autophagic.

(sent 2:07 am: han ) it’s raining. i’m never asleep at 2 am. (sent 2:40 am: han ) i opened the window. the rain smells like you. ( sent 3:01 am: han ) sometimes i hope (sent 3:27 am: han ) my last breath will be your curse. 

She pieces her thoughts in fragments. He looks at her like shards. 

This is how she dismantles herself every night. 

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⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀I swallowed crushed ice

“baek sumin.” she whispers. “why did you bring these? why are you…sending me these– what,” she chokes up, the anger– oh the anger. it burns in her gut; her head, it tenses and throbs, feeling it behind her eyes. “what did you expect to get from me, with this. with this…trash?”

“probably so.”

admittance is an obvious nod of the head and a subtle shrug of slender shoulders. sooyeon is smiling now. prettily glossed lips curl into an elegant curve – but sumin sees past the crevices, revels in the tension that pulls at the tails of sooyeon’s mouth. composure begins to falter, she bears witness to the other’s perfectly crafted facade as it starts to break into splinters. sooyeon sneers: bared teeth and darker gaze. she’s almost pleasantly surprised she’s held out for this long. a chuckle tumbles quietly from her own mouth but she shows no intention to move. an invasion of personal space. sumin’s eyes twinkle in satirical amusement. “but, i think i know you well enough.”

every queen has an ugly secret. today, sooyeon’s crown rusts. 

here is a foolish queen sitting atop a burning throne. 

( when are you going to give it up? )

it is a process she repeats, taunting at the predator that sooyeon hides in her chest to come and take a bite out of hers. an objectified mockery; she is a slow flicker of a flame and sumin wants a forest fire. she wants combustion and ashes, sooyeon’s shattering pretense on a silver platter. 

her reactions are comical at best, the smile widens when sooyeon slaps her palms against her desk and stands opposite to her. her fingers are curling around the picture, crushed within her clenching fists while sumin’s fingers continue to tap quietly against the desk’s surface. something akin to a giggle has a palm fitting over her laughing mouth, shoulders shaking subtly – did she think this would go away as easily as the first time? at their feet are the photos she clears off, her belongings landing on the floor with a pathetically loud clutter. dignified shoulders are shaking as they are stripped of such privileges. in this arena, filled with rabid and sinking humanity, sumin imagines the sound of sooyeon’s heart against her chest cage. rattling and beating, violently, savagely. in this arena is apathetic sterility. sumin is going to paint its pallid walls red. 

the questions are not asked as much as they are demanded, yet her sentences are fragmented, each pause that separates the phrases commences with an identifiable tremor in sooyeon’s voice. she watches sooyeon’s wide-eyed gaze and wonders if the emotion that colors the browns of her eyes is of fear of what was to come or embarrassment of what has come back. “come on, sooyeon. breathe,” is probably insensitive  but empathy is a courtesy that sumin does not give. she sees it now, burning red, clutching at the woman’s shoulders and she wants to drag it out in the open, watch it wrap its talons around her throat. what is a foolish queen without a burning empire?

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This is not a tango, this is not a dance with fate. There are no stars aligning to commemorate this toxicity. It’s the first shed of morning light and it should have been beautiful, but in the sky everything looks the same. His words are muttered in an undercurrent; her lips are still tingling. Acrid. They become a routinized dissection that leaves them bare – sandpaper skin against cuts, bleeding feet on shattered glass.

She wears ill-concealed disdain and lets a scoff force its way through her mouth. “You are unbelievable,” her hands shove at his chest, forcefully this time; she can’t breathe when he’s stealing all her air. “Do you think I give a damn about whether you’re ready or not?” There’s a steel-edge in her words, she does not raise her voice and as she speaks in a calm demeanor, her eyes never leave his. “Do you think I’d rather stay here and drown in your indecisiveness than go on with my life? Do you think I don’t try?”

“The irony of you is astonishing, Han. Really.” A burst of laughter fills the space between them is followed with an arch of a brow. “I liked it? Don’t forget that you kissed me first.” She takes a step closer now; this abstract dance is getting tiring. When she looks at him, she sees beauty doused in ashes and rust.

(She will always want the one thing she will never have.)

His pride is revolting. It’s not even a matter now, how in this minimized distance he is still towering over her. Vaguely, she wonders if he can hear the sound of her heart as it thrashes against her rib cage. “You dare me?” Satirical amusement lifts her mouth at the corners. Fist closing around the collar of his shirt and yanks him down. “Do you, Han? Because I don’t think you can let me go.” Sumin does not know if it’s the need to prove a point, or her own urge to crush her mouth against his that makes her does so. Collision is painful, her hold doesn’t loosen. Her mouth pries his lips apart, tongue flicking, teeth nipping. She barely pulls back, lets the challenge caress his mouth as she speaks. “Can you let me go, Han? Really?” 

Sumin is going hysterical and it’s majestic to admire. Her palms are flung to his chest and the thud that sends his rib cage on tremors reminds him of her ballet, the evenings she lies next of him while her fingers spun routines on his own destructive hands. She doesn’t shriek but she presses on, anguish draining her energy to be vocalized, and it is still the same voice that lulls him to sleep whenever the ghosts try to take him away on some nights. She laughs - the sound perishable, broken, a mockery for their shared agony and it’s still the prettiest thing he’s heard. 

She’s still hysterical when she approaches him. Frenzy in her eyes. Daredevil in her shadows. Love her plague, and she’s dying, dying, pulling him with her to the stones with their names in intricacy. 

“I dare you.” 

her presence is unnerving, she deduces this much. it was an after-effect of the loose ends of their friendship. sooyeon had always kept her at an arm’s length, unconsciously cautious but sumin is about to crawl underneath her skin.

she does not seem fazed about her rejection. sumin’s smile only grows wider – all teeth and twinkling mischief, feral. her words are nitpicked and ridiculed with mocking laughter, a hand threading back her dark hair as she straightens up in her seat. “anymore, huh. you’ve never failed to surprise me, sooyeon-ah. i would have never taken you for the sentimental type.” then she leans back, oddly comfortable despite having invaded someone else’s territory, nail scraping against the surface of her armrest. “pretentious,” is added thoughtfully, lips puckering in thought before she commences with a nod. “you’re right, this suits you just fine, after all.”

manifestations do not occur in all grandeur. they appear as minute subtleties: that brief, terrified expression in her eyes and the way her mouth parts slightly, only to close without having uttered a sound. teeth biting into flesh just before it breaks. (how fascinating, how utterly frail a human being can be.) and she has done this long enough to know that sooyeon is aware.

this time, sumin stands. her footsteps halt in front of sooyeon’s desk.

“do you really want to play this game with me, sooyeon?” her hands are laid flat on top of expensive, hardwood tabletop just before she leans in, weight supported by her arms. gaze momentarily focuses on something else, quiet hum accompanying the tension that saturates their silence. “okay then,” a smile surfaces, crescent-moon eyes and fleshy cheeks.

and she retracts. sumin walks back to her seat to retrieve an envelope.

remember this: when you rid your hands of the stain, they remain red. photos are laid down in front of sooyeon, glossy surfaces glisten beneath fluorescent light before they reveal their content. they are identical to the one’s she has kept hidden within her possession – broken skin and dark bruises, bleeding flesh and barbarity, camera footage of her hands tearing through the girl’s flesh. savagely, almost fascinatingly so. there is a smile in her voice when she’s done. modulation is everything, she does not stray from calm and even. 

irritation lingers. there’s this subtle twitch her brow periodically makes while he paces. anxiety sits heavy on his broad shoulders, sumin can almost see it radiate off him. he does not stop looking through windows, it does not take much for her to understand the situation, what he’s running from, what he’s afraid of. they’ve been in this situation before, it’s not much of a surprise to her that he fucks this up. after all, it was just a matter of time.

he brushes off her inquiries carelessly, in a way that irks her, as if he could not be bothered: dragging her into the messes he makes with his fingers tight around her leash. in the end, sumin is always compliant. in the end, she wonders if she was partly to blame for this -- wonders if his fingers fidget to the reasons similar to hers. the seconds continue running, she resumes tapping her fingers against her skin.  

(in the end, she will always give in. one way or another.) 

“sehun,” her voice is quiet now, purged from the initial venom that laid thick in her tone. the sound of sirens blaring from a distance is faint, she cannot distinguish between his anxiety and her own, but it does not fade. her gaze flickers towards his haunted features before she breathes out a weary sigh. her steps are quick, she heads towards the window he stands in front of. very vaguely does she become aware of his staggering height, and how her shoulders graze his biceps instead of his own shoulders instead. the streets remain bare of commotion, enshrouded by a certain stillness: flickering streetlight, swaying shadows. the sirens echo from a distance, this stillness won’t last.