đ ⊠someone who makes my muse laugh.
In truth, Xiu couldnât think of many people who well and truly made her laugh.
 When her mother was still alive, the two of them managed to find ways to make each other laugh until tears streamed down their face. Despite her motherâs gentle nature, she had a dark and wicked sense of humor that mirrored her daughterâs. Min Hye could see a terrible situation and find something to laugh at, and Xiu was grateful to inherit this trait from it.
 âYou can laugh or you can cry, Xiu,â sheâd told her daughter one night as they lounged in the womanâs quarters within the compound. âAnd Iâm, quite frankly, tired of crying at all the terrible things around us. Sometimes, things can be so awful that you canât help but to laugh in shock, if nothing else. Finding humor is a coping mechanism. Donât be afraid to lose it.â
 After Min Hye died, though, Xiu struggled more and more often to find the humor in anything about her situation. She was angry, blood boiling so often that it was a wonder it didnât evaporate altogether. She was furious with rage and filled with an aching, lonely heart. The violence and debauchery around her was foul, and there was nothing she could do but to engage in it if she was to survive â to become the worst and make her teeth the sharpest of them all so that she wouldnât be eaten alive. To instill fear in the members of the Kinoshita-gumi was no easy task, but it was one Xiu accomplished, even at the tender age of fifteen.
 There were bright spots. It was around the same time that Min Hye passed that she entered into a relationship with Kage, an orphan that the oyabun had taken in as a favor to the boyâs late parents. Kage and her only laughed together when they were less than sober, and more often than not, she found herself angry at him too. Argue, get blitzed, fuck, make up â rinse and repeat. He left bruises and scars on her, mentally and physically. And while her heart was getting broken every other day, there was still another presence that existed within the compound that offered some strange kind of comfort.Â
 Feng. Feng, the boy with no father and a mother that passed him off so that she could survive. He wasnât technically an orphan, but he was still no better than them. Feng was a couple of years older than Xiu and her friendliest rival. Where she was silence, shadows, quick and quiet, he was used for intimidation. He towered, lean and muscular and athletic, with sunset eyes that could look so wicked but could also look so soft, when he thought other people didnât notice the way that he looked at the daughter of the oyabun. Heâd liked her since they were little children, had even once been friends with Kage until the relationship between him and Xiu destroyed it into nothing but bitter hatred.Â
 But the thing about Feng is that, despite his dislike of Kage and the rivalry between him and Xiu, is that they were⊠alike, in a lot of ways. He had that same dark humor as her mother and a smile that made Xiu feel warm in ways Kage could never make her feel. When it was just the two of them, there were many times where it was a time filled with laughter, completely sober. He could make her laugh until her sides hurt and she was doubled over. With Feng, Xiu felt an electricity that sparked her back to life. Their relationship was complicated, this much was true⊠But he protected her. He took care of a girl who staunchly refused to let anyone do that job, in his own ways. And one of those ways was getting her to laugh, to bring light back into jade eyes that had been so dim for so very long.
(( Thank you for the ask that you sent in a million years ago, @captaingiddyblack! What are timely responses! I have no idea! ))
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
stormborns
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
