#atfs

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10* / 11 / 12 (lachina) / 13 (awiti) 14 (luella) / 15 (inka) / 16 (lilly) 17 / 18 (evi) / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 25 / 26 / 27 / 28* / 29 / 30 / 31 / 32 / 33 / 34 35 / 36*/ 37 / 38 / 39 / 40 / 41 / 42 / 43 / 44

Anything marked with a * means it’s from the Sims Resource.

It was in this impenetrable silence that Jaehyun had received his first sense of true euphoria. However, that’s what he thought every single time he came across something that widened his eyes and knocked the air from his lungs.

But this time was different.

Jaehyun braced himself to take his first real good look out through the seemingly invincible glass window. He had done a very good job avoiding it, despite his colleagues’ enthusiastic rough-housing and their acts of shoving his face against the glass. Jaehyun waited till the shuttle became vacant of movement, silent-ish too, but there was really no avoiding the huffs and bleeps coming from the systems around him.

The first time he thought he felt euphoric was when he was 18, receiving an internship fresh from high school. Jaehyun worked so incredibly hard for this moment. He graduated with flying colors, and every honor imaginable. All his years of extra classes and hours studying finally for once paid off, and his future was going to be essentially taken care of. Shaking hands with the heads of the space company was harrowingly exciting. The only thing that kept him glued to the ground, and his mind focused, were the squeezes from the handshakes and the pats on the back he received from his mentors.

As soon as they had left the room he cried out, tears falling and a flurry of emotions rushing through his pulse and every strand of his hair. One associate who was apparently still in the room awkwardly coughed, and Jaehyun wiped his tears in a totally manly way and rushed past him and out the door.

The second time was the year after. It was after he endured harsh physical training, but the schooling wasn’t too bad - he had experienced worse by his own accord. He felt euphoric when he was raised out of the pool, passing his tests for the day. His lungs burning and blood screaming in his veins. There was a slight sickness in his head as things were maybe a little less in focus than what his 20/20 eyesight was used to. Everything fucking hurt. But Jaehyun couldn’t help but smile because it was in this moment that it hit him. He could do anything. The pain he had endured that morning, which was a lot, broke him. But the Jaehyun that resurrected was so empowered, physically and mentally, and so enriched with passion. Under his mask and the poundage of equipment hooked up to him, he laughed.

After he was allowed to eat and rest for a few hours, he had returned to the common room. His colleagues teased him from his strange emotions earlier that day. And they said that it was his slight lightheadedness which drove him mad.

The third time was probably when he first fell in love. The person of interest was an office worker in the building. The two of them weren’t really supposed to cross paths. But Jaehyun didn’t have the heart to have someone else deliver his lab results to be analyzed. He personally took the papers and delivered it to the person who would become his first love, thinking he had gave them to the doctor to check up on his sugar and salt counts.

He was wrong, but it worked out since he scored a date at the nearby pier the following Sunday afternoon. They drank cider and ate funnel cake, and it quickly became a tradition of theirs. He felt euphoric because he found someone he could call his, somewhat of a rarity, and definitely something he would not take for granted.

Another time that came close was when Jaehyun was notified that not only would he would be the youngest person to enter a real shuttle, but he would also be the youngest person ever to reach space. This time it wasn’t a test; no longer a guinea pig, Jaehyun was going to experience the real deal in a year or so. People had been preparing for years for this moment, and he couldn’t understand why it was him. He didn’t question it. And like his 18 year old self, he shook hands with the higher ups with a grin and nodded excitedly.

Jaehyun didn’t feel euphoric in this moment, only because he didn’t feel like it was any more impactful than experiencing genuine love for the first time. It was still great, my god it was great, but maybe that was the extent of it. He didn’t find any chills at the tips of his fingers or anything, just a bubbling in his heart and a boost to the ego.

But no. This moment. It had to be the one.

In this moment, it felt like it was more than just euphoria. Exhilaration, ecstasy, bliss. None of the synonyms quite caught the connotation of the emotion that Jaehyun was feeling. Nirvana couldn’t even come close. He was above the world, in a figurative and an unbelievably literal sense. As he looked past the thick aluminum silicate glass, he felt like he was out there. The lack of oxygen outside the space shuttle identical to the lack of air in his lungs. His eyes were as bright as the stars that the earth swam so far away from. Jaehyun’s hands were clammy and the clenching of his fists kept him focused and reminded him that he was no longer dreaming. It was as if in his entire life, he was asleep, but he finally woke up with a gasping breath and a rapid, maybe alarmingly so, beating of his heart.

He was thrown in perspective, too. The elatedness was probably equivalent to the unexpected sorrow he felt.

Jaehyun was no stranger to such emotions. He had experienced many moments of sadness and confusion, despite the success he reached ever since he was younger. Like: why me? What is my point in the world? What am I even working towards? He had this overwhelming lack of confidence in his life, thinking that he would never feel true ikigai - he would never find his reason for being. Sometimes Jaehyun would feel this disgusting disconnect. He felt numb and blank and emotionally detached. It was a darkness he would dip his toes in very rarely, but it was an ocean that was ever present and Jaehyun feared its open water.

There was a heart wrenching and convulsing weight that fell upon him. He felt so irreversibly small and insignificant in the whole scope of things. All the things he had accomplished were so irrelevant. It was like for that moment, he was drowning in that ocean for hours. Here he was, a tiny human, floating in the sky - far beyond its stratosphere - in a hunk of metal. From up here he felt like he could see everything, that there was so much more in life to live for, but the people below him were riddled in anger and a spitefulness over matters he thought were so trivial.

Jaehyun was so goddamn happy. But so, so angry and sad. It also broke him when he realized he would truly never experience a moment like this one again. It was like he had skipped to the end of an enticing book, spoiling its finale. It was so bittersweet, so aggravating that he had ruined it, but so exciting to have finally discovered the ending. This moment was something uncapturable. The clicking shutter of a camera, or a journal entry could never dream of containing the blizzard in his heart and mind.

And he stepped away from the glass, his hands peeling away from the window.