#marbles.

Asher looked over at the other and brought a hand to his neck, nodding a few times as he cleared his throat. “Y-yeah, it is.” Pressing his lips together, he din’t know what else to say. His neck was one of the most sensitive spots in his body.

    He could tell by the way the stranger’s collar poked him, eliciting a quick hand-to-neck response followed by a small intake of breath. Ki’s observation voiced itself when his curiosity piped up. Tilting his head at the response, his finger drifted forward, purposely dragging against a small red patch at the tendon so skillfully crafted under the skin of this boy’s neck.

starter for dolvmite​:

    Pop. The little glass marble crammed inside a blue bottle cap had finally shot away and into the back of his throat. For ten minutes (give or take), he’d been gnawing at the bottle of ramune, dragging his canine strategically along the sealed orb and sucking hard. He’d thrown away the plastic used to punch it open, and instead of getting help, Jinho had just gone along with it. Now he was choking, bringing a slender hand to his throat to coax the marble up. It had already passed through.

    The tendons in his hands became taut and delicately strung until his fingertips were digging into his throat. His eyes were taped to the empty basket of breaded fish crumbs that lay in front of Jinho.

    This week marked the era of buying things. Initially he was offset by the idea of buying an animal like a product, like it belonged to anyone other than the earth, but gradually, he found his trips to the pet store growing more and more frequent. Until he had emptied most of his paycheck and left with a milky white puffball of a kitten. 

    The walk home was long, and the kitten had started giving little chirps against her spot tucked in the crook of his arm. He frowned and nudged the space between her ears with a gentle stroke. The day was hot. She must have been thirsty. 

    His eyes scanned the sidewalk until they landed on a girl taking swigs from a bottle of water, changing his course to stop a few feet in front of the bench she sat on.

    “Excuse me...” He ventured, adjusting the whining cat in his hold and scrunching his nose until she was curiously arched over his forearm.

    Night was his favorite time to explore. Often he had no notion of where he was going or what he would do, but this night he was content to ride the bus with his new phone in hand. He couldn’t understand a majority of the interface, even if half of the store had taken turns showing him the ropes. He could hear them mumbling assumptions of him being a defector. 

    With time to himself and a ragged bus route to kill his boredom, the only function he’d mastered was the camera button. Shoes, walls, and people walking in all directions were no match for the shutterbug behind the screen. And now that he’d run out of things to photograph, his shoulders slumped, eyes roamed curiously over the slim amount of people who began to pool off of the bus, and fingers edged at the warm device. After all, where was there to be on a Thursday evening?

That phrase sure wasn’t usual to be heard. To be honest, Siyoung had never heard that coming out of anyone’s mouth, and hearing such words from a perfect stranger made the situation even more awkward, if not creepy.

“What?”

How else was he supposed to reply to the male standing in front of him? His stare was peculiar, just like his voice, a voice which sure wasn’t comforting to hear in the middle of the night. Besides, the absence of light didn’t help Siyoung realize the person in front of him wasn’t a normal human. Luckily for himself, the boy with glasses had an incredible talent at keeping a straight poker face when it came to borderline-freaky situation. He had to thank all those scary video games -which still made his hands shake in fear. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to control his whole body.

It was his body itself which came out probably with the best idea. And no, it wasn’t about running away as fast as he could. His shaking hand rapidly reached for his pocket. Feeling the frame of a lollipop through the cloth, the hand didn’t hesitate a second to grab it and offer it to the boy.

“I.. eat this instead… it’s from the arcade..”

    He was known to play with his food. Even when he wasn’t hungry, he found some humans much too amusing to leave alone. This boy wasn’t hard to impress upon.

    His eyes jumped to the wrapped candy, genuinely intrigued by the shape and the prospect of it being a meal substitute. With a set of sharp, cold eyes, his slender fingers snatched the little thing as elegantly as a spider would an insect, hugging it between his bones and spinning threads of curiosity. In one quick movement the plastic wrapping had been tucked into his pocket, leaving the ball of strawberry flavor painfully bare in light of the moon.

    His gaze lifted expectantly.