Under the Stars

Preface

Hey there, thanks for checking out this fanfic. I've put a lot of time and thought into it and I hope that you enjoy reading it! Aside from short stories I've written for school, this is the first story I've ever written. It's the first long piece of fiction I've done, and it's the very first I've ever published, so please keep that in mind if you see the flaws in my writing.

Okay y'all read the description and the tags (I hope? Please do so if you haven't already), y'all know what this story is gonna contain but I'm gonna say it here again. This story contains sensitive subjects like mental illness, self-harm (that gets descriptive) and suicide. There will not be individual chapter warnings (there is 1 exception) as they would be kinda redundant in this case. There is a reason that this story is rated mature.

Relating to the paragraph above, please be respectful in the comments. I think that should apply to every single fanfic you ever read, but especially here since this story does cover some sensitive subjects. I do not mind if you share your thoughts, but please do so in a responsible and thoughtful way.

Also I wanna acknowledge the existence of a very good friend of mine, Mina, who's basically the reason I'm even writing this. I'd been wanting to write fanfiction for years but I was always too afraid to. Too afraid of judgement, worrying too much about whether or not it gets popular, worrying that I wasn't a skilled enough writer to actually write a story. But soon after meeting her, after I told her that I wanted to write fanfiction, she (quite aggressively) encouraged me to write a story and show it to her. And these aren't direct quotes but she did say something like "I will decide whether or not you have potential, if you do, awesome, if you don't, well that sucks." But then like a month later I sent her the introduction and was like "Do I have potential?" and her exact response was "ofc you do, this is pretty neat ma man" and I'm here like ??? because I was expecting her to be a lot more harsh. Anyways, thank you to Mina for encouraging me to write this story.

I've had the idea for a story like this since I was like 13? I also named the chapters using song lyrics, feel free to take guesses at what songs you think they are from.

Oh yeah btw "oniisan" means "older brother", I decided not to have Tsukki call Akiteru by name since it is actually rare for kids in Japan to call their older siblings by name. "Ani" is also the casual way of saying "older brother", it's used when talking about your brother to somebody who isn't a family member. "Okaasan" means mom. There are both casual and formal ways for other family members but these are the only relevant ones.

Another huge thank you to my good friend Dani, a fellow fanfic fanatic who read the entire goddamn story pre AND post edit to make sure that it was nice and shiny.

Disclaimer : This is only a representation of mental illness through the eyes of one singular person. Everyone's experience with depression, anxiety and/or other mental illnesses is different.