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๐
Pride
ft. Notes save the day
” ๋ ๊ธฐ์ตํด์ค “
–
Neither of them acknowledged yesterday’s events that felt like a hot fever dream. In fact, the most interaction the two teachers had ever since waking up was a brief accidental eye contact in the kitchen before they silently left their ways.
No one at school knew what was going on, either. After witnessing the two’s unscripted kiss, everyone was practically ready to throw heart shaped party poppers. But people soon caught onto the awkward silence between them. Which led to the current situation.
“…Just what could have happened between them??” Hu Tao sighed while balancing her chair on the back legs. As soon as she realized what was going on, an emergency meeting was hosted in ms. Yae’s classroom at terrifying speed with the lunch bell. What happened between them was a mystery, but what about that kiss? “Maybe we did cross our boundaries. Thinking back on it, it wasn’t the right thing to just catch them off guard by lying like that.” Most agreed to the student body’s vice president for the most part. “We didn’t even get to throw the birthday party for ms. L/n…”
“Oh my, what’s going on here?” A pink haired teacher hummed as she walked into the classroom, closing the door shut behind her. The previous bubbly and excited atmosphere that was there among the group before the play commenced was long gone, replaced by awkward silence and cogs turning in their heads. Immediately understanding the situation, Miko breathed out from her nose softly. “Ah. So about those two, should have expected.” She placed a stack of marked papers down on the side of her desk and hopped onto the chair, legs crossed.
“Well, as fun as the idea wasโconsidering they’d rather pretend nothing happened instead of communicating, I don’t think progress is coming too soon at this level. And frankly, it’s probably not good to intervene between those two this time.” With a soft hum, she tapped her nail against the desk. “It’ll be best to let them figure it out. You kiddos did a good job in playing cupid, though.”
Everyone murmured quietly, but a mutual agreement spread across the room for the meantime.
โMeanwhile.
Banging her head on her desk, Y/n flushed a heated pink once more. Embarrassingly enough, she could barely even focus on today’s lessons that felt so obviously halfhearted and dazed. She was an adult, for goodness sake. And her own problems were beginning to affect her job and these kids that had no business to do with it. Well, maybe not no business… Still. Knocking over paintbrushes, leaving the wax melter on high and almost cooking the contentsโalthough airheadedness wasn’t out of character for her, today was probably far worse.
Thankfully, everybody seemed sympathetic. Despite even nearly dumping water onto another student’s piece, the said student didn’t seem to mind and only offered her an understanding smile. People’s sympathy was a really weird thing.
Y/n often found herself caught in the fog of others’ sympathy, watching it drift towards her like some foreign mist she couldn’t grasp. There was a detachment in the way people offered their concern, something rehearsed, as if their words weren’t truly meant for her but some version of her that they imagined. She wondered where this strange impulse came from, this need to express sorrow for another’s misfortune. Did they feel it, really? Or was it just a reflex, an obligation to offer kindness in the face of pain? The source of their pity seemed unclear, as if born from a shallow pool of rehearsed emotion, and she questioned if their feelings held weight, or if they vanished as easily as they were spoken.
Was it the fact they seemed to need to feel the blame for yesterday night’s incidents? Was it the sorriness they felt towards the nice teacher? It was impossible to tell.
Pity was something the young teacher hated to be under the shadow of. The attention often felt suffocating, confusing. The feeling of others trying to peer deeper into her in a personal levelโshe hated that. No one really understands another person, once they go past a certain extent. The concept of thought process and feelings made complete empathy impossible. So was anything else fake?
Probably not. But she didn’t want it anyways.
Surprisingly, Y/n didn’t find herself hating nor blaming the teacher across her classroom at the moment. If anything, the blame’s spotlight were all casted straight in her face in her eyes. For not being mature enough to deal with this situation like an adult, for not having the courage to make the first step to solving this crisis out. And yet, like a child throwing a tantrum, all she wanted to do at the moment was to fall backwards and cry in her bed about all of this.
Being an adult is a very difficult thing. And when children that never got to grow up fully can’t keep up with their body, they just become overgrown children trapped in a grownup’s body, forced to deal with grownup emotions somehow.
But despite it all, she felt her heart dropping in a flutter when her memories dragged her thoughts back to what happened last night.
“โThank you, for being born.”
Birth. The creation of a living existence, the first breath of a manifesting formโwhere everything begins to unravel. Birth changed history and will continue to for as long as life exists. Birth changed, changes, and will change people for as long as humanity continues to roll on its seemingly never ending story. People aren’t really born with a sense of self. It’s the other people around them that slowly builds that very person. Which is why the term blood is thicker than water remains closer to a statement rather than a metaphor if anything. Well, both figuratively and literally.
What was he exactly thanking her for something she had no choice or say in? She never asked to be formed into this worldโnever said yes to the question of seeing, hearing, feeling everything she did.
Birth itself is something people have no choice in. But their actions after that, for the most part, yes. Free will is a fascinating thing. Children often experiment with this matter, somewhat explaining many of them seemingly reasonless actions or words. You could choose to smash that egg you were about to cook on the ceiling on a Sunday morning, and the old lady next door could always unplug her life support. The domino effect that followsโthe consequence was the only thing that holds people back.
Each and every action that held every bit of one’s intentions and heart, that was something that could be thanked.
Kunikuzushi once changed his names in hopes of leaving behind who he was before and starting anew. Who names their child country destroyer anyways??
He thought changing his name would change him. There was something final in the sound of his old name, a weight that pressed against his skin, that filled the spaces between his thoughts like a dense fog. He had said it too many times, let others say it for too many years, and in each repetition, it had become something else. The syllables felt like they had grown claws, digging into his chest and pinning him to an identity that had long since stopped fitting.
When he first chose the new name, it felt like shedding a skin. He rehearsed it in front of a mirror, tasted the unfamiliarity of it, felt a brief exhilaration in the idea that it could be his. A new name. A clean start. He could become someone else, someone lighter, unburdened by the past that clung to his heels. With this new name, he would be undefined, able to build himself anew from the dust of old memories and fresh hopes.
But names are only the wrapping, the surface. The package changes, but the product remains. He could feel it โ the way he still woke up with the same old thoughts, the same old patterns across his mind. The world responded to his new name, but inside, he felt no difference. There was still the heaviness, the same strange ache in the space between what he was and what he wanted to be. He was a man reshaped by his own hands, but when he pressed his palms to his chest, he still felt the same heartbeat, steady and inescapable, beneath the layers of false beginnings.
It was like trying to repaint a house that had already begun to rot beneath the boards. The new color was bright, inviting, but beneath it, the structure sagged with the weight of all that had come before. He hadn’t realized that until now. The name was just a brushstroke, a coat of polish that glossed over the cracks in the foundation. It could be stripped away as easily as it had been applied, leaving him exposed again to himself.
Perhaps he’d thought the world would see him differently, that the name was like a key to a door he hadn’t yet found. But everywhere he went, people accepted the name without question, and in that acceptance, he saw through the illusion. They didn’t know him. They didn’t know the old name, the old him. They took the label and moved on, but beneath the mask of syllables, he was the same. His thoughts, his fears, his desiresโthey were written into him deeper than any name could change.
He began to wonder if names were nothing more than sounds. A collection of letters, spoken with meaning only because they were given meaning. But underneath, he was still there, still him. And that was something a name couldn’t erase, no matter how far he ran from the old one or how tightly he clung to the new.
In the end, the name was nothing but a sound in the air. A shell, a label. The essence of him, the core of his being, remained untouched by it allโshifting, morphing, growing, but never transforming in the way he thought a name could. He had been looking for a door out, a way to slip free of himself. But names weren’t doors. They were only windows, and the view from the inside never changed. And the whole time, he trapped himself in that fortress of glass.
And then she came in, slowly shattering the walls without the owner even noticing.
Fine. His pride lost the eternal tug of war in his mind this time(…again). He loved her. So much that it fucking hurt. Too much that he felt nauseous.
He wasn’t the kind of man people liked. It wasn’t just that his words had a bite to themโsharp and unfilteredโit was the way he wielded them like a weapon, cutting through the air, cutting through people, until all that was left was the sting of his presence. He wore his indifference like armor, pushing everyone away before they had a chance to get close, to see the mess underneath. It was easier to be the villain, the one with the cruel smirk and the quick retort, than to let anyone linger long enough to find out he was hollow.
So when he found himself thinking about her, really thinking about her, it felt like betrayal. Not to her, but to himself, to the carefully constructed wall he’d built brick by brick. He hated it. Hated that she had somehow slipped through the cracks, quietly and without permission, like light breaking into a locked room. And she was light, that much was undeniable. The way she moved, the way she spokeโeverything about her was effortless, untainted by the shadows he lived in. She made the world seem softer, cleaner, as if she existed outside the grime that clung to people like him.
He couldn’t even bring himself to say it aloud. It felt wrong, like the words would tear something apart inside him, something he couldn’t afford to lose. Because if he admitted itโif he said, out loud, that he liked her, that he loved herโwhat would be left of him? He had spent so long being this version of himself, the one who didn’t care, who didn’t need anyone. To say he wanted her was to admit that he wasn’t complete on his own, that there was something missing, something she filled.
It hurt. More than anything he’d felt in years. The sheer unfairness of it. She was… perfect, and he wasn’t. She was kind, while he spit venom at anyone who came close. She was everything he’d spent his life pretending didn’t existโgoodness, warmth, beauty. And he? He was the opposite of all that. A man shaped by resentment and regret. He could see the stark contrast between them every time she smiled, every time she spoke with that soft, effortless grace that made him feel like dirt under her shoes. And he hated it. He hated that he wasn’t worthy of it, of her. But worse, he hated that he wanted it all the same.
But none of that changed the truth. The ugly, aching truth he had buried so deep inside that even he could barely face it. He liked her. Loved her, even. More than he had any right to. And it was excruciating to feel something so pure and know it would never be his. It was like holding his breath, waiting for a drop of rain in a desert that would never come. And yet, he stayed there, waiting, wanting, knowing that she was out of reach but unable to stop himself from reaching all the same.
Because in the end, that’s what hurt the mostโnot the fact that he wasn’t good enough for her, but that he knew it. Knew it, and still couldn’t help wanting her. Still couldn’t stop his heart from clenching every time she came into view. Still couldn’t stop himself from imagining, just for a moment, what it would be like if she looked back at him with even a fraction of the feeling he kept locked away.
He’d never say it. Not to her. Not to anyone. But it sat there in the back of his mind, gnawing away at him. A confession without a voice, a feeling that burned, silent and unresolved.
And so, for another they, they ruined each other once more.
Stepping back into his classroom, Scaramouche felt his heart dropping. On his desk, a pastel green sticky note.
We need to talk at home.
Tonight was probably going to be the longest night in history for two people on this planet.
โโ
A/n guess whis back for ghe first time in like months
Also before anyone asks im okay nowwww i was originally gonna come back a lot faster than this but irl stuff happened so
Sorry for the cliffhanger (not rlly bc next updates gonna come real soon)
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