003): (...) Although Chondathans make skilled mercenaries and cunning rogues, Chondathan culture, has not encouraged study of the Art or great religious fervor. Notable exceptions exist, particularly in the study of the Art among the Netherese influenced Chondathan cultures that lie north and west of the Inner Sea.

(...) Those Chondathans who dwell north and west of the Sea of Fallen Stars (except in Sembia) are more likely to have blue eyes and have fairer complexions and darker hair than those born in the South, evidence of a Netherese heritage. In Chondath itself, particularly in the lands bordering Sespech, a significant Shaaran influx in recent centuries has given many natives of Chondath more of an olive skinned hue.

(...) Chondathan Society (...) As Chondathans place a high value on book learning, many receive some amount of schooling while growing up.

(...) Animals and Pets (...) Chondathans favor small felines as pets and hunting companions (...). Tressyms are highly favored by those who can afford them, as are lynxes.

3.5E: Descended from the natives of the Vilhon Reach, these hardy folk have spread to settle most of the western and central Inner Sea region and much of the Western Heartlands. Chondathans form the primary racial stock of Altumbel, Córmyr, the southern Dalelands, the Dragon Coast, the Great Dale, Hlondeth and both shores of the Vilhon Reach, the Pirate Isles of the Inner Sea, Sembia, and Sespech. They are slender, tawny-skinned folk with brown hair that ranges from almost blond to almost black. Most are tall and have green or brown eyes, but these traits are hardly universal.

The Chondathan domination of central Faerún came about largely by virtue of extensive trade and settlement rather than by force of arms. Many Chondathans are merchants of one sort or another, and they are not afraid to take risks, travel, or settle new lands.

5E: Chondathans are slender, tawny-skinned folk with brown hair that ranges from almost blond to almost black. Most are tall and have green or brown eyes, but these traits are hardly universal. Humans of Chondathan descent dominate the central lands of Faerun. around the Inner Sea.

Chondathan Names: (Male) Darvin, Dorn, Evendur, Gorstag, Grim, Helm, Malark, Morn, Randal, Stedd; (female) Arveene, Esvele, Jhessail, Kerri, Lureene, Miri, Rowan, Shandri, Tessele; (surnames) Amblecrown, Buckman, Dundragon, Evenwood, Greycastle, Tallstag

--

The Illuskans

Races of Faerûn (2003): (...) Wizards are rare in Illuskan society. They are widely feared and assumed to be in some way affiliated with the Arcane Brotherhood. Of those who do study wizardry, perhaps the most common specialization is the school of Evocation. Sorcerers and bards are more common among Illuskans, as many Illuskans have a trace of draconic ancestry in their heritage.

(...) Illuskans are not inclined to keep animals as pets, companions, or familiars, as relatively few species are native to Ruathym or nearby islands. Goats, sheep, and geese do better in the cold Illuskan lands than do cattle, swine, or chickens.

3.5E: : The seagoing, warlike people of the Sword Coast, North, the Trackless Sea, and the Desarin river valley, Illuskans are tall, fair-skinned folk with blue or steely gray eyes. Among the islands of the Trackless Sea and Icewind Dale, their hair color tends toward blond, red, or light brown. On the mainland south of the Spine of the World, however, raven-black hair is most common. Iluskans are proud, particularly of their ability to survive in the harsh environment of their northern homelands, and they regard most southerners as weak and decadent. Illuskans make their livings as farmers, fishers, miners, sailors, raiders, skalds, and runecasters.

5E: Illuskans are tall, fair-skinned folk with blue or steely gray eyes. Most have raven-black hair, but those who inhabit the extreme northwest have blond, red, or light brown hair.

Illuskan Names: (Male) Ander, Blath, Bran, Frath, Geth, Lander, Luth, Malcer, Stor, Taman, Urth; (female) Amafrey, Betha, Cefrey, Kethra, Mara, Olga, Silifrey, Westra; (surnames) Brightwood, Helder, Hornraven, Lackman, Stormwind, Windrivver

--

The Tethyrian

Races of Faerûn (2003): (...) In recent centuries, these disparate groups have gradually coalesced into a relatively new ethnic group known as Tethyrians, occupying a vast territory stretching from Calimshan to Silverymoon and from the Sea of Swords to the Sea of Fallen Stars. After centuries of enslavement and oppression by one group or another, Tethyrians are fiercely independent, protective of their freedoms and suspicious of threats posed by powerful kingdoms and empires. Given their disparate ancestry, Tethyrians have never developed a unique language of their own, instead adopting the language of the latest wave of conquerors or refugees. Today most Tethyrians speak Chondathan.

(...) Outside Calimshan, many Tethyrians are craftsmen or caravanners, while others find employment as mercenaries in the employ of other realms. Tethyrians make skilled fighters and rogues, reflecting the struggle to survive successive waves of conquest and generations of warfare. Tethyrian culture has a long tradition of bardcraft, reflecting the absence of a Tethyrian empire at any point ni history and the corresponding reliance on itinerant bards to preserve and spread Tethyrian oral history.

(...) Tethyrians view life as a struggle to be survived through ties to Family, clan, and tribe. To a Tethyrian, freedom is the most precious gift, and the enslavement of another is the greatest sin.

(...) The paths of the loremaster and archmage are both attractive to Tethyrian wizards.

(...) Aside from bards, Tethyrians have not traditionally had access to book learning, although those who do are much esteemed by their peers.

(...) Familial, clan and tribal bonds require that adults look out for one another, so the elderly and those who cannot earn their keep turn to relatives and friends for support.

(...) Tethyrians have strong arcane and divine spellcasting traditions: Bardcraft is revered, and many master bards are of Tethyrian stock. The varied mature of Tethyrian heritage has produced many sorcerers as well. Likewise, the strong influence of Calishite and Netherese cultural traditions has echoes in the large numbers of Tethyrian wizards, although most learn their craft through a traditional master-apprentice relationship, not by attending a formal school.

(...) Animals and Pets (...) Tethyrians are partial to canines, particularly those bred for herding, hunting, or working. Falcons (treat as hawks) and swamp ferrets (treat as weasels) are commonly employed in hunting and often serve as familiars. Ravens are also favored as pets or familiars, particularly in the vicinity of the High Moor.

3.5E: The Tethyrian culture is a melting pot of Calishite, Chondathan, Illuskan, and Low Netherese elements. This unique background makes Tethyrians among the most tolerant, though fiercely independent, ethnic groups in Faerûn. They inhabit a vast territory stretching from Calimshan to Silverymoon, and from the Sea of Swords to the Sea of Fallen Stars. Tethyrians are of medium build and height, with dusky skin that grows fairer the farther north they dwell. Their hair and eye color varies widely, but brown hair and blue eves are the most common. Tethyrians are proud of their diverse heritage and protective of their freedom, so they tend to distrust powerful kingdoms and empires.

5E: Widespread along the entire Sword Coast at the western edge of Faerun, Tethyrians are of medium build and height, with dusky skin that tends to grow fairer the farther north they dwell. Their hair and eye color varies widely, but brown hair and blue eyes are the most common. Tethyrians primarily use Chondathan names.

--

Verdict

After analysing these descriptions, I would say that it makes sense that Gale Dekarios can be of either a Chondathan or Tethyrian heritage — though I'd venture a guess that there's a fair mix of both.

Given that the Dekarios clan is "scattered far and wide", it could imply that they're of a mercantile affinity (Chondathan) and thus have settled in various cities along the the Sword Coast and beyond for trade purposes. Further migration patterns veering west, towards the Sword Coast, and an affinity for magic that can be related to Netherese ancestry (Chondathan and Tethyrian) are valid backgrounds for what we know of Gale.

Some things to consider:

The Tethyrians have more of a natural arcane leaning than the Chondathans (Gale was casting accidental fireballs at the age of 8, among other funny accidents).

The Tethyrians form strong familial and clan bonds (Gale has strong ties to his mother, is very family oriented).

Gale has more of an olive skinned hue, brown eyes and hair, as the combo is more common with the Chondathans ethnicity in contemporary Faerûn. It speaks of a Mediterranean background, if we were to compare it with Earth.

The Chondathans also have an affinity with felines, while the Tethyrian veer towards employing animals for hunting and favor birds of prey as familiars.

The Chondathans place a high value on book learning.

Both ethnicities have ties to the Netherese, which creates a compelling narrative device — especially after Gale's fallout with Mystra due to the Netherese orb incident. However, opportune irony aside, I think that what we see of Gale points to a mix of both heritages and that they reflect different sides of him that go beyond ethnicity, as they also affect his background from a socio-economical standpoint.

#bg3 #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #baldur's gate 3 #tara the tressym #forgotten realms #bg3 meta #morena dekarios #bg3 spoilers #faerun #dungeons and dragons

[asahicore]

we’ll always have this summer - psh (m)

this work contains smut - minors please do not interact pairing. sunghoon x fem!reader synopsis. Your mom ruins your summer plans by sending you to the equestrian center your grandmother owns in the south of France, wanting you to spend some time away from the city and take a break from your med studies. Although you’d been determined to spend the worst time ever there, you soon find out that maybe the cold but cute horse nerd next door who doesn’t want to talk to you might actually turn this summer into the best one of your life. genre. summer au, strangers to mutual dislike to friends to lovers ig, city girl x country boy type beat, mainly fluff and smut but also angst cause i love pain word count. 25.9k a/n. hi sisters i'm super excited to repost this, it was really fun rereading and editing it, and i hope that all of you who had enjoyed reading it last summer will still like it this time around and that those of you who hadn't read it will enjoy it now <3 i had also posted an sfw version, so if anyone would like that too, pls lmk! ok thats it let me know what u think love you bye

Sunghoon was going to have a very normal, uneventful summer. He would take a very much needed break from his studies and take care of the equestrian center he lives in, letting his parents take a breather and enjoy their summer. He’d wake up early and do everything he needed to, then spend the afternoon on horseback or sleeping in a random field. It’d be a routine his body is used to and likes, and he’d be able to let his worries go for a while. But then, you came along.

You, who’d had big plans for the summer. You, who should’ve been going on a two-week vacation with your friends to Mallorca as a treat for having aced your second-year medical school final exams and as a celebration for getting an internship in the hospital of your choice. You, who would’ve done nothing for those two weeks but sunbathe, read trashy romance novels, and get margarita-drunk at 2pm, and would’ve spent the rest of the summer hanging out with your friends in Paris, your home, and taking day trips to random French cities. This summer would be your last fun, carefree summer before you were thrown into real semi-adult life, and you were going to make the best of it. That’s what you had planned; to your utmost despair, your mom seemed to have other ideas in mind.

“We’ve gone over this a thousand times now, sweetie. You’re going. It’ll be good for you.”

“You know what will be good for me?” you say, close on her tail as you descend the stairs. “Relaxing and having fun with my friends for two weeks. Not cleaning horse manure and having to walk ten kilometers to get service.”

“It’ll be one or two kilometers at most, dear, not ten.” 

“Ugh!” you groan ostentatiously. Your mother only shoots you a don’t-be-so-dramatic look. You glare back at her.

“It’ll be good for you,” she repeats, turning back to whatever was occupying her in the kitchen before you started arguing with her as you plop down on one of the stools at the center island. “You’ve seen neither your grandmother nor the countryside in ages, so it’ll be a nice change. What’s more, they say the best doctors are the ones who’ve done different jobs, you know.”

“Who’s ever said that…” you mutter under your breath, a clear look of distaste on your face. “But anyway, I see Mamie every Christmas at Auntie’s in Perpignan, and even if I didn’t, whose fault is it I never go to the countryside? You never bring me there.”

Your mother lifts her head and looks at you. “I’m too busy to make the journey all the way there. You’ve seen it, there’s two trains and two buses, I can’t do all that. Which is why we settle for Marseille. Direct train, easy. You, on the other hand,” she says, pointing to you with her wooden spoon, “will have plenty of time this summer.”

“Yeah, time I could’ve spent on a beach in Spain or with my friends here!” You know you’re being annoying, but you can’t help it. You really want to go to Mallorca.

She sighs. “I just need you to trust me on this one, honey. You’ll have tons of other summers to do all that. Your grandmother is getting old, so I want you to have at least some memories with her before… you know. I know it’s our fault you didn’t see her more often, so this is our way of making up for it!”

Your father walks in the kitchen, materializing out of nowhere as he often does. “Your mother’s right, you know.” They both peer down at you, and you know then you really don’t get a say in this. “I had an amazing bond with my grandfather, and I want for you to have something similar with your grandmother. She’s the only grandparent you’ve got left, and I promise you, you don’t want to let that go to waste.” You still don’t look fully convinced, so he adds, “Plus, you already get along well, right? You always talk lots when you see each other at Christmas.”

Your father does have a point. You know the problem isn’t being with your grandmother, anyway. Truth be told, you were quite looking forward to spending more time with her. She had a great sense of fashion, and you were sure she had many stories to tell you. It was the fact that you had to spend your summer in a godforsaken town of Southern France where the nearest town was seven kilometers away and the nearest city almost a forty-minute drive. Where you lived in Paris, you had everything you needed in a five-minute walk radius, and you just needed to hop on the Metro or the train to go anywhere else. And it was an equestrian center, of all places. You didn’t even like horses.

“Also,” your mother starts, dragging out the vowel, “the family that lives in the house next door has a boy your age. I heard he’s cute.” She wiggles her eyebrows and you groan at her, which just makes your parents laugh more. You don’t want to stereotype, but you highly doubt a boy who lives in an equestrian center in the middle of God-knows-where is anywhere as handsome as the boys you see everywhere in the capital city. Hot people live in cities; to you, that’s always been a fact.

And as if a stupid boy could make this any better anyway.

-

Your mother wasn’t lying when she said the journey was long. You took the Metro from your apartment to the train station, then a rapid train to Perpignan, a regional train to Argelès, and a bus to the town of Laroque-des-Albères. And that wasn’t even it - there could’ve been a second bus, but your grandmother had arranged for the neighbors’ son to come and pick you up and drive you to the small commune named La Pierrerie where the equestrian center was. 

To your dismay, there was another thing your mother had been right about; the neighbors’ son being cute. When you get off the bus, you look around the almost empty parking spot with no idea of who you’re supposed to look for. But he must see your lost expression and all your luggage and assume you’re the one he had come to pick up, so he calls out your name. Your head snaps towards the direction of the voice, and the moment your eyes settle on him, you have to hold yourself from gaping at him like a dead fish. For someone who supposedly spends his weekends and vacations outside, taking care of horses, cleaning stalls and doing handiwork, his features are… delicate. The perfect blend of sharp and soft - a round face contrasted by a knifelike jaw, plump lips, his eyebrows forming a straight line over his almond-shaped eyes. But you find roughness on his face is in the crease of his eyebrows as he peers down at you. You haven’t done anything yet, but he already clearly disapproves of you.

There’s a scowl on his face - he may be pretty, but he’s definitely not welcoming. You walk towards him, dragging your luggage behind you, and he doesn’t move to help you until you reach the car, and finally he opens the trunk and hauls one of your suitcase in. 

“Thank you,” you breathe, looking up at him, “um?”

A beat passes as your eyes lock, and he looks so bored you think he might not even bother to give you his name, but thank God he does. “Sunghoon.”

You decide not to let his rudeness get to you and put on a bright smile, but by the time you’re done saying “nice to meet you,” he’s already gotten in the driver’s seat. He starts the car without another word, and your efforts at any sort of conversation are so fruitless that you give up after two minutes of asking questions that are only met with two-word sentences. You can only hope that his family isn’t as unfriendly as he is, otherwise you’d be in for one hell of a summer.

When you arrive in La Pierrerie, it’s almost nine p.m., and you’re exhausted from your long journey and from carrying around such heavy suitcases. Still in complete silence, Sunghoon takes two of your bags and heads towards what you can only assume is your grandmother’s house. You go to follow him, but you soon notice your grandmother and another woman, who you guess is Sunghoon’s mother, sitting at a table, sipping on some lemonade. As soon as they see you arrive, they rush towards you (well, the woman does - your grandmother walks as fast as she can), helping you with the rest of your baggage. They kiss you on both cheeks as a greeting, starting from the right but you’re used to starting from the left, which almost makes your lips bump into each other. Thankfully, they laugh it off, and you make sure to remember the local custom to avoid future potentially awkward encounters.

The woman introduces herself as Mrs Park and tells you she lived next-door to your grandmother, just like you’d guessed. She says that she’s happy to meet you and hopes that you had a nice trip and that you weren’t too tired for the meal she and your grandmother had prepared for tonight. You like her instantly - her kind eyes and warm smile make you feel at home right away. 

Your grandmother hugs you too, and you had to admit it felt nice seeing her after such a long time. Such a sweet welcome revives you a bit, and a nagging voice in your head tells you, see, this isn’t that bad, this summer might be good after all, but you quickly shut it down. Your stubborn nature wants you to hate this for at least a little bit, especially after the excruciating car ride you just had to sit through. You won’t show it to your hosts, obviously, because you want to be respectful, but you can at least scowl and curse your parents when nobody’s looking.

There’s no time for awkward silence and looking back and forth between the two women because as soon as the greetings are over, Mrs Park announces she’ll go heat up the food and get the last things ready while your grandmother shows you around her home, which would be yours for the next two months and a half, and lets you unpack for a bit.

Your grandmother’s house is on two floors. The ground floor is basically one big room, which the front door leads directly into. There’s the kitchen, the dining room and the living room. It’s all very open and bright, and you can tell it must be very warm when the sunlight poured directly through the large windows into the room at the right time of day. It’s simply decorated, with furniture that probably hasn’t been updated in a while but that is well maintained and looks cozy enough. Black-and-whites and photographs of fuzzy quality are hung on the wall of the dining room and you’re eager to take a closer look at them later on.

Upstairs are two bedrooms and the bathroom, as well as a mezzanine that’s a few steps lower than the rest of the floor and that looks over the living room. This is where your grandmother keeps her books and her trophies from her past very successful horse riding career. There are a couple armchairs in the corner and a window to bring more light in, and you’re sure this would make an amazing reading nook for late evenings or stormy afternoons. 

Your room is not much more than a double bed, a chest of drawers, a cupboard to hang your clothes in and a few empty shelves. Your grandmother had told you you were welcome to bring any kind of decoration you wanted to make this room yours for the summer, so you’d taken with you a few posters and framed pictures as well as some babbles you liked looking at. She’d picked out some daisies from her garden and made a bouquet out of them, livening up the vase on your bedside table. 

She sits on your bed as you put your clothes away (which you had brought so many of, you weren’t sure there’d be enough room to put them all in) and tells you how she’d come to live here with the Parks. This is something you like about her - she has many stories to tell, each more fascinating than the other, and she’s always willing to tell them.

Your grandmother had actually grown up not too far from here, on the other side of town. Her parents had signed her up for lessons every Wednesday afternoon for a few years, until her instructor recognised her potential and told her she could ride professionally if she wanted. So, she started having two-hour lessons four times a week. When she started winning local, then regional, then national championships, she moved to Perpignan to be taught by more qualified instructors in a more renowned riding club.

Years forward, she got pregnant and her career as a rider was over. When her kids were old enough, she got a job as an instructor and even managed a few athletes of the club in Perpignan, but she continued to visit her old club in Laroque once in a while, as she always did throughout her career. She’d seen it wear down and lose customers over the years to the point that at the end of the nineties, it was under threat of closing down. Her old teacher had long passed and her son and his wife had taken over. This son, who was a bit older than your grandmother, had worked there his whole life, but it wasn’t what he wanted to do - as the only son, he’d had no choice but to stay and take care of the club. However, he hadn’t wanted it to close that way, and he was still desperate to keep the club alive, especially because his own son truly loved it and wanted to take over and manage it once he was done with high school.

Your grandmother, with more money than she needed from her successful career and the inheritance she got from her husband’s passing, offered to buy the club from the Parks and manage its finances while they took care of the horses and of lessons. Her only condition was that she could move in in the other house on the property that wasn’t inhabited and needed a few renovations. They agreed immediately.

Mr Park graduated from high school in 1998, got married to the now Mrs Park in 2000, and they had their first child, Sunghoon, in 2002 - the same year as you. His parents moved out to the city and got new jobs that they liked a lot more while the club, thanks to your grandmother’s donations and Mr and Mrs Park’s hard work, prospered once again. It did help that an Olympic rider sometimes helped out with lessons and gave out advice for aspiring athletes.

And now, here you are, twenty years later, visiting her for the first time since you were probably six. You don’t have many memories from those few times you’d been here, so it was all new to you. Especially that Sunghoon boy, whom your grandmother was sure you would get along with based on how chummy you were back in 2008. When you were both six. You didn’t have the heart to tell her how he had been with you in the car.

“Sunghoon’s a bit shy, but once you get to know him, he’s a really good kid. Very passionate and hardworking. So is his sister Yeji, but she’s got different ambitions,” your grandmother muses.

“Oh yeah? What does she want to do?” you ask, genuinely interested, as you try to somehow fit another t-shirt into one of the drawers. You’d started out by folding them nicely but you’d soon given up and started stashing them into the corners.

“She wants to become a professional rider. Says she wants to become like me,” she explains with a small chuckle. “Well, she’s definitely got what it takes. I got her a spot in that bigger club in Perpignan I told you about, so she goes there after school twice a week, but she still trains here with me every weekend.”

“You give her lessons?” you ask, some surprise in your voice, which makes your grandmother laugh.

“What, you think I’m too old?” she jokes and you shake your head rapidly, but she doesn’t take any offense to it. “I can’t stand for hours and shout like I used to, but I can sit in the center of the riding hall and watch, then tell her what she needs to work on and what she’s doing well. She says it helps her, so I’m happy to do it,” she adds with a shrug. You nod as you open another drawer and decide this one will be for your underwear.

“What about Sunghoon?” You can’t help but ask, a bit curious about him. You doubted you could really chalk up his impoliteness to shyness, but you could still listen to what your grandmother had to say about him.

“He’s more like his dad, wants to take after the club. But he’s a very decent rider, too. If his sister hadn’t said she wanted to go pro so early on, I’m sure he would’ve. You know one thing that’s great about getting old?” she asks suddenly.

“No?”

“You observe people a lot more, and you understand them a lot more too. Well, now that I think about it, it might be just me,” she says, making you chuckle. “I don’t have a lot going on in my life, so I have more time to be nosy and see what others are up to. He’d never admit it, I don’t think, that he gave up on a potential riding career for his sister. He’s the type to make quiet sacrifices, and he loves his sister to death. He’d rather take over the club and watch her be happy than the opposite.”

You nod, an approving expression on your face. “Sounds like a good guy,” you say honestly, surprised that someone supposedly so kind could also be so rude.

“He is. Handsome, as well, by the way, as I’m sure you’ve noticed,” she adds, a knowing smile playing on her lips, but you just roll your eyes playfully.

“That’s what mom said,” you reply, not wanting to admit that they are both right on the matter of Sunghoon’s handsomeness. 

Sunghoon’s the one who opens the door when you and your grandmother knock. His expression when he sees you is the same as earlier, but you don’t have the time to ponder over his behavior, because quickly enough, two figures appear behind him. He steps to the side, letting enough space for you to come in, his harsh gaze never once leaving your face. You turn your attention to the figures, namely his father and a young girl who you guess is Yeji, and, thank God, they’re looking at you with wide smiles.

“You must be Y/N!” his father beams, and you nod, returning his smile and saying hi. He kisses you on both cheeks, and this time you remember to start from the right. “Welcome. We’re very happy to have you here, aren’t we, Sunghoon?”

He seems oblivious to his son’s clear distaste of you as he loops an arm over his shoulders, happily shaking one of them under his grasp. “Right,” Sunghoon says, voice monotone. “Hi.”

“Hi,” you reply with a slightly confused tone - what the hell was his deal? Usually, whatever energy someone gave you, you’d give it back to them. You’d have no problem being as rude to Sunghoon as he was to you if only his family didn’t seem so nice.

“I’ll go help Mom in the kitchen,” he announces and walks away. His father turns back to you and gives you an apologetic smile.

“Don’t mind him, he’s just shy. He’ll warm up to you eventually.” You nod, saying it’s okay. 

Yeji then takes a step towards you, introducing herself as she goes in for the usual two kisses on the cheeks. “Hi, I’m Yeji!”

“Hi, so nice to meet you!”

“Me too, I’m really happy you’re here! It’ll be nice being with another girl,” she says, gesturing towards her oblivious brother with a tilt of her head. It takes a lot more effort to be nice than to be rude, you think, side-eyeing Sunghoon in your head.

“Are there not a lot of girls that come here for lessons?” you ask as she leads you inside the house, showing you where to take off your shoes and jumper.

“There are, but they only come here once a week and stay for a few hours, so it’s not the same. I’m stuck with my anthropoid of a brother most of the time,” she says, lowering her voice to make sure only you can hear what she says. You both laugh at her diss; nothing like bonding over hating boys with another girl. You can already tell you’re going to like her.

You ask if there’s anything you can do to help, but the Parks tell you to not worry about anything and sit down. You and Yeji join your grandmother who’s already sitting at the dinner table, and the three of you chat, or rather, you and Yeji chat while your grandmother listens. Or maybe she isn’t listening, you’re not sure. 

Yeji is in her first year of high school. The prestigious riding club she is being taught at doubles as a school, so that’s where she’s been studying for the past few years, and she boards there as well, coming home every weekend unless she’s got important competitions coming up, in which case she stays there for a few weeks. Competition season is about to start, so she’ll be spending most of her time there this summer.

“And do you like it there?”

She looks slightly taken aback by your question, as if she’s not quite used to being asked about that. “I mean, yeah, yeah, I do. It’s nice being able to ride so often, and not having the stress of needing to figure out what I want to do next. But it is… you know,” her voice gets quieter, “a lot of pressure sometimes.”

Sunghoon walks in then, plates and cutlery in hand, and starts setting the table. Yeji’s face lights up at her brother’s arrival, using it to change the topic. “Sunghoon is studying to become a vet. He’s finished his two years of preparatory classes, so now he’s going to a vet school in Toulouse.”

He glares at his sister, but she doesn’t pay him any mind. “He graduated top of his class, you know.”

“Why are you telling her about me?” he interrupts.

Yeji just shrugs. “I’m telling her about us.”

“Well,” he says, putting down a plate in front of you and a fork and knife on each side of the plate, “she doesn’t need to know about me.” You can’t see his face but the cold tone of his voice and his presence right behind you are enough to send shivers down your spine. What the hell is his deal?, you wonder.

You look at Yeji, a confused look on your face, and she rolls her eyes as a dismissal of her older brother’s behavior. “Don’t ask me, cause I don’t know what his problem is, either,” she says, and you can’t help but chuckle.

Mrs and Mr Park walk in then, bringing in the main dish of duck confit as well as roast potatoes, vegetables and some bread. Mrs Park gives you the biggest chunk of meat and a load of sides, saying you must be famished after such a long trip even though you tell her you’d brought things to snack on. She says she’d hesitated between cooking Korean food or a typical French Southwestern dish but had opted for the latter, wanting to welcome you properly in the region. You thanked her and told her it looked amazing.

When everyone is served, you wish each other ‘bon appétit’ and start eating. You’re chewing on your first mouthful of duck and potatoes when Mrs Park asks you what you study. “Your grandmother said you were a med student?” she asks with a smile. Everyone looks at you except for Sunghoon, who only has eyes for his food.

You nod, waiting to swallow before answering, and Mr Park tuts his wife for not letting you eat. “I am. I passed my second year,” you say, earning yourself some congratulations, “and I’m starting my residency in a hospital in Paris next semester.”

“Do you know what part of the hospital you’ll be in?” Mr Park asks.

“We get to do turns, so we can see what we like. We give our school our top five choices, and then they put us in three departments for three months each, and then choose our favorite one based on the offers we get for the summer. I’m in the children’s ward first, then cardiology, then reeducation. We’ll also get to watch over surgeries.”

He nods, humming at your words. “And is that what you want to do later? I mean, work in one of those departments?”

“I’ve got time to change my mind, so I guess it depends how much I like being at the hospital, but I think I’d rather have my own cabinet after some time. I feel like overtime, you build more of a relationship with people, and it’s a lot less stressful, too,” you add with a chuckle.

Mr Park smiles and nods again. “Ah, I see. That’s nice. And would that be in Paris?,” he asks, and this time, it’s his wife that tells him to leave you alone, but you say it’s okay.

“Probably. It’s the city I know best, but nothing is set in stone.”

“You should come here!” Mrs Park perks. “Most people who live here are quite old - no offense, Nadine - ” (“None taken,” your grandmother says with a smile), but we’ve only got two doctors, and one is probably retiring in the next six to ten years.”

“You tell me to leave her alone, and then you tell her to move here,” Mr Park mutters, earning himself a small slap on the arm. They start bickering, and your grandmother just sighs and shakes her head.

“Young love,” she says, making everyone laugh. Even Sunghoon cracks a smile, and you get a glimpse of his dimples. As soon as he catches your gaze, his smile drops, and you turn your eyes away, your cheeks heating up. Yeji starts a new topic and soon enough you’re all chatting again. If it wasn’t for Sunghoon making it very clear he didn’t want you here, you’d already feel at home, just sitting at this dinner table.

When dinner is over, you insist on clearing the table and doing the dishes, saying you felt bad not doing anything. “I need to earn my keep,” you tell Mrs Park with a smile.

She laughs and says, “Oh, no need to worry about that, with Sunghoon showing you the ropes the next few days, you definitely will.”

Sunghoon perks up at the mention of his name. “What’s this about?” he asks, that crease still in his eyebrows. You find yourself wanting to stroke them with your thumbs and brush that frown away, but you quickly snap out of it. He may have a pretty face, but from what you’ve seen, that’s about all there is.

Mrs Park lets out a small puff of air through her nose. “We’ve talked about this, dear. You’re showing Y/N around the club tomorrow and Monday. It’s so you know how everything works before summer lessons start,” she explains, turning towards you.

“Why does it have to be me, though?” Sunghoon almost whines, and you want to scoff at him.

“Because your father and I said so,” his mother says, ending the conversation there, and you’re reminded of your own parents.

Sunghoon looks at you and frowns, so you raise your eyebrows back at him. It wasn’t your fault you were here or that his parents had designated him to show you around, so there was no reason you should make yourself small or apologetic for him. He scoffs and looks away. “Just be outside by eight a.m. tomorrow morning, okay?”

He doesn’t let you answer, just gives you one last hard look and walks away.

-

“Why are you wearing a dress?” Sunghoon asks as soon as you step outside the next morning.

“Good morning to you too, Sunghoon,” you reply sarcastically. You roll your eyes when he doesn’t say anything, just stands there, arms crossed over his chest, so you add, “Because it’s going to be hot today. And because it’s pretty.”

“This is an equestrian center, not a fashion show. You won’t be comfortable. Go put on a t-shirt and some shorts or some leggings. And wear sneakers, not sandals, Christ.”

You scoff and mirror his posture. “You don’t get to tell me what to wear, you know.”

He lets out a dry chuckle and rolls his eyes, a disbelieving smile on his face. “This might be a holiday for you, because it’s sunny and there’s nature everywhere, but this is work we’re gonna be doing. So, for your own sake, wear the right kind of clothes. But if you want to get horse saliva on your dress or step in horse shit wearing those shoes, be my guest.”

You glare at him for a few seconds, realizing that he’s right, and huff out an annoyed “fine,” stomping back into your grandmother’s house. “Be quick!” he calls after you.

You come back out five minutes later, wearing a tank top you usually use for sleeping, a pair of denim shorts and old sneakers your mother had told you to pack. “Took you long enough,” Sunghoon says, a true ray of sunshine, but you decide it’s better to ignore him. He barely talked to you yesterday, but now that it’s just the two of you and he has to, his words are somehow more annoying than his silence.

You stare at him unfazed and ask, “So, what’s first?”

He raises his eyebrows, seemingly surprised, but answers anyway. “Right. Follow me.” He heads towards a part of the farm that is attached to the riding hall and that your grandmother had pointed out yesterday evening as the reception and office area. 

Sunghoon fishes a keyholder out of his jean pocket and slides open the door using one of the many keys he has. He goes to stand in front of a postboard and points to it. “This has the daily and weekly schedule on it. It’s a routine, so things don’t change much, but when they do, we add a post-it to the board. For example, the blacksmith is coming next Thursday to check horseshoes. That’s a post-it. Today, we’re cleaning out all the stalls and adding fresh straw. We do that every Monday, so it’s on the schedule. No post-it.”

“Right. That makes sense,” you nod. “Is that all we do today?”

“We do rounds first, but basically, yeah, because cleaning takes a long time. And Monday is technically our day off. No one comes in for lessons so we use that free time to clean out the stalls.”

You nod and Sunghoon chuckles at you, but you don’t have time to question him about it because he’s already off and you have no choice but to follow him. He leads you to a part of the farm on the other side of the courtyard and pulls out another key, pushing the door open to a wide three-and-a-half-wall room with rings attached to the walls every few meters. Three and a half because behind that space on each side are stalls, as Sunghoon points out.

“This is the prep room, where we get the horses ready before a lesson.”

“What do you do to get them ready?” you ask, looking around the room.

“You clean their coat and their hooves, brush out any tangles in their manes and tails, then saddle and bridle them. The club saddlery is over there,” he says, pointing to a door on your right. “Horse owners have their own stuff in lockers in another room.”

Apparently, you’re not checking out the saddlery today, because Sunghoon is already walking over to the stalls. 

“Hi everyone,” he greets softly. You follow him closely as he walks on one side of the stables, petting each horse as he walks past them or peering over the door to see how the sleeping ones are doing, and then does the same thing on the other side. He greets each horse by name, and even though it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he remembers each and every one of them, it still does. You tell him exactly that, and he chuckles.

“What would you think of a teacher that doesn’t know their students’ names? This is kind of the same,” he explains. He shows you the stacks of hay and straw at the end of the stables, and explains that they bring it here from the fields every once in a while because it’s more convenient, and that this is what you’ll be using later.

When he’s checked that everything is okay, he opens the door on the other side of the room leading outside. On your right stands a huge pile of manure, and you can’t help but make a stank face at the odor hitting you right in the nostrils. Sunghoon chuckles again (can he please stop chuckling at you for no reason?) and reassures you by saying they’re emptying it soon. “The farmers use it for their crops,” he explains.

On your left, there’s another barn that you guess hosts more horses. He gets out yet another key and pushes the door wide open. Light fills the barn instantly, making the dust particles in the air visible, and you hear a few grunts and huffs from the horses - of annoyance at Sunghoon waking them up or of happiness at seeing him, you’re not yet qualified enough to say.

There are two other smaller, one-sided stables next to the riding hall where he takes you and does his rounds again. When he’s all done, you follow him to the riding hall where he opens two doors on each side, that way you can walk through it to get to the pastures in the back rather than walk around the whole center, and takes down the electric cables that serve as an entrance to the pastures. He doesn’t explain any of this, however, so you sort of have to guess. Wordlessly, you head back to the last stables you were in and there, he throws a bunch of what you think are harnesses at you.

“What are these?” you ask dumbly, looking at the thing in your hand.

“They’re halters,” he says, and when you just stare wordlessly, he adds, talking as if it were obvious, “you put them around the horse’s head so you can take them places?”

“Right. Can you show me how to put one on?”

He sighs but obliges; he doesn’t have much of a choice anyway. Not your fault that he’s lived here all his life whereas you’ve encountered a horse maybe three times in your twenty years of life. 

He demonstrates how to put a halter on and watches over you as you practice it on an old and tired-looking white horse. When you manage to do it somehow quickly, he says, “there you go,” and you’re surprised to not hear any sarcasm in his voice. However, when he pats the horse’s forehead, you have a feeling the praise was more directed towards her than you.

You walk side-by-side to the pastures, you with the white horse, whose garrot reaches your shoulder, and Sunghoon leading a small pony in each hand. They have to walk quickly to keep up with his strides and you can’t help but laugh at their cute swaying hips.

“How old is she?” you ask Sunghoon, head tilting towards the horse you’re walking with.

A soft smile cracks on Sunghoon’s lips, perhaps the first smile you’ve seen on him today. “That’s Nellie,” he answers quietly, looking at the horse in question. “She’s turning 20 this December. We were only born a few days apart.”

“Wow, so you grew up together, that’s pretty cool,” you say honestly, and Sunghoon’s eyes settle on you for a few seconds, eyebrows raising a bit as if surprised by your words. 

“Yeah, it is,” he says, looking back in front of him. “My parents taught me how to horse ride with her. And she’s the only horse that belongs to the club whose papers actually state that I’m her owner. All the others have my parents’ name or the club’s on theirs.”

“Ah, so she’s your horse,” you say, looking at Nellie and smiling. You’d have imagined a much taller, handsome and dark-haired horse for him, but this somehow matches as well. It makes Sunghoon appear sweeter, for some reason.

“Yeah,” he says simply, but you don’t miss the small smile on his lips. So maybe there is a way to get to know Park Sunghoon, you think.

Once in the pastures, he shows you how to release a horse safely in case they get excited about being outside and hurt you accidentally or run away. Thankfully, these horses know better than to do that sort of stuff, so it’s very unlikely that anything will happen, he explains, but you’re always better safe than sorry. You head back to the stables in a silence a bit less awkward than before and do the same things with the three other horses in those stables. Not much is said, but you don’t want to force the conversation. He just explains to you that these few horses work well together in the pastures, but that it’s not always this easy.

“Horses have a herd instinct, so they need to be with each other, but also not with anyone. You know how wolf packs have alphas and betas and stuff?” he asks, and you nod. Your friends and you had an obsessive Teen Wolf phase when you were in middle school. “Well, horses kind of have that too, because there’s a hierarchy in their herds. So there’s usually one leader, a mare, and some others that just get along.”

“How do you know which horses get along, though?”

“You just have to observe. You can tell pretty quickly which horses are going to have a leader or a follower type personality. Just put two leaders together, and they’ll clash instantly. It can get pretty bad pretty quick, so the first few times you put certain horses together outside, you really have to watch over them and be careful.”

“That’s so interesting,” you say after a few moments. “I never knew horses to have such complex relationships,” you say, and he smiles.

“Horses are really cool,” he says, and immediately grunts. “That was such a loser thing to say.”

You can’t help but laugh at his self-realization, but quickly reassure him. “No, it’s not. It’s something you’re passionate about, of course you’re gonna find them cool,” you say, and the smile he gives you as an answer shouldn’t make your heart beat that much faster, but it does, and you don’t know how to feel about that. You’re just glad he’s being nice to you - bare minimum, but still, a small victory.

“Time for the hard part, now,” he says when all five horses are happy in the pasture. You follow him to a toolshed where they keep tools, of course, but also two empty wheelbarrows and snacks for the horses like grains, carrots and salt blocks. He tells you to grab a shovel as he rolls out a wheelbarrow and you head back to the stalls together.

There’s nothing complex about shoveling dirty hay and horse shit into a wheelbarrow, but by God is it a draining task. The shovel itself is heavy, so having to pick all that stuff up, heave it back into the cart, and then repeat for who knows how many times is a real burden on your poor back and arms. You definitely let Sunghoon know how hard this is for you, what with all the sighs and loud breaths and grunts you’re letting out. You’ve barely finished cleaning one stall out when Sunghoon is starting his third, and you can tell he’s not happy about it.

“If you complained less, you’d work faster, you know,” he says, that scowl back on his face.

“I can’t help that I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” you chide back, out-of-breath and wiping some sweat from your forehead.

“Yeah? All the hard tasks usually done for you, princess?”

His scowl turns into a small smirk as he looks at you, and you curse your heart for doing a flip when he chuckles at your dumbfoundedness. It’s just a stupid nickname, you tell yourself, no need to get so worked up over it.

“I’ve never had any hard tasks like this in the first place,” you say, moving on to the second stall. “My body isn’t made for it.”

“Well, it’ll have to get used to it.” Yesterday, his mother had also told you you’d get used to it, as a way of reassuring you; but Sunghoon’s words are a far cry from his mother’s, and are more of a threat than anything.

Another few minutes and you’re done, Sunghoon watching you as you finish cleaning your designated stall. You dump everything at the manure pile, then head to the straw pile and fill the wheelbarrow to replace the dirty straw with fresh one in the stalls. And then, you only have to do that four more times. Easy enough, right?

No. Not easy.

The only semi-easy part is taking the horses out of their stalls and tying the rope that are attached to their halter to a ring in the prep room, except some horses are less compliant than others and you end up having to call Sunghoon a couple times so he can take care of them for you.

The whole time you’re heaving manure into the wheelbarrow, you’re complaining. At first, it was the stank that had really gotten to you - as one can imagine, hay infused with horse piss and shit doesn’t smell like fresh linen. But somehow, you got used to it - maybe the physical exertion forced you to forget about the smell and focus on the pain taking over your whole body. 

You huff and puff as you feel the heavy weight of the shovel in your arms and shoulders every time you need to lift it up and bring it back down. The pain in your upper back from years of carrying your backpack on one shoulder makes itself known, and after half an hour you’re whining that you can feel muscle scores coming in your whole body.

“They’ll probably stay for a whole week too,” you mumble to yourself, but still loud enough for Sunghoon to hear.

“You’ll get used to it, I told you. In a few weeks this will feel like nothing.” When you only grunt in response, he adds: “I usually do this on my own, you know. You’re lucky you’re only doing half of the work. Or more like one fourth, with the speed you’re going at.”

“Why don’t your parents or sister help you out?” you ask as you lean against the stall wall, using the distraction of a conversation to take a break.

“My parents already work all week when I’m not there, giving lessons and taking care of the club, so it’s the least I can do to help out on weekends and during my breaks. And my sister already works hard enough at her school so I want her to relax when she’s here,” he replies, never stopping his shoveling.

“But you work hard too, don’t you? I mean, your sister said you were top of your class. You should get a break too.”

His movements halt for a split second only. If your words have any sort of impact on Sunghoon, he doesn’t want to let you know.

“I just study hunched over my desk all week. It’s nice to do something physical, and I don’t mind the time alone.” You’re not sure whether this is an excuse he’s come up with for himself or if he’s telling the truth, but his tone is so final and you understand that he’s done with the conversation, so you pick up your shovel and get back to work. You don’t complain for the rest of the morning.

When you’re finally done with the stalls, you bring back the horses you had walked to the pastures so that others can enjoy the free space and green grass. That’s when you run into an obstacle.

No matter how much you pull, coax, or stare impatiently, this horse won’t budge. Sunghoon rests his back and one foot against the plastic half-wall of the riding hall, chuckling at how awfully you and Dona are getting on. He’s already brought back the other five horses to their stalls and has nothing better to do than be useless, apparently. 

After a few minutes of you trying to negotiate with Dona, to no avail, Sunghoon finally speaks up, just loud enough for you to hear. “Stop staring at her. Horses get nervous when you stare too much.”

You scoff. “But she won’t move! I’m trying to show her the desperation in my eyes!” you shout back, and turn to the horse who only peers at you with empty black eyes.

“Don’t shout. Horses don’t like it when you shout,” Sunghoon simply answers, propping himself off of the wall and taking his sweet time walking towards you. When he reaches you and Dona, he takes the tether from your hands and says, “C’mon, Dona,” without even looking at the horse, who immediately follows, no questions asked.

You stand there dumbfounded and mouth O-shaped as you watch the two of them stride away calmly, running after Sunghoon when your shock dissipates. “Don’t run,” he says when he hears your quickly approaching footsteps, “horses don’t like it when you run.”

“My God,” you say, already out of breath, “how many things do horses not like?”

“Quite a few,” he answers matter-of-factly, although you meant your question more rhetorically than anything.

“How did you do that, anyways?” you ask when your breathing returns to normal.

“Well, mainly, it’s just because she knows me and knows to listen to me,” he explains, turning his head just a bit to look at you as you walk back to the main stables, the sun making itself shy behind the tall trees even though it’s nearing midday. A warm breeze blows, sweeping your ponytail to the side and rustling the leaves on the trees. “But also, horses need to be told what to do, not asked. Your attitude needs to be, ‘we’re going back now,’ not, ‘hey, wanna go back?’” You nod slowly at first, then faster when the words start making sense in your head. Sunghoon wants to make fun of you but finds it sweet that you’re at least trying to understand.

“Right,” you say after a few moments. “It’s not very nice, though,” you add, causing Sunghoon to tilt his head and frown his brows, silently asking you to go on. “Well, I’m sure Dona would like a say in the matter.”

He once again contains his laughter because you look so serious and he doesn’t want to make you feel bad, but ultimately fails and snorts at your comment, making you look up at him, bewilderment written all over your face. “What? I’m being serious!”

“I know you are,” he chuckles, “but don’t worry, Dona doesn’t mind having to go home. And if it was up to her, she’d stay out all night.” 

Sunghoon tells you some anecdotes about the club and its occupiers on your way back, making you giggle at some of the mischievous things the horses have gotten up to. He’s more talkative than this morning which takes you slightly aback, but you’re not going to complain about the change. You were dreading having to spend your summer annoyed at a cute boy you’d have to see every day, so you’re glad his first impression is drastically different from what he’s actually like.

You and Sunghoon part ways a bit before noon, and you plop down on the couch as soon as you get to your grandmother’s house. “Tough morning, huh?,” she calls from the kitchen. You only have enough energy left to hum a small “yes” back. She chuckles at you, then tells you to take a shower before having lunch. You spend the rest of your day sunbathing on a deckchair in the backyard, taking some time to relax before what you’re sure will be a tiring week.

-

One thing you learn during that week and the weeks after that is that Sunghoon has his fair share of fangirls. As a female-dominated hobby, most of the club members are teenage girls who love horses and cute boys.

Tuesday morning before lessons start, he shows you basic things like how to properly groom a horse and how to put their saddles and bridles (which is actually a lot harder than it looks - putting your thumb in a horse’s mouth seems a bit counterintuitive), just in case you ever need to get a horse ready for whatever reason. You’re going to be here for two months, so might as well learn things like these. 

While you help him walk some horses to the pastures, he explains that summer lessons are different in that instead of learners coming once or twice a week, they come all day from Tuesday to Friday and then pass an exam on Saturday morning if they want to. Since both his mother and father teach, they’re able to have two separate groups, one for riders who come for more laidback lessons with games and walks in the fields nearby, and one for those who want to improve their skills in an intense week of both practical and theoretical lessons.

There isn’t much you can do on your own, so after you’ve gone around the stables giving grains to the horses that need them, you join Sunghoon outside in the courtyard as he cleans and greases some saddles and bridles that are starting to wear out. It’s fairly easy to do and he lets you help out, so you sit outside together in silence, enjoying the warmth of the sun on your face. That is, until you start noticing the girls.

You don’t want to pay them any attention, but what with the way they wave shyly at Sunghoon and giggle when he waves back, a smile you can’t describe as anything but dazzling adorning his lips, it’s impossible not to. Some of them even call out his name, saying “hi” in the sweetest way they can. You don’t blame them: had you been fifteen and seen a boy as pretty as Sunghoon, you probably would’ve acted similarly, especially if you got to see him on a regular basis. 

What gets on your nerves, however, is how much Sunghoon enjoys it: you can tell by the smirk that won’t leave his face the whole time or the way he makes them all swoon by remembering their names. Bare minimum, you think to yourself once again, but you don’t say anything. Even if slightly infuriating, it’s also entertaining, seeing Sunghoon enjoy himself this way. You would’ve thought he was the type to want to be by himself at all times, unbothered by anyone, yet here he was, blushing at all the attention he was receiving.

After a girl who had come up to him (sparing you a confused “hi” when she saw your unfamiliar face but quickly turning her attention back to Sunghoon), wanting to know how his year at school had gone, skips giddily away, you can’t help but tease him.

“I can’t believe you’re liking this so much,” you say with a smile, keeping your attention on greasing the leather parts of the bridle.

Sunghoon looks up at you, a semi-offended look on his face. “I’m just being nice.”

“I didn’t know ‘just being nice’ entailed letting yourself be showered in compliments and winking at fifteen year-old girls. Aren’t you turning twenty?” 

“I’m not- I didn’t- Whatever,” he gives up, a pout on his face as he returns to work. You nudge his shoulder, making him crack a smile, and you feel like you won the Grand Prix of something.

Another thing you learn that week is that there’s a lot of going back and forth with Sunghoon. One minute he’s laughing at your jokes and acting like a normal human being, and the other he’s giving you the cold shoulder as if he suddenly doesn’t want you around anymore. Sometimes, these changes in his attitude are so quick, they give you whiplash.

You learn to not pay too much attention to these mood swings, not wanting to create any problems for yourself. He seems to be happy when you ask him about horses, so you often come up with the most random things you can think to ask, and he always patiently answers even the dumbest of questions. However, his patience is much quicker to run out when you complain about any task you’re given, so you settle on glaring at the back of his head.

Thankfully, you’re actually a lot less busy than you thought you would be. Your tasks consist mainly of cleaning the stalls, feeding the horses, and taking care of the ones who are too old or have some kind of illness and can’t be mounted. You bring them to the pastures, where they spend a lot of their time, then brush out the dirt and dust embedded in their fur after rolling around on the ground. These horses are often the most affectionate, gently nuzzling your hands when you try to clean their face and huffing happily when they see you arrive.

You do this a couple times a week and Sunghoon often joins you, bringing Nellie out and attaching the rope of her halter next to the horse you’re taking care of so he can groom her as well. These are the moments when he’s in his best mood and he lets you blabber away, talking about random things and concerns in your life as he listens and nods, sometimes sharing some of his as well, letting you take a peek into his closed-off world. You find that you have actually quite a lot in common, with you being in med school and him in vet school, which are both intense and high-pressure. Yet, there’s always something that’s quite surface-level about these conversations; students will always easily bond about the stress of deadlines and horrible professors. You want to dig deeper, but something tells you that Sunghoon will quickly shut you down, and you’re okay with waiting for a bit. You’re just glad he hasn’t been the way he was with you that first day the whole time and that he’s actually talking to you and even sending a smile your way once every now and then.

You also hang out with Yeji quite a lot. Even though she’s on her summer break, competition season means she spends four days a week at her boarding school to train and the other three days at the club, trying to enjoy her summer like any other normal high schooler as best as she can. She doesn’t say much more on how she feels about training so much, only slightly hinting at her level of stress and fatigue like she had done at the dinner table, and you can tell it’s a touchy subject, so you don’t pry.

It does take your body a few days to get used to being outside in the sun and walking around all day, so your first week at the club, you head home as soon as you’re done with your tasks and take a shower then help your grandmother with dinner, spending your evenings reading or playing Scrabble with her (she’s an impressive player, by the way, and has taught you many words). Every Sunday night, you have dinner with the Parks, although Mrs Park also sometimes urges you into her house at one p.m. with the promise of delicious food.

On your second Wednesday there, however, you feel like going out in the evening. After a really hot week, it had stormed during the night that made Tuesday turn into Wednesday which had made the air feel less heavy and more refreshing, so doing anything was a lot less energy-consuming than it had been before. It’s nine p.m. and the sun is low in the sky when you tell your grandmother you’re going to explore the property some more. You know there’s a path that goes behind the pastures to a forest and that is used for horse rides and walks, so you make your way there and follow it.

The mud is still a bit soft from all the rain of the night and morning and you can tell apart footsteps as well as hoof and dog paw prints. The trees on each side on the path are so full of leaves that they make a sort of arch overhead, barring any of the remaining sunlight from entering and casting a shadow all over, and you wish you’d have brought a thin jumper with you. It feels nice to be outside when the sun isn’t making you feel like your skin will melt right off of your body, though. 

You’ve been walking for about fifteen minutes, stopping here and there to look at a flower or snap a shot of the clouds you can see through the trees when you reach a clearing. It’s completely empty, the trees making way for a vast patch of just grass and small daisies, so of course you see him immediately.

A couple hundred meters away from where you’re standing is Sunghoon on a tall, ginger horse, galloping in circles. You don’t know much about horse riding, but you can tell that he knows what he's doing from the way he holds himself and directs the horse. His back is straight and his legs are pressed against the horse’s flanks, his hips moving in perfect synchronization with the horse’s strides so that he stays seated on its back rather than bounces like you’ve seen many less advanced riders do. The horse’s neck rounds and its head stays down, making its steps light and refined, and Sunghoon holds the reins long and low on each side of the horse’s garrot so he can gallop in a continuous circle.

The sight is breathtaking.

You’d always thought that horses had a certain grace to them, especially such tall and slim horses like the one right in front of you, and Sunghoon, with his perfect stance and control, somehow brought even more of that grace out. It was clear that it took a lot of work and talent to reach such elegance.

Although he seemed highly concentrated on what he was doing, Sunghoon noticed you after a minute of you standing there, all but gawking at him. You see him chuckle as he subtly changes his position on the horse and slows to a trot, heading towards you.

“Hey,” he calls out when you’re within hearing distance of each other. “What are you doing here?”

“I was just… taking a walk,” you say, pointing to the path behind you with your thumb but your gaze not leaving Sunghoon, still wearing an expression of astonishment on your face. “Sunghoon, that was- I mean, just, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. You looked amazing,” you say, unable to keep your honesty at bay. If the girls from the club had seen him ride like this, then you were definitely starting to understand why they were so smitten over him - you felt almost starstruck.

He chuckles again and looks down bashfully, hoping the dim light hides his growing blush from you. “Thanks. I wasn’t really doing anything special.”

“Not anything special, are you kidding? I’m serious, that was awesome. It was like- like a figure skater gliding, or like a ballet dancer doing turns or something,” you say, shaking your head in disbelief.

Your grin gets even wider when he lets out a giggle at your words, immediately covering his mouth with his palm when he hears the sound he’s made. He really does have a thing for being paid attention to and praised, you note.

“So you were just on a walk?” he asks awkwardly as a way of changing the subject, scratching the back of his head.

“I needed some fresh air, I guess. Plus, I’ve only been staying in the club, so I thought I’d take a walk around.”

“I can show you around when I’ve got time this week, if you want.” His offer seems to come as a surprise to the both of you, but you nod anyway, grateful for the extended hand.

“That’d be nice,” you say. You’re not sure what’s happening when you two stay there for a few seconds, just smiling shyly at each other, but you don’t hate it. 

“Have you ever been on a horse?” he asks, breaking the silence first.

“Well, just a couple times, but it wasn’t lessons or anything, so I don’t know if it counts- wait, wait, what are you doing?”

A sudden mischievous smile has made its way to Sunghoon’s features as he dismounts, bringing the horse next to you. “Wanna try, then?”

“No,” you say with a pointed look. “No way. That horse is taller than me, Sunghoon, I’m not getting on him.”

“Oh c’mon, I promise you it’s not scary, and I’ll be holding onto the reins the whole time. We can just walk back to the club like this.” His eyes are working hard to convince you, and his small pout makes what little resolve you had crumble.

“Fine. But you better not let go of that horse.”

“I won’t,” he says, and something about his tone makes your qualms dissipate.

You walk over to where he’s standing on the left hand side of the horse and hook your left foot in the stirrup. Sunghoon instructs you to place your hands on each end of the saddle and hoist yourself up. It requires a lot more arm strength than you’d have imagined after seeing so many riders do it effortlessly, but Sunghoon is there to help you up as soon as he sees you struggling, two strong hands coming up to hold you at the waist and lift you onto the horse. You tell yourself it’s the physical exertion and not his touch that renders you breathless.

“Wow,” you say when you look around you, almost two meters above ground.

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?”

A small giggle escapes your lips. “Yeah. Pretty cool.”

“How does it feel? Are you sitting okay? Here, I’ll change the stirrup length so they fit you. Or we can just cross them over the saddle, since you won’t really need them, anyway.”

“No, I’d rather wear them, please,” you say, and your slight anxious tone makes Sunghoon chuckle.

When he’s done adjusting the stirrups for you and made sure you’re comfortable, he shows you how to hold the reins properly and tells you how to get the horse to start walking. “We usually teach beginners that you knock your heels against their flanks, but because Flame has only been mounted by more advanced riders, he might not like that. Don’t panic,” he reassures as soon as he sees your eyes go wide, “just press your calves against him instead of using your heels. Here, see? I’m holding him by the front of the reins, so he won’t run off.”

“Right, right,” you breathe out. Sunghoon’s right there, so there’s no reason to stress about this.

“Good. Just a small pressure from your calves, and we’re good to go.”

Flame is very reactive, already started walking when you’ve barely squeezed your legs against him. With Sunghoon practically directing the horse for you, you realize there’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the ride.

“This feels nice,” you say as you try to get used to Flame’s quick but steady rhythm. Sunghoon’s smile is better than any other spoken answer he could’ve given you. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, you decide to speak up.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Sunghoon replies, looking up at you.

“Why were you so mean to me the first night I got here?”

He seems slightly taken aback by your question, but you get a glimpse of a guilty expression before he looks back down. “Right, sorry about that. I’ve kind of been feeling bad about it all week, but I was scared to bring it up.”

“It’s okay, I’m just curious about the sudden change is all,” you say.

“I just-” he starts, but then seems to think for a bit. “I’m not the best with strangers, for one. Plus, you were going to stay for the whole summer. I’ve built a routine for myself every summer here, and I don’t like it when something, or someone, disturbs my peace. Also, no offense, but I’m not a huge fan of you city folk. So many people at school have this weird prejudice against me for being from the middle of nowhere, so I’ve kind of got a low tolerance for them. So before I even met you, I didn’t really like you. Sorry, that’s harsh.”

You tell him not to worry about it. His words make you understand him a bit more, and you’re glad it doesn’t seem to be anything too personal against you. You tell him to go on and he sighs. “And you know, I talked with my parents and they told me it’ll be nice to have someone else around to help, and that your grandmother always talks highly of you, and that it was stupid to have decided in advance I wouldn’t like you, and I sort of agreed, but I couldn’t bring myself to be okay with it all. It’s like, we’ve been fine all this time, so why bring in someone new? My parents told me that technically this whole property belongs to your grandmother, and that she could bring anyone she wanted, and I couldn’t really say anything against that. But anyway, I told myself that if I just was cold and pretended you weren’t here, that it’d be fine. But then I- I saw you, and…” his words trail off here and he looks down as if embarrassed to say what comes next.

“And?” you pry, too curious not to.

You really have to focus to hear his words because of how low he mumbles them. “And you were really pretty…”

This confession that seemingly comes out of the blue makes your heart swell with satisfaction and you can’t help but tease him about it. “What was that? I didn’t hear you clearly.”

“Oh c’mon, you heard me. Don’t make me say it again.”

“I want you to say it again, though.”

He sighs and gives in. “Fine. I said you were pretty.”

You laugh, way happier than you should be at his words, and he whines at you to not make fun of him. “So you were mean to me because I was pretty? Doesn’t make much sense,” you taunt.

He sighs again, shaking his head a bit as if in disbelief he’s actually talking about this. “It’s just that… I wanted to be nice, I promise you I did, but I just… I’m not even sure myself. I think it just pissed me off even more, because it wasn’t like having to ignore some rando, it was having to ignore a really pretty girl, which obviously I don’t really want to do,” he says, and you laugh again. “But then you ended up being really nice as well and even funny, and I felt like an asshole for being mean. Which I should never have been in the first place, I know. I’m just… bad with strangers, like I said. Not used to them. It’s not an excuse for my behavior, though, so I’m sorry.”

You look at him with a smile and thank him for apologizing. Sadly, it’s a lot more than most nineteen-year-old boys would do, so you appreciate it. You spend the rest of the ride teasing him about how he thinks you’re pretty and how he was really acting like a tsundere, earning a few embarrassed chuckles from him. Something about getting him flustered just gets you going: his shy smile that reveals a pair of dimples and another of fangs, the blush creeping on his cheeks as he looks down at his feet. Too adorable.

When you reach the entrance to the club, he helps you get off the horse, holding you when your knees almost buckle at the impact of your feet against the ground. For some reason, you weren’t expecting to be so high up, even though you had been on a nearly two-meter horse for the past fifteen minutes.

“You know, I could teach you how to mount, if you’re interested,” he says as you brush some horse hair from your leggings.

That’s the second offer Sunghoon makes you tonight; he’s really showing you his nice side now, you realize with a flip of your stomach. You could just say yes, that sounds fun, but instead, you decide to annoy him some more. “Didn’t know I was so pretty that the Park Sunghoon would offer to give me lessons!”

He rolls his eyes playfully and starts to walk away with Flame. “Forget it then.”

You giggle as you catch up to him and nudge his shoulder with yours. “I’d love to.” 

-

From that day on, it’s a lot easier to be around Sunghoon. He still doesn’t let you complain, and you can tell the walls he’s built around himself have only shrunk by a few bricks, but at least his attitude doesn’t flip around anymore. He reveals a side of himself that’s goofier than you’d have imagined, cracking random dad jokes and making side comments that never fail to make you laugh. He’s also quite sensitive to your teasing, always looking away with a blush, mumbling a small whatever at your words, but his shy smile lets you know that he doesn’t actually mind it.

The riding lessons usually happen in between work breaks or at the end of the day, and after a few of them, you know how to get a horse to start, turn, and stop, and you don’t like a complete fool when the horse’s pace goes up to a trot, having mastered the art of sitting and standing at the right time. Sunghoon had shown you a few horses you could practice on and you’d gone for a piebald horse named Picasso whose garrot reached your chin, because the agglomeration of white hairs at the top of his otherwise black head formed a small heart.

Although you’d noticed from the get-go that Sunghoon was nothing less than gorgeous, it hadn’t hit you in the face until now that you could call him a friend, and every time he smiled or that the light hit his eyes a certain way, your heart skipped a few beats. At first, you told yourself that that was it - you found him pretty. That didn’t mean much more than you being able to recognise beauty, and it certainly didn’t mean you actually liked him as anything else than a friend.

That was until this one day, when he was giving you a lesson after everyone had left the club. In the south of France where temperatures often rise to the high thirties in the summer, heavy storms are bound to break out. This was one of those days - it had been raining the entire day, but it had calmed out a bit at the end of the afternoon which was why you had gone ahead with the lesson. However, twenty minutes into it, the rain got heavier again and thunder suddenly rang, loud and resonating in the emptiness of the fields. Horses are generally skittish creatures, and Picasso was no exception, the sound frightening him so much that he took off in a rapid gallop. In less than a fortnight of lessons you hadn’t developed the strong legs and quick reflexes of an advanced rider, and you were unable to keep up with him, falling off of him with a yelp, everything happening in the fraction of a second.

You fell right on your butt, the pain shooting off from there and spreading to your whole body and taking away your breath for three long seconds. You had barely the time to register what had happened that Sunghoon was already next to you, frantically asking if you were okay and telling you to stay still. He pulled his phone out and called Yeji, telling her to come to the riding hall quickly. 

From your peripheral vision you could see Picasso pacing back and forth at the other side of the hall, as if to calm himself down. Sunghoon held you up with one firm hand planted on your back, his other hand resting on your arm as his thumb brushed your skin comfortingly. He helped you regain a normal heart rate by making you mirror his long and controlled breaths, worried eyes never once leaving your face. 

Yeji got to the riding hall in no time and immediately spotted you sitting on the floor and Sunghoon crouching over you, but her brother asked her to please take Picasso back to his stall before she could walk over to the two of you. She nevertheless asked if you were okay and you nodded, trying to give her a faint smile that reassured both her and Sunghoon.

“You feeling better?” Sunghoon asked when your tears had finally stopped falling, wiping away the ones that had rained down your cheeks and reached your jawline. 

You nodded, taking a deep breath through your nose that turned out to be useless when you opened your eyes and realized how close Sunghoon was, face merely inches away from yours and arms wrapped around you, taking your breath away more than the pain had. “Y-yeah, I’m fine, more shocked than anything.”

He let out a chuckle of relief and brushed the hair away from your face, fully putting your heart and lungs out of order. “I’m glad. Falls always happen when you first start out riding, but they’re still really scary. I was worried you got badly hurt for a second there,” he says simply, and before you can even process his words, he asks, “Are you feeling ready to get up?”

You can only nod, looking up at Sunghoon like he saved you from a near-death experience as he helps you up. If he notices your gawking, he doesn’t say anything, and you’re thankful for it. In your three weeks of knowing each other, you’ve been the one to tease Sunghoon and make him unable to say anything. Even just in general, you’re used to being the flirt that makes boys blush - very rarely were they able to do the same to you, even though they all tried their hardest. Yet Sunghoon, without even realizing it or doing it on purpose, had just made your heart flutter and your brain draw a blank. You wished you could blame it on the shock you just had and the pain still making your legs weak, but you’re reminded of all the times a simple smile or passing touch had put you in the same state, and you know you’d be a fool to continue on ignoring them.

It takes you literally falling flat on your ass to realize you have feelings for Park Sunghoon.

-

Unsure what to do with this newfound information, you decide to keep things between you and Sunghoon as they were. You’ll be leaving at the end of August anyway, no need to make things awkward for the remainder of your stay. Although some moments make you wonder if he might feel some kind of way for you too, you try not to think too much of them and enjoy your friendship as is. 

When you’ve reached a level where you being on a horse isn’t a danger to yourself or those around you, Sunghoon keeps his promise of showing you more of the premises and you go on horse rides together, allowing you to discover random creeks and benches that were placed in the middle of nowhere. You go on these a few times a week when you’re all done with your tasks of the day and the raging heat of the sun has somewhat calmed, and to your surprise, you actually really enjoy being out in nature, even though bugs are still a very much unwelcome part of it.

One day he mentions vet school and you’re reminded of your grandmother’s words on your first night here about how it wasn’t particularly what he wanted to do, so you ask him about it. He turns to you with a stunned look on his face. “I didn’t know she knew about that.”

“She told me she noticed a lot of things like that.”

He turns his head again and gazes up at the sky. “Well, she’s not wrong. It’s my parents that wanted me to go to vet school. I’d be happy just taking care of the club and making a living that way, but they say they don’t need my help year round and that it’s better for me to take up a better job.”

“For someone who doesn’t want to do it, it’s very impressive that you’re top of your class.”

He chuckles shyly and a blush appears on his cheeks. “Did Yeji say that? I only got the top grade for a couple of subjects, not all of them,” he says, making you scoff as if to say ‘still, very impressive.’ “And you know, I still like it and find it interesting, and if I’m doing it, might as well give it my best and make my parents proud.”

“Yeah, I get that. My parents are both doctors so there was never any doubt in either their or my mind that I’d become one too, until I started my first year and realized that maybe I could’ve done something else.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

You turn your head to look at him and he mirrors you. “Cause if I’m doing it, might as well give it my best and make my parents proud.”

You both look away with a chuckle. “Guess we’re more similar than I thought we were,” he says, taking you aback, but you’re very glad he thinks that way. You turn to your side, leaning against your elbow as you peer down at him.

“What about a riding career? Had you ever thought about that?”

“God, yeah,” he answers without any hesitation. “My parents signed me up for a few competitions when I was younger, and I won a couple. It made them happy, so I was happy, but I also actually really liked it. My parents never really asked how seriously I wanted to take it, though, and I didn’t say anything, so when Yeji started showing a lot of interest in competitions and becoming a professional rider they focused their attention on her and assumed I didn’t really mind, I guess. I never tried to prove them wrong. As I said, I’d be fine just taking care of the club.” He sighs and pauses for a second. “She was really young when she said she wanted to have a horse riding career, and my parents just ran with it. Now that she’s older and it takes up basically ninety percent of her life, I can tell it’s a lot of pressure on her. But it’s too late to switch places and she’s the same as me, doesn’t want to let down our parents. I just hope she won’t push herself too much, you know.”

You nod, listening intently to his words. “I’m sure you’ll be there to watch over her if she ever does. You seem like a good older brother.”

He smiles and looks up at you. “I try to be.” He reaches a hand up to your face and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. The sudden, unfamiliar and intimate gesture takes you by surprise and as soon as he registers your wide eyes and agape lips he retracts his hand, apologizing. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean to be weird, I just- I don’t- I’m sorry,” he stammers, looking away with a blush.

You don’t say anything for a few seconds, too stunned by what just happened, and he looks back at you, calling out your name in a small voice. His worried expression immediately crumbles when you start laughing. “It’s fine,” you say between giggles. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

He breathes out a sigh of relief and smiles again. “Sorry, I just did it without thinking. My friends and family are always super touchy so I’m just used to that sort of thing.”

“I’m the opposite,” you say, and Sunghoon raises his eyebrows. “My parents aren’t very affectionate. I mean, they tell me they’re proud of me, and buy me gifts and stuff like that, but we never hug, or say we love each other. You’ve seen my grandma, right? The only time she’s hugged me in the almost three weeks I’ve been here was the very first day, and that’s because we hadn’t seen each other in six months.”

Sunghoon nods and hums at your words. “Yeah, now that you say that, your grandma isn’t the type to hug, or, I don’t know, pet your hair or anything, even though I’ve known her basically my whole life. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he says, and you shake your head.

“No, don’t worry, you didn’t. It was actually… kinda nice,” you admit, looking away from him quickly.

“Really?” he asks with one of the widest grins you’ve ever seen on him, and you can’t believe this is the same boy that glared at you as he opened the door just a few weeks ago. You look at him from the corner of your eyes for a few seconds, trying to hide your smile, but give in and nod.

He opens his arms wide and says, “Come here,” and you look at him in disbelief.

“As in…” you say, pointing with your index finger to his chest, and he nods, blinking slowly. You scoff but do it anyway, resting your head on his chest, and a weird but warm bubble envelops your insides as he circles your waist with an arm and caresses your hair with his other hand.

“Is this okay?” he whispers, sending shivers down your spine.

“Yeah,” you whisper back. “This is okay.”

-

One Friday morning when he’s grooming Nellie and you’re braiding Picasso’s mane, he tells you he’s driving to the city tonight to meet up with his friends. “We’re just going to McDonald’s and then the cinema… and they’re kinda losers, you know, but it’d be fun if you came too. If you want to, I mean,” he offers, his shyness preventing him from looking you in the eyes. When you say you’d love to, his whole face lights up.

The day passes and when the clock strikes six p.m., you walk out of your grandmother’s house and find Sunghoon who’s waiting for you, back resting against his parents’ car. Hands in his pockets and sunglasses on, you can tell he’s trying to look cool and it makes him all that much more endearing to you. He fixes his posture and takes his sunglasses off when he sees you approaching, as if trying to get a better look; he’s seen you wear cuter outfits than tank tops and denim shorts for the dinners with his family but you’ve never worn such a pretty dress, and his heart speeds up at the mere sight of you.

“Like what you see?,” you say when you’re closer to him, twirling around in your dress.

“You look beautiful,” he says, and the look on his face must not be far from the one you wore when you saw him with Flame in that clearing a couple weeks ago.

His honesty makes you a bit shy, and you thank him as you ruffle his hair on your way to the passenger seat of the car. He stands there dumbfounded for a second until you call out his name, getting him back down to reality.

On your way to Perpignan, he tells you about his friends Heeseung, Jay and Jake, and how they all met two years ago. He shared a dorm with Jay and Jake in their first year of preparatory classes, and Heeseung, in the year above, was assigned as his mentor. They all clicked instantly and have been practically inseparable ever since, although they all live quite far away from each other, which is why it’s easiest to meet up in Perpignan when they’re on break from their studies.

“Heeseung’s girlfriend will also be there. Her name is Yunjin, she’s really nice, so if the guys get annoying you two can just talk together.”

“Why, do you guys have a tendency to get annoying when you’re together?,” you ask lightheartedly, making Sunghoon chuckle.

“Not always, but it’s a possibility. They’re nice though, so don’t worry. Jay and Jake especially are outgoing, even though Jay kinda ruins the mood sometimes cause his jokes are just awful. Heeseung is a bit shy though, just don’t take it personal if he like, doesn’t really talk to you or anything.”

“That’s funny, that reminds me of someone,” you say with a smile, unable to stop yourself. Sunghoon just replies with one of his famous whatevers.

It takes you about an hour to get to Perpignan. When you arrive, his friends are waiting outside of the McDonald’s, the boys waving with their whole arms in your direction while Yunjin watches them cross-armed, a smile on her face. “Oh, God,” Sunghoon murmurs, already embarrassed by his friends. “They’re not always like that, I promise,” he says as you walk over to them.

“Really,” you deadpan when they’ve started chanting Sunghoon’s name, watching as his face turns a deeper shade of red.

“Hi guys,” he greets them, bro-hugging Heeseung, Jay and Jake and kissing Yunjin on each cheek. You remind yourself once again to start from the right and not the left, and greet the boys first. They all say “hi, Y/N” and give you their names, and you’re quite flustered that you don’t need to tell them your name.

“Sunghoon’s told us a lot about you,” Jake says with a knowing expression, and you all chuckle when Sunghoon mutters “shut up, Jake.”

You go to greet Yunjin next and you’re surprised when, rather than simply pressing the corner of her lips against your cheek like most people do when they greet someone they’re not particularly close to, she actually kisses your cheek, an extra-friendly gesture. “I was so relieved when Sunghoon said he was bringing a girl,” she confesses, reminding you of Yeji, “I can’t deal with having to babysit these four all the time. Look at them,” she says, gesturing towards the quartet with a nudge of her head. They’re sizing Sunghoon up, ruffling his hair, pinching his cheeks and brushing away invisible creases in his t-shirt as he tries to swat their hands away, to no avail, and you can’t help but laugh at them along with Yunjin.

You all head inside the McDonald’s, getting into pairs of two to pick your order on the giant touch screens. You choose a McChicken, potato wedges and ice tea, and Sunghoon chides you for getting wedges instead of fries.

“People who get those think they’re better than everyone else,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Because we are,” you say with a smile. You touch the screen to get to the payment page but Sunghoon goes back, saying he’ll order too.

“But I need to pay?” you say, looking up at him questioningly.

“I can pay for the two of us,” he says nonchalantly, and you tease him with an ‘ooh.’ “Shut up,” he mutters, already blushing, “just let me do something nice for you.”

“Fine,” you smile, nudging his shoulder with yours a bit. “Thanks. I’ll get the cinema tickets then.”

He turns to you abruptly, his eyebrows drawn in together. “But then that cancels out me paying for this…” he whines, and you give him a look as if to say, “yeah, exactly.” 

“I don’t mind getting the tickets,” he says. “I get paid for my work at the club but I never spend any money, so, you know, I can get this for you. It makes me happy,” he mumbles, avoiding your teasing gaze.

“Thanks, Hoon,” you say, the nickname escaping your lips before you can stop it. He doesn’t seem to mind it; if anything, his blush gets deeper. You think he might end up eternally red at this rate.

“Of course.” He orders a double Big Mac, fries and a coke, and you tease him for getting such a boring meal. “They’re classics for a reason,” he defends himself. 

You swear you’ve never seen him so red and so stuttery as when you get on your toes to press a kiss to his cheek as a thank you for paying, and you think there’s no way he could get any cuter than this. His friends don’t miss it and Jake punches him very obnoxiously in the shoulder as what you can only assume is a weird congratulatory gesture.

His friends are a bit annoying, but in a funny way, so it’s okay. You’re so unaccustomed to their very unique sense of humor that everything they say and do makes you laugh, whereas they’re used to behaving like that and don’t even question their weirdness anymore. Contrary to what Sunghoon told you, Jay’s jokes land with you every time, even when the whole table grunts. 

Most of the conversation, to Sunghoon’s dismay, is spent telling embarrassing stories about him, which his friends have a lot of after having seen him drunk so many times. Heeseung asks you about how it’s been being with Sunghoon at the club, and you don’t really notice the sly smirk on his and Jake’s faces until you’re done answering. You tell them about all the things he’s made you do, but when you notice him about to complain, you add that it’s also been nice, learning how to ride a horse and spending time in the countryside.

“So you’ve seen Sunghoon ride, then?” Jake asks, and Heeseung’s snort tells you it’s not an innocent question.

“Yeah, I have,” you say, but it comes out more a question because their behavior confuses you.

Jake gives you a pointed look. “And, what did you think? I mean, it’s not the coolest sport out there, is it?” he asks, and the way Sunghoon looks down at his half-eaten burger is enough for you to put the puzzle pieces together.

You frown slightly. “Well, I think it’s a lot cooler than running after a ball and pretending like you’re gonna die when you twist your ankle,” you reply, remembering Jake’s mention of him playing soccer. Jay is quick to diffuse the tension when he sees Jake about to bite something back, saying to just talk about something else. You back off and look at Sunghoon, who seems to have completely spaced out and left the conversation. You rest your hand at the top of his knee, his attention snapping back towards you and he gives you a small smile, then turns to his friends and the conversation starts again as if nothing had happened. You’re thankful for it, because you don’t wanna create trouble the first time you meet them and make it awkward, but you really don’t appreciate his friends making him feel like he’s not “cool” because he’s a horse rider; there’s already enough stigma about it being a girls’ sport, he doesn’t need any added pressure from them.

The rest of the meal goes well, Heeseung and Yunjin throwing fries at each other, and the table making fun of Jay for eating his McFlurry so messily. Apart from the horse riding comment and the fact that they love teasing him (which you do too, to be fair), Sunghoon’s friends are nice and make him laugh, so you relax around them once again, although you and Jake exchange a few tense eye contacts. You won’t feel sorry for defending Sunghoon, even if you’ve known him for three weeks and Jake has for two years. 

When you’re done eating, you walk to the movie theater that’s just two minutes away, the boys ahead and you and Yunjin in tow. “I’m really glad you spoke up for Sunghoon earlier, and I’m sure he appreciated it too,” she says, just loud enough for you to hear. “I’ve tried speaking about it with Heeseung, but he and Jake just don’t seem to get that it actually annoys Sunghoon and they say it’s just for fun. I did horse riding when I was a kid, so I know how hard it actually is, and Jay is just a bit more mature than them, so we try to get them to stop, but they still do it a bit. Their humor is basically just making fun of everyone in their group, so sometimes they don’t know when to stop.”

You nod at her words, the situation a bit clearer now. “He should bring them to the club and show them how good he is,” you say. “Or better yet, make them get on a horse so they can see firsthand that it’s not the horse doing all the work like everyone says.” Yunjin laughs and agrees, saying she’d pay to see those boys on a horse. 

You reach the cinema as you make a note to talk to Sunghoon about this later before you can forget. You ask Yunjin what movie you’re seeing, realizing you had no idea, and she rolls her eyes. “I wanted to go see the new Marion Cotillard movie, but the boys said it looked boring, so we’re going to watch some horror movie. I don’t even know the name, but I’m sure it’s just a rehash of the same tired haunted house plot.”

While Sunghoon gets the tickets, you sneak to the food counter and get two bottles of coke and a large popcorn to share with him. He complains that he could’ve gotten that but you shut him up with a tut. 

“Are you good at watching horror movies?” you lean in and whisper when you’re seated and waiting for the movie to start while ads play, and you see him shiver slightly, but that might just be because of the aircon in the theater and not your proximity.

“What do you mean, am I good at watching them? Do you mean if I like them?” he asks, eyebrows slightly furrowed as he looks at you.

“No, I mean if you get scared easily. You can like them and watch them a lot but still get scared. I feel like you’d scream at all the jumpscares,” you add that later part just to tease him, and you know you hit bullseye when he looks away with a scoff, straightening in his seat.

“I guess they’re fun to watch, but no, I don’t get scared. And I’m definitely not going to scream.” He looks down at you with a smirk, his confidence hitting him out of nowhere as it sometimes does. “But I know you will, so feel free to hold onto my arm when you get scared,” he says, and it’s your turn to scoff and look away.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be alright,” you say just as the lights start to dim and the movie starts playing.

It takes a while for the movie to pick up, so the first half hour, you’re not really into it, paying more attention to the way your hand brushes against Sunghoon’s whenever you reach for the popcorn at the same time rather than to what is happening on screen. However, when a ghost with a very unpleasant face suddenly pops out, you can’t keep yourself from jumping in your seat and letting out a small gasp which Sunghoon would’ve made fun of, had he not been twice spooked as you were, the pieces of popcorn he was about to eat discarded somewhere at his feet because of the jumpscare.

You share a look with Sunghoon and when the both of you realize the other was completely bluffing, you burst into quiet giggles. He offers you his arm to hold onto again and you roll your eyes but take it anyway, glad for the reassurance his warmth brings you. You wrap one hand around his bicep and place the other in his hand, interlacing your fingers together, and for once you’re the shy one and can’t look him in the eye, keeping your gaze on the screen when you feel his eyes on you, surprised but pleased by your cute action.

You spend the rest of the movie like this, bodies turning towards each other every time something scary happens on screen as if instinctively going to the other to find comfort. If you weren’t in a public place, you probably would’ve ended up in his lap. Or he in yours, perhaps.

The loss of his warmth when the movie ends and the lights turn back on makes your heart a bit sad, and you already find yourself waiting for the time you’ll get to feel him next to you again. When you walk out of the theater, the sun’s finally set and the sky is starting to get dark. You all walk back to the parking lot, Heeseung, Jay, Jake and Yunjin ahead, talking about the movie excitedly and recalling their favorite scenes, but you and Sunghoon hang back a bit. He’s silent and for a second you’re worried all the hand-holding has made him awkward but when you look up at him, he gives you a smile that calms all your nerves in an instant.

Jake suddenly turns around to face you, walking backwards. “What did you two lovebirds think?” he asks.

“It was alright,” Sunghoon answers. “It had some scary scenes but I couldn’t really get into it.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause you two were too busy being all- ow!” Jake starts but is interrupted by a kick in the shins, courtesy of Jay.

“Can you read the room, just once in your life, bro?” he says, and Jake rolls his eyes but turns back around anyway, leaving you and Sunghoon to laugh at his friends’ antics. 

When you reach the parking lot, you say goodbye to everyone, saying it was nice meeting them and you hoped to see them again soon. “If you can, you should try and visit the club at some point, it’d be nice seeing you there,” you tell Yunjin as you hug her goodbye.

The car ride home is silent at first, betraying both your and Sunghoon’s shyness. “Tonight was nice,” you start, wanting to start a conversation after a few minutes of just looking out the window.

Sunghoon responds immediately as if he’d been waiting for you to say something. “Yeah? I’m glad. I was scared you weren’t going to like my friends or something…” he says, glancing at you with a worried expression on his face.

“Well, I really liked Yunjin and Jay…” you trail.

“But?”

“But…” you sigh, too late to turn back, but unsure whether it’s your place to bring this up. “Heeseung and Jake were nice, you know, but that comment they made about you horse riding really brushed me the wrong way.”

“Aww,” Sunghoon coos, and you roll your eyes at his fake saccharine tone. “Did it make you upset for me?”

“It did!” you say, wanting Sunghoon to know you were serious. “Friends shouldn’t make fun of your passions. Plus you’re really good at it, and I’m sure they’d be impressed by you. I talked about it with Yunjin, you know,” you add before he can cut in. “She said it happens all the time and you’re used to it, but it’s not something you should have to put up with. You should have them over at the club some day.”

Sunghoon hums, pouting his lips a bit. “I don’t know… It’s not that big of a deal. It’s how we mess with each other.”

“You looked really down when they were saying those things, Hoon. You’re allowed to say when something bothers you. And if they don’t listen, then they’re assholes. I know you’ve been friends for a while now, and I’m not trying to make you cut them off by any means, but I think you should talk to them. If they’re good friends, they’ll understand and not want to say something that hurts you. At least I hope so,” you say, looking out the window again to hide how upset this truly makes you. Sunghoon’s next words come as a surprise to you.

“Thanks, Y/N.” You look back at him with a questioning look, wordlessly asking him to go on, and he sighs. “I’m sort of used to keeping everything for myself. Taking a step back so I don’t take things personally, not complaining and just doing what I’m told even if it’s not what I want to do, stuff like that, I’m used to it. I just- I don’t wanna bother anyone, you know. I think you’re the first person who’s ever told me I’m allowed to voice things out.”

You don’t know what to say for a few seconds, shocked by this revelation. It’s very fitting of him - sacrificing his potential career for his sister, going to vet school to please his parents but taking care of the center whenever he’s on break. You didn’t know this behavior went deeper than that, and it was ingrained in him to just take it all and never put up a fight.

You say, “You’re allowed to put yourself first, you know. Sometimes, you even need to,” and it’s an unfamiliar breath of fresh air that blows away some of the weight on his shoulders, hearing those words. He chuckles a bit, hoping that the tears pooling in his eyes don’t accidentally overflow.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that, but it’s nice knowing I have the option. Thank you, Y/N,” he repeats, and you smile at him, relieved when he smiles back.

The rest of the car ride goes by in a flash as you make fun of each other for being so scared of the film and jump from topic to topic like frogs bouncing around lily pads, somehow neither of you ever losing track of the conversation. You tell him someone with such a boring McDonald’s order doesn’t deserve to have opinions and he says that of course you’d think that since you chose potato wedges instead of french fries.

Without noticing it, you soon reach the center, and Sunghoon walks you to your doorstep after parking the car. You stand in front of each other at the door, and you seriously feel like the main lead in a teen rom-com, butterflies in your stomach and all the works as you look up at him, expecting a little something.

“So…” he starts, pressing his lips into a flat line to hide his smile.

“So…” you repeat, nudging your foot with his as you both look down.

“Tonight was nice,” he says sheepishly and you can’t help but laugh, him soon imitating you.

“It was. But we’ve already established that, I think.”

“Right.” His gaze finds yours, and the look in his eyes makes your heart feel like it’s on an acid trip. You stare at each other for a few seconds, unable to look away, and you’re about to run off into the house, the tension too much to handle, when his eyes finally drop to your lips. Knowing him, he probably won’t do much more, so you take a small step towards him and raise your lips towards his, closing the distance between the two of you inch by inch, getting closer, closer, closer, until-

“Sunghoon!” Yeji’s voice rings out in the night, taking you aback as you gasp and stumble a few steps back, not wanting her to see you almost devour her brother’s face. Sunghoon closes his eyes and shakes his head, then lets out an exasperated “what.”

“I can’t believe you went to see that new movie without me. I saw it in Jay's story. I told you I wanted to go see it!”

He sighs and looks at you, mouthing a “sorry” before walking towards her, hooking his arm over her shoulders as he walks her back to their house. 

“Sorry, lil sis. We can go watch it together, I don’t mind seeing it again. Also, why do you follow Jay? Unfollow him,” he commands, and after that you can’t hear anything because they’re too far away. You watch them walk with a smile on your face, appreciating their little moment together, and your heart does a little somersault of joy when Sunghoon turns around to wave at you from his door.

-

After that night, you’re more determined than ever to turn that almost-kiss into a actually-happened-kiss. However, your resolve soon seems to have been for nothing when Sunghoon tells you about how he wishes he didn’t have to leave with his parents, but they won’t let him stay, and you’re reminded of the Parks yearly vacation that starts the next day, exactly three days after the night out.

It’s a late Sunday afternoon and you’ve done everything you needed to for that day, so you and Sunghoon went off on a horse ride as you often do, deciding to take a break when you reach a field in which a bunch of haystacks rest. You only had to exchange a look to understand the other immediately, so you tied your horses to a tree and raced over to the closest stack, helping each other get to the top and laying there.

“I wish you didn’t have to go either,” you say, playing with a loose strand of hay peeking out from the stack in the small space between you and Sunghoon.

“You gonna miss me?” Sunghoon teases, grinning as he lightly nudges your shoulder.

“As surprising as it sounds, I think I might,” you say, and from the corner of your eye you see his grin get wider.

“I think I will too,” he replies, and he giggles when he sees you try and fail to suppress a smile. “Actually, I definitely will,” he adds just to see you smile bigger, and it works.

“When are you leaving again exactly?” you ask to change the subject.

“Early tomorrow morning. I still haven’t packed,” he says and sighs.

“We should head back so you can pack,” you say even though you don’t want to do that at all.

“Yeah, we should, but I don’t want to,” he replies, practically reading your mind. “I wanna stay here for a while.”

A small silence settles between the two of you, but it says more than a thousand words. The tension that has been hanging over your heads for a while now but only thickened after Friday night is almost palpable now. You’re laying so close that your arms are almost touching, occasionally brushing when one of you shifts, and if you turned your head, his face would be right there, which means his lips would be right there. Well, one of you is going to have to do something about this tension, you think, and it’s definitely not going to be him.

“Sunghoon?” you call out, turning your head towards the boy next to you. He does the same and your eyes meet. In this late afternoon hour, the sun is right behind you and he has to squint a little bit and use his hand as a shield to look at you properly. He looks a bit stupid like that, but you think he’s cute.

“Yeah?”

The warm feeling that spreads over your whole body at the sound of his voice is what gives you the confirmation that you want to say what you say next, and the courage to do it.

“Can I kiss you?”

His eyebrows raise slightly but he’s quick to hide his surprise and starts grinning instead, revealing those fangs of his you love so much. You have a feeling they’d leave the cutest marks on your skin. “Sure,” he says, letting his eyes drift down to your lips just like that other night.

So you do.

You lean in close enough to press your lips onto his, letting them touch for a brief second before leaning back again. A small pout forms on his lips at the fleeting contact. “That’s it?”

You could just eat him whole, you think. A kiss will have to do. “What did you want?” you ask, trying and failing to hide a smirk.

“That wasn’t a proper kiss.”

“Yeah? What’s a proper kiss then?”

He looks away with a huff. “I’m sure you know what a proper kiss is. Why would you ask to kiss me if you’re not even gonna do it properly…”

“How about you show me then?”

This makes him look promptly back at you, his eyes a bit wider. When he just gulps without saying anything, you add: “Or should I try again? Properly this time?”

He nods, eyes set on your lips. He’d always found them pretty and inviting, and he’d caught himself daydreaming about this exact moment a few times, but now that it was right in front of him, his brain was short-circuiting. All he could do was close his eyes and wait for you.

You find it cute how he screws his eyes shut before you’re even kissing him, making him look like a k-drama female lead during the first kiss scene. You can’t help but smile a little even as you bring your lips to his once again, this time a bit firmer, a bit deeper. He waits for you to move your lips against his before he does so too, but once he’s started, he’s unstoppable.

In fleeting conversations and off-hand comments, you’d learned that Sunghoon had had a couple girlfriends but that it always ended after a few months. When you’d accused him of “virgin behavior” after he did something embarrassing for an almost twenty-year-old, he’d fervently defended himself of very much not being virgin and very much having had sex before, which you’d said was what a virgin would say, but you knew he was saying the truth because he wasn’t the type to lie, especially about this sort of thing.

What was sure was that he kissed you like he knew what he was doing, and he was doing it well. His shy demeanor from a minute ago is completely gone as he tilts his head and deepens the kiss, holding you tight against him. His hands were shy at first, but when yours made their way to his hair so you could gently tug at the strands there, he understood he didn’t need to be so polite. One of his hands found your waist while the other cupped your cheek, his thumb coming under your chin to tilt it up towards him. 

Your lips move against the others’ like you’d done this your whole life, and you’re unable to keep it Disney-friendly for long as your feelings and the fact that you were finally touching each other like you’d been wanting to take over any reason you had left. The kiss turns hungrier, needier, hotter, as if catching up on all that time you lost to dilly-dallying around each other. It’s easy to slip your tongue inside his mouth and you swear you hear him moan when your tongues come into contact, the small sound making your brain turn into mush and giving you one goal, and one goal only: hear him again.

You pull away and press a palm to his shoulder, and he lets you push him down on his back as you straddle his lips, positioning your core right over his growing erection and watching with a smirk as he bites his lips and furrows his eyebrows, humming at the feeling of you against him. You press your lips back against his and note with satisfaction that his movements are messier than before, kissing you mouth open and letting you take full control of the kiss, almost unable to focus on kissing you and on feeling you grind very lightly, almost teasingly against him. Slick pools in your underwear at the angelic sounds he’s making, and you’re very happy he doesn’t seem to be shy about being vocal because his moans are the prettiest sound you've ever heard.

You move away from his lips and trail wet kisses on his cheeks and jawline, moving down to his neck and his Adam’s apple, gently biting and sucking the skin at the base of his throat, enough to make him squirm underneath you but not enough to leave a mark, even though you’d love to, the thought of other girls seeing him all marked up because of you filling you with a sense of pride you didn’t know you could have.

You find his sweet spot at the juncture of his neck and his shoulder, so you kiss him more there, tracing the other side of his neck with your fingernails. He’s so sensitive and those actions alone are enough to have him whine a small “fuck, Y/N, that feels so good,” and you think you might actually go insane with lust for him. 

You’ve just started kissing him on the lips again, his hands holding your hips so tightly you think they might almost bruise your skin and his kisses desperate and needy, when his phone buzzes. Taken aback, you pull away quickly, and he whines at the loss of contact. He goes in to kiss you again but you tut and tell him to check his phone in case it’s important. You note that he does what you say, and you wonder whether that’ll hold up for other situations. You observe him as he unlocks his phone and reads the text, and you curse yourself for waiting until he leaves to do this. You could’ve had him heaving, cheeks rosy, lips slightly swollen and eyes blown out for some weeks now, but your hesitation prevented you from doing anything, and now you’ll have to wait ten more days to see him like this again - that is, if he wants to do it again.

“It’s my mom,” he says with a sigh, snapping you out of your reverie. “She says I need to come home and pack my bag and have dinner.”

You pout at each other and he sits up, wrapping his arms around your middle and nuzzling his face in your neck. The rather intimate action surprises you a bit, but mostly you find it endearing, and it was pretty obvious Sunghoon would be the clingy type. You’re happy he feels comfortable enough around you to show this side of him - plus, it makes him ten times more adorable than he already was in your eyes.

“I want to go even less now,” he murmurs, voice muffled and you giggle at him as you caress his head.

“Same. But ten days will go by quickly, right? And I’ll be right here when you come back,” you say, leaning back so you can cup his face in your palms and look at him, his cheeks a bit squished. “You’re so cute,” you whisper with a smile, and the compliment makes his cheeks heat up but for once he doesn’t look away and keeps your gaze locked in his.

You peck his lips quickly and get off of his lap. “Right, we should go then,” and when he whines in protest, you add, “your mom will be mad, Hoon,” which is enough to convince him.

You head slowly back to the center and walk the horses to their stalls, talking about this and that as you often do, but you grow silent as you near his house, dreading having to say goodbye. The only difference with Friday night is that you’re standing at his door and not yours; the tension and heart-fluttering awkwardness are the same. Well, maybe not exactly the same, because you had your tongue down his throat just fifteen minutes ago.

“You’ll be alright when I’m gone, right?” he asks, taking your hands in his and letting them hang between you two.

“Yeah, I will. Plus, your parents’ friend is coming to take care of the club, right? I’ll help her, and I’ll hang out with my grandma while you’re on vacation and the ten days will be over before we know it,” you say, more trying to reassure yourself than him.

Sunghoon sighs but nods as if trying to convince himself too. “Right.”

“Right,” you repeat, and look up at him with a smile. The thought that this might look completely dramatic to any outsider crosses your mind, but you ignore it because you’re really not looking forward to spending ten days without Sunghoon here. When he comes back, you’ll only have three weeks left, and that simple fact already makes your heart ache.

He takes you in his arms and holds you close to him for a few moments. “Okay. I’ll see you soon, Y/N,” he whispers in your hair. “Don’t miss me too much. But not too little either. Just the right amount,” he jokes, and usually you’d have punched his chest or something but right now all you can do is chuckle. He pulls away and pecks you on the lips, and when you take a step back, he opens the door and waves at you goodbye, then disappears inside the house.

-

Not to be dramatic, but those ten days are probably the longest of your life. The Parks’ friend, Madame Rasson, is nice enough, and you enjoy helping her out and having dinner with her and your grandmother every night, but she’s no Park Sunghoon. You don’t really have the urge to gallop away with her and kiss at the top of a haystack as the sun sets behind you, nor do you feel like a small part of your heart stays with her when you’re not together.

Sunghoon calls you every night under the pretext of wanting to know how the horses are doing, but you know Mrs Park and Mme Rasson are keeping in touch and that he just wants to talk to you. You don’t call him out on it though and let him tell you about his day when he’s done pretending he cares about who did what and who went where. After a few days, as you’re nearing the end of a call, he tells you he misses you then hangs up right after as if he hadn’t been basically crying into your shirt about how much he didn’t want to leave and how much he’d miss you just a few days prior, but you just giggle and text him that you miss him too, which he texts a heart back to.

Yunjin also comes around one day, saying she missed horse riding and wanted to hang out again, so you show her around the club and go on a horse ride together, taking her to all the spots Sunghoon took you to, pointing with a giggle to the spot where you made out. She gasps when she hears that and lightly slaps your shoulder. “You two made out?” she says, surprise and excitement all over her face. You only giggle some more and nod, face heating up.

“I mean, it was obvious it would happen at some point. You guys were giving each other major heart eyes the other day.” You roll your eyes and say you weren’t even though you know you very much were. “Plus, the guys send a lot of voice messages on their group chat and I sometimes listen to them with Heeseung. The way Sunghoon talks about you is so cute it makes me want to throw up sometimes.”

The thought of Sunghoon talking about you to his friends makes your heart jump and swell with pride a bit. “Really? What does he say?” you ask, not looking at Yunjin to hide the stupid smile you’re wearing.

“He just talks about your day and what you guys did, but he’ll focus on a random thing like the way you said hi to the horses or how you ate your food and he’ll be like, it was the cutest thing ever. He doesn’t go into too much detail cause he knows the guys will make fun of him but it’s still really sweet. Heeseung told me he’s never talked about any other girl like that, you know,” she says, looking at you pointedly. “And you probably also know Sunghoon isn’t the easiest to get to know. But he’s clearly let you in, and he really wanted you to meet the boys, so I think he really, really likes you.”

You give yourself a few moments to process Yunjin’s words, but all you can say in the end is “Well, I really, really like him too,” and Yunjin laughs at you.

She stays over for dinner, charming your grandmother with her jokes and willingness to help, and spends the night as well. You two stay up until late talking about your families, school, how she met Heeseung and how cute you and Sunghoon are, and the fact that you have to stay quiet so as not to wake your grandma up makes you want to laugh even harder. When she leaves the next morning, she mentions that she saw the sea was really nearby and asked if you’d been.

“I haven’t yet, but Sunghoon did say he knew a spot and would take me sometime… I’ll ask him about it again,” you say, and she nods fervently, saying she hasn’t been to the beach forever. You hug each other goodbye and you wave at her until you can’t see her car anymore, and you get that empty feeling of being alone again, so you go find your grandmother and bother her with tons of questions which she answers patiently. Five days to go until Sunghoon comes back.

And then these five days are over, and Sunghoon finds you in the middle of the afternoon, taking a nap in your grandmother’s backyard and oblivious to the fact that the boy you like the most is back. He wakes you up by taking your sunglasses delicately off of your eyes and pressing his lips to the top of your head. You frown and open your eyes bit by bit until you recognise the boy hunching over you and then open your eyes all at once, sitting up in your lounge chair and wrapping your arms around Sunghoon’s neck, pulling him down towards you.

“Hi,” he giggles, chin hooked over your shoulder.

“You’re back!”

“I am.” He pulls away to peck your lips, and it’s like he hasn’t even left a day. “I’ll go get changed and check on Nellie and then we can go for a horse ride, if you want?”

You nod excitedly. “Sure. I’ll go get the horses ready.” You both rush to your respective destinations and meet again fifteen minutes later in the grooming hall just as you finish buckling Picasso’s saddle. Sunghoon pecks your lips once more just because he can, and then you’re off.

Sunghoon’s prepared a blanket so you could lie in the grass in the clearing. On your way there, you ask him about his vacation and he admits it was actually really fun. They drove down to Spain, spending a couple days in Barcelona and then a week in a smaller seaside town. In terms of weather and landscape, it wasn’t very different from their hometown, but the food was amazing and the people very welcoming, and Sunghoon and Yeji could finally put their years of learning Spanish in school to the test.

“I took a lot of pictures because there were so many things that reminded me of you or that I thought you’d like,” he admits bashfully, taking out his phone from his bag once you’re settled on the blanket. You rest your head on his chest and rest your hand on the side of his stomach, feeling the vibrations of his laughter against your ear and commenting on the pictures he shows you, giggling when he starts rapidly scrolling through fifteen consecutive selfies.

You try to keep up a conversation but it’s a bit hard to do when his neck is right there, close enough for you to press kisses on or to nuzzle your face in if you just lifted your head a bit, and his skin is soft and warm and you want to feel all of it under your palms. Even Sunghoon, who usually never shuts up when he’s with someone he’s comfortable around, is quiet. His sigh when you trail your hand up from his waist to his shoulder tells you he’s probably thinking the same as you, and as soon as you graze your fingers through his hair, he’s rolled you onto your back and his lips are on yours, kissing you with all the need that’s built up over the past ten days. You have a feeling just kissing won’t be enough to satisfy either of you today.

There’s a sense of urgency to all of your movements, the way all four hands are restless and travel each other’s body tirelessly, pulling on the other’s hair, kneading the skin here, caressing it here. Sunghoon bites down on your lower lip and the action makes you moan, so he takes that opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth. Your kisses are open-mouthed and wet and messy, but you wouldn’t have it any other way because they translate all the desire you have for him and you want him to know exactly just how he’s making you feel.

You remember how much Sunghoon likes it when you compliment him, or tease him using your words, so you decide to do just that. When he starts trailing kisses your jaw, then sucking and biting at your neck, leaving tiny marks there, you whisper his name, making him hum. 

“Hoon. I want you so fucking bad.” 

You feel him trembling at your words and he nuzzles his face in the crook of your neck, whining as he continues pressing wet kisses there. He ruts his hips into yours, seemingly more by reaction than deliberately. “Want you too,” he murmurs, and slips his hands underneath your t-shirt, the flesh on your stomach burning everywhere his hands touch it. You lift your arms so he can take the piece of fabric off, and he’s quick to find the back of your bra as well, unclasping it and revealing your breasts to him.

In no time he’s already delving into your body, pretty pink lips circling and sucking on one of your nipples and deft fingers playing with the other, warmth spreading all over you at the intense pleasure he’s finally giving you, wetness already starting to make your underwear stick to your core.

Your fingers find purchase in his hair, pulling whenever it feels particularly good, and he seems to like the pain that comes with it because it’s enough to have him moaning around your nipple. “Fuck, Hoon, that feels so good,” you breathe out. Despite your praise and to your confusion, he pulls away, trailing kisses down your stomach until he reaches your shorts and looks up at you when his fingers are around the button, asking for confirmation to go further. He whispers “thank God” when you nod your head yes.

“Wanna make you feel good,” he says as he drags your shorts and underwear down at the same time, eyes fixated on your glistening folds.

You hold yourself up on your elbows, admiring him and his blown-out pupils and disheveled hair - he’s never looked hotter. “You already were, baby.”

“Wanna make you feel even better,” he says before diving right into your pussy, giving you no time to get used to the feeling as his tongue licks up a long stripe up your folds before finding your clit, alternating between giving it kitty-licks and sucking it. You’re a moaning mess in an instant, pulling even harder at his hair and sometimes holding onto his shoulders as if your body might start levitating at any moment. As if that didn’t already feel good enough, he then adds a finger, and quickly a second one into your hole, his thin and long digits feeling better than yours ever have. He must be some kind of fingering expert because he finds your g-spot in thirty seconds, pressing the sensitive spot again and again until you come apart for him in an embarrassingly quick orgasm, moaning his name and how good it feels like a broken record.

That doesn’t seem to be enough for Sunghoon, however, who doesn’t relent and sends your body into overstimulation until you find the energy to tell him to stop. “Was that good?” he asks innocently when his lips find yours again, letting you taste yourself on his tongue.

“Was it good?” you repeat, almost scoffing. “Baby, it was amazing.”

“Really?” he asks, a childlike grin on his face that is worlds away from the things he just did to your body.

“Really. Let me show you how good it felt,” you say with a mischievous smile, pushing his shoulder down so you switch positions and he’s the one laying, back against the blanket. “Let’s get this all off, yeah?” you say, hands fiddling with the hem of his shirt, and when that’s gone, with the band of his sweatpants and underwear. He gulps when he’s fully naked under your curious gaze, but he’s brave and his eyes don't leave your face, patiently waiting for what you’ll say or do next.

“So pretty, Hoon,” you purr as your hands trail from his thighs up to his neck, applying some pressure there, not enough to cut off any oxygen but enough for him to feel it. “And all for me,” you add as you mark his neck just like he did yours, before pushing yourself down his body until your face is level with his now fully hard cock. You press wet kisses to his thighs and hear his breaths get shakier when your kisses get dangerously close to his crotch. “Haven’t even touched you, and you’re already this hard, baby?” you tease, and chuckle when his cock twitches at your words.

“Please,” he implores, voice small.

“Just a second, baby. Be good for me, yeah?” you ask and he nods, eyes screwed shut as if in pain. You had a feeling that Sunghoon might like to give control rather than have it, but you hadn’t thought he’d let you have full power over him like that. You can’t say you dislike it, though.

You don’t want to make him wait for too long, and the sigh of relief he lets out when you finally place your tongue on the base of his shaft and lick a stripe up is worth it. Your baby is loud and lets you know exactly what he likes, and what he likes is when you pay attention to his tip and his sensitive balls at the same time. You alternate between having your lips around his tip, hands massaging him, and your palm circling his tip, taking his balls in your mouth and letting them out with a pop. In just a few minutes, his whole body is shaking under your touch and his moans are getting louder and louder, almost shout-like. He calls out your name and pleads with you to stop, and you look up at him with a worried expression. Before you can ask if he’s okay, he says, “Wanna cum inside you,” and how can you refuse him when his blush has spread to his whole face and his eyebrows are furrowed in concentration and pleasure, trying his best not to cum?

“Of course, baby.”

He sits up and you straddle his lap, telling him you’re on the pill when he’s about to pull out a condom he’d sneakily brought from his bag. “Fuck, okay,” he says, voice shaky at the idea of feeling your bare walls around him.

You raise yourself over him, your arms wrapping themselves around his neck and his around your waist, you line your entrance up with his dick and then sit back down onto his lap, his cock stretching you out in the best way possible as it slips right in, your wetness serving as natural lube. You waste no time before moving your hips against his, first rocking them back and forth and then raising them up and down, the both of you letting out loud moans and breaths at the pleasure taking over your bodies.

“Y/N, feels so good, gonna cum quick,” he breathes out into the crook of your neck, biting the flesh there which feels surprisingly good.

“That’s okay baby, you’ve done so well, cum whenever you want.”

“Want you to cum too, though,” he whines, and you can’t help but chuckle.

“You already made me- fuck!” you scream out of surprise when Sunghoon’s hands suddenly grip your thighs tightly and he holds you steady like this as he ruts his hips up into yours, the angle hitting right where it needs to. Your brain can’t form sentences that make any sort of sense so you’re left blabbering praises and curses at the same time, feeling your second orgasm rapidly approaching.

“Fuck, baby, just like that, fuck- so close, Hoon…”

The feeling of your walls clenching as your high washes over you is enough for Sunghoon to tip over the edge as well, your releases mixing together in a loud and sticky mess. You’ve never felt closer to heaven as you do now.

The seriousness of it all soon starts to fade as you and Sunghoon lock eyes and burst into giggles, breathing still heavy and irregular. You help clean each other up and put your clothes back on, but you don’t head home until the sun has long set, feasting on the snacks and water he’d brought along.

You check the time before you go to bed that night. 00:57, Thursday 11th August 2022. Twenty days left with Sunghoon. 

-

Eighteen days left with Sunghoon. Your last days together feel like a montage, like you’re watching a movie in which you play the lead role and you know the ending credits will have to start rolling at some point. You hate to be thinking that way, but the first thing you do when you wake up every morning is check the date and tell yourself how many days you’ve got left with your summer love. 19 days, 18 days. If Sunghoon feels a change in your attitude, how your gaze lingers more, how your touch softens, he doesn’t say anything.

You mentioned how you and Yunjin would like to go to the beach, so he called up his friends and got them to drive all the way over here. He said another time when you told him this is the perfect opportunity to show them his horse riding, and you didn’t push it.

He drives you all to what he calls ‘his’ beach spot, and indeed, it feels like it’s yours and yours only. It’s a bit of a trek getting there, having to walk up a dirt road and climbing some rocks before heading down to a small sandy beach where the sand is so hot it burns and the water only feels refreshing for two minutes, but you love it. He side-eyes Jake and Jay when you take off your dress and reveal your bikini-clad body, and barks at them to stop salivating even though they weren’t looking at you.

Yunjin on Heeseung’s shoulders, Jake on Jay’s and you on Sunghoon’s, the six of you play a tournament of who can make the others fall faster. Your boy has amazing balance, robust legs, a strong core, and decent (surprisingly impressive) arm muscles, so you win, a victory peck turning into a makeout session that everybody groans at, except for Jake who whoops. 

You apply sunscreen on each other’s backs and complain that evening when you’ve got weirdly-shaped sunburns anyway, you along the lines of your swimsuit and him on the back of his knees. You eat the watermelon Jay brought and the boys spit black seeds at each other, not daring to do it to you or Yunjin after the stank look you gave them.

When you get home and everyone has driven off, neither of you is quite ready to call it a night yet. Sunghoon eyes the backseat of his car and you understand what he wants immediately. His skin smells like sun, sweat, sunscreen and sea water, and it’s all so him. It smells so good, it’s almost intoxicating, and you think you’ll never be able to get enough of his scent, of him. You won’t be able to look up at the bright star in the day sky or at an orange bottle of sticky sunscreen the same way ever again. 

You’ve had many things in your life. You’ve had dolls, and you’ve had books and CDs. You’ve also had and still have friends, sometimes even boyfriends. You’ve had fun, and times that were not as fun. You’ve had sex. But you’ve not had anything like what you have with Sunghoon. He’s the one who gave you the intense feeling of truly loving and being loved, the insatiable craving of wanting more, the overwhelming need to see and talk to and feel and smell. 

He’s the one who gave you the best summer of your life, and it’s the best thing you’ve ever had. It overpowers everything you’ve ever had to the point that it feels like it’s the first thing you’ve ever had; it might be the only thing you ever have, because you don’t understand how you could want anything else now that you’ve had him. He’s all you need.

Seventeen days left with Sunghoon. You’re having your joyful weekly dinner with your grandmother and the Parks when you feel something hit your foot gently. You feel it again, and when you look up at the boy sitting right across the table from you he’s trying to hide a small smile, but you know him too well to miss it. His clothed foot caresses the ridge of your own and you suppress a giggle at the ticklish feelings. You tease him back, and you realize you’re playing footsies at the ripe age of twenty years old, but it doesn’t bother you. You both end up failing at not laughing and when innocently, his mother asks, “what are you two laughing at?”, he coughs and says it’s an inside joke.

Fourteen days left with Sunghoon. The last two weeks of summer lessons have started again and Sunghoon and you can’t run around and lay in random fields at any time of the day anymore, but you still try your best to spend every waking second of the day together, to the despair of his fangirls. However, you still find moments where it’s the two of you in an empty stall and one exchanged look is enough for you to push him against the walls, your lips finding his in the fraction of a second. Sadly, before it can get too heated, a nearby horse always neighs or huffs as if telling you to get a room.

Twelve days left with Sunghoon. Conveniently, Sunghoon’s sister and their parents are out for the night at a party in celebration of the competition season that’s about to end, so you finally get to spend the night in his room. You technically could’ve done it before, but the house is old and the walls are thin, and you didn’t need that kind of humiliation. 

Maybe Sunghoon feels that your time is slowly running to its end too, because as the days pass, he melts under your touch like a candle to a flame even more than before, he kisses your lips with more desperation and he holds your hips tighter as if you were going to disappear from between his hands at any moment. He always asks to please, please let’s cum at the same time and please, please say my name and you do it because you’d do anything for him.

You do it three times in a row, both of your bodies weak and sensitive with overstimulation yet unending desire, and you feel tears pouring down your cheeks as your third orgasm of the night hits you. There’s no way anything will ever feel as good as this. You tell him this, and he says, “I know.”

Seven days left with Sunghoon. He asks you what you’ll do when you go home, and you reply that you don’t know, because even though you’ve been thinking about what little time you have left together, you haven’t been thinking about the time after that, simply because it puts a bland feeling in your mouth whenever it crosses your mind. “I’ll start studying again and I’ll start my internship. I’ll get black out drunk at least once a month to forget all the stress and pressure of being a med student. I’ll think about you. That’s probably about it. What about you?”

“I’ll study too and I’ll have an assistantship at some point too. I’ll get drunk on Thursday nights and take care of the club during the weekends. I’ll think about you, too. More than you, I’m sure.”

“That’s not possible. You won’t ever leave my mind.”

“You won’t either,” he whispers.

Two days left with Sunghoon. He tells you you’re going camping for your last night together, not wanting to leave your side for even a second. “We’ve only got so much time left, we need to make the most of it,” he says, and you wished he knew that that had been your exact thought for the past twenty days.

That night, everything goes much slower than it usually does. You take your sweet time taking the clothes off of each other, reveling in discovering the smooth skin underneath the fabric as if you hadn’t seen it dozens of times by now. You find all of his moles and kiss them one by one, and he takes a full minute kissing down from your lips to your core. His thrusts are slow but deep, and your lips don’t leave the other’s the whole time.

-

Ten hours left with Sunghoon. You wake up the next morning when the sunlight the thin walls of the tent are unable to keep away gets too bright for your eyes’ liking. The warmth of this late August night has made you two drift apart while you slept, but you quickly find his body again and you wrap your arms around him, nuzzling your nose into the crook of his neck. He smells like sleep and like himself, which is comforting.

He calls out your name and you lift your head to look at him. When he doesn’t turn his head as well and only gives you his chin and jawline to look at, you know he’s about to say something important. Something he doesn’t dare to say while looking in your eyes. 

Your mind goes back to all the times you’ve laid down next to each other and you hope that those will be what you see whenever you think of Sunghoon in the future. The sun not quite ready to call it a day, a slight breeze picking up, the hay a semi-comfortable mattress that sometimes poked you at the back of your neck and arms. Sunghoon right next to you. You were always happy then, hoping you wouldn’t regret anything later. You wouldn’t have known what to do to prevent that anyway.

All you know is you don't want your memory of Sunghoon to be tainted by this moment right now, this moment in which he avoids your gaze and your heart feels heavy because you’re leaving soon and you won’t get to have him in your embrace like this. You want to be happy when you think of him; you don’t want to feel his absence.

“Yeah?” you answer. He still doesn’t look at you, and you get a bit nervous.

He sighs a deep breath like you’ve never seen him do before. “Is it okay if I say something a bit selfish?”

You love him so much. You realize that maybe that’s what you’ll end up regretting. “Go ahead.”

“I wish you didn’t have to leave,” he says, and you almost laugh out of relief.

“That’s not selfish, Hoon. I don’t want to leave, either.” You reach for his hand and he lets you take it, your fingers intertwining immediately as if made to hold each other. To hold onto each other. He still doesn’t look at you, and you know there’s something more there.

“It’s selfish because I’m scared I’ll resent you for leaving,” he says, voice a whisper. 

Ah. There it is.

You squeeze his hand, wordlessly asking him to go on. He takes another breath, a shakier one this time, and he chuckles at the tears he feels pooling in his eyes. “You showed up here out of nowhere and you made me so, so happy. You listened to me and got me to open up, which I usually hate doing. You told me that I was good, that you were proud of me. And now you’re leaving and no one will tell me those things anymore.” The first crack in your heart happens when you hear his voice quiver at the end of his sentence.

“You don’t need me to tell you those things. You know them now, and you have yourself,” you try to reassure him.

The second crack happens when he finally turns to look at you, lips trembling and eyes full of tears. “But I want you to tell me those things.” It takes everything in you to not burst into tears, but you want to be strong for him. For the both of you.

“I can still tell you those things. Phones exist, you know.” A small smile appears on your lips as you try to alleviate the tension. Sunghoon’s eyebrows crease and he pouts his lips; you can tell he doesn’t want to laugh in this moment, but the nudge you give him and your smile make his facade break.

You laugh as he whines, telling you this is a serious moment and to not make him laugh. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you say between chuckles and you wrap your arms around him, bringing him to lay his head on your chest. You kiss the top of his head and graze your fingers through his hair. “Laughing is all I can do to stop myself from crying, baby,” you whisper. When you feel a tear roll down your cheek, you add, “And it’s not even working that well.”

Sunghoon buries his face deeper between your breasts and sobs. No more, no less, he sobs, loud, choked sobs that make his whole body shake against yours, and you hold him as tight as you can so that they don’t break him in two. “I’m gonna miss you so much,” he manages to say, and that’s when the third and final crack happens and your heart shatters. It breaks into a million tiny pieces that fall all over your body; some of them make their way to your throat while others travel to the tips of your fingers and others lodge themselves behind your knees or in the pits of your stomach. Your heart breaks into sharp pieces and you feel them piercing under your skin everywhere. You feel like you’re gonna throw up.

You and Sunghoon aren’t even technically dating. You’ve known each for two months. You live far, but not halfway across the world; you can see each other again. You will see each other again. It’s not supposed to hurt that much, yet it hurts even more than that. 

“I know, baby, I know,” you whisper into his hair. “I’ll miss you so much too. But we’ll see each other again, right? Paris isn’t that far away.”

His sobs calm down and you hear him sniffle as he catches his breath. “Paris isn’t far away, but we’ll be worlds apart. You’re going to study and become a doctor, and I’ll stay here. You know what medical school is like, you’re going to be flooded with work for at least four more years. I can’t expect you to stay in touch all the time.”

“Well, it doesn’t need to be all the time, does it? I’d annoy you if it was.”

“You could never annoy me,” he says, and it makes you laugh. He’d never have said this two months ago.

“Plus, I’ll still get time off. I can come back next summer.”

He raises his head to look at you and you can see all the hope and sadness in his puffy eyes. You want to kiss away the tear stains on his cheeks. You want to right everything wrong just to see him smile again. “Next summer?” he echoes in a small voice.

“Next summer,” you promise, a smile you hope is comforting on your lips.

-

Next summer doesn’t work out. The one after that either. Your internship is going swimmingly, and so is his assistantship, and you simply don’t have the time to make a trip all the way down there. A part of you is also worried that if you see him again, you won’t have the force to leave.

Those years you don’t see him, you’re reminded of the ten days you were apart during that summer, and how you’d felt like he’d kept a small piece of your heart with him, because it still feels that way. There’s something that’s keeping you tethered to that summer, something that the strongest scissors or the sharpest knife in the world couldn’t break.

For a short period of time, he was all you needed. But reality quickly seeped back in, and now you needed good grades and then a good job, a decent flat, a decent income. You didn’t need anyone like you needed him, but you still wanted them because even if they weren’t as pretty, or as patient, or as kind as your Sunghoon, they were still good, and sometimes that was all you could ask for. You were always sorry that you couldn’t give them your whole heart, because a piece of it had stayed in the south of France and you didn’t have the courage to march down there and demand it back. Selfishly, you hoped you also kept a piece of Sunghoon’s heart in yours.

You did call once in a while, but those calls made both of you more sad than happy, and after a couple years the calls were so spaced out that they only happened on birthdays and special events. The next time you see him, it’s five years later, at your grandmother’s funeral. You can only stay for three nights and you spend most of your time there with relatives, celebrating your grandmother’s life, so you don’t see him much. When you do, you get to catch up for a few hours. He’s almost done with vet school and he’s specialized in equine studies. He’s an intern at the horse vet in Laroque which means he gets to stay in the center and help his parents out. Yeji is on her way to becoming one of the best in the country, he adds with a proud smile. You’re finishing up your last years as an intern in a Paris hospital, but you haven’t changed your mind about becoming a general practitioner, which you need just a few more years of experience for. You don’t miss how his face falls slightly when you tell him you have a boyfriend and that you’re thinking of getting engaged to him. He tells you he’s happy for you with the saddest eyes. The hug he gives you when you have to leave brings back so many feelings and memories, and even after all these years there’s nothing more that you want to do than stay in his arms and never move again.

You break up with your boyfriend as soon as you get home.

On a random Thursday, you’re done with your decade-long studies, and you’re free to go out into the world, a medical diploma in hand. You get a job in a cabinet owned by a friend of your parents, and you like the job, but you know you’re just passing the time until the opportunity you’ve been waiting for comes around.

Every week, you check whether a spot opens up for a general practitioner in the small town of Laroque-des-Albères. It doesn’t for about eighteen months, until suddenly it does, and in a week you’re packing your bags and taking that trip you took twelve years ago.

Sunghoon doesn’t even know. He could be married with a wife and three kids, for all you know, and it’s foolish but you hope he’s been waiting for you. He’s just finishing up a health check on some of the older horses when you get out of your car, eyes finding him immediately. From the other side of the courtyard, he smiles at you, and it’s like the summer you first fell in love all over again.

permanent taglist: @ozymandia-s @bbujiikseu @sd211 @lalalalawon @sunghoonmybeloved @w3bqrl

© asahicore on tumblr, 2023. please do not repost, plagiarize or translate my works. feedback and reblogs are always appreciated!

#sunghoon x reader #enhypen x reader #sunghoon smut #enhypen smut #sunghoon fluff #enhypen fluff #sunghoon angst #enhypen angst #sunghoon au #enhypen au #sunghoon fanfiction #enhypen fanfiction

[pkmnprofloblolly]

Hello! Trainer from Alola here, big fan of your work. I was wondering; is there any evidence of any legendary pokemon being related to other pokemon? For example, does Rayquaza share any DNA with other dragon pokemon? (I know it would be extremely difficult to get any rayquaza DNA fhshfjd) Or are pokemon like that entirely their own species?

the answer is, as with many things on this blog.. it depends!

"legendary pokemon" aren't really a cohesive category like, say, a type or a taxonomic group. the only common factors are that they tend to be very rare and that they have legends about them. as our examples, let's use two groups of hoenn legendary pokemon: latios and latias, and groudon, kyogre, and rayquaza.

latios and latias (like other pairs such as nidoqueen and nidoking, or volbeat and illumise, latios and latias are sexually dimorphic members of the same species) are indeed related to other pokemon- they're birds! specifically, they're in the auk family, which are a group of generally stout, seafaring birds like guillemots and puffins. this may seem strange- the latis appear to have wings and arms, and no legs, very unlike birds. however, if we take a look at their skeleton, the connection becomes much more obvious:

what we generally interpret as arms are actually the lati's legs, the thighs of which are obscured by flesh and feathers. while they use their wings to steer and for some lift, the latis generally stay aloft with their psychic powers rather than traditional flight, which is why they can hover in place. this has freed up their legs for use in manipulating objects, and they are rarely seen standing on their feet. because they mostly rely on hovering, their legs no longer have the strength to hold their large bodies up for very long.

these pokemon are indeed exceptionally rare, having very low population numbers in only a few regions, and spending most of their time over open ocean. like many pelagic seabirds, they breed on only a few small islands, like alto mare off the johto region and southern island off hoenn's south coast. their populations are on the upswing, though, in large part due to concentrated conservation efforts on those islands. point being, though, they are indeed just animals. rare, powerful animals, but animals nonetheless.

many legendary pokemon fall into this camp. articuno, zapdos, and moltres, lugia and ho-oh, heatran, and various others.

.

conversely, the so-called weather trio of hoenn: groudon, kyogre, and rayquaza. these three are even more rarely seen than the latis, only having been sighted in recent times during their clash in hoenn nearly two decades ago. despite the three's resemblance to other living pokemon, as far as we know they are entirely unrelated to any known animals, or even any other life on earth.

this is known because evidence of these pokemon have been found dating back over 3 billion years ago, that is to say over a billion years before multicellular life even existed. gigantic fragments of footprints attributed to groudon have been sighted alongside some of the earliest fossils we know of of early bacteria. modern physical samples from these pokemon- the extremely few that have ever been recovered- have never resulted in any dna evidence, and appear in structure much more similar to inorganic matter.

as it stands, it appears these pokemon arose some time early (relatively speaking) after the earth formed, being (as opposed to natural living organisms) animate representations of the forces of nature themselves. a similar condition is often assumed for some other grandiose legendary pokemon, such as dialga and palkia, though much less tangible evidence exists for their presence in prehistoric time, so this is mostly an assumption based on their infrequent appearances & legends surrounding their origins.

#Anonymous #art #latias #latios #pokemon #pkmn irl #speculative biology #kyogre #groudon #rayquaza #pkmn

[xxblairexxss]

I’m sorry

Pairing : Charles Leclerc x asian!reader

Theme : Angst

Just a timeline of Charles’s girlfriend throughout the years, how she went from a girl who migrated to France when she was 6 years old to becoming a girlfriend of the Formula 1 driver, Charles Leclerc.

I’m not entirely sure about this one but I just wanted to clear my draft. I’m only tagging those who told me they wanted to be included in my general tag list! Please don’t be offended if I didn’t tag you because it’s not Jealousy part 3 😭 so I thought you don’t want to be tagged but please let me know if you wish to in all of my stories!

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2018

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2019

yninstagram

Liked by charles_leclerc and 98,765 others

ynusername dropping a selfie bcs it’s been a while

charles_leclerc Mon amour 🧸🤎

ynusername 🤎

user1 SO PRETTYY

user2 LOVING THE HAIR COLOUR!!

user3 she’s asian? can she speaks french?

user4 she has lived in france since she was 6 so yes she can

ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc and 78,072 others

ynusername a quick stop for mirror selfie before rushing to class

charles_leclerc my pretty girl 🤎

user1 oh to be called my pretty girl by charles too 😭

user2 does she always dress like that?

user3 other wags just scream old money with class. this one..i’m not sure myself 😣

user4 lol she can wear whatever she wants

user2 i just wish she wear something more relevant since it’s affecting charles’s image too

user4 that doesn’t make any sense

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2020

ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc, and 103,665 others

ynusername rainy season 🌧️

charles_leclerc I miss you

ynusername I miss you too 🥺🥺

user1 I love how she still look stunning without all those expensive brands

user2 PRETTIESTTT ❤️

user3 is it just me or she looks so out of place compare to other wags?

user4 how i wish she paid more attention to her style

user5 too simple 😕

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2021

ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc, and 277,231 others

ynusername loving this dress! 💛

charles_leclerc beautiful princess

ynusername love youu! 🥺

user1 meeeh tried too hard

user2 lol all those stuffs but still don’t look on par with other wags

user3 omg you look so pretty in a dress!!! AAAAA

user4 charles’s princess ❤️

user5 girl you ate and left all crumbs

“I can’t.”

Charles furrowed his brows to your answer. “What do you mean you can’t? Y/N, we have been together for more than 6 years. Don’t you think it’s time for us to start living together?”

“I got a job offer in London. I’ll be moving away in a week.”

“What? What about us? Don’t you think you should have told me first before you accepted the offer?” He blinked in disbelief, part of him was hoping that you were just pulling a prank on him.

“It was a job that my mom had always been dreaming of, Charles. She sacrificed a lot for me.”You tilted your chin to avoid the tears on your waterline to spill. “She sacrificed her life before she could play with dolls for me. I spent my childhood waiting for the sound of her keys jingling as she came back from her night shift, waking up with just a small note sticked on the side of my breakfast plate because she couldn’t wished me a good morning for having to rush to work. She gave up on her dream, crying from missing her parents in South Korea every night just to make sure I got a chance to draw my life with colours so I wouldn’t have to suffer like she did. I need to accept this job for her. Everything I have been doing and ever will do is for her and you know this.”

Charles remained silence. He had always known your mom’s struggle, raiding you alone as a signle mother and part of him had always known that if you were put in a situation where you had to prioritise your life or your mom’s life, you would always choose hers. He knew it but he was never prepared for the day to come. He couldn’t find himself to say anything else and pulled you into his embrace instead.

“And I’m tired. I’m so, so tired of the constant pressure from everyone. I can’t even wear anything that I want without getting comments about how incompatible I look, how messy I look. I– I don’t know what they– what everyone wants from me. It’s either I looked out of place, an outsider or I looked like I’m trying too hard. I don’t know what everyone expect from me. I’m happy, I’m so goddamn happy that you got to be where you are right now but the more you are building yourself, the more I’m falling apart. I’m losing myself, Charles. I feel like I have been helping you to build your garden while mine is just getting abandoned and forsaken and just full of wilt flowers.”

“I’m sorry.”

That was the last word you remembered him saying as he kept you in your arms, holding you so you wouldn’t fall on your knee from the way your body shook within every sob.

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

2022

ynusername

London, United Kingdom

Liked by charles_leclerc, and 277,663 others

ynusername took a day off to play tourist!

comments have been disabled

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

2023

lancomeofficial and ynusername

Liked by charles_leclerc, and 377,620 others

lancomeofficial Lancôme newest global ambassador, ynusername lookingall glammed up by jaime.creates.

user1 OMG OMG OMG

user2 THAT’S MY GIRRLL

user3 been here since day 1

user4 She looks unreal

user5 it’s been a while since the last time i saw her in my feed 🥹

user6 still using her ex bf fame to build her name lol she’s worse than other ex wag

user7 are you high???

✧.* tags! @i83andrew @cltrlne @karmabyfernando

#charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc imagine #f1 imagines #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagines #f1 imagine #f1 x reader

[saintslewis]

❝ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃 | 𝐅𝟏 ❞

pairing: f1 grid (not all) x black fem driver!reader

summary: in which reader takes the f1 pilots to experience her culture and the beautiful country that is South Africa.

warnings: south african slang, cussing, social media environment, mentions of food, borderline chaotic

saint’s team radio 🎀: you have no idea how excited i was to write this. i love my country so so much and to be able to share it with all of you is a blessing. thank you @exotic-iris13 for requesting this! side note, December is in summer so i hope i don’t confuse you! enjoy!

please like, comment and reblog! (i’m watching you)

fc: @/mbbaarrhliii on ig!

tags: @non-stop-imagines @perfecttrashface @mauvecherie-writes @purplelewlew @arshiyuh @yeea-nah @alika-4466 @louvrepool @sheluvsf1

imessage: THE OFFICE 🏎️

y/n: i just got my braids done losers

charlie w a ferrari: but the season’s over, we won’t see it :(

carlito: plus didn’t you already have them done last month?

landinhoooo: no guys december braids usually mean a vacation, so where are you going? 🤨

y/n: firstly, you know wayyyy too much about the braids thing 😭

honey badger: that was oddly specific i have to say, lan

yukibae: yeah that was weird

landinhoooo: wtv 🙄 where are you going, y/n!

y/n: my mother is requesting the presence of all of you so you’re all coming back home with me 🤭

carlito: mi vida, wouldn’t that be too soon? winter break just started

kika’s bf: also how would it work? accommodation, transport, all those things

y/n: are you saying no to an african mother?

lew <3: guys say yes, she’ll show up to your house and force you

alexander!: not to mention it’s summer that side (she kidnapped one of my cats, say yes)

princess george: okay, let’s say we all go. what is going to happen?

y/n: i’m just saying, you haven’t lived if you haven’t never experienced a South African summer

mad max: I don’t know, y/n. just please don’t guilt trip us

mickey schumi: i can already feel her frown from here

y/n: i was going to pay for everything but since none of you want to go, i’m saving money 🤭

landinho: wait

kika’s bf: wait hold on

charlie w a ferrari: why didn’t you say so in the first place?!

honey badger: now that you’ll be our sugar mommy, ofc we’ll all be there

princess george: that clears out so much

y/n: you guys are a bunch of IDIOTS

alexander!: there has to be a catch???

landinho: ALEX SHUT UP WE’RE GOING ON A FREE TRIP

carlito: we’ll even dance to that one music playlist of yours

y/n: all of you have to wear my merch next season and you’ll let me win two races back to back

mad max: now y/n-

y/n: uh oh! looks like max is paying for everything!

charlie w a ferrari: JUST SAY YES

mad max: okay, you’ll win two races and i’ll slow down

princess george: i just did some quick research and y/n, you’re seen as a national treasure??? and lewis is considered Nelson Mandela’s grandchild??

y/n: well, yes! don’t question my country, okay? 🫶🏽

yukibae: yes ma’am 🫡

oscahhh: i went for a run, what did i miss??

landinho: we’re going on a trip and y/n is paying 😝

honey badger: except max, he’s paying for his own things

mad max: i’m not??

y/n: three races and i’ll get you a new console

kika’s bf: CAN I HAVE ONE??

landinho: NOOO I NEED ONE, PLS Y/N

y/n: we all earn millions every race??? get it yourself????

kika’s bf: i’m going to tell kika you’re bullying me

y/n: she’s coming on the trip too along with all the other wags 🤭

yukibae: and where’s YOUR wag, y/n? 🤨

y/n: yuki shhh pls i’ll literally buy you an island

charlie w a ferrari: NUH UH YUKI TELL US

landinho: yuki what do you know

princess george: whoever isn’t y/n’s wag, say so RN

everyone: NOT ME

lew <3: damn

landinho: I KNEW ITTTTTT

honey badger: IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW AHHH

alexander!: I HAVE TO GO TELL LILY

oscahhh: have you guys never seen them interact in the media pen? it’s like they’ve been married for 27 years

logang: and how do YOU know that

oscahhh: mate, you told me

y/n: 🙄

y/n: go pack for this trip before i shave your eyebrows 🫶🏽

y/n’s instagram story

seen by kehlani, ferrari and 34,282,722 others

-

“There’s no way you got cars for all of us.” George and everyone else really couldn’t believe that the lengths you went through to make this trip as perfect as you could. “Not to mention booking out the Four Seasons!” Carmen interjected, walking next to her boyfriend.

You watched as everyone filed into the Mercedes vans waiting for them on the airport runway where the large jet had landed. You couldn’t believe you got everyone to come to South Africa in the first place but guilt tripping them had worked a charm, complaining that you don’t have a home race and that your mom would be pissed.

Very easy to fool these guys.

The skies of Johannesburg weren’t all too clear but you could tell that it was summer. Deciding to rather catch up with everyone at the hotel a bit later, you used a private exit to the airport so that you could visit your mom and sister before anything else. Plus you knew a big deal would’ve been made if you had announced that you were coming home so posting will do for now.

“Bathong, where are your friends? I thought you’d all come here.” Your mother said whilst setting up the extremely long table in her backyard so you were sat on a pool chair just watching her.

bathong - more of an expression of confusion or shock

“It was going to look suspicious if i came here with all these people with the same vans following each other.” You replied. “I booked the Four Seasons, it should be big enough for all of us.”

“Oh okay, that’s fancy. So where’s your boyfriend?” Your mom asked with a grin on her face that earned a head shake from you.

“Ukuphi uLerai?” Where’s Lerai? (younger sister)

“Usaseskholeni. Unfuna ukuyomlanda?” Your mom replied. She’s still at school. Do you want to go fetch her?

“Yeah, i want to surprise her. So let me go and I’ll see you later when I drop her off.” You stood up, saying goodbyes to her as your mom went about what she doing.

Hopping in one of your various cars that you kept in your mother’s garages, you quickly texted your boyfriend when an idea popped in your head.

imessages!

y/n: do you want to cause a bit of chaos

lew <3: sigh

lew <3: what kind?

y/n: i’ll pick you up rn and we’re going to pick my sister up from school 😝

lew <3: should i be scared?

y/n: slightly, see you in a few 😚

-

To say you caused a bit of chaos would be an understatement. You hadn’t realised that your sister’s school was huge and this whole time, you forgot what you and your boyfriend did for a living. Picture this: a Lamborghini Urus parked outside where many high school kids are obsessed with it, you and Lewis stepping out to call your little sister, kids recognise you two, you apologise to your sister with ice cream.

You end the day off with lounging in the room with your boyfriend, laughing at the reactions of your fans to the news of you being in the country. You had planned this whole visit out, wanting everyone to get their rentals tomorrow morning then taking them everywhere.

yourusername

liked by pierregasly, bellahadid and 937,728 others

yourusername home 🇿🇦

view comments

user there’s no fucking way, YOU’RE BACK??

yourusername and i’m with my FRIENDS 🤭

youryoungersister a facetime would be nice next time 🧍🏽‍♀️

yourusername well, no!

landonorris y/n, what is a kota?

yourusername if you’re up for it, we can get some today

georgerussell okay but what IS it

yourusername DON’T WORRY

georgerussell I’M WORRIED

carlossainz55 you didn’t say it was going to be this hot

charles_leclerc she warned us mate 😭

danielricciardo btw max is still hanging out with that cat he found at breakfast

lilymhe i’m obsessed with this place, i never want to leave

francisca.cgomes you’re still in the hotel room 🫤

alexandrasaintmleux i just googled gold reef city, CAN WE GOOO PLS

alex_albon WHATS THAT

loganseargent IT’S AN AMUSEMENT PARK

user i just drove in the four seasons driveway, guys there are so many cars lined up for them 😭

user she comes to the country when i decide to LEAVE??

dbngogo stfu you’re back? 🥹 come to Konka 🫵🏽

landonorris WHAT’S THAT

dbngogo it’s a nightclub 🤭

sza CAN I JOIN Y’ALL

yourusername ofc bae

lewishamilton there’s a flower bouquet that says Mandela’s grandchild for me 🧍‍♂️

user oh fuck he knows the joke

georgerussell told you

f1 y/n bring back our drivers 😣

yourusername bring back kyalami then we’ll talk

user oop-

-

SOWETO

south western township

Not wanting to waste any time, Y/n scooped up her friends to visit her hometown, where she grew up and dreamed of this very moment.

The convoy of extremely expensive cars that sped through the route to Soweto had caught the attention of many people, including the news that announced your arrival.

Briefing the boys (and the girls) on their menu choices of your favourite foods, they all equally decided that they’ll start training when they get back home. With the food place being right across a park with a large parking lot, it was convenient for you.

Being the host for this whole trip, you went ahead and ordered for everyone, speaking through the hole in the wall to specify orders and paying a hefty price including drinks. You watched as all your friends climbed out of their respective cars, leaning and sitting on the hoods of the cars as they all bonded. The vibrant atmosphere of your home country made everything feel like summertime.

Getting help carrying all that food to the group, everyone took their orders and observed them. “So, amagwinya are fat cakes, they’re very filling. A Kota is a uncut loaf of bread with stuff inside like hot chips, sausages and other things that you can specify for your Kota.” You explained, everyone immediately digging in and their faces said it all.

“And for you, Lew, you can have the fat cakes and the hot chips. I have to say, you’ll be full for the entire day.” You turned to your boyfriend who gave you a kiss before trying the food.

Later that day, dinner at your mother’s was a success, everyone finishing their plates and sharing different stories under the Johannesburg stars.

The next day was filled with fun activities, hitting up the amusement park Gold Reef City then late night karting, the friendship between everyone was growing as smiles never left their faces.

a week later

yourusername

liked by patooward, mclaren and 3,728,912 others

yourusername south africa my baby, it’s been amazing 🇿🇦

view comments

landonorris take me back (we’re checking out of Four Seasons)

danielricciardo and what about your gf that you met? 🤨

landonorris she’s coming to the next race 🫡

maxverstappen33 three wins and that’s it

yourusername do you want me to tell on you to my mom?

maxverstappen33 no 😨

charles_leclerc i need another kota

alexandrasaintmleux we’re actually shaking for one right now

yourusername askies 🤣 sorry

loganseargent never thought i’d ever be an avid lover of amapiano

user what multiverse are we in that Logan, the most american person to ever exist, is saying this

user it’s the South Africa effect baby 😝🇿🇦

lewishamilton can we come here every winter break?

carlossainz55 can we please? all my joy is at Gold Reef City

alex_albon i just want her mother’s cooking again, changed my life

f1 y/n, what did you do to our drivers

yourusername if you add kyalami to the calendar, you’ll know 😚

lilymhe someone gave me a painting of you and i will be hanging it in my home

francisca.cgomes to complete the shrine

landonorris to our Sugar Mother Y/n

yukitsunoda i got all the recipes, i’m ready

yourusername we need 20 kotas stat! 🫵🏽

oscarpiastri even your money looks so cool 😭

user if this is not the greatest representation of our country, i don’t know what it is

mercedesamgf1 can we join next time? 😔

yourusername no

tyla I LOVE YOU

yourusername I LOVE YOUUUU

-

saint’s notes: ahhhhhh hope y’all enjoyed! mwah 😝 i tried but it feels sorta rushed?? idk, let me know

#saint writes #☆ ‧₊˚ saint’s media pen #f1 x black!reader #f1 imagines #f1 x you #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #f1 fic #formula one x black reader #x black reader #x black fem reader #black!reader #south africa with saint! #Spotify

[mrchiipchrome]

Parents

W.C. - 3 k

“Fuck!”

“Language” Lucy replies.

Joining Barcelona at the age of 14 last season had changed your life for the better, sure the balancing of schoolwork and professional football was difficult to say the least but you had the most amazing women around you helping. You moved from a small club in the south of Spain to the giants during the summer transfer window, over the moon as soon as you got the call that they wanted to sign you. Your parents gave you the ‘okay’ for the move, though their jobs were too important to leave so you would get placed with a teammate as a solution.

So when you had packed up what little you needed from your childhood bedroom in your backpack, you set off for the train. One tearful goodbye with your parents later and you stepped foot on the train taking you to the city of dreams.

When you arrived, you got picked up by a member of staff and directly to the training grounds where you would meet the team for the first time and sign the paperwork. It felt like it took 1000 years to sign all the papers but when you were finally done, you could feel the excitement coursing through your veins. 

Meeting your teammates was a success and the prospect of living with any of them had you excited. You instantly got the hint that you would live with the two English women when they were asked to stay after practice. Not making too much of a fuss when they realized they had a teen to take care of was good for you, the two of them already having known that you would join their residence for a couple weeks. And so you moved in, creating an unbreakable bond by the end of the first week with the two women.

—

“Can we go out for ice cream after training? I finished all my assignments.” No one could ever resist your puppy dog eyes, infamously adorable, so when you threw them into the mix you were sure that you would get your sought after ice cream. Lucy slings her strong arm around your shoulder, walking a little faster than she normally would to be able to keep the pace of your long lanky legs. Keira slips her arm around your waist at your other side, the two older women sandwiching you between them as they ‘think’ about your offer.

“Sure, but only if you promise to brush your teeth extra carefully tonight. Wouldn’t want you to get cavities-” Your cheers cut her off as you suddenly take off in the direction of some of the younger players, happy that you would get your sweet treat. 

The two women left walking look at each other with a certain softness expressed through their eyes. They hadn’t been expecting to be thrown into ‘parenthood’ so suddenly but life works how it does for a reason, and to be fair Keira did have a bit of experience, dealing with Georgia and all.

Later that day, Lucy’s followers are blessed with a picture of you sitting across from them at the ice cream parlor eating your ice cream before a picture of her and Keira doing the same. It was a sweet moment between the small family, you had really found your true parents in the two women.

—

Trekking around with a knife and an apple was not an uncommon feat at the Walsh-Bronze household, especially not recently. Keira had banned you from using knives after you had accidentally cut off the tip of your pinky while cooking and had to go to the hospital to have it reattached to the rest of your finger. So now you were stuck with the ugly bandage on your hand and another reason for Keira to not let you do something, but you’re sure that she’s been looking for a reason to ban your use of knives for a while now.

You had already looked everywhere for the midfielder, Lucy had gone out to grocery shop so Keira was the only choice but you had exactly no idea where she was. Just as you’re about to break the hard imposed rule she had set and cut the apple yourself, you hear talking from the living room.

Walking into the room, you immediately spot Keira sitting on the couch talking to someone. At first, you don’t know who’s on the other line, but that is before you hear the heavily accented raspy voice of Keira’s best friend. Leah Williamson.

Both Keira and Lucy think your obvious crush on the defender is hilarious, always teasing you and speaking about introducing the two of you. Yet you had always been able to escape the premises before Keira had ever pressed the button under Leah’s name, going over to Vicky’s or in dire cases your captain’s house.

Your eyes widen drastically, but with Keira not noticing your obvious presence you slowly start to back away and out of the room. You see how Keira’s head snaps up in your direction as you accidentally step on one of Narla’s squeaky toys, producing a sound akin to that of a dying pig. Looking down at your feet and the offending device, the only thing you can think about is how the next few minutes are going to be pure hell and embarrassment for you. The next time you look up at the redhead she’s staring back at you with a teasing look in her eyes and a smile full of mirth, and you just know she’s thinking of ways to torture you.

“Y/n, just the person I was looking for! Come say hi to the people” Her eager movements indicating she wanted you to come closer simply don’t give you another choice, especially now that they know it’s you who entered the room. Walking over to the couch which she sits at, you’re careful with the knife still in your hand as you flop down beside her.

“Need help with my apple, please.” Without even responding, she hands you her phone while taking the things from your hands in a swapping gesture. The first thing you notice is how Leah's face only takes up half of the screen instead of the whole screen, clueing you in on what Keira meant by ‘the people’, it wasn’t a facetime call but an instagram live.

“Hi Y/n, I've heard a lot about you, all good things I promise” The wink she throws you isn’t a flirting one by any means, it’s one of those you throw out haphazardly at the end of one of those sentences like the one that just fell from her lips. And like anyone would in your situation, you stutter out a reply all while a blush overtakes your face.

“H-hey Leah” You pair with a wave as you hear Keira sigh beside you at your obvious awkwardness around people you thought of as attractive. “Keira talks about you all the time, so I’ve heard a lot about you too.”

“Keira was just telling me about her new habit of banning things around the house-“

“I have nothing to do with that-“ Keira cuts you off before you can continue lying about your clear involvement in doing things that you later get banned from.

“Excuse me, wasn’t it you who just had to spend nearly two hours in the ER to reattach the tip of your pinky after an accident in the kitchen? Wasn’t it that whole ordeal that made me ban your use of knives in the first place?” Her exposing you had the blush on your face turning a deeper shade of red as you relent, holding up your non-dominant hand covered in bandages from your wrist up to the tips of your pinky and ring finger. 

“To be fair, it wouldn’t have happened if Luce hadn’t distracted me in the first place. She’s too good at that.” If Lucy hadn’t made you look up by calling your name, then you wouldn’t have sliced through your finger instead of the cucumber and Keira wouldn’t have needed to pick up the bloody piece of flesh to put on ice while the distractor herself wrapped your finger tightly in a kitchen towel.

“What about the time before that, huh? The oven incident? Who’s fault was that?” She speaks as she hands you the now cut up apple and takes her phone from your unsteady hand, the phone displaying Leah’s clearly amused expression at the bickering happening in Spain.

“Gracias Kie” You cut yourself off as you take a bite of the juicy apple you’ve waited for so long before continuing what you were about to say. “That was mostly my fault, but how was I supposed to know that the baking sheet had been in the oven when there were no indications of it being hot” Keira just rolls her eyes at that, having told you multiple times before you picked up the metal that it was hot.

“As clumsy as Alessia then, are you?” Leah reminds you of her presence with the rapidly strung together sentence, and while you just look on confused as you hadn’t ever met any of Keira and Lucy’s national teammates she understands exactly what the blonde means.

“No, Alessia’s more clumsy clumsy while this one” She points at you with her thumb, “is dangerous clumsy. Less trips and falls over her feet casually, this one is barely allowed to use the butterknife ‘cause she might accidentally cut herself. Yeah, them two together would be chaotic. We would need double the manpower to keep them from injuring themself.”

Just as you’re about to retort, you hear the front door open and Lucy calling out for you. Sighing, you begrudgingly say goodbye before taking your leave to help Lucy with the groceries. You hear Keira say a quiet “She has the biggest crush on you” to Leah, but you simply can’t be bothered to react.

—

“Lucy, Luce, Roberta, wake up damnit” 

Being shaken awake by a frantic 15 year old is not something many do, usually at that age you’re more sophisticated and careful as you wake people if you do at all. And yet, Lucy finds herself in the predicament of having to decide whether to wake up or not, but as she hears the fast breathing and feels the hands on her still she decides to wake up.

“Hey, hey, calm down. I can’t help you if you don’t calm down, you know.” Now sitting up and more alert, Lucy pulls your shaking form down onto the bed she shares with the other English woman who has miraculously managed to stay asleep through all the ruckus. Holding you in her arms, she feels you calming down little by little until you’re completely still in her hold. She’s nearly convinced that you’ve managed to fall asleep as your steady breaths puff against her neck, but as you speak her assumptions are proven wrong.

“Had a bad dream, I wanted to make sure you and Kie were alright. If it’s not too much to ask for, could you tell me the story of the moon and the sun again?” Lucy had to hold back from letting the exclamation of adoration out at you immediately looking for her and Kiera after experiencing a nightmare. She remembers telling you the story her own mother had told her when she was a kid.

"Of course I can, it’s no problem” She waits for you to stop shifting around so much and to find a more comfortable position in between her and her girlfriend. When you finally still, she starts retelling the story she’s heard so many times before.

“Before there was anything, before me and you and everyone else on this planet existed there was a moon and a sun. Every night right before the moon would go to bed, it would notice the sun lighting up the sky with its incredible glow. As the moon woke up, the sun would go to sleep and its shine would be gone, the moon would miss the very thing it so longed for. So the moon devised a plan, a plan to not miss the bright light of its long lost love, a plan of great excellence and intrigue. And so the night of the plan came, the moon waiting for the rays of sunshine to overtake the dark of the sky it had been so used to. As the sky lit up with soft rays of orangey yellow, the moon couldn’t think of anything other than how much more beautiful everything was when it was lit up by the sun.” 

Lucy felt the way you had slumped against her halfway through the story, now sure about your unconscious state.

“You’re good with her” Keira speaks from the other side of your body and Lucy smiles at the sound of her voice.

 “Thank you”

—

When you heard that team bonding would take place at the zoo, you couldn’t have been more excited. On the contrary, both of your team moms were less than happy about the choice of location for the activity knowing they were going to have a hyperactive Y/n on their hands. But as luck would have it, the kiddie leash they had ordered for these occasions had come in the week prior. It was one of those backpacks with the leash attached to the back of it that you would see parents with unruly children use. 

After a bit of bribing, they got past the initial protests of you not being a child and got you to put on the dinosaur backpack, they tightened it to make sure it wouldn’t fall off before walking out of the house together.

They made sure to use the backpack function as well, stuffing it with your drinks and snacks. You’re nearly at the zoo when they realize the absence of the memory of you taking your medication that morning, and at that moment they are incredibly thankful for making you wear the backpack.

Watching as you flip Mapi off for making fun of your new accessory, they don’t have the heart to tell you off for the obscene gesture. Not when it was their fault you were getting made fun of in the first place. 

Like always, you gravitate towards the younger members of the team while Keira does the older ones. This leaves Lucy to go with you to your friends and Keira to walk over to hers. 

“Vicky look at my backpack, isn’t it cool?” You skip over to her, clutching onto the fabric hanging over your shoulders as Lucy tries to keep up with your overly energetic self.

“It’s really cool Y/n” Vicky’s words mean a lot to you, her becoming a close friend and a sisterly figure for you with her being so close in age. 

When everyone is rounded up, they buy their tickets one by one and wait on the other side of the gates for the rest. Once inside, you’re rushing around buzzing to see all the animals that you can’t see normally. Like the saying goes, time goes faster when you’re having fun, you soon find yourself eating lunch with half the day being spent with different animals. You and Lucy are throwing teasing comments at each other like usual when an innocent comment starts an onslaught of funny statements.

“Y/n when I was your age-” She doesn’t get to finish her sentence before you start.

“Luce, when you were my age I wasn’t even born yet. In fact you made your senior debut for Sunderland a year before I was born.” That shut her up, not knowing that you had done your research on her. 

The rest of the day goes off without a hitch and as you walk home, you can’t help but wonder why life has been so good to you lately. But you don’t think for too long, instead being happy with the course your life has taken.

But everything everyone can talk about when the pictures of the day are released is how you had to wear the kiddie leash. 

—

Lately you’ve been using TikTok a bit more often, not much more than before but there was a difference. This meant that you had discovered new trends and edits of your teammates, you had even followed a couple of accounts making videos of your teammates to show them later. 

But when you saw the video on your recommended page, you just knew it would be perfect for you to use with Lucy and Kiera. The perfect opportunity to strike comes up when they ask you to join them for a walk with Narla later that day, to which you agree. 

You let them walk in front of you as you slow down, TikTok open on your phone ready to record the interaction. You hold your thumb on the red button as you start by recording yourself mouthing the words before turning it to them and recording them in time with the sound.

Slipping your phone back into your pocket, you decide to edit the clip later and enjoy the walk you currently were on. 

Arriving home, you go to your room and type out the in video caption of ‘when they take you out on walks with their dog’. Before posting the video you type the usual caption, ‘walks with Robert and shaKeira (narla was there too)’.

An hour later the two victims barge into your room and unexpectedly hug you, expecting them to be ‘annoyed’ at you but that wasn’t the case.

“You think of us as your parents?” You see Lucy discreetly wipe a tear from her eye, but you pretend not to notice it.

“Well yeah, you guys have been more like my parents these last few months than my biological ones have been all 14 years they had me around.” The two just embrace you harder at that, and you can feel their love seeping through their actions.

“So I take it you like my mama y papa video then?” The two of them just press a kiss to either side of your face, and you feel truly happy for the family you have gotten since you moved to Barcelona.

Nearly took longer to post this, my hand is burnt. Hope you enjoyed, this was a pretty shit one. Promise the next one is Lessi

#woso x reader #woso imagines #wonze #keira walsh x reader #lucy bronze x reader

[intheholler]

On Appalachian and Southern Stereotypes

After seeing some people leap at the opportunity to insult and further harm us under my posts, even by obviously leftist accounts, I wanted to address some of the most popular stereotypes of our region.

Not as an excuse. There are many negative, violent and otherwise harmful features of the American South. We have a horrific history especially in terms of the violence we inflicted and continue to inflict upon the Black community that cannot be forgotten, and, as a culture, we do need to pay our dues.

But maybe this will help y’all apply some nuance to the situation and understand that we aren’t all your enemy.

Stereotype 1: Everyone is a Republican Racist

Absolute horse shit, my friends. There are people like me all over the south and in the hollers. We just get drowned out by the fascists, and it is all by design. 

In my home state of North Carolina alone, they are working tirelessly to make it impossible for young, often liberal (if not outright leftist) voices to be heard. They specifically target regions with heavy POC populations.

As recently as May of this year, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned their own previous ruling which once made gerrymandering illegal. This allows Republicans free range to draw their congressional lines wherever benefits them most. 

Meanwhile, Roy Cooper, our Democratic governor, has been in office since 2017.

Gerrymandering is a real problem, and it reflects the worst of us. But it does not reflect all of us.

We are a working class, pro-union people.

We are coal miners and mill workers and farmers.

We took up arms against the government and fought for our labor rights during the Coal Wars as recently as the 1920s.

We bled for labor rights at the Battle of Blair Mountain.

It’s a myth that you keep perpetuating that we are all closed minded, bigoted regressionists. It diminishes the efforts of everyone from the coal miners to people like me while we try to make the region a better place.

It actually only worsens what you say that you wish you could “saw off into the ocean.” 

That's my home you're talking about.

Stereotype 2: Everyone is Obese

36.3% of the overall population of the Southeast is obese. This is true.

Have you considered why that may be? For starters, Southerners are more likely to be uninsured compared to individuals living in the rest of the country.

"Among the total nonelderly population, 15% of individuals in the South are uninsured compared to 10% of individuals in the rest of the country."

Partially because they didn't even expand the same Medicaid benefits to us. and partially because we are just so fucking poor. 

17% of the American South is below the poverty line, compared to 13% in the Midwest, 13% in the West, and 13% in the Northeast.

Percentages under 5% may not seem like much, but when you consider 1% of the total United States population is around 3,140,000 people, yeah, that adds up real quick.

How does this relate? Well...

Mississippi has 19.58% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 39.1% obesity rate.

West Virginia has 17.10% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 40.6 % obesity rate.

Kentucky has 16.61% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 40.4% obesity rate.

Are you seeing the trend?

We, generally speaking, are more likely to be unable to afford to feed ourselves wholesome foods, and we are less likely to be able to afford medical insurance--two things that are obviously important to maintaing good health and a "healthy" weight.

By the same token... 

Stereotype #3: We're All Uneducated 

The South and Appalachia are some of the lowest ranked in terms of educational funding and spending per pupil in the entire country. We don't even break the top 30 on the list, y'all.

49. Tennessee at $8,324 per pupil 47. Mississippi at $8,919 per pupil 45. Alabama at $9,636 per pupil 42. Kentucky at $10,010 per pupil 36. North Carolina at $10,613 per pupil 35. South Carolina at  $10,719 per pupil 33. Georgia at $10,893 per pupil 32. West Virginia at $10,984 per pupil

The top three best-funded states, by comparison, receive between $18k and $20k per pupil.

In terms of higher education, student loans are a death sentence for everyone but especially impoverished kids just looking for a way out. It just isn't feasible for most of us. And that's if we even tested well after going to shitty schools our whole lives. If we had better education, we'd have better literacy in all things, including critical thinking, allowing us to better see through the bullshit we are taught. But we don't. And you aren't helping the ones who are trying in spite of that.

Stereotype 4: Bad Teeth

Quickly going to touch on this one--when we consider a lack of access to affordable, healthy food, shitty medical insurance in general and our poverty rate, this one is kind of obvious. Even so:

“Dental coverage was significantly lower than the national average in the South Atlantic (45.6%), East South Central (45.6%), West South Central (45.9%), and Pacific (48.0%) regions.”

Every time you make a toothless hillbilly joke, ask if poverty is really the butt of the joke you want to be making.

These are just the most pervasive of them, imo. And they can all be underlined by extreme poverty which is absolutely by design.

It also contributes to why it isn’t so easy to “just leave” as we are so often dismissively told to do. Moving is expensive.

And why should we have to, anyway? Why should we have to flee our homes?

Why, for those who feel safe enough and/or have no other choice, should we not stay and fight to better the region?

And why can’t you other leftists get behind us and help us in our fight instead of perpetuating harmful stereotypes? We're your people, too.

Just some food for thought. And I hope some of y’all take a big ol bite.

#i am already exhausted #if you wanna discuss or for some reason argue any of these points my asks are open but i'm hopping off of here for now #appalachia #appalachian culture #appalachian mountains #southern usa #txt