#603k

an exaggeration and a vision that  might actually prove true. he can’t cook to save his (or anyone’s, for that matter) life. agreeing to bake for julie is a mistake, and he still, with a rolling pin in hand, and a whisk in the other, wonders how anyone in this damn family could ever leave him alone with a running stove. but desperate times call for desperate measures, he guesses. 

everyone was in an even messier rush this morning. a toast was shoved in lance’s mouth as he fixed his bag, and julie ran out the door still holding a mug of coffee.

terry just so happens to have a day off.

( “i have a paper due. you’ve got to help me.”

“sure, anything.”

“anything?”

“anything.”

“i need you to bake a hundred cookies. thanks, t. you’re a lifesaver.”

“wait --” )

naturally, the first thing he does is call his boyfriend.

“no ramen today,” he starts, narrowed eyes studying the cookbook on the counter. he hands kiel a bag of flour. “just burnt cookies.”

wordstuck (not accepting) - @603k

elmosolyodni: to slowly break out into a genuine smile when being overcome with emotions, like love or utter happiness.

04.17 // they speak without their voices for a long time. 

he watches the way her fingers tinker with the strings of his guitar. she, the way he stitches his smile together like a step-by-step process. as always, she’s the first one to find her voice. 

“i think you’re great.” a wayward curl catches on her upper lip when she looks up. the first of an early spring breeze brushes it back over her shoulder. he snorts, lips toeing along something confused and something a little bit embarrassed. 

“you haven’t even properly heard me play yet.”she shrugs.“it’s something you like doing, isn’t it?”he nods.“why wouldn’t you be great at it?”

05.17 // they spot each other in a faceless crowd.

she’s found a sliver of a spot at the outer edge of an audience. he sits with his guitar in his lap, fingers in between the strings. it’s one of those afternoons where the clouds hang too low, an incorrigible grey against the city skyline. it looks like this morning’s rain is about to split the sky open in a rerun. 

there’s a lull in instrumentals when he transitions from chorus to verse. he looks up briefly and finds her there. just another face in a faceless crowd. 

lee hyeri? in the minuscule shift of his brows. acknowledgment comes in the small tilt of her head. a greeting in disguise. hi. a beat. sorry i’m late. and then she waves. 

he thinks: there she is. that impossible girl with the crowd-pleasing smile. that lee hyeri and her curious eyes. by the time he’s finished, the beam in her eyes is something louder than the ripple of clapping that falls on deaf ears. told you you’re great, she smiles from across the crowd. he grins, bows his head. 

(track)

he’s half-asleep, or at least, she thinks he is.  maybe it’s the way his head’s slumped against one arm, face turned away from her and towards the window instead.  the television’s been on for a while now, drowned out as she strums aimlessly, his guitar resting awkwardly on her lap. for once the living room table is free of any bottles, replaced with old magazines, paper plates, her now-lukewarm glass of milk. after awhile he mumbles that she’s playing the chord wrong. third finger, b. it scratches, his voice, the needle of a record player. 

she’ll make them breakfast later (which, really, is two bowls of cereal and a burnt egg for him. he makes a wry comment and she kicks him under the table). they’re quiet and she can see the bags beneath his eyes, but it’s normal. morning is a comfortable affair, her socked feet sliding around the kitchen as he washes the dishes and she pretends to help.  

she reminds him to lock the door. they’ll part ways at the front of the apartment, but she remembers to roll down the taxi window and call his name once. kiel, he turns. questioning. the street light is going to turn green soon.

we’ll be okay, she says.

   the plucking softens when kiel comes back, but it doesn’t die. “jeez...” 

   his voice drowns it, anyway.

   “haven’t you thrown it away?” a stop, sharp, unwilling. the wooden plectrum is hold high now, hand for a pedestal. but trash doesn’t deserve to be hold that high, so he lowers it a little. “it’s hardly even a plectrum now.”

“well uh, riddle me this first.”

he punches a hole in the first tag of the pile, pencil uncharacteristically perched on his right ear. he can’t be haughty if there’s no real reason to be, but his shoulders are fixed anyway, nose up if you ignore the fact that your glasses work best that way with the finer things. his tongue sticks out the corner of his mouth ever so slightly, professional nametag (huzzah!) a little something called uncooperative for all the best reasons one could possibly, strangely muster right now.

weird, perfect timing, 2017 being the mother of its subculture. supposedly.

“you see the little pin thingy hanging from my shirt?” kiel raises one brow, eyes and hands still fixed on the remaining tags stashed on the counter. only one elbow rises to point west (my left, your right). it points to nothing, clearly helping the stranger in finding what he doesn’t think he needs. it’s hard to tell whether he’s capable of that part anyway - thinking. wasn’t an expected situation ever, really. kind of the most exciting thing that’s happened in for-fucking-ever, which is tragic for a town that’s not even so small.

it’s simple human company. but something ~*~within~*~ tells him it’s beyond that. mad money goes straight to branding him an easily amused fool. and so wednesday goes.

finally, kiel places the tags down. salvages one that hasn’t been punched yet, offers it to the man across the counter without still sparing him a glance. the pencil’s next, glasses close to falling off his nose as he inhales sharply in a daze that he’d been convinced would bring up the pair. “technically you could have one too, but it seems we’re out so.” he fixes his specs properly, middle finger habitually on the bridge of the frame as he focuses his gaze on the recipient of some nonsense that never stops (you’ll get used to it). “this should do.” the corners of his lips quirk up by a millimeter, nostrils flaring in the midst of pausing for a well-needed second or two.

“your uh, name. sir.”

just the first.

He’s caught somewhere between thought A and thought B when he comes up to the counter, only to encounter thought Y.

(Respectively:)

Thought A: There’s absolutely no way we’re making it out of whatever this is we’ve signed up for and making it across town to catch the movie. 52 miles between starting point and ending point, 1.2 miles walking to the nearest street, 16 minutes. Maybe 10 if paced correctly at a light jog. Cut through the graveyard field, cut another 2 minutes. Eight minutes to get to the nearest street. Another two waiting for the Uber to get around. The graveyard, huh.

Thought B: If someone’s buried alive, they’ve got maybe six hours before they start to asphyxiate. If they’re buried in a coffin, anyway. As long as they’re staying calm, anyway. Huh. Once the oxygen drops 10%, they’d go into a coma. Sudden death would occur somewhere between six and eight percent. But then you’ve got to look at the oxygen you’re replacing with carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide binding with blood better than oxygen being a problem, now maybe you’re looking at maybe 160, probably more so 150 minutes. Killing you a whole two hours before your coffin ran out of oxygen. Huh. Not to mention you’d probably be dead before anyway, in the way six feet of dirt’s about five hundred pounds, barely liftable by a normal human. Huh.

Thought Y, Part 1: Counterboy has better hair than me. 

The thoughts cease for a moment, and he shuts up in his own head. Something about the moment is miraculous to a point, maybe even a little odd, and a whole lot unnerving. He looks over at the stranger, blinking exactly four and a quarter times before leaning a little closer. 

Thought Y, Part 2: Counterboy’s kinda cute.

"Wait, I’m a little confused. Okay, a lot confused.” He gives a smile -- the signature one, that softened the sharp bits of his face and made most (most, related key words: not little, not few, but certainly not all) people a little more responsive, and a little less crude (crude, being subjective) to him. He’s thinking it’s working, until he sees the way the stranger’s face is pulled all taut in all the rightly wrong places, and not so seemingly ready to pull loose.

“I’m new. I don’t know how the system works. Or anything around here, for that matter.” Now he’s hoping for the other to make a dad joke. Or crack anything, for that matter.

603k

he does.

only after he collects said device and grants himself the opportunity of sitting in the front seat first, v-collar seemingly soiled in a brief reflection. three, two, one is silent this round, free hand grazing along the rim of the ashtray to his left. kiel figures it’s a lot better to deal with demands this way, eye contact no longer being as necessary as it had been in the backseat through that damn rearview mirror. that, too, is silent - a plea, one that arrives just as fast as the fear on the other end of the line.

one inhale,

“park soyeon-ssi wanted me to deliver a message to you.” no english.

an exhale,

“same place, same time.” no stuttering. “or your wife won’t be the only one who hears about it.”

click.

furrowed eyebrows is a look he’s outgrown since six am alone, lethargy making it too difficult for him to be fucked any further with doing something about it. with a small sigh following suit, the corner of his lips quirks up, mouth pressed in a tight line as he spares his phone a cautious glance. concern replaces lethargy fast. “he… hung up first.”

his gaze stays straight ahead, no effort in looking at death straight in the eye being made at all.

do we still win?

fear, predictably, always sounds the same.

it’s nothing like those bullshit horror movies, high-pitched screaming (fuck, he hates watching them.  how stupid can you get? it’s all wrong, so damn wrong.  they ought to learn a thing or two from sinjin). instead, it’s the silence, that barely-audible sound of breathing; something struggling to breathe, remembering what it’s like to be alive. and then realizing that, shit, i’d really like to not die today!

you know.

predictable.

sidekick plants his skinny ass into shotgun; taeoh barely bats an eye.  better for him, anyways-- easier to reach, or strangle, whatever’s necessary.  he doesn’t think he’ll have to settle for the latter, though.  he’s almost starting to like the guy. at least he hasn’t cried.

the kid recites his lines without a hitch, and it’s all going according to plan.  more or less.  taeoh barely has a chance to reach over to change the radio station when the call ends more abruptly than he’d expected. huh. maybe sangwon’s smarter than he remembered. 

"no big deal.” his foot weighs down on the gas pedal again until the car’s screaming-- roaring.  he imagines the old man screaming instead and smiles grimly.  so maybe he’s not going to cooperate.  he hadn’t said a word during the call but taeoh had heard him loud and clear (that sweet, sweet silence).

"we’re just going to have a little detour.”

t-30 minutes until he gets on that plane.

late night self reflective asks 🌙  x. // not accepting

cosmos: what’s one thing you wish you could say to someone you are no longer friends with?

< dial tone… >

“i hope you’re happy.”( the number you are trying to reach is— )“you have to be.”

< …end call >

nightmare: what are you most afraid of?

she’s always known this. her father and his storm-filled mouth, ruthless and cutting, even to the best of things: his ex-wife, his daughter, the small haven they protected for 8 years until, that too, he blew away. no one simultaneously disappoints and terrifies her more than her father and his mouth.

( what are you afraid of? hyeri-yah, what do you want from me? )

approval. reconciliation. for what she dreams after, for who she loves, and for those 8 years that will never come back. 

earth: where do you feel most at home?

it’s pitch dark for miles in every direction. here, there’s the distinct sound of the winter ocean breeze and bare feet sinking into soft sand. she can barely make out where the shore ends and the waves begin.

she’s lost track of her steps. of the distance from one end of the shore to the other. all she remembers is the gentle lapping of water and the memory of her father’s whistling in her ear. her mother’s laughter. that same crescent sliver of the moon.

( when you grow up, you’ll remember, lee hyeri. don’t forget, don’t forget. )

warm fingers cup over her hand. are you cold? talk to me. she’s always the last to notice the slight tremor of her fingertips.

@603k from x.