with an arranged marriage set in place, the sacred bond is doomed with a wife who wants to make the relationship work and a husband who’s ready to ruin it all. unbeknown to him, a tragic fate already lies within the pages of his romance book.
genre. heavy angst, unrequited love, arranged marriage, modern au, 18+
tags/warnings. mentions of trauma, mentions of depression, blood
notes. last chapter everyone! donut be scared :] the angst is lesser than part 19. thank you for the overall support this series has received! please see more notes after the cut
series masterlist -> sequel
additional notes. i don’t wanna be too dramatic so i’ll try to keep it short, you guys probably have heard about this a million times whenever i answered asks, but sincerely not was supposed to be my last piece of writing on tumblr. i had such a terrible writing slump before i posted it and it came to a point where i wasn’t satisfied with all the content i’m putting out. i didn’t expect that sn would blow up, or let alone have such a loyal and supportive audience that now became the reason why i work hard every week to pump out long chapters. i sincerely can’t thank you guys enough for going through this 5-month journey with me. with more than 200k words, 20 chapters, and a community built because of this series, this is perhaps a work that i will cherish and remember for the rest of my life. thank you to each and everyone who stayed up all night reading this series, to those who always eagerly left comments and theories under every post or in my ask box, and to those who contributed amazing fanarts for this fic. from the bottom of my heart, thank you and i love you. - sincerely, saint ♡
3 YEARS LATER
“As you all know, three years ago, I lost control of this company.” Standing in front of the executives and the shareholders was Satoru Gojou in his three-piece Zegna suit. “The market cap suffered a significant decrease to eight billion less. Because of the scandals and mismanagement on my end, not only did many investors pull out, but we also lost some of our most brilliant employees who all have contributed to the company’s growth over the last twenty-five years.” With all eyes set on him, the tips of his fingers felt unusually cold, but he had to continue his talk by walking around the new faces that filled up the conference room. “I know what you’re all thinking: ‘Why is the Chairman talking about his sob story?’ After all, no one would have thought that a person like me could still save the Gojou Group from its massive decline. Many journalists even referred to it as a major corporation failure. When my company’s stock price bottomed out, many people took the chance to buy stocks dirt cheap and I was already foreseeing how long it would take for me to file for bankruptcy. I went through terrible depression, my health deteriorated, and my mind was in a dark period for a year after I got divorced, but I still did everything I could to salvage the only thing I had left. But how could I? Where do I begin? At the time, it was nothing but a hopeless and ambitious thought.”
Satoru stopped from his leisurely gait and placed a hand on top of his CFO’s shoulder. As he looked down at the blond with a grateful smile, he then proceeded to finish his speech, “To play this game or any game, you must have a good mentor. Mine was my colleague, Nanami Kento, who once told me that if my life crumbled apart after I lost my wife, I should also think about my innocent employees whose lives would be far more affected if I didn’t do anything to save the company. He was right. I couldn’t possibly mope around and watch more people suffer from the difficulties I've caused. And so, I sought his advice and worked with him to rebuild the Gojou Group from ground zero.” Satoru turned on his heel as he finally arrived at the far end of the table. “Just like Nanami, you are all here because you’ve given me another chance at reconstructing the company from the damages I had done. It was a tough three years and we’re still working to restore everything back to how it was, but I just wanna take this time to express my sincerest gratitude to each and every single one of you inside this room for inspiring me and allowing me the opportunity to rise up from the bottom. In return, I will ensure—as the Chairman of the Gojou Group—that you will all be generously rewarded for your dedication and hard work. Thank you.”
After the general shareholders meeting, Satoru was back in his office with his CFO and his secretarial staff who were seated on the couch to deal with schedules and paperwork while discussing the spontaneous speech he had just done at the meeting.
“What in the world was that?” Nanami asked, unfolding a newspaper before resting his back against the couch. “You made a speech like you were stepping down from your position.”
Satoru chose to sit at the edge of his office table as he took a sip from his coffee mug. “Why? Do you wanna be an interim CEO again?” His tone was playful, although remembering how difficult it must have been for Nanami to be in the highest executive position at such a desperate time. Back to the days when Satoru was mentally and emotionally incapable of making good business decisions, the Gojou Group and its twenty subsidiaries would have all collapsed if not for Nanami’s immediate action plans to keep the company intact as one of the nation’s largest conglomerate in terms of assets and the second largest in terms of sales.
That being said, the blond didn’t even hide his year-long exhaustion after becoming the company's major pillar of support. “Please. I’d rather retire early than have you punish me with that title ever again, interim or not.”
“Don’t say that, Nanami. We’re gonna have a really long loving relationship as Chairman and CEO-to-be, you know.” Satoru continued to tease and earned Nanami’s glare as a response, all before the former noticed his secretary who was chuckling at the sight. “I think Miwa has better time management when she’s reporting to you, anyway.”
The blue-haired girl was quick to deny. “Not true, Chairman!” said Miwa while arranging some papers on the coffee table. “I always handle my time perfectly well no matter who I’m reporting to.”
Undoubtedly. Even if he treated her like a robot sometimes, Satoru was lucky enough to have had the chance to see Miwa’s professional growth from the past three years that she had been his executive assistant. He would never in his life forget that this girl stayed by his side during the lowest period of his life. Her loyalty was what led her closer to him to the point where they grew a sibling-like connection. Although they maintained a professional superior-subordinate relationship, he was able to joke around with her while she was given the rare opportunity to speak to him informally at certain instances: one, when he needed a good scolding and two, whenever he was teasing her about Yuuta (but that was a story for another day).
“Let’s see… What if I reassign you to be Yuuta’s secretary one day?” Satoru grinned in mischief as he set the coffee mug down. “He’ll be graduating next year and I’ll appoint him as the Vice President once he returns to Japan.”
Instead of Miwa whose cheeks were suffused with a pink tint, it was Nanami who immediately reacted in surprise. “You’re really gonna train him for the position as soon as he comes back?”
“Yeah.” Satoru offered a nod before signaling his secretary to reach for the special suit she carefully hung on his rack this morning. “He looks forward to it. He’s smart, responsible, and analytical, so you won’t have a hard time mentoring him.”
The man exhaled deeply, languid as he flipped the pages of his newspaper. “Why do you always leave the job to me?”
“Because you’re the best, Nanami~! Take it as a compliment.”
“I don’t need compliments, I want a Bugatti in return,” he made a quick bargain, “a mansion in Aoyama and a one-year vacation leave to Kuantan, Malaysia with no texts, calls, and emails from you.”
Satoru was better off as a statue after hearing his CFO’s offer. “And that’s what I call a good businessman!” He gave him a well-deserved clap and turned to his secretary in haste, “Miwa, take note. This kind of brazenness is something I wanna see from you.”
The girl simply laughed at the good-humored exchange between Nanami and Satoru while she held the expensive suit in front of the latter. As if she had read his mind, Miwa suddenly asked, “Are you really going to… do that today, sir?”
It would be nice to blame the air conditioner for the sudden thickness in air density. Not even ten seconds had passed and the mood swiftly changed into something more sullen, more gloomy. As Gojou took off his Zegna coat and unfastened his cufflinks, his gaze fell down on the visible scar on his forearm. Once a deep gash that required multiple stitches, now a reminder of that cold December night where blood and glass shards surrounded him as he sobbed his heart out in his mother’s arms.
He could ask Miwa’s questions to himself and only one answer would come out each time. “I have to.”
“Want me to go with you?” offered Nanami out of genuine concern. “I can reschedule my meeting with the finance department.”
Satoru, despite being genuinely appreciative of their concern, did not muster enough courage for the past two months anticipating this day just to back out at the last minute. “No, I got it.” That was all he had to tell Nanami and Miwa before he changed into the classic Givenchy tuxedo that was gifted to him three years ago. “Take care of everyone here while I’m gone.”
Gojou could barely remember what the atmosphere was like on his own wedding day. Because it was rushed and planned by everyone else except the bride and groom themselves, he didn’t have a great archive of memories relating to that special day that ultimately changed his life. Frankly, he was fairly busy with the company back then so he didn’t have much time to participate with the whole wedding preparation, leaving the designers and wedding planners to be the ones who visited him in the office just to remind him that he was going to become a married man. His distaste towards the forced marriage doubled his anger towards an innocent bride that later became a vital part of his life.
Many people asked him this: would Gojou consider marrying again? His answer would depend on the person. The answer, among many options, was only one particular woman with a selfless heart and an altruistic soul. Satoru couldn’t think of getting married to anyone else other than his soulmate whom he had promised a wedding back to when they were six year-olds. His childhood friend who had spent his birthdays with him just before they grew apart. His other half whom he had shared the most memories with from then and now. The lover, the wife, the mother of his child.
His one and only.
In an alternate universe, he had the option to restart his life back from where it all began. On the wedding day, where white primroses adorned the trellises, where satin linens complemented the dome of cloudless skies, where elaborate details and enchanting décor ignored the idea of ‘less is more’. But no matter how grandiose the setup was—whether it was whimsical or glamorous or traditional, in his previous life, he had forgotten the true essence of his own wedding—it was being united with his partner in life.
Beyond everything, marriage was a sacred bond between a husband and his wife.
The reminiscence of being surrounded by wedding decorations was déjà vu for Satoru who had not paid the slightest bit of attention to it three years ago. Or did he? Because with the way he recalled the tiniest details of his first wedding, it looked like he did pay a significant amount of recognition to the special day as much as he initially thought. The redolence of jasmine added to his nostalgia as he continued to walk like a ghost along the pathway where the wedding planners were passing left and right. They were oblivious to the man with white hair in a black tuxedo, concealed by a face mask while keeping himself unseen by blending amongst the low number of guests who had just arrived. The French baroque cathedral boasted of timeless elegance and one look at the ceiling gave him a breathtaking view of the magnificent Rococo art. Didn’t he get married in a garden? The decorations were either just black, ivory, and champagne not apricot and periwinkle blue. Right, Gojou remembered. Every stark difference was screaming to be remembered. The color palette, the theme, the flowers, and even the venue.
This wasn’t an alternate universe nor was this his own wedding.
This simple and yet sophisticated church wedding was his Earth-shattering reality to serve as a reminder that the tragedy was in his romance book, not yours.
With over seven billion people around the world, he was granted to be with only one person that had been his supposed life-long partner. Unfortunately, life could no longer offer him a rewind after everything that had happened. He didn’t have a free pass to travel back through time and rewrite his past. Just like the ugly scars on his forearm, some things just never fade. What he had for himself was the future—the chance to be a better man without the expectations from a yearned woman. A closure, not to accept his defeat, but more so to prove his eternal love.
Not many guests were familiar to him except for your cousins and the groom’s immediate family. The wedding in itself was an intimate setup, seemingly only for those who were dear to the wedded couple-to-be. It was a great contrast to your first glamorous wedding where almost every famous personality was invited amongst the swarm of influential businessmen. In this wedding, attention was not being waved at his face because the primary focus was the ceremony that would soon unify a man and a woman as one.
He wasn’t even invited, so why the hell was Satoru Gojou in here?
Thankfully, no one had really noticed him as he managed to escape from any unwanted attention by sneaking close to the walls until he finally reached one of the exits that headed towards the back. There was a pavilion just a couple of steps away from the church where they kept the bride before the actual ceremony would begin. Needless to say, Satoru’s blood had drained from his face as soon as one of the notable bridesmaids walked out of the door.
“Ieiri.” Gojou took off his face mask and noticed how his voice had become unstable. “Where’s she—”
“Inside,” replied Shoko, pointing towards the room. “She’s with her friend, but it should be fine. Gen went to see their father. Did anyone see you?”
“No, I don’t think so.” His heart was pounding on his chest. His head, pulsating. Air was luxury for him to breathe at this moment when he thought of the man he would become once his eyes were set on you again three years after you left.
Ieiri must have felt his temperature rising (or falling in that sense) because cold sweats started forming on his temples, but not until she snapped her fingers in front of his face to wake him up from his trance. “Hey, it’s okay.” A couple pats on the back lessened Gojou’s tension. “You can do it. This is your last chance.”
They said during moments of panic, it was normal for a person to feel numb. Everything was in slow motion and very few sounds were picked up by the ears as all the unnecessary hubbub would be blocked out. While he tried to reach for the doorknob, Satoru’s hand was visibly shaking due the accumulation of anxiety that he never realized had built up upon coming here. His nerves were like seismic waves forming ripples on a pond. What was he scared of? He had gone through so much alone for the last three years, but even so, this day might be the summit of his pain. It would mark as the highest point in his mountain of broken heart and eternal loneliness.
It was different in his head than when he actually opened the door and stepped inside the room. A girl with dark hair in a half-updo was smiling at you from the mirror as you two were unaware of the new presence that had entered the room. Even from afar, even when he could only see your side profile, Gojou had already fallen weak on the knees. A wave of strong emotions washed over his body as he saw the very woman that he loved and still undeniably did.
“…Y/N.”
When had he last called you by your name?
To him, the name that rolled off his tongue had also sparked a flame to his heart. To you, on the other hand, the voice that called it out was nothing more than a stranger from the past that you wanted so badly to erase. He could see it in your eyes with how they widened in shock, leaning on the negative scale more than the positive as you hastily got up from your seat. “W-What are you doing here?”
The girl who stood by your side kept a guarded stance while she mumbled, “Y/N, should I call for Toji?”
“No need.” Satoru blinked thrice in the same second and shook his head. “He knows I’m here. He…” trailing off, he drew in a deep breath, “He told me to see you before the ceremony.”
It happened a week ago when Gojou found out you came back to Tokyo after three long years. He heard rumors about you dating Toji, but he never really thought that your bond was deep enough to lead to another marital union. Wasn’t it such a cruel fate? Someone who was once his bride, was now someone else’s.
As hard as it was for Satoru to swallow, he knew that Toji Zen’in must love you a lot and he wasn’t even surprised that you ended up with his rival after all the things that had happened. Not many guys would allow an ex-husband a chance to meet his bride on the wedding day just for the sake of closure. But you see, your groom respected you and trusted you and cared for you enough to understand that this was something you and Satoru had to have. A private moment to conclude the relationship that scarred both you and him, which could possibly cause complications in any of your future marriages if not resolved. There was no harm in having this much needed conversation, especially since three years had gone by and you were close to strangers at this point. Or at least, he was to you. Any feelings you once harbored for him were completely gone like how the same gleam in your eyes that used to shine for him was now empty.
You must have realized that fearing Satoru Gojou would not help you in the long run, so you ended up allowing him inside before you turned to your friend. “Akemi,” you spoke to her calmly, “can you excuse us for a while?”
From the corner of his eyes, Satoru noticed how the woman with the gentle face glanced at his way before she decided to trust your words and subsequently made her exit. With the door shut in a 33-square meter room, it didn't seem as if the distance between you and him was there. Not when he had become too enamored of your ethereal beauty to a point where he couldn’t breathe.
And he had to swallow. Hard. Because you were so goddamn beautiful that his eyes were filling up with tears. Are you real? The pain he felt sure was. Are you really in front of him? He scanned every inch of your face and remembered how he used to wake up staring at those eyes each morning, how he used to touch those cheeks, how he used to kiss those very lips. He never had the chance to appreciate you back on your own wedding day and his greatest regret in life was not telling you how breathtakingly regal you looked in a wedding dress. Forget the swarovski crystals that hugged your figure or the natural make-up that enhanced your features—Satoru believed that no other woman could beat your grace and elegance in his eyes even if you were wearing a simple white dress with a bare face.
You aged three years older after you last saw each other, but the most fascinating part of it was seeing you in the best version of yourself. Not a trace of heartbreak. Not a hint of loneliness. There was that certain class and maturity that made him fall in love with you all over again.
“You look beautiful,” he meant to say it aloud despite the clench it caused his heart because he had to let you know no matter how shameless. “I know I never got to tell you this before, but… this, this is also how beautiful you looked on our wedding day.”
You watched him take a deep breath as if he was the rightful groom who was star-struck at the sight of his bride. “You never even looked at me on our wedding day.”
“I did, I know I did…” He stared at you in pining melancholy. Did Gojou imagine having this casual talk with an ex-lover? He was afraid that this might be the calm before the storm. “I’m sorry for bringing it up. I-I don’t intend to stay throughout the ceremony today.”
“So, what are you here for?”
“…”
“Satoru.”
“I just think that, maybe…”
With a distant gaze, your impatience led you to go straight to the point. “We’ve been divorced longer than we have married, Gojou.” But what hurt more was the way you avoided meeting his eyes. “If you have nothing important to talk about, save it. If you’re here to congratulate me, thanks. I hope you find someone else to marry, too—”
“Why did you let go?”
The sudden question rendered you speechless, so much that you almost sympathized from the guilt and agony that casted your ex-husband’s face. Satoru had been suffering for three long years thinking of the picture perfect family that he had lost and all of those unwanted memories during his darkest days were now swallowing him in whole. They were burying him six feet under and pulling him back into that abyss of torment that he thought he had already escaped. It was endless, bottomless, complete darkness.
But even with the obvious pain in his visage, you couldn’t find the right words to answer. He had to be the one to clarify it further. “Our baby,” his voice broke and his words took him back to that sorrowful day at the hospital, “I wanna know why you let go. I-I don’t understand why you did it.”
“You know why.” Tears were threatening to spill from your shiny eyes. “Don’t bring it back. I don’t wanna talk about it right now.”
It hurt. It hurt so much that he wanted to hug you, but couldn’t. That he wanted to wipe your cheeks, but couldn’t. That he wanted to kiss your forehead, pull you into his arms, hold you close. It hurt how much he longed for you day and night for the past 1,095 days, hoping that you would come back to him and be his wife again. How foolish. This woman in front of him wasn’t the same one he married for that woman had given up on him, but him—he never once gave up on you. He kept holding on like you were the last buoy keeping him afloat in the vast sea. “I messaged y-you nonstop.” His breathing hitched as a sob rose in his throat. “I sent you hundreds of voice mails even if you had me blocked everywhere. I followed you to New York and tried to search every corner of it for you, b-but I was told to leave you alone. In the end, I had to leave you alone and give you space, because I didn’t want you to hate me more than you already do. Do you know how it feels to be… to be abandoned by someone you love, and three years later that person comes back only to marry someone else?”
Out of the many things Gojou learned from his therapist: you can never suppress sadness. It always managed to seep out and the best way to handle it was to release such a heavy emotion out of the bottle. His face was already a screaming sign of Fragile: Handle With Care. But if anyone were to break him, the privilege was yours.
“Satoru, we never should have married in the first place,” you argued, eyes glistening with similar blues as you looked up at him, “We were doomed from the beginning because that marriage was never genuine. Stop holding on to me like I’m more than just a key to your personal goals.”
“Y/N, I love you…” At this point, he couldn’t stop the waterfall that gushed out of his eyes, emptying his sockets until he could no longer cry. His voice was thick with tears, his words were strangled in his throat. “I love you, I cherish you. I still do. I still fucking do and I’m so miserable without you. Don’t say that I was never genuine when I truthfully fell in love with you.”
You refused his words and swallowed the pity forming at the back of your throat. “No, you fell in love with the idea of me. You fell in love with the idea of having your own happy family regardless of the person you wanted to share it with.”
Satoru attempted to reach for your arm, but felt wrong for having tried because his cold hand didn’t deserve to touch your sacred warmth. “That’s not true.”
“I’m not your wife anymore.” Your reminder served numerous stabs in his hollow heart. “Gojou, you need to move on and live your life without me. You’re young, you’re single, you can easily go back to the way you were before you were ever married. You can even forget our marriage happened. Just please… Please find your happiness elsewhere.”
“I don’t… I don’t wanna forget.”
He came here promising himself that he was only going to apologize and clarify his intentions, it was never part of his plan to be a sobbing mess in front of you while begging for the love he had taken for granted. He wanted his wife back. He wanted Y/N Gojou to accept him again and give him another chance to be a better husband. But that was not the agreement he had with Toji when he allowed him to have this talk with you. Gojou had to remind himself not to steer away from his original path and respect the boundaries that were set in order to live a guiltless life. He ought not to be selfish, but more selfless because that was something he learned from you.
And in saying that, his only option for you to achieve your peace and true felicity was to let you go. Like setting a dove free from a bird cage, spreading its wings into open air before flying away—you had to have that freedom without a pathetic ex-husband clinging on to you. All he ever brought you was misery and heartache, so the best way to repent for his sins was to cut the thin string that kept you tied to him.
“Do you love him?” he asked once and for all, even though it shattered him inside, even though it squeezed his heart and every artery. Layers of unsettling emotions overcame him as the thought of you marrying someone else, having a family with someone else, doing the things you did with him to someone else—absolutely, agonizingly wrecked him. “Will you be happy if you married him?”
Along with your modestly downcast eyes, you took the chance to dodge the direction of his desolate gaze. “Probably so much more than when I married you.”
Who knew that an honest answer could make one’s world crumble into ashes?
In every sad song, sad movie, or sad novel there was, Gojou believed that his tragedy could sell billions of copies because there was nothing more satisfying than reading a story about how the man who once had it all, in the end lost it all.
As for you, your immediate thought was to turn away, searching through your jewelry box on the table before taking out the very last piece that connected you to him.
Your wedding ring.
The same ring he was still wearing to this day.
“Satoru, I loved you.” Your words flew past your mulberry lips as you reached for his hand. Throughout your marriage, it was for the first time he ever heard you say those three words. Three words that were now in the past just like the ring that you placed on his palm. “If you ever wanted to hear it, I did love you. I loved you so much that I stayed that long because I wanted us to work. I love you enough that I want you to be happy, even if we’re no longer together.” Gojou’s eyes were the loneliest shade of blue as he felt your thumb running across his cheek. “For the eleven months and twenty-two days we were married, all I did was to try and fix you. Now let me fix me.”
Didn’t you know? When you were in love, your voice was always the calmest. Your eyes, the dreamiest. Your face, the softest. It was a slapping contrast to the loom of darkness that swept over your ex-husband’s face—the man you once loved and was bound to by vows. But if his sorrow meant that you would find your joy, then he was ready to have his heart broken over and over again by the one person he loved the most. You.
Words needn’t be said. He accepted the ring you returned with a great wretch of sadness, keeping it safe in his own hand like he was holding onto a person in the form of a gold wedding band. In an hour or so, another ring would adorn your finger and it would be much more beautiful than the one you previously had from an ex-husband that you easily forgot about.
Your love story ended here.
On the first day of spring, where flowers bloom to signal the start of your new beginning. The radiant woman he loved the most would start a new chapter in life with someone else. And unlike you, Satoru was stuck in his cold, winter sorrows. There were no four seasons in his calendar for his days remained in the coldest months of the year because his source of sunlight found another world to shine on.
“I have to go.” The soles of his feet wanted to stay, but he couldn’t linger around any longer than he should’ve. What last words would he have to say to his ex-wife? ‘Have a happy marriage’? When that, in fact, was a form of self-punishment. But on a similar note, he felt the longing in your eyes and it allowed him to wish for nothing but the best for you. “I know he’s gonna take care of you, but… just in case,” he trailed off, forcing an upward curve on his lips, “I hope he kisses you every morning when he wakes up.”
“Satoru…”
His words were surprisingly cathartic. “I hope he’ll call you beautiful each day, stroke your hair when you lie on his lap, take you out on movie nights and spontaneous dates.” To make it more lighthearted and less dramatic, he added a few happy memories. “I hope he won’t drink straight off the milk carton or forget to turn the lampshade off at night. You deserve to be with someone who lets you spend pink toilet papers and expensive skin care masks on his credit card. Someone who stares at you in your sleep, thanking God for blessing him with a wife like you.”
Your lips quivered, eyes achingly staring at his.
Gojou ignored the weakness gnawing his chest and offered a smile that may have a million meanings, but truly only translated to one: I’m happy when you are. And so, he tucked a piece of hair behind your ear and leaned in to plant a kiss on your forehead. It was a harmless, unassuming kiss to let you know that he would always care for you the same. “I love you.”
Hesitance then bathed your eyes as he pulled away. Was that guilt in your gaze? Or was it pity? Either way, you squeezed his hand and opened your mouth reluctantly. “Wait, I… There’s something you need to know.”
At the rate of your growing anxiety, Satoru decided for himself that today was not the day for you to deal with it. He may have been selfish all his life, but he didn’t want to ruin your wedding for his sake. With the Zen’ins was where you belong. After all, they were a family void of drama or any ulterior motives that could break your trust in the long run. That was the household you deserved to be in.
“Will I be crying on my knees if I did know?”
You held your breath. “Maybe.”
“Will it fix us?”
“I don’t think so.”
Knowing a disappointing truth was better than wondering forever. But in that moment where palpable silence became one of his biggest fears, he decided that the less he knew, the better. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it,” he assured, backing away and learning the art of letting go, “I should head out.”
“…Okay.”
His cue to leave was your sudden sympathetic gaze. His signal to turn around and step out of the room was the fact that he despised seeing sympathy in your eyes because it made him yearn and seek for your love. He didn’t need your sympathy, he needed you. It was a dangerous zone that he ought to avoid or else there was no going back.
The only way was forward.
Walking through the hallways alone gave him a newfound sense of catharsis. Although the other half of his soul remained with you, lovers didn’t necessarily have to be soulmates. They came in different shapes and forms, be it with a childhood friend, a past lover, an ex-wife. He was content for not sticking to his brand of selfishness which cost him a wife and a child in return.
Fate must be playing with him, because just as he turned to the corner of the hallway, he stumbled upon a little boy with white hair who was hiding his face against the wall.
Could it be…?
Stopping in his tracks, his eyes widened and brimmed with tears. He must be imagining this whole thing. He must be hallucinating. Why did his chest hurt this badly? Why did the atmosphere suddenly make him feel queasy? He felt sick to the bones after remembering the depressive episodes he went through because of his unborn child. The pain he suffered from his loss was more than a person could take. And now, this…
“‘Gumi!” The giggling kid ran past Satoru to meet Toji’s teenage son who immediately carried the little boy in his arms.
“There you are,” Megumi spoke to the child with a rare smile on his face, “You’re not supposed to show yourself when you play hide and seek.”
Satoru’s heartbeat quickened exponentially. His pulse was thumping with a heavy beat. It wasn’t until Megumi saw his figure down the hallway when the dark-haired boy became nonplussed. He knew what the older guy was thinking, and he didn’t seem to know how to react to it.
The little boy with similar white hair was facing away, so Gojou was yet to see if the kid looked like a splitting image of him to confirm his questions. He was already shell shocked and he would probably break down had he learned that the child was indeed his.
But seemingly hearing Satoru’s trail of thought, Megumi took the chance to keep the little boy away. “Come on, let’s go see your mom.”
“Mama?” The kid turned around, noticing Satoru’s presence as the person who carried him walked further and further away. Each growing distance did not do anything to melt the block of ice he had become. Frozen as he stood there, eyes wide at the sight of the child with white hair and baby blue eyes.
This couldn’t be real.
At the beginning of spring, the sky was crying and so was he. You were moving into new spheres, but this heart of his could love so infinitely that everything becomes muted. His heart could love so blindly that everything you do merited its forgiveness. It was unimaginable for anyone who actually cared to understand the gravity that had fallen on Satoru as he rushed into the parking lot. In a daze, lost in his own thoughts while putting the missing puzzle pieces together.
Three years in New York City.
Had he been deprived of a child that he believed hadn’t been born at all?
He was searching through his many antidepressants in the glove compartment of his car. Satoru had been so full of anxiety for this day that he missed taking a couple of pills that he strictly had to take to aid his severe depressive episodes—one of which was about to happen in a few. That child of his could have been a hallucination after all. His mind liked to play tricks on him ever since his mental state went on a downward slope. It wasn’t your fault nor anyone else’s.
It was his.
The onus was always on him. The blame, the criticism, the hatred even to himself. While the wedding was on going, Satoru was in his car crying silently to himself with his head on the steering wheel as his saddest thoughts haunted him. He could easily walk out of the car, crash your wedding, and perhaps confirm if that child was not just a fragment of his imagination.
But what scared him the most was getting a confirmation that you did hide his child for three years without telling him. Why did that scare him, you wonder? Because it meant that he would have to hate you again. It meant that he had to feel strong hostility towards you, when that feeling was the last thing he ever wanted to feel for his own wife.
During his lowest moments, the person he ran to was also the person who once ran away from him. You weren’t aware, but his mom never once left his side at times where the world felt hopeless. Or when breathing felt like luxury than a need. Or when simply existing felt like an undeserved privilege. She stayed and nurtured him to make sure that he wasn’t alone as much as he believed. It was her duty as a mother to care for her child. The only person who truly understood his never-ending pain.
“Mom.” One minute he was crying soundlessly in his car, the next he was on his phone choking a sob. “Mom, I-I can’t do this alone.”
“Satoru? What’s wrong, honey?” Worry laced her voice on the other end of the line. “Where are you?”
His chest rose and fell heavily. “I w-wanna wake up from this nightmare. I wanna wake up next to her.”
“Where are you?” His mother repeated her question with her anxiety increasing tenfold. It was one of ‘those days’. Those terrible, dark days where the other side was whispering in her son’s ear, tempting him to escape this world in his own hands. “Did you go to her wedding? My son…”
Gojou released a sigh, but it sounded more like a plea for help. His eyes were bloodshot and forlorn as he stared at the ceiling of his car. “I saw her and she looked beautiful. Sh-She’s happier, she’s… she’s… Mom, I love her.”
“I’m coming to pick you up.” He could tell his mother was tearing up. “Stay where you are, Satoru. I’ll be there as soon as I can—”
“We have a child,” he spilled out of the blue and the way it flew past his lips only brought a burning ache in his chest. “Our son, he looks j-just like me.” He pictured it all out in his head—how his son would look sleeping in your arms, how his son would run towards his stepfather each time he came home, how his son would look at Satoru Gojou without recognizing him as the father who anticipated his birth with such excitement five months into your pregnancy. “I have a son and he doesn’t know me.”
Deafening silence took over his mother, though it didn’t last long until she spoke in a careful voice. “What are you planning to do right now?”
There was no handbook on what to do after finding out that your ex-wife faked her abortion all along. He wanted to be angry, he wanted to yell the nastiest profanities for the absolute fool he was seen as, and yet everything he would do would just be futile at this point. He was already having difficulty in processing the idea of your marriage with someone else, much less a child with you. Instead of fighting for the family he lost, he felt like he would actually just lose a hundred battles more.
He had to think. Think, away from this place, away from the wedding that was happening inside the cathedral. He needed to clear his mind and figure it all out on his own. For one, was he supposed to pretend that nothing happened? Were you supposed to hide the child from him forever? Were you going to let another man be a father figure to a child who looked exactly like the husband you escaped from?
In a minute, Satoru revved his engine and accelerated the car past forty. He hit sixty when he drove through the street, then he hit a hundred when he reached the freeway. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and drove with blithe disregard for the rules of the road as tears blurred his vision. But maybe, instead of finding a way on how his presence could contribute properly to an ex-wife and a long lost child, he had to choose the easier option—to disappear. Because for all its worth, he wasn’t needed anymore. You managed three years without him, and you could manage fifty more years without him.
His little boy could continue his life not recognizing his shameless father who cheated on his mother, neglected her, ruined her. He was a bad influence and that was solid proof that Satoru could have never been a great dad as much as he liked to believe.
Though, for one reason, you were wrong. As he stomped his foot on the gas pedal, he remembered your words from earlier, ‘you fell in love with the idea of having your own happy family regardless of the person you wanted to share it with’. He didn’t want that family with anyone else but you. That mansion he purchased wasn’t meant for Sera, but for a home he pictured out with a woman he would marry and have dozens of children with. He wasn’t given a chance at explaining himself nor was his voice heard when he tried to beg for forgiveness. You didn’t owe him one, but it broke him to know that because of that miscommunication, your love couldn’t be fulfilled in this lifetime.
This was a world where he was and would always be alone.
Reaching for his pocket, he took out the ring you returned to him and placed it between his fingers, reminding himself of a piece of you that he could still hold onto.
Other than the ring, he also had memories of both good and bad. The wedding day, Iceland, the auction, the morning after his father’s birthday, Bora Bora, Nana’s death, finding out you were pregnant, knowing you had stable angina, that sunset in the yacht, Eula going to jail, him losing everything including you. If any author decided to write about him one day, Satoru hoped that people could learn from his tragedy and value their marriage before it was too late.
Wasn’t it pathetic how he barely remembered everything he had done for the past three years except for those moments with you?
His phone rang wildly from the cup holder as his mom ceaselessly called him. But before he could manage to reach for the gadget, he failed to hit the brakes when the traffic lights turned red. Another blinding light greeted him in slow motion—he realized that the lights were from another car. A much bigger vehicle was speeding towards him when the corner of his eyes saw it from a split second and it was all too late when he tried to steer himself away given the car’s screeching sound, the cacophony of horns echoing left and right, and the tires skidding on the pavement. The collision happened faster than his mind could take. Although his ears picked up the sound of a glass shattering, his eyes didn’t capture the sight of the vehicle that led him to a fatal crash.
There was no deus ex machina to save him from the accident and neither were there flashbacks of his life from childhood until now. There was only darkness that pulled him in and embraced his soul into that empty, inescapable void.
On your second wedding, you expected that things would be easier this time around.
It took you three years to rebuild yourself to be the strong, independent woman that you were now. The process was a difficult path and you could admit that many times, you wished that you didn’t have to go through all of it alone. Being a single mother and studying fashion at the same time was a tough journey, but also the best decision you had made in your life. You learned how to love yourself, along with your son who grew up to be a very sweet kid, while understanding what your real worth should be in a society where being a divorcée at age twenty-eight was considerably acceptable.
You had your father and Gen’s support while raising your son in a country minus the spotlight from the media that could have caused you more stress three years ago. You hoped Satoru could understand. You just wanted to raise your baby in an environment without all the negative energy that surrounded him and your past marriage. So even if he would end up hating you now, you only ever wanted to prioritize your child. Your decision not to tell him was because you no longer had any connections as husband and wife soon as you divorced. Keeping the baby back then could mean that it would be harder for Satoru to let go, so despite having heard his heartbreaking screams that day in the hospital, you had to act on the advice that your father and sister gave you which was to finally put an end to your arranged marriage.
Besides, you were still blessed with a respectable man who had been there for you through thick and thin. A man you would soon lock eyes with once the towering doors by the vestibule was finally opened.
But at the thought of marriage, you suddenly remembered your first husband. You were foolishly thinking of Satoru Gojou at a wedding with a different man. Your trembling fingers matched the increased pace in your heart, just as much as how you blinked through the sting in your eyes. You realized that you were blinking tears until the wooden doors swung open to welcome you into another marital union that once put you through hell.
There they were, awaiting for you to walk down the aisle in your glamorous bejeweled gown. You saw your small audience of families and friends smiling at you as they eyed you with admiration. You saw Toji Zen’in at the far end of the aisle, handsome and perfect in his classic tuxedo while anticipating his status as a married-to-be.
With all eyes on you, you slowly made your way across the aisle, but each step was suffocating. The thought of going through marriage—hoping that it would be perfect only to be crushed by reality in the end—scared you. You didn’t realize that you had developed trauma with weddings all because of a certain white-haired male who altered your vision of what marriages were supposed to be.
Three steps.
Could you really do this again? Could you become someone’s wife and be locked under the vows of marriage for better and for worse?
Two steps.
Could you really offer yourself with wholehearted devotion towards a man who could end up ruining your trust once more?
One step.
The loud thumping of your heart was the answer: maybe you could. For Toji. For the love you deserved. For the marriage you always dreamed of.
But although you concluded with that answer, your hand lost grip on the flower bouquet as you saw another future as a wife back to square one.
“Call the ambulance! 911! Somebody help!”
“Sir, please stay with me.”
The light came back to him while he was sandwiched between the cold dirt and the hot metal of the car. The heavy weight of the vehicle was pressing down on him and keeping him paralyzed amongst the broken shards of glass. No voice escaped his hoarse throat, but he could feel blood dripping on the side of his head where a throbbing sensation had just started to grow.
Yet all in all, he was numb.
He couldn’t move his hand, couldn’t see beyond the confines of his car, couldn’t breathe more oxygen that his lungs needed—all his mind could process was the thought of you. Right when the shiny gold ring was within arm’s reach on the concrete floor, Satoru lifted his broken arm up just to hold onto that one piece of memory he had of you.
He wasn’t certain if he was only waiting for death or something much worse, but at the rate of the excruciating pain that his brain was giving him, he knew one way or another that he would lose a part of himself from hereafter.
But he hoped to every saint that he wouldn’t lose that part of him that loved you.
That Satoru who first fell in love with you at the age of six, got married to you at the age of twenty-five, and still loved you at the age of twenty-eight was the version of him that he wished not to lose.
He was an antagonist in his own tragic story and was merely a plot device to set up conflicts, obstacles, and challenges for the protagonist. Although in most fairytales, the main characters were granted a happily ever after, you and him were given an inevitable twist of fate.
Perhaps this was the end. Or perhaps it wasn’t.
Sometimes the end wasn’t really the end.
After all, this was a universe where he was a character with unmistakable flaws that could not be redeemed. While that may be true, he hoped that you wouldn’t forget that at a certain point in time, he was truthfully, unselfishly in love with you.
That in this universe and in all other parallel universes, he was and would always be sincerely yours.
How come we are so fucked: the decline of modern democracy
The second law of thermodynamics states that the level of disorder in any closed system cannot decrease. Unless there's some external influence, things can only get more and more messy. The earth is not, by any mean, a close system, and therefore neither the biosphere nor human activities are in fact directly governed by the second law in the strict sense. Nevertheless, we can still formulate a version for this law of nature that is applicable to human societies: without a focused intervention everything shall get worse.
A democratic government is a synthetic thing. It was made; it didn't just evolve. The first system for a modern democratic rule was set up in the US of A during the late eighteenth century by its founding fathers. It was based on ideas by liberal European thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau and Montesquieu. Although the US was hardly a true democracy then – it legalized slavery and assigned voting rights to white men only – the system it procured still served as a template for all modern democracies hence: parliament, government and head of state (and potentially other public positions) elected by the general public according to the majority rule.
There is no perfect system of government. The US Americans, for instance, tried to construct a fair system, but it was rather naïve and it still contained many loopholes that could be exploited by some groups to increase their own political power on the expanse of other groups. Moreover, when certain people become powerful due to flaws in the system, they use this power to enlarge end deepen these advantageous defects, gaining even more power, and that allows them to increase yet again the inherent unfairness. This dynamic is common to all forms of government, not just in the US: barring a dramatic disruption or, alternatively, a continuous effort to counter decay, the imbalance and unfairness can only increase over time. It's the "second law" of sociodynamics.
Indeed, dramatic disruptions can occur. The US had a civil war. Germany fell into fascism and then was defeated and conquered in a world war. However, revolutions and total wars are rare, unpredictable and bloody. The only practical way to preserve a fair, liberal democracy it to fight for it relentlessly. The problem is, most people fail to understand this fact. They have this false vision of a democratic system as a stable structure, protected by its constitution and by its institutions. And because they don't take into account the second law of sociodynamics, they become passive subjects of the deteriorating system, ignorant with respect to the fundamental reasons all this is happening around them.
One of the resulting misconceptions is to regard conservative politics as representing just another ideological stance. In fact, those who lead the fight to conserve a faulty system are typically the ones who benefit mostly by it. And they have a built-in advantage, exactly because of these faults. It’s a positive-feedback vicious circle – the powerful have the power to preserve and magnify their power. The fact that they operate within a supposedly fair democratic system only help to obfuscate the actual dynamic behind the scene.
But it doesn't end here. There's another factor that make matters much worse than they could have been. The masterminds of modern democracy made a fatal mistake in their design. They stipulated that political power is allocated strictly based on majority. And this, as it turned out, is profoundly destructive.
Democratic governments profess to represent a "social contract", empowering it to rule for the benefit of the society as a whole. However, in effect, they frequently gain control that is only based on a small majority. For example, a governing coalition may have gained a very narrow majority of just 51% of the votes but obtained practically all the political power. Moreover, in a heterogeneous society, where political and ideological affiliations are rooted in rigid ethnical, religious or socio-economical divisions, the same parties can gain the electoral upper-hand repeatedly in every election. Constituents of minority groups, large or small, are being incessantly deprived of any significant influence on the national policy.
Minority groups suppression has far-reaching consequences. It undermines the very essence of the social contract as it leaves many citizens politically powerless. Consequently, the state can ignore their interests with impunity, make them outcasts, and, in extreme cases, even persecute them under the guise of a lawful democratic rule.
The "winner takes it all" scheme generates a constant socio-political tension, hatred between rival political tribes and deep frustration that often leads to violence. Such social disintegration can be observed in democratic countries all over the world. Politics became a zero-sum game, and it's fucking up our societies and, eventually, our lives.
But what can be done? Is there any other fair way to determine policy without resorting to the who-got-more-skulls arm wrestling? Is there a way to drive society toward consensus rather than division? Is there a way to disrupt the vicious circle of the powerful using their power to gain more power?
Well, as a matter of fact, there is! I intend to elaborate about it in future posts. Meanwhile, it may be illuminating to consider the method employed in the NBA draft, and how it prevents specific teams from perpetuating their hegemony.
Republicans have a new way of sticking their noses in other people’s business.
Republicans have been on quite a successful rampage against modern life: banning abortion, trying to make contraception harder to get, dumping books about race, sex, gender, and the Holocaust (the Holocaust?!) from school libraries, tormenting trans people. You’d think they’d take a break, but no—now they’ve set their sights on a new target: no-fault divorce. Leading the charge are Republican legislators in some of the worst states for women (looking at you, Louisiana!) and reactionary anti-feminist ranters like Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, and Steven Crowder. Fun story: Crowder went viral for portraying himself as a victim of no-fault divorce, expressing shock that his wife could divorce him without his permission even “in Texas”—shortly before a video emerged in which he berated his heavily pregnant wife for, among other domestic failings, not being “wife-worthy.” Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
I mention the great 17th-century poet, today known mostly for his epic poem Paradise Lost, because he was one of the first—if not the first—English writer to call for marriage to be not a religious sacrament enforced by church and state but a civil partnership that unhappy spouses could end at will. (Milton knew whereof he spoke: He himself married 17-year-old Mary Powell, whom he barely knew, when he was 34; she left him some weeks later and stayed away for three years.) In The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) and three subsequent tracts, he argued passionately in favor of divorce on grounds of simple incompatibility: Where there was no love or friendship, the marriage was already dead. Forcing unhappy partners to stay married prevented them from finding more suitable mates, and it substituted church authority for independent rights of conscience. “Wisdom and charity, weighing God’s own institution, would think that the pining of a sad spirit wedded to loneliness should deserve to be freed,” he wrote.
It isn’t clear how much of this freedom Milton would have extended to wives. Still, it was a start. But it would take more than three centuries for unhappy spouses to win the freedom to end a marriage without proving infidelity, abuse, or similar against their partners. The first no-fault-divorce legislation in an American state was signed only in 1969—by none other than conservative icon Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California. It’s now the law in every state, although Mississippi and South Dakota require two-party consent.
Who benefits from easy access to divorce? Everyone, I’d argue, including children, often cited as the reason parents should be forced to stay together—because what can be better for healthy development than growing up in a household full of bitterness, rage, and disrespect? Women have the most at stake, though, because women are more vulnerable to men than vice versa. Even in the 19th century, when divorce was hard to get and few women could support themselves, women filed the majority of divorce petitions in the US; today, it’s more than two-thirds. (Jordan Peterson says it’s because women are more neurotic than men, always looking on the negative side. Well, given the sexist nature of most marriages, where women still do most of the housework and child care, they’ve got a lot to be negative about.)
Researchers who followed the long state-by-state rollout of no-fault divorce found that in every case it led to dramatic decreases in suicide among wives, domestic violence, and murders of wives by their husbands. Those insufficiently acknowledged facts effectively prove that controlling women is what’s behind calls to get rid of no-fault divorce, because if women’s lives and safety mattered, divorce would always have been easy to get. In 2019, Jim Daly, the head of Focus on the Family, which opposes no-fault divorce, told unhappy couples that “God hates divorce in every case,” even when there’s violence, cruelty, addiction, pedophilia. (The wife is supposed to fix the marriage by being superdeferential, blaming herself, and giving her husband lots of sex.)
Who wants this? Who needs this? There’s a real-life experiment that measures the popularity of Daly’s position. In Louisiana, Arkansas, and Arizona, engaged couples can sign up for a “covenant marriage,” in which they agree to seek divorce only for adultery, abuse, or a handful of semi-criminal activities. Despite a quarter-century of its existence as an option, only about 1 percent of couples choose it. The Bible may be all for covenants, but even among evangelicals, not many parents would want their adult child trapped forever in a loveless marriage to a terrible person. (The divorce rate for born-again Christians is 33 percent, by the way—higher than the rate for atheists and agnostics, 30 percent, according to 2008 research by the Barna group.)
sorry you're not feeling great :( sending you my best!
cute new years prompt could be drunk sneezy eddie at a NYE party. too wasted to cover properly and steve trying to control him lol but unfirtunately he gets sneezed on during their kiss at midnight
I love this! Have a short little ficlet set in modern day Streamer AU. -KB
*****
Regardless of whatever anyone else said, Eddie was having a great time. He and Steve were hosting a small New Years Eve party at their apartment with Robin, Nancy, Chrissy, Jonathan, and the Corroded Coffin guys.
Eddie couldn’t deny liking a good buzz, but New Years Eve was one of few occasions where he had an excuse to drink a little more than usual. Presently, he had on gold glitter 2023 glasses and one of those shiny disposable top hats.
Dick Clarke’s New Years Rockin Eve was on the tv in the background and Eddie was dancing to Harry Styles’ As it Was with his fourth glass of champagne in hand.
“Wow, who knew it only took some champagne for the party animal to be unleashed!” Chrissy teased as she danced with him in the boys’ living room.
“What’re you talkin’bout Chris? I’m iiKSHiew! I’m always a party ehhh animal- ETSHuhew! SNFF”
Eddie had spent the better part of the night sneezing - drinking was one of those things where the buzz also went to his nose. Unfortunately for his guests, his ability to cover decreased as the night progressed.
“Eddie! C’mere!” Robin, also tipsy, was standing on the couch pulling the dancing man closer to her as she pressed a tissue to his nose. “Take this. Just hold onto it yeah?”
Eddie took another sip of his champagne and held the tissue in the other hand. He felt his nose start to tickle, so he held the tissue and champagne over his head and sneezed openly at the ground.
“H’iixxTCH! N’gxtCHU! H’etSCHiew!”
“What are you doing, you dummy??” Robin exclaimed, as he sneezed on everything BUT the tissue.
He looked up at her with glazed eyes. “Didn’ wanna s’deeze on it.”
He seemed genuinely confused. Gareth put an arm around him and laughed.
“You dumbass. That’s literally what that’s for.”
Eddie rolled his eyes and playfully shoved Gareth off him as he danced away over to Steve.
It was a little over one minute to midnight and everyone was getting ready for the big moment.
Steve was in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. Eddie came over, doing a drunken party dance as he did. The older man put a hand on the doorframe next to Steve’s head.
“Hey there handsome. What’s on your mind?”
Steve chuckled, holding his own glass of champagne. “I’m thinking that you had too much to drink, sneezy.”
Eddie feigned a gasp, bringing a hand to his chest dramatically.
“I didn’t know we resorted to name calling, Steven,” he joked, “and to think I was going to ask you to be my new years kiss.”
“I’m your boyfriend Eddie, you don’t have to ask me.” Steve laughed.
“Well, we’ve got-” Eddie glanced at the tv where the ball was dropping slowly, “20 seconds left. I wanted to be polite.”
Steve chuckled, “Okay Eddie, I’ll be your New years kiss.”
They turned their attention back to the party where everyone was counting down.
10…9…8…7….6…5…4…3…2…1…
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
With the traditional new years song playing in the background, Steve leaned in and pressed his lips against Eddie’s. Despite being wasted, he had to admit, Eddie was still a good kisser.
He was lost in thought when Eddie simultaneously jerked forward and pulled away. Steve barely had time to register what happened.
“N’Gtch! Tsch’iew! H’EKSHiew! Fuck! Sorry Steve!”
Eddie had sneezed as he pulled away from the kiss, continuing to sneeze at the floor as he turned away from his partner.
Everyone was giggling at the spectacle, Robin coming to tease Steve and wipe him off with a napkin.
Chrissy walked over to her longtime friend, rubbing a hand on his back.
“Okay you,” she said, slipping the champagne glass out of his hand, “You’re cut off for the night.”
4 Workout Mistakes Us Old Guys Need To Fix - Yeah I said it, "..Us Old Guys...". I'm 55 and I feel it every day. What do I do? I fight back, hehehe. So, if you JUST HIT THE big 4-0 (or maybe the big 5-0, or 6-0?) and now you’re worried about things like mobility and work out longevity, don't worry TOO much. There's less reason to worry than you may think. Just because you’re 40 or 50 doesn’t mean that you’re out of your prime. Truth is, you still have plenty of time to condition your body for optimum mobility, to look better, get stronger, and even MORE athletic as you age.
What is you fitness age?
There are those people who think the day you turn 40 is the day that proverbial downward fitness and health spiral begins. That's an extreme reaction. But that’s not to say your body isn’t going through some changes, cause it is. Your testosterone is likely decreasing, and there may be a reduction in your tendon and ligament vascularity also. Injuries may be more frequent. Also, you likely find you need an extra day or more to recover after working out, especially an intense workout.
Something about that number freaks out, and for good cause. You’re used to a certain level of fitness then, all of a sudden the aches and pains kick in. You find that you tire more easily. Many feel that their training needs to change and that they’re on the downswing in terms of athleticism. It doesn't need to be that way.
Now, you don’t have to make massive, dramatic changes to your workouts,—but you will have to be a little smarter about your training. That includes fixing some mistakes and bad habits you might have developed.
4 Workout Mistakes Us Old Guys Need To Fix
You (only) Don't Train for Power
One trap many forty & fifty-somethings fall into is to slip into a pattern of the same ole workouts, never expanding beyond the old standard of 5 sets of eight to 10 reps, while placing most—maybe too much—of their focus on elements such as time under tension.
Power is great but it's not all there is.
Now, from a strength and muscle building standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, overlooking one exercise essential, training for power, cannot be overlooked no matter your age. It doesn’t have to be crazy or complicated or require endless sets of power cleans, but without maintaining some form explosive training, you will lose it, and quickly.
How to Fix It:
It’s no secret that we LOVE kettlebells here. So, a good start is adding an exercise like kettlebell swings into your routine. Just three sets of 10 to 20 reps, a few times a week will help you create and maintain a lot of explosive body power. You can also intertwine power training in ways you haven’t before like being more forceful with your big lifts, like maybe using lighter weight in you bench presses, squats, and deadlifts. Three sets of three to five reps will have feeling powerful at any age.
4 Workout Mistakes Us Old Guys Need To Fix
You're Training Too Heavy
You may have felt good back in your high school football days (queue Al Bundy meme here – GO POLK HIGH! LOL) through your twenties loading as much weight as possible and going for your bench press max every day. Now, don’t even think about doing something like this. It does little at this point of your fitness life unless you're willing to deal with the punishment.
How to Fix It:
Done over too long a period, all that heavy weight will take its toll on your joints. Your 40s are the time to begin train more comfortably in the six to eight rep range (or even eight to 10). And while creating some TUT (Time under tension) is good, you’re still able to move load, and still be joint friendly—a long-term win-win.
You Don't Do Enough Isolation Exercises
We all may have noticed that modern trends push for more of multi-joint lifts than before. That CAN be a good thing, especially when strength gains are concerned.
But at the same time, it’s wise for your workout to include a few complementary isolation lifts to the plan.
How to Fix It:
Think about adding two iso moves in each workout to help complement the deadlifts and squats and so forth. This gives you a chance to add some additional volume which in turn will help to elicit hypertrophy.
If it’s leg day, then try leg extensions and curls following your squats. If back day has you doing pullups and rows, add a few preacher curls and standing curls. Hopefully, you get the idea. This will help you pile up volume without crushing your joints.
4 Workout Mistakes Us Old Guys Need To Fix
You Don't Do Enough Cardio
With all the focus on weights, it becomes convenient to neglect the cardio and conditioning portion of your workouts. Not attacking that energy system isn’t very wise when it comes to longevity. Your metabolism begins slowing down after 40, so it’s critical to burn calories elsewhere. This is why it’s important to elevate your heart rate.
How to Fix It:
10-20 minutes of activity is a good place to start. Whatever you're doing doesn’t have to be long and repetitive, and you can slot it toward the end of your workout. Hit the treadmill or row machine or bike and just move at a steady consistent pace. Push it a bit more oomf into it by adding 30 seconds on/off interval training as well. A long run, even picking up the weight training pace are ways to add cardio to your workout.
We mentioned kettlebells earlier (of course we did). Utilizing kettlebells and your primary strength workout tool with add the cardio-conditioning element with every routine. You kill 2 birds with one kettlebell.
There's a lot of stuff when you were under 40 that you could skip. You can't skip conditioning (cardio) anymore. As long as you don't skip it. You're still going to continue to move toward your goals so avoid those mistakes and let's keep those gains happening.
Hope that helps. Getting older doesn’t have to suck. Keeping fit and healthy can last well into our elder years, there’s no reason it shouldn’t. So, do yourself a favor and start incorporating these ideas into your daily fitness routines. Let us know what happens.
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please tell me your headcannons about the silly old traditions and funny hats and gowns worn at the Assassins Guild graduation ceremonies (bonus points: Vetinari occasionally attends as a distinguished alumnus; differences for those not taking the black) Downey has to make a speech
I love this ask, thank you so much. <3
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Downey has added feathers to the hats because it’s Downey and he believes all hats need a nice feather.
Vetinari: . . .I refuse.
Downey: It’s a single, white feather. Very stylish.
Vetinari: You can’t make these hats stylish. It’s impossible.
Downey: That will not stop me from trying.
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First it must be said, I place most of my Discworld fashion firmly in the “anywhere from 1350-1650″ camp. Which means there’s lots of diversity but it’s all still very late medieval/early modern. This is a just-me thing though, as the books are all over the place with the fashion. There seemed to be a sense, in the early Watch books, that fashion went backwards (i.e. the more recent, to our mind, the clothes the more old fashioned they are on discworld) but that was quickly abandoned partway through the series and then it became a hodgepodge.
I still like the early modern feel and so am keeping to it. You can pry Downey’s stupid fucking doublet with its black pearl buttons and his slouchy hat with the Florentine “I’m very gay” feather from my cold, dead hands.
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This got long so it’s under the cut.
Fashion first, because this is Downey and the Assassins we’re talking about after all.
So I imagine the hats that the professors/teaching staff wear are the slouchy ones like these. This is modeled off of hats that were in fashion when the guild first instituted formal graduation ceremonies which are relatively recent (for a given value of “recent” i.e. only circa 150/200 years ago).
The students graduating with the Black get the slouchy hats too. The ones who didn’t take the black get the more familiar flat board graduation cap. (Students 100% balance things on top of the flat board cap. This may or may not be desired by the cap-wearer.)
The formal, ceremonial gowns, indeed the entire outfit, for the teachers are hilariously ornate because of course they are. It’s the Assassin’s Guild.
All ceremonial gowns would be different iterations of the houppelande.
Beneath the gown there is the Assassin’s black of the doublet with a long-ish skirt beneath the belt (knee length? perhaps floor - but then it starts hitting gown territory). The doublet is form fitting at the top, belted off with the skirt below. Naturally, there are very nice buttons. The linen undershirt is white and can be seen at the collar and wrists. Leggings/tights/hose/whatever you want to call them, also black and worn with dress shoes, not their usual working day boots. All men present wear this, including Vetinari.
(Downey: No grey-blacks allowed on stage unless it’s representing your specialty and I know you didn’t specialize in astronomy and quantum mathmatics.
Vetinari:
Vetinari: But it’s My Colour.
Downey: Put the doublet on.)
Women on staff are also all in black, but it’s a dress over a kirtle which is over their undershirt which can be seen at the cuffs. The dress et al is also form fitting on the top with tightly buttoned (or laced) sleeves, then there’s the belt and full skirts after. Dresses are always worn with a high neckline. They too have formal dress shoes, though you can’t see them.
The ceremonial gowns are black with coloured lining and trim. I’m thinking the sleeves are large and pinned back to show the lining which represents the general field you’re a specialist in. So, green for biology; red for literature/linguistics; white for deportment/dancing; blue for history; yellow for mathematics or whatever. The lining can be dual-colours if applicable. The trim will accent the lining but doesn’t mean anything in particular.
The slouchy hats, however, tell you what the person specialized in with regards to their training i.e. poisons; knife work etc.
Some gowns have that long drapey hood that is purely for aesthetics, but not all. I’m thinking if your specialty is stealth (coughHavelockcough) you get it. But, of course, as a specialist in stealth you don’t want people knowing that so no one who qualifies for a drapey hood wears it.
Students wear simple black gowns with relatively short, deep cut sleeves so you can see more of their doublet beneath. Boys wear the usual doublet/hose combo (kind of like this) and girls the formal dress/kirtle combo (think this, but all black and with less jewels and tighter sleeves) beneath their graduation gowns.
All gowns on students and staff alike are closed in the front - either with buttons or ties.
Aside from the hat distinction between those who are taking the black and those who aren’t, the gowns for those taking the Black are all black and have the drapey hood. Those that aren’t taking the black have gowns trimmed with a dark colour - maybe blue? grey? something that blends but still is distinct.
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Ceremonial Nonsense
The graduation is held in the great hall where the students usually dine on a day-to-day basis. Parents are allowed and all families get a “plus two” for grandparents or family friends or whatever.
There are two separate ceremonies - the first is for those taking the Black. That’s the one where Downey forces Vetinari to give a speech as he is Guild Provost and one a Distinguished Old Boy etc.
Downey does his speech first and usually lines up those coming after him (Vetinari; Mericet; Lady T’Malia is what I have in my head. Though Mericet can usually convince Downey to sub in someone else as he is Too Old For This Shit).
For those taking the Black Downey will pepper in Fun Facts About Assassins and Helpful Pro Tips for Life (some of which are more helpful than others). Vetinari’s speech usually offers subtle rebuttals to Downey’s more outlandish life advice. Lady T’Malia’s is a universal favourite because she has the dry, disdainful wit of a person who has seen way too much nonsense in her life and has lived to continue to roll her eyes at it all.
Mericet, when he’s made to do a speech and can’t pawn it off on one of the younger staff, is always very short. His record time was 15 seconds wherein he got to the podium, looked somberly out at his soon to be former students, and said “All I can say to you is, good luck and don’t die” then he sat down. Downey could be heard to mutter: Really?? rather loudly.
Vetinari, more out of a desire to cause Downey some form of annoyance than anything else, will drone on for a long time and pepper in weird references only the headmaster of the guild will understand. He makes a few tiger jokes every year to which Downey, when he gets up to introduce the next speaker, will reply: “You really need to get over that”. No one knows what they’re talking about. However, the students always haaate it when Vetinari takes the podium. There is much sighing and sliding down in seats out of boredom.
The students are called up to the stage the receive their diploma in order of their name and it’s done by house (so viper house then black widow then poison dart frog or whatever they all are).
Weapons are expressly forbidden on all students after that One Unfortunate Incident back when Cruces was headmaster about which the least said, soonest mended.
Back when Downey and Vetinari were graduating, when weapons were allowed, all students were given a ceremonial sword and they got to wear it when they went up to take their diploma. Students still get a ceremonial sword (or dagger, depending on preference) but they are received after the ceremony.
The infamous ring is presented alongside the diploma.
For those not taking the Black, it’s still the same roster of speakers but it’s usually a faster ceremony (though, that is changing over the years as the Guild is sought out more and more as a general-purpose educational institution for parents seeking a classical education for their children).
Students in this group are also gifted a ceremonial sword but they’re allowed to wear theirs during the graduation ceremony because most can do nice, polite, gentlemanly dueling and not much else. Unlike their colleagues who can use it in increasingly diverse and experimental fashions.
After both ceremonies are complete there is a grand dinner with students and their families and much conviviality. Under Downey’s reign as headmaster the amount of “accidental deaths” that occurred at this dinner have decreased dramatically. Mostly because unlike previous headmaster, Downey thinks it a waste of a good education to knock someone off so soon. Also, it is deplorable manners and not civil.
(Vimes, “It’s also immoral.” Downey, “I fail to see your point, commander?”)
Wait at least a year or two until inhuming that One Guy who was A Class A Cunt During Maths. Or, if they’re really that bothersome, at least have the grace to wait until after the pudding has been served.
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Pre-graduation tomfoolery
The graduating class, as a whole (well, those who survived the Run and those not taking the Black who haven’t accidentally fallen down the stairs), have two weeks between end of term and graduation and tend to run absolutely wild.
Downey’s main rule is: no one is inhumed, his dogs are left alone and nothing is set on fire; flooded; booby-trapped; or exploded etc.*
*see fine print for continuing list.
It is considered a grand tradition for each house to prank their house master. One year, students cellophaned everything in Mericet’s office. Including individual pages of books. Downey thought this absolutely Delightful. Mericet said, “that’s it, I’m retiring.” Which is, coincidentally, what he says every year.
Students will also strike up a very large game of Gotcha (i.e. Assassin) over the course of the intervening weeks between Term and Graduation. It used to be a very deadly endeavour but due to Downey’s new rule of “no inhuming until after graduation you daft kids” it’s just become a way to dunk on people.
These are also the weeks that students clean out their rooms which is always an adventure. Many will try and discreetly sneak out their illegal pot plants and shroom logs. Those that hide them in places that aren’t their room will have minor panic attacks because Lady T’Malia and other staff enjoy rounding up the plants ahead of the students and watching the fallout.
(Vetinari: I really should tell Vimes you have enough here to supply everyone in the city for a decade.
Downey: Leave my drug collection alone.)
There is a lot of Lady T’Malia and others being like, “You all do know we hid our illegal shit in the exact same places, right?’
Students will also throw end-of-year ragers in the common room which the staff pretend to know nothing about. These tend to get very messy very quickly. Downey will show up around 3am to shut it down, though. Because some people need to sleep and aren’t 18 anymore.
--
Anyway, that’s the long and short of my headcanon for Guild Graduation nonsense. All in all it’s a rowdy if somewhat bittersweet time. Downey secretly gets a little teary eyed over it. Aww look at his tiny little murderers going off into the big wide world. He remembers when they first arrived with knobbly knees and big eyes. His paternal side comes out in full force.
Vetinari: it’s very good you have hundreds of students and several dogs because I don’t know what you’d do without them since you’re basically 110% a dad.
Downey: i might have gotten married. What a horrifying concept.
Vetinari:
Vetinari: I have weird feelings about that which I am not going to explore in any great depth.
Shamelessly stole this from @tarberrymentats‘ post because I’m always a sucker for behind-the-scenes character inspiration and meaning stuff, so if you steal this in turn, feel free to tag me!
(I’m also stealing Halk’s usage of lovely art by @yesjejunus for this one 🖤)
Agnes Sands, Courier Six of the Mojave Express
A) Why are you excited about this character?
Agnes was an opportunity to create what felt like a very unorthodox OC, and it’s an opportunity that has certainly paid off. She’s not young, and she’s not a particularly pleasant or easygoing person to be around, but she’s also not the endearingly tragic loner type or a badass army-of-one. She’s not “spunky” or “fun” and isn’t the kind of Fallout character who’s necessarily motivated to do every quest, meet every companion, accomplish every thing. She’s not an important person; being an important person is anathema to her, and the looming, overarching themes of It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’ are these ideas of the hard limits on unlikely heroism, and how you really can’t fly that far on circumstance and luck. I’m very excited for everyone to see how it goes when the going gets tough.
Furthermore, the design and writing process for Agnes was very informed by finding justifications, reasons, and origins for all of her personality traits, skills, and various hang-ups. The result is a character that feels, to me, so deeply real and well-rounded and alive, that Agnes is a person who has lived every one of her 34 years of age, and that in each of those years were key developments that molded her into the person she is. When I write her, I feel like I know her because of how intimately I’ve researched and come to understand the life she’s led. I don’t want to say it comes effortlessly, but there’s a very genuine, sculpted depth to her character that I’m proud of, and it forms the bedrock of It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’.
It is also very important to me that Agnes is a trans woman, and is a trans woman who looks the way she does with a strong jaw and a big nose and long face and a wide body and hairy arms and so many other “masculine” features, because I wanted to create a character with a very real, visceral, visible transness to them, and for this transness to be a meaningful part of her character that informs her relationship to other people and the scarce world of the Mojave Wasteland instead of just an auxiliary character trait. She is no less of a woman for existing the way she does, but I simply wasn’t interested in creating a character or interpreting the Mojave Wasteland in a way that wouldn’t meaningfully grapple with what it really feels like, to me, to be a trans woman.
B) What inspired you to create them?
Many of Agnes’ character traits actually come from mechanical and specialization decisions that I play in game. I often joke that Agnes “just plain sucks,” but it’s true that in my Fallout: New Vegas game, I have encumbrance set to a measly 25 lbs without backpacks (necessitating her shoulder-slung duffel bag), use a directional flashlight instead of the Pip-Boy light (necessitating the shoulder-mounted flashlight), play with dramatically decreased total S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and skill points per level (which is why she’s so bad-to-average at most things except key specialties), and so on. This was the most obvious level of inspiration, and much of Agnes’ personality and backstory is reverse-engineered to justify the aspects of her character suggested and represented by her mechanical stats.
C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?
Epiphanies have come over time, but ultimately I more or less hammered out Agnes’ whole “story” upfront. I have a detailed character bible saved away that covers not only her entire life pre-courier, but the story beats of her experience as the courier thrown into the center of the events of Fallout: New Vegas and the seismic geopolitical power plays leading up to the second battle of Hoover Dam. So, uh, stay tuned for each new issue of IKROAH!
D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?
I wouldn’t say that I’ve meant to meaningfully change her appearance over time, but as I’ve been working on the comic, I’ve simply gotten better at drawing and the result has been an Agnes that more consistently looks like how I want her to look. One deliberate change to her appearance has been that her hair is a lot fluffier and voluminous than it used to be, just because a few other peoples’ fanart of her would be like that and I really liked how it looked.
E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?
Hard to say. Agnes has such a defensive, prickly, and particular personality and is so shy and anxious that she’s someone very hard to get along with in general, regardless of who you are. Cass could only ply her through a combination of drunken genuineness and total embarrassment that razor-cut right to her trauma. I don’t think I’d have the...audacious wherewithal to be that blunt with her if we’d just met. The best case scenario is that she imprints on me as a younger trans woman and feels compelled to look out for me because if there’s one soft spot she has, it’s that.
F) What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?
Pride at the amount of work I’ve put into developing her and crafting her story so far, pride at how it’s been such a rewarding and enjoyable vehicle for getting so much better at art and writing since this summer, and occasionally sadness just because, man, I really let her fucking have it sometimes, huh.
G) What trait of theirs bothers you the most?
Her solitary lifestyle made it necessary to find a way to write Cass into the story, just so that there would be some more dialogue while she traveled. She has a lot of interpersonal flaws, her habit of going from totally reclusive and private to hollering mad with no steps in between would certainly be off-putting to me especially. She gets a bad, sad, crying kind of angry, and she doesn’t get there quick but she goes get there suddenly.
H) What trait do you admire most?
She has a dedication to her and a commitment to what she’s good at. She understands the value of stability, good work and a good job. Sometimes this value is so much to her that it keeps her stagnant, and she’s very much a person who’s stuck in their ways in so many regards, but there’s a resilience to her that may not be obvious at first, but that she simply wouldn’t have gotten this far or survived without.
I) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?
Agnes’ story is so tailored to the source material of Fallout: New Vegas that I thought that transplanting her into other AUs would be difficult, but it’s actually been pretty seamless inserting her into the a modern AU with a few friends called Courier House, where instead of being a courier, she kept up her medical training and works as an EMT. That also spun off into a modern zombie AU, which is just fun and tragic in a lot of juicy ways.
I also have a lot of thoughts on an AU in which she makes it to the Commonwealth, in which she’d become Nick’s partner at the eventually-renamed Valentine and Sands Detective Agency, helping to solve cases of burglary and theft, B&E, and advises on various security concerns. She’d also get extremely invested in tracking down missing children. There are a lot of parallels and dramatic development potential between Agnes Sands and Nick Valentine that I’d kill for more time to explore one day.
J) Did you have to manipulate or exclude canon factors to allow them to create their character?
I didn’t have to, no, but I chose to and at least filled in some holes. My theory on transitional health care in the wasteland is all my own (the Followers are the primary manufacturer and distributor of hormones, which can be inefficiently synthesized from Auto-Docs so they’re not impossible to find but are considerably rare) and I’ve taken some liberties in the IKROAH canon so far for convenience, such as Primm never getting taken over by convicts and the Cassidy Caravans buyout offer being a letter at the Mojave Express instead of something she’d have had to get personally from Alice McLafferty later on. Expect a lot more little twists like this in the future.
