#Service now introduction

[markcraft3636]

What is ServiceNow |Introduction | User Interface| Application & Filter Navigation | Complete Course

ServiceNow is planned with intelligent systems to speed up the work process by providing solutions to amorphous work patterns. Each employee, customer, and machine in the enterprise is related to ServiceNow, allowing us to make requests on a single cloud platform. Various divisions working with the requests can assign, prioritize, correlate, get down to root cause issues, gain real‑time insights, and drive action. This workflow process helps the employees to work better, and this would eventually improve the service levels. ServiceNow provides cloud services for the entire enterprise. This module consists User Interface and Navigation. The Objective of this module is to make beginners learn how to navigate to applications and modules in ServiceNow, using the Application and Filter Navigators. To Create views and filters for a table list and to update record using online editing.

[kkkkkkkitty]

[warmfuzzyanimal]

33 for the artists ask thing!

33. have you taken a lot of classes for art?

not really! i took standard art classes offered in grade and highschool and attended less than a year of college in pursuit of an art degree.

...and then i realized college was kinda bullshit and dropped out. <- (this is awesome and i'm proud to be a college dropout and i'm not joking) BUT! i had *one* really cool professor who loved anime and had a fursona and they are massively the reason i didn't give up on art as a career.

i'm a strong believer in the internet having almost any class/tutorial/guide that you can think of for Free, so nowadays i'll watch youtube vids or look at free classes to try and hone my skillz

[queer-ecopunk]

So, I'm trans. And several years ago, I was at my great grandfather's funeral. 17, newly on T, barely out to anyone other than my close friends and family. And I'm standing there at the refreshment's table, surrounded by strangers and members of my family's church, when George walks up to me.

This man is ancient, bent like a finger and frail. Tufts of white hair surround his wrinkled face. Like always, he's wearing thick glasses, massive hearing aids, and his veteran's hat. George was my first introduction to the concept of war, when he told me as a child why he was missing two fingers on his hand. He's been a fixture at church since I can remember. I've only ever seen him at there or in uniform at parades, the rest of his time spent in a nursing home somewhere. He picks up a deviled egg and says, in his quiet voice,

"You know, before your grandfather died, he told me that now he had 3 grandsons."

I'm frozen in place. I don't know what to say to that, if I should say anything at all. This is not a conversation I expected to have, especially not with this man. But he continues.

"I didn't know what he meant! So he explained it to me."

And I can imagine it. My great grandfather, uninformed and opinionated but supportive, explaining to his friend the news he barely understood himself over after-service coffee and cookies. His eldest grandchild was now a boy.

"And, you know, I didn't know what to think."

Here, George looks me up and down. This 90-something year old war veteran, who knew me mostly as the little girl playing in the church kitchen with his wife, processing what my great grandfather had really meant. It feels like a long pause, even thought it probably passed in a second.

"But you look good. So, eh!"

And then he smiled, shrugged, and walked away without another word. If I was fine, if I was happier, then that's all that mattered.

George passed away this week, at the age of 99. This memory has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but I wasn't sure if or how I should share it. It was a conversation that meant very little, but also meant the world. It was scary, and funny, and the moment when I realized that sometimes the people you least expect will accept you. Sometimes, even if they don't fully understand, even if they barely know you, someone will choose to support you. And that will always matter.

[100vern]

ex-conomics | csc

you supported seungcheol through years of being an aspiring athlete, and all you got to show for it was your undergraduate degree and an awkward, stuttered apology when he dumped you to go semi-pro. now he’s back after an injury derailed his career, and there’s only one problem: you’re the only one available to tutor him. you - 0; the universe - 1. talk about no return on investment.

⚽ pairing: choi seungcheol x f. reader ⚽ genre: exes to (lite) enemies to lovers; university au; angst, fluff ⚽ rating: while there is nothing explicit in this fic, there are two brief references to smut. while i can't stop anyone from reading this, i would prefer minors do not interact with this or any of my work. ⚽ warnings: cheol is some degree of famous, reader is a grad student/TA, mentions of an injury and coping with the aftermath of it, lots of economics talk that even i do not understand, swearing, one mention of alcohol, some misplaced jealousy, rom-com tropes, dino is kind of a loser but we love him anyway. probably a lot of other things i missed, but this is actually pretty tame for a fic of this length. ⚽ word count: 13.4k ⚽ thank you: a lot of people looked this over for me in the process and i'm sure i will forget some of them so if i do i'm sorry: @the-boy-meets-evil, @hot-soop, @highvern, and @haologram, who also gave me some wonderful ideas for the vlogs. thank you to MIT for opencourseware existing. i took microeconomics and dropped it, so i couldn't have done this without you. everyone in the discord server for helping me along the way and keeping me motivated. ⚽ author's note: i haven't posted a fic in nearly seven months, so i think it goes without saying that there are parts of this i like and a lot more i'm not 100% happy with. i'd love if this was more fleshed out and 10k longer, but i was able to write anything at all so it's good enough. this was written for the back to school with seventeen collab, hosted by @camandemstudios. thank you both for letting me participate! please make sure to check out the rest of the stories! everyone worked so hard and this collab was a ton of fun to participate in. <3

You look down at the paper. Back up at who handed it to you. Down at the paper again.

“You’ve got to be joking.”

The poor freshman kid laughs, all nerves, and even though the sound is grating, you remember what it’s like to be forced into work study. How far away graduate school seemed; how large your professors loomed over you with all their power and knowledge and credentials; how you constantly felt like the dumbest person in nearly every room you walked into for four straight years.

“Um—”

You sigh, just barely resisting the urge to slam your head onto your desk. “I—it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Your words do little to ease Freshman’s nerves. He’s still hunched over in the doorway of your office, wringing his hands as he shifts his weight back and forth, in for a lifetime of body pain with the way he’s squaring his shoulders. “You’re sure about this, though? Like, I’m really not being set up?”

“I don’t think so?” he offers, slowly starting to turn green right before your eyes. “Dr. Lee ga-gave me the paperwork himself, I don’t think he would’ve messed it up? Oh no, did I mess it up? Should I go back to Student Services and conf—”

Good god, this kid’s anxiety is gonna stink up your office for weeks. “No need!” you interject. “I’ll just…” Sign it, you want to say, but the longer you stare at the sheet of paper the quicker you’re losing your resolve.

TUTORING REQUEST FORM Student Name: Choi Seungcheol Degree: Undergraduate Major: Business Course: ECON04101 Introduction to Microeconomics Instructor: Lee Yeonseok, PhD. Recommended Tutoring: High (3-4 hours per week)

You curse under your breath. Of the two names on the paper, Dr. Lee’s does not come as a surprise. He’s a notorious hard-ass with an infamous attrition rate—most students don’t last more than a week in any of his classes—but he’s also the sole reason you were able to pay for someof your grad school tuition out of pocket with all the tutoring money you made.

That, however, was two years ago.

“Does he know I don’t tutor anymore?” Stupid question. The kid stares blankly back at you, as if to say I don’t know any more than the people in Student Services, let alone Dr. Lee. It is literally my first year here. “I’m Dr. Ahn’s TA this year. I’ve got my hands full with her bullsh… stuff—”

Immediately, you know you’ve said something wrong, because the kid’s eyes light up, all that previous anxiety disappearing like smoke. “Wait, the same Dr. Ahn that teaches the crypto course?”

“No, that one died,” you say quickly. Kid deflates. “Anyway, I don’t really tutor anymore, especially for econ. As you can see”—you gesture vaguely around the cramped four walls of your office—“they’ve upgraded me. They even put my name on a little placard by the door! Go look! They spelled it wrong! If that doesn’t sum up this university I don’t know what does.”

You heave another sigh. Try to school your face and tone into something that exudes professionalism and finality. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I tutored Dr. Lee’s students for, like, three years in undergrad so I’m sure they just… forgot that wasn’t my actual job here. Who’s in charge of tutoring these days? I’ll shoot them an email and explain all this.”

Freshman gives you a name, and it takes less than a second to find them in the employee directory. You expect that to be the end of it, but he’s still taking up space in your doorway. You quirk an eyebrow. “Yes?”

The hand-wringing returns, along with an embarrassed flush that disappears beneath the neckline of his school-branded sweatshirt. “I just—um. Maybe you could, uh. Send that now? Before I get back there?”

You blink. “Don’t you have to go all the way back across campus? How slow do you think I type?” He shrugs, and you give up on the idea of getting rid of him. “Fine. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Lee Chan. I’m a sophomore. Do you know that guy?”

“Oh. I thought for sure you were a freshman, but you’re gonna need to be more specific, Lee Chan, Sophomore.”

“The guy they want you to tutor.” You freeze. The guy they want you to tutor is—“Choi Seungcheol,” Chan tacks on, and, yeah, you know—knew, you correct yourself—someone with that name, once upon a time.

But there are a lot of Chois and a lot of Seungcheols. It’s been years since you’ve spoken to the Seungcheol you knew, and that was when he’d broken up with you to—“I heard he’s a football player? Well, used to be, I guess. The girls in the office were freaking out so I guess he’s pretty famous, but I don’t know anything about sports, do you? They said they have photocards of him. I thought they only did that for idols.”

You think about being kids together in Daegu. Think about the exasperated looks you’d share when your parents would drag the two of you to festivals: Palgongsan in the autumn, Biseulsan in the spring; transformation and rebirth. Think about being eight years old and watching your father cram into the small space of the Chois’ living room, standing around the TV with Seungcheol’s dad, shouting at Park Jonghwan. Daegu FC made the FA Cup quarterfinals that year, and you think, of everything, that’s what you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

You think about falling in love slowly. Sixteen and clueless, the pair of you were. Didn’t really know any different, just that you’d look at him and feel butterflies. That you’d hold hands in secret. Text beneath the dinner table. That you’d watch him on the football pitch and be consumed by pride. That the future felt impossibly far away, that life would never catch up to the two of you.

You think about all the football jargon you didn’t understand—the academies, the teams, the implications. You think about, I’m thinking about trying out for the FC Seoul U-18, I just don’t think there’s much more I can do here in Daegu. You think about replying, Oh, I applied to university there.

You remember thinking it must’ve been fate, how easy that had worked out. How easy that first hurdle had been overcome.

You think about how fast everything happened. The try-out, the acceptance, the explosion. Remember being unable to go anywhere those first few months without seeing Seungcheol’s face, touted as the next big thing. Think about applying for scholarships when he was applying for international visas. Think about studying for midterms when Seungcheol was studying English for interviews.

You think about the last few weeks of your relationship, when it felt like you were desperately trying to cling to ghosts. Think about how Seoul had once felt endlessly big, both in opportunity and size, and how it now felt suffocating. You think about, So you’re just giving up? Is that what you’re saying? Think about, I don’t know what else to do. It doesn’t feel fair to you.

You think about all the places you’ve watched him. On countless football pitches; shy glances in school hallways; in the passenger seat, wracked with nerves on the drive to Seoul; poised above you in bed, hairline dotted with sweat as he rolled his hips, telling you how much he loved you.

You think about watching him walk out the door, and how you never watched him again.

So you fire off your email, concise and to the point about why you can’t tutor Choi Seungcheol in Introduction to Microeconomics, and turn to Lee Chan, Sophomore.

“No,” you finally answer. “Never heard of him.”

For all intents and purposes, your rejection should’ve been the end of it.

A few days go by. You hold office hours, attend lectures, work on your thesis when you have both the time and the energy. Try to ignore the feeling of bees beneath your skin, anxiety needling each time you check your email. You were well within your right to decline the tutoring request, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve done something wrong. That someone somehow knows who Seungcheol was to you and will pull you up on it. That those girls who’d gushed about him to Chan are somewhere laughing at your expense.

But you don’t hear anything at all about it… until you do.

Sunday evening. You haven’t moved from your couch in hours, some variety show playing in the background, barely audible over your keyboard clacking. Much to your detriment, you don’t write many papers these days, so you’re out of practice. Feels like you haven’t done anything besides formulas in years, all of your academic knowledge reduced to fucking math, so you’re about ready to toss your laptop out the window long before the email even comes through.

You see, From: Lee Yeonseok. You see, Subject: Choi Seungcheol - Tutoring.

Your stomach plummets to the floor.

You scan the body quickly. You see the words personal favor… friend of his father… urgent matter… and your hands start shaking. Whether it’s from the sheer audacity of this man or anxiety, you aren’t sure, but it’s not like it matters. There aren’t a whole lot of people on campus brave or dumb enough to go up against him twice.

“Motherfucker,” you spit, bitter the only taste in your mouth.

Where did you go wrong to wind up here? You’d followed the script: got the grades, passed the exams, received half of the required education for the Respectable Career, helped a few others along the way chase dreams that may or may not have been their own. You’d fallen in love. Only had a broken heart to show for it, but that’d been in the script, too: The First Love, followed by The First Heartbreak.

The split from Seungcheol was supposed to have been the end of that chapter. You’d planned on never seeing him again, and you never would have, had it been up to you. Apparently the universe has other plans, participation required.

“Did you spill onion dip on the rug again?” You startle, sending your laptop flying. Kaori, your roommate, is perched halfway in between the living room and the kitchen like a cryptid, clearly not expecting your reaction. “Oh. Were you watching porn?”

Face burning, you fetch your laptop from the floor. “In a common area? Kaori, please, I have far more decorum than that.”

She snorts, resuming her trek to the fridge. “See, that’s what I thought, but then I walked out here and you threw your laptop so fast it was like watching my ex get caught watching furry porn all over again.” She pries the lid off a large container of yogurt. “You think this is still good?”

“Dunno. What’s it smell like?”

She sniffs it and pulls it back to check the label. “Vanilla, I think, which is concerning because it’s supposed to be strawberry.”

You shrug. “What’s the worst that can happen, you get extra”—you pause, trying to remember the correct order of things, before giving up entirely—“...biotics?”

“Mm, so close. Care if I just eat this with a spoon?”

Nose scrunched, you wave her off. “Couldn’t pay me to eat yogurt on a good day, let alone if it’s expired. All yours, babe.”

Spoon in hand and a pleased smile on her face, Kaori collapses onto the couch beside you. You try to return your attention to your paper, try to find your momentum again, and it works for all of ten minutes before you’re groaning and slamming the top closed.

You don’t even need to look over to know Kaori’s staring. “What’s up with you?” she asks. Before she can answer: “Wait, is this serious? Because I can’t have a serious conversation in this t-shirt.” You steal a glance sideways. Ask Me About My Hemorrhoid! it says, and you exhale loudly. “Don’t breathe at me, I lost a bet.”

“And continued wearing it?”

She jokingly rolls her eyes. “God forbid a girl has hobbies.” Nudges you with her foot. “C’mon, spill.”

Kaori doesn’t know about you and Seungcheol. Most people don’t, aside from a few old classmates from Daegu who found you on social media and tried befriending you once he started making a name for himself in Seoul. After that, it was just easier to keep things private while you were together. New friends knew you were seeing someone but not their name or how long you’d been together. Any curiosity surrounding why the Choi Seungcheol was following you on Insta had been waved away easily. Our parents are friends, we grew up together. Then you broke up, and there wasn’t any evidence to delete, and he wasn’t following you on Instagram anymore, and it was easier that way.

So, yeah—even though you hadn’t met her until years later, Kaori knows you have an ex. She knows you’ve had a few flings and situationships in the time since, too, and it’s why she’s none the wiser when you ask, “It’s nothing, really. Just—do you follow football at all?”

“Nah, not really. The new guy’s pretty into it and keeps trying to get me to watch the games with him, but it’s so fucking boring? I dunno, I can’t get into it. Not in real life, anyway—I binged all of Captain Tsubasa in an embarrassingly short amount of time, though. Why?”

“Student Services asked me to tutor someone the other day and I had to turn it down. I just don’t have the time, you know? This semester’s already killer, and Dr. Ahn’s been riding my ass nonstop about grades. Turns out it’s some football player, so Dr. Lee emailed me asking me to do it as a personal favor, which means, on top of all the other shit I have to do, I’m now tutoring some football player four hours a week in Microeconomics.”

Her face distorts. “God, that guy’s such a prick. Like wow, you’re good at the economy! Good for you! Who cares! Why don’t you go balance the national debt or something instead of torturing university freshmen!”

You also wrongly assume that’s the last you’ll hear of it from Kaori.

Two days later, after Student Services replies to your email with the days and times you’ll be tutoring Seungcheol, she materializes in the living room to harass you.

“You didn’t tell me your football player was Choi Seungcheol.”

The panic is instant. You know how she means it, but it’s not how your body interprets it. All of a sudden it feels like an interrogation, an accusation, and a whopping serving of guilt takes up residence in the middle of your chest for not being entirely honest.

“Explains this weird text Ken sent me.”

She slides her phone over to you, open to her text thread with her current flavor of the week. Beneath an article about Seungcheol enrolling in classes at your school:

doesn’t ur roomie TA there Why are you calling her “ur roomie” like you don’t know her name?? Rude. Also yes. ask her to get me an autograph No babe pls he was my fav player before he got injured No 🙄 fine. can i come over later? Starting to think you’re using me for my roommate. Get your own job 🙄

You hand her phone back. “I didn’t think you’d know who Choi Seungcheol even is.” It’s the best you can do, even though it just digs you a deeper grave. “You said you’re not into football.”

“I’m not, but unfortunately I am into that stupid man.” She sighs, wistful and longing. “Babe, you have to understand. His dick is so big.”

You hadn’t wanted to stay in Seoul for your graduate degree, let alone the same university you’d gone to for undergrad.

You’d applied to schools all over—Japan, Europe, even a few in the States. Romanticized the hell out of NYU, went window shopping for an overpriced apartment, picked a favorite pizzeria based on nothing but vibes and online reviews. In those few months after graduation, there wasn’t a whole lot tying you to Seoul. Your and Seungcheol’s relationship had been old history by then, your parents split. Your dad stayed in your childhood home and your mother moved a few hours closer to her sister. They’d waited until your brother was old enough to be out of the house.

And it’d just been… a lot. Overwhelming. Some days you could barely shower or feed yourself, let alone move halfway across the world, so you’d stayed in the familiar and tried not to let it feel like failure.

But the good thing about familiarity is you learn its tricks, figure out the hiding spots. Early on, your first or second week of grad school, you laid claim to a study room on a floor of the library everyone else ignored. You write notes on the whiteboard with faded blue markers that are still there days later. The chair on the opposite side of the table is always exactly where you left it, the space between it and the table enough to only accommodate you. Sometimes you leave books—old paperbacks littered with notes in your writing—or papers, just to see if they move.

They never do.

And all of this is why it feels like a punch to the gut when that sanctity is tainted. When you’re halfway through a stack of Dr. Ahn’s exams and the doorknob rattles behind you. When you don’t even need to turn around to know who it is, because he still sounds the same, still has that overwhelming presence. You’ve always sensed him before you felt him.

“There you are,” Dr. Lee says, ambling into the room before you can protest. He, too, is overwhelming, just in different ways. Immaculate posture that anchors his slight frame that’s always dressed impeccably and expensively. Wears a watch that’s triple your tuition. Shoes polished so bright they’re nearly blinding. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

This time it is an accusation.

Well, you found me, you want to say, but just knowing Seungcheol is behind him, lingering in that half-study room, half-hallway space, is enough to keep you quiet. Like if you speak you’ll summon him closer and you’ll no longer be able to pretend this is nothing more than a nightmare.

You plaster on a polite smile. Say, “Ah, here I am, kyosu-nim,” and put all your energy into trying to glue Seungcheol to the floor with your mind.

Which is fruitless, because Dr. Lee moves further into the room. Gestures for Seungcheol to follow him with an impatient huff, and the study room is small, sure, and with three people it feels cramped, but that’s not the reason it feels like all the air’s been sucked out of the room.

Seungcheol looks… different. He looks as anxious as you feel, and he sticks close to the wall like he’s trying to disappear. Dr. Lee introduces him with grave importance, unaware of your history, and the forced smile he offers you almost looks embarrassed.

You know Dr. Lee is still hammering away, probably giving you a stern talking-to for rejecting his request the first time, but you can’t tear your eyes away from Seungcheol. Feels like the world around you has reduced to a pinhead, all hyperfocus; feels like your lungs are sucking in stale air one at a time.

“...his father is a very good friend of mine, so I expect…”

You expected to feel nothing. Seungcheol had left to chase his dream—one you’d always been so supportive of that it sometimes felt like your dream, too—and, perhaps naively, you thought the distance and the years would’ve been enough. You expected your heart to have hardened. You expected all those nights you spent crying to hit you at full force. You expected anger, hurt—indifference, at the very least.

“...as many hours per week as you both can manage…”

But you should’ve known better. Should’ve expected the butterflies, the way your palms grow clammy, the way your heart rate spikes. Should’ve expected everything to feel upside-down. You should’ve expected to look at Seungcheol and feel sixteen and in love all over again.

“...you are responsible for his academic progress…”

And that simply will not do. You’ve spent the last few years pulling yourself out of that hole, clawing your way back to something resembling normal. You’ve purged the thought of him from your mind—let his scent fade from your sheets, an old sweatshirt he’d left behind; forgot the way his lips felt against every inch of your skin; forgot the way his entire being lit up when he laughed; forgot the safety he encompassed, the way he whispered all those sweet nothings.

You cannot go there again.

So you roll your shoulders back, smile politely. Say, “Ah, kyosu-nim, Choi Seungcheol-ssi seems very intelligent, I’m sure he is capable of being responsible for his own academic standing, don’t you think?”

Dr. Lee cannot disagree without all but calling Seungcheol an idiot, so he hovers before you in shocked silence. Makes a show of huffing and checking his watch, like he’s all of a sudden remembered he’s late for something and being inconvenienced by this conversation he started, and then he’s halfway out of the library with a terse, “Discuss and figure this out amongst yourselves,” thrown over his shoulder.

You have an entire dramatic exit planned in your head. Gather your things, fake a phone call that makes you sound authoritative and important, and brush past Seungcheol wearing your nicest perfume as if all of this is so far beneath you you can’t even bring yourself to care about it.

Of course, you actually have to brush by him for any of that to happen, and since you’ve already decided you will not go there again, you quickly scribble your email address onto a piece of paper and slide it across the table at Seungcheol, who has steadfastly remained planted just outside the door. “Here’s my email. I don’t have time to discuss this right now.” Seungcheol cocks an eyebrow. You start throwing things into your bag haphazardly. You know you look frantic and affected, but there’s not much you can do about that. “What? Send me a copy of your syllabus and what you want to prioritize. It’ll be easier to get through this if we have a plan instead of winging it.”

He seems to catch on to your distaste because he mirrors it. Scoffs as he rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, no use spending more time together than we have to,” and if you hadn’t gone years without speaking, you would’ve seen right through it.

But you did, so it stings all the same.

As it typically does, the planet keeps spinning after your run-in with Seungcheol.

You grade Dr. Ahn’s coursework. Try running off your anxiety at the gym, even though it’s pretty good at keeping pace with you these days. You meet Kaori’s maybe-boyfriend sneaking out of your apartment early in the morning and he has the good sense not to mention your ex, but you chalk that up to the mess of hickeys covering his neck and not any sense of social decorum.

Other people’s embarrassment saves you a ton of your own, you’ve come to learn.

Throughout all of this, Seungcheol only emails you once to send you his course syllabus. Doesn’t mention tutoring or provide you with his schedule or ask for yours, so when you’re sitting in a bar with your friends, three or four drinks deep and feeling a little petty, you forward him the original tutoring request and make sure to bold, underline, and highlight the “Recommended Tutoring: High” part for good measure.

He doesn’t take your bait—electronically, at least—but he does show up to your office hours the following Tuesday.

Bag tossed onto the floor, he flops unceremoniously into the chair across from you and says, in lieu of a greeting, “They spelled your name wrong. On the door thing.”

“I know,” you reply, your smile polite and terse. Incredible how he has the ability to raise your blood pressure in milliseconds. “What can I help you with?”

“Depends. How long do you have?”

“Well, considering you’ve shown up to my office hours on time, I’m assuming you already know I’m here every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six. So”—you glance at the clock above the door—“assuming no one comes by who needs my help more than you do, you have approximately one hour and fifty-eight minutes.”

Seungcheol is quiet for a moment as he takes you in. His stare is weighted; it makes you feel a little green around the edges. Clinical and sharp, so far removed from the way he used to look at you. You clear your throat. “I looked over your syllabus. The good news is there’s only a midterm and a final and the rest is problem sets. The bad news is there’s only a midterm and a final so they’re weighted quite heavily. You really need to know this stuff inside-out to have any hope of passing.”

“That’s why you’re here, right? Dr. Lee specifically requested you.”

You huff a breath through your nose. “I’m here as supplemental help. I can’t take your exams or do your readings for you. What else are you taking this semester?”

He sighs, sinking further into the chair, very much playing the part of the heir who has no interest in any of this. Which… is unlike him, you think, if you’re even allowed to. The Seungcheol you knew years ago took everything so seriously. Never clipped corners or took shortcuts. Anyone else would think him a spoiled, petulant child. “Business Accounting and International Trade.”

“Could be worse,” you note. “At least those three courses are tangentially related.”

Seungcheol rolls his eyes. “Easy for you to say. I haven’t taken a fucking math class in years.”

You return it. “You remember how to add and subtract, don’t you?”

“I ruptured my ACL, not my…” He trails off, looking a little embarrassed that he can’t name a part of the—“Brain.”

Whatever you were going to quip back with dies on your tongue. It's the first time Seungcheol has broached the topic of his injury—the first you’re hearing of it at all, actually—and he says it like it’s a joke, like it’s not a thing at all, but the pain is all over his face. The bitterness of the situation he’s found himself in. The unfairness of it all.

And there are so many questions you want to ask that aren’t your place: if it’s fixable, if he’ll ever play again, how he’s coping. But you don’t really need to—you can’t imagine how you’d feel if someone suddenly pulled the rug out from under you. If everything contained within the four walls of your office suddenly disappeared.

Not that the man sitting across from you hadn’t already done that, but.

“Right,” you continue, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. You know Seungcheol—know he wouldn’t want you prodding, sticking your fingers in that particular wound. “I want you to take a look at this,” you say, handing over a printout you have saved from your undergrad tutoring days. “Tell me what looks familiar, what doesn’t; what does and doesn’t make sense.”

He looks down at the paper. Back up at you. Down at the paper again. “What the fuck is this?”

“I—what? Cheol, it’s my old notes on recitation. Surely you’ve already covered this—the syllabus says this is week one stuff.” He looks down at the paper again, and it’s so familiar, watching the life drain entirely from someone’s eyes.

You barely resist the urge to slam your face onto your desk a second time.

You meet Seungcheol at the sports center for your next tutoring session.

He likes the humidity and the smell of the chlorine by the pool. He also likes that it’s not the football pitch, so the two of you sit in the bleachers there and go over his lecture notes. Much to your surprise, Seungcheol talks a mile a minute. Has stars in his eyes when he says he finally understands elastic demand curves, supply shock; tells you he spent a whole hour making flashcards.

It’s the first time you’ve seen him so excited since your tutoring began—the first glimmer of hope you’ve felt since Dr. Lee cornered you in your library hideaway. None of this surprises you. Seungcheol has always been smart, even when football was his primary (and sometimes only) focus. He has more determination and grit than anyone you’ve ever met, so you’re not surprised he’s doing well, excelling, but you are surprised—

“Can I ask you something?” Seungcheol shrugs, shoves half a protein bar in his mouth and swallows without chewing. “Why are you… uh. Here?”

“At this university?”

“Not exactly. I mean, I am wondering about that, but I guess… why business?”

Seungcheol hums. Tucks his good knee to his chest and stares down at the pool. No one’s using it, and truthfully the two of you probably aren’t even allowed to be here, but you understand why he likes it. It’s nowhere near as secluded as the library and definitely not as air conditioned, but it is peaceful. Calm. The water laps against the coping in quiet, small waves.

“Ah, I don’t know. You know how it goes.”

You quirk an eyebrow. Never, in all the years you’ve known him, has Seungcheol done anything he didn’t want to do. All that grit and determination. “What about your father, then? Dr. Lee mentioned this was a favor to him. He’s a pretty important person to have in your Rolodex of favors.”

Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what this is: Seungcheol’s father has new money; worked from the bottom up, made some smart investment decisions that finally panned out after Seungcheol left for Seoul. Started doing his own thing, made a name for himself. Last you’d heard from your mother, Seungcheol’s brother was second-in-command. Hell, even your own brother did an internship there.

So you know what this is: a father helping his son after his dream was shattered, life turned upside-down. You can’t blame him, even if you’ve heard the whispers from all the way across campus. That Seungcheol is washed up now, trying to nepo his way into his father’s company because of it; that all he knows is sports and he should’ve stuck to that, what does he know about business, why is he the one Dr. Lee went out of his way to help.

Doesn’t stop any of them from smiling at him, though; doesn’t stop them from asking for autographs or selfies.

But you also know this isn’t something Seungcheol seems willing to discuss, so you crack a joke—“I mean, business. God, who’d wanna go into that?”—and go back to what he was willing to talk about.

You’ve never hated elastic demand curves so much in your life.

Deep in the throes of tutoring—when you can’t tell if it’s week two or week twelve—you make it back to your apartment just before ten, head pounding.

The door flies open just as you’re about to punch in the code, and there stands Ken, looking far more put-off than you’ve ever seen him. Looks defeated, if you’re being honest, like someone mopped up all his emotions and wrung them out like dirty dishwater.

“Oh, hi,” you say hesitantly. The man in front of you seems too much like a caged animal to let your guard down. “Everything okay?”

He aborts a nod halfway. Mutters an apology as he brushes by you and stalks down the hall, disappearing around the corner to the elevators. Usually he’s a talker—you haven’t been able to avoid a Seungcheol-related conversation in weeks—so you’re a little stunned. Stand there stupidly for a while, and that’s where Kaori finds you a moment later.

“You gonna stand out here all night, or…?”

“Oh—yeah, right.”

You follow her inside. Toe off your shoes and put them in the rack. Focus on the sound of the kettle whistling instead of the overbearing tension in the room. Drop your bag off in your room, throw on a sweatshirt three sizes too big and a comfy pair of socks. Rummage through the fridge for leftovers, contemplate what mindless show you’ll watch as you eat, and you do not, under any circumstances, ask Kaori what happened.

You don’t have to. You knew what this was going to be the first time Ken spent the night—the way he looked mortified to be meeting you in the shared kitchen at seven a.m., wearing a look that begged you not to tell your roommate he was sneaking out.

I, uh, have an early class, he’d said. You know how it is.

Maybe you should’ve called him on it then. Issued a warning-but-not-really. She’ll get attached if you don’t tell her. She should know it’s different for you, if it is.

But you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t your place. Kaori wouldn’t want you in her business like that, so you stayed quiet, just nodded before watching him slip his shoes on and close the door behind him so quietly you wouldn’t have known he left at all if you hadn’t been looking. Gone, just like a ghost.

So, yeah, you know exactly why your roommate looks haunted.

“I’m a few episodes behind on this if you want to watch with me,” you offer, pointing at the television with the remote. It’s a lie—you’ve never watched this show a day in your life, which Kaori seems to know—but she contemplates it nonetheless. “Also, my mom mailed us some cookies. I think they’re in the fridge.”

“Why are there cookies in the fridge?”

You huff a laugh. “They were outside the door this morning before I left for campus. I don’t know—just saw who the package was from and was like, oh, this must go in the fridge.”

She nods. Grabs the container and joins you on the couch. Sticks her feet beneath your butt and doesn’t mention a thing.

The closest she comes is a few days later. Catches you right before you head out to campus and asks how tutoring is going.

“Not bad, actually.”

Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes when she says, “That’s good. I’m glad things are going well for you two.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore makes his unexpected return at your office hours on an unsuspecting Tuesday.

“Can I help you?”

He doesn’t answer right away, just helps himself to the seat across from you. “Maybe,” comes his cryptic retort. “I was thinking about signing up for that crypto course next semester.”

You narrow your eyes. “No, you weren’t.”

He sighs. Looks a little panicked, like he can’t believe that didn’t work. “You’re right, you’re right. I, um—I wanted to come say thank you.” He pauses. “You know, for that… email you sent.”

You blink. “No, you didn’t.”

Lee Chan, Sophomore cracks immediately. Thunks his head on your desk and lets loose a pained sound. It nearly sounds like he’s wailing when he says, “I’m sorry! They put me up to it!”

What you’re able to piece together is this: Lee Chan, Sophomore has become a bit of a celebrity in the Student Services department ever since he met you, Choi Seungcheol’s tutor. And, like any smart, previously unpopular university student would do, he took advantage of it. Might’ve stretched the truth a little to make it sound like he knew more than he did, so now here he is, angling for information the girls with the photocards may or may not have paid him to get.

“They want to know about his girlfriend.”

“His what?”

What you’re able to piece together is also this: the Photocard Girls are certain Seungcheol is dating someone, based on little more than vibes. You suspect these vibes are their three degrees of separation, considering there was an abnormal amount of Change of Major files formed after his enrollment, but you tell Lee Chan that you don’t know anything and, even if you did, you wouldn’t put his business out there like that.

But some part of you still has this inexplicable urge to protect Seungcheol, so you match their offer with interest and tell him to say there’s nothing to report—not that you didn’t know, not that he couldn’t get anything out of you. Seungcheol isn’t dating anyone.

You don’t know if it’s true, but you figure that if it isn’t, he still deserves privacy.

Which is a notion you have trouble explaining a few hours later, when Seungcheol strolls into your office with a grease-stained paper bag full of cheese coin bread, offering one to you with a proud smile that drops slowly when you just stare in return.

“What’s wrong?”

Your mouth opens, closes, opens again. Nothing comes out, even though it should be simple. Some sophomore kid was just in here angling for information or the Student Services department is taking bets on whether or not you have a girlfriend would both suffice, but you cannot bring yourself to say the words.

What you settle on is, “Sorry, I just… had an interesting meeting before you got here.”

“Oh. Are you okay?”

You sigh. Tilt your head back to stare up at the ceiling. “It was about you, actually.”

Seungcheol chokes, starts stuttering over words you can’t make sense of. Says, “Me? Why? I passed my last exam—I mean, barely, but I still passed. And that wasn’t your fault! I didn’t study enough! I’ve been losing my mind over my International Trade class, that shit sucks—”

“It wasn’t about your grades, Cheol.”

“Oh.” Then, slowly, a lopsided, pleased smile overtakes his face. “Haven’t heard you call me Cheol in a while.”

“Seungcheol,” you correct.

He seems to forget all about the meeting. Tries again to offer you a coin bread before he threatens to eat them all himself, so you acquiesce mostly to shut him up, say you’ll bring the extras to Kaori. For some reason, you tell him about how much she’d loved the cookies your mom sent, and the nostalgia sets him off, gets him talking again, asking if they were the yakgwa she used to make when you two were kids.

They were, but you can’t seem to tell him that, either.

Seungcheol: sorry it’s last minute - running late. can you meet me at my place instead?

Seungcheol shared a location with you

You’re halfway to replying—I don’t think that’s appropriate—before you sigh and delete it. Midterms are only a few days away and you don’t have time to argue over where your tutoring sessions will be, so if Seungcheol wants to meet at his apartment that’s where you’ll meet him.

You read over the midterm notes on the train. Once, twice, and then a hundred more times until they’re nearly memorized, all so you can ignore the voice in the back of your head saying what a bad idea this is. That you have no business being on your way to your ex’s swanky part of town or integrating yourself into his life beyond tutoring at all. You shouldn’t know where he lives. Maybe you shouldn’t even have his phone number or answer his texts.

Not that there’s much you can do about it now, two stops away.

Seungcheol greets you warmly, if not a little rushed. Apologizes for the mess once you step inside, although it’s less “mess” and more “haven’t finished unpacking,” but there’s enough clear space to study at the dining table, so that’s where you set up, determined to keep things professional.

“Sorry again about this,” Seungcheol says, placing a can of cola in front of you as he takes the seat across. “I had to meet with my father and lost track of time, I guess.”

“Oh. How’s he doing?”

Seungcheol sighs, leans further back in the chair as runs a hand through his hair. A light brown, now. “Same as he always was, I guess. Talked about the business, about my brother. Can’t get him to shut up about that stuff most of the time.”

“The business is doing good, though.” You cough, clear your throat. “My, uh. My brother interned there during undergrad. I don’t know if your father told you that.”

You don’t know why you say it, because it’s clear from the brief flicker of pain on Seungcheol’s face that he hadn’t known, that no one had told him. And it hurts you too that they felt the need to keep it a secret, to protect Seungcheol from you even in tangential ways.

“He didn’t,” he admits, “but I’m sure he was happy to see him. He was, uh—he was glad to hear you’re my tutor. Said you were always smarter than all of us boys combined.”

You laugh. Hope it sounds casual instead of strained. “Well, no need to prove him right. Come on,” you say, tossing a study guide in his direction, “let’s get to work.”

Everything is alright for a while—nearly an hour at least. He has the formulas memorized and attributed to the correct equations. He can explain supply and demand, preference and utility, but things start to fall apart around budget constraints and constrained choice.

The formulas get mixed up. He grows frustrated when he doesn’t know the answers to your questions right away. Rolls his eyes and gets a little snappy when you correct him, try to explain things differently in a way he understands. At first he’s able to temper it, collect himself before things truly start spiraling out of control, but the longer the two of you sit there the more it all unravels.

He snaps, you snap back, and you can’t figure out why. You’ve survived this long in Seungcheol’s orbit even though you never thought you’d be around him again, and perhaps it was bound to explode eventually, but…

It’s the familiarity, you realize.

You and Seungcheol aren’t friends, though you’ve been playing at it for weeks now: meeting outside of the library or your office, the personal conversations bordering on reminiscing, being in his personal space. You don’t belong here. You don’t want to be his friend—you can’t be, not for real or pretend.

“That’s not what I’m say—”

“Then explain it better,” Seungcheol fires at you, eyebrows creasing. “You’re the tutor here.”

You roll your eyes. “I’m trying, okay? All I meant was—your answer isn’t wrong, but I know Dr. Lee and he’s going to want more than that in a response.”

“Right—not good enough, like I said.”

“I’m just asking you to expand on your answer—”

“And I’m telling you that’s all I’ve got. I’m not like you, all right? I don’t have all this shit just floating around in my head all the time. I’m not smart, I barely have any idea what’s going on half the time, and you sitting here being condescending about it is doing fuck-all to help.”

You inhale sharply, taken aback at the hostility in his voice. Suggest calling it for the night, say neither of you will be productive if you keep going like this, and neither of you bother to apologize.

So much of your relationship with Seungcheol was marred by clichés.

The two of you passing notes back and forth during class. You in the bleachers of all his games, screaming along to the team chants, waving a sign around with his name on it. Not realizing you had a crush on him at all until he liked someone else and it made your stomach hurt. Childhood friends turned lovers.

Another cliché: that it’s starting to feel like that all over again.

Seungcheol sits across from you in the library, econ textbook cracked in half in front of him as he pays no attention. Keeps grabbing his phone each time it vibrates across the table. Can’t fight the smile that forces its way onto his face when he reads whatever’s there.

Stupid, you think—both to do this and to think it’d play out any other way. Seungcheol left years ago. Probably lived ten lifetimes while he was away while you were here in this exact spot doing this exact thing. Barely lived half a life, just stuck your nose in textbooks and forced your way through.

“Cheol,” you say, trying to drag his attention back to the study guide. No use. He’s typing away, presses his tongue into the fat of his cheek as he responds. “Seungcheol,” you try again.

Also fruitless.

You have no claim here, you remind yourself—not to his time, not to him. He’s only here because someone else mandated it. You’re only here because someone else mandated it, but it stings all the same. Another reminder of what used to be, of what ended regardless of what you wanted. Another reminder that the role you used to play in his life is not the role you play now. That the space you used to take up created a vacancy, and eventually it was going to be filled.

And if this was anyone other than Seungcheol, if you were more emotionally evolved when it came to him, it wouldn’t gnaw at you as much. All of this would roll off your shoulders.

But it isn’t, and you’re not.

“If you’re not going to listen, then—”

“I am listening,” he interjects, but he’s not looking at you. Not looking at his textbook or his study guide. Keeps laughing and smiling at his phone, and it’s sick how bothered you are by it. That it feels like your stomach’s been turned inside-out with jealousy; with annoyance, because you don’t want to be here anyway, don’t want to do this anymore, and you’re wasting your time on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.

Perhaps he never did.

“What are we discussing, then?”

Still not looking up: “Consumer theory.”

You laugh—more a huff of air than anything, grin sardonically out of one corner of your mouth. Seungcheol sees none of it. “Wrong,” you answer, already expecting the way he shrugs it off. “I’m gonna skip ahead a few chapters, though. Consider it a freebie for your business class.”

It must be your tone that finally grabs his attention. Cutting, precise, purposeful. Seungcheol lowers his phone, quirks an eyebrow, wonders where this is going to go. It’s clear he’s pissed you off, that you’re itching for a fight. It’s clear the years of silence are finally coming to a head.

“Let’s talk about ROI. You know what that is?” You barely give him a second. “Return on investment. A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of several investments. So, let’s say I make one-hundred-thousand won on a ten-thousand won investment: my ROI is 90%. Are you following?”

He nods.

“Great, now let’s try something a bit more hypothetical.” You suck in a breath. “Let’s say I invest years of my adolescence into someone. A friend at first and then something more. Let’s say I played cheerleader, supported every hope and dream he had—went to every game, cheered him on, helped him practice his English. Held his hand and talked him down when the pressure felt overwhelming, when the only thing that felt inevitable was failure. Now, let’s say all I got in return was a stuttered, awkward apology as he dumped me and walked out the door. Let’s say that guy showed up again after years of silence just to once again waste my fucking time.”

The thing about pain is it’s not linear. What hurt five, ten years ago might not hurt today, but it might tomorrow; what hurt yesterday may never hurt again. The thing about pain is it lets you stick your head in the sand until it can’t anymore, and that’s where you are now: that window of time between Seungcheol walking out the door on the assumption you’d never see him again before he bulldozed his way back into your life has been slammed closed, locked up tight.

So you don’t even notice you’re crying until the room goes deathly silent and you can hear the drip drip drip of tears on paper. Until you watch Seungcheol’s hands flex and unflex in mid-air, stuck in that liminal space, wanting to reach out but knowing he has no right to. Until your chest aches so bad you’re sure you’re either about to break into stardust or cease to exist.

Until you say, “What, Choi Seungcheol, would you say my fucking return on investment was?” and he has nothing to say at all.

Kaori invites you to a party.

Just something small to celebrate the end of midterms and a classmate’s birthday. Nothing out of control or raucous, not even the kind of thing that’d earn a second glance from campus security. I won’t even make fun of you if you leave before eleven, is how she sold it to you, in addition to a small amount of begging and bargaining and a powerful set of puppy-dog eyes.

After everything the two of you have been through, you find it hard to say no.

So here you are, nearly eleven o’clock on a Friday, a cup of cheap beer in hand. A friend of a friend of a friend is wailing into a karaoke machine and although your ears are bleeding, it does feel nice for that to be your greatest worry. You aren’t thinking about your classes or how you’ve been prioritizing everyone else’s academic success. You aren’t thinking about whatever��s going on between Kaori and Ken. You aren’t thinking about Seungcheol.

At least you aren’t, until he walks through the door.

You’re going to continue not thinking about him at all—not about the fact he’s alone or how good he looks in a simple black T-shirt that’s a little taut in the shoulders. You’re not going to think about the way the air shifts, like the universe knows he’s important and is willing to accommodate. You’re not going to think about how Kaori catches your eye across the room, recognizes him from all her internet searches, and the way she mouths oh my god he’s so beefy at you.

You’re not going to think about how guilty you feel that she doesn’t know, because if you do you’re certain it’ll take over.

You watch Seungcheol work the room; watch as he floats between conversations, as strangers fall over themselves at the sight of him. How eager everyone is to give him something and how reluctant he is to take them. You watch as he winds up in the same circle as Kaori and how she must mention you, oh, your tutor is my roommate, because there’s a question in return before he turns and meets your gaze.

You wonder why the distance between you feels more insurmountable now than ever before.

Seungcheol finds you in your office.

It’s not a Tuesday or a Thursday, far later than four to six in the evening, but he doesn’t even bother knocking before he’s barreling in, stifling your space with his bad energy.

You haven’t seen him in nearly two weeks. Not since the party, if that even counts. Hasn’t bothered to reply to any of your texts or emails, and that was just fine by you, if that’s how he wanted to act, but it isn’t until he’s brooding on the other side of your desk that you realize you’re still aggrieved, too. Feels a little too familiar, him leaving you behind and in the dark.

So you don’t mean to—typically have much more professionalism than this—but when he tosses a stapled stack of papers with a barely-passing grade on your desk and says, “This is your fault,” the words come automatically and without forethought.

“Fuck off, Seungcheol.” It’s not your words that take him by surprise; more so the roll of your eyes, the accompanying huff. The impression that all of this is beneath you and nothing more than a mere annoyance. That however affected you were two weeks ago is not how affected you are anymore. “That’s what happens when you blow off your tutoring for two weeks because you’re a coward.”

He laughs, incredulous; unable to help the sound the tumbles out of his mouth. “I’m a—I’m a coward?”

“Yes,” you reply, tone giving away nothing. All he sees is feigned nonchalance despite the hurricane you feel brewing beneath the surface. “This,” you continue, pinching the corner of the paper between your fingertips and disposing of it in the trashcan beneath your desk, “is all on you, but do please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to blame me for. I’m all ears.”

You don’t miss it: the way Seungcheol’s eyes grow wide at your ‘I’m all.’ The way he thinks you’re going to punctuate that sentence with yours, and it nearly has bile rising in your throat. Makes you want to scream, rip at your hair. If the last few months have taught you anything, it’s that you are still hopelessly in love with the man across from you—the man that continues to leave before he’s left, always at your expense.

So, yeah—Seungcheol is a coward, but only when it comes to you.

But he doesn’t look much like one now, gripping so hard at the edge of your desk that his knuckles have gone white, baseball cap pulled down low enough his eyes are barely visible. He’s always been overwhelming, always carried himself with an exaggerated arrogance even when it wasn’t warranted, always took everything so seriously, and maybe that’s why you’d thought he’d treat you the same way. Take you seriously. Wouldn’t just throw it all away on a maybe thing, and that’s why it's been years and you still aren’t over it.

Maybe Seungcheol is a coward, and maybe so are you.

Because not once since he’s been back have you been able to say what you mean. Can’t seem to tell him about the anger, the hurt, the heartbreak. Played it all off as petty nonchalance because you foolishly thought that would hurt him, that you’ve been reduced to simmering ash, no hope left for a fire.

“I could never blame you for a goddamn thing,” he says, voice so deep you could drown in it.

You so desperately want to know. You don’t want to know anything at all. You want Seungcheol to explain everything to you in detail and spoil the ending, but only if it’s guaranteed to be happy. Enduring another loss like the first time—you’re not sure you can take it. Not after you two have crossed paths like this, because you’ve never quite believed in fate but you think that has to mean something. That so much time and life had transpired and you two came back together.

Today, though, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get any answers.

Seungcheol straightens, looms at full height. Digs into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulls out a thumb drive. Wordlessly, he hands it over, and then he’s gone just as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Again.

Kaori wants to spend the weekend moping, and you can’t come up with a good reason not to join her.

She doesn’t mention Ken once. Not when she’s sobbing over A Silent Voice and Toradora! after that. Not when she keeps glancing at her phone every couple minutes to see if she has any texts. Not when you—only halfway paying attention between grading and your own assignments—suggest ordering something for delivery, maybe that new burger place down the street you heard was good, and Kaori shuts it down so vehemently you can only assume it was Ken’s favorite place.

Kaori just cries over the man with the big dick she never expected to take so seriously, and not even your stonewalling makes her feel ashamed of it.

And there’s respectability in that kind of openness and vulnerability. At least whatever she’s feeling is honest; at least she can admit she’s sad. You think watching Kaori process her breakup might help you process yours too, years too late, so you suck in a breath and ask, “Can I tell you something or is now not a good time?”

Kaori looks over at you. Dabs a soggy tissue at her eyes. “Well, I guess it depends,” is her answer, and she doesn’t shy away from how waterlogged her voice sounds. “If you’re going to tell me you’re a Takasu and Kawashima shipper, maybe, but if it’s anything worse I’m not sure I could take it.”

“I—what? Who even are they?” She gives you a half-hearted thumbs up. You sigh in response, sink further into the couch. “It’s, uh.” Clear your throat. “Do you remember when we met sophomore year? At that party? And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything and you said, and I quote, why not, I have a sixth sense for this kind of thing and I know that guy will have a huge—”

She hides her face behind her hands. “Ew, god, yes I remember that. My dick whisperer era. How embarrassing.”

“Right. And I told you I wasn’t looking for anything because I’d just gotten out of something.”

“Not really by choice, if I remember correctly. I told you if it was quiet it should’ve been loud, and then you never talked about it again.”

You nod. “I—yeah, that sounds like something I would’ve said.” You suck in a deep breath. “Listen, this is probably gonna sound bad considering I did never talk about it again, but—”

“Hey,” Kaori says, nudging you with her foot. Meant to be comforting, somehow. “It’s okay. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, too… most of which I’m not sure you should, actually.”

A laugh forces its way out, gives you a nice reprieve from the anxiety of the conversation you’re about to have. The need to explain it all, the need for advice. Maybe it’s not her—or anyone else’s—business, but you think you’ve kept this to yourself long enough. You and Seungcheol loved each other, once, and it seems foolish that no one knows.

Maybe Kaori had been right. Maybe love should be shouted from the rooftops; exist out in the open. Maybe something hidden in the shadows can never thrive in the light, and you knew it back then, deep down, but now it seems so obvious.

You think back to a few days before the library. Think about how things didn’t feel good but they felt okay. Think about the frustrated crease between Seungcheol’s eyebrows as he stared down at his textbook and how all you’d wanted to do was smooth it. Think about how you’d rolled your lips and tried not to laugh; how you thought it’d take a miracle to help Seungcheol pass this class.

Think about: What is the difference between the short-run and the long-run from the perspective of production theory?

Think about the short-run of your and Seungcheol’s relationship—that you’d burned bright and fast, even though it’d felt like a million years. Hadn’t dared to consider the long-run because anything beyond that bubble felt impossible.

Think about: Which of the following is not a property of isoquants?

Think about the way Seungcheol’s eyes lit up when he knew the answer. That they’re always linear, he said, and you smiled at his enthusiasm, raised your hand to high-five him and dropped it when he hadn’t noticed.

You think about the explanation—isoquants can be linear when inputs are perfectly substitutable—and what those graphs look like. Downward sloping, left to right. Think about how the graphs change when the isoquants are perfect complements.

L-shaped. Less straight as the inputs become poorer substitutes.

You know what your and Seungcheol’s graph would’ve looked like back then.

So it’s easy, almost, to tell Kaori everything. You tell her about growing up in Daegu, about the smell of the azaleas at Biseulsan in the spring. You tell her about how your parents had befriended the neighbors, how they had a kid your age, that that kid was Seungcheol—yes, that Seungcheol.

She’s able to anticipate the rest from there, but you fill in the blanks of what she can’t: being sixteen and falling in love, holding hands, the clandestine notes. All those football matches and how your throat would be hoarse from cheering. How nauseous you’d felt applying to university in Seoul, how excited you were when Seungcheol said he was coming with you. That, after you arrived, it felt like you were living in fast-forward. Barely any time to breathe or adjust; no time to just be you and Seungcheol. You had to be a student, someone responsible; Seungcheol had to be a phenom.

“Could you feel it was going to happen?” Kaori asks, now sat ramrod straight, all her attention on you. “Like, did you know?”

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Maybe I did? It’s hard to say now, all this time later. I know things definitely felt different, like life was pulling us in opposite directions.” You laugh, bitterness coloring the edges. “You couldn’t go two blocks without seeing him on some billboard, and I was just… normal, you know? I wasn’t some rising star athlete like he was, I just went to my classes. How was I supposed to compete with something like that?”

Your roommate hums, leans back into the pillows as she stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t think you were. Maybe that’s why Seungcheol was worried—maybe he felt like you were losing your own identity feeling like you had to keep up.”

You want to push back, argue that you weren’t, that you didn’t, but the truth is that it’s possible. That the shadows created by Seungcheol’s dreams were so massive you wouldn’t be surprised if they unintentionally swallowed you up. “It still wasn’t his choice to make,” you say, voice barely above a whisper.

And Kaori already knows all about your hurt, listened as you explained it all and laid everything bare. So when she says, “Sometimes that’s just how it goes, though, babe,” it doesn’t feel condescending. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time. You can say now it wasn’t Seungcheol’s choice to make, because it’s been almost five years and you’ve made a life for yourself separate from him. But the—god, this is gonna sound so patronizing, I am so sorry—but you guys were so young. No one has it all figured out at that age.”

She snorts, runs a hand through her messy hair. “Shit, I’m nearly halfway to thirty and I still don’t know anything.” Adopts a frown. “What do you want now? Do you want closure? Want to try to fix things and become friends?”

“I don’t know,” you admit, biting at a hangnail. “He actually, um. The other day when he stopped by my office, he left me a USB drive? And before you ask, no I did not already look at it.”

“A USB drive? Who does this guy think he is, James Bond?” A pause. “Are you gonna look at it, though?”

You do.

Not until the silver, midnight light creeps in through your bedroom curtains and you’ve stared at the ceiling long enough; waited long enough for texts that never came, for divine intervention to, well, intervene. It never did—fair enough—so you decide to take fate by the reins. Grab your laptop, instant headache from the screen, stick the drive into the port.

It takes a second for it to load, but when it does: dozens of videos, organized by date. Vlogs, by the look of them—some from before your breakup but the majority of them from after.

You’re not sure what you expected, but it wasn’t this.

You click on the first one: a month and a half before both of you moved to Seoul. A fresh-faced Seungcheol appears on your screen, cheeks still round with adolescence. He’s in his room back in Daegu, can’t get the camera angle right. Nostalgia hits you like a ton of bricks as it pans to the side, to the wall behind his bed, and you see all his old posters. Mostly football players you couldn’t name, some girl group he used to love, a few movies. Just below them are some of the notes you’d written him in school, and they’re all you can focus on as he talks about how excited he is for the move.

The next: a few weeks after you’d started classes. By then, Seungcheol was well into the swing of things with Seoul FC. Already a big fish in a small pond, tryout offers from European teams starting to roll in. You can hear yourself in the background stressing over your first exam, wishing a generational curse upon your calculus professor. In the video, Seungcheol laughs, whispers like he’s telling the camera a secret as he talks about how nervous he is for his future. I don’t know why, he says, but it just feels like everything is about to change.

There’s a long pause between that one and the next. You understand why when you look at the date: three months after your breakup. Your hands hover uselessly above your keyboard. Whatever answers you’ve been looking for the last few years are probably in this video, but you can’t bring yourself to open it. Not right away, at least.

You click on a different one at random. Seungcheol’s somewhere in Europe, judging from the language on the signs behind him. Snow falls quietly—whenever he filmed this, it must’ve been early. No one else is around, and he cracks a joke that it’s a good thing, people would probably think he was crazy if they saw him. He doesn’t tell you where he’s going but he narrates the entire walk: points out a cafe he’s grown to love. The way to get to his practice stadium from where he’s standing. Pauses near a restaurant and laughs ruefully, shakes his head, says, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but one of my teammates set me up on a blind date here and I got stood up. You’d probably think that was funny.

(You do. It also makes your chest ache.)

One from two years ago: Seungcheol in a hotel room, clearly nervous. He raises his hand to wave at the camera and you can see the corners of his nails bitten raw. Dark circles beneath his eyes; cheekbones more pronounced than you’ve ever seen them. On the screen, Seungcheol sighs, rakes a hand through freshly-bleached hair. Sucks in a deep breath as he says, I’m so nervous. I’m so—so fucking nervous and I don’t. Fuck, I don’t know what to do. I want to call you because you always knew what to say but that’s so fucking selfish. God, we haven’t spoken in years, and it’s my—that’s my fault, I know, so I brought this all on myself. I just want to hear your voice.

Another from a week after that: the color’s returned to his face, and he’s recording from what looks like a penthouse apartment. Sleek, modern; a small white dog napping on the bed beside him. He smiles, looks like he got his teeth fixed, looks like he’s no longer carrying around the weight of the world. Talks endlessly and excitedly about some tournament. Talks so fast you can barely keep up. Talks around words tinged with languages you don’t understand.

Seungcheol wins a championship. Records a drunk vlog from the same night, hair soaked through with god-knows-what—water, champagne, you don’t know. But he looks radiant. Looks like the culmination of two decades of dreaming. He looks happy, free, at peace. He looks like the reason he let you go, why he had to go away.

You scroll to the bottom of the files. Pause at the last video, dated seven months before the term started.

“Hi,” he says, and you can immediately tell everything is all wrong. Seungcheol’s in the dark, face only visible enough to see the tears tracking on his cheeks. “This is going to be the last one of these I make. I don’t know if you, uh—I’m sure you aren’t paying attention to me—my career—anymore, but. I, um. I got hurt. Ruptured my ACL. They’re not sure I’ll…” A sob escapes him. Has you wanting to climb through the screen to hold him, thumb away his tears, tell him everything is going to be okay. “They don’t know if I’ll ever play again.”

Seungcheol no longer looks happy, free, at peace. “Maybe you’ll be happy to hear that,” he continues. “Maybe it’ll help you to know I threw away our relationship for nothing.”

Cut to black.

The sudden silence is deafening. Has you desperately clicking back to the video you’d skipped, the one from just after your breakup. Seungcheol looks the same in that one, too, like the life has been drained out of him.

I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s not like I’ll ever show these to you now, since I…

I’m sure I owe you an explanation. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing, I just—things have been so hard, and I’m still trying to make sense of it all. I feel like my life went from zero to a hundred before I could even blink and now I’m scrambling. I didn’t think it was fair to—to drag you through that. Me being away, moving to an entirely different continent. I have faith we could do it, I just. I don’t know, baby, I don’t…

You deserve to have your own life. Be your own person. I’m so scared that the world will never see you for who you are—so beautiful and intelligent and kind. You don’t deserve to be reduced to my partner. And if you ever see this, I know you’re gonna roll your eyes. Probably call me a mean name because I took the choice away from you, because you think I’m trying to be selfless and heroic, and you’d be right. It’s not fair, and I wish I could tell you I’m sorry.

I wish I could just… pluck out my brain and give it to you, because even if it killed me to do it, at least it makes sense to me. And I don’t—I don’t want you to think I’m not hurting. I’ve been sick to my stomach since I left. I know I’m making a mistake, I know I am, I just—how do I do what I think is right in the long-run when it’s not what I want right now, or ever?

I don’t want to get over you. I don’t want you to get over me, and that’s how you know I’m not acting selflessly, because you should. I want you to always be happy, I just… wish it was with me.

So, I’m going to keep making these. I’m going to take you along for the ride, wherever it takes us, because you should be here but I can only hope you can one day understand why you’re not. I’m so—I’m so sorry, I don’t…

I’m sorry.

I love you.

You fall asleep and dream that you were the one meant to meet him at that restaurant.

The first thing you do is make a call to your mother.

“Could you send another container of yakgwa?”

On the other end of the line, your mother tuts, motherly intuition audibly kicking into overdrive. Is probably wearing that all-knowing, sly grin she always does when you try to be coy and evasive. “What happened to the last container I sent?”

“Ah, you know Kaori loves those. They barely lasted an hour after I told her what was in there.”

She hums an acknowledgement. Sounds like she takes a sip of tea. “I remember someone else being quite fond of those cookies, too.”

“Well, they are the most popular cookies in the country, so.”

After haranguing you into admitting they’re for Seungcheol and not your roommate, your mother promises to send them quickly. A few days at most, which buys you enough time to figure out how you’re going to approach the man in question.

The vlogs have turned your entire world upside-down. Answered questions you hadn’t even known you had. Took all that anger and resentment you’d been holding onto and set it free, and now you’re just left with… a void. Want to mend things, and it makes you wonder if such a thing is even possible, if it’s too late, but you don’t let those thoughts get very far.

Instead, you let them spur you into action. Have you sitting in front of your laptop at your desk, office hours long since over, silence creeping in the more the department empties. The thrum of the airconditioning and the tick-tick-tick of the clock are all the only company you have.

You worry if it’ll show on camera, how out of sorts you feel: sweating from the nerves, dabbing at your hairline; cheeks warm to the touch. But you suck in a breath anyway, steel yourself. Look at your webcam and the daunting red circle…

And start recording.

He hadn’t gotten it at first. Not really.

There’d been a container of yakgwa outside his door with his USB drive taped to the top of it. No note—not that he needed one to know who it was from, but he wasn’t sure what it was. A goodbye? A please fuck off forever and never contact me again?

He’d just taken them inside. Ate too many of the cookies while feeling sorry for himself. Maybe had a glass or two of wine to compound the issue, and never, ever considered contacting you. Didn’t think he could bear it if you never wanted to see him again, but he just…

Well, he was drunk and alone and he missed you, and he’d rewatched all those videos he recorded a million times before when he was like this, so what was a million and one?

It’d been the same as every time before: he smiled at the happy parts, cried at all his old wounds. Wanted to reach through the screen and strangle his past self for including that part about the blind date, because he never wanted to date anyone who wasn’t you, why would he say that, felt mortified at the thought of you watching that—

And then there it was.

All the way at the bottom. A new video. One that hadn’t been recorded by him—

Hi, Cheol, you say, and that’s all it takes to reduce him to a sobbing, yearning mess. I’m not sure what to say here. I don’t really record much—sometimes for lectures when the professors are too busy, but never anything personal like this, but I watched every single one you made for me and I thought I should return the favor.

I wanted to tell you everything I’ve been up to since you left, but it hasn’t been much. I got my degree. Tutored a lot in undergrad—the same thing I’m tutoring you in now, actually. I was good at it and it felt good to have something that was mine, you know? I almost moved for grad school. Thought for a while I was going to wind up in New York, but then my parents divorced and it felt like too much, too scary, so I stayed. Kaori also stayed, so we got an apartment together. It’s not much, definitely not as nice as your place, but it’s good enough.

I don’t think I ever told you, but she was seeing a guy for a bit and he was… obsessed with you, to say the least. Thought you were the coolest person in the world. They aren’t seeing each other anymore. Ended pretty badly, but—speaking of which, maybe steer clear of Student Services for a while, too.

Sometimes it felt like failure that I wound up staying here. That I had scholarships from all these far-away, prestigious places and didn’t take advantage of them. That I gave into my fear. And now… I don’t know. Maybe there’s a reason I stayed behind. Maybe there’s a reason you ended up back here, too.

Whatever happens—I don’t want you to think I still blame you. Kaori says we do the best we can with what we’ve got at the time, and I understand now that’s what you did. Even though it hurt me, you were trying to protect me. I get it now. And I’m sorry you had to go through all of that alone. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to go to all these places you didn’t know. To have to deal with your injury, the loss of a dream.

You said in one of your videos that you just want me to be happy, and that’s all I want for you, too, whatever that looks like.

Here’s my address if you ever want to come by to talk.

I love you, too.

—and then he’d been up and out the door, feeling stone cold sober, running to the front of his building to wait for his ride.

Felt like the drive took hours. Must’ve hit every red light between his apartment and yours. Took the steps two at a time just to get to your door faster.

There’s a man already standing outside your door when he gets there. One that looks shocked to see him, stars in his eyes, and when Seungcheol says, “Oh, you must be Kaori’s ex,” he looks more like he wants the earth to swallow him whole. Embarrassed in front of his idol.

He knocks on your door and gets no response. Knocks again, harder this time, and he has to try really hard to stifle his laughter when your voice yells from the inside, “Fuck off, Kenji, I already told you she’s not here!”

“It’s me,” Seungcheol yells back.

There’s quiet again. Just enough time for it to feel like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest and follow Kaori’s ex down the hall.

Then you’re yanking the door open—slowly, so slowly, like you’re scared it’s not actually him. Your eyes are brimming with tears when they meet his own, and he doesn’t let himself think, just goes on instinct, when he grabs for you, hands on your cheeks, and presses his lips to yours.

Somehow you taste the same.

Somehow you taste like redemption.

You taste like home.

Seungcheol kisses you until the tears slow. Kisses you until the universe realigns, until he could map your mouth in the dark. Kisses you until all you’re all he knows again.

When he pulls away, you’re gripping at his sweatshirt, don’t want to let him go. He presses his forehead to yours, offers up a million more apologies, starts talking nonsense. Says he’s going to drop microeconomics, what the hell does he know, he barely has a passing grade anyway, what does it matter, he’s such an idiot—

And then you say, “You came back,” and nothing else matters.

“I always will.”

(Later on, as you’re trying to steady your breathing, slick with sweat, your thigh thrown over Seungcheol’s hip as he stares down at you, dopey smile on his face, you say, “Choi Seungcheol, don’t you dare drop that class. I have worked my ass off to get you to barely-passing.”)

if you’ve made it this far thank you so much for reading! i am still very new at writing for seventeen, so i hope this was acceptable. i'm now going to throw myself into the warped tour vernon fic and will hopefully not go another 7+ months without posting anything. 😭

i would love to hear your thoughts! <3

[aurumalatus]

𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 [𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞]

pairing. kinich x fem!reader

word count. 700

genre/warnings. childhood friends to lovers, slow burn, fluff and angst, drabble collection

summary.

in which kinich learns the value of all things: lives, friendship, and, of course, you. or, in which kinich realizes that you are the only priceless thing in this world.

author's note. this is just a short prologue to show how things end (yay happy endings!), but the two have a lot of trauma to go through before they reach endgame. i love kinich's character and design so i'm excited for this! interaction is highly appreciated :)

𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 | 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 ↣

Kinich thinks he’s loved you since forever.

He has no way of proving that, of course; those years are long gone, and even if he had the opportunity to ask, he’s not sure his younger self would have a comprehensible answer. He can only see now that he’s come so far, when the memories are too murky to make sense of but the warmth remains—when he thinks of your smile and feels something akin to the weightlessness of grappling and flying through the trees.

He says “forever” because he really has no idea when it started—the realization came far after the feeling. He’d been before school age when he met you for the first time, and it’s been over a decade since then.

“Kinich!”

Your call interrupts his thoughts, and his gaze is drawn skyward—you’re standing somewhere far above him, on one of the walkways lining the cliffs of the Scions of the Canopy. You’re waving so wildly and ridiculously that it almost makes him smile.

“Are you coming down?” he calls through cupped hands, well-acquainted with this kind of long-distance communication. Sound tends to echo well between the cliffs here, and he’s sure you heard him when you offer an enthusiastic thumbs-up in return. 

“Yup! I bought a few things, so I was hoping you could help me carry them home!”

Kinich rolls his eyes teasingly. “Somehow I doubt that you have enough Mora left to afford my services.”

You pout in reply. Ajaw decides to appear then, a malicious puff of smoke over Kinich’s shoulder. “Of course not! You better not be making fun of me, letting some mortal treat you like a servant! The Almighty Dragonlord, K’uhul Ajaw, won’t take this kind of disrespect—”

Ignoring his wordy introduction, you call down to Kinich again. “I’m coming down! Think fast!”

“—Don’t make me lau—wait, what?!”

Even Ajaw yelps in surprise as you take a running leap off the walkway, freefalling fast down the plane of the cliff. If he were any younger, Kinich might’ve had a heart attack. But you’ve been pushing your luck with him for years, and it comes as instinct when Kinich grapples up, deftly catching you in his arms with a light ‘oof’.

You’re holding a few boxes in your arms, he notices, and you smile. 

“I bought some Puff Pops for us to share later. I was thinking we can do some climbing, or there’s this cave I’ve been meaning to explore.”

His heart does a sort of flip that cannot be attributed to the way you fly through the sky. It’s all so much: the sensation of your warmth pressed against him, the scent of the wind rushing past, and the laughter of his tribe members below. Their eyes shine as they watch the two of you pass above them, chuckling at the familiar sight. 

And really, he can’t remember ever being this happy. When he thinks of how much it took to reach this point, the heartbreak and trauma aren’t the first things to come to mind. Instead, it’s you. The way you held him, the way you cried for him, the way you chased him. Always laughing, always in love.

Too lost in his thoughts, he doesn’t notice your curious stare for a moment. You poke at his cheek, and he startles, nearly dropping you both.

“Is something wrong?” you ask shyly, suddenly self-conscious of the box in your hands. “We don’t have to do any of that. Really, if you have a high-value job or something, I understand.”

Ajaw decides to butt-in again, reddened with rage. “Yes, all of that sucks! I mean, seriously, don’t you have anything better to do—”

“No, it’s great,” Kinich murmurs in reply, flicking Ajaw away with a strong hand—the Saurian’s roar dissipates with the wind. He holds you tighter against his chest. There’s nothing worth more to him than you. “That all sounds really, really amazing.”

As the two of you burst through the trees, laughing the whole way, he thinks that it doesn’t really matter when he started to love you. All that matters is that he doesn’t stop.

Kinich thinks he’ll love you forever.

[nerdygirlramblings]

did someone say omega!soldier? here you go

previous

The next two hours are a complete whirlwind. You find yourself back in front of Adam, who has the most shit-eating grin, being officially and properly introduced. He holds out his wrist for you to scent, and as you finally tell him your name, you hold out your hand to him. Price passes him your transfer papers and tells Adam to pull together everything he needs to make sure the transfer goes through smoothly. He makes you sign releases for your service records, so your skills can be paired with those of the other 141. His smile freezes momentarily when he apologetically says, "You're going to have to re-qualify on your weapons and do another PT check."

Price cuts in and says, "I'll make sure we get that squared away, Adam. Ye'll have 'er new quals within a fortnight."

Adam also makes you release your medical records. "Need to know anything that would be necessary if you're injured on an operation and can't get to base medical."

You're pulled into a virtual standing meeting with Laswell who was apparently anticipating this and promises to pass this news up the chain of command on her end as well. Price also has you record a quick introduction for him to send along to Farrah and Ale, names that mean nothing to you yet, whom he says are members of other military units who often work closely with the 141 in certain areas of the world.

You're given a tour of the task force's barracks by a grinning Soap who tells you, "Noo tha' you're part 'a the team, you're welcome here whenever ye want."

You end the day walking with the 141 into the mess for supper. The conversations quiet when you walk in after Ghost with Gaz at your back. Hushes comments spreading from the tables nearest the door to further back in the room. It's not like half the base didn't see you with them yesterday, but there's something different now. Yesterday they met you there; walking in together, everyone knows a dynamic has changed.

As you pass by the alpha whose nose you broke, there's the scent of burning ozone wafting from the table, and you hear someone mutter "fuckin' slag."

Before you even register what's happened, you're overwhelmed by the acidic scent of burning rubber. Ghost leans over, grabs the offending soldier by the scruff of his neck, and slams him into the table top. You're standing close enough to hear Ghost when he growls in the other man's ear, "I ever hear ya fuckin' disrespectin' a member 'a my team again, I'll kill ya." Ghost then shoves the man back into his seat and glares around the now silent mess. "Eat," he commands, and heads get quickly buried back into meals, conversation ticking up to cover the oppressive anger still radiating off Ghost.

He stalks silently to a table in the back of the mess, the rest of the pack and you following in his wake. None of the others seem surprised or fazed by Ghost's behavior. You're a little disturbed, in part because you've never been on the receiving end of such protective behavior. Your omega, however, is preening over the alpha's display.

You're sat between Soap and Gaz again, but this time it's Price and Ghost who collect food for the table. You watch them head for the line, their eyes constantly scanning the room, pointing at little pockets of soldiers. You turn to ask Gaz what it means only to find him glaring at other tables, seemingly at random.

When Price and Ghost get back, you're quiet throughout the meal, trying to follow the conversation that clearly picks up threads of things you know nothing about. You perk up when Ghost rumbles your name. "Yer wi' me on the range tomorrow mornin'," he says. "Hear Adam needs new weapons quals." He glances at Price, who nods. "Gunna see wha' ya can do."

You blink at him for a moment. "Er, yes, sir. Er, half five, sir? Or does earlier work better?"

The pack shifts a little. Soap tilts his head quizzically while Ghost asks, "Wot? Why on earth would we be on the range so bloody early?"

You feel a ripple of shame work its way down your back. "Er, I usually go early. Before it gets too crowded." Now Price is looking at you, too. You can see he's trying to guess what you're not saying.

Ghost huffs, grasping things quicker than Price. "Ya mean, ya go before ya piss off alphas simply by being an omega wi' a good eye." You shrug in response, eyes on the table. "Fuck 'em if they can't handle 'ow good ya are." He looks at you, and you can feel his stare burn your cheek. When you can't take it anymore, you glance at him. He catches your eye and says, "Oh eight hundred, sharp, yeah? Ya show me if yer as good as Garrick keeps sayin'."

You swallow quickly, throat bobbing, as you reply, "Yessir. I'll be there."

next

series masterlist | main masterlist

[donatellawritings]

𝜗𝜚 ⊹ ‧₊˚ 🐇 introducing princess!reader, ugh i love her sm <3

you were fairly new to kildare island, completely wet behind your chanel-adorned ears. it had only been a few days, since your parents had made the switch from the cozy countryside of puerto rico, unpacking their final cardboard box that harshly clashed against the dreamy interior of your bright and sunny lakeside home. you weren’t surprised that your parents had chosen such a picturesque home of grandeur, they always had a niche for the finer things in life, a trait that was undoubtedly passed down to you.

you see, you had always been a spoiled princess, always insisting of having anything and everything that you wanted — and it was always given to you, without question. perhaps it was the fact that you were an only child? who cares, you were the precious little girl that your parents would go to the ends of the earth for, so why should you accept anything less, from anyone else?

as privileged as it may seem, you did have to admit that you loved living a life where you were pampered and had every single need, no matter how minute or ridiculous, fulfilled without question. you always wore the finest of fabrics from the most upscale brands, exercised in the cutest athleisure wear as you worked up a sweat on your peloton, i mean, you even made it a point to get your hair and nails done every other week. your parents’ banking statements were essays long, detailing your multiple visits to sephora, mainland boutiques, your hefty car note, and monthly spa membership fees.

but, you were far from a ditzy girl, in fact, you were so entitled to the point where you turned your button nose upward at every guy who approached you. you had yet to find a man who didn’t allow you to walk him like a pathetic little dog, you knew that you needed a man who would put you in your place, yet shower you with adornment and lavish gifts.

carefully scraping the tiny smear of residual lipgloss with the tips of your long almond french-manicured nails, you huffed as you flipped your blown-out hair over your shoulder. “ma, m’going to drop this off now!” you called out, tugging on your light grey mini skirt, your fingers dancing over the black lace and pink ribbon adornment, before you grabbed ahold of the white ceramic tray of lemon squares that your mother prepared the night prior.

you’d been given the task of introducing yourself to your neighbors, especially since you father had made it a point to extend the services of his construction company to the fellow members of the country club. your parents had praised you for being their sweet little girl who would be staying home for college to the community, so it was now your turn to seal your reputation as the perfect girl next door, and help uphold your parents’ fresh reputation as newcomers on figure 8.

your perky tits were cutely pushed up against the undone buttons of your undersized button up top, your gold rosary glinting against the sunlight as you made your chanel mules stepped out on the floorboards of your front porch.

𝜗୧

after about an hour of walking from door to door and exchanging your rehearsed pleasantries, while offering the sweet and tangy sticky treat, you’d finally made it to the final home that seemed to overlook the entirety of the community. your puffy cheeks ached from your stretched smile as the soles of your french-pedicure feet throbbed — maybe wearing heels as you walked from porch to porch wasn’t the smartest idea? balancing the tray of lemon gooey lemon squares onto one hand, you brushed a strand of hair from your extended lashes, letting out a small huff, before you mushed your finger into the doorbell.

it didn’t take long before the front door was answered, your rehearsed introduction flitting away from you as you looked up at the blue eyes that stared down at you. your lipstick stained lips parted as the twenty-something year old man stood, his jaw tight as he raised his eyebrows at you, before his eyes shamelessly fell to your pushed-up tits, “i, uh, hi! my family and i recently moved in, so i just wanted to introduce myself,” you smiled, a blush creeping to your cheeks as you revealed your name to the tall man.

“ah, s’that right?” he questioned, clearing throat with a nod to himself as he took it upon himself to lift the plastic wrap that concealed the melted lemon squares, before his curtain bangs fell in front of his eyes. “y’walked all the way here, by yourself, huh,” he mumbled, placing the wrapping to close around the tray, before bringing his intimidating gaze to yours.

with a nod, you nudged the tray in his direction, “would you like one? my mother made them fresh!” you beamed, restoring your role as the mannered girl next door, your trained resolve slowly burning away under the unforgiving north carolina sun.

oh, how he saw right through you.

wordlessly, the young man lifted the plastic wrap, one more, being the small gooey treat to his lips as he kept his eyes on yours, not missing the way you swallowed thickly as he wiped the corners of his pink lips with his ringed index finger and thumb. you watched pathetically with your lips parted as he licked over his lips, “rafe cameron,” he smiled smugly, extending a hand to you.

there was something dark, yet tantalizing about the young man that towered over you, it even brought an undeniable ache to the bundle of nerves between your plush thighs.

accepting his hand, you batted your dolly lashes at rafe, a warmth growing in your tummy as his large hand enveloped yours in a firm grip, his thumb barely kneading into the soft skin between your forefinger and thumb.

deciding to fall back into your stuck-up persona, you were the first to break the hold between you and race, your eyes squinting a bit as you took one step backwards, “it was a pleasure, rafe,” you sang, clutching the empty tray to be tucked into your side.

spinning on your heels, you could feel rafe staring at the under-curve of your soft ass that peeked beneath the tight knit fabric of your skirt, watching as your hips swayed with each step you took. it wasn’t until you were far enough from the young man that you tugged on your skirt to remain secure around your thighs. internally, you scolded yourself for losing event the slightest bit of your cool. you were too good for him, you were too good for him. way too good.

rafe knew this as well, yet he was always proactive when it came to getting what he wanted — even if he had to get a little dirty.

[thef1diary]

Little Big Fan | Three

— Little Big Race

Series Masterlist

wc: 2.4k

Usually, you had a hard time waking your daughter up, and unfortunately she got that habit from you. It was something your mother laughed at a lot whenever you told her about it. She would always say, "you were a troublesome child so now you have a troublesome child but she's cuter."

Today was a different story, Isabella was the one waking you up. "Mama, mama, mama, wake up, we have to see Maxy race today!" She jumped up and down on the bed even though you've tried to tell her not to.

Groaning, you peeked out the blanket to see the biggest toothy smile on your daughter's face and it should've been enough to wake you up. You looked over and saw the time, it was way too early for her to be this energetic. You still have no idea how she musters up so much energy in her little body.

"Bella, qualifying is seven hours away, let's sleep a little longer?" You asked and easily wrapped your arms around your little one. Covering her in the blanket, you hoped to at least get another hour of sleep.

It took her less than two minutes to fall back asleep in her mother's arms. That habit, was from her father who never had an issue of being unable to sleep quickly.

The hour passed by rather quickly, and this time Isabella woke up as soon as she felt you getting off the bed. The giddy excitement was still there and rightfully so but it was a little calmer than an hour ago.

Since you only had to order room service instead of cooking breakfast, the morning was a lot less stressful for you. As soon as Isabella was finished eating breakfast, she ran to her little suitcase and took out her outfit for the day.

Once you helped her change, your little girl was decked in a blue dress with red glittery clips in her hair according to her wishes, her reason being, "Maxy always wears red and blue."

Soon enough, you two were enroute towards the track. You had gotten your passes when you first checked in at the hotel because Max had dropped them off before you arrived.

It was simple enough finding your way towards the entrance, but it was a whole different story after. There were so many people, albeit less than outside, and they all looked like they knew where they were going.

Holding Isabella's hand tightly, you continued walking in hopes to figure out where you're supposed to go. "Where's Max, mama?" Your daughter asked but you didn't have an exact answer.

"Hopefully somewhere around here, angel." You contemplated calling him, unsure whether or not he'd be busy. But then again, if he is then he won't pickup so there was no harm in trying.

Keeping your gaze on Isabella, you called him. After two rings, he picked up, "Hi, I was just about to call you, are you here?" You could hear him panting on the other end as if he ran to pick up your call, but you decided not to comment on it.

"Yeah, I don't know exactly where we are though," He laughed on the other end, "it's okay, just describe the area and I'll come find you." 

You did as he instructed and Max was walking towards you within three minutes. However, he was not alone, there was another man in different coloured teamwear walking next to him. 

Isabella's smile grew when she spotted Max but since you were holding her hand, she couldn't run towards him. Max crouched down and held his hand up so Isabella could give him a high-five. 

The man standing next to him the same, and Isabella was mesmerized, gasping, "Daniel Ricciardo." She probably butchered the pronunciation of his surname but he didn't seem to mind.

Max shook his head, "no, Isabella, he's Daniel Avocado." The comment made Daniel burst out laughing, and you couldn't help but join in. 

The sound of your laugh directed Max's gaze towards you and once it was on you, it was stuck there. Even when Daniel nudged him and asked, "introductions?" 

A few seconds passed by without Max saying anything so to save him from further embarrassment, Daniel decided to take the liberty of introductions. Once you introduced yourself to him, Daniel had a knowing smile on his face. 

"So you're the one who's daughter ran away because of Max," he chuckled while your cheeks grew red in embarrassment, "unfortunately yes, how did you hear about that?" You asked, having an idea that Max probably told him.

But the answer Daniel gave you was surprising, "I've heard the story around ten times so far since someone keeps bringing you up in conversations." 

Max's eyes widened but you laughed, "is that so? Well Isabella hasn't stopped talking about Max either." 

You and Daniel collectively looked at Isabella who was still starstruck by not one but two drivers, the shock of being in the paddock finally catching up to her. Then the two of you looked at Max, who was also unusually quiet according to Daniel, and burst out laughing once again.

"Looks like both of them had too much to say and now it's not enough," Daniel commented and you agreed with a nod. "Your daughter is adorable by the way," he added to fill the silence and nudged Max harshly when you looked at her. 

"How about I show you around?" Max finally found his words, and you looked at him skeptically, "I don't want to take up your time if you have something else to do." 

"I've got some time, plus it would be very unfair if you came all the way here and I didn't spend time with you and Isabella." Max didn't wait for a response from you, instead turning his gaze towards your little one, "right?" 

Isabella gave him a sharp nod, and you couldn't help but smile as you saw the two interact. "Alright then, lead the way." 

It took him thirty minutes to show you around the paddock, but he mainly focused on the RedBull Energy Center, as that was where all the driver's guests could relax and enjoy some team catered meals.

Isabella asked him all sorts of questions, and Max even stopped for an extra minute to grab some noise cancelling earmuffs for her little ears. 

Your eyes widened when he placed them on her head, mentally cursing at the fact that out of all the things you could've forgotten, it was the headphones. Once again, before you could hide your expression, Max noticed it and muttered, "it's okay, that's why we have them here." 

He explained that since it was his home grand prix—something you didn't know until he mentioned it—most of the fans were rooting for him. 

Then, Max was approached by someone from his team, telling him that he was needed back in the garage. The rest of the day passed by quite fast. You watched qualifying from the hospitality as per Max's suggestions. 

As the session continued, you slowly understood some of the terminology, but it would still take a few more races to fully understand what is going on. On the other hand, Isabella clapped happily every time Max's RedBull passed by, and you even joined her after a few times. 

—

It is race day. You and Isabella were back in the paddock and this time you had figured out where to go. You were proud of yourself for navigating the area after only being shown around once. You reached later than you hoped due to the traffic, but fortunately, there was still a while before the race began.

Max had told you to meet him near the garages and when you neared them, you could see him speaking expressively to a small group of people. Based on their outfits, you knew they were drivers. The only one you remembered other than Max was Daniel, as you've met him yesterday. 

"Mama, walk faster," your daughter urged, her pace fastened as soon as she spotted Max, tugging you along. You were glad that she didn't leave your hand. 

"Maxy!" Your daughter cheered as soon as she was in hearing range of the drivers. They all collectively turned towards the noise, Max's face lighting up as soon as his gaze landed on you two. 

"Isabella!" Max cheered with the same amount of energy, and you let go of your daughter's hand so she could run up to him. 

He greeted you as well, taking a step closer to you and with a sheepish smile on his face he spoke, "I got something for her." Max said quietly enough so Isabella didn't hear him, since he wanted your approval first before he revealed his surprise. 

You nodded, encouraging him and with a big smile he placed a cap on Isabella's head, surprising her. She took it off to look at it and when she saw his driver's number on the cap, she gasped.

Then, she placed it back on her head and turned to look at you, "mama, look!" You chuckled, "very nice, what do you say, angel?" 

Isabella didn't think twice before hugging him, "thank you, thank you, thank you!" 

Max held out another cap for you, and before you could say anything he added, "I need everyone to know who you're cheering for." Deciding to tease him you responded, "what if I want to cheer for Daniel?" 

You saw his smile drop, making you break out into a smile to let him know you were just joking. You pointed to the number on the cap, "number 1 driver, yeah,” you stated, the implication of him being the number one driver both literally and figuratively was heard loud and clear.  

"Mama," Isabella grabbed your attention, pointing at the driver in a red suit that you've yet to be introduced to. "Lightning McQueen," she added, making the group of drivers around you laugh at her words. 

Charles pointed at himself, "me?" he looked at you for an answer and you nodded, "yeah, can you really blame her though, you're all decked out in red." 

As if you were lying, he looked down and then shrugged, "fair." 

Isabella was content with being the center of attention between the drivers that you now know the names of; Charles, Lando, Alex, and George.

Max pulled you aside. "I wanted to ask you this yesterday but we didn't have time. Do you think Isabella would like it if I let her sit inside my car?" 

Your mouth quite literally dropped open, and you had to blink a few times as if it would make you understand his words better. "Huh?" is all that left your mouth. 

"My car? Is she going to like it?" He asked again and you nodded, "she would love that, are you even allowed to do that?" 

He chuckled at your question, "it's my car, I think I can do anything I want with it." 

Before he could turn around to speak to Isabella, you reached for his hand to stop him, "Max, you have no idea how much this would mean to her." He nodded in understanding, "make sure to take lots of pictures." 

You heard her squeal in excitement as soon as Max asked the question, watching her eagerly nod. You followed them into the garage, heart warming at how Max held Isabella's hand the entire time. 

With the way Isabella hasn't stopped smiling, you would think her smile was permanently stuck on her face. You took loads of pictures, a few even with Max's helmet on her head that was way too big for her. 

Even the team principal, Christian Horner, stopped for a moment to look at the joy on both Isabella and Max's face. It would make one think that it was Max’s first time around a F1 car as well.

By the time the race started, Isabella's energy had significantly drained, but she remained awake for the entirety of the race. Watching the race from the garage unlocked a different joy on her face, and she would cheer when Max came into the pits for fresher tyres. 

As soon as her eyes drooped, something would occur in the race that would cause her to brighten up again. Max barely had to overtake as he started off in pole position, only needing to pass the other drivers after coming out of the pitlane. 

Just like Isabella, your eyes didn't waver away from the race despite how fast your heart was beating due to nervousness about the drivers' speeds. 

You knew they were the best of the best, very professional, but ever since you've gotten to know them personally, you couldn't help but worry for them. Especially Max. 

Turns out, you didn't have to worry too much as Max crossed the finish line first, winning the race in front of his home crowd. 

Everything after that was a blur. You just remember Christian leading you towards the crowd underneath the podium, ensuring that no one had the audacity to push or shove you. Isabella was safely in your arms, watching the celebrations with wide but sleepy eyes. 

As soon as she saw the trophy being handed to Max, she rested her head on your shoulder and was out like a light. 

Once the champagne was sprayed, you made your way through the crowd, walking towards the exit. Your daughter was sound asleep and you didn't want the noise waking her up and disturbing her much needed rest. 

Other than the one extra hour of rest in the morning, she hadn't taken any naps since she was mesmerized by everything around her. Now, since it was all over, all you focused on was getting back to the hotel. 

As soon as Isabella was comfortably in bed, you decided to take a shower to wash away all the built up and dried sweat. While you were busy, your phone rang with two calls, both from Max, that were inevitably sent to voicemail. 

After your shower, you ordered some food and turned on the tv in the other room. Around fifteen minutes went by before there was a knock on your door. Thinking it was room service with your dinner, you opened it without checking who it really was.

Max was stood on the other side, changed out of his race suit but still in a Redbull polo.

Taglist: (let me know if you want to be added or removed) @xjval @mrsmaybank13 @cherry-piee @urfavnoirette @solphin @burningcupcakefire @nessacarty1 @dreamsarebig @omgsuperstarg @fanficweasley @redbullgirly @llando4norris @minskzy @wonnou @randomgirlnumber13 @dark-night-sky-99 @chanshintien @leilanixx @gisellesprettylies @peachiicherries @monsieurbacteria6 @67-angelofthelordme-67 @arian-directioner @loliaa @distancedss @bache3 @morenofilm @sachaa-ff @lighttsoutlewis @teamnovalak @casperlikej @lexiecamposv @sadg3

[markcraft3636]

ServiceNow | What is Update Sets | Compare , Revert and Merge Update Sets | Complete Course

ServiceNow is planned with intelligent systems to speed up the work process by providing solutions to amorphous work patterns. Each employee, customer, and machine in the enterprise is related to ServiceNow, allowing us to make requests on a single cloud platform. Various divisions working with the requests can assign, prioritize, correlate, get down to root cause issues, gain real‑time insights, and drive action. This workflow process helps the employees to work better, and this would eventually improve the service levels. ServiceNow provides cloud services for the entire enterprise.

[cressidagrey]

The Queen of Romantasy and the Race Car Prince - Chapter 11

Pairing: Lando Norris x Elizabeth "Lizzie" Treshton (Original Character)

Summary:

Elizabeth Treshton—bestselling romantasy author, queen of fae heartbreak, and sworn devotee of a carefully structured routine—never expected her service dog to abandon protocol and diagnose a Formula 1 driver with something. But that’s exactly what happens when Mara the wonder-dog ditches Lizzie’s side to aggressively alert to none other than Lando Norris in the middle of a coffee shop.

Warnings and Notes: 

Mention of epilepsy and service animals. I don't myself suffer from epilepsy, so I asked my IRL friend, who thankfully was nice enough to let me ask her all the questions I could come up with. The rest I asked Reddit. So everything that's wrong...that's totally my fault and not on purpose.

As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble

Lizzie barely had time to take in the Quadrant studio before a guy launched himself across the room like he was personally greeting a royal dignitary.

“Oh my god, you actually brought her,” he gushed, stopping just short of throwing himself at Mara’s paws. “Lando never lets us meet his friends—”

Lando sighed theatrically, rolling his eyes as he led Lizzie inside. "Because you're all lunatics."

The man grinned, unfazed by Lando's comment. "Yeah, but we're your lunatics.”

Max Fewtrell, already grinning, lifted his phone. “Right, formal introduction time. Lizzie, welcome to Quadrant chaos. You already know me—”

“Tragically,” Lando mumbled.

“—but this is Ethan, who thinks he runs things, Ria, who actually runs things, and Steve, the only adult in the room.”

Lizzie grinned. “Nice to finally meet you all.”

“Oh, we’re making this official,” Ria said, practically vibrating as she rummaged through a box on the table.

Lando groaned. “I already hate this.”

Ethan smirked. “Oh, you will.”

With a dramatic flourish, Ria pulled out a small fabric bundle and unfolded it.

Lizzie blinked.

It was a Quadrant dog bandana. Black with neon streaks, the brand’s logo stitched neatly in the corner.

“You made her merch?” Lizzie asked, trying to hold back a laugh.

Lando let out a long-suffering sigh. “Okay, listen. I can’t be seen walking a dog wearing Ferrari merch—”

"You could just walk her," Max chimed in.

"Shut up. Anyway.” Lando picked up the bandana. “And I highly doubt Lizzie would let me put McLaren papaya on her—”

“Not happening,” Lizzie confirmed.

“So this is a compromise.” Lando gestured at the bandana like it was the only logical solution. "I thought she’d want a little Quadrant flair too.”

There was a beat of silence as everyone seemed to process his logic.

Then, everyone started laughing. Loudly.

"Oh my god." Ethan shook his head, grinning. "Lando Norris, dog-walking fashion expert. Who would have thought?”

Max snorted. “Honestly, I get it. The internet would never let you live it down.”

Lando shot him a look. "Exactly. Have you checked Twitter lately? They already think I'm the biggest Ferrari fan in the history of ever. I don't need to give them any more ammunition."

Everyone else laughed harder. Ria was trying to catch her breath. "Oh my god, Lando, you're such a drama queen."

Steve, the supposed only adult in the room, was the only one who didn’t laugh. Instead, he studied the bandana with a considering expression. “Honestly, it is a good look. The orange would have clashed with her coat anyway.”

That set off another round of laughter, but Lando looked oddly appeased by Steve’s assessment.

Max clapped his hands together, grinning. “Right, Mara needs to try it on. Lando. Do your thing.”

Lando rolled his eyes, yet he knelt next to Mara. The Labrador seemed to realize this was important, because she sat perfectly still, her eyes trained on the bandana.

Lando wrapped the bandana around her neck, adjusting it until it fit snugly.

“There we go. She’s a Quadrant girl now,” he said, ruffling Mara’s ears.

 Lizzie crouched beside her.

“What do you think, girl?” she asked. “You like it?”

Mara gave a single wag of her tail.

“Oh, that’s a yes,” Ria confirmed, nodding sagely.

“100%,” Max agreed.

Lando stood, hands on his hips. "Of course she likes it. I have good taste."

Lizzie suppressed a smirk, trying (and failing) to hide her amusement at the ridiculous scene unfolding before her.

"And he's modest too," she joked.

Lando shot her a look, though there was no real annoyance behind it. "Hey, I'm just stating facts."

Max snickered. "Lando Norris, humble as always."

"You all just wish you were as humble as I am," Lando shot back, rolling his eyes.

Ethan gave an exaggerated sigh. "I know. It's tragic really. If only we could be as modest as the great Lando 'I'm a better driver than everyone in this room' Norris."

Lando flicked him off in response.

"So, this is where the magic is gonna happen?" Lizzie asked curiously, staring around the warehouse. "It looks..."

"Like an abandoned warehouse?" Max suggested drily. "It's for the aesthetic of the photoshoot."

"And what is that aesthetic?" Lizzie asked. "Where to dump a body?"

Lando shot her an amused glance. "Dark, edgy, abandoned industrial-chic, I think."

"Yeah, it's our 'we're really cool and don't care' vibe," Ethan chimed in.

Ria nodded. "And it's cheaper than renting out an actual studio."

"Not to mention we have the freedom to set everything up exactly the way we want," Steve added.

"You know...for the vibe," Max said, wiggling his fingers in the air.

"I think the aesthetic choice is very 'Lando','" Lizzie mused, eyeing Lando, who looked offended.

"What does that mean?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Hmm..." Lizzie tapped a finger against her chin, pretending to think. "Rich, edgy, slightly obnoxious..."

"I am none of those things," Lando protested.

Lizzie stared at him. "Lando, you literally bought a Range Rover on a whim. Now you are sitting here,  in front of the dog, whose bandana you had custom designed as we debate the 'aesthetic' of your photoshoot in a warehouse."

Max snickered, while Ria and Ethan tried to hide their smiles. 

Lando huffed. "Fine, I see your point. But it's still a cool aesthetic."

"It's definitely unique," Lizzie conceded.

Max's grin widened as he turned to Mara, who had been quietly observing the entire exchange. "And what do you think, Mara? Do you think Lando has a cool aesthetic?"

The Labrador simply sat there, with her tongue lolling out, blissfully unaware of the debate about Lando's cool factor.

Lizzie smiled. "I think that's a solid 'yes' in dog language."

"Alright, alright. Enough making fun of me," Lando complained, though he didn't look particularly bothered. 

Steve, who'd been watching the whole exchange, finally spoke up.

"You know, I have to say, this is already more fun than most photoshoots."

Granted, Lizzie had managed to get through her life with literally only three photoshoots unless one counted random selfies with fans, so she tended to agree.

It was quite fun that she got to watch the whole thing go down though, shooting Lando's newest merch collection, while Mara happily took a nap on her feet. It was...interesting to see this side of him. 

Lando, as it turned out, had a knack for modeling. He effortlessly fell into different poses, morphing from nonchalant cool to charming casual without breaking a sweat. Lizzie couldn't help but admire him.

Ethan, as the photographer, seemed to be having the time of his life. He directed the shoot with enthusiasm, barking instructions like the self-proclaimed art director. "Okay, Lando, give me intense stare. Yeah, that's it. Now, throw in some smolder."

Max, playing the role of the hype man, didn't hesitate to boost up Lando's ego.  "Damn, mate. You were made for this. When are you gonna ditch racing and become a professional model?"

"Never," Lando shot back, without even pausing in his poses. "I have too much dignity for that."

"Dignity? You?" Max laughed. "That ship sailed years ago."

"Oh, shut up," Lando retorted, but he couldn't quite hide his smile.

Lizzie watched all of this with amusement, her eyes fixated on Lando as he moved in front of the camera.

He was a different person in front of the lens.

Confident, charismatic, almost...intoxicating.

It was easy to lose herself in the view, especially as his gaze frequently met hers, his smug smirk sending tingles down her spine.

God, he was handsome.

After what felt like hours, the shoot was over.

The lights were shut off, the equipment packed away, and the warehouse slowly returned from a makeshift photoshoot studio back to an abandoned warehouse.

Lando, as if waking from a trance, wandered over to Lizzie, his gaze roaming over her in a way that she could only describe as hungry.

"You’re staring," Lizzie pointed out, fighting down a shiver as his gaze continued to linger on her.

Lando gave her a lazy smile, not bothering to look away. "Can you blame me?"

Lizzie’s heart did a little flip, her cheeks warming under his gaze. She was still getting used to this — the casual intimacy between them, the easy banter, the way he looked at her like she was the only thing in the room worth seeing.

She could hear the others packing up and chattering in the background, their voices a soft, background hum. But right now, her attention was laser-focused on Lando, his eyes still holding hers captive.

"We need to get going," she said, kinda hating herself fo having to say that. "Tasha will kill me if I am late to my own reading."

Lando nodded, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from her.

“Right, right. Can’t have Tasha coming after you with a pitchfork,” he said, his tone light but his eyes still holding that intense look.

She gave him a smile, but she promised herself that tonight…tonight she was going to take advantage of that massive bed in their hotel room. 

***

"We banned all flash photography and we'll had somebody tell them to just ignore Mara multiple times," Tasha said seriously.

Lando hadn't known that Lizzies best friend slash pseudo-sister also had the role as personal assistant slash point of contact for everybody that was involved in Lizzie's actual job...but he had learned that over the last few weeks.

Lando leaned back in his seat, watching Tasha as she talked. She was a force to be reckoned with, that much was obvious. He couldn't help but respect her dedication to making sure everything ran smoothly.

And he was also very glad that Lizzie had somebody with her at all times that knew the ins and outs of her epilepsy better than anybody else.

Tasha was a godsend, both a best friend and a safety net for Lizzie.

As Tasha continued briefing them on the night's schedule, Lando let his gaze drift to Lizzie, who was listening intently to her friend.

She was an absolute star to look at as always, but there was something different about tonight. There was a spark in her eyes, a hint of excitement, and a faint smile on her lips he really liked.

Lando was not the type to sit and listen to people gushing over books for hours, but given the way Lizzie looked, he was sure he could put up with it...

He had been to his fair share of movie premieres and gallery openings, but those were easy. He took a few pictures, flashed a charming smile...he was the center of attention. 

But tonight…Lando Norris was completely ignored. Because he was uninteresting. 

Elizabeth Treshton was the star. 

Lando Norris got to sit backstage and follow along from the shadows. 

And quite frankly, he found the whole experience fascinating, just because he got to see Lizzie's world.

The world of books, of words and imagination. It was utterly foreign to him, and yet he couldn't help but find it fascinating...especially with Lizzie in the middle of it.

She was the star here. She was the one people wanted to see. The world she had created, the characters that had been born out of her words on a page...millions of people had read these words.

And they loved them.

Lando found, to his surprise, that he couldn't take his eyes off her as she walked on stage, as she read a few pages, as the hall clapped, and as she answered the first few questions. It wasn't even about the words anymore, it was about the way she talked, about the way her eyes shined. About the way she was fully in her element.

He wasn't looking at a different woman...but he was looking at a facet of hers...that he hadn't yet gotten to completely see.

And he found himself wondering how many there were. How many layers he still had to uncover, how many things he still needed to discover.

He was a race car driver, speed and competition were his domain. He was living the life he'd always wanted.

But sitting here in this venue, watching Lizzie take the stage and make an audience of strangers hang onto her every word like the last light in a dark cave...he knew he was only scratching the surface here.

The rest of the reading, the Q&A and the signing went by in a bit of a blur. He was too busy watching Lizzie and the way her face lit up when fans came up to her and told her how her writing had moved or inspired them. And when she was finally finished, making her way towards him with a tired smile on her face, he couldn't help but reach out and grab her by the hand to pull her closer.

Her steps faltered for a second as he pulled her closer, but when she looked at him, her expression melted into a soft, tired smile. "You held out pretty well," she teased lightly.

Lando shrugged nonchalantly, his grip on her hand tightening. "I had a pretty good view to keep me entertained," he replied, his gaze drifting over her face with an intensity that belied his casual tone.

"Oh? And what exactly was so entertaining about the view?" Lizzie asked, amusement sparkling in her eyes despite her obvious tiredness.

Lando's smile widened into a lazy smirk. "Just taking in the show, Miss Treshton," he said, his thumb tracing circles against her wrist. "You were quite the spectacle up there."

Lizzie arched an eyebrow. "Spectacle, huh? Are you just trying to butter me up, Mr. Norris?"

"You are incredible, you know that?" he told her seriously.

She stared at him wide-eyed.

"And not just tonight," he continued, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice. "You've built a whole world with your words, Lizzie. And you've got millions of people wrapped around your little finger, myself included.”

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Now that Book 7 is over, if you had to list all 7 Books in order of most to least favorite, how would you list them?

For me, it's:

BEST

Book 6 - Amazingly catches us up on the character development for the OB boys while also exploring the complexities of loss + grief and what that can do to a person. Doesn’t feel too bloated or like too many characters are fighting for screen time.

Book 4 - Very complicated motives for our OB boy of the month. Appreciate all the mind games played this book.

Book 3 - I actually consider this one pretty basic too, but I do like that Yuu takes on more of an active role in this one + actually tries to come up with their own solutions. OB boy's self-reflection in the museum was also good.

Prologue and Book 1 - Very basic, nothing offensive about them. Serviceable enough introductions to the world and to the general pattern of each main story book.

Book 5 - Just personal dislike for idol competitions and anything adjacent to them. Premise was definitely not for me. Middle part/the training was boring but necessary. Thought Epel got over his gender normative views way too quickly but liked his talk with Deuce on the beach.

Book 7 - Bulk of the issues start coming in during the dream hopping part, everything ultimately dragged on for too long. Feels like one huge chunk of wasting time doing irrelevant things + there is not enough urgency to save the world because of it. Ending is hand-wavy and rushed (the one part that should have been longer and more detailed got glossed over). Also has holes in logic, but not as many as book 2; story can still largely function with those.

Book 2 - So many plot holes. Actively makes the OB boy look incompetent rather than intimidating.

WORST

[cjrae]

Carelessness. Or; Lakan's crime in Maomao's eyes is worse than malice.

There is a temptation to take Lakan's character lightly. After his initial, sinister introduction had played out and we are given the story of how Lakan met Maomao's mother, much of Lakan's devotion to his wife and daughter is played for comic relief, allowing him to be the butt of the joke, along with Maomao's exaggerated reactions of disgust and insistence that she has no relation to this man.

It is worth remembering, though, that Lakan is referred to as the fox for good reason - the fox is a trickster figure and Lakan's whole character lies in how he can turn on a dime between being funny in a very pathetic way to those same qualities becoming extremely dangerous when his fun is threatened.

Lakan's heroic qualities do exist, but they are overshadowed by his carelessness and selfishness; it is these qualities that have, so far, doomed the relationship he craves so badly with his daughter.

Spoilers under the cut all the way up to Vol 11's English translation.

Fengxian

We see it in his relationship with Fengxian. While Lakan does not deserve all of the blame for Fengxian's fate, it is his carelessness that puts her in the position of becoming a common prostitute to support Verdigris House after her actions nearly ruined it. Let's pay attention to the sequence of events.

"…Lakan now found himself persona non grata for having been too close to him [Luomen]; he was told to go on a long trip and not come back for awhile. He could have ignored this, but it would have only been a headache later. His father was in the military too, making him not just a parent but a superior officer. At last, he wrote to the brothel saying he would return in half a year's time. This was after he had received a letter saying the contract buy-out had fallen through."

So, first and foremost, we know the following:

1.) Lakan did not strictly have to leave. It was the politic thing to do, but if he had pushed the issue, he could have stayed. If the goal had been to simply have Lakan out of the public eye, while his father may not have been pleased with it, his marriage to Fengxian could have also served a similar purpose as he began to focus on domestic affairs and kept a low profile. But his convenience weighed more heavily than his feelings for Fengxian.

2.) Fengxian tells him that the buy-out has fallen through BEFORE HE LEAVES. Assuming she's just barely pregnant at that point (call it eight weeks, ish) and his letter indicates that he's going to return for her before the baby is born, this is still a terrible sign for her. As he himself puts it later;

"Did he not grasp what happened to such women?

A little thought might have revealed the answer, but his head was full of Go and Shogi and nothing else, and he had been unable to arrive at the truth…It was all his fault for being so impulsive."

But Lakan didn't think and sure enough, three years later, Fengxian isn't waiting for him in her polite little box at the Verdigris House. Because love is not convenient and Lakan values convenience above almost everything else. It's not until he loses Fengxian and their baby (and has the loss driven home to him in a very visceral manner when he finds the fingers in his un-forwarded mail) that it occurs to him that he wants more than endless game playing.

Luomen

We know somebody did check Lakan's mail, though, as the letter with Maomao and Fengxian's fingers is the only piece that's opened. It's easy to guess that it attracted Luomen's attention because it was bloodstained, but Luomen does what Lakan should have - he immediately makes for the pleasure district to find this woman and her child.

It takes him years of patient work on behalf of the Verdigris House to be trusted to adopt Maomao. We know it takes years because Maomao is initially raised by the Three Princesses and the madam, while Luomen is slowly building trust with the courtesans by providing them medical services. At no point does Luomen stride in, demanding to be given custody of his great niece because he's her family. Instead he recognizes that she has a family already in the brothel and works on becoming a part of their lives - because that's what's best for Maomao.

Luomen understands that filial duty goes both ways - a child has responsibilities to the parent, certainly, but those duties imply a reciprocity of care. First, the parent cares for their child, which means that the child's needs must be the priority. What Maomao desperately needs is care, education, safety and stability. All of which, Luomen prioritizes making sure Maomao has to the best of his ability.

Contrast this with Lakan's immediate reaction to finding Maomao in the pleasure district.

"One day, out of the blue, a strange man had appeared and tried to lead her away. The madam had shown up shortly after and beaten him with a broom and the sight of the bruised and bloodied man had inspired fear in her young heart. Anyone would be scared by a man who reached out to them grinning, even as blood poured from his face."

Lakan literally tries to take her off the street, believing he has the right, because he's her father. He doesn't care that he's scaring Maomao, he's described as grinning and reaching for her despite the reactions of everyone around him. Which is why Luomen's reaction to Lakan reception in the pleasure district is very telling - this is a man who is described as far too kind for his own good and having been very close with Lakan.

"Nonetheless, while her old man was compassionate, he did grasp the broader situation, and he never tried to stop the old madam from chasing the other man out of the brothel with her broom. He knew that wrong was wrong."

The manga adds the context that Luomen also "knew the woman with the missing nose." Luomen feels for Lakan, but his duty is to Maomao as her adopted father and to Fengxian as her doctor. His feelings do not outweigh those responsibilities.

Maomao

Lakan adores Maomao from the moment he lays eyes on her. But his love is inherently selfish - the loss of Fengxian and his estrangement from Maomao do not inspire him to do better with his talents consistently.

The ironic part is that Lakan could have made a very compelling argument to be given custody of Maomao. We know that the whole reason he decided to use his strategic brilliance to take back the headship of the La Clan is inspired by Maomao and the life he feels she deserves to have. He also goes back to Verdigris House and although it takes him ten years, he pays off two and a half times the damages he caused - in the world of the red light district, he has paid for his initial crime. So we see that he is capable of putting forth effort when he feels inspired to do so.

If he had applied that same strategy and patience toward working on finding a place in Maomao's life that honored the relationships that supported her when Lakan had abandoned both her and Fengxian, he might have been able to convince those that cared about her that it was in Maomao's best interests to be raised by him as a princess of a named clan.

If we need further evidence that Lakan's carelessness is still a dominant character trait, we can look at a more recent example in the story; the Shi Clan's assassination plot against Jinshi.

Gossip is one of Lakan's hobbies and that, combined with his intuition, means that he's the first person to realize that something is going on. He sees all of these supposedly coincidental acts happening around them and intuits that there is a grander purpose at work. And, to his credit, he doesn't ignore it - he puts his talent of using the people around him to good use. We see him rope Gaoshun into looking into the poisoned seaweed under the guise of a colleague asking for a favor, we see him prod Jinshi into letting Maomao investigate the metalworker. Lihaku is one of his direct subordinates and he's tasked with investigating the explosion at the warehouse and following the trail as they realize that the arson was a diversion.

But at no point is he doing any of this because of anything so prosaic as duty or responsibility. This is a fun game to him that's serving a dual purpose of getting him closer to Maomao. Everything is entirely about what will amuse him or further that one, singular goal. And he's greatly amused - until Maomao puts the pieces together and realizes that this is an assassination attempt.

It never occurs to Lakan that simply maneuvering people around him to get things done and amuse him carries any danger - because he doesn't care that deeply about anyone else aside from a few select individuals. Everything in his mind was entirely about getting him and Maomao into the same place where she couldn't run away from him. Where she would be forced to accept his help.

Which is exactly what happens; Maomao can't get into the temple on her own and she needs Lakan to vouch for her. It is an extremely clumsy, transactional way of trying to build a connection.

So then what happens?

First Maomao is bludgeoned by the guard - a Go stone of a man, unimportant, except for the damage he inflicted on his little girl that Lakan did not anticipate. But worse is when Jinshi carries her out of that temple, bleeding and unconscious, after having saved his life. Everything Lakan has done to try to force his daughter to acknowledge him has instead lead to her being seriously injured.

Maomao points out, later, that if Lakan had simply stepped forward and used his official position as a Grand Commandant to spearhead an investigation, this plot might have been discovered much sooner. Maomao, having a few self-absorbed tendencies of her own, is focused on Suirei's promise of resurrection medicine. But Lakan should be more focused on the fact that, had he actually done something himself, perhaps Maomao wouldn't have been hurt.

Lakan

I said before that Lakan's heroic qualities do exist and it's important to acknowledge them, while also realizing how they are caught up in his self-serving behavior. For all that buying Fengxian out is about Lakan finally getting something he's wanted, there is also virtue in the fact that he does not see the damage the disease has done to Fengxian and think of her as damaged goods. To him Fengxian has just as much value as the day he lost her, simply because she exists. Forget an attitude that's rare in the red-light district, that attitude is rare in the entire setting, which is acknowledged as extremely patriarchal.

Lakan also gets a chance to redeem himself somewhat during the Shi Rebellion. By the time Maomao is kidnapped, it's not because Lakan has been lazy - we see that he's been actively involved in the investigation about the feifa, with a chilling understanding about what improved firearms technology could do for military tactics. He is actually using his position and subordinates appropriately, setting Lahan to investigate the financial trail, which provides Jinshi the concrete proof needed to officially put the rebellion down. This time, the danger to Maomao is not Lakan's fault, and when he realizes she's been kidnapped, he does whatever he must to get Maomao back.

"Silently, Lakan turned toward Jinshi. Then he got up, knelt before Jinshi and pressed his fist into his palm in a gesture of respect. 'I come in supplication. I humbly request that you mobilize the army to strike against the rebel, Shishou.'

Lakan was a grand commandant, in other words, a secretary of military affairs. Jinshi understood what it meant for such a person to ask for the army to be mobilized."

Jinshi observes that his motives have nothing to do with the good of the nation and he is entirely concerned with his own, selfish needs, but while Lakan's motives may be selfish on behalf of the nation, he IS actually acting the way a father should. Maomao is in danger and his priority is doing whatever he must get her to safety, whether that be using the full authority of his rank or putting aside his pride to get Jinshi to mobilize the army.

Neither Malice Nor Virtue

Book 11 gives us an interesting look at Lakan, first in the war conference where Gyoku-ou is gauging Jinshi and Lakan's support for invading another country and we see that Lakan does not care.

"'What do you think, Sir Lakan?'

Lakan once again stopped working his Go problems and studied the map intently. He wore the same look with which he would appraise a board game…

'I don't know about your reasons or excuses. All I know is how to win at Shogi,' Lakan said and then he started arranging the pieces on the map. The aide gave Jinshi an apologetic look.

There was no malice in Lakan - but neither was their virtue. So long as something didn't harm him or his family, he paid it no mind. If there was a chance to participate in an interesting game however - that he wouldn't miss…to the strategist war was just a combination of his favorite games; it was a Shogi match using human pieces and a game of Go in which you captured real territory."

Jinshi's evaluation of Lakan is rather damming. The man has neither malice nor virtue. He cares only about himself, his family and his simple pleasures. This is the core of the issue that has doomed his relationship with Maomao, who despite having inherited a great deal of Lakan's characteristics, values two things above all else in her relationships; work ethic and compassion toward others.

Lakan desperately wants that paternal role with Maomao, but his behavior means that the roles are often reversed - when they are forced to interact, Maomao is often stuck taking care of him, thinking about what will be best for Lakan so that she can maintain her own peace as much as possible. He cannot possibly be her parent if he insists on being a perpetual child to those around him.

And indeed, Jinshi treats him like a child, cutting Lakan's support out from under Gyoku-ou by laying out for him that his daughter and his uncle would both be hurt by this war, giving Lakan a reason to care.

Rikuson

While Book 11 is rather damning in it's evaluation of Lakan as a truly neutral figure, there are hints that Lakan is capable of at least expanding his circle. Rikuson provides first a different perspective of Lakan than we're used to, giving us his first impressions as a child;

"Among the nomadic tribes, it was said that some herdsmen could distinguish each and every one of their sheep - but Rikuson could never do that. Maybe Lakan saw people's faces the same way Rikuson saw sheep.

'Well, what do you do when you really need to remember who someone is?'

Lakan was silent for a moment…"I remember them by the shape of their ears, or their height. I look at the quality of their hair. Memorize the stink of their sweat. Or I listen for the pitch of their voice…'

'Wouldn't it be easier to just remember their face?'

'I don't get faces. I can see people have eyes and a nose and a mouth, but when I try to put them together they get all tangled up and all I can see is a Go stone. Now the size of a person's nostrils, the length of their eyelashes - those, I can understand.'

So he didn't remember an entire face, just specific details about it. That sounded exhausting. No wonder he only did it for the most important people."

Rikuson is right - that DOES sound exhausting. With this perspective in mind, it makes more sense to the reader why Lakan constantly appears lazy and apathetic; because he's always riding the edge of exhaustion just to function. And because Rikuson hasn't had to live with the consequences of Lakan's carelessness, he is better able to empathize with how Lakan interacts with the world around him.

Later, after Rikuson has killed Gyoku-ou, Lakan walks into the situation and instead of exposing his former aide, he protects Rikuson.

"'He was already murdered when you entered the room. So you killed the rebel - is that not right?

It was, of all people, Lakan standing there…What was he doing here?

…Ah, Rikuson thought, it was all over now. There was no hiding anything from Lakan. He had neither good intentions nor bad, but would simply lay out the facts…

'You heard the man,' Lakan said to those around them.

'Wh-What do you mean, Grand Commandant Kan?'

'Hrm? He's telling the truth. He killed the rebel who killed the man. Where's the crime in that? If anything, this is all your fault for leaving such scant security.'

…There was much murmuring, but the general consensus was that if Grand Commandant Kan said it, then that was that…Their suspicion of Rikuson had been dispelled in an instant."

You'll note he doesn't lie for Rikuson. In fact, he offers a perfectly truthful understanding of what happened. The man is Takubatsu, whom Rikuson did in fact find murdered when he entered the room. And Gyoku-ou had essentially taken Jinshi hostage and was actively undermining the Imperial Brother's authority and legitimacy, which does make him a rebel.

But in protecting Rikuson, he offers a counterpoint to both Jinshi and Rikuson's observations that he has neither malice nor virtue, good intentions nor bad. Perhaps it is just that Rikuson has earned Lakan's liking and loyalty over the years, but it is growth.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Where Lakan has earned moments of redemption and growth, it is when he has shown that his fun is less important than those he cares about. There is an opportunity within the story for Lakan to act as Maomao's father in a way Luomen cannot - in the matter of her marriage.

If Lakan is willing to put all of his intuition and political cunning behind Maomao's choices regarding marriage and family, then he has the chance to finally perform an act of duty by his daughter that would establish a reason for Maomao to begin to display filial piety toward him.

But Maomao's marriage would absolutely challenge Lakan's fantasy of playing 'daddy'. It would literally require him to give away his child but more critically, it would mean giving up his fantasy of Maomao as a perpetual little girl and fully acknowledging the grown woman that she has become.

Whether Lakan is wiling to put Maomao's needs first above his own will be the crux of his character development. At no point has Lakan been malicious, but his carelessness has done more to shape Maomao's early life than any other influence. Could he do better? Perhaps. Will he? The answer to that question and how it affects Maomao's adult choices will shape his role within the story going forward - whether he will continue to doom the one relationship he wants more than any other in service of his own needs and fantasies, or if he will sacrifice them to do his duty by his daughter when it matters most.

[i-dared-myself]

Home (Yours) For The Holidays

Stray Kids x reader

Requested by anonymous: the reader would be stray kids ninth member and a foreigner.) how do you think it'd be like to spend the holidays with each of the members's families? 🤔ex. i feel like changbin’s family would travel for the holidays or have a fancy dinner (and def wouldn't mind the reader joining them if they couldn't go back to their country to be with her family). 🤗

•You felt really awkward about it, so you decided to spend the holidays by yourself. In your room.

•“I’m glad we got the holidays off,” Changbin remarks, stretching out his arms. “What’s everyone doing?”

•Everyone talks about their plans with family and friends, and then it’s your turn. They all face you expectantly with smiles.

•You clear your throat. “I was thinking uh, of getting takeout. That way I don’t have to cook.”

•Chan grins and tilts his head slightly. “Aw, that’s nice. I totally get families who don’t cook for the holidays. Dishes are a lot of work.”

•You force a smile. It’s embarrassing to have to correct him. “No… It’s just me.”

•Jeongin looks horrified. “You’re eating takeout? By yourself?”

•“Well I don’t really have family around here.” You shrug. “And you guys are my friends.”

•Seungmin swallows. “Oh. Well…”

•“We can’t just let you do that!” Jisung scowls and stands up. “You’ll spend it with us!”

•“What?” You demand. “No! You guys have a good time with your family and friends. I’ll binge my shows here.”

•“But that’s really sad,” Hyunjin says. “Nuh-uh. You’ll spend it with us.”

•You get a whole week off, so the members rotate days with you. You protest, but are flattered by their insistent tries to give you a good time.

•“You’re like the kid that we split between for the holidays!” Felix tells you cheerily. “We just got divorced, and now we’re struggling to evenly split time…”

•You glare at him. “Shut up! I didn’t ask you to do this for me!”

•“Aw, you love us!” Chan teases, scrunching your cheeks together.

•Minho raises his hand. “I claim you tomorrow.”

•“That sounds bad,” Changbin comments. “Don’t say that again.”

•So you spend the next day with Minho. Apparently he didn’t tell anyone that he was bringing you, so they were startled to find a stranger on their doorstep.

•After introductions are made, Minho shoos you off to the living room. It’s slightly awkward, but they warm up to you quickly.

•Minho joins you again and puts out drinks, and you take a mug. He gets scolded for not letting them know you were coming, but you’re assured it’s not your fault.

•They tell you what a pity it is that you won’t be going home to see your family, and how you’re always welcome over. Minho is scowling as they fawn over you.

•The night is pleasant and Minho smiles more than you’d ever seen. You meet his cats and since they apparently like you, now you have to pay each month to see them.

•You call it a subscription service, he calls it feeding his babies.

•The next day is with Jeongin.

•Apparently he forgot you were supposed to go with him, because you wait outside in the cold for ten minutes before texting him. You can’t feel your fingers as you type out your message, and then a call is coming through.

•Jeongin is panicked and says he’s sending someone to come pick you up. You blink and don’t respond for a moment, because what???

•The car ride with a complete stranger is very awkward. You don’t know how they’re related to Jeongin, but you’re just hoping you got into the right vehicle and aren’t being kidnapped right now.

•When you get at Jeongin’s family’s house, his parents are lecturing him for forgetting about you. He apologizes a gazillion times and vows to never forget you again.

•Then you go to the bathroom, and the house is empty when you’re done. You’re wondering where everyone is, and then your phone buzzes.

•Jeongin is frantically apologizing for forgetting you again and you can hear people yelling at him in the background. They come back to pick you up before taking a walk around the neighbourhood.

•Changbin has apparently chosen the next day with you.

•He tells you to dress fancy, and you try your best to live up to whatever expectations he might have. You put on your best clothes, and you do your hair, stomach rolling with nerves.

•Changbin takes you to a fancy restaurant and introduces you to his family. You’re very unsure of yourself, since this is an entirely different setting than what you’ve experienced so far.

•But you order your meals, and make small talk. There’s a lot of questions about how nice Changbin is or isn’t, and you feel a lot of pressure.

•“He’s, uh-“ You swallow nervously. “Changbin is very polite and kind.”

•They all nod along and Changbin’s face is red as they talk about how they raised him right. But then the conversation swerves to embarrassing childhood stories and he desperately puts an end to it.

•Hyunjin takes you to his house the next day.

•It’s a quiet evening, and you would even call it refined. At least, more so than your average day with Stray Kids.

•They show you the finger paintings Hyunjin made as a child, gushing about how they always knew he would be talented. You smile along, taking photos for later.

•They let you take photos of baby pictures as well, and you’re practically giddy. You’re going to show them to everyone else and there’s nothing he can to do stop you.

•Except he does try to stop you by pinning you to the ground and attempting to steal your phone. You struggle for a moment before screaming, and his mom runs in.

•He gets scolded and is made to apologize to you, although you know you’ll pay for it later. He promises as much before his mom narrows her eyes at him.

•Jisung drags you along on the next day. He isn’t bringing you to hang out with his family, but some old friends instead.

•They’re very eager to hear about what working with/living with/suffering through Jisung all the time is like. You laugh and tell them that he’s great, and get a pitying pat on the back.

•You go out for a meal, and then go out to the mall. You and Jisung wear masks and hats and his friends call him a gang member.

•You reply that he’s not fierce enough for it, and maybe, just maybe, he could be a playground bully. He puffs his chest out in outrage and yells (Loud enough to gather attention from strangers) that he would take your lunch money if he knew you in high school.

•You and his friends both laugh hysterically, making Jisung pout. You feel bad and assure him that he’s very tough, because look at those biceps. He could totally mug someone.

•Jisung nods. “Yeah… I could mug someone if I wanted to.”

•An old lady shuffling by squeaks snd clutches her purse tightly and begins moving at a faster pace.

•Seungmin seems reluctant to take you with him.

•You repeatedly tell him that you’re more than happy to stay home, but he shakes his head and forces you into the car. Seungmin introduces you to his family and they all smile at you.

•“So this is the friend he’s always talking about,” his dad remarks, grinning from ear to ear. “He speaks so highly of you.”

•The tips of Seungmin’s ears turn a bright red and he mumbles to you how they’re lying. How he’s never talked about you because he hates you.

•You rub his shoulder with a smug smile. “Sure. But I know that you loooove me and I’m your bestest frieeend.”

•He flicks your forehead as everyone files inside. That night, you see his bright smile. The I’m-truly-happy smile, snd it’s contagious.

•He seems to be in his element, and you’re so glad he let you tag along. He even lets you hold his hand when you walk home because he’s in such a good mood.

•You spend the last day with Felix and Chan.

•They tend to miss their family as well, so they hang out together. You’re honoured to be invited to their little tradition, as exhausted as you are from the week.

•Felix nudges you at the boba store you went to, reminding you to order. Chan gets yours from the counter when it’s ready, handing it to you.

•You’re mostly quiet and let them do most of the talking, listening with a happy smile. It’s light-hearted and relaxing.

•You finish your boba as you watch a movie with them. They’re on the fifth one in the series, but you don’t mind. You know you’re about to fall asleep anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

•As they try and adjust you so you’re more comfortable on the couch, you mumble out a slurred, “G’day, mate.”

•Chan sighs fondly, shaking his head. He and Felix resume the movie, quietly discussing how much the week must have tired you out.

Taglist:

@velvetmoonlght @jinnie-ret @hansmic @imeverycliche @iwuberic @mbioooo0000 @strawberryscentedd @lezleeferguson-120

[vldunchartedregions]

Voltron Season 8 Meta Introduction

Hi! Welcome to "Uncharted Regions."

Now that it's been several years since Voltron Season 8 came out, the news of Netflix's removal of the series on December 14th, 2024 shook the fandom and pop culture as a whole.

You may be wondering... 1) Huh?! 2) Why?! It's a Netflix Original! 3) I loved this show, I don't understand! I was the same, too. We were all a little confused. However, licensing rights were ending to Netflix and Netflix doesn't want to renew. Fair play.

As someone who worked in a corporate company who also provides live streaming services + has a degree in television production, I have a better understanding of the executive decisions at play that comes down to it. It was not too hard to decipher why when you know what went on in the trenches of the Voltron fandom from 2016-2018.

The bottom line is that Netflix marketing did not match the source material provided, and there was intensive discourse across multiple facets of the fandom. You can imagine Netflix were not fans of the outcome of the series, and may not have even been told by Dreamworks the outcome of the series when Season 8 dropped; especially when Netflix's global social media accounts openly admitted to shipping Klance on Twitter.

Regardless, we're not looking at who's to blame, but you do have to wonder how such a large international miscommunication between Netflix, Dreamworks, and Voltron's IP holders went down the corporate funnel.

...I digress, let's move on.

As many people did from the news of it's removal (which also surprised the official Voltron accounts), I got back into the Voltron fandom really quickly and tried to rewatch as much as I could before it's inevitable removal from Netflix.

I haven't touched this show in years, friends. Not since 2020. The rewatch showed me one thing: that this show is breathtaking, stunning, and at it's core - it represented change. It's truly one of it's kind. To have the crew from Avatar: the Last Airbender, and Legend of Korra working on it on such a high level? Hell, there was an MFE pilot spin off in the works.

There was a lot of promising stories to tell with new outcomes and twists with a classic IP such as Voltron. It was promising a new future and fresh takes with comics, games, and so much more.

Now, alike to most viewers, I was there when Season 8 dropped. Hell, I was at the NYCC 2018 panel where they gave out these posters (which will be VERY relevant to this meta, I assure you):

The hype of Voltron Season 8 lead to a FULL panel that got closed off mid-way in the line. Many fans flew from across the globe (including myself) to get a glimpse of the showrunners, cast & crew, and a unique slice of the pie into Voltron Season 8's trailer.

The excitement was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before in a fandom. It was extremely thrilling, the trailer was outstanding, and Season 8 wasn't too far away.

First shown at New York City Comic Con 2018, get a look at the #Voltron production team's take on the upcoming final season of Voltron Legendary Defender, streaming on @Netflix tomorrow!

Then Season 8 dropped on Netflix... December 14th, 2018.

It was jarring. There were plot points that made no sense, obvious edits to scenes, censorships like a One Piece 4Kids dub, characters cut and pasted into scenes, and storylines were slapped together like a messy sandwich. And it was incredibly obvious too.

The fandom noticed and reacted accordingly - asking questions and demanding answers left, right, and centre. The showrunners responded through podcasts and statements on various levels.

The answer was clear... their vision wasn't the only vision going into the show:

"You know, as we sort of got through the process of premise, script, it went all the way down the line. It got storyboarded. And then at some point, you know, we received pushback from the studio and you know, we were sort of a little confused, like, “hey, how did it go, like, so far down the line before we received pushback?” And you know, this is not like a, like, a vilifying of DreamWorks or anything, like, every exec that we ever interacted with was, it was like, “hey, we understand why you want to tell this story. We understand where you’re coming from. It’s a little bit bigger than that. You know, there’s-there’s other, sort of, controlling parties with Voltron which makes it unique. It’s not just a DreamWorks-owned property.” And it just–I think logistically it just got really, really weird."

Joaquim Dos Santos - Afterbuzz TV interview. Source: https://dragonofyang.tumblr.com/post/183820127648/abtv-mar-4-transcript

---

Fans promptly started a petition two days later to release the original Season 8. THAT'S how obvious the editing was and how obvious the deterred, original vision had become.

As a disappointed fan and someone who studied media analysis intrinsically for university, I did try to rewatch back then, and it was painful to watch. What happened? There were layers of context on the cutting room floor and scenes didn't make sense. Hell, each episode title always has a double layered meaning, and even those layers were stripped from the core of the episodes for the most part. This left fans to say, "Whaaaaat is going ON?" The entire fandom was hurt by what had occurred.

The cast & crew that were also unaware of these story changes were also quite hurt, too. To make it more apparent, the showrunners were pretty open on speaking about leaving the project as well on the Buzzfeed Aftershow Podcast, but they simply couldn't:

LM: It’s not-it’s not just like, “Oh I can’t afford my mortgage!” You know, we have a crew that we care about we brought onto this show. If we abandoned them, we-we don’t know what’s in store for them. We don’t know, do they get to stay on? Do they get to keep their jobs? Does someone else come on and then they’re working under someone else that they didn’t sign up for? Or–

JDS: Or they’re working under someone else that’s just gonna be like, “Alright, we’re just gonna finish the show and not really do right by the rest of it.”

Lauren Montgomery & Joaquim Dos Santos - Afterbuzz TV interview. Source: https://dragonofyang.tumblr.com/post/183820127648/abtv-mar-4-transcript

---

We all wanted answers, and sure, some members of the team did speak up - but it didn't provide clear answers on what was the go with Season 8 being edited so far into post-production.

Now, this blog isn't dedicated to restoring Season 8 to it's original format (that would be lovely, but we have to be realistic - it has been 7 years and no google drives of the original season 8 have dropped so far). No, no.

That might happen (I've got a positive mindset on it - someone has to have a back up copy on some hard drive somewhere), or maybe it will be released... in a green sock reality.

Rather, this blog is dedicated to all the fans (new & old) whom want a sense of closure to as to why their favourite show on Netflix from 2016-2018 dropped the ball so hard for Season 8.

Not thinking much of it, I had posted a twitter thread detailing how the ending with all the lions flying off looked a little odd.

...And so, I received an anonymous inbox on New Years Day, 2025

This DM... was the start to an unravelling of webs and a rewatch that crumbled immediately. The cracks were all there.

I rewatched Season 8 with this information at hand with a few of my closest online friends, and we were shocked at how much there was to uncover. We were absolutely FLOORED by what was found, including incredible pieces of evidence from the fandom itself.

Now... Why does this matter? It's been YEARS and I'm sure we're not the first to uncover some pieces of information (See the #FreeVLDS8 movement - so, so many good finds there as a foundational point of reference).

Some of what we've uncovered in these Uncharted Regions has NOT been covered by the fandom before, nor does it scratch the surface of what's been found as of yet.

Welcome to the Uncharted Regions of Voltron Season 8.

Our aim for this meta is to acknowledge the following with detailed evidentiary support: 1. The editing of multiple episodes & scenes.

From there, we will look at the alleged changes: 2. Plot points & scenes that may or may not have had cuts. 3. Providing official-style edited shots comparisons to portray how some scenes should've looked in the original Season 8. 4. Piecing each episode / episode orders together (as best as we can) 5. The original ending.

Cheers to the beginning of a new meta, a new hope, and a new perspective on what truly happened to Voltron Season 8.

(Allegedly; for entertainment purposes only)

The one thing I humbly request is PLEASE... No hate towards the showrunners, cast, crew, or the official Voltron IP holders. There's a lot that has changed culturally and intrinsically within the industry over the years and this outcome was not something they could simply control. Let's be adults, look at this open conversation with empathy and love, and respectfully, let's indulge in this topic with grace - your feelings, however, are incredibly valid when it comes to this meta and what we uncover, as there's many alleged finds that may shock the fandom.

Let the journey commence.

Check out my Twitter page for any and all updates in regards to this insanely detailed meta; including teasers and screenshots! Please and thank you.

[alien-magnolia]

Tainted Love

Fic description: This is a dark fic. 18+ MINORS DNI. Dom!-coded Billy Loomis + hyperfeminine, sub-coded afab reader: they are married, committing crimes together <3 and having a wonderful domestic life <3 besides all the blood and murder. Smut/horror genre: kinks include service!, blood!, knifeplay!, ropes!, choking!, spanking!, free-use!, SERVICE, d/s mental dynamics, majorrrr daddy!kink, exhibitionism

If you like this post, pls engage, comment, reblog! It means so much to me, Ty <3 WC 2.7k

October 10, 1996.

The dark red, yellow, with tinges of brown leaves tumbled down the secluded suburban street. A tan cottage stood at the end of a cul-de-sac, yard neatly trimmed, wind chimes ringing on the porch where they hung. A dim light inside. A black van pulls into the driveway, scaring away a few neighboring birds. The door shuts — a young man enters the house.

——

You were just about finished with tonight’s dinner when your partner came back from college. You loved Billy dearly, and so you did almost everything for him. It was your dynamic — and he loved it as well. You served him, your Billy, your daddy.

How exactly did you get involved with a serial killer? Involved far enough to be an equal partner in his crimes? Involved enough to be so cautious and excellent at keeping first-degree murder a secret? Involved enough to live with him?

—-

It began last fall. A chilly November morning, fog rolling in on the campus. You walked in your pretty pink outfit, donning lace and frills, kitten heels, and butterfly hair clips. You were only nineteen. Young. Innocent. You were looking for your ‘Introduction to Early Modern Literature’ class, yet happened to wander over on the other, more secluded side of campus. You stumble over a rock on the sidewalk. You fall, beautiful rosy cheek now stained with a gash of bright, red blood.

Your hands, your knees, cut up from the bumpy pavement. You start crying. This was just too embarrassing!! With your social anxiety and shyness, you really hoped nobody had seen this. You did not like to be perceived by people — that is just how you were. You look around — not a soul to be seen.

Except for a man — lean, sitting on a brick bench, cigarette in hand. You couldn’t make out how he looked, yet fear overtook you as he started making his way over. You start to scramble up, hoping to run away from him, yet your bruises were just too intense for you to do so.

His deep voice asks you, “Hey, sweetheart, you okay? You nod. “Yeah jus’ a few scratches. Can’t see too well in the fog,” you sheepishly explain. “Hey, no worries. Here, I’ll help you up, yeah?” You oblige, taking his big calloused hands in yours as he helps you stand. You finally get a good look at him. God — he was handsome. More than handsome. Extremely, extremely, attractive. You got wet just by looking at his deep brown eyes and crooked smile looking down at you.

“Hey. Don’t be too shy, hun. Come. Want me to help you fix those bruises? There’s a bathroom right around the corner, he suggests. You nod silently, agreeing, following him to a door on the left.

He begins wiping your bruises with a wet towel, trying to stop the bleeding. His tongue pokes out of his mouth as he focuses. You see more of him now. He wears all black. Smells like cigarettes and a dusty old basement. “So what brings you to this part of campus?,” he asks, brown eyes focused on your bruises.

“Just got lost. Needed to find one class but couldn’t. Maybe I’ll skip today anyway…,” you trail off. “Aw. Today’s your first day huh?,” he coos at you, with a smile you just couldn’t figure out. “Um. Yes. I don’t really know the campus, so…,” you quietly answer him, afraid to look into his eyes. His voice, his face, it all made you thirst for him even more.

“I could tell. Hey. Maybe you should skip. Been looking for someone to hang out with,” he suggests, finishing up cleaning your bruises, putting a few bandaids on you. “I’m Billy, by the way.” You introduce yourself to him, a little smile forming on your face. You ended up skipping class that day, spending time with him in that secluded courtyard, smoking cigarettes, listening to The Smiths. You ended up fucking in the bathroom a few hours later. You knew that you were indubitably attracted — glued to him and everything that he was. Something did feel a little off about how he treated others — you did not care.

So it was.

——

~Present day ~

You hear the keys jingle in the doorway, heavy boots make their way towards the kitchen, where you were. You currently donned a short little black dress, fishnets, with nothing underneath. You were waiting for him.

“Hey, sweets. Looking good today,” he compliments you, as he takes your small hand in his, moving you closer to him, wrapping a hand around your waist. You giggle as he peppers your cheek with kisses. “Sweetie. Want’a ask you something,” he insists, quietly, yet confidently. Your big eyelashes blink as you wait for his question.

“Wanna play with me tonight?,” a sinister smile adorns his face, his brown eyes filled with a hint of malice, excitement. Your eyes match his. You loved playing with him, your sessions, where you gave over complete control of yourself, to him. You trusted him completely. He led, you followed.

You were his. His prey, his little girl, his accomplice. You were his, devoted completely, mind and body. The two of you even had matching tattoos: a forever symbol of your unique relationship.

“Yes, daddy. What first?” He chuckles lowly. “Glad you asked, princess. We’re going to the van.” You smile back at him, as he gives you a kiss, pulling you closer to him by your neck. You knew what to do, sticking your hands out, as he takes a rope from the nearby drawer.

The rope felt nice around your wrists, you liked to watch him tie it. You didn’t want your freedom when you played with him. “Daddy’s girl, all tied up, huh? Come sweets. Let’s go to the van,” he sneers at you in the best possible way, as he leads you outside. Still, he manages to grab a coat for you, alongside some knives. You suspected that both of you will be using those later.

“Before we leave our house, thought we might have a bit of fun in the van, what’dya say? I think it’ll be nice for my little girl, yeah?,” he croons at you, caressing your cheek, before gripping it harshly, brown eyes boring into yours.

You’re on your knees for him in his dingy van. His waffle knit white t-shirt feels nice on your bound hands, as you see him start to unbuckle his belt, dropping his jeans to the floor of the van. “Give daddy’s cock some love, hun,” you hear, and his strong arms work to push you down to the floor. You look up at him from your back, you see him towering over you, cock in his calloused hand, slowly rubbing it. He lowers his cock and balls onto your face, you love the feeling of his heavy ball sack on your chin. His cock was wide, not too long, yet wide, weeping, with three beautiful veins and a beauty mark <3

It was all red and ready for your wet throat. You took him eagerly, sucking so much pressure, you felt his silky smooth voice moan out in ecstasy. You keep sucking, swirling your tongue around the mushroom tip of his cockhead. He pulls a knife to the side of your cheek. You stop.

“Look what daddy’s got here hun. You don’t like this little toy, do you?,” he taunts. With that, he lowers the knife to your chest, where he makes a gentle cut on it. He liked to cut you with his knife. Another way to possess you, to mark you as HIS.

“Get up, sweets. Daddy’s gonna cum if you keep this shit up.” He chuckles, and helps you up, wiping that little cut he made with a towel. That same towel now goes in your mouth as a makeshift gag.

His hands tightly grip your hips, pushing you down onto the floor of the van again. Hips spread, gagged, hands still tied, you felt his finger swipe across your clit, down your labia, trailing over your wet, wet, pussy. Your hole was clenching around nothing!! He was going to fix that.

“Aww. Look at you , sweetie. Cheeks all rosy, ass up for me, ready to be bred,” he taunts. You only moan in response. “Does daddy’s little girl want to be bred, hmm? Like a little cow?” You moan in response, he tuts, and lifts your neck up gently. “What was that?,” voice low. Shit. You fucked up.

“Yes, daddy,” your voice is muffled through the gag. He smiles again, that dark smile of his. Sinister. Evil. Exactly what you wanted to see. Without warning, you feel him push into you. Wide, throbbing, filling that sweet spot exactly how you wanted. He went slow for just a little, relishing how good his little girl, his breeding cow, dumpster, was for him. Then he went fast. Too fast. You loved hearing the sound of his cock and balls slap against your ass, your squelching pussy <3

You feel so full of him, you saw stars as his wife cock drilled deeper and deeper into you. You felt him twitch inside, your favorite part!! “Take my cum, baby. Fuckin’ take it,” you hear him grunt, as his hands press your body down into a mating press, his stomach now on top of your back. He had you caged in, tied, gagged, absolutely abusing you on his wide cock. You were in heaven. You were his now, in this moment. The both of you came, and of course, he did not let you squeeze his cum out of you.

“Keep it in, hmm? Want our visitors to know that you’re daddy’s girl.” You nod and smile, making grabby hands at him once he unties your wrists, and takes the towel out of your mouth. He lifts you up into his lap, peppering your face with kisses, smiling up at you as you giggle.

He helps you get dressed, gently cooing at you as you show him the carpet burn you got from being on your knees for so long. He kisses it to make it better <3 and even puts on your white frilly socks for you, helping you with your little black kitten heels and your dress.

“Where to next, daddy?,” you giddily await his answer. “Now, we drive. To meet our special guests for tonight,” he replies, your smile now matching his level of sinister. The both of you were about to go have some fun, with some unconventional guests as well.

——-/

It was now almost midnight. After your play session in the van, you couldn’t wait to play in front of your guests!! The both of you listen to heavy metal as Billy speeds down an abandoned road, the rotting leaves blowing towards the sides from the van passing by on the road. He pulls his van up a few meters close to the woods, and parks.

“Coat, baby.” You nod, and he puts your black puffer on. He leads you to the backseat, where a black trunk with a lock is placed. He opens it. His mask. Ghostface. He puts it on his hip, putting on black clothes over his nice ones. He gives you gloves, and a knife. One for himself as well. Binoculars.

“Come, hun. This way.” You follow him up into a tree, where the both of you take turns with your binoculars. He takes out his block of a phone. How you loved the 90’s. He dials the number, telling you to watch their reaction in the windows. “Hi. What’s your favorite scary movie,” Billy's voice drawls out to his unsuspecting victims in the mansion that you were currently hiding outside of.

Billy continued to harass them on the phone, beckoning you down the tree quietly, and closer and closer to the person’s backyard. Billy stays on the phone, pointing at you to stay put, and opens the window on the first floor. You wait outside, as he slips on in.

You knew what to do. You’d wait for his signal, then follow him in. Then, came your favorite part: where Billy shows you off to his victims <3

You see his hand signal through the window. You step on inside, and see the couple tied to each other, this time with metal chains. Billy is wearing his mask. “Just in time for the show, sweetheart. Kneel.”

You do as said, loving the absolutely sadistic smile on his face right now. He puts on your leash ( only for when in front of un-consenting others) and has to crawl to sit at his knees. “You see here, my two pretties, you two are going to watch me fuck my little princess here. After that, I’ll decide if you get to live,” he chuckles in absolute glee.

“By the way, if you two decide to make a sound, or go at my little girl here, I’ll stab ya. Sounds good? My, my, what a perfect, scary movie,” he narrates to himself, to you, to the two victims, who looked like they were about to mentally lose it. <3

He skips with the foreplay, the blowjob, the fingering. He gets right to it. He wants his victims to see his pretty girl, on his own terms. He roughly pushes you down onto the floor, strong hands positioning your hips in place, giving your ass a few harsh spanks <3 you hear the belt buckle slip, and soon enough, you can feel the warmth of his already hard cock near your puffy pussy.

Your eyes are drawn to the couple. You loved being shown off, being watched. They did not want to watch you. But that is okay. Billy is going to make them. :)

They watch in horror as he starts rutting into you like a beast, bloody knife that he used on one of the victims nearing your neck, staying there. The knife soon drops, he gives it to you to hold as he starts losing control. You were too, feeling so full of him, getting an extra serving of his cum :) was your favorite thing to do.

You smiled as the couple looked on in horror. Billy pulled out just the last second before, and came all over your face. “Look so pretty with my cum all over your face, sweet girl. Clean it up f’me, yeah?” You nod.

After you wipe it off, Billy steps back in front of the two victims. “See how nicely I treat my girl? I’m her daddy, after all. Just wanted to show her to you. She’s mine, forever will be. What a nice show the two of you got,” he chuckles, before stabbing one of them, the screams could be heard from down the block.

Billy finished off the other one, not before giving her a good slap and punch. <3 The pool of blood covers the entire kitchen tiling, making it seem red everywhere. It’s on your shoes, on Billy’s. He takes his mask off, and picks you up in his arms.

“Did so good f’me today, sweet girl. So proud of you,” he praises you. “You did good too, Billy. I love how rough you are with them.” He smiles again, giving you a tender kiss. “Let’s leave, huh? Go back home, watch a scary movie?,” he asks. You nod, staying still in his arms as he carries you over the blood, and back out to the woods.

The two of you make it back to the van. They won’t catch you. As long as you’re together, everything was just fine.