#Serial Passage

[didanawisgi]

Proximal Origin of Epidemic Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 Clade 2.3.4.4b and Spread by Migratory Waterfowl

[adragonthatwrites]

The sillies

[anakinmoser]

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

But more than that, more than his message to the police and the public, he was talking to me; taunting me , teasing me by quoting a passage from my own hurried work. He had brought the bodies to a construction site because I had taken Jaworski at a construction site. He was playing catch with me, showing all of us just how good he was at telling one of us - me - that he was watching. I know what you did, and I can do it, too. Better.

I suppose thta should've worred me a little.

It didn't.

It made me feel almost giddy, like a high-school girl watching as the captain of the football team worked up his nerve to ask for a date. You mean me? Little old me? Oh my stars, really? Pardon me while I flutter my eyelashes.

I took a deep breath and tried to remind myself that I was a good girl and I didn't do those things. But i knew he did them, and I truly wanted to go out with him. Please, Harry?

[brocktonbay]

4.12

[redpool]

You ever noticed how, in a majority of Australian set horror movies, the victims are always tourists. Because I have.

[javert]

He stuck his arm out through the edge of the bubble, letting the water pool on his hand. It was cold— he hadn’t thought it would be cold. The wind whipped past his head, curling through his fine hair. At the dizzying horizon, thin trees whose height he couldn’t begin to guess bent and tossed their leaves. The grey clouds above flashed with lightning, and then thunder rumbled half a second later, shaking the ground and echoing in Hail’s chest. Sandreas, distantly, watched him. A line of cars drove up through a gate and came to a stop nearby, and all of Sandreas’s staff quickly took got in, leaving just a few waiting for Sandreas himself. But he walked over to Hail, at the edge of his rain shield. “You’ve never been on a planet before,” he said. Hail’s hand was still extended out of the rain curtain, and so much water had pooled in his cupped palm that it was pouring out onto the ground. When the lightning flashed overhead again, Sandreas dropped his rain shield, and as the thunder rumbled, the water drenched them both. The ice water streamed through Hail’s hair and down his face. “Welcome to Emerri,” Sandreas said.

[violent138]

Dick, concerned: "Why the hell is she doing that?"

Tim, tiredly: "She's convinced that two crime scenes twenty five years apart are linked."

Dick: "Ah, we've all been there. B, remember when I thought I'd found that super famous serial killer?"

Bruce: *grunts*

Steph, in the periphery: *aggressively drawing a red line between two pieces of evidence, on an extremely wobbly step stool*

Dick: "He had this sick gimmick, but turns out guy was behind bars all along. B let me chase the case for months."

Bruce: *smiling*

Tim: "Yeah I've done that too. It's like a rite of passage-- hey watch it."

Damian, unapologetic, marching past him:

Dick: "Oh man, I hope he doesn't make too much fun of her."

Tim: "Have you met--"

Steph, shrieking: "Yes! Yes I was right! AAH!"

Bruce, flinching:

Tim and Dick:

Damian, trying to wrestle out of the hug: "I found some old DNA evidence and now I regret it."

Steph: *cackling maniacally and crashing down*

[bitbd]

The lesson here is that children are dangerous, Taylor.

"When I realized what had just happened, I could have cried. It was easy enough to pin down Regent, Tattletale and Bitch as teenagers. It wasn’t much of an intuitive leap to guess that Grue had been one too. The ‘children’ Lung had mentioned, the ones I had gone to so much effort to save tonight, were bad guys. Not only that, but they had mistaken me for one, too."

Gestation 1.5

[ireverie]

indulgence

pairing ↠ serial killer!sunghoon x (f) professor!reader

genre .. warnings ↠ smut, graphic depictions of murder, graphic depictions of violence, noncon, mentions of pregnancy, sunghoon is 43 (set in 2023)

summary ↠ you're an accomplished detective in the detroit area and park sunghoon is a prolific serial killer. when your department sends you on its behalf to pull back his layers, you attempt to convince sunghoon to recount his experiences and unravel the mystery once and for all.

wc ↠ 10.3k

a/n ↠ originally posted on my blog revehae, i am not plagiarizing myself. sunghoon’s american for the plot. part 3/3 of the in my blood series. as always, feedback is appreciated!

don’t like it, don’t read.

the deepest prick of unease settled through you and you shuddered from its nipping cold. 

killers were your forte, but none like this. never in your life had you ever met a killer who’d been at their craft for over a decade. they typically got sloppy after the first half, which insinuated that this sunghoon park guy, whoever he was, was far from an ameteur. 

“gate twelve,” came the guard’s voice, speaking into a transmitter. he was to escort you to sunghoon’s holding room.

the gate lifted. behind it, you clocked the riveting face of detroit’s worst nightmare, hands cuffed at his back as he sat facing you. there was a sort of twisted grin on his face, not as if he was excited to have a visitor, but excited his visitor had been you.

“good luck with this guy. officers tried to get him to budge. he didn’t take the fifth, but the bastard’s damn good at talking in circles,” the guard whispered in your ear.

“duly noted,” you replied quietly, stepping further and taking the seat across from sunghoon. 

the guard left you to your devices, shutting the door behind you and leaving through the passage that led to the gate. complete and total privacy was the only way sunghoon agreed to talk. your department initially refused, insisting there should at least be one or two other officers monitoring the interview, but you let him have his way.

if you wanted to get this man to talk, that was your only option.

“hello, sunghoon. i’m detective ___ from the detroit police department,” you introduced yourself coolly, cloaking your nerves with confidence. never would you show a guy like this any fear.

sunghoon hadn’t stopped grinning since he made eye contact with you. you’d seen pictures at most and he was devilishly handsome, even more so in person, but it didn’t compensate for his unsettling aura. “that’s a beautiful name, detective.”

“flattery will get you nowhere, park.”

“it’s gotten me here,” sunghoon quipped. 

“yes, it has. and i suppose you already know why i’m here.”

“yes, i do,” sunghoon said, pleasant thus far. “you want me to tell you about the murders.”

you bobbed your head. “i do. you see, you’re an enigma to me, sunghoon. you turn yourself in, get fingerprinted, and all of the sudden our datsbase’s going off because your prints are connected to three other crimes over the past twenty-five years.”

sunghoon feigned surprise. “wow, it’s been that long?”

“it has,” you replied, in spite of knowing he couldn’t have not been aware. “martina mortes in 1998, sabrina lee in 2005, christine dalton in 2013, and dr. lee this year.”

sunghoon leaned back in his chair. “i’m familiar with those names.”

“you should be. you sexually assaulted and murdered these women,” you spat, none too tender. “except for martina mortes. you only strangled her. do you want to tell me why that it is?”

“what’s the weather like today? i haven’t been outside, but summer has been kind to detroit.”

ignoring him, you persisted, “let me guess. she was your first victim and that kill, unlike the others, was spontaneous. her being dead defeated the purpose of the sex act, didn’t it?”

“well, do you like your partners warm or cold, detective?” sunghoon asked, deflecting. 

you were heeding the guard’s warning. it seemed this guy liked to answer questions with questions, your least favorite type of offender. “that’s why when you subsequently added the sex act to part of your crimes, you kept your victims much longer, because you like to see them suffer. until you got bored. then, you killed them and dumped their bodies like trash.”

as if he was disinterested, sunghoon glanced to the side and yawned. 

the audacity on this guy was astounding. “am i boring you, park?”

sunghoon replied with total indifference, “if you think you know everything, then why are we here?”

you answered without hesitation, “because i think you’ve wanted to tell someone about what you’ve done for a long time, sunghoon. but you realize that you’re not like other people. i’m giving you the opportunity to get it all off of your chest.”

sunghoon cocked his head to the side, as if he was contemplating your offer. his face was borderline inscrutable. it was difficult, if not impossible, to decipher what he was thinking.

you restrained from heaving a breath. there was a crushing weight on your shoulders, the expectation to get this guy to crack. if you couldn’t do it, nobody would - ever. “how many victims do you have?”

“four.” sunghoon’s answer was quick, automatic. like he didn’t even have to think about it for a second.

folding your arms on the table, you shook your head. “no, i just don’t think that’s true. see, we’re pretty sure martina mortes, your high school girlfriend, was your first victim, and the college professor was your last.”

sunghoon cocked a brow. “but?”

“but there’s no way someone like you could’ve resisted your urges between four kills over the past two decades and then some.”

there was no point in denying the four victims, because you already had substantial proof. nor did sunghoon deny that martina was his first victim, because given the decomposition of the bodies, she died long before the other three. admitting that she wasn’t would be admitting that there were unfound others.

and sunghoon had no intention of implicating himself more than he already had. the only reason he turned himself in was because he didn’t want to prolong the inevitable, for whatever reason. he pulled his lips into a mock frown. “your assumptions about my self-restraint are hurtful,” he replied.

whatever, moron, you thought irritability. “i think they’re more than just assumptions.”

sunghoon teased, “then, let me know when you know something.”

you narrowed your eyes, groaning, “oh, come on. i know and you know that you can’t ignore your desires for a month, let alone over ten years. you have a compulsion. killing makes you feel powerful, it makes you feel in control, and you can’t live without the high it gives you.”

“you make me sound like an addict,” sunghoon remarked, pretending to be offended.

“it wouldn’t be so far from the truth,” you said, glancing over the file at your end of the table. “the first two kills were seven years apart. the second two kills were ten. full offense, i don’t see how you could control yourself for so long.”

“you can believe what you want, detective. i didn’t kill anyone else,” sunghoon lied, not that you ever needed to know. 

of course, he couldn’t control himself. the second he took someone’s life, it became a part of him, and his purpose in this world became clear to him. for the first time in his life, he felt as if he had something that made living worthwhile.

you surrendered. it was obvious sunghoon was intelligent and he wouldn’t be easily tricked into confessing. “okay, fine. let’s talk about the victims we know of. tell me about martina mortes.”

“what is there to tell?” sunghoon asked, brow cocked. “we met in junior high. then, in eleventh grade, we got together.”

“tell me about why you killed her,” you insisted, painfully curious. “it happened in chicago, before you moved to detroit over the summer. you killed her in the heat of the moment.”

sunghoon gave the impression that he would take a minute to crack, so you were surprised when he said in response to your prodding, “we got into a wrangle, if you will.”

that much was obvious. “what kind of wrangle?”

the garage was hot and the air was stuffy, making it difficult to breathe. to say nothing of the frustration scorching sunghoon’s skin, his face tensed into an irritated glower.

there was something about women he never liked, the seemingly inherent ability to blow almost anything out of proportion, as exhibited now as his girlfriend screamed in his face. his stepmother was the same, never not coming up with a reason to fuss at him. he was always walking on eggshells around that woman. 

martina was bristling. “you always fucking do this, sunghoon.”

sunghoon heaved a breath, sighing, “what - what do i always do, martina?”

“you trivialize everything i go through. you make me feel like i’m overreacting when i’m not, you just refuse to hold yourself accountable,” she spat. 

“martina, we’re about to go to college, for fuck’s sake! you can’t focus on your academics and a goddamn child. i don’t get why you won’t just have an abortion and call it a day,” sunghoon roared, heating up a thousand degrees.

“god, do you listen to a word that comes out of my mouth? my parents will kill me, sunghoon. if not for being pregnant at eighteen, then for killing it.”

sunghoon sighed. “i don’t see the part where that’s my problem.”

tears blurred martina’s eyes. she came up to him, shattered by his carelessness and embraced by isolation, and bellowed, “you want to know what your problem is? your problem is that you’re an incompetent bastard with no regard for other people!”

sunghoon’s body was engulfed in flames but his shoulders were cold, and he lost control of his emotions, grabbing martina by the throat. he effortlessly lifted her with a single hand and smashed her against the closest wall none too gently, watching her eyes wince closed.

“you wanna say that again?” sunghoon asked, nothing short of belligerent.

ache spread out through the back of martina’s head, a ceaseless throbbing worse than any hungover. her feet dangled off of the ground, waving and kicking, fingers weakly prying at the ones pressing down on her windpipe. until she was completely still, legs dropping, hands going limp at her sides.

“i didn’t even realize how long i spent standing there, until she felt… empty, and i knew she was gone,” sunghoon confessed, but his tone was far from sympathetic. “she scratched me. you know, when she was trying to pry my hands off. i didn’t know until hours later.”

you shook your head, disdainful. “you killed your pregnant girlfriend?”

sunghoon groaned, “oh, please. i was eighteen. i would’ve been a terrible father.”

“i would be slightly more inclined to accept that as an excuse if it weren’t for the fact that you had a son by sabrina lee only two years later,” you said viciously.

“a lot can change in two years.”

“i’m sure it did.” your eyes flickered over the file again, but nothing would allow you to familiarize yourself with this killer more than talking to him yourself. “for example, you realized just how much you liked killing.”

if sunghoon could’ve raised his hands, he would’ve. “your words, not mine.”

you leaned over the table, unrelenting. “tell me about it, sunghoon. how did it feel when you strangled her with your bare hands? what was it like?”

sunghoon chuckled. “is that what you wanna hear?”

you nodded. 

sunghoon leaned in too, getting closer to you, and whispered in your ear, “i squeezed every last breath out of her, one by one, until there was nothing left for her brain and she went slack in my arms. and when i was done, i felt elated. i felt free. it woke up this dormant sensation inside of me that i swore to never repress again, because it made me feel alive.”

your lungs started to feel shallower, like no breath could reach the bottom, and you sensed your heart come to a halt for a minute. sunghoon pulled back, grinning from ear to ear, as if he was proud of himself. 

“detective, did i startle you?” sunghoon asked, tilting his head ever so slightly. 

your face hardened. “why would you ever think that?”

“you’re not as good at feigning indifference as you think you are, detective. full offense,” he mimicked, mocking.

he’s just a fragile man that kills women to make him feel better about himself, because he needs to be in control. don’t give him power over you. that’s what he wants, you said to yourself, shutting any and all other thoughts. “so, you killed martina, nobody could connect her disappearance to you, and by the time they discovered her body you were already studying for college two states over.”

sunghoon ignored you, at least for a little. he was taking a liking to making you feel uneasy around him. “has anyone ever told you how gorgeous you are?” he asked out of nowhere.

“you aren’t my type. i don’t fool around with serial killers,” you replied sharply.

sunghoon didn’t seem to be offended, but you didn’t expect him to. “really now? it feels like we’re on a date right now. after all, we are getting to know each other.”

you asked, “have you always had such a distorted perception of normal human interaction?”

sunghoon shot with no hesitation, “have you always had such a sharp mouth?”

you pulled yourself together. the only way you would get anywhere with this guy was by establishing that you were the one in control. “okay, enough. this is my interview, park. you answer my questions, not vice versa.”

“that’s not any fair,” sunghoon told you, that unnerving smile still on his lips. “i don’t have to tell you anything, you know. and without me, you lose the only key to those answers you want so badly.”

“you shutting up doesn’t make much of a difference, considering you’re already dodging my questions,” you replied.

“let’s play a game,” sunghoon suggested.

you weren’t in the mood for any games, but that was sunghoon’s method of operation. “i don’t like games.”

“you’ll like this one,” sunghoon insisted, laughing. “twenty questions.”

your shoulders dropped. “am i supposed to be guessing something?”

sunghoon shook his head, something sinister about him. “no, it’s much easier than that. we take turns asking each other questions until i’ve answered ten and you’ve unanswered ten.”

you stared into his eyes, willing yourself not to break contact. he was just as relentless, silently cocking a brow at you, as if to challenge. and you weren’t an idiot. that’s exactly what it was. you asserted, “i go first, you can only ask me yes or no questions, and if i don’t like your final answer i get to press you for another.”

sunghoon slightly lifted his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. “yes, ma’am.”

“okay,” you started. “what made you move from illinois to michigan?”

“i was kicked out of the house. didn’t have anywhere else to go. but i had a buddy here whose family took me in,” sunghoon answered frankly.

you pondered those words, wondering if his aforementioned buddy knew about his secret indulgences. or if he asked why sunghoon’s parents kicked him out of their home. it would’ve been the question scratching at your mind, itching to be answered.

sunghoon’s lips parted. “what kind of perfume are you wearing - honey lavender?”

“yes,” you said, focusing your attention on anything but the possibilities of how he could’ve known that. he’d been with so many people to the point where he just knew. “why did you get kicked out of the house?”

“my dad always thought there was something different about me, ever since i was a child. he was a nasty piece of work. he found my journal, read a couple of things i wrote, and decided there was no hope for me in the house,” sunghoon ranted.

that piqued your curiosity. “what did you write about?”

“wait your turn,” sunghoon sang. “your hair smells just as lovely as the rest of you. do you match scents all the time?”

you were mildly uncomfortable, but given the type of dude he was, you stifled it. “yes. you don’t have to be such a pervert all the time, you know?”

again, sunghoon rolled his shoulders, chirping, “you call it perverse. i call it amusing.”

you almost cursed under your breath when you realize you’d asked him a question. “wait, i didn’t mean to ask…”

sunghoon cut you off, “that’s too bad. it’s my turn again. do you like necklaces?”

“not ones made out of fingers,” you retorted. it was meant to be a joke to hide how unsettled you were, hyper aware of the necklace dangling around your neck. you could feel invisible pressure on your throat.

sunghoon snickered. “i’ll admit that was funny.”

you pressed, “what did you write about in the journal?”

“my dreams,” he admitted vaguely, though in reality, he wrote endlessly about his corrupt fantasies of abusing women. some pages were about his stepsister, and there was a few about what he’d done to martina, though not explicitly. “you have the most beautiful eyes. they’re the perfect shade.”

you were certain he had told many other girls those same words and were not flattered in the slightest. the glare you were giving him was ferocious. “i’m not sure if there’s a question in there somewhere.”

“do you think your eyes are pretty?”

“i haven’t really thought about it,” you told him, quick to change the topic. you’d encountered your fair share of stranglers and it was no secret why he was so interested in your eyes. “was your relationship with your father estranged?”

“nothing was enough for that man. i had the top grades in my class and the highest gpa, and he took my door off its hinges and seized my privacy,” sunghoon told you, words harsh, but his tone plain. “he was obsessed with being the perfect family, something that was ruined the second my mother destroyed everything, and rather than embrace me, he turned me away.”

your eyes flickered. there was something about his language that stood out to you. courtesy of the research you’d done on him beforehand, you were aware that his father was divorced then remarried his stepmother, who already had a daughter sunghoon’s age. but rather than describe his parent’s separation as a divorce, he said his mother destroyed everything.

what a hostile view towards women, you mused, repulsed. but given the nature of his crimes, it adds up. and it might’ve been the origin of his hatred.

his family was twisted. you couldn’t fathom how his father, aware of just how unwell his son was, clocked his abusive fantasies towards women, and instead of getting him the help he needed, he left him to his own devices to slaughter them as he pleased.

you blinked when sunghoon leaned, craning his face towards yours, and snapped out of your reverie when you jolted back. 

“there you are,” sunghoon said, chuckling at your surprise. it was all over your face. “i’ve been talking to myself all this time. you must’ve been thinking about me.”

“no, not really. i was wondering if i forgot to feed my dog last night.” it was an obvious lie, but you would never encourage this guy to feel more important than he was.

amusement gleamed in sunghoon’s eyes. he was having a wonderful time, truth be told. had you not been so pretty, he would’ve clamped up like a crab, but you were so pleasing to the eye that he didn’t mind confessing a couple of truths. “a dog. that’s interesting. i myself have always wanted a pet - a snake. the constricting kind are my favorite.”

“you don’t say,” you droned, voice dripping with crisp irony.

your sarcasm was chucklesome to sunghoon, but his words were the truth. he remembered, all those years ago, asking his father for a pet snake. and when he refused, sunghoon, in turn, killed the family dog. he added, “they don’t just suffocate their prey. they coil around them, almost like a straitjacket, and cut off its blood supply.”

you replied, “yeah, but animals hunt to survive. you hunted because you had nothing better to do with your life.”

“in my humble opinion, we’re all animals of nature, and creatures of sin,” sunghoon told you in a whisper, as if he were telling you a secret of some kind. “anyways, it’s my turn now.”

you resisted a disgruntled exhale. 

like his questions couldn’t get any more absurd and strangely perverse, sunghoon asked, “when you shower, what do you use - a washcloth or a loofah?”

“that’s not a yes or no question,” you replied with total disinterest. 

“it’s hardly any less simple.”

“a washcloth,” you replied, though only because you needed to ask him your questions and resisting an answer would only waste valuable time. “why did you wait so long before killing sabrina lee?”

sunghoon smiled at the mention of his son’s mother, but the grin on his lips was distinguishable from the others. like he didn’t even realize he was smiling. “she was special. i loved her.”

“no, you didn’t. you don’t hurt people that you love.”

“maybe that’s true for you, but you’ve called me everything but a child of god and it’s clear you don’t think you and i are alike,” sunghoon said. “i don’t miss her, though, because she left a better print on this world. a world that was never made for her in the first place.”

a better print on this world. your brows furrowed, until you remembered the child they shared together. “you know what i think? i think whatever you felt for your son’s mother was the closest thing to love you’ll ever be able to pull from your ugly black heart.”

“you’re very strongly opinionated,” sunghoon responded, ever so unbothered. maybe some decades ago, it would’ve irked him to the point of breaking, but he was much more in charge of his impulses now.

you lifted your shoulders, gazing at him with the most discerning of eyes. all he could think about was how nice it would’ve been to seize you by the throat and watch the light dull from them.

to your surprise, sunghoon’s next question was not as a deviant as you assumed it would be, asking, “what made you decide you wanted to become a detective?”

“because of the people i used to know that aren’t around to tell you why,” you answered distantly, before pressing, “how was sabrina different, sunghoon?”

sunghoon perched over the table again, an uncomfortable distance close to you, made worse by his whispers. “because unlike the others, she didn’t beg me to stop - she begged me to finish. for it to be over. and when i wouldn’t, she begged me to kill her.”

the mental picture you got was cruel. your heart hurt for these women that had no idea what hit them until it was too late. 

“i put these women out of their misery,” sunghoon continued. 

you spat in a heartbeat, “the misery that you forced them to endure.”

sunghoon winced. “no, these women were miserable long before they met me. they were just ignorant of it. impressionability is a weakness.”

“either you have one hell of a god complex or you are working overtime to justify your sick actions.”

sunghoon merely shrugged, vicious and ominous and everything in between. there was something so dark about his spirit. you could feel it just from sitting within a couple of feet of him. 

sunghoon’s memories were triggered. he was reminiscing about the times he shared with his son’s mother, how perfect she was. there were no other women like her. she was his favorite victim, someone he took his sweet time with, while the others were disposed of in a few months time. 

midnight loomed, riding on the tail of dusk. sunghoon was counting down the minutes until the clock struck twelve, a self-imposed rule to gauge his willpower. the second the hour came, he bolted from the crackling sound of the cabin’s fireplace to a bedroom, anticipation like a stimulant.

the wooden floorboards creaked the closer sunghoon crept to the door. save for himself and the woman chained to the bedpost, the cabin was void of life. it belonged to the parents of a close friend who ensured it was vacant whenever sunghoon needed a place to indulge his twisted fantasies.

which was basically all of the time.

he meandered inside with a crisp bottle of water in hand, droplets condensing at its sides. sabrina laid right where he left her, just as broken, dreading her next breath. tape adhered to the flesh over her mouth, muffling her whimpers. there was nobody around for miles, the cabin was totally isolated, but it was a safety measure.

the chains were used likewise. when sunghoon was not there, the restraints kept her prisoner. sunghoon, reckless as he could be back then, was many things and stupid was not one of them. the chains stretched long enough to reach the bathroom but no further and he had his loyal friend help him test it after each victim.

“can you go further?” sunghoon called out.

heeseung’s lower limbs were shackled, ceasing his footsteps just shy of the hallway as he came to a total standstill. “not if i want my legs to follow me,” he’d retorted.

sunghoon had snickered. “good.”

had sunghoon been there, though, he would take the chains off. none of this was fair, even sunghoon didn’t believe that, but not giving them the chance to fight was too unfair. he needed not to chain them when he had the gift of his big, burly arms.

sunghoon waltzed over with a lighthearted and carefree gait, as if this was just another wednesday afternoon to him. and in some sick, despicable way, that wasn’t too far from the truth. he ripped the tape from sabrina’s lips, watching her face tense with pain.

“sunghoon,” sabrina rasped, voice croaking. he could tell from her flushed face and misty eyes that she’d been crying. “i’m thirsty.”

sunghoon cocked a brow, glancing to his hand. he had an irritating knack for playing dumb. it used to be endearing. now, with everything she knew to be true torn from her bare hands, sabrina didn’t know what to think. “what - you want this?”

sabrina nodded.

“yeah?” he popped off the top, throwing back a few gulps just before releasing a satisfied, “ah.”

sabrina’s lips trembled. “please.”

had she been anybody else, sunghoon probably would’ve dangled the water in her face just to snatch it away, but there was something about sabrina that made him gravitate towards her. in a rare moment of benevolence, sunghoon handed her the water, letting her drink.

she didn’t drink in short sips, but in giant gulps as if she’d known for some time that they’d be her last. when her thirst was satiated, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, handing the bottle back, and whispered, “thank you.”

sunghoon set the drink aside before returning to her, unshackling her limbs. sabrina’s breath quickened the moment the chains clacked harshly against the floor and nearly stilled when he brought his hand to her flushed face, tracing her chapped lips with a calloused thumb.

his thoughts rushed with unbridled exhilaration, ablaze with suspense, but he slowed for a moment to marvel at her loveliness. sunghoon’s hand touched her hair, touch tender in ways it would never be again, because he would never again know a woman as great as her.

he brought his lips to her ear, nibbling at the shell before asking, “do you know what i want you to do?”

sabrina bobbed her head, starting to halfheartedly peel off her clothes without needing to be told. with so many days held prisoner in this hell hole, it became routine. like she’d already resigned herself to her fate and knew sunghoon getting his way was inevitable. he always got what he wanted.

to be frank, it came out of nowhere. she never saw this twisted side of him coming. all she knew was that she became suspicious of his lack of family presence and it was too late when she saw him for the monster that he was, and then she woke here.

it had to have been months ago, although sabrina couldn’t have been sure how many. everyday started to bleed into the static hopelessness of another. sometimes sunghoon wouldn’t show for days, leaving her to live antsily, dreading his unavoidable return. other times, he would spend a day or two in the cabin, fucking her into kingdom come. 

as if she couldn’t be any more faultless. sunghoon smirked. “smart girl,” he purred. he would never deny her wit, given that she’d caught onto him, but her lack of strength was her only vice.

sunghoon restlessly tossed his own shirt over his naked shoulder and came to step out of his boxers. there was mischief on his plush lips. he knew something sabrina only knew from the unkind churn of her gut.

the end was more than near. it loomed over her, relentless and remorseless, and all she could like it to was dark and leaden clouds in a somber sky. even then, there was almost nothing she wouldn’t give to see the world again, but she’d long kissed that hope goodbye.

“down,” sunghoon told her, tone dark and stern.

she pliantly did as told, bare back meeting the mattress. sunghoon crept over her, hard cock twitching at the sight of her so meek. typically, he liked when they put up a fight, but sabrina knew better.

sunghoon could tell she was fighting back tears, willing herself not to cry with a stabilized breath, but her endeavors were in vain the second he started to force his way inside her. they escaped her eyes and dampened her cheeks, unable to overlook the agony of the stretch. 

“shh, baby,” sunghoon crooned in her ear, the weight of his body bearing down onto hers. “what’s the matter? you used to beg me to fuck you.”

sabrina shook her head, silently pleading for a mercy she knew deep down that sunghoon wasn’t capable of. “please make it quick.”

sunghoon’s tone was almost sweet. “but baby, you told me you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me, remember?” 

sunghoon knew that his words weren’t reassuring and he didn’t intend for them to be. there was a reason why he loved how she tried to hold herself together. he got to push her limits, find her breaking point. in the end, she would get her wish, and in a way, sunghoon thought that that was love.

her walls were just as tight and vice-like as they’d been all those times he’d taken her before. if sunghoon got close enough to her, let his hands wander and tease as they never not had done, sabrina would still involuntarily gush around his cock. like her body knew she was forever a slave to his touch. 

just looking at her face as she wept sent shock waves of pleasure rippling through his dick and chest. sabrina didn’t cry in noisy, gasping sobs. her tears dripped from her thick lashes quietly, mouth parting in the most silent of whimpers.

and she orgasmed the same way, sunghoon remembered. back when things were normal between them, when she begged for him to fuck her, as he called it, her release was marked by a volatile shudder, but a silent cry of ecstasy.

sunghoon pushed sabrina’s lips into an upward curling with his thumb and index finger. “smile for the camera, sabrina,” he whispered.

sabrina’s brows furrowed, painfully oblivious to the camera tracking her every emote. sunghoon couldn’t not document his deeds. there was something about being able to play them over, immersing himself back in that moment over and over, even when the life itself could not be so easily brought back.

but for sunghoon, they could be. when he rewatched these videos again and again, it was like he could feel their pulses thump in their neck, resuscitating.

sunghoon’s hands were everywhere, fingertips traipsing towards sabrina’s neck where marks lingered from all the times he’d strangled her, only to slacken his grip when she was just shy of passing out. the bruises were different colors, indicative of different healing stages. sabrina tensed, startled, and wondered when it would all be over.

“sunghoon.” sabrina was overcome with defeat. her voice cracked as she asked, “sunghoon, please just cum.”

sunghoon’s face tensed with pleasure. “fuck, babe, when you say it like that…”

he stood at the brink of climax, threatening to teeter over, and there was only one thing that could knock him over quicker than anything else. it wouldn’t be anything she said, anything she did, but only a weakness sunghoon had the power to wield against himself.

“you want me to finish?”

sabrina nodded. 

sunghoon chuckled darkly. “then, in that case, it’s time for you to get your wish, baby.”

he watched her shoulders slump, releasing all hope of ever knowing anything different again and accepting that this was where things ended. thinking about the feeling he remembered none too distantly, one that almost seemed to keep his blood pumping through him, in a way, sunghoon’s fingers itched.

sunghoon lifted his hands, bringing them to sabrina’s face, but before he could touch her, she exclaimed, “wait, sunghoon!”

his brow cocked. 

sabrina’s lips trembled. “can you tell me what today is? please?”

“wednesday,” sunghoon replied, holding his hands around her neck, but keeping his grip slack. for now.

“wednesday,” sabrina said, pulling her lips into the faintest of smiles as tears blurred her vision. “will you tell jake that i hope he has an amazing thursday?”

“that can be arranged,” sunghoon said, grinning.

sabrina nodded, setting her mind at ease. she’d already made peace with this day some months ago. she never knew when it come, but she saw it as something bound to happen. “thank you,” she whispered. 

those were her last words. because when sunghoon tightened his grip at her throat, almost like tightening a noose, he couldn’t bring himself to stop in spite of the agonized gleam in her stare. and then her stare was empty, and sunghoon had already emptied his load inside of her.

to describe the sensation he got from killing in a way that captured its essence would be impossible. it was more than feeling the life leave her. it was more than watching her eyes become soulless. it was a release, a way of relinquishing all of the vacantness he harbored, and knowing that his heart was still there.

it would always return, sometimes as soon as the next day, but for a minute, sunghoon was whole and no drug could replicate that kind of contentedness.

sunghoon did tell jake what sabrina said. he wasn’t all too sure why, maybe it was because she was his mother and jake was her son that they’d created together, and sunghoon would never have it any other way. for her to be the one to give him a child, he couldn’t imagine any other woman in her place.

it was almost unfortunate that she had to go so soon. even sunghoon thought that her demise was premature. had she not grown so suspicious of him, sunghoon could imagine making her his wife, maybe even spending the rest of his life with her.

their marriage wouldn’t have been without his secret dark life, but sabrina wouldn’t’ve been a victim. alas, loose ends needed to be tied. sunghoon couldn’t trust that she would’ve kept quiet, and even then, she was in a much more fitting place for an angel like herself.

there was much of this memory that would be abridged. never would sunghoon reveal anything about the cabin or the dear friend that helped him commit his indulgences, or even the existence of the tapes. if they found those videos, that was proof of murder with a grand total of 106 women.

the air around you was heavy and the words you’d just been fed weren’t easily take in. “what you’re just told me is really sad.”

but sunghoon didn’t look sad. whether or not he ever truly cared for sabrina would perpetually be a mystery. “maybe,” he started. “but tell me that you wouldn’t hurt the person you loved most if it was what was best for them.”

“i did. but what i had to do is different from what you were.”

sunghoon’s interest was piqued. “how come?”

“it was my responsibility to decide whether or not to take my sister off of the ventilator. there was no hope for her,” you confessed, though brushed over it quickly. “what happened to your ex-wife?”

“not that interesting of a story,” sunghoon said. “she wasn’t sabrina, i got tired of her, here we are.”

“and yet she wasn’t a one-off like martina mortes.”

“had she been a one-off, my body count would be one number higher. that was a favor,” sunghoon told you, grinning as if you actually had something to be grateful for.

you didn’t waste a second to accuse, “because you need to keep your victims to extract all the relief that you can from them, right?”

“i’m afraid it’s not your turn to ask questions,” sunghoon replied tauntingly. “what was your sister like - did she have long hair? what color were her eyes? how long were her lashes?”

sick son of a bitch, bellowed the voice in your head, though you willed yourself to remain composed. it was plain on his face that sunghoon didn’t want an answer - he wanted a reaction. and as furious as that made you, you couldn’t let him provoke you. “that’s none of your business,” you said, but there was a loophole. “but she was beloved.”

that qualified as an answer. sunghoon glanced at you in a way that made you feel see-through, as if he knew that you were threatening to come apart at the seams and didn’t buy your nonchalance for a minute. 

sated, he went on to feed you bullshit about his ex-wife’s death, though there were only four people who knew what truly happened to her and one of them was dead.

sunghoon remembered that day like it happened yesterday. it was a thursday evening when he’d come home from work. christine had picked jake up from school hours ago and sunghoon wholly expected to come home to her in the kitchen.

it was dark outside. the moon was a mere sliver and the stars were duller than they typically were, almost like they had witnessed something that drained their spirits. sunghoon remembered struggling to identify his house key, trying each of them until the door clicked open.

“i’m home,” sunghoon’s voice thundered as he turned to lock the door. 

there were quick footsteps from upstairs. jake, sunghoon thought, more than familiarized with the sound. but there was none of christine’s usual voice.

“dad, i’m hungry,” came jake’s voice from the stairs, coming down them one by one.

that in itself should’ve been suspicious, but instead, all sunghoon could think about was how sabrina would’ve already fed her son. “hasn’t christine made dinner by now?” sunghoon asked, irritated.

jake shook his head, though sunghoon couldn’t see. he was hanging his coat on the rack, like he always did after he locked the door. “she can’t right now.”

“why not?”

“because i think she’s dead,” jake replied, nonchalant as ever.

that was the very second that sunghoon turned around and noticed that jake was stained with blood. it was all over his face and the spots would probably never come out of his clothes, not that they would be kept.

for half a minute, sunghoon was genuinely stunned.

jake didn’t say what happened, and there was no need to. “the blood won’t come off,” was all he said, showing his father the pair of hands that he’d washed with vigor.

sunghoon heaved a breath. he should’ve seen this coming. jake took after his father and he never liked christine. to say the least, sunghoon couldn’t blame him. “where is she?”

“where they all go,” jake replied, as if it was the most normal and natural thing in the world to him. 

sunghoon headed for the basement with quick footsteps, jake following behind. if somebody were to come down there, they wouldn’t suspect a thing. not only was it decorated to look like one, but it was used as a man cave. behind a soundproof wall, though, was a dungeon for his prisoners. 

in this case, there was a trail of blood leading to the wall, proof that jake had somehow brought christine there after he hurt her. sunghoon entered the cell and saw her there behind the bars, coming to her side to check her pulse. 

pressing his thumb to her wrist and neck, sunghoon sensed a pulse, though it was weakening. “she’s not dead,” he said, wresting his phone out of his pocket.

jake didn’t look so relieved, but he didn’t voice his dissatisfaction. “are you mad?”

sunghoon glanced down at christine. jake had used a kitchen knife, attacking her in the heat of the moment. she was butchered and blood-splattered, on the verge of slaughter, and yet sunghoon couldn’t find it in him to offer any compassion. “that you hurt her? no. that you made a mess? a little.”

now that was a relief. to jake, at least back then, his dad was the coolest guy that he knew.

there was quite the scene in front of him and sunghoon didn’t have a thing for blood. he shook his head in reproach, chastising, “i’m going to teach you the right way to get rid of a woman when you’re sick of her.”

that piqued jake’s curiosity. 

sunghoon was quick to dial heeseung’s number. he had medical experience and that was what he needed right now. when the call connected, he said, “i’m in calling in a favor.”

heeseung patched her up again. at least for a few months, sunghoon still needed her breathing. they scrubbed the floors free of blood, burned jake’s bloodied clothes, and it was as if nothing ever happened.

what sunghoon had told you was only a fraction of the truth, but still enough to make you want to grimace. it bemused you how he got away with murdering his ex-wife and nobody thought to suspect her husband with a track record of disappearing partners.

“you want to know what’s really amazing?” you started, though it was more like disgusting. “how three of the women you’ve killed were your significant others, and somehow, you’ve only now been incriminated.”

sunghoon looked proud of himself. had it not been for jake, he probably would’ve never been caught. “sabrina never told anyone that we dated, or that she had a baby by me. her parents wanted her to focus on her education. if they knew she’d gotten pregnant, she would’ve been the black sheep.”

“and you took advantage of that,” you hissed. 

“so what if i did?” sunghoon asked, careless. “not to mention that dozens of teenage girls in chicago were going missing at the time. they added martina to that number and called it a day. is that sad? maybe. but that’s how it works.”

“and as for your co-worker?” you asked sharply. the boldness of his crimes astounded you. “her husband grieves her. were you having an affair?”

the thought of her made sunghoon chuckle. oh, were we, he reminisced. it was a misfortune that he didn’t get the chance to have his way with her the way that he wanted. and for that reason, he couldn’t regale you in a truthful account of her death.

what happened that day, the day his co-worker died, challenged his fate and was the reason that he only now knew the imprisonment he thrusted upon others.

sunghoon knew when he spotted her that he would revel in her vulnerability. married, but she hardly wore her ring. her kind was the most naive - the kind that believed ecstasy was without costly sin. one way or another, she had to reap what she sowed.

he worked his way inside her pants, but it was hardly any work; she was on a desperate pursuit for pleasure and when sunghoon promised it to her, offering content on a silver platter, she thought less with her brain and more with the throbbing between her legs.

for months, sunghoon slept with her, which was far from typical. if she were anybody else, sunghoon would have pursued her for a couple of weeks time, then banished her to the underground prison. though considering he already had a victim down there at the time, he had some time to spare.

it was no secret that she had grown fond of sunghoon in ways she hadn’t been of her husband in a very long time, and though sunghoon found her to be special, in a way, he could not reciprocate her feelings. when sunghoon saw her, all he felt was the overwhelming urge to use her with a lick of remorse, and squeeze those panting breaths out of her.

it was a shame that he never got the opportunity. sunghoon already tested the bounds of his self-restraint when it came to her, each of their encounters consensual with her oblivious to his deepest, darkest desires. sometimes, his fingers would wander to her neck, but even that was wanted.

what was not wanted was the tyranny over her body that preceded her death. it bemused sunghoon to learn that his son, along with two of his friends that he thought of like brothers and sunghoon thought of like sons, ravaged her to the brink of being unrecognizable.

had sunghoon held control over the situation, he wouldn’t have cared what happened to her and would have even permitted them to go to town. but what happened was somehow darker. when he got a call from the professor late that day, hearing her broken sobs over the phone, he told her to meet him at his house.

that was his first mistake. 

it wasn’t that she didn’t come. she made it there, hopeful to confide in sunghoon about the nightmare that tore her apart, but it was jake that opened the front door. and when she entered, there was no hope out of her coming out breathing.

jake had been a downward spiral ever since a month ago when he stumbled upon the tape of his mother. ever since he was a boy, jake watched every tape he could find of his father’s dark life, even sharing them with his friends as if they were movies and not snuff.

but this was not like those. this was his mother. and watching her suffer, listening to her final request before her untimely death, broke jake in ways which he would never recover.

jake had known since he was little that his mother was dead and his father was to blame, but his understanding of what happened to her was skewed. if he’d known eighteen years ago what he knew today, when sunghoon had his own son aid him in his mother’s demise, none of it would have ever happened.

to say nothing of the fact that what sunghoon had jake do was only a mere fraction of his mother’s suffering. jake would fetch things from the other side of the cabin he vaguely remembered visiting every now and then for three months. when he was not there, which was often, he would lie to his neighbors about her whereabouts.

even though when she died he was only a kid being taken advantage of, jake hated himself for letting it happen right under his nose. he wished he would’ve told his neighbors the truth. maybe if he had, his mother would still be alive and kicking, and he would know the only woman he ever cared for.

that was why he went after his professor that he knew his father had also been eyeing closely and having an affair with. her fate was obvious. sunghoon would entertain her for a while, somehow charm and woo his way into her pants like he did every other woman, kidnap her and keep her downstairs for three months, then kill her and identify the next victim.

but sunghoon’s liking of her was also hopelessly discernable. she was living too long. and that was a telltale sign that sunghoon took a special interest in his son’s professor, something that jake feared would rival the affection (if it existed) for his mother.

jake was not keen on having his mother replaced. the last time it happened, he snapped and maimed his stepmother. and he was not afraid of doing so again.

when jake exacted revenge, it felt like nothing he had ever done before. vengeance tasted like heaven. his professor tasted elysian. and he had never felt so good about himself, but then the high wore off, comparable to the fading release sunghoon got after strangling his victims, and familiar pain seared through him once further. 

vindictiveness was a lethal venom, festering quickly upon injection. after jake got what he wanted, there was a greed to replicate that feeling, in spite of the fact that nothing would compare to that first blow. in his own way, unlike his father’s but similar nonetheless, he was pivoting towards release.

jake was on the brink of something like psychosis when he heard those knocks on his front door. and when he peered outside, spotting the professor, his recklessness got the better of him.

she was dead before she even stepped inside the house. jake yanked her inside, brought her downstairs, and forced himself onto her for a second time that day. when she wept for sunghoon, wishing he would come home, jake almost pitied her naïveté.

if jake hadn’t killed her, wrapping his hands around her throat the way that he knew his father had been yearning to, sunghoon would have.

the look on his professor’s face was pitiful. “sorry,” jake said, though he clasped his hands around her throat harder. “but i have to make a statement.”

it was not particularly a difficult thing to do, at least not to stomach, but killing her was merely just a means to an end. he didn’t get off to it like his father would’ve, jake’s interest lay inflicting psychological damage, but he did it because he knew how much it pleasured sunghoon to squeeze the life out of his victims.

and if jake couldn’t have what he wanted, then as long as he lived, neither would his dad for tearing it away.

sunghoon came home moments too late. jake left his professor in the cellar for his father to find, eyes wide and face pale.

sunghoon glanced around. he saw her car parked outside, but no sign of her. when jake came from his bedroom on the upper floor, a creeping feeling of deja vu flooded sunghoon’s chest, but he asked, “where is she?”

jake’s face was expressionless. “she’s dead,” he replied, confident. “i mean it this time.”

sunghoon shook his head. “you killed her?”

“wasn’t it you that said you were going to teach me the proper way to dispose of a woman when i’m sick of her?” jake asked, approaching his father as he crept down the stairs.

though sunghoon wasn’t pleased, he willed himself to calm down. “did you strangle her?”

“yes.”

sunghoon figured, from the lack of blood staining his house this time around. “will you tell me about it?”

that caught jake off-guard. he expected his father to be angry, to let loose. he had to have been dreaming of choking her since the day he laid eyes on her. “you sick fuck,” jake sneered.

sunghoon snickered, unbothered. that’s rich. “who do you think you got it from?”

obviously, from the face jake was making, he didn’t like that. his nonchalant attitude dissipated. “i’m not like you!”

“keep telling yourself that. maybe one day you’ll delude yourself into believing it,” sunghoon replied, hanging his coat on the rack in spite of knowing he would be leaving again soon.

“i’m not like you - i mean that.”

sunghoon, miffed, rolled his eyes and said, “come on, son. you think i don’t know you and your friends have been watching my tapes for the past decade and then some like they’re cartoons?”

“but not mom’s,” jake spat, loathing fizzing in his stare. 

sunghoon froze, then spun around. “is that what this is all about?”

jake nodded, pleased his father was finally getting the picture. “i found it in your study. you hid it more carefully than the others, because she was special or you didn’t want me to find it, i don’t know.”

sunghoon heaved a breath. “you were never supposed to see that.”

“but i did,” jake replied. “and i’ve suffered every day for the past month because of that.”

sunghoon shot without hesitation, “a suffering you brought upon yourself. nobody asked you to go snooping around in my things.”

jake’s lips were twisted into the meanest snarl sunghoon had ever seen. emotion wrecked through him in its totality. “is that what’s important to you? i shouldn’t be surprised. you couldn’t even spare your own son’s mother from your heartlessness.”

sunghoon massaged his temple, summoning all of his willpower. “please,” he groaned, sensing an incoming headache. “women are weak, cheating whores. just look at your professor. maybe your mother wasn’t, but she was a liability.”

if that was supposed to console jake, it had the complete opposite effect. “are you saying she deserved it?”

“i’m saying that you’ve always been too soft,” sunghoon said, not bothering to sugarcoat his chastising. “just like your mother. even when you were a child. that’s why i had you help me, i hoped you would harden up a little.”

jake scoffed. “unbelievable.”

“your mother went quietly. she didn’t even fight it, jake. so, why are you?”

“because of that,” jake told him, vitriol in his voice. “she didn’t ask you to stop one time. she just asked you to get it over with.”

sunghoon tipped his head back. “ah, yes. she really was perfect, wasn’t she?”

that was all it took to kindle an unforgiving rage within jake and in a moment of fury, flickering through him in a flash, jake lifted his hand to smack his father.

sunghoon caught his wrist, as if this weren’t the first time this had happened and it was wholeheartedly expected. his voice lowered to a mere hiss, “i’ve never laid a hand on you. ever in your life. don’t make today be the day i start.”

jake glared, but wrested his way out of his father’s grip and backed away.

sunghoon smoothed down his shirt and headed for the kitchen, knowing jake would follow. this conversation was far from over. “now, if you excuse me, i have to clean up your mess,” he said, pulling a burner phone out of a drawer. “if you don’t mind.”

“i can clean up my own mess,” jake replied, scowling. 

setting the phone on the counter, sunghoon reached for a glass. “no, you can’t. not without digging your own grave. unless you want to go to prison, pack your shit, ask one of your buddies if you can stay with them for a few days, and take the tapes with you. hide them.”

jake made a face. “what are you talking about?”

sunghoon sighed. “we can’t get away with this one, son. her car’s parked outside. there’s too many loose ends.”

“we can get rid of the car. you don’t have to go to jail!” jake shouted.

“it’s either you or me. frankly, i’m doing you a favor. you wouldn’t last two seconds behind bars,” sunghoon hissed. he grabbed another glass, sliding it across the counter, then said, “now, wine? you know, to celebrate your old man going away? i believe that’s what you want.”

jake shook his head. never in his life had he been so conflicted. his father that he’d been so bent on despising until he the day he died was voluntarily confessing to a crime he didn’t commit, just so that his son wouldn’t have to suffer in prison.

“why are you doing this?” jake asked, bristling with emotion. 

sunghoon sighed. “because i love you, son. even if you don’t think so. and because your mother would be turning in her grave if she knew you were in prison.”

jake blew out a breath. then, after a moment of reluctance, he grabbed the glass on the counter and reached for the wine bottle. 

sunghoon snickered. “atta boy.”

“i wonder how your son reacted when he learned you were going to prison for murder,” you said, pondering. “you live in the same house. i wonder how he didn’t know.”

sunghoon lied, “he was at a friend’s house when i killed her. doesn’t like that it was his favorite professor.”

you nodded along, buying his lies. “that is a lot to take in. i mean, imagine your dad was having an affair with your favorite science professor. then, he kills her, like how he killed your mom.”

sunghoon shrugged his shoulders. “have you never heard the phrase ‘the heart wants what it wants?’”

“i have,” you replied. “and i guess your heart wanted to stop the function of others.”

sunghoon laughed at his own expense. “oh, please. you give me too much credit. you shouldn’t make me out to be more romantic than i am.”

you shook your head in disappointment. “you make these women want you, and then you undo everything. that has to be part of the amusement to you.”

“it gets a chuckle or two out of me.”

your lips were tempted to curl into a frown for the umpteenth time that day alone. “why?”

sunghoon leaned up in his chair, exclaiming, “because it’s fun!”

you were going to say something, but he didn’t give you the chance. 

sunghoon continued, “everyday, as adults, we do the same job for hours and come home. people want excitement in their lives. women get exhausted of coming home to their husbands or nobody at all.”

your stare was blank. “and your point is?”

“i didn’t just make those women want me, baby. i made them need me,” sunghoon told you smugly. “i brought a spark to their lives, and i took it away just as fast. and i do it… because i can.”

“because you could,” you corrected, confident he would never be free of this place for as long as he lived. “you’re going to be in here a very, very long time.”

sunghoon grinned. “i wouldn’t be so sure.”

you cocked your brow. “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“wouldn’t you like to know?” sunghoon teased. you hated the smugness in his tone. like he knew something that you didn’t.

the door opened, and the guard from earlier returned. “i hate to interrupt, but it’s time for the count,” he said, coming behind sunghoon to undo his cuffs.

it all happened in a blink. sunghoon’s weight was pressed flush against yours, roughly thrusting you into the table. your body screamed, agony spreading through your side, but your gun was in a lockbox outside the room.

sunghoon knew from your conversations alone that you weren’t the type to go quietly. your first instinct was to fight back. naturally, you struggled against his hold, refusing to bend to his will even as panic shot through your chest. your whole body was on guard, aiming for survival.

but to your misfortune, your might was no match for sunghoon’s. you glanced to the guard for assistance, but when he only stood there as if he was waiting for it to end, the most unsettling feeling of realization washed over you.

“don’t fight him,” the guard said, arms crossed. “you won’t win.”

sunghoon snickered when he noticed your eyes widen in shock. you hadn’t seen that coming. though you tried to resist, it was over once his slender fingers came to your throat, and you genuinely feared for your life. 

you didn’t realize how good you had it just being able to breathe until you couldn’t anymore. your breaths wouldn’t come. it felt as if your bones were being crushed. your whole body was on fight mode, but it was like sunghoon had the reins, shutting down your senses one by one.

“you put up a good fight, detective,” sunghoon whispered darkly in your ear, admiring your struggle.

your lips parted, but you couldn’t speak no matter how hard you tried. your self-preservation instincts were no match against him. all you could do was meet sunghoon’s stare. the pressure on your neck was too much to handle, and in seconds, you were out.

“lights out,” sunghoon said. he released your throat, having no intention of killing you and leading you for dead, but knowing that you would likely regain consciousness in a matter of seconds, he grabbed you by the hair, smashing your head flat against the table to subdue you.

heeseung winced, but he did nothing to step in. “poor girl,” he mumbled under his breath, pitying you. “had enough?”

“for now,” sunghoon replied. “let’s go.”

heeseung gave sunghoon a uniform to wear so that he would blend in amongst the uniforms like heeseung had and when he was ready, the two of them fled before they could be deterred.

when they had successfully gotten away, heeseung asked with his hand on a steering wheel, “you know that i don’t agree with this, right?”

sunghoon snickered. it had absolutely been said. “you haven’t agreed with my lifestyle for the past twenty-five years, yet you still help me. why?”

heeseung frowned. sometimes, he asked himself the same question, but deep down inside, he knew the answer. “because we may not share blood, but we’re brothers,” heeseung replied. “and for my brother, i’ll do anything you need.”

sunghoon quipped, “like smuggle me across the border?”

“like smuggle you across the border,” heeseung said, chuckling. “when we get there, there’s gonna be this dude named sunoo. he’s gonna help you out. i’ll be in touch.”

sunghoon nodded. “i can’t thank you enough, man.”

“just lay low and stay out of trouble,” heeseung said, shaking his head. 

sunghoon grinned with mischief. he was already thinking about all of the beautiful women he couldn’t wait to get his hands on. “no promises,” he answered, sighing contentedly.

taglist: @ribbioniki, @yunakj, @vvenusoncasual, @lovingvoidgoatee, @iloveu-143, @bigwforjay, @hooniehon, @adoredbyjay, @cloud-lyy, @firstclassjaylee, @captainsaposts, @tinycatharsis, @511rkive , @sangiewife

[maeintree]

almost doesn't count | s. reid

Summary: Spencer Reid has been crushing on you ever since you joined the BAU, and Valentine’s Day feels like the perfect time to finally ask you out Pairing: early seasons!Spencer Reid x agent!fem!Reader Word Count: -900 Author's Note: just some fillers to put something on my masterlist! and some lil lovey dovey valentine's day fics!! this is really short but i missed spencer so here ya go!

Spencer Reid had been working up the courage for weeks.

It wasn’t as if asking someone out was an impossible feat—he had recited entire passages of obscure literature from memory, broken down complex behavioral patterns in serial killers, and once even explained the mechanics of quantum entanglement to Morgan (who had promptly told him to shut up).

But somehow, walking up to you and asking you out on Valentine’s Day seemed more daunting than anything he’d ever faced before.

His crush on you had been a quiet thing at first, sneaking up on him the moment you joined the team. It started with stolen glances across the bullpen, the way your laugh made his heart stutter, and how you always listened—really listened—when he rambled. And then, before he knew it, you were in his thoughts more often than he cared to admit.

So, on Valentine’s Day, he made a decision: he was going to ask you out.

It started with a simple Valentine’s Day card. Well, simple in theory. In reality, it was an intricately folded piece of card-stock, filled with Spencer’s neat (?) but small handwriting, detailing an absurdly specific statistic about the origins of Valentine’s Day traditions.

You knew it was meant to be sweet, in his own Spencer way, but it also made your heart race in ways you weren’t prepared to admit.

Spencer, naturally, was oblivious.

“So, historically, Valentine’s Day wasn’t actually a romantic holiday,” he had begun, sitting across from you in the BAU’s break room, his fingers nervously fidgeting with the sleeve of his sweater. “It originated from the Roman festival Lupercalia, which was a—uh—fertility ritual involving the sacrifice of goats and, um, the slapping of women with strips of their hides.

Which is—obviously—not romantic at all, but somewhere around the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote ‘Parlement of Foules,’ and that’s where the association with love really started. Although there’s also speculation that St. Valentine himself was a priest who performed marriages in secret, which is why—”

You leaned forward, watching him with amusement as he continued rambling, the words spilling out at an almost frantic pace.

It was endearing, the way he talked so much when he was nervous, and you weren’t sure if he was even aware of how much he was saying at this point.

“Spencer,” you interrupted gently, resting a hand over his. “Breathe.”

He blinked rapidly, as if suddenly realizing he hadn’t taken a proper breath in minutes. “Right. Breathing. That’s—uh—important.”

His cheeks turned a shade of pink that rivaled the candy hearts Garcia had placed around the office. “What I—I mean, what I was trying to say is that I know Valentine’s Day is usually about, um, flowers and chocolates and not historical analysis, but I—uh—I wanted to give you something that—”

“That’s uniquely you?” you offered, smiling.

He exhaled, relieved. “Yes. Exactly.”

You took the card, running your fingers over the embossed edges. It was thoughtful, sweet, and—most importantly—Spencer. “I love it.”

Spencer’s face lit up in a way that made your heart stutter. But before either of you could say anything more, a loud whistle from the doorway made you both turn.

“Reid,” Morgan drawled, grinning as he sauntered in. “Did I just hear you giving a TED Talk on Valentine’s Day?”

Behind him, JJ and Emily exchanged knowing smirks, while Hotch simply raised an eyebrow in quiet amusement.

“Oh, he didn’t just give a TED Talk,” Garcia chimed in, appearing suddenly with her arms full of pink-wrapped candies. “Our resident genius just made the most adorably awkward Valentine’s confession in BAU history.”

Spencer groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I hate all of you.”

You laughed, nudging his shoulder. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Spencer.”

And despite his embarrassment, despite the teasing, despite the overwhelming urge to disappear into the floor, Spencer smiled. Because, for once, he didn’t entirely mind being the center of attention.

It was supposed to be simple. Once everyone clocked out, he’d find you outside, ask if you wanted to get dinner—something casual, no pressure. But as he stepped outside, he saw you before he could call your name.

And he saw the man standing next to you.

Saw the way you smiled at him. Saw the way he cupped your cheek before leaning in to kiss you.

Spencer stopped in his tracks, feeling his heart plummet to his stomach. The words he had rehearsed in his head over and over evaporated into nothing.

The man pulled away, and you hugged him before stepping into a car, leaving Spencer frozen where he stood.

“Well, that sucks,” Garcia’s voice cut in, startling him. He hadn’t even noticed her walking up beside him, arms crossed as she watched the same scene unfold.

He swallowed hard, trying to keep his expression neutral. “Who is he?”

Garcia tilted her head, looking at him like she was about to break bad news. “That’s her boyfriend. Aren’t they cute?”

Spencer felt something in his chest tighten, but he forced a small smile. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “They are.”

Garcia’s face softened. “Spence…”

But he was already turning back toward the parking lot, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Garcia.”

She sighed, watching him walk away, before muttering under her breath, “Okay..”

help this feels so ooc for him, i'm so used to writing cocky people.. i'm so sorry! but anyhow, likes, comments, & reposts are greatly appreciated!

[ninthprime]

now that hxh is officially coming back here's my attempt to count how many plots are going on at once right now

a plot: the kakin royal family, joined by beyond netero, has chartered an expedition to the forbidden dark continent on a huge whale ship with thousands of civilians. the hunter association signed on to join with the plan of actually sending the ship to a fake “new continent”, dropping off the family and civilians there, and then continuing to the real continent. the problem is the king of kakin is also using this expedition to force his fourteen (legitimate) children into a death match, with the survivor as heir

b plot: kurapika has discovered that kakin’s fourth prince tserriednich is in possession of the remaining scarlet eyes and, in order to get close to him, has signed on as a bodyguard to the fourteenth prince, baby woble, and her mom queen oito. as it turns out all the princes have autonomous nen beasts so this is a more complicated job than it looks. by which i mean at one point he gave up a substantial part of his life to possess a cockroach

c plot: to get more specific, kurapika has been trying to keep the peace by inviting the servants and bodyguards of the other princes to come to nen classes taught by him (read: he and fellow bodyguard bill are just forcibly opening their nen abilities), but a mysterious nen construct called “silent majority” killed most of woble’s other servants and now keeps killing people in the classes. there are apparently multiple people who can use nen in the classes already and who are mostly not telling him.

d plot: the three big mafia families of kakin (the hei-ly, xi-yu and cha-r) have been invited onto the ship mostly because their leaders are all illegitimately related to the king and been told to not cause any trouble…but the king’s illegitimate daughter morena, the new leader of the hei-ly and certified #gamergirl, actively wants to the destroy the world and is breaking the peace by spreading nen to her followers using her ability and letting them gain “levels” by killing people on the ship.

e plot: the phantom troupe has shown up knowing that hisoka will have followed them here and are trying to track him down and kill him. they’ve split into groups and the only group we’ve followed- phinks, feitan and nobunaga- have teamed up with the xi-yu and cha-r to deal with both hisoka and morena. during this we get an extended flashback about how the phantom troupe used to be tween anime dubbers and originally became criminals to track down those who killed their friend.

f plot: unbeknownst to the phantom troupe, the xi-yu’s underboss hinrigh has already met with hisoka (or at least someone who looks a lot like him) and given him a passage to the top level, where the royal family is, because the mafia knows a fight against hisoka will be more trouble than it’s worth while also trying to stop morena. in other words: hisoka is going to where kurapika is

g plot: tserriednich, the previously mentioned guy with the eyes, is also a misogynist serial killer and has gotten interested in nen, so his bodyguard theta has decided to teach him nen herself in order to slow him down and potentially stop him. unfortunately he’s a nen genius and has already developed an ability that lets him see into the future and overwrite reality by reacting accordingly, which he used to get out of theta shooting him. his nen beast has now marked theta for lying to him twice and will make her “no longer human” if she lies a third time.

h plot: melody, hired to be here by kurapika, attempted to sneak the teenage twin tenth and eleven princes off the ship only for the tenth prince (and the other hunter she was working with) to be killed, revealing the princes cannot leave the ship. thankfully the tenth prince kacho’s nen beast is basically her ghost. melody is now likely going to have to deal with an investigation into her actions and has also noticed that eleventh prince fugetsu is rapidly having her nen depleted. kaiser, a member of the justice bureau, claims to have fallen in love with melody after she performed her music for the ship and intends to help her, but melody doesn’t trust him and thinks he’s using manipulation nen on himself. oh and a large amount of the princes have invited her to perform for them, including tserriednich.

i plot: first prince benjamin, a nen user, has control of the military and has used his customary status as firstborn to send one of his guards to each of his younger siblings, which in at least one case led to a successful kill (the eighth prince). he’s in lockdown currently however because second prince camilla, also a nen user with an extremely powerful ability that seems to prevent her from being killed, attempted to kill him herself, and the justice bureau on the ship is trying to figure out who started what.

j plot: camilla has a group of ultra-loyal guards from the lower caste who have developed nen curses to kill her siblings in exchange for their own deaths. their captain, sarahell, has been developing a curse on woble and intends to attend kurapika’s class to deploy it.

k plot: ninth prince halkenburg, a baby marxist who progressive civilians and the younger princes both see as a potential savior, tried to kill his father and then himself after the first death in the succession battle and got stopped by nen beasts both times. he has responded to this by going apeshit and developing an ability that appears to allow him to put the souls of his guards into other people. his testing of this involved having one of his men shoot himself while in the body of one of benjamin’s men, so benjamin has him arrested now too.

l plot: third prince zhang-li’s nen beast is dispensing mysterious coins and zhang-li is dispensing said coins amongst his guards as well as to melody, whose performance he liked. zhang-li also appears to be hiding that he’s actually the son of the king’s illegitimate half-brother onior, the head of the xi-yu, who he’s asked to look into the last succession battle.

m plot: hanzo and bisky, also hired to be here by kurapika, were working as bodyguards for the twelfth and thirteenth princes until the twelfth prince was the first death of the war. the kindergarten-aged thirteenth prince’s stress in response to his sister dying now appears to have led his nen beast to trap their group in some sort of reality bubble. bisky had to reveal her battle form to head servant vergei to explain nen and what was happening, which has mostly just led to vergei getting a mad crush on her.

n plot: izunavi and basho are also here on kurapika’s behest guarding the sixth and seventh princes, who both have not done much yet; sixth prince tyson has a mysterious religious creed that izunavi has convinced her to pass onto her father and seventh prince luzurus mostly likes to smoke weed everyday but seems surprisingly perceptive and, more importantly, apparently funds the cha-r.

o plot: despite being a deranged maniac, tserriednich has a group of childhood friends working fairly standard military guard positions on the lower floors; they’re trying to find out more about nen after picking up that the hei-ly, which tserriednich was allied with before morena took over, are using it.

p plot: fifth prince tubeppa, aware she has few allies and little knowledge of nen, has been trying to meet with kurapika for a while. the literal last thing teased before this hiatus was her bodyguard longhi revealing to kurapika that she knows nen and kurapika agreeing to meet with tubeppa.

q plot: the rest of the phantom troupe has split off: machi and franklin are both on their own (but nobunaga wants to go get franklin), chrollo is making a plan with shizuku and bonolenov that appears to involve a disguise ability bono has, and illumi joined the troupe on hisoka’s request so they could have a yaoi death battle and is with kalluto. speaking of which:

r plot: mizai ran into illumi and kalluto and has them staying in a room in the quarters the zodiacs are using. he’s currently trying to figure out whether he should be telling kurapika the troupe is on the ship or not, knowing it could risk the well-being of both woble and kurapika himself. (he also secretly gave melody clearance to try to save the twins.)

s plot: beyond netero is still in lock up and being watched by members of the zodiacs. he hasn’t done anything yet, but it has been implied he’ll try to escape at the fake “dark continent.”

t plot: ging and pariston have a group allied with beyond who are going to the dark continent themselves; ging joined because he knows pariston must be up to something. it remains ambiguous whether they have their own boat or are on the whale somewhere.

u plot: leorio and cheadle are working at an understaffed clinic near the zodiac headquarters, meaning that once again Leorio Is Just Offscreen

v plot: a random member of the cha-r is trying to get the autographs of the phantom troupe members. this has been used to dispense plot info about how far we are from being out of contact with land. pray for his success

TOTAL PLOTS COUNT: 22

[prettiestpilotpoll]

SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN

With the final of the Prettiest Pilot Poll due to be posted in a few hours' time, submissions are now open for the next poll-

the Prettiest Fictional Pilot Poll!

RULES

Pilot must be fictional. All forms of fictional media are welcome- film, tv, books, radio serials, the lot

Pilot must be involved in military aviation anywhere between 1914 and 1945

No nazis

Include at least one piece of propaganda- this could be an image, link to a video, a short passage from a book, or even just a few lines saying why we should vote for them! This can be official or fanart

Submissions close on the 20th of May, and the first round begins on the 24th!

Best of luck!

-mod Pup

EDIT OF A PREVIOUS EDIT: submissions can be found at https://prettiestpilotpoll.tumblr.com/submit

Tumblr doesn't like letting me post it as an actual link, I'm afraid!

Submissions can also be made via the ask box

[synity]

HELLO so I've read your white noise jihoon fic and I'M IN LOVEEE (i love angst LMAO) could you write another heavy angst jihoon 🥹🥹 i just happen to love heavy angst and jihoon at the same time 🥹🥹

DISAPPEARING ACTS

(Lee Jihoon x Fem Reader)

*heavy angsr, emotional, slice of life, drama, slow-burn, tension, emotional unraveling*

I used to think I understood people well. I study them for a living, after all criminology demands it. Profiling minds, decoding motives, understanding why people do the things they do... But somehow, with Jihoon, everything I’ve ever known felt completely inadequate.

He wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t hiding anything sinister. He was just... a boy who slowly began to slip away without realizing it.

We met on a rainy night cliché, I know at a small café near the university. I was buried in notes about victimology while nursing a cold Americano, and he walked in, drenched from head to toe, looking like something that had just escaped a dream and got lost in the wrong reality. I didn’t recognize him at first not as the famous Woozi, producer of hits, member of SEVENTEEN. I just knew he had kind eyes, and that he asked the barista for two sugars and no cream, just like I did.

He sat across from me, headphones on, tapping away at his laptop. For the next few hours, we exchanged glances and shy smiles. When he left, he said, “Good luck with whatever you’re studying,” and I replied, “You too, with whatever you’re making.”

Fate or maybe something more mundane, like routine brought us back to that same café the next week, and the week after that.

Soon, he was watching me underline textbook passages, and I was watching him tweak vocal tracks. I didn’t know it then, but I was falling. Slowly, then all at once. And when he asked me out awkwardly, like it was a song he hadn’t finished writing I said yes, because I already knew that nothing had ever felt so right.

We became each other's safe place. On days when autopsy reports made me sick to my stomach, he held me until I could breathe again. On nights when a deadline kept him in the studio, I brought him dinner and reminded him to sleep. He'd say things like, "You're the only person I want to see after 16 hours of mixing," and I'd pretend I wasn’t already in too deep.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was ours.

Until it wasn’t.

It started with missed texts.

At first, they were just delayed responses hours late, simple things like "Sorry, was recording," or "Didn't see this." I understood. His job demanded focus, long nights, chaos. Mine did too. I once spent 48 hours analyzing a serial offender's pattern for a term paper, so who was I to judge?

But then came the missed calls. The forgotten dates.

My birthday. Our anniversary.

He always apologized. Always looked genuinely sorry. Hugged me like he meant it and whispered, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

And I believed him. Every time. Because Jihoon wasn’t careless just consumed. I told myself that. Repeated it like a mantra.

He wasn’t fading because he stopped loving me. He was just... overwhelmed. Right?

But how do you explain the ache of eating dinner alone again? Or the way your heart sinks when you walk past the old café and realize it’s been months since you shared a moment there?

How do you hold on to someone who’s still there but no longer with you?

One night, I stayed up until 3 AM studying forensic pathology. My phone was silent. Jihoon had promised he’d call after practice, but I knew better now. I’d stopped holding onto promises like lifelines.

Still, when I heard the soft knock on my door, I ran.

He looked tired. Pale. Overworked.

“I missed you,” he said.

“You always say that,” I replied, voice colder than I intended.

He stepped inside, taking in the open books and messy desk. “You’re still studying?”

“I live in this apartment more than you live in yours, so yes.”

The words hung in the air like a slap. I wanted to take them back. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry.

“I’m trying,” he whispered. “You know I am.”

But trying isn’t enough when it’s one-sided.

I wanted to scream at him. Shake him. Beg him to just see me again.

But I didn’t. Instead, I sat down on the edge of my bed and stared at my palms red from gripping my pen too tightly. I didn’t even realize I’d been crying until Jihoon walked over and wiped a tear with his thumb.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, voice hoarse. “I didn’t mean to miss your birthday. The studio-”

“The studio always needs you,” I cut in softly. “Everyone always needs you, Jihoon. Except me, I guess.”

He froze.

“You think I don’t need you?” he asked, disbelief washing over his face.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I think you don’t notice when I need you.”

That silence that followed was heavier than anything I’d studied in all my classes. He looked at me like he was seeing me through a fog like maybe, somewhere along the way, he’d gotten lost.

“I love you,” he murmured.

“I know you do,” I whispered. “But love isn’t supposed to feel like I’m always waiting for you to come back.”

He sat beside me. Close, but not close enough. His hand hovered near mine, like he didn’t know if he had the right to hold it anymore.

“I haven’t been fair to you,” he said. “I got so caught up in deadlines and concepts and schedules that I forgot I had something someone who doesn’t see me as work. Just as Jihoon.”

I blinked back fresh tears.

“I used to love how hard you worked,” I admitted. “It made me feel safe. Like I was dating someone who never gave up. But now... I just feel like I’m last on your list.”

“You’re not,” he said quickly. “You’ve never been.”

“But it feels like I am.”

He reached for my hand then, cautiously, like he thought I’d pull away. I didn’t.

“I don’t know how to be in a relationship while also being... me,” he said. “I’m scared I’ll never figure out the balance.”

I finally looked at him. Really looked.

“I’m not asking you to change, Jihoon. I’m just asking you to try. Really try. Because I’m scared, too. Scared that one day, I’ll stop waiting. That I’ll stop hoping you’ll choose me over another late night.”

He flinched.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he said, voice breaking. “I’ll slow down. I’ll try harder. Please... don’t give up on me yet.”

And there it was the part that shattered me. Because despite everything, I still loved him more than anything else. But love, no matter how deep, couldn’t survive on apologies alone.

I didn’t answer right away. We sat there, hand in hand, hearts bruised but still beating in sync barely.

I knew the road ahead would be rough. I knew he wouldn’t magically become the perfect boyfriend overnight. But part of me still believed in him in us. Maybe that made me naïve. Or maybe it just made me human.

“I’m not giving up yet,” I whispered finally. “But Jihoon... don’t make me regret staying.”

He nodded slowly, eyes glassy. Then he pulled me into his chest, arms wrapping around me like he was trying to memorize the shape of my sorrow.

We stayed that way until the sun started to rise.

And even then, I didn’t know if we’d make it..

Things were different after that night.

Not better. Just... different.

Jihoon started trying in the small ways he left sticky notes on my desk that said, “Good luck on your midterm ♡,” or brought home my favorite takeout when I worked late on my thesis. He sent me voice notes when he couldn’t come home for dinner. He’d text me good morning and goodnight like clockwork, even if he couldn’t call.

But even with all that, there were still days I sat on the couch waiting for him to come home until the food got cold. Days when I’d pass out on the floor in front of my laptop, eyes blurry from analyzing crime scene data for hours, and he wouldn’t be there to help me into bed.

It wasn’t his fault. Not really.

He was trying. I could see it in how he reached for me more often, how he’d kiss my forehead before rushing out to the studio and whisper, “I’ll make it back early tonight, I promise.”

But early became 2 a.m.

Tonight became next week.

And promises?

They started to feel more like hopeful guesses.

One night, I was up grading mock forensic reports for my TA job. I’d brewed coffee three times already, and my neck felt like it was fused to my spine. I looked at the clock: 1:41 a.m.

Still no Jihoon.

I stared at my phone, my finger hovering over his contact.

But I didn’t call.

What was the point?

If I called, he’d answer, apologize, say he was on his way. Maybe he even meant it. But I was tired of hearing “I’m sorry.” I wanted to feel it.

Just as I closed my laptop and buried my face in my hands, the front door creaked open. Soft footsteps, the rustling of his coat, the quiet shuffle of someone trying not to wake the house.

Too late.

“Hey,” I said without looking up.

He froze. “You’re still awake.”

“I had work.”

He stepped into the kitchen awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. “I brought bread from that bakery you like…”

I didn’t respond.

He set the bag down slowly. “Did I forget something again?”

“No,” I said, standing. “You just forgot me again.”

“YN…”

“Don’t.” I finally looked at him, really looked. “You say you’re trying, and I believe you. But Jihoon, I’m exhausted. I’m drowning in assignments, exams, autopsy reports, case studies hell, I’ve barely slept. And the one person who’s supposed to be my calm in the storm is never here.”

“I’m here now,” he whispered.

“But for how long?” My voice cracked. “Until your phone rings? Until the next beat hits you and you forget I exist?”

“That’s not fair—”

“What’s not fair is I keep giving and giving, and you keep... not showing up. Not in the way I need you to.”

He looked like I’d punched him. “So what now?”

I took a long, shaky breath.

“I don’t know.”

And that was the truth. I didn’t know.

Because I still loved him. But I also loved me. And I was starting to realize I couldn’t keep bleeding for someone who didn’t even realize I was cut.

He crossed the room then, slowly, like I might vanish. He took my hands.

“I know I’m failing you,” he murmured. “But I don’t want to. I’m scared. Scared that I don’t know how to be everything you deserve. That I’m too far gone in my own world to love you properly.”

I swallowed, eyes brimming with tears.

“I don’t need perfect, Jihoon. I just need you to show up. Really. Not just physically emotionally. I need to know I’m still a part of your world.”

He nodded, tears trailing silently down his cheeks.

“I’ll prove it,” he whispered. “Not with words. I’ll prove it with actions. Please… give me time.”

I didn’t say yes.

But I didn’t say no either.

And for now, that was enough.

Three weeks later.

I hadn’t heard his voice in twenty-one days.

It wasn’t because we were angry. There were no screaming matches, no broken plates, no one storming out. That would’ve been easier, I think. Something to blame. Someone to point fingers at.

But we were just… tired.

He stayed at his studio the night I told him I needed space. Packed a duffel bag and left without protest. His eyes were glassy, jaw tight, but he didn’t try to stop me. Maybe that was the worst part how easily he let go.

I moved in with a friend near campus. Her place was smaller, a bit messier, the walls thin enough to hear her laugh when she FaceTimed her boyfriend. But it felt warmer, somehow. I could breathe again.

I didn’t realize how much of myself I’d lost until I was no longer orbiting his world.

For once, my mornings weren’t rushed. I woke up with sunlight in my hair instead of bags under my eyes. I drank coffee that wasn’t cold. I read chapters without rereading the same line ten times. I went on solo walks, bought myself flowers, smiled at strangers, and cried a little when no one was looking.

I missed him.

Of course I did.

His hoodie still hung in my closet. His laugh still echoed in my head when something dumb happened. I still reached for my phone when I saw something I knew he’d love before remembering there was no message to send.

But I also missed me.

The version of me that dreamed of working on criminal cases, of writing policy reform, of standing in a courtroom defending justice. That girl had started dimming her light for someone who barely noticed she was fading.

That couldn’t happen again.

I wasn’t sure if I still believed in fate. In timing. In people “meant to be.” Because if Jihoon was really my person, why did love feel so damn lonely?

Then… a text.

[Jihoon] I hope you're okay. You don’t have to reply. Just wanted to say I’m thinking about you. And I’m sorry again. For all of it.

I stared at the message for five minutes.

Then ten.

And I didn’t respond.

Because the thing about time is when you finally give yourself some, you start to realize what you deserve. I deserved more than just love. I deserved effort. Attention. Consistency. And I was starting to believe I didn’t have to beg for it.

Jihoon’s POV Three Weeks Into the Separation

I still park outside her campus sometimes.

Not to stalk. Not to be weird. I just… like knowing she’s okay. Seeing her walk out of the lecture hall with her messy notes and oversized tote bag. Watching her tuck her hair behind her ears when she’s focused on her phone. I’ve even caught her laughing with her friend once, and for a moment, I let myself believe she was still mine.

She looked lighter.

I should be happy about that. But it crushes me.

Because I made her heavy.

I didn’t mean to.

I didn’t realize love could feel like a burden until I became one. It started with missed dinners. Ignored calls. Me saying “just five more minutes” and turning that into hours. Her cooking dinner for two and eating alone. Her dressing up for a date I forgot. Her eyes watering and me too tired to ask why.

I didn’t mean to be absent. I was just… stuck in a cycle of needing to make something of myself. Every song I worked on, every melody that slipped through my fingers, felt more important than rest, than sleep, than her not because she didn’t matter, but because I thought she'd always be there.

She was the one constant in my chaos.

And I took that for granted.

I keep her hoodie folded in my room the yellow one she always wore when painting. It still smells like her. Faint lavender and acrylic. I haven’t washed it. Can’t bring myself to. Sometimes I sleep with it under my pillow like some lovesick teenager.

The studio’s been quiet without her humming while she waited for me to finish up. No soft giggles. No late-night snacks. No hand on my back reminding me to eat, to stretch, to exist outside of my obsession with perfection.

I check my phone more than I should.

She didn’t reply to my message. I didn’t expect her to. I said she didn’t have to. But fuck, it still stung.

I wonder if she’s forgetting the little things. How I used to run her bath when she got cramps. How I’d sneak into her classes just to watch her present. How I carried her paint set in my backpack once because she forgot it and cried from stress.

She never asked for much. Just me. Just my attention.

And I couldn’t even give her that.

Now someone else might.

That thought haunts me.

I don’t want to stop her from healing. She deserves peace. But I can’t stop loving her either.

So here I am. Outside the campus library, sitting in my car like a ghost, wondering if maybe just maybe she misses me too.

YN’s POV

It was just a regular café.

At least, that’s what I told myself as I walked in, the bell above the door chiming softly like it always did. I had my headphones in, hoodie up, messy sketchbook tucked under my arm. I just needed to get out of my own apartment, away from the memories that clung to the walls like dust.

I wasn’t expecting to see him.

Jihoon.

He was at the corner table. Same old black hoodie, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, fingers wrapped around a chipped mug like it was holding him together. He looked thinner. Tired. His under-eyes were dark, his usually neat hair curling out at the sides like he hadn’t run his hands through it in days.

I froze mid-step. He didn’t see me yet.

My first instinct was to turn around. To pretend I never saw him. Because I wasn’t ready. Not to talk. Not to remember. Not to feel everything again.

But then he looked up.

And our eyes met.

His lips parted slightly. No words. Just that same unreadable, searching expression I’d seen the day I walked out.

The tension hit like a wave. My chest tightened. The air felt too thin. The playlist in my ears faded into nothing as my fingers slowly pulled the earbuds out. He stood up. Slowly, carefully, like he didn’t want to scare me away.

I wanted to run. But I didn’t move.

“Hey…” he said softly.

One word. One stupid word. And everything inside me cracked open like glass under pressure.

“Hi,” I whispered.

There was a beat. A silence so loud it made my ears ring.

“You look good,” he said, voice rough. “Healthy. Painting again?”

I nodded. “Trying to.”

We stood there in the middle of the café, like the rest of the world had faded away. Like we were suspended in a memory neither of us could erase.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly, voice trembling. “God, YN, I’m so sorry. For not being there. For letting you go through it all alone.”

I bit my lip, hard. “I never wanted to be alone, Jihoon. I just… didn’t want to feel invisible.”

His eyes welled. And then so did mine.

“I was drowning in work,” he said, stepping closer. “But that’s no excuse. You were always the most important thing. I just forgot how to show it.”

“I used to wait by your door like a fool,” I whispered, tears slipping down my cheeks. “You were five feet away from me and still out of reach.”

“I know. I know.”

His hand reached up, trembling as he brushed a tear from my cheek. I leaned into it before I could stop myself, because damn it, I missed his touch like air.

“I still wear your hoodie,” he admitted with a broken laugh. “It still smells like you.”

That did it.

A sob ripped out of me and I collapsed forward not caring that we were in public, not caring who saw wrapping my arms around him tightly, desperately.

He caught me mid-fall, but he was shaking just as hard.

We ended up on our knees on the café floor, clinging to each other like the world would split in half if we let go.

“I missed you,” I choked out, burying my face in his chest. “I missed you so much it physically hurt.”

“I never stopped loving you,” he whispered into my hair. “Not for a second.”

I didn’t know if we were ready to fix it. If this meant we’d be okay again. But in that moment, in that fragile embrace on the café floor, we were just two people who had hurt and missed each other too much to keep pretending we were fine.

And sometimes, that’s where healing begins.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Cliffhanger

Cliffhanger - a plot device in which a component of a story ends unresolved, usually in a suspenseful or shocking way, in order to compel audiences to turn the page or return to the story in the next installment. A cliffhanger can end a chapter of a novel, a television episode, a scene in a film, or a serialized story (book or movie).

Cliffhanger endings usually fall into two categories:

The main character comes face-to-face with a dangerous or possibly life-threatening situation.

A shocking revelation comes to light, threatening to alter the course of the narrative.

Tips for Writing Cliffhangers from Dan Brown

“Cliffhangers pose big questions at the end of a chapter or section,” Brown says.

“Typically, a cliffhanger stops during a climactic event midway through the action instead of at its natural conclusion. Is your hero about to push the villain off of a racing yacht? Stop where the hero has the villain in his grip. Leave the reader thinking, ‘All right, I’ll read just one more page....’”

Brown suggests these strategies for creating cliffhangers:

Move the last few paragraphs of a scene to the next chapter.

Create a section break between your work.

Introduce a new surprise that the audience will not expect.

Use pulses, or short sentences or phrases to remind the reader of lurking danger.

Tips for Writing Cliffhangers from R.L. Stine

R.L. Stine advises writers to develop the very end of the novel first and creating at least 5 potential cliffhangers for each chapter ending.

To successfully build up to a cliffhanger, Stine suggests using descriptive elements to remind readers of potential danger.

He also advises using these structural elements to frame a cliffhanger for maximum impact:

Start chapters with a sense of urgency.

Keep passages concise and cut out superfluous descriptions.

Blend descriptive passages into action scenes.

Stay grounded in a protagonist’s sensory experience.

Find plausible ways to withhold key information from a reader (i.e. narrate from the point of view of a character who can’t get/doesn’t know the information).

Open a chapter in the middle of a scene.

Open a chapter or section with a question, an interesting fact, or a change of pace.

Use a “pulse” to remind the reader of lurking danger.

Use flashbacks to open new sources of suspense.

Finish a chapter with a cliffhanger ending.

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[kingsmoot]

🔥

Honestly I’ve always been confused on Roose’s problem (among the many others he has) on why he doesn’t remarry and have actual true born heirs.

Obviously Domeric is killed by Ramsay and he’s like hm that will happen again, but he should just marry some woman and have as many children as possible, surely Ramsay can’t kill then all, espically if he just hides them away.

This is only controversial because whenever I talk to people about this like they’re like are you fucking forgetteting about the serial killer in the back garden but just KILL him if you have more sons it’s not that hard Big Goosey!

ooooooooough i'm so happy to talk about this, and i'm so sorry it's taken me so long to respond to you. i just wanted to be able to sit down with this ask and get nice and carried away.

you are right that roose COULD remarry and just try for as many kids as possible. and if wife number four dies in childbirth or from pregnancy complications well let's just line up wife number five and try again. he could walder frey it and play a simple numbers game. surely rams can't kill ALL of them as babies. maybe we'll hide a few. send them off to foster. maybe rams will finally get murdered in one of those almost-happy-accidents that keep happening to him but somehow letting him fail upwards instead of dropping dead. what if everything worked out for a change!

but even though roose is a self-serving pragmatist, this isn't something he would do. i do not think roose will ever have another child after ramsay. he tells theon that walda has a "fertile feel to her" and that if she pops out sons the way she pops in tarts the dreadfort will soon be overrun with the fruit of their loins. but i think he's just being.... glib. especially because he dismisses this fantasy as soon as he shares it.

Lady Walda is a Frey, and she has a fertile feel to her. I have become oddly fond of my fat little wife. The two before her never made a sound in bed, but this one squeals and shudders. I find that quite endearing. If she pops out sons the way she pops in tarts, the Dreadfort will soon be overrun with Boltons. Ramsay will kill them all, of course. That's for the best. I will not live long enough to see new sons to manhood, and boy lords are the bane of any House. Walda will grieve to see them die, though."

adwd, chapter 32, reek iii

i'll back up a bit, here, to make my point.

the thing that makes roose bolton such a terrifying villain is not his leeching, his voice so soft other men strain to hear it, his ageless face or his queer, cold, pale eyes. it is the fact that he does not see other people as worthwhile. he simply does not believe in their personhood.

This is a cold man, Catelyn realized, not for the first time.

asos; chapter 49, catelyn vi

to me, the roose moment that makes my blood run cold is actually the above excerpt from reek iii where he describes himself as "oddly fond of his fat little wife". this passage gets memed on a lot. so much so that i feel like people take the whole thing as a joke that it's easy to dismiss. but i really disagree. roose's description of walda isn't funny to me. it isn't awkward. it's chilling.

this is not the way you talk about your living human wife. this is the kind of distant, impersonal affection you would use to describe a neighbor's dog. not your own dog, who you know well, but your neighbor's, who you only see from time to time. this is how roose bolton talks about a woman he likes. a woman he is fond of and intimate with and married to. and she's less than a pet to him.

there are lots more examples of roose's cold calloused solipsism in this chapter. for another:

"This miller's marriage had been performed without my leave or knowledge. The man had cheated me. So I had him hanged, and claimed my rights beneath the tree where he was swaying. If truth be told, the wench was hardly worth the rope. The fox escaped as well, and on our way back to the Dreadfort my favorite courser came up lame, so all in all it was a dismal day. "A year later this same wench had the impudence to turn up at the Dreadfort with a squalling, red-faced monster that she claimed was my own get. I should've had the mother whipped and thrown her child down a well … but the babe did have my eyes. She told me that when her dead husband's brother saw those eyes, he beat her bloody and drove her from the mill. That annoyed me, so I gave her the mill and had the brother's tongue cut out, to make certain he did not go running to Winterfell with tales that might disturb Lord Rickard. Each year I sent the woman some piglets and chickens and a bag of stars, on the understanding that she was never to tell the boy who had fathered him. A peaceful land, a quiet people, that has always been my rule."

adwd; chapter 32, reek iii

besides the abject horror of roose running down a random woman he spotted on a river bank with a gang of armed men to hold her down and rape her under her husband's corpse, the thing that really makes his treatment of ramsay's mother frightening to me is how casually he pays for her upkeep for the next couple decades.

i find it almost impossible to compare roose and the unnamed miller's wife of weeping waters socially and economically. she lives on the dreadfort's lands and he is her lord. the kind of money and resources that roose can toss around on an afternoon's diversion of fox hunting is more money and resources than this woman could have ever hoped to see if she had lived a dozen lifetimes. and when she comes to him beaten and scorned with his rape baby brandished in her arms, he maims her brother in law and gifts her her dead husband's mill and a generous annual allowance. in one casual motion he grants her more than she ever could have hoped to have. and he could have done that from the beginning. there was nothing stopping roose from making a gift of the mill to her after he raped her and left her bleeding on the river bank. besides, of course, the fact that it would never occur to him to do so. not until he got annoyed. before then, he hadn't thought of her at all.

but in addition to reek iii giving us a glimpse at roose bolton's pre-canon, casual, wanton, cruelty, it also gives us a glimpse into his own self perception. he says:

to ramsay:

"You are mistaken. It is not good. No tales were ever told of me. Do you think I would be sitting here if it were otherwise? Your amusements are your own, I will not chide you on that count, but you must be more discreet. A peaceful land, a quiet people. That has always been my rule. Make it yours." "Is this why you left Lady Dustin and your fat pig wife? So you could come down here and tell me to be quiet?"

and again to theon:

A peaceful land, a quiet people, that has always been my rule." "A fine rule, m'lord."

roose's criticism of ramsay is not the fact that he is a serial killing serial rapist. roose is both of those things. roose's criticism of ramsay is the fact that he's gouche. he's bruttish and rude and was not raised in a noble household to act a lord. he's classless as well as lower class.

roose's greatest criticism of ramsay is that he makes him look bad.

but, and this is the point i've been ramping up to make, i think that roose is actually ashamed of ramsay and what ramsay says about him. i think roose, like tywin, sees his child as evidence of his own corruption.

don't worry i have pullquotes.

"They're only leeches. My lord." "My squire could take a lesson from you, it would seem. Frequent leechings are the secret of a long life. A man must purge himself of bad blood. You will do, I think. For so long as I remain at Harrenhal, Nan, you shall be my cupbearer, and serve me at table and in chambers." This time she knew better than to say that she'd sooner work in the stables. "Yes, your lord. I mean, my lord."

acok; chapter 47; arya ix

"Yes," Roose Bolton said. "His blood is tainted, that cannot be denied. Yet he is a good fighter, as cunning as he is fearless. When the ironmen cut down Ser Rodrik, and Leobald Tallhart soon after, it fell to Ramsay to lead the battle, and he did. He swears that he shall not sheathe his sword so long as a single Greyjoy remains in the north. Perhaps such service might atone in some small measure for whatever crimes his bastard blood has led him to commit." He shrugged. "Or not. When the war is done, His Grace must weigh and judge. By then I hope to have a trueborn son by Lady Walda."

asos; chapter 49, catelyn vi

"Tell him … tell him to be afraid?" Reek felt ill at the very thought of it. "M'lord, I … if I did that, he'd …" "I know." Lord Bolton sighed. "His blood is bad. He needs to be leeched. The leeches suck away the bad blood, all the rage and pain. No man can think so full of anger. Ramsay, though … his tainted blood would poison even leeches, I fear." "He is your only son."

adwd; chapter 32, reek iii (sidenote i can't help but hear a note of pain in theon's voice, here. i don't think he's feelings empathy or sympathy for ramsay, here, but he does know what it's like to be dismissed and discounted by a lord father who has no other sons to choose from, and hearing how roose talks about ramsay threatens to remind him of a feeling he had before he learned his name.)

i have a really long post in which i pull these same quotes where i talk about the parallel of how robert talks about joff to how roose talks about ramsay. and while i'm talking about joffrey there, i did make the point that roose's phrasing about ramsay's bad blood that not even the leeches can drain away leaves us with the obvious question of whose blood it is that's in ramsay. and if we know whose blood it is that's in rams, then we can look at roose's frequent and obsessive leechings in a very different light.

roose tells ramsay that no tales were ever spread of him, and yet he is notoriously regarded as cold, cruel, and deeply unnerving by the whole of the north. he does, in fact, have a bad reputation. and it does precede him. but roose is protected by his high birth, his status and position as lord of the dreadfort, by his military strength, and by his political and social loyalties + securities as ned stark's bannerman who raised his banners in support of robert's (successful!) rebellion. he, like his son, preys on anonymous northern peasant girls who have no recourse for justice, but he's not quite so loud about it.

speaking of roose's son, let's pivot to domeric real quick.

"Lord Bolton has never acknowledged the boy, so far as I know," Ser Rodrik said. "I confess, I do not know him." "Few do," she replied. "He lived with his mother until two years past, when young Domeric died and left Bolton without an heir. That was when he brought his bastard to the Dreadfort. The boy is a sly creature by all accounts, and he has a servant who is almost as cruel as he is. Reek, they call the man. It's said he never bathes. They hunt together, the Bastard and this Reek, and not for deer. I've heard tales, things I can scarce believe, even of a Bolton. And now that my lord husband and my sweet son have gone to the gods, the Bastard looks at my lands hungrily."

acok; chapter 16, bran ii

from lady hornwood we learn that ramsay was only brought to the dreadfort (and still not publicly acknowledged) after the death of roose's only son and heir

The Lady Walda wrote from the Twins almost every day, but all the letters were the same. "I pray for you morn, noon, and night, my sweet lord," she wrote, "and count the days until you share my bed again. Return to me soon, and I will give you many trueborn sons to take the place of your dear Domeric and rule the Dreadfort after you." Arya pictured a plump pink baby in a cradle, covered with plump pink leeches.

acok; chapter 64, arya x

from walda we get a very young noblewoman's practiced courtesies, assuring her lord husband (a stranger to her) that she will do her duty as his wife and produce him healthy, hale heirs. and we might assume that "your dear domeric" here is just a bit of poetic alliteration that walda includes in her letter to be flowery.

but roose himself talks about domeric in a way that is totally unlike how roose talks about anyone else at all.

"He is your only son." "For the moment. I had another, once. Domeric. A quiet boy, but most accomplished. He served four years as Lady Dustin's page, and three in the Vale as a squire to Lord Redfort. He played the high harp, read histories, and rode like the wind. Horses … the boy was mad for horses, Lady Dustin will tell you. Not even Lord Rickard's daughter could outrace him, and that one was half a horse herself. Redfort said he showed great promise in the lists. A great jouster must be a great horseman first." "Ramsay killed him. A sickness of the bowels, Maester Uthor says, but I say poison. In the Vale, Domeric had enjoyed the company of Redfort's sons. He wanted a brother by his side, so he rode up the Weeping Water to seek my bastard out. I forbade it, but Domeric was a man grown and thought that he knew better than his father. Now his bones lie beneath the Dreadfort with the bones of his brothers, who died still in the cradle, and I am left with Ramsay. Tell me, my lord … if the kinslayer is accursed, what is a father to do when one son slays another?"

adwd; chapter 32, reek iii

domeric is given a depth and a personhood in roose's memories that his three wives and his rape victim are not. he speaks about domeric with a great and enduring father's love and a fierce pride. he goes out of his way to tell theon (a boy lord reduced to a pitiful, nearly inhuman state) about his accomplishments and his interests. roose loved his son.

and his other son -- a culmination of all his many years of cruelty and predation, a congealing together of all his bad blood -- kills him.

roose bringing ramsay to the dreadfort, even before legitimizing him, is his admission that ramsay is the only son he will ever have. he will never sire another heir. ramsay will make certain that any he might produce go to their graves. rams is the death of his house. roose acknowledges that explicitly in reek iii, but he admitted it to himself as soon as he summoned rams from weeping water.

roose's decision not to have any more children is a very intentional one. he is not trying to solve the problem of ramsay killing all his potential heirs. he knows that this will be inevitable. he has accepted that his bastard son snuffed out his one beloved heir, and that the gods have bound his hands. he cannot kill ramsay, for the gods abhor a kinslayer. and yet ramsay is a kinslayer himself, which roose is well aware of. ramsay is only a shadow of the father, and a reflection of his many sins. he is both a result of and a punishment for roose's cruelty.

[this-acuteneurosis]

I feel like your big tragedies have a bigger impact compared to book or movie tragedies by the nature of the media. If I was reading a book and I hit a bad thing, I could keep reading till things got better. With weekly posting, we have to sit with our feelings and no resolution.

Your story is awesome, btw.

That was actually a huge contributing factor in where I decided to cut off Duty Bound. Posting serially means I do get to add suspense all over the place with The Real World Passage of Time. But I've also always taken a deliberate break at the end of each arch, to get my feet under me for the next one. And when I realized I could turn that into a massive three way cliffhanger, I just had to. I think if I had been writing these as actual books, I would have ended Duty Bound a little earlier and pushed the Naboo invasion to the next arc, since so much happened on Geonosis. Honestly I might have split Duty Bound into 2 or 3 parts. Thankfully, I am posting on the internet and can do what I want and pretend this story is shorter than I think it is, as long as I don't look at the series word count.

Thank you! (*^_^*)