Really good!

Very lovely.

To choose someone you have grown close to through effort and time over someone who seems fated and compatible is not easy. I find this subversion of the fated love trope intriguing. There may be someone out there that would be perfect for us, it is statistically highly likely with how many humans populate this world. But to strive for just that perfect partner is not always going to turn out well. A love not quite so perfect, but made of compromises and effort is far more beautiful to me.

Yeah, I have always believed in the 'opposites attract' thing. Being with someone that's just like you lacks dynamism and tension. Everything becomes predictable. I guess I just prefer the unexpected (and the occasional argument).

Love the message in this one. Fated lovers (including lovers who met as tiny children and don't remember) is a very common trope in manga and anime, and I've seen it shoehorned into a number of works that absolutely didn't need it. So I like this subversion.

Take that Clamp.

Realizing this after reading it again after a long time, but I think the teacher can also see the red string of fate.

I think the whole "love at first sight" / "red string of fate trope" is a dangerous holdover from the Romanticism era of literature that keeps getting propagated even by the modern media. I think it is so popular because it is comforting to think that anyone, even you, can meet a person with whom you'll have a wonderful and fulfilling relationship without putting any actual work into it. It's the same kind of wish fulfillment like winning a lottery -- it can carry you through a rough patch in life, but it is setting you up for disappointment if you actually expect it to happen to you. In my experience, "fated" relationships are much more a result of years of listening to and mutually adapting to each other than any kind of "natural" compatibility. Which is why I'd take a friends-to-lovers and rivals-to-lovers story over a fated-lovers one every time.

Realizing this after reading it again after a long time, but I think the teacher can also see the red string of fate.

Oh, she's made that pretty clear. Here, she basically says "I know you think it's your fate to be with me, but I will be happier in the relationship I've actually worked on. And don't you have someone much more important to you than me, if you ignore this string for a moment?"

last edited at May 11, 2022 1:26PM

oooh this was such a nice oneshot

Easily the best age gap story I have ever read. Everyone, including the grown up, handles the topic of love in a realistic and responsible way.

A nice plot for a coming of age story, I would watch that movie

Nice story, but the title should be “The Thing That Binds You And Me.”

English speakers have been conditioned to shy away from the use of “me” in compounds like this, but it’s easy to figure out the correct pronoun form simply by dropping the other term.

For example, “My mom and ____ went to the mall.” Unless they’re Tarzan of the Apes, a native speaker would never say, “Me went to the mall.” It’s “My mom and I.”

Same here. Unless the person is a Rastafarian, they wouldn’t say, “The thing that binds I.”

Still, a very nice story.

I was really hoping for the twist to happen, and I’m glad it did. They were foreshadowing it pretty heavily with how much the friend was focused on over the teacher, and it paid off. Really cute.