false realities

low activity multimuse blog, written by erin ( she / her, 21+ ). all characters featured here are original characters. this blog is selective and will only be interacting with mutuals! please take the time to read through my guidelines before following and interacting.

important note — please always like or reblog from source! will softblock if not.

…

“i miss you even when you’re standing right in front of me,” he answers almost belatedly. eyebrows pushing together as if to say he wishes he never missed her. jaw pulling tight as his stare falls on her lips as if to say if i could just show you how much i miss you now. what he wants to do is hold her and kiss her and say he’s sorry, but that feels dishonest. and he’s trying to learn how to be honest in a real way that will mean something ten years down the line. so, what he does is stay a frigid ten centimeters away, and what he says is, “but i’m not the only who fucked up here.”

love and heartbreak are false binaries, she has come to learn. more often than not you’re snarled up in one single entanglement than standing firm in the clear-cut distinctions of affection and hatred. and as much as sujeong has let herself falter in the inexactitude of the former with hyun, she’s still her father’s child, still a sharpened blade even if sheathed. so she moves with an acerbity that can only be driven by the wish to injure, to cut deep and wound, when she scoffs at his words and diverts her gaze upwards instead of letting the building tears fall. “do you really want to talk about being given away? if you were more than happy to forget about me the moment you came across someone whose smile looked just the least bit like mine if you squint hard enough, what did i mean to you?”

she thinks about the rise and fall of his breath against her cheek in the dark of the night, the rise and fall of her own heartbeat to match his steadied pace when he falls asleep first, how everything felt so compelling that even time would come to a standstill before it. and then, how these parallels can be so mocking—because it’s the same rise and fall in the way they fall apart, come back together, only to eventually crash again. when you render yourself in this sorry spectacle over and over again, justifying the unending disintegration of this reverie as some sort of tribulation because these things never come easy, what do you call it—love, or sheer stupidity?

right now she’s leaning towards the latter.

hyun sujeong might have been born a ruined thing, having learnt that the way to survival was staying on the offensive. so even when she loses herself temporarily in a forlorn trail of her gaze slipping towards his lips because unconscious mirroring betrays her attentiveness to his every darned move, and because she’s taken a step closer to him, fire coils in her like a viper poised to strike. up this close, he’s familiar, like someone she used to love—only colder. “careful now,” her eyes narrow into slits. “don’t you dare try to tell me that i should play the villain for your mistakes.”

because sujeong knows—if she’s not careful enough, it’ll be far too easy to give away the secret she has guarded so closely in these moments of fight or flight: she does have a heart, and every fragment of it belongs unequivocally to him. “so tell me again, where did i go wrong?” she starts, except this time it ends with a subtle crack in her voice, a subtle crack in her facade pointing to the choked honesty behind her question. this time, there’s some candour peeking through, “and if this is another one of those sick twisted games you play, where you somehow get me to believe that you cared for me in any capacity, where you keep me endlessly twirling in circles around you, i’m not interested.”

…

“listen.” his eyes dart to the closed door of the kitchen and the peals of laughter coming from the living room before finally resting on her again. hanbin isn’t really the grinch that stole christmas but he’s not in the mood to dampen whatever festive spirit the house has been enriched in either. partially because the noh family’s never done anything less than treat him like their own son. partially because he thinks yeonjung still has a gun. “you’re the one that left us in this mess, but you’re the one that’s going to give it away if you’re gonna fuckin’ glare at me like that the entire night. everyone in your family has eyes, and they can use them.”

he kisses his teeth, letting that hang in the air for a few beats of silence before he sighs again. “c’mon. we need to enter together, at least.”

—

the force in his tone is at once both infuriating and captivating. meeting hanbin’s gaze head-on with a raised chin and a stubborn glint, yeonjung has all the intention to portray herself as the very embodiment of firmness. but really, what it comes across as is childish. because really, the truth is that she doesn’t know how to act around him anymore. she doesn’t know how to make of the way she still holds her breath in waiting to hear his voice, some sort of malignant prickling piercing through skin and reaching beneath her bones with an intensity only he could elicit from her resolute heart.

then, it comes—antagonism, returned two-folds. there’s a pang of something eating away at her, choking her up like she’s blindsided and caught unaware in a tidal wave, pulled ten feet under. one harsh slap of reality, and she’s second-guessing.

yet still, she refuses to lose. “and i didn’t know you were such an ass. or did i?” her words sharpened by sleepless nights spent revisiting decayed memories piled up one after another, it’s resentment. it’s the voice of all her unanswered questions through the years. “you don’t get to act like you’re the saint here,” yeonjung’s pointed tone doesn’t falter, and it comes out unfriendly through gritted teeth. she can’t pull her gaze away from him, so she settles with rolling her eyes instead, rounding off with a final, curt rebuttal, “don’t tell me what to do.”

in hindsight, hanbin had always been a random variable, a wild card she never could have foreseen within the neat boundaries of her carefully structured existence. all over her callow heart, he left his imprint in his usual laidback ways at the tender age of sixteen. ( or should she call it irresponsible? ) yeonjung was never adept at making friends, and he was all she had—until she realised she might not have been all too good at keeping people in her life, too. a frustrated grunt wrangles through her throat, her fingers rubbing at her temples.

yeonjung doesn’t quite know what to do with her hands, and so when she reaches out a hand to grab his, it’s purely out of habit. almost instinctual. ( she doesn’t acknowledge it, not even to herself, but it steadies her. ) with a resigned sigh, she relents, “we’ll hurry, get dinner over and done with, then come up with some excuse to leave. it’ll take an hour, or like, two at the most.” like this, she drags them both towards the dining table, her fingers wrapped around his like she’s clinging to a lifeboat.

“look who came,” she announces their arrival in a sing-song voice. “i know i said he wasn’t going to come, but he actually made it.” she tapers off with a smile forced into her cheeks, and yeonjung feels yet another eye-roll incoming, this time at her own acutely unnatural acting. and like this, with an uneasy glance back towards hanbin, she tries to convince herself that this is all only a pretense. nothing more, nothing less.

&. 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫! for @primrcsies​​​​​

for there was only one ( 🛏  bed ) jung junho  ›  baek sohee

—-

junho has never gone camping before. and it sounded fun when the band talked about it weeks prior—a teambuilding activity, something useful to spend some of their gig money on. but their cheap rental van’s tire blew out on the way and they’d spent the better part of the afternoon stuck on the side of a highway. and it rained the day before, so they had to huddle their tents together on what little dry patch of soil remained on the campsite. and junho has never put together a tent before. he’s drenched with sweat and sore everywhere by dusk. the water pressure in the single working shower leaves too much to be desired and provides little comfort. but he hurries back, hair still dripping wet. because they’re still in the middle of a forest and he doesn’t want to leave his tent-mate alone any more than he wants to stay alone in the shower.

when he gets back to the group’s little slice of paradise, he sees that—mosquitos abound—everyone has zipped themselves up in their makeshift homes. “hey,” junho greets with a smile, head ducked as he enters the small tent. he diligently zips it closed behind him. “oh,” he says upon seeing an unzipped sleeping bag laid across the floor like a makeshift mattress. “no, it’s okay, don’t unzip it—they said it gets really cold at night. i have a really thick blanket so i’ll be fine,” he says, suddenly very aware of how small the space and how deep the night. the lucky stars that allowed him to pick her name from the lots they drew to decide partners shining brightly up above.

—

she loses him midway through his statement, caught up in this unfounded awkwardness festering in the apertures within conversation, the lines-in-between she misses. “i think it’s big enough for us to share,” her voice isn’t much more than a whisper, though it resonates with clarity within these narrow confines. and maybe there’s something to be said about letting yourself go, following your heart and all that crap, but sohee wouldn’t have known what liberation meant if it stared her square in the face. her lips move entirely too fast for her mind to catch up with, and she remains none the wiser to the underlying currents of emotion driving her unfound bravery, “and i’ve got a motive.” she meets his gaze with a sheepish smile. “i think i forgot to bring a blanket. if we share this, can we share that blanket you’ve got too?”

all his life, he’s spent running after her. and just as he thinks he has finally caught up to her, he’s running again. going in circles, trying to figure out what’s wrong because there’s something wrong. his eyes follow her as she walks across the room—so caught up in her that he doesn’t even look at the bright shining moon.

but she says his name and hyun looks away. he moves to his luggage and starts aimlessly unpacking. unzipping empty zippers, looking for nothing. “yeah?” he says, a half-hearted attempt at sounding surprised because he doesn’t have the heart to really lie. he doesn’t think he sounds convincing at all.

where he never unpacks his luggage, now, he starts stacking his clothes on top of the dresser. his back to her, because he really doesn’t think he can even look at her. “did you talk to him?”

—​

around and around, she spins herself dizzy in this slow dance of deceit. sujeong feels like she’s six all over again, on a carousel with her motion sickness and her insides churning with violent nausea. only this time, there’s a cruel twist: the ride seems to restart every time she thinks it’s nearing the end. the dread hits, such a near and dear old acquaintance, coiling itself in dead knots all around her guts. sujeong keeps her gaze locked upon him, following his every move. and sometimes she thinks she must have been a fool, to think that she could inch this close to the radiance of a blazing wildfire like hyun and not burn.

so here she stands, engulfed in his scalding grasp once more, ever the willing martyr to their entanglement. and maybe only ice cold apathy could douse this pyre of bad faith they’re circling. sujeong shoots him a cold smile as she answers, her tone light as if merely discussing the weather, “i did, yeah, we talked a little. i don’t know if you can call it a catch up?” she sits herself down on the bed, arming up with comfort for the long night she could now see ahead. “you know him, he’s not always the most forthcoming, especially not with me.”

there’s a kind of wretched emptiness that swallows her up from within whenever she does this with him. the careful savoring of words like a slow, insidious poison upon the tongue is familiar, like a choreographed dance she has long memorised. yet still, with all the rawness of a performer forced into a ceremonial staging, it never stops feeling foreign. and every time she breathes a little too deeply, takes a step forward too clumsily, it tightens like a noose around her neck.

it’s a painful reminder that she should never have let him—or anyone—close enough for it to hurt, and a cruel testament to the indelible marks of her upbringing that will forever cling to her being. because even with the people she loved the most, she would always be bound to this unrelenting game of wits. with practiced precision, she ties her words together carefully, “i realise i’ve never really asked you about this before. when was the last time you spoke to yoojung?” and like this, sujeong slips herself back into a practiced veneer of composure so easily, it would disgust even herself, if only she had the breathing space to pause and observe her own facade.

from letting so many things slip through his fingers, this is what hyun has learned. lose something you love too many times and you’ll learn to miss anything before its gone. you’ll learn every medium to make something live forever. memories aren’t enough. he needs to put memories to music, to picture, to moving images, to a piece of it in a frame or a glass box or plated in gold. he knows he’ll never forget this, but he also knows he’ll never remember it well enough.

how perfect she is in the moment—his dream girl come alive, everything he has ever wanted in the flesh. greed rushes to his head as fast as blood rushes the opposite direction. he goes where he’s led, takes what he’s given. hyun curls his fingers tight around supple flesh, wrist aching with restraint and mind running with everything he wants to do but can’t. as his other hand drags her skirt further up her thighs, he hums a frustrated groan, kept low by an imperative need to keep quiet. without apology and without shame, he’s consumed by the thought of what they’re doing—the tiny space, the surface-tension silence constantly threatening to break, just one lost stranger taking a wrong turn away from getting caught, it’s so exciting. without thinking, desperate for any amount of relief, hyun reaches for the buckle of his belt.

half the thrill is the challenge. the danger and the risk.

( ... )

—

restraint and moderation come easy. it’s what she’s been trained for her entire life, after all. a slow turn of her head, a deliberate gaze, a steady tenderness in her stride, it’s all drilled into her—and sujeong never steps one inch out of line. yet with hyun, in this gray area of an in-between, it’s always a rush. a hurried tug at his tousled hair clutched between her fist, their limbs entangled, and that unruly flood through her veins. past the ignited flame she feels in the ache within her guts and past the unutterable thirst in the sound of their breathing growing increasingly laboured, she sees the shreds of their past, all the broken fragments of time they’ve come to lose and would never get back. sujeong sees this all with enough clarity that every waking moment by his side becomes a reminder to make up for lost time; she doesn’t want a single second to go to waste.

( in this world, you pick your poison, she’d often heard her mother say. ) ( she picks him. )

for there was only one ( 🛎  hotel room ) cha hyun  ›  hyun sujeong

—-

the door locking shut echoes loud against the silence. “they don’t have any extra rooms. or beds,” hyun says in an awkward monotone. and still, there’s nothing but silence. shoes shuffling across the room, clothes ruffling as they’re unpacked. pins falling all across the floor. he busies himself with emptying his suitcase. between the weather and sujeong’s shoulder and forgetting to pack a puffer, hyun can feel his fingers freezing off. he thinks, whoever decided the reunion should be a week-long mt. fuji ski trip was out of their mind. he thinks, whatever he did to make her upset definitely wasn’t worth it. he thinks, he can’t remember if he did something or if she did or who was upset first or if it even matters. he exhales loudly, trying to breathe the heaviness out of his chest before it triggers an asthma attack. the way he sees it—this could go one of two ways.

hyun walks to her and, from behind, slides gentle hands down her arms until his hands lay atop hers. his chest to her back, his chin on her shoulder, he tightens his arms around her. “please say something,” he says, voice raspy with tiredness and cracked with hope. “i’m sorry,” he says, equal parts sincere and clueless.

—

really, it’s not so much his fault as it is the universe’s. and with that in mind, she reaches out with the metaphorical olive branch, “no, i’m sorry.” but it’s as sincere as baiting a hook gets. forced within these tight circles they run in, and the game of wiles is binding, even with the ones you’re supposed to love the most. “i didn’t mean to be cold. i’m caught up in my head, i guess,” she makes a vague gesture at her temples, heaving a sigh. it’s some semblance of truth peeking through, and maybe hyun deserves this much.

because just the last time they were with each other like this, they’d been laughing, his voice in her ears delicate and her cheeks tinted champagne pink. it’d been all-consuming, like witnessing the full moon in its entire glow, him with that illuminating gaze behind his streaks of golden hair. tonight too, the moon makes its presence known. sujeong moves to draw the curtains open, and their room is dappled in the shafts of pale moonlight. that’s the charm of the crescent moon, this perfect balance of obscurity keeping spectators shrouded in its beauty, all while keeping its halved darkness masked.

“i just couldn’t stop thinking about this one thing that happened the other day,” hyun sujeong is a creature of habit, and she’s always found clarity in hyun. she’s always found herself leaning on the soft cadence of his voice when the world, with all its reproval, grew too loud. so naturally, that’s what she tries to seek out tonight, too. “i saw yoojung at the airport. can you believe it?” her tone bleeds ignorance, but the sharpness in her questioning gaze gives it away. this is it—she’s baiting a hook, guised beneath the illusion of a trivial question.

...

“Sujeong,” he walks toward her then, one hand reaching for her wrist to pull them closer together, his voice hushed with proximity like a shelter. “I respect how you feel, but we’re in public. If you wanted to confront me for years you’ve misconstrued, you should do that in a way where you’re asking a question I can actually answer, versus accusing me of something you have no idea about. How can you say that?” He flinches, his emotions prevailing where he meant to suppress them. “That you started thinking I wasn’t real? I’m your brother. I practically raised you. What—?”

at his tone, she flinches like it’s muscle memory, like it’s an innately learned response. recognition is a slow unfurling, recollection dawning on her with every dreadful pound of her heart in her ears—this distinctive sound of his inflection rising in anger, she’s heard it before. and that steely gaze piercing through her, she’s seen it before. this ache that settles in her chest, she’s felt it before.

yoojung was always said to look most like their father. sujeong thinks she finally sees it now.

these elapsed years in the spaces between, and she’s spent them all dreaming up a moment just like this. in her wildest fantasies, this was going to be some sort of brilliant reunion, a vignette flashback of their childhood memories playing in the back of her mind. sujeong had never once expected it to unfold quite this way. everything muddled beneath this sense of overfamiliarity, and she finds herself wondering—would it have been better if her brother had changed beyond the point of recognition?

because all this time, she had been content to think of it as exactly that—him, as an out-of-reach dream. all those lazy summers lounging in the backyard, late-night ice-cream runs away from their screaming parents, everything. every memory that made yoojung real had been condensed into that faded polaroid of them by the pool, tucked deep inside a box of his old clothes, which was then swiftly left to collect dust in a quiet corner of the house.

she’d imagined this moment to feel a little more rousing.

instead, what it feels like is asphyxiation. the hallways shifting into a labyrinth closing in around her, this is betrayal that bides its time, lying low in a place of familiarity for that element of surprise. and if she’d allowed herself a moment to pause and think about it all, then it might hit her how disconcerting all of this is. not so much what’s left unresolved between them, because she’s used to having her questions dismissed and left unanswered. rather, it’s the way this twisting pain feels strangely intimate, because too many things in her life have been this way.

but if there’s one thing sujeong knows best to do when the make-believe walls she builds around herself begins falling into decay, it’s to retreat.

she recoils from his hand around her wrist, and it’s her way of refusing to give in, her retreating steps once again stretching out the gap between them. the more he pulls her closer, the more she wants to step away, because this is exactly the kind of silent rebellion she’d learnt growing up in a house as chillingly noiseless as theirs had been. she feels like she’s ten all over again, caught by their father in the midst of a tantrum. “raised me?” she scoffs in disbelief. “what does that even mean, yoojung? what does that mean to you? because the last i remember, you left,” the moisture builds in her eyes, and she feels her mouth going dry, her throat closing up.

“you left without even saying goodbye, and you never looked back. you—” she forces herself to continue, pushes the words forth until her voice breaks and a single tear rolls down her ashen cheeks. sujeong swipes away at it forcefully, that much more infuriated by the way her slumped shoulders rendering her posture a rough caricature of the grace drilled into her bones. “you’ve never even called or texted to ask about me! and me, i never stopped asking mum and dad about you in the weeks after you left. wait, what do you mean—” only mid-sentence into her ramble does she fully come to process what yoojung said. “hyun? are you saying he knew—?”

...

he wants to compliment her white coat.

a nurse passes by. il calls her attention. she jumps at the sight of him, gives him a quick judgey once over, then plasters a warm smile onto her face. ‘what is it dear?’ she asks. he says, ‘that doctor i was talking to, young girl with silky brown hair and poreless skin, is she coming back here?’

the nurse’s stare turns cautious, intimidated by the glint of the light against the metal in his tongue maybe, though she tries to hide it. ‘dr. ahn should be back in a moment with news about your friend,’ she says curtly, before shuffling away.

‘thank you,’ il calls after her though she doesn’t care for it. he sits back in his chair and intertwines his fingers, sets them upon his lap as if he has lounged here his whole life. he settles in and waits, ever patient.

—

life always has a perfectly dreadful way of coming full circle━or rather, as miyeon would probably put it, a perfectly dreadful way of throwing a curveball full of shit right in your face. so maybe this is a stroke of bad luck, karma in the worst form, or maybe it’s kismet. maybe there are actually astral influences at work here and it was just always written in the stars, that their twisted fate would one day lead them both up to this inescapable moment of running into each other at the worst possible time.

because what were the goddamned odds, right? that even in the small town of gosan, they’ve only ever seen each other in passing since il’s return. yet here they stand, forced to confront each other and at her workplace, no less. and miyeon thought she’d been smart to flee this far from her hometown. turns out the moment you start running, you never stop—because this is what’s at stake. because what’s chasing you is the inescapable past. how do you outrun that? how do you continue to hide when it’s shown up and it’s now sitting right there, less than ten meters away from you?

and now she’s fiddling with her fingers, back against the wall, mind running a mile a minute as she tries to sprint her way towards some kind of answer. miyeon only snaps out of it when she feels a hand on her shoulder, soon followed by the head nurse’s voice in her ears asking if she’s okay. she steadies herself with a firm nod of her head and a dismissive wave. then, she repeats a statement over and over in her mind: this is not gosan. like a mantra to clear her scattered thoughts, and she swallows with it, hard enough to push back down the fear rising in her throat as she makes the decision to face up to it, rise up to the challenge, whatever.

ahn miyeon decides that this is her showing the professionalism she’s always been told she lacks. because what better way is there to show that your bedside manners aren’t as terrible as everyone says than to have a decent, professional conversation with the ex-boyfriend you stabbed in the back, right? right. so she finally turns the corner, and time stands still when their gazes meet across the room. she’s walking towards him, she knows because the walls pass her by in her peripheral vision, but she can barely feel the movement of her feet. time stands still when she draws closer to him, and there’s a thrumming in her ears, the nervous beat of her heart.

every bit of training hurled into an abyss in her consciousness now, miyeon finds herself tongue-tied for the first time. and she tries to tell herself to see him for what he is in this moment—a patient’s loved one, but she doesn’t know how to. the only thing she does know, with certainty, is that she owes him an apology. and she swears it’s on the tip of her tongue, this close to rolling off it, the words “i’m sorry” like a flash flood just waiting to surge forward. but the urge dissipates just as abruptly as it had emerged when he turns his head and catches sight of her, and she’s forced to actually take the few steps left between them, to close the gap that had been a protective bubble for those seconds in which she’d debated turning around to run away.

“that was a lot of blood, wasn’t it? it’s… long time no see. i meant, uh━it’s good to see you.” god, so much for being professional. she’s this close to scoffing at her own lack of ability to form a coherent sentence, or even hold il’s gaze. “your friend is doing fine—or rather, he’ll be fine?” fuck, if any of the attendings were hearing this, she’s pretty sure she’d be this close to losing her job right here and now. “i just mean to say, they’re patching him up right now, so you don’t have to worry too much.” sheer willpower keeps her from slapping herself, or from just slinking away into the on-call room and spending the remainder of her work shift holed up in there.

every second with her feels like the first time. every moment with her is that single moment all of his addictions are about getting back to. she’s the first time that no subsequent time is ever as good as. and he’s no churchgoer or god-fearing believer, but he imagines this is what it feels like being in a confessional. this being pulled into the dark, this getting drawn away from the crowd. this being swallowed by silence.

this waiting. this praying for release, this hoping for redemption.

“y-yeah, imagine—” he laughs, the choked sound in his throat caught between awkward and unsure and wanting. he’s distracted with gauging, trying to figure her out as thoughtless steps kiss her shadow. suddenly, he feels breathless, like he’s been running for miles.

they turn a dead-end, a corner in the room farthest from the stairs, and he takes the chance for a break. when he reaches for her hips, he feels as if he has finally caught up to her. they’ve walked only a few steps, but there’s a pleading in his eyes, like he’s asking her to stop. just a second. pause. for a breath. 

a second passes and it’s not enough, and so hyun puts his other hand on the other side of her waist. he pins her ever so gently against a wall painted over with the shadow of a display case set in front of it. here, where the light can’t reach them, it almost feels like they’ve sunk to the bottom of the ocean. pulled each other there. here, he has to take deeper breaths. here, it’s too dark to think. all it takes is his gaze falling to her lips, and hyun can’t help himself—he crushes their lips together in a kiss.

this is that first time. that first kiss, that first breath of air. this is that single moment all of his addictions are about getting back to. this is the first time that no subsequent time is ever as good as.

and he kisses her over and over until his lungs burn for air. hyun pulls away and drops his mouth to her neck. one arm circling her waist, free hand dragging up her thigh until he’s hiking up her skirt. “this is what you wanted, right?” he says, voice dangerously low—almost someone else. but he’s the same boy who can’t seem to get tired of telling her he loves her, and it’s in the way his hand stops wandering, like he’s asking for permission.

hyun pulls away a painful inch—to look at her, like he’ll wait to hear her say it.

( his heart completely melted by the sight of her, it takes all of him not to ruin the moment with a million gentle professions of love. )

starved for his touch even though she had already been holding on to his hand so tightly for twelve hours, any sense of sujeong’s rationality had already been cast aside at the gates of the louvre. by now, she’s surrendered full rein to the heat gradually rising deep within, no longer able to hold herself back when his lips falling upon hers is an all too welcome reminder of just how far he can bring her. the beat of her heart hammers louder and louder against the low rumble in his voice, and it’s so loud in her ears that she swears it’s echoing in the emptiness of the space around them.

everything darkened in this corner, everything closing in around them, soft hums leaving her parted lips are the only sounds she can afford to make when she leans into his kisses, into his touch against her bare skin, everything about him all consuming to the point of disregard for reality. this is cha hyun, always two steps ahead of her in the cat-and-mouse game they play. and this time, sujeong can no longer bear to deny herself of him—hailing the white flag now, she’s all too willing to let herself be caught, all too willing to tangle herself up in him once more. sujeong’s eyes flutter shut as she gives in, and her head instinctively leans back to expose more of her neck, more of herself to him.

when she finally finds the strength to push a word past the weight lodged inside her throat, her voice is barely louder than a breath, “more.” but it’s just enough in the silence that surrounds them. “i want more,” in her winding consciousness, her hands speak up for her too, one reaching out for his to guide it further until she feels his fingers dangerously close and hooking around the white lace of her thong, another slowly wandering his chest. she trails along his jawline with tender kisses, stopping just shy of his earlobe when she leans in closer and grazes her teeth along it. “what about you, hyun?” fingers now wrapping around the nape of his neck, there’s a slight tremble in her voice, and all the yearning that’s been slowly swelling beneath her facade of detachment threatens to brim over in this very moment.

—    ›    for @primrcsies​

i’ll try all i can to find a soft place to land ( i’m holding a heart here in my hand ) sabrina with sujeong

from the wreckage of her life, this is what she decides to salvage: perfect wavy hair down to her waist, fresh new auburn dye job, black cocktail dress that hugs her like a second skin. this is what she decides she can’t lose in the fire: impeccable red-manicured nails, expensive red lipstick, posture made perfect by black louboutins. sitting at the bar, holding herself back from waterboard-death by martini, she’s a monument to all the values the old money philanthropists of this night’s charity dinner hold dear. to sitting still when all you want is to melt into the floor and disappear. to showing up no matter what, even while you’re busy trying to dig yourself out of your own shame and humiliation.

the end came so fast, she wasn’t sure what had happened until it was in the newspapers the next day: Park’s daughter, fiancé break up. (that very weekend: Park announces campaign;  daughter’s engagement.)

no one cares that you’ve been bled dry when you’re dripping with this much residue of wealth and free time. from the remains of a love she tried to build, torched by the very person she thought she’d spend the rest of her life with, this is what she decides to save: some old, powerful family’s hundred-year-old heirloom. a diamond so big you can see it from space, so old it predates the stars. a promise so everlasting, it has spanned generations.

histories and traditions she still thinks can keep her safe. insulate her, forever. she wraps herself up in all of it as if anything can keep her warm. staring at the rock on her finger, she’s not lost in thought. just lost.

someone tries to take the barstool next to her and sabrina swats them away with a tap to the arm and a dismissive wave of the hand. “i’m waiting for my friend,” she tells them. they look at her, offended. “shoo!” she rephrases, wiping the hand she’d touched them with on her skirt. they scoff, and leave.

stressed out by any amount of confrontation, sabrina picks up her drink and takes a much-needed sip.

within the confines of her head, it made sense. treading water to keep herself afloat all this time, sujeong has long grown accustomed to making her way through life with blinders on. and so within the confines of this mind-numbing escapism in which she keeps her eyes shut and the world ceases to exist, it made sense to run at the first sight of trouble. at any sight of trouble. the coming of age films make it seem easy, like an earth-shattering awakening thrusts you into some higher level of consciousness. in reality, it creeps up. in reality, it’s all just paralysing at best—so in the face of agony, of heartache she never had the stomach to deal with, what she does is she takes flight the moment first light come around.

the thing she fails to take into account is, in reality, the protagonist and the antagonist are indistinguishable roles. because in her story, she rationalizes it all well enough, justifying the heedlessness in wiping her presence off the face of the earth, jumping on whichever flight and whichever shift she finds available. but she returns to find that in sabrina’s story, this scene is painted with over a hundred missed calls and at least a few hundred more texts, all having gone unanswered. reality is quicksand trawling her further into the mayhem the more she tries to fight against it.

“heard you were waiting for a friend,” sujeong sidles up to sabrina’s side, sitting herself down on the barstool, and her fingers move quick to signal at the bartender for a drink, not wanting to waste more time than she already has over the past few weeks. “took me a while, sorry. there was traffic?” a little lift of her shoulders, and there’s a sheepish smile to follow her attempt at a wisecrack, at easing the tension she knows will definitely be soon to come. but really, it’s not like any amount of apology or superfluous jokes can negate the way she’d forgone her best friend all for a stopgap getaway, a temporary one-way ticket out of life.

so she swaps it around with some bit of sincerity, too. “but i’ve got tonight all freed up for you, and i’m here with my feet on the ground and everything. humor me?” and she raises her glass mid-air, as if it was a peace offering, because everyone knows cheers is synonymous with i’m sorry.

...

already, he feels restless. a flight attendant passes by, asking champagne or caviar. “yes,” hyun replies, raising two fingers and giving her a smile. universal sign language for two please. this is someone who has flown first class his entire life. “thank you,” he says. this is someone who has had to be polite for most of his life. and every time the same attendant walks by with the same question, he gives her the same reply. 

“you know,” he turns to sujeong, mind wandering. really, all he can think of is her. “i’ve never actually been on a flight you were on. i mean, when you’re at work.” there’s endearment in his eyes—the kind that comes naturally to people who are too far gone. three flutes of champagne ease his nerves, turn him back to comfortable and playful. “should i get on one sometime?” his voice lilts low, and the corner of his lip upturns, like he’s teasing her. there’s reminisce in his eyes, like he’s remembering how she looked the last time he saw her, “you look good in uniform."  

or maybe nostalgia, like he’s missing her even when she’s right next to him. or maybe sentiment, like he’s thinking of her even when he’s not thinking at all.

what strikes sujeong in the moment is that the only kind of love she has ever known is the taste of raw honey against the sharpened edge of a blade. that’s her mother smiling and cooing at her in the cot, except her sole intent is to show her off to the other housewives that have come for brunch—so that they can say, oh, what beautiful eyes she has! that’s her father reminding her to doll up for the dinner events, only to act as if she’s invisible when they’re seated at the table. ( yes, he’s actually forgotten to introduce her on more than just a few occasions. ) that’s falling asleep next to the boy of her dreams, all wrapped up in his arms as his gentle, resonant voice whispers all the lies she’s ever wanted to hear, only for him to have seemingly clean forgotten her for another girl’s embrace the next.

still, all of that becomes easy to disregard when she’s with him again like this. whatever it is, the atrocities of this world spinning around them or every single way in which he has hurt her, everything grows faint at the edges, everything pushed into the peripheral of her mind when she throws herself into the furnace once more and his face is all that matters. an innate taste for pain guised as passion, and hyun becomes a dagger she ungrudgingly plunges into her guts and twists inside herself. deeper and deeper still, even with her bare hands smeared in the vermillion red of blood; maybe that’s just the kind of love she’s only ever known.

so yes, she decides—she loves him. she loves him in a way she never has with anyone else before, in a way that’s so intricately tied to whatever warped semblance of self-identity she’s got left.

yet the matter of the fact is she just can’t bring herself to tell him that again just yet, can’t bring herself to utter the words which sound this wretched to her own ears. so her fingers run tenderly over his cheekbones, gentle as to be almost imperceptible, right where the sun hits from beyond the window to her left, and she decides—this will do it for her, the light her mangled soul could never have the ability to summon will do it for her. “if you ask nicely enough, maybe someday i’ll wear it just for you,” her free hand now moving to wrap around the stem of her wineglass, a swig of the champagne follows her light voice, and sujeong moves to nuzzle the tip of her nose against hyun’s before she leans her head against his shoulder.

the smile against her lips feeling like it’s spread all throughout, warmth reaches to even her toes, and his presence is grounding like a tether to the shaky ground beneath her feet. every fiber of her being leans into the warmth of every touch he has to offer, sujeong shifts lightly in her seat, if only to nestle closer towards him, and her eyes begin to flutter shut before any realization hits. her pulse stilling to tranquility, falling asleep when she’s next to hyun has always been this effortless.

getting lost in him has always been so easy.

——

the next time her eyes feel like they’re fully open again, she’s standing at the entrance to the louvre, the slow lull to her breathing revealing the incredulity that brims over from within as she squeezes hyun’s hand, still firmly wrapped in hers. (the only time she let go was when they’d gotten to the hotel room and had to unpack.) between the beauty of the splendour to the building they stand before and the gentle warmth in his gaze, she’s rendered inarticulate for a moment, though her whirlwind of emotions erupt in the delight that’s materializing across her features. “how did you know?” she asks, only to realise right after the redundance of the question—of course he knew that she would have wanted to be here, of course he could read her heart like it’s his own, and so what she says next is simple. “thank you, hyun. you make me really happy. really.”

open truth spilling forth without so much as a speed bump to set her back, she’s lucid dreaming in a reverie come alive, and sujeong finds herself all too quick to whisk hyun away. wandering further and further down unfamiliar steps, her fingers tug impatiently at hyun’s sleeves, feet quickening in a bid to seek out a quieter spot just for them. and it turns out, the basement is a lapse within the teeming crowd. “it’s quiet here,” she turns around to look at him, her smile growing as the weight lifts from her chest. she’s never been one for crowds, always leaning more into the muted moments of intimacy, always wanting hyun to herself. “like we’re the only ones around.”

the dichotomy of fight or flight, head or heart, feet on the ground or head in the clouds is one that sujeong has spent the entirety of her life wavering between. eventually she learns to rest on the delicate balance between, though her bad habit of erring on the side of caution is a merit and drawback all at once. so when she peers into a mirror and stares down the reflection in it, the only image she ever sees is that of a back turned. the hazy dwindling view of a girl’s back, going and then gone. the lingering shadow as she turns a corner.

she never could sketch a self-portrait.

because when the primitive fight or flight defense mechanism kicks in, she’s always the one leaving. but even then, even when escapism has come to shape the bulk of her experiences, enough repetition of anything yields the inescapable malady of ennui. these days, sujeong comes to find it all tormenting her like a plague. the tendrils of the past never too far behind her, and no matter how much she hastens every step she takes across untrodden ground, all it feels like beneath her feet is needles puncturing skin, blades of grass lined with serrated edges brushing against her flesh. this is what it’s like to have spent every passing second walking on eggshells.

her first instinct when her gaze lands upon an all too familiar face in the crowd is to turn her back. like she has to be the one to leave first.

but the thing about defense mechanisms, about fight or flight, is that it’s beyond cognizance. so, her feet making their way back towards him, damn near running all the way across the arrival hall—it’s all instinctive, like the way she used to always run to him crying first when she fell and scraped her knee. the dichotomy of good and bad presenting itself before her now, and sujeong realises just how bad she’s always been at picking one or the other. see, the thing about losing someone is that you begin to frame them in the best or the worst ways, and so all she could ever think about when she woke up one day and it seemed like her brother never existed, is how good he always was to her.

yet all she can think about now, is how much of an asshole he was to have left without a word, everything in-between wiped out.

“hyun yoojung,” the syllables foreign against her tongue, her hands tighten into fists at her side as she stands right before who she thinks is her older brother—though the past few years have really left her wondering. “it’s really you, isn’t it?” a dry laugh rises in her throat. “y’know, i was beginning to wonder if you were ever real. if i always just dreamed you up in some sort of manic desperation to have someone normal in this darned family. but then i suppose a normal brother would have had the decency to at least say something before he completely disappears for years on end.”

the act of atonement / @primrcsies

there’s five steps to atonement, and hansol doesn’t know any of them. maybe if he did, this would be easier.

there’s a thin line between boldness and shamelessness, but he thinks he’s long stepped over it with the panache of a charlatan, finding it easier to apologise than to ask for permission in the first place. it’s always been like that; the words ‘sorry’ undemanding on his tongue as opposed to a ‘please’ because it’s less difficult to fake an apology than it is a plea. somewhere along the years, he forgot how to differentiate between real and fake remorse.

“sorry,” he says now, genuinely, but it’s the same way someone says sorry for being five minutes late, for forgetting their wallet at home and not the way someone says sorry for making someone haul ass to the hospital at 2 in the morning when they’re closer to strangers than friends. there’s an air of silence in the room, save for the methodical beeping of the machines, and he gets the odd desire to pull out the wires that’s pumping whatever into him. he’s not sure what he’s apologising for. underneath the sheets a hand curls into the mattress with the shame he’s barely allowed himself to feel before – but it burns now, like the gaze sujeong has on him. 

he remembers the same sight years before, too. the memory is dizzying, vague, expunged from his memory in an attempt to defend the last of his childhood like if he really tried hard enough, he could somehow convince himself it isn’t true that sujeong doesn’t want anything to do with him. the attempt is fruitless, of course, especially when he has proof right in front of him in the form of her ablaze presence, irritation plastered across every inch of her body. (or is it disappointment? anger?) he finally has the decency to glance up, biting his tongue so hard he thinks he might draw blood, staring at the blank wall behind her like there’s something that catches his attention more than hyun sujeong.

hansol swallows. the beeping continues. “i couldn’t think of anyone else to call.”

let’s get this straight—hyun sujeong is anything but forgiving. anything but generous. falls into anything but the altruism she wears like a bulletproof vest. what she is, is vengeful. is a strong believer in getting even and bearing witness to it. is willfully clinging to a lack of consideration for anything other than her own interests. so let’s get this straight—her soles striking against the pristine white of the hospital floors now, every purposeful step she takes towards the ward and every quiver in the breaths she draws in, that’s not worry or regret or consternation at the thought of possibly losing bang hansol. for real, now. forever.

or so she likes to think—she likes to tell herself this is just seeking redress.

but maybe the way she’d jumped out of bed the moment she saw his contact name flash across her screen, or the way she’d barely bothered to look at the clothes she hurriedly grabbed from her wardrobe as she damn near ran out the door says different. and maybe the way her mind can’t help but to drift towards the notion of what it’d feel like to lose a friend you’ve technically already lost betrays the amount of regard she still holds for him.

she’s standing before the door now, and she can see him laid out in bed, and all she can think about is how people would move on from something like that. or how they don’t. in the same moment her hands reach for the knob and pushes the door open, sujeong draws in a long breath, like preparing herself for battle. and she hopes she never has to find out. the sound of the minute and second hands making their rounds around the clock wildly loud in her ears, she only stares at him, the silence all too stifling. all too heavy.

then she swallows.

“what are you sorry for, hansol?” her voice weaves together the syllables of his name for the first time in years, and it’s a prompt for something more—something enough to show just cause for all the elapsed years standing between them. “for calling me? or for calling me only now?” it’s like looking into the desolation of a night sky devoid of stars, the way his vacant gaze seems to look right through her. “it’s been ages since you last spoke to me, and the next time you remember that i exist, it’s because you’re half-dead?” and the hint of hurt in her voice, no matter how wrapped up in hostility, has her taking a step back, further away from the edge of his bed.

( 🌸 for @primrcsies )

...

with a long sigh drawing out of his pursed lips, he looks around to spot a dark haired woman sitting at the very end of the booth. i guess it’s worth a try to entertain myself with someone who might be wishing they were elsewhere but here like me? not one to randomly approach strangers, he figures, why not change that tonight?

“is this seat taken?” a kind, cautious smile stretches through his lips, hoping it doesn’t come off as anything but friendly. he clears his throat and meets eye to eye with the other party guest, adding with a tinge of humor sparkling in his eyes, “i’m in desperate need of company and you seem to be the only one not too crazy about the dance floor finally inviting us in.”

nights like this, she shifts in her own skin. uneasiness in every shaky step she takes until she reaches the bar counter, languid slouch in her shoulders more wretched than chic, and it’s all a flashback to the first time a boy breaks her heart—at fourteen, someone tells her they’ve grown bored of her, and lin learns that the fate of a pretty face is to be nothing more than a plaything. and so even on a night like this, heartbreak on her sleeve and melancholy stamped across her hung head, she approaches it all the way she approaches anything on any other night.

see, this is someone who has spent all her life running in circles around other people. her consciousness gathered within hours and hours lost to striking poses on thin sheets of paper, dressed to the nines in clothes that are just as flimsy, material or otherwise. and there’s always a script to these, vaguely worded instructions on who or what she’s supposed to be. and on a night like this, she’s the embodiment of lonesome ennui.

it’s hard not to develop a flair for the theatrics when your gaze is supposed to hold a different sentiment every few seconds, when every flash of the camera corresponds to an identity change. something like the way she is tonight, all forlorn and pitiable, works best when people are watching. when there’s an audience. for someone like the way lin is, nothing is ever real until someone else sees it, too. perception is a funny thing like that.

a photographer once told her that she’s a work of art. and so here she sits, her dinner gown of the night all haute couture and disinterested existentialist, in display like a brilliant artefact of sorrow for the assemblage of equally resplendent spectators to her craft. admittedly, she could have just skipped the event. but again, who would lin be if not for her showmanship, pushing herself all the way out in her pursuit of perfection? even if turning up at this event meant moping around all night, at least she’s seen doing it. at least there are eyes on her.

said photographer told her that she’s made for the cameras, too.

and she can’t deny it, maybe a part of her hoped that a distraction would come her way tonight. a distraction just like the clean-shaven male standing by her side now. an elbow propped along the edge of the counter, lin slides a palm beneath her cheek as she tilts her head towards him, a slightly raised brow betraying her interest. she takes him in for a moment—her eyes, just as bleary and unfocused as her mind dazed over from the glasses of wine she’s been downing, sweeps across his features and there’s the slightest flush that rises in her cheeks.

and now her lips no longer feel like her own, as it unwittingly mirrors the smile stretched across his. “well, it’s been empty all night,” her free hand giving a wave towards the seat beside her, indifference is hard to keep up when the extending edges of her lips are vying with the ache in her heart, and the latter fights a losing battle. “desperate need of company? that’s a surprise,” the question lends itself to her growing curiousity, the inscrutable charm to his dark eyes drawing her in. “just doesn’t seem like something you would be lacking in—” with a face like that— “but i’m not complaining.”

...

the next words cause her to swallow down a scoff, instead tilting her head to the side as her grin grows. there’s no audible reply from her, silence there to keep the other woman company, anticipating the reflection upon that sentence, a rhetorical question lingering between them ⏤ why wouldn’t you remember, sujeong? you tell me. i’m curious. but if it’s one particular thing that continues to leave her dumbfounded is the sheer audacity sujeong continues to maintain. the combination of abrupt form of skinship and the sudden interest within saerin’s life causes her body to freeze upon impact, mind wondering if this behavior was actually successful within anyone else besides dim witted men. she should be angrier at this, in all honesty, but she finds herself releasing an exhale instead ⏤ identical to the type of exhale one makes when a person is out of their league, but you can’t exactly say that to their face without being the mean one. 

“… right,” eyes dash from her occupied arm to the woman attached to it before slowly shedding herself from the other’s grasp in a slow manner, trying her best not to bring attention to what could be an embarrassing moment, “if you were really interested that question would have been asked around six … seven years ago, maybe? or is there a reason that you’re suddenly interested now after ghosting me right after graduation?” now it’s saerin’s turn to bring the indifference, straightening out her evening dress before her eyes narrow in on her expression. “because this whole charade is to tiring to keep up sujeong, i mean honestly. was i really just a speck in the sand to you?”

—

shoulders laden with an undeniable weight, by now sujeong learns perfectly, much like pavlov’s good little dog, to acquiesce in the fate of finding herself pawn in a game she never agreed to play. endlessly relegated to the powerless role of a spectator in her own life, and she spends years committing to memory the presets in every single one of her predetermined social roles. the cost-utility analysis was always clear in her mind, being the right-hand man to ryu saerin goes like this: front row seats to the perversion of reality on the highest rungs of hannam high’s social ladder, her parents’ approval at the dinner table, and the withering of a self-identity. like every other tight corner she forced herself into, friendship never amounted to anything more than convenience. especially not one with saerin, designated dreamy it girl of hannam high.

it took just as much out of her as it did with learning to unlearn it all. and as cynical as it sounds, it turns out saerin was just the easiest to discard first.

there’s a lot she could say about it all if she really wanted to, but all sujeong has ever known are political twists and turns in conversation. and of the many unspoken rules, there’s one most apt for here and now—people only ask questions about other people so they can talk about themselves. which is to say, the notion that saerin might actually care about her side of the story never even surfaces. “so that’s where everybody went. i was just wondering why i haven’t had a chance to take a breather yet, but now i know it’s because everyone else has forgotten about work,” light-hearted laughter trails her voice, all airy and shallow, another look of jest weaved into a smile. she spends the greater part of her life feeling like she’s six feet underwater sinking into a bottomless pit of nothing at all, suffocating beneath the veil of false pretense, and sujeong starts to realise laughter might just be the only sound left she can make that people will actually listen to.

“i’m kidding,” like it’s all in good fun. her hand raised mid-air, a dismissive wave sweeps it all away, the same way she did with every piece of memory that has seen even a flicker of saerin’s shadow. this is what it’s like to have been told bedtime stories of deception and opportunism. “but not really. i mean—you know what it’s like, of course,” the corner of her lips following the rise and fall of her tone, and she reverts to pandering once more. “everyone wants to be in the committees, but once they’re in, not everyone wants to actually do something.”

around and around and around, she turns herself about in circles. old habits die hard.

saerin as the axis, and all sujeong ever does is circle it. all sujeong ever does is keep herself at bay. her parents say it’s the right thing to do, that only by keeping herself visible will she do the hyun name proud. all sujeong ever does is lie, even to herself, and so she follows suit, yields without so much as a grumble. it eats away at her, the guilt of denying herself a mind of her own, and at some point it becomes a noose around her neck. at some point, she wanted nothing more than to break free. at some point, a friendship like what she had with saerin grew to be revolting. the real question, now, is—how much does she want to tell saerin?

“what are you talking about?” her lips going askew, a faint frown plays at its edges in a feigned expression of confusion and concern. old habits die hard. 

“i’m pretty sure this is all just a misunderstanding, saerin,” she says her name like she didn’t type every letter of it into a search box in her contacts list, in her social media following lists, so she could block out every possible way of contact. ( only she did. ) “i mean, it’s easy to drift away after high school, isn’t it? you grow up and become an adult, you get busy. sometimes you forget to keep in contact with people. but hey, if you missed me, all you had to do was tell me!” a hand brushes down her hair, faux bravado passed off as poise, and the note of levity in her tone is perfunctory at its core. “that’s what reunions are for—we’ve got the time to catch up now, haven’t we?”

every strained syllable falls short of the superficial warmth she means to reach, of the fond old friend persona she tries to act the part of. but old habits die hard. but as out of practice as she clearly is, as far as the cracks are reaching in the glass armor she tries to shield herself in, sujeong still can’t seem to stop playing the game. all too brittle now, but it’s sheer obstinacy left that’s desperately holding it all together.