traveller.

SEND ME A ✧ AND I’LL INTRODUCE YOU TO ONE OF ALL THE MUSES I EVER HAD.

Jung Daeryong

Have you ever gotten used to it?

The killing?

He drifts about the corridors of books, fingers dancing lightly over the spines. He loves these books — they are the only consoling factors of his life. Daeryong is the lonely librarian — the one that prowls the very edges of the building. His life is made up of these  very archives.

He creeps about the alleyways, fingers dirties by the blood of thousands. His body is covered in its own fair amount of red liquid, staining his skin and coating his weaponry. Trained fingers would wait for pulses to stop. A hardened soul would cry in pain, in spite of the fact that he had seen and heard the same beg for life a million times more. The Phantom is a lonely hunter — an entity that destroyed his father’s beloved Syndicate.

Above him, leaping and watching from the rooftops is his doppelgänger. This copy would watch and wait — his own gun poised for the moment that anything would happen. When the Phantom stalked the night, the Dawn will come and greet the face covered in anguish. Dawn is his twin, his calmer, more playful and more precise counterpart.

They used to be tools, mere weapons of precise killing — assassins.

They learnt something on the night that their father, their legacy, died. They drew first and if they hadn’t they’d continue their name as infamous killers. They’d continue to walk in the shadows of the city, unregistered, unknown and unheard of. They’d remain mere weapons. If they hadn’t drawn first, their coffins would have been nailed shut by their father. 

Daeryong has a brother — Soryong. They are minutes apart. This more adventurous side of him glues together his sanity. Soryong, the childish, the playful and the ever social. This brother is the only one that allows him to carry on. Soryong keeps Daeryong from colliding with the Phantom beneath.

That way, he can smile.

That way, he can search for a world of no regrets.

A new form of calamity; a white serenity.

[MSG:] …Alright, I’m not sure how drunk I was last night, but it must have been a pretty good night if you’re texting me about this. [MSG:] Also, you must be a damn cool person because you either talked me into giving you my number, or I gave it to you willingly. Congratulations, you totally interested my drunk self.

[MSG:] Let’s be honest, it was probably because you put the toaster in the freezer.

{MSG:} I obviously have no idea how drunk I was either when I sent this text. I do not remember any toaster and freezer.

{MSG:} but i remember frozen peas

{MSG:} And whether I interested your drunk self or not — I have no idea. 

{MSG:} I hope your toaster is fine though.

Coffee. He needed coffee so bad since his stomach felt like it was about to literally eat itself from the lack of flesh. Taehyung did his best to conserve his energy and hold on to the last bit of sanity that clung onto the back of his mind. The customers in his shop were looking like fine meals for his teeth to sink into and having their blood run down his tongue. But no. He had to have self-control, Couple of minutes and he can hold on. Thankfully the shop was closing soon and the couple in his shop were already leaving when they picked up a Stevie Wonder classic vinyl. Quickly giving them their change and receipt, Taehyung held a grin on his face when they exited with such smiles How nice. 

Having the shop close early, his stomach was twisting again, this is what he gets for refusing to eat for a long periods of time. But fuck it. Inhaling a deep breath, Taehyung grabbed his book bag, and locked the shop up before walking down towards a local coffee shop that made strong enough bitter blonde coffee for him. 

The walk was short and there weren’t much people today which he thanked or then his patience was going to be the end of him to exposure. When the barista glanced at him, she knew already what he needed, and Taehyung was about to take a seat on his usual corner but noticed an unfamiliar face. It was rare, not much ‘humans’ came by. But this human, was strange. He looked like a real survivor, being a curious ghoul, his eyes were fixated at mathematics and strange symbols. 

Strong aroma of the coffee called to him, turning around the cashier called him by his name. “Nishiki, here.” Grunting in response, Taehyung grabbed his cup of coffee and took a sip, when he noticed there was a pause at this stranger’s expression, like as if he was stuck on something and sure enough he was stuck on a problem. Math wasn’t his think but he can tell it was like chemistry. Maybe a Chem Major? Who knew.

Taehyung grabbed the pen nonchalantly and fixed the problem that lead to the problem he grinned gently, glancing at the name at the upper right corner. ‘Yongguk’. Interesting.

Yongguk looked up at him with confusion at first then a fiery glare that sent a shiver down his spine. Very interesting. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Humming softly, Taehyung shrugged his shoulders and took a sip of his coffee, leaving the shop with a mumble. “Maybe I shouldn’t Yongguk, but you should be thanking me.” He knew they would meet again. This person truly intrigued him. And probably pissed him off as well. Friendships can’t always be greeted with a hello, sometimes it takes different wrong approaches, in this case, very.

  Coffee. Its scent wafted about the store, filling each and every crevice with the warmest tints of brown. It would trickle through the porous blockades within his brain, opening all passages of thinking — of experimenting and of remembering. In almost every single store that he visited, this scent would merely penetrate the first layer before fading out and refilling with the less enticing scents of sugar, cakes and that suspicious tint of old milk.

All but one.

This store had the most accurate balance of accompaniment dishes and coffee. And in this very store, Yongguk would brew his thoughts, nurturing them and archiving them in the little time he spent about the area. He loved this little pocket of the city. As strange as it was, this store drew him back over and over again, despite the variants that existed throughout the lines.

The coffee always seemed to be made just to his liking.

Yongguk was there once again, his books and thoughts interlacing with the coffee about him. This time, he didn’t watch the city pass by, rather, he mused himself with incomplete theories. Quantum particles, chemistry and fractions of engineering battled upon the pages. Blue, black and red scrawls decorated the pages in the most awkward angles — twisted, distorted and squashed about the corners. They made sense.

Sort of.

This moment of growing understanding lasted till a hand came into his line of sight and picked up a pen. It reached towards the only white space left on the paper and added to his notes. Whatever that hand wrote made sense. However, it only made sense in this line. Yongguk flickered through his memories and huffed. It didn’t work in the other worlds. With this discovery, his eyebrows furrowed, confusion evident on his features. Why, of everything, would it not work?

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

They slipped his lips before he could do anything. Even before he could erase the somewhat frustrated comment, Yongguk’s thoughts were greeted by a reply. Thank him? Yongguk registers this just as the individual was leaving the store.

“What? Oh, right.”

Thank him. That was the courteous thing to do. And of course, Yongguk thanked him. He tipped his head in recognition, mumbling a soft thank you before glancing back at the numbers and indecipherable mess on his page. With a new conjunction of reds, blues and blacks, Yongguk saw another factor to the theory. It required a solu—

It worked.

In this new light, it worked. This time, Yongguk jolted from his seat, leaving his bill on the table and hastily gathering his books. This man had a head for these equations and Yongguk wanted to take a peek into his knowledge. It could have been anything, but whatever it was had brought a new light to a different mass of scientific confusion.

Who was he?

He pushed through the door of the café, muttering a quick thank you to the barrister. His eyes dart about the surrounding area, faces converging but never matching the one that had added to his theory.

1. Name of your muse.

Yongguk

2. One picture you like best with your muse’s faceclaim.

that

3. Two headcanons for your muse that you’ve never told anyone.

Yongguk gathers anything that he requires in alternate universes through the Reboot. There are all sorts of things there — the world changes as the other worlds change. He can have anything and everything; but he chooses not to.

Yongguk spends more time in the Reboot than in an existence that has other life forms. The Reboot controls where he goes the majority of the time. If he is in another line, it is often by accident unless he has his Divergence Meter on him.

4. Three things your muse loves doing in their free time.

Reading, Thought Experiments, Wandering   

5. Four people whom your muse loves.

Love would be a difficult emotion or connection for Yongguk to develop. Rather, any form of relationship would be defined as an attachment or unusual compulsion to revisit the individual regardless of the thread they were in. The development of such a relationship would prove difficult with the understanding that Yongguk cannot stay in one place for long — let alone make a friend that he carries through the millions of threads. So, with that cleared up, four would be a number that stretches his understanding of emotions too far. If there were anyone, Renata, Retsuya and the companion shredded by time would be on the list.

6. Three fond childhood memories.

Ironically, these memories would be from a combination of the millions of threads.

Yongguk remembers a striped orange, gold and black stuffed animal that he’d holds close to his heart. He remembers his mother’s perfume on the plush — soft, sweet and calming. He remembers the joys and adventures that he took the plush on. He can no longer remember its exact form, however. It seems to flicker between that of a tiger or a bear, or even a horse.

Yongguk also remembers games. They seem to have the most interesting stories, plots if you must. He remembers all the names that he saw in the thousands of worlds. He sees the tetris, the minesweeper, the first person shooters and those that really were a bit lackluster. Never the less, he sees that games that started the process of boiling up his thoughts.

Most strangely, Yongguk remembers his mum. No there was no father, his face was too confused with the thousands of threads — his mother, however, remains constant for a fair amount of lines. So constant, that he sees and hears her sometimes — especially with the song that she hummed and whispered when he couldn’t sleep as a child because of the man that fell through clocks in his dreams.

7. Two thing your muse regrets.

He regrets having fallen into the most dangerous of causality loops after the death of his friend. He should have left it — let it slide — accepted the passing and moved on. He would have gone to great places, but he chose not to.

Yongguk despises himself to this day for having every played with time. It was an entity that no human should have to explore. As with any science, he shouldn’t have gone too far. As with any theory, Yongguk should have left some things as a page of words or as a collection of thoughts and theorized values. He shouldn’t have ever moved through the thousands of worlds in search of a selfish desire.

8. One thing they’d go through heaven or hell to save/change.

Regardless of his hatred for having done anything to save the life of a friend, he would keep going to the perfect world line. He would die the thousands of times that his friend did just to see a smile that recognized his very own.

9. Tag ten people to do the same thing.