ERODE.

it’s eerily quiet after the previous bustle of a fantasy city, a few birds chirping and the rustle of leaves in wind the only sounds he hears. that is, until he hears footsteps behind him and he turns quick, alert, confused. when his eyes land on an unfamiliar but unassuming avatar, he breathes, shoulders relaxing. “so, what is this, some sort of weird boss fight? i don’t play this game very often,” he says by way of greeting, half joking, a grin growing on his lips as he tacks on, “but if you’re the type of boss that shows up, maybe i should log on more.” 

saeyi’d stolen away in the middle of her shift, wheedling the other bartender into covering for her for just ten minutes while she ran down to try to placate little cheonsa yet again. only it’s probably made him more panicky, when whatever was holding the vr worlds together suddenly crashes. the world they’re in starts leaking pixels into the air and their avatars lose all sense of orientation, vision blacking out a moment until she finds herself in a completely different world, alone. who knew emotionally unstable vr inventors would make structurally unstable vr worlds? 

this new world is a little similar to the idyllic one she’d been in, albeit ridiculously bright. perhaps its a quirk of all vr world creators, to love nature but only artificially, one where it can be controlled with codes and buttons. she’s actually paid attention to cheonsa’s excited lectures about the worlds and their creation; the crash probably triggered some safety worlds or whatever they were called to ease the load before they’re manually extracted. a small problem: she’s not in a vr cafe, she’s in a secluded backroom of ambrosia. no one’s going to get her out unless she does it herself, and she definitely doesn’t know enough about the odyssey to fix this alone.

if they’re split based on physical proximity in the real world, there probably aren’t a lot of other avatars around, but surely there’s at least someone? it’s lucky the world is smaller; she finds another person after a quick walk around the enclosure, easy smile never faltering even when she sees who it is.

“i know i’m short to begin with,” he huffs, “but all of this feels like…” he runs nervous fingers through his hair, trying not to think about how they’re currently missing their signature light caramel shade. “i feel tiny. insignificant.” helpless.

he only catches onto what he just did when the words are already out, his hand flying down to cover his mouth as if that would prevent him from saying anything else that might damn him down the line.

she’s not really sure why she’s here. yes, they were supposed to meet to map out a plan for their newest assignment, but with the entire city down, that’s pretty much a bust. and yet—here she is at their meeting place, with an equally confused and unhappy jihyun. his need to justify being in the space same would be amusing if she wasn’t mentally doing the same, with the exact same reasons. there’s no trust between them, just a thin tightrope of mutually assured jailtime if either of them were to turn on the other.

ironically, it’s a stronger bond than she has with almost anyone else. the very first person who’d paired them must be smug in their painfully accurate foresight, though the teething period of their partnership certainly had been less than ideal. it’s still the teething period of their partnership, cutting their teeth on blood diamonds and tech even the olympians wouldn’t be able to envision the only way they can stand to be around each other. but he’s a good person to work with, as much as it annoys her to admit; she might even say he’s tolerable on more than half of their jobs.

but they’re not on a job now, just two people trapped by the outage in elysium. jihyun’s bare bones appearance makes him look younger and smaller, wrapped up in clothes too big for him. she can’t remember ever seeing him this way, snark and confidence somehow stripped away along with his modifications. she’s not sure if the nagging feeling just below her ribcage is telling her to exploit this small window of opportunity and get out of their forced partnership, or if it’s telling her to protect him.

“Oh fu-…,” he exclaimed as he went down, scraping the skin of his palms as he went down before lifting up his head to squint at whoever he’d bumped into.

A squint that quickly turned into an affronted glare as he pointed a finger at a horribly familiar figure.

“You!,” he yelled up at Saeyi, completely unmindful of how he looked sprawled on the sidewalk.

she’s just minding her own damn business, the blackout reaching past the late hours of the night where it’s got no business being. it hasn’t been an overall loss, even if she’d made a few missteps along the way. nothing a little bit of her usual tricks can’t fix. maybe she shouldn’t have so ungraciously run away from the entire mess or skip out on an olympian’s wonderfully furnished and not at all operable apartment, but she’s got bigger things to worry about. bigger fish to fry, as they would say.

elysium powered down is a sight she can’t say she’s ever really seen, neon lights and drunken chatter filling the streets even at the latest hour. and life goes on without its neon and electricity, a crush of people still out and about with little care ( or a lot of glee ) for the power outage they’re experiencing. saeyi sidesteps a pair of intoxicated teenagers, shouting and screaming and the stink of alcohol is almost enough to cover up the tell-tale panic as just drunken behaviour. no one really has the capacity yet to pose much of a threat, but she keeps an eye on them as she passes and misses another disaster in the making, walking straight into him.

ugh. fei.

the true tragedy of this power outage is the death of her commslink and by extension, the proximity alert she’s put on fei to warn her when he’s within distance. no such luck now that her modifications are down and so is he, sprawled right in front of her. the smile on her lips is sarcastic when their eyes meet, the sort only he would be familiar with.

“me?” she exclaims, her tone a parody of his offence. saeyi rolls her eyes at his dramatics. “watch where you’re walking,” she adds, then remembers his eye and snorts, voice going sarcastic and amused. “aw, did your eye mods die, so you actually can’t watch where you’re going?” she rolls her eyes, thinks about jihyun’s reaction if she were to just leave fei half-blind and rolls her eyes harder. but it’s not like she could get any unluckier, so she bites out, “do you need. help.”

when she stumbles into her office she sighs. the windows are shut and it feels so stuffy, but she makes her way to the sofa in front of her desk, banging her ankle on the coffee table and cursing. the soft cushions are a relief to her aching body but she barely has a moment to herself. she hears the creak of the door, the hinges shrieking like they’re right next to her ears. when she turns her head, she can’t see, eyes dark. 

the air leaves her chest, heart racing. 

“who’s there?”

the power grid being down means more than just losing their modifications, even if it’s what most of elysium is focused on. the city’s never felt so vulnerable, the sparks it relies on for life missing; a day’s time is all that most elysium natives need to even out the panic with some good old opportunism. that is, now that everything’s down and more importantly, vulnerable, the more aspiring of some of them are going to start picking away at the feast left by the olympians while they worry about their own modifications instead of more important matters. their worlds are built around them and only them, after all; the petty issues that elysium fights to have the luxury of reside in the periphery of their thoughts.

she would never condemn someone for making use of the wonderful opportunities elysium provides when she’s certainly done more than that herself. there’s an admiring in her disdain for the olympians, their ability to absorb almost everything elysium takes from them with barely a moment in their bank accounts. still, unlike her fellow elysium dwellers, her goals are a little more forward thinking than a short lived crack in the system. which is how she finds herself at jooyoung’s doorstep, her current ( mostly ) legal employer of the ambrosia.

but then, so what if she isn’t meant for heaven. who’s to say it’s even a place, right? someone has to do the dirty work, the things no one else will touch, clean up this rotten city in one way or another. and what is a better cleansing than blood? “only you, for now, darling.” she laughs out, leaning against the bar to regard the other with a spark of interest, the lifting of her her brow in an arch over dark eyes. “i wouldn’t ever say no to a favor,” she admits easily enough, “what’d you have in mind?” 

this close, saeyi’s tempted to take back her thoughts about familiarity and allure. jaein never really stops being magnetic; she’s just learnt to guard herself against that attraction. strength slips through the glimmers saeyi is privy to, but she doesn’t think it’s so much a show of intimacy as it is of intimidation. she knows what the other is in the afterlife for, the same way she shares the knowledge of saeyi’s proclivities. they make a pretty pair, one that draws the eyes of quite a few of the club’s patrons. neither of them pay the stares any mind.

their’s a familiar two-step that jaein plays to with a coy laugh and a flirtatious response. “me?” she echoes, raising her glass towards the other woman. “i’d be flattered, but i know what you do.” part of her is curious: she knows the code jaein operates on, wonders exactly what keeps herself separate from the people the other woman goes after. sentimentality? she doubts it’s something as fickle as that.

the running is unconscious. he’s almost out the door before he even realizes. all he knows is that the voice inside of him is telling him to get back home, to get somewhere safe. the word will not accept you for how you are. those words continuously echo in the back of his mind. he just about makes it out of the afterlife before he’s colliding with another body in the street. even when throw off his balance, about to collapse on the floor he tries to pull the hood tighter over his head. there is an apology stuttered out of his lips and in his rush to get away he trips over his own limbs. the fear of being seen overrides his embarrassment and he is almost so desperate to get away that he’ll crawl to do it. he barely even registers the fact that his palms have suffered the brunt of his fall and are now bruised and scrapped. the only worry he has now is that his hood stays on. 

she blinks twice, rapidly, repeats the action like she expects something to have changed within the last five seconds. the interface doesn’t flicker to life. saeyi runs her fingers over the back of her head, feeling the tell tale bump hidden by her hair. everything is eerily silent. she feels off-kilter without the solid assurance of her modifications; it’s been far too long since she’s had to operate entirely on her own. not that she doesn’t have confidence in herself, but she’ll admit she’s gotten used to these tools.

so saeyi cuts her losses and gets out of the afterlife, jinsol’s gaze cutting against her pride. she’s already started to plot a way to retie those loose ends, but just the inklings of a plan are no good without the ability to do some information gathering now that the power’s completely out. returning home and laying low seems like a better idea for now, before she susses out exactly how she can spin this panic into an advantage for herself. this sort of adversity weakens, and one man’s misfortune is another man’s treasure.

someone knocks into her and she can almost feel the sour fear emanating from them, wide panicked eyes meeting hers with a flash of—familiarity? the features are unmistakable through the discoloured marring, enough for her to recognise cheonsa. there’s a sick sense of irony that the pretty pioneer of the vr world would have a face as undeniably tragic as he does, his virtual persona illuminating the reconstruction of some lost vanity. glee bubbles up at the tangible insecurities she sees, solidifying all those assumptions she’d been hoarding to use against the olympian. this is her element, his tell-tale tremble of his hands seeking out something to cling to.

[ ... ]

and finds her only after he’s shivered his way through smoking a cigarette and a half. a semblance of normalcy in the middle of the blatant loss of it. and jinsol’s not too sure he’s keen on that. the way the world’s dimmed. the loss of light. it’s haunting. it’s through an inhale that burns at his lungs that he turns his head and catches sight of her. shifts closer, past small clusters of people streaming in and out of the thankfully-open club. a brief hand on her shoulder to grab at attention before he pulls it back to himself. “dambi,” it’s mumbled around the filter, and he remembers to pluck it free from his lips before he speaks again. “you alright?”” he wonders out. it’s hard to tell where everyone’s at. it’s hard to tell much about anything, currently.

“wonder how long this’ll last…?” is tips up into a question at the end, the same way he tips his head back to stare at the sky. like he’s waiting for everything to flicker back into light based on sheer poetic coincidence.

it does not.

someone touches her shoulder briefly, held back by something as yet not uncovered. her eyes meet his. there’s a cigarette dangling from his fingers, predictable in its mistimed vice; embers burn bright in the dark, dwarfed by the neon of the afterlife. it makes a sorry sight. his words are mumbled out and she can’t tell ( yet ) if it’s his general state of intoxication or a newer state of panic that’s fuelling it. either way—this should be easy, then.

saeyi tilts her head back, closer to his, and grins. “hiya,” she greets, “gimme a sec,” leave him wanting more, right? saeyi taps the stranger she’d been ‘calming’ on the cheek, eyes warm with false concern. “you’ll be okay, yeah?” they cling to her and she pries herself out, smile never budging from her face; they sag against the wall without her to hold them up, saeyi turning to face jinsol and block the stranger behind her. he wouldn’t care, really, about the person she’s just casually cast off—seo dambi breaks hearts, it’s nothing new. but she’d rather not have his focus wander off on something less than savoury. relative to whatever wickedness the afterlife has to offer, that is.

“yeah, i’m good,” she says, shrugging with a nonchalance she doesn’t feel. her lips tilt with mirth, nodding to the pulsating energy of the club. “does it really matter when we’ve got this?” it’s strangely tiring to be someone as empty as her party girl persona is, her entire being a vivid affair of shallow desires. she knows jinsol must run deeper than that, must have something more to him than mindless parties and trust issues. flashes of it peek out every so often, not enough for her to pretend she’s just an observant friend. but the world they share is bereft of value and jinsol is still mostly a closed book, save the obvious. it is, after all, why she’s out here with him. perhaps a moment of vulnerability will do him some good.

[ ... ]

so she pushes towards the table instead, fumbling a grin towards the bartender and a smile on her lips as she requests a drink, adds it to the ever growing tab, and turns to survey the crowd, which seems intent on pressing in closer around her by the second. after a few sips of the liquid she’s got a friendlier disposition to her, perhaps disregarding her hunt for the time being, and she turns to a nearby figure, brow arcing as she lifts a drink in salute. “what a fucking night, right?” her head shakes, dark tresses shifting with the movement. “who knew a blackout would get the party going like this, huh?” 

she’s getting a little tipsy, because that’s really the only way to deal with having been stuck in a vr world with your non-worst enemy for the better part of two hours. nothing against gun, or his absolutely comical face when they finally got out and he figured out who she was. the afterlife is just better, and it’s a lot easier to pretend to be a drunk party girl when you’re actually sort of drunk. saeyi spins around on her bar stool answering messages as her many aliases, nursing the long island tea to get through the excessive exclamation marks and poor spelling of her inebriated marks. it seems the weak willed are prone to both gullibility and panic; all the better for her, then.

someone steps up to the bar, velvet and crimson and too familiar to be properly alluring. saeyi downs the rest of her cocktail and moves into her space. “cranberry vodka,” she tells the bartender, and grins up at jaein. “on her.” there are probably rules to being a bartender that say, don’t choose the lamest drink on the menu, but she’s not working right now. well—not working in a ‘gainful employment’ kind of way, anyway. her after hours activities are separate from her bartending. somewhat. saeyi grins and loops an arm around jaein’s, leaning her chin on the taller girl’s shoulder while she waits for her drink. “hi, pretty,” she teases, “come here often?”

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