#Eugeo: Oh my god don’t look at me like that. You KNOW I didn’t say yes

[shima-draws]

Kirito: Hey welcome back. What took you?

Eugeo: Well uh.

Eugeo: I think

Eugeo: I just got proposed to?

Kirito: Oh neat good for you

Kirito:

Kirito: Wait, WHAT,

[thegayfromrulid]

My first 2k Words for 2k Kudos one-shot is here! A request made in my DMs by @rentsak1313 for some Kirisuna wedding nerves. I won’t repost the entire prompt here. I will be cross-listing this to AO3! One-shot below the cut. 

           Do you ever feel like everything is about to go completely and utterly wrong, even though there probably isn’t any sort of solid evidence that things are about to go downhill? It’s that gut feeling that you could just take your finger and lightly tap the situation at hand—and then it all falls over, like you actually punched it with all of your might. Maybe that’s a weird comparison. Either way, that’s about how I feel in this very moment. And I think it’s plastered obviously across my face because Eugeo’s giving me a funny look.

           Everything is in place. Not a single detail is screwed up. I even remembered to put on deodorant. I mean, I don’t usually forget that, but I feel like at some point during the course of wedding preparation I might have. That would have been bad. Just thinking about possibly missing that makes me think I might have missed something—or maybe I’ll mess something up in the process of going through the steps of…oh, what am I saying?

           I took a deep breath and glanced down at my tuxedo coat. I grasped the top buttons in my hands and decided to distract myself. I slipped each button through their respective holes, counting the buttons as I went. One, two, three, four!

           “Hey, I know you’re nervous, but you know better than that,” Eugeo said.

           He reached over and deftly unbuttoned the last button. I let out an awkward laugh.

           “Is everything okay?” he asked.

           It was an incredibly simple question which should have had an equally simple answer. But the words stuck in the back of my throat like I’d swallowed a little too much peanut butter. I must have been making some face; Eugeo placed his hand on my shoulder and gave me a smile. I tried to flash him a toothy grin back. He immediately lost his composure and started laughing at me.

           “Calm down,” he said, trying to speak through his laughter. “You really don’t want to be grinning like that when you’re exchanging vows, you’re going to make her hyperventilate.”

           “R-reassuring,” I stammered.

           Nevertheless, I took a deep breath. Today is not the day to be panicking and losing my mind. I tried to divert my energy elsewhere. I started pacing around the room for a bit, but Eugeo reached over and stopped me by grasping my shoulders, steering me over to a chair, and pushing me down into it. He sat down across from me.

           “Are you really that nervous?” he asked.

           I bit my lip.

           “You two have been together for quite some time,” he said. “Forgive me if I’m out of line, but I don’t think you’ve got anything to be nervous about.”

           Frowning, I shook my head.

           “No, it’s not, like…I’m not nervous because I’m getting married,” I said.

           He raised an eyebrow.

           “This is the right decision for us, after all,” I said. “It’s what we’ve always wanted. I’m very confident about this step. I just…”

           “You just…what?”

           I heaved a sigh.

           “I don’t want to screw this moment up and have to live with it for the rest of my life,” I groaned.

           Eugeo chuckled and shook his head at me. I wondered what he thought was so funny. If this was his once-in-a-lifetime moment, I bet he’d be just as nervous about screwing it up. Unless some strange events happened, I could only marry Asuna once. I want this day to be perfect not just because it’s my wedding day—but so that she’ll have a wonderful day to look back on throughout our marriage.

           There were so many ways it could go wrong. Tripping was probably the most likely. I’d already buttoned my tux wrong, which Eugeo had so kindly pointed out. Something else might be wrong with my outfit. Maybe the guests would be wearing strange outfits. Someone might spill a drink. There could be late people. I could end up appearing late because of all of my worrying.

           “Maybe I should have wished for good luck with my wedding back at the shrine,” I groaned, placing my head in my hands.

           Sighing loudly enough that I could hear him, Eugeo reached over and gently rubbed my back.

           “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “If you keep getting yourself worked up about what might go wrong, you’re going to jinx yourself.”

           I gave a rather pathetic nod.

           “Right.”

           I felt as pathetic as that nod was. Asuna probably wasn’t half as nervous about messing up as I was.

             Actually, in truth, she might be more nervous than he was. She wanted to go and check on him, but that was an excuse. He didn’t need checking on. He was a grown man, after all. Asuna just needed him to be with her in this very moment. Kirito always calmed her nerves. All of her fears would melt away as soon as their eyes met.

           But she knew that if she’d get up and say she was going to see him, Lisbeth would stop her in her tracks, enforcing the “don’t see the bride in her dress before the wedding” nonsense. Asuna wasn’t really one for superstitions like that. Lisbeth might have said that earlier only as a tease. Where did that kind of belief even stem from? She couldn’t think about that now. She had to focus on the wedding.

           Asuna turned to gaze at herself in the mirror. Was her hair perfect? She was probably needlessly concerned about her appearance. Kirito didn’t care one bit what she looked like—he loved her whether she was dressed to the nines or in a set of simple pajamas. Oh, now that sounded like he didn’t care about her appearance at all. Was is selfish of her to hope he was outfitted perfectly?

           “Oh god, what if he gets crumbs on his suit!” she blurted out.

           Lisbeth blinked over at her, considered the thought for a moment, and then giggled.

           “It’s not funny!” Asuna said. “Of all of the things that could go wrong, that would be the most likely mishap!”

           Her maid of honor gave her a smiling nod.

           “Yeah, knowing Kirito, he’s probably found a snack back there somewhere and is awkwardly trying not to get it all over himself. Don’t worry too much, though. I’m sure Eugeo is policing him like a hawk.”

           Asuna tried to relax her shoulders a bit.

           “You think so?”

           Lisbeth nodded.

           “I know so,” she said. “I’ve never met a better Kirito policer than Eugeo.”

           Well, at least she didn’t have to worry about that. It didn’t clear up any of her other worries, though. She turned back to the mirror and started to fuss with her hair and dress. If Eugeo was making sure Kirito looked absolutely perfect for the event, then she couldn’t risk appearing a mess either. She wanted to look back on this day and see a successful event—one she’d smile about as she told her children of the day she married their papa.

           “Oh!” she exclaimed.

           Lisbeth looked at her again.

           “What’s wrong?” she asked.

           Asuna covered up her mouth and gave Lisbeth a worried look.

           “Did he set up the camera for Yui?” she asked.

           Yet another thing that could go wrong. She felt her nerves practically grinding on her. The stress was unbearable. Tears threatened to fall from her eyes, but she had to keep her makeup in perfect condition. She couldn’t cry now. She drew in a breath.

           “Would it really be so wrong if I went and saw him before the ceremony?” Asuna asked.

           Her friend frowned and cocked her head to the side.

           “I mean, that’s on you if you get bad luck,” Lisbeth said. “But you don’t really think it’ll be bad luck, do you?”

           Asuna shook her head.

           “If anything, I think seeing Kirito will ease my nerves and bring me good luck,” she said, clutching her hands to her chest.

           If her friend was right, him seeing her in her wedding dress would be the cause of all of the mistakes that occurred during the wedding. Everything she was envisioning going wrong would happen like a chain of dominoes being knocked down. But she couldn’t fight the feeling that everything would be better if she just spoke with him for a short bit alone.

           She lifted her chin up and forced a smile as she gazed at her friend.

           “I’m going to go talk to him,” she said. “I won’t be too long.”

           Lisbeth smiled and shook her head.

           “Hurry back, then, soon-to-be Mrs. Kirigaya.”

             Eugeo gave me a fixed glare as I contemplated grabbing a snack to keep myself busy and not thinking about all of the ways the wedding might turn into a big disaster party. As my hand inched closer, I noticed that his eyes narrowed more and more. Finally, I gave into his glare and yanked my hand away.

           “If you got crumbs on that tux, Asuna would strangle me after the reception,” he said. “Or worse: in the middle of it.”

           I frowned. I definitely didn’t want Asuna strangling someone in the middle of our wedding reception. That was just another thing to add to the list of possible ways the ceremony could go wrong—not that I would have originally thought of my bride suffocating someone with her bare hands when imagining mishaps and screwups. I reached down again for a little bite-sized snack.

           “Kirito.”

           My hand snapped back into place at my side, as if it had never hovered over the food tray at all. Eugeo’s glare remained severe even as I kept my hand glued to my thigh.

           “I know you’re nervous, but if you mess up your suit eating a little snack, that’s an error you’ll be thinking about until you go to sleep tonight.”

           I hung my head.

           “You’re right…” I mumbled.

           Great. Another thing to worry about.

           “Relax,” he said. “If you just behave, everything’s going to go perfectly—is that Asuna?”

           I whirled around and saw Asuna hurrying into the room. She’d pulled up her dress to keep from tripping over it as she ran. My mind instantly presumed something had already gone wrong. I walked over to her. She thrust her hands out to me. I took them and gazed at her, concerned.

           “Is everything okay?” I asked.

           She bit her lip and looked up at me, clearly on the verge of tears.

           “I’m so nervous, I just…I just needed to come see you…” she said, trailing off.

           It wasn’t very obvious, but after a moment of gazing at her I could see that she was shaking. Immediately tossing my own worries about screwing today up away, I just smiled at her and squeezed her hands gently. Her eyes widened just a bit. Suddenly, to my surprise, she burst into a fit of laughter.

           “You’re a nervous wreck, too, aren’t you?” she said.

           My cheeks flushed with heat, making my embarrassment obvious. I tucked my head down, trying not to make eye contact as I explained myself.

           “Look…I don’t want to mess up our special day…” I mumbled.

           She shook her head.

           “And here I’ve been worried about the same thing all day,” she said. “But I think just coming and talking to you makes me feel a bit less nervous.”

           I lifted my head and locked eyes with her. That nervousness that I’d seen earlier seemed to have vanished. I reached up and tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. My smile returned as I stared into her eyes. She looked stunning, and she was right. Being here with her dispelled all of the nerves about wanting today to be perfect.

           Because it already was perfect.

           Careful to not smudge her makeup or mess up her hair, I slipped my hand behind her head and pulled her into a gentle kiss. This was probably bad luck of some sort or another, but I didn’t care.

           “Hey! You’re going to kiss in the next thirty minutes anyways!” Eugeo said. “Come back over here so we can go over what you need to do!”

           I chuckled and shook my head. Asuna silently thanked me with her eyes. She gave me a nod and then hurried back to her dressing room. I let out a sigh, relaxed for the first time today. I turned my head to the left, looking for where Eugeo was, turned back to watch Asuna disappear down the hallway, and then did a double take when I realized he was right next to me.

           “Feeling calmer now?” he asked.

           Smiling, I gave a nod.

           “I guess no matter what goes wrong, today will be special regardless,” I said. “We’re both worked up over silly things when we should just calm down and focus on what’s really important.”

           Eugeo gave me a very matter-of-fact nod.

           “See? There’s nothing to be nervous about.”

           I sat back down in a chair and leaned back to take a deep breath. Everything was going to go perfectly. Can I pinpoint an exact reason why? Not really. But I think what’s important is that when Asuna and I spoke, those nerves melted away. I still don’t want to mess anything up. Yet I am at peace knowing that we’re striving to have a happy, wonderful day together.

           And that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?

[recentanimenews]

Manga the Week of 8/23/17

SEAN: I can’t. I just can’t. How on earth is this much stuff coming out?

MICHELLE: And still none of it is 7SEEDS or Silver Diamond!

ANNA: Or Demon Sacred!

SEAN: Dark Horse gives us the 26th volume of the Vampire Hunter D novels.

ASH: I somehow managed to forget that the novel series was still ongoing.

SEAN: J-Novel Club has a 2nd volume of adorable family series If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord. Oh please stay an adorable family series…

Yes, there’s still more Del Rey rescues, with Princess Resurrection 17.

Somehow there is a new Animal Land out, Vol. 12. Only 9 months after 11! Is the series back on track?

ASH: Maybe?! The ending seems so close and yet so far away.

SEAN: Kodansha gives us a 4th volume of Chihayafura digitally. Will our ragtag bunch of karuta misfits get it together?

MICHELLE: Yay!!!!

ANNA: So excited!

SEAN: And there’s a 4th manga volume of Clockwork Planet, whose novel I enjoyed more than I did the adaptation.

Domestic Girlfriend hits Vol. 5 digitally as well.

As does Fire Force, which is print, and still not as good as Soul Eater, IMO.

Inuyashiki 8 comes out in print as well. It’s ended in Japan recently.

And Land of the Lustrous hopes to make slightly more sense with Vol. 2, but it will look gorgeous no matter what.

ASH: I’m looking forward to the beautiful mess.

ANNA: Maybe I’ll check it out from the library just for the pretty….

SEAN: The first debut next week is Love & Lies, which North American readers may find slightly familiar if they read it on the Mangabox app. It’s also got an anime coming out. The premise involves a Japan where everyone automatically gets an arranged marriage at 16.

Kodansha has a 2nd volume of Real Girl, meaning I should read the first, but TOO MUCH MANGA.

MICHELLE: I missed the first one, as well.

SEAN: The second debut next week is another of THOSE isekai adaptations. That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime is based on a novel Yen will be starting this December, and Kodansha’s adaptation runs in Shonen Sirius. The premise is… what the plot says.

ANNA: We live in interesting times.

SEAN: Lastly (for Kodansha), we get a 2nd digital volume of Tzuredure Children.

On to Seven Seas, who blissfully only have two releases next week. A Centaur’s Life has its own anime adaptation going on, which seems to be adapting a lot more than I expected, including scenes I was sure it would cut. This is the 12th volume.

There’s also a 6th volume of yuri potboiler Citrus.

Vertical has reached a dozen volumes of What Did You Eat Yesterday?. Will there be egg dishes? (Do eggs come in dozens in Japan?)

MICHELLE: !!!!!! I love when there are surprise things that weren’t on my radar.

ASH: I’m always read for more What Did You Eat Yesterday!

ANNA: Woo hoo!

SEAN: The rest of the list is Yen. They have a bunch of light novels. The 4th Asterisk War may not be the best of them, but my guess is that it’s the shortest.

A Certain Magical Index’s 12th volume is a ‘downtime’ book, with much of it taken up by wacky shenanigans. I suspect the cliffhanger will be less wacky, though.

The Devil Is a Part-Timer! has an 8th volume, and may finally be returning to Enta Isla for a bit.

Goblin Slayer’s 3rd volume features goblins being slayed.

The Irregular at Magic High School has a 5th volume that I would also classify as ‘downtime’, but we do get a Beach Episode out of it.

KonoSuba’s 3rd volume will, one hopes, be completely ridiculous.

Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers has a 2nd volume, where we see how long they can extend the “one of us is a traitor” plotline.

And Sword Art Online’s 11th volume shows the ongoing adventures of Kirito and Eugeo training to become knights, this time complete with cute squire girls.

Yen manga also has one or two or twenty titles. Anne Happy has a 6th volume, and may be caught up with Japan by now.

Aoharu x Machinegun also gives us a 6th print volume.

ASH: The first volume was fun and I’ve been meaning to read more, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

SEAN: We have reached the final Blood Lad! You can tell it’s the final one as it’s not an omnibus, ending with a single-sized 9th volume. I will miss this underrated series.

BTOOOM! has an 18th volume, and I haven’t missed it at all, but it’s not going anywhere yet.

Delicious in Dungeon’s first volume was enjoyable enough, though I worry it will leave me with very little to review. Definitely getting its 2nd volume, though.

MICHELLE: I kept meaning to read the first, but now I’ll just have to review the first two together.

ASH: I loved the first volume and am looking forward to the next a great deal.

SEAN: There is also a 3rd Demonizer Zilch, which I keep forgetting Yen puts out.

More series whose premise I just couldn’t get past, we have a 7th First Love Monster.

Girls’ Last Tour will have an adorable post-apocalypse in Volume 2.

ASH: I didn’t find the characters overly compelling, but I did really like world and environment of the series.

SEAN: High School DxD is not dead, it merely seems like it after this recent hiatus. It returns with Vol. 9.

Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl has a 3rd volume of what will no doubt be adorable yuri stories.

Log Horizon: The West Wind Brigade does not have yuri, but it does have Soujiro, so there’s a tradeoff. This is Volume 6.

Murcielago’s 3rd volume will no doubt have yuri, but if you see “If you liked Murcielago, you may also like Kiss And White Lily for My Dearest Girl”, something is screwy with Amazon’s algorithms.

ASH: HA! Someone may be in for a surprise.

SEAN: Re: Zero’s 2nd arc has its 2nd manga volume, and no doubt features Subaru dying.

Rokka also has a manga adaptation, and it’s up to Vol. 3.

Vol. 3s are popular these days! We also have a 3rd Spirits & Cat Ears.

And double digits for Trinity Ten… um, I mean Seven.

Ubel Blatt also hits double digits with its 9th omnibus. If that makes no sense, you don’t know Ubel Blatt.

Lastly (thank GOD), a 6th omnibus for Yowamushi Pedal.

MICHELLE: Yay! This is a good week!

ASH: Yay, indeed! Yowamushi Pedal isn’t released nearly as often as I wish it was.

SEAN: You must be getting SOMETHING from this morass. What is it?

By: Sean Gaffney