bermuda triangle.

he smiles when she finishes. “one of your songs? that’s great news!” he says, raises his glasses, a playful raise of eyebrows. he smiles warmingly at her, and there’s this part of hyuk who cares deeply for this girl in front of him, this beautiful girl, this brilliant girl. “oh, seriously, you can’t be scared. you’ll rock that stage, you know that. weren’t you number one in that shit fest of a show?” he asks, sighs, as if a sullen thought had just hit him. “there’ll be a swarm of articles about the oh so talented song suran. your company won’t even let you be seen around me, imagine the scandal. the nation’s crush walking around with the rotten poizn member.”

“everything is always that bad,” she corrects. it feels like that lately. she’s never sure what’s up or down anymore. who she is, where she’s doing. with the way the world fell apart around her, she’s just exhausted. it’s been a rollercoaster of insanity. from her.oine and singularity to jawbreaker and kjh. from desperately trying to claw her way up in produce project, to fight for an opportunity she’d already had twice, to compete against people who seemed more interested in tearing her down then building themselves up, to suddenly being withdrawn from the competition, pushed into the public sphere through her group once more. as if she couldn’t have just been focusing on that from the beginning. at least she’s getting some opportunities, here and there. at least.

now, were she being honest she’d admit a lot of her current malaise has more to do with jaewon, jaekyu, and yohan than it does with the state of her career. the career situation doesn’t help, mind you, but there’s a lot going on on a personal level that has her head spinning. she feels like she’s treading water and only just barely. hyuk is a breath of fresh air though, a sliver of calm in her bizarre storm of a life. she likes his new apartment, and the quiet of it, and the solitude. she likes that he feels stable, and safe, for all he extolls himself as a problem child.

she strides past her into the little room, pushes a hand back through her hair, still half styled. she’s still in her stupid stage outfit - but she likes this one better than the girl scout schtick at least. nothing says sexy summer like an eleven year old’s scout uniform right? “why’d you do it, suran? you know i - ” she swallows, shakes her head, stares concentratedly out the window. “we’re supposed to be friends.”

from the beginning of what suran now refers to as The Clusterfuck, aka the Yohan Scenario, people have been treating her like a victim. she thinks it has more to do with jaewon than anything else, more to do with her own demeanor, than what happened. it has more to do with san’s past, too. she thinks. it’s an educated guess. 

and there’s some guilt, if she’s honest. guilt that she lets them, eunju or ellie or san or any of them really, keep on treating her as if she was wronged. she hadn’t necessarily really wanted to get laid. she’d been angry, she’d been upset. but she’d been as involved in it as yohan was. they were both fucked up, in the same sort of way, their patterns for coping with heightened emotional states rewired, strung together wrong, neurons misfiring and impulses coded into the brains incorrectly. but by virtue of biology one is more easily perceived the more aggressive and active participant than the other, and thus suran has found herself coming out of this surprisingly clean. 

not with jaewon, maybe. not at first at least. not with jaekyu, right now. but in general. there’s more of a sympathy for her than she’d expected. when she sees jowi approach, however, she knows that this is going to rapidly dissipate. her stomach drops like she’s just swallowed a boulder whole, freefalling towards the floor. she wants to drag yujin in front of her like a human shield. she grits her teeth. “ah, unnie,” she breathes out uncertainly. “yeah, okay, “ 

IDOLIZE EXCLUSIVE MEME 09.23 - 10.20

Here you go, it’s our second meme! Please keep in mind the standard meme etiquette — reblog to participate, give as much as (more!) than you receive, send to everyone who reblogs, etc. Meme replies are not eligible for activity, but are a great way to think through your muse a bit, or show off some aspects of development you haven’t had a chance to reveal yet.  For every response to a meme questions that is 250+ words, you’re eligible to add +2 EXP to your points page! This does not include duplicate answers to the same prompt, but you’re welcome to answer more than once. 

“if you don’t want it it’s ok,” he says, picks up the key swing it on his index finger. “I’m sure someone else will put the little studio I built you to good use too.”

she never knows what to do with him. with his attention. with the way her head clouds fuzzy around him, the way her tongue ties, the way her heart races. how is she supposed to deal with that? deal with him? she’d looked up to olympus as industry seniors. she’d been a fan, too, though she’d reluctantly admit she hadn’t stanned their sharp eyed rapper. but when he’d plucked her out of the crowd, honed in on her like a hawk spying prey, she’d never stood a chance. she hadn’t even tried to fight. by the time she realized, even a little, that she needed too, it had been too late. he slides her hair from her neck. his breath is warm against her skin and his lips are warmer. it would be comforting. it would be soothing. but sharp teeth close to the canvas of her skin leaves adrenaline in her veins. she thinks of the last time she saw him. of the hand on her, of the silencing, of the fact she ought to hate him for that. ought too, but doesn’t. her teeth catch her lip, bite down. 

get it together, suran, she thinks. he’s not all that. he’s nothing special. and he’s not. the hero worship is gone from her now, long has been. the starry eyed girl fresh on the scene has been replaced with an industry veteran far more jaded, used to clawing her way desperately upwards, used to using every tool in her power to desperately grasp after her dreams. because this is everything to her, this desperate march forward, this path toward the opportunity to create the music she’s always dreamed of, to make herself into  something, someone tailor made to deliver her message to as many people as she can manage. kwon jaewon is both a distraction and perhaps the means to an end. she should know by now that she has to be careful with him. around him. she tries to be. but perhaps the imbalance is too great, because every moment in his presence she falters, that grip on her selfhood loosening, until she’s the same wide eyed rookie she was once. just as stupid. 

“sure, yohan’s great.” he pushes it out, and it sounds like something else. like the words should be ‘i give up,’ but they’re busy masquerading as something more pleasant. he can’t bring himself to be angry. he can’t bring himself to be much of anything. like before, before he got his meds. when he’d get tripped up. when everything he could take as a criticism compounded and left him struggling, before he would just sink into that wash of nothing and loneliness. 

“don’t worry about it, it’s my problem.”

god, she’s too drunk for this conversation, is too fucked up for all of this. for jaekyu in general. she always has been. she might have been someone good once, someone sweet or kind or charming, but instead she’d just ended up fucked in the head. and now she’s driving a wedge between jaekyu and yohan, something that could irreparably damage them, this beautiful thing they have created, a musical and familial symbiosis and fuck is she about to yoko ono atlas at this point? 

not really, but a semi-hysterical girl drunk off her head tends to get carried away. suran’s always been like that, her mind running faster than her mouth can catch up. she’s not one for witty and biting diatribes, not like san or jowi, just a mess of a girl with a mess in her head, so she’s finding herself, now, stammering erratically. she jumps from one point to another, leap frogging over the logical progression of thoughts, and she loses him along the way. 

she can see it in his eyes, how it seems like the light goes out of them - whatever was left of it. leaves them dark and dank. “no, not - he’s not really, he’s just, he’s just a fucking idiot is what he is, and i shouldn’t have - done anything. shouldn’t have let him?” she’s not sure. she remembers the look on eunju’s face when she’d spilled the situation on her lap like word vomit, a secret she couldn’t take back. how eunju had looked so betrayed, and almost disgusted - maybe by her, maybe by yohan. maybe by them both. she wonders if there is really and truly something wrong with her, for reacting to emotional disruption like that - with him, for doing the same. what had the world made of them? 

was it fair to blame the world? other people had horrible pasts and far less fortuitous situations, and here she was acting a fool, as if one corrupted relationship could really do this much damage to a girl. no, she was just as responsible for her own actions as anyone else. she hadn’t said no. she hadn’t even not wanted it. she’d been, at most, thoroughly and completely selfish in how little she’d considered jaekyu at that moment. she could hide behind all the excuses she wanted - a warped template for affection, a disconnected cognitive understanding of how to process anger and hurt, an inability to process emotion. but the truth was, circumstances or no, technicalities aside, she’d been complicit in this. she’d fucked it all up, and for what? and why? 

so he waits before she has looked around the newly furnished apartment before he walks towards her, hands on her shoulders as he leans in, whisper in her ear, “what do you think?” he asks, not giving her enough information. it’s a gift, he wants to say, though it’d be a lie. more like another clause to their contract, another button on her leash. 

another nail to her coffin. 

it’s like walking into the lion’s den. she stands in the elevator until it shuts off, air conditioning quieting and the silence sudden, deadening in the air around her. she hasn’t pushed the button, hopes the doors don’t open, hopes no one calls the elevator up. she doesn’t know what this is, what it’s going to be, what he wants from her. 

she never seems to have an idea of that - didn’t know, doesn’t know, why jaekyu put up with her for so long, with the back and forth, with the up and down. doesn’t know why yohan fucked her when he did, or why she let him. why she encouraged him, baited him even. why she does any of the things she does, she doesn’t know. 

but she figures, she could probably trace a winding road back to him. 

back to kwon jaewon. 

she presses the button. 

the elevator roars to life once more and sends her upwards, up and up, in a safe little muzak box of benign soft jazz, and she thinks she’ll remember this pallid, washed out elevator forever, a story in pastels and missed opportunity and mistakes. the bell dings, she steps out. before she knows better she’s standing in front of the door, keying in the code she’s been given, prompted inside to the unfamiliar interior. it’s new, like the rest of the building. it still smells like paints and plaster and it looks for all the world, a lot like an empty white box. the windows are gigantic, the view of the sprawling city, of the winding han, enough to take her breath away. a second half-floor loft for the bed, shining kitchen. it’s small though, compared to his last place, the opulence of it. it doesn’t suit his style. 

it suits hers. 

yujin keeps her voice low, only wanting suran to hear her as she pulls the older girl closer this time. “just don’t, don’t even think of yourself like that,” yujin whispers. “i’m sorry, i didn’t mean to offend you. maybe that was too much, but i really didn’t mean it, you know.” god, she’s such a bad friend. “i’m sorry, i just, i won’t do it again if you don’t like it.” she probably wouldn’t stop apologizing at this point, but at the same time she wonders if her friend’s okay. is she only like this because of something yujin has said or is there something else that she’s hiding that yujin doesn’t know? she wants to ask, yet it feels like a bad time, so instead she offers a little smile at the older. “you said you wanted some water, come on.” she mutters, already dragging suran by her arm as she starts to walk again. “i’m sorry i messed up, i’ll do better next time.” the last thing she wants is for suran to feel unhappy or upset because of her anyways, so yujin makes a mental note to think first before she talks after this. “are we 

yujin backpedals immediately, but the damage is done. she’d seen the look in her eyes, had heard that earnest edge of “i’m joking, but not quite” and she knows. she knows now, what yujin can think of her- what lurks beneath the surface, just before suran reminds her the jokes are just that: they’re jokes. she’s tired of this conversation already, as she watches yujin widen her eyes and frown, makes a grab for her hand. she pulls it away, half petty and half because her skin is crawling.

because maybe yujin isn’t really wrong.

why does she always cycle back to him, to jaewon, to someone so damaging? maybe she’s not better than that. not that great at all. no wonder she’d ended up ruining things with jaekyu so intensely, so perfectly, such a scorched earth cruelty. “yeah, you say that, but you did. just now. you can’t deny it. it wasn’t all joke and we both know it.” she returns, because if suran is one thing, it’s brutal in her honesty, and they both know the truth of what’s going on here. like it or not, intentional or not, yujin went there, and it’s not something easily taken back. “like i get its something we all like to joke about but...” but yujin took it a step farther, this time, a step too far, and suran’s head is spinning.

“practice more?” he scoffs, looking down at his body as if that gives the tell all on how many hours he’s punched in at the practice room. “i understand it’s difficult for you to praise absolute perfection, so i’ll let the comment go today. i know deep down you mean that i was amazing, spectacular, the best you’ve ever seen. i know,” his hand reaches out to pat her head before grabbing at the water bottle that was offered, the one he chugged down seconds prior already forgotten. “god, it is so hot out there, why the fuck did they have me in denim?” half the bottle is gone before he can finish his sentence, a few drips at the edge of his lips but he lets it cool the torched skin. “but it was fun out there. their energy out there is unmatched. i’ve also never seen so many signs asking for my hand in proposal at once.”  his eyes are lit with amusement, the usual smile gracing his face. “what have you been up to though? besides dodging my calls to catch up during a lunch.”

there are a lot of things that give the impression suran is born for this. she was born into it, after all, which is a big factor. parentage aside, there’s the fact that she was raised into it. nature and nurture coming together to surround her, from infancy, with music equipment. with dancers. with those toeing the line of public and private, with those willing to sacrifice themselves for their dreams. childhood was spent as much backstage or in the crowd at one of her father’s various milestone performances, settled int he crowd at the awards show for a television program she was barely cognizant of being on, knew only through the tents in her house filled with camera men and lenses that appeared every so often, trailed after her and her father as they embarked on various outings. she knew her father and mother’s friends to be visible on television as she clicked through channels, knew that she could find comments from around the world on the photos her father would upload of her. 

she grew up acutely aware of what it was firstly to have a dream and secondly, to lose yourself in it. to fall into the darkness of what it meant to put your heart and soul into your art, to expose yourself on stage like that, to leave yourself vulnerable to a critical public. it was frightening and exhilarating in equal measure. “you’re the best i’ve seen in a few hours at least, “ she determines after a moment of contemplation, cocks her head to the side to grin, a playful expression that dissolves the faux innocent countenance of a moment prior. a hand pats on top of her head and her nose crinkles upwards slightly in reply, brow perking bemused as he snags the offered bottle, drains it in fast gulps, adam’s apple bobbing. “cause trends override comfort,” she sighs out dramatically, lowerlip jutting in plaintive complaint. 

then again, she does feel kind of angry, or at least she thinks so, when she remembers the other half to the equation at hand. “yohan,” she says drunkenly. “yohan, who does he even think he is? - god?” it’s a weak insult but she kind of wants to cry so - forgive her for being a bit childish on the matter.

‘or something” she agrees, mutters it a little bit darkly. she  likes eunju even more in this moment eunju is hardly judgmental, just takes her drunken ramblings in stride and offers her sagelike wisdom, offers her sympathy. she needs that. she needs someone who doesn’t make her feel even worse about herself and her decisions, or the things that just sort of seem to happen to her. she knows that’s not really how it works. she could have stopped yohan. he’s not a monster, he would have backed off if she told him too. but he hadn’t because she hadn’t said anything. hadn’t even tried to say anything, just... welcomed it all. as if she’d wanted it, wanted him, wanted to be so close to ruining her career, wanted to ruin things with her and jaekyu. she hadn’t wanted a bit of any of that, so why on earth had she just fucked him? she’d been stone cold sober,  upset, emotional, volatile. what had she been thinking?

the problem was she had no answer, because she wasn’t consciously aware of the fact that, it turns out, abusive relationships fuck you up whether they realize they were toxic or not. she’d been molded in the shape of that, trained into reacting to stressful moments in that way, had learned to register people angry and in power over her in a certain way. but without significant therapy and self awareness, how was she supposed to figure that out?

“don’t hate him either, though, “ she mumbles, a laugh as the other holds out a finger to link their pinkies and she complies, a widening smile as the other continues by kissing the backs of their hands. reaches over to tousle the other’s hair lightly. “it’s not... it wasn’t anyone’s fault, its just one of those things that happens and then you wonder what the fuck you were thinking, why you let it happen, why you’re such an idiot,” she trails off. pushes herself upright, “etcetera.”

and it’s a fruitless war that he fights because he knows the winning side from the very beginning. 

he kisses her, and she ignites. 

“it’s alright. you can be something with him if you want. it’s not my business.” it sort of is. they’re in the same group. and him and suran seemed like they were on the brink of getting back together. but this is jaekyu’s default, to appease the other party if they’re someone he likes. if they’re someone he considers a friend. it’s a hard habit to shake, it’s one ingrained into him.

“it’s fine.” that’s what jaekyu says. but it isn’t fine. and that’s easy enough to pull from his expression. the slump of his shoulders.

this isn’t right. 

nothing about this is the way it should be. 

jaekyu is radiant smiles. jaekyu is the rumble of a skateboard on rough pavement, jaekyu is the rasp of a laugh through a lungful of smoke. jaekyu is fingers dancing over her sides to make her laugh, jaekyu is callouses and an unexpected softness, a gentle strength restrained. jaekyu is  a tousle of hair flopping into dark eyes. jaekyu is the sparkle of amusement when he watches her. when he thinks she doesn’t notice. jaekyu is remembering the stupid things she doesn’t even remember telling him about, like how he turns up with yuja tea on the coldest days of the year like clockwork, like how he orders in the strawberry bingsoo when the oreo is his favorite. he’s selfless, and he’s sweet, and he’s a damn fool. he’s a river of memes at two in the morning, jittery fingertips that tremble against her skin. he’s energy, more that any one human has the right - or need - to have, he’s distracted and haphazard, he’s a bag half packed but you’re already on the plane. 

he’s not this. he’s not supposed to be. 

there’s a wall behind his eyes. a shutter drawn, windows closed off to her now. there’s a lock at the edge of his lips that stifles anything but the firmest of expressions. there’s something desolate in his features. a pain she didn’t know she could cause him. they’d seemed so casual so often - or at least, she’d wanted it to be that way. did he love her, she thinks? and even if he did, did she deserve it? she knows the answer to both of those questions. first yes, foolishly, stupidly, and second no. is it better to break him now? doesn’t she know she’d have been no good for him, isn’t that why they’ve been on and off and on and off again? 

she breathes out, barely. 

she wants to stop him. she wants to hold him. she doesn’t deserve to do either, doesn’t have the right to it. there’s an angel on her shoulder that tells her to let him go - he deserved better from the start. there’s a devil on her shoulder that tells her she always knew she’d do this. that tells her she’s a sick thing, a ruined thing, a warped thing. 

how funny, that they’d both agree, now. 

and how much funnier still is it that she ignores them both. grabs his wrist. drops it just as quickly as he stops, like it might have burned her. like his skin sensed the impurity o her and rejected the contact. “i don’t want too, i don’t want that -” she protests. the voice doesn’t sound like her. hoarse, and desperate, “i didn’t - “ didn’t what, want any of it? she hadn’t stopped him, had she? hadn’t even shut down, like a victim would. she’d just fucked him, because what else would she have done? because he’d been angry, and what? she didn’t have an answer. she’d done it. she hadn’t wanted to do it. she’d regretted it. but she’d done it. goaded him, grabbed him, fucked him right back. and why? and for what? god.