#slnd

tw: abuse

Hanbyeol is raised with a silver spoon, a stiff upper lip, and a straight back.

The younger of two boys, it’s understood from birth that he’s not the heir. It makes for a bit of a strange upbringing, really - he’s not quite important enough to receive the attention a child needs, but he’s just important enough that he still needs to be raised the right way, the Song way.

He’s a quiet baby. Perhaps he knows from the very beginning that children are to be seen and not heard. He doesn’t cry, and he doesn’t fuss. His brother is endeared by him, but his parents aren’t as much so, and ultimately this is the way things remain throughout his entire life.

Hanbyeol sees happiness in glimpses and pieces - his brother plays with him sometimes, when the both of them are free from tutors and schoolwork and extracurricular activities. He sees loneliness more often, and he sees it particularly when the whole family is together at the dinner table, the dining room silent except for the clinking of cutlery.

He sees it most when his brother leaves for university.

His father is a quiet man, a strict man. His mother is the same. Sometimes, when Hanbyeol is very young, he wonders whether they talk to each other at all. They certainly don’t talk all that much to him. They don’t really start talking to him for a long time, not until he’s their only child left at home. Hanbyeol realises then that their earlier silence had probably been for the best, and he regrets ever wishing for their attention.

His world remains small for a long, long time. He has minimal friends as a child, and that doesn’t change until he nears secondary school where, with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of chance, he makes his first friend that hasn’t been introduced to him by his parents. And then, like the tiniest domino setup, he suddenly has a group of friends.

Things are suddenly different.

It’s strange at first, to have people apart from his brother ask about him. It’s strange to spend time with people for the sole purpose of enjoyment. Hanbyeol is awkward and then he’s not, and then he’s happier than he’s been in his whole life, and when he’s young and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, he expects it to last forever. Of course, as things tend to, it doesn’t.

His world contracts again sharply as he’s sent to university. Video calls multiple times a week start to dwindle first, and then the phone calls do, and then the texts. Soon enough, he’s getting a single text a month, and then a few months, and then a year. Hanbyeol is smart - it doesn’t take him long to realise what’s going on.

He closes up entirely. Friends aren’t really worth it, he decides, his mother’s words echoing uncomfortably through his mind. They’re distractions, his father’s voice adds. Maybe they’re right. He fast-tracks through his parents’ decided majors for him and he ends up right where they want him - working in their company, high up enough to be of use, not so high up enough to be too powerful.

It’s not his ideal life, not really, but… It’s fine, Hanbyeol thinks, downing his third cup of coffee.

she’s moved around since the day she was born, always picking up and going somewhere when her dad’s work decides to move them. it was always her and her older brother kicking each other on the plane, fighting over who gets to use the gameboy as their parents look on haggardly.

the sparkle of new places starts to dull quickly when erina realizes that she has no place to call her own, always having to say goodbye to the friends that she made and move on, trying to pick up the pieces in the middle of the school year and try to insert herself somewhere.

so rebellion comes early for her as she tries to make sense of her situation. she sneaks out at night, gets into trouble with her friends, and generally does anything that her parents definitely don’t want her to do. the feeling of freedom is attractive to a girl who probably gets too much of it, but now it’s on her terms.

by the time she gets to middle school they move to korea despite the usual protests, with promises that that they can stay at least until she graduates, so with another tug at her rose gold luggage, headphones strung up to her ears, she makes the move again.

once high school rolls around her parents want to move again, but this time she’s adamant about staying, saying that they promised her she could graduate here. she has a life that she built, friends she made, teachers she got attached to. she makes enough of a fuss that they allow them to stay with family until they finish high school.

it starts with a few pictures on social media, the pretty and innocent high school student look that everyone loves. before she knows it she’s gaining more and more followers, and erina finds herself falling into a superficial world because it gives her the attention in a way that she always craved, in a way that she never could before.

their friend group promised that they would always be friends, and even though erina loved their bond so much, she was one of the first to leave. seemingly without even telling anyone, she goes to japan for her job, for opportunities that she couldn’t get while she was here.

I.

“Jaesuk oppa.”

“Mhmm… Yeah?”

“Let’s break up.”

Her statement jolts her boyfriend awake immediately. His head whips around to face her, sleepy eyes widened in such a bewildered expression Eunsol finds it cute. It’s almost comical how her first thought is to tell him it’s a joke, that she’s not serious about it. She would want nothing more than to jump back into the bed with him and feel safe in his arms, under the blankets. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she forces herself to follow through with it. If you love something, let it go, right?

“I’m serious.”

Good, her voice isn’t trembling.

“Why?” he finally voices the question he’s been asking with his eyes. Hearing it with such raw emotion breaks her heart even more. Was it selfish of her to leave him as she wanted? Or was it more selfish of her to stay with him even when she knew she was weighing him down?

She’s been through numerous breakups before and initiated most of them. None of them was as difficult as this. They’d met through a mutual friend when she was still working. Han Jaesuk: young, bright-eyed, and beautiful. Their friends would joke that he was too good for her, way out of her league, how she would never have snagged such a great catch if not for Jisoo introducing them. Eunsol had laughed along with them then, slapping on their backs and telling them not to spout such bullshit.

At first, when the production company she worked for filed for bankruptcy and she was left without a job, having him there for her was comforting. But as the weeks passed and she remained unemployed, it began to feel a little upsetting. They no longer celebrated his small achievements at work. He always came home late at night, drunk as a skunk, smelling of alcohol. Having so much time to herself allowed her to reflect, to dissect and pick apart meaningless conversations. His encouraging words falling on ears which would eventually hear them as condescending.

It’s always the little things piling up to amount to a force powerful enough to tear open a rift.

Except Eunsol’s the only one drifting away. And God, how much it fucking kills her.

“I started seeing someone else.” Better lie than truth, it would be easier to deal with his hate and indifference than receiving his pity. “You knew about my reputation during university, right? It was only a matter of time before I started my shit again.”

Each word that comes out of her mouth is a blade, sharp and cutting, but who were they meant for exactly? If his face was an open book, then hers would be a canvas. Painted over and hidden. Her suffering shelved away for someone else to deal with. His is in plain sight, still having trouble processing her words, yet there’s nothing she could do to help him ease the pain even if she wanted to. Eunsol blinks back the tears that were starting to well up in her eyes, smoothing out the wrinkles in her pants as she abruptly stands up amidst the heavy tension in the room.

“I’ll start packing my things.”

(Was this really the right thing to do?)

II.

INT. AN APARTMENT IN MAPO-GU – LIVING ROOM – NIGHT

EUNSOL is drinking with her third sister, EUNHA, in the latter’s apartment. Beer cans and soju bottles are strewn on the coffee table and on the floor. There’s a plastic container, containing half-devoured jokbal, on one end of the table.

EUNSOL: You know, when I was younger, I thought… I thought that once I turned 20, once I became an adult, I would finally understand.

EUNHA has a look of concern on her face although it goes largely unnoticed by EUNSOL, who is busy taking her nth shot of the night.

EUNHA: Understand what?

EUNSOL: I don’t know. The world, I guess. How things work. How people work, why they do stupid things… [sighs contemplatively, tracing the outline of her now-empty shot glass with her index finger] I don’t really know.

EUNHA: [snorting incredulously] You thought the knowledge of the world would magically transfer to you once you turned 20?

EUNSOL: With all due respect, unnie; die in a fucking ditch. I’m being serious here, pouring my heart out to you. Don’t laugh.

EUNHA: Ugh, fine. Continue.

EUNSOL knocks back a couple of drinks, wiping her lips with the back of her palm once she’s finished. EUNHA pours more soju in her shot glass.

EUNSOL: So, it’s like… Why can’t reality be kinder to me? Like my childhood imagination was. Why do we have to suffer? Haven’t I done well enough? What more do I have to do? Can’t life be as easy as it was 20 years ago? I should have just done what I wanted to do back then.

EUNSOL rests her head on the coffee table.

EUNHA: I thought you did? The four of us always fought because of you, you spoiled brat.

SILENCE hangs in the room after EUNHA’s half-joking interjection; the older sister taking her time to pick out her next words carefully. When she’s about to speak, she realises EUNSOL has fallen asleep across the table, clutching the shot glass tight. Carefully, she pries it out of EUNSOL’s grasp and throws on a blanket on her sister’s back. With her spare hand, she strokes EUNSOL’s hair.

are you happy?

delicate hands twist around each other, fingertips rubbing into pink patches as if friction could somehow make the discomfort go away. the papercuts sting more than usual when dasom finally gets around to that tower of dishes stacked up in her kitchen sink  —  maybe it’s the stagnant water, maybe it’s the cheap soap. it’s all the same to her.

she thinks about her mother as the old water seeps down the drain and she thinks of her father as it fills back up. neither of them have called or visited in a while, but she knows it’s only a matter of time until they do; that’s why she’s finally cleaning, isn’t it? so that they won’t have to see how their only daughter is living nowadays. hell, maybe she’ll even fork out some cash to get the lock on her front door fixed. can’t have them lecturing her about safety again.

relax, dasom. they only nag because they love you.

of course, she knows it’s because they love her. and she loves them just as much. but even with all of her overflowing optimism, the constant nagging makes her think about things she’d rather just ignore, like the sound her washing machine makes that can’t be good and the tell-tale signs that she’s going to have to replace her hot water heater soon.

plus, they always ask her are you happy?

it’s always at the worst times, too, when they should know the answer without asking. when she told them she was dropping out of fashion school because it just wasn’t practical, they didn’t encourage her to stay like she wished they would’ve. they only asked her if she was happy. when she told them she was going to major in education instead and become a teacher, again, they asked her if she was happy. when she moved into her first apartment and everything went wrong but she refused to move back home, again, they asked if she was happy.

and most of the time, she thinks she is. no – she knows she is. her life’s really not bad, even if she does struggle to pay her rent on time. anyone who’s ever met her will claim she’s lively, warm, exhilarating, thrilled to be alive. but she maintains her optimism by never thinking too much about the things that go wrong.

when they ask her if she’s happy, she’s forced to think about the dreams that slipped from between her fingers, the friends who’ve grown distant with time, the aching loneliness as she approaches twenty-six and still feels like she’s just a kid herself.

a dreamer, that’s what you’ve always been, with your head in the clouds but both feet firmly on the ground, a bird, with you wings clipped and torn, longing for places you’ve never known nor seen, caught in an endless reverie. ever since you were a child, you’ve always had the same aspirations, same hopes and beliefs, knowing that you couldn’t be contained, trapped, forced to stay in one place for the rest of your life.

childhood was easy or at least the parts of it that you can remember. warm dinners, mother’s kisses before sleep, perfectly-ironed shirts and skirts, and the hauntingly beautiful laughter of your friends who were there always with you, day and night.

but then your parents changed, and so did your life when your father moved to busan. you didn’t follow him nor did your mother pack her bags, and suddenly it was just the two of you against the world and the fine district called mapo. high school quickly followed and the life of a teenager, and yet you allowed nothing to dull your courage or dim your spirit, remaining that same illusive yet quaintly soft soul, with the most secretive smiles that could make even the perfect girl next door turn green with envy.

you worked at bars, cafes and restaurants, changing locations like pairs of old leather gloves incapable of keeping your fingers warm when winter comes, and it wasn’t because of your lack of spirit or poorly executed tasks, but because you starved and longed for a change of scenery. yet no matter where you went, you always took your favorite postcards with you, keeping your little collection as a set reminder to never look back; from the sunny california that had tempted you with its beaches and glamour, timeless paris and eiffel tower that had brought out the romantic in you, to the flamboyant morocco with a coastline on the north atlantic ocean and the liveliness of mumbai, you knew you had to go, leave everything behind.

but high school always remained the favorite chapter in your life. you’re not sure where it all went wrong, how the tight ropes around you and your friends became so loose, but one day you just woke up in your apartment on the other side of the world and realized that it was all gone.

maybe you should’ve tried harder after graduation, but instead you just packed your bags and started searching for jobs again, anything that could help you escape from seoul. you saved the idea of pursuing a higher education for later and as you kept postponing it, you lost track of time and in the meantime became a stewardess. it was your one way ticket to a better life and something that should’ve only been a steppingstone, but then you got lost in the real world and kept your job without giving it a second thought. it was fun at first. you were paid nicely, scratch that, you were paid more than enough and you saw places you had never even heard of, and met people of every sort, the good and the bad.

then you moved to los angeles, but it was far from the dream you had envisioned. stuck in an apartment that was the size of a shoe box, you only had enough space for a quick rest, which objectively speaking, was more than enough for a preoccupied flight attendant like you. yet to your biggest surprise, you managed to get engaged too. he’s nice, honest, kind, it’s really hard to find a single flaw, and for a while you were happy. but the pressure suddenly became suffocating. so once again, you packed your bags and promised to come back, leaving him a simple explanation: i have to take care of my beloved mother back in seoul.

you’ve been gone for seven months now and the clock just keeps on ticking, provoking you on every corner, reminding you of the california dream you’ve left behind.

no matter what he does, sejoon feels like he never quite gets the smell of sesame oil out of his hair. the most terrifying realization was when he buried his face in his pillow, the deafening concert of the cicadas blaring through the window as he recognized the same smell in his linen pillow case. from then on he stopped dropping his aching body onto his bed right after work, even though every  weary bone yearned for the comfort of the mattress. instead, he lets the burning hot shower stream perform a factory reset on him, his brain idle but somehow running at 100 miles per hour simultaneously.

roaring laughter is what he earns from his father whenever he claims soju to taste bitter. “it’s sweet! you’ll get used to the taste,“ is the standard answer and sejoon has learned better than to disagree. the fault does not lie in the clear liquor. the sweetest strawberries, the most sour gummies, the richest red wine, the spiciest chicken - they all leave a bitter taste on his tongue.

the same bitterness seethed in his gastric acid whenever he met his friends and he despised himself for it. there was no vocabulary poignant enough to convey his envy when they voiced their complaints over boring classes, strict teachers and the approaching exam season. he had stopped thinking of all the things he would do and give up to be in their place, for it was in vain. they would often blame time-consuming classes and the countless hours spent studying as the reasons for the amount of get-togethers growing thin, but secretly sejoon did not mind the scarce contact. the less he was reminded of what he had been denied, the more he could ignore it.

the times he could not ignore it was when his brother visited. dazzling star park sehun, seoul national university attendee, medicine student. there had only ever been enough money to pay for one son’s rent, to sponsor one son’s tuition, to finance one son’s hakwon. of course it had to be the eldest son, who else. the honor of helping at the family restaurant was bestowed onto sejoon instead, a process to give the establishment into his experienced hands eventually.

when his older brother and his posse of medicine, law and engineer student friends frequent the restaurant and threaten to empty out the entire soju stock in one evening, sejoon cooks with his lips tightly pressed shut. his brother does not smell like sesame oil, he smells like gucci’s memoire d’une odeur. “it doesn’t have to be snu,“ he had begged his parents. any university would have been fine, he would have moved to busan if necessary, the tuition at pukyong national university was affordable. his pleas fell on deaf ears, the answer was always a firm no. blood, sweat and tears had been poured into the restaurant, too much to give it into stranger’s hands once mother and father decided to retire. it had to stay within the family, someone who would not run it into the ground, someone who knows it inside out.

sejoon does not hate the place. the two moons is decently popular enough among locals to have regulars and interesting enough for tourists to frequent and take pictures for their instagram account. hell, perhaps he would have studied business and management and taken over the restaurant at one point anyway. but he cannot help but see a metaphor in the way he routinely pours leftover samgyetang from a guest who did not finish his meal down the drain. wasted efforts.

complaints are rare, that does not mean they are non-existent. a veil of friendly demeanor covers them nicely at all points, sometimes he scares himself when his customer service voice manages to win the upper hand even outside of work. sejoon was not born stoic, but every second spent not doing what he wanted turned the characteristic up a notch. laughter has become less frequent, he cannot remember the last time he laughed until he ran out of breath. some days he gives it his all at the restaurant, stays late till after closing to count the register and mop the floors, sometimes he is barely mentally present. he is unhappy with either.

1999—

He’s six and presses down too hard with the black crayon when he colors. It’s a mess of looping dark slashes that threaten to rip at the thin paper. Rogun bears down with too much concentration and his free hand anchoring it into place. Scribbles overlapping lines and wobbly-shaped animals, everything etched overtop a page in a homework book.

Rogun makes it through the first three chapters before his mother catches him in the act. Angry words that send a kick of guilt running through him, even if he hadn’t cared about his hagwon schoolwork. The kind of cowed guilt that only a child can find before they discover how impassivity works.

Crayons confiscated and she’s upset with him for the rest of the day. He can see it in the sharp clench of her jaw, the way her eyes flick up in disbelief when he fidgets antsy and bored nearby trying to make up the work. An occasional sentence pushed out, quick to punch through the silence.

Your father doesn’t work so hard for you to ruin your things.

Rogun has always had a problem of swimming in the in-between. Caught at a crossroads and wondering which way to push himself, committing only halfway to each. It starts here, in between an apology and a protest that he hates it all anyway. That he doesn’t want to study grammar and math.

He curls his fingers together instead.

You always do this.

If he hadn’t then, he’d prove it.

2009—

Your grades aren’t up to par.

They aren’t, and his hands are smeared over in thick black charcoal. It’s scrubbed into the wood of his desk, transferred from paper and palms. His parents stare at him like that because it’s a deviation, because they’re used to him shifting mechanical through the motions and following the guidelines of their expectations. It’s like a rulebook:

Unconditionally, remain in the top three of your class.

Enroll in extra-curriculars that will look nice on your university admissions forms.

Score well on the entrance exam.

Find a worthwhile job, like a doctor or an engineer.

This unspoken rulebook is fucked, and Rogun sinks too much time and sanity into learning formulas that don’t come easily to him, drilling English vocabulary in past the layers of his skull, being the sort of son other mother’s might point to in example.

But it never came easily, or even particularly naturally. It just involved a lot of effort, let bottled up emotions spill out over paper when he was twisted up with anxiety. A barrier to sleep, despite all that lethargy.

Your grades aren’t up to par.

They say, and they aren’t, because they never are.

Put those away. Study.

And so he does.

2012—

He graduates, and he even has an acceptance to a university his parents approve of. He just hadn’t told them about the other one, an art major at a humanities-focused school. Entirely useless, and Rogun knows the kind of reaction he’d be met with if he told them.

So he hadn’t.

Not until last minute, and then he let that match drop. Catch at the proverbial-gasoline soaked carpet and wreck the landscape of their relationship. The decisions that followed didn’t help rebuild from that charred sort of wreckage either.

It all just deteriorated.

He goes to art school, he goes into debt, he gets his first tattoo.

2018—

It’s not his own shop, but it’s a shop and that’s enough for him. He needs some way of paying off that debt, and it wasn’t like the army gave generous pay when it came to mandatory time being served.

This is what his wants anyway, to stitch ink into skin. Translate his art onto bodies.

He separates himself completely from that golden boy image his parents had so desperately wanted for him.

Imprints his rebellion across himself.

This year is the last time he visits his parents. Their disapproval is heavy and palpable. It twists around him until he feels suffocated and like he’s sixteen years old again.

They don’t want anything more to do with him. He takes the sentiment to heart and distances himself from them completely, moves to Osaka the beginning of next year after securing an apprenticeship.

2020—

He’s in his own studio, tiny and cramped with mounds of paper spilling around him. They’re colored over with sketchy, winding snakes and withering flowers. Back in Korea now, and trying to collect all the scattered pieces he’d left behind him when he’d decided to run.