#It started with a doodle and the caption took a day and an age to complete

[momo-t-daye]

Consequences had always been things that happened to other people.

Oh, Sirius had had his fair share of detentions (but he and James could make detention more entertaining than their initial shenanigans) and screaming matches with his mother (even if he couldn’t win those, he could at least make sure that Walburga lost); but those were just things that happened, those weren’t really his fault.  He wasn’t prepared for consequences, he wasn’t prepared for any fallout, he hadn’t thought of anything past his plan to make Severus Snape go away.

He hadn’t expected Remus to be so upset.  Remus wasn’t willing to talk to him, Remus wasn’t even willing to look at him!  Remus was acting more like a martyr than a marauder.

He had expected Snape to be scared, he’d wanted Snape to be scared, getting Snivellus to go away was the whole point of it all, and scaring Sniv off was what success looked like.  Watching Sniv skitter around corners, go quiet in the classroom, and fold in on himself— that was a victory, right?

He hadn’t expected James to be so angry.  He couldn’t understand why James was so angry.  James had never been angry at him before.  Not really angry.  Not angry enough to stop talking.

He had expected Dumbledore to be disappointed, Headmaster Dumbledore was an authority figure and he was very good at disappointing authority figures.  But, even while disappointed with Sirius, Dumbledore had made sure to protect Remus, so it really should be all right (Remus shouldn’t be upset, James shouldn’t be angry, Peter shouldn’t be the only one of them willing to pass the salt or say good morning).

He hadn’t expected Narcissa to seek him out while he moped along the corridors in baffling solitude after a lonely lunch, to take his arm and guide him off to a quiet hallway soaked in dusty sunlight.  He hadn’t expected her to say that she understood him, that dear Aunt Wally would be so very proud of him for his efforts to maintain and uphold the natural hierarchy, but (over his spluttering protests), that he really needed to pick a different half-blood to torment because Severus Snape was her pet project and she would be so dreadfully put out if anything ghastly happened to that boy.

She knew he knew about pet projects, she said with a pretty little smile, what, with Remus Lupin.

The bottom had dropped out of Sirius’ world as his cousin, with her pretty doll face benign and benevolent, began to insinuate a picture of a future he hadn’t bothered to imagine, a future he hadn’t expected.

Severus hadn’t told her about Remus Lupin, she said before his accusations could fly.  He’d thought Dumbledore had fixed things, that it really was going to be all right, that Snape wouldn’t, couldn’t— !

No, Severus had been reticent, almost recalcitrant.

But Remus Lupin had confessed when Lily Evans asked.  Remus Lupin had been ready to crack, absolutely bursting with guilt and boiling with grief.  Why, Narcissa hadn’t needed to do anything beyond pointing dear Lily in the right direction.  

So now she knew about Remus Lupin.

She surmised that Dumbledore knew about Remus Lupin, particularly given Sirius’ blithe attitude (wasn’t it amazing how fast that could evaporate?), but, she wondered innocently, did the Board of Governors know about Remus Lupin?  Goodness, did the editors at the Daily Prophet know about Remus Lupin?

Her tone was so solicitous and soothing that it made Sirius sick to his stomach. 

Certain pertinent information was readily available to anyone that could access and peruse the Lycanthrope Registry.  Did Sirius remember that Bella’s former roommate, the surviving one that hadn’t run off to another continent before graduation, Rita (what a gem) was trying to establish herself as a full-time contributor to the Daily Prophet?

“You can’t,” he’d said, his mouth dry and his throat tight with terror.  “Cissy, you can’t tell.”

“Oh, Siri,” she’d sighed and he couldn’t tell whether she was bemused or amused.  “You’re wrong.  I can, I can tell whomever I so please.  The only question is whether I shall.”

Writing the right letter to the right person would be simple, Narcissa was little “Miss Missive”; but Narcissa wasn’t inclined to contact her darling papa or her dear sister’s former roommate about this little issue just yet.  There was still a chance Sirius could aid her in resolving this situation discreetly.

She didn’t particularly dislike Remus Lupin.  Even if she felt that introducing Sirius to those muggle velour tracksuits was completely unforgivable, she could admit that it wasn’t the sort of crime that really warranted death or Azkaban. Furthermore, while she didn’t particularly like Albus Dumbledore, she didn’t particularly loathe him either.  Even if Dumbledore was a bit of a political nuisance, she found that an eccentric headmaster rattling around the school could usefully produce a number of charming little anecdotes to sprinkle into her regular correspondence (Griselda Marchbanks, for one, thought Dumbledore stories were delightful).

Still, Remus Lupin and Albus Dumbledore were sacrifices she was willing to make if Sirius would not cooperate.

She was, primarily, concerned that setting off the chain of events that could lead to the imprisonment and/or execution of a classmate (and/or dangerous Dark creature) along with the Headmaster’s removal and replacement would be dreadfully disruptive; particularly since their O.W.L.s were coming up in a handful of months.

Severus was looking forward to taking the O.W.L.s and Narcissa had no wish to deprive him or to distract or detract from his experience.  Good marks on O.W.L.s could help when one’s blood hindered.  Unfortunately, death or dismemberment would make it very difficult for him to take his O.W.L.s.

She would go so far as to tolerate Severus being disgruntled about disrupted exams if Sirius offered her no other choice.

He’d thought Bella, with her habit of breaking all his favorite things when she was bored, was the scary cousin.  Prissy Cissy, with her pristine dresses and fussy golden curls done up with ribbons and porcelain doll face and her proclivity for keeping her hands clean and frivolous fondness for needlework and gossiping with the old ladies, had never frightened him.

Now Narcissa stood before him with a terrible little smile, unspooling a vision of a world in which she broke some of his favorite people for his imagination and he was frightened.  

He was trapped in a web of his own making, he would dance like a puppet on a string for her or she would take that string spun from his web and use it as a noose for Remus. It was all his fault, no wonder Remus and James were both furious.

“What do you want?”

She looked at him as though she couldn’t decide whether he was dense or only pretending to be obtuse.

Very carefully, as though talking to a small child or a senile auntie, she informed him that he was to leave Severus alone.

There would be no hexing in the hallways, no shoving on the stairs, no cursing in the classroom, no jinxing in the Great Hall.  He would no longer be permitted to torment, taunt, prank, or persecute Severus without risking her ire.  And, for goodness sake, Sirius was to cease and desist with that utterly appalling appellation they’d stuck on the poor boy.  It was juvenile and inelegant and dull.

She expected he would also enforce this new standard of behavior on cousin Jamie, that Pettigrew boy, and Remus Lupin.  That bit wouldn’t be terribly difficult for Sirius, she said, as Remus Lupin was all but born to wave the white flag at any pitfalls in his path, the Pettigrew boy was all too happy to mimic the manners and morals of the more magnetic personalities in his vicinity, and Lily Evans was having a little chat with Jamie about some possible futures right about now.

She trusted that she and Sirius understood one another.  It was so nice to have had this little chat, to finally have clear communication with her cousin.

Now she really needed to go find Severus and let him know that all was well, there was nothing to fear, that Sirius and his little cronies would behave from now on.  They would behave, wouldn’t they?

With a chaste kiss on his cheek and a half-maternal pat on his head, she departed and Sirius, shaken by the genteel menace, stumbled towards the Gryffindor tower.  He wanted to talk to James, he needed to talk to James.  He hoped James would talk to him.

He met Lily Evans on the stairs, she was cold with rage and her eyes were hard.

“Oh,” she said, “Narcissa found you.  Good.”

He froze as she swept past, red hair tied up with one of Narcissa’s embroidered ribbons.  Green velvet.  Very nice floral motif. Some sort of daffodil.

“Black!” She called up, as if in afterthought, “I expect Narcissa was rather too nice to you since you’re both family.  If anything happens to Sev, if you hurt him ever again, just know that I won’t be nice at all.”

It should’ve been laughable.  Lily Evans was just some middle-class muggleborn girl from some nowhere town.  Who cared if she was or wasn’t “nice”?

She didn’t have Walburga’s temper or Bella’s humor, she didn’t have Narcissa’s connections, she didn’t have a Gringotts vault, she didn’t have generations of magical knowledge to consult or a childhood home full of really nasty curses.  Yet she looked prepared to lay a flock of geas upon him.

“Fine,” he said.  “I’ll lay off Sni—” her eyes were narrowed and his tongue bent towards an unfamiliar articulation, “—aaape.  Snape.”

He wondered, for a moment after she was gone, whether, or perhaps why, Cissy had given Evans that ribbon for her hair.

Remus’ bed curtains were shut and so were the curtains around James’ bed.  Peter was nowhere to be found and Sirius didn’t have the map (he suspected Remus had monopolized the map over the last week and was using it to avoid him).

James didn’t come to dinner and Remus moved to the other end of the long Gryffindor table with Peter trailing behind him as soon as Sirius sat down.  It was awful, and all the more awful when he noticed Snape watching him from across the Great Hall, flanked by Narcissa and Lily Evans, whispering to one another like sisters.

He hardly slept, he wanted to talk to James, or maybe Remus, or even Peter, but they had conspired to ignore him.  He was still awake when James slipped out of the room before the clocks had managed to find their way to six AM.

Quidditch practice, perhaps? 

Perhaps not, Otto Bagman wasn’t a fan of sunrises.

Sirius snuck out after James, if he could just corner James, just talk to James, just warn James, then maybe, maybe things could be all right.  If he could talk to James, then they could come up with a plan together, and maybe they could fix everything.

James wasn’t in the common room loo, where Sirius had expected to corner him while his pants were down and he wouldn’t run.

Instead, perhaps anticipating pursuit, James had gone out to the  sixth-floor bathroom.  It was early enough there wouldn’t be a swarm of first years competing for the one good shower.

James’ eyes were puffy and red-rimmed and his expression went stormy when he spotted Sirius in the mirror sidling up to the next sink.  He even went as far as to turn his back to Sirius and began to brush his teeth while perpendicular to the counter.

It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t awful, if Sirius didn’t suspect that James had been crying all night, if it wasn’t his fault for not thinking about the future beyond making Severus Snape go away.

There was a silent breach between them now that Sirius could not begin to broach.

 Perhaps because he was overwhelmed with angst as he washed his face for the third time in eight silent minutes, waiting for James to finish brushing his teeth, Sirius was caught unawares.  He couldn’t have expected Severus Snape to appear in the bathroom— the sixth-floor bathroom was well within Gryffindor territory and far from the depths of the dungeons where the Slytherins dwelt—, and wedge himself into the narrow gulf between Sirius and James’ silent back.  It would be utterly uncharacteristic of Severus Snape to place himself, isolated and vulnerable, in their power, it was the last thing Sirius could’ve expected.

But Snape was there, practically touching Sirius, practically touching James, intent on his own reflection as he drew dark lines around his eyes like he wanted to be some kind of wretched raccoon.

James nearly choked on his toothbrush, which was enough to convince Sirius that he wasn’t hallucinating Snape’s presence and bizarre behavior.

“Hmm?” Said the horrid little gremlin, “Did you say something, Black?  Potter?” And the question mark was shaped like a scorpion poised to strike.

“No-!” James said, all but frothing at the mouth, “No,” he said again, to Sirius this time. “Don’t.” It was the first thing he’d said directly to Sirius in the last several days. 

“No, nothing, uh, no,” Sirius agreed, desperate for James to keep talking to him.

“Ho ho,” Snape murmured, now focused on applying appallingly black lipstick to his thin smirk. “Indeed, indeed.  My, how the tables have turned!”

Then it hit Sirius like the wrath of the Whomping Willow: this was a test.

Narcissa, and Lily Evans perhaps, had established the boundaries of the new regime.  Now, Inspector Snape had arrived like a malicious ballerina with toes en pointe upon the very line that Sirius mustn’t cross.

Over Snape’s head, James was urgently trying to beg Sirius to hold his tongue without uttering a word himself and Sirius was earnestly trying to convey via pantomime that he understood and would be as mute as a swan.  

The wink, far more subtle than the semaphore, was a sadly limited method of communication, and neither James nor Sirius had ever learned sign language. 

Severus, with feigned disinterest in the pair desperately attempting, and failing, to spontaneously develop telepathy, produced a small onion from one pocket and a rather large kitchen knife from the other.  Then, with exaggerated care and precision, he cut the onion crosswise and appeared to savor the lachrymatory aroma.

Sirius and James froze, in a tableau of horror, as inky tears rolled down Snape’s smiling cheek.

“What the—?”  Sirius gasped, his own eyes watering as Snape, blinking rapidly, proceeded to store the onion halves in a jar and rinse his kitchen knife.

“It’s called fashion, Black,” Snape declared with manic cheer.

“Oh, uh, very, uh, very pretty…?” James offered weakly.

Sirius nodded along, despite knowing full well that the list of the season’s top looks did not include ‘sad nightmare clown’.  It was one thing to wear a fetching taxidermy koala on your head, but no one sensible wanted to go around looking like a miserable panda.

The unhinged lunatic, evidently satisfied with himself, smirked at the feeble compliments.  Sirius had never seen Snape look so happy as he did right then, waltzing out of the bathroom to get a start on Saturday.

“He’s gone mad with power, hasn’t he?” Sirius whispered.

“We’re doomed,” said James, and Sirius felt his heart swell with joy.

They were a ‘we’ once more.  They were friends again.

For James (and for Remus too, of course, of course), Sirius would endure ten thousand temptations from Severus Snape.

[taetaespeaches]

“Why would you have the condoms clear across the room from the bed?”

yoongi x reader (or oc) genre: smut; fluff word count: 2.7K

a/n: hi, lovelies!! So Yoon and Kid are still very much smitten and are very much uh.. in need of each other. So enjoy this soft first time drabble. This takes place a few days after their date in “If I came and picked you up right now, would you like to go somewhere with me?” Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy! :)) 

YOU loved your apartment. It was cozy, tidy, homey, and now, it had the man of your affections placed comfortably on your sofa. Having him around was something you could get used to.

“No, you cannot see baby photos of me,” you refused through a smile sitting on the opposite side of the couch, both of you facing each other.

“Aw, come on, I bet you were the cutest,” he grinned back. He had sent you a photo of him as a little boy earlier that day and had been insisting since that “it’s only fair I get to see you as a baby too.”

“You set the bar too high,” you told him. “I can’t compete with the adorableness that is four-year-old Min Yoongi.”

“Well that’s crazy and it can’t be determined by you, we need two judges.” You playfully glared, shaking your head before taking a sip of your gin and tonic, which was a whole other topic for bickering earlier in the night.

“I mean, I have gin and tonic water,” you had told him when he first arrived.

“Gin and tonic? That’s your go-to drink?” Yoongi questioned with a smirk.

“What’s wrong with that? Add a little lime and voila, delicious,” you told him, grabbing the tonic water and lime from the fridge.

“No, nothing’s wrong with that,” he started, pouting his lips as you set the tonic water and lime onto the counter, popping a hip out as you waited for him to continue. “Just a little surprised you have the audacity to call me a grandpa when your favorite drink is a gin and tonic,” he teased, his lips curving up into his adorable gummy grin, you gasping in offense.

“Why is a gin and tonic a grandpa drink?” You asked in offense, though you were fighting off a smile.

“Well for starters, my grandpa drinks them,” he told you with a small chuckle, you rolling your eyes as you let out a giggle of your own.

“I guess we’re both little old men trapped inside the bodies of a couple youngins then,” you joked, Yoongi letting out a full laugh at the comment.

“Soulmates,” he told you, your heart racing at the comment, even if it was spoken in jest.

“You’re not seeing my baby photos,” you insisted. “That’s like skipping three whole relationship steps.” As soon as the words left your lips you wanted to take them back. Yoongi’s eyes widened, and you realized you and he had never ever called your union a relationship.

Yoongi took a drink of his gin, minus the tonic, as you took another swallow of your drink, waiting for the slightly awkward moment to pass.

“What relationship steps?” He suddenly asked, a smirk on his lips once again.

You licked your lips, averting your eyes across the room. “Just steps,” you said lamely, Yoongi letting out a breathy laugh.

“Well, if you don’t want to show me, that’s fine, I guess. I just thought it would be kind of cool to see what kids looked like back in the 1950s when you were growing up, Gramps,” he joked, you nudging him with your foot across the couch, his shoulders shaking in laughter.

Standing up from the sofa, you set your drink down on the coffee table before taking a few steps away from the furniture the man was still seated on it, his eyes following you. Turning around, you met his curious gaze. “Come on,” you nodded your head toward your bedroom. “My baby photos are in there.”

He was up in an instant, setting his own drink down as he followed you through the apartment to get to your room. This was the first time he had been inside your bedroom, though you had a feeling it would be far from the last. Maybe eventually he’ll even have his own drawer.

You walked across the room toward a shelf of books as Yoongi looked around the room, taking in his surroundings that all felt so you.

Grabbing a photo album off the shelf, you held it up to him. “I put this together when I was around twelve,” you grinned. “I even wrote captions.”

Yoongi smiled widely, flashing you that gummy adorableness again as he quickly made his way to you. He stood a bit behind you, his chest pressed to your arm as he looked over his shoulder at the book, you slowly opening it to the words, “My Family Album” with doodles of flowers, hearts, stars, and suns all around it.

Yoongi’s smile stayed plastered to his face as you turned the page, the first set of photos revealed. The first two photos were of you as a little girl, probably around the age of four. In one, you were “Helping paint the house!” as the caption stated, and in the other, you were posing proudly in some blue pants that nicely matched the floral top you sported, with a matching headband of course.

“Looking good!” Yoongi read the caption aloud before bursting into laughter at the very early 2000s photo.

“Shut up,” you whined through your own laughter. “I bet I was so proud of this look.”

“Rightfully so,” he chuckled. “You’re adorable.”

“You’re as in, you are?” You asked. “Present tense.”

“Of course, present tense, Kid,” he said easily, stealing your air for a moment as he reached over and flipped the page to see the next photos. However, as he smiled at the memories pasted in the book, your eyes were on his, admiring his features yet again.

“You’re distracting me,” he told you with a smirk, feeling your gaze on him, his eyes slowly moving from the book to you. “So obsessed.”

“And what about it?” You quipped, Yoongi’s smirk slowly dissolving as he licked his bottom lip, a scoff slipping out. You both inspected each other’s faces, your eyes traveling from one feature to the next until yours lingered on his lips, his on your gaze.

He leaned toward you, placing a sweet kiss to your lips, and when he tried to pull away, you brought a hand to the side of his face, encouraging him to stay there as you deepened it. Yoongi easily wrapped an arm around the base of your back, his fingers curling around your hip as you dropped the photo album onto the desk in front of you and turned in his hold so you were facing him. You brought your hands to his neck as he moved his free hand to your side, gripping your flesh overtop the t-shirt you wore.

It didn’t take long for things to progress, Yoongi’s fingers greedily feeling the warm skin of your abdomen and waist underneath the clothing, one of your hands digging into the hair at the nape of his neck, the other hand flat against his collarbones.

Yoongi walked backward to the bed, you following along eagerly, and when his legs hit the mattress, he sat down, looking up at you with swollen lips. His hands found the waist of your lounge shorts, digging his fingers underneath the band as his eyes flicked up to meet yours, silently asking for the go ahead. You nodded, and he wasted no time in pulling the shorts off your hips and down your legs, his eyes taking in the sight of your upper thighs exposed to him, your shirt just long enough to cover the bottom of your panties.

He gripped the back of your thighs, pulling you closer to him as he looked up at you again to see you staring at him intently. He smirked as he gently pushed your shirt up your abdomen, eyes never leaving yours as he leaned toward you, his eyelids flickering shut as he kissed the top of your underwear, tingles jolting through your body at the simple yet intimate touch.

He pulled away just slightly to look back up at you, you scoffing at the smirk he wore. Shoving against his shoulders, he caught himself, leaning back on his arms as you moved to sit on top of his lap, straddling him, attaching your lips to his instantly. One of his arms stayed back to support you both as the other wrapped around your backside, holding you to him.

Your hand found the side of his shirt, tugging on it as you mumbled, “off,” against his mouth. He let out a light breathy chuckle as he sat up, reaching for the shirt at the top of his back, pulling it over his head. Crumbling it up, he tossed it across the room just before you wrapped your arms around the back of his neck and kissed him with need.

He kissed you back as his hands reached for the bottom of your top, bunching it up until it was over your chest, Yoongi separating from your lips to look at your bra covered breasts. “Fuck, Kid.”

You grinned at him as he pulled the shirt over your head, you helping pull it off of your arms, discarding it on the floor.

“Can I get this off of you?” He asked, his finger running along the strap of your bra over your shoulder. You nodded eagerly, Yoongi grinning as he reached behind you, easily unclasping the bra.

“Ooh, skilled,” you joked, Yoongi shyly smiling as he shook his head.

“No, I think I’m just very fucking excited and very fucking ready,” he informed you, your heart racing at the comment. You adored how upfront and honest he was, never holding back thoughts. To say it was a huge turn on was an understatement, and that became very obvious when you quickly slid the straps off your arms pulling the bra from you and tossing it carelessly, leaving your upper body completely bare to him.

His eyes became even more hooded as he looked at your chest, his hands finding them as he placed a kiss to your sternum. “I’m starting to think I haven’t told you near enough just how stunning I think you are,” he told you, his gentle eyes meeting yours as you beamed down at him.

“You’ve told me plenty,” you assured, Yoongi shaking his head as his hands grabbed the back of your thighs once more.

“I really haven’t,” he insisted before flipping you over, you letting out a giggle as your back met the mattress, Yoongi crawling over top you. “You sure you want to do this tonight?”

“Yeah, of course,” you nodded, reaching for the back of his neck, bringing him to you so you could kiss him. He pecked your lips a couple times before pulling away, his eyes meeting yours once again, his eyebrows raising.

“We can wait if you want, Kid,” he assured you sweetly, you smiling in response to his consideration.

“I don’t want to wait,” you told him, Yoongi grinning at you before he pressed his lips to the tip of your nose. Your hands found the button on his jeans, popping it open before sliding the zipper down without hesitation. You began pulling the clothing down his legs, Yoongi sitting up onto his knees to help you get them down his thighs, you removing your hands altogether as he sat to get them the rest of the way off.

He slid his briefs off as well, all while you sat up on your elbows, eyes scanning over his back and lean frame, appreciating his fit body. “Condom?” He asked, looking back to see your small smile, his lips curving up in response.

“Over there,” you pointed across the room. “In that little box.” The box was sitting on top your dresser and Yoongi groaned.

“Why would you have the condoms clear across the room from the bed? It would be so much easier if they were right there in that drawer,” he lectured with a pout as he nodded at the dresser drawer, you laughing loudly at his complaints. “Now I have to walk across the whole entire room butt ass naked in front of you just to get a condom so I can finally make love to you,” he continued, you only laughing even more.

“Maybe it was strategic. Maybe I wanted to see you walk across my room butt ass naked,” you teased. Yoongi scoffed again as he shook his head, grabbing the box off the dresser, digging inside of it, his ass on full display for you. “It’s a nice view, if that’s any consolation.”

“Yeah you better appreciate this,” he grumbled, pulling out the box of condoms, and turning around to give you a front view. You expected to see his grumpy face, but he was wearing an amused smile.

“Only a grandpa would complain about having to walk across a tiny room to get laid,” you noted, Yoongi smiling even wider as he crawled back onto the bed.

“I’m naked, Kid,” he pointed out, kissing your swiftly, momentarily distracting you from teasing him. “Being nude in front of you is a bit intimidating,” he whispered against your mouth before pecking your lips once more.

“You’re insane,” you countered, “and you seemed quite confident strutting around in all your nudity.”

“It’s an act,” he grinned cutely, kissing you again. “Now take these off,” he dug a finger underneath the waistband of your underwear, snapping it against your skin. “So I can make love to you. I’m not here to get laid, baby.”

You couldn’t hold back your smile as you kissed him once more, holding his face close to yours as you pulled away. “I’m quite fond of you,” you whispered to him, your eyes scanning his features up close, giving extra appreciation to the small freckle to the left of his nose.

“I’m fond of you too,” he assured you, kissing your temple as he sat up on his knees to put one of the condoms on, you moving to slip your underwear off.

He was back on top of you in a moment, kissing you with hunger, his hand running along your side, fingers teasingly soothing along the underside of your breasts.

“You ready?” He asked, you nodding enthusiastically.

“Make love to me, Gramps,” you teased, though the room was thick with tension as you both tried to hold back your desire. He giggled, his breath hitting your face as he positioned himself at your center and slowly slid in, giving you time to feel comfortable.

Yoongi kissed you slowly as he stayed still, and when you were ready, your hand gripped onto his ass and you whispered a simple, “Move,” against his lips.

The sex was slow and romantic, and sweet and cute. You both took your time, basking in each other’s attention and touch. Yoongi felt every inch of your skin as he moved his hips, enjoying the slow drag in and out of you.

You grabbed onto his hips, his sides, his ass, his arms and shoulders, anywhere you could reach, holding him close to you as small moans and whines left your lips, music to Yoongi’s ears.

And when Yoongi started letting out low quiet moans, hardly audible if he wouldn’t have been exhaling them into your neck, you were brought to you high much sooner than you were expecting. It didn’t last long for either of you, but it was perfect.

Yoongi grabbed your hand, intertwining his fingers with your own as you finished, and he didn’t let go. Not when he was brought to his own high. Not afterward as he stayed above you, both of you catching your breath. And not when he rolled to the side of you, you curling up against his nude form, relishing in the warmth of his skin against your own.

“Well that was incredible,” you breathed out against his chest, feeling the rumble from his chuckles reverberating against his chest.

“Fuck, Kid,” he groaned, soothing his thumb against the side of your hand as he pulled you closer to him with his other arm.

“Stay the night?” You asked, nudging your chin against his pectoral, Yoongi tucking his chin into his neck to place a kiss to the top of your head.

“If you want me to,” he mumbled sleepily.

“Do you want to?” You asked, knowing the answer but still feeling nervous over his reply.

“Of course, I do,” he assured you.

“Good,” you smiled, placing a kiss to his chest. “Stay the night.”

[goodlucktkachuk]

Frantic -- Matthew Tkachuk (Pt.2)

a/n: And by popular demand we have part two. Hope you guys enjoy!

Part One

------------------------------------------

Instantly a smile covered your face as you pressed confirm. Your instagram was nothing of scandal, mainly  paintings or doodles, a few pictures of you and Emily, and some vacation photos from last summer in Muskoka that you knew Matthew will enjoy. When Mitch reentered the room he shot you a puzzled look.

“What’s got you so chipper mini?” He teased, using the nickname your mom affectionately gave you when you were four and in a phase where you followed Mitch everywhere.

Chuckling, you shrugged your shoulders, “Emily sent me a really funny video of Nick in a facemask.” He laughed at the thought and the topic was dropped.

Around 1am, Mitch was blacked out on the couch next to you so you took the blanket you had wrapped around you and you tried to place it as softly as possible on your sleeping brother. After turning off the TV, you headed into their bathroom to borrow Steph’s makeup wipes. As you stared at yourself in the mirror for the first time that day and you could really see how tired you were. The all nighters of  homework and the rush and fall of going to games had started to catch up with you. You quickly slipped into Mitches closet and grabbed one of his old London hoodies and a pair of boxers. Once you found yourself in your pajamas and the warm embrace of the guest bed you flicked your eyes on your phone once again.

*Matthew_Tkachuk has sent you a message*

Intrigued by what the boy has to say you slid over the notification and unlocked your phone.

Matthew: first of all, what the fuck? Had I know it was you I wouldn’t have said what I said

Y/N: what?

Matthew: You didn’t think to mention that you're a mini marnie princess?

Y/N: why does it matter matty? Not like I live with him anymore. I’m an adult now Matty

Matthew: You’re still Mitches kid sister Y/N! I can’t just brush that off

Your chest ran tight after hearing him call you a kid. You knew you were younger but didn’t see the big deal about it.

Y/N: Oh give me a break, I’m 19, I’m all grown up now Tkachuk

Matthew: prove it, move this to snap and put your money where your mouth is ;)

Your heart fluttered in your chest but before you could enjoy it you found yourself mentally scorning yourself. This was your brother's old teammate and a family friend. Hell, you and Tayrn were attached at the hip everytime you two were together. There was too much history. Even though everything in your mind screamed no you found yourself accepting his proposal anyway before drifting off to sleep.

The next morning you woke up to find there was a sticky note placed firmly on your forehead. Pulling it off slowly, you flipped it over and it read ‘Went out for lunch with some of the team. Text me when you wake up’ The fact he couldn’t have just texted you that made you roll your eyes. You slowly lifted yourself out of the bed and started your staggered walk to the guest bathroom.

The sight in the mirror this morning was actually pretty cute. Your braids were slightly a mess from the night before but it went nicely with how Mitches sweater fit you and how his boxers hung off your hips. You snapped a picture of you throwing up a peace sign and posted it on your story with some witty caption about stealing Mitch’s clothes and looking better in them before hopping in the shower.

After departing from the warmth of the shower you changed back into your jeans from the night before and kept the sweater on. You ordered yourself some food and pulled out your laptop to get some school work done. Before you dove into art history and marketing techniques you opened a snapchat from Matt.

It wasn’t anything groundbreaking. He was sitting in a restaurant somewhere in a nice polo shirt. You could see half his face and his curls were pushed up with a red bandana. You stared at it for so long that you almost forgot to read what it said. ‘Snazzy hoodie you got there mini marnie, too bad it has the wrong name on the back’

You followed suit with your response, only sending half your face with a smirk plastered to your lips. ‘See Marner suits me so much better than Tkachuk so I think I’ll stick with this one!’

Matthew smiles at his phone. He was at a team lunch with the Flames and a few Leafs to catch up before they had to head back to Calgary. It was nice to see all the boys again, especially Mitch even though he had a different Marner on his mind. The lunch was overall pleasant even with all the dirty looks he had got from Auston any time anyone mentioned Y/N. As hard as it was for him not to spew endless chirps, he knew if he ever wanted a shot with you he knew he had to bite his tongue.

Deciding taking photos wasn’t the smartest way to hide what he was doing he texted you back instead. “Ouch Y/N that one hurt a bit. Hopefully in a few years you’ll change your mind ;)”

Y/N: In your dreams, Tkachuk. The team already has me destined to be with Aus so you gotta get in line.

Seeing those words made a fire erupt in his body. He knew you were probably just joking around but the idea of Auston getting to hold you made his blood run cold. Maybe that friendly warning wasn’t in the best interest of Y/N but Auston being selfish.

Matty: Auston has nothing on me sweetheart.

His words stopped you in your tracks. You never thought the juvenile feelings you had for Matthew would ever be reciprocated but here he was playing the game right back.

Y/N: I don’t know Matty, I’ve seen what Austons packing

As soon as Matthew read your text he slammed his phone down with a ‘Fuck’ that was a bit too loud making all the guys look at him.

“What’s your deal?”  Johnny asks, confused at his sudden outburst.

“Nothing.” Matthew says before he picks his phone backup and answers his text.

Matthew: I’m sorry what?

Before you answered, your mind drifted back to the previous summer. Mitch had invited the team and their girlfriends up to your cottage for one of the long weekends. It was a really fun weekend filled with drinking, boating, bonfires and even more drinking. On the last night there, Auston had a bit too much and proceeded to take off his swim trunks and run full force into the lake. Thinking it was hilarious, a few of the other boys followed suit. Unfortunately, because of where you were sitting when this happened, you saw a bit more of your brother's teammate than you would like to.

Snapping back to realted you messaged him back.

Y/N: you read what I sent

Matthew: tell me how good he was and then let me show you something better princess.

A mad blush crossed your face at the thought of Matthew showing you what he could do. You pushed those thoughts out of your head and began work on the lecture notes you were avoiding. Trying your best to push the thought of him having his way with you out of your head.

A few hours passed and the boys all crashed into Mitches apartment. Mo, Jake, and Zach set up shop on the bar stools across from you as Auston draped himself over your shoulders. Mitch leaned over the edge of the counter, all of them talking over each other. You missed having a house full of players all having fun. Matthew texted you again and you quickly turned your phone over before anyone could see it but you weren’t fast enough. Hearing your phone go off and seeing Auston look over your shoulder, Jake shot him a look to which Auston just shook his head and they both frowned knowing it was Tkachuk. Still typing away on your computer, Aus reached down putting his hands on yours and the pressure alone messed you up. As you went to scold him Jake interrupted you.

“So Y/N did you hear the Sandman and his girlfriend broke up?”

“I didn’t actually, I thought they were gonna get engaged?” Not looking up from your screen you tried speaking with as little interest as possible.

He shrugged his shoulders then continued “Guess it didn’t work out” He took a slight pause while Auston nodded at him  “Maybe you two should go out. Mitch mentioned at lunch you aren't seeing anyone.”

“I’m not sure dating another leaf is a good idea.” You responded still trying to feign interest.

“I think that would be a great idea.” Aus chimed in from behind you.

“I don’t remember asking what you thought, Auston.” You bite back.

You could cut the tension between you and Auston with a knife. After about a minute of no one saying anything, Mitch clapped loudly to catch the group's attention before he spoke.  

“Alright boys I think it's time for some Modern Warfare” The boys all nodded and headed towards the living room.

Auston leaned in close, whispering in your ear before going to meet the others, “It’s cause he’s young right? I know guys my age are more your speed these days.”

You flinched slightly, “I don’t know what you're talking about” You tried to say as smoothly as possible.

“If you say so, pest.” The last word basically being spat at you with a hostility you had never felt from him before. He finally let go of you and headed for the living room.

With that comment you had had enough and excused yourself to head back to your apartment. On your way down to the lobby knowing you were safe from the watchful eye of Auston and Jake you decided to answer Matthew.

Matthew: Y/N? Did I say something that's going to get me in trouble?

Y/N: Sorry, got distracted by some homework. Since when is Matty Tkachuk afraid of causing a little trouble ?

Part Three

[queerchoicesblog]

A  Life So Changed (SC Titanic, Zetta x Adele Series, Ch. 15)

So, folks, here’s the new chapter of the series. Thank you so much for your support, hope you enjoy it!

Little disclaimer-favor: especially since the tags don’t seem to be working anymore, if you do enjoy it, please consider supporting the author & sharing this. A little gesture that means a lot!

Also, this chapter contains reference to THIS FIC I wrote about James and Zetta inevitable confrontation not showed in the original book.

Word Count: 2000+

Zetta x Adele Tag: @storyscaped​ ​ @storyscapefanficarchive​ @marmolady​ @animus-and-anima​ @hayley-carter19 @escako​  @everlastingchoices​ @indescribablechoices​ @ahrielstuff​ @bornonawdnsday​ @nazario-sayeed​  @h-doodles​ @adele-serda​ @marlcasters​ @brightpinkpeppercorn​  @michelleconnoly​ @charliejane-blog​ @ghost-of-yuri​  @choicesgremlin​  @lanzhansguqin​ @orange-elephants​ @wonder-falcon​

Zetta x Adele Series Tag: @eternal-langdon​ @nydeiri​

➡️ Ch. 1, Ch. 2/1, Ch. 2/2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch. 6, Ch. 7, Ch. 8/1, Ch. 8/2, Ch. 9, Ch. 10/1, Ch. 10/2, Ch. 11/1, Ch. 11/2, Ch. 12, Ch. 13, Ch. 14

____________________________________

What follows that night is a feverish dream. The following months flow in a haze as days blend into each other. New York, my apartment...all is familiar yet ever distant. As if I'm back home and somewhere far away simultaneously. I'm here and I'm not here.

Moving on is tougher than I could have possibly imagined. Sabine and Richard take care of me with tender compassion, doubling their usual efforts: it's heartwarming, truly. It leaves me wondering what I have ever done right in my life to deserve such adoration and, most importantly, affection because it's genuine concerned affection what I see in their eyes when our eyes meet. Sabine immediately added a newfound touch of sweetness to her proverbial efficiency and joins me at the breakfast table more often these days: sometimes it happens that I am not in the mood for talking and we sit together in complete silence. At first it made me nervous but my little Napoleon doesn't seem to mind: she would offer me a smile and gesture to the coffee pot or the plate filled with slices of my favourite bread and my nervousness melts away replaced by a sense of comfort. Richard visits me more than usual and invites me to join him for a walk at Central Park: "you always say how much you love that place, let's go together...it will do you good" he suggests, smiling sheepishly and offering me his arm. Just like Sabine, he doesn't mind that at times I fall quiet and melancholy takes over me. He would gently stroke my hand resting on his arm and keep walking at my side. One day, as I took a seat on a bench, he picked a flower, a gorgeous little daisy, and pinned it to my hat. He smiled at me and gave my hand an encouraging squeeze before taking a seat beside me. He's surprisingly sweet, sweeter than I deserve, and more mature than I thought when we first met. Richard never once mentioned nor complained about James. He would have every reason and right to question me about him after the secret letters my nephew sent him, asking for money. He never did: the day after our arrival, he even asked his friend John to make sure Mr. Eisler and his valet were safe in their New York apartment. Richard is probably waiting for the moment I'm ready to have that conversation. How could I never be ready for it? Yet, I must, I must confront my nephew: what he did is too hurtful and serious not to come with harsh consequences. Before I send a note to James, I share with Richard my decision: as much as I have little desire to see him now, he's still family and I have at least a moral obligation to him, the old oath I made to Theresa, so I will grant him a generous monthly income. I will set a few conditions, which include no more letters or inappropriate requested to Richard and no more interferences with the marriage under the treat of a legal action from my lawyers. I explain my fiancée the hideous scheme my nephew planned, omitting some details, and I assure him that I was in the dark about the letters: I knew nothing about them and I'm deeply ashamed and sorry he went this far. Richard listens to me carefully and gives me a painful smile as he take my hand into his. "I knew, Zetta. I always knew and I didn't suspect you when I received them, not even for a split second" he sighs. "I trust you, my darling". He just worried about me and he is still concerned because as much as it pains him to say that, my nephew seems dangerous and he has no sympathy for him. I assure him we won't see him anytime soon: after what he did, the things between James and I will never be the same. I don't even know if I will ever be able to forgive him. I repeat the same words to Jaime a few days later and having such a conversation with him is one of the toughest thing in my whole life. I'm angry and disappointed as I speak, wounded in the deep yet tortured by the familiar affection refusing to die inside me. When he close the door behind him, full knowing I don't know when we will see each other again, my heart breaks and I fall sobbing on my knees. My little prince is gone. There is a big fuss in town about the Titanic hearings: American and British authorities are investigating the disaster and the White Star Line company is covered with shame. The hearings are held in New York at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel so I try to keep updated. I spoke to a committing magistrate too: he asked questions about that night to see if I could provide valuable information for the official investigation. It turned out I had none or at least very little to offer him, aside from reporting the questionable decision of lowering half-empty lifeboats and the stubborn refusal to go against it of many officers, like the one I yelled at on the deck. I sign my deposition, which adds up to many others he gathered since the inquiry started. I don't need to testimony at court, he said, he has tons of other witnesses reporting the same issue and he will just add my deposition to the documents to be sent to the judge. "You can go, thank you for your time, Miss Serda" he smiles, vigorously shaking my hand. He praises my heroism but I don't know what he's talking about. Apparently, other witnesses claimed that they owe me their life or saw me protesting on the deck. I'm no hero, I think as my mind runs to the young steward who stayed behind, down in the belly of the sinking ship to keep the light on and give us all a chance to survive. I think his name was Charlie. A few weeks after the beginning of the hearings, about the end of May, I receive a letter from Lucille. She hadn't hear from me since our arrival and she's worried about me, she writes. She had sent me letters but I answered none. She profusely apologises for not waiting for me as she promised but "they had no choice, the chaos was mounting": she hopes this won't be the end of our friendship. Hoping so, she renews her invitation: Richard and I will be her most welcome guests if we fancy joining her and Cosmo for dinner at their apartment whenever it suits us. I don't know how to feel about this. Under different circumstances, it would have filled with joy, maybe relief after all we've been through, now...now things are more complicated than that. Unlike me, Lucille and Cosmo were asked to appear at court during the hearings to verify certain details. They had been all over the press ever since the news spread and I wonder if I'm being a bad friend "abandoning" her in a time like this. The press predictably feasted and is still feasting over the disaster: tragic stories, eye catching headlines, shocking revelations, heartwarming and heartbreaking pictures from the pier: ça vien sans dire, the touching embrace between me and Richard - "reunited lovers" as the caption said - made it to the front page. As weeks went by, my brief appearance was replaced by the new scandal involving nothing less than the Duff-Gordons, not only my personal friends but also a couple of incredibly famous socialites. When I first read it, my heart sank while Richard declared himself disgusted by what journalists write these days. Rumor has it that Lucille, sitting with her husband and secretary on Lifeboat No. 1, commented to her Laura something like, "There is your beautiful nightdress gone" in the aftermath of the sinking. When the Titanic disappeared to the bottom of the sea and poor souls were freezing to death in the ocean, begging us on the lifeboats to come back and save them. I still hear their screams in my nightmares. There's more though: reportedly Cosmo had bribed the lifeboat's crew not to return to save swimmers out of fear the vessel would capsize; he handed checks to them on board of the Carpathia. But Lifeboat No. 1 was designed to carry 40 passengers. Only 12 people were on board when it was lowered unlike the one I was on, filled beyond its capacity. How could an half-empty boat capsize? They could have saved so many lives that night! The thought made my stomach turn to the point that I feel almost nothing when I see the pictures of them during the inquiry: Cosmo looking grim and tensed in his seat and Lucile dressed in black, a mourning dress with a veiled hats, entering the court. I know better than to trust rumours blindly...but I know them. I've known her for ages and, as much as it hurts to say, I can't completely rule out the possibility that for once the press was right. Maybe I'm wrong but I can't vouch for them this time. And doubt is an uncomfortable thing... The final report by the inquiry is more generous than me and clear their names, even if - I'm sure - the general public will be less forgiving. Anyway, Richard is quite fond of the couple, we will surely go visit them... I do not pretend to be fine after what happened on my birthday's night -the sinking, James' betrayal, but I can conceal. I know how to conceal, if need be, in public, in front of people who cannot understand. I'm an actress, a great actress after all. But I feel numb, a ghost of my usual self. During the day I try to keep myself busy. My renaissance requires hard work and commitment as well as a good plan. Sabine and Richard are excellent helpers: I need new projects to work on to make my comeback and an efficient daily schedule to prevent me from drowning in my sorrow. I may conceal it but I dread the time when I have nowhere to run and my mind races back to that memory that fills me with excruciating sadness and guilt. My sweet revolutionary. At night I drink sherry and write letters to Adele. They're passionate, melancholic, tearful. I throw them away in the morning: my words flow on the paper but they ring hollow in the daylight. I don't know what I am supposed to write her. What should I tell her? What could possibly excuse my silence as times go by? I wish I could speak freely what's inside my mind but it's unbelievably difficult. More than she deserves, probably. For some time I tried to convince myself that our little romance on the Titanic was mere attraction, a secret affair favoured by the circumstances: two women growing close, Adele's protectiveness, my heart susceptible to women's beauty and charm just like hers. We found each other and it happened. That's all. But her memory lingers, it never fades away. Never. She always finds a way back to me. At night or during the day, by accident. She's everywhere even if this isn't a place she belongs to. She's in the announcement of a referendum for women's suffrage in Michigan: I read the news and think how excited she must be about it. Maybe she knows it already but I feel a silly urgency to send her the page of the newspaper: your dream may come true after all, see, my love? She's in a gorgeous dress I see hanging on a mannequin in a boutique and I know would fit her perfectly. I have to refrain myself not to buy it and send it to her with a sweet note because I don't care if she needs it, I just want her to have it. She needs beautiful things in her life too. She's in a witty joke I hear in a fancy cafe: I laugh and turn towards Sabine to say "Oh Adele would love this humour" but words die in my throat. When I turn, my cheer has turned into a grimace. Adele isn't here. I don't even know her address here. The thought pains me. I could ask Sabine to find it, I could visit her...but I find myself wondering if it would be the better judgement. I'd give up half my fortune or even more to know about her, even just a quick update. Is she fine? Is she still hurting? Did she and her sister settle down safely? Does she have nightmares at night? She looked so defeated and forlorn on the Carpathia, it pains me to remember seeing the light in her eyes flicker. But maybe this way it will be easier for her to move on. To forget me, if that's what we must get to, no matter how much it hurts. Sometimes I drink myself to a stupor to break the spiral of such thoughts and I'm quite ashamed of myself when Sabine finds me like that in the morning. I mutter nonsense excuses I don't owe her - but I feel like do, she's not a maid, she's my friend - as I hold onto her since I can barely stand on my feet at times and I burst into tears whenever she says: "You have nothing to apologise for, Madam" I do, though. I should - no I must apologise to Adele and Hileni too for disappearing and abandoning them on that pier. I must tell Adele how things really are, how I miss her, it's unbearable... So it's no surprise then that when Richard announces me his idea to postpone the grifter story project I've been working on in favour of a new one, "an homage to the Titanic tragedy", my mind comes find her once again. The project is a wise mix of ambitious opportunism - the sinking is still the talk of the town and people will love it - and genuine concerns. He says I'll not only play the main heroine but also pick the subject, he will just help assessing the script but he wants me to be the one calling the shots on the story to tell. I believe he feels it might be somehow therapeutic for me, aside from the alluring detail of having the star Zetta Serda co-writing an announced success. I consider it for a while, but in the end I write down the Carrem sisters story. I'm fully aware that the picture will hardly be able to bring back to life what it truly happened, the grandeur and the terror. I'm experienced enough to know that the audience can take only that much of the tragedy: they wanna cry and say that they felt as if they were there but they would scream and leave the room if I showed them the truth. A giant ship collapsing in front of you, officers shooting to maintain orders, stewards stubbornly denying desperate passengers their only chance to jump on a lifeboat and to survive, the screams of those who floated in the chilly waters and the dreading silence that followed their unmerciful death. They will never take that much. On the contrary, they will likely enjoy the story of two sisters separated and reunited, prevailing over the impending tragedy threatening to kill them both. It's an heartwarming story with an happy ending and the right amount of pathos and hope. It's also the story of my love that I'm writing down on paper and hand to the posterity. When I present it to Richard, he loves it. He himself couldn't have found a better story, he says, barely containing his excitement. I explain quietly that it's a true story, I just changed the names in respect of the real protagonists of this story. I can only hope Adele won't hate me for this when she sees it. Hate me even more than she's probably doing right now, I frown. I can only hope she will understand.

[hannahmcne]

Her Royal Highness - Chapter 4

Mal's door remained unlocked, but she didn't go anywhere except down the hall. Mainly because she couldn't remember where she'd come from and a piercing headache had started in the front of her brain, right behind her eyes. So, she hung out in her room. Not long after Ben left, Sophia came around and brought paper, writing utensils, books, and a little list filled with lots of numbers.

"What's this?" Mal asked, as she rubbed her head and squinted at the writing. She recognized the names written on the sides of the numbers, but her head still didn't feel like it was working correctly.

"A list of important phone numbers for the palace," Sophia answered. She had a tea set on the dresser and was preparing a cup for Mal. "My number is on there too." She said as she added a small pill to her cup, which fizzled into the drink and disappeared.

"What do I do with them?" Mal asked. She sounded flat-out exhausted as she tried to focus on the paper.

Sophia chuckled and took the list out of her hand, replacing it with the tea, which Mal stared blearily at in confusion. "For your headache," Sophia told her. "Drink up. Where is your phone?"

It was lying on the bed, locked. Sophia handed it to Mal, who quickly entered her password and then gave it back because the light hurt her head even more. She took a sip of the hot drink Sophia had given her and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. "Oh gosh." She moaned as her head cleared. "This heals everything."

Sophia opened the text app with a chuckle. While Mal finished her tea, Sophia entered her phone number and set the message 'Mal Bertha'.

"Look, Mal. Now you can contact me." Sophia explained to Mal, showing Mal her own phone screen, which had lit up with a green notification with her name in it.

Mal looked at the screen and watched as Sophia showed her how to label the number with a contact so that she'd know it was Sophia.

"Why are there two keyboards?" Mal asked, noticing a different panel at the bottom of the screen. She pointed to it so that Sophia could see what she was talking about.

"One is a picture keyboard." Sophia simplified. "There's a bunch of faces and animals and stuff. Want to see?"

Mal shook her head. Eventually, she'd be left alone, so she could explore the picture-keyboard then. She observed in bleary exhaustion as Sophia entered in a new number and sent her name through. This time, a little grey text box appeared with three dots in it.

"They're messaging back," Sophia explained to Mal, gesturing to the box.

'Ben Florian' was the name that came back. Mal frowned. "Is that Prince Ben, Ben?" She asked.

"Yes." Sophia nodded and watched Mal to see what her reaction would be.

"Oh," Mal replied lamely. The phone buzzed in Sophia's hand. A moving picture had appeared from Ben. It featured a middle-aged man with a friendly smile, who was waving with the caption: 'Hi'.

Sophia continued adding Belle, Adam, Lumiere, and a few other people. One of these was named Doug. When Doug first received the message with Mal's name from Sophia, he immediately texted back a paragraph. There wasn't much meat to it. It was basically "If you need me, come ask" "Sorry if I take a while to answer texts."

Sophia was very kind to keep Mal's saucer topped with headache remedy, but eventually, she had to slip away to refill the pot. Mal, who felt much better, took the books Sophia had brought and began to fill her little bookcase up. She discovered a surprise: a thick, white comforter hidden underneath the pillows on her bed. She traded her shock blanket for it and took the paper and pencils Sophia had brought her. Then, she hid out in the closet, which she liked because it wasn't as bright, and it was a smaller space. She did keep the door cracked open a stitch, so Sophia wouldn't wonder where she'd gone if she came back.

Mal liked to doodle. She'd done more than her fair share of graffiti on the Isle, decorated their hideaway behind the rock-pulley system, and spent a fair majority of her time in class drawing on scraps of grey paper. It was nice to work with all the new utensils instead of the emptyish ones she got on the Isle. As she was finishing putting the finishing touches on a rendering of her new home, the castle, she heard a knock at the door. She pushed the closet door open a little with her toes and called: "Come in!"

The door opened and revealed a woman who Mal had seen many times on TV. She cautiously climbed to her feet.

The Fairy Godmother flashed a beautiful smile. "Hello, Mal." She greeted, then curtseyed. "I'm the Fairy Godmother. I've been told you aren't what we were expecting."

The Fairy Godmother wore a blue dress with a retro collar and a pink bow fastened beneath her collarbone. Underneath her skirts, Mal could see the edges of a black and white polka-dotted fabric attached to the bottom of the knee-length dress. She wore blue plastic flats and wore her hair curly with a pretty silver clip in it.

Mal swallowed and managed a small bow, of some sorts. "It sounds like you were expecting Hades himself." She said softly.

"Not Hades, but a mini-Maleficent, perhaps." The Fairy Godmother's smile faded a little as her eyes began to travel. Mal shifted her weight and began twirling a lock of hair around her finger as the older woman studied her.

"White isn't really your color, is it, dear?" Fairy Godmother asked with a smile.

Mal smirked. "Just don't put me in yellow and we'll be fine."

Fairy Godmother laughed. "How old are you, dear?" She asked.

"Sixteen," Mal answered, leaning against the closet frame and kicking her leg up to rest against the doorframe. At her answer, the Fairy Godmother looked sad.

"My, you're much younger than I was expecting." The Fairy Godmother whispered. "You're about the same age as my daughter Jane."

"What are you here for, again?" Mal asked. This conversation was going way off track, in her opinion.

"To talk, mostly. I was curious, have you experimented with your mother's magic yet?" Fairy Godmother sat down on the bed and examined Mal even further.

The question startled Mal. Of course, she knew her mother had possessed some of the strongest magics in the land before her imprisonment. The fact she had created and executed this elaborate mess was a testament to that. But the idea that she would have similar powers hadn't occurred to her. The only thing she'd ever been able to do was make her eyes light up.

Fairy Godmother chuckled. "I suppose not, then? Can you try now? Do you know any spells?" Mal shook her head. Everything her mom had once crammed down her throat and into her head felt like years ago now. "Make something up." Fairy Godmother encouraged her. She bit her cheek as she crossed her ankles daintily and waited.

Mal raked her newly not-aching brain and quickly made a flimsy rhyme. "Snap my fingers like a thread, hurry to fix the hair on my head."

Upon her words, her fingers took a life of their own. A sharp green light appeared at the end of her fingernails. She flicked her hand left, then right, and then made a little circle around her face, all against her will. Her vision went green and foggy for a few seconds, and then she felt the strands on her head rearranging and straightening themselves into something that hopefully didn't look like she'd had a mental breakdown earlier and lost her cool at the future king of Auradon. Mal slumped back in exhaustion as soon as she had control of her hand back.

The Fairy Godmother applauded lightly. Mal stared in surprise at her fingers, and then quickly turned her attention back to the Fairy Godmother. Conversation now, panic over new revelation later.

"Well, Auradon discourages magic, I'm sure you know. You might be able to find books in the library to teach you about theory and things like that, but active practice is a punishable offense, usually with heavy fines and sometimes community service. And of course, spells work better if the lines match syllables, and if they're in multiples of three, seven, or with the same number of beats as your age." Laugh lines appeared in the older woman's face as she smiled proudly at Mal. "But, laws aside, you could very powerful one day, even without practicing magic. I hope you'll recognize that and use that power for good."

Mal had no clue what she was going to do at that point. She was still blown away that her first feeble attempt at a spell had worked.

The Fairy Godmother cleared her throat. "If I may, can I sample your magic? If there's any correlation to Maleficent's, it might help with decoding her curse. We have already sampled former cursed items, but it appears in different… context on Ben." She gestured to Mal's hands.

Mal swallowed and nodded. "Yeah. Anything to get me out of this mess." She outstretched her fingers and walked towards the Fairy Godmother.

At her words, the Fairy Godmother looked incredibly sorry. She took Mal's hand and spread her fingers out. She began to mumble, and the tips of Mal's fingers relit. A warmth spread through her palm. But the Fairy Godmother quickly let go. She shook her head. "Your magic is the same type hers is, but it's far too weak at the moment to be able to unravel her curse. It's also slightly warped."

"Warped?" Mal asked, alarmed. How could it be warped? She'd cast one spell her entire life and now she was damaged forever. Just her luck.

"It happens naturally." The Fairy Godmother assured her. "Everything in the world has a little magic, and your magic grows depending on where you live and how you use your powers. I bet the barrier over the Isle is what warped it the most." Fairy Godmother shrugged. "Anyways, we can't have you help us break it yet until you're a little stronger."

"How long will that take?" Mal asked.

"Well, you should have been growing your magic at a steady rate for several years now." Fairy Godmother explained. "For you to recover and exercise your magic enough to gain enough power would take two or three years of intense magical growth, which you won't be able to get in rhabdophobic Auradon."

Mal slumped her shoulders in disappointment. "Alright." She mumbled. Fairy Godmother patted her cheek.

"Cheer up dear. We'll figure this out. For now, are you alright? I heard you had a panic attack today. Has that happened before?" She folded her hands in her lap and tilted her head.

"Yeah, I did," Mal admitted. "And no. I've never had anything like that happen. I just, the walls felt like they were going to fall in so I went into the closet to hide."

"And couldn't stand up?" Fairy Godmother prompted, looking worried.

"Or hear or move or anything." Mal agreed. "It was like my brain was shaking and my body went stiff." The Fairy Godmother examined Mal as she moved her hands in explanation. Mal carefully sat down next to the wingless-fairy.

"Before then, had you eaten or drank anything?" The Fairy Godmother asked.

Mal shook her head. "No. Well, I had some candies on the way to the palace this morning, but nothing else since lunch yesterday. I missed dinner because my mom decided to inform me that I was leaving."

"That would play into it. You probably didn't sleep all that well either, huh?" Fairy Godmother nodded as if this all made sense to her.

"No," Mal admitted sheepishly.

"We have panic attacks like that at the school every year when finals roll around." The Fairy Godmother informed her. "People forget to take care of themselves. We get panic attacks and people passing out when they're exercising, among other things."

"Oh. So, I just need to keep on top of that?" Mal asked.

"That should do it. Of course, if it persists, see a doctor." Fairy Godmother smiled.

Mal made a face, and the Fairy Godmother laughed. A silence formed for a few seconds. The Fairy Godmother looked around the room. "Did you really not know you were coming here?" She asked quietly.

Mal withdrew into her frame and clammed up. "She sat us down in front of the TV and wouldn't say a word on why she was so excited. When they finally brought Ben out of his meeting with you and King Adam gave his statement to Auradon, she told us in celebration while she was dancing around the room. None of my friends or the other villains had any idea what to think. No one talked to me all day."

"So, it wasn't exactly a surprise when they showed up?"

"Well…" Mal trailed off. "I don't know. It all went so quickly." The Fairy Godmother crossed her legs and leaned forward to Mal. She waited until the purple-haired girl began to speak again. "I was angry at first, but then I managed to convince myself she'd been lying. I mean, Mom's had tons of elaborate plans to leave before. But when I came back they'd already packed up my things for me and the guards showed up about five minutes later to drag me away."

"On behalf of Auradon, I apologize." The Fairy Godmother whispered softly. Mal snapped into an upright and hostile position and furrowed her eyebrows at the Fairy Godmother.

"You'll apologize for this and not for the Isle of the Lost?" She accused. The Fairy Godmother looked taken aback.

"Why should we apologize for the Isle of the Lost? We had to protect ourselves from the villains." She explained with confusion evident in her tone.

"I find it funny," Mal said bitterly. "How you fought an entire war where both sides lost thousands of people and still refused to use the death row to eradicate the problem. It's your fault I'm here in the first place. If you had killed Maleficent, I wouldn't have to deal with this – this burden! Or if you had come up with a different solution to the Isle of the Lost: banished them outside the kingdom, removed their powers, again: killed them, then Mom never would have thought to create this spell in the first place. Who's to say it's her fault and not Auradon's?"

"We don't believe in killing or hurting people like that." Fairy Godmother explained to try and placate Mal. This only riled the teen up even more.

"And that's another thing!" Mal retorted angrily. "Auradon's famous honor code; despite the fact you imprisoned hundreds of your worst villains, murderers, and schemers on the Isle and refuse to provide them the basic essentials to life outside of the weekly trash delivery, you don't believe in removing a person's magic and allowing them to walk free for their lives? Haven't you heard what happened to Ursula's eye? Or my Mother's wings?"

The Fairy Godmother was silent. Then, she pointed at Mal's head. "Your horns, dear." She whispered.

Mal blinked in surprise. She cautiously reached up to feel the top of her head and fell two curved protrusions descending back into her skull. They felt like warm stone or ivory. But they were only there for a second, and then they were gone. She stared in shock at her fingertips, as if she were doubting what they'd felt.

Across the room, the door creaked, and someone knocked. Mal turned her sharp gaze to the entrance. After a few seconds delay, it opened a little more and Prince Ben appeared, looking sheepish. He cleared his throat and began to speak in a high, awkward tone:

"Erm, sorry, we're waiting for you in the library, and-"

"How long have you been standing there?" Mal interrupted his introduction. Ben wilted. Mal scoffed. "Long enough, then." She stood up and, after a moments' hesitation, took her new phone with her. Ben's face was red as she marched past him at a brisk pace. She stopped outside the door and pretended to wait for him and the Fairy Godmother, but truthfully, she didn't know where the library was.

Ben held the door for the older woman as she walked past, then took up the lead. Mal walked beside him. If she couldn't lead, she sure as heck wouldn't fall behind him. Ben curled and uncurled his hands like he wasn't sure what to do with them while they swung at his side.

Ben stopped outside of a pair of doors that were three times his height. Why anyone would need doors this tall, Mal didn't know, but she hoped some giant found them useful one day. Ben opened the door to allow the Fairy Godmother, who had remained silent during the walk down, and Mal, to walk through.

Mal sucked in a breath at the tall beams of the library. The ceiling was patterned opposite the floor, with the ceiling being the lighter inverse of the pattern on the floor. The room was a very large rectangular prism, with the wall ahead made of glass and looking out over the kingdom. The wall they'd just entered with their backs to had a beautiful mural of the castle, featuring a beautiful girl in yellow and a rose, among other things. It must have been the story of Belle and her Beast, Mal noted as she took in a ferocious, growling monster in a corner of the wall. The last two walls were made of books. Several other enormously tall bookshelves filled the magnificent room, but directly in front of her was a collection of rose-embroidered couches and chairs surrounded by a rosewood coffee table with dozens of papers and folders spread out on it. Belle and Adam were sitting in two armchairs and holding each other's hands. They looked up without a smile as the group entered the room.

"Come and take a seat." Adam invited in a weary tone. He raised a hand and beckoned the three towards him.

They did, and Ben and Mal ended up sitting next to each other on the two-seater so that everyone could examine them. Ben still hadn't said anything to Mal since telling her they were waiting for him. He twiddled his thumbs and did his very best to politely ignore her.

"We have about three months until Ben is due to become King." Adam began in a grave tone. "Mal has agreed to marry him, but only as a last resort. One of the new goals of this meeting is to ensure she is no more trapped than we are."

Everyone flinched at the King's harsh, straight-to-the-point words. Mal bit her tongue and examined the mural on the wall.

"The spell… it is too complicated to break at this moment." The Fairy Godmother admitted. "We don't know where to start." She picked up a manila file on the coffee table and opened it up. On the top was a black and white photo of what looked like a mess of spiderwebs.

"This is one micro-cubic traunct of the spell." The Fairy Godmother explained. She laughed at Ben's confused expression. "A traunct is the smallest portion of any spell. It's much like an atom in how magic is made up. Unfortunately, this one is, by far, the most complicated of any spell I've ever seen. In most cases, a simple undoing spell could sever small trauncts. However, Maleficent has done something rather unique in that these trauncts are backing each other up, and nothing we've tried thus far has severed their hold. We're going to have to unravel it or submit to it."

"Unravel it?" Belle asked.

"In order for us to unravel it, we have to find a hink, or a hole in the trauncts so we can loosen their hold and put them apart little by little. The spell won't be broken, per se, but we can pull conditions off the spell until eventually, it will be as though it has no power on you."

"Sounds like a lengthy process," Mal commented.

"It is." The Fairy Godmother admitted sheepishly. "I've never seen anything so complicated. We're looking at a year, maybe two years' worth of work."

King Adam made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like the beginning of a groan, or like he'd been kicked or something; a defeated sound.

"There's no hope it'll be gone before Ben's coronation?" Mal begged.

"Unless there's a major breakthrough within the next ten minutes." The Fairy Godmother said. Mal turned her head away from the group and schooled her features to indifference. Ben leaned forward and started running his hands through his hair. The only sound was that of Mal tapping her hands on her knees.

"I think it's time to start talking about the kingdom's infrastructure when Mal becomes Queen." The Fairy Godmother said quietly. No one missed the use of the word 'when'.

"Right," Adam muttered. "What are the details of Maleficent's curse?"

"Mal must become Queen before Ben is twenty-five, otherwise the both of them will begin to experience excruciating pain. If Mal is murdered, then Ben will go with her. If she's maimed in any way that she's rendered unable to take the Queen's throne, the results will carry over onto Ben. She needs to have the ability to pass binding laws in Auradon and has authority over troops in Auradon's standing army." The Fairy Godmother rubbed the bridge of her nose as if to stem a headache off. "As far as Auradon's requirements go, Mal still has to pass the same tests Ben did. I can deliver them here if you would like?"

"Tests?" Mal asked.

"There's three of them," Ben explained. "I failed the last one due to this curse, but since it's consciously manageable, I'm still able to rule the Kingdom. Basically, the tests were made to answer three questions: Will you be able to rule the kingdom? Will you do it right? And is anyone controlling you?"

"Oh," Mal said because there wasn't much else to be said.

"Would you like to zoom through it?" The Fairy Godmother asked gently. "It probably wouldn't be worth discussing much more if you can't become queen anyways."

Mal shrugged. "Sure. Whatever." She turned her phone over, palm over palm, as the Fairy Godmother reached for a different, light blue folder.

"If you fail the first two, you will not be able to rule." The Fairy Godmother cautioned. Mal didn't seem concerned.

The Fairy Godmother withdrew a similarly blue-tinted paper to the one Ben had written on. Ben was especially anxious to see the results. He scooted forward on his seat to peer over her shoulder. As Mal scrawled her name on the first two lines, the entire room held its breath. Then it faded to blue, and the three royals and one fairy breathed a sigh of relief. Mal rolled her eyes.

Ben curled his nails into his palms as the Fairy Godmother asked Mal the second question. This, of course, was the goodness check. Belle and Adam both leaned forward in their chairs as the Fairy Godmother asked Mal to sign on the third line. Mal's hand hesitated on its way to the paper as she raised an eyebrow at the nervous royals. Then she scrawled her name and the date, and the black color changed to the same royal blue as the first question.

Ben sat back in cold shock.

This was Maleficent's kid, right? The mistress of all evil? The one who cursed Queen Leah's entire kingdom? Ben was dumbfounded. He glanced sideways at Mal and watched her tuck a lock of purple hair behind her ear as she chewed on her cheek and stared at the paper. Something softened in his heart and he had to look back at the paper to stop the awed smile from moving onto his face.

While he sat in his stupor, the Fairy Godmother removed all spells and enchantments from Mal, and then Mal signed her name. It came back red, just as Ben's had. The Fairy Godmother produced a gem, identical to the one in her office, and instructed Mal on how to hold it. She read the spell's aura quickly and determined it was the identical other half to Ben's spell.

And that was when Ben had another revelation.

Maleficent had raised a lady fit to be queen. He wasn't even sure Audrey would have been able to pass the test, cruel as she was. And extended from that, Maleficent had raised this girl while keeping in mind she would one day be his wife.

It couldn't have been Maleficent's intention to raise such a morally strong woman. Mal must have found the path of good herself while on an Isle where evil ran rampant. Ben was beyond impressed.

"We've talked." Belle began with a quick gesture to her husband and herself. "And we've decided to announce that Mal will be queen alongside Ben."

Fairy Godmother drummed her fingers together. "I think that's the right thing to do." She said finally. "Unless we wish to marry Mal and Ben and allow them to go their own separate ways?" She gestured to the two teens.

No one in the room had considered this alternative. It made the royals stop in their tracks.

The Fairy Godmother continued: "Of course, neither would be able to get married to other people until the curse is broken, if ever. So long as Maleficent's conditions are covered, they technically have their freedom."

Mal dug her fingers into her knees. Living alone in Auradon? That was a prospect she wasn't prepared to cover. She looked toward Ben to try and decipher his feelings. His eyes were wide; he looked like a deer caught in headlights.

"We need time," Belle said quickly. "We don't need to make decisions like that so quickly. We'll let Ben and Mal be the ruler of that decision."

"But-" Adam continued. "We need to know by a month before the coronation. That's when we were planning on announcing Mal since we wanted to keep the press away from you while you adjust to Auradon and get to know Ben."

Belle nodded in agreement. Mal crossed her arms and leaned back into the upholstery. The king and queen were actually, by her book, being pretty fair. A warm feeling was rising up inside her chest. And before she could stop them, two words spilled out of her mouth.

"Thank you." Mal blurted out. "For being so fair." She pulled her arms tighter around herself and turned back toward the mural on the wall. The air in the room suddenly felt very thick with... what?

"You're welcome, dear," Belle replied as if it were no big deal.

The sun dipped lower and lower in the sky outside. At first, Mal had tried to follow the conversation, but then she'd gotten lost among all the legal terms and political abbreviations. She only looked back at the group whenever her name was mentioned and did her best to look as if none of their words were affecting her. She was aware her edginess was tuned down by the fact she was wearing white instead of black.

As the day drew to a close, Belle and Adam got up to show the Fairy Godmother out. Mal, too, stood up to examine the large mural on the side of the wall. Ben remained sitting for a few seconds, and then stood up and walked up behind her. He was watching her with a curious expression as he stood behind her and watched her cross her arms and take in the large, beautiful painting.

"You good?" Ben asked in a whisper that tickled his lips as he spoke.

Mal exhaled through her nose. "Yeah," She agreed in a high, strong voice. then, softer and more guarded: "It's whatever."

"So... no?" Ben asked, watching her eyes flicker back and forth.

Mal didn't answer. The muscles in her arm tensed, and she acted as if he were not there. Then, she raised her hand to the wall and gestured to it. "This is a lovely mural. I used to paint things like this on the Isle."

"Oh, yeah." Ben nodded. "For Mom and Dad's first anniversary, Dad wanted to have the library redone, but the plans took too long to be drawn up. So, two years later, for their third, they began work. Mom was pregnant with me that year and the paint fumes were too much for her most days, so she never saw the progress until after I was born." Ben explained. He let his eyes flicker over the frame of Mal's shoulders as she listened to him and took a small breath.

Mal chewed her cheek in thought. "That's cool. And there's so much detail..." She smiled a little, and then returned to a neutral expression. Her eyes fixed on the floor. "So, this is really happening, huh? I was still kind of hoping I'd wake up and it'd be over."

"Yeah." Ben sighed. "But hey, you're going to be a queen."

"Ugh." Mal groaned. Ben laughed at her dismay and, while she was distracted, slipped an arm around her shoulders. Mal tensed up and shrank away from his grasp, but Ben didn't seem to notice.

"You'll be a great queen, and by the way, you did really good today. I know a couple of Auradon kids who wouldn't have passed the goodness portion of that test." Ben told her.

Mal's eyebrows furrowed. Why would that matter? Was that supposed to make her feel good about herself? 'Some Auradon kids can't do this, so it's amazing a daughter of Maleficent could.' "So... are you comparing the Islanders to Auradonia? That's it's amazing an Islander managed to best any Auradonian?" Mal frowned and turned to look at him.

Ben shook his head. "No." He disagreed. "It's just that you're a good person who comes from an entire island of bad. It's admirable." He reached down for her hand, but Mal jumped away and out from his grasp.

"What are you doing?" She hissed, guarding her hands against him and bracing herself as if she expected him to throw a punch. "And you said no before you basically regurgitated what I'd said." She narrowed her eyes and took a few careful, suspicious steps back.

"Calm down." Ben patted the air with his hands. "I just-"

"And for the record," Mal snapped, interrupting him. "Your parents created the Isle. It's their fault that I'm even here, that I was even born. Auradon is finally getting what's been coming for a long, long time."

"That's not true!" Ben disagreed. "Mal, I was just trying to-"

"I wish I could throw you onto that Isle." Mal hissed. Her eyes were alight with green magic. Ben searched through them and found nothing but weakness. Nothing but guarded faults. A vein began to pulsate in his neck and he balled his fists up. Mal dug in her feet, marched right up to him, and stuck a finger in front of his nose. "Don't you even understand?" She hissed. "You and everything you've grown up with?" She gestured around to everything around them, the furniture, the library, the beautiful mural. "It's abhorrible." She snapped. "You gave the children of your enemies nothing despite their innocence. Generations would have withered away in misery if your parents and their band of petty royals had had their way. I thought you believed everyone could forge their own paths and be anything they wanted in Auradon, despite where they came from."

"We do believe that!" Ben protested. He reached for the hand the hung at her side but she jumped back like he was a hot stone.

"Don't touch me!" She shrieked. "You're liars, all of you!" She began to back up to the door. Ben followed her in small steps. "You already think I'm like my mother, like Cruella, like the Evil Queen! It's your own fault and your own proposed goodness that made you foolish enough to allow my mother to spell your stupid crowns. It's Auradon's fault my mom has cursed me and you. So don't go feeling sorry for yourselves now that your 'happily-ever-after' has a kink. You deserve torment for all the evil you've caused."

Mal turned and fled out of the library. Ben dug his nails into the palms of his hands, turned, and ripped a pile of books off of a shelf to throw to the ground. They clattered to his feet and hid his shoes from view. He kicked them away and dropped down to the carpet, where he buried his face in his hands. She was so arrogant, and self-righteous and... right. Ben pulled his legs up to his chest. She was right.

[ramirei]

Assertion of the Heart - preparation 7 + 8

Takamizawa Arisa is eager to make friends and fit into class at her junior high school. However, she doesn’t fit into the girl groups and the only person she talks to is Enomoto Kotarou who sits in the seat behind her. Though she feels close to Miura Karen, a fellow classmate who doesn’t fit in class, she was scared of being singled out by her peers. Shibasaki Ken, Kotarou’s friend, takes notice of the conflicted Arisa but – “It’s too boring to hate all the time.” What awaits Arisa as she takes a step forward in her own way!?

Find the masterlist with all the chapters here!

Please support Honeyworks by purchasing the novel here! (CDJapan is also a good alternative).

Takamizawa Arisa Born on February 3, Aquarius, blood type B. 7th grader. She had planned to fit in with a group of friends in junior high school. Her family owns a shrine. She trusts Kotarou.

preparation 7

 Students went rushing out of their classrooms as the chimes rang once class ended. Come the end of April, club admissions would no longer be accepted and everyone would fully decide on the club they wanted to join.

So far, Arisa hadn’t felt like joining any clubs and would immediately go home once school ended instead. She didn’t really want to stay at school. She only stared down at her feet once more as she passed students on their way to their clubs when she realized it. She had a feeling that the harassment towards Karen was getting worse by the day. Her gym clothes would be thrown into the broom closest or milk would be poured into her indoor shoes…

Arisa had noticed Karen as she quietly wore her rinsed indoor shoes, but, despite that fact, she was unable to talk to her. Surely, Karen would no longer smile at her. She probably thought that Arisa was friends with those girls and was laughing at her.

More than anything else, the fact that Arisa couldn’t tell her, “It’s not like that,” was the most shameful of all.

She wanted to do something. But, what should she do?

She doubted it would turn out well if she brought up to a teacher that Karen was being bullied. If she said anything, it would cause even more of an uproar and it was likely that it would only make it difficult for Karen to be in their classroom.

That was how elementary school was like.

There was a child being bullied in her class and she had told the teacher about it. However, the bullying hadn’t stop and it only made the nasty gossip even worse.

It was always like this. Even if she acted thinking it was the right thing to do, the opposite of what she intended would happen. That’s why she thought it was better to not do anything and to just adjust to the situation. It would surely be useless even if she poked her nose in Karen’s business. If it would make the situation change for the worse, then it was better to not do anything.

She didn’t want to make the same mistake.

But, are you fine with that? The bullying might become even worse even if she left things as they were. Is it truly right to just stand by and watch it happen? Should I talk to someone about it?

But, who? There was no one she could consult with –

“Hina, wait up!”

Arisa slowly lifted her head at that voice. It was right at that moment that Kotarou was leaving a different classroom.

“Eno…” Her feet were moving forward before she realized it.

“Seriously, what do you want!” A 7th grade girl replied, peeved.

Kotarou followed the girl without noticing Arisa, “Are you gonna go to your club today?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“I’m going too, so once we’re finished, let’s…”

“No way. I promised my friends I’d go home with them.”

“Huh, why!?”

“What do you mean why? It’s ‘cause we’re going to eat crepes on the way home.”

“Hey, Hina! Wait up!”

Arisa had paused at a corner of the hallway and watched the two as they gradually disappeared from her sight. They seemed to get along well. They were able to argue with each other with whatever they wanted to say. They had a proper relationship.

The girl called Hina called out to another girl, then they walked down the stairs while chatting happily with each other.

Ah… how nice…

That girl was sure to have a great personality, was bright, and had a lot of friends. She had made her own place in her class and didn’t know things like bullying –

Kotarou was the same. Those two were standing in the warm sun.

“Why am I like this…?” A murmur slipped out.

It was like she was always… always in a cold, dark place. Even though she wanted to escape. She didn’t know how she would be able to.

What should I do? Tell me… please.

Someone –

Arisa turned and broke into a run with her face turned downwards. Along the way, she bumped into someone’s shoulders, but was unable to even lift her head to apologize.

Someone help me –.

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“Hey, are you listening? Shibaken?”

“Oh, sorry. What did you say?”

“Geez. You weren’t listening! It’s about going home today!”

Ken was walking down the hallway, ignoring what the girl walking next to him was saying, when Arisa had come running and lightly bumped into his shoulder. It seemed like she hadn’t noticed him because she was looking down.

“Oh, hey…” He tried saying something to her, but it didn’t look like she heard him.

She left with an expression of what looked like deep thought on her face.

“What the heck is with that girl? Isn’t it horrible that she didn’t say sorry when she bumped into you?” The girl clutching onto his arm said angrily.

“…she didn’t bump into me.”

“Huh? She definitely did.”

“I said she didn’t, so leave it.”

“What are you getting so mad about? Shibaken?”

Ken put his hands into his pockets and said no more as he walked away.

If you’re only looking down, you’re not gonna notice what’s around you.

Even when there’s someone that wants to help…

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I don’t want to go to school…

Arisa felt miserable the next morning and her body wouldn’t move no matter what she did. It was the first time she skipped school.

“Arisa, are you okay? Take medicine if you have a fever. Or do you want to go to the hospital?” Her mother worried asked as she peeked into Arisa’s room. She felt sorry towards her mom.

“No… it’s okay. My head just hurts a little.”

“Are you sure? I’m going to go shopping, but your grandpa will be home. If you need anything, let him know.”

“Okay…” Once the door closed, Arisa placed her head on her floor table while deeply sighing, “I lied…” She just kept lying to both her classmates and her family.

But… I don’t want to go. I hate school. She hated the way she shut herself and was running away even more.

“Just adapting to the people around me isn’t how I live,” Arisa slowly raised at her head at the line she heard from the TV she forgot to turn off. On screen was a model with long hair in pigtails. She was being interviewed by an announcer and her eyes were sparkling.

Oh, that girl… I know her… She was the girl that appeared in the pudding commercial. She was also often in fashion magazines.

Narumi Sena. That was the name that was written in the captions.

“I want to say that this is what I like.” Sena smiled brightly as she said this, “It’s too boring to hate all the time.”

Arisa couldn’t move her eyes away from the screen. These words seemed as if they were thrown straight at her.

“I want to push my chest out and be a “me” that I can be proud of. If I don’t, then surely no one would think, “oh, that’s nice.” That’s why I want live being honest to myself.” She replied with a clear voice despite her cheeks turning red in embarrassment. She looked straight at the screen with confident eyes.

There are people like this, too… Yet she was around the same age as Arisa.

This person was firmly walking without hesitation on a path she wanted to travel with pride. There was a stark difference between her and Arisa; Arisa, who was unable to go anywhere while she shrank and huddled in the confined world called school.

The world was so wide, and she was able to go anywhere –

Yet, until when will I keep shutting myself in this small world? She could do anything if she put her mind to it. She could even become whoever she wanted.

“Ahhhh, geez!! This isn’t like me at all!” Arisa yelled, placing all her strength into standing up.

“It’s too boring to hate all the time.”

Her heart was intensely and strongly spurred by those words as she opened the closet in her room. The thing she pulled out was the outfit she had fell in love with at the shopping mall. Even though Yui and the others had laughed at her, she hadn’t given up and had visited the mall once more to buy it on Sunday. She threw off the clothes she was wearing and, for the first time, slipped the sleeves of her new outfit on. She split her hair in half and tightly tied them into pigtails in her large, full-length mirror.

She looked at herself in the mirror again and, without thinking, let out a laugh, “Hahaha. This doesn’t match me –”

She was reminded of when she had laughed together with Karen as they said, “Though it wouldn’t really match me.”

It really didn’t match her at all. Both the feminine clothes and the pigtails. As expected, she wasn’t like Sena. She still couldn’t have confidence to state what she liked like Sena did.

But –

That was okay. Rather than living while deceiving herself, it was much better to live while being honest to herself. Rather than being who she hated, it was much better to be someone that she liked.

She would no longer lie to herself.

That was what Arisa declared to herself in the mirror as she cast aside her hesitation and worries.

preparation 8

Arisa took a deep breath in front of her classroom the next day.

From here on, I’ll start over again. With her resolve made, she lifted her head and, looking straight ahead, opened the door with a tense hand.

The state of the classroom remained unchanged as always. Karen was looking down and was erasing the cruel doodles drawn into her textbook by someone with an eraser.

The girls were laughing, “I would hate that,” while referring to the doodles.

The boys fooled around in front of the blackboard simply because this wasn’t a situation they were involved in.

There was no longer anyone that felt discomfort from this scene as it had already become fully a part of their everyday lives. It became something natural for them.

This is wrong… This isn’t right. Someone needed to say that this wasn’t “normal”.

“We can’t let things go on like this!” Arisa, stirred into action when it seemed like she would cower back, said in a booming voice to be heard by everyone in the classroom.

The classroom, previously buzzing with energy, instantly fell into a hush. All their surprised gazes fell on Arisa.

Terrifying –

Her legs were trembling slightly. But she took a step forward. She was no longer able to retreat from this. Her gaze met with Karen’s as she slowly lifted her head. Her eyes widened immensely as she looked over at Arisa.

This may prove to be fruitless. Even so, please reach someone.

Please –

Arisa placed her feelings into her smile and directed it to Karen, who looked a little like she was about to cry. The chime then rung and everyone returned to their seats.

“What the heck was that? Doesn’t she only want to put on a goody-two-shoe act?”

“Isn’t she just bothered by the points on her report?* Since she’s an honor student.”

Arisa could hear these heartless voices as she arrived at her seat. It was clear that they were talking to be heard. It was the girls sitting nearby. They were giggling as they avoided her gaze.

Ah, it didn’t do any good as I thought.

She hadn’t expected them to be understanding immediately. She knew that this wasn’t something that simple. However, Arisa was about to hang her head despite these thoughts.

“It reached me.”

Arisa slowly lifted her head at the voice from behind her. Enomoto… her chest became hot with emotion and a smile naturally formed on her lips, “Yeah…”

She didn’t have any regrets, but… She didn’t have any, but…

♦     ♦     ღ     ♦     ♦

There was always, somehow, an unpleasant atmosphere enveloping the class whenever Ken visited Kotarou’s classroom. Surely Hina wasn’t the only reason why Kotarou came to Koudai and Ken’s classroom during lunch. Maybe he didn’t want to stay in his classroom because the atmosphere was so bad.

Some of the girls were at the root of the bad atmosphere, doing things like talking behind each other’s backs and ridiculing each other. This wasn’t something particularly unusual. It was something that every class had. There were even several instances of nasty school bullying amongst boys. Everyone would stay quiet about the abnormal situation, even though they thought it was ridiculous, and would instead accept it. It wasn’t easy to change the relationship between students once this atmosphere was created. No one wanted to be burdened with trouble, so they would turn a blind eye to inconvenient situations, pull a face as if nothing was wrong, and just spend their lives smiling.

Well, that’s pretty normal…

Ken casually looked over at the girl sitting by herself as he chatted with Kotarou and Koudai like always. It was then that –

“We can’t let things go on like this!” The person that entered the classroom, pleading, mustering all her courage, was Arisa. Despite her slightly trembling legs, she looked straight ahead in order to assert that she wasn’t wrong.

They weren’t the only ones that were surprised.

Arisa directed a smile to the girl sitting by herself, a bit embarrassedly, “Morning, Karen!”

The girl named Karen looked down once more when her eyes became wet with tears. But, in a quiet voice, she replied back, “Morning.”

“Takamizawa…” Kotarou mumbled, amazed.

“Oh, Shibaken. We gotta go back to class. Homeroom is about to start.” Koudai said in sudden realization after looking at the clock above the blackboard. Students began to hastily return to their seats at the chiming bell.

“Can’t let things go on like this, huh…” Ken mulled over Arisa’s words as they returned to their classroom. Both her tightly tied pigtails and the strong look on her face, as if she were about to challenge everyone in class, were surely an embodiment of her resolve.

He had no clue what kind of change her state of mind went through. However, it was much better than her smiling while following along with everyone else, than her looking down in pain, than her breaking down crying on the rooftop.

The person that she was today was far better.

♦     ♦     ღ     ♦     ♦

Even though lunch was over, and their afternoon classes had begun, Karen hadn’t returned to their classroom. Arisa, noticing this, looked over at her empty seat.

She wasn’t able to change anything.

Yui and the others ignored Karen and only spouted insults at her. Arisa was still helpless during Karen’s difficult times. She was supposed to be the one that raised her voice to say that they couldn’t let things go on like this.

No – there should be something that she could do.

“Then, for the next English sentence… Takamizawa, translate it.” Their English teacher lightly brushed the chalk off their hands after writing on the blackboard before turning to face the students, “Takamizawa?”

Arisa was spacing out, so Kotarou threw his eraser at her from behind. It hit her on the head with a tap, then rolled onto her desk.

“Takamizawa?”

“Oh, r-right!” Arisa quickly stood up and opened her textbook once she realized that she had been called on.

…I have to go now.

There was no doubt that Karen was crying.

The fact that Karen would shut herself in the bathroom to cry when it became difficult was something she found out a while ago. Even though she knew, she continued to pretend that she hadn’t noticed.

Arisa closed her textbook, raised her head, and looked at her teacher.

“What’s wrong?”

“Excuse me. Um… I have to go to the bathroom!” She couldn’t think of any other excuse to escape the classroom. She lowered her head at her teacher gaping at her and quickly exited the classroom. As soon as she went out into the hallway and closed the door, she could hear her classmates laughing loudly at her inside the classroom.

She was sure to become a laughingstock when she came back. But she didn’t even mind. There was something more important than that right now.

Arisa lifted her head and quickly walked down the empty hallway. She headed to the bathroom in the north building, where few people came and went, and found a single door deep within the bathroom closed. Stifled crying slipped from inside the stall.

She’s here as I thought…

“Karen.” Arisa called out in front of the stall. The cries abruptly stopped, “You’re there, right?”

“Why… are you here? Isn’t it the middle of class right now?” A small voice replied, almost as if she were about to disappear at any moment.

“You weren’t there, so I slipped out, too.”

“…Why… this has nothing to do with you. You should just leave someone like me alone.”

“I realized that things couldn’t go on like this. I made a mistake. Hey, listen, Karen. I… once more, I wanted to…”

“What’s the point now!” Karen cut off Arisa’s word in a scream. Her voice was trembling. She was surely crying, “You saw everything the entire time, yet pretended that you didn’t. You put on a good face here and there, then talked about me behind my back to fit in with them. Arisa, y’know… you’re sly. Now you’re trying to put on a good face. Because you sympathize with me? Or is it like what everyone said and you’re bothered by the points on your report?”

It can’t be helped… it’s unavoidable. It was natural for Karen to criticize her because of what she had done up until now. That’s why she couldn’t say something like, “I hadn’t meant to do that.”

Arisa turned her back to the door and lowered her gaze, “It’s exactly like you said, Karen. I’m sly. I was weak and put everything into protecting myself. I hurt you because of that. I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”

She definitely wouldn’t forgive me with this, will she? She desperately strung words together because she had no idea what words she could say to atone for her mistakes. Now, put all of your feelings into what you’re able to put into words –

“I was really happy the first time you talked to me. I was also really happy when you called me by name. The fact that I wanted to become friends with you back then is true. I know that it’s late coming from me after all this time and I know that this sounds like a convenient thing to say. But, once more… just one more time.”

“Stop it!” Arisa shut her mouth at her rejection, “It’s so difficult, so painful, I felt so helpless… I always, always thought that someone would save me. But no one did. Not you, not the rest of the class, anyone!”

That was right. She knew that feeling. It being so difficult, painful, and being unable to do anything by herself despite struggling for so long. She had clung to anyone as if she were drowning and desperately extended her hands out. But no one had come to rescue her and her cries reached no one.

I know that feeling, too… She wasn’t able to go anywhere in that dark world.

“I hate it… I hate everything. Everything should just disappear!” Arisa felt like her heart was being crushed by Karen’s yells and sobs, “This dark, narrow… world… I can’t anymore… I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“That’s wrong, Karen… The world is so wide and we can go anywhere.”

That was what she had been taught by the person she saw on TV that day. The thing that they hated wasn’t really “everyone”, but it was their “self”. Their self that couldn’t do anything, couldn’t do anything but shut themselves away, their weak and powerless selves. Their self that couldn’t get along with anyone, couldn’t be accepted, and were hated. Their self that wasn’t able to say that they hated the things they hated, put on a friendly smile to fit in, their cowardly selves. She wanted to throw her hated self, everything, away. However, she was made to realize that that was no good.

It’s too boring to hate all the time –

The school and the inside of a single classroom wasn’t everything to their world. If they took a step forward, then a larger world would spread out before them. In spite of this, it was a waste to shut themselves in this small world and hate themselves. Because, even if they think they’re in the darkness, if they lifted their heads, then the light would shine on them.

That’s why don’t cry anymore… Hey, Karen. Karen… Arisa looked upwards as she leaned against the door of the stall. The tears in the corners of her eyes spilled over and ran down her cheeks.

Because this time, she wouldn’t make anymore mistakes. Because she definitely won’t make mistakes.

♦     ♦     ღ     ♦     ♦

It became May after the week ended.

In the morning, Arisa entered the classroom and greeted them with, “Morning.��� However, even the people that would usually reply back to her were awkwardly distant. Arisa looked around the class, confused by the different atmosphere.

In the back of the classroom, Yui and the others were giggling happily. Arisa lost all words when she found Karen in the middle of their group.

Karen…

Karen had been included in their group of friends as if they hadn’t been gossiping and harassing her this entire time.

“What’s with her? A change of image?”

“Was she originally like that?”

“Why’s she trying to stand out?”

“What a hypocrite. It’s seriously so funny.”

“Does she think she looks good with that hair? How lame.”

“Like she just did whatever she wanted.”

In response to the girls, who were talking loudly on purpose so they would be heard, Karen commented, “Right.” It was obvious who they were talking about.

Ah, I see… Karen went over to “that side”. She had no right to blame her. Because she had done the same thing.

Arisa headed to her own seat as a bitter taste spread in her mouth. She noticed a small memo when she placed her bag down. Opening it, she found slanderous doodles all over it. She crumpled it in her hand, pulled out her chair, and sat down. It was as she thought. She had a feeling it would turn out like this.

That their target would change and she would be alone… She was the only one that didn’t exist in their world.

“Ah…” She looked up and let out a small voice in self-mockery. Her vision blurred when she looked down.

Don’t cry. This isn’t something to cry about.

Tears dripped onto her tightly grasped hands. It turned out like this again. She didn’t like being alone. Despite having those feelings, it happened again even after she became a junior high schooler. It was like restarting a game that she couldn’t clear. She was only able to get a bad ending no matter how many times she restarted and, despite resetting each time, she could do nothing but go on the same route. But, I guess it’s alright…

This time, she made a choice she believed in. She wasn’t following the flow. It was the path she decided on after properly following her heart. If she only got bad endings as a result of that, then it was unavoidable. She had no choice but to think that this was the conclusion of this game. Surely, no one could remain uninjured in order to become an adult and grow older. Although nothing had changed and she was alone once more… somehow, strangely, she wasn’t afraid.

She didn’t hate who she was now. Swallowing all of her tears and pain, she smiled while putting on a slightly brave front.

It’s fine for today to be looking down.

♦     ♦     ღ     ♦     ♦

She could hear the sound of the band practicing from the open window after school. Arisa squatted next to the flower garden in the courtyard while listening to them practice. Gingerly pushing aside the tulip leaves, she picked up pens that had fallen in between them. The soil was wet from the rain yesterday, so her hands were covered in mud. On top of that, the pens she had unearthed from the mud didn’t look like they would be useable again.

“This isn’t something you happily scatter around!” Arisa grumbled without thinking and sighed.

Today’s last class was PE. Her bag, which had been hung on the side of her desk, was gone when she returned to the classroom after changing. She hadn’t found it in the cleaning supply closet or the trashcans. It was when she looked down into the courtyard from the hallway windows that she saw her bag tossed out into the flower garden. She had no choice but to pick everything up like this because her belongings, even the contents of her pen case, had been thoroughly scattered throughout the garden.

The thought of Karen leaving the classroom laughing together with Yui and the others crossed her mind, making Arisa’s face darken.

“This, what happened?” A voice suddenly asked from behind.

“Huh?” She said as she turned her head. Oh… this girl was together with Enomoto.

The person with her hands on her knees as she looked at Arisa was a girl she remembered seeing. Her hair, split into pigtails, were curled.

“Hina, we’re leaving for club.” Her friends called out as they waited for her in the passage.

“Go first!” She said to them. “This is horrible.” Hina squatted down next to Arisa like it was natural for her to do so and began to pick up her pens and notes.

If this had been the typical person, they would likely ignore her because they had nothing to do with her. She wasn’t even in the same class as her. They didn’t know each other’s names.

Even though it’s like this, why…

“Your club… is it okay? Aren’t you going to be late by concerning yourself with someone like me?”

“Ahh, yeah… so we have to hurry!” Hina brushed away the dirt on the textbook she picked up with a pat after checking her watch. Her hands were just as covered in mud as Arisa’s.

She should just leave someone like her alone. Arisa unconsciously swallowed those words, “You’re… Enomoto’s girlfriend, right?” She asked somewhat hesitantly.

Hina’s eyes had, for a moment, become wide and blank. It then immediately turned into surprise as she yelled, “Huuuuuuuuuuuuh!? Who is whose girlfriend!?”

“You are Enomoto’s… am I wrong?”

“Absolutely not, you’re wrong! Why did you think that!?”

“B-But, it’s because you look like you guys have a good relationship.”

“It’s not! Kotarou is just. A. Childhood. Friend! We’re just incidentally, and unfortunately, neighbors!” Hina’s cheeks puffed up in mortification. “Why would I be paired up with someone like Kotarou…” She muttered, then, as if suddenly realizing something, looked at Arisa, “Are you in the same class as Kotarou?”

“Well… yeah.”

“Don’t tell me that Kotarou said that!? That I… with him… that stuff.”

“He didn’t say it. That’s just what I assumed.”

“I see… Oh, but, really, it’s just your misunderstanding! There isn’t anything between me and Kotarou!” Hina sighed, “Everyone teases us and it’s really annoying.”

Ah, I see. It’s Enomoto’s one-sided love…

“Is this all of it?” Hina asked, looking around once more to check if there was anything else still on the ground.

Arisa also checked the contents of her bag, but the only thing that was missing was her panda mascot. It looked like it had snapped off again even though she fixed it after she lost it in the locker rooms.

“Is there anything missing?”

“Looks like I have everything,” Arisa replied and closed the flap of her bag. She would feel bad if she made Hina keep her company any longer even though she had club activities. She just had to look for it by herself later.

“Shoots, I’m sorry. The time, I’m gonna be late!” Hina grabbed the sports bag she left on the ground after glancing at her watch once more.

“W-Wait!” Arisa said on reflex, stopping Hina as she was about to leave.

Hina looked back, “Huh?”

“I… Is… it alright if I ask for your name?” She asked somewhat hesitantly.

Hina’s eyes widened before she smiled, wide, “It’s Setoguchi. Setoguchi Hina. You?”

“Takamizawa… Arisa.”

“Bye, then, Takamizawa.” Hine waved, then ran towards the clubroom building.

Setoguchi Hina.

Arisa repeated the name to herself over and over so she wouldn’t forget. She and Enomoto are the same. She’s kind.

When she could no longer see Hina, she turned to look at the clear sky. The light dazzled as she held her hand against her forehead.

If she could be like her and call out to someone with, “What’s wrong?” If she had been the first to reach out a hand. If only she was able to be kind –

Then, maybe we, too, would’ve been different?

♦     ♦     ღ     ♦     ♦

After school, Ken was passing by the courtyard when he noticed Arisa and stopped walking. She was squatted next to the flower garden picking up her pens and notes. Her lips were closed tightly together in a straight line as if she were holding back something. He understood the situation immediately even without asking.

It turned out like this after all… Ken slightly averted his gaze as he thought this. Their classes were different and they have never talked to each other before. She didn’t know anything about him, either. Wouldn’t she be startled if he called out to her? Wouldn’t she be wary of him? What would he say to her?

What’re you doing?

Should I help you?

Hey, I’m Kotarou’s friend –

Ken turned towards her and took a step forward. It was then that he saw Hina, who had been passing by, step up to Arisa. He didn’t step any further. Hina spoke to Arisa and, together, they began to pick up her scattered belongings. Without a reason to speak to her, Ken huffed and changed his direction. He was heading towards the back gates when he noticed a panda mascot on the ground. He bent to pick it up.

This is her’s, isn’t it… He had seen Arisa with this mascot on her bag before. Turning back, he saw Arisa in the middle of a conversation with Hina. “What the heck am I doing…” He murmured with a strained laugh and clutched tightly onto the panda mascot.

The soccer and baseball clubs were in the middle of practice when Ken returned to the school yard. Kotarou was also amongst the running 7th graders. It was strange to see him with a serious expression that was so different from his face when they were messing around, causing Ken to laugh to himself.

“Heeey, Kotarou!”

Kotarou glanced at him upon hearing his name. He was pretending that he hadn’t heard anything, perhaps because the seniors would glare at him if he were to slip away during practice.

“Kotarou! Enomoto! Kota! Kota-chaaaaaan!!”

“You’re annoying! What!!” Kotarou finally ran up to him with a scowl.

Ken burst into laughter and threw the panda mascot in his hands towards Kotarou.

“Huh, w-what is this?” Kotarou instinctively caught it, but looked at it, confused.

“It’s that Takamizawa girl’s. Pass that to her.”

“Takamizawa? Why should I? Shouldn’t you do it yourself?”

“I’m counting on you, then. Kota-chaaaan.”

“Stop calling me that!!”

Ken waved at him, laughing. He tucked his hand in his pants pocket, turning away from the enthusiast cheers from the club members, and walked away.

♦     ♦     ღ     ♦     ♦

Arisa was often by herself even when May was almost over. Only Kotarou remained when she returned to the classroom after finishing her committee work.

“Enomoto…” She called out to him.

Kotarou turned towards her with a jerk. There was a rag in his hand, “Takamizawa! Didn’t you go home?” Hastily, he tried to hide Arisa’s desk with his body.

Arisa walked up to him and, the moment she looked at her own desk, lost all words. Her desk, which had been covered in scribbles, was… covered in scattered eraser bits.

“This…”

“I’m telling you, it wasn’t me! I just.”

“I know!”

He was erasing it for her. Secretly, when no one was looking. Even up until now, it was like this. He was helping her without her knowledge. Always… always in this way.

Arisa placed pressure at the back of her hand at her tears that naturally began to fall.

“W-Wha, hey, don’t cry! This kind of stuff is no big deal.” Kotarou searched for a handkerchief, flustered. He made a face saying he didn’t know what to do when he wasn’t able to find one.

No. It wasn’t because it was hard. It wasn’t because she was sad. She didn’t care about something like scribbles on her desk. She had always thought that she was alone. It felt like she had been fighting by herself. But, she was wrong.

I wasn’t alone…

There were people that sincerely accepted her words. There were people that said that her words had reached them. She was so happy and warm that she couldn’t help but want to cry. She couldn’t do anything right, she was always failing, hurting someone, being hurt by others.

Thinking, oh, I’ve had enough… she had given up.

But, she wanted someone to believe in after all.

“I’m sorry… Enomoto.” Wiping away her tears with her hand, Arisa looked up. She was embarrassed at her slightly nasally voice.

“It’s no big deal… I mean, I was told by Shibaken to look after you.” Kotarou stiffly smiled with a hand on his hip.

“Shibaken?”

“Oh, well… a guy from a different class. Kinda… like my friend.” He then fumbled through his pants pocket as if he remembered something, “Oh, yeah. You dropped this, right?”

The thing that Kotarou had given her was the panda mascot that she lost that day. After Hina left, she had tried searching for it by herself, but had given up after not being able to find it, “You remembered that it was mine.”

“Oh, well… because of this and that. Anyway, I’ve returned it.”

She felt like she created connections with people every time this mascot disappeared. Despite that, she always messed up and failed…

This time, for sure, she wanted to treasure it. So she wouldn’t ever lose it again.

Arisa wrapped her hand around the mascot.

“… You okay?” Kotarou asked, concerned.

She nodded, “Yeah,” and faced Kotarou once more, “If you ever have any troubles, I’ll definitely be there to help!” This was the small resolution she engraved in her heart.

“What the heck is that…” Kotarou laughed, stumped.

Arisa held out her hand, “A proof of our friendship!”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at but…” Despite saying this, Kotarou firmly gripped her hand.

“Oh, I’m just letting you know… but it’s nothing like that. Don’t misunderstand me.”*

“R…Right…” They laughed at their awkward conversation.

Arisa erased the scribbles on her desk with Kotarou. They were hard to erase, causing Kotarou to yell, “Damn!” in exasperation.

Arisa squinted in happiness looking at Kotarou’s profile, “Enomoto, y’know.”

“What is it?”

“Thanks…”

Feeling shy about words she was unaccustomed to, Arisa scrubbed briskly at the scribbles. 

* Points on an evaluated school report (that covers all three years of junior high) that eventually are sent to the high school that the student is trying to get into. A portion of the points aside from test/homework grades are on your behavior in class. * Pretty sure she’s telling Kotarou not to think she likes him lol.

[republicstandard]

Don't be Deceived by the Media’s Pro-Immigration Child Exploitation

American conservatives are crowing from the rooftops of Trump Towers. Their biggest foe, the mainstream media – the Prince of Darkness who masquerades as an angel of light, has been stripped of his horns and pitchfork. Lucifer has fallen from heaven into the shithole of Dante’s Inferno, and is being tormented by the angelic host of conservative radio commentators and Republican roosters cock-a-doodling at the cyclopean cock-up committed by TIME magazine.

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The fakestream media have broken Jeffrey Archer’s eleventh commandment: "Thou shall not get caught." TIME was caught with its pants down and its picture of a crying three-year-old Honduran girl exposed as fake news. The girl was real, the crying was real, the picture was real, but the context was faked, framed and photo-shopped.

TIME shamelessly featured its child pawn like child porn on the cover page of its July 2, 2018 issue. It shows the girl facing Donald Trump, who is looking down on the child with bemusement. TIME would like its readers to interpret the look on Trump’s face as callousness. A canny three-word caption completes the toxic cocktail of half-truth and digital demagoguery: Welcome to America.

The image is further inflated by a TIME human-interest story zooming in on Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, John Moore, who sheds copious crocodile tears as he spins his tale of sanctimonious poppycock. Moore recounts photographing the child on the US-Mexican border as mother and child were trying to enter the US illegally and were apprehended by law enforcement.

"When the officer told the mother to put her child down for the body search, I could see this look in the little girl’s eyes," Moore tells TIME. "As soon as her feet touched the ground she began to scream." The Border Patrol is taking mother and child away in a van and Moore’s bleeding-heart explodes as if he is Mother Theresa. "All I wanted to do was pick her up. But I couldn’t," he recollects.

Am I sounding like a cynical son-of-a-bitch? To this day, I cannot forget what I saw when I was six – a child being separated from his parents. A man with a sack walked through the slums in Mahim, Mumbai. He stopped outside a hovel, picked up a child, threw him into the sack and walked away.

I froze, traumatized with terror, unable to cry or scream or call for help as I watched from the window of our first floor apartment. In India, children snatched from their parents are sold to gangs who cripple them and force them into beggary.

Since when does the Left care so much about keeping the family together?

To this day, I cannot forget what I saw later in life – a British working class grandmother who sat weeping through a service at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich, where I served as Chaplain. She accosted me at the door after the service and blubbered like a child about to break down.

She was holding pictures of three beautiful children. Her partner told me her story. Social Services (SS) had forcibly removed her grandchildren from her care. She was looking after her grandkids in lieu of her alcoholic daughter, but the SS wouldn’t let her even see the kids any longer. The SS were giving one child to a gay couple for adoption, despite grandma’s objections. We did our best to help her reconnect with her grandchildren, but the State had kidnapped them.

So when American’s leftwing media erupted into hyper-hysteria over Trump separating immigrant children from their parents and cruelly caging them in Nazi concentration camps and Japanese internment camps, my hermeneutic of suspicion went into overdrive.

"Since when does the Left care so much about keeping the family together?" I asked myself. After all, one of the primary goals of the Left is the destruction of the family. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels "usually wrote about the destruction, dissolution, and abolition of the family," observes historian Richard Weikart.

Marx fulminated against "the bourgeois claptrap about the family" and "the hallowed correlation of parent and child," both of which he found "disgusting". Charles Fourier, a utopian socialist proposed that children be separated from their parents and raised communally. Robert Owen, one of the most influential advocates of utopian socialism declared war on the family. In his commune, children after the age of three were removed from their parents for proper education.

Under Mao, children pulled from their parents. All parents were to eat in large mess halls while their children went into day nurseries. Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai was adamant that the "worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine," but "must remember that there are only our children" who would be wards of the state.

If you think this is history, think again. Prof Melissa Harris-Perry, who holds the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University, believes that children should be separated from their parents. Harris-Perry laments the lack of "a very collective notion" of our children. She wants us "to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities".

Since when does the Left care so much about keeping the family together? I asked myself again. There can be no more permanent separation of a child from his or her mother than killing the child in its mother’s womb. And what about the Left’s dogma of single-parenthood separating children from father or mother and depriving the child of its most fundamental human right to two parents?

Don’t be deluded into believing that the Left cares about children. They are using children as a battering ram against Trump – a socially acceptable form of child abuse, I thought, as the 'separation of immigrant children’ debate raged. But surely, they wouldn’t stoop to the gutter and use images of little children for their political agenda? Wouldn’t that be a socially acceptable form of child pornography?

My worst suspicions were confirmed when it was revealed that the images of immigrant children in metal cages were actually four years old and taken during the Obama administration. Gotcha! Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau was among the many to condemn the photos – until he realised they dated back to His Master’s Reign.

Then came the bombshell – the crying girl in the border picture on the cover of TIME was actually never separated from her mother! It was fake news. TIME took its own time to issue a correction, but chief editor Edward Felsenthal stood defiantly by the picture, saying that while agents may not have taken the child, the photograph captured the mood of the story.

I remembered how the mainstream media had abused the image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi – the Syrian boy tragically drowned while going from Turkey to Kos. The MSM couldn’t even give the little boy the dignity of getting his name right, and called him Aylan Kurdi. The family were trying to get to Canada and join their relatives in Vancouver. The media, activists and politicians fanned the flames of the picture and cried themselves hoarse demanding open borders.

Brendan O’Neill, writing in The Spectator, responded and termed the use of the child’s image "moral pornography". "It’s more like a snuff photo for progressives, dead-child porn, designed not to start a serious debate about migration in the 21st century but to elicit a self-satisfied feeling of sadness among Western observers," wrote O’Neill. "When it comes to producing moral porn for the right-on, it seems the normal rules of journalism – and civilization – can be suspended," he scathingly added.

They will exploit suffering, dying and dead children in a contemptible game of moral and emotional blackmail.

One of the most morally despicable stories of the media’s use of child porn is the case of Kevin Carter’s picture of a dying girl in the Sudan in March 1993. The girl, no more than five years old, had collapsed while crawling toward a UN feeding center. As Carter crouched to take her picture, a vulture landed nearby, awaiting her death.

Carter waited for 20 minutes, hoping the bird would spread its wings so he could capture a better shot. It did not, and after he took a few images, he shooed the bird away and watched the girl continue to struggle. TIME, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers emblazoned their pages with the picture.

Only later did people raise questions about the girl’s fate and about the "appropriateness, decency, vulgarity, and the tasteful function of photojournalism", writes Barbie Zelizer in her book About to Die: How News Images Move the Public. Why did Carter not help the girl or make certain the vulture was gone before he moved on? "Which is the true vulture?" asked one reader in a blistering indictment of the media.

Carter’s callousness cost him his life. Hounded by phone calls in the middle of the night criticizing him for not rescuing the girl, he killed himself in 1994.

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The mainstream media doesn’t give a damn about children. The Left doesn’t give a damn about the family. Their agenda is open borders and uncontrolled immigration. They will exploit suffering, dying, and dead children in a contemptible game of moral and emotional blackmail. Their ultimate goal is totalitarian control. For once a country is swamped by immigrants and Balkanized into warring ghettos –all warring with each other– people will turn to the supreme nanny-state for security and salvation.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2yZ5JRA via IFTTT

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The bright spots in the dark era of Trump Twitter: political parody accounts

Image: mashable composite: Christopher Mineses

Over the course of his first months in the White House, President Trump notoriously turned Twitter into his personal outlet for unhinged political venting. That of course inspired the creation of dozens of parody accounts that became tools of resistance, coping mechanisms, and light-hearted distractions from the political chaos.

A simple Twitter search for “Donald Trump Parody” reveals a collection of over 50 accounts, and though each tackles Trumps presidency with a different approach, they all set out with a common goal: to make Twitter in the Trump era a bit more bearable.

SEE ALSO: Hit Trump where it hurts (his Twitter account)

To get a better sense of what it takes to challenge Trump on his favorite social platform, we reached out to the creators of two of the most popular Trump parody accounts on Twitter and uncovered some intriguing facts about the 24/7 job.

For instance: One of the most thought-provoking accounts on Twitter was inspired by Trump’s spat with the musical Hamilton.

While accounts like @RealDonalDrumpf and @mechanicaltrump attempt to imitate Trump’s unique online behavior, tweeting with an excessive amount of exclamation points and bashing Obama and the Democratic party every chance they get, others, like @aTinyTrump, give followers a good laugh with the help of Photoshop.

Wouldn’t it just be terrible if @realDonaldTrump saw our page and threw a little tantrum like this? That would just be tremendous. http://pic.twitter.com/twbHwJxPjI

TinyTrump (@aTinyTrump) February 19, 2017

The more serious parody account @DTrumpExposed, meanwhile, provides followers with essential information related to Trump’s presidency and his administration, serving as an alternative source of news for those who want to stay in the loop.

@IfHillaryHad imagines American politics in an alternate reality, tweeting on a day-to-day basis as Hillary Clinton had she won the election. @BRIDGETTRUMPSD1 is a depiction of Trump’s diary entries if they were written in the style of Bridget Jones. You know, very normal stuff.

Which brings us to @HalfOnionInABag, the scrap of a vegetable just looking to get more Twitter followers than Trump. It hasn’t quite reached the president’s 28.4 million, but 739,000 followers is still pretty impressive for a vegetable.

What if this account that is simply half an onion in a Ziploc bag ended up with more followers than @realDonaldTrump? http://pic.twitter.com/D28lODPZLO

Half An Onion (@HalfOnionInABag) January 20, 2017

Trump now with maturity!

If there’s anything we’ve learned from the overzealous, typo-ridden 140-character messages posted to the president’s Twitter account, it’s where there’s a Trump tweet, there’s room for improvement.

One man decided to take on the taxing job of editing those tweets to try and make the president’s words sound more, well, presidential. Under the promise of anonymity, the 52-year-old creator of Mature Trump Tweets spoke to us about the inspiration behind the thought-provoking account, how life has changed since starting it, and what kind of impact he hopes his revised words have on the world.

Here’s how he edited one of Trump’s tweets about “fake news”:

The independent media have an important job to do. Informed Americans can ferret out the truth w/out my need to try to sully or discredit. https://t.co/URR1qsHxly

PresidentialTrump (@MatureTrumpTwts) February 25, 2017

Since several early followers wondered if Barack Obama were behind the account, the creator has decided to go by the nickname Barry.

“I think he’s failed to recognize, or worse doesn’t care, that his words matter.”

He began the account last fall, a few weeks after Trump won the election, as things on Twitter got more and more surreal.

“I think he’s failed to recognize, or worse doesn’t care, that his words matter,” Barry said. “I became almost numb due to the Twitter assault that seemed to attack first amendment rights and lack of civility in his tone,” he went on, identifying the president’s Twitter beef with the cast of Hamilton as one of the events that drove him to create the account.

“I needed to do something because I felt powerless. So I decided to recreate his tweets and tweet the way I think a true diplomatic statesman would. It was cathartic for me, and I had a hunch it would be for others too.”

Watched @nbcsnl for laughs b4 turning in. Just need @AlecBaldwin to purse his lips a bit more :-)If we can’t laugh at ourselves, we’re sunk. https://t.co/qOFVb2sg8n

PresidentialTrump (@MatureTrumpTwts) December 4, 2016

Throughout the course of the young presidency, Barry’s goals for the account have evolved. “Originally it was selfish. I needed an outlet,” he explained. “I also was determined to not allow this type of tone to be normalized. That’s a scary proposition.”

Retweets from powerful social media voices like J.K. Rowling, Ricky Gervais, Seth McFarlane, and Mark Cuban were soon to follow. Mature Trump Tweets has 123,000 followers, some of whom have reached out to tell Barry how important the account is to them, offering to start GoFundMe or Kickstarter campaigns to ensure it remains up and running.

The first 90 days of my presidency has been humbling. I’ll work tirelessly for you & this country. We have much yet to accomplish, together. https://t.co/9OvgFOoObr

PresidentialTrump (@MatureTrumpTwts) April 17, 2017

“Today, I have bigger goals,” Barry admitted. “I think this could be a counter movement. One that espouses kindness, civility, decorum things I think Americans and people around the world truly want and crave.”

Maintaining an account that directly responds to Trump’s relentless Twitter activity isn’t always easy. “I usually retweet Trump when he tweets, which means daily usually early in the morning or late at night,” Barry said.

Barry also tweets whenever he feels the president should be tweeting, even if Trump remains silent. “Those are often the most popular, because it demonstrates the fact he seems tone deaf on what’s important and what the majority of Americans want to hear from him.”

“W/so much negativity in headlines right now, know we really can & will build a better, kinder world together. Pls keep believing.” – Barry

PresidentialTrump (@MatureTrumpTwts) April 20, 2017

Embracing the chaos through humor

During Trump’s first month in office, executive order signing became something of a sport for President Trump and it wasn’t long before 34-year-old Mike Gaines took notice.

With each document Trump presented, Gaines thought he resembled a proud little kid showing off his drawings to his parents. Gaines was inspired to take a more lighthearted approach to manage his political frustrations. Trump Draws a brilliant collection of photoshopped GIFs was born.

kat http://pic.twitter.com/ra55wo0ulW

Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017

When Trump fired Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general who refused to defend his travel ban, the Los Angeles-based visual effects artist decided to transform the proud president into an ambitiously doodling toddler with the help of his iPad Pro, the app Procreate, and Adobe After Effects.

Gaines began posting to the account several times a week, showing Trump dramatically revealing drawings of cute little animals and holiday greetings, with timely political references. He misspelled captions (in too-real Trump fashion) and occasionally even doodled with his non-dominant hand to really capture the youthful aspect of his photoshop creations.

me http://pic.twitter.com/R64NwAYGKu

Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017

“In this increasingly divisive political world, the account somehow cuts through all the BS,” Gaines said. It’s “simply a way to laugh at the doodles of a very proud man, who just happens to be the president of the United States.”

After the account which is currently at 439,000 followers received such a positive response from Twitter users, Gaines decided to expand the endeavor to include paintings in the White House, presentation tools, and really any other white surface begging to be memed.

my office http://pic.twitter.com/rqjbKxRxgr

Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) March 1, 2017

my lemonade stand http://pic.twitter.com/1T8SxB0BkQ

Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) April 5, 2017

“I feel like these accounts really are a bright light in a pretty dismal world right now, he said. “Laughing and comedy are the best way to cope.”

Though Gaines refers to Trump as “a diamond mine for comedy,” he thinks the president’s seemingly unfiltered, unprofessional Twitter account is a true cause for concern. “Dude needs to pick a new game … maybe trying to run the country instead?” he suggested, clarifying that he’s not trying to use Trump Draws to make a political statement.

“I really just want to add some levity to this crazy political climate,” Gaines said. “Sometimes you just need to see Trump childishly draw an elephant to get you through the day.”

So simple, yet so effective.

my job http://pic.twitter.com/H0FL6n8JP5

Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) April 28, 2017

Parodies FTW

Though its tough to say definitively whether Trump is the most parodied president in history I mean, even George Washington was subject to sketches The Donald does seem to have a big target painted on his back in the social media age.

Even when it comes to more recent presidents, a search for “Barack Obama parody” yields eighteen results on the platform. “George Bush parody” reveals a mere three. (Though, to be fair, Obama was elected when Twitter was only in its infancy.)

The takeaway? When it comes to being parodied on Twitter, Trump is winning. So much winning.

WATCH: Trump accidentally stood next to Darth Vader and this is why symbolism exists

Read more: http://ift.tt/2pvd9FA

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2qrR3kI via Viral News HQ

[sarmtravels-blog]

Day 2, Bangkok: low-budget trekking

Woke up at 7:00, got ready while everyone else in my room was asleep, and went downstairs for a cup of coffee. Ran into Nate as soon as I got to the kitchen! We decided to go to the Chatuchak Weekend Market- one of the largest markets in the world and, according to TripAdvisor, one of the top places to avoid if you're hungover. We walked to the subway station and boarded the most crowded subway I've ever been on; more crowded than any rush hour NYC subway I've ever known. When we got to the market, we didn't even know where to start. It was massive! Rows and rows of stalls, stands, shops, kiosks.... the only thing missing was the people. I guess because it was a Friday morning at 9am, people weren't out to play yet so most of the stands were closed and there were no other tourists there. Still, we wandered for a few hours and both bargained to buy some handmade souvenirs. I brought a little bag of goodies to give to little Thai children because my Aunt Jen told me they love that stuff. I tested the theory today. She did love the purple pen that has a face on it, but she didn't allow me to keep her. Better luck next time, I suppose. After we'd had enough there, we stopped at a park to drink some bottled water and decide on our next moves. We chose to go to the part of the city home to basically every mall because it was on the way. I've never seen more confusing, huge, bougie malls in one place in my life! The primary reason we went is because I (of course) forgot to bring any clothes that work for bars/clubs. I had an immensely difficult time navigating the shopping complexes and it didn't take long before Nate went off on his own. Aside from the fact that I didn't know my way around any of the interconnected malls and I had no idea what to wear out, I was at a loss. Many of the stores in the malls were fancier ones like Coach, Louis Vuitton, etc so you already know I had no idea what I was doing with my life. Luckily, I ran into a trendy woman who pointed me in the direction of H&M and Forever 21 and knew everything about every single club. She was my angel today. Unfortunately, the stores selling American clothes cost more than they would in America, but ya girls a sale shopper. A solid 3 hours at the malls and a small but appropriate purchase later, I took the subway back to Surasak (where my hostel is). Much less crowded this time. I was so tired I stood at the side of the highway waiting for a lull in traffic so I could cross that I neglected to see the pedestrian bridge going over the highway. Oops. I walked about 10 minutes to Nadimos, a Lebanese restaurant I found when I googled "falafel." The streets here are so full of life. It was 15:35 so kids were running everywhere, food stands were bustling, and the streets were bumper-to-bumper. The restaurant looked like a 5-star American but the prices were unbeatable. Nate met me there and we shared a dish. To cool off from a  long day, we went across to street to get traditional Thai massages. They set us up in 2 adjacent beds and asked us to change into these funny tan robes but, don't worry, I shut the curtain between us. The massage was certainly a full body experience. I swear that woman had 3 arms. At one point, she lifted me up on her knees and starting laughing. I burst out laughing too. Massage? $9. Having your leg bent behind your back for you? Priceless. Im back at the hostel now to rest up before we hit some bars/clubs tonight. I'm exhausted, but after that shopping adventure, it would be a sin not to go out. In other news, I'm down to 250 baht ($7) in cash and still debit card less. Yes, I am accepting donations. Some of today's observations:

Everyone under the age of 18 is in the same school uniform

When people say thank you, they put their hands together and bow their heads

Bangkok is heavily comprised of tourists and I have yet to meet another American

Tap water is not safe to drink which is definitely an inconvenience

  [caption id="attachment_136" align="alignnone" width="3264"] View waiting for the subway[/caption] [caption id="attachment_137" align="alignnone" width="2448"] Shrine to the late king. These are EVERYWHERE.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_138" align="alignnone" width="3264"] Entrance to the market[/caption] [caption id="attachment_139" align="alignnone" width="2448"] On a busy day, all of these doors would be open[/caption] [caption id="attachment_141" align="alignnone" width="2448"] Nate and some penis soap[/caption] [caption id="attachment_142" align="alignnone" width="3264"] An intersection of shops[/caption] [caption id="attachment_143" align="alignnone" width="2448"] "I'm pretty sure the club will pop off if I wear this tonight"[/caption] [caption id="attachment_144" align="alignnone" width="2448"] Damn uniforms[/caption] [caption id="attachment_146" align="alignnone" width="2448"] Bangkok must be the motorbike capital of the world[/caption] [caption id="attachment_147" align="alignnone" width="2448"] This delicious meal was $4!![/caption] [caption id="attachment_148" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Views from the +66[/caption] [caption id="attachment_150" align="alignnone" width="2448"] Massage room[/caption] [caption id="attachment_151" align="alignnone" width="3264"] A kitty in a Yankees shirt. This pic is kinda inexplicable.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_152" align="alignnone" width="2048"] Giving a sticker and a pen to my girl LeeLee. She didn't speak any English, but we had fun doodling together.[/caption]