SINKHOLE

helloooo i’m sol (21+, they/them) and this is yuhwan. he’s an old oc revamped too many times so if he seems familiar... my b dude i’m attached i guess. anyway, i’m excited to be here! please like this post if you’re interested in plotting and i’ll hit you up. i’m not on twitter and pretty sparse on discord, so i prefer tumblr im! but if that’s difficult for you, we can figure smth out! i have a short (haha) tl;dr under the cut, but you can also read up more on his BIO and PROFILE pages.

well pops, hate to break it to you, but i’m pretty sure god really is dead!

(and other fruitless, worthless, pointless, and not to mention half-hearted sentiments presently coursing through nam yuhwan’s mind.)

the human body is probably a prison. that’s what yuhwan’s actually thinking right now. sitting in a family restaurant, grilling the meat (silently, too, which is crazy because yuhwan loves disrupting otherwise idyllic atmospheres—a favorite past-time right up there with exploiting people’s secrets) for two people he’s pretty sure are, on paper and to the masses, supposed to be his best friends shouldn’t feel like punishment.

but it does. 

for more reasons than one, it does. and he has to admit that at least forty-nine percent of the guilt weighing on his shoulders is probably a product of his own mistakes, but maybe they wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t his first time seeing @suranchr face-to-face in years?

(but every time he catches a glimpse of her face, he feels himself wavering like a god damn fool, and maybe he’s okay with taking fifty-one percent of the blame after all. shit.)

the meat sizzles. loudly. and he notes, mildly, that it’s not very good meat. @chrwoohyun deserves better for their first joint huzzah since his release from prison, but they’ll all have to pass off living paycheck-to-paycheck as indulging in some nostalgia instead. didn’t they bag on this restaurant in high school? how nostalgic!

the meat. it seriously sizzles. 

     ( ... )

    today, however, spells for something different. spells for the presence of another to disturb our spiraling dancer. for a pair of brown eyes, equally surprised, that locks with hers—here, for the briefest of moments, she feels like she can breathe—and suran stops without meaning to, breath caught in her throat. 

     ( ... )

    though, right here and now, from her mouth to her ears it sounded more like a greeting than anything. a it’s been a while, it feels like. a i can’t believe you’re here, left unsaid, yet evident all the same with the matching curve of her lips. 

    “you can’t possibly tell me you’re here to avoid people.” you shouldn’t even be here in the first place.

       fate is an ugly, blistering thing. there he goes, seeking respite the only way he knows how (by rooting out high peaks, where even falling would feel like a lifetime condensed into the blink of an eye); yet here he is, finding something sharper, more jagged in its place. memories are always fickle for yuhwan because sentimentality has felt like a luxury since the second he befriended mapo bridge—

       but right this second, it’s unfair the way his expression softens when she looks at him, meets his gaze, and god, how long has it been since the last time they were face-to-face like this? there’s a warmth, phantomlike, that lingers in a body often cold, before he reminds himself that some reunions only lend themselves to more tragedy in the end. 

       “hah,” he laughs, but it comes out like an exhale—something tired, resigned. he’s stupid for this, he knows, but the little bubble of hope that rises from the bottom of his ribcage only to pop right before it can make it to the tip of his tongue almost deludes him into thinking five years of radio silence were just a figment of his imagination. “so you get nostalgic too, huh?”

       five years of radio silence, of learning to dodge suran’s head not because he wanted to (he wanted to do anything but) but because yuhwan’s never been good at chasing, only good at accepting what comes to him. five years of learning limbo’s winding paths, of learning its boundaries and reminding himself never to blur them. 

       those five years were hardly his imagination. even he’s not so cruel as to punish himself in his daydreams. 

       he can’t hold anything against suran though. never against suran. and maybe he’s stupid for that, too. if there was ever a time to be angry, to be upset, to ask questions, to demand answers—

       well, wouldn’t it be now?

       yuhwan smiles, and it’s unfortunately sincere. if he’s going to be angry, be upset, ask questions, demand answers—it’s not going to be now. maybe it won’t be ever, at this rate. maybe an hour from now, suran smiling at him like she did all of those years ago will be another memory for him to juggle. and maybe that’s all he can really ask for. “i really did come here to avoid people,” he admits, and gingerly, he sidesteps where he’s pressed his back to the door—like he’s leaving her an opening. going to run away again? he doesn’t ask. it’s never going to be his place to. “a lot of chatterboxes in this company. you’d think i’m some bigshot writer with the way they’re trying to cozy up to me.”

       the loose cigarette wobbles up and down with each word he utters, like a pendulum, a see-saw; and how fitting that is. he’s feeling a little up and down himself. probably not battling any fight or flight instinct, seeing as how he’s been waiting—maybe impatiently, maybe patiently—for their serendipitous collision; but his heart feels like it’s rising only to plummet, and repeat.

       he doesn’t want her to leave, but who would he be to make her stay? 

       “if you’re going to leave, lend me a light first?” yuhwan tilts his head up from the pavement, where he’s been engaged in a staring contest with an unmovable fissure. he almost says, for old time’s sake, before deciding that’s too cheesy. almost settles on, you don’t have to leave though, before deciding his sincerity has no place here.

       what he really wants to say, what he really wants to ask is not a variation of what happened or why did you shut me out?

       all he wants to know is this: how have you been?

       "christ on a fucking stick.” 

       the stairwell’s winding; not the good kind, either, but the dizzying kind. and the smell of cigarette smoke and something acrid feels especially strong the second the door closes behind him. there was a DO NOT ENTER sign abandoned somewhere in yuhwan’s wake, but he can’t bring himself to care. there’s an itch in his teeth, after all. he can’t get any work done at this rate. 

       three steps from the top and he stumbles. his tennis shoes are worn down. come to think of it, they were a gift from his parents, weren’t they? haven’t they heard? give a man a pair of shoes and he’ll walk straight the hell out of your lives! then again—maybe that’s what they wanted.

       hey man, he thinks, squeezing his eyes shut. focus. this isn’t the time to unpack. granted, it’s never the time to unpack. but right now, right this second, it’s especially not the time for letting his thoughts wander. mental olympics are his forte and in the summer, winter, fall, and spring, all he brings home are golds when it comes to running cyclical hypotheticals—but not now. not when there’s money on the line.

       the door to the rooftop’s unsecured, a broken chain dangling from pristine handles. he doesn’t think much about it when he shoves it open, and the humid air of seoul’s summers is hardly refreshing or crisp (sometimes, he pretends he can taste the light pollution—he imagines it’s what la croix tastes like) but it’s one hundred times better than trying to navigate a conversation with a bunch of two-faced people trying to curry favor with his pen and paper. 

       ah, well. he’s two-faced too. but two’s a crowd. three might as well be an apocalypse.

       behind him, the door clatters to a close. yuhwan presses his back to it and shuts his eyes again. breathes in. out. he mutters the national anthem under his breath like a mantra. meditation. zen. he’s doing this for money. never mind the fact that sometimes, when work sends him to report on real news, it feels like he’s navigating hannam all over again. he prefers the sensationalism; prefers speculating about whether person A did fucked up thing B or why person C screwed person D and all of their ancestors over. when he’s forced to show up somewhere with only the truth to confront—only the truth, raw and unadulterated—it’s too boring, too stifling, and he’s not into it.

       “fuck,” he sighs out again. the tip of his shoe feels worn, but the dull pain kind of draws him back into himself. god, this blows. and when he reaches, blindly, for a pack of cigarettes only to find he doesn’t have a lighter, he thinks, well, at least things can only look up from here.

       and looking up from here happens in a one-two step:

       first, he opens his eyes.

       second, he realizes he’s not alone.

       and because one’s lonely, two’s company, and three’s so contrary it might as well be right—

       third, he locks gazes with someone all-too familiar. and he really shouldn’t be so simple-minded, but the way the sun’s setting casts an orange curtain on ( SURAN )'s face—timed so perfectly that it almost feels so cinematic. 

       an unlit cigarette dangles from the corner of his mouth. he’d laugh, but he doesn’t want to waste a perfectly good cigarette.