wonderland

❝ — refresh, ★°。

          he forgot how striking the sight of her can be, that she’s a calming presence despite the chaos their interactions can become. why does running across campus feel like a lifetime ago? throwing her over his shoulder and making wagers on their food, on the ahjumma who adores the both of them, why does he suddenly think that if he went there now, she wouldn’t recognize him? 

          then again, does anyone? 

          the way yoohyeon smiles at him gives him some hope that he could be recognized, brought back, claimed again from whatever hell he sent his own mind to in order to avoid everything he didn’t want to face before, whatever that was and is. “ you’re right. for such long legs, you run more like a giraffe than a gazelle. ” he grins, quite proud of the comparison although he could keep going, say she has the appearance of the grace of a gazelle either way. could say something idiotic about animal attraction and he doesn’t know why he bothers with such thoughts, such jokes, or why he has to try to keep everything light. ah, actually that answer is simple. too heavy and he crumbles, weaker than even he knows. 

          “ maybe i’ll volunteer next time, ” he chuckles, glancing down at the luggage when she mentions it and he wonders how he missed it the first time. but he’s seen her with luggage before. hell, she’s had it to stay at his home before. why does now feel so different? “ gifts? oh, told you your mom loves me. so how much did she spoil me this time? you know i love her cooking. ” reaching for her arm, he guides her inside, taking the luggage for her and rolling it in, gesturing with a tilt of his head towards the kitchen.   

it almost feels back to normal, the banter, the ease, but there’s a slight change there that she’s never felt before; it feels too far to call it discomfort, but it makes her feel on edge, as if were she to say just one wrong thing, this delicate game they’re playing, pretending like nothing has changed will all fall apart. and she can’t have that, doesn’t want that, because she doesn’t know what any of it means. “i would say that’s rude but giraffes are cute, so i will thank you for the compliment,” she responds, quick on the uptake as usual, sticking her tongue out at him for good measure as she begins to step inside.

but then he takes her by the arm, touches her, and it almost feels like freshman year all over again, a sharp rise in nostalgia, the elevated heart rate, the vaguely tinted cheeks, as if the mere weeks they’d gone without seeing each other had reset everything she’d worked so hard to build up. it nearly causes her to withdraw from him in surprise, but she manages to maintain her composure in the end, keeping a smile on her face despite it all. “you should,” she says with a cough, rolling the luggage behind her, bringing it to a stop once she’s inside. “i bet you wouldn’t be able to out run me, though. i can tell when you’re around. it’s my chanyeol senses.”

❝ — refresh, ★°。

          the transition from summer term to fall is more about pacing to chanyeol. all in all, that means that he lacks it, that he can’t even remember what he learned over the summer now that finals are over and fall term is days away. either way, he does his best to clean, a surprise considering the state of his place the past few months since returning from spring break. two seasons and he doesn’t recognize himself still. how many more will come for him to realize he could transition better than this, go smoothly from one change to another instead of jumping from one end of the spectrum to the other? theatrics, but taken with his life choices. 

          his father texts him more lately, concern spelled out in each syllable and he knows that it comes from his younger siblings too. normally, he spends the summer taking them out, running around with them, and keeping them outside in the sunshine where they belong, the sun shining as brightly as they do. he’s nowhere to be seen, not wanting to be a cloud hanging over them. instead, he braves the storm alone and it’s coincidental that it continues to rain these days. the knock on his door is surprising til it strikes a certain chord in him, a pattern that belongs to one and only one person. 

          leaning against the door, he rests his forehead there for a second, debating if he has enough energy to continue to pretend today before he decides to play around, hoping it’ll raise his spirits first. how she hasn’t called him out on his behavior yet is a mystery. with a detailed knock of his own, he stifles a chuckle as he waits, opening the door a minute later with a grin. “ making sure you weren’t gonna run like those lovestagrams. i still wanna know if they used the track team for those deliveries. ” 

as soon as she sees his face, a smile blooms upon her lips, an inexplicable relief coursing through her veins. she realizes then she’s missed him, even in all of his change and turbulence, and in all of her uncertainty. she wonders if the time they’ve unintentionally spent away from each other, as short as it’s been, is enough for him to sort through whatever he’s going through, for things to go back to the way they were, but something still feels off, and she can’t quite place her finger on it. at this rate, she’s unsure if things will ever be the same as they were before.

still, she continues to smile, laughing quietly at the joke he’d made, shaking her head soon afterward. “you know i can’t run that fast,” she says, flashbacks of only a few months ago when they’d both dashed across the campus to grab some pizza at their favorite place. it feels like a completely different time now, a different era. “if anything, you’d probably be better at delivering those than me.”

when yoohyeon had first joined the tribune, she never imagined she’d be writing the kind of column she did. in fact, she’d had no idea what she even wanted to write for the school newspaper, considering all of her writing experience came from writing fiction. all she knew was that she loved writing, and she saw joining the tribune as a great addition to a future resume, though she often wondered if a resume would even help her get a job in the kind of field she wanted. were scripts picked up by big companies based on merits like education and extracurricular activities, or were they more based on the people you knew and the connections you had?

in any case, writing an advice column had never once crossed her mind, and yet, here she was, in her second year on the team, replying to anonymous letters under a pseudonym. in all honesty, she hadn’t known how to answer these things when she first started out, and she still doesn’t know what she’s doing now. she’s not quite as experienced as the persona she lives under while writing, and she mostly makes informed decisions based on other people’s lives, as well as the plethora of films and dramas she’s seen and books she’s read. still, even with all that knowledge in her head, she still finds herself stumped sometimes, and goes around asking for advice about giving advice, such as she is doing now.

she spots miyoung first and foremost as she wanders around, an elder member of the tribune, and someone she hasn’t interacted with too much but doesn’t find too intimidating or mean. still, she approaches tepidly, a warm smile on her lips. “um, miyoung?” she calls out the her senior with a meek wave of her hand. “have you got time?”

✦ ; INTO THE FROZEN

          “ huh … is that so? should i feel honored that we are enough for you? ” the question leaves a bitter taste in his mouth— he wonders, has he even once thought he was good enough for yoohyeon? no. the answer is, sadly, undeniably, always a no. “the twins, i mean. since i represent them and all. ah, is this a sign i should’ve gone into talent management or law? could change my mind, right?” though the years he’s spent so far would go to waste. committing concepts from biology and anatomy and physiology to memory took its toll on him, new study habits tried and tested, tossed away til one worked, and somehow he’s made it this far. 

          “ they are pretty busy… might have to meet up with them on your own, i’m afraid. my schedule and theirs are just hopeless. ” but he has less students willing to be tutored by him this term, he’s less willing to take on students too, and his free time has increased only to be squandered by whatever distraction of choice comes up. 

          “ hm? no, i asked because you’re picking, right? said we would match. we having the same conversation? ” he teases, leaning on the table once more and resting his other hand just below the one that supports his head, drumming his fingertips against the surface. “ see, yeah. matching. that’s what i thought. you’re not gonna let me pick for us, are you? i think we both know who has the better color sense here. ”  

she looks at him with sincerity in her eyes for the second time since meeting up, almost serious if not for the gentle and almost playful smile upon her lips. “why wouldn’t you be?” she asks, having always thought the they---that he---would be enough. even if it’s like this, as the friends they promised themselves they would be. afraid of giving herself away too easily, she forces a laugh, adding, “their fame is so massive. no wonder you can’t get your schedules to match up. it’s a shame.”

“oh, i thought we had already agreed to both go silver,” she says, followed by a laugh, completely genuine this time, no longer veiled in uncertainty and questions. she picks up a few strands of her hair, examining the edges. split ends have begun to form, so she’s definitely due for a trim, at the very least, in addition to a touch up on her roots. she isn’t sure her hair would be able to take a drastic change in color without cutting off a lot of length. “well, i’d be staying silver. you’d be getting the rest of the way there.” she reaches out, running her fingers through his own hair, a movement that feels both natural and not. “it wouldn’t take too much, i think.”

❝ — comeback , ★°。

          the entire break itself feels like a blur. between summer classes and trying to make enough time to see jihye so she doesn’t whine— how her sister went from nagging that lara doesn’t have a social life at all to insisting that lara is now too busy for her is unfathomable, trulyy— she can’t think of anything other than the material for each exam. though there’s a number of people who stayed on campus for summer classes, she couldn’t even see them as much, cafes and libraries her solace as she studied whenever possible. 

          a few days left to go and lara laments that she couldn’t visit all the prop shops that had specials going on right now or work on more crafting projects, a few gifts for jihye left on the backburner til she’s free. but now that classes are done, she can’t figure out what to do first. it’s perfect timing when yoohyeon invites her to eat bingsu and just when she was laying with her head over the edge of her bed, about to groan about the heat for the nth time today. 

          the pressure to dress up 24/7 is no longer there and so she does so for comfort, denim shorts and an off the shoulder top she hadn’t worn yet either. did she manage to do anything outside of schoolwork this summer break? not wanting to be late, she jogs part of the way there before deciding the heat is too overbearing and a brisk walk is fast enough. just when she gets to the door does someone else come out and she’s ducking down to avoid colliding with them, stumbling forth into the shop with a yelp. straightening herself out with a quick glance to see if anyone else saw, she could facepalm when she realizes she shouldn’t have taken the side door so she would’ve caught yoohyeon outside. 

          shuffling back outside, she throws her arms around yoohyeon, heat be damned, and moves in front of her, hands extended to help her up so they could go inside. “ you’re early! i could’ve come sooner, were you here long? ” 

people often wonder how a person like yoohyeon, someone who is so easily to startle, would be a fan of scary movies and video games. when she explains it’s all about the story-telling and the lore, she gets even more strange looks, which she supposes is warranted when the genre isn’t exactly known for it’s script and rich world building, but she usually gets strange looks from people anyway, so it doesn’t really matter in the end.

still, jumpiness is one of her more unfortunate traits, and she understands the concern from others, too, especially considering just how easily she scares.

it’s no surprise, then, that when she suddenly feels a pair of arms wrap around her from behind, she lets out a loud shriek, one so loud and shrill that any current standing scream queens would willingly relinquish their title to her. when she realizes it’s just lara arriving for their scheduled bingsu date, she throws her head back, letting out a groan that emerges from the pits of her stomach, followed by an equally formidable whine. “you took ten years of my life!” she says, straightening up as she places a palm on her chest, attempting to catch her breath and slow her heartbeat back to its natural rhythm. once she’s calmed down a bit, she laughs, realizing the silliness of it all.

the start of a new semester means the arrival of several boxes from her mother containing food, sent in an overnight package. yoohyeon has lost count of how many times she’s asked her mom to stop doing it knowing how expensive shipping can get, but the woman can’t be stopped. she can literally feel her pockets ache when she thinks about the fact that her mother often sends her too much food on purpose because then that means yoohyeon has no choice but to share it if she doesn’t want it to go bad because it isn’t enough for her to worry about her own daughter, but her daughter’s friends as well.

this time, her mother has made it abundantly clear that the excess she’s sent is meant to be shared with chanyeol, and while yoohyeon has no qualms about that, she hasn’t seen much of him over the summer break (a lot of it her own fault for being busy), nor has she even seen his family since...well, she doesn’t like to think about that. at least it’s a good excuse to go and see him now, footsteps small and light as she makes his way to his dorm.

once there, she knocks her special knock to announce her arrival before calling out to him. “hello~ anyone home~?”

summer break has officially ended, and there’s only one weekend left before the new fall semester starts, but it feels like summer break only just began last week. things have gone by so fast that she doesn’t know where time has gone, and the idea that time is a social construct has never been more believable. she almost regrets not having gone out more, but when she remembers that she had summer classes in addition to all the projects she’d started over the past few weeks, she’s a little less hard on herself. there’ll be plenty of time to go out when she’s dead, or something like that.

in any case, with the weekend still left to go before the new school year begins, she figures now is as good a time as any to finally go out and have a little bit of summer fun. in most people’s cases, that would involve going out and getting drunk, but yoohyeon would love nothing more at the moment than to go out and have some summer treats, and she can’t think of anyone else she’d rather do that with than lara, who seems to love and appreciate sweet desserts just as much as she does.

luckily, lara wasn’t busy when yoohyeon had called her, so now she sits in wait outside of the bingsu shop where they’d decided to meet up. impatient, idle fingers check the time to see that there’s still five minutes left to the meetup time, but if lara is even a second late, yoohyeon isn’t going to hesitate to call her up and ask where she is. and so the countdown begins.

henlo everyone!! i just wanted to apologize yet again for my lack of activity. i’ve been experiencing some health issues, but it’s mostly under control now, so i’m going to try and get more active!! that being said, i’m in desperate need of new threads and plots for miss yoohyeon, so if you’d like to do me a favor:

like this post and i’ll come to you for plotting, or

comment a word, and i’ll write up a starter based on the word! (just a note that they will be pre-established as friends in the starter, so just be forewarned!)

✦ ; INTO THE FROZEN

          “ might be too late for that, ” the hitch in her tone is easy for him to catch. how long had they known each other now? joked around more than they should’ve? relied on each other? secrets between them are few but the weight of that handful is still too much to overcome like this, even as his shamelessness cuts between them now. 

          “ for the twins, huh … it’s an honor then, to be your middleman. at least one connection i’ve tried to make for you worked out. should i try again for another? ” she’ll catch on, he’s fairly certain, that he means trying to hook her up with someone he knows. “ or maybe you should just move into my room back home. take over for me again. they might like you more. ” and he hasn’t gone him recently. he can’t, not like this. a part of him doesn’t want to and the guilt of that also weighs heavily on his mind and heart. 

          “ connections, huh? normally, i’m the one joking about that, ” he laughs, glancing towards the laptop when the main colors on the screen change. leaning in slowly, in case it’s not what he thinks, he looks to her before the screen. “ so what color are you thinking of? or are you planning on surprising me? ”

she says nothing, answering with only a small chuckle, a quiet surrender to the situation, tired of discussing it in such vague terms because it will lead nowhere; it always has. instead she latches onto the line he’s thrown, talking about his family, deftly waving off his offer with a flick of her wrist. “i’ve got no need for another connection,” she says, trying to keep the joking within the lines she’s drawn, aware of what he’s insinuating. “the twins will be enough.”

and they are, as far as being introduced to people through him goes. but bringing them up only serves as a reminder that she hasn’t seen them or heard about them in so long, and he hasn’t offered for them all to meet up in quite some time. it’s worrying, now that she thinks about it, and she stares at him with what she hopes is a neutral expression, question at the tip of her tongue. she abandons it at the last second, though, deciding to go about it in a more roundabout manner. “when are those geniuses free again, anyway. seems their schedule’s been quite busy.”

summer break officially began a few weeks ago, and although she’d like to say she’s spent most of it living it up and having fun like many of her peers, the reality is that she hasn’t. as much as she’d like to blame it on the fact that she’d signed up for summer session, the truth of the matter is that she’s spent a lot of her free time within her dorm, watching movies, some of them ones she’s seen multiple times already. she doesn’t even realize how much time has passed until she happens to glance at her calendar to realize she hasn’t even changed the month yet, and horror fills her when she realizes two weeks has passed since july started.

suddenly feeling the urge to go out, she grabs her cell phone from her desk and jumps onto her bed, turning to lie on her stomach as she goes through her friends list. of course, there are people who immediately come to mind, but things have been weird lately, and she doesn’t know if she has the capacity to deal with that at the moment. instead, she scrolls through her contact list, stopping when she sees gikwang’s name. she hasn’t seen him in quite a while, and feels bad that he might think she only calls him up when she needs him to film for one of her shorts, so she swipes his name, opting to give him a call.

it rings for a few moments, and she waits, rolling once again so she’s on her back, staring at the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling, ones she hadn’t been able to put up on her own. she begins counting them, immediately turning back onto her stomach when he picks up. “hey, hi, what’s up, gikwang?” she asks, definitely not having panicked at him actually picking up. “what are you up to?”

❝ — seongnam unsolved , ★°。

a musty gust of wind engulfs them when the door flings open. he scrunches his nose at the stale scent, stepping in warily after yoohyeon. each step (or more like a tiptoe), comes with a creak from the wooden floorboards, sending a pang of fear to his heart with every creak he tries so hard to muffle. junhyung surveys the room, a sense of relief washing over him as he realises that yoohyeon was right — there was nothing in there. not even a window or a lamp, just a measly lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, unused and seemingly untouched for years. “yea,” he whispers in agreement, “without our lights, it would be pitch black in here.” he adds softly, hopefully loud enough for the camera to pick up but not loud enough to disturb anything else.

the rest of the room was covered in layers of dust that seem to have piled up for years. junhyung feels himself relax a little, knowing that the room was empty and small, which felt a lot less intimidating, compared to what he had expected before yoohyeon opened the door (and without warning too but he’ll let that go since they’re not exactly in the best situation for him to be petty). though stricken with nerves, he doesn’t forget his duties and pans his own camera around to film the room and get cutaways to support yoohyeon’s material. upon feeling her tug at his top, he turns to her, moving his camera along with him to capture whatever caught her attention. 

junhyung felt faint. staring back at him in the camera screen is a pair of footsteps. footsteps were never a good sign, especially in horror and thriller movies. he does not want to know why there are footsteps, or more importantly, when they were made. if they were made a long time ago, they would’ve faded… right? he doesn’t crouch down like yoohyeon, because crouching only puts him in a more vulnerable position. he peers over at the footsteps from where he was standing, gulping as he felt fear paralysing him in the limbs. unfortunately, yoohyeon does not know when to stop and instead, starts to follow the footsteps. usually, at this point in movies, junhyung would be shouting at the characters to back away and leave already but like those characters who just don’t know when to stop, they proceed deeper in.

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know…” his last words come off as a whisper, a hand reaching out to tug yoohyeon’s shirt as he follows after her like a child staying close to their parent. he gazes upon the footsteps with every step he takes and only then did it hit him, seeing the footsteps next to his own foot. “y-yoohyeon?” his voice cracks a little as he stops in his tracks, panic washing over his face. “these don’t look like adult footsteps.” 

she’s so lost in concentration that she can barely hear junhyung’s response (or is it that it had been so hushed that her ears could barely pick it up?), focused on getting the perfect shot, encapsulating all of the eeriness that the room radiates. it’s his second statement that catches her attention, and her movements suddenly stop as it registers. at first, she’d just thought it was someone with really small feet, since people have made comments about her own feet before, calling them small, and she is sometimes able to find shoes her size in the kids section, but the footsteps she’s capturing are smaller than even her own, and that’s quite the feat (no pun intended) to achieve for an adult-sized human being (is it even human, who knows?).

“wah~ you’re right,” she says, voice full of awe and wonder. that wonder and amazement is quickly replaced with fear again, however, once the questions start filling her mind. why is there just this one set of footprints? what child would be in a place like this all by his or herself, without adult supervision? why did it seem like the child was only pacing along the walls, seemingly without a destination or reason? she stands up slowly from her crouching position, turning to look back at junhyung with a mixture of fear and confusion. she opens her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes out.

then comes a sound to pierce through the silence. it comes from neither of them, though, but rather from somewhere within the room. she sucks in a sharp breath, holding it there, as if her own breathing would disturb or anger whatever it was that made the noise. it was soft, seemingly muffled, like a baby crying or some kind of mewl. she slowly releases the breath she was holding, not because she’s suddenly gathered her courage, but because she couldn’t hold it any longer without passing out. “i--- i think it came from the walls...”

❝ — urban legend , ★°。

If there was one thing Jisoo was sure of right now, it was how the girl was clearly ignorant or simply ignoring his discomfort, but Jisoo wasn’t one to say no, or to in any way, reject anyone so he took in all her questions and pondered on how to answer them. If anything, he felt somewhat proud of himself for being able to tell the story, despite how such ridiculous beliefs had hurt him and caused a relatively uncomfortable childhood. 

It takes some recounting, about the little tugs on other parents when they saw him approaching them, the hushed warnings of not hanging out with him and all the mockeries from the not-so-sensitive kids. But it felt so distant now, that he could just brush it off behind him and to simply tell these stories as if he wasn’t the subject.

”I think they’re ridiculous,” he started off, looking at the curious girl, “not them, if they exist. But the idea of them.” but he knows that this isn’t what she wants to hear, so he took a small sigh before continuing, “it’s just… we kind of believe that they bring in bad luck and follow a cursed kid around and cause bad luck of sorts to anyone around them…” It wasn’t a ‘we’, it was a ‘they’. 

“The bad luck we talk about isn’t so much death, but sometimes being unfortunate lead to death too. Legend has it that they were one of the pioneers of the village who didn’t get what they want… so they tag onto newborns, until they die and it’s onto the next newborn. It’s also very timely that when they die and someone else enters the world, we’d experience some sort of drought or harvesting issues and that implicates the economy there a tad bit…” Jisoo ended it off hesitantly, but smiling nevertheless, before looking at the girl, “I don’t know if it answers your questions, I’m not this… informed.”

she waits with baited breath as he seems to ponder over her questions. she’s glad that he’s not just brushed her off, seeing as how they’re both strangers to one another, and there’s a vague pulling at the back of her mind that she should maybe ask if he’s even comfortable with continuing his stories when he doesn’t even know that she is, but it’s in the very back of her mind, grandly overshadowed by her curiosity and interest. she supposes that’s just another one of her faults, one she recognizes but also one she doesn’t bother to fix, but it doesn’t really hurt anyone, does it?

an involuntary pout forms at her lips when he does finally answer because it’s not one she’s expecting. not only that, but it’s as if he’s shot an arrow right through her heart, because it goes against everything she believes. to her, the idea of ghosts is thrilling, exciting, otherworldly. there are literally countless tales of them, some different, some similar, and it’s those disparities that make those stories seem new every time. she comforts herself from the blow to her beliefs by telling herself it’s only these particular ghosts that he thinks are ridiculous.

“ah~ so it is more like a legend,” she says once begins to explain, more to herself than to the storyteller. she goes over his words once more, latching on to different details, and she can kind of see now why he said that believing in this particular ghost or legend or whatever it is would seem ridiculous. “but why would he latch onto just the one person? that’s just mean...” then again, most ghosts and spirits aren’t known to be kind.

✦ ; INTO THE FROZEN

          it’s not her scene, he does know that. he’s known that for some time now. it isn’t his either— at least, it wasn’t. now he fits in a little too well, broken souls filling in the gaps with alcohol and other intoxicating substances. distractions. anything to distort reality as they know it. that’s what he’s there for anyway and it’s clear in how much he drinks, the changes in preferences, how there’s the occasional lingering scent of cigarette smoke on his clothes, in his hair. 

          “ they don’t look as good dancing, ” he shrugs, smugly, too arrogantly for his own liking if he could see himself. he nearly embodies all the traits he used to dislike seeing. with every intention of continuing, of making it worse, chanyeol doesn’t expect the stern way she says never. he wishes he could let that confirmation be as healing as it is; he wishes he could let that be enough to pull him out of this. then again, he used to want to be enough for her and he knows, even now, that’s all for naught. “ you must really like me, huh? ” 

          they hadn’t crossed that line before, didn’t joke much like that and he’s holding his breath for a moment, laughing it off the next. “ yeah? sounds great. you can pick when. i’ll make it. ” his schedule hadn’t been much lately. outside of practice, that is. 

if only you knew. it’s a thought that stays buried deep within her, out of sight and out of mind---at least, she tries to keep it that way, but it has a way of rearing its ugly head every time he gets too close, and every time he gets too far away, like now, at a distance that she can no longer see him, distinguish all the features that made him recognizable, almost a stranger, but not quite. it’s impossible for him to be so when she’s already memorized his silhouette, bits and pieces of him etched directly onto her brain.

“don’t get too full of yourself,” she says with a scoff, trying to keep her voice light, an upward lilt in her tone. she can’t let him see her falter, can’t let him see her crack, so she smiles, lets out a small laugh. “i keep you around for your connection to the twins, remember?” it’s a feeble lie, the only one she can concoct in that spur of the moment, one that isn’t so farfetched it would show the cracks in her armor, but also one that’s unbelievable enough to still show that she’s still joking around.