#yes this is ripped off from ghibli

[mollyyancey]

Which Touhou character could you see enjoying playing ocarina?

It feels like a very fairylike activity 🌸

[manitapaleta]

(I'm so sorry it's 4 am and so I lack the inhibitions to restrain myself from making dumb requests) Ehehe I would like to request Nicky as a fucking fairy if you please! 😌🌸✨ Maybe an itty bitty little fairy in Lark's hands

Nark pixie hollow universe au!! 😤😤😱🤯🧚‍♂️✨🌈 they go on adventures and shit like a Disney movie but they CUSS and SMOKE FAIRY WEED and KILL PEOPLEEEE SHFFDCKHKYDHFJ

This would make a terrible kids movie

[moonlitinks]

Writer Q&A Tag Game

Thank you to bestie @writingbyricochet for tagging me! CAN WE JUST START OFF WITH THAT LITTLE WRITING SNIPPET (AND THE KISS SCENE) THAT HAD ME SQUEALING??? I AM SO, SO EXCITED FOR PARADISE LIVED AND DIED. for anyone interested in this amazing writer, her answers are linked here!

1) What motivates you to write?

Whenever I sit there and read a good book in one sitting for hours. The magic. The characters. The romance. The ACTION. It just makes me realize that I want to ignite this same feeling to others, and I want to make my book feel like a second home for them to escape to <3

2) A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

This is my most recent writing snippet that I'm just SO HAPPY TO WRITE I DON'T KNOW WHY

“Well, I think you’re a selfish—” Rip. The sound of her skirt tearing caused her to pause, and the magpie picked and picked at the edges of her dress. What was it doing? Bari grabbed at the remaining pieces before she exposed herself and got kicked out due to indecency. He stared at her with indifference, scowling like he could not take her at all. “There,” he said. “Now you have no reason to cling to me.” He snatched the magpie from the air and Bari cried out in alarm. Even the bird seemed to sense the dangerous aura that the he emitted, pecking at the space in between them. Altair paused at where the magpie pecked, and his gaze slipped for a second, enough to Bari to snatch her bird back, and the lantern in the other.  She really did need to get rid of the lantern, but it wouldn’t move because, apparently, even an enchanted object believed that she didn’t know what she wanted. “Tell me to take a voice.”

3) Which OC makes you smile every time you think/talk about them and what are they like?

Altair, because he's so complex. I always love a character that is more mysterious and has a lot of history to unpack behind them because of all the awful things they've done, but a lot of guilt and regret following them, too. Seeing their transformation arc is BEAUTIFUL.

4) What process of writing do you enjoy the most?

Drafting and creating plot twists! And brainstorming / daydreaming about ideas. If you can't tell, I'm not much of a plotter haha.

5) What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

Inner dialogue! And I think I really like getting in depth with characters, so you really know them.

6) What is something in the writeblr community is most enjoyable?

I think I love it because we're all honest about the writing process. Writing is really lonely and it actually can really drain you mentally without the right mindset. Personally, I have a lot of anxiety, so seeing people that understand me really makes me feel like I can write and simply enjoy it. It also makes me feel less alone.

7) A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

Scrivener, my love. I also love watching author interviews like Chloe Gong and Stephanie Garber and just seeing what their drafting and publishing journey has been like, and it inspires me to write! Pinterest is also great for aesthetics, and Spotify is the best for playlists <3

8) A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

I love the Enchanted Kingdom (soon to be named...) I've built so far. It's filled with curses that have been unresolved in the first lives that these gods have lived, and now have reappeared to kinda ruin the Kingdom. My world is very fairytale slash studio ghibli esque, so I'm having so fun with the tidbits now!

9) What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

Oh, God. DO I KNOW THIS PERSONALLY. I swear my rough patch hasn't ended... writing after nearly not writing for a good two years really does something to you.

Writing is all about mindset. It doesn't matter how much of an oddball idea you have. If you don't believe in it, it'll never get finished. Every time I doubted myself, my anxiety got so bad I shut down immediately. And I was so worried about what other people would think when reading my books, that I stopped myself from writing the books I want to write in the first place. Whether you have people around you discouraging to write, or can't believe in yourself, at the end of the day, it's just you and your book. And what's the point of writing if you're just following a trend? Or slugging yourself to finish a book you can't even connect with? Each book is a piece of yourself, and I think the greatest realization I had is to write the story you want to read. And it doesn't matter if it's about some girl who makes a deal with a god to save her sister, or about some alien on a spaceship, or about carnivals! Writing is so amazing because you can connect with readers who enjoy the same things you do, but it all starts with believing in yourself first.

When you get stuck, don't panic. If you haven't read an article about how Boredom Leads to Creativity, maybe take a quick break about writing that first! Writing isn't about who finishes the book first, but it's about quality and a game of luck. Maybe you need a break away from writing. Maybe you need to reconnect with your characters. Maybe you're just tired of toiling over and over again on this plot line.

There is no set method to returning to your project. But what has helped me is learning why I want to write. It doesn't matter how much I return to my world, or try to force my characters into more trauma if there's no reason why I'm writing this. Like, is it to enjoy it? Is it to have people experience these feelings I've felt months ago, and hold importance to me? Even the simplest reasons are the deepest ones. <3

And finally (sorry this advice is literally a hundred pages long, can you tell I'm procrastinating right now?), writing is meant to be serious, but it's also meant to be fun. The draft is simply just that: a draft. You can get ideas from random lines you wrote, or even take out characters to write a different book about! Don't ruin the one thing you've learned to love. Personally, writing in fun / ugly fonts: Arial, Comic Sans, etc., has really helped me focus on what I want to say instead of whether this book will ever get queried or not. Set a routine. Write everyday, or don't if you're more of a mood writer. The instant you feel the itch to write, JUST FUCKING DO IT, OKAY. THIS IS A SIGN. It doesn't matter if it's a scene in the third act and you're only on chapter 1. It's a sign that the story wants you, and only you to write it.

FINALLY FINALLY, I swear this is my last piece of advice, and the shortest: Believe in yourself, even when no one else does. Writing is hard, but rewarding. I believe in you. <3

wowooww that was long, tagging @orphicpoieses @macabremoons @halfbit @leisoree @sleepysuiteheart @the-chaotic-writer @heymacareyna @hallwriteblr @sculpture-in-a-period-drama @pixelw0rds @thetruearchmagos + other mutuals and anyone who wants to participate! i would love to hear your responses, PLEASE.

[toweroftickles]

Reimagined Tickling #1

Prince of Egypt/Breath of the Wild

Ok, so, let me explain real quick. Haha I've got a ton of requests that I'm working on right now...more Ghibli stories, Digimon, Balan Wonderworld, etc. But in the midst of all that I had this idea and just wanted to write it out really quick. A lot of times when I see a tickling scene in a movie or TV show, I imagine how fun it would be to see other characters in those same situations. You know, like "Oh I wanna see X character get tickled like that." So I thought I'd try writing a few drabbles where I'll take a famous tickle scene and reinterpret it with new characters in new settings.

Now, as I've said before on this blog, one of my favorite tickle scenes ever is the one from The Prince of Egypt. XDDD

So I thought for my first one, I'd do a variant on this scene with...

Link...

...and some lovely Gerudo women. ;)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With an eardrum-splitting rumble, the massive Molduga burst through the sand and knocked Link high into the air.

On the urging of Riju, the young hero had gone deep into the sands of Gerudo Desert to slay the great beast, which had been ransacking nearby settlements, gorging itself on collected fruits. Nothing he couldn’t handle. But this Molduga in particular was proving to be a challenge. As he thrust his spear into its underside, it rose to its full height, snapping its jaws, and yanked him up with it. But he knew better than to give up. Plunging his weapon further into the monster’s underbelly, he ripped it open from chin to groin, sliding down it and leaving a gash in his wake.

Link returned to the sand below in triumph and watched as the enormous monster crashed down into the dunes.

And then he was hit.

Stinking green and purple goo burst from the Molduga’s ventral wound and splattered Link from head to foot. Viscera and corkscrew-shaped innards sloughed off his arms and into the sand.

Great. Just perfect.

----------------------

Link sputtered when a cauldron of water spilled out on his head. Strings of golden hair flattened down into his eyes, until one Gerudo woman aggressively pushed them out of the way with a soapy rag across his forehead.

This was so embarrassing. He was trapped in the Hotel Oasis’ spa area, stripped down to his trunks, and reluctantly allowing some Gerudo women to scrub him clean. (Again, at Riju’s insistence. She even paid for the deluxe spa treatment herself.) Romah, her assistant Olu, and one other pirate lady were wringing out sponges, dunking them into clay bowls and vigorously scrubbing the blood from their Champion’s body. In the midst of these women…unnaturally tall, muscular, dark-skinned beauties with flaming hair…Link’s average height and pale skin stood out quite a bit. Sometimes the girls had to kneel down to bathe him.

His ears grew hot with embarrassment and he felt the color of his face going pink. One of the sponges grazed his dripping arm; its texture was rough and unpleasant. His near-nudity didn’t help matters. Bubbles covered him all over.

“Um…blah! Hng…uh…l-ladies, really, I can do this myself…” he stammered.

Link looked down and gasped – one of the Gerudo ladies had grabbed his right ankle and lifted his foot off the ground. He couldn’t bring himself to speak in protest, but the woman’s warm, rough sponge scrubbed frothing bubbles against his bare sole. His whole body wiggled.

“Wait…no…Heh! Heh-Heh Heheh!” Link couldn’t stop himself from giggling.

“Uh-oh, girls; I think this voe’s a little bit ticklish,” laughed the woman scrubbing his foot.

“Yes, we can tell,” Romah replied with a sly smile. Link felt his arm lift, and another sponge struck his abs. It scrubbed and scrubbed and caused involuntary spasms below his ribcage.

“Heh-Heh Ha! Hngk! Hh-Heh! Heh-Heh Ha-Ha Ha-Ha!” the boy hero laughed helplessly. It was already difficult enough for him to speak to other people, but these girls…giggling at him, teasing him, all of them half-naked and with him forced to stand there laughing…there was nothing he could do. He wanted to beg them to stop but the words wouldn’t come.

“Awww, cootchie cootchie coo!” Olu was so excited, teasing Link mercilessly as she scrubbed his armpit. The woman beneath him had allowed his right foot to drop to the ground, still wet, and had moved on to tickling his left. He jumped in place in a way that told her, much to her amusement, that she’d found his weak spot.

“Heh-Heh Ha-Ha! H-Heh! Gkhn! L-heh…ladies, pl-hease, I really…Heh-Heh Heh-Ha Ha!”

“Ooo, he’s so cute when he laughs,” the girl giggled and batted her eyelashes at him.

“I like how muscular you’ve gotten, Link,” flirted Romah.

“He looks like a squirmy little boy…”

Link couldn’t take anymore. It was unbearable. His entire face had gone red, his whole body trembled. Wet sponges and rags dragged soap over his arms, his tummy, his back, his feet.

“Heh-Ha Ha! Please, you’ve cleaned every inch of me…”

Or so he thought. Olu, in the midst of all their cooing and playing with him, decided to get a little bit too friendly for Link’s comfort, and he felt a sponge scrubbing his inner thigh. He almost leapt out of his skin. It tickled, but that wasn’t his primary concern.

“WAH!! I…I…uh…” the Hylian boy stammered, blushing profusely.

Outside the spa room, peering in from behind a curtain, Riju, Urbosa, and Zelda were all covering their mouths to stifle their giggling. They were a little nervous that Link would notice them, but the slight trepidation was a more than worthy price of admission.

It was another few minutes before the impromptu bathing session ended. Link was left standing there, still soaked to the bone and covered in suds, when Romah doused him with another pitcher of warm springwater and threw a towel around him. The other Gerudo ladies tried to look like they hadn’t enjoyed themselves too much as they sauntered out.

“Don’t worry, I won’t stay to watch you change,” Romah winked at him.

Link lowered his face into the towel, hoping to hide his embarrassment. Between the laughter, the tickling, and the humiliation, Link’s heart was beating so fast he’d barely been able to breathe for 10 minutes.

With one last playful chuckle, the Hotel proprietor finally left him be.

Sooo, what do you think? If you've got any ideas for this, ie "put this character I like in the tickle machine from BNHA" or something, I'd love to hear them.

[mrskurono]

a/n: this is the first installment(?) of the Nori brain rot from ages ago w/a Studio Ghibli vibe, idk man this just happened word count: 2.2k tags: post!Shibuya arc, possible spoilers, blood, violence, cursing(?), heavily Hoizer inspired, kinda edited character(s): Noritoshi Kamo, fem!sorcerer reader pt ll

Curses stank. 

In a metaphorical sense yes. But also in a literal sense for you. 

These twisted beings permeated your senses like a rot that you could never rid. Unless exorcised they stuck around in your nostril for days. Each one a different smell but all of them stuck in your craw all the same. 

Beasts of rancid nature in behaviors and looks. Nothing more than to be exorcised by sorcerers. You learned quickly that exorcising the curses was no different than taking out week old trash. 

What you hadn’t planned on was someone doing more than dumping trash on the world. Whatever had happened. Suddenly you were faced with more than just dutiful tasks of keeping non sorcerers safe. A monsoon of trash had been dumped not only on you. But every human in this world. 

Your nostrils burned. And you couldn’t be rid of these things quick enough. Each one you exorcised only meant two or three popped up in their place. Never ending. You couldn’t stomach this smell though. It wouldn’t kill you before you got a breath of fresh air.

Glancing around you take a deep breath. Mountain air on the outskirts of Kyoto during this time of year always meant a refreshing break from the city stank. What you smelled wasn’t refreshing. It was that same vile smell you could clearly recall. 

A curse. One that was close too.

To thread carefully was to perhaps save your life. Every aspect of daily life ripped from you. As well of millions of others. You had done your part to try and protect those around you. Soon finding it in slight vain as you sought out some place to find your own breath of fresh air in this madness. 

‘It’s close....I feel like I’m gonna hurl.’ Thoughts toying with where the curse might have hidden itself. You keep a firm grip on your hilt with every intent to draw it the second the creature made the mistake of slipping up. 

Where you could smell it lurking. There was something else. Almost metallic in scent. You ignored it though. Nothing over powered the scent of a curse. You longed for just the sight of these things. Told over and over again how handy it was to have more than one sense open to curses. Each and every time you took a whiff of one, it made you wish nothing more than to just be able to see these creatures instead of smell them as well.

‘Wait-’ Every alarm in your body went off. Snapping around you couldn’t smell the rancid putridness of the curse anymore. That same metallic scent hung around though. You couldn’t identify it. It was something you’d never smelt before but also so familiar. 

Each hair on the back of your neck rose. This was an old deserted Buddhist temple. No one should have been here except you and the curse ransacking the place. A safe haven or so you thought. When your instinct told you to step behind one of the structural beams. You were suddenly glad you did.

Mere inches from your face, the gust of an arrow whistled past you. Weapons were not used by curses. Now you understood. That smell was human.

Quick to defend yourself, with sword drawn, you didn’t expect the same arrow to make a hard one eighty back in the direction you were. No wooden pillar to save you now. You raise your sword just quick enough to sheer the object in half. Rendering what ever power it was imbued with useless. As it had sped past you though the faint smell of iron suddenly became strong. Whatever it was from had a source. Likely human.

Not ready to give up your ideal hiding place to some interloper. You take only a second to focus on the unfamiliar smell. Faint. And not like a curse. There was something towards the back of the temple though that hinted that they were lurking where you couldn’t see them.

With an idea of where the attack would come from. When another arrow came flying by you from a faceless source, you were ready. Smacking it down before the enchanted weapon could turn on you like the first had. This time though you’d seen what angle the projectile was fired from.

‘Gotcha,’ No shortage of ways around a deteriorated temple like this. You duck down through a few broken beams and make your way up to where the attack came from. 

Expecting to have but a lowly sniper sitting with no way to guard themselves. You find no one. But the scent lingered. Scrutinizing it closer you decided maybe to use a different sense, “...Hey, I know you’re not a curse! Neither am I! Maybe if you just-” Words cut off by another arrow whizzing past you. There was nothing ruder than being interrupted. Glowering in the direction that the arrow came from now you tightened you grip on your sword, “Ok! I get it- Strangers we might not-”

Another arrow. This time too close to your head for comfort. You lost your patience with the third one. 

Recklessly charging towards the assailant was clearly enough to throw their game off track. Swinging your weapon before seeing what it was to lie before you. It was a surprise when your blade met with the dull thud of the wooden limb of a bow. 

“What the-” You attack deflected for the moment being. Your first instinct is to jump back from whoever deflected your attack. In close enough range you thought you had the upper hand to avoid the bow. But that was purely lazy thinking on your part as the cause of the stank of iron became clear.

“Slicing exorcism!” This nobody who reeked of iron shot what looked to be a shuriken made of blood at you. 

No time to be disgusted. An overwhelming scent of blood made it apparent what you’d been smelling. It wasn’t a simple metal. It was blood.

“Oh- Oh!” You raise your blade up in the nick of time to just get the splatter of cold liquid on your cheeks. Disgusted in passing you have no time to dwell as the stranger before you makes to dart away. With their head of dark hair in your line of sight, you weren’t ready to try and re-find them once again in this maze of debris.

Lurching forward you feel the upper hand stall when they stopped your attack once more with the brute of their bow. Clear view of them now. The man who’d clearly fired the arrows was all but composed when shaking off your attack. No way to not suspect another sorcerer caught up in this giant trash heap of curse attacks. You still have no time to play nice when they hurl another blood conjured weapon at you.

In such suddenness you are less lucky than you have been. This one catching your cheek and causing a sting to spread throughout the skin of your face. Fed up with this game you don’t care if he’s a sorcerer or not. This was a one for all situation now that you intended to win.

Firm foot hold found. You realize the man has cornered himself at this point. Range attacks out of the question. Undoubtedly giving you the upper hand now. With a hefty swing of your sword and the first time you’d channeled any energy into at all. You bring it down like a guillotine. Ready to strike flesh. Instead the snap of the bow is your first sign of an upper hand. 

All but trash the man throws it aside but too slowly. You’re on him before the range attacker can pull that weird blood trick again. Slight intent to kill as if he were a curse. You swipe your foot down and knock him down to the temple floor with a hard thud.

You waste no time between the moment his head hit the ground and your above him. Tip of your blade pressed to his neck. One breath too deep from him and the sharp tip would pierce his pale skin. Eyes fixated down on him you realize in the moments after your adrenaline fades that he’s staring right up at you.

Sharp tongue your words come out curt only to be interruped right away, “Who are-”

“Another sorcerer-” His eyes open from the slits they’d remained in the skirmish, “What are you doing here? How did you-”

“I get to ask the questions!” You snarl, jabbing his throat with your sword just enough to watch a crimson bead peak from under the tip of your weapon, “You attacked me, what are you doing up here? Why were you-”

“...you’re so pretty-” Suddenly his eyes open wide realizing what he said, “Wait I didn’t-”

“Shut up or I’ll cut your throat out!” Your sword pressing uncomfortably into the side of his neck now, “I asked you a question! Why are you up here!?”

“Kamo-”

“What? What are you-”

“Kamo family!” He quickly sputtered, “Head of the Kamo family!”

The name rang a bell somewhere in your frazzled brain.

“I’m the head-” He suddenly registered really the blade to his neck, “I’m looking for stragglers-”

“In an abandoned temple?” You weren’t buying it. 

“My people live just down the hill,” He spoke earnestly, “I had to keep the stragglers safe when the curses released from their seals in the keep. Some where up here but-”

“I killed them,” You glared down at him, “I killed all but the one you shot. How long were you up here? Were you following me?”

A shake of his head even as he stared at the glimmer of your sword, “No. I was looking for anyone who came up here. I didn’t expect to find another sorcerer. I felt your cursed energy and assumed you were a curse.”

Eyes narrowing you didn’t like the sound of something so simple to this pretty face, “...I don’t believe you. Give me a reason I shouldn’t kill you right now or else-”

“Noritoshi-” He blurted out, “Noritoshi Kamo. Head of the Kamo family. I can give you some place safe to stay. I don’t understand what’s going on but-”

You lift the blade from his throat. Something about the diligent tone in his voice. Like he’d introduced himself like that a million times. You could kill him but it seemed a waste. Weapon retracted but no offer to help him up. You stand above him with a confounded glare, “...do you know what’s happening?”

His head shook and your stomach dropped. Noritoshi didn’t get up. Only propping himself up slightly when he realized the back of his head was thumping from the impact, “....A special grade curse released a powerful seal in Shibuya about two weeks ago...I saw but....” His face became somber and he shook his head once again, “...I don’t know what’s been going on. I just know things are in disarray and it’s my duty to protect my people.”

Once more you were skeptical but with how little rest you’d gotten in the past few days due to the tremendous increase in curses. This man’s words seemed as solid as any other theory you’d heard. More so than the plea of non sorcerer’s you listened to day in and day out about the end of times. 

“...Has the Jujutsu elders said anything?” You step off him completely. If he was speaking the truth maybe he knew what was going on as an actual heir to one of the clans.

Noritoshi looked up at you a moment longer, “No...there’s been a wide emergency notice to do what you can but our numbers....” He grew quiet, “...as many sorcerers seem to be dying as the rest of Japan.”

Perhaps the end of times were coming. You grip your sword hilt tight and take a deep breath, “....seems a angel of death is coming then whether we like it or not.”

“You’re a sorcerer.” He began to get to his feet, “Please, come with me. If anything to stay away from here. There is a grave yard on the other side of the thicket. More curses will come. No one should be here even as a sorcerer yourself.”

First hand you’d seen the influx he spoke of. From every direction. While out of the city provided some safety you knew that this place left you as vulnerable as any other if you stayed alone. With no words to be spoken of from the elders. And an age of curses threatening to crowd out humans. Like a trash pile reaching it’s capacity. You didn’t see much choice in this one.

“...I will kill you if I find out you’re lying to me.” Voice firm without breaking eye contact with him as you sheath your sword, “I smell one curse in this safe space of yours and I’ll-”

“Kill me, yes,” Noritoshi nodded with both busted ends of his bow in his hands as he looked on at you, “I am not lying but if you see fit, I’ll accept you as my angel of death then.”

a/n: I have one wine cooler in me as I finish this. This might be a multi part if the inspiration finds me. Anyways, um, yeah! This is an old idea coming so pls let me know if you liked it!

[ephemerlskies]

of honey and cinnamon | jjk

⇢ pairing: jungkook x reader

⇢ genre: fluff, one shot, slice of life au, enemies to lovers, musician!jungkook

⇢ word count: 14k

⇢ warnings: explicit language, mentions of terminal illness, mentions of death, themes of grief, slight plot twist, a surprising consumption of sugar, enough cheesiness to last you a lifetime

⇢ summary: what makes a three-day train ride back to your hometown anything but dull and dreadfully long? the answer, and your salvation from a boring trip home, was being stuck in the same cart as jeon jungkook for the entire ride there. unknown to you, he would turn this mundane trip into an unexpected adventure.

♪ playlist: dream a little dream of me - ella fitzgerald, departure - joe hisaishi, a journey (a dream of flight) - joe hisaishi, longing for mother's return - satoshi takebe, the sixth station - joe hisaishi, a town with an ocean view - joe hisaishi, you're in love - joe hisaishi, one summer's day - joe hisaishi ♪

a/n: this was honestly one of my favorite fics to write! ever! it was heavily inspired by studio ghibli movies hence the playlist because i recently binged a bunch of ghibli films (and i do not regret it) so, i tried to replicate the vibes from the movies i watched as best as i could!! :)) i hope you lovely readers enjoy!

They tell you love takes time. If you are patient and attentive enough, it courses through your body easier than your own blood and sinks itself in each vessel and bone and cell. Love will melt into your heart until that is all it knows. And in tales where lovers make grand gestures, like slaying the dragon and giving the moon and the stars and the sky along with the world underneath it and bestowing true love's kiss, it takes an entire story to get to the part where they are in love.

Love takes time, and in that time, there is a series of sometimes likely, and sometimes unlikely, events woven delicately within each minute that leads to the moment you know, you are in love. Traditionally, love makes itself known. It is loud and beautiful and anything but hidden within the ordinary moments used to fill in the gaps between the bigger moments. 

This story, your story, existed during the moments in between.

This train station had always emulated such an archaic ambiance. So much so that you believed you'd traveled back in time to when it was first built. Everything felt surreal, when you stepped on the train making a beeline to Cart 102, the floors felt like water; the surface tension clinging just strong enough to keep you afloat not without the occasional toss and turn. You swore it was just the rusted tracks that jostled you, but a part of you knew it was the water.

"Single rider?" The attendant stood at your cart's checkpoint, hand extended and waiting for your ticket.

"Yes, here." You handed him the paper, along with your baggage but kept the book for future entertainment and the pillow because you could tell the seats were no softer than wood.

"The train is fully occupied, so someone will be sharing your cart."

Perfect. If the world wants to do you a favor, just this once, then you hope that it sends you a quiet passenger. One that exchanges the customary 'hello' and 'goodbye' which is the extent of your interaction with them because you were tired in a way that sunk you into your zone of unsociability and on your way back home for the worst possible reason.

And the world did, in fact, do you a favor. It delivered Jungkook to Cart 102. But it just was not the favor you expected.

At first, you believed him to tick all your requirements for the ideal travel companion. Perfectly manicured company with a clear sense of boundaries. For one, he entered with a wall of silence that not only kept a greeting gated in but even the slightest acknowledgment that you were seated right across from him. It was so natural for him to ignore you that you had to glance down at your hand to check if you really were invisible.

He took his seat, stared out of the frost dusted window that reflected the sliding door that separated you and this man from the rest of the train and the world, and sighed. For a moment, he just stared and you thought it would get easier from here. But then he turned to you, and smiled.

"Hi, I'm Jungkook." It was a full smile, one that showed nearly every tooth, which reminded you of a rabbit. That paid enough respect for the previous shouldered entrance, and at first it was cute. Then, it made you feel guilty.

It was a smile you couldn't afford to return at the moment, so instead, you offered back a slightly upturned lip and a cordial nod.

"___." His hands looked strong like they had handled an array of heavy things and had the calluses to prove it. The way he sat made you feel a spark of something.

It was only a few seconds later when you realized that something was an unbridled annoyance. His legs were spread out, having you picturing the times he'd monopolize the space on a crowded bus. Jungkook was probably the type of man who was born with an entitlement that carried through to every part of his life, including the way he sat down on trains and pissed the living hell off of you.

"Like what you see?" Now you were pissed off for two reasons. The way he sat and the fact that you just got caught staring at him; his lap to be specific.

Soon, the two reasons doubled when your eyes returned to the smile on his face that didn't seem to have gone away. He was proud to catch you in the act, and most likely assumed your staring was due to an attraction so gripping that you couldn't help yourself but to stare at his crotch of all things.

"No, I was just..." Your words caught in your throat, because you weren't about to explain why his spread position on the seat had drawn an irritation from you thicker than the blood pulsing loudly through your body. You didn't want him to know you cared enough to be irritated in the first place, even if that meant letting him believe your staring was a form of unspoken flattery. "No."

"Okay, whatever you say, ___." It was the sarcasm this time, and the way he said your name that pissed you off. There was a seed inside you, ready to bury in your gut and grow just enough for you to rip his tongue from his mouth so he'd never have to say your name again.

"You'd think you didn't want to make the person you're about to spend three days on a train with angry, but maybe you're just that dumb." Insulting him gave you instant relief from the headache you knew was about to assume your forehead.

"Damn. Guess you're not the type to take a joke." Jungkook revealed his teeth one by one again, but you didn't describe it as a smile. A smile is something you thought to be beautiful, a physical expression of joy. No, what his face possessed was something sadistic. You were sure of it.

The way he carried himself and voiced his thoughts were more concentrated than arrogance. There was not a word in any language that could properly describe Jungkook. Nor was there a feeling that could render yours into something palpable. And the world had sealed you inside this cell marked Cart 102 with the person who was grainy and slick like quicksand, and just as deadly because you were sinking into him and every feeling he had provoked within the ten minutes you'd known him.

Jungkook was the first person you hated. Beyond every rude customer, every demanding boss, every high school bully, every cut tie, there was Jungkook who wore that heavy medallion of hatred around his neck like he was proud of it.

In all honesty, you thought he should wear it. He earned it. Everyone should know that you hated Jungkook and that it only took him a record-breaking ten minutes to attain the once unattained title.

You began to read your book, however 'read' didn't accurately describe what you were doing, which was staring blankly through the same words while collecting more reasons why you hated this man. It became an obsession of yours in a few short moments, because now you didn't just hate the way he sat and spoke and smiled. You hated how his breathing was somehow louder than the wheels grinding against the metal tracks or how whenever another train would pass by, he'd bring his face so close to the window you could see the warmth of his breath cling onto the glass and form a small, foggy patch.

You especially hated that you could quite literally feel his eyes on you, blistering your skin like the way a magnifying glass would redirect the sun's rays onto a target, which just so happened to be your face. Jungkook was unrelenting; as if he were trying to sear your skin with a permanent brand of his eyes.

Between the rhythmic flipping of the pages that you weren't reading, you were compelled to reprimand him for the staring. Maybe throwing his own words back into his face about 'liking what you see' would do your own vengeance justice. But that might indicate you were thinking of what he said to you this whole time.

"The weather looks so cold. It's practically raining." You moved only your eyes up from your book to study him.

He was looking out the window again, eyes chasing each speck of mist preluding the raindrops that were surely going to fall. It always rained at night.

"Looks like another thunderstorm." You packaged up the gasp that was about to burst from your chest.

For reasons you'd rather not share with a complete stranger you were hellbent on hating, you were terrified of thunder. Not lightning, but the loud crash that followed it. It was the last thing you wanted to experience while bottled up in a train with Jungkook.

"Excuse me." Your abrupt stance interrupted Jungkook's rain watching.

"Hey, where are you going?"

"None of your business." The slam of the sliding door echoed the anger you didn't express before as it snapped shut, fractionating the air you once shared with Jungkook.

You took a deep breath, the air outside felt cooler. The attendant was loyal to his assigned post, which was convenient for you.

"Sir, is there any way I can switch carts?"

"No, full train. And your ticket says Cart 102, so that's where you were meant to be." His eyes were sheltered by his hat, so there was no chance of pleading with your eyes if you couldn't even see his.

"Fine." It was a long shot, one that you didn't have the aim or trajectory for. You suppose he was right. Cart 102 was where you belonged for now. You just couldn't accept that Jungkook also belonged there with you.

Inside, the warm yellow light was beckoning you back in. Through the door, the brightness glimmered out until it was consumed by the dark hall where you stood. Jungkook was looking out of the window again with a rising and falling chest; you could hear his breathing even from behind the door or at least, you could imagine how it would sound.

"If we're going to share a cart, we could at least be friends." Jungkook's suggestion made him too human, too real for you to hate. You wanted to cling on to the idea that he was a horrible person, harboring more vices than the devil himself. But his voice was friendly sometimes, and his smile looked loving, occasionally, when he presented it to you.

"I don't see why we can't just be silent for the rest of the ride."

"Why are you going back home?" For a second, you were shocked enough to forget you were supposed to hate him. His gaze was calm and carried none of the worries yours had. You wondered, just for a second, about all the others who were on the receiving end of his gaze, and if they felt the way you felt when he looked at you. That look that distinguished him from anyone you had ever met.

You didn't want him to be right, because you didn't want the 'why' to be real. The tragedy, the only thing demanding enough to peel you away from your life away from home, should not have been the 'why' that put you on this train. But it was, and it made you angrier than he did.

"How do you know I'm going home?" You injected each word with a sharpness that you hoped would sting Jungkook.

"Well, are you going home?"

"Yes... are you?"

"No, just visiting." His eyes returned to the window, like a refrain in a poem. Always returning to look somewhere out into the beyond.

"Well, you should count yourself lucky." And you returned back to your refrain, pretending to read just so you wouldn't get caught staring at him and listing more reasons you hated Jungkook because that was easier than thinking of what was really bothering you.

"Lucky. Huh." You wanted to know what was so captivating on the other side of the window. What could have possibly supplied his eyes with something that was more interesting than the inside of this train? "Why are you going back home?"

"You already asked that."

"And you didn't answer me." Perhaps it was the stars, and he was tracking them in his mental inventory, examining until they were replicated along his memory the same way they were plotted across the sky. "Why are you going back home?"

"My mom. She's dying." Stars seemed to be a beautiful thing to keep your eyes occupied in a way your mind couldn't be, but you couldn't see past the thick fog and lack of light. "She's sick."

"I'm sorry to hear." His sincerity worked against all the animosity you'd cultivated for him.

How could he see the stars? You were going to ask, but you didn't want him to know what lied beyond the small beacon of light surrounding the train was lost to you, or rather you lost them. You wanted to hate him, so you didn't ask.

"I knew something bad must have happened to get someone like you to come home." That comment certainly suffocated any benefit of the doubt you were going to bestow upon him. Jungkook was arrogant and entitled, and in your most recent discovery, presumptuous and judgmental. Everything wrong with this world. No amount of dashing smiles and considerate questions could change that. You had to remember, you hated this man

"How dare you! How- How dare you assume something so rude!" The cloth of your pillowcase had almost worn through from how tight your fists were gripping them. You felt the fire burning through your nerves, soon about to combust and set Cart 102 ablaze. "I hate you."

It was two in the morning, or at least those were the numbers shining from your watch. The window offered the same pitch blackness that frustrated you, so you decided to give your legs some employment from sitting.

The hall of the train was nearly as dark as the outside; the overhead lights once drizzling down a soft glow were turned off. You wandered down the stretch of the medium but the further you walked, the thinner the walkway felt. Soon, the walls on either side of you were pressed against your shoulders so snugly, you had to turn your body to squeeze through.

"Having trouble?" You knew that voice; you hated that familiar inflections and conceit planted in each word he spoke.

"Can't you see I'm trying to walk?" Squinting proved to be obsolete while trying to see whatever destination was in the distance. "Why is everything so dark?"

"Because, you're not trying." If you could turn around, if these walls weren't beginning to smother your body to immobilization, then you would have run over to him and slapped the smile right off of his face. Because you were trying, you were trying to see this whole time but the dark had infested everywhere.

Unfortunately for you, the walls were connecting closer and closer, as if trying to move through you so they could reach each other and close altogether. But where would that leave you? When the gap was stitched shut, where would you be?

The walls were softer than you thought, but still forceful enough to steal all the air from your lungs leaving you a panicked mess lodged between these unkind walls. And the pressure wasn't enough to kill you, but it was just enough to leave you stuck and miserable.

"Jungkook, help me, I can't..."

Day One

Your dream was vivid enough to mislead you into thinking it was real. It wasn't until your eyes fluttered open, and consciousness spilled into your mind like a gentle breeze that you realized the nightmare was over. The window allowed a soft light into Cart 102, making you more thankful for the day than you had ever been in your entire life. You lifted your head from your pillow placed on the seat that you didn't recall placing there, and now that you think of it, you didn't remember falling asleep either.

You especially didn't remember covering yourself with this wool coat that smelled like the air after a bonfire had just finished browning marshmallows and dissolving wood.

"Someone's finally awake." Then it all came back to you. You wondered why everything felt so tranquil. It was a shame you couldn't enjoy the peace before the omen of annoyance, your special nickname for Jungkook, had returned.

"What time is it?" Your eyes were blinking away the sleep, and when that failed, your hands began to rub them until they were able to prop open fully.

"Eight-thirty. Here." He set down a Styrofoam cup of something hot enough for steam to escape through the open space of the lid. It smelled sweeter than coffee.

"What is it?" Your question came after you had already picked it up to furnish your hands with warmth and your nose with the delectable aroma leaking from this cup.

Jungkook’s smile was hidden behind his cup, already half empty, withholding an answer from you because he wanted to see if you would try it before you knew what it was.

"Don't worry, it's not poison." You figured it could be counted as retribution in the form of a nice pick-me-up for all the irritation he'd caused you, not to mention the fact that even in your dreams, he couldn't seem to leave you alone. No, Jungkook's presence was something that would slip through the realm of your sleep, the only place you thought you could escape him.

You sipped slowly, and the drink inside the cup made a quick and favorable acquaintance with your tongue. The contents were something you'd be able to identify separately, but when combined, they were delicious and elusive all at once.

"Wow, this is great!" The smile escaped faster than a spilled cup of water, and before you could clean the messy evidence of your gratitude, Jungkook returned the same smile, but his wasn't a spill; his smiles were never an accident, and you could almost resent him for it.

Almost.

"You like it, huh? Didn't take you to be a fan of sweet things." Both pairs of eyes were taken by the scenery just on the other side of the window decorated with streaks of the fallen dew drops.

His pride was untamed, and you assumed it was because Jungkook never took any action to dilute his own conceit. You liked to imagine how often Jungkook could arm himself with that smile, that laugh, which you were not too blind in your own despise to admit were both conventionally attractive assets of his, and everyone in a ten foot radius would fall into his hands. The world seemed to rest in his hands, and all he had to do was smile.

Not you, though. You were certain you had polished yourself with enough perspective so you wouldn’t be foolish enough to let something as shallow as a charming smile fracture your walls. Though, it was increasingly frustrating, verging on the point of catastrophe, how difficult it was to convince yourself of this and to ignore the image of his smile, sneaking its way to the forefront of your thoughts after brushing it off seconds before.

It was overcast, and the grey from the sky had permeated along the air below, yet it didn't puncture the vibrancy of the ever-extending grassy plains. They seemed to continue on forever, as if you walked out to the horizon it would take an eternity to find the end of the green landscape. The wind acted as music to which each blade of grass had been dancing an instinctive choreography.

And every so often, a patch of flowers would appear, perform its part, then disappear just as quickly.

For a moment, you wondered what Jungkook thought of the small bits of the world this window was displaying. Did he think it was just as beautiful as you did?

"It's honey, cinnamon, and milk. My mom used to make it for me when I was a kid." Though the view was timeless, you finally broke your gaze to look at Jungkook.

It was hard to imagine this man, the harbinger of almost every ounce of anger you have ever felt in your life, as a child who would drink milk with honey and cinnamon made by his mother. But then again Jungkook's face began to change, or at least the way you saw it morphed into something entirely different.

His bright eyes didn't look like they could be from this world. Not when they seemed to hold everything in his line of vision within them so warmly that it could spread magic over everything around him; like a fairy tale, but this magic rested in the two sockets of his eyes. Something so enigmatic made you want to snap at him just so he would look at you instead, and hold you in his eyes. As though to be held by his eyes would fix all your problems.

"Hm." You looked down at the cup, trying to savor each sip however ultimately failing since the honey melted in with the milk and perfectly heightened each flavor.

Without thinking, you wrapped the coffee-colored coat tighter around your body. It was blissful, sipping a cup of delight inside Cart 102, protected from the prickly wind of the winter while still being vended a view of its beauty. This train ride was almost perfect, if not for the (slightly less) bothersome burden that sat across from you.

"Looks good on you." He didn't have to specify he was referring to his jacket that was giving you comfort.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't-"

"Nah, keep it. You looked cold when you were asleep. You were shivering so much it basically sounded like you were begging for my jacket." Jungkook laughed softly.

Maybe two hours ago you would have been brimming with enough rage to rip his jacket off of you and throw it in his face because it sure sounded like he was pitying you or guilting you into a 'thank you' that you were too petty to relinquish. But now, in the morning that tamed you, stomach digesting a tasty drink given by none other than Jungkook, you let it slide.

Just this once, you thought.

"Well, that was very kind of you. And thank you for the drink, but I don't need some stranger doing me any favors."

"Wow, you sure are stubborn!" He laughed again, even though you had been nothing but uninviting of his advances, he just laughed.

"Am not." You muttered.

"Whatever you say." Just this once, you let him have the last word. Just this once.

One emptied cup of Jungkook's special later and you were energized enough to read, and hopefully retain the story rather than flipping mindlessly through the pages while you fueled your attention with rage.

Jungkook was busying himself, putting thought to paper. The quick ticks of his pencil against the wooden table was enough to earn him a passive-aggressive sigh from you, and you hoped he was perceptive enough to get the hint.

The ticks continued, even spaced out to a consistent pace as if he was beating a drum just to anger you. Your annoyance was once again brimming over, ready to spill into another display of it that consisted of a furrowed brow, a scowl, and a slew of incoherent retorts that had been brewing in your mind.

"Can't you write any quieter?" It hadn't measured up to all the clever insults you had loaded into your verbal weaponry, but it did the job to convey your frustration which obviously hadn't been communicated through your previous sigh.

"I'm not writing, actually! I'm trying to figure out the time signature for this piece. Three-six just isn't right." The pencil once tapping out a rhythm was now tucked between his teeth, and you could tell this was a habit of his from the various other tooth-shaped indents along the end of the pencil.

"Whatever, just... do it quietly."

"Quietly? This process is anything but quiet."

"Then try your very hardest."

"I'll try. Emphasis on try."

Though your eyes had reunited with your book, your curiosity pledged allegiance to what Jungkook was writing on his paper. It took an effortful battle between your urges and your restraint to finally ask him.

"What's a time signature?"

"Kind of like a rhythmic guide. For music. I'm a composer, and I'm hoping I can get this fellowship to work with professionals all around the world!" Jungkook's response came almost immediately after your question and his answer consisted of more information than you asked for, which meant this was something he was passionate about. Either that or he just loved talking about himself. It could have easily been both.

However, from the way his eyes held the world, they seemed to hold the music etched onto his paper the tightest. Like, if he were to let go then he would lose any and all purpose to hold on to anything else.

"You make music? Like songs on the radio and stuff?"

"No, not really. Songs for movies. I want to be a film composer."

"Oh. Is that why you're traveling? To study with a professional?" You surprised yourself more than him with that question.

"No... I, um. I wish that was the reason." Before asking him what his reason was, you stopped yourself from letting yet another question slip from your mouth.

Because you were supposed to hate him. Jungkook made everything difficult, even the notion of hating him was made to be a challenge. Asking him questions, learning about him, making the person in front of you turn into something with more dimensions than two was pointless when in a couple days, you'd leave this train and never see him again. Better to go back to hating him.

It wasn't as satisfying as before. Now that you've acquired some knowledge of who he was beyond an obnoxious seat hog and arrogance asshole, the reasons to hate him were beginning to be outweighed by all the other reasons to not hate him.

So far, you learned he was a musician. A passionate up and comer who gives strangers his jacket when they look cold, and shares a drink of milk and honey and cinnamon because it reminds him of his childhood. Someone who has made biting his pencil into a habit when he was working through a thought, who would often stare out windows and saw all the stars you couldn’t; someone who was quick to try to make friends with even the most emotionally withdrawn people.

Shortly after taking more time than planned on recounting all the things you learned about Jungkook, you felt indebted to him since he only knew two things about you. 

You were stubborn and you had a sick mom. Or at least, you believed these were the only parts of yourself he picked up on. The rest were things he’d observed with an attentive eye of which you had not noticed had been studying your mannerisms in the same way you studied his. 

When you left the cart abruptly after he mentioned the thunderstorm that was somehow delayed for tonight, he was correct to assume it was because you were afraid of the storm. Now, whether it was the thunder or lightning that rattled you so viciously you had to walk off your fear was yet to be discovered. Jungkook was confident he’d figure it out.

Or, how he watched you when you were sleeping in a way he wouldn’t describe as creepy since it was endearing to see you sleep. In fact, he was doing his best to ignore you, but your muffled groans had revealed to him you were the type to have the occasional nightmare. Again, the dream itself was something he was more than interested in discovering.

And your adorably executed performance of passive aggression didn’t evade him in the way you presumed it did. He heard the sigh and understood exactly what you were attempting to accomplish with that, but decided to act like your effort to shut him up wasn’t completely transparent. Mostly because he wanted you to ask him what he was doing. 

Jungkook wasn’t ready to admit it yet, but he enjoyed the way you spoke, even if it was drenched in a thick layer of annoyance. For now, he decidedly stuck with finding innocuous ways to fall back into a conversation with you, to slowly but surely learn all that he could in this three-day train ride. 

At half-past three, lunch had been served, consumed, and digested. Jungkook’s plate, however, was just short of being completely gone. Everything had been notably ravaged by him except for the pile of walnuts he picked out of his salad at the beginning of the meal.

“Not a fan of walnuts?” You convinced yourself this question came from a place that was starting to feel queasy from the silence that was more intoxicating than the small glass of complimentary wine you downed a little too quickly. 

“Allergic. Nothing too serious, though. My throat gets itchy and sometimes I get a rash on my skin.” You made a mental note that Jungkook was allergic to walnuts, which you stored in the part of your brain that harbored knowledge that was completely useless to you yet you still reserved space for it to be memorized.

“That sucks.” 

“Yeah, but it did come in handy when I was in class and didn’t want to be. I’d tell the teacher the cafeteria food had walnuts in it and I needed to go home and get my EpiPen before I died.” The list of things you knew about Jungkook continued to lengthen, and you couldn’t specify when it happened, but you began to enjoy every detail that made the list grow. 

You wouldn’t have guessed it would take a single day for you to wish it would never stop growing. But then again, you didn’t realize this at the time.

“And that worked? Sounds like you had your luck laid out for you from the beginning.” Jungkook smiled at this, the same bunny-toothed smile from yesterday, but it felt much different to you now, as if you were one smile away from forgetting your once insistent hatred of Jungkook. 

“Yeah, I guess so. What about you? What are your allergies?”

“Other than overly friendly weirdos on trains? Nothing.” It was the strangest reaction to feel proud, of all things, when you were rewarded by his laugh. It was softer than the wind rushing against the side of the train, however his laugh outperformed every other sound in the surrounding area until it was all your ears could focus on.

“Then it seems you’re the lucky one. No allergies. Free to eat whatever you want.” His eyes parceled between the sheet music in his hands and you. Though, it was difficult to pull them back down to his work since this was the first time he had your undivided attention that was not born from annoyance or repulsion to whatever he was doing. 

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m free to eat whatever. I have standards.”

“Really?” It was his not-so-discreet way of trying to capture all the pieces of you that he could, but from your slow intake of air, it seems as though you weren’t entirely finished with talking to him either.

“Cilantro. It’s absolutely disgusting. And mushrooms. I can’t stand mushrooms.”

“I love mushrooms.” Of course, you do, you thought. He didn’t have to say it, but he most likely loved cilantro as well. And you were most definitely right. 

“I suppose you love everything I hate?” Eye contact with Jungkook was more than you could handle ever since his mannerisms stopped annoying you and started intimidating you, so you found refuge in the scenery beyond the window. It never failed you during the day, but at night you would have to scavenge for something to stare at when Jungkook’s eyes were close to stealing your breath away. 

“I suppose you hate everything I love.” 

It took a careful eye to catch the subtle hints of emotion that even you were too distracted to notice. Jungkook’s eye was trained pretty well in observation of the hidden traces of even the most thoroughly subdued emotions. His eyes were so well versed in gathering the scarce evidence of emotions that it prompted him to ask his next question:

“What are you looking for?”

Now, your eyes were still averted by his, so you held on to the slowly fading daylight while you still could. But, sadly, the window was a distraction of sight, not sound, so you heard his question loud and clear and felt obligated to give him an answer. Even if your answer was pathetic.

“Just looking at the grass. It’s pretty.”

“I didn’t ask what you were looking at, I asked what you were looking for.” 

Determining what emotion you let slip through the quiver in your lip was a task Jungkook wasn’t well equipped for just yet. In all fairness, he had only known you for a short while and he still felt disappointed in himself for not being able to know what he made you feel with that question. 

“I don’t know.” You couldn’t help the stunned tone of your voice, but that was all that could fuel your words at the moment. “I guess… A distraction. It’s so beautiful out there.”

“Everything looks beautiful when you only have a small amount of time to admire it.” Whatever distraction you were looking for had certainly met your eyes and did its job since you had absolutely no clue he was staring right at you when he said that. That he was savoring the small amount of time he had to admire you.

Jungkook was right, which was a habit of his that he took unrestrained pride in; life was beautiful when you moved through it with such little time to spare. Though slamming your hand in a doorway was something you would sooner do than admitting he was right.

The fabric of time moved in a peculiar fashion when inside a train. You move so fast and yet, not at all, and it is as if there is a tear where the train moves through, and evades the grips of each minute that transports the future into the present and the present into the past. It felt this way the moment you stepped onto the train, so when you checked the time, it didn’t surprise you that it was already an hour before midnight. 

The daytime had slowly melted away, carefully, the way ice shrunk inside a glass of water until it combined with its surroundings, and the plains of grass could only exist in your memory right now. The blackness of night consumed everything beyond your window once again, though there was the occasional streetlamp that provided a glimpse of everything you couldn’t see as of now. 

What you couldn’t see was nowhere near as frightening as what you were about to hear. 

The first flash of lightning felt like a warning. It took a few seconds for the wretched boom of thunder to follow, which was the interval of time you foolishly hoped it would, just this once, fail to accompany that streak of light. That perhaps this train moved quick enough to outrun the storm.

“___? Are you okay?”

You didn’t notice your hands had immediately cupped your ears until Jungkook’s voice was filtered through as a jumble of indiscernible noises.

“Sorry, I just…” Steadying your breath was a toll that required an upfront payment of all your attention, so your previously muted voice and steady tone had gone out of the metaphorical window, along with the rest of your response.

“So it’s the thunder.” Jungkook said softly to himself. It didn’t matter since your hands were being utilized as makeshift earplugs. They seemed to deflect every sound except for the thunder that punctured through your barrier effortlessly. 

Before, Jungkook had this preconception of you. From the minute he stepped into Cart 102, he could tell you were the type to carry yourself steadily, the type that supplied their own assurance and isolated their emotions in the same way you isolated yourself. But here you were, hands clamped against your ears, eyes pressed shut and body shaking; this was a surplus of emotions you let seep through your walls. It was expressive enough for any dimwitted onlooker to know exactly what you were feeling: pure fear. 

And Jungkook had always been adept to telltale signs of what was buried beneath the obvious emotions. He could tell you wanted to be distracted. You needed help.

It was easier to stifle one sense if you stifled them all at once. If you didn’t want to see, you had to plug your ears and hold your breath. And in this case, to block out the sound, you had to shut your eyes and numb the rest of your body in the slim chance that the thunder wouldn’t penetrate through your poorly constructed firewall. 

Suddenly, you felt the space beside you sink lower which meant Jungkook had taken the liberty of invading your space at the worst possible time. It was difficult to focus on blocking out the sound when you could feel the side of his shoulder bump lightly against yours. 

“___.” You shifted towards him slowly, waiting for his explanation of why he was on your side of the cart. “Can I touch you?”

You were past your wit's end, spending the last bits of your sanity trying to calm yourself from the second crash of thunder that made your body lift from the seat for a solid two seconds. All you could do was nod, and hope he wasn’t a serial killer that was about to strangle you to death in a moment of vulnerability. 

He was working in your favor, just like when he wrapped you up in his coat and set that cup of milk in front of you, he moved in determination to comfort you. And if it weren’t for the dire circumstances, your pride would have refused the security of his arms that were carefully enveloping your body and eliminating the frigid space around you. You hadn’t realized how cold this train was until you were invited into Jungkook’s warmth. He had somehow silenced the storm, and all you had to do was let him. 

The third blast of thunder pushed you deeper in his embrace, and you wrapped your arms around him tightly like the lifejacket he was that kept you from slipping below the surface of the angry ocean currents. 

“If you couldn’t tell I-” Boom, “I hate thunder.” Your voice came out strained through the fear-induced filter lodged in your throat.

“No, actually, I couldn’t tell at all.” Nine out of ten of your thoughts were concentrated on the thunder, and that one exception was applied towards how annoyingly sarcastic Jungkook managed to be through thick and thin. It was impressive enough that he could subtract the fear even by a small fraction for you to laugh. 

“You’re so-” Boom, “You’re insufferable.”

His laugh was noticed through the gentle bounce of his chest that rocked your head more than the actual sound of it. Soon, a hand came to run through your hair and with each stroke, he somehow removed your terror layer by layer until you were afforded with indifference to the storm simply because you were lulled into a half-sleep and were now too exhausted to care about the thunder. 

“You’re okay. Everything is okay. You’re doing great. Breathe deep.” His chest smelled the same as his coat. A fire burning so brightly, sending the aromas of everything it consumed into the air.

Now your attention belonged to the warmth of his arms, and how he moved his hand through your hair with something deeper than kindness. It was selflessness because he too was scared and tired and in need of rest. Despite this, he used the last of his energy to ward off the threat of a second panic attack. 

“Thank you.” You whispered into his chest, and it seemed as though it permeated through his flesh and ribs and absorbed straight into his heart from the way he held you even tighter. 

The storm had settled, and the horrors of loud thunder were abandoned for quite some time now, but it felt too comfortable, too perfect for you to be anywhere else but here in his arms. So, what went unsaid was more than enough for him to retract any intention to return to his seat and instead hold you against his chest, where his heart would retain strength from being close to you. 

You couldn’t tell if you had already slipped into a dream when you heard him singing softly, or if the melody of Dream a Little Dream of Me was actually being crafted by his voice so beautifully and fell into perfect synchronization with the rhythmic beat of his heart. Either way, you were thankful to bear witness to a sound that reduced the idea of thunder down to something that could never hurt you again, and instead made seeing all the stars the heavens could offer possible even through the darkest nights. You felt a well of tears moisten your cheeks.

In his arms, with his voice, you could see the stars.

Back in the dimmed hallway of the train, you could make out the outline of a figure standing in the distance, waiting for you. Waiting, but about to run out of time. You saw her slowly disappear the way wind would rustle the dying leaves off a tree in autumn. Slowly her body was wilting, disappearing, and the wind only picked up speed. 

All you could think to do was run to her, your mother, the shell of a woman you had known and loved your whole life. Her frail body being stripped of flesh as easily as wind undresses a tree of its leaves until there is nothing but branch and bone.

The walls began to close again, and you knew you had to act faster. You had to push past the pressure of closing walls even if they were squeezing so tightly movement became impossible. All at once, the impossible became your burden to redesign into something possible, which was the only thing crushing your spirit more than these damn walls.

You were so close; you held your hand out and—

Day Two

Winter mornings always start the same. Your eyes began rediscovering sight before the rest of your senses flooded into function, then your stomach would get angry for digesting nothing but its own acid until you filled it. And just like yesterday, your pillow cushioned beneath your head on the seat and your body shielded from the rogue winter winds that snuck inside of your cart by the same bonfire scented coat.

“Rise and shine.” Jungkook said from behind the sheet music he was examining. He must have been stealing glances of you every five minutes or so to catch the moment you’d finally wake up.

“Time?” Part of you didn’t want to get up. Part of you, the more persuasive part, wanted to remain tucked under Jungkook’s coat and slip back into a light sleep. If it weren’t for the hot drink waiting for you on the table then you would have done just that.

“Nine. A little later than yesterday.” You sat up eventually, wrapping the coat around you, and for a moment life was comfortable on the train. So much so that you didn’t mind how your hair was in complete disarray. 

Jungkook enjoyed seeing you this way. When you had first woken up and didn’t wear the usual veil of detachment from the rest of the world. Your guard had surrendered to your sleep ridden body. He guessed very few people saw you like this, natural and raw and untouched by the pressure to be presentable, and counted himself lucky, just like you would say, to be one of those few.

“Thanks, again.” You said softly into the warm cup between sips. “How much?”

“No. It's okay.”

“But-”

“Seriously! Don’t mention it.” He was firm, but that didn’t stop the gentle smile that crept its way back onto his face. You didn’t know what to say other than the thanks you had already said, so you just kept drinking. It was still just as delicious, but today familiarity was peppered into the milk among the honey and cinnamon which gave it that much more reason to love it.

“You get up this early every day?” You asked, because you were at a loss for words but felt less comfortable without hearing his voice to accompany the brisk, quiet morning. 

“Usually I do. I like the morning. It feels like I have the world to myself before everyone else wakes up.” Charming. It was the last thing that came to mind when you would picture Jungkook. Now, however, it seemed to be the only characteristic that came to mind when you thought of him. 

Sitting in front of you, half mindedly scribbling notes onto the staff and half his attention expended on sharing the small ways he saw the world, he was just charming. As easily as he once drove a blunt edge of annoyance into your chest, he erased every bit of evidence that he could ever be anything but charming.

“Sorry to steal the morning from you. I gotta wake up sometime.” You felt entirely unpracticed in the realm of light, friendly conversations, and that was evident from the way you wanted to gag at your own response to his. What you thought was a tasteless, almost pathetic attempt at banter was, to Jungkook, another reason to enjoy the morning. 

“I’m glad it’s you that I have to share it with.” Jungkook certainly sat higher on the hierarchical scale of wit compared to you, but even that didn’t agitate you in the way it would have before. What was more shocking than that was the fact that you felt the muscles in your cheeks changing your flat lipped expression into a smile.

“Flattery gets you nowhere, Jungkook.” You responded that way only to save face. It was a habit of yours you didn’t realize you were doing until the words had already been deployed by your tongue.

“It seems to have gotten me a smile from you. Those are hard to come by.” You jerked your head quickly over to him, the same grin stained with smugness there to meet your surprised ‘o’ shaped mouth. 

He was right again. Your smiles have always been punctuated lately, but you were too busy paddling through every distraction available to even notice.

“Very funny.” Your voice was low enough for Jungkook to nearly miss it. Once the soft tone of your voice delivered to his ears, he looked away from his sheet music to mine through your face like a cavern, searching for the hidden bits of the treasure-like emotions strewn in along the subtle details. 

“What’s wrong?” It was a leap of faith, his question, a leap that sent him plummeting blindly into the depths of everything he craved to know about you. 

“That thing you said the other day.” Your expression was unreadable to the whole world. But inside the train, the whole world rested just on the other side of the window. There was no reason to come off as impassive, cold, or unconcerned, to care so much about trying not to care. “About going home.”

“Mhm?” You waited to see if he had anything to say, anything to stall what was about to escape from your lips. You knew it wouldn’t take long for your thoughts to go rogue, especially when he made you smile like that. 

“I’m angry.” He gave you a look that said ‘no shit’ without having to actually say it. It made you nervous, but still willing to go on. “You're right. I didn’t visit home ever until now. I thought I grew out of it. I thought I became someone too big to fit in a town so small and stuck in its way. But I was never too big, I don’t think I ever actually grew. Because when I got the call, after stupidly ignoring it a hundred times before, I felt like the same child. So scared of the idea of a world without their mother. So, yeah, I’m angry. I’m angry I could be arrogant and stupid enough to think I could live the rest of my life never looking back.”

Jungkook just watched you, with those eyes that held the world. His eyes were holding so much right now when they were looking at you. So much weight from a source he couldn’t define with his own intuition. So much weight, he couldn’t understand how you had been shouldering it on your own this whole time, if he couldn’t stand a few minutes holding it now. 

“Going back home.” You scoffed. “It's not about looking back. It was never about that. I think returning to something familiar is almost just as scary as fleeing somewhere new. All your past mistakes and demons that you have to face…”

“Demons. Is that any way to talk about your mother?” It was his way, unique to Jungkook alone, to litter in a bit of lighthearted teasing even when he was supposed to be serious. As if he couldn’t stand to let the air in Cart 102 become too damp with sadness, as if his heart wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

“I made a mistake. I spent too much time away, and now the last way I’ll see her is weak and sick. That’s my demon. My mom was just unfortunate enough to be the arbiter of it.” 

Jungkook wanted to tell you that if he could, he would take all your pain away and send it back into the universe to find someone else to harbor it. Someone who deserved to feel a loss so heavy, because he knew just by looking at you that you deserved none of it. But he held his overly romantic tongue for now in regards to easing you into him smoothly. Since he had come such a long way with you, making gentle strides to win your affection, it would be greedy of him to tarnish that by saying something as outrageous as that, even if that was truly how he felt.

“Come with me. I have an idea.” It would have been easy to refuse him, to swat his hand away and never speak to him again for the rest of the train ride. But what prevails after the wear and tear of expecting the worst and knowing the painful and permanent scars it will leave you is the trust of someone who turned scowls into smiles, who held his hand out to you and waited for you to take it kindly.

Those tales they tell about feeling sparks when you make contact with your soulmate were decidedly wrong. Wrong to you, because when you touched Jungkook’s hand, you felt those sparks nestling under your skin and learning its way through the rest of your body. Wrong, because Jungkook was no soulmate of yours, just an unlikely stranger you met on a train once. 

And yet, you couldn’t help but wonder, you couldn’t help but hope he too felt these sparks that supposedly meant nothing.

Jungkook pulled you into the hallway, which was brighter than the way it looked in your dreams. At the end of the walkway, there was no ghost resembling your mother, and the walls weren’t closing in, and instead of pushing through alone, you had Jungkook holding your hand tightly, and graciously guiding you down.

“This way.” He whispered, and you mimicked the stealth in his voice through the way you muffled the sound of your feet hitting the train floor, which felt less like water and more like sand with him; soft yet solid sand.

You arrived at an unattended area of the train. The only hint of what Jungkook was up to was that grin. That grin was too playful to be a grimace, and too mischievous to be a smile. That grin that you hadn’t noticed you were looking forward to seeing, the same one you could sense you would miss when the train arrived at its destination. That when he grinned, you finally found the courage to return it. Needing no conditions or second guesses, you were just you, somehow smiling on the train that was taking you to your sick mother. And it was all because of him and his stupid, lovely grin.

“What are you doing? Are we supposed to even be here?” 

“Shh, we’ll get caught.” He began to wriggle with the door handle until it opened. 

“So we’re not supposed to be here! Jungkook, let’s go before we get kicked off!” To silence you, he simply held his hand up. You pouted your lip but did as he commanded. 

Inside the door, there was a collection of all the food meant for purchasing. Your assumption was confirmed that Jungkook had no intention of paying for the bags of pretzels and packets of cookies he was stuffing into his pockets. Hands full with quite the assortment of foods, he looked to you and raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“Come on, put these in your pockets! Hurry.” He held the food out towards you. There was no convincing him to put all the stolen goods back, and there was no convincing yourself to not go along with his sinfully sweet plan. 

The fast-paced walk back to Cart 102 was the most exhilarating thirty-five seconds of your life. Jungkook looked all too calm, like spontaneity fell into his hands naturally or like it was a birthright, belonging to his life from the beginning. Life with Jungkook, even if the short span of time he’d claimed part of yours was fleeting, was the most excited and fearless you had ever felt. 

Jungkook and you emptied the haul of food onto the table. For a second, they went untouched only for the two of you to admire your successfully pirated goods. Then, for the first time on the train you met eyes with Jungkook and laughed.

It was the sort of laugh that exercised muscles in your abdomen you weren’t aware that you had in the first place. The kind that began at the top of a hill, and with one push it was tumbling faster and faster, growing louder and wilder. 

Jungkook was laughing too, a sound which could qualify as the only competitor to surpass the beauty of his singing. And whatever music he was scribing onto the paper would have to be beyond masterful to sound anything close to as immaculate as his laugh.

“I can’t believe we just committed grand larceny.” The words came out of your throat between fits of laughter, eyes now with an abundance of happy tears.

“Woah there, “‘grand”’ is a stretch. I like to think of it as unlawful borrowing.” The rest of the afternoon was spent with celebratory feasting of your unlawfully borrowed goods. Your favorite was the packs of chocolate mints, and Jungkook had cleverly avoided eating them when he noticed how much you liked them. 

When dawn arrived, Cart 102 settled into a comfortable silence, now consisting of you reading your book tempered by a glance out of the window every few pages and Jungkook tapping his pencil against the wooden desk while marking up every blank space on his page. To anyone else, including the likes of you, the page was nothing but a jumble of incoherent scribbles. To Jungkook, it was his next masterpiece; the best idea he made tangible on paper and hopefully soon, audible when someone agreed to commission it.

“Done!” 

His remark startled you, being that there had been no warrant for him to exclaim his progress with the music he was working on. You chuckled softly, closing your book and looking back to Jungkook.

“Done with what?” 

“This song. I know this one will sell. I just know it! It’s perfect.” Jungkook’s passion was bursting past the seams of his body. “I just wish… I wish I had more time.”

“What does that mean?” Again, all he offered was the same grin, and that was all you needed in order to know he wouldn’t be dropping any more hints on the account of your curiosity. 

“It means this train ride is ending tomorrow, and I’ll have too much on my plate to work on anything else. So this right here,” He held up the paper with the same tact one would for a pile of pure gold, “Is my last chance to get my work out there for a while.”

For reasons born from an unidentifiable place, you felt like crying. Last chance. It sounded serious. Something you weren’t ready to know and something he wasn't ready to tell. So, instead of pestering the answer out of him, you let him have his secrets. You let him have all the secrets he had somehow gotten out of you. 

And somehow, you were okay with it. Just this once.

Jungkook said he was taking a quick nap. Quick must mean something entirely different where he was from since it lasted about three hours and counting. For someone who had nothing to do but sit on a train all day, he sure was tired. It would have concerned you had it not been for witnessing how much energy he exerted into writing his music, as if each tap of his pencil required the same amount of energy as running an entire mile.

You were looking out of the window, which looked like it had been coated with tar. The departing sun left no remnants of its light and the moon must have been situated on the opposite side of the train, so it was up to the stars to illuminate your view of the world. But, outside the train was dark. Dark, and almost pitch black.

The first few specks were thought to be a hallucination that bloomed from your own wishful thinking. But soon, there were more and more twinkling lights dusting the sky and that outshined any doubt you had before. The stars were so bright and glimmering clearer than you had ever seen. Only something so beautiful, something that ingrained itself into the grooves of your brain to keep forever, could elicit the gasp that came louder than expected.

“Woah.” It jolted Jungkook awake and you would have felt bad if he weren’t already supplied with three and a half hours of extra sleep. 

“What?” His voice was hoarse from being unused for such a long interval.

“The stars! I can see them! They’re so bright, Jungkook. So bright.” The tears began to form in part from the lack of blinking and in part from how happy you were to see the stars. The same stars your mother was probably looking at and the same ceiling of glitter that loomed protectively over you and Jungkook. They were more than just constellations tonight; they were a celestial map navigating you back home and an astronomical assurance that everything would be okay. Even if the worst happened, everything would be okay.

“They are. They’ve been bright for a while. It took you long enough to notice.” Your smile was not yours to control anymore. It was a small price to pay considering you had a world full of stars to last you a lifetime.

“I guess I haven’t been trying as hard to see them as I thought I was.”

And you turned to him, which was the only thing besides the starlit arena above you and Jungkook and the train you’d rather be looking at right now.

“I can’t wait to go home. I miss it so much.” It was the first time you said it out loud, as well as the first time you were able to admit that to yourself. 

“I’m glad you feel that way. You should feel that way.” 

“Thank you.”

There were a plethora of reasons that prompted that thank you. Far too many reasons that were decidedly unfit for just a single thank you. So, you concluded that the thank you was for Jungkook; for becoming a part of your life. For every decision he made on this train that rearranged your feelings towards him into something pleasant. Something that felt warm and safe.

Tonight, the last thing you saw before slipping away into sleep was all the stars that weren't at your disposal before. Every silvery diamond brandished along the expanding sky was so mesmerizing, you wished you could imprint them into the backs of your eyelids when they eventually lulled you into a calm slumber. That and the memory of Jungkook’s rendition of Dream a Little Dream of Me set on repeat in your head. 

This time, you weren't trapped in the confines of a dark train hallway. You were standing in the middle of a grassy field, laden with a diverse collection of wildflowers. The mellow green hues seemed to lift from the blades of grass, stretching into the air around you.

And your mother was there. She wasn’t being blown away by the wind. Just like the sturdy trunk of a tree, she stood with dignity and conviction at the top of the highest hill that provided a view of your hometown; it was the most beautiful you had ever seen her. 

“Mom!” The way you were running felt more like gliding, or flying even, because you moved through the wind without a bit of resistance. Your body was frictionless and unstoppable. And when you finally fell into your mother’s arms, it was the most freeing feeling in the world. 

“I’ve missed you so much. I thought you were going to leave me.” The blue sky that sealed you and your mom into the earth made a stunning partner for the fields of green underneath you. 

“I’m always with you, darling.”

It was difficult to decide whether the sound of her voice or the sentiment behind it made you cry, so you decided not to decide at all, and instead, you simply let yourself cry. Everything was so beautiful, but still not complete. 

“Mom, I feel like something’s missing.”

“There is.” She responded, but it wasn’t a question. Your mom was not your mom, just a figment herself cultivated by your own mind. She was one with you, and she knew exactly what was missing. 

“Where do I find it?” Her hands cupped your cheeks, just like she would when you were young and crying over a scraped knee.

“You know, love. You know.” 

The wind pulled a gentle melody from the spaces between the leaves. A melody you were quite familiar with and grew to love. It slowed, then everything was silent.

Day Three

Waking up came to you in a hurry, as if you shouldn’t spend another second living life through dreams because today was the last day on the train. The last day you’d spend with Jungkook, and possibly the last time you would ever see him.

It was uncharacteristic of you to feel this way. Disappointed at both yourself and your situation. You knew from the beginning that this was a temporary arrangement, and Jungkook was not a permanent fixture in your life. In fact, you used to be thankful for those circumstances because you hated Jungkook. 

But, of course, you went ahead and let him in. You let him buy you tasty drinks, hold you during thunderstorms, and offer you a coat, a smile, a laugh when everything felt cold. You let him ripple currents of fun into your life, but that would be giving yourself too much credit, you suppose.

Because it was never a matter of allowing him to do any of this. He did all of those things, and more, all by himself.

What was even more uncharacteristic of you was greeting the early morning before Jungkook. He was sound asleep, with skin being lightly freckled by the glints of sunlight shimmering through the gaps in the clouds. The morning sun was always docile, kindly shedding light in a way that wouldn’t pull sweat from your skin like it did in the afternoon.

You liked the sight of him sleeping, mostly because it was one of the few moments of the day when he was completely silent, and those were rare.

“Better take this opportunity.” You whispered to yourself before getting up, covering Jungkook with the coat, and heading to the concession stand you had raided with Jungkook yesterday. 

Wondering if the workers noticed the missing inventory, you idled by the counter before ordering but they all looked too tired to care to serve you let alone realize a quarter of the chocolate mint packs were taken.

“Hi, two warm milks with honey and cinnamon please.” The attendant seemed to appreciate how closely your voice was to a whisper. He sluggishly poured two steaming cups of milk and sleeved them before exchanging them for the money already placed onto the counter. 

“Honey and cinnamon are over at the self-serving station.” You followed to where his finger was aimed towards and nodded politely with the two cups in each hand.

You didn’t know why, but imagining Jungkook making this drink himself, instead of ordering it premade, ranked this act as something more motivated than customary kindness. Because getting these drinks wasn’t simply walking to a stand, purchasing, and walking back to Cart 102. There was now an erroneous step you hadn’t accounted for. The act of making milk with honey and cinnamon. 

As you scooped a spoonful of honey to mix into the creamy liquid, one of your mother’s many proverbs rang in your ears, as if she was standing right beside you saying it.

“When you make food for someone, it’s just another way to express that you love them!”

It froze you for a second. Recalling what she would say when you would throw together a meal for the pair of you when she was too tired to. She worked so hard as a single mother, so every shortcoming felt like a colossal failure, no matter how little it mattered to you. And she would always say that to you because ‘thank you’ just didn’t cut it.

This was the first thing you made for someone other than your mother and yourself. But, there’s no way it was because you loved him. 

Just this once, you thought. Just this once I’ll make food for someone that I don’t love.

You were relieved to greet a still sleeping Jungkook when you returned to your cart. The cart you studied closer, because you were about to leave it and wanted to retain all the details that you could before it became a memory you would only visit when you were feeling reminiscent.

The beige walls, the small table where you would read and Jungkook would compose, the stiff leather seats that you had surprisingly gotten used to, and the large window that gave you a glimpse of the blurry world waiting for you.

Jungkook’s groan snapped you out of your trance. Before he regained full cognizance, you placed the cup in front of him so you’d be able to boast that you had woken up before him and had the morning all to yourself for a moment. That now you were the one sharing the world with him.

“What’s this?” He said groggily. 

“You know.” You tried your best to mirror his smugness, the way he would sip his drink after sending a witty one-liner through the air like it was no big deal to him. 

Before you became lost in the person you changed into with Jungkook, a person that felt more like a fun costume to wear when you didn’t feel like being yourself anymore, the more neurotic and controlling part of you fell back through when you remembered that the measurements of the ingredients might have been off.

Maybe you had gotten the drink entirely wrong, so your deed would shrivel down to a failed act of kindness. Nothing at all your mother would consider a gesture of love. And that was more frightening than any blast of thunder.

“It's delicious.” Jungkook said out of nowhere, almost as though he knew he was interrupting your thoughts. Breaking them down into a powder thinner than flour, so he could blow all your worries away with one puff of air. He wasn’t lying either, it was delicious.

You spent a gracious amount of time and energy avoiding the book you were meant to finish during this train ride. Instead, your efforts were fully consumed by the last person you thought would ever be the center of your attention. At least, you thought if he were going to be the focus of it, then it would have been because you were mentally berating him for reasons that didn’t bother you much at all anymore; in fact, they started becoming admirable.

“If you could run faster than a train, where would you go?” He asked.

“Paris. Or Italy. I'd just have to figure out how to run on water.” You earned a good laugh from Jungkook with that comment. And finally, you felt like you were beginning to find your niche in conversations, and it relied heavily on sarcasm.

“I’d love to see the day when ___ walks on water.” 

“What about you? Where would you go?”

“I would make my legs take me straight to Carnegie Hall and force the organization to play one of my pieces.” Each word was formed by his tongue as if he had that response rehearsed a hundred times over. Jungkook knew exactly what he wanted, and given the chance, he would use any and every asset to get him there.

That alone was why you fell into something deeper than attraction. Why you began to take notice of things about him that weren’t of importance before. And why your intentions to observe how the world designed this man to be so stunningly unique was less cryptic than you’d hoped.

Maybe if you noticed how his white button-up was undone down to his sternum and tucked into the waistband of his slacks tastefully, then your heart would have taken a quicker pace long before now. If you noticed how his jet black hair was gentle and fluffy when it draped over his eyes, then you would have been frustrated with yourself sooner for not seizing the chance to introduce your fingers to its texture. And if you noticed how the ridges along his palm looked perfect to be held in, then you would have savored every second he held you the night of the storm. There was an astonishing number of details about Jungkook, about as many as the stars in the sky, that would have made you mountains more intimidated to even speak with him. 

One of the attendants left all your observations of Jungkook scattered when she peaked her head through to give the two of you an update on your arrival.

“Looks like we’ll be getting in earlier than expected!” In theory, that was a blessing. You’d get to finally deboard the train and be with your mother. Though, you’d be lying if some piece of you wanted this train to continue west until there was no more land to travel on; and if you could, you would redistribute each part of this train to assemble a boat, so you could sail Jungkook across the seven seas. “Our arrival will be in twenty minutes! I hope you both enjoyed your trip.”

And if Jungkook felt the same way, he didn’t show it through his polite smile and nod at the attendant. 

“We’ll be getting off soon.” He said to you, though you could tell it was his way of interrogating your thoughts on the matter.

“Time moved by so oddly on the train. I didn’t even notice it was already day three.” You paused and took one last glance out of the window. “Funny.”

"It's funny,” He began, and you settled into what you knew was about to be another piece of Jungkook's mind served in the form of his delicate words, “when you're inside a train you don't feel like you're moving. Even though you are, of course. You're moving faster than you would outside of a train. But we feel like we are still because we are moving with the train. When you're in a train, you are moving with time too, so it feels rushed and stagnant all at once. When you're not inside, time moves past you. It feels better to move with time, don’t you think? It feels like you could outrun it if you wanted to, or it feels like you will never run out of time at all. That you and time are equals. But soon, we'll have to get back onto the platform, and time will move past us again, and it’ll feel like we’re running out already."

“You’re right.” You finally admitted. “We’re running out of time.” 

We’re running out of time— together, you wanted to say. However, courage and boldness was a currency you weren’t rich in. Unspoken desires and lost hopes were all you had left to tender. 

“Yeah, I guess so. Hey, I-” He hesitated as well, because when you looked at him with such wishful eyes, it made what he had to say entirely too real and all too scary. “I really liked being your travel buddy.” 

You could tell he was holding back too. That everything you wanted to say to him and everything he wanted to say to you wasn’t meant to be translated into words, that exchanging sentimental smiles was all you and he could afford. Instead, it was better to exist through the language of emotions, floating around the train, moving with time, and eventually, when you and Jungkook returned to the world, those emotions would remain with the train and travel beyond your destination. 

That’s why you let them go. Sometimes, a train is only meant to be a train. 

“Me too. Though, I have to admit I hated you at first.” 

“I know.” He grinned as you etched the most accurate memory of it in your brain as you could. 

His stance came unprecedented. The small radio tucked in his bag now sitting on the table, serenading an unfamiliar melody and overtaking the silent air inside Cart 102. Then, came his hand, extended to you just like he had yesterday. Only this time, you didn’t need to wonder what he wanted from you because you would give whatever he asked. 

You took his hand, or rather you gave him yours, and followed his gentle tug until it led you to his body, pressing away all the space once separating the two of you. Jungkook’s hand followed the curve of your waist until it landed at the small of your back while you instinctively rested yours on his shoulder. 

You and Jungkook swayed to the music until all those words about moving with time became real. The way he held you close had you immune to the passage of time. The soft brush of his breath against your cheek felt welcoming, and you would try your very best to remember the way existing felt when your skin was touching his. It was odd, dancing on a train with someone you didn’t know well enough to call a friend but weren’t estranged enough to call an acquaintance. Again, it felt like you were in between two walls, stuck, trying to out-think your way through a collapsing maze of judgement. 

Though, no matter how odd it was, it stopped neither you nor Jungkook from holding onto each other for the last few moments available. 

The train must have hit a rock, one you would like to thank because it knocked the two of you over until you had fallen into his lap, laughing so hard your bodies shook. You would have been uncomfortable in this compromising position if not for the sense of belonging fostered in the empty space in your chest while being in his arms.

Jungkook didn’t notice you were detangling your limbs from his until you were already gone, seated across from him in the same spot. 

Once, he learned in science class of this phenomenon called ‘afterimage’, which is when your eyes get so accustomed to staring at one particular thing that when you look away, the thing stained your vision in the form of a silhouette, like an echo of something your eyes grew so comfortable seeing that it stayed with you, even when you looked away.

And he knew, even when the view of you sitting across from him in this train wasn’t there anymore, he would carry that afterimage of you, always echoing in his vision like a beautiful melody he couldn’t get out of his head. Not that he wanted to let go anyway

It was sour, the cruelty of letting go. When the train began to brake, it felt like a lifetime of agony. A bitter, unforgiving slap in the face courtesy of the confines of reality, stealing you away from the shelter of a train; a place that made it so easy to be swept up in something as dazzling and impossible as magic. You were onto important things, you knew this, but it was nice to live, even if it were just for a bit, inside something as magical as Cart 102, where you could count on a generous supply of warm coats, milk with honey and cinnamon, and Jungkook.

“Well, our stop is here. Hey, how about we share a cab? Why not save some money, right?” You could only nod, because speaking would have led to tears, which would have led to a failed explanation of why you were crying.

Jungkook hailed the yellow vehicle over, the opening of his shirt widened just an inch too much to let your mind wander.

“You’re going to the hospital, right?” He asked.

“Yeah, the only one in town.” You said, knowing the driver wouldn’t need any more specifics than that. This town was so small there were a lot of singular facilities that made the layout equally difficult to be crammed into and easy to memorize. One library, one park, one church, and one hospital.

As Jungkook went to give the driver your destinations, you packed up the luggage into the trunk. Not too long after, you were side by side in the back of a cab. All you could bring yourself to do was gaze out of the window and watch all the familiar scenes of your hometown pass by, each landmark dousing you with a strong presence of nostalgia. 

No matter how sad parting ways with Jungkook was, it was good to be home.

The cab finally arrived at the hospital, and you got out not expecting the other person in the car to get out with you. Perhaps he was being polite and saying goodbye. You knew you would have done the same if his stop preceded yours.

The two of you stood in front of the entrance, gawking up at the tall building that was in desperate need of reconstruction. You turned your gaze over to Jungkook. 

“Where to now, Mr. Jeon?” You asked, since this town was small enough, and you were fluent in every secret hiding spot it had to offer, you might be able to visit him if that wouldn’t come off as too invasive.

“I'm here.” He responded just as ambiguously and ever so matter-of-factly as always. This time, you demanded to know more.

“What? What do you mean?”

“It took a long time to find a doctor that specializes in my condition.” Jungkook finally turned to you, his eyes crowded by tears. “My heart is weak, ___. I came here to get better, and hopefully, I do. I'm going to be a famous composer one day, and I’ll need a strong heart to get me to that point.” 

You felt angry at him again. For not telling you, because it felt less like keeping something from you and more like lying to you. For telling you, and making it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, that it wouldn’t break your heart into pieces weaker than his own.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” It was the harsh snap he expected from you, but he was committed to keeping this a secret until he couldn’t because it was easier that way. 

“I didn’t want to admit it. I’m scared, ___. Really scared. If I don't get better…” 

“Well, you have to! Carnegie Hall is waiting for you and I didn’t waste my time getting to know you for nothing. So, you just go ahead and get better okay?” Your words were coated in anger but layered on top of something compassionate, sweet even. Sweeter than milk, honey, and cinnamon. 

“I’ll try.” He grinned again, knowing it would satisfy you for the time being. Grinning, like a goodbye gift. 

“You’re an idiot, Jungkook.” 

Before you could lose the last word, you gripped your luggage in one hand, the pillow in the other, and made your way into the hospital, leading to what you knew would be countless nights spent at the side of a hospital bed, eating foods you’d rather not eat, and watching daytime cable while taking care of your mother.

What you didn’t know was that a good portion of those nights would be spent with someone else. Someone who resided in the west wing of the hospital. 

Someone who would bring your hand to his heart, and ask you if it felt stronger, and you would always reply with ‘yes’, or ‘yes, you idiot’, even when you were terrified that one day your hand wouldn’t feel the tap of his heart against his chest. Someone who would sing to you in exchange for the times you would read to him. Someone who you would leave notes and small gifts for, his personal favorite being the packet of walnuts accompanied with a folded paper inscribed ‘for when you need to get out of class’. Someone who, when he would be having a particularly difficult night, you’d fall asleep holding hands with, and you’d wake him up with a warm cup of his signature beverage.

Someone you would inevitably begin to fall in love with. 

A month later, one of two people you loved dearly would walk out with you through those hospital doors. That person was Jungkook. And the melancholy of losing your mother to the battle between her and her cancer would also follow you, and stay with you almost as long as Jungkook had.

A year later, you would return, hand in hand with Jungkook. Every two months. It was the promise you sealed onto your mother's gravestone that you would always return every two months. Even if the weather dispatched the most terrifying thunderstorms, or your work piled a stack of paperwork high enough to reach the sky, you’d still return home.

You and Jungkook placed a bundle of wildflowers you picked on the way to her grave, sitting at the top of a grassy highland, at the base of the granite stone. She was overlooking the world, with a perfect view of you; it made you feel safe that she was watching over you, and she was watching over Jungkook and his slowly recovering heart. 

The weather was perfect. The sun blanketed everything beneath it with a generous warmth but didn't restrict the gentle breeze from tempering it. The leaves and grass moved with the wind, but your mother’s tombstone was strong and unmoving, losing no part of herself to the fluid motions of the spring air. 

“I kind of like it here.” He said softly, adorning the view of the hilltop with you. It was the morning, and it didn’t feel like he was sharing the world with you anymore. It felt like it was yours to begin with, and he was just lucky enough to be allowed a part of it. 

“Me too.” One hand was with Jungkook, and the other was with your mother.

“I think it would be a nice place to get married and raise our children. You know, after I become a world-renowned composer and all.” This would have shocked you if you had not been wishing to hear him confirm these dreams of yours for a while now. “Did that scare you? I didn’t mean to be too forward.”

“No, I think this would be the perfect place to live. Only if it's with you.” Because you knew, something was missing here without him. He made this hometown of yours finally complete in the wake of your mother’s passing. 

When you kissed him, he tasted like honey. And he would have told you that you tasted like cinnamon.

It could never scare you, because you were in love.

You were in a debt of gratitude that was deeper than the ocean. There was so much you wanted to say to him.

The town is milk. It is up to you and me, Jungkook, to provide the ingredients that will liven this town of milk into something sweeter, something survivable, something that will continue to sustain a force as powerful as love. Without the honey and cinnamon, all you have is milk. It seems we are the perfect blend of the two to make this bitter place palatable when it hits our tongues. This town needs us together in the same way milk needs honey and cinnamon. 

You didn’t say any of those words out loud. You didn’t need to. All you needed to say was:

“I love you.”

And all he needed to say was:

“I love you too.” 

[thenovelartist]

A Blanc Slate, Chapter 1

Marichat May 2021 has arrived and I am once again writing a story by the seat of my pants. XD I will post one chapter a day (hopefully daily?), and each chapter will have 3 prompts. Enjoy ;)

Next >

1. Rain

The clouds were thick and black, shrouding the city in darkness. This was normally when Chat Noir had the best time blending in.

But as he stood before her now, up in the high beams of the Eiffel Tower, his brilliant white suit stuck out like a sore thumb.

She remembered the first time he’d been akumatized and turned into Chat Blanc. His blue eyes had flipped between empty and full of pain. He’d been fighting the akuma the whole time, and it had physically pained her to see him like that.

However, that was the difference between then and now. His normal green eyes glowed behind that white mask. No; that was a lie. They held the same green color, but instead of the vibrant life they normally held, they were empty. Hollow. As if his soul had died.

“Chat Noir?”

Her voice sounded weak to her own ears, and had his kitty ears not twitched, she would have questioned whether he’d even heard her.

With inaudible footfalls, he slowly stepped towards her. Once he was close but still out of touch range, he extended his closed fist towards her.

Normally, that would be a ‘pound it’, but it hurt Ladybug more than she would have thought to know Chat was just wanting to give her something.

She extended her own hand out, and he dropped two things into her hand. Clink clank.

Even in the darkness that hung over Paris, she knew what those were right away. And her gut positively dropped to the bottom of the Eiffel Tower.

“Chat,” she started, words somehow failing her.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he stated, his voice firm but tired. She only could tell that because she’d known him so long.

Her hand around the two miraculouses, falling to her side as she took him in. “If… if I have the moth miraculous, then… how are you…?”

Her words died out, and Chat didn’t add to them, instead turning his head away while his ears flattened back on his head.

Biting her lip, Ladybug fought for anything to say. “Are you okay?”

She already knew the answer. But he still said it.

“No.”

“What can I do?”

“Not much,” he said, taking a step back. “And frankly… there’s nothing I want you to do, either.”

She felt cold begin to hit her face, but the oncoming rain was the least of her worries. Even the fact she held the two missing miraculouses was negligible compared to the weight of her heart breaking at the pain her partner was experiencing.

“Chat—”

“Please, Ladybug,” he growled, ears pinning flat as he shot her a snarl. But it didn’t seem to mesh with the tears that were already forming in his eyes. “I need you to stay out of this.”

“But I don’t want to just sit here and do nothing when you’re—”

“This isn’t your battle to fight!” he shouted, shocking her silent. “Hawkmoth was your battle to fight. Mayura was your battle to fight. But the miraculouses are back in your hands, meaning your fight is over.”

“It’s not over until they’re brought to justice, Chat,” she countered. “And I’m not going to let you just—”

“He was my father!”

Lightening ripped across the sky, followed by thunder rolling through Paris and shaking Ladybug’s entire world.

“It’s personal,” he spoke, his voice steady once again. “And not anything you will muddy your hands with. I won’t let you. You will tell the public that you retrieved the miraculouses and Paris is safe. I will handle the rest.”

“Do you honestly think I’m going to just let you handle it alone?”

“You think I’m not capable?”

“I never said that!”

“It’s better this way, Ladybug,” he said. “That way you won’t be lying to the press when you say you didn’t know Hawkmoth’s real name and therefore cannot release it to the public.”

She grit her teeth. She did hate lying, but in this instance, for Chat’s sake, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

And he should have known that.

“Then what about you?” she challenged.

“What about me?”

“You think I’m going to do this without you by my side?”

“Yes.”

The finality of those words struck her harder than an akuma blow.

His eyes flooded with an intensity rarely seen from him, and Ladybug found herself taking a step back to steady herself.

“Let me finish this,” Chat stated. “And once I do, I’m giving you my ring back.”

“NO!” The panic that suddenly bubbled up felt suffocating. “No. What makes you think you need to surrender it?”

The rain was coming down harder, but Ladybug hardly felt it. She barely acknowledged the fact they were both drenched by now. All that registered in her mind was Chat’s sad and broken expression.

“Sorry,” he whispered, barely above the rain. “But I can’t be your Chat anymore.”

He took a step backwards and away, putting more distance between them before giving her a pained smile. “And… I guess the other thing is I need time away from you.”

“Why?” she begged. She was sure tears were streaming down her face by this point, but her cheeks were so wet that she didn’t know what was her tears and what was rain. “What are you even talking about? I don’t—”

“I know you don’t,” he interrupted.

“Then tell me!” she screamed. “Aren’t we partners?”

He sighed, pained grin still on his face. “We were,” he said. “Until Hawkmoth was gone, right? I’m going to go clean up the mess. Think of it as… as my last gesture to you.”

Ladybug just stood confused. “What—”

“Good bye, Ladybug,” he said, taking out his staff. “We’ll meet again, at least once. I promise. After all—” He waved his hand, the one with his ring, in her direction. “I will be giving this back to you.”

And with a roar of thunder, he was gone.

2. Ghibli

As Ladybug made her way home in the rain, she so happened to catch sight of a figure sitting in the park across the street from her house. Part of her was tempted to stop and rush over to him, but the other half knew better. Considering what had just happened at the Eiffel Tower, she knew he would run from Ladybug.

But maybe…

Would he run from Marinette?

With the idea in her mind, she ran back home, detransformed the second she entered her room, quickly put away the two miraculouses he’d given her, and then snagged a raincoat and an umbrella before running back out of the house.

Checking both ways before crossing the street, Marinette splashed through any and all puddles without care as she ran towards Chat Noir… er, she supposed he was Chat Blanc now.

It didn’t matter to her. That was still her partner no matter what color his suit was. And at the moment, her partner was in pain, slumped over as he sat on the edge of the park’s fountain, his head hung low and ears drooping as rain poured over him.

When Marinette got closer, she noticed his ears twitch before he glanced up and looked towards her. His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing out, princess?”

Princess. That was her nickname. That was also a very good sign. It gave her hope he wouldn’t turn her away.

She flipped up the hood on her raincoat before extending the umbrella out so that it was covering him. “What are you doing out, Chat?”

“Nothing,” he curtly said. “Go home, Marinette. It’s cold out.”

“Exactly,” she countered. “So why are you out here getting soaked?”

He just shrugged. “I have my reasons.”

“Reasons you don’t want to tell me?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she said, wracking her brain for ideas on just how she could convince him to get him out of the rain. “Do your reasons allow you to come inside the bakery, then? Or are you out here punishing yourself for being a bad kitty?”

She tried to make it a joke, hoping it would put a smile back on his face if only for a second. But she instantly regretted her words the moment his ears fell again.

“Chat—”

“Please, just leave me alone.”

Her heart broke all over again. Something in the way his head was bowed just made her want to touch him, want to comfort him. Part of her knew it was risky to push her luck, but the other part, the part that cared deeply for her partner, just wanted to comfort him any way she could.

She patted his head, causing him to startle in a way that shocked her. His eyes were full of panic at her touch and his body was tense, as though he was ready to run.

“Sorry,” she said, tugging her hand away and taking a step back. Please don’t run. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He didn’t relax fully, but the tension in his body did ease a bit, and then he shifted away, out from under her umbrella. “It’s fine. Just leave me alone.” Then he looked up, his eyes locking on something behind her. “You should go back home.”

“Only if you come with me.”

“Marinette.”

“I’m not going to just leave you out here in the rain like some kicked cat!”

Lighting flashed in the sky, shortly followed by thunder, but Marinette hardly noticed. Her attention was fully focused on Chat, who was looking back up at her with some surprise.

Eventually, he sighed, his shoulders slumping with exhaustion. “I’ll escort you; that’s all. Understood.”

Better than nothing, and it still gave her a chance to convince him inside out of the rain. “Understood.”

He stood, but he ended up stumbling sideways two steps as though he was going to fall over.

“Chat?”

“I’m fine,” he said, spreading his feet wide to give him more balance. “It’s…” He forced a smile at her. “Just been a long day.”

Liar, she thought. It’s not just that.

He got close enough to put a hand on her shoulder with the intent of guiding her back towards her house, but Marinette just knew something was off. She dropped her umbrella in favor of holding Chat’s head with one hand while the other landed on his forehead.

In spite of the chilling rain, he was warm.

He stepped away, clearly agitated at the touch—that was the other thing; Chat loved touch, so why was he shying away from it now?—and shot her a glare. “Marinette,” he growled in warning.

“You’re running a fever, aren’t you?” she asked, watching as he swayed unsteadily on his feet.

“I’m fine!”

“You are not!”

“I am!” he shouted, voice firm and strong and threatening. She found herself taking a step back out of shock.

He seemed to notice that because half the fight in his eyes extinguished immediately. “I’m fine. I don’t need anyone. I never asked for help. I don’t want anyone else to end up in this mess. So, leave me the hell alone!”

But he didn’t move. And neither could she.

And when he took a step back, as to be the first one to retreat, he stumbled, landing on his knee.

She rushed to his side. “Sorry, Chat,” she said, grabbing his arm, both to keep a hold of him so he wouldn’t run as well as support him. “But I’m not leaving you alone like this.”

“You should.”

“I won’t.”

“I don’t need you.”

“But you want someone, right?”

“Not in my own mess.”

“But do you really want to fight it alone?”

The only sound that filled the space was the rain that continued to pour down.

And after what felt like an eternity, he eventually spoke. “No…” he admitted, voice quiet and weak. “No, I don’t, but it would hurt worse if someone was hurt because of me.”

She didn’t know how to counter that. All she knew was she needed to get him out of the rain as soon as she could. “Come on, Chat.” she coaxed. “At the very least, let me get you out of the rain.”

He still hadn’t moved from the ground, leaving it up to Marinette to pull him up. He had to lean on her substantially, and she hadn’t even realized he’d been this unsteady on his feet.

Had he been like this just an hour ago when he met her as Ladybug?

She dragged him back to her home, then slowly up the stairs before deciding the best place to dump him was in the bathroom so he could both get clean and warm himself up. She could only hope she didn’t leave her bathroom a disaster as she led him inside. Thankfully, it wasn’t too much a wreck. She sat him down on the edge of the tub, then patted his head. “I’ll go grab you a towel, okay? You just take your time to clean yourself up.”

“Marinette…” he weakly tried to argue.

“Don’t even try with me, kitty,” she warned. “Warm up. Use whatever you need to. I think I have clothes that will fit you that you can change into. I’ll go grab those. Don’t worry about it and don’t even try to argue with me.”

He looked up at her, and she swore she could see the internal debate happening behind those green eyes of his.

Eventually, he sighed. “You’re as stubborn as my lady.”

Marinette smiled, a genuine one. No matter what front he had tried to put up, he still considered her his lady. That gave her hope. “Thanks for the compliment.”

And with that, she walked out of the bathroom and shut the door. Once she did, she heard the water start up.

“Hey!” Chat called out. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah, what do you need?”

There was a pause. “Is… is there any conceivable way I could bother you for some cheese?”

Ah, for his kwami. What did Chat always complain about? Smelling like camembert? She would have to go see if she had any, but she knew any cheese would do. “Sure thing.”

“Thank you.”

Anything for you, kitty. “No problem.”

With that, she started off to collect the needed items only to realize that walking up 2 flights of stair soaking wet was bound to leave dirty, wet footprints on the floor.

Well… guess she knew how Sophie felt now having to deal with Howl.

3. Dirt

Once all the dirt on the floor and stairs was cleaned up, she started collecting the things Chat needed. She did manage to find some camembert in the fridge, though it wasn’t much. Surely it would be enough to restore his kwami, though.

After that she grabbed a towel and change of clothes for him. Who knew what shape his clothes were in, and she wasn’t going to let him get back into dirty clothes after a nice bath if she could help it. Luckily, he and Adrien looked to be about similar sizes, and she had made an outfit for Adrien since his birthday was right around the corner. She knew he was the son of a fashion designer, but he’d also totally egged her on last month when she casually suggested making him an outfit one day. And so, she did.

Now that outfit would be worn by Chat Noir for the time being, but Adrien didn’t have to know that.

Once her arms were full of the aforementioned items, she knocked on the door to the bathroom. “Chat, I have the cheese you asked for, and a towel and change of clothes for you, too. I’m going to close my eyes and slide them in, okay. I won’t look, I swear.”

“Thank you, Marinette,” he said, voice sounding very tired.

With her eyes closed, she cracked the door open and felt around for the counter before sliding the items on top of it. Once she was sure they weren’t going to fall on the floor, she quickly backed out and shut the door again. “There you go. Feel free to ask for anything else, okay?”

“Hey, Marinette?”

“Yeah?”

He was silent for a moment, and she opened her mouth again to repeat herself when he spoke. “I… really appreciate this,” he said. “Sorry for… pushing you away, and I’m sorry if I hurt you. I’m… I’m really grateful… that you did this for me.”

Anything for you, you stupid cat. “You’re welcome, Chat Noir. It’s always an honor to help out the heroes of Paris when they need anything.”

He was silent yet again, but Marinette didn’t quite want to leave. “Feel free to take your time in there,” she said. “And when you come out, I’ll check your temperature again and give you something for your fever if I suspect you have one. Oh! And I know you’ll be careful anyway, but those clothes were actually made for a friend. I really don’t mind you borrowing them for the time being, but once you’re able to return them, I would like them back, please.”

“I’ll bring them back as soon as I can, princess, in the same condition you gave them to me in. I promise.”

“Thanks, Chat. Is there anything else I can get for you?”

“You’ve done more than I deserve, Marinette,” he spoke, voice now solemn. “Thank you.”

You’re hurting, kitty, and I won’t feel like I’ve done enough until I know how to help you through it. “You’re very welcome, Chat.”

[sunflowersseemhappy]

Do you have any headcanons for main 6 set in modern times? What kind of job would they have, what music would they like or whatever else? I love your headcanons, they're always so detailed and on point 💖

I really loved doing this, only reason it took so long is because I definitely over thought a lot of this. Thank you for the ask! I hope you enjoy the headcanons, I definitely want to do more of this! SO when I have the time I definitely will and I actually have a rough plan of what the story and the background for the six and MC’s would be.

The “Event” mentioned references the plague but when and if I get to it that will all be explained.

REQUESTS ARE CLOSED but here is my Masterlist in the meantime!

Asra

You’ll usually find Asra in one of two places, the shop or the local cafe/bakery, living the slow city life.

Asra loves to people watch and more importantly he loves photography, he’s always taking pictures, a lot of them are of MC.

His bedroom wall is plastered with his photography and he sells a lot of them as a side gig on etsy.

He has a great blog too.

But his main focus is the shop, tucked away on a quiet corner street it feels faintly magical. Asra does tarot, sells candles, crystals and other trinkets, as well as herbal remedies that Julian admits work quite well.

In this AU Asra grew up in foster care, so when he finally found his home in the shop he never thought about living anywhere else.

It’s stayed that way for years, sharing a two bedroom flat above the shop with MC, its cluttered at times, filled with secondhand belongings but Asra loves having his own space and own things.

And he so loves taking his little holidays out of the city, bringing back more trinkets that bring good luck and fortune.

Asra always wears sneakers or trainers on his feet, mainly because all he does is walk in the city.

Although he does have a painted van for the shop deliveries; he and MC spent a week painting a swirling pattern on its sides.

His wardrobe is all tees with faded logos and cotton pants but on the rare occasion he decides to dress up Asra has an impossibly colourful blouse and faded jeans he loves to wear.

And there are so many hats! Vesuvia is sunny but he has more hats than he needs, although it's nice to have one for any occasion.

Also has crocs, they are an abomination of pink.

Asra’s phone of choice is an old samsung, he keeps meaning to update it but he’s a bit scared the photos on it will get lost.

Asra and technology don’t always mix well, for some reason...

Even in this universe Asra wouldn’t be Asra if he didn’t have Faust, a mischievous lavender python who always seems to escape her vivarium and ends up in Asra’s camera bag.

When Asra picked her out at the pets store he was told he was the only person she had ever not bitten or squeezed. Asra believes in fate, so he took her back home with him and the two are inseparable.

Asra oh so loves music, and just about any kind of tune can be found on his mp3 however he soon found his favourite to be the chillhop tunes the cafe played everyday. They really relax him.

The biggest Disney fan when he was younger, Asra then slowly decided Dreamworks were better but his favourite movies are those from Studio Ghibli. Asra simply adores the art, the music and the stories.

As mentioned Asra loves photography but he also quickly discovered watercolour paint and he doesn’t claim to be good at it but he does love making little pieces of art for birthdays and Christmas.

Speaking of which Christmas is his favourite holiday.

Asra also dabbles in growing orchids, he's too successful and there are so many he and MC don’t know what to do with them!

Asra’s favourite hobby aside from photography is rollerblading. He’s pretty good at it, cruising through the streets and along the dockside of the city (he definitely dragged MC into trying it out).

Asra never really thought he’d be one to get a tattoo but after getting Faust he changed his mind, since then he has a gorgeous complicated tattoo of the little snake on his shoulder blade.

It was only after “The Event” that Asra got another one; MC’s favourite flower on his hip bone.

Nadia

Nadia Santrivia, she’s beautiful, generous and married one of the richest men in the city, for the most part she’s alright with that.

Although Nadia hasn’t always lived in Vesuvia she’s tuned into the city around her so well, she’s in her element and thriving.

Work doesn’t end, if there was ever a beginning to start with. It's one thing after another; approving designs, attending fancy dinners, opening a charity fundraiser. Life is busy for the CEO of Vesuvia Industries.

Nadia’s happy to run Lucio’s business, because she knows she can do good with it but she can get lonely. Thankfully she has several friends who she can rely on to cheer her on...

The most important thing is that she can be herself, her own person, being last in line for her parent’s business and overshadowed by several sisters Nadia needed an escape.

Vesuvia provided the opportunity.

Nadia’s apartment is sat above the clouds in the skyscraper of Vesuvia Industries, much the same as the other universe home and work go hand in hand when it comes to Nadia.

She’s not materialistic, her apartment is clean and open and perfect for yoga and other purposes that require open space. It's very new and high tech, the coffee machine is her favourite thing though.

The views of the sunrise over the bay are gorgeous.

Ashamed to admit she has tons of shoes.

It’s usually required of Nadia to have the suits and dresses befitting a woman of her status, so when the sun goes down or she has a day off Nadia looks like an entirely different person.

She’s no less stylish, but her airy blouse’s, ripped denim jeans, subtle leather jacket and ankle boots give her a whole different persona, and man does it make her look good on her motorcycle.

Yes a motorcycle, Nadia owns one. It comes out of her garage only once a month but when it does she turns heads.

The rest of the time Naida is pretty eco-friendly with an electric car the business made just for her in a deep shade of purple.

As the CEO of the company Nadia is expected to have the latest iPhone model, her phone is always ringing and if she weren’t so patient she’d probably hurl it off the skyscraper roof.

Nadia always wanted a pet but she could never figure out what kind, and one dropped into her lap literally. Turns out she’s an owl person, although Nadia would never consider Chandra a pet more a companion.

A skyscraper is no place for a semi-wild owl but Nadia is happy enough to make the trip to the stables outside of Vesuvia to see Chandra and give her toys. Such a change from the small owlet Nadia raised.

When it comes to music Nadia is very picky, she spent her childhood listening to her sister’s choice of music and certain songs just put her in a bad mood, except for jazz.

That music preference surprised her but as soon as she discovered Lucio didn’t like it she was hooked. She thought about learning the saxophone (not to annoy Lucio or anything, no definitely not...)

Nadia’s not a big movie watcher, although she is a big fan of disaster movies when the mood strikes (it's nice to think about more chaotic things happening than signing a stack of papers), mainly she only has time to watch tv shows.

Her favourite is the Walking Dead but MC has caught her watching ‘how its made’ shows too. Of course being an avid inventor Nadia would be enthralled by seeing how her car or coffee machine is put together.

Speaking of inventing, although Nadia always wanted to make it her job she’s only ever gotten to approve the inventions her company makes.

It's not entirely what she wanted but thankfully she has just enough time to squeeze in working on her little projects. Ones she hopes will help others one day.

Nadia’s found it super important in the big city to keep herself safe, between her hobbies of yoga, kung fu and fencing she’s a pretty formidable opponent. It’s saved her life more than she’ll ever admit.

Her other hobbies, to list a few are horse riding, polo, piano, swimming, wine tasting, and playing those arcade grabber machines (she has about 50 teddy bears and MC has about the same amount). Most of those hobbies began in her childhood.

Nadia likes to pretend she is above getting a tattoo but anyone who knows her well enough will reveal she has a owl shadow tattoo on her inner heel.

Julian

Poor Julian is the definition of a struggling city batchelor, and he certainly wouldn’t have it any other way.

Still the most well traveled of the group Julian spent his formative years abroad in the army as a field medic (where he met Lucio), now though he’s a lean mean crime fighting machine!

Well he’s a forensics doctor for the Vesuvia PD, but it still counts as being a crime fighter! He’s never really lost that dramatic flair that's for sure.

He’s been a bit of everything; medic and doctor, waiter, translator, actor, sailor, troublemaker and a fugitive (but that’s a story for another day).

But Vesuvia truly is his real home, a place he’s always come back to and where he’s made friends and family, enemies, lovers, and memories.

Sure he lives in the ‘bad part’ of town as Asra calls it, but Julian feels at home enough that it doesn’t bother him, that and he’s got Mazelinka to handle the riff raff.

The two of them share a two-storey house that sits next to his favourite bar, a bit too convenient for Maz’s liking. Despite that the place is cozy and old, all wood flooring and furniture that's been around longer than Julian’s lifetime, it’s filled with the scent of cooking and coffee and other than the box tv and Julian’s phone there's almost no modern technology.

Julian’s room has faded photos of his friends, and postcards from places he’s been too and a few posters of his favourite plays, as well as rough sketches tacked to the corkboard his desk is littered with papers and he even has an old school microscope.

In the mess of his room only Julian can find the thing that he’s looking for, he calls it an ‘organized mess’ when in reality it’s really just a mess.

Unfortunately this extends to his clothing choices too, Julian is terrible at laundry so there is no end to the stains on his mellow patterned tees and jeans, the only smart thing about his wardrobe are his boots and oxfords.

Quite true to form his black trench coat is a constant companion. He usually dresses like he’s in a black and white movie or like a scruffy doctor when he’s in his lab coat.

Still has an eye patch, his depth perception when crossing roads is not great... there are a lot of hospital bills.

Also the reason he doesn’t drive unless he can help it, Julian doesn’t own a car but he’s prone to borrowing one if he needs it (usually from Asra).

Julian is very much the guy on the subway who falls asleep on your shoulder because it's the only place his mind isn’t working overtime.

MC thinks it’s very cute.

Julian’s not really too fussed about his phone of choice, Samsung, Apple, so long as he can make calls and do google searches on symptoms of a flu he’s good. No matter how hard he tries his screen is always cracked.

People often point out the raven following Julian around, he’s not too sure if its the same one but Julian knows its his own fault feeding the scrawny thing when it landed on his window pane. Now it won’t leave him alone, Julian took to calling it Malak and he’s quite fond of the bird even if it likes to cackle for food outside his window at an ungodly hour in the morning.

Maz has threatened to cook Malak on more than one occasion.

Music is one of the few things that helps Julian focus, he’s not usually super into any particular artist or album but his main love is music from musicals and movie soundtracks, if he’s able to do so he’ll sing along.

Lead forensic doctor Valdemar finds it highly unprofessional when they are conducting autopsies.

Almost has no time to watch movies or tv but if you strapped Julian to a chair and put on Brooklyn 99 or any kind of superhero movie he might enjoy it just a little bit...

Honestly though those things are just background noise for him, Julian will put on the tv to keep himself occupied while he’s doing reports. But he loves comedy movies and shows, they might tear him away from his laptop just long enough that he gets a few good laughs.

However if Mazlinka gets the old camcorder out he’s all over watching old home videos of him and Portia and his old hound dog, he’s just so nostalgic sometimes.

Thinks learning counts as a hobby, Julian habitually grabs any book he can to read through so youtube is a miracle in his eyes. Free content, that he can listen to and learn from as well as visually see? Yes please.

Julian learned to play the fiddle when he was younger, for a time as a teen he even went street performing to earn money for Portia’s obsession with bracelet making. He doesn’t play it much anymore but he’ll give MC a tune anyday.

He’s also very invested in cocktail mixing, only thing he mixes is Salty Bitters, he’ll argue any day that the Salty Bitter counts as a cocktail.

Also very invested in his self sustaining bio-tank at work, the other officers are growing concerned about the leeches Julian likes to keep in it. They’re planning an intervention.

The only tattoo Julian had was one forcibly given during “The Event”, his ‘murderers mark’ on his hand. He’s really ashamed of it because it reminds him of the part he had in the disaster that befell Vesuvia.

Muriel

He definitely suits the other universe more, it's even harder to get away from people in this modern world.

But the start remains the same, he was lost and his only friend was Asra for a long time, until Lucio came along and tricked him into doing unspeakable things as a ‘bodyguard’ until he escaped.

People are unavoidable and Muriel keeps to himself during his job as a keeper for a local animal sanctuary, raising and re-releasing wildlife with other volunteers, he practically runs the place.

But the volunteers know not to bother him especially when he goes back to his house on the hill, to take care of his chickens before he vanishes like usual into his house.

No one knows much about him, and he prefers it like that.

Muriel’s home is simple and honestly built for one, there’s only one chair, only one pillow on the bed, only one set of cutlery, only one of everything. It leaks on occasion and always needs fixing, he’ll forgo sleep to fix things.

Who needs more than four hours of sleep anyway?

A lot of Muriel’s belongings are from garage sales, or picked up off the side of the road, not a lot of money goes toward his comfort Muriel prefers that the animals in the sanctuary have comfortable beds and good food.

Muriel’s clothes? He wears them till they die, an usually when he picks them up from a garage sale they’re already pretty close.

For that reason Muriel doesn’t have a specific choice of clothing, he owns jumpers, tees, denim jackets, flannels and whatever jeans and pants fit. He has one pair of khaki coloured boots that are surprisingly well maintained and usually wears a beanie or cattleman hat to hide his face.

Old pick up, old pick up, old pick up! Owns an old pick up truck he fixed up, it breaks down regularly and only plays radio but Inanna enjoys riding in the back. Muriel likes driving a lot on those country roads.

All that’s to be said about Muriel and his phone is this; he owns a nokia and has no intention of getting a smartphone. Ever.

His hands are a bit big for it though, he’s called MC and Julian accidently so many times... and he only usually text’s, so that's awkward.

Inanna is Muriel’s constant companion, and when they’re in the city man do the two of them turn heads. Inanna is a wolfdog in this universe and she definitely looks more wolf than dog.

But she really is a big sweetheart, Muriel raised her from a puppy after she was rejected and placed in a shelter, he knew a wolf dog would need some special attention to grow into a perfect companion rather than a dangerous animal.

Anyone can look at Muriel and instantly think he’s one of those people who would play country music, for the most part that’s true. He does play the guitar and can sing okay, he does like country but his real love of music comes from indie artists.

He can’t really explain it but the music gives him a sense of carelessness and hope he’s never known.

Doesn’t really watch tv or movies, Muriel is almost always too busy for that but he’s found it the strangest thing, Inanna likes watching tv...

After that he got drawn in by the documentaries about animals, he didn’t really realize that people did shows about the habitats and behaviours of animals but he finds himself entranced by it when he passes by.

He soon relented and sits on the floor with his arm draped over Inanna as they watch documentaries about wolves in Alaska.

With the amount of animals Muriel raises anyone would call it a job, Muriel however would argue it's a hobby for him. Sure waking up every hour in the night to feed raccoon babies isn’t ideal but it's never been anything short of joyous to watch them go back to the wild.

Muriel's other hobby centres around his guitar and learning songs to play to himself and maybe a certain person *cough* MC *cough*.

He’s also an avid baker, none of his meals are ready made. Leading on from that he forages for mushrooms, and herbs rather than buys them.

Muriel doesn’t have a tattoo, only his scars.

He thought about getting some but he doesn’t trust someone to touch him that way and also he’s not a big fan of needles.

Probably a good thing otherwise Inanna and all his chickens names would be on his arm.

Portia

Absolutely suits the modern life in this universe, Portia somehow finds the time to do everything, the bustling worker or the relaxed dreamer.

She’s almost everywhere in the city, doing everything at once; working at Vesuvia Industries, grabbing the sweetest iced tea at the cafe, exploring the corruption of downtown streets.

Portia is obsessed with knowing every inch of the city, and what goes on inside it because it's a very strange city with a stranger history.

Portia is a great and helpful assistant to Nadia, but she’s also hiding a lot including her identity as Pasha Devorak the reporter for Vesuvian Times.

She has as many curious secrets as the city.

Portia previously lived in a small studio flat however since working for Nadia she has been lucky enough to afford to rent out a small cottage outside the city. She loves it so much and other than being in an AU not much has changed between the two cottages.

It’s shielded by so many grand trees and a vivacious garden that it feels like her own little world, the inside of the cottage is filled with hand knitted blankets, painted glass figurines and the warm smell of baked goods.

Sometimes its a bigger place than Portia can manage by herself but she likes taking to fixing things as they come along, she definitely is a fan of the saying “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!”

Her clothing choices are just so cute and by no means is she afraid of showing off her cottage core style; jumpers, skirts, vest tops, crop tops and patterned blouses look really good on her. Of course the garden requires the heavy duty stuff, sweatpants, a tattered tee and the old hoodie that refuses to die.

She’s not to much into heels even though she’s short, Portia prefers pumps and loafers because “comfort over beauty!” (although she would be pretty cute with or without).

Nadia finds Portia’s headstrong and optimism very amusing and definitely takes a few life lessons from Portia.

Who needs to drive? Portia doesn’t, she loves taking the bus or the train wherever she goes. That way she can bop her head to her tunes while watching the landscape go by, in a beautiful intricate place like Vesuvia it's important to take it all in.

That and everyone can agree that Portia behind the wheel of a vehicle is a disaster, she just gets so distracted.

Nadia has offered Portia a new phone many times but Portia is plenty happy enough with her older gen 6 iphone (because if she got a new one she’d have to get wireless headphones!) Also she’d feel bad for Siri.

Unfortunately Pepi the cat came from terrible circumstances, certain circumstances where Portia jumped of a bridge after witnessing someone chuck a mewling bag into the river.

But Portia is so thankful for her amazing kitten, the two of them protect each other. Though Pepi’s idea of protecting Portia is making sure the birds don’t feed from the feeder outside and meowing at the fridge when it’s too loud.

Portia’s music taste is disarming to those who don’t know her well, she is a huge fan of rock, any rock music just so long as it’s good and a classic (ACDC, Queen, etc...) she likes to think she is a connoisseur of rock.

Julian can not put into words how much he abhorred it when his little sister would blast that music to drown out his.

Portia will either watch every movie or show when it comes out or will binge watch a show or movie after forgetting it existed. There is no inbetween, but she loves media, consumes it even.

Detective shows and spy movies are her favourite but she’ll enjoy just about anything unless it's a musical she was forced to watch one too many times because of Julian.

Portia has so many hobbies, one would say too many but she digresses.

Of course gardening is at the top of her list, moreso because the garden always needs doing but she gets a great sense of pride growing her own food and Pepi loves chasing the spiders that hide in the strawberries.

Portia is also a very avid blogger, there is a lot of conspiracy theories on there but with a following of half the city it seems pretty popular.

In her downtime Portia is loves to relax with her favourite soft drink and beat V3suviaC0unt#1 ass on her games console, she finds the shrieking of her enemy to be great fun.Portia’s love of games however soon transpired to collecting action figures of her favourite game characters.

She is very protective of them.

Like Muriel, Portia also doesn’t have a tattoo. It’s not that she’s afraid of needles but she just hasn’t found a reasonably good design to get yet.

Lucio

Lucio is definitely the one out of the six who was made for the modern world, sure being a Count is cool and all but in this world he can have both power and freedom and not have to sit in every meeting called.

He’s never once taken anything seriously, Lucio’s power has been built on the backs of others without him ever having to raise a finger.

It’s happened everywhere he goes, in the army he sacrificed the good of his teammates to rise in the ranks, he forced the Asra’s parents to make him the best prosthetic arm in history, he codled up to an old dying man to get his business and when he found out that wasn’t for him Lucio pawned it off to his wife and rolled onto the next devious plan.

Lucio’s been an army man, a CEO, a crime lord and the cause of “The Event” but maybe one day he’ll rise above those defining moments and be greater (but that is a story for another day).

Of course Lucio did live with Nadia for a time, but when he made her CEO Lucio took to calling his mansion home, Nadia wasn’t a fan of the creepy vibe it gave off which is just as well because Lucio hosts a lot of unsavoury characters...

True to form each room in that place has only the most expensive belongings, every bed is king size and the garage is filled with gas guzzling monstrosities of cars. It’s not cluttered by any means, but it's gaudy and shows off his wealth.

The only place things seem normal is the kitchen, Lucio doesn’t spend much time in there but on the wall sits a board of old memories when he got along with the others, they didn’t always find him unbearable.

Lucio’s torn it down and put it up so many times already he can never make up his mind if he wants to keep it.

Only thing Lucio ever liked about running a company were the expensive suits he was told he had to wear at least that was a great improvement on his fashion sense. Of course he’s not always wearing suits sometimes he’ll just wear a dress shirt with one too many buttons undone and a pair of white chinos and trainers.

Sunglasses are a must, that, and a lint roller. The dogs shed a lot...

As mentioned before Lucio has a lot of very pricey cars, he is the product of what would happen in Portia was given a car, he’d get distracted and crash it into the back of another vehicle.

He’s lucky anyone will insure him and that he has so many cars.

Lucio tried to be different to the ‘normies’ by getting his company to make a phone suitable to his taste. A phone that had two charging ports (to charge it twice as fast) and a waterproof casing (that kept it a bit too dry and hot so it spontaneously combusted in his pocket).

Lucio now has the latest iPhone instead.

Owns a lot of pets, the exotic eels, macaques, cockatoo, etc... The same as he does in the normal universe, none of which are particularly nice and well behaved. He prefers his fur babies Mercedes and Melinchor.

They were two dogs he saw fighting in dog fights and he was in love instantly buying them and bringing them to live with him, chaos follows those two like a bad odour.

Lucio decided that to be the cool rich guy he needed to like cool music, for the longest time he spent his time listening to hip hop no one really ever notices that Lucio in fact hates hip hop, he much prefers pop music.

It's a secret he will take to his grave but MC has definitely heard him singing to Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’ in the shower.

Lucio is the biggest movie buff in Vesuvia, he’s definitely offended when no one invites him to premieres, which is why he’s done all he can to get into movies (with little avail). And he will watch anything and enjoy it, he is usually one of those people who don’t realize the book exists when such a movie is out.

But do you know what his favourite kind of movies are?

Romantic-comedies, or just anything that's classed as romance. Date nights with Lucio are pretty good but he cries a lot, poor guy.

Just don’t get started with Lucio and hobbies, if he’s tried something once he’ll make out he knows everything about it and even if he hasn’t tried it he’ll pretend he has. He’s forever speaking out of his a** but no one dares call him out on it.

That being said Lucio really doesn’t have the capability to commit to a hobby, unless parties count? They don’t? They should!

Although one could say maybe planning parties does count...

Tattoos? Lucio has a few; his army number on the back of his neck, a sword piercing a heart on his chest and the twin silhouettes of the dogs running on the heel of his foot.

[thotforbaku]

Hi! I wasn’t sure how to send a request, but could you write a one shot for shouto x fem! reader? Maybe they’re on a date or in the dorms (idk aha go crazy) and he’s super gentlemanly and soft! Ft. Class 1-A catching/following them! Thank you so much!

hello! yes, this was the correct way to request, haha. thank you for being my first request! i hope my writing fulfilled your request to your satisfaction. if not, lmk asap! i’ll try to change it around for you :)

word count: 1.6k

»»——⍟——««

Contrary to popular belief, Todoroki was actually quite perceptive. He knew he didn’t have the best track record, i.e. his hand crusher moments and the whole “Midoriya being All Might’s secret love child” conspiracy. Regardless, he still picked up on the smallest things, especially when it came to his classmates.

When Kaminari forgot his homework, volts would zap from his fingertips as he drummed them on his desk nervously. When Mina was eavesdropping, her feet would be pointing towards whoever she was listening to. Dark Shadow snuck out occasionally during class, signaling that Tokoyami was running low on sleep from studying the night before.

And then there was you.

He hadn’t particularly tried to focus all of his attention on to you initially. No, you were just another one of his classmates. He wasn’t interested at all, nor was he interested in anybody, really.

It was only when he encountered you at the sports festival that he took a liking to you.

Not only was your quirk powerful, but you yourself held an immense presence nobody could ignore. Your water manipulation quirk was controlled well by you, and you utilized it to the best of your ability. Besides this, however, he knew absolutely nothing about you.

You were an enigma, to him and everyone else around you. But he bet no one wanted to know you like he did.

He wanted to know you from the inside out, from head to toe. He wanted to know your favorite color, food, and movie. He wanted to know how were feeling on a daily basis. He had a desire, no, a need to know all of these things, yet he only knew one: you were tired.

You were absolutely, oh so very tired.

Now, anyone would have been able to tell this, if they took a good look at your swollen eyebags or your lethargic behavior. Todoroki has been seeing you train for hours on end, ever since Aizawa-sensei and you discovered your new ability: controlling water within one’s body. This allowed you to try and control one’s body movements against their will; it was an extremely manipulative, powerful technique.

But it was taking a severe toll you. Todoroki saw the aspirin you would take daily, and heard the extra strength pills rattling in your bag. He would see you pinch your eyebrows together in pain and screw your eyes shut whenever Bakugou would start screaming his head off. He wanted to help you, somehow in some way. He felt that you needed a break from your constant repetitive schedule of school, training, extra training, and sleeping. He wanted you to relax, to be able to talk to someone, and to pretend the world is stopping. He wanted to be there for you, for when you crash and fall down to help you back up again. He wanted you, unconditionally.

So imagine his surprise when you said yes to him asking to hang out.

It may have taken a little insistence on his part, and explanation that yes, he wanted it to be a date, but he did it. But now that you actually said yes, he honestly had no clue where to come from here.

So he pulled out the big guns.

At 5:00 in the evening, two hours before your training would end and come up to his room, he decided to start preparing food in the kitchen. Sure, it was a date, but he knew you were too tired to attempt to exit the dorms after a long day. So, he had the amazing idea of a movie night within his own dorm.

Of course, the food wasn’t anything too fancy, in his eyes. The only food he knew how to make really well was soba. Cold, soba.

But he made it damn well, and he knew it.

Todoroki had whipped up the soba immediately, and placed it within bowls to bring it up to his room later. He ignored the side eyes and surprised looks he received while he was moving around in the kitchen, and shuffling through the pantry. He only looked up when he heard someone clearing their throat.

“So, Todoroki-kun, you seem real busy.... Got a hot date?” Kaminari joked, grinning lazily as he wiggled his eyebrows.

“Yes.” Kaminari stopped at his straightforward reply, his grin frozen on his face, as he processed Todoroki’s reply. The common room went silent, as they also heard the conversation take place.

“Y-You’re— who?” Kaminari stuttered, eyes bugged out as he splayed out his hands in front of him. He opened his mouth to reply, but saw you shuffle through the front doors, hunched over like you had the world’s weight on your shoulders.

“With her.” Todoroki responded as he made his way towards you. He silently slipped your backpack off your shoulder and onto his, balancing the food on one arm and taking your hand onto his.

“How was training?” He asked, rubbing a thumb gently over the side of your hand, looking at your from the side.

“Tiring. I want to flop onto a bed and never get up.” You responded quietly, sagging even further.

“That’s exactly what you’re about to do.” Todoroki gave you a small smile as he unlaced your fingers from his, and unlocking his door.

“Huh?”

“I figured you’d be too tired to try and leave the dorms today, especially after all the training you’ve done. I know you’ve just been wanting to relax, so I figured our date could just be watching movies together.” Todoroki explained as he laid out the food on his desk and unfolding his futon.

“I.....” You seemed to trail off, your eyebrows furrowed as you stared at the ground. Todoroki hesitantly looked at you, afraid of what your reply was going to be now that you weren’t immediately answering. Did he do something wrong? Were you not a fan of movies? These thoughts raced through his head as he was cursing himself for not being more considerate.

“This is really thoughtful of you Todoroki-kun. I was worried that I wouldn’t be up to speed for our date, but to know that we’re just having a quiet night in the dorms? I... really appreciate it.” You looked back up, a tired but wide grin on your face, your eyes crinkling. He let out a small sigh of relief, and sat down on the futon, pulling out his laptop and setting it on his kotatsu. He patted the seat lightly next to him, smiling as you sat down, your knee brushing his.

“That’s good to hear. And, since we’re on a date currently, I think I’d feel more comfortable with you calling me by my given name.” He told you as he ripped open a bag of chips, passing it to you. You nodded in thanks, and quirked your lips in thought, mulling over what he said. You then nodded, seemingly comfirning your thoughts.

“Okay, Shouto-kun. What do you have planned for the night?” You asked, taking a chip and placing it in your mouth.

“A Studio Ghibli marathon.” You paused at his reply. He looked at you puzzled. He seemed to catch a lot of people off-guard today.

“.... I haven’t watched a Miyazaki film since my childhood..” You sighed, grinning at him happily. He stared at the grin painted on your face, burning it into his memory. He saw you smile twice now in one sitting, and he would cherish it for a long, long time.

“I did a good job of choosing the movies then, didn’t I?” He asked you, softly smiling as he offered you a bowl of a soba, already breaking his chopsticks in two. You clapped happily as his perfectly broke, passing yours to his to repeat it.

“You really did, Shouto-kun. I really can’t thank you enough. I was surprised when you had asked me out a date, I didn’t think you cared enough to talk to me.” You confessed, fiddling with a string on your jumper as you glanced up at him. He nodded simply, ducking his head to meet your eyes.

“I can see why I’d come off that way. I definitely wasn’t the most approachable in the beginning of the year. But with everything’s that happened, I realized that shutting everyone out wasn’t the best thing to do. And ignoring you, when I had a clear interest in you, definitely wasn’t either. You intrigue me so much. I want to find out and know every little thing about you. Will you let me?” He asked you, sincerity bleeding into his tone, his eyes darting all over your face.

“Of course.” You clasped both your hands over his, squeezing tightly. He let out another short sigh, shoulders sagging forward.

“Then let’s start the movie, shall we?” He leaned forward, and tapped the space bar, letting the blue light of the intro shine brightly onto your face. He smiled as he felt your head rest upon his, and brushed his hand over your knee.

It was finally his turn to try and unveil someone and their secrets. And it just so happened to be you.

____________________________________

“....Was someone at the door, Shouto-kun?”

“No, I believe the rest of the class is downstairs.”

Kaminari sighed in relief as Jirou continued to hold one of her ears the door, relaying the date to the rest of the classmates silently standing in the hallway.

“I can’t believe he bagged her before me.” Kaminari cried, blowing his nose into his sleeve. His classmates cursed at his noise, and scattered, scared of getting caught. “Wait, where are you guys going?”

“...Are you sure there’s no one there, Shouto-kun?”

[broccoliboix5peepeeman]

heyo!!! request for tododeku (there is no other ship) in no 3 for the physical affection prompts! [ps; i hope i sound totally normal but your writing is really soft!!!]

No ship, only tododeku! :D Also thank you so much?! *sobs*

Also, this turned out to be over 1000 words whoops, rip y’all’s dashes

‘Dekuuuuu!’

‘Urarakaaa!’ Izuku moaned back, scribbling in his notebook while his friend poked his cheek.

‘Make Todoroki-kun come to movie night!’ Izuku paused in his note taking and turned to find Uraraka frowning at him with her cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk.

‘Why?’

‘Well, me and the rest of the girls asked him and he said no!’

‘What makes you think he’ll say yes to me?’ Izuku raised an eyebrow. ‘Besides, why is it important that he comes to movie night?’

‘He always says yes to you, Deku!’ Uraraka smacked her forehead in exasperation. ‘You have him wrapped around your little finger and you aren’t even dating yet!’

‘Ura-’

‘Plus, he has to come because it’s Studio Ghibli week and he hasn’t seen any of them!’

‘I do not have him wrapped around my- Wait, what?’ Izuku stared at his friend with wide eyes. ‘He hasn’t seen any Ghibli?’

Uraraka nodded solemnly and raised a fist to her chest. At her confirmation, Izuku shot up from his seat. ‘Where is he?!’

*

Shoto walked into the common room, his heart pounding against his chest with anxiety. He had only agreed to come because of Midoriya; he didn’t have a clue what to expect or how to behave. He had never been to a movie night before, what if he did something-?

‘Todoroki-kun!’

He was shaken from his thoughts by his best friend and crush, who waved at him enthusiastically from where he was sat cross legged on one of the armchairs. Shoto smiled softly in response and wandered over to Midoriya, who practically beamed.

‘Hi Midoriya.’ He tried to keep his voice calm and looked around for a free seat but found none. ‘It seems I’m the last to arrive.’

‘It’s okay!’ His friend stood up and gestured to the chair. ‘Wanna share?’

‘Sh- Share?’ He can’t have heard right. ‘There’s not enough room.’

‘I can sit on your lap!’ Midoriya exclaimed before quickly closing in on himself. He rubbed the back of his neck as a blush formed on his cheeks, and Shoto had to remind himself not to burst into flames. ‘Un- Unless you’re not comfortable with that, of course! I can always sit on the-’

‘I’m okay with that… If it’s you.’ Shoto then ducked his head and moved past Midoriya to sit down before he could further embarrass himself. Why did I add that last part?

Once comfortable, he leaned back and looked up at Midoriya expectantly, but his friend had begun muttering to himself and nodding his head.

‘Deku!’ The both of them jumped at Bakugou’s exclamation. ‘Sit the fuck down, it’s starting!’

‘Oh y- yeah! S- Sorry, Kacchan!’ Izuku scrambled forwards, only hesitating for a moment before sitting down sideways in Shoto’s lap, legs dangling off the side of the chair. Shoto stilled at the close proximity, but when Izuku turned and smiled wobbly at him, he found himself relax against the cushions as he smiled back at his crush.

Ten minutes into Howl’s Moving Castle and Shoto quickly realised that he was in love. How had he gone his entire life without seeing these films?

At the end of the movie, he turned his head and caught Midoriya staring at him, expression unreadable. ‘So I take it you enjoyed it?’

Shoto swallowed heavily and nodded enthusiastically, which caused Midoriya to chuckle fondly. ‘Well next up is Arrietty! It’s not as popular as some of them, but it’s still really good!’

Midoriya was absolutely right, Arrietty was also a really good film, but Shoto was beginning to sense a theme. In both films, every interaction between the two main protagonists resonated with Shoto; it made him think of the boy next to him, and he distantly wondered whether Midoriya was thinking the same thing.

‘My heart is stronger now that you’re in it.’

Shoto stared at the screen then and tilted his head to the side. The rational part of his brain assumed the boy on the screen was talking about his heart condition, but something about the way he said it just clicked with Shoto, and before he knew what he was doing, he suddenly huffed with surprise.

‘Huh, funny.’

He felt Midoriya shift to look at him.

‘What’s funny, Todoroki-kun?’

‘My heart is stronger now that you’re in it. I just realised that’s how I feel about you.’

‘HUH?!’

Several of their classmates shushed them, and Midoriya sent them frantic apologies before whipping his head around to stare at Shoto. ‘You… You… Feel that way about me?’

Shoto met his crush’s questioning gaze and nodded wholeheartedly.

‘I feel it every day since the sports festival back in first year.’ He whispered. ‘I’m stronger now because of you.’

‘O- Oh...’ Midoriya looked away then with a look of… Disappointment? ‘You mean in terms of power. I thought you meant...’

He trailed off then and Shoto suddenly realised that he hadn’t explained himself properly. Sure, he could leave it at that and avoid talking about his deeper feelings, but from the way Midoriya was looking at him - or not looking at him rather - Shoto figured he should go with what he feels like saying.

‘Well… Yes, you have helped me strengthen my power… But I didn’t just mean that.’ He cautiously reached out and took Midoriya’s right hand, feeling the bumps and grooves of his calloused fingers, before resting it against his heart. Midoriya inhaled sharply at the gesture, and Shoto hoped his best friend could feel the way his heartbeat had quickened. ‘I’m not good with words, but you understand?’

Midoriya stared at him for a moment, not knowing what to do with himself, before tears brimmed in his eyes and his lip quivered.

‘I understand.’ He used his free hand to rub at his face before gazing down at Shoto adoringly. ‘Can I… Can I kiss you, Todoroki-kun?’

Shoto felt his cheeks burn and his eyes moved to Midoriya’s lips, illuminated only by the light of the movie that was now completely forgotten, and subconsciously licked his own before nodding in response.

‘Please.’

Midoriya leaned forwards and Shoto found himself doing the same. Their lips connected and Shoto’s eyes fluttered shut. It didn’t matter that they were both awkward. It didn’t matter that the rest of their classmates were in the room. It didn’t matter that Midoriya was clearly trying to keep his lips from muttering about whether he was doing a good job or not. To Shoto, it was perfect.

Shoto felt himself smile against Midoriya as he kissed him once, then twice, then again; and when Midoriya mirrored his smile as he leaned in for another, Shoto truly believed that he was the luckiest person to ever live.

[stayarmytinyzenmoa-l]

Tag Post

Four Songs Tag/Playlist Tag

Tagged by: @yeongwvnhi and @jjinan

Rules: List the 4 songs you have on repeat the most these days (They were very similar so I just meshed them together hehe)

I have been in such a funk recently, and Day6 make feel better music and crying music so you can bet that I’ve been listening to their tracks a lot

And on the flip side some days I wanna feel like a bad bitch so Action Figure is there for me

My all time favorite Ghibli movie and yes I liked it before it was cool, I’ve even read the original book. It’s a great song to listen to when imagining fantasy-like stories

*cough* Angst. *cough*

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do this!

K-Pop Writing Tag

Tagged by: @yeongwvnhi

Rules: Handwrite your favorite group(s), your bias(es) in said group, and your wrecker(s)

Yes I write in all caps deal with it.

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do this!

Fashion? Tag

Tagged by: @hachanbaecon-main​

➼ 𝐒𝐎𝐅𝐓  11/20

baby pink | iridescent | glitter is always a good option | no bra | minimalistic tattoos | cherry patterns | sweet-scented perfumes | wearing generous amounts of blush | doodling hearts | getting excited to pet an animal | fun nails | re-watching old barbie movies | hair sticking to glossed lips | heart-shaped sunglasses | taking pictures of the sunset or sunrise | stuffed animals | protecting nature | stickers everywhere | teen movies | the light rain that falls from a clear sky at the beginning of the night |

➼ 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐀𝐂𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐀  14/20

neutral tones | masculine outfits | studying languages | worn down copy of books | grey skies | turtleneck sweaters | loose-fitting pants | hair tied with a silk ribbon | trying to remember a cool difficult word you read somewhere to use in a convo | thick belts | minimal makeup | windows fogged by rain | vintage jewelry | blouses with cuffed sleeves | reading a murder mystery and trying to solve it | oxford style shoes | sweater vests | subtitled old movies in a language you don’t speak | leaves crackling as you walk | annotating books to express your emotions about the story |

|➼ 𝐄𝐃𝐆𝐘  8/20

closet full of dark clothes | fishnet tights | makeup sweating off | neon signs | searching for unknown songs | chokers | band tees | doodling on old converses | finding smoking aesthetically pleasing but not doing it | weird humor | accidentally very dramatic | dim lights | layered outfits | chain belts | chipped nail polish | messy hair | low quality pics | piercings | combat boots | scribbling on desks |

➼ 𝟕𝟎’𝐒  7/20

colorful wardrobe | doodling flowers | wearing short shorts | using a bikini top or bra as a normal top | listening to ABBA | flowers in your hair | DIYing everything | jamming to songs alone in your room | drunkenly telling your friends you love them | patterned bandanas | mid-heeled shoes | messy braids | flared sleeves | walking barefoot on grass or sand | bold sunglasses | the good kind of tired you get after doing something you enjoy for hours | feeding stray animals | fun patterned socks | room decorated with succulents and other plants | likes to go roller skating or skateboarding |

➼ 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐏𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐔𝐀𝐋 

collared clothes | drinking juice out of a champagne glass | getting excited to see the met gala looks | thick headbands | small pastel cardigans | making your friends take your ootd pics | plaid mini skirts | tweed two pieces | watching reality tv to pass time | frilly tops | watching old hollywood movies | academically driven | long manicured nails | new year’s eve fireworks | colourful tights | layered golden jewelry | yearns for luxury brand items | decorating your room with fairylights | cursive and neat handwriting | lace details |

short necklaces or long necklaces / studs or badges / dangling earrings or small hoops / belts or suspenders / black or white / silver or gold / leather chokers or chain chokers / plain rings or rings with stones / winged eyeliner or smudged eyeliner / vertical stripes or horizontal stripes / contact lenses or natural / skirts or shorts / dress-pants or skinny jeans / ankle boots or knee boots / fishnet or mesh / zippers or laces / cargo pants or jeans / heels or flats / black hair or blonde hair / bangs or forehead / long hair or short hair / chain bracelets or leather bracelets / natural hair tones or unnatural hair tones / plain or patterned / loose hair or tied up hair / oversized t-shirts or crop tops / buttoned collar or open collar / butterfly or tie / ripped jeans or clean jeans / eyebrow slit or no eyebrow slit / angel theme or devil theme / enforcer theme or criminal theme / cute or sexy / love or hate / school theme or work theme

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do this

[latetaektalk]

hiiiiiii 🥰

ahh well, I’ll definitely let you know once I get around to reading it!! omg, never let me go is so bleak, so yah, you’ll love it if you love a good cry, like me hehe!

spirited away is literally like no other movie I’ve ever seen, and I was on the fence on whether to give it 4 or 5 stars, I think really it’s a 4.5 but there’s no half a star emoji haha. I’ve had family over so only half way through howl’s moving castle but I love it so far, so think it’ll be highly rated!

eeeek a fellow marvel fan!!!! I frickin love anything fantasy, LOTR, HP ⚡️ so, I don’t have favourites of anything, I’m so so indecisive, but a few of my favourites are cappie winter soldier, (probably the first marvel movie I really loved), thor ragnarok, GOTG, infinity war, civil war, black panther, spiderman. also the disney+ show wandavision is so good! I love scarlet witch 🧙‍♀️ also, I know it’s not marvel, but frickin love into the spider-verse!!! what’s your favourite marvel movie?? and what are your favourite movies in general?

hmm, good question… my favourite lego set is probably my new york set, it’s the first one I made during lockdown and it brought me joy during a bad time!

ah I was so waiting for a good time when I heard the title for the song, and when I listened to it, I was like, I should have known it was gonna be a sad girl summer. I haven’t, I’ll definitely check it out. I love hot ones interviews, did you see olivia rodrigo’s one, it was so funny! I love billie eilish’s new song, happier than ever, but I still need to listen to her new album!

I’ve always wanted to play piano, do you still play? yeah, I really hope she does!! but even if she doesn’t, fans always come through and do amazing versions themselves on youtube, but it would be awesome if she did official versions !!

speak soon, 🦋.

hello love !!

i definitely love a good cry, so im looking forward to getting it !! be ready for me to rant a bunch to you when i finish it!! and yes oh my god spirited away has a special place in my heart 💕 i watched that film during different stages of my life, and ive just grown such an appreciation for it! and im glad youre enjoying howl's moving castle! i really love that film too,,, in general im just in love with every ghibli film asdfsa also! i hope you had a great time with your family !!

ahhhh i see your a fantasy lover!! im not gonna lie, im not much of a fantasy fan and also havent actually finished the harry potter books/films but im always amazed by the people that are! i just know i wont be able to remember all of the lore 🤧 marvel lore is already enough for me sadfas and ahhh your taste is just ✨✨ im happy to hear that youre enjoying wandervision !! i dont have disney+ so i havent actually watched it yet,,, but im glad you like it! and oh my god i still gotta watch the spider-verse too asdf ive been so lazy with watching things these days lmao and even tho i agree with you that its impossible to choose any favourites, i do think that the first GOTG film is my favourite! its pretty much the first marvel film i ever saw and i just fell in love 💘💘 and aside from the marvel films, i really love romcoms !! my favourites are probably 500 days of summer and about time! both have a very special place in my heart because theyre just so goddamn great 💓 i also absolutely love the ocean's films !!! i think ive rewatched these films about a dozen of times now,, like whenever i dont know what to watch ill put it on! and obviously also spirited away ✨

ohh i see !! i just googled it and the set is so pretty! im glad to hear that it brought you joy during a bad time!!

and yeah stoned at the nail salon could have either been a really happy or sad song,,, and honestly with lorde i was expecting the latter LMAO and yes please do check it out!! it was a lot of fun!! and yeah ive seen olivia's hot ones interview !! now that lorde and olivia have done it im just waiting for a certain miss taylor swift to do it too to finish off the trio 👀 and right! i gotta listen to billie's new album too!! i really enjoyed her first album, so hopefully ill get around to listening to it soon! have you listened to it now? if so, what are your thoughts?

no, i quit around two years ago,, to be honest, i never wanted to learn in the first place asfds i was kinda forced into it by my parents rip and never really developed much of a passion for it 🤧 but if you wanna play piano, im sure you can teach yourself !! i feel like piano is a rather easy to learn, at least compared to other instruments! have you looked into that maybe? and if you dont wanna teach yourself, taking a couple lessons and learning the basics should be enough for most people !! i hope you get to around learning the piano one day !! im sure youll enjoy it because it really is a beautiful instrument 💘

anyway, please have a nice day love!! love you lots 💓

[jojiship]

Studio Ghibli Films: Thoughts & Rankings

I have been binging Studio Ghibli (and other anime films) since May. I saw a lot of people in Youtube rank them and I decided to do it as well. While I don’t have a camera to record myself, I decided to post my ranking of its films. First of all, I want to say that this is quite a subjective ranking and it’s personal. These are my opinions and of course, everyone can have opinions of their own. Second of all, I think all of these films have their good sides, but there are ones that I enjoyed and there are ones I didn’t enjoy. Either way, I recommend people to watch all of these films. You won’t regret watching most of them.

This post ranks the films from the 5th to 1st. Obviously, there will be spoilers ahead, so you’ve been warned.

5. Princess Mononoke (1997) – I would watch the animation of the nature in this film for hours in loop. It’s so wonderful, beautiful and breathtaking. Whether it’s animating the lake, the forest or even just the trees, I was in awe of it. It truly makes you appreciate it and again, Studio Ghibli shows you how much they love nature themselves. Now, let’s talk about the film. The film was amazing. The best word for it is amazing. The plot was so different and yet so captivating. There wasn’t a moment in this film where I was bored and where I felt it dragged along. Seeing this battle between humans and nature was what I had to see. When I was a kid, I didn’t appreciate this film as much, but now, it’s definitely one of my favourite films and in my top five of Studio Ghibli films. All the characters were incredibly well written, especially Ashitaka, San and Lady Eboshi. I love how there was no villain in this film. Yes, Lady Eboshi and her people were ruining the forest, but they were also trying to live their lives and grow as a community. I loved how everyone played a part in the village, the men, the woman and even the disables, had roles. You don’t see this in many films and I like that Princess Mononoke showed us that. The boars and the wolves were interesting to see as well. The bond that San had with her family and how she hated humans because of how she was raised. The ending was great. I liked that Ashitaka decided to stay and help with Irontown rather than go with San like some people expected him to. The only thing that truly bothered me was the face of the Forest Spirit. It haunted me for days which prove how much it creeped me out. If someone told me that the face of the Forest Spirit was their sleep paralysis demon, I would believe them in the spot.

4. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - The first Studio Ghibli film that I’ve seen is My Neighbor Totoro. It’s the kind of film that reminds me of my childhood and it’s the one that gives me a nostalgic feeling. I love it so much that it’s definitely the film of Studio Ghibli that I’ve seen the most. It has this charm that should be more prevalent in other animated films, especially films for kids. Every scene is truly like magic. Whether it’s the umbrella scene at the bus stop, or the scene where the tree grows, or even the scene with the cat bus and the girls. Satsuki and Mei are enjoyable, vibrant and interesting characters. The bond between them reminds me a lot of my bond with my older sister. You can definitely say that I was a lot like Mei as a little kid (Yes, I did get lost one time and made my whole family, especially my sister lose their mind). Again, this film embraces the beauty of being a child. It shows the curiosity, the innocence, the energy and the imagination that most kids possess at that age. Totoro is such an interesting character design and it’s no surprise that it’s the logo of Studio Ghibli. My Neighbor Totoro speaks to my inner child and reminds me of the good old days. It’s a film that I’ll recommend to everyone, but especially young kids. Also, it’s the Studio Ghibli film that makes me smile through the whole of it. If I’m feeling sad or if I’m not in a good mood, I watch My Neighbor Totoro and it never fails to make me feel better.

3. Spirited Away (2001) – Objectively, I think Spirited Away is the best film that Studio Ghibli has ever produced. Personally, it’s the third, but that doesn’t mean it’s worse than the second and first. It’s a matter of preference that I have. Again, I watched this film as a kid and I did enjoy it a lot. I always called it one of the best animated films. I rewatched it in May after years of not watching it and I loved it just as much as I did when I was a kid if not more. Miyazaki created an unforgettable film with an astounding plot, amazing characters and an exciting world building. Chihiro is your typical kid. She can be whiny and scared just as every kid is her age. The growth that she goes through the film was amazing. Watching her work hard and her progress was such a good watch. You could see her struggle with cleaning at first, but soon enough, she got the hang of it. Also, as much as I love the film, I couldn’t help but think that her parents were a bit dumb. Like my parents wouldn’t have done any of the things her parents did. My dad wouldn’t have sped like that in such a dangerous road and they definitely would have turned around after coming close to the temple. Either way, I’m glad that they screwed up though because it gave me this film. The other characters like Haku, Yubaba, Zeniba, Lin and many others were brilliant. Out of all this, I enjoyed Haku the most. The way he helped Chihiro was so nice and their whole bond was fascinating to see on screen. The guests in the bathhouse were designed so well and were just so good. I don’t have any words to describe the scenes with No Face or the spirit of the polluted river because they are out of this world. No wonder this film won an Oscar for best animated film. The details, the story, the animation, the characters, the soundtrack and the world building all deserve an Oscar of their own. 

2. Grave of the Fireflies (1988) - I don’t think I’ve ever cried with any film, book or series as much as I cried with this. Even when it ended and I had turned my TV off, I was crying. It’s one of the saddest films I’ve ever watched and truly, the saddest film Studio Ghibli has ever made. It touched my heart immediately when it started and it ended up ripping it at the end. I knew that it wasn’t going to have a happy ending, the beginning tells you that it’s going to end quite sadly. Yet I was taken back by the scenes, especially the last scenes. The story of Seita and Setsuko is a story that many kids have experienced in war. In most war films, we are shown battles, we are shown armies, soldiers etc., but not in this film. In this film, we saw the personal history of siblings trying to survive war and bombings. Seeing Setsuko hallucinating was heartbreaking and it was in that moment when I started to cry. When Seita said that she never woke up after that, I couldn’t control myself. Funeral scenes have been hard for me to watch lately, but not a single funeral scene has broken my heart like the one in this film. The scene where Home Sweet Home played in the background left me speechless and I still don’t know how to explain how I feel with that scene. Grave of the Fireflies is a film that is all too real and it made my whole body hurt at the end. Although it's ranked second in my list, it’s the one who I’ll probably rewatch the least out of all Studio Ghibli. Takahata is truly an incredible director and this film proves that better than any other film of his.

1. Whisper of the Heart (1995) – Talented. Inspiring. Brilliant. Relatable. Amazing. Show-stopping. Spectacular. Never the same. Totally unique. Whisper of the Heart is undoubtedly the best Studio Ghibli film I’ve watched. I enjoyed everything about it to the last details. I didn’t even stop the film to get water even though I was thirsty as hell. That’s how much I loved the film. I never related to characters as much as I related to Shizuku and Seiji. I write and I used to play the violin when I was younger. While I stopped, I still enjoy every story that has something to do with violins. Shizuku was such a normal character that spoke so much to me and to everyone I recommended this film to. Many of us have been in her position where we didn’t know what we’re going to do in the future. While Shizuku had many interests, you could see that she was stuck. I liked that she was inspired by Seiji to see if she could be good at something and she learned that she did have some sort of talent for writing. But just like Seiji’s grandfather, Shiro said about polishing her talent. I think many people, especially people who paint, draw, sing, compose, write and build, should listen to his words. They shouldn’t expect perfection at their first try and that they should give it time and hard work for their skills to become amazing. When I first started to write, I needed to hear Shiro’s words. This film is such a beautiful coming of age story that I think everyone should see no matter the age. Now, let’s go to the romance of the film. Hands down, Shizuku and Seiji are the best romance in Studio Ghibli films. While I love Howl and Sophie and Jiro and Naoko, it’s Shizuku and Seiji that won my heart. They had such a good romantic journey. Their scenes were just astoundingly beautiful, especially the one in the end. When I saw him by the tree, I started to giggle and I always screamed. It was just incredible to watch. Every interaction they had made me love them more. I repeat, the best Studio Ghibli couple. When I finished the film, I wanted to find a guy like Seiji. Too bad we were in lockdown and I was unable to find him. The use of Country Roads was amazing. I always loved the song and now, it’s one of my favourite. What upsets me about this film is the death of its director. If Kondo hadn’t tragically passed away in 1998, I think he would have given us other amazing films like Whisper of the Heart. I can say that this movie whispered in my heart and I’ll never forget it.

[aliveandfullofjoy]

watched two of netflix’s new movies tonight!

a whisker away: occasionally cute and occasionally funny but a complete mess from start to finish unfortunately. between a deeply unlikeable protagonist and a sense of whimsy that feels more ripped off of the studio ghibli formula than something more authentic, it’s far from the most satisfying anime film you could watch. it’s genuinely unhinged though, and the direct translation of its japanese title makes me laugh: “wanting to cry, i pretend to be a cat.”

the life ahead: okay yes sophia loren is excellent as always and it’s so nice to see her onscreen again, but WOW ibrahima gueye is really, really terrific. what a debut performance, to hold your own so effortlessly opposite a living legend. really lovely and touching movie but fairly pedestrian. not sure i’ll remember much about it in a month but it is what it is.

[puffinstack]

okay!! so

time for my favorite game: Bound Writes Things at Midnight so She Doesn’t Have to Forget Them in the Morning

also known as: Building Character, one mistake at a time

so one of my MCs for NaNo, yes? yes.

her name is Galdrie!! i am so very excited for you all to meet her. she dresses mostly in long robes (the kinds in Ghibli movies that seem to be constantly puffed up) and she is rather soft.

a useless lesbian, she spends her days doing her job as Archivist. this means logging every significant cultural occurence that happens within her jurisdiction. she has to be VERY well informed and yet really does not seem to like people all that much. (this turns out to be untrue for a select group, most importantly her apprentice Teck. more on him another time.) she is always Stressed, and always a bit snippy (again, except for Teck. she has infinite patience for Teck because she knows no one else will extend him that respect.) she is enormously responsible (to the point of often feeling crushed by this responsibility).

speaking of responsibility, her job description:

keep records of:

political actions, from insurgent movements to the current leader’s day-to-day schedule

culture, from fashion trends to architectural movements to painting styles

holding and distributing memories for members of the population who are:

predisposed to forgetfulness for whatever reason and need the memories sent somewhere

dying and want their loved ones to have their memories

collecting copies of every possible book, library of alexandria style

providing the tiebreaking vote in any kind of election, being considered the one citizen who can provide the most informed vote

conserving cultural artifacts

taking a regular census of all citizens

taking care of the sprites, golems, and other low functioning creatures associated with the Archives

more on this last point: “low functioning” as a label does not work in her world the same way it does in ours. what it means here is they can follow basic commands and have free will, but don’t usually have the energy to think for themselves. their jobs could be done by magic, but it would be impossible to sustain that wide a network for any actual amount of time. the Archives act as a kind of sanctuary for these creatures and Galdrie (and every other Archivist) is so, so careful with them. it gives them a place to work and make a living that lets them be independent.

so yeah. Galdrie’s a hot mess most of the time.

she, like all Archivists, is prone to fits of sneezing, the occasional coma-like hibernation (usually not exceeding 5 days), and clothes and skin permanently covered in faded text.

her magic is growing out of her control and she is very worried about that. this out-of-control growth forces her to make larger and larger expenditures of magic as time passes because if she doesn’t, she starts to feel like she’s going to explode. since using magic takes a pretty decent amount of energy, she is chronically fatigued.

she hates it when people touch her bare skin. she has an amazing memory (affected by the fatigue it’s worse of course, but still). she is really passionate about social change and also lemon desserts, and somehow keeps track of Teck’s seemingly endless lists of both nicknames/aliases and friends. she also has an extremely short temper (excluding Teck as always). she isn’t a Feelings Person. she is an oldest sibling, with two younger brothers and three younger sisters whom she loves very much. she sleeps like a dead woman and can drop into this dead sleep anywhere, almost on command. she has been known to fall asleep while walking. (this is pre-chronic fatigue. she’s really good at sleeping.)

she has very long hair at first because it is a part of her village’s culture to cut their hair off only when they go to war (whether that be with an enemy or with themselves or wtih a disease) so that it can’t make them vulnerable.

she’s one of those lesbians that if a woman smiles at her she falls apart but if a man even LOOKS at her wrong she rips his teeth out.

TL;DR i love her to death and i hope you love her too. (she is pivotal to the non-existent plot so we will be seeing a lot of her as time goes on!) i will reblog this post when i add to it, mostly for my own benefit because it’s easier for me to have everything in one thread (not because i think anyone on the internet needs to reread my ramblings eight times). also, if anything is internally inconsistent here, i’d appreciate it getting (GENTLY) pointed out. i am stupid sometimes. thank you.

[cozyteez]

a/n: this is got kinda long because my brand is self indulgence lmao. word count is abt 1.1k

[21:04] you got out of the shower and put on some warm PJs before plopping onto the couch. while scrolling through netflix when you decided to text yeosang

'yeosang im BORED'

'and what exactly am

i supposed to do about that?'

'talk to me!! tell me

abt ur day :))'

'bad. why don't you watch something

on netflix idk'

since you had gotten home earlier than usual and ate a good dinner, you were in a pretty good mood. you decided to spread your good mood to yeosang since he seemed pretty down in the dumps. besides, you hated seeing him like that

'get yourself ready i'll

be there in 15'

'y/n i'm not really in the mood ....'

'oops already started driving'

when you pulled up to the dorms you had two missed calls from yeosang and one text

'there better be ice cream.'

you rolled your eyes and smiled as you got out of your car, he was such a sweet tooth you swore he thought he could fix anything if he had enough ice cream and jellies

seonghwa opened the door and greeted you warmly as always with a smile and brief hug

"he's in his room"

you nodded and headed towards his door saying your hellos to the other boys along the way

once you got there you knocked 3 times. all he did was groan, so you twisted the handle and let yourself in and closed the door behind you

upon entering the room you saw him laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling with his hoodie pulled up on his head and the drawstrings halfway pulled closed

"oh yeosang. really?" you put your hands on your hips "isn't this a little much"

"it's really not"

"my god. okay. come on and get your sorry ass up we're gonna fix this"

you pulled him up by his arms with little resistance and pulled him by the wrist all the way out the door

the boys couldn't help but giggle as you guys walked past. they heard your whole conversation through the door and thought it was funny, but they stopped as soon as he gave them a look since they knew he could rip them all apart with just a few words

once you guys got to the car you turned on your sing along playlist and sang as loud as you could all the way to your place, but yeosang was determined to stay in his bad mood and had his arms crossed as he looked out the window the entire time

once you guys got inside you tossed your keys in the bowl next to the door and kicked your shoes off, yeosang followed

you turned around and sighed with your hands on your hips, he still looked so sulky

"well i'm down to my last resort. c'mon"

you pressed play on your speaker and the music from the car continued from where it left off throughout the room

grabbing his hands, you pulled him into the middle of your living room and tried to make him dance with you by moving his arms around to the beat of the music

"c'monnn yeosang dance with meee"

he pulled his hands away looking more upset. crossing his arms he contracted within himself

"i'm really not in the mood"

you reached for his hands again but he jerked away

"i'm being serious y/n, please" his voice was starting to shake and he reached up to quickly wipe his eyes

"oh no, i - " you didn't know what to say, but now realized what kind of bad mood he was in and it wasn't one that was gonna be fixed by being loud and goofy

"can't we just watch something on netflix ..?" he voice was very small and almost a whisper, he was definitely crying

"yeah yes of course" you stopped the music and reached for the remote

you sat down and motioned for him to sit as well. he immediately snuggled up to your side and laid his head on your shoulder as you pulled up netflix

"what do you wanna watch?" you wrapped your arm around his shoulders and started rubbing his upper arm

he just shrugged and leaned in closer

scrolling to the movies, you looked for the first studio ghibli film you could find

once you had it pulled up you shifted so that you were leaning against the arm of the couch. yeosang pouted because you moved away

"well come here then"

you opened your arms and legs for him to snuggle in close. he smiled and moved over to you, laying his back against your chest as you laid your arms on top of his chest over his shoulders

he wiggled a little to get comfy in between your legs but soon settled and relaxed. as the movie played you fiddled with the strings of his hoodie, eventually pulling the hood off of his head to play with his hair

"y/n?"

he wasn't crying anymore but his voice was still really small and quiet

"yeah?"

you stopped playing with his hair and he craned his neck to look up at you with his sweet eyes

"i know you were already on your way when i texted you... but do you have any ice cream?"

"of course i do" he smiled and you ruffled his hair "how could i not when i keep you around all the time"

after finishing the movied with your tummies full of ice cream, you asked yeosang if he wanted to talk about his day after relaxing a little. he talked about everything that went wrong as you went back to playing with his hair

when he was done talking he couldn't stop yawning and his eyelids looked heavy

"do you wanna stay the night?"

he nodded with his eyes closed

"okay. i'll take you back in the morning. do you wanna brush your teeth?"

he nodded again

"okay, let's get up"

he groaned but slowly sat up

for the rest of the night he sleepily moved around as he got ready for bed. after washing up you guys got into your bed. he reached for you hand once you joined him under the blanket and you happily obliged, quickly falling asleep

when you woke up his hand was still in yours and he had a little bit of drool on his pillow

“good morning y/n”

his voice was groggy and his eyes were still closed

“well good morning to you sunshine. feeling better?”

you smiled to yourself and squeezed his hand not really needing an answer because you know that he only drools when he has a really good nights rest