#guys stumpy is in the corner its fine

[amphibia-a-day]

Day 953 of Amphibia Screenshots

Episode: Anne of the Year

[manyblinkinglights]

MY PERSONAL TAKE ON UNITY-”HUMANOID” FERAL AVATAR RIGGING FOR VRCHAT

First of all: this is actually not that bad. If you avoid the many pitfalls I will lay out for you in this tutorial, the worst thing about the hookup process is the same thing that’s bad about everything in Unity: dragging the little thingies into their little boxies gets kind of tedious. 

NUMBERED LIST: 

1. Start with Rigify’s meta-human. 

2. Modify it by deleting extra bones, and

3. altering the hips and legs and shoulders for compatibility with VRChat’s full-body IK, as per Kung’s YouTube tutorial. 

4. Build your quad model around the head, neck, chest, spine, and hips of your Humanoid. 

5. Lock your Humanoid legs and arms out of weight painting.

6. Rig your quad model, and

7. Get it into Unity. 

8. Start putting rotation constraints on all/most of your quad model’s bones (I’ll tell you TWO BIG SECRETS). edit: I forget what two things were supposed to be the secrets. Pick whichever two things helped you most and let’s just call those the secrets. 

9. Build and test your avatar, then start tweaking your constraint weights until you get the effect you want!

**

ADVICE: 

part A: You can test an activated quad leg rotation constraint directly in your scene by applying it, and then grabbing your humanoid thigh or shin transform and rotating that, but YOU HAVE TO CTRL-Z IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS. NEVER apply a rotation constraint to a bone that’s been left out of its default position!

part B: Always, always, ALWAYS and only, only ONLY work on your Armature in Blender from full X, Y, or Z isometric view with X-mirroring on.  

KNOWN LIMITATIONS: 

The levelling bone in your backbone always points directly back, relative to root, from the user’s hips; they twist up and leave it behind if they turn from side to side too far, all the way around, or, god forbid, hit VRCEmote 6 (backflip). You cannot sexy poledance or flop onto the couch in this style of avatar without making a spectacle of yourself. 

If there’s some crazy calculus that’d spit out the exact right leg lengths and constraint weights to perfectly eliminate foot-vs-floor clipping at every height, I do not know it. There are just too many variables at play; put whatever leg lengths onto your quad that it requires, and then try to come up with rough, biomechanically-inspired values for your constraint weights such that your quad feet wind up near the same elevation as your Humanoid core’s feet when you enter the Humanoid sit position. If you do this your end result will be PRETTY DARN GOOD at standing and bending/dancing heights, but it WILL get squirrelly as you approach crouch. That’s just the way it is; in fact I recommend replacing the prone and crouch animation blendtrees with the standing ones. While this tutorial will generate an avatar that crouches and crawls around prone okay/amusingly, you do get sent into the floor in crouch/prone and there simply isn’t anything to be done about it. 

There is also NO WAY to migrate rotation constraints from one avatar to another. You can copy a fully-constrained avatar and hot-swap in your own edited mesh, but you (basically) CAN’T EDIT bones in an already-constrained armature without turning it all into spaghetti. 

**

ONE.

You need a working, full-body-tracking compatible biped skeleton to start with. But... there aren’t any out there (that I’m aware of) to start with, so I recommend scaling up a meta-human out of the Rigify add-on for Blender... here’s a guy walking you through that bit of it: https://youtu.be/DS885Sk1gSs?t=30 (we will not be making an “animation rig,” we are just getting a human-shaped Armature into the project with almost all of its bones named correctly already. So just do that part.)

TWO.

...and then deleting the face stuff, some other stuff, and the extra four non-finger hand bones out of each hand (make sure not to accidentally nuke part of your thumb, like me, because you might not notice until way later that you’ve given yourself a stumpy single-jointed thumb). You want to go from this:

To this:

I mean, I guess you could leave them, but too many useless bones will come back to bite you later if Unity decides it can’t figure your shit out and makes you drag every. single. handbone. into. the L and R hand slots yourself. Set yourself up for success and don’t skip this deletion step. Also, now’s the time to rename your hips -> spine -> chest -> neck -> head chain, since Rigify has them all as like spine01 spine02 etc.

Your penultimate guy:

THREE.

Now modify its thighs and hips as per Kung’s tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sfTEBAl8sA

Basically, for this armature in particular you need the tops of the thigh bones to be below the entire hip bone, as follows: 

AND you need the hip bone to be above the thigh bones (Rigify’s is too far back). Personally, I got good results from just grabbing my legs and scooting them backward. 

If you DON’T do this, PC people and three-point tracking people will still be able to use your avatar fine. But full-body people’s hips will jut forward in a super fucked up way. IF YOU FOLLOW THIS TUTORIAL EXACTLY and include a BEND bone, this will be a problem. IF YOU CUT CORNERS and disregard the BEND bone (and/or you choose to lock the hips out of weight painting--valid), you can skip this step. But you seriously might as well do it. 

IMPORTANT! The lengths and angles of your bones here determine, in part, the later behavior & vivacity of your finished model. I like this modified Rigify base because VRChat’s IK makes it nice and lively. If you use a different Humanoid base, like a ramrod straight turbocompatible one, or a cool but non-fullbody-compatible style one (hey, go for it! PC and three-point tracking people have rights too!) the flavor of your animations later on will be different! 

FOUR. Build your model around the head, neck, chest, spine, and hips of your inner Humanoid! Don’t hold me liable for anything that happens to you if you change the armature proportions, but based on this one time I helped a kid hook up their quad horse, you can get acceptable/interesting non-full-body-compatible behavior if you do change them (to perfectly follow your cool dragon neck or whatever). I will continue on as if you did not change them! Anyway, do your thing. If you’ve got someone else’s mesh for this step, do your best to pose it in a neutrally upright standing position, and then put the Humanoid in it like they’re the front half of a horse costume, scaling the whole rig up and down as necessary. Again, ANY CHANGES YOU MAKE TO THE PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMANOID RIG WILL CHANGE YOUR ANIMATIONS LATER, and break full-body compatibility if you go too far!  Here’s mine, see the little guy in there? Try to pick him out from the rest of the rigging:

Your head needs to be placed so it does a good job aiming its head/so you can set the view orb so you more or less see out its eyes, and your neck, chest, spine, and hips should be in its neck and forequarters, but your legs and feet DON’T have to match up with your quad forelegs or forefeet! Your quad feet can be anywhere relative to your Humanoid ones so long as your quad is in its symmetrical, neutral standing posture. 

You can see that mine are a bit in front. It’s fine.

FIVE. Parent the mesh to the armature (or uhhh is it the other way around? Whichever way around it is, do it) with empty groups. Go into your Vertex Groups panel and lock out the limbs--that’s shoulders, upper arms, forearms, hands and fingers, thighs, lower legs, feet, and toes. You want them zero and kept at zero (unless your want your arms for a taur). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG82fogtuCg WATCH THE ABOVE VIDEO IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY. :V You can run the auto weight paint from here and/or start dinking around with weight painting your quad’s neck however is most comfortable for you if you want, but you still need to

SIX.  rig your quad model! Okay, here’s the one big rule for your grounded legs (wings and funky lil extra limbs that just wave around can do whatever): 

you must leave your Rigify legs straight up and down, no angling outwards, and YOUR QUAD LIMBS MUST BE STRAIGHT UP AND DOWN, NO ANGLING OUTWARDS.  

See mine: 

You don’t have to have them all perfectly in line from the front like I do, you could have your legs be set at any widths (say, wider stance in the armature hind legs than in the Humanoid ones, if your quad has wider hips), but they HAVE to all be exactly straight up and down, just like the Humanoid legs are. I tried matching my actual gryphon limb angles like in normal rigging once, and it resulted in incorrect foot placement/limb angles when standing neutrally (because VRChat’s neutral stance is not a perfect T- or A-pose). It’s fine if they’re different heights, though--here’s a side picture where you can see that my hind legs are lots taller, and my forelegs a little taller, than those of my Humanoid core:

Okay so maybe this belongs up there under FIVE. but, since you CANNOT add any jaunty character to your quad by adding naturalistic/sideways angling in its armature, the mesh, instead, must deviate from the armature to give you the illusion of a jaunty stance, and I DO recommend doing (just a little of) this. Your bones don’t HAVE to be in the center of your mesh volumes to still work okay, especially when they’re only serving as relatively-restricted legs (knees don’t twist, and neither do a bunch of quad bones driven by them). So, feel free to “pose” your quad legs in an interesting way around their upright bones, especially when it comes to giving your hind legs a different character from your front ones. Otherwise it’ll be way more obvious they’re rigidly linked, despite their different proportions. I recommend angling the apparent set of your hind legs out just a little, so your hind feet seem to be set wider than your front ones.

Not only does this help give each set of your legs its own character, to help with the illusion that they’re actuating totally differently, and that these are definitely your own original character do not steal’s full custom animations and not VRChat’s default ones--but your back legs are going to be operating the reverse of your front legs. This means that when the wearer adopts a wide stance, with their feet well apart from each other (as in many dances), YOUR BACK LEGS WILL CROSS. The amount of space I left between my gryphons’ hind legs, above, accommodates the normal amount of moving around that people do pretty well, but be advised that making a beautiful character with its hind legs neatly, narrowly posed might hit you with some heartbreak later! (You could get around this by instead rigging your quad to have its forelegs be the reversed ones, but this might be a little disconcerting for a fullbody wearer; or you could give yourself a “pacing” gait, where both your front and back left legs step forward at once, but this is a glaringly visible design choice for the kinds of people who notice these things. If you do this, make it a choice, not what-you-did-because-it-turned-out-you-had-no-choice.) 

(I did a bunch of bogus shit to make it so I could switch between regular locomotion and a pacing gait, but that’s outside the scope of this tutorial.)

Now, your BOB, LEVEL, and BEND bones!

BOB: Somewhere on your armature, put an unparented bone (any size) along your midline called BOB. (I put mine below my hips and called it dingle.dangle.) Ever ported a model in and left something unparented accidentally? Remember how it disconcertingly gets “left behind”? Well, we’re using that phenomenon to our advantage! BOB will be our rotation reference bone for LEVEL and BEND. 

LEVEL: So, LEVEL. Your quad’s back/torso should be/have one big bone coming out of the back of your Humanoid hips, call it LEVEL. It should be the parent for all your quad’s limbs, except for anything you have coming out of the head or neck (idk, whiskers, chinwings, whatever).

BEND: BEND is optional, but recommended; a bone that also sticks out the back of your hips, and stretches out more or less to the end of your ribcage, maybe to the middle-ish of your ribcage. Mine is parallel to the floor but that doesn’t matter much, and weighted at around strength .4 to the ribcage behind my shoulders, a little bit of the back of my shoulders where they meet my body, and tapering off towards my waist. Basically when you wiggle this bone up and down, it should arch and bow your back a little bit, over the top of your other weight paints, in whatever way is visually acceptable to you. Mine does this:

SEVEN.

Now, into Unity. Navigating Unity is mostly beyond the scope of this tutorial, but if you can add a VRC Avatar Descriptor, you can add a rotation constraint. It works the same, you just go find the bone (”transform”) in the hierarchy that you want and add a rotation constraint component to it. 

So, get your .fbx out of Blender and into your Assets folder or whatever. Click on it and go to Import Settings, set it as Humanoid, apply, configure. Pick out and add all the bones of your Humanoid armature to the Humanoid panel (if it hasn’t autopopulated--it might!), reset your pose and then enforce T-pose if necessary, delete the reference to Jaw, put Chest in and make sure there’s no Upper Chest, etc., all the usual things. You should see a little green T-posing person in the forequarters of your quad! Hit Done and you’re done. (Look up ordinary VRChat avatar 3.0 import tutorials if you’re having trouble with this step; you’re Humanoid at this point already, same as anybody). Now drag your newly-confirmed-for-Humanoid .fbx into your scene. Open up its hierarchy and look for the LEVEL bone; it should be under hips. Put a rotation constraint on this bone (click on it, Add Component button, search “rotation” or “constraint,” pick Rotation Constraint). Click the little plus to add a target, and drag BOB in there from the hierarchy. Leave the strength 1 above and 1 below (the 1 below will always be left alone at 1 unless specified otherwise), and click Activate. There! You did it! Now your whole entire ass won’t wave around!! You can hop right in and Test Avatar if you want--your head and neck will be the only things that move while your legs will all be stiff like a piñata, but by god, your back will be staying level. Try crouching and going prone!

Enjoy this first, sweet taste of quad success if you’ve gotten this far, because there are many, many ways to screw the rest of this process up, and even with me guiding you, you might find some brand new ones. Applying a rotation constraint correctly is as easy as above, but here are some pitfalls: if you move any bones in Unity with active constraints on them, or bones upstream of an active constraint, they get fucked up. If you activate a constraint on a bone that’s been moved, moving the bone back afterwards will fuck the constraint up. LEAVE YOUR MODEL IN ITS DEFAULT POSE AT ALL TIMES, UNLESS YOU’VE MADE SURE TO SWITCH TO GAME MODE. (Sometimes you get lucky and you can rescue a ruined bone by deactivating its constraint and then going to Modified Component -> Revert on the transform itself. But don’t count on it.)

If you change any values within a constraint while it is active, it gets fucked up. Uncheck “Is Active” before modifying any constraint!

But wait, there’s more! If you hot-swap your model (minimize Unity, open Blender, do edits, export your new .fbx, delete your old .fbx in the save dialog and replace it with your new .fbx, WAIT A FEW SECONDS because opening Unity in the middle of the hotswap borks everything, maximize Unity, it thinks for a second, then accepts your new model while hey presto preserving your rotation constraints), AFTER ARMATURE EDITS, so, again, if yo-- if you--*about to sneeze voice*--

If you hot-swap your model after armature edits, the whole thing can get fucked up and you might have to re-apply all your rotation constraints again. 

hhhhh that’s better. Now, you MAY hot-swap your model after wholesale bone additions and deletions, but rotation-constrained armatures lose their tiny minds if you change constrained bone lengths, positions, or angles!

Moving on! You just did LEVEL, now let’s do BEND.

BEND is constrained at .5 strength to BOB. Add a rotation constraint to BEND, set the strength to .5, hit the plus, drag in BOB. (Dial your reflexes in on this sequence because you are going to be doing it a lot.) The purpose of BEND is to bring a little life to your otherwise ramrod-stiff quad spine; you can experiment with strengths (of weight paint, of constraint weight, of bone length) but I recommend you try copying me to start. So that’s: BEND, a bone sticking out to about the end of your ribcage, weight painted at .4 or so to your ribcage and gradienting smoothly away, constrained to your unparented bone BOB at .5 strength (waving around without any constraint put too much wiggle in my gryphon). 

BOB, LEVEL, and BEND are the major engines behind my quad rigging giving an acceptable effect! You don’t need to throw $90 at Final IK if you’ve got some time on your hands and BOB, LEVEL, and BEND. :)

Now for ALL THE REST OF YOUR LIMBS!

A note before we begin. Unity rotation constraints can’t ever go past 1:1, that is, there is no way to “amplify” a motion to make it a bigger one. You can only approach parity with the reference motion, never exceed it. The clearest example I can think of is a tail. My tail is six bones, and I thought I could constrain each one to the head at .1 and they’d “stack” and make it so a small motion of my head would put an attractive curl in my tail. Lol, nope. The first one rotated the tail .1, the ones that followed each inherited that .1 rotation from their parent and had their constraints satisfied, and did nothing, and I had a tail that barely moved at all. (Blender’s bone constraints work differently and allow this kind of amplification; you can also test things out in there, but I could never figure out which settings would give me Unity-like behavior.) So, with that in mind, bring up a gait cycle of your target animal. If a video is too confusing, look for some static images (like an animator’s gait cycle) that show the gait. Try to see which bones rotate the most, and which rotate noticeably less. Use this to inform your constraint weight values later. If you picked a static image, you can even measure the rotations throughout the cycle to see which move most and least! I don’t know enough to use exactly specific language here, so, to the extreme literalists in my audience.... sorry about what I just said. If you find your ability to magically pick up on what I mean is poor, I’ll just give you my gryphon numbers later! Or you could just try some stuff, like having every bone at max strength & seeing what happens, and then picking just one to turn down to .5 strength and testing again. That should clarify the concept for you quickly.

Alternatively, the quick-and-dirty “I’m NOT HERE to acquire any sensitivities I don’t ALREADY HAVE” test is to just try to get your quad feet as close as possible to your biped feet’s level/height when the biped thigh is picked up to 90 degrees and the shin hangs straight down (the “sit position”).  Here’s how mine do:

Now, that’s half of the challenge, noticing which bones in the legs ought to be more or less responsive, and then roughing out an idea of the relative weights/responsivities each leg bone needs to make that happen, deciding which bones are liveliest and should be set at or near 1 and which are stiffest, or least active, and should go around .5 (you might even dip to .3). But (you might scream) what are you weighting these guys RELATIVE to? What are their TARGETS? Well!

...I’m not going to try to explain this. I’ve confused everybody every time I’ve tried. :p Just start with the shoulder constrained to the thigh, then the next bone down to the shin, then the NEXT bone down to the thigh again, then the shin again, and so on (thigh shin thigh shin thigh shin). This will get you 98% of the way there because most of the bones in a tetrapod leg-chain operate in simple opposition to each other. Basically, by rotating the shoulder like the thigh, when you raise your leg, your quad will start to raise its shoulder. By having the next bone rotate like your shin, and then continuing the pattern after, contracting your knee will make your quad contract its whole leg. This breaks down a little at the paw-and-toes, or the distal complexities of the horse, but just start with this pattern by rote. Then test it, and if one of the bones is obviously backwards, swap its target to the other one and test it again.

Last concept: if you have two bones in a row weighted to the same thing (like where you’ve got two bones that do not work in opposition to each other), the second one needs to have a bigger weight to the target than its parent. Because it inherits the parent’s rotation, and then only adds whatever amount that’s bigger. So, for my forepaw, I have it at .5 to the shin, and then the toes are at 1 to the shin. The whole paw acts as a shin-unit, but weighting the hand less than the toes allows the toes a little of their own flair. :v

(Okay that was a third-grade-biology-textbook lie. I actually have my upper paw .5 to the shin and my toes/beans at 1 to the foot. I might have a little bit of weight to the foot in the upper hand/palm part of my eagle foreclaws too. But I don’t recommend you add any weighting to the foot until you’ve got a good baseline result with just weights to the thigh and shin!!!!! The foot does things that you might find confusing and upsetting and which can introduce a LOT of incorrect limb placement/clipping, especially the further up the chain you allow it to interfere; it should be used sparingly or (as in my hind legs) not at all.)

Finally, the more your bone lengths and angles resemble your target animal’s (use a skeletal reference!), and the better you are at deciding which bones should respond a lot (and be weighted with high values) and which should respond less (and be weighted with lower ones), the more visual interest and species-specific character your quad avatar will have! You can see my gryphon’s rig above; here are its constraint values (where I go LR to LR, the left bits of the Humanoid control the left bits of the quad; where I go LR to RL, the left bits of the Humanoid control the right bits of the quad):

Back: LEVEL: 1 to BOB BEND: .5 to BOB Wings: upper_arm.LR.001: .5 to upper_arm.LR forearm.LR.001: .5 to (forearm.LR .5, hand.LR .5) hand.LR.001: .5 to hand.LR Hindlegs (targeted to the OPPOSITE side human legs): thigh.LR.002: .7 to thigh.RL shin.LR.002: .6 to shin.RL foot.LR.002: .9 to thigh.RL toe.LR.002: .7 to shin.LR Forelegs - EAGLE: thigh.LR.001: .7 to thigh.LR shin.LR.001: .8 to shin.LR foot.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR toe.LR.001: .5 to (shin.LR 1, foot.LR 1) toe.LR.003,5,6: 1 to shin.LR toe.LR.004: 1 to thigh.LR Forelegs - LION: thigh.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR shin.LR.001: .5 to shin.LR foot.LR.001: 1 to thigh.LR toe.LR.001: .5 to shin.LR toe.LR.005: 1 to foot.LR Tail: tail.001: .5 .5 to head tail.002: .6 .6 to head, etc. ***

REITERATION OF IMPORTANT PROTIP: Again, the quick and dirty test of your targets and values is to switch to Game mode and hike your Humanoid’s leg up so the thigh is parallel to the floor and the shin’s straight down (the sit position). Does your quad also hike its leg up, so its foot is in the neighborhood of your Humanoid’s foot level? Are all of your bones bending the right way? (Any that aren’t need their target switched to the other kind of leg bone.) If your quad is more or less “also contracting its leg so now it’s up,” then you’re either finished, or really really close!! If your quad daintily raises up its lil’ ol’ leggy for you, test your gait in-game and decide whether it has the right “feel”. If one of the bones is too stiff or too crazy relative to your reference animal’s style of motion, change its value so it behaves better, and hang the sitpose test. People mostly spend time standing, anyway, and your quad will likely look great standing and moving around even if it doesn’t do well at the sit test. 

[fantranslatorbychoice]

Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi Volume 6 Intermission 3 - Kasuga and O-ryo

T/N: Yep, it’s a double premiere guys, I hope you all enjoy. =)

As always, if you like this translation, you can heart it, share the link, reblog, I just respectfully ask that DO NOT REPOST ELSEWHERE. This is my contribution to the scant English content of this fandom, and I worked really hard to finish this thing, it’s not like I just copy-pasted everything. I even had to build the kanji in Jisho one by one. Try it and you’ll see what I mean.You can rave about this, rant about this, reply, etc. but if possible please link back to this page. If you’re unsure how to do that, just copy the web address of this page. If you’re on a blogsite just insert the web address as a hyperlink as a link back to here. Honestly if this light novel was officially-published in English, I wouldn’t even be doing this right now... And if it did, I’d take this offline to support the publishers and Yuuma-sensei. Creators support creators, is what I believe in. I’ll prolly do 1-5 once 6-10 has been done, or however long I can manage to translate the raw texts, it can take a toll at times.  As previously-mentioned in earlier chapters, if you stumbled upon this one, the two seasons of the anime covered volumes 1-5, so other than the extra details, you didn’t miss much stuff.

No spoilers lol

P261 "Hmph. You're the newly-hired kid? Really, you're named Kasuga? Aren't you a stumpy little tanuki-girl? I am O-ryo, the future Wakaokami. I'll train you under me, and I'll be sure to drill the job of being a waitress into your head."

I remember well, the day that I first met O-ryo sama. I am Kasuga, a Bunmon Tanuki, while still a child was chased off from my home by my Hachiyo Baba-sama to experience the outside world, and along with my uncle Chiaki who also has nowhere else to go, we inquired in, and started working in Tenjin-ya. It was that first day. That person who called me stumpy, has hair and skin as white as snow, it was the conspicuously beautiful snow lady. Her personality is of someone who hates losing. She was a selfish Sempai, but has an indomitable and strong willpower to rise to the top, and I thought that surprisingly, I have come to like this person. As such, in order to gain her dream position of Wakaokami, she exerted herself no matter what it took. P262 A woman who fights her battles to win. I came to her side and I recorded her heroic battles, and I wrote about it in my diary.

"Hey.... Hey, why are you asking something while falling asleep, Kasuga-kun, HEY!" "Whaaaa~" In the middle of talking about something regarding a Hachiyo's marriage at great length, sitting on my heels I was nodding off to sleep. Since early morning I have been with Aoi-chan, and I have been going about here and there. I was feeling confident. I was dozing off in front of Byakuya-sama. Is Byakuya-sama angry or is he surprised? "Good grief. You're a reliable and shrewd girl girl, and I think that it's beyond expectations that you're going to get married to a Hachiyo... yet I am worried that they'll find faults on you. That is a position that has many enemies, do you understand? "Yeah, I get it. I have watched Aoi-chan for a long time. But Aoi-chan is awesome... Even though she's in a disadvantage, she was aware of her own strengths. Furthermore, in Tenjin-ya, when Aoi-chan gets married to Odanna-sama, isn't there anyone who grumbles about it?" "Hmmm. in that case, isn't that a problem? Because nobody's complaining, probably there's a group that's P263 thinking about rubbing her out of existence." "That point, I am fine with that. I plan to not make enemies with my demeanor, an incomptetent person making a blunder. Well, at any rate, from the very start I have been incompetent." "..." Byakuya-sama narrowed his eyes, and with a snap hit the corner of his mouth with his fan. I thought that he was going to say something but, he just scolded me and released me after saying "You can go now" . Wahh, after standing up from sitting on my feet, they fell asleep and started tingling painfully... Holding the Maneki-neko** coin bank, I planned to go back to Yugao. Along the way, the waitresses looked over here, and started gossiping and whispering to each other. Up until now the friends that were calling me in carefree voices, and the sempai that used to fiddle with and pushed me around, now they pass sideways, and bow their heads subserviently, and flees anywhere. Oh well, I could understand why they became like that but... I come in contact with the management staff that were like Shizuna-chan and they are normally composed, but I'm a normal girl, aren't I? I feel like I'm a sore thumb sicking out. "Kasuga, Kasuga" "...Chiaki" From the other side of the hallway, peeping over here looking worried, it was my uncle, the tanuki. T/N: Maneki-neko, the beckoning cat, famously known for bringing in luck. It's said that it was originally named after a cat that waved to a monk to go inside a shrine and the monk almost got struck by lightning or something, so it was a lucky omen. P264 He approached while calling for me. "What is it, from now onwards I'm helping out at Yugao." "It's not that, you were called for by Byakuya-sama, and I got worried somewhat." "It's nothing. It's just that I'm developing a souvenir product with Aoi-chan." "Why you, aren't you scowling at me?" "Why, my relative shouldn't speak about me flippantly." He isn't necessarily overprotective and he wasn't saying anything like that, but ever since the old days Chiaki has been worrying about me. He's just a nice and charming person who took care of me, and he always looks after those that are just like me. Though I'm already fine, even at this age he still worries about me... "Chiaki aren't you staying behind here in Tenjin-ya?" "Yep. I'll continue working here. Even though I was thinking of coming along with you." "It's fine, it's nothing. I've always been taken care of by uncle, I cannot function properly being a Hachiyo's wife." "...Kasuga" His eyes gloomily welling up, holding down the corner of his eyes, Chiaki went "That tiny Kasuga has grown to be praise-worthy" "Ahhh stop it already, don't be gloomy.. Get over it." Shh... Uncle you're annoying. P265 While being paid extra care, I could feel myself fading away. Our relationship, even though we are family, here we cannot become too overly-familiar. The love that tanuki give to each other are the strongest among Ayakashi, as such they aren't entrusted to to other people, which makes tanuki unaware about so many things such as getting close to and connecting with strangers. Those people, now matter how much we studied them, we couldn't find them... With regards to those, I thought I learned those in Tenjin-ya.

"Oh.." In front of the passageway that connects the door to Yugao, there is someone who is sneakily peeping in. Isn't that... "O-ryo sama, what are you doing over that place?" "Kyaaa!" O-ryo sama jumped up suprised. With a sluggish expression, she slowly looked back. Opening her mouth as if about to talk, hesitatingly, she made a weird face by sticking her lower lip out. "H-hmph." In the end, O-ryo sama took her leave without saying anything. P266 I slightly tugged on O-ryo sama's sleeves. "What now?" O-ryo sama icily stared down at me with that severe gaze. Oh well, I've been used to that gaze. "Uhm, I believe so, that O-ryo sama will likely aim to be Wakaokami again." ".... what?" "Within Tenjin-ya, there's something that only O-ryo sama can surely do." Pulling my hands immediately from the hem, I madly dashed towards the inner garden where Yugao was. The O-ryo sama who was aiming to be Wakaokami. And the one who made her dream come true, the O-ryo sama that became Wakaokami. To me, O-ryo sama is dazzling, despite the many enemies she makes, being hated by her colleagues, being gutsy and only wants to rise up into the world. The one I adored. After doing so many different things, O-ryo sama eventually became demoted from Wakaokami, and yet... When O-ryo sama becomes Wakaokami once again. Truly, I support that from the sidelines..

End of Intermission 3, Volume 6. Previous - Chapter 8 Next - Chapter 9

References:

Wonderful site for the youkai references

Other stuff I used to do this: Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary (you can buy here, I’m not sponsored btw). I was about to buy the older edition but then the newer one came out 2013 so I bought that instead. Worth buying since I was able to find nearly all of the words I needed just by stroke pattern alone.

Merriam-Webster's Japanese-English Dictionary (the red-covered 1996 version is apparently out of print right now). This is what I have been using for a very long time, I bought it when I was still a fetus (yes I am old so what lol), and after so many years, when compared to newer editions, I still prefer this one since its entirety is Japanese-English, the English to Japanese gloss are just 16 pages tops, so you get more Japanese words for your buck. But that’s just my opinion, maybe other people prefer the Jap-En x En-Jap IDEK.

Basic online dictionary, Jisho. Knowledge of verb conjugations  and other words are necessary since not all have entries.

If you can read Japanese, you can buy the whole set in Amazon Japan, they’re shipping worldwide now, I think.

[springtimebat]

A Family of Draculas

Chapter Three: Wasp Eyes

My child wasn’t human. He never was. He never could be.

He arrived on a grey day in Autumn, when the winds were particularly strong. He was born with cloth ears and button eyes. I lifted him into my arms and he gurgled, his felt lips stretching into a stitched grin. His stumpy legs kicked my side with a strange giddiness, as if he’d known me for a long time and was greeting an old friend instead of his mother. Curled up between his legs was a tail, scaly and pointed. He lifted it high into the air and allowed me to stroke it.

“I’ve made a demon,” I chuckled. The baby, small and comfortable in my arms, gurgled in agreement. Mrs Darling, completely forgotten and left in a dark corner of the house, suddenly gave an exasperated groan.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Mrs Darling grumbled, “Children are thoughtless creatures. Sometimes they get your hopes up, sourdough. Then they’re born and they are...bitter disappointments.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” I grinned, tickling my baby’s tummy.

“I don’t need experience,” The old lady huffed, “I know enough parents to know that baby will be more trouble than it's worth.”

“The only child you’ve ever liked is me ma'am. At least, I think you like me.”

Mrs Darling looked at me and, suddenly, her eyes didn’t seem to fit her face, which was all boils, warts and scars. Her eyes were that of a small child’s, wide and longing.

“Sometimes,” She started, and she now gazed at the son in my arms, not directly at me. It seemed she didn’t have the strength, “Sometimes...you seem far older that you appear to be... sometimes you even seem older than me. Your father was like that.”

“I guess it’s just in my nature then,” I sighed, hoping to change the subject. The witch never liked to talk about the Unicorn. My father always made the old woman sad and wistful. I looked down at my baby again. He seemed bigger than before and his eyes were slowly opening to the light.

“Look ma’am!” I gasped, holding my son up to the sky, “His eyes! Look at his eyes!”

“His eyes?”

“They’re glowing! They’re yellow! As yellow as a lamplight!”

“Yes. Indeed they are.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I did. I saw eyes like that once.”

“Where?”

“Your father’s pair. He has his grandfather’s eyes,”

I stilled, “We don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to.”

The witch was quiet for a moment. Then she turned to the front door, tears in her eyes.

“I think I’ll go out for a walk,” Was all she said.

And, just like that, she vanished into the woods.

I growled in frustration and held my baby tighter. He began to struggle against my chest and gave a little cry that reminded me of the birds that sang on the roof at night.

“ They say that those birds are the souls of the departed, travelling to the lonely places of the world,” I whispered, setting the baby down on the floor, “What if I cried like that as a babe? No wonder my father gave me up!”

I wrapped the boy in an old blanket, pushing him onto my knees as the clouds shifted outside.

“She’s gonna catch a cold out there,” I muttered to the silent room, “She’ll catch a horrible cold and she’ll blame me.”

My son giggled and grabbed my forefinger with a chubby fist. His hands were manufactured out of different strands of felt, cloth and cotton, just like his face. But his fingers seemed to have melted, fused together . They were unable to move fluidly. He tried his best though, struggling to keep a grip on my flesh. I grinned as his brow furrowed in frustration.

“I should really give you a name,” I whispered, “I can’t just keep calling you The Boy or Wasp Eyes can I?”

He gave a little nod, directing my thumb up to his mouth.

“Huh, you have no teeth. Fancy that. You’re just like a sock puppet. I guess I could name you after your father...you do kind of resemble him, no matter what that old hag believes.”

The baby gave a small yawn, too focused on my hand to care.

“Fricorith’s a fine name. I don’t know what it means but I’m sure it’s something sweet. I tried looking it up in the books I could find but it was never there. It was as if the name never existed. As if the man had been erased.”

Our son pulled away from my hand and lay back in my lap, his golden eyes straining, trying to keep open.

“Your father’s gone, tired old thing,” I smiled, “It’s ok. We can think of a name later.”

I rocked him with one hand and adjusted the blankets with another. Thunder pierced the sullen ground outside and my bundle whimpered against me. I grabbed onto his hand tighter and stooped over in the dark, more shadow than flesh and bone in these long night hours. A phantom. That’s what I was. Motherhood overtook me.

“It looks like she’s gonna be a long time. She hasn’t even come back to avoid the rain. She intends to get the flu. There’s no doubt about it.”

I stroked my son’s hair, a mixture of real baby curls and matted braids. He began to toss and turn in his nest, clearly tired but too nervous to sleep. It was a feeling I knew all too well, sleeping alone for months with only the corpse cradle for company.

“You really need to sleep, little guy,” I sighed, formulating a plan, “What if momma tells you a story? Will you sleep then?”

He stopped wrestling with the sheets and gave an anxious nod, looking about the room for any monsters.

“Very well. This is the story of the Witch and the Unicorn.”

{The Witch and The Unicorn: A Bedtime story for Ragchildren}

Once, long before you were born, a Witch and a Unicorn met at a bar.

The Witch was withering away by the fires, as she often tended to do. Her job was to rake her claws among the glowing coals and fly with the smoke out of chimneys. This evening, the witch had a night off from ember work. Yet, she seemed transfixed by their wonders still, hoarding its light from ordinary folk. She knew something was coming. Something special was coming to her.

Midnight passed by and the Unicorn entered through a back door. He hadn’t slept in days, his skin was a pale silver and his hair a long plait down his back. Yet, he continued to attract merchants, thieves and hustlers, who clutched scissors and desired his hair, his limbs, his moon-white eyes. People who wished to see him taken apart in jars. Because of this, he hid in the Witch’s smoke and the bar’s natural smog. He sat before the old woman, kneeling in ashes, frozen as if he were a statue made out of marble. The two had never met, only heard of the other through strange songs and wishes caught on wild winds. The Witch stared at the Unicorn with young eyes, her heart beginning to strain. The Unicorn watched the Witch with contempt, sick of being gawked at by people who were not worthy to.

No introductions were made. But a conversation took place.

“I have a girl.” The Unicorn said.

“Do you now?”

“Yes. She is four months old. She will be five months old next Thursday.”

“Fascinating.”

“She holds lightning inside of her.”

Silencio. The Witch continued to gawk, uncaring of proper etiquette.

“And I’m sure my blood flows through my veins.”

“Mhmm. Why are you telling me this?”

“I heard that you are interested in bringing on a ward. A ward that you could teach them magic.”

“I may be thinking of doing so in the future. Why, dear thing, would you want to give away your daughter to me?”

“The girl will hate me. It will hate me for what I’ve done.”

“The mother-”

“Dead. Not gone. Just dead.”

“I see.”

“She died with the boy nestling into her. She died delivering.”

“The boy?”

“The other twin. We had twins. The boy died hours after. He had fur, silver fur.”

“Does the girl-”

“She’s just like her except for her abilities. She sings and the wolves feed her for me.”

“The Corpse Cradle will crave her.”

“She will be able to support herself in time. Those first few years... she will need help in those first few years. These are my terms. You must promise her your protection.”

“Very well, luvvie. I’ll take her off your hands.”

“How will I find you again?”

“Just send her to me with chalk on her feet.”

“Thank you.”

“You may visit if you wish, my dear.”

The Unicorn said nothing.

“If you wish it, luvvie.”

“We’ll see, old woman.”

A few days later, the Witch brought a small girl into the woods. A baby who enchanted wolves and seduced the trees before she was even able to speak. She offered to pay but the girl’s father didn’t care for money. And so, the girl was brought up to live in the woods, to feed and placate all the eeries things of the world. Eventually, she became an eerie creature herself.

The girl never saw her father again.

{Exeunt}

The Corpse Cradle let out a hysterical cackle as I finished the story, thrusting mismatched fingers and toes out of separate fleshes.

“Laugh all you want,” I growled, “It got the baby to sleep.”

At mention of the baby, the cradle made a disgusting slapping noise with its teeth and one of its stomachs twisted inside out.

“Don’t do that, it’s unbecoming. Besides, it won’t get you anywhere. You will never touch him. I’ll kill you before you ever touch him.”

The Cradle groaned and flipped onto its side, its bulbous veins pulsing underneath their skin. I rolled my eyes, shifting on the dirty floor. The baby mumbled in his slumber and rolled around in his makeshift bed.

“I wish he was here,” I mumbled to myself, “I wish he could see the baby.”

I turned back to the Corpse Cradle, eyes narrowed.

“But he’s not. He’s never coming back and it’s all your fault.”

I waited for a laugh, or a groan; any signs of life. Instead, the creature stayed silent, feigning sleep.

Rolling my eyes, I clutched my baby tighter, pulling him to my chest like a shield.

“They’re not gonna get to you, Wasp Eyes. I’ll die before anyone gets you.”

We fell asleep, curled up together on the floor, and dreamed of wild winds and Unicorns. The Corpse Cradle watched us from the dark, its domain seeming more and more like prison bars as the hours flew by.

[uglypastels]

True Reflections // Tom Holland

request: how about something with Tom, where his girlfriend is insecure about her body and he comforts her and just tells her how beautiful she is (idk if you do smut, but add some in if you want)

(a/n) It’s late, I’m tired and emotional. I have no idea if this is actually any good. also, as I said, it’s really late so I can’t be bothered with editing (will probably regret this later whoops) 

word count: 2098

warning: angst, light swearing, self-consciousness, mention/indication of smut, indication of self-harm, depression. but it's not all that bad, there is a lot of fluff. I promise. 

One more kiss. That’s all he needed. Just one more to seal the deal. Her soft lips pressed against his as his hand supported her neck lovingly. Her hot fingertips grazed his chest and to his dismay, she pulled away. He tried to lean into her but she giggled: “Hmm, babe, I really have to get up now.” 

“Fine, but get back here quickly, I’m not done with you yet.” He smirked as he watched her scoot out of the blankets that were wrapped around their naked bodies. She put on her underwear and walked to the bathroom. While she was gone Tom let out a deep breath with a smile. His hand behind his head, chest still glistening in sweat, head spinning. 

All his senses were overthrown. He could only smell her sweet scent mixed with his. He couldn’t feel anything except for her lingering touch. When he closed his eyes, he only saw the image of her beautiful eyes looking up at him. His ears were ringing with the little moans and curses she let out while his lips were burning with the desire to taste her again. The boy was going crazy and he was fine with it. Being in love did that to you after all. 

Some time passed and she still hadn’t come back. The space in the memory foam next to him regaining its normal shape as the covers started to get cold. Tom hadn’t bothered to check the time but he knew it was longer than she usually took. Something was wrong. 

“Babe,” he called out, “I miss you.” It was a reoccurring joke in their relationship but when he didn’t receive any response he really started to worry. “Babe?” Still nothing. Tom sat up and picked up his boxers from the ground. He threw them on and jumped over the bed to the open door. 

The cold wooden floor sent shivers down his whole body but it was nothing like the anxiety he was feeling as he jogged through the small hallway to the bathroom. He knocked on the white door softly. “Love, you okay in there?” No response. He tried spinning the knob and to his surprise, it was unlocked. 

Carefully, preparing himself for anything that might be facing him on the other side, he opened the door. The hinges creaked as usual. What he saw broke his heart. There she stood the most beautiful girl in the world, looking at her reflection. One of her arms crossed over her chest, as the other rubbed her neck. She was slowly turning from left to straight ahead to right and back. Any time she turned too far she would strain her neck to see the rest of her body in the mirror. 

Her face was showing disgust. Hatred towards what she saw. Shame at her own body. She didn’t turn around when the door opened behind her. Her eyes didn’t even glance up in the mirror to look at her handsome boyfriend walk in and stand next to her. So handsome. Too handsome for her. 

“Why do you love me?” It wasn’t supposed to come out. She meant it as a silent thought. Not to be heard by anyone except for her own demons. To be left in the dark corners of her mind forever. But he heard it… and it wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear.

“Is that a serious question? You know why I love you.” He made sure to remind her every minute of every day. It was the first thing he told her when they woke up. He told her at breakfast, at lunch, and at dinner. He told her no matter if he was sitting right next to her or on the other side of the world. It wasn’t always with words. Sometimes it was as simple as letting her pick out his outfit when they went out because she had much better taste than him. Or buy her those cookies she liked so much because they reminded her of Christmas even though it was July. Or let her screw up the lyrics of his favorite songs because he loved to hear her sing.

“I’m serious Tom.” she sighed, finally turning around. He noticed how she was holding in her stomach. Looking back up to her eyes, she said with the most serious tone he could form: “So am I. But fine, let me remind you.” He walked up to her, placing his hand right above her hip and the other on her cheek. Her eyes were glistening in the yellow light of the bathroom. He could feel how her skin had turned cold from standing naked in the bathroom for so long.

“I love you because you are funny, smart, kind, loving and so much more. A day with you feels like an eternity because I can’t help but cherish every single moment. Every little thing that you do in your own special way. I love it how you always stay up all night on Halloween just to play a Christmas song the moment the clock strikes midnight. I love it how you scrunch your nose when I say something you don’t agree with,” he chuckled when she did what he just explained, “Just like that.” he gave her a small kiss on the tip of her nose.

“I love it how unique you are. Every inch of your body is covered with nothing but love and care for others and you are beautiful… absolutely divine.” She had been beaming but when he spoke his last sentence the smile faded and she scoffed.

“You don’t have to lie to me.” She pulled away from his grip and looked into the mirror just to leave him standing there, mouth agape and eyes wide open.

“Excuse me? Have I ever lied to you?”

“I’m not beautiful Tom.” her words came out strangled. “I’m hideous.”

“Darling, please don’t say that.” He wanted to reach out for her hand, to turn her around from that cursed looking glass. She just stepped away.

“But it’s true. I’m- ugh!” she groaned in anger and frustration. “My hips and stomach make me want to vomit. I have saggy boobs and rolls…” tears were forming in her eyes, “my legs are short and stumpy and so are my fingers. I have acne and stretch marks all over the place,” her eyes fell on her hips and thighs. “Not to mention the scars.” She moved around so the light would hit all the marks she was talking about. Suddenly, her lower body was covered in thin pale lines, some accentuating her body shape with the purple-red tinge in them, some even thinner and parallel to each other, Tom had memorized all of them. Sure to kiss every spot of hatred away from her when they were in bed.

“My nose and forehead are huge, while my eyes are tiny. My smile is horrendous and don’t even get me started on my eyebrows.” Her hand went up to smoothen the hairs in her left eyebrow, the one with a little scar going through it. Tom knew she despised it but to him, it was one of her finer details. Just like anything else on her body.  

“Darling-” he couldn’t listen to it anymore. She was killing herself with her own words and he was dying alongside her.

“And my hair, god, my hair. Always a mess, I don’t know how you can live with me… how you can even look at me. I don’t deserve you. Everyone else knows it. All of those people are right. I am just a waste of space and I should just let you go. I shouldn’t keep you away from something better. You can do so much better than-”

“That’s enough!” Tom didn’t mean to yell. He just wanted to pull her out of the trance that she put herself in. He should have seen it coming. It happened every time. Her mind would subconsciously wander off to the darkest place and she would start to say all of those horrible things. Just staring in front of her. Eyes blank and unfocused. She turned her head in shock when he shouted out. Tom lowered his voice.

“Love, you are breaking my heart. I can’t listen to it anymore. For the love of god, please stop.”

“But it’s true Tom, all of it. I’m hideous! I am a disgusting, piece of shit, that doesn’t deserve you or anything you have ever given me.” The tears were now streaming down her face. She looked broken. The last few pieces only hanging off of their corners to each other. Ready to fall apart.

Tom took a step forward and she took a step back. Even though the floor was clean and smooth, every time she back away from him it felt like stepping of lego and shards of glass. Only when her back hit the tiled wall could he finally close the space between them. But before he did take that final place, the last pieces fell apart. The little cries turned into sobs as she put a hand over her mouth and slid down to the floor. Her forehead leaning on her raised knees. Tom immediately slid down the wall next to her. She fell to her side, her cheek on his bare chest. Tom could feel the tears trickle down his skin as he stroke her hair. That all he did. He didn’t say anything. He just let her cry.

They stared there for a while. Her sobs softened but her breathing stayed uneven. Tom was looking up at the ceiling, recounting the panels over and over again, holding back his own tears.  He only looked back down when the grip on his arm loosened, when her breathing finally found its rhythm again and faucets in her eyes ran out. He pulled her close and leaned in to kiss her forehead.

“Darling,” he whispered, “You are the most beautiful girl the world has had a pleasure to have created. Everything you see in that mirror is exactly the reason why I love you. I love every inch of your skin and yes, that includes every blemish, spot, scar or mark you got. I love each and every hair on top of that pretty head of yours as tangled or messy it might be sometimes.

“You are the love of my life and you make me the luckiest guy in the universe just letting me be with you. Not to mention to see you, to touch you, to love you...It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. We got each other and that’s what’s important. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

“Tommy,” her voice was still shaky. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, darling. Now let’s get you to bed. You’re freezing.” She nodded against his chest and like that he helped her get up, not letting go of her for a second. His arms snaked their way around their favorite place in the world, her hips. Like that, they were walking back to their bedroom. Before they stepped through the doorway though, she turned around in his arms and kissed him. It was a long, passionate and sloppy kiss. Tom’s grip on her hips tightened and he heard her whimper just the tiniest bit.

They simultaneously pressed deeper into the kiss. Her small hand now on his jaw, her thump right under his bottom lip. He smirked into the kiss and at that moment her lips started to make their journey sideway. Beginning at the corner of his mouth, down to his jaw to his neck. Tom rolled his eyes in pleasure when he realized what she was doing. When he felt her suck on that sweet spot of his, adding on to the purple mark she had left him as a present just two hours ago.

It was all the motivation he needed to grip her tightly and pull her up bu her legs up to his hips. Her legs wrapped themselves around him as her arms did the same around his neck. Their lips connecting again. As he lead her back to their room, Tom hoped she would never let go of him. That she would let him stay in her life. To let him love and cherish her. To show her how truly wonderful and beautiful she was. Let her be there for her. Help her piece herself back together. Let his kisses be the glue that she needed to be a whole again.

The End 

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@andwhatdostarsdobest   @tomhollanders2013 @thelazypangolin @spiderrrling @merryspidermas @tom-holland-and-textposts @lovelyspidey @hazsterfield @nerdraging4point0 @hey-its-grey @winterwondholland @tominachristmasjumper @rachramblesstuff @theprincesofasgard @fratboievans @musiclover1263 @peter-parker-life @moonkissedtom @christmas-marvel  

[bluewindfall]

The dull, insistent vibrating buzz of his phone drags Chi Zhen from his sleep, and as he cracks an eye open, the screen lights up with Lu Li as the caller. It’s currently three thirty in the morning, but knowing Lu Li, he could still be working.

Chi Zhen snaps up from his bed, kicking his comforter aside and picks up the phone immediately, shaking the sluggish fog from his head. “Lu Li, what’s wrong?”

“Chi Zhen,” Lu Li says, voice oddly muffled through the phone, “I need help. Can I come over?”

“Yeah, of course, uh, did something happen? Are you okay?” Chi Zhen asks, “Lu Li?”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Lu Li replies. “Sorry.” He abruptly hangs up and it leaves Chi Zhen feeling a discomforting tension in his gut. Worry creeps down his spine like spindly fingers, dragging cold trails. He paces back and forth in his bedroom for a minute or two, then gets dressed agitatedly.

Lu Li hadn’t explained the situation and Chi Zhen doesn’t know what to do to prepare. Should he get a first aid kit out just in case? Has he made progress with the case? But it’s Friday; Lu Li would have gone home already. He shouldn’t have been out investigating.

Chi Zhen boils water absently as he waits. He needs some caffeine, but if he makes coffee, he’ll have too much energy. He dumps a bunch of tea leaves into the teapot, letting them steep carelessly. It’s a cheap grocery store brand anyway.

A quick series of knocks on the door jolts Chi Zhen out of his thoughts and he rushes to shut the stove off, unlocking the door.

He feels a measure of relief as he realizes Lu Li looks fine; he’s not injured and he doesn’t appear to be worried at all.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” Lu Li says as Chi Zhen grabs his arm, pulling him inside swiftly.

“Yeah, but it’s fine. Want some tea? What’s going on?” Chi Zhen asks, leading Lu Li to the kitchen.

“I forgot, tomorrow is Easter. I usually take Yinuo to a local egg hunt, but it’s cancelled because of the rain tomorrow.”

Chi Zhen frowns, pouring the tea carefully. “Yeah, it’s definitely going to rain. That could be messy.”

Lu Li ignores the tea and crosses his arms, leaning on the counter. “I thought, if you’re not busy....” he looks up with a questioning glance and Chi Zhen shakes his head. “Then, we could hide eggs in your house.”

Chi Zhen takes a sip of his tea before he answers to give himself a bit more time to process what Lu Li’s going on about. It’s been a while since he’s even given Easter more half a second of passing thought. He can hardly remember what the point of looking for the eggs was.

But Lu Li is giving him an expectant look and seriously, this guy would move heaven and earth for his daughter, of course he’s going to make Chi Zhen help him out at four in the morning.

“Wait,” Chi Zhen says, “I thought Easter was on Sunday. Tomorrow’s Saturday,” he points out.

Lu Li gives him a confused look. “Today is Saturday.” Chi Zhen checks his phone and, okay it is Saturday, what was he thinking?

“It takes a long time to plan things out. We need to get moving. Can you help or not?”

“Okay, okay. What do you need?”

“Eggs and something to put inside as a reward.” Lu Li says.

“Like candy or whatever?” Chi Zhen grabs a pad of paper from his living room table and writes a small list as Lu Li rattles off potential options.

“I read online, there was an idea to write small tickets as rewards, like: staying up for an hour or going to a movie.” Lu Li says, flicking past a few pages on his phone. “We can add some of those and candy, and other things we can find. First, we need plastic eggs that open up. We also need real eggs to paint later. Or dye. But, the contents need to be removed and if they’re not completely dry, the paint will smear.”

Chi Zhen secretly wants to laugh a little. He’s taking this so seriously, doing research and planning.

They take Lu Li’s car to the supermarket and Lu Li buys a dozen large eggs, carefully checking for broken or cracked ones as he sets the carton down in the cart cautiously.

Lu Li instructs Chi Zhen to grab plastic eggs while he looks for a syringe of some sorts.

It takes Chi Zhen a considerable amount of time to find the plastic eggs, and Lu Li’s back in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Chi Zhen stares at the bag of multicolored plastic eggs and ponders. “How many eggs do we want? Do we need that many?”

There are so many options: there’s a bag of sixty medium sized plastic eggs, another bag of forty and a few twenty egg bags. Then, there are these combo ones which have five large eggs along with fifteen medium eggs, but the colors are significantly shabbier.

Chi Zhen looks in the cart and grabs a small yellow stuffed animal. It’s soft and adorable as all stuffed animals innately are, with round spots of pink dotting its cheeks, shiny black eyes and short stumpy little buds for arms. “Is this…”

“It’s a duck. I think.” Lu Li replies, without looking away from the plastic eggs.

“Are you sure? This isn’t even, it doesn’t even have wings,” Chi Zhen protests. “This is not a duck.”

Lu Li grabs the twenty egg bag and sets it in the cart. Then, he reaches back in and takes the bag out again. “Let’s check the crafts store first, then come back here. It’s right next door.”

“Oh. Let’s split the work then. I’ll buy some candy and the eggs, uh, the real ones, and you go buy the paint and other stuff. I’ll head over there once I’m done.”

Lu Li nods curtly, “Call me once you’re there.”

Chi Zhen turns the cart around and picks a out decent bag of vibrant little chocolate eggs. There’s no one else in the store at all, probably due to the time of day—

Is the craft store even open right now?

Chi Zhen grabs the bag of twenty eggs and puts it back in the cart. Because there is no way the craft store is open right now. He’s not waiting, what, four hours to come back and buy plastic eggs later. No matter how much of a perfectionist Lu Li wants to be with this, he’ll just have to settle for these eggs.

He grabs a packet of reasonably cute chapsticks and another packet of small hair ties embellished with polka dots and ribbons, adding them to the small pile of other trinkets Lu Li had found.  It should be enough now, so Chi Zhen goes and checks out.

The cashier murmurs good morning and scans Chi Zhen’s items rapidly, placing the items into a paper bag with skillful efficiency. Satisfied with his purchases, Chi Zhen makes to walk out when Lu Li comes back in the other door.

“They were closed, right?” Chi Zhen asks, handing the bag to Lu Li for him to inspect.

Lu Li glances at the contents and rolls his eyes. ”You should have told me.”

Chi Zhen shrugs, “Alright, let’s go back. I got your food dye and some watercolor paint too. That should be enough, right?”

Lu Li stares at the bag for a minute longer and Chi Zhen watches as a corner of his lip tilts upward almost unnoticeably. “Thanks, Chi Zhen.”

“Hey, what are you saying? Of course I had to help. Come on, we have to blow out these eggs already. What are we going to do with a dozen scrambled eggs? Should we make a cake or something?”

Lu Li drives them back and Chi Zhen attempts to yawn discreetly several times. It’s too early to be up, let alone on a Saturday. The sky is still dark, covered with clouds like dark clumps of cotton, saturated with heavy rain.

He’s happy though. It’d felt like there was… a distance between them since Chi Zhen had returned. But right now, he can be grateful, even for these small things, somehow silly and unremarkable.

[sirivsblaxk-blog]

Fic prompt: Graves is found alive and returns to work. He has to deal with everyone's guilt and his own quiet hurt. One day he's in his office feeling absolutely terrible when this tiny, big eyes baby Mooncalf is suddenly there demanding to be cuddled. Percival obliges and finds himself smiling and feeling happy for the first time in months. He's still holding the baby Mooncalf when he finally meets Newt, and it is love at first sight for them both.

I love Percy with the creatures! This was fun to write (:

Even before Percivals capture he spent a lot of time in his office during work hours, but now he was back he did so even more. People made him skittish now, loud noises made him jump and he flinched at any form of human contact. If that wasn’t reason enough he couldn’t deal with the ever-growing weight of guilt looming over everyones head whenever he appeared. He didn’t blame them. Sure, they didn’t notice but from what he’d heard Grindelwald had done a pretty good job at impersonating them. And anyone who did notice was quickly gotten rid of, imperialised or obliviated.

Percival didn’t want people tip toeing around him and feeling bad, constantly being nice to him because they felt they had to and thought him fragile. He wanted things to go back to normal. But he also know things couldn’t be normal again. Everything had changed. He had changed. He was hurting, although quietly and on his own, he didn’t want to appear weak or unfit, they might put him on leave again. He was scared to be alone but also scared to be around people. He hated his home where every noise put him on edge but he hated his office knowing Grindelwald had sauntered around in it parading as him. He hated his walk home, everyone he passed was suddenly evil and out to get him, but apparating would mean he got home quicker and as stated before, he didn’t want that either.

He was lost. He’d lost himself and he didn’t know how to get him back. Grindelwald had chipped away every piece of him until there was nothing left but a hollow shell with his face on it. He didn’t enjoy the things he used to. He felt empty, constantly confused. Most of all he felt lonely. He had no one to confide in. Those at work were friends sure, but not close friends. He didn’t have any family. Keeping all his thoughts bottled inside his head was slowly killing him.

Percival sighs and buries his face in his hands, his elbows on the desk in front of him. His hair was dishevelled, something unusual for him. His once favourite cloak tossed onto the chair in the corner, he couldn’t even bare to look at it. He looked up with an angry glare as his office door creaked open. He’d meant to shut and lock it but he’d slammed it so hard in anger it had bounced back open. He was about to yell, about to tell whoever it was to get the hell out and not come back. But staring back at him wasn’t one of his colleagues. Staring back at him wasn’t a person at all. It was a creature, of some sort. He wasn’t the best with creatures so he had no idea what it was.

The creature had a short stumpy body and a long wide neck, a small head placed on top of it with large bright eyes. It looked young, at least he thought it did. It trotted over to him, head tilted slightly as it stopped just by his leg, a curious look to its eyes as it sized him up. Then, it jumped onto his lap in one swift movement and fell against his chest.

Percival sat, staring wide eyed at the creature now laying on him, he considered shoving it off and getting back to work but its soft fur nuzzling against his neck made him reconsider. He put a hand on its body and stroked it, much to the creatures pleasure.

“Hello you,” He smiles lightly, indulging in the warm contact, letting his face rest against the soft fur for a moment. Maybe he could get a cat. Maybe that would make his home seem less empty. Or one of these things, whatever they were. He could get one of those.

He nuzzled into the fur, soaking in the warmth and coziness, a feeling he hadn’t had in a long time. But his quiet cuddle time was abruptly cut short by his door banging open, making both him and the creature jump, Percival held it to his chest almost protectively, though he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to protect the creature or himself.

“There you are!” The man who’d burst into his room called, for a confused moment Percival thought he was talking to him, but the mans eyes were on the creature in his lap, “You had me worried sick! Wondering about on your own!” He scolds the animal as he walks closer to them both.

Then, as if he’d only just realised Percival was there, the stranger turns to him, setting bright eyes on his dark ones, “Oh I hope she hasn’t been bothering you!” he says with a much calmer voice, a smile breaking out on his face.

Percival breath caught in his throat, he opened his mouth as if to reply but no words would form. This man, this stranger in front of him, this absolute bundle of light and warmth, was the most beautiful thing he’d laid eyes on. The light from his high windows casting a yellow glow over him and lining his already sharp jawline and high cheek bones. His bright eyes glowed in the light and his auburn hair fell perfectly across his pale freckly skin.

“I’m really very sorry,” the man continued, “I left her for not a minute and she just ran off! Luckily someone saw her running this way and I was able to find her before she got hurt…Are you okay?” that’s when Percival realises he was staring at the man with his mouth open and eyes slightly wide. 

He shakes his head to kick himself back into gear and sits up a little straighter, “Me? Yes…Yes I’m perfectly fine.” He smiles at the boy, “Your little…friend, was keeping me company.” he says, ruffling his fingers in the creatures fur.

“She is extremely sweet,” the boy says, taking the creature from his lap and placing her on the floor, Percival suddenly felt cold where the small body had been, “I should probably get her back to her colony, her family will be worried.”

“You have more of those things?” Percival asked.

The man nodded, “I have several. Among…”he stops, as if realising he was talking to the Director of magical security and the head of the DMLE.

“It’s okay,” Percival says, “I’m not planning on confiscating whatever you have…You must be Newt?”

He’d remembered hearing about him. The man with a case full of creatures, this definitely had to be the guy. Everyone had talked about how great he was, and he could definitely see that, but no one mentioned how handsome he was.

The man, Newt, nods his head, “I am…And your Director Graves.” he replies.

“The real one,” Percival feels the need to point out, “Please, call me Percival.”

“Okay, Percival,” Newt replies, a smile on his lips and a mischievous flash to his eyes, “Would you like to come and visit her family?”

Percival just smiled back at the boy. Something inside of him changed at that moment. Suddenly he didn’t feel as lonely. The world didn’t seem as scary and daunting as it had five minutes ago and Percival just knew that he was going to be okay.

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #36: Business.

Written: 2/2/2017 (#37 was NSFW, so it was skipped)

Confined in his cubicle, working never seemed like a valid option to Glen. Why spend the day filling out forms, looking over data, profiting margins, or whatever the hell he was supposed to do, when he was guaranteed to never be fired as long as he kept baking treats for his boss? Staring blankly at his computer, he had three windows open at the same time. One was a video detailing how to make home made caramel, he didn’t trust some store bought ingredients, another was a recipe for cheesecake, and the third one was a spreadsheet that somebody emailed him, but he mostly forgot that it was on the screen. He looked at the clock he hung on his wall, always a little lopsided, but whatever, apparently he had to wait a whole hour until it was his lunch break. Getting bored of all of cooking information, he cracked his knuckles, folded his arms over his desk, and rested his head down, closed his eyes, thinking about the show he watched last night (what was its name?) over and over until he drifted off.

“Hey.” He shot up, looked around wildly, did somebody catch him nodding off? He eventually spotted a plain girl with thick glasses, peeking her head over his cubicle. “Whats your take on the spreadsheet?” Rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hands, he mumbled something about them being cost effective. For some reason this wasn’t enough for her to go away, and he was confused about what she wanted. Not knowing that he had large red marks on his face, from sleeping at his desk, he turned to his computer, opened up the file, nodded at the screen then nodded at her. She was more confused than he was, “So… is it fine? Should I email it to corporate or..?”

“Yeah. Yeah, definitely send it, great work like always.” He tried staring at her until she went away, and after thirty seconds of uncomfortable eye contact she finally dropped down and disappeared from his little world. Putting his hands behind his head, he reclined and smile, confident about another successful maneuver at work. Almost dozing off again, he realized that it might be break time, but his excitement was ruined since he still had twenty minutes left to go. Why’d that girl bother waking him up then? The phone rang so he picked it up and placed it back down onto the receiver. “You’re doing great today,” he said to himself.

After ten minutes of him taking notes on making carmel, he felt a presence behind him, spun around in his chair, and saw a stumpy, frog looking man in a mint green, short sleeved, button up shirt with a mud color tie and pants. The guy just stared for a while, so eventually he had to take the initiative. “What’s going on?” The words came out awkwardly, but in his head it sounded very calm and professional.

The odd man reached his sweaty hand into his pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and took a little while to unfold it. Glen really wanted to turn away from and ignore this man, who was he anyways? Why was he being such a hassle, didn’t he have a job to do? When the paper was finally unfolded, and the frog man smoothed it against the outer wall of the cubicle, he presented it to Glen. It was another dumb spread sheet. “Did you approve this?”

Not sure at all, he confidently said, “Yes. Yes I did. It was very professional and met up to the standards that we hold here at-” Shit what was the name of the company? He couldn’t think of it, so instead he waved his hand out in front of him.

“What?” The man seemed taken aback, and-while sweating from his brow, causing little wisps of hair to hang down-he quickly reviewed the paper in front of him. “But… None of this makes any sense, the numbers are all wrong.” He held it back up and pointed to a section in the bottom right corner, “And-and I’m pretty sure this is a menu.” Glen scooted his chair forward, not bothering to get up, and stared directly at the paper, which was at his eye level, and it read: turkey club with extra guac, rose-butter ice cream served with caramel sauce, pastrami served over a bed of warm rice and salmon, a cup full of warm soup, chocolate pudding filled with gummy worms and topped with crumbled german chocolate cookies, and so on. It made him hungry, so he spun around and moved his chair over towards his computer, maximizing the window with the cheesecake recipe. The stumpy man lowered the paper, waited for Glen to respond, but after waiting some time he cleared his throat.

Hearing this, Glen turned around, surprised, and then remembered the man was there. “Oh, you need anything else?”

Flustered, the man threw his hands up into the air, “You need to fix this!” He didn’t know why he was even dealing with this problem in the first time, or why it was even so complicated.

Annoyed, Glen snatched the paper from the man, grabbed a pen from his desk, wrote a bunch of random numbers over the menu, and then handed it back to the man, who hurried to examine the changes. Before the guy could realize that it was still probably wrong, he stood up, exclaimed, “Well, its break time for me”, grabbed his coat, and walked towards the exit of the building, whistling, wondering where he was going to eat for lunch.

However, when he was close to the door, the girl from earlier stepped into his path and blocked him. Seeing her full self he could tell that she was plainer than he thought before, wearing some drab, grey attire of a cardigan, button up, and skirt that all seemed to blend into each other. “Herman's upset, I thought you said the sheet was okay!” She seemed pretty pissed at him, but who the hell was Herman? Was that the man who kept bugging him earlier? What the hell did she want from him?

Trying to calm down the situation, while still being as business like as possible, he shook her hand and said, “Don’t worry, the problems solved, the stars have aligned.” Then he briskly walked out of the office before she could have a chance to respond. Why was any of this his problem anyways? The sooner he could get some fresh air and something to eat, the better.

Two blocks down from the bland office complex was a burger joint that would make any burger you wanted, as long as you brought everything other than the patty or bun. It was probably going to go out of business soon, so Glen was trying to get as much out of it as he could before that dreadful day. When he walked in, belling ringing, he saw, like always, that there were no customers and the owner, a tall, Vietnamese man with a thick beard and no eyebrows, was watching the television he kept on the counter. When the owner saw Glen approach, he immediately stood up, beamed, and asked, “So what did you bring into day, Mr. Business?” It was the name Glen had given him as a joke, but after being called this multiple times he started to wonder if the man thought this was really his name, but he sort of liked being called that so he never bothered to check. He put a lunch box-one from his childhood that was faded blue, with a worn off picture that he couldn’t even remember what it originally was-on the counter and slid it over to the owner, who opened to it, laughed, and pulled out: a can of dog food (wet), various mint leaves, sliced salmon (in a smaller container, above an ice pack), and a small hunk of smoked Gouda. “You’re really trying to test me, huh?”

“Well, I figured I might as well see how great of a chef you are, before, well-” After saying that he just looked at his shoes, embarrassed that he even brought it up. After a month of visiting he never talked about the fact that the place might close, but now it felt so weird to say it.

“Before what?” The owner seemed genuinely curious, and studied Glen’s face. “Are you sick or something, what’s going on?”

Waving his hands in front of him to dispel any sense of worry, Glen tried to explain, “No no no, nothing with me… I just figured your business wouldn’t last long is all, well, since there’s never anyone here…” He felt shitty that he had to explain it, especially with the implication that he was a big successful business man, while this restaurant owner was a failure in that sense. The owner met this with a laugh.

“No, I wont go out of business for quite some time.” Collecting the ingredients in his hands, he moved towards the back and fired up the stove, smiling the whole time. “A lot of money comes through here, I don’t even need customers. All I need is for my benefactors to stay in business, my wife to cook the books, and I’ll still be here. Hell,” laughing as he tossed a patty on to the stove, it sizzled, “I’m probably going to die here. Now,” he held the bag of patties in one hand and looked Glen in the eyes, “Single or double?”

“Double, like always.” The owner nodded and tossed another onto the stove. “Uh.” Something wasn’t making sense, “Who are your benefactors? What do you mean by-”

A look the owner gave, one that said “You should know”, made Glen shut up. He took a seat at the counter and fidgeted with his hands. “Do you really not know?” When the owner asked this he didn’t even bother to look up, and was starting to put some dog food and the salmon onto the stove. “I thought you worked in that business complex down the way.”

“Yeah, so? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Huh. Well, let me finish this up and I’ll tell you a little story.”

The owner’s story:

Well, I heard some rumors about the building from the people who set me up with this restaurant, but I guess its probably not true. You can’t trust those guys very much, but they keep me in business and all I have to do is help cook the books and look the other way, so why should I bother to question them? Oh yeah, the story.

About two years ago, I was a struggling chef working in some chain restaurant, the one with the striped walls and the carnival food, but every day it crushed my soul. When I was young I always expected to be this big chef, where I could have a restaurant that proved my skills, with no menu, where every day customers would come in to challenge my abilities, and every day I would keep showing my skill. I wanted to become a legend. Now, working in a chain restaurant is no way to show your skill. All it really does is hurt your back and give you just enough to give by. It seemed like that was what my life was just going to become.

One day, we get this new kid, supposed to be a new line cook. His arms are covered in gang tattoos but that’s nothing to be surprised about, you would be surprised to know how many chefs in those places have criminal records. However, after working with him, showing him the ropes, chatting with him on smoke breaks, I start to learn that he’s not really interested in working at the place very long. He seemed like a good enough cook, so it surprised me when he said that. The weird thing was, he said he was a talent scout, and he liked the way I was able to serve up meals. He talks about how he’s got all of these big connections, and needs somebody to lead a small restaurant, and wants to see if I’m good enough. So, that night, he put me to the test and I tried really hard to impress him, because if he was telling the truth I was going to get out of that shit hole and make something of myself, even if it was on a small scale. If he was wrong, all I did was waste a little bit of my time and the guy got a good meal. No big deal.

I made him a Monte Christo, but I remember I substituted the meat inside for some fresh fish we had for the meal of the week, and I made up this sauce to go with, and the guy took one bite, went outside to make a phone call, and then he comes back inside and tells me we have to wait a little while. I didn’t know what was going on, so I just shot the shit with him for a little while, until there was a knock on the back door. It was very precise, it had to be a code. The guy opens the door and three men walk in, two big guys who are all tatted up like the line cook, and some older man in a suede suit who doesn’t say a word, walks right over to the sandwich, eats the whole thing, wipes his mouth with a handkerchief he kept in his pocket, and he told me I had the job.

Next thing I know, I’m out of that shitty restaurant, I tell the manager where to shove it, and the mob guys get me this restaurant, which at the time was just a vacant lot. They tell me that I get to design it, because it has to seem like I’m the owner, so its gotta look like its mine. This was great. They tell me they don’t give a shit about the menu and I get to make whatever, but I have to feed them whenever they decide to come by. This is also great, and because of this I keep some ingredients in the back since I don’t ever expect them to bring their own. They tell me that I gotta launder money through here, and I’ll get a small percentage for helping the money flow through, which is also great.

“Wait,” Glen was finally finished with his burger, every scrap, which he had been so determined to finish, and could finally speak, “So this place is a mob front.” The owner nodded, happily. “And you’re just sayin’ this out loud? That’s cool to do?”

“Well,” the owner scratched his beard, “You’re the only one in here, and you work at that shady office, so you probably deal with this stuff often. Plus, if you told, you would have to find somewhere else to eat lunch at.”

Glen nodded, these were very good points, but something bugged him. “Why do you keep talking about my work like that, what’s your problem with it?”

The owner narrowed his eyes and  gave a skeptical look, but when Glen proved to be genuinely curious and ignorant, he finally answered. “Well, from what I heard, that building is just a front, a black site for shady government research that goes on.”

Glen laughed and shook his head, “No its just a normal business, we.. Uh…” What did they do there? He started to get sweatier than the stumpy man who was bugging him earlier. What the hell did they do there? Without saying a word, he put a twenty on the counter (the meal only cost $10) and hurried out of the restaurant, marching towards his work. Waiting at a crosswalk, cold wind blowing in his face, he checked the time on his phone. Only five minutes left in his break. Looking at the buildings around him, he noticed none of the buildings stood out, they all seemed to blend together, and wondered how many of them were potential fronts.

When he walked back into the office everything seemed calmer than he had left it, and there were no signs of the people who were harassing him before. Maybe the problem, whatever it was, had blown away. The path to his cubicle was clear, but before he walked down he noticed his boss watching him from the glass wall of her office. She beckoned him in, he lowered his head and walked over. What did she want? Was this about the situation from earlier? Was she just hungry? Opening the door to her office, he noticed that she was starting to pull the cord that moved the thick, black curtains to block the view of the glass wall. He sat in the low, black vinyl chair across from her desk, she sat in hers.

A full minute passed before either of them said anything, the whole time she stared at him while he looked at his hands in his lap. Finally, she broke the silence, “Why do you look so guilty?”

Cautiously, he said, “I thought I might be in trouble for the situation earlier today.”

“With the spreadsheet?”

“Yeah, that one.”

She leaned back in her chair and studied his face. Her chair was tall, black leather, meant to appear more powerful than the guest chair, which only made her seem more intimidating than she naturally was. “You know I like that you cook for me, but that wont keep you safe.” He had to put in a lot of effort to keep his eyes locked onto hers, they seemed cold and dead. “You know how many people died because of your little slip up?”

“Wait, died?” He became too startled to begin to hide his worry. “How did that happen? Aren’t we just an accounting firm?”