♡ 〉THAT’S WHAT YOU GET. ( 🎧: so take a seat, we’re settling the final score / and why do we like to hurt so much? ) sujeong & yoojung — @divenaz
the dichotomy of fight or flight, head or heart, feet on the ground or head in the clouds is one that sujeong has spent the entirety of her life wavering between. eventually she learns to rest on the delicate balance between, though her bad habit of erring on the side of caution is a merit and drawback all at once. so when she peers into a mirror and stares down the reflection in it, the only image she ever sees is that of a back turned. the hazy dwindling view of a girl’s back, going and then gone. the lingering shadow as she turns a corner.
she never could sketch a self-portrait.
because when the primitive fight or flight defense mechanism kicks in, she’s always the one leaving. but even then, even when escapism has come to shape the bulk of her experiences, enough repetition of anything yields the inescapable malady of ennui. these days, sujeong comes to find it all tormenting her like a plague. the tendrils of the past never too far behind her, and no matter how much she hastens every step she takes across untrodden ground, all it feels like beneath her feet is needles puncturing skin, blades of grass lined with serrated edges brushing against her flesh. this is what it’s like to have spent every passing second walking on eggshells.
her first instinct when her gaze lands upon an all too familiar face in the crowd is to turn her back. like she has to be the one to leave first.
but the thing about defense mechanisms, about fight or flight, is that it’s beyond cognizance. so, her feet making their way back towards him, damn near running all the way across the arrival hall—it’s all instinctive, like the way she used to always run to him crying first when she fell and scraped her knee. the dichotomy of good and bad presenting itself before her now, and sujeong realises just how bad she’s always been at picking one or the other. see, the thing about losing someone is that you begin to frame them in the best or the worst ways, and so all she could ever think about when she woke up one day and it seemed like her brother never existed, is how good he always was to her.
yet all she can think about now, is how much of an asshole he was to have left without a word, everything in-between wiped out.
“hyun yoojung,” the syllables foreign against her tongue, her hands tighten into fists at her side as she stands right before who she thinks is her older brother—though the past few years have really left her wondering. “it’s really you, isn’t it?” a dry laugh rises in her throat. “y’know, i was beginning to wonder if you were ever real. if i always just dreamed you up in some sort of manic desperation to have someone normal in this darned family. but then i suppose a normal brother would have had the decency to at least say something before he completely disappears for years on end.”
