U GOT IT

-- 🟊 busking!  [ butterflies - queen naija ] 

it’s been a long time since yohan has performed anything live. it’s been years, honestly -- and even when he did have an audience, it was when he was rapping. his singing hasn’t taken the spotlight since he was in high school, but that was mostly by choice. when singing, especially acoustically, it’s a lot harder to feign confidence when you’re not meandering around a stage with a hood pulled over your eyes, spitting some kind of self-aggrandizing bullshit too close to the microphone while cycling through 3 or 4 different hand gestures. 

yohan thinks of rapping now as finding ways to put forth the illusion of being bigger, like someone’s projecting a giant hologram of himself on a screen in front of him. he’s watched rappers manage to have presence and power without seeming to fake anything, though -- he’s always been in awe of the people who can be themselves onstage and still command attention. there were times when he enjoyed being in the audience of underground rap shows more than actually performing, for this reason. 

but he’s not in a dingy club. there’s no stage, no microphone. he’s not surrounded by the party-goers and soundcloud rappers like he used to be, either. here, tonight, it’s just him, a fold-able stool, a guitar. 

that’s not to say that he’s alone here, though. there are strangers everywhere, blurry faces strolling past, walking fast if they’re headed somewhere or slow if they’re some of the people wandering through hongdae just to see the other buskers. just down the street, there’s a circle of people cheering on a dance group. yohan can’t hear it super well, but he thinks he hears the notes of exo’s love shot rising up from within the crowd.

as he presses his lips together and sets down his stool, he tries to hype himself up. just get through one song and you’ll feel better, but even his internal monologue sounds hollow. he already thinks he can feel a few sets of eyes on him, curious looks as he scootches his bum back onto the seat and lifts his guitar. they’re expecting something from him. but what? an entertaining performance? a beautiful voice? something memorable, something unique? 

he wants to warn them. sorry in advance, y’all. 

he swallows again, thickly this time, and his fingers take up the positions of the song that yohan has been idly practising out of boredom for the past few months.

I don't wanna fall so fast But I'm open They always say that good things never last And I know 'cause I've been broken

it’s an easy english song -- probably a safe choice for now. though there’s a bit of a drop within the first minute of the song, it remains gentle. the lyrics are soft, with a fairly simple, straight-forward meaning to them -- basically, it’s not really anything like the music yohan usually listens to. he came across it by chance when he accidentally selected it on spotify instead of travis scott’s butterfly effect and laziness led him to listen to the whole song instead of changing it. he was surprised at how much it made him... feel. 

I'm tryin' to protect my heart But you're making it so hard And I guess it's safe to say You take my pain away

he sings it in a lower octave than the original’s singer, queen naija, did. there was some adjusting to do to make the key fit his range, but the natural husk to his voice suits the raspiness of the original. he continues the simple finger-strumming from the intro of the song, letting his eyes close and only opening them once in a while to stare at nothing in the distance. he tries to loosen his arms a little, to let the song take him away, and as he moves into the pre-chorus and prepares to play the full chord progression that he’s arranged for this part of the song, he finds that it’s working.

And I just wanna hold you all night long Whenever I'm around you, nothing's wrong I'm hoping that you'll always be around You got me on a high, I don't wanna come down

his voice weaves through the notes sweetly, incorporating just a tiny bit of the melisma and vibrato techniques that he’s tried to pick up over the years. he holds back just a little, stopping himself from trying to go too overboard out of fear of making himself sound unstable, or going offkey. his voice, previously a little breathly, grows louder for the chorus.

And I love it, I love it (these butterflies) Yeah I love it, I love it (I'm on a high) Yeah, I love it, I love it And I just wanna love on you (ooh)

obviously, he can’t overlap with his own voice live. he’s adjusted this part to suit his performance, skipping the second i love it, i love it line in favour of leaving a few strums of the chords there before coming back with i’m on a high and continuing on. instead of going back to the plucking, he switches to softly playing chords throughout the next verse, surprising himself with how emotional his voice manages to sound.

Ever since you crossed my path Everything is different You always know just how to make me laugh You got me all up in my feelings And as much as I love the feeling I hate it, it gets me frustrated Wanna say just how I feel But don't know how you would take it Why do you do what you do to me? Got me doing things that I don't do usually

whenever he sings this song, he can’t help but feel a little bit of an ache in his chest. it’s been a long-ass time since yohan has experienced butterflies, since he’s gotten to fall in love. he doesn’t want to look back on it, especially now that he can barely remember what it really felt like; it’s all been tainted by feelings of guilt and a sense of loss. it’s only when listening to songs like this, singing in such plain, yet effective words about new love and the unknown and the anxiety that comes with those things that he can almost feel it again, like the ghosts of butterflies  start to flit around his stomach again.

a minute later, he’s finishing the song with a final, gentle downward strum that rings out. he hears a smattering of applause and looks up with wide eyes, having genuinely forgotten about the possibility of people watching him toward the last bit of the song. 

he smiles with both his lips and his eyes, warmth in his stomach as he stands up and bows to the small crowd one, two, three times. 

“thank you,” he says in korean, feeling just a tiny bit proud of himself. this wouldn’t look like much of a risk to people on the outside, but he feels like he’s just vaulted over one of the biggest hurdles in front of him. 

halloween starter for @rkjinhyuk !

yohan used to be a “creative kid”. as a pre-schooler, he was encouraged by his parents to express himself however he wanted to, leading to many masterpieces being found on different walls and surfaces of the house until his parents reigned him back a little bit. as his drawings became less scribbles and scratches and more shapes and recognizable facial features, they started to feature more and more on the family’s fridge. for a few years, the fridge stayed covered, until slowly some things started to come down and be replaced by more practical things, like a white-board to-do list, motivational poster magnets, the cool bottle-opener-slash-wine-screw shaped like a duck that came in dad’s stocking one year. his mother always told him that they still kept everything, in a very special box up in their room. little philip didn’t really care much as he got older, instead finding more enjoyment in keeping stuff in his own sketchbooks. of course, for a while he still showed off pretty much everything to his parents seeking validation in ooh’s and aah’s but eventually, when doodling was no longer a popular thing for a middle-school star athlete to do, he stopped caring. 

he eventually grew out of the whole visual art thing entirely -- well, he took one class in high school, but switched into the health and fitness class at the encouragement of his friends -- and his creative side was buried deep underneath dreams of hockey championships and trap beats, left about a hundred pages back into the half-filled sketchbooks that sit rotting in yohan’s anchorage-based storage unit. 

it’s been a long time since he’s put any creative effort into a halloween costume. besides all the partying, there hasn’t been much in it for him when it comes to halloween since he became too old for free candy; though he secretly admired people’s costumes; it wasn’t cool to get super decked-out in sfx makeup for halloween in high school unless you were, like, an art or theatre kid. yohan and his popular friends typically flexed their non-chalance and innate coolness by wearing as little as they could get away with to the halloween parties.

he doesn’t look back on it fondly. almost every year, his friends would bug him to dress up as PSY. which, looking back on it, was pretty weird and kinda rude, but yohan didn’t think much of it at the time besides being mildly annoyed when his classmates would ask him to sing the song and yohan would have to tell them each time that he doesn’t actually speak korean and literally, if you try to sing it you’ll still probably pronounce it better. on god. ( that wasn’t entirely true. by then he’d gone to korean school for a little while and actually secretly enjoyed the hell out of it, but he always felt uncomfortable talking about it with the more well-meaning, but ignorant of his classmates. )

his costumes have graduated from sunglasses and suspenders, at least, but when he can get away with not wearing anything special, he will. yeah, he has ideas, yeah, he’s a little jealous of how confidently people walk around on halloween night decked out in even the most riduclous costumes, horns reaching like five feet in the air and capes trailing behind them and the like. every halloween night, he thinks okay i’m tired of being lame, next year i’ll do something awesome, but every halloween morning, he realizes he’s forgotten that he wanted to care again and he winds up throwing on a shirt that he already has and coming up with something on the fly.

and thus, he’s settled on Alvin again, which is actually not a terrible costume when he actually has the other two chipmunks with him, but he doesn’t at the moment. yugyeom is going to be theodore, and apparently they’re stealing a dog? but for now, he’s just a tall boy in a regular red sweater with a yellow cardboard ‘A’ taped to it, and hasty eyeliner ‘whiskers’ beside his nose. he’s shown up to this event mainly to see what goes on, as he didn’t really research any of the information beforehand, he wanders around a bit, eyeing the food -- but not for too long, the jell-o brains make him feel a little queasy -- and then stands for a while beside a small group of zombies, opening up his phone to scroll through his apps absent-mindedly. 

a few minutes later, he hears someone clear their throat ahead of him, and yohan realizes too late that he has 8 white-contact-clad eyes staring at him -- a quick glance around and he realizes he’s accidentally been standing in line for... something. oh, fuck me. 

“huh?” he says dumbly, cheeks heating. 

“how many in your group? two?” the staff member is polite, but looks a little exasperated, gesturing at him, and then to his side. 

yohan, still looking stupid, repeats himself: “...huh?”

one of the zombies pipes up politely: “we need groups of six to go in, so they’re looking for two people,” and it takes a second to see that the zombies are a 4-person group and yohan is standing directly after them. 

“oh-- no, sorry, it’s just me,” he says, awkwardness clear in his voice. oh god, what is he even in line for? 

in an attempt to figure out what to do, he looks around again, this time looking to his side and back a bit. immediately, his eyes land on the other person closest to him, the one that the staff lady thought was in his group or whatever. he gives him a once-over and a small nod.  

"hey, olaf.” he turns back. 

wait, olaf. i know that olaf.

“jinhyuk?” spinning around once again, his eyes widen, and he blinks several times. though his face smiles, his heart drops. happiness at seeing his old friend is very overshadowed by the guilt he feels when he's reminded of how long ago he meant to message jinhyuk to tell him he’s back... “hey man, it’s been a while, ahah--”

the voice of the attendant interrupts, tearing yohan’s attention back to the front of the line. “okay, so you’re both solo! perfect, you can both come on in,” 

dated: october 31st 2019  ft: @rkkyg

yohan hasn't done much for halloween since his high school days, when it was more common for him to attend themed parties and dress up in group costumes with his bros. typically, he still had to be coerced into doing anything more than throwing on a white and black shirt every year and switching between saying he's a referee, zebra or prisoner. he wouldn't consider himself un-creative but makeup and aesthetics aren't exactly what he's good at. that and he's generally just... lazy. he hasn't dressed up in halloween for years, although you can typically still find yohan at the parties drinking the "blood" cocktails.

but when his dear little brother asks him to match costumes with him this year, who is he to say no? yohan, who hadn't ever spent time with someone directly related to him until this year, is happy to do pretty much whatever yugyeom wants. their idea was admittedly a little corny, but it's a simple enough costume that he doesn't mind. besides which, it kind of feels good to be the Alvin of the Alvin and the Chipmunks, the big fat 'A' on his too-long shirt indicating the fact. yohan's dad had old alvin cartoons on dvd back at home, and he'd watched them quite a bit when he was little. he also watched the alvin movies in the theatres, although he did skip the last one as he was too old to enjoy it as much... what was that one called? chip-wrecked? 

regardless, he feels like yugyeom fits well as the soft youngest brother of the bunch, so he was pleased with him being theodore. yugyeom's idea to "borrow" his friend's dog and dress him up as simon is also hilarious and adorable. yohan is content, even if he's gotten a few amused looks at the whiskers drawn on his face as he walks down the busy night streets. he doesn't mind too much, but he does think it's silly that people find his whiskers all that stare-worthy when there are other people walking around with blood and gore painted all over their face.  

he's headed towards a location yugyeom had sent him a little while prior, so he can wait for him to be finished his busking before they go do... whatever yugyeom is planning to do. he forgets. halloween shenanigans, probably. trick-or-treating? is that what they're doing? he thinks they're probably both too old for that, but hey, he's not going to say no to free candy if it comes to that. 

𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐗 𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 ☆ just dancing with @rkseokwoo!

the sign-up line for just dance 2019 is lengthy, and yohan realizes pretty quickly that this was a significantly dumb idea. yugyeom mentioned games at some point and he kind of wishes he was more into them so he could have one more thing to talk about with his brother -- but he's a noob. he did play some games here and there growing up, but they were mainstream nintendo games for the most part and he'd never consider himself a "gamer". thankfully, gamex includes one game that he's actually a little familiar with: just dance. memories of jumping around in his living room in front of his wii and knocking things off his parents' coffee table come to mind, but he doesn't remember the game being very hard to play.

that lasts for as long as it takes yohan to watch the first few rounds of the just dance tournament, mouth falling open as he realizes he might be a little outmatched. some of the competitors seem like actual professional dancers, hitting the moves perfectly while adding their own flair and though he enjoys watching them, yohan looks away to search the room for someone he can talk to about pulling out.

and then, as if the universe knew of his plans and decided that his impulsiveness Shalt Not Go Without Consequences, his name is called out. "fuck," he whispers under his breath, then nods and gives a tight-lipped smile to the person he thought called out his name. there's another person named after him, someone whose name yohan doesn't know. he steps up to the platform and looks at the screen, swallowing nervously. at the song selection screen, yohan looks over at his... rival? dance partner? a man who looks like he might be around his age is looking at the screen too. 

+ @rkseungwoo

running into people he used to know is a common thing lately; yohan, genuinely, wonders how it's statistically possible given the size and population of a city like seoul. he didn't grow up in a small town, exactly, but anchorage always had a "small town feeling" where most of the families knew of each other and seoul is weirdly similar in some ways except instead of families knowing families, it's just him running into the people he'd somehow convinced himself he would never see again.

the man perched on an armchair a few feet away from him hasn't seemed to notice him yet, eyes trained on the phone in his hands, and yohan wonders if he should just ditch his morning iced coffee routine and run away (far away, back to alaska) while he still has time. 

but, no, he stays. despite the drop of his stomach and the ice in his veins when yohan first saw the other man's face and yohan's immediate gotta go gotta go gotta run i'm gone reaction, he does kinda hope that seungwoo will look up and meet his eyes. 

he doesn't know what he's expecting, really. it's been so long. will seungwoo still recognize him? will he pretend not to recognize him? will he look surprised that he's back? angry? hurt? all of these things are valid reactions that yohan probably deserves. even if seungwoo got up and just punched him in the jaw, yohan would probably just shrug it off -- oh, yeah, that's been a long time coming, huh. 

as the breaker-upper -- and asshole who dipped from the country instead of holding up the agreement to be friends -- he doesn't have a right to want seungwoo to talk to him or smile at him or even. acknowledge his presence. seungwoo doesn't owe him anything. but as yohan glances at him again, he can't help but feel some kind of yearning for it -- just the chance to say hello how are you and get a few more minutes to look at the face that he'd tried and failed to purge his mind of when he first moved years ago. 

breathing out through his nose, he turns to face the front counter with a more rigid posture, fixing his eyes on the chalkboard display. there's only one person ahead of him. and seungwoo has been waiting for his order for some time, now, so soon he's going to get it and leave and hopefully go back to being out of yohan's orbit again. 

seungwoo?  the barista calls out, and he hears the man acknowledge it softly. yohan is annoyed at how his heart beats harder just at hearing his voice. what the fuck philip, he thinks. what the actual fuck. 

he deliberately turns his head to the other side, pretending to read some information on the bags of starbucks coffee they have arranged on the shelf. the lady in front of him is taking a million years to place her order and yohan is actually grateful, so he doesn't have to speak up and risk seungwoo noticing him before he leaves. when he hears the chime of the door behind him, yohan finally relaxes a little, looking towards the front and then--

"wh-!" 

seungwoo is standing right beside him, drink in hand, looking at him. yohan's heart does that really fucking annoying flippy thing but yohan knows that it's probably just out of shock. and holy shit, did seungwoo get taller?

"dude... you're still doing that, huh," he tries to sound at least a little casual, but the laugh he forces is breathy and weird and the way he gives the cashier a please help me i’m dying look is probably pretty obvious. "y'know, a tap on the shoulder, like, usually works pretty well. one of these days you'll sneak up on someone like that and give them a heart attack. you ready to pay their hospital bills?" he pauses. “wait, does korea pay for healthcare?”

when he's done his nervous-ramble, he swallows, manages a mostly genuine smile. yohan's original plan to leave and pretend seungwoo doesn't exist again has been crumpled up and spitballed at a wall by now, and his brain scrambles to try to re-write a new plan that will cause him the least heart-achy-ness and stress, but his braincells scream and then go into hiding when he lets himself look at seungwoo. his urge to run fades away and is replaced with the warmer feeling of familiarity as he consciously thinks about how seungwoo's gaze is just as difficult to hold as it always was. 

+ @rkcsb replied: street!

yohan's switch to a road bike after having gotten used to doing deliveries in a car made him less than happy. he misses being able to listen to his own music, to have the solitude of the driver's seat to be able to  think, talk to himself, and/or do his own vocal collaborations with whatever is playing from his car's speakers. he can't really do any of that now, needing to pay too much attention to the road since his new vehicle is significantly smaller than everything else on the road and he can't really sing unless he wants to embarrass himself. which he really doesn't, not in this big, lonely city where he's trying to establish himself again and not make himself look like a fool at all times.

that being said, even following all of the spoken and unspoken rules about being a Biking delivery guy, he manages to mess up all the damned time. it's not his fault sometimes, when the downtown streets are so crowded and traffic is a mess. whenever he almost runs into somebody, almost gets run into, drops his food or gets himself lost because his phone-slash-gps died and bikes do not have an outlet to charge it with, it's everyone else's fault was his.

but this goofer in particular is completely on him. his korean is fair by now but still not perfect, and if he reads something too quickly, often he's going to mix up some syllables. how is he  supposed to understand that this little cafe and the restaurant down the street are different when their names are similar? especially when he's under pressure because he's late picking up his delivery anyway.

backdated: early 2016 + @rkluna

yohan can't remember the last time he didn't feel lost.

he feels like one of the hunks of ice he used to stare at back home when his parents used to drag him out to glacier bay, split away from the rest of solid land, pushed and pulled by whatever waves are strongest in some kind of direction but melting away to nothing before being able to reach anything close to a shore.

...or maybe that's a little too dramatic?

he's not much of an iceberg right now anyway, considering how friggin' hot it is in this bar -- or maybe that's the effect of the drink in his hand. yohan stares down at the condensation rolling down the mug and the impulsive part of his brain, the really stupid part that keeps getting him into trouble, wonders if it would be frowned upon to pick the mug up and hold it to his warm cheek.

he decides that, yes, that would look weird in public and while he's apparently done worse according to "numerous sources", he cares about not spilling his drink on his close friend, at least.

"you sure being out here is okay?" he says, the smile that had lit his face when she arrived not faltering much, save for the concerned light in his eyes. "i know this was, like, your idea. but. this whole 'getting kicked out for being irresponsible' thing is really not as fun as it seems,"

and it must seem pretty fun, considering yohan was already on drink number dos before luna even got there. he's not one to drink when he's stressed or upset, but it was tempting this time -- if only because he knows that eventually there will be a point where he's buzzed and floaty enough to not think about his disaster of a life and the big decision that he's kinda-sorta-made. floaty... ha. like an iceberg... okay, maybe he’s a little buzzed already.

+ @rkkyg replied: meat

yohan sometimes takes his job for granted. sure, it would be more ideal to have some kind of career or some kind of ambition by now, but in terms of entry-level stuff, his delivery gig has been pretty sweet. he can make his own schedule, he essentially doesn’t have to deal with a boss and with all the biking he’s doing, his legs look fucking great. 

but there are times when it’s frustrating to him, no matter how much he tries to count to ten and weigh the pros and cons in his head to calm down. these things consist mainly of: people being stupid about sharing the road with a bike, getting stuck in elevators (admittedly a few of those times were his fault, he should pay more attention to signs) -- but the worst part of the whole thing will always be the difficult customers. 

he really shouldn’t have to deal with angry people considering that there’s, like, a whole contact support button that they’re supposed to use. but he gets it anyway, “listening” to the customers’ complaints while blinking and wondering when they’re going to notice the wireless earbuds he’s hiding under his bike helmet. this time, he was listening to some really good andre 3000 and muttering polite little i’m sorry to hear thats and mm-hmms as he waits for the customer to hand him their money. he’s surprised when, instead, they shove the bag of food back at him and close the door. yohan is confused, realizing too late that the angry korean words he filtered out might’ve been important.

what can you do? end his own shift, that’s what. he has a canceled order to report and food to return to the store -- actually, is he supposed to do that? is that even sanitary? he doesn’t know, so he opts for safety and heads back to the chicken store he picked up from earlier. 

he’s surprised, pleasantly, to see a semi-familiar face at the front counter when he walks in. “yugyeom?” yohan smiles happily, if only a tad awkward as he recognizes the man as the younger brother he didn’t know about until a few months ago. 

hello everyone!! this is getting queued because i’m probably out and stuck on my phone seeing spiderman today but i thought it was important to get this up!! my name’s moose and this is my second muse, the first one being @rkkenta. yohan, who also goes by his english/Bro name philip, is also (kinda) new ic, as he’s just moved here (again) from alaska. i’ll be putting some more points under the cut, and please like this post if you’d like me to come to you for plots, and/or reply to this post with a word for a random starter!