#eludum

the moment chiaki found out there was supposed to be a meteor shower that night, it was over for hajime.

that lunch, when they met briefly between classes, she excitedly showed him the article she’d found online. “i’ve never seen a meteor shower in real life before!” she told him. “they’re always really pretty in animal crossing, so… do you wanna watch it with me?”

that night, chiaki packed a blanket into her bag and hiked up to the top of a nearby hill, where the view of the sky would be clear. the city lights twinkling all around them definitely distracted her, but the article had said the shower would be visible even amidst all the light pollution of tokyo.

now, with a smile on her face, she settles back on the blanket, folding her hands over her lap. she waits.

and waits.

and waits.

when it feels like it has already been forever, she turns over on her side. “isn’t it supposed to start soon?” she complains to hajime. or, she tries to, before biting her tongue. he’s looking at her awfully funny, but more important than the weird expression on his face…

“you’re not even looking at the sky!” she accuses him, sitting up to give him a playful little shove.

damn... he’s been caught. he doesn’t like to stare at people, but he tends to get lost in his thoughts, and then he forgets to move his head. and... when it comes to nanami, there are a lot of thoughts to get lost in. like how the moonlight catches on her skin, or how cute she looks when she smiles, or the look in her eyes that seems to be both intensely focused and faraway at the same time. she’s... breathtaking, if he’s being honest. but hinata can’t exactly be honest about something so embarrassing.

she shoves him, and he laughs awkwardly. he can’t exactly admit to getting distracted by how pretty she is — it’s sort of a weird thing to drop on someone, and he’s pretty sure nanami wouldn’t believe him, anyway — so he’s forced to come up with an excuse.

she'd dipped from the future foundation new years party early, her head swimming with thoughts and just a little too much alcohol. when she returned home, she probably *should* have expected him in her apartment; kamukura went where he pleased, and hadn't she told him this day was special? without really thinking about what she was doing, chiaki stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his lips, as is (apparently) new years tradition. "happy birthday."

despite everything, kamukura tends to avoid functions put on by the future foundation. sure, he isn’t their number one enemy or whatever anymore, but the air is always full to brimming with suspicion and malice the moment he walks in. not only that, it really is painfully boring. 

nanami seems to enjoy them well enough, however. it’s good. she deserves the relaxation. 

still, he finds himself putzing around her apartment the night of the new year party, waiting for her to return home. she’d asked him to be there, but she knows better than to expect him at a future foundation function. he can apologize for breaking in later.

when she walks in, however, he doesn’t receive the usual cheery greeting. instead, she wastes no time walking right up to him, pressing up onto her toes, and laying a soft kiss to his lips. 

he doesn’t even have time to react properly before she’s back on the ground smiling up at him. 

Now, video games were not exactly Sonia’s forte. She had very little practice with them, her education as a future monarch having taken up much of her childhood prior to arriving in Japan. However, she was willing to take the plunge; games were a crucial part of the Japanese high school experience, and thus at least attempting to partake in such activities was a necessity.

She hadn’t expected to be quite so awful at them, though.

“...Nanami-san?” Sonia began, the LOSE screen of Mario Kart flashing before her, “Would it be alright if we played something else? I find,” she looked ruefully at her character, a princess all in pink who looked rather downtrodden about having come in dead last, “that this game may not be, ah, my style.”

It was difficult not to feel disheartened. Nanami’s entire talent revolved around her gift for gaming, so of course she would be rather better at it than she was - and yet, Sonia found that being beaten by the CPU, just as much as she was by her classmate, rather embarrassing.

“Do you perhaps have anything with simpler controls?” the princess offered earnestly, setting down the controller in her lap with a certain degree of elegance.  “Or something a little less... competitive? I am sure there are a variety of games we can play together, but I do not think that constantly winning against me must be fun for you.”

You’re not sure how he managed to fit, solely considering the length of his legs, but he proves to be more flexible than you imagine. And he takes great care not to make too much noise or kick the sensitive parts, for which you are grateful.

After a few minutes of decisive wiggling, Leorio finally settles down, resting his chin in his hands, and sighs softly.

as she groggily came to, she realized with increasing clarity that just about every part of her body seemed to ache and throb with an intensity she hadn’t felt in quite a while.

chiaki’s eyes fluttered open. there was a pink-haired girl standing above her who seemed familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it at first. instead she was busy trying to determine whether the pain in her leg was an old injury, or a new one. as she pressed down on the spot where it hurt the worst, she remembered the flash of sharp claws and mechanical laughter.

that’s right… towa city is under attack.

she jolted up. “what– you–” her head felt fuzzy, and she struggled to speak. “y-you’re… one of the kids from that broadcast…?”

          oh   no !      now   what’s   she   supposed   to   do ?      monaca   told   her   to   watch   their   latest   target   in   case   she   woke   up ,      but   that   left   the   matter   of   what   she   was   supposed   to   do   now .      after   all ,      normally   they   introduced   themselves   as   a   group      —      not   one   at   a   time !      but   she   needed   to   do   SOMETHING .      after   all ,      she’s   the   only   one   here   right   now ,      &&   that   means   she   needed   to   be   the   temporary   face   of   the   warriors   of   hope !

@eludum​​  //   ask. “  why has no one fallen in love with me yet?  i’m so bored.  ” @ mahiru, prob talking abt a dating sim or smth but ... not like she would know that        

mahiru’s first thought is to say umm... i’m right here. but she doesn’t think chiaki would say something as rude as that to her face. it’s not like she’s forgotten that mahiru even exists... right? but what other explanation is there?

her eyes fall to the console in her girlfriend’s hands, and she peeks over to see a hunky guy and a text box. nanami’s quick eyes dart over the text, advancing the text before mahiru can even think to read it. suddenly, she’s forgotten why she was even looking, already seeking to make sense of the game.

@eludum  /  ask. 🌻                        

charles and vincent are not canon. they are not even a good ship. i don’t know what the majority of this fandom is Thinking! i do not have the brain cells to go in-depth on this but effectively... the whole point of their relationship is that charles knows nothing about vincent. they’re online friends, and they only ever talk about philosophy, not about each other’s lives. they don’t know anything about each other.

and people tend to the take the “god of (t)his world” thing and just fucking run, which is fine and all, but i think taking it and running so far as to say that charles is in love with vincent is a little unrealistic. there’s nothing to be in love with. in heaven’s gate, charles is more often than not really disturbed by vincent and doesn’t know what to make of him. he likes their conversations about philosophy, but when vincent gets too intense, he doesn’t know what to do with it.

effectively, charles likes the idea of vincent. he likes that he can imagine him as just

someone who will “put up with him”. but vincent isn’t just that, and i have a feeling that if the two of them ever tried to get closer than cursory conversation (and by that i mean philosophy and politics), they’d bite each other’s heads off.