#but anyway. im immersing myself. hello
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dyvimwhitehart · 1 month ago
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if i started posting stuff abt my wiz ocs would the masses like that (girl who is going to do it anyway)
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nottsangel · 2 months ago
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hello hello! 🍯 anon is here and ready to give you some juicy feedback/reaction for your fic!
1. OMG OMG it was so good, girl! it was so fucking hot i was drooling from both lips as i was reading. i HAD to read it twice, last night and today in the morning. it's a shame i am on my period, otherwise i would have went to town. but nonetheless, i had lots of fun reading it.
2. it was quite the immersive experience! you're doing amazing with descriptions, i swear to god. it was so clear who was standing where doing what. it wasn't as chaotic as other fics that implement foursomes/threesomes. however, my heart still goes to your dialogue, it will always be my favourite part! it was refreshing to see the guys bickering and fighting with one another; in many fics, guys have little to no interaction/no distinct relationship, so it was lovely to see them so humane. that mattheo and enzo dynamic was funny af to read.
3. the guys and the girl reader are so deliciously built. the guys, again, have personalities and specific dynamics between them. the girl! is not! a weak little baby! i am so glad she was shown as a grown ass woman, speaking up for herself and asserting dominance! yeah, i know there are inexperienced/virgin women (just like me), but i strongly dislike the infantilisation of the reader.
4. THEO WAS SO YUMMY I AM GONNA COLLAPSE! his little "you look so sexy right now, i might just keep you all to myself tonight" made my knees weak. he is so sexy and for what!!!!!! I NEED HIM ASAP!!! 🥵 💦
5. 10/10, will read again tonight.
- 🍯 anon
MY LOVEEEE ILL CRY !!!!!!!!!!! first of all THANK YOU SO MUCH for taking the time to read it AND to write all this !!!!!!!! im so happy to hear you liked it !
im SO glad the descriptions were good because sometimes its hard to read my own work as a reader if that makes sense so im really glad that you experienced that way!!
i genuinely LOVE writing funny dialogue like bickering and playful fighting like that and it’s def the most fun part when writing to me!!!!
and YESSS im so glad u feel the same way !!! i can’t stand infantilisation of the reader in fics and i’ll always try to make reader somewhat of a baddie even when she’s being submissive 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ anyway thank you once again baby your ask really made my entire day !! 💖💖💖💖💖
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nereidprinc3ss · 7 months ago
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A very unnecessary rant but am I the only one who is annoyed by the bombshell reader thing? For once I just think it would be interesting to see a reader who is the same as Spencer so I wouldn’t feel like a creep reading the scenarios. I’m a bit like Spence without the IQ. Aversion to touch, introverted, immersed in my own stuff, prob with some autistic traits. At this point I just think that there is definitely something wrong with me, lol.
hello!! there’s nothing wrong with you, but i completely understand the feeling. part of the reason i started the dybmn series is because i felt like i wasn’t ever seeing any accurate representation of insecure!reader fic, like it was all either like uwu!reader or yes bombshell!reader. honestly i love the bombshell fics, i can’t really relate to being that confident but i think the dynamic is cute and i really enjoy them! but there are definitely writers who will complete requests with different dynamics if you specify grumpy!reader or ditsy!reader or literally whatever you’d like! so that or writing your own fic are my best pieces of advice. im 100% sure there are plenty of people who feel the same as you, who knows if you have any interest in writing maybe that could be your niche!
some writers (myself included i think) also tend to infuse the “reader” characters with a strong personal voice because it’s easier to imagine how i would react to spencer reid saying something than to imagine how someone really like… polite or demure would react to it LOL. it’s an unfortunate blind spot but it can also be really cool to see how different writers do it!
anyway that was my tangent… i lost my own thread as so often happens lol
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yrydescend · 4 months ago
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Looking for friends to talk japanese with
Hello! im anthony, a 20 year old japanese learner. Ive grown tired of the repetitiveness of japanese textbooks and have started recently to immerse myself in the language. However, i have not been able to find anyone to talk japanese with (the main reason i have been learning this language in the first place!) and eventually become penpals/ internet firends. As you have probably guessed, english isnt even my native language lol. Anyways, im sending this message to the world in hopes of somebody reaching out. Thank you!
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stonyponyofficial · 1 year ago
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hello i've got a twofer for you :3c hope that's alright......
one is if you could be transformed into some variety of mythical or supernatural beast right now, what sort would you choose to be?
two is do you have any kind of bucket list? something you've always wanted to do but haven't gotten the chance yet?
oh yeah thats fine the last one had like 4 hidden and tucked away. seinfeld voice not that theres anything wrong with that. ill answer sooooooooooooo many questions (so send her some)
1 looking at list of mythical beasts voice ohhhhbh yeah... thats sick... awrsomeright im answering a question. well i was gonna answer something relatively normal until i found the Azukiarai/Azukitogi at the end of the alphabetical list for A on winkipedia. these are creatures that. well. they wash and grind their azuki beans (respectively, literally what their names mean) by a stream, and anyone who approaches "will inevitably fall in the water" because u see this is a scheme for eating people. not the beans im preparing right at this second mind u. why i would even have a little song about it that i sing to draw u near and it might go a little something like "Will I grind my azuki beans, or will I get a person to eat? shoki shoki" aaaaaaaand ur in the water. um normal answer id be a pegasus for no reason whatsoever stop looking at my profile picture. start looking at my hooves and massive wings, betch. < jesse pinkasus btw
2 an actual list, i do not have. feels too big. scary even. like if i said to myself i wanted to do something and then never did and also died id be sooooo embarraassed, while dead, than if i had just never done it anyway but never said i wanted to. initially im thinking just stuff like "i wanna visit this place and do this there" which at first dont feel like good enough answers until i realize going places and doing things there is just what people do anyway, until they die. so there are perhaps a few places id like to go as well as things id like to do there. um sorry number one is japan and i would be the most embarassing person to be with. its so prettyyy and it would be awesome for learning the language mroe. 100 percent language immersion babey.. . i wanna learn japanese, i guess is another thing. and probably more useful languages to my everyday life too! idk if this is bucket list material or just things i want to do. i would also like to go somewhere with a mountain someday i think. my area is renowned for its flatness and lack of buildings, so perhaps i would like to be somewhere with those things :3 maybe even.. go near the moutain.. . O.O no. not yet. far too scary by far.
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jayflrt · 1 year ago
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Hi Alice!
Just finished Against The World and OH MY GODDDD IT WAS INCREDIBLE
I loved the gradual build up and the way you set it out, it was paced to perfection. And so immersive as well! I literally sat there for five minutes just processing the whole thing.
I was feeling so proud of myself for piecing together Jeongseong's twist, bro, I felt so accomplished 😭. The second twist legitimately made me grip the edge of my desk like holy shit
As always, phenomenal writing, so intricate and detailed in all the right areas. Thank you for this fic! A little late on this feedback, sorry - was finishing up my semester.
Also, loved the stoner's guide update! Jake at the end had me wheezing (and the whiplash I got from reading your crack humour right after your psycho horror fic 😭)
Anyway, I will be reading Golden Boy next and I'm very excited!!
<3
omg hello hello pleasure to see you ! :') how have you been?? 🥰 the new username is so cute too 💘
AHH THANK YOU FOR READING 🫶🫶 omg im glad the build up felt gradual for you !!! i always worry about rushing so im glad it didn't feel that way HAHAH and omg the second twist was my addition to the fic for its rewrite so i feel so satisfied that the first plot twist acted like a decoy 😌 but hey u figured out the original plot twist !!! 🙏
OMG PLEASE never apologize for being too busy to read something here !!! your own life always comes first so please never feel obligated to read everything on time !!! 🥹 this blog will always be up and running so u never have to worry about being late to smthn dw 🫶 but i hope your semester went well ! are you on break now? :o
LOL no fr horror to humor must be such a jarring change in genre for you 😭😭 golden boy will probably be too since it's pure fluff HAHAH but i hope you enjoy it whenever you get around to reading it 🥰💖
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kithtaehyung · 1 year ago
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HELLO THAT WAS INCREDIBLE
every time you post something new i’m absolutely blown away by how deeply you seem to understand yoongi. like everything he does in this chapter just seems so in character. the way he ran to her when she couldn’t get a word out because her heart was too heavy I SCREAMED ACTUALLY. i truly feel like yoongi would drop everything for his lover because that’s what really matters above all else. like tae said he was probably having an even harder time and i really admire the strength.
i felt physical dread in my stomach while reading the first half. i really feel like i’m there experiencing it. this chapter sucked me in to the point where i felt like i almost couldn’t hear the world around me. felt like i was going to cry for a good while but made it out without shedding a tear a real feat for me i cry about everything
so many things that had me kicking my feet and as a fic writer myself i’m going to include them bc i know i like it when people give me specific reactions
“It was just nights ago that you cradled all his moonlight in your palms.” YOUR WORDS INCREDIBLE MY HEART ACHING
“Yes my love” RYEN RIP MY HEART OUT AND STOMP ON IT IM SURE IT WOULD HURT ME LESS. i know this is a happier moment but the way i vocalized so hard i need some citrón tea
“Don’t fall in love” I KNOW THIS WAS PLAYFUL BUT LIKE FRIEND I THINK ITS TOO LATE JUST SAY THE WORDS
The guitar playing SO YOONGI HE WOULD PLAY YOU TO SLEEP BECAUSE HE DOESNT WANT TO HAVE TO SAY BYE
YOONGI RESTING HIS HEAD ON HER CHEST PEAK COUPLES IN DEEP LOVE THAT ARE EXTREMELY COMFORTABLE WITH EACH OTHER
the smut was so delicious and i didn’t expect it to be THAT. it makes so much sense because of the MONTHS of frustration but the way it manifested was just perfect. the changing of positions and begging and her FUCKING SHOES !!!!!! scrumdiddlyumptious ! a full course fucking meal.
ryen you never disappoint and i’m so excited to read the other half of this chapter even if it’s going to leave me crying and damaging my vocal chords.
i’m sorry this is very long i just enjoyed it so much. anyways thank you and now i’m going to make theories with my bestie🫶🏻💜
AHHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH OMFGGG! i love your commentary let me bring this to under a cut so we can converse >:D
every time you post something new i’m absolutely blown away by how deeply you seem to understand yoongi. like everything he does in this chapter just seems so in character. the way he ran to her when she couldn’t get a word out because her heart was too heavy I SCREAMED ACTUALLY. i truly feel like yoongi would drop everything for his lover because that’s what really matters above all else. like tae said he was probably having an even harder time and i really admire the strength.
oh. my god. i'm blushing so hard?? not even two sentences in and i'm already hiding in my hoodie LOL you are way too kind. he really said "where are you" like that was his first reaction? the way my heart beat so damn loud😭 this man got serious quick. thank you for saying that about him.. i truly do love 3tan yoongi with all my heart and wanna protect him at all costs.
i felt physical dread in my stomach while reading the first half. i really feel like i’m there experiencing it. this chapter sucked me in to the point where i felt like i almost couldn’t hear the world around me. felt like i was going to cry for a good while but made it out without shedding a tear a real feat for me i cry about everything
whoa. that is some huge praise! it's so interesting to hear too bc when i'm working on it, sometimes i just get lost during the writing process that time goes by and i don't really remember what i wrote. so when i go back to read, it's kind of a surprise! the dialogue itself sometimes gets me immersed enough like i'm actually in it, and i'm just writing what they're all saying?? super intriguing.
so many things that had me kicking my feet and as a fic writer myself i’m going to include them bc i know i like it when people give me specific reactions
YOURE SO REAL FOR THIS THANK YOU T^T “It was just nights ago that you cradled all his moonlight in your palms.” YOUR WORDS INCREDIBLE MY HEART ACHING
i am blushing again!!
“Yes my love” RYEN RIP MY HEART OUT AND STOMP ON IT IM SURE IT WOULD HURT ME LESS. i know this is a happier moment but the way i vocalized so hard i need some citrón tea
umm no lie you made me want citron tea so much that i had it the same night you sent this LOLL. it helped a lot because my brain was so fried from posting, so thank you for that😂 BUT ALSO THIS LINE YEAH....
“Don’t fall in love” I KNOW THIS WAS PLAYFUL BUT LIKE FRIEND I THINK ITS TOO LATE JUST SAY THE WORDS
LMFAOOOO STOP IT
The guitar playing SO YOONGI HE WOULD PLAY YOU TO SLEEP BECAUSE HE DOESNT WANT TO HAVE TO SAY BYE
i really did think of him during this moment and ugh.. to be able to listen to something like that would be so.. yeah.
YOONGI RESTING HIS HEAD ON HER CHEST PEAK COUPLES IN DEEP LOVE THAT ARE EXTREMELY COMFORTABLE WITH EACH OTHER
STOP IT x1000 IM GONNA FLIP THIS DESK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the smut was so delicious and i didn’t expect it to be THAT. it makes so much sense because of the MONTHS of frustration but the way it manifested was just perfect. the changing of positions and begging and her FUCKING SHOES !!!!!! scrumdiddlyumptious ! a full course fucking meal.
oh gosh.. this makes me so happy bc like,, i think smut is still my weakest point lol. like i really need to get better at it! but this was so intense because of the buildup and i know i needed it to be Extra Spicy, you know? THE HEEEEEEEEELS FCK.
ryen you never disappoint and i’m so excited to read the other half of this chapter even if it’s going to leave me crying and damaging my vocal chords. i’m sorry this is very long i just enjoyed it so much. anyways thank you and now i’m going to make theories with my bestie🫶🏻💜
WAIT I WANNA HEAR THE THEORIES ARE YALL GONNA GATEKEEP OR- lmfao i love yall! thank you so so much for reading and for the kind as hell words. you have know idea how happy you made me feel!
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wonustars · 3 months ago
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ahem ahem. *taps mic*
hello, here i am with another long reblog because one of choco’s stories has absolutely crushed me (in the best way possible). *SPOILERS AHREAD*
let me start off with my initial thoughts going into reading:
if i’m gonna be honest i didn’t want to start this till the last part was posted and ended up reading it during the weekly updates because i got too impatient 😂
i was so immersed into Wonwoos character while reading the first two parts. he was lowkey miserable but the contrast between Wonwoo and Her had me by the throat. there is nothing i love more when the couple consists of a girlboss and a shy man who would do anything for said girl boss
back to Wonwoos character:
i found it very enjoyable to read everything in his pov. every emotion he felt, i had felt it too. im ngl i cried during a few parts of the story just envisioning how he views the world and how he works through all his emotions.
Her’s character:
i loved Her so much. you dek. she reminded me so much of myself. The outgoing, outspoken, and sometimes can be perceived as intimidating to those who aren’t very close to her. the jack of all trades yet master of none. my god. that’s how i portrayed her at least, getting hyper fixated on one thing just to abandon it the next day to try something else. her relationship with mingyu made me raise my eyebrow once or twice. i knew from the very moment that fight between her and bells happened at the party, that mingyu was cheating on her with bells. it was clear as day, and my heart went out to her. she deserved so much more. i’m not sure if it’s character development or maybe we just got to see more of her true personality once the story came to an end, but Her is so much more than what people made her out to be.
if there’s one character i could yap on about its MINGYU:
god. i’ve never felt so heartbroken for a fictional character until i learnt about how he was when he first started dating Her. He had become so brainwashed by Her’s parents and the need to become some successful man for the future that he forgot what his past self truly wanted to achieve. the way Her described mingyu made my heart hurt, because when Wonwoo described Mingyu it was like he was a shell of the person he used to be. Going thru the motions to satisfy everyone but himself? maybe i’m just yapping but that’s how i saw him. He used to have his own aspirations, he used to be in love. HE WANTED TO BE AN ARCHITECT 😭 damn it i just felt like he lost so much of himself and so did Her, they both did. and in my head they become happier after their break up and Mingyu decided to do what he truly desires and is happy.
the plot:
honestly, i’m glad that i read this when the parts were posted once a week. it gave me time to reflect on everything that happened in the story. watching Wonwoo overcome his last relationship and also finding better ways to regulate his anxiety thru the help of Her just made me so happy for him. I really felt his emotions at the beginning almost as if I was the one really feeling that way, and it made me so upset. Seeing the way Wonwoo had changed for the better with Her in his life made my heart melt. you could see the obvious changes. and same with Her! they both had become better versions of themselves the more time they spent together. although i do think that the fight they had was very needed. it seemed like wonwoo had so much piled up inside him, and he needed to learn how to just let it all out, albeit yelling at Her probably wasn’t the best way, im glad he stopped bottling up his emotions. they’re honestly perfect for each other, and the way this was written is just so damn good. THEIR TENSION! especially the night she slept in his room and the first time they had sex. goddddd the smut scene was just so satisfying, cathartic almost after all that pent up TENSION!! i was so happy with how it went. they really match each others freak Aifkskhdskjdjfjek. anyways i loved how every character was written in this story but if i commented on everyone i would probably be typing in this google doc for about 5 hours. so i’ll end it here.
thank you choco, for writing this, for taking the time out of your days to write this masterpiece and post it on tumblr FOR FREE. you’ve really outdone yourself. all your stories are great and i will definitely be reading this one again. the way you described the characters feelings, their actions, everything. i’m in awe and as a writer i aspire to get become this poetic in telling a story. thank you for allowing everyone to be graced with your writing, i cannot describe how appreciative i am of your existence!!! 🫶 im so happy we’re mutuals btw :”)
p.s vernon was my fav character ever! i would’ve done an in depth analysis on him AND seokmin if it wasn’t almost 2am rn hhehe
HER | part one.
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✧✎ synopsis: wonwoo, a heartbroken and burnt out writer nearing the end of his math degree, wants nothing to do with the seemingly perfect, intimidating girl who has everyone under her thumb. you. unfortunately, his literary talent has got him shoved him between a rock and a hard place when you want to write a book and require his expertise. you two are the furthest from compatible. wonwoo can’t see this going well. at all.
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pairing: wonwoo x fem!reader word count: 23.5k genres/tropes: writer!wonwoo, university!au, plug!vernon + boyfriend!mingyu as prominent side characters, SLOWBURN (i am not fucking around this is my slowest burn yet), relationship drama, soul searching, strong angst/hurt (i’m coming for the jugular), comfort, romance, smut, a smoothie of every emotion on earth.
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(!) warnings: drug use (weed, coke, ecstasy), wonwoo has anxiety + anxiety attacks + fairly dark thoughts, prescribed medication, gambling, intense language, infidelity, throwing up.
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✧✎ a/n: just some quick things i want to make apparent!
the fic is told from wonwoo’s pov, not the reader’s! 
all major timeline events are organized through chronological dates
potentially triggering scenes within the fic are NOT MARKED in advance
the content is already quite mature, so pls heed the warnings!
bolded and italicized text implies characters are conversing in korean, tho it doesn’t happen often!
the fic in its entirety is 140k, so it has been split into 6 parts
everyone's patience and understanding has been endlessly appreciated! you have no idea ;_; i give you all shining stars 🌟
⇢ part two | part three | part four | part five | part six ⇢ soundtrack for those curious! ⇢ read at ur own pace! :)
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—MARCH 19TH.
“I have a relatively big favour to ask of you.”
 No. Wonwoo didn’t want anything to do with favours.
The fact that Seokmin had actively picked out his presence in the coffee shop like he was some shiny contortion of plastic had actually offended Wonwoo. He came here for two things: to not be bothered, which his friend knew, and to work on the book he was halfway through typing and had been halfway through typing for the past six months. Call it writer’s block, or an inspiration drought, or an absolutely depressing lack of drive—it had been hanging over the writer with an annoying persistence and it seemed that no number of lemony scones or cold coffees were going to make it vanish.
“Uh, Wonwoo?”
“Sorry… what?” He forced his gaze to shift from the blank page on his laptop to Seokmin’s apologetic, softly expressional face, slightly flushed from his time outdoors in the chilled March weather.
“I was just wondering if you’d be up for a favour—a pretty big one—and I know this is your special creativity spot, but she’s been like, breathing down my neck about it and I can’t put it off again.”
“Whose been breathing down your neck?”
At first, Seokmin didn’t say a word, or even make a sound. His lips twitched for a moment, but then he pressed them together and his chest visibly sucked in with a breath. God, Wonwoo hated the suspense and he hated Seokmin for interrupting him when he had been so stupidly close to putting a sentence down that he probably would have back-spaced in frustration a minute later.  
“Y’know…” he trailed off, “Her.”
Her.
No, not her, you.
But most people—if not everyone—referred to you by an alias that had seemed to stick so well the majority believed it actually was your name. When people said her they meant Her, and so in a confusing mess of finger-pointing they really meant you. Come to think of it, Wonwoo had no idea where the nickname even came from or who gave it to you or what it even meant.
And he was perfectly fine with never knowing.
“What?” Wonwoo deadpanned. “What on earth could she want to do with me? She doesn’t even know me.” He slid down in his chair, fingers pulling at his circle-lensed glasses so they tilted uncomfortably across his nose bridge. “Or, is this a joke?”
“Oh—no! Absolutely not!” His friend was insistent on proclaiming, vigorously shaking his head. “I’m being serious.”
“Why don’t I believe you then?”
“Okay, well, if you let me explain everything, it’ll all make sense. I said I know someone who writes really well—”
“Meaning me?”
“Yes, meaning you. And the only reason that was even brought up is because she wants to write a book.”
Wonwoo couldn’t help it. He laughed a very short disbelieving laugh that flashed a transient smile to his face as he readjusted his crooked glasses. You were the last person he would ever envision wanting to write a book. He then navigated the trackpad on his laptop, deciding to close the document simply titled, 01, that harboured the fleet of pages to his own current work in progress.
“Yeah,” Wonwoo disregarded, “sounds like bullshit.”
“I’m telling you the truth!” Seokmin exclaimed, gripping onto the metal back of the café chair like he was squeezing someone’s taunt shoulders. “She won’t tell me about what, okay? Just that she’s been thinking the idea for a while now. It’s not like I didn’t try to get details. But she refused—said the only person who can know is whoever’s going to help her. Look, y’have to understand, she was pestering me about it nonstop. And you’re my only writer friend!”
“Well, you’re about to have none.” He answered, reaching for his coffee cup but stopping it just short of his lips. “How serious is she about this, anyway?” Wonwoo sighed. “Do you know how much fucking time you need to dedicate to writing a book?”
He stomached a slow, somewhat grimacing sip as he tasted the coffee’s coldness, meanwhile Seokmin swallowed heavily, and at last pulled out the chair he’d been white-knuckling to take a seat.
“Yes, I’m aware it takes time. I know that. And she is serious or else I wouldn’t be here, bothering you. She takes everything seriously.” The boy began unbuttoning his sleek black jacket. “Really, who knows what’ll happen? Maybe you’ll meet her once and she’ll decide she can’t stand you, and then you’re off the hook for life.”
“Yeah, well have you ever considered what might happen if I can’t stand her? Are my feelings even being considered? Minutely?”
“Minutely, they are being considered.”
“Liar.”
It wasn’t that Wonwoo disliked you.
In actuality, you scared him more than anything. But to be associated with you was to be drawn into your life and caught like a firefly in a glass jelly jar. The proof was right in front of him—to Wonwoo’s eyes, Seokmin was basically your little mailman that scrambled around in hectic nature to do your bidding, because most tasks apparently weren’t worth the time or effort.
“I can’t believe you’re trying to rope me into this. You know I can hardly write my own shit, right?” Wonwoo said bitterly, wishing it was the opposite, “my mind is a desolate, blank canvas of fuck-all and if she thinks I’m writing it then she needs a reality check.”
“No, no—of course you won’t write it!” Seokmin reassured him with his big, opalescent smile. “Really, you’re just giving tips, maybe guiding her process, helping with the planning… you know, this could be facilitated so much easier if you spoke to Her yourself!”
“So, my nightmare?” Wonwoo huffed, shaking his leg.
In an instant, Seokmin had whipped out his phone, tapping around the screen quickly using his thin pointer finger.
“I’m just going to pull up her schedule. It’s always pretty packed, but more into the summer break, it thins out a little. “
Wonwoo exhaled, staring off into the warm, afternoon sunlight that hailed in through the windows, striking all the shimmering flecks and pieces of dust afloat in the café air. When he breathed in again, he could smell the luxurious coffees brewing in their rich and distinctive notes. It was such a beautiful day—still chilly as the snow outdoors began to thaw—but pleasant nonetheless.
“This is such a fucking waste.”
And Wonwoo spent it being miserable.
“No, it’ll be useful. Trust.” Seokmin chirped.
“You’re trying to dip me in your optimism gloss again.”
His friend smiled affectionately, tilting his head.
“This will be good. You’ve been a hermit since I’ve known you.”
“Yeah,” Wonwoo scoffed, “so you think it’s a good idea to shove me with the person I relate to least on the entire planet?”
“Really? The least? So, what you’re saying is, you relate more to serial killers? Or animal abusers? Or like, literal fasc—”
“Stop.”
“You want to do this. I can see it in your eyes. I’ll set you up.”
A part of Wonwoo knew there might be no wriggling out of the situation, especially with Seokmin sitting across from him, characteristically eager and brightly pushy as always, like a goddamn salesman. For now, it could be easier to let himself get cuffed.
“Can I at least have some time to think it over?”
“Uh… well… the thing is… the thing with that is—”
“You’ve cornered me?”
“I wouldn’t word it like that.”
“… Okay.” Wonwoo removed his glasses, shoved his knuckles tender but deep into his eye sockets, massaging through flashes of white as he came to accept a fate he didn’t know even existed in his astrology. “Just, I don’t know—fuck—schedule me in wherever.”
“Ha! It doesn’t exactly work like that.”
“I really don’t give a damn how it works, Seokmin.”
“Right,” his friend laughed nervously, “I promise that I’ll get back to you pronto. Sorry for the disturbance. And, uh, good luck.”
 “With what part?” Wonwoo grumbled, fixing his spectacles back on to clarify Seokmin’s sympathetic face, the light bouncing off his head of brassy hair like a disco ball. “My incapability to write a goddamn thing or the fact I have to help your perfectionist friend who’s probably going to chew me up and spit me out?”
 “Both parts.” Seokmin grinned. “It can only go up from here.”
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Wonwoo had one very distinct memory of you: creative writing with Mr. T. It had been an elective class he took amongst all his compulsory maths, and at the time it was a much appreciated break when Wonwoo grew apathetically bored from looking at matrices and confidence intervals and equations that engulfed the length of his notebook. Professor T was late one day in the fall.
And that’s when Wonwoo remembered you walking in.
There was a sort of sharpness about your presence that pulled everyone’s spines straight. People tended to angle themselves away from you, though they did it subtly, feigning an adjustment in their seat or a plunge into their bookbag for something that wasn’t even there. Wonwoo lacked the words to describe you. To be honest, he most likely could if he put that infinitely expanding lexicon of his to work, but even then, he feared that everything would fall flat.
Some scruffy looking guy had made the mistake of sitting in your seat—someone who probably skipped most lectures and only happened to find himself near Gildan Hall purely by chance.
It was the seat squat in the middle of the small auditorium.
He remembered the hand propped on your hip as you sashayed up to him—you always sashayed places. Wonwoo found it funny, like there were paparazzi stuffed behind potted plants and vending machines waiting to spring out with their blinding flares, just to capture you picking up a half-empty bag of flavourless popcorn.
“Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no.”
“Hm?”
“Excuse me? Yes, hello. You—can you get up please?”
“Up...? Why?”
 “Who are you?”
  “I’m sorry… what’s this about?”
 “Are you a first-year or something? Never bothered going to class until now? All the moshing and beer pong and ending up in some random basement of a friend of a friend of a friend is done so you’re deciding to actually get your money’s worth? Well, let me tell you this—I’ve been showing up to class punctually, and this is my seat. I always sit here. It’s my unofficially-assigned-assigned seat, which seems to be a known fact to everyone in this room except for you. Everyone has one. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to sit in other people’s seats. I don't care who you are. You could be my own mother. You could be my best friend, even. President of the universe. That doesn't make it okay, 'cause it’s a respect thing. It's one of those assumed societal rules and you just fucking kicked dirt all over it.”
Whoever he was, he never came back to another lecture.
Since then, Wonwoo had dually made it his mission to never cross paths with you, look at you, or even so much as huff one single carbon-dioxide filled breath in your general direction, just in case that was some degree of unbeknownst personal law he might violate.
Seokmin had royally screwed it up for him.
What could you possibly want to write a book about, anyway?
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—MARCH 26TH.
Wonwoo didn’t know how he was expected to find you in this gigantic mall. As he brushed through the streamlines of people, bumping their shoulders and mumbling the driest, most insincere apologies, he couldn’t stop looking at his phone. Seokmin had given him your number with the instruction that he could find you, here, on a busy Saturday afternoon. So far, Wonwoo had sent you four texts, none prompting a response or the grey-dotted bubble, even. Fuck, why did he agree to this? He couldn’t stop thinking it.
Why did he agree to help you, whom he was beginning to not even like, or want to be aquatinted with, write a book, when he’d been struggling to fill the same page of his own story for months?
Squeezing the phone tighter in his fingers, Wonwoo’s broad shoulder then smacked into someone else while he was busy steeping in his misfortune. It earned him a wildly disgusted look.
“Maybe watch where you’re going," the stranger grumbled, some man with an engrained scowl and big, bewildered eyes.
But Wonwoo ignored him.
He didn’t fucking care, and he was sick of wandering through this mall. It made him feel overstimulated, like his clothes were sticking to his skin differently, like the back of his head was swelling, and like all the smells in his nose were somehow making him warmer.
The stranger just stared at Wonwoo as he walked away.
Ding!
A text, but not from you—Seokmin, instead. Apparently, you were in some clothing store on the second floor. Wonwoo stepped onto the escalator, pressing himself into the barrier to make room for the especially speedy people who couldn’t simply stand and wait. He felt a random touch on the back of his head. Scrunching up the glasses on his nose and turning around, Wonwoo stared at the downward escalator, locking eyes with a pretty dark-haired girl he’d never seen before. She wiggled her fingers at him with a flirtatious smile, the scent of her perfume still lingering. Fresh roses, he thought.
He blinked at her once, twice, then turned back around.
Never in a million years.
It was funny, though.
Once Wonwoo stopped outside the clothing store you were supposedly inside, he felt the myriad of distractions and scents and noises dampen behind him. The irritability he couldn’t shake was slowly transforming into nerves. He’d never met you before, unless half-glances controlled by fear from across the small, basement auditorium that hosted creative writing counted.
Focusing on one breath, and then another, followed by a deep, self-soothing inhale, Wonwoo attempted to convince himself that he was in control, not the emotions quivering at his fingertips.
He cracked his neck and walked in.
After a minute or two of confused isle-pacing, Wonwoo rounded a corner, his eyes immediately fixating on a girl who was picking through a neatly assorted dress rack, her head tilted elegantly and her lipstick glimmering under the sterileness of the lights—you.
He gulped. Just suck it up.
She can’t be that bad. You can’t be that bad.
“Uh, sorry to bother you. I’m Wonwoo. I know we have a mutual friend in Seokmin. Lee Seokmin. He’s in one of your seminar classes or something, and, uh…. anyway. I believe I’m supposed to help you with a book you’re interested in writing… that’s what I was told, at the very least. And… I know we’ve never met but… um… I guess…” he trailed off upon noting your lack of acknowledgement.
Suddenly, he was taking a step back, letting you progress further along the clothing rack, your fingers hopping between each hanger and your eyes scanning their corresponding fabrics.
Wonwoo jerked on the inside with panic. He hated the situation already, though he somehow found the resounding courage, or perhaps, humility, to address you again, even if he’d rather die.
“So, I’m not sure if you—”
“Can you move, please? Over here or something? I want this dress.”
He kept his mouth shut in order to avoid spilling out any obtuse nonsense, instead watching with a nervous, analyzing gaze as you removed the hanger and shook out the purple, wine-coloured fabric, its sparkles rippling when you stroked your hand along it.
“Woah. This is too pretty.”
Wonwoo cleared his throat, unsure if you were speaking to him directly. You already had a bundle of dresses tossed over your arm. Why would you meet up with him when you were clearly busy?
“Hey, what did you say your name was?”
“Me?” He found himself echoing.
“No, the mannequin wearing that hideous plaid mini skirt. Of course I’m talking to you. Should I get you a q-tip or something?”
“No... I don't need a q-tip. It’s Wonwoo.”
“Wonwoo?” You exercised the name slowly on your tongue.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, well, just so you’re aware, it’s 11:35. You were supposed to meet me outside the boutique at 11:30. I can see you’re not very punctual, so that’s noted…” for a moment, you stood back, and the searing line of your gaze judgmentally raked him from top to bottom. “Anyway… you’ll have to assist me with some things now, thanks to your big delay. I got all bored waiting for you, so I decided to do a little self-indulgent shopping."
It could have been wiser to continue biting his tongue, but even Wonwoo, who had practically vowed to avoid you for all eternity  due to his fear, felt compelled to challenge your unorthodox logic.
“Big delay? I don’t mean to be rude, but I did take the bus to get here, and their timing is never right. I feel like five minutes is a reasonable time to wait. Not that I’m saying you’re impatient.”
“Well, here’s the thing…” your back turned to him as you took a few slow steps down the clothing rack, probing between the different, pricy materials for anything exuberant you might have missed. “That is what you said, isn’t it? That I’m impatient? I mean—jeez—why bother dancing around it when you can just say it?”
He watched you face him again, except he was keeping perfectly silent, clutching his hand into an anxious, balled fist.
“Well, I suspect you lack urgency, making you apathetic, so therefore you have no sense of initiative. I’m sure you’re already aware, anyway. I can be slow, too, with certain things. Like, when I’m icing a cake. Or painting my nails. But I don’t walk slow, ever. That’s for unmotivated, pointless people who will probably go nowhere in life.”
“… Pardon?”
“Hold this, please.”
Suddenly, you draped the wine-coloured dress over Wonwoo’s shoulder. And he left it there for a second, still gobsmacked, chest shuddering from the pressure of his pumping heart, and wondered how you were even a real person. Once you began walking elsewhere in the store, Wonwoo questioned a very understandable escape toward the exit, though, for some reason, he snapped from his stupor and quickly paced after you, now folding the dress more straightly over his arm. He realized he was too afraid to surrender.
“I’m supposed to help you write a book,” he stated, feeling his lungs dig deep for air, “Seokmin said you needed help.”
“Okay, I’m tired of holding these two. Here—” you again blanketed the dresses into his arms, “—please keep this olive one in good shape, no crinkles. I have yet to find this colour anywhere else.”
Swinging back around, you began heading toward the change rooms, your uncomfortably tall looking heels clicking with each step. Wonwoo stuttered, and he couldn’t stop doing it—just, absolutely baffled by you and your consuming sense of worth. He didn’t know what to say, he could only follow, producing bits and pieces of sentences that you were either ignoring or genuinely hadn’t heard in comparison to the monologues in your own head.
“At what point will we discuss why I’m here?”
Finally, he spat out something coherent.
You paused, and for a fleeting moment, flicked your very intense eyes up and down in an examination of Wonwoo, who felt like he was being intrusively picked apart under a microscope.
 He swallowed tautly, “I’m just wondering… that’s all.”
You pressed your wallet against the top of his shoulder, guiding him to sit down on the white leather stool placed just outside the fitting rooms. He sat, too, fighting the urge to wipe his clammy palms on his jeans—even worse, the dresses you’d dumped on him.
“Let’s talk after I try these on, ‘kay?”
There was something different about your voice. It fell lower, sweeter, and he shivered with the thought that you had quite possibly just hypnotized him. He looked up at you, nodding his head.
“Good. Everyone calls me Her, by the way.”
“I know.”
He held his breath as you reached out to take a dress, the wine-coloured one, which was more like a dark, nightly amethyst now that Wonwoo was observing the fabric up close. So, what the hell was he supposed to do? Just sit there, twiddling his thumbs and shaking his knee while you busied yourself with fitting into all those wildly sumptuous dresses? There was a plethora of other things he’d rather be doing—too many to name, in fact. But he wasn’t going to bother slithering away now, chiefly because you petrified him too much and he wasn’t in the mood to be further guilt-tripped by Seokmin.  
Throwing his head back, he blew out a tired huff and looked at the ceiling. Why the fuck was he doing this? He just couldn’t stop thinking it. What on earth could he possibly gain from being terrorized by your weird authority.
“Hey, I’ve been there, for sure.”
Wonwoo noticed an older man waltzing past him, probably in his early thirties or so, who’d spoken in a sympathetic tone. He seemed very polished and clean-cut, made apparent by his sleek suit, and as a university student who was routinely on the verge of going broke after most rents, Wonwoo knew money when he saw it.
“Pardon?”
The man stopped and smiled.
“Waiting for your girlfriend, aren’t you?”
“Oh, no. I’m just—”
He was interrupted by the squeak of the change room door.
“Be honest. How does this look?”
You had stepped out to examine your silhouette in the large, full-body mirrors against the wall, taking advantage of the heavier lighting to scrutinize every divot and ruffle that textured the amethyst dress. Wonwoo wasn’t sure what to say in the moment, and the man he was explaining himself to had wandered off into another aisle to answer a phone call. He watched your fingers pick and pull at the material so it could be readjusted in certain places, your bottom lip pursed as you angled your hips and tensed a leg to make a pose.
There were at least three other dresses strewn in his lap, and you were most definitely going to make him sit there and judge each one. Now, he could be honest. The dress was glittery yet sophisticated, something like a gloaming, purple-stained sky and its first emergent stars encapsulated into fabric, though he wasn’t completely sold on it. But he also wanted to leave the mall as quick as time would allow, so rather than being verbose, he shaved it down.
“It’s pretty, not great. I don’t really know.”
“Hmm…” you mumbled, keeping your eyes fixated on the mirror, “not great? What’s not great about it? The frilly parts?”
“Yeah, the frilly parts.”
God, he wanted to go home so bad. Warm tea would be nice right now. There were crinkle-cut fries in his freezer.
“Ugh, but I love the colour. I’m getting conflicted. Maybe I’ll toss it aside and think about it again later. Yeah, I’ll do that... okay, let me get the white one next. It’s a little short but I can make it work.”
 Wonwoo carefully pulled out the white outfit from the bottom of the pile and handed it off to you. The skirt was notably cropped.
Again, you strode back into the change room and softly clicked the door shut behind you. Wonwoo pulled out his phone almost immediately, navigating to his texts with Seokmin. His thumbs blasted against the screen, tapping out literary warfare that expanded into a decent sized paragraph Seokmin would most likely respond to with an apologetic smiley face. It might take a day or two for Wonwoo to cool off, but he always forgave him. Mr. Sunshine.
When he heard the door rattle, Wonwoo quickly hid his phone back in his pants pocket; however, he severely regretted that decision because holy fuck—that vinyl white skirt was indeed short and tight and the winding, crossed straps of the top were just maintaining your cleavage. He needed something to help avert his eyes because Wonwoo felt them itch with the urge to stare at your body despite how uncomfortable he was. The floor tiles—count the floor tiles, or count the lights—something, anything to distract his brain.
“Okay, this is like—if I bend over, I’m flashing someone.”
He prayed you wouldn’t ask him his thoughts.
“But like—okay, I can make this work, right? This has potential. If I stand really straight, and proper, and, just… pull this down a bit here—okay, fuck, that was too much. Don’t look for a second… don’t look…. don’t look… m’kay, fixed it.”
Wonwoo wanted to cradle his head in his hands. And, right when he swore that the situation couldn’t sink much lower, the wealthy, black-suit man returned from his phone call. He paused the second he saw you in the mirror, watching intensely as you fiddled with the vinyl and attempted to adjust the x-shaped top a little higher over your cleavage. Except he wasn’t exactly modest about his gaze. It was drinking you in like some sort of insatiable alcohol.
“This is tough,” you huffed, pressing your hands against your chest, “the top is super sexy. I love how open the back is. But it’s such little fabric considering the price. It sucks that I look so hot in it.”
Horrendously, Wonwoo noticed a jewel bracelet slip off your wrist onto the tiled floor. Even more horrendously, he watched in the tensest position possible as you began to bend over and grab it.
No. No, no, no, no way.
The last two dresses spilled in a silk and cotton heap off his lap, nearly tripping him during his rush toward you. He managed to cover your backside in the most heart-hammering nick of time, his hands accidentally brushing in static sparks against yours to help you pull the tight fabric back down your hips. Knowing the man was still watching in the mirror, Wonwoo clasped onto your arm and dragged you back toward the fitting room, his cheeks turned to rubies.
“Fuck, you need to be more careful,” he rasped, “the skirt is too short for you to bending over like that, alright?”
“I’m not leaving a gifted two-hundred-dollar bracelet on the fucking ground. Should I have just kicked it into the change room?”
“Gosh…” Wonwoo rubbed along his neck with tire and lowered his voice. “Bending over in a skirt that short, especially when there’s a fucking weirdo watching you, is not the best procedure.”
“So, it’s my fault he’s a creep?”
“Okay—that wasn’t what I—um—”
“Do you even like this outfit?” You deadpanned.
Wonwoo chuckled in disbelief, “I’m not answering that.”
“This is useless." Your eyes agitatedly rolled. “I’m changing.”
“Great, whatever. Do that.”
He gently pushed you further into the change room and closed the door with a smooth, loud shutter. His heart was still racing.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t let my girlfriend wear that either.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” Wonwoo didn’t care that his tone was snappish and clearly tired as he collapsed back onto the stool, making a point to ignore the perverted bastard until he left.
“Wonwoo!” You called his name after a few minutes of silence from the fitting room, “please bring me the green one!”
He wanted to utterly vanish, have the building collapse and crush him in a pile of dust plumes and rubble. Sliding the dress through the small gap in the changeroom door, Wonwoo found himself pausing.
“Why don’t I just hand all these to you?”
“Because, I’m using the hangers in here for my clothes.”
“Why can’t you just pu—”
“Thank you!”
Impatiently, you nabbed the dress and shut the door.
However, that dress was the last one you tried on, and Wonwoo couldn’t have been any more relieved. Talking to you seemed like it might give him heartburn or a hemorrhage.
He thought the shiny colour of olive green suited you best.
The dress was silken and long, slightly form-fitting, with a slit cut far up the right thigh and thin spaghetti straps at the shoulders.
You picked the first three dresses to take home, and left the last shimmery one on the rack.
“We’re leaving now?” Wonwoo asked, cracking his fingers.
“Yes, after I pay. Don’t seem so eager.”
“With all due respect, this place isn't really my scene.”
“Your attitude isn't really my scene.” You swiftly corrected him.
He stood next to you at the counter, observing as you zipped open your small black wallet to pull out a credit card. If you were shopping at a store like this, you must be making bank. But Wonwoo was somewhat nosey, and when you set the card on the countertop, he glanced at its embossed name. It definitely wasn’t your name.
Kim Mingyu.
It was your boyfriend’s.
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[ Wonwoo | 1:15 pm ]: Goddammit Seokmin answer me
[ Wonwoo | 1:15 pm]: I’ve sent you at least ten texts
[ Wonwoo | 1:16 pm ]: Truly how do you do anything with this girl? I feel like she’s somewhat psychotic and you just fucking had to flash your sad mopey eyes at me in that café so I would break and help her write her book. I’m sitting here with dresses in my lap, pretty much acting as her unpaid personal assistant. Why the fuck is she asking me about dresses, anyway? Did you help her orchestrate this bullshit? I’m actually pissed at you. I want an entire paid lunch.
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He wasn’t all that surprised you made him carry the matte silver shopping bag (with these twine handles that he absolutely hated because of how they suffocated around his fingers), and by a certain point, Wonwoo just didn’t give a damn any more. What little social battery he’d maintained since leaving his apartment had officially depleted, for he could feel it weighing in the plaza air around him like an imperceptible mist. Unfortunately, you weren’t lying about being a fast walker. He’d never seen someone stalk with such vigor.
It was nearly an endurance test to keep at your swaying hip, and the few times he fell behind, you would pause and beckon for him.
But Wonwoo discovered that even you needed to stop, to eat and drink like a normal human rather than the disguised cyborg he fleetingly speculated you were. Your touch was so abrupt—a hand had curled around his bicep and suddenly Wonwoo found himself being jerked into a café on the bottom floor of the mall. Of course, you had to pick the most expensive place to buy food in the entire fucking vicinity, and since Wonwoo was penny pinching at the moment, he opted to stand back and let you order.
But then he saw you flick open your wallet, waving Mingyu’s sleek yet flashy credit card between your fingers with blatant enticement.
“I can pay for you.”
He shook his head, muttering a careless, “no thanks.”
“Don't BS me. What do you want to eat?”
Wonwoo couldn’t stop staring at the credit card.
“What’s the limit on that thing?”
“Enough.”
“You haven’t burned through it already?”
“These openly snide comments you’re making aren’t appreciated, you know. Now, please give me an answer before I break off the temples to your glasses so I can use them to stir my drink.”
“… What?” Wonwoo mumbled, completely lost.
“Pick something!”
“Okay, fuck. I’ll just get a coffee, then.”
He took a step forward to examine the menu boards that the employees were wildly scuttling around underneath, browsing down their chalk-written cold brews until he picked one at random.
That was all Wonwoo asked for.
You bought a lemonade and some sandwich he didn’t catch the name of, toasted on panini bread. It felt amazing to sit down. Wonwoo let the silver bag slide completely off his arm and hit the floor, to which he could sense your gaze stinging over him in disapproval. He should have gotten a sandwich himself, but Wonwoo still wasn’t sure how he felt about using the money on your boyfriend’s credit card.
Wonwoo relaxed in his chair, angling a glance down at his phone that he kept below the table, checking for any Seokmin texts.
None. He was supposed to be Wonwoo’s stupid life preserver in this situation with you, and so far, he’d been left for dead. Taking a lengthy sip from his drink was the only way he could stomach it.
“You should put your phone on the table. Screen down.”
“For what reason?” Wonwoo responded in a dull tone, quickly checking his social media with impatient swipes of his thumb.
“So we can have a conversation.”
At that, he almost gagged, slapping down the coffee cup he’d just picked up.
“Now?” Wonwoo laughed, his deep voice reverberating louder than he intended around the café, “you want to talk now?”
“Uh, yes,” you answered, picking up one half of your sandwich and readying it before your mouth, “why is that shocking?”
“Because—you—ah, whatever.”
“You seem crabby. Is that your normal shtick or are you just hangry? Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
He was in a worse mood than usual, but that could be blamed entirely on the mall and how exhausted it made him feel—everything about its environment sucked out his soul. It was most likely the reason he was even daring to act so impatient. You took another bite as you waited for him to answer, and the delicious crackling sound of the toasted bread managed to fissure something inside him.
“Your eyes tell all. Here’s the other half.” You offered.
Finally, he’d experienced his first flares of contentment that day, though he wasn’t expecting it to be from a panini sandwich with what he could taste to be lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, and different types of melted cheese.
“Thanks.”
“Well, I’ll at least give us time to finish eating.”
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[ Seokmin | 2:30pm ]: I can do one paid lunch :)
[ Seokmin | 2:30 pm ]: Her’s not psychotic she’s just uhh
[ Seokmin | 2:31 pm ]: She probs did it to mess with you 
[ Wonwoo | 2:37 pm ]: She thinks being 5 mins late warrants putting me through one of the worst experiences in my life.
[ Seokmin | 2:37 pm ]: Awwww
[ Seokmin | 2:37 pm ]: Who doesn’t like a little shopping??
[ Wonwoo | 2:39 pm ]: It wasn’t shopping it was torture. You owe me so much more than a fucking lunch.
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—MARCH 29TH.
Unfortunately, Wonwoo never got the opportunity to discuss your book that Saturday. In the middle of eating, your phone buzzed with a brief call that had interrupted your peculiarly passionate rant on the different cup sizes at the movie theatre (Wonwoo had listened without saying anything, mostly because he dreaded the circumstances that may come from peeping a word when you were so fixated on explaining that ‘the medium is too much but the small is too little and they’re both obnoxiously priced’).
He then watched cluelessly as you launched up from the table, collecting every little belonging between your fingers, babbling about some wax appointment that had escaped you.
It was just that simple—you were gone.
In the beginning moments of your absence, Wonwoo had sat there without much inclination of what to do next.
He’d worried it was another test, and that he was supposed to dutifully follow you to said wax appointment and continue bending to your every endeavour with no retaliation throughout the day. He had also found the silence across from him unsettling, in a way.
Nonetheless, if you weren’t there, then Wonwoo figured he didn’t need to be there either. So he left, taking the fifty-six back to his apartment, and you hadn’t contacted him since.
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Wonwoo actually knew his landlord quite well.
Her building was comprised of four apartments, which sat above her pottery shop on the ground floor. She wasn’t a very bothersome landlord and it was fairly easy to connect with her whenever something broke or caused problems.
When he first moved in three years ago, Wonwoo had ardently adored living there, constantly studying the shelves of shiny glazed vases in addition to the beautiful water colour paintings that were created by his landlord or her students. It had been an inspiration supernova in terms of his personal literature, and he was able to start writing his book. Though, at the time, Wonwoo hadn’t been living alone in his apartment, and it was an inescapable fact that the only reason he began writing his book was with the hope of eventually presenting it to his old girlfriend-slash-roommate.
Now, it was just him.
And as Wonwoo pushed up from his grave of rumpled bedsheets, feeling lethargic and empty, he tried concerningly hard to pinch those thoughts from his mind. It was nearly lunch. He knew damn well he shouldn’t have allowed himself to rot that long in bed, but the other half of himself, the self-sabotaging kind, just couldn’t be bothered to fucking care. Wonwoo reached for his glasses that lay half-opened on the nightstand, raking them onto his face while brushing the hair from his eyes. The first thing he properly saw was his tall, skinny, orange bottle of venlafaxine. No. He was ignoring it.
Wonwoo had been ignoring it for the past few months.
Whenever he got particularly sick of staring at the bottle, he’d shove it in his drawer, making sure to bury it deep under old, amply-scribbled notepads and inkless pens that he’d worn to the bone. At last getting up from the bed, Wonwoo experienced his entire body sway and he caught the room spinning at the distant edges of his peripheral. But he walked through it without a care in the world, utterly too used to the feeling of imminent nausea even without his medication. He decided on a shower, then dressing himself, one Poptart, a swig of water from the kitchen tap, and almost walked out the apartment door with the minty toothbrush still in his mouth.
After walking three blocks down from his apartment, Wonwoo stepped across the dead, spiky grass and into the lacklustre parking lot behind the bowling alley that always smelled like stale pizza.
He knew the vanilla Camry well enough to identify it—stalled smack and centre amongst the emptiness—the licence plate being chiselled into his head like his old locker combination from high school (16-12-24, because Wonwoo for some reason liked fixating on prehistoric details that were glaringly useless in his present).
Early two-thousands R&B was blasting from inside the outdated-looking car, though it was thankfully turned down once Wonwoo threw the door open and shimmied inside.
The odor permeated Wonwoo’s lungs in a heartbeat.
“I thought you were getting this dry-cleaned,” he sighed to his friend, Vernon, who was busy rifling through a backpack.
“Uh, didn’t happen. Didn’t wanna pay all that. M’gonna find someone else to do it that’s not taxin’ my ass. Air fresheners are all dried n’shit so you’re gonna have to deal. My bad, Glasses.”
Glasses. That nickname had always made Wonwoo huff a little half-chuckle, and almost instinctively, he pushed the glasses a bit higher back up his nose. He was introduced to Vernon at a New Year’s Eve party he was forced to attend back in December, though it had been difficult to speak with him because he was blitzed out of his fucking mind—not to mention the choking pain of ignoring the girl who had been sliding her hands along the divots of his shoulders and chest from behind, kissing at his neck.
But Vernon was branded in tattoos, and had all kinds of metal in his face, and was blessed with concupiscent, honey-burnish eyes magnetized every woman in the vicinity straight to him.
Somehow, Vernon had become Wonwoo’s plug in the mix.
“Now, what are you gettin’, Glasses? The usual quarter ounce, right?” Vernon’s tongue poked between his blistered lips as he dug a heavily-inked hand further into the backpack seated in his lap.
“Yeah, quarter ounce.”
“Oh, fuck yeah. Found it. This one.” Vernon exchanged the plastic-bagged ounces of weed with Wonwoo’s cash. “Gimme, gimme. I know it’s all here, but let me check… “ he flaked out the tinted bills with a satisfied head nod. “Prettier than a princess. You’re golden.”
“Did you just say princess?”
“Yeah. That’s what I said… what?”
“I’ve never heard that.”
“It’s not princess?”
“It’s picture, isn’t it? Prettier than a picture.”
“Really? Oh. That’s not how I remember—why the fuck are we even talkin’ about this? Doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Now, that’s gonna last you if you’re cute,” he said, throwing his notorious bag into the seat behind him, then tapping at his busted radio with a thick strip of tape across it, the next song rasping through the speakers, “don’t go crazy on it with your meds and shit. Do you still got enough papers?”
Wonwoo scoffed dryly at Vernon’s assumption while he hid the plastic bag within an inside pouch on his navy-blue jacket. A second later and his phone buzzed with a text message.
“Fuck the meds, honestly,” Wonwoo grunted, shifting his hips up in the seat to remove the phone from his back pocket.
Vernon itched his dark eyebrow. “Alright. Just askin’.”
Wonwoo opted to say nothing as he checked the text message without much expectation, and he was thankful that Vernon was the type to drop a subject easily. Instead his friend transitioned into a different conversation, something about another tattoo that he’d been debating, but in the kindest way possible, Wonwoo wasn’t listening to a goddamn word. You had texted him. Finally. For the first time. After three days of radio silence. And Wonwoo didn’t know why he’d suddenly exploded into such a fidgety, heart-pounding mess. You wanted to meet up again in order to discuss the book’s details.
“Who the fuck is that? Jesus Christ?”
“No,” Wonwoo laughed, clasping his right hand into an anxious fist, “um, I dunno. Just—Seokmin’s got me doing this thing with a friend of his. She’s trying to write a book and he kinda threw me into helping her. We’re supposed to meet up and talk about it.”
“Oh,” Vernon answered, leaning his elbow against the window and sweeping a hand through his black tresses, “do I know the chick?”
“Maybe?”
“She got any social media? An Instagram?”
“Yeah.”
“Ou, let me see.”
Wonwoo wasn’t following you. Then again, he was hardly following anyone. His Instagram had remained completely empty since his girlfriend left him, which had prompted Wonwoo to archive every single picture and delete all the ones that contained her, even the ones that captured mere traces of her in beaded bracelets and hair ties and white socks left on the carpet.
Wonwoo used Seokmin’s account to find you. Honestly, he hadn’t ever looked at your Instagram before. Without gleaning a single photo, Wonwoo thrust his phone at Vernon.
“Oh, yeah, I do know this chick,” Vernon chuckled, thumbing through your profile with a growing smirk, “Her, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Mm, yeah. Know her. Tried to fuck her. Didn’t work at all.”
Snapping his head to look at Vernon, Wonwoo gaped, “what?”
“Yeah, I mean—” Vernon adjusted himself in his seat, pulling up his knee to rest a tattoo-coated arm across it, “—ran into the chick at a party that some rich dude at your university threw. Sweet-talked her for a bit until I realized she had a stupid boyfriend. She told me a million different ways to kill myself. Yeah, she’s somethin’, for sure.”
“You’re lying.”
“Ha—a little. She didn’t tell me to kill myself,  just scolded me for about ten minutes. God, she was wired as fuck though. Her boyfriend—fuckin’, Mingyu, or whatever—he gets her coke. I’ve seen her take a line like it’s pixie dust, man. This was like, over a year ago, though. Dunno if she’s still that loopy. I don’t care. She’s pretty hot.”
Vernon then flashed him a picture from your account, a full body picture of you sprawled across sparkling white sand in a bikini, meanwhile Wonwoo could only stare at it with the blankest possible expression as his brain splattered with computing Vernon’s story.
“Is she still with him?” Vernon asked.
Wonwoo cleared his throat and sat with his spine rigid against the leather, nearly forgetting where he was and what he was doing.
“With who?”
“Lady Liberty. Mingyu.”
“Oh… yeah. They’re dating, still.”
“No fuckin’ way,” his friend lamented while he continuously plunged further into your pictures, thumb pressed to his chin, eyes glimmering, “you coulda flipped this book thing on its head and actually got some fuckin’ head, especially with that deep ass voice you got there. I know it’s gotta feel good. I mean, look at her lips—”
“You’re being gross as fuck,” Wonwoo groaned, swiping his phone back and stuffing it away, “get a girlfriend yourself, man.”
“I’m tryin’ to clean up my act a bit before I do that.”
“That’s definitely a work in progress, I’m assuming.”
“Asshole,” Vernon’s voice was gritty as he coughed into a fist, slipping his knee back under the steering wheel and proceeding to crank his stereo until the music was practically suffocating Wonwoo, “now get the fuck out. You’re not my only deal today. Sorry, Glasses.”
“Later.”
Wonwoo pushed open the door and stepped outside into the cold afternoon breeze. He sucked in a long, relieving breath. At times the fresh air disgusted him, especially when he cozied into one of his mental ruts and everything in the world seemed so grey it was soul-crushing, but Vernon’s car smelled like straight fucking cannabis.
Fresh air was heavenly.
“Don’t forget to text your girl!” Vernon laughed just before Wonwoo slammed the door shut to swallow up the melodic lyrics.
He wanted to make a snap comment before the boy drove off to his next endeavour, but he didn’t care enough to think of one.
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[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: hey wonwoo, it’s her. I think we should finally settle a date to talk about this book thing. let me attach a pic of my schedule and you can pick any open slots
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: 145_348.JPG
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]:  seokmin isn’t going to be our communicator anymore, so u can stop complaining to him about it
[ Wonwoo | 1:45 pm ]: Okay, thanks.
[ Wonwoo | 1:45 pm]: I’ll take a look soon.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:45 pm ]: I’m excited to see you again
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:50 pm ]: no likewise?!
[ Wonwoo | 1:50 pm ]: Likewise.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:50 pm ]: ugh. thx
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—APRIL 1ST.
It was around six in the evening and Wonwoo was seated in the SRX building, the sky rolling with lambent, hazy-toned pastures of peach in the windows behind him. He had arrived about an hour ago, taking the staircase up to the third floor. It was much quieter there, making it easier for Wonwoo to endlessly stare with glazed, void eyes at his laptop screen and the cursed document he couldn’t finish. After tapping his fingernails in a bored, repetitious pattern against the shiny white table, he felt the urge to delete each and every paragraph as if he hadn’t poured months of earnest love into them.
You would be meeting him soon.
He could still remember looking at your schedule, pinching into the screen and examining all the different colour-coded blocks: dinner parties, SSA meetings, gym sessions, errands—how the fuck you managed to juggle those things and more left him marvelled yet terrified. You were pretty on point regarding your arrival time, to which Wonwoo could immediately identify you before even seeing your face due to the heel clicking and the sounds of tapping jewelry on your bag.
Emerging onto the floor with a very intense scowl and a notably crushing grip on your drink, you were to say the least, angry. Wonwoo gnawed slightly on his tongue as you sat down.
Your purse clunked like a cinderblock onto the table.
He watched you inhale a slow, shaky breath, raising your hand with the expansion of your chest in order to calm down.
 “I’m going to kill myself.”
Wonwoo leaned back in the chair, subtly trying to establish more distance between you. He flicked a glance at his laptop.
“Damn. Why is that?”
“Because of stupid, incompetent people.”
“Yeah?”
“I just—I don’t get it!” You laughed, though it wasn’t a particularly jovial sound and more than anything it seemed like you were going to start smashing glass. “I don’t get how people are unable to understand that we don’t do walk-ins unless one of the stylists are free—” you dug a hand into your purse, pulling out a straw, “—which in the salon’s case, is almost never! I tell them we can’t in my very sweet, established customer service voice: ‘I’m sorry, but the only way to receive a chair is to book online.'”
Wonwoo tilted his head, grinning a little.
“Blah, blah. I tell them the entire story in the kindest way I can, even though I want to grab them by their fucking neck and drag them over the counter to show them our website.” You slipped out your laptop next, accidentally dragging out a lanyard along with it that you agitatedly shoved back into the purse. “And then, they get all uptight and pissy when we can’t wriggle them in! Sorry, our makeup artists are busy! Working with people who made scheduled fucking appointments! The world doesn’t fucking revolve around you!”
You scraped the drink toward you, slamming the straw straight through the plastic film lid with such force that several people ended up turning their heads. After taking a long sip, you gulped and glared until they probably realized it was you and pretended not to care.
For a moment, Wonwoo didn’t know what to say, so he’d folded his arms instead. Considering that Wonwoo worked the late shift stocking shelves at the pharmacy department, your predicament sounded like an entirely new world to him.
“Ugh, I’m sorry to bring all this negativity with me,” you apologized, still exasperated, “I don’t need this fucking tea—I need straight vodka. I’m seriously frazzled.”
“Seriously frazzled?” Wonwoo repeated, finding your choice of words funny as he resumed leaning forward, arms still crossed.
“Very, seriously frazzled.”
“I’m sorry about your day.”
Again, you sighed deeply while removing your long, warm jacket to drape over the chair’s spine—it was a rather elegant reveal of the strapless pearl dress underneath, tinted by the evening light, peach-pink as it rained from the ceiling length windows and framed your body like you were some sort of resurrected angel. Tension at last started escaping your shoulders. Wonwoo quickly realized that he'd been staring, and his fingers curled into a nervous fist.
“You’re actually such a good listener.”
Wonwoo cleared his throat. “Um, thank you.”
“I like that you don’t interrupt me.”
Settling his elbows on the table and ruffling the back of his messy black locks, Wonwoo felt himself panic a little on the inside.
“Well,” he heaved in, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I know," you chirped, posturing yourself confidently, “anyway, the book. We need to talk about it.”
“Table’s yours.”
Wonwoo’s knuckles pressed softly into his cheek while he waited for you to prepare your laptop. His own document was glowing at him, and he swore the emptiness of the page made the screen brighter (in the absolute worst, most mocking way).
“Okay, I’ve got my ideas and such pulled up.”
He expected you to continue and introduce the concept, but you had suddenly stopped, and Wonwoo thought you appeared almost smitten and somewhat timorous. It was strange, because from what he’d known and gauged so far, you were nothing akin to that.
“Well, promise that you won’t think it’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
“That’s why I want you to promise!”
Wonwoo pushed up his glasses and sighed, “I will need to be honest at some points you know, depending on what kind of help you want from me. Not that I’m going to be a straight-up dick.”
You scoured at him from over your laptop.
“Whatever.”
“I’ll promise if it makes you feel better.”
“Just—shut up." You wiggled your hand at him dismissively and proceeded to tug the laptop closer. “I don’t even care anymore.”
Once you spent a moment affirming the document to yourself, you looked up at him and smiled. “I’m going to write a book for Mingyu. Our fifth anniversary is coming up in the winter—it’s actually on Christmas Eve—the day he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. I just want to write him a little memoire thingy that tells our story. I want it to walk through the events of our lives, and how I remember them. First encounter, first date, first kiss, stuff like that. I’ve already collected some good memories to include. I have… somewhat of an outline? But my problem is the writing. I can spew nonsense from my mouth at a million miles an hour, but when I try to actually write? It’s crickets.”
You sat back, a hand poised thoughtfully at your cheek while one leg folded over the other. Wonwoo knew you were granting him the space to speak and at least offer a slice of his thoughts, yet, in that moment, he found himself to be drowning. He didn’t believe in fate or destiny or anything of the delusional like; however, hearing you explain the exact premise of a story that he had been successfully writing until a certain breakup—it had shaken him, and Wonwoo felt like the universe was smearing salt fresh into his unsewn wounds.
“So…” your head cocked to the side. “Can I at least an ‘okay’ or a head nod or some sign of life? Or are you just too disgusted?”
What could he say? What was he supposed to say?
Wonwoo was genuinely clueless on how to help you write a story that he’d been utterly failing at writing himself. And, sure, maybe Wonwoo should just give up completely. His ex-girlfriend had ripped out his heart without a single indication that it would happen, and then exited his life in the blink of an eye, disappearing so fucking abruptly that Wonwoo could have said she was a shadow that he imagined in pure lunacy. But he hadn’t dropped the story because there was this very stubborn, unwilling part of his being that could not move on from her—her, who had been his love, and breath, and bones.
He’d decided to finish the story as a manner of easing into closure. If that closure never came, then so be it.
“Are you seriously fucking ignoring me right now?”
His silence had promptly disturbed your peace, and now you were glaring at him with the beginning licks of fire and hell in your eyes.
“I don’t think I can help you.”
“What?” You pronounced sharply. “Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Wonwoo said while closing his laptop and sliding it back into his shoulder-sling bag, “I just—I’m not the right person to help you. I’m not, and you’ll have to take my word for it.”
“Seokmin told me you could write fucking anything. He made it out like you were some literature God with a golden quill. And—great, you’re just packing up fucking everything. Are you serious? Am I even allowed more of an explanation or are you gonna leave it at that? Wonwoo, you couldn’t have told me this at a worse time.”
“I didn’t plan for it to be like that.” He could hardly push the syllables up his diaphragm. “It can’t be me. I’m sorry.”
You didn’t lift a finger to stop him from leaving, though the wavelength of your incinerating stare was felt like a hot, melting scratch down his neck. This was terrible, he was terrible—Wonwoo already knew that about himself. He wanted to go home. He wanted to shut himself away in his room and sink straight through the sheets until he was swallowed. His anxiety was webbing around him. It was pulling him down into the soil and earth like he belonged there.
He truly hated this part of himself.
More than anything, he truly hated when other people saw it.
Especially people like you.
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—APRIL 8TH.
Wonwoo didn’t think you would ever speak to him again, in person or over text message. In retrospect, he was fine with it. You were rather overwhelming and especially tiring for someone like Wonwoo who would be perfectly fine never seeing another human in his lifetime. Not to mention he was freed from helping you with your book, which he learned was a technical love letter to your boyfriend in addition to a romance he wanted a nonexistent part in. Going down that path once was already excruciating enough, and given his anxiety attack that saw him locked in a cold washroom stall last week, it was best you just forget about him. He assumed you already had, anyway.
After he stocked the last red bottle of sinus medicine onto the shelf, Wonwoo used his boxcutter to break down the cardboard package and fold it flat with the others he’d opened. It was time for his break, and then he would only have one more hour until the pharmacy section closed for the night. Once it hit ten o’clock, the store was automatically still and hardly anyone came in—minus the few student couples whom Wonwoo had to point in the direction of pregnancy tests or plan b. But it was a Tuesday night. He was at the bare minimum appeased he didn’t have to console a sobbing, snotty-nosed eighteen-year-old girl imploring for a First Response.
When he collapsed down at his favourite seat in the breakroom, Wonwoo pulled out his phone. He had sent Seokmin a text yesterday evening about going studying at the SRX building for their upcoming math midterm, though Seokmin had yet to respond and Wonwoo couldn’t evade wondering if you were pulling some strings behind the curtain.
He opened his bottle of juice and spent the remainder of his fifteen listening to music and jittering his knee.
Wonwoo took his earbuds with him back onto the floor, sneaking the wires under his shirt to pull out his collar. There were only a few boxes left on his cart that required stocking, and whatever didn’t fit would have to be scanned into storage. That shouldn't take long. Wonwoo could almost taste the crisp atmosphere of the night air and feel the gentle chilliness soon to ghost against his face.
However, halfway into shelving the cough drops there had been a polite tap on his shoulder, and Wonwoo wanted to wither up and lose his head right there on the tiles like a sundried rose.
He didn’t know who to expect when he turned around, pulling out a single earbud while the other continued to blast his music.  
“Oh, shit—I didn’t know you worked here.”
Fuck. He wanted to kill himself.
“Yeah, started a couple months ago, actually.”
Mingyu.
It’s not that Wonwoo didn’t like speaking with him, because they had definitely exchanged cordial conversations in the past, particularly when they both took that Probability Poker elective last semester and Wonwoo learned that Mingyu was a pretty decent bluffer. Unfortunately, Mingyu’s belief that he was a great bluffer was actually the one indication that he was indeed bluffing. It showed in his overly confident eyes before a twitch of the lips or a subtly shifted foot, meanwhile Wonwoo was able to sit there the entire time like he was an Easter Island statue incarnate.
Put simply, Wonwoo had always preferred to avoid Mingyu because he was your boyfriend, and per routine, he attempted to slip around most people that were associated with you.
“Cool.” Mingyu smiled and the flashes of his pointed teeth caught the light. “Stuff’s got switched around in here again.”
“New mods came out last week,” Wonwoo answered, placing the last cough drop box onto the shelf and facing it straight.
“Well, don’t know what the fuck that means,” his tone was brassy as he laughed, “I just came to ask where the plan b is now.”
 “Two aisles down, check the endcap.”
“Appreciate it, thanks—oh, condoms?”
“Next aisle.”
“Got it.”
“Just come get me when you’re done,” Wonwoo said, grabbing his boxcutter and running the blade along the taped seam of the cardboard to satisfyingly slice it open, “I’m the only one in pharmacy right now, so I have to ring you up.”
As soon as Mingyu disappeared around the corner, Wonwoo tossed the flattened cardboard onto his cart with the loudest, most life-draining sigh that could be harboured. He wasn’t the kind of person to cultivate those racing, panicky thoughts that consumed his brain like a merciless hurricane, rather it was typically one single thought that was an eternal black space to swallow him. But Wonwoo had to admit that seeing Mingyu had triggered something of the latter, and now he was feeling sick with the fact you possibly told Mingyu about his episode at the SRX building last week. To Wonwoo it had been the shackles of his anxiety, though it probably came across as a very ill-mannered, abrupt rejection from your perspective.
Mingyu didn’t take long picking out his items. It was clearly a run of the mill routine for him at this point—a mere grab and go.
At the register, Wonwoo mentally questioned why Mingyu had grabbed such a plethora of condoms. He didn’t mean to be vulgar in his thinking, but how often were you getting fucking railed?
Either that, or Mingyu preferred being well stocked.
Vernon would be bruising his knuckles on his steering wheel right now, considering how devotedly he attempted to seduce you.
As payment, Mingyu pulled out that godforsaken credit card that you had borrowed during the dress shopping. Wonwoo felt nauseous just looking at the damn thing. He swiped all of the items into a small plastic bag which he then handed to Mingyu with a notable impatience, wanting to whisk the boy out as quick as possible.
“G’night, man. Thanks for the help.”
“Night,” he answered in a deep, tired sigh, watching Mingyu’s head of thick and bouncy black hair disappear toward the aglow exit.
Well, clearly you weren’t wasting anytime thinking about him despite the dramatics pertaining to the situation last week, not even in the most marginal fraction. Mingyu must rail it out of you every night—not that Wonwoo would be surprised to learn such a thing considering the tall boy’s physique and your openly lascivious nature.
Well, good luck to you both, he supposed.
At least it was closing time.
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Wonwoo had always suspected there was something ever so slightly off kilter about his body, especially in the way it reacted to certain situations and emotions. He knew it probably wasn’t the most mundane, ordinary act—locking himself in his aunt’s washroom the day of his sixteenth birthday, sliding down onto the cold, hard tiles, feeling his heart jolt, punch, and thump again his chest like a battering ram. There had been a pattern of rubber ducks on her eggshell blue shower curtain, and Wonwoo remembered counting them row by row, over and over, until his breath managed to steady.
Twenty-four ducks. He could still recall the number.
A doctor’s visit about three weeks later had granted him the diagnosis and a scribbled venlafaxine prescription. Wonwoo was already collecting his sweater off the tissue sheet bed, ready to leave.
In the beginning, he was strict about his medication. He organized them into pill cartridges and set alarms and always ate them with cooked, warm meals. Understandably, his habits dwindled every now and again, however, Wonwoo was quite pious to the routine for a good couple years. But then he met his most recent girlfriend in university. She was shy and reserved. All about the books.
Cute as buttons.
He fell in love.
And it was all such a rush of rose petals and sweet symphonies that Wonwoo became distracted from his healthy habits.
Of course, everything crashed and burned once she abandoned him. He capitulated in an instant, and the sight of the orange bottle made him paler than winter moonlight. It’s not like he wanted to suffer, or despise the way his body put him through a neural hell beyond his own control. The fact of the matter was that Wonwoo just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take those stupid pills.
It was a mountain. Every. Single. Time.
And for the third time that week, Wonwoo found himself awake at an ungodly hour, rifling through the black lunchbox he kept in his closet with his glasses about to slip off the fine point of his nose.
He pulled out the baggie filled with the quarter-ounce, his silver grinder, and his rolling papers. Moving to his desk, Wonwoo clicked on the small overhead lamp to illuminate his space, in which he tapped some of the weed into his grinder and began twisting the lid until he was satisfied. He liked preparing joints to smoke on the roof. It wasn’t particularly hard to access, anyway. Right outside his bedroom window was a balcony with a short ladder attached to the brick, and once Wonwoo had discovered it, he made a habit of climbing up to spark his joints so that their pungent aroma could be carried away by the fresh winds usually stirred up at gloaming.
Honestly, it was the only thing he enjoyed.
Just before he slipped out the window, Wonwoo grabbed a pair of black jeans he’d worn earlier in the week, discovering the lighter he’d accidentally left in the back pocket.
The ladder shuddered slightly when Wonwoo gripped it, though if he were being candour, he didn’t care whatsoever if all the bolts suddenly loosened and he were to splatter against the sidewalk like an uncooked pancake. In fact, the fall probably wasn’t enough to kill him. Maybe a few broken bones and scrapes, some blood staining the street akin to little patterns of rain, bruises that signatured violets into his skin, but Wonwoo would still be painfully, vividly alive, enough to see the stars if the glasses didn’t snap off his face.
It was a colder night, so Wonwoo made sure to tuck on his beanie and huddle into his thicker-sized coat. He sat with one leg dangling over the building’s edge, feeling the wind whiplash against his back and crawl in these chilly, indecipherable whispers from his shoulders to his neck, almost tickling him, like it had missed him.
An orange flicker popped to life from the butane of his lighter, which he used to lightly singe the joint perched at his lips. Wonwoo then tilted his head back, blowing the cloud and its loose, airy curls straight into the sky’s deepest purples.
He loved being alone.
Even when his ex-girlfriend had moved in with him all those months ago, there was an unyielding part of him that hadn’t been ready to forfeit all his space and privacy.
But, over time, his love surmounted the sacrifice.
He would wake up to her sleeping face, and with thoughtful nudges, clear the hairs off her cheeks. He would spend an hour working on his homework or writing his story while waiting for her to stir so messily in the sheets that it became graceful. He would tease her with his cold hands as she boiled up tea in the kitchen, pinching at her hips with the utmost softness and giggling huskily into her neck when she would twist in the arms that bracketed her body against his chest. He would trap her between the counter, sunshine striking the room aglow in these nearly blinding seas of light, mouthing at her throat and tugging at her shorts and hitching his fingers so deep into her heat because all Wonwoo wanted to do was make her feel good.
Opening his eyes again, Wonwoo saw the stars rather than her face. The high was disseminating past his lungs and mingling with the pain that festered in his heart, concocting something that hurt so wonderfully, in all the right places, in all the right spots.
He was a fucking mess.
It wasn’t sustainable. But he didn’t care enough to fix himself.
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 —APRIL 15TH.
Why did Wonwoo keep coming back to that café? The number of times he’d sat down with conviction that today would be fruitful—today, the eloquence would flow from his fingertips like perfectly pitched music notes and the symphony would read as beautiful and mellifluous as it sounded in his mind. Today, he was going to write.
Except, he accomplished nothing of the sort.
Repeatedly tapping his index finger against the space bar, he waited for the right adjective or phrase to leap out—to grasp him in a headlock even—whatever it took, Wonwoo was willing to sit there all afternoon until one fucking word conjured in the infinite blankness that was his imagination. He reached for his drink, only to take a sip of dry air that smelled like his earlier cocoa. Wonwoo realized the cup was empty. Had he wasted this much time already?
It pricked similarly to a bee sting. His passions felt impossible. A sigh upheaved from his chest and fingers curled into his hair, musing up the already disarrayed strands and slowly warping himself to look more and more like a mad scientist. Wonwoo removed his glasses and slumped back in the chair, rubbing at the reddish prints left on his nose. Writing had soaked itself in agony and he was going to remain in the storm of it until the bitter, ungratifying end.
‘Till death do us part.
 And then, something struck.
Though it wasn’t what Wonwoo had hoped for.
Literally—it was your hand hitting the glass of the café window, which had jerked Wonwoo out from his self-pitying.
He scrambled to fix his glasses back on, your face clarifying in an instant. You smiled at him with your glossed lips, and he didn’t like the nuance of your countenance one bit. Watching you enter the café was jarring and uncomfortable and his fist immediately clenched, his index nail picking at the ruined cuticle of his thumb. Two weeks ago—that was the last time you had spoken. At the SRX building.
“Hey!” You sounded friendly. “Can I sit here?”
“Well, uh—”
“Great, thank you.”
You pulled out the chair across from him, then set your bag delicately on the windowsill. Wonwoo watched with nervous, fluttering eyes as you smoothed out your cropped skirt before sitting down, ensuring it was tucked under yourself appropriately.
“How are you?”
Gulp.
“Fine.”
“Good. That’s really good. I’m glad.” Your nails drummed once against the table. “I actually didn’t plan on coming here, but I saw you as I was crossing the street, and I thought, ‘I should stop by and check in on him’ because, y’know, we haven’t been talking.”
Wonwoo furrowed his brow. “Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Slap your hand against windows to get people’s attention.”
You swept something off the table with your palm, and this sunshine-like laugh turned your entire face to sweetness, but it wasn’t entirely earnest, and Wonwoo bit into his lip because you fucking terrified him. He caught your sparkling eye and wanted to melt.
“Did I scare you? I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re good.”
“What are you working on?”
“A paper.”
Obviously, he was going to lie. Whether or not you could pick up on his lie was beyond Wonwoo’s control at that point. He didn’t know what you wanted, or why you were interrupting the flow of your very organized scheduling system to seemingly toy with him.
You didn’t respond to his paper comment. There was a thick silence between you despite the distant clattering of dishes, bubbling coffee machines, and conversations that coalesced into one big buzz.
Wonwoo bit the bullet.
“Something you want from me, yeah?”
“Not… exactly… I mean, after you left me at the SRX building, I wanted to get very angry about the whole situation. My day was terrible, and you responding to my idea with that sickly look on your face didn’t help. But I thought about it. You said no. I can’t ask anything more of you, y’know? I have to respect what you said.”
“Oh.” Wonwoo unclenched his fist, stretched out his long legs a bit more. “Yeah, sure. I get it. Thanks for understanding.”
“I just didn’t think my idea was that bad.”
“Well… no. It’s not bad. It’s not bad at all.”
A twitch to your lip suggested you didn’t believe him. Wanting to clear the air a bit, Wonwoo stopped slouching. He sat straighter and lowered the lid of his laptop, inviting the space between you.
His mouth opened, and then closed.
Fuck, just breathe you idiot—he cursed at himself.
You did that little head tilt thing, half-smiling at him, looking radiant underneath the café sunlight and so oddly patient with his tied-tongue that Wonwoo was miraculously able to find his words.
“There is nothing wrong with your idea. I made it seem like there was. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to help you write a romance story, for personal reasons that would be useless explaining. But you seem very confident in everything you do. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Hm, well, thank you for believing in me. Romance can be a touchy subject—I didn’t think of that, and I get it… I guess I felt more insecure about your reaction because writing is the one thing I can’t ace. I do need help with my story, even if I don’t want it. Well, it’s just the truth, isn’t it? There are some things I can’t do!”
You chuckled at yourself, and Wonwoo thought it to be actually endearing. All your hard edges softened in that moment.
“So, I haven’t made any progress in my story, which sucks because I’m operating by deadline—” reaching into your bag, you unveiled a small, compact mirror, using it to remove something invisible from your eyelash, “—do you have any writer friends that would help me?”
Wonwoo scratched his nose.
“Uh, with the book?”
“Yes.”
“None.”
“What?” The mirror snapped shut as you gagged at him. “How do you have no writer friends? Isn’t that your major? Literature? Do you even have friends that aren’t Seokmin?”
“I’m a math major for fucks sake.”
“You’re fucking joking, Wonwoo. Please, tell me it’s a joke.”
He leaned back, folding his arms and propping an ankle onto his knee. You were still gaping at him, and he wanted to smirk.
“What’s wrong with math?”
“Nothing. Math is… math,” you gritted, shoving the mirror back into your expensive-looking, gold-buckled bag, “but why math? Why straight math? I thought you wanted to be a writer.”
“Man, Seokmin really didn’t tell you fucking anything, did he?” Wonwoo chuckled. Or, maybe you had only heard the things you wanted to hear, which was what Wonwoo assumed.
“Like I have space in my brain to remember the multiverse of information that constantly comes out of his mouth.”
“So what is there space for then?”
“You're toeing a dangerous line.”
“Well, I like math and writing.”
"And what kind of papers would you be required to work on as a math major? Did you stumble across some quintessential theorem that nobody else really cares about except for you and all the other pocket-protector wearers out there? Or is this a Good Will Hunting scenario? Even better—are you waiting for someone to walk by behind you and see all that really complicated mumbo-jumbo on your screen and think to themselves, 'woah, this guy is really smart. He's working on a paper with numbers, and I only work on papers with words. Where did I go wrong in my life?' so you can develop some sort of alternative complex that writing just isn't giving you?"
Wonwoo cocked his head at you, perplexed.
“What the absolute fuck are you talking about?” He felt a laugh in his chest, but he pushed it down. Wonwoo had never met anyone like you before. “You made up everything you just said.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“I go on tangents. It’s just something I do.”
“Damn. I can tell.” Wonwoo rubbed at the corner of his eye and slipped the ankle off his knee, further spreading his legs. “You like hearing the sound of your own voice, yeah?”
He always hated when people bothered him at the café, especially when he was trying to write. Today, it was different.
“Well, that’s true.” You beamed at him so matter-of-factly, like it was obvious. “The most beautiful sound in the world, isn’t it?”
“Mm.”
“Thought so. Ugh, I just can’t believe you have no writer friends to hook me up with.” He watched you slouch forward, slapping your arms across the table. “I’ll have to go wait outside Gildan Hall and start ambushing all the smart-looking literature majors.”
Wonwoo found himself examining your perfect nail polish.
“Good luck with that.”
“Can you at least try to sound more sympathetic?”
“You don’t seem like a person who appreciates sympathy.”
“Pft. According to who? I like being comforted when the time is right, and you’re not being very comforting.” You groaned into the table.
“You like being comforted?” He scoffed.
Your head popped up, and you were pouting. “At certain times, yes. Most times, no. It’s a complicated system. No one’s really cared enough to learn it except for Mingyu, and that was by force, and I think even he hates it. But I’m not asking for the moon. Just a reasonably sized chunk of it. I have to be worth something, right?”
“What’s life without someone catering to your every whim at the drop of a hat, huh?” He couldn’t help but mutter with sarcasm.
“Yes, exactly! See—you read my mind.”
Wonwoo bit his tongue.
“Ugh, now where’s my stupid phone?”
It was in your purse. Immediately, your eyes lit up.
“Jesus Christ. I’m gonna be late to my electrolysis!”
Like a burst of lightning, you shot up from your seat and quickly fixed the cream-white purse back over your shoulder. It reminded him of that time at the mall. One second you were engrained into a tangent, and the next you were scrambling about, attempting to recover the lost time in your meticulous schedule.
“If you think of anyone, please text me!”
Wonwoo nodded his head.
Now, there was a vacant seat before him, left slightly tugged from the table due to your hectic departure. For a moment, he just sighed, feeling the breath emerge from somewhere so deep in his chest that it ached. That was the thing about you—in a confusing turmoil, you managed to fill him up when he felt empty, but then empty him once he felt full.
He didn’t know what kind of person you were.
But there was an odd thrill to it that Wonwoo couldn’t articulate.
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—APRIL 18TH.
Sat with Seokmin at the boy’s dining room table, Wonwoo popped a purple grape into his mouth while flipping a pencil between his fingers. The two had been staring plainly at their last problem from the math homework, but the question was horribly long, and his handwriting had morphed from legible penmanship to the most slurred hieroglyphics. Wonwoo wanted to dump a ramen packet into some boiling water and call it a night. He’d devoured a whole stem of grapes. His head was pounding and his stomach growled for a meal.
“Oh! You see—this is what gets me every time!” Seokmin exclaimed, leaned over his scattered papers, shoulders hunched with strain, “I mess up one multiplication in a matrix, and it screws me all up! Now I have to go over—uh! My fucking pencil just snapped.”
“Good,” Wonwoo mumbled, pressing a hand along the groove of his stiff neck, cracking it, “take it as a sign to give up.”
“We’re so close.”
Scooting the chair back to stretch his legs, Wonwoo then snatched his phone off the table. It was nearly ten at night.
“I’m hungry, and I don’t care anymore.”
Seokmin sighed, “are you going to eat now?”
“Yeah. Any ramen left?”
“It’s in the box sitting on top of the fridge. Soup broth is in the cupboard beside the microwave. I think there’s some eggs, too.”
Wonwoo easily grabbed the noodle packet off the fridge. He asked his friend if he wanted a bowl as well, and Seokmin agreed, abandoning their math homework after his defeating pencil-snapping incident. While they waited for the water to start bubbling over the stovetop, Seokmin had joined Wonwoo in the kitchen, though he leaned against the counter, holding his phone six inches or so from his face. Wonwoo had never seen anyone text that fast.
Gosh—he didn’t even need to ask who it was.
Noticing a few smudges on his glasses, Wonwoo lowered them down to the hem of shirt, beginning to massage the marks away.
“Our math final is the twenty-eighth, right?” Seokmin asked.
“Should be, yeah.”
“Thanks. If it’s on the twenty-eighth then I can definitely go.”
Wonwoo slid the glasses back onto his nose.
“Go to what?
Taptaptaptap—Seokmin’s fingers were practically electric.
“Uh, this thing that Her is having… at her parents’ house… like… a big dinner party… I’m helping her plan it… just need to make sure… I’m free those days… there! Okay, all settled.”
At last, Seokmin had clicked off his phone and slid the device back into the pocket on his sweatpants. Wonwoo folded his arms, staring at his friend with a deeply furrowed yet confused brow.
He sucked in a helpless breath.
“I don’t get you, Seokmin.”
“What—why?”
A few hot droplets of water had leapt from the pot, slightly scalding Wonwoo’s arm. He promptly ripped open the ramen packet and submerged the noodle brick, poking at it with chopsticks.
Wonwoo cleared his throat, “are you obsessed with her?”
Seokmin laughed, sounding astounded.
“No, I’m not obsessed. I’m just helping. We’re friends.”
“Right.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Setting the chopsticks beside the stove, Wonwoo turned around again, habitually crossing his arms low along the chest.
“I guess I don’t understand what you get out of that relationship.” He admitted. “Why can’t she do shit herself?”
“Ha!—That’s an interesting question.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“No, it’s not that.” Seokmin lifted himself onto the kitchen counter, his head thumping back against the wooden cupboard. “I just wasn’t expecting you to ask that. And—I meant it’s interesting to see your interpretation of it. Like, my friendship with Her.”
Wonwoo nodded. He wasn’t going to coax anything out of his friend that he wasn’t already willing to say. In fact, Wonwoo had only begun talking to Seokmin back in the early, rainy days of September, since they ended up in the same discrete mathematics course and happened to choose seats right next to each other. Their bond had formed fairly quick, but they never really conversed about topics more intimate than school work and their own interests.
“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo said, “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, don’t apologize. I mean, I totally get why you’re curious.”
Seokmin glanced down at his knees, scratched his chin.
“Uh—well, what did you say, anyway? Why can’t her do shit herself? I mean, her life is super busy. Her mom’s a writer and editor for that popular fashion and beauty magazine you always see at all those glamour stores—Stunning Monthly—something like that. Her’s dad is this business tycoon guy. He works with my dad, actually. I’ve known Her since high school. Our families are close, so naturally we’ve spent a lot of time together. Her family picked up all their stuff and moved into Hillcrest on account of her dad needing to relocate for work.”
Wonwoo remained silent at the revelation, even though he was urged by curiosity to badger Seokmin with questions.
“But, uh—without all my non-essential rambling—the relationship with her parents is tumultuous. Who doesn't have a shaky relationship with their parents, though? A few lucky souls, probably. But they've set things up for her quite well, in my opinion. Her mom got her a job at the Milestone—that fancy beauty place down Bank Street? She has a makeup chair from time to time and works reception. She’s definitely gonna graduate Cum Laude with some big fancy scholarship. Not to mention the little power couple thing she’s got going on with Mingyu. She just tends to be…” Seokmin winced, massaging his shoulder, “she’s just a bit unpredictable. It would be way too easy for things to start falling all over the place. She’s a busy girl so I figure it’s nice to help her out. Keep things organized.”
Wonwoo bobbed his head, thinking.
“I guess I’m curious about the book thing. I mean, if everything is so perfectly laid out for her, and she’s so busy all the time…. why write a book? That takes months, extreme dedication, planning out the ass… it’s loving everything you’ve written and then hating it so atrociously… I don’t know,” he sighed, shrugging with confusion, “if I were her, writing a book would be the last thing on my mind.”
Folding his arms, Seokmin leaned back against the cupboards and agreed. “I know. But sometimes she just lurches onto random things out of nowhere. One year she practically turned her entire living room into a freakin’ art studio and I slipped on an open tube of paint on the floor—nearly popped out my tail bone. To be fair, her passion projects never last long. She never has the time, as you said… I know you’re not helping her anymore. She’ll probably drop it without help.”
“Really? Just like that?”
“Yeah,” Seokmin answered, smiling, “just like that.”
For some reason, Wonwoo gritted his teeth. He would hate for you to discard the feat so readily, just because he couldn’t pitch in as initially planned. Yes, writing was not always a fruitful cherry blossom tree and sometimes chalking down one sentence was equivalent to a month of effort and squeezing out all the creative fibres in one’s brain, but there was so much worth and occulted beauty to it at the same time. It was the art of expression.
Wonwoo thought it was quite cruel to deprive oneself of the ability to express and articulate things as they coursed through the fragile skin and the warm veins, and chiefly, the heart.
“Anyway, maybe I didn’t really answer your question,” Seokmin laughed, “but, y’know, don’t worry too much about turning down the book. You’re right. She’s got more important things to focus on, as I was telling her over and over, and—oh! Fuck, the ramen’s bubbling!”
Wonwoo quickly twisted around as the water began spilling over the edge and sizzling like fried meat. He lifted the pot off the piping hot, orange element, to which Seokmin joined him, twisting the stove dial to a much lower heat. Blowing at the white froth, Wonwoo waited a precautionary minute before returning the pot.
Once dinner was ready, they gathered back at the dining table, entwining the noodles with their chopsticks and hardly allowing a second for the ramen to cool before they were shovelling in burning mouthful after mouthful. The bite in Wonwoo’s stomach was gradually appeased. He soon felt warm, and full, and less tempered.
“Seokmin.”
“Hm?” His friend glanced up from his phone.
“So…” Wonwoo leaned back in the chair, his fist clenched. “I guess what—from what I understand—if I don’t help Her, or if she doesn’t find someone who can, then the book just won’t happen ”
At his observation, Seokmin nodded, seeming unbothered.
“Uh, yeah. Pretty much.”
“That’s sad.”
“Hey, you two just aren’t destined for each other,” he replied, slurping his noodles, “you were right back at the café.”
Picking up the white and blue patterned bowl, Wonwoo prepared to drink the broth, feeling the delicious heat fan back against his face. Once he finished eating and helping Seokmin with the dishes, he planned to catch a late-night bus back to his apartment above the quaint pottery shop. He didn’t know if he would sleep or not.
Maybe, however, that would give him time to rethink some choices, even if he shouldn’t trust the musings his brain happened to curate past nine at night. Especially any musings concerning you.
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[ Wonwoo | 11:45 pm ]: Sorry to message you this late.
[ Wonwoo | 11:45 pm ]: I’ll keep it brief: I’ve given your book idea some thought, and if the offer still stands, I’d like to help you write it. Though, I understand if you want someone else’s help.
[ Wonwoo | 11:50 pm ]: Goodnight.
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[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: AHHHHHHHHHHH
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: good morninggg
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: no that’s so perfect
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:37 am ]: okay. OMG. there’s just so much we have to sort out. I’m trying not to overwhelm myself lol
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:37 am ]: thank u for giving it more thought. I’m excited to plan everything and see u again ofc :)
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[ Wonwoo | 12:55 pm ]: Likewise.
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—APRIL 24TH.
Since last November, Wonwoo hadn’t invited many guests to his apartment—not even his older brother, who had never stepped foot into the building after Wonwoo originally signed the lease. Seokmin visited once or twice, but everything was curt, and while there had been one time that Vernon slept overnight on the couch, it was hardly notable.
Knowing that you were going to be at his apartment in a few hours was a very daunting thought. Consequently, Wonwoo had done something he hadn’t properly completed in months: clean.
It wasn’t like he just threw out the garbage and wiped down the kitchen counter either. He legitimately cleaned, picking over his apartment with a fine-tooth comb, not allowing one coffee cup or coaster to seem even vaguely incongruous. He fluffed out the couch pillows and vacuumed the floors. He went through his entire room, tidying up piles of clothes on the floor and aligning every book on his shelf. For the first time in months, Wonwoo threw open his heavy curtains, pure sunlight engulfing the space in such a bright glare that his eyes stung and he hardly recognized his own bedroom. Most importantly, he remembered to hide the pill bottle in his nightstand.
After all the anxiety-driven cleaning was done, Wonwoo collapsed onto the couch and stared plainly at the ceiling, the reality of what he just accomplished beginning to sink into his pores.
What the fuck?
He doubted you would care even microscopically if his apartment wasn’t perfectly swept and polished and artistic like a photo from an interior design catalogue. But at the same time, it would have been impossible for him to leave it alone. The burst of productivity undoubtedly left Wonwoo rather hot and sweaty, so he opted to take a shower before you arrived. Standing beneath the cool water and taking slow, languid breaths helped ease his nerves.
And, for the first time in what he imaged to be—months, Wonwoo dried himself off with this feeling that everything was okay.
Not good. Definitely not great. But okay.
While he buttoned up a pair of blue jeans, Wonwoo heard his phone ding from his desk. Reaching over, he tapped the screen.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:05 pm ]: hi, I’m almost there
His chest fucking lurched.
Roughly jerking open his drawer, Wonwoo pulled out the first shirt he saw, tugging the white long-sleeve over his head before he wiggled his feet into a fresh pair of socks. Once Wonwoo found his glasses, he sat on the edge of his bed with his phone.
[ Wonwoo | 12:08 pm ]: Okay.
[ Wonwoo | 12:08 pm ]: Would you like me to come down?
God—he felt like his stomach was going to collapse.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:08 pm ]: no that’s okay :)
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:09 pm ]: it’s really pretty down here
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:12 pm]: sorry I was looking at some of the pottery / painting stuff. it’s the staircase down the hall, right?
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:12 pm ]: unit 102?
[ Wonwoo | 12:12 pm ]: Yes.
He reminded himself to breathe. Calm and slow and lifting the pressure that dug so bluntly into his lungs. The webs began to burn away. It had been a narrow escape, but it was successful.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:13 pm ]: heyy, I’m outside
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Wonwoo walked to the front door. His fingers brushed the knob in a flash of doubt, though his mind had already committed and now the door was pulled open and you were there, just as you said.
“Well, hello.”
He nodded at you, and then gestured for you to enter.
“Where should I take off my shoes?”
“There’s good,” Wonwoo answered, pointing to a textured mat in the corner that you proceeded to leave your simplistic heels on.
How absurd was this? Never in his life would Wonwoo imagine you at his apartment of all places—the one girl whom he adamantly tried to avoid because you were his gleaming opposite, and everything that you were, certain and in control, scared him. You were gazing around with your hands politely clasped together, ignited in the fulgurant sunlight, a small smile on your mouth.
“Wow, you’re very clean.”
Wonwoo stepped after you, maintaining a shy distance.
“It doesn’t normally look this neat,” he admitted, watching you readjust the strap of your tote bag, “I did clean for you.”
You turned to face him, and your laughter filled the space with a refreshing, long lost tone that made everything brighter. His fist clenched up anxiously and he knew his cheeks were pinkening.
“Um, cleaned or power-washed?”
He merely stared at you. Why couldn’t he fucking speak?
“Jeez, don’t look so afraid. I’m joking. And I obviously appreciate the effort.” You spun back around, continuing to walk past the coffee table and toward the kitchen. “It’s a lovely place, and it’s definitely got your personal touch. Oh—this is a cute mug.”
He breathed out, unfurling his hand and stretching his fingers until the air in his knuckles popped. You began wandering in the natural direction of the bedroom, and so Wonwoo followed, his eyes drifting up the jeans that hugged your legs and your sashaying hips, to back of your delicious-smelling hair. What was that scent, anyway?
Manuka honey?
But it was just a trivial glance, really.
Nothing meaningful.
“Is this your room?” You asked, stopping at the doorframe.
“It is.”
Biting your lip, you peaked inside and started to grin.
“Do you care if I go in?”
 “No.”
He tried not to crumble right there on the floor. Wonwoo’s room was his sanctuary, a fortress, something that barred out everyone but himself and granted him the freedom to do whatever he pleased (whether it was self-detrimental or not). The thought of others in his room was a gash in that perfect sanctuary, in which he could see the walls bleed out all their comfort and familiarity. His ex was the last person to be in his room, typically sprawled across the bed with a good novel in her hand.
It was a sour, sour reminder.
“Oh, and there’s the bookshelf,” you pointed out, “how fitting.” That penetrating gaze of yours roamed his desk and his bed and all his knickknacks in between. “Hey, why’s there a balcony outside?” You then asked, settling your hands onto the window frame and leaning out, the wind fluttering minimally through the layered curtains.
“Just a remodelling error,” Wonwoo explained, “it was supposed to be removed, I think. Never happened.”
Allured by curiosity, you leaned further out, examining the ladder that led up to the building’s roof. He looked at you again, specifically the arch in your back and the way your arms were planted so firm at the windowsill. He looked at the sunlight rippling on your cheek and your lips that appeared to sparkle, like you had kissed glitter.
“You definitely go up there, right?”
“Yeah.”
Half-shutting the window as to keep the breeze flowing, you chuckled. “I figured… so, I guess we should stop dawdling and get to the meat and potatoes. Is here a good spot? Or do you want to go back to the living room?”
“We’re in my room anyways,” Wonwoo commented, pulling out his desk chair and promptly sitting down, “so, why not.”
“Cool. Let me get my laptop.”
You slipped the tote bag off your arm and sat on the edge of his freshly made bed, being careful not to rumple the sheets.
“Okay!” Your hands echoed a series of soft claps. “I’m all ready now. I’ll try my best not to ramble—oh, and please, please don’t interrupt me until I’m done. I’m going to be very pissed if I lose my train of thought and I’d like this meeting to remain pleasant.”
Wonwoo nodded. “I know.”
You flashed him a brief smile.
“So, as you know, Mingyu and I’s fifth year anniversary is coming up in December. My gift to him is this so far nonexistent book. We’ve been through a lot as a couple, and as individuals, and I want the book to fully capture this journey we’ve been on and how much I… appreciate him. Also, I’m going to introduce a second, special element—” a hand plunged into your tote bag and suddenly a video camera was revealed, “—I want to record some of our brain sessions, and, like, our voyage of figuring this shit out. I like mementos. I hope that’s okay.”
“… Do I answer?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Then, yeah. I’m okay with it.”
“Secondlyyy—” you lilted while scrolling a little ways down the notepad on your laptop, the video camera stuffed back into your flower-and-honeybee-patterned tote, “—there are a few places we’ll need to visit—not the actual places that Mingyu and I went to since we grew up nowhere near here—but places that more so have a strong resemblance to the ones in my memory. I feel like it will help me with visual aspects of the writing. I’m a very visual person. Y’know, setting up the scene and technical things like that. I like touching and feeling and seeing and breathing everything in. I want all my senses on fire, basically. Like… the way your lips feel after eating insanely hot noodles.”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
Wonwoo didn’t really care. He just agreed.
“Lastly, I want to make a schedule for us. So, I’m kindly asking you to set up a schedule of your own—work shifts, doctor’s appointments, tests—the like, so I can incorporate them into my own hectic life and make us one colourful, super writing schedule.”
And then, with a big, winded sigh, you shut your laptop.
“That’s it. Done. Thoughts?”
Honestly, the entire premise didn’t sound all that terrible. He had braced himself for the worst, but you were unsurprisingly organized and had pinpointed all your desires quite clearly. Of course, he knew it was going to be sheer hell—flames up to his knees and desert sun beating on his skin like a hot skillet frying butter. You were structured and dedicated and Wonwoo was none of those things.
No doubt, Wonwoo would have to learn to deal with you.
You would either be his trigger or his pulse.
But, even worse, you would have to learn to deal with him.
“I’m just following your lead on this,” Wonwoo announced, lacklustre of much interest, resting his hands against his stomach while he rotated back and forth in the swivel chair, “whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. How soon do you want the schedule thing?”
“Like, as soon as possible.”
“Okay.”
“Do you really have no questions?”
Wonwoo scratched the side of his head.
“Uh, have you got anything written down yet?”
“Yes,” you propped open your laptop again, “an intro.”
“Oh, really?”
“Don’t question me. It was already difficult enough to write it, and I agonized over it for hours.” You pouted, slumping slightly.
He shifted up straighter in the desk chair.
“I’m sorry. I was just wondering. It’s good you started.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
Wonwoo tilted his head at you. “Do I get to read it?”
Your feet crossed and twirled together. He didn’t think you had any nervous ticks, but that was something easy to pick up on.
“Um, not yet. Not until we officially start.”
“Okay.” He answered with a gentle voice, noticing your swaying feet still again and a bit of rigidity dissipate from your body.
Well, he didn’t really know what to do at this point. Wonwoo suspected you were constrained by more tasks for today and your time with him was limited. It’s not that you were sitting in an awkward, stifling silence, but he would rather occupy himself with something rather than nothing, because nothing left his heart to race.
“Are you hungry?” He asked.
Glancing up from the laptop, you shook your head. “I ate before I came here.”
“Are you going to be leaving soon?”
At that, your face crinkled with laughter. “Sick of me already?”
Wonwoo crossed his arms. “No. Just asking.”
“Well, I have a wax appointment soon. I’ll be leaving in ten minutes or so.” Finally, you looked up, and your eyes clicked with his in a way that made the fine hairs along his neck prickle coolly. “Does that answer your question?” A subtle grin pulled at your soft lips.
“It does, yes.”
“You don’t like having people in your room, do you?”
He huffed at the observation and delved a hand through his black hair, feeling the dampness slide against his fingers. “Not particularly.”
“You should have just said that.” Rising off his bed, you closed the laptop and shoved it back into the tote bag.
Wonwoo’s entire chest jerked. It felt like a ten-story drop.
“Are you leaving?”
“Mm, I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding.”
Why did his throat close up just then? Why did his vocal cords abruptly feel so coarse and tight? Why was his heart hammering? He didn’t mean to project the wrong impression. He didn’t hate you in his room. It just felt misplaced, and new. Like picking up a puzzle piece from the box and attempting to jam it into a different puzzle.
“It’s fine. Seriously. I should be early, anyway.”
Wonwoo stood up, realizing he needed to breathe. “Um… would you like me to walk you down?”
You stopped on your way out, faced him with a pretty smile.
“That’s okay.”
But then you did something rather strange; your hand sank into his firm upper arm and suddenly you were leaning into him, so carelessly close that he could feel the fanning, light warmth of your breath against his neck. Wonwoo’s head started to spin, and he thought a cloud had enveloped the room because his vision fuzzed.
“Sorry,” you took a step back, removing your hand, “you just smell really good. Like an ocean or something. It reminds me of this beach in Puta Cana. But your hair’s all damp and fluffy so that’s probably why. That was weird. I’m sorry.” Again, you laughed.
Why the fuck did you do that? He was almost angry. But not at you. At himself. For reacting in such a giddy, stupid way. Your touch and breath had burned him and there was this sharp, cutting flare inside Wonwoo that didn’t want to let you leave.
“All good…” he mumbled, sounding groggy and slow.
“I’ll see myself out then. Bye!”
And with a final chirp, you left, the front door closing in the distance while he could only stand there, shuddering and strangely hot and beyond confused. Wonwoo moved to swing the heavy curtains shut, the entire room succumbing into its usual shadiness. He sat on the edge of his very neat bed, removed his glasses, and buckled over while rubbing his veiny, pale hands through his hair.
The feeling was so lost and suppressed to his memory.
Wonwoo didn’t even know what it was.
He was relieved you were gone, but he also wished that you were still there, leaning out his open window with the wind and sunshine in your face. It was a sight so sweet and equally intimate.
Who are you?
What are you doing in his meaningless life?
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—APRIL 28TH.
Wonwoo had finished his math final with half an hour to generously spare, and now, he was sitting, bored, sketching his pencil against the last page of the thick packet. The professor wouldn’t care.
Hopefully.
On one hand, Wonwoo knew he  should really just stand up and hand the damn thing in, but on the other hand, he hated—no, abhorred being the first person to return a test, especially an exam at that. Wonwoo was pretty smart. He knew that about himself and he never bothered to maintain the guise he wasn’t. Still, Wonwoo wasn’t pretentious. If he had to wait until the final fucking minute to hand the packet in, solely to avoid being the first student up, then so be it.
Besides, there wasn’t anything too pressing that required his immediate attention���minus the pertinent schedule he was supposed to make and have sent to you approximately three days ago. You had called him last night, to which the phone crackled with a loud, static bark of his name as you admonished him for his lateness.
“I told you three days ago I wanted the schedule! Three days! I can’t believe this. What’s so hard about making a schedule? Beep boop, you press some buttons on your laptop and it’s done. It would take ten minutes tops! Ugh, I’m so done with you, Wonwoo. In fact, don’t call me back—don’t even text me until you have the schedule!”
And then the line had collapsed, leaving Wonwoo to stare rather expressionlessly at his phone screen, the boy huffing out a breath of tendrilled smoke while he relaxed on the apartment roof. That had been his first experience sat on the receiving end of your seasoned quips, and it left him with this very profound emptiness, like his insides had been scooped out and the shell of his body was nothing but a wooden nesting doll. It had been such a long time since he genuinely cared about disappointing someone. Wonwoo had grown far too complacent with the feeling of disappointing himself.
That would never motivate him to do anything.
But you were different. In the sense that Wonwoo mostly remained proactive out of fear you might bite his head off.
From somewhere near the back of the room, Wonwoo heard chair legs scraping, and he eagerly flexed his fingers while observing a girl with the slickest ponytail he’d ever seen march past him to the professor’s desk. She set her packet down. He thanked her. She left.
Jesus Christ. Finally.
“All finished, Wonwoo?” His professor mumbled in a tone that hardly escaped his own lips, glancing up at the boy expectantly.
Pushing up his glasses, Wonwoo nodded.
“I suppose it’s harder for you to sit there and wait than it is to write the actual exam, isn’t it?” The professor noted with an almost undetectable smirk as he slid the test packet inside a tan-coloured folder, to which Wonwoo turned January cold.
“I don’t know.” Wonwoo shrugged, pretending to feel unbothered when in reality his skin was slithering like a snake pit at the thought of being even marginally perceived. “Maybe.”
“You have a good summer, alright?”
“Thanks. You too.”
Wonwoo swept a quick glance over the classroom right before he left, noticing that Seokmin was sat beside the wall, one hand tangled tight into his black, ruffled tresses as his pencil scribbled all over the paper like he was writing pure nonsense. He probably was.
And Wonwoo meant that in a nice-this isn’t really your sweet spot, but you’ll manage nonetheless-way. After leaving the classroom, Wonwoo thought he might go home and plunge head first into his oasis of bedsheets and flat, foam pillows that he loved so much, and permit himself to decay until it was physically impossible to lie down any longer. But he decided against it at the last minute, turning up at the café instead with his shoulder-strung book bag and the timely urge for a scone. He then sat down at his favourite table.
Pulled out his laptop.
Opened the document he was at incessant war with.
The last scene he’d written was breakfast.
“Uh, okay. Orange juice… or orange juice?”
“Did you say orange juice?”
“I did.”
“So… chocolate milk?”
“Ha! Funny... is there any sort of correlation between being a complete nerd and making such well-woven jokes?”
“Not sure. But I’ll get back to you when I find out… thanks. Your tea is sitting on the island, by the way.”
“Thank you, Won. Oh—you even put it in my Woodstock mug!”
“Yes, why are you so surprised that I remember?”
“Because it’s always hidden at the back of our cupboard, behind ten other mugs that we certainly don’t need and all our plates. I mean, I guess it’s my fault. Half of them are from my mom.”
“It’s sweet.”
“It takes up too much space. But I can’t tell her no.”
“That, you’ve got to work on.”
“The Christmas thing isn’t happening anymore, if that helps. I think the thought of having to cram all my family into our living room for a night was what motivated me the most. My mom said she’ll send us poinsettias instead. I think that’s way easier.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, I can assert myself. Sometimes.”
“No, no. I do believe you. I’m proud. Okay—bottoms up.”
“How’s the combination of venlafaxine and orange juice?”
“I don’t know. Juicy?”
“Better juicy than anxious?”
“You could say that.”
Right, back when Wonwoo actually had the willpower to make himself breakfast rather than slapping a mixed berry Poptart into the toaster or worse, nothing at all. Back when he could wake up before noon without feeling nauseous enough to curl into a ball and drape the sheets over his aching head. Back when he actually took his medicine. Her face beaming at him from across their table had always been like a glass of sunlight and citrus. She had been his own vitamin.
Wonwoo knew he wasn’t going to write. He was just going to stare and mope and ensnare himself in the pinwheel of memories that blew over him whenever he had the gall to reread his past literature.
The Woodstock mug. She’d taken that with her.  
He decided it was strange and sometimes irritating how love, broken or not, could suture itself into even the most mundane things. Orange juice was just that—juice—the carton he used to pick up and impetuously drop into his grocery cart every so often. Now, it wasn’t juice at all, but slow mornings, steaming tea kettles, and reading together on the couch with legs all tangled up until lunch time.
Now, Wonwoo couldn’t drink it at all.
Breaking the lemon raspberry scone in half, Wonwoo dropped a flaky piece into his mouth before it got too cold, and then proceeded to close the document. There was no way in hell he would write, and while he loved drowning in his own misery in order to snuff any glimpse of productivity more than the average individual, he thought it might be worthwhile to finally start that schedule.
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[ Wonwoo | 8:20 pm ]: schedule.pdf
[ Her | 8:56 pm ]: thanks
[ Her | 8:56 pm ]: don’t piss me off again
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—APRIL 30TH.
For an April morning, it was surprisingly bright. The sun was out in full and glistering warmth by the time Wonwoo stepped onto the sidewalk and began pacing down to the park, practically needing to squint the entire way. He almost hated it. Early mornings were not his friend, nor were the blades of light cutting across his glasses. But today was his first writing session with you and Wonwoo knew it was more than crucial that he was the furthest thing from tardy—it would be akin to willingly setting his hands inside a burning fire if not.
You agreed to meet at the park since it was roughly equal distance between Wonwoo’s apartment and some breakfast place you wanted to stop at. He thought it was uncharacteristically thoughtful of you to shoot him a text asking if he wanted anything, though Wonwoo declined nonetheless. It was damn near impossible for him to eat a bite of food until lunch time, hence his expression softening in confusion when he at last climbed into the passenger seat of your sleek silver car and was greeted by you passing him a cold tea.
“Am I… holding this for you?” He wondered, sitting still.
You shook your head. “No. It’s yours.”
“I didn’t ask for anything.”
“Yes, I realize that. I can read, thank you.”
Wonwoo wasn’t going to argue. He simply shut his mouth, clicked on his seatbelt, and set the tea into the cup holder. He then began looking around at your car’s interior. Everything was exceptionally clean and smelled sugary, like iced gingerbread.
The thing was, Wonwoo still wasn’t very sure how to talk to you, and most often there was the stiffest frog in his throat whenever he sat around you in silence for too long. Your thumbs were tapping against your phone at light speed. It reminded him of how Seokmin was texting you back at the boy’s apartment when they were studying for finals. Wonwoo couldn’t help but wonder if Seokmin was naturally more inclined to respond to you out of friendship or fear. Maybe even a pinch of both if that was possible. Another quiet minute passed by.
“Okay, fuck, sorry,” you suddenly spluttered at random, quickly slotting your phone into the GPS holder, “just some shit with my mom. Um, okay. Yeah. We can get going.”
“All good," Wonwoo answered.
“You know where we’re off to?”
“Vaguely. The track by Caldwell High School.”
He watched you flit him a smile. “That’s the place. I’ll explain more once we get there. And, by the way, I am expecting you to drink that tea. It’s not anything crazy. It’s oolong. Only a bit of caffeine.”
“I drink coffee, you know.”
“Yes, and it probably makes you jittery and insufferable.”
Wonwoo preferred not to comment.
The car ride wasn’t too long. Actually, Wonwoo did love a good car ride. He remembered the long trips he used to take with his family to the water park when he was a child, the sensation of the breeze blowing into his face and how different shades of green would scatter in through the windows as the sun hit the tree leaves like emeralds. There was something so limerent and sadly distant about the memory that Wonwoo felt his chest hurt. Even if he were to take that same road, and smell the same breeze, and see his skin glow with the same hues of the forest, he doubted it would feel the same.
His mouth had gone awfully dry. Wonwoo then reached for the cold tea sitting in the cup holder and took a sip, suddenly very appreciative that you had thought to get him something, anyway.
And while he couldn’t be too certain, Wonwoo wanted to think that maybe this would be a good memory, too.
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After the half-hour long car ride, Wonwoo made sure to stretch when he stepped out into the empty parking lot. It was cloudier now, a bit more of a breeze to help counteract the warmth that remained in the air. You came around to join him, twisting out a cramp in your leg while adjusting the purse over your shoulder.
The walk to the track field wasn’t long, no more than a few minutes, and Wonwoo obediently trailed at your side until he witnessed the bleachers slowly coming into view. It resurfaced memories from his own high school days in PE, which Wonwoo had actually been quite successful at despite his distaste for sports and their atmosphere in general. He remembered liking kickball the best.
You sighed in a wistful tone while staring across the marked asphalt and fresh April grass. “All high school tracks look the same, don’t they?” Then, you carefully set your purse onto the bleachers.
Wonwoo rolled his shoulders, taking a more observant look around. It wasn’t strikingly different from the track at his high school.
“Sure. I guess.”
“I mean, there are some differences. We had ditches by our track. Come to think of it, I honestly believe they put them there for kids to hurl in from heat stroke or over-exertion… that’s what I did, anyway. It was right before I had to do triple jump. I hated it because you had to really build up speed. I didn’t want to run. So, even if I hadn’t thrown up from heat stroke, I probably would’ve made myself throw up some other way. Straight to the nurse. She gave me a popsicle.”
He glanced at you sideways. “Seriously?”
“Mmhm.”
“You’d rather throw up than hop, like, three times?”
“I said it was the running part I didn’t like.”
Wonwoo couldn’t imagine purposefully making himself upchuck in order to get out of something. If his anxiety was terrible enough, then he wouldn’t even have to worry about it, really.
That was its own mechanism of disaster.
“Running is eighty-percent of Activity Days," Wonwoo said.
You clicked your tongue at him. “Exactly. And I’d do anything to never run. I tried to sit in one time with the seventh graders. They were in their art block and they were doing painting under the trees; birdhouses or something. But their teacher kicked me out. And she didn’t even let me take the fucking birdhouse that I was painting.”
“The nerve,” Wonwoo answered, scratching his temple.
He proceeded to take a seat on the metal bench, rubbing his hands together. He still didn’t know how Mingyu fit into everything.
“So… what’s your plan, here?”
You sat next to him, folding one leg over your thigh and proceeding to reveal a journal that you had stuffed inside your expensive bag. The tips of your fingers skimmed through a few fluttering pages, until you stopped on one in particular that was ink-abused with cursive scribbles. Wonwoo assumed you did most of your planning on a laptop, hence his surprise to learn that you actually used a journal. He had a journal himself, though it hadn’t been touched in months. It mostly contained small poetic excerpts.
Next, you pulled out a pen.
“This is how I first ran into Mingyu. At my school’s track field. He was new and good at all the activities. I swear, his name spread like wildfire. Anyways, I haven’t figured out all the bits and bobs. I want to really soak in the feeling of—oh!” Suddenly, you grasped the journal back onto your lap, the pen hitting the paper in a cursive ribbon that Wonwoo could hardly read. “I just thought of a great line. His eyes, I wanted to soak in them, like an oasis.”
You stabbed the paper again to make a period.
“Not bad,” Wonwoo commented.
“Okay, here it is!” A black case was pulled from your purse, and once you unzipped it, Wonwoo realized it was the video camera that you had initially shown him at his apartment. “Okay, I want you to film some stuff. The field, obviously. I need it from different perspectives. It will help me with setting the scene later on.”
“Why do I have to film it?”
“Because, Seokmin told me you’re quite handy with film equipment stuff, and I don’t want to drop it. So just do it, please?”
Accepting the video camera from your hand, Wonwoo sighed in agreement. Flipping open the side-screen of the camera, Wonwoo began clicking some buttons and adjusting the focus. Luckily, he was familiar with the particular camcorder thanks to a film education course he’d taken outside of school.
While you busied yourself at the bleachers with starting up your laptop, Wonwoo began collecting footage, slowly panning the camera across the vast length of the gravel track and the grassy soccer fields situated beyond. He kept a concentrated eye on the side-screen to ensure the lighting wouldn’t change too drastically. A wind had picked up from over the forest, and he could see how the clouds were consequently being pushed along like herded sheep in the sky.
Once he brushed back the floppy, black hair that kept tickling his face, Wonwoo lowered the camera and turned to you.
“So, where else should I film?”
You were typing something, and didn’t bother looking up.
“Go across the field. Film from the other side.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“I have to go all the way over there?”
“Yes. Walk, crawl. Skip, hop. I don’t care. Just do it, please.”
“Jesus Christ,” he huffed out, feeling tired and yearning to go home, “I hate how seriously you’re taking this, y’know that?”
Your fingers continued blitzing against the keyboard.
“Nobody likes a complainer.”
Ironic, he thought, but obviously kept to himself.
There wasn’t a point in expecting any sympathy from you—that, he already knew—which engendered Wonwoo’s long, trudging walk from one side of the track to the other, the wind irritably blowing his grown-out locks over his glasses every time he attempted sweeping them back. Hoisting the camera back up, Wonwoo adjusted the side-screen and began his same ritual of steadily panning the camera along the landscape.
You appeared in the view, still sat on the bleachers, though nothing about your face or figure was too discernible. It felt like you were a background character in a painting, just a little glob of acrylic.
“All done?”
Finally, you had glanced up at him with a smile.
Wonwoo nodded. “Unless you need anything else filmed?”
“No, that should be enough. The track is most important.”
“Right.”
He tried giving back the camera.
“Actually, do you mind keeping it?”
“Um, okay. But how will you look at the footage?
“Dropbox. We’ll share one. Upload the clips there.”
Wonwoo plopped himself back down on the bench, fitting the camcorder into its black case. He pulled the zipper along the seam.
“How much longer do we need to be here?”
“Not that much. Just let me finish this paragraph.”
There was a dull pain throbbing at the front of his skull, edging down to his temples—across his nose bridge where his glasses pressed in more tightly than usual. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled a deep breath, trying to escape the feeling, the nausea, the chills that were beginning to seep up his neck as the wind blew turbulently against him. It would be embarrassing if this happened here, right in front of you. The hard lump had suddenly lurched forward in Wonwoo’s throat but he leaned his head down last minute and swallowed it despite the roughness. No, everything was okay.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
Wonwoo opened his eyes, staring down at the trembling hands buried in his lap. Subtly, he pulled the sleeves of his cardigan over them. He assumed his face was reflecting a sheer, sickly opacity.
“Nothing.”
“Uh, sure. Now look me in the eyes and say that.”
Again, Wonwoo swallowed, but he managed nonetheless.
“Nothing’s wrong. I get headaches sometimes. That’s all.”
“… Oh. Well, I’m basically done here. I was gonna ask if you wanted to walk a lap around the track with me, but maybe we should just go home. I mean, how bad is it? Your headache?”
Yes, yes. Home. Wonwoo wanted to go home. He had only been away from his apartment for a solid two hours, and yet all his mind and body’s energy had completely drained. He felt dried out, withered, fragile as tempered glass. Going home sounded cosmic. 
“It’s getting better. I wouldn’t mind walking with you.”
“Oh! Cool. If it gets really bad, just tell me.” You then spent a minute collecting your belongings back into the cream purse.
Wonwoo immediately looked the other way, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair, mouthing a string of guttural curse words directed at his discombobulated head. Because what the hell was he doing? All his relief and peace had just suckled itself down an invisible drain. Why on earth did he agree? Why?
“I think this will help me, too," you said, having left the shiny bleachers behind, instead kicking the pebbles at your feet, “if we walk the entire track, then it’s like we did the four-hundred meter.”
“You’re supposed to run the four-hundred meter.”
“Well, I know that.”
“I’m surprised you hate running. I mean, you walk so fucking quickly sometimes.”
He heard you snort, clearly amused by his observation.
“It’s because I’ve mastered the art of sashaying. To have a perfect sashay, you can’t walk too slow, but you also can’t walk too fast. It’s like a strut. You need to have confidence while you do it. It lets people know that you’re serious and professional. I’m not dragging my feet, but I’m also not in a rush. It’s the perfect pace.”
Wonwoo sniffled and scrunched the glasses up his nose, continuing alongside you at a pace that was rather aimless.
“I didn’t realize there was a science behind sashaying.”
“Now you know,” you declared.
Wonwoo’s  upper lip quirked slightly, and a small grin appeared on his face, which was starting to dapple with colour.
“I don’t sashay, do I?”
At that, you laughed, “no, you amble.”
“Yeah, I’m an ambler… which basically means I’m an unmotivated, pointless person who will probably go nowhere in life.”
For a moment, you stopped walking, and you merely furrowed your brow at him while your forehead creased with thought. Wonwoo stopped as well. He raked back his fluttering, windswept hair and smirked, flashing his teeth. The behaviour was uncharacteristically snide and a bit of a dig at your bluntness, but he couldn’t help it.
“Don’t remember, huh?”
“No… but it sounds familiar.”
“You told me that, the day I met you—that people who walk slowly are unmotivated and pointless. Their life is a waste, basically.”
He noticed your eyes shift up toward the right, as though you were pulling the memory forward from the intricate files of your brain. And then you started to smile, and it made Wonwoo smile, too.
“Oh, I do believe I said that.” You started walking again, and he followed. “Ha! Wow, you’re right. I said that. I’m so funny. I mean, I was right. You only walk slow when you have nowhere to be.”
“I did have somewhere to be. I was going to meet you.”
“Well, then you just didn’t care.” He felt your elbow press shallowly into his rib. “See what I mean? Unmotivated and pointless. And, honestly, I would have taken your apathy as more of an insult if it wasn’t for the fact that you seem to treat most things like that.”
“So, I’m just supposed to accept that you’re calling me a loser? How do people normally react when you say things like that?”
“Things like what? They’re just my observations about the world. You are a person in this world. I was making an observation about you. Albeit, it came across strongly. But I don’t know. No one ever cared about being gentle or sugar-coating with me. Gives you tough skin, y’know? Metaphorically, of course! I always moisturize.”
 Wonwoo scoffed, smiling at your nonchalance. “The way you word things is honestly fascinating.”
“Psh. How do you even remember that?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem that hard to remember. It was a pretty memorable, somewhat awful experience, to be fair.”
“Awful?” You retaliated in unprecedented disbelief, pushing into his arm until he allowed his tall frame to stumble. “Try again.”
“Interesting?” Wonwoo substituted, his heart thumping. 
Your eyes were narrowed at him, glimmering with a sharpness that made his fingers clench into anxious fists.
“… That’s a little better.”
He exhaled a soft breath of relief.
As you began nearing the full circle, Wonwoo realized his head had eased from its horrible aching and the chills dampening down his neck were gone. Everything didn’t feel as awful compared to before. He was still tired, and his energy was sputtering in tiny, dying sparks, but at least his desire to crawl under the earth and degrade to his bare bones had subsided into something less morose.
“I heard you were having a get together next week,” Wonwoo decided to ask, rounding the last bend in the track.
“Oh, the dinner party?”
“Yeah. Seokmin’s helping you plan it, right?”
“He is. Which I appreciate. My mom is usually the one in charge of everything, and she loathes it. But, I mean, when we try to help her, she just ends up fretting even more—says we’re basically getting in the way and ruining it. I don’t know. She’s such a snappy perfectionist. Seokmin can have fun dealing with that.”
Wonwoo almost made a thoughtless comment in response to your story—he’s probably had eons of practice with you—though the pieces connected just in time and his mouth sealed shut.
“Your dad can’t help either?” He questioned instead.
“Ha! No way. My dad helping is a recipe for fucking disaster if I’ve ever seen it. He’s painfully bad at decorating, can hardly be trusted to cook or invite anyone from the guest list. The most my mom allows him to do is set the table.” You then scoffed, shooting a pebble forward with the tip of your shoe. “I swear, he knows exactly how to push my mom’s buttons. The faster he does it, the quicker she kicks him out and he’s absolved of all chores. What a cheat, huh?”
“Hm, yeah… is Mingyu going?”
“Of course.” You smiled. “He always goes.”
At that point, you had circled back to the bleachers. Adjusting the bag strewn over your shoulder, you heaved out a longing sigh.
“Well, that’s four-hundred meters in the books.”
“Is it everything you hoped and dreamed it would be?”
You cackled, “not even close. I think I was right to avoid it.”
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—MAY 3RD.
Wonwoo slid his pharmacy badge through the time-machine until he heard the beep. After an eight-hour shift, he was hungry and tired, but Wonwoo also knew the second that he got home, his urge to eat and desire to sleep would be gone. Instead, he would spend his midnight staring up at the ceiling, thinking. About anything and everything, and nothing at all. When the first cracks of dawn light would spill in from under his curtain, then he would close his eyes.
It was all very typical.
He stood outside the store, phone in hand, waiting for Vernon to pick him up because Wonwoo hadn’t felt like walking home despite the softness of the nighttime wind and the alabaster moon’s shining ambiance. The mirage was pretty and he enjoyed it, but his feet were too sore to inch him another step. Luckily, Vernon didn’t take long.
Luckily, he was the only one of Wonwoo’s few friends with a sleep schedule just as horridly fucked up as his. It was eleven at night, but on a weekday? The dead, empty street testified for him.
“Heyy, Glasses,” Vernon sang in his throaty voice as Wonwoo climbed into the passenger seat, “you look like a prostitute standin’ there, waitin’ for me to come get your ass. But a sophisticated one.”
The interior didn’t smell heavily of weed, he noted. Thank fucking god, Vernon had finally paid someone to dry clean it. Either that, or he took the initiative into his own hands.
“I highly doubt you have ever seen a prostitute in your entire life. And the fact you think they’d be standing outside a pharmacy at one of the quietest parts on this block attests to that.”
“God, I hate when you get all technical n’ shit. Such a stiff.”
“I’m tired.”
“Yeah, well. You’re always tired. N’ for the record, I have seen a prostitute, outside Room 319. It was a week before Christmas; she had this huge coat on, walkin’ up to people in her pink heels and this crazy eyeshadow that made her eyes pop. I bet she’s a nice girl.”
“Mhm. I bet she was.”
“Oh, you’re a cunt, yeah? You don’t believe me.”
“Does it matter?”
“I’ll take you one day. Room 319’s got a table with your name on it. They’ve got this one shot, the Stabilizer— it’ll put you down like a fuckin’ sick dog but it gets you the best drunk of your life. Maybe we’ll even run into Pink Heels lady. She’s our Halley’s Comet.”
“Halley’s Comet only comes once every seventy-five years. “
“You know what the fuck I meant.”
“Not interested.”
Vernon blinked at him for a moment in the dull light, and then he sighed, forfeiting. He placed the tip of the key in the ignition, but he quickly removed it as though he remembered something.
“Wait, I’ve gotta ask—how’s it going with Her?”
Biting down on the inside of his cheek, Wonwoo reached for the seatbelt and pulled it slowly across his chest, debating how intelligent of an idea it would be to entertain Vernon’s curiosity. But he could also understand the allure. You were like this enigmatic myth that people craved to know about, even if it frightened them.
Wonwoo’s head collapsed back against the seat.
“It’s going well.”
Vernon spat out a boisterous laugh, a hand slapping down on his knee. “Jesus Christ. You’re so dry, man. That’s it?”
“I mean, it’s true. We’ve started the book. Or, she has.”
“Okay, and?” Vernon attempted to engage him further.
“And, what?”
“What’s she like, obviously? Is she actually a fuckin’ psychopath? Is she normal? Can she walk on her hands? I dunno!”
Wonwoo rubbed underneath his glasses. He didn’t really want to talk about you when you weren’t there. It felt like a Bloody Mary situation, where you’d magically conjure in the backseat to sinch your cold hands around his neck and wrangle him limp and lifeless. But then there were Vernon’s shimmeringly prying eyes that just wouldn’t stop burning Wonwoo no matter how hard he bit his tongue.
“I have nothing to say. She’s cool.”
“Oh my fuckin’ God.” Vernon slacked back into his seat, clutching at his steering wheel. “You just don’t wanna talk about it… oh! Shit. I just remembered. She’s having a dinner party tonight, isn’t she? In Hill Crest. Or as I like to call it, Rich People Neighbourhood.”
“Yeah, that’s where her parents live… how do you know that?”
“Shit!” Vernon immediately shuffled up in his seat and delivered a hard smack into Wonwoo’s shoulder. “We should drive down and check it out! Right fuckin’ now!” He was lit up with excitement, even though Wonwoo considered it a terrible idea.
“No. Absolutely not. And answer my question.”
“Was sittin’ behind Seokmin at Solar Pop, he talks really loud, happened to overhear some things—doesn’t matter. I think we should go! C’mon, allow some spontaneity into your life! Why not?”
“What the fuck do you mean, why? It’s a family party. With some close friends, which—in case you haven’t noticed—neither of us are. You can’t fucking crash a family dinner party. Who does that? Not to mention the fact that it's eleven at night. They're probably washing up. Sending people home. By the time we get there, it's lights out."
“Aren’t you her friend?”
“No. I’m just someone who’s doing her a favour.”
“Favours are from friends.”
“We’re. Not. Friends.”
“Okay—fuck, Glasses. Fine. We won’t crash the stupid dinner party. But don’t you wanna go for a drive or something? I’m tellin’ you, the houses are insane. Last time I went down there, it was for a big fuckin’ party some dude at your university threw. I think I ran this by you already, when I talked about tryin’ to chat up Her. I stopped by with my old friend—y’know, Dots, the guy that died from the overdose and everything. That party was crazy. It was in a mansion.”
“Vernon,” Wonwoo had just finished massaging the throbs at his warm temples, “we are not going to Hill Crest.”
His friend swung his head in disapproval, making a tsking sound with his teeth. “Such a fuckin’ stiff.” He started the car. “It’s the fact I know you have jack shit to do tonight, or tomorrow.”
“I’m not gonna do some stalker drive-by on her house.”
“You don’t wanna do Room 319. You don’t wanna judge a bunch of richies sittin’ up in their ivory towers. I mean, it’s not like we’re eggin’ them or spray painting fuckin’ curse words on their eight-door garages. What do you wanna do?”
Wonwoo rolled down the window and leaned his face toward the moonlight, to which he could feel the wind brush up against his skin in feathery strokes, as though it were caressing him. He knew that Vernon meant in a general sense rather than in the heat of the moment. But in a general sense, Wonwoo would rather not be anywhere at all. He would rather do nothing, or even exist.
“Can you just take me home? Please?”
Vernon exhaled a defeated gust of breath and began to angle his tires away from the curb, the pharmacy lights pulled behind them.
“Yeah, ‘course. Mr. Boring.”
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—01:49
Wonwoo hadn’t been able to fall asleep since Vernon dropped him off a couple hours ago. He’d anticipated that. Usually, Wonwoo wouldn’t do anything. He wouldn’t toss or turn, or pace circles around his bedroom, or count down from one-hundred, because even if he did, none of it would work. His mind would still be wide awake.
Hence Wonwoo’s decision to grab his phone. Staring at a lurid screen definitely wasn’t going to help, though he wasn’t trying to sleep, anyway. That conversation with Vernon was repeating in his head like a chattering bird, pushing him, pushing him, pushing him to find your Instagram and dig into your pictures because now Wonwoo was thinking of your dinner party and how vehemently you seemed to hate it. He saw that you had posted something quite recently, around the same time Wonwoo had left the pharmacy.
For a moment, his thumb hovered over the post.
He didn’t want to press it because he didn’t care.
Or, maybe he did.
There were multiple pictures in the set, and Wonwoo flicked through all of them. Some were of food, close-ups of your jewelry—you even included a picture with Seokmin. But then Wonwoo had settled on the last photo and something in his stomach convulsed.
He recognized the dress like a flash of light—the sapphire one with the glimmering detail that you had modelled for him at the expensive boutique in the mall. Of course, that arm hanging cheekily low around your hip belonged to your boyfriend, Mingyu. He had a champagne glass pressed to his lips, fitted in his black suit with his hair neatly combed and styled into place. The smugness in his face was stifling. Wonwoo rolled onto his stomach, his eyes refusing to drift from the picture for even an instant. He just kept staring.
Staring and thinking. Staring and thinking.
One minute spent staring at your smile.
The next minute at the low placement of Mingyu’s hand.
Another minute staring at your sparkling dress.
The next minute at Mingyu’s brutally cocky expression.
He would switch back and forth.
But Wonwoo didn’t really care. He was just bored.
And alone with his thoughts.
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—END OF PART PART ONE.
NOTE! while i truly cherish & adore all comments, pls refrain from remarks such as "pls post part x" "i need part x" "when are you posting part x" while i do understand the sentiment, i find these comments very dismissive & kinda disrespectful! i don't prefer to post series fics and so i don't receive these often, but pls note that if you comment this i will delete the comment!
the fic itself is completely done, so all i have to do is get the parts ready for posting. however, bc this is the first part, i don't have a set posting schedule just yet. i think it will depend on roughly how long those who read the fic take to finish it! but i will be sure to make a post about it or include the schedule in part two once i figure it out!
again, thank u so much your ur patience :3
much luv!! 💕
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big-maggots-writes · 6 months ago
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Okay uh, little update, for myself mostly and to motivation to continue on.
I dont know if the story in writing is godnat end up being long enough for a novel and im slowly coming to terms with and being okay with it being a novelle, and also promptly reminding myself of how much I adore short immersive books that have no continuations. If I like it so much then how come i feel its not worthy enough....mmmmmehhh this is more thinking that I was thinking i was going to think for this motivation post for myself.
Its also an announcement post, to say im back, to those who care *gestures at the dust bunnies (also on another note, "dust bunny is an absolutely adorable name for little collection of dust).
Ive sort of maybe realized I don’t have an end, and thats currently my biggest problem, besides the whole writing the bread of it all out, but tahts miiiiinooor thinnnngss. *cough cough.
So anyway, hello, again to myself probably but if you had fun reading this, you could, maybe, choose to make it known...somehow~
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loveariddle · 3 years ago
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I just wanted to say that I’ve followed you years ago on tumblr and DA I believe, and just tonight rediscovered you (as I left this site for many years then came back), and the moment I saw your art on my dash, I immediately recognized you not by your name, art or style, but by the feelings you invoke in me every time I get to look at your art. If I had to put your art into words, I would say it’s like memories of summer as a child. Something wondrous and fills you with bubbly excitement yet fills you with warmth like basking in the sun on a lazy day.
When I saw your art today, I was sucker punched by those age-old emotions I haven’t felt in years since I’ve last seen your art, and I may have gasped dramatically as I thought to myself, “It’s them!!”. Anyways, I’ve spent the last hour immersing myself in your lovely art again, and wanted to thank you for creating art that invokes these kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings in me. I hope you have a lovely day!
omg hello this is so sweet im😭😭😭😭🥺!! /screencaps
this both makes me very happy but also realizing i mustve always just drawn the same stuff from way back then HJEOGHJ but thats rly amazing to me, sometimes ill have thoughts if my art is boring/what is its appeal.. but i actually do like what i draw so ill keep on doing what i want. thank you for writing this and still enjoying my stuff until now!! have a lovely day as well🥰💗💗
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tenthgrove · 2 years ago
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Anon sent me a very wonderful ask about Myriad Trickery last night but I don't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it, so I'm pasting the ask under cut along with my response.
hi my name is not important but what IS important is that you handcrafted Myriad Trickery and you are the finest argument of why i phucking love fanfic SOOOO much. you have crafted a storyline i never even thought about and put a Metric Ton of care into story structure, worldbuilding, and RELATIONSHIPS, (yes relationships, not just romance because y/n getting to know the squad is SO WELL ILLUSTRATED, like the progression is so delishus. especially with pros. oh to be someone named celeste with a shitty ex husband and smol kids you need to get back --- anyway) like. shit these last few chapters Hurt me. i would like. beat my own ass up for making my babies so sad. so mad. smad. but like, you gotta get your money tho. so shoutout to y/n and wanna know for doing what they have to do with their skillset. also can we talk about y/n l/n for a second?? making them a P.I.??? in-fucking-spired. doing The Absolute Most with 4 entire personas and using them to sink their fingers into hardened criminals and SUCCEEDING at making most of them catch feelings???? teach some classes please because i cant even do that with 1 person!!! (lets leave out the fact that y/n fell too because the squad is so fun to be around.) y/n being knowledgeable in stealth n subterfuge, AND armed with their wits to get as far as they did despite not being an indestructible tank??? we cant all be like jotaro so we make do babey, and thats part of why i love y/n so damn much. im too soft, im not a tank at all and i dont want to hurt anyone or make them sad (well unless they do it first) but i dont even care that the difference between me and y/n is the one with jupiter and phuckin earth. y/n is engaging asf and going thru their thoughts is a treat. like its not ME me, but the way you write them makes me feel like i understand them completely. so i have an easier time immersing myself without anything getting me out of that immersion. your writing????? has me on the edge of my seat. im even using my voice to say their lines!!! y/n and i…… we r kind of dumbasses tho but im a corporate slave 8/5……. still. i wanted to read the next chapter on ao3 so hard, i was legit sneaking peeks at my phone at work -- very risky because we got undercover unauthorized breaktime snitches --because i wanted to know all the juicy details of what was going down, and now i regret it because im finished with the chapters on ao3. i want to experience the story for the first time again but you can only experience something for the first time only once!!!!! im gonna reread my fave parts, which is everything with prosciutto because he is my absolute favorite. but like, im happy you're here on tumblr so i can send all this directly to you. you make me want to print Myriad Trickery out and have it bound so i can pull it off my shelf and read everything cover to cover, like a bedtime story. i dont have the words to thank you enough for the monumental effort you did to give us this story except for: thanks so much for giving Myriad Trickery to us for free. shit if i were a publisher i would want to give you a book deal but for now here is a big ole virtual kiss for you for imparting the greatest reader insert saga -- yes. a wholeass saga -- ive ever read.
Hello anon! Where to begin?! I cannot describe how much it means to me that there are people this invested in my silly little stories. I'm a person who writes more for comfort than actual writing merit but MT is one of the few stories where I really wanted to create something to be proud of on a literary front, and that's what makes it so hard but rewarding to write.
The good news is that I absolutely do want to continue the story. I started a planning document for the next chapter soon after the last and it's been empty until last night, when I finally got down a paragraph on how I want the next chapter to begin. My problem is that I wrote the initial plot entirely around the build up to the big twist reveal, and it's kinda hard to come down from that, but I do have a basic idea of what I want to happen.
I may just cut down the remaining plot to about 3 chapters, but no matter what form I do want to get something out.
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my-reality-my-rules · 3 years ago
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Hello hello! So i've been trying to shift over this month, but i kinda have trouble focusing. In my experience before i didn't make it yet, nor did i mini shifted, but i do see a faint sky of my dr, and the other time i hear a sound of a motorcycle (that is not from this reality) quickly gone after i detached from it. I didn't rlly use any specific method, i just focus on what my brain quickly visualize and just follow it, and that one time i feel completely numb from my cr body, and met with my dr self, but then i noticed that i am rlly tired so i just focus on sleeping and yea i didn't make it to my dr. Oh and i don't rlly script my dr, but im considering it. So maybe can u share tips on how to focus while shifting? Thanks for advance!!
[thanks for this ask!]
well, here's a small list with the things i frequently do to focus:
breathing exercises
guided meditations
detaching
visualisation
DR immersion
breathing exercises and guided meditations help me keep count of where i am. detaching, more on grounding myself to properly set my sights on my DR. visualisation and DR immersion are somewhat linked, as the latter is a form of the former.
the one i use the most are DR immersion and guided meditations. as someone with a terrible attention span and too much homework, i find it incredibly difficult not to focus, but to focus consistently. I'm not sure on which of those given suggestions would work best for you, as again, every person's shifting journey is different from the other. but those two I've singled out were what worked best for me.
DR immersion is simply setting around some things around in your environment to remind you of your DR; like small trinkets, books, or habits you adopt, to better integrate your mind with the idea of the place you're shifting to. and when that happens, there's a chance that you can have a stronger pull towards the place itself. it helped me with setting my eyes straight on the prize. the subtle control and reminder of these details drive you on the direction that familiarises you more with your DR.
guided meditations also serve a similar purpose. however, instead of reminding me about my DR, they somewhat control my thought process. i don't know about others, but when i listen to these, it feels as if I'm being commanded to do it. i know it's not necessarily that, but once I've started hearing the guided meditation itself, there's an underlying feeling of ambition to finish it. the instructions that the speaker gives, usually makes me relax and adjust accordingly with the help they're trying to give. the pacing also keeps me in line.
as for scripting your DR, hmm. I'm not going to lie—it makes imagining your alternate self and desired reality just a bit easier. because you're listing out these details, you have the chance to focus and fix the details that you include. I'd recommend it too, but just know that it's not really necessary to have one.
I'm saying this because I'm actually impressed that you never really used a method either—that you relied on the power of your own mind, simply visualising. it speaks much of your focus and control alone. that's really impressive, I'm not going to lie.
anyways, if you want an extended explanation for the other 3 tips, just hit me up. i actually have them listed out in previous posts, and I'm trying to look for them, should you have the need. either way, i hope this answers your question, at the very least!!
happy shifting ❤️❤️
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tainted-wine · 4 years ago
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hi hello! im not typically someone who has any guilty pleasures (because i see everything i like as nothing i should be ashamed of), and even though your subject: raptor fic really tested that rather accepting part of me, i am glad i found it and was curious enough to read it! i love the portrayal and the repeated schemes and sentences you used since it made me recall the other times it happened (what with the commands and hawks'/raptor's growing displeasure at potentially everything). and its all extremely vivid. the development of the story and the different characters, too, were cathartic to follow, and usually id think to myself that "hoo, 5k words? im in for a ride", but i was hanging onto every word of your four times longer work lmao. ive also been trying to reblog it but it just wont let me, keeps on redirecting me to the dashboard or the front of the search page. :/ anyway i just wanted you to know that i found it incredibly interesting and immersive to read (i even got two of my friends to read it who were disgusted at first but in the end had to admit they enjoyed it too 💀). keep up the great work uwu
THANK YOU so much, dear! It warms my perverted heart every time someone mentions how they're normally not into that sort of content but they end up enjoying it. It really means a lot. Repeated phrases in different or similar situations are a weakness of mine. Always loved it in writing. Sorry that you weren't able to reblog, but I'm super grateful for your sweet words, and even sharing this gross sin with some friends!
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tigerseye46 · 4 years ago
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House of Madness
Worked on some possessed Pigsy au stuff! 
Warning: Possession, Forced Behavior, Pigsy is kinda yandere in this ngl
                                      ---------------------------------
 Four days has passed since Pigsy took him to this place, this horrifying place. It’s all icy, the walls barren, he almost tripped the first time Pigsy took him to the castle, now it has long carpets in the hallways, possibly in some failed attempt to please Tang. Regret wells up in him, he should have seen the signs, he should have noticed when Pigsy began to change but he didn’t, not until it was too late and now Pigsy was possibly lost to them forever.
 Tang sighs as he explores his prison, he’s tried to escape before but no matter what, Pigsy is one step ahead of him. The pig has left all sorts of traps to make sure Tang never leaves. He keeps an alarm that only he has the passcode to, if he gets the slightest idea that the scholar might leave, he’ll drop everything and come right on back even if he’s in the middle of a fight with Wukong. He stops at the mostly empty library that Pigsy set up, for now it is only filled with books from their apartment, the pig promises he’ll get more.
 The scholar picks up a book, scanning the cover of it, he sighs again and sits on a chair, opening it. He questions if he should try again, maybe he’ll get lucky? He shakes his head, he’s never been particularly lucky, sure, he got lucky enough to be chosen to retrieve the scriptures but the ensuing journey was certainly not lucky. He ponders on what to do, so immersed in his thoughts that he gasps when arms wrap around his waist and a kiss is placed on his neck.
 Pig-, not Pigsy whispers, “Hello, my love.”
 Tang holds his breath for a second. “He-hello.”
 “Somethin’ wrong, gorgeous?”
 “N-no… you just startled me is all.”
 Pigsy kisses his neck again. “You were so cute while readin’, I had to sneak up on ya.”
 The Buddhist shivers at the contact. “O-oh…” He’s hoping that will be the end of it, it never is.
  “What are ya readin’ anyway?”
  “Hm? O-oh.” He looks at the cover again. “Something about adventure.”
  “Haven’t been payin’ attention? Is my little freeloader distracted? What were ya thinkin’ about?”
  Thinking of ways to get away from you, Tang wants to say but he holds his tongue. “Just something.”
  “Were ya thinkin’ of me?
  Tang pauses then answers, “Yes. Yes I was.”
  The answer satisfies the pig and he kisses him on the lips. When Tang refuses to kiss back, the pig growls and pinches him, he opens his mouth in shock and Pigsy uses that as an opportunity to further the kiss, pressing him against his body. Tang kisses back reluctantly until Pigsy is satisfied and they separate, the Buddhist holds back tears.
  “There, that wasn’t so hard now.” He rubs a thumb against Tang’s cheek. Tang mumbles something. “What was that, love?” He lifts his chin. “Speak up, I can’t hear ya.”
  “N-nothing…”
  “It didn’t sound like nothin’. I can barely understand a word that comes out from your pretty mouth that way. Now tell me what’s wrong. I can make it all better.” The smile he gives is unsettling, it’s like his icy blue eyes are trying to read into Tang’s soul.
  Tang shoves him away. He shouts “You’re is what is wrong! Don’t you see it? You aren’t you! You’re possessed! The White Bone Spirit has taken control of your mind, fight it!”
  Pigsy blinks for a few seconds, his eyes returns to their normal blue then he blinks again and the same icy blue appears. He grins madly and steps towards Tang, the Buddhist backs up until he hits a bookshelf, a few books fall off. Pigsy grips him by the waist and crowds over him. “Oh, sweetheart, what are ya talkin’ about? I’m completely in my right mind.”
  The Buddhist scoffs. “Yea, right then tell me, what are we doing here? Why aren’t we in your noodle shop? Why aren’t we with the kids? How does none of this seem off to you?”
  “Sweetheart, I think ya ask too many questions. We’re here because I’m gonna treat ya like the royalty ya are, I told ya that in the beginnin’, shame ya didn’t seem to hear me. And who needs that stupid shop anyway? Wouldn’t ya rather live in a place like this? You never have to do anythin’. The only reason our kids aren’t here is because that jackass has them. Don’t worry I’ll get them for ya.”
  “Don’t you touch them!” He shouts. “You leave them alone! Don’t you dare a hair on my kids’ heads!”
  “Our kids, love. Our kids,” he corrects. “I wouldn’t hurt them, ya know me. All I want to do is kill that monkey, he’s gettin’ in the way of our happy family. He tried to take you away from me but no longer.” He kisses Tang then whispers, “He won’t be a problem, we can be a happy family, just like I always wanted.”
  “You leave him alone too!” He hisses and attempts to shove him again but the pig keeps him firmly against the bookcase.
  The pig glares at him. “What?! Why?! Are ya in love with ‘im? Ya are, aren’t ya? I won’t let ‘im take you away from me! I’ll kill ‘im!”
   “No! I’m not in love with him!”
   “Really?! Because it seems as if ya are! I’ll go fight ‘im right now and get our kids then you’ll only love me!” He adjusts his crown and turns away from Tang, he’s decked out in ancient Chinese armor, his cape swishing a bit as he walks.
   Tang ponders what to do, he can’t risk him fighting Wukong and his kids getting taken to this place. He grips Pigsy’s clothing and smooches him suddenly, the pig smooches back with eager intent. Tang’s heart thumps, this isn’t Pigsy but his mind is racing, he wants this, he wants Pigsy but he’s smart enough to know that this isn’t him and he’s only doing this so not Pigsy won’t capture his kids. He moves away from Pigsy and tries not to appear disgusted at the creepy grin the pig gives him.
   Pigsy replies, “Wow! Passionate, aren’t ya?”
   Tang blushes. “Qu- quiet.”
   “No need to be embarrassed, doll. I think it’s rather cute.”
   “Don’t call me doll!” His cheeks puff up.
   “Awwww. What, don’t like that nickname? Don't worry, I have a thousand other things to call you.” He backs away to finally give Tang some room to breathe.
   “Tch.” Tang narrows his eyes at him and he bends down to pick up the books littered on the floor, stacking them on top of each other, one is a translation of the Journey to the West. He holds it with one hand and as he’s about to put it with the others when Pigsy grabs his arm. The pig’s eyes observe the book. “Is something wrong?”
  He takes the book from the Buddhist’s hands. “Want to read this.”
  The Buddhist raises an eyebrow. “Why? You’ve never been interested in those stories before.”
   “Well, love, there’s a lot ya don’t know about me.” He runs a hand on the Buddhist’s cheek and winks. “I can’t wait until I get Tripitaka here. Gods, he’s going to be beautiful, after I get him and our kids, everythin’ will be complete.”
   Tang raises an eyebrow. He’s heard Pigsy comment about Tripitaka, him before. He hasn’t asked yet and he’s scared to ask. The comments paralyzed him. It was always something like “I can’t wait to go into Heaven and grab him,” “My gorgeous master, I’ll treat him like royalty,” “It would be great to have your idol here, wouldn’t it, love?” He still has no idea what the pig means and he knows he should try to figure out. Why is Pigsy planning on kidnapping him? Well, he’s already kidnapped him but the pig doesn’t know that. The only pig demon that Tang has ever been familiar with aside from Pigsy is Zhu Bajie. He sighs, he hasn’t seen Bajie in ages, the pig was and is his first love, he misses him and wishes he was here to save him. Pigsy is his second love, but Pigsy isn't Pigsy and he’s trapped and Tang needs to get out yet he wants information on why he wants Tripitaka so bad, curiosity is burning into him.
   “Pigsy?”
   Pigsy purrs. “Yes, love?”
   “Um… why do you want Tripitaka?”
   “Don’t be jealous, babe.”
   “I’m not!”
   “You’re both equals in my heart. He’s beautiful just like ya are, how could I not want him?”
   “What? You don’t even know him.”
   “I know him, doll but relax your pretty, little head. No need to be jealous.”
   “Don’t call me doll,” he repeats.
   Pigsy smirks and plants a kiss on his cheek. “Why not?”
   “Because I’m not a toy!”
   “You’re right, ya aren’t. You’re more like royalty, although I could treat ya like a doll if you want.”
   “Shut up.”
   Pigsy narrows his eyes at him and roughly pulls his chin up. “Now babe, it’s rude to tell your future husband to shut up.” The pig’s blue eyes glow as he says this, it makes Tang shiver, the chef’s fingers are cold like they have been for some time. His blue eyes glow brighter. “Never tell me to shut up again, got it?”
   Tang nods reluctantly. “Got it.” Pigsy smiles and lets go of his chin. Tang puts the rest of the books back and as he finishes, Pigsy lifts him into the air. “Wh-what are you doing?”
   “Almost supper time. I should treat ya like the king or queen ya are and escort you myself,” he replies and walks Tang to his dining room, book still in the pig’s hands as he takes him.
   They arrive at the dining hall, the pig gently lets him down and pulls out a large throne meant for Tang. He silently commands for him to sit down, Tang glares but he knows better to disobey, he sits down reluctantly then the pig pushes it slightly.
   Pigsy kisses his cheek. “Any preference on dinner, love?”
   “No…”
   “Alright, I’ll make ya somethin’ then we can chat and have some fun later,” he purrs. He places the book on the table and saunters off.
  Tang grabs the book from the wooden table, he stares at it, he wants his disciples, he needs his disciples to rescue him, he doesn’t know where Bajie or Wujing are but he hopes they know what’s happening, he hopes there’s a plan to rescue him. He presses the book against his chest, he misses them, it’s been so long since he’s last seen them. He’s all alone and he has no one to rescue him this time, he has to be smart, the kidnappings have made him smart.
  Tang ponders on the information he’s gathered. Pigsy doesn’t want to eat Tripitaka, well him so that’s good at least. His heart thumps at the reason the pig took him to this place, he hadn’t realized that Pigsy was in love with him, how long had the pig been keeping it in? He does love Pigsy, the real Pigsy and he wants to be with him, not until he’s freed, until they’re both freed.
   The Buddhist knows he’ll have to comply with what the pig says, get him to lower his guard down then escape when he has the chance. He knows Pigsy doesn’t want to hurt him, he just wants the scholar to be his, he can deal with it, it won’t be too bad, right? All he needs to do is find a way to get out and get rid of the White Bone Spirit. He prays the group finds a way to rescue him and Pigsy. He moves the book away from his chest and flips to a page. The memories of his disciples and their journey flood back to him, they were always there to keep him safe but they weren’t here and he had to fend for himself.
   Tears fall from his eyes as he reminisces, the cold air of the castle sweeps through him and he shivers. He leans back into his wooden throne, he’s thankful it’s not made of ice unlike that throne Pigsy makes him sit in constantly. He twists the bracelet around his wrist that he was forced to wear, pulling the collar of his tight outfit, he hates it, it isn’t him, it isn’t comfortable like his old cassock or his current outfit. He’s practically a doll for Pigsy to dress up and play with, he can’t bring himself to hate the pig for it, he knows he isn’t in his right mind.
   He hears the doors swing open and he shuts his eyes. He hears multiple plates being set on the table. Pigsy places a thumb under his eye, he shudders at the contact. “Love,” The pig starts. “Why are ya cryin’?”
   Tang sniffles and wipes his tears with his hands. “Oh I didn’t realize. It’s nothing.”
   The Buddhist opens his eyes when the pig runs a hand through his face, Pigsy is down on his knees. A soft look is on his face, it’s almost like he’s him again. “It’s not nothin’. You are my queen.” Tang rolls his eyes at the queen part as more tears roll down his face. “You deserve to be happy. What’s wrong?” He wants to tell Pigsy everything, he wants to open up to him, hug him, kiss him but this isn’t Pigsy and he continues sobbing. “Hey,” he whispers. “Ya don’t have to be sad. I’ll take care of ya, I promise.” He presses a kiss to the back of Tang’s hand and gets rid of his tears.
   Tang observes him and smooches his cheek, the demon purrs and the scholar can’t help the smile that creeps on his face. He plants another kiss and enjoys the other purrs that come out of the demon. The pig has a lovestruck look on his face and Tang lets out a laugh. “I don’t doubt that. I’m fine now that you’re taking care of me.”
   Pigsy kisses him on the forehead and he turns red. “Okay but if anythin’ is botherin’ ya, you tell me. I hate seein’ ya upset. You deserve to be happy.”
   The monk beams. “Thank you.”
   Pigsy nods and sits in the throne right beside him. He holds the monk’s hand in his, Tang rests a head on his shoulder, for a moment he can pretend everything is fine. He blushes more when the pig places a kiss to his lips and feeds him, whispering gentle promises of love into his ear. Tang playfully pushes him away at one point when the pig uses a cheesy pick up line.
   “My love,” Pigsy purrs.
   Tang rolls his eyes and asks “Yes?”
   “Have I ever told ya how beautiful you are?”
   “Oh, only about a dozen times now. Although I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”
   “Good cause I’ll tell ya as many times as I want.”
   “Wow, that almost sounds intimidating. Should I be scared?”
   “Just tellin’ the truth, dear.” He winks as he feeds Tang again.
   Tang accepts it and basks in their little domestic moment. “Do you ever run out of names to call me?”
   “Nope,” he replies. “I got a thousand in my head just for ya.”
   “I feel special,” he jokes as he chews on another spoonful.
   “As ya should, you’re mine after all.”
   Tang frowns for a second. Something about that statement makes him snap out of it. A pit of guilt forms in his stomach, he feels as if he’s taking advantage of Pigsy. The pig looks at him in worry and he has to look away because he can’t give in, no matter how many times he acts like Pigsy, he has to turn him away.
   The demon puts a hand under his chin to force the human to stare at him. The icy blue orbs quickly remind him of the possession, he bites his lip to prevent sobs from slipping past his lips. The demon furrows his eyebrows and Tang sends him a fake reassuring smile, Pigsy nods and continues feeding him.
   After dinner, the pig carries him to their room with the book of the journey still with them. The pig throws pick up line after pick up line at Tang while examining the book, he tries to scoot away but the arm wrapped around his waist pulls him in closer.
   Tang groans when another line is thrown at him. “You know you could do better than cheesy pick up lines.”
   Pigsy snarks, “Sometimes they work, I have other lines, just don’t know if you’re ready for that.” Tang huffs and leans against his shoulder. “Don’t worry, honey, we got time.”
   “Time? Time for what?”
   “For me to shower ya with as many compliments as there is. We have a lot of time.”
   “Oh, great. How wonderful,” he replies, sarcasm present in his voice but Pigsy thinks it’s sincere and gives him a peck on the side of his head.
   “So rose, do ya want to pay me a compliment back?” He winks, the scholar rolls his eyes and scoffs. The demon pinches his waist and he lets out a yelp, the demon’s eyes glow blue as they always do when he gets even the slightest bit angry or annoyed. “Well, do ya?”
   Tang freezes and takes deep breaths, he reminds himself that he has to get the pig to lower his guard down. As he cups the pig’s face, he trembles and touches his forehead with his, the other’s eyes dilate. “Yes… ummm… well… it’s embarrassing to say…”
   “Come on, babe. Any word that comes out of your mouth is stunnin’. Just say it.” Tang’s heart thumps at the compliment.
   “Well…” he taps his chin. “I love that you cook for me and never threw me out of your shop despite my unwillingness to pay. You care about me despite your gruffness…. And umm… yea.”
   The demon purrs and kisses him a whole bunch. “See, love, absolutely stunnin’.”
   “Thanks…”
   “I think that’s enough readin’ for tonight, babe. Readin’ this book bring back old memories of my journey.”
   “Huh?”
   “I’ll tell ya later. Let’s go to bed, can’t wait for ya to try on the other outfit I picked for you.”
   “Great…”
   Pigsy kisses him and gives him the silky pajamas he chose, thankfully for Tang they are more comfortable than his earlier clothes. Pigsy places his own crown to the side and gets into a better outfit. He snuggles up to the scholar, the demon rumbles, Tang tries not to coo on how cute this would be in normal circumstances. He adjusts himself so he is facing away from Pigsy, the demon whispers sweet nothings.
   Hours pass and Pigsy is snoring into his ear, Tang’s eyes droop and he looks at the bedside clock that the pig set up, it is now 3 am. Tang wriggles out of the pig’s grasp, he grabs a robe set aside on a chair, and puts it on. He tiptoes out of the room, once he’s farther enough, he bolts, he’ll have his escape tonight, nothing will stop him.
   He tries not to slip on the carpet as he dashes, he quivers at the air and wraps the robe around himself tighter. Despite the castle only having the two of them, it is humongous, he can barely wrap his head around it. He finds the icy stairs and grabs the railing, carefully walking down so he makes he doesn’t trip. He would tell Pigsy next time to cover the stairs with carpet or something, if there was going to be a next time that is.
   Tang smirks to himself and finds the front door of the palace, that would be too obvious. He searches around for another exit, he finds a window and tries desperately to thrust it open but he’s too weak. He scrambles around for another exit, his heart beats fast, he’s terrified of Pigsy waking up.
   There’s a door leading to the back entrance of the palace, does he risk it? He nods to himself, the door has no traps around it, if he’s quick enough he can run before the alarm sounds. He’s about to open the door when arms are placed on his waist and a figure rests a head on top of his own, his heart stops.
   “Sweetie…” he hears a growl. “What are ya doin’ up? I’ll give ya one chance to explain yourself.”
   He gasps and turns to face Pigsy, his eyes light up the darkness. “Ummm… well… I was looking for something to eat. I’m kinda hungry…”
   “DON’T LIE TO ME!” He shouts, his hands balled into fists, Tang flinches. “Ya were tryin’ to escape!”
   “N-no! I-!”
   “Yes you were! Don’t lie!” Pigsy slams a wall with his fist. “Your mine, ya hear?! MINE!”
   Tang swallows and backs up slowly, the pig is huffing out of anger, his fist still against the wall he punched. The Buddhist trembles, he’s regretting trying to run now, but a part of him wants to flee to escape Pigsy’s anger. When the demon turns, still with an angry expression, Tang feels goosebumps on his arms. The demon quickly lets go of his frustration and leans down to cup the scholar’s face. He smiles but Tang is trembling, scared out of his mind and crying, the pig’s cold fingers and dark smile made everything worse.
   Pigsy plants a kiss on his forehead. “I know you’re just confused. It’s okay. That monkey has poisoned your mind. I know ya want to be mine, ya just have been brainwashed.”
   Tang gasps, “I… I…”
   Pigsy shushes him. “It’s okay. We’ll be happy soon enough. I won’t let that monkey manipulate ya the same way he did master.”
   “Wh-what?”
   “Hm? I just said I wasn’t gonna let ya be brainwashed. Jeez, love bug, you’re supposed to be the smart one, although ya haven’t been actin’ so smart recently.” The pig let out a chuckle.
   The Buddhist rolls his eyes. He thought to himself, Pigsy had said “master,” Tang remembers when he use to go by master... wait… was he talking about Tripitaka? “No, not that! It’s just… you said something about your master? I wasn’t aware you had one.”
   “As I said, there’s a lot ya don’t know about me.”
   “Like?”
   “Now, babe, ya disobeyed me, don’t think ya have a right to know that information just yet.” Tang narrows his eyes, if he’s staying here, he needs information, he’s shaking but he needs to be smart. He pouts and gives the pig his best puppy eyes, the pig’s ears droop at the pout. “What’s wrong?”
   Tang wipes the tears left over from his fear, trying to make it seem as if he’s upset that the possessed demon refuses to tell him anything. “Well… it’s just…” he fake sniffles. “You refuse to tell me anything. I want to know more about you. I want to know what it was like before we met but you’re so secretive!” He covers his face with his hands and smirks when he hears Pigsy let out a whimper and attempt to pull Tang’s hands away to look at him. Tang wipes more fake tears.
   “Hey…. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep secrets from ya, I didn’t want to tell ya and have you get jealous!”
   The Buddhist hides his smirk, he has him in his grasp. He stomps his feet for good measure and takes a step back angrily when the pig attempts to pat him in reassurance. “Well you talk about Tripitaka all the time! You never tell me why, how are you so sure I’m not jealous now?!”
   “Babe…”
   “Don’t “babe” me!” He sniffles again. “I thought you didn’t care about me… I want to stay with you,” he lies through his teeth, “but you won’t say anything. How am I suppose to take that?”
   Pigsy frowns and shrinks back to his normal size. “I’m sorry… I’ll tell ya whatever it is you want.”
   He shows him a fake smile. “Thank you.”
   “But never run away from me like that again, okay?”
   Shivers shoot up Tang’s spine and he nods. “Okay…”
   “Good. Now let’s take ya back to bed then I’ll tell ya all ya want to know.” He carries the monk back to their bed, the monk sits up on the bed. “So what do ya want to ask first?”
   “Ummm… so you used to have a master?”
   “Yep, I was his disciple, we used to go on a lot of adventures together, most of which you have read about.”
    “Really? Because I would remember that.”
    Pigsy grabs the book from his bedside table and holds it up. “Yes ya have. It’s all written here, most of it anyway.”
    Tang’s eyes widen and he snatches the book from the demon’s hand. He scans it because the demon must be joking, he leans against the bed frame. “But this is about the Journey to the West…”
     “Yea, told ya that you have read most of it.”
     The gears in Tang’s mind spin as he tries to uncover the pig’s words. Master… Tripitaka… mentions knowing him…. a pig demon… no… no, no, NO! All the clues clicked but he doesn’t want to believe it. It can’t be, Tang is praying that he isn’t who he thinks he is. “Wait… are you- are you saying that your….” He trails off, he can’t finish his sentence.
      “That I’m the Zhu Bajie? Yes, I am, doll. Told ya I knew Tripitaka, he’s my gorgeous master. Took you awhile to figure that out.”
       “Are you- are you serious? Please tell me you’re joking!” Gods no, he can’t be Bajie! That would mean… that would mean his Bajie, his first love is also his second love and has been with him the entire and he never knew. He can’t be Bajie… his disciple who he’s longed to reunite with has been with him. A feeling of dread washes over him and he wants to laugh and to scream, Pigsy’s face is completely serious.
      “Why would I be jokin’ about this? I’m Zhu Bajie. It’s impressive, huh?”
      Tang feels his eyes water. The rake… the talk about Tripitaka… everything points to him being Zhu Bajie. “Ye- yea… impressive.” He thought it was a coincidence, he thought he would never see them again. He fixates his gaze at the book in his hands.
       Was Pigsy ever planning on telling him? Does this mean Sandy is Sha Wujing? His two disciples were going to fight their brother… this can’t be. Did Pig- Did Bajie love him? Love him back when he was Tripitaka? He always loved the pig, no matter what and… wow… This was the worst way to find out.
     Sobs escaped from his lips, his whole body shook and Pigsy wraps his arms around him in an attempt to comfort him. Tang gasps and stares at the book of his, of their journey.
      Bajie kisses the side of his head. “Awwww, babe, are ya cryin’?” Tang nods, he can’t look at the pig. “Ya don’t need to cry, I know how great I am but you’re even greater, just like Tripitaka is, I can’t wait to see him.” At the mention of his old name, he sobs louder. “Huh? Babe, don’t worry, you’re both equals. I won’t let ya or him get jealous. I’ll love you both forever and you’ll never be able to escape me.”
    As he stares up at the pig’s eyes, it hits him, he’s trapped in a house of madness.
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healinghyunjin · 3 years ago
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hello 😭💫 i just read your moonrise au and i’m so immersed 😭😭 i really love the story flow and how consent was hyunjin’s top priority!!! i also love how caring he is pls im crying hshshshs anyway i hope to read more of your future aus!!! and if there is a possibility for another chapter for moonrise but no pressure! >< anyway thank you for sharing your work!!! ily 💭💗
Hello hello love!!! Thank you so much for this 😊 - I’m so glad you enjoyed Moonrise, and feedback like this is what keeps me going haha 💕 Hyunjin is such a delight to write for, and I’m so glad that you thought the way I imagined him and the story flowed worked!!
Real life has gotten much busier for me, but with the holidays coming up now, I’m hoping to find some good time to write!! I have a Chan AU that’s been on the literal cusp of being finished for months now lol. I promise you that it’s gonna drop in November - otherwise I’m yeeting myself off Tumblr lol. So hopefully that’s something that you’ll be able to enjoy in the short term!!! And while I’m not sure about adding onto Moonrise in the near future, I do have a couple drabble ideas with Hyunjin that I might bring to light before the end of the year!!
Thank you again - this ask really motivated me during what’s been a tough week 💛💛💛 Sending you all the love!!
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sophocused · 3 years ago
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so I picked up a certain book from my shelf that I remember picking when I was 12 or 13 (almost 10 years ago) because I want to start reading for pleasure again and im realizing that this was the very first time something lgbt+ happened to me. keep in mind, I was 12/13 and the main characters were 13 y/o twins, Connor and Grace Tempest.
it was really refreshing thinking of such an innocent time, roaming a bookstore literally judging books by their covers and my core interests that weren't yet overly saturated by media reviews and other external opinions. Just pure, intrinsic motivation.
I also realized since I'm reading books for pleasure, I no longer believe in "reading for my age group" because frankly, I want at least some minute guarantee that some happiness/triumph will come of all the suffering that comes into the plot line of a book.
I finished Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker last night and was just left really sad and triggered. Don't read it if you're sensitive to mentions of SA, r##e, p#d0philia. I get that the point was to tell me how Greek women suffered whilst mainstream beliefs of the legends of Achilles was positive. I get that that was the point but I was really craving some whimsical Greek myth woman girlbossing or something (and not too close to the sun)
Anyway, that's how I ended up picking up Vampirates again bc hello, vampires? pirates? dystopian future where most of the world is ocean and there's a new age of piracy rising up in the world? yes. Also, one of the very few YA novels I saw as a kid that had an Asian main/side character, Wu Chen Li. We're not going to talk about how she's Chinese yet weilds double katanas which are Japanese (the author is from the UK) , I'm reading purely for nostalgia and to be immersed in a world that's entirely from the figment of my comfortable imagination.
Also since it's YA, I have some peace of mind that some triggering no-no stuff is less likely to show up. Also for my eyes which can't see stuff clearly 6 inches away from my face, it's nice to feel a thick book but it's because the words are 1.5-2.0 double-spaced
This has been a ramble but it's to prove to myself that I did not let my mini breakdown over a recurring mistake from earlier this day sink me into an episode of being non-verbal and non-reactive. I basically just saved myself from dissociating. It certainly helped that I immediately messaged 3-4 friends who I could be transparent with that I needed some help, to just talk about anything, feel normal, and I appreciate them for that ( ꈍᴗꈍ)
Thank you to the random blogs liking my little rambles about the little wins I do in the day, like just about successfully doing a calc problem, or cleaning my room. It feels like a virtual pat on the back, with the additional respect of boundaries because my physical space doesn't get infiltrated! ヾ( ͝° ͜ʖ͡°)ノ♪
Alright good night, take it easy~
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