Urgent Appeal to Support My Family in Gaza: Critical Need as Winter Approaches
I invite you to join this humanitarian campaign to support my family in Gaza, who are facing extremely harsh conditions following the recent war. The situation has worsened with the arrival of winter. It is a dire time, and families like mine in Gaza cannot survive without your support.
link GFM
Our Story: From Stability to Tragedy
My family of ten lived a simple, stable life before the war took everything from us. After the bombing, our home was completely destroyed, and we were forced to live in a tent in Deir al-Balah, facing unbearable conditions.
- **My father** suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, struggling to receive regular treatment.
- **My mother** also suffers from hypertension, enduring pain in these harsh conditions.
In addition to our material losses, five members of my family were seriously injured, and we lost our sole source of income after the destruction of the stores that sustained us.
My Brother Ahmed and His Children: A Growing Struggle
My brother Ahmed lives in northern Gaza, where he is facing extreme difficulties in providing food and medical care for his three children:
- **Amir** suffers from a skin condition caused by the severe living conditions in the tent and the extreme heat. He needs specialized medical care.
- **Muhammad**, who has polio, is seeing his condition worsen due to the lack of proper medical treatment.
Winter Makes Things Worse
With winter setting in, the hardships have only intensified. The tent we live in does not provide enough protection from the freezing cold and rain, and we lack the essential winter clothing. We urgently need:
- **Winter clothes** for all family members to keep warm.
- **A new, sturdier tent** to protect us from the cold and harsh weather.
- Along with **medicines, food, and medical care**, which remain crucial for survival.
How You Can Make a Difference
Families like mine in Gaza depend on your generosity and support. Every donation, no matter how small, can make a significant difference in providing:
- Warm winter clothes and blankets to keep us warm.
- A new tent to shelter us from the cold and rain.
- Urgently needed medicines and medical care.
- Food and safe shelter.
- Hope for relocation to a safer place where we can receive proper medical care when the border opens.
Our Story in Pictures: From Life to Destruction
The attached photos tell the story of my family before and after the war. The first photo shows our peaceful life at home before the bombing. The second photo reveals the destruction that left us homeless and struggling to survive. With winter here, life has become even more challenging.
Your Support Can Make a Real Difference
In this critical time, we need your help. Your support can change our lives and help us endure. Your donations won’t only provide basic needs for my family, but they will also help other families in Gaza facing the same suffering. Thank you for your generosity and compassion.
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SINCERITY
Flirting with Suo is never a good idea—you can never tell whether he means to charm you or make fun of you when you do it. Sometimes it feels like both. Occasionally it feels mean. More often than not, you like to entertain it. But you can't right now, not when his blood is all over the washroom sink. Your manager will be furious about the mess, and also about the fact that you're giving first aid to three delinquents while you're on the clock.
If Suo makes one more joke about marrying you, you'll probably throw up and cry.
(Or: Suo, Nirei, and Sakura get into a fight in the red light district and go to you to get patched up. Suo takes the opportunity to tease you mercilessly.)
4.5k words, suo x reader with implied one-sided sakura x reader, sfw with mature themes. set post-canon (they are all 18-19 years old), non-canon backstory details for suo and sakura (speculative as of ch. 146). fem reader – references to gendered professions, e.g. hostessing; reader wears a dress for her job in a girls’ bar. warning for inaccurate depictions of first aid! dividers by @/cafekitsune.
Suo’s never liked your job.
You suppose this is fair. The feeling is mutual. You’ve never liked the fact that Suo chose to go to a delinquent school rather than a proper high school, and he’s never liked the fact that you chose to drop out of your proper high school to go work in the red light district—first at a kyabakura, and now at a girls’ bar. His master, who also happens to be your master, has always told you that this was a natural reaction on his part. Having a secondary school certificate is important, after all. But Suo’s disapproval of your income sources, no matter how politely or subtly phrased, has always felt like it runs deeper than simple concern for your education.
Still, this has never stopped him from visiting you at your place of work, though he only tends to come by under the worst possible circumstances—tonight worse than any other.
When you see the three of them limping through the clamour and heat of the red light district—the neon glow of the street making the blood smeared across Suo’s face shine vibrantly—you entirely forget that you're on the clock. You chuck your sign onto the ground (3000¥ per hour! it reads) as you cut a path toward them, almost tripping in your stiletto heels. Your customer service voice gives way to your regular one, which is so outraged that it startles everyone around you.
“Suo, you motherfucker—are you trying to lose the only eye you have left?!”
Suo is unbothered. His smile is calm and deeply shameless as you approach him. It’s nothing like Nirei, who cringes at the furious look you give him, or Sakura, who looks like a deer caught in headlights when you round on him instead. Like he doesn’t know what to do at the fact that someone is worrying over him, and especially not when that person is wearing an extremely revealing evening gown. For a minute, you think he's going to bolt.
But Suo keeps him there, grip tight on his arm.
“Hi,” he says brightly, like there isn't blood all over his face and shoulder. “Are you busy? We might need to trouble you.”
“Of course I'm busy! I'm in the middle of a shift!” you fume at him. But you still extract Sakura from him, scruffing him by the neck before he can clam up and run. You pull him in the direction of your bar, and gesture for the other two to follow. “Hurry up before my manager sees you.”
Smuggling three delinquents into the washroom of a girls’ bar is not a skill you thought you'd ever need, but it is one that you've become an expert in. This is at least the third time you've done it. The Furin trio rarely ever loses fights, but they occasionally slip up in the part of the red light district that isn't controlled by Roppo-Ichiza. This is somewhat unavoidable, as Keyaki Street is a different beast from Keisei Street. It isn't just delinquents here, but bona fide criminals. “Like, actual fucking Yakuza,” you grouse at Suo for the millionth time. You wipe at the blood remaining on his face—most of it you've already rinsed off, staining the melamine sink with iron—and the paper towel in your hand blooms red.
“But these guys weren't Yakuza,” he says cheerfully.
“They still pulled weapons on you! Bladed weapons!”
“Mm… well, that's true. I'm sorry.”
You scowl at him. “No, you're not.”
“No, I'm not.” He’s still smiling. “In our defense, we didn't have much of a choice. They were about to do something terrible to an innocent person,” he says, and you deflate a little, because you know Suo can't stand to see injustice. This is something you love very dearly about him, and also a quality of his that constantly raises your blood pressure. But then you roll your eyes when he happily adds, “And in my defense, it’s all our Captain’s fault!”
“Oi!” Sakura yells from one of the stalls, where he’s sitting and holding a bag of ice to a knot on his head. “Wasn’t my fault we ended up fighting. They were practically beggin’ to have their asses kicked.”
“You did provoke them, Sakura,” Nirei says. He's in the other stall, trying to stay off his sprained ankle.
“Well, they were dangerous! Not like you wanted to just leave them alone either,” Sakura grumbles, and Nirei apologises, though Suo accurately points out there is no need for him to. After hearing this story, you can't help but agree, and you suppose you shouldn't have expected any differently. After three years at Furin, Sakura is no longer the type to pick fights for no reason. Whatever those guys were up to must have been pretty bad for him to start shit in unfamiliar territory.
Still. The red light district is what it is. Touts, street gangs, and Yakuza are constantly causing problems here, with violence of a scale and nature that Bofurin simply don't see on their own turf. Your street in particular makes someone like Endo look like a joke. “You should still learn to exercise some restraint,” you say to Sakura. “And you”—you give Suo a miserable look—“you know the area. You should have known better. At the very least, you should have called me for backup.”
“But you were on the clock,” Suo points out, and you frown. Despite having absolutely no need, you take out an alcohol wipe and swipe it over his cut. He winces.
“I'm still on the clock now,” you reply, voice dry, “and here you are, distracting me anyway. My boss is going to be on my ass about it if I don't bring in any customers tonight, you know.”
“We can be your customers,” Suo offers.
“You aren't old enough to drink!”
“Neither are you, yet you work here.” His gaze has turned a little sharp. His voice too. You blink, suddenly mollified.
“...okay. If each of you buys a drink after this, I’ll call us even.” Then you glance down at his changshan, which is sliced through, the pearly silk stained red at the shoulder. He’s insisted that the wound is unserious and said that he'd rather clean up his face first, and you're starting to question his priorities. “That is, if you don't have to go to the hospital after this.”
“I don't.”
“I don't know if I believe you.” You pull out some polysporin. “Come closer.”
Suo could do this on his own. His hands aren't incapacitated. But he humours you, as he's always humoured you, and allows you dab his cut with the antibiotic. You feel a little sentimental as you do it, and almost a little sad. Doing this reminds you of when he was a kid who had just started learning martial arts. Granted, he never got any real cuts back then, but sometimes he’d scrape his knees or his elbows or—god forbid—his face, and you would plaster bandaids all over him when he did. But none of those were real injuries.
More than anything, doing this reminds you of when he lost his eye. The state that he was in after the accident. The way his face was bandaged after the surgery. The texture of the gauze against your fingers when you asked to try swapping out the dressings for him.
If Suo notices the way your lip is trembling, he doesn't comment on it.
“You’re so mean—how come you never believe anything I say?” he asks. You press the gauze to his cut with more pressure than necessary, and he blinks. He opens his mouth again, but then the door rattles violently.
“Sorry!” you yell. “Washroom’s closed for cleaning!” You wince as you hear complaints in reply—you’ve been closed for half an hour!—and shoot Suo a sour look as the customer leaves. “I’m really risking it all for you three,” you remark.
“I'll make it up to you,” Suo says. “I'll stick around the whole night and buy as many drinks as you want. Your manager won't be able to hassle you about anything then.”
“No way. You're not wasting that much money on the red light district.” You frown. “Master will kill me if I let you piss away your inheritance like that.”
“I’m not wasting my money on the red light district. I'm wasting it on you.”
“Well, I'm employed at a girls’ bar, so when you waste money on me, you are in fact spending it on the red light district.”
“Then you should quit so I can spend as much money on you as I want.”
“Quit and then live on what income?” You set aside the first aid kit and grab some more paper towel. “Take off your shirt.”
“Oh? Right here? Right now?” His eye goes wide. “How forward.”
Sakura coughs very, very loudly from the stall. If you weren't so used to Suo saying this kind of thing just to mess with you, you'd probably do the same. In fact, you'd probably choke on your spit and die on the spot. But as it is, you only sigh and start unbuttoning Suo’s changshan, starting at the high collar. Any sentimentality or concern you previously felt is quickly drowned out by annoyance.
“Suo.”
“Don’t worry—I don't mind,” he adds. “I thought you'd never ask. I just didn't think it’d happen here. And so suddenly.”
“Don’t do that. I can't do this today.”
“Don’t do what?” he says innocently. He lets you slip his changshan off one shoulder. To your relief, the cut does look very shallow—he’s too quick for anything other than a bullet to land a serious hit on him, you guess—but you still swallow when you see it. It looks like he's bled a lot more than he probably actually has.
Or you hope so, anyway.
“Joke like that,” you reply after a moment. “It's very mean.”
“I’m not joking about anything.” You feel his eye on you as you start dabbing at all the red on his skin, the paper towel in your hands blotting crimson as if with ink. Your breath shakes as you study the wound. He lifts his hand, his knuckle brushing against your cheek. You smack it away, but he doesn't seem bothered. “I was being very serious,” he continues. “Quit working in the red light district and let me support you instead.”
“Suo,” you say, your voice flat, “there is no job you could qualify for on this planet that will let you earn more than what I'm making now. If anything, you should let me support you.”
“Ah,” he says brightly. “I get it now—you want me to be your trophy husband!”
Now you are choking on your spit and you do think you're dying. Sakura sounds like he's not doing much better—something bangs loudly against the washroom stall, and you assume it’s his forehead. Even Nirei is affected, not-so-subtly clearing his throat.
“I do not want you to be my trophy husband.”
“Just a regular husband, then?” he asks. “That’s alright. If I joined the Yakuza, I could make plenty of money. You could even stay at home if you wanted.”
“Suo you motherfucker you are not joining the fucking Yakuza! And I wouldn't be a stay at home wife!”
“Oh? You wouldn't want to be?”
“No, god! Do you know how much I could make if I scored a hostess gig at a high-end place? Why would I ever turn down that kind of money?!”
“Ah, so you want us to be dual income?”
“Of course I would want us to be dual income!”
“You could get a different job and we could still be dual income.”
“There’s no other job that would pay as well.”
Suo sighs, and your brow twitches. You've always been suspicious about why he disapproves of your choice in career. It’s not in his disposition to judge people, but sometimes you still worry that he's doing it to you.
“What,” you ask, “would you be so against marrying a hostess?”
“No, not at all. But I'd be worried if my spouse worked somewhere unsafe. What if you end up at a Yakuza-owned club?”
You pause, startled at the abruptly earnest tone of his voice. Suddenly you feel guilty.
“Oh… well, I wouldn’t work at a Yakuza-owned club.”
“Hm… then I guess it's fine.” Suo nods, as if arriving at a decision. “We’ll get married, we’ll be dual income, and neither of us will work for the Yakuza.”
“Yes, exactly. We’ll get married, we’ll be dual income, and neither of us—” Your eyes go wide as you realize what you're saying. You feel yourself flushing. “Wait.”
“What? Is there a problem?”
“Suo.”
“Don’t tell me you're going to change your mind now. That would just be mean.”
“I'm being mean?” you ask, flabbergasted.
“Well, yes. You don't think it would hurt if you changed your mind about marrying me? And so soon after agreeing, too.”
You stare at him in disbelief. You have a number of possible retorts that cross your mind, and somehow you pick the least relevant one: “You can't trick someone into marrying you.”
“Then can I trick you into dating me?”
“Suo! I said don't do that!”
“Don’t do what?”
“Joke about that kind of thing!”
“I'm not joking about anything.”
“Yes you are? You don't actually want to date me. Stop saying that you do!”
Suo leans in. He stares at you, his gaze distinctly vulpine. It's very attractive, and also intimidating, and you should be used to it by now, but your heart rate ticks up anyway. You swallow thickly as his thumb glides along your cheek again, your skin scorching beneath his fingertips. You forget to bat his hand away this time.
“You’re so mean,” he repeats, voice lilting, “how come you never believe anything I say?”
He's baiting you. He's obviously baiting you, and you consider for a moment whether you want to bite.
Flirting with Suo is never a good idea—you can never tell whether he means to charm you or make fun of you when you do it. Sometimes it feels like both. Occasionally it feels mean. More often than not, you like to entertain it. But you can't right now. His shirt’s stained with such a bright red that it keeps distracting you, just like the blood he's left all over the washroom sink. Your manager will be furious about the mess, and also about the fact that you're giving first aid to three delinquents while you're on the clock. You think they'd go broke before they could spend enough money here to appease her, were she to discover the four of you. You might even lose your job. Then you wouldn't be able to support yourself anymore, let alone Suo, who cracks jokes as easily about being your trophy husband as he does about being Leonardo DiCaprio.
If he makes one more joke about marrying you, you'll probably throw up and cry.
“You're not being very gentlemanly right now,” you finally point out. He raises a brow.
“No?”
“No. I'd even say you're being a menace, actually. Doing a very bad job of”—you almost laugh as you say this, because you've heard this speech so many times—“engaging with my feelings. Not being supportive at all. Really falling off the staircase to adulthood, you know.”
Suo studies you. Something complicated passes through his eye before he pulls away, his expression now back to normal. It's deceptive how innocent he looks.
“Sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I’ll play nice.”
“No, you won't,” you retort, and Suo smiles at you, not replying. But he does give you a break. You finish cleaning up the cut without incident, although you do get flecks of blood on your evening gown, which you hope won't be too noticeable against the black satin. You bemoan the lost cause of Suo's changshan too—made of Suzhou silk, a gift from your master—and silently make a note to buy him a replacement sometime.
You're in the middle of buttoning up his shirt when the door clicks and swings open. Met face to face with your coworker, you freeze up.
Your stage name leaves her mouth in an angry bark. “What are you doing? I told you you're not supposed to be having sex with customers here, you should be doing that someplace—” She stops, evidently spotting the blood on Suo’s shirt, and then the other two individuals locked up in here with you, one of whom is blushing violently and looks to be on the verge of dying from embarrassment. Beneath your hands, you feel Suo’s body go stiff too.
“Oh,” she says before either of them can comment. “It’s just your delinquent boyfriend and his buddies.” Suo waves at her, and she nods back before squinting at the sink. “Are you going to clean that up?”
“Yes,” you say quickly. “Please don't tell our boss.”
“Have I ever ratted you out?” she asks. “Just get out of here soon. People do have to piss, you know.” Then she stops, looking at Suo with a dubious expression. “And make sure your boyfriend doesn't die.”
You're too tired to correct her on the nature of your relationship. “I've been trying,” you say, and she gives you a sympathetic look before retreating. You hear her laughing with a customer about people fooling around in the washroom, and I'm so sorry for the inconvenience, sir, and could you please go downstairs while I clean up. You’re so relieved, you nearly fall to your knees. A calloused hand touches your back as you rub your temples.
“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Suo says quietly—sincerely—and instead of saying no, you're not, you reply, “I know. I’m sorry too.”
Suo’s always hated your job.
He’s always hated your job, your boyfriends, your apartment, and a lot of other things about your life that Sakura doesn’t have any business prying into. And it's just as well. Sakura also hates your shitty job, and your shitty boyfriends, and considering that you live in the same shitty building as him, he isn't a fan of your rental situation either. Nirei’s too polite to say anything about it, but Sakura can tell that he disapproves as well. It’s not like any of them are living the most comfortable lives either—Sakura has personally been living from shithole to shithole, mostly alone, ever since his parents passed—but your lifestyle does make them all feel poorly.
You're just a very easy person to like. And it's very easy to want nice things for you. So Sakura gets it, how Suo feels about you.
What he doesn't quite get is how Suo acts about you.
One thing he’s learned over the years is that Suo is very good at reading people. Sometimes he understands Sakura better than Sakura understands himself, and he can convince Sakura to do things which he himself didn't think were possible for him to do. He's done the same with Nirei, and about half the other people in their grade, and at least a third of the guys in Bofurin. It’s frankly a terrifying skill. But Suo never uses it with you—not to get you to change jobs, or boyfriends, or even apartments.
At first Sakura thought that you were just immune to Suo’s tactics, but he's recently come to realise that Suo simply gets too emotional about you to know how to convince you of anything. He’s even emotional enough to get kind of petty and a little mean with you, which is something that Sakura has only witnessed from Suo during fights. Really bad fights.
It’s terribly uncomfortable, especially when you’re clearly head over heels for Suo.
Sakura doesn't have any business prying into your personal problems. Though truthfully, he’d be happy to thrash some random assholes for you anyway, if that would fix your heartbreak. (He's already done this to at least one of your exes, and it worked shockingly well.) The problem is, Suo is not a random asshole and Sakura isn't sure that you'd want him thrashed in the first place. But it's just fucking painful watching the two of you act like this around each other, so he ends up pulling Suo aside after you kick them out of the girls’ bar, scowling.
Suo looks at him, surprised. “Sakura? What's the matter?”
He doesn't mince words. “How come you were being such a dick to your friend?”
Nirei goes stiff. “Sakura,” he says in his panicked ‘why are you trying to pick a fight now’ voice, “where is this coming from? I don't think Suo was being rude…” But Sakura can tell, as Nirei’s finishing his own sentence, that he's second-guessing himself.
“No,” Suo replies. “I was being a bit terrible, wasn't I?” There’s no humour in either his words or his face, but the corner of his mouth lifts. He actually looks endeared. “I'm surprised you noticed, Sakura.”
“I mean”—Sakura feels himself going red, embarrassed at just the memory of how you looked at Suo; first so worried, then painfully fond, and then like you were going to burst into tears right there in the washroom and ask him to hold you, as if you were in a horrible getsuku drama—“it was kinda hard not to.”
Suo nods. “I suppose it’s natural to be sensitive to the feelings of someone you like.”
Heat floods his face. “I don't like her!”
“Did I say you did?” Suo’s mouth curls when Sakura can't answer. “Don’t be embarrassed. She's a very easy person to like.”
Sakura tries his hardest to ignore Suo—which should be easy, because Suo lies randomly and pointlessly all the time, whenever he thinks it's funny—and says, “If she's an easy person to like, how come you act like you don't like her at all?”
“Was I acting like that? Or was she acting like it was impossible for someone to like her?” Sakura stops. Suo gives him a long look, then smiles. “You would know how difficult it can be to accept being liked, Sakura. And how long it can take to understand that there are people who want to support you unconditionally.”
Sakura opens his mouth once, twice. A third time. Nirei sighs. The two of them watch as Suo—rather than walking in the direction of the subway—steps over to a vending machine and buys a bottle of oolong tea.
“Are you going to wait for her shift to finish?” Nirei asks.
“Mm, I think so.” Suo glances down at his ankle. “But you should go home, Nire-kun. You can’t fight like that. In case those guys come back here, I mean.” He opens the bottle, takes a sip. “They had bladed weapons. It would be bad if you risked it.”
Nirei glances at the entrance to your bar, worried. “But…”
Sakura understands without Nirei finishing his sentence. The security at your bar is terrible, and plenty of people like to exploit that. It was Nirei who noticed a group men eyeing you before anyone else did, following you all the way from Keisei Street to your place of work. And sure, Suo kicked the shit out of them in the end, did much worse to them than vice versa—but who knows if there aren't more of them.
Suo hates your job. All three of them do.
“It’s okay,” Sakura says. “I'm sure the two of us will be enough.”
“...I'll ask Tsubaki if he's free,” Nirei finally relents. “And I'll text Kiryu and Tsugeura too.”
“Thanks, Nire-kun.”
Suo gets a bottle of ramune after Nirei leaves, passes it to Sakura. Tsubaki comes by later, still in his pole outfit, with several pieces of taiyaki for them to share—I’m always snacky after dancing, he explains—and the three of them loiter in front of your bar until four in the morning. Tsubaki asks questions about you in a tone that has Sakura wanting to crawl into an alleyway just to hide, and Suo deflects masterfully with questions about Tsubaki’s new boyfriend. The guys from earlier don't show up. Maybe the sight of Roppo-Ichiza’s top fighter scares them off.
You're surprised to see them there when you emerge a little later. You give Tsubaki a happy but perplexed look as he hugs you.
“Tsubaki? What are you doing here?”
“Keeping these two company,” he replies. “And I wanted to say hi, of course. You should come by the club sometime, you know! I haven't seen you in forever.”
“Sure! That would be nice, but…” You turn to Sakura and Suo, puzzled. “Why are you guys still here?”
Sakura, on instinct, nearly recounts the whole evening to you—about the men tailing you, about how they got into a fight, about the kind of things they said they'd do once they caught you—but Suo answers first.
“Troubling you again,” is all he says. “It’s fine since your shift is over now, right?”
You give the two of them a long, curious look. For a moment, you look worried, but you're eventually disarmed by Suo’s expression.
“I guess it's fine,” you reply. You sound so happy. Suo’s gaze goes soft, and Sakura has to force himself not to look away. “Let's hurry up and go home.”
You smile at them, and it's the kind of smile that makes it very easy to like you. The kind of smile that makes it natural to want nice things for you. The kind of smile that would make anyone emotional, even if they're normally very controlled. It makes something in Sakura squeeze tightly, all knotted up and painful.
He’s starting to understand why Suo acts the way he does around you.
END
this wasn't meant to be a love triangle, my apologies…
this was also meant to be a very short piece (like 500w lol), but I kept thinking about what suo’s backstory might be, and why he was so comfortable in the red light district in the manga, and what these guys might realistically act like in an aged up, romantic context. that all coalesced into this very bizarre fic LOL. I'm not sure how it'll land, but I hope someone out here enjoyed it! I would like to write more about this triangle (+ nirei) but I'm not sure what the level of interest would be, or if it'll even make sense with the manga. I guess we’ll see eventually!
in any case, thank you for reading!! <3
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