#death to short form video content | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starlostseungmin · 2 years

Text

cruel summer, lover ─── a pillow in between.

masterlist. playlist.

✰ pairing — non-idol!lee know x fem!reader (with she/her as pronouns)

✰ genre — enemies to lovers trope, stuck together, romance, slight angst and humor, smut.

✰ warnings — profanity, kissing, explicit sexual content, soft dom!minho, unprotected sex, nipple/breast play, pet names, aftercare?? slight degrading, mentions of alcohol and clubbing, minors dni. lmk if i missed smth, not proofread.

✰ word count — 7.2k +

✰ songs that was used for inspiration — cruel summer by taylor swift, cool for the summer by demi lovato, wish you were sober by conan gray, know me too well by new hope club ft. danna paola and angel baby by troye sivan

REBLOGGING AND LEAVING A FEEDBACK WOULD BE APPRECIATED. NSFW CONTENTS UNDER THE CUT. mdni.

“Honestly, I wouldn't date you!”

“The same goes with you!”

“Don't waste such a fucking handsome lad like me Y/n”

“Can I be honest?”

“Go ahead,”

“Fuck you! You. Are. Not. My. Type.”

It started during high school and continued until the last year of college, it was always been you and Minho. Never a dull moment when you two started bickering, a comedic show that your friends enjoy. Profanity and bad gestures, death glares, and fuming faces, everyone got used to it. Anytime, anywhere, whenever you and Minho crossed paths, nothing changes. But everything needs to be put to a stop at the end, yet, it happened in an unusual way, or so you thought.

The fresh color blue welcomed your eyes as you glance at the window. Clouds were so white and thick, the sea waves were barely visible down below, it was the start of your summer. Loud noises from the plane’s engine died down the moment it landed on the runway and the hint of excitement on your face cannot hide it anymore. A vacation is all that matters right now, after a hectic week of spring classes, the university finally gave the cue for a break. Two weeks were settled, and a week will be spent at Jeju.

Your footsteps were heard as you make your way to the arrivals area dragging your suitcase and your backpack resting at the top. The fresh air swayed with your hair as the gentle sunlight illuminates the magnificent exterior. It made you smile and decided to take a few pictures for documentation, some would be useful for Instagram stories. The camera focus had to go sideways to execute a short video, but your brows knitted against each other when a familiar figure shows up out of nowhere. It was a prompt to end the filming as your hands fell, eyes focused on the person. Minho.

He was wearing an oversized black t-shirt, baby blue loose jeans, and white shoes, his purple locks falling above his eyes, one backpack strap hanging on his shoulder, and a black suitcase standing beside him. Minho looks so fucking good with it, but it can't hide that menace personality of his. Is he leaving or did he just arrive? What the fuck is he doing here anyway? You thought and he felt someone was staring at him as he was busy with his phone. His eyes immediately searched the area and landed on you. A smirk was formed on his lips, it’s been quite a while since the last time he saw you and still felt the same feelings. Hate.

“What are you staring at?” He asked.

“An asshole,” You snapped which made him laugh halfheartedly. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“You never changed Y/n, tsk,” He said shaking his head. “I’m here for a vacation, and you?”

“Likewise, but I hope not to see you around,” You roll your eyes as the smirk never left his face, shoving his phone inside the pocket of his jeans.

“Me either you nincompoop,” He said as his smile faded, breaking the gaze.

You roll your eyes again and waited for a taxi to come by wishing to disappear immediately. It was a fair afternoon, you promised to make yourself stress-free for the whole trip and sleep in the hotel when you arrive, but things doesn’t seem to go in your way when Minho pushed himself inside the taxi you waved your hand for.

“Thanks for the ride love,” He smirked before leaving making you groan in frustration.

“I hate that asshole,” You sighed in response and got another taxi instead.

Closing your eyes, you tried to manipulate a comfortable atmosphere after being pestered by someone you hate. Years have already passed yet you still felt the same way the moment you met him during high school. He was another usual student, you thought, he was always quiet and cold except when he was with his friends which became your circle of friends as well. Minho was warm inside when he gets sincere, but not everyone melts his heart, that includes you. It was strange, you didn’t know exactly why, but because he treats you that way, you learned to act like him. Even regretted that bright smile you gave him the first time you met when only a face of judgment was plastered all over his face as a response.

Scoffing at the thought, you opened your eyes to enjoy the scenery outside. The thoughts of Minho would ruin your vacation, all you need is space and alone time. It was a hotel where Chan used to tell stories about, a real estate that his aunt owns somewhere in Jeju. A week's vacation in their hotel just beside a fancy beach, the nightclub is open every Thursday 'til Saturday, two swimming pools, one on the ground floor and one on the rooftop, and free access to breakfast and spa. You were all hyped up when he said he would try to make a reservation for you. He’s the type to keep his promises and gave you details a week later. Everything was settled and you were going to stay there for a week, with a minimum fee after his aunt decided to give a discount out of nowhere. It was a bit strange.

A sigh escaped from your lips, glancing at the front. Minho’s taxi was just ahead of you, taking the same direction as to where you were heading to. The hotel was already in sight, the view of the blue waters kilometers away shines after a short while on the road. Rays of Sunshine made sparkles, and birds fly high above it. It was nature friendly, and the excitement riles up from the minimum, but the sight of Minho getting off at the same destination tried to fade that smile of yours. Why is he taking the same hotel when there are other hotels around? It was reasonable enough that Chan must’ve mentioned it to him, all you just hoped is not having the same floor.

You paid for the ride and took off, Minho was heading to the front desk as you followed him from behind. The interior of the hotel was even fancier than the brochure. White walls and baby blue curtains, high ceilings with a magnificent chandelier in the middle, statues of angels, different types of flowers enveloped the entrance to the pathway, grand stairs, and doric columns, your eyes sparkled at the sight. Too immersed in the view, you didn’t notice his figure ahead and stumbled upon his back, breaking your fantasy with a grunt from him.

“Are you following me?” He asked acting scared the shit out of his dear life the moment he laid his eyes on you.

“Don’t set your high hopes on me, the last thing I want to do is to get involved with you,” You snapped as he rolled his eyes.

“Sure, whatever,” He said as he started talking to the staff. “Room reservation under Lee Minho please,”

You roll your eyes in response as you waited at the back. Crossing your arms, you went back to admiring the interior again. An aesthetically pleasing view for an architect major like you, but waiting for him to finish his reservation talk leads to impatience.

“I’m sorry but I only reserved it for myself, I didn’t put any names in the application form.” He said as that caught your attention.

“But it indicates from the form that the hotel website received is you’re with Ms. (y/l/n) (y/f/n).” The staff said which made both of your eyes widen in shock.

“Excuse me?” You asked, getting in between the conversation. The staff’s eyes landed on you as they smiled at you. “I heard my name, what’s this all about?”

“Can I have your IDs please?” They asked.

“Why would I room with someone I don’t like?” Minho asked as you took out your identification card from your wallet.

“The same goes with me, I asked Chan to make me a reservation,” You snapped, giving it to the staff.

“Good for you, I applied myself alone,” Minho sighed in frustration. “How did this happen?” He added, handing his ID.

“The form was from you Mr. Lee since it is your email that was used, Ms. (y/l/n)’s name is also being indicated during the application,” The staff answered, showing the monitor of their computer. You leaned closer to read, you never filled anything since Chan said he got your back. Minho was also complacent about the form he submitted.

“I didn’t type her name on it,” Minho defended.

“This is already reserved and you even paid for it, if you wish to have separate rooms, we cannot give you a vacant one as of the moment because we are packed,” The staff explained, as you had to reread everything from the top to bottom.

“I think Chan messed up my reservation,” You said, gaining back your composure with a palm on the forehead for getting a headache, unable to process everything.

“No, he messed up MY reservation,” Minho hissed underneath his breath.

“How so?” You asked as he glared at you.

“I was filling up the form using his laptop saying he’d be the one to submit it to the site, he paid half because it is his aunt’s fucking hotel, he probably typed your name under the ‘other guest’ list, fuck it,” He said when you facepalm and reached for you phone to type his number.

“It will be a waste if you don’t take it, this reservation is up for the whole week,” The staff added.

“Can you just give us a refund?” Minho asked

“I’m sorry Sir, but as per the hotel’s policy, we strictly don’t offer refunds,”

Minho sighed harshly trying not to lose it, he rested his forehead on the desk grabbing his hair in frustration. Chan wasn’t picking up his phone and it’s driving you nuts as well, you were doubtful that the money he asked from you was half of the payment for the reservation. The staff was also acting a little bit weird as per your senses but that wasn’t the issue. Going to be roommates with Minho is like living in hell, you were already living a hellish life on land, how much more like it to be with him. The one you hate the most is going to be stuck with you the whole week.

“Fine, we’ll take it,” He said after a few moments of silence.

“What?” You asked, being bewildered. “I can’t just spend an entire week with you?”

“Babe, if you don’t want it, you can leave, I will have it all for myself, even the money you paid, it’s not a big deal,” He smirked.

“That’s not fair,” You scoffed.

The staff was right as you would agree, it would be a waste of money and opportunity to reject a vacation. You can survive a week with him, just focus on your routines, you thought. It is a rare experience to come to Jeju and enjoy the company, except for the man standing beside you.

“It’s not fair, I know, but up to you,” He shrugged. “Give me the keys and room number please,” He smiled at the staff, leaving you dumbfounded.

“Have a wonderful stay Sir,” The staff smiled at him and offered the keycard with the room number with it. He fled for the elevator as you stayed with the staff. Thoughts running across your mind, filling in with a debate whether to pursue him or not. Your next flight for the round trip is scheduled for next week and looking for a hotel after dark would be a struggle. His figure started to fade from your sight making you contemplate a decision.

“Fuck, fine, I’ll go,” You said. “Do you have extra keycards?” You asked the staff who was watching the two of you.

“I gave him two just in case you’d change your mind,” They smiled as another sigh escaped from your lips and ran to catch him.

“Minho!” You called as you enter the elevator.

“Have a romantic stay you two!” The staff teased as both of your figures vanished in their sight by the time the doors closed. You heard it loud and clear, but Minho just laughed it out, while you were not pleased.

“Hello you,” He smirked. “What made you change your mind?”

“None of your business, give me the other keycard.” You said as he gave you the other one.

Snatching it away from his hand, the boy just laughed at your frustration. He loves seeing you suffer in some ways. The hotel was 25 floors high, and your room is on the 19th floor. A long ride in the elevator made the atmosphere awkward. Minho became quiet after the small talk, tightening his grip on the handle of his suitcase as you stood beside him, staring at your reflection by the door, aimlessly.

You followed him outside as he lead you to the room.

“I can’t believe I’m spending an entire week with you,” You sighed in disappointment.

“Your loss if you won’t,” He said giving you his usual smile but it was teasing you. A sound was heard from the door indicating its opened. Minho slipped a card inside the hotel card switch and opened the lights only to make you more annoyed.

“It’s not losing–only one bed?!” You exclaimed the moment you saw the extension of the interior which made him drag his attention to you.

“What are you talking about?” He asked as his eyes landed solely on the king-sized bed in the middle of the room. “Oh, fuck,” He hissed, closing his eyes in frustration.

“I’m sleeping on the floor,” You said, taking your luggage and proceeding to the closet to have your things placed.

“You don’t want to share the bed with me and cuddle?” He smirked.

“No, fuck you!” You snapped at him.

“Sure, I’ll fuck you hard then,” He said still carrying that teasing smile of his as you smacked his arm.

“I hate you so much, just wait until the week is over I’m not going to see you again! Ever!” You exclaimed at him.

“Likewise, but don’t sleep on the bed, it’s uncomfortable, just put a pillow in between us or whatever, I’m using the bathroom,” He said, leaving his things unattendedーgoing away. You just stood there in front of the closet, clothes rested in your hands, sighing at the thought.

“It’s a cruel summer indeed,”

Night fell, and you decided to leave the room to take a stroll down to the swimming pool on the ground floor as Minho took the whole room by himself to sleep. It was a tiring day for you, disaster followed. But despite the tragedy, it can’t break the fact that the place is ethereal, minus your unexpected roommate. Your footsteps just encircled the pool, walking around made you at peace, especially when it was the evening. The moon was high and bright as it reflected the blue waters of the pool. It caught your attention, a beautiful distraction from exhaustion.

You decided to sit down, soaking your legs in the cold blue liquid. Lights flashed gently and the sounds of them became more relaxing. It was peaceful without your phone. Minho had to struggle waking up from his deep slumber after it blasted your weird ringtone, a chorus of a song. An irritated groan escaped from his lips as his hands searched for the noisy device at the side table. No luck, he sat up with messy hair, drowsy eyes, and a hint of annoyance to find your phone.

“Damn, Y/n, why did you leave it here?!” He hissed, snatching your phone laying on the other side of the bed. His eyes scanned the screen only to find out Chan was calling you. “Fuck, you finally showed up.” He grumbled, swiping the answer button.

“Hello?” Chan’s voice echoed.

“Eyy~ what’s up? I know that you did us dirty,” Minho's voice was heard making Chan laugh.

“Ya, why do you have Y/n’s phone? I was going to apologize for not taking their calls this afternoon,” Chan answered as Minho smirked in response.

“She went out without her phone,” He sighed. “I’m sharing a room and a bed with her, thanks a lot.” But Chan only laughed even harder. “Does this seem funny to you?”

“I’m sorry,” Chan’s laugh faded.

“Yeah, whatever, if you’re looking for her then call her later. I’m in our room and I don’t know where she went, too dumb to leave her phone. I don’t care anymore, I–” Minho said but was cut off when Chan sighed at the end of the line.

“Look, I didn’t do this to make your relationship grow even worse. It’s been a while since high school Minho, makeup with Y/n,” Chan said.

“Why should I?” Minho said, firmly holding your phone pressed against his ear. “She doesn’t like me, she hates me.”

“You said you feel different, why are you acting like this?” Chan asked. “This is the only way I can help you two, I can’t have you hate each other for life, Minho.” The latter fell into silence after that, closing his eyes, he took a deep sigh, licked his lips, and took a glance at the empty side of the bed with a book you read an hour ago left unattended.

“I’ll tell her that you called when she comes back, good night hyung,” Minho said changing the subject before dropping the call. Chan wasn’t able to say something, the younger one’s heart was too hard to manipulate.

Minho’s back pressed against the mattress, hands covering his face before a sigh came out of his mouth. He stared at the while ceiling before glancing at your phone’s screen. It was a picture of you, so beautiful even if you were just wearing your pajamas with an oversized white shirt, smiling at the camera. It made his heart beat but he couldn’t bear the fact that he hates how he feels, and how you feel towards him. Hate, it was all hate.

It started as a joke during your junior year of high school. He loves being a menace, but his joke was taken too seriously that it hurt his feelings. You didn’t like him as much as he didn’t like you, but Minho did have a soft spot for the people he cared for. He lied a few times, not everyone melts his heart, he said, you made it pound. A moment that rarely comes, the feeling he longed for.

“Honestly, I wouldn't date you!” That was the one he said, a joke that wanted to annoy the hell out of you. A way of taking your attention, a coping mechanism from the hurtful truth that you won’t ever return how much he feels for you.

“The same goes with you!” A response that he thought was just the usual answer to an insult.

“Don't waste such a fucking handsome lad like me Y/n” A teasing backfire that he half-meant.

“Can I be honest?”

“Go ahead,”

“Fuck you! You. Are. Not. My. Type.” It felt like a dagger pierced his chest.

It was so vivid, a memory he had a few years ago still chases him. A matter of his heart that he couldn’t take it off of his body. He tried to sympathize and leave it behind after graduation but college drew him back when he knew you were attending the same university. Fate exists, but it’s not for everyone. The thought of it was childish, a simple scenario that some experience in their lives, but he’s beating himself because of it. Even the hating game pursues, he couldn’t get the shit out of loving you. Everyone knew, except you, Chan already made a move but he won’t budge, a headstrong young lad can’t get out of the verge of moving on and made a resort of hating you as a cover of pain.

Minho left the bed to change his clothes and wore his perfume and an Apple watch. He won’t be able to sleep again. The thought of you would mess it up, thanks to Chan as well. That was the time you came back from outside. The door opened gently, revealing the guy who was wearing a black long-sleeved oversized polo with a white shirt inside, and black pants, his piercings were matching, a cross hanging on the right side, he was so handsome. Your eyes had to check the fit, one that would make you fall on the floor never denied he is good-looking.

“Are you done checking me out?” He asked, gaining back your attention to his face.

“You wish,” You retorted. “Where are you going?”

“Clubbing,” He said. “By the way, Chan hyung called on your phone, call him back,”

“You used my phone without permission?” You asked, knitting your brows.

“Your phone was fucking loud, it woke me up,” He snapped. “And that annoying ringtone of yours. Anyway, I’m leaving, call me when you feel lonely,” He added with a wink and left you scoffing in response.

“What the hell was that?” You asked shaking your head before storming inside the room.

It was delicate to spend your time alone, no Minho pestering you around, the pool was good from earlier and the comfort of the novel you were reading at the moment was endearing. A dream vacation you always thought about but you knew this peace will end up pretty soon. Quiet and solemn, a night of deep thoughts. Chan engaged in a conversation and apologized throughout the call, saying he’d make it up to you when both you and Minho get back. Never mentioned anything about what he told the latter. It was good, can’t change what is going on and accepted your fate. A week with him wouldn’t be so bad, you wish.

1 am, the book was down to its last page. No book to read anymore, sucks to bring only one. You couldn’t sleep even when you were so exhausted from all that had happened. Minho was still on the rooftop, unknown what time would he want to come back. You stood up from the window seat, wanting to get a rest but speaking of the devil, he managed to get in time, drunk when he scanned the keycard on the lock. He couldn’t even stand straight and walk properly.

“Y/n~~” He cooed as you rushed towards him.

“What took you so long?” You asked, assisting him to the bed, an arm around your shoulder and your arm around his waist for support. “It’s so late,”

“Come on, it’s not every day I can go out clubbing!” He whined.

“Still, you’re wasted,” You said making him sit on the bed but his body fell on the mattress, taking off his shoes, and tossing them on the floor.

“Live a life,” He said and went unconscious. A sigh escaped your lips as you tucked him in. The smell of his perfume and alcohol made it intoxicating, it was strong but bearable enough to avoid sinful thoughts. You sat down beside him, staring at his peaceful figure and fixing the messy bangs that cover his eyes.

“I like you better when you’re sleeping, I hate it when you’re awake just to make fun of me,” You whisper as you caress his purple locks. He hums in response to your touch, it was comforting but he was unaware of it.

“Hmm, why do you hate me so much Y/n?” You stayed silent as he talk in his sleep. Something unexpected for him to say. “I like you so much that it hurts me until now…”

Eyes still on him, frozen on your seat, contemplating what to do in response. It was so out of the blue but your lips meet his forehead. A sweet gesture of feelings you hid to illuminate the hate. Minho liked you for so long, but the hating phase brought you here, confused. You wanted to wake up without the memory of this one. Heart pounding crazily, you wanted it to stop. A smile forehead kiss didn’t help you, but it was effective for him to fall into a deep slumber.

Trying to brush off the thought, your hand reached for a pillow and placed it between you and Minho. The empty side of the bed was yours as you lay down, taking half of the duvet to doze off. Everything will be forgotten in the morning, you hoped.

Rays of sunshine through the transparent window as it peeks into the small gap of the curtains and a hint of wind blows with it. You were still fast asleep and Minho shifted his position, dazed at how he ended up here. He felt the pillow beside him and saw your sleeping figure next to it facing his direction. His cold stare and knitted brows faded, you were beautiful as always as his hand wanted to reach out to touch your cheek but he had to hold himself together. Only a gentle sigh escaped from his lips, taking his time to get out of the bed carefully.

You felt his movements and heard the bathroom door open and closed. The first whole day spent with him and being stuck together is full of surprises. Grabbing your phone from the nightstand, it was past 10, how could I sleep so much? Slapping yourself back to reality, it was pretty late for breakfast, Minho was hoarding the bathroom and you got impatient. A sigh escaped your lips as you waited for him, the scene from last night suddenly appeared in your mind. It wasn't an offense, rather it was sweet–wishing Minho was sober when he said that. You shake your head with a disappointed smile on your face, it’s not the time to think about it that way. A mistake.

He left the bathroom 30 minutes later. He was all dressed up for the day but his purple locks were still wet as the water dripped down from his bangs to his forehead. A towel in his hand, trying to dry them off, you just stared at him. Contemplating on inviting him to eat, you hoped he wouldn't react dramatically. He was busy anyway.

“Say, do you want to get brunch together?” You asked, finally. He stopped drying his hair, tossed the towel over his shoulder, and grabbed his hair product.

“Did something happen to you? It’s a miracle you’d invite me to eat with you,” He said, styling his hair as you roll your eyes.

“You can say no if you don’t want to, I can manage to go alone,” You retorted which made him chuckle.

“I wasn’t going to refuse,” He said. “It’s your turn to use the bathroom,”

“Thanks,” You said quietly and stood from the bed, taking your way to the bathroom. But there he goes again, the intoxicating smell of his, but this was more fragrant than last night. You smirked at yourself closing the door behind you, it was dumb to play it cool when you literally have something going on. It was driving you nuts, the smell, his way of fashion, that handsome face of his, not to mention the book you were reading was about enemies to lovers trope. “When’s this vacation going to end?”

You and Minho ended up at the restaurant up to the 22nd floor, food on the table as you sit across from each other. It was fancy, everything was to your liking, except for the awkward atmosphere you were having with him. Silence enveloped the both of you, only the murmurs of audible conversations of the other people and the banging of utensils to the dishes were heard. You were too shy to say something, and Minho seems too busy with his food to give a shit.

“Do you have something to do today?” Minho asked not taking his eyes off the steak.

“What?” You asked back, looking at him.

“I asked if you’re going to do something today,” He repeated meeting your gaze with his cold eyes.

“Nothing, really,” You answered quietly. “And you?”

“No idea, probably go clubbing again later,” He said as you sighed in response.

“Since when did you like clubbing?” You asked again, as he drink his glass of sparkling water.

“Since the moment you said I’m not your type,” He smirked leaving you dumbfounded. “I’m done with the meal, see you around,” He added wiping his lips and taking his dishes to take off.

Another sigh escaped your lips after his figure vanished into thin air, it took you a while to leave the place to space out. He’s really unbelievable, avoiding you and being rude, a menace to have your heart pound so suddenly. You weren’t expecting to feel it, but one more confession from him will make you lose it. You thought he hated you so much the first time, you thought he just acted that way because he doesn’t like everything about you, yet it wasn’t always like that. You didn’t know, you don’t know anything.

Night fell and Minho is up to the club again as you stroll by the beach alone. You could see the dancing lights on from the hotel’s rooftop. It was beautiful, how much more when you were in it. But you dislike clubbing, getting in once made you regret it. Being drunk is not your thing, even the smell of alcohol and the suffocating crowd. Minho knows that, and you know he’s not the type to go clubbing. He lied about it, saying he wasn’t your type was done years ago. It became a blur but it was clear for him to remember.

You tried to brush off everything and walk peacefully by the shore, but the lights coming from the top of the building keeps bothering you, and the thought of Minho getting drunk again is something to be your concern. A frustrated grunt escaped your lips as you drag yourself back to the room. A black dress that falls above the knee was reserved for a fancy occasion, it has thin straps and fitting, that shows the beautiful form of your body. Black high heels and silver earrings, pink lipstick, and hair that falls naturally, it’s been a quite while since the last time you dressed up like this.

It wasn’t the best feeling, but you managed to pull it off. You loved how you look but this won’t last long, you needed to drag him out of that place or stop him from getting drunk again. The lights welcomed you when the elevator’s door opened, the loud music was banging inside your ears, walking through the crowd as you look for him. The intoxicating smell of mixed alcohol, perfume, and smoke makes you want to vomit, you hated it so much. But why do if it’s Minho, you didn’t feel anything? You made your way through a bunch of laughing and drinking groups of people. Some of them were already making out on the couch, a few were bold enough to find a private place to have sex, it wasn’t new.

“Hi, are you alone?” A stranger asked who suddenly appeared in front of you.

“What?” You asked again because of the loud music.

“I asked if you’re alone,” The stranger smirked. “Do you want to spend time with me?” It added, dragging themself closer to you.

“Fuck off! She’s with me,” Someone said wrapping their arm around your shoulder glaring at the stranger, pulling you away. It was Minho, with a glass of strong liquor in a hand. “What are you doing here?” He asked, taking it all in one gulp.

“I wanted to see your place,” You said rolling your eyes. “And how many glasses did you take already?” You asked again taking the glass off his hand and placing it back on the counter.

“Hmm, I don’t know, 8?” He laughed as he made you sit with him by the counter. “I thought you hate the club?”

“I got bored in the hotel room, and don’t worry I’m not going to stay longer if you don’t like me in here,” You retorted, ordering the same alcoholic beverage as you crossed your arms.

“I’m not complaining,” He said tossing his hands up in the air for surrender.

“Whatever floats your boat, Lee Minho,” You forced a smile before the bartender could hand your drink. The boy just scoffed, not getting that dumb smile off of his face. He was tipsy, for now, one that gives hint for you to be worried. You just didn’t want him to be alone in a place like this, you didn’t know what caused the spark.

You fell into silence as you drink while he takes everything in one gulp, “Hey, don’t drink recklessly!”

“I’m just enjoying my time, Y/n,” He said with a hic in between.

“Stop it right there,” You retorted when he took another shot. “Fuck it, Minho,” You added taking the glass off his hand, asking the bartender not to take orders from him again. He was left dumbfounded and that’s when the time someone approached him. A pretty girl who was probably the same age as you. Minho noticed them and smirked.

“Hey there,” He said wrapping his arm around their waist.

“Oh my gosh, no,” You muttered to yourself the moment you heard it. The girl was flirting with him and you could see that dumb smile on his face, not leaving it. You fell into disgust, one that sparked something inside you to move. Jealousy.

He was flirting back, rubbing his hands on their waist as they talk about something you can’t relate to. It was like a meter of distance when you walked towards him, crashing your lips on his to push the girl away. He couldn’t believe it, and neither do you. It made his heart pound, and the other one left in disgust. Minho kissed your lips back, pulling you closer to sit on his lap. That wasn’t part of the plan, you couldn’t stop either way. His lips tasted the same as the liquor, strong and sweet at the same time. An intoxicating addiction that came out of nowhere.

Your tongue collided with his as you wrap your arms around his neck, deepening the kiss. He’s definitely drunk and you were sober, but you’re acting like a drunk. His hand placed on your thigh drawing small circles that caused you to stop, and locked eyes with him. Cheeks started to turn red, a fluttering moment of blooming love confession. A subtle description of how much he loved it and you wanted more. It was stupid at first, but the taste of his lips made it different. His eyes fell on your lips, it was pink and luscious as your lipgloss tinted his own.

“I’m sorry,” You said.

“Why did you stop?” He asked eyes turning dark.

“Did I make you uncomfortable?” You asked, being embarrassed when you realized you were on his lap. “I’m getting off now,” You added and was about to stand up when he pulled you back.

“No,” He said. “You should know how much I’ve been waiting for this,”

You bit your lower lip as you kissed him again, Minho hummed in response as he pulled you closer again. His hand rested on one side of your cheek as the other one supported your back. Your fingers played with his purple locks, giving him licking kisses. He smirked in between them, a teasing bite of your lips made you whine, and heavy breaths followed as his hand started caressing your thigh again. His lips traveled down to your neck, leaving wet kisses as you throw your head back with a mewl coming out from your mouth. He didn’t want to stop, all he wanted was to do you right now. But not without your permission of course, yet, he wanted you so badly.

His lips reached on your collarbone, slowly sliding the straps of your dress off of your shoulder. You knew where is this going, intimate. “You smell so good, I want to taste you,”

“Not here,” You answered, pressing a soft kiss against his lips.

“Do you want it?” He asked playing with your hair.

“Please?” You pleaded when his stare turned even darker, full of lust as an evil smirk formed on his lips.

“Fuck,” He chuckled. “I’m going to make you feel good baby girl,”

You didn’t realize how fast everything was moving until you reached your room, with Minho locking the door behind him. His lips got impatient that they met yours the moment he pinned you up against the wall. Your hands hurried to take off his coat, lips didn’t leave each other as they molded to share torrid kisses. His hands started to squeeze your ass to pull you even closer as his lips fell back on your neck again, earning a moan from you.

“Fuck,” He hissed, biting your neck and licked the mark. You tried managed to take off your heels in a hurry as unbuckled his belt, tossing them on the sides not caring where they went. His body pressed your figure hard against the wall, fingers played with the straps of your dress until they became undone, and slipped them off to show your chest. “So beautiful,” He said before taking your nipple inside his mouth, sucking and nipping the skin.

“Shit! Ohーfuck!” You shivered under his touch. It was already driving you crazy enough to let out a sinful sound. He left your nipple wet with his saliva before turning to the other one, sucking it and twirling his tongue around. A hand slipped between your thigh feeling the wetness of your clothed core, he bit your nipple in response.

“You’re so wet for me doll,” He said as his lips brushed against yours.

“Take everything off,” You retorted, kissing him again. Minho slipped your dress off of you as it fell unattended on the floor with his pants and black shirt. He carried you all the way towards the bed, not breaking the sloppy kisses you’ve shared. You felt your back encounter the soft mattress as he hovered above you. His kisses traveled down from your lips to your jaw, back on the neck where his bite screamed red, licking the valley of your breast and leaving wet kisses on your stomach, until he reached the hem of your panties, dragging it off of your legs being welcomed by your wetness.

“Spread it for me, love,”

Your legs parted their own, unable to think straight, you just wanted to get railed by him as he took off the last piece of clothing he had before pressing the tip of his cock against your clit. Brows knitted together as you watch him driving you crazy, and you rubbed your wetness on it. He leaned closer to you, hand squeezing your boob before sliding himself inside slowly which made you let out a beautiful sinful sound that was so good in his ears. Eyes rolled back as he held both of your hands, pressing them together above your head and intertwining your fingers together. He kissed your forehead before pressing an intimate kiss on your lips before thrusting himself inside you.

It was sweet, his gestures made your heart pound, his actions driving you crazy as you tightened the grip on his hands. Minho picked up his fast pace as you moaned against his lips. Heavy breathing accompanied the sensual moment, he made sure to be gentle as ever. He didn't want to ruin the first time does it with you. You were so small below him, a moaning mess yet so beautiful to watch when you say his name when he gets faster. His member tightens your walls, sucking it deeper as he goes in and out. You couldn't think straight anymore, he loves the sound you make, he loves the sight of you being a mess. Everything about you, he waited for so long, he wouldn't let this moment slip. Sober or not, both of you wanted it the moment you kissed him in the rooftop club.

His lips met your nipple again as he started to suck and nip the skin. Your hands finally free from his grip as the other one played with your other breast, squeezing and pinching your nipple as your finger dug deeper on his back, scratching them in response to his pace. He went faster than before and made you scream his name, his lips never left your breast, he loves them so much. Tears started to form in your eyes as you reached your high. Minho was proud, he doesn't want to stop fucking you.

“Baby, I’m close… fuck!” You whined under him.

“Shhh,” He said, pressing a soft kiss on your lips before allowing you both to release. You were breathing heavily as he buried his face in the crook of your neck, hugging him.

“Are you okay?” You asked, playing with his purple locks.

“Hmm,” He hummed in response. “Do you still hate me?”

“You made me hate you,” Minho locked eyes with you as he smiled softly, kissing your cheek.

“I’m sorry,” He said, disappointment surfacing in his eyes. “Do you want to wash up? I’m sorry I dragged you into this, I–” But he was cut off when you kissed him again.

“Don’t say it,” You said. “I’m sorry that I hated you so much before, I just didn’t know why you didn't like me the first time.”

“That was my fault, I wish I told you sooner that I–”

“You like me?” You smiled. “You were drunk when you said it,”

“Shit,” Minho laughed and went back to bury his face again on your neck. “I’m embarrassed,”

“It’s not embarrassing when I feel the same way, but I do,” You said as he looked at you again before giving a prolonged kiss on your lips. “I love you,” You inserted in between the kiss.

“I love you too, don’t hate me again okay?” He chuckled before pulling away.

“Why would I when I already told you that I love you?” You laughed in response when he just shrugged.

“Let’s wash up now, yes?” He said leaving a kiss on your forehead.

“Hmm,” You hummed as he carried you in bridal style, leading to the bathroom’s bathtub. A rose-scented bubble bath with a few candles being lit up was so relaxing. Minho went in first as you sat with your back against him. His arms wrapped around you, with his chin resting on your shoulder. “Do you want to tell the boys about this?”

“I don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you and me,” He said, kissing your bare shoulder. “We’ll tell them when we get back, okay? I want to spend the rest of the week quietly with you.”

You felt his lips on the side of your head as you looked at him with a smile, “Just the two of us for the rest of the week?”

“No one else,” He smiled before capturing your lips again.

REBLOGGING AND LEAVING A FEEDBACK WOULD BE APPRECIATED.

©️ 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐒𝐄𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐌𝐈𝐍 , 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑.

2K notes · View notes

illicitlimerence-writes · 2 years

Text

lake como | p. gasly

pairing: pierre gasly x reader word count: 2.6k words warnings: smut 18+ ONLY, kinda public sex, kinda exhibitionism ? unprotected sex (p in v, creampie), fingering, oral, choking, kinda switch!reader and switch!pierre (i think?), thigh riding, idk what elseeee pls lmk if i missed anything a/n: i was heavily affected by those pictures and videos from pierre in italy, so this came to my head. thank you to cousin @ireallydontknowdudee for beta-reading<333

my masterlist

(i mean, dude)

as the months and days ticked by, the weather started changing, long gone were the dark, cold, gloomy winter days. the clouds parted, making way for clear skies and shiny rays of sun.

with the rising weather came the days off. summer had never been her favorite season, but once she got a taste of what summers with pierre were like, she started looking forward to the endless nights underneath the stars, boat rides with the sun hitting her face. and her favorite part, pierre's shirts unbuttoned at the top.

it was his favorite form of teasing. showing enough skin to make her want more, covering enough to make her want to undo the rest of the buttons. and don't even start with the shorts. his white shorts were going to be the death of her. they accentuated his legs perfectly, clinging tightly to his thighs when he sat.

as their relationship progressed, she learned that pierre loved wearing white linen during summer. it contrasted perfectly against his tanned skin.

they’d been in lake como for the past two days, and each day was better than the last. pierre was becoming a different person there, he seemed more carefree, relaxed. they’d traveled with friends, but decided to spend their last day in como just the two of them. their morning was spent watching the sunrise, sitting on the balcony and enjoying a comfortable silence. his hand rested on her thigh, fingers spread wide, covering her skin completely. then, they went to town, he was carrying a picnic basket, where they placed different foods, fruits, wine and cheese that caught their attention as they walked through the streets. he held her hand as they walked to the small harbor, a boat he’d rented for the weekend was waiting for them, floating on the bright blue water.

she felt the wind blowing, she adjusted the headband currently holding her hair back, feeling the sun on her face. it was a perfect combination of the chilly italian breeze and the warm sun. she closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the leather couch, a content sigh leaving her lips as she felt the boat stopping. they were in the middle of the lake, with no other boat or person around. just the two of them.

“are you enjoying yourself, ma cherie?” pierre asked, she opened her eyes to him standing in front of her. he was biting his bottom lip, shooting her a flirty glance.

"i am now that you're here, mon coeur," she extended her arms, prompting him to lean down, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down. they laughed as she laid down on the leather seat, pierre falling on top of her. “everything is better when you’re around,” she smiled, and she noticed his cheeks getting red, and wondered if what because of the sun or her words. she hoped it was the latter.

pierre was resting his weight on his arms, each on either side of her head, caging her in. he leaned his head down, pressing his lips against hers softly. she hummed softly, smiling into the kiss. her hands found refuge in his hair, his strands looked blonde under the yellow sunlight, he simply looked angelic.

a few minutes passed, their lips were caught in a sweet, soft fight for dominance as they lost themselves in the moment. he left a trail of kisses down her neck, there was a dopey grin on her face as she moved her head to the side to give him better access. the left strap of her dress had fallen from her shoulder, freeing even more skin for him to kiss and cherish.

"baby," she whispered, he placed one more kiss on her shoulder before lifting his head, she placed a hand on his cheek, her thumb tracing the small dip from his dimples, "i love you," she said, and somehow, his grin grew wider.

"i love you too, cherie," he could see the sun hitting her eyes, and he could’ve gotten lost in her eyes right then and there. her fingers were playing with the collar of his shirt, and she let her hands slip under his shirt, touching the warm skin. he could see the shift in her eyes, changing from soft and gentle, to playful and hungry. “mon amour,” he started, lifting his top half, but she wrapped her legs around his waist, keeping him caged in her hold, he started laughing. “we’re in public, my love,” he reminded her with a quick kiss to her lips.

“hmm, i don’t see anyone around,” she raised an eyebrow, biting her bottom lip as she waited for his reaction. “we’re in italy,” she started, kissing his neck, “we’re finally alone,” she continued, dragging her lips down the column of his throat, “and i want you,” she curled her fingers on his hair, “i need you,” she whispered in his ear, right before kissing his soft spot. she felt him let out a shaky breath as she spoke. she’d made sure to keep her voice low and breathy, showing him how badly he was affecting her. “you know how i get when you wear white linen,” she whined, throwing her head back against the leather.

“show me,” he said, “show me what you want,” he leaned back, letting her take control. his back was now against the seat, she quickly straddled his lap and sighed as she felt his hardening length tucked inside his pants. she leaned down, leaving kisses all over his face, his neck. his hands were on her waist, feeling as she moved her hips back and forth, slowly. as her lips were attacking his neck, her fingers were fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. she started undoing them, her lips following the free path she was creating, she kissed her way down his chest, feeling the muscles in his abdomen contracting as she bit and nipped and licked his skin. soft sighs and whimpers were leaving his mouth, she bit back a smile at the thought of her being the one responsible for making him feel like that.

she pushed the shirt apart, he sat up to take it off but she stopped him.

“leave it like that,” she whispered, her hands on his face as she directed his lips toward hers. she felt him smile against her mouth, “since you wanted to wear linen, we’ll leave it on,” she said, moving one of her legs to rest between his, she was now caging one of his thick, muscular thighs between hers. she pushed him back against the seat, biting her lip as she settled down slowly.

leaving pierre with his clothes on was good for both of them, he knew how much it affected her to see him wear it, and for her…

“fuck,” she sighed, rocking back and forth slowly, the feeling of her heat against the fabric of his shorts was sinful. pierre looked down to his leg, lifting the skirt of her summer dress to reveal her bare cunt rubbing against him, using him to get herself off.

“you…” he started, but she placed her thumb on his lips, a wicked smile on her face as she continued rocking her hips. her nails were scratching his cheek lightly, playing with the small beard on his face.

“see what you did?” she asked, furrowing her eyebrows as she gave one hard thrust, an obscene moan escaped her lips. she lifted the skirt of her dress, raising her hips, the unmistakable wet patch of her arousal staining the white fabric, “you made me messy,” she let out a shaky breath as he tensed his thigh. one of her hands went to palm his cock over his shorts.

“shit, cherie, please,” he breathed, placing kisses on her throat. “take it out,” he pleaded.

“no.” she whispered in his ear. “i told you. we leave the linen on,” she leaned back, watching as his face changed from shock to amusement, it was on rare occasions that he got to see her like this. he liked it. her hand left his straining cock, traveling to her wet core, she circled her clit with the pads of her fingers, in harsh, fast circles that made her let out a loud moan.

if there was anyone around, she hoped they were enjoying the show.

she slipped two of her own fingers inside her, aware that pierre was following her every movement. she could feel how much it was affecting him, from the way his breath was quick and uneven. she gave a few quick thrusts, rocking her hips against her own fingers now. once she got enough, she plopped down on his thigh again, and pierre grabbed her arm, taking her fingers in his mouth as she rode his thigh until she declared it was enough. she smiled, throwing her head back as she felt his hands on her waist, grounding her down to his thigh. she moved the shirt out of her way, leaving his chest completely exposed and available for her. she raked her nails down his chest, to his stomach, leaving kisses right after her trail of red lines.

her actions were accompanied by soft grunts, moans and whimpers, from both of them. she was getting close, her clit close to hurting from all the stimulation, whilst pierre was suffering since his hard cock was barely getting any attention. his shorts were completely ruined by now, but neither of them found it in themselves to care. the only thing in their minds was release. her release.

she really tried to keep it up, make him live all the teasing she’d been through since they arrived in the small italian village a few days ago. he hadn’t touched her since their trip started, he’d been too busy with his own fun to pay attention to her needs. she wanted him to suffer as well, but she knew she needed him so she could cum.

“fuck me,” she said, “please, pierre, fuck me,” her hips were starting to slow down, it was all too much. “please,” she repeated once she noticed he wasn’t doing anything to fulfill her needs. “baby,”

“no. you wanted to cum on my thigh? do it. i won’t touch you until you do,” he said, his hand sliding from her waist to her face, he moved her head so she was looking at him, “finish the mess you started," he ordered, his hand wrapping around her throat, squeezing lightly. he felt a gush of arousal leave her cunt, he took notice of his ruined shorts. "you want me to fuck you?" he asked, she whined, nodding as she continued to move her hips against his thigh, "you want me to ruin you just like you ruined my clothes, baby?" he said, and she was sure that his words were what was bringing her over the edge. "speak,"

"yes," she gasped, he'd tightened his grip on her throat, which made her squeeze her legs against his thigh. "yes, please, please, pierre. fuck me," she begged, feeling electricity running in her veins.

"i will," he said, noticing small unshed tears filling her eyes, her stimulations were too much. she didn't know how much more she could handle, “you just need to cum first. let go, give it to me and then i’ll fuck you, we can do anything you want, just cum for me,” his hand slid between their bodies, touching her clit as he kept his hand around her throat. her eyes rolled back, pierre sat upright, pulling her closer by his hold on her neck, their lips met in a hot, fiery embrace as he moved his hand in fast, rough circles over her clit, she lifted her hips, chasing his touch as her thrusts on his thigh didn’t stop.

she was close, he could feel it. he could feel the way her legs were threatening to give out, her muscles fluttered around him.

“fuck it,” he groaned against her lips, pulling down his shorts and underwear, freeing his hard, throbbing cock. she immediately threw one leg over his, his cock slipping inside her aching hole easily from how wet she was. she gasped, hands gripping his hair as he held her waist, his lips replaced his hand on her throat, and he held her steadily as he was the one to guide her movements up and down his shaft. “you’re so tight, so wet,” he breathed against her neck, his warm breath making her skin rise in goosebumps.

“it’s all for you, all yours,” she mumbled, if she thought riding his thigh was driving her over the edge, having his cock inside her, finally, was both a torture and the greatest pleasure she’d felt in days. his thrusts were deep, at the perfect speed so she could feel every inch of him and crave more at the same time.

she was mumbling incoherent words under her breath, her eyebrows furrowed in a teasing frown. he sneaked one hand down to touch her clit, and the band inside of her snapped. she gripped his shoulders, almost ripping the fabric of his shirt as she held onto him desperately. his thrusts slowed down, but they were still as rough as before.

“please, please,” she didn’t know why she was pleading, she was still wrapped in the cloudy aftershocks of her orgasm.

“i’m almost there,” he said, kissing her cheek softly. “you did so good for me, baby, so perfect,” he held her hips as he helped her up and down his cock. “you’re squeezing me to death, my love. you want me? you want my cum inside of you?” she nodded at his words, rocking her hips back and forth, using the little strength she had left to squeeze her tight, velvety walls around him. “fuck, yes, just like that,” he grabbed her hips and flipped them over, so he was now on top of her. her legs wrapped around his waist as his thrusts became faster, erratic.

her back arched off the leather seat, pierre took the opportunity to kiss his way down her neck to her chest, dragging the light fabric down to her stomach and attacking her breasts with small bites and licks. she felt another orgasm forming in the pit of her stomach, a small ball of fire that was making her delirious.

after a particular hard, deep thrust, she felt his warm release hit her walls, then, she felt his weight on top of her. she turned her head forward, seeing the blue sky. she smiled to herself as she felt his lips making their way up her chest, her sore neck, and finally her lips. she closed her eyes and sighed as they kissed, she whimpered against his lips as he slipped out of her still sensitive core.

they kissed for a few more minutes, as the hazy afterglow started vanishing. she unwrapped her legs from his waist, feeling him sitting up. he looked down at her, a smile on his face as he took in her post-orgasm state. chest moving up and down in deep, fast breaths, a dopey smile on her face and a thin layer of sweat on her skin. he started buttoning up his shirt, but felt her hands on his, stopping him.

“where do you think you’re going?” she asked. she gathered all the fabric of her dress, taking it off and throwing it to the side. she leaned back against the leather rest, “you have to clean up the mess you made,” she bit her lip, spreading her legs. the sight of his cum leaking out of her was enough for pierre to fall down on his knees, to bury his face between her legs and eat her out like it was the last time he’d get to taste her.

turns out, pierre wasn’t the only one that became a different person in lake como.

2K notes · View notes

elluia · 4 months

Text

My 2023 fanfic recs [1/5]

This is a multi-part series, with a countdown to the New Year!

Navigation

The best of Ike x Soren fanfics YOU ARE HERE

The best of Fire Emblem fanfics (Genealogy, Three Houses, Engage, Heroes)

The best of misc. series (Omori, Long Live The Queen, Stardew Valley)

The Spicy™ best-of (bonk)

My 2023 works recap (Fódlan and Tellius)

Let’s start with the best of Ike x Soren fanfics! To everyone’s surprise, FE blessed us with a lot of Soren content this year (an alt in January in Heroes, a DLC Emblem in Engage, and we finally won CYL!), and I am SO PROUD of the fandom for all the beautiful fanworks and projects I’ve seen come of it 💙 (I’ve finally received my copy of The Devoted zine 🥰)

A long list below the cut (with links!), and that's far from everything ✨ My eternal respect and gratitude to all the creators who made my year 💖

📚 Fanfics

Daylight by Traincat

This is peak shipping. Their entire journey, told through meals as they grow closer. 10/10, would cry again.

Prince of Shadowed Winds by Theia_Eos

An absolutely incredible Prince of Daein!Soren AU. Amazing use of the lore, perfect understanding of the characters, and still very close and respectful of canon. I can’t wait for the retelling of Radiant Dawn! (I’ll admit, I can’t bring myself to read the last two chapters and “end” for now T_T)

Radiance in Elyos by Azure_Aeraki

Incredible plot and storytelling from Emblem Soren’s perspective, and his hope to meet the Emblem Ike of the world he suddenly found himself in. And incredibly engaging story, get it?

Birdhouse in Your Soul by Aisene

The first fanfic I read in this fandom was from Aisene, is it really a surprise that I love her latest work? In this story, Bird!Yune follows Soren instead of Micaiah, and their bond is both hilarious and heartwarming at once.

Flowers Fall by Measured

Happy ending Hanahaki disease in 2023? Yes, please!

My life for yours by emblem_oracle

Also one of my long-time favourite writers for this ship. Soren takes what could have been a mortal blow for Ike, and this leads to… read it and find out?

Lonely Nightmare by SuperDuperStarry

Add Ranulf for the most wholesome of relationships? Don’t let the title fool you, it ends up really sweet!

And the story's all over you by Toothpaste_Fresh

Last but not least, a short angsty fic, and I won’t spoil it for you.

🎬 Video

I had to. It's perfection.

youtube

📝 My contributions

I’ll count them here rather than the FE part of this recap, because the ship is very much implied, they’re just not together yet 😉

A Cutting Truth

In the long summer spent in Begnion, the newly formed Crimea Liberation Army hones its skill before marching on Daein. Among them, the staff officer of the Greil Mercenaries makes a baffling choice. To be promoted as sage, Soren picks up a knife.

A look into Soren’s psyche through the second half of Path of Radiance.

The Strong Survive

A (canon-compliant) retelling of PoR’s Endgame, where Mad King Ashnard touches the medallion, and recognizes Soren. And what better way to make up for lost time than a duel to the death? After all… Only one Daein royal may survive.

Stay tuned for the FE fic recs tomorrow!

#fe9/10 #fire emblem #fic rec #fanfic rec #tellius #ike x soren #ikesoren #elluia writes #FE9 #FE10 #path of radiance #radiant dawn #Youtube #soren #ike

26 notes · View notes

bizarrequazar · 4 months

Text

GJ and ZZH Updates — December 31-January 6

previous post || all posts || following week

And we're back! Sorry for the break between posts, thank you all for your patience.

This is part of a weekly series collecting updates from and relating to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.

This post is not wholly comprehensive and is intended as an overview, links provided lead to further details. Dates are in accordance with China Standard Time, the organization is chronological. My own biases on some things are reflected here. Anything I include that is not concretely known is indicated as such, and you’re welcome to do your own research and draw your own conclusions as you see fit. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or additions. :)

[Glossary of names and terms] [Masterlist of my posts about the situation with Zhang Zhehan]

12-31 → Gong Jun's studio posted eleven photos of him rehearsing for his performance that evening. Caption: "The lark @ Gong Jun Simon shines, see you tonight"

→ Deeyeo posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun. (1129 kadian)

→ Dragon TV posted a short video with footage from Gong Jun's rehearsal.

→ Chinese whalers who bought the scam's photobook (the one that was being sold on a soft-core porn site, see 10-26) started posting photos from it. The content includes such things as Zhang Sanjian shaving, eating, etc. and feels very voyeuristic, so 100% it's aimed at dreamgirls. Photoshopping quality is on par with the scam's usual stuff.

→ The Instagram posted six photos of "Zhang Zhehan".

→ Gong Jun performed at Dragon TV's New Year's Eve show, performing his song 明天晴空万里. [performance video] [on stage with Justin and Johnny] [backstage interview]

→ Gong Jun's studio posted nine photos of him from a New Years photoshoot. Caption: "The blue sky is thousands of miles away, and the clear waves are vast; whatever your heart desires, you will go wherever you go. @ Gong Jun Simon is gilded with colour and feels the beauty of the past."

They later also posted a video from the same shoot. Caption: "The sound of pressing the shutter, and the smiling expression was frozen. Waiting for the update of the four seasons, enjoy the clear sky with @ Gong Jun Simon."

01-01 → Gong Jun's studio posted four photos of him holding balloons spelling out "2024". "Starting a new journey in 2024, @ Gong Jun Simon wishes everyone a happy New Year and a fun and promising new year!"

→ Gong Jun posted a douyin of him doing a little dance with Justin and Johnny Huang (two of his costars from Go Fighting). Caption: "Dance with your brothers! Happy New Year 🎉" BGM is Stay by The Kid LAROI feat. Justin Bieber.

→ The Instagram posted ten photos of "Zhang Zhehan" at a New Years fanmeet in Thailand. During this fanmeet, Zhang Sanjian reportedly said that he has been less active(???) recently because his mother has been in and out of hospital due to a viral infection, and has gone blind in one eye. The post he later made about this was worded in a very impersonal way. A reminder that the real Zhang Zhehan was very private about family matters like this, including never mentioning his father's death in 2016 until his post-813 interview with Li Xuezheng.

→ 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Gong Jun posted two photos of himself with a puppy. Caption: "Wishing everyone a prosperwoof 2024!" This was reposted by his studio with the added caption, "@ Gong Jun Simon and everyone will be prosperous in the new year!" He also posted these and two more photos to his Xiao Hong Shu, caption "Woof woof woof! Happy New Year!", and his Instagram, caption "2024 woof woof woof!"

→ Gong Jun's studio posted a year in review video for 2023. Caption: "Annual report, please check it out! In 2023, cultivate 'Ye' morally, be meticulous in every 'Si', and interpret various forms and postures with ingenuity. In 2024, actor @ Gong Jun Simon is 'modest' and a 'beginning' of a brilliant generation, running towards the ideal 'rank' with enthusiasm."

→ The Instagram posted four photos of "Zhang Zhehan" holding an apple.

→ For New Year's Day, Gong Jun changed his Weibo auto-reply to "Happy New Year, I send you a song of wealth, Do re mi fa fa fa fa fa!" The following day, he changed it back to the "Now that you're here, won't you stay?" auto-reply that he's had it set to since the Word of Honor concert. [screenshot]

01-02 → One of Gong Jun's lawsuits against an anti was announced to have been settled in Gong Jun's favour. It's worth noting that it was closed in September but could not be made public until now.

→ 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun. (1129 kadian)

→ Gong Jun's studio posted a video of Gong Jun with the puppy. Caption: "@ Gong Jun Simon: Is it warm? 🐶: Warm, but want to escape."

→ Gong Jun posted a commercial he did for 361°. [subbed video] Caption: "Put down your endless work and trivial matters in life, go out, and you will discover the big world. In the new year, let’s go wild with me and @ 361degrees."

→ The Instagram posted five photos of "Zhang Zhehan" and one of a bedazzled music note.

01-03 → Gong Jun posted a commercial he did for L'Oreal. [subbed video] Caption: "This time, [L'Oreal] and my care are not just about the scales of the hair, making the hair smooth and shiny; they are also extended to nature to jointly protect the strange and rare scales and life of pangolins. Let's 'protect your skin and shine' with @ L'Oreal Hair Care."

→ The Instagram posted five photos of "Zhang Zhehan" and one of clouds.

01-04 → Nothing of note.

01-05 → 361° posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

01-06 → Gong Jun's studio posted a behind the scenes video of a photoshoot he did with Tissot. Caption: "Behind-the-scenes footage drop TIME! @ Gong Jun Simon rode on his beloved motorcycle"

→ LaLaTV re-aired the first five episodes of Castle in the Time.* They previously aired these on 12-27, but people aware of the Zhang Sanjian situation have been avoiding bringing attention to it. *Zhang Zhehan's old drama that is suddenly and suspiciously being aired in Japan, see [here] for info.

Additional Reading: → N/A

previous post || all posts || following week

#Zhang Zhehan #Gong Jun #Word of Honor #woh cast #lld timeline

22 notes · View notes

lets-ignore-that · 3 months

Text

Looks like Tumblr live died! Death to short form video content!

#lets ignore rambles

9 notes · View notes

bloop-im-a-frog-now · 1 year

Text

If The Gods Were Kind — cave pt.1

Hello! Welcome to the first part of this massive fic I have been writing for the past 3 months. This was part of the @lifefanworkexch and I had a ton of fun writing this! The prompt (given by the lovely Jupiter, my secret soulmate) was Desert duo Hurt/Comfort in Third Life, following canon closely. This first batch focuses on me playing with Minecraft world-building and adding some headcanons about the life series, since I’m following canon. I just can’t help myself, following the content creators’ videos.

Enjoy!

Master Post

— —

Content warnings: graphic description of animal death and dissecting process, gore, graphic description of violence, description of tending injury done badly and blood.

If the stars were aligned, maybe he wouldn’t be in this mess. If the universe had any pity for him (which he was certain it did for making him live this long), he would be sitting, looking at the sunset—looking at him. If the gods above wanted kindness, he shouldn’t remember what happened, shouldn’t remember a yearning that will never be fulfilled. A hole in his chest, forever empty, and an underlined anger, bubbling closer to the surface every day. Then, and only then, did the gods deserve his kindness.

He woke up in a clearing, full of colorful flowers. Some red, some yellow, but most were purple. He couldn’t name them all, even if he tried. He couldn’t remember how he got in this clearing. He couldn’t remember why he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and where all these scars in many shapes and forms came from. Actually, his mind was drawing on a blank when he tried to dig deep in his memories. The only certain thing he knew was his name.

Well, not really, but he did find a sort of communicator with a name engraved in the back.

GoodTimesWithScar.

He figured his name was Scar, if the engraved name indicated anything. The communicator itself was quite bland, a metallic shine to it. There was a keyboard, but he didn’t look at it for very long. The letters seemed to change shape every time he looked at it, and the back of his eyes ached. While the device wasn’t a box, it wasn’t thin either. He wondered how it fitted perfectly in his pockets.

The screen was black, making him search for a power button. How did he know he needed to find a power button was beyond him, but he needed to find one. He looked back at the keyboard and saw a button with a circle and a line cutting across half way. He pressed it. The screen became white, then gray.

There were two things written on the screen. “Punch a tree” and “You have no contacts”. First off, it took him an embarrassing amount of time to read those two things (not to mention the slight ache behind his eyes spreading to his temples), and second, he did not understand them. Punching a tree? Was that even possible? Scar looked around him, searching for trees, and saw some up on a hill. Might as well try.

As he climbed the hill, he was often losing his balance, almost falling every time. He kept looking at his hips, thinking maybe he was wearing something heavy, as his hips felt like they weren’t able to move to their complete capability, held back, but he was only wearing a belt with brown cargo pants. He had to take breaks, mostly to not fall over. When he arrived at the top, a wave of fatigue submerged him, and a sharp but short ache pierced his lower back. Scar stretched his back, hoping it would dim down, and was only left half satisfied. He slightly frowned, wondering what was up with his body.

He brought his focus back to the tree in front of him. He rolled his shoulders, glad he didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary (though, how would he know what was normal and what was not), and started punching the brown tree’s bark. He felt incredibly stupid when punching the trunk, but after a couple of punches, a part of it disappeared.

Scar yelped when the wood vanished. Where did it go? He ignored how heavy his shoulders felt, and walked frantically around the tree to find the wood he’d been punching.

“C’mon, c’mon, where are you?” he singsonged, desperately looking, even tearing grass. Maybe it shrunk. Maybe it was still stuck on the tree.

Scar got up from his crouched position with great difficulty. He had to sit down on his butt, and try again to hoist himself up with the help of the trunk. He looked inside the hole he punched and couldn’t see any wood hanging around. He groaned.

He took his communicator out of his pocket. He really didn’t want to touch the thing often, but he had no choice. He opened it and saw that the first message on his communicator changed. Scar took a deep breath and closed his eyes, bracing himself to read. This first message read: “Punch a tree: Achieved”. Scar’s eyebrows shot up. Did he get the wood? Where would he find the wood he supposedly got?

His communicator buzzed, drawing his attention back to the text. While the letters were still jumbled, he recognized certain shapes of certain letters and was able to get “Taking Inventory”. Inventory? As in, having a secret pocket dimension on his person? How would he find that? He patted himself, hoping it would activate something, but he got nothing except a dull ache in his calves, heavy and trembling.

He looked around. He couldn’t rest, he needed to understand what was going on. Or, at least, have a basic understanding of how this world worked, not that he had any previous knowledge of its rules.

Then, something clicked. He instinctively searched in his inventory for the piece of wood he just punched. Scar sighed, relieved he wasn’t as hopeless as he thought he’d be. He put the wood in his hand, feeling the rough structure of the bark. He wondered if he could do anything with this. Why did his communicator feel it was necessary to indicate to him he needed to do that? He looked at the tree with a hole. What other treasures did this tree hide?

He continued his punching, even punching the leafs to find some sticks, saplings and rarely, some apples. Scar looked back to the clearing. He went deeper into the forest than he originally thought. He should probably head back, who knows what this world would be beyond it. His eyes squinted when he saw a flash of blue, deeper than the color of the sky.

He went back to the clearing, wanting to know what this flash of blue was. He tried to step down, but immediately lost his balance. He grunted, a dull ache on his butt blossomed. He had to figure out how to go down the valley, into the clearing without losing some of his gait and feeling like his legs were gonna give out. Scar sat on the hill and started slowly sledding down. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was better than falling and rolling without any control.

When his butt reached a flat surface, he used the hill to hoist himself on his feet. He limped his way to the flash of blue, who has grown more prominent and frequent. His eyes fell on a little pond close to it, but he turned his attention back in front of him. It was a transparent wall, oscillations of blue and white moved in tandem. He could see the other side of the wall, a whole landscape before him. He was stuck inside a world. Whatever put him here didn’t want him to go very far.

He huffed and decided to check his inventory out of curiosity and boredom. In it, he saw crafting recipes. This might be useful, he could craft something to protect himself or even something to sleep on. His legs were wobbly underneath him, and he noticed a cliffside, filled with coal and different types of stone. He could maybe settle close to it before he went to explore the world. He circled the pond and sat close to the cliff, his back to the rock. He shimmed into a more comfortable sitting position and looked at the crafting recipes.

As Scar tried to craft something to protect himself, his communicator buzzed in his pocket. He stopped his crafting—which was growing less fruitful than he hoped it’d be—and looked at the screen. A key word he could decipher was “crafting table”, and the feeling of foolishness came crawling back, realizing what he needed to do. He went back to his crafting, this time making planks with the wood he collected. It was easier to manipulate planks than the trunk of a tree. With the planks, he used some of it to make the crafting table.

Scar placed it right beside him and swiveled to face the cliff. One of the recipes he looked at said he needed charcoal for torches. He figured torches were important, especially to see in the dark. He stood up, using the grip of the rock to help him, and feeling a soreness in his shoulders. After rolling them back, he made the necessary tools to survive, with the help of the crafting table and crafting recipes: a sword, an ax, and a pickaxe. He mined the coal and some stone. Could he use the stone to make better tools?

He heard an oink behind him. He turned around swiftly, and inhaled sharply. It was only a family of pigs. He sighed of relief and glanced at his stone ax, then back at the pigs. He slowly approached them, ready to swing. His calves spasmed and made him wince, forcing him to stop and wait for it to pass before swinging his ax to the animals.

“Aaaaand, gotcha,” he said as his ax cut one of the pigs’ heads off. The other two squealed and ran away from him. “Oh no, you won’t you little—” he chased them and raised his ax to chop one of their heads, “—rapscallion.”

One of them managed to escape while the other’s head was rolling on the grass, almost landing in the little pond. As he bent down to grab the head, Scar saw a mop of brown hair reflected in the water. He fell to his knees when he couldn’t stay in his crouched position, and decided to look at his reflection as he waited for the ache and the soreness that took over his lower body to pass.

He carded his short brown hair with his hand, fluorescent green eyes darting around his face. His hand went down to brush the jagged scar that ran from his temple to his jaw and traced the one on his nose to his cheekbone, surprised he didn’t feel any pinching sensation while he was talking to himself. His skin was sun-kissed, his arms were quite muscular, he had broad shoulders and quite a large form. Not to mention the beginnings of well-toned abs. He wondered what he did in his other life to end up in a shape like this.

When he could get up, Scar took the bodies of the two beheaded pigs to the cliffside, and placed them on the ground close to the crafting table. He sat down and poked at the dead animals.

How could he make them edible? He snacked on the apples he found, feeling energized every time he ate one, even making his lower body feel weightless. He poked the skin of one of the dead pigs, wondering how he could make them edible while munching his apple. He wanted the meat of the pigs, so he had to find a way to have access to said meat.

He took his stone sword and cut the body of the pigs in half. His knees cracked when he crouched and almost fell, as if his hips could not hold him in this position. But nausea caught in his throat as coagulated blood ended up everywhere before he could focus on the instability of his hips.

His ankles were shaking, it was getting harder to keep his position, so he placed his knees on the ground, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath before continuing this awful process. He needed food, the apples weren’t going to last him long, and he’d need to find a shelter before the night came.

Scar took out the organs he could see. They were covered in blood, squishy in his hands. He swallowed the bile that threatened to come up. The pigs were quite big, he ate an apple in order to use the little energy he had to skin them and make them edible.

He turned the dead animals around while getting rid of the skin that protected them, placed the organs to the side, and got as much meat as he could from the bones.

He sat on his butt with a big sigh, taking a breather from the horrid smell and the vicious sight. It’s only when the sun had passed its zenith that he put the meat on the stone. His hands were bloody and his pants dirtied.

He groaned and tried to get up. Nothing moved except his arms, and even then, it was hard to get them to grasp the rocks on the cliff to help him stand up. The last apple he ate was probably a couple of hours ago, and no way he was gonna eat raw meat.

He tried a second time, his legs buckled underneath him, landing on his butt harshly. He needed to cook the chops he made. He looked at the recipes, chanting “c’mon” under his breath to find something that would help him cook the meat. His eyes landed on the word “Furnace”.

“A-ha! Furnace!” He grinned at his victory.

The description was exactly what he was looking for. He rolled his shoulders back to soothe the soreness and tenderness he felt, closed his eyes to dim the ache behind them, and brought his focus back on the recipe, mumbling the instructions to himself. He needed the stone he mined earlier and his crafting table.

Scar glanced at the crafting table beside him. It would be hard for him to use it while sitting down, but getting up wasn’t an option when he knew his legs would buckle underneath him and wouldn’t be able to hold his body weight. He tried getting on his knees to at least see what he was doing.

He used the cliff and the crafting bench to help him, and with great difficulty, managed to be on his knees. He crafted the furnace and placed it beside the crafting table, using its support to scooch around. He put the coal he mined earlier and the pork chops in the furnace, waiting for them to cook.

Scar observed his surroundings, finding something to occupy his hands. Maybe getting more stone wouldn’t hurt anyone. He took his stone pickaxe in one hand and tried to raise it above his head to break the stone. Before he could even do that, the pickaxe became heavy in his grip, making it almost impossible to raise it above his head. Like his arm couldn’t go further than a certain angle. He rolled his shoulders, massaged them a bit and tried again.

Fool him once, shame on him. Fool him twice, shame on him again, apparently, because his arms still couldn’t reach above his head in order to swing at full force against the stone.

He groaned, giving up, and crafted more tools with the stone he managed to mine. He sat down close to the warmth of the furnace. He looked at the sky and couldn’t see the sun anymore. He saw hues of orange and a cool blue submerging most of the sky. Night was coming soon and he didn’t even have a shelter. But first, he needed something to stabilize himself, to help him move around with minimum energy.

Scar searched in his inventory for anything and found a couple of sticks from the branches of the tree he punched. He took them in his hand, inspecting them. He used them to stand up and measured every one of them to see which one would be best for his height. The one he chose was just below his waist, but it’d do for now.

He inspected the stick, unconsciously sitting on the crafting table. He couldn’t wrap his hand around the stick, it was too short for that, he would need something on top of it to hold it properly. How could he attach two different pieces together? He checked his inventory and found some residual leafs, some long enough to wrap around.

He winced. It wouldn’t stay for long, but it was all he had, so until he could find a better way to attach them together, this would have to do. He placed a small stick on top of the longest stick he had, wrapping leafs around it to temporarily secure it. He used the wall and the stick to stand up, legs trembling slightly at the weight on them. He grunted, stabbed the stick to the ground, and tested his balance. Scar had to bend in order to use his walking stick correctly, but not to the extreme that it would bother his movements.

He wondered how he managed to hurt himself so badly. He dug and dug in his memories, but just couldn’t grasp the reason. Did he get stung by an insect that affected muscles' articulation? He hadn’t seen any insects so far, it wasn’t a likely possibility. Clearly, he had a life before appearing in this clearing. A life that still affected him and left him clueless about what was going on with his body.

A burning smell reached his nostrils, and he sniffed the air to identify it. It smelled strong and sweet, like something tender and juicy was being cooked.

“Oh my gosh,” he realized out loud, “the pork!”

He landed on his knees in front of the furnace (much to the detriment of his calves), and searched inside for the pork chops. He let out a “a-ha!” when he found them and took them out with his bare hands.

Big mistake.

“Ow!” he yelled, dropping the burning meat on the ground. He put his fingers in his mouth, salivating around them to cool down the burn.

Scar cursed at himself for not thinking clearly and took one of the last sticks in his inventory to bring the pork chops closer to him. He took the coal out of the furnace, stepping on it to minimize a fire risk. It was a beautiful clearing, it would be sad for all of it to burn down. He waited for his food to cool before eating it with his non-burnt hand, landing on his butt after finding it difficult to sit on his knees for too long.

A wave of energy engulfed him, relaxing the tension around his lower neck and relieving some ache in his hips and shoulders. He could start working on his shelter if he felt better. He put the other three pork chops he managed to make edible in his inventory and took his walking stick.

Much to his dismay, with his frantic movements, the two pieces that were barely holding together separated. He groaned, and put them back where they were, wrapping the long and lean leaf around them, tying a knot. He stood up, still using the furnace and the stick to help him.

When he found his balance (even when the small stick was threatening to fall off at any moment), the sky became darker. Night was coming, and he forgot to craft torches and still didn’t have a shelter. He mentally slapped himself and quickly made some as the world submerged in twilight.

Scar placed one torch when he heard a groan. He looked behind him and couldn’t believe his eyes. Was that a zombie? It was slowly approaching him. He froze, not knowing what to do. Then, something sharp pierced his shoulder. He grunted, shoulder pushed back, and used the torch to see who shot an arrow at him.

His eyes widened.

A skeleton was on top of the hill, readying its bow once again. The zombie was getting closer, and he needed to get out of here. He hastily grabbed his crafting bench and his furnace, put them in his inventory, and began mining a hole in the cliff. It’d have to do as a shelter for now.

Something grabbed him and ate a piece of his flesh, right on his injured shoulder. He screamed and elbowed the thing behind him with as much force as he could muster. The zombie backed away with a sharp groan. Scar took out his stone sword and plunged it in the monster’s stomach. Another arrow hit his bitten shoulder. Again.

His legs were shaking, his hands trembled, and he forgot how to breathe. He took out his sword from the monster, not looking at it to see if it was dead, and quickly dug himself in a hole. He closed it when he had enough space for his body, dodging the arrows the skeleton shot mercilessly at him. He tried to bring his breathing back to normal, but it took him much more time than he would’ve liked.

After composing himself, Scar placed a torch, mined a larger hole (with great difficulty), and looked at his shoulder. Blood trailed down his chest, and he regretted not getting water from the pond. He didn’t have anything to clean the wound. He looked down, questioning why he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and saw his ripped pants. It was the best thing he had for the job.

Scar sat down, his body stiffen with tension, feeling every bit of pain the injury inflicted on him as he tried to cut the bottom of his pants. With laborious efforts (it was a feat and a half to bring his legs up towards him), he managed to get a piece and cleaned the blood off of himself. The piece of clothing was immediately soaked the closer it got to the wound. He also needed to get the arrows out of his wounded shoulder.

It was a painful process. Cutting the bottom of his pants, trying his best to clean the wound, pulling the arrow out, screaming, using the cloth to hold the blood in. Repeat.

In the end, his body slumped against the harsh stone wall, exhausted, adrenaline drained. He let out a big exhale and ate a pork chop. His mind wandered. If there were zombies, that meant there was civilization somewhere. That meant having supplies to heal his wound. That meant getting better materials for his walking stick.

His eyes landed on an iron ore. Could he collect the iron and forge armor? He really needed protection after that encounter, and tools weren’t gonna protect him from flying arrows and zombie bites. He gasped.

“Will I turn into a zombie?” he asked out loud. How did he know you could turn into a zombie if they bit you was beyond him, but he knew it. Scar figured if he was gonna turn into a zombie, he would’ve felt the effects by now. Fortunately, he didn’t turn into a brain-eating monster after minutes of holding his breath.

He ate another pork chop and felt his energy regenerated. He could mine, find out what sort of ore there was deep down, below him. He stood up, using his stick and the stone to help him up. His legs trembled, and he felt exhausted, but he needed to get out of this place, needed to find a village.

<- Prev _ Master Post _ Next ->

#tw: animal death #tw: badly mended injury #tw: internalized ableism #tw: blood #tw: gore #tw: violence #third life #3rd life smp #goodtimeswithscar #gtws #scar #here we go #every batch will come every 4 days or every week #depending on how close i am to finish #:D #trafficblr #bloop's attention seeking strategy

37 notes · View notes

littlemut · 1 year

Text

reject modernity (short form video content) embrace tradition (static memes and silly pictures)

#gifs are welcome #honestly im so sick of the tiktoktification of everything #death to tiktok #death to short form video content

23 notes · View notes

spacevixenmusic · 11 months

Text

Unfairly Maligned Games, Vol. 1

Games I loved that got low scores, review bombed, or have some other weird negative stigma attached to them that I think is unfairly earned.

NOTE: I don't believe in giving games a number score or a letter grade. Maybe I'm just bad at criticism or very easy to please, whatever.

Battleborn [2016]

One of my personal favorite games of all time, Battleborn was advertised as a hero-based PVP shooter with MOBA mechanics that unfortunately came out right alongside one of the biggest games of the PVP shooter genre ever released (Overwatch). Thanks to this poor timing, Battleborn - along with several other similar but different games - was doomed to failure, choked to death by Blizzard's infinite marketing resources and predatory Free Play Weekends that just mysteriously happened to occur on the same weekends as its "competitors" major updates, DLC releases, promo events, etc. Battleborn is no longer available to play ANYWHERE as of January 2021; so few people played it after it was review bombed as "the game your mom bought you when you asked for Ovewatch for xmas" (yes Blizz fans used that fucking Simpsons meme TO DEATH, it's their one joke they have about Battleborn) that the game's servers had to be shuttered so the money could be funneled into Gearbox's much bigger cash cow release at the time, Borderlands 3.

Sour grapes aside, Battleborn was in many ways the game that many people actually wish Overwatch was now. In addition to the PVP game, Battleborn had a co-op campaign mode - complete with a story, cutscenes, and unique character dialogue depending on who you brought to each mission - which could be played for character XP (ability tree unlocks), random gear loot (for use in either campaign mode or PVP), and character cosmetics. The 30 playable characters were wildly varied in terms of design and gameplay, and yes I have to point it out every time, Battleborn had both "cute tiny animal in a mech suit" and playable black women BEFORE Overwatch did. The game also featured a very impressive and highly slept-on visual aesthetic that felt like every Saturday Morning Cartoon I ever grew up with from the 80s/90s, featuring a wild blend of 3D and 2D animation that all the other hero PVP games WISH they could have matched.

And damn, dude. If you like Lore in your video games, there was a TON of material written for this one. And I'm not just talking about supplemental media like a comic or a wiki or an interview about cut content or whatever. I mean there was a metric FUCK TON of additional world-building material right there in the game. Each character came with a set of challenges you could complete which would give you the usual XP and money, but also unlocked a fun little tidbit of Lore about the universe. These came in the form of short stories, recorded conversations, email logs, forum posts, shipping manifests, and even fully voiced segments explaining details about each character, who they were, why they were fighting this war, and some fun little ways of explaining how their weapons or abilities worked. For example, Reyna holds her laser pistol on its side, gangster-style, because she wanted to use a very specific gun model, had its internal parts stripped out so she could use an ammo clip of a much stronger caliber than that model was supposed to be capable of, but in order for the chamber to reload correctly, the gun had to sit a bit cockeyed. And that fun little nugget is just sitting there, right in the game, for you to discover! It's fucking cool as hell!

Now I know you're itching to make a joke about there only being like 15 people who even played the game. Yes, I've seen the Active Player Steam charts meme. It's true, Battleborn had a very small, but also very dedicated, community. Despite that, there were so few people playing that we all ended up making friends with each other pretty quickly. It was one of the friendliest PVP communities I'd ever been a part of. We knew there weren't many people online, so we created an environment that felt comfortable for players new and veteran alike. Many of us are still friends today, outside of the game. Because there were so few people online, we also got to play regularly with Gearbox devs and game writers, and even one of the voice actors responsible for at least three of the game's characters (plus a few NPCs!). We organized and hosted our own events, got official backing from the devs for Double XP weekends, held art jams and hashtag celebrations. Hell, I even used my love of this game to jumpstart my serious foray into music by making an entire album of songs for its characters (complete with a bunch of commissioned fan art from the community)!

(art by Leaddybum)

So yeah. Rest in peace, Battleborn. You were ahead of your time and the hate and harassment you got from The Gamers was completely undeserved. I will always keep hope alive that you'll come back to us some day. Maybe as a sequel, maybe in a new format. There was so much more left to explore in that universe.

May our battle never end.

#unfairly maligned games #battleborn #ask me about this game motherfucker #TALK TO ME ABOUT THIS GAME #I dare you to come at me cause I will preach my love of this game forever and a day #also it's 2023 and OVERWATCH STILL SUCKS SHIT #FUCK YOU BLIZZARD

36 notes · View notes

yjano · 1 year

Text

Who I am now?

Part 18.

Pairing: Jake x Mc.

Genre: Angst, comedy, dark romance.

Warnings: Strong language, angst scenes. 18+ content can be found.

Words: 9.2k

Author's note: This story contains mature topics and is not fully related to the duskwood game. A different parallel with different personalities. Thank you everyone for following and liking this! lly.♡

•

Jake focus.

The cold air bit harshly at my knuckles and the tip of my nose, coloring my features with a soft hue of red. The crude winter weather refused to relent as it further weakened my once-strong frame. My body now turned stiff by the rather mean winds that jeer at my pathetic form.

Sitting there on the bench stiffly and alone, holding tightly onto a small bouquet of too-bright tulips that seemed odd when compared to the bleak atmosphere graveyards tend to carry, odd or not, they were my mom's favorite flowers and it was a yearly tradition for me to bring tulips for my mom's death anniversary.

Don't take me wrong. I love my nonbiological mom but I could never forget my real mom.

I twirled the said flowers in my hand now, my eyes studying the soft pinks and delicate whites when my mind flit back to the remnants of my eleven-year-old fragmented memory.

-back to his childhood-

"Kaden, Jake, make sure you fall in love with someone like your mom." The twins' stepdad murmured to himself, dazedly staring at their mother as she slipped her foot into beat-up converses, tying the laces with a smile on her face.

She was dressed in faded white dungarees and a black tee. She stood up in one hand holding a small potted tomato plant. Its green unripe bulbs swayed back and forth as she childishly hopped off the last step of the staircase.

She was a florist, an avid one at that, and a little bit of a gardener. But mainly she attended to flowers she tended to them from her backyard to her many potted plants dotted around the house to the small florist situated in the center of the town that she owned proudly. She did love plants. Especially pink tulips, tulips were often found sweetly decorating the patio and the window sills of their family home.

The twins have practically been living in a jungle since their birth. Constantly having to teeter-totter in and out of their mother's overgrown plants growing inside their home since they were toddlers, "helping" out in the garden.

Now at age eleven years old, the twins refused to partake in acting florists and instead kept to their increasing collection of action figures and video games. They did, however, help out on Saturday by watering the plants. Well, Jake did because Kaden was too busy crawling through their mom's few cabbages, dirtying the knees of his jeans as he determinedly eyed the green vegetables to find a pet snail he could lovingly name as "Snail".

"And kids, make sure you become someone as loving and sweet as your father." The twins mother now replied, pushing her too-long bangs out of her eyes and grinning at the two of boys who sat at the dining table, coloring in their penciled drawings of dinosaurs copied from their stepfather's book about the aforementioned creatures.

"But dad, I'm going to fall in love with Selena and she looks nothing like mom."

Kaden stated dejectedly as he colored his stegosaurus purple with those chubby wax crayons they've never got around to growing out of. "She got long hair, not short hair."

Their father snapped out of his lovestruck daze then and looked over his shoulder at Kaden with his bright eyes narrowing at the boy.

"Young man, you are too young to be falling in love just yet."

Their father, Alex, worked at a local high school as a science teacher, and both of the twins were fairly educated about science as their father, regularly, read excerpts of stories he assigned to his high school students. The twins never really understood their father's bedtime jargon but twins adored hearing him recite stories in perfect words.

But something lethal stewed behind his softened gazes and quiet laughter, something very ugly remained dormant inside him, only surfacing when a certain something triggered it.

And that certain something was godamn exam season. When exam season came rolling by, most people who previously flocked around him, adoringly kept their distance knowingly and allowed the man to have peace and space as marking a good thousand exam papers often caused the Beast as twins had dubbed it to emerge.

The Beast was their father's personality during exam season, he resembled a beast down to a capital tee. His mouth was constantly twisted into a grimace and his thick brows were often tugged together in serious contemplation as he maniacally graded several lit papers with his red biro furiously scrawling away on the surface of his student's papers.

"Honey, let the boys live." Their mom grinned, delightedly settling her potted tomato plant on the window sill near her before padding over to her husband and pressing a kiss on his cheek to console him for not taking his side in the debacle of whether their kids were too young to love. Their father was quick to forgive as he smiled, returning the affectionate action by leaning his head forwards and bopping his nose gently against his wife's. Twins having mistaken the bopping of noses to be a kiss, squealed at the sight, playfully yelling.

"Ewwww!"

They received loud curses from their startled grandmother who stood in their kitchen, baking something sweet for the twins to consume after today's lunch.

Their mother flit her eyes towards Jake who giggled quietly at the grandmother's spew of threats before returning to coloring my drawing.

"Jake honey, what about you? Do you have someone you want to love?" She asked slyly, smiling at her youngest twin who promptly ducked his head, distractedly coloring in his messily drawn pterodactyl as he mumbled.

"Maybe."

"Oh? And who's the lucky person?"

"I think, I think I love red eye."

Kaden snorted derisively at this.

"Brother! You can't fall in love with your car model!" He claimed, referring to Jake's jeep car toy model. Their parents stifled their grins at this, not wanting to hurt their sensitive son's feelings.

"S-shut up otherwise I'm going to tell Selena you like her." Jake stuttered, glaring at his twin brother.

"Bro, no! You can't!"

"Jake, let your brother tell Selena himself. She's his crush and it's his choice to choose whether he wants to ask her out or not. And Kaden, your brother can love whoever or whatever he wants, even his car toys. It's okay to do so." Their mother reprimanded with a small smile as she parted from her husband's side to walk over and plant lipsticked kisses against an embarrassed Jake and a protesting Kaden's foreheads.

"Isabelle dear get going already! I'll take care of the kids!" The twins' grandmother yelled over the deafening clamor of pots and pans clattering together in the kitchen. Their mother glanced towards the kitchen with a grin on her face.

Their parents were going to a different city for their annual visit to see the lush flower gardens where they first met each other. When the two stood in a field full of brightly colored flowers as a teary-eyed twins mother had yelled at a perplexed Alex for picking the flowers so crudely fifteen years ago.

"Alright, mom!" She called over her shoulder, addressing the kids' grandma before walking over to her patiently waiting husband who now stood by the front door.

"We'll be back soon! Be good boys, I love you!" She claimed enthusiastically, blowing kisses over her shoulder to the twins who simultaneously groaned with embarrassment. "Stay safe! Don't trouble your grandmother! Eat all the foods she makes! Don't make too much of a mess! And-"

"Honey, we're going to a garden show for a couple of hours, we're not leaving them forever." An amused Alex raised his eyebrows at his wife before glancing over to his boys, simply and using his best teacher voice sternly saying.

"No fighting, okay?"

"Okay, dad."

"Bye, dad!"

The car crash happened later that evening.

"Locals, high school science professor, D.Alex, and florist, D.Isabelle, were reported dead this evening at 10pm. The couple was said to be traveling back home to their family from flora gardens when a drunk truck driver hit the car headfirst, immediately causing lethal head injuries that ruthlessly killed the inhabitants of the car.

The driver had then continued to drunkenly drive, brashly forcing the vehicle aside where it promptly crashed into the weakened railings of the city bridge, breaking poor infrastructure away and causing the car to topple backward and fall into the icy river below.

Both the car and the bodies have been retrieved from the water a few hours ago by emergency services called in and informed of the accident by a local in her late twenties who additionally stated the driver's number plate. The offender, the thirty-six-year-old man, has been arrested by local police officers and is now put on trial for later this month when his prison sentence will be determined. We predict he will serve a ten-fourteen year sentence."

-present time-

I sighed heavily, shakily. I blinked away hot tears that threatened to spill at the resurfacing memories that hastily consume my mind. Biting my lower lip to suppress the myriad of emotions I was experiencing, I tightened my grip on the tulips wrapped with pale pink cellophane and stood up, walking the couple steps to the two gravestones inscribed with the names of my parents.

Swallowing the constricting lump in my throat, I crouched down by the off-white slabs of stone and settled the tulips by the head of my mom's grave, deeming them okay. I exhaled heavily and forced myself to rise to my feet and rake a hand through my dark hair in an attempt to console myself.

I pushed my hair off my forehead and gazed down at my stepfather's grave with lidded eyes and the overbearing feeling in my heart almost suffocating me.

Flowers weren't present on my father's grave, meaning that Nymos hadn't come by yet.

After our parents death, me and Nymos had unknowingly appointed ourselves the roles to procure flowers to offer to our mom and dad. I was self-appointed to buy my mom her favorite tulips and similarly, Nymos was self-appointed to purchase our father bunches of baby's breath wrapped in the same brown wrapping paper our mom used to package them with.

I desperately hoped today wasn't the day when Kaden will forget to buy our dad his flowers. Frowning at the thought of Nymos perhaps forgetting about today's event. I pushed myself off my haunces and stood up, distractedly brushing myself off before turning away. Picking my way through the off-white snow, careful not to step in puddles and dampen my boots when I walked back to the bench.

Straightening my leather jacket, I seated myself down on the bench and folded my arms over my chest in an attempt to gain warmth.

"Hey."

I jerked my head to the left to see Kaden standing by the bench, similarly dressed in a casual suit but more concerned about the weather, wearing a warm winter's coat that sit perfectly on his shoulders. My twin brother smiled at me, waving the bunch of little, white flowers in my direction in a warm greeting.

I looked away, retraining my gaze on my parents.

"Piss off."

"Good to see you too, brother," Kaden replied cheerily, walking past me and stopping by the two graves placed side to side with each other.

Standing there with his eyes closed, Kaden looked the epitome of peaceful, and comfortable. As if he had practiced in looking so serene standing in the middle of a graveyard on a wintry morning.

I blinked at him. Was this the kid who bawled like a baby as soon as he stepped foot inside the godamn graveyard eight years ago, crying hard about something regarding zombies and brains spilling out of heads?

Kaden finally opened his eyes and crouched by his father's grave, placing his purchased flowers nearby. I looked away when Kaden stood up and turned around, childishly refusing to meet my brother's eyes.

"Came here a little earlier than usual to see you and-" Kaden hummed, walking towards me with something in his hand. "Give you this little bad boy." Grinning, Kaden outstretched his arm, offering the item in his hand to me when he was standing a couple of steps in front of me.

"It's a compiled file of songs that helped me through my break up with Lex last year. I guarantee you that by listening to this song, You'll instantly feel better." Kaden explained, sitting down beside me and taking my hand, pressing the item into my pliant palm.

"It's got some Coldplay in it because I know you like his song, oh and some of the neighborhood is in there somewhere."

I glanced at the item laying flat on my palm and snorted derisively at the shared words scrawled onto the protective plastic casing of a cd.

"Kaden top fifty songs to listen to, to get out of a break-up period." I read in a bored, condescending tone before glancing upwards to look at Kaden with my eyes narrowing.

"Why the fuck would you need to get over the breakup? You're the one who broke up everything and everyone, you fucker." I spit out with my hand tightening in my hold on the cd. Kaden warily studied my eyes for a few seconds before mumbling out.

"Just because I was the one who ruined everything doesn't mean that I didn't feel an ounce of heartbreak at all Jake. I still miss you and Lex of course. I-"

I cut him off by chuckling bitterly, looking away. I was softer when Mc was around but when she's not around I can show my anger towards Nymos at its fullest.

"Maybe if you hadn't fucked around with all of us, I would've missed you too, but you did fuck up so what do you expect me to say? I miss you too. No, all I have to say now is fuck you, you fucking fucker. You brought this upon yourself." I grit out before abruptly standing up and starting to walk away from my brother with shoulders tensed and hands trembling.

"Brother, wait!"

I didn't realize I took Kaden's cd until arriving home and noticing the item sitting dejectedly on the passenger seat of my jep where I had angrily thrown it without thinking.

After Mc's sudden departure and my mother and father's death anniversary, my life continued as a routined sequence, bearing little to no fruits of happiness or success. Only heartbreak seemed prominent in my life.

In the morning, I'll wake up, lie on my side and stare at the other side of my bed, painfully contemplating what it'd be like to have Mc by my side, arms wrapped around her lithe frame and burrowing my face into the junction where Mc's shoulder meets with her neck, breathing in her comforting scent of cool vanilla mint? Or was it just warm vanilla? No? Maybe?

When the thought of Mc started to distress me, I tore myself away from my crumpled sheets, leaving my unmade bed looking very dejected and dragging myself to my bathroom, seeking resolve in a warm shower that'll hopefully comfort me.

After the shower which brought little ease to my aching muscles. I fell into yet another lapse, standing there in the bathroom, reminiscing memories of a grinning Mc singing to me through a mouthful of froth and using her toothbrush as a substitute for a microphone. I reminisced finding a frenzied Mc wrapped in a cream-colored shower curtain whilst thrashing around in our hotel's bathtub, crying out in bewilderment as her hands flail around manically in an attempt to pull the slightly damp material off her face. I reminisced-

Once again, I drew myself away from the bathroom, wandering lifelessly out of the suddenly suffocating room as yet again, memories of Mc kickstarted my distress.

Most of the morning passed by within a blink of my eyes as I was focused solely on distracting myself through a terse game of overwatch and halfheartedly gnawing at the burnt toast I had made for breakfast. Memories do not surface at this time of day.

I finally parted from my computer, deeming myself incredibly hungry and needing to ingest some food as soon as possible. But as soon as I entered my kitchen, my bare feet pattered against the cold marble tiles, I find out that I had barely any food present for me to eat. I hadn't gone grocery shopping in weeks.

Closing the refrigerator with a small sigh, I rested my forehead against the thrumming appliance and contemplated whether I should throw on a hoodie, grab my keys and go grocery shopping or order takeout like I was doing straight for this past month.

Deciding that I don't care anymore about breaking out after binging on greasy fast food, I took my mobile phone out of my backpack and dialed my local pizza place with my stomach growling loudly. I ordered a large veggie supreme pizza just to be healthy, garlic bread, one small portion of potato wedges, chocolate chip cookies, and two cans of coca cola.

Once I realized I've spent half the day playing overwatch and snacking on cold pizza, I licked the tomato sauce off my thumb and switched my computer offer, pushing myself off my chair when the screen blanks, leaving only a mere reflection of my face staring at me in the eyes.

Hastily looking away from the haggard, expression that was settled long since on my face, I drew the grease-stained pizza box and plastic bag into my arms and padded out of my bedroom, walking down my set of winding stairs before setting foot on my living room and stumbling towards the kitchen, dumping the items in my arms onto the growing pile of rubbish seated by the already overfilled bin that I should clear out. I tugged my refrigerator open and grabbed a water bottle, uncapping the bottle and lifting it to my lips, sipping at the water as my thoughts finally spurred again.

Fuck, I miss Mc.

I miss her soft eyes. Her wide smile, her long hair...Her soft touch. I miss her so much.

Her loud laugh, her 'good morning' kisses, her habit of mumbling quietly in her sleep, her tendency to look good in shitty shirt and tacky flip flops-

I want her back. I want her back in my arms. Her cute fixation on my tattoos, her soft stomach, her awkwardly small hands that envelope my hands like a baby's.

I'm so pathetic.

So weak, so stupid, so fucking dependent on someone who I knew would leave me.

Of course, she'd leave me. Everyone does soon. I dropped my eyes to the tiled floor, parting from the bottle of water, and capping the container before resting it on the countertop with shaky hands. I feel like I was going to throw up.

I reached for the refrigerator, placing my clammy palm against the cool surface, I breathed in deeply and breathes out equally the same until I fully suppressed the need to hurl my veggie supreme and instead released the floodgates to my tears, allowing myself to bask in my self-hatred.

Like all evenings since I parted with Mc. I climbed into bed early in hopes of getting a good night's rest to start the next day with a renewed attitude. Of course, that doesn't happen, but it doesn't stop me from being hopelessly wishful.

Despite my rather optimistic attempts, I find myself lying on my back in the center of my king-sized bed with my arms and legs splayed out in a starfish form.

Hoping that my bed will seem more occupied if I take up more of the space myself. It doesn't work out too well as seconds later, I retracted into my usual sleeping form. Sleeping on my side and securely enclosing my arms around my body pillow.

Sighing in defeat, I burrowed my face against the cotton material of my body pillow and closed my eyes, purposefully slowing my breathing to trick myself into falling into a deep slumber.

Again, it doesn't work out too well, and I find myself crying. This time crying more out of my frustration at not being able to fall asleep soundly than my heartbreak that seemed hellbent on making my life a misery.

Crying is something I now considered a ritual to do to fall asleep. This past month I've been doing so without fail, only falling asleep after I was emotionally drained. So I cried myef until I've fallen to sleep. A sleep which only bring my four hours of rest before my routined, mundane daily life kickstarted again.

However, the boring cycle I inhabited came to an abrupt halt when someone hammered a heavy fist against my front door one day, indicating that I had a guest. I hadn't had one of those for quite a while now because I'd been refusing to meet my best friends, feeling that if we did hang out I'd only depress the others.

So it's more than just surprising for me to comprehend that I had a visitor at my doorstep after long months of plain solitude and silence.

Still, I managed to pull myself together through my bewilderment, throw on a hoodie to conceal the white tee messily stained with specks of soy sauce, grapple for my round, silver specs, and descend my winding staircase with my eyebrows furrowing together in wonder.

"Hurry up and open the door, bro! It's cold out here!"

My footsteps faltered almost immediately at the voice emanating from the other side of the door. My movement came to a total stop in the middle of my staircase with my eyes narrowed at my front door with suspicion.

"Bro, you dickwho-! I know you're in there! I can't believe you'd let your dear brother freeze to death on your doorstep!"

I scoffed at his words before turning around and walking back up the stairs to ignore my brother's rather dramatic wails.

"I can hear the neighbourhood on the other side of the door you're playing 'afraid' one of the fucking tracks on my mixtape!"

I stilled at Kaden's quick identification of the song playing softly on my surround system speakers. The song which, yes, partakes a four-minute slot in the stupid disk Kaden had offered me, and the song which I had grown excessively fond of over these past couple of weeks. Constantly finding myself replaying the song a good few times before I pretty much have the entire set of lyrics embedded into my memory.

"Oh, come on! This is not fair! I love the neighbourhood and you know this so why are you depriving me off by closing me off?" Kaden whined. "Afraid is one of my favorites, godamn it!"

Silently I rolled my eyes, tucking my hands into the pockets of my ripped jeans, continuing my ascension to the comfortable confine of my bedroom.

"Hold on, wasn't Sam's birthday the passcode to your house?" Kaden thought aloud, causing me to stiffen for the umpteenth time that day and swiftly look over my shoulder, slightly alarmed. I watched, wide-eyed, at the silhouette moving behind the glass paneling of my front door.

I run down the stairs before I know it, unsteadily taking two steps at a time, dashing towards the front door that beeped softly. An indicator that the door was unlocked. As soon as the door edged open almost tentatively, I sprint toward it, slamming my side into the hardwood door and pushing the door closed with my upper body weight, all the while feeling determined to not have to deal with my irritating older brother.

Kaden didn't let the door slam shut in his face though, as he counteracted the sudden propelling force behind the door by pushing back just as hard, grunting a little with the effort.

"I don't wanna see you, you fucking fucker." I gritted out, annoyed at my brother's almost admirable persistence.

"Bro, this is so embarrassing! People are staring!" Kaden hissed lowly before raising his voice, speaking in a friendly, light tone to someone I can't identify.

"Oh, hey there, Mrs. Barnett! Long time no see!"

"Get off my doorstep before I fucking lodge a bullet in your forehead."

"I came down here from my apartment with homemade fried rice and some of my video games, hoping I could be a good brother by distracting you from your break up, but this is what I get? Threats?"

"We haven't broken up. We've just temporarily disbanded!" I grunted out with evident rage.

"Stage one of a break up: Denial." Kaden said in a light, sing-song tone that only managed to infuriate me further.

"Oh, fuck off!" I roared, bare feet digging into my plush carpet, with my shoulder pressing the door hard.

"Come on, I got sushi too!" Kaden whined, ramming his sneaker-clad foot into the small gap in the door and pushing back with so much force, the bottom of the door caught onto my little toe, making me yelp out in alarm and hurriedly retract my foot away before it was squished completely by the door.

"Fuck." I cursed under my breath when I noticed a grinning Kaden standing before me, fried rice boxes balanced in one hand whilst the other languidly pushing his hair off his forehead.

"I'm loving what you've done with the place." He hummed with a pinch of blatant sarcasm, waving a lazy hand at the incredulously messy state of my penthouse home.

"Just what the fuck do you want from me, you persistent fuckass?"

"Your time, that's all I ask," Kaden beamed at me. "And your computer, and some forks." He said cheerfully, walking past me and heading into the front room.

With balled fists and gritted teeth, I stormed into the front room to see Kaden settling himself on my white leather settee, placing the fried rice boxes on the coffee table, and tapping his foot to the beat of the song playing on my sound system.

"Kaden, seriously I am gonna-"

"One game," Kaden glanced upwards with his eyes bright. "That's all I ask."

I suddenly felt so exhausted my body was so incredibly tired and weary from ingesting copious amounts of high-in-sugar energy drinks this morning after waking up a groggy mess.

Yet I was glaring at Kaden through lidded eyes. I just wanted, desperately wanted him to leave already perhaps leave the sushi here though so I can conform to my body's wishes and crash onto my warm, warm bed.

But I knew Kaden. I've experienced beforehand his high levels of pure adamancy and I know he won't let me sleep peacefully until he gets want he wants.

Weakened, I mindlessly allowed myself to drag my heavy limbs towards the settee adjacent to Kaden and allowed my burning hatred for Kaden to simmer down to something bearable when I seated myself near him.

"One fucking game," I muttered. "And then you're out of here."

"Got it."

The one game we'd both agreed on turned into two, then three, then four, and then to whatever number we were on now. We furiously thumbed at our consoles, staring at the television screen with narrowed, focused eyes.

Our half eaten fried rice long forgotten and sat idly on the coffee table's surface.

Despite my almost crippling descent from a high sugar rush to a high sugar crush, I forced myself to stay awake to resolve the increasing gap of character lives Kaden had over me.

I was really too competitive for my good, definitely too determined to not lose to my twin brother hence our elongated play and poorly discarded lunch. I noticed my younger twin yearning to hack off some well-needed weapons from my archive which made me laugh mentally.

All blatant displays of hostility were put on hold, temporarily causing my frustration to decimate into something that sit at the back of my mouth. Like the aftertaste of something bad concerning Kaden. I was so focused on the game and was entirely unaware of him sitting near me, curled up into the arm of my settee and cursing inaudibly under his breath, frantic thumbs twiddling the controls.

'It's almost nice'

Is what the little voice in my head stated plainly, and it was true. It was sorta nice competitively playing with someone for once and it was sorta nice of Kaden to swing by or 'force his way in' with some food and video games and his company. He didn't have to, but it was nice.

That was until Kaden purposefully killed off his character, wordlessly setting his games to console down on the coffee table, and starting packing away our half-eaten fried rice and stained forks.

"Why'd you do that for? You just killed off all four lives-"

"You need to sleep." Kaden shrugged. "And eat healthily, and exercise and drink plenty of water. I mean, just look at the state of you." He murmured pointedly, wrinkling his nose at my disgruntled self.

"You look nasty. Add showering regularly to that list too."

"We could've finished off that level at least, it was basically done and-"

"Bro?"

"Mm?" I grunted out almost aggressively.

"Sleep, okay?"

"Fucking okay," I muttered bitterly, bringing my socked feet up onto the settee and tucking them under my body, reluctantly adjusting myself to fill the expanse of leather and get myself semi-comfortable enough for a well-needed nap.

I set my head on the arm of my settee and watched through lidded eyes a calm Kaden tying the simply red material of his box up into a knot.

"Bro?"

"What?" I mumbled with my eyelids fluttering close.

"Do you love Mc?"

"Yeah. A lot."

"Do you miss her?"

"I'm trying to sleep here not play fucking twenty questions," I muttered, "But yeah, I do."

"Then why haven't you gone back for her yet? I thought you'd be on it to get her back but you're here, losing your six-pack to pizza." Kaden commented, patting my stomach lightly which I replied by kicking him off the settee and onto the carpet below.

Groaning from where he was splayed out on the carpet with a dull ache in his back, Kaden retorted with a grunt.

"So what gives? Why aren't you mounting your trusty steed and riding into the sunset in hopes of finding your damsel in distress?"

No reply.

"Well, bro, I'll let you sleep but I'll be-"

"I'm scared...I'm scared she doesn't want me anymore." I said staring into the distance with a glazed look in my eyes.

"She's not Ikari, bro."

"I know," I said softly, fazed eyes meeting Kaden. "But that doesn't mean she won't leave. Everyone leaves me eventually. It's almost a curse."

And with that, I sighed shakily, and turned on my side, looking away from Kaden and closed my eyes.

"Have a safe journey back, fucker."

Mc focus.

The camera was placed on the bed, tilted slightly upwards to capture me. I cupped my face with my hands and puffed my cheeks out endearingly. I laid on my front on the unmade bed, staring at the camera's lens with lidded, tired eyes.

"Hey Jake. I went to Nymos yesterday and he offered to take me to yours. I'm sorta contemplating on going because of two reasons though." I lifted two fingers in the air, using them to visually tick off my reasons. "One, because I'm putting all my trust into this guy I barely know and who could potentially harvest and then sell my precious organs on the freaking black market. Two, I-" I hesitated with my speech faltering suddenly.

"I... I don't know if you still want me."

I looked away from the camera, swallowing noticeably before speaking softly. "Is that, is that why you haven't contacted me yet? Because you maybe don't want me anymore?" I send 'him' a strained-looking smile.

"If that's the case then that's, that's okay. It's okay. I understand. It's normal for people's minds to change quickly. I just wish-" I duckd my head, fixing my spectacles. "I just wish that if that's the case, you rather have told me immediately than have me come down here, looking for you like some, I don't know, really desperate idiot?" I let out a shaky breath, humourlessly laughing a little at my words.

"Maybe it's because I haven't been the best girlfriend? I mean, I did get you hit on the forehead by that baseball bat-wielding freak and made you sleep on all those stained couches and tried knocking you out with that vase but that was before we got together so does that count? Oh, and I ate your food sometimes when you weren't looking and..." Feeling guilty I suddenly looked away, biting my lower lip slightly.

"Let's concentrate on more pressing matters like the fact that I'm going to god-knows-where with your brother. He could potentially sell me off to some bastard. But if he tried to, it'll be okay because you see, I called up Dan yesterday about what I'm doing and he's still sorta upset with me, but he grudgingly activated a tracking device on my phone so he can monitor my whereabouts."

"Also, I gotta call him every hour to reassure him that I'm alive and relatively well. If I don't call him, he's just gonna have to assume I'm in trouble and send a SWAT team to my location. But hopefully, it doesn't come to that resolution."

I crossed my fingers for luck at my words, trying to look optimistic for the camera.

"But anyways bye, for now, angry bird. I'll see you soon if your twin doesn't decide to kill me!"

Smiling at the camera's lens, I reached over to thumb at the "stop recording?" button, promptly causing the recording to halt abruptly, submerging itself into darkness.

Slightly uncomfortable, I shifted the camcorder to my hands, unknowingly turning the camera to capture my face from a low angle, gifting Jake a lovely view of my chin. I plastered a small smile at the wary man before fumbling with the camcorder, wandering over to the elevator that was open for the taking uneasy, I stepped unsteadily inside the mechanical beast of an elevator and punched the button indicating 'fifth floor'.

Settling into the back of the elevator whilst glancing anxiously at the four walls of the metal compartment that trapped me in momentarily, I shakily exhaled before lifting the camcorder to my face, sending a small smile at the lens.

"Claustrophobia."

I said weakly with my eyes flickering upwards at the band of numbers that line the ceiling of the elevator, glowing a soft red when the elevator passed said numbered floor. In a focused manner, I subconsciously mouthed numbers that light up a faded crimson, accounting for the floors of the apartment complex.

"I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this."

"Please stand clear of the elevator doors as they open." The robotic voice spoke.

"Well, damn, don't you look like a real cutie?" Nymos spoke suddenly. The camera still concentrated on my face through an awkward low angle, clearly capturing my perplexed facial expression. My eyes widened a fraction at the sight of Nymos crowding me frontwards. I choked.

"Uh, thanks! And you look really cute today too!"

My cheeks immediately colored crimson at my words. My embarrassment made obvious. "Fuck, that's not what I-"

Nymos chuckled just before the camcorder was suddenly switched off by a flustered me with my fumbling fingers hurriedly digging into the "stop recording?" button and cutting my video to an abrupt halt.

Internally, I cursed myself at my absurd compliment, because Kaden Dalton looked nothing like cute in those sinfully torn-up jeans and that long-sleeved white sweater that practically strained under the guy's toned biceps. An denim jacket in one hand and in other...

A tiny, caramel-colored pup? A tiny, caramel-colored pup that had its sharp canines sunk into the sleeve of his sweater, gnawing away at the woolen material almost petulantly, said animal now hissed violently at me upon noticing me frowning down at her.

"Ah," Nymos hummed, noticing my widened eyes on the pup in his arms.

"This is Lex's precious pup. Isa. I call her rabid bitch lovingly though. Don't I, sweetheart?" Nymos smiled down at the pup, raising his other hand to pet isa between her ears.

The small pup was quick to nip harshly at his fingers, causing Nymos to grit out a strained "Fuck!" And hastily retract his hand away. "Rabid bitch is fitting, no?" He asked, seething.

"She's pissy with almost everyone except fucking Lex."

"Rabid bitch, huh," I said, gulping at the threatening growls emanating from such a fluffy-looking, small animal.

"How come I didn't see her yesterday?"

"The rabid bitch came back from Tokyo last night, because Lex couldn't take care of her. Because she's with Sam supporting him on his race. I'm put on dog-sitting duty for the day or even week." He scowled, glaring at the dog clawing his sweater to pieces.

"Oh."

"So, what's with the camcorder?" He queried as a distraction, stepping forwards into the elevator and taking place beside me. "Haven't seen a model as old as that since I was a kid." He suddenly commented, leaning past me slightly to press the button labeled 'G' for the ground floor.

I, practically pressed up against the wall of the small compartment due his incredible build and studied him through the corner of my eye, watching his movements warily in case he decided to suddenly break out of character and pull out a menacing looking, serrated knife from behind isa tawny fur and slice me to pieces then and there.

Struggling to breathe regularly with Nymos standing so close to my side...He was so close. I could fucking smell Nymos mint-based cologne. I squeaked out a reply.

"I'm using it to make videos for Jake to watch so he doesn't feel like he's missed out on anything."

Nymos, slightly surprised at my response, turned his head to face me then, warm silver eyes studying me as a small smile breaks out on his face, a cute dimple that had me gulping hard presenting itself.

"Bro hit the jackpot with you, hasn't he?" He said, turning away with a grin on his face. I reddened at the comment.

"Thank you?" I replied uncertainly, self-consciously fumbling with the clunky camcorder in my hand.

The elevator doors parted once more, revealing the square space of a lobby that Nymos stepped into first, distracted by an impatient isa trying to scramble out of his grasp. I followed after them, keeping a safe distance just in case isa decided to launch herself at my face and embed her sharp claws into my features.

"Is isa coming with us?" I asked, hoping the temperamental pup wasn't going to be the one to accompany us.

"Unfortunately, yes. Her mom thinks we're going out for walkies at time like this." Nymos gritted out, jerking his face away from isa when she hurriedly scampered up his chest, pressing the mouthful of soft fur into the his mouth.

"Little does she know that we're going for a three-hour long 'walkie' to the outskirts of Duskwood."

"Nymos," I exhaled, stopping in my tracks, "If you know where they are, why don't you just give me their addresses and I'll make my way up? you don't need to make all this effort."

Nymos focus.

"It's not necessary no, but I'd like to do it."

"Why?"

Seriously though, why do I wanna take her to him and them? Why not just send her off on her own? Is it because I feel like playing cupid?

Because I wanna see Jale happy again by reuniting him with a screaming baby? Because I wanna be in my brother's good books again? Because I wanna be spiteful and ruin Ikari's efforts to separate them?

Mc focus.

"Well," Nymos drawled out, turning round slowly and thinking through his answer. "Because I wanna get to know my future sister-in-law?" He suggested lazily.

His suggestion had me choking on my spit, coughing hard when I tried to surpass the sudden choking.

Nymos simply grinned, turning around and walking towards the opened entrance and heading straight out of it whilst I spluttered with disbelief.

Recovering from my fit of disbelief, I jogged after him, red in the face from choking on my spit and my backpack thumping loudly against my shoulders with every movement I made.

"Wait!" I yelled after Nymos, "That's a.... sorta plausible reason but!" Still jogging, I shrugged my backpack off my shoulders and unzipped the accessory.

"There's bound to be a reason why you're doing all this for me when you don't have to, so just state your price!" Breathless I rummaged messily through the contents of my backpack, stumbling after Nymos, finally grasping my checkbook and pulling it out.

Nymos stopped by an Mercedes parked just outside the apartment complex, glinting almost dangerously under the winter sunlight.

"Mc, I own the latest Mercedes model. I own even more expensive cars that are stowed away in three garages all over the country. I own eight penthouse suites, six villas, two private jets, night clubs distributed in Tokyo and Duskwood, fucking farmland somewhere in the middle of China that I don't even bloody need-

"You'll do this all for free then?"

"Huh? When did I said that? Money is money," The grin on his face only made me roll my eyes in response. "Kidding. I don't require anything in return but you can always pay the fast food order I'm gonna get at the drive-thru." He hummed, rounding the hood of the car with an upset isa still pursuing her bout of scampering about with little grunts emanating from her mouth.

I was standing a little off to the side of the Mercedes and sighed at Nymos words, shoving my checkbook back inside my backpack, and zipped it up distractedly. I stifled a laugh at the sight of Nymos wrestling an outraged isa into the bright pink travel carrier seated in the backseats of the car. Smiling to myself, I walked towards the passenger seat of the car and tugged at the handle of the door, remembering something.

"Oh, and just wanted to warn you now that you shouldn't try anything iffy. Because I have a fifty men swat team tailing your ass and they won't be afraid to shoot you down without any proper warning. So no slicing me open and selling my organs on the black market, okay?"

Nymos snorted at my garbled words, saying nothing else but a simple.

"Alright, that's noted." Which was just about enough to convince me to relax my stance and slide into the seat of his car.

An angered isa jabs at her chew toy with her front paw, snarling at the way it squeaks in response to her squishing, Nymos glanced at the rearview mirror, noting the way she hisses at him from time to time, reminding him just how much she disapproves of him.

Nymos just simply rolled his eyes at her hostile behavior and retrained his gaze on the asphalt road stretching out before him, completely disregarding her behavior.

I was seated on his left in the passenger seat, and rested my elbow on the ledge of the window, cupping my cheek and staring outside, seeming to be in deep thought. Ten minutes, I've been like this. ten minutes, we've been driving and Nymos slowly, slowly growing restless at the lack of speech, just the irritating squeaks of isa chew toy filling the silence between them.

The twin wasn't one to feel comfortable during quiet, slow drives. He preferred racing down streets with his heartbeat hammering against his ribcage and listening to the radio churn out mainstream tunes which only act as background noise for him to relax in.

"Wanna listen to some music?" Nymos finally gritted out, his tone concluding he had enough of listening to the auditory abuse.

Dazed I broke away from my thoughts and glanced out at Nymos, blinking, "Hm? Of what genre?"

"It's burnt disk I made a while ago of rap, r&b its a jumble, really."

"Sure. I'm pretty much open to all kinds of music so," I shrugged, looking away and returning to gazing out of the window, "Hit me with what you got."

Nymos grinned, placated with the idea of no longer having to be ensconced in infuriatingly loud squeaks. He reached over with one hand, sliding a cd into the slot and pressing play-

"What are the rules for breakfast today?

What are the words I'm forbidden to say? I need to let my hair down and grow up like a real ass bitch

A real ass bitch, bitch

What are the rules for breakfast today?

What are the words I'm forbidden to say?

I need to let my hair down and grow up like a real ass bitch

A real ass bitch, bitch

I've been beat up my whole life

I've been shot down, kicked out twice

Ain't no stoppin' me tonight

I'ma get all the things I like

I've been beat up my whole life

I've been shot down, kicked out twice

Ain't no stoppin' me tonight

I'ma get all the things I like."

Started, I hurriedly reached for the pause button, abruptly halting the song with a stuttering laugh following.

"Hah, ha, fuck. How about we just stick to the radio, hm?" Nymos raised an amused eyebrow at me.

"Thought you were open to all music, though?"

"Oh, well yeah. But I actually, you know what? It's your car, your music."

"Yeah?"

"Yup-"

"Break necks, I'm the chiropractor

Come on down, you know I got ya

Real shit, feelin' saturated

Real love, this might fuck the haters

Break necks, I'm the chiropractor

Come on down, you know I got ya

Real shit, feelin' saturated

Real love, this might fuck the haters!"

"-Okay, Jesus Christ." I wheezed out once I cut off the music again. "Can we just uh, listen to some radio?"

Nymos laughed nodding and moved to remove the disk.

"Radio, it is." He hummed, and seconds later, random calm music spilled out of the car's sound system, causing me and Nymos to immediately burst into song well, sing along enthusiastically for 0.5 of a second before they trail off, perplexed by the other's bout of singing.

"...You like Selena Gomez too?"

"Do you like Selena Gomez?" We both asked simultaneously. My eyes widened when a grin formed on Nymos face.

"Yeah!"

Chuckling, Nymos leaned over and turned up the volume, singing along with a laughing me. I soon accompanied him, following up with slightly off, wild arm gestures.

The six minutes it takes to slide into the Mcdonald's drive-thru was full of an apt conversation about what song we favorite the most in Selena Gomez's album.

It was safe now to say that I was reasonably comfortable around Kaden Dalton. I settled against the leather upholstery of my seat, sipping at my can of coca cola through a straw and smiling to myself, mouthing along the lyrics to Lyus to you and me.

"Hey, screaming baby you sure you don't wanna order anything?" Nymos asked for the third time, glancing over his shoulder at me. I was caught off guard and shook my head quickly.

"Alright," Nymos hummed, returning to reciting his order to the Mcdonald's employee who seemed to be more concentrated on Nymos' car than his order of burgers and fries. I stifled a chuckle at this, leaning down slightly to haul my backpack onto my lap, unzipping it to gain access to the camcorder shoved inside. I felt in the mood to film a little for Jake.

The camera flickered on to show me frowning at myself, attempting to sort my locks by using my reflection in the camcorder's lens. Soon becoming distracted by how unkempt my hair was, almost forgetting the camcorder's recording my actions until I feel a jolt coursing through my body. I smiled sheepishly at the camera with my hand falling from my hair. My embarrassed, little smile was hurriedly replaced with a scowl when two brown paper bags, stained with grease courtesy of the fast food inside were both placed on my lap.

"The healthy shit is for you in case you get hungry. Figured you'd prefer carrot sticks over the big mac." Nymos turned away, taking the takeaway cup of coffee off the McDonald's worker and thanking her.

"Thanks for that Ele- Elena? That is your name? Huh, a cute name for a cute girl."

I listened to Nymos flirt, rolling my eyes at the camera and pushing my spectacles further up the bridge of my nose. Oh, Lex is so going to kill you, Kaden.

I rifled through the paper bags in search of my 'healthy shit' and I soon found it with my fingertips grazing across a couple of packets of bite-sized carrot sticks. Pulling them out of the bag, I scrunched my nose with distaste at the sight of condensation mingling with warm carrot sticks.

I leaned forward to set the camcorder onto the dashboard before me, making sure the lens faced me before tearing the packet of carrot sticks open and taking one out. Hesitantly I nibbled slightly at one end of the vegetable stick.

"It's not that bad? A little warm, a little watery but otherwise it's alright."

Isa growled from the backseats emanate, causing me to glance over my shoulder at isa sitting inside her pet carrier and glaring at me with something akin to dislike in her eyes. I glanced down at my piece of a carrot stick and looked up at Isa.

I offered the carrot stick in her direction. And to my surprise when I slotted the carrot piece inside the pet carrier through the latch isa immediately grabbed ahold and started gnawing furiously at the vegetable piece, whilst making what sounds like passive-aggressive yips at me. I turned back around to face the front.

"Did it hurt when you fell-"

"Sir, I have other customers to attend to, so please leave now unless you'd like to order something else from the menu."

"Are you on the menu?"

"No."

"Damn, El, why you gotta be so cold?"

I ignored Nymos' attempts to flirt with that girl. Because I knew damn well Lex will beat his ass for that. Instead, I distractedly rummaged a little through the brown paper bags, taking note of their cloying contents which I pulled a face at. The stench of meat overwhelmed my senses.

"Why are there three of everything?"

"Huh?" Nymos glanced over at the greasy paper bag I was holding up, heavy with the three messily parcelled burgers inside. "Oh. they're all for me."

"All of them??"

"Yup." Nymos tore his gaze off the girl again to beam at me, evidently happy with his choice of breakfast. The wide grin he wore on his mouth dropped however when he noticed the clear disapproval etched onto my face. "What? I'm a growing dude. I need the extra junk." He muttered defensively.

The camera was kickstarted awake by me. I was currently sipping at a can of coke, languidly placing the camcorder on the dashboard of Nymos car, making sure both of us are present within the camera's focus. Whilst I adjusted the camcorder's placement and waved a little hello in greeting, Nymos spoke over his mouthful of burger.

"So," He swallowed his mouthful of burger. "I said I wanted to get to know my future sister-in-law better, and like what's a better method to do that that by playing twenty questions?" He took another bite of his second burger. "I'll start first."

He was chewing slowly, thoughtfully, whilst I sat back in my seat and picked up my mobile phone. Nymos cleared his throat smiling slyly.

"So screaming baby... what are your kinks?"

I glanced up from my phone to blink at him confusedly. Is he serious?

"Hm? What are kinks?" I asked sarcastically, crossing my arms.

"..."

"Okay." He inhaled sharply before raising his voice, startling me. "Folks, don't panic but we have an Innocent among us-" isa barked in alarm at his volume of voice.

"Nymos, what wait-"

"We keeping things PG-13 for screaming baby here on now for her to stay pure and a child of god-" isa joined in with his exclaiming by barking loudly. Creating a commotion that had me wincing. I rolled my eyes unimpressed.

"Oh god, will you stop I know what kin-"

"It's happening, everybody stay calm, stay fucking calm, Isa!" Isa barked harder.

"Kaden it's none of your business!" I groaned, making him laugh even harder.

"Of course, you'd say that. Miss innocent screaming baby."

Annoyed I furrowed my dark brows at his side profile.

"Yeah? Well, what are your kinks, Mr I'm not innocent?" As soon as my words left my mouth, Nymos' laughter slowly trailed off to awkward little chuckling.

"Hmm," Nymos' warm silver eyes darted away from my questioning gaze, coughing unsubtly as he does so.

"How about we try not to make things awkward for each other since you're gonna be marrying my bro soon, hm?"

I rolled my eyes at his lame response. Isa seemed to think it to be a poor excuse too as she sent a dismissive glance at Nymos, growling softly with distaste.

"But! I can inform you on my bro kinks if you wanna know?" Nymos shoot me a sleazy wink which only made me laugh in response. I shook my head with disbelief at his personality.

"So?" He looked expectantly at me, suggestively raising his eyebrows. I was embarrassed now.

"Alright, alright. What are Jake's kinks?"

Nymos stifled a smile that I doesn't see when I very unsubtly pretend to seem uninterested by examining the ingredients listed on the side of my can of coca cola.

"Hmm," Nymos almost laughs at how quickly my head snapped upwards. A clear indicator that he had my full attention.

"Mm... I'm fairly certain about one kink he's into. Like I think he's super invested in it." He side-eyed me carefully. In reply, I chewed unconsciously on my white-striped straw.

"And what is that specific kink?"

"I think bro's biggest kink is," Nymos lowered his voice ominously. "Bestiality."

I gulped nervously.

"And what is bestiality?" I took a measured sip of my coke to perhaps brace myself for what he was about to say

Nymos brought a fist to his mouth, biting down on his knuckles to stifle a heart-wrenching sob that had me shuffling in my seat, looking so fucking scared.

"Bro, he- He likes fucking little animals."

I choked and unintentionally spewed coca cola all over Nymos. Isa barked excitedly deciding then and there that I was her favorite, second to Lex though for spraying Nymos with lukewarm coco cola and offering her those delicious carrot sticks earlier.

#duskwood #duskwood jake #duskwood mc #jake x mc #mc and jake #duskwood family #duskwood fandom #duskwood fanfiction

36 notes · View notes

a-pop-of-korean · 1 year

Note

Hello! If you're still doing song breakdowns, I would love if you did Daisy by Pentagon <3 Thanks for the educational posts!

Sure! Thank you for the request and for your patience! I will link my full-length lessons of the grammar points I talk about if you want more information!

I rely on Naver Dictionary, the English subs on the music video, and colorcodedlyrics.com's translations to help me out with this! I hope you enjoy! 화이팅!

Vocabulary

거짓/거짓말 = Lie

기억 = Memory

사랑 = Love

아주 = Very

오래 = A long time

멀리 = Far

맘 = Heart, mind

상관없다 = To not matter

불행하다 = To be unhappy

꿈 = Dream

가물가물하다 = blurred, foggy

머뭇머뭇하다 = To hold back, to hesitate

차가워지다 = To become cold

미치다 = To be crazy

얼간이 = Fool

눈물 짓다 = To be moved to tears

구슬피 = Sorrowfully

Grammar

거짓말 같은 밤 거지 같은 기억 / 이젠 다시 돌아가고 싶지 않아

An unbelievable night, awful memories / I don’t want to go back again

[noun] + 같은 + [noun]

The adjective 같다 means "to be like" or "to be similar." Attaching -ㄴ/은 to its stem turns it into its noun-modifying form, meaning it can be used to describe nouns. 거짓말 같은 밤 literally means "a night that is like a lie."

거지같다, according to Naver Dictionary, is a standalone adjective meaning unsatisfactory or disagreeable.

[verb stem] + 고 싶다

This structure means "to want to [verb]." 돌아가다 means "to go back," so 돌아가고 싶다 means "to want to go back." Attaching -지 않다 to this stem means "to not want to go back."

네가 뭘 하든 간에 아무 상관없고 / 그냥 불행하길 바라

It doesn’t matter what you do / I just hope you’re unhappy

-든(지) 간에

This structure has the meaning of "whether." Literally, the first line could means "whether you do what, it doesn't matter."

-길 바라다

This structure is used to say that you hope something happens. 부행하길 바라다 means "to hope that [someone] is unhappy." You will probably also see 바라다 conjugated as 바래(요).

내 꿈속의 한 송이의 데이지 / 난 그 사랑에 데이지 / 너 하나 없을 뿐인데 / 미칠 것 같아

The one daisy in my dream / A daisy of love / It's just you who isn't here / I think I’ll go crazy

송

In Korean, there are things called counters, which are used when talking about the numbers of objects. Different kinds of objects use different counters; flowers, for example, use the counter 송. 한 송이의 데이지 means "one flower." You could also phrase it 데이지 한 송.

-을 뿐이다

This structure, in short, means "it's just" or "it's only."

-ㄹ/을 것 같다

This structure is used when you want to say that you think something will happen or that something seems like it will happen. 미칠 것 같아 means "I think I'm going to go crazy."

얼간이처럼 너를 죽도록 너를 / 사랑했는데 고작 이게 뭐야

Like a fool, I loved you / to death, so what is this?

[noun] + 처럼

This means "like [noun]." 얼간이처럼 means "like a fool."

[verb stem] + 도록

This structure means "so that" or "to the point where." 죽도록 너를 사랑했는데 literally means "I loved you to the point where I died."

-ㄴ/은/는데

This has a few different usages, but in this case, it essentially provides context for the following clause. It can also show contrast and mean "but." In this case, the speaker is asking, despite loving this person so much, what's going on now?

고작

고작 means "only, just, barely." I'm not entirely sure how it adds meaning to this line, but it's a common word in Korean!

못다한 말들이 있어서 왔네요

I came because I still have things to say

-아/어/여서

This means "because." Attach it to the verb of the clause with the reason. In this case, 있어서 means "because I have."

-네(요)

This is a sentence ending expressing surprise or admiration. This line might be expressing surprise at the fact that they returned.

That's about it for this breakdown! Check out my masterlist linked below to see the other songs I've broken down, and feel free to request a song that I haven't done yet! See you in the next lesson! 다음에 또 봐요!

My masterlist

Join my Discord chat here to practice Korean with others!

Follow me on Instagram here for more Korean content!

Get Drops Premium using my affiliate link to expand your Korean vocab!

Check out my Ko-Fi to support this blog and my studies! Thank you for your generosity!

34 notes · View notes

uncloseted · 10 months

Note

How do you feel about the desensitization social media has about tragedy and how this affects our brains? I’ve studied media and communication and I’m super passionate about this topic.

The other day I was scrolling on Youtube shorts, and I saw a girl post a video about the air quality in new york due to the wildfires in Canada. The video was satire/comedy and she sped her video up while prancing around lip singing to yellow by coldplay or something. (Side note: why do people even find these sped up videos funny? They’re annoying)

I’m just wondering if you have an opinion on how desensitized people have become. Like at first glance I was like Oh that’s a bit funny! And then I caught myself and was like hang on this really happened as is currently affecting others… that’s horrible. I’ll scroll on my snapchat news and see murder case / true crime headings reading like fun little blurbs. And people do their makeup and profit off other peoples trauma for views like they’re professionals doing it and it’s so insulting. The list really goes ON.

Do you think some studies will start coming out soon about how our empathy levels are incredibly low or even developing our brains differently because of social media’s impact on empathy and being desensitized to so many things?

Sorry for the loaded question! I’m curious to see what you think.

Thank you for this question because I've been thinking about it for like, three days straight. At first I was inclined to be like, "well, no, I think the internet is fine and our worries about empathy are just a moral panic that we see with every new technology that's developed." And then I was inclined to be like, "people have definitely become less empathetic lately, and the internet is probably a big part of that." But I think the reality is that the internet is kind of neutral. More than anything, the internet is a tool that acts to magnify and intensify the way people already are. Some people use the internet to become more aware of other people and understand their unique situations; other people use it to be trolls.

The first thing I want to talk about here is the idea that people used to be more empathetic in the past. I just don't know if that's actually true. Blood sports- games in which people are violent towards one another on purpose as a form of entertainment- have existed for most of human history. Gladiator combat in Ancient Rome is a relatively popular example of this, and often ended in the death of a gladiator. Boxing is a sport that has historically been popular and continues to be popular to this day, despite the fact that it's just two people violently attacking one another. Lynchings used to be public spectacles, where the attendants often treated these as festive events, with food, family photos, and souvenirs. I don't know that I believe we were really more empathetic in the past at all. I think we've actually really improved on the "you can't torture, maim, or kill other people or animals for entertainment" front, especially since those types of things are generally banned from social media.

And like I was saying before, I do genuinely think that the internet can foster greater understanding and empathy towards marginalized groups. I know the struggles of all sorts of groups that I might never encounter in real life. I know how to be polite to people from a variety of different cultures that I might never experience. I've been posed with some really challenging philosophical questions through the content I've been exposed to online. I'm hearing the narratives of marginalized groups that I may have never otherwise heard, and I'm hearing it in their own words. That's incredibly valuable, and I think people who have grown up in the internet age don't fully appreciate how historically rare that actually is. Up until now, history has been written by the victors, the powerful, the oppressors. Now that narrative is democratized and widely available. That's huge in terms of its ability to build empathy and understanding if we choose to be open to it.

But, that same democratization can create problems. The first is that there's not really a distinction between in-group and out-group content anymore. It used to be that there was kind of a sense of, "well, I can say that about my own [group/family/situation] to people who understand, but you can't say that, because you're not part of it and you don't get it." People create content with their in-group in mind, but it often "breaches containment"- it's seen by people who aren't in that in-group. People who are living in New York and making jokes about the air quality situation in New York are usually making those jokes for other people in New York who are in their same situation. They're trying to lighten the mood of something scary. But the people who are seeing it aren't necessarily in New York; they're all over the world, and the context and emotional intention of that joke is kind of lost. There's an implicit assumption in these videos that you're starting from a place of understanding how horrible it is because you're living it, but that's often not true of the actual viewers. In your case, you saw a funny video and thought it was funny. If you had seen a serious video about the same situation, you probably would have been like, "oh shit, this is serious. I hope the people are okay." It's not necessarily a lack of empathy here but a lack of shared context in the way the information is being presented (or something like that?)

That brings us to problem two, which is compassion fatigue. More than ever before in history, we are constantly aware of every bad thing that has happened everywhere in the world, every single day. It used to be that you would get the newspaper and it would be focused mostly on local news, with some national headlines and a couple international headlines that were really important. The information we had about bad things that were happening were mostly things we could do something about. But now, that's not really the case, right? Today, I know that the Jenin refugee camp suffered massive damage following the Israeli army's biggest assault there in 20 years. I know the Palestinians fear that the situation will escalate. I know that Allison Mack, who ran the Nxivm cult, was released from prison after serving just two years of her sentence. I know that a suspect in a Philadelphia shooting was charged with the murder of five people, and that a Canadian man is facing terrorism charges over far-right videos, and that Japan has announced a controversial plan to release treated waste water from the Fukushima nuclear plant, and that Senegal has been facing a crisis because their President, Macky Sall, was threatening not to step down after the end of his second term, and that France is protesting police violence because a police officer shot and killed a French-Algerian teenager. And I can't do anything about any of this. I just know about it, and I have to care about it because I know about it.

And we've created this weird ecosystem online where everyone feels like they need to issue a PR type statement about whatever sociopolitical thing the internet cares about in the moment to show that they're a good person who is informed, even if they don't have a significant following and aren't impacted by the issue at hand. All of us are doing a weird kind of brand management for a brand that's just our own self, and we're managing it for the sake of our friends and family because we feel like we have to. And any time a person with a significant following does publish one of those statements, inevitably there are people badgering them about why they haven't spoken on the issue that they care about that's happening in their country. I just don't think that we as people have the emotional capacity to process that much information or care about that many things, especially when they're situations that we can't really do anything about, and especially when that situation will be replaced with something new within a few days. I think that's one of the reasons so many people feel helpless and disempowered right now. There's too much to fix but no real way for us to do it, especially in the time scale the internet provides.

So in this sense, I don't think that we're lacking empathy so much as we're required to be so empathetic that we've exhausted our capacity for it. There are more demands put upon us to be empathetic than ever before, and so we reach those moments of compassion fatigue more than ever before.

The other thing that I think is worth talking about here is the way in which the internet prioritizes extremes. The goal of algorithms is generally to get people to stay on the website longer, and the easiest way to do that is by getting them to feel a strong emotion. That's why clickbait works. It's also why the internet is invested in creating so much outrage. And the easiest way to continue getting people to feel outraged is to show them increasingly outrageous things, whether or not they're true. The internet kind of got 4chanified- like teenagers on 4chan, social media algorithms and article headline writers are trying to out-do one another by recommending or posting the most outrageous thing they can in order to capture the attention economy.

This is the part that concerns me the most with regards to the internet in general. Famously, Facebook’s negligence facilitated the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar after its algorithms amplified hate speech and Facebook failed to remove the inflammatory posts. Outrage = views = money for Facebook = more outrage bait being pushed = in the most extreme cases, genocide. And also, outrage = views = money for Facebook = more outrage bait being pushed = Donald Trump getting elected in the US. Outrage = views = money for Facebook = more outrage bait being pushed = people believing misinformation about medicine. And I think that creates a kind of interesting dynamic when it comes to empathy. Because in some sense, these people are very empathetic- they're outraged because of their empathy. They read a (fake) story about a child being victimized by a pediophilic trans teacher (or whatever) and panic because they have empathy for the children that they believe were victims. They're anti-immigration because they have empathy for the people who (they believe are) losing their jobs to immigrants. In the case of the Rohingya genocide, the Buddhist majority in Myanmar had empathy for the individuals that they believed were victimized by the Rohingya for their religious beliefs. These people were all wrong, but they're not lacking empathy. They're making a decision that an outside group isn't worthy of empathy because they've committed such heinous crimes. And that's a tale as old as time; just ask anyone who's Jewish.

I think what we need to be worried about is the ways in which the internet, and especially social media, can platform and expedite that process on a level that hasn't really been seen before. After the 2016 election, I used to really believe that we just needed to sit down with people across the aisle and have a civil, empathetic, rational conversation about the issues. But now I think that if that was ever possible, the time for it has passed. Misinformation, disinformation, and sensationalized information have become so rampant online that there's not really any way to have those discussions anymore because there's no way to agree on what is and isn't true. And unless we change something really quickly, that problem is just going to get worse with the advent of deepfake technologies and AI bots.

I feel like I've said a lot here but I haven't really come to any conclusions... but those are some of my thoughts, at least. I guess maybe it's that humans have always kind of sucked at being empathetic to people who are part of an out-group, but now we're just doing it on a global scale and reacting to threats that are (perceived to be) larger than ever before? Maybe it's that we should focus on strengthening and bettering our local communities as much as possible, and contributing on a global scale when we can? Maybe it's that media literacy is important, and we should always interact with news articles critically, even if they seem like they're a credible source?

#InternetEmpathy #VirtualNarratives #EmpathyThroughTechnology #DigitalDemocratization #SharedContextChallenge #CompassionFatigue #InformationOverload #OnlineOutrage #AttentionEconomy #SocialMediaImpacts #media literacy #cultural criticism #cultural critique

13 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 2 months

Text

Content warning: This article contains a scene including a graphic sexual assault.

My friend sets aside his cocktail, its foamy top sprinkled with cinnamon in the shape of a hammer and sickle, to process his disbelief at what I’ve just told him. “You want to return to Russia?” he asks.

I met Enrico when I arrived in Stockholm eight months ago. He understands my situation as well as anyone. He knows that I fled Moscow three days after Russia invaded Ukraine; that my name, along with the names of other journalists who left, has fallen into the hands of pro-Kremlin activists who have compiled a public list of “traitors to the motherland”; that some of the publications where I’ve worked have been labeled “undesirable organizations”; that a summons from the military enlistment office is waiting for me at home; that since Vladimir Putin expanded the law banning “gay propaganda,” I could be fined up to $5,000 merely for going on a date. In short, Enrico knows what may await if I return: fear, violence, harm.

He wants me to explain why I would go back, but I can’t think of an answer he’d understand or accept. Plus, I’m distracted by the TV screens in the bar. They’re playing a video on loop—a crowd in January 1990 waiting to get into the first McDonald’s to open in Russia. The people are in fluffy beaver fur hats, and their voices speak a language that, for the past year, I’ve heard only inside my head. “Why am I here?” a woman in the video says in Russian. “Because we are all hungry, you could say.” As the doors to McDonald’s open and the line starts to move, I no longer hear everything Enrico is saying (“You could live with me rent-free …” “You could go to Albania. It’s cheaper than in Scandinavia ...” “We could get married so you can live and work here legally …”).

Part of me had planned this meeting in hopes that Enrico would persuade me to change my mind—and he did try. But I’ve already bought the nonrefundable plane tickets, which are saved on my phone, ready to go.

A week later, I spend a night erasing the past year from my life—a year of running through Europe as if through a maze. I clear my chats in Telegram and unsubscribe from channels that cover the war. I wipe my browser history, delete my VPN apps, remove the rainbow strap on my watch, and tear the Ukrainian flag sticker from my jacket. The next day—March 29, 2023—I fly to Tallinn, Estonia, and ride a half-empty bus through a deep forest to the Russian border. The checkpoint sits at a bridge over the Narva River, between two late-medieval castles. German shepherds keep watch, and an armed soldier patrols the river by boat.

“What were you doing in the European Union?” the Russian guard asks.

“I was on vacation,” I say.

“You were on vacation for more than a year?” she asks.

I reply that I have been very tired. She stamps my passport and the bus moves on.

What I didn’t tell the guard, and what I couldn’t tell Enrico, is that I’m tired of hiding from my country—and that I want to trade one form of hiding for another. I have conducted my adult life as if censorship and propaganda were my natural enemies, but now some broken part of me is homesick for that world. I want to be deceived, to forget that there is a war going on.

“Start from the beginning,” my mother would say when I couldn’t figure out a homework problem. “Just start all over again.”

I woke up on February 24, 2022, to a message from a friend that read: “The war has begun.” At the time, I was an editor at GQ Russia, gathering material for our next issue on Russian expats who had moved back home during the pandemic. I was also editing a YouTube series called Queerography. For a blissful moment, I took my friend’s text for a joke. Then I saw videos from Ukrainian towns under bombardment. Russian forces had encircled most of the country. My boyfriend was still asleep. I wished I could be in his place.

A few months earlier, American intelligence had informed Ukraine and other countries in Europe of a possible offensive. But Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, had responded: “This is all propaganda, fake news and fiction.” While I didn’t necessarily believe the truth of Lavrov’s words, I doubted the regime could afford to tell a lie so big. Vladimir Putin’s approval rating was near its lowest point since he gained power. On the eve of the attack on Ukraine, only 3 percent of my fellow citizens thought the war was “inevitable.”

After the invasion, I spent three days in silence. I couldn’t sleep, and I had no appetite. My hands trembled so badly that I couldn’t hold a glass of water still. When I visited friends, we’d sit in different corners of the room scrolling through the news, occasionally breaking the silence with “This is fucked up.”

In Moscow, armed police patrolled the streets to deter protesters. Soon, the press reported that a man was arrested in a shopping mall for an “unsanctioned rally” because he was wearing blue and yellow sneakers, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. News media websites were blocked in accordance with the new law on “fake news” about Ukraine. People stood in line to empty the ATMs. “War” and “peace”—two words that form the title of Russia’s most celebrated novel—were now forbidden to be pronounced in public. Instagram was filled with black squares, uncaptioned, seemingly the only form of protest that remained possible. The price of a plane ticket out of Russia soared from $100 to $3,000, in a country where the minimum wage was about $170 a month.

If I waited another day, it seemed, the Iron Curtain would descend and I would become a hostage of my own country. So on the morning of March 1, my boyfriend and I locked the door to our Moscow apartment for the last time and made for the airport. In my backpack were warm clothes, $500 in cash, and a computer. We were leaving for nowhere, not knowing which country we would wake up in the next day.

At the international airport in Yerevan, Armenia, flights arrived every hour from Russia and the United Arab Emirates, another route along which people fled. Once we were there, we boarded a minivan to Georgia, the only country in the South Caucasus with which Russia no longer maintained diplomatic ties. The van was packed with families and their pets. From one of the back seats, a girl asked her mother: “Mama, are we far away from the war now?” A night road through mountain passes and volcanic lakes took us to the border. I asked a guard there to share a mobile hot spot with me so I could get online and retrieve coronavirus test results in my email. “Of course,” he replied, “though you don’t deserve it.”

In Tbilisi, the alleys were lit up at night with blue and yellow. On the city’s main hotel hung a poster that read “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.” Fresh graffiti on walls around the city read: “Putin is a war criminal and murderer.”

At an acquaintance’s apartment, we shared a room with two other men who had fled. “The most important thing is that we’re safe,” we reassured each other if one of us began to cry. “I’m not a criminal,” said one of the guys. “Why should I have to run from my own country?” None of us had an answer.

In Russia I was now labeled a “traitor and fugitive.” The Committee for the Protection of National Interests, an organization associated with Putin’s United Russia party, had stolen a database containing the names of journalists who had left the country and distributed it on Telegram. Liberal journalists in Moscow had begun to find the words “Here lives a traitor to the Motherland” scrawled on their doors. One critic was sent a severed pig’s head.

My fellow fugitives and I started looking for somewhere more permanent to live, but most rental ads in Tbilisi stipulated “Russians not accepted.” We tried to open bank accounts, but when the bank employees saw our red passports they rejected our applications. Like so many other companies, Condé Nast—which publishes GQ and WIRED, among other magazines—pulled out of Russia. I was without a job. The YouTube show I edited closed down soon after, its founder declared a foreign agent and later added to the Register of Extremists and Terrorists. Foreign publications told me that all work with Russian journalists was temporarily suspended.

Soon signs began to appear outside bars and restaurants in Tbilisi saying that Russians were not welcome inside. I decided to sign in to Tinder to try to meet people in this new city, but most men I chatted with suggested that I go home and take Molotov cocktails to Red Square. I placed a Ukrainian flag sticker on my breast pocket and wandered the city in silence, ashamed of my language.

My boyfriend and I finally found a room in a former warehouse with no windows, the furniture covered in construction dust. The owner was an artist who was in urgent need of money. To pay the rent, I sold online all my belongings from the Moscow apartment: a vintage armchair from Czechoslovakia, an antique Moroccan rug, books dotted with notes, a record player given to me by the love of my life. Ikea had closed its stores in Russia, and customers wrote to me: “Your stuff is like a belated Christmas miracle.”

One day in mid-spring, I left the warehouse for an anti-war rally that was being held outside the Russian Federation Interests Section based in the Swiss Embassy. The motley throngs of people chanted “No to war!” In the crowd I glimpsed the familiar faces of journalists who had left Russia like me. “Why did you come here?” a stranger asked me in English. “To us, to Georgia. Do you really think your cries will change anything? You shouldn’t be protesting here. You should be outside the Kremlin.”

I wanted to tell him that I grew up in a country where a dictator came to power when I was 6 years old, a man who has his enemies killed. I wanted to say: One time, when I was an editor at Esquire, my boss denounced an author I worked with to Putin’s security service, the FSB, and the FSB sent agents to interrogate me, and when I warned the author, the FSB came for me again, threatening to arrest me and listing aloud the names of all my family members. I wanted to tell the stranger on that street in Tbilisi that I’d had to disappear for a while, and that when I felt brave enough, I had gone to protests and donated money to human rights organizations. That I had fought but, it seemed, had lost. That I just wanted to live the one life I’ve got a little bit longer. But at the time I couldn’t find the words.

A month later, the world saw images of mass graves in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, dead limbs sticking out of the sand. Outside our building one morning, on an old brick wall that was previously empty, was a fresh message, the paint still wet: “Russians, go home.” My boyfriend went back to Russia so he could obtain a European visa, promising he would be back in a month, but he never returned.

I spent the rest of the year on the move: Cyprus, Estonia, Norway, France, Austria, Hungary, Sweden. I went where I had friends. The independent Russian media that I’d always consumed went into exile too, setting up operations where they could. TV Rain began broadcasting out of Amsterdam. Meduza moved its Russian branch to Europe. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta, cofounded by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, reopened in Latvia. Farida Rustamova, a former BBC Russia correspondent, fled and launched a Substack called Faridaily, where she began publishing information from Kremlin insiders. Journalists working for the independent news website Important Stories, which published names and photos of Russian soldiers involved in the murder of civilians in a Ukrainian village, went to Czechia. These, along with 247,000 other websites, were blocked at the behest of the Prosecutor General’s Office but remained accessible in Russia through VPNs.

“During the first days of the war, everything was in a fog,” says Ilya Krasilshchik, the former publisher of Meduza, who went on to found Help Desk, which combines news media and a help hotline for those impacted by war. “We felt it our duty to inform people of what the Russian army was doing in Ukraine, to document the hell that despair and powerlessness leave in their wake. But we also wanted to empathize with all of the people caught up in this meat grinder.” Taisiya Bekbulatova, a former special correspondent for Meduza and the founder of the news outlet Holod, tells me, “In nature you find parasites that can force their host to act in the parasite’s own interest, and propaganda, I believe, works in much the same way. That’s why we felt it was our duty to provide people with more information.”

I wanted to continue my work in journalism, but the publications that had fled Russia weren’t hiring. My application for a Latvian humanitarian visa as an independent journalist was rejected, and I didn’t have the means to pay the fees for US or UK talent visas.

The panic attacks began in the fall, during my first stay in Stockholm. Red spots, first appearing around my groin, started to take over my body, creeping up to my throat. I’d get sick, recover, and then wake up with a sore throat. In October, I learned that my boyfriend had married someone else. The next day, my mother called to tell me that a summons from the military enlistment office had arrived.

I was in Cyprus when, at 3 am one February morning, I woke to the sound of walls cracking and the metal legs of my bed knocking on marble. Fruit fell to the floor and turned to mush. The tremors of a magnitude-7.8 earthquake in Gaziantep, Turkey, had passed through the Mediterranean Sea and reached the island. I didn’t scramble out of bed. I hoped instead that I would be buried under the rubble—a choice made for me by fate. Later that month, my friends in Stockholm insisted that I come stay with them again. I wandered the streets on a clear winter day, buying up expired food in the stores. The blue and yellow flags of Sweden shone bright in the sun, but I saw in them the flag of another country. Back in the apartment, I slept all the time, and when I did wake I lulled myself with Valium. One day I felt the urge to swallow the whole bottle.

Frightened by my own thoughts, I felt how much I wanted to be back in Russia. In my mother country, all the tools of propaganda would keep painful truths at bay. “The news in Russia is only ever good news,” Zhanna Agalakova, a former anchor on state TV’s main news show, later told me. Agalakova quit after the invasion began and returned the awards she had received to Putin. “Even if people understand that they’re being brainwashed, in the end they give up, and propaganda calms them down. Because they simply have nowhere to run.”

Masha Borzunova, a journalist who fled Russia and runs her own YouTube channel, walked me through a typical day of Russian TV: “A person wakes up to a news broadcast that shows how the Russian military is making gains. Then Anti-Fake begins, where the presenters dismantle the fake news of Western propaganda and propagate their own fake news. Then there’s the talk show Time Will Tell that runs for four, sometimes five hours, where we’ll see Russian soldiers bravely advancing. Then comes Male and Female—before the war it was a program about social issues, and now they discuss things like how to divide the state compensation for funeral expenses between the mother of a dead soldier and his father who left the family several years ago. Then more news and a few more talk shows, in which a KGB combat psychic predicts Russia’s future and what will happen on the front. This is followed by the game show Field of Miracles, with prizes from the United Russia party or the Wagner Private Military Company. And then, of course, the evening news.”

I had gone from being infuriated by this kind of hypnosis to envying it. The free flow of information had become for me what a jug of water is to a severely dehydrated person: The right amount can save you, but too much can kill.

“Welcome to Russia,” the bus driver said as we crossed the border from Estonia. I was nearly home. There was no particular reason for me to return to Moscow, so I made for St. Petersburg, where some friends had an apartment that was empty. I used to look after it before the war, coming over to unwind and water the flowers. It was a place of peace.

All my friends had left Russia too, so I was the first person to set foot in the apartment in a year. Black specks covered every surface-—midges that had flown in before the war and died. I scrubbed the place through the first night, starting to cry like a child when I came across ordinary objects I remembered from peacetime: shower gel, a blender, a rabbit mask made out of cardboard. Over the next few weeks, I tried to return to the past as I remembered it. I went to the bakery in the morning. I exercised, read, wrote. At first glance, the city seemed unchanged. There were the same boatloads of tourists on the canals, tour groups on Palace Square, overcrowded bars in Dumskaya Street. But more and more, St. Petersburg began to feel to me like the backdrop of a period film: impeccably executed, the gap between the past and the present visible only in the details.

One day I heard loud noises outside my window, as if all the TVs in town had suddenly started emitting the sound of static. The next day the headline read: “Terrorist Suspected of Bombing St. Petersburg Café Detained and Giving Testimony.” The café had hosted an event honoring the pro-war military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, and a bust of his likeness had blown up, killing him and injuring more than 30 people. But life went on as if nothing had happened. St. Petersburg was plastered with posters for an upcoming concert by Shaman, a singer who had become popular since the invasion thanks to his song “I’m Russian.” (He would later release “My Fight,” a song that seemingly alludes to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.) In a candy store I noticed a chocolate truffle with a portrait of Putin on the wrapper. “It’s filled with rum,” the clerk said.

Sometimes in checkout lines at the supermarket I glimpsed mercenaries in balaclavas, newly returned from or preparing to go to the front. On the escalator down to the subway, where classical music usually floated from the speakers, Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto was interrupted by an announcement: “Attention! Male citizens, we invite you to sign a contract with the military!” In the train car, I saw a poster that read: “Serving Russia is a real job! Sign a military service contract and get a salary starting at 204,000 rubles per month”—about $2,000. One afternoon, as I stood on the platform next to a train bound for a city near the Georgian border, I overheard two men talking:

“I earned 50,000 in a month.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, bro. But I won’t go back to Ukraine again. It’s fucking terrifying.”

This was a rare admission. The horror of the war’s casualties—zinc coffins, once prosperous cities turned to ruins—were otherwise hidden behind the celebrations for City Day, the opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and marathons held on downtown streets.

After a week or so in Russia, feeling very alone, I went on Tinder. One evening I invited a man I hadn’t met over to the apartment. I placed two cups of tea on a table, but when the man arrived he didn’t touch his. He threw me to the floor, unbuttoned his pants, and inserted his dry penis inside me. “I know you want it,” he whispered, covering my mouth. “I can tell from your asshole.”

I bit him and squirmed, trying to get him off me. After he left, my legs kicked frantically and I couldn’t breathe. I knew that the police wouldn’t help me. I contacted Tinder to tell them that I had been raped and sent them a screenshot of the man’s profile, but no one answered. That evening I bought a ticket for a night train to Moscow. More than ever, I wanted to see my mother.

“You must have frozen over there,” My mother said as she met me at the door to her apartment outside Moscow. Putin had said that, without Russian-supplied gas, “Europeans are stocking up on firewood for the winter like it’s the Middle Ages.” People were supposedly cutting down trees in parks for fuel and burning antique furniture. Some of the only warm places in European cities were so-called Russian houses, government-funded cultural exchanges where people could go escape the cold as part of a “From Russia with Warmth” campaign. When I told my mother that Sweden recycles waste and uses it to heat houses, she grimaced in disgust.

Thirteen months earlier, when I had left the country, my mother called to ask me why. I told her that I didn’t want to be sent to fight, that I couldn’t work in Russia anymore. “You’re panicking for no reason,” she said. “Why would the army need you? We’ll take Kyiv in a few days.” After the horrors in Bucha, I had sent her an interview with a Russian soldier who admitted to killing defenseless people. “It’s fake,” she responded. “Son, turn on the TV for once. Don’t you see that all those bodies are moving?” She was referring to optical distortions in a certain video, which Russian propagandists used to their advantage.

After that, we had agreed not to discuss my decision or views so that we could remain a family. Instead, we talked about my sister’s upcoming wedding, my aunt’s promotion at a Chinese cosmetics company whose products were replacing the brands that had quit the country. My uncle, a mechanic, had finally found a job that would get him out of debt—repairing military equipment in Russian-occupied territories. My mother was planning to take advantage of falling real estate prices to buy land and build a house. In their reality, the war was not a tragedy but an elevator.

I had arrived on Easter Sunday, and the whole family gathered at my mother’s house for the celebration. My aunt told me she was worried that I might be forced to change my gender in the West; she had heard that the Canadian government was paying people $75,000 to undergo gender-affirming surgery and hormonal therapy. My stepfather was interested in the availability of meat in Swedish stores. Someone asked whether it was dangerous to speak Russian abroad, whether Ukrainians had assaulted me. I kept quiet about the fact that the only person who had attacked me since the invasion was a Russian man, that the real threat was much closer than my family thought. The TVs in each of the three rooms of the apartment were all switched on: They played a church service, then a film called Century of the USSR. There were news broadcasts every two hours and the program Moscow. The Kremlin. Putin—a kind of reality show about the president.

“Do you know what this is?” my mother said as she placed a dusty bottle of wine without any labels in the middle of the festive table. “Your uncle gave it to us,” my stepfather chimed in. “He brought it from Ukraine.” A trophy from a bombed-out Ukrainian mansion near Melitopol, stolen by my uncle while Russian soldiers helped themselves to electronics and jewelry. “Let’s drink to God,” said my stepfather, raising his glass. “You can’t raise a glass to God,” my mother answered. “That’s not done.” “Let’s drink to our big family,” he said. The clinking of crystal filled the room; to my ears it sounded like cicadas.

Suddenly I felt sick and locked myself in the bathroom. I tried to vomit, but my stomach was empty, bringing up only a retch. “What’s wrong?” my mother asked, standing outside the door. “Drink some water, rest, sleep.” I tried to lie down. My skin began to itch. My friend Ilya Kolmanovsky, a science journalist, once told me: “Did you know that a person cannot tickle himself? Likewise you cannot deceive a mind that already knows the truth.” Self-deception is dangerous, he said: “Just as your immune system can attack your own body, your mind can also engage in destroying you day by day.”

That evening I left my mother’s apartment for St. Petersburg and made an appointment with a psychiatrist. I told the doctor that I felt like the past had been lost and I couldn’t find a place for myself in the present. She asked when my problems began. “During the war,” I answered, careful to keep my face expressionless. The psychiatrist noted my response in the medical history. “You’re not the only one,” she said. She diagnosed me with prolonged depression and severe anxiety and prescribed tranquilizers, an antipsychotic, and an anti-depressant. “There are problems with drugs from the West,” she said. Better to take the Russian-made ones. If the Western pills were like Fiat cars, then these would be the Russian analog, Zhigulis: “Both will bring you closer to calm, but the quality of the trip will differ.”

Though the drugs seemed to help, I began to realize over the next several weeks that no amount of pills could change this fact: The home I was looking for in Russia existed only in my memories. In June, I decided to emigrate once again. At the border in Ivangorod, spikes of barbed wire pierced the azure sky and smoke from burning fuel oil rose from the chimneys of the customs building. This time, as I left, I felt that I had no reason to return. My home was nowhere, but I would continue searching for one.

With financial help from a friend, I moved to Paris and signed a contract with a book agent. I made an effort not to read the news. Still, from time to time, I came across stories about Putin’s increasing popularity at home, how foreign nationals could obtain Russian citizenship for fighting in Ukraine, how the regime passed a law that would allow it to confiscate property from people who spread “falsehoods about the Russian army.” One day, when air defense systems shot down a combat drone less than 8 miles from my mother’s home, she called me and asked: “Why did you leave? Who else will protect me when the war comes to us? Who if not my son?” I didn’t have an answer. “I love you, Mama”—that was the only truth I could tell her.

3 notes · View notes