#i got very carried away. just enjoy this as a read and safjaskfk (looks at our other threads to throw at u )

[phantombs]

@ymagishi asked:  ❛before you say anything, can you just not say anything ?❜  𝟐𝟕  𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐒  𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄  𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒, still accepting.

Monster-girl. Reckless. Bad news.

“Weird. Was there anything to say?”

She needn’t announce it: she’s clearly upset. The weight of that night, concert yet buzzing waspy in her brain, wear thick and heavy upon her shoulders. Yet, it isn’t beleaguered that she very much seems, not when standing there always like a pillar, she’s seldom ever fancied crumbling apart. Never once. She -- stone like, tough as diamonds -- is unbending, unyielding, and truly unbreakable.

But at the end of the day, Yukako, young as she is, remains a girl. A frazzled girl. He knows. And though poems can make girls into crowns of cut jewelry, the world so ruthless is a glutton for perfection. No, there is no room at all for fracturing diamonds or jewels. They’re steeply devalued or primly set aside, and seen like gemstones on necklaces or the gold bands of rings, girls, like diamonds, can’t have their flaws.

But she -- bloody knuckled, the smell of phở still in her memory -- did.

She’s sensitive. Maybe the kids had talked of her in school today. She’s still like an open wound fresh and glistering wet, and big brother is a healer. He knows one, two, three-thousand things about weeping hemorrhages, so much so that she didn’t need to snap to stand them clear. Nope. They are there, her ego or heart both, bleeding under the surface. He knows his hurts. He hangs quiet, and she chops the strawberries for the tart he’s busying with. He pinches the crust, cute divets forming like a doily, and quietly, the knife thunks and thunks. And then--

“Give me your hand. You’re bleeding. Did you notice?” he says.

It’s about the chopping. Or not. It most definitely actually is, but it’s not. He offers his hand, and in contrast, hers seems to wear a dribbling cut. Oh.

The early morning is quiet. Cường wets a towel, and gently, he works it over it, the deep red staunching the cloth. Gingerly, the smell of strawberries waft from wet and seedy under her nails. He cleans. “It’s funny. I help treat a thousand cuts, but for you, it’s mostly been for fussing at rose bushes. Or maybe knitting. Or helping make the best desserts with someone.” Not bruises. Not split skin when fists fly at teeth. Not just a rumor-mill. She isn’t like the things kids say, Cường knows that, and to simply so in the sun-gauzed kitchen...

 “I usually tell people to stop doing what hurts them, but I don’t know what you’d be without them. Or me. I really like your strawberry tarts, you know.”

Ah. He takes a band-aid from somewhere, and he wraps it about her. She’s still berries, their sticky seeds, and the month of sun, at her hands.