VIVRE SA VIE

❛once upon a december;

she should let this go. yuna clearly isn’t interested, ahri should just get what remains of her pride and leave too. 

instead, she just sits on a table that she isn’t welcomed with a person who doesn’t welcome her either. “yes, i could.” ahri agrees, even thinks that she probably should. but she didn’t come here to sit on the other side of the library. “but, you see,” ahri rests one of her elbows on the table before resting her chin on her hand. “i’m afraid that the company on the other side of the library won’t be as good as it’s here and it’s not as much about me not standing it. and you know that even if for some reason you seem to like pretending that you don’t.” ahri verbally pokes yuna, resists the urge to raise her chin in challenge, daring the other to not acknowledge that at the same time it isn’t a lie that ahri hates smoking because the smell of it is horrible, but this nagging is more than just about that, it’s because ahri worries and yuna knows that, has heard ahri’s soft exasperated tone repeating the same words again and again, sometimes even using the excuse of not liking the smell to hide her fond worry, but they both has always known what it was really about. 

“should i start showing you shocking videos to finally make you stop? like a mother does with her child.” ahri doesn’t resist the urge, this time, to roll her eyes at yuna’s words and then having her lips pressed in a thin line. “please, nothing that can bring you to an early grave is beautiful. i thought we were past the phase of being edgy teenagers who are all about “look how morbid i am”.” 

she’s a masochist, she knows it, that’s why the cigarette tastes even sweeter when it’s accompanied by harsh words, scolding. perhaps ahri has given herself too much power, allowed herself to dream and hope without a limit, but when it comes to yuna, there simply isn’t a method that works; she can’t be saved. she was built wrong, just like every atom of her body, and given a twisted form. she’s a walking imperfection and so to other imperfections and bad things she must turn, it’s the only way that she’ll stay happy. happy, it’s a relative term and of course she isn’t happy, but at least she can say that her soul no longer aches. she’s found herself in a fascinating state of numbness; something that she would recommend to everyone, it makes living tolerable. “scold me more, ahri, i love it when you do that. hurt me, hurt me, come on, say that i’m a bad girl,” she laughs and throws her head back, sensing an oncoming headache. is it something that comes with the weather or ahri? goddammit ahri, look at what you’re doing. 

“spare me from the melodramatic explanation. you’re still that same annoying girl i knew. god ahri, just grow up. it’s time. the rest of the world moved on, maybe you should too,” she wishes she could shake some sense into the girl and ask her to stop dwelling on the past, to stop touching old wounds that are more prone to bleeding that she wishes to admit. of course she fucking misses her, but they’re not the same people anymore. or at least yuna isn’t, she pushed everything under a rug, hid the past even from herself, nothing good ever comes from looking back. “i’m afraid you’re wrong. i’m bad company, especially when i’m sober and i’m telling you now, i won’t stop smoking,” the girl almost snarls, pursing her lips even harder to draw on the cigarette. fuck, she is acting like an ill-tempered and stubborn child again, one set on misbehaving just to prove her point. 

la sauveuse ,

     she relaxes a little bit when the woman doesn’t seem offended by her turning down the cigarette or push her to try one. some people are particular about their vices and justify their own vices by enticing others into it. but instead, the woman just seems to dismiss it without any hesitation, no pressure whatsoever, and sejeong relaxes a little bit more. 

     the other woman’s brusque voice doesn’t really deter her, rather, it reinforces her idea that the woman doesn’t really mind helping her. with what seems to be a blunt, firm personality, she can’t imagine the other spending time on things that are annoying to her. obediently, she nods, “i live in gong hall,” she says softly, the tense set of her shoulders having faded significantly from earlier. 

    “thank you for helping me, yuna ssi.” she says politely, bowing at the other woman in greeting. “i’m kim sejeong.” she blinks at yuna curiously. “um… what were you doing out here, if you don’t mind me asking? i’m lucky you were, of course, but…” she trails off, already feeling awkward and unsettled.

“mm gong hall, nice choice,” she thoughtfully nods and exhales, hoping her best to avoid small talk. it’s a killer, a proper drag, something that gets on her nerves more than it actually should. why talk if words have no meaning? why waste your breath on something that’ll be forgotten in just a few quick minutes? “it’s inspired by the european styles because my grandfather was such a big fan of their cities. i guess it’s a family thing after all,” - loving foreign places, spending ridiculous amounts of money on holidays and trips abroad. 

“it was the only right and reasonable thing to do. i don’t need to be thanked for it,” but she acknowledges the girl’s word with a modest smile, unable to shake off a surprising feeling of accomplishment. she’s a failure, the ha family’s little nightmare, but at least she’s still capable of doing things for others and not just for herself. at least it’s some sort of progress. “i don’t care much for names, they can be quite heavy burdens, but i’ll say that it’s nice to meet you and i wish we were meeting under different and better circumstances,” she wistfully sighs and averts her gaze, now focused on the ground beneath her feet. 

so he got rather fast through the crowd, the building of his club in front of his eyes, before someone got into his way so fast, that he wasn’t able to stop anymore but run into them. he first feels a bumping of a body colliding into him at first, before feeling the wetness of a liquid spilling onto his chest. he halts and looks down on himself, on his shirt that now displayed a huge coffee stain. then he blinks up at the girl in front of him, hearing her apology which makes him smile softly at once. accidents like these tended to happen in the busy rushing of the day.

“oh, it’s ok. it’s my fault as well. i was rushing, so i didn’t see you coming in from the side.”

quickly and without a single word, she fishes out a couple of tissues from her purse, as though she actually knew what was going to happen, as though she possessed the mind of a psychic. but she isn’t one, sadly not, she’s never been blessed with any special gifts or talents, but she is wicked, clever enough to pull this thing off as a harmless accident. yet some would argue that even that is a talent, the ability of committing wicked things without a shred of remorse. perhaps she ought to feel ashamed for her actions, but right now, she only has time to focus on her selfish mission. save the gut wrenching, iron heavy remorse for later. there’s time, there’s always time, life is all about living in the moment.

“no please, i was the one carrying around that stupid coffee. it definitely tasted awful, perhaps that’s why it’s been with me for this long. guess i should’ve tossed into the trash when i had my first sip. nothing good comes from bland coffee,” yuna looks up at him with an apologetic look, smiling slightly while trying to feign shock, deep regret and sadness. “look at your chest. oh i am so awfully sorry.”

la sauveuse ,

     the woman pulls out another cigarette, and sejeong bites on her lip. she’s never understood the appeal behind smoking, but then, she also doesn’t drink, so some people might wonder what kind of college student she is, exactly. a rather sheltered and quiet one, she would probably answer if she were asked. “no, thank you,” she says politely when the woman offers her a cigarette, though her voice trembles faintly, grateful that she is blowing the smoke in a different direction. sejeong has never had a particular affinity towards the smell of smoke, but neither is it something that disgusts her. 

     she blinks at the other woman quietly, her heart still pounding from the scare, though she’s trying to suppress that as much as possible. the woman’s words intimidate her a little bit, the idea of scaring the man off not exactly her idea of fun. 

     “u-um,” she manages, not wanting to trouble the woman any more, since she’d already helped out with scaring the male off. “i’m not hurt,” she says uncertainly, “and i wouldn’t want to be a bother…” the truth is that she’s worried about the walk back, but not enough to ask this complete stranger, kind as she was, to go out of her way.

     she does want to say yes, though. 

for a moment, she gives herself the liberty of studying the girl’s cherubic face, from the lip biting to the look in her eyes, so prim and proper, and she doesn’t even have to say a single word but yuna already knows what’s on her mind. it really doesn’t take a genius to spot those who don’t bother to deal with cancerous things. 

“that’s all right. more for me then. i just wanted to be polite,” she lifts a shoulder in a half shrug, taking a hard drag of her cigarette. many had begged her to stop. father. mother. especially father. even her friends. they say it’s for her own good, but how do they know what’s good for her? if she likes it so much, then is it truly that bad? if anything, it’s good to find something that you love - so that you can later on let it kill you.

“splendid,” she mutters, tendrils of white smoke wafting from her nostrils. ha yuna isn’t particularly known for her subtly or willingness to take part in seemingly pointless conversations, never being the one to dwell on things except when it’s convenient for her. but she can’t just leave her. not after everything she’s witnessed and perhaps, somewhere, deep down, she has a heart. bruised, black and ugly, but still a heart. “you’re not a bother. let’s go.”

(...)

     but before she can steel herself enough to do anything, she hears the sound of footsteps, and a woman’s voice, cold, asking if the man behind her is bothering her, but before she can reply, venomous words are being spit out. the man who had been following her is gone within moments and sejeong breathes out a sigh of relief before she turns wide eyes onto her savior. 

     “thank you,” she breathes out shyly and she’s immediately rather intimidated by the woman in front of her. not just by her undeniable beauty, but also by the power — whether it’s in confidence or something else — that seems to exude from her.

truth be told, she doesn’t expect for the entire scene to unfold so quickly, but in just a few brief seconds, she watches as the man almost vanishes into thin air, retreating with his tail between his legs like a castrated beast. triumphal, in her own world she’s julius caesar, a girl with unmatched power that comes from within. glancing up from beneath heavy eyelids, she smirks at the words that slips from the other’s lips and makes a noise of disagreement. “no need to thank me. it’s what any sane person would do.”

she shrugs it off because she actually wants to believe that’s the truth and as she finishes her second cigarette for the evening, she fishes a new one out from her inner coat pocket and subsequently lights it with a silver lighter which coincidentally has her father’s name engraved on it. the lighter is hers, she just borrowed it without him knowing. he still asks about it from time to time, but all that yuna can do is give him a sad, pitiful look. he can always buy a new one, fuck sentimentality and nostalgia.

she inhales fast but exhales even faster, blowing out tendrils of smoke in a different direction so that the poor girl wouldn’t have to suffer in a grey cloud of cancer. “do you smoke by the way? do you want a cigarette?” is the first thing that she says after her initial response, but in all honesty, yuna has never known how to properly console people. her compassion only consists of her offering cigarettes and a few minutes of her time for talking. “but that son of a bitch sure did run away fast. i wish that i had gotten at least a few more seconds to scare him even more. god, it was so fun.”    

(...)

Hearing the scoff, she doesn’t flinch as she would with people with real power. Yoori was going about this chess game all wrong, this girl was just some random. She was not a rich man funding her scholarship, nor was she wealthy woman who had the connections that she needed to get to her dream job. She was a fellow student, rich and bored. “Though, I find it funny that you moments before called yourself ‘so clever’as if it was a objective fact. But as you say, how can you be clever when words are just random sounds?”

“You didn’t ask, but I will. What your name? I’d prefer if you give me your age as well, since I am not familiar enough with you to call me by my name.” Pulling a pile of books into her arms, beginning to walk away before turning slightly to the other. “If you would like to return the favor and help me put away the books, I’d very much appreciate it.” She begins her walks to the other isles of books, before glancing at the girl for a beginning to put away the books in her arms as she walked down the bookshelves. 

“waxing poetic and using aristotle as an example isn’t actually proving your point. i’m pretty sure that he was talking about actual positive attributes like certain skills or great knowledge captured withing one’s mind and not about beauty. being beautiful means nothing if you don’t have something special underneath all that charming skin and flesh,” lifting her gaze up, she only yawns, deliberately emphasizing on its loudness.“but you did just boost about it. so tell me, why does it matter? if i were a man, i’d probably be flattered, but unless you’re trying to seduce me, i don’t really see the point in talking of your own beauty.”  

sighing once more, she pushes herself up onto a smooth wooden surface, resting the sole of her heeled boot on one of the nearest chairs. now she’s sure that if any other student even dares to do the exact same thing, they’ll receive a proper fine or at least a stern warning, but the same rules have never applied to her. she reaches into her coat pocket and finds only an old tissue,  frowning slightly as remembers that she left her pack of cigarettes back in her class. “well it could be an objective fact as unlike beauty, intelligence can actually be measured. haven’t you ever heard of the iq test?” she snorts lightly and her voice turns to a soft coo as she offers the girl a pitiful pout.

(...)

But they were not written characters, and such speaking was not taken well. “I don’t really care for compliments anyway.” She says, not flinching but watching her carefully to see if she could catch her intentions but to no avail. “Models are not just tall, they also must be pretty. Which I am as well, but that is just something like my height. Out of my hands.” She supposes they both agree on that fact, that it’s not good to compliment on something you have no control over. Though this similarity in thinking doesn’t stop Yoori from setting her jaw at every word escaping the girl. It reminds her of the rich, their pointed way of talking not saying anything at all but saying everything. 

And all at once, she knows this girl comes from money. She watches her for a moment, “what are you implying? That you are so clever that I cannot keep up? Are you assuming I’m offended on not being complimented by a stranger? That I come to place of reading and studying…to stare at pictures?” Yoori has played this game before, but it never got easier to resist the fire she burned from her tongue instead swallowing it. “My name is Song Yoori, not tall girl. I’d appreciate you stop referring to me as my gender and a physical trait.” 

 there are plenty of conversations that the two of them could perhaps have, but first, she’d have to get to know the other, decide whether or not their thoughts clash well enough for yuna to actually spare some of her precious time on chatting with the other girl. never the one to walk into any situation without supplying herself with facts or proper research, yuna is by far too clever and far too cautious to dive head-first into anything - that is, unless she suddenly changes her mind. “well that’s quite remarkable, most people seem to be depended on compliments. so what a refreshing change,” she nonchalantly remarks, as if she's simply discussing the current weather.

“there you go, contradicting your own previous statement, what a pity. you say that you don’t care for compliments and yet you simply felt the desire to call yourself pretty. but you’re wrong, not all models are pretty, not at all, as beauty is subjective. just because you think that something is beautiful doesn’t mean that others must too, including me. would i call you pretty? well i don’t know, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter because that beauty is not truly yours. it belongs to your mother and father and you wear an ancestor’s face. but most importantly, it also belongs to nature and it won’t stay with your forever,” her indifference ought to be irritating, but it dawns on her then, that perhaps there's not much more to the girl before her than meets the eye.

it’s late, she comes to that conclusion when she checks her silver wrist watch, but she still slows her stride as she exists the main library, coming to a full stop in the middle of the hallway to light up a cigarette, ignoring the no smoking sign on one of the doors just as she had done it a countless number of times prior to this. will there ever be a point in her life in which she will no longer have to gawk at that sign and these awful halls? 

but it’s too late to let such macabre thoughts infect her mind and while that certainly is a valid query, she quickly decides to worry more about her next drink. what should she stop to buy? red wine, vodka, soju, absinthe? while she’s at it, she should probably buy another pack of cigarettes due to being left with only three more in her deep pocket – now that’s an actual crisis. the end of the fucking world. 

she continues to walk, managing to make it far away from the main faculty building without any interferences or trouble on her way  – as she’s usually had the awful privilege of being approached by people she could barely stand for a casual chit-chat at best. but then her eyes land on a strange pair  – a girl and a boy, which seemingly seem normal at first, but by the time she lights another cigarette, she’s more than aware that someone is actually following the girl. 

the cup of cheap black coffee in front of her turned cold about thirty minutes ago and yet she continues to stare into it as though, perhaps, it will eventually tell her how to solve her problems. or, alternatively, reheat itself through spontaneous combustion. between repeating the complex grammar structures of the french language, reading books, and scrolling mournfully through an instagram account that she never bothers to update, life seems heart-sinkingly unsettled.

it doesn’t hurt to say or think about it, but she knows that she’s barely liked among the professors, most of them keeping a polite smile plastered across their faces due to a gut-wrenching fear of disrespecting a member of the ha family and really, she doesn’t even deserve a shred of respect, but her father seems to think differently. 

and he wishes to see her leave a good impression. blatantly said, it’s a last call for redemption. he wants to see her remembered, in a better way, before she finally leaves the halls of snu and sets out into the world, leaving nothing behind but myths and legends of a girl once known. but then she spots @sgnxgikwang and maybe, just maybe, she feels like her faux prayers have been answered. she looks at him and then at her coffee, and then once again back at him, and so a cleverly wicked idea forms inside of her head. 

(...)

Yoori has made herself a fortress in the library, surrounded by piles upon piles of books stacked three to four high. Not quite towers in their own right, but they kept the proximity safe from intruders especially in the fiction where most students avoided since it couldn’t be cited in papers or the like. Though this time she had made her place in the historical non-fiction since it was the middle of the semester and no one had any book reports due it seemed. Besides, as long as she stayed away from the textbook section of the shelves, she’d be safe from interruption.

Though now she sees that she spoke far too soon, “excuse me?” A single perfectly carved eyebrow raised to take in the shorter female. Using her elbows to push herself off the bookcase she was leaning on, she stood toe to toe with the girl looking down slightly. “An observation, made a compliment based on said observation, and then dismiss it all before asking for help.” She repeats the means of her speaking back to the girl, her expression unreadable. “Is this usually your manner of speaking?” She inquired stepping past her and handing it over easily. 

yuna is a walking contradiction, a woman that consists of polar opposites, but that’s perhaps her true beauty. unhinged and strange girls are always one step closer to god, for they're not afraid to trudge along dangerous paths. she smiles when the other girl finally begins to speak, feeling almost prideful for masking her request as a simple compliment. but the girl’s fast and she does notice her sudden shifts, so yuna has no choice but to nonchalantly nod along. “who said anything about compliments? that was a simple observation. nothing more and nothing less because at the end of the day, your height is not something that you can choose,” she says with a smile that only goes skin-deep, chuckling slightly. 

“of course i do. i am so clever that sometimes i don't understand a single word of what i am saying. do you know who actually said that? oscar wilde. he was right. but you do have to admit that my way of speaking isn’t for those who aren’t sharp-witted. it takes a keen ear and a sharp mind to notice certain subtleties.” but with the book finally in her hand, she feels once more satisfied. calm. nausea is finally hers. 

“thank you for the help, tall girl. however, i’d like to add that being tall could be considered a talent these days so don’t feel hurt by the lack of compliments from me. everything’s a talent these days and what are models if not walking hangers?” yuna playfully adds, surprised by her own willingness to spare more than the usual few words of greeting with those around her.