#only tagging some because i want to be only medium annoying

[bowling-with-skulls]

LIBERAL film noir:

Double InTHEMnity

LESBIAN Laura

DRAGsablanca

The Third TRANS Man

Nightmare ALLY

PRONOUNS Blvd.

The Maltese Falcon

[luxaofhesperides]

“You know, I never realized how true the ‘eyes are the windows to your soul’ thing was until I saw yours.” + fluff + cafe AU ; requested by @kiv1!

He’s sure Danny didn’t expect to see him every other day after he casually mentioned that he had gotten a part time job at a local cafe. However, as his friend, it is Duke’s moral duty to only get coffee from that shop while Danny is on shift, specifically to annoy him. 

Also, so he can support his friend, but being annoying takes priority.

It’s a routine now, for both of them. Danny clocks in for his shift and an hour later Duke is strolling into the cafe with his eyes locked on Danny’s. The rest of the baristas always shove Danny up to the register when they see Duke, taking over whatever order he was making. Even some of the other regulars turn their attention up to the counter, hoping for another few minutes of entertainment.

Danny sighs as he gets ready to input Duke’s order. It’s never the same one, because Duke would hate to be predictable and make things easier for Danny, but it has the side effect of making him realize that some of the expensive, seasonal drinks are really good. 

It’s a bit hard on his wallet, but it’s a price he’s willing to pay for teasing Danny. 

“Hey,” he greets cheerfully as he leans against the counter, grinning at Danny.

Danny sighs again. “What can I get you today, random customer that keeps bothering me.”

“A latte, but make it sweet somehow. And iced.”

“What size would you like?”

“Let’s go with medium today.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah.” Duke leans closer to Danny, watching as he fights down a smile. “I just gotta say that you got gorgeous eyes. You know, I never realized how true the ‘eyes are the window to your soul thing’ was until I saw yours.”

Danny considers this for a moment, then shakes his head. “It kind of sounds like your trying to steal my soul through my eyes.”

“Why is that what your mind goes to?”

“Well. I watched Coraline last night.”

Duke stares at Danny, taking in the dark circles under his eyes. “...Didn’t you say that movie gave you nightmares as a kid?”

“Yeah! And it turns out, it gives me nightmares even now!”

“And ruined my pick up line,” Duke complains playfully.

“It was too cheesy anyways,” Danny replies, putting Duke’s order into the screen. It prints a moment later, no doubt with some bizarre name since Danny refuses to actually name Duke on his orders, and then recites the price. 

He pays and watches as Danny slaps the order onto a medium sized up, then tosses it over to the barista making the drinks. He’s not actually sure what her name is since she refuses to wear a name tag, but she always gives him a wave and also a rating of how good his pick up lines are.

“Seven out of ten!” she calls out to him today, then gets started on making his drink.

“I don’t see why you don’t flirt with anyone else,” Danny says, “I’m pretty sure my coworkers like your pick up lines even more than they like me.”

“Why would I want to flirt with them? Danny, I’m literally only here to bother you.”

Danny rolls his eyes. “Yeah, trust me, I know. My good looks just keep pulling in business.”

He says it like a joke, but it’s true. Duke has noticed it. Danny’s coworkers have noticed it. His manager noticed it and now has him out on the floor every shift. If they can get him to work on the chalkboard sign outside, or wipe down the two tables out front, then they do it, because Danny is Midwestern to his core and it’s very charming in a place like Gotham. He smiles at people as they walk by, happily answers their questions when they ask him what the cafe serves, recommends food and drinks for them, is generally a bright and nice person to everyone who comes near the cafe. 

His cute looks draw people in, then his personality makes them stay. 

It’s all customer service, of course, because Duke never gets the cute, sunny Danny. He’s left with the sarcastic, rude, and funny Danny that’s been his friend since they met in junior year of high school. 

“Your eyes are really pretty, though,” Duke says, “Very blue. Sometimes green. It’s no wonder people keep falling for you!”

Danny reaches across the counter to shove Duke away, but he’s blushing, so Duke is counting it as a win. “Shut up. Now you’re just lying. My eyes are never green.”

“Yes, they are. Danny, I’ve seen them multiple times. They’re green sometimes.”

“No? My eyes have literally only ever been blue. They’re the bluest blue to ever blue. They don’t just turn green.”

They squint at each other for a long moment, trying to figure out who’s wrong and in what way. Duke’s pretty sure Danny’s wrong, since he can’t exactly see his own eyes, and Duke has spent an embarrassing amount of time just admiring how nice they are in different kinds of light. But also, they are Danny’s eyes, so he should know what color they are.

Then Danny’s coworker is setting down Duke’s drink on the pick up counter, giving Danny an excuse to get back to work.

“One medium oatmeal cookie iced latte for Cornelius Aggravating Douglas.” He holds up the drink and makes very direct eye contact with Duke, holding out the drink towards him.

“Did you really have to make the initials ‘Cad’?”

“Yes.”

“Fair enough,” Duke says, making Danny crack a smile. 

“Are you heading out after this?”

Duke grabs a straw and sticks it into his latte, swirling it around some. “That was the plan, yeah. Got a few library books to pick up. Why?”

“I got approval for a half shift today, so I’m off in like ten minutes, if you wanna wait for me.”

“Hell yeah, dude! I’ll wait outside so I don’t distract you with my flirtatious winks again.”

“Get out of here,” Danny laughs. Duke lifts his drink in a quick toast, then gets out of there. He takes a seat at one of the tables out front, content to just people watch as he slowly sips his latte.  

It’s cloudy out, but not raining, which is always a plus. As much as he’d like to see the sun, these kinds of days aren’t so bad, either. The wind still carries a bit of a chill, but the spring is steadily warming things up. There are tons of people out, a constant rush of movement, but a few do catch sight of him, then look towards the cafe, their steps slowing down as they think. Most keep walking, but Duke does manage to get a few to go in just by taking a long sip of his latte to really enjoy it.

Really, he should be getting compensated for the work he’s doing to draw people in. Danny’s not the only one who can do it. 

Bruce keeps offering him money, so he doesn’t need to get paid, but maybe he can convince the other employees to talk Danny into accepting one of his pick up lines so they can go on a date one of these days. 

It’s become a bit of a joke, but the first time Duke used a cheesy pick up line on Danny, he was being absolutely serious about it. He definitely shouldn’t have used a pick up line he found from a website centered on relationship advice, but he panicked and needed some extra help. 

Instead of smoothly asking Danny out on a date, Duke froze up, blurted out the pick up line, then had to laugh it off with Danny and pretend it was a joke. 

He still wishes he was able to ask Danny out properly before, but he’s also glad that they got to spend more time as friends, getting to know each other. It’s easier to be with him now, no longer so tongue tied and flustered. 

Duke gets to fluster Danny now, which is much better. 

And maybe one day his pick up lines will work! Sooner or later Danny’s going to question why he keeps doing this, and then he’ll connect the dots and understand what Duke feels for him.

As it is, he has yet to connect shit. 

“My eyes are definitely blue,” Danny says as he walks out of the cafe, messenger bag slung over his shoulder. “I checked while I was putting my apron away.”

“You’re still on that?”

“They’re blue.”

Duke gestures for Danny to come closer. He complies and leans down, letting Duke cup his face in his hands. He checks, considers, then checks again, and says, “They are indeed blue.”

“Told you they weren’t green,” Danny says smugly, pulling back. 

“And I said they were green sometimes. Now clearly isn’t one of those times, but they do turn green!”

“I don’t think you should be allowed to say any eye-related pick up lines until you admit that you were wrong and didn’t know my eye color.”

Shaking his head, Duke stands up and pushes in his chair. “Just wait, I’ll catch it sometime and prove it to you.”

“Sure, whatever. Don’t you have library books to get?”

“Yeah, you coming with?”

“Obviously. Why else would I leave my wonderful job where I am left alone to make drinks in peace?” Danny knocks his shoulder against Duke playfully, then reaches over and steals his drink right out of his hand. He takes a sip, makes a pleased hum, and drains half of what was left in the cup. 

“Hey!” Duke moves to take it back, which is naturally the exact moment Danny takes off running, effortlessly dodging everyone else on the sidewalk. He takes off after Danny, using his powers to make sure he can move out of the way of anything or anyone who gets in his path. 

They’re past the block when Danny starts to slow down, taking another sip of Duke’s latte. 

He puts on a final burst of speed and all but tackles Danny into the mouth of an alley, reaching for his cup. “Gotcha!”

“No!” Danny wails dramatically. He takes a step back and Duke watches as his power kicks up again, showing him a vision of Danny stepping on an empty can and falling back. Except he doesn’t really fall back? His foot rolls back on the can for a second, then goes through the can and settles back onto the ground where he catches his balance. Through the entire three second fall, Danny’s eyes are a bright green, brighter than Duke’s ever seen them.

His vision fades away and he moves to catch Danny, taking the chance to watch carefully as Danny’s foot does indeed go through the can. He quickly brings his gaze up to Danny’s eyes, which are green, but not inhumanly bright like they were in his vision.

Is the green not perceptible to normal humans?

He can probably only see it due to his powers. Which means he somewhat inadvertently outed himself as a meta.

Whoops!

Might as well just bite the bullet.

“Hey, do you have powers?” 

Danny chokes, shoving Duke away as he coughs and tries to clear his throat. He looks panicked, wild-eyed, searching for an escape route. “What? No. Why would I have powers? Maybe you have powers, have you ever considered that?”

“I mean. I do have powers. That’s why I’m asking.”

“Hold up. Stop talking. You have powers?”

“And your eyes are green sometimes.”

“That’s. No, they’re not,” Danny lies. It’s a very bad lie, seeing how on edge he is, and as much as Duke hates making Danny feel like that, he did get some bad habits while training with Bruce and this is one of them: the need to keep pushing, chasing after clear answers regardless of what the cost is. 

Duke shrugs, taking a sip of his latte, down to its last few mouthfuls, acting casual. “If you say so. But my powers don’t lie, man. As much as I wish they would, sometimes.”

“...Can we not do this out here?” The defeated tone Danny speaks with makes Duke hate himself. But he needs answers now. He needs to know if Danny is like him, if he’s safe, if he needs help. He needs it more than he needs Danny to like him at all. 

“Sure. I know a few quiet places we can talk.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Danny mutters. “Did my eyes really give it away?”

“Yeah. I mean, to be fair, I also didn’t realize until literally right now, so I don’t think anyone else will figure it out just from staring into your eyes.”

“See, this is what happens when you keep flirting when you don’t mean it. Secrets get pulled out into the open and it’s bad for everyone!”

Duke lightly punches Danny’s arm, trying to lift the mood. “Hey, who said I didn’t mean it?”

“What?”

“Who said I didn’t mean it when I flirt with you?”

Danny blinks at him, confused, then says, “I mean, no one I guess. But it’s pretty obvious?”

“I only flirt with you, you know.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Duke says, trying to ignore how his voice shakes slightly. “There’s another one of my secrets. Can we call it even now?”

“Oh!” The shock of the revelation distracts Danny from his earlier nerves. Which is great, because now Duke is the one who’s nervous. It’s worth it, though, seeing the pretty blush come to bloom on Danny’s cheeks. “So all those pick up lines—”

“Yeah.”

“And the pick up line made you realize my powers!” 

“These pick up lines are doing the most,” Duke agrees. And then he realizes, “Hey, you what this means? I was right! Your eyes are windows to your soul!”

“I’m going to hit you,” Danny says, already winding back for a solid punch. He lets Danny hit him since it’s only fair for the stress he caused; as a meta, Duke knows how important secrecy is, how the difference between life and death can be just how well his powers are hidden. 

“Are we even now?”

Danny considers him for a moment, then sighs. “Yeah, I guess. Let’s be done with this for now, okay? Let’s go to the library.”

He refuses to entertain any conversation about powers or Duke’s feelings for him. It’s nice to spend time with Danny, but by the end, Duke is sure he can feel his heart start to crack in half. A sleepless night awaits him when he gets home, moving past his cousin’s attempts to talk to him in favor of flopping face down onto his bed.

But the next day, Danny grins at him when he walks into the cafe. He doesn’t have a new pick up line, choosing instead to act as calm and casual as possible to give Danny some space.

Also breaking routine, Danny insists on personally making Duke’s drink, writing something onto the cup before he fills it up with a floral tea. 

You’re so fine, you made me forget my pick up line, is scrawled on the side of his cup when he gets it. 

“Enjoy your drink, Cutiepie the Third,” Danny says with a shy smile.

“The Third?” Duke repeats, relief making him feel lighter than air, “Who are the first two?”

“Don’t worry about it, cutie. Get to class!”

Duke lets Danny chase him out, and holds in his laugh when he hears Danny’s coworker screech, “What was that?!”

Yeah, they’ll be fine. In the meantime, Duke needs to see if apology pick up lines are thing. Danny definitely deserves one.

[wuffgang-ameowdeus-moozart]

Aren't you tired of forced romances with no chemistry that only take away from the actually interesting plot? Don't you just want media where romance isn't portrayed as being superior and more important than (queer)platonic relationships?

Well, my exhausted aro ass is too, so here are a few tricks and wisdoms I've gathered over my years of being a-spec (which is all of them) on how to avoid romance (in media) in a very allonormative society 💚🤍🩶🖤

(this is a rec list btw. no I am not shitting on the shows that I tagged, quite the opposite)

1. Middle Grade

I get if you aren't really into that, because it is kind of annoying to be pointed to literal children's literature when all you want is a story that isn't constantly being interrupted by describing the main guy's heated eyes for the twentieth time.

However.

It is true that in middle grade, friendship is always more important than romance. Because, let's face it. Making two eleven year old characters kiss is kinda weird. So even if there is a romance, it isn't very prominent and treated more like friendship and/or a puppy crush. Plus some stories get surprisingly dark?!?!

Examples

- Howl's Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones), technically a romance in the end, but mostly focused on found family, shenanigans, and finding your own value

- House of Many Ways (DWJ). Yes, again. I really like her books okay? They always have something so fantastical and whimsical about them. This is my other favorite book by her and it has literally no romance at all. Plus a hmc cameo that is so fun !!

- Coraline (Neil Gaiman). Maybe this is cheating because I never actually read it. However. a) the movie traumatized me. b) Wybie was added to the movie, he doesn't exist in the book, so if "power of friendship" isn't your thing this will be great. Probably vibes over plot.

Flyte (Angie Sage). Technically this is the second book, but I never read the first one and still understood everything. Once again, no romance at all. A fun read, which can get surprisingly dark at times.

2. Short Story Collections

Once again, I get it if it isn't your thing. Short stories are - as the name reveals - short. Which means: no worldbuilding, very limited narrator, open ending, no time to really get attached to characters, etc.

But.

The cool thing about collections, is that they always have a certain theme. And as long as the theme is not romance, romance will not be the focus. Even if there is a romantic relationship, it will be used to explore this theme since there simply isn't time for anything else.

Examples:

Life Ceremony (Sayaka Murata) This is the book that actually made me figure out: hey! I do actually like short stories !! The main theme is basically about being different and it plays a lot with body horror and the perception of your own body in contrast with how society sees it. There is even a story about two women who platonically live together and raised multiple children!

Canterbury Classics: Classic Tales of Horror (introduction by Ernest Hilbert). As the name suggests, this is a collection of horror short stories, featuring well-known authors such as Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe or Charlotte Perkins Gilman. As these are classic old tales, the language is a bit complicated at times and you can read them for free on Gutenberg. However, the book is very very pretty and the introduction is very interesting (Origins of the genre, specific tropes and monsters, etc.)

3. Podcasts

PODCASTS!!! If you follow me, you are probably already aware of those. However, in case you don't, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of Audiodramas.

The cool thing about Podcasts is that pretty much anyone can do it. All you need is an idea, a mic, a lot of motivation, and you're pretty much set to go. No producers or publishers you need to get approval from. So it is only natural that this medium is filled to the brim with queer creators. Basically every character is somewhat queer. It's awesome.

Examples:

- The Silt Verses. I adore TSV. I listened to the first season like, four times. (the second one is good too but OH MY GOD THE FIRST ONE). And one of the main characters is canonically and explicitly aro!! Sister Carpenter, I love you with my whole being. And the great thing is, it is very clear that the writers love her, too!! There is a lot (like a LOT) of body horror so it isn't for everybody. But if you think you can handle it I really recommend it. (Plus, not any romance plotlines at all !!)

- Wolf 359. This is one of the older ones and it is really good. It's a bunch of restless and very unwell people stuck in a spaceship under the unforgiving rule of capitalism. However bad you imagine it, I can assure you it is worse. But the really cool thing is that there literally isn't any romance at all. Like, there are great m/f friendships but they never even hint towards a romance. Some people are so unused to that that they literally ship the main dude with the fucking robot AI. (don't worry, not an actual romance plot).

- Girl in space. I am sure you will be absolutely shook to know that this one also takes place in space. It is about a girl. In space. Shocking, I know. Except that she has been on her own for well over a year when suddenly a fleet of strange ships arrive and kidnap her. There is also a very asshole-y robot. And questions about what makes us human. And found family!! And a goat. And cheese. Just go listen to it okay. This is also one of the shortest ones of the list, so maybe a good start.

- Malevolent. I have to confess that I personally am not a huge fan of this one? Like the premise is really cool - a detective who wakes up blind and with a demon in his head who can see through the detectives eyes. What the fuck?, you may ask yourself. So does Arthur Lester. Mysteries and other dimensions and a whole lot of pain ensues. Harlan is undeniably an awesome VA and a great writer, but his stories just seem a bit too repetitive to me? Nonetheless I know of lots of people who enjoy it a lot. Trying to define the relationship between Arthur and John (his demon) is perhaps the biggest mystery of them all. (Jk. there are multiple murders and stuff. they've really got other priorities)

- Middle:Below. This is another short one and probably the least famous of this list? It's about this funky lil dude with a ghost roommate and a cat who can talk (.....or can it?). There is a m/f friendship but it never turns into a romance (wow it is possible!!). They all go on adventures on the dimension between life and death. Despite the description, this is literally just a comedy. A bit spooky at best. Reminds me a bit of scarier kids cartoons like gravity falls.

4. "Gay" movies/series in countries with homophobic censorship

Now you may think, "hey that seems like a bit of an asshole move!". And you would be 100% correct in thinking that.

However.

It does also mean that the main relationship of the story can never be explicitly romantic. They can allude to it, they can try to show it. But they can never confirm. So it is very easy to interpret them as having a QPR. (because tbh I don't think I've ever seen one on television.)

Examples:

The Untamed. Look. I am aware that the first episode is so fucking atrocious, all right? And no, the CGI does in fact never get better. And sometimes the translated subtitles are a bit awkward. But I swear that it is so good. Trust me on this one, okay? Just make it through the first ep. It's a wild ride. Lan Zhan I love you. (However the book it is based on (written by a woman) depicts them being in an explicitly romantic relationship, with lots of very inaccurate and badly researched smut, so the fandom pretty much sees them as exclusively romantic.)

- Word of Honor. Very much in the same vein as The Untamed. Except that the first episode is less horrible. And the one dude has a very fruity fan. And they also raise a kid together. And the costumes of the villains are really fun!! I actually never finished this one tbh. I know that the book it is based on has one very extremely terrible ableist plot point, but I don't know if that made it into the show since I never got that far

The Devil Judge. The last two were fantasy, this one is a dystopia. Very tense and interesting. There is a romantic subplot (typical childhood friend vs bad boy love triangle), but he rejects the childhood friend and they can't exactly show him and the "bad boy" (who is actually a judge. and also kinda his sugar daddy) as explicitly romantic for the reason above. They also live in the same house and cook together and take care of a child together. Can totally recommend.

Assassination Classroom. A bunch of students have to kill their teacher who is an alien. that's literally the plot. I cried so hard at the finale. Nagisa and Karma have MASSIVE vibes and you can't convince me otherwise. (There is a romantic subplot that does end in a kiss, but they agree to continue as friends since those were..... extenuating circumstances. The dude very clearly is not into her). Nagisa also very aro-spec coded imo.

5. "Straightbaiting" Anime

Sometimes Anime does this thing (which I personally find very hilarious) where a boy and a girl will have no other romantic involvements or love interests while growing closer and closer, but never get together. A bit like reverse queerbaiting.

Examples:

- Fairy Tail. The ultimate power is friendship anime. That is all you need to know. (I should also perhaps warn you that the end of the last arc (and the sequel series, but we don't talk about that) are huge letdowns. Like the buildup? So good. But....welp. If that doesn't bother you too much and the idea to have a group of people be the main character instead of one person only, this may be the series for you. Just do yourself a favor and skip all the filler arcs

Soul Eater. I really love the vibes of this one. Once again, most of the fandom likes depicting them as explicitly romantic, but they never canonically are. It also reminds me a bit of creepy children cartoons. It is also where the superior fictional school exists, Devon. Frankenstein teaches there (the dude, not the monster). People transform into badass weapons. Nobody can convince me that Make Albarn is not a trans woman. However the ending deviates a bit from the manga, and I personally think the anime one is a bit worse

Noragami. This one will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the first anime I really watched. This one also has people who transform into weapons, but the vibes are very different. It goes a bit more into Japanese folklore in case that interests you.

Bonus: Canonically Aro/Heavily Aro-Coded Characters

They were not anywhere above because the stories they are in didn't really fit any of the categories. But they exist!

Wolf (Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts). I adore Wolf. There is also barely any romance. Like, it will seem like it at first, but don't worry, it's only straightbaiting. There is a romance subplot but it's very brief and very much in the background. Overall very good aro show 👍

Isaac (Heartstopper) Very queer show, very high likelihood that you already know of it. The series per se is very romance focused, but as far as I've heard the a-spec rep in S2 is really good

Georgia (Loveless). Actually never read it. But, well. Title pretty self-explanatory dare I say. By the same author as Heartstopper (Alice Oseman)

Chance/Chris and Shadow/Ryan (woe.begone) Are explicitly in a QPR together !! they are also probably the healthiest couple in the podcast lol

Henry Clerval (Frankenstein). Henry is the "a couple of besties!!" to Victor's "we look like a couple <3"

Barbie (Barbie 2023) If you've seen it you know what I mean.

Jo Marsh (Little Women). I never read the book, but Jo in the 2019 movie??? very sus.

I would also recommend checking out Japanese books! I personally think they are much better at writing romance than the western people lol. It's more about knowing each other and sharing your views of the world, thus changing each other and leaving a mark forever, even if the relationship ends. (studio ghibli romance vibes). My favorite Japanese book doesn't have an English translation :(

aber an alle Deutsch-Sprecher*innen: Die Katzen von Shinjuku (Durian Sukegawa) -> og title: Shinjuku no Neko

Can't think of anything else right now, but please leave some of your own recommendations! Hope this helps ^^

[gabrielsbubblegumbitch]

do you have any opinions on the hazbin critical and vivziepop critical tags?

tw // mentions of sexual abuse and sucide

I have a personal beef with them. And not because I love Hazbin and Vivzie so much but for more presonal reasons so the following opinion won't be measured at all.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are some legit criticisms out there. Like, the show could definitely do better with body diversity and giving us more varied sapphic relationships instead of just throwing a ton of male/male couples at us. And, yeah, Vivzie's response to some of the criticism has been... questionable. (I still cringe when I think about that one time she explained that Raphielle can ship ValAngel because they are sa survivor, but Raphielle explicitly admitted to not be one).

But then, there's stuff that's just... pulled out of nowhere. Like the whole thing about Valentino being a "fetish character." Come on, the world of villains is filled with queer, flamboyant baddies. What sets Valentino apart is how his abusive behavior is shown in the open, making us rethink our love for villains. If it weren't for Mascarade, people would worship this moth daddy gangster in a dress, much like they are with Vox now. It's hard to root for the bad guy when you see the fallout of their actions. Like, Loki committed war crimes and no one was outraged when he got his own TV series and dragged creators for supporting atrocities.

Constant Valentino/Angel Dust discourse actually leads to the more serious issues I have with this "community", more harmful than just "bad media literacy" like the way they handle the topic of sexual abuse and weaponize it, without ever listening to victims. There is this constant shitstorm about Angel being a "bad sa survivor rep," that the way he's written is insensitive because "he shouldn't be horny, he's sexually traumatized." Like, do these people not understand that making Angel unable to enjoy his sexuality the way he wants would essentially mean acknowledging that it's no longer his but belongs to his abuser now? Also, the argument I keep seeing that drives me BAT SHIT CRAZY aka "I can enjoy this media that is centered around murderer, you cannot enjoy the media that treats rapist as a nuanced character because rape is objectively worse than murder." WHO THE FUCK TOLD YOU THAT? Reading this makes me feel so angry and sad and guilty because frankly, I was raped, and of course, it was horrible but still I'd choose it any time over being murdered. Because I have my life, I'm loved, and I love, I pursue my dreams, and I can still experience so many good things in my life. Painting sexual assault as this worse-than-death experience is not the feminist take they think it is and does not do victims any good.

Or accusations that Vivzie's support of fandom bullying led to someone taking their life. It's such a ridiculous and harmful claim. Honestly, this thing always makes me heated because suicide is not an easy decision, ask any person who ever faced it. It's not like "ah, this stranger told me to kms, I guess I gotta do it now." Of course, any kind of bullying and abuse adds to the suffering and can be the final trigger, but to me, it's just so disrespectful and harmful that someone could have experienced prolonged, intense suffering and all of this is omitted, their death labeled as a result of "fandom bullying" and weaponized in fandom drama. Also, it's simply cruel to put the blame for it on one, uninvolved person.

Also, it always annoys me when people hold small creators to immensely high standards while not doing the same with others. If we keep lynching and canceling every media that is not objectively morally pure, we won't be left with only perfect media. We will be left with media produced by white, privileged billionaires who might be real-life rapists, abusers, and thieves but are too powerful to be taken down by social media outrage. Hazbin's success is a major W for the underappreciated medium of animation (we saw what WB did to 90% of their animated shows), unpopular genres like musicals (Wonka creators were literally too ashamed to market it as one??), and unapologetic queer narratives that are not written for a heteronormative audience or centered around queer oppression (ofmd, the other medium I can think of in that realm has just been canceled). I can't stand people so desperate to put it down driven by their black-or-white sense of morality. Kant won't be patting your back for being the Moraliest Person because you bullied an indie creator and her fans.

Also everyone who feels the need to explain me hazbin critical agenda - save your breath. I'm very emotional about it and I frankly don't fucking care why you think you are right.

[brisquad-unit-4402]

crimzon ruze dating an artist

i’m gonna be real the hate mail stream changed me as a person

yhis one is about ruze and a reader that likes to make visual art, but if this gets some reception might be interested in writing more headcanons for writers, musicians, programmers, dancers…

tags: gender neutral reader, established relationship, fluff, headcanons

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

let’s get it out of the way: ruze isn’t just a viciously violent mercenary menace, he’s also a viciously violent mercenary menace that ✨ loves creativity ✨

he respects people that can use their imagination, like inventing new horrific ways to kill a corruption beast, or making someone’s day worse in a way that can’t be replicated

so naturally he gravitates to people who put their imagination to use through their own art medium. he has a type for creators

one of the best feelings ever is being able to watch an artist in their element, focused on their vision

there’s always so much to admire. their hands wrapped around the pencil, the way they squint and stare at the lines… he could go on

if he’s really lucky maybe the artist will move around while drawing a character, just so they can use their own body as reference. it’s so cute seeing them lift a hand and compare it to the one they were drawing, even the pout they do when they erase the last few strokes, all frustrated but ready to try again. especially the pout

he doesn’t do the whole “talking about your feelings” thing so when he sees a well-done drawing, well, that just makes admitting it all the more redundant. who needs words when a picture is worth a thousand of them?

ruze himself isn’t exactly an artist, but he’s tried before. it’s tough work. anyone that can control their pen that well deserves respect

if you’re an artist and your love language is quality time then dating ruze is a dream. he’ll do work in the same room as you while you’re preoccupied with your latest piece

it’s just the right amount of togetherness, but you’re able to do your own thing, and so is he. this feeling gets even better with banter, music, anything

he doesn’t mention it often but ruze also likes to work with his hands too. his favorite is papercrafting

you’re the only one in the world that knows he has a diy scrapbook full of photos and embellishments and, yes, some of your doodles and scrapped art you let him keep

always wants to display your art in some way. it’s personal and makes him feel like his house is a little livelier

if you need more space or expensive supplies for your art like a firing kiln, large canvases, pressure pots, or other equipment, then he’ll drop off the face of the earth for, like, a week, then come back with a bounty collected and a cut of it for your art fund

ruze likes the challenge of hunting down and fighting a fearsome monster, and how you brighten up as you plan a visit to a local craft store

he likes to ask questions about what you’re working on. this can be anything from art history to oc lore to symbolism to techniques

it makes especially good conversation at night when he’s about to go to bed with you

…there have definitely been times ruze was the first to sleep because you got hit with inspiration at 1 am though

it would be hypocritical if he were to make you rest, but just don’t overdo it and wake up cranky past your alarm, alright?

and do some stretches, including your hands, and your back. you’re literally dating someone who uses his muscle to make money. you better be treating your body nicely while you’re making art

you should be getting accidental paper cuts, not carpal tunnel because SOMEONE didn’t stick their arms straight out and bend their wrists back while keeping their fingers straight for 10 seconds, then bend their wrists down to the floor for another 10 seconds. not naming names

the type of mf that will sneak up and make some form of sudden physical contact (a kiss? bite? lick? annoying poke to your side?) so your back straightens and then tells you to keep it straight instead of giving you more affection

would NEVER respond to someone talking about their art with “can you draw me?”

that’s probably his greenest flag actually

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

✧. ┊ masterpost ✧. ┊ kofi

[sh1-n0bu]

pspsps.... I'm planning on writing starting today and tips/suggestion

pspspspspsps… yis yis nobu is here

now first things first!!! PLEASE CREATE NAVIGATION AND MASTERLIST POSTS TRUST ME THEY ARE AN ABSOLUTELY LIFESAVER❗️❗️

so, most blogs tend to keep it simple, only i seem to keep it so long and annoying /pos anyways—

as ive said, make a navigation post first. what you feel comfortable writing and what you don’t feel comfortable writing. it will make it clear on what kind of requests youre okay with accepting

second, masterlists post. of course, it can branch into different fandoms if ur thinking on writing for different fandoms. if not, it can be divided by characters that you will write for or by scenarios/fics/thirsts/brainrots etc etc

third, abt me. it can be a separate post like mine or it can simply be a quick abt me post along the lines of

name, age, zodiac sign(if u want), reqs: open or not

fourth, you can also make anon list if you want like mine or just like the one above, it can be one long list. depends on ur preference hun

fifth, as for writing a fic, i keep it relatively simple. word vomit. thats what fanfics essentially are, word vomit. it can be long, short, medium length, doesnt really matter because ur pouring ur heart and soul into that shit anon

i like to write it in a specific stule and im sure you know it if youve read a few of my fics.

[title] or no title since even i struggle with titles anon, dw

symmary of the fic in short few sentences. ive seen few writers write their fic this way and its actually super nice

warnings. what the fic will have since its important to not cause your readers to get triggered by things they dont like

notes or authors notes. some other writers name it in different ways according to the general aesthetic of their blog and its super cute to see it. tho this one is optional and u dont have to write it if u dont wanna

and then, read more cut comes in. though sometimes, the read more cut isnt mandatory if its a simple thirst or what you think doesnt need it

and thats abt it. and of course, tagging. its important to tag ur fics luv. and have fun! hope this was helpful<3

[agbpaints]

I like a lot of battlemechs. Some of them look really cool, some of them play like absolute fiends, some of them are absolute piece of shit graft boxes. The Hammer isn't really ant of those, I like it because of its name.

Designed by Gibson Federated Battlemechs in Free Worlds League space and first rolling off production lines in 3053, the HMR-3M Hammer was intended to serve as a direct competitor to the Federated Commonwealth's popular Valkyrie battlemech in the light fire support role. It packs the same throw-weight in missiles, though it splits it into a pair of LRM-5s equipped with Artemis IV Fire Control and fed by a 2 ton ammo bin instead of a single LRM-10, drops the jump jets (though maintains a ground movement profile of 5/8), and carries slightly less armor than contemporary Valkyrie designs like the VLK-QD. It uses this saved weight for a fairly beefy set of sidearms- three medium lasers arranged in a vertical stack up the center torso and into the head. Interestingly, the arms of the design are free of any weapons, implying it has some want to be in melee which the missile racks really do not want it doing. As far as base models go, it's not super inspirint- as a Valkyrie competitor it lacks the mobility to quickly move to firing positions and as a fire support platform it basically serves as a budget Trebuchet, a mech that already sits firmly in Discount Dan's bin of mostly competent missile boats. It's biggest boon is likely its double ammo bins and low BV cost, which easily allows you to add weird LRM ammo like smoke and thunder rounds to a force without sacrificing an archer or something, and even then you waste the Artemis, tonnage which I think is kinda wasted on LRM-5s anyway.

Now, onto the thing that drew me to the Hammer, the variants. You see, each variant of the Hammer has a fun little nickname instead of just a variant code. That's character most mechs don't get outside customs and I think it's kinda cute. Anyway, the HMR-3S 'Slammer' is our first variant and by far the worst. This one pulls two of the medium lasers on favor of *another* 2 tons of LRM ammunition. This allows the Slammer to keep up its fearsome 10 damage barrage for 48 turns, long enough that someone else might have the sense to wander over and kill it dead.

Next, we've got probably the funniest variant, the HMR-3C Claw-Hammer. This is the compulsory 'oops all medium lasers' version of the design, pulling an LRM rack and its attendant ton of ammunition in favor of four more medium lasers. The heat sinks have been upgraded to double strength freezers to cope with the strain of being roughly 40% of a Nova, and to its credit it can more or less handle the heat of its guns.

Finally, we have the HMR-3P Pein-Hammer. Unlike the previous variants which had some long range firepower (even if it was only token like the Claw-Hammer), the Pein-Hammer is 100% a forward unit. It carries a pair each of ER medium lasers, small pulse lasers, and Streak SRM-4 launchers, along with a TAG laser designator for guided munitions and enough double heat sinks to more or less carry the load of its guns. This Hammer has a sort of annoying, weird anti-synergy with the rest of its ilk- despite being obviously a forward observing unit that LRM boats could benefit from, the TAG system it carries is wasted when combined with the Arty-IV every other model has. It does, however, pair fairly well with contemporary ANV-8M Anvil, spotting for the heavier mech's Arrow IV artillery piece.

I decided to get in on the action and make a pair of my own variants. The HMR-3ASC 'Sledge-Hammer' is an extremely low cost iteration on the 3M- rip off the expensive guidance systems of the LRM racks, along with a laser and a heat sink, and just add more missile tubes. 4 LRM-5s means that with Kerensky's blessing, you can deliver a knockdown at long range, while the lack of inbuilt guidance means special munitions are less feelbad.

The HMR-3AT Trench-Hammer is intended specifically for hunting battle armor. 4 jump jets keep it ahead of most of its prey. While the double SRM-6 rack can be loaded with Inferno munitions to make Toads die a firy death, or just regular missiles to soften them up before they get whacked by your force's bigger guns.

[queenimmadolla]

How do you feel/what do you do about poc that are in the sunken place? I’ve seen poc admit they can’t imagine a poc as reader and only imagine white people, then defend white washing in all fandom mediums(fics, art, headers etc). It annoys the fuck out of me, esp since white creators use those poc to hide behind. Like ok if you’re cool with the white supremacy in your head good for you, but it doesn’t work for me and I want to imagine reader as pic and flr people to work towards and create a more welcoming environment for everyone.

The sunken place, that made me laugh out loud!!! But you’re right, they never fail to show up when a white person is doing their best to make sure a reader is white. But let’s talk about it, cause I been DYING to give my piece.

I can always hear them coming, the loud ass tuba that makes up their Uncle Ruckus theme song starts playing right before they post their “I can excuse racism” ass reply so they can shove their head up white writers’ asses.

The most common statement I see is something like “tbh I just ignore those words, they barely even register to me now, and sometimes I don’t even wanna imagine myself so it doesn’t bother me” like congrats on admitting that the white coding has been SO common of a practice that you’ve adapted to purposely imaging a white person in your place because the white writers you worship made it difficult for you to ever imagine yourself or at least an oc with the same shade of skin as you in a READER insert.

and if they don’t wanna imagine themselves in the reader tag but feel inclined to speak up about people who do being upset? GET THE FUCK OUTTA THE READER TAG! This doesn’t involve you then, bitch. Go read some OC fanfiction, and take your house slave mindset with you. They’re not better than us by agreeing with details that do encourage and up hold white supremacy (we’re not calling you members of the kkk, we’re saying if you want to imply Reader is white, you’re implying we should because my black ass does not have straight blonde hair, blue eyes and cream colored skin)

‘Oh, but vivi it’s not that deep, I just like to write certain─’ with disrespect, shut the fuck up. if you’re white, you do not encounter these racist people on here the way we do because they’re most likely your friends and followers while they’re OUR antagonists.

You do not get to decide whether you only wanting white people to be able to see themselves in Reader (an insert meant to let literally ANYONE see themselves in the place of) is racist or not—just like business owners who refuse to allow POC to shop/dine/sit in their establishments don’t get to say they’re not racist.

ANYWAYS, if they’re a POC and they excuse this shit, here’s a perfect character for them to insert themselves in the place of:

[atthebell]

atp this website should just let me opt in to tags im willing to see rather than blocking this many

Do you ever feel like you run out of qsmp content to consume on tumblr because of the blocked tags?

^ not at all a criticism of blocking tags, I do it liberally lol, just curious because it happens to me sometimes

not really; part of the reason why i have to block so many tags is because i follow so many people in order to see a lot of qsmp stuff. because i like keeping up to date with as many characters as possible i like to see a lot of stuff, but that also means seeing shit i don't want to see or seeing incredibly stupid & biased takes from people who only main one POV (at which point i usually just block and move on with my life; if you can't step outside your characters pov for single second, you're not working with this medium right).

i DO have issues with not seeing enough about roier and cellbit on my dash honestly-- i hear every detail about tubbo and bad and foolish's streams, but whenever i miss a cellbit stream i know ill have to watch it back myself because people won't have said what happened because there's such fewer cellbit fans on here, and same goes for roier. although there's definitely more spanish speakers on here than brazilians so i do get some of what happens on his streams. in general, though, there are like three people on here who care about cellbit enough to post about him and im one of them so :/ i need to up the propaganda or something i feel like im going insane

there's also far less fanart on here than there is for other mcyt fandoms, which is sad, so i do often find myself combing through every character's tag hoping to find new art but ive already found it all. this isn't a criticism of fanartists, qsmp just isn't as popular on here and that's reflected in the amount of art.

anyway i don't really have a hard time finding content about most characters but there's a few where it is a struggle, though not because of blocking tags. and the reason i block so many tags is because i just do not share the same taste in other media as the people i follow, so i pretty much have to block whatever other stuff they post about or ill want to scream. and bc i have every variation of cc & q neg blocked along with usual tws.

i suppose because of how many people i have blocked im probably missing some qsmp content, but i have people blocked because they're awful and post misinfo or are just annoying so like. im not gonna unblock them just to see bad analyses of bad or cellbit or tubbo on my dash. i have a few things that earn an instant block from me, and misinfo is a big one, along with just being mean as hell or bigoted in some way. idk im very particular about cultivating my dash and although im frustrated often, that's more due to the state of fandom & online culture in general at the moment (bad) than all that specific to this fandom.

[indigobard]

PREFACE RANT TO THE RANT: This was spurred on by the fact that all I did was look up the helluva boss tag for fanart when the new episode dropped, and now my For You recommended box has been forever tainted with this stupid ass group of people that post "Helluva Critical" and "Viviene Critical". I keep blocking one, and a new one will pop up on the next page. Thinking back on it, this shit is always the same with every goddamn thing that is good in this world. It fucking exists around a bunch of useless consumer fucks who wouldn't appreciate artistry if it caused peace on our planet Earth. Nothing is good enough, and now my tumblr recommendations are apparently tainted forever because the annoying minority is more like a 40% 60% split than a 10% 90% split. Fuck. 

THE RANT: Why do animation and drawn things as a medium have the worst fans? It's got the most death threat-sending, hateful, cretinous motherfuckers with no grasp of nuance or any inkling of patience. It happens with every show and comic nowadays. Like, fucking chill and let things be created without gaining some fucked-up sense of entitlement to a thing that your only, only motherfucking addition to is being a consumer of said thing. Which is the lowest part of the economic totem pole and barely worth shit. It takes hundreds of thousands of consumers for something to make it big these days; we are all a thousandth of a thousandth of a thousandth of the reason something can keep airing, so sit the fuck down. Much like most these losers the changes they want to make are trash. I guess after years and years I have come to the conclusion that while I'm glad fandom exists because it ups the funding of these projects, I at the end of the day absolutely detest and fucking hate a sizable portion of fandoms because looking at them makes me so unsurprised that being an animator or a writer for one of these shows is so often a miserable experience for the creators we should be encouraging.

OUTRO SOLUTION: After a short search I have discovered the block tag option so just like the people who should just stop watching the shows and reading the things they only ever criticize and personally attack people for making I am going to block the two tags filled with just the worst people. Good riddance idiots.

[hundredblooms]

lol this tag is a lie i already have things in the works for inserts despite the games being unreleased. lol. lmao even. anyway. here's rough sketches/concepts and whatnot for them. all information is subject to change as things get released. under the cut because hoooo boy this got long.

jackpot crash course

two different ideas for this one actually. i may do one or both it depends-

idea one is CD's junior detective. they've known her since childhood.

idea two is a car mechanic that fixes up vehicles for benny. they've known him since childhood as well. if i go with this one they get to wield a comically large wrench at some point, maybe to kill one of the other characters since this is a death game.

they lack charisma but they make up for it in likeability and tenacity. also manipulating the shit out of people, which they kind of feel bad about but justify with their desire to survive.

bittersweet sentence

take the autism creature and put it in a human body. that's it that's this self insert.

it has a staring problem but that's because it's observing the other prisoners to see what they do and don't like and how they handle situations.

they also have this weirdly calming effect? keeps yun-woo from snapping and tones down na-hun's energetic ass a bit.

they follow yun-woo and na-hun round like a stray cat. no one knows why. yun-woo has tried to shake them off but they stay anyways. na-hun doesn't mind, he enjoys their company.

it's never outright stated how they ended up in the dreamscape prison but it's implied they were in a really bad situation and bad headspace when they first fell asleep

firmly believes they don't deserve parole so they purposely neglect their daily tasks or give their stickers away in order to stay in the prison. yun-woo does manage to convince them to leave with him once they get close enough.

even so, they worry they may not get to see him in the real world because the premise is people trapped in their sleep and if they have been stuck in sleep for a while (we're talking MONTHS) they could die or end up in critical condition.

s-01-ver bullet

they're either with uno (whoever he's affiliated with) or laska industries. either way they're proficient at their job and well respected.

also either way they have biometric enhancements that kind of didn't get programmed right. they lose control of their body and mind when the equipment "glitches" so they require uno's help to keep it under control.

their code name is "duo" because of the above ^ but also because they can complete the work of two men in one day. only kowalski and uno know their real name (i also don't have a real name for them yet).

prefers to stick to a plan like kowalski, but unlike kowalski is more flexible when plans go sideways. ("you gotta be nonchalant because the second you start chalanting shit go left")

"it's so fucking over" on the inside, "we're so fucking back" on the outside.

divine hunt

guy who's clearly losing in a fistfight but talking shit like they're winning.

very composed, calm, and mature (they have to be since they work for the mayor) but easily annoyed by john doe. they pick fights with him a lot.

some kind of medium that's like?? an ambassador for the town between then mortals and spirits planning divine punishment.

or maybe they share a body with a divine or formerly divine spirit. that would be fun maybe.

always wants to help celeste and oliver however they can. john doe is on his own though fuck that guy (/lh)

little flowers or thunderclouds can be seen around their sprites depending on their mood.

the looping woods

uhhhh they know noah and omen somehow??? this game doesn't have much context behind it so i don't have much for this one sorry.

"kill me once, shame on me. kill me twice, how did you do that. kill me three times, this time loop fucking sucks."

they survive if noah survives and omen dies but die if noah dies and omen survives. or all three of them die. lol. lmao even. this one has potential for multiple endings but all of rachel's games so far have had multiple endings so we'll see!

yabai yatai

they specialize in water-based exorcisms!! learned how from their aunt, who married into the family (most of her family is exorcists).

they moved to japan when they were 18 to help with the spirits issue over there. their immediate family was told they were moving for university since they kept the whole exorcisms thing under wraps.

possibly the only person who can keep reiji's ego in check. they also sometimes feed into his ego on accident. oops.

calmer and more passive in general, but they won't hesitate to face an issue head-on if the situation calls for it.

literally they just grab shinko and go "this is my son now." he has no say in this by the way.

[momobani]

HALL MONITOR

If Your Winter Is Hard - Chapter 5 - 17.7k

medium!minghao x exorcist!reader

SERIES MASTERLIST

Warnings: exorcism(duh!); discussion of ghosts + death, reference to death of family members, light violence/ fighting, mention of guns, mention of grief, attempted sexual innuendo(?), mention of food, depiction of trauma/ grief  

Sum: just when you think you’ve started grappling with your biggest case yet, a loose end from the past almost derails your whole operation.

A/N: the plot thiccens. We’re really getting into the thick of things, I’ve had to add an additional planned chapter since I can’t fit everything in oops.

Taglist: @sleeplessdawn  (idk whether it’s annoying of me to tag you too @aceofvernons since you haven’t asked to be tagged but i know you’ve been keeping up with the series, which i’m so thankful for <3, but also i never offered to tag you, i’m sorry if it seems presumptive of me, i don’t mean to bother you, i just thought you might be interested) 

You were starting to regret what you did.

Okay, not really but sort of.

Minghao wasn’t a bad roommate per se but he most certainly was not what you had expected. Like when you would go grocery shopping and he bought all these veggies and meat AND actually ate them. You hated to admit it but you were basically a sewage rat when it came to the meals you usually ate - this was a little bit of a switch up to say the least.

He would unapologetically wake you up the crack of dawn to go jogging, continuing his exorcist training programme against your will. He made a ruckus at your door then eventually entered, dodging the pillows you threw at him when he came in to drag your ass out of bed and kept talking to you so your brain would wake up.

It was kind of your fault though; you really hadn’t thought about the training when you told him to come live with you and had brought that upon yourself. You felt like you were perpetually stuck in some ‘80s film training montage with ‘Eye of the Tiger’ as the background song, except you didn’t feel excited, just really fatigued.

After the jog you had to go take a nap because your body just couldn’t take it. Then you’d get up and work. But not without having minimum one awkward (usually bathroom) encounter per day.

Like today.

You were ready to play dead like a possum for the day because the exhaustion was rife but you decided to brush your teeth at least.

Minghao would do a more elaborate work out and so by the time you woke up from your nap, you’d both be headed to the bathroom. You know this but you still tumble out of bed, thinking you can overtake him.

You’re still half asleep and shuffling down the hallway and then the bathroom door swings opens, a cloud of steam defusing into the hallway and then you smack into something warm and wet. The collision knocks you back a couple of steps and you zero in on the disturbance, aka your roommate, ready to groan at him but you open your eyes and lose your train of complaint.

Minghao is standing there, still sopping wet from his shower with only a towel wrapped around his waist. It only takes a split second to process the image in front of your eyes, the detail of his bare upper half, broad shoulders, biceps and stray water drops marking a trail down his abdomen and sliding past where the towel clings to his waist and lower-

You screw your eyes shut and smack a hand over them as an extra measure.

“What are you doing?” He asks, the amusement evident in his voice. You can tell he’s on the verge of laughing but you’re on the verge of losing your sanity. This was more of Minghao than you wanted to see but the image was ingrained, burned even, into your eyelids. Great, now you’d have ghosts and a shirtless Minghao whirling around in your dreams-

well, nightmares.

“Please wear clothes around the house. It’s not a big ask.” You whine, still squeezing your eyes shut.

“They get damp if you keep them in the bathroom as you shower and I’m literally three steps away. You just have bad timing. That’s a You problem, roomie.” He sasses back. “Now, scoot.” He tells you. You obey, moving left, just wanting to end this situation already. You hear him sigh and you infer you’ve stepped in the wrong direction so you go the other way and end up smacking into him again.

Your forehead is now wet and your nostrils filled up with the scent of his body wash. It’s something woodsy, piney, the kind of thing that you could imagine a forest elf or woodland deity smelling like.  

Minghao’s hands land on either of your arms and hold you still. He exhales, the very light frustration seeping through in his voice.

“Let me do the scooting or we’ll be here forever.”

You let him move past you without another mishap.

“You can open your eyes now.” He calls from behind you before shutting the door to his room.

Not everything was annoying though. Sometimes it was kinda funny. Like when you would be sitting at the kitchen table, answering emails or whatever before bed and Minghao would waltz in, wearing a matching set of pyjamas (who even does that anymore?) and his bathrobe thrown over, his reading glasses on one of those chains and would start making his before bed tea.

There was something incredibly elder-like about his actions, as if you were watching a wise old man doing his daily routine with aims of making it to a hundred.

You found it somewhat endearing except for when he switched it up and came in with only the bathrobe and pyjama bottoms hanging off his hips, his head stuck in a book (you swear you might have even caught him with one of your cheesy romance paperbacks but you weren’t sure) while you tried to avert your eyes quickly enough.

You’d seen Minghao’s chest more than your own since he’d moved in.

You told yourself it wasn’t forever and just shut your eyes, willing yourself to stay calm while your blood pressure rose.

*

It’s another chicken dinner induced meeting for your group exorcism project and you’re all gathered around your conference table as per usual; you, Minghao, Hoshi, Seungkwan and Vernon while Jeonghan showed up as Seungkwan’s other plus one. Seokmin couldn’t make it tonight, claiming himself the understudy of whatever musical was on at the theatre and therefore had other work.

You figured the show must go on so you called a meeting regardless.

“Right, the main topic of today is discussing the preliminary scouting mission on site. Seungkwan, take it away.” You gesture to the head of the table, waving a drumstick around. You were sitting to the side today. It was kind of nice to let someone else lead for a change.

“As we’ve established there are several spirits on site. We managed to make a note of at least eight ghosts, although it was hard to tell if there was indeed a ninth one that was attracted to the incense.” He begins. He clicks the projector on your table to life and the image appears on the wall behind him. “Here are the collected characteristics we could discern from the initial viewing. It was a little difficult to get more details on first sight but this is what we definitely agreed on.”

You’d briefly read over this document since the guys had managed to create the report on the mission a few days after going to the apartment block. There were eight boxes in a table, listing each ghost and the few basics on their appearance, like gender, rough estimate of age and whether they had any signs of being vengeful spirits.

“There was some fog around us as the spirits appeared therefore it’s possible to speculate at least one may be a vengeful spirit, even if there was no other tell tale signs of that. It may have been the site itself and thus purely coincidental. I will say, the collective summoning was terrifying in itself so trying to measure the level of dread and drop in temperature to guesstimate if there were any vengeful spirits is practically impossible.” Seungkwan continues.

“Do you think there was any connection between any of the spirits that showed up initially? Any links to each other that might prove useful to be aware of when trying to identify them?” You ask, aiming the question not only at Seungkwan but also Vernon who’d been there too.

“Nothing, at least on a surface level.” Seungkwan tells you. “My guess is that the ghosts are all connected by their resting place being ransacked and disturbed. They must have been spirits hanging around the cemetery and probably very quiet ones at that, which is why no reports would have come in. You know how hard it is to get anything cohesive on cemetery ghosts since everyone thinks it’s just the general vibe of a cemetery that drives people to feel uncomfortable rather than the intuitive sense there might be a ghost around.”

“People like to believe that their loved ones aren’t roaming around being lost in a world that no longer accommodates them, which is why we don’t tend to get many reports on ghosts at cemeteries.” Jeonghan chips in.

You feel an edge to those words as they leave his mouth and you know he’s talking about your sister. You will yourself not to get mad since he was to blame for her death and therefore her becoming a ghost, so why does he get to sound like that? Did he blame you for not being able to exorcise her? “Now, I’m more interested in what you mentioned before. What’s this about a ninth spirit?” He questions.

“Ah, I was just getting to that. I forgot you didn’t see it, bro.” Seungkwan answers. You don’t miss the way that Jeonghan’s eyes make a strategic yet casual movement to your face and back to the projection.  

There’s a lightbulb moment in your brain. The questions you’d asked yourself about Jeonghan being at the apartment block had answered themselves.

From the sounds of it, Jeonghan hadn’t been there on site with them. You hadn’t asked Seungkwan before when he was compiling the report with Vernon and Seokmin since it hadn’t occurred to you to be more suspicious than you already were of Jeonghan showing up after Seungkwan expressed he wanted his help. You should have doubled down and interrogated someone, either of them, or all of them. You mentally slap yourself for the silly mistake.

But now that you knew Jeonghan hadn’t been there, what did that mean? But then why was he asking your aunt about group exorcisms? He hadn’t wasted a second after presumably hearing about it from the others and being called by Seokmin for help. Were you missing something? Did Jeonghan have some kind of experience with group exorcisms that you weren’t aware of or something? Or an interest?

If Yoon Jeonghan has an interest in something dangerous, it bodes ill for anyone around him. You had to find out what his game was. You weren’t going to let the same thing that happened to your sister happen to anyone else.

“Yeah, so it’s kind of strange.” Seungkwan says, snapping you out of your thoughts. “When we were counting the spirits, Vernon and Seokmin both counted a ninth spirit that I didn’t. We had thought it might just be a counting error since they were all roaming about and I just hadn’t seen it.”

“But neither Seokmin or I can remember anything about that ghost - I can recall details, identifiers about each one that we saw for counting purposes, but that one is too ambiguous. As if we imagined seeing it. Isn’t that odd?” Vernon finishes.

“Was it just far away and you couldn’t see it properly or?” Minghao asks.

“No, it definitely went past us, like the same sort of distance as the others but even now I can’t picture it in my head, I just know I saw something.” Vernon says.

“Could this be your medium sight failing?” You ask. “Usually exorcists have clearer vision than mediums, no one really knows why but it’s speculated it’s something that developed over generations of exorcists since they’re the ones who need to see the spirits most. So I reckon if Seungkwan had seen it, maybe he could have remembered stuff about it.” You explain.

There’s a moment of silence, the pause full of thought.

“So exorcists have like 20/20 vision for ghosts but mediums don’t?” Hoshi wonders out loud.

“Something like that.” You say. “It’s not an exact science or anything.”

“They say that if a medium trains to become an exorcist, it’s possible to improve their sight.” Jeonghan says nonchalantly. You can’t help but zero in on him from across the table.

Now that you’d learned Jeonghan was a medium, you had had a lot of questions that remained unanswered. The problem is that Jeonghan had never personally told you he’s a medium and you didn’t trust his intentions of keeping that from you, so naturally you hadn’t revealed your hand by asking him.

The mounting suspicion you had about Jeonghan and his involvement in your case was starting to worry you, even more so than before. Before you were just mad at him for casually showing up and trying to weasel his way back into your life however now, now he was on thinner ice than he’d ever been.

“Yeah, but no one’s ever done that.” Seungkwan shrugs. “Anyway, we’re still unsure about this so it’s on the docket for the next scouting mission. We need exact numbers regardless of why they couldn’t recall this spirit.”

No one’s ever done that but Yoon Jeonghan, you think.  

It was common knowledge in your circle that Jeonghan didn’t come from an exorcist family but had the abilities to see ghosts. That’s why he was respected for mastering the skills required to be an exorcist without growing up in that world, an incredibly rare feat throughout the history of your industry. That was even before the rumours of the demon exorcism that had been done by your sister, which had made Jeonghan’s name even more revered than before since people thought he did it instead.

But you were only realising that the world didn’t know Jeonghan had medium abilities too, abilities that allowed him to be possessed by spirits as well as the skills to exorcise them. You wondered why he had never boasted about it, it seemed unlike him. It meant he did every job with an added dimension of danger, which you didn’t understand in itself.

Could you conclude that only your aunt and your sister had known? Your aunt talked so casually of it that you would have assumed everyone knew about it. Now, you were certain everyone lived in ignorance.

“Then that’s the next step. Recount the ghosts and see if it matches up.” Hoshi hums. It was the familiar sound he made when he was trying to use his brain, one you’d gotten used to without realising.

“That’s inefficient. What if the same happens? We need to figure out a way to make sure we don’t miss any.” You counter.

It’s at this moment that the lights in the conference room suddenly turn off. There’s a series of surprised noises sounding around the room, you jumping slightly at the unexpected darkness. The projector had turned off too and the only light was coming from Seungkwan’s laptop which was running on battery.

“That’s odd, it’s been so long since we’ve had a power outage.” You say, getting up.

“I’ll go check the fuse box.” Jeonghan volunteers and is several steps ahead of you. You were just getting up to do the same. You go on a candle hunt instead, telling Minghao to get the tea lights from downstairs while you picked out the box of emergency candles you usually kept for exorcism related stuff in the office.

You bring it back to the conference room and start lighting them up with your metal daisy lighter. Minghao comes back first, then Jeonghan after a couple of minutes.

“It’s not just here, there’s no electricity on the whole street.” He informs you all as he sits back down. You’re distributing the candles around the table, lighting the last couple.

“Where did you get that?” Jeonghan asks when you light the last candle and slide it’s tiny stand towards him. You’re confused for a second but find him looking at the lighter in your hand, somewhat mesmerised. Maybe he recognised it.

“It was in my sister’s things.” You tell him.

“Ah, right.” He doesn’t say anything else.

“We don’t need electricity to brainstorm.” Seungkwan announces. “So how can we get every ghost?”

You sit back down finally, all the candles lit around the conference room, the light casting a warm but eerie glow on everyone’s faces. You run through exorcisms you’d done, more specifically your identification methods but can’t come up with anything on the spot.

“Hey, I think I have an idea.” Vernon pipes up, his tone more than unsure. “This might be really stupid or totally smart.”

“It’s funny how often those are synonymous.” You muse. “Let’s hear it.”

“What if we set up two counting stations and do two simultaneous counts?” Vernon says.

“So instead of lighting up one incense pot, get two and separate them?” You look at him to clarify. Vernon quirks his eyebrows in approval.

“Exactly. We station ourselves in two different locations and tick off the ghosts from that list as they come and see if the same ones show up again.” He says.

“That could work.” Seungkwan hums. “We can have several people at each one to make sure we get an accurate reading.”

“It’s not bad; some of them might not show up at both locations but they’ve already been spotted so at least we know of them. It might be easier to find that potential ninth one since they’ll be less in one go.” You say, starting to be on board with the suggestion.

“The only possible thing that could go wrong is that they ignore the second location and all show up at the one.” Jeonghan chips in.

“That’s one outcome but what really are the odds of that happening? Especially if we make sure to split the locations evenly.” You say.

“Fine. We can do that next.” He replies. You want to fight him on it and tell him that you don’t need absolutely everyone but you remember Seokmin wasn’t available for a couple more days.

“We can send three at either location and tally them up. Good idea, Vernon.” You smile in his direction. He nods back, the entire action oozing relaxed ease. Sometimes you really thought Vernon had chosen a great career as a medium; he was never scared or nervous about letting ghosts possess him. You needed more mediums like him.

The thought catches you off guard because you realise that you do have another medium like him. It was very rare for Minghao to show any sort of fear, except for when you put him in a life or death situation, understandably. You felt a pang of guilt over that yet again.

You agree on dealing with the re-count tomorrow and arrange to meet at the site around half four. It’s getting late so you decide to call it a day since the electricity isn’t back on yet.

As the guys clear the room you notice Seungkwan and Vernon hanging back.  

“YN?” Vernon gets your attention as you blow out some of the candles around the table.

“What’s up, Vern?” You blow out another one and look up at him.

“You got a spare hour these days?” He asks. You see Seungkwan doubling as Vernon’s shadow, standing a couple of feet behind him and throw him a sceptical glance too.

“What do you need?”

“You know how we’ve been spending a lot of time around here.” He pauses and you nod. “I’ve been going to an animal shelter to volunteer in my free time since I can’t at home and I saw a cat ghost hanging around.”

“A cat ghost?” You repeat. You hadn’t seen an animal ghost in a long time. They were kind of rare too, like vengeful spirits.

“Yeah, I was wondering if you could help me exorcise it.” He looks at you hopefully.

“Sure, but can’t Seungkwan do it?” You ask. As the question leaves your mouth, it becomes apparent to you that if Vernon was asking you instead of Seungkwan then he probably already tried and failed.

“I don’t know how to do it, YN. And you do, right?” Seungkwan perks up behind Vernon.

“I haven’t done it myself but I watched my sister do it a couple of times, so technically I do know.” You feel yourself already wanting to make up excuses if you mess it up and can’t help the poor kitty.

“That’s better than what I can do about it, will you do it?”

You look at both of their expectant faces.

“I already said yes, you guys. But the problem is finding a medium who can deal with animals.” You explain.

“Who did it before?” Vernon asks.

“Jun, both times. He’s extremely competent as a medium; he can handle anything. He’s very in demand and travels a lot so I’ll need to contact him first.”

“That’s okay, as long as we can get that cat out of there. It seems really lonely and the other animals keep getting riled up whenever it tries to play with them. They can’t see it, I don’t think, but they can definitely tell it’s there.” Vernon laments, suddenly really serious.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it. I’ll try and get a hold of Jun asap.” You reassure him.

“Thanks, YN. See you tomorrow.” And you bid your goodbyes with the two of them, walking them out of the office doors so they can head to Seokmin’s place, where they were staying.  

*

You agree with Minghao that you drive to the apartment block and he drives back. Potentially you could have asked if Hoshi wanted to drive but a) you didn’t trust Hoshi driving your car (no offence to him) and b) you weren’t even sure if he could drive since he didn’t have a car and he had moved specifically to be closer to his place of work (your house).

The two of you go get him and he gets in to the backseat like an excited kid getting picked up by his parents after school. He sits in the middle and pokes his head between the seats, grinning. You half expected him to start whining about getting McDonalds on the way back (to which you would have said you have food at home and Minghao would have possibly convinced you to go, only to get a black coffee and nothing else).  

“Let’s go count some ghosts!” He giggles. You can’t help but crack a little smile at Hoshi’s enthusiasm for such a mundane mission. Even though you’d gotten used to working with Minghao, it had been a while since you’d really been around Hoshi and you had to admit, you’d missed him. The office sometimes felt empty without his constant twittering, humming and dancing around.  

“Seat belt.” You remind him, chiding him quietly.

You make Minghao be the navigation and look at the map for you while you drive. For some odd reason the building site had a new address, which didn’t show up in the navigation system yet so you had to go the old fashioned way. Minghao instructed you consistently, making sure you were taking the correct turns or when to change lanes in order to be on the right roads.

It’s been a while and you’re getting closer to the site when the buildings start to look strangely familiar. Had you been down this way before? It was possible but this was in the part of town you really didn’t visit often. Your city was fairly big and it was impossible to know every part of it. Yet, as you drove, you felt the road flash before your eyes with a sense of deja vu.

It’s difficult not to search for the image in your mind as you go whilst still paying attention to the road but it’s bothering you more and more by the second. It’s already darkened outside, the days cutting shorter as winter approached, so you have to pay extra attention when driving in the low light.  

“Make the next right then after that go straight so we can find a parking spot.” Minghao tells you, his voice starting to seem far away.

It’s less than ideal when you finally start to place the buildings and streets in front of your eyes and within your memories.

“- no matter what, kiddo. It’s dangerous-” her voice echoes through chamber of your mind.

It hits you like a tonne of bricks when you realise why you knew the surrounding neighbourhood.

You’d been recklessly following a car here three years ago, tailing them from your house all the way here as they were headed there.

The warehouse.

That wretched, evil place that you hated more than anything in the world.

The place where your sister had died.

It was so close.

The thought shocks a wave of goosebumps across your skin, the feeling spreading to your insides and it makes you feel unbearably cold. You try your best to remember the exact way. You’d been following them on a bike that day, the bitter November cold trying to immobilise your limbs the longer your stayed outside.

“Take the next right-”

You don’t make the decision consciously.

In a split second,  you switch lanes suddenly, vaguely glancing in your rear view mirror to find no cars were close, swerving left and then flooring the pedal to the floor so you could make the traffic light before it switched to red. The force throws Hoshi and Minghao against the windows and they yell in surprise.

“YN! What are you doing?” You hear Minghao next to you but you ignore him, almost possessed by the image in your head. You had to find out if you were right.

This couldn’t be a coincidence.

You had no idea what this could possibly mean - the cemetery and the warehouse being so close together - but your intuition told you it was not a coincidence. You would bet your life on it in that moment, every fibre of your being prickling in anticipation.

“YN, slow down!” Minghao is leaning over, his hands clutching onto yours as they clutch the wheel itself, in a desperate attempt to gain control of the situation. You keep the car steady but don’t let up.

“Minghao, let go.” You demand, feeling yourself almost growling.

Your breath is unsteady and your jaw is clenching. You can’t help the way your body stiffens. Minghao probably senses it and releases your hands, retracting his hands carefully. You don’t dare look at his face right now, you knew that you’d only find some kind of horrified expression of distress so you don’t look (not that you could since you were driving).

It’s thirty seconds and you find the dirt road leading up to the warehouse. It’s not exactly dirt but it’s not a finished cemented path either. The warehouse is somehow still standing, a chain and padlock adorning the front doors.

In your mind’s eye you see it burning from the inside out, the wall of fire flashing before your eyes once again. It was daylight this time, it looked like any old, abandoned warehouse, not a fiery inferno of demon energy.  

You’ve barely pulled up in front of it when you leave the engine running, flinging your seatbelt off and throwing your door open. You ignore Minghao and Hoshi’s concerned shouts as your legs carry you forward and you run up to the door, slamming into it, trying to open it but only managing to shift it to the distance the chain allowed.

You try pulling on the chain and padlock but it won’t budge. You knew there was another set of doors but chances were they were padlocked too.

“YN, what the hell is going on?” You hear Minghao finally catching up to you. He sounds as breathless as you feel and it makes you waver, marginally bringing you back to reality.

You sigh and swallow back the pent up adrenaline in your mouth. Your mouth feels so dry and your heart is racing and suddenly you feel like you’re burning up, the only salvation being the light breeze in the air.

“It’s…th-this is where my sister died.” You say, your voice trembling involuntarily. You finally feel the sting of tears forming in your eyes but you fight them back. You can’t break down now, not here, not in front of your friends.  

“Here?” He looks around in disbelief.

“I don’t get it,” you start. Hoshi is standing a couple feet away, possibly too scared to approach you while you were hunched over the doors. “I just feel like there’s something wrong; that apartment block is close, isn’t it?” You direct that question to Hoshi.

“Less than half a mile away.” He says.

“You don’t get this kind of heavy ghost activity without a reason. And here,” you purse your lips, weighing up whether you should say it. You decide after driving like a maniac, they deserve an explanation. “There was a demon here.”

You hear the sound of Minghao sucking in the breath between his teeth and Hoshi visibly steps back. For all the time you’d know Hoshi, you’d never told him details about how your sister had died, never daring to mention the demon part to anyone else.  

You turn to them, ashamed for dragging them around like this on a whim.

“I’m sorry, you guys. This was stupid.” You look down, feeling a little pathetic at your outburst. “Let’s go.”

“It’s okay. You felt it was something serious, just please be careful next time, okay?” Minghao says, his eyes still full of worry. You nod. “Can’t be causing traffic accidents, can we?” He adds lightheartedly. You can’t help the way the corners of your mouth perk up for a split second as you agree.

You downplayed it for now, setting aside this irking and plaguing haunch to gnaw at you until later when you had time to think. Minghao doesn’t look incredibly convinced, giving you a look of gentle scepticism but he decides to believe you.

“Maybe you can ask Jeonghan about it. Surely he’d know something about demons, right?” Hoshi quips up hopefully, and while his intention is to be helpful, deep down it sparks the tiniest bit of ire since how was he so good at pinning the tail on the donkey? How did he manage to name the one person who knows something without knowing his involvement in this whole thing? You had to hand it to Hoshi, he had a knack for being right at the most unpredictable times.

“Maybe.” You say, walking back toward the car.

You feel Minghao’s eyes on you, heavy as he tries to discreetly stare at you, presumably to react if you do anything crazy again. Or maybe he figured out that Jeonghan did factor into this equation but couldn’t understand exactly how. Minghao knew the most about you and Jeonghan’s past friendship out of your friends. The others mostly knew you’d just worked at the same firm, nothing about the context.

It doesn’t take you long to reach the site of the apartment block, the area around mostly greenery bleeding into dirt roads, almost like an arboretum. You envisioned what it might look like one day if the building was finished. There was potential for a whole complex here if greed had its way one day.

It was easy to see why that corporation was trying to get back on track with their development; it could become a whole residential village. That could mean hundreds of millions in Platis’ back pocket.      

It was also remote enough from other areas since it had been the site of a cemetery. There was something extremely quiet and still in the air around the building. The block itself was bigger than the word could describe; it was closer to several blocks conjoined to make one grandiose structure that spanned the size of a sports field.  

You had parked a fair distance away, finding a street a couple of minutes away since you couldn’t park on site or get inside the gates separating the building work’s parameter. You snuck in around a back entrance that was closer to the forest like area behind the block.

“The others should be on that far side of the building, on the first floor.” Hoshi points over to the opposite end of the building to where you’re standing.

The progress on the building was stuck at having the actual structure complete - outside walls, inside walls separating apartments and stairs - but everything else was incomplete so it remained in the likeness of a concrete multi-floor parking lot.

“So we’re going up to at least the seventh floor on this side.” Minghao confirms the plan, looking up at the span of the building’s height. It was an impressive eight floors and all those stairs were waiting for you.

“Great, let’s hike.” You sigh. You should have expected that the others would trick you into doing the higher floor since they got here first. Then again, it was entirely your own fault. Again.

You start your great climb on the open plan stairs, the walls not completed around them and you can peak into each floor as you pass it by, seeing some of the sectioned off apartment or even what seemed like possible office areas.

Hoshi, ever the most energised person at any given moment, decided to race you to the top in order to show you - and this is a direct quote - his “tiger power”, you being both you and Minghao. So you shrugged and let him run off ahead of you with the bag of incense while you paced yourself up the stairs.

You’re somewhere on the fourth floor when you hear the echo of voices conversing somewhere nearby. It’s coming from down the long corridor to your right and you instinctively stop. Minghao carries on climbing up, clearly not having heard what you heard.

“Psst!” You hiss as quietly as you can and as urgently as you can to get his attention. Luckily Minghao is alert enough to hear you and he stops abruptly.

“What?” He hisses back.

“I heard something, let’s check it out.” You motion to the hallway beside you. You can still hear the conversation taking place, the hum of voices far away from you.

Minghao nods and follows you down the corridor, stepping lightly behind you as you make an effort to be as silent as possible. You advance slowly, the voices getting louder as you go. Could it be possible somebody had been here before you and you hadn’t noticed since you came in the back door? What about the others? What if they’d been caught? You were technically trespassing right now.  

You refused to believe that the Yoon Jeonghan would ever be caught sneaking around, or Choi ‘Silent as a Prius’ Vernon either but you were a little concerned that Boo ‘Voice of the Ages’ Seungkwan might have given them away. Then again, they were so far away and whoever it was, was here.

For some reason the voices are getting closer without you making significant movement forward and it’s a good thing you have exorcist vision or you might have missed the way two shadows appeared in the hallway, stretching from the apartment furthest ahead.

You whip around looking for a hiding spot, grabbing Minghao’s hand and dragging him into the closest doorway and throwing him into the first segregated room, squeezing yourself in after him when you find it’s a utility closet. He seems surprised and you slap a hand over his mouth instinctively.

You hold you breath, listening to the footsteps of whoever is walking past. You catch snatches of words from where you’re hiding, only able to hear it properly since everything was echoing wildly. There’s two of them, two male voices having a conversation.

Something about ‘building no matter what’ and ‘find people’ and ‘their superstitions don’t matter’. There’s a lot more but you can’t make it out from here. You wondered if these were people who were from Platis. You’d have to look into it, since this suggested those rumours were true; it sounded like they were pushing for resuming the building work.

That could mean you had less time to finish your exorcism than you thought.  

You look at Minghao, the two of you pressed close together. His eyes are wide and you think he’s glaring at you. You realise your hand is still over his mouth and let go apologetically. Sometimes you forget you don’t have to keep tabs on him the way you have to with Hoshi.

“Oh my god, Hoshi!” You whisper, mentally face palming yourself. He’s more likely to make noise than you were. You hope he was already at the top and being quiet.

The voices have for the most part faded away now. You can still hear them and you decide you need a glimpse of them, just to know who you were dealing with. You step to the edge of the apartment and poke your head out carefully.      

You just about manage to catch their heads as they bob down the stairs, both of them men in their forties or fifties, in suits, one of them wearing glasses. That’s all you were able to see for a split second. It looked like they could be Platis people, if their corporate attire was anything to go by.

“I think we’re going to have to hurry with all this. What if they start building and we haven’t done the exorcism yet?” Minghao says as you resume your stair climbing.

“I don’t know but it’ll complicate things, to say the least.” You reply, picking up pace.

You reach the seventh floor where Hoshi is already setting up the pot of incense. He hears you coming and glances back at you.

“Took you long enough.” He says sassily. “I can’t believe that you guys don’t have the stamina to do seven flights of stairs.” You scoff at his assumption.  

“Hoshi, we almost ran into some people, we had to hide.” You tell him, joining him in his squat in front of the incense. He’s put it together nicely but you have the lighter.

“What people?” He asks obliviously. You shake your head.

“We don’t know, for now let’s just get this done. We’re behind, I bet the others are done already.” You argue as you light the incense.

The three of you had agreed to isolate yourselves in a cube while the ghosts come and go so you had your gun at the ready, finger on the trigger when the first spirit appeared.

The usual sequence of events follows; the temperature drop, your breath becoming frosty, a prickling dread falling over you, all of it only a mild inconvenience to you at this point in your career.  

It doesn’t take too long for any of them to show up. With the crystallised walls surrounding you, you and Hoshi list off what you can see while Minghao cross checks the description with the information stockpiled from the previous counting.

So far three ghosts showed, in the span of five minutes. You weren’t sure exactly what you’d been expecting timing wise, but Hoshi assured you this was the pace they moved at last time. You have to renew the salt cage a couple of times while you wait and you start to get suspect that you’ll need to use up the second lot of incense.

When the time comes you step out of the cage as one wall disappears and you seal Hoshi and Minghao in it with the last bullet in your magazine. You reload your cartridge and take a good look around for any ghosts headed directly towards you. The coast is clear so you move to deal with the new dose of incense, lighting it in a hurry.

You feel that there’s a spirit approaching you from your left and you shift so you can see it in your peripheral vision, seeing it’s still a fair distance away. You clamp the pot shut and bounce back speedily. It’s just in time that you find the salt cage has worn off around Hoshi and Minghao and you rebuild a new one in a matter of seconds.

It wasn’t particularly exciting work, standing there and listing off what you saw but it was important that you did it thoroughly. Exorcisms were all about accuracy - you can’t send off a spirit without an identity. Without a name. It’s not possible.  

These souls are lost and they have to be found. They have to be pointed to the right direction too, so they can find their way. It’s not fair for them to have to wander the earth endlessly. It was in these kinds of moments that you didn’t consider your ability to see ghosts a curse but rather as a way for you to help others.  

In the end, you count seven. You wait and wait for any more to show up but it’s all in vain. After a quick phone call to Seungkwan, he informs you they counted about the same number as you, which strikes you as odd. It was most likely they had managed to find even more ghosts, who hadn’t made an appearance the previous time.

“Where did you station yourselves last time?” You ask Hoshi as you wait for the last of the incense to burn off.  

“Hmm,” he scrunches his nose in thought. “First floor, somewhere in the middle of block. We thought it would be better if we were as close to the ground as possible.”

“Okay, that explains it. There’s definitely some spirits that aren’t moving very far.” You nod. “Let’s call it here. I don’t think anyone else is coming.”

And with that you make your way back to where you left the car. You find the others waiting there too, Vernon sitting in the passenger seat of their car while Seungkwan and Jeonghan perch on the hood.

“What took you so long?” Seungkwan whines. “We’re all hungry and we want dinner. Did you get lost or something?”

You purse your lips, unsure of how to answer. It was entirely your actions that kept you from being on time. You felt a tang of shame slide through your mind for it. You couldn’t act on impulse like that, you were an exorcist for fuck’s sake. You had to be the level headed one.

“You try going up seven flights of stairs next time!” Minghao complains. “It’s not as easy as it sounds.”

For a moment, you hesitate. He was obviously lying, but was he lying for your sake or did he not want to mention the warehouse to the others? Whichever it was, you were suddenly really grateful to Minghao.

“It’s done now, the important thing is that you found more ghosts. Does that mean we got all of them?” You cut in.

“More than likely. We burned a lot of incense and no more showed up.” Jeonghan speaks up.

You’d been watching for the few moments you were there already, trying to gauge if he knew where you were - he must, right? Surely he must recognise that the warehouse was so close? He didn’t show any hint of well, anything. You expected him to be on edge maybe, or to seem disgruntled but if he had any reaction, he was hiding it well, keeping a poker face.

“Right, we can compare results at the office, it’s getting cold and dark out here. Let’s go.” You say, conscious that despite your coats the weather wasn’t for hanging out outside.

The others agree and you set off back to the office.

It turns out there was indeed a ninth spirit and an additional four others, making your grand total of ghosts a somehow expected and clichéd thirteen. You should have known it would be something ironically obvious like that.

So you tell everyone to go and rest up and pack some bags since you might have to do long hours starting tomorrow.

“I want to see everyone nice and early, 9am, okay? We need to move quickly.” You can’t help yourself but nag. There was something about those two men at the apartment block that rubbed you the wrong way and you couldn’t stop thinking that they were solely here to mess up your whole project.

*      

It’s not quite 9am yet but you’re starting to gather for your next meeting. For some it seems to be a little too early as you see Vernon space out with his eyes open while his chest rises and falls steadily. You feel a temporary pang of guilt seize your chest.

The conference table is scattered with cups of coffee and a plethora of snacks to make up for missing breakfast.  

“Why are we here when we can be in bed?” Seungkwan asks, keeping a hand in front of Vernon’s face to catch him in case he falls forward.

“Ghosts don’t sleep, so neither do exorcists.” You say bitterly. There’s a collective groan around the table in your conference room. “Listen, this won’t take long, okay?”

“Jeonghan’s not here yet.” Seokmin says followed by a monster yawn. He’d finally been released from his theatre duties as the understudy and could come and help out.  

“That’s his problem. Anyways,” you pause. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. Firstly, we need to find an actual account of a group exorcism. Then we need every single name of the people buried in the cemetery under the apartment block so we can find our thirteen ghosts.”

Seungkwan frowns. “You didn’t find anything else in those files?”

“Nothing that actually solves our problem. The most we got out of those is that there can be no exorcism, singular or not, without a name so we need to know who the ghosts were. But that’s not new information.” You reply. It was disappointing that you still hadn’t got the most vital pieces of information towards your case.

“You know, for dispatching the dead, you sure do have to do a lot of paper work.” Hoshi sighs.

“No one said it was all action. Actually, being an exorcist sometimes feels like being a glorified hall monitor; you’re essentially taking names and sending people places.” You say.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but hall monitors don’t face death while they work.” Minghao points out. You feel like that was specifically directed at you. You had to admit it was kind of deserved.  

“That’s beside the point. You were saying, YN?” Seungkwan steers the conversation back.

“Right. We’re just going to have to dig deeper. Seungkwan, you’re going to need to go through your family archives too.” You continue.  

“Okay, no promises though.” He shrugs. “I’ll take Vernon and Seokmin. We can get through it in like a day between the three of us.”

“Good, you guys should hit the road, we can regroup day after tomorrow.” You tell them. They leave so it’s just you, Minghao and Hoshi. You turn to scribble something on the whiteboard, making note of who’s doing what.

You start to turn and get startled to find Hoshi standing right next to you. You jump back with an exclamation of surprise. When had he got there? He was grinning, a hopeful puppy eyed expression plastered on his face.

“Right, Hoshi. For you I have a special mission.” You say carefully. Minghao perks up from his coffee, his brow scrunching in confusion. “I’m putting you in charge of something really important, okay?” You watch him nod in determination, leaning to hear.

You mirror him, putting your arm on his shoulder so you can beckon him closer. “I need you to find records of every person buried in that cemetery. You’ll need to locate them using the city archives and follow up if there’s any unidentified burials in family graves. Our whole operation depends on this. Can you do it?” You ask him.

You swear you’ve never seen Hoshi this serious, not even when you’re researching other exorcisms or going on scouting missions or even before the possession itself. It’s both reassuring and alarming, though you knew that he had never half-assed anything in his life, so you side toward the former.  

“I’m on it, Boss. You can count on me.” Hoshi vows. You hear footsteps approaching the conference room and then glance at the red head that walks through the door. Perfect.

“Great! Take Jeonghan with you.” You offer Hoshi a double fist bump, bringing both your hands up. “Go get them, tiger!” He nods enthusiastically and answers your fist bump.

Jeonghan stands at the door, looking a little lost. His hair is a little tousled as if he hadn’t brushed it and there are dark circles under his eyes. You think in the back of your head that he looks a little rough, was he okay? You almost ask him out loud but stop short.

“You’re late. Go help Hoshi.” You nag instead.

“Sure.” He says, voice quiet, and not a hint of fight. He turns to follow Hoshi out the door. You find yourself feeling merciful and before you can stop yourself, you act.

“Jeonghan.” You call after him. He looks back, as if surprised you said his name. You can’t remember the last time you said it at a decibel this low and with no malice. You pick up an unopened packet of biscuits and slide it across the table towards him.

He picks it up before it can teeter off the edge, staring at the packet then looking at you on the opposite end of the table. His eyes are big with disbelief and then the tiniest ghost of a smile appears on his face, yet you can’t help but read the sadness it’s tinged with.

Was this indicative that he was aware of where you’d gone yesterday? Maybe he’d remembered the warehouse like you had and it had impacted him more than you would have guessed just from looking at him.

You get back to your whiteboard before your heart can soften any more.

This didn’t mean anything, you tell yourself. The pack’s for Hoshi too, but you can’t erase the knowledge that those biscuits are both your sister’s and Jeonghan’s favourite. You’d gotten obsessed with them too and had eaten them alone for years, your house never lacking at least one pack.                  

“Don’t you think there was something off about Jeonghan?” Minghao asks after a few moments once you’re alone. He stands up from his seat and grabs his empty coffee cup.

“He’s a big boy and he can take care of himself.” You reply, suspecting that Minghao picked up on something yesterday too. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah, my bag’s packed downstairs.” He says.

“Mine too, let’s get them and leave. It’s a three hour journey and we better get a move on.” You lead the way to your basement.

“You want me to drive?” Minghao offers once you put the bags in the back of the car. You shake your head.

“I’ll drive since we need to make a quick pit stop. Get in.”

Your work was cut out for you; find a record of a group exorcism no matter what. And for that you’d need to make use of the public records stored in the depths of the Council of Exorcists library. But first you needed to talk to Mingyu.  

“Where are we-” Minghao pauses to yawn loudly. “Going?” He finishes. You find that suspicious for two reasons, a) you’d never heard Minghao yawn before and b) because he was an absolute Spartan when it came to his rigid sleeping pattern. Or so you thought.

“Mingyu emailed me last night saying he had some useful intel, so we should find out what it is before leaving. It might help us with our research.” You explain.

“Hmm, kay. Wake me up when we get there.” He says, closing his eyes and nestling into his coat. Your curiosity gets the best of you.

“Why are you so tired? I swear you went to bed earlier than me last night.” You question him after you make a right turn.

“You know there’s things one can do in a bedroom other than sleeping.” He mutters.

“Okay, ew, TMI, I didn’t need to know that.” You complain immediately, your brain jumping to a conclusion you wish you could have spared yourself from. You push away the invasive mental image by straining your eyes on the road.

Minghao cracks one eye open and judges you with it. “I was painting. Why, what did you think I meant, YN?”

“N-nothing, it’s not my problem w-what y-” you start stuttering with embarrassment, trying to end the conversation as soon as you could before he caught up with you.

“Oh my god, YN!” Minghao exclaims suddenly. Too late. He starts laughing, the sound making you grip the steering wheel harder until your knuckles protrude from under your skin. “Wow, amazing. Who knew you were such a little perv, I had no idea you were like this!”

“Shut up! Don’t act as if you never do that, it’s a totally logical conclusion I could come to since most people do that.” You argue, fighting the way the blood rushes to your cheeks. It was too early in the morning for this.

“Pfft, you seem to have given the subject a lot of thought.” He scoffs, clearly teasing you, the mirth in his voice unmissable. “I do wonder now though, what else you’ve been thinking about.” He hums in thought. If you weren’t driving, you’d roll your eyes.

“Weren’t you going to sleep?” You demand.

“Aha, I’m too awake now, never mind.” He giggles at the way grit your teeth. You enter a higher speed zone and ram your foot down on the pedal, the force throwing you back on your seats as the car zooms forward. “Okay, okay, I’m done, just don’t kill us. I had enough of your driving yesterday.” He concedes.

“That’s what I thought.” You mumble, satisfied.

You reach Mingyu’s office in a few minutes and make your way in. He’s got a similar situation to you, except it’s the opposite way around - an office on the bottom floor and a living space above it. You knock on the office door, standing in the tiny doorway to the side.

The door opens and Mingyu greets you, a fuzzy fleece sleeve ushering you into the office. It’s surprisingly tiny and contrasts completely with Mingyu’s stature, the man standing up and almost hitting the low ceiling.

“Have a seat guys, I just baked some croissants, we should eat them while they’re hot!” He says as he hops up the stairs. You weren’t going to say no.

The croissants’ warmth wafts in the air as soon as Mingyu re-enters the small office, the smell triggering your stomach into sudden and unexpected emptiness. You take a croissant each, grateful since you’d not really snacked with the others.

You sit in the two chairs opposite the desk. Mingyu has a double monitor set-up, most of the surface area of his desk being taken up by them and a keyboard and matching mouse.  

“What did you want to tell us?” You ask Mingyu before taking a bite.

“I’ve been investigating some of the reports on the Platis apartment block. I managed to track down some of the builders that worked on site and asked them a few things.” He starts. “I’ve emailed you a summary but I thought it be easier to talk face to face.”

You nod, encouraging him to continue.

“The ones I spoke to had worked on the project since the beginning, some of them even being part of the team that destroyed the cemetery but they said nothing weird had happened during that time period. However, they said that there had been a thunder storm the day of the ground breaking and it disturbed some of the formalities.”

“When did they hold the ceremonial stuff? After destroying the graves, I mean.” You ask.

“About a month after, I think. There was some headlines about it actually, hang on.” Mingyu pulled his keyboard closer and tapped away for a moment before turning one of the screens towards you and Minghao.

The article that came up was dated September, four years ago. The math checked out if they started building but stopped within a year or so. You skimmed the article shortly, reading about how the weather had been bad prematurely for that time of the year and how lightening had struck really close to the site on the day of the opening ceremony which led to further disruption.

“Stop! Scroll back up.” You ask Mingyu since a photograph caught your eye. There was several in the article, mostly of the site but also of some people. “Who are they?”

The photo that caught your attention was of two men shaking hands for the camera, each holding a shovel in the other hand. You recognised the one wearing glasses from yesterday when you’d seen him at the apartment block.

Mingyu looks at the screen then refers to the notes at the bottom of the article.

“Hmm, the one with the glasses is the President of the company.” Mingyu looks down at his own notes and tells you his name and that he was in that position for about a year before building started.

“Maybe he’s the one who’s been overseeing everything then. What about the other man?” You ask.

“He’s the CEO, I think.” Mingyu pulls up a list of company personnel and you read that he was appointed just before the ceremony.

“Timing’s weird, right?” Minghao comments.

“Companies change positions all the time. It’s probably just a coincidence.” Mingyu says. “I can dig into the appointment though, if you want.”

“I think you should dig into the old CEO. As for the President, I saw him there yesterday. He was talking with someone about resuming the project.” You say.

“Really?” Minghao asks. “Is that who it was?”

“I’m certain it was him. He seems invested in this; why else would he go there and look at everything?”

“Alright, I’ll investigate them as much as I can.” Mingyu makes a note of your request on a post it note. “The rest of the builders recalled weird occurrences as they were working. Stuff like the lights constantly acting up, power outages and even feeling like they’re being watched.”

“That sure doesn’t sound terrifying.” Minghao mutters sarcastically.

“They also said that there was occasional objects falling by themselves and people started to suspect there were ghosts around. It was coming from a place of superstition but they were right.”

“So the builders were starting to get paranoid about working there, right?” You remember the theory you’d had way back when you first heard about the case. It was the most obvious thing to you for some reason; maybe because you’d grown up constantly being reminded that most people were scared of ghosts.

And fear was a powerful thing.

“Yes, some quit fairly early on but not everyone could afford to. Rumours were starting to spread about there being ghosts and naturally the sceptics wanted an explanation whilst others wanted to be paid more for working somewhere they deemed dangerous.”

“If any one of those ghosts was a vengeful spirit, they’d be right. It could have been really dangerous. Then what happened?”

“They staged several strikes and Platis fired a lot of people using circumstantial excuses to bypass labour laws. Except it bit them in the ass since the rest kept striking and eventually it wasn’t about the ghosts. In the end, Platis shut down the whole thing since there was no one willing to work there any more.”

“Right, the ghosts had driven them away. It’s safe to say though, Platis wasn’t about to completely give up, they probably wanted the rumours to die down for long enough so they could restart.”

“Exactly, that’s why there was hardly anything about the strikes in the news; there was a media blackout orchestrated by the company.” Mingyu explains.

“Damn, they really want that apartment block.” Minghao muses.

You nod, the pieces starting to fit slowly. “It would be way too much of a loss for them if they abandoned it for real, and for what? These people are capitalists, the mere possibility of ghosts obstructing them means nothing to them.”

“It’s literally hundreds of millions on the line. Not to mention the lengths they went to for the local administration to even allow them to touch the cemetery; it must have taken years to pull the right strings and maybe millions in bribes too.” Minghao says cynically.  

“The dead aren’t here to demand justice.” You reply. “I remember reading about protests to stop the initial grave destruction - the company managed to move past public opinion and who knows what laws to even break ground.”

Minghao shakes his head. “You’re right. We’re dealing with a company that bulldozed a whole cemetery. It’s unlikely they’ll stop.”

“You know, when I first started hearing about ghost sightings from this case, I thought it was probably just one or two ghosts, something standard.” Mingyu laments. “There’s no way I would have predicted something this complicated.”  

“I know, there’s just no end to this, is there.” You sigh.

“You’ll figure it out, I’m certain. That’s why I sent it to you and Seungkwan; you guys are the best around here. I’d talked to Jihoon about it, discussing what it could be, who knows maybe there was an employee’s death being covered up and the ghost wouldn’t leave, but Jihoon insisted I check the location. When I found out it was a cemetery, he told me to send it to you two.”

That felt like high praise, someone directly from the Council thinking so highly of you and Seungkwan. It made a tingle of pride run through you, that your firm was respected like that. It was something your family had built over so many years, and Seungkwan’s too.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mingyu.” You say. “Keep us posted if anything else comes out about the building work; we need to know how much time we’ve got left.”

“Will do. That’s pretty much everything. There’s some detailed notes in the email but apart from that, I think that’s it.” He replies. “What are you guys doing today?”

“We’re headed to the Council, actually. We have some archives to dig through. I don’t suppose you’re interested in helping?” You bat your eyes hopefully.

“I am helping!” Mingyu pouts. “You just told me to look into those people, I can’t be in two places at once, can I?” He whines.

“Alright, alright.” You concede. “It was worth a try. Let’s go, Minghao. Somebody is very busy so we better vacate the premises.” You say, faking offence.

Mingyu sticks his tongue at you like a five year old.

And like a five year old, you retaliate by sticking yours out further. You find Minghao standing there, silently judging you, his mouth forming an open frown of disgust. You put your tongue away in a flash, clearing your throat.

“Anyways,” Minghao says loudly. “Thanks for the croissants and the intel, Mingyu.”

You thank Mingyu too as you walk out, practically getting pushed out the door by Minghao.

“Keys.” Minghao holds out his hand as you trudge back to the car. You surrender them without a second thought, figuring it was probably his self-preservation instinct talking by stopping you from handling a vehicle after witnessing whatever that was.

“All yours.”

*              

For the first hour, you drift in and out of sleep, the endless road and motion of the car lulling you into relaxing. You hadn’t slept too good last night since you’d been up, unsettled and thinking about the warehouse. Seeing it again had reopened old wounds and it made you feel a little queasy.

The second hour you insist that you swap over and let Minghao rest, so you take over driving. You end up swapping again for the third, just to make sure neither of you is getting too tired.

It’s good timing since Jun calls you back because you’d left him a message yesterday on Vernon’s request. You talk on the phone, telling him about the situation at the shelter and he tells you he can swing by on Saturday to do the exorcism.

You’re arranging a meeting time when the car gets on an incredibly bumpy road leading into town, your destination close. Minghao extends an arm across your body, trying to act as a barrier to stop you from being thrown forward too much.

For a moment you’re stunned; you had literally never seen anyone do that, did people actually do that? It struck you as odd but you also thought it was cute and found yourself appreciative of Minghao.

There were moments where you realised how lucky you were to have found a coworker and friend like him. Being around Minghao was starting to be normal to you. It made you see that you’d grown more comfortable with him lately. Must be the long hours you’ve been working together.

You say goodbye to Jun just as you pull up to the Council of Exorcists underground parking lot. There’s a security barrier with a little ticket machine just like every other building car park and one would never suspect that the building itself was host to a semi-secret organisation founded centuries ago.

On the outside, the building looked like any historical limestone building with a modest dome, perhaps a college or library of some sort, but through it’s glass sliding doors, you entered another world.

The foyer was an open space illuminated by the light coming through a grandiose round window on the ceiling contained within that dome. The glass of the window itself was detailed with a faint stalactite of geometric patterns. A fountain was erected in the middle of the hall, its body made of the same limestone as the rest of the building, positioned directly underneath the dome.

If you stood at the fountain and looked up, you could see the sky at any time of the day, staring up at the sun or finding the moon on a clear night. It was one of your favourite features of the Council because you could appreciate the sheer architectural beauty of the building.  

Historically the cover story for the building had been a library, which there still was to some extent but in the last century, it was said that it was a super exclusive office building and no matter how many people inquired about renting an office space, it was maintained that it was unavailable.

The real entrance, if you could call it that, was located past the fountain and through two sets of heavy mahogany double doors adorned with large glass panes. You enter on one end, pushing them and they give a satisfying creak of acknowledgement of your effort.

There are hardly any people milling about, maybe one or two of the people who worked in different departments but the reception area is mostly empty today.

Jihoon is sitting at one of the several antique seat sofas dotted around the room, which is also largely made up of old mahogany desks, doors and other furniture. Each of the couches is dark red, green or purple velvet with gilded gold arms and legs, the style stuck somewhere between Gothic and Victorian. Everything here seems darker; it was a complete contrast to the light of the foyer.

He looks up when he hears the creak, putting his phone away and standing up as he gives you a friendly smile. Jihoon was usually all business every day, keeping his collection of pinstripe, tweed and other miscellaneous suits as an almost uniform like dress code. Today he wore a grey tweed, chequered three piece and a black tie, completed by his thin wired, round glasses. He looked more like a Peaky Blinders book keeper than an exorcism archivist.

“Hey, you’re here. Was your journey alright?” Jihoon asks you as you each shake hands with him.

“Yes, everything was smooth, thank you.” You reply.

“So what are we looking for today?” He asks as he leads you two to the small office located behind the front desk.

That’s where they kept all the keys to the different part of the building, as well as all the ledgers that contained a log of who came and went and what they looked at that day. It was a little old fashioned you had to admit since everything was written by hand in a massive A3 volume, the ledger itself heavy and resembling what you imagined a fairytale spell book might look like. It was hand bound, the thick pages cushioned by its thick hardcover.

The book was massive and it perched spread open on a proper podium placed on a mahogany desk, a selection of feather fountain pens, ballpoints and highlighters left by its side. Jihoon writes your names down in the next available space on the page sectioned off like a table, the date first, names, then a summary of visited locations. You knew the process well, knowing that Jihoon always recorded the summary when you were leaving.

“We’re in need to read up on group exorcisms. It’s about that cemetery apartment job Mingyu told you about some time ago.” You explain.

You were hoping it would be possible to find something detailed quickly though you didn’t have high hopes since group exorcisms were extremely rare and it might take a while to locate any records. On the flip side, whatever records there were, were usually untouched and would be left in the same place unlike the plethora of more recent records which were constantly being shifted around in order to accommodate the mass of files that grew every year from exorcists sending their case reports in.

You were sure that your family had several shelf fulls of ledgers of reports in here, as the regulations from the Council required every office to send in copies of their reports at least annually if not bi-annually. The point was that these reports could be used for educational purposes as well as for cross referencing whether in researching case studies or methods or to be put into practice like how you were searching for a practical method of exorcising more than one ghost at a time.

“Ahhh, that. Yeah, I remember.” Jihoon finishes scribbling and turns around to the cabinet mounted to the wall containing the keys to the archive rooms. “I thought that was over already. Didn’t Jeonghan already collect some information on that?” He asks as he rummages around for each key.

His words make you freeze.

What was he talking about? You turn your head towards Minghao slowly, and find him already looking at you, just as confused as you feel. The expression on his face says ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’. You hadn’t mentioned to him what your aunt has said about Jeonghan poking his nose in on the case weeks ago but clearly Minghao also thought something was amiss. You turn back to Jihoon.

“Jeonghan came here? When? What did he look for? What did he find?” You bombard Jihoon with questions suddenly, your heightened suspicion of Jeonghan hitting you full force once again.

Jihoon unhooks another key from its place in the cabinet and swivels to take you in for a moment, his lips pulling into a frown along with his brows.

“I thought you sent him?” He asks.

You shake your head. “I know nothing about this. This was all his doing.” You say gravely.  

“Sorry, I, uh, wasn’t aware you guys aren’t on good terms.” He pauses. “Well, he came a few weeks ago, took a good look around the archives, rooms 3A through to 3C and then also 5H, I believe.”

A few weeks ago? It correlates with the timeframe of his visit to your aunt so chances are he probably looked around for the information she wasn’t able to help him with.

The Council building was more than meets the eye. This was a tip-of-the-iceberg type of building - the four floors of the building were complemented by five floors below ground level. On the top floors, management and organisation were segregated by department, as well as the department for mediums, which is where they educated and trained mediums.

Everything below ground level was paper, books and files, whether it was case reports, the library full of books on exorcism and related subjects or all other archives. From the sounds of it, Jeonghan been through  some archive rooms and that was on the third floor below ground, but you weren’t sure what was on the fifth and final underground level.

You’d never been there before but you were sure you’d heard your sister say she had.

“So what did he look at, did he say?” Minghao continues for you as you were deep in thought.

“Not sure about the archive rooms, but he looked at some demonology stuff on level five. Actually, he comes fairly often to hang about the fifth floor so I just told him to take whatever he needed out on loan. There’s very few people that ever visit the fifth floor so they wouldn’t be missed anyway.” Jihoon tells you.

Your head starts spinning as you hear the word ‘demonology’ leave Jihoon’s mouth. You feel fear seize your heart like a lightning strike. What on Earth was Jeonghan doing? Had he not learned his lesson?

“YN?” You hear vaguely from beside you, it feels like the sound is travelling through water and doesn’t quite reach you.

Is this why Jeonghan had showed up all of a sudden? He was back on his demonology bullshit and he needed something from you? What could he possibly need though? And what could he be doing after everything that happened? Your sister died because of his sick fascination with demons and he had the audacity to keep poking his nose where he shouldn’t?

It makes you feel lightheaded and your heart physically lurches.

“YN?” You hear again. This time it snaps you out of your reverie. Minghao is looking at you, a concerned hand resting on your arm.

“Huh?” You manage, pursing your lips since you felt your mouth was about to tremble. “Sorry, I just can’t believe what I’m hearing.” You admit.

“Really? I thought you of all people would be interested in the research Jeonghan is doing.” Jihoon seems surprised for some reason.

“I am now. I think it’s time I had a long conversation with him.” You vow. “But first, can we take a look at rooms 3A through 3C?” You ask. It was probably your best shot of finding anything on group exorcisms if Jeonghan had been through it already.

“Yeah, these are the keys to the second floor archives,” Jihoon hands you three keys on a chain. “And these are the ones to the third floor archives.” He gives you a second set. “Be careful with the lock on 3C, the key tends to snag a little bit, just throw a shoulder on it and it should open.” He warns.

You accept the keys and nod.

“Thanks, Jihoon. We’ll get going now.”

“See you later.” He says.

With that, you and Minghao set off further into the building and find the elevator instead of taking the stairs. The elevator, like everything else in this building, is ancient and stuck in an era long forgotten. It’s one of those early twentieth century structures that is essentially a metal cage instead of a box. You felt like you were descending into a speakeasy rather than into the underground libraries.

“Are you okay?” Minghao asks you as soon as the loud whirring of the elevator stops. You glance at him, shrugging.

“I don’t know. I think I’m just shocked to hear it. And really confused. I have no idea what’s going on.” You say miserably.

“What is this stuff about Jeonghan and demonology?”

You sigh as the elevator arrives on the third floor, pushing the door to slide open with a series of squeaks. It was high time you should explain it to Minghao since he’s here and he’s heard a lot already. Still you hesitate since this is the first time you’re telling the story to anyone properly.

“My sister and Jeonghan were trying to exorcise a demon the night she died.” You begin as you unlock the first door to room 3A. You’d wandered down the corridor from the elevator, the half lit hallway casting shadows across your face.

You enter the first room and it’s all mahogany like upstairs and dusty bookshelves full of folders and boxes of files. The room itself was what you would describe as the poster child for dark academia or whatever the kids called old libraries these days.

“I had no idea what it is they had been working on at the time since I was a trainee and doing other odd jobs, especially around here, I had a brief stint up in management and that’s how I met Jihoon.” You pause as you both take a pile of folders of the closest shelf and settle them one of the two heavy desks at either end of the room.

Minghao settles on one side of the table and you on the opposite.  

“Anyways, turns out they had been on the look out for a case they could take on and try out what they’d learned. In the end, they must have not realised that whoever exorcises that demon might die. I don’t know any more details, but my sister wasn’t the reckless type, I’m certain it must have been Jeonghan who pushed them to do this. She always ran after him, wanting to do everything together.”

“And you never heard the truth from him?” Minghao asks, his voice soft.

“No, not a direct confession. He never told me where this demon obsession of his came from, nor why they were even trying it. You have to understand this though, in our circle, people praised Jeonghan so much for being an exorcist from a normal family. That must have gone to his head and you know how it is with ambition; it’s never enough to just do a good job, you have to be the best. Clearly, to him that meant being an elite.”

“But then what happened with the demon? Did they exorcise it?”

“My sister did, but it killed her. I saw it happen.” You feel your eyes losing focus as images from that night tumble out of your memories and into your mind like a waterfall.

“I’m sorry.” He says sincerely. You look down, mostly at nothing since you’re ignoring the pile of paperwork in front of you for a second more.

“Me too. The irony is that she died an elite in the end.” You sigh. “Enough about that. I’ll make sure to pay Jeonghan a visit and interrogate him. Let’s just see if there’s anything in here. If there was, he must have found it and read it, so we need to do that too.”

“Right, we might be here for a long time.” Minghao says, his eyes trailing over the endless looping shelves around the room.

*          

That had been the understatement of the century.

You had began searching reports and files from around one in the afternoon and you were still going at midnight. You’d stopped for a few break times, and taken a good forty minutes for lunch, but you were still unlucky.

The good news was that you’d moved through room 3A kind of quickly and got stuck into room 3B for a few hours. You were trawling through even more stuff in 3C, the low light in the room lulling you into wanting to sleep already, but the sheer idea that Jeonghan had been scheming something behind your back kept you awake with spite.

You’re ready to call it a night and come back tomorrow since you had another day before you needed to regroup, when Minghao suddenly shoots up from his seat. He’s clutching a thin card document folder in his hands while his eyes tremble as he reads. You stop still, holding your breath in anticipation, not daring to move in case it disturbs the moment.

It’s been almost twelve hours of just reading through things, and you were ready to throw yourself across the room in despair.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Minghao suddenly yells, each syllable louder than the last. “Ahhh!” He slams the folder down on the pile in front of him, his face unreadable but for the madness written across it. You stare up at him in wonder. “I got it.” He whispers finally.

You all but start crying, throwing your head back and falling into your seat with an extremely loud groan of relief.

“Are you sure? What is it?” You gather yourself quickly, since you want to make sure it’s not a false alarm.

“It’s a case from the nineties and it’s after a flood during the rain season. There was a lot of victims during the flood and a village was full of ghosts, so they had to hold a mass exorcism.” He summarises. “YN, I really think this must be the one.”

“Let me read it too.” You pull the file towards you and turn back to the first page.

In the next five minutes, there’s a tense silence in the room as you scour the pages of the report, assessing it carefully. It seems legit from the start to the end - the most important part being recorded in detail as to how the exorcists dealt with several ghosts at once.

You close your eyes and nod.

“Good job. You found it.” You sigh for a moment, shoulders sagging. “We can go now. This we can work with.”

“Oh please, if I have to read another sentence ever again, I might just gouge my eyes out.” Minghao stretches, his joints cracking loudly in the quietness of the room. He swivels his head side to side, stretching his long neck too and you feel the urge to do the same but you hold it in, looking through the file one more time to make sure it was enough.

You end up getting back up to the reception area to find a nightshift guard there, and you hand him the keys making sure you sign out the file you were taking properly to make Jihoon’s job easier. You also send him a quick text that you found what you needed and you would swing by tomorrow to say goodbye.

It’s past one am in the morning when you leave the building. You tell Minghao there’s a motel nearby and you could probably crash there since there’s no where else to go. You’d stayed there before a few times when you were visiting so you knew it was decent.

You drive the five minutes there and park quickly, your body screaming for sleep. You’d had a late lunch and Jihoon had brought you some snacks around dinner time so you were relatively hungry too. In these situations though, you were always prepared.

You kept a stash of protein bars in your glove compartment and a six pack of water bottles in your boot. You also had a small first aid kit in the centre console and other meds. Thus was the preparation level of an exorcist. (or you know, someone who took long-ish car journeys).

You take some food and water with you and walk up to the front desk of the motel. There’s a man doing a crossword puzzle sitting behind it, his tiny specs hanging off his nose as he thinks about the answer. He looks up when he hears you approaching and greets you.

“Hi, how can I help you?” He says, putting his pen down.

“Hi, two rooms for the night please.” You say, taking out your wallet. The man taps away on his computer for a moment, then pauses.

“I’m sorry, there seems to be only one, would you like to take it?” He looks between you and Minghao. You look at him and he’s nodding.

“I can just sleep on the floor. We’ll take it, thank you, sir.” Minghao answers for you. You weren’t in a position to decline the room and besides, you’d be alright to sleep for a few hours.

“Alrighty, let me write that up for you.”

You trudge to the room, your feet barely stepping one in front of the other as you walk ahead mindlessly. The room itself is decent, a queen size bed and a desk being pretty much the only furniture. There’s an ensuite and a small closet to one side and that’s it.

“I’ll take the floor, you sleep on the bed.” Minghao says, dumping his bag beside the desk.

“Eh, I feel bad, you found the case, you deserve the bed as a reward.” You tell him, placing the food and water on the desk.

“It’s really fine, trust me.” He argues back.

“Let’s rock, paper, scissors for it.” You plead. You wanted to at least make it fair.

“Fine. Rock, paper, scissors - shoot.” Minghao throws a rock and you throw paper. He gives you a half smile. “Happy now?”

“Sure.” You frown. There’s no arguing with that though. So you collapse on the bed and kick off your shoes.

“At least take off your coat, hmm?” Minghao nags from the foot of the bed. You huff and shimmy out of it and leave it on the edge of the bed.

You pick up a pillow and chuck it at him. He catches it easily and puts it on the floor on the right of the bed. The man at the front desk had given you an extra blanket so he places that down too.

You don’t remember much after that, drifting to sleep as soon as your head hits the pillow.

Everything is dark around you. Except for the massive fiery glow blazing beyond the doors in front of you. You can feel the heat on your cheeks and you fall backwards, landing on your ass, limbs flailing as you struggle to crawl backwards.

There’s a loud ringing in your ears but also the unmistakable screams, terrified shouts and the crisp roar of flames drilling into your brain. There’s black spots in your memory, unknown periods of time passing by in a blink of an eye and then someone is pulling you away, dragging you from behind.

You don’t know why but you resist, desperate to run into the warehouse and find your sister. You knew deep down she was probably dead, but you had to check for yourself. Whoever it is, they’re pulling you and pulling you hard away from the dying fire.  

The doors finally explode, each one being thrown open as a burst of energy escapes the warehouse. And you can see her through the blurriness of your vision.

She’s lying on the ground, the blaze circling her and the intricate pin pointed arrangement of knives, daggers and swords around her.

The black fog is gone now and only fire remains.

And you’re vaguely aware you’re screaming, in pain, in despair, in anger, you’re wailing and howling as you watch the world burn in front of you.

You wake up, already screaming, registering the feeling of the wet trails down the sides of your face and you’re shaking with the shortness of breath that grips your lungs.

“YN!” You hear vaguely. Then a pair of hands grips your shoulders and brings you up, turning you enough to the side. You cough and sputter, crying and trying to regain control of your body.

Minghao brings you to his chest, holding you close, trying to calm you down. You grab on to him mindlessly, relieved you weren’t seeing any of that any more, the blaze fading to the back of your mind. You squeeze your eyes closed and focus on your heartbeat, alternating between your’s and Minghao’s.

*

You wake up again, this time slowly, probably because you’re feeling too hot.

Maybe ‘hot’ isn’t the right word. More like restricted. A little trapped. Cramped.

There seems to be a weight on top of your chest and on your thighs and you struggle to wriggle underneath it.

You crack your eyes open a smidge, letting them adjust to the light and find a prickly mess of hair tickling at your cheek and neck. As the realisation hits, you blink rapidly as your eyes widen.

It wasn’t just a weight; it was the weight of Minghao’s arm and leg thrown over your body, enclosing you beneath them. It comes back to you, why you were like this. After you woke up from your nightmare, Minghao helped you calm down.

You must have fallen asleep like that, both of you exhausted from the previous day.

You finally manage to wriggle enough to free one leg. You moved gently but it still wakes Minghao up. He doesn’t move though, probably just as confused as you had been and you decide to prompt him a little.

“Hey, bestie? Mind letting me breathe?” You mumble. He opens his eyes and shoots up like a rocket, utterly startled at where he found himself.

“YN?” He asks. “Sorry, I must have fallen asleep last night.” He runs a hand through his hair, mussing it a little more rather than taming it.

You almost smile at the clumsiness, not used to seeing this side of Minghao. Usually he was the one waking you up, banging pots and pans and yelling at the top of his lungs to wake you up and go jogging.

“Don’t apologise. Thanks for looking out for me.” You say, feeling sorry for having woken him up initially. You imagine you were screaming bloody murder and it’s a surprise you hadn’t had a noise complaint. Then again, this was a motel.

He shakes his head softly. “Don’t mention it. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I guess. It happens sometimes. Not often, but every once in a while.” You admit.

You’d worked on overcoming this sort of occurrence, trying professional help to the extent you could, but the subject matter didn’t allow for much leeway and there wasn’t really any therapists for exorcists around here, maybe two or three in the whole country.

It had been a long time since you’d had a nightmare about your sister’s death. You’d had that one breakdown after seeing Jeonghan for the first time in years but since that you’d been okay for the most part. You thought it might have been the mention of demonology that had crept up on you, the shock unleashing a flash of memories you’d put down and tried not to pick back up.

“Don’t keep it to yourself, okay? You shouldn’t suffer alone.” Minghao says. “Maybe talking about it will help.”

You appreciate his words and nod.

“I’ll try.” You promise.

You make quick work of packing up and getting back to the Council building, your agreement with Jihoon withstanding.

When you arrive, he’s waiting behind the desk, tapping away on the computer in front of him. You almost would have missed him if it weren’t for the loud clacking of the keyboard since the desk’s front part is raised  so high and Jihoon was sitting down, basically hidden from view.

“Hey, Jihoon.” You greet him and he looks up.

His glasses are positioned on top of his head while he types and he’s wearing a pinstripe suit on today, looking more like a Wall Street type who doesn’t partake in the carnage of selling stocks because he’s above that. At least that’s what the suit reminded you of.

“Ah, hello. I heard you found what you were looking for. Is everything there?” He asks.

“Yes, Minghao found what we came for, just wanted to let you know we’re taking it out and we’ve sorted it out with the night duty guard.” You tell him. He nods.

“I’m glad.” He says, a tiny smile gracing his lips. That was usually the most you got out of Jihoon. “Is there anything else you need?” He raises his eyebrows at the two of you.

You think for a moment, mentally running through the list of things on your agenda for this case. You almost slap yourself for forgetting.

“Actually there is one other thing. We’re going to need more mediums. We have four, potentially five if he’s not busy, but that’s probably not going to cut it. Do you know anyone who might be able to help us out?”

Jihoon puffs his cheeks, considering your request. He opens the desk drawer to his left and starts rummaging through it. He pulls out a business card and holds it out to you.

“Give this guy a call. His name is Chan and he’s a rookie. Freelancer for the moment. The kid might be a little new but he’s got potential to be very good with some experience.” He says.

You accept the card with a quiet thanks and stash it in your pocket. You felt like you were finally getting somewhere with your project. You bid Jihoon goodbye and get back on the road.

*                  

It’s not even two hours that you’ve been back in town and you’re already calling Hoshi to check in with him as to where they got up to with the cemetery records. You call him partly because you want to know when you can call the next meeting tomorrow but also because you want to know the exact whereabouts of one Yoon Jeonghan before you make the trip.

Hoshi tells you that they’ve managed to dig up, quite literally, the archives upon archives on who was indeed buried in that cemetery. He sounds proud but when you ask him how they got it done so quickly he hesitates to reply.

“Hoshi, if it’s not done properly, just tell me so I can go do it myself.” You huff over the phone. You were alone in your kitchen, eating some noodles you whipped up quickly.

Minghao had left to go hold a class he was going to cancel if you hadn’t made it back yet. He hadn’t told you he’d have to cancel it, saying the case was more important, and you feel a pang of guilt because you didn’t consider how busy he must be when you decided to pick this task. Maybe it would have been easier for him if you’d dealt with the personal information of the buried instead of going to the Council.    

“It’s not that,” he sighs. “It turns out that before destroying everything, Platis did make a record of everyone in there and we tracked down that file.”

“It doesn’t matter how you got the information, as long as you got it. Good job.” You reassure him.

You had to admit, you weren’t expecting that. The worst people you knew had done something just a fraction reasonable? You weren’t buying it, maybe they had an ulterior motive.

“So you’re done? Where’s Jeonghan, is he with you?” You ask, hoping it doesn’t sound too suspicious. You remind yourself this is Hoshi you’re talking to; he didn’t see things like that - you could tell him you were specifically looking for Jeonghan and he wouldn’t think it odd whatsoever.

“Yeah we’re done, we’re both home.” He confirms. “I’m doing laundry actually, I had a bunch of socks to wash but they were all single from when I had crutches and now I can’t find some of their pairs.” You can practically hear the pout in his voice, mourning the loss of his socks.

You were feeling a little antsy, ready to go storm Jeonghan’s base of operations, well, his house, but you also didn’t want to interrupt Hoshi. Instead you try to wrap it up nicely.  

“So what I’m hearing is, I can get you socks for Christmas?” You say, attempting to cheer him up.

“Hmm, isn’t it too early to think about Christmas yet?” He asks on the other side of the line.

“Hoshi, it’s November.” You deadpan. “That’s practically Christmas already.” You shrug to yourself. It was already almost the third week of the month, time racing ahead of itself constantly.

“Eh, I guess. Well then, I won’t complain if you do.” He laughs.

“Listen, Hosh, I gotta go, I’ll call you when we’re set for the meeting tomorrow. Rest up, okay? You did a good job.” You say. You say your goodbyes and hang up.

So he was home.

In a heartbeat, you’re grabbing the tin box of tea and out the door, making a bee-line towards your car.

This was the perfect opportunity; Jeonghan was not expecting you and he probably wouldn’t have thought about you catching on to anything he was doing, whatever it is that he was doing.

Previously you’d been suspicious that he was trying to one up you on the case and prove that you needed his help, that you were still just a kid that needed supervision even if it had been years that you’d managed without either your sister or him. After what Jihoon told you yesterday, you were ten times more on edge than you had been. What could he possibly have been looking at on the fifth floor?

Demonology was a difficult subject to say the least. It was extremely complex, dangerous, and at times unpredictable. You knew almost next to nothing about it, safe for the snippets you might have heard from your sister over the years.

She liked to read books written by researchers, fascinated by some of the methods of exorcism that were recorded. You’d thought it was just some weird hobby of hers, the way you watch a documentary about deep sea fish maybe, but you’d never actually dive into the ocean looking for them. You could not have realised how it was actually a couples activity between the two of them until it was too late.

You wanted to stop whatever it is Jeonghan was up to now on his own.

Was it because you were just angry at him for dragging your sister into it in the first place? Or because you were worried about how dangerous it was to poke at a hornet’s nest of evil energy? Because it could kill him too?

You hadn’t thought too much about your reasoning, but it came from a deep aversion towards the general subject of demonology.

You pull up to a parking spot, somewhere in the area where you’re sure Jeonghan’s office is, checking the parking rules by habit before stopping the engine. It’s just starting to drizzle annoyingly when you get out then car, and you pull up the hood on your sweater, tugging your coat closed as you pace down the street.

Seokmin had left behind a business card with Jeonghan’s address on it, whether purposeful or accidental, you’d kept it since you’d found it a few weeks back, sure it might come in handy.

Your breath is coming out in frost in the mid-afternoon gloom, the skies already darkening despite the time. There’s a sense of suspense starting to shroud your mind, your intuition acting up in your gut prematurely. You reach the building, struggling to locate its entrance since it was on a smaller alley of shops whose metal shutters are pulled firmly down, a plethora of graffiti adorning the steel surfaces.

There’s a side door to your left and you almost miss it because it’s so well secluded from the main part of the street. You presume his office is on the second floor since there’s a hardware store on the first, its metal shutters padlocked to the ground.

You stand at the door, looking at the small panel beside it where you can buzz up to the upper floor like you would in an apartment block. You find a ‘Yoon JH’ scribbled into one of the name slots and press the buzzer beside it.

You count one Mississippi, two Mississippis, and the front door buzzes open. He probably thought you were a postman or something.

You knock on his apartment door, an off-white, heavy metal piece with a scratched paint job.

It creaks open and Jeonghan stands dumbfounded on the other side. This is possibly the most astonished you’ve ever seen him in your life. His red hair is tied back in a half ponytail and he’s wearing sweats and a cardigan with a white t-shirt underneath and you think you spy a tiny coffee stain on the shirt.

“YN?” He asks, his voice echoing in the hallway. “What are you doing here?”

You’d come with an excuse, bringing up the tin box into his field of vision.

“I went to see my aunt recently and she told me pass on some tea to you.” You say with a forced half-smile. You had to work on your innocent kiddo impression because this might not cut it. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to fool him for long enough to get into the house.

“Ah, well, thanks.” He accepts the box, not making a move to let you in.

“How about I make some for you?” You ask. “For old times’ sake?” You insist gently. You don’t wait for him to respond but step forward and enter the house.

Jeonghan plays along, humming as you basically barge into his home. You’d like to think you had probable cause like they say in crime shows.

You take off your shoes and follow him into the living room and kitchen area, taking careful note of the number of doors you spot on the way. There’s four, so by process of elimination that must mean a bedroom, a bathroom, and two others. One of them must be an office. But which one?

In the living room, Jeonghan has a small TV, a dinning table and a two seat couch, taking up most of the space. There’s a bunch of photos framed hanging on the wall and you do a double take. Not that you weren’t expecting it, but you see photos of your sister and Jeonghan, even some with you in them.

“I’m surprised you know where I live,” he says. “Didn’t think you’d even know the area.”

“Of course I know where you live.” You counter, accidentally dropping your act and scramble to pick it back up. “I mean, I know all my friends’ addresses. Duh.” You lie. You weren’t sure which part you were lying about though, the friend part or the address part. Call it a half-truth.

“Right,” he seems to let it slide and if he was suspicious, then he didn’t show it. “So how was it? Where did you and Minghao go?” He asks, pulling out a tea pot.

Oh right, you were supposed to be trying to make tea. Well, trying to snoop around but you’d have to do that subtly. You tear your eyes away from the photos and turn back.

“We went to the Council, actually.” You say casually, watching him for any sign of suspicion.

“You’re back pretty quick though, you must have found something right?” Jeonghan replies, keeping his eyes to the task at hand. He’s trying to flip it around and interrogate you without your knowing.

“Yeah, I think we were lucky, only spending one day in the archive rooms.”

“So did you find what you were looking for?” He glances behind at you. You’re standing a few feet away, trying figure out a way to orchestrate your snooping.

“I always find what I’m looking for.” You say, determined. You feel like you’re dallying. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Sure, second door to the right.” He says.

“Thanks.”

That rules out one of the four doors, that leaves you with three remaining ones. The space between the ones on the further side of the corridor makes you think there’s enough space for both the office and the bedroom so you decide to try those first.

The first is the bedroom and you close the door just as quietly as you’d opened it, keeping your ears open in case he’d heard you and came to check. You try the next door, cracking it ajar and gasp, opening it further.

This must be the office and it is totally cramped; the large table in the middle takes up most of the space, every inch of it covered in books, papers and folders all in various states of being opened or spread facing down. There’s a panel covering the length of the far wall and it is littered with papers, post it notes, photos and crazy arrows pointing to this and that like the situation room of a police department.

You swallow and look closer, your heart racing as you confirm your suspicions.

The books are all exorcist works, volumes upon volumes on different types of exorcisms and demonology and histories of the methodology used within your sphere. It makes your eyes glaze over and you’re overwhelmed.

This was bigger than you thought.

You’re standing speechless in the doorway, mouth agape and tears filling up your eyes. It looks like he never stopped even after what happened to your sister.

Did he have a death wish?

“YN?” You hear the kitchen door opening and Jeonghan stepping into the hallway. You hear his rapid footsteps as he races towards you when he sees where you are.

You turn around, your throat tight, and glare at him.

“Yoon Jeonghan, what the fuck is all this?” You demand, feeling the tension rising in your chest.

He looks like a deer in the headlights, the expression on his face almost terrified.

“YN, I can explain.” He says hastily, keeping his voice low as if he’s trying to calm you down. You don’t want to be calm right now.

“You fucking better. I’m listening.” You say through gritted teeth.

This better be good.        

*

A/N: thank you for reading, feedback is always much appreciated! Also a note, whenever I write SVT stuff, it is my personal goal to make sure to include as many members as characters as possible so bear with, it is actually going to work out this time I think. Also heart eyes for roomie Minghao cuz he’s just walking around in his lil bathrobe and YN is slowly losing it (rip). Also (last one) I had so much fun with the world building in this one, like the literal building, the decor, jihoon in a suit lmao (i pictured the 1 mil won gose ep), the ledger and ahh it’s just a joy to make this little things up haha.

*copyright 2021-  © momobani

[stanningjay]

Balance the Scales

A new original story, posting chapters weekly & free!

Cedric & Gideon are two dragon shifters locked in an epic battle of hook-up chicken. They both know they must search for their true fated mates, but somehow can't help returning to each other's arms (and beds). Then they meet Alex, a human barista who knows nothing of the world of shifters, who turns them both upside down.

Balance the Scales is a polyamorous, fated mates, dragon shifter story. The first chapter is here, and new chapters post on fridays! Teaser after the cut.

ao3 style tags: #eventual smut #medium burn #Porn with feelings #NSFW, #fated mates, #dragons, #lovers to idiots to dragons to lovers once again, #threesome, #polyamory, #anal sex, #blowjobs, #awkward first times, #coffeeshop meet-weird #aggressive use of kitchen tongs #marking #no ABO dynamic #non ABO shifters #original fiction #unprotected Sex #ot3

***

Cedric

It happened like clockwork. Like my libido was on a fucking timer. When had I become so predictable? The snap of my briefcase rang out in my empty office, a satisfying thunk that felt like closing a chapter. Every time, I told myself it would be the last time.

And then, the ache in my gut would start. It would grow unbearable, and I’d find myself here. Sitting in my office after dark, long after I’d sent everyone home. Staring at my phone. Typing and deleting a dozen texts, all variations on a theme:

U up?

U Busy?

U free tonight?

I used the abbreviation for ‘you’ mostly to annoy Gideon. I texted instead of calling mostly to annoy Gideon. I did a lot of things to annoy Gideon.

Annoying him was safer, safer than letting myself really want him. Because, if I was going to be a slave to my urges, I wasn’t going to be miserable alone. I would dig my fingers into the lingering bruise of our semi-regular hookups so Gideon was just as full of self-loathing as I was.

I was pretty sure Gideon hated me.

I was pretty sure I needed Gideon to hate me, because the alternative was even more painful, because hate was at least something, something deep, fiery and primal.

And, we dragon shifters were nothing if not deep, fiery and primal.

The place between my shoulder blades itched, my human skin wearing thin and tight like an ill-fitting suit. I unbuttoned the collar of my shirt, as if that would help. The urge to shift always rose with my desire to see Gideon. At his place, I could wear the skin of my ancient fauna. I could stretch my wings, the bones in my jaw and skull expanding to accommodate fangs and horns and the armored plates that rand down my vertebrae. Gideon would shift, too. And in our dragon forms, we’d fight. Then we’d shift back, and we’d fuck. The sparring was foreplay, brutal and animalistic. One of these times, I always thought, Gideon and I really might kill each other.

It was the same every time, a constant, but goddamn it if it every time wasn’t the highlight of my life.

Gideon and I had met at a farmers’ market six years ago. A real bougie meet-cute right out of a gay hallmark movie. The small-town farmer and the big city executive. I’d been passing through town on the way to visit my parents, and I stopped to get a pressed juice and a pastry, and some flowers for my mother. And there was Gideon, standing at his little farm stand, haloed in an explosion of color, dozens of flower arrangements and elegant bouquets. He was huge and rugged. Scowling. Beautiful. Putting all the flowers to shame.

I approached with caution, because I could tell he saw me immediately for what I was, just as I recognized him. I looked into his icy blue eyes and saw the beast beneath.

For a several moments, we’d just stared at each other.

I bought some flowers. He gave me his card.

It took me three weeks to work up the courage to call him.

We met for a drink, despite the fact that we both knew we’d never work. It was just my luck—the only other ancient shifter in a hundred miles, and he wasn’t mine.

And I wasn’t his.

That was the thing with ancients. Our power came with a lot of rules, many of which didn’t have much bearing on modern life, except the first, and the biggest. Each shifter born with an ancient fauna only had one mate. A true mate.

It was something you just knew, deep in your bones, deep in your soul, when you saw them. It was an instant, undeniable attraction. Fate. Destiny. Blah blah blah. My parents could—and often did—wax endlessly poetic about the day they’d met. Their story was sweet enough to turn anyone into an instant diabetic

As hot and infuriating and toe-curling in the sack as Gideon was, he wasn’t mine. He wasn’t my destiny. I’d mostly given up on finding my true mate, and I imagined Gideon probably felt the same. We could never have that kind of soul-deep pair bond between us that would allow us to be truly complete. Truly settled. Whole.

But we could absolutely get together from time to time and fuck each other’s brains out. It took the edge off being so goddamn lonely. Kinda. With a resigned sigh, I looked down at the screen of my phone, brushing my thumb over it, like maybe I could feel my way to a better solution.

I hit send.

***

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[xxlordalexanderxx]

Get to know the author!

name: Jessica or Slurku

pronouns: She/Her

preference of communication: Either here via IM or Discord. I don't like to give out my discord freely, if you really want it, ask.

most active muse: Alexander and Cromwell. Don't got time for anyone else atm.

experience / how many years: Been RPing since March 7th 2006 for nearly 17 years now ( I have that kind of memory) I got my start on Gaiaonline did a lot of anime RPs like Inuyasha and Full Metal Alchemist and Naruto and Pokemon and I'm not fucking proud of how I used to write shit either. I would take a 3-4yr break before coming back to RP on tumblr where I was in the Wreck it Ralph fandom from 2012-2018. I would occasionally RP on skype when that was relevant as well. I had a few RPs in dA notes for some reason but that didn't last long.

platforms you use: tumblr, not interested in RPing in discord or anywhere else.

best experience: When I first debuted my evil ( or more evil and animalistic) King Candy Cybug and freaked a bunch of people out, that was funny as hell.

rp pet peeves: Being rushed for anything ever. This is my hobby and you are not paying me, do not ever rush me for anything even if you are nice about it. Because regardless of how nice your are I can still see that you are being impatient with me. I am a person with a life and health issues who also takes care of a parent with no kidneys.

Too many fight RPs scare me, I get skeeved out because I had a horrible fucking time after a while in the WiR fandom. Just constant fight and big-dick muse measuring is annoying. Anyone can make their muse god.

This isn't to say I won't do them, there has to be reason for it. Alexander looking to hunt someone but said quarry decides to fight back is more than welcomed.

Not being able to land hits on muses when fighting and taking all the hits sucks and I will write myself out of said fight because at the point things get boring. Fighting is give and take. Alexander is tanky and I will write him as such but he can be hurt too.

Lore breaking is pretty upsetting to me.

People who don't readmore super long replies. There's really no excuse not to do it, you can do it on mobile even so...

Making starters for people who never answer them. I will not do so again but you are free to throw one my way.

Relentlessly and constantly, and I mean over staying your welcome with annoying my muse get's tiring at some point. I do have fun with Alex getting irritated but if it's just all the fucking time I get a little irked myself. I know it's fun to poke at the big bad scary monster man but my brain starts to hurt piloting this big bitch of a man at some point, please chill sometimes.

fluff, angst, or smut: All are good in moderation.

plots or memes: I don't mind either or.

long or short replies: For plots, medium to long as long as things are formatted to not clog the dash. I don't mind short replies but only if muses are just shooting the shit. I'm not a fan of one-liners for plots.

best time to write: When I'm well rested, fed, showered, properly medicated, hydrated, caffeinated, and gotten my irl stuff taken care of and whenever I feel like it.

are you like your muse(s): Sometimes. In a more milder sense I'm not trying to eat people I'm a lot nicer than he is but I don't take any shit either.

tagged by: Stolen from @cflight

tagging: God

[sharp-teeth-and-archived]

Get to know the author!

name : Bambi or Eden, most people know me by Bambi

pronouns :  she/her/hers

preference of communication : with the recent layout, probably d.iscord, but I'm open to discussion in the ims. I don't like to communicate through asks because its unreliable.

most active muse :  lt changes all the time, honestly, but usually Astrid, Sean, Cassie.

experience / how many years :  2018 on tumblr, but I've been rping since I was 10 on other platforms.

best experience : Too many to name.

rp pet peeves : I don't necessarily have a lot of pet peeves, but perhaps not giving me much to work with, anon hate, oc and female muse hate, and how sometimes single ship muses are treated. I know the ac fandom and rpc is really small and basically inactive, but I saw a huge dip in activity for Jacob when I made him single ship when the ac rpc was more active. I get it that people want to ship. I do have characters I would like to ship with, but it just got annoying to me on how Jacob was so full of activity, but when I switched him to be single ship, he had like no activity. It just kind of showed me that some people were only into Jacob for shipping purposes when he had all this development and thought I put into him. It just felt really unfair to me. This isn't really the case recently with him, but its just what I noticed.

fluff, angst, or smut : I enjoy all three, honestly. It just depends on the muse. For angst, it might take me a bit to get to things because I need to be in the right headspace and mood for it. I use all three for character development and exploration.

plots or memes :  I haven't been into memes so much, more into continuing them from others because I've been trying to focus more on my drafts. So plots? Maybe? Memes can be a really good ice breaker and a good start to a thread that can be added and worked upon.

long or short replies :  My replies tend to be long, but really long replies can take a while for me to get to because it just takes a lot out of me energy-wise. So those threads are often tackled later. Probably a good medium between short and long? I don't really write stuff shorter than two paragraphs.

time to write:  Recently, day time, but usually whenever I'm not absolutely tired.

are you like your muses : I wish tbh. A lot of the time I pick a muse that is so different from me, or have traits I wish I had. I wish I had Sean's charisma and confidence. I wish I had Evie's intelligence and bravery. I wish I had Hewlett's perseverance. In general, I'm most like Cassie with some of my family dynamics (hers are very, very extreme), some of her traits, and her predicament in life in trying to understand herself and finding connection with others. But I also wish I was more like Cassie.

tagged by: stole it

tagging: Whoever wants to!

[simstryingtheirbestok]

get to know me - useless info edition

@papermint-airplane tagged me into this and I'm going to suppress my awkwardness long enough to do it.

what do you have under your bed? 

This fold-up fake tatami mat that I put under my futon. Also sometimes marbles or small bouncy balls from my cat because if you hide a toy, it makes it brand-new when you find it again. It is apparently also very exciting when your person vacuums them up by accident and erupts in a stream of invective.

favorite candy? 

I toggle between peppermint patties and Mounds. Right now it's peppermint patties because 'tis the season blah blah.

describe your favorite shirt. 

A plain V-necked, 3/4-sleeve all-cotton medium gray shirt from the ultra chic, super exclusive, boutique artisanal St. John's Bay label at JC Penney's. 😂 Idgaf. I am at baseline an un-fancy person who became even less fancy during the pandemic.

the last thing you drew/doodled was:

The floor plan of a house in a custom world that I won't name because it was a really impossible house to play in, and I drew it out so I could expand the floor plan and make an improved version.

You know those houses that look adorable from the neighborhood screen, adorable in their thumbnails, adorable from the outside--and then you get inside and there are all these 1 x 1 tile bottlenecks because the builder cared more about appearance than function? It was that.

Builds like that make me so upset, and they're everywhere. Build like that for your irl dolls, not the Sims!

are you completely sober rn?

I am, and mostly have been for the last 5 years! I make one exception on NYE, then it's back on the wagon for the rest of the year.

It's the only way to fly for someone like me, who otherwise will decide to celebrate it being Tuesday. Wouldn't Fat Tuesday be even fatter if it happened every week? And Friday, that's mandatory, you've simply got to drink Friday, plus, Thursday is a kind of pre-Friday, isn't it? Yeah, it's Friday Eve! That deffo calls for some shots. Saturday is for pre-gaming with friends, then drinking some more--you wouldn't want to be antisocial--and Sunday there's a big game on that will be way too boring to watch without beer, and--

So. Once a year, and then that once-a-year usually reminds me why once a year is enough (because I don't do moderation).

what's one thing that annoys you more than anything? 

I am trying to be less annoyed by things, but I'm still annoyed by enough things that picking only one is a challenge.

But I guess my build mode rant up there fits here too so, that. Oh and hey, I know "cozy" is very in right now, but while you technically can call a 2 x 4 room a bedroom... you probably shouldn't.

have you ever gotten your tongue stuck to a cold pole during winter? 

No, I've spent too much of my life in the sunbelt for that to be a thing for me.

if you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?

I know it's a cliche, but Paris. I am exactly the kind of tourist they hate--I dress terribly (see above), I butcher the language, I'm overweight, I'm basic in every respect--but I find their disdain for me absolutely adorable (and tbh somewhat justified) and my God, the food.

what was the last single word you spoke? 

"Safe." I always end my goodbyes to people with "drive safe."

tagging:

I would love to see responses from @simsdastra, @oasislandingresident, and @distantloner if any of you feel so inclined? No pressure.