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fandomweekly2025-03-24 06:30 pm
quicksilverfox3) wrote in fandomweekly2025-03-24 06:30 pm
Entry tags:
[#253] don't look for me (SVSSS)
Theme Prompt: Light in the Dark
Title: don't look for me
Fandom: The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System
Rating/Warnings: T, previous canon temporary character death
Bonus: No
Word Count: 900
Summary: Shen Yuan wakes trapped in a box.
“—un? Shizun?”
Being buried alive is never how Shen Yuan thought he would die. He has always had some awareness of his own mortality, a sickly child morphing into a sickly adult, his wings constructed from the flimsy paper of hospital gowns and branded with his patient information until he could recite it in his sleep. Weak heart, overactive immune system, connective tissue disorder, on and on, take this to sleep, this to wake up, but not too much because it will tax your lungs, take these as needed and you’ll know when that is because you will be dying but wait thirty minutes all the same.
His first death had been barely memorable, a bloom of ever-present pain through his chest, no heavenly choir except the chime of the notifications from his computer, no bright light except for the glare from his screen, the cursor flashing as his heart didn’t. His projected second death, unless he suffocates beneath what could be as little as an inch of dirt given his current situation, is horrific, yes, but it is at least interesting. Airplane might have been a sell-out hack and he couldn’t describe breasts that weren’t either pendulous or perky if he had a knife to his throat, but some bright moments of creativity bleed through the mountainous slag heap of his writing.
“Shizun, this disciple begs you to answer him!”
And now, Shen Yuan is hallucinating Luo Binghe calling out to him. There’s a strange symmetry to it all, that his favourite character, his beloved disciple, will be present at his demise.
“Shizun!”
Don’t cry over this Shizun, Shen Yuan wants to say. The very edges of his being ached, chipped away at until he fit into this new body that had never belonged to him until it did, and the hollow space behind his eyes pulses with a very real agony. He doesn’t deserve it, he would like to say.
“Begging Shizun’s pardon.”
Hang on. Shen Yuan squirms against his bonds, the thin cable cutting into his wrists, the backs of his fingers tucked beneath his chin. There’s only a few inches of space between his mouth and the thin wood of the coffin he had been bundled into before the bandits fled. Without-A-Cure is a plot device for a wife plot and it is a bastard to suffer through. “Luo Binghe,” Shen Yuan whispers, his breath shallow and sparing. “Can you hear this Shizun?”
“This disciple can hear you, Shizun. He has an artifact from An Ding Peak, all of Shizun’s disciples do.”
Wife-plot 321, or was it 312? It had been a flash update, one of a few chapters all uploaded at the same time and all as forgettable as the one before as Airplane slowly dissolved into nothing more than cheap tropes to string about any actual craft he performed. The wife had been a demoness, dark-skinned and heavily quilled over her head and spine, one of the few races that weren’t entirely typical of traditional demons. She had an ability to duplicate herself into semi-functional copies of herself and used the Rock of Distance Speech to communicate. It worked from her own spiritual energy and familiarity, so it wouldn’t be impacted because of his weakened state, the fault of Without-A-Cure.
Another sliver of his being pressed onto some cosmic scales, a debt he can’t quite calculate the weight of yet.
“Shizun? Can you describe your surroundings to this disciple? We have several members of the other Sect’s searching as well.”
Shame pools over Shen Yuan’s tongue, a choking mass burrowing down his throat until he could choke on his reflexive denial, his insistence of being fine. “That is too much effort for this Master,” he says instead, his breath damp against the cracked lines of his palm, every inhale scented with cracked pine and disturbed earth.
He’s going to die down here all the same.
“Shizun?” Luo Binghe’s expression is easy enough to picture, his dark eyes overflowing with tears and bright flush in his cheeks. He wears forlorn misery well, almost too well for the fated stallion protagonist, clinging to Shen Qingqiu’s robes until he collapses like an overvalued cheesecake and pats his head. “Please tell this disciple where you are.”
It is a fool’s errand, the same type of quest that would send the new disciples scrambling around the Peaks looking for striped paint and hunting for an elusive snipe. He would be yet another myth, a ghost story to terrify children while the older search for his bones beneath the earth.
“You’re underground, Shizun? Can you hear anything?”
His head hurts. There’s something important that he needs to do, a reminder scrawled in smudged pencil in his hazy thoughts and he cannot make out the shape of it. Shen Yuan huffs out a quiet sigh and can’t draw in enough air to fill the space it leaves. The universe trembles around him, pounding behind his eyes, in his chest.
He is dying. A quiet death, choking and pinned in place, already buried.
It is a shame. He had grown to like this life, the people he met in solid flesh and blood, the scant changes he had made that wouldn’t be enough for what was on the horizon.
“Shizun? Shizun!”
Light overhead, a crack in the darkness, and Shen Yuan knows nothing more except for blue light bleeding through the gold.
Title: don't look for me
Fandom: The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System
Rating/Warnings: T, previous canon temporary character death
Bonus: No
Word Count: 900
Summary: Shen Yuan wakes trapped in a box.
“—un? Shizun?”
Being buried alive is never how Shen Yuan thought he would die. He has always had some awareness of his own mortality, a sickly child morphing into a sickly adult, his wings constructed from the flimsy paper of hospital gowns and branded with his patient information until he could recite it in his sleep. Weak heart, overactive immune system, connective tissue disorder, on and on, take this to sleep, this to wake up, but not too much because it will tax your lungs, take these as needed and you’ll know when that is because you will be dying but wait thirty minutes all the same.
His first death had been barely memorable, a bloom of ever-present pain through his chest, no heavenly choir except the chime of the notifications from his computer, no bright light except for the glare from his screen, the cursor flashing as his heart didn’t. His projected second death, unless he suffocates beneath what could be as little as an inch of dirt given his current situation, is horrific, yes, but it is at least interesting. Airplane might have been a sell-out hack and he couldn’t describe breasts that weren’t either pendulous or perky if he had a knife to his throat, but some bright moments of creativity bleed through the mountainous slag heap of his writing.
“Shizun, this disciple begs you to answer him!”
And now, Shen Yuan is hallucinating Luo Binghe calling out to him. There’s a strange symmetry to it all, that his favourite character, his beloved disciple, will be present at his demise.
“Shizun!”
Don’t cry over this Shizun, Shen Yuan wants to say. The very edges of his being ached, chipped away at until he fit into this new body that had never belonged to him until it did, and the hollow space behind his eyes pulses with a very real agony. He doesn’t deserve it, he would like to say.
“Begging Shizun’s pardon.”
Hang on. Shen Yuan squirms against his bonds, the thin cable cutting into his wrists, the backs of his fingers tucked beneath his chin. There’s only a few inches of space between his mouth and the thin wood of the coffin he had been bundled into before the bandits fled. Without-A-Cure is a plot device for a wife plot and it is a bastard to suffer through. “Luo Binghe,” Shen Yuan whispers, his breath shallow and sparing. “Can you hear this Shizun?”
“This disciple can hear you, Shizun. He has an artifact from An Ding Peak, all of Shizun’s disciples do.”
Wife-plot 321, or was it 312? It had been a flash update, one of a few chapters all uploaded at the same time and all as forgettable as the one before as Airplane slowly dissolved into nothing more than cheap tropes to string about any actual craft he performed. The wife had been a demoness, dark-skinned and heavily quilled over her head and spine, one of the few races that weren’t entirely typical of traditional demons. She had an ability to duplicate herself into semi-functional copies of herself and used the Rock of Distance Speech to communicate. It worked from her own spiritual energy and familiarity, so it wouldn’t be impacted because of his weakened state, the fault of Without-A-Cure.
Another sliver of his being pressed onto some cosmic scales, a debt he can’t quite calculate the weight of yet.
“Shizun? Can you describe your surroundings to this disciple? We have several members of the other Sect’s searching as well.”
Shame pools over Shen Yuan’s tongue, a choking mass burrowing down his throat until he could choke on his reflexive denial, his insistence of being fine. “That is too much effort for this Master,” he says instead, his breath damp against the cracked lines of his palm, every inhale scented with cracked pine and disturbed earth.
He’s going to die down here all the same.
“Shizun?” Luo Binghe’s expression is easy enough to picture, his dark eyes overflowing with tears and bright flush in his cheeks. He wears forlorn misery well, almost too well for the fated stallion protagonist, clinging to Shen Qingqiu’s robes until he collapses like an overvalued cheesecake and pats his head. “Please tell this disciple where you are.”
It is a fool’s errand, the same type of quest that would send the new disciples scrambling around the Peaks looking for striped paint and hunting for an elusive snipe. He would be yet another myth, a ghost story to terrify children while the older search for his bones beneath the earth.
“You’re underground, Shizun? Can you hear anything?”
His head hurts. There’s something important that he needs to do, a reminder scrawled in smudged pencil in his hazy thoughts and he cannot make out the shape of it. Shen Yuan huffs out a quiet sigh and can’t draw in enough air to fill the space it leaves. The universe trembles around him, pounding behind his eyes, in his chest.
He is dying. A quiet death, choking and pinned in place, already buried.
It is a shame. He had grown to like this life, the people he met in solid flesh and blood, the scant changes he had made that wouldn’t be enough for what was on the horizon.
“Shizun? Shizun!”
Light overhead, a crack in the darkness, and Shen Yuan knows nothing more except for blue light bleeding through the gold.
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