#it’s like killing someone without actually killing them

[lxstxr]

all in | e. prentiss

summary: An innocent girls night ends with you and Emily stuck in a game of strip poker.

word count: 2.0k

tags: 18+ nsfw, dom!emily, fem!reader, oral (r receiving), please lmk if i forgot anything!

a/n: this is my first time writing actual smut and im incredibly nervous to post this (what, who said that??)

Emily’s living room glows under soft lamps and the flicker of a half-burnt candle on the coffee table. Penelope flops onto the couch with dramatic flair, draping herself over JJ. “Okay,” Penelope declares, cheeks flushed and hair wild from the three classes of Cabernet Sauvignon she’d already had. “One more round. 'Never Have I Ever.' Let’s go. I want confessions.”

JJ groans, already holding up three fingers. “I swear, if this turns into another ‘Penelope has done everything’ game.”

“You’re just mad I’ve lived more lives than you, blondie.”

You chuckle and glance over at Emily, who’s lounging in an armchair with her glass balanced perfectly in one hand, legs folded underneath her. 

JJ’s eyes gleam. “Never have I ever... hooked up with someone from the Bureau.”

Penelope rolls her eyes and drops a finger. You and Emily glance at each other, and then both stay still. Suspiciously still.

JJ catches it instantly. “You both paused.”

“I was thinking,” Emily says smoothly.

“I was lying,” you admit, just to watch Emily’s expression twitch into a smirk.

“Ha!” Penelope shrieks, pointing between you two. “I knew there was weird tension!”

“There’s no tension,” Emily says too quickly.

“None at all,” you echo, matching her tone with mock innocence.

JJ just snorts into her wine. “If I have to watch you two flirt anymore, I’m going to gouge my own eyes out.”

Emily raises a brow at you. “Do you call this flirting?”

“I call it beating you at every game so far,” you say sweetly.

“Ouch.” Emily grins. “Don’t get cocky. You haven’t played me at poker yet.”

“Oh my God,” Penelope groans, gathering her purse. “I’m tapping out. I can’t watch this slow-burn enemies-to-lovers crap happen in real time.”

JJ stands, stretching. “Henry’s got soccer in the morning. I’m out too.”

You glance between them. “Wait, really? You’re leaving us?”

Penelope shrugs on her jacket and smirks. “You’ll manage. Or you won’t.”

JJ, already halfway out the door, throws a wink over her shoulder. “Try not to kill each other with your sexual tension.”

You and Emily look at each other. And then away. And then back again.

The door clicks shut. The room is quiet.

Emily swirls the wine in her glass, not looking at you. “So…”

You raise an eyebrow. “Poker?”

She smirks. “Only if you’re not afraid to lose.”

The apartment is quieter now. The mellow jazz from Emily’s endless vinyl collection has softened into the background, and the candle on the table burns low, casting shadows across the walls. You’re perched on the couch, one knee tucked under you, wine glass cradled in your hands. Emily refills hers, then yours, without asking. You watch her move deliberately and unhurried, like she has nowhere else to be. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and her dark hair’s fallen a little looser than it was earlier. She’s flushed from the wine. Or maybe it’s the company.

“Do I need to worry about getting hustled?” you say, swirling your glass. 

She raises an eyebrow. “Please. If I were trying to hustle you, I would have already done it.”

You smile over the rim of your glass. “Okay, Prentiss.”

Emily walks over with a deck of cards and a dangerous glint in her eye. “Strip poker?”

You arch a brow. “You’d like that too much.”

She shrugs. “We could play for pretzels.”

You glance at the half-empty snack bowl, then at her, matching her smirk. “Fine. Strip poker. But I should warn you, I play dirty.”

Emily sits across from you, cross-legged on the carpet, and starts to shuffle the deck with practiced ease. “So do I.”

The cards slap crisply as she deals. “Basic five-card draw?”

“Works for me,” you say, stretching out, deliberately casual. “House rules?”

Emily looks up through her lashes. “One item per loss. Nothing too scandalous at first.”

Your laugh is low and warm. “Trying to ease me in?”

“Trying to give you a fighting chance,” she deadpans.

You shoot her a mock glare and glance down at your hand. Not terrible. Not great. But the point isn’t winning, and you’re pretty sure Emily knows that too.

First round, she loses. Off comes her bracelet.

Second round, you lose. Your hoodie joins the growing pile beside you.

By the third round, things are heating up. Your smiles are slower, and the pauses between glances feel more loaded.

“You’re stalling,” she says, watching you frown at your cards.

“I’m considering my options,” you reply. “Some of us don’t have tell-free poker faces.”

She smirks. “Oh, I wasn’t talking about your face.”

You shoot her a look, but your pulse skips anyway. She wins again. Off comes your sock. You toss it at her, and she catches it with a grin. “This is the most undignified strip poker I’ve ever played,” you mutter.

“Oh?” Emily leans back on her hands, all long legs and quiet confidence. “How many games have you played?” You take a sip of wine and don’t answer. Her smile deepens.

The game goes on. Layer by layer, piece by piece. The room feels warmer. The silence between jokes starts to stretch. She’s watching you now, really watching. You’re both down to your last couple of layers. Emily’s in a tank top and black lace underwear. You’re not far behind. Your knees have migrated closer during the last hand, somewhere in the middle of a story she told about her days at Yale.

You lean in, elbows on your knees. “You’re stalling now,” you say.

“I’m considering my options.” She mimics you and raises her eyebrows. You smile. She matches your smile, slow and unreadable. She deals another hand, but her gaze flicks up too often to be casual. The cards barely hit the floor before she’s watching you again over the edge of her wine glass.

You’re both tipsy. Not drunk. Just buzzed enough that your inhibitions are softer at the edges. Just enough that neither of you feels like pretending this is still just about cards.

“Your poker face is slipping,” she says as she plays her hand.

You scoff. “So is your shirt.”

She glances down at the thin tank top clinging to her, then back at you with a half-smile. “I’m not the one losing.”

You lay your cards down slowly. Full house.

Her eyebrows lift in genuine surprise. “Okay, that’s annoying.”

“Off with the top, Prentiss.”

Emily eyes you like she’s debating whether to obey or find some loophole. Then, with a long exhale and an exaggerated roll of her eyes, she pulls the tank top over her head and tosses it aside, leaving her in nothing but black lace you’re definitely not supposed to be staring at. “Happy?” she asks.

You take a deliberate sip of wine. “Ecstatic.”

She smiles, slow and knowing. “You’re blushing.”

You roll your eyes. “Please. It’s just the wine. Deal.” She does. Neither of you looks away.

You lose the next hand. Of course you do. You half suspect she threw the game before just to lull you into a false sense of security. You pull your shirt off, matching her now in nothing but underwear. You sit back on your heels, hair messy, skin flushed, and try to look unaffected. Emily doesn’t bother pretending. Her eyes drag over you like she’s savoring every inch, and when she speaks again, her voice is quieter.

“You want to call it?” she asks.

You tilt your head. “Giving up?”

She smiles. “Just checking if you’re ready to lose.”

You reach forward, grabbing the deck from her hands. “Let’s raise the stakes.”

Her brows lift, but she lets you take it. “Oh?”

You lean in, close enough that your knees are touching. “Last hand. Winner decides what the loser takes off.”

Emily stares at you. You stare back. The air feels thick. Charged. “Okay, deal,” she says, voice low.

The cards are almost secondary now. Neither of you is really watching them. You both lay your hands down at the same time. Emily wins. You don’t flinch. You don’t even blink. Instead, you meet her gaze and murmur, “Well? What’s it gonna be?”

Her mouth curves. “Your panties,” she says softly.

You don’t break eye contact. You don’t joke. You don’t stall. You rise slowly onto your knees, hands slipping to your waistband, and with deliberate grace, you slide them down and off.

Emily watches, stone still. And when you sit back down in front of her, completely bare and more emboldened than you thought you’d be, you ask in a whisper, “Now what?”

Emily sets her glass down with a soft clink. And then she leans in, lips brushing yours, and says against your mouth. “Your turn to win.”

Emily’s lips brush yours once more, soft, almost tentative, but the heat of it coils low in your belly. You chase her mouth before she can pull back, hand sliding into her hair to anchor her as you kiss her like it’s something you’ve been holding back for too long. You have.

She tastes like wine and something dangerous. She kisses like she means to unravel you. Her hands are on your waist, firm and sure, fingers splayed across your bare skin as she pulls you into her lap. You straddle her thighs without hesitation, gasping as your bare skin makes contact with her.

“Fuck,” she murmurs against your neck. “You’re gorgeous.”

You smile, breathless. “Took you long enough to notice.”

She nips at your collarbone in response, then soothes it with her tongue. “Oh, I noticed. I just have excellent self-control.”

“Not anymore.”

Emily hums, low in her throat, and slides her hands up your back, pulling you closer. You rock your hips without meaning to, the pressure sweet and maddening as you grind down on the lace between you. Her breath catches. Her head falls back slightly.

You kiss your way down her throat, tasting the salt of her skin, the edge of her control. She lets you explore for a moment, but then her grip tightens, and suddenly you’re on your back on the carpet, blinking up at her as she hovers over you, hair wild and eyes dark.

“You like being in control?” she asks, voice rough.

“Sometimes.”

She leans down, brushing her lips along your jaw. “Not tonight.”

You shiver as her mouth trails down your body, over your chest, between your breasts, and lower until she’s settled between your thighs, spreading them with her hands like she owns you. Her eyes flick up once, checking.

You nod. “Yes. Please.”

That’s all she needs.

She kisses the inside of your thigh first, slow and maddening, then the other. She doesn’t rush. Emily Prentiss doesn’t do anything halfway. When her mouth finally finds you, you gasp, sharp and loud, hands flying to her hair as she licks into you like she’s starving.

She moans softly when you tug at her, and the sound vibrates through you like electricity.

Your hips roll into her mouth without permission. She holds you down, one arm across your hips, the other hand spreading you open so she can keep working you apart with her tongue. Every flick is precise. Every stroke is calculated.

You’re babbling her name before long, thighs trembling, nails digging into the carpet. She murmurs praise between licks until it’s too much. “That’s it, so good for me,” she hums, “Come for me, sweetheart.” 

You break. Hard. The orgasm crashes over you like a wave, sharp and blinding. You cry out, back arching and thighs clenching around her as she rides it out with you, unrelenting until you’re gasping her name and pulling her up into your arms.

She kisses you again, deeper this time, letting you taste yourself on her tongue. You’re still trembling. Still dazed. “Holy shit,” you whisper.

Emily laughs softly against your mouth. “Told you, I play to win.”

You bury your face in her neck, catching your breath. “I want a rematch.”

[goobstars]

𝐉𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐁𝐎𝐘

summary : when ragatha's suggestion of a softball game comes into play, you find yourself befriending a player on the opposing team—evil jax—without the knowledge that your jax was watching from afar.

tags : romance, reader & jax are dating, no maid outfit jax just to spite you all, jealousy, censored profanity, and violence.

note : this was a request from mistycomma, so i hope you enjoy, and thank you for the request!

you found it funny.

everyone was up against evil versions of themselves—minus you and gangle, for some reason. though, you weren't really complaining.

as the field was getting set up—the evil versions taking their places—you couldn't help but just find the whole thing amusing. evil ragatha just laughed a whole lot while talking in an odd accent, evil pomni seemed more relaxed while cursing every now and then, evil kinger—or coach dictatorer—did nothing but shout, and you didn't even know what was going on with bazooble.

yet, the one you found most hilarious of all? evil jax.

could you even call him evil? the boy seemed incredibly shy and antsy, and he always had one hand gripping his arm while he looked around.

you leaned against the bench—sitting beside jax as you continued to examine the evil versions of everybody.

kinger was giving a quick peptalk to everyone, and while it made no sense, you could tell he was just trying to hype everyone up. you nodded at his words before you heard someone clear their throat.

you peered up from kinger and noticed evil jax was standing at the bars of the dugout.

"h-hey, guys. i-i hope we all have a fun game, no matter who ends up winning."

you gifted evil jax a smile, "good luck out there." the boy gave you a nervous smile back before walking away, and you looked up at jax once you noticed his quietness.

jax's eyes darted towards you, then back at evil jax before his eyes narrowed in disgust. "i wanna kill that guy."

"why? he's sweet!" your words only made jax mumbled incoherent things as kinger called ragatha to the field, and you smiled at her once she waved at you before going onto the field.

jax only wrapped an arm around your shoulder, and he shot a scowl at evil jax once he noted the boy gifting you glances.

he leaned in closer as your eyes remained on ragatha while she batted, and he slightly nudged your head with his own.

when you didn't respond, he nuzzled into your shoulder. it got a slight reaction out of you as you leaned your head onto his, but he wanted more of a reaction. he wanted you to pay attention to him and not the game that had that stupid evil jax in it.

you continued to watch the game as you witnessed ragatha hit the ball right into pomni's glove, but before you could make a comment about the loss, you felt jax nip your neck.

"what are you doing?"

your question got no reply as he only pushed his head more into your shoulder, and you didn't know what to do. you didn't know why he was acting like this, and you certainly didn't know what to do about it.

"[name], you're up next!"

you pulled away from jax as soon as kinger announced that you were up, and you watched him slightly frown at your actions. yet, you didn't have time to acknowledge them as you were handed a bat and sent out to the field—rubbing your neck with your free hand.

jax stood up from the bench as he walked over to the bars, and he gripped them as he watched you play.

you were a bit far from where he was, so he couldn't hear you much, but all he knew was that you were talking to evil jax. the boy would say something and you would laugh—which resulted in you missing the hit. why were you joking with him? he was on the opposing team, and there was no way he was that funny to where you would miss the ball.

jax watched as you swung again, and when you missed, he swore he heard evil jax say that you were doing good. why was he being so nice? why couldn't he just shut up and leave you alone?

when it was your final swing, you actually managed to focus this time, but you still missed.

despite the fact you didn't get a single hit, evil jax clapped and cheered you on, and only irritated jax more.

since you had struck out, you walked over to the other side of the dugout, and evil jax followed you.

why was he following you?

jax gripped the bars of the dugout as he scowled at evil jax, and he watched as the boy leaned over the bars to talk to you.

and you were happily talking back.

why were you talking to that guy when jax wasn't that far from you? why did you walk over to the other side of the dugout? did you want to talk to that guy?

"why do you look so bothered?" the sound of zooble's voice made jax roll his eyes as he continued to watch you talk to evil jax, and zooble seemed to catch onto his gaze as they watched as well. "evil jax is a whole lot nicer than you, huh?"

"no, he's just a coward who doesn't know when to mind his own buisness." jax's words were sharp, and zooble let out an airy scoff before crossing their arms. "you know, you weren't acting like this until he started talking to [name]..."

"so what?" jax snapped back, but when he let go of the bar and turned to face zooble, he was met with the sight of them leaning forward on the bench with an eyebrow raised.

"are you jealous?" zooble's words were filled with taunt, and jax's face only flushed as he glared at them. "I AM NOT JEALOUS!"

his pupils were scrambled while he stared at evil jax, and zooble hummed. "i don't think i've ever seen you this bothered before..."

jax only ignored their words once kinger announced that it was his turn to bat, and he harshly grabbed the bat out of kinger's hands as he made his way onto the field.

he noted the way you waved at evil jax before the boy walked back to his spot on the field, and for some reason, that only bothered jax even more. why was he so bothered by this? it's not like you were interested in that guy.

right?

his hands gripped the bat tighter as he took his stance, and he narrowed his eyes at bazooble. "let's see what you're made of!"

bazooble's words made jax's eye twitch, "SHUT UP!"

"i-it's okay! i think you'll do great!"

the sound of evil jax's voice made jax's head snap towards the boy, "I WANT YOU DEAD!"

his gaze flickered towards you, and he noticed how your eyes were wide from his words.

"strike one!"

jax narrowed his eyes before he realized bazooble had thrown the ball, and he frowned. "COME ON, JAX!"

kinger's shout only made him roll his eyes before he slightly lifted the bat, and he lazily swung the bat.

oddly enough, he hit the ball, but it didn't go in front of him. instead, it went behind him, and a large centipede in the crowd caught it.

which it then ate the ball.

"huh, i guess there's no more ball—we're done."

as jax trudged back to the dugout despite kinger's worried shouts for him to go back, but jax just handed the bat to zooble before walking over to you.

you could hear him grumble a few things underneath his breath before he plopped down beside you, "are you okay?"

"i'm fine." jax snapped at you, and you only blinked at him a few times before standing up from the bench. his ears slightly moved down as he straightened up his back, "where are you going?"

"you seem annoyed, so i'm going to give you some space and go talk to evil jax for a minute while they try to find a ball—"

you felt his hand grasp your wrist before pulling you back down on the bench, and he wrapped his arms around your waist. "no."

"why not?"

"because he's annoying and i'm gonna kill him."

"jax, it'll only be for a second—"

thump.

your words were cut off as jax tensed up, and he pushed you away while you eyed his leg. "did—did you just thump at me?"

he looked away from you, and you felt a smile cross your lips once you took everything into consideration.

the nudging, nipping, and thumping gave it all away.

"you're jealous." you teased him while his face heavily flushed, and his eyes flickered towards you in a glare. "i am not."

you only raised your eyebrows at his words, and you slightly scooted away before hearing that noise again.

thump.

his glare only harshened as you let out a laugh, yet your laughter was cut off once he wrapped an arm around your waist before he hid his face in your shoulder. "shut up."

you let out a quiet sigh before placing a kiss against his cheek, and you felt him relax against you.

you watched as ragatha went up to bat again, which confused you, but you didn't even know if you could call it her 'batting' due to the fact bazooble was laying on the ground for some reason.

"ANOTHER HOME RUN!" caine announced, "THAT CONCLUDES THE GAME!"

ragatha looked at caine in confusion, and his words honestly made you even more perplexed too.

yet, when jax shifted his head against your shoulder, your confusion vanished.

the opposing team griped about how they lost while evil ragatha quite literally melted upon losing, but while they were doing that, you felt jax lift his head from your neck with dialated pupils.

"i'm not a vegan anymore."

you watched as jax hastily shot up from the bench before dashing back onto the field, and you were confused as to what he was doing before you noticed him heading straight towards evil jax.

the boy waved at jax before his face was filled with fear, and you heard screams erupt from him once jax bit him and started shaking him around.

you only leaned your elbows against your knees as you placed your face in your hands, and a quiet sigh left your throat while you watched the scene.

as odd as jax was, you loved that boy.

and it made you happy knowing that he loved you back.

[rollingchibi]

hot take: polites would’ve sided with the crew.

he fought in a war—he killed people. “open arms” does not mean he’s an eternal pushover. he was fully willing to try and kill that cyclops like everyone else. he has his own body count; he just wants to lead with kindness first. when odysseus stops leading with kindness or reason, he would be on the side of the crew.

mutiny is a collective crew decision because no one wants to kill more than they have to of people they care about, and polites is part of the crew.

the fact that he’s got a kalimba playing in his music and comes off as very sunshine-y and young does not mean that he is stupid or blindly trusting, and “mutiny” happens after odysseus has been steadily losing all of their trust for three years. it’s not some spur of a moment thing they suddenly decided. it was a bona fide discussion that they had to have because you need crew consensus (or, at the very least, the majority) in order to mutiny.

no, polites would not have sided with odysseus.

“open arms” means polites would’ve been the last one still believing in odysseus and in his capacity to change for the better, just like eurylochus, but not that he wouldn’t rebel or find injustice in the choices odysseus makes. he would reach out until the end, but he would still side with the crew. what odysseus chooses to do is not okay, and it is selfish, and that’s the point. and polites isn’t going to be okay with that when he didn’t even want odysseus attacking the lotus eaters without just cause. (now, imagine when it’s his friends and crew mates.)

everyone likes to forget that the first one to point out that what odysseus chooses to do is wrong and cruel is polites. he’s the first voice of reason trying to confront odysseus and make him change because he knows it’s unsustainable for both the crew and odysseus himself. epic is relying on you to have some knowledge of the trojan war, or war, in general, to understand odysseus’ mental state here, but odysseus is a monster during the war. he is awful, and his first expression of guilt or remorse at any of it in the epic canon is when he’s forced to be the monster by the gods’ hand to kill astyanax. that’s when he becomes “just a man”. until then, he is the monster, through and through.

(remember: epic was jorge wanting to see odysseus actually struggle with the decisions he makes because he, canonically in the odyssey, doesn’t with a great deal of them. so we pick up right when he starts actually struggling with what he’s doing and what he’s become.)

“open arms” is polites attributing all of that to the trauma of war, but the origin of it doesn’t matter because the crux of it is that odysseus, operating as he is right now, is hurting crew morale. odysseus’ distancing from the crew starts in the troy saga, and polites is the first one to notice it, so he’s the first one to reach out. eurylochus does it next in “luck runs out”. this becomes a recurring event of the two closest to him reaching out (obviously cut down to just eurylochus, post-polites’ death, but we’re talking about if polites had lived here) and being constantly rejected and shut down.

and then we hit “scylla”.

and polites would not have sided with odysseus with that.

it’s been three years of trying to reach out to him and nothing. polites is not siding with odysseus—i desperately need you all to stop misunderstanding “open arms”. it’s a song about polites approach to life, but it’s also a song about a friend reaching out to a friend that they think needs help desperately, and then the narrative shifts to odysseus constantly rejecting it (he rejects it from the get-go with polyphemus since the lotus wine is premeditated). nowhere in “open arms” is blind faith a part of polites’ philosophy of life, nowhere in “open arms” is it ever indicated that someone needing help excuses their terrible actions, and nowhere in “open arms” is polites shown to be willing to be walked all over—it shows the opposite, in fact.

he would’ve mutinied, and he would’ve been just as angry and just as hurt as the other forty-something men that were still on that ship (and he would’ve wanted to keep odysseus alive, just like eurylochus, because they don’t want him dead—they want him human).

put some respect on his name.

(this is, of course, assuming a universe where nothing in epic’s story changes except that polites survives polyphemus.

“but, soul—if he survived, none of this would’ve happened—”

yes, it would have because they would have still not killed the cyclops, odysseus would’ve still doxxed himself because other men outside of polites died there, and poseidon would’ve still pulled up which added all that time to their journey. yes, it would have still happened. polites death being polites is only significant to us, the audience, in the sense that he’s a named character. he is still just a crew member. anyone dying after ten years of surviving was going to be a blow to the crew’s perception of odysseus and, also, to odysseus’ unwavering faith in himself and his methods, especially after “open arms”.)

[sungbeam]

BIRDS OF PREY — fifteen

nonidol!kim hongjoong x f!reader

living in gray areas of your city, out of the way of gangs and mafia territories, could only keep you safe for so long. it was only a matter of time before you began running into problems, or rather, problems began running into you.

▷ genre, warnings. nc-17, strangers 2 lovers, slow burn, mafia au, angst, swearing, mentions of alcohol, mentions of death, violence (firing of guns, actual murder), mentions of a bomb, we talk to a hired hitman, i am a little shithead 💀, also barely proofread

▷ word count. 7.1k (i had a lot of ground to cover...)

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a/n: i did get carried away again but that's besides the point

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GOOD FAITH

PLAZA VELVETINE WAS rather lovely in the daytime. 

Its blushing granite face was carved with the likeness of roses, each petal etched into the hard stone to reflect the very flowers that lined its perimeter. The front entrance, a towering archway that leaned over the circular driveway, was in direct line to the three-tiered fountain at the center; this too was surrounded by carefully placed rows of crimson, thorned rose bushes. 

It was one of those rare winter mornings where the sun gathered the strength to peer past the clouds blanketing the sky. Hongjoong gazed out the window in front of him, one leg crossed over the other, a hot cup of coffee in hand. The morning sunlight streamed over him and showered him in its buttery gold light. He wore his dark hair neat and swept out of his face; expression neutral and bored, a typical, rich client biding his time in the hotel's front parlor room. 

It wasn't often that the Pirate King of Hala Town could be seen in civilian clothing and outside of his territory. Plaza Velvetine was located in Sector 1—technically, as long as he was Hongjoong, and not the Captain, he had every right to be here. 

As he lifted the edge of the cup to his lip, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. 

Just to his ten o'clock, legs spread casually, Choi San turned the page of the book in his hands. He nudged the glasses on his nose upward, eyes flickering between his leader and the words before him. 

Of course, Seonghwa wasn't about to let Hongjoong be stupid without a trusted set of eyes around—especially considering who Hongjoong was being stupid about this time. 

Hongjoong exhaled a soft sigh and turned his gaze back out toward the window. Maybe he should have brought a book, too…

Before his mind could wander, he glimpsed someone in the reflection of the window. The sunlight, as it beamed down from its perch and through the glass, reflected off the figure who just arrived behind Hongjoong. He was dressed in a similar manner as the mafia head, with a smart button-down, slacks, and dark hair swept out of his face. 

There was a brief moment where his heart tripped over itself. But that was only normal when one met a man who could kill you in an instant. 

The weight on his left ankle, beneath the hem of his pants, was a soothing presence. Realistically, he likely wouldn't be able to get to the pistol holstered there in time, but San was here; and Wooyoung was nearby, watching through the scope of his rifle. 

“You must be Mr. Kim,” said the newcomer with a smile. As he did so, the corners of his mouth pressed dimples into his cheeks; how disarming. They reminded Hongjoong distinctly of Bang Chan, and his fingers twitched. 

Though the man never took his eyes off Hongjoong, he had undoubtedly clocked San sitting not even a hundred feet away. 

Hongjoong wore an easy smile. He leaned forward to set his coffee down on the table that now separated them. “And you must be Q. I've heard much about you.”

“And I, about you,” the assassin replied. His smile favored one side of his lips more to add a cheekiness to his demeanor. No one in their right mind would suspect what his true nature was. 

“Would you like a drink?” Hongjoong asked, gesturing to the coffee table. “It's on me.”

Q shook his head. “Thanks, but I'm alright. To what do I owe this pleasure? I don't always get to meet the men in charge.” He grinned boyishly, marveling at Hongjoong akin to a boy gazing up at his idol on a TV screen. There was a sharpness hidden beneath all that innocent light, though. One could only pick it out if they were familiar with it. 

Hongjoong lifted a brow. “Is that so? I would have thought your work called for face-to-face meetings.”

“Oh, so you've heard of my work?” If at all possible, Q's eyes seemed to sparkle. 

Hongjoong couldn't tell if he feared the man's derangement or felt in him a kindred spirit. Nonetheless, he maintained his neutral body language as much as he could, neither frowning nor smiling too big. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“And so does yours,” he was quick to remark. He leaned onto one arm of the chair, a pensive furrow between his dark brows. “Tell me, Mr. Kim, are you afraid of death?”

What an odd question. One might think of that as a threat. “Only that it might hinder my work,” Hongjoong replied. It wasn't a complete lie; but this wasn't a therapy session and no Wings Express assassin was going to get anything more personal out of him than that. 

“Ah.” Q leaned his cheek against his fist. “I can't say that I disagree completely with that sentiment, and you do seem like the type. What you don't seem like the type for is showing up here like this” —he gestured very lightly at his counterpart, the space, the coffee— “I'm surprised. I expected you of all people to be more… careful about your identity.”

Hongjoong smiled, though its insincerity wasn't hard to discern by the stillness in his eyes. “Well,” he said, “what can I say? It's about time people knew who they were dealing with.” If integrating his identities would prevent anymore of this imposter bullshit in the future, then so be it. Perhaps he had been foolish to think that he could keep his two worlds separate. It was a dangerous mindset to have, that being the arrogant belief that he could be two different people at once without consequences. 

He shifted then, reaching for his coffee cup. “But enough about me. We have business to attend to.”

Q smiled knowingly. “Of course. You mentioned in your communication that there is some information that only I can give you. You do know that my clients are confidential, right?”

“Conditionally,” Hongjoong corrected him. “Your clients are conditionally confidential.” 

Anything could be bought for the right price, and that was what Hongjoong was here, today, to do. Though the idea was stupid, arranging to meet with this paid hitman in particular had a greater purpose than putting himself in direct danger once again. If he wanted answers, sometimes all he had to do was ask. It was simply what was necessary. 

The assassin before him seemed to have a penchant for smiling like a wolf in sheep's clothing. “Yes, conditionally. What condition would you like to pay?”

“Well, how much did you charge Jung Joonseo for his commission?”

“Oh, you almost got me there,” Q chuckled, tapping his index finger against his lips. No, I didn't, Hongjoong thought to himself. “How sly of you, Mr. Kim. I can neither confirm nor deny that Jung Joonseo ever reached out to my agency for our services.”

Hongjoong tilted his head to the side. He knew from rumor that Q was smart, quick as a whip, and sadistic to all Hell—it took one to know one, after all—but trying to ask that question was worth a shot. “Let me put it this way: someone three years ago commissioned the Express for the head of a mafia family. How much did you quote them?”

Q shrugged. “The head of a family is a risky figure to take down. I'd guess it was around a million: ten percent for the down payment, and the remainder after proof of success.”

“Then I'll offer double for your information.” 

“I'd be insane to refuse,” he replied, smiling. He settled in his seat with one leg crossed over the other, a greedy gleam in his eyes. Out of his pocket, he retrieved a standard, white business card with a set of numbers on the front. He slid the card across the table for Hongjoong to pick up. “But since I like you, Mr. Kim, I'm willing to be generous. If you wire just one million to that account, then we can talk.”

Hongjoong pulled his phone out while skimming over the numbers on the card. He'd take losing a million over two million any day. 

“After all,” Q continued, his tone airy and nonchalant, “I never did get the rest of that money back then.”

What Q just admitted to didn't slip past Hongjoong. He continued to type in the bank information as casually as possible, even as he mentally tucked away this knowledge and began synthesizing more questions out of it. “Apologies for beating you to the finish line,” he murmured. He pressed one last button, an action completed with finality as he raised his head, and tucked his phone and the card away. “Check your account.”

Q only smiled for a beat, then it widened. Someone was speaking in his ear; Hongjoong hadn't even noticed the tiny earpiece attached to the inside of his ear canal. “I'm never gonna complain about work being done for me,” he mused. “But I am getting my money in the end. Do tell me what you'd like to know.”

“Did Jung Joonseo put in an order for Lee Hyunseok?”

“Right to the good part,” Q laughed. “Yes.”

Hongjoong felt a spike in his pulse and he resisted the urge to lean forward. “Your agency is known for their efficiency and skill. Why wasn't the order completed sooner?” Before Hongjoong had been the one to take him out. 

A shrug. “Mr. Jung kept telling me to wait. For someone so calculating, he seemed to be unable to follow through on this matter. Though, I did tell him that if he kept changing his mind on me, there would definitely be interest on his bill.” The latter was expressed with an ill-concealed amount of discontent; the assassin wrinkled his nose at the memory, eyes filled with something petulant. 

Well, putting a hit out on a mafia head—let alone a mafia head who was also your boss—was a major decision to make. Joonseo had to be certain that everything would go to plan and that Hyunseok's death would be in his best interest. All of this seemed to at least verify what you and he had thought several nights ago. 

(Speaking of you, the meeting was taking place tomorrow night. There was still far too much to prepare in the meantime. Was keeping you in the dark about his plan the right call? It had to be.)

“I seem to have lost you, Mr. Kim.”

Hongjoong blinked and his attention focused back on Q across from him. He maintained a bored facade, hoping his counterpart wouldn't take this as a sign of weakness. “You were saying?”

Q's tongue stuck between his teeth as he grinned, his arms folding over his chest. “Do I bore you, Mr. Kim? I must be off my game.”

“No, no,” Hongjoong dismissed with a flippant flick of his wrist, “I’ve just got business on the mind. Please, continue.”

“Business? Ah, I've heard of all the drama you've been dragged into recently.” Q leaned onto the left arm of his chair, then propped his legs over the other arm so he was draped over the piece of furniture. He closed his feline eyes for a moment, then opened them to look at Hongjoong. “What, with the imposter sightings, that Sector 1 bar, the alleged break-in…”

Hongjoong's eyes narrowed slightly. “Is there a point to this?”

“I merely wanted to ask if you had any leads.”

“And why would you be interested in that?”

Q shrugged his shoulders as best he could in his position, which basically constituted a jerky motion that looked as if his neck was broken and in a cast. “Maybe I have a vested interest in your success, Mr. Kim. I've always liked you much better than your predecessor.”

Hongjoong peered at his counterpart, his interiority at war with itself. It would always be good to have someone from the Wings Express on his side; but then again, they could be bought. It literally happened just now. He couldn't count on Q's allegiance anymore than he could count on Bang Chan's. 

He snorted. “You don't even know me; how could you possibly know if you like me better than him?”

“Call it intuition.” The assassin suddenly maneuvered himself back into an upright position. “As a show of good faith, Mr. Kim, I'd like to offer you a gift, I guess you could say.”

“A gift?” Hongjoong deadpanned, unimpressed. 

Q smiled. “A gift,” he verified. “Based on what I've heard, you never caught or killed Mr. Jung after Lee's fall, did you?” At Hongjoong's silence, Q took that as confirmation. “He’s never left the city, but he did go underground for a couple years. Only recently did one of my contacts catch wind of him reappearing.”

Hongjoong clasped his hands together, leaning in. Every thought from his head evaporated for the time being. “This better be going in a productive direction, Q. When and where?”

“Who knows?” Q replied, lifting his palms upward. “But he's out there, and you probably know him better than I do. He's working with someone.”

“Yes, a Mr. Young—”

“Nah, no,” he cut in with a shake of his head. “I hear this one goes by another name. I know this Mr. Young character, but I don't think that fucker is him.”

Hongjoong scrunched his brows together. Who could he possibly be talking about? 

Q stood from his seat then, carefully smoothing the front of shirt and pants down, carding a hand through his hair. “I think that's all I wanted to say.” He paused, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, there is one more thing—I hear you've caught yourself a little birdie.”

Confusion, fear, then ire flashed through him in that order. They struck like triplet bolts of lightning, hard and fast, bruising. Nothing could have made him more defensive than that statement. Hongjoong cocked his head to the side with a terrifying stagnancy in his eyes, as dangerous as still-water; but his mouth twisted in a smile. “Who?” he asked, incredulous. 

The assassin grinned with teeth, canines glinting, as he leaned his elbow over the back of his chair. “She must be pretty if you wanna pretend she doesn't even exist.”

Hongjoong could feel himself relax into his armchair. “And you must be obsessed with me if you're asking about the people in my life,” he quipped. 

“So you're saying she wouldn't be interested?”

“In who? You?” Hongjoong barked a laugh, leaning his cheek against his fist. He wondered if knives could be teeth, or how this infidel would sound when he broke every bone in his body. Hongjoong hadn't felt the thrill of his knuckles against flesh in a long, long time. He was so done with playing games and chasing ghosts. “Not a chance.”

Q raised his brows, but by the infuriating smirk on his face, he didn't seem to be put-off at all. “Just thought I'd shoot my shot,” he replied airily, and began to step in the direction of the entrance. 

And what if I shot a bullet through your face? 

He patted the back of Hongjoong's chair as he passed. “It was nice doing business with you, Mr. Kim. They do say to keep your enemies closer, don't they?”

Crows never forgot a face. When wronged, they could distinguish the face of their aggressor amongst a crowd and warn others of the danger that came with that very face. 

By all measures, you were ready for tonight's meeting. It was going to be like any other night at Dionysus: your task was to listen and make sure your smile was made of steel. You had gotten yourself this far already—one more night couldn't hurt. 

From what you gathered during your very brief training course over the past thirty-two hours, the party tonight included a gallery of officials high up in the ladder of power, excluding the real reigning family in this territory. Among them were the leaders of the Lioncrest Society, the GV mafia, and others. The woman training you, Freddi, didn't seem to know their identities, only that if they had gotten a seat at the table, they were to be treated as such. 

You brushed your hands down the sides of your dress, the hem suddenly an inch too short, the fabric a pinch too tight. The palms of your ice-cold hands began to sweat as you hurried out of the employee break room and through the kitchen. Because of the fast turnaround of your induction onto the VIP wait staff, you had yet to receive a locker in the respective break room. Apparently, Lilac still hadn't come in to claim her things, not that you minded. 

The kitchen had been in full swing for several hours now; since you were on a different wait staff, you had different hours than you did before. Despite a party of very important people occurring tonight, business could not simply stop. There were plenty of exits and entrances for them to come and go without going through the main doors. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you spotted Jungwon at his usual station. He'd come in as normal, while Sakura dropped you off. To avoid suspicion, you'd all decided it would be best this way. 

Dimples pressed into his cheeks as he smiled slightly, lifting two fingers in acknowledgement. 

You managed a smile back, as well as a nod. There was a contingency plan in place should anything go wrong, plus a list full of protocols to amend the plan spontaneously. You had those practices drilled into your mind, just as long as Jungwon still had your back. 

You didn't have any more reasons to think otherwise, though. 

As you made your way out of the kitchen to swing up the VIP stairs, your eyes feverishly scanned the floor for Sabine. You caught a flash of her cherry red hair out by her regular tables, but she was far too busy to turn your way. You were running out of time—for some reason, this felt like the last time you would ever see her. 

At the top of the stairs, the entrance was roped off with velvet and guarded by a pair of broad shoulders in sunglasses. 

“Hey, how's it going?” you greeted. The words had tumbled out of your mouth even if you didn't expect him to respond anyway. They never usually did. 

This one wasn't any different. Sunglasses recognized you from yesterday's training and immediately raised the metal scanner in his hand. With practiced grace, you lifted your arms up, gave a slow spin, then waited for his approval. As he waved the scanner over your earrings, you held your breath, holding… holding… holding…

“You're good,” said Sunglasses, followed by the clinking sound of the velvet rope being unclipped. 

You nodded in thanks, ducking past to quickly take your place in the lineup and sucking in a deep breath. While you weren't able to bring anything but yourself into the room, Sakura had provided you with a pair of one-way transmitting earrings. When activated, they could send audio to the receivers—in this case, Jungwon and Sakura—but they could only be activated when needed to avoid detection by something like the guard's scanner. 

(Sakura had also complained about the terrible battery life on the earrings. They're pretty, she'd grumbled, but as good as dead if they're overworked.)

Amongst the other six or so girls with you was Freddi, your mentor from yesterday. She wore a little, black dress like you, different in style, but short enough where your customers wouldn't care. It was a uniform of sorts, you'd been told, but it was one you already wore from your days down on the main floor. 

“Hi,” you whispered to her as your new handler counted heads. 

Freddi fussed with a stray, pink strand, her eyes darting between you and the handler. “Hey. Did I mention yesterday that it's crazy you got pulled in for tonight of all nights? I mean, talk about throwing you to the wolves.”

The irony wasn't lost on you. You gave a smile that was a genuine grimace hybrid. “Whatever keeps the money rolling, I guess,” you replied with a lame shrug. “Did he say anything before I got here?”

She shook her head. 

Both yours and her attention snapped to the front as the handler began addressing all of you as a group. Tonight, he expressed, was an important night—not only for the club managers and their reputations, but for you all, too. The added emphasis on the latter made it so his meaning wasn't lost on any of you. 

You swallowed down your nerves, your finger tapping against your thigh in replacement to pacing. 

Soon, the seven of you were led into the meeting room. It was rather small, but not without its subtle luxuries. The centerpiece was a large, circular table; dark green like it was carved from emeralds, framed with a polished mahogany around the edges. Overhead, a chandelier sparkled with low light, its individual crystals reflecting in rainbow fractals around the room. There were seven chairs around the table, one man per waiter present. 

The seven of you spread yourselves out, waiting by a seat to pull out for the person you were to attend to tonight. 

And you didn't have to wait long to find out who it would be. 

Your heart had gradually begun to beat louder and louder as time ticked onward, but it wasn't until tonight's guests began filing in that you almost choked on your heart as it catapulted into your throat. 

You grappled onto the back of your assigned chair, slathered on a smile like it was just another swipe of Aurora. You willed your knees to hold like steel. 

The faces that entered the room—there were some who were familiar, some who were completely unknown to you. Each man came with at least one guard, and there were undoubtedly more outside the door. 

You could pick out Manager Cheung's voice before you even saw him. He blabbed noisily beside someone you didn't recognize, a man with annoyance engraved in his face, his salt and peppered hair swept back. Manager Ly seemed the less outspoken of the two. He strolled in beside two others—one of whom you recognized. 

In fact, his face in particular set off your internal alarm bells. You had taken the liberty of familiarizing yourself with relevant faces and names, those that could be found on the internet, at least. It was all in preparation for whomever you were to see tonight. Surprises were not ideal in this situation, and it was a good thing you weren't surprised to see Jung Joonseo. There were a few things different from his old photographs, but the underlying features of his face remained the same. 

Hongjoong had once described this man to you as shrewd and calculating. He had once controlled every piece of money Strictland owned. How many calculations had he performed in preparation to take revenge on Ateez?

You wondered what Hongjoong was doing now, wondered if he might miraculously waltz through that door as his suave alter ego, Jun. His yellow-tinted glasses and the plush feeling of his thumb against your lip played in the forefront of your mind. It wasn't the ideal image to see if you wanted to remain focused, that was for sure. 

“Ah, Jinyoung! And I see you've brought your protégé,” Manager Cheung exclaimed as he exchanged hearty greetings with the remainder of tonight's guests. 

Kang Jingyoung, head of the GV mafia family, and Bang Chan were the last to step through the door. Behind them, the guards posted outside sealed the entrance. The only other door was the one you and the wait staff came through—the service entrance. 

Your eyes found Chan's from across the room, but neither of you looked any longer than a second. If anyone in this room caught on that you knew each other, you'd be dead. Maybe he'd get a slap on the wrist, but you… 

He had a dark colored piece of fabric pulled over the lower half of his face, leaving only his eyes and the twin glints of his eyebrow piercing for you to see. 

As you snapped back into focus, you nearly started at the sight of Joonseo, Manager Ly, and the third unknown member of their party making their way toward your side of the table. 

The third man didn't boast a terribly remarkable face. There were no scars, birthmarks, or notable features. He had a straight nose, a slim jaw, and eyes so empty that you shuddered. He was quiet, even compared to Joonseo and Ly, who conversed only in hushed tones. But he was young, undoubtedly so. Perhaps even a little younger than yourself. Who was this guy?

If Joonseo was likely behind this entire mess, then why was he here without Mr. Young? What role could this other man be playing?

The man in question met your stare, something flashing across his face. You could have sworn his lip twitched, but you didn't have time to hyperanalyze him—you had a job to do. 

You pulled out the chair in front of you, gesturing to the empty seat. “Would you like to sit down, sir?” you asked. 

He slid into the offered seat, and he muttered a “Thank you,” to your pleasant surprise. 

“Can I get you anything from the kitchen before the meeting begins?” You leaned around him to place a drink napkin before him. 

“You look familiar.”

Ba-bump. You let out an easy laugh. “I get that a lot, actually,” you mused. You lifted your head, only to meet Chan's eyes from directly across the table. 

“No, I mean,” the man continued as he watched you, “I've seen you before. Have you worked at other establishments around here?”

“Oh, no. Not around here,” you said. There was a distinct weight to his stare, you realized, as if a shroud had been placed over your shoulders and came to life just to crawl over every inch of your body. “Are you sure I couldn't get you a drink, Mr…?”

“Kyungmin.”

“Kyungmin,” you repeated. “Our bartenders are especially good at a classic martini.” He looked like a martini guy; you couldn't explain it. 

He finally glanced away from you when Joonseo nudged him with a hand. The two men leaned close to one another, and you turned your head slightly in hopes to hear what they were saying. 

It was over far too quickly, though, and Kyungmin was turning back to you. “I'll take a dirty martini with two olives then.”

“Right away,” you chirped and jetted off to fulfill that order. 

When you returned with the martini in hand, the table had already begun discussion. You could hear the chatter like the buzz of white noise as you pushed through the swinging service door, passing by one of the other waiters on duty. 

“Funny how you don't have a bar in the room,” Jinyoung remarked with a flippant wave of his hand. “The clubs I own always have a bar in the VIP rooms, even if they're small.”

Did Jinyoung make it a habit of insulting his hosts wherever he went? you thought. Your eyes went to Chan again, who's own face was blank as the drink napkin in front of him. Maybe if you knew him better, you'd be able to find exasperation in between the lines of his face; but every time you saw him now, you could only think of Ryujin. After that, all thoughts of getting to know him further than simply being across a table from him vanished. 

The martini landed delicately on its targeted napkin, and you stepped into the shadows at the edges of the room, hands clasped in front of you to listen. 

Manager Cheung's top lip curled upward in distaste, and he opened his mouth to undoubtedly fire a retort back at the mafia head. 

The man whom Cheung had been speaking to before, and was now seated beside, raised his hand. Cheung's mouth snapped closed, his head bowing briefly in a deep nod. How interesting. “That’s enough. We've business, don't we?”

“Of course, Mr. Park,” Cheung said. “It is an honor that you've chosen mine and Manager Ly's club to host tonight's discussion.”

Mr. Park didn't react, expression-wise at least, to Cheung's pandering. If this was a different situation, you probably would have laughed. “Jung,” he grunted, nodding to the man to your right, “it’s been nearly four weeks and I don't see those punk 17’ers moving on Ateez.”

You blinked. Wow, no beating around the bush, it seemed. 

There was a memory distant in your mind. From the Lioncrest gang members you had eavesdropped on weeks ago… could this be the Park they were referring to? He was certainly someone high up within their ranks. 

“We have yet to see evidence of your plan's success.”

Joonseo laced his fingers over the table top. “Mr. Park, you've seen pieces of my plan succeed. Maybe not this particular motion, but the public's view of the Captain has diminished.”

Mr. Park narrowed his eyes at him, his face somehow becoming even stormier than before. “Public view?” he quite literally spat. “This isn't some prissy game of politics. You're not running for mayor. Aish.”

“Of course not.” To Joonseo's limited credit, he didn't shrink under Park's disapproval. He drummed his fingers against the table, took a sip of his drink, then laced them back together again. You wished you could see his face. “But it's all a part of the plan. We need to turn people against him, and my actions have been carefully calculated to make him seem like an unstable figure of power. Subtle acts of attack such as mine may not be within your realm of understanding.”

“Why, I could crush you between my two pinky—”

“Gentlemen,” Chan cut in brightly, “we're allies, are we not? Colleagues. We have our separate strengths, but they come together to help each other reach our goals. Let's not forget.”

Jinyoung nodded sagely, patting his protégé on the shoulder. “Well said. As for our portion of the plan, our men are in position at the docks. It's your move, Jung.”

You glanced over at Kyungmin. Was he an assistant to Joonseo? Why hadn't he said anything yet?

Joonseo was again the one to respond. “It's unimportant that the Diamond District hasn't waged war against Ateez; it's mildly annoying, but there are… other ways.”

“Like what?” Cheung blurted. 

Park sent him a look, but inclined his chin. “Don't be coy now.”

Joonseo and Kyungmin exchanged a glance, and if you hadn't been paying attention, you would have missed the micro movement of Kyungmin's head. 

He just shook his head. Was Kyungmin refusing to speak? He was far too young compared to your knowledge of what the length of Joonseo's experience was. (Who was this guy?)

“You mentioned before you had an inside man,” Manager Ly offered. 

Joonseo nodded. “They are… not the conventional type of 'inside man’—”

Park slammed his hands against the table, rolling his eyes. “Do you or do you not have someone inside the Captain's circle? How many men do you truly have under your power, Jung? Are you wasting my time?”

“If you'd just be patient,” Joonseo said through gritted teeth. 

Your eyes caught onto movement—Kyungmin. He raised two fingers to wave you over without moving his head. Your spine straightened as you shuffled over to his side. 

He handed you his empty glass. “Get me another one of these.”

With a nod, you took the glass from him and hurried through the service door. 

Your heart pumped almost as fast as your legs. Every second you were out of that room was another valuable piece of intel you were missing. 

As you lingered at the VIP lounge's bar, you anxiously drummed your fingers against the surface. There was one other girl here before you, but the bartender on duty tonight just gave her the drink she came for. You cracked your knuckles, eyes feverishly watching the bartender begin to assemble the martini. 

From your distant left, you swore you heard the faint sound of your faux name being called. 

Your head went on a swivel to locate the sound. 

Jungwon appeared at the far end of the lounge as he pushed a bussing cart across the empty room to where you were standing. “Hey, how's your night going so far?”

Grabbing the empty martini glass, you met him in the middle to pass it over to him. With some breathing room between you and the bartender, it would be easier to chat unheard. “I feel like I'm missing so much by just being here for five minutes.”

“It's okay. I mean, have you—y’know—heard anything?”

You paused. Jungwon didn't know about the inside man, and Hongjoong hadn't figured out who it could be yet. You swallowed, mentally sorting through your information for something else. “Most of it has just been validating things we already know. Oh—do you know anyone named Kyungmin?”

Jungwon frowned and scrunched up his nose. “Doesn't ring a bell. What does he look li—”

“Hey! Drink's ready.”

You swore under your breath. “Okay, I'll talk to you later.”

“Wait, Dove!”

You halted midstep with your hand already wrapped around the neck of the glass. His mouth opened to say something and you passed him an expectant look. 

His expression shuddered and he bit his lip, waving it away. “Nevermind. 's not important. Good luck with the fat cats in there, and I got you if you need anything.”

“Thanks!” With not a moment to lose, you darted back toward the service door into the private room. 

The door swung open at the force of your shoulder, and you were immediately met by Mr. Park's loud assertions. 

“—want that land, Jung. If you can't get me the rest of Hala Town, then I'll find someone who can.”

The two men were standing at this point—a battle of the wills, so to speak. You winced to yourself, yikes, and made your way over to Kyungmin with his refill. As soon as the drink left your hands, you sank back into the safety of the dim shadows. 

“You will have your real estate, Mr. Park, if you would just have faith,” Joonseo sneered. “Your small mind can't comprehend the fascinating way that my machinations have worked—”

“You're really beginning to get on my nerves, boy.” Park pressed his fingers against the table, staring openly with the dark eyes of a ghost. 

A shiver tumbled down your spine. What was the signal for ‘gun’, again?

“We have C4.”

All eyes bolted over to the voice, and even your eyes widened in mild surprise. Kyungmin casually looked up from his martini glass as if he hadn't attracted everyone's attention like he was the opposite end to the room's magnetic pole. 

Manager Cheung blinked, flabbergasted. “C4?”

Kyungmin nodded. “You should be satisfied to know that if it’s physical violence you want for results, we're planting a bomb at—”

BANG!

The sound was so akin to an explosion, that you threw yourself back against the wall as a reflex. The doors to the private room slammed open against their back walls and the room flooded with strangers. Shouts, clambering, the metallic cocking of firearms echoed throughout the space. 

“Keep your guns away! Or be stupid, I don't really give a damn,” chuckled the one at the front. His blond hair was chopped in a short cropped style, and there was a tiger tattooed on his one exposed shoulder. 

Your heart pounded up against your ribcage as you and the other waiters cowered against the edges of the room. The figures were mostly covered from head to toe, their mouths hidden behind masks; something turquoise—no, periwinkle, caught your eye. There was a geometric sign visible in the blur, vaguely familiar. 

The maniac with the tiger tatt raised his rifle. “Which one of you broke onto Diamond District property?”

In the beat of silence, you and about a dozen others saw someone move. You saw the gleam of dark metal—a bodyguard's attempt to draw his gun. 

The invaders were far quicker. 

BANG! And it began what felt like the end of the fucking world. 

More guns were drawn and bullets tore through air, fabric, flesh, bone. You had to slam your hands over your ears because you swore you felt the warmth of blood trickling from your eardrums. 

Your fingers fumbled for the switch on your earrings and felt that telltale click. The signal for a room full of guns—

“Dove!” you managed to hear over the dissonance. 

Your head whipped in their direction—fuck—your eyes widened as you clocked a figure running right at you. 

Red hair, wild eyes, familiar? You had barely a second to think before he yelled at you to ‘duck’ and tackled you to the ground. His arms came around you, hand cradling the back of your head, rolling so he took the brunt of the fall. 

A wave of serious déjà vu nearly knocked you over again. 

In the split second you took to look him over, you saw the unmistakable glint of steel in his eyes. It was so familiar to you, like a siren's call, that there was no doubt in your mind of who this was.  

When Hongjoong knew the realization hit you, he yanked you up to your feet and shoved you toward the service door. “Go find Jungwon.”

“But the others—”

He fixed you with that hard, burning stare. “Now!” 

You had no choice but to obey. Crashing through the service entrance, you hesitated for only a moment on the other side before careening down the hall to find your ticket out of here. 

The city air was flooded with sirens again tonight. It smelled particularly of gunpowder and rage. What transpired this evening, according to news sources, was a gang shootout gone wrong. A handful of bodies were recovered from the wreckage of the Dionysus night club in the southeastern area of Hala Town, but authorities were unsure as to how many got away or even survived the event. 

You were hunched over in the front seat of Jungwon's car outside the Ateez commanders’ home. The ringing in your ears had yet to cease, and neither had the throbbing in the side of your skull. 

In the deathly quiet, you attempted to piece together tonight as a whole. What the Hell even happened back there? How did people end up dead?

Yours and Jungwon's heads lifted in tandem at the sound of gravel beneath tires. The headlights of a black SUV sliced through the cold, winter night as it pulled up a little ways from Jungwon's car. 

When the driver's door opened and a head of scarlet red hair appeared, you bumped Jungwon on the shoulder. “Thanks, Won. G'night.”

“Night,” he replied back softly. “You okay?”

You nodded. “I‘m fine. Get home safe.”

You broke out into the evening air and stormed over to Kim Hongjoong with the likeness of the thrashing winter waves less than a mile from you at the docks. Blood rushed in your ears like distant thunderstorms, and you couldn't get the distinct spike of fear in your heart to go the fuck away. 

“What were you thinking?” you exclaimed as he met you halfway. 

Hongjoong yanked the top of his mask down, the bandana pooling around his neck. A drop of something dark and red dribbled down the side of his face from the crown of his head, and your breath hitched. “Fuck, you're bleeding—”

“I'm not, I'm not,” he reassured you, but didn't push your hands away. “It's the hair dye.”

Oh. Your nostrils flared and you shoved at his chest. “What were you thinking? What was that? Don't tell me that was you guys.”

“No, I was tagging along with a bust that the DDC was doing tonight,” he explained, snatching your hand before you could attempt to hit him again. A smile grappled at the ends of his lips and he had to sink his teeth into his bottom lip to suppress it. “We discussed the chances of important figures from Strictland making an appearance tonight and thought we would kill two birds with one stone. It was a risk I was willing to take, but only because I knew I would be there to make sure nothin’ happened to you, doll.”

He leaned in close, hands still locked in yours. “Are you alright?” 

You hated that his sweaty, red hair was making your heart palpitations worse. Hated that he still had your well-being in mind, despite almost always throwing himself into danger. Hated that he thought your wanting to punch him was cute. How did he sleep at night?

You had to look away before your eyes gave away every last one of your secrets. “I'm not hurt if that's what you're asking.”

“I care about that, too, but that's not what I'm asking.”

One hand loosened its grip, and you felt him guide your chin back in his direction. His eyes were dark as the sea on a cloudless night—you’d like to drown in them some day, any day. “Talk to me, dove.”

“You scared the fucking shit out of me. Is that what you wanted to hear?” you said finally. “Do you have no regard for your well-being at all, Joong? You could have gotten yourself killed. If anyone in that room knew who you were…”

“They didn't,” he said firmly. “I don't have a scratch on me, I swear.”

“Doesn't make you any less of an idiot.”

He let himself smile this time. “I'll take it. Now let's go inside. It's fuckin’ freezing and I have something I wanted to talk to you about.” His hands moved out of yours, but only to wrap around your waist to guide you inside. 

The warmth and the weight of his arm around you was embarrassingly comforting, the kind of grounding that an anchor performed. Maybe even your headache was slowly fading away. 

“Right,” you perked up as you both entered the warehouse, “there are things I wanted to discuss with you, too.”

Hongjoong glanced over at you, red dye dripping down his neck and cheekbones. He nodded, though the movement was dazed; and his eyes wandered downward to someplace below your eyes and nose, someplace you both knew he shouldn't be looking.

Your skin warmed at the realization and you glanced away again. 

“Wait.” He drew you back to him, and you could feel your heart jamming into your throat again. Your mind went blank from the sensation of his breath fanning over your lips.

“Captain! Captain, we've got bad—oh.” 

You jolted like a spooked horse, out of Hongjoong's hold and nearly five feet up in the air. Your hand flew up to press against your chest as your heart raced erratically in its cage. Good fucking grief. 

Hongjoong shot a glare at Wooyoung, the figure who appeared at the top of the stairs, with enough power to level a city block. The latter had his phone held up in his hand, as if he was on a live call with someone, and his eyes were wider than a full moon as he was struck with what he just walked into and how much blow back he was about to get from his superior. 

“Someone better be dying or dead, Wooyoung,” Hongjoong grumbled.

Wooyoung smiled through a grimace. “Well, that's just the thing, hyung. We just found Mr. Young's dead body in the marina.”

a/n: pls reblog if u enjoyed !

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[murderofravens]

would anyone like my opinions on s3? ill give them anyway. spoilers below the cut

the first thing im the most frustrated about is the way they handled inho and junho's storyline. since s1 we have seen them set up such a special, emotional relationship of two brothers, who by the end of the show have matching surgery and bullet scars, but suddenly we don't get a single scene of them? nothing?

WHY did inho send the baby off to junho? what is he supposed to do with her? inho taking care of the baby himself would've made more sense considering he joined the games for his wife and baby and it could be set up as a way to redeem himself but he sends off another burden in his little brother's life??

wdym inho who was desperate to save his little brother, who gave a kidney to him, who saved his life and wanted him far away from the games as possible, is readily allowing for his worker to 'kill them all including the detective'???? im so pissed at how they butchered the more humane aspects of his character

the vip scenes were HORRIBLE and took away from the mysterious/emotional aspects of the show. they couldve given that screentime to exploring the characters relationships, or inho and junho or inho and gihun's dynamic, but NOOOOO. the voice work was EVEN WORSE! especially with the lady's!!

inho and gihun. i dont even have words for this. they hyped up their dynamic throughout the press, through photoshoots and the 457 thing, and the most we get is a few minutes confrontation?? gihun's entire arc in s2 revolved around unmasking the frontman, asking his motivations, FIGHTING HIM, but when gihun finds out its his former teammate who he developed a friendship with, its NOTHING? it almost felt like their entire dynamic in s2 never happened, it felt like the hollow shell of the characters they'd made but without any sort of development

it's clear they were setting up american squid game's foundation through their ending (yet another show im surprised they greenlit) but WHY THE FUCK were they playing ddakji? shouldnt they be playing american children's games?? considering korean squid game was about koren children's games?? im 100% netflix's involvement and pressure regarding setting up the american sg is one of the major reasons why the writing is so poor in this version.

myunggi. what the fuck happened to him bro. its apparent his motivations were driven by money from the start, but one of the reasons he abandoned junhee also stemmed from his love for her. we saw glimpses of it in s2. and then they quite literally make him the main villain in s3? it feels a little shallow and taking the easy route. killing his own daughter is crazy. but i guess with guys like him it was the most obvious route he'd take. its still a little disheartening to see.

idgaf about namgyu. im sorry i cannot stand him. i was happy when he died 😭

no-eul was incredible. big fan of park heesoon as the masked man. i really liked their dynamic. she's one of my favourite characters. but i feel like they could've done more with his character. he was clearly meant to lead the games incase something happened to inho.

gihun was truly a very well written protagonist. at the end he did something very gihun like; and he moves me so much. what did irk me about him is the fact that he readily killed daeho with his bare hands— his teammate and someone his best friend truly cherished. but he hesitated to kill the actual bad men who were responsible for many deaths including his teams, and threatened to kill him and the baby. it was very frustrating to see. gihun does have a dark side but why was it aimed at the wrong people?

hyunju's death KILLED me. genuinely. i cried. and the old lady's. their arcs were very well written but god they devastated me.

ill be honest i was so sure the series would end with inho dead someway. preferably killing himself. i was so sure we'd see him sacrifice himself for junho, considering how emotionally charged their storyline has been so far. it was disappointing how it was handled.

these are the ones that are in my mind, ill keep posting when i think of something new.

[lovingdabeessss]

Thank you for pointing out yang also helps blake out when she needs help or to chill, recency bias has the fandom thinking it's only ever going to be blake helping yang when the core of their relationship is "they protect each other" when one falls down the other picks her up and vice versa honestly amazing how healthy their relationship is

Thank you!!! I love when people think I do a good job talking about them

I thought it was important to bring up just because how HUGE yang reassuring Blake is

(this isn’t to downplay what Blake is to yang i just can’t talk about 2 things because then I’ll never stop talking)

It’s a big part of their relationship and dynamic and both of their characters and development especially in the beginning

It means a lot to who yang is as a person and who she is in context to Blake

Like I want to do nothing else but acknowledge just how important meeting and being with yang was for Blake

Blake just got out of a relationship that was incredibly manipulative and toxic

But the only reason she got OUT of it was because the person doing that to her was hurting OTHER people, it clearly took Blake a much longer time to realize what he did to HER was wrong

And then she teamed up with yang, a girl who’s so patient and supportive and kind to her and expects literally NOTHING in return

And it’s very important to me that I think that she started acting like that BEFORE she started to have a crush on Blake in any way

Yang did that because it’s what she could tell Blake needed, and that’s just the kind of person she is

Blake needed reassurance, she needed to believe she was more then just a dark void, that she deserved better then what she got and that’s what yang was for her

Nothing to do with romance or anything else, flat out just: Blake needed someone to do that and yang excelled in it

And there’s so many examples

Like:

Blakes drawing her abusive ex in a notebook yang sees but Blake clearly doesn’t want to talk about it? Yang lets it go, doesn’t ask any questions

Blake puts herself down when they talk about their motivations for being here? Yang says “you’re not the kind of person to run from a fight”!

Blake has a fight with Elon musk jr Weiss and reveals she was part of a group that while having a long history of being a group for fighting for faunas rights has recently started killing innocent people (under new leadership) and then she RUNS? Yang “abandonment issues” xiao long literally just looks for her, she isn’t mad her team partner left without a word, she doesn’t so much as mumble about the secrets or the white fang thing, she doesn’t comment on how it must make her feel to be abandoned like that, she even defends her to Weiss repeatedly

When they find her and Blake admits to something SO personal and big for her, to decide to go after and try and right the wrongs of the white fang and figure out what’s going on, yang supports her, casually and sweetly, like there should never be any doubt on what she was going to do, yangs just happy Blake���s expressing her wants

NOT EVEN MENTIONING BURNING THE CANDLE WHICH WAS A WHOLE THING ALL ABOUT THIS PART ABOUT THEM

Yang helped Blake immeasurably on her road to recovery

And I’m not saying that Ruby and Weiss and sun weren’t important too!!! They absolutely were!! Weiss and sun actually serve 2 different versions of the same thing Blake needed, and we all know why Ruby’s important relationship for Blake to have, I’m just saying all of them COMBINED couldn’t get Blake to stop destroying herself after several attempts and it took yang 1 conversation max AND got her to additionally go to the dance with a single sentence

Yang probably did the best job 1 person can do to help out someone going through something this huge and difficult

However Blake was going through a LOT mental illness is a big thing especially with all the trauma and just how fucking long she was in that situation for

A lot of things were conditioned into her and they worked really hard but new trauma tends to bring up old bad habits

As amazing of a job yang did at being there for someone who’s so traumatized

she was still just one person and Blake needed the bigger support system of her family to get to the healthy place she needed to be at to truly be the healthy person she is now

and to truly be the healthy person she’d need to be to be a healthy significant other for yang

but I doubt she could’ve even gotten to the point of willingly going back home without yangs help

Something I should probably make a different post about tho is

The point of “we’re protecting each other” is that they’re NOW loving each other by working together

Before they wanted to protect each other but they were working separately, they weren’t communicating about it and to a certain extent they weren’t respecting each other about it

That’s the POINT of it

It’s shown in how they fight Adam

The first time it’s Yang protects Blake and then it’s Blake protects yang

The second time they’re doing it together at the same time

That’s why it works

Also btw yeah I totally get the frustration, the bumblebee relationship is so awesome and so nuanced and amazing and people aren’t always gonna remember to express they’re cannon complexities

Even down to the simplest “we’re protecting each other” or the entire point of the song “all that matters”

Such is the nature of fandom

Anyway the reason for the recent bias is probably cause a lot of the more obvious helping each other and comforting each other things have been yang to Blake

And people have recently realized there’s a LOT that yang needs to be talked to about

So they’re making up for it in fandom

As fandom works

And it makes people occasionally forget just how prominent yang helping Blake is or just forget to mention it

[rori-is-writing]

Tell Me It Gets Easier

⟪ ⟨ Ch 1: Sorry To Bother You ⟩ ⟫

A The Pitt AU Fic.

Multi-Part | Explicit | Dr. Robby x OC | 1,323 words ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Summary: Robby’s secret telepathic neighbor keeps interrupting him every time he thinks a little too hard about offing himself. But in the process, finds herself drawn to him in a way she never would have expected.  ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Tags: Age Gap (20+ years), Female OC, Suicidal Ideation, Telepathy

Read on AO3 | The Pitt Masterlist

[ A/N: The only downside to writing in this fandom is there aren't a lot of fantasy adjacent fics or AUs out there. So I guess I had to write my own. ]

Why am I here?

Daisy paused in her aggressive chopping and glanced at the wall where she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, her neighbor currently sat on the other side—contemplating killing himself…again. 

Christ. This was the third time this month. 

She waited, hoping perhaps it was just one of those passing thoughts that rarely ever came to anything. Like when someone would look over the railing of a balcony or bridge and randomly think I wonder what would happen if I jumped? Of course most people rarely ever acted on those sorts of thoughts. In fact, they were usually so disturbed by the shocking suddenness of them that they would go out of their way to pretend it had never happened at all. 

Unfortunately for her though, this was not one of those. 

I can’t keep going on like this. I can’t lose another one.

Suddenly—in her mind’s eye—she saw a glimpse of a too-small face, covered in blood and staring sightlessly up at the ceiling as the sound of a flatlined heart monitor droned on in the background. 

Daisy wished this were the first time she were seeing the death of a child in someone’s head but unfortunately she’d long since grown numb to it. After a lifetime of hearing and seeing the thoughts and memories of others—the good, the bad, and the most truly heinous and soul-crushing—it was a miracle she hadn’t gone crazy before the age of twelve. 

With a sigh, she laid her knife flat on the cutting board and made her way towards her front door. Dinner could wait. 

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

“Hi there, sorry to bother you,” Daisy said, not sorry at all as her neighbor opened his door to blink suspiciously at her. 

Robby was just as scruffy and exhausted looking as he always was. Though that made sense considering he was an E.R. doctor. Or so she had gleaned from his mind that first day she’d moved into the apartment next to his. 

Her again, he thought. Wasn’t she just here last week?

She had, yes. After he’d spent far too long staring at the bottle of Percocet he kept in the back of his medicine cabinet—something leftover from some surgery he’d undergone several years before—and had swiftly appeared at his doorstep to offer him ‘home-warming’ cookies like they hadn’t been neighbors for the last two and a half years. 

“You wouldn’t happen to have seen my cat roaming around have you?” Daisy asked him with her best concerned Cat Mom face. “Mumble. He’s an orange tabby. Fat. Adorable. Loves attention and snacks.” 

This was, in fact, a lie—not about the attention or snacks of course, her cat loved nothing more than to beg for treats and chin scritches—but that Mumble was very much safe and sound. In fact, as of five minutes ago, he was still napping away the evening in his favorite spot—the basket of clean laundry she always told herself she’d get around to folding before giving up when she inevitably fished out her last wrinkled blouse of the week…before starting the cycle all over again. 

But her neighbor didn’t need to know that. 

“Oh,” Robby said, surprised. He paused, actually searching his memory for a glimpse of an orange tail or ears hiding behind a bush on his walk home from work. Poor thing. She almost felt bad about deceiving him. 

Almost. 

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Daisy continued, knowing damn well he was. “But I just worry about him is all…” 

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding genuinely contrite. “I can’t say I have.” 

She pasted on her best ‘I’m so disappointed but trying to hide it’ face before nodding. “Yes, of course. I won’t bother you any more. Just wanted to check if you’d seen him. I’m sure he’ll turn up though.” 

As she moved back she couldn’t help but reach out with her mind, brushing against his just to make sure he would be okay for the remainder of the night. 

Most minds had a ‘taste’. A feeling that was distinctly, wholly their own. Her mother’s tasted like sunscreen and cheap wine on the beach—her favorite place to vacation every summer with her husband before Daisy had been born. Her father’s tasted like newspaper and wood shavings—his refuge in their old shed where he liked to wile away his weekends building furniture for no one in particular. 

But Robby’s mind, his tasted like blood and antiseptic. Old leather and new scalpels straight out of the packaging. The bitterness of loss and the sweetness of friendship. A physician’s mind through and through. His vocation was not simply his job, but his life. He hated and loved it in equal measure, not matter how much it broke him some days. 

He would be fine, for now at least. Until the darkness called him once more and she was there to distract him again. 

Same time next week? She thought with no small amount of dark humor. 

“Sorry I couldn’t help,” Robby murmured awkwardly. 

Daisy smiled as she backed toward her own door. 

“You already have.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Daisy remembered the first time she realized she was hearing thoughts instead of spoken words. 

She had only been a toddler then—just a couple of months shy of her fourth birthday. Still wholly innocent and sweet—unburdened by the knowledge of what she was just yet. Speech had come to her early. Her parents had marveled over the rapid and exciting development of their only child, so far ahead of her peers in her age range. 

Of course, it was only later that it would become clear that this had more to do with Daisy’s ability to hear every word and thought—spoken or otherwise—rather than their daughter being some sort of wunderkind genius as they had initially assumed. But those were revelations for later. 

“She already knows her letters!” Daisy’s mother had boasted to her friend. “Her doctor is so impressed!”

The friend, a bottle-blonde with a perpetually frazzled air about her, smiled in reply. Her lips had been closed. She never spoke. And yet…Daisy had heard her words regardless. 

Letters my ass. She has to be exaggerating. Addy didn’t know her letters until she went to Kindergarten! 

Daisy had blinked up at the woman. 

“Bad word.” She said. 

The woman smiled down at her, confused. “What’s that sweetie?” 

“Bad word,” Daisy repeated, a little more forcefully. 

“What bad word sweetheart?” Her mother asked, equally puzzled by this strange turn in the conversation. 

“Can’t say,” Daisy said. “Bad.” 

Her mother had, of course, drilled into her the importance of never using ‘bad words’ after she’d repeated a few her father had ‘said’ very loudly once. But this was different. This was a guest using them. And so…so rudely! 

What the fuck is she on about?

Daisy gasped. 

“Bad word!” She yelled, pointing an accusing chubby finger at the woman. 

Her mother’s friend frowned. I didn’t say that out loud did I? No, of course not…but then why…?

And that’s when it had all clicked into place. 

The afternoon had only spiraled from there. Daisy had swiftly been sent to her room for being rude to her mother’s guest but it hadn’t mattered. Like always, she could hear them speaking through the walls, as if they were right there in the room with her. 

I don’t understand what’s wrong with her today. I can’t believe she would embarrass me like that!

What a weird kid. 

I bet she’s just overtired. She just needs a nap. 

Maybe she’s possessed? No, that doesn’t make sense. Demons aren’t real…unless…? 

And so on and so forth until the woman left. 

She never came to visit again. 

Not that it had mattered to Daisy. All that mattered from then on was that she knew. Knew what she was.

Weird. 

Unnatural. 

A freak. 

Next Chapter | Tell Me It Gets Easier Masterlist

Thanks for reading! 🩵

If you would like to be added (or removed) to this or future tag lists, please let me know!

Tag List: @wisps-writes-fic

[chronicallyonlin3]

( ˶°ㅁ°)The Winchesters as yandere big brothers...

(Yandere!Winchester Brothers x Little Sibling!Reader)

((I used to watch this show with my mom all the time so it has a special place in my heart, especially the boys(and Bobby)))

Yandere!Winchester Brothers who hates letting you on hunts, but somehow you always get roped into it.

It's never on purpose to. You just somehow find your way into their mess. From flirting with vampires to befriending shapeshifter. You always get caught up in their hunting, the Winchester curse or something like that.

"Fucking hell! Y/N! Why are you here?!" Dean yelled. Him and Sam were just about to storm a vampire nest when they found you, their little sibling, hanging around it. They were sure they'd left you at the motel in the nearby town. But knowing you, you snuck out without their permission, and somehow ended up here. So of course, Dean had Sam take you back to the Impala and ACTUALLY make sure you stayed.

The ride back was not a fun one.(ᵕ—ᴗ—)

.

Yandere!Winchester Brothers who use you as a mediator when they argue over stuff.

They usually fight over dumb stuff. Not figuring out what type of monster they're fighting, helping out other hunters, honestly just trying keep each other (and you) alive.

"Sam, you know you can't just jump into a whole group of them! And definitely not by freaking yourself!"

"I could handle it, I mean it's done right?"

They'd keep this going until they both go to sleep or out somewhere, the former definitely resulting in some tension. But they can never stay mad for long if there precious baby sibling is there to get them to make up.

.

Yandere!Winchester Brothers who would never let anything happen to you, whether that be you getting injured, or dying.

I mean do you see the way they treat the other dying? Yeah, they would never let you go, like ever. You could be possessed, dead, infected, anything, they would never let you go. They already resurrected each other more than enough times so why would it be any different for you? Family is all they have and they'll be damned if they lose another.

.

Yandere!Sam who stays up late with you. studying different monsters and creatures.

Since they don't let you go on the actuals hunts they, mostly Sam, thought it would be best for you to be on research duty. It lets them do less work, and you still get to be prepared if something ever comes for you.

Sam would see you desperately trying to stay away with a mountain of books around. He's tell you to get to bed, but being stubborn you say no. So, he stays with you, and goes through all the books and weird online forums with you. And when you eventually fall asleep, book in hand and head on his shoulder, he falls asleep with you.

.

Yandere!Dean who would sabotage any chance of you being in a relationship.

It's not like he never wants you to find love or anything. He just thinks relationships are stupid in your line of work, and no, he doesn't see how hypocritical that is. You, his little sibling, younger then him, younger then damn Sammy. Why would you ever need a partner when you have your older brother(s) there for you? Besides, they'd probably get themselves killed or put you in danger with not knowing about all the monster and such out there, better to just never date at all!ദ്ദി(ᵔᗜᵔ)

And with him being protective to the max, he would be so nosy if you did actually get with someone. Asking you about them 24/7, how they're treating you, if he needs to 'set them straight'. Which is just him beating the shit out of them.

.

[chosaraki]

Mine forever

—————————————————————————

Gitae Kim x R.femele.

—————————————————————————

(Y/n) as a close friend of Jake Kim

—————————————————————————

The metal sound echoed softly in the shed. The smell of oil, grease and burnt steel mixed with the humid morning air. You were down, focused, with your fingers dirty with oil while changing the chain on Jake's bike. He had left with you trusting that he would take good care of it - and you always took care of it.

Being his friend meant many things: listening to his outbursts, covering up illegal fights, protecting the younger boys from the Big Deal, and - of course - fixing his motorcycles every time he came back with them destroyed.

You heard low music on the phone, so you didn't notice the shadow until it completely turned off the light around you.

He looked up.

And there he was.

A man so tall and wide that he seemed shaped by war. He wore black from head to toe, no symbols, no marks - just presence. The type of presence that forces anyone to straighten their posture. His eyes examined you as if they knew too much, even without ever having seen you.

You got up calmly, wiping your hands on the cloth. His gaze was direct, without fear - as it always was.

- "You're lost?" - you asked, simple.

He smiled. A cold, elegant, soulless smile.

- "Actually, I'm looking for someone. Jake Kim They say he's number one here."

The mention of Jake's name has already put you on alert. This man was not from the police, nor from the local gangs. You felt that. He didn't use threats - he was the threat.

- "He's not here now." - he replied, trying to keep the tone neutral.

- "You lie badly." - he tilted his head to the side, like a wolf studying the prey.

You didn't back down. But the tension was palpable.

He took another step. Now, between you and the exit. His body radiated danger. Still, his gaze was not on his face - it was on his body, on his every line, as if he was calculating how long it would take to break each part.

- "Are you just his friend?" - he asked.

You crossed your arms, keeping your chin up.

- "Yes. And why? Jake is not afraid of anyone. If you came to fight, you'll leave here with more broken parts than this bike."

That should have the angry one. He smiled. A smile that was not warm - it was of perverse interest.

- "Braved." - he murmured. - "I like that. And now I like you."

He approached once again. You took a step to the side, but he cornered you against the tool bench, the big hand landing next to your waist.

- "Jake has so many things and doesn't even know what to do with them. Maybe I'll show you how a real Kim treats a woman."

His heart raced - with fear and anger.

You looked into his eyes.

- "Do you think you can intimidate me? Jake may be your brother, but you're nothing like him."

He didn't move. But his eyes darkened. His pride had been touched.

And he liked it.

- "Jake will hate me more than he already hates... when I make you choose me. Of my own free will."

With a last intense look, he retreated.

- "Tell him that Kitae passed by here. And that now... he has something of mine."

He walked away without looking back. But you knew: that conversation wasn't over.

It was just the beginning.

———————

Next day — Big Deal Shed

Jake entered the shed with his step hurried and his jaw locked. The other members could barely follow him - he only walked like that when he wanted to kill someone.

- "Where is she?" - he asked one of the boys, who indicated the back area without daring to face his leader.

You had your hands in the pockets of your sweatshirt, with headphones in your ear, but you noticed his presence as soon as he entered. Jake's energy was different - hot, intense, protective. But today it was loaded.

He stopped in front of you. The look was worried... and furious.

- "(y/n)... is it true?"

You took off your headphones. - "If you're talking about your sick brother surrounding me yesterday... yes. Yeah."

Jake was silent for a moment. His fists closed slowly, as if he were holding himself.

- "What did he say?" - his voice was low, dangerous.

- "I said that now you have something of him. And he seemed to be talking about me."

Jake turned around, kicking hard a toolbox, which ricocheted and fell scattered on the floor. The others moved away.

You weren't scared. He approached him, firmly.

- "Jake. I'm not your possession. And I'm not fragile either."

- "I know." - he replied quickly, still not looking at you. - "But he's not like the others. Kitae... he pulls out everything he likes and keeps it to himself. He doesn't joke, (y/n). He destroys."

You held his arm, squeezing it.

- "So let me fight. Let me be part of it."

He finally looked at you. And you saw: real fear in his eyes. Jake Kim, always protective, was scared to death of losing you.

———————

NIGHT — BIG DEAL ROOF

You needed to breathe. The night was cold, and the sky, without stars. You went up to the roof, the only place where you could think. The city seemed calm. It just looked like.

A voice broke the silence behind you.

- "You searched for me in your thoughts all day."

You turned slowly. Kitae was there, like a shadow that emerged from the concrete. He wore black, his hands in his pockets, as if he wasn't the most dangerous thing alive in that block.

- "Did Jake tell you that I would kill for what I want?"

You took a step back, but firmed your feet. - "If you want me, you'll have to kill me too. Because I'm not something that is stolen. And I don't even see myself easily."

He walked up to you, slowly.

- "You still don't understand, (y/n)..." - he stopped inches from your face. - "I don't want to hurt you. But I will. If that's the price to have you."

You faced him. There was no fear in you. Just repulsion... and a strange spark. Something that Kitae also noticed.

He growled low.

- "Jake never looked at you the way I look. He protects you like a brother. But me? I think of you with your hands tied and your neck full of marks."

You pushed him hard, but he held your wrist before it retreated.

- "And that's why I won't give up. You will be mine, (y/n). Even if it costs my brother's head."

And then he let go. As if you had all the time in the world.

- "See you soon."

He disappeared into the shadows of the building as if he had never been there.

But you knew. That wasn't the end.

——————————

Any night - Empty street, near the Big Deal shed

It was late. You came back alone, headphones in your ears, thick coat and the thought away. I had just argued with Jake. He wanted to take you away from everything, send you away, as if hiding was a solution.

And you hated it.

You weren't a maiden.

But at that moment, even full of anger... you felt it before you saw it.

A black car stopped a few meters away. No license plate. Dark windows. The passenger door opened slowly.

And before you could react - strong, fast, cold as steel arms wrapped around your waist. They pulled you as if you were light as paper.

You fought, kicked, screamed. But there was no one on the street. And that damn perfume - the masculine, woody, clean smell - made you want to bite your own tongue.

You were in his arms.

Kitae Kim

Inside the car. Locked. Prison.

- "I'm been thinking about doing this for days." - he murmured, calm. "You think about me, don't you?"

You snorted, staring at him. - "You're sick. Let me go now."

He looked straight into his eyes, as if he saw through his defenses.

- "I saw how you looked at me. On the roof. And before that. You try to fool yourself. Try to hate me. But I'm inside your head."

You wanted to spit on him. I wanted to punch. But...

... I didn't want to admit, not even to yourself... that he was fucking hot.

Those veins bounced in the forearms. The way he spoke with his chin locked. The predator's look.

"Imagine if he grabbed you hard, threw you against the wall, made you shut up with his mouth..."

- "WAKE UP, (Y/N)!" - you said loudly, hitting your own face with the palm of your hand. "He's a maniac, psychopath, human trash!"

Kitae laughed. He heard.

- "I liked the sincerity. That makes you even more mine."

You turned around, trying to open the door. He stretched his arm and locked it with a snat.

- "You're going to spend some time with me. Go talk to me. And you will understand... that all this you feel - the fear, the anger, the tension - all this is just the first stage of obsession."

You were silent. The car went through streets you didn't know.

Kitae watched you sideways.

- "You're going to fight. But in the end, (y/n)... you'll stop running away. Go look at me and accept: you want me."

You turned to him with a cold look.

- "You'll never be Jake. And I'll never be yours."

The smile he gave was slow. Dangerous.

- "I don't want you to be mine by force, (y/n). I want it to be... for the will."

And that was scarier than any threat.

Because part of you... was afraid that, deep down... he was right.

———————

How did all this start?

It was hard to believe that everything had started just a few weeks ago.

You remembered perfectly: the first day you saw him was quick - a strange presence during a tense meeting between gangs. You were standing next to Jake, arms crossed, without smiling, but watching everything. A girl among dangerous men, and yet... confident.

His eyes crossed with yours. It was fast. A still, cold, emotionless look - and at the same time... curious.

You thought it was just another bored mobster. Any look.

But it wasn't.

——————————

FLASHBACK —

THE BEGINNING

Kitae Kim didn't forget faces.

But yours wasn't just recorded - it was fixed.

You had something that messed with his control.

Your posture... your speech... the way you didn't look away from him like everyone else.

And for the first time in years, something in Kitae got out of control.

-

That same night, he already knew your name.

The next day, your address.

In less than 72 hours, your apartment had already been invaded while you were away.

Cameras installed in discreet corners.

Motion sensors.

Microphones hidden in sockets.

You didn't know... but you were already inside the cage, even walking free.

Observation

Kitae watched everything from a dark room, on split screens.

You in pajamas.

You cooking with your hair up.

You singing softly in the shower.

And then...

You alone in bed, rolling impatiently.

Hands sliding through their own body. The breath getting heavy.

The private pleasure, the eyes closed, the muffled moan on the pillow.

He saw it. Everything.

And that... made him burn inside.

- "She has no idea..." - he murmured, his fingers closing around the coffee mug.

- "...that already belongs to me."

——————

You were his new project.

But it wasn't just desire. It was possession. Fascination. Addiction.

—————————————————————————

—END OF THE FLASHBACK

The silence in the car was almost unbearable. The engine roared low while the city lights were disappearing little by little through the window.

You watched the path carefully - no point seemed familiar. They were leaving Seoul.

The seat belt pressed your chest as a reminder: you had no way out. And he knew that.

Kitae drove with a frightening calm. The long fingers rested on the steering wheel, firm, quiet, as if he hadn't just kidnapped you in the middle of the street.

You tried to keep your voice stable, but the fear choked inside.

- "To where are you taking me?"

He answered without looking at you.

- "To where no one will take you away from me."

His heart shot.

- "You're crazy."

- "No." - he murmured, now turning his face. The dark eyes shone with a sick certainty. - "Crazy is the world that ignores you. Jake keeps you as a friend, as a shadow. I see you in full."

You wanted to laugh nervously.

- "You kidnapped me. That's not seeing someone. This is obsession."

- "Right." - he turned right, taking a deserted road surrounded by trees. - "That's courage. I do what other men only fantasize about. I take what I want. And I want you, (y/n). From the moment you looked up at me without fear."

His stomach turned.

But worse than fear, it was the heat on your cheeks. The sweat on the back of the neck. The damn thought that came back:

"Why is he so handsome? Why doesn't my leg stop shaking?!”

You closed your eyes and tried to concentrate.

The house appeared after twenty minutes of tense silence. Isolated. Huge. Automatic gates. No neighbors nearby.

A luxury captivity. A prison tailor-made for you.

The gate opened slowly and he parked calmly.

- "Leave." - he said, without violence, as if he were inviting you to dinner.

You hesitated.

- "If I run, will you kill me?"

He smiled... with his eyes.

- "If you run, you'll find out what I'm capable of."

You left.

The night air was dense. The house was silent. He put the card on the door and let you in first.

The house was clean, modern, large. But... there were pictures of you on the walls.

You froze.

It was you in ordinary moments: reading, laughing with friends, sleeping. Photos taken from afar. Or maybe... from the inside.

- "You have cameras in my house." - you whispered, disgusted.

- "I had." - he corrected. - "Now I don't need them anymore. You're here."

You turned around, your heart in your throat.

- "I will never love you. I will never want you."

He stared at you for a second... and then took a step forward. The voice came out low. Intense.

- "Then learn to hate me with each of your cells. But do it close to me. Here. Where I can see you feel."

And the worst? Part of you... trembled with something that wasn't just fear.

——————

Days passed in that house.

You've tried everything. Ignore him. Face it. To provoke. Pretending coldness. Vomit sharp words whenever he approached.

But Kitae Kim was a patient monster.

He didn't need to run. Because I already knew: what burns, consumes. And what consumes, dominates.

You slammed the door. He smiled.

You ate in silence. He was watching you.

You said "I hate you"... and he just answered:

- "One more step."

He was winning, and you knew it.

Because deep down, between fear and anger, something in you burned. Something unthinkable.

That night, you decided to try one more time. The plan was simple: to provoke so much that he would retreat. Make him feel disgusted. Make him let you go.

You came down with a short dress. Cold eyes. Firm steps. He sat on his couch, with his legs crossed, as if he were in control.

- "Do you want me that much?" - you said, sarcastically. - "So take it. Enjoy. And then he gets sick of me right away."

Kitae didn't answer right away. He looked at you in silence.

Then he got up.

Came to you.

And before you could react - he pulled you by the arm, throwing you on his shoulder as if it were nothing.

You screamed, hit his chest hard, kicked.

- "You crazy! Let me go!!”

But he carried you to the room. He opened the door with his foot. He threw you on your back on the bed. His body came on top, like a shadow, like fire. The heat of his body, the wild eyes.

- "You want to provoke me until when?" - his voice was low. Hoarse. Burning.

- "You're playing with fire. But I am the fire."

You tried to turn your face, but he held your chin tightly. The glued faces. The eyes fixed on yours.

- "Do you hate me?" - he whispered. - "Or are you just pretending to keep your pride?"

You were breathing fast. And I was tired of running away. Tired of pretending.

Because the desire overflowed. Because he dominated you inside even when you said no.

You pulled him by the shirt. He tore the fabric between you. His hands are warm. Firms. His body is heavy, solid. His raw, impatient touch. No mercy.

And in that bed, in the middle of the emotional war, you got lost.

You moaned loudly. There was no control.

You shouted his name.

You bit his shoulders, scratched his back, arched his body.

- "You're mine." - he said through his teeth, with failing breathing.

- "My. Only mine. Until the end."

And even if the world rushed around, at that moment... you didn't want to escape.

I wish he never stood.

————————

The truth was simple, cruel and addicted: every time you tried to resist, you ended up in bed.

You said "no" with words, but your body screamed "stay".

And he knew. Kitae Kim read you like no one else.

You tried to keep control. She tried to learn something new from him - defense, escape, emotional domain. She tried to be cold. Sarcastic. Offensive. I wanted to prove to be stronger, smarter.

But he always found the loophole.

And you... always slipped on her.

———————

You were in the center of the room, with your arms crossed, trying to learn a new defense technique that you had read in a manual left by one of his guards. He watched from the couch, shirt open, eyes half-closed.

- "I'm trying to learn, damn it." - you said, frustrated, after missing the movement for the third time.

- "You look beautiful when you get angry." - he said with a crooked smile.

You spun on your heels.

— "Go fuck yourself—"

He was already up. It was already too close.

His hands slid to his neck. Not with violence, but with control. Domain.

The firm, warm fingers, forcing you to look straight into his eyes.

- "Every time you start screaming..." - he murmured - "...it ends like this."

You shuddered.

Your body responded before your mind.

The legs became weak. Breathing failed. The lips parted.

He had found it. Your weak point.

You tried to resist. He used words like a knife:

- "You're disgusting. Coward. Psychopath. If you think you own the world, but you're just a... of a—”

He squeezed lightly, just enough for his voice to become a moan.

His eyes closed. His body arched.

- "You don't know how to lie, (y/n). When I play here..." - he pressed a little more, with his thumb on the side of his neck - "...you undo it."

You wanted to curse. I wanted to hit.

But all that came out of his mouth was a low, broken, shamefully real moan.

- "Damn..." - you whispered, your knees almost giving way.

He held you with his arms, sticking your body to his.

- "Do you see? You are my favorite lesson. And I'm the only one who really teaches you."

The clothes were torn off in a hurry. The floor turned into a bed. The world has disappeared.

You got lost in the screams, in the dirty words, in his smell.

And once again... you were defeated. For a touch. By a command. For him.

⸻

You could hate Kitae Kim.

But your body?

Your body... had already surrendered.

—————————————————————————

After weeks of secret surveillance. She tried to resist with hatred, provocations and strength - but Kitae discovered her weak point: control. Each confrontation ended in desire, tension and physical surrender.

Despite everything, she feels pleasure with him, even fighting against it. What began as kidnapping became a mutual, dangerous and explosive addiction.

He wants her body and soul.

And she... is on the verge of not being able to escape anymore.

—————————————————————————

[pursued-by-the-squid]

x. caught up in the rip, pt 2

pairing: gi-hun x gn!reader x in-ho

word count: 10.3k

ao3 | masterlist

The lights blink out without any fanfare. You lay quietly for a moment, straining your ears to try and detect the faintest of sounds – the scrape of metal, the hush of a breath, the shlick of shoes on the floor – and you tell yourself that nothing’s actually going to happen. Gi-hun’s just paranoid. You’re all paranoid, that’s all this is, and nothing’s going to happen tonight – no O player attack, no soldiers coming in to count the dead, no uprising to defeat the Captain.

Young-il rests a hand on your shoulder. You can just make out the shine of red and blue lights reflecting in his eyes from where he hovers over you. He doesn’t have to speak for you to know what he wants, what you have to do. You slip out of bed as carefully as you can manage, glancing around in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Gi-hun, but he’s been distant since this decision was made and you can’t find him anywhere, and then Young-il is pulling you under the bed with him and you can only hope everything will turn out alright in the end. You’ll never forgive him if he gets himself killed tonight.

The metal bar you extracted from your bed lies on the floor just beneath the foot of the mattress. Young-il puts an arm over your back as you settle beside him; you both love and hate how right it feels, how the sensation burns through you like a betrayal and a promise in equal measure. You still can’t believe he kissed you. You still can’t believe you let him, and in the open where anyone could see, where Gi-hun could see.

Of all times to set a pseudo-confession, he just had to pick tonight? He couldn’t have waited until tomorrow? He couldn’t have postponed his decision to kiss you until after the carnage?

His arm tightens around you as you catch a shadow passing over the faintly glowing X in the center of the room. Oh God, this is actually happening. They were right, they were both right, the O players are actually going to attack. Your friends and allies, as it were, are all safe beneath their beds, but what about the others?

Your head snaps to the side where you can just catch a glimpse of a player drifting to sleep, their back turned to you and a blanket drawn over their body. They don’t know. They’re going to get killed.

“Don’t look,” Young-il murmurs, and you have to suppress a shudder because he’s closer now than he’s ever been before. You can feel the warmth of his breath on your neck, then the squeeze of his arm around your back, and you’re ducking your head low so you can turn back and look at him. “It’s better if you don’t look.”

You wonder what his eyes might look like if there was enough light to see them by. Would you see a ghost of the man you met during Mingle, or the friend who’s stuck by your side both inside the games and out? The screaming starts before you have a chance to wonder any further.

You’ve heard people die in all sorts of agonizing ways since the games began, but you’ve never heard anything like this. There’s the sickening thud of fists against flesh, the distinct pop of a fork puncturing skin, the wet sound of blood mixed with the gurgling horror of a stranger’s death rattle, all backed by the constant, grating sound of screaming. Your eyes water immediately and you curl in on yourself, transforming into a quivering ball of fear that seeks shelter in Young-il’s warmth.

The lights start flickering, pulsing so quickly that it’s hard to focus on any one thing, to see or make sense of the moving bodies and the blood. Someone goes sprawling out across the main floor – their face and number indistinguishable in the chaos – and then another player lands on top of them, arms raised, metal flashing in their hands, and then–

Young-il’s fingers slide up the nape of your neck to fist in your hair, and then he’s forcing your head into his body, shielding you from the gore with a gentle reminder not to look, that he’s here, he has you. That it’s going to be okay.

Someone falls from their top bunk and lands horrifically hard on the floor just a few feet away, unmoving and silent.

Everything is not going to be okay.

You’re worried about Gi-hun. You’re worried about Jun-hee, Dae-ho, and Hyun-ju. Hell, you’re worried about everyone. You’re terrified someone’s going to peek under the bed and see you curled into a pathetic, useless ball, and they’re going to kill you both, and you’ll never be able to tell Gi-hun you’re sorry for everything that went wrong because of you.

Another body slams onto the ground, this time directly in front of your bed. It’s a woman and with the way she’s landed, you can tell that she was pushed. You can see the fear in her eyes, mostly because she’s staring directly at you when you finally manage to push Young-il away. A fork pierces through her shoulder and she screams, and so do you, and then she’s scrambling on her hands and knees, sobbing, bleeding, trying desperately to get away.

Her feet are swept out from under her and she’s suddenly dragged backwards. “Help me!” she screams, and her arms reach for you.

Her fingers catch on the corner of the bed frame, nails scraping so hard against the metal that you’re sure they break under the stress. The metal beam you brought with you gets pushed out in her direction like a branch offered to a dead man sinking through quicksand, and you don’t even realize you’re doing it until you feel Young-il ripping your arms back, hissing in your ear. But she’s dying! If you do nothing, she’s dead and you’ve killed yet another innocent person.

The O player that attacks her, whoever it is, slams their fork into her spine over and over again. They keep stabbing long after she’s stopped screaming, after the life has left her eyes and she becomes another empty body with ragged, broken fingernails.

“Get back,” Young-il snaps as he pushes your shoulder, sliding you down the length of his body toward the wall, and you’re about to, rather stupidly, ask him why when you see the new face appear just inches away from where you’d been.

An O player. Blood-splattered face, wild eyes. Bared teeth. He swipes his arm under the bed and Young-il cries out, and then you realize that the sound of a fork in flesh isn’t coming from the ongoing massacre beyond your safe haven. It’s coming from Young-il.

“Young-il!”

It’s all a blur of limbs and flashing lights. You think you see him lash out, all gritted teeth and coiled muscles. You think you see the O player’s head crash into the bed frame. You think you even see a fork lodged in Young-il’s forearm, but it’s difficult to make sense of.

He roars and the bed frame shakes, and Young-il is gone, and there’s another body on the floor. And there’s blood – God, there’s blood everywhere – and you think it’s the O player’s, you think it’s his body that twitches with every stab of metal driven into his chest. You think it’s Young-il’s hands that wield the weapon. The man who just cradled you in his arms, who kissed you. Who swore to protect you.

You’d very nearly locked him out of that damn Mingle room and this is the way he chooses to thank you – with violence and blood and the rage of battle simmering in his veins.

“You motherfucker!”

You don’t recognize the voice, but you see the moment Young-il stops stabbing. You can see the body he’s mutilating go still and then his feet on the floor, but that’s all you can see. The rest is all sound – a fist to a jaw, a punch to the gut, more swearing, the gurgle of a man struggling to breathe through a chokehold – and oh God, you can’t lose him too. It can’t end like this.

The bed frame jolts above and around you, shuddering as a body slams into it. There’s another flurry of blows landing on bone. You don’t know who’s hitting who, who’s winning or losing, you just know that it has to be him. You don’t care who he takes down, so long as he’s alive.

Feet go tripping over bodies. The metal bar goes sliding through blood until it clangs against the bed. Someone drops to the floor. Another person grunts when they get stabbed. The bed groans in protest, then again, and again, and then the entire thing is tipping onto its side as you shriek.

When you have the wherewithal to open your eyes again and look out from your quivering fetal position, you can see Young-il’s body moving. He’s dodging blows and delivering his own with quiet efficiency. Blood stains his hands. The light catches his teeth when you get a glimpse of his face, however fleeting it is. It’s the same face you saw during Mingle.

And then, suddenly, the lights flicker on and stay on. Then the voice on the intercom. You remember Gi-hun’s plan with startling clarity just in time to see Young-il slip into the shadows, darting between bunk beds. You’d be furious with him if the players he left behind weren’t already beaten into a bloodied pulp and left moaning on the floor. You scramble to grab the metal bar in an attempt to protect yourself all the same, and you put considerable effort into ignoring the blood dripping off the end onto your feet.

The soldiers appear moments later, guns drawn as they advance into the room. “Hands in the air! Get your hands in the air!”

Players across the room are dropping their forks, shattered bottles, and the rare metal beam stolen from a bed frame. The ones that don’t get the muzzle of a gun in their face as their only warning. You decide to drop yours before the choice is forced upon you. That’s when the second round of chaos breaks out.

Several of the players scattered across the main floor, otherwise unassuming dead bodies waiting to be counted, jump to life. You think you catch Gi-hun among them, but the movement is so fast that it’s hard to tell. A handful of the pink guards fall dead within seconds. Guns are ripped from their corpses, aimed and fired, and another handful of guards drop with bullet wounds that cut through their temples. It’s awful.

As if there wasn’t already enough blood spilled. As if you haven’t already witnessed enough violence to last you a lifetime. You have no compassion for these faceless fucks who murder your fellow players, and maybe that’s a sin you’ll have to atone for one day, but that doesn’t mean that you enjoy watching them get slaughtered either. You don’t find any pleasure in watching their heads snap back and their bodies slump to the ground, in smelling their blood or in watching it stain their jumpsuits. But at least… at least it isn’t you. That would be even worse, right?

Only one guard makes it out alive. One guard out of the dozen who came in to quell the fighting, and at least it’s not you. Right?

You catch Young-il’s eye from across the room and find it almost impossible to maintain the contact. It feels like he’s staring directly into your soul, like he knows exactly what you’re thinking, and you’re not sure if he’s judging you for your cowardice or trying to understand you. You’re not sure which feels worse.

On your side of the room, the chaos has given way to confusion. From the looks of it, both X and O players were killed in the attack. You pretend not to find any joy in the knowledge that some of them have paid for their sins with the ultimate price. You pretend not to wish that Player 100 had been among those lost. But not everyone is able to lie themselves so readily.

One of Gi-hun’s accomplices, Player 047, advances on a small gathering of O players when he recovers a gun from the guards. He raises the muzzle, fire burning in his eyes, and you think for a second that he might actually murder all of them right in front of you, but Gi-hun swoops in at the last second. Your heart almost beats out of your chest.

“No!” he exclaims, grabbing the muzzle and shoving it towards the floor.

Player 047 is so angry that he shakes. “Move!” he demands. His anger lends him strength, and he rips the gun from Gi-hun’s hand and points it again at the nearest player. “Do you not see this? They aren’t human. They're like goddamn vermin blinded by money!”

You don’t agree with him. You don’t.

Gi-hun moves to position himself directly in front of the gun this time, and you find yourself sprinting across the room in response. It’s instinctual. It’s adrenaline and fear of the purest kind because you refuse to watch him put a bullet in his brain.

“This is not what we took these guns for.” The skin of knuckles stretches thin when he tightens his grip. He doesn’t look at you as you run over. Maybe he doesn’t see you. Maybe he doesn’t care. “If we do this, we'll be no different from those masked men.

He passes you a moment later, his shoulder brushing yours, his eyes lingering on you for only the briefest of moments as he turns to approach the center of the room. He raises his arms, his expression softened and imploring. “Everyone,” he calls, “don't be scared. Gather round, please!”

Is he mad at you?

The other players glance at each other, muttering softly in confusion, lingering in the shadows where they think the machine guns can’t reach them, and you don’t blame them one bit. Gi-hun marches toward the head of the room where the other rebels have gathered, each of them sporting a gun strapped across their chest or weighing heavy in their hands. He doesn’t look at you even as he turns to face you and the remaining players.

Why? What have you done that’s so wrong?

Young-il bristles as Gi-hun comes to stand beside him, but the sharp edges of his face are brushed smooth a moment later. You almost wonder if you’d imagined it.

“Everyone! We will now head up to the masked men's headquarters.” You knew it was coming. You knew that’s what this entire bloodbath was designed for – a chance to stick it to the Captain and the soldiers and everyone who’s ever partaken in these games – but it still leaves a foul taste in your mouth. It makes your stomach feel queasy and all your muscles stagnate to see Gi-hun so committed to such a terrible plan. “We'll capture the ones who captured us, put an end to this game, and make them pay. Anyone who knows how to use a gun and wishes to join us, please step forward.”

The room is painfully silent. You look from one player to the next, studying them, waiting for someone to step forward and proclaim their bravery, but no one does. No a single one. You don’t blame them, of course. Just the thought of strapping a gun to your chest and marching into the unknown makes you want to vomit, not only because you’ve seen enough death to last you a lifetime or because you know how strong and powerful the soldiers can be, but because you value your life more than your morals.

Gi-hun ought to be ashamed of you. Maybe he is. Maybe that’s why he’s angry with you, because you stood against him when he was trying to do the very thing he came here to do. You’ve disappointed him. And more than that, you’ve betrayed him. You allowed Young-il to corner you and kiss you, even after everything, and what kind of a friend does that make you? What kind of person? How could he ever –?

“I understand you're scared.” The sound of Young-il’s voice is enough to draw you from your self-induced punishment, to see him take a step forward and address the room like a hero. Like Gi-hun. “I am too. But Gi-hun says this may be our last chance to make it out of this place alive and I believe him. If you fight with us, we may stand a chance and finally be able to leave.”

One heartbeat ticks by. Then another. You’re impressed by his earnestness, even moved to wonder if you could do any good joining them. Would it be worth the effort? Do they really have a shot? Would Gi-hun forgive you if you tried?

“I'll fight with you,” comes the voice of one player, a younger man standing close to you. An X player.

Another raises his hand and dares to step forward. “I'll join you too.” He’s an X player too.

Not a single O player chooses to join the fight. You neither blame them nor are surprised by their collective decision. But by now, a new feeling of dread has settled in your bones. Now that Gi-hun has a small army on his side and plenty of weapons to boot, it’s finally happening. All this time, you’d hoped that maybe something would happen and he’d be unable to go through with the plan, but there’s no one and no thing left to stop him now and that scares you. Because you know what kind of man Gi-hun is. At least, you think you do. You know what kind of man it was that taught you how to fire a gun, who burst into your apartment with his eyes ablaze and a pistol in his hand all because he thought you were in danger. You know what kind of man he his when he sets his mind to something and you know he won’t back down now that he’s so close to his greatest dream.

“Gi-hun.” His head snaps up at the sound of his name, but the expression on his face is all wrong. It’s the way he looked earlier when he was relaying his plans – frantic, angry, and determined. You’d think you’d be used to it by now, but… “Please don’t do this.”

The muscles in his jaw tighten. “I don’t have a choice,” he says as he looks down to study his machine gun. As if this were just another discussion shared in the depths of his motel. As if he isn’t about to get himself killed trying to follow a plan you’re convinced is doomed to fail.

Your hand finds his arm, fingers applying the slightest bit of pressure to try and bring him back from the cusp of his destruction. “And I don’t want you to die.”

You don’t want any of them to die, but you especially want Gi-hun to continue breathing. Even if he’s being an idiot right now. You care about him too much to lose him.

“Don’t go,” you urge, and you try to further prove your point by taking a step closer. Invading his space. Forcing him to see you, rather than to simply stare right through you. “We could stay here. Barricade the doors. Shoot anyone who comes through. Just… don’t go. Please.”

The world hardly seems to exist beyond the two of you. Several heartbeats come and go, punctuated by the shape of Gi-hun’s grief and the terror of his impending departure. You think that maybe, if you’re very lucky, he might agree. It’s a terrible plan, not to mention selfish and mindbogglingly stupid, but it’s a plan borne out of desperation and devotion in equal measure. You don’t want to watch him leave knowing that he might never return.

Stay with me, you think. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

But the moment is fractured too soon. Hyun-ju’s voice, already relegated to the background, fades out entirely. The other players that Gi-hun’s recruited call out some vague affirmation you’re not fully paying attention to. He takes a step back. He looks at you like he’s never seen you before in his life. “You know that I can’t,” he says. And then he walks away.

Young-il swoops in the second he’s gone. “Are you alright?” he murmurs, one of his hands already tracing the streak of blood on your arm. You’re not even sure how it got there, if the blood is yours or not. There’s an awful feeling in your gut that it’s not.

“I’m fine.”

His voice hums low in his throat, a gentle sound that tells you he knows you’re bullshitting but won’t say anything to call you on it. “He’ll come back,” he assures you, and you want so badly to believe him. “He always does.” If he sounds amused by that, you’re not sure you understand why.

You both watch in silence as Gi-hun approaches the guard and demands for his mask to be removed. You both watch in silence as one of the faceless killers that have been haunting you for the past 3 days is revealed to be a young man, perhaps even a boy – you’re not even sure he has a single wrinkle on his face yet – and you watch as Gi-hun cocks the pistol and aims it between the boy’s eyes. You feel lost.

There’s a subtle shift of weight beside you and then the brush of Young-il’s fingers as they inch up your arm, drifting just beneath the hem of your sleeve, suddenly has you rocketing back to the kiss he gave you. Was that only a few minutes ago? It feels like it’s been ages. Like you’ve experienced entire lifetimes since he cradled your face in his hands and– no. You don’t have the time or the luxury to dwell on something as stupid as a kiss when the two people you care about most are about to march to their deaths.

“Promise me you won’t get yourself killed.” You know it’s not a promise he can make. He’s not the one with a death wish. He’s not the one holding all the puppet strings, choosing who will live and who will die. There’s nothing he can do to keep himself safe, just like there’s nothing that Gi-hun can do to keep himself alive. There’s just blind luck and hope.

Young-il isn’t a fool. He knows this as well as you do. Maybe that’s why his eyes seem to go all soft when he looks at you, why a shadow passes over his face that seems to send him far away. He takes your hand in his and holds you like that for a moment, and you allow yourself the chance to study the way his muscles move beneath his skin, how the tendons flex when he squeezes you. You don’t know what this means, let alone what that kiss meant. You don’t know what kind of choice you’ll have to make if you ever get out of this place, but for now you are content with the knowledge that at least one of your dearest friends is willing to fight to come back to you. That has to be enough.

When he and Gi-hun leave, they leave with a charming warning from the announcer: “All players, it is bedtime now. Please return to your quarters immediately. Otherwise, you will be eliminated from the game. Let me repeat. All players, it is bedtime. Please return…”

You find a seat on the least blood-soaked bed you can find and wrap your arms around yourself. It’s a poor attempt to stave off the fear creeping up your spine. It’s as cold and empty as any promise Young-il can make about coming back alive.

There’s a lot going on inside Gi-hun’s head right now. The stories Jun-ho had told him are coming back to haunt him. Did he stand where Gi-hun stands now? Did he see the other officers with their masks off? Did he know that they could be so young? He keeps thinking about what he’ll do when he finds the Captain and they meet face-to-face. He’s not sure how many bullets he’ll unload when he does. And that only makes him think about how quickly everything happened, how quickly his life flashed before his eyes. How easily it could have been for Young-il to miss that shot, for Gi-hun to be the one with a bullet in his brain rather than that fallen officer.

What would you have done?

He shakes that thought away the moment it comes, but it’s persistent. It digs its claws into his flesh until he bleeds. He can’t ignore the fact that with Jung-bae gone, you’re the only person here who actually cares about him. The only person left to mourn him.

And then he remembers the sound you’d made when Young-il pressed you against the bed frame and kissed you. How you’d given in so easily. And Gi-hun presses the barrel of his pistol harder against the young boy’s skull.

He can’t afford to think about that now. He can worry about you when the battle is won and you’re both safe. He can curse Young-il’s name all he wants once the Captain is in his grasp. But until then, he is as much a soldier as any of the young officers here and he has a duty to fulfill.

“How much farther?” he questions. His hand shakes from the pressure of gripping the pistol so tightly. The boy blinks at him when he turns him around, and Gi-hun isn’t sure if he’s looking into the eyes of a misled innocent or a burgeoning psychopath.

“The entrance to the management area is around that corner. The control room is right above it.”

Gi-hun wonders what might await him once he gets there. An ambush, perhaps? He can so easily picture a dozen bullets slicing through his brain matter the moment he opens the door, and it would all be over. Just like that. Every sleepless night, every drop of blood and sweat, every won spent, all of it meaningless while he bleeds out on a pastel pink floor. He may as well shove the pistol down his throat and save them all the trouble.

Then the boy takes a bullet to the skull. Then the hellfire starts raining down around them and Gi-hun throws himself behind the nearest pillar. He has to think, he has to come up with a solution and fast. If the Captain continues to send reinforcements, then it’s only a matter of time before they’re overwhelmed entirely and can’t advance any further. He needs to get into the management area before that happens.

“Will you be able to find it?” Young-il calls over the gunfire when he explains as much. He’s honestly surprised by the authenticity of the offer considering where the man just had his mouth not even an hour prior. “Should I come with you?”

If Jung-bae were here… But he isn’t. Gi-hun lost him because of his own inability to stop the Games, because of his own decisions to self-isolate and abandon his best friend in the years after he first won. And as angry as he is that Young-il chose to kiss you, to take from him the one and only thing that he has left, as bitter and spiteful as he feels when he thinks about the kiss he gave you himself before everything went wrong, Gi-hun also know that there is no one left who can help him now. He’s made his bed. Now it’s time to lay in it.

“Alright,” he relents. He calls for Hyun-ju, catching her attention from across the walkway with a wave of his arm. “We’re looking for the management area. Keep them distracted for us!”

She shows her understanding with a determined nod, and Gi-hun thinks he understands now why you’ve been so keen to search for her whenever the opportunity presents itself. If either of them makes it out of here alive, he intends to thank her for helping you when he couldn’t.

If.

He shakes his head. There can’t be any room for mistakes now, for ifs or whens. There can only be this moment and the next, the path that leads him to the Captain and the heart of the Games. There can only be the end of all things.

He gestures for Young-il to follow them, and they slip away like ghosts. One step closer to victory. One step closer to the destruction of everything that has tried to kill him these past four years.

Gi-hun is certainly tenacious. He isn’t so self-absorbed to try and deny it, but that doesn’t mean he’s impressed. Far from it.

This little rebellion should never have gotten off the ground, let alone managed to stay aloft so easily and for so long. All it took was the delusional dreams of one single man – a gambling, absentee father with no family, no hope, and no intelligence to speak of – and now the very foundations of In-ho’s life are threatening to crumble. He has an army of fully competent, well-trained soldiers at his beck and call, and yet here he stands in his own management area dressed in the clothes of a player and shadowing Seong Gi-hun like a pawn following his commander into battle.

He supposes that if he were to be truly honest with himself, the blame is partially his own. After all, he was the one who chose to entertain Gi-hun’s notions of heroism. He was the one who brought Gi-hun back here despite knowing the depths of the man’s desperation, the money poured into guns and tech and boots on the ground. He was the one who dragged you here against your will to try and goad Gi-hun into a mistake or blind rage or some pathetic, twisted attempt at self-sacrifice. He had simply failed to realize how far the man would be willing to go to prove him wrong.

And yet, it would be so easy to end it all right here and now. Gi-hun is a fool. Brave in the way that all stupid men are, but a fool nonetheless because his back is turned. Three days spent at his side and three years wasted trying to chase him down, and still he fails to see the traitor in his midst.

His finger hovers over the trigger. Betrayal has come easily in the years since becoming the Frontman. It would be no different this time, and you would never know. In-ho supposes that would be a victory in and of itself. Seong Gi-hun’s imperfect morality torn asunder, your heart shattered and broken like his had been nine whole years ago when he left this island and found his wife and child dead. The cycle continues. Humanity proves itself once more to be nothing more than selfishness and greed and endless bloodshed.

Every time he has the chance, however, a string of guards appear and he’s forced to redirect his vitriol at his own men. No more stray bullets fired vaguely in the direction of the advancing soldiers. The only option left to him now is to aim true and pretend that this is what he wants. That this is a fight worth dying for. He can only imagine the chaos in the control room, what his second in command is thinking even now. The Frontman comes to him then, pushing between the pages of Hwang In-ho and Oh Young-il’s warring personalities to draw his mind back to the VIPs. They’ll be arriving early in the morning – or, more precisely, very fucking soon. Most of them may be asleep while they travel in their fancy jets, but he’s willing to wager that a few of them are watching the live feed even now. Feasting on the bloodshed and the drama like parasites. He needs to be back in his mask and polished dress shoes before they arrive.

And so, the dilemma comes to him again – let the game continue and allow Gi-hun the illusion of victory, or end it all with a single bullet in his spinal cord?

“Gi-hun-ssi, Young-il-ssi, do you copy?” Ironic that it’s the ex-soldier who manages to save Gi-hun in the moments before In-ho can make his move.

Gi-hun takes out his radio while In-ho fires a few warning shots around the corner. “I hear you, Hyun-ju-ssi.”

“We’re running low on ammo. Most of us are down to only half a magazine or less.” Relentless gunfire continues in the distance, clipping some of her words off at the end. “Have you found anything yet?”

A single glimpse into Gi-hun’s eyes says everything that he cannot physically bring himself to say, but In-ho sees it. In-ho knows.

“Not yet. We’re running out of ammo too, but there should be spare magazines in the soldiers’ pockets in our quarters. Go get them.” Another round of gunfire comes screaming down the hallway and takes out a sizeable chunk of wall by Gi-hun’s head. “And send backup if you can.”

In-ho can feel the ticking of a vein in the underside of his jaw. This needs to end now. He should just put a bullet in Gi-hun’s brain now and march back to his apartment, reestablish control, prepare for the VIPs. The uprising would flounder without him. You would break. In-ho would finally win. So why is it that he cannot raise the gun and shoot 456 pointblank?

Did he become a coward overnight? The very idea makes him bite back a smile. He knows that isn’t the case. Did he lose his spine somewhere between the Mingle playroom and the management area? Did you break him somehow the moment he touched you, like some perverted siren siphoning your soul back into his long-dead heart?

The Frontman cannot afford this distraction any longer. The Frontman has a job to do. The Frontman needs to get a grip and kill Gi-hun before anything else goes wrong, but In-ho finds that the Frontman is as far away from him now as Young-il is. Another piece of himself left adrift in the West Sea.

“You should go.”

In-ho blinks. He knows he hasn’t imagined it, but for Gi-hun to suggest such a thing… “What?”

There isn’t time for this, and he thinks that they both know this. “Cover me!” he shouts to Young-il’s dismay, though he doesn’t argue. He swoops around the corner and fires off several warning shots that allow Gi-hun to dart across the chasm that separates them.

Flinging himself against the wall after a couple shots of his own, Gi-hun takes a moment to catch his breath. He stuffs a hand into his coat pocket and withdraws the only magazine he has left.

“What are you–?”

Gi-hun forces Young-il’s fingers to close around the magazine, curling both of his own hands around them as if to say all the things he can’t bring himself to admit. “Take it,” he urges. “Go for backup. One of us needs to make it out alive.”

He feels as if he’s just been plucked from the present and thrown into the past. He feels as if he’s looking into the dead and soulless eyes of the recruiter. As if he’s staring down at Sang-woo’s empty face as his blood spills upon the dirt. At his mother’s long vacant body sprawled across the kitchen floor. He feels as he’s felt since the moment Sae-byok died – that he is the one who should have lost his life, but fate had other plans. Now, at least, he can fulfill the destiny he’s been running toward from the very start.

“Gi-hun-ssi.” Young-il’s voice is low and quiet, gentle, his eyes searching for things that Gi-hun could never guess at. In some strange way, it reminds him of Sang-woo. “Are you sure?”

I saw, he wants to say, but the words get stuck in his throat. I understand now. All this time, he’d never realized you were something he could lose, not like that. He had thought the Games might claim your life, or you’d return to your home country once you graduated, and he would be alone all over again, but not once had Gi-hun actually, seriously considered that he was at risk of losing you to another man.

But he knows now the mistake he’s made. He won’t be making it out alive. The Captain is sure to have etched his name and number into a thousand bullet casings by now, hoping that each one might find its mark within his chest. And if he’s going to die, then Gi-hun will do everything in his power to ensure that you don’t have to suffer alone. At least it’s someone like Young-il, a man moved by the death of innocent women and unborn children. At least it’s someone who can take care of you, if not with blood money, then with the strength in his fists and the courage in his heart.

“Go,” he finally manages to say, forcing back the lump in his throat as the world comes back into focus all around him. “I’ll hold them off.”

When Young-il does finally relent and disappears down the corridor, his weapon brandished, Gi-hun allows himself a moment of peace. He can’t be sure that Young-il will survive as much as he can’t be sure that this rebellion will have amounted to anything in the end, but he can hope. He chooses to hope that it will be enough. More ammo will come, backup will come. Either he or, more likely, Young-il will make it out alive. The Games will end and it will finally be safe for people like you to walk freely on the streets. And that is why he watches his fellow player go with the ghost of a smile – because despite the jealousy that eats at his bones, the heartbreak he refuses to admit to, and the fact that they’ve never seen entirely eye to eye, Young-il gives him hope. Just like you.

You wonder now if this is what war is like. You hate to assume anything when you’ve only ever been a student, only ever touched a gun because the man who gifts you money and makes you smile wanted to ensure you could protect yourself, but being here has made you wonder. The bodies and blood scattered across the floor, the rapid staccato of gunfire and all the death that comes with it. This is war and this is what it’s like to be a civilian caught in the middle, waiting for your turn at either freedom or execution.

There’s no clock here, no way to guess at the passage of time except for the tortured lengths of quiet your brain endures between heartbeats, so you have no way of knowing how long it is that Gi-hun and Young-il are away. The open-ended anxiety makes you so restless that you feel sick. The sweet old mother, Geum-ja, does her best to placate you and offer some comforting words. Her son Yong-sik even tries to help, but it’s hard to believe either of them when they say that your friends will come back to you. Knowing what you know, how can you possibly believe that this will end in anything other than total ruin?

“He’s very persistent,” Geum-ja hums as she pats your hand. “He wants to set things right, doesn’t he? That means he’ll come back.”

If only it were that simple. If only anything was simple anymore.

Your throat feels raw from the effort of holding back your tears. “I don’t know if he can,” you whisper through trembling lips. Because you’ve known Gi-hun for long enough now to know what he’s like when he’s on the brink of death – he isolates, he runs, he fights and snarls, but he doesn’t come back to you unless you go running after him. And you’re too much of a coward to go after him this time.

Yong-sik laughs weakly in an attempt to cheer you up. “Ah, don’t say that. Gi-hun-ssi’s smart. If anyone can make it, it’s –”

The sound of sneakers squeaking on tile and hands slapping palm first on the door draws your attention, and all three of you turn to see Dae-ho skidding to a halt just inside the exit he and the others had taken earlier. Blood is smeared across his cheek and he’s sweating profusely, his eyes frantic and his hands – are his hands shaking? Oh god, did someone die already?

You jump to your feet, taking the steps two at a time before leaping down to the floor. Yong-sik stands, but doesn’t follow you. “Dae-ho-ssi, what happened?” he calls. “Why are you back by yourself?”

His focus is scattered as he scurries around the room muttering to himself, head and hands shaking profusely. You follow him at a distance, watching the way he scavenges the bodies of the dead guards. “Dae-ho-ssi?”

“Magazines,” he mutters, and his head snaps up so he can look at you. You’ve never seen him look quite so… not himself. “They need ammo. Th-The magazines, we’re almost out.”

“Dae-ho,” you start, “where’s Gi-hun?” You can’t stop staring at the blood on his face and wondering who’s it is.

He hurries over and deposits the magazines he’s already collected into your hands. “They left. Him and Young-il-ssi, they left. Th-They said they needed backup.”

You let out a sigh of relief because thank goodness, they’re alive. Needing backup and more ammo isn’t exactly good, but at least they’re alive. You can work with that. You can breathe with that.

“Help me,” Dae-ho begs, and you can see it in his eyes that he’s only half there. It’s like looking into a mirror fresh out of the Mingle room. “I-I need–”

“It’s okay. I understand.” And you do. Of course you do. If anything, you understand a little too well.

Between the two of you and Yong-sik, you’re able to make quick work of searching the soldiers for any extra ammo. Dae-ho volunteers his own jacket and you help him pack the magazines inside. It’s not a lot, but it’s a sizeable enough collection that it should be enough for every member of the uprising to have one. You send a silent prayer with him, not fully intentional and not necessarily inspired by any real belief, but because there’s nothing else for you to give or do that might bring Gi-hun or Young-il back to you.

But something happens when he turns to leave. You don’t know what. Dae-ho makes it just through the door when he suddenly freezes, the ammo clutched to his chest like a small child as he trembles and mutters nonsensically. You think at first that more of the guards have returned and he’s frozen in fear because he’s staring down the barrel of a gun, and then you think that something similar might be happening for Gi-hun and you feel the entire line of your esophagus close up until you can barely breathe.

The radio in his pocket is crackling faintly. It sounds like the others are calling for him, but he refuses to answer. He just stands there and stares at the wall. You and Yong-sik share a look.

“Do you think–?”

You shake your head. “I don’t know.”

Then suddenly, Dae-ho shrieks. The ammo and radio drop to the floor, and he comes barreling into the room as if he’s just seen a ghost. He darts for the far corner where his bed is and he throws himself onto it with a gasp. He’s crying. No, wait, he’s talking to himself. Or… both, you think?

The radio chirps once more, this time louder and with more gunfire in the background. You can’t tell who it is or what they’re saying, but every word only makes you feel more and more guilty. More terrified. More confused. What if it’s Gi-hun? What if it’s Young-il? What if they’re in trouble and Dae-ho can’t help them anymore?

An image of Gi-hun lying dead comes to you, blood dribbling down his cheek, and you’re suddenly flying across the room. Your feet go skidding over the tile, very nearly knocking you off balance as you approach the chirping mass of ammo. The radio has been dropped just beside it, crackling between one voice and the other, the only evidence that none of this is the nightmare you wish it was.

“Dae-ho, answer me! Dae-ho, are you there?”

Your fingers fumble with the buttons as you hold it to your mouth. “This is [___], can anyone hear me?”

The radio practically hisses as a flood of voices comes in at once. First it’s Gi-hun, then it’s Hyun-ju, then it’s Young-il. “What are you doing?” “Where’s Dae-ho?” “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine, but I think Dae-ho’s having a panic attack. Or a PTSD episode or something.” You cast a cursory glance over your shoulder to see Yong-sik flinching as Dae-ho yells for him not to touch him. “He’s crying in the player room and he won’t let anyone near him.”

Silence creeps over your bones until you’re shivering. The bundle of ammo looks far more ominous than it has any right to as an inanimate object.

“We’re running out of ammo,” says Gi-hun.

“All of us,” Hyun-ju adds. “If we don’t get more soon, they’ll gun us all down.”

You don’t like the sound of that. You don’t like the unspoken but blatant implication that the ammo must somehow get from the player facilities all the way to wherever the firefight is happening. But then you think about the players you’ve sent off to war, to bleed and die for the slightest chance of freedom, and you feel like a coward and a fool.

“What can I do?” you ask, even though you desperately don’t want to.

Gi-hun grunts into the radio, his voice briefly muffled by the sound of gunfire. “We need that ammo, [___].”

“But I don’t know where you are.” I don’t want to go. I don’t want to die. Doesn’t that make you a terrible person?

“Follow the cameras,” Hyun-ju orders, and you can make out the sound of shooting on her end of the connection. “We shot them as we went, so it should lead you straight to us.”

Follow the trail of death straight into the lion’s den. Pay no mind to the fact that you will almost certainly get yourself killed trying to help them. Pay no mind to the fact that choosing not to help would be signing the death warrants of every person up there.

“Okay.” You gather the ammo as best you can, stuffing a few magazines into your pants pockets and carrying the rest in your hands. “Okay, I-I’m on my way. I’ll do my best.”

Stepping into the hallway, you’re met with the sight of sickening pastels and pock-marked walls. The stairs you’ve been forced to climb for three days straight as you’re marched to your potential death loom ominously over you. Without any of the soldiers to guide you, you feel lost. How stupidly ironic that now, of all times, you wish one of them was here to help you. But Hyun-ju was right – the security cameras have all been shot. It gets a little confusing trying to follow them, but you think you’re headed in the right direction.

You round the first corner, glancing quickly at the ceiling and to the walls on the opposite side of the building. No guards. No players. Just you. You wipe the sweat from your brow on the back of your hand and start running again.

You’ve only passed a single level when the radio crackles in your hand.

“Young-il-ssi, what’s going on? Are you attacking?”

Almost without thought, your stride falters. Attacking? What does Gi-hun mean, attacking? You find yourself standing in the middle of the corridor, heart in your throat as nonsensical images of blood and bullet-riddled bodies fill your mind’s eye.

The radio comes to life again a moment later. You can hear muted gunfire in the background, but your focus is immediately drawn to the sound of Young-il’s voice wavering. “Gi-hun-ssi, I’m sorry.” As if he’s been crying. As if… “It’s all over. They got me too.”

No.

You don’t even realize that you’ve dropped all the ammo until you feel several magazines land on your toes, but even then, you can’t move to gather them. You’re frozen, your feet glued to the floor as if you’ve spontaneously grown roots.

“Young-il-ssi, what happened?” Gi-hun’s shouting. He won’t stop shouting. You suppose that if you had the ability to, you’d also be screaming, but all you can do is stand frozen in terror as the man who kissed you chokes on his final breaths. “Are you alright?!”

Your fingers fumble with the radio. “Young-il.” You can’t find the right button. Which one was it? Was it the top or the bottom? “Young-il, wait. D-Don’t…”

“Young-il-ssi? Young-il-ssi! Answer me!”

There’s a single moment between Gi-hun’s shouts where you finally have enough clarity of mind to function normally. The radio shrieks softly in your hands. “Young-il…” But you don’t know what else to say. You don’t know how to save his life with just a radio and a broken heart.

“[___],” he croaks, and you choke back a sob.

“Young-il-ssi!”

“[___], I–” Whatever else Young-il might have said in his final moments, you’ll never know. The radio goes quiet a mere heartbeat after a final gunshot blares from his end of the line.

Dead. Like all the men he’s killed today. Like the other players dragged into this hellscape. Like every poor, lost soul forced to play or forfeit their lives. Like his wife. Young-il is dead.

The radio finds its way to the floor, though you’re not even sure how it happens. One moment you’re standing, swaying in place but ultimately stuck like a fly trapped in honey. You keep replaying the way he’d said your name, the way he’d held your face when he kissed you. The way he’d gurgled as he choked on his own blood. And then, suddenly, you’re on the floor, gasping for breath.

No. No, he can’t be dead. He can’t be dead. He promised. You stare unblinkingly at the floor, all doused in vibrant pink paint as if this were a children’s retreat and not a labyrinth of nightmares.

Young-il is dead. And some terrible, horrible, disgusting part of you wants nothing more than to rip every pink suited soldier to shreds for taking him from you.

“[___],” comes Gi-hun’s voice, though is sounds tinny and distant. Unreal. You almost want to believe it’s just a dream. “[___], where are you?”

You think you hear Hyun-ju, too. “I’ll find–” But her words are lost too, swallowed up by rapid gunfire and the incessant ringing of grief in your ears.

Young-il is dead.

Your palms press flat against the floor, your fingers splaying out amid the dirt and abandoned magazines. If you try hard enough, you think you can picture his face. Probably splattered with blood. Pale and cold. And his eyes…

Young-il is dead.

You grab the nearest magazine and chuck it against the wall with a scream.

Young-il is dead.

There’s a flash of motion, a blur of pink against pink in the corner of your eye. The sound of boots on the ground.

Young-il is dead.

Gi-hun calls to you once more and you don’t have the heart to answer him.

Dead.

“Player 457.”

You don’t fully recognize that you’re crying until you look up to find yourself surrounded by four pink guards, each of their silhouettes blurred by the wall of tears gathering along your waterline. Four guns are aimed directly at you.

“Raise your hands above your head.”

Are they going to kill you? Even though you’ve done nothing, fought for nothing? You haven’t aided the uprising in any meaningful way, yet still they look at you as a threat. And for what? Why does it matter? Young-il’s already dead and you’re half convinced that Gi-hun is about to join him. He was the mastermind, after all.

“Player 457,” one of the guards repeats. “Raise your hands above your head. If you do not comply, we will use force to subdue you.”

Subdue you? Why? If anything, you’ve been the perfect player. Oh sure, you had your share of aggression before the games began, but now you’ve been beaten into submission. All this death and blood has made you weak. What threat could you possibly pose now?

One of the guards, a Square, gestures to the others before taking a step back. They swarm you in an instant, like insects crawling over a corpse, as they drag you to your feet. They’re trying to wrestle your arms behind your back, but you keep squirming away, begging them to stop.

“I didn’t do anything,” you tell them, gentle and trembling like a mouse caught in a trap. One of them yanks hard on your arm, twisting it behind you as you cry. “No, stop! I-I didn’t–”

“Player 456, you have broken the rules of the Game. You are being disqualified.”

Disqualification means death, doesn’t it? They’re going to kill you?

Your fear flares to life in a brief surge of anger. This isn’t right. This isn’t fair. You’re not going to let them kill you for something you didn’t do, even if it means admitting you’re a coward.

“I haven’t done anything!” A pair of handcuffs closes around one wrist, and you frantically yank your other arm away in a desperate bid for freedom. One guard grabs you by the shoulder and slams you into the nearest wall, only for you to land a kick to his shin. Another two guards take his place and pin you down until both your arms are restrained. “I haven’t done anything! Let me go!”

“That’s enough,” says the square soldier. “On your feet.”

In a way, you’re glad that Gi-hun isn’t around to witness your descent into cowardice. It’s true, you didn’t pick up a gun, you didn’t attack any of the guards. You kept to yourself like an obedient little puppy, didn’t you? Kept yourself out of harm’s way while others made the sacrifice to lay their lives on the line for your sake. Why should you be punished for something you aren’t a part of?

And what would Young-il think? asks the quiet voice in the back of your head. He’d probably say something insightful about the difference between cowardice and self-preservation, and Gi-hun would frown at the streaks of gray the notion paints across his black and white view of the world, but then they’d nod at one another in understanding and that would be that. And wouldn’t that be nice?

But then, that’s never going to happen, is it? Because Young-il is dead.

Suddenly, the pastel pink walls and yellow stairs seem as gloomy as an incoming storm. You can’t see the colors anymore, just the splatters of blood and bullet holes punched into every conceivable surface. Your legs seize up when you turn down a corner and come across the remains of Gi-hun’s band of soldiers, all of them dead, and then you’re lurching to one side so your dinner can spew out of you.

“Keep moving,” says one of the guards, shoving his hand between your shoulder blades. You barely have time to wipe your mouth dry on your sleeve before you’re tripping forward, stumbling over bodies and slipping in the blood they’ve left behind.

This is so much worse than any of the other games. Worse than the arena, worse than the five-player game, worse than fucking Mingle, because this time the bodies are familiar to you. This time the bodies have names. Maybe that makes you sick. Or maybe knowing that Young-il is among them is what makes you sick because you’re more brokenhearted over his death than you are over all the others put together.

A radio crackles somewhere behind you. “Status on Player 457.” It’s some kind of modulated voice, heavier even than that of the guards.

“Apprehended and unharmed, sir. We’re just entering the management area.”

The management area, as it turns out, is a dark stretch of stairways at the edge of the horrifically pastel labyrinth. The walls are a deep shade of violet-blue, pockmarked with the evidence of Gi-hun and Young-il’s attack. Dead soldiers are sprawled out every few corners, their pink suits tainted red, but you don’t see a single player anywhere. No Gi-hun and no Young-il. You might almost think you’d dreamed it all.

But before you can decide whether or not that’s something to be relieved about, you’re grabbed by the literal scruff of your neck and forcibly guided up another flight of stairs. My legs work just fine, you want to say, but all the spitfire and rage burning up inside you feels more like the final lingering embers of a campfire rather than a blazing forest fire. You hate being led around like a dog on a leash, you hate feeling like a prisoner being led to the hanging block, blind and dumb and already half dead, but you don’t have it in you to fight anymore because Young-il is –

You’re guided around another corner and nearly choke on your own tongue when you finally clear it. “Gi-hun!”

Bound hands go reaching for something that you cannot touch, something too far away to grasp. It’s instinctual to want to run to him. It’s not an attempt to fight, not an attempt to flee, nothing more than the yearning of your heart to cling to the only thing left in this place that offers you any comfort. That’s not how the guards see it, though. One of them grabs you by the elbow and another jams the butt of their gun into your stomach, and then you’re dropping to your knees with a yelp.

“[___]!” he cries. His silhouette is blurry, made that way because of the blinding pain or the electric shock of terror lancing down your spine, you’re not sure, but you think you can see him straining against the barrel of a gun. “I surrender! I surrender, don’t hurt–!”

“Player 456.”

It’s the voice from the radio, the dark and crackly one that made all your hairs stand on end. You follow the voice further up the stairwell until you find its owner – a figure dressed in smoky gray, a hood drawn over his head and a black, geometric mask on his face. In his hands, a shiny silver pistol, and just behind him, the masked man who had broken into your apartment. The Square Mask with the black suit and pink zip. You squirm in horror, but are caught on your knees with a gun pressed to your head, so you can’t run. And you so desperately want to run.

“Did you have fun playing the hero?” the first figure asks. He raises the pistol so it’s aimed directly between Gi-hun’s eyes.

Your stomach drops so violently that you think you’re going to throw up again. Not like this. Any other way, but please not this. Not when he’s on his knees, staring up into the face of the man that ruined his life. Not after losing Jung-bae and Young-il. Not when you haven’t gotten to tell him–

“Look closely at the consequences of your self-righteousness.”

The pistol suddenly changes direction, swerving to the opposite side of the hallway as the masked figure sets his sights on you. There’s a heartbeat of quiet, a heartbeat between the life you’ve clung so desperately to and the death you seem to have been destined for. You’re so scared that you freeze on the spot.

The pistol fires. Something blazing hot and horrifying pierces through your left shoulder. One moment you’re swaying in place, trying to stay balanced as the pain burns through you like a plague. The next, you’re on your back, the ceiling spinning above you.

You can hear Gi-hun screaming. He sounds the same as he did when Jung-bae died. Because that’s what’s happening, isn’t it? You’re dying. That’s what usually happens when you have a bullet lodged inside your body.

For a moment, you’re left staring at the ceiling, wondering how it all came to this. Tears are stinging along your waterline, burning just as hot as the wound in your shoulder – hot like your hand pressed against the stovetop, sharp and agonizing and awful.

“No! [_]-!”

“Take him away,” says the voice from the radio.

Bodies shuffle around somewhere to your right and Gi-hun’s screams start to grow faint, but they don’t disappear entirely. They still rattle your bones even as you’re bleeding out, as the world starts to feel cold and hot and uncomfortably distant. Boots slap hard against the floor. A shadow leans over you, all hard, unfeeling geometry shrouded in death. His pistol blazes like silver starlight when he levels it at you.

But you’re not brave enough to look death in the eyes. Maybe you might have been before the games began, but now? Now you’re nothing more than a frightened little mouse caught in the trap of a cat much bigger, braver, and bolder than you could ever be. You squeeze your eyes shut, fat tears rolling down your cheeks and neck until you’re sure they’re mixing with your blood on the too-purple floor, and you wait for death to find you.

The pistol fires a second time. Strange hands maneuver your head so they can press a scanner behind your ear. The honey-sweet voice of the announcer proclaims another casualty to what few players remain: “Player 457, eliminated.”

Somewhere in the bowels of the game complex, you think you hear someone scream, but you’re not sure if it’s real or just the final hallucination of a dying mind.

well folks, this is the conclusion to part 1 of SWIM.

i just want to say that i so appreciate every like, reblog, and comment you've left. every message in my inbox is deeply treasured. every reaction has fueled my love for this fic and its characters. thank you for being a part of this journey!!

SWIM part 2 will be starting up very soon to help all of us cope with s3, so stay tuned, stick around, and don't be a stranger!

[spotlightlowlife]

Where nuance doesn't even go to Hell

This latest Helluva boss was so SO bad. Drawn out waste of time in just five minutes that added nothing, it could have slotted in to any timeframe as there's no tabs on character growth and the characters could have been switched out with anyone else, this could have been Moxxie and Millie instead of Blitzø and Loona.

As we have now come to expect, the latest short follows the whole plot we were sold, assassins who specialise in carrying out hits on humans and the mayhem that follows, things well featured in the pilot and early season one.

This story has Loona and Blitzø go on a job together, they are tasked with yet another petty hit which is fine, would be better if the main story didn't keep trying to force:

'they're just like people'

'they're nice really'

'they just had it tough and need to open up'

'sadness'

'desperation'

'hurt by rejection'

'just look at them grow'

Narratives, which again would be fine if they weren't so selective for whatever fleeting thing was going on that may never matter again or be consistent with future events, but they have worked before such as in the pilot where IMP tried to do the right thing when they believed that they made a mistake by seeking medical help, nothing wrong with displays of decency, or Moxxie's reluctance to take out the hit in a mother of a happy family, rathering the target was someone like a 'shitty dad', all to only be forced to act because it became a rescue mission and for his team to not care how he felt which reinforced where he stood amungst them, his unhappiness made sense in the end and there was nothing wrong with his initial projection, but on that note, let's return to this short.

The target is a very sweet old man who has high compassion for orphans, so much so that he has adopted many. Not only does this never take a perverted turn, but it takes a very familiar one, where it turns out that this man has adopted those who easily get left behind in the system, again sound familiar? Well not to Blitzø, as this isn't even picked up on at all.

Remember the main series in its season two briefly returned to its roots of carrying out hits for sinners in the finale, only for this plot and its contractor, a woman, to not be taken seriously?

This woman's targets received compassion without any dialogue, they simply needed to be a male same sex couple enjoying the holidays with their daughters. Double standards tend to mean nothing though, I can't really knock consistency. We get a moment of false character growth of Blitzø and Moxxie watching them through the window which is history repeating itself of Moxxie's reluctance to kill a happy family and Blitzø wanting him to get over it, this time Blitzø leads the compassion train and Moxxie, not knowing what Blitzø was actually daydreaming of, supports him before they quit the job totally ignoring Millie in the process, which was also supposed to be a thing.

It's also not so innocent because it seems women are needed to make these children then after serving her purpose she can be a mean bitch who deserves to die or someone long dead needed to serve a lead guys sob story, that's the case for Blitzø, Moxxie and Stolas. On the topic of Stolas, it fair to nickname this character 'Digression', because he's literally central to Blitzø's almost every move and the story going sideways, his mood swings could have made or broke IMP, but instead he chose to twist his own misdeeds on Blitzø and gaslight the whole audience like a true narcissist, but nobody else saw it (including many viewers) and in Blitzø's case, he had no right to speak on it like most victims. Is there nuance to this? Something for us to realise and take note of? No.

The sinner who placed the hit deserved to be ignored for her story hitting to close to home, for Stolas, her ex and his new man deserved to be spared because they gave Blitzø hope that he and Stolas could be like them one day (with their grown daughters having apparently had personality transplants) and finally this sinner, dispite all the petty jobs they take on, deserved to have her job rejected and to be assaulted, in defence of Stolas. That's that.

Yet Blitzø couldn't also see himself in someone who like him adopted someone disadvantaged and pours unconditional love into them, in this guys case multiple times? Why not?

Honorable mention of Loona. Since when did she seek validation from humans? What was the major difference between this loving dad and Blitzø sho chose her and smothers her? Why would she feel it fine to show her real physical appearance without warning and why wouldn't a human be startled? Does she long for more time in Earth and see this world as wonderful, because he haven't seen any of that just like we never see her studying magic. What even is the culture of their world and what do they know about humans? It's like Loona and every other female is here to be seen and not heard.

Not once was this target used to remind her that she had someone similar in her life, that this mirrored her own experience, the episode ended with Blitzø and Loona barely interacting and the two of them and the target interacting together momentarily. Nuance? Nope!

In season one we saw the scheming business man who placed a hit on his dying rival immediately upon entering hell only for them to be reunited, see opportunities, waste no time and immediately go back into business with each other. We also had the much better short we saw Emberlyn taken out on a petty hit revel in her moment of being centre of a demons scheme before showing up as a cute demon fangirling outside of the office.

But this short, no, nothing. A character actually has something in common with the characters in question but this isn't realised, he's killed off and the story finishes and not because of anything in particular. Nuance? Hello no.

[nosferatuix]

I'm actually curious if in a world where Geto took Gojo up on his offer to just kill the cult, if they develop the same fixation canon!Geto did without more time for the jujutsu world to grind them down and without the conversation with Yuki to make them feel like non sorcerors in general are the problem. So that might lead to a funny scenario where they go to explain themselves to Shoko and when she's like "so what IS your guys' evil plan anyway" they're like uh well. Yeah we're still working on that. And Shoko's like, hold up. So you guys announced your defection as the worst curse users in history by massacring a bunch of civilians in the street in broad daylight right near the school, and you don't have a plan. And stsg are like okay LISTEN we have some ideas!! We just haven't settled on exactly the specifics of how we're going to tear down this society and they end up debating with Shoko over lunch and developing their vision. It's my opinion that the three of them are best workinng together.

Alternatively maybe the higher ups DO send Yuki after them as the only person who could maybe possibly take them(she could probably kill Geto by himself, and pre Toji Gojo, but together with Gojo's rapid development? nah, although in fairness if they did mass murder and dipped five minutes after his enlightenment they wouldn't necessarily know that). And Yuki's like well cute to think you can order me around but I AM curious ngl.

waitwaitwait i seriously love the potential here!! you're right about them not exactly being able to pin the blame on a specific someone bc of the lack of conversation with yuki, which really does make the whole thing have triple the comedy effect than i initially thought of it to have. and the longer that "lunch" drags on, the more they realize how many other problems are there with the way their society operates. (satoru tries to make a list of them because shoko bullied them about not doing this properly and she ended up being mortified momentarily when she realized almost 80% of that list has been her contribution since she deals with the aftermath/clean-up of many of these problems.) i like them working together the best as well, the double-agent thing was mostly a thought experiment since i felt like shoko would have to have something serious happening to her for her to say FUCK IT even when faced with the possibiliy of many of her sorcerer friends dying because she's not there to help them, but it could very well be that the higher-ups already started treating her as if she's an accomplice of stsg which could leave her no choice but to actively defect to join them.

but yuki being sent after them is such a great idea!!! we know that she receives orders to take on missions but that she chooses to actively ignore/avoid them so these three teenagers turning into cult leaders/curse users overnight might just be the thing that'll pique her interest to the point of her wanting to check it out for herself. can't send anybody but the only special grade sorcerer you have at hand after two special grade sorcerers unless you have a death wish, right? so i can just imagine yuki getting a call in the middle of the night, ignoring it once she realizes it's related to the higher-ups in some way, then getting bombared with more calls which prompts her to finally at least see what they've got up their ass this time. insert her finding out the only other two known special grade sorcerers said fuck it all, went on a murder spree and even "coerced" their other classmate to join them on their "hellish crusade" lmao. she'd give yaga a ring without a care in the world that it's literally three in the morning (not a problem for him because he'd been sitting in his office with his head in his hands and enough alcohol to kill a small child in his bloodstream) and just demand to be filled in on the gossip as to what happened to his three students that fucked them up this much.

imagine sashisu's surprise when she pulls up to their hiding spot with beer instead of death threats on her sleeve, sits them down and just goes: "so, what's the plan? how do you guys plan on handling this and is there anything i can do to help?"

[mister-walrus]

Who wants my unsolicited ideas? No one? Cool, I'm gunna rant anyway.

A Rant About Schools

The American school system would never motivate a student to talk about information like it's actually interesting, especially not someone with Ryy's attention span (yes, I'm throwing shade.) If I'm not mistaken, this is something Ryy and his other buddy wanted to look into for fun. So, why can't schools as we know them mimic that behavior?

The Prussian Model

Well, I should start by defining what I mean when I say "American Public school system", since the term can be vague. What I mean is a modern, public school in America that resembles the Prussian model as used by Horace Mann-- students are sorted by age and taught the same things at the same time, with no regard for individual education. The Prussian system was very much designed to be a conveyer belt, meant to pump out obedient workers.

"The Prussian model of education wasn’t designed to create critical thinkers; it wasn’t even designed for kids. Prussian leaders built it to produce disciplined, obedient soldiers who would follow orders without question. " - Tiffany Hoben in The American Education Model Began On A Foundation Of Local Control

Why Grades Aren't a Good Motivator

In this system, grades are supposed to be an indicator of how well a student is doing and a motivator to improve.

In practice, however, it ignores neurodivergence-- it tells autistic individuals that they aren't good enough. When in reality, it's the system that's failed, not them.

And, for me at least, grades don't motivate me. Getting a reward for learning, something that's innate in every one of us, makes the subject less interesting. If I where to say that I'm hungry and the my friend says "I'll pay you twenty bucks to eat this sandwich." My reaction would be "Why do you need to pay me twenty when I was already hungry? What's the catch?", the reward makes the practice seem less appealing. In other words, when the want to learn is intrinsic, you kill any motivation by providing extrinsic rewards. What Ryy wrote wasn't for a grade (at least I hope not), it was for the fun. And, he was proud of it afterwards (as he should be), which is something I can't imagine happening in our current system.

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I could go into this deeper, but I have a project to work on. Feel free to comment anything, I love me some good debate, just keep it respectful. If anyone wants sources I'll happily provide them :)

for my astro twin @cutetrilobite2 !!

What keeps a star together?

Stars are formed by molecular clouds, basically large groups of space dust that are an insane amount of times bigger than the sun. They can span literally thousands of light-years, so their sheer mass makes them cold! This causes gases to "harden" and clump together.

These clumps (that's such a stupid fucking word. clump) collide together and create a protostar! Basically a baby star.

(fun fact, the prefix proto means beginning, or first of :D)

Now, what actually keeps a star together? It's the same thing that causes its life cycles!

After millions of years, the star continues to grow through processes that form helium, squeezing hydrogen atoms together. This pressure and force reliant on an atom's ability to morph and stay together is known as nuclear fission! Nuclear fission also releases heat energy, which makes stars burn!!! Hence binding it and giving us identification to its life cycle!!!!! How cool is that??

This is easy to remember-- nuclear means something that has to do with the "nucleus" of an atom (aka what binds to make helium) and fission relates to processes like these!

Another fun fact-- our sun is in its main sequence stage. This is kinda like adulthood? Basically the "peak" of a star's life. We mark this by a star consistently going through nuclear fission; making sure it is producing heat energy properly and not dying anytime soon.

so, there! stars stay together using nuclear fission, the same process which makes it live! uh. idk how to end this. don't do drugs and love the moon 👍

[soullessjack]

another jack thing™️ i think isn’t picked up at all a lot is that he loves his puter

much to consider

[glitter-stained]

Are the people who keep complaining that jason got away with what he did completely unscathed actually okay? Like, did we read the same comics? There's extremely little I can think of that didn't happen to Jason as "punishment"

like why are the people who want him to be punished forever not happy he is already getting punished forever what else do you want

[arolesbianism]

Been working on some first run Chou sprites for funsies, here’s a handful of the ones I’ve done so far