WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

he laughs soft until lijae brings her hands together and light appears once more. “whoa,” he mumbles quietly, like he’s worried breaking her focus might cause the thing to explode. or, something. and he certainly can’t have that happening up on his rooftop. he’s about to ask if anything like that’s happened before the ball comes his way, and he catches it on instinct. “just light?” he repeats, eyes widening while he inspects the glimmering ball in his hands, tossing it between his left and right, each time tossing it higher and longer. “so i’m holding like a mini star in my hands right now? huh. neat,” he says, standing up to move a few steps back from her, still playing with the light. “so lijae the light bringer, what brings you to my humble abode? did the light from my bright smile attract you to this rooftop, or did you just move in to dynamite?” he teases before throwing the light back in her direction with no warning. 

she likes that, the look on his face, like he might find it, her, incredibly amazing. she likes that look, the one that sort of borders towards reverence. a pleasant change from the distracted, scientific fascination that often follows her. she hates that, the way she’s reduced to clinical, scientific components. “super cool,” she corrects, a quick tilt of her lips as she shifts, pushing a hand back through her hair with a grin. it snags into the bleached strands, pulling through tangles and prompting a stinging in the back of her eyes and a lopsided wince to crease her features. 

“no, stars are gas and fire,” she corrects, eyes rolling, with a bemused smile that creeps over her lips. “it is neat though.” she adds with a grin, watching it light up the planes of his face, casting shadows against the curve of his jaw. “oh, god, don’t be clever about it,” she complains at the lilt of his drawl, nose scrunching. his eyes are bright and his smile wide, flashing white teeth back at her with an enthusiasm that startles. 

“the rooftop was already closed off to all the tenants before me anyway. something about too many injuries or something and mr.go didn’t want to be held liable? dunno, but none of that applies to me, so,” sunwoo explains, pushing a hand through his hair before leaning forward to rest his arms atop his knees. “anyway, i can’t tell you too much about it. it’s super secret ninja training for a reason,” he jests in a hushed voice, shushing her with a finger to his lips. “but, what about you? what are you and what was that gold thing and most importantly can you make another one that i can use?” 

she sniffs quickly, dragging the back of her hand against a scrunching nose. his laughter is loud, almost to the point of being jarring, and he turns an expression on her that contains sunshine and crinkled skin and not a single indication of anything particularly bad about him. despite the fact he has tattoos dotting his knuckles that would make any grandmother scowl, despite the fact he’s clearly been practicing weapons training in a somewhat illegal manner. “too many accidents sounds right,” she decides with a hum, pushing a hand back through her hair to clear it back out of her face. it tangles from the wind, knotting around her fingers and she’s left whining as she tugs it out. “you’ve already killed any frightening illusions you might have had. instead you used your hand as a napkin, declared yourself a ninja, and gave me yogurt. i’m pretty sure you must be six years old,” she decides with a quick grin, tilting over her lips and scattering to a broader smile as he lopes over to the target. 

it is impressive, she admits, the way he moves with such consistent and confident movements. he turns around to show off just a little more, whipping the batwing over his shoulder with a confident smile, one that twists something up in her chest. it is, patently, unfair that some boys are as attractive as they are. she purses her lips to force herself into not looking  too impressed, hums a little bit. “kinda cool.” she decides after a moment, fiddling with the edge of the yogurt bottle, running her thumb against the edge. “but i can do better.” she tells him with a grin, holding her hand up, palm out. a disk of light appears there and she flicks her wrist as if throwing it. now in actuality, she’s controlling it’s direction visually, but the end effect is that it looks a lot like its being propelled straight into the bullseye of the targeted yellow spray, directly beside the boy’s. she shrugs, with a grin. 

as his snacks spill across the table, he sits on the mattress and clicks the play button down, cassette tape winding up to play some hip hop track he heard on the radio one time and hasn’t stopped listening to since. he raps along incoherently as he considers his food choices, reaching for the popsicle that’s already half melted and popping it into his mouth. it’s cool against his tongue, refreshing in the later afternoon heat as he hums – only stopping when a gold light in the sky catches his eyes and comes crashing down before him. he blinks, chewing down on the wooden popsicle stick as he tilts his head to examine the gold structure until it disappears before his eyes. ‘ooh,’ sunwoo hums shortly quietly to himself, intrigued, shifting his attention to the girl in front of him. 

“all good,”  he answers easy, wiping the popsicle melt from his lips. his eyes scan her body, only looking for any traces of blood (he swears), and shakes his head, reaching to take the stick out of his mouth and toss it onto the table. “nope, no blood that i can see. thank god too or mr.go would threaten to kick me out again, probably. not that he ever really would,” he snorts, leaning forward to click the stop button on the boom box. “yep, but i guess you don’t? i’m sunwoo, haven’t seen you around, and everyone knows better than to come up onto the roof. or you know, crash land onto it. same thing,” he pauses, grabbing a thing of yakult and holding it towards her, “here, have one. in case you’re bleeding inside. i heard this has probiotics? antibiotics? or something? i don’t know but maybe it’ll help.”

she feels an awful lot like she’s been hit by a bowling ball. there’s a scrape on her elbow and her head is spinning ever so slightly, a lingering dizziness at the edges of her senses. she’s got to stop pushing so hard, she’s pretty sure it’s just going to run her into the ground. but how is she supposed to figure anything out if she doesn’t test it? 

besides, it’s been mostly successful. 

the boy on the roof peers over her,eyes wide and sparkling and his hair a tangle of dark waves. there’s a popsicle stick sticking out of his mouth and the ripple of a surprising amount of muscle beneath tanned skin. the scattering light from the afternoon sun or from her construction as it implodes sparkles over his skin, and the whole thing leaves a strangely surreal taste in her mouth, as if she’s imagining him. “dope,” she sighs out, pulling herself upright to and stretching her legs out. “good music,” she tells him, reaching over to put it back on again, but tugs the dial down, fingers moving then to check on her walkman, which is battered and rather worse for wear. “damn,” she mumbles to herself, taking the offered drink and ripping it open with her teeth. 

the complex juts upwards into a precarious point, low railing revealing a scrap of greenery situated at the top- lush at the edges and patchy in turn, it represents the haphazard approach that has generally been taken at dynamite tower. since moving (read, running away to) the city in a shirt broken down two door, lj has held a certain fascination with the fledgling community. billed as a co op for your run down rebels and vigilantes, at odds with the more black and white celebrity focused power structures of good and evil. the aesthetic of it is awkward against the skyline, jammed between sleek new high-rises with it’s half yellowed brick and sloped roof. 

it’s not that tall a building, truthfully, but lijae hasn’t ever attempted a flight this high before. pressing her palms together brings a shimmering disk to life, oblong and big enough for her to hop up on top of it, settles her feet against the solidified disk of shimmering gold. shifting, she flexes slightly, bracing herself as she bends her knees lightly. it’s just a quick recon mission, a glimpse at a world she can’t be a part of, like peering through her fishbowl, and then it’s right back to her apartment slash run down (stolen) car.  with a grunt, she pushes her feet down slightly and feels her power hum to life beneath her, soaring up abruptly as she draws herself upwards, a sudden jolt that betrays the fact that she hasn’t had a lot of a chance to work her skills out. at least, not in a wider, uncontrolled atmosphere. 

as she lifts into the atmosphere, she jams a finger against the button of the walkman on her hip, a muddled rendition of a popular r&b track blaring out tinny and thin from the headphones slnug around her neck. it provides a slight soundtrack as she zips through the air, careening high, high, higher. it leaves her heart racing and her senses spinning, stumbling as she raises one floor, another, third, fourth, until she’s up around the tenth floor and nearing the roof. she’s tired by this point and unsteady on top of it, and she realizes a second too late that she’s losing control. it’s a quick jerk and a sudden jolt and then she’s tumbling down onto the astroturfed surface of the  roof, which someone has clearly attempted to dress up as a semi campground, and she fumbles into a heap.  there’s a groan, as she reaches her hand up to rub against the bruising spot on her skull, squinting at the offending shoes upon which she has landed, lips pursing slightly. she drags herself upright in time to see tattooed knuckles swipe themselves across full lips, blinking against the scattering light of her construction fragmenting, disappearing. 

@galaqsies

the pavement is as gray and damp as the skies, a miserable testament to drabness and weariness. it suits her mood, she thinks, forced to cower beneath an umbrella, fingers clutchign tightly to the plastic molded handle. it's so pedestrian, to deal with things the nonmagical way. mundane. she ducks out of the way of a passerby, skirts around a corner. her skin prickles, goosebumps rippling down her spine and for the hundredth time that day she tries to decide if she's being followed or if the chills are simply coming from the whisper of the cold winds against her skin.

she ducks into a bar, a divey place where the smell crashes over her like a wave, smoke and whiskey, cheap and stale. her nose crinkles and she beelines for the back cornerbooth, slouching into place with a frown. with her back to solid concrete she feels more secure, pulling her hood down over her face and drumming her fingers idly on the table. a chain laces around her neck and in her pocket is a ring to match the heft of that strange silver. she keeps one fist closed around it as she gestures for the bartender, a gruff order on her lips. 

and then, as soon as she takes a sip, she feels a change in the air. there's something electric that skitters over her bones, a shift in energies that raises her hackles. the culprit is immediately obvious - she sees him standing in the doorway, an outline of narrow shoulders and a sharp jaw. fuck. of course they'd have hired him. she purses her lips, pulls the cup to her lips as if she can hide behind it, but it's impossible. so much for dodging out on him.

@ggcren

it’s a strange feeling. between her and kiyong now - a distance that grows. she wonders if it was always there, if he’d always been throwing up walls for her to stubbornly try to knock to the side. and how badly she’d wanted it to work. how stubbornly she had tried, to dismantle the barriers and push her way closer, to worm into his heart. 

but it had never really been open, had it? at least, not to her. how long had she thrown herself there, like the sea battering against jagged rock, torn asunder again and again and again. how relentlessly had she tried to become what he wanted, to build herself out of something lacking and into something better. how relentlessly had he turned a blind eye to her, a casual cruelty that had frozen to her core? 

and how ironic then, that as this broken and battered, tattered and weathered creature, she had - in exposing herself only to further torment - found herself enshrined. enveloped. first in something nameless and terrible, in a crushing maelstrom of desire and of deprivation, of two halves not quite meting into a whole. and with time, how had that changed, into the kind of promise she had never dared make for herself, the kind of hope she had never even dared chase after. 

after a strangely awkward afternoon of catching up with kiyong, they meander back to the apartment with a sort of quiet uncertainty, her hands plunged deep into her pockets. her heart doesn’t flutter, now, and the strange coldnesses and steeliness of his personality are no longer quite as endearing in their challenge as they had been once. 

and as much as he is death here. as much as he holds the power, for a second, under the eyes of this girl, the king of death feels fear.

“no matter what you choose,” his thumb grazes her lower lip, eyes lowering, the taste of them coming back to him. the taste of her blood. her life. “i’ll be waiting for you.”

the stories don’t talk about things like this. moments like this, when monsters become men, when birds become boys. when feral eyes fix on you and she knows - she should be afraid. anyone with sense would fear him, anyone with a mind would feel it fracture in this moment. faced with this impossible world, this place beyond the veil. her body rejects it, but her mind and heart - 

his words hit hear heavy in the chest, a fear that bubbles behind her rib cage. she should fear him, it only makes sense. but behind that boil lurks something else. something darker and deeper, something that frightens her more than he possibly can. there is a whirlpool in the pit of her stomach and a trembling in her veins and his hand is on hers, a vice grip that envelops. his words are soft, and silken, like the whisper of a sword as it hisses from it’s scabbard. 

his fingers burn now, against her skin, with cold or heat she can’t be sure. every sense is off beat and distracted. her brain can’t process this and her body is in revolt against it and in worrying, frightening dismay she realizes what it is that she feels. what it is that is lurking beneath the surface. what it is that he is summoning from so deep in the darkness of her soul that it will surely haunt her. 

desire. 

she tilts her head, on an instinct, nuzzling her nose against the curve of his palm. the smell of him is wrong, inhuman. tiny details that don’t seem to add up to a human man. the reflection of that is the twist of her stomach. “you’re a terrible husband.” is what she determines after a moment of thought, nips at the pad of his thumb before she curls her fingers around his wrist, pulls his hand away from her skin, for fear of burning. “i feel sick. when will that stop?” she demands the answer of him without pretense. “you could have mentioned that, by the way, somewhere along the line.”  sometime before you kissed me, stole a piece of me from between my lips. it feels that way, too, like he has taken something from inside her, left a hole that will ache for him forever, a chasm. frightening and sudden, leaving her lurching and uncertain in this strange new world. 

she’s different, he thinks. maybe. maybe she won’t run away. maybe she’ll-

don’t be foolish, a voice whispers. many voices. a warehouse full of them. 

maya is not foolish enough, not proud enough not to feel fear. she feels it in this moment, bubbling inside her. there is a cold certainty - that she might die here. that she might have died, already. the journey had certainly felt like it, once she had succumbed to it. she remembers his kiss. she remembers his teeth. she remembers their lips wet with blood. 

maya is not foolish, but she is stubborn. 

his smile irks her. it’s cold and fearsome, digging in between her bones like a barb. hooking behind her rib cage and pulling, pulling until her breath thins out. until even stubborn feet must move, to follow after him. a step and another, as he gestures. taunts her. as if to say, go on then. as if teasing her for the fact that the world outside that door is something strange and new and terrible. it’s greatness bears down on her even now, the light too bright and the dark too black, a world in hyper contrast that her eyes cannot yet fathom. 

he’s behind her, and his voice slithers down her spine like a snake through the grass, wrapping around the vertebrae and coiling in her chest. she’s holding her breath. his fingers burn now, as if she cannot adjust to him, either, to the wavering hot and cold of him, all and nothing. finite and endless. silver whispers against her skin and the weight of the gem is heavy and cold against her sternum. she runs her tongue against the back of her teeth. 

“is a necklace supposed to charm me that easily?” she retorts, with a confidence she doesn’t feel. some stubbornness, some fight or flight response turned verbal. like a cornered animal she lashes out. “should i be flattered?” her lips purse, “that you dragged me into this world half dead? who would go with you, for such a journey.” the words sting her lips, split and bruising. the rest of her body, too, like an overripe peach, seems fit to bruise and burst. 

“i apologize,” he says, and his voice carries around the room, empty. it used to be. not that he was lonely, no. death is never lonely. but it missed something. her. it missed her. “but you ought to get used to it. this is your home now, maya.” taehyun steps closer to her, close enough to touch. and he does, a hand on her hair, until it touches her cheek. “how are you feeling?” he asks, his hand on her chin. his blood freezes at her warmth, so strange. so new. 

it is such a strange thing to think of. 

growing up she had scoffed at the warnings her grandmother handed down, the scolding of the neighborhood ladies. watch out, they’d told her. he comes for little girls like you, who grow up wild and reckless. watch out, or before you know it he’ll be on our doorstep. 

everyone knew the stories and, just as surely as everyone knew them, they knew also they were myth, folk lore, legend.  a story written into the core of the world and she, spinning in it’s grip now. tangled up in the tapestry of it, her first impulse is to resist. to pull against gilded threads, to sharpen her shears - and what good will that do anyone? 

he’d made it clear, after all, on her doorstep, bringing with him fate and destiny and disaster. 

grandmother had known better than she had; sighed at the sight of him with that paper thin weariness of a woman who had known the spark of something in maya too early and who had noticed too late that her attempts to reign the girl in were failing. 

maya wasn’t sure who she felt like - wendy following peter pan? alice, falling into the rabbit hole - no, that would have suggested some agency. perhaps persephone, stolen and tempted.  “do you, really?” she asks him, before she turns to face him, hears the echo of his voice in the room, a heaviness, a discordance, as if the air has been so long undisturbed that it trembles with the sonorous ring. how long has he been here alone? “what if i don’t get used to it? what if i don’t want to get used to it? what if i tell you i want to go back, then what? what will you do?” it’s  half a challenge, half a barb and less than half a dream. 

every atom in her rejects this place. she feels weary, more than she should. there’s a strangeness on her skin. when his fingers touch her they burn like ice, frostbite against her skin. she squeezes her eyes shut at the feeling, something sudden. she clenches her jaw against the urge to pull away from that frigid touch, and as if in reward, or in accommodation, he warms against her. this is perhaps worse, and she swallows past the swell of something in her throat. “everything is wrong here.” she tells him, pursing her lips with a pause. “different. different, here.”  

he waits until she turns back towards him, wanting her to see the stupid smile on his lips, before settling himself back down into the chair and shutting his eyes. his answer to her question comes in more of a hum of acknowledgment, accompanied with, “yeah, practicing. not much to practice for this music video really, but. we have lots of performances coming up for this release, so. practice.” he doesn’t delve into his reasoning, because who wants to hear that anyway? instead, he tries to shift the focus, peeks one eye open to look up at her, “why, is it that obvious? are my eyebags making your job harder?” 

with his eyes closed like this he looks his age. she thinks about her older brother, the same age as him, who hardly knows left from right, who just got a tragic haircut, who still posts memes on social media instead of properly curating his feed like she tells him too. who works part time at a pc bang and is still in school, finishing up a business degree he’s getting because it’s the right thing to do. she’s always thought of her brother as stupid but well meaning, immature. she’d always shouldered the emotional burdens for the two of them, tried to keep him from straying too far from the path. 

it’s hard to imagine sunwoo like that. maybe because she sees him at work, as a professional. sees him sharp eyed when he’s scanning the screen to monitor progress, watches him go from half asleep to charisma in the blink of an eye, like he’s taking off the mask of a boy and putting on one of a man. they’re in an in-between age, the two of them. there’s something tenuous to it all. lijae herself hasn’t even managed to get out of her parent’s house yet - probably won’t, on the wages she’s making now, for quite some time. 

celebrities seem like they’re in a different world and she hasn’t even seen the half of it, just the back stages and the quiet corners. it’s strange, to be this close to someone she barely knows, someone who has been places she can only imagine, lived a life she’d never even dreamed of. it’s like he’s from another planet and she doesn’t know how to talk to him, as easy as he makes it seem. 

@galaqsies

this is the first big project that they’ve allowed lijae to help with. up until now, her life as an intern has mostly meant fetching coffee, placing lunch orders, coordinating deliveries (of lunch and product alike) and scheduling. occasionally, she’s allowed to follow the real stylists around as they work. sometimes, she’s been allowed to re-apply the faintest, clearest shades of lip balm or to dust on further setting powder between takes. 

and now, after six months of excruciatingly long hours and back breaking work (often literally, being tasked with hauling the clothes or supplies for hair and makeup around), she’s being allowed to step up to the plate. just a little. an inch forward. but lijae is ambitious, and if given an inch, she’ll take a mile. 

yesterday had been the solo shots and sets, and she had spent a good part of the day staring in awe, having assumed much more of things to be computer generated than was actual. today, she sees immediately why they’re allowing her more freedom on set. it’s set up similar to a sort of dream boy’s backyard, with a foosball table, a huge couch, a dog, some grass, and so forth. the boys are outfitted simply and she’s instructed strictly that the makeup will be the same. fresh, shining, bright. 

they’re kind of already shining, if she thinks about it, but professionalism means that she shouldn’t, even when she’s ushered in front of sunwoo, who’s half asleep in one of the makeup chairs. she feels like she should say something to him like, hi i’m here and i have to put a bunch of layers of paint on your face now. or maybe, do you want a pillow, or maybe, well, anything. but she’s not sure what the protocol is, glances over and sees kiwon fully asleep as someone silently straightens pale pink strands, and she thinks it might be okay to just not talk at all. so, carefully (gently, uncertainly) she tilts his chin with a fingertip, the tip of her brush dragging a coral tint into place. she’s so focused, in the end, on tracing the curve of his lips and avoiding the layers of foundation already carefully applied, that she doesn’t notice wide round eyes fixed on her for a beat too long, startling slightly at sudden wakefulness, fumbling her brush to the floor (god damnit, another thing to sanitize) and scuffing backwards in platformed sandals. “uh, sorry, hi, i’m the training stylist, so - uh  - i’m styling you. i would have said something but i thought you were asleep,” she nods, meaningfully, towards the still unconscious boy beside them.  “i’ll get another brush.” she adds, bobbing down to pick it up and set it aside, trading it out for another. 

@ggcren

one by one, maya watches as men come to marry her sisters. fine men, kind men, men with secrets. one by one, maya watches from the window. 

she’s always been a solitary thing. a creature of wild hair and wilder eyes, a madness that beats beneath her ribs, stuttering to life. she’s always had her head in the clouds, whispered secrets in dark corners, dark eyes seeming to follow something unseen. maya lives in the spaces between the worlds, one foot in and one foot out. 

perhaps this is how it was always meant to be. perhaps this is how he found her, in the end. as if some shining thing in her soul called to his darkness like a beacon. 

when he arrives, crisp and sharp, the memory of crow’s feathers somehow lingering in the absence around him, maya knows in an instant there is more at hand here, more to be seen, than what is presented on the surface. like a glamour, this part of him is one facet of many. 

she makes the mistake of falling into the depth of him that day. 

not that she’d had a choice. 

she wakes in an unfamiliar world. colors different, sounds sharp, the air strange against her skin, and in her solitude, in this wide room with it’s unfamiliar surroundings and the strangeness of the views outside her window, she wonders how she will learn to live like this.