CANVAS

WRITING PORTFOLIO

Something tells me you’re a trickster, eyes gleaming with mischief, fingers drumming as if ready to take, take, take. You’re a tried and true street rat, feet pounding against concrete pavements until your soles turn black with dirt and dust.

Nothing gets you going like a good chase. The old cat and mouse game, cops on your tail as you speed past corners and alleyways with a pile of powdery packets in your arms, maybe even a hefty wallet or two.

Bright-eyed child with a penchant for trouble, roaming streets like you’re the king of New York City. Is there such a thing as compulsive white lying? Legs bouncing, heart racing; always something to do, always something to steal. Troubled kid in the hoodie, fingers wrung under your pockets. Could be skill, could be kleptomania. You’ll never get tired of this.

Your prowess is beyond your father’s DNA. The last time you felt your mother’s touch was when she swathed you in cloth and left you by the orphanage door. Tell me that doesn’t hurt you, that her family name was worth more than the babe she carried in her womb for nine months. That you were nothing more than a byproduct of some godly tryst, as is the case with most of your lot.

You are not at all heroic but are cursed with the fate of one, brought upon you by a foolish messenger god who got too smitten with another mortal—just another notch on the Olympian bedpost, another half-blood with a slim chance of being claimed. You will find that the gods don’t care much for their children, but expect them to fight their battles and win. After the war, all twelve cabins wove shrouds for their dead; but yours bore it most, having held both claimed and unclaimed children.

(Still, the gods do nothing.)

You are an odd one, little hero, with wild eyes of a born deviant and a talent for troublemaking. You’re a good runner in more ways than one: light on your feet, never been caught, rap sheet deceivingly clean. Quick to run from any semblance of stability because you’d be bored to death, or so you say; the soft, hollow spot that sits on your chest begs to differ.

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“but why can’t we?” he asks, leaning over the railing. the galaxy spills down into the void beneath the two of them, droplets of starlight clouding the space around them. they hum, hanging back a little, small fingers trailing over the trace a comet left behind.

“a touch isn’t much to us,” they hum, demonstrating it by reaching out and gently pressing the palm of their hand to his shoulderblade. the presence is warm and sends the faintest of shivers from the ends of his hair to his toes. “but to the people on earth a nudge could mean a tide flooding spaces the sea shouldn’t reach. it’s a matter of perspective.”

perspective. he rolls the taste of the word in his mouth, tries to make it fit.

then maybe it is a matter of perspective too, when they reache out and a touch of theirs sends his heart into a frenzy, prompting it to almost leap out of his chest.

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the girl doesn’t belong here.

that much is obvious, in clothing ill-suited to the harsh winds of shidiya, stumbling about with no discernible purpose. no, that is not right. all wanderers had a purpose. they would claw and shift and wade through seas of burning desert, with nothing to show for it but grains of sand lodged beneath their fingernails. stuck to their cheeks, atop their eyelids.

it always ends the same way.

“she will die without help.” a phrase softly spoken. both promise and observation.

her leader says nothing in response, only the stillness of his face, shaded beneath his head scarf.

nahal looks back to the barren horizon, the girl little more than a pinprick amidst dunes of burnt umber and black. in a few hours’ time, her body would find home in the sand. the flesh will swell underneath the sun, a plum, over ripened and set to burst. sticky. rotten. but elder eman has always said that the desert is greedy. the body will never rupture, for the sand gulps the water down, the blood, the life, as though it was the one that was parched. and there the body will lie, preserved.

a short sigh to her right calls her attention. there is something unknowable in her leader’s gaze. though, perhaps that is unfair. nahal has long abandoned her attempts to unravel the hidden script held within him. she trusts him with her life. has trusted him. will trust him.

he does not glance in her direction. “go.”

even if she has never found pity in his eyes.

reaching the girl is as simple as breaking off from their path and urging her camel forward. yet still, she keeps her distance. the dagger sheathed against her thigh, hidden underneath her dress, is a welcome comfort. she does not dismount when she addresses her.

“hello.” nahal tilts her head at the girl. “what are you doing here?” there is dried blood on your neck.

despite everything, she understands her leader. there will be time for water later. not much later, but later.

WRITING PORTFOLIO

HOUSEKI NO KUNI.

cinnabar counts three moons in the sky tonight. twilight still lingers when they emerge from the cave underneath hollow cape to make the nightly rounds.

it is a pointless self-soothing habit from a less bearable time. the island was never in need of a night watch; cinnabar was merely in need of an assignment. a desire for purpose in lieu of guiding instincts. the years roll by regardless, so they might as well go on with their duty.

they wander. wading through the wetlands, ankle-deep in water and mud. the roots from failed tree stumps linger just below surface level, and might cause someone less familiar to trip and fall. only the soft rustling of the vegetation suggests movement beyond their own; the bugs scurry on their way across the water, the branches, along each blade of grass.

a minor interruption to the meditation, but no matter.

nothing of substance to find in the wetlands tonight. there almost never is. many hundreds of years ago, they might expect to find traces of battles that took place during the daytime. it stirred no excitement then, and elicits no feelings of nostalgia when they think of it now. the waters here ran deeper once.

cinnabar continues east. the rolling hills are solitary even in the day. the last of the tall, white flowers sway in the breeze, reaching for the last days of blue skies before winter chokes the life out of the earth completely.

but no dead flowers from the years before remain. organic life rots, and breaks down eventually. wishing not to disturb this gentle cycle, cinnabar makes an early turn for the school, lest the mercury that is continuously congealing in the air around them cause any further damage to this moonlit scene. yet another failure of this form. they shall have to think of the flowers again in winter, in dreams.

it’s a short walk. cinnabar passes the school, making no observation beyond its sameness. the building looms quietly over the landscape. everyone is asleep inside, and safe for now.

the clouds roll slowly overhead. only two moons remain visible; great white eyes peering down over the land like phos, whose eyes were ground to a fine dust somewhere up there on one of those moons, once did. it’s been more than half a century since then.

they keep their distance from the school, and anyone within it who may suffer harm from being near them. it’s the long way around en route to the cord shore, but cinnabar has nothing if not time. it’s still far from daybreak.

the grassland thins out gradually, gives way to the sandy beach that stretches along the southernmost tip of the island. a familiar haunt on lonesome nights.

footprints remain for a little while in the damp sand, before they’re washed out to sea along scattered gem fragments, small rocks, and various invertebrates. nothing noteworthy.

they count aquamarine, citrine, and peridot among the smaller rocks. some larger pieces, but they lack any distinct features, having been softened and dulled by the rolling waves against grains of sand. when the sky is clear, and the land is illuminated simultaneously by all six moons, the pieces, however small, shine brilliantly against the dark sea. tonight the light barely registers. hopeless, they think.

a gem of familiar tint rocks back and forth in the receding tide, plants itself firmly in her mind as an infectious memory. impervious to diseases, as all inorganic matter is, cinnabar is familiar enough with the concept of invasion to recognise a breakdown of their defenses.

phosphophyllite. scattered to pieces and buried right below her feet. each agate leg at right angles on opposite sides of the island.

and lazulis’ head, with several chunks of it lost in the heat of the moment. even as they picked up the pieces, cinnabar could not shake the thoughts of  what horrid outcome would result from any attempt to piece it back together.

arms only in name. abstract appendages, horrid golden instruments with roots digging deeper and deeper into the last remaining part of the phos they once knew, the last vestiges of their namesake gemstone body.

cinnabar doesn’t know the precise location of each shard of the body. there might be hundreds, buried in precise locations for safekeeping until the master decides on a course of action, and with each piece, a severed slice of consciousness. the self completely ruptured. though it’s not as if they were in unity before then. the sinful nature and ugliness of their betrayal is nearly palpable, as if cinnabar could reach their hand into the dark, murky water and somehow feel its infected tendrils grazing against their limbs, prying for an opening.

-

a crack breaks them out of thought. they peer down, and find a small spiral shell cracked under the sole of their shoe. a hundred tiny pieces, some interspersed with flecks of color, seeping into sand.

they’ve nearly exhausted the stretch of beach by now. standing afore the cliff at the end, cinnabar makes a final observation of a chunk of red ruby at the very peak, which catches the moonlight at a precise angle to ignite itself inward and out with a red glow.

when it drops, it will make a fine addition to rutile’s collection.

they make sure to pass over the western side of the island before returning to the cape, though there is no practical need for this beyond extending the duration of their patrol. as they peer up at the sky they are met with a dull vastness, blotchy with slow-moving clouds, rather than a consuming darkness. two moons remain, and there is an indistinct hue of light ascending across the horizon.

so ends cinnabar’s night watch: with nothing to report, as always, and only a scattered mind to gather– a piece of it buried alongside each of phos’ fragmented selves, perhaps.

WRITING PORTFOLIO

Today is feeling long. “I’m going to knock out, don’t talk to me for the next five years” long, chills running up River’s spine at the thought of being unconscious for longer. Then again, promoting Zombie does that to you. Or is it merely the fourth professional year in the industry catching up to him? Next year will be half a decade, another five years after…and then what?

He’s lost in thought this way, looking at nothing in particular. Jisung waves a hand in front of him as he’s passing by, but even that much doesn’t snap him out of it. What does instead: a random voice permeating the space, addressing him. Unless there’s another River? Y’know, alive. It’s loud, too.

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like most people, daeil remembers his childhood in bits and pieces: his first ever model airplane; the cornerstore down the street from their one bedroom apartment back in nevada; a banged up old ford mustang his dad salvaged from the neighborhood scrapyard with six months worth of rent—not the first reckless decision his father had ever made. certainly not the last, either. but maybe he should be a little more upset about the fact that he remembers the car better than the man’s face. in his defense, maybe there’s just not much to remember.

it’s hard to feel any real sense of loss over an alcoholic, parasitic, wife-beating bastard of a deadbeat dad.

his relationship with his mother, on the other hand, is a lot more… complicated. there’s not much more to say.

he doesn’t talk about his childhood and neither does his mom. it’s like they made a conscious decision to leave it behind back in their small studio apartment, like an old and worn coffee table, or the audioslave posters he kept taped to the foot of his bed.

his mother loves him. he knows she does. but sometimes, people can’t love you the way they want to. sometimes, they can only love you as best they can.

( he has a diabetic seizure when he’s 14 and home alone. a neighbor finds him several minutes too late, and he’s declared comatose an hour after he’s hospitalized—the doctor tells his mother that there’s nothing more that they can do, so she immediately has him transferred to a private research hospital, lists her house up for auction less than a week later. when she wasn’t working three different jobs or crying in the hospital bathroom at 2 AM, she was by his hospital bed. telling him stories. holding his hand and stroking his hair. )

his mother loves him. he knows she does, and on a lighter note; the first time a haggard old man of a rather short stature came into their house, insisting on the fact that her son was a wizard, nam subin deftly maneuvered herself between him and her boy, fully convinced a crackhead had found his way into her home and already halfway done calling 911.

to be completely fair, when he’s first escorted into yosul’s campus, he’s halfway wondering if someone’d laced his pumpkin juice, too. everything about the place is bizarre, and he only finds his footing on the first day of school.

he takes to flying like a fish to water—his first day in class earns him a semester’s worth of detention and the seeker position on baek ho’s quidditch team. coming from a maeobsa perspective, the entire concept of the sport is absolutely batshit crazy, absolutely fucking insane and it’s fucking exhilarating. he spends his first three years playing for baek ho, the next three playing for yosul. the sky becomes where he feels most at home.

( and apparently, it shows. he’s scouted for nationals during the championship season of 2019. it’s in the middle of a house party thrown in his name that he realizes: it’s starting to feel less like home and more like free fall. a friend manages to push through the throng of dancing bodies to his little corner of the room, leans in to yell congratulations in his ear with a long, warm hug. he shoves the thought to the back of his mind, smiles back at her, tries to focus on her excited chatter over the heavy bass thrumming in his ears, instead. )

WRITING PORTFOLIO

( i ache for you, in the parts of me that still yield. )

it’s humid for one of the last summer nights, the kind that sticks to skin like tape residue, a persistent existence. tranquility is fragile with dark clouds looming, hinting at an impending storm. he’s left the windows ajar, barely two inches wide and the rising winds are lifting curtains in waves. the standing fan works through the silence, creaking softly everytime it goes from left to right. likewise, ikjun feels his heart pendulating, yanked in every direction everytime his fingers rest on a pulse point, focusing on the indication that the person in his hands is alive. kicking and well and in one piece. perfectly functional (debatable). and there’s a stirring in the pit of his guts; of anger, of confusion, of the mangled mess of questions he’s had to hold on his tongue. but the basis of it all: relief that minwoo’s some kind of alive.

i wasn’t expecting you is an understatement to the more accurate: i thought you were fucking dead. it’s surrealism that has a grip on his thoughts, circling them in.

all those nights spent heading down the same hallway, months of tracing old footsteps and memories (again and again), spare supplies in his bag always — all for that just in case. when he’s caught stuffing a fresh pack of alcohol swabs into his bag, he tells taek it’s for convenience, for old habits’ sake, and the questions have stopped since. for all of his snark, taek is empathetic. it’s hard to understand the loss that comes with identifying a body from a toe tag, but he tries. late night warm coffee deliveries, voluntarily switching his shifts to ikjun’s slots, avoiding details that he knows will jab at a sore spot.

for a while, it feels like he’s healing.

except he forgets that jo minwoo is as persistent as glue, the same way a smudge of glitter gets stuck on skin. he doesn’t leave easily, doesn’t leave completely. after all the scrubbing clean that ikjun’s had to do for a wound to close, minwoo tears it apart raw and ikjun forgets to breathe.

as though for old times’ sake, minwoo makes an abrupt appearance in clothes that barely look like they fit and colours that ikjun’s no longer able to make out beneath the spreading patches around open wounds. despite the pressing urgency of the man bleeding his tiles red, ikjun allows himself a moment, at least this much: enough to notice how minwoo’s seemingly haggard but the sharp definitions of his features have ikjun pausing all of his original thought processes.

he’s reluctant, but he needs minwoo alive for the answers.

with fingers cold to touch against skin, the scent of disinfectants is overwhelming yet strangely comforting when he switches the stained cotton swab with a fresh one. a final step of securing the wrapped bandage is sealing the end with a piece of tape, prepared beforehand and subsequently torn off minwoo’s arm.

it begins to rain, escalating into a storm within seconds and ikjun takes advantage of the silence that’s been lifted. “judging from the scars, you could’ve easily handled this yourself.” distracts himself briefly with the bag of used supplies on his lap, tying the knot twice before tossing it into the bin next to the table. in the distance, he can hear rain getting in through the windows. for a moment he worries about the plant placed right next to it, but he doesn’t stand just yet, gaze on familiar features, fixating some on the new scar over minwoo’s left jaw.

WRITING PORTFOLIO

the postwar nation is falling to the ground in its exhaustion.

when the western world finds itself wide-eyed upon japanese automobiles, technology replacing the jobs of handymen and birth rates declining; comes the picturesque medium of the “middle class family”. sony playstations flooding the market, feeding the insatiable appetite of capitalism as children attach themselves to television screens and vcr cables, tangled. when indulgence congregates with greed, entering a new decade determined by commerce. the homemaker is restless and her husband, a salaryman just got cut after a loyal bargain of seventeen years.

all business and burden, obligation, where dreams never lived past the night with a high school sweetheart.

he’s five when news anchors stutter over their horrors, the tokyo subway attack. a child untouchable on the dense, ever-slowing inhabitants of kanoya. stricken with paranoia, his mother hasn’t taken the train since seven months after the incident.

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The man laid out before him is not his husband. Not the one he remembers.

The husband Jihu remembers has hair the color of raven feathers, pins used to keep the strands in place. His skin is milky white and bruises like ripened plums when pressed. The curl of his lips makes the sun pale in comparison.

This man is nearly unrecognizable. Hollowed out features, sunken eyes and skeletal limbs, skin like paper, hair lifeless—

(Just like the rest of him, hanging on by a mere thread.)

They were wed three springs ago. Petals rained from above as they stood beneath the plum blossom trees and promised their undying love to one another for all the forest to witness, two souls irrevocably becoming one.

That was the first time Jihu had seen Yunseo weep. The sight broke his heart, then slowly pieced it back together.

“Jihu.”

His name spoken in tender syllables. A cold hand on his wrist. The weight of such fragile things.

“Look at me, please.”

And he does. Even though it hurts (oh, how it hurts). Jihu looks at the love of his life, at his withering form, and barely suppresses a sob.

Yunseo smiles, and even this small movement seems to take so much out of him, though he’d deny it if asked. “I love you,” he says. 

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When Soyi wakes up, her face is cold.

It’s the first thing she notices. That, and the fact that her head is pillowed on Jungah’s shoulder and she’s looking at her like she’s the damn sun, or something.

“What,” she scratches out, but she’s more than a little disoriented and her voice feels like it’s a million miles away. Yet, when Soyi looks up and finds that Jungah’s still looking at her like that, she pushes herself up and peers at her more closely.

“What?” she demands, a little more insistently. “What’s wrong?”

Jungah’s always been funny this way, she thinks.

Amidst the haze emerges a niggling doubt that feels strangely like an admonishment. It says something that sounds a lot like: you should know. And she really should. She almost thinks she does, tucked away somewhere deep in the warmest corners of her chest. But somehow, somehow—

She still doesn’t.

There’s something…soft, about the way Jungah looks at her. It’s terrifyingly vulnerable and frighteningly open. It feels like she’s intruding on something, and Soyi almost has to will herself not to look away.

Jungah swallows. For a second, she looks like there are words caught between her teeth.

It’s almost like…Like…

The next station is Blackheath. Please mind the gap between—

It startles Jungah out of it enough for her to instantly slam the unlatched door shut. The change in her expression is so subtle Soyi isn’t even sure if she’s imagining things, but whatever that was—whatever that look on her face is, has long been wiped clean, with absolutely no trace left.

Don’t go, Soyi almost wants to say, foolishly. There’s absolutely no sane explanation for the desperate urge she feels to selfishly reach out and stash Jungah’s expression away for herself. Or why she feels so strangely disappointed, for that matter.

“Nah, nothing,” Jungah laughs, reaching out to flick at Soyi’s nose and pulling her up off the seat. “Maybe later. Anyway, your nose is cold—have my jacket.”

And just like that, the moment’s over. Soyi tries to convince herself that it is, in fact, nah, nothing.

It’s only when Jungah shuffles Soyi out of the station, arm around her shoulders all the way down the muted lights of the rainy streets and back home; when Jungah leaves with the gentle brush of her hair behind her ears, does Soyi realise that she’s still wearing Jungah’s jacket.

And it’s only at eleven pm when she’s lying in bed, finger sliding along the screen of her phone to check for notifications, does she realise she never got to find out what Jungah was about to say.