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linkspooky · 4 months

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SHIGARAKI VS. YUBEL: HOW TO SAVE YOUR VILLAIN

The failure of Deku to save Shigaraki isn’t just a tragic conclusion for Shigaraki’s arc, it’s also My Hero Academia failing as a story. When I say the story failed, I mean the story has failed to answer any of the questions it asked its audience. It’s themes, character arcs, everything that communicates the meaning of the story to the audience is no longer clear.

Saving Shigaraki was the central goal of not only the story itself, but the main character Deku. By failing in its goal you can’t call this a good ending. In order to illustrate why this goal of saving the villain is so important to both Deku’s character and the central idea of MHA, I’m going to provide a positive example in Yu-Gi-Oh GX were the main character Judai successfully saves their villain. One of these stories fails, and the other succeeds. I will illustrate why under the cut.

BROKEN THEMES = BROKEN STORY

When artists draw they have to consider things like perspective, anatomy, shading, light, coloring. Drawing has rules, and it’s hard to produce good art without knowing these rules beforehand. If I draw something that has bad anatomy, you can criticize me for that.

Writing has rules, just like drawing. The rules of storytelling are important because writing is an act of communication. You can write whatever you want, just like how you can draw whatever you want, but if you break the rules the audience won’t understand what you are trying to communicate.

When I refer to MHA as a broken story, I am referring to the fact that it has broken the rules of storytelling. As this youtuber explains.

“I guess we should first define what broke and broken even means in this context. Has the story turned into an unintelligible mess? Not really. Value judgements aside, the narrative is still functional and fulfills the criteria of being a story. So how can a story that still functions be broken? Maybe to you it cannot. But to me a story that is still functional isn’t enough. What I mean when I say MHA is broken is that it’s lost something crucial. A codifying style of structure, pacing and payoff that until a certain point was the core of its identity.”

I could launch into a long-winded explanation of what themes are, but for the sake of simplicity I like to define themes in terms of “Ask, and answer.” The author asks a question to the audience, and then by the end of the story provides an answer. The audience is also invited to come up with their own answer which prompts them to think about the story on a deeper level. The question both MHA and GX are asking both its main characters and the audience is “Can you save the villain?” with the additional complicated question of “Should you save the villain?” This post will detail how both stories go about answering those two questions, and more importantly why those answers matter for the story.

With Great Power… You know the rest.

My Hero Academia and Yu-Gi-Oh Gx are actually similar stories once you get past their superficial differences. MHA is a story with way better worldbuilding, compared to a society where everything revolves around the trading card game, and people go to school to be better at a trading card game.

However, if you get past that. They are both bildungsroman, stories about the main characters growing up into adults. They both have an academy setting where the goal is for the main character to graduate and enter the adult world. They are both shonen manga. GX is the sequel of Yu-Gi-Oh a manga that ran in Shonen Jump the exact same magazine as MHA. The biggest point of comparison is their main characters, who both start out as young and naive who are driven by their admiration of heroes. Deku is a fan of All Might who wants to become a hero despite not having a quirk, because he loves All might who saves everyone with a smile. Judai’s entire deck archetype revolves around “Elemental Heroes’ and later “Neo-Spacians” who are all based on popular sentai heroes like ultraman.

The central arc for both characters is to grow up. Growing up for both of them not only requires figuring out what kind of adult they want to be, but also what kind of hero they want to be.

Now I’m going to drastically oversimplify what a character arc is.

A character arc first starts out with the character being wrong. Being wrong is essential because if the character is right from the beginning, then there’s no point in telling the story. A character often holds the wrong idea about the world, or has some sort of flaw that hinders their growth. The narrative then needs to challenge them on that flaw. It usually sets up some kind of goal or win condition. That flaw gets in the way of a character “winning” or achieving their goal, so they need to fix that flaw first. If their ideals are wrong, then they need to think about what the right ideals are. If they’re too childish, they need to grow up. If they have unhealthy behaviors or coping mechanisms, they need to unlearn it and require better ones. Otherwise, that flaw will keep sabotaging them until the end.

I’m borrowing the word “win condition” from class1akids here because it’s an incredibly appropriate terminology. Midoriya needs to do “x” in order to win, otherwise this victory doesn’t feel earned. The “x” in this case is usually character development. As I said before, a story where the main character hasn’t changed from beginning to end feels pointless. Especially in Deku’s case, he was already a brave, strong hero who would charge right into battle and defeat the bad guys in chapter one, so him defeating Shigaraki in a fist fight doesn’t represent a change.

The story sets up not only “What does the hero need to do to win?” but also “How does the hero need to change in order to win?” A character either meets these requirements before the end of the story, or they don’t and usually this results in a negative ending.

MHA in its first half quite clearly set up both the final conflict of saving the villains, and also that saving the villains is its “win conditions.” The hero shouldn't be allowed to win without first fixing this flaw.

From this panel onward the central question Deku is forced to answer shifts from “Am I strong enough to defeat ShigarakI” to “Can I save Shigaraki?” However, much earlier than that All Might goes on to basically set up the win conditions of what makes the ultimate hero as someone who “Saves by winning, and wins by saving.”

All might: You can become the ultimate heroes. Ones who save by winning, and win by saving.

Therefore the story has set it’s criteria for what kind of hero Deku needs to become. If he wins without saving, then he’s failed to become what the series has set up as the Ultimate Hero.

Shigaraki and Yubel aren’t just narrative obstacles, or boss monsters to be killed like in a video game. They are narrative challenges, which means that the character can’t grow in any way if they don’t answer the challenge presented by the characters. They are villains who actively resist being saved, to provide a challenge for two heroes who define their heroism by saving others. The challenge they pose adds a third question to the story and the main characters.

"Can I save the villain?"

"Should I save the villain?"

"If I don't save the villain, then can I really call myself a hero?"

In other words the decision they make in saving, or not saving their final antagonist defines what kind of hero they are. In Deku’s case it’s even more critical he defines what hero he wants to be because the MHA is also a generational story, and several of the kids are asked to prove how exactly this generation of heroes is going to surpass the last one. The kids growing physically stronger than the last generation isn’t a satisfactory answer, Deku getting strong enough to punch Shigaraki hard is not a satisfactory answer, because we are reading a story and not watching a boxing match.

I’m going to focus on the last two questions though for a moment. Many people who argue against saving villains like Shigaraki argue he is a mass murderer and therefore isn’t worthy of salvation. However, the act of saving Shigaraki isn’t a reflection of Shigaraki himself, but rather the kind of hero Deku wants to be. It all boils down to Spiderman. In the opening issue of Spiderman, teenage Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider and suddenly gains super strength, the ability to stick to walls along with other powers. However, being a teenager he uses these powers selfishly at first. He doesn’t feel the obligation to use his powers for other people, and therefore when he sees a robbery happening right in front of him he lets the robber go. However, because he lets the robber go, the robber then attempts to hijack a car and kills his Uncle Ben in the process. If Spiderman had stopped the robber then he might have prevented that from happening. He had the power to stop the robber, but he didn’t feel responsible or obligated to save other people. As a result Uncle Ben dies. It’s not enough to have power, ti’s how you use that power that reflects who you are, therefore: “with great power comes great responsibility.”

The choice to save Shigaraki actually has little to do with whether or not Shigaraki is redeemable, but rather how Deku chooses to use his power, and what he thinks he is responsible for reflects who Deku is as a person. Deku himself also clearly outlines how he wants to use his power, that One for All is a power for saving, and not killing.

How he uses his power reflects Deku’s ideal in saving others, and therefore if he doesnt use his power to save, then he’s failed to live up to his ideals. It's not whether it's morally right to save a murderer like Shigaraki, but rather the way Deku wants to choose to use his power. It's about whether he feels the responsibility to save others.

Judai explores an incredibly similar arc to Deku. They are basically both asked what kind of responsibilities a hero is supposed to have, which is also a metaphor for growing up to handle the responsibilities of adulthood. As both characters start out with incredibly naive and childish ideas about what a hero is. Therefore realizing what a hero is responsible for is key to them growing as a character. However, Judai is different from Deku. In some ways he’s more like Bakugo. Judai is a prodigy who’s naturally good at dueling. He doesn’t duel to save others, but rather because duels are fun and he’s good at it. He’s very much like Bakugo, who admired All Might as a hero just as much as Deku did, but admired the fact that he was strong and always won rather than he saved others.

However, I would say both Deku and Judai are questioning what a hero is responsible for. They are both asking if they have the responsibility to use their power to save others. If they have to fight for other people, just because they have power. His first big challenge as a character comes from Edo Phoenix, who calls out Judai for not thinking through what it means to be a hero, and what responsibilities heroes carry. Judai duels because he thinks it’s fun. He will show up to duel to help his friends, but that’s because he’s the most powerful person in the group. Even then it’s because he finds fighting strong opponents to be enjoyable. Bakugo will beat up a villain, but for him it’s more about winning then if the action will save someone or not.

Judai is more often than not pushed into the role of being a hero, he doesn’t play the hero because he’s a particularly selfless person, and he’ll often avoid responsibility if not forced. He has power but no sense of responsibility and the narrative calls them out as a problem.

Edo: Can you even fathom that, Judai?

For Judai, he can’t understand the responsibility of being a hero. For Deku, he idealizes heroes so much he can’t understand that there are people out there the heroes have failed to save. These two callouts towards Deku and Judai are discussing similar because they’re both discussing where a hero’s responsibilities lie. Is a hero responsible for saving everyone? Is someone strong like Judai responsible for using their strength to help other people?

Judai’s arc continues into the third season where he’s not shown to just be naive but ignorant. He’s not just childish, he actively resists growing up because he doesn’t want to take on adult responsibilities.

THe same way that Deku just decides not to think about whether or not All Might failed to save people in the panels above. However, in Judai's case he's actively called out for his choice to remain ignorant.

Satou: Now, which one is at fault? Judai: Isn’t it the guy who saw it, but didn’t pick it up. Satou: Not quite. If one is aware of the trash that fell, it may be picked up someday. But there is no possibility fo the unaware one ever picking it up. Judai-kun you are the foolish one unaware of the trash that has fallen. Judai: Are you calling me out for how I am? Satou: Your behavior towards me was atrocious. The worst was attending class only for credit, even if you were there you only slept. Judai: Yeah, I know. I was all bad, but it wasn’t that big a- Satou: It is important. You see, one by one, the students inspired by your attitude were losing their motivation. Now if you were a mediocre duelist, then this would not be an issue. Satou: However, you are the same hero who defeated the three mythic demons. Every single student in the academy admires you. You should have been a model for this academy. Judai: Me, a role model? Are you kidding? I just do whatever I feel like doing. Satou: Great power comes with great responsibility. Yet, as you remain unaware of that, you’ve spread your lethargy and self-indulgence.

seems like a minor issue, but look how Judai responds to the accusations. “I just do whatever I feel like doing.” Satou is arguing that Judai should pay attention to the influence he has on others because of his power, because how he chooses to use that power affects others. However, Judai chooses to actively not look at the consequences of his actions because he doesn’t want to take on that level of responsibility, and therefore he’s looking away from the trash.

While it seems like it doesn’t matter in Satou’s specific example, not thinking of the consequences, or how you use your power can have unexpected consequences. Spiderman doesn’t feel like it’s his responsibility to stop a bank robber, and that bank robber shoots his uncle. You could still argue it’s not Spiderman’s responsibility to stop every crime in the world, and I guess no one owes anyone anything from that point of view - but Spiderman failing to act responsibility had the consequence of directly hurting someone else.

Spiderman has to live with that consequence because it was his own Uncle that was hurt. This is where we really reach the duality of Judai.

In GX, Judai is, symbolically speaking, The Fool of the Tarot Deck, the Novice Alchemist — a person brimming with infinite potential, yet one who is also supremely ignorant, who walks forward with his eyes closed and often unknowingly causes harm in his great ignorance. In this, he is very much the embodiment of the faults we most commonly associate with teenagers — selfishness, recklessness, shallowness, a lack of dedication or empathy when it’s most needed. Like most people, he has good traits that work to balance out some of the above, but his narrative path through GX ends up being that of the flawed hero undone by his faults — and then that of the atoner, the repentant sinner. In his case, the mistakes of his teenage years are the catalyst for his growth from a boy into a man burdened with duty and purpose. Judai is someone with infinite potential, with great power, but also ignorant on how he should use that power, and that makes him an incredibly flawed hero who needs to learn how that power should be used.

Deku similarly exists in a society where heroes deliberately turn a blind eye to the suffering of a certain type of victim. Shigaraki’s speech heavily resmebles Satou’s speech about garbage on the side of the road.

Shigarali: "For generations you pretended not to see those you coudln't protect and swept their pain under the rug. It's tainted everything you've built."

Deku shares Judai’s ignorance, because he’s not only a part of a system that doesn’t even see trash on the side of the road, but he also worships heroes so much that he’s incapable of criticizing them. If Deku saw the flaws of heroes, but at first didn’t have the courage to speak out, but eventually gained the courage that would be one thing. However, if he doesn’t see the flaws of heroes, then the problem will never be fixed.

There are also consequences for both Judai and Deku failing to use their powers responsibly. These consequences take the form of the villains who came about because of all of society’s ignorance to the suffering of victims (Shigaraki) and because of the main character’s ignorance to their suffering (Yubel). Shigaraki and Yubel are also explicitly victims that the heroes failed to save, turned into villains who are active threats to the heroes.

Should I save the villain?

The answer is yes, because the decision to save is reflective of the kind of hero each character wants to be. Each story clearly sets up that Deku and Judai aren’t punisher style heroes who shoot their villains, they are being set up as heroes who save. Deku needs to “save by winning.” As for Judai, a big deal is made of Judai’s admiration for another character Johan who represents a more idealistic kind of hero. Johan unlike Judai is someone who duels with a purpose, something Judai outright says he admires because he’s empty in comparison.

Judai: Johan what have you been dueling for? See, it’s about fun for me… Well, for the surprise and happiness too. I guess I do do it for the fun. Sorry, I guess I put you on the spot by asking out of nowhere. Johan: What’s this about Judai? Judai: It’s nothing. Johan: I suppose there is one goal I have. Johan: Even if someone doesn’t have the power to see spirits, they can still form a bond with a spirit. That’s why I do it for people like him. [...] Johan: I'll fight for everyone who believes in me, and I'll do it with my Duel Monsters. Judai: I'm jealous you've got feelings like those in you.

Becoming a hero who uses their power to help others isn’t just a goal the story sets for Judai, it’s a goal that Judai sets for himself because of his admiration for Johan. Johan represents the idealistic hero Judai wants to be, but is also held back from because of his personality flaws. Johan represents the kind of heroic ideal that Deku is aspiring to be.

Johan’s ultimate goal isn’t punishing the wicked, but to use his power to save others.

Johan: Judai, it was my dream to save everyone through my dueling!

The story sets up the idea that it’s not enough for Judai to simply be strong, he’s also challenged to become a savior who uses his power to help others like Johan. Deku needs to “save by winning” and Judai needs to “Save everyone through his dueling.” However, Johan also adds another condition to what saving means. His idea of saving isn’t to defeat a villain, but rather his dream is to help connect spirits and humans together, even if there are humans who can’t see spirits. Johan doesn’t save people with the power of physical force, but rather the power of human connection.

Should I save the villain?

Here the answer is "Yes", because wants to become more like Johan someone who uses their power to help others not just for themselves. Then we reach the third question

If I don't save the villain, can I really call myself a hero?

It once again comes to power and responsibility. Heroes have great power, and they are responsible in how they use that power, if they use it irresponsibly then there are consequences. Shigaraki wants to destroy hero society, because the heroes irresponsibly use their power to turn a blind eye to everyone’s suffering.

People suffer when heroes fail to live up to their responsibilities. The entire conflict of season 3 is created by Judai failing to save Yubel. If Judai had helped Yubel when they most needed it, instead of abandoning them, then Yubel would never have been twisted by the light of destruction, would never have attempted to teleport the school to another dimension, would never have attacked all of JUdai’s friends.

These consequences matter. Deku can turn his eyes away from Shigaraki’s suffering, but let’s say a hero failed to stop a robbery, or rather he didn’t even try, and because of that his mom was shot and died in the street. Would Deku consider the man who failed to stop a bank robbery a hero? When Spiderman let a bank robber go instead of trying to stop him, was he being a hero in that moment? Both the stories and the characters themselves have defined heroes as people who use their powers to save others, therefore if Judai and Yubel fail to save their villains then they can’t be called heroes by the story’s own definition. Now let’s finally return to the question of "Can I save the villain?"

Was there ever someone you couldn’t save?

m going to start with Yu-Gi-Oh Gx as a positive example of how to save your villain. Gx works for two reasons. One, it’s established from the start that Yubel isn’t beyond salvation, and two, it makes it so Judai can’t win without saving Yubel. The conflict of the story does not end until Judai makes the decision to save Yubel. In some ways the writing is even stronger because Judai is directly responsible for the pain and suffering that Yubel went through that turned them into a villain in the first place. Yubel isn’t just a victim, they’re specifically Judai’s victim.

Yubel is a duel spirit who is also essentially Judai’s childhood friend. A duel spirit just like the kind that Johan wants to save. During their childhood Yubel got too overprotective of Judai, and started to curse his friends for making him cry or upsetting him in any way. Until everyone Judai’s age started avoiding him and Judai became all alone with only Yubel for company. Judai’s decision was to abandon Yubel at that time. He took the yubel card and shot them into space, hoping that being bathed in space rays will somehow “fix” what was wrong with them. I know that’s silly but just go with it. Judai abandoning Yubel had the unintended consequence of Yubel being subjected to the light of destruction, a corrupting light that subjected Yubel to years of pain. This pain literally takes the form of Yubel burning alive.

Yubel connected to his dreams called out for Judai every night, only for Judai’s parents to give him surgery that repressed his memories of Yubel causing him to forget them entirely. Yubel then spent the next ten years alone in space, continuously subjected to painful torture, with their cries for help being ignored.

"I was suffering even as you came to forget about me..."

Yubel is then met with the question of how can Judai treat them this way if they loved him so much? As from Yubel’s perspective, they’ve only ever tried to protect Judai, only for Judai to not only throw them away, but subject them to painful torture and ignore their cries for help. Judai effectively moves on with his life, goes to duel academy, makes friends while Yubel is left to suffer in silence all but forgotten. This is where Judai’s ignorance has serious plot consequences.

It’s not just the pain that Yubel endured that made them snap. It’s that their pain went ignored.

Yubel holds out the faint hope that Judai will answer their calls fro help until they finally burn up upon re-entry into earth’s orbit. At which point they’re left as nothing more than a single hand crawling on the ground. Yubel who cannot fathom why Judai would cause them so much pain, and then forget about them, convinces themselves that Judai must be causing them pain, BECAUSE he loves them.

But you see, I couldn't possibly forget about you in the time that I've suffered...

Judai is allowed to move on with his life, to make friends, to spend the next ten years doing so while Yubel is subjected to ten years of agony. When they finally escape their painful torment, they see all the friends Judai has made while they’re left alone and forgotten. However, Yubel’s goal isn’t revenge. Rather, it’s to make Judai share and recognize their pain. WHich is why I said it’s not the fact that they were made to suffer, but their suffering is ignored. Yubel’s entire philosophy revolves around the idea that sharing pain is an expression of love, and that they and Judai share their love for each other by hurting each other.

"That's why I sought to fill all those linked to you, your world, with both sadness and anguish..."

For Yubel, making all of Judai’s friends suffer and Judai themselves suffer is a way of making them and Judai equals again. They want to show “their love” for Judai, but it’s more about forcing Judai to recognize the pain he’s caused them by forcing him through the same pain. Yubel’s philosophy of sharing pain is actually a twisted form of empathy.

They’re not entirely wrong either, that even people who love each other can cause each other pain, and that if one person is suffering alone in a relationship or the suffering is one-sided then there’s something wrong with that relationship.

Yubel: I get it now… You weren’t in love, with Echo. Yubel: No.. you may have loved her just enough to clear the conditions in palace for you to control Exodia, but the you didn’t truly love each other. Yubel: You were only unfairly hurting her, while you stayed unharmed. You wouldn’t suffer. You wouldn’t suffer. You wouldn’t be in pain. Amon: What are you getting at? Yubel: I’ve been hurt! I’ve suffered! I’ve been in pain. That’s why I’m making JUdai feel the same things I did!

Yubel’s twisted theory of love, is a pretty thinly veiled cry for empathy.

They break out into tears when talking to Amon about the way they’ve hurt and suffered. They clearly state upfront that their goal is for Judai to recognize their love. One of the first things they say to Judai is a plea for Judai to remember them.

Yubel is presented as a very human character suffering through a lot of pain throughout their entire villai arc, they break down into tears multiple times, they cry out in agony, they're visibly suffering and you see their mental walls begin to break down when Judai denies them any empathy.

Yubel is actually incredibly clear and straightforward about their desire to be saved by Judai. However, Judai doesn’t lift a single finger to help Yubel the entire arc, even though they themselves admit they are directly responsible for Yubel’s suffering but they helped create who they are today.

Judai plunges into a different dimension and gives up everything to save someone, but it’s Johan, not Yubel they try to save. You have Johan, the perfect friend, and perfect victim that Judai gets obsessed over and will not stop at anything to save, and then you have Yubel, the imperfect victim that is actively harming Judai and all of his friends that Judai chooses to ignore. The whole season Judai only focuses on saving the perfect victim Johan, and this is clearly shown to be a flaw. Judai doesn’t just ignore Yubel to save Johan, he also ignores every single one of his friends.

Judai only caring about saving Johan, and deliberately ignoring and abandoning the friends who came with him to help, essentially abandoning them the way he did Yubel leads to another consequence. After he abandons them they get captured, rounded up, and actually die and become human sacrifices.

Losing his friends, causes Judai to snap. Judai becomes the supreme king and decides power is all that matters; he starts killing duel spirits en masse in order to forge the super polymerization card. Which means being left alone, suffering alone, being abandoned by everyone causes Judai to snap the exact same way that Yubel did.

In fact Judai is only saved from his darkest moment, because two of his friends sacrifice their lives, trying to get through to him and appeal to his humanity. At that point Judai’s friends could have just chosen to put him down like a mad dog, to punish him for the amount of people he’s killed, but instead they try to save him because of their friendship.

I just want to save my friend. That is all.

By the time Judai is facing Yubel in their final fight, Judai doesn’t have the moral highground against Yubel in any way whatsoever. They’ve both lashed out because of the pain they endured and killed countless people in the process of lashing out. The only real difference between them is that Judai is lucky. He had friends to support him at his lowest point, while Yubel didn’t. Does Judai learn from Jim’s example, and go out of their way to save Yubel the same way they were saved because Yubel is still a friend? Nope, Judai tries to kill Yubel at this point.

I made a lot of friends... And they all taught me something… real love is wide enough, large enough and deep enough to fill the universe. Your so-called love is only a conceited delusion.

Like, Judai, sweetie baby honey darling. How was Yubel supposed to make friends when they were floating in the empty void of space?

Judai hasn’t learned, they are still ignorant, and still turn a blind eye to Yubel’s suffering. After all if his love is wide enough, large enough,and deep enough to fill the universe then why don’t thy have any room in their heart whatsoever for empathizing with Yubel?

Judai making friends while Yubel was trapped in space doesn’t make Judai a better person than Yubel, it makes Judai lucky. Judai doesn’t even appreciate that luck, because he treats his friends like garbage. It’s not about whether Yubel is worthy of salvation, because Judai is a mass murderer and his friends still went to great lengths to save them anyway. It’s that Judai doesn’t want to empathize with Yubel, because they still want to remain ignorant and irresponsible. Judai wants to continue playing hero, with a very black and white definition of what a hero is. By this point Judai’s killed lots of people, but if he makes Yubel the villain in the situation, he can keep playing hero. He doesn’t have to look at himself and what he’s done, because blaming everything that happened on Yubel and then putting Yubel down like a mad dog allows Judai to absolve his own guilt. Judai practically ignores Yubel’s cries for help, even when Yubel spells it out for them.

I couldn't have lived with the heartache unless I felt that I was being loved...

At this point Yubel themselves acknowledges that their love was just a delusion. That it was a coping mechanism, because they couldn’t live with all the pain otherwise. WIthout it they would have just died, which makes Judai unmoved. The implication here is that Judai thinks yes, Yubel should have just died in that crater. It would have been easier for Yubel to die a perfect victim, then for Yubel to crawl out of that crater and go on to hurt other people. While that may be true the same can be said for Judai - it would have been better if Judai died rather than become the Supreme King. His friends could have put him down like a mad dog, you could have even called that justice - but they didn’t. Judai making no attempt to save Yubel isn’t because he thinks it’s morally wrong to save someone who’s killed as many people as Yubel has, or because he thinks he can’t forgive Yubel, it’s because Judai is taking the easy way out. Johan is a nice, easy victim to save, because he’s Judai’s perfect boyfriend, while Yubel is a complex victim that requires Judai to understand their suffering. Even the act of saving Johan isn’t about Johan himself, it’s about the fact that Judai feels guilt over Johan’s disappearance. What Judai wants isn’t really to save a friend, but to stop feeling guilty over that friend. Judai isn’t just disgusted by Yubel’s actions towards his friend, he also wants to avoid the guilt he feels over causing all of Yubel’s suffering, because it requires acknowledging the complex reality that he is both victim and perpretrator in this case, just as Yubel is both victim and perpetrator.

So how can an arc where Judai doesn’t try to save Yubel until the last possible minute, be better than an arc where Deku makes it his goal for the final act of the manga to save the crying boy in Shigaraki?

It’s because the story does not let Judai get away with his continual refusal to empathize with Yubel. Yubel’s entire character revolves around empathy, in the form of sharing pain. As a duel monster, Yubel’s effect is that they are a 0/0 attack monster who is immune to all damage, but when you attack them they deal all the damage back to you. Which means that Yubel will respond to all the pain they feel, by causing you just as much pain in return. Yubel is not a character who can be defeated in a fight, or a duel. In fact they’re the only Yu-Gi-Oh villain who never loses a duel once. The most Judai can do is duel them to a draw, and they draw three times. Yubel wins against everyone else who challenges them. In a way Yubel is like Shigaraki, the ultimate, unkillable enemy that can’t be done away with violence. Judai’s refusal to empathize with Yubel or attempt communication also makes them worse, every time Yubel is hurt they escalate. THe more Judai hurts them, the more they will hurt in return, it’s a cycle that will never be broken simply by killing Yubel, because Yubel is unkillable.

Not only that but the story has gone to great lengths to show that saving Yubel is the correct course of action. If Judai doesn’t save Yubel, he’s basically spitting on the selflessness Jim showed in saving him. In fact if he doesn’t save Yubel, Judai is contradicting his own words on what makes a good friend. Sho once asks Judai after witnessing his brother change, what he should do if a person you lov ehas changed into an entirely different person. What if they're a person you don't even recognize any more? A person you don’t even necessarily like anymore?

That's why if it were me. I'd probably just be looking after him until the very end, even if I didn't like him. I'd do it cause I think it'd prove that I care about him.

Judai doesn't even say that Sho is obligated to save his brother or morally redeem him, just that he has to keep looking at him instead of turning away or ignoring him.

Judai is being a bad friend, by his own definition. By choosing to deliberately look away from Yubel, Judai’s not living up to his advice for Sho for how you treat people you care about.

Which is why the resolution for Judai and Yubel’s arc is so important, because it’s done by Judai finally acknowledging Yubel’s pain, and promising to watch over them from now on, words that are followed by the action of physically fusing their souls together so they’ll never be alone again. Judai doesn’t just say pretty words about how they won’t ignore the crying child inside of Yubel, but instead he makes a sacrifice to save Yubel at risk to themselves to show their words are backed up by actions. Judai says Yubel will never be alone again, and then he commits.

"And even if that means I won't exist anymore... I don't care."

Judai has resolved his character arc by this action, because Judai is finally taking on responsibility and that responsibility is watching over Yubel, so the two of them can atone together. Judai even says himself this isn’t an act of sacrifice on his part, but rather him finally accepting adult responsibilities.

Judai: I wouldn't sacrifice myself for you guys. I'm just going on a journey to grow from a kid into a man.

Judai needed to save Yubel to complete his character arc and grow as a person. If Judai hadn’t saved Yubel, he would have still remained an ignorant child. By learning not to turn a blind eye to Yubel’s pain, and also smacking sacrifices and physically doing something to atone for the way they ignored Yubel up until this point they’ve not only saved Yubel they’ve also done something to address their wrongs. This also continues into the fourth season where Judai’s personal growth results in him learning what kind of hero he wants to be as in Season 4 in order to atone for the spirits that Judai slaughtered, he decides to leave his friends behind and walk the earth with Yubel helping spirits and humans get along with each other. In fact Judai’s final speech as a character isn’t even about how strong he is as a hero, but how weak he is as a person.

And I put my friends through some rough times. Form that, I figured a few things out... all I can do is believe in them.

The lesson Judai learned is because he’s weak, he needs to empathize and believe in other people the same way that his friends once believed in him when he was at his lowest point. Judai’s not the strongest hero, he’s the weakest one, but that gives him the ability to empathize with people who were lost just like he was, and guide them back from the darkness.

The story of how Deku became the worst hero.

I’m going to say this right now it might turn out next week that Shigaraki is just fine, and he’ll use the overhaul quirk to reconstruct his body. However, even if that happens Deku has completely failed at his goal of saving Shigaraki for the reasons I’ll illustrate below. In theory, Deku’s arc of saving Shigaraki, and therefore winning by saving should be much easier for the story to accomplish and also much less frustrating to watch. After all, Shigaraki has been around since the beginning of the manga, he’s literally the first villain that Deku faces. He’s also the first villain that Deku talks to, where he brings up the idea that there were some people All Might failed to save. There’s also many intentional parallels between the two characters, the entire manga is about their parallel journeys of becoming the next generation hero and the next generation villain. Shigaraki even directly quotes the line at one point that all he wanted was for someone in his house to tell him he could still be a hero, the same line Deku said in the first chapter was that he wanted his mom to tell him to be a hero instead of apoalogizing to him for being quirkless.

Not only is the setup for Shigaraki and Deku made obvious (Deku can redeem Shigaraki by telling him that he can still be a hero too), but Deku himself states out loud that he wants to save the crying child inside of Shigaraki.

Judai runs away from Yubel the whole time, whereas Deku is running towards Shigaraki and actively makes it his goal to understand Shigaraki and continue to see him as a human being rather than a villain. The story also makes it clear that saving Shigaraki is necessary to saving hero society as a whole. After all Yubel is just Judai’s victim. Whereas Shigaraki is the victim of all of society. He’s the crying child who was ignored. The cycle won’t be broken if heroes continue choosing to ignore people like Shigaraki, because more victims will grow up to replace him.

Shigaraki: Everything I've witnessed, this whole system you've built has always rejected me. Now I'm ready to reject it. That's why I destroy. That's why I took this power formyself? Simple enough, yeah? I don't care if you don't understand. That's what makes us heroes and villains.

Shigaraki rejects the world because the world continues to reject him. THe solution to this problem is not rejecting Shigaraki, because Shigaraki won’t go away, the system will just continue to reject people like Shigaraki. As long as heroes and villains don’t understand each other, they’ll keep being forced to fight and the conflict won’t end, because hero society is what engineers it’s own villains.

clear as day by the story itself. If the objective of saving Shigaraki is clear, then how exactly did the story fail in this objective? What went wrong? In this case it’s a failure of framing, and breaking the rules of “show don’t tell.” Stories are all about actions and consequences. When a character makes a certain action in a story, the way other characters around them, the world, and whatever consequences that action frames that action in a certain light. It provides context for how we are supposed to interpret that character in that moment.

For example, when a character does something wrong and another character directly confronts them over what they did wrong, that frames them as in the wrong. The story is criticizing the character for what they did wrong. Context is everything in a story. Stories are just ideas, so they require framing and context to communicate those ideas for the audience. Certain character attributes can be strengths or flaws depending on the context. My go to example is that if you put Othello in Hamlet, the conflict would be resolved in five seconds because Othello’s straightforward personality and determination would have him kill Hamlet’s uncle without questioning things. Whereas, Hamlet constantly questioning and second guessing himself would lead to the worst ending possible. However, if you put Hamlet in Othello, then Hamlet wouldn’t fall prey to Iago’s manipulations, because Othello doubts and questions everything so he wouldn’t believe Iago the way Othello did.

Hamlet’s contemplative and introverted nature can be a strength in one situation, and a flaw in another. Othello’s tendency to act without thinking things through can be a strength in one situation, and a flaw in another. Context matters, because context tells you how you’re supposed to interpret a certain characters actions, and therefore tells you more about that character. This is why people repeat “Show don’t tell” as the golden rule of storytelling, it’s one thing to say something about a character, it’s another to us the characters actions in the story itself to show them something about the character.

What’s even worse then breaking the rules of show don’t tell however, is telling the audience one thing, and then going onto show in the narrative something completely different. In that case the narrative becomes muddled and confusing to read. If I the narrator say “Hamlet is someone who overthinks everything” and then in the story Hamlet walks up to his uncle and kills him with no hesitation, then the narrator is straight up unreliable. It becomes impossible to tell as an author what message I’m trying to get across about these characters, because I’m telling you one thing and showing another.

This is why the writing fails in the second half of My Hero Academia because we are constantly told one thing, but then the story shows something entirely different and sometimes even contradictory to the thing we are being told.

Judai is a much worse hero than Deku, he always runs away from Yubel, and we’re never directly told that he’s supposed to save Yubel either. However, the narrative is incredibly consistent. Judai’s behavior of running away is consistent with his character. All the other character call Judai selfish for abandoning his friends (and they’re not even talking about Yubel). Judai is never painted in any positive light for his actions, therefore we as the audience understand Judai’s behavior is wrong and he needs to fix it. The narrative makes it clear that Judai needs to grow up, and Judai is never rewarded for his refusal to grow up, he’s ruthlessly chewed out, not by his enemies but also by his own friends. However, the narrative isn’t merciless on him either. Season 3 of GX is dark, but it’s not grimdark. Even when Judai loses his way, he’s still shown love and compassion by those same friends who go to great lengths for his sake. The narrative criticize Judai but it never insists that he’s beyond redemption and needs to be put down like a mad dog.

The message is very clear, that not only does Judai need to grow up, but he also deserves the chance to grow and change, which is why he should give Yubel a similar chance. In comparison the story sets out this clear narrative arc for Deku of understanding Shigaraki, but it never challenges him for failing to understand Shigaraki. If you listen to what the narrative says, how other characters describe Deku, and what Deku himself says and only read it on a surface level then yes, Deku’s goal is to save Shigaraki. If you analyze actions however, he is in effect just like Judai he never takes any meaningful action or steps towards Shigaraki, nor does he think of what saving Shigaraki might look like or entail.

The story describes Deku as someone who is possessed by a drive to save others that eclipses all common understanding, but does the story give us any examples of that behavior?

Judai is characterized as a selfish, irresponsible child, and the story gives us countless examples of his immaturity and how it hurts others. Does the story of MHA do the same for Deku's purported virtues? Let’s run through Deku’s actions, step by step, the actions themselves and how they are framed in order to find any evidence that Deku possesses this drive to save others. Does Deku reflect at all on the question of:

Can Shigaraki be Saved?

Deku leaves on a journey to try to understand villains. When he makes a perfunctory attempt to understand and empathize with Muscle, and Muscle replies that some people are just evil does Deku keep trying to reach his heart? Nope, he just punches him.

Well, if he’s failed in his goal of understanding a villain then does the story call him out on his failure? Does Deku face any sort of narrative consequence for that failure? Is he framed negatively for failing to understand Muscle, the same way that Judai is framed for abandoning Yubel? Nope. Deku doesn’t express any frustration at all over is inability to reason with Muscle. There’s also no negative consequence for Deku just choosing to punch muscle, it turns out that there was no reasoning with Muscle and some people are just bad eggs so Deku was right. It’s okay for characters to fail, but if a character fails and it’s not framed by the story as a failure then the writing itself as failed. Why even bother to include this scene in the first place if it doesn’t advance Deku’s character in any way? This scene in spite of showing Deku failing to understand someone actively paints Deku in a positive light, because of how much stronger he is ow that he can OHKO a guy that gave him trouble all the way back in the camp arc.

This scene doesn’t tell anything about Deku as a character, it just makes him look cool. In fact that’s precisely the problem, Deku isn’t adequately challenged as a character, because he’s never allowed to fail. Even when he does obviously fail at the things the narrative set out for him to do, he’s never challenged on those failures, because the priority isn’t to make Deku grow, it’s to make Deku look good. As I said before, Judai is the hero because he’s the weakest. Deku is the hero because he’s the strongest. Well, next a big flaw on Deku’s part is that he worshippd the same heroes that were making the world corrupt. Heroes like Endeavor who created people like Dabi. So, does Deku take action to either criticize the older generation of heroes, or separate himself from them in order to try to be better than them? Nope, he teams up with them. Not only that, Deku can’t do something as simple as tell Gran Torino out loud about his plans to save Shigaraki. If Deku feels that Shigaraki is worthy of salvation then he should at least try to make an argument here about his ideal of saving others.

Now here’s the thing, if Deku hadn’t directly looked at the camera and told us he wanted to save Shgiaraki, would we be able to deduce his intentions from his actions? If you took away all of Deku’s internal monologue, and just showed him punching Muscular and saying nothing when Gran Torino says he may have no choice but to kill Shigaraki would anything about Deku’s actions indicate that he wants to save Shigaraki? Let me use avatar the last airbender as a positive example for a moment. People say that Aang’s desire to spare Ozai’s life comes out of left field, but like if you analyze Aang as a character down to their bending, and the way they react in situations they always prefer de-escalation, or taking a third option as opposed to confronting things head on. It’s literally why Toph says Aang has trouble learning earth bending, because as an airbender, he always tries to look for some other way to solve the problem, instead of a direct confrontation with force. As early as season one, Aang tells Zuko someone who has tried to kill him several times that he was friends with someone from the fire nation one hundred years ago and in a different situation they could be friends. Aang’s desire to save the Firelord may not have been told to us until the last possible minute, but Aang’s aversion to violence has always been a part of his character from the beginning. However, Deku never shows any similar aversion to violence. There’s basically no example where he ever tries to de-escalate a situation, or he avoids a conflict by seeking a third option.

Anyway, let’s move onto the next example. In the confrontation where Lady Nagant fights Deku, when Deku learns the fact that the heroes were employing government hitmen to attack people for uhh… exercising free speech does Deku give any reaction to this information? When Lady Nagant says that Deku is only going to bring back the status quo, does he show her any meaningful evidence that he won’t do that.

Deku’s response is because the world is so grey, he needs to extend a helping hand to others. Which you know what thay could be a response. Deku saying that his response to the corruption of the hero world is that he now understands that society led some people down the wrong path, so his way of addressing the wrongs of that society is lending a helping hand to as many people as possible even people he used to think was irredeemable.

I will give Deku the benefit of the doubt, I think this is an acceptable answer. I can’t save everyone, but that’s not going to stop me from trying to save as many people as possible and maybe I can save people who were this society’s victims on the way too. However, does Deku demonstrate his resolve to extend a helping hand in any meaningful way.

Deku is met with an armless, insane Overhaul who’s begging for someone to help heal his father figure in the Yakuza from his coma. This isn’t like Muscular who insists that there’s no helping him, Deku is met face by face with someone asking him for help. Deku’s gotta extend a helping arm whenever he can, because he knows some people were abandoned and led astray by this society… Unless that person is someone he doesn’t like personally. At which point he only helps them on a conditional basis. We are told Deku will save anyone and everyone, but Deku is met face to face with an armless man who is begging for help and Deku’s does nothing to help him. Deku’s not criticized for refusing to help overhaul either, it’s never brought up again. When Deku begins to experience a mental breakdown because of all the people he’s trying to help in the Dark Deku arc, we are told this is the result of Deku trying to save everyone, but we do not see Deku attempting to save a single villain after Muscular and Nagant.

He exhausts himself beating up villains that AFO sends after him, and only helping innocent civilians. Which would be fine if this arc were about how Deku is running away from his real responsibilities the same way that Judai was running, but that’s not what we’re being told. We are told that this is all part of an arc of Deku learning to understand villains and be a hero.

Deku is asked “Can you save Shigaraki?” by the story, but Deku never at any point has to deliberate on that question. Judai doesn’t deliberate on that question either, but him choosing not to think about things and stay ignorant is the point.

It’s actually fine to make Deku stagnate as a character. It’s fine to have him take the easy way out by just punching villains and giving up on them after one conversation. It’s fine for him to be empathetic to other people’s suffering, or even self-righteous. It’s fine for him to be ignorant.

He could be all of those things if it was a part of a narrative teaching him to unlearn his behavior. In fact the narrative might have been better if Deku started out by saying he didn’t want to save Shigaraki, that there was no choice but to kill him, because then at least his actions would be consistent with his words. Then his lack of empathy and his tendency to resort to violently beating up villains instead of avoiding violence would be character flaws he could work on. Deku however, is presented to us as this empathic hero who is always willing to give others a second chance though he never actually sticks his neck out in order to do so. Continuing on with our slow crawl through MHA, one of Deku’s friends is revealed as the traitor. Deku has a heartwarming scene fo saying that Aoyama can still be a hero, but look at his actions. He lets the adults in the room physically tie Aoyama in a straightjacket and imprison him, for the crime of… doing bad things while he was in a hostage situation. Apparently, if a bank teller helps the bank robber by giving them money when the robber has a gun to his head, the swat team should just snipe the bank teller. Not only does he not defend Aoyama against the adults, or stand up for him, or tell the adults they’re wrong to treat Aoyama a clear cut victim who had a gun to his head and was bing held hostage like he’s a villain - he also lets the adults use Aoyama an innocent victim as bait in order to lure out AFO. Deku tells Aoyama he can still be a hero, but he doesn’t defend Aoyama as a victim of being taken hostage, nor does he stop the adults from further taking advantage of him and throwing him right into danger. Some people are just led the wrong way that’s why they need to be extended a helping hand, but fuck Aoyama I guess. He needs to earn the right to be sympathized with by physically putting his life in danger.

Deku can’t even go out of his way to save a friend who he’s known for the better part of a year, when that friend is a complex victim forced to do bad things.

Then Deku and Uraraka have a conversation where they both, kind of ruminate on the idea that maybe the villains are human beings who are worthy of sympathy.

In fact Uraraka is actively trying to dehumanize Toga by looking at the destroyed city, so she won't have to think of Togaas a person.

The language here is also a major fault of this arc. It focuses far too hard on “forgiveness” over and over again. As I said before, saving Shigaraki isn’t about Shigaraki at all, it’s about Deku, and how he wants to use his power as a hero. Deku has even stated himself that he doesn’t believe that OFA is a power that should be used for killing people. So why does whether Toga or Shigaraki are forgivable or not even matter? It’s the same with Deku refusing Overhaul any sympathy. If he’s so morally opposed to abusers, then why does he work with Endeavor and defend him at every visible opportunity, even in front of his victims? Whether or not Deku can forgive Shigaraki doesn’t matter, because Deku is not the moral arbitrator or right and wrong. In fact Deku doesn’t even have any morals, so how is this a moral debate? Is there any point where Deku gives a clear definition of what he thinks right and wrong is? Does he quot Immanuel Kant to the audience?

Batman doesn’t kill people, not because he thinks that every last person on earth can be saved, but because Bruce Wayne an incredibly rich white man thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have the authority to decide who lives and who dies. When Bruce doesn’t kill the joker, it doesn’t mean he thinks the Jokers actions are forgivable, it’s because Bruce thinks it’s not his place to determine whether someone has the right to live.

The whole conflict that MHA presents us is that heroes pick and choose who to save, and only save the ones they deem as innocent. So, how does Deku saying repeatedly they can’t forgive Shigaraki contribute to that theme in any way? In fact by focusing on forgiveness, rather than whether or not he personally has the right to pick and choose who lives and who dies Deku is ignoring the elephant in the room. The question isn’t about whether Shigaraki’s redeemable or if his deeds should ever be forgiven. The question is whether Deku has the right to decide who gets saved and who doesn’t.

We are told that Deku as a character is someone who wants to save everyone no matter what, so Deku shouldn’t be focusing on whether or not Shigaraki is worthy of forgiveness, he should be making an idealistic argument like Xavier does in this panel. Why doesn’t Deku talk out loud with Uraraka on how he believes his power is for saving others, and not killing? If he’s meant to represent some idealistic hero, then why doesn’t he even talk about his ideals? Why don’t I as the reader know what those ideals are?

I think Xavier’s ideals of forcing the X-men to provide a good example to the mutant community, in order to try to earn the respect of other human beings is wrong, but at least he has ideals. He tries to inspire the other people around him to live up to those ideals. The story can criticize him for his ideals and point out how they’re wrong, while it can also uplift parts of his idelogy like where he believes there are no evil mutants. Deku has a chance to do the same to Uraraka, to tell her clearly, “I don’t think we as heroes have the right to pick and choose who we help…?” but he waffles. Not only does he waffle, but this moment is meant to be read as an indication that both Deku and Uraraka are sympathetic individuals who want to save their villains. They are supposed to look good and idealistic here and they don’t. For Deku it just seems like a repeat of his behavior with Overhaul. The only villains that are worthy of sympathy, are the ones that he personally decides are forgivable.

The story isn’t about whether or not it’s moral to save someone who’s killed as many as Shigaraki has. The story never seriously discusses any sort of complex morality or moral philosophy. Once again to bring up avatar, yes you can argue Aang sparing the life of a war crimminal is bad, but Aang mentions on multiple occasions that he wants to retain the cultural values of the airbending people. Aang has a morality, a consistent morality, it might not be a morality you personally agree with but at least he has one. Deku hates abusers, unless he’s next to Endeavor then he thinks abusers should be given the chance to atone. Deku doesn’t believe that One for All is a power for killing, but he never stands up to any of the adults who are blatantly trying to kill Shigaraki, he doesn’t even express out loud to Uraraka that he doesn’t think heroes have the right to decide who lives and who dies. In fact he’s given the perfect opportunity to, when Hawks kills a villain and it’s broadcast live on the news in font of everyone, but Deku never has anything to say about that. The reason Deku and Uraraka both put such an emphasis on “forgiving” their villains has nothing to do with the story itself. It’s because the author Horikoshi, is afraid that some people will misinterpret his story as saying that he actually thinks that saving a villain like Shigaraki means that he condones mass murder, so he has to have the characters talk about not forgiving Shigaraki.

Judai doesn’t have any consistent morals either, but once again that’s the point and something the story relentlessly calls him out on.

Cobra: Fortune would never smile on a fool like you who fights while prattling on about enjoying duels. Cobra: You are certainly a talented duelist. But you have one fatal flaw. Judai: A fatal flaw? Cobra: Yes, your duels are superficial. Someone who fights with nothing on his shoulders, cannot recover once he loses his enjoyment. What a duelist carries on his shoulders will become the power that supports him when he's up against the wall! Cobra: But you have nothing like that! Those who go through life without anything like that cannot possibly seize victory. Cobra: But I know that nothing I say will resonate with you... because you have nothing to lose but the match. Judai: I... Cobra: Afraid aren't you? Right now, you have nothing to support you.

Judai’s regularly called out for his superficiality. Judai is only a hero because he’s strong and wins fight, he doesn’t feel any responsibility towards other people, and in fact he loathes having to feel responsible for others. Judai isn’t just naive, he deliberately chooses to remain ignorant. Since he’s ignorant of his own faults, he makes awful decisions when it comes time for him to lead, and his friends die because of choices he made. We are told that Deku doesn’t want to remain ignorant, that he wants to understand villains, but Deku’s actual actions are him continuing to ignore society’s ills and the suffering of victims. In fact if you take away Deku’s internal monologue and the narration, Deku’s actions almost exactly mirror Judai’s.

Deku is just as superficial as Judai, and he also doesn't want to spend any time thinking about what kind of hero he wants to be, but the narrative never punishes him for it.

Judai is asked what burdens he has to bear and he has to meaningfull answer that question, Deku is allowed to get away with not having to think about anything. Deku remains superficial. Both Judai and Deku spend the entire arc running away from their villain rather than confronting them in any meaningful way. They both never express out loud any sympathy for their villain, or try to empathize. THey both never step down from the role of hero, and only confront their villain as a hero, because they don’t want to think about themselves as complicit or in the wrong. Shigaraki and Deku’s final confrontation mirrors Judai and Yubel’s but without the same clear framing. THe entire time Yubel is trying to get Judai to empathize with them, and Judai only responds with physical violence, because they don’t want to stop being the hero and because they can’t see Yubel as anything other than the villain. As soon as Deku arrives on the battlefield (by the way everyone else and their mom pointed this out, but Deku who doesn’t think OFA is a power for killing, is completely okay with a plan called the “Sky coffin plan” where every other hero was clearly trying to murder Shigaraki).

When Deku arrives he asks if Shigaraki is still in there, but he doesn’t do anything to try to reach Shigaraki, he jumps right to punching him. In fact he never tries anything besides punching him as hard as possible. How is punching Shigaraki with the force of a thousand suns saving him exactly? How is that different from how he tried to defeat Shigaraki the last war arc, before he saw the image of the crying child that made him want to try a different approach in saving Shigaraki? In Judai’s final fight with Yubel, it’s made explicitly clear that Judai is not trying to save Yubel, and that’s a fault on his part. In fact Judai gives the traditional “I have friends, and you don’t” speech to Yubel but it’s a subversion of how that speech is usually used. Usually that speech is used to show that the protagonist won because of they valued friendship,while the villain treated their friends poorly and only cared about power. However, it’s ironic in this case because Judai got all of his friends killed. Judai treats his friends like garbage. This speech isn’t used to show that Judai is winning because he values his friends more than Yubel does, it shows that Judai is a hypocrite, playing the hero in this situation where they are just as bad as Yubel. Judai’s not morally superior, he’s just lucky that he has good friends. Friends that were willing to save him. The only connection Yubel has to anyone else, Yubel’s only friend is Judai and Judai is a shit friend.

In fact, Mirio tries to give a version of the “You don’t have any friends” speech to Shigarkai, only for Shigaraki to get mad and tell Mirio that he does have friends and people he wants to protect.

This fact is also something that is blatantly ignored by Deku, even though Mirio tells him about it… even though we are told that Deku is trying his best to see the humanity in Shigaraki.

Judai blatantly admits they’re trying to kill Yubel. Which makes them a worse person, but a better character than Deku, because their actions are clearly framed by the narrative and consistent.

On the other hand we are told that Deku doesn’t want to kill Shigaraki, and yet everything Deku does makes it look like he’s just trying to kill Shigaraki and put him out of its misery. If we didn’t have Deku stating out loud that he wants to save Shigaraki and wants to see him as a human, there’d be nothing in his actions to indicate that he’s trying to avoid killing Shigaraki. Deku says he can’t pretend he didn’t see Shigaraki crying, but like, does he ever hesitate to punch Shigaraki, does he ever think that causing Shigaraki more harm is wrong when he’s already suffered so much? Deku says that Shigaraki is a person but does he treat him like a person? Does he try to talk to him like a person? To use avatar again, Aang does talk to Zuko pretty early on. Deku doesn’t even give the classic “We could have been friends under different circumstances” speech. When Shigaraki resists Deku’s attempts to see him as a person or emapthize with him, Deku’s response is to just resort to punching harder.

Which is in effect the same thing Judai does to Yubel, just kill them as a villain so they don’t hurt anybody else, but framed in an entirely different light. Judai is shown to be ruthless, and cold in his attempt to only settle the conflict with Yubel by violently putting them down. On the other hand we’re being told that Deku is compassionate and empathic while he punches Shigaraki with the force of a thousand suns.

There’s another eerie similarity between both of these final confrontations. At the climax of the confrontation, both Judai and Deku have a psychic vision where they see events from Yubel and Shigaraki’s childhood. This vision is supposed to help both characters understand the good in the villain they’re facing.

Let’s see the contents of this vision and how the visions change each character. Judai is shown a vision of his past life where Yubel sacrifices their entire body, and even their humanity to go through painful surgery to turn into an ugly dragon, all for the sake of protecting Judai in a previous life.

Judai is then forced to witness the good side of Yubel they’ve been ignoring all along to paint them as a villain. Yubel is simultaneously extremely selfish and willing to hurt people Judai cares about, but they’re also extremely selfless and will do anything to protect Judai and have made great sacrifices in the past for Judai’s sake. Deku gives lip service to not ignoring the humanity in Shigaraki, but Judai is literally forced to acknowledge the humanity in Yubel. Not only that, but Judai changes his behavior immediately after learning this new information. After seing the sacrifice that Yubel made for him in the past, Judai responds with a sacrifice of his own. A sacrifice that perfectly mirrors the sacrifice that Yubel once made for him. Yubel gave up their humanity for Judai, so Judai fuses his spirit to Yubel’s, becoming a human / spirit hybrid so Yubel no longer has to be alone.

Judai also doesn’t just fuse their soul with Yubel’s in order to stop Yubel from destroying everything, it’s because both of them at this point need to atone together, and Judai is fulfilling his responsibility of watching over his friend until the end to prove that you care about them - as he said to Sho. Judai’s also fulfilling Johan’s dream of helping repair the bonds between spirits and humans, by reconciling with Yubel and repairing their bond. It’s also Judai atoning for his previous behavior of abandoning Yubel, by choosing to stay alongside them as they both atone together. Deku does sacrifice OFA during the fight against Shigaraki, but their sacrifice isn’t to help Shigaraki, but rather doing psychic damage to Shigaraki by using OFA is the only way to defeat them. He transfers OFA in order to break Shigaraki’s brain so he’ll stop reissting and Deku can beat him down. Judai fuses their soul together with Yubel out of empathy and a responsibility they feel to help their friend fater abandoning them, Deku transfers One for All to Shigaraki in order to hurt him and make him easier to punch. It's funny that Deku doesn't travel to Shigaraki's mind to learn more about him, but instead with the specific intent of harming him.

Once he's inside Shigaraki's mind, he doesn't take time to reflect on how Shigaraki used to stand up for bullied kids, or how he wants to be a hero to villains because no one else will stick up for the outcasts in society. No, he only care about Shigaraki when he takes the form of a child crying for help.

In the aftermath of the psychic vision Deku’s behavior doesn’t change towards Shigaraki in any way either. You could say he sacrificed his own arms in order to try to comfort Shigaraki within the depths of his own mind - but that’s not a real sacrifice either because his arms immediately come back. When Judai learns about the sacrifice that Yubel made in a previous life towards him, he stops seeing Yubel as an enemy and finds a way to resolve things peacefully between them. When Deku lanterns that Shigaraki’s a victim of All for One, and that his entire life was a lie, when he sees Shigaraki’s suffering first hand does his beavior twoards Shigaraki change in any way?

When he sees Afo has taken over Shigaraki’s body again, does he try to shout for Shigaraki, to tell Shigaraki to fight from the inside, to reassure Shigaraki that he’s still in there that there’s still good in him? Nope. He just punches Shigaraki some more.

What Deku needed to tell Shigaraki is so obviously set up by the narrative too. Shigaraki wanted just one person in that house to tell him he could be a hero. Deku wanted his mother to tell him he could be a hero if he was quirkless. Deku sees that Shigaraki started out as a boy who wanted to be a hero, and who was manipulated into being a villain but does he try to appeal to the boy inside of Shigaraki by telling him he can still be a hero? Does he now see the good in Shigaraki? Nope, he just tries to kill him by punching him really hard.

I purposefully chose the images for the banner of this post, because it shows how differently MHA and GX treated its villains in the end. Yubel is embraced by Judai in the end, Shigaraki evaporates into dust.

"Judai, now that our souls have become one we will never be separated again. I have now been filled with your love and power. Let us fight together, against the wave of light leading this universe to destruction!"

Shigaraki could so easily have been given the love and empathy that Yubel was shown, but instead their life ends with no show of empathy from Deku, and with them dying believing that their long life of tragedy meant nothing in the end. Shigaraki realizes he's a crying kid, but he's never comforted.

Shigaraki: I only stole my body back from Master, and I didn't destroy anything. "In the end, I was just as you said... A crying kid, huh?"

Yubel is embraced and comforted, Shigaraki disintegrates into nothing.

One of these stories is apparently an optimistic story about heroes saving people, but it ends with the lifelong victim being killed in the most nihilistic manner possible, never receiving comfort, and never achieving anything with his long life.

The other story is a silly anime about card games, shows that when people are alone and suffering they can lash out and do terrible things. That all people are weak especially when they're alone, but the solution isn't to abandon them, or condemn them for their faults, but to believe in them and help uplift them the same way that Judai decides to uplift Yubel so they can atone together.

Which is why Deku gets an F in being a hero. Go directly to summer school. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $100.

#mha meta #ygo meta #mha 423 #bnha 423 #mha 423 spoilers #bnha 423 spoilers #izuku midoriya #deku #shigaraki tomura #tenko shimura #judai yuki #yubel #soulshipping #yu gi oh gx #yu gi oh

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etirabys · 7 months

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meandering post about reading Orson Scott Card again

I've been offline starting at 9pm every day (except once. I was drunk at karaoke and asked for anons at 8:30pm) for six weeks, with the result that in befuddled boredom two nights ago I picked up Orson Scott Card's Songmaster from the house bookshelf.

I read Ender's Game and three sequels when I was a teen thought the books were mid. Since those are OSC's best works I assumed he had nothing more interesting to offer me and didn't try more of him for fifteen years, but Songmaster was compelling enough that I immediately afterwards picked up The Memory of Earth, the first book of a pentalogy.

TMoE is extremely my jam: after humanity blows itself up on Earth, AIs monitor thriving human civilizations in the planets that survivors managed to escape to, and suppress any tech that enables large scale violence by exerting low key mind control via satellites. But forty million years pass, many of the satellites break down, and the AI needs help from humans to restore capabilities. Because as its control wanes, people are starting to e.g. conceive of airplanes or bombs again, and override the injunctions against entering military alliances more than two edges of connection away.

The AI is worshipped as a god all over the planet, but the fourteen year old protagonist that becomes one of the AI's agents tells the AI from the beginning that he'll break with it if its morality seems wrong to him. I like the fourteen year old – unlike Ender or Songmaster's protagonist (adult minds piloting ten year old bodies), he's a normal gifted kid who's unpopular 50% due to his ego and big mouth and 50% because he's socially inept and offends people even when he's trying to be nice.

Songmaster is also partly about a permanent solution to large-scale violence, albeit through one guy who establishes a monopoly on violence and sweeps in pax galactica. Both it and TMoE are preoccupied with the eradication of suffering from evil / human violence, which is closer to my resonant frequency than narratives about defeating particular people or ideologies. At the moment I can't think of any other book with such an insistent focus on the matter than T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It's hard to make a compelling story out of, and I don't think Songmaster really succeeds, but TMoE's premise is well suited to explore that. (I'm also enjoying the matriarchal culture where everyone is expected to have multiple serial-monogamous marriages.) After reading 70% of TMoE last night I wrote:

Usually when I read fiction there's a small part of me going, how can I use this as fodder for my own growth, how can I remix or improve or react against this, how do the author and I measure against each other? (If the quality and content are at an anti-sweet spot, the small part becomes quite large and I feel all teeth towards the author.) But on occasion I read something so close that the absence of that measuring-feeling is its own sensation – ego departs, or at least is split across two bodies. There's just amity and recognition

And it's pretty interesting to feel this way about Card for, well, the reasons.

(If you're familiar with Card drama none of the following will be new to you; I'm coming to it fresh so the rest of this post is me going "uh... wow")

I vaguely knew he was a homophobic Mormon who'd gotten into fights about gay stuff, but I couldn't tell from the Ender books I read. But in Songmaster his issues spring off the page in such a weird way. Every fifth Goodreads review of this book is "Card, u gay?" because, well,

(One review, possibly from a fellow Mormon, that went "Card, it's so sinful of you to be this gay in your novel". Why did he write this book that would predictably make everyone mad...)

it's full of gay male desire. The protagonist (Ansset) is approximately a castrato and characters notice him sexually a lot. The first and only time Ansset has sex it's with a Kinsey 4-5 male character he loves, who's married to a woman but has fallen in love with Ansset. It turns out the drugs Ansset took to prolong his singing career painfully and only-kinda-figuratively explode your balls when you have your first orgasm and you'll never feel sexual desire again. (You'd think his loving teachers would have warned him of that, but, whatever, they didn't.) The other guy is literally castrated in punishment for inadvertently torturing a highly valuable castrato. It's pretty bald: GAY SEX IS ALMOST IRRESISTIBLY TEMPTING BUT YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT.

(Sidenote: both Ansset and the guy's wife are very close and have a "there's enough love to go around" attitude about the gay sex initially, before they go "wait Josif is a SERIAL MONOGAMIST... he can only love one person at a time... the moment he had the gay sex his marriage was destroyed". It's funny in a mildly stupid way that Card would set up this parable of homosexuality destroying lives and a marriage but almost everyone involved is peacefully ready to sail into an open marriage. I guess it makes sense if you want to say very clearly that THE GAY PART IS THE BAD PART)

which is fascinating to me, because... why would you tell on yourself like that

(81k also told me secondhand of an essay? interview? where Card openly says "we have to stand against legalizing gay marriage because everyone will get gay married and society will collapse", so that's informing my read of Songmaster as well)

I am pretty dang open about my personal life online but if I had a lot of feelings I thought were disgusting and immoral I would not write a novel dripping with those feelings before pointedly castrating the leads for them. Especially if it wasn't relevant to the actually highbrow themes of (checks notes) winning over your adversaries with kindness and never relinquishing your monopoly on violence. I would be so so so so embarrassed to let this go to print, it's so psychologically transparent, what was he thinking

(Well, I assume he's a very different person with different social incentives. For all I know, people in his church went "hey Orson we read your book and it's clear that you're gay but signaling strongly that you won't give into the gay feelings, we're here for you, it was really brave of you to publish this".)

#rambl #orson scott card #eti reads stuff #eti reads the homecoming saga #songmaster #content note: homophobia

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kallypsowrites · 1 month

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I feel like I've seen so many TV cancellation announcements for stuff that I might've watched but now might not. And it really just emphasizes how much the current system is eating itself.

Binge culture means that people are expected to consume a show right as it drops. Because so many shows are binged now, even weekly shows are held to the same standard. If they don't perform well during the initial release, they are written off because binge numbers are the numbers that matter.

So you get more and more people who are afraid to get invested in shows because it might get canceled on a cliffhanger. Because of that, they don't tune in to watch something until they're sure its going to continue. So the next bingeable show gets less viewers. It gets canceled. More people join the 'I'm not going to watch yet because I'm afraid to get invested' crowd. Less people watch TV.

And it sucks because people like this are often the most ardent fans of a work--the ones who will write fanfiction and make fanart and write long analytical posts convincing people to watch a show. The people who will make a new show their whole personality because that's how hyperfixation works. I am amongst that crowd. I can't let myself get invested in something anymore unless I know that I'm going to get emotional payoff.

TV execs have been continuously breaking trust with fandom spaces for the past several years. They don't give shows a chance to find their legs, to grow an audience, to gain a cult following. They kill something in it's cradle in service to the numbers.

And it's not just the fans who suffer because of this. It's writer's rooms. I'm going to school right now for screenwriting and its BAD out there. So many writers who pour their heart and soul into a concept only to never get to bring it to fruition. There's no room for slow burns. For thoughtful storytelling. For trusting the audience. There's no room for real creativity. So the shows that do get renewed are often competent but uninspired or sequel/franchise content. Cause that's what gets views.

I cannot imagine how disheartening it is as a writer to start so many projects and never get to finish them. Think about your own writing. If you were working on a fanfiction but knew at any moment someone could stop you updating because you aren't getting enough hits/kudos, would you find joy in that anymore? I sure wouldn't.

I believe that a lot of the best storytelling is going to come out of indie spaces in the next few years--writers and artists moving outside of Hollywood and making their own low budget stories. Because it's almost impossible to thrive within the current system.

It's not the writer's fault. It's not the fan's fault. It's the way TV has become. And its going to crash and burn and I'm sure execs will find a way to blame anything but the system they created.

#writing #tv shows #my lady jane #the acolyte #rant post #shadow and bone

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chrysanthemumgames · 2 months

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An Update - August

Hey everyone!

It’s been a bit since I’ve written a proper update here, so just to let everyone know, here’s what’s going on with FoA/etc, right now.

First, the TLDR version:

I’m working on the sequel, Blood of the Living. I probably won’t be releasing a public demo until I have a few chapters, but Blossom-level patrons and up can check out the Build-in-Progress (BIP) on Patreon.

FoA itself has been sent off to the HG for the final time; release estimate is 5 September.

The longer version is this: Blood of the Living’s first chapter is nearly finished. It’s not a terribly long one, sitting around 35k words right now and perhaps likely to hit 45k by the time it’s done, but I’m reasonably happy with it so far.

My plan is to make this game overall a little bit shorter than FoA. I’m aiming for 600k words in total, with an average playthrough length of hopefully around 120,000. In some ways, this game is a lot of smaller stories rather than one larger one, and the aim is to make it a satisfying resolution to character arcs and romances without bloating it too much.

That said, I really have no idea whether that length estimate is terribly realistic or not. I think it is, but I try to leave room in my writing process for improvisation and changes and inspiration as well, so we’ll see how it goes. There’s also quite a bit of variation to account for, even before the fact that there are six RO/POs (and a possible poly) is considered.

I’ve decided I don’t want to release a public demo until there’s a sizable chunk of material there, probably around three chapters. That said, if you want some sneak peeks at what's upcoming, my Patrons (those who have access to the BIP) are able to read what I'm working on, so if you find yourself with a few extra dollars to throw my way, that is certainly an option.

I hope to have BotL finished by the end of 2025, though again, this is only the roughest estimate (and very optimistic about my daily writing success).

As for FoA, I received the edits back recently, and fortunately there weren’t a huge amount of continuity notes to get through, so I was able to finish my final changes in a few days and get them back to HG. I am told that if all goes to plan it will release on 5 September. I still have no knowledge of the price.

I’ll keep you all updated as I go.

#progress update #jess rambles

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gingerhastoomanyobsessions · 8 months

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the lords in black are so interesting to me because. they’re so us. we’re watching the citizens of hatchetfield suffer for our own entertainment just as much as they are. we’re their accomplices in all of it

pokotho made hatchetfield into a musical because musicals are entertaining. and we ate that shit up! it’s soooo fun watching a little man scramble as the world around him bursts into song. the musical genre is satirized because pokey knows how the genre conventions work just as well as we do. we like watching musicals so much that black friday and npmd are musicals, too, even though they don’t revolve around pokotho’s plans as much as tgwdlm. we want them to sing. pokotho does too.

bliklotep is the audience and the audience is bliklotep. trail to oregon calls the audience “the watcher with one thousand eyes” and that’s not all, in watcher world blinky seems to be able to see through the eyes of anyone and everyone who loves spectacle. he wants to see the characters go through angst because WE love angst. it’s fun to watch alice and bill express their buried frustrations. blinky wants it to end in bloodshed because he loves tragedy, and let’s face it, so do we. it’s like that one post about how hamlet is aware of the audience and is angry that we don’t do anything to intervene because we want to see how it plays out. personally, I think blinky could have stopped the woodwards if he really wanted (he’s an elder god, after all) but alice shooting him shifted the narrative so that the emotional payoff would be more fulfilling if they escaped. and blinky loves a good story.

t’noy karaxis has blorbos. we joke about it, but that’s really what it is, isn’t it? he’s the fan who watches the movie again and again and again and again to see his favorite character’s dramatic death scene. he’s the guy who writes and reads angst fics by the hundreds because he likes to see his faves cry. he’s the hatchetfield enjoyer who’s on the edge of their seat waiting to see how ted kicks the bucket this time. the bastard’s box is pretty much just an ao3 account filled with whump and hurt no comfort. he’s sadistic AND he genuinely adores ted, because we fans are often cruelest to the characters we love the most. he puts ted through character growth— the realization that his life went the way it did because of his own mistakes, his inability to be vulnerable with jenny before it was too late— and he does that by writing a 56-chapter angst fic that’s still updating to this day

nibblenephim is the fan who voraciously devours every scrap of content that a creator produces and demands more, more, more. let’s face it, the fandom will never let starkid rest until we see this story through to its end. and then someone will demand a sequel series. nibbly is hungry because we will never stop yearning for more stories. he’s simple because that desire itself is simple— as humans, we need creativity like we need air to breathe. nibbly wants more because we want more. and we will never be satiated.

wiggog y’rath is the ruler and the king because he’s the self-inserting writer. I think jon matteson plays paul *and* wiggly for a reason— wiggly is the only lord in black to be played by the same actor in every single show, and that actor also plays the protagonist of tgwdlm. wiggly wants to be the protagonist. he tries to force himself into the human world of hatchetfield because he wants to participate, dammit! he wants to be the bestest ruler that the earth has ever seen! everyone has to love him because he’s going to be their bestest fwiend! when he appears in human form he’s gonna be the prom king! he’s the ebony dark’ness dementia raven way of the hatchetfield multiverse. he wants every human character to bend to his whims and to love him and to put him at the tippy-top of planet earth because he’s the writer and the writer’s main character, you fuckheads, and he can make whatever story he wants, whether the other characters like it or not! if you’ve ever written a self-insert story? congratulations! you’ve been wiggog y’rath.

and the funny thing? I don’t think the lords know that they, too, are as fictional as anyone else in hatchetfield. maybe blinky knows— he sees through the audience’s eyes, after all— but I don’t think the others do. if they did, maybe they’d be a little less tyrannical. a little bit nicer.

but then the starkid writers wouldn’t have much of a story to tell, would they?

#the lords in black #starkid #hatchetfield #hatchetverse #npmd #join me in the metafiction analysis hole.#the real villains of hatchetfield are the starkid writers themselves and those of us who want to see the shows!#the only reason the lords in black fuck up the world is because WE want to see that story!!!!!#note: the ‘you fuckheads’ bit was meant to be in wiggly’s voice/pov. I do not think the good people of starkid fandom are fuckheads.

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petrichor-han · 11 months

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the city that never sleeps; choi beomgyu

PAIRING | beomgyu x fem!reader

CAST | choi beomgyu, choi yeonjun, yoo jimin (karina), mentions of choi soobin, yang jeongin (i.n), shin ryujin, lee heeseung, kim minjeong (winter)

WC | 28.2k

GENRE | angst, smut, childhood friends to lovers, friends to lovers, neighbor!au, boy next door!au, right person wrong time (sort of)

WARNINGS | explicit language, explicit smut & sexual content, infidelity, toxic relationship, verbal abuse, mc has a present mom and dad, vaping & smoking cigarettes, marijuana mentions

SYNOPSIS | SEQUEL TO IDLE TOWN! // it’s been ten years since you last saw choi beomgyu in the flesh, but a high school reunion prompts you and your fiancé, yeonjun, to return to your hometown one last time. unfortunately, it seems like old habits die hard, and the harder you try to stay away from beomgyu, the closer he seems to get.

A/N | i was not planning on a sequel but sometimes the heart wants what it wants and i just had to write this. idle town readers, welcome back, and if you haven’t read the prequel then it’s linked in both the synopsis above and next to my masterlist below. it’s not required to read part one, but it’s helpful and provides context.

request to be added to current and future taglists HERE!

listen to the playlist here!

MASTERLIST | IDLE TOWN (PT. 1)

TEN YEARS LATER.

The day that you receive the envelope in the mail was the day that everything started going downhill. Now that you think about it, when was your peak? Was it as soon as you stepped foot in the city you’d always dreamed of living in? Was it when you met Yeonjun? Was it when you started working at that publishing company with amazing pay and benefits?

All in all, you’re not really sure. But if you had to pick a simple “best moment,” it would probably be your college graduation.

It was the perfect summer day. You’d aced your last semester of classes and had numerous colorful cords around your neck, showing off your accomplishments from the past four years. You sat between two people that you were semi-close with now, what with being almost forced to talk to them during rehearsals and all. They were alright, maybe you’d have even been friends with them in school if you met them earlier. Maybe being the key word. So instead, you sit between them, exchanging excited words in hushed whispers, making small talk, asking them what their plans are after the ceremony is over with. One of them invited the two of you to an end-of-school party that one of the frats is throwing; you had no clue about it. But as they explain the theme, saying that it’d be fun to end your last year with a typical college party—something that you’d probably never get the chance to do again—you start thinking, why not? What do you have to lose?

The ceremony itself is great. Nothing goes wrong, even though in these sorts of situations you always expect something to go awry. It doesn’t start raining, no one trips or messes up their words, the speeches aren’t too dull (as far as graduation speeches go), and the cheers for you as you walk across the stage are almost deafening. You can’t help the wide, almost cocky grin that spreads across your face as you turn to the crowd and wave once towards the area you know your loved ones are sitting in, spotting Yeonjun’s pink hair right away. He sticks out like a sore thumb, almost neon in the bright sunlight in comparison to the people around him. You hear his voice rise up above everyone else’s cheers, yelling your name amongst praise and sweet words. It makes you blush, how he’s not afraid to say such sappy shit in front of your parents, in front of your friends—in front of your entire graduating class, really.

The rest of the ceremony goes by in a blur. You can’t stop smiling even if you’re a little clammy underneath your cords and robe and cap, and your grin grows even wider once you’re able to toss your cap in the air and then go find your loved ones.

You see Yeonjun first, parting the crowd like the Red Sea. It’s kind of impossible to not see him. That’s something you’ve always equally liked and disliked about him—he attracted attention wherever he went. And not always from those who were sexually attracted to him, though that was, admittedly, a large portion of the attention that he got. No, he emitted this glow when he walked into a room. There was something about him that demanded your attention, even if you were unwilling to give it up. It was partially his looks—god, was he stunning—but also, the charm that basically oozed from his pores. You’d never known anyone that didn’t like Yeonjun. Even if they were apprehensive at first, no one could resist his genuinity, his kind nature that collided with his sharp visuals that sometimes made him come off as the cold or arrogant sort of attractive. But of course, no one ever thought of him as cold or arrogant as soon as he opened his mouth.

You liked this about him because it was easy. Everyone loved him: your friends, your classmates, and most importantly, your family. “He’s such a catch,” your friend Yeji said jealously, eyeing him as he walked away after dropping off lunch for you. “I wish I had a partner that would bring me a homemade meal.”

“And he drove half an hour to get here,” you bragged playfully, shaking your little dosirak full of food, still warm to the touch.

When he met your parents, your mother waited until he left the room before nudging you and smiling. “That’s a keeper,” she said happily, “I couldn’t think of anyone better for you.” The only issue with this was the fact that you noticed her stumble over the second part of that sentence, and it made you think of someone that you hadn’t bothered to think about in years.

But when Yeonjun was there, any semblance of thought towards that someone melted away almost immediately.

You run into his arms, almost crushing the massive bouquet of flowers that he’s holding gently. He holds it above the both of you with one hand and catches you in a tight embrace in the other, laughing and trying to speak through his giggles to congratulate you. “You are the most wonderful person in the world,” he says astutely, caressing your face gently as you part. Before you can get too far, he brings you back in to kiss you softly, his hand dropping to the small of your back to bring your body closer to his. Once he lets you go, he hands you the colorful bouquet that you almost squished. It’s beautiful. The entire thing is so heavy, full of flowers that are almost as big as your head. It hides the bottom half of your face as you hold it in front of your body and he laughs, pinching your cheek and calling you cute before everyone else arrives to congratulate you.

Is it selfish of you to think of that as your peak? Why do you consider it so? Your immediate answer to that is because of how you felt, how happy you were. You were so happy that you had no more room for any other emotion, save for perhaps excitement—but even that bled into happiness, blurring the lines between which was which. But maybe you think of that as your peak because of your achievements—no, that’s not it. You’ve achieved much more since then. Then the last conclusion, and the one that you dreaded to consider, must be correct. You consider it your peak because of everyone else’s reactions. They celebrated you that day, they all paid attention to you and how much shit that you’d done in those four years. And to be fair, it was a well deserved celebration—you worked your ass off in your undergrad years, so much so that sometimes Yeonjun would have to physically stop you from pushing yourself before you collapsed from exhaustion.

Your other option for your peak in life isn’t a singular moment. But it’s happier than considering yourself to peak in college. You consider your life as a whole since you moved out of your parents’ house to be your peak. That time frame between getting on the airplane to New York City and receiving that letter in the mail, that was your peak.

It has been ten years since you left your hometown far behind when you pull that letter out from between a catalog for lacy underwear and your electricity bill, and promptly spit your coffee all over your dinner table.

The address is from your home state, your hometown. It’s the address of your high school, and sure as hell, that’s your full name written across the front of the envelope. The stamp in the corner is of the school mascot—well, the same animal as your school mascot, anyways.

Hands shaking, you wipe your mouth quickly and then use a butter knife to cut a slit in the envelope. A single piece of dense paper slides smoothly into your palm, and you gnaw on your lip until you taste blood as you read through it, eyes following the dark print, chasing it as it registers in your brain. You swear you can feel your tongue dry and your heartbeat slow as the words “HIGH SCHOOL REUNION” echo in your head. You toss the invitation back on top of the opened envelope and busy yourself with wiping up your mess of spewed coffee.

Of course, this is when Yeonjun comes back.

You hadn’t expected him to be gone long; he’d just stopped by the local bagel place to get some fresh breakfast to pair with your coffee (though your cup is now half gone, spat across your dinner table).

“What’s wrong?” he asks immediately.

That’s another thing about Yeonjun—he can read you like an open book. It’s a little annoying at times, when you want to keep certain things private or hide surprises from him, but most of the time you appreciate his intuitiveness.

You don’t say anything, but point towards the invitation that’s still on full display, laying on top of the envelope it came in. Yeonjun kicks off his shoes and sets the box of bagels on the kitchen counter before walking over to you. He kisses you on the temple and picks up the invitation, leaning against the table as he scans it. Sucking in a deep breath through his teeth, he taps the thick piece of cardstock against the solid wooden surface of the dinner table and looks at you, concern clear in his eyes. He takes in your ashen face, bloodless and unsure.

“Well,” he says, “are you going to go?”

You groan loudly and slump forward in your chair, your forehead colliding with the table with a resounding clunk. Yeonjun coos, babying you like he knows you want him to, and drapes his slim frame over your back. His weight is a welcome comfort, like your very own weighted blanket.

“I don’t know,” you say honestly. Your voice is muffled, but he understands.

“If it’s stressing you out this much already, then…” he trails off, but you already know that he’s going to suggest not going. For some reason, this pisses you off a little and you nudge him off of you and pick up your head, scowling at him.

“What if I want to go?” you ask, frowning.

“Then go, of course,” he says, walking back into the kitchen to retrieve the bagels. His voice echoes through the hallway, preceding his physical return to you. “I just assumed that you didn’t want to because—“

“Because of Beomgyu,” you finish for him.

Yeonjun stops, freezing up at the sound of his name. You do too. It’s like you’ve been literally frozen—you feel so unbearably cold, and you can’t move an inch even though you’re the one that said it in the first place.

“I was going to say because of your reaction to the invitation,” Yeonjun says carefully. He still does not finish his route back to you. Instead, he stands there, halfway between the kitchen and you, very still. In his slim fit dark pants and sweater, he almost blends into the background.

There’s an uncomfortable silence that settles between the two of you, making itself comfortable atop all the surfaces in your home. Outside, it begins to rain. The only sound is the scattered raindrops that are beginning to pit-a-pat against the roof of your apartment building and the tiny fire escape.

After what seems like an eternity of stunned silence—you’re both still so shocked that you even uttered his name—you clear your throat to break the ice and say, “Well, I probably won’t go anyways. I hate that town.”

“Right.”

You both resume your day as usual, but the air is different. You’re both much more reserved and careful with what you say, something that’s rare for Yeonjun, who usually likes to speak his mind even if it comes off as a bit brash sometimes.

The reunion is not discussed any further until the week of, when you slide two plane tickets across the dinner table to Yeonjun, the destination being your hometown.

“Come or don’t,” you say, “but it’ll be uneventful either way.”

“I know this means a lot to you even if you refuse to say it out loud,” Yeonjun says knowingly. “I’m not an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot, but you’re also unusually good at reading my mind,” you murmur. This prompts Yeonjun to crack a smile.

“Well, since you already bought me a ticket…”

“I can get a refund,” you retort, but he knows that it’s a lighthearted joke.

“Not a chance.” He snatches up the tickets and walks over to you, slinging an arm around your shoulders and holding the papers up to the light. “High school reunion, here we come.”

—-

Maybe you should be more nervous.

Or maybe it just hasn’t kicked in yet.

Because the thing is, it’s not like you haven’t been back to your hometown at all since you left for college. You come home for certain holidays, for special days, for celebrations or times of mourning.

So far, it feels like another one of those times.

In your head, it’s just like you’re going home for Christmas, or for your mother’s birthday. Nothing has been really different just yet, so it has yet to hit you.

It’s only once you’re back in your childhood bedroom, with Yeonjun standing next to you, that you begin to feel uneasy. The only time you’d stayed in your childhood bedroom (after you’d moved out, of course) was for a long weekend during Christmas a few years back. Every other time, Yeonjun had come with you, and the two of you stayed in a nearby hotel. This time, before you could book a room, your mother had called you and demanded that the two of you stay in your childhood home.

“Cancel your hotel room,” your mother said cheerfully, once you’d picked up her call.

“Why?” you asked, stifling a yawn and blinking your dry eyes simultaneously; she’d woken you up from a late afternoon nap. Golden sunshine was pouring into your bedroom like honey, splashing across the length of your shared king-sized bed. It was the first real sunshine to penetrate through the thicket of fog and storm clouds, the last lingering signs of spring before summer took over. The air was warm and heavy, scented heavily with the spices Yeonjun was using to cook dinner in the kitchen. The bedroom door was slightly ajar, and of course this is why the smell of food was so strong. You sit up as your mother starts talking again, wrapping a soft throw blanket loosely around your shoulders. It’s only a few steps to the window, but your bare feet are quickly getting chilled from the hardwood floor as you peer out the window at the setting sun.

“You and Yeonjun can just come stay at the house,” your mother prompts, but her tone is a little off.

“You know I love our house, but it’s just too small for me and Jun to stay in my room,” you say, walking back over to sit down on the edge of the bed. “We sort of tried that one year at Chuseok, remember? We tapped out at around eleven after tossing and turning for like half an hour in that tiny bed.”

“I know, but still,” she says, trailing off.

You lean down to inspect a chip in your floor. “But still what, mom?”

“We’re selling the house,” she finally says. You freeze, heart skipping a beat as you lick your dry lips.

“You’re selling it?” you ask hoarsely.

“We can’t take care of it any more,” she explains, and you can hear the pity in her voice, sweet like cough syrup. “We’re going to move to a little complex a few towns over at the end of the month.”

“Oh, Woodbury?” you ask faintly, a flash of a memory of a Woodbury Apartments catalog sitting on your parents’ coffee table the last time you’d visited, around the winter holidays.

“We just thought that you might like to stay here for the last few weeks. We’re mostly cleaned up and starting to pack…”

Your head is swimming in the warmth of your bedroom, suddenly too hot for your taste. The blanket slides off of your shoulders as you mumble an excuse to your mother and hang up before she can even reply. You feel your phone buzzing in your hand and you know that your mother is texting you and asking if you’re alright, but you don’t answer her. You sit there until Yeonjun comes to get you for dinner, and once he sees your frail figure, shaking and clutching your phone to your chest, he scoops you into his arms and you listen to his heartbeat until the words come spilling from your lips.

You grimace, thinking back upon the memory of that phone call, as you yank the zipper on the side of your suitcase, trying to get out the bag that holds your toiletries. You packed it on top of all your clothes for easy access, for this reason exactly. The memory of your mother breaking the news to you wasn’t a good one, and the worst part was how stupid you felt for being upset about it at all. You were nearly thirty years old and you were having a breakdown over your parents selling their house?

“You grew up there, there’s a lot of memories. It makes perfect sense to feel the way you do right now,” Yeonjun had soothed, when you whimpered out your worries about sounding dumb. But you still felt shitty about feeling shitty.

But like you’d said before: nothing really felt different until you actually got back and you were unpacking in your childhood bedroom. You’d specifically asked your parents to leave it untouched so that you could pack things up yourself, and they obliged. Every other room in the house had been scrubbed clean and left simplistic, easy to clear out in just a few hours when the time came to leave for the last time.

Luckily, that wasn’t for a while yet.

First, you had to get through this damn reunion.

It took place the night after you landed, starting around eight thirty. You assumed that people would show up early, so you prepared yourself to arrive at crisp eight forty-five, just so that there was no chance of you being early nor late. You wanted to attract the least amount of attention possible from your old peers.

“If you don’t even want to see anyone, why did you decide to go?” your father asked sharply over dinner that night. A mixture of your annoyance, the tension in the room, and probably some of his pain medication for his back, was all building up. You watch through slightly narrowed eyes as your mother slips another few pills to him, a new wrinkle line appearing on her forehead. She’d tended to your father day and night since he fell off a ladder a few months ago. His tone made your head ache, and you sighed harshly—perhaps a bit too harshly, you realize, as you watch him flinch—before replying.

“I do want to see people,” you say, scowling into your dinner. Even though it’s delicious as always, prepared by your parents, you can’t seem to get much of it down before your stomach starts turning. You put down your utensil and rub your eyes, making your parents exchange an uneasy glance with an awkward Yeonjun. He didn’t really know what to do about the tension between you and your father, so he helplessly draped an arm over your hunched over frame and rubbed your shoulder comfortingly as he made a kind, somewhat pitiful expression towards your father. “It’s just that—I don’t want to see most of them, and I know that most of them haven’t ever left town. What if they ask me questions? What if they want to be friends? What if they expect something from me just because we were in the same class?”

“Woah there,” Yeonjun said, speaking up before either of your parents could offer a singular reassuring word. “Doll, if they didn’t care ten years ago, they probably won’t care now. At most you’ll get a few curious questions but it won’t be from a harmful place.”

“You weren’t there,” you glower at him, “you don’t get it.”

“Did something happen?” he asks, eyes widening. “I didn’t know… You never said anything about… Are you alright?” He stutters, trying to find the right thing to say to soothe you.

You kind of feel bad at this point, with both your parents and Yeonjun staring at you with the same concerned look written across their faces, the food in front of them untouched since the conversation started. You didn’t mean to be bitchy and bitter about it—after all, you were the one that chose to come back and go to the damned thing after all. But this was why you wanted to do it alone. As soon as it was over with, you imagined yourself returning to the playful, slightly more cheerful version of yourself that everyone knew and loved. You exhale loudly, then stand up. Your three loved ones mirror your actions, with Yeonjun straightening up to his full height beside you immediately, as if he could read your mind, and both your parents half-rising, mirroring out of pure empathy.

“I’m sorry,” you state, “I’ve just been stressed about this.” You want to say something more, give them more information about what the hell has been going on inside your head since it really clicked as you were standing there in your childhood bedroom, but your tongue feels glued to the roof of your mouth. Your jaw clenches and unclenches as the three of them stare you down, expecting more, but when they realize that is all you have to say, you watch your parents’ wrinkled faces deflate into a more relaxed expression. One that says, “my child has issues, but they’ll work through it themselves and there’s nothing we can do about it so let’s just stop freaking the fuck out.”

“It’s okay, sweetie.” Your mom says this solemnly.

When your eyes meet, you feel anger bubbling in your chest again. There is nothing but pity behind those old eyes. You know that your mom feels bad for you, her child that’s completely exiled from the hometown that they once lived in. The child that ran away to a big city and never came home again. The child that’s back home for the last time before they finally, really turn into an adult and let go of the last strings of childhood forever.

It settles, though, as she reaches over to place her cool, dry hand over yours. You look down, a little ashamed now that you’re calmer and can think clearer.

“I think I’m going to turn in early, so that I can… pack tomorrow before the reunion,” you explain, and your hand moves to pick up your dirty plate. Before you can lift it an inch off the table, your father swipes it from you and waves you and Yeonjun off.

“We got this. You two go get settled.”

You lock eyes with your father and you give him an appreciative nod. He smiles in return—yes, a sad one that is full of pity for you—and kisses you on the top of your head as he walks by you on his way to the kitchen.

You press your lips into a thin line, a slightly awkward silence emerging between the remaining people at the table. Your mother jumps up before anyone has the chance to attempt to rekindle the conversation, and brings both hers and Yeonjun’s dirty dishes to the kitchen, following your father and disappearing behind the cream wall of your dining area.

“I guess we’ll do what they say,” Yeonjun says, exhaling slowly and standing up. He pushes his chair in and tries to brush off imaginary dust from his place mat, and then looks to you for direction. Though he likes to take the lead, it seems that there is an exception when it comes to your childhood home.

You take the creaky stairs by two and slip around on the slick wooden floor, warped and smoothed down from years of sock hockey and communal use. Your childhood bedroom door is there at the end of the hallway like it always has been, illuminated by the ceiling light that’s clearly just been replaced by the sheer brightness of it. The door, which has faded crayon lines and your name in wooden letters, blue tacked to the wooden frame, is slightly ajar, just how you had left it when you went down to dinner.

The two of you sidle into the room, feeling a little claustrophobic. You spy an old purple bikini string overflowing out of one of your old dresser drawers, and your chest lurches a little as a memory of Beomgyu resurfaces. In the brief flash, Beomgyu is sitting in the middle of your bed, mud-caked high tops kicked off and laying on your shag rug. The browned laces are messy and askew, because of the haphazard way that Beomgyu had untied them messily and kicked them off carelessly. He’s dressed in a t-shirt and baggy, light colored jeans. His white socks have a hole on the left bottom and you can see pale flesh peeking through because of the way he’s laying, slumped onto his back with his feet sticking straight out in your direction. His hair is dark, long, and messy, with those white streaks that you loved so much. His brown eyes are twinkling in the dim yellow light, and just as he opens his mouth to say something to you you snap out of it.

When the image of Beomgyu dissipates completely, you realize that you’ve been staring at Yeonjun this whole time. His stature almost mirrors Beomgyu’s in the memory. But instead, Yeonjun is perched politely on the corner of your mattress, and his pointy-toed, shiny black boots are neatly lined up next to your teenage collection of shoes in your closet. Your own ankle boots had been kicked off and left in the middle of your old rug, just like the illusion of Beomgyu’s Vans had been. Yeonjun’s hair—it’s a mushroom-y shade of brown now, rather than pink—glows warmly in the light alongside his sharp, sparkling eyes, a stark contrast to Beomgyu’s midnight locks and rounded boba pearl eyes.

“Hey you,” Yeonjun teases, “where’d you go off to in Dreamland? I missed you for a few moments there.”

You realize that you’ve been fidgeting with your fingers this whole time, picking at your cuticles and peeling the surrounding skin. It’s a bad habit that tends to resurface when you’re stressed, and your fingertips burn now. You regret it, but it’s too late.

You chuckle. “Sorry, I got lost in my memories for a second.” You swallow hard, feeling choked up for some reason.

Yeonjun picks up on your watery voice and your inflamed fingers, and he smiles that goofy smile that always makes you feel soothed before he kisses your hands and starts rummaging for his own luggage to find a first aid kit. You let him baby you for a bit, jabbering over your wounds and gently rubbing in a medicated ointment to soothe the throbbing. He selects the worst wounds to bandage up, reassuring you that the other ones would be fine as long as you didn’t touch them again, but it was too late already. Your skin wouldn’t heal before tomorrow, and after that you hardly had a damn about anyone and what they thought of you. You mentally insult yourself for a moment before feeling weary, pushing Yeonjun away after he finished fixing your last finger but rewarding him with a long kiss.

He’s desperate for something more, for your attention to be solely on him. You again feel bad; your mind has been elsewhere for days now, and you know that Yeonjun can feel it.

So you relent even though you’re exhausted, and you kiss him with what you hope is passion, dragging your nails down the curve of his back to make him groan and pull you closer to him until your front halves are smushed together. Chest to chest, your bare breasts beneath your thin t-shirt brushing against his hard pecs, his groin grinding against yours. You wrap your legs around his slim waist, pulling him ephemerally closer, closer, closer. You suddenly desire him so much that it burns. It hurts in your chest and your stomach and your head and the burn can only be soothed by his touch. Slowly he pulls away from your lips though he feels intoxicated by them; if he could, he’d kiss them forever. He starts at your head, pressing light kisses to your forehead, nose, and lips. He lingers on your lips again, the feather light drag of flesh against flesh driving you insane when you were craving depraved, rough handling.

Maybe Yeonjun really did feel your desperation as you gasped aloud and clung to his frame. That faked passion in the beginning was so foolproof that you yourself feel victim to your own lying.

Yet, nothing more really happens that night. You both take off your clothes, locked in each other’s embrace, and you feel his hot mouth attaching itself to your neck, your chest, your clavicle. His wet tongue laves over the bruises he’s suckled onto your flesh, narrowed eyes looking up to you for approval. You stroke his hair, and the texture is even different from Beomgyu’s—you remember when he would lay his head in your lap during your sleepovers, and every now and then he’d shift and lock eyes with you, grinning foolishly like he always did. You didn’t realize how much you missed him until now, until you found yourself in a place that reeked of familiarity, that reeked of him. If you closed your eyes and tried hard enough, you think you could smell the cologne that he wore all those years ago. It’s musky, yet sharp, and he wore so much of it sometimes that you couldn’t ever hug him without your eyes watering and your nose wrinkling.

Yeonjun’s mouth parts from a particularly sensitive spot on your neck, a string of saliva from his lip connecting to your neck for just a moment longer before breaking. He places a soft, wet kiss on your lips, lingering there for just a little too long before he pulls away and smiles at you.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he says quietly. You fix your gaze on your fiancé, his face smooth and soft in the warm glow from your bedside lamp. That’s the only source of light in the room apart from the slivers of pale moonlight that are barely creeping in through a crack in your dusty butterfly patterned curtains.

“I know.” You place a kiss on his forehead, which he receives gratefully, happy to have your attention. At least, some of it. More than he’d been receiving recently.

“Do you want me to come with you tomorrow?” he asks, following you to the bathroom.

You clutch at the plastic bag holding your toothbrush and toothpaste, along with other toiletries. “Do you want to come?” you ask, as he closes the bathroom door behind him as he walks in. You turn on the faucet, wetting your toothbrush and squeezing a blob of mint green toothpaste onto the bristles. Yeonjun reaches over to turn off the water.

“Do you want me to come?” he asks. “It’s your high school reunion, and if you’re more comfortable going alone then I understand. But if you want me to come—especially because he might be there—I would love to.”

You accidentally jab yourself in the gums with the hard plastic of your toothbrush at the mention of Beomgyu. Even though he didn’t say the name aloud, you knew that was who he was referring to. You groan, spitting out the mixture of blood and foamy toothpaste into the sink as you turn the water back on and watch the mixture go down the drain. “I know I’ve made it seem like a really big deal,” you said, choosing your words carefully, as to not offend your somewhat hot headed fiancé, “but it’s really not. I think I was just overwhelmed because of all the memories here, and the fact that my parents are selling the house. But really Jun, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll be there for an hour, max.”

“Then you’ll be back and we can finish packing,” he says promptly.

A warm feeling washes over your body at the way Yeonjun always used words like “we” and “us” constantly. It always made you feel like part of a team, like a relationship should be. Such a simple gesture made you feel so safe and loved.

“Yes,” you said, pinching his cheek playfully, “then we can finish packing, and my parents can sell the house and we can go home.”

Yeonjun grabs your hand and plants a kiss on the back of it, making you blush as you pull it away. “I can’t even brush my teeth in peace,” you tease.

“What can I say? If you’re gone for more than five minutes, I start to miss you too much.” Yeonjun winks before leaving you to finish washing up in peace, and you sigh softly as he closes the door. You look in the mirror, and you look tired even though you’ve yet to start packing at all. Really, it won’t be a big job. What’s more exhausting to think about is the reunion.

You can almost picture a devil and an angel on your shoulders as you stare at your reflection in the mirror as you pat in your skincare.

Listen to everyone else, the devil-you scolds. She scowls up at you. Why are you even going to the reunion? You could just skip it tomorrow and help your parents pack up the rest of the house. Your trip home won’t be a waste, and you’ll suffer less. It’s a win-win situation, she pressed.

Because she has to prove to her old classmates that she’s successful now! the angel on your other shoulder pipes up cheerfully. And isn’t it nice to see old friends anyways?

The devil scoffs. If she has to prove that she’s successful, is she really successful at all? And what old friends are you even talking about? She had Beomgyu, and that was all. There is zero point in going to this stupid reunion.

Maybe if we see Beomgyu again, he’ll fall in love with her again and she can live the life she always wondered if she could have if she’d just forgiven him—

You throw a fistful of water at the mirror, washing away the hallucinations. Your eyes are rounded and panicked, from the angel speaking your greatest fear aloud. You always told yourself that if you never thought about it again, it wasn’t real. You didn’t really think or care about it; it was just an intrusive thought.

Now, it was too real. Your angel spoke the truth.

You may not be in love with Choi Beomgyu, but you sure as hell have laid awake many nights wondering what would have happened if you did love him back.

Even more so, what would have happened if you’d never gone to New York in the first place, and stayed with him like he wanted you to.

—

“That’s the last box of books,” you wheeze.

Collapsing on top of a freshly sealed box filled with your dusty collection of Harry Potter books, you stare up at your ceiling. Yeonjun’s sweaty forehead appears in your line of vision, a playful expression on his pretty face. “Tired already?” he asks, pulling you up. You groan loudly as you get back on your feet, squeezing his hand tightly.

“The books are heavy,” you complain.

“That’s your fault for being such a nerd and having ten million books crammed into one room,” he retorts, wiping his brow with his forearm. “But enough of that. We’re done with it now.”

You sit down on the floor, which is bare now. The first thing you two had done was roll up your old flower-patterned rug and take it down to the main floor so that the movers could easily pick it up with the rest of your parents’ stuff once they arrived early next week. A half empty bottle of water sits next to you, and you reach for it and chug the remaining liquid. A bead of sweat rolls down your temple and collects in the collar of your dusty t-shirt.

“We did a lot for just one day,” you praise, as you look up at your newly empty shelves. “It already looks so much emptier in here.”

“It really does,” Yeonjun says, sitting beside you and squinting at the empty bookshelves.

You pick up your phone, and your eyes widen at the time. You wanted to give yourself enough time to get ready without rushing and stressing yourself out further.

“You better get going,” Yeonjun said, noting your reaction to the time. “Don’t want to be late.”

“I won’t be,” you say confidently. You give him a quick peck on the lips before dashing off to take a shower and wash away all of the dust and sweat before getting dressed.

Besides stressing yourself out about going in the first place, the next big thing you worried about was what you were going to wear. You didn’t want to show up under or overdressed, and you’d done countless hours of research on what was usually proper. You even scoured some of your old peers’ social media to see if they’d posted at all about the reunion, any hints of what they would look like. Well, their outfits, at least.

Luckily, it seemed like a lot of your classmates still liked to over share, and you found out more about what others planned to wear that night. Turns out, you had stressed out over almost nothing, as usual. You picked out an outfit from the few choices you’d stuffed into your suitcase, finding something almost new and just fancy enough to put your old classmates to shame. Yes, you were definitely going to outdo your frenemy Shin Ryujin, and without looking tacky too, as Lee Heeseung tended to do. Lucky for him, he was handsome enough that people looked past his terrible sense of fashion and liked him anyways.

You almost tripped down the worn wooden stairs as you tried to multitask and double-check the location while pulling on your left shoe. It wasn’t like you even needed to look it up on your phone; you knew the way to your old high school like the back of your hand. You’d walked there every day for four years, and driven there countless times with other people. You could close your eyes and find yourself there in a matter of fifteen minutes (or less).

Yeonjun had insisted on driving you there himself, and he promised you that he’d pick you up as soon as you texted him as well. You felt your heart flutter as he insisted on escorting you, liking the feeling of being cared for. He played music from a decade ago and sang along, making you giggle and pushing your anxiety to the back of your mind.

Then before you knew it, with a quick kiss, you gathered up your things and left your parents’ car, and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of your old high school. It’s littered with cigarette butts and old chewed gum, just like it was back in the day, and a wave of nostalgia fills you as you inhale the familiar scent of marijuana and crayons, a jarring juxtaposition that oddly made your heart ache for those years you spent on the cusp of adulthood and the cliff edge of childhood. The very same years that you spent suffering through high school in the very building you were staring at now.

The front entrance is decked out in colorful balloons and a long white banner that reads “WELCOME CLASS OF ‘08” in crooked black paint. You manage a tight-lipped smile at the staff at the entrance, and duck into the main hallway, where a few people are mingling by the sidelines. The gymnasium is booming with music, and it’s almost too similar to your senior prom (which you of course attended with Beomgyu).

You don’t recognize the few people talking outside in the hallway, so you prepare yourself to enter the gymnasium. You have to take a deep breath and look down at your outfit to make sure you’re not in your seafoam green prom dress. The watch on your wrist almost feels the same weight as your oversized corsage made of baby’s breath and small dyed blue buds. Your ankle boots seem to morph into dirty black Converse with scribbles on the toes. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the shiny reflection of the freshly repainted lockers, and your rippled reflection is ten years younger, with unblended green eyeshadow plastered up to your eyebrows and a brown-red lipstick on your lips. Your hair is very reminiscent of the time, and your nails are bitten but painted with matching green nail polish. Underneath your dress, your toenails are slathered with the same shade even though they wouldn’t show with your choice in shoes.

You feel ten years lighter, ten years dumber, ten years younger.

TEN YEARS BEFORE.

You’ve never had a panic attack before, but you think you’re having one now.

In the girls’ bathroom.

At school.

During your senior prom.

You’re breathing heavily, wheezing as your lungs seem to collapse in on themselves. Your manicured hands are gripping the sides of the porcelain sink so tightly your knuckles ache, and you’re staring at your reflection in the mirror. Your eyes are teary, but you know that if you let those tears fall your face will be streaked with metallic green trails for the rest of the night. You grit your teeth and will the wetness in your eyes to go the hell away.

Beomgyu was waiting for you outside the bathroom.

He’d never even asked you to go to prom with him; he just assumed that the two of you would go together. The week before prom, you complained about not having a date, and he’d turned to you with a surprised look, asking why you couldn’t go with him. For some reason, it hurt your feelings a little when he said that you were his best friend, but it healed the wound a little when he said that there was no one else he’d rather go with.

He was so handsome in his suit. You knew that his mother picked it up at Dillard’s and had made slight adjustments herself so that it would fit him perfectly. Even so, the white shirt underneath was wrinkled and his tie was crooked, veering to the right. It didn’t matter to you though, and you’d smiled nervously, blushing from your nose to your toes as he offered you a corsage and you held out the boutineer.

You felt like he was your boyfriend even though you walked the same way to school you did every day. The only difference was that you were all dressed up—and the simple fact that anyone who saw the two of you would assume you were a couple. Especially with the way he had offered his arm to you, and the way you were currently walking perfectly in time as you clutched his thin but muscular arm.

It was too much when you both got to the school and he kissed you on the cheek right before the two of you walked into the gymnasium. Choppy locks of his messy wolf cut fell into his big brown eyes as he grinned at you, cocking his head to the side innocently as you nearly sweat through your makeup.

Then, you ended up in the bathroom. A messy stuttered excuse to Beomgyu had to suffice, and you rushed away from him, clammy hands lifting up the train of your dress so that you didn’t trip as you ran away.

He’s your best friend, idiot, you murmur under your breath, staring at your ragged reflection in the mirror. Stop acting like such a freak. You have a month before you go to school an hour away, and then you won’t have to worry about these feelings ever again.

You place a hand over your heart, feeling the rapid beating start to finally slow as you take deep breaths and reassure yourself that it’s going to be okay. It’s been harder and harder to tamp down the weird bubbling feelings towards Beomgyu, and you’ve never been happier to be attending your back-up school in the fall. Anything is better than here, you think, grimacing. Anywhere away from Beomgyu will help me work out my shit without him interfering.

“Your shit” refers to these odd feelings. Obviously.

You finally let go of the sink and take a step back, relaxing your shoulders and looking at yourself one last time. You look normal. Your face is no longer scrunched up in a confused, panicked expression, and your chest isn’t heaving with shallow breaths. Your hands are less clammy and you feel more at ease. Right before you turn away, you fix the corner of your lipstick with your pinky finger, then spin on your heel and exit the bathroom.

Beomgyu is waiting there, slumped against the lockers, picking at a cuticle. When you come back, his face lights up, and you can’t help but allow yourself to love him more than a friend, even if it’s just for one night.

TEN YEARS LATER.

You practically relive your senior prom in that same bathroom, clutching the sides of the sink and staring at your reflection with a mixture of nausea and anger bubbling in your stomach. This time, all you have to do is take a long drag from your vape before the tension in your head starts to loosen. You exhale, a cloud of white slipping from between your lips as you stuff the little device back in your purse, between your lipstick and your box of cigarettes.

You feel like your old wallflower self again as you lean against the door before pushing it open to exit the bathroom again. For some reason, being in that bathroom again reminded you of the days where you’d skip class and eat lunch alone. You didn’t want to go back out to the crowd, something that you didn’t have any problems with after you graduated high school and came out of your shell for once and for all. But now, surrounded by your past, your hand hesitates a little before pushing the door open and leaving the confines of a place that’s seen you at your best and your worst for the better part of four years.

Then it starts to feel like things are moving in slow motion.

You’re hyper focused on the fact that the heavy bathroom door had dragged a clump of wet paper towels out of the bathroom and across the freshly waxed floors. You grimace as you step around the sodden mess, making a face and successfully avoiding the paper pile.

You look up, the ghost of a scowl still present on your face, and then you see him.

It’s been ten years since you’ve seen Choi Beomgyu, and it’s such a strange feeling that resonates through your entire body that you actually feel bile rising hot in your throat. You swallow hard, tasting bitter stomach acid, and can’t do anything else but stare.

It’s stupid really; you feel, again, like your stupid teenage self. The one who froze up in uncomfortable situations, the one who cried too easily, the one with seemingly permanently sweaty palms that no boy would ever want to touch, especially not when you were around other more radiant individuals. No, you felt like you hadn’t changed at all as you stared at Choi Beomgyu the same way you did when you were eighteen: with nothing but love and pure adoration in your eyes.

But that’s not to say it wasn’t terribly conflicting.

As soon as you saw him and it actually registered in your mind that it was him in real life and not some ghostly memory, you felt your throat tighten as you thought of the last interaction you had with him. Those old familiar feelings of softness and love faded as you remembered the full extent of what he did, and it was hard to just pretend like that didn’t happen. You would never forget that.

But god, was he gorgeous.

Ten years had nothing on him. Even though twenty-eight wasn’t old in the slightest, you could still see signs of aging in your other classmates. Some had hairlines that had receded much further back than they were when they were eighteen, some had the beginnings of smile lines and crow’s feet, and some even had some wisps of gray hair, though it was only a select few.

Beomgyu on the other hand looked exactly the same, yet so oddly different you almost couldn’t recognize him unless you looked very closely. You wondered for a moment how different he’d look in your eyes if you’d been by his side for the past decade and watched him age right beside you, rather than miles and miles away, both physically and metaphorically. Then, you attribute the weird unfamiliar feeling in the pit of your stomach to the fact that you haven’t seen him in years. Because really, you hardly know him any more. You can’t really call him your best friend if you have had zero contact for a decade.

His hair, which you remembered was always messy, shaggy, and unkempt, was cut shorter. Instead of the dark natural black with white streaks, it was a reddish brown. It was just short enough to be acceptable for a professional job, but long enough that it still looked like Beomgyu. His bangs still fell into his eyes the same way as he leaned forward to laugh, and your heart ached as you heard the tail-end of his goofy chuckle. He stood right outside the gymnasium entrance, talking with a guy whose name you think was Soobin. You distantly remember him at the graduation ceremony. He leans against the lockers nonchalantly, making you remember your senior prom again, but this time the way he does so isn’t in a cocky way. He looks genuinely relaxed as his shoulder rests against the cold painted metal, nodding along as Soobin chatters away to him.

This entire time, you’ve been standing right outside the women’s restroom. You’re kind of surprised that no one’s asked you to move out of the way, given how long you were standing there like an idiot with your mouth hanging open like a fish’s.

Luckily, no one really gave a fuck.

People were flying by, most of them on the phone and saying something like, “I was just there! You told me to meet you by the entrance! No, the front entrance!” Others were just standing around, either focusing way too much on their own conversations or typing aggressively on their phones without paying any attention to those around them, which included you.

You fight the urge to whip out a cigarette right then and there, feeling a headache coming on.

Taking out your own phone, you shoot a quick text to Yeonjun, who’s already asking you when you think you might be ready to leave. Unsurprisingly, you already feel exhausted and plan to just stop by the main room and then get the fuck out.

When you look back to the entrance of the gymnasium, Beomgyu and Soobin have disappeared, and you catch a glimpse of Beomgyu’s pale blue dress shirt and Soobin’s khakis rounding the corner to the men’s room, opposite where you’re standing. You breathe a sigh of relief and enter the main room, chewing on your bottom lip as you look around for anyone you know.

It really is like senior prom, you think grimly, as you sidle over to a table with drinks and snacks. You pick up a can of lemonade and pop it open with the little tab, taking little sips from it as you look around some more.

“I didn’t think I’d see you here.”

You swallow a mouthful of lemonade and turn to the source of the voice, eyes widening a little in surprise.

It’s Karina, who looks as beautiful as ever. Like Beomgyu, she doesn’t seem to have aged at all, rather, her beauty seemed even more radiant. You knew immediately that she was the type to simply get better looking with age, and you couldn’t help but feel a little jealous at that thought.

She offers you a small smile and stands next to you, looking you over with a satisfied look. “You look really good,” she said honestly, “how have you been?”

You let out a long sigh, ending it with a bitter chuckle. “I’ve been good, finished school, got engaged. After I finish helping my parents pack up the house I won’t have a reason to come back here ever again, so I thought why not?”

“Right, I heard about them moving out. Where to?”

“Some apartment complex, I forgot the name.”

“Was it Autumn Oaks?”

You shake your head no, pursing your lips. “No, that’s not it…” you mumble. trying to remember. Then it comes to you, and you snap your fingers at no one in particular. “Woodbury!” you say, silently commending yourself on remembering the name.

“Oh! I must have been wrong then,” Karina laughs, and you’re again jealous of her because of how delicate and pretty she sounds. It’s like the tinkling of little silver bells. Her eyes scrunch up when she laughs, and your gaze washes over her pretty face. Her laughter subsides, and it becomes just a little awkward as she clears her throat. “So, engaged, huh? Who’s the lucky guy?”

You feel a blush creeping onto your face; your cheeks feel hot.

“Yeah, his name’s Yeonjun. I met him as soon as I got to New York and we’ve been inseparable ever since.” You feel a little sheepish talking about him for some reason, and you’re unsure why. You’re very proud to have a partner as loving, handsome, talented, and successful as Yeonjun. Yet, it’s still weird to admit your love for him. It’s like he doesn’t fit with this version of you. And then you wonder, for a brief moment, if that really matters—have you really changed that much since high school? So much so that Yeonjun doesn’t even fit into the world you used to live in?

Awkwardly, you show Karina the home screen on your phone for reference. It’s a cute selfie of you and Yeonjun from the past winter holidays. When the photo was taken, you and Yeonjun had been on an evening stroll when it started to snow, and heavily. The snowflakes were more like clumps, so many little particles gathered together all at once. In the photo you can see the snow clumps clinging to your winter clothes, your hair, even some resting on your eyelashes and eyebrows. Your noses are red from the cold, a single puff of breath escaping your mouth as you’re caught mid-laugh, mid-smile, permanently in the picture.

At first you hated that picture. You hated that Yeonjun took it when you were caught off guard, hated the way you looked in it. But the more that you looked, the softer your reaction got, and eventually you came to love the photo as much as Yeonjun did. At least, you loved the way he looked in it. With his eyes almost closed from his whole face being scrunched up with laughter, his exposed teeth in his wide smile, and his strong arm wrapped around your shoulders, he looked like the sweetest boyfriend ever.

Karina seemed to think so too as she audibly cooed at the picture. “You guys are adorable,” she declared. Then she stops talking, swiftly brushing a strand of hair behind her ear before she locks eyes with you and continues. “Honestly, and I don’t mean this in a bad way at all, I promise—I always thought that you and Beomgyu would end up together.”

There’s a pregnant pause, and it was like everyone in the room held their breath before you remembered where you were and laughed, a little too loudly to be natural. “That’s crazy!” you say between fake chuckles, feeling your stomach turn. You briefly wonder what Karina would do if you threw up all over her, and then pray to any higher being out there that it wouldn’t actually happen. “What makes you think that?” you ask quickly, before she can respond to your exclamation.

She flushes a dark pink. “Oh you know…” she waves a hand in the air. “You two were always together, like always. Everyone thought you were already dating, even if you never were. We all thought so.”

You get déjá vu, remembering the last time you talked to Karina—when she asked you to hook her up with Beomgyu. You get irrationally angry over this, pushing aside the fact that it’s been ten years since she liked him, and you have a fiancé who obviously isn’t Beomgyu.

You force a tight-lipped smile, squeezing your can of lemonade so hard it crunches in your fist a little. Karina doesn’t seem to notice, taking a long sip of her own lemonade.

“Well, it was really nice catching up,” she says, after it’s clear you’re not going to further the conversation. “Good luck. Not that you’ll need it.” She holds out her free hand to you, and you grip it firmly as you both shake. You both burst out into giggles at the odd formality, and the butterflies you get from laughing with a female friend is like nothing else. You wish that you’d had a friend like her in high school. Maybe you even wish that you’d been her friend back in high school.

“Thanks,” you say, “you too. It was so good to see you again.” You find that you genuinely mean it, and a fire roars in your chest. This was what you wanted. You wanted to come back for closure, and now you have it. You saw Beomgyu and he seemed to be doing just fine without you, mended things with the one person you weren’t on great terms with, and you’re folding it all up in your metaphorical box of childhood memories. You can just feel the satisfaction of tying the ribbon and moving on to the next chapter of your life without anything weighing you down.

How mature, you think, to be able to move on from childhood just like that.

You feel accomplished, and a weight that you didn’t even know about has been lifted on your shoulders. You feel lighter than air; you felt as if you could walk amongst the stars if you tried. There’s nothing more for you to do, so you gather yourself and take a deep breath before exiting the gymnasium, giving it one last look. Still, it felt like only yesterday that you’d walked these halls as a student. Those miserable (yet wonderful) years felt like a lightyear and a day away simultaneously.

You’re fumbling through your purse for your phone, to text Yeonjun when your keychain falls out from your vigorous digging. It lands with a loud clink, metal hitting linoleum, and you groan, moving to pick it up, but another hand snatches it before you do.

Standing up, you readjust your purse as the person holds the keychain out to you. “Thanks,” you sigh, reaching for it.

They tug it away then, and you jerk your hand back in surprise. “Where did you get this charm?” the person asks in an accusatory tone.

You finally get your purse back on your shoulder and look the freak in the eyes, but just as you’re about to give them a piece of your mind it clicks. Your breath is stolen from you; you feel like you’re shriveling up on the spot, no oxygen flowing through your veins.

Choi Beomgyu is standing in front of you, frowning at your old matching keychains.

Why hadn’t you gotten a new one, damn it? It’s not something that you regularly thought about; you always made a mental note to get a new one but it always slipped your mind. It was never important enough for you to write down.

You try to say something—what, you don’t know—but your mouth is so dry that you hardly rasp out a single word. Beomgyu finally looks up, dark eyebrows angry and scowling, but as soon as your eyes meet, he melts. You see the hurt, confusion, and warmth flow through his face like waves onto a shore. He drops the keychain again, eyebrows furrowed and hands shaking.

What are you supposed to even say in this situation? You have no fucking idea.

That’s why you run. You squat down quickly to snatch your keys up, and then sprint for the front entrance. The doors are wide open, and you can see the pink and purple sunset, just out of reach. You don’t look back, and you’re soon you’re half running, half tripping down the staircase and then slipping on the dirt pathway all the way back to your house.

It’s stupid. It’s juvenile. It’s immature. Why did you run from him like a maniac? Why didn’t you just say hello and then goodbye like a normal person? No, now things were definitely going to be weird.

Sweat is running down your back when you finally get back to your house. It’s not a long walk, but even though the sun had now fully gone down, it was still hotter than ever. You forgot how nasty summers in your hometown could be.

Musty, muggy air surrounds you as you wipe your moist forehead with your wrist. You feel suffocated in your semi-fancy outfit, and your dress shoes are killing your feet. All you want is to get home, take a shower, and forget that you ever saw him.

So that’s what you do. You don’t tell anyone that you saw him, even though you know they’re wondering. Especially Yeonjun, who was so eager to pick you up from the school and hear all about the reunion. You can see it written across all their faces as you eat dinner together—while they ate, at least. You still felt so sick that all you did was pick at it with your fork and push things around on your plate.

Afterwards, you kiss Yeonjun on the forehead and slip out the door. It’s too early to go to sleep just yet, and you want some fresh air.

Now that the sun had fully gone away, the air had cooled more, but just a little. It was thick and warm, and the buzzing of mosquitoes and other pests hummed in your ears as you itched an already inflamed bite on your ankle. Fireflies danced close to the grass, the flashing yellow lights illuminating the dark blades. Distantly, you could hear big bullfrogs croaking and crickets chirping, and you knew that it came from the small stream that you and Beomgyu liked to mess around in way back when. You lost a sandal there once, you think.

The road from your house to your school started off as black asphalt, but later turned into a winding dirt path, carved by human feet alone, through a small thicket of trees fondly referred to as “the forest.” There were multiple ways to get there though; you and Beomgyu just liked this one best. You stand where dirt meets concrete, staring into the forest, and puffing on a cigarette, exhaling plumes of smoke floating up towards the massive full moon. It’s still too hot out, but you somehow feel more suffocated inside the house. Something about Yeonjun and your parents staring you down, their eyes practically begging to know what happened. You don’t need their damn sympathy, you just needed to chill the fuck out.

“Big city girl needs her nicotine fix?”

Somehow, you knew this would happen. A part of you knows that’s why you came out here tonight.

“Only when I’m stressed.” You purposely take an exaggerated, long drag.

“Because of me? I’m flattered.”

Beomgyu finally stands beside you, heels on the asphalt and toes brushing against the loose dirt. You refuse to look him in the eye. You refuse to look at him at all. The only light is from the moon and your lit cigarette, flashing reddish orange every time you breathed in.

“What do you want?” There’s no softness in your voice despite your opposing feelings inside. You drop the remains of your cigarette onto the dirt ground and stamp it out with your shoe, which you now realize are an old pair of Converse, worn down and caked with dirt.

And, complete with faded Sharpie scribbles made by you and the cocky bastard standing next to you.

“You ran away from me earlier.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“You ran away from me ten years ago too.”

You groan loudly, wiping your face dramatically until the reds of your eyes showed. “I’m not doing this again,” you say, in a voice that’s much higher pitched than normal. You’re getting mad.

“What, you’re just gonna run away again? Very mature,” he said sarcastically. Your heart panged with hurt; there was venom in his words. Clearly, he was still hurting from you leaving. He hadn’t healed either.

“Say what you want to say, I’m only here until the end of the week anyways,” you snap.

Honestly, even though you’re still mad at him, a part of you still cares deeply for him, and it makes your throat tighten when you see the despair on his face. You know you did the right thing back then; leaving, and never talking to Beomgyu again. You never wanted to let him think that what he did was okay, and you knew that if you ever reached out to him and apologized he would assume that. Even so, there were so many nights where you sobbed into your pillow, restraining yourself from calling his number, not even knowing if he ever got a new one. Maybe that was another reason why you didn’t want to call; if you tried to call and couldn’t reach him, it’d be ten times more humiliating.

“You know I’m sorry, don’t you?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it okay,” you mumble, dejectedly. “Just because you said that you’re sorry, just because you are sorry, it doesn’t mean you didn’t try to purposely ruin my future. For selfish reasons too.”

He doesn’t reply for a minute, cocking his head to the side like he always used to do. Seeing him with his old mannerisms makes you feel sick.

“I know,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “I was a stupid kid. I didn’t want you to leave, even if it meant holding you back. It was so damn selfish, and I am so sorry.”

You swallow past the lump in your throat. “Okay. Thanks.” Again, Beomgyu doesn’t reply right away, and instead he turns to face you. The moonlight hits his face perfectly at this angle, and his features are lit up by the beams of silver. You can’t help but look over at him too, staring into his brown eyes that look completely black in the night. They’re so big and dark, but the moonlight reflects sparkles into them. Your scowl softens as you take in the slight signs of aging that you realize he’s beginning to show. His jawline is much more square now; his chin and nose slightly more prominent. There’s faint smile lines traced into his smooth skin, so light that you know you wouldn’t be able to see it in the daylight. The faintest whisper of stubble was only obvious on his chin, if you looked very closely. “Is that all you wanted to say to me?” you say finally, after what seemed like an eternity of you two staring into each other’s eyes.

“No,” he admitted. “There’s so much I want to say, but I’ll forget most of it before I even begin. But I missed you a lot. And I still love you a lot too.”

You wince at the declaration of his feelings, and you hope to any god out there that he means he still loves you as a friend, as someone he’s known for so long. But you know that isn’t what he means. You ask anyways.

“And by love… you mean…”

“I never stopped loving you,” he said fiercely, and his eyes look wet in the pale light. “I never will.”

“You’re crazy,” you say, but your voice cracks, and when you see Beomgyu’s pleading eyes finally spill over at the sound of emotion breaking through your rock solid facade, you shatter.

You’re leaking like a broken faucet; no sobs or cries, just silent tears streaming down your face non-stop. Beomgyu’s crying too, but he’s the opposite. His shoulders are shaking so hard from the force of holding his sobs in, and you can hear his little chokes as he swallows them down. Against your own better judgement, you mentally say fuck it, and walk over to him to take him in your arms.

You regret it and love it at the same time.

He smells just like he did back then; you can tell he uses the same cologne and it makes you smile into the top of his head, where your chin rests softly. And yes, the smell still makes your nostrils sting initially—but you find it doesn’t really bother you like it used to. His body against yours feels different physically but the same in memory. He’s broader, a little taller, a little more squishy now that he’s out of his teen boy phase where he grows faster than he can eat to catch up. But the way his hands clasp around your back, the way he buries his face in your neck, the shake of his left leg (you can tell he’s genuinely nervous because of this), it’s all the same.

You watch your own tears drip down into his red-brown hair, smoothing them away before they can soak in. You sit there on the asphalt in silence, stroking his soft hair and holding him close, as you both cry.

You almost press a quick kiss to the top of his head, but as soon as you look up you see Yeonjun standing there, flowery apron on and an oven mitt on one hand. Right, he’d been in the middle of baking dessert when you’d run out. You push Beomgyu away, a little too roughly, as Yeonjun looks the two of you up and down suspiciously. “Is that Beomgyu?” he asks sharply, and Beomgyu, upon hearing another man’s voice, turns around before you can even open your mouth to reply.

“I am. And who are you?” Beomgyu asks, rather rudely. You shove him again and stand up, walking over to Yeonjun and shaking your head. You bring your wrist up to your eyes and roughly wipe away any of the remaining tears. Yeonjun notices this and his expression softens as he bends down to try to look at your face.

“Hey, is everything okay?” he murmurs softly, rubbing your back gently. “This asshole didn’t try anything, did he?”

“What did you just call me?” Beomgyu asks loudly.

“I called you an asshole because that’s what you are,” Yeonjun snaps. He gently takes you by the arm so he can guide you back to the house, and you let him. “And just so you know, I’m Yeonjun, her fiancé. So fuck off.” He sends one last bone-chilling glare at Beomgyu before he wraps an arm around you and walks you back down the road. Beomgyu can see him leaning down to whisper in your ear, and he grits his teeth angrily, knowing that you’re both talking about him.

“It’s fine, Jun, really,” you say, between stuttered gasps for air. You’re crying again, harder this time. It’s embarrassing; you’re not sad, you’re angry.

“Are you sure? He didn’t try to pull anything? Promise?”

“Promise,” you choke out, and Yeonjun presses a swift kiss to your wet cheek as he closes the front door behind the two of you.

“Then… can I ask what was happening when I found you two?” he asks quietly.

You avert your eyes and stare at the ground. You’ve tracked in some dirt, and you know your mom will be pissy if you don’t clean it up before you go to bed. Yeonjun says your name, reaching over to tilt your chin up so you can look him in the eye.

“He started crying because he felt bad, so then I felt bad and… I just hugged him. He looked so pathetic.” You tell Yeonjun the truth, and he accepts it immediately. There’s no question about it; he trusts you completely.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that alone,” he says, sounding genuinely sorry that he wasn’t there with you. “I would have beat his ass.”

“And that’s why we walked away,” you said, laughing a little and wiping your teary eyes.

“That’s right,” he repeats, pulling you into a tight hug. An immense wave of guilt washes over you as you flinch; your first thought was something terrible.

You like Beomgyu’s hugs better, and you always have.

—

The next morning dawns hot and dry.

Unlike the previous day, in which the air held so much moisture you could feel your clothes clinging to your seemingly permanently damp body, this heat was unbearable in a different way.

You swear you can feel your skin cracking and drying as soon as you step into the direct sunlight, no matter how much sunscreen you apply. Heat waves are practically visible when you look outside; they’re distorting the image of the big tree in your backyard.

This morning, you’re sitting on your front porch with a paper plate and a steaming mug of coffee. On the paper plate is a blueberry streusel muffin; courtesy to your fiancé’s above average baking skills—and also the reason behind the flower-patterned apron he had been wearing when he came across you and Beomgyu having a weird emotional snot-fest. The muffin is a little soggy, as muffins tend to degrade to once they’ve been shut in a tupperware overnight, but the promise of a sweet treat first thing in the morning far outweighed the initial disappointment upon seeing a second morning muffin.

Chewing slowly, you dust off your streusel sticky hands, crumbs rolling off your palms and landing onto the peeling wood of your front porch. You watch one big crumb of streusel roll down the expanse of your thigh and down two, three steps until it lands in a patch of sunlight further down the stairs that lead to the street. It’s early enough in the morning that the sun isn’t directly overhead and therefore burning you as soon as you walk out the front door, and you’re grateful for the temporary shade. Your bare feet brush against the edge of the shadows, toes dipping into light and spreading across the sun warmed wood.

It’s a gloriously individual morning, and you breathe in the smell of trees and warm grass. If only you could freeze this moment in time and revisit it whenever you wanted. If only you had such an escape that you could return to when times got tough.

But really, that morning is the only peaceful part of your day. You’re arguing with your co-worker on the phone as soon as you down your last sip of coffee, which had by then cooled into a lukewarm liquid. You hate the last few gulps of a hot drink, because there is nothing worse than a lukewarm drink that’s meant to be hot. Then, irritable from your row with Jeongin, who fucked up your entire project and needed help restoring a few very simple documents, paired with the misery of living in a house with no AC during the hottest, driest summer months, you end up being snappy with Yeonjun.

Also, your mother made your least favorite dish for dinner, and as much as you appreciated your parents for cooking for you, there was no way in hell you were eating it.

Stomach growling, head aching, and fingers sore from furious emailing (thanks to Jeongin), you curl up on your side in bed. Your hair is still damp from your recent shower, and your face is shiny and a little sore from you taking out your anger on your face when you were washing it.

You’re plucking at a piece of your hair, just toying with it mindlessly, when you feel the edge of your bed dip down as someone sits on it. You freeze, sucking your bottom lip into your mouth to chew on it nervously until you taste blood.

“Long day, huh?” Yeonjun asked softly. You scoot over a little to let him lay next to you, but you don’t turn to look at him. He sidles in carefully, leaving just a little space between your bodies in case you’re not comfortable with too much contact tonight. You shrug in response, the only sound being your t-shirt brushing against your bed sheets as your shoulders move up and down in place of real words.

“I was just annoyed, and everything piled up so quickly after I had to fix Jeongin’s shit.” You spit out Jeongin’s name like it’s poisonous, and Yeonjun can’t help but chuckle at your petty behavior.

“He’s a kid,” he chided, “but he is a pretty dumb one, at that. I thought young people were supposed to be good with technology.”

“Doesn’t apply to clueless idiots,” you mumble, your words muffled from your lips being pressed to your pillowcase.

“It’s been a long few days for you, hasn’t it?” he asked, forgetting about Jeongin and his antics. “Are you sure you don’t wanna fly home early?”

Home. Fly home. Right, this wasn’t home any more, even though you always referred to it as that. I’m going home for Christmas. This girl I knew from back home got married last month. My hometown is a wasteland and I never want to go back. But I don’t want to lose it, either.

“I’m okay,” you start, and you can just picture Yeonjun’s doubtful frown without turning to look at his face. “Fine, I will be okay once this is all wrapped up and over with. It’s a stressful time but it’s something I have to do. I had to come back to my high school reunion for closure. I had to at least see Beomgyu one last time. I had to help my parents clean and sell the house.” You’re laying it out for him, word by word, and he pays attention to your intonation and serious tone, moving a little closer so that he could rest his head right next to yours. His nose poked the back of your scalp as he inhaled the scent of your shampoo, and underneath that, the scent of you.

You swallow hard, feeling all of the anger from your long, stressful day melt away. Yeonjun’s steady breathing and complete attention to your stupid rant had calmed you. Silently, you both stare up at the warm-toned walls, washed with a dim yellow light from the small lamp on your nightstand, the only light in the house left on at the moment. It was late, past midnight, and you two were the only two souls in the house that were awake.

Holding your breath, you slowly move closer to Yeonjun until your bodies are pressed so tightly to each other that you couldn’t wedge a single finger between where you two were connected. He breathes in harshly at the feeling of your hips connecting, flexing his hands into fists to try and control himself. Then, with a shaking hand, you reach over to find him, and once your fingers brush against his, you slip your hand into his hold. His fingers are warm, soft, familiar. Especially from the past few days of moving heavy objects. You bring your intertwined hands up to your chest, and then they part—you press his newly free hand against your breast, letting him feel your hardened, sensitive nipple. He groans softly, deeply, into your hair as he thumbs at the hardened nub over the thin material of your shirt.

You exhale, happy that he seems to have missed you as much as you missed him.

Now you feel his hard length pressed up against your backside, grinding roughly into you and making you slick with anticipation, though you were both still fully clothed. Momentarily, he let go of your tit, and before you could whisper a question he slipped his hand underneath your shirt to grope at them freely, without any barriers. He’s breathing heavier now, soft grunts escaping his lips ever now and then. You’re holding back a whimper as he sucks hickies onto your neck, his hot tongue making you squirm.

All in one quick fumble, you’re facing him now and your lips are pressed to his. Your neck is stinging from his teeth, your nipples burning from his calloused fingers pinching and teasing. Worst of all, your clothed cunt, grinding against Yeonjun’s hard muscular thigh, which he had pressed roughly between your legs as soon as you turned to face him, gasping.

You feel your teeth knock against his as you choke down a moan when your clit nudges against his thigh just right, and he reaches up with one hand to grab your throat gently, just enough to get your attention. He shushes you, and you whimper quietly as his fingers move up from your throat to inside your mouth. You swirl your tongue around the digits, sucking them deeper into your mouth, eager to please as you stare at his gorgeous face, half hidden in the shadows. His lips are swollen and red in the limited light, his eyes hooded and dark as he stares at you sucking on his fingers, desperate and longing. You haven’t felt this way in a long time. When was the last time you wanted to please a man this badly?

Yeonjun pulls his fingers out of your mouth, staring at the string of saliva that connects them to your bottom lip momentarily before it inevitably breaks, and then he reaches down into your pants, spit soaked fingers expertly finding your clit, as they have done for years and years. He knows everything about your body, and better yet, everything about your mind that makes your body react.

He’s going to give it to you exactly how you like it, exactly like he’s done for years and years. He’s never let you down before, and he isn’t planning on it now, even when it’s in your childhood bedroom.

He winks at you before ducking under the covers, and you feel his hands grabbing at the waistband of your pants. You lift up your ass, letting him remove your shorts and panties at the same time, and finally, you feel his warm breath tickling your inner thighs as he leans in.

He presses sloppy, wet kisses down your thighs as he works his way to the center, and finally you feel his fingers teasing you with light touches, poking and prodding just to get on your nerves a little so that you’ll pull his hair the way he likes it. And that you do, tangling your fingers in his brown locks as he smiles into your cunt, your wetness dripping down his chin.

Yeonjun reappears once he’s done his job, so well that you had to stuff your fist into your mouth when you came so that you didn’t wake up your parents with the loudest, most pornographic moan you’ve ever uttered. Your legs are shaking as he emerges from between your legs, your slick making his lips and chin glisten in the light. You reach up to grab him by the shirt, dragging him down to you so that you can taste yourself on his swollen, pouty lips. It’s salty, a little bitter and musky, and you can smell it all over his face as you messily make out with him, lips sliding over each other as you fumble with the bottom of his shirt to try and tug it up. Feeling your cold hands on his stomach, he reluctantly stops kissing you to rip it off his body, tossing it onto the floor with a flourish. It joins the pile of clothes on the floor, alongside your shorts and panties, which had made their way closer and closer to the edge of the bed before finally just falling in a sad heap, forgotten about in the heat of the moment.

You watch his muscles flex in the dim light as he tosses his shirt onto the floor, your eyes glowing with lust. He dives back in; kissing you like it’s the last time he’ll be able to taste your lips as he fumbles with his pants. You part once more to rid yourself of the remaining clothing items clinging to your bodies; your shirt and his pants.

You’re already reaching over with a spit soaked hand to grab at his dick before he even gets the chance to toss his boxers on the floor, and he sharply inhales at the feeling of you sliding your slick hand over his cock head. You feel it twitch under your touch and giggle. The effect that you have on him has never dimmed; you are the most gorgeous person in the world to him.

Before you and Yeonjun had officially gotten together, you had just been friends. He was two years older than you, an upperclassman already, and he didn’t want to hold you back with a relationship as soon as you got to school. No matter how much he liked you, he kept his distance just a little as he watched you grow and change as a person in those first few months as an adult. In this time, you managed to rack up a few sexual experiences, some better than others, all being below average at best.

It was hooking up, that’s all it was. That’s the only kind of sex that you had, the only kind that you thought existed. Fucking. Hooking up. Having sex. Such plain, brash terms.

Then, you were with Yeonjun.

Fucking had a different meaning with him. There was affection, an underlying softness even when he was being rough, an overflow of love pouring from his heart into yours every time he was inside of you. It made you feel weird at first, and you actually avoided him for a bit after you started crying during one heated night due to feeling so safe in his arms. It was so new that you got scared; you thought it was wrong.

It wasn’t just fucking any more, you later thought, he was making love to you. It was as simple as that. You had previously thought that fucking, having sex, making love, hooking up—it was all pretty much the same thing; they were all synonymous terms. No, the difference with Yeonjun was that he made love to you, and that was the missing puzzle piece in your previously deeply unsatisfying sex life.

You knew that this is what he was doing now, especially tonight when you were both feeling so vulnerable. His lips hardly leave yours, save for when one of you needs to take a gasping breath, and his hands roam your body, embracing and worshiping every single part of you. It’s driving you crazy, as you’re doing nothing but kissing though you can feel his hard cock brushing against your weeping slit every time he leans forward. To remedy this, you wrap your legs around his waist to pull him closer to you. Now he’s grinding against you, his length pulsating against your cunt with every movement either of you make.

“Please Jun, please just do it already,” you whine, over and over, crying in his ear.

He teases you endlessly, stuttering his hips to make your breath catch in your throat, smirking at your visceral reactions to him. In the middle of your begging, he angles his hips differently, and his head slips into you, a breathy moan leaving your lips. He bites down hard on his lower lip, resisting the urge to groan aloud and slap your tit to see it jiggle, and pushes the rest of his cock in, warmth enveloping him as he closes his eyes.

Your hands scrabble for something to hold onto, and his shaking hands find your flailing ones. He grips your hand tightly, pinning it above your head as he rocks his hips into you. The covers slip off of his narrow hips at the slow, constant thrusts, exposing all of you in the light. You look down to see where you’re connected, see the ring of your slick around the base of his shiny cock, and throw your head back with a whine as he pushes into you particularly roughly.

Yes, sex with Yeonjun is always full of passion, full of love. It elevates the experience for you, when you feel so deeply and wholly for the person that you’re having relations with.

You can’t help but pull him in for another kiss when he chokes out a quick warning, words spilling from his trembling lips. You’ve orgasmed twice already, from Yeonjun putting off his own orgasm in order to make sure you achieve yours. His neglected cock, edged multiple times, was red and leaking copious amounts of precum by the time his trembling hand directed it back inside of your swollen pussy after your second high.

You feel warmth erupt from his cock as he cries into the kiss, unable to tamp down the soft groans that escape his lungs. Slick, wet sounds are the only thing you can hear apart from the both of your labored breathing, as he keeps thrusting his softening cock inside. You feel his cum leaking down your ass cheeks, and your cunt clenches around him as he stills inside of you.

Somehow, the two of you fall asleep like that. It’s just so warm and fuzzy and sticky, and you’re so tired that when he lays his sweaty face in your chest, you close your eyes and don’t open them again until the early hours of the morning, when you feel like you’re about to piss yourself.

You leave Yeonjun in the cum-stained bed; it’s still just past two in the morning, but you know you won’t be able to fall back asleep now. At least, not while there’s rivulets of dried semen down your inner thighs and you smell like a mixture of saliva and sweat. After you flush the toilet, you stare at the reflection of your hickey covered neck in the mirror hanging on your wall, pressing against one lightly with your pointer finger and grimacing at the purple color. It’d be a bitch to try and cover. You want to shower again so badly, but first you need a smoke. You find a half empty box of stale cigarettes in your purse and a gas station lighter on your nightstand, and you open your window and step out onto the roof.

It’s a cool night. Your bare feet and legs—you only put on Yeonjun’s shirt and a fresh pair of panties when you woke up—scrape against the rough surface of the roof tiles. You’re clutching the box of cigarettes so hard you think you might have dented a few of them. Balancing one between your lips, you light it and inhale deeply, tossing the lighter down and leaning back before exhaling. You watch the exhaled smoke rise up to the dark sky before eventually dissipating.

“I seriously think you have a problem,” a disapproving voice states, and you curse aloud, almost dropping the lit cigarette off the roof as you sit up.

Again, Beomgyu stands there, looking wounded. “Why the fuck are you here?” you ask. Suddenly, the way that you’re dressed makes you extremely uncomfortable. Beomgyu seems to notice this too, eyes following the length of your bare legs, disappearing beneath the oversized shirt you have on. With disappointment, he realizes this is probably Yeonjun’s shirt covering your body. This is quickly remedied when you sit up in annoyance and he catches a flash of your panties underneath. He feels like a teenage boy when a simple glimpse of white panties makes his cock twitch in his pants.

“I wanted to be an adult and say I’m sorry,” he says indignantly, offended at your violent tone.

“At one in the morning?” You scoff, stubbing out your cigarette on the roof tiles even though it’s only half-gone. You don’t feel like smoking any more, not with Beomgyu’s judgemental eyes on you.

“He get you into that shit?”

“Jesus, Gyu,” you snap.

“Fine, fine! I don’t care. I’m sorry.” His lithe figure, bathed in moonlight, moves closer to you, but with a slight caution. You know he isn’t completely sure how you feel about him.

“Just sit down already.”

He sits.

“You called me Gyu again.”

His voice sounds thick, pained. You habitually reach up and touch your chapped, kiss-swollen lips. You hadn’t even noticed that the old nickname slipped out; it felt so natural to say even though it had been so long since you had. The closest you came to saying any variation of your ex best friend’s name was the silent mouthing of the vowels and consonants that made up one of the most beautiful names you’ve ever heard. The loneliest nights, mostly the ones that you struggled through right after you moved away, were spent with the ghost of his name on your lips. You were too cowardly to go any further, as if the simple singular utterance of his name might summon him from across the country and into your dorm room. The wound was so fresh that even the made-up version of Beomgyu that came with the memories was too much for you to bear.

“Remember all the nights we’d come out here and just look at the stars?” he asks suddenly, and all of a sudden you truly feel eighteen and heartsick again—staring up into the dark void of nothingness above you, rendering you and Beomgyu smaller than the tiniest ant, nothing more than two less than microscopic specks on such a vast planet.

“Yeah,” you manage to get out, though your voice sounds oddly strained.

“The night before you left—the last time I saw you—I was looking at the stars and thinking of us.” He laughs a little, and you can’t help but turn to look at him, your dry eyes burning with the possibility of tears. You’re on your side now, facing him; he’s still laying flat on his back with his hands clasped behind his head. His eyes are locked on the night sky, so focused that he doesn’t even realize that the girl he loves is staring at him with tears in her eyes. “And then, you just appeared. It was like I manifested you. You looked fake in the moonlight too.”

“Fake?”

“Yeah, you almost didn’t look like yourself. You were wearing this dress, a floaty looking one with flowers, and you looked so pretty that I thought I was imagining you standing in front of me. I thought I made it all up, until I grabbed your hand and you were warm and solid and real.” Now he turns to look at you and realizes that you’re facing him, paying full attention to his rambling. Slowly, he mirrors your pose, turning to look at you. Your faces were close enough now that if you both leaned in, you’d kiss. The very thought of that makes your stomach turn—with anticipation or dread, you’re unsure.

“Like now.” He whispers this last part, before looking down and taking your hand in his gently. His hands are different from Yeonjun’s; instead of being smooth and soft, they are dry and calloused. You can see how years of work in his dad’s old shop has taken a toll on his poor hands; the days where his hands were young and clean were long gone. You hold his hand up to your face to study it closer, to memorize each little line and freckle so that when you left for the last time you could remember exactly what Choi Beomgyu’s hand looked like, exactly how it felt to hold. Years from now, you will be sick and dying in bed, and you will wonder if the pale, slight freckles on the back of his hand will disappear amongst dozens of age spots. Will his fingers gnarl and twist like his grandfather’s did, falling victim to arthritis? Will his nails grow thick and yellow, like so many other elders’ do? You take in the cracked fingertips, the dirt and oil under his nails.

“Like now?” you ask thickly.

He nods, head slightly bobbing up and down. It was so subtle that you almost didn’t catch it, instead focusing on his full lips and how they glistened. How was it possible for a man to have such perfect, delicate features? You’d never seen anyone so pretty in your life. There’s something about seeing a beautiful man in the middle of the night; the moonlight will illuminate their face in a completely different way than sunlight does. It will make you see an entirely new side of him, and it will only make you fall deeper in love with this unattainable, gorgeous boy. Once you see a beautiful boy in the moonlight, you will never be able to forget about them, and this is when you know that you will never be able to let Choi Beomgyu go. More time could elapse—ten, fifteen, twenty more years—and you’d still think of him too often for it to be normal. You’d still hope that one day, you get another chance to try things again.

That is how you find yourself kissing Choi Beomgyu, nothing but a single pane of glass separating the two of you and your sleeping fiancé.

His lips are slightly chapped. They’re warm, but his tongue is hot and wet as it glides across your lips, begging you to open your mouth. You do so after only a brief hesitance, sighing a little into his mouth as he cautiously puts a hand on your waist. The feeling of his hands on you seems to snap you out of your daze, and you quickly pull away from him, sitting back up and looking at the window, panicked. It’s still dark. No one is awake but you and Beomgyu.

He reaches for your hand again. “Are you okay?” he asks. It’s a stupid question, you think—you just cheated on your loving, perfect fiancé—and he’s asking if you’re fine? Of course, he’s guilt-free in this—Yeonjun’s feelings mean nothing to him.

“I just can’t do this. Not while he’s sleeping right there.” You look away, guilt already melting away as you stare into Beomgyu’s gorgeous eyes. It’s like you forget all about Yeonjun as long as Beomgyu’s there in his place.

Beomgyu ponders your words for a moment, looking off into the distance and pursing his lips. “Then… let’s go somewhere else.”

You bite your tongue. Somewhere else?

“And that means…?” you ask.

“I know a place,” he says mysteriously. “Do you trust me?”

You know you do before you even say it. Before the incident, there was no one you trusted more than Beomgyu. And even after the incident, you know that you would be safe with him.

You quickly climb back into your room and snatch up a pair of shorts that are laying on the floor, pulling them on so that you’re not walking around in your panties. You also slip on some shoes, the first comfortable pair you see.

After you climb back out the window and shut it as quietly as possible, he motions for you to follow him. He shimmies down the side of your house, whispering directions to you when you try to mimic his moves. You slip a little more than halfway down, your panicked scream catching in your throat, reducing it to little more than an exhale, but you land in strong, firm arms. Beomgyu rolls his eyes at your clumsiness, not the least bit phased, but you have to calm your rapidly beating heart before you even think to thank him.

You feel a new fire burning in your chest, the thrill of doing something so daring, so wrong, waking up your hibernating rebellious side. You’re reminded of other moonlit walks you had with Beomgyu, years and years ago. You snuck out the same way, through your bedroom window—you just didn’t fall halfway down.

It’s only when you’re more than halfway there that you realize where Beomgyu is leading you. He helps you across a shallow stream, telling you which rocks are safe to step on and which are slick with damp moss, and then a memory pops back into your head. You land safely on the dirt ground, clutching Beomgyu’s hand, and you grin. “Are we going to Thomas?”

Thomas—the nickname that you and Beomgyu gave to the abandoned boxcar in a clearing in the woods. At the time, you were regularly babysitting a child in the neighborhood, who was obsessed with the animated show about a talking train named Thomas. For a few months, you and Beomgyu watched a little more of the show than you’d like to ever admit. You also both enjoyed it more than you’d like to admit. But something that you were more than happy to admit, you now had a good code name for the train car in the woods.

“You still remember!” he exclaims. “I was starting to think you seriously forgot about him.”

“I did, until we crossed the stream,” you admitted. “It’s been a while.”

“It really has,” he agrees, “since when, junior year of high school?”

“Something like that.”

You only have to walk a little longer before the trees thin out, and you spot the faded old car on the other end of the small clearing. You take Beomgyu’s hand, and you both run over, laughing openly and bumping into each other playfully. He boosts you up into the car first, and then hoists himself up and sits beside you.

The door had been ripped off the car since you’d found it, and it was now covered in moss and broken down into splinters behind the structure. This meant that there was a section of the car that was lit up by the moonlight, so you weren’t stuck in complete darkness. That was where you and Beomgyu sat, legs hanging over the edge, until he nudged you and got up, walking further inside the car until he sat down at the far end, motioning for you to come inside. You follow him, kneeling beside him, heart hammering in your chest as he slowly takes your hands.

“Can I kiss you again?” he asks quietly.

You swallow hard, but nod. You shut your eyes tightly before your lips collide, but as soon as he’s kissing you again you don’t care any more—there’s no more hesitation. You’re bringing his hands to your chest eagerly, sucking his tongue into your mouth.

He pushes you down, so that your back is flat on the floor of the car, and he’s slotted between your legs. He’s groping your tits over your shirt, pressing his knee into your cunt.

You pull out of the kiss, opening your eyes and studying him. His lips are swollen now, and he’s panting. “I want to see you,” you whisper.

“Then look,” he says sassily, cocking his head to the side, shifting his bangs into his eyes.

“No,” you whine softly, “I want to see all of you.”

He holds his breath once he realizes what you mean. You watch intently as he slowly sits back on his heels, taking off every item of clothing carefully. You do the same, making a neat pile so that you don’t lose anything.

You’ve seen him shirtless before, when you’d go to the pool or he’d change his shirt in front of you on the occasion. But now, he looked different. He’s more muscular, more solid. He’s still slim, but it’s clear that he’s worked on his body and grown into it more over the years. You can’t take your eyes off of him as he takes off his pants, gaze fixated on the bulge in his boxers. He flushes a dark pink when he follows your eyes, and gets back between your legs, staring at your naked tits. Your nipples are stiff in the cool night air, and he gently tweaks one of them, smiling when you inhale sharply.

“Is this okay?” he asks, when his mouth is an inch away from your breast. His warm breath ghosts over your skin, and you moan quietly, nodding and pushing your chest against his lips. He sucks your nipple into his mouth, grazing his teeth against it, and you can’t help but place a hand on the back of his head and lean into his mouth.

When he’s done admiring your tits, which he’s dreamed about for years, he places wet kisses down your body, until he reaches the band of your panties. “Okay?” he asks again, just as his fingertips curl underneath the elastic.

“Yes, please,” you gasp, and he pulls them down your thighs, tossing them into the pile of clothes in the corner. He places his hands on your knees, spreading your legs, eager to see you. He leans down, parting your glistening lips in the moonlight, and feeling prideful—you’re wet because of him. He did this, not Yeonjun.

It seems that the differences between Beomgyu and Yeonjun keep growing—the two of them eat pussy differently too.

Beomgyu’s messy with it, spit already dripping down your cunt and down his chin. He’s rough too, pressing his tongue against your clit until your thighs are shaking uncontrollably. His soft hair curls around your fingers as you pull his head closer to your cunt.

You cum, surprisingly harder than you have in a while. You’re whining and bucking your hips into his face, until he finally lifts his face. His lips and chin are wet, and he has a shit-eating grin on his face.

“What?” you ask, suddenly embarrassed at the way he’s staring you down.

“You’re so hot,” he sighs, and you feel yourself blushing at his genuine glee.

“Whatever,” you mumble, suppressing a giggle, but he doesn’t stop smiling to himself as he takes off his boxers.

You think it’s completely, wholly unfair how beautiful he looks naked.

Something about his skin makes him look extra luminous in the moonlight that washes over his body in pale stripes, slipping through the slats of the wooden walls and pouring in through the door frame. His auburn-brown hair looks dark cherry red in the limited light, so different from the fine black hairs that litter his arms, legs, and stomach. This is where your gaze dips lower, towards the one part of Beomgyu you’d never seen before.

His cock, hard and leaking, twitches as he feels you staring. You’re impressed—but really, you weren’t expecting to be disappointed. You’ve never seen him naked before, but you weren’t an idiot. After seeing him in his swim trunks that last summer, you couldn’t help but bring that image to mind whenever your fingers traveled beneath the elastic band of your panties. You swallow hard as he drops back down, hovering over you. He’s breathing heavily, nervously, as he tries to decipher the unassuming expression on your face.

“I hope I’m not disappointing you,” he can’t help but blurt out, not thinking straight.

You wrap your arms around his neck and pull his face close to yours again, kissing him long and deep. He melts into your embrace, quickly reciprocating your excitement. You feel the head of his dick nudge against your slit as he moves closer, and you unconsciously buck your hips up, slipping it inside for just a moment. You both shudder at the sudden closeness, the sensation of being closer than you ever have before, and you part—he stares so deeply into your eyes that you swear he’s staring at your soul. You feel more naked than ever; it surpasses your physical body. You’ve exposed your loves, your fears, your darkest secrets and the skeletons in your closet, before baring your tangible nudity—something you’d never done before.

His eyes drop to your neck and chest, and the adoring fuzzy gaze disappears as he takes in the dark marks left by Yeonjun. His hold on your hips tighten, so hard that you’re gasping from the tingling mixture of pain and pleasure, and he attacks the same spot on the side of your neck, the same one that Yeonjun had been nibbling at as he worked you through an orgasm. It’s sore, swollen—the skin is hot to the touch and bruised already, but Beomgyu’s hard teeth reignite the pain ten times over as he roughly rubs your clit. You cry out, thighs squeezing his hand as you come again, feeling over sensitive already.

He positions himself at your entrance, looking up to you for confirmation. Your chest is heaving as you pant, still woozy from your orgasm, but you know you won’t be wholly satisfied until you feel him completely. This time, you need him in a way you have never had him. You nod, and he reaches up to clasp your hand above your head, rough fingers pinning you to the wooden floor.

He enters you in one fluid motion, so smooth you don’t register it until he’s fully sheathed inside and the two of you let out a simultaneous deep groan.

“Does he fuck you as good as I do?” Beomgyu can’t help but spit out between moans, slamming his hips into yours so roughly that the slap of skin on skin echoes around the empty car.

You’re getting annoyed at how you keep comparing Beomgyu to Yeonjun, so when his thrusts differ from your fiancé’s too, you completely block the thought of your loving partner out of your head. You forget that he’s asleep in your childhood bedroom, cuddling with your favorite stuffed animal, surrounded by the smell of you. You forget that it’s too late to ever go back, to ever regain what has been broken. And you forget that you ever hated Beomgyu, because it was hard to hate him when your mind was so clouded by lust you couldn’t think of anyone else.

The last thing you think about before you fall asleep in the early hours of the morning with another man’s cum leaking out of your sore cunt, is how angelic Beomgyu’s face looked when he filled you up. It made you want to wrap your legs around his narrow waist and let him fuck it into you, so that he would never be apart from you again. You never wanted to see another face ever again, after you saw his delicate features scrunched up in pleasure.

You’re so exhausted by your sneaking around, so sore from the splinters and scrapes, that you curl up right next to Yeonjun without showering off your night.

It’s a pity, that when Yeonjun wakes, long before you do, he doesn’t suspect a thing when he sees a twig clinging to the back of your shirt, or fresh mud on an old pair of your shoes. He trusts you, so wholeheartedly, that he pressed kisses on top of your exposed hickies—though not without noticing that they looked a lot darker than they did the last time he saw them.

—

“Excuse us, ma’am!” Two children—no older than ten and twelve—squeeze past you in the crowded aisle, the younger one brushing against a box of uncooked pasta and knocking it to the ground. Without a glance backwards, they speed off towards a tired looking couple with a shopping cart full of sugary cereal and cheap plastic toys. It’s then that you register the name that one of the kids called you, and you’re disgruntled—do you really look that old? You catch a glimpse of yourself on the reflective surface of a colorful advertisement standee, and frown at your appearance, feeling older and more out of place than ever.

You toss a box of uncooked pasta into your cart and go forth, braving the chilly aisles of the grocery store without your jacket, which you stupidly left in the car, thinking that you’d be fine. You make a mental note to never trust the temperature again.

As you’re studying the nearly identical packages of grapes, a pale hand reaches for the same bag you were going for. The both of you spring back, surprised, and you lock eyes with Karina.

“Oh!” you exclaim. You try to make yourself say hello, but there’s already been an awkward silence after your surprised outburst.

She smiles, unaffected, and says, “Hello, (Y/N). How have you been?”

Damn her perfect ability to navigate a conversation.

“Hey, Karina!” you say, crossing your arms to try and mimic a comfortable position. “I’ve been good! Just busy, moving and stuff, you know. What about you?”

She laughs, the same delicate laugh that makes your stomach jump with excitement, before replying. “I’m good too! Trying to soak up the last few weeks of summer, then everything starts up again. This place really revolves around the kids, you know? When school starts again, it feels like the whole town just wakes up after a long sticky summer nap.” She pauses. “Oh, I’m rambling.” A little embarrassed even though you’re clearly not offended, she places a delicate hand over her chest. A pretty silver ring sparkles on her fourth finger.

You shake your head, assuring her that it’s fine, that she’s right anyways, but you’re staring at her ring the whole time. She notices, gaze following yours and quickly flickering down to her hand, and smiles broadly. “Oh! Did I tell you last time? I’m married now!” she exclaims. Her cheeks are pink, flushed with excitement. Clearly, she was very happy in her relationship, eager to talk about it. The very thought of your own relationship now made a rock appear in your stomach—a heavy, dark, massive boulder that weighed you down and made you sick.

“Congratulations!” you say, and you both share a little moment right there in the fruit and vegetable aisle—it makes you miss your girl friends from back home, and you again wonder if it would have been possible to be friends with Karina way back when. If that would have made things different. Better, even.

“Thank you, thank you.” She looks down, trying to hide her wide smile, and brushes a long lock of her dark hair behind her ear. “He’s the best.”

“That’s sweet, I’m really happy for you,” you say, and you find that you actually really mean it. You exchange goodbyes as the conversation naturally trails off, and head off in opposite directions—both of you carrying a bag of grapes, neither one being the initial same choice.

As soon as you get into the car and place your hands on the steering wheel, your phone starts ringing, and you groan and reach over to fumble around in your purse for the vibrating device.

“Hello?” you ask, answering the call, which you now see is from Yeonjun. You feel the rock in your stomach press down harder on the sensitive walls of your stomach lining, and you wince.

“Hey, babe,” he coos, “are you on your way back yet?”

“Yeah, just finished grocery shopping,” you say honestly, propping your purse back up. You work on tossing the mess back into the open mouth of the bag; you ended up spilling an expired container of Tic-Tacs all over the passenger seat when you tried to feel around for your phone.

“Good! I was thinking that maybe we could go on a drive tonight?”

You freeze up, a handful of fruit flavored mints falling from your hand. “Why?” you ask carefully.

“No reason, I just… I guess I just miss spending time with you alone,” he confesses. “As much as I love your parents, and this place, it’s not the same. I’m excited for us to go back home, and for things to go back to normal.”

Your heart aches at the melancholy, tired voice on the other end of the line. “We leave soon, babe,” you assure him, “we’re almost done here.”

“I know, I know—I’m sorry, I’m complaining. This is a lot for you, I shouldn’t be wrapped up in my own feelings.”

“No, no! I understand, I do, and I miss you too. Look, the drive sounds good. I’ll be back soon, and as soon as I finish putting the groceries away we can leave. Does that sound okay?” Your grip on the phone tightens, and you feel guilty. If not for the complete betrayal, then because you’d genuinely been neglecting him since you got home too.

“Yes, it does.” He sounds content, relieved even, and you smile to yourself as you say goodbye and hang up. You place your hands back on the steering wheel, and take a deep breath as you head home, away from Mr. Kim’s grocery store—which is now owned by his son. Another small change, another thing that makes you feel like you never knew this town in the first place.

Outside, the sun is setting. Orange and pink bleed through your cracked windows, painting warm stripes across your body. The air is warm and thick, almost soupy from the humidity, but it feels familiar and comforting.

Yeonjun is baking again when you return, the same flowered apron that’s too short on his lanky frame tied in a messy pink bow at his back. He’s pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven when you push the door open, hands full of groceries.

“Welcome back!” he exclaims, quickly putting down the cookies to rush to your aid. Gratefully, you hand off a few bags. Yeonjun bustles around the vanilla scented kitchen, putting things away quickly as you dust off your hands and sneak a cookie from the tray. Sweetness floods across your tongue as you bite into one. It’s still a little too warm, the center burning your tongue a tad and the rest of the treat falling apart in your hands. “They’re not cooled yet!” he scolds, finally noticing your struggle.

“Couldn’t help it, they looked too good,” you say around a mouthful of cookie, and he rolls his eyes before walking over and planting a peck on your messy lips.

“I’ll finish up here, you do what you need to do,” he says, kneeling down to sift through the remaining few bags. He shoos you away as you cram the rest of the cookie into your mouth, giggling.

Really, you don’t need to go off and do anything. You already had everything in your purse. So all you did was check your reflection quickly before walking back into the kitchen, where Yeonjun has finished putting the groceries away and is hanging up the beloved frilly apron.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Sure am.”

He grins, wraps an arm around your shoulders like he always does, and presses a kiss to your temple. The two of you don’t bother to close the windows or lock the door, because it’s a small town where everyone knows everyone. It’s still a bit unnerving for Yeonjun, who has always lived in the city. He was brought up sternly, always told by his parents that if he ever left a door unlocked or a window open, someone evil would surely get in. And in the city, that’s not too far of an assumption. That was probably Yeonjun’s least favorite part about you—if he had to choose. Though you were much better about it now, for the longest time he saw you as a little country mouse lost in a big city. You would leave the door of your dorm room open all day after leaving for class. You would often leave the windows unlocked overnight. One warm autumn evening while going out for dinner with some friends, you left your window completely open and Yeonjun was the one that found the intruder under your bed. To be fair, the intruder was a rather chunky squirrel who didn’t have the gymnastic ability to hurl himself back up onto the window ledge, but still. You remember all of this fondly, as you watch Yeonjun double check that the front door is closed in the rear view mirrors before pulling away from your house.

The sun seemed to be taking its sweet time, wanting to give a magnificent show to anyone who spared the time to watch. You stare down at the small clouds of reddish dirt being spit up by the wheels of your car, then refocus your attention on the splendid landscape before you. The warmth of the setting sunlight bled golden everywhere, turning the green grass a springy hazy shade and shining rays of sparkles onto any moving creature. A pair of songbirds flew by quickly, twittering and warbling a good night song as golden light danced across their waxy feathers. You squint at the tree that the birds have landed in, and you gasp as you recognize it. “Jun,” you plead, “can we stop by the blackberry bushes? It’s just the right time to pick them.”

“Blackberry bushes?” Yeonjun exclaims, “you don't have to tell me twice.”

“You sound like my dad when you say stuff like that,” you groan as he pulls off to the side of the road.

“I am honored. He is a fine gentleman,” Yeonjun insists goofily, watching you with adoring eyes as you leap out of the car and into the meadow.

“It’s just past this tree,” you claim, pointing to the very same tree that the two birds landed in earlier. “I used to come here with—I used to come here all the time,” you said, stumbling over your words. Your mouth feels dirty, almost saying Beomgyu’s name aloud, and in front of Yeonjun too.

If Yeonjun notices, he doesn’t say anything about it. He lets you lead him past the tree with the gnarled bark and further into a thicket of younger trees. Your grasp on his hand tightens as you spot the patch of bushes, their branches heavy with fruit. You bound ahead, letting go of his hand and plucking a few large berries, the dark juices staining your fingertips. Yeonjun walks up beside you, pulling a large handkerchief out of his pocket and holding it out to you. You pile on blackberries immediately, knowing that was why he was offering it.

“Your lips are purple,” Yeonjun says accusingly, using his free hand to point at your face. You feel your cheeks heat up slightly; you’re embarrassed for acting so juvenile and stuffing your face with blackberries.

“And yours aren’t,” you say in the same tone. His eyes flicker from your lips then back to your eyes. You feel your heartbeat speed up as he gently sets the handkerchief of berries down on the soft grass before scooping you into his arms and pressing his lips to yours.

“So sweet,” he murmurs against your purple lips jokingly.

“I told you it was blackberry season,” you retort, giggling as you feel him squeeze your hips.

You keep the handkerchief of blackberries in your lap for the rest of the ride, crying out when Yeonjun would reach over and slap your fingers away as you tried to sneak another berry into your mouth. “I want to use those in some scones!” he insisted playfully.

The lightheartedness of the banter and the gorgeous golden light painting your hometown in nostalgia was an escape. It was almost like you were back home with Yeonjun in your apartment, looking back on fond memories you shared together. The setting outside your window looked fake because of the dreamy haze, and you wished you could freeze in this perfect moment with the perfect man. Everything in the snapshot would be perfect; it wouldn’t capture the thoughts that plagued your mind as soon as you stepped out of the car and looked up at your childhood home. Guilt, pain, and hurt bloomed in your chest as Yeonjun parked the car and took you by the waist, so that the two of you could walk back inside together. You masked the guilt of another man’s touch behind a smile, but it didn’t last long. As soon as you looked up, your blood ran cold. An ambulance was parked right in front of your house, and the front door had been thrown wide open.

Yeonjun grabs your hand as you both run up the front stairs and into the house. You see your father sitting on the floor of the kitchen, an oxygen mask covering his lower face. Your mother sits a small distance away from him, her face gray and her lips pressed into a thin line. An EMT pats your father on the shoulder before mumbling something to your mother and nodding at you and Yeonjun on his way out. The ambulance pulls away, luckily without a patient inside.

“What was that?” you blurt out, running up to your father, who is having trouble standing up on his own. His face looks gray too.

Your parents exchange worried looks before they look back at you. “Sweetheart,” your mother coaxes, “remember when your father fell off that ladder a few months ago?”

“Yes, but you told me everything was okay. Isn’t it?” you ask in a small voice that sounds childish, naive, and stupid—even to you. You feel Yeonjun stiffen beside you, and you turn to look at him. He’s always been bad at hiding things, so you immediately know. “You knew this whole time,” you say to Yeonjun, pulling away from him.

“Doll,” he says pleadingly, his eyebrows furrowed with pity and regret.

“We didn’t want to upset you,” your mother clarified, “it happened right before you and Yeonjun got engaged, and we didn’t want to spoil anything.”

“That wouldn’t have spoiled it!” you say shrilly. “I would have come to help you and Dad if I knew!”

“We knew you would, that’s why we didn’t tell you. It took so much planning and time and effort for Yeonjun to plan things out for the proposal and we didn’t want to ruin the mood before or after, and by then months had already passed…” your mother trailed off.

“I’m your daughter, I’m supposed to help you when things like that go wrong,” you say, feeling your eyes starting to well up with tears, though you’re not completely sure why. “And why does Yeonjun know, and I don’t? It would have been his planning that got ruined, not mine.”

“It was an accident,” your father says abruptly, and you see that he’s been able to stand up on his own. He leans against the kitchen table heavily. “Your mother accidentally ordered my medication to your address and Yeonjun was the one that found it.”

“Autumn Oaks will be good for them,” Yeonjun pipes up, trying to help. “They’ll get all the help they need there.”

Your eyes almost bulge out of your skull. “Autumn Oaks? The assisted living facility in town?” you ask. You pick your brain for the moment you first heard the name, and then you get it—Karina. “Even Karina knew before I did?” you fret.

“Karina? Nurse Yoo?” your dad asks.

“You know her?”

“She works there. She’s actually the one that showed us around. Do you know her?” your mother asks. She seems very nervous now, clearly due to your building emotions.

“I went to school with her,” you mumbled. Your head absolutely aches, and you stare out the front door, still hanging wide open, into the dark night that had crept up on the four of you since you got home. “I need to go for a walk,” you say. Your parents again exchange looks. “I’m not mad,” you snap, “I just need a minute to process everything.”

You feel Yeonjun start to follow you timidly, but you look back at him with narrowed eyes. “Alone,” you emphasize, and he shrinks back and lets you go.

Luckily, you had the sense to hang onto your purse the entire time, and you fumble through it for your cigarettes and a lighter. You shove one into your mouth and light it, tossing the box and the lighter back inside the mess of your bag. You don’t know where you’re walking, but the night is warm and muggy and you can feel insects swarming. You want to go back home and take a long hot shower, especially as you feel a bead of sweat slip down your back, but you don’t want to face everyone again. You feel like an idiot for acting like an emotional child, and you don’t know why you have been ever since you got back to your hometown. It was like you were reverting back to the person you were the last time you stayed that long. As if simply breathing the air and drinking the water were enough to take away ten years.

You stop walking naturally in front of a house. A large, old tree stands strong in the front yard, casting a large black shadow over the whole space. Though it’s been repainted a new color—a light beige, instead of the misty blue it once was—it still feels like your second home. You’re very sure that Beomgyu doesn’t live here any more, mostly because he said he hated bland paint colors and you simply couldn’t picture the Choi Beomgyu living in a beige house of all places. But also because your parents had told you that his parents moved out years ago and retired somewhere sunny and warm, leaving the family business to Beomgyu, who was more than willing to take over it by then. They had no news about where Beomgyu had moved to.

You feel like a freak, just standing outside someone’s house like a stalker, so you turn on your heel and start to walk away, when someone says, “hey,” in a low voice.

The front door of the blue-turned-beige house opens, and Beomgyu stands there in pajama pants and a thin white t-shirt. “Why the fuck are you here?” he says, mimicking the voice you used when he appeared on your roof.

“Shut up.”

“I’m joking. Come inside already. Aren’t the mosquitos pissing you off?” He steps aside and opens the door wider, motioning for you to come inside.

So you do.

You’re not sure what you’re expecting when you step inside. Maybe, you expected it to look exactly how it did the last time you saw it, with his parents’ furniture and decorations and family pictures on the walls. There’s a few hints of the old decor as you look around and focus on a few minor details, but for the most part it looks completely different. New furniture, more modern and young, paintings on the wall that definitely weren’t there before. There’s even an entire wall missing, the one that separated the kitchen and the front room entirely. Something about an open concept, you think solemnly, recalling an episode of HGTV you watched when you were too drunk to get up and get the remote to change the channel.

“It looks different in here,” you say bluntly.

“Well, my parents don’t live here any more, do they?” he asks cockily. “Come on, let’s go up to the bedroom. The old house still doesn’t have AC, but my bedroom has a really good fan.”

The stairs creak the same way they did when you ran down them sobbing the last time you were there. It’s bittersweet, and you hold yourself back from rolling your eyes at your old dramatic self.

Beomgyu’s right about the fan, at least. The bedroom is much cooler than the rest of the house, and it’s cast in a cold bright light from the flatscreen TV mounted on his wall, facing the foot of his bed. “Nice place,” you say, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Did you get an interior designer or something to help you with all this?”

“Or something,” he says, shrugging. He gets in bed too, patting the spot beside him once he got comfortable. You inch forward, a bit awkwardly. Your heart is pounding in your chest, and you feel like a middle school girl sitting next to her crush at the movies or something equally as corny and butterfly-inducing.

Beomgyu doesn’t hesitate to wrap an arm around you and pull you in closer, so that your legs are draped over his and his hand rests on your waist. His big hand starts to slip under your shirt, toying with the hem and teasing you. He already knows why you came to him; he can see that you’re upset. He rightfully assumes that Yeonjun is a part of the reason, and he knows that you want him to take his place, even if it’s just for a night.

Boldly, you take his hand that’s teasing you and place it firmly over your breast. Beomgyu stops pretending to watch whatever is playing on his TV and looks at you, a crooked smirk on his face. “That’s why you’re here,” he says, wanting a verbal confirmation.

“‘Course it is. No one knows how to comfort me better than you do.”

“Not even Yeonjun?” Beomgyu can’t help but ask, venom lacing his words. He can’t hide his jealousy, even when he thinks he can. It always comes spilling forth from his lips like sick word vomit.

“Not even Yeonjun,” you whisper as he closes the distance between your lips, unsure if you’re lying or not.

It’s not as frantic this time, because you know you have time. No one is expecting you home anytime soon, and Beomgyu doesn’t seem to have anything going on either. It’s a sudden but welcome change; the soft sheets instead of the splintering wood of the train car, the cool controlled breeze instead of the sweltering mugginess, the silence of closed walls instead of the risk of open air.

You let Beomgyu take off your shirt and shorts, and you settle between his legs as he whips off his own top. You pull down his pajama pants and boxers in one fluid move, taking his cock in your hand and suckling on the head. The saltiness of his precum coats your tongue as you swallow it down, your nose pressing against his crotch as his hand gently presses on your head, wordlessly begging you to take it all. It’s better than you imagined, and you’d imagined it many times.

His breathing grows ragged as you start jerking him off, his dick slippery with your saliva, and you take one of his balls into your mouth. His eyes roll back in his head as you do so, and he groans loudly. “I knew you’d be good at this,” he pants as you take his length back into your mouth.

You make a noise of confusion, the vibrations making him whimper.

“I just wanted you so bad,” he babbles, “I knew—I knew no matter what, I’d never forget—” His eyes squeeze shut as he cums, and you hollow your cheeks and swallow, eliciting a high-pitched squeak from him due to the slight overstimulation. Shaking, he opens his eyes to look down at you, and you sit back up obediently, using a finger to push a small pearly rivulet of cum into your mouth; it had been dripping down your chin.

“You’d never forget?” you asked, crawling up to him on all fours. Beomgyu feels his cock jump again as he stares at you taking off your underclothes, and he grips your hips tightly, squeezing the flesh there and exhaling deeply.

“I won’t,” he says breathily, as if he’s making a promise to you, “I won't ever forget.”

You press your forehead to his, feeling his sweaty bangs stick to your skin. The two of you stay like that for just a moment as his heavy breathing slows, and then he slowly reaches up to caress your cheek and pull you in for a kiss. He shifts beneath you, his muscles flexing as he lifts you up and tosses you down onto the soft mattress so that he’s the one on top now.

“I was having fun up there,” you say, wrapping your legs around his waist. You can feel his dick, half-hard, nudge against your clit.

“I think you’ll have fun down here too,” he says with a wink, as he presses sloppy kisses down your neck. Your toes curl as his warm breath ghosts over your nipple; he’s making his way down your body, making sure to worship every inch of your skin with his slick lips. He can’t help but flick your nub with his tongue, watching your reaction as you flinch at the unexpected contact. He envelopes your nipple and the surrounding area into his mouth, suckling hard and making your toes curl with pleasure as he grinds against you simultaneously. His teeth graze against your skin, eliciting a low moan that erupts from deep inside, so animalistic you hardly recognize yourself. You realize that with Beomgyu, unfamiliar parts of you emerge and take charge—both parts that remind you of your youth, as well as parts that you’d never met before, or even knew existed at all.

A string of saliva, glistening in the faint bluish light, connects his lips and your breast for just a second before it breaks. He looks up at you with big doll eyes and smirks, a juxtaposition of innocence and naughtiness, before mouthing the valley between your breasts and kissing his way down to your navel, then between your legs. Beomgyu’s words echo in your mind as you flush with slight embarrassment, realizing he’s staring straight at your sopping cunt with great interest. The fact that you’d both been taking your time this time around made you much more aware that he was perceiving you just as much as you were perceiving him, and that thought was making you just a bit anxious.

After all these years, he can still read you like a book. He feels your thighs tense up as he gently slides a calloused finger through your slick, and though he thinks your pussy might be the prettiest one he’s ever seen, he stops, and makes eye contact with you. Your brow is slightly furrowed, your lips pressed together—a sure sign that you’re worried about something. “Everything okay?” he asks, wiping his finger on his sheets. “You look like you’re thinking long and hard about something.”

“More like I’m thinking about something that’s long and hard.” You catch his eye for a split second before you start to grin and he bursts out laughing.

“You had me there,” he admits, settling back between your legs. “I thought you were having your reservations.”

“What, you thought I wouldn’t want to double dip or something?”

Beomgyu shakes his head, trying to suppress a smile. “I’m trying to go down on you and be all sexy, and you’re making jokes that align with the humor of an immature thirteen year old boy.”

“Sorry, I do that when I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be. It’s just me.” You lock eyes with him, but this time it sends a real chill down your spine. Different from the chills that you got when you saw him at the reunion and he handed you your keys. It was so much more than just those five words that he spoke aloud—in that phrase, he cemented the fact that you two have history, and that there is so much meaning in the actions that you’re committing together. It’s just Beomgyu—but how can he be “just” Beomgyu when your feelings about him have been the exact opposite forever? It’s never been simple. He’s never been “just” Beomgyu.

Your clouded mind is suddenly cleared when you feel his lips connect to your clit and he starts suckling roughly, similarly to how he was attached to your nipple earlier. You can feel his teeth biting at your cunt, teasing it with little flashes of pain that make your back arch and your thighs start to close in on his face. He holds your legs apart, devouring you like he’ll never have the pleasure of tasting you again, and knowing that that could be the reality. You feel a mixture of his spit and your juices running down your inner thighs and soaking the sheets beneath you, but you hardly care. You want to leave a mark in his bed, in his house—in that moment, you want it to be known that you were there.

You finish as he plunges his thick fingers into you and curls them upwards just right, and your moan catches in your throat. You almost choke on it, a few stuttering gasps being the only thing that escape your lips as you come down from your high.

Before you can fully reorient yourself, Beomgyu’s sliding his cock against your slippery pussy, whining like a bitch. He’s too embarrassed to ask if he can fuck you, but you know he wants to. You want it too, but unlike him you’re not afraid to say it. “Please,” you whisper, just like you did in the woods, “please.”

Without another word, he’s pushing into you, which is quite easy given how much lubricant there is. He grips the headboard of his bed, his knuckles turning pale from the effort, as he waits for you to tell him to go on. You reach for him and he listens immediately, almost giddy as you pull him close. You want to feel his sweat on your skin, have his spit in your mouth, feel his stuttered breaths as he gets close.

He slips a pillow under your hips before readjusting himself, wanting to make sure you’re comfortable, before he starts drilling his hips into you.

The way he fucks reminds you a bit of your hookups in college, before you got with Yeonjun. The desperation, a bit of inexperience, and the quick but deep thrusts are all too reminiscent—but in a good way. It’s different, than the way that you’d been fucked by Yeonjun all these years, and you realize that you’ve missed it. The carnal urge to just fuck like animals, without caring about staining the sheets or worrying about someone hearing you.

You don’t realize just how far you’ve shifted until your head is hanging over the side of his bed, and your eyes are level with his nightstand. You can feel him getting close already—which you’re not surprised by, given how long he’s been waiting for it—and you’re getting close yourself until you lock eyes with a framed picture sitting beside his lamp. He groans loudly as he slams his hips into yours one more time, and you can’t help but gasp as you feel him filling you up, but your eyes are focused on the picture. It’s upside down, because of the angle you’re at, but it’s pretty obvious what it is. You don’t need to be right-side-up to know that it’s a wedding photo. And not just any wedding photo either—it’s a picture of Beomgyu and Karina.

It hits you like a ton of bricks. You’re the other woman, just as he’s the other man. You try to sit up, forgetting that he’s still hovering above you and trying to recover from having two orgasms quite close together, and smack your forehead into his.

“Ow!” he exclaims, pulling out of you and sitting back.

“You’re married!” you blurt out, scrambling away from him. His gaze drops to the photograph on his nightstand, and he wrinkles his nose guiltily.

“Well—yeah… But you’re engaged.” This time, it’s your gaze that drops—and you look down at the diamond ring on your finger. There’s a deep, gnawing pain that’s arising in your stomach, and you know what it is immediately. Guilt, so thick and dark you swear anyone who looks at you could see it seeping from your very pores, is tearing you apart. You feel yourself tearing up, which is somewhat ridiculous because you’d known this whole time that you were cheating. You weren’t an idiot and you weren’t manipulated either—you were a completely conscious and self-aware asshole that chose to cheat on her fiancé with her first love. And so was he.

You furiously wipe at your eyes with the back of your hand and stand up, crossing your arms over your chest as you scan the room for your clothes. You go around and pick up your garments one by one and put them on, and Beomgyu watches you solemnly. Neither of you say anything until you’re fully dressed and he’s at least pulled on his boxers and pants. You stand there at the foot of his—no, his and Karina’s king-sized bed, and glare at him. It’s hypocritical to be mad at him for cheating when you’ve been doing the exact same thing, but for some reason that’s how your brain is functioning.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me?” you asked, staring at the floor. You don’t know if you’ll cry or fall for him harder if you look into his eyes again. You fear that it might be both.

“I don’t know. It just never came up,” he says lamely. You narrow your eyes at his half-assed reply.

“I helped you cheat on her.”

“So what? I’ve been helping you cheat on Yeonjun. How’s this any worse than that? In the end we’re both just assholes.”

“Because I know Karina! She was the closest thing I had to a girl friend here in town!” you exclaim, “It's not like you know Yeonjun—you don’t care about hurting him. I care about hurting Karina!”

“But you don’t care about hurting your own fiancé?” Beomgyu rubs the back of his neck, confused, and stares at the floor. “I don’t get you.”

“That’s not the point,” you mutter, “but it doesn’t matter. Whatever. It’s already done, and like you said, we’re both the assholes in the end.” You can feel his cum leaking out of your cunt and pooling in your underwear. You want to go home and shower, without anyone seeing you or talking to you. You briskly walk over to his bathroom while rummaging in your purse for something to touch up your disheveled appearance.

You’re wiping at the makeup that’s started to slide off your eyes with a dry makeup wipe you found at the bottom of your purse when Beomgyu appears behind you in the mirror. He’s still shirtless, and somehow still beautiful in the shitty bathroom lighting. You stop your futile attempts to fix your appearance and stare at his reflection with weary eyes. He wraps his arms around you and presses a long kiss to the top of your head as he inhales your scent and takes it all in, knowing that you won’t return. You let him.

“I just got you back,” he mumbles, “and now you’re leaving again.”

“I wasn’t ever planning on staying. I wasn’t even planning on seeing you again,” you say firmly, though it’s obvious when your voice shakes that you hardly believe your own words.

“But you did,” he whispers. “Doesn’t that mean something? Doesn’t—doesn’t the fact that you’re standing here in my house, in my shirt, with my cum leaking out of you, mean something?”

You look down. You are, in fact, wearing his shirt. Somehow you must have pulled it on instead of your own. Even worse, you recognize it as an old band t-shirt that he used to wear in high school. You shake your head and pull it off, throwing it aside as you walk back to his bedroom and find your own shirt crumpled in a mess on his floor.

Looking wounded, Beomgyu appears in the doorway, clutching his abandoned shirt. “Are you really leaving?”

“Well, I don’t know when Karina will be back but I don’t want her to see me sleeping on her side of the bed,” you say coldly, “and I have a fiancé I need to get back to.”

“A fiancé who doesn’t know his future wife is a dirty cheater,” Beomgyu says, glaring at you. You see tears in his eyes, the hurt evident on his face.

“Don’t start that shit with me,” you snap. “And don’t contact me ever again.”

“I did a pretty good job avoiding you for ten years. What’s another ten, twenty, thirty more?” Beomgyu spits back, but his tears start to spill out and he turns away, not knowing you already saw them.

But you don’t care. You don’t want to care. So you gather your things and you go, slamming his front door so hard that the stained glass wind chimes hanging on his front porch fall and shatter on the wooden floor. You don’t even give the mess a second glance as you stomp down the stairs and down the path home.

The lights are all off, except for one. Your bedroom light is on, and you know that Yeonjun must have left it on. Whether he’s awake or not, he was waiting for you, and that makes the guilt sink into your stomach even further. You didn’t know it was possible to feel even worse than you did while you were laying in Beomgyu’s bed.

As quiet as possible, you unlock the front door and close it behind you, re-locking it and wincing as the heavy iron lock clicks into place. You creep up the stairs and peek around the corner, sighing with relief when you realize that your bedroom door is closed. You’re allowed to slip into the bathroom and wash yourself of all the evidence of Beomgyu before being confronted by anyone. Usually, you’re plagued with thoughts in the shower—whether that’s stress about work or dinner plans for the night, your mind is always running as you shampoo your hair. Tonight, it’s the opposite. You feel blank and numb as you rinse yourself and step out of the tub, toweling yourself dry before tiptoeing down the hallway and letting yourself into your bedroom.

Yeonjun is wedged against the wall in your childhood bedroom, leaving space for you in your little twin bed. You’re realizing just now how bare the room looks—everything is gone except for the bed and the little nightstand, where Yeonjun’s glasses and your cup of water live every night. He’s scrolling on his phone but he looks up immediately when he hears the door, and his face lights up when he realizes it’s you. “Welcome back,” he says carefully, not wanting to breach the subject unless you propose it.

You leap into his arms, feeling the guilt twisting your stomach into knots as he presses warm kisses to your clean skin. “I went to a friend’s house,” you clarify, “and we just smoked and sat there for a while. I just needed to get away for a minute.”

“Okay,” Yeonjun says, rubbing your arms comfortingly, “thank you for telling me.”

“It was an acquaintance from high school. Her name is Minjeong.”

Though he didn’t ask who the friend was, you can see relief flood across his face as he realizes it wasn’t Beomgyu—or even another guy. “I’m glad that you feel better now,” he says, pressing a kiss to your naked collarbone. You slide off his lap and get dressed, tossing the towel onto the floor.

“Come to bed,” he coaxes, “it’s nice and cozy.”

“I don’t doubt that,” you reply, sidling in next to him. As soon as you lay down, he wraps an arm around you and kisses your cheek. “I love you,” you say, desperate for him to say it back, even though you know he will—from his knowledge, he has no reason to doubt you at all.

“I love you too doll,” he mumbles sleepily, and then he’s gone. Asleep, dead to the world, no nasty thoughts plaguing his mind.

Unlike Yeonjun, you lay there awake for hours, unable to fall asleep for a multitude of reasons. Even worse, you know that most of these reasons are your own fault, and that guilt is eating you alive. Every single thought that you had managed to avoid in the shower was haunting you now, forcing your eyelids to stay open and keeping your heartbeat racing.

—

On the last morning that you will ever spend in your childhood home, you are awakened in the early hours of the morning by a massive moving truck trying to parallel park right beside your driveway. Yeonjun is already stirring, both from the noise outside as well as your movements, and he blinks hard as his eyes adjust to the bleary light. It’s so early that the sun hasn’t fully risen yet, and you can see from your window that the late summer has given birth to a smattering of dewdrops stricken across the greenery, giving it a haunting, blurred look. The palest of sunlight spreads across the land, a subtle “good morning” before the dry heat that’s sure to come once the quiet early morning hours wither away. Your parents are shuffling about downstairs, pushing all of the boxes and furniture into the front room so that the movers can have easy access and you can all hopefully be out by the designated time. The faint smell of dark roast coffee reaches your nose, and it reminds you of the youthful years you spent here, and how you got so used to that smell of coffee in the morning. When did you forget about it? When did you adopt a new norm?

Yeonjun presses a sleepy kiss to your cheek before climbing over you and claiming the bathroom first, and you hear the shower turn on. He’s always been a morning person, whereas you prefer to bathe during the night. It works out well in your apartment, where you only have one bathroom. You glance down at your phone, which has coincidentally given you an update on a few places the two of you had been looking to move. The crowded apartment, though now nostalgic and homey, is simply too small now. You’ve outgrown it.

You busy yourself with cleaning up a few stray clothing items scattered across the hardwood floor, your bare feet making small pattering sounds as you walk about. It’s hard to sort between your clothes and Yeonjun’s clothes—you tend to share a lot of garments, and you have a similar taste.

As soon as you zip up your own suitcase and sit down with a huff, Yeonjun strolls back into the room, a towel clinging to his waist and another slung around his neck. He uses one end to rub at his dripping locks, and you jump up to escape to the bathroom, suddenly very aware of where you were last night, as well as the fact that you’re unsure how to further explain yourself if anyone asks. “I’ll be down in a few,” you say to him, “I’ll help bring down our suitcases and everything.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got it,” he says, shaking his head. “Take your time. Your parents have coffee on the table too if you need some.”

“When did you have time to go and say good morning to them?” you exclaim, your voice echoing down the empty hallway.

“I didn’t! I just know!” he yells back, and that makes your skin prickle. The ease of Yeonjun becoming a part of your family—it makes you feel that guilt even more. How could you take him away from your parents now? How could you take your parents from him?

Once you’re done washing the sleep away from yourself, you get dressed and frown at the room that’s now completely empty. You’d heard people coming up and down the steps, but you didn’t think they’d touch your room. Now, even the bed that you’d just slept in was gone. For a moment, you stand there in your bedroom alone. Though, you suppose you can’t even really call it that any more—you don’t possess it. How long has it been since it was really yours anyways? A decade? More? Less? You try to hold your emotions back, because it’s just a house, but it’s to no avail. You have to return to the bathroom and wipe your tears carefully with your sleeve while staring in the mirror and realizing just how much your reflection has changed.

“Are you sure? We can stay and help, it’s no problem,” Yeonjun’s voice echoes up the stairs. You sidle into the kitchen and stand in the doorway, looking at your parents and your fiancé. They’re standing across from each other in the kitchen, all holding steaming mugs of coffee.

“Oh, don’t worry about us. We don’t want you to miss your flight,” your mother insists, “the movers said they could help us just fine. They’ve been moving a lot of folks into Autumn Oaks lately.”

Your chest clenches a bit at the thought of your parents in assisted living—were they really that old already? They seem perfectly capable, aside from the incident with your father. You suppose that’s reason enough to consider assisted living.

“Okay, but call immediately if you need anything,” Yeonjun says warily, placing his empty mug down on the kitchen counter. “I’m going to call a car.”

He ruffles your hair when he notices you standing in the doorway, and then walks out. This leaves you with your parents, the both of them standing there and smiling at you. You know it’s because of Yeonjun. You know they wholeheartedly think you’re safe with him, and that he’s your forever. Who are you to say he isn’t?

“We really can stay and help you guys,” you offer again, but your father shakes his head.

“And we told you we can handle it,” he says softly, “you have a flight to catch.”

Your shoulders sag as you sigh. Perhaps, you weren’t only wanting to stay for your parents. You don’t want to let go of the house, of your aging parents, of Beomgyu. You don’t want to let go of your hometown, even though you hate it so much. And even though Autumn Oaks was just a drive away, hardly even separate from your hometown, it still felt like the end of an era, a disconnect, a severing of the last attachment you had to your childhood and everything that came with it. You got your closure, and that was what you wanted—so why did it feel wrong? For the first time in so many years, you feel like you’ve made bad decisions that you cannot come back from.

“Okay,” you say. “It was really nice seeing you. And I guess—to see the house one last time.” You will your emotions to stay under control. “I’m going to miss you.”

“We always miss you too,” your mother says, pulling you into a hug. “But we’ll see you come Christmas, won’t we? Maybe we can come and visit you and Yeonjun in the city this year.”

“That would be really nice, Mom,” you whisper as she lets go. She stands back, still holding onto your arms, and looks at you.

“You’ve grown so much. We’re so proud of you,” your dad says, and it’s like he’s reading your mother’s mind as a tear trickles down her face. The three of you briefly embrace, a final wordless reminder of every memory that you had together in that house, and then you blink and it’s all gone.

Yeonjun comes for you when the car pulls up outside, and before you know it you’re staring out the airplane window, looking at all the miniature houses down below. You’re finally going back home, but you know you left a piece of yourself in your hometown, and you’ll never see her again.

Maybe that’s for the better.

EPILOGUE.

Yoo Jimin, known most commonly by her nickname Karina, is fucking exhausted.

It’s the first snow of the year, she’s worked two double night shifts in one week, and she’s trying her damn best to get the household ready for the holiday season. She’s a woman who knows what she wants, and though this means she takes charge and gets shit done, it also means she burns out. Fast. And frequently.

Her vision is slightly blurry on her drive home from Autumn Oaks, where she’d been busy tending to two new residents. They had made sure to try and shoo her away, claiming that they were just fine on their own and getting settled in, but it was her job to check in on them every now and then. She groans aloud in her car, thinking about how much she wanted to sink into a hot bath and just be alone for a while.

The windshield wipers obediently push the fat snowflakes gathering on the glass away and out of sight as she pulls into her driveway. At least it looks cozy from the outside, as she’d made sure to tell her husband to put up the Christmas lights outside. He did, and they were twinkling warmly at her as she stepped out of the car.

She knows that Beomgyu is sleeping. He sleeps a lot, and not just because she tends to work nights and he always works days, but because he’s been avoiding her.

It was a natural conclusion that she came to, and that would be just fine with her because she knows that marriage isn’t some perfect fairytale, but there’s something that’s been nagging at her for months now. Beomgyu had been acting normal until the end of summer, after the reunion. It was quite popular amongst the gossipy folks, mostly because of a certain quiet individual who had become vastly successful in her market after leaving town about ten years ago. She was by no means a celebrity, but her success and emerging personality was a pleasant surprise to a lot of people—Beomgyu included.

This was worrying for two reasons.

One, because everything lined up pretty perfectly with the last time she was in town.

And two, because she knew damn well, more than anyone else, of that individual’s history with Beomgyu.

Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. Everyone who knew Beomgyu knew about her too. Everyone thought they’d get married and stay in town forever, so it was quite a shocker when they ended up fizzling out and she left for New York so abruptly. It’s a little odd that everyone’s still so obsessed with their failed love story, but small towns tend to hold onto any bit of drama they can get. When tornadoes bring in people from the past, it’s inevitable that a rainstorm of gossip will come along with it.

The house is quiet when she walks in. She sees Beomgyu asleep on the couch in front of the fireplace, which is only dying embers now. They glow a faint red, barely sparking, but are still exuding a fair bit of warmth. The entire house smells like firewood and sugar, the latter scent being courtesy to Beomgyu’s newfound hobby. Baking, of all things! Karina simply didn’t understand where it was coming from. This too began at the end of summer, when he declared that he was sick and tired of store bought treats (he’d never had a problem with them before) and that he was taking on the task of providing the two of them with fresh baked goods whenever they wanted.

He was horrible at it, for a while. He’d never baked anything edible in his life, and he went through a fair bit of money buying ingredients because of how often he would mess up and want to try again. If anything, his determination was what linked banking to his other interests. He had always been a stubborn asshole, especially when it came to working at the auto shop, previously owned by his father, and before that his grandfather.

But eventually, he got better. He liked to make muffins, and he would leave them out for Karina when she returned from her night shift, still warm to the touch—he’d often be awake well into the early hours of the morning to try and get a new recipe right. It was enough overlap that Karina, who got home around four in the morning, was able to get to them while they were still fresh. Eventually, this was the only was she ever felt warmth from her husband.

She walks over to the couch quietly. She had slipped off her shoes as soon as she walked through the door, wanting to keep the floors clean.

Beomgyu looked peaceful when he slept—a facial expression that never occurred naturally around her any more. She smoothed a lock of reddish brown hair out of his eyes, and he winced at the contact. She removed her touch from his face, but the damage was already done. Her husband opened his eyes, one before the other, and frowned in the firelight. “What time is it?” he asked. “Did you just get back?”

“Four fifteen,” she confirms, “what did you make tonight?”

“Blueberry streusel,” he replied, sitting up and yawning. He did not, however, move to go to sleep in their bed, with her.

“Muffins,” she said quietly, staring at the muffins, still steaming from the oven.

A silence settles upon the couple, in which nothing is heard but the howling winds outside and the faint crackling of the dying embers in the fireplace.

“I think I’m gonna head to bed—“

“I can’t live like this any more—“

The two of them stare at each other, both cut off by the other. “What do you mean you can’t live like this any more?” Karina asks sharply, any semblance of sleepiness immediately gone from her body. “What does that mean?”

Beomgyu rubs the sleep from his face and groans into his own grasp. “I just—I don’t think I’m happy like this.”

“With me,” Karina says, though it’s more of a question than anything. She already knows the answer.

“Just with everything. I feel like I’ve done nothing with my life,” he explains, ruffling his own hair. Her fingers twitch, wanting so desperately to run through those soft locks.

“What does that mean for us?” she asks in a small voice. She hates how meek she sounds.

Beomgyu shrugs, as if she’s simply asking him what he wanted for dinner. “I don’t know.”

She’s suddenly angry more than sad, but she feels tears coming to her eyes either way. “It’s because of her,” she spits, to which Beomgyu’s eyes widen. He already knows who she’s talking about.

“Who?” he asks, eyes darting around wildly.

“You know damn well who.”

Beomgyu doesn’t respond to his wife, and instead they stare at each other as a frigid cold settled over them. She couldn’t undo what she said, and he couldn’t undo what he did—that was that.

Silence ensued for the rest of the night, and in the morning when Beomgyu awoke again his wife was gone. He had a voicemail left by one of her friends, stating that she’d be around every now and then in the coming week to pick up Karina’s things little by little. Karina, it seemed, did not ever want to see Beomgyu again.

He understood that decision—honestly, he did. He felt guilty after he realized just how much warmth and love she had provided him, even if he never picked up on it before and surely took it for granted. There was a cold void left behind, and it was slowly overtaking the entire house.

Beomgyu didn’t know what else to do—what else could he do? With his wife gone, his auto shop mediocre at best, and no one important left in his life? Other than his parents, who had already retired and moved away years ago, he had absolutely no one left. All he had was shattered remnants of past relationships—and in grasping onto those shards desperately, not caring whether or not they cut into his flesh, he sold the house and used his funds to move to the city that never sleeps, in the hopes that someone somewhere would be able to wake him out of the waking nightmare he’d been living for the past decade.

DIVIDER CREDIT | @firefly-graphics

#kflixnet #k-labels #k-vanity #beomgyu x reader #beomgyu smut #txt x reader #txt smut #txt imagines #tomorrow x together imagines #beomgyu imagines #txt hard hours #beomgyu hard hours

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physalian · 2 months

Text

“How do I know if my story needs work or if I’m just being hard on myself?”

As I sit here accepting the fact that at 70k words into Eternal Night’s sequel while waiting for my editor for Eternal Night itself, that I have made an error in my plot.

Disclaimer: This is not universal and the writing experience is incredibly diverse. Figuring this out also takes some time and building up your self-confidence as an author so you can learn to separate “this is awful (when it’s not)” and “this is ok (but it can be better)” and “this isn’t working (but it is salvageable).”

—

When I wrote my first novel (unpublished, sadly), years ago, I would receive feedback all over the chapters and physically have to open other windows to block off parts of the screen on my laptop to slow-drip the feedback because I couldn’t handle constructive criticism all at once. I had my betas color-code their commentary so I could see before I read any of it that it wasn’t all negative. It took me thrice as long as it does today to get through a beta’s feedback because I got so nervous and anxious about what they would say.

The main thing I learned was this: They’re usually right, when it’s not just being mean (and even then, it’s rarely flat out mean), and that whatever criticisms they have of my characters and plot choices is not criticism of myself.

It did take time.

But now I can get feedback from betas and even when I hear “I’d DNF this shit right now unless you delete this,” I take a step back, examine if this one little detail is really that important, and fix it. No emotional turmoil and panic attack needed. I can also hear “I didn’t like it” without heartbreak. Can’t please everyone.

The only time I freak out is when I'm told "this won't need massive edits" followed up by, in the manuscript, "I'd DNF this shit right now". Which happened. And did not, in fact, require a massive rewrite to fix.

So.

What might be some issues with your story and why it “isn’t working”.

1. Your protagonist is not active enough in the story

You’ve picked your protagonist, but it’s every other character that has more to do, more to say, more choices to make, and they’re just along for the ride, yet you are now anchored to this character’s story because they’re the protagonist. You can either swap focus characters, or rework your story to give them more agency. Figure out why this character, above any other, is your hero.

2. Your pacing is too slow

Even if you have a “lazy river” style story where the vibes and marinating in the world is more important than a breakneck plot, slow pacing isn’t just “how fast the story moves” it’s “how clearly is the story told,” meaning if you divert the story to a side quest, or spend too long on something that sure is fluffy or romantic or funny, but it adds nothing to the characters because it’s redundant, doesn’t advance the plot, doesn’t give us more about the world that actually matters to the themes, then you may have lost focus of the story and should consider deleting it, or editing important elements into the scenes so they can pull double-duty and serve a more active purpose.

3. You’ve lost the main argument of your narrative

Sometimes even the best of outlines and the clearest plans derail. Characters don’t cooperate and while we see where it goes, we end up getting hung up on how this one really cool scene or argument or one-liner just has to be in the story, without realizing that doing so sacrifices what you set out to accomplish. Personally I think sticking to your outline with biblical determination doesn’t allow for new ideas during the writing process, but if you find yourself down the line of “how did we get here, this isn’t what I wanted” you can always save the scenes in another document to reuse later, in this WIP or another in the future.

4. You’re spending too long on one element

Even if the thing started out really cool, whether it’s a rich fantasy pit stop for your characters or a conversation two characters must have, sometimes scenes and ideas extend long past their prime. You might have characters stuck in one location for 2 or 3 chapters longer than necessary trying to make it perfect or stuff in all these details or make it overcomplicated, when the rest of the story sits impatiently on the sidelines for them to move on. Figure out the most important reasons for this element to exist, take a step back, and whittle away until the fat is cut.

5. You’ve given a side character too much screentime

New characters are fun and exciting! But they can take over the story when they’re not meant to, robbing agency from your core characters to leave them sitting with nothing to do while the new guy handles everything. You might end up having to drag your core characters along behind them, tossing them lines of dialogue and side tasks to do because you ran out of plot to delegate with one character hogging it all (which is the issue I ran into with the above mentioned WIP). Not talking about a new villain or a new love interest, I mean a supporting character who is supposed to support the main characters.

—

As for figuring out the difference between “this is awful and I’m a bad writer” and “this element isn’t working” try pretending the book was written by somebody else and you’re giving them constructive criticism.

If you can come up with a reason for why it’s not working that doesn’t insult the writer, it’s probably the latter. As in, “This element isn’t working… because it’s gone on too long and the conversation has become cyclical and tiring.” Not “this element isn’t working because it’s bad.”

Why is it bad?

“This conversation is awkward because…. There’s not enough movement between characters and the dialogue is really stiff.”

“This fight scene is bad because….I don’t have enough dynamic action, enough juicy verbs, or full use of the stage I’ve set.”

“This romantic scene is bad because…. It’s taking place at the wrong time in the story. I want to keep it, but this character isn’t ready for it yet, and the vibe is all wrong now because they’re out-of-character.”

“This argument is bad because…. It didn’t have proper build-up and the sudden shouting match is not reflective of their characters. They’re too angry, and it got out of hand quickly. Or I’m not conveying the root of their aggression.”

—

There aren’t very many bad ideas, just bad execution. “Only rational people can think they’re crazy. Crazy people think they’re sane,” applies to writing, too.

I just read a fanfic recently where, for every fight scene, I could tell action was not the writer’s strong suit. They leaned really heavily on a crutch of specific injuries for their characters, the same unusual spot getting hit over and over again, and fights that dragged on for too long being unintentionally stagnant. The rest of the fic was great, though, and while the fights weren’t the best, I understood that the author was trying, and I kept reading for the good stuff. One day they will be better.

In my experience beta reading, it’s the cocky authors who send me an unedited manuscript and tell me to be kind (because they can’t take criticism), that they know it’s perfect they just want an outside opinion (they don’t want the truth, they want what will make them feel good), that they know it’s going to make them a lot of money and everyone will love it (they haven’t dedicated proper time and effort into researching marketing, target audiences, or current trends)—these are the truly bad authors. Not just bad at writing, but bad at taking feedback, are bullies when you point out flaws in their story, and cheap, too.

The best story I have received to date was where the author didn’t preempt with a self-deprecating deluge of “it’s probably terrible you know but here it is anyway” or “this is perfect and I’m super confident you’re going to love it”.

It was something like, “This is my first book and I know it has flaws and I’m nervous but I had a lot of fun doing it”.

And yeah, it needed work, but the bones of something great were there. So give yourself some credit, yeah?

#writing #writing advice #writing a book #writing resources #writing tips #writing tools #writeblr #outlining #story structure #editing

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andromeda-nova-writing · 22 days

Text

“What part of ‘I want you, and only you’ do you not understand?”

Fem!Reader Words: 1742

AN: Is it a sequel to the last fic or a request from @isekyaaa? It's both! I hope I've done the prompt justice for you

Y/N’s classroom was silent as she shuffled papers around trying to clean up what was now a shared classroom. To say it was her classroom wasn’t a good way to describe the room. It was a room that she had been thrown into over a month ago on the other side of the campus. The classroom was cramped, lights would flicker in and out, and the heat would never kick in. It felt as if the university just wanted her to quit. Had her rightful complaints of poor treatment got her into this? Or maybe it was the fact she wasn't afraid to critique their golden boy?

At least she had already completed her final class of the day and with no meetings, all that was left to do was to go home. Hopefully, the next teacher here will be satisfied with her cleaning. With the knock on the door, she assumed that was who had shown up.

“I’ll be just a minute. I’m almost done in here.” Y/N placed the last of the papers within her bag, eyes not even making contact with the door frame. “I just have to clean the whiteboard.”

There was a man’s sigh followed by footsteps and a binder landing in front of her on the desk where she sat. It was a plain purple that felt way too familiar. Looking up at its owner she shouldn’t have been surprised. “What do you want Ratio?” Her question came off in a mix of annoyance, tiredness, and ready for a fight.

“Open it.”

“Your hands work.”

“Will you just open the binder?” A question that sounded more like a demand

She rolled her eyes before doing what she had been asked. There was no sense in fighting every little thing. Looking at the paper on top, it was just a simple list of grades over time. There were two sections highlighted about a month apart from each other with a noticeable improvement. It was small but clear to see. “It's a start at least. Is this all you have to show me?”

He flipped to the next page. It was the start of a thesis for what he must have been currently working on. The page was covered in red ink of his handwriting over the text he had printed out. It had been a bit odd to see knowing how much he had preferred to work in digital. He had on plenty of occasions spoken a snide comment to her about how he did not need to leave to grab a notebook and that he had access to everything he needed at all times. There were too many times when he had given her a side eye even on just running out of ink.

“You do know I’m in an entirely different field of study than anything you’ve done? I’m not sure if you really want me to read this over. It may be best to find someone else.” She closed the binder, rejecting his request before getting up to clean the whiteboard behind her. “I teach art history. I’m doing a fashion history course at the moment!” She emphasized as began to wipe down the whiteboard, clearing it of a few things that had been required for her students to take note of.

“You are able to not hold back on giving critiques which is a skill in itself.” One that others at the university he found were lacking. “I do not require someone who has a similar knowledge as me. It’s harder to understand where my writing doesn’t make sense when someone has an easier time following along with the subject matter.”

Y/N dropped the cloth in her hands, turning around. “That is not the compliment you think it is!”

“And it wasn't an insult either!” He pinched his nose in an attempt to remain calm. “It's a rough draft. There are still things I would like to add but I want you to read through it first.”

She leaned against the clean side of the whiteboard that was behind her. “It would be better to find someone else to read through it. What part of that do you not understand?”

“What part of ‘I want you, and only you’ do you not understand?” He had said it louder than he had meant to, emotions taking over for a brief moment. Perhaps the same emotions that had derailed his train of logic led him to even ask her for this favor.

“The part where you are the one who is saying it. I’m bound to say something that will start a debate and derail your work. Or better yet I help you only end up teaching in a closet next.”

“You act as if I am the one who put you in here.”

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do. You even yelled at me over this a month ago.”

“I wasn't yelling.”

He had crossed his arms giving her a side eye.

“You are misremembering. I was annoyed yes but yelling no.”

“If you can remember that you can remember your own actions then. You waltzed in and blamed me for the actions of people higher up than me.”

“I,” she sighed remembering back on it more, “I did do that didn’t I? To be fair, your lack of teaching skills left me in a room where I feel like I'm going to turn into an ice cube. How are you even standing in here without shivering?” Y/N asked as she looked over the more revealing aspects of his attire.

He shook his head at the lack of an apology. “They do keep most of the servers within this building. That's still no excuse for why this room is so cold.”

“Every time I ask about it I'm told either the heat is out or that it's on low. I was told it was going to be fixed but I’m pretty sure that was a lie now. Most of my students started bringing blankets to class with them. They are just recording the lecture instead of taking notes and I can tell they aren’t going back to listen to it cause the grades are just dropping now.” Y/N complained with defeat just washing over her.

“Have you made it known that these changes are affecting your class?” He asked the obvious as if she couldn’t think of it herself.

“They will make changes off of things you say because the complaints come from you. Your name carries weight. No matter how correct I am, because I even dare to point out a flaw of yours I am to be ignored and tossed aside so as to not ruin what your name brings to this place.” Her eyes drifted to the floor. “I’m clearly being punished. If I speak about what is going on anymore who knows what I may lose next? The arts remain to be disrespected even when used to teach about the history of different worlds. I must face the fact that I am not wanted.” It hurt a bit to admit it allowed. This had been a dream job of hers and it felt horrible to see it ripped from her over a lack of general respect from those above her.

“I want you.” He repeated once more with softness and desperation leaking into his voice. “As annoying as your critiques can be, listening to them has forced me to take a look at myself and bring improvement. Trying to improve myself without the input of another only works for so long. I’ve seemed to have forgotten that.” Perhaps he had grown too similar to some of those who worked here in that aspect. The distance between them was breaking as he moved closer into her space.

Her laughter filled the small space between the two of them. One that was genuine, not filled with their usual sarcasm and jabs back and forth. “Are you hiding a literature degree there? I've never heard anyone beg for a critique like this before.” She teased.

“It’s not begging. I am just asking what I know you are capable of. You would have given your thoughts without me asking, wouldn’t it be better to invite those thoughts instead?”

“I suppose it would but I'm not quite sure about it still. My critiques of you haven't ended well for me. What's to say this time would be different?”

“I believe I have met your requirements to discuss what is considered life-changing once more.” The grades rising just by points didn’t meet what she had asked of him and yet it was enough to take his advances seriously.

“I wasn’t sure you would follow through on what I asked of you. Have you found a definition or have you found a different example?” She looked up at him, it took everything to not lose herself in how he was staring at her. His eyes tethered to her lips watching every movement. Part of her wished he would go through with the example she had put a stop to last time.

“It would seem that day in the library was example enough for me. The memory won’t quiet in my mind.”

“Perchance have you put that brain of yours to work figuring out what would quiet it?”

“It is less a matter for my brain to solve.”

“But you have found a solution?” Her eyes kept darting between his normally cold eyes and his lips which appeared so inviting. Maybe if she had paid more attention last time she would have noticed that before.

“I have.”

“I must ask, do you want me for a critique or do you want me?”

“If it’s both?”

“Then I would implore you to show me what you considered life-changing that day. It may persuade me to say yes.”

It was only a matter of mere seconds before Y/N found herself kissing the man she had been blaming for some of her issues with this university. However, she mostly laid the blame for those issues starting with his teaching style, but it was hard to focus on his flaws when he was being so loving at the moment.

Was it loving or more an act of desperation? Something that she would decide later as for now it was quite enjoyable being pinned against a whiteboard making out with a man she could have sworn was just a thorn in her side.

#dr ratio x reader #veritas ratio x reader #dr ratio #veritas ratio #honkai star rail x reader #honkai star rail #hsr #hsr x reader #guess who's off hiatus finally!!!

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kamiversee · 6 months

Text

The F*ck List (semi-official) Breakdown.

The following was submitted by my lovely ☃️anon, & I needed to make this it’s own post given how long it is, my replies & clarifications are written in between this breakdown & theory (Ex: A/N > Etc.).

Here, you’ll find majority of details you may have missed & maybe even more to think about. Enjoy :)

(wc; 5.7k) (content; spoilers ofc)

holy shit Kami. i literally had to take the entire day to process everything. before anything else, i need you to know that you've created an absolute masterpiece. TFL was the first fic i ever cared to keep up with and it has set the bar impossibly high for any other writer out there. please take your time with TFL 2, i'm so excited to read your other work!! also a break sounds like it would be so good for your mind considering how long you've dedicated yourself to this story 😭😭😭 you're seriously impressive. heads up, i didn't proofread this at all bc i finished typing this at 4 am LMFAO so forgive me if it's all scrambled and makes no sense.

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A/N > Thank you for taking the time to write this breakdown, I seriously appreciate it so I wanted to take my time in responding to it & engaging with you :)

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now, on to the yap. i deadass cracked my knuckles before typing all this out.

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A/N > You’re so real for tht ngl

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i reread the entirety of TFL from chapter 1 and my brain is so melted from analyzing that i'll prob find more details tomorrow after i sleep on some theories 😭 BUT HOLY FUCK YOU REALLY WEREN'T KIDDING WHEN YOU SAID YOU WERE HINTING AT GOJO'S OBSESSION SINCE LITERALLY THE FIRST CHAPTER??? the fucking hint being that "Gojo's desire for you is so strong it's almost frightening." GIRLLLLLL 🫵🫵🫵🫵🫵🫵

your foreshadowing and referencing is insane. idk if you intended a lot of it, but a lot of it caught my eye.

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A/N> I TOLD YOU GUYS IVE BEEN DOIN IT SINCE THE FIRST CHAPTER !! Okay not exactly but like there was a vibe I had from the first chapter & when I later came up with the twist & went back and saw that everything would connect perfectly ^.^

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chapter 7; the reader and Gojo have lighthearted banter about how the reader "started this" situation.

"I made a mistake." [reader]

"A good one."

"Bad one." You correct.

this was regarding a completely different situation but it baffled me how much it connects to the plot itself; the reader making the "mistake" of leaving her door open, and how it lead to months full of trauma and love. probably completely unintentional, but such a good detail.

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A/N > Very intentional btw, it’s supposed to be known that, in a sense, Gojo x reader is forbidden :)

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Choso's still staring at you intently, "What version of you would someone not like?"

The way he words his question only furthers that little feeling in your chest. It's almost as though he were implying that any and all versions of you would be acceptable in his eyes. - Chapter 16

THE WAY WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT CHOSO WOULD STICK BY US REGARDLESSSSSSSS AAAAAA WE'RE SO BLIND!!! i just hope this stays true to the sequel :')

"No, I wish you didn't have to hate me." He says, shutting his eyes again and sucking in a deep breath, "B-But... it's uh, It's okay. I can live with you hating me." - Chapter 21

AAAA WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!!!! WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THIS WAS FORESHADOWING OUR FUTURE WITHOUT GOJO 😭😭😭 how he can live with the idea of the reader hating him so long as she's happy with Choso, especially considering his later revelations of how twisted his actions were and how if you stuck with him, he'd view you differently. fuck.

You despise the fact that he loves you. To you, it's almost entitled for him to feel like he has that right. How dare he hold such a strong emotion for you? If he felt this way, why is he forcing you to sleep with people for him? It makes no sense.

Why would someone claim to love you and put you through so much?

If he's been in love with you all this time, why start the list in the first place? Why couldn't he have just tried to win your heart from the beginning? Why the list? Why the blackmail? You don't understand him. - Chapter 23

i'm crushed. we didn't understand because we didn't know that Sukuna was involved. that could mean a million other things. i have some far-fetched theories about this but hear me out later!!!

the entirety of chapter 23 had me fucking floored while i was rereading. THE FORESHADOWING WAS EVERYWHERE!!! EVERY FUCKING WHERE

"No sweetheart, Sukuna's an asshole but..." His expression flickers and his smile fades away. He swallows and then clears his throat, "I'm pretty sure he'll satisfy you just fine."

...

You narrow your eyes at him, "Are you sure?"

...

"Fuckin' positive," Gojo suddenly sounds pissed and you grow concerned. The arm around you gets a little tighter while he walks you through some crowds and you keep looking at the man confused.

There's a vein popping out along his jawline because of how hard he's gritting his teeth.

of course he's aggravated because he knows that Sukuna is the one behind the list in the first place 😭😭😭 I'M SORRY WE DOUBTED YOU SATORU, FUCKKKK

——FIFTEEN MINUTES. That was the exact amount of time it took you to seduce Sukuna. The act was way too easy. Actually, it was suspiciously easy.

BECAUSE HE FUCKING KNEW 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

"What all did you plan on doing tonight aside from getting harassed by strangers?" Sukuna suddenly questions against your skin.

You ignore how close he is and the way his lips make you tense, turning your head to face forward. Chuckling at his last comment, "Same thing as everyone else here." You reply, slightly confused by his question.

"Bullshit," He utters, "Nobody dresses like this without the intent of gaining my attention," Sukuna claims while his hands slide back down along your body.

this 100% could be just him being cocky and Sukuna, but the recent reveal just makes this feel like an extra demeaning interaction. but of course, it's Sukuna.

chapter 24 is so fucking shady too with everything we know. i know you addressed some of these points already bc i brought them up in previous anon messages, but these things still had me paranoid;

the way Sukuna leaves us and tells the reader to go to his room after a certain amount of time (i know he could have just been tidying up real quick but everything about this man has me on edge)

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A/N> A lot of people are on edge about this but I’ll be honest, there’s nothing crazy that happens in between this time period. Not saying nothing happens but nothing crazy— it’ll be addressed later (in the next fic most likely)

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the way he's been consistently on the phone since the reader entered the room, which is shortly after she messaged Gojo saying that she'll be able to cross Sukuna off of this list by tonight which he wasn't happy with at all.

no seriously, he kept diverting his attention to something in the bathroom and then came out, still on his phone. maybe he's talking to literally anyone else but STILL I'M PARANOID

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A/N> This is to show the fact that Sukuna is a very socially active individual, & hints to the theory (I think you later state) that he has connections.

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this happens in chapter 25 but the way he keeps smiling while the reader kisses him is just so smug of him especially considering the original reason as to why the reader's even interacting with him

then the spicy chapters with Sukuna…

the foreshadowing that the lack of knowledge of Sukuna's reputation will come back to bite her in the ass; first with the knowledge that he is abusive, and then her finding out that he is the curator of the list, knowing the full details of her blackmail and even threatening her again.

WHO DID HE FUCKING FIGHT HELPPPPP MY MIND IS BOGGLING there's no way it's Gojo, right? they're both too unscathed in these next few chapters for there to have been a fight between the two of them.

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A/N > It’s not Gojo. 🙏

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THE FUCKING MOMENT WHERE HE CONTEMPLATED SOMETHING WITH THE PHONE IN HIS HAND??? I FUCKING KNEW IT. I FUCKING CALLED IT WAS SOMETHING SHADY AS HELL.

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A/N> The other Sukuna hint I was talking about is right before this moment btw, you’re welcome ;)

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then he has the audacity to hold his tongue right afterwards?? it's such a big hint towards the fact that he knew about the list from the beginning UGHHHHHHHH.

the way he tried to humor the reader about her "job" even though he was in on the whole thing. UGH. SUKUNA WHEN I GET YOU SUKUNA?? 👊👊👊👊 especially with that "whore" joke right afterwards. i can't stand him. i know that it's implied that he has a twisted view on women from having abusive women in his life (his mom and his ex who he punched) BUT STILL. he's so lucky he's fictional and hot.

the fact that we're able to pick up on the fact that it's a "crazy coincidence" that he continues the whore jokes UGHHHHH HE HAS BEEN PLAYING US FROM THE STAAAAAARTT

Gojo got upset at something from Sukuna's party, he didn't want you to call yourself a whore all of a sudden, Sukuna seems to have believed that was your actual job, and you remember how pissed Gojo seemed as he thought about you sleeping with Sukuna-

Holy fuck. Are the two connected somehow? Is something going on? What does Gojo owe Sukuna? Does Sukuna know you only slept with him as payment to clear Gojo's debt? Is-

GIRL YOU WERE ALMOST THERE!!!! YOU ALMOST HAD IT!!!

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A/N > I love teasing in my narration by nearly spoiling things 😹

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seriously though, these chapters killed me. the official end obliterated my heart. it's so fucking bittersweet i want to scream at the top of a high building. the reader ends up happy and with someone she loves, which is fantastic for her. she deserves that after everything she went through. Choso treats her so, so well.

but Gojo. with the theories i have, i feel horrible. i was so harsh towards him as a die hard Choso girly but these endings changed me. i just hope i'm right.

the fact that his healing journey is harsher than ours makes this ending sting so much. he's healed, and you can see it with his demeanor from the call and the way he interacted with the reader.

we were always made aware of the way he looked at us such deep attachment. the initial gleam shows that he's happy to see us, but that he's not reliant on us for his happiness anymore. he's finding that on his own, and it's a grueling process for him. i wished the reader gave him a hug, but that would probably make me feel even worse.

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A/N> He gave her a lil side hug (with his arm over her shoulder) & was resting his head on hers at the end if that makes you feel any better 😅

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"Through my blackmailing, I fell for you but I also did it because I loved you from the start." i'm gonna throw up bro i'm so sad. i'm proud of his growth. his obsession was so, so strong but he always prioritized the reader's happiness over himself. i know that being self-sacrificial is so core to his personality but it doesn't make it suck any less. i'm devastated. i started blasting mitski in the car on my way to work after reading this.

i thought i was ready for the journal burning. i was so ready for this tie to be severed, for them to finally move on. but i failed to realize that it could ultimately mean a life without each other. it makes sense as to why, but it still sucks.

kami i need that poly ending before i cry my eyes out at 4 am rn. you know i can't handle angst, but bittersweet endings lowkey hurt me even more. i need all my babies to be happy. i desperately need it.

but that alt ending... fuck. in a horrible, sick, and twisted way, i'm relieved. i'm a Choso girly from the bottom of my heart but i can't let this Gojo go omfg. even if he shows up for one more chapter, i think i'll be alright. BUT IT BETTER NOT BE FOR DEATH KAMI!!!! I HAVE A FEW EXCERPTS THAT SUGGEST DEATH FLAGS BUT I AM SIMPLY NOT LOOKING AT THEM. DON'T DO THIS TO ME KAMIIIIIII. i need this boy to be frolicking in a field of flowers or something. my heart can't take this.

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A/N> I know I reference death a lot but that’s just to add a sense of how dramatic the characters are 🫶

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okay, time for my mind-fucky theory. pls bare with me. if it wasn't obvious by my last post, i'm 100% on board with the theory that Sukuna's blackmailing Gojo, which started this whole thing. but the thing that is getting me is how this all connects. i have some assumptions that could make sense, but there are a handful of gaps. here's my thought process;

Sukuna's blackmailing Gojo by using his obsession/love against him.

we are already familiar with the fact that Gojo has liked the reader for years. there was a chapter where Gojo mentioned that it started off as a "crush" but he was so oblivious to his own obsession up until the reader mentioned it to him. it's to the point that he didn't understand what was wrong with the idea of hurting people for the reader. who's to say that Sukuna didn't catch him in some sort of heinous act regarding the reader like stalking?

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A/N > You’re cooking with this one and I almost, almost had to go get the fire extinguisher :D

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Gojo didn't understand the difference between love and obsession until later on in the story. this would be consistent with the implication that Gojo just loved her so deeply that his morals were askew as we have yet to find out how far his love goes.

what if Sukuna caught him in the act of doing god knows what, and brought up the fact that if the reader found out about this, that she'd get super freaked out and would do everything she can to get away from him (considering probably barely knew each other, if at all, at this point). but why would Sukuna devise such a plan over a money bribe? well, Sukuna's already revealed to be wealthy, and maybe he was bored. the same line that Gojo kept repeating to the reader whenever she questioned him as to why he did it. what if Gojo asked Sukuna why he's blackmailing him, and he said the exact same thing; "I was bored." we see how much Sukuna mirrors Gojo's speech by calling the reader "sweetheart" often, what if Gojo did the same thing?

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A/N > Gojo & Sukuna do have a few parallels in this story & they will be addressed more in the sequel.

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we wondered in chapter 23 how Gojo reaches out to these men to ensure their debt is "paid," but considering how oblivious everyone else on the list is to Gojo owing them anything, it would make sense that he only reports to Sukuna as he is ordered to do so. but two things stumped me on this theory overall.

the reader said that she used to party a lot and get involved with boys before Gojo. if he was stalking her for so long, why did he wait so long to approach her?

what specifically would be the blackmail that Sukuna has on Gojo?

regarding the first point, it's been mentioned that Gojo has been "scared of women" and was shy when it came to approaching the reader. he knew of her for so long, but was able to constantly slip under her radar. considering how much of a pervert he is, it wouldn't have been surprising for him to sneak around and watch in on the reader hooking up with other guys. after all, these guys were probably complete strangers to him and all he cared about was you. remember how Gojo was basically able to tune out his own best friend, Suguru, when the reader was hooking up with him in their living room? it wouldn't be wild to assume that he was able to do the same for your other hookups as he spied on you.

to connect this with second point, what if Sukuna caught Gojo being a peeping tom on the reader during a party hook-up? while being so distracted in the act of spying, Sukuna spots him. the reader wouldn't be alright with the fact that someone who's barely an acquaintance (if that, depending on the time this occurred) to her has been perving around and watching her have sex without her consent. she would do anything to get away from Gojo, and of course that would crush him. Gojo tried to buy Sukuna's silence by any means necessary. so, Sukuna generated a list of people that he and Gojo mutually knew for the reader to fuck. the reasoning for it would be the fact that Gojo has to sit through the process of having the girl he likes fuck a bunch of guys besides him, and the fact that Gojo knew all these men would make it sting more. plus, he has a reputation for hookups. (chapter 8)

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A/N > You’re like RIGHT there with it and yet not there at the same time omg 😟

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but why would Gojo agree to this deal with Sukuna, and why would he also go with the method of blackmailing the reader? it's basically a guarantee that the reader would be scared away regardless. but again, we could recall that Shoko mentioned that he was too "scared of women" to approach the reader at first. this was his chance to finally approach her. plus, "once that video is gone, there is no excuse he'll have to be around you." (chapter 8)

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but the more i thought of this reasoning for the two points, the more bizarre it felt. so what if instead of Gojo being a peeping tom, it was Sukuna. we get so many hints that Sukuna has eyes and intel everywhere. we get an indirect implication of this when he called us out for rolling our eyes during our phone call with him. yes, it could be completely by chance, but it's still a great hint that he "sees everything" and "knows everything." we get an even bigger hint towards this in the alt ending when he directly references The F*ck List.

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A/N > Others have taken note of how Sukuna knew she rolled her eyes but trust me, that’s just to show that Sukuna knows the reader’s body language more than he’s let on & paid attention to her a lot during the time they were together.

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it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume that he has some shady videos taken of people without his consent, some possibly acquired through other people (like how Gojo was revealed to have sent Sukuna the video of the reader from the first chapter). what if Gojo caught Sukuna with the video, threatened him to delete it, and Sukuna counterthreatened to have it be sent and posted everywhere. it would be highly ironic, but consistent with the way that Gojo and Sukuna practically mirror each other at times. the reasoning for the list choices would still be the same for this theory, too.

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my citations for these theories ☝️🤓

“You once asked me if I love you because I blackmailed you or if I blackmailed you because I love you and my answer is both,” Gojo confesses as he turns to meet your gaze, “Through my blackmailing, I fell for you but I also did it because I loved you from the start.” - Chapter 56

loved you from the start; his obsession has been consistent from the start (supports Gojo being a peeping tom theory) or he has always had a deep concern for you (supports him wanting to stop Sukuna from spreading blackmail of you instead).

“I’ve sacrificed everything for you, y’know.”

“How? What’s everything that you’ve sacrificed, hm?”

“You. I sacrificed the woman I love to make her happy.” Gojo admits, and of all he’s said thus far, that feels like the truest statement.

“I could’ve been happy with you.” You remind him.

He laughs, “Yeah well, I’m an idiot.”

You scoff, “That’s all you have to say?”

“Yup.” - Chapter 56

is he an idiot for being a peeping pervert instead of just approaching you normally? maybe. how does this make her happy? she ends up finding love through Choso, through the list, through the blackmail.

But deleting the video means ... he has no more leverage over you and can't force you to help him with the hole he's dug for himself. - Chapter 8

the hole being the blackmail set against him by Sukuna.

Gojo's behind you cursing at himself for being unable to tell you the truth.

He's so scared that you'll never help him without the blackmail and, well, he has every right to be because you're pretty sure that if it weren't for those videos he has over your head, you wouldn't be doing any of this. - Chapter 9

the videos he's referencing is the original video from chapter 1 and the fake video he lied about with Suguru, but he can't tell the reader the truth because it's too twisted and risky (supports Gojo peeping tom theory).

He silences himself in thought. There are so many ways he could go about answering such a question but the possibilities of how you may react are endless. Plus, you're drunk and if he's going to admit or explain anything to you, it'll be while you're sober.

"Because..." Gojo's voice gets so quiet that you almost don't catch what he says, "...I don't have any other choice." - Chapter 21

if he didn't go through with his list, Sukuna would have went through with Gojo's blackmail, thus resulting in either you getting as far away from Gojo as soon as possible or Sukuna's video being sent around.

He let something slip abruptly, "W-Wish I c-could tell you everything, sweets..."

Your brows furrow at that.

Are you missing something here? - Chapter 22

YES GIRL!!!! SUKUNA'S BEHIND THE WHOLE LIST, HE'S BEHIND THE BLACKMAIL GIRLYPOP

"Anything," Gojo says, meeting your gaze. He's so serious that it's almost dark the way he looks at you, "I'd do anything for you." - Chapter 29

"I meant it when I said I'd do anything for you."

You follow his motions and then end up right back in his arms, "Right..."

"I'd sacrifice the very thing I love just to see you happy." Gojo claims proudly.

You scoff, "Thought' I was the thing you loved?"

"You are."

His words bewilder you, "Then that makes no sense."

"It won't." Gojo shrugs. - Chapter 29

🧍‍♀️

anything. even if it means putting your body, heart, mind, and career on the line. directly supports the theory that Sukuna initially had blackmail on the reader.

"We're the same, y'know..." He suddenly says, his voice breaking again, "We both want someone so terribly bad but our situations prohibit us from getting that person."

"You could've prevented all this though..."

Gojo sniffles and you feel a drop of wetness slide down his cheek and slip against your palm. The man was crying? Why? - Chapter 30

this whole time we've been told that Gojo and the reader share more similarities than the reader realizes. what Gojo is to the reader, the reader is to Choso. while Choso now knows of the men that the reader slept with, he doesn't know why. he doesn't know about you being blackmailed. you know that you had to sleep with these men. you don't know why. you didn't know it was because of Gojo being blackmailed.

"For loving me, Satoru. It's not a crime," You say, mocking a comment he made to you earlier, "You're allowed to love me. So, for that, and that only, I forgive you."

Those words healed so many more wounds in his heart than you realized. It was like that was all he ever needed to hear. If Gojo's mistake was loving you and that's what caused this, then you forgive him.

If in some twisted way, his feelings started the list, you forgive him.

COME ON NOW.

There’s so much going unspoken but the two of you knew what either was saying, you understood each other more than either of you realized. - Chapter 35

“Well,” Gojo sighs heavily and then draws your hands off his face, leaning down to you a bit, “Sometimes, sacrifices need to be made in exchange for one’s happiness.”

“Are you telling me that all this was for the greater good?” You quiz as you raise a curious brow.

“Something like that, yeah,” He shrugs. - Chapter 45

You tell him, “If I had one wish, it’d be that you did that from the beginning.”

Gojo opens his mouth to say something but then he swallows his words down. He nearly fucked up.

“All you had to do was talk to me,” Your shoulders raise into a shrug as you move a hand to the doorknob, “Things could’ve been different if you did.”

“Even if I’ve been obsessed with you since the beginning?” He questions and he’s stepping closer to you again. He can’t possibly wrap his head around that possibility-

You laugh a bit, “Especially if you were obsessed from the beginning,” You didn’t know it but that statement right there made the man feel as though his world was falling apart, loads of regret tumbling over him as he stares at you with wide eyes, “Satoru I think you forgot but, before all this started, aside from Shoko… I was lonely.”

Gojo’s throat goes dry and he fails to form a response to that, “I…”

“If you had just talked to me one time, and more than a hey or how are you,” The way your eyes soften, a slim sheer gloss of tears coating your gaze as you speak to him, “I would’ve fallen for you.”

He grits his teeth, “Don’t tell me that.”

“But it’s true.” You say.

And just like that, Gojo was crumbling all over again. If only you knew how much he regretted everything after hearing you say that. - Chapter 46

if he had just spoke to the reader before all of this, maybe she wouldn't have gone to those parties, hooked up with those people, and caused whatever kind of blackmail Sukuna had on Gojo (or on her).

He wishes he could take it all back, his feelings for you included. If only he could go back and stop himself from ever being curious about you. That’s what started it after all. Because, at the end of the day, Gojo knew who you were before you knew who he was— hell, even before Shoko knew who you were. - Chapter 53

then what is the timeline of his obsession starting? has it been before Gojo? could his blackmail have taken place even before Shoko introduced you two, adding to the weight of the threat that Sukuna held over Gojo's head (regarding the peeping tom theory).

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A/N > The timeline on Gojo’s interest, not obsession just yet, on the reader will be addressed in the sequel so this’ll be answered there <3

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but there were certain parts that stumped me and my theories so i have some weird reasonings around them;

It's selfish of him and seriously fucked up but, he's said it before and he'll say it over and over again-- you're all he has. He made promises to everyone on that list, promises of delivering a woman to them at some point, and of course, he couldn't convince anyone he knew to do such a thing.

So again, the situation with you just happened to be a coincidence.

The problem is that Gojo hates that it's you. He hates that you're the one he ended up doing this to. - Chapter 8

Gojo's known to be a silly guy so it could make sense that he actually did promise these guys hookups for reasons unrelated to his blackmail. after all, he does have a reputation for getting people hookups. the coincidence is that Sukuna now has dirt on Gojo and wants to toy with him. by making the reader sleep with them the guys he coincidentally owes hookups to, he fulfills his role/reputation and relieves his debt at the same time. two birds, one stone.

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A/N > As we later learn that some of the “debt” Satoru claimed to have isn’t real, we can also infer that his reputation & the promises he’s made to these men were done out of coincidence. Take Toji for example; tell me you can’t see an interaction between him & Gojo where Gojo gets a bad grade and wants to get it up so he taunts his professor with the idea of getting him a hookup & Toji would laugh it off considering Gojo’s reputation ;)

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another thing that stumped me is why Gojo got so worked up with the reader referring herself as a whore, and the connection to Sukuna. my delulu reasoning is that once Sukuna threatened Gojo with blackmail by either of the two theories/methods i mentioned, Sukuna casually referred to the reader as a whore. that caused a major fight between the two, possibly even getting physical (which can refer back to the implication that Gojo has hurt people for the reader).

the fight could have increased the tension and severity of the situation, so Sukuna decides to add Choso to the list knowing how easily attached Choso gets. in chapter 5, the reader and Gojo were discussing the list and Choso specifically. Gojo was even noted to be relieved when the reader had mentioned that they'll just have to hope that Choso doesn't get attached, as he obviously holds deep feelings for the reader. Sukuna knows that by going through with the blackmail with Choso involved, Gojo most likely will not end up with the reader if Choso get attached and the reader reciprocates those feelings.

also, the counterargument that Sukuna and Gojo are actually friends/allies in this situation just doesn't sit well with me. it would make for a crazy twist but it just feels too out of character for Gojo. but then again, how would Sukuna specifically know about The F*ck List? but idk, it just feels so wrong to me. maybe i have too much faith in Gojo lmfao. after all, he has consistently shown a great dislike towards the guy since chapter 23. but maybe it's my denial speaking. i really don't want to think of Satoru going through this whole arc only for it to reveal that he truly is a piece of shit. pls don't do this to my pookie my heart cannot handle it </3

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A/N > Remember, Gojo is a good actor & you go a long period of time in the book not realizing he’s not as much of a villain as he pretends to be 😉

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there's that moment after the reader fucked Sukuna that still messes with my brain. with my theories, my brain's thinking that he contemplated on collecting even more blackmail on the reader. for what reason? idk, to be an ass? to torment Gojo further and add more to his blackmail? but maybe he decided not to because he already has plenty of blackmail on the reader (if the theory of Sukuna having a video of her from way back then is true) and fucking her knowingly made Gojo pissed considering all the dirt Sukuna has.

so why can't Gojo tell her the truth now? why does he want to wait years in advance? maybe he's hoping that by that time, not only will you forget and not care about the situation overall, but maybe Sukuna will forget all about it as well. the chances of Sukuna holding on to the reader's blackmail for that long is slim and the reader would most likely be in a situation where she is completely separated from Sukuna depending on her job and living situation with Choso. the stakes are lower than if he were to reveal everything to you now, at a moment where your life is still so uncertain. it would go against his wish for you to end up happy.

┏━━━

A/N > Maybe Gojo doesn’t tell her the truth because he can’t, just as he said 🌚 Perhaps he’s not allowed to yet. After all, why would Sukuna even tell the reader he made the list in the end? ^.^ Just some food for thought!

┗━━━

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regarding the future of TFL... fuck, bro. i have no fucking idea. i'm too caught up in the (presumed) past. i'm mourning fr. i love this fic sooooo fucking much. whenever you decide to pick up on the sequel, i will be there. if you choose to publish anything else in the meantime, i will be there. thanks for such a fun and memorable read, Kami. i'm excited to bookbind this soon 🤍🤍🤍 now, i need to watch blue lock to shove these feelings down.

yap fin (for now)

-☃️

A/N > I love you sosoosooooo much for this. These theories are like reading an entirely new fanfic sometimes except, I know all the answers & what’s going to happen next, which only makes me more excited ^.^ Thank you for taking the time to make this, thank you for reading, thank you for supporting, just, THANK YOU.

This right here is exactly what I write for; people like you :)

To the others reading this breakdown & theory, thank ☃️anon because she’s a damn godsend & ilhsm ^.^ (definitely showing favoritism rn, sorry not sorry, ily all I swear)

Edit; Since you’re watching Blue Lock, I can’t wait to bring my Shidou fanfic here because a lot of the drama in TFL has inspo from that fic, which I wrote first ^.^ & I could totally see you enjoying it because not only is it a childhood friends to lovers than enemies & back to lovers troupe BUT it also includes Itoshi Sae x reader which ofc, adds hella drama :))

P.S. It’s two am as I finally post this and omg sorry it took me a while, I wanted to answer other anons first before unpacking this badboy, again, tysm!!

#the f*ck list #tfl!theories #tfl spoiler #tfl #k!ans: ☃️

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