Haystack | Countryhumans ASEAN

worry [🇸🇬🇧🇳🇲🇾] (⚠️)

content warnings // possible political events, panic attacks

this is the only chapter with content warnings but it's absolutely minor so don't worry too much. :)

also this is kind of ventish, so this is also the only chapter which goes a little too far from the dark side (in aseans perspective anyway), nontheless the entire rest of the book is a stress reliever. im okay now though dw, this was written a while ago lol

long chapter go brr

dec 2022 update: im not gonna update the goddamn translations in this chapter if there was any. this is too long, this is like 3k words long and I'm NOT bothering this 💀 sorry for mistranslation errors

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Singapore and Brunei are both countries who are devoted right from the very beginning. Who knew that 2 small and rich countries would earn their place high up in the ASEAN organization. They're dedicated to the organization, and it seemed like it haven't changed ever since.

Tick tock, it was now the spring of 2018. The UN affiliation went great, EU was very supportive as he should've. Speaking of which, they both started hanging out often once more after ASEAN was introduced. It was a wild experience for him, he felt more needed and made him more busier than ever. He liked that experience.

Spring in Southeast Asia sadly doesn't exist, but it doesn't stop them for having durian seasons, heck even extremely hot temperatures throughout April. Despite that small difference from the rest of the entire sub-continent, it was still a great place to see nature nonetheless. Being tropical in the entire region makes everyone not complain about it being too hot or cold, as they all have the same climate.

Spring is also the time of work, loads of work. From February to June, there is usually a wave of problems ever so often that needed fixing, so there's little to no time to hang around. It's the highest amount of paperwork they had to do for the entire year. From fixing tourism to making sure the economy doesn't crash, it's sure preventing everyone to be relaxed throughout.

Two of which are, back to the original topic, Singapore and Brunei.

It's now 3am. All three of them-ASEAN, Singapore and Brunei-had to pull out an all nighter for that day. Laos and Myanmar did help at one point, but they had to get home at around 1am.

What were they working on?

The Spratly islands territorial dispute.

What a mess, Singapore isn't even involved in that drama. Brunei is, but she only claimed a small portion of it. ASEAN himself doesn't even know how to take that seriously anymore, he just constantly gets ideas he knows it wouldn't spark the situation off. Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and the Philippines made a huge chunk of mess behind the organization, which was one of the reasons why their reputation has been slowly decreasing. That's excluding China, who isn't even part of the organization but the regional forums, who claimed to take the whole thing.

ASEAN sighed out of frustration as he drops the black (digital) pen on the desk, looking towards the tablet and placed his palms on his forehead out of stress. He was trying to write an entire report about this, but he literally couldn't think of more things to be added. 3am isn't the best time to write things straight for him anyway, but he really needed this who-knows-how-long-this-essay-will-be as soon as possible. United Nations needed it for more reviewing.

'If only that group of islands won't exist, then we're done,' he thought, as he read through the document he had written digitally. It's expected to be five pages long, he's still at the third one under the paragraph about Malaysia.