#inkdrift

a soft smile offered to the receptionist, a tad sheepish, equal arts shy and excited. the pads of her fingers drum across chisato's lower lip as she pores over the flash boards, humming a quiet ' ba-ba-ba ' under her breath. she knows that the whole thing about getting a tattoo is that there should be a meaning to it----or so she's heard, anyway. she's sure some people have gotten random dots and smiley faces before; after all, r----

ah. there she goes again.

she gives her head a quick toss to clear her head before resuming her persual. what is she going for? neotraditional? fineline? blackwork? oh, definitely not that last one, not for her first. but these lotuses look good too, symbols of rebirth. an ouroboros, infinite beginnings and ends? or maybe something cute, like a panda. chisato likes pandas. she had a stuffed plushy of one when she was a little girl, though it had soon been mutilated by her brother and his friends in an unfortunate accident. they tried to replace it, but one look at those brown-and-not-blue glass eyes had her heart shattering into tiny pieces. she'd forgiven daiki, of course. but maybe that's not the first thing she should think of when she looks upon her forearm.

she strokes the bare skin, soft and unblemished, a blank canvas for any of the artists further in the parlor to work their magic. maybe she should've done more research----looked online, on instagram, to get a sense of who she even wanted to put the needle to her skin in the first place. but when was the last time she made a well-thought-out decision, anyway?

"it was actually more so just fucking weird rather than scary. i was trapped in this carnival funhouse type thing and i was going through that hall of mirrors where your reflection looks all distorted, y'know? then i ended up in this giant room with all these clowns laughing like they'd gotten ahold of some good shit. the laughs just kept echoing and filling the room until i was hearing it inside my head. even when i covered my ears, i still heard it so clearly that it freaked me out and i finally woke up. that's the last time i eat tteokbokki with extra gochujang before bed."

LATE NIGHT PLAYLIST i. midnight train by se so neon. / ii. to her by 3rd line butterfly. / iii. trippy by beenzino. / iv. evening glow by wave to earth. / v. sunset by tuesday beach club.

"i'm a pretty simple guy in that respect. i'll usually go for soju or a kloud, something like that. there are times where i'm feeling a little fancier and i spring for a rice beer which has a really great flavor. i'm far from a connoisseur of alcohol, but i have my favorites."

she knew it was stupid — keeping a dirty flyer she'd found on a sidewalk grate for nearly a week. she had been walking home from the train station when she happened upon it; an unassuming looking advertisement for drag racing down at the strip. supposedly, you could even bet on the races, a fairly interesting proposition in seonah's eyes. she couldn't explain it, but she had a good feeling about attending the race. maybe it was the handful of times she'd seen her father get an inkling before a horse race, or maybe a night out just sounded like a good idea, but she'd decided pretty quickly after she'd found it that she was going.

even now, she had the flyer tucked into her pocket, just in case she needed to present it to get in. to be honest, she wasn't at all sure how this worked. as she walked across the vast lot bordering the drag strip, she saw quite a bit of leather, some designer clothes and plenty of mini dresses. she couldn't help but feel a bit underdressed in her yankees t-shirt and jeans and wholly out of place. it was obvious this could be a lucrative outing for some people. if her conversion rates were correct, she had a little more than 200 bucks worth of won tucked into the flyer, and she was gonna see where it got her tonight.

as she got closer to the strip, she was beginning to see a lot of the race cars along with the trailers they'd been driven in on. she began surveying them closely, seeing if any of them sparked a particular feeling or not. there were mitsubishis, nissans and kias in every color and with every wrap imaginable. none of them really spoke to her the way the flyer did.