#ㅤ* ╱ 조진달래. ━━━━ 795.

[jindallaebe]

[  🥀  ]  𝖘𝖔 𝖎’𝖒 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖉𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖔𝖓—𝖇𝖎𝖌 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖑.

𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖑𝖔𝖋𝖙 𝖆𝖕𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙, 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖗  /  20230604. 𝖙𝖑𝖉𝖗  /  A ( RATHER EMO ) CHECK-IN WITH JINDALLAE.

he hasn’t been sleeping well lately, and tonight’s full moon isn’t making it any easier on him—its beams casting pale, moody spotlights through the windows in his flat. no one but him is home right now, and that always puts him on edge; his limbs restless with an anxiousness he doesn’t know what to call. in truth, nights like these, when there’s no one else around, bring back the many childhood memories he has of sleeping lonesomely in his and mindeulle’s small shared bedroom. as kids, min often spent long stretches of time at the hospital, and jindallae made no secret about how much he fucking hated that. he loathed not being connected to his twin for days that frequently turned into weeks, and it felt unfair that he only got to see him when he was allowed to visit by the adults in his life, which was never as much as he wanted. it felt like a dagger sinking deep into his back, right between this shoulder blades. back then, being separated from min made jin feel like a failure of a sibling. he wanted to be there for his brother, but he was being kept away. he felt helpless because he longed to be the one trying to cheer min up—trying to shed some sort of light on the rather dark, gray and murky circumstances.

all jindallae wanted was to make min laugh, or to protect him from the phantoms under the bed, or to distract him with the action figures he used to collect, but he was seldom allowed to. each night spent alone in their space made him feel blue with sadness, and red with anger, and he typically expressed these emotions in aggression—obsessively targeting those around him for keeping him away from his brother. this era of his life is largely what began to paint him as a monster. his biting remarks and ruthlessness burned his parents, his older brother and sister, and the doctors and nurses assisting mindeulle so badly; it was alarming that someone his age could come up with such strong insults. he was called a fire-breathing dragon since then, and from then on, he’s carried around that moniker like a badge of honor. for better or for worse, it’s how he learned to function as a human being; it’s how he learned to defend himself when feeling vulnerable, or mistreated, or misunderstood. it’s how he learned to cope with quite literally being on the outside looking in for all that time.

those feelings spilled over into adolescence, then into adulthood, and as it seems, not much has changed. his blazing words and combustible temper remain intact, and so does the haunting restlessness. after min’s trips to the doctor became less frequent, jin got what he wanted by being reunited with his twin, but from that point forward, he was also plagued with catastrophic worries. throughout all of his youth, he only slept soundly when his brother was softly snoring in the bed beside his. whenever things became too quiet, jin’s alarm system sounded off—forcing him awake so that he could check on min; making absolutely sure there were no problems. most of his nights were spent secretly hovering over him, and though those moments are years into the past now, his body still clings onto that sensation—muscle memory taking over in reckless abandon. survival mode creeps up on him whenever he sleeps alone, and he despises that this is now an unfortunate reality for him.

there’s nothing he hates more than appearing weak, so the fact that he can’t figure out how to get over this enrages him, and he’s vowed to never let anyone see it. that being said though, suffering with this in silence isn’t helping matters any either, so every night there’s no one else at his place, he browses through the contacts on his phone in an attempt to find a distraction—something ( rather, someone ) to help remedy the uneasiness he’s subjected to. tonight is no different than any of the others, and as he tosses and turns, he fires off a few text messages; desperately hoping that someone’s also awake and willing to throw him a lifeline. so far though, no one seems interested, and it sucks for him to admit it to himself, but that’s likely caused by the inferno sizzling within his heart—the one that’s seemingly not afraid to rage, and torch every bridge he’s ever built between he and another person.

one day he’ll learn how to properly address these obstacles that lie in his path, but for now, he’s bullheaded and refusing to see the solutions. all there’s left to do is hope he can figure it out sooner rather than later; preferably before hurts anyone else.