#bae sumi & lee hanbi —— 001.

[13elmst]

not to be dramatic, but sumi thinks she’s about to hurl. and it’s not from the wicked hangover from last night’s party, or waking up in some guy’s room on his really uncomfortable futon, or that she’s pretty sure that last night’s punch was spiked with something that just really didn’t agree with her. it’s because sometime this morning, she reached for the back of her neck and felt skin, as opposed to the polyethylene material of the patch. it was enough to jolt her from whatever the fuck she was doing, to start running with nowhere to go. and she tries to retrace her drunken steps, to push through the haze of what can only be considered as a complete blackout, and try to recall when she got the wise idea to peel the thing off.

all this searching takes her to hanbi’s room. there’s that pounding in her head again, as if some fairy godmother from hell is trying to tell her that she’s getting warmer, so she yanks the door open to catch evo’s vice president hopeful passed out on her bed in what seems to be a really… unnatural position. typically, sumi would practice more compassion and decorum, would tiptoe her way to the latter and poke and gently whisper hanbi’s name till she’d wake up. but there are more pressing things at hand, like where is her patch?, and what has hanbi seen? she’d done so well convincing everyone that her power was anything but a freakish shadow that seemed to have ‘wanting to rule the world in a really unethical way’ on its checklist, and there’s no nightmare worse than hanbi finding out the truth behind why sumi finds it absolutely critical to patch up 24/7. so… instead, sumi pitter-patters towards hanbi’s sleeping form and yanks the girl up by the wrist, shakes her awake with the same fervour she uses to “hanbi, hanbi, hanbi!” her name. sumi cradles her girl’s cheeks in her palms, not lovingly but in a bruising-imminent type of way as she yells, “wake up!” and “what did you see?” and “where’s my patch?” in rapid succession.

ft. bae sumi & @redlike's lee hanbi

[13elmst]

hanbi:

( … ) "yeah, in the drawer," she speaks, voice hoarse nonetheless. there's a movement of her chin towards her desk. there's plethora of papers scattered around, broken makeup, scattered jewerly.  "you look like someone killed you last night and brought you back. or — like you saw a ghost. you —" asking the obvious, she knows; but the memory of the shadow creeps up behind her, just like that. "are you okay?"

in her head, everything is fine. bae sumi is a vibrant city girl living in a luxury apartment in the heart of seoul with her cool wine aunt. her mildly grating anomaly dictates that she’s got a spot of bad luck, which means she’s starting small fires whenever she bothers herself to cook or getting coughed on by the sickest, most contagious man in the room—nothing too dreadful, if you think about it—so she sticks the patch on the way one would take aspirin for a killer headache, and goes about her day.

in her head, everything is fine. and lies are easy to believe when they’re contrasted against the sinister truth. how sumi has a family—a mother, a father, siblings—who want nothing to do with her, and so she’s involuntarily shipped off to her estranged aunt who they say is just like her, despite her begging and crying and gripping deathly onto the hem of their trousers. how bad luck is code for demonic shadow that follows her around, that breaks bones and shatters glass and tears through wood, so sumi starts fires and burns things on purpose like it somehow drives the monsters away.

point being: sumi doesn’t intend to lie to hanbi. the girl’s an endearing fire starter who’s just a little politically misguided—in sumi’s opinion anyway, t4d supporter that she is—and sumi doesn’t doubt that hanbi knows better than to judge. but sumi doesn’t want hanbi to know in the way that she’s trying to deceive herself, and an added loose end in a tangle of already loose ends renders the whole lie increasingly hard to believe, fantastical as it is. so there’s this way in which she freezes in her frenzied search, fingers halting mid-air as she veers her head ever so slightly to the left, as if to catch hanbi’s expression through the corner of her eye. she stops herself, of course, tries to play it cool and brings her gaze slowly back to the contents in the drawer. “i’m fine,” short. stunted. there, a glimpse of biofirm’s logo. sumi pulls the box quickly out and peels the backing paper off the adhesive end of the patch, and replaces it on the back of her neck. a pause and she pivots, manages a contrastingly peppy, “oh my god, i’m totally fine!” paired with a smile. “i think we just had, like, the craziest night,” she diverts, brings hanbi’s thoughts towards the party and importantly, away from the moment in her bedroom, “do you remember that wild fight between gangcheori’s captain and sanghyun? or that conversation you had with wooseok? i didn’t even know you knew him like that, but i caught a few people looking so i dragged you away.”

“i mean— i love a cc gossip more than anyone, but isn’t he… t4d?” the implication of hanbi’s political stance hangs in the air. sumi pauses, glances at hanbi’s injured arm, and winces. sumi doesn’t intend to lie to hanbi, and more urgently, she knows that a good friend would check up on the injury that she’d inflicted. but more than that, sumi isn’t ready to accept the truth. so she leans her back against the closed drawer, crosses her arms, and manages a distracting, “god… what was in that punch?”