#*lsm

[hoshingi]

BOOSEOKSOON How is your youth?

[namchyoon]

yoongi and bss' "fighting" challenge 🤍 for @bubmyg 🤍

[diamonddaze01]

i lied i have two thoughts

fiancé seokmin who has been getting really secretive lately. slipping away a lot, staying up late at night when you're asleep. you're worried. is he getting cold feet

you find out later on— either when you confront him, or at the altar— he's been going absurd lengths to learn your mother tongue behind your back. lee seokmin, husband-to-be, who makes sure his vows are in the words of your childhood. who would he be if he didn't learn all of the languages you could be loved in

예쁜 말

-`♡´- PAIRING: lee seokmin x reader | -`♡´- WC: 1.0K -`♡´- A/N: outing my mother tongue in this one.... but anyways enjoy yet another office bathroom iphone notes fic

Something is wrong.

It starts small at first. Seokmin slipping away at odd hours, muttering vague excuses about work or helping a friend. You tell yourself it's nothing, that you're just overthinking. But then it becomes a pattern—he’s slipping away more often, staying up late at night when you’ve already fallen asleep, leaving you with nothing but an empty space beside you.

It’s nothing drastic, but your mind races, and you can’t stop wondering if there’s something he's not telling you. You don’t want to jump to conclusions, but you can’t help it. You know him—his gentle nature, his loyalty, the way he’s always open with you. But lately? He’s been so distant, so secretive.

Is he… getting cold feet?

You push the thought away, but it lingers, creeping under your skin. The doubt gnaws at you every time you look at him, every time he runs off to his study, every time his phone buzzes, and he quickly silences it.

One night, when you wake up and find the space beside you cold, you decide you can’t wait any longer. You slip out of bed, padded footsteps soft on the floor as you make your way to the living room. There, you find him, hunched over his laptop, headphones on, his back to you. He doesn’t hear you approach.

You stand in the doorway for a moment, watching him. There’s something about the scene that makes your stomach twist—a strange feeling of both intimacy and distance. The glow of the screen illuminates his face, the way his lips move as if he’s speaking to someone. The soft murmur of his voice, too low for you to catch, only adds to the tension in the air.

"Seokmin?" you say softly, breaking the silence.

He jumps, startled, quickly slamming the laptop shut, like he’s been caught doing something wrong. "Baby! You scared me. What are you doing up?"

Your heart races, but you force the words out, your voice wavering, unsure if you’re ready to hear the truth. "What are you doing, Seokmin? Why have you been acting so secretive lately? Are you… getting cold feet?"

His eyes widen, disbelief flashing across his face. He stands up quickly, stepping toward you with a mix of confusion and frustration. "No! Why would you think that?" he exclaims, his tone softening when he sees the worry in your eyes. "It’s not like that at all, I promise."

"But you’ve been so distant. You’ve been sneaking around and staying up late. I don’t know what to think, Seokmin."

He hesitates, running a hand through his hair as if caught in a bind. You watch him closely, searching for any sign of the man you know and love—the one who would never keep secrets from you. Finally, after what feels like an eternity of silence, he sighs, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

"I’m sorry," he murmurs, looking down. "I should’ve told you sooner."

"Tell me what?" you ask, voice shaking now. "What’s going on?"

He takes a deep breath, pulling you gently toward him. "Baby, I—" He pauses, gathering his words like they’re precious. "I’ve been learning Kannada."

You blink, confused. "What?"

He gestures awkwardly toward his laptop. "I’ve been learning your language. I—I want to say my vows to you in Kannada. On our wedding day."

Your mind races, trying to process the words. Kannada? Your mother tongue?

"But… why?" you whisper, heart pounding in your chest.

Seokmin smiles sheepishly, his ears turning pink. "I just… I wanted to be able to promise you forever in the words that shaped you. The words you grew up with. The language that loves you first. I wanted to make sure that when I stand up there on our wedding day, I’m giving you all of me, in all the ways I can."

Your breath catches in your throat, and before you can stop yourself, tears spring to your eyes. You blink quickly, trying to hold them back, but Seokmin sees it anyway. He reaches out, gently brushing away the tear that’s already slipping down your cheek.

"Seokmin."

He winces. "I’m not very good yet. I’ve been practicing so much, but my pronunciation still sucks. Jeonghan made fun of me last week, and I made my tutor cry—"

"You what?"

"Okay, she was crying from laughter, but still." He groans dramatically, burying his face in your shoulder. "I just—I wanted to do this right. I wanted you to hear it on our wedding day and know that I love all of you. Every part, every language, every version of you that’s ever existed."

There is a lump in your throat, a tightness in your chest that feels dangerously close to crying.

"You—" Your voice shakes. "You learned my language?"

"For you?" He cups your cheek, thumb brushing away the tear that escapes. "Of course I did."

And that is what breaks you. You let out a shaky laugh, burying your face in his neck as you cling to him. "You idiot. I thought you were hiding something terrible."

"To be fair, I was hiding something terrible. My accent is awful."

You pull back, looking at him through damp lashes. "Say something, then. I want to hear it."

He swallows. "Right now?"

"Right now."

Seokmin’s ears go red, but he nods. He takes a breath, searching for the words he’s practiced over and over in secret. And then—

"ನಾನು ನಿನ್ನ ಪ್ರೀತಿಸುತ್ತೇನೆ."Naanu ninna preetisuttene.

The words are a little shaky, thick with his accent, but they are unmistakably clear. I love you.

You let out a soft, broken noise, hands coming up to cradle his face. "Again."

He smiles, eyes shining. "Naanu ninna preetisuttene."

This time, you kiss him. You kiss him with every ounce of love in your body, with the weight of every word he’s ever spoken and every word he’s still learning. He melts into you, laughing against your lips, holding you like he’ll never let go.

"Seokmin," you breathe against his lips. "I love you so much."

"I love you too," he whispers, his forehead resting against yours, his breath warm against your face. "I’ll love you in every language I can find, forever."

"God," you murmur when you finally pull away, breathless. "What did I do to deserve you?"

Seokmin grins, nose brushing against yours. "I ask myself the same thing every day."

You shake your head, overwhelmed with love. "Say it again."

And so he does.

[jarofalicesgrunge]

Layne Staley - Alice in Chains performing live at Munich, Germany, 1993.

📸Photo by Fryderyk Gabowicz

[vicaly]

Draw sad steb with sad vi. both mourning ppl and etc. maybe a rainy atmosphere as well cause they're depressed together 😞

I was raised that to honor the dead is by continuing their memory and celebrating through stories. There is still mourning and regret, but it is carefully cared for and wrapped in heart filled nostalgia

It definitely shows here lol. What with Jericho's storytelling of how he helped fight in the finale and the three of them all going back and forth with good memories of the people lost

They deserve it after all that trauma :)

[bookyeom]

anything but shy - lsm

pairing: dokyeom x reader word count: 1.6k warnings: a single swear i think, alcohol, kissing, a little suggestive but not much summary: seokmin is shy… kind of.

A/N: FINALLY A LITTLE ONE FOR MY ANGEL BABY LOVE OF MY LIFE SEOKMIN. It’s just a small one, but it came to me and I love him. That’s all.

“Seokmin — oof.”

The man beside you giggles as he tries to right himself against you after stumbling, mumbling an apology that doesn’t seem quite genuine. The two of you finally make it down the hall to his bedroom door, and he moves to put all of his weight against the door frame. He’s not even pretending that he’s not watching you, which makes you feel all sorts of funny on the inside, because when he’s sober, Seokmin is as shy as they come. 

You can’t count the number of times you’ve caught him looking, only for him to flush and look away when you do. Your friends keep telling you that he likes you, that the two of you act like way more than friends, and you’ve kind of given up on denying it at this point. He’s your friend, and sure — you’ve thought about what his lips might taste like. Or what those beautiful hands might feel like against your skin. That’s beyond the point.

Since you’d gotten him back to his apartment, you’d managed to get some water in him. He seems to be pretty sobered up already, but you can tell there’s enough liquid courage left in him for him not to care that he’s being obvious. You try your best to ignore his intense gaze as you turn the handle, kicking a pair of shoes out of the way that block the path to his bed. You reach for and tug on his wrist, pulling him into the room behind you, and the two of you finally make it to sit on the end of his bed. He doesn’t make a move to lay down, his head lolling onto your shoulder with a contented sigh. You try desperately to ignore the chill that shoots down your spine when you feel his breath against your neck, when you feel the weight of his side pressed into yours. 

“You’ve gotta get changed, Seok.”

Seokmin shakes his head. “Too much effort.”

“Well I’m not dressing you for bed.”

It’s quiet for a moment, and then you can hear his sharp inhale against your neck as he says, “Will you undress me, then?” 

What the fuck?

You absolutely cannot do this. 

“Sorry,” he adds a moment later, his voice much quieter, and you can almost hear him second guessing himself.

You choose to ignore him for both of your benefits as you gently push his head up and off your shoulder. He whines but stands up, making his way over to his dresser. You avert your eyes quickly as you fall back onto his bed, but you’re not fast enough to miss him pulling his shirt off over his head. You squeeze your eyes shut, the image of his tan back and shoulders seared into the back of your eyelids.

You’ve been trying desperately not to dwell on any of Seokmin’s flirty little gestures or comments for a long time now. You’ve been friends for a while and it happens often when he’s drunk, which was difficult to handle at first — but manageable. The problem is that recently, he’s been teasing you while entirely sober, too. You wonder when he’d gained his confidence; you think it might have something to do with the way Soonyoung and Mingyu have been hyping him up at the gym. 

It’s subtle, and still very Seokmin, the way he goes about it. A little squeeze of your hand before he gets up to leave; a wink as he pays for your coffee; a compliment that catches you by surprise. You have no idea how to react to any of it because he’s just like that so effortlessly — so full of teasing remarks and kindness. It’s been shaking you to your core, and you wonder if he knows. On occasions that are few and far between, you manage to catch him off guard in return with a flirty remark. You cherish those moments. 

You wince as you replay the evening. Tonight, he’d been an absolute menace. And by that you mean he’d hardly left your side, brushing soft touches across your back and shoulders, grasping for your fingers when the group of you went anywhere. You know he didn’t even drink that much, so you can’t help but wonder why he’s being extra flirty tonight. 

Your breath and thoughts are promptly stolen from you with a whoosh as Seokmin sprawls on top of you without warning. You let out a groan at the sudden weight. 

“Ow,” you whine, and he just hums in response. 

“You’re really comfy,” he mumbles against your shoulder. He sounds shy again, a completely different person from the one you’d seen just moments before. You can feel your heartbeat pick up at the realization, at the thought of you being the one to make him feel shy. You momentarily forget about the pain you’re in when he adds, mumbling, “The comfiest.”

“Thank you,” you whisper.

He nods, lips brushing against your skin as he hums. Neither of you speak for a few moments, and you find yourself holding your breath in the silence. You can feel him against every part of you, and you’re terrified that he’ll hear how fast your heart is beating with him this close.

“I think I’m more comfortable with you than anyone else.” He says the words so softly that it makes your head spin.

Oh. 

Your hand lifts on instinct to the hair at the back of his neck. You feel him still for a moment before he relaxes, and you let your fingers start to play with the strands. He sinks further into you with a sigh. You desperately don’t want to move, don’t want to break whatever is happening here — but it’s really starting to get a little hard to breathe. 

“Seokmin,” you try again softly, and this time he lifts his head to look at you. The breath is effectively knocked out of you when his eyes meet yours, soft and hesitant, and you swallow. “I don’t want to disturb you, and I know you want to show off that you’ve been working out… but you’re really heavy.” 

His eyes go so wide that you’d laugh if you weren’t in the position you’re in. “Shit! Sorry, oh my god.” He moves to push himself off of you in a panic, but you keep him from going too far with your arms around his neck. 

“I didn’t say I wanted you to let go,” comes out before you can stop it, and you watch Seokmin’s face switch from horrified to surprised to pleased, all in the span of ten seconds. Confident Seokmin is back, and you’re screwed. 

Because it only takes a second for his hands to slide around your back, another half a second to flip you over. Then you’re suddenly on top of him, pressed down against his chest as he beams up at you. “Does this work for you?” He smiles. “Works great for me.”

He’s flirting with you. 

On purpose. 

Sweet, shy Seokmin is flirting with you, looking you dead in the eyes as he does. 

“I wanted to play with your hair,” you finally manage in an attempt to tease back, and you know you’ve succeeded when Seokmin smiles so wide you wonder if it hurts. He lets his head fall back against the pillow, his hands squeezing against your lower back as he makes a show of getting comfortable.

“You may continue,” he finally says dramatically.

You roll your eyes, but the fond smile on your lips gives you away. It fades slightly as you stare down at him, and he gazes back, watching and waiting for you to make the next move. He’s so handsome, you think, all big brown eyes and soft touches, the only indication that he might be nervous seen in the way he swallows thickly in the silence. Your eyes travel across his face as your hand lifts to brush his hair back behind his ear, and you break eye contact as your finger trails down to gently play with the hair that curls just behind his ear. 

“Are you sober right now?”

Your question comes out timid. You can feel him look at you, as serious as ever, hands squeezing where they’re linked together against your back as he replies, “I only had two beers.” He waits for you to meet his eyes again before he adds, “I’m nervous, but I didn’t want to rely on liquid courage tonight. Not with you.” 

You can feel your heart skip a beat inside your chest. “What do you need the courage for?” 

He opens and closes his mouth for a moment, debating. Then he squeezes his eyes shut. “To tell you that I like you a lot and want to date you, mostly.”

You had kind of expected him to say something along those lines, based on your current predicament. 

Does that mean you were prepared for it? Absolutely not.

“Mostly?” Is all you can manage. 

“Also to tell you that you’re super hot and funny.” His eyes are still closed, eyebrows furrowed, and your hand moves to rest against his jaw.

“Seokmin.” He opens one eye, then two. You are so fond. “You’re super hot and funny, too. Also, yes.”

”Yes?” He repeats, and you nod.

”I want to date you, Seok. Yes.”

He blinks up at you, jaw slack, before he murmurs, “Holy shit.”

You can’t come up with an answer to that. So you do the next best thing: you lean down to capture his lips with yours. And you’re quick to learn that Seokmin is anything but shy when it comes to kissing you.

Taglist: @wheeboo @tae-bebe @waldau @eoieopda @gyuminusone @minisugakoobies @lvlystars @seohomrwolf @variety-is-the-joy-of-life @christinewithluv @wqnwoos @iluvseokmin @darkypooo

[phykoha]

Leave your things behind, 'Cause it's all going off without you

He's been on my mind lately,,,

[svtscans]

Love & Letter Repackaged

[bribing-dandicus-dancifer]

hiiiii, I’m still alive and drawing Dandy’s World, I’m just abysmal at posting

have the Circus Troupe because I love them so bad

Bonus Comic under cut!

Translations: Yatta: “You are so cute in my shiiiirt!” Looey: “Is there anything under that?” Blot: <Yes> Looey: “…Are those my boxers?”

[hyper-coasters]

[hoshingi]

WOOZI & DK Follow Again

[hanniedream]

[diamonddaze01]

UNTIL YOU KNOW ME

PAIRING: lee seokmin x f!reader | WC: 5.7K GENRE: reincarnation au | soulmate(?) au | angst with a happy ending | time is non-linear and also not real don't read into it too much imo.... WARNINGS: major character death, discussions of blood and weapons, heartbreak x 10000, Seokmin Just Needs A Hug.... A/N: for the 100 collab! thank you to @gyubakeries, @eclipsaria, @nerdycheol, and @shinysobi for hosting such a wonderful collab! | first fic in over a month! sorry I've been gone so long work SUCKS! but writing this was actually so refreshing. I really do enjoy putting Seokmin in Situations (i'm sorry darling boy)

SUMMARY: Seokmin has loved you 99 times. But in this life, just like every other, you don't remember. You never do. But Seomin? He remembers everything. Every goodbye. Every loss. Every time he almost kept you.

On the 47th time Seokmin fell in love with you, he realized it would be the 47th time he lost you, too.

For the first 46 times, he had been foolishly optimistic. For the first 46 times, he still thought himself a king, like he was the first time, his first life. But here, in the 47th (or what could have been his thousandth at this point), Seokmin watched you drop his hand—king of nothing, loser of everything.

He had thought the 47th time would be different. But then again, he had thought that about the 46th. 

In the 46th, he first saw you at the market, laughing—loud, unabashed, bright enough that every head turned toward you. You were tucked between crates of peaches and dried herbs, a smear of pomegranate staining your bottom lip, the sunlight catching in your lashes. A leather satchel hung from your shoulder, worn at the edges, and you walked like someone with places to be and time to waste. You didn’t even glance at him.

That life, Seokmin had sold ink. Hand-ground, bottled in glass, sealed with wax. You visited his stall every week, even though you barely needed supplies. You’d spend long minutes just standing there, brushing your fingers over the shelves like they were familiar somehow. You never lingered on him—but you always lingered.

You asked questions you already knew the answers to. You always added a little extra money to the pile of coins. Once, you’d looked at him for a second too long and said, “It’s strange. You feel like a face I dreamed about.”

Then you’d smiled, tossed a coin onto the table, and left.

You weren’t his, not in that life. You married a cartographer—a good man, Seokmin remembered. He hadn’t hated him. Smelled like cedarwood and carried maps that curled at the edges like flower petals. He’d watch you walk back to the cartographer’s booth, the hem of your skirts catching the breeze, your satchel bouncing against your hip, and think—at least she’s happy.

You died giving birth to your second child. Seokmin found out from a friend of a friend. He didn’t go to the funeral.

And still, your absence gnawed at him in ways he never admitted aloud. He hated himself for thinking it stung a little less that time. Like grief was something you could grow used to.

He closed the stall early the next day. Burned every ledger with your name in it.

This time, in the 47th, you had been the one to say his name first. In this life, you were a singer. Jazz, mostly—low, smoky notes that curled through the air like perfume. He heard your voice before he saw you, carrying out the back of a bar he hadn’t meant to stop at. It had been years—lifetimes—since he last found you, and hearing you again hit him like a blow to the chest.

He’d stepped outside to clear his head. The alley behind the bar was quiet except for the scrape of a match. When he turned, you were already leaning against the brick wall, a cigarette balanced between your fingers.

“You got a light?” you asked.

He fumbled with his lighter. “Yeah. Here.”

Your fingers brushed his as you took it. Your touch felt exactly the same. You lit your cigarette, exhaled a ribbon of smoke, and looked at him for a beat too long.

“What’s your name?” you asked.

“Seokmin.”

You smiled. “Seokmin,” you repeated, like it tasted good on your tongue. “I feel like I’ve said that before.”

Later that week, you sang for him alone. After the last show, after everyone else had gone. You stood barefoot in the dressing room, still in your stage makeup, and sang something soft and unhurried. He watched you from the chair, hands clasped between his knees, trying not to hold his breath.

In that life, you let him stay.

You fell asleep with your hand curled into the front of his shirt. You let him make you breakfast. You danced with him barefoot on cold tile floors, laughed at his terrible jokes, pulled him into bed when you were too tired to talk. You never once said the word soulmate, but some mornings you looked at him like you were starting to remember.

He almost believed the curse was lifting.

Three weeks later, he read in the paper that the bar had been raided. Police found illegal opium stashed under the floorboards. One casualty. Female. Unnamed. Mid-twenties.

He read the sentence again. And again. The words didn’t change.

He didn’t even finish the article. Just threw the paper into the fire and stood in front of it until the smoke made his eyes sting. He didn’t speak for days. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t breathe without hearing your voice in his ears.

The worst part was that it was different, this time. You’d let him love you. You’d leaned into it. And for a moment—just long enough to hurt—he’d thought you might stay.

When the fire burned low in the hearth, and your scarf still hung on the back of the chair, Seokmin realized he was already mourning the 48th.

The first time he had known you, truly known you, he had worn a crown made of thorns and gold.

The thorns were metaphor, at first: guilt threaded through power, a boy-king raised too fast, carved sharp by grief and coronation. But over time, the weight grew real. Heavy. Gilded. Cutting. On colder nights, he would remove it and find faint red grooves across his temples, like the memory of someone’s fingers pressing too tight.

You had never touched the crown. You never bowed, either, not when the court looked on, not when his voice carried over the fields and froze armies in their march. Your head only ever inclined out of habit, not reverence.

You were not a queen. You had never wanted to be. You had been his warhound. His iron nerve. His blade and the hand that steadied it. You walked three steps behind him in court: silent, precise, eyes ever-moving. But in battle, you rode so close your knees brushed. He had memorized the rhythm of your breathing beside him: steady as the northern wind, sure as thunderclouds in spring. He trusted you more than he trusted his gods.

You bled for him, once.

An assassin’s blade had found its mark, but not the one it sought. He remembered the scream—his own—and how it had barely broken free before you collapsed. Steel had kissed your ribs. You had grabbed the attacker by the hair and run them through before falling.

That night, he paced the length of the war tent, blood soaked through his hands, staining the floor in places the servants would scrub for hours. The physicians had whispered, muttered things about odds and infection and prayers.

But you had lived.

And he had never again worn his crown without hearing your ribs break beneath his fingers.

He never said thank you. You never asked him to.

After, something shifted.

He began reaching for your wrist before any decree. You no longer waited to be summoned. He told his advisors he did not dream. You knew he did. (You were the only one who stayed when he woke screaming.)

And then, the witch came. 

Not cloaked, not veiled, not smoke and shadow. No, she came clothed in grief. In mourning black, with a spine stiff from loss and a voice that broke on the names of her sons. She stood in chains before the court, and the king stood tall as justice was read to her face.

But he flinched when her eyes found you.

Because the witch saw it. The way his gaze darted to you first. Always first. The way he moved closer to you without realizing, even now, even here. The way his hand curled—not around his crown—but around the hilt of his sword, every time her voice rose.

“You strung my children in your gallows,” she said, voice dry as sand. “For every son I buried, you will live a life. And in each one, you will find her again.”

The court murmured. The king stilled.

“And in each one,” she whispered, “she will not know you.”

He tried to kill her then. Blade unsheathed, a scream tearing from his throat. But the magic had already rippled through the chamber, warping the air. By the time his steel reached her, she had turned to dust.

He fell to his knees in it. In her. In the curse that still trembled on the marble floor.

He had dreamed of you, every night before the curse. After, he dreamed only of losing you.

He never told you what the witch said. Maybe he should have. Maybe you would’ve believed him. But how could he? How could he say, I think I’m going to lose you for a hundred lifetimes, and still hold you like it wasn’t already happening?

He tried to make the most of it. He held your hand longer. He stole minutes, lingered in rooms just to watch you fasten your cloak or pull your hair back with a cord. He memorized the scar on your collarbone, the way your mouth curved when you were amused but trying not to show it.

And when the end came—when a blade meant for him found your heart instead—he didn’t scream.

He only whispered, “Please. Not yet.” And somewhere, in the distance, the witch laughed.

The next time he woke, he was in a crib. Small hands. Weaker lungs. No crown.

But still, even as a child, he dreamed of you.

And he remembered everything.

In the 19th life, you had been a lighthouse keeper’s daughter.

A quiet girl, born of fog and brine, made of solitude and wind-whipped cliffs. You spoke with your hands more than your mouth. You hummed sea shanties under your breath and slept in a narrow bed beneath a round window that framed the moon like a portrait.

The nights were long. You were used to ghosts.

That life, Seokmin came to you in a storm; not a man so much as a memory trying to remember itself. His ship had shattered itself against the rocks sometime before dawn. You found him tangled in a net of driftwood and broken oaths, sea-foam in his lashes, a gash on his forehead like something the ocean had kissed and bitten in the same breath.

You dragged him inland, breathless and barefoot, the hem of your nightgown soaking in salt. He coughed up seawater and a name you didn’t recognize.

When he woke, it was to the sound of your fire and the creak of old wood settling in your cottage walls. He bled on your sheets. He slept in your father’s clothes.

You fed him soup without asking questions. He answered them anyway.

“My brother,” he said, fingers twitching against the wool blanket. “The sea took him.”

You didn’t tell him the sea takes everyone, eventually.

He watched you when you weren’t looking. You always were—looking, that is. Out toward the rocks. Up at the sky. Across the slow breath of the sea. But never at him.

Still, you brought him what warmth you could: your silence, your bread, your presence. And he, in return, gave you stories of constellations; of stolen ports and stars that guided without mercy; of the ship he had sailed, black-flagged and silver-rigged, bearing the symbol of your father’s enemy.

He didn’t know you had kept the flag.

Your father did.

He found it three days later, soaked and tangled in the wreckage like a secret unraveling.

He came home with the wind behind him and blood already in his eyes. The storm had passed, but it howled still in the bones of your home.

You stood between them — the man you had nursed back into life, and the man who had given you yours.

“Please,” you said, your voice cracking like driftwood underfoot. “He didn’t come here to fight.”

But your father had known too many men like him. Men with soft eyes and hidden blades. Men who flew foreign flags and left entire villages burning in their wake.

Seokmin tried to stand. He was still weak. Still foolish. Still yours.

“I would never hurt her,” he said, voice hoarse, hands raised as if in prayer.

But prayers are no match for grief. And your father’s blade was already moving.

The hunting knife sank in just below the ribs. 

Small. Cruel. Inevitable.

Seokmin tasted iron. Then salt.

Then the press of your hand over the wound, trembling, desperate, too late.

You cradled his face like something fragile and fading. Like driftglass worn smooth by time.

“Why does it feel like we’ve done this before?” you whispered, tears carving salt lines down your cheeks. “Why does this feel like an ending I already know?”

He opened his mouth.

He wanted to tell you: Because it is. Because I’ve loved you this way before. Because I always lose you.But his lungs were filling, and your hands were shaking, and the candlelight was flickering like it knew what came next.

So instead, he closed his eyes and let the sea take him again.

Death came easy, the 19th time. Almost like falling asleep to your voice.

He never woke from that dream. Not until the 20th.

In the third life, you had been a thief, laughing as you ran, skirts hiked, hair wild like a storm had fallen in love with you.

Seokmin had been a soldier then: duty-bound, spine straight, boots loud. He’d seen you first at the edge of the market square, slipping an apple into the folds of your shawl with a wink at the grocer. You’d moved like a secret, like the city itself was built to part for you. You were sunlight in the cracks of stone, mischief bottled in human form.

He hadn’t meant to follow you.

But that’s the thing about you. You happened to him. Like falling. Like gravity.

He chased you through alleyways for reasons even he didn’t understand—at first because it was his job, then because it was you.

You let him catch you once.

Once.

You turned around in the dark, lantern light catching the gold flecks in your eyes. “You’re not very good at this,” you told him, grinning as you pressed him to the wall. “A real guard would’ve cuffed me by now.”

“I forgot the cuffs,” he’d said, heart stuttering.

You laughed into his collarbone.

You were made of quick fingers and quicker stories. You never told him your real name.

You whistled as you walked. Stole buttons from his coat just to stitch them into your own. Called him “soldier boy” until he stopped asking you not to.

He kissed you like he didn’t know it would end. Like maybe it wouldn’t. And you let him. You let him want you.

The last time he saw you, your laugh echoed too far ahead.

You had stolen something you shouldn’t have—something political, or dangerous, or cursed. He couldn’t remember now. Only that you had turned and run, and he had followed.

You were already bleeding when he caught up.

A blade between your shoulder blades. A pool of red blooming at your spine like the worst kind of flower.

You collapsed in his arms, breath catching like it didn’t know whether to stay or go.

Even then, you looked up at him and smiled. Like he was the one who had stolen something. Like he was the lucky one.

“You almost had me,” you whispered, voice broken but bright.

He pressed his forehead to yours and lied. “I’ll find you next time.”

You died before he got the last word out.

In that life, he carved your name into the hilt of his blade. Even though you never gave it to him. Even though you never said it once. Even though he wasn’t sure it had been real.

Still, he wrote it in the steel.

Seokmin thinks the lives where he doesn’t see you die are the worst of all.

When death comes suddenly—when he holds your body in his arms, when your final breath stutters against his skin—there is at least a shape to the grief. An ending, cruel and sharp, but certain.

But the lives where you just fade? Where you disappear in the blur of traffic, or laughter, or time? Where you leave without knowing him, without ever realizing what you meant, who you were—those are the ones that ruin him slowly.

There’s no body to mourn. No grave to kneel before. Only the ache of unfinished things. Unkissed mouths. Unspoken names. An entire love story dissolving like fog in morning sun.

He tells himself it’s mercy, that maybe not seeing the end means there wasn’t one. But deep down, he knows better.

The 88th time, he’d been your professor.

He knew it the second you walked into his lecture hall: late, breathless, a pen tucked behind your ear, hair still damp from the rain. You slid into a seat near the back, opened your notebook with fingers that trembled from the cold. You didn’t look at him once that entire hour. Not when he stammered over a line of Yeats that reminded him of the 9th life, or when he dropped his chalk mid-sentence because you had tilted your head in the exact way you used to when you were a queen’s ghost in his bed.

He pretended not to notice you. Tried to be good. Tried to be just a man teaching literature to a room full of strangers. But you weren’t a stranger. Not to him. You were the poem.

You stayed after class one day, weeks in, to ask about a line in The Waste Land. You tapped your pen on the margin like you always did when you were thinking. He watched the ink smudge on your thumb, the same way it had when you'd written him battle reports by candlelight in your first life. You said, “It’s funny, this part—about memory being a kind of burden.” And you laughed.

He forgot how to breathe for a moment. Because for him, memory was everything. And it was crushing him.

He resigned two weeks later. Left behind a half-finished syllabus and a note to the department chair. You never saw him again. But he saw you, from a distance, months later, laughing in the courtyard with someone else, your copy of Eliot annotated to death. You had underlined the line "These fragments I have shored against my ruins."

So had he.

The 72nd time, he was your neighbor. Third floor, two windows across.

You liked to play music late at night—old jazz, mostly. Sometimes rock. Sometimes nothing at all, just the clink of a spoon against ceramic as you stirred your tea. He watched the glow of your lamp through the blinds, a moth to something warm and unreachable.

You passed each other in the hallway every morning. You wore headphones, always. He would nod. You’d smile, distracted, polite. Once, you left your laundry basket in the communal room and he guarded it like a temple, sitting cross-legged in front of it with his back against the dryer until you returned. You thanked him with a granola bar and said, “You’re sweet.”

He wanted to tell you that once you had sewn up the wound in his side with your bare hands. That once you had taught him how to peel mangoes with a knife curved like a crescent moon. That once you had died cradled in his lap, whispering a name he hadn’t used in that life—but it was his all the same.

But all he said was, “Anytime.”

You moved out six months later. He never saw where you went.

But for years after, he still left his window open at night, waiting for the sound of your record player.

The 91st time was different.

You met in a secondhand bookstore. It was raining, the kind of rain that turned the city soft and slow. You were in the classics aisle, thumbing the cracked spine of a copy of Wuthering Heights like you couldn’t decide whether to take it home. You looked up when he reached for the same shelf.

He should’ve walked away.

Instead, he picked up the book and offered it to you, holding it out with a sheepish grin. “You look like you’d like this.”

You tilted your head at him. “That obvious?”

He didn’t know what came over him then—maybe it was the scent of the rain in your hair, or the shape of your mouth on a word like obvious—but he said, “You just remind me of someone who once loved tragic things.”

Your eyes narrowed. “And how’d that end for her?”

He could’ve said: with a sword through her chest in a burning chapel or: with your hand in mine on a battlefield, dying with your mouth full of my name or: you don’t want to know, not really.

But instead, he smiled and shrugged. “She loved anyway.”

You paid for the book. Wrote your number on the receipt. Said, “Just in case you have any other doomed recommendations.”

For three weeks, you met in quiet corners of the city. Cafés, museums, bookstores with creaky floors. You kissed him in a park under a jacaranda tree, your hands in his hair, and he thought—please, this time. Just this once.

But the dreams came.

You woke up one night, tangled in his sheets, your breath short, a name you didn’t recognize on your lips. You stared at him like he was a ghost. And maybe he was.

The next morning, your number stopped working.

He never returned to that bookstore.

Time no longer moved straight for him. It twisted, coiled like smoke in a sealed jar, writhing just out of his grasp. It folded in on itself, looped through seams he couldn’t stitch shut. Days became out-of-order photographs, blurred at the edges. Sometimes he woke with dirt beneath his fingernails and someone else’s name on his lips. Other times he woke mid-sentence, his voice hoarse, body trembling, your name already half-formed in his throat before he could stop it.

He’d come to in the middle of moments he hadn’t yet earned.

One time, he opened his eyes and your hand was in his. Candlelight flickered across your features, dancing shadows onto the wall, and you were laughing. Your smile was soft and wine-stained, and he thought, pleasepleasepleaseplease don’t let this be the middle or the end. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease let this be the beginning.

But then the world exhaled, and so did you. And just like that, you let go. The wax had melted too far. The moment was already behind him.

He was always late. Or far too early.

Once, he walked past a street performance in a rainy city, the smell of chestnuts thick in the air, and a violinist was playing your song. You were in the crowd, arms linked with someone else. You didn’t look his way. That was the 59th life. You’d been happy. He’d gone home alone and carved your name into the baseboard with a penknife.

There were lives where he found you on accident: caught in laughter in a passing car, your head tipped back, wind in your hair. He'd pull over. He’d get out. He’d run after you. By then, it was always too late. Always.

And then there were lives where he lived entire decades without knowing you were there. Lives where your name never passed his lips, but his dreams were full of you anyway. Your eyes in faces of strangers. Your laugh hiding behind glass storefronts and voices on the radio.

Once, he met you on the first day.

He had blinked into existence and there you were, leaning over a record store counter, your chin in your palm, chewing a pencil that had no eraser left.

You didn’t even look up as he entered. “New here?” you asked, thumbing through a crate of old CDs.

He couldn’t speak. Could only nod.

You turned then, slid him a mix tape in a clear case with handwritten words across the label: for the sad boys.

You raised an eyebrow. “You look like one of them.”

And then—God, then—you smiled.

Not the kind of smile made for anyone else. The kind he remembered from lifetimes ago, before curses, before loss. The kind you gave him when you’d collapse into a tent after battle, dirt on your cheek and blood on your blade, and he would press his forehead to yours and whisper, you made it. That smile.

He didn’t breathe until he was out the door.

In his 98th life, he kept that tape in the top drawer of his nightstand. Even when the store burned down. Even when you left before winter. He never played it. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to know what songs you’d chosen. He didn’t want the sound of your past to be louder than your memory.

And still, some nights, when the silence stretched thin and the moonlight spilled like milk across the floor, he’d take it out of its case. Run his fingers over the letters, worn down by time and hope. He'd hold it to his chest and listen, not to the music, but to what was missing.

You always felt just out of reach. Like a word he once knew. A breath he hadn’t finished taking. A promise made on a night neither of you could remember.

And the worst part was this: You didn’t know he was waiting. You never did.

By the 99th, he no longer prayed for you to remember.

He didn’t beg the stars, didn’t barter with fate, didn’t scream into the ocean the way he had in the 57th life. Didn’t offer up his name like a chant or a wound. No, by then, Seokmin asked for nothing more than time. A brief stay. A held breath. A quiet life, even if it flickered out too soon.

In the 99th, he found you behind a glass door painted with chipped celestial decals, a crescent moon flaking off the ‘o’ in “OPEN,” a trail of stars skimming the corner of the window like they were escaping. The bell chimed as he stepped in, sharp and unkind.

You looked up. You wore a threadbare tank top and boredom like armor, curled on a stool, a single earbud tucked under your hoodie’s drawstring. The whir of a needle hummed from the back room. He thought, just for a moment, that he’d walked into a dream stitched together from old memories. But no, it was you, older, sharper, your smile missing. You hadn’t seen him yet.

He didn’t know what compelled him to speak. Maybe it was the ache in his chest. Maybe it was the way his heart clenched like it always did when it sensed you in the room.

“I don’t have an appointment,” he’d said, voice unsteady.

You glanced at the empty chairs, then at him — his fingers fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve, his breath shallow.

“No one does anymore,” you replied, voice dry. “Sit.”

He lowered himself into the cracked leather chair like a man about to confess.

You set your gloves on with the kind of efficiency that told him you were good at this — careful hands, precise eyes, the kind of focus that once won wars in other lives. You didn’t ask many questions. Just raised a brow as you prepped the machine.

“What are we doing?”

“A sun,” he said. “Small. Over the heart.”

You didn’t laugh. Just nodded.

“Bold placement,” you murmured, your touch ghosting across his chest as you wiped the spot clean. Your fingers were cold. He felt his ribs shudder under them.

When the needle buzzed to life, he barely flinched. Pain was easy now. Familiar. It grounded him, steadied his breathing. He focused instead on your face: the soft crease between your brows, the way your mouth tugged slightly to one side in concentration. The same mouth that had once commanded armies. That had once kissed him behind a curtain of falling snow. That had once whispered his name as you drowned in the 34th life.

You didn’t speak. You didn’t have to.

The silence between you was velvet-lined, thick with memory he could not share.

But then, when it was over—when the ink had settled beneath his skin, permanent and small like a secret—you lingered.

You stared at the sun, your thumb brushing gently around it, not quite touching.

You tilted your head.

“Feels familiar,” you said.

The words weren’t soft. They were hushed. Like they didn’t belong to the present at all. Like they’d spilled out from another life by accident.

Seokmin’s throat tightened.

He wanted to say, It’s because you’ve drawn it before. On my wrist, in the 18th life, when we were both seventeen and on the run. Or the 42nd, when you painted it in the sky for me with fireflies. Or the 65th, when you carved it into the bark of an apple tree and told me you’d always come back.

But he didn’t say any of that.

He just nodded. Quiet. Reverent. Grateful.

And you didn’t press.

He left with a bandage over his heart and the ghost of your fingers still clinging to his skin.

He didn’t ask for your number.

He didn’t need it.

You were always a life away.

And this one was almost over.

When his 100th life comes, Seokmin almost forgets.

Time, by then, is waterlogged: bloated, heavy, slipping through his fingers before he can name it. He wakes sometimes and feels seventeen. Other days, he’s all of them at once: soldier, scholar, ghost, god. There are lifetimes he can no longer separate from dreams. Some where he knows he died before you. Others where you didn’t die at all, just vanished, like smoke trailing from the edge of a candle, leaving him in the dark.

But in this life—in his 100th—Seokmin finds himself with a crown on his head and your hand in his.

It startles him. The symmetry. The cruelty of it. Or maybe it’s mercy. He hasn’t decided yet.

The palace is quieter than he remembers. Not the gold-dripping empire of his first life, where bells tolled and sycophants bowed. This one is quieter. Older. Cracks in the stone. Ivy on the columns. A throne made of wood instead of war.

He looks down, and there you are: fingers woven between his, knuckles familiar.

You’re not in armor this time. No blood on your boots. You wear blue. The soft kind. The same blue as the ink that once stained your hands, satchel heavy with pomegranate. The same ink you dabbed on his trembling skin as he told you he wanted a sun on his chest. Permanent. Just above the heart. The fabric sways when you move, like you’ve never known a battlefield. 

But your gaze?

Your gaze is sharp as ever. It slices through the years. Finds him like it always does.

And this time—this time—it lingers.

There’s something different in your eyes. Not just fondness. Not just fate.

Recognition.

He swallows.

You smile. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’ve seen you,” he says, and it’s the closest he’ll ever come to falling to his knees.

You smile at him as the court rises, as banners are unfurled above their heads.

He lifts his eyes to the crest on the silk.

A sun.

Gold and jagged and familiar, encrusted in diamonds atop your crown.

You wear it differently than he ever imagined. Not like royalty. Not like a symbol. You wear it like it’s always been yours. As if, somewhere in you, your hands remember what it was to trace its shape onto his skin. Onto tree bark. Onto war maps. Onto history.

He turns to you, and for a moment, you're no longer queen—you’re the daughter of the man who had once stood on a gallows, made martyr by the very flag Seokmin now rules under. You had screamed that day—not words, just grief. And even as they pulled you away, he had met your eyes. In that life, his 23rd, you never forgave him.

But in this one, your palm finds his. And stays.

You lean in, as the crowd dissolves around you, a blur of robes and oaths and rustling pageantry.

“I had a dream last night,” you say, soft and faraway. “We were in a forest. I had a sword. You were bleeding. I held your face and told you not to die.”

He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Did I?”

“No,” you whisper, brushing your thumb across the inside of his wrist, where he swears the skin still remembers the kisses you pressed there 43 lives ago. “You came back.”

The throne behind you is carved wood. No gold. No fanfare. Ivy spills from its corners like it’s always been part of the earth. And maybe it has. Maybe this kingdom is a little quieter, a little humbler, shaped by all the lives he never got to finish. All the ones he watched you slip through like sand.

But here—in this 100th, his last—he thinks maybe it was all worth it.

Because when he looks at you now, all the pieces come together. You laugh with the same mouth that once kissed him behind a bookshop, that once shouted orders on horseback. You smile like a thief who never got caught. You hold his hand like a promise.

And when you kiss him,  it tastes like ink and salt and rain.

He feels it then: every life pooling into this one.

Every sun he ever wore.

Every name you ever said, even when you didn’t know why it made your chest ache.

Every version of love that wasn’t enough—until now.

Until you.

Until you knew him.

And this time, he doesn’t need to pray.

This time, he just stays.

[jarofalicesgrunge]

☼ Alice In Chains At The Offramp in Seattle, 4th February 1991.

📸by Alison Braun

[lauvinchi]

seventeen 'happy burstday' ver. 1 new escape layouts (97z)

like and reblog if you'll save or use it, drop an ask for requests 🖤

photos (especially headers) are not mine, ctto

[kernel-emojis]

whew okay!! these took awhile to gain motivation for but >:)

Sign languages emojis! Please let me know if any of these are the incorrect acronyms/terms for the sign language, and feel free to request more from me!

We have: 1. American Sign Language (ASL) 2. British, Australian, and New Zealand Sign Language (BANZSL) 3. Chinese Sign Language (CSL) 4. French Sign Language (LSF) 5. Japanese Sign Language (JSL) 6. Levantine Arabic Sign Language (LASL) 7. Spanish Sign Language (LSE) 8. Mexican Sign Language (LSM) 9. Ukrainian Sign Language (USL) 10. Plains Sign Language/Hand Talk