ncseunghee

[ncseunghee]

nchye:

she huffs to retract. “don’t bother. the last thing i need right now is mood lighting.” the warmth of the restaurant does little to penetrate past the plastic of her jacket. she stays still for a moment. then shucks it off, folds it, hangs it over the empty seat next to her stool.

it doesn’t matter that everything feels familiar; hyeryun feels as tense as a teacher facing her first class. there’s no right way to introduce the topic so she’ll pull a truancy card for now.

“herby.” she murmurs, face hidden somewhere in the crook of her arm. medicinal is what she means to say but her head’s as good as shot. seunghee’s sixth sense, on the other hand, seems as active as ever. “scary.”

“just asking.” seunghee’s words fall muted. any hint of tender affection she reserves for her fails to echo. opening the cooler stored next to the sink reveals a full stock: chamiseul, makgeolli, her own hand at moonshine. a second glance at hyeryun prompts the decision to bypass any involvement of alcohol in this kind of misery. so, to the soup, then. “there’s plenty of it.” both of herbs, and ghosts of some long-held fear. 

the pot’s placed on the trivet, and she begins ladling the soup. “cilantro, bay leaf, thyme…” the bowl that’s placed in front of hyeryun is now filled with soup.“ …you’ll have to taste it to find out the rest.”

the steam rising from her own bowl is a welcome comfort. positioning a stool so it’s opposite to hers, seunghee finally sits down. again, that brief consideration, but in this very moment asking at all would be to push your fingers through a finely spun web. “take your time.”

she hastens to the soup, spooning several consecutive mouthfuls down and hardly taking the time to relish the carefully selected flavors. she burns her tongue but the sensation provides a welcome distraction. halfway in, the soup has cooled down sufficiently enough for her to abandon the spoon and instead take both hands to the curve of the handsome bowl, lifting it to cover her face. by the time hyeryun brings it back down the soup inside has disappeared, the only traces the odd speckle of pepper and oil reddened by tomatoes.

“okay.”

she breathes out. “i slept with a guy.” as soon as the words are out she wants another bowl of soup to burn her tongue again. the admission is shameful. she’d never been one to choose bedfellows with care, but that was only for women. in any and every circumstance men were subject to a vicious screening process. “fucked him within an hour of meeting him.”

she buries her face in the crook of her arm again and whines pitifully. “god, i’m ugly.”

"...oh."

oh my god. 

and to think she'd been bracing for the worst kind of news to be delivered. though, in all fairness, what "the worst" entails is subjective by design.

but she’s speechless. absolutely speechless. at first, she’s not even sure what to do other than to laugh. laughter that stays lodged in her throat because the timing would be oh-so bad and she has the decency to cough instead.

 “oh...oh, hyeryun, baby, i–” seunghee grabs the ladle again. a better plan of action over still-searching for the right words. “you’re gonna need more soup. okay.” she spoons another helping. 

 another revelation dawns on her then: those sunglasses are shame shades. a beat. a breath. “isn’t that how...one night stands work?” the five-second-rule but reversed, and for noncommittal sex—there isn’t one, is there? hyeryun’s never struck her as the patient type. 

seunghee places a hand on her elbow anyway, in her most sincere show of sympathy. softly, she asks, “that bad, huh?”

landslide

[ncseunghee]

ncguk‌:

Her own hair isn’t any better at its personal best. Skin’s scrawly for all the same reasons, but that doesn’t make it necessarily right. It feels like that though. Don’t you hate that it does? “For?”

(No.)

She’s half teasing, half curious. Nothing more comes to mind in the meantime past the food that neither of them has prepared for once, a 99-cent-brand serenity washing over her at the thought. If you distract yourself with the little things this way, find beauty in all that you see and hear, what other Marie Kondo bullshit you can list on or off the spot? 

Tsk, man. So what if you can? If you do? So what.

Guk takes a deep breath and places her hands back in her lap, rubbing her palms together to keep warm, shoulders scrunched. “It’d be fun if the gelato had a stronger concentration of wine or rum puree than… whatever else makes gelato what it is.” One brow’s raised, an eye closed as she yawns and lets her nonsense die in the air. They’re the only two in their own little corner, but all eyes beat down on them from elsewhere somehow. How do you mind if it’s nothing new? She leans in protectively anyway, more of an instinct than it is default. “You don’t look so hot.”

her hands are clasped over her mouth, as if deep in thought, but the soft crinkling of her eyes is telling. “come on, you know.” simultaneously: something that says i can buy that. it’s hard to tell if it's an offer they'd asked for a long time ago and it'd slipped their minds, or if this is the kind of deal that always arrives without warning. 

seunghee places her hands down on the table, thumbs absently fidgeting. "consider it done. we can experiment with the fireball that's left in your cabinet." sweet honey coupled with that  cinnamon burn—the gears spin on in their momentum incessantly. good riddance. how is it that the natural order of things feels more like a burden by the day? 

the server takes a moment to interrupt, putting down their cups before ducking out from the patio. mentally, she bats away the thought entirely and distracts herself with a spoonful of gelato. “sleeping is hard.” plainly put, like how the sky’s blue or the grass is green or so on. another spoonful. “that’s the only excuse i can really think of.” 

precursor

[ncseunghee]

ncjaeho‌:

the last time he’d seen a clear night was in jeju when he outstayed his welcome in a farm. it had been chock-full of stars and constellations he couldn’t name but the sight was an experience he could never get here in seoul. the neon lights drown it out, as they do with everything. places, people, memories—-

it’s all become a blur in more ways than one. more than jaeho would ever like to admit.

tiredness releases itself in a yawn which he doesn’t bother to cover. late shifts were always troublesome. moreso when the supervisors (read: stupid fucking old men who have more bark than bite) saddle him with boring casefiles that have more report writing than actual action. like, who actually gives a damn about missing cats when there’s drug rings to bust, yuripa to take down? point in question: why even give those cases to headquarters?

so when the opportunity presented itself, he announced he was taking a break and hightailed the fuck out of there.

he shoves his hands into too-big pockets of a windbreaker he borrowed. whatever. he’ll think about it later. whatever. trudging past the occasional drunk, he makes his way to half past twelve, half-smile ghosting on his lips. barely there but not at all. like the money he has to pay off his growing tab.

the air in the restaurant is different from where he stood; warm, inviting and soupy with the aroma of food. at this point, the grin on his face is full-blown and cheeky as he walks in with an unbolstered amount of confidence in his swagger. so reassured. sliding into an empty booth, the investigator’s eyes lock with seunghee’s own. he gives her a small wave and mouths something. resists the snicker that’s about to break through.

where’s the menu? service here is horrible.

many of the faces present are no strangers to these premises—if she doesn't have a name to pin on, there's their usual to go by. booth five likes extra salt in their grilled cod. table three likes three dabs of ketchup for their wedges. melancholy girl with her cap brim tugged down low sits at the counter and always asks for donkassu. 

seunghee's eyes flit over each one of them as she makes her way around, refilling and serving. when she returns to her place behind the counter, another face makes his appearance with the loud clang of the bell. through the thick of rice steam, he has the audacity to look her dead in the eye and smile—wide. her expression has always been of absolute neutrality, but suddenly it's a turn colder, lips a thin, firm line, gaze hawk-like. 

boy who owes over 300,000 won for food. miser hands, yet feasts like a king.

wordlessly, her attention returns to finish the task at hand. the hard clap of the knife hitting the board as she dices the onions is brisk and echos of warning. 

she's let it build for this long. tonight, things will have to change. 

upon tossing the vegetables into the pot, seunghee finally walks on over to where jaeho sits, mischief on his mind and bears no shame for it. the menu is slid underneath his palm. she places her hands behind her back. has to do her very best to not sound icy when she says, "when you're ready." 

re:again

[ncseunghee]

precursor

@ncguk

"how much?" "10,00 won." 

persimmons are in abundance at this time of year. picking up one from the case, seunghee feels out the firmness, and decides to buy a box of the fuyu variety and one of hachiya. the gears in her mind are already turning with ideas as she hoists the purchases in her arms. jam, sliced in half-moons to eat, dried for sujjeongwa and hodu got-gam mari, which reminds her, she'll need to buy walnuts later. but for guk's sake—and her hands lugging the other half of her groceries—seunghee makes a beeline for the nearest bistro set up outdoors. 

"they have good gelato here." the owner of the shop is a sicilian native, having arrived to the korean peninsula to be with a woman he’d called his wife for fifty-two years. her picture hangs above the counter in a gilded frame, which is always spared a lingering glance out of respect. seunghee puts the boxes down underneath one of the tables and gestures for the same to be done with the bags. 

she catches her reflection for the first time in hours through the wide window: the tip of her nose tinted pink, bags under her eyes, stray hairs sticking out from what had once been a carefully coiled bun. details that shouldn’t sting, but the pins-and-needles continue to prick beneath the skin as they order. “i’ll pay.”

physical affection isn’t common with the likes of her. neither is a quaint friendship like theirs. seunghee’s hand extends to put it over guk’s, squeezing slight before letting go. “thanks, by the way.”  

[ncseunghee]

landslide

@nchye

the skies are overcast with clouds welled up with tears. hyeryun arrives at half past twelve in sunglasses and a two-dollar convenience store poncho when the first raindrops trickle down.

without taking poncho or sunglasses off she slides into a corner booth meant for four. she sits there unbothered but the rain falls harder and claps against the window with a vengeance. too fucking noisy. she gets up with and slides into a counter stool with a plasticky squeak. 

the hello she gives seunghee is the weakest this month. she barely spares the specials of the day a glance. “hot soup. i want it scalding hot. i want it to burn everything in its path.”

tonight, the restaurant is the emptiest it's ever been, but seunghee works away like there's company. braised mackerel with radish for an absent table of two. lemongrass soup boils in the pot for an imaginary patron down with a cold. 

it's just her, her thoughts, and her inability to sit still with their weight until the door swings open. she looks up, expecting the impossible—and it's hyeryun. it's hard to tell if what she feels is relief or something worse. 

setting the broth to a low simmer, she pulls out a bowl from one of the cabinets. muted clinks of porcelain and silverware fill the silence as she wonders what to begin with: the uncharacteristic thinness of hyeryun's voice, the distant boom of thunder, or the inexplicable heaviness of it all. "should i dim the lights down?"

[ncseunghee]

hullo! jeah mun here. in light of the new muse rules i decided to go ham and bring 2 more girlies :’) seunghee is one of them: a revamped character from the first run of nc, where instead of choi seunghyun, temperance is now the lovely jung ryeowon! 

psa: this is a sideblog because lord knows it’s gonna be a struggle bus trying to log into different accounts and it makes things easier. if u wanna plot, hmu or like this post and i’ll message you!

choi seunghee: 34, former u.n. diplomat turned chef and owner of half past twelve. took over for her father as he left her the establishment in his will 

past: birth, childhood, career

dad was a former mob boss who ran operations in mokpo; turf war complications + his inevitable arrest led to baby hee, her older sister and their mom to be relocated

mom’s death + sister taking her studies abroad left seunghee to be sent to boarding school and couch surfing during breaks 

lowkey highkey felt unwanted :’( may or may not have carried over as some issues she now deals with in her love life 

decided she wanted out / staying in korea doesn’t seem like her best bet to leading a life with some form of purpose so she took the first chance she could to go to the states

got her undergrad degree and masters in international relations, picked up by the u.n. and spent nearly a decade going to different countries. really put some things regarding diplomacy / political crises / human rights into perspective

dad got released from prison and seunghee wanted to visit him but work got in the way

prompted to return to korea when she finds out he’d suddenly passed away and ended up missing the funeral rites

present: half past twelve, personality 

doing her best to carry on the her dad’s work though a lot of it may...or may not have to do with remedying that guilt she’d felt for not trying to see him one last time

with how customers basically acknowledge her as the femme!papa choi safe to say she’s doin’ a swell job rn

can literally cook up anything: u name it, she’ll make it if the ingredients are in stock

intimidating as hell at a glance because she hardly ever seems to talk, but in actuality quite gentle and understanding. on the flip side, very firm and hard to persuade

soft spot for the kiddies that come in (who get to eat for free woohoo)

plays oldies all the time and only heads over to joule when they do throwback thursdays

swears she can hold her liquor (she can’t)

considers herself #cultured for all the traveling she’s done

green thumb mami

night owl for obvious reasons

plots: 

canon specific: drinking buddies, running tabs, etc.

general: anything! i’m down for anything 

[ncseunghee]

[ncseunghee]

I’m certainly not interested in innocence at all. I get very upset when people tell me that my record’s all about innocence. If I’m interested in childhood, it’s not the innocence, it’s the part of childhood where you have this huge capacity to be sad. You understand an innate sadness in a lot of things, and you understand an innate beauty in a lot of things. You pick apart something dead that you find on the side of the road, or you ask really embarrassing questions at the dinner table. There’s this curiosity, and this lack of embarrassment and lack of self-censorship—that’s interesting to me. But not innocence.

Joanna Newsom, The Believer Mag, 2004

(via dudguacamole)

[ncseunghee]