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Zygmunt Wierciak (1881-1950), ''Testament mój; Król Duch fragmenty ilustrowane'' (My Will; King Spirit Illustrated Fragments) by Juliusz Słowacki, 1927

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Zygmunt Wierciak (1881-1950), ''Testament mój; Król Duch fragmenty ilustrowane'' (My Will; King Spirit Illustrated Fragments) by Juliusz Słowacki, 1927

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Jane Allen Boyer (1875-1940), ''The Mary Frances Cook Book'' by Jane Eayre Fryer, 1912

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pairing: natori/matoba word count: 1,111 rating: g notes: another little fic i wrote almost 6 yrs ago that i cleaned up to share on account of Going Thru It w/ the ova announcement. it's too short for my ao3 posting liking, but gay enough i wanted to share

“Nanase,” Seiji says, the click of the thrown-open shoji door against its frame sharpening his pause. “I’ve met someone.”

Her back is to him, arm moving as she signs off on whatever it is the adults in the clan take care of in his young stead. “Kind of early for that, isn’t it. You’re fifteen.”

“It’s not like that.” He pads in, closing the door with more care than his entrance, despite his heart beating so fast it thins out his chest, erodes his ribs. “He can see youkai. And he has a fair amount of power.” He leans on the low table, disturbing Nanase’s paper piles. “But it makes sense, because he’s a Natori.”

This, at least, earns him a raised eyebrow. “A Natori, huh? What are you going to do about it?”

He stretches, papers rustling under his school uniform. He brings his cheek to the crook of his elbow, eyes on the far wall, the ancient wood his forefathers had carved out to a home. “I’m not sure yet. But I’ll find out.”

* * *

Incantations split the forest’s calm in twain, Shuuichi’s voice a breath after Seiji’s, a moment’s dissonance between leader and follower. It has no detriment on its effectiveness: the circle etched on the soil crackles blue, the activation nearing completion. And with a final command, stuttered in awe by Shuuichi, it is done. Smoke borne of nothing sweeps across the circle, dissipates just as fast, and the jar at the center seals itself shut.

It is empty, of course. This is a trial. Training. Seiji is younger, but for the lessons barked at him since speech took meaning, Shuuichi gapes at him like he would the stars, infinite in their distance and never in their might.

It isn’t a terrible feeling.

“Not bad,” Seiji tells Shuuichi. “You need to speak with more confidence, though. Wavering means the youkai has found a weakness in you. They’ll take advantage of it.”

Shuuichi’s lip curves down. “I know.” He runs a hand through his hair, sprinkled with dust the smoke had riled up. “I wasn’t scared of a hypothetical youkai. It’s just the power in this—they’re just words, but they can do this.”

“Language is a weapon of its own, Shuuichi-san.”

“You're fifteen and saying things like that? Are you sure an old youkai isn’t possessing you?”

The smile that had flirted on Shuuichi’s lips strikes Seiji with the precision and sharpness of an arrow. He does not let it show, giving Shuuichi one of those smiles he hates for their emptiness. “I’m sure.” He glances westward. “The sun will set soon. This is a good stopping point.” He rubs the circle from existence with his foot, and Shuuichi helps. The pot’s seal is easily removed. Everything is as it was.

“Seiji,” Shuuichi says, in that alarming way of his. So earnest.

Seiji tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, then looks at him. The sun is to Shuuichi’s back and the crown of his hair is burnished in bronze; his face is in shadows, contoured to the dips below his eyes, beside his nose, the sharpness of his cheekbones. Alarming. “Yes?”

There’s nothing left to rub away, but Shuuichi’s foot dimples the earth. “Do… Do you want to get something to eat? Something quick, before nightfall.”

“As long as it’s sweet,” he says, thinking of powdered sugar melting on his tongue, of a spot of white cream at Shuuichi’s pink mouth.

He takes another arrow at Shuuichi's expression. “That’s fine.”

Is it ever.

* * *

Seiji’s hair is growing, as intended, but when he feels thinness brush his nape, he startles, mistaking them for fingers as curious on his skin as they are when holding charmed paper.

Not that he knows what it feels like to be touched so tenderly. But he wonders, and tells himself not to, then ignores his own advice.

Typical adolescent confusion, he explains to his reflection in a purifying mirror, glimpsing Shuuichi’s hair at the corner from where he stands, somewhere behind him.

Is it?

* * *

For all they do together, there is a distance insurmountable. Shuuichi is guarded, wary of Seiji’s intent, unable to untangle what he says and to weave together what he does not. It isn’t all purposeful; not when it comes to Shuuichi, so far removed from centuries of exorcist politics that around him, Seiji can almost, only almost, be someone else. Because being a Matoba is to paint a target on your heart and offer your enemies the arrows, regardless of the things you say.

The distance persists. If Seiji draws nearer, Shuuichi pulls back. This is what people do to the Matoba. He’s used to it—his skin has grown thick from more than his archery.

Yet Shuuichi lingers in Seiji’s periphery. He still meets him. Flusters at his comments; promises to help Seiji as Seiji has helped him; doesn’t close the distance screaming at them. He promises his help.

Seiji will be fine, and he says as much, his laugh so light it might not exist. He’d survived on his own before meeting Shuuichi, hadn’t he.

* * *

It is Nanase who enters his study now. She says nothing; she’s there to pick something up, leaving Seiji to his work, daily increasing as the clan head. 

“Nanase,” he says, fanning the ink on the spell he’d just inked.

Nanase’s reply is a tad late. “Yes, boss?”

He weighs his words as if it’ll balance out the damage if he wields them precisely. “I met someone.”

“Someone else piqued your interest?” The smirk on her voice is sharp even when his back is to her.

“No.” He lays the fan across his lap. The ink glistens like spilled blood. “Once, I met someone.”

She breathes out, exasperated. “That’s nice.” He knows she’s left when the door slides shut again, smooth as a broken relationship could not be.

“It was,” he tells the emptiness in the room.

* * *

The mountains of themselves weather away, the distance between them widening like the maw of a great beast. But it has never consumed them. It rejects them, mocks them for the knowledge it could eat them. But it won’t. They’d taste bitter, wouldn’t they.

Somehow time molts into years, slowly when Seiji deigns to think of it, fast where he allows himself to be consumed by more earthly matters. There are no more days where he can sneak out to follow whims instead of duty. There are no more frivolities in his heart: there is only his name.

The distance widens and still they run into each other, accidents with no fatalities and just as tragic. Eyes meet, heads turn away—Shuuichi’s first, always.

But they’d met.

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pairing: natori/matoba word count: 323 rating: g notes: little fic i wrote almost 6 yrs ago that i cleaned up to share on account of Going Thru It w/ the ova announcement. it's too short for my ao3 posting liking, but gay enough i wanted to share

To describe Seiji and Shuuichi: futile. Language has not yet shaped itself to the cracks between who they were, who they are, who they are becoming. Avoidance is futile, as well; the supernatural is confined to the spaces they inhabit. They meet and go again, a vaguely predictable pattern, not always exchanging words but eyes always, always meeting. That, often, is enough.

I see you, those gazes say. I see you are here, I am aware, and I will do nothing of it. As is their pattern, razing through every overgrown forest and mountain, their feet wearing down the earth the same wherever they may go.

It's awful. Addicting. One of them should go—permanently, or to amend things—but neither of their prides will permit it. The pattern continues. They seek it out by virtue of their insolence.

Seiji catches Shuuichi in photographic flashes: white where the sun glows on his false glasses, flaxen on his hair. There and gone, because where Seiji is, Shuuichi soon won’t be. In the field, at least. In the Matoba estate, hosting other exorcists, information swapped for the currency it is, Shuuichi is willingly here—but he had had little choice, didn’t he, if he wished to be the exorcist he’d sworn to be in their youth? 

Only when the sun and moon align does he approach Seiji or does Seiji approach him. From the corner of his singular eye, Seiji watches the traditional garbs Shuuichi has thrown on, just a tad too big; and the crinkled paper bag, with an inked character just-dried, soaks up the clarity of his voice.

You fool, Seiji thinks, with a soft curve to his mouth he hides behind a sleeve. Shuuichi is not trying very much to be invisible. Is it on purpose, because he does not really want to be mistaken for the youkai he’s long disdained? Because he wants someone to see him?

I see you.

And it kills him.

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NATOMATO WILL ALWAYS WIN WE WILL NEVER LOSE PERPENDICULAR PATHS CROSS AGAIN ON CURVED SURFACES LIKE THE SKY'S GOD BLESSSSSSSS

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ever-present

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im sick and im ill. wretched twinks.

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Jennifer's body 🩸

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We need a new installment in this universe every couple of years, this is my mcu.

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A dreaded sunny day so I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates 🪓❤️⚡️

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Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

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30 min sketch

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"Beyond the Diversion Called a Smile" Cain SR Card Story - A Lesson in Being Popular

Cain: So this is the house of the Sage's "Fated Someone"…

Chloe: There's chocolate absolutely everywhere! It's so amazing that they collected all of this from around the world. But anyway anyway anyway! It's their Fated Someone! Isn't that just soooo romantic?

Cain: Ahaha. You Western wizards sure love to talk about love, huh?

Chloe: Absolutely! I know that since the Sage is kind of in trouble today I should be a little more restrained and stuff, but I just can't help getting excited about this kind of thing! Hey, hey. You're super popular, right? Has anyone ever called you their fated someone?

Cain: Well, sometimes.

Chloe: Omigosh! Tell me more, tell me more! Me and the Sage got so startled we ran away, but what do you when that kind of thing happens to you?

Cain: Erm, well, it's not like I can accept their feelings. So… If they say it lightheartedly, I just laugh it off, but if they're seriously confessing to me, first I always thank them. They really had to screw up their courage to say it, after all. But after that, I turn them down very firmly. Right now I'm focusing on my duties as a Sage's wizard, and that means I can't accept the feelings they have for me.

✦✧☾✧✦

Chloe: …Wow. You're so cool…!! I… I definitely wouldn't be able to handle it the way you do. I'd be so worried about accidentally upsetting them or making them hate me that I'd get so worked up about how to respond I'd just… get stuck and not respond at all. …Even though I guess acting like that would make it all awkward and stuff. Even though we were just thinking about hypotheticals I started getting all upset…

Cain: C'mon, Chloe, don't get so down on yourself like that. Wouldn't they feel the opposite of that, anyways?

Chloe: The opposite…?

Cain: They wouldn't think it was awkward or get upset or anything like that. I think they'd honestly be happy about it. It's not like anyone enjoys knowing their feelings are unrequited, but I think that they'd be happy to know the person they love is considering their feelings so sincerely. After you let them down like that, I think they would still cry it out, but once they did, they'd think to themself, I'm so glad I fell for someone so wonderful. I'm sure you make everyone who loves you happy.

Chloe: … …Ehehe, I hope so. …I really hope that's true…! Thank you, Cain. I'm feeling a lot better now! Gosh, I really understand why you're so popular. I learned a lot!

Cain: Hahaha. Guess it was a good lesson for the West's young heartbreaker! I can teach you more whenever you want.

Training Episode: The Art of Being Popular

Akira: I'm back… Woah?! Cain, what's with all those packages?!

Cain: Oh… Is that you, Master Sage? Sorry. As you can see, I got so many presents I can't see past them.

Akira: Huh? You mean every single one of those in that huge mountain you're holding is all for you?

Cain: Yep. I had to stop by the capital for some personal business and then people just kept handing me them. I dunno if this waws planned or something but before I knew it, here I am with all of these.

Akira: Is today a holiday like Valentine's Day in Japan…? But gosh, you're as popular as ever, huh. But with so many of these you don't really know who gave you what, right?

Cain: …? No, I do?

Akira: Huh?

Cain: This box with the red ribbon is from the florist's daughter. This one with the blue wrapping paper is from a lady that runs a fruit stand. This long, narrow one is from the manager of a cafe on main street… Yep, I still remember all of them. I could tell you everyone who gave me one, and which one it was specifically, too.

Akira: Wow…!!

Cain: Ahaha, thanks. But this isn't all that impressive, really. I mean, every single one of them went out of their way to pick out a present for me, and then worked up the courage to call out to me and offer it. It'd be disrespectful if I forgot who each one was and started getting them mixed up, you know?

Akira: (He says it like it's just natural… But I guess that's what makes people like him so much.)

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''InforMik'', #1, 1987

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From the History of Culinary Herbs (1986)

Soviet postcard set illustrated by N. Barbotchenko. Includes 16 postcards.

Some handling wear on postcards and set cover; the cover has been visibly bent.

$16 + SH $9

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