#tw.self-harm

You never cared much about art. Galleries felt stiff, full of people nodding too seriously at things that didn’t speak to you. You couldn’t paint, couldn’t sculpt, couldn’t even stay inside the lines in a coloring book. But Kai’s work...

His paintings didn’t just hang. They breathed. They pressed into you, soft and suffocating all at once. His strokes weren’t just skill—they were obsession. And even someone like you, someone who couldn’t tell a Monet from a Manet, could feel it.

You didn’t know you had already been chosen.

It had been years ago. A gallery visit on a quiet weekday. You were just wandering, killing time, walking through marble halls that smelled faintly of wood polish and dried oil paint. You weren’t expecting anything. You never did.

But Kai was there, standing half-shadowed behind a sculpture of a grieving saint. Watching.

He said later that the world came into focus the moment you stepped into the room. That everything before you was gray and everything after was too much color all at once. He didn’t know your name, didn’t even know what kind of voice you had. But the way your fingers brushed the frame of a painting, the way your shoulders shifted when you tilted your head… it was enough.

He went home and painted until his fingers split. He didn’t stop for sleep or food. Just sketch after sketch. Canvas after canvas. Your face from memory. Your body in light he imagined. Every part of you interpreted through devotion and hunger.

You lived your life unaware. Meanwhile, Kai watched. From galleries. From coffee shops. From the corner of a park bench as you passed with your headphones in. Every glimpse fed him. You didn’t know it, but you were inside every one of his pieces.

Until a certain Saturday morning.

You hadn’t planned on being at the gallery. A friend had canceled on brunch, and it was on the way home, so you ducked inside. Familiar scent. Familiar hush. But this time, it was different. One painting pulled you in like a magnet.

You stopped in front of it. A woman in silk, head bowed, eyes shut like she was praying. The resemblance made your chest tighten.

“It suits you,” came a voice at your side. Quiet, reverent.

You turned. He was standing uncomfortably close. Tall, pale hands still smudged with graphite, folded neatly in front of him.

“I’m not really… into art,” you said, unsure why you were explaining yourself. “I just stumbled in.”

He smiled, just a little. “You don’t have to be into it. You are it.”

“That’s dramatic,” you laughed.

“So is beauty.”

There was something in his eyes that made your smile falter. Not threatening. Just… intense. Like he was seeing things no one else could.

From that moment on, Kai made himself part of your life.

Little things at first. A coffee shared after a chance run-in. A link to an art exhibit you mentioned liking. He never pushed. Just listened, watched, remembered. Every word you said became sacred scripture. He soaked it in.

He was kind. Gentle. Soft-spoken. It was easy to let him in without realizing how deep he'd already burrowed.

You didn’t notice the shift until it was too late.

Until you started feeling like your days were being watched.

Until your smile started feeling like a promise.

And then, quietly, you began to pull away.

You told yourself it was just space. You’d text less. Visit his studio less. But he noticed. He always noticed. The distance bloomed like rot in him.

So one night, you went to talk.

You didn’t want a fight. You just wanted clarity. Distance. Something honest.

But the second you stepped into his studio, the air changed.

The door clicked behind you like a final decision. Paintings watched from every wall. Some half-finished. Some of you.

Kai stood near the center of the room, staring at you like you'd just torn open his ribs.

“Don’t leave,” he said quietly.

You hesitated. “Kai… we need to talk.”

“You can’t leave me.”

His voice wasn’t loud. Just broken. He crossed the room slowly, step by step, like each one cost him something. His hand reached up to your face, trembling.

“You made me human,” he whispered. “Don’t take that away.”

You tried to breathe, to say something soft—but he kissed you before the words could form. Not sweetly. Desperately. Like he thought kissing you might keep you from disappearing.

You could have stopped it. Maybe. But you didn’t. Or couldn’t.

He claimed you, right there in the studio. Over and over. Rough, unrelenting, worshipful. His mouth never stopped praising. His hands memorized. His voice broke when he said your name like it was a prayer. You lost track of time, of thought, of why you’d come. When you finally collapsed against him, your body trembling, your voice hoarse, he just held you.

And then, something in him changed.

He slipped away from you, quietly. You heard him rummaging through the far corner of the studio. When you managed to sit up, your skin sore and flushed, you followed.

He was kneeling at the altar you’d never noticed before. A mess of broken brushes, burnt-out candles, wax puddled like bloodstains. He stripped off his shirt. Picked up a cord.

“Kai—what are you—?”

The first lash struck hard.

Your breath caught.

“Stop it,” you said, rushing to him, but he didn’t even look at you. The cord came down again, and again. Each strike left another red trail. His skin opened. Blood mixed with old paint on the floor.

“I touched divinity,” he muttered. “With hands that weren’t clean.”

“Kai, stop!”

Your voice cracked. He finally turned to you.

You were standing there wrapped in the sheet from his bed, the moon lighting you like some kind of spectral saint. Your eyes wide. Your voice shaking.

He smiled, dazed. “You came back.”

• ─────⋅☾ ☽⋅───── •

Weeks passed.

You never brought up what you saw that night. But something shifted. You stopped trying to leave. Maybe out of fear. Maybe guilt. Maybe something else. You and Kai made an unspoken agreement: he could have you, as long as you could still have your world.

You moved into his apartment. You went to work. You went out for groceries. He let you. But every evening, he was there, waiting by the window. He didn’t ask what you did or who you spoke to, but you could feel the questions thick in the silence.

Then came the grocery store.

You were in the frozen aisle looking for your favorite brand of dumplings. Kai had stepped away to grab tea. That’s when you heard your name.

“Hey! I thought that was you.”

You turned. A coworker. Harmless. He laughed about running into you, asked how your week was going. You smiled. Responded politely. Nothing inappropriate.

But Kai saw it.

From across the store. Just your face. The way you tilted your head. The way the guy laughed too hard.

He didn’t approach. He didn’t make a scene. He didn’t bleed.

Because you had asked him not to.

That night, you were in the bath, humming softly, steam curling up around you. The water muted the world.

Kai slipped into his studio barefoot. He walked to the far wall where he’d hidden a canvas under cloth.

He’d painted it months ago.

You, in mourning silk. Surrounded by candlelight. Lips parted, eyes closed like you were dreaming something holy. He’d planned to show you one day, maybe light candles for real, present it with flowers and trembling hands.

Instead, he dragged it out back into the cold.

The fire pit was still black from last winter.

He laid the painting down carefully, like it was a body. Then struck a match.

It caught fast.

The flames devoured you—your painted form. The silk, the curve of your mouth, the skin he’d studied for years. The fire made it twitch and melt. Made you scream silently in oil and canvas.

He watched. Not blinking. Not breathing.

You smelled the smoke first.

Towel around your shoulders, you stepped outside, confused. The flames were high. You rushed toward them, heart pounding.

“Kai?” you shouted. “What are you doing?!”

He didn’t turn right away.

You got closer. Saw the painting—what was left of it. You froze.

“I never saw this one…” your voice cracked. “Was this—was this for me?”

He finally looked over his shoulder. His eyes were empty.

“It was,” he said. “It was my favorite.”

You stared, confused. “Then why…?”

“Because I let you smile at him.”

Your breath hitched.

“I didn’t bleed this time,” he added. “You said you didn’t want that. So I burned instead.”

“Kai…” you whispered, stepping closer. His hands were covered in soot. His hair smelled like smoke. His expression didn’t flicker.

He reached out and cupped your face gently, like he’d done the first time.

“Tell me it’s mine,” he said. “Your smile. Your voice. Tell me I don’t have to burn again.”

You didn’t answer.

Because you weren’t sure anymore if you were still whole.

Or if part of you had already burned with the painting.

TBC.

noirscript © 2025

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HOW HAS JUKJEON BEEN TREATING YOU THE PAST 9 MONTHS ?

to hanjun, jukjeon is merely a stepping stone between the dreariness of his hometown to the decadence of seoul, the place where his vast ambitions lie. for now, it’s only a temporary solution to a short-term situation; a subliminal place between the country and the city, a transition from his origins to his objectives. he absolutely has no plans to form attachments in jukjeon, to have anything tying him down, especially when everything he has in jukjeon is only temporary. it has to be. as for the suburban life, having lived in an isolated manner in boring and idyllic jeju island, the monotony doesn’t bother him. his sole aim is to finish his graduate studies before moving on to seoul anyway, and nothing should disrupt that.

TELL US MORE ABOUT YOURSELF !

tw: cheating, self-inflicted injury.

I. FAMILY.

it’s a foreign word; like sand grains on his tongue, a grittiness he can’t help but spit out in contempt. they say family is warmth, family is love, but all he sees is the privilege of those who’ve never seen otherwise.

the funny thing is, his family exists like a bad melodrama:

there was once a naive woman who fell in love with a deceitful man. it starts off like a cinderella story, as a romantic whirlwind romance between a waitress and a doctor, a country girl and a city boy who found each other against all odds against the backdrop of jeju island. she proclaims her love for him and he proclaims his love for her but she stays in blissful ignorance as he tucks his wedding band away from sight. nine months later, a little boy is born and her heart is broken from the betrayal, yet she stays with the man for the sake of love. and so, they’re tucked away in jeju island, near enough for easy access but far enough from the main island, away from prying eyes and scandalous discovery of their presence.

they play family whenever he comes by, with a monthly allowance accompanying his visit as if they’re a family for pay, made available whenever he desires it so. she doesn’t quite care, all she wants is his affection but hanjun quietly boils in his hatred for him, gritting his teeth in pretence of a grin. hanjun sees the bright smiles on his mother’s face, but then he hears her weep in the silence of her room when she thinks he can’t hear. for all the resentment he has for her, it starts from there. the way she can never stand up for herself, the resigned way she allows people to mistreat her and talk behind her back, all while being disowned from her family. hanjun watches as each monthly visit from his father turns sparser one year after another, as if they’re toys he’s simply gotten tired of. his mother slowly withers away, and nothing hanjun does is ever good enough to erase the place of his father in her heart.

can they be considered ‘family’ then, in this mess of half-hearted feelings and useless attachments?

II. COMMUNITY.

it’s a laughable concept; like the bitter aftertaste of a deceivingly sweet facade, an illusion built on a foundation of lies.

hanjun learns very early in his life how much of an unpleasant sight his presence is to many. after all, fact is fact, and single parenthood is a stigma; as is marital affairs. it just so happens that hanjun is a product of both and it’s not something that’s difficult to put together on that small island.

to hanjun, community spirit is a motley of things. it is the neighbours whispering and pointing at them whenever they think they’re not looking. it is the unconcealed sneers whenever they walk past, the blatant ostracisation. it is the way the other neighbourhood boys throw rocks at him while the adults looks away, and the way they spit out curses like “hussy” or “home-wrecker” if they see his mother as much as smile at another man. it is also the way his grandparents pretend they no longer exist, looking the other way if they so much as cross paths, and the way they’re being treated as less than human just because they’re different from everybody else. as usual, his mother endures, endures, and endures, like she does to every mistreatment. but hanjun, on the other hand, he… he sees fire.

III. POWER.

throughout his life, hanjun learns three lessons. one, the rich will always bully the poor. two, the strong always overpowers the weak. and three, only the smart and the capable will stand triumphant. to hanjun, he is the smart and the capable. the one who will rise above everyone, destruction in his wake if that is what it takes.

it doesn’t take much, but it begins like this:

he is in his boyhood. his stature is small, his frame thin, and his skin tanned. he is powerless, at the mercy of the older and bigger neighbourhood kids as they shove him to the ground, the marks on his body the tell tale signs of a recurring event. he’s holding his tears in, hands trembling from the fear and the anger as he thinks about each push and shove and hopeless fall. his mind is protesting and his body is reeling, yet, when he spots an approaching adult, he grabs the largest rock and strikes himself in the head. there are screams and then there’s blood flowing down the side of his head — a sacrificial offering — but it’s worth seeing the panic and the accusations fly. after all, at the sight of a small wounded boy amidst much bigger ones, no one would ever suspect that the injury was self-inflicted.

after that, finding people’s weaknesses becomes like a drug to him, knowing that he’s able to bring someone to their knees if he wants to. most of the time they’re secrets kept for safekeeping, but other times he wields them simply for the fun of it. fights become common to those who provoke him and situations are easily manipulated in his favour; by the time he reaches university, he studies law because he wants to know the rules just so that he can break them. to him, what is most important is that he’s choosing his own path, that he is under nobody’s control.

IV. JUKJEON

leaving jeju island is a given.