know where

only kid practically raised by his grandpa bc mom and dad couldn’t be assed to take him along with their travels and commitments (they’re renowned creatives or wtv) 

u’d think there’d be festering mommy daddy issues pero at that time everyone was telling him he should be grateful that the old man was taking care of him so he kept those feelings to himself /: 

grandpa owned a bougie artisanal tea farm in boseong and that’s where he’s been for most of his childhood. a country boy at heart! 

starts playing baseball for fun and next thing u know he’s actually pretty good enough to start doing little league and get a partial athletic scholarship at hannam

moves to seoul, gets a growth spurt and starts looking cute and knows it 

girlies at school know it too and next thing you know he’s just the local sweet lowkey dumb boytoy jock that seems to have a rep for serial dating (only here’s the thing: he’s the one that got dumped constantly, and he’d never been the sort to really initiate these rels in the first place) 

about to get drafted into the kbo until someone called the cops about a party where people were using drug$ (only weed tho) and without really thinking abt his own consequences he takes the fall for a drug possession charge for a bestie 

prisoner life for 5 years, and he’s out finally. been about 6 months and it’s been...a lot

that time is filled with the few visits from friends, even fewer visits from the parents who just give him the Disappointed™ look every time, and (tw: death) grandpa passing away 2 days before his release date. at least he learned to woodwork a bit i guess? 

frankly among the general sphere of hannam kids and co he pretty much poofed, so i imagine if there’s any rumors it’s about where he’s been at

now working at a custom furniture design shop as a carpenter’s apprentice and building cool stuff and trying his best to reassimilate into civilian life again and keeping as low of a profile as possible

2021 @matthewchr

He can't recall a time in his life before pity became a constant. From the day home became the sprawl of green behind his grandfather's house and onwards, it's stayed at his heels, like some wide-eyed, forlorn hound that doesn't know any better, old faithful. Most folk don't know any better: there's a sob story that sounds like every bit the tragedy it seems on paper, and a child so wholly earnest in the wake of circumstance it's painful. Familiar is the feeling, but nothing remotely close to being considered a friend.

At one point, he wondered if this would be permanent. At another, wonder turned to want—to outgrow whatever it was so pathetic about him that evoked such a response. To try to work against the grain of the years passing, to shed off any and all that lingered. At the last, he’d been forced to reckon its permanence, no matter his age. 

Hwang Naeun, well-meaning as she is, stands as an aching reminder. He felt it in the back of his teeth, in his chest, dull sinking deadweight as she’d sat him down at the shop, contract in hand. Beneath the crisp enunciations of commissions, deadlines, and an idea in mind is an undercurrent of sympathy. It pools around his ankles, quicksand thick. Woohyun smiles at her offer and the weight of it sinks him down by a perilous inch. Woohyun shakes Naeun’s hand in firm agreement and he sinks deeper.

Why bother asking?

(Why bother with anything?) 

Pity trails behind him, like that lame hound as he picks between California laurel and black walnut out of the catalogue. It licks at his leg as he carves and cuts through plywood, bringing Naeun’s vision to life in tepid silence as the voices of mother and son carry through the walls of their home. It sits by his feet, ever present and oh-so patient for acknowledgement as he stands at the entrance for an arts-eats-beats outing put together by none other than hers truly. 

Woohyun wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t show up. Tries not to be when he does anyway, side profile discernible through the sea of heads. For a moment, he debates if waving Matthew over would suggest anything more than it should, then decides against it. Gives him a nod of acknowledgement when he makes his way around at last. 

Well. What now? Woohyun glances at him, as if a once-over would give him any c(l)ues on how to start this off on the right foot. Sorry you’ve got to do this (but so am I), sorry if I can’t help your mom pseudo-adopting me (she couldn’t help it either), sorry if this is the best I could come up with (it is). 

chaeryeongchr​:

han chaeryeong is not even sure anymore of the events that have transpired to lead up to this very moment. she blames it on shin woohyun’s perfectly sculpted face, but more than that, she blames it on his kind and probably perfectly sculpted, if that was a thing heart.

it was probably never his intention, but he should’ve known that being nice to one han chaeryeong would come to this. granted, a person picking up something for someone who dropped something and flashing them a devastating smile was probably common courtesy; just being polite— but tell that to the obsessive han chaeryeong. this happened her first year, and it is now mid-way her second year and the first words she says to shin woohyun are a proposition for sex. she’s aware that she’s skipping several steps, but han chaeryeong is also a teenaged girl afflicted with a low self-esteem and hormones. she also heard a more popular girl in the washroom brag about her first time, and han chaeryeong had decided, as she sat on the toilet with her lunch tray on her lap, that the key to acceptance was losing your virginity.

if she couldn’t date shin woohyun, she could try to get in his pants, right?

at least, this was han chaeryeong’s totally-not-spontaneous-and-perfectly-thought-out-plan (read: it was totally spontaneous, and not planned out perfectly at all). deep down, she had prepared herself for rejection. she knew it was crazy. honestly, she might even lose respect for anyone who even agreed to—

“is this, uh, meant as a legitimate offer, or…”

chaeryeong blinked up at shin woohyun in disbelief. discreetly, she even tried pinching the side of her thigh to make sure this wasn’t some weird fantasy, but there stood woohyun sunbae, staring down at her with a neutral expression. she didn’t see a hint of disgust on his face. was this actually going to work???

in some stroke of pathological luck, chaeryeong felt her nerves ease a little. “yeah, if you want it to be.” in her head that sounded totally nonchalant and not awkward at all. she tried throwing in a smile and tucking her hair behind her ear for good measure.

Let it be known that had it been anyone else, they'd take this as a chance to run. Fast. Now. Somewhere in his brain, Yuhwan and Suran's voices urge just that, conjured up Mini-Me versions of them with their arms frantically waving to signal the red flags that their friend can’t seem to read.

Instead, all Woohyun can notice is what this isn't. He thinks to the girls before her standing in the same exact spot by the bleachers, the feeling of deja vu compounding in recognizing the ends and not the means. This time, there's no beating around the bush. No sweet confessionals to sugarcoat and counter the sin. No timid pretenses to prelude the shamelessly inevitable. It boils down to nothing more but a different course taken that leads to the same damning outcome. He pictures the face of his most recent ex, shakes off the sting at the memory of how she’d become an ex at all. Better this stays strictly body to body on body. His heart alone has been strung along far too many times for it to wind up as collateral damage. 

In what may be the most bizarre moment to be feeling touched of all things, he relents with a low nod. “Okay.” White flag raised high sans the sentiment of defeat. With more confidence this time, "Sure.” 

Woohyun shifts the weight of his helmet, tucking it under the other arm. He looks over his shoulder, where past the gym’s double doors await the shower stalls. “Now’s probably not a good time though since...” Cue the sheepish gesture to his scuffed up uniform and the sweat slicked state of his hair. Leaves it to her to fill in the gaps. 

How she ended up with a trained dog without putting in any of the work herself is the real question. This how he was with all his girlfriends? Wrapped around their legs, puppy panting?

“Not really.” She says, already dreading the sap-clinging plastic wrap. It’s been a hell of a week and she’s too tired and horny to keep whatever this charade is going. Her mind travels elsewhere, inevitably to the other stick she’d rather be chomping on, and the near fantasy of air conditioning.

And yet he’s inching off the bench, his hand thumbing for bills like he’s on fuckin’ autopilot. “Knock yourself out.” She plucks herself off as well, wincing narrowly at the angry imprint of the bench on her thighs. “I’m just going to get water. Let’s just grab a cab back to my place once you’re done.”

Are you sure? He almost makes a mistake with that follow up. Memory kicks in the stopper right before it can so much as slip out: two months ago, brunchtime cut short at an Apgujeong café. Most serious parables on never ever second guessing your boo don’t include a date-turned-LeftoversGate situation (don’t ask) (please do), but part of Sangah’s appeal is in the way she keeps him constantly on his toes. 

All this leaves him with a muted, inoffensive, "Oh." Never one to persuade nor pursue, he folds away half the amount back into his leather wallet. More than enough for water and a single popsicle. He looks behind them, finds nothing they’ve left behind on the bench.

The back of her legs doesn’t go unnoticed, sore-pink to the touch. Woohyun frowns at his own negligence. A tender afterthought surfaces, one he’ll hold himself to later when the time is right.

chaeryeongchr​:

shit. he knows her name. for some reason, the fact that shin woohyun knows her name adds to her nerves instead of relieving them— she had some anonymity on her side before then but her name comes with certain connotations: the chick who practically almost died before lunch time last year. the chick who kicked over a trash can in a fit of rage just last week over a grade. han chaeryeong, the crazy chick. her reputation precedes her, and if shin woohyun knows her name, now the chances of any of this working have been reduced by 12.3%. which is a lot, considering she only had a 15% chance to begin with (she did the math between second and third period, okay).

the fact that han chaeryeong believes this plan had any chance of actually working in the real world is a testament to her mental stability— or lack thereof.

mathematics and frail rationality aside, now that she’s looking at woohyun, teenage sensibilities take over and she can’t help but gape at him like a fish, round eyes blinking.god, he’s so hot. she wills herself not to follow the one droplet of sweat clinging to his jawline, because if her imagination carried her, she might not be able to follow through (even if, well, this was exactly the reason she was standing before the senior right now).

“uhhh, yeah.”

chaeryeong leans against the fence, her elbow resting in a hole in the metal netting and her hand on her head. she looked like some school bully in Once Upon a Time in High School. realizing that she is indeed not the personification of cool in this position, she clears her throat, shifting awkwardly as she moves away from the fence. she realizes that she probably looks insane as she opens her mouth to speak several times but says nothing as she shifts around, and then, finally, words leave her mouth:

“look, i’m just gonna cut to the chase.”

she sucks in a deep breath to calm her nerves, and now she’s staring right into woohyun’s eyeballs with great determination, brows furrowed. she is a girl on a mission, after all.

“so here’s the thing: i like you.” she doesn’t wait for his reaction, because at this point she knows that she just has to bulldoze through it to make it as painless as possible. “and i was wondering, if you would do me the honour— er, no, not honour. but like, if you would ever consider uhhh.” deep breath. “h-having sex with me?”

nailed it.    

He doesn’t have a whole lot to go off of—the who’s and what’s of the Hannam underclassmen hardly going beyond the bare minimum. Somewhere in his brain is a mental yearbook that he flips through, name tags and picture day ready photos, divided by class. Through the sea of faces is Han Chaeryeong. Second year. Portrait pristine with present tense clarity. Only here she's not exactly smiling, features pulled into something like stunned shock.

He frowns. Was there spinach in his teeth? A raging pimple between his brows? The hand on his scalp moves to muss his fringe back over his forehead. His lips press extra firm as he attempts to discreetly run a tongue over what may be left of his lunch on his chompers.

Only she parts, then closes, then parts her mouth once again and his self consciousness morphs into a sick sense of dread. Is it...two? (Two?!) raging pimples? He starts shuffling his feet, suddenly unsure if he really wants to hear what she wants to say but the dislodged apple falls free from the throat in three’s—I like you, I was wondering, 

H-having sex with me? 

The hum of cicadas stops. The evening breeze falters. 

He stares and stares and stares. Whatever limited lexicon he’d possessed milliseconds prior had poofed without a trace. 

For a good two minutes, there’s nothing but dead silence. 

Shin Woohyun’s not sure what he was supposed to be expecting, but it wasn’t anything close to this. 

“...I see.” 

He briefly steals a glance at his shoes. He can only hope, for the sake of preserving what’s left her dignity, that his voice doesn’t sound anything less than a neutralized, steady alto. He clears his throat. 

chaeryeongchr​:

c. 08/2013 in retrospect, this was probably the stupidest thing she’s ever done— for such a smart girl, han chaeryeong had a laundry list of Stupid Things She’s Done™— but this, this definitely topped the list.

at least she still had a shred of rationality left as her subconscious practically screamed at her the moment she stepped out of yaja, her heart rate reverberating with each echoing step down the empty staircase. to be fair, chaeryeong’s heart rate probably would’ve spiked anyways since she was skipping self-study, but she knew that the reason for the ringing in her ears and her red cheeks wasn’t rage induced (her arch nemesis had grinned at her as they watched her slip past their sleeping homeroom teacher— okay, maybe she was a little mad at the stupid, smug look on their face), but something else entirely. she tried to steady her heartbeat as she burst through the metal doors and the evening air prickled at rosed cheeks, but as she neared the baseball field, the sound of a bat striking the white-and-red-stitched ball caused her stomach to drop.

even through the chain-link fence, she could make him out immediately. it wouldn’t be the first time she’d watched one of his practices, but today was different. she gripped onto the fence as she watched the baseball team collectively thank their coach, and one-by-one, they started filtering out through the threshold beside where chaeryeong stood. she almost lost her chance, steeling herself with a deep breath, before she spun around as he passed right by her, and breathlessly called out to him:

“sunbaenim!”                         

Two and a half hours under Coach Kim's command has the team running across the baseball diamond in machine-like synchrony, from toss to hit to each clean skid over the home plate, ad nauseam. Being one win away from moving up the regional bracket charges each movement with conviction, all tunnel vision and the burn of adrenaline as they keep pushing through one more lap.

The whistle cuts shrill through the air to call time, and they all slow to a stop. Breathing heavily, Woohyun yanks off his helmet and tilts his chin upwards, relishes in the cool open air and the sight of the sun subsiding. Kim's spiel on strategy takeaways and handing Youngkang’s asses to them next Wednesday goes in one ear and out the other, thoughts of victory swept over by ones of an ice cold shower and samgyeopsal for dinner. Guess today he knows better today than to keep them for any longer, because it’s said and done—just like that? Just like that. 

Thank. God. 

Cleat-cladded feet squeak through the grass as they bow their heads then jog into place, single file towards the locker rooms. Oblivious to the figure waiting by the entrance, he nearly misses her completely until a hand from behind smacks at him for his attention— “Shin, she’s calling for ya”—and he looks to his left. 

A thumb is raised to point straight at his chest. “Me?” Her face says it all. The confusion grows. “Oh.” 

chrsangah​:

Okay? Sure, in a sense. She’s moments away from melting clean away. Fifteen minutes ago she’d have snapped because her thighs were chafing bad and she was sorely regretting wearing shorts out. The thought of seeping through the bench planks now and letting the sun beat her into effervescent gas didn’t sound so bad—she wouldn’t have to contend with the sweat gluing her legs down, or the heat of his hand precariously grazing over her skin. “Hot.” She says. Doesn’t like his question, or this question, ever. Almost all of the time it is perfunctory and people respond with disingenuity in equal measures. She stays her open hand, gaze finally moving. “If you’re trying to tickle me, it won’t work.”

"I wouldn't try." The warning in her tone is familiar by now, even if the degree of severity is never the same each time. He'll take those than lessons learned the hard way any day.

Hot. O-kay. He can't do much about the inevitable what with the month and time of day, but he could take a stab at the obvious. The other hand shoots up, fingers splayed wide and hovering above the crown of her head. Doesn't do much, but A for effort? Maybe?

2013 @chrsangah

                                          you perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.                                                                    ━━  g. bataille, circa ‘12

     𝙨𝙝𝙚’𝙨 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙗𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙜𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙩. for others, for herself. pitiful is the cursed thing that’s never learned to self soothe. that’s never been taught the how-tos to ease her demons. instead, suran carries under her belt a myriad of other set skills. how to lie to everyone. how to fool yourself. how to weaponize your teen angst. and, the more popularly regarded: best way to cope for a teenager. ignore it. swallow it. pretend it doesn’t exist till you can’t any longer. and if that fails? lash out. drag the rest of the world down with you. if you’re not allowed rest, not allowed reprieve, not allowed a flicker of warmth—why should anyone else? 

     like this, our wicked creature thrives off the virulent black tar that oozes from the crown. drenched in teen turmoil that gradually seeps into skin, between bone ligaments. utilizes it to strengthen her resolve and sharpen her teeth. in short, bitingly bitter as she is, myo suran is generally not the one to seek out for any kind of succor; for revenge or something of the sort, perhaps—but never this. 

     though, it isn’t exactly like he’s asking. 

     but—nonetheless, how is she supposed to deal with this? 

     the silence between them is unnatural. teeters on the edge of uncomfortable. knowing fully well by now what woohyun’s day to day demeanor is like or rather, what he was like just this morning, this afternoon’s version of him is especially unnerving. suran’s discomfort is evident, yet found only in the impatient tapping of her pen against her notebook, eyes locked on the downturned corners of his lips. it’s because they’re friends—because shin woohyun is the way that he is—that she’s more or less developed a sense of responsibility for him; that she’s this bothered by it. so much so she wants to swear at him for the unease settling in her gut. 

     “so?” suran is first to break the silence, fingers flexing around her pen; purposefully obtuse with the question she poses. what with how quickly gossip is passed from mouth to mouth in their class, it isn’t like she doesn’t already know. or at least, have some kind of inkling. but times like this, it’s better to hear it from the horse’s mouth. “what happened?”

Rinse, regret, repeat. It’s a wonder of cosmic proportions that he isn’t neck deep in a depressive spiral over just how many times he’s gotten the shorter end of the breakup stick. Dumpee coping mechanisms kick in under tried and true conditions: (poorly) conceal, don’t (obviously) feel, and get through the rest of this shitty day without incident. The clock on the wall ticks a quarter to two in the school library. So far so good? So far, as good as he can be. 

Until he turns another page of his math textbook. Until his eyes drop to problem #24, which talks about a girl. Problem #24 that talks about Jungmi who has six apples and the mind to hurl them against the pull of Earth’s gravity, 9.8 m/s squared. Until Suran stiffly asks what happened as if their homework hasn’t already given him enough to work with and oh god, is his vision is starting to get blurry? Shit, shit, shit—

He manages a “Huh?,” the sound caught between a hiccup and something more mournful before he swallows it down. What happened to faking it ‘til you make it? Right. 

2015 @chrseoha

There's no time to plan prior when you’ve got nothing but a handful of breaths to work with. Between breaking away from the dissolved scene of a teen party and being caught red-handed, ten at best, fifteen at most, and they’d gotten him in seven, body hitting pavement by the sheer brute of their hands. 

The skin on his knees is still tender from the impact, red through torn denim and unattended to. His head spins with the same questions asked at intervals, a dingy carousel from hell of what’s been done’s, who else’s, and why’s with no new answers and the one damned, neck-strangling lie. The only allowed interruption is when he asks for more water. 

The running joke is that he's the overgrown son that she'd been practically forced to adopt and look after. In some ways that's not too far from the truth (exhibit A: freshman year). While he's got more of a backbone now, but she'll always hold down the fort in that department.

On a less funny note, he has this self contained thought that crosses his mind once every so often that she only ever tolerates him purely for the sake of commitment. There's a reason why the whole "we wouldn't be friends had we met today and not then" phenomenon exists.

Or it could be out of guilt when it was allegedly her damning bag of weed that he'd been busted and arrested for. The memory's starting to get fuzzy on this one.

He wouldn't be surprised if she upped and left one day. Almost expecting it. See points #2 and #3 and the trend of casual abandonment in his life. Probably wouldn't stop her either because let's be honest, all of that (and him) can be a lot. The stretch of time when she didn’t visit him behind bars for a hot second gave him a taste of what that’s going to feel like when/if it happens.