#rorinwx

many are quick to call attention to the moments in the spotlight, at the heart of the action where one attempts the finicky pirouettes and double cabrioles in front of the animated crowd, but so few speak of the moments prior. that is, before the gaining of momentum. before the curtains are drawn. before the music cue, while the space exists as a pin drop silence.

bitna feels like she’s always caught in those moments.

and that is to say: she’s always privy to her drumming heart caught in the ridges of her throat, proximal to the eardrums, it’s deafening. and in these moments where they exist in a pocket of fear and anticipation, where the space remains ever so dark, as if the world is not yet ready to glance upon them, she learns to stop time. to be still as a meticulously carved sculpture, to hold her breath and steady her pose until the light streams in and the music cues for the hour to resume.

and she sees this cue now. watches a small glow swim first from right to centre, then split from one to two. she realises it then, that the shadow anglerfish is staring straight at them. catches its taunting growls in the undertone of her beating heart, as though a sickening predator toying with their prey before the slaughter. here’s a head start, it whispers, i’ll count to ten. bitna reaches her right arm out in the dark until it lands upon what she presumes is rorin’s arm, and she slides her fingers down to seize her dormmate’s palm in a tight hold.

there’s this way in which he’s seemingly shrouded in mystery. glint in his eyes and the curl of his lips, he’ll massage the many tales of his nine lives into the curious ears of his adoring fans, yet there is not a soul that can confidently admit to knowing him. through and through. inside out. for the most part, he prefers it this way. understands the undeniable allure of the unknown, the eroticism of danger, enough that he readily dons it like a thick fur coat over his naked torso. and how does he accomplish this, one might ask? well, the answer is relatively… simple.

there is a lot about park beomseok that park beomseok himself doesn’t know. nothing of his past, of all the occurrences that preceded his birth. and it’s not meant to draw pity, has never been an incessant curiosity that plagued his waking hours. in the bluntest sense, beomseok simply doesn’t care enough to find out. and he prefers it this way. not knowing why his parents abandoned him or the kinds of lives they lived. it’s of little relevance to him. besides, he’ll say, the mystery adds to his allure.

but what happens when he does find out?

it’s weird, these feelings that he barely knows how to juggle. finding out that his mother was an air fairy narrows down the population by a fifth. given his age, that further cuts down the possibilities enough for him to almost wish he’d paid attention in math. and he’s tried it on for size, let this titbit dribble into the ears of a select few if only to see how it felt. beomseok’s paraded the many tales of being an air fairy more times than he could count from before he found this out as a fact, but after, it somehow hits a little too close to… well, ironically, home.

so he tucks this piece of him neatly into the sleeve of his heart, in a way that one disposes of candy wrappers when there’s no proper place to trash it and they don’t want it sitting in their hands.

of course, it would take an air fairy to pluck it out. he’s roaming around the party, gladiator helmet in one hand, when he hears it spill from rorin’s loose lips. and it… bothers him, in a way that he’s never felt bothered by much of anything at all. beomseok thinks to ignore it, or maybe he’ll entertain it by taking charge of the narrative and twisting it into a half-truth, but there’s just no other way to describe it. he just doesn’t want it out. so it happens quick, the way he approaches her from behind to wrap his naked arms around her, one arm curling intimately around her waist while the other fixes firmly over her mouth.

“ladies, gents,” he addresses the crowd, never mind the fairy that he’s held captive against her will, “i’m gonna have to borrow my girlfriend. she’s had a little too much to drink.”

and it’s in this way that he carries her out into the balcony, her back to his chest as he drags her by the waist. it’s only when he feels the cold breeze that he lets her go, pays her an unfittingly maddened gaze hidden behind an ingenuine smirk.

she had never understood possessiveness to be a negative trait. could never quite see the problem in curling one’s cordlike fingers around their rightful possessions, in holding it protectively against one’s chest, right above their beating heart, and calling it theirs. of having to apologise for it. and why should she? why should she, when all her life, anything that she had ever dared to dream of, anything that she had ever been brazen enough to grasp would fall through the gaps in her fists like sand and pool so effortlessly into byeol’s cup? here’s the thing about possessions: when all the things you care about escapes you, when anything you could ever want flees from your grasp to pirouette mockingly atop your sister’s crown, even the things that never once bore any substantial weight suddenly start mattering.

and it’s in this way that bitna glares at the cup balanced cosily in rorin’s hands. there’s a moment when she thinks she could let this go, but she recalls the day they moved in, when she had found a selection of cups arranged haphazardly on the kitchen table and decided that this one would be her cup because all the others had appeared so lacklustre, and the moment just escapes her. in the grand scheme of things, it’s a blip, really— certainly not the kind of battle that one should choose especially with someone she’s meant to live with for the coming years, but that’s her cup. no— that’s her cup. they’re on the couch watching some inane programme on the holo-tv, an otherwise meaningful bonding moment between newly acquainted dormmates, and rorin takes a sip out of her cup.