#not teeny-weeny status

[lux--nova]

I encountered the funniest phrase I've ever read in a scholarly article yesterday and I had to share it with yall. I will now quote scholarly sources when assessing whether something is tiny, teeny, or teeny-weeny, thank you.

#the article was about micro signatures by artists in safavid islamic manuscript illumination btw #which is a really fascinating subject #and i can tell the author had a lot of fun with it too #bc they threw this in there lmao #the article is called 'who's hiding here? artists and their signatures in timurid and safavid manuscripts' #by marianna shreve simpson #art history #islamic studies #history #dark academia #silly academia #wait correction its a chapter from the book affect emotion and subjectivity in early modern muslim empires: #new studies in ottoman safavid and mughal art and culture #the title of their book is too long for just one tag #not teeny-weeny status

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Decrapify cookie consent dialogs with the Consent-O-Matic

Remember when they sneered at Geocities pages for being unusable eyesores? It's true, those old sites had some, uh, idiosyncratic design choices, but at least they reflected a real person's exuberant ideas about what looked and worked well. Today's web is an unusable eyesore by design.

Start with those fucking “sign up for our newsletter” interruptors. Email is the last federated protocol standing, so everyone who publishes is desperate to get you to sign up to their newsletter, which nominally bypasses Big Tech’s chokepoint on communications between creators and audiences. Worst part: they’re wrong, email’s also been captured:

https://doctorow.medium.com/dead-letters-73924aa19f9d

Then there’s the designer’s bizarre and sadistic conceit that “black type on a white background” is ugly and “causes eye-strain.” This has led to an epidemic of illegible grey-on-white type that I literally can’t read, thanks to a (very common) low-contrast vision disability:

https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-use-pure-black-for-text-or-backgrounds/

Often grey-on-white type sins are compounded with minuscule font sizing. You can correct this by increasing the font size from teeny-weeny-eyestrain-o-rama to something reasonable, but when you do, all the static elements on the page size up with the text, so the useless header and footer bars filled with social media buttons and vanity branding expand to fill the whole screen.

This, in turn, is made a billion times worse by the absurd decision to hide scrollbars (shades of Douglas Adams’ description of airports where they “expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not”).

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3205828-it-can-hardly-be-a-coincidence-that-no-language-on

Scrolling a window (without using RSI-inflaming trackpad gestures) is now the world’s shittiest, most widely played video-game, a hand-eye coordination challenge requiring sub-pixel accuracy and split-second timing to catch the scroll-bar handle in the brief, flashing instant where blips into existence:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1516136202235043841

One of the scariest things about the precarity of Firefox is the prospect of losing some of the customizations and stock features I rely on to decrapify the web — stuff I use so often that I sometimes forget that it’s not how everyone uses the web:

https://www.wired.com/story/firefox-mozilla-2022/

[Image ID: Two side-by-side screenshots comparing the default layout of a wired.com article ('The intoxicating pleasure of conspiratorial thinking' by Virginia Heffernan) with the same article in Firefox's Reader Mode.]

For example, there’s Firefox’s Reader Mode: a hotkey that strips out all the layout and renders the text of an article as a narrow, readable column in whatever your default font is. I reach for ctrl-alt-r so instinctively that often the publisher’s default layout doesn’t register for me.

Reader Mode (usually) bypasses interruptors and static elements, but Firefox isn’t capable of deploying Reader Mode on every site. The Activate Reader View plugin can sometimes fix this:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/activate-reader-view/

But when it can’t there’s my favorite, indispensable Javascript bookmarklet: Kill Sticky, which hunts through the DOM of the page you’ve got loaded and nukes any element that is tagged as “sticky” — which generally banishes any permanent top/bottom/side-bars with a single click:

https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky

A recent addition to my arsenal is Cookie Remover. Click it once and it deletes all cookies associated with the page you’ve currently loaded. This resets the counter on every soft paywall, including the ones that block you from using Private Browsing. Click this once, then reload, and you’re back in business:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-remover/

Today, I added another plug-in to my decrapification rotation: Consent-O-Matic, created by researchers at Denmark’s Aarhus University. Consent-O-Matic identifies about 50 of the most commonly deployed GDPR tracking opt-out dialog boxes and automatically opts you out of all tracking, invisibly and instantaneously:

https://consentomatic.au.dk/

We shouldn’t need Consent-O-Matic, but we do. The point of the GDPR was to make tracking users painful for internet companies, by forcing them to break down all the different data they wanted to gather and the uses they wanted to put it to into a series of simple, yes/no consent requests. The idea was to create boardroom discussions where one person said, “OK, let’s collect this invasive piece of data” and someone else could say, “Fine, but that will require us to display eight additional dialog boxes so we’ll lose 95% of users if we do.”

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/26/ico-ico/#market-structuring

What’s more, the GDPR said that if you just bypassed all those dialog boxes (say, by flipping to Reader Mode), the publisher had to assume you didn’t want to be tracked.

But that’s not how it’s worked. A series of structural weaknesses in European federalism and the text of the GDPR itself have served to encrapify the web to a previously unheard-of degree, subjecting users to endless cookie consent forms that are designed to trick you into opting into surveillance.

Part of this is an enforcement problem. The EU Commission we have today isn’t the Commission that created the GDPR, and there’s a pervasive belief that the current Commission decided that enforcing their predecessors’ policies wasn’t a priority. This issue is very hot today, as the Commission considers landmark rules like the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), whose enforcement will be at the whim of their successors.

The failures of EU-wide enforcement is compounded by the very nature of European federalism, which gives member states broad latitude to interpret and enforce EU regulations. This is most obviously manifested in EU member states’ tax policies, with rogue nations like Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Ireland vying for supreme onshore-offshore tax haven status.

Not surprisingly, countries whose tax-codes have been hijacked by multinational corporations and their enablers in government are likewise subject to having their other regulations captured by the companies that fly their flags of convenience.

America’s biggest Big Tech giants all pretend to be headquartered in Ireland (which, in turn, allows them to pretend that their profits are hovering in a state of untaxable grace far above the Irish Sea). These same companies ensured that Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner’s Office is starved of cash and resources. Big Tech argues that their Irish domicile means that anyone who wants to complain about their frequent and enthusiastic practice of wiping their asses with the text of the GDPR has to take it up with the starveling regulators of Ireland.

That may change. Max Schrems — whose advocacy gave rise to the GDPR in the first place — has dragged the tech giants in front of German regulators, who are decidedly more energetic than their Irish counterparts:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/15/out-here-everything-hurts/#noyb

The new EU tech competition laws — the DMA and DSA — aim to fix this, shoring up enforcement in a way that should end these “consent” popups. They also seek to plug the GDPR’s “legitimate purpose” loophole, which lets tech companies spy on you and sell your data without your consent, provided they claim that this is for a “legitimate purpose.”

But in the meantime, GDPR consent dialogs remain a hot mess, which is where Consent-O-Matic comes in. Consent-O-Matic automates away the tedious work of locating all the different switches you have to click before you truly opt out of consent-based tracking. This practice of requiring you to seek out multiple UI elements is often termed a “Dark Pattern”:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3313831.3376321

But while “Dark Pattern” has some utility as a term-of-art, I think that it’s best reserved for truly sneaky tactics. Most of what we call “Dark Patterns” fits comfortably in under the term “fraud.” For example, if “Opt Out of All” doesn’t opt out of all, unless you find and toggle another “I Really Mean It” box, that’s not a fiendish trick, it’s just a scam.

Whether you call this “fraud” or a “Dark Pattern,” Consent-O-Matic has historic precedent that suggests that it could really make a difference. I’m thinking here of the original browser wars, where Netscape and Internet Explorer (and others like Opera) fought for dominance on the early web.

That early web had its own crapification: the ubiquitous pop-up ad. Merely opening a page could spawn dozens of pop-ups, some of them invisible 1px-by-1px dots, others that would run away from your cursor across the screen if you tried to close them, and they’d all be tracking you and auto-playing 8-bit music.

The pop-up ad was killed by the pop-up blocker. When browsers like Mozilla and Opera started blocking pop-ups by default, users switched to them in droves. That meant that an ever-smaller proportion of web users could even see a pop-up, which meant that advertisers stopped demanding pop-ups. Publishers — who knew their readers hated pop-ups but were beholden to advertisers to keep the lights on — were finally able to convince advertisers that pop-ups were a bad idea. Why pay for ads that no one will see?

Pop-up blockers are an early example of Adversarial Interoperability, AKA Competitive Compatibility (comcom for short). That’s the practice of improving an existing product or service by making an add-on or plug in that changes how it behaves to make it more responsive to its users’ interests, without permission from the original manufacturer:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

It’s been more than 20 years since the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) tried to get tech companies to voluntarily recognize and honor their users’ privacy choices. It failed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P

Do Not Track, another attempt to do the same, did not fare much better:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track

But you know what actually worked? Tracker-blockers and ad-blockers, “the largest consumer boycott in history”:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Making it impossible to track users is of great assistance to efforts to make it illegal to track users. Tools like Consent-O-Matic change the “security economics” of crapification, by turning the consent theater of illegal cookie popups into actual, GDPR-enforceable demands by users not to be tracked:

https://doctorow.medium.com/automation-is-magic-f4c1401d1f0d

Decrapifying the web is a long, slow process. It’s not just using interoperability to restore pluralism to the web, ending the era of “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of text from the other four”:

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

It’s also using a mix of technology and regulation to fight back against deliberate crapification. Between Consent-O-Rama, Reader Mode, Kill Sticky and Cookie Remover, it’s possible to decrapify much of your daily browsing and substantially improve your life.

[Image ID: A GDPR consent dialog with a rubber stamp in the center depicting a snarling man flipping the bird.]

#pluralistic #plural system

[greentrickster]

So something good that started in my life last December was that I stumbled into a bit of luck and now have a deal with a nearby geek culture shop to sell plush mages I make. This was extremely fortuitous, because I created the design and concept back in 2017, had made about ten before forcing myself to stop, and, other than gifting one to a friend, still had them all, and was planning to find a holiday donation bin for a charity that accepted handmade stuff, because I was tired of them taking up space in my room. Like literally the only reason I still had them was because life was hectic and I kept forgetting to go check for where any local donation bins were.

This is very exciting, the owner's super nice and helped me set some stuff up so I'm selling on consignment, which means I only get paid when someone actually buys one, but I get a bigger cut of the money when they do.

My dudes, I have an income again.

It's teeny-weeny and irregular, but I have one, and, almost more importantly, a bunch of them sold during and right after the holiday rush, so I get to make more, and it's giving me something to actually do besides working on my mental issues and trying to fill my time while I gain the mental health and stability to get, you know. An actual job. I'm currently making a few more to put in the store, then I'm going to focus on making extra stock to have available for when the local anime convention (and it's stale, stale vendor's hall) arrives this spring.

Not only that, it means that I can make as many of these things as I want for now! And while it takes about a day to make one mage, I'm flexing hard on my status as a professional ADHD haver by having three or four on the go at once, but in different stages of completion. So if I feel like sewing I can one on this one, but if I want to do some pinning I can work on that one, and the third one's ready to finish stuffing and assembling whenever I feel like it, now I want to take a break to watch anime, oooo~ sewing mood again-!

Like, this is in no way I can turn this into an actual career, just because, like I said, it takes about a day to make one from scratch, going at a pace that's both productive and physically healthy for me and also, given that they're about twenty inches tall, made of primarily minky fabric, and being done by hand, that means that I am selling them for nowhere near what they're worth, because people wouldn't be willing to pay that much. Like, the minimum wage where I currently live is (a ridiculous) $7.50 an hour. If I made one of these guys in six hours, that would mean they'd need to cost $45 just to cover my time, never mind materials and the fact that this is skilled labour, and that is not the price on the tag, let alone my cut. They look deceptively simple for all the tricks and techniques that go into one (never mind the fact that minky is expensive fabric, the craft safety eyes I use are special-ordered and very good quality, and, oh yes, these little fellows are machine washable). I literally cannot make a livelihood doing this.

But, like I also said, it's giving me something creative to do that isn't just more reading, writing, and gaming. I love doing all those things, but this is a kind of physical activity that I've needed in my life, and making something physical is so different than writing, with the wonderful bonus that minky fabric is one of my favorite textures! As long as I'm strategic about my acquisition of materials, I'm not going to be losing money on this, and while it's something I think is going to end up paying dividends more in my mental health than in my wallet, I will be earning money for this. I'm getting paid to make plushies to my heart's content (or until I run out of materials for the moment) while watching anime/youtube and working on my mental health, and, for now, that's not only enough, it feels really good!

#my life #would have told you all sooner but was busy with holidays. catching plague. and going through an entire character arc in a couple weeks #my mages

[footballf1]

SPIDERRR!-Daniel Ricciardo

Summary: In which the OC (Natalie) is scared of spiders and when she stumbled into one, she screamed for her honey badger boyfriend to get it.

Warning: There might be some grammar mistakes

Type: Fluff

Natalie grumbled and shifted her head at the pillow. She wanted to sleep more but her body wouldn't let her go to sleep, for some reason.

She groaned out of frustration, but did it silently since she remembered that there was an Australian sleeping beside her.

Daniel has just gotten back home after the previous race and knowing him, he would always like to sleep in late.

She opened her eyes slowly to adjust the sunlight that was flashing at her eyes. She sat up while rubbing her eyes, to get rid of the crusty eyes. She looked beside her and saw the shirtless Daniel snoring peacefully.

She stretched her arms up before stepping off the bed. She carefully and lazily walked to the bathroom and turned on the light. She grabbed her toothbrush and squeezed out some toothpaste on the brush.

Natalie felt more awake when the minty taste of the thick cream hit her mouth and nerves. She moved the brush around her mouth and tongue.

She accidentally knocked the toothpaste over the counter top. She bent down to grab it until she saw an 8 legged bug right in front of her feet.

Her eyes widened when she realized what it was. She screamed out of terror and climbed up the sink.

"DANIIIIIIIEEEEEEELL!" She screamed out for him.

Daniel snorted awake because of her screams. He was about to fall asleep again because he thought it was a dream. "DANNNNIIII!" Until he heard her 'bloody murder' shriek.

He jumped out of the bed, feeling more awake. Along the way of running to the bathroom, Daniel accidentally tripped on something which made him fall to the floor. "Ow." He mumbled.

He got up from the floor and started limping to the bathroom. When he reached the bathroom, he was surprised to see her on the sink and she looked like she had seen a ghost

"Nat what's wrong?" He asked in a worried tone.

She pointed towards the floor where the spider is at. "That's what!" She exclaimed.

Daniel looked down on the floor to see where she was pointing out. He burst out a laughing when he saw a small spider on the floor, doing nothing but standing still like a statue.

"What are you laughing at?" She asked. "Get it." She shrieked.

"Baby...." He paused because he couldn't control his laughs. "You woke me up because of this." He said with a mixture of laughters

"Daniel, that's a tarantula!" She exclaimed.

"First of all, you're over exaggerating because that is not a tarantula." He said which made her sighed in relief. "In fact that is a common wolf spider." He added.

Natalie looked at him with horror. "How does that make it any better, Daniel?!" She exaggerated.

"Well tarantulas are fuzzy and are not scared of us because they don't give a crap about humans. While the wolf spiders are small and a bit fuzzy, they stay away from us whenever they see a human." He said calmly.

"If they stay away from us then why the hell did this one have the guts to come near me?" She asked him.

"I don't know. He's probably a brave little fellow." He shrugged.

"Will you just get it please?" She pleaded.

"Why don't you get it?" He asked. "It's not like it's gonna attack you." He added.

"You're the honey badger. You get it." She reasoned weakly.

"What does my nickname have to do about me getting a teeny-weeny spider?" He asked.

"Please Daniel you know I'm arachnophobic." She pleaded before putting on a pout.

Daniel groaned out of frustration. This was not how he wanted to wake up in the early morning. "Fine I'll go get something to catch it. Hold on." He said before walking away from the bedroom.

5 minutes later, he came back with a plastic bowl and paper. He slowly trotted to the spider while he was in some sort of attacking position. "Alright spider. I'm not gonna hurt you or anything." He paused.

"I'm here to rescue you so please just be.....cooperative." Before she knew it, Daniel put the plastic bowl over the spider in a flash. She jumped by his sudden action.

The spider reacted quickly and started squirming around the bowl. Daniel slipped in the paper under the bowl with the spider in it. He carefully stood up and was trying to balance the paper and bowl.

"WOAHH!" He yelled out while faking a fall on the spider.

She screamed again while Daniel burst out of laughter. "DANIEL JOSEPH RICCIARDO!" She said angrily. "Just get it out of here." She said through her gritted teeth; annoyed by the fact of him scaring her.

"Yes boss." He joked while walking out with the spider.

She got off the sink and continued what she was previously doing. From the mirror she saw his head popped up from the door. "Just wanted to let you know that I released it and I'm going back to sleep." He said before disappearing.

She spat out the water and wiped her mouth with the towel beside her. Natalie felt bad for waking up Daniel. She got out of the bathroom and saw him on his stomach, asleep.

She smiled and climbed onto the bed. When she laid on top of his bare back, she heard him grunt. "What now? He grumbled with his eyes still closed.

"I wanted to say thank you for saving me from that spider."

"I'm called the honey badger for a reason." He pointed out sleepily.

"Well in return..." She teased while she traced his tattoos on his arms. "Do you want to come shower with me?" She asked.

Daniel opened his eyes wide open and immediately got up. Natalie giggled when she fell down to the bed. She felt herself being pulled from her ankles, but not before she was thrown over by the shoulder.

#daniel ricciardo #daniel ricciardo fluff #f1 imagine #f1 fluff #mclaren f1 #first imagine on Tumblr #arachnophobia #spiders #please request #Daniel being a honey badger

[ofmermaidstories]

merm...bkg hunger games au....

okay so here are my initial thoughts:

1) im actually probably way too into the hunger games to be having this discussion lmfaoooo. im too into it, it’s too perfect, i love it too much. it is basically the pinnacle of all YA and i will fight literally everyone on that.

2) so with the first point in consideration, are we talking like a strict 1:1 AU? Setting it in New America/Panem? Districts with distinct specialities? Commentary about reality TV and modern entertainment entwined with like, the trauma that comes with war and trying to break free of generational curses and etc etc etc? RE: reality TV, I do think we could probably modernise that just a teeny weeny little, to include like, idk, some bullshit about how we’re always under constant surveillance and how we no longer have the time/option to be unavailable (because we’re so connected!). and since we’re like, apart of an actual fandom, maybe we could throw in some stuff about how our more privileged/sheltered audience members would engage in like, stan culture about all these dying kids, LOL. Shipping wars that ends bitterly because one half of the pairing like, idk, clubs the other to death LMAO. Real People Fanfic and the culture war that would come from that (people having a problem with RPF of the tributes bc they’re real people, but like also conveniently like… forgetting they’re real people who are being forced into a death match). would we throw in a line about Reader and/or Bakugou discovering self-insert Gamefic? lmao no wait i made myself snort, we’re absolutely keeping that LMAO. anyways im gonna cut myself off here bc otherwise i will ramble on, but that brings us to point numero-threeo—

3) i recently rewatched Battle Royale (a “random” class entered wins a yearly lottery then dumped on a remote island where they have three days to murder each other—all in the name of keep the status-quo, etc etc, also this is somehow a solution to sky-high unemployment rates etc etc etc.). if we kept the Quirks then like, you could spin it as a dystopian AU where people are fearful of quirks being too powerful, so then ya death-match children are pulled from hero classes and we make Reader end up in there accidentally or something, and oh no! they’re also quirkless (and defenceless hehe).

4) idk. i know i was like hehe i like war! but like, i don’t know how to emphasise how much i love the hunger games LMAO. and how that love sort of translates into the same fierceness i feel about BNHA, when it comes to fanfic—that the canon characters have certain inevitabilities you have to honour. just like no matter the universe, we are always going to need a Bakugou who’s centered around his friends (Deku, always, in any capacity. Kirishima, the first equal he had. Shouto, his frustrating Bestie <3), to me the hunger games works as well as it does because it’s war through the lens of relationships. Gale as the danger of unhealed anger, Peeta as choosing peace—like… that’s the magic of THG to me, and i just…… like…… what are we gonna do with the relationships, with a BNHA cast? 🥺 What would Bakugou be? Do we start with a Bakugou who’s still in Bastard Mode? Has he gone through his canon growth by the time he and Reader meet? If he has, then how was that facilitated in our new world? Did he and Deku end up in the same game? Survive together somehow? How many of their peers and friends do they lose, or does that come later on? How do we fit Reader into that dynamic naturally? the romance in THG happens through like, a need to play the game, play it up for the cameras, but it’s born out of Peeta’s very real feelings for Katniss, that started when they’re kids, and I’m not a childhood friends-to-lovers person (writing wise). The “romance” (if u can call it that) in Battle Royale is probably more culpable to what i do (vague awareness of each other/one-sided crush, grows as they prop each other up) but… idk!!! idk!!!! we could just write up Bakugou and Reader sharing a cave and making out over a festering wound but like…. idk!!! i believe in earning our kisses. 😌 show me the build up in the war-torn society first, and then maybe we can have a kiss later on, lmfaoooo.

#ofmermaidstories-asks #basically what i am saying is that i am absolutely the wrong person for this discussion LMFAOOOOOOO #because i just cannot let myself do fun sexy festering wound cave kisses—like i need a whole ass essay beforehand on the system that #got them in the cave in the first place and i just— #sometimes ur girl here doesn’t have the brain power 🥹 #‘do things for fun’ they say #that only works if you’re normal and not a massive overthinker who also happened to have a THG phase!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #OR a BR phase!!!! #i am LITERALLY staring at a copy of the BR novel right now #like!!!!!!! #i cannot do this in a lighthearted teehee manner lmfao #we go in guns blazing OR NOT AT ALL!!!

[streaminn]

Bruh, I'm so happy you like the songs. And yeah I'm sorry but Hermit Enid kinda always exits my mind not because it's not good, but because it's to angsty for me 🥲 but you're right it goes pretty well with her state of mind.

No but Three days grace is such a good band to make AMV to. I remember watching a ton of them in the anime fandoms, we would eat them up.

Also yeah, you always get the gist when I'm trying to explain what the songs make me think of, I love that.

And you're right ! Crazy was kind of a fluffy song and "she had problems with the gospel liars so she bought some fuel and then she started fires" made me literally laugh out loud, it was such a burning the Crackstone statue moment like, come on. It was a cute song ! (You know what I mean)

And to finish, while I said something about bands making good music for amv's from my teen years, there's The last of the real ones from Fall out boys. Tell me, which Enid does it fit the most ? Cause I'm torn between t&t, streamer!Enid in their senior years, but there's kinda a tiny teeny weeny bit of stalker Enid.

Totally fair with the thoughts of Hermit enid, angst ain't always everyone's cup of tea

Also Great minds think alike lost, why you think we got such amazing imagination when it comes to the songs?

Crazy is just overall so jolly despite the lyrics, definitely made me think of Wenclair when i first heard it

O Nah, the last of the real ones is definitely stalker Enid. it has the same flamboyant delusional that she'd have.

"U are the sun and I am the planets" reminds me of how Enid is aware of Tyler and xavier's crush

"Ik this whole dam city think it needs you" could be a ref to how Wednesday gets swept up in her investigation

"just tell me I'm the only one, even if it's not me" this definitely nailed it bc the stalker Enid au is one of the few aus where Wednesday's feelings isn't known to be reciprocated

#Stalker Enid au #the lost tiger #Song thoughts

[southkoreaandjapan]

Last Full Day in Korea

June 27, 2023

Today we left the egg (Seoul) - the yolk and the white - and went south to Oeam Village in the mountains. This village is still the home of many people but not much has changed in the last 500 years.

We were greeted with this amazing site - a lotus garden. The lotus is one of those plants that are 100% useful. Some parts are eaten and some are used of medicine. Today they made my eyes happy. How beautiful!

Here is what the UNESCO website says about this place.

Oeam Village, a typical rural town of Korea, is a clan village, home to the Yi family hailing from Yean. Oral traditions have it that it was about 500 years ago when people first inhabited the village site. But according to the records, the village was settled when the Yi clan moved to the site. The first person who settled in the village was Yi Sa-jong, and since his settlement, the village prospered, emerging as a major clan village for the Yean Yi family in late Joseon (1392-1910).

At the back of the village, Mt. Seolhwasan rises in the northeast and the mountain ranges encircle the village from behind. Also, the village faces Mt. Meonjeoksan in front and Mt. Bongsusan to its southwest. To the west, the village is bordered by a broad field, and a stream “Geundaegolnae” flows in between. It is the typical geographical features of a traditional rural village of Korea, having a broad field near the village.

The village was formed on the low hill of Mt. Seolhwasan. Houses are uniquely distributed along the main road, which is divided into many byroads leading inwards. The village seems to have been created sporadically corresponding to natural topographic conditions, but there is an underlaying principle in it: the village was settled along the straight line that connects Mt. Seolhwasan, the guardian mountain in the northeast, and Mt. Bongsusan in the southwest. The village is an oval shape settling in the low hill on the ranges of Mt. Seolhwasan stretching toward the southwest. The ground of the village is progressively higher toward the east and to fit this geographical condition, most houses were built facing southwest, with a few houses facing south.

Currently, there are 69 households residing in the town, and 38 of them are engaged in farming. The resident population is 192 people in total. More than half of the buildings are thatch-roofed And every year, residents thatch their roof with new straw, and the technique has been handed down by tradition in the village, a work of valuable intangible cultural heritage. All the houses in the village are walled with stones from field, in that stones in various sizes were easily found in the town. Villagers built walls in the field too by using removed stones from the field. Again, this construction is very distinctive and is another special feature of Oeam Village. Champan House and Geonjae Old House are State-designated Important Folklore Materials, and in January 2000, the entire village was designated as Folk Village by the government.

It was a lovely look at life before the condominium world that is Seoul and we had a beautiful day to meander. The pic below is a teeny weeny look at Seoul.

We were greeted by a resident in his 80s and he walked us around his village.

He began by welcoming us warmly to his village and explaining this:

These totems represent a male and female spirit that keep disease away from the village. CLEARLY! This is a Buddhist village that was once plagued with ill health - but no more.

He walked us around the village and it was striking.

Rice paddies and mountains

Homes with thatched roofs and dry stone walls - the thatch is rice straw - FYI.

Homes with more elaborate roofs too. The roof denotes the status of the villager. Below was our kind village guide's home.

Actually this is only the main house - built by his great-great grandfather. Impressive. Below is the house "furnace" if you will. The smoke from the fire is funneled under the house allowing the floors to be warm even on the coldest days - and it get COLD here with lots of snow. (We saw this method in one of the building in Gyeongbokgung Palace.)

Yong asked us what we would be looking for if we were looking to build a new home. We came up with things like good schools, near by shopping and easy access by roads. Then he told us that 500 years ago people looked for a mountain to protect them from winds and give them plenty of fresh water. They would look for arable soil and sunshine for gardens. This village fit that bill.

We had lunch in the village and while we all removed our shoes not everyone sat on the floor. Some us of were lucky enough to have chairs. Yay for our friends, Carol and Jay and Mark and me.

In another part of the village we made Gochujang sauce. Now this was the kind of cooking for dummies that I love. Add salt water and a rice sweetener that looked like honey - and ta-da!

Now we have to wait 100 days before we eat it. That is October 5 by Anson's calculation.

We ended the day's activities with a cruise down the Han River. It was the perfect event until some idiots started feeding the seagulls - and you know that NEVER ends well.

Our last Korean dinner was in a local restaurant that serves dishes typically from North Korea and included cold noodle dishes. We were all pretty game to try whatever - and it did not fail to deliver.

We learned many things about the culture including the tradition of ancestral celebration. The "rule" is that the eldest son must host a huge event for family and friends to honor 4 generations of ancestors on their designated day - the day of their death. We all know that the eldest daugher-in-law who does all the work for this event and even Yong agreed that that is true. But I still like the concept. We do indeed stand on the shoulders of the ones who came before.

The patriarchal society is alive and well, however and it is causing some issues because the complete absurdity of the "eldest son" being the heir to all - is no longer setting well with sibs. While visiting Oeam Village today we saw a house overgrown and clearly uncared for. We asked our guide and he said, the father had died and the kids were suing each other to see who should inherit the house. In the meantime, it sets - awaiting a court ruling.

Our daughter sent me that attached article. Apparently the young women have had enough of Korea’s patriarchy.  Interesting and you go girls.

Tomorrow we head to Japan. We have had a great time here in South Korea.

[chantalvdreijden]

🎼She wore an itsy bitsy, teenie weenie, yellow polka-dot bikini, that she wore for the first time today🎶 #song #music #muziek #summertime #statue #beeld #portrait #portret #woman #bathingsuit #badpak #blackandwhite #blacknwhite #bnw #bw #bws #zwartwit #monochrome #noir #lovephotography #photographer #photography #fotografie #fotograferen https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf2Fju9jV4L/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#song #music #muziek #summertime #statue #beeld #portrait #portret #woman #bathingsuit #badpak #blackandwhite #blacknwhite #bnw #bw #bws #zwartwit #monochrome #noir #lovephotography #photographer #photography #fotografie #fotograferen

[sherlockedcarmilla]

Johnlock Fluff

- a series of stand-alone fics by CarmillaCarmine   (All of the fics can be read separately and in no particular order.) I wanted all my sweet stories in one place for easy go-to when in need of fluff. Enjoy!

The Alumni Night John receives an invite for an Alumni Night but doesn’t want to face his old colleagues alone. Sherlock agrees to go with him. The night takes a turn John didn’t expect. Mature, 2.5K

Because I Care During the epidemic, John comes back home from the clinic with a fever. Gen, 7.5K

Green Becomes You Dublin is very busy on St. Patrick’s Day. And there’s only one bed in John and Sherlock’s hotel room. Fic and art collab with the NitaElwy. Teen, 5k

The Adventure of the Wedding Bands The day comes when Sherlock finally realises that it’s time he and John should have matching rings. Wedding rings. — A story of a wedding, fluff and first Pride Parade attendance. E, 17K words

The Baker Street Irregulars Sherlock keeps leaving the house in the evening without telling John where he’s going or taking him along. John decides to follow him. Gen, 2700 words

Improbable Three-year-old John would like to have someone to play with. One day a boy appears out of nowhere and they become best friends. Kidlock, Gen, 1K

I know it's fine When John meets Sherlock for the first time, his life is flipped upside down. He doesn't fall in love. He runs. Part of First Kiss (fix-it) Series, Teen, 1300 words

Take My Card Sherlock kept asking John out by way of discreet suggestions. However, John was unable to take an obvious hint even when it smacked him in the face. Part of First Kiss (fix-it) Series, Teen, 1800 words

Short Version When Sherlock reveals his “not dead” status to John, he is most pleasantly surprised by his friend’s reaction. Part of First Kiss (fix-it) Series, Teen, 1600 words

I want you Sherlock left his best friend's wedding early and John ran after him. He doesn't fall in love. He runs. Part of First Kiss (fix-it) Series, Teen, 1400 words

My friend, John Watson For the first time in his life, Sherlock follows a prompt from a meme he received from Molly. Gen, 2K

It's Been Ten Years Sherlock and John celebrate a 10 year anniversary. Gen, 1300 words

The Case of the Missing Egg Sherlock and John take on a case of a missing Fabergé egg. Gen, 1700 words

The Crispy Shepherd Sherlock and John have six weeks to kill before Moriarty’s trial. John leaves bored Sherlock in the flat only to come back to quite a surprise. Fun and fluff. Teen, 2K

The Reluctant Birthday Boy John once told Sherlock that he had everything he could ever want. So what do you give a man like that for his birthday? Gen, 600 words

Teenie Weenie Peenie  After weeks of snogging and giving Sherlock blow jobs, the moment came that John had dreaded the most; taking his trousers off in front of his lover. Until now, he'd managed to remain clothed from the waist down at all times. How would Sherlock react to John’s secret? Teen, 890 words

Smelly Coat  John decides to wash Sherlock’s smelly coat after an evening of skip-hopping. After all, what could go wrong? Gen, 1900 words

Good Day Sunshine  Sherlock forgets to put on sunscreen before venturing outside on a sunny day. Gen, 500 words

The Synesthete  When a distraught yell from his new flatmate wakes Sherlock in the middle of the night, he comes up with an idea to calm the other man down. Gen, 650 words

Touching a Sore Spot   Sherlock flirts for a case. John becomes an angry ball of possessive fury. Teen, 650 words

A Study in Deductions   John decides to take on a case without Sherlock. In the process, he finds unexpected things about Sherlock as well as himself. Gen, 1600 words

50+ SPF A summer 221B ficlet - prompt “summer”

I Love Men A summer 221B ficlet - prompt “hot”

Christmas Fluff:

The Johnlock Christmas Completely unaware, John and Sherlock drift closer to each other during the holiday season. Fluff ensues. Mature, 6.5K

Jingle Bells Sherlock refuses to take proper care of himself so John takes matters into his own hands. Gen, 700 words

From Paris, with Love Sherlock takes John to Paris during the holidays. Fluff happens. Dissonance-verse fic. Gen, 2K

Thank you for reading, kudos and comments!!! <3

My Twitter /  Ko-fi /  Patreon

#fluff #Johnlock #fic #fanfic #myfic #john x sherlock #sherlock x john #series #stand alone stories #Thank you for reading #Thanks for reblogging

[tmmyhug]

YOO mine hasn't shipped yet!! what's the quality like?

It’s great!! i got the black t shirt and it’s v soft and durable and the design is nice and vibrant ! runs a little big in sizes but that’s the status quo for me cause i’m teeny weeny. i was a little worried about shipping because i’ve heard horror stories about merch getting lost but this came faster than i expected :D

#ask #anonymous

[katzkinder]

No idea why…

But the first thought when i saw the lust pair aesthetic post https://katzkinder.tumblr.com/post/664827126371008512 was that Misono’s personal life and the way he was raised (Lust arc overall) while it made sense and was a major turning point for his character within the overall story… regardless, was just a teeny weeny bit effed up. Like, it’s honestly a miracle he came out of all of that crap (the way he was raised) the way he did (and a lot of that is because of Lily’s care and guidance, even though he’s at fault in some areas too) because Misono could’ve EASILY been way more effed up from how he was raised. There is no denying that fact.

I love how Tanaka not only presented and executed the plot and inner mechanisms of his character both in and since the lust arc (and the story overall of course) because every tragic piece of him and how it affects him makes sense.

I just woke up this morning. Rollled over to check my notifications. Come across the Lust Pair Aesthetic post… and all this above ⬆️ surges through my head but the main part that stood out looking at this aesthetic… was #1 not so much the plot of it or anything but there’s another book who’s title fits this very well - “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” (again even though the plot of the book/movie essentially does t really relate, I think the statue made me think of it?) but the wording of that title fits Misono/Mikuni upbringing very well, I think. - - - and #2 (the main thought now stuck in my head looking at the aesthetic post) we still don’t know much detail about Lily’s backstory and/or tragic past from his human life; as of right now, all the fandom has is warranted speculation. I love Tanaka’s writing style, so this isn’t a bash on their style or anything - but what if when we finally get Lily’s back story… it has some V.C. Andrews vibes? Given the inferences and speculation of what Lily could have most likely had to endure when he was human… I think a V.C. Andrews vibe would fit very very well. What do you think?

(If you don’t know V.C. Andrews, I recommend watching lifetime’s rendition of My Sweet Audrina and watching the Flower in the Attic series the 4 lifetime movies #1 - #2 - #3 - #4 (the books they’re all based on are incredible as well, but I think the vibes of how they were executed cinematically makes more sense when I think of how Lily’s tragic backstory could be revealed/executed)

Yeah… so that’s where my brain instantly went after seeing the Lust Pair Aesthetic post 😅… how’s your morning going?

Bruhhh I have been Running so much lately. Doctors' appointments and babysitting and attending my cousin's games and her band recital (and I've been getting back into painting, too! Can't wait to show y'all some of what I've done, even if it's not much ww)

And yesss, it IS fucked up! I actually relate to it a lot. From being sheltered and coddled to the point of it negatively impacting my growth as a person because my guardians were afraid of my getting hurt, to some of the more personal family circumstances, to being Terribly Short and babyfaced (I'm still taller than Misono, but I feel as if he's not going to grow much more eitherrr), I started really taking the Lust Arc apart because of how much of myself and my own life I saw in the central characters!

God I will CRY if/when we get Lily's backstory. What happened when he was human, why did he not want to live, what made him the way he is... I want to know it all! And there are so many little things about his character that kinda hint at possibilities, but the fact of the matter is? We don't know a thing outside of those little, tiny glimpses Misono saw before.

I've always heard people talk about "Flowers in the Attic" but never really looked at the book myself... I'll check those out! I think Lily would appreciate the movie recommendation himself; the man loves his films. Adds it to my ever growing list along with "Death in Venice."

Thank you so much for the ask! To tell you the truth, I started my Lust Pair aesthetic tag because I... Am working on an AU! Multiple in fact. God save me. And so far, they're my favorite pair to think about the backstory and circumstances of. The major roadblock I'm at is actually drawing the fuckers jkgkfd

Current Project list is... Very long. And then I keep adding more and more WIPs to the pile, OOF xD

#asks #anonymous #kat's mewsings #thanks for the ask nonny!!

[usergf]

@heureux4430 tagged me to do this 💕 Rules: tag 10 people you want to get to know better! Relationship status: not single Colour: sage green ? @fineliine influenced me very much Three favourite foods: DOSA !! my love my life my everything The song stuck in your head: itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini The last thing I googled: flower therapy pubmed Time: 9:38 Dream trip: Sweden Anything I really want now: a really good fucking hug like someone hold me please

Tagging everyone who sees this now !

[shijiujun]

[ENG] History3: Trapped Novel - Chapter Nine

Translation Masterpost can be found here

Disclaimer: Translations are entirely mine - these are not official translations and some phrases have been changed for better English interpretation so you’ll definitely see better/different translations elsewhere. Also keeping in mind when we translated this we aren’t exactly thinking about the style of writing and this translation is as close to the novel as we can make it XD So yes, some parts may be a little awkward to read. And yes some teeny weeny details and words may not turn up in the translation because the Chi to Eng mind acrobatics didn’t work out. If you see asterisks, scroll all the way to the bottom for notes!

Full chapter below the cut

Note: JFC I AM FINALLY DONE WITH THIS DAMN THING, BYE H3T NOVEL CRIES I DONT WANT TO BE PLAGUED BY THIS ANYMORE HAHAHA - Also give the masterpost a few hours, I need to update the new links with my new username ARGH - History3:Trapped novel translations are now COMPLETED (with the exception of terrible sex scenes).

This was a muchhhh longer chapter than usual (more than 30 pages) + gosh I have a lot of things to say about the sex scenes because they’re just totally not logical but never mind I’m glad to like be done with this hahaha. It’s dragged on for long enough!

---

Chapter Nine

Inside the abandoned warehouse

Chen Wen Hao and Tang Yi have their guns trained on each other, and at the same time, they are staring at Shao Fei in shock, who just said ‘Chen Wen Hao is your father’.

“Don’t panic, the evidence is in my pocket.”

Shao Fei holds up both his hands, and then slowly reaches into the pocket of his jacket with one, pulling out two pieces of paper folded together, and looks at Tang Yi and Chen Wen Hao.

“One of these is the birth certificate from the hospital, and the other is the note you wrote to Li Zhen-jie.”

Chen Wen Hao’s expression morphs entirely, and then he turns to his henchmen and says, “All of you go outside and wait for me.”

The men guarding Chen Wen Hao’s safety put down their guns and then head outside to the open space outside of the warehouse.

“The both of you put down your guns first, so you won’t regret in case you misfire, and then listen to me finish speaking, okay?”

Both men in confrontation with each other exchange looks, and then keep their weapons at the same time.

Shao Fei heaves a sigh of relief, and continues explaining, “I found these two things in Li Zhen-jie’s belongings, and I also went to Tang Yi’s adoptive father to confirm it. Tang Yi, you were born on 21st October 1990, and Chen Wen Hao, you began serving your sentence in February 1990, and when Li Zhen-jie went to visit you, the date was 17th May 1990.”

Realising what this means, Chen Wen Hao’s eyes go wide, and he mumbles, “It cannot be… this is impossible… Li Zhen told me she aborted our child, so it can’t be…”

In the third month of pregnancy, the mother will begin to feel nauseous and most due dates are calculated 266 days after confirmation of the pregnancy date, that means if Li Li Zhen was already pregnant before Chen Wen Hao entered prison, then the expected due date indeed would have fallen somewhere in October.

Chen Wen Hao rushes over suddenly, gripping at Shao Fei’s shirt collar tight, “Are you using this to make me spare Tang Yi because you knew Li Zhen visited me in jail before?”

Shao Fei is almost entirely breathless from the tight grip, but still continues with his answer, the closest thing to the truth after piecing all the clues together, “I don’t know what Li Zhen-jie said to you in jail when she met you, all I know is that after she visited you, she applied for a year long break, and this is unusual for a workaholic like her.”

“And after she returned to her post, she never once applied for long leaves and did not get married either, so there’s only one possibility left. Tang Yi, is yours and Li Zhen-jie’s son.”

“Son… I have a son… a son…” Chen Wen Hao repeats dumbly, loosening his grip on Shao Fei’s shirt collar.

As if juxtaposing Chen Wen Hao’s helplessness at this moment, Tang Yi seems as cold and calm as he always is, “So what if this is true?”

“Tang Yi, Li Zhen-jie may not be a good mother, but she was loving you in her own way. When you ran away from home when you were 12, she immediately went South to search for you, but still lost all clues of where you went.”

Tang Yi’s lips curve up in a sneer, “I only have three family members in this life. My adoptive mother, Tang-ye and Hong Ye. Everyone else are unrelated strangers to me.”

“Tang Yi…” Shao Fei softly calls his name, his heart aching as he looks at Tang Yi’s expression, trying to suppress the pain.

“Tang-ye is the most important person in my life, he is my father… and you, you’re only a murderer who took him away from my side!”

He says the word ‘murderer’ through gritted teeth, slides his gun out from his waist, and points it at the murderer he managed to draw out after four years. Seeing this, Shao Fei immediately puts himself in front of the gun.

“No, I didn’t kill him. I didn’t.”

Chen Wen Hao has not yet calmed from the emotions of guilt he is feeling, and then he looks at his son who’s pointing a gun at him, shocked.

“You’re lying!” Tang Yi looks at the man in front of him angrily. “I remember your face very clearly, you’re the one who killed Tang-ye, it’s you!”

“It’s true that I was there to look for Tang Guo Dong, because I wanted to question him, to ask him why he had to sabotage me like this? But I didn’t kill him. When I reached the scene I only saw him pass something to Li Zhen, and then there were two gunshots, and they fell to the ground, their blood spilling out…”

Chen Wen Hao has his face in his hands, filled with guilt and anguish.

“If you’re not the murderer then why are you trying to have me silenced? Why did you bring a gun there?”

“I’d only just witnessed them being shot and then I saw you, if it you were me, wouldn’t you take your gun out to defend yourself? As for that gun… yes, I wanted to kill him. These twenty years, I hanged on because of my hatred for Tang Guo Dong, and now you’re telling me, the person that I’ve wanted revenge on is not Tang Guo Dong’s bastard son, but my son? I don’t even know who I should vent my hatred on now, why did my life turn into this?”

“Are you done?” Tang Yi immediately unlocking the safety on his gun, and then to Shao Fei who is blocking his way, he snarls, “Get out of the way!”

The person in front of him does not move, however, raising his chin instead and staring at Tang Yi head-on, “If the murderer really is Chen Wen Hao, then why would he have stayed put after he killed them? Besides, even if he did have a reason to kill Tang Guo Dong, he definitely wouldn’t have killed Li Zhen-jie.”

“…”

At the flawless argument, even through his anger, Tang Yi finds himself frozen to the spot, before he finally lets his right hand, which is holding onto the gun, fall back to his side.

“Chen Wen Hao, I’m not taking your life (now), and when I find evidence to prove that you are the murderer, I will kill you myself!”

Once he’s done, he turns and leaves.

“Tang Yi!”

Shao Fei quickly chases after him, and attempts to hug him from the back to calm down the man whose emotions are teetering on the edge of a breakdown, but the other shakes him off, hard.

“Meng Shao Fei! You know how long I have been waiting for this day, why did you stop me? Why?”

“Because he’s not the murderer.”

“You!”

With his raised arm, the fist that is about to descend is retracted at the last moment, and instead lands heavily on the car engine’s top, the sound deafening. He then pushes away the Shao Fei who stopped him repeatedly previously, sitting in the driver’s seat and stepping on the accelerator, leaving the long-time abandoned warehouse at high speeds.

“Tang Yi…”

Shao Fei follows after him shakily, and can only watch the other drive away, standing in the same spot.

Tang household

The door is slowly pushed open to reveal a room shrouded in darkness. A man sits unmoving like a statue at the end of the bed, and with an aching heart, Shao Fei walks over, opening his arms to embrace the angry and anguished Tang Yi.

“I’m sorry… I know it’s hard for you to accept this…”

This is why when he discovered the truth, he was hesitant, because the truth would hurt the person he cares about the most.

“I don’t care if Chen Wen Hao is my biological father or not, only Tang-ye is the most important person in my life.”

“I know, so all the more we need to find the real murderer, right? Ah-“

Tang Yi pulls Shao Fei onto the bed with force, using his firm chest to cover Shao Fei’s back.

“If you don’t want this, push me away.”

The hot puff of breath coming straight from his throat comes into contact with a spot behind Shao Fei’s ear, and this is the last chance he’s giving his partner to flee from him.

Shao Fei is pressed face first on the bed, and he can even feel the other’s hardness at his butt, “I’m drenched in sweat all over, how about you let me go take a shower first… mmn…”

He’s flipped over and with his face turned up, Shao Fei looks at Tang Yi in a room that is not illuminated by any lights except for the moonlight.

Their breaths become increasingly harsh, and through their tightly pressed bodies, they can feel the other’s breaths and heartbeats with every rise of their chests.

Tang Yi supports his weight with a hand against the bed, and looks at the person lying down, “Push me away, or shall I continue? You pick one.”

The ends of Shao Fei’s mouth curve, and then he reaches up to grip at the man’s shirt, tugging him downwards until he’s right in front of him.

He answers, “Continue.”

—

“Tang Yi…”

Their tightly pressed lips slide across each other’s, the dryness turning wet with the saliva coming from the sides of the mouths, and Shao Fei never once realised that he had such an intense thirst for making love.

But perhaps he was wrong, because the other person wasn’t the person meant for him, and just like before, he never thought that one day, he would fall in love with another man. A man who’s built exactly like him.

“Sss… ha….”

Deeply inhaling after exhaling the carbon dioxide in the lobes of his lungs through the gaps between his teeth, he emits a sound left to everyone’s imaginations.

Tang Yi loosens the hands cupped around the sides of Shao Fei’s face, and gazes deeply at the eyes which have chased after him for the past four years, unwilling to give up.

“What’re you looking at me for?”

Shao Fei wants to flee, and yet cannot help but fall into himself that he sees (reflected) in Tang Yi’s eyes. How contradictory. Is this what loving someone else is like? It’s like holding a raw egg in the palm of his hands, afraid of losing grip if he holds on too lightly, but also afraid to crush it if he holds on too tightly. His heart is just like a dandelion floating in the air. It flies with the breeze from time to time, and lands without the help of the wind.

“Thankfully, I didn’t kill you then.”

He does not deny that there were a few times, Tang Yi wanted to make the cumbersome thing that was Shao Fei disappear with the simplest but also most violent way, and he is thankful to the him who decided to change his mind, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to have Meng Shao Fei in the future. At this moment, this is a Meng Shao Fei he cannot bear to let go.

Shao Fei’s mouth curves in a smile, and he compliments himself, “What a pity it would have been to kill me, you would have one less person to argue with you, and no one would point out your flaws right in your face, like I do!”

Tang Yi once again kisses the mouth that is still moving, but it’s different this time as the kiss is deeper, hotter.

“Hmm… Tang… Tang Yi…”

The tongue that slid into his mouth is exploring every inch and sensitive crevice, making sure that Shao Fei is filled with his own scent inside and out.

His competitive spirit is piqued, and Shao Fei unceremoniously returns the favour with equal fervour. His hands reach out towards Tang Yi’s back, and he tightens his hold behind the other’s neck. Pushing the tongue that’s marking its territory inside his mouth back into Tang Yi’s own mouth, he draws out the other man’s desire more passionately.

“Hnn…”

A satisfied moan sounds from his throat, akin to the purrs of a large-sized cat.

Changing the direction of their kiss endlessly, they don’t stop until they slowly run out of breath. Tang Yi’s smile is indulgent, his thumb swiping at the saliva stained on Shao Fei’s lips.

“I’ve underestimated you after all.”

Thinking that Tang Yi is praising the way he took initiative in the kiss earlier, Shao Fei smugly answers, “This is nothing, I’m like this, once I’ve decided on something, I definitely will get it.”

“No, what I mean is, I definitely underestimated you-“

Tang Yi grabs the wrist of the other’s dominant right hand and guides it to the lower half of his body until Shao Fei’s palm is pressed against the part of his body which has already hardened in reaction, before answering fully.

“-how much you tempt me.”

“…”

Because of this, Shao Fei’s ears turn red immediately, obviously visible on both sides of his face.

“What about you?”

“Don’t, don’t say anymore!”

He immediately curls backwards but is unable to avoid the palm that is already pressed against that spot between his legs, separated by the material of his light blue denim jeans. On the already hardened spot, Tang Yi rubs, his hand moving up and down.

“You’re hard too.”

Tang Yi’s tone reveals delight as he says this. Knowing that it is not only just his one-sided attraction to the man, Tang Yi grabs onto the hardened member under Shao Fei’s pants with pride, feeling Shao Fei’s thirst for him and also coming clean with how much he wants Shao Fei.

“Of course, it’d be weird if I wasn’t hard from our intense kiss earlier.”

Shao Fei turns his face away out of embarrassment at having his cock caressed like this under his jeans, but ends up revealing his red ears to Tang Yi. As a predator, just like a large feline creature, Tang Yi naturally is not willing to miss out on this opportunity, and so he opens his mouth and with his sharp teeth, he targets Shao Fei’s left ear, and bites down.

“A-hah!” Shao Fei startles at the pain, inadvertently making a pornographic sound.

A tongue delves into Shao Fei’s sensitive ear, and the wet sounds as Tang Yi licks at his skin causes his member to fully harden.

“Tang… Tang Yi…”

“Hmm?”

Tang Yi responds to the other’s soft call in a deep, nasal tone lazily, his sharp teeth rubbing against the soft spots of Shao Fei’s ear. This thrill, which he both anticipates and is afraid of, makes Shao Fei’s body shudder again and again.

“You… can’t be…” he swallows, then asks, testing the waters, “…thinking of topping me, can you?”

Sexual intercourse between two men means that one of them has to be on the receiving end, unlike sex between a male and a female, where the male is always the one driving the desire of the other.

“If not? You want to top me?” Tang Yi asks, laughing as he frees Shao Fei’s left ear from his teeth, and turning Shao Fei’s face towards himself.

“Who said that I must definitely be under you? I can-“

“Shh,” Tang Yi says, his eyes curved as he puts up a finger to Shao Fei’s lips.

“Of course I’ll be topping you, because I began loving you way before your confession on the hospital rooftop.”

“When?”

“The abandoned hut in the mountains, do you remember? The things you said to me.”

“Tang Yi, you genuinely want to leave the underworld and that’s why you’re trying to reform, right?”

“I’m using this as a ruse and pretending to go legal, but in actual fact I am-“

“My bad, I was too full of myself to just think you were like that… Tang Yi, I’m sorry!”

“…”

“Hey, I’ve already said so much, you should at least give me a response?”

“This is the first time I’ve seen a monkey capable of reflecting on himself.”

“Hey! Who’re you calling a monkey? I’m telling you, even if you are sincere in wanting to reform I will still be watching you. As long as you use any illegal methods, I will still arrest you and throw you into jail!”

“You’ll keep watching me?”

“Yes! Watching you! Using both my eyes to watch you!”

“Okay, then I’ll let you always, always, always watch me.”

“From then on, I realised that when I look at you, I experience a different kind of emotion.”

It was just that at that time, he still did not understand that this was a sign of a budding love quietly planting itself his heart.

“It was then,” Shao Fei looks at Tang Yi in disbelief.

He thought he was fated for a rejection after having loved Tang Yi first, and in the end, the person who fell in love first was actually Tang Yi.

“Okay! I admit defeat, I’ll let you top me.”

There is no winning or losing in love, there is only whether he is willing or not. And he is both willing and accepting of this.

“Don’t worry and give yourself to me, I definitely won’t disappoint you with my skills.”

—

“Ah…. Hah….”

Shao Fei sits at the head of the Super King bed, biting at his bottom as he watches Tang Yi, who has his face buried in the lower half of his body. The man is like a devout follower, crouching between his separated legs, which have long been divested of his jeans and underwear, thrown to the floor next to the bed. Just like how they do it in dramas, whenever sex happens, the floor is always littered with clothing items.

“If you’re uncomfortable, remember to tell me.”

After the reminder, Tang Yi once again buries his head between Shao Fei’s legs, gripping onto his upright member and using his tongue to lick at the sensitive head.

“Ahah…” Shao Fei opens his mouth and inhales at this.

He’s never had a girlfriend and could only ever use both his hands to satisfy his desires. Even though he has seen this image thousands of times, he has only been able to see this on several unsavoury sites. Who knew that when he is surrounded by someone’s mouth, the feeling would be this pleasurable. Being licked by a wet tongue triumphs over the satisfaction he feels when he masturbates by hand.

“Tang… Tang Yi…”

He can only call the other’s name repeatedly, just like a child who has just learnt to speak, his mind going increasingly hot, speechless.

“Hnn, mnn-hmm…”

Tang Yi retracts his tongue and then swallows the hard organ whole. Although Shao Fei’s size is not huge, it still fills up every crevice of his mouth.

“Ahah… oh god… oh god…”

His hardened member is suddenly engulfed by a hot and wet place and as it ventures deeper and deeper into the mouth, and because of Tang Yi’s gag reflex leading to the uncontrollable contractions of the throat, his red tip is being tightly squeezed. The pleasure rushes up suddenly from his groin, and he almost has an out-of-body experience from this.

His ten fingers are curled up in Tang Yi’s hair; he wants to push away the head that is making repeated bobbing motions, but is also unable to resist pressing the back of Tang Yi’s head forward whenever he moves downwards, all to get further into the deeper parts of his mouth.

The pressure on the back of Tang Yi’s head is too forceful, but Tang Yi resists his gag reflex from having this hard cock down his throat with only a furrow of his brows, as he continues to draw out Shao Fei’s pleasure.

“Ah… Ahah… Ahah….”

Not enough, it’s not enough!

He wants more, he wants it deeper, he wants to feel even greater pleasure!

His brain and loud thoughts drive Shao Fei’s body to lift up his waist and send his member into the deepest part of Tang Yi’s throat as he presses on the back of the other’s head.

“Mmhm-“

“Ahah… ahah… ah-“

The lines between Shao Fei’s eyebrows deepen as he gradually loses control over his movements. Tang Yi does not stop Shao Fei’s almost-violent motions until Shao Fei loses himself entirely in a thrust and shouts, a thick liquid spilling into his mouth.

Finally spent, his raised hips naturally drop back onto the bed in its original position, and the movement has his softened member sliding out of Tang Yi’s mouth after his release.

Tang Yi turns over, opening his mouth and coughing incessantly to expel the mixture of cum and saliva lodged deep in the back of his throat. It drips onto the floor next to he bed, sliding down Tang Yi’s mouth and jaw.

“Tang Yi! Tang Yi are you okay?”

After Shao Fei calms his harsh breaths, he finally realises how despicable his earlier actions were and immediately sits up. Feeling guilty, his arm goes around Tang Yi’s shoulder as he looks at the man he loves, hurting for him.

“Why didn’t you stop me?”

Tang Yi lifts his left arm and wipes away the traces of Shao Fei’s release left on his mouth and jaw, then seriously says, “As long as it’s something you want to do, I will not stop you.”

It doesn’t matter if it was Shao Fei’s relentless chase throughout the past four years, or his almost violent actions during sex.

“You! Damn it!”

Tightly clenched fists strike against the soft bed, and his heart lurches, biting at his lower lip. Then, Shao Fei hooks his hands around Tang Yi’s neck as they fall backwards, hard.

The bed makes a twinge of protest at the force of their weights.

Tang Yi stares at Shao Fei who’s trapped under him, waiting for the other to tell him why he’s acting like that.

“Tang Yi you listen to me! No matter how much I say it hurts later, you’re not allowed to stop. I want to use everything I have, and love you fully!”

The ends of Tang Yi’s mouth curve upwards, and then seductively he says, “If you dare to seduce me, then you must be responsible for putting out the fire.”

“Who’s scared of who? At most I will just ask for leave from the station tomorrow!”

“Meng Shao Fei…”

“What?”

“Remember to call in sick for a few more days.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m very certain that when you’re able to leave this bed, it’ll be at least two days later.”

“Fuck! Mmm-hmm-“

Tang Yi, I regret it already! Let me go!

Tang Yi!

—

“Remove your hands!” Tang Yi orders, glaring at Shao Fei who is using his hands to cover his face.

“I don’t want… it’s… hah…. it’s so embarrassing…”

His ankles are caught in Tang Yi’s hands, his legs spread wide and his butt lifted up as Tang Yi’s cock forcefully thrusts inwards, emitting wet sounds. Because this position allows him to clearly see this secret spot, a spot which his fingers have never come into contact with in the past 30 years, and yet it is this very same spot that is being driven hard into repeatedly by another man’s hardened cock.

“Ah… ah…. Tang Yi… you… don’t…. you’re too much… a…hah…”

Damn it! How is this guy’s stamina so good?

“Remove your hands!” Tang Yi frowns.

He likes seeing the way Shao Fei’s face is flushed red because of him, the expression he’s making as he is in trapped the depths of lovemaking, out of control.

“Ah-ah!”

Another deep thrust and Shao Fei cries out even louder than before.

“Meng Shao Fei!”

He warns in a low growl. On this planet, it is only this person who would dare to oppose him twice in a row.

“Ahah… jerk… Tang Yi you’re a fucking jerk-“

Shao Fei removes his hands from his face, and with what he thinks is a fierce gaze, he glares at the man who’s thrusting into his body. Tang Yi licks at the corner of his mouth and smiles, satisfied, “It’s a really nice expression, why would you hide it?”

His hips are aching and his legs hurt from the intense workout, and Shao Fei doesn’t know that what he thinks is a powerful frightening expression, looks like a tiny cat with its claws out to Tang Yi. Cute, and it makes Tang Yi want to bite him, hard. And so he does as he wishes, loosening the hold he has around Shao Fei’s ankles, letting both of Shao Fei’s legs fall back onto the bed, and then he lowers his body and bites hard on Shao Fei’s left nipple.

“Hmm… you… you bit me!!”

“Only you, Meng Shao Fei, would dare to let me repeat the same instruction thrice.”

With both hands on each side of Shao Fei’s waist, and different from the heavy and intense thrusts from earlier, Tang Yi settles into a slower rhythm. In this tightly filled channel, Tang Yi’s cock is well lubricated with the help of pre-cum left inside, and with the tip of his alarmingly-sized member, he unceremoniously strikes against Shao Fei’s prostate.

He drives Shao Fei’s pleasure towards the peak again and again, but before he can truly reach it, Tang Yi would retreat. Shao Fei, who is pressed under him, is just like that rock which is endlessly pushed by Hercules in Greek mythology as he is unable to obtain the highest pleasure from this.

“Hah… hah-ah… Tang Yi you… you… purposely… ha-ah, you purposely-“

“It’s so difficult to serve Officer Meng. If I fuck you too hard, you say you’re embarrassed, and now that I’m fucking you slowly, you say it’s not enough. Unless… this body, instead of me treating it gently, you wish for me to torture you mercilessly?”

“Shut… shut up…”

Absolutely not intending to admit that he does indeed want to be fucked hard, into his deepest parts, Shao Fei is almost driven insane by this slow friction. Biting at his lips and staring at the evil man, he curses him in the back of his mind, and then suddenly hugs his arms around Tang Yi’s neck, using a grappling technique to hook his legs behind Tang Yi’s back.

Tang Yi squints, looking at Shao Fei, who has attacked him with such a move.

“Damn it! Since you won’t move, I’ll move!”

With that said, he lifts his butt upwards and takes the initiative to ride Tang Yi’s cock with his soft entrance. Although it’s very tiring and almost impossible for him, it at least makes him feel good.

“Ha… ah…. ah…..”

Using his hole to rub against the hard member, Shao Fei finally finds the uncomfortable sensation being alleviated. But… it’s not enough…

“Ah-ah… Tang Yi… help me… hurry up and help me… It’s not… enough like this… ah…hah… it’s not enough….”

“Beg me.”

“I beg you, I beg…”

“Beg me to fuck you?”

“Yes… I can’t, I can’t take it anymore, hurry…. hurry up and fuck me, fuck me hard, ah-ah…”

Shao Fei shakes his head, scattering the hair strands on his forehead, stuck there by sweat.

Finally hearing the other man’s initiative, his hands lock around Shao Fei’s waist, and then Tang Yi thrusts heavily into the spot that will make Shao Fei cry out the loudest.

—

Having completed their intense lovemaking, both men lie on the bed on their sides facing each other.

“I can’t, I’m going to sleep first, goodnight,” Shao Fei yawns, and then shuts his eyes.

“Sleep then! Goodnight.”

Tang Yi looks at his lover’s face, and recalls what Tang-ye said to him before…

“Xiao Tang, one of these days there’ll be that person that will make you understand what a marvellous feeling it is to live a simple and normal life.”

At that time, he didn’t believe Lao Tang’s words at all. To him, being normal means allowing oneself to be bullied, and he does not want to be bullied anymore. Thus, he needs to become stronger, until no one dares to hinder his way and stop him from doing what he wants to do.

“Tang Yi! I’m chasing you for life!”

But there is indeed one such person, who stumbled his way into his tightly guarded heart, who said this to him standing on the hospital’s rooftop as he pointed at him.

“Tang Yi.”

“Hmm?”

“Can you give me a wish?”

“Okay.”

“I wish that I will be at your side for every birthday from now on, and with me around, you’ll no longer be alone.”

He thought it would be a lonely birthday, but instead he received a cake that made him so touched, a cake made personally by Shao Fei, even though it didn’t look very nice. And…

The third birthday wish, promising the rest of his life to Tang Yi.

“Lao Tang, I finally believe in what you said.”

Tang Yi’s mouth curves in a faint smile. He caresses at Shao Fei’s lips with his finger, and repeats what he said told Shao Fei before…

“Meng Shao Fei, you made my life so different. You made me experience warmth again, so I hope you live on well, for my sake.”

“Also, I love you. I really, really, love you.”

At a riverbank

“Why did you arrange to meet?” Yan Zheng Qiang asks, his back facing another person who is approaching from behind him.

“I just wanted to tell Sir that my previous mission is over.”

The man with red hair responds to the other person standing at the riverbank with a seemingly harmless smile on his face.  Yan Zheng Qiang turns, and considers Jack, who has delivered a USB into his hands.

“This includes all of Xing Tian Meng’s information, and also what you care about the most, Chen Wen Hao’s current list of deals and channels.”

“The information has been verified?”

“Of course.”

“You’re as good as expected, it’s not a waste of the station to hire you at high costs.”

Jack smiles and accepts the other’s compliment, then says, “Since this mission is already over, let’s talk about our next one, I believe Interpol will be very interested in this.”

“I’m listening.”

“Chen Wen Hao’s actual battle place, a complete set of information from Cambodia.”

Yan Zheng Qiang’s eyes narrows as he looks at Jack in disbelief, “These few years, despite having worked with the Cambodian government, we have been unable to penetrate this drug channel. Chen Wen Hao has planned everything well and has corrupted both the good and bad in the region, just you alone, you’ll be able to reach in?”

“If it’s just me, of course I wouldn’t have any solution, but it’s a different matter altogether if Chen Wen Hao personally invites me in.”

“For a mercenary who does as he’s paid, you’re actually giving up the interests laid out before your eyes?”

Jack shrugs and smiles, “It can’t be helped. Who asked me to have a liking for thrilling challenges, and I get more intrigued by things that are more difficult to obtain. Don’t worry, since I have taken the initiative to cooperate on this, the price is negotiable, as long as you deal with Xing Tian Meng for me, I will be able to help you infiltrate this channel. How’s that, are we good on this deal? Or not?”

Yan Zheng Qiang thinks about this for a bit, and then reaches out with his right hand, “Okay, we will be responsible for dealing with the aftermath of your leaving Xing Tian Meng, and I hope you will be able to give us more information of the drug trafficking deals in Southeast Asia.

Jack returns the handshake, and smiles, “No problem, sir, may our cooperation be pleasant.”

—

“If the murderer from four years ago is not Chen Wen Hao, then who is it?” Zhao Zi mumbles to himself dejectedly as he walks on the road, having just left work at the station.

“Shorty, is there gold on the floor? Aren’t you afraid of hitting something if you walk with your head down like that?”

Having just looked up, he sees Jack squatting at his doorstep, and who knows how long he has been waiting here?

“Why’re you here?”

Jack stands up, pinching at the other’s cheek, and teases, “I wanted to see you, so I came.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I don’t have the mood to joke with you today.”

“I’m very serious, shorty…” Jack loosens the grip he has on the other’s cheek and his tone is suddenly somber, “if I can’t come and see you for a period of time, will you miss me?”

Frightened, Zhao Zi’s eyes go wide as he looks about his surroundings anxiously, “What did you do? Was it something illegal?”

“I can’t say and I don’t want to implicate you in this,” Jack shakes his head, his mouth curving up in a forced smile.

At this, Zhao Zi is even more certain that Jack has done something bad that he can be arrested for, and immediately takes out his keys to open the door without paying the person next to him any mind.

“You haven’t answered my question from earlier-“

Jack has only just opened his mouth and is immediately dragged into the house, the other covering his mouth, and as they walk, Zhao Zi says in a low voice, “Hey! Speak softer, what if you’re found out by someone else? Damn it, you still dare to come to me after having done something illegal, did you forget that I’m a police officer, and all my colleagues are policer officers? I can let you hide for a night, but tomorrow you have to leave first thing in the morning.”

“Pfft!!!”

Jack pulls down the palm covering his mouth and with a tug, he brings the man into his embrace and kisses at his cheek.

“Hurry up and answer me. If i left, would you miss me? And do you like me or not?”

Zhao Zi does not reply, and quietly closes the door with reddened ears.

Police station rooftop

Shi Da Pao sits on the rooftop of the station by himself, his mouth biting at a cigarette as he stares at the moon-less sky. Around his feet on the ground, several cigarette butts lay, and it’s apparent that he has been sitting here for a while now.

“Whoo…”

Another heavy exhale of white smoke leaves his mouth.

The wallet he has between his fingertips holds a photo of his daughter when she was younger, and every time he was tired at work he would open his wallet and look at it a few times, thinking about how he would be able to see her run to him happily when he get home, and with her arms raised, she would shout, “Daddy, a hug!”

No matter how much pressure he was under, everything was easily forgotten. His daughter is his power bank, always giving him power which is full of love and hope.

“Xiao Ya… Daddy is sorry, he is sorry…”

On the protective plastic cover over the photo, teardrops continue to fall one after the other.

He then wipes away the teardrops on the plastic film and shuts the wallet with the photo inside, and then throws the last cigarette onto the ground. He gets to his feet and uses the bottom of his shoe to stamp out the cigarette and then leaves the rooftop as a cool breeze blows over him.

He heads downstairs and walks into the floor with the label ‘Inspections Team’.

Tang household

“Good, good morning.”

Finally having the strength to leave the bed, Shao Fei sees Tang Yi who is already preparing breakfast when he walks into the kitchen, and immediately shifts his gaze, greeting Tang Yi awkwardly.

“Are you still okay?”

Tang Yi looks up and sees the other person who has one hand pressed at his waist as he pulls a chair at the dining table back and sits down, and Tang Yi’s mouth curves upwards.

“Great, I’m great, I’m totally reinvigorated and filled with energy- sss….”

Wanting to pretend that everything is fine, Shao Fei has only just straightened his back when that spot begins to throb, after having been put through the grinder the previous night.

“Officer Meng’s stamina is not bad.”

“Of course.”

“Then next time I don’t have to be considerate towards your body, and can do it until I’m satisfied.”

“What? You did it twice yesterday and you’re still not satisfied?”

With a red face, Shao Fei looks at the Xing Tian Meng leader in alarm, who after doing so many things to him, could not only carry him to the bathroom to clean him up, but also wake up bright and early in the morning to make breakfast.

Tang Yi’s smile deepens as he places the already made breakfast in front of his lover, and then opens the fridge to take out a coke, placing it on the table. Then, he pulls out a chair and sits down opposite Shao Fei.

“Tang Yi…”

Shao Fei observes the other’s reaction, and after hesitating for quite a while, he opens his mouth finally, “If you find the murderer before me, please hand him over to me, and don’t put me in a difficult position between my relationship and duty to my profession.”

If Tang Yi kills someone, then he will be a criminal who must face the punishment of law, and as a police officer enforcing said laws, Shao Fei will have to arrest him.

Tang Yi looks up and watches this man, who aside from his adoptive mother, Tang-ye and Hong Ye, is the fourth person whose life is more important than his own, and changes the topic, “Head to work after you’re done eating!”

“Tang Yi…”

Shao Fei wants to try and persuade him again, but he’s interrupted by a Jack who has just walked into the kitchen.

“Boss, we caught He Hang.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”

Tang Yi, in the moment he gets up and leaves the table, is immediately caught by the man seated opposite him.

“Leave it to the police!”

Looking at the other’s determined gaze, Tang Yi sighs, and removing Shao Fei’s hand, he says, “All i can promise you is to send him to you while he’s alive.”

“…”

Shao Fei watches as Jack and Tang Yi leave together, and then the phone he has in his pocket rings. The moment he picks up, he hears Zhao Zi’s panicked and rushed voice.

“Zhao Zi what is it? What? You said laoda turned himself in at the inspections team?”

Investigative Team Three

“Zhao Zi be clear, what do you mean by laoda turning himself in to the inspections team?”

Shao Fei asks Zhao Zi who is waiting at the door once he sees him, after having rushed from Tang Yi’s house back to the team with his foot stepping aggressively on the accelerator on his way back.

“I’m not sure either, but Jun Wei went to ask, and it seems like laoda admitted that he was secretly involved in the resale of drugs back to the underworld.”

“How is that possible? Why would laoda do that? What’s the motive? What motive does he have?”

“Could it have something to do with Xiao Ya’s surgery give years ago?”

After Zhao Zi says this, everyone descends into silence, and only Yu Qi asks, confused.

“What happened to Xiao Ya, what surgery?”

Zhao Zi looks at his junior and explains what happened five years ago, ‘You only joined the team last year so you don’t know, but Xiao Ya was really sick last time, and what was it…”

“Leukaemia,” Shao Fei continues where Zhao Zi left off. “At that time laoda was almost driven insane from desperation, and there were no matching bone marrows locally. Everyone on the team helped to check if they were matches, but none of us were suitable.”

Standing at the side, Jun Wei sighs, “After finding one for a year, just when everyone thought there was no hope left, laoda suddenly found a matching bone marrow from some other channel, and that’s how he saved Xiao Ya.”

“Could it be that laoda resold the drugs to the underworld because he needed the money to save Xiao Ya?”

Everyone’s expression is somber, silently agreeing with their junior’s deduction.

Then, the phone on the table rings, and Jun Wei rushes over to pick it up, but his face falls when he hears what the latest new update is.

“What is it?”

Jun Wei looks at Shao Fei who has walked over, and answers, “Top brass wants to open a large scale internal investigation, and that another member from the team is involved in the case.”

“Who?”

“Ah Zhi.”

Everyone immediately turns to look at the seat that originally belongs to Zhou Guan Zhi, and Shao Fei becomes uneasy.

“Zhao Zi, where’s Ah Zhi?”

“I haven’t seen him from just now onwards.”

“Go with me to find him at his house.”

“Okay.”

Shao Fei rushes out quickly after finishing what he said, and Zhao Zi swiftly follows, one hand clutched tight around his phone. Seeing her seniors leave so hurriedly, Yu Qi asks Jun Wei, dumbfounded, “First it’s laoda, and then it’s Ah Zhi-ge. We are police officers, right? Our job is to uphold justice, and go after criminals, right? Then why…”

The woman’s eyes go red and she is unable to say anymore. Jun Wei pats at her shoulder with a sigh, unsure how he can reassure the other as well.

Private club, inside a room

“I didn’t think you would come and beg me,” Si He Hui’s leader looks at the bills piled on the table in front of him and says, sarcastic.

Zhou Guan Zhi looks at Lao Ke, his palms sweating, “Ke-san, I know you have contacts, anywhere in Southeast Asia is fine, all I ask is that I am able to leave here as soon as possible.”

“You brought the team to ‘take care’ of me just a while ago, and now you’re begging me? Officer Zhou, you’re trying to fool me, is it?”

“Ke-san, we’ve known each other for more than a decade, and you know exactly how many times I’ve let you go in between, and besides…” Zhou Guan Zhi’s eyes darken, and he hints, “You still have some ‘items’ in my possession, and as long as you arrange for me to leave, I will make sure those things disappear from now onwards.”

Lao Ke side eyes the person sitting in front of him, and laughs, the sound cold, “If it wasn’t because you had no choice but to leave the team you wouldn’t even be here looking for me, so I’m afraid those things you have on me, you won’t be able to use them yourself.”

“You’re right, I won’t have any use for them, but Ke-san don’t forget, my colleagues are still eyeing Si He Hui’s every move, and I’m very sure they will be happy to receive these ‘things’.”

Lao Ke’s expression freezes immediately, and after a moment of hesitation, a smile returns to his face, “Let’s talk it out, let’s talk it out. Fine, I’ll help you this one, but the price…”

“Another 10,000 NTD, I will give after I’m on the boat.”

Zhou Guan Zhi takes out another 10,000 NTD from the backpack he has on him, then puts it back inside.

“No problem, the location and time I will let Officer Zhou know later.”

“Okay.”

After confirming his escape route, Zhou Guan Zhi opens the door and after checking his surroundings to make sure no one is following him, he then walks out of the room with his head down.

Inside the club, Chen Wen Hao is speaking to another man surnamed Wang as they walk out from another room.

“Xiao Wang, I’ll leave finding the person to you.”

“Chen-ye, leave it to me! I’m just very curious, is the person you’re looking for really so important?”

“Very important, and he’s not easy to find because I’ve never seen his face and only remember his back, and it is also an impression from four years ago. Just from these clues, asking you to help me is indeed trouble for you.”

“Chen-ye you stand on too much ceremony with me by saying that, don’t worry! Even if you give me just a single strand of his hair, I will be able to dig him up.”

“Good, then I’ll have to entrust you with this.”

Chen Wen Hao reaches out and somberly shakes the other’s hand. Right at this moment, however, the door to the room in front of them suddenly opens, and Chen Wen Hao casually looks at the other once. Just as he’s about to look away, that person suddenly pulls up the hood on his shirt, and then quickly leaves, his expression full of anxiety.

In that moment, the scene before him aligns with the hazy memory he has from four years ago. He points at the other man and orders, “Get him!”

“Yes.”

His two men rush over immediately from behind him, and restrain the hooded man on the ground.

Outside an apartment

Numerous members from Investigative Team One stand inside Zhou Guan Zhi’s apartment, and plenty of items are scattered all over the ground.

Shao Fei and Zhao Zi have only just reached the door, and before they can say a word, the officer standing outside the door stops them.

“I’m sorry, we are searching through the house right now, so the both of you cannot go in.”

Shao Fei looks at the other and asks, “A search? I’m from Team Three, can I ask what’s the situation right now?”

The man standing at the door side eyes these two officers who have turned up in a hurry, and answers, “Zhou Guan Zhi is suspected to be involved in a homicide case four years ago, and also a drug trafficking case. The warrant for his arrest is out.”

“Homicide? Which one?” Shao Fei persists.

“I’m sorry, due to confidentiality, we are unable to reveal much.”

Zhao Zi tugs at his good friend’s sleeve and says, “Ah Fei, we should leave here first and see if we can find Ah Zhi.”

“Mnn.”

As Shao Fei walks down the stairs, he thinks about what the person just said, and suddenly realises what the last piece of the puzzle of four years ago is…

Five years ago, laoda resold the drugs confiscated by the police because he urgently needed the money for Xiao Ya’s leukaemia treatment, and Zhou Guan Zhi was one of the people involved.

Four years ago, Tang Guo Dong who had begun reforming Xing Tian Meng met up with Li Zhen-jie, and according to what Chen Wen Hao said, Tang Guo Dong once handed over a package to Li Zhen-jie, but after the homicide happened, that package was taken away by the shooter.

And now, Zhou Guan Zhi is involved in a homicide that happened four years ago, and this is related to drug trafficking.

It can’t be-

“I know who the murderer from four years ago is!” Shao Fei shouts at Zhao Zi who’s standing in the stairwell, his feet coming to a stop.

“What? Ah Fei you know?”

“Zhao Zi, I’m going to go find Tang Yi, you hurry head to the station and get some people over, hurry! Any later and we won’t make it!”

“What do you mean by we won’t make it? Ah Fei! Ah Fei!”

With that said, and not caring about Zhao Zi’s calls, he immediately rushes down the stairs. He opens the door to the car he parked in the alleyway and sits in the driver’s seat.

“Tang Yi, you must not do anything foolish!”

Inside the speeding car, Shao Fei frowns as he holds onto the steering wheel, then steps harder on the gas pedal, quickly driving towards Tang Yi’s house.

Tang household

“Tang Yi!”

Shao Fei pushes aside the Xing Tian Meng lackeys that are blocking his way to the living room, and once he goes in, he sees Zhou Guan Zhi with his hands tied behind his back, his face bloodied as he kneels on the ground. In front of him on the table, a picture of Tang Guo Dong and a gun is placed there.

Tang Yi stands next to the table and glares at Tang Guo Dong’s murderer in anger from a higher angle, and then reveals a cruel smirk. His fingers are dripping with Zhou Guan Zhi’s blood.

“Ah Fei! Save me! I beg you please save me!” Zhou Guan Zhi hollers anxiously, seeing that the person who walked in is someone familiar, as if this is his only chance of survival.

“You still don’t intend to tell me the truth? Good, since this mouth is of no use, I shall knock out your teeth one by one.”

Tang Yi cracks his knuckles, the sound of his bones interlocking echoing.

“Tang Yi…”

Shao Fei walks until he’s in front of this man, whose murderous intent is apparent. Looking into his eyes, he tries to calm the person whose emotions are out of control down.

“If you kill him right now, we’ll never know the truth! You let me bring him back to the station to investigate, and I promise I’ll give you the truth back from four years ago.”

“The truth?” Tang Yi sneers, and says, “I don’t need to know the truth, all I need to know is that this is the person who killed Tang-ye and that is enough!”

Shao Fei sighs as he turns around and walks to Zhou Guan Zhi, and from start to end says what he found out.

“Ah Zhi-ge, I already know that the people who released the confiscated drugs from the station is you and laoda. Li Zhen-jie, who has always hated drugs, must have found out about this and so cooperated with Tang Guo Dong to find the internal mole in the station, but they would never have thought that the people she was looking for were the both of you.”

“…”

Zhou Guan Zhi glares at Shao Fei, who has deduced most of what happened, his entire body trembling.

“I just don’t understand, laoda did it to raise the funds needed for Xiao Ya’s medical fees, then what did you do it for? That you needed such a huge sum of money?”

“Gambling debts…”

Shao Fei inhales sharply, his eyes reddening as he looks at his colleague, who he has gone through so much with, and then asks, “Then why did you kill Li Zhen-jie and Tang Guo Dong?”

“I… I didn’t… I didn’t…” the person who still refuses to tell the truth shakes his head vehemently.

Tang Yi picks up the gun on the table and presses it against Zhou Guan Zhi’s forehead, then unlocks the safety. As long as Tang Yi’s index finger moves on the trigger, he will turn into a cold corpse. In the face of the threat of death, Zhou Guan Zhi sobs and yells at the only person who can save him now, Shao Fei, as if mad.

“Yes! It was me! It was me! He Hang told me it was Li Li Zhen and Tang Guo Dong who were cooperating to investigate the people in the station, and he said I would be done for, so I… Ah Fei… please bring me back to the station… I beg you… I don’t want to die here, I really don’t want to die… Ah Fei…”

“Tang Yi, let me bring him back.”

Shao Fei looks at the man, who has blood and tears all over his face, with both disgust and anger. He heads over to Tang Yi’s side and reaches out to press down on the muzzle of the gun pointed at Zhou Guan Zhi’s forehead. 

Even though he knows the truth, Shao Fei can barely resist the urge to beat up this man, who he once thought of to be his brother, but as a police officer he has to stick to his duties and the law. This is a line he will not compromise on.

“These four years, all I’ve been thinking of everyday is how to take revenge for Tang-ye!”

“But I can’t watch you kill someone in front of my eyes.”

“Then arrest me!”

Bam!

The sound of a gun firing shocks the three people present in the living room.

Blood drips down his fingertips onto the floor incessantly.

“Don’t.. don’t kill others…”

Shao Fei, who pushed Zhou Guan Zhi aside and dived towards the gun, says weakly as he looks at the man who is holding onto him tightly.

“Why did you have to stop me like this….”

Tears fall uncontrollably onto Shao Fei’s face.

“As long as I can stop you from killing others, I.. it doesn’t matter….”

Wanting to use his usual tone and smile to chase away the shadows cast over the other’s heart at present, Shao Fei is unable to even lift up an arm to wipe away his lover’s tears.

“Meng Shao Fei, you’re the stupidest police officer I’ve ever seen.”

“And that’s why I fell in love with you, is that not?”

Those pale lips curve indulgently, and he turns his head a little, wanting to see the other man’s expression more clearly, but he pulls at the bleeding wound on his right chest.

“Don’t move.”

Tang Yi uses a hand and presses at the gunshot wound, applying pressure to slow down the flow of blood, and at the same time uses his bloodied hand to make a call as he says anxiously, “I need an ambulance here, someone was shot.”

“Meng Shao Fei, you better live on well.”

Shao Fei’s heart cannot bear to see Tang Yi’s tears as they fall continuously onto his face, and looking at the man who has said this through gritted teeth in a threatening tone, it’s as if they have gone back to the days of their first meeting.

That stoic, expressionless Xing Tian Meng leader that no one dares to approach-

-Tang Yi.

#history3: trapped #history 3: 圈套 #history 3: trapped #history3 novel #h3t #tangfei #tang yi #shao fei #translations

[hoseokslefteyebrow]

The Serpent's Shadow || J.HS || 5

Pairing : Jung Hoseok X Reader

Genre :  Angst, teeny weeny tiny bit of fluff

Summary : But how could the Serpent ever know? What's happening behind his back? In his own Shadow? Without looking back?

-

This story is IN the Harry Potter time line!

( Deathly Hallows Part one & two)

Wordcount: 0.8k

The Serpent's Shadow Masterlist | Next

" Carrow, you can hand that one over to me." Hoseok said as he motioned to the second year gryffindor in Carrow's grip.

" You seem to have a certain grudge against Gryffindors and that one Hufflepuff." Carrow smiled.

" Don't remind me." Hoseok said as he stared the Gryffindor down, who shrunk under his gaze.

" Wanna torture this one together?" She blinked at him as if it's a cute thing couples would do.

Hoseok gave her a disgusted expression.

" Certainly not. I'm good with you being on a 10 meter distance." Hoseok told her.

Her smile fell as Hoseok roughly pulled the Gryffindor out of her grasp and walked down the hall with her.

They kept walking they reached one of the hallways near the Gryffindor commonroom, where he let go of her grasp with her.

" Go. But make it look like I hurt you next time." He told her as he turned around to leave.

" What? But how?" She asked puzzled.

" I don't know. Try acting, or ask one of the older Gryffindors, they have a lot of experience." Hoseok waved his hand at her as he walked off, checking on if anyone saw.

-

It's a little over 9 at night when someone knocks on Hoseok's door.

His first worry is that it's a death eater who simply wants to talk to him.

His second worry is that it's Draco who wants to cry again and complain how hard his life is.

His third worry is that it's Carrow, who hadn't seen him at dinner because he didn't show up. ( Mainly because he wasn't in the mood to see her face.)

" Who is it?" He said gruffly.

No one answered, instead the person gently knocked on the door again.

He grumbled in annoyance, but got up from where he was seated on his bed anyway, making his way over to the door and opening it.

The person in front of him had their hood up, but as soon as she peeked over the hood's edge, he pulled her inside, not bothering to step back to create space between them. He threw the door closed behind her.

" Y/N? What are you doing here?" Hoseok asked as literally looked down at you, concern swimming in his dark brown orbs.

You grinned and pulled your hood down.

" I went to see you. I have good news." You smiled.

" What is it?" He asked as he sat down on his bed.

" Harry Potter's been spotted."

-

Ever since you brought him the news, things have been going better.

You've been going to Hoseok's almost every night, sneaking trough the dark hallways at night or him sneaking into your dorm rooms.

Everyone who was part of Dumbledore's Army knew him, and no one minded him. After all, he did help out most of their asses. Often saving them from trouble.

Hoseok felt a lot more at ease since he's been working with both parties. It's become fairly easy for him.

Be a little sweet to Carrow, her running her mouth a tiny bit, you sneaking into his room at night, him reporting to you, and you easing all of his worries by simply being there in his arms.

Just like right now.

The two of you weren't a thing, neither of you actually went to that topic, even after your confession, but laying together like this, wrapped up in each other's company, it just felt right.

" Do you think this will ever change?" You ask softly at some point of the night, looking out of his window into the depths of the black lake.

" That what will change?" Hoseok asked, hoping you're not talking about your relationship.

" The war. Do you think that we'll ever be able to live freely again as wizards? No matter the blood status." You say quietly.

It's quiet for a moment before he answers.

" I think so. I tough that no one would accept me anymore after what they forced me to do. I tough everyone would hate me. Yet here you are. You're always there for me now that I think of it..." He goes quiet at the end of his sentence.

" I'll always be here for you Hobi." You smile at him.

For the first time in a while, he actually smiles back at you.

[ A/N: Hey, yes my mini hiatus is over. I can breath without shaking in pain now lol. Also I know I promised like actual fluff, but it really doesn't fit in the story line yet. So y'all just have to wait sorry xD.]

#bts #bts x reader #idkeitherman #bts housemates au #bts fluff #bts angst #bts hogwarts au #bts hogwarts #bts harry potter au #hobi x reader #jung hobi #hobi hobi

[irisvseyelash]

[Part 1] Aww good luck for your revisions and exam, Iris! Wish you have successful exams and getting all good&satisfying grades. Amiin.. 🙏💕💖 About sideblog, I'll encourage you to make that! You could post some of your drawings along with hcs or snippets of your fic/draft, as a way to vent or practicing your skills. You have my support! 😤👍✨ Yeah same, I also feel too insecure to make a fic when I had no writing skill. Making random hc is my specialty, not writing fic *hands up in surrender*.

[Part 2] Btw, have you seen Garou's promo art for chinese edition of Road to Hero game? It has Garou in Highschool uniform! 😳💖 Last week I wrote Batarou HS AU and today there's this Highschooler Garou promo art, what a coincidence! Now I imagine Badd has Garou as his senior in my HS AU with an appearance like this: twitter(.)com(/)dailygarou(/)status(/)1297020663530696704 👀✨ No wonder Badd will fallen in love with him, he'd be swooning (internally, ofc), aww.. 😍😩💗💘

[Part 3] Consider: Badd secretly had a huge crush for his senior prior the tutoring event begin, he's attracted by Garou's style and handsomeness (also his reputation as both troublemaker and school prodigy, whoaa, Badd's truly respected him!) but quickly pissed off by his bastard personality once Garou opened his mouth, lmaoo! But soon enough, once they both warmed on eachother, Badd could see Garou's soft side and kindness. Plus his family already welcomed Garou, even adored him.. 😚

[Part 4] Speaking of Batarou HS AU, it's still WIP for I still working on the main event. Already writing the bonus part of it, instead, lol what is this randomness I can't anymore with myself 😜😅😂 Anyways, I'm preparing something for the fandom on the next month, and it's including you, too! It's nothing big and idk if it's good, but I hope it will keep you all entertained 😚💕 Just wish me luck to not become a procrastinator and piling my planned WIPs in discontinued works again 😞😔😅

Ameen.. Thanks again Dyan 😭💓💓💓💓 Oh yeah! Happy Belated Awal Muharram to you! I totally forgot about that astaghfirullah😂😂

👀👀👀 should I? I think I'll link it up in the reblog of this post, that blog. Tbh, lately it's been feeling like I have lesser and lesser time for writing fics or shots and more and more AUs and HCs keep popping up, like one of my recent HCs of Tareo being Orochi's son :/

But heck *waves white handkerchief* I don't do AUs and HCs as well as you either.

Oh my god About Garou's promo pic forgive me lord for I have sinned 💦💦💦 He has no right to even wear his uniform like that. pFT IMAGINE IIDA TENYA NYOOMING TOWARDS HIM FROM THE SCHOOL GATE—

*cough* anyway, Yes I've seen the promo pic and holy heck I would be lying if I said I didn't squeak when Ruby first showed it to the discord server 😂😂😂 It was... Interesting, I guess. Okayyyyy Iris stop exposing yourself 😂

Okay but tell me that Garou wouldn't make any straight guy to not fall for him, platonically or romantically. I mean heck the school probably loves him but he's just such a dick that the faculty and the student body just dislikes him.

Awwwwwww my goodness imagine Badd bumping into him on the first day of school and just— *rereads part 3* HOLd on this is kinda similar to the plot of a Breddy fanfic I read on Wattpad 'You had me at Watch It' or something. Okay anyway but Garou just opening his mouth as a bad first impression would be canon fight me 😂😂😂 if it wasn't for his intimidating, rbf expression, it would be the way he talks or the way he acts

And BABY SOFTGAROU YES AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA where else can you get a cunning and bright troublemaker like him to only add on to your already effed up family who all probably have the same taste in others but only have the goddamn troublemaker be a babey and a cloud aafnfnfhdn

Oh yeah, your HS AU! Can I has a teeny weeny snippet before you totally post it??? Pleaaaase *insert doggo eyes* and oH RANDOMNESS MY FAVOURITE 😂😂😂 (ignore the begging, I was listening to Vivaldi's 4 seasons and was being dramatic)

Gassssp you're including me??!?!? I hope it doesn't have a deadline, cause my studies and exams schedules will never be tolerable at any rate in time ( TДT)

Let's all just pray that procrastination doesn't catch up to us and whack us in the head ≥﹏≤