#pahanjae.

she’s had too many drinks, tonight. too many drinks and too many vials of pretty potions tucked up her sleeves. too many packets of powder dug out of her pockets. in fairness, she’s created them herself. knows the causes and effects like the back of her hand. like the inside of it. like the lines that read out her fates and fortunes, if you care to believe in that kind of thing. and maybe she doesn’t. it would be ironic of course, to not believe in fortune telling, as she rides the high of  a potion meant to sooth away worries. as she breathes a powder that promises bliss and serenity, a casual ecstasy of forgetfulness. what are worries, what are cares, when you can erase them from the mind’s eye with but a little bit of plant life plucked at the full moon, under a promising star, dried for a fortnight and ground up at the crack of dawn. 

there’s a warmth that flushes her cheeks, perhaps only in minute capacity from the drink that stains her tongue and lips. she’s painted in the flush of it, hair falling in an untamed cascade of curls around her shoulders, over and down them, spilling like dark waves from a waterfall. she’s got a potion in her pocket with a name on it, though, and she makes a beeline for him when she sees him. 

things with hanjae are complicated. not in the way they should be, in a way she likes. but she can’t subsist forever on the dregs of jinsol’s affection, when he bothers to look her way. she knows she’ll never have what she wants from him, what she needs. she knows she won’t have hanjae either, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting him. it doesn’t stop her from wanting someone. she struggles with that. with the wanting. she pulls the bottle from her pocket as she approaches him, holds it up. it glints in the dim lighting, refracted light glimmering through the deep indigo liquid. 

“i’ve got something for you, if you’ve got something for me,” she tells him, brow lifting. everything comes with a price, after all. she lets her lips twitch into a grin that spreads slow and perhaps ever so slightly sinister in reply to his startled glance. “did i sneak up on you?” she teases, tilts the bottle to let the glass flicker and shine.