#informant

Pride 2026 – “June of fluffy Feverwhump”

These wounds won’t seem to heal, this pain is just too real

“Perhaps one can never forget their first love…”

Kosuke’s words are so low they become hardly audible despite the intimate closeness, barely caressing his face in the complete darkness, and Kei’s hand twitches as he represses the desire to close the distance and stroke his shoulder. Would this bring any comfort? He’s rarely attempted this… Attempted to understand without any further motive he could then set in motion to solve the problem…

“During all these years abroad, she was everything to me… The cold, the isolation, all these efforts, they were all for her, because she was waiting for me at home…”

Usually, he enjoys these times with the man he loves, in bed after a long day of work and a pleasant evening together, so close they almost touch, whispering words that have never been shared before in the thrilling comfort of being understood by a like-minded, desperately hopeful, blindly devoted companion, forgetting for an evening that he can never be accepted for who he truly is once all the masks have fallen. Tonight, however, Kosuke’s most sincere confession doesn’t call for a response and Kei cannot feel anything but the hunger of a bottomless, ice-cold pit.

“I know these thoughts are all for nothing, now, but they are so…”

“Familiar.”

He understands this pain: the woman he loved died a few years before… He still remembers too clearly his heart breaking with an intensity equal to the love it had felt, the numbness of his limbs after realisation had struck, the struggle to function and move when it all had lost meaning, when Satoshi’s eyes on him brought him anything but comfort. And the impossibility to express any of it, thus keeping it tearing, bleeding inside, where it bit and scratched until there was nothing left, until he had thought he could never feel such love again.

However… Niwa Emiko is still alive…

“What am I supposed to do with all of this…” Kosuke whispers, pain permeating what is a rhetorical question.

Now Kei understands why his curse never activated, how he could cultivate this fragile bond, nurture it and let it grow until it looked like trust, then affection, then seemingly mutual tenderness: despite his perseverance at trying to convince him otherwise, Kosuke’s heart still binds him to his first love, and his first love only…

“I understand,” Kei says; the only tolerable answer. He will think about these words, decide on what the wisest sequence of actions will be, later. Will he tie Kosuke by his side, or free him and regain his own freedom…? Is there any other way…?

Later… Later…

Happy Birthday

August 27

- @sidefallnews

*waves aggressively* Hello!!!!!