#girl w the big wet eyes of a kicked puppy who grew up on the streets & loves to steal and intimidate (high wis low int)

[vileidol]

@withsappho unfortunately, the angel and the devil on your shoulders are both recommending murder

[froggybaek]

| based on my “illusion” Netflix concept |

⠀⠀⠀ ↳ “yeosang grew up in an orphanage, not knowing what a real family felt like his entire life. he’s now moved in with a college student named yunho, only to soon realize that his new roommate has an odd habit of sneaking out in the middle of the night and not returning till sunrise. one night, yeosang follows the other boy - just to find a floating vessel outside their bedroom window.”

xx. 1.8k words

xx. angst / fluff

xx. no pairings

    All his life, Yeosang had lived inside a lonesome orphanage. To be honest, he didn’t truly blame his mother for placing him upon those cold, wet steps in front of the looming doors all those years ago. He grew up to understand the cruelties of the world, the loneliness of feeling lost when, in reality, that’s what most people were; lost.

    Even if you did everything right, the world could come crumbling down around you.

    That was the scariest aspect of life in most cases. Yeosang himself suspected that he just happened to be the turning point in his mother’s life, the pebble in the road that made her stumble and scrape her knees. Blood pouring from the temporary injury, wet tears streaming down her cheeks, the woman had no other choice but to give her baby away. The baby, now a young man, didn’t dare hold a grudge against the woman he only knew as his birth mother. According to the oldest boy in the orphanage, Seonghwa, who had light blonde hair as bright as the sun, Yeosang got lucky.

    Other boys and girls were forced to grow up in horrific conditions instead of the quaint orphanage they had the privilege of residing in. They grew up with little to no signs of simple love, or care. Their eyes would close every night in the hopes of a miracle happening, of some hero rescuing them from their sorrows and tattered clothes. For Yeosang and Seonghwa, though, they were lucky enough to be decently educated in the comfort of the tiny classroom down the corridor, just next to the dining hall where everyone gathered to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For holidays, the caretakers would try their best to decorate the bleak, beige halls with colorful spindles and homemade paintings.

    When he was younger, Yeosang would eagerly scribble on printer paper with crayons and markers as his caretakers praised his artistic abilities – well, for a six-year-old. His own decorations, along with the other little ones, would be pinned to the halls and doors for everyone to see. Once he got older, though, other children his age began to leave. They were adopted and loved by real families. But Yeosang didn’t falter, as he still had an older boy named Seonghwa to help him pin the new kids’ decorations up for Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving.

    If Yeosang could ever claim to have had an older brother, he would certainly point to Seonghwa first. The blonde with plump lips and a soft smile always had something intelligent to say. It was the older boy who taught Yeosang how to play baseball in the usually vacant backyard of the orphanage, it was he who showed the younger boy how to protect the younger ones from dangerous eyes when they did get the chance to go outside. It was always Seonghwa flicking the nightlight on just before bed, silencing the hisses of agitation from the other boys; as only he knew that Yeosang could not sleep in total darkness.

  And then, on the night of Seonghwa’s eighteenth birthday, he vanished.

    That night, Yeosang could’ve sworn he heard the window opening and closing at the foot of his bed. Assuming he was just dreaming, the brunette went straight back to sleep. When he woke up the following morning, Seonghwa was just… gone.

    No one made a big deal about it, really. As he had finally become of age, Seonghwa would’ve been due to leave the orphanage a couple days after his birthday. The caretakers simply shrugged their shoulders, stating that it would be pointless to worry. If anything, they were supposed to silently cheer on the older brother figure of the building, hoping that he found a place to stay. Still, Yeosang felt a bit betrayed. Seonghwa was the closest thing to family he had, so why hadn’t he even received a simple goodbye? A hug? A promise that, one day, they would meet again?

    “Yeosang, I think I burnt our pizza!”

    The man visibly jumps from his spot on the chair, a slight squeak coming from the wheels due to the pressure. The frame he previously had clasped between his fingers nearly clatters to the floor, but he catches it just in time. Setting it back onto his desk, Yeosang lets out a disgruntled sigh.

    “Yeooosaaang-“

    “I heard you, Yunho,” he finally calls back, sleepily rubbing his eyes, “you did take it out of the oven, right?”

     He was met with silence. “O-oh… I’ll go do that right now!” Yunho laughs nervously, sounding as if he had stumbled on his own feet in an attempt to run back to the kitchen.

    Mid-groan, Yeosang lets out a quiet laugh of amusement. Yunho, his roommate, was a rather interesting man. He appeared tall and muscular, but he truly acted like a lost puppy in every sense of the word. When he was helping Yeosang move in, he had (somehow) convinced his new roommate to dye his hair with him. The plan was for both of them to go blonde because, well, why not – except Yunho had managed to grab a box of pink and teal hair dye instead.

    Neither of them checked the boxes before they dyed their locks. So, now, Yeosang was stuck with what Yunho called “fairy pink” hair, while the other had teal colored strands. Usually, Yeosang probably would’ve been a bit upset, but seeing the college student’s pout and hearing his whines of apology; well, he felt a certain liking to his new hair.

    Straightening out the picture frame on the desk, Yeosang gave it one last look. It was an old photo of himself and Seonghwa on Christmas morning, both of them smiling toothily and clutching onto plushies they had gotten from the caretakers. Thankfully, Yeosang had wept over the photo so often that, now, he no longer felt the need to break down and cry for his lost brother. Now, he felt the need to go into the kitchen and make sure Yunho didn’t accidently set something else on fire.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀  ⠀ ---

     “Are you sure the pancake wasn’t overcooked, or undercooked?” Yunho bugged Yeosang yet again, bottom lip jutted out in a persistent pout, “maybe I used too much butter – oh, you like blueberries instead of chocolate chips in your pancakes, don’t you? Di-“

    Sighing yet again, the pink haired man throws a soft pillow at his worried roommate, who just barely caught it in his arms. “The pancakes were great, Yun, don’t worry about it. Better them than a burnt pizza.” He added on with a teasing grin, to which the other huffed and threw the pillow back at him.

    “Hey! I swear the instructions said forty-two minutes, not thirty-two!” He insisted, slumping back into the gray beanbag. “I’m gonna stay up pretty late, I have a paper due tomorrow morning and I still haven’t finished. I uh, might be playing some music, just tell me if it gets too loud.”

    Humming in understanding, Yeosang shifted from his position on the couch, hand reaching out to grab a book that had been resting on the coffee table. “I probably won’t notice, it’s fine. Just no sneaking out, eh?” He shot back monotonously.

    Yunho visibly stiffened, his fingers latching onto the sides of the plush beanbag. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting that snarky statement from the other man. “Calm down, I’m just joking. I could give less shits about whatever you do in your own bedroom, Yun.” Yeosang continued, eyes subtly narrowing at the taller of the pair.

    Of course, he was lying through his teeth; quite smoothly, though. For the past four weeks, Yeosang had been noticing something off about his roommate. In the middle of the night, he would hear a window open and close – then repeat just before the sun rose over the horizon. Yeosang already knew Yunho was, for some godforsaken reason, “sneaking” out to do something about every two nights. There was a certain pattern to it, so he didn’t suspect a secret lover or anything too crazy.

    But tonight, Yeosang planned to follow Yunho. It was invasive, yes, but he was worried. The last time someone had snuck out, they had vanished without a trace – without a single goodbye. Truth be told, the man didn’t want to experience that feeling ever again. Over the past few months he’s been living with the student, he had started to feel a sense of comfort. Losing that would be yet another terrible memory to tuck back into the darkest crevices of his mind.

    Bidding his unsuspecting roommate a quiet goodnight, Yeosang sat upright on the couch and kicked his legs up onto the table, book nestled between his thighs. He would wait, and listen – as long as he needed to.

       Just as he suspected, about an hour and a half later, Yunho peeked out of his bedroom to check on the pink haired man. Yeosang, pretending not to notice this action, merely licked the tip of his finger and flipped to the next page in his book. When the door slowly closed, he silently placed the book on the arm of the couch and tiptoed over to Yunho’s bedroom. The music he had been playing wasn’t too loud, letting Yeosang hear pretty much whatever it was his tall friend was up to on the other side of the door.

    At the faint sound of the window unlocking with a click, Yeosang slowly pushed the door open. An inaudible gasp flew past his lips, going unheard by Yunho, who was beginning to climb onto a thick spool of rope dangling outside his bedroom window. A sudden sense of urgency swept over Yeosang, urging him to go and stop his friend from doing – well, whatever the fuck he was doing, of course!

    “Y-Yunho!” He shouted, speeding over to the window just as the other man was about to try and close it with his foot. Reaching out to grab onto the rope and the edge of the teal haired man’s shirt, Yeosang refused to let go.

    “Yeosang? W-what’re you doing?” Yunho squeaked in pure shock, now hanging onto the rope for dear life so he and the man holding onto him didn’t crash into the bushes below them.

    Ignoring the drop in his heart when he realized he’d almost lost his grip, Yeosang huffed and tried to pull Yunho back down through the open window. “Me? I’m saving your dumbass – why the fuck are you climbing a rope, anyway-?”

  “Yunho, you’re taking too long, we’re pulling you up!” A new voice interrupted their arguing, making both of them freeze. In the blink of an eye, the rope was been tugged upwards by someone. Before Yeosang could try one last time to throw them both back into the bedroom, his foot lost its grounding on the windowsill.

    Suddenly, they were going up into the air, Yeosang holding back a scream while Yunho told him to hold on.