#unusual format

[deisderiumbooks]

Fan Book, sqq flavored

My first full bind of 2026! I saw a fan book structure in a new-to-me book on bookbinding I got for Christmas and immediately thought it needed to be a fic about sqq. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

The fic is chapter 13 from x_los's SVSSS Miscellany, Original Bads: Reverse Transmigration, in which Shen Jiu comes to the real world. (Shen Jiu does not actually use a fan in this fic.)

[akanotsubasa]

[Inktober 2018, Day 9]

[seraphictom]

"All Things Considered"

Solution # 1

Go to the barber. Look at all his excellent power tools. Straight razors, sharp scissors, and plastic combs in blue sterile liquid. Point at the electric clippers and have him shave all your hair off. Watch it fall to the ground and be swept away in little piles, parts of you taken away. Feel their eyes on you, but when you turn their noses are in magazines and books. You know their really laughing at the whiteness of your scalp. If it draws attention, maybe you shouldn’t get your hair cut, not on this day.

Solution # 2

Don’t get out of bed. At all. Tell them you’re not feeling well. Your mother is already upset. She doesn’t need this today.

Solution # 3

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Use all the hot water and feel it change over to cold. The running shower covers your sobs. Your mother won’t hear you, because she’s in the pantry moving cans around to cover her own tears. Only the flashing light bulb on the ceiling will hear you, but it’s too concerned that it will burn out. Your father was the one who changed the lights. You think you can reach it. Your finger tips will grace the hot surface, but you’re just not that tall. He was tall. Use the bathroom scale to give yourself a few extra inches. Marvel over how you feel like half a person, but still weigh the same. Grab the bulb, twist it off, and drop it into the trashcan. Leave the socket empty. Take a towel from the linen closet and dry your hair.

Solution # 4

Search through your closet and look for a hat. Find none. You don’t wear hats. Sneak into your parents’ room and search through your father’s closet, and then realize he too never wore hats. You find in the back in a tattered box with a faded shooting star on it, some forgotten company’s logo, a Halloween mask. Your father’s Halloween mask that he wore every year while passing out candy. Put it on with your black suit and go to breakfast. You think how wonderful it is in the mask. You couldn’t have found a better solution today. Look at your mother’s face when she sees you in a pressed suit with the face of a demon. Take off the mask even if you don’t want to, because of your mother’s eyes.

Solution # 5

Don’t worry about your hair at all. Don’t worry about the way you look, just put on the black suit and a wrinkled tie. Skip breakfast. Eat an apple when your mother insists, even though it tastes like cardboard. Go to the funeral home and sit in the front row with your mother. Don’t look at the casket. Instead look at people’s shoes and wonder why dress shoes only come in brown and black. Feel your mother try to press your hair flat and feel annoyed, but then realize your mother is trying not to look at the casket either. When the line of people starts to walk by the casket and you’re pushed to the front, turn and go to the bathroom. Lock the door behind you and cry until you vomit. Wash the taste of sour apple out of your mouth and go back into the hallway. Your young niece will hand you her stuffed sheep, something she is never seen without, and you’ll walk back to the showing room where people are leaving. Your mother will ask you where you got the stuffed animal from and you’ll look at, but won’t remember. She’ll lead you out to a waiting car, and an hour later you’ll being falling asleep on your bed with muddy shoes while downstairs, people eat. Wake up at night. Go down to the kitchen and eat wake leftovers with your mother. Don’t speak to each other. See your reflection in the glass of the window. See your hair stand up in every direction. Then realize you can only see your reflection because the chair across from you is empty. Hold your mother’s hand, and then put her to bed. Stand in the doorway until you hear her breath grow steady. Go to your room and try to sleep. Dream about your father.