A modern love story by bastxnessA modern love story - by bastxness

Here I am standing, in front of my mirror in the bathroom thinking about my life once again, why couldn´t I find any real friends, the only two I really think about as friends are my stepsister and Klein who I met online. I am also thinking about my body, about me being too fat and needing to do some sports. I am unhappy about everything, except for the games I play. Now I need to get ready, I can already hear my mother screaming at me for being two minutes too late.

On my way to school i‘m talking with Suguha, my sister about some games we both want to play. Heading to our classes we have to split our ways. Now I am thinking bout what my classmates wroten the groupchat this morning, we are going to have a new girl in our class, anyways I am going to be alone for the rest of the day again, nothing is going to change soon.

Now in the classroom with the teacher being late, because he had to show the new girl all the rooms, we are sitting on our places being quiet and waiting for him to come in. He finally enters after ten more minutes, but the girl isn´t with him. He tells us about her being a bit shy and that we need to respect that. He goes out and asks her to come in. I can´t trust my eyes, she has beautiful long orange hair, a beautiful and cute face. Now I think she was lying about being shy, I think she is one of those….. The teacher interrupts my thoughts with the sentence: Please Asuna, take your seat over there, right next to Kazuto (me). This can´t be real, i´m trying to pinch myself in the arm, but it´s not a dream, this is really happening. I try to not let my anxiety or Asperger out very hard, but now that she sits next to me, looking me intoe eyes, saying in a soft an cute voice: „Hi, my name is Asuna, nice to meet you.“ I feel this nice warm feeling, coming from deep inside my body, I have never felt that kind of thing before.

I say, still a bit nervous: „He…  Hey, I am Ka… zuto.“ She starts smiling at me, and I try to smile back, I hadn´t really smiled for ages now, but she actually got me to start seeing a point in my life again. The teacher interrupts this moment by telling us to get out our books, because we are going to start the lessons now. The whole day I can´t stop looking at her. And now finally there is a break. Our teacher tells me to stay with her for the day and help her with everything she doesn´t understand or needselp with. I show her everything from the Mensa to how our schoolbook system works, everything our teacher hadn´t explained her yet. After two and a halfours of walking around the school, she asks me if I wanted to meet her the next day (…which was a Saturday) to show her our little city, I tell her that I for sure have time for her, still a bit anxieous.

The next morning I am only thinking about what to show her and what would be new to her since she came from Tokyo into a small town with ten thousand peopleiving there. I decided to show her the shrine, some nearby stores and the top of the mountain, where you can see the whole city and it´s beautiful laken the middle. At 10:00 AM she finally arrived at my house, wearing the most normal clothes for a small town you could imagine. I´m showing her around the town. When we come to the top of the mountain, it haslready gotten late, and Sun is about to hide behind another mountain. I tell her that this is my personal calm down spot, whenever I get too stressed or whatever, I would come here to calm down.

Sadly nothing really happened between us, and now we are about to graduate from school. I wanted to talk to her many times but we both were busy studying for our finals. I ended up passing with a good grade but I did not see her again, now my anxiety has gotten worse and I dont want to trust anyone, because I thought this would happen everytime I started to like someone. I haven´t gone to the top of the mountain since the day we graduaded. Right now I am heading right to my favorite spot, where I used to calm down, but I haven´t had the time for it lately, but today I am going there again. Finally being on top of the mountain I see Asuna, sitting on a bench she probably brought there herself. I start calling her name until she finally sees me and starts running towards me, I start running aswell. This feels like an eternity, I can´t wait for her to hug me, as the only non-family person I have ever loved. Now she is about five meters away and about 50 centimeters higher than me, she jumps, her hair sparkles in the air, she looks way more beautiful than ever before. I catch her mid-air with a mini jump, holding her in my arms for at leastive minutes before loosening my grip on her. We start talking about me having had no timeo get there for the last few years and how much we had missed each other. Then she suddenly asks: „Did you really love me that much back in school?“ I just looked at her letting a single tear roll down my face. She understood instantly and explained to me that she had been coming to this spot for the past two years waiting for me every single day, we both start crying just holding each other, falling onto the floor. I tell her that I love her and never want to loose her ever again. She just grabs my neck, pulls me towards her and starts kissing me, I start to kiss her aswell.

Three weeks later, we are talking about buying a house on top of the mountain, where we want to live together. Since that day she has been visiting me every day, we are even playing some games together. She is the perfect partner for me, because she mostly cured my depression. I love her very much, we both want to be together forever and never leave each other alone ever again.

You’re perfect the way you are - by Dana

Dissatisfied, I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself. My gaze wandered from my hair, which just hung limply down on my head, over my face, down to my chest and stomach, up to my legs, which, however, were covered by sweatpants. I was absolutely not pleased. My blond hair looked thin and my belly, I also found much too thick. Not even my arms looked particularly good, although I was doing regular sports.

Sighing, I turned away from the mirror and put on a hoodie so I wouldn't have to look at my body any longer. My hair, I tried to comb and style a bit, but I just couldn't get it right, so I finally gave up and walked out of the bathroom into the living room.

"Hey angel.", Jade who was sitting on the couch greeted me and smiled at me. I smiled back slightly, then laid down on the couch with her and snuggled up to her. Jade pressed a quick kiss to my hair and then turned her attention back to her cell phone.

I spent the time looking at Jade.

How did she manage to look even better every day. Still, I could hardly believe that we were really together and that I really had her to myself.

I sometimes had moments when I thought I didn't deserve her at all. I had never told Jade about my inferiority complex. I didn't want to also make her extra aware that she was way too perfect for me.

Maybe I should stop thinking about it. Instead, I leaned a little further toward Jade and closed my eyes.

~

"Lou?" I turned to face Jade. "I'm going to bed, I'm really tired and I don't want to sleep on the couch. Will you come?" she asked and I nodded in agreement.

Jade went ahead to the bedroom and I went to the bathroom again briefly, but then joined her. She had already stripped down to her underwear and I marveled at her body one more time. Another time I wondered how she could look so incredibly pretty. And why not me.

Before I could continue my thought, Jade smiled at me and put her arms around my hips. I looked up into her breathtaking face and I was just about to start talking when her lips came to mine. I sighed happily once and wrapped my arms around her neck as I returned the kiss.

After a few seconds we broke away from each other again and she smiled briefly at me again before walking over to the bed and lying down.

I just took off my pants, leaving the hoodie on as I felt kind of uncomfortable now. Then I lay down in bed with Jade. She slid closer to me and put her arm around my waist again.

Although she usually did that, I still felt uncomfortable. For a short time I watched Jade's perfect face. Then I carefully tried to push Jade's arm off me.

However, Jade unfortunately caught this and opened her eyes a crack wide again in surprise.

"Lou? Are you okay?" Without meaning to, tears were now welling up in my eyes. Great. Actually, I did not want to start crying now in any case, but of course it could not be stopped anymore. "Hey what's wrong little girl?"

That she used the word "little" didn't really help now.

Kind of struggling to keep my composure, I sat up, Jade as well.

"What's the matter? Did I do something wrong? Is something hurting you?" asked Jade, now increasingly concerned. I just shook my head and then threw myself around her neck.

"It's...it's just...," I stammered. "What is it?" asked Jade.

"I'm uncomfortable. I...I'm not happy with myself." Jade pushed me away from her a bit and looked at me in disbelief. "What are you not happy with, please?" I just shrugged and then made a hand gesture that included my whole body. "Everything.", I replied.

Jade just continued to look more than incredulous. "Why?" she then finally asked.  Confused, I looked at her. "I just don't like my body." "Why?" asked Jade again. She raised a hand to brush a strand of hair out of my face with it.

"Lou, you have no reason to feel inferior at all. You're perfect just the way you are." "But-", I wanted to contradict but Jade just put a finger on my mouth. Then she replaced her fingers with her lips.

After what felt like an eternity, which was still too short to my taste, she broke away from me again.

"You are perfect Lou, I know it. Now you just have to realize it yourself and accept yourself."

And I was quite sure that I would be able to do that with her by my side.

Love in an Apocalypse by GentyLove in an Apocalypse – by Felix Schneider

It was a cold and windy autumn day in 2019.

Nearly six years after the outbreak, in a world that some people would call an apocalypse.

Yes, it is totally a Zombie apocalypse.

And all that because of a mushroom. The cordyceps.

This mushroom wasn´t dangerous for humans, rather for ants. But it mutated. Its effect is that you act differently. You can get infected by a bite. From then on you have two days. After that you´re an infected zombie with one target: Infect more people!

We try to survive, but it’s hard. The infected people attack us many times.

There is not much food, so we have to hunt animals like deers and rabbits.

Because of that people join together in gangs. There are many friendly gangs like ours, but also many bad gangs like cannibals.

That day I was hunting in the forest for our whole group.

“Shhhh” I said to myself. There was a sound. “I hope it’s a rabbit”

But it wasn’t a rabbit.

It was a girl! She was very small and almost starved.

“Why does she look like that?” I asked myself again.

But then I understood. She was a Scar. The Scars are a sect. They are sacrificing people for their god. And because of the way she was looking at me I thought I would be the next.

But then she said something very quietly: “Help”

“Help?” Why should I help her? The Scars killed many of my friends for their rituals.

I got closer. She had many wounds and blood on her body.

“Is the blood from her?”

But there was no time to think about this.

I heard some loud noises.

Must be horses.

In that moment an arrow hit a tree right next to me.

Bows, the weapons of the Scars. That I had to find out very fast on my own risk. 

I then had to run. ”But what with the girl?”

“Yes.” I said to me. No other discussion with myself. I take her with me.

After ten horrorbilly minutes we arrived at our little base village.

It has about 150 residents. All survivors or kids of them.

They stared at us when they opened the gate.

“Why should he bring a Scar girl with him?” They maybe asked themselves.

I took her to the washroom. All the blood would not make a good impression on the others. After that I gave her some new clothes. With the new clothing and the washed hair she actually looked beautiful.

“Wait, what, why do I think so? Her gang killed so many of my friends. No.”

I got scared.

“Are you talking to youself?”

The girl talked to me.

“Don’t be scared of me, please, I´m Anna and no Scar anymore.”

“What did she say?” I asked myself ,“She is no Scar anymore”

I sorted my thoughts and asked a question:

“Did the Scars look for you, Anna?”

“Yes, I think so. I ran away from them and their weird sect. I never wanted to be like them. I only want to survive and that was the only way.”

“That’s plausible.” I said “Anna, I´m sorry that I was scared. But you looked…”

“...crazy?” she asks.

“A little bit.” I answered.

“No problem, I mean…”

And then she kissed me.

It was lovely. “Why does she do this?” I asked myself, lightly touched.

But my question was answered fast.

“As a little thanks.”

I cannot believe it.

I love a former Scar girl.

Five years later.

We life in a house in California, with many animals.

There are not many people left. Only us, with the golden sunset in our cornfield.

And our children, Max and Sarah.

We have many stories to tell them, when they are older.

I hope the Scars don’t hunt her anymore.

Based on: The Last of us [2013] , The Last of us Part || [2020]