[ravynisblue]

Hello loves~ ♡

Welcome to my little online archive: a place where I let my daydreams come true.

You can call me Ravyn. I write mostly self-indulgent fanfics filled with dark fantasy, quiet comfort, and comedy (ofc).

You can find me on: @ravynisblue and @ravynisyew

I’ve also started reposting my finished works on AO3: @ravynyewisblue

Any kind of trace means the world to me, so please don’t be shy to interact with me, I dont bite!

Stay a while, yeah? 🌙

[ravynisblue]

ur dedication in writing all these fics make me want to continue writing ㅠㅠㅠ

i was srsly debating if i should stop writing but you made me continue 🙏🙏 sending kisses and huggggsssss

- ☄️

Awh arent you a sweet one 🥺❤️ honestly, i keep writing stuff i wanna read. And i daydream a lot, like A LOT. So i need to let it go by writing it down.

Im sooooo happy to inspire you to keep goinggg. But please be gentle with yourself, fallen meteor anon ♡♡♡♡

[ravynisblue]

I LOVE MOTHER AND MISFITS SO MUCHH !!

Omg THANK YOU SO MUCHHH ANON WHOEVER YOU ARE MAY YOUR BED SOFT AND YOUR BLANKET WARM AND YOUR PILLOW COLD ♡♡♡♡

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 20

The interrogation room was offensively dark, with a beam of harsh fluorescent light from the center of the ceiling casting pale light onto their skin. Liriope sat still at the metal table, making the detectives across from her increasingly uncomfortable.

She sat still in her pale-yellow house blouse and quiet exhaustion, one arm resting neatly on the table. Her IV was still attached. Not only was the liquid still halfway empty, but she had deliberately worn it as a calm statement that her innocent compromise wasn't something to take for granted, and unless the Den Haag Police Department had suddenly acquired strong evidence of her relation to the case overnight, they should quickly leave her alone.

Across from her, Detective van Doren had been trying for fifteen minutes to provoke something resembling fear, guilt, or any slip in her composure. Unfortunately for him, he hadn't had enough time to know that Liriope had always been richer, smarter, and more patient than him.

“We had evidence that you were present at the mayor’s charity ball two nights ago.”

“Yes.”

“And there was an attempted theft involving the restricted archive system room.”

“Yes.”

“And strangely, several unusual security failures occurred during the event.”

“So?”

He folded his hands like he had discovered a strategy.

“Do you not find that suspicious?”

Liriope took one slow sip of the tea they had offered her in a paper cup and regretted it immediately. Terrible tea. Criminal, honestly.

“I find your tea suspicious,” she said. “The rest is merely disappointing.”

The younger detective at the side visibly tried not to laugh. Van Doren looked like several gears in his head were being forced to rotate in real time.

“You are being unusually calm for someone under investigation.”

“Calm, you said. Do you possess no eyes, Detective? I am tired,” Liriope replied, shaking the tubes sticking to her left arm to make her point. “Everything is either tax fraud or disappointment. This barely qualifies as a Tuesday.”

Silence. She let it sit there.

That was the game she had been playing for a while. At her father’s dining table, in her late husband’s study — something she had mastered along the way because those men said she needed to weaponize her feminine weakness. The game of cooperation without surrender, calm without weakness. She would let them ask, lead them in a circle, let them think they were slowly pushing her toward a confession, when in reality they were simply wasting government funding.

Though she usually hated using her health as leverage, the IV and the visible exhaustion certainly helped. Let them feel guilty on their own. It was more efficient.

Twenty minutes passed like that. Questions. Answers. Polite warfare.

Then the door opened. Mr. Ikeda stepped inside first, immaculate as always, followed by her lawyer, who looked like a man already billing by the minute. Liriope looked up. The lawyer should have been enough to attend the interrogation. Mr. Ikeda’s presence was its own anomaly.

“Excuse us,” her lawyer said smoothly, already stepping forward. “My client requires a private moment.”

Van Doren sighed through his entire bloodline but waved his permission as the detectives stepped out. The second the door shut, Liriope looked at Mr. Ikeda.

“Which one?”

Of course, the head butler was here because it was one of her children; nothing else would have brought Mr. Ikeda out of the house and straight to a police station. The old man adjusted his glasses.

“Master Fuma collapsed this morning, right after Madam left.”

The world narrowed into the memory of breakfast. The warm sunlight. Taki smiling sheepishly after receiving her jam. Nicholas being irritated. Maki throwing emotional bombs everywhere. K looking like he wanted to die from embarrassment. Their first calm morning, where no one was pretending too hard. Where, for once, they had looked like a family instead of survivors.

“He had a seizure,” Mr. Ikeda continued carefully. “Dr. Junkichi is with him now. The masters believe it is related to the excessive use of his ability.”

No one in the room spoke. They both waited for her reaction. Liriope stared at the table, at the reflection of the fluorescent light on the cold metal that suddenly felt like it was mocking her for being here instead of beside her children. Remembering how Fuma looked that morning, she hadn't noticed anything wrong. He was as calm as ever.

The next second, she stood up, the metal chair moving back with one sharp sound.

The lawyer blinked. “Madam—”

“I am done here.”

Her voice had changed. Gone was the careful patience. Gone was the polite game. What remained was cold and sharp enough to draw blood. She removed the IV herself, ignoring the sting, and set it neatly on the table like an insult. Then the detectives returned into an entirely different room, finding Liriope already standing waiting for them, coat in hand, expression cold and tense.

Detective van Doren stopped. Something in his instincts told him not to provoke her any longer, which also meant he had lost an opportunity to make her crack.

“One of my sons is sick,” she said. “I am leaving now.”

He frowned.

“…I’m sorry, Madam. I was not aware you had a son.”

Liriope looked at him like she was deciding whether he deserved oxygen, irritation already creasing her brows.

“I do, in fact,” she said. “And I need you to let me go.”

The younger detective wisely took one step backward. Van Doren, unfortunately, still believed in procedure.

“We still require your cooperation—”

“I have been cooperative.”

“Yes, but until this investigation concludes—”

“No.”

She stepped closer.

“I have been very cooperative with the Den Haag Police Department for years, officer.” Her gaze flicked down to find the name tag on his chest but found nothing before dragging her gaze back up to his eyes.

“I came here ill. I sat here politely. I answered your tedious questions. I allowed you the illusion that this was a discussion.”

Then, from her sleeve, with terrifying calm, she pulled a small decorative knife for opening letters. Silver flashed once under the fluorescent light. The room stopped breathing. She placed it on the table between them with a soft click.

A warning.

Paperwork.

Van Doren stared at it.

“…What is this supposed to mean, Madam?”

Liriope tilted her head slightly.

“Whatever meaning you choose to give it, officer. It can be a mere token. A threat. A reminder. You decide.”

His throat moved. She leaned in just enough to invade his personal space.

“But you need to let me go this once,” she said softly, venom smooth on her tongue, “before you regret it.”

The younger detective looked like he was reconsidering every life choice that had led him here. Van Doren swallowed.

“…Alright, Madam.”

Good choice.

“We will call you back within twenty-four hours. As of now, you have not yet been proven innocent.”

Liriope picked up her coat. Her disgust was still elegant. She looked him directly in the eye.

“Fuck you,” she said. “Because you cannot prove me guilty either.”

Then she turned and walked out with no hesitation, no apology, just straight home.

To her son.

They did not know what they were expecting because the second Liriope’s figure appeared in the doorway of the medical wing, the entire room exhaled like someone had finally allowed oxygen back into the building.

The room itself was too white, too sterile, too bright, too exposed. It smelled like antiseptic and medicine and worry that had been sitting there too long. Machines hummed softly in the background. Curtains hung half-drawn, and in the middle of it all lay two disasters: Fuma and, somehow, Nicholas.

Apparently, one crazy act of necromancy had taken months off Nicholas’s life expectancy, which he had never told them as a simple disclaimer, and maybe the only reason he had managed to attend breakfast at all was because hunger had briefly overpowered medical science.

So now Nicholas was also in bed.

Though unlike Fuma, who looked pale and feverish and genuinely concerning, Nicholas looked like a man enjoying the opportunity to be horizontal. One ankle was sticking rebelliously out of the blanket. Soft snores escaped him with insulting peace. He looked less like a patient and more like a hibernating big cat.

Fuma was worse. He lay unconscious, too still, like a mannequin covered in sweat.

Dr. Junkichi had said the fever had not gone down, but at least it had not spiked either. No more seizures. For now, they only had to watch. Monitor. Wait. Which was the world’s worst task possible for people who loved you too loudly to wait.

Yuma, Taki, Maki, and Harua had all clearly cried again. Their eyes were swollen for the second time that morning, which honestly felt excessive, but emotionally, though? Understandable.

Jo and EJ did not look much better. Their mouths were set too tight, their shoulders too tense. Even now, the moment they saw her, something in both of them visibly shook.

K, who had been standing near the window like he had been personally appointed Head of Family Crisis Management against his will, finally let out one long breath through his nose. Like he had only been pretending to be the responsible eldest until she came back and could take the job from him again.

He pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to hurt, forcing whatever was threatening to become tears back where it belonged. Absolutely not. Not again today. Not in front of these mockers.

Liriope stepped inside, and before she could even properly cross the room, Jo had already planted himself at her side with the determined energy of someone escorting a very stubborn royal hostage, one hand hovering near her arm as if she might collapse at any time.

Honestly offensive. Liriope looked at him, ready to ask him to let her go, but as Jo looked back, looking extremely scared and sad like a wet dog, she chose to say nothing and took his forearm with quiet acceptance, letting him guide her forward anyway. It seemed like everyone had decided she was ninety years old rather than twenty-four.

She walked straight to Fuma’s bedside. She stood there for a moment, just looking at him.

His face was too pale. His breathing was steady now, but too warm, too heavy with fever. His usually perfect composure had been replaced by the vulnerable unfairness of sleep, and suddenly he looked younger. Smaller somehow. Not the person everyone leaned on, just a boy who had pushed himself too far and finally paid for it.

Liriope reached down and placed the back of her hand gently against his cheek. Definitely still burning, but not worse. Only then did something in her shoulders loosen. She did not even glance at Nicholas. From the position of his body alone, she could tell he was not dying. Half his leg was outside the blanket, and the soft snoring coming from his side of the room was deeply disrespectful for someone supposedly recovering from dark magic.

He was fine. Annoyingly so.

Her gaze moved back to the others as she finally, properly looked at them. The swollen eyes, the trembling mouths, the way all of them were standing too close, like no one wanted to be left alone with their own thoughts. Liriope frowned.

“Why do you all look so miserable?”

Her voice was softer than the question deserved. Yuma, sitting in the chair beside Fuma’s bed, looked up at her like a deeply offended cat. He was pouting. His eyes were wide and red, his brows taut together, definitely holding another batch of tears.

Liriope sighed softly. Then her instinct moved faster than thought as her hand came down and brushed gently through his hair. Yuma let out a heavier exhale at the touch; it was audible. His brows drew even tighter together, making Liriope immediately flinch.

Had she done something wrong?

She pulled her hand back at once, genuinely confused, thinking Yuma might hate it. Instead, EJ walked toward her, looking as tired as everyone else. He stopped in front of her, eyes scanning her from head to toe. Liriope found it uncomfortable, feeling scrutinized under his gaze. Instinctively, she straightened her posture, but before she could say anything, with the same serious face one might use to deliver a national tragedy, EJ said,

“You should also be in bed.”

Liriope blinked.

EJ crossed his arms. “You are also sick.”

He was pouting too. It took her aback. Why were they pouting? Why was everyone in this room looking at her like she had personally emotionally abandoned them?

She looked from EJ to Yuma. To Harua, who still looked one inconvenience away from crying again. To Maki, whose face was suspiciously wet for someone pretending otherwise. To Taki, hovering like a worried emotional support pup. To Jo, still standing too close. To K, who had suddenly found the ceiling fascinating.

And for the first time in a very long time, Liriope looked genuinely confused.

“…Have you all unionized against me?”

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn

[ravynisyew]

PSPSPS (and other ways to win a heart)💗😺

Asakura Jo x Catshifter!OC

Jo had only just stepped down from the carriage when he decided something was deeply wrong with this town.

It had been a year since he left.

A full year spent in the quiet countryside, where the mornings were slow, the air smelled like damp earth, and his grandmother called his name like it was precious. She had slipped on the muddy road last winter, her hip never quite the same after. Jo had stayed, cooked, cleaned, walked her to the garden when she could manage it, listened to her stories even when she repeated them.

A year until she recovered.

Apparently, a year was also long enough for every bachelor his age to lose what little sense they had left. Because the very moment his boots touched the ground at the outskirts of town, a man launched himself into the river. Not slipped, not even tripped. Launched straight to the water.

Jo blinked in surprise, one hand covering his gaping mouth while another hand still holding the strap of his bag, as water splashed violently against the banks. For a second, he thought it might’ve been an accident until he saw a flash of white, small and fast, darted past the man just before it jumped and gone.

Jo stepped closer, peering down at the stream just as a drenched blonde head broke the surface with a gasp. “Robert?” Jo called, brows knitting together. “You okay?”

Robert shoved wet hair out of his face, eyes sharp and irritated, water dripping from his chin as he glared up at him like it is Jo who had personally pushed him in.

“Fuck off.”

Jo blinked. Well, that was new. He crouched slightly at the edge of the stream anyway, tilting his head.

“You just jumped to the river.”

“I slipped.”

“You jumped.”

“I said I slipped!”

“…alright.”

There was a beat as Jo watched Robert looking extra annoyed sitting in the shallow water. The sound of water rushing past filled the space between them. Jo glanced around, scanning the bushes, the muddy road, the empty stretch of path. For the briefest moment, something white flickered between the bushes again.

Small. Light on its feet. Gone before he could focus.

“…what were you chasing?” Jo asked, quieter now. Robert followed his gaze, jaw tightening. “You didn’t see it?”

“I saw something.”

A pause.

Then, like it physically pained him to admit it, Robert muttered, “It’s a cat.”

Jo blinked. “…a cat?.”

“Yes, a cat,” Robert snapped, dragging himself toward the bank with far less dignity than he probably intended. “White fur. Blue eyes. Fast as hell. And—” he huffed, frustrated, “—it has a key.”

Jo stared at him.

“A key.”

“Yes.”

"...someone put a house key on a cat?"

Robert shot him a look that suggested he was seconds away from committing another act of questionable decision-making. “You’ve been gone a year, haven’t you?”

“…I have,” Jo said slowly, reaching his hand to help Robert get up. “That explains it.” Robert took his hand and hauled himself out of the stream with a wet grunt, boots squelching unpleasantly as he stood.

“There’s this woman announced she’ll only marry the man who can open her front door with that key.”

Jo processed that. "She's... locked inside?" Jo asked, genuine concern crossing his face. Meanwhile Robert just stares at him like you've been gone too long.

"No," Robert groaned. "She lives there just fine. It's just her condition. If you want to court her, you have to enter through the front door using the key around that cat's neck."

Then he processed it again. “…and the key is on a cat.”

“Yes.”

“And your solution…” Jo gestured vaguely to the river, “…was to drown yourself?”

“I was catching the little devil! I almost had it.”

“I’m sorry to say this but, you were nowhere near it.”

“I was close.”

Jo looked at him, contemplating if his friend has always been so competitive. Then glanced once more toward the trees where the white blur had disappeared.

“It seems the conditions only make everyone’s on edge, its poking right on their ego you know.”

“you too.” Jo pointed.

“well, she’s a real fine woman”

“… so you’re all chasing it?”

“Everyone is,” Robert said, already wringing water from his sleeves. “You should too. Some idiots have wagered half their annual income on catching that little beast." Robert definitely sounds like someone who also put money in.

Jo didn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifted back to the path, to the quiet rustle of leaves, to the place where that small white figure had vanished like it had never been there at all.

A cat with blue eyes who possessed a key.

“I’m okay,” Jo murmured. "...Poor thing."

Robert frowned.

"Poor thing?"

"It doesn't even know why everyone's chasing it."

“… You’re impossible.”

Not chasing it sounded like a much better idea.

In the span of a week, Jo witnessed enough ridiculousness to conclude that the bachelors of this town had collectively lost their minds.

He had never imagined there were so many ways for a grown man to humiliate himself over a ball of fur. Ironically, Jo hadn't even seen the notorious woman nor the elusive cat. He had, however, seen Lucas attempt to leap across two rooftops.

It ended exactly as one would expect.

Lucas missed the landing entirely and disappeared with a magnificent crash, landing face-first into the large rubbish bin behind the baker's shop. Jo, on his way home with a basket full of vegetables balanced on one arm, could only wince.

"...Ouch."

The lid of the bin rattled before Lucas emerged, covered in cabbage leaves and what Jo sincerely hoped was yesterday's bread instead of something far worse. The two made eye contact, Lucas glared at him as though Jo himself had moved the roof.

"...I'm just buying potatoes," Jo muttered before quietly continuing on his way.

Another day, Jo had to save Ethan from becoming roadkill. The man had thrown himself directly in front of a moving horse carriage with absolutely no warning.

"There!" Ethan shouted. "It's the cat!"

Jo reacted before thinking, grabbing the back of Ethan's collar and yanking him backwards just as the horses thundered past. The coachman yelled several words Jo's grandmother would've washed his mouth with soap for.

"You could've died!" Jo exclaimed.

"I almost caught her!"

"You almost became part of the road!"

Instead of gratitude, Ethan shoved him away and sprinted after another flash of white making Jo stumbled backward. The paper bag he'd been carrying burst open on impact. Oranges rolled merrily across the cobbled street.

"..."

Jo sighed and crouched to gather them one by one.

"Sorry," he apologized to the oranges, as though they had suffered a personal inconvenience.

As he reached for the last one, he felt it someone was watching him. Jo looked up and at the mouth of a narrow alley, half-hidden behind the shade of the brick wall, sat a cat.

White.

Not merely white, but impossibly so, as though every strand of fur had been spun from fresh snow instead of surviving muddy streets after days of rain. A pair of bright blue eyes regarded him without blinking. Pink nose, pink ears. Even the tiny glimpse of its tongue as it gave a slow, deliberate lick over one paw was pink.

Jo forgot the orange in his hand.

What a pretty cat.

Just as Jo finished gathering the last orange, he looked back toward the alley and found the cat was gone. Not a strand of white fur remained. He tucked the oranges back into the paper bag and continued home. This town had truly lost its collective mind all over a cat.

Poor thing.

The next morning was peaceful.

Jo settled by the large window on the second floor with a sketchbook resting on his knees. Sunlight spilled across the wooden floorboards while the town slowly woke below him. He absentmindedly sketched the rooftops he'd missed during his year away, occasionally pausing to erase a crooked chimney or redraw a passing pigeon.

Then came the shouting from below.

"There!"

"Don't let it get away!"

Jo looked down, a familiar streak of white darted across the street below. The cat. Behind it came nearly a dozen men running and yelling. One vaulted over a market stall. Another nearly knocked over an old woman carrying bread.

Someone threw a net, it sailed wide, tangling itself around a fruit stand instead.

"What are they doing...?" Jo whispered.

The cat squeezed beneath a wooden cart just as another man hurled a small stone. It struck the cobblestones with a sharp crack only inches from the cat's hind legs.

Jo froze.

Another stone flew.

Then another.

The cat zigzagged desperately through the street, ears flattened, body pressed low as it searched for somewhere, anywhere to escape. Someone laughed. Someone else shouted, "Corner it!"

"They're going to hurt it."

His grip tightened around the charcoal stick in his hand. It wasn't a game anymore, it wasn't even a competition. It was a dozen grown men chasing a frightened little creature through the middle of town as though its terror meant nothing.

Jo pushed himself to his feet before he'd even realized he'd made the decision.

"Oh, you poor thing..."

He was about to run downstairs when he saw the cat darted to another alleyway and vanished, leaving the group confused.

“smart cat”

That night, Jo felt like a criminal at the dinner table.

His mother had gone all out, there was an entire roasted turkey sitting at the center, glistening and fragrant, because in her eyes, her son had come back thinner than he should be.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Jo insisted, shaking his head quickly. “It’s just… a growth spurt.”

“In your twenty-two years of life?” she shot back immediately. “You made that up.”

Before he could defend himself, she placed a whole turkey leg onto his plate, leaving none for his father. The old man didn’t even protest. He simply watched Jo with quiet fondness, as if seeing him eat was enough.

And that only made Jo feel worse.

Because the moment his mother turned her attention to his father, Jo carefully slid the turkey leg onto a napkin, wrapped it, and hid it beneath his sleeve.

Like a criminal.

All for a certain white, beautiful, poor cat.

After dinner, Jo excused himself for some “fresh air.”

His mother didn’t question it, didn’t even blink when she noticed the familiar leather bag slung over his shoulder as he stepped out of the house.

The town had already quieted. Without much oil or wax to spare, people ended their days as soon as the sun set. Streets that were lively in the morning now lay dim and still, shadows stretching long between buildings.

Jo lit the small lighter he’d received as a birthday gift last year. A soft flicker of flame enough to guide his steps as he wandered through narrow alleyways, posture slightly hunched, peering into every dark corner like he was searching for something precious.

Or someone.

“pspsps…”

His voice was soft, careful, in case she was near.

"...Kitty?"

Only silence answered.

"...Pspsps..."

He checked beneath carts, behind barrels, near the bakery. He went as far as to the bridge where Robert had so spectacularly failed yesterday.

He walked for nearly an hour, only to find nothing. Jo slowed to a stop, exhaling softly. Maybe that was for the best, the poor thing had been chased all day he almost hoped it had found somewhere safe to hide.

Still…

He adjusted the strap of his bag. He had brought food. Water. He just… wanted to make sure the cat was okay.

“…what kind of owner even does that?” he muttered under his breath. “Using a cat like that…"

Jo clicked his tongue in quiet disapproval as he turned the corner toward home,

“Meow.”

Jo nearly jumped out of his skin.

He looked up. Perched on the edge of the candlemaker's roof sat a familiar white silhouette, tail wrapped neatly around dainty paws. Blue eyes gleamed beneath the moonlight.

"...There you are."

“…that’s dangerous,” Jo said immediately, voice low. “Hey—don’t move. Stay there.”

The cat blinked at him and miraculously stayed on its spot.

Jo quickly scanned the area before spotting a stack of wooden crates behind the shop. Grateful for his height, he climbed up with relative ease, pulling himself onto the roof with a quiet grunt. When he turned, the cat was still there waiting making his chest tighten. Jo stopped several feet away.

"...Hi."

"..."

"...Pspsps."

One of the cat's ears twitched.

“…come here,” he murmured softly, crouching a little. “pspsps…”. He didn’t dare to reach and the cat… came. “Good kitty,” Jo breathed, almost in awe.

Careful not to startle it, he slipped his bag off his shoulder and pulled out the neatly wrapped napkin. He unwrapped it slowly revealing the turkey leg, shredding the meat into smaller pieces with his fingers before placing it down on the napkin.

“I brought you dinner,” he said softly. “Are you hungry?”

Next came the flask. He poured water into a small tin cup and set it beside the food. Only when everything was ready did Jo step back to give the cat some space.

“Go on,” he said, settling himself a few steps away. “I won’t come any closer to bother you.”

The cat didn't move first, just watched him in silence. Jo waited as the moon climbed higher, sensing no danger from him, slowly, the cat stepped forward. Jo held his breath as it sniffed his offering and then looked at Jo.

"Take your time" Jo whispered, then the cat began to eat. Relief washed over him so quickly it almost made him laugh. "There you go. Oh… you eat so well,” he cooed under his breath, watching her carefully. A soft purr followed. Jo visibly melted.

The moonlight caught in her fur, turning it almost silver, glowing softly against the dark rooftop. Her blue eyes flickered every now and then in his direction, alert but no longer afraid. They sat like that for a while.

“…did your owner feed you today?” Jo murmured after a moment, voice gentle. “It must be hard, being chased around all day…”

The cat paused mid-bite, blue orbs the color of sky looked up at him.

“…she sounds a little cruel, don’t you think? Your owner really shouldnt let people do that.” the purr stopped and the slit in the cat's eyes widened, stared directly into his soul.

“Ah…sorry,” he said quickly, raising both hands in surrender. “I talked badly about your owner. My mistake. I won’t do it again. Promise.”

The cat held his gaze for one more second before returned to eating. Jo exhaled, smoothly averted a crisis. He watched the cat for another moment, soft smile lingering, on his face.

Then blinked.

Wait.

Then his eyes drifted toward the space between the cat's hind legs. Jo leaned forward, squinting just a little.

"...Huh."

There was... an alarming lack of certain organs.

“You’re a girl?!”

The cat slowly lifted her head and gave him the most unimpressed, deadly stare he had ever seen in his life.

“…sorry.”

The following days settled into an almost normal routine, save for Jo's constant search for a particular white cat he had somehow become utterly taken with. He wasn't even looking for the key everyone kept talking about. In fact, Jo had yet to notice whether there truly was one hanging around her neck. He simply wanted to pet the beautiful white cat.

...And, if possible, save her from the endless chase.

Daytime, however, made both goals nearly impossible. The moment the cat appeared, there would always be a group of young men charging after her as though tomorrow would never come. And with each passing day, the pursuit grew more ruthless. People began laying traps. Jo could no longer believe this was about winning a lady's heart.

It was brutal.

Nets hung between narrow alleyways.

Baskets were propped up with sticks and bait.

Ropes stretched carelessly across busy paths.

Even iron traps appeared in the fields beyond town.

Jo stopped in front of one, staring at the jagged metal teeth in disbelief.

"...That's excessive."

It wasn't even hidden particularly well. Which was perhaps why Old Sally found it first.

The elderly shepherd wandered straight into the trap on his way home, his poor eyesight never catching the metal teeth concealed beneath the grass.

The sharp snap echoed across the field. By the time Jo reached him, several townsfolk had already forced the trap open. Old Sally escaped with nothing worse than a badly sprained ankle and a string of colorful curses directed at whichever fool had left the trap there.

After helping the old man onto his cart, Jo found himself lingering beside the abandoned contraption.

Cruel.

His eyes traced the sharp iron teeth. Unbidden, an image formed in his mind. Soft white fur caught between the metal. Bright blue eyes wide with fear. Snow-white fur slowly stained crimson. The thought alone made his stomach twist.

"...Poor thing."

As Jo walked home that evening, another realization quietly settled in. This whole chaotic chase had become something else entirely. No one seemed interested in winning the lady's heart anymore. It had become a contest. A matter of pride. The woman had become the prize.

The cat...

Merely the obstacle.

And everyone was so determined to win that they'd forgotten there was a living creature caught in the middle of it all.

Once again, Jo smuggled his dinner into his leather satchel. By now the poor thing permanently smelled of roasted meat and grease. He had long since given up storing his sketchbook inside without wrapping it in cloth first. Hopefully the smell would fade, well probably not.

He tucked in a small tin of sardines, a few scraps of roasted chicken he'd managed to save from dinner, and quietly borrowed a clean dish towel from the kitchen.

After bidding his parents goodnight, he waited until the house fell silent before slipping out through the back door. Thus began his newest evening routine. Back slightly hunched, hands tucked into his coat pockets against the cool night air, Jo wandered the sleeping town.

"Pspspsps..."

Silence.

"Kitty..."

He peeked beneath carts.

"Pspspsps..."

Around stone walls.

"...Pretty kitty?"

Behind market stalls, nothing.

Night after night, he'd found himself doing exactly this. Tonight, however, unease settled heavily in his chest. Dark clouds had swallowed most of the moon, leaving only the occasional sliver of silver light to spill across the streets.

Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled. Rain was coming.

Jo glanced toward the rooftops. "I hope you've found somewhere dry..."

The thought bothered him more than he cared to admit. For all the stories surrounding the mysterious woman, Jo rarely saw the cat disappear into any particular house once night fell. She simply roamed as though she had nowhere to return to.

"...Poor thing."

"Kitty..." he called again, softer this time. "Pspspsps... where are you?"

A faint clatter echoed from a narrow alley as Jo turned. Two bright blue eyes stared back at him.

Then, without a sound, the white cat stepped gracefully from the shadows. Even beneath the dim moonlight, her fur seemed to glow. She sat perfectly still, looking him over from head to toe making Jo shifted awkwardly beneath the scrutiny.

"...Hello."

The cat blinked.

"I brought dinner again."

Slowly, carefully, Jo crouched and reached into his satchel. But the moment he took a step forward, the cat rose.

"...Oh."

She turned away.

Jo's shoulders drooped, maybe his presence is unwanted. Then, after only a few paces, she stopped and glanced over one shoulder.

Waiting.

"..."

"...Do you want me to follow you?"

The cat flicked her tail once, Jo considered it as a yes.

"...Okay."

He followed several careful steps behind, allowing the cat to set the pace. Through two narrow lanes, across the quiet street, past the clockmaker's garden, he followed solemnly until she hopped effortlessly over a familiar wooden fence.

"...Wait."

He climbed over after her.

"...This is my house."

The cat was already waiting beside an old rain barrel in the corner of the backyard.

"...You know where I live?"

She merely sat, watching with her stunning blue eyes. Jo laughed under his breath. "Well... I suppose that answers my question."

He settled onto the grass beside the barrel and opened his satchel.

"I brought sardines."

The small tin popped open with a metallic click. Jo carefully arranged the fish onto a little ceramic plate he'd borrowed from the kitchen. A little bit too fancy to feed a stray cat, but this gorgeous cat deserved it, he said.

"There."

The cat, meanwhile, had begun meticulously licking one pristine white paw, behaving as though she'd all the time in the world.

Clearly...

She was waiting for her meal to be served properly.

The distant rumble of thunder rolled across the sky once more, closer this time. The wind picked up, carrying with it the cool scent of wet earth long before the first drop of rain had fallen.

"It'll be pouring soon."

Jo glanced toward the heavy clouds overhead before looking back at the white cat. She was still happily occupied with the sardines. He hesitated for a second, then, slowly, he reached out. His fingertips brushed the top of her head, a barely there touch. Gentle enough that she could move away whenever she pleased.

Jo smiled to himself. "...You're getting used to me."

His hand lingered, carefully smoothing the impossibly soft fur between her ears. It was every bit as fluffy as he'd imagined, maybe even softer.

"If you don't have somewhere to stay tonight..." He scratched lightly beneath one ear. "...my room is warm."

The cat offered no response. She simply continued devouring the sardines with an enthusiasm entirely unbecoming of the graceful creature she appeared to be.

Still Jo watched, utterly delighted.

"Goodness."

She finished every last morsel. Then, began meticulously licking one paw after another despite the unmistakable sheen of fish oil coating her nose. Jo couldn't help himself as a laugh escaped him.

"You know..." The cat looked up. "You clean yourself very thoroughly for someone whose entire face is still covered in sardine."

She blinked.

"...Smart girl."

The cat continued washing herself as though refusing to acknowledge the slander.

Another rumble in the sky immediately followed by the first cold raindrop landed squarely on Jo's cheek.

"...Oh."

Without thinking, Jo scooped the cat into his arms.

"Sorry!"

He tucked her safely against his chest beneath his coat just as the rain began to pour.

"Let's get you inside!"

The world dissolved into sheets of rain. Jo sprinted across the backyard, nearly slipping on the wet grass before bursting through the back door, racing up the stairs two at a time. Only once he'd reached the safety of his bedroom did he stop.

"...Phew." He carefully set the cat down in the middle of his bed. "That was close."

Silence answered him. The cat hadn't moved an inch. She sat perfectly upright atop his quilt, completely motionless. Her bright blue eyes were impossibly wide stared at him.

Frozen.

Jo blinked.

"..."

"...Did..."

His smile slowly disappeared.

"...I'm sorry."

"...Did I cross the line?"

I am dumbfounded.

Starstruck.

Flabbergasted.

Shell-shocked.

Whatever word one wished to use, none of them felt sufficient to describe the current state of my brain.

I had just been...

Picked up.

By a man.

A man.

I swear upon every ancestor before me, the string of profanities currently marching through my head would make even drunken sailors gasp in admiration.

That wasn't even the worst part. I had been enjoying my dinner.

That's right.

Dinner.

Because this absurdly lanky man had, for the past week, developed the peculiar habit of sneaking food out of his own house every evening just to feed me. And the meals were always delicious. I wondered if he cooked them himself.

...No.

Focus.

That was not the point.

HE PICKED ME UP.

Without warning.

Without permission.

Without even the slightest hint of malicious intent, which somehow made it infinitely worse because now I couldn't even justify scratching him.

Then he,

HE

Ran.

Clutching me against his chest as though I have no saying in this, straight into his house.

Straight up the stairs.

Straight into

His.

Bedroom.

...

How dare.

How utterly scandalous.

Had anyone seen us?

If my ancestors from above had happened to see this exact moment, I'd have to fake my own death and met them instead.

...

...

Although...

His coat was warm.

Ridiculously warm that the rain hadn't touched me once. He even tucked me beneath his chin to shield my ears from the wind.

...

...

No.

No, absolutely not.

I refuse.

I refuse to acknowledge that I may have enjoyed being carried.

Or that the rhythmic thump of his heartbeat had been...

Comforting.

...

I—

What?

No.

Absolutely not.

I am no woman tamed by any man.

I am a respected lady.

The most sought-after woman in this ridiculous town.

I do not melt because a gentle idiot wrapped me in his coat like I was his precious.

...

...

His…

...

WHAT?!

Author's note: This fic is for my birthday boy, Jyoo, &TEAM’s one and only cat parent. I saw this prompt on Instagram and immediately knew I had to write it for him.

I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know what you think ♡

[ravynisblue]

So... i might have giggling and kicking my feet writing this...

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 19

Sunlight spilled through the tall dining room windows in warm gold, far too peaceful for a house that had hosted necromancy less than twelve hours ago. The garden outside looked offensively beautiful. Birds were singing freely, unaware of spiritual crimes. Somewhere in the distance, a fountain splashed away, continued its rich-people nonsense.

Breakfast had been served. Which, in this house, ever since the arrival of nine always-hungry boys, meant there was enough food to cater a small royal wedding. Fresh rice, very important for Jo’s sanity. Warm soup still steaming, because Harua needed it to survive apparently. Fish. Fruit. Toast, which Taki kept stealing like bread was a limited-time offer. Tea strong enough to fix poor decisions. Coffee strong enough to create new ones.

For now, at least, no one was actively fighting.

Well. Physically.

K sat in heavy silence, still being psychologically assaulted by the memory of his own emotional breakdown. Across from him, Maki kept making eye contact and smiling like he personally knew secrets from God.

K wanted him dead.

Nicholas, meanwhile, was still mourning the fact that he had missed K’s collapse and had spent the last ten minutes aggressively interrogating the only available witnesses, which, fortunately for everyone involved—but unfortunately for the ones beside him, EJ and Yuma,

“Start from the beginning,” Nicholas demanded, pointing with a piece of toast like a lawyer presenting evidence. “What was the exact crying timeline?”

“There were stages before he collapsed,” Yuma said helpfully.

“There were not stages.”

“There were definitely emotional stages,” EJ corrected.

“I hate all of you.”

“Aawwh,” Harua said mockingly, reaching for his tea.

Jo, thankfully, had recovered enough facial dignity to exist in public again after a long cold morning shower, though K still occasionally looked at him, remembered the swollen tragedy from earlier, and had to immediately look away before laughter ruined breakfast again.

Taki, currently sitting too close to Liriope, was explaining why jam should legally count as a form of emotional support.

“It improves my psychological strength,” he said seriously.

Liriope, seated at the head of the table with perfect posture and an IV still attached to her arm like elegance itself refused weakness, turned one page of the newspaper and replied without looking up.

“Good for you.”

“Thank you.”

She quietly pushed her own jar of jam toward him. Taki took it with glittering eyes like he had just been handed custody of happiness.

It was absurdly normal.

No one said it aloud, but everyone felt it, that strange, fragile warmth that came after surviving something awful together. The kind that settled quietly in a room and made people sit closer without noticing. The kind that made breakfast feel less like survival and more like belonging.

Even K noticed it. Which was exactly why he was immediately suspicious. Peace in this family usually meant the universe was loading a weapon. And right on cue, Mr. Ikeda entered the dining room. But this time, he was not carrying tea. That alone made everyone look up. His expression remained professionally calm, but there was something in his tight grip that quickly made the room tense.

“Madam,” he said.

Liriope lowered the newspaper.

“There are detectives at the front gate.”

Silence dropped over the entire room, fast and heavy.

Nicholas stopped interrogating. EJ looked at Fuma almost instinctively, like his body had learned to seek Fuma’s reaction before his own. And for once, even Fuma looked caught off guard. His eyes widened slightly. That was enough to make the rest of them uneasy.

Mr. Ikeda was about to continue when Liriope raised one hand, stopping him. No one moved. Maki slowly put down his spoon.

K felt something cold settle in his stomach. “Why would there be detectives here this early in the morning?” he asked.

Liriope did not answer immediately. She simply folded the newspaper and placed it beside her plate. Took one slow sip of tea.

Calm.

Terrifyingly calm.

Then she stood, the IV line shifting with her movement. And suddenly, the sight of it, her still pale, still weak, still recovering, made something ugly rise in the room.

No one liked it. Not after last night. Not after knowing. Not after understanding.

She should have been resting. Instead, detectives were at her door. Nicholas looked offended on a spiritual level.

“That feels illegal.”

“It probably is,” Yuma said.

Before anyone else could speak, Liriope walked around the table and stopped beside K. He looked up just as she reached down and grabbed his shoulder. It was such a small thing, but it silenced every thought in his head.

Her fingers were cold, seeping through the thin fabric. Her voice, when she spoke, was low enough for only him.

“Hide Jo.”

K’s expression changed instantly, understanding the situation in a second. Jo had been the one caught on camera during the attempted heist at the mayor’s ball, that was the truth he already knew. So, the detectives had nothing to do with her for sure. It was they who were the trouble. Jo was the documented proof. And she… she was protecting them first.

K looked up at her, eyes widening with the full weight of it. Whatever she found in his face seemed enough. She gave his shoulder one small squeeze before she let go.

She turned toward the door. “Finish your breakfast.”

“No,” Fuma said immediately.

Everyone turned. He was still sitting, but his entire body had gone tense. His expression was tight that made the word feel bigger than it sounded. Scared. For her.

For a moment, Liriope just looked at them all. At the concern they were trying very hard to disguise as annoyance. At the anger. At the protectiveness. At the quiet panic sitting beneath all of it. And for one brief second, her whole face softened.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but mommy does not need her children’s permission.”

Silence.

She had left them speechless.

By the time anyone recovered enough to react, she was already walking toward the front of the house, with someone pushing her IV stand and all, like a queen going to war. And the moment she disappeared, the room exploded.

“I thought rich people were immune to law,” Maki said, already rolling up his metaphorical sleeves.

The front door had barely closed behind Liriope when Fuma suddenly collapsed. One second he was standing there, still staring at the entrance she had just walked through, his whole body wound too tight with tension. The next second, his knees gave out like someone had cut the strings holding him upright.

He hit the floor hard.

For one full second, nobody moved. Because it did not make sense. Fuma DID NOT fall. Fuma was the one people fell toward, the pillar, the calm one. The one who stood still while everyone else became disasters around him. Fuma was the person-shaped concept of handling things.

And now he was on the floor.

“Fuma?” EJ moved first.

The chair scraped violently against the floor as he lunged forward, dropping to his knees beside him. The rest of the room erupted all at once.

“Fuma—”

“What happened?”

“Why is he falling?!”

“Fuma?!” Yuma’s voice cracked in a way no one had ever heard before.

Maki was already halfway across the room, nearly tripping over Harua in the process. Jo stood so fast his chair fell backward. Taki made one panicked noise like a bird being emotionally attacked and bolted for the door before anyone even told him to.

“I’M GONNA GET DR. JUNKICHI!”

And then Fuma’s body jerked violently.

Everyone froze.

His whole body seized, sharp and uncontrollable and terrifying. His breathing turned uneven. His face had gone pale in seconds, sweat already forming at his temples. For one horrible moment, no one knew what they were looking at. It was like the sight defied all their logic.

“No, no—” EJ grabbed Fuma carefully, trying to keep him from hurting himself against the floor.

“He’s burning up.”

Harua dropped beside him.

“What do you mean burning up?!”

“I mean he has a fever, Harua!”

“That does not explain why he had one in the first place!”

“He’s a person too!” EJ snapped, panic bleeding through his voice now. “Move the chair. Move it, don’t just stand there!”

Jo and Maki moved instantly, shoving furniture away.

Nicholas who had already been pale all morning had gone white. His voice came out thin.

“…he’s been rewinding too much.”

Everyone looked at him.

Nicholas swallowed, refusing to acknowledge the dark beings slowly watching from the corner of the room.

“He’s been using time perception too much. Every time he took a peek at the future. Every time he cheated the timeline before it happened. It must have cost him.”

His hands were shaking now too.

K stared at the chaos. His brain felt like it had stopped functioning because suddenly everything connected in the worst possible way. The impossible timing, the things Fuma somehow knew, the moments he arrived too perfectly. The disasters that had been avoided before anyone else even realized they were disasters.

He had been rewinding.

Again and again and again.

For them. For all of them.

He had known that, but only now did he know the weight of that price. K looked at Fuma shaking on the floor and felt something cold and ugly claw up his throat.

Liriope had just been taken because of their mess. Jo was currently a walking arrest warrant. Nicholas looked half-dead from necromancy. The younger ones were panicking and crying.

Wait.

…is that Maki crying?

Taki came back with Dr. Junkichi, and soon after the seizure was over, Yuma and EJ helped Jo carry Fuma on his back as everyone moved to the medical wing.

What the fuck.

What the actual fuck.

K stood there, useless.

He hated it, he hated that his hands felt empty, hated that there was no enemy to hit, no solution to grab by the throat. Just chaos. Just people he cared about falling apart one by one while he stood there like an idiot wearing glorified expensive trauma.

And him, supposedly the heir, supposedly the eldest one meant to lead, standing there with absolutely no idea what the hell to do.

For the first time in a long time, K felt young.

“You cannot play eldest only when it is convenient.”

Liriope’s voice echoed in his mind, giving him whiplash because she was right. She had always been right.

“Kei!”

Harua’s voice snapped through the spiral like a slap.

K looked up. Harua was already halfway down the hall, glaring at him like he was personally offended by emotional dissociation.

“Are you coming or are you planning to have your crisis here?”

And before K could answer, Harua marched back, grabbed his sleeve, and physically yanked him forward.

“Move,” he snapped.

So K did.

Because apparently, breakdowns would have to wait.

---

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn

Next

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 18

That day started with K deciding that consciousness was a scam.

Morning light was stabbing directly through his eyelids like the sun had taken a personal issue with him. His head hurt. His face felt swollen. His body ached offensively, suggesting either an emotional breakdown or physical violence, and honestly, he was not sure which one had happened. Possibly both.

He tried to roll over and pull the blanket higher. There was no blanket. He reached farther, still half-asleep, blindly grabbing at empty air like a man abandoned by comfort, and found nothing. Offended by this betrayal, K gave up on dignity and let out a long, miserable groan.

“Urgh.”

His eyes felt glued shut. Opening them required effort he did not currently possess. The light was offensively bright. Morning itself felt like a personal attack. Without looking, he found what felt like a body near his feet and softly kicked it.

“Close the curtain,” he whined, his voice rough with sleep and regret.

The body did not respond. He kicked again.

“Jo. If that’s you, I’m demoting you.”

Still nothing. Unhelpful. Disrespectful, even. With the suffering of a man being forced into responsibility against his will, K finally surrendered to consciousness and sat up.

Immediately, he froze.

This was not his bed.

First of all, it was far too large. Second, there was some kind of dramatic lacy canopy above him, like he was a Victorian widow recovering from tuberculosis. Third, why did it smell expensive?

K looked around slowly, with the growing horror of a man reconstructing a crime scene from vibes alone. At his feet was, indeed, Jo, still asleep despite the assault on his dignity. Jo had somehow ended up half-sideways across the bed. The suspiciously soft white blanket K had been looking for was no longer on the bed. It was on the rug, where Harua, Taki, and Maki were sleeping in one deeply tangled pile like emotionally codependent street cats. The blanket covered all three of them badly. Taki had one leg over Harua. Maki was somehow using Harua’s shoulder as a pillow. Harua looked like a man who had accepted death.

On the other side of the bed, EJ was sleeping dangerously close to the edge, one wrong breath away from becoming a floor problem. Farther across the room, Yuma was curled on the rug like a cocktail shrimp abandoned mid-party. Fuma was asleep on the couch in a sitting position, arms folded, his posture still somehow put together even while unconscious, like sleep itself respected him.

And Nicholas? He was at the far end of the second couch, face-down, one arm hanging dramatically like a man who had died beautifully.

K stared at the entire room. Then, with deep spiritual exhaustion, he said aloud,

“…what the fuck.”

Where the fuck was he?

Why was everyone here?

Did someone sedate him and his brothers and arrange them like a modern art installation?

Was this a hostage situation?

Had they died?

Before he could spiral further, the bedroom door opened.

Mr. Ikeda stepped inside carrying a tea tray, looking perfectly composed. Perfect posture. Perfect suit. Perfectly calm smile. As if the room in front of him did not look like the aftermath of either a family bonding exercise or a small cult ritual.

He took one look at K sitting upright in bed, visibly questioning reality, and smiled with divine patience.

“Good morning, Master.”

K looked at him. Looked at the room. Looked back at him.

“…Mr. Ikeda,” he said slowly, “why does this room look like we lost a war in here?”

Mr. Ikeda adjusted his glasses.

“A very emotional evening, sir.”

The dead slowly rose.

One by one, the room returned to life with the sounds of suffering.

Nicholas groaned first from the couch like a Victorian ghost being summoned for a second shift. Yuma rolled off the rug with the elegance of a dropped towel. Maki woke up already complaining, though no one could understand what he was saying because half his face was still buried in Harua’s shoulder. Taki was already sitting up, looking like he was zoning out while internally trying to calm his senses down.

Harua staring at the ceilings looking like he regretted surviving. EJ sat up with the thousand-yard stare of a man who remembered everything and wished he did not. Jo opened his eyes last. And K, who had been waiting for the universe to offer him one act of kindness, saw his face and immediately lost all moral integrity.

The eldest burst into laughter. Real, violent, unhelpful laughter. Because Jo, usually sharp-faced and composed like a man carved from good decisions, looked like he had personally kissed a wasp nest. His lips were swollen. His eyes were puffy. His face had lost all dignity. For one glorious moment, K forgot his own suffering.

“Oh my God,” he wheezed, pointing. “Jo, what happened to your face?”

Jo stared at him with the calm hatred of someone choosing not to commit murder before sunrise.

“I cried,” he said flatly.

That only made it worse. K nearly fell off the bed laughing like a dying horse. Taki, now awake enough to participate in violence, sat up and squinted at Jo.

“…you do look unfortunate.”

“You too,” Jo said, his voice empty.

Eventually, everyone was forced into the cruel act of becoming presentable. Showers were taken. Teeth were brushed. Emotional damage was aggressively ignored. By the time they gathered in the dining room for breakfast, they looked mostly human again.

Mostly.

K walked in, still suspicious of existence. Then he saw her.

Liriope was already seated at the far end of the table like some elegant final boss of emotional consequences. Freshly dressed. Perfect posture. Newspaper in hands, the morning news already open. A cup of tea beside her.

And still, attached to her arm, the IV drip.

K stopped walking.

Everything suddenly came back, spinning into his head like an ambush. The ghost. His father. The breakdown. The crying. Liriope’s calming words. Her arms around him. His soul leaving his body in real time.

He froze in the doorway like a man witnessing his own execution.

Behind him, Yuma gently patted his shoulder.

“You’re blocking the path.”

Then he walked past him and sat down like nothing had happened.

K remained standing there, spiritually dissolving. A hand slowly crept up to close his gaping mouth in shock. Under his breath, intended only for himself and God, he whispered,

“…did I just cry in her arms?”

Unfortunately, Maki heard him.

Which meant everyone would hear it in approximately three seconds.

Maki appeared beside him like a demon summoned by humiliation and placed one deeply sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

“Yes,” he said warmly. “Yes, you did.”

K’s eyes only grew wider.

“No.”

Maki squeezed once.

“You did. With tears. Several. Very cinematic.”

“I reject this memory.”

“Unfortunately, witnesses exist.”

K looked like he wanted the floor to open and claim him. Maki, because cruelty was love in this household, leaned closer.

“So,” he asked, smiling like Satan with better hair, “how was the emotional rebirth?”

K, without hesitation:

“Kill yourself.”

From across the room, Harua, already seated and holding tea like a man who had nearly died for art, lifted one finger.

“You cried on her shoulder.”

K pointed at him with the fury of a betrayed nation.

“I will kill all of you.”

Nicholas, halfway through stealing EJ’s toast, frowned.

“…what happened?”

His brows furrowed deeper. Understandably so, considering he had spent the second half of last night unconscious after performing illegal spiritual activities and nearly dying for the greater good. He looked around the table.

“Why does everyone look like they survived a divorce? What did I miss?”

“He was ugly crying,” Taki announced, carrying toast like he had been personally assigned as courtroom witness number one.

“There was sobbing.”

“There was not sobbing,” K snapped.

“There was definitely sobbing,” EJ said, sitting down with the calm certainty of a man who had unfortunately seen too much.

Nicholas sat up straighter.

“Excuse me? Fill me in. I almost died summoning your father, and you’re telling me I missed the emotional climax?”

No one answered, which somehow made him even more offended.

“Unbelievable. I perform one necromancy and suddenly I’m excluded from family trauma?”

“You were unconscious,” Jo said.

Harua took a slow sip of tea.

“He said, and I quote, ‘I needed a father.’”

Nicholas gasped like someone had announced a royal scandal.

“HE DID NOT.”

“Yes,” Yuma said, already stealing fruit from K’s plate before he had even sat down. “With tears. Very moving. Honestly, ten out of ten performance.”

Nicholas pressed both hands to his chest.

“I missed character development?”

K looked ready to launch himself directly into the sea.

“I hate this family.”

“Too late,” Yuma said. “You cried. That legally made it permanent.”

Nicholas pointed dramatically.

“And I was robbed of witnessing it.”

“You caused it,” Fuma reminded him.

“Exactly. I deserved front-row seats.”

And from the head of the table, without even looking up from the tablet, Liriope spoke.

“Why,” she asked calmly, “would you kill anyone before breakfast?”

The entire table went silent, not uncomfortable like before. More like... waiting.

She took one slow sip of tea. Then finally looked up at K, who was still standing there like a man awaiting public execution.

“Sit.”

K sat.

Immediately.

Like God had personally issued a command.

Maki looked down at his plate to hide his grin. Taki made a noise that was either laughter or choking. Nicholas looked personally betrayed that everyone else had witnessed history without him and was clearly considering demanding a full reenactment.

Across from him, Fuma looked almost kind enough to save him.

Almost.

No one did, though.

And that, unfortunately, was how K learned that emotional healing did not come with dignity.

Only witnesses.

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn

Next

[ravynisblue]

Wolf vs Chocolate 💥🍫

Lycan!K x Vampire!Wife

Young K was perhaps the first dog in the history of the world to personally discover that wolves and chocolate were never meant to meet.

Unfortunately, he would only arrive at that groundbreaking conclusion after drinking an entire cup.

It happened sometime around the eighteenth century, long before chocolate had become an ordinary comfort found in every household. Back then, it was still a novelty, a curious brown drink whispered about by merchants who carried stories and spices from lands so distant they sounded almost mythical. Few people living in the frozen north had ever tasted it.

Neither had K.

That, as history would soon demonstrate, had been perfectly fine.

Winter had settled deeply over the northern lands where our couple had chosen to spend several decades together. Snow buried the forests beneath blinding white blankets, rivers slept beneath thick sheets of ice, and daylight became increasingly reluctant to appear. The nights stretched longer and longer until darkness lingered for nearly the entire day.

K loved winter, not the snow or the cold. He loved it because winter granted him something priceless. Longer nights meant his wife remained awake for longer. To K, that alone made winter the greatest invention nature had ever produced.

The first centuries of their marriage had been filled with an almost embarrassing amount of discovery. Most couples spent their newlywed years learning each other's habits, right? K and his wife spent theirs learning the world. Every village was worth visiting, every festival deserved celebration, every rumor absolutely required immediate verification. Mostly because K possessed an astonishing talent for attracting trouble the way flowers attracted bees.

Or perhaps, more accurately, trouble simply saw K in the distance and thought,

Him. We want him.

Every evening, he found another excuse to coax her outside.

"Fresh air is good for your lungs."

She would raise an eyebrow.

"I’m dead."

"It can still be... emotionally good."

"Nonsense."

Yet she always went anyway. Not because his arguments were convincing, they rarely were, but mostly because she had gradually realized he was trying to chase that deep boredom inside her. K seemed determined to correct that.

He dragged her through forests simply because the moon looked particularly beautiful, a few wild howls would escape him that he was no longer embarrassed about. He insisted they watch migrating birds despite neither of them knowing anything about birds. He spent entire evenings lying beneath the stars inventing ridiculous names for constellations that already had perfectly respectable ones.

He wasn't merely showing her places; he was quietly teaching her that life could still contain small, meaningless joys even after death.

Especially after death.

So when K appeared that evening with the unmistakable expression of a man about to suggest something questionable, she merely sighed and reached for her cloak before he had even spoken.

His face lit up immediately.

"You knew."

"You've been vibrating with excitement for the last hour."

"...Maybe a little."

By the time they reached the town square, the annual winter night market had already transformed the streets into a sea of lanterns and voices.

Dozens of merchants lined the roads beneath colorful canvas awnings. Warm light spilled from hanging oil lamps, painting the snow in shades of amber and gold. The air smelled of roasted meat, fresh bread, mulled wine, pinewood smoke, unfamiliar spices, and a hundred other scents carried from distant kingdoms.

Traders had travelled from every corner of the world, bringing fabrics, books, strange fruits preserved in honey, curious little mechanical devices, polished gemstones, and inventions nobody in the north had ever imagined.

The market itself seemed entirely indifferent to the freezing weather. Perhaps because there were simply too many people. Bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, laughter rose through the streets, and the warmth of hundreds of conversations chased the cold away.

"This," K declared proudly, spreading both arms wide, "is why winter is wonderful."

"You said that because I'm awake longer."

"That too."

She smiled.

Predictably, K managed to stay focused for approximately three steps.

"Oh."

She already knew that tone.

"What?"

He pointed dramatically toward a nearby stall.

"That man is selling spoons."

She looked.

"...Yes."

Then K abruptly stiffened. His ears twitched, and his nose wrinkled.

"It's silver."

Before she could respond, he stepped neatly between her and the display, planting himself like an overprotective guard dog confronting a dangerous predator.

"It's silver, love. Careful."

"I know."

He eyed the neatly polished cutlery with visible suspicion.

"...Why would anyone make eating utensils out of silver?"

She glanced at the display again.

"Because silver reacts to certain poisons."

K looked at her.

"It tarnishes."

His ears lifted.

"So if your food has been tampered with, the spoon warns you first."

For several seconds, he simply stared at her in adoration.

"...Holy."

He grabbed both of her hands.

"You're brilliant, darling."

"The lady is correct, sir," the merchant said with an approving smile, lifting one of the polished spoons from the display. "Observe—"

He took a single step closer.

K hissed at the poor merchant. A full-bodied, unmistakably lupine hiss.

"Please remove that dangerous stuff from my wife."

"...Sir?"

The merchant blinked once. Then very, very carefully lowered the spoon.

K nodded in satisfaction, slipped an arm protectively around his wife's shoulders, and guided her away before the bewildered man could recover. Behind them, the merchant remained standing exactly where they had left him.

Still holding the spoon.

Still trying to understand what had just happened.

Five minutes later, they were still making their way through the market. Or rather, K was making his way through the market. She was simply following the increasingly unpredictable trajectory of her husband.

Their hands remained intertwined as they wandered between rows of lantern-lit stalls, warm light spilling across the snow beneath their feet. Voices overlapped in half a dozen unfamiliar languages while merchants called out prices, children darted between bundled adults, and musicians somewhere deeper within the market struggled to be heard over the crowd.

K managed to remain focused for nearly five whole minutes. A personal record, she might give him that.

"Oh."

She smiled to herself.

"What now?"

He slowed to a stop, his nose lifting ever so slightly into the cold air. Like every wolf, he trusted his nose long before his eyes. A slow smile spread across his face.

"Those chestnuts smell wonderful."

He inhaled again, dramatically this time.

"Buttery."

Another sniff.

"Warm."

Before she could reply, he leaned sideways until his forehead rested against her shoulder with an exaggerated sigh.

"I think I can smell comfort."

She laughed softly.

"You don't eat chestnuts."

"I could start."

She raised an eyebrow while he smiled with complete innocence.

Ten minutes later, K was happily chewing roasted chestnuts as they continued through the market. Apparently emotional maturity tasted remarkably similar to butter. Every now and then, he held one out toward her.

"No?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I don't need to eat."

"I know."

"..."

"...But I wanted to share."

She smiled before gently pushing his hand back toward him.

"You finish them."

"I suppose I must make this sacrifice."

He sighed dramatically before eating another one.

As the crowds grew denser, K's fingers quietly tightened around hers.

"So..." he asked, lowering his voice so only she could hear. "Are you comfortable enough, my dear?"

She knew what he meant. Even through the countless scents drifting across the market, the smell of blood still lingered beneath them all. Hundreds of warm hearts beating only a few steps away. Hundreds of people wrapped shoulder to shoulder against the winter cold.

To K, it was simply another crowded market.

To her, however, it was rather loud.

She let herself breathe slowly before giving his hand a reassuring squeeze.

"I can manage this much."

Immediately, the small crease between K's brows disappeared.

"Good."

Without warning, he leaned over and pressed a gentle kiss against her cheek.

"So amazing."

She laughed.

"You praise me for the smallest things."

"I praise you for surviving impossible things."

His answer arrived so matter-of-factly that she found herself unable to tease him further. Instead, she simply bumped her shoulder lightly against his. Together they continued deeper into the market until the steady flow of pedestrians abruptly slowed to a crawl.

A crowd had gathered.

An enormous one.

People stood shoulder to shoulder despite the cold, patiently waiting beneath a modest canvas tent whose owners looked thoroughly overwhelmed by their own success. Two merchants hurried frantically behind the counter, barely managing to keep up as mugs disappeared almost as quickly as they could be filled.

Clouds of fragrant steam rolled upward into the freezing night. Children clutched warm cups with both hands. Parents laughed into their own mugs, and the air itself smelled different here.

Sweet.

Rich.

Roasted.

Hints of cinnamon drifted through the steam, mingling with unfamiliar spices she couldn't quite place. Beside her, K stopped walking altogether. She followed his gaze.

"What is it?"

He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at the hand-painted wooden sign hanging crookedly above the little tent, sounding out the unfamiliar letters one by one.

"What..."

A pause.

"...is that?"

Almost as though summoned by the question, one of the exhausted vendors lifted his voice above the crowd.

"Fresh hot chocolate! Nice and warm! Best you'll find this winter!"

K blinked.

"...Hot..."

Another blink.

"...Chocolate?"

He turned toward her with complete sincerity.

"What is chocolate, love?"

She considered the question for a moment before shrugging.

"I've never heard of it."

That answer visibly bothered him because it meant neither of them knew the answer.

K could tolerate many things in his long life.

Cold winters.

Long journeys.

Even silver spoons.

But discovering that the rest of humanity had apparently invented something exciting without informing him personally?

Unacceptable.

Nearby, a woman accepted her steaming mug with an expression bordering on religious enlightenment.

"Oh, it's wonderful," she sighed happily to her companion. "Everyone's talking about it. They brought the ingredients from overseas."

That sentence was fatal.

K's ears perked.

His eyes widened.

His entire face lit up with dangerous curiosity.

"Everyone is drinking it."

"I can see that."

He rose onto the tips of his boots, craning his neck shamelessly over the crowd in an attempt to glimpse whatever miracle was hiding beneath all that steam.

"I should know why."

She looked at the long line, then a quiet sigh escaped her. She already knew she had lost.

"...One cup."

His head whipped toward her.

"Really?"

"One."

The grin that spread across his face could probably have illuminated the market without the aid of lanterns. He squeezed both of her hands with enough enthusiasm that several nearby shoppers turned to look.

"I love you."

"I know."

"And I shall use this privilege responsibly."

She regarded the crowd, then him.

"I have my doubts."

K, meanwhile, had already begun enthusiastically dragging them toward what would become one of the worst dietary decisions in lycan history.

Nearly twenty minutes later, they finally reached the front of the line. K had spent the entire wait standing on the tips of his boots, attempting to peer over the shoulders of complete strangers. Occasionally, he whispered observations.

"That one's smiling."

"I can see."

"So is that one."

"I can also see."

"...Nobody looks disappointed."

She resisted the urge to point out that people rarely stood in freezing weather for disappointing beverages.

The exhausted merchant greeted them with the weary smile of a man who had repeated the same speech several hundred times that evening.

"One hot chocolate?"

"One," she answered before K could accidentally order enough for an army.

The merchant nodded gratefully. A small brass pot hung over glowing coals, its contents steaming gently in the winter air. He stirred the dark liquid with practiced movements before pouring it into a thick clay mug. A sprinkle of fragrant spice disappeared across the surface before the mug was carefully passed into waiting hands.

"There you are."

K accepted it with both hands.

"...Oh, it's warm."

"It is called hot chocolate," she reminded him.

"Right."

He stared down into the cup.

The drink was unlike anything he had ever seen.

Dark enough to swallow the lantern light dancing across its surface. Steam curled upward in lazy ribbons, carrying scents he couldn't begin to identify.

Sweet, roasted, something earthy, something almost floral, hints of cinnamon.

Something else entirely.

"...It smells complex."

"I think it probably is."

He nodded solemnly and lifted the mug cautiously to blow across the surface.

Then he took a careful sip.

The world stopped.

The market vanished.

The crowd disappeared.

Winter itself seemed to politely excuse itself from existence as the cold no longer reached his senses. The liquid rolled across his tongue with impossible softness.

Warm.

Rich.

Silky.

Sweet in a way honey wasn't.

Comforting in a way warm bread wasn't.

It carried roasted notes he had never imagined could exist beside sugar, wrapping around his senses until it felt less like drinking and more like someone had somehow liquefied an entire fireplace on the safest evening of his childhood.

His eyes slowly widened.

"...Love."

She was already smiling.

"Yes? You liked it?"

His head turned toward her with agonizing slowness.

"...This tastes like..."

He searched desperately for adequate vocabulary.

"...like..."

Nothing.

Language failed him.

"It tastes like happiness."

His expression grew increasingly convinced.

"Sweet happiness."

Before she could respond, K spun back toward the stall, catching the poor merchant's attention just in time.

"Excuse me, dear sir."

Too polite for the merchant to ignore.

"Yes, sir?"

"What exactly is chocolate?"

The merchant blinked.

"It's from cacao."

"What is cacao?" he repeated like a drunk hawk.

"It's a kind of bean that grows in warmer lands, sir."

"How could it taste like this? Who discovered—"

The merchant opened his mouth, but she had already gently taken K by the sleeve.

"Kei."

He looked back.

"...What?"

"The poor man has twenty people waiting."

Only then did K finally notice the increasingly impatient line stretching behind them.

"Oh, right."

He glanced at the merchant, who looked moments away from emotional collapse.

"...Sorry."

"You are quite all right, sir."

The merchant did not sound convinced.

She guided K gently away before another question could escape.

As they reached a quieter side of the street, his attention had already returned to the mug.

"...This is incredible."

His voice carried the quiet reverence of a man who had just witnessed divine intervention.

She couldn't help laughing.

"Is it?"

He looked genuinely offended that she had even asked.

"Love."

Another sip.

"This changes things."

"What things?"

"I don't know yet."

Another sip.

"But... things."

He frowned into the cup again.

"...Why has nobody told me about this?"

"It was literally introduced tonight."

"Still."

He took one final, heroic drink, determined to enjoy every last drop. Then he tilted the mug higher until it was empty.

"..."

The silence lasted several seconds.

Then he looked at her with unmistakable betrayal.

"...It's gone."

She nodded sympathetically.

"It would appear so."

His shoulders slumped.

"I'm devastated."

She laughed so hard she had to stop walking.

Behind them, the chocolate merchant quietly watched the strange young couple disappear into the crowd. The husband looked as though he'd just experienced the greatest joy of his life. The wife looked as though she was trying very hard not to laugh at him.

Neither of them had the faintest idea that somewhere deep inside the very happy wolf...

history's worst stomachache had already begun.

The walk home began pleasantly enough.

The night market slowly disappeared behind them, its lanterns shrinking into warm little stars against the winter darkness. Snow crunched softly beneath their boots while the cold air carried the fading sounds of distant laughter.

Winter mornings in the north arrived lazily. The sun wouldn't rise for hours yet, so there was no reason to hurry. K still held her hand, though the empty clay mug had somehow remained tucked carefully beneath his arm.

"I think I'm keeping this."

She glanced at the mug.

"...Why?"

"So I can remember."

"You've known chocolate for approximately forty minutes."

"I miss it already."

She laughed beneath her breath.

"You are unbelievable."

"I know."

For several more minutes they walked comfortably through the sleeping streets.

Then...

"...Babe." His voice sounded different.

She looked over.

"Yes?"

K's brows had drawn together.

"My stomach feels..."

He paused.

"...confused."

She blinked.

"...Confused?"

"I don't know how else to describe it." His free hand rested experimentally over his abdomen.

"It feels..."

Another thoughtful pause.

"...like it's having a meeting."

She couldn't help smiling.

"Perhaps too much sugar?"

"Maybe."

He sounded unconvinced.

Still, they continued walking.

Another ten minutes passed.

Then—

"...Babe."

"Hm?"

"I think something is happening."

That made her look properly. Her playful smile disappeared.

Even beneath the winter air, tiny beads of sweat had begun gathering across his forehead. His breathing wasn't labored yet, but even it was noticeably heavier than before. His shoulders had rounded slightly, one hand now pressing more firmly against his stomach.

"I think..."

He swallowed.

"...I think I'm sick."

The words sounded almost offended. As though illness had personally violated some agreement.

She frowned.

Lycans didn't get sick like this.

She had watched K eat things no sensible creature should consume; raw venison, half-cooked boar, fish that had almost certainly seen better days. Once, to her everlasting horror, he had eaten something simply because a stranger assured him it was "probably edible."

And he had been completely fine.

But by the time they reached home, however, fine was no longer an appropriate description.

K's cheeks had flushed. Sweat dampened the hair curling around his temples despite the freezing weather. He couldn't seem to stand still. He paced, seemingly trying to escape the riot inside his stomach.

"No..."

He muttered to himself.

"I don't like this."

"What hurts?"

He looked at her with complete sincerity.

"...Everything below my ribs."

"...That's rather broad."

"I know."

"It won't narrow it down?"

"I've tried."

Then his stomach growled.

It sounded like an angry bear trapped beneath his ribs.

Both of them froze.

"..."

K looked downward.

"...That didn't sound friendly."

Another, louder rumble answered him.

His eyes widened.

"Oh."

Without another word, he spun around and bolted toward the bathroom.

“…”

"Oh, no."

A horrified gasp followed.

"LOVE."

She was already walking toward the door.

"Yes?"

"I THINK MY INSIDES TURNED MUSHY."

She pinched the bridge of her nose.

"...What?"

"My organs."

A miserable pause.

"...They're liquefying."

Another horrifying sound echoed through the bathroom.

"I THINK THEY'RE LEAVING."

She leaned her forehead against the wooden door.

"...I don't believe that's what's happening."

"I'M LOSING IMPORTANT THINGS."

"...You're probably not."

"I THINK I JUST SHAT OUT MY LIVER."

"You definitely didn't."

"HOW DO YOU KNOW?"

"...Because you're still talking."

"..."

"...That's a good point."

Nearly half an hour later, K finally emerged, looking... defeated.

His face had gone pale beneath the flush. His clothes hung slightly crooked, and his hair looked as though he'd repeatedly dragged frustrated fingers through it. The moment he reached the sitting room, his knees gave up entirely. He folded onto the wooden floor.

Immediately his wolf instincts seemed to take over. Soft gray ears emerged first, flattening against his head. A moment later his tail slipped free behind him, curling instinctively around his body until it wrapped tightly across his stomach, like it was trying to physically hold him together.

He curled inward, making himself small.

Absolutely miserable.

"I think..."

His voice came out barely above a whisper.

"...I'm dying."

She knelt beside him immediately.

Now she was actually worried.

She had seen him stagger away from battlefields stitched together with fresh bandages, complaining only that he'd gotten blood on his favorite coat. She had watched broken ribs knit themselves back together while he insisted on helping carry firewood. Once, he had fallen asleep halfway through having an arrow removed from his shoulder because, in his own words,

"Wake me up when it's the boring part."

Pain rarely slowed him.

Illness had never touched him.

Yet here he was.

Curled into himself, sweating in the winter and shivering despite the warmth of the house.

His tail wrapped tightly around his middle as he looked at her with watery eyes.

"...Make it stop. Please."

Something cold settled into her chest.

This wasn't normal.

Her mind raced back through the evening.

The chocolate.

"...Chocolate?"

"Must be it... It was..."

A weak smile somehow appeared.

"...Worth it."

She stared at him for a full second.

Then sighed so deeply it seemed to come from somewhere beneath a century of marriage.

"...You absolute idiot."

"...A handsome idiot?"

"...That remains under review."

His tail gave one exhausted little thump against the floor.

Then another cramp hit.

"...Never mind."

He folded back into a ball.

"I withdraw my application for continued existence."

Sometime later, the whimpering stopped.

Not because the pain had eased, though, but because K had finally lost consciousness.

His body remained curled tightly upon the wooden floor, his tail wrapped instinctively around his stomach. Even in sleep, his brows refused to relax. Every few breaths, his face tightened as another silent wave of pain passed through him somewhere beneath unconsciousness.

She knelt beside him.

"K."

No answer.

Only the slow, uneven rise and fall of his chest.

Carefully, she unfolded the wool blanket from the nearby armchair and draped it over his body. He had always insisted wolves ran warm.

Today he was shivering.

Her fingers lingered briefly against his forehead.

Still damp.

Still burning.

"...Stay here."

The words were ridiculous, as though he planned on wandering off while unconscious.

Still, she whispered them anyway.

Then she went to the cellar.

Expecting the lined shelves covering the stone walls from floor to ceiling, filled with bottles, jars, bundles of dried flowers, preserved roots, oils, wines, and old remedies gathered over lifetimes.

Her memory used to know exactly where everything was.

Today every shelf looked unfamiliar.

She opened cabinet after cabinet. Glass clinked together. Drawers slid open.

Nothing.

Her hands moved faster.

Her breathing remained steady only because she no longer needed to breathe.

Memory arrived without invitation.

A tiny workshop warm with candlelight.

The smell of crushed rosemary and beeswax filled the air as her grandfather stood patiently beside a worn wooden bench while she struggled to hold a mortar properly in hands much smaller than they were now.

"No."

He smiled gently.

"Like this."

His weathered fingers adjusted her grip.

"Medicine doesn't like to be rushed."

She remembered staying awake long after midnight, grinding herbs into a soft green paste while listening to him explain which leaves eased fevers, which roots soothed pain, and which flowers quieted an upset stomach.

She remembered shelves overflowing with remedies.

Every illness had a place.

Every ache had an answer.

Back then she had believed her grandfather capable of curing anything.

Now...

The shelves surrounding her contained none of it.

Centuries had passed since she had needed medicinal herbs. Vampires did not catch fevers. Did not suffer stomach pains. Did not need healing teas or crushed leaves or carefully measured tinctures.

She hadn't thought about those lessons in hundreds of years because she never imagined she would need them again.

Least of all... for him.

Her hands tightened around the edge of the cabinet.

"I don't have anything..."

The words disappeared into the empty cellar.

Not a single remedy suitable for what she desperately wished to fix.

When she finally returned upstairs, the house had become painfully quiet.

K hadn't moved. He still lay exactly where she had left him. The blanket had slipped halfway from one shoulder. His breathing had grown thinner now.

Shallower.

Each breath seemed to catch somewhere inside him before finally escaping. His stomach rumbled again. Even asleep, his face twisted.

Another silent whine escaped him.

Something inside her clenched.

No.

She couldn't keep watching this.

Her eyes drifted toward the windows.

Heavy curtains hid the world beyond.

Slowly, with careful steps, she crossed the room.

One hand hesitated around the fabric before lifting the curtain just enough to peer outside.

Gray skies.

Heavy clouds.

The forest remained buried beneath snow.

The horizon still held no sunlight.

Safe for now.

Winter mornings lingered.

The sun was late.

She still had time if she hurried.

The thought came all at once.

The forest.

Relief herbs.

Her grandfather had once pointed them out growing near streams where the soil was damp.

If they had survived the winter...

If enough remained beneath the snow...

If she could remember correctly...

Too many ifs.

Not enough choices.

She lowered the curtain and moved quickly through the house.

A broad-brimmed hat, the ridiculous one K had bought because "It matches your eyes." Now she pulled it firmly over her head. A thick cardigan. Neither would truly protect her, only delay the inevitable.

She glanced back once.

K remained motionless.

"...Wait for me."

Then she stepped outside.

The cold struck immediately. Not that she noticed because she was already running.

The frozen river wound through the forest exactly as she remembered, its surface trapped beneath thick sheets of ice while fresh snow buried everything in dazzling white.

She dropped to her knees without hesitation, bare hands plunged straight into the snow.

One patch.

Nothing.

Another.

Nothing.

She dug deeper. Snow scattered across her sleeves. Ice scraped against her fingers. She moved farther along the riverbank.

Again.

Her grandfather's voice echoed through memory.

"Square stem."

She dug.

"Leaves with small teeth."

Another hole.

"Soft little hairs underneath."

Nothing.

Another patch.

Nothing.

She couldn't stop.

Every empty handful became another image of K curled helplessly across the wooden floor.

She dug faster.

One patch.

Five.

Ten.

Twenty.

Her hand disappeared beneath the snow again. Then her fingers touched green leaves hidden beneath the frozen earth.

"There..."

She brushed the snow away carefully.

Square stems.

Small serrated leaves.

Soft fuzz beneath her fingertips.

"You beautiful thing..."

She gathered every sprig she could find.

The first ray of sunlight slipped through the evergreen branches. A sharp sting brushed across the back of her neck, making her freeze.

Too late.

The clouds had begun to break.

She wasted no time.

She turned and ran.

The forest that had welcomed her only moments ago suddenly became hostile. Light spilled between branches in widening ribbons. Another burn bloomed across the back of her hand, then her shoulder. The exposed skin along her neck hissed softly as sunlight kissed it.

She ignored it.

Home.

Only home mattered.

She clutched the herbs tightly against her chest and kept running. Snow slowed every step. The estate still seemed impossibly far away.

Another shaft of sunlight found her. The smell of scorched flesh reached her before the pain fully did.

Still she ran, because her stubborn, impossibly curious husband lay unconscious on the floor, still fighting the consequences of thinking chocolate tasted like happiness.

K woke up feeling delirious. But the grumble inside his stomach had subsided into bearable pain.

The post-haze left him confused, his body hot as he kicked away the wool blanket draped over him. Then the smell of herbs reached his nose.

Slowly, he raised himself into a sitting position and found his wife asleep on the floor. Quickly his gaze snapped to the window and found it closed. The only source of light was the flickering candlelight from the table.

Why is she sleeping here?

It didn't take him long to notice a mortar and pestle lying beside him, residue of green paste still coating the bottom. The same green stained her fingertips.

Wait.

He jolted fully awake and found fresh burns on the backs of her hands. They were still angry red.

Though they hadn't scorched the skin deeply, his nose caught another hint of burning as he slowly turned her body and found a large patch of scorched skin stretching from her shoulder to the back of her neck. Then suddenly everything clicked together.

Did she go out this morning to find him a remedy for his pain?

His mouth felt as dry as sand, and slowly his taste buds caught the lingering taste of vegetation. She must have forced him to swallow that green paste from the mortar.

He exhaled heavily, then gathered her limp body against his chest, careful not to touch the burns. He slowly carried her to her coffin. But as soon as he laid her upon the velvet lining, her eyes fluttered open, black irises glinting with scarlet red.

He whispered,

"...Babe?"

"...You're feeling better?"

The delirious tone made K's heart ache.

"You..." He couldn't finish.

"Told you being nosy would kill you someday." She said it with the corner of her mouth tugging upward slightly as she saw the worry filling his expression.

"Thank you." K's eyes immediately filled with tears.

He knew he didn't need to address whatever had happened a couple of hours before.

"It's fine." She reached out, still half asleep, and cupped his cheek to check for a fever.

Normal.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

Nothing more.

He carefully lowered his forehead against hers, afraid to jostle the burns she had earned because of him.

"I won't drink mysterious things anymore," he whispered.

She smiled without opening her eyes.

"Convince me."

Outside, winter sunlight continued across the snow-covered gardens.

Inside, wrapped in silence, one very foolish wolf held the woman who had walked into the dawn for him, wondering for the first time in his impossibly long life how he had ever become lucky enough to be loved like this.

Idk anymore guys, the hyperfixation wont go away 😔

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 17

K had spent too long being held together by spite. Eventually, spite ran out.

The room was still cold, lingering after something unnatural had passed through and left the air remembering it. No one spoke, everyone was isolated in their own thoughts despite being together, facing the same pressure.

Nicholas was half-dead from the spell backlash, now unconscious on the couch in Liriope’s bedroom, one arm hanging off the side like a corpse refusing to stay still.

Liriope, meanwhile, had collapsed onto her bed.

Dr. Junkichi moved around her calmly. He checked her pulse, her temperature, and the state of her breathing while the rest of them stood around like children who had accidentally summoned consequences.

Which they did.

Finally, he adjusted the IV drip now connected to her arm and sighed.

“She is exhausted,” he said. “Severely. Lack of sleep, lack of food, stress, and apparently whatever nonsense you all decided to attempt tonight.”

No one made eye contact.

“She needs rest. Real rest. Preferably without any more chaos.”

He gave them all one last look that felt medically judgmental, then excused himself from the room.

The silence returned immediately.

EJ pulled a chair to the bedside and sat down without a word, elbows on his knees, watching the slow rise and fall of Liriope’s breathing as if he were personally making sure it continued. The others scattered across the rug, too shaken to leave and too guilty to properly stay. No one had the energy for jokes. That alone made the night feel wrong.

Mr. Ikeda stood near the door looking like someone had personally dragged him out of bed and then removed the concept of sleep from his life forever. His hair was slightly out of place. His tie was crooked. His soul looked tired.

Yuma, for the first time in recorded history, actually felt bad looking at Mr. Ikeda.

The ghost was gone, but no one knew what to do with what it had left behind.

K remained kneeling beside the open window, staring at the empty space where his father had stood while Taki stayed beside him in uncharacteristic silence. He had not moved because the image in his head had been shattered. His father had always existed as something simple in his mind: distant, cruel, impossible to love. A man built entirely from discipline and disappointment. A father who looked at his son and saw only legacy. That hatred had been clean. Reliable. Easy to understand.

Now there was a contradiction lodged inside it.

His father had loved Liriope.

And yet she had feared him.

How could both be true? How could a man love someone and still leave them looking like that? The uncertainty was worse than hatred. Hatred was solid. Hatred gave you something to stand on. This did not.

The silence that followed stretched so long that Maki genuinely began to wonder whether everyone had fallen asleep sitting upright like haunted furniture. When he glanced around the room, however, every single person was still awake. Still tense. Still trapped inside their own thoughts. Sleep was nowhere near any of them. Eventually, because silence made his skin itch, Maki stood. No one stopped him as he wandered toward the bed.

There she was.

Sleeping, technically.

But even unconscious, Liriope did not look peaceful. Her brow remained faintly furrowed, as though even in dreams she was trapped somewhere she desperately did not want to return to. Loose strands of hair clung to her face, damp with sweat that had gathered along her forehead and neck. Somehow she looked smaller than before. More human. Less like the terrifying woman who commanded boardrooms and politicians and more like someone their own age.

A child.

The thought landed with a guilt Maki found deeply inconvenient.

He glanced over at EJ.

“Shouldn't we wake her up?” he asked quietly. “We used to wake each other whenever nightmares got bad. She looks like she's having one.”

EJ shook his head immediately.

“She needs the rest.”

As though the conversation had somehow reached her through sleep, Liriope shifted against the pillows. Her lips moved. At first the sound was too soft to understand. Then,

“Please...”

The room froze.

The word was barely more than a whisper.

“I'll behave...”

Taki's head lifted.

Another whisper.

“I'll try harder...”

The words sounded impossibly small coming from someone like her.

One by one, the others found themselves drifting closer to the bedside, drawn by the quiet horror of it. Even K eventually pushed himself upright and stepped away from the window. Only Nicholas remained unconscious on the couch, still sleeping like a dead cat personally abandoned by God.

Yuma stared at Liriope for a long moment before speaking.

“I don't think she meant any harm.”

His voice was quiet. Honest.

And for once, nobody argued.

Because deep down, all of them had already begun questioning the story they had written about her. Mostly after seeing the way she had looked at K's father. That had not been fear of a ghost. It had been fear of a man. You did not need to be particularly clever to recognize it. The truth had been painfully obvious.

Harua crossed his arms, his voice lower than usual.

“She’s kind of pitiful, don't you think?”

EJ gave the smallest nod. Not pity in the cruel sense. Not weakness. Just the quiet tragedy of realizing someone had been carrying far more than they had ever allowed anyone to see.

Fuma, who had remained silent through most of the night, finally moved. He crossed the room and stopped beside K as though he had known from the beginning exactly where he would be needed. Reaching over, he squeezed K's shoulder.

The older man remained rigid with shock. Years of emotions he had buried and swallowed had surfaced all at once, and now he no longer knew where to put them. Because the only witness to his father's cruelty was lying unconscious on the bed. And somehow, impossibly, she looked like a victim too.

Then, very softly, she murmured again.

“K...”

The room stilled at once. K looked down. It was barely more than a breath, but unmistakable all the same. His name.

Her fingers twitched against the blanket, and slowly, as though even waking required effort, her eyes fluttered open. For a moment they remained unfocused, heavy with exhaustion, hooded and dazed and still trapped somewhere between sleep and whatever nightmare had followed her there. Then her gaze found him.

K stood beside the bed with his shoulders locked and his expression carefully blank, trying with everything he had not to feel anything at all. She watched him through half-lidded eyes for a long moment before attempting to sit up. Immediately, EJ stepped forward, slipping one arm behind her shoulders while adjusting the pillows with the other. Normally, Liriope would have refused the assistance on principle alone. Tonight, she allowed it without protest. She needed the help.

Propped against the pillows, pale and exhausted with the IV still connected to her arm, loose strands of hair clinging to her face, she looked nothing like the terrifying woman who ran an empire. Instead, she looked like someone who had been carrying far too much for far too long. And when she looked at K, there was something in her expression that made the room ache. It was not pity. It was not regret for herself. It was grief for him.

Maki instinctively straightened beside Harua like a criminal awaiting sentencing. Honestly, fair. He had enthusiastically supported Nicholas's necromancy idea from the beginning and was already preparing to be blamed for it. But Liriope never looked his way. She did not scold anyone. She did not ask what they had been thinking. Instead, she slowly lifted her arms toward K.

An invitation.

And then, in a voice so broken it barely sounded like her own, she whispered,

“I'm... I'm sorry.”

The words fractured around a sob she clearly had never intended anyone to hear.

And that was enough.

The change in K was so sudden it startled everyone watching. One moment he was standing there like stone, jaw clenched, every wall firmly in place. The next, his shoulders shook. His face twisted as though something inside him had finally split open after years of pressure. His eyes squeezed shut. His mouth trembled. A sharp, ugly sob tore free before he could stop it, and before pride could intervene, before whatever stubborn part of him still believed he needed to remain standing could fight back, he folded.

He fell forward onto the bed and into her arms.

And there, finally, K cried.

Gone was the sharp-tongued man who argued with everyone and trusted no one. Gone was the impossible heir who met every wound with sarcasm and every disappointment with anger. What remained was a very tired, very angry, very heartbroken child who had been carrying too much for too long and had finally found somewhere safe enough to collapse.

For a few seconds, the room seemed to forget how to breathe. EJ glanced at Fuma, startled despite having expected this somewhere deep down. Fuma only gave the smallest nod. He knew. Harua reached blindly for Maki's hand. Taki found Maki's other hand without being asked, and the three of them stood there linked together, watching K unravel as though they had accidentally stumbled into something sacred and private. Jo remained quietly behind them, uncertain how to join. Yuma had gone strangely silent, and Fuma noticed immediately. Without a word, he pulled him closer, wrapping one arm around him while rubbing slow circles against his back. Quiet comfort. Because sometimes watching someone else's wounds split open made your own ache too.

And in the safety of Liriope's embrace, K finally said the things he had spent years swallowing. There was no spite left in him for restraint. His words came broken and angry, tangled with tears and old resentment.

“I didn't need an empire,” he said against her shoulder, his voice cracking. “I didn't need any of it.”

His fingers twisted into the fabric of her clothes.

“I needed a father.”

The words came out so strangled that Liriope tightened her hold around him.

“I needed him to look at me and see me. Not some stupid heir. Not some extension of his name. Me.”

Another breath.

Another shuddering sob.

“I needed him to come after me.”

His voice grew smaller there. Younger. As if the years had peeled away one by one until only the child remained.

“The day I left…”

Everyone in the room felt it before he even continued.

The center of it.

The wound.

“The day I ran away, all I wanted was for him to come pick me up.”

His voice shattered completely.

“I waited.”

And there he was. Not the heir. Not the successor. Just a boy who had stood there believing, despite everything, that maybe this time his father would choose him. That maybe love would arrive late, but it would arrive. And it never did.

That was the betrayal.

The absence.

The silence.

Sometimes absence hurt worse than violence because violence at least acknowledged that you existed. Absence was its own form of abandonment, and K had been carrying that abandonment for years.

Liriope never interrupted. She never tried to soften his anger or quiet his grief or reshape it into something easier to carry. She simply let him break exactly as he was, ugly, honest, exhausted, and years too late. One hand rested at the back of his head while the other remained wrapped around his shoulders, steady and warm. Somehow that made everything hurt worse, because this was what he had wanted all along.

To be held.

To be chosen.

To be allowed to fall apart without being punished for it.

And through every shaking breath and broken confession, she kept repeating the same words.

“I'm sorry.”

Softly.

Again.

“I'm sorry.”

As though repetition could undo years. As though apology could reach backward through time and rescue the child version of him from all those empty rooms. As though she could apologize for wounds she had never inflicted herself. Maybe she knew it was impossible. Maybe she said it anyway because sometimes sorrow needed language, even when that language could change nothing.

And K cried harder because of it.

Because kindness, at the wrong moment, could feel like its own kind of violence.

After a long while, when the worst of the storm had finally passed through him and left him trembling with exhaustion, Liriope spoke again. She delivered the words carefully, as though handling something fragile enough to break in her hands.

“Your father loved you.”

The sentence struck with the force of a blade finding an old wound. K made a sound that barely resembled a sob, something rawer and deeper, as if grief had finally found the exact shape of the thing buried inside him. His entire body folded tighter against her. Hearing those words physically hurt. Because that was it. That was the thing he had wanted his entire life. Not an inheritance. Not approval. Not a future carefully arranged by someone else's hands.

Just that.

He loved you.

He had needed to hear it with the kind of desperation people reserved for air. But not from friends who had only witnessed the aftermath. Not from people who loved him and wanted to comfort him. He needed it from someone who had known the man himself. Someone who had stood in the room and watched the story happen. A witness.

Her.

And because the words came from Liriope, they felt real.

That reality stung far worse than doubt ever had.

Relief crashed through him so violently it almost hurt. Because if it was true, then maybe the child who had waited had not been foolish. Maybe he had not imagined everything. Maybe the love had been there all along.

Broken.

Damaged.

Wrong.

But there.

And he hated how much he needed that truth. Hated the peace it brought. Hated the part of himself that still responded to it even now.

I was loved.

The thought felt almost too painful to hold.

Liriope kept one hand in his hair, smoothing it back once as though he were still small enough for that gesture to fix anything. Her voice remained calm when she spoke again, but there was something old in it. Something worn smooth by experience.

“He was also a man who did not know how to love without ownership.”

The room remained silent. Even Nicholas, half-conscious on the couch, seemed to understand that this was not a moment to interrupt. Liriope's gaze drifted somewhere distant, not focused on the room or the people inside it but on memories only she could see.

“He prepared the world for you because he did not know how to prepare himself to be your father.”

K's breathing faltered.

She did not allow him to look away from the truth.

“He thought providing was love. He thought control was protection. He thought discipline was devotion. He built your future with both hands and never understood that what you needed was for him to kneel down and hold you when you cried.”

For the first time, her voice thinned.

Only slightly.

“He failed you.”

No one argued.

The truth was too simple for argument.

Then, softer:

“But he loved you.”

Fresh tears slipped from beneath K's closed eyes. Liriope held him through them.

“That distinction matters,” she said quietly. “Because love does not erase harm. And harm does not erase love.”

The words settled over the room and into every person standing there. Not because they were only about K. In truth, they barely were. The sentence seemed to belong to all of them. To old wounds and complicated families and people who had loved badly despite loving deeply.

“That complexity is painful,” Liriope continued, “and true.”

And perhaps that was the cruelest lesson of all. That people could love you and still break you. That someone could become both your wound and your proof that love existed. That healing did not come from choosing one truth and rejecting the other.

It came from surviving both.

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn

Author’s Note: I think one of the most insane things about being human is the relationship we have with our parents. No one gets the same version of love. And somehow, even when love is there, we still end up hurting each other anyway. Because sometimes it doesn’t come out as warmth, it comes out as control, as expectation, as “I know what’s best for you” until it stops feeling like care.

And even when we grow up, get angry, or leave… there’s still that small, very inconvenient part of us that just wants to be seen as a child. Not an extension. Not a legacy. Just someone worth protecting. And when you don’t get that, the absence doesn’t go away. It's stay as a gaping hole forever tugging for attention.

This chapter lives in that contradiction: someone who love you and still fail you. Which is honestly very rude of life when you're aware of that.

Anyway.

I also wanna talk about grief... it is a whole other demon. But not today before I emotionally spiral on main.

Next

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 16

Liriope returned home far later than she had intended.

The city was quieter at this hour, the streets washed in amber light and the kind of silence only rich districts could afford. Her driver said nothing as the car passed through the gates of the mansion, and for the first time all day, Liriope allowed herself to lean back against the seat and close her eyes. Exhaustion sat deep in her bones.

Apparently, the mayor had gotten curious. Which was unfortunate.

The incident at the ball had been messier than she preferred. Too much attention. Too many witnesses. Too many whispers from nosy people who had no business noticing anything at all. Worse, someone had apparently reported “a suspicious group of young men causing elegant chaos” near the restricted floor while somehow leaving no dent in the security system.

It really was unfortunate that the mayor had decided it was interesting.

He had not figured out who they were yet, but curiosity from powerful men was rarely harmless. Which meant Liriope had spent the entire day smiling politely, redirecting conversations, and gently making sure the mayor found several other scandals far more entertaining.

Questions about who the young men were that she had been seen with at the ball because he was a new face and their proximity suggested they were more than mere acquaintances. One person had even been brave enough to ask if he was Liriope’s new lover after the death of the late Director Koga.

It was exhausting work.

Especially when done on no sleep.

She had not slept the night before, sitting beside Harua’s hospital bed in the medical wing, listening to the steady beep of machines and pretending that if she kept watching, death would not dare come any closer.

Ridiculous, yet effective.

Ten out of ten. She would do it again.

By the time the car stopped in the mansion’s garage, it was nearly two in the morning. Mr. Ikeda opened the door before she even reached the steps.

“Madam.”

She gave him a small nod.

“Any disasters?”

Mr. Ikeda considered that.

“No permanent ones.”

Good enough.

She stepped inside and immediately frowned at how quiet the house was.

This was a house currently containing nine young men with poor decision-making skills and a suspiciously high tolerance for crime. Silence was never a good sign.

Usually by now she would hear something.

Taki shouting like he was being personally attacked by furniture. K dramatically narrating his own emotional suffering. Nicholas laughing like someone had suggested arson. Maki saying something deeply inappropriate in a hallway. EJ pretending he was not emotionally attached to every single one of them.

Something.

But tonight? Nothing.

No conspiracy whispers through the walls. No ridiculous laughter from the upper floors. No sound of someone definitely not supposed to be on the roof.

She stopped at the bottom of the staircase. “They did not run away again?” she asked.

Mr. Ikeda adjusted his glasses. “No, Madam.”

That somehow made it even stranger. She glanced at her watch.

2:15 A.M.

...perhaps they were sleeping.

A deeply suspicious concept, but technically possible. After the last two days, even chaos required rest.

She let out a quiet breath and finally started upstairs, one hand resting lightly against the railing. Every step felt heavier. Now that she had stopped moving, exhaustion arrived all at once, merciless and complete. Her body felt as though it had been held together all day by obligation alone.

Halfway down the corridor toward her room, the dizziness started.

Ah, right.

Food.

She had barely touched breakfast because Harua had still been unconscious, and leaving his bedside had felt impossible. He had only woken near lunchtime. Then lunch itself had become its own problem. She had seen the hesitation at the table immediately. Nine boys trying and failing to look normal while eating in front of her as though she were some kind of final exam.

Ridiculous.

So she had excused herself first, claiming she had work to do, and left the mansion not long after.

No lunch.

No dinner either.

Only caffeine, irritation, and other people's incompetence.

Now, standing in the quiet hallway at two in the morning, she would have sold several minor politicians for a bowl of warm soup and rice as her head spun again.

Wonderful.

She pressed two fingers briefly to her temple and kept walking. Just a few more steps to her room. Her bed. To silence and possibly unconsciousness. She opened the door and stopped, only to find nine shadowed figures already inside.

For one long second, no one moved. They were just… there. Scattered across her bedroom like an illegal support group.

Maki sat cross-legged on the carpet. Harua was sitting in a chair, looking better than she had left him that morning. Then there was Taki, perched on the edge of the armchair beside him like a persistent bird refusing to migrate.

Yuma sat unnaturally straight on her couch, cramped together with Jo, EJ, and Fuma as if they were all suddenly allergic to personal space. Fuma, somehow, still looked like he belonged there more than anyone else.

And K stood by the open window, arms crossed, leaning against the frame with Nicholas beside him like they were waiting to negotiate with God.

All nine of them turned to look at her like children waiting for their mother to come home after abandoning them all day for suspicious adult gatherings.

In very slow motion, she closed the door behind her. Then she said, with the exhausted calm of a woman too tired to be surprised anymore,

“Why,” she asked, “are there nine men in my bedroom at two in the morning?”

Maki immediately raised one hand because, admittedly, that did sound improper.

“In our defense, we are not random men—”

“Shh,” Harua whispered loudly. “It means you accept that we are her sons.”

“…”

Liriope blinked at that comment. Then Nicholas smiled like a man moments away from making history and several mistakes.

“We have a gift for you.”

Liriope closed her eyes. Somewhere deep in her soul, she felt the unmistakable certainty that whatever came next was going to exhaust her patience to its limit.

She opened her eyes again.

“I do not want—”

Before she could even finish, the whole room suddenly changed. The temperature dropped so sharply it felt like the air itself had been replaced. Cold and heavy, making breathing harder. The warmth vanished from the walls, from the floor, from her own skin. The room felt smaller somehow. Tighter. Like something unseen had stepped inside and taken up all the space.

Liriope’s hand reached for the doorknob and tightened around it as her head spun.

No.

Not now.

Not here.

Something then shifted in the air. Something old and familiar. A tension she had buried for years rose like poison through her bloodstream.

Her stomach turned, body went cold and then her ears began to ring.

No.

She could not falter.

She would not.

Liriope forced herself to breathe slower.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

Control, she needed control.

Slowly, the violent ringing in her ears softened enough for her to hear the room again. She swallowed hard against the acid rising in her throat and finally looked up.

The boys had gone silent. The four on the couch had somehow pressed even closer together, as if physical proximity might protect them from bad decisions. Harua and Taki looked like they were trying to merge into the same chair. K stood rigid by the window. And Nicholas was whispering something under his breath, his hands trembling.

Spellwork.

Liriope’s voice came out sharper than intended.

“What are you doing?”

No one answered. Then, from the open window beside K, a violent gust of wind rushed into the room.

Curtains snapped. Papers scattered. The candles on her vanity flickered wildly. And the wind began to take shape.

White, pale, like smoke and memory forced into human form.

A figure.

Tall, broad-shouldered hunched a little from the age.

A familiar posture.

And suddenly every nerve in Liriope’s body lit up in horror.

No.

No.

No.

“Father—”

K’s voice broke but the figure did not look at him. Did not acknowledge him. Its eyes were only on her.

Liriope knew that shape. Knew it by the way her bones curled from recognizing every hum of his voice.

The discomfort she had swallowed for years came rushing back all at once, pressing against every rib, every breath, every unfinished wound she had spent so long burying.

But the figure moved closer, like the worst nightmare to her gasping state.

“My love,” it said… warmly.

The room went dead silent. Every one of them watched, each carrying their own speculation as the ash-grey shadow moved closer and closer to Liriope, who was practically trembling against the door.

K’s stomach dropped violently as he felt cold coil and twist inside him. Beside Taki, Harua whispered, horrified,

“…what the fuck is this?”

Because this whole situation was wrong. Based on everything they believed, they had expected anger. Wrath. The spirit of a dead man dragged back into the world of the living, demanding answers for his sudden and unjust death.

Not this. Not this soft, intimate tone laced through his voice like a scene from a psychological horror film orchestrated specifically to torture someone.

Nicholas swayed where he stood. His mouth stopped casting the spell as the color drained from his face so quickly it was almost frightening.

“…this is wrong,” he rasped, barely audible.

His voice sounded thin.

“This isn’t—this isn’t how he—”

He had performed the spell perfectly. He was certain of that part. But this was not the father they had expected to summon. Or maybe worse.

Maybe it was.

Liriope’s face had gone red beneath her makeup from terror alone. Her eyes were wide. Terrified. Her arms wrapped around herself instinctively, trying to physically hold herself together.

“Stop.”

Her voice trembled, and everyone froze. This was not fear of ghosts. EJ saw it first. She was afraid of him. Not the spirit.

Him.

The figure stepped closer, arms opening slightly, as though he intended to hold her. Like this was tenderness. Like this was love.

“Please,” she said again.

And this time the word cracked.

“Please make it stop.”

But it kept coming.

Closer.

Closer.

Then finally Fuma moved, catching Nicholas by the arm just before he collapsed completely by the window and steadying him.

“That’s enough.”

But before Nicholas could fully fall, Liriope did first. Her knees hit the floor. Her whole body lost control. Like whatever had been holding her upright had finally snapped. EJ moved so fast he reached her before anyone else.

Fuma held Nicholas.

EJ held Liriope.

K had dropped to his knees by the window, staring at the ghost of his father like the world had split open beneath him. And the rest of them stood frozen, clutching each other, watching the horror they had summoned with their own hands.

Because suddenly, terribly, all of them understood.

They had made a mistake.

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn

If i was liriope though? I would chew their stupid head and spit it out to flame. Gosh

Next

[ravynisblue]

Im sooo exciteddd

This is EXACTLY the kind of read that gets me locked in immediately.

I don’t even know how to explain it but I can already feel it scratching that deep, feral need inside me for a full dark gothic fantasy world like I’ve been YEARNING for this kind of atmosphere PLEASE, how is it 2026 and we still don’t have a machine that lets me jump straight into my books because I would’ve been GONE already 😭

Anyway yeah… I’m obsessed. Loved the first page ♡

[ravynisblue]

K's Way Into Conquering Portraiture (II)

Lycan!K x Vampire!Wife

K had a new hyperfixation.

She knew this with absolute certainty.

The problem was that she couldn't yet prove it. Not because K was particularly skilled at keeping secrets. He wasn't. In fact, K was perhaps one of the least deceptive creatures she had ever encountered in several centuries of existence. Unfortunately, he was also a terrible liar in very specific ways. Which was how she found herself suspicious.

It began several nights after his sudden obsession with wandering around universities.

The evening itself had been pleasant. The moon hung low above the estate, silver light spilling across the garden paths and flower beds K spent entirely too much time fussing over. Somewhere nearby, music drifted softly from an open window.

Slow.

Gentle.

Perfect for dancing. K, naturally, had seized the opportunity immediately.

Now they moved together beneath the moonlight. One of his hands rested against her waist while the other held hers. Their steps followed the music without thought.

One step.

Another.

A slow turn.

And when her palm rested against his shoulder, she noticed it immediately.

Stiff muscles.

Enough to notice, enough to feel wrong.

The movement of his body remained smooth. His smile remained exactly as warm as always. Yet beneath it she could feel the subtle rigidity in his muscles.

Interesting.

Her eyes narrowed slightly at K smiling far too innocently. She had known this man for centuries. There was no such thing as innocence anymore. Something was wrong. Or rather,

Something was being hidden.

The realization settled comfortably into place. K wasn't capable of concealing anything truly serious from her for longer than twenty minutes.

No.

This felt familiar. The same sort of nervousness he developed whenever he planned surprises. The same tension that appeared whenever he became deeply invested in some new project. A secret.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

Without saying a word, she stepped closer. The movement appeared entirely natural within the dance that K didn't seem to notice. Or perhaps he did and was simply too distracted by whatever occupied his thoughts. Either possibility was equally likely.

Slowly she rested her temple against his chest. The steady rhythm of the music continued around them. And beneath it his heart beat a little faster than normal.

Curious and even more curious, her lips twitched that now she knew for certain. K was hiding something. The question was what.

She remained exactly where she was, listening to her husband’s heartbeat stumbled slightly. Then she leaned even closer. The bridge of her nose brushed lightly against his shirt. His heartbeat immediately became louder.

Ah.

Definitely hiding something.

She inhaled.

Once.

Twice.

There, beneath the familiar scent of soap, cedarwood, and whatever cologne he had become obsessed with this month, something else lingered.

Faint, subtle almost hidden scent of... oil. Not perfume oil. Not cooking oil. Something thicker, waxier. The scent barely existed at all. Her eyebrows lifted slightly. Oil paint?

Now that was unexpected.

Slowly she pulled back then K immediately swallowed. His Adam's apple bobbed.

Nervous.

The realization nearly made her laugh. Because whatever ridiculous scheme he had gotten himself involved in this time, he was clearly attempting to keep it secret. And apparently failing spectacularly.

She met his gaze. Warm amber eyes stared back at her. Nervous. Trying very hard to appear normal. He smiled. She smiled back. Neither of them said a word.

The music continued.

One step. Another. A slow turn beneath the moonlight.

K visibly relaxed. Perhaps believing he had escaped discovery. Poor thing.

She let him keep his secret for now. After all, whatever strange little project currently occupied his attention was making him happy. And if centuries together had taught her anything, it was that uncovering K's surprises too early tended to ruin half the fun.

Besides, she already knew where to look now.

Oil paint.

A secret.

And a husband who suddenly became nervous whenever she got too close. Sooner or later, he would tell her. Or more likely that he would accidentally tell her. K had an excellent track record when it came to accidentally revealing his own surprises.

Several months had passed since K had apparently developed a secret. Which, admittedly, was impressive.

Usually his excitement betrayed him within weeks. A month if fate was feeling particularly generous. Eventually he would begin smiling too much, hovering nearby with suspicious frequency, or accidentally reveal half the surprise while attempting to conceal the other half. It had happened enough times throughout the centuries that she considered it less a personality flaw and more a natural law.

And yet somehow this particular secret had survived for months that she almost respected it. Almost. Lately she had begun noticing small things.

Tiny things.

For example, K had developed a habit of showering immediately after returning home. On its own, this meant very little. Except K enjoyed lingering. He liked wandering through the gardens first. He liked sitting beside her while recounting every insignificant event from his day. He liked stealing kisses before doing literally anything else. There had once been an entire afternoon lost because he stopped to kiss her in a hallway and somehow forgot where he had originally intended to go.

Now he returned home and disappeared upstairs almost immediately then emerged freshly showered. Freshly scrubbed as though washing away evidence.

Very interesting.

Then there were the conversations. Or rather, the increasingly suspicious lack of conversations. Whenever she asked about his day, K still answered. Technically. The problem was that his explanations no longer resembled complete stories. They arrived as fragments. Disconnected events stitched together by panic.

"I went into town today."

A pause.

"There were pencils."

Another pause.

"Actually several pencils."

A longer pause.

"What would you need pencils for?."

K immediately reached for his tea.

"for a person."

"...A person?."

"Yes."

And then the conversation would abruptly die. It happened often enough that she eventually began looking forward to it.

Her favorite incident involved the laundry. She had been carrying a basket downstairs over midnight when K materialized directly in front of her. Smiling far too brightly.

"Oh!"

The basket vanished from her hands.

"I'll do that."

She blinked.

"You hate laundry."

"I've changed." The answer arrived much too quickly.

Before she could argue, he was already retreating toward the laundry room with the basket clutched against his chest. Naturally she followed. Well, partly because she was curious. Mostly because watching K attempt deception had become one of her favorite hobbies.

The moment he noticed her approaching, he visibly panicked. His shoulders straightened, his smile tightened. And then, for reasons she still could not fully explain, he abruptly pulled several worn shirts behind his back as though protecting them.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you hiding your shirts behind your back?"

"I'm not."

"You are."

She stared at him, one eyebrow perched. K stared back. Neither of them moved. Eventually he laughed far too loudly to be natural.

"Haha."

A pause.

"You probably shouldn't stay in here."

"...Why?"

Another longer pause.

"Laundry reasons."

She left before she started laughing.

The cellar had been worse. For centuries neither of them had bothered locking it. There had never been a reason. Then one evening she went downstairs to retrieve a bottle of blood and discovered the door locked.

Locked. She stood there for nearly a minute, holding back the bubbling laughter threatening to escaped her.

Very interesting.

The key was nowhere to be found and when she eventually asked K about it, her husband reacted with alarming speed. One moment she was standing in the hallway, the next she was airborne.

"Love."

Before she could continue, he had already deposited her onto the sitting room couch. Then came a kiss pressed to the top of her head. A hand smoothing gently through her hair.

"Stay here, princess."

Another kiss.

"I'll get it."

"Kei—"

Another kiss.

"I'll be right back."

And then he disappeared downstairs before she could protest. The cellar. Whatever it is, he was definitely hiding something in the cellar.

Unfortunately every attempt to investigate ended exactly the same way. K redirected her. Distracted her. Carried her somewhere else. Or bribed her. She was still annoyed about that.

Eventually she decided a more direct approach was necessary. The opportunity arrived beneath a full moon. Silver light poured through the bedroom windows, washing everything in pale illumination. She stood near the glass, moonlight pooling around her feet, watching the grounds below.

Predictably, K found her within minutes. He always did, like gravity, or tides, or particularly devoted wolves. Strong arms wrapped around her waist from behind. His chin settled comfortably upon her shoulder. A familiar warmth, familiar weight. Her hands found his wrists and held them there.

For several moments neither of them spoke. Then she asked quietly,

"What have you been hiding from me these days, hm, love?"

The reaction was immediate. His heartbeat lurched. His breath caught.

"WHAT HIDING BABE NOTHING."

She physically flinched. The shout exploded directly beside her ear.

“…”

"Oh. Shit."

A pause.

"Sorry, darling."

He immediately kissed her earlobe in apology. Apparently believing that solved the problem. It did not, though it helped somewhat. She tightened her grip around his wrists. No escape.

"Then why are you so nervous around me lately?"

K made a deeply distressed sound. The sort of sound produced by a man realizing every available exit had just vanished.

She waited until eventually his shoulders sagged.

Defeat.

"I..."

A pause.

"I made a friend."

“…”

She blinked.

"What?"

"A friend."

"K."

"Yes?"

"You befriend everyone."

"I do."

"That's not something people hide."

"Right."

A dangerous pause followed.

"My friend is very cute."

She stared.

"What?"

"His name is Jo."

"..."

"And he looks like a rice grain."

The silence that followed was extraordinary. Somewhere outside an owl made a noise. She wasn't entirely convinced K understood how language worked anymore.

"A rice grain."

"Yes."

She turned slightly to look at him only to find his expression radiated with panic.

So damn interesting.

"Mhm."

Her voice remained perfectly calm.

"Tell me more about your friend Jo."

Relief immediately flooded his features. The relief of a man who believed he had narrowly escaped execution.

"Oh!"

But just like that the words began pouring out. Apparently all K required was permission. Jo was a university student. Jo studied art. Jo was shy. Jo was talented. Jo looked perpetually stressed whenever K appeared unexpectedly beside him. Jo consumed an amount of rice that K found genuinely concerning.

"Jo and I had lunch together."

A thoughtful pause.

"He ate four bowls of white rice."

Another pause.

"I don't know if that's normal."

The concern in his voice sounded entirely sincere.

"I've been wondering about it."

And suddenly the panic was gone, replaced with excitement.

Now he was happily explaining Jo's classes, Jo's sketches, Jo's opinions on pencils, Jo's alarming rice consumption, and a surprisingly detailed ranking of various tonkatsu restaurants. At one point he spent nearly five minutes discussing pork cutlets. Another three discussing rice. She eventually found herself laughing.

And behind her, K visibly relaxed. The tension left his shoulders. His heartbeat settled. His smile softened. And suddenly she understood. He still hadn't answered her question. Whatever secret he was protecting remained hidden. But for tonight she let it go.

Because K was smiling again without pressure. Because he looked happy. And because apparently he had once again adopted an introverted human.

Some things never changed.

The following morning began as most mornings did with K carefully lowering his sleeping wife into her coffin. The movement had become second nature over the centuries. One arm beneath her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, his hold secure and practiced. He could probably do it blindfolded by now.

Not that he ever would.

That would require looking away from her.

And K had never been particularly talented at that.

The red velvet lining cradled her weight as he settled her inside. Dark hair spilled across the fabric in loose waves, black against crimson, spreading around her shoulders like silk poured over fresh wine. Her hands folded neatly across her chest. Her breathing had already begun slowing, sleep steadily pulling her further away from wakefulness.

Beautiful.

She was always beautiful that wasn't new. The sky was blue. The moon was bright. His wife was beautiful. Certain truths simply existed. Yet there was something about these final moments before sleep claimed her completely that always made his chest ache.

The quietness, the softness, the way the world seemed to shrink until only she remained. Just the woman he loved.

K leaned down and pressed a kiss against her forehead. Then another against the corner of her mouth. Then a third because he felt like it that one eye immediately cracked open.

"You get three."

"Who made that rule?"

"I did."

"How dare."

She snorted. The sound warmed something embarrassingly deep inside his chest. Then her eyes finally closed.

The faint curve of amusement lingered on her lips for another moment before sleep carried it away as well. Her breathing softened. Slowed. Deepened. And little by little, she drifted beyond his reach. Silence settled across the bedroom and K remained where he was.

Watching.

Just for a moment. Then another. Then several more. The truth was that he never got tired of looking at her. Not after one century. Not after five. Not after all the years that had accumulated between them.

If anything, the problem seemed to be getting worse. Most people assumed love eventually settled. That it softened with time found a comfortable shape, a quieter form.

K suspected those people had never met his wife.

Because every year somehow made things worse. Every decade revealed something new. Every century handed him another reason. It was honestly becoming ridiculous.

Eventually he exhaled and reached for the nearby chair. The wooden legs slightly lifted to avoid any sounds as he bring it toward the foot of the coffin. His sketchbook settled against his raised knee. Pencils followed. The familiar tools felt less foreign now than they had several months ago. Still strange, but less terrifying.

For a long moment he simply looked. Not drawing just looking. Jo had insisted observation mattered.

"Most people don't actually see what they're drawing."

K had considered that complete nonsense. Then Jo forced him to spend an entire afternoon studying the shape of a single ear. Apparently art was ninety percent staring and ten percent suffering. Who knew.

Now, however, he understood. Because every day he noticed something new. The delicate curve of her cheek where it softened near her jaw. The faint bend of her nose. The shape of her eyelashes resting against pale skin. The way one eyebrow sat ever so slightly higher than the other when she was annoyed. The tiny scar near her temple. The barely noticeable asymmetry of her smile. The way one side of her mouth curved a little more than the other whenever she laughed.

Tiny insignificant details. The sort of things most people would never notice. Yet somehow they felt important. As though they were pieces of a language only he knew how to read.

His pencil moved slowly across the page. Line by line. Stroke by stroke. The sketch grew patiently. No longer paralyzed by the possibility of mistakes.

Well.

Not completely paralyzed.

Jo would probably call that progress. K preferred to call it survival. Because every time he looked up from the paper, he forgot what he had been doing.

Every time.

His eyes would drift back toward her face then stay there. Minutes passing unnoticed. The pencil forgotten entirely. At one point he spent nearly fifteen minutes staring before realizing he had not drawn a single line.

Ridiculous.

Entirely her fault.

How was anyone expected to concentrate under these conditions? The portrait slowly took shape. A suggestion of her jaw. The outline of her hair. The graceful slope of her shoulders. Still imperfect. Still unfinished. But start to get recognizable. For the first time in his life.

K felt something soften inside his chest as he examined his work. There she was, not perfectly captured. But enough that someone looking at the page would know exactly who it was. Enough that one day he could place the finished sketch into her hands. Enough that one day he could say:

Look.

Look at yourself.

Look at how beautiful you are.

Because she had not seen her own reflection for so long. Because mirrors no longer offered her that kindness. Because centuries had passed since she had last been able to stand before mirrors and silvers and find herself staring back.

And sometimes, K caught her touching her own face. Never for long, enough for her to realize he'd noticed.

A fingertip tracing her cheek. Her jaw. The bridge of her nose. Small absent-minded gestures as though trying to remember. As though piecing herself together from memory alone. Every single time it happened, something inside him cracked because he knew what she was wondering. Maybe she never spoke the thoughts aloud. Maybe she never even consciously acknowledged them. But he knew.

What do I look like now?

Would I recognize myself?

Do I still look the same?

The cruelest part was that K knew the answer immediately.

Of course she would.

He would recognize her anywhere. In any century. In any crowd.

In any lifetime.

He would know her by the sound of her footsteps. By the rhythm of her breathing. By the way she tilted her head when thinking. By the shape of her silence. He would know her if the world remade itself a thousand times over. But she couldn't see what he saw.

So he drew.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Hours slipped by unnoticed. Sunlight slowly climbed higher beyond the cellar windows. Sketchbooks filled. Pages turned. Pencils dulled. And somewhere between one portrait and the next, K realized he had accidentally fallen in love with his wife all over again.

Which should not have been possible.

The first time had already consumed his entire life. Apparently the universe had examined that level of devotion and decided it wasn't nearly enough. Unfortunately for him, every time he looked up from the page, there she was.

Still beautiful.

Still beloved.

Still capable of ruining his concentration after several centuries of dedicated practice.

His gaze softened. A helpless smile pulled at his mouth. Then he reached forward and gently brushed a loose strand of hair away from her face.

"My pretty girl," he murmured quietly.

The words disappeared into the silence.

"You've forgotten."

His thumb lingered briefly against her temple. A tenderness so familiar it had become instinct. His eyes drifted back toward the unfinished portrait. Toward the woman taking shape beneath his pencil. Toward the surprise hidden in stacks of sketchbooks she still hadn't discovered. His smile softened further.

"I'll remember for both of us."

Okay, this is it, y’all. I’m moving this godforsaken Earth to Mars and leaving it to them. I can’t do this anymore.

Who’s coming with me? 😔

[ravynisblue]

hiii!!! i've been meaning to ask for a while because i'm still a bit lost- in 'mothers and misfits', is liriope the lady's actual name? or is it a nickname/code name? i've gone through some of the past chapters to check but i still cannot figure it out and was hoping you could clarify? ty!! <3

Hiii!! Liriope is her real namee 💔 She just uses her initial “L” for some of her underground stuff (like the casino), so I can see why that got confusing 😭

I DIDN’T REALIZE IT READ LIKE THAT since I don’t have a beta reader (it all make sense in my head though), I’m so sorryyy 😔

Thank you for asking!! ♡

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 15

The second Liriope’s car left the mansion, the entire house exhaled, literally and physically. Like prisoners hearing the guard leave for the night. The silence she left behind was immediate and enormous, as if the walls themselves had been holding their breath.

Taki, who had been standing near the window like an anxious house cat with excellent hearing, lifted one hand dramatically the moment the sound of the car disappeared past the gates.

“The dragon has left the castle.”

“…”

Then Maki, who had been sprawled face-down across K’s new bed like a man recovering from war, lifted his head.

“Praise be.”

Nicholas crossed himself.

“May she be blessed and remain gone for at least three business hours.”

“Amen,” Yuma said from the floor.

K, sitting in the desk chair looking like a man who had somehow progressively become the unwilling leader of a criminal support group, pinched the bridge of his nose.

“She is not a dragon.”

“She is absolutely a dragon,” Maki said.

“Rich-people dragon,” Taki agreed, already abandoning the window and heading toward the center of the room like a town crier bringing bad news.

“Corporate dragon.”

“Worse,” Nicholas said.

“Maternal dragon.”

“That is the most dangerous kind of dragon,” EJ muttered.

“Stop with the dragon talk,” K muttered before smacking each one of them on the head. When he reached Fuma, though, he lowered his hand.

And that was how, within five minutes of Liriope leaving, all nine of them had gathered in K’s room for what Maki had officially declared an Emergency Meeting.

No one trusted any other room in the mansion. Even though Mr. Ikeda seemed to have developed claustrophobia from seeing nine grown men sticking to each other in a small room almost every time throughout the day. Honestly, no one trusted this room either, but at least collective paranoia felt safer in groups.

Something about Liriope’s house made all of them feel like they were being supervised at all times. Not because she had actually done anything, though, but because every hallway was too quiet, every door too expensive, and Mr. Ikeda appeared with tea like he had been summoned by guilt alone.

It was impossible to have suspicious conversations comfortably in a place like this. Which was unfortunate, because suspicious conversations were most of their personality.

So K’s room it was.

The emergency meeting had naturally lost all dignity almost immediately. Maki was now occupying the bed like a Victorian patient, yapping about how well he had slept last night and insisting on building a conspiracy theory about how Liriope must have put something in their beds. EJ sat by the chair, arms crossed, looking like the only person with functioning brain cells, while Taki sat sideways on the armchair like EJ’s dramatic sidekick.

Yuma was fully horizontal on the carpet like a milk-drunk kitten. Nicholas was half-hanging off the bunk-bed ladder like a decorative threat. Jo remained closest to the door, preserving escape routes. Fuma stood near the bookshelf as if it were his brand now. K looked up at him and waved a hand.

“Come and sit. You’re making my neck hurt.”

Fuma obeyed and sat next to him on the floor.

Maki sat up on the bed like a man about to deliver either a revolution or the worst idea of the week.

“We need to discuss the fact that we may have been adopted against our will.”

That was a strong topic to start with.

Silence followed. Everyone stared at him, trying to make sense of what they were going through at the moment.

Then Nicholas nodded slowly.

“Valid.”

And just like that, chaos began.

“What does she actually want?” EJ asked, arms still crossed like he was trying to hold the entire group’s intelligence together by force.

“Control,” Yuma said from the floor without opening his eyes. “Probably emotional warfare. Possibly tax fraud.”

“Why would rich people commit tax fraud if they already own the government?” Nicholas asked.

“For fun,” Jo said.

“Impressive.”

Taki pointed dramatically from the armchair.

“Is this revenge? Like, we ran away, so now she’s making us stay here and emotionally process things?”

“And why would she kidnap us in the first place anyway?” Nicholas asked, clearly avoiding using his brain at the moment.

“Because we were trying to rob her casino, remember, Larry?” Harua said, already getting another headache.

“Right.”

“This is worse than prison,” Maki said.

“Maybe she is evil,” Yuma offered. “Elegant. Beautiful. Terrifying. Rich. That is villain coding.”

“Tch, you think she’s beautiful?” K scoffed saltily.

“You’re blind if you disagree.”

Even Fuma nodded in agreement beside him.

“She did save Harua,” Jo reminded them.

“Villains can be confusing.”

K rubbed his temples. None of this situation made any sense to him. Maki pointed at everyone like a man carrying the burden of truth alone.

“Also, she is, like… too young.”

A beat.

Then eight voices answered at once.

“That is not the main issue.”

“It absolutely is,” Maki insisted, offended by their lack of vision. “Who adopts grown men? We are adults. We pay taxes.”

“No, we don’t,” Fuma cut in calmly.

Maki blinked.

“What?”

Fuma folded his arms.

“We are thieves. We do not pay taxes, Maki.”

Then Taki, visibly alarmed, sat up straighter.

“But… we pay taxes for food and clothes and stuff, right?”

Fuma looked at him with the kind of patience usually reserved for confused children and dying men.

“Yeah.”

Taki made a tiny, relieved noise. K, for some reason, looked proud anyway and reached over to ruffle his hair.

“That… you got the point.”

Maki, still emotionally committed to the real issue, pointed again.

“Still, her eldest son is older than she is. That is ridiculous.”

The word son earned an offended frown from K.

“That is admittedly insane.”

“She cannot look at K and go, ‘my son,’ like she didn’t personally marry someone from his father’s tax bracket.”

“Again,” Fuma said quietly, “not taxes.”

“Stop correcting me,” Maki snapped.

Fuma only shrugged.

Yuma rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

“I still think she’s trying to emotionally kidnap us.”

“I knew she was ready to adopt us all when she built a hospital wing in a month,” EJ said.

“She gave us bunk beds. I love bunk beds,” Jo added quietly.

“You know what’s the most shocking? She prayed over Harua,” Taki said, much quieter now.

“She did? I thought she was cursing us under her breath.” Maki flopped back onto the bed.

Somehow, their talk did not produce anything useful. No one had any idea what her motives were because she had been so contradictory. She kidnapped them, but let them wander around. She even let them run away. She saved Harua when he was on the verge of dying during their reckless heist, had already built a medical wing maybe for them to use and prepared comfortable rooms to accommodate all nine of them.

She was not remotely evil, and yet her kindness did not feel entirely sincere either.

“She might need K to fully control the Koga Empire. You know, real heir and stuff,” Fuma said, finally being serious enough to address the issue, which made the whole room fall silent. Mostly because he rarely said anything.

“Really? You saw it?” K asked.

“No.”

The room exhaled at that and then collectively surprised themselves at the feeling of relief that maybe she did not want anything from them after all.

Fuma frowned slightly.

“Why do you all look upset? Can’t I say anything from my own thoughts without it having to do with time perception?”

He almost looked offended. Yuma laughed from the floor before K dramatically pulled him into a headlock.

“No, Fuma. We’re just surprised because it’s rare.”

Still, Fuma playfully sulked at that.

Which, unfortunately, only sent the conversation spiraling in a far worse direction.

Maki sat up again like a man struck by divine stupidity.

“What if she manipulated your father?”

K hated that instantly.

“No.”

Nicholas, naturally, made it worse.

“What if she married him for power?”

“No.”

“What if she was planning this the whole time?”

“No.”

“What if,” Yuma said from the floor, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling, “she is secretly a corporate supervillain and this is all part of a twenty-year revenge plot?”

K looked like he was considering murder.

“No.”

Taki raised one hand.

“What if she poisoned him?”

Harua turned slowly.

“Why is that your first contribution?”

“I watch documentaries.”

Maki, now fully committed to ruining K’s day, pointed dramatically.

“No, think about it. Rich, beautiful, terrifying woman marries powerful man, inherits an empire, emotionally kidnaps his son years later. That is villain-backstory material.”

Nicholas gasped.

“She is in a soap opera.”

“She IS the soap opera,” Yuma corrected.

K pinched the bridge of his nose so hard it looked medically concerning.

“She did not murder my father.”

“How could you be so sure?” Jo asked.

K paused and found no answer.

EJ, who had been silent for too long and was therefore dangerous, finally spoke.

“If she wanted money, she already had more money than God.”

Liriope did not need anyone’s inheritance. She practically owned half the city and probably the moon.

Maki frowned.

“Fine. Then power.”

“She already had power,” Fuma said.

“…More emotional power?”

“No one wants that much emotional power,” Harua muttered.

Jo leaned against the wall.

“And if she wanted control, why would she willingly adopt eight disasters?” What a self-aware king.

Silence settled as everyone looked around the room. To the evidence of her trying to adopt them.

“That is self-destruction,” EJ agreed.

“Exactly,” Maki said. “No sane woman would choose this.”

From the doorway, a calm voice answered:

“She did.”

“AAAAHHH—!”

Everyone screamed at Mr. Ikeda, who suddenly stood there holding a silver tea tray like he had manifested directly from guilt and bad timing. No one knew how long he had been standing there.

K stood up so fast he nearly twisted his ankle. Before Mr. Ikeda could react, K had crossed the room and grabbed the poor man lightly by the sleeve like an emotionally compromised detective in a bad crime drama.

“Sir,” Mr. Ikeda said with perfect calm, balancing the tea tray with supernatural professionalism, “please release my sleeve.”

“No.”

“Master K—”

“Was she manipulating my father?”

Mr. Ikeda blinked once.

“No.”

“Was she secretly evil?”

“No.”

“Was she running a corporate supervillain revenge plot?”

“…No.”

“Are you lying to protect her?”

Mr. Ikeda looked mildly offended.

“I have served Madam for twenty-three years. I do not lie. I simply exercise discretion.”

Maki pointed dramatically from the bed.

“Hah! He’s biased. Throw his testimony out.”

Mr. Ikeda turned to him with the patience of a saint.

“I am literally the primary witness.”

“Biased witness.”

“I watched your father force Madam to eat breakfast for three consecutive years because she forgot meals while working.”

That was… unexpectedly specific.

Nicholas slowly sat up.

“…Continue.”

Mr. Ikeda adjusted his glasses.

“She’s devoted to your father.”

The room stilled.

Even K couldn’t accept that fact.

Because unfortunately, Mr. Ikeda did not look like a man who joked.

They let Mr. Ikeda go mostly because his explanation sounded too unreasonable to digest.

What did he mean, Liriope had simply loved K’s father? That she stayed because of that? That now she wanted to take care of his only child out of loyalty and something dangerously close to affection? And the rest of them too, because apparently being K’s disaster collection counted as “brothers in arms”?

Absolutely not.

That was not logic. That was emotional propaganda, and Maki’s logic had dismissed it immediately.

“No. I reject that reality.”

Taki nodded with full seriousness.

“Same. Too genuine. Suspicious.”

Yuma, still sprawled across the floor, raised one hand.

“I trust crime more than I trust genuine emotional intentions.”

“Exactly,” Maki said, pointing at him like he had found his people. “Finally, someone with sense.”

Mr. Ikeda, standing in the doorway with the patience of a man who had clearly survived worse households than this, adjusted his glasses.

“Or perhaps Madam simply cares for you.”

“See?” Maki said. “That. That sentence sounds fake.”

Mr. Ikeda stared at him for a long moment, then gave a long, exhausted sigh.

“I shall bring tea.”

“Yes,” K said immediately. “Please. Strong enough to kill.”

Mr. Ikeda left with what looked suspiciously like relief.

The room fell quiet again after too much talking and absolutely no useful conclusions. Their emergency meeting had lasted far too long and produced exactly nothing except emotional damage and several new conspiracy theories.

Nicholas, however, looked dangerously excited, which usually meant he had an idea. K noticed immediately and narrowed his eyes.

“No.”

Nicholas blinked.

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

He sat up straighter, folded his hands, and said with the calm confidence of someone about to cause irreversible problems,

“We could ask your father.”

K stared at him. For one full second, his brain refused to process the sentence.

Then, flatly “He is dead.”

Nicholas nodded once. “Yes.”

Maki, who unfortunately understood Nicholas too quickly, slowly sat upright. His eyes narrowed.

“…Continue.”

Nicholas smiled. That was never a good sign.

“We shall summon him.”

“…”

The room went still as a breeze suddenly drifted into the room through the open window, sending chills down everyone's spine. Everyone sat up straighter. EJ looked up. Even Fuma, who usually treated chaos like weather, blinked. K looked like he was considering murder as a conflict-resolution strategy.

“You want,” he said slowly, “to perform necromancy on my dead father, in my stepmother’s mansion.”

Nicholas lifted one shoulder.

“When you say it like that, it sounds dramatic.”

“When I say it exactly as it is, it sounds like a terrible idea.”

Taki sat up. “Wait.”

Everyone turned then Taki pointed between them, suddenly invested.

“We can do that?”

EJ rubbed his face. K closed his eyes.

“I hate all of you.”

“But,” Nicholas continued, ignoring him completely, “it’s actually better than assuming things and making up conspiracies. It’s effective and efficient.”

“When was the last time you performed necromancy?” Jo asked.

“Years ago…”

“Give us the exact number.”

“…Well, trust me, I still remember how.”

Maki stood on the bed like a prophet receiving divine revelation.

“Oh, then we are absolutely doing this.”

“No, we are absolutely not,” K snapped.

“Yes, we absolutely are,” Yuma said from the floor.

“Why are you voting? He’s not your father.”

“Damn, K, you can be hurtful sometimes,” Yuma snapped, his voice small enough to earn guilt and silence K.

K pressed both hands over his face in immediate regret.

“…Sorry.”

Yuma looked smug.

Nicholas clapped once as though this had now become legally approved.

“Excellent. Midnight séance it is.”

“No,” K said immediately.

“Yes,” said eight voices at once.

He looked around the room.

At Maki, already planning crimes with his eyes. At Taki, looking weirdly excited about ghost logistics. At Nicholas, who had clearly been waiting his entire life for this exact moment. At Fuma, who looked resigned. At Jo, who somehow seemed calm about all of this. At EJ, who had accepted that fate was cruel. At Yuma, who was enjoying this far too much. At Harua, who looked like he wanted to fake another medical emergency just to escape. And K realized, with the deep spiritual exhaustion of a man cursed by family, that he had already lost.

K stared at the ceiling like God personally owed him compensation.

“I want it officially noted,” he said, voice flat, “that when this goes horribly wrong, I will be saying ‘I told you so’ from prison.”

Maki hopped off the bed and patted his shoulder with false sympathy.

“That’s the spirit.”

“That is the opposite of what I said.”

And that, unfortunately, was how the emergency meeting ended: with a group decision to commit necromancy in secret inside the mansion of the most terrifying woman any of them had ever met.

Honestly?

At this point, it felt on brand.

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn

If i was liriope i will regret every single second i spent adopting them istg

Next

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 14

Liriope dismissed them from the medical wing like they were some incompetent knights being banished from their queen’s court.

“Out,” she said, her tone lacking its usual bite.

At first, no one argued. Mostly because none of them had the emotional strength left to survive a second round. Mostly because they did not stand a chance against Liriope.

Maki, however, made one last brave and deeply stupid attempt.

“I’m staying with Harua.”

Beside him, Taki nodded immediately.

“Same.”

Liriope, still seated beside Harua’s bed, did not even look up from the medical chart in her hands.

“No.”

Maki straightened.

“But—”

“No.”

Taki tried next, because apparently near-death experiences made them both delusional.

“What if he wakes up and needs emotional support?”

“He will delightfully survive the tragedy of not seeing your face for eight hours.”

“That feels personal.”

Liriope did not even bother to respond.

Maki crossed his arms.

“We are his closest companions.”

“We are his favorites,” Taki added, following the gesture.

Liriope finally looked up and smiled. That terrifying, too-soft-to-be-true smile that usually meant someone was about to experience character development against their will.

“Respectfully, it is I who does not wish to see your faces for the rest of the night,” she said softly, her words sharp enough to cut.

“…”

Then Maki nodded once, goosebumps rising on the back of his neck.

“Understood, Ma’am. Fair.”

“Extremely fair,” Taki agreed.

What she did not say was that they were exhausted. That fear still clung to all of them like smoke. That delayed grief was still grief. And tonight, she wanted them sleeping, not standing around a hospital bed, pretending that holding onto exhaustion was an act of loyalty.

So instead, she simply waved one hand toward the door.

“Out.”

And like men being dismissed from divine judgment, they went.

Mr. Ikeda was already waiting outside the medical wing, hands folded neatly in front of him, his expression serene beneath his perfectly white moustache and immaculate posture. There was no hint that he was a butler who had spent his entire career resolving childhood issues and was already doomed to follow the same path again.

“This way, masters,” he said politely.

No one had the energy to protest being escorted to bed like the problematic children they were.

The mansion was quieter at night. Soft lights glowed along the hallways. The silence settled over everything, making even breathing feel too loud.

Their footsteps followed Mr. Ikeda through familiar corridors, and with every turn, K’s mood visibly worsened, judging by the deepening crease between his brows. By the time they reached the familiar residential wing, he had already decided violence was a reasonable emotional response.

Mr. Ikeda stopped in front of the first door.

“Your room, Master K.”

K looked at the closed door. Then looked at him. Then looked back at the door, as though its very existence had personally insulted his trauma.

“No.”

Mr. Ikeda blinked once.

“…No, sir?”

“I would rather sleep in the bathroom, Mr. Ikeda.”

“…”

“Sir—”

“I mean that sincerely, Mr. Ikeda.”

K folded his arms across his chest, trying his best to project defiance at the poor butler.

Maki, already emotionally unstable, burst into immediate laughter.

“That room really traumatized you, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“Understandable.”

“I am not sleeping in there.”

Mr. Ikeda, to his eternal credit, did not even look surprised or resigned.

Before the argument could continue, Yuma, who had been standing suspiciously quiet this whole time, stepped forward.

“I’ll take it.”

Everyone turned.

“…Why?” Even K still had the energy to ask that.

Yuma shrugged, suddenly looking far too casual for someone volunteering to jump into one of their crew’s psychological wounds.

“Why not? The room feels lived in.”

Nicholas narrowed his eyes.

“That sounded weirdly emotional.”

EJ thought the same, but Nicholas was the one who said it out loud.

“I hate that you heard it.”

But he was right. There had been something about that room. The worn sheets. The old books. The quiet warmth of a space someone had actually lived in instead of merely decorating.

It had been… comforting.

Deeply annoying.

Yuma refused to unpack that. So instead, he opened the door and stopped.

“Oh.”

Everyone peeked over his shoulder.

K frowned.

“…What?”

His old room was gone. Well, not entirely gone.

Changed.

K’s old queen-sized bed had been replaced with a bunk bed and a single bed by the window. Fresh sheets. Fresh blankets. The rest of the furniture was still there, but it no longer felt spacious and empty.

A room meant for people.

Plural.

Yuma blinked slowly.

Mr. Ikeda adjusted his glasses and, as though no one had asked a question, said,

“Madam thought it might be more comfortable if you all slept together rather than separately. Especially in an unfamiliar place.”

"..."

Then Maki, from somewhere in the back, whispered,

“Did she really mean to adopt all of us?”

Mr. Ikeda smiled politely at him, which was somehow a yes.

Maki shivered.

“That is the scariest thing anyone has ever said to me without actually saying anything.”

“Honestly?” Taki muttered. “I think we’re already adopted.”

“That’s a nightmare.”

Yuma stepped fully inside.

“Alright. I’m taking this room.”

Then, without missing a beat, he turned around and yanked Taki inside.

“You. Sleep with me.”

Taki blinked beneath Yuma’s arm, which had now snaked around his neck.

“…Me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Yuma looked offended by the question.

“Because if I wake up in the middle of the night having an emotional crisis, I need someone pretty to look at.”

Nicholas made a choking noise.

“That was somehow the worst and nicest thing you’ve ever said.”

Taki, after a moment of processing, nodded solemnly while K rubbed his temples.

Room assignments happened quickly after that.

Yuma and Taki claimed K’s old room.

K, after refusing to sleep in his own trauma chamber, voluntarily ended up with Fuma and Nicholas. Which felt like a mercy after the long day. Both Fuma and Nicholas could be surprisingly quiet.

Well, K would have preferred Jo, who was reliably quiet, but for now this would do.

EJ ended up with Maki and Jo, a combination that made him look like he was already planning his funeral. Jo was everyone’s favorite roommate, but Maki? He rarely slept at night, and he was not remotely quiet about it, which was a nightmare.

Mr. Ikeda opened the final door and stepped aside.

“Please rest, young masters. Madam insists.”

Maki narrowed his eyes.

“That sounded like a threat.”

“I feel like it was phrased as love,” Jo said.

“Jo, don’t let her brainwash you.”

Mr. Ikeda only gave that same polite, unreadable smile.

“Goodnight, gentlemen.”

And with that, he left them alone.

For a moment, the hallway stayed quiet.

Nine boys.

One giant mansion.

One terrifying mother figure upstairs.

And the deeply uncomfortable realization that they had, somehow, accidentally become a family.

Maki stared into the middle distance.

“I think,” he said slowly, “we may have been emotionally kidnapped for real.”

From beside his bed, EJ called back,

“Go to sleep, Maki.”

And for once, he actually did.

The mansion was quiet the next morning. Suspiciously quiet. Because for the first time in what felt like forever, all nine of them had slept like the dead. No nightmares. No late-night arguments. No one sneaking out to commit emotionally damaging decisions. Just pure, immediate unconsciousness that came only after absolute terror and the relief of surviving it.

They had nearly lost Harua. Then they hadn’t. And apparently, the body responded to that by shutting down like Maki’s computer forced into emergency restart.

No one had even bothered to wash up. They had simply collapsed into bed in their formal clothes, shoes kicked off in random directions as dignity already abandoned them. Which was why the next morning looked less like organized criminals and more like a deeply unfortunate dormitory.

A line of very sleepy, very sticky, very pathetic boys stood outside one bathroom door like prisoners of war. Hair a mess. Eyes half-open. Souls gone. At the very front, Maki was banging on the door like a man seconds away from committing murder.

“Fumaaa,” he shouted, voice full of betrayal, “I am about to pee on this expensive floor. Open the damn door!”

From two people behind him, Taki groaned dramatically, bent slightly forward in shared suffering.

“Stop talking about piss, I’m also in an emergency.”

“This is a humanitarian crisis,” Nicholas added from the wall, where he had given up standing and was simply leaning against it like a tragic Victorian woman.

“No one warned me rich people also suffer with the lack of bathroom.”

Jo, still somehow looking composed despite clearly being half-dead, crossed his arms.

“This is because none of you think ahead.”

“This,” Maki snapped, still pounding on the door, “is not the time for character analysis.”

K, standing somewhere in the middle of the line, had fully given up on consciousness. He was leaning half his body weight against EJ, eyes closed, visibly taking a second nap while waiting for survival. EJ, unfortunately chosen as support furniture, looked deeply betrayed by life.

“You are heavy.”

“I am suffering.”

“That does not reduce your weight.”

“Emotionally, it should.”

EJ sighed like a man accepting his fate.

“Good morning,” K mumbled without opening his eyes, voice still rough with sleep. “My brother in arms.”

Nicholas immediately smacked the back of his head. Usually, K would have retaliated. Today, he only let out a tired laugh, the sound low and warm in a way that made everyone pause for half a second. Because it was annoyingly nice, despite the chaos, despite everything, this morning felt good. Domestic, in the worst possible way. But good.

Another ten seconds passed, then Maki hit the door again.

“FUMA.”

From inside, only the sound of running water answered.

“OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!.”

Another full minute passed. Then finally, mercifully, the bathroom door opened. Hot steam rolled dramatically into the hallway like divine revelation and there stood Fuma. Freshly showered, hair still damp, clean shirt. Looking peaceful. Radiant. Like a man who had achieved enlightenment while everyone else rotted in line.

He looked at the group of exhausted creatures in front of him. Then blinked once.

“…You know there are multiple bathrooms on this floor, right?”

Silence. Absolute silence. The kind of silence that came right before violence. Maki stared at him. Taki stared at him. Even K opened one eye. Fuma, unaware or perhaps fully aware of the danger, continued calmly,

“There are at least four.”

And then—

“DAMN YOU, YOU SHOULD’VE SAID THAT FIRST—”

Taki, who almost never cursed, broke formation and fled down the hallway like a man escaping war. At the exact same moment, Maki launched himself into the now-empty bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him like he was protecting national secrets.

Nicholas pointed dramatically.

“Traitor!”

“Survival first!” Maki yelled from inside.

Jo turned without a word and walked toward the next hallway. EJ peeled K off his shoulder and shoved him gently toward another direction.

“Find another bathroom.”

“I was emotionally attached to this one.”

“Move.”

Yuma, emerging from K’s old room looking suspiciously refreshed, took one look at the chaos and immediately turned around.

“Nope.”

Too late. Taki, sprinting past him, pointed wildly.

“There’s another one down there!”

And just like that, the Great Morning Bathroom Migration began. Doors opening. Footsteps running. Threats being shouted across expensive hallways. Mr. Ikeda watching all of it from the staircase with the dead-eyed calm as he adjusted his glasses and walk away.

Harua woke up to peace. Real, suspicious peace which immediately made him think something was wrong.

The room was quiet except for the soft, steady beeping of the monitor beside him. Morning light spilled through the large windows in warm gold, bright enough to tell him it was already late. His body felt heavy, like someone had replaced all his bones with wet concrete.

Then the smell hit him. Antiseptic. Alcohol.

Hospital.

Oh no.

Awareness came back all at once, sharp and ugly. The heist. The system room. The electric shock. The pain. The lights flickering. Falling.

Right.

He might almost dead, wonderful.

Harua stared at the ceiling for a long second, processing the deeply offensive fact that he was still alive. Then he turned his head and nearly had a second heart attack. Liriope was sitting beside his bed. Just sitting there. Perfect posture. Perfect hair. Perfect terrifying calm. Sitting on a chair pulled too close to his bedside like this was the most normal thing in the world.

She looked up from the book in her hands.

“Good morning,” she said casually.

Harua’s soul left his body. The heart monitor beside him immediately betrayed him with frantic beeping.

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep—

Liriope glanced at the screen, mildly fascinated.

“Your normal heartbeat is really that high, huh?”

Harua looked at her like a cornered rabbit realizing the wolf had learned table manners. She tilted her head slightly, still studying the monitor.

“Although I do think you need to calm down a bit. It is over two hundred already.”

That did not help, that somehow made it worse. Because why, why in the name of every bad life decision was he alone? With her? Where were the others? Where were his brothers? Where was Maki’s unnecessary screaming? Where was Taki’s dramatic emotional support? Where was literally anyone else?

No one. Absolutely no one.

Harua, still half-dead and fully betrayed, stared at her in silent horror. Liriope turned a page in her book.

“You are making this feel far more dramatic than necessary.”

Harua opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again like his brain had stopped providing useful dialogue options.

“I…”

Excellent start. Liriope finally put the book down and waited politely. He tried again.

“Why are you here?”

She looked at him like the answer should have been obvious.

“Because this is my house.”

“Why? Why am I in your house? Did they give me in?”

“I’m not sure what is that mean, but you’re almost died.”

Harua wanted to disappear into the mattress. Unfortunately, near-death experiences did not grant that power. Before he could continue humiliating himself further, the door opened. Fuma stepped inside, freshly showered and looking relaxed. Looking like a man who had achieved spiritual peace by himself while everyone else suffered.

Harua had never been so happy to see another human being in his life. His eyes actually widened. For one brief, shining second, he looked like he might cry.

“Fuma—”

Salvation. Fuma took one look at him, then at Liriope, then nodded once like a man confirming a prophecy.

“You left me here.”

“Yes.”

Harua felt betrayal on a molecular level. And then like God deciding peace had lasted too long, the rest of them arrived. Loudly. Maki burst in first like a grieving widow in a soap opera.

“HARUAAAAA!”

Taki right behind him, already dramatic.

“We thought we lost you!”

Nicholas followed, hand over his chest.

“I already prepared a speech for your funeral!”

Yuma leaned against the doorframe.

“I called dibs on your jackets, by the way.”

“Huh?”

Jo slipped in quieter than the rest looking relieved, while EJ entered with the exhausted expression of a man who had tried to protect peace of the patient and failed to stop all of this chaos. K came last, arms crossed, looking like he had been forced here against his will by the concept of guilt. He gave Harua one look.

“You look terrible.”

Harua stared at all of them. At the noise. At the chaos. At Maki already trying to dramatically hold his hand. At Taki with watery eyes looking personally victimized by Harua’s survival. At Nicholas absolutely still ready with a funeral speech, one hand clutched in chest drammatically. And for one terrible, honest second, he wished he had gotten five more minutes alone with Liriope. At least she had been quiet.

Harua sighed so deeply it almost counted as spiritual damage.

“I want everyone out.”

“Aw,” Maki said. “He’s fine guys. He missed us.”

“I want specifically you out first.”

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn

Next

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 13

Coming back to Liriope’s mansion felt significantly more humiliating the second time. The first time, they had been kidnapped. This time, they had returned voluntarily.

Well, technically.

Because “voluntarily” was a generous word for being dragged back by circumstance, panic, and the very real possibility of Harua dying if they did not let the terrifying rich woman with suspiciously unlimited resources handle it.

Still, the irony was vicious.

Maki sat in the van in complete silence for the last ten minutes of the drive, staring out the window like a man being personally punished by the universe.

“We really escaped,” he said at last, his voice hollow, “just to come back.”

No one answered. Because there really wasn't a defense for it.

A month ago, they had fled this place like survivors escaping a haunted house. K had flipped Liriope off from a moving vehicle. Maki had declared freedom. Nicholas had celebrated. Half of them had spent the entire drive talking about never seeing this mansion again.

And now they were voluntarily driving through the same gates.

The whole van had calmed about a minute before they reached the entrance, after Maki saw Harua’s vitals improving on the monitor. Liriope must have given him first aid.

Harua would survive.

And for now, that was enough for all of them to breathe again.

Beside him, Taki, who looked equally guilty and only slightly less dramatic, leaned against the glass.

“This feels embarrassing on a spiritual level.”

“Mostly because K flipped her off last time,” Nicholas scoffed.

“Damn.”

From the driver’s seat, K said nothing, which was somehow worse.

No one wanted to be the person to point out that they were, once again, pulling into Liriope’s gates like children returning home after making bad life choices and finally surrendering.

The mansion loomed ahead, warm lights glowing against the dark, elegant and impossible, and still somehow looking like it had personally judged them from a distance.

Yuma sighed from the backseat.

“If she says ‘I told you so,’ I’ll be too embarrassed to breathe in her presence.”

“She won’t,” Nicholas said quietly.

Everyone looked at him, almost surprised. But Nicholas just stared solemnly through the windshield.

“She’ll say something worse.”

That sounded much more like her, because it was, unfortunately, true.

By the time they stepped inside, the household staff was already moving like this had been planned for weeks. Which, knowing Liriope, maybe it had been. They were soon led upstairs at a calm pace, past familiar hallways, past rooms they had very dramatically escaped from, and toward an entire section of the house none of them had seen before.

K stopped first. “…What the hell is this?”

The answer was: a hospital.

Or something dangerously close to one. An entire wing of the mansion had been transformed into a private medical floor. White walls. Sterile light. Machines humming softly. Cabinets lined with medication.

The faint smell of fresh paint still lingered beneath the sharper scent of antiseptic and alcohol, like the whole place had been built too quickly for the paint to fully settle. Like the mastermind had already known how much they would need it.

New.

All of it was new.

Nicholas blinked. “Did she build a whole medical wing in one month?”

Fuma, who had suddenly appeared beside them and no longer surprised anyone when he did things like that, said flatly,

“Yes.”

“Fuck, you scared me,” Nicholas cursed, earning a slap on the back from Fuma.

“That feels… excessive,” Yuma said, looking around in awe.

“No,” K said. “It feels exactly like the kind of thing crazy rich people do for fun.”

After a few more steps, they reached the center room.

Harua was lying in the bed.

Still.

Too still.

For one terrible second, they all forgot how to breathe.

Cables ran across Harua’s bare torso, monitoring every beat of his heart. IV lines disappeared into his arm. A used defibrillator sat off to the side like physical proof of how close this had been. A doctor—or maybe a nurse, none of them knew, and all of them looked equally terrifying during a crisis—was adjusting the drip connected to him with calm efficiency.

His eyes were still closed, but the monitor beside him beeped steadily.

Alive.

Alive.

Only then did they acknowledge the rest of the people inside the room. EJ and Jo stood off to the side, careful not to get in the way of the medical staff. Both still looked stiff from panic.

Meanwhile, Liriope sat beside the bed. Still in that red dress from the ball, though the elegance of it looked misplaced beneath the fluorescent lights. Diamonds still at her throat. Hair still perfect, not even a single stray strand out of place. And yet, she was holding Harua’s free hand in both of hers, pressed close to her forehead, eyes closed. Muttering something so soft they almost didn’t catch it.

Something that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.

No one moved.

No one spoke.

Because suddenly the room felt too intimate for witnesses. This was not the terrifying chairwoman of Koga Empire. This looked, unbelievably, like a mother terrified beside her child’s hospital bed. Praying for God to save the heart of her life.

Then the doctor checked the screen again, adjusted something on the IV, and finally nodded.

“He’s stabilizing.”

That was all.

But Maki realized, only then, that he had been holding his breath for what felt like an hour. It left him in one shaky exhale that almost hurt. Beside him, Nicholas sat down immediately on the nearest chair like his legs had given up on being useful. Taki pressed both hands over his face as he leaned into Fuma, who was already there to catch him.

On the other side of the room, EJ and Jo finally released the tension in their shoulders, both looking like they might actually cry. Even K’s shoulders dropped.

Alive.

Harua was alive.

Only then did Liriope slowly lift her head. Like now that she knew he would live and be fine, she finally had time to remember she was angry.

And God, she was angry.

She turned in her chair and looked at the eight men standing there as though a courtroom had just been called to order. No one met her eyes.

Not one.

Eight grown criminals scattered around the room suddenly found the polished floor fascinating. Shoes had never been more interesting. And the silence stretched, somehow becoming more traumatizing with every passing second.

Finally, Liriope spoke, her voice—God help them—calm. Which was much, much worse than yelling.

“I heard,” she said softly, “that my children were running a very successful heist crew in the Grey City.”

No one moved. No one dared to peek and see her expression.

“I did not realize,” she continued, turning the chair toward them as she folded her hands neatly in her lap, “that you were apparently this bad at it.”

Maki looked at the floor harder—if that was even possible. K stared at a tile as though he were having a very important cursing battle with it mentally. Nicholas briefly considered death, gripping the bed rails tighter. But when Taki raised his gaze, he found Liriope smiling.

That was somehow the most terrifying part.

“What exactly,” she asked, “possessed all of you to raw-dog one of the most dangerous security systems in Denhaag because you happened to have some handicap up your sleeves?”

"..."

“What was the rush, Maki—” she paused as Maki visibly flinched.

“—that you didn’t gather enough details about how notoriously hack-proof the mayor’s residence was?”

Silence.

Absolute silence.

Even the machines seemed quieter.

Yuma, traitor that he was, took one small step backward to avoid her stares. Harua, unconscious, was somehow still the smartest person in the room.

“Were you always this careless?” Her tone lowered slightly, making it obvious she was swallowing her anger at the moment.

Unable to contain the emotion bottled up in her chest, Liriope stood.

“Do explain.”

No one did.

Because unfortunately, there was no explanation that made this sound any better. And somewhere in the bed behind her, Harua—who had nearly died because Maki had an idea—continued sleeping peacefully through the single worst group scolding of their lives.

Honestly, though?

Good for him.

Liriope stood at the foot of Harua’s bed like judgment made flesh. She folded her hands in front of her. Terrifyingly calm.

“Well?” she said.

“…”

The monitor beside Harua beeped softly. No one moved. Eight grown criminals stood around the bed looking like children called into the principal’s office after setting something on fire. Which, honestly, was not far from the truth.

Liriope said nothing else. She only looked at them. And somehow, that was worse.

Then, because self-preservation was stronger than loyalty, Yuma pointed directly at Maki.

“Him.”

Maki turned so fast he nearly dislocated something.

“EXCUSE ME?”

“It was your device.”

“It was all your idea because of the lack of money!”

“Victim blaming,” Nicholas muttered.

“Shut up,” both of them snapped.

Liriope did not move. She simply watched. Which somehow made the betrayal happen faster.

Taki raised one hand. “In fairness, Your Honor, I did say I hated the plan.” The words blurted out in panic as his senses caught something close to murderous intent from her.

“You supported the plan,” Maki hissed.

“I supported the concept of money.”

“Same,” Nicholas said immediately.

Taki, arms crossed, spoke without looking up. “I said it was a bad idea.”

“No,” K replied flatly, “you sighed dramatically when I refused the idea the first time. That is not the same thing.”

Harua, unconscious and blissfully absent from this conversation, remained the smartest person in the building.

Under Liriope’s stare, everyone kept trying to survive.

Yuma crossed his arms. “I would like to state for the record that I am decorative support. I am not frontline staff. Especially on an infiltration mission.”

“You were physically and emotionally supporting the whole plan,” Maki shot back.

“Yet I was morally absent.”

“That explains many things,” Nicholas said.

“Thank you.”

“That was not a compliment.”

“I don’t care. It still counts.”

Taki pointed at EJ. “He also encouraged crime.”

“I encouraged the vibes,” EJ said, looking offended.

“You are the worst kind of witness.”

Nicholas placed a dramatic hand over his chest. “I also was there for emotional support.”

“You were there because crime excites you,” EJ said.

Nicholas considered it. “…Both can be true.”

“Mostly the second one,” Jo said quietly from the safest corner of the room. Everyone turned to Jo, who had spent the last ten minutes trying to become part of the wallpaper and looked mildly betrayed at being perceived.

“I chose silence,” he said carefully.

Maki pointed at him. “Coward.”

“Alive coward,” Jo corrected.

Then all eyes turned to Fuma. Everybody completely forgetting Liriope’s presence in the room in their need to shift the blame.

Fuma, who had been standing near the wall in complete stillness, looked up like a man who had hoped destiny might skip him this once. It had not.

Maki narrowed his eyes.

“You can literally see the future.”

Fuma nodded once.

“Yes.”

“And yet,” Nicholas said, spreading both hands, “we still almost lost Harua.”

Fuma took a moment.

He could lie.

Unfortunately, everyone here knew him.

“I thought,” he said carefully, “that perhaps they would learn, Your Honor.” Fuma lowered his head beneath Liriope’s piercing gaze.

“…”

Then Yuma blinked.

“That was stupid.”

“Yes,” Fuma agreed.

“Wildly optimistic.”

“Yes.”

“Honestly kind of offensive.”

“Yes.”

Liriope still said nothing. Growing tired, she took her seat again, red silk immaculate, watching them unravel like a very expensive court trial that did not seem likely to end anytime soon.

And then Jo spoke. Quietly.

“I went to her.”

That made everyone stop.

Jo looked at Harua, still pale against the white sheets, wires crossing bare skin, the used defibrillator still sitting nearby like proof of how close it had been.

Then he said, softer,

“I knew she would come.”

Silence settled heavily across the room. Because beneath all the fury, beneath the terrifying competence and impossible control, that was the truth they were beginning to see.

She would come.

For every single one of them.

Even if they kept running.

Even if they hated her for it.

Even if they only remembered she existed when something went horribly wrong.

She would still come.

For the first time, Liriope’s expression shifted. Only slightly, into something softer. Almost tired. She gave one small nod.

“Yes,” she said.

“I would.”

And suddenly no one wanted to joke anymore.

The silence stretched, and then Liriope turned to K. And everyone in the room collectively thought:

oh no.

Because everyone else had been scrambling. K was about to be judged.

He stood there with his arms crossed, jaw tight, already looking like he would rather fistfight God. Unfortunately for him, God was currently wearing red silk and staring directly at him. Liriope stepped closer.

“You.”

K did not look away. Did not answer.

“You are the eldest.”

There it was. From somewhere behind him, Maki whispered,

“We should leave.”

“No,” Nicholas whispered back, “I need to see this.”

Liriope ignored them.

“You know exactly how reckless they are.”

“Yes.”

“You know exactly how easily they follow terrible ideas.”

His eyes flickered briefly toward Maki.

“…Yes.”

“And yet you let this happen.”

K’s shoulders went rigid.

“We are not children.”

“No,” Liriope said.

“But they are your brothers.”

The room went still. Even the monitor beside Harua seemed quieter, ashamed of the truth.

K’s voice came out sharper now.

“They are not my responsibility.”

Liriope’s expression did not change.

“No,” she said softly.

“But you love them like they are.”

That landed harder than yelling ever could. Because it was true, and everyone knew it. K looked away first. His ego refused to acknowledge the truth coming from her mouth.

Liriope’s voice softened, but only barely.

“You do not get to play the eldest only when it is convenient.”

"..."

Maki suddenly found the ceiling fascinating, almost whistling just to fill the suffocating quiet. Taki was definitely trying not to cry. Yuma looked like he wanted to fake his own death. And K stood there, furious and cornered and seventeen kinds of emotionally compromised. Because the worst part was that she was right. Which was unbearable.

Finally, he said, quieter now,

“…I know.”

Liriope looked at him for a long moment. Then she sighed. Tired.

A mother before anything else.

“Yes,” she said.

“I know you do.”

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn

[ravynisblue]

Mother and Misfits

Chapter 12

A month after escaping Liriope’s mansion, with their money dwindling because Liriope had seized every gold bar they had managed to fish out of her husk bank account, they were doing what they did best to survive: another heist. Which, according to Maki, was deeply healing for both morale and their financial problems.

K had disagreed at first. Doing anything in this city, where Liriope seemed to have her hands in everything, felt painfully risky. Denhaag was too small when someone like her decided to pay attention. Every street felt like it belonged to her.

But he was also trying to manage eight disasters who kept insisting that running away without money was just “dying somewhere else with extra steps.”

Eventually, exhaustion won, so here they were.

It was New Year’s Eve. Denhaag was holding its annual mayoral ball, the one night a year when the city’s richest people gathered in one mansion, wore expensive clothes, lied beautifully to each other, and left their valuables insufficiently protected.

Naturally, it was perfect.

The target wasn’t sentimental. It was the mayor’s system. Tonight, while the entire city’s elite got drunk under crystal chandeliers, they would slip inside, access the private accounts, and take exactly what they needed.

Money.

Enough money to leave the city for good.

No more staying close. No more hiding in old factories. No more risking Liriope deciding she wanted family dinner again.

The plan was simple. Tonight, they would take what they needed. Tomorrow, they would disappear.

Which meant K had spent the last three hours trying not to kill everyone himself before the mayor had the chance.

They had split into two vans for better mobility. The first van consisted of Harua and Jo, who would get into the ball, with Fuma and EJ assisting them. The second van was filled with five bickering mouths that seemed physically incapable of shutting up.

“This,” K said for the fourth time, adjusting his cufflinks with the fury of a man personally offended by formalwear, “needs to be clean. Quiet. No improvising. No chaos.”

Maki, also dressed and somehow looking far too fine in formalwear for someone who would spend the whole night in front of his laptop, nodded solemnly.

“So naturally, you’re saying Taki should stay in the van.”

“Correct.”

“Rude,” Taki said, fixing the collar of his suit with unnecessary flair. “I bring happiness to this crew.”

“Wrong,” K replied. “You bring noise complaints.”

“I bring personality.”

“You bring police attention.”

“Both true,” Nicholas said.

Jo, already halfway inside one of the mansion’s decorative mirrors for surveillance, sighed like a tired ghost.

“Can we be quiet? You guys know I can hear everything, right?” he asked, already overstimulated.

Somewhere inside the mansion, Harua, currently doing his best to avoid drunk rich men accidentally walking into him, sounded deeply miserable through the comms.

“I hate rich people,” he muttered.

“You say that while actively planning to steal their money,” EJ said.

“I’m helping myself hate them less.”

“By taking their money?”

“Correct.”

Taki adjusted the small earpiece in his ear, already distracted by the overwhelming noise of the city tonight. Fireworks cracking in the distance. Cars. Music. Too many voices. Too much everything.

Fuma sat behind the wheel of the second van parked near the back entrance, calm as ever, waiting for the escape route like a man who had already seen tonight go badly and simply chosen not to elaborate. Which, honestly, was never reassuring.

K looked at all of them and made the mistake of remembering he was responsible for this.

This crew was hopeless.

Absolutely hopeless.

He exhaled once, long and tired. Then pointed at all of them like a man issuing a final warning before divine punishment.

“Silence.”

The mayor’s mansion sat in the most prestigious part of Denhaag. Standing in the highest hill in the city, its stacked white stone glowing under the winter lights. Guests moved through the music spilling from the ballroom. Servants drifted between them like ghosts, carrying silver trays filled with bubbling champagne.

Harua had gone first, as always, invisible before he even crossed the gates, slipping through security like a bad decision no one noticed. His job was simple, and he had done it a thousand times before.

Reach the system room. Install Maki’s device. That was it.

Easy.

Maki’s voice crackled softly through their earpieces.

“Main ballroom clear. Security rotation normal. Mayor is ugly.”

“Useful,” Yuma muttered beside him.

“He is.”

Then Jo went suddenly quiet. He had always been the quiet one, but they all sensed something was wrong. K straightened immediately from his seat.

“Jo?”

A beat passed, and everyone went silent.

Then, quieter, “…Liriope is here.”

Suddenly, time stopped for all of them. Even for Maki. Even for Nicholas. Even K forgot how to breathe for half a second.

Jo’s voice came back, lower now. “She just entered the ballroom.”

No one spoke, because suddenly this was no longer a heist. It was a risk. Because if Liriope recognized even one of them—

No.

K shut that thought down immediately. We proceed,” he said.

“Careful not to be seen, get as far away from her as possible”. His voice was controlled, because he could not afford panic now. They had to survive first.

“We finish fast and leave.”

No one argued, but tension settled into every word after that.

Jo moved farther through the mirrors immediately.

“I am staying nowhere near her peripheral vision.”

“Smart,” Nicholas muttered.

“I choose life.”

Meanwhile, Harua kept moving. Silent and invisible. Low to the ground when necessary, slipping past corners, servants, and expensive paintings that probably cost more than their entire childhoods combined.

No guards.

No alarms.

No resistance.

It was too easy.

He hated that.

The system room was exactly where Jo said it would be.

Unlocked.

Unguarded.

Almost insultingly simple.

Harua slipped inside and shut the door softly behind him. Rows of buzzing monitors greeted him. Security feeds. Control panels.

Victory.

Finally.

He crouched by the main system and pulled the small device from his pocket, the one Maki had built with far too much confidence and absolutely no proper labeling.

“Very reassuring,” Harua muttered.

Into the earpiece, Maki replied immediately,

“I heard that.”

“Good. If I die, haunt yourself.”

“Just plug it in.”

Harua took a breath and reached to connect the device. The second his fingers made contact with the metal, white-hot pain engulfed him instantly.

Violent.

A brutal snap of electricity exploded through him, sharp enough to erase thought entirely. Harua gasped, but the sound barely made it out. The lights in the entire building flickered once.

Just once. Barely noticeable. A tiny blink in a house full of excess.

And then he hit the floor. His body slammed hard against the tiles and went still.

In the van, Maki froze as the connection vanished. His own pulse monitor, connected to Harua’s vitals, dropped so fast it made his stomach turn.

140.

141.

142.

143.

What is going on?

100.

101.

102.

103.

Too low. Too wrong.

Still falling.

Maki’s face went white.

“No.”

K turned immediately.

“What?”

Maki was already grabbing the comm.

“Harua?”

Nothing.

His voice rose.

“Harua.”

Still nothing.

The number dropped again.

69.

70.

Maki stood so fast he hit his knee on the dashboard and did not even feel it.

“Harua!”

Nothing.

No voice.

No movement.

No signal.

Just the slow, terrifying decline of a heartbeat disappearing.

Jo was already moving, already getting the big image without further explanation. Mirror after mirror, faster now, reckless in a way Jo never was. He found the nearest reflection to the ballroom. To her.

Liriope stood among politicians and glass and false smiles, looking perfectly composed. Jo appeared in the mirror beside her, and she noticed instantly. Her eyes lifted and locked onto him. And for the first time since they escaped, Jo did not care about being seen. Hell, he desperately needed to be seen right now.

He did not speak. His voice would not reach her anyway. He only looked at her, terrified, and begged silently.

Please.

Please.

Please.

Her eyes widened slightly, and her expression changed. She understood at once, without needing anything explained. Without hesitation, Liriope set her glass down and smiled politely at the mayor. She excused herself with that same effortless grace and walked away. Her steps were swift, efficient, and direct toward the system room.

Because somewhere in this house, one of her children needed her.

From the van, Maki saw Jo emerge from the nearest mirror, stepping back into the ballroom like he had been there the entire time. His suit was neat enough to let him disappear into the crowd, just another well-dressed guest moving too quickly for anyone to question.

He was running, not enough to cause a scene, but still fast. Purposeful. Head down. Straight toward the system room. Maki gripped the dashboard so hard his fingers hurt.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Come on, come on—”

Then the door opened. First, Jo. Then Liriope. She stepped out in red silk and diamonds, looking like she had simply excused herself from polite conversation instead of pulling one of her children half-dead off the floor.

She had one hand gripping Jo’s arm. The other was steadying him. Because Jo was slightly hunched now, shoulders tense, trying to support something hidden beneath his jacket.

At first, Maki saw nothing. Then a flicker.

Harua.

His invisibility was unstable now, breaking at the edges like static. A shoulder appearing for half a second. A hand. The outline of his body slumped across Jo’s back before vanishing again.

Unconscious.

Maki’s stomach dropped.

“Oh, God.”

Beside him, K had gone completely still. They watched as the three of them moved through the edge of the ballroom, careful and fast. At one corner, they nearly crossed paths with a group of laughing politicians and women in glittering gowns.

Liriope reacted instantly. She stepped closer to Jo, almost clinging to his side like an affectionate companion, her body angling perfectly to block the flickering shape of Harua from view. Elegant, natural. A performance so smooth no one questioned it. She smiled, exchanged something polite, excused herself with effortless grace, and kept walking like this was nothing.

Jo did not look at anyone, he just kept moving.

One step.

Another.

Toward the back exit.

The second the door closed behind them, dignity died. They ran straight across the cold stone path toward the second van where Fuma was already waiting by the engine, calm as ever, like people carrying unconscious invisible boys was a perfectly normal Tuesday.

Jo yanked the side door open first. EJ were already there, worried, helping pull Harua carefully inside.

Still breathing. Barely.

Liriope did not even pause. She walked straight to the driver’s side. Fuma had exactly enough time to blink before she opened the door, grabbed him by the sleeve, and physically yanked him out of the seat. He stumbled backward with surprising grace for someone being evicted from his own vehicle.

“…Understood,” he said.

She got in and claimed the wheel. Adjusted nothing. Everyone barely had time to shut the doors before she slammed her foot on the gas. The van launched forward like it had personally offended her. Maki, still watching from another van across the street, stared in horror.

“…oh, she’s driving.”

Yuma made the sign of the cross.

“We’re about to lose another brother.”

Inside Fuma’s van, Jo nearly hit the floor trying to stay upright as Liriope tore through the night roads like traffic laws were personal suggestions. One hand on the wheel. Perfect posture. Murder in her eyes. She changed gears sharply, took a corner far too fast, and said through gritted teeth,

“Tell your stupid brothers to follow.”

Jo, gripping the seat like prayer, immediately grabbed the comm.

“Maki.”

Static. Then—

“Yeah?”

Jo looked at Liriope, who was driving like she intended to fight God personally.

“…Follow the van.”

A beat.

Then Maki’s voice, deeply concerned:

“Why do you sound like you’re in danger?”

Jo watched Liriope accelerate harder.

“Because I am.”

I love mother ♡

Tags: @dheimyoung-im24 @channiesbighugs @kpopstannnnn