One Day You Think: I Want To Die. And Then You Think, Very Quietly, Actually I Want A Coffee. I Want

One day you think: I want to die. And then you think, very quietly, actually I want a coffee. I want a nap. A sandwich. A book. And I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friends, I want to sit in the sun. I want a cleaner room, I want a better job, I want to live somewhere else, I want to live.

Self-starving is how I punish myself just because this world is too much to handle and I hate everyone.

felt giddy so thought of updating twice a week lmao

Still my first instinct is to show you everything I'm doing for the first time,be it a hairstyle or my little accomplishments. As I long for your approval,still.

Love Is a Game: For Foolish Girls’ and Devils’ Plays

Chapter 2: Love Is a Game: For Political Enemies

Word Count: ~ 10.7k+

Description: They say love is a game for fools; but how can you win a game, you never wished to be a part of?

We were always friends – or rather, two neighbouring countries king’s children, who were forced to be friendly with one and other, to avoid further war between our lands.

But somewhere in the space of time and laughs, the line between friends and politics disappeared;

Warning for the chapter: mentions of war, jealousy, angst, verbal fights, this is a yandere story, please keep that in mind. If any is missed, please tell me, so I can add them!  

Warnings for the series: mentions of war, yandere themes, blackmail, verbal fights, 18+, smut, blood, more will be added with time

!In no way of shape and form do I think this is how Jungkook acts in real life, this is pure work of fiction, so if you choose to read it, please keep that in mind!

Keep reading

Of Ruin: Chapter 8 || KTH

(banner by @itaeewon)

Of Ruin (Masterpost)

Rating: NSFW - minors dni Genre: vampire!au magic!au royalty!au, s2l, slow burn, eventual smut, angst and fluff

Summary: Taehyung of House Rune, Prince of Infracticus has been cursed. You’re the human world’s leading curse-breaker. It should be simple. But unraveling the curse becomes the least of your problems in the face of a world on the brink of civil war… and the love you start to feel for the prince.

A/N: Thank you endlessly to @sailoryooons for betaing!!! 💕

//

Section Warnings: injury and blood, angst wc: 4.8k

When you’d studied casting - in the framework of counter-curses, never much else - you’d learned like a human. You’d learned the methodology of pulling magic from the air around you, like one might pull water from a cloud. You never knew there was magic inside you, rising up to meet the rest. You never knew that you might possess something of your own, stronger and more readily available than what the world around you could offer.

Now, as you stand in your tiny bedroom in the palace practicing the same deflective spell over and over again, you wonder how you could possibly have been so oblivious. The magic that races through your system nearly makes you high.

You know that you should stop and sleep; you know that you need to rest, to recover. But every time you consider putting the book away, turning off the lamp, and laying in the dark, your heart begins to race again.

And then, instead of doing any of those things, you run the spell again. You imagine the Infracti who’d attacked you, and you push back with all your might.

You run the spell so many times that it becomes muscle memory - your tongue repeating mindless syllables, your hands pushing and pulling magic like you’re conducting the ocean tide. You’re barely thinking about what you’re doing. Your mind goes blank, a low buzzing like static settling at the base of your skull.

Say the words, do the motion. Knock down anything that comes close. Say the words, push the magic. Say the words, push the magic. Get them away, keep them away, get them away away away -

Your wardrobe explodes noisily, wooden splinters flying through the room followed by your shirts and slacks. You scream and drop to the floor, covering your head, just as one of your shoes crosses the room and takes out your lamp, leaving you in the darkness you’d been avoiding. You shake on the floor, still covering your head even though the danger has passed.

You hear Namjoon shout your name before he throws your door open, flooding your room with light from the corridor.

“What happened?” he asks, trying and failing to turn the light on with the switch on the wall. The lamp lies on the ground, shattered. You can see it because you’re still at eye-level with the floor.

Namjoon must spot you, cowering, and makes his way towards you.

“Careful,” you warn him, finally uncovering your head and trying to sit up. Your arms both sting, and you bet you have chunks of wardrobe in them, like giant splinters. Lovely. You don’t even want to look. “There’s pieces everywhere.” You’re not sure if you mean the wooden splinters or the shattered lamp. You feel delirious.

Namjoon freezes midstep, one foot raised in the air.

Satuel appears behind him and seems to understand what happened. She waves her hand and you watch as the wooden pieces of the wardrobe and the ceramic pieces of the lamp slide along the floor to a common spot, making a nice, neat little pile of debris.

“Come,” she says. “Out here where I can see you.”

Out in the common room, she looks you over, tutting when she looks at your arms. Your heart begins to slam in your chest as she examines you; you’re very aware, suddenly, that you must be bleeding.

Namjoon and Satuel look at each other, having a silent conversation that you are very much not a part of.

“Go back to bed,” she tells Namjoon, who is hovering a few feet away, unsure how to help. “I’ll take care of her.”

He does as he’s told, a bit robotically, and you’re sure he was half-asleep for the whole encounter. He might wake up in the morning and think he dreamed it.

Satuel procures a pair of tweezers - from where, you aren’t sure - and guides you to sit at the small table where you eat. She gingerly takes one of your arms and bends it so she can see better as she starts to work.

“Care to tell me what happened?” she asks evenly, her focused gaze only on what her hands are doing.

“Was practicing a defense spell,” you mutter. Your eyes suddenly feel heavy. “Must have messed up. My wardrobe exploded. It broke the lamp.”

“You should have been sleeping,” she remarks, putting down the arm she was working on and motioning for you to hand her the other.

You don’t answer this. You don’t want to admit that you were too scared. You don’t want to look weak and frightened. You don’t want to offend her by admitting you’re afraid of her kind. You don’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing her kind can frighten you. These feelings contradict each other, yet somehow both manage to be true.

She seems to know anyway. She finishes working on your second arm and places it on the table, sitting back and looking at you with wet, black eyes. Your stomach turns, and the hairs on your arms raise.

You hide them under the table.

“Prince Taehyung can heal those when he… wakes,” she says. It occurs to you, as she stumbles over this wording, that at this moment Prince Taehyung is simply a monster. If you needed him, now, he would be no help at all. In fact, in his current state - wherever they have him tucked away - he’s the most dangerous one here.

Everyone else would need to use discretion if they fucked with you. Under the curse, Prince Taehyung would have no such qualms.

“Okay,” you say quietly. “Thank you.”

She continues to watch you, then cocks her head slightly. “There is a tea I could bring,” she says. “It would calm your nerves. It would likely help you sleep. I’ll bring some.”

You want to object; you don’t know what it’s made of, what the effect will be. You want to stay clear-headed. You want to stay awake. You never want to close your eyes again.

But this is the first kindness Satuel has shown you. This is the most she has spoken to you at length. You don’t want to reject her, lest she never try again.

“Thank you,” you nod. “I’ll try it.”

Still, when she brings you a steaming mug, you sit on the couch in the main room and hold it between your hands. You inhale the steam deeply, noting what you can recognize: chamomile, definitely. Perhaps lavender. Something else that you can’t name.

You look up at her, nervous. “Will I be able to wake when Prince Taehyung is ready for the ritual?” you ask. “Or will I be -?”

Drugged, is what you want to say. You don’t.

She smiles, and it almost looks warm. “You’ll feel normal,” she assures you. “It won’t make you groggy.”

You nod in thanks and sip at it. When you’ve finished, you set the mug on the low table, and you bring the heaviest blanket from your bed back to the couch. You curl up in a ball, the blanket over your head, and breathe slowly, waiting for sleep.

You leave every light in the room on.

—

It is not Satuel who wakes you, but Namjoon, gently shaking your shoulder and pulling the blanket just enough that your eyes peek out. You squint up at him, the light almost painful in the wake of your dark little blanket cave.

“Sorry,” he says, grimacing. “I wanted to let you sleep more, but the prince has asked for us.”

You groan, closing your eyes again. You feel awful - your body aches, your head is pounding, and your arms throb in the places where Satuel had removed wooden splinters sometime early this morning.

Still, after a moment of wallowing, you push yourself to rise. “Do I have time to shower?” you ask, the blanket over your shoulders like a thick, winter cape.

Namjoon glances at the clock. “Maybe, like… a fast one?”

You do your best to hurry, though the water stings the open cuts you sport, which makes it tricky as you hop in and out of the water, hissing and wincing. When you’re ready, both Dansoo and Satuel lead you and Namjoon through the palace, up the steps to Prince Taehyung’s wing.

You’re greeted in the front room not by the beautiful, dark haired Infracti, but by a breakfast spread.

“Prince Taehyung will be with you in a moment,” one of his staff tells you. “Please help yourselves to breakfast.”

“God, coffee,” you manage, making a beeline for the table. Namjoon follows, and when Prince Taehyung comes through the door he finds the two of you sitting on opposite ends of the couch, each clutching a mug of dark liquid like they tether you to life.

He nods in greeting as he passes Namjoon, but slows his stride to pause by you. You look at him guiltily, already knowing where this is going.

“I heard there was an incident,” he says, voice low.

You shake your head as Namjoon nods. Traitor.

“Hardly,” you say. “I was practicing magic. I made a mistake. There was… uh, a problem.”

“An incident,” he repeats. Then, he sighs like he just doesn’t know what to do with you. “Can I heal you?”

You lower your gaze and hold up your arms.

He sighs again as he surveys the damage. Then, gently, he takes one arm and begins to run his spare hand over the cuts, and you feel the tingling sensation that lets you know the healing is working.

You swallow down how nice it feels to have his hands on you. It’s not productive, you remind yourself. Not only unprofessional, but unrealistic, too. Doubly foolish.

He’s dangerous, too. He’s one of them, too.

Triply foolish.

“I’d like you to stay out of trouble for maybe a day,” he scolds under his breath, barely audible.

“I’m finding that harder here than I ever did in the real - I mean, back home,” you joke.

The real world, you’d almost said. Like this one isn’t real, but truly just a dream you can’t seem to wake from.

It does feel that way.

If Prince Taehyung notices, he has the grace to ignore it.

He hovers as you work uneasily on your coffee, and then asks, “So, are we trying the ritual today?”

“That’s the plan,” you answer, and Namjoon shoots you a look like you aren’t being polite enough. But you feel like you and the prince have gotten, maybe, a little friendly on your visits to the stable, enough to give you the leeway to speak casually.

At any rate, he doesn’t object to your tone, instead leaning his arms on the back of the couch and asking, “Do you need anything for it?”

“Actually, yes,” you say, sitting up straighter. Now that the caffeine’s hit your system, you’re feeling more human - but definitely still sore from top to bottom. “Could you get us a metronome?”

“A metronome?” he parrots, brows furrowing.

“You know,” you say, flapping a hand. “The thing for music that keeps the beat for you? I saw your piano room, I’m sure you have one here somewhere.”

A smile grows on his face. “You saw my piano room?”

You don’t answer this, feeling your face flush; you’d found the piano room on the night you’d gone wandering, when Prince Taehyung had literally saved your life the first time.

Namjoon watches this exchange with raised brows, but says nothing. You try to ignore the look on his face.

Prince Taehyung’s smile grows, and he shakes his head a little. He looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. He controls himself, mouth twitching back into something more neutral, and then he says, “Yes, I’ll send for it. Anything else?”

You consider this. “Somewhere quiet to work? We need a bit of space, and your staff can’t come too close or their energy will mix into the reading.”

He nods absently, already moving to ask one of his staff to fetch the metronome. “Don’t worry about that,” he says over his shoulder. “I’ve already thought of the perfect place. Come on, I’ll show you.”

—

Taehyung picked his greenhouse for the ritual. It’s spacious, far from his main quarters, quiet… and soothing, with several water features that bubble quietly. He thinks, though it’s just projecture, that this will be good for rituals or magic.

It’s calm and safe, and Taehyung thinks that’s important.

The other curse-breaker, the man, stays by the door, making sure none of Taehyung’s staff accidentally enter, and keeping a safe distance himself.

You sit cross-legged on the ground, facing each other. Taehyung watches you carefully, listens - from his place opposite you - to your pulse beat through your body, quickened with nerves and excitement. He feels your magical signature like a caress, and it astounds him that you can’t feel it, can’t feel the magic brimming at your fingertips, ready to be directed. 

“This is supposed to be different than before,” you remind him. “I’m only going in with the intention to look.”

He nods. He hears what you’re telling him - it shouldn’t hurt this time, shouldn’t drain him, shouldn’t feel like his insides are being funneled backwards through his body.

Before the curse had tried to kick you out - before the pain had started - having your magic toy around with his… well, it hadn’t been unpleasant at all. It had felt good, if he was being honest. Like something was clicking into place, as it was meant to.

“You’re going to feel me poking around, just like before,” you repeat his earlier words. “You’ll also likely feel things that… belong to me.”

He feels his brow furrow. “What does that mean?”

You twist your mouth and eye the ceiling. Taehyung waits, lets you decide how to explain it. 

“It’s like…” you say slowly, still thinking as you talk, “we both open up and let our magic through. So the same as I can steer my magic to take a look at the curse, you could steer yours to investigate mine. It’s… available.

“If that happens,” you continue explaining, clearly intending to do a better job looping him into the whole process this time, “you might, without meaning to, interact with it. You might feel emotions that belong to me - that’s most likely.”

“You’ve done this before?” Taehyung asks, though he knows the answer. 

“Once,” you nod. “A long time ago, though.”

“What happened that time?” He leans back on flattened palms, putting a little more space between you.

“It went well,” you say, something energized coming over you. Like you perk up when you talk about your work, your successes. “I was breaking the curse for this woman - she was like, so old -”

“Older than me?” Taehyung asks, failing to hold back a teasing smile.

You laugh. Taehyung likes the sound of it. “Old for a human, okay? Anyway, we did the ritual and I was looking around at her curse and I could feel her magic kind of… pressing back? Not in a bad way, though, just… presence. And when we finished and ended it, she told me something…” You break off the story, letting out a laugh that’s maybe a bit bitter - Taehyung can’t tell. “She told me some things about myself, about what I was feeling, things I had gone through recently at that time - like while she was in there she just got a little film of my life, or something.”

“That sounds invasive,” Taehyung murmurs. 

You shrug. “I knew what I was agreeing to. It was sweet, and kind of funny. And I cracked her curse.” The pride in your voice is evident. 

“So,” Taehyung asks, back to playful, “what film am I scheduled to see today?”

You laugh again, and his smile widens. “Books, probably,” you tell him. “Hours and hours and hours of books.”

Taehyung waits patiently as you get ready. He places his hands palm-up on his knees, and you place yours palm-up on top of his, resting lightly. They’re small, he notices for the first time, fitting neatly inside his own. 

You lift one hand and reach to set the metronome at a slow pace. It’s so slow, in fact, that Taehyung thinks for a moment that it must be broken.

“This is to pace our breathing,” you tell him. “Inhale and exhale between the beats. We’re going to do that first - just breathe in time, together.”

“I don’t need to do anything else?” he clarifies. He wants this to go well, he wants this to work. 

He wants it to be done and over so you can look at him and tell him, I know exactly what’s missing, we’ll have the curse ended before midnight tonight. He wants you to tell him, it’s over - the curse is gone.

“I’ll tell you,” you assure him, your voice becoming almost melodic as you step into your role as a magic-wielder. “For now, breathe. We’re inhaling - ready?”

He does as he’s told - inhales until he hears the device’s click, then begins a slow exhale. Click. Inhale - click. Exhale - your own breath mingling with the gurgling body of water behind you is the only other sound in the room. Click. Inhale.

“Good,” you say on the exhale. “You keep that rhythm - that’s your most important job.”

He nods, concentrating on the rhythm, the clicks, his breath in and out. 

“Next job,” you murmur. “Keep your eyes on my eyes. Don’t look away.”

He lifts his gaze to meet yours, and you hold him there, steady, as you breathe together in time. Your eyes dance as they take his in, and he thinks he can feel you already - your magic starting to touch its fingers to his, tentative. He’s not sure he’s ready for when your magic opens for him, when he’ll be able to press against it and feel what you’re feeling, not just see it reflected in your eyes.

“Good,” you say finally, lips barely moving. “Don’t do anything but what you’re doing right now. I’m going to start the incantations.”

You do, quietly, your voice calm and even. The chanting is musical, almost like you’re singing to him. Taehyung can feel everything as it happens - so strongly that it almost startles him out of his breathing, almost makes him lose focus and tear his gaze away from your eyes. 

As if you can sense him faltering, you press the backs of your hands more firmly into his palms, silently reminding him of his only tasks. 

He focuses, but he can still feel it - your magic rising up, strengthening, beginning to expand. He can feel it when it touches his, cautiously, like letting a dog sniff your hand before you stroke its head. It’s somewhere between a tingle and a warmth, your magic, and it slips seamlessly into his, filling up every empty space. Like water, like air, like every element he needs to keep existing. 

It feels good - just as it had last time your magics had mingled, and this on its own is distracting. 

Focus. Inhale. Click. Exhale. Click. 

Your magic begins to explore - he can feel that, too. He can feel it as it lifts and examines, feel it as it prods and dives within him. He could lose himself in this - in the way the controlled breathing lulls him into calm, into the warm and pleasant sensation of having his magic matched and complemented, into the cool press of your hands into his. 

He could - but he doesn’t want to. You’d said that he could - “without meaning to” - explore your side. You were forgetting: he may not have done this ritual before, but he is Taehyung of Rune. No one has better magical control than his family. It’s in his blood, just like yours, and he can steer his magic just as well.

He presses in, watching your face for any indication that you recognize the feeling. There’s none; your eyes are unfocused, muscles slack except for your mouth, which repeats the incantation hollowly, over and over. Emboldened, he presses further. 

The memories come without context in quick-moving bursts; they’re hard to follow. Some are still images, some play like a video clip on fast-forward, others are just dark but sound rings through Taehyung’s head, foreign and jolting. Each comes with a feeling - or more than one - that Taehyung feels so deeply they must be his own.

The faces of humans who might be your family, and the feelings of both love and disappointment. 

Books, as promised, and feelings of comfort, of pride.

Cities, waterways, more faces, more books, an old man, books again, another city, another pile of books -

Loneliness. Loneliness stitched into all of them. 

Images begin to ping in Taehyung’s mind as familiar -

Namjoon’s sharp eyes, and the feeling of gratitude. 

The throne room of the palace, his parents, the image of Infracti eyes - fear, fear so engulfing that Taehyung’s fingers flex against yours instinctively, and he fights to keep exhaling until he hears the click somewhere in the back of his mind. 

His own face, his own form approaching from the end of a hallway. Taehyung is swept with surprise to feel excitement attached to his image, something tinged with affection, and danger, and thrill, and something that Taehyung can’t - or won’t - put a name to.

Guilty, he pulls back, letting his magic simply simmer along with yours instead of steering it into your consciousness.  

He listens to the clicks, focuses on his breathing. Feels a stupid little smile sneak across his face, feels relief that your eyes are too unfocused to clock it. Feels a swell of affection for you, the human - no, witch - sent here to fix him. Feels a twin swell of protectiveness as his mind replays your fear. 

He’ll do better, he promises himself. He’ll do better at staying with you, at keeping everyone else away. 

He becomes aware that he no longer hears you chanting and watches your eyes carefully for the moment you come out of the trance.

You come back to yourself with a gasp, and Taehyung is startled to find you gaping at him, wide-eyed, struggling to get a word out.

“What?” he asks, stomach sinking. “What?”

You look around frantically like you’re trying to place yourself. “Maiesti,” you finally whisper, horrified, wild eyes coming back to find his. “I think someone tried to kill you.”

—

Prince Taehyung leads you - at a fast clip - to a small room that reminds you of a meeting room that an office building might have.

As you walk, you fill in Namjoon, talking almost faster than you can think.

“One of the threads,” you say breathlessly, “was definitely, absolutely intended for ending life.”

Namjoon stops walking; Prince Taehyung does not, carrying forward, causing you and Namjoon to scurry to catch him.

“You’re sure?” Namjoon asks.

You look at him evenly. “Entirely.”

“So, I was right,” he says quietly. “Remember? When I said I thought death magic might be involved?”

“I remember.”

He shakes his head. “I think my grandfather knew, or at least suspected.”

You look at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“That’s why he called me. I’ve been wondering. He had to suspect there would be an element of death magic - that’s my area of study. He knew you’d need me for that.”

You huff. “If he thought this was a murder attempt, that would have been nice to know ahead of time.”

Prince Taehyung acts like he hears none of this, simply leads you into the meeting room and asks a guard to fetch his parents.

The three of you wait in tense silence. You don’t know about the men, but your mind is racing with possibilities - the who, the why.

The Queen looks alarmed when she enters, and while the King doesn’t look as frantic, there’s definitely an air of concern.

“Thank you for coming,” you say, greeting them respectfully. “We wanted to speak to you right away. The Prince and I completed a ritual this morning -”

“You what?” The Queen asks sharply, but she seems to be directing this at her son, who ignores her with the polish of someone who has ignored their mother for over five hundred years. He motions for you to continue. 

You continue again, a little shakily. “We completed a ritual whose purpose was to feel out more of the curse, identify some threads of intention that we missed before.”

“Was it successful?” the King asks.

“It was,” you say carefully, “but I felt you should know about a major thread that I uncovered.”

Everyone looks at you, waiting - those who already know what you found, and those who are about to hear for the first time.

You take a breath and lay your palms flat on the table. “I found a thread whose intention was death.”

“How sure are you?” the Queen demands, standing up straighter, her brows furrowed.

“There’s no doubt,” you say calmly. “That’s what it was. Whoever cast this curse… they included the intention to kill Prince Taehyung.”

The King shouts someone’s name and an Infracti hurries into the room, leaning down to listen to the King’s request. He leaves again, and the King addresses the table.

“My cabinet members are being summoned,” he says. “We’ll address this at once.”

“Why would they bother with all the other threads,” the Queen asks, her eyes on you, “if they just wanted to kill him?”

“I’m not sure,” you admit. “It doesn’t make sense to me, either - but the intention was there.”

“I can speak to that,” Namjoon says calmly. The Queen snaps her attention to him. “Death magic is my specialty. A curse like that - just to end a life - it can’t be done. Magic… as I’m sure you know, magic is life. Magic wants life. It will not end a life unless it is twisted just right. It’s likely that whoever cast this curse had to… add padding to sneak this piece in. Perhaps they hoped that if they failed - which clearly, they did - then at least the prince would suffer.”

“Which he is,” you add, unhelpfully. 

“The Scores must be behind this,” the Queen says.

“There’s nothing that particularly indicates them,” the King points out.

“Except seven thousand years of war,” she shoots back. “Who else? Who else would benefit from killing our son?”

The King rubs at his temples. “I want to know where their little venefici was the night the curse began,” he muses. At that word, you feel blood rush to your face. You expect Namjoon to pat your arm, but it’s the prince who meets your gaze across the table, his face open and apologetic.

“Father,” he murmurs reproachfully, the first time he’s spoken since you all gathered.

You wonder what he thinks about all this.

You wonder if he’s frightened.

The King follows his gaze and frowns. “No disrespect intended,” he says, though his tone indicates that he’s displeased at being corrected. “We appreciate your skill here. But I need to find who cast on my son, and bring them to justice.”

“And cure him,” you say. This time, Namjoon does knock into your arm, trying to shut you up.

The King narrows his eyes at you but doesn’t address your insolence.

“And what about you?” The Queen asks, directing her attention at you and Namjoon. You try not to squirm. “What does this discovery mean for the counter-curse?”

You exchange a look with Namjoon, and you give him a nod. Death magic is his forte, not yours. 

“I’m afraid it’s a bit of a good-news-bad-news situation,” he says, inclining his head respectfully. “The good news is we identified that element of the curse so we are able to begin finding how to counter it. The bad news… well… the thread of intention called for loss of life. In countering that… only life can pay for life.”

Prince Taehyung’s head snaps up. “Will someone have to die?” he asks, horrified, eye wide. 

“Not necessarily,” you hurry to soothe him. “It may take Namjoon and I some time, but I’m confident we can find a way that isn’t so… drastic.”

“You’re dismissed, then,” the Queen says, her voice still even and cold. “I don’t want you wasting a single minute until you have something worth trying.”

You nod in understanding and move to leave. Satuel and Dansoo are waiting in the corridor, ready to walk you and Namjoon back to your quarters. You glance over your shoulder as you go, trying to get one last look at Prince Taehyung.

To your surprise, you find him standing still, watching you walk away. From this distance, he looks more like you expected him to look the first time you’d met him - somehow both haunting and haunted.

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thank you for reading! chapter 9 coming next friday!