#if you are worried about being bad think about what specific acts you’ve committed make you think that | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hhjs · 4 years ago

Text

forget me not.

♡ based on — "During times of war. I want to say: I only love you, And I cling you, Like the peel clings to a pomegranate, Like the tear clings to the eye, Like the knife clings to the wound." and the song nightlife by daydream masi.

♡ summary — Hyunjin's unsure of the tingle in his gut, why it's happening. But he thinks, just for a second, it feels a little like hope.

wherein, putting your heart on the line for the sake of doing favours isn’t a frequent component in your schedule. But what happens when this favour is asked for by the boy you may or may not have fancied for far too long?

You accept it.

For a very embarrassing reason, really, which is — you think Hwang Hyunjin needs you.

♡ pairing— hwang hyunjin x reader

♡ word count— 8.8k whoopsies

♡ genre and alternate universe — angst, fluff + hanahaki au.

♡ author's note— this was supposed to be a drabble and then i sort of lost my fucking mind ehe...also this is easily the worst thing i have ever written im so sorry aaa but this is a lil present from my end hahaha

♡ warnings— suggestive content, vomiting, mention of blood. allusions to depression and heartbreak.

Amongst other things, you're extremely bad at saying 'no'. You don't mean the word per se...but the underlying connotation of this very monosyllable which may come at the expense of letting another person down.

It's sort of stupid, you understand, your friends have constantly voiced their worries for your extremely complacent nature more often than you'd think actually. But it all goes over your head. See — old habits really do die hard.

When you're eight, this very defect takes you to dreadful saxophone lessons your mum spoke so highly of. When you're 15, it gets you called to the principal's office for flashing Jeongin trigonometric functions in Mister Choi's pop quiz, when you're older, things are definitely no different.

The passenger seat is occupied, Hyunjin's holding a tangled muffler to his suede jacket clad chest. At 21, he's become someone you used to know. A friend of a friend, Felix's to be very specific. But the man in question, who was supposed to be his ride, passes off this duty for kegstands and you just happen to be the designated driver for the night, shuffling Jisung beside Changbin and Chan, who claims to be 'sober' even though he's half asleep.

Hyunjin is uncharacteristically quiet.

There's a polite smile on rendered your way as your eyes meet. A small curvature along his plump bottom lip, tighter around the edges. Still this simple formality is so beautiful that you feel something inside you come alive.

When Jisung starts snoring, you flip on the radio and Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here comes on.

Your fingers feel numb when they come to tap out a rhythm to the track. It's nice. Tingling guitar riffs swelling, David Gilmour's gruffy voice pours in from faulty speakers. The more the song progresses, the more you find yourself attempting to think about anything that will distract you from the boy beside you, in the flesh no less.

So late at night, the main road is eerily silent. Cobblestones reflecting the sound of tires thumping against its layout, streetlights blinking at you from their drooping heads. Across the street, a baker is tucking away leftover bread and buskers are packing up their beat up guitars, a man in his late 50's pulling his blanket to his nose as he rests a head full of gray hair on the cold pavement.

You glance at Hyunjin from the corner of your eye and find that his staggering smile has completely disappeared. Now there's a distant glaze in his eyes. It's like he's here, in this moment, with you, but at the same time, he's somewhere else.

Under the impression you've done something wrong, you immediately begin to panic. But the thing is, you don't actually know if you should ask. Would it constitute as crossing a line if you had anyway?

Hyunjin covers his mouth with a sleeve, muffled retching building beyond fabric.

The reasonable assumption is obvious. It's not abnormal to be nauseous when you've got one too many drinks in you. He motions for you to pull over, incoherent sentences practically melding together, words forming and dissipating between choking fits.

You scramble to dig out a bottle of mineral water you habitually deposit in the glove compartment, offering him the tissue first. Ears perking up in satisfaction when a garbled thanks escapes his parted lips. But then... something weird happens.

As your eyes flicker to unintentionally glance at the contents discarded on the pitch grey sidewalk, you freeze in your seat.

You were never a big believer of superstition, not someone who buys into myths only meant for the fiction genre. Sure, you can be gullible sometimes...but what's happening falls no way under the realistic category.

The lethal Hanahaki disease, only inherited by some unlucky descendants, every moment in your head prior to this one, was something that's obviously non existent.

Yet... there's so much blood, too much blood attesting to your blatant ignorance. The petals are of a white rose, smudging together in swirls of grotesque crimson in mimicry of a sheen of red sticking to the inner corners of his lips. It has happened before, you can tell, from just how unsurprised he looks.

Hyunjin's stare flits to commit every detail of your to memory, in what only seems a quick study of gauging your forthcoming reaction, though even before you can produce a coherent thought, he says,

"You can't tell anyone." His voice drops a few octaves as though he's afraid your snoring friends in the back might've noticed. "Please."

Hyunjin's face softens by the slightest, contrary to his firm demand, there lies a desperation you couldn't overlook.

In retrospect, what you're about to tell is ultimately a promise that'd come back to bite you in due time. However, see now, you're extremely bad at saying no. Somehow you're even worse when it comes to Hyunjin. So you blink, turn the radio off and say,

"Okay."

—

The pool is preheated. For that you're most thankful.

Frankly, you couldn't imagine what it'd be like being pushed into a chilly body of water mid winter. Not that it's pleasant otherwise, you can't swim.

Well at 15, you hadn't quite learned to. The other kids have scurried inside to hog freshly baked Snowman biscuits Seungmin's mum is renowned for.

Then and you think you'll never quite forget it, Hyunjin's wearing an orange power ranger t shirt, it's darker now that it's wet, his glasses are marked with uneven splatters. His face scrunches up at the sudden splash of wetness engulfing his body. He wasn't planning to get in the water.

"Hold on tight." He says, wounding your arms around his neck, your calves tighter to his sides to support your shivering body. Back then Hyunjin's hair was black, cropped short and swept to the side, he smells like fabric softener and skittles. A water donut is discarded in the middle of the pool.

Everybody you know and don't know, from the birth of superheroes stuck in comic books to valiant protagonists behind fuzzy television screens, has this inherent desire to be saved. From the world, from themselves. No, no, it doesn't have to be a grand gesture, swooping them off of their feet from the grasp of surly men in dark alleys, sometimes it's really just simple. Sometimes people save you in the most ordinary way there is.

The weight of your form on his bright pink water donut while he stood on his toes to merely rest his elbows so the item wouldn't flip, a small act, certified this very claim, had not the nimble touch of his cold fingers, brushing away wet hair from your face, to anxiously ask if you're okay met the purpose. He talks to you like the sound of his voice has the power to injure you.

You nod slowly. Like this, it feels like you're going to be.

Hyunjin pouts, looking perfectly unconvinced. He paddles the pair of you to steel stairs spiraling into the pool, so he can stand without just his nose peeking out of the water, he looks at you once again, a wrinkle between his dark, arched eyebrows and says solemnly, "Jisung's such an idiot sometimes, isn’t he?"

But isn't he your friend? You want to ask. Something stops you though —his tone tells you you aren't the only one to fall victim to Jisung's practical jokes. Not that they were offensive or anything. Han Jisung, the same person who twiddles his thumbs when he wants the last chicken nugget and cries every time you watch Howl's Moving Castle together, genuinely doesn't mean any harm. It's just that...when he's comfortable with people, who aren't many, he tends to do a lot of dumb things. Dumb, endearing things that Minho will kill him for someday.

"A little bit," You mumble under your breath. Heat rising to your face at the possibility of Hyunjin being concerned for you. He sounds almost angry. "Thanks by the way."

It's rather pitiful to remember. Because with time, Hyunjin's world becomes so big that your interaction stands to be too insignificant to not forget. Before you know it, he's the shooting guard of your school's basketball team, just a handsome face who dates better girls, makes better friends. It's superficial and a little sad.

No, no, a little sad is an understatement actually.

To see someone you understood intimately, a boy who always described details too much just to stray from the main story, a boy with too many emotions bubbling to an awfully animated surface; someone who was passionate, sensitive and so nauseatingly big hearted...change into a man who is indubitably untouchable...is tragic. At least.

Yet funnily enough — you can't quite imagine a world without Hwang Hyunjin. His ringing laughter rippling through loud ambiences, his distant humming of Christmas carols whilst he absently skimmed through spines of children's novels and his eyes glimmering in adoration whenever he spoke of something he loved — Without him, you imagine, there would be a massive deficiency in your world, in the world. Like if birthday cakes came with the biggest slice carved out.

Hyunjin grins, a big sort of candid grin that turns his eyes into upturned crescents. His previous temperament long forgotten. Suddenly, this utterly atrocious happening seems to not be so bad. Suddenly you don't mind that Jisung is an idiot sometimes.

"Of course."

—

Hyunjin is not perfect. Hyunjin is no prince charming.

People don't know this. They don't understand this.

He ends up paying for dinner when he's out with a big crowd even though they were supposed to split the bill, he ends up crying when he gets angry and he is an abysmal liar, in every sense of the phrase. Hardly ever succeeding to hide his emotions when he should. When he was a kid his parents reminded him that it's a good thing to be unapologetically himself, that being honest is a good thing.

But as your eyes meet from across an ocean of people quagmired by crunchy leaves, sticky remnants of rain and his ex girlfriend who he now claims to be okay with being friends with, on her toes to poke his cheek whilst Chan's arm wraps around her waist, the soft white roses ornamented on a bow she loves wearing all the time, he thinks it's far from an agreeable trait to have.

Actually whilst you balance a newspaper under your arm and bring your coffee to your lips, it's like you're looking through him, past his skin, his flesh, something secret inscribed on his bones, embedded into his soul. You know everything, you know everything, you know everything.

The thought itself... surprisingly enough, doesn't appal him.

Hyunjin raises his palm in the air, feeling the autumn prickling against his skin. He waves at you.

—

Working at a library can be taxing. But it sure has its perks.

You can just about turn the place upside down and put it all back together without getting in trouble. Albeit another reason, besides your profession could be that Minho owns the place. Frankly, he may or may not have been the only cause behind your employment. It's hard to tell now that your co-workers really do recognise you've a knack for arranging things.

But to you, your job is very personal. A precious thing which relieves you from various worldly tensions. Velvety spines under your roughened fingertips, the burst of minted pages hitting your face every time you walk in, your love for reading, for a world of stories is so immense that you think you wouldn't have traded it even if your life depended on it.

For a disease that's not very well known, it's ironic how an entire section of mythology is dedicated to it. Past closing hours, amongst many novels mounted on your desk, you fixate on the one that made most sense. There's a few things you've picked up in common from all of them though — the hanahaki disease is extremely rare, it doesn't affect all those who suffer from the qualms of unrequited love.

Possible remedy according to findings entail

growths can be surgically removed, if the patient consents to eradication of memories of their loved ones.

Clanking of keys alerts incoming and you pause your tapping pen to look up.

"Burning the midnight oil, are we?"

Minho leans against the doorframe, he's half yawning, half talking and fully concerned for you.

"Yeah, looks like I'm gonna be a while." Your monotonous tone provides that you are not paying a lot of attention. You blurt without looking up. "Are you leaving?"

"No, still haven't finished archiving for that Pfizer project...But I'm going to get a bite to eat..." His inky eyes remain on you as his tone falters, "You want anything?"

"I'm fine. Thanks."

"Wow you're like...really uh invested." He tilts his head in thought, "You seeing someone again?"

You know Minho long enough to know he has a teasing side to him, from diaper days to play dates ending in pillow fights because he kept offering you his last Pringle just to pop it into his stupid smirking mouth — but you have no idea where he's going with this.

So you look up, finally. Furrowing your brows.

"No. What does that have to do with anything?"

He shrugs, "I haven't seen you concentrate so hard since you dumped Jeongin."

Your right eye twitches. Because you know exactly what he's referring to, and simultaneously, for the sake of your well-being, you much prefer being in denial. "What?"

"C'mon. Remember how you always ended up doing his homework?" He reminds you. "It's like when you like someone, you go out of your way to do charitable stuff for them. But...this? Too much. Even for you."

You ignore Minho's comment. To the world, Hwang Hyunjin's place in your life is not significant. After all this is the most natural undulation in the vicissitudes of life — for someone who once was your friend to eventually drift apart, to become a has been. It's too hard to explain why you care. After all this time.

"I was just being nice." You narrow your eyes, unimpressed. "Clearly this concept is lost on some people."

"Sure you are, bud. If being 'nice' is synonymous with whipped." Of course, there's a smug grin gracing his pouted lips that tempts you to fling something at him. Not that you can though. Seeing as Minho breaks out into a full fledged sprint, his singsongy voice a thinning echo bouncing off of shelves and windows and doors.

Still somehow his footsteps manage to travel through walls, permeating into your office with such great amplitude that you could be bamboozled into thinking he hasn't left at all. Or maybe you've stopped paying attention, your eyes zoom in on any other helpful detail you can put to use in wrapping your head around what you have witnessed firsthand.

At the same time, you can't really ignore how hungry you're feeling just from the mention of a bite to eat. So when Minho's shadow forms again on the page you've been 'reading' for the last few seconds you sense a gigantic wave of relief washing over you.

"You know what I changed my—" slamming the book shut, you blink against scanty provision of light, with raise your head and a bleary vision, recognise him in an instant. Except...it isn't Minho. "mind..."

The only source of brightness is a small emerald lamp perched on the corner of your desk, light green catches onto one of the ornamented corners and speckles of golden caress his supple skin gently. You hadn't realised how cold it might've been outside until you see how heavily dressed Hyunjin was, a long overcoat worn over woollen sweater, a Santa hat and muffler pulled to his chin. It's no one other than your boss himself who has given him directions to your office, you know this, Hyunjin has never been inside before.

So when he marvels absently, you sense yourself feeling a little self conscious about not cleaning up. All around you, a comforter and love seat pushed against the window, cigarette butts discarded in ashtray and then...the books strewn before you tell him you practically live here.

For some reason, Hyunjin only seems to loosen up at the spectacle.

"Hi." He says finally.

"Hi..." you arrange the reading materials quickly to one side so you can rest your elbows. A small (successful) attempt made to hide your research. "Something up?" You say, but what you really mean is, what are you doing here?!

Did he suspect you were going to tell on him? Right that's it, that must be it, you tell yourself, believing, knowing, of all the years Hwang Hyunjin has known of you he has never been one to care about your whereabouts.

"I just...um," He starts, forwarding his mitten clad hands. It's the back of a crumpled coffee cup on which straight handwriting reads a bucket list...of sorts. You immediately understand that his coming is an act of impulse. Urgency of living every moment like it's slipping through it's fingers, that he just needed to tell the only person who knows, be it by accident.

Hyunjin clears his throat. "I wanna do all this before I die."

In lieu of giving an instant response, baffled, you gawp at him. Despite knowing, hearing Hyunjin say it out loud somehow makes everything...too real.

It's as though someone's reached inside your throat, pulled your heart out and crushed it with their bare hands. Hyunjin, the boy who smelled like fabric softener and skittles and wore power ranger shirts, the boy with the fantastic smile and cold fingers, is dying. You won't let him. You can't let him.

You thumb along the numbers scribbled in hasty penmanship, look up and blink rapidly, "Okay," you say, a small whisper, barely there words. "That's okay."

Even with the hat covering tips of ears, you could tell the same faint blush coating his cheeks had rushed to that particular area. His eyes drift off to the sight of pens discarded inside a wooden holder because he can feel your gaze on him. "and I...I need your help."

"Alright."

Hyunjin's eyes widen to a great degree, he sits straighter, as if he hadn't expected you to comply so quickly.

And honestly? Neither had you.

It's quiet. Awkward.

"You know it's not like I haven't thought about dying. I just figured I'd get to grow old first, settle down, have kids and all that," A wry laugh escapes his parted lips. "Everything's happening too fast."

You hesitate, thinking he's making a mistake. Frankly he shouldn't feel obligated to give you an explanation.

"You...you don't have to tell me."

"No—I mean...can I?" He gives you a sheepish look, disliking his own whimsical tone, somehow endearing still. You find yourself wondering how long he had to keep his burdens to himself, not just pertaining to his illness, but everything. His dreams, his hopes, his fears. Anything which requires a certain amount of depth. And you almost ask him, the question sitting at the tip of your tongue, yet the realisation rather simple, stops you. Maybe you've mistranslated 21 year old Hyunjin all along — moulding himself into someone who's convenient around people who only liked him for who he appeared to be, maybe even with all that popularity, parties and glamour, he's just...lonely.

You push your reading glasses into your hair, press your knuckles under your chin and hum in consent.

He shifts in his seat, "Have you ever... been in love?"

You release an amused huff. Let your eyes linger on him for a long minute.

"Once."

Hyunjin half expects you to laugh. Poke fun at him for his melodramatic backstory. That's the sole reason why he doesn't tell his friends (funny, for people he considers close, they seem to know not much about him or care to know, that is. ). But you... you look at him with something in your eyes that tells him the rubbish reasons he posited makes all the sense in the world. Hyunjin's unsure of the tingle in his gut, why it's happening. But he thinks, just for a second, it feels a little like hope.

—

Midnight rendezvous.

As someone who has lived a fairly extraordinary life, Hwang Hyunjin's bucket list is bafflingly ordinary. He's more of a finding joy in small things kind of a person, punctilious at best.

Things change. People notice. They hesitate, whisper about you and last night while you were out on last minute cheap wine run, the grocerer, a girl who looks around sixteen asks you if you're dating Hyunjin. Underneath the thinly veiled curiousity, there's something like anger dripping from her words.

You furrow your eyebrows in simple insinuation that it's weird for a stranger to take interest in your life. Maybe it was written on your face, the fact that you're a dying man's beck and call is for reasons far more complicated than it looks.

You go to his parties. Greet him as a friend would and not just for the sake of maintaining formalities. He comes to the library more times than he does, waits for you to get off work so you can check something off the list at least. People notice. People understand. Hyunjin's different around you. He's bright, talkative when he forgets to contain himself. You sense your heart swelling with pride just at the understanding that he can be himself around you.

You drive to the beach, sit in your trunk and drink straight out of the bottle.

Hyunjin laughs a little. Suspends his feet in the air. With time, he's gotten paler, exhausted. "Rough day?"

You hum.

"Very. Our children's collection is usually low in stock around the weekends."

Hyunjin crosses his arms over his chest. Curious.

"And?"

"And if I say I got yelled at by a toddler would you believe me?"

Hyunjin feigns contemplation, even with the realisation that his body is becoming less and less cooperative, he manages to remain perfectly cheerful.

"I can actually," he grins, "At that age, I was a real pain in the ass."

"Were?"

Your smile is just a slight curl against the bottle's mouth as he grumbles under his breath about your 'insensitive' remark.

You think of your life after Hyunjin, think of his absence like a gaping hole you'll never be able to fill out. It makes you sick to your stomach.

—

Bake something from scratch.

Hyunjin's face twists in apparent thought, eyebrows rising. A pink tongue poked against his cheek, whilst he chews carefully, trying really hard not to flash an accidental reaction whilst you clasp your butter and oat flour soiled hands together, some of the batter on your cheek, neck to anticipate his answer like your will to live depends on it.

You ask yourself how it got to this. Why you didn't care that you were awake so early on a Sunday morning with flour powdering every kitchen appliance in sight in spite of being awfully restrictive about who you let into your kitchen. But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter because it's nice like this.

Hyunjin has his hair pulled away from his bare face, a mole under his eye, a small birthmark on the back of his ear.

When you first met, you thought he was a kind of handsome that couldn't be real. Something formidable about it. Only destined to exist behind fuzzy television screens and flashy magazines.

But in retrospect, you realise, that that's not true at all.

If you look close enough, if you really pay attention, there's a softness underneath, something goofy, something warm, the sharp jut of his nose circling into a soft button, his eyes are big, black and his mouth jutted out into a natural pout, he looks innocent, like he doesn't quite realise the extent of his charms.

"It's..." His soft voice pulls you out of your reverie, and you look up to find his eyes glimmering jovially. Every time it surprises you, the lack of regret in them and the abundance of nonchalance. You wonder what it means to love someone like that, to love someone to the point of martyrdom. It shouldn't be like this. "perfect,"

"This is like, the only batch we didn't burn, right?"

You snort, "Yeah." Fully turn to him, "You know what they say, fifth time's the charm."

Hyunjin's laugh, you think, is so contagious that it makes it an imperative to smile in return. In shaky compartments the sound comes, like being 8, laying wide-eyed in a paddling pool and staring up at a crayon blue sky, raindrop rippling beyond all that noiseless water. His eyes curve to upturned crescents, an unconscious hand covering up the seams of his lips whilst he shakes his head. You don't even notice when he starts speaking again.

"Huh?"

"I said you got a little...something..."

You almost lose a fraction of your sanity when his nimble fingers come to wrap around your wrist while you hold onto the spatula employed into the whole snickerdoodle batter mixing business, a liberated hand coming up to gently wipe your cheek. It means everything to you. And nothing to him.

Later, when you're alone at night, really alone, you put your palm to your chest and feel the unsteady beat of your heart. A warning, a reminder. I can't. I can't. I can't.

—

You hold Hyunjin's hair up. His hands resting on the cold toilet seat, he's whimpering and bleeding. It happens every time he sees Haseul, or something which reminds him of her. Like the song.

This time she's drunk. And it's because she impulsively rises to her toes and presses a tender kiss to Chan's lips.

Hyunjin's just a feet away, across students and solo cups and streaks of neon falling irregularly through his line of sight.

He can never confess, not to her. The last thing Hyunjin wants is for her to feel bad for him. To say she feels the same as an act of service. He tells you. You understand. Somehow... you always understand.

They met in college, Hyunjin and she. And Chan was an upperclassman who seemed to be good at...well everything. At first, he couldn't figure out why it never occured to him before, the fact they were getting together maybe before, after or during the length of their relationship.

Though the answer is simple.

Hyunjin thinks the pillar to good relationships is trust. Call him a sappy romantic or whatever but he had seen true love manifest from it through generations before him and his parents and their parents. To think a different fate was woven for him...used to be unimaginable.

How ironic is that?

Hyunjin presses his cheek against your chest because he doesn't want you to look at him when he cries.

Then for the first time....he tells you he's scared. He's scared of what will happen to him. Of what is happening to him.

He's falling apart.

You cradle him, press him closer to your body like you're trying to put him together. People can't fix each other. Not really. But sometimes... they're worth the try.

"Hey...hey...it's alright," You shush him, run your fingers through his hair. Your voice almost breaking, faltering. Still this, this you mean it with every fibre of your being. "It's okay to be scared."

—

Self bleach hair.

It's Christmas and you're late for a late night dinner he's putting together. (As reluctant as he was about getting along with Hyunjin, he seems all too eager to make invite him whenever a get together takes effect.)

His apartment smells like floor cleaner. There's a queen sized bed pushed against an electric blue wall, a Fleetwood Mac poster taped to his door, small reading desk where Canon EOS New Kiss rests, polaroids of things checked off the list littered all its wooden surface.

You pick up the only photo he hasn't labelled, it reminds you that your friendship isn't just based off a pursuit. This is natural. Pizza box discarded between you two, on your roof top. It's a little too dark, you're holding a cigarette between your fingers, you're laughing and Hyunjin looks like he's going to complain the minute he's done taking the picture. (And he does.)

You smile, pressing your fingers against it like the touch could transport you to a simpler time.

"Ready to go?"

Hyunjin rakes a tentative hand through his newly dyed hair, grey (a suitable colour he says.). You can tell he's put a lot of effort into cleaning up, his usual hoodies and sweats alternated with a red satin shirt tucked into dark dress pants and a coat of the same colour. Hyunjin is beautiful. Perhaps even more like this. In fact, the extent of this quality is so Goliath-like that it obliges dolled up attendees to marvel up in awe. While you fully agree with their unsaid ponderings, you really do, you find yourself missing a less sophisticated version of him.

"Yeah, but first..." you fish out a wrapped squarish material from the depths of your pocket. Hyunjin's eyes widen, two bunny-like teeth showing for the extent of his grin.

"You got me a present!" He all but rips it out of your hand, shaking the material eagerly. He’s a Christmas person, a supreme holiday enthusiast if you will. The sheer excitement in him projects itself in every physical aspect possible. Slight jumping on the balls of his feet. "It's a cassette...?"

You speak too much, nervous he doesn't like it. "It’s a Christmas mix. I thought...since you like carols. I know it's a little old school, I'm sorry if that’s not what you were hoping for—"

Hyunjin pulls you into a big hug, wrapping his entire body it feels like; his arms around your waist, he squeezes you tighter against him, "Thank you." He whispers into your hair, it's not just about the cassette, you can tell.

There's a small light bulb dangling from his ceiling, he hasn't fixed it since the first time you pointed it out. You can tell with your eyes closed, you've begun to know more intimately than your own home. It's safe here. A place that deludes you into thinking that he's not running out of time, that even in his absence in the world, whenever you should walk into this room, it would be an imperative to find Hyunjin lazying about in its confines. Familiarity can be quite tricky, can't it?

His gratitude is not unknown to you. It's in the guilty smile that threatens to show every now and then, it's in this and it's in that. In many ways, it is not something you're a stranger to.

And yet the words manage to tears your heart at the seams. Just a little.

—

Make a snow angel.

From above, he imagines, he may appear to look like a chunk of cookie dough in an ice cream pint.

The snow is not as comfortable as it appears, its frigid temperature seeps into Hyunjin's clothes (and what feels like his internal organs, if that's even possible). He waves his hands and legs inward, outward.

Your head tilts towards him. Face twisted in annoyance. "You're getting on my wing!" You say. "Have you no respect for personal space?!"

Hyunjin narrows his eyes jovially. And people tell him he's the one with a penchant for theatrics. He leans closer in rebuttal, waving his leg around your design with more purpose. You give up. Sit on your knees, fumble with the snow. He’s still in the same position. Smug as ever...

"This is what happens when you disrespect your elders." He fake-warns. "Oka—"

What he doesn't anticipate, however, is the snowball you launch on his stupid grinning face. Now it's your turn to laugh. You clutch your stomach and point at him whilst he glares at you having barely managed to blow the snow off of his mouth.

"Oh, you're gonna get it now!"

You let out an animalistic screech, Hyunjin’s already trapped you under his weight, his thighs wound around your waist, hamstringing your plan to escape, now you're merely squirming. His fingers come down to attack your sides, digging into the flesh so mercilessly to the point you’re not sure if you’re laughing or crying. It's like there's a wildfire inside your lungs.

For a moment you forget, you let yourself forget what's to come.

“Alright, alright I’m sorry!” you press your palms against his chest in an attempt to push him off, Hyunjin has a dumb smile on his face that seems to give the impression of a hanger stuck inside his mouth. But... there's something behind his entertainment as the sound of his laugh dies down, chest heaving with exercise. His smile drops.

You can count each lash, each freckle and line on his face. The dark in his eyes. The pink of his lips. Your sweater's ridden to your ribs. And the warmth of his fingers shifting against your bare skin hits you with an earthshattering force.

Hyunjin kisses you. For a fleeting second, you freeze. Rigid with shock. Then it passes as soon as it comes.

You let out a noise of content,indubitably grateful that your neighbours forgot to put on their porch light for the night. See it’s like this, the act of kissing is not as special as is the person himself, you muse, you can kiss anyone, you can touch and be touched by anyone. But none of that truly compares to this. Not when they aren't him.

You’d be lying if you said you never thought about it. Just like you’ve thought about a lot of things. But just the realisation that the boy you’ve harboured in your heart for more complicated reasons than you disclose, to yourself even, touches you with so, so much care...it’s tearing you apart.

It’s too good to be real.

You suddenly push him away. The tugging and pulling at your heart too much to handle. For the fact remains — Hyunjin doesn't love you. He doesn't even like you. You never expected him to. Actually, you've never felt what you feel with that condition in mind either.

See when the feeling of having everything you could ever want is cradled between your palms...it ought to be hard to let go. (Maybe he’s just doing this because he feels bad for you, the little voice in your head says. You listen.)

Hyunjin speaks up first.

“I love Haseul.” he tells you, but it sounds more like he’s telling himself. “That’s why...that’s why, all this...I love her.” Not you.

You swallow, “I know.” Your hands come up to dust your pants. Hyunjin’s still on his knees, as if the answer to his conflicts are deposited under all the snow. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not, it’s not okay. I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have done—”

Now you hear it, the hint of pity in his voice. You don’t mean to sound as bitter as you do. Seeing as you’re usually very good at keeping calm , breaking that very reputed front frustrates you even more.

“Look just forget about it, okay? We don’t have to talk about this.”

Hyunjin looks like he didn’t expect this side of you to exist. At least, you think, at least it got him to stop talking.

—

Learn to skate.

"If I fall, I'm taking you with me."

"You say it like I have a choice."

Hyunjin shoots you a warning glare even though you can't see. His choppy skidding steps supported by the vice grip he has on your arms. You haven't skated since you were in highschool. But when you're pretty good at it still, the smooth blade of your beaten skates gliding through ice with much dexterity, it's like floating, freeing, the wind hitting your faces, snow catching in your lashes. It's peaceful, you try not to think about the warmth of Hyunjin's arm circling around body, the vague rhythm of his heartbeat against your back. His laboured breaths on your neck. It's torturous. But spending so much time with him has taught you to hide your feelings better.

The park welcomes a large crowd around holiday season, children with toothless grins, tugging onto their mum's coats, small chin resting onto a parents' head, teenagers moving in together in school uniforms. It's the happiest time of the year. When you move past an elderly couple, they smile and tell you make a wonderful couple.

You're just about to make a correction. This puts you in an awkward position... doesn't it?

But then Hyunjin grins toothily and says, Thank you, like it's the most amusing thing in the world. You ignore the wrenching inside your chest.

Hyunjin leans forward, his plump lips brushing against your ear. "Where did you learn to skate so well?!" There's something like excitement in his kiddish laugh aside from admiration. It's not much of a question as it is an exclamation.

"I am pretty good, aren't I?"

He laughs, doesn't let you go. "Yes, yes...really good."

Out of breath, you slow down, move your feet steadily, careful not to lose balance.

"Oh my God! It is you!"

You raise your head, blink against flakes hindering your vision. Jeongin's voice used to be thinner before. As far as you remember. Now it has a weight to it.

You let out a nervous laugh.

"And it's you..."

Jeongin's eyes travel to the arms around your waist, to the stiffened figure behind you and you immediately liberate yourself. Moving to let Hyunjin use your arm as purchase, you don't fail to notice the pinch in his forehead, a frown on his mouth.

"This is my friend Hyunjin. Hyunjin, this is Jeongin—"

"We used to go out." Jeongin smiles, forwarding his hand, which is returned with an unenthused shake and a demure reply. Hyunjin never speaks to anyone this way, not even people he claims to hate.

The former male looks to you again, "I was, uh... wondering if you'd like to go out for a cup of coffee sometime."

Things between you and him ended amicably at the event of his departure for further studies, which deprives you of awkward tension which is expected when exes meet.

Besides, a cup of coffee never hurt anyone.

Right?

Without thinking, you nod slowly, "Yeah that sounds good,"

"Text me anytime."

"Sure."

“I'll be out of your hair then," he beams. "It was very nice meeting you too, Hyunjin."

"Right."

Hyunjin, you realise, has released your arm. He leans on barricades fencing along the skating area, smiling briefly. You know it’s wrong...yet you sense that you almost need him to be upset.

Then he tilts his head back towards you, "He seems like a really nice guy," he whispers, genuinely meaning every word. Your heart sinks. "I see the appeal." Underneath the lurid glare of fairy lights brandished overhead, Hyunjin's ash hair glints like it's threaded out of silver. You wonder what he's thinking.

—

Watch every Disney movie ever made.

You never end up texting Jeongin back. Just stalling for when you're ready, you tell yourself. Even though that's not true at all.

"This brings back so many memories. My parents used to belt out A Whole New World with me, like every time we watched Aladdin."

Hyunjin wipes his face with the back of his hand, technically you’re not very sure what he’s saying exactly because he’s mumbling into a paper napkin you've passed over for the umpteenth time. You find yourself picturing a small but happy family of three, of Hyunjin in Scooby Doo pajamas and gap between his teeth. (Contrary to your previous convictions, he hasn't changed all at much, save for the teeth bit. ) It's cute.

He looks to you expectantly. Can't be the only one telling embarrassing stories.

You shrug, "I had a thing for Simba. Let's just say my mum and dad were nice enough to indulge me."

Hyunjin reaches for the remote and pauses the ending credits of Lady and the Tramp. He turns to you fully now, gives you a judgemental stare. "Simba...?" He says, "Like the...lion?"

"What? It's normal to crush on fictional characters, okay?!"

"Okay,sure," Hyunjin snorts, putting a pillow between you and him so you can't kill him. "furry."

A part of you is tempted, obviously. But the much bigger part is more invested in how he looks happier, healthier. You want to think that means something.

—

Hyunjin invites you over for movie night. It's getting colder and you keep poking him with your cold feet. There's an extra set of blankets in his cupboard, he informs you, he isn't sharing his with you — and that's when you see it.

The deflated pink donut folded to the side, his and yours sharpie inscribed initials on one side.

"Found it yet?"

You don't even notice when he comes to stand behind you. So the question effectively makes you jump out of your skin. Hyunjin has a bowl of popcorn pressed to his chest, there's a pink hair band holding his hair away from his forehead. For the lack of a answer he takes it on himself to find the source of your silence. As if you've been caught red handed.

You think this is where he'll ask you to leave, that or he'll least scold you or something. You prepare for the worst.

Hyunjin just smiles, it's a big smile that succeeds in bringing out the small dimple indented on the side of his cheek. You've never noticed before. It's kinda weird. Because when it comes to him, your attention hardly ever falters.

"You probably don't remember. That’s from Seungmin's 15th birthday,"

You want to scoff under your breath. All this time you had told yourself that you were the only one to be affected by your estranged friendship growing up. Now...the same logic colours you every bit of ridiculous.

You blink away, swallowing. Voice solemn.

"I remember." Hyunjin's gaze is heavy on your shoulders. An emotion you can't quite put a finger on crosses his delicate features. It's something between surprise and relief... something else too. You don’t understand it.

—

It's disconcerting that he can’t remember the last time he got sick. Not the usual discomfort inside his chest, not the blood, not the thorns or petals. Hyunjin's just gotten so used to it, you know? What if he gets his hopes up for no good reason? What if it just comes back?

There's no possible explanation, he explains over a hasty 3 A.M message he had to leave on your answering machine because he's freaking out.

Then Haseul texts Hyunjin, tells him she misses him. Everything's adding up. Everything's falling into place. This is what he wanted, isn't it? She loves him, she finally loves him back. That must be it. He doesn't know what to say.

But he tells you, and when he does, it sounds a lot like an apology.

—

Kiss underneath a mistletoe.

“Chan and I broke up.” She says it like it’s something he should be happy about. So when he remains quiet, it only prompts her to speak more, fill up the big mighty silences.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Look Jinnie, I know I made a mistake, but...can’t you give a second chance? Just this once?”

Hyunjin has thought about this particular moment a lot. Kissing her instead of producing a response, pulling her off of her feet and mumbling of course, of course, of course. Back then, there were little doubts in his head pertaining to her, back then he believed that she was the only one for him. The love of his life at the wrong time, in the wrong place.

Now...something doesn’t feel right.

The thing about wounds, sometimes, of the heart in particular, is when they close up, it’s hard to make head or tails of the kind of person you become in their wake. Hard to adjust. Like when he suddenly shot up 7 inches in ninth grade, a late bloomer at that, and the weight of his new sneakers felt..odd.

He glances at her and also understands what it’s like to be lonely, the constant need to compensate for it by grasping at the last straw. He used to be in her shoes too. This isn’t any different. Albeit, he isn’t exactly taken by her presence. Just that he doesn’t know if what he’s doing is right. He looks over your table a few feet away from where he’s standing. Having gone out to take a call. You notice his absence and then from your seat, do your best to locate him. (he thinks of kissing you on a bed of snow, thinks of the sizzle of your skates against ice, thinks of his list on a coffee cup and his pink water donut and it’s okay to be scared. Why did it have to be you of all people, through everything? It’s not really a work of coincidence. Not at all actually.

Maybe he just wanted it to be you.)

When your eyes do lock...seeing him with his hands in his pockets, her standing beyond the barrier as she tries to say something, you smile, even if it’s a little sad. Hyunjin thinks to the conversation some nights before. Thinks of you reminding him that there's nothing to lose at this point, that he should do what his heart tells him. That it’ll be alright, if he just takes a leap of faith. Hyunjin smiles back. Through the glassy exterior and mini water fountains running down its slanted form. The realisation is not as dramatic as he thought. It’s just late.

He tears off the false mistletoe decoration glued along the periphery of an arch.

And like always.

He takes your advice.

—

Cohorts of guests pour into the colossal hotel, heads turning in quiet admiration for bejeweled arches breaking out against buttery white architecture, the roof is impossibly naked, translucent glass baring a starlit sky to your watchful eyes. Showing little mercy to a frail chute held over your head,costumed characters wade through oceans of gossamer, twinkling silver and swaying movements to slow jazz. You prop a heeled foot up on the bar platform, which strangely resembles a pedestal, in a futile attempt to catch your breath, with clammy digits settled atop the risky surface of a marbled counter. A soft voice speaks over the ambience, uttering your name with much care. You lift your head. And there he is.

Jisung is scouring through the Spotify playlist you’ve put together for New Year’s Eve. He’s complaining about the lack of Beyoncé while your friends go around the buffet table. When he calls you, you’re sipping your drink, laughing at something Changbin is saying, his eyes brighten just at the sound of your laugh. Hyunjin isn’t surprised to see his friend taking a liking of you even though he hardly knows you. That’s just the effect you have on people.

Excusing yourself, you allow him to walk you to a less densely populated area where a stone pillar faces expensive paintings of nameless painters. With the effect of alcohol settling in and your inhibitions effectively lowered, your steps sway a little. You lean against the massive build rising from tiled floor. “So what’s up?” you murmur, the lump in your throat thickening just at the thought of him speaking the good news into existence. “I take it went well?”

Hyunjin doesn't answer. He looks distracted for a bit. Then in an instant he snaps out of his daze. “What did you mean when you said ‘once’?”

Your brows come together in inquiry.

“What?”

"When I asked you if you have ever been in love, you said ‘once’." He persists, his fingers come up to your shoulder, grazing slightly as if they’re trying to carve out words against the skin. "You weren’t talking about Jeongin.”

He knows. He’s always known. Hyunjin can’t believe he’s been so stupid.

“Took you long enough.” You let out a sardonic laugh.“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

"It matters to me..." Hyunjin sounds offended, you gather, but he manages to quell his temper for the sake of coaxing your confession. Is he purposely embarrassing you? "I don’t think...I love Haseul anymore...I didn’t realise...I haven’t for a long time."

A big chandelier beams over withering plants pushed against the ceiling, in this poor supply of light, you can tell exactly how he looks, eyes glimmering adoringly, you've spent something-teen years of your life wondering what it's supposed to mean. And it still manages to confuse you.

"Why are you telling me this?" you ask, albeit you already know. Because funnily enough, before he got his braces removed and dyed his hair a scandalous blonde, before bucket lists and heartbreak, he was just the boy who told you he liked your stupid reindeer sweater even though it had officially made you the 7th grade laughing stock. You remember being fifteen and in love with Hyunjin. And you've never actually stopped. You need to hear it to believe it.

It drives you crazy. The way Hyunjin brushes his fingers against your cheek, shifting strands away from your eyes. But you can't help it, you've always wanted this. You lean into the caress, peering up at him as his large hand cups your jaw, thumb traversing from your tilted chin to your glossy lips like he's trying to smooth out all the creases. His voice is small, a whisper.

"Because I need you to know I think I’m falling in love with you.” he says. His palm opens and there’s a plastic mistletoe nestled between his fingers. You’re smiling and sniffling whilst his forehead comes to press against yours. Hyunjin grins. “And there’s still one last item on my list.”

“Are you seriously asking me to land one on you now?”

“Oh hell yeah.”

—

"Move."

You press your fingers against the slick, sweaty skin.

In rebuttal, Hyunjin grumbles under his breath. Only half awake, half aware that he was mumbling in his sleep. His naked chest seems to be, if it’s even possible, glued to your bare front as he sprawls out like a starfish over your body, using his gangly arms to accommodate the strange position.

Though and you know he knows it too — it’s anything but uncomfortable.

See by now, you aren't exactly a stranger to Hyunjin's sleeping habits. Or really, any habits of his.

All the windows are cracked open, moonlight percolating through a thin sheet of curtains in rendering evidence that it’s still night time. You can make out the faint sound of honking in the distance, a few stray dogs here and there, probably producing strings of complaints about the blatantly unbearable heat.

The strong stench of sweat and an aftermath of what happened before is a quick reminder of where you are, what you’re doing and that your arm’s going cold for a lack of circulation under his weight. Beads of sweat collected against his skin and trickle down the side of your face, the crook of your neck, which only prompts you to apply more force to the pads of your index and pointer — albeit it did nothing to move him, "Gross." You groan. "You're sweating like a pig!"

This comment, of all the things you've tried to get him to sleep on his side, succeeds in making Hyunjin raise his head, his grey hair matted down, a few rogue strands pushed out to fall over the unamused look in his eyes.

In an unprecedented minute of absolute clarity, something inside your stomach started to churn at the shocking sight. You’re impossibly, absolutely and nauseatingly in love with Hwang Hyunjin and the funny thing is, you don’t have to think twice to know he is too.

"Gross?" Hyunjin lowers his face to brush his pouted lips along your jaw, grinning when you let out a shaky but involuntary breath and as if he is looking to make a point with his digits traversing from your bare stomach, just along the hem of your underwear, "After all that?"

"I hate you." You say — but more like, stutter. The sound of his giggles eliciting a strange sensation in you, reverberating against your chest, knocking against his ribs and your skin, like it’s trying to reach out to you, like your bodies insist on melding into one.

"I don’t think you’re being honest, baby." He laughs, squeezing your side, coming up to plant a warm palm to your butt to repeat the action, which in turn, drew a mewl from you. “Because you looove me.” Hyunjin smirks, his finger thumbing along your throat to your chin. You think this is what all those great poets meant in endless litanies of lovers torn apart by time and war woven together in a simple caress, like a longing, like a secret. Guarded from prying eyes, greedy hands, and you keep it, you keep it. For him. With him.

963 notes · View notes

theartofdreaming1 · 3 years ago

Photo

Katniss, bravely stepping inbetween Gale and Thread (and his whip) - she’s so courageous and protective, she deserves the world 😭

As usual, my thoughts regarding this week’s prompts and (many) random thoughts on chapters 7-9 are below the cut. (Is it just me, or are my notes getting longer and longer with each and every post? I swear, this book is so meaty, we’ll soon reach the point where I have to type out the entire chapter, with my thoughts in the margins)

heart

“Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else in unthinkable.”

I think these words are a result of Katniss being so afraid of losing Gale that she’s kinda overcompensating; their relationship has been strained these past few months and they’d just had a row, separating from each other on bad terms - and the next time she sees him, he’s been whipped so bad that he’s lost consciousness and could be potentially dying from his wounds. Of course she’s so terrified of losing him, that she’s holding on as tightly as she can to him. It’s important to keep in mind how important their relationship is to her and we see that in her preceding thoughts: What a pair we were - fatherless, frightened, but fiercely commited, too, to keeping our families alive. Desperate, yet no longer alone after that day, because we’d found each other. I think of a hundred moments in the woods, lazy afternoons fishing, the day I taught him to swim, that time I twisted my knee and he carried me home. Mutually counting each other, watching each other’s backs, forcing each other to be brave. - Gale was the first person who was her equal, a kindred spirit, her partner. After Katniss had lost both of her parents when her father died and her mother succumbed to her depression - the people who were supposed to care for her and guide her through growing up - she was stuck with the role of sole provider and protector of her family at age eleven. She must have been so lonely all this time until she met this boy who understood what she was going through and they learned from each other and shouldered their burdens together, to take off some of the overwhelming pressure. Of course that relationship, of course Gale is important to her. But also now their relationship has become more fragile, after the Games they are in danger of growing apart - it’s got to be so terrifying to feel like the one proper, mutual relationship you’ve had seems to be slipping through your fingers. With everything that’s going on, her entire life as it is teetering on the razor’s edge (heck, the president himself has been threatening her and her family!), it’s no wonder that Katniss is craving that familiarity and safety that her relationship with Gale used to provide her with. And seeing Gale in this state just has her holding on to him more tightly than ever.

mind

Hmm, no big moment is coming to my mind right now; I think I’m always most impressed by the tiny moments that show how tenacious, resilient and fiercely kind humans can be - like Darius stepping forward to stop Gale’s cruel punishment, Leevy volunteering to tell Hazelle about Gale and promising to stay with the Hawthorne children, Madge bringing the morphling, Katniss pressing Darius’s hand in the Training Center, Twill taking Bonnie with her to flee to D13 and so on.

soul

I believe that Katniss was honestly surprised to learn that Gale had feelings for her; she had categorically shut down the idea of entering a romantic relationship for herself, so I don’t think she’d seriously consider anyone being romantically interested in her in return (that’s not how that works, of course, but I think that’s how she perceived the whole shtick). Their kiss threw her completely for a loop and if anything, she mostly saw it as something that contributed to the deterioration of their previous, easy and comfortable relationship.

Chapter 7

A mockingjay is a creature the Capitol never intended to exist. [...] They hadn’t anticipated its will to live. - In a way, the Capitol continues to make this mistake with the people living in the districts, too - underestimating their will to live (opposed to just surviving)

I look in his [Gale’s] eyes. His temper can’t quite mask the hurt, the sense of betrayal he feels at my engagement to Peeta. This will be my last chance, this meeting today, to not lose Gale forever. - Okay, we don’t know how much Katniss might be (incorrectly) presuming here, but the idea that Gale might feel betrayal because his best friend is being forced into an engagement pisses me off. It’s fine if he’s feeling jealous because she’s being paired off with Peeta when he wishes he could have a shot with her, but how in the world does this even rate as a betrayal?! A) It’s done against her will and B) Just because they’re friends doesn’t mean Katniss owes him anything when we’re talking about romantic feelings... Ugh 😒 Also, it’s quite noteworthy how insecure Katniss feels about their relationship - she’s constantly worried Gale will drop her and their friendship (waiting for Gale after the camera teams left after winning the Games: I’d begun to think that he’d given up on me in the weeks that had passed.- Ch. 2) and it doesn’t help that she’s been through that extreme, traumatic experience without him and they haven’t had much opportunity to spend a lot of time with each other (with the Victory Tour and Gale having to work so much) and when they do hang out, they don’t seem to really talk much, which doesn’t exactly help...

He [Gale] tosses the gloves on my lap. “Here. I don’t want your fiancé’s old gloves.” “He’s not my fiancé. That’s just part of the act. And these aren’t his gloves. They were Cinna’s,” I say. “Give them back, then, he says. - Gale can be so petty sometimes 🙄

While I talk, [...] [Gale] occupies himself with turning the food in the leather bag into a meal for us. Toasting bread and cheese, coring apples, placing chestnuts in the fire to roast. I watch his hands, his beautiful, capable fingers. Scarred, as mine were before the Captiol erased all marks from my skin, but strong and deft. [...] Hands I trust. - Oh boy, this moment really shows how these two are at cross purposes right now - Gale’s prepping the food as you would for a toasting (romantic connotation), while Katniss is oberserving his hands, thinking how their hands used to match (not anymore!) and basically wishing herself back into the time before the Games, when things were ‘simpler’/more clearly defined (and also platonic!); there is nothing romantic from her P.O.V. - it’s all about the friendship and trust

[Gale] steps in and I feel myself lifted off the ground. The room spins, and I have to lock my arms around Gale’s neck to brace myself. He’s laughing, happy. “Hey!” I protest, but I’m laughing, too. Gale sets me down but doesn’t release his hold on me. “Okay, let’s run away.” [...] “You’re sure?” I say. [...] “I’m sure. I’m completely, entirely, one hundred percent sure.” - Yeah, and I’m sure you’re not going to change your opinion in the next five minutes, Gale... In his defense, Gale didn’t know all the details, so in that regard it’s totally valid that he might decide to change his mind after having more input... It’s just that Katniss specifically asks him whether he’s sure and his reply is so full of conviction (100% sure!), only for him to do a complete 180 just a couple of minutes later; Gale’s very hot and cold, which makes for such a harsh contrast when compared to Peeta’s more measured reaction later in the chapter

He tilts his forehead down to rest against mine and pulls me closer. [...] I don’t try to move away. Why should I, anyway? His voice drops to a whisper. “I love you.” That’s why. - Oh man, Katniss just can’t catch a break 😞 Really not wise of Gale to drop the L-bomb here (after, what? a kiss they never talked about and little else... their communication is truly abysmal and it’s really damaging to their relationship, hurting the both of them)

“Gale, I can’t think about anyone that way now. All I can think about, every day, is how afraid I am. And there doesn’t seem to be room for anything else. If we could get somewhere safe, maybe I could be different. I don’t know.” I can see him swallowing his disappointment. “So, we’ll go. We’ll find out.” - I mean, honestly, I totally understand where Katniss is coming from - she doesn’t need a romantic interest, she needs a partner, which is why she’s been so eager to talk to her hunting partner, someone she’s used to rely on for survival and now he’s also confounding their relationship by introducing that romance-angle (as if it wasn’t bad enough that her relationship with Peeta got kind of messed up when that same angle was forced upon them prematurely)... Also, telling how Katniss thinks she’d have to be different to maybe even consider a romantic relationship with Gale - Katniss as she is right now just can’t see herself wanting to be with Gale romantically; it would require a change... I’ve got to give Gale credit for still going along with it, and trying to push past his disappointment, though

“My [Gale’s] mother is going to take some convincing.” [...] “Mine, too. I’ll just have to make her see reason. Take her for a long walk. Make sure she understands we won’t survive the alternative.” “She’ll understand. I watched a lot of the Games with her and Prim. She won’t say no to you,” says Gale. - That’s interesting, I wonder what exactly Gale means by that? That Mrs. Everdeen won’t say no to Katniss because she feels guilty that Katniss had to go through the Games or because watching her daughter compete in the Games really made her realize how messed up Panem is? Or that she’s more inclined to trust Katniss’s judgement after everything that has happened?

“Haymitch will be the real challenge.” “Haymitch?” Gale abandons the chestnuts. “You’re asking him to come with us?” “I have to, Gale. I can’t leave him and Peeta because they’d-” His scowl cuts me off. “What?” “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how large our party was,” he snaps at me. - Gale doesn’t seem to have realized how close and important Peeta and Haymitch have become to Katniss... maybe because they never properly talked about this aspect of Katniss’s life (I swear, their shoddy communication must account for at least half of the damage their relationship has taken in these past few months alone)

“What if he [Peeta] decides to stay?” he [Gale] asks. I try to sound indifferent, but my voice cracks. “Then he stays.” “You’d leave him behind?” Gale asks. “To save Prim and my mother, yes,” I answer. “I mean, no! I’ll get him to come.” “And me, would you leave me?” Gale’s expression is rock hard now. - Boy, oh boy! I think Gale knows (like Peeta) that Katniss could never leave behind the people she cares about; then, he’s kind of gauging whether Peeta has already received the Katniss Everdeen Stamp of ‘Caring’ - and, as it turns out, he has! And then Gale ends up making it into a bit of competition by asking her whether she would leave him behind (or, alternately, her turning him down has him confused about the depth of their relationship, I dunno); not fun

“There’s an uprising in Eight?” he [Gale] says in a hushed voice. I try to backpedal. To defuse him, as I tried to defuse the districts. - Katniss is going to be about as successful as she’d been at defusing the districts, too - But here we have another example of Katniss trying to rein in Gale’s temper because she’s afraid he’s going to get himself in trouble (like when she decided not to tell him about Snow’s visit to her house because she was worried what he’d do with that information)... It’s really not great that she feels the need to censor herself so he won’t do something dangerous... Katniss knows first-hand how badly impulsive actions and decisions can be received in the Capitol - and she never even meant for a rebellion to happen!

“And it’s my fault, Gale. Because of what I did in the arena. If I had just killed myself with those berries, none of this would’ve happened. Peeta could have come home and lived, and everyone else would have been safe. too.” “Safe to do what?” he says in a gentler tone. “Starve? Work like slaves? Send their kids to the reaping? You haven’t hurt people - you’ve given them an opportunity. They just have to be brave enough to take it. - Katniss is taking all the responsibility upon herself again... Gale is right to point out that she was merely a catalyst, not the cause for the rebellion - the cause are the awful living conditions of the people in the districts

“Stop it! You don’t know what you’re saying. The Peacekeepers outside of Twelve, they’re not like Darius, or even Cray! The lives of district people - they mean less than nothing to them!” I say. “That’s why we have to join the fight!” he answers harshly. “No! we have to leave here before they kill us and a lot of other people, too!” [...] “You leave, then, I’d never go in a million years.” [...] “What about your family?” “What about the other families, Katniss? The ones who can’t run away?” - This discourse is so painful because they are both right - Katniss has seen more of the districts and how things are handled beyond the (relatively tame) confines of D12 and it’s fair that she wants to know that the people she cares about are safe from harm; Gale, of course, has a point commenting that not everyone has that opportunity and the only way to have a long-lasting, wide-spread improvement of their conditions is through rebelling against their oppressor - but that will inevitably come along with sacrifices and collateral damage and it’s easy to say that it will be worth it in the long run, but when those who are hurt/dead could end up being your loved ones, it’s definitely easier said than done

He throws Cinna’s gloves at my feet. “I changed my mind. I don’t want anything they made in the Capitol.” And he’s gone. I look down at the gloves. Anything they made in the Capitol? Was that directed at me? Does he think I am now just another product of the Capitol and therefore something untouchable? The unfairness of it all fills me with rage. But it’s mixed up with fear over what kind of crazy thing he might do next. - Gale getting rid of Cinna’s gloves just because they are from the Capitol is a prime example of this “us vs. them” mindset that he will be (worringly) fast to adopt - of course, perceiving the opposite side as “other” will make it easier to fight against them; however, it’s all too easy to lose sight of your opponent’s humanity when you think like that (think of how Gale has a hard time understanding Katniss’s distress upon seeing her prep team being treated so terribly/inhumanely in D13); Katniss feeling upset that Gale might perceive her as a product of the Capitol instead of its victim is understandable (and isn’t that exactly what the inhabitants of D13 are going to think of Peeta in MJ?) - and yet, she is still worried Gale could get himself into trouble with his impulsivity; she’s a good bean

”Going to town?” I ask. “Yes. I’m supposed to eat dinner with my family,” he [Peeta] says. - I’m tripping over the word ‘supposed’ here - it doesn’t sound like Peeta’s looking forward to hanging out with his fam, although it can’t be that often, since they’ve been away on Victory Tour and he is living alone (maybe the end of the chapter will give us another hint why that is 😒😒)... I can’t help but wonder whether these family dinners are mainly for public perception (in that case... it really is no wonder Peeta is so good at playing the cameras - poor guy had to fool the outside world his entire life) or because they are the only chance for Peeta to hang out with any of the members of his family he might actually want to spend some time with

“Peeta, if I asked you to run away from the district with me, would you?” Peeta takes my arm, bringing me to a stop. He doesn’t need to check my face to see if I’m serious. “Depends on why you’re asking.” President Snow wasn’t convinced by me. There’s an uprising in District Eight. We have to get out,” I say. “By ‘we’ do you mean just you and me? No. Who else would be going?” he asks. - Peeta doesn’t just blindly agree to Katniss’s proposal; he needs to know what’s going on first (he has been burnt before - no more secrets!) - and it’s a testament to how well he knows her that as soon as he’s asking whether she meant just the two of them, he corrects himself because knows that Katniss would never leave the ones she cares about behind

“What about Gale?” he says. “I don’t know. He might have other plans,” I say. Peeta shakes his head and gives me rueful smile. “I bet he does. Sure, Katniss, I’ll go.” I feel a slight twinge of hope. “You will?” “Yeah. But I don’t think for a minute you will,” he says. [...] “Then you don’t know me. Be ready. It could be any time.” - Telling how Peeta immediately agrees to the plan once he gathers that Gale won’t come - he knows that Katniss cares about Gale and could never leave him behind, ergo she’d never actually leave under these circumstances - he knows her so well. Also, Katniss’s reaction is like that of a petulant child, it’s kind of funny 😄

“Katniss, hold up.” [...] “I really will go, if you want me to. I just think we better talk it through with Haymitch. Make sure we won’t be making things worse for everyone.” - Ultimately, Peeta would follow Katniss to the ends of the earth - doesn’t mean that he can’t throw in a sensible suggestion in there as well 😉 (Also, in the next chapter we will see how Katniss, Gale, and Peeta might be a little too inexperienced/naive to be able to form accurate expectations of what is to come - Haymitch and his generation have a little more experience in that regard)

He raises his head. “What’s that?” [...] I haven’t noticed the strange noise coming from the square. A whistling, the sound of an impact, the intake of breath from a crowd. “Come on,” Peeta says, his face suddenly hard. I don’t know why. I can’t place the sound, even guess at the situation. But it means something bad to him. - Why does my sweet boy know what a whipping sounds like, Suzanne, huh?! Care to explain that? 😭

Peeta steps up on a crate against the wall of the sweetshop and offers me a hand while he scans the square. I’m halfway up when he suddenly blocks my way. “Get down. Get out of here!” He’s whispering, but his voice is harsh with insistence. - Peeta was offering his hand to help Katniss up the crate because they are a team (and he’s a gentleman)! It’s only when he recognizes who is receiving those lashes and realizes that Katniss will lose her shit once she knows, which could make the current situation even worse, that he urges her to leave, and he is not the only one to think that: - Voices hiss. “Get out of here, girl.” “Only make it worse.” What do you want to do? Get him killed?”

Chapter 8

It’s too late to stop the arm from descending, and I instinctively know I won’t have the power to block it. Instead I throw myself directly between the whip and Gale. I’ve flung out my arms to protext as much of his broken body as possible, so there’s nothing to deflect the lash. I take the full force of it across the left side of my face. - Katniss is so selfless; she knows that it’s either Gale getting hit again or a lash to her own face and she chooses the latter

“Hold it!” a voice barks. Haymitch appears and trips over a Peacekeeper lying on the ground. It’s Darius. [...] He’s knocked out but still breathing. What happened? Did he try to come to Gale’s aid before I got here? - Haymitch sure appeared quickly - I can easily imagine Peeta taking off immediately to get him (or send someone to bring him to the square) once he knew Katniss couldn’t be stopped; but if Haymitch had been at his house in Victor’s Village, there is no way he’d have made that quickly to the square... maybe he was already at the Hob and had gotten wind of the whole situation? Also, poor Darius! Wearing a uniform/being in some sort of position of power is no guarantee you won’t get punished as soon as you show the tiniest glimpse of compassion - in a place like Panem, nobody is safe from the caprice of the people in charge

I see a flicker of recognition in the eyes of the man with the whip. [...] it wouldn’t be easy to identify me as the victor of the last Hunger Games. Especially with half my face swelling up. But Haymitch has been showing up on television for years, and he’d be difficult to forget. - Getting Haymitch truly was the smartest move to make (which is why I’m pretty sure it was a move on Peeta’s part - he’d know how to use reminders of ‘appearances’ to ensure a punishment wouldn’t go ‘too far’, y’know 😢). But also - Thread must have lived under a flipping rock, to not being able to recognizes Katniss (her face must have been plastered all over the place during the Victory Tour, which just had concluded recently) - or he was just too in the heat of the moment, with someone opposing him, bleugh 😒

“He [Gale] was poaching. What business is it of hers, anyway?” says the man. “He’s her cousin.” Peeta’s got my other arm now, but gently. “And she’s my fiancée. So if you want to get to him, expect to go through both of us.” - I love how Peeta’s just laying it down as it is; his phrasing just sounds so factual, rather than provocative (although it is, of course); he really has a way with words - Maybe we’re it. The only three people in the district who could make a stand like this. Although it’s sure to be temporary. There will be repercussions. - Haymitch, Peeta, and Katniss working together as a team again! Also, a good example of the effect people with public influence can have

One [Peacekeeper], a woman named Purnia who eats regularly at Greasy Sae’s, steps forward stiffly. “I believe, for a first offense, the required number of lashes has been dispensed, sir. Unless your sentence is death, which we would carry out by firing squad.” “Is that the standard protocol here?” asks the Head Peacekeeper. “Yes, sir,” Purnia says, and several others nod in agreement. I’m sure none of them actually know because, in the Hob, the standard protocol for someone showing up with a wild turkey is for everybody to bid on the drumsticks. - It’s kinda nice to see the local Peacekeepers supporting Purnia’s claim to get this display to stop - this is the only way out of this situation where Thread’s authority is not openly challenged (and we know Thread doesn’t take well to having his authority challenged - see Darius)

There’s no stretcher, but the old woman at the clothing stall sells us the board that serves as her countertop. “Just don’t tell where you got it,” she says, packing up the rest of her goods quickly. Most of the square has emptied, fear getting the better of compassion. But after what happened, I can’t blame anyone. - It’s sad how that air of intimidation makes people want to mask their acts of compassion (and also says a lot about the precariousness of the existing living situations if that old lady is still selling that board - I’d never even consider exchanging money for that, but that’s probably my privileged situation showing here; Katniss brings up the theme of fear vs compassion - very fitting, since it seems to be her driving force (although, generally, her compassion wins out over her fear) and despite her assertion that fear appears to be getting the better of compassion we see a good amount of people reaching out to help, such as the following example:

Leevy, a girl who lives a few houses down from mine in the Seam, takes my arm. My mother kept her little brother alive last year when he caught the measles. “Need help getting back?” Her gray eyes are scared but determined. - The subtle suggestion here that Leevy might be further motivated to help out because Katniss’s mom helped her little brother is also an excellent example of how kindness breeds kindness

“Get some snow on that,” Haymitch orders over his shoulder. I scoop up a handful of snow and press it against my cheek, numbing a bit of the pain. - This moment reminded me of Peeta immediately reaching for some ice from that fruit tureen after Haymitch hit him on their way to the Games in THG (Ch. 4) - their different immediate reactions to getting hit in the face could simply be due to the fact that Katniss is a little too preoccupied worrying about Gale to think about her injury, of course, but I feel like you could also interpret them as examples for how much experience Katniss and Peeta have with being hit in the face, respectively...

Gale must have gone to Cray’s house, as he’s done a hundred times, knowing Cray pays well for a wild turkey. Instead he found the new Head Peacekeeper, a man they heard someone call Romulus Thread. No one knows what happened to Cray. He was buying white liquor in the Hob just this morning [...] but now he’s nowhere to be found. - As I’ve already mentioned regarding Darius, inhabiting some position of power does not guarantee you any safety in Panem (there is always someone more powerful who will treat their inferiors like garbage, if they feel like it)

By the time I showed up, he [Gale]’d been lashed at least forty times. He passed out around thirty. - Jesus 😨 poor Gale!

“What about Darius?” Peeta asks.“ After about twenty lashes, he stepped in, saying that was enough. Only he didn’t do it smart and official, like Purnia did. He grabbed Thread’s arm and Thread hit him in the head with the butt of the whip. Nothing good waiting for him,” says Bristel. - It’s so messed up how it is not enough to have someone who’d stand up and do something about a horrible situation - they have to do it the right way, or else they’re toast; there really shouldn’t have to be a smart way of doing the right thing

Snow begins, thick and wet, making visibility even more difficult. - (President) Snow is coming down hard on them, making it hard to see what’s up ahead

Ever so gently, she [Mrs. Everdeen] begins to clean the mutilated flesh on Gale’s back. I feel sick to the stomach, useless, the remaining snow dripping from my glove into a puddle on the floor. Peeta puts me in a chair and holds a cloth filled with fresh snow to my cheek. - Although she’s quite squeamish, Katniss stays as Gale gets treated (the force that holds the loved ones of the hurt/dying, just like when Peeta was being treated after their Games); meanwhile, Peeta is taking care of Katniss - there is so much care + love to be found in this moment

My mother has to save the strongest [painkillers] for the worst pain, but what is the worst pain? To me, it’s always the pain that is present. If I were in charge, those painkillers would be gone in a day because I have so little ability to watch suffering. - Honestly, same; I can’t stomach seeing other people suffer without feeling overwhelmed and feeling like crying... I don’t know how professionals do it

“Just give him the medicine!” I scream at her. [...] “Take her out,” says my mother. Haymitch and Peeta literally carry me from the room while I shout obscenities at her. They pin me down on a bed in one of the extra bedrooms until I stop fighting. - Oof. Poor Katniss! But yeah, it was the best call to remove her from the situation, Mrs. E. had to focus on what she was doing... Also, Haymitch and Peeta are the ones to get Katniss out of there and stay with her - these three take care of each other!

After a while, my mother comes in and treats my face. Then she holds my hand, stroking my arm, while Haymitch fills her in on what happened with Gale. “So it’s starting again?” she says. “Like before?” - Katniss’s mom has become a much more active and soothing presence in this book, I like it... Also, what does “again” mean? Does this imply there has been an attempted uprising in D12 that needed to be squashed before?

Cray would have been disliked, anyway, because of the uniform he wore, but it was his habit of luring starving young women into his bed for money that made him an object of loathing in the district. In really bad times, the hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them. - Horrifying and absolutely disgusting 🤢 Those poor women! How desperate they must have been!

... when the doorbell rings, I shoot straight out of bed. [...] “They [the peacekeepers] can’t have him,” I say. “Might be you they’re after,” Haymitch reminds me. “Or you,” I say. “Not my house,” Haymitch points out. “But I’ll get the door.” “No, I’ll get it,” says my mother quietly. - Again, Mrs. Everdeen is taking the initiative! She was so watered down in the movies

[Madge] holds out a small, damp cardboard box to me. “Use these for your friend,” she says. I take off the lid of the box, revealing half a dozen vials of clear liquid. [...] “What is that stuff?” asks Peeta. “It’s from the Capitol. It’s called morphling,” my mother answers. “I didn’t even know Madge knew Gale,” says Peeta. “We used to sell her strawberries,” I say almost angrily. What am I angry about, though? Not that she has brought the medicine, surely. “She must have quite a taste for them,” says Haymitch. That’s what nettles me. It’s the implication that there’s something going on between Gale and Madge. And I don’t like it. “She’s my friend” is all I say. - I mean, Katniss could be mad because A) Gale had literally just told her he loved her a few hours ago and if there was something (reciprocated) going on between Gale and Madge, that would have been pretty shitty for both girls involved and also B) she is friends with both of them and it would be hurtful to learn that two of your closest friends had been seeing each other without telling you anything about it... also, she’s super upset over Gale getting so seriously hurt just after they’d had an argument, her feelings are all over the place

... I’m selfish. I’m a coward. I’m the kind of girl, who, when she might actually be of use, would run to stay alive and leave those who couldn’t follow to suffer and die. This is the girl Gale met in the woods today. No wonder I won the Games. No decent person ever does. You saved Peeta, I think weakly. But now I question even that. I knew good and well that my life back in District 12 would be unlivable if I let that boy die. - Yes, Katniss, you knew that your life back in D12 would have been unlivable if he died - but not because you feared that people would shun you; it was because you “couldn’t lose the boy with the bread” and because “if he dies, I’ll never go home, not really”... This is an excellent example of how distorted your memories can get when you are in a bad headspace at present

The berries. I realize the answer to who I am lies in that handful poisonous fruit. If I held them out to save Peeta because I knew I would be shunned if I came back without him, then I am despicable. If I held them out because I loved him, I am still self-centered, although forgivable. But if I held them out to defy the Capitol, I am someone of worth. - Katniss, you don’t have to be planning to overthrow a corrupt and cruel government to be someone of worth! You’re someone of worth just by being yourself! - The trouble is, I don’t know exactly what was going on inside me at that moment. - Frankly, very rarely are our motivations clearly defined by a single factor - or my professor would not have been able to teach an entire semester-long course on motivation psychology😉)

Chapter 9

Gale’s dead to the world, but his fingers are locked around mine. I smell fresh bread and turn my stiff neck to find Peeta looking down at me with such a sad expression. I get the sense that he’s been watching us awhile. “Go on up to bed, Katniss. I’ll look after him now,” he says. - Peeta! Must have been hard for him to see Katniss like this (and the underlying strength of Katniss and Gale’s relationship, when his relationship with Katniss is still not all that solidified), and yet he’s being such a good bean about it 😭

I give a strangled cry and wake with a start, sweating and shivering at once. Cradling my damaged cheek in my hand, I remind myself that it was not Clove but Thread who gave me this wound. I wish that Peeta were here to hold me, until I remember I’m not supposed to wish that anymore. I have chosen Gale and the rebellion, and a future with Peeta is the Capitol’s design, not mine. - Katniss, gurl... Maybe your instinctive desire to receive comfort from Peeta is trying to tell you something??!? Also, Katniss is forcing this strange dichotomous association of Gale = rebellion and Peeta = Capitol, when in just a bit, she’s clearly connecting Peeta to the rebellion as well (aside from the fact that Peeta was basically the first person to suggest to her that maybe a rebellion was necessary... just saying)

Fighting the Capitol assures their swift retaliation. I must accept that at any moment I can be arrested. [...] There might be torture. Mutliation. A bullet through the skull in the town square [...] I imagine these things and I’m terrified, but let’s face it: They’ve been lurking in the back of my brain, anyway. [...] I’m already a target. - Oh geez! Despite admitting that she’s terrified of what the Capitol is capable fo doing to her, Katniss is still pretty composed naming the possible horrors in store for her, which is just a heartbreaking reminder of how many terrible things she has already had to endure.🙁

Now comes the harder part. I have to face the fact that my family and friends might share this fate. Prim. I need only to think of Prim and all my resolve disintegrates. It’s my job to protect her. [...] I can’t let the Capitol hurt Prim. - 😭😭😭 Katniss has reached a point where she can put her own need for survival/physical intactness aside, but the thought of something awful happening to Prim stops her short (it’s so strange to think that, in a twisted way, it wasn’t the Capitol who’d ended up inflicting the final harm upon Prim...)

And then it hit’s me. They already have. They have killed her father in those wretched mines. They have sat by as she almost starved to death. [...] She has been hurt far worse than I had at the age of twelve. And even that pales in comparison with Rue’s life. [...] Prim... Rue... aren’t they the very reason I have to try to fight? Because what has been done to them is so wrong, so beyond justification, so evil that there is no choice? Because no one has the right to treat them as they have been treated? Yes. This is the thing to remember when fear threatens to swallow me up. What I am about to do, whatever any of us are forced to endure, it is for them. - All these things are very true and it’s also very fitting that the main motivation for Katniss would be to ensure a better future for the children of Panem (and to avenge the evils done to the people close to her heart... while Katniss of course can see the abstract bigger picture/reason for the rebellion, she always operates best when it comes to specific people/circumstances she has a deep, personal connection with)... But also: all these things apply to you, too, Katniss! Despite your tendency to feel responsible for everything and everyone, you’re still a child that had to grow up way too fast and had to endure way too much!

We need someone to direct us and reassure us this is possible. And I don’t think I’m that person. I may have been a catalyst for rebellion, but a leader should be someone with conviction, and I’m barely a convert myself. Someone with unflinching courage, and I’m still working hard at finding mine. Someone with clear and persuasive words, and I’m so easily tongue-tied. Words. I think of words and I think of Peeta. - Katniss’s idea of a great leader for the rebellion is Peeta - interesting, isn’t it (she could have considered Gale, but no)? She makes a good point, though: it helps when a leader has plenty of charisma, and our boy has that in spades; he’s got a good set of morals, is not above joining in on the action/risking his own neck when the need arises and is very genuine and purposeful with his words and actions, which is inspiring... I think Katniss is severely underselling how courageous she is, though

He could move a crowd to action, I bet, if he chose to. Would find the things to say. But I’m sure the idea has never crossed his mind. - Why would you assume that, Katniss? Peeta’s literally the one to suggest to you that trying to placate the district might not be the right thing to do... Peeta’s not someone who’d stir up trouble just for the sake of stirring up trouble, sure; he’s much more deliberate about doing things the ‘right’ way, but he’s not generally opposed to challenging authorities (he’s literally the one to openly gift some of your winnings to another district!)

She knows what she’s doing, my mother. I feel a pang of remorse about yesterday, the awful things I yelled at her as Peeta and Haymitch dragged me from the kitchen. “I’m sorry. About screaming at you yesterday.” - It’s so sweet how Katniss feels sorry for yelling at her mom and apologizes to her; their relationship really has improved so much in this book - “I’ve heard worse,” she says. “You’ve seen how people are, when someone they love is in pain.” Someone they love. [...] Of course, I love Gale. But what kind of love does she mean? What do I mean when I say I love Gale? I don’t know. I did kiss him last night, in a moment when my emotions were running so high. But i’m sure he doesn’t remember it. Does he? I hope not. - Katniss is struggling to figure out in what way she loves Gale... She definitely doesn’t want him to remember their kiss because she knows it wouldn’t be fair to give him the hope that she might be able to return his romantic feelings when she is still in the dark about her own

... and I can’t really think about kissing when I’ve got a rebellion to incite. I give my head a little shake to clear it. “Where’s Peeta?” I say. - Lol, goes on to immediately mention the guy she’s been kissing these past few weeks (see, with Peeta you could actually have both: kissing and rebellion, Katniss - he’s the perfect man, isn’t he? 😉😋)

“He went home when he heard you stirring. Didn’t want to leave his house unattended during the storm,” says my mother. - Yeah, I don’t think Peeta left because of his house; I’m pretty sure he needed some time to himself after seeing Katniss and Gale this morning - he is the type of person who needs to be alone to work through his feelings when he’s feeling upset - “Did he get back all right?” [...] “Why don’t you give him a call and check?” she says. I go into the study, a room I’ve pretty much avoided since my meeting with President Snow, and dial Peeta’s number. After a few rings he answers. “Hey. I just wanted to make sure you got home,” I say. “Katniss. I live three houses away from you,” he says. “I know, but with the weather and all,” I say. “Well, I’m fine. Thank you for checking.” There’s a long pause. “How’s Gale?” - Aww, Katniss is worried about Peeta and gives him a call, although she hates being in the study 😊 Also, her calling him must have been at least of some reassurance to Peeta that she genuinely cares about him, in some way (though, he’s still clearly busy processing her relationship with Gale, since he’s asking about him as if he hadn’t seen that dude just a couple of minutes prior)

“Have you seen Haymitch today?” “I checked in on him. Dead drunk. But I built up his fire and left him some bread,” he says. “I wanted to talk to - to both of you.” I don’t dare add more, here on my phone, which is surely tapped. - Despite everything, Peeta still made sure to look after Haymitch! And I know, there is also the issue of their houses themselves potentially being bugged, but I couldn’t help imagining how they could easily avoid the whole phone-tapping thing simply by using a tin can telephone (they do live pretty close to each other, after all) 😂

“You don’t even have a phone,” I say. “Effie had that fixed,” he [Haymitch] says. “Do you know she asked me if I’d like to give you away? I told her the sooner the better.” “Haymitch.” I can hear the pleading creeping into my voice. “Katniss.” He mimics my tone. “It won’t work.” - Okay, but Haymitch mimicking Katniss’s tone reminds me so much of when Peeta mimicked her tone towards the end of their Games, when she was trying to persuade him to climb into a tree as a lookout while he was insistent she’d show him some plants to gather; these three, I swear! 😂 On a sad note, Haymitch is talking from experience here when he’s advising Katniss not to challenge the Capitol 🥺😢

Some streets away from the square, I see a blaze flare up. None of us has to say it. That can only be the Hob going up in smoke. I think of Greasy Sae, Ripper, all my friends who make their livings there. - Katniss considers the people from the Hob her friends - honestly, even if the Hawthornes, Everdeens, Peeta and Haymitch all had agreed to leave D12, I don’t think Katniss would have been able to go through with it - she cares too much about the people in D12 to have been able to leave them to their fate

“Well, I better go see how much rubbing alcohol the apothecary can spare.” He [Haymitch] trudges off across the square and I look at Peeta. “What’s he want that for?” Then I realize the answer. “We can’t let him drink it. He’ll kill himself, or at the very least go blind. I’ve got some white liquor put away at home.” “Me, too. Maybe that will hold him until Ripper finds a way to be back in business,” says Peeta. - Another instance of Katniss and Peeta being on the same wavelength, having taken precautions to help out Haymitch so he doesn’t have to go cold turkey again

We find Hazelle in her house, nursing a very sick Posy. I recognize the measles spots. “I couldn’t leave her,” she says. “I knew Gale’d be in the best possible hands.” - The second mention of someone having contracted the measles in D12 - Why the heck does the Capitol withhold measles vaccination from the people in the districts?! They’re inflicting unnecessary damage onto the very people they want to exploit... But I guess cruelty isn’t always about playing it smart and logical...

When we’re outside, I turn to Peeta. “You go on back. I want to walk by the Hob.” “I’ll go with you,” he says. “No. I’ve dragged you into enough trouble,” I tell him. “And avoiding a stroll by the Hob... that’s going to fix things for me?” He smiles and takes my hand. - They are a team, they stick together (and they are constantly holding hands, always physically linked to each other)😩💕 Also, Peeta pointing out the irrationality of Katniss’s train of thought to calm her down and stay with her reminds me of how he’s going to use logical reasoning to calm her down after the jabberjays in the Quarter Quell arena

We go back to the square. I buy some cakes from Peeta’s father while they exchange small talk about the weather. No one mentions the ugly tools of torture just yards from the front door. The last thing I notice as we leave the square is that I do not recognize even one of the Peacekeepers’ faces. - How weird is it that Peeta and his dad just talk about the weather?! Is this supposed to illustrate how in the Mellark family they just ignored the ugliness going on in their lives *cough cough* the abuse *cough cough* and just pretended that everything was fine, on a very superficial level? Also, it makes perfect sense that the Peacekeepers have been exchanged; the more time we spend with people, the more likely we are to like them - that won’t do if you want to have a ruthless authoritarian police force in the districts

As the days pass, things go from bad to worse. The mines stay shut for two weeks, and by that time half of District 12 is starving. The number of kids signing up for tesserae soars, but they often don’t receive their grain. Food shortages begin, and even those with money come away from stores empty-handed. [...] The eagerly awaited food promised for Parcel Day arrives spoiled and defiled by rodents. - This is just so awful and despicable 😞 Life in the districts was already horrible but now the government does not even honor the extortionary rules they themselves have set up! I can’t help but wonder if the lack of food could be traced back to rebellions in the food supplying districts and, to keep this from the inhabitants of the Capitol, the reduced amount of good food was (obviously) kept for the Capitolites, so that the bad food had to be sent to the districts, anyway... It just seems like such a breach of ‘honor’/etiquette on the Capitol’s part, I dunno... Or maybe Snow was just desperate to use any means necessary to stamp out any potential rebellions in the districts that he still had some control over...

Gale goes home with no more talk of rebellion between us. But I can’t help thinking that everything he sees will only strengthen his resolve to fight back. [...] Rory has signed up for tesserae, something Gale can’t even speak about - Poor, Gale! Poor Hawthornes :(

My fingers have all but decided to release the arrow when I see the object in the glove. It’s a small white circle of flat bread. More of a cracker, really. Gray and soggy around the edges. But an image is clearly stamped in the center of it. It’s my mockingjay. - It is so very telling that the true symbol of the rebellion combines something symbolic of Katniss (which also contains a nod to Rue) and something symbolic of Peeta (the bread/cracker!) The people in the districts have rightfully recognized the both of them as symbol of the rebellion; they have a truer vision of the matter than the more artifically/forcefully constructed symbol of rebellion that D13 /Coin will push - we will also see that when the people in D13 will view Peeta as a traitor, while the rebels Katniss will visit in D8 instead ask her about Peeta and assure her that they know he was speaking under duress

#thgagain #thg #katniss everdeen #hunger games #thg meta #peeta mellark #haymitch abernathy #gale hawthorne #my sketches and drawings #thg fanart #catching fire

104 notes · View notes

polyadvice · 3 years ago

Text

I want to live in partnership with another couple, but my husband is unsure

My partner and i recently got married. We're really happy, but for the past half year I've caught feelings for two other friends. My husband feels the same way and these two friends are already in a relationship and poly. My husband has feelings but more platonic than my romantic feelings and doesn’t really wanna pursue anything. Every time i try to have a discussion about it he gets overwhelmed or jealous. But its like I just want them in queer platonic polycule?

I don't want to have sex or even kiss them but I want to go on dates and hold hands and live together and raise kids with them. My partner feels exactly the same way but he is still super hesitant. He was this hesitant when we started dating so idk what to do about my feelings. Am I a bad person for wanting to pursue this even though my spouse is lowkey jealous? And am I a bad spouse for even wanting another relationship while being just recently married? I don't want to weird my friends out but I don't like to just not tell people how I feel about them. It feels wrong somehow. And on another note, sorry for all the questions, if my partner and I did decide to pursue this kind of relationship, how do I even go about it?

The good news is that the arrangement you’re describing is as old as humanity itself, and in fact how most families have been raised over the course of history. The “nuclear family,” where only two adults live in a detached home and are expected to meet all of each other’s financial, developmental, emotional, physical, culinary, etc. needs - as well as those of any children - is a very recent concept.

You may be well served by letting go of the concept of a “queer platonic polycule” and exploring language for what you really want that doesn’t signify a necessary departure from the monogamous marriage your husband feels committed to protect. What you’ve described may be well represented by other concepts, including family friends, kinship networks, close neighbors, chosen family, or non-blood cousins. Raising kids together, spending quality time together, supporting each other, and “doing life together” might be less threatening ways to talk about this, at least for your husband.

Talk with your husband about what he wants, and what he does not want. Be specific, using examples and real-world concepts rather than conceptual terms. What is his best case scenario, and what is his worst case scenario? What is he afraid of happening? Can he describe where his jealousy is coming from? What do you mean by “go on dates?” What kind of quality time spent with these other people would feel like “too much” or “jealousy-inducing” for him?

Talk through actual situations. Would you two want to plan joint vacations with this couple? How would you handle things like joint finances or individual healthcare costs? What does “raise kids together” mean for you? Are there any examples from books, movies, or your own lives that you can draw inspiration from? Do you know any neighbors, extended families, religious congregations, or other people who can help serve as a model for this kind of life?

Once you’ve figured out what you actually want, you can bring that up with the other couple. Instead of asking “do you want to form a queer platonic polycule,” ask them “what are your thoughts on co-living with us?” or “would you like to go camping with us next weekend?” Worry less about what words to put on things, and focus on how you want to be in relationship. In some cases, you might not need to have a Big Serious Relationship Defining Conversation, and can instead simply start intentionally living into the type of connection you want. Finally, you ask whether you are a bad person for having these feelings and desires, and my answer to that question is a resounding: absolutely not! Our thoughts, feelings, and desires are entirely our own business and don’t have the power to make us a good or bad person. It’s how you act on them that matters. If you’re pressuring your husband into doing something that he doesn’t want, or you’re acting manipulative or otherwise disregarding his boundaries, then those are not great things to do, but I’d still caution you against equating “did an unhealthy or unhelpful thing” and “is a bad person.” You are you, and you contain multitudes, and you’ve hurt people and you’ve helped people, and you’re just a person. Try to let go of this notion that anything you think or do can make you “a bad person.”

Completely unrelated: One of my Buzzfeed quizzes made it to the front page, which makes it the best contender for Maybe Actually Making Me Some Money. If you like this blog and enjoy my advice, would you be so kind as to click this link or even share it around to help it gain some momentum? <3

#community #polyamory #platonic friendship #advice #intentionality

72 notes · View notes

hypnomicimagines · 3 years ago

Text

The Past is the Past [Yamada Ichiro]

You had thought you left that relationship behind you.

Technically, you didn’t even consider it an actual relationship. To summarize it in the crudest manner possible the man you had formerly been seeing was nothing more than a glorified fuck buddy, and even in those moments he barely managed to meet your expectations. It was a moment of weakness more than anything and you hated to admit to it, hated that this man tried to hold your sexual relationship over your head as though it meant anything more than it did. You don’t think he was in love with you by any stretch of the imagination but it was about the control he wanted to exert over you, the guilt he wanted you to feel thinking he was depressed that he had to spend his nights alone.

In fact, you could remember a time where you had gotten annoyed about him ditching you last second (since you wasted time getting ready) and he had come at you like you were an obsessive freak. That moment was what had you calling it quits on your relationship with him, but thankfully your bed had barely gotten cold before you found your next warmer.

Perhaps he was a little more to you than that.

You laughed as his brothers both took off into the crowd, two different people who had two different objectives in mind to enjoy the festival to the fullest. Ichiro stayed solidly by your side though he looked exasperated at how his little brothers were acting, giving you an apologetic look though you didn’t mind. They had argued the entire walk there about what would be the most fun to do and after not agreeing, had decided to take off and prove they were having the most fun doing their specific activity. You can’t begin to fathom HOW they’re going to judge that particular contest but that wasn’t your biggest concern right now nor was it Ichiro’s.

“Where should we go first?” Ichiro looked like a kid in a candy store as he looked out over the festival, eyeing a game with some interesting prizes that might look good in your arms. You wonder when the last time he ever let himself have fun was but it was too sad to dwell on for long, knowing the bigger implications were that Ichiro never really had a childhood to begin with. From getting a job at such a young age to caring for his brother on his own, he… “Hey!”

“Sorry!” You bowed your head in apology but Ichiro’s light-hearted laughter brought you back into your good mood, hooking arms with your totally-not-boyfriend even though he certainly should be at that point. You had been ‘dating’ for quite some time now, a relationship with no commitments though you weren’t seeing anyone else (and you were positive Ichiro wasn’t either); it had been in a weird limbo that you didn’t want to blame on commitment issues but were certainly because of commitment issues. “Why don’t we eat something good first? And then you can show off for me at that goldfish game.”

Ichiro had no complaints and led you to a nearby stall, your heart fluttering in your chest as he held it up to your face to feed you. His other hand was waiting to catch any excess food that might fall, a doting move that had you tumbling even further into the hypothetical love hole you found yourself in. You didn’t like that you had picked that name but since you would never utter those words out loud, you simply dealt with your inability to name things in a less awkward way.

“Did it taste good?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

You enjoyed the surprised look on his face as you held up the snack to him to take a bite out of, having to admit that he looked cute when he was flustered like that. The evening was off to a beautiful start, a date that was full of an energy unlike any of the other ones. Ichiro was the type of man you felt you could truly enjoy yourself around, where you could be yourself without having to worry about fitting into a specific stereotype until you’d locked him in. He wanted you just as you were and you wanted him as he was, even if you had to admit he was as close to being the perfect man as he could possibly be.

“Should’ve known I’d see you here whorin’ around with someone else.”

You didn’t even know you were being addressed at first, too absorbed in the way Ichiro looked while he was concentrating at the game in front of him. You only realized it once you’re pulled back abruptly, stumbling and grabbing onto Ichiro in surprise. He whipped around with lightning speed, arm wrapped around your middle as he pulled you back to his side and away from your assailant. In another unfortunate moment, Jiro and Saburo came running back, arguing as they did so but quieting down once they sensed the atmosphere.

“Why won’t you respond to my phone calls? My texts? This dude why?” He looked Ichiro up and down as though he could possibly stand a chance against him and so far he’s stayed silent, carefully assessing the situation as he kept you close to him. “I suddenly ain’t good enough for you?”

“What’s there to be so mad about? Weren’t we just friends?”

“Talk to me like that again—” His arm flexed like he was going to swing but you find yourself on the backline now, completely shielded from any oncoming danger.

The three Yamada brothers standing defensively in front of you tugged at your heartstrings, your grip on Ichiro’s arm tightening. You didn’t want the younger two to hear the disgusting things that might be spewing out of his mouth if this confrontation continued, you didn’t want their view of you to be colored by a world they didn’t quite understand (and that it wasn’t your business to explain to them). Ichiro had the same idea, calling out to Jiro then Saburo, nodding behind him to show it was time for them to back off. As much as your ‘ex’ wanted to continue shouting it was all too easy to lose him in the crowd once you got deeper into the festival grounds, exiting on the other side once you were positive the coast was clear.

“Who was that guy anyway?” Jiro asked as he fixed his hat, looking back with a scowl. “Seemed like a real jerk.”

“He was.” Ichiro agreed, looking to Saburo to see if the youngest in the group was unharmed. “You shouldn’t put yourselves in harms way like that. What if something happened?”

“Well, we couldn’t let anything happen to them, right? You wouldn’t so why should we have to sit back?”

“Jiro’s right about something for once.” Saburo agreed, Jiro looking quite proud before he realized what a backhanded compliment it was. “You told us to protect the people we care about and… and…”

Saburo is suddenly flustered and Jiro joined him in being embarrassed, knowing his thoughts had been along the same line (he just hadn’t spoken them out loud). You and Ichiro both shared a surprised look as you hadn’t realized how fond of you they really were, your heart once again overwhelmed with a hurricane of intense emotions. You reached out to wrap your arms around both of them in a tight hug, crying out something or other about how ridiculously cute they are. Ichiro watched with a smile as his brothers grew even more sheepish at your affection, noting that they both were still awkwardly patting your back to return the gesture in their own way.

Once you’ve returned to the Yamada household Jiro and Saburo said their goodnights, probably just as exhausted by the evenings events as you were. Ichiro invited you to sit on the couch beside him and you did so after changing into casual attire, leaning into his arms to experience the comfort you had craved for the past few hours.

“I’m guessing tonight would be a bad night to make it official?” Ichiro asked awkwardly.

“You were gonna… ask me out at the festival? Wait, I bet it was gonna be right before the fireworks, right? Just in case I said no and we could enjoy one last beautiful moment before my potential rejection.”

“I know I read a lot of light novels but I’m not that cliché,” Ichiro grinned, leaning over to kiss your cheek. “But… maybe. That would be a good hypothetical plan.”

“It would be… I really would’ve liked that. To have a moment under the fireworks with you.” You leaned over to return the affection, lips brushing against his cheek. “But my answer is yes, romantic fireworks present or not.”

“R-Really?” As much confidence as he had shown you throughout the night this is the first moment you’d ever seen him falter like that; you really would have to cherish that cute wide-eyed look on his face as you had a feeling it would be rarity.

“Yes, really. I would be some type of idiot to turn you down.”

“Nah, not an idiot.” Ichiro leaned in to press his lips against yours, savoring the feeling of your body pressing against his. “We should get some sleep, tonight was exhausting…”

“Are you sure sleep is what’s on your mind, baby?” Your sultry tone is noted immediately, Ichiro’s cheeks darkening at your implications. “Why don’t we make our way up to your bedroom and we’ll see how much sleep we’ll get tonight.”

#Yamada Ichiro #Ichiro Yamada #Hypnosis Mic #Hypnosis Microphone #Hypnosis Mic Imagines #Hypnosis Microphone Imagines #Hypnosis Mic x Reader #Hypnosis Microphone x Reader #Yamada Ichiro x Reader #Scenario

77 notes · View notes

becomewings · 4 years ago

Photo

The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>

BTS Universe Story Highlights, pt. 4 / 4

« pt. 3 | start at the beginning

Introduction

The final sections for TaeHyung’s arc and the Epilogue are 4.3k and 4.4k, respectively. As with earlier parts of the series, I have included “tl;dr commentary” at the bottom of the post after a section of additional thoughts (specifically devoted to an interesting MV location parallel!). This commentary summarizes the parenthetical asides I made throughout the summaries and may be of interest as standalone reading to those who have already played the game yet would like to review its connections to the BU texts and MVs.

Content warning: contains references to death, suicide, suicidal ideation, child abuse, domestic violence, blood, homicide, depression, trauma, PTSD

This guide contains major spoilers and includes references to other BU media

Do not repost, copy, or quote without permission

Heart’s Distance

TaeHyung’s story opens with a short cutscene. In his apartment (with the calendar on the wall open to May), TaeHyung smiles at a photo of his father holding him as a baby. (The image looks similar to the photograph he holds at 1’48” in the HYYH On Stage: Prologue short film.) Remembering his father’s drinking and violence, he crumples the photo with a sigh. SeokJin then narrates over a series of shots explaining the latest developments in the loops. By this 15 May Year 22, he has saved NamJoon, ensured that JungKook and YoonGi saved each other, prevented HoSeok’s accident in the hospital, and borrowed everyone’s help to free JiMin. Everyone is gathered outside NamJoon’s container that night, smiling and giddy from saving JiMin. “How long has it been since we’ve all laughed together?” SeokJin asks. (This is a reference to the recurring phrase “we can laugh when we’re together” present throughout the Notes and occasionally this game.) He wants to relax and enjoy the moment too but knows this isn’t over yet. TaeHyung is laughing radiantly next to JiMin. “What drives this happy and innocent TaeHyung to commit such an unspeakable act?” he wonders.

SeokJin’s reflections on the coming days in previous loops present the crux of his challenge and this story: on 19 May, TaeHyung is arrested for vandalism while painting graffiti on the streets. (The bus stop depicted in the shot is the same as the one in Highlight Reel.) One thing SeokJin has learned through the loops is that TaeHyung and his sister live under the constant threat of domestic violence. On 20 May, TaeHyung goes home after spending the night at the police station. The situation gets especially bad for his older sister, and TaeHyung makes a choice that he can’t take back. (In the shot in the game, TaeHyung approaches his father from behind and the sound of glass occurs on a cut to black. We know from the I Need U MV and Save Me webtoon that he fatally stabs his father.) SeokJin’s inner thoughts relate that he has tried to stop this event by preventing TaeHyung from going home this day or even involving NamJoon—but all of his attempts have ended in failure.

While SeokJin is mulling over this challenge during their gathering on the night of 15 May, HoSeok approaches and asks what he’s thinking about by himself. “Oh, nothing much,” SeokJin dismisses. HoSeok remarks that it’s nice to be there with everyone. “It makes me think of the old days…” While HoSeok happily chats, SeokJin’s attention stays on TaeHyung as he approaches NamJoon. The player is given the choice to “get closer to eavesdrop” or “listen to what HoSeok has to say.” In the first path, SeokJin excuses himself to make a phone call and only pretends to pick up the phone as he nears TaeHyung and NamJoon. In the second path, HoSeok jokes about eating too many snacks in high school thanks to SeokJin. SeokJin is a little distracted, but HoSeok notices that TaeHyung has snacks. “Huh? What’s that? I want some too!” SeokJin uses this opportunity to follow HoSeok and join their two friends. The paths converge with SeokJin overhearing TaeHyung and NamJoon’s conversation. TaeHyung says he doesn’t want to go home and asks if he can spend the night at the container. SeokJin remembers that TaeHyung often mentioned not wanting to go home in high school. Back then, they thought it was because he enjoyed being with the group, but now SeokJin knows that he was probably avoiding his father. He wonders why TaeHyung insists on going home on the 20th since he hates it there so much. Maybe learning the reason will be the key to stopping—and saving—TaeHyung. “Do whatever you want. You can sleep over,” NamJoon replies. TaeHyung brightens visibly at this answer. “Do you want to stay up doing something? We can play a card game, or…” HoSeok chimes in too that it sounds like a fun idea, but NamJoon says he has work tomorrow and can’t stay up late. “Let’s play until I have to go to bed.” TaeHyung’s phone vibrates. His face is already grim when he peers at it. “Actually, I think I have to go home.” Surprised, NamJoon asks why, but TaeHyung leaves without answering.

SeokJin leaves the gathering and follows TaeHyung, shadowing him carefully to avoid detection. He wonders what was in the text that changed TaeHyung’s mind and notices that they’re heading in the opposite direction of his home. After purchasing snacks at a nearby store, TaeHyung stands at a bus stop. SeokJin wonders if he’s waiting for someone since he lets several buses pass by. Eventually, a disembarking figure approaches TaeHyung. SeokJin recognizes her as Kim Eunhye, TaeHyung’s older sister. She asks why he is waiting for her since he said he’d be home late. “I was about to head in, so I thought I’d wait for you,” TaeHyung replies. “You should’ve gone ahead. Dad probably hasn’t had dinner yet…” she trails off. TaeHyung says he ordered delivery to the house for their dad. “Did you eat yet? Here.” He hands her a hot dog. SeokJin follows at a distance when they begin walking home. “Do you think dad will be drinking?” Eunhye wonders. “Is that even a question?” TaeHyung returns. They go back and forth about how he has been drinking less these days, goes to work every day, and doesn’t get as angry. “I hope things stay like this,” Eunhye finishes. “...It won’t last,” says TaeHyung. From his sigh, SeokJin senses how little TaeHyung trusts his father. He is surprised to hear that his father goes to work every day. In previous loops, he wondered if the cause for TaeHyung’s accident was an external force and went to observe his father’s workplace, but the man was not at the construction site and apparently hadn’t shown up for several days.

“I better check it out,” SeokJin decides. He calls Uncle JunHo, his father’s assistant, to ask for a favor. The two meet later in SeokJin’s bedroom. “You wanted to go on-site for practical training, right? This is the form you need,” says JunHo. He dismisses SeokJin’s thanks. “The Assemblyman seemed to be interested, too. He said he’ll be keeping an eye on things.” “Father said that?” SeokJin checks. “Make sure to use this opportunity to take a thorough look around. It’ll all be helpful to you later,” JunHo advises. (It’s helpful to know that Kim ChangJun is involved in some shady business with a construction company—this is revealed in The Notes 2.)

On 17 May, SeokJin visits the construction site. The foreman tells him that they’re busy and won’t have time to pay any special attention to him. SeokJin is glad for the lack of watchful eyes because it gives him the opportunity to observe TaeHyung’s father, Kim SungHoon. He is working silently, and SeokJin can’t see anything wrong on the surface. “Why does he get so violent at home?” he wonders. The foreman has apparently been watching too and yells at him. “Oi, you! Why aren’t you working?” Kim SungHoon points out that there isn’t any scaffolding. The foreman orders him to use a ladder instead. “You can’t get any work done being all careful.” Kim SungHoon tries to protest, but the foreman won’t hear it. “Are you going to pay for it if the schedule gets delayed, Mr. Kim? Hurry it up!” A look appears on Kim SungHoon’s face as though he’s been wronged, but he uses the ladder to begin working. SeokJin’s concern must be visible, for the foreman makes conversation with him. “Ahem. Don’t get the wrong idea. You might not be well aware of it yet, but it’s hard to always follow the rules on site. We can’t stay on schedule if we’re not flexible.” “I see…” murmurs SeokJin.

Another laborer shouts, drawing their attention: Kim SungHoon has fallen from the ladder and lies groaning on the ground. The foreman curses and rushes over, demanding how he could be so careless and shifting the blame to him for not paying attention. With a hurt back, Kim SungHoon cannot continue working. Trying to downplay the accident, the foreman gives him a few bills and advises him to stop by the hospital. TaeHyung’s father seems to have something to say, but he withers under the foreman’s stare and accepts the money in resignation. The foreman then assures SeokJin that this happens occasionally on a rough worksite and hands him money too. “You’ve worked hard, so here’s a little something for you to get a nice snack. Forget about everything that happened today. You know what I mean, right?” His brazen, selfish attitude angers SeokJin, but he smiles and leaves to follow Kim SungHoon. He is shocked to witness TaeHyung’s father purchase alcohol at a convenience store rather than go to a hospital. Worried about what will happen if he drinks while injured, SeokJin tries to call TaeHyung, but he doesn’t pick up. The episode ends with a small scene of TaeHyung finishing graffiti on a wall. He doesn’t know why he painted what he did, but the “dumb, ugly-looking graffiti” represents how he feels. He rubs the still-wet paint, yet it doesn’t go away. Picking a new color, TaeHyung sprays over the existing layers like he’s pouring and emptying out all of himself.

On 18 May, TaeHyung deals with his third rude customer of the day at the convenience store. The man demands why he must pay for a bag, even though the law has changed so they can no longer be given freely. TaeHyung either relents and gives him the bag without charge or stands firm. In the first path, he gives in, knowing that he probably won’t restrain his anger if they argue further and that he’ll have to cover the cost with his own paycheck. In the second path, the customer flings the money at him before leaving. TaeHyung clenches his fists and holds in his anger. The paths rejoin with him reflecting that this isn’t a good day. He greets the next customer and realizes that it’s SeokJin. “How come you’ve been stopping by so often these days?” TaeHyung asks while ringing up his bottled coffee. “Huh? Just. I have some things to take care of around here,” SeokJin answers. TaeHyung doesn’t know whether or not to believe him. SeokJin keeps asking how he’s doing, and it makes him a little uncomfortable. Today, SeokJin asks more meaningless questions as always, until: “How’s your father?” TaeHyung can’t stop himself from responding sharply. “Why do you ask about him?” Taken aback, SeokJin stammers, “N-No reason, really. I was just wondering if he was well… Uh… Never mind.”

A rich-looking father and son enter the store, interrupting the awkward silence. The way the father looks after his son and buys him what he wants to eat plunges TaeHyung into memories—he once felt the same as the boy about his own father. He remembers asking his dad who the baby is in the photograph we see at the beginning of the story. Kim SungHoon said it was him. “Don’t you think you look just like dad, TaeHyung?” An incoming phone call shakes TaeHyung out of his memories. The food deliverer informs him that no one is home to accept the order of hangover soup. “Huh? My father should be there…” TaeHyung confirms that the deliverer can leave the food outside the door, but he worries about his dad, who was passed out drunk and groaning in his sleep when he left for work. “SeokJin. I need to run home really quickly. Do you think you can watch the store for me?” TaeHyung leaves as soon as SeokJin gives a startled affirmative. The episode ends in SeokJin’s perspective. He’s curious and concerned about what is going on with TaeHyung, as he couldn’t overhear the phone call. Since leaving the store alone to follow TaeHyung may just create more trouble for him, SeokJin decides to stay put and look for clues.

Arriving home, TaeHyung brings the hangover soup inside and finds his father slouched in the corner. More soju bottles are lying out than when he left this morning. “Your lunch is here.” TaeHyung shakes him when there’s no response. “Wake up and eat.” Kim SungHoon mumbles something unintelligible, so TaeHyung nudges him again. His father shudders and cries out. “You bastard! I’d just gotten comfortable!” “Oh… I just wanted you to eat before the soup gets cold…” says TaeHyung. Kim SungHoon calls him a bastard for not listening. “I just told you to leave that damn thing here!” “Hah… Anyway, eat your lunch.” TaeHyung touches his shoulder again, and his father shoves him away. “The pain is killing me. Get lost, bastard!” TaeHyung yelps. The back of his neck burns from something he hit, but he doesn’t feel the pain over the rage brewing inside him. He can’t stand to look at his father for another second and kicks the door open to rush outside. “But of course. Why did I run over here to make sure that miserable geezer ate something?” he thinks bitterly. TaeHyung’s temper cools as he walks back to the store, and he remembers the pain in his neck. His fingers come away with blood when he touches the spot. He trudges onward, planning to bandage it at work. The memory of the rich father-son duo comes to mind: the man holding his son’s hand so tenderly, and the kid smiling brightly up at him. It makes TaeHyung even more miserable, and he fights to suppress the feelings that threaten to overflow.

Alone in the convenience store, SeokJin feels anxious not knowing when TaeHyung will return but decides to poke around, hoping to learn something like he did when observing NamJoon’s room at the gas station. He either looks through TaeHyung’s backpack or a full box near the register. The box is only a makeshift lost-and-found with customers’ forgotten items. Despite his discomfort at rooting through someone’s belongings, SeokJin finds the crumpled photograph of TaeHyung as a baby with his father in the bag. “He wouldn’t be carrying it around if he truly hated his father. But it wouldn’t be crumpled if he liked him, either. Is it… love and hate?” SeokJin wonders. He also finds a post-it stuck on the counter with a note left by HoSeok: “I packed this for myself but Auntie invited me over for dinner. There are two patties inside. Make sure to enjoy it and write me a full review at least one page long!” SeokJin realizes they’ve spent all this time looking out for each other. He’s glad to see the signs of HoSeok taking care of TaeHyung and TaeHyung being grateful enough to keep the note.

When TaeHyung returns, SeokJin is concerned to see blood from a cut on his neck. “Are you okay, TaeHyung? What happened to your neck?” But TaeHyung avoids looking at him and doesn’t answer, instead putting on a bandage and continuing work. SeokJin ignores a call from Uncle JunHo, deciding it’s more important to look after TaeHyung. “Are you sure you can stay here all day like this, SeokJin? Aren’t there people at home wondering where you are?” TaeHyung speaks up at that moment. SeokJin smiles sheepishly. But with the incident looming ahead on the 20th and no solutions yet to avert it, he has no choice but to stick close to him. After TaeHyung’s shift ends, SeokJin asks what he’s doing now. The red seeping through the bandage worries him. “I’m just… gonna go paint some graffiti,” says TaeHyung. He reluctantly agrees to allow SeokJin to tag along. His phone vibrates before they leave. “Sis? What’s going on? What? The emergency room? Why is Dad there? Hold on. I’ll be right there!” TaeHyung runs out. SeokJin catches up to offer him a ride, which he accepts after a moment’s hesitation.

The perspective switches to TaeHyung when they arrive at the hospital and find his sister waiting with an uneasy expression. She thinks that their father was injured at work. When she tapped him lightly to wake him up for dinner, it caused him a lot of pain. TaeHyung remembers the incident at lunchtime and wonders if he felt like that earlier, too. Eunhye notices SeokJin, and TaeHyung introduces them, noticing that her hand seems to make her uncomfortable. “Did you hurt yourself, sis? What happened to your hand?” “Oh, it’s nothing. I… tripped before we came to the hospital.” TaeHyung knows she’s lying but doesn’t argue. He pretends not to see her injuries, and she pretends not to see the one on his neck—like they always do. Eunhye voices concern about the high bill, which the hospital wants them to pay before discharging their father tomorrow. “The company will take care of it if he was injured at work,” SeokJin assures. TaeHyung finds the construction foreman’s number in his dad’s cell phone and calls him. Reporting the situation, he asks if his father’s injured back can be processed as an industrial accident. The foreman denies that they can help. “How can we cover an accident where Kim SungHoon was drunk on the job and failed to follow safety protocol?” The foreman informs him that he already gave Kim SungHoon money to see a doctor. “There’s nothing else to say, so I’m going to go. And I’m telling you—don’t try to pull anything.” TaeHyung swears when the call ends. Eunhye wonders if the foreman is mistaken because she doesn’t think their father drank that day. TaeHyung purses his lips shut instead of replying, filled with rage at the patronizing foreman and their incompetent father. He hates that he can’t say his dad isn’t the kind of person to drink on the job, and his body shakes with indescribable emotion.

“They won’t cover it as a workplace accident?” SeokJin asks, the perspective shifting to him. He knows the foreman is lying but is unsure how to help TaeHyung and his despairing sister. He could pay the hospital fee himself, but that was counterproductive when he tried it for NamJoon in an earlier loop. Noticing a text from Uncle JunHo asking where he is, SeokJin postpones his decision for later and bids TaeHyung a quick farewell. “I’m sure there’s a way to take care of all of this. Don’t worry too much. Take care of your dad. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

On 19 May, TaeHyung and his sister exit the hospital room with twin sighs. Their father called the foreman back after hearing about the first conversation and let loose, only hanging up when his supervisor agreed to speak in person at the hospital. He also demanded alcohol all night and only recently fell asleep. TaeHyung notices that Eunhye looks exhausted and suggests that they take a nap before the foreman arrives that evening. Later, the foreman arrives with some workers and a box of drinks. TaeHyung stands in the corner, not wanting to butt in since this is his father’s business. The foreman asks how Kim SungHoon is doing, advises him to rest, and then adds, “We’re here to say that you shouldn’t bring up compensation since it’s your fault you were injured.” The foreman accuses him of drinking on the job, and the coworkers Kang and Seo nervously agree. Kim SungHoon argues back about being denied the scaffolding and drops the box of drinks, a “token of their sincerity,” on the floor. While the other works avert their gaze, the foreman looks down on him and clucks his tongue. “You bastard! You call yourself a man?!” Kim SungHoon roars. The foreman bristles. “What? Bastard? Watch your mouth punk!”

Eunhye tries to intervene, pleading for her father to calm down and apologizing on his behalf. The foreman accepts her actions like it’s the obvious thing for her to do. His arrogant attitude reminds TaeHyung of how he probably deals with his underlings. “Sir. My father wasn’t drunk,” he speaks up. The foreman’s arrogant air dissipates. “What are you saying? I have witnesses here.” TaeHyung explains that his dad did not drink that day or the previous one. The foreman scoffs. “Look at this kid. Where’d you learn your manners? He probably drank on the way to work even if he didn’t at home! Who do you think you are, raising your voice like that?” TaeHyung’s hands tremble with rage at the injustice, but he has nothing to retort. Suddenly, SeokJin appears. “I also saw everything. Remember me? I was there on site for practical training that day. I watched him work and he definitely wasn’t drunk.” The foreman grows flustered as SeokJin reveals the truth of the site’s dangerous work process and makes it clear that he coerced Kim SungHoon into not following the correct procedure. He glares between SeokJin and TaeHyung. “I don’t know how you both are putting up this united front… But you think it’s going to change things? We already paid him. It’s a done deal. Understood?” Fuming, the foreman leaves with the other workers in tow. “It’s alright now, TaeHyung.” SeokJin gently taps his shoulder. TaeHyung realizes how tense he has been when he loosens his grip and sees little crescents of his fingernails cut into his palms. (His wounded palms are a recurring motif.)

The perspective shifts to SeokJin while TaeHyung stares blankly at his hands. He decides to come clean about his payment of Kim SungHoon’s hospital bill, since the problem with NamJoon was that he paid it secretly. “You can think of it as borrowing—” “Thanks, SeokJin,” TaeHyung interrupts. “I’ll pay back all of it. Thank you.” SeokJin is a little shocked by his response—it is the first time he’s heard “thank you” from TaeHyung. He hopes that this is the beginning of solving TaeHyung’s problems and bids farewell for the day. Outside the hospital, SeokJin runs into HoSeok, who correctly guesses that he came to visit TaeHyung. “How’d you know?” “I stopped by TaeHyung’s work and didn’t see him, so I called him right away,” HoSeok explains. SeokJin expects him to ask about Kim SungHoon, but instead HoSeok worries about his friend first. “Is TaeHyung alright? He must’ve been so shocked. He cares a lot about his dad…” “TaeHyung does?” SeokJin checks. “Yeah. Even though he says that he doesn’t want to go home all the time, he always makes sure his dad gets a real meal every day. Even if he just eats convenience store snacks himself.” This is new information to SeokJin, who wonders if this is why TaeHyung is determined to go home on the 20th. HoSeok seems more familiar with TaeHyung’s sincerity than anyone else. SeokJin is still braced to explain how he knew about Kim SungHoon’s injury, but HoSeok is more focused on contacting TaeHyung and continues on towards the hospital. Overcome with exhaustion as his tension ebbs, SeokJin trudges home to plan his next move.

Later on 19 May, TaeHyung helps his father walk home after he is discharged from the hospital. He is grateful that SeokJin paid the bill but even more so that he intervened to verify Kim SungHoon’s unjust treatment. “SeokJin might be a better person than I thought.” No words are exchanged as TaeHyung supports his father. His arm is thin, but the weight that presses down on him is burdensome. “It’s the weight of the wheel that I can’t escape. The weight of reality—that I’m always going to be responsible for my father. A person that I wish I could let go, but can’t, and the contradictory feelings of hating my father but wanting to protect him.” In a perspective switch, SeokJin watches at a distance with bated breath. Even though TaeHyung seems accustomed to helping his father walk, Kim SungHoon raises his voice every time he almost falls. SeokJin guesses that TaeHyung is adamant about going home on the 20th because he is worried about his father, who is just out of the hospital, but all he sees is violence against his sister when he arrives. “I’m going to stop it this time, no matter what,” he vows.

On 20 May, SeokJin stands at the bus stop and touches the graffiti for which TaeHyung was arrested the previous night. (It’s the “I’m Fine” message depicted at the same location in the Highlight Reel.) He wonders what TaeHyung felt when he painted it and feels uneasy that he may not be handling this sequence correctly. SeokJin shakes away this premature doubt. There’s one thing that has changed from the previous loop: him. He has protected Kim SungHoon after his injury, paid the hospital bill, and built up enough credibility with TaeHyung to earn his thanks. This time, he reassures himself, his words will get through to his friend. Later, SeokJin follows TaeHyung when he leaves the police station. They walk in silence, but TaeHyung does not push him away or ask why he’s following. “Thanks for walking me here, SeokJin,” he speaks up when they arrive at his house. SeokJin waits a few moments before heading inside after him, entering a familiar situation he has seen far too many times: TaeHyung lunging toward his father, who looms near Eunhye. “TaeHyung! No!” SeokJin dashes to grab his arm. “Let go!” TaeHyung snarls and flails. SeokJin holds tighter, pleading for him to calm down. TaeHyung yells and shoves him away. SeokJin slams into something and falls, pain blooming in his skull. TaeHyung spins around with an expression of shock. The voices calling SeokJin grow fainter, and his vision blurs. “Tae… Hyung…” The glass shatters, marking another failed loop and concluding the story. (This is not the first time TaeHyung has caused SeokJin grave or mortal injury during his intervention: in the Save Me webtoon, he accidentally stabbed SeokJin with the broken bottle instead of his father.)

Nightmare: Epilogue

Throughout the <I’M FINE> series, we have witnessed SeokJin’s trials and failures in the earlier time loops. These experiences culminate in the Epilogue, titled “Nightmare,” as in The Notes 1. This arc spans his efforts to save each of his friends between 11 April and 22 May rather than focusing on one or two characters. SeokJin’s decisions and their consequences here closely follow The Notes 1, so now we have a more detailed picture of his journey between the Save Me webtoon and the first book. The Epilogue fills in some gaps and provides greater depth to these events. For the sake of clearer context, I have still summarized the moments that parallel The Notes 1.

On 11 April Year 22, SeokJin opens his eyes to the familiar bedroom ceiling, the events of the previous loop replaying in his mind. Will he be able to save his friends this time? Uncertainty, horror, and the fresh pain of failure plague him, but he looks at the photo of his friends by the sea. Once, he believed that saving them would be straightforward. But while obsessing over only the problems that he could see, SeokJin lost his way and had to learn from his mistakes. The “signal fires” that helped guide him back were the times spent with his friends, the moments they began to truly understand each other, and the memories he wants to treasure. As he leaves his room, he reflects: “We’re all connected together by a single string, and we’re fated to save one another. And the person to finally put an end to all of this… has to be me.”

In his car, SeokJin encounters a scene at the school crosswalk that he always runs into around this time. He sees a downcast-looking JungKook crossing the street among a group of students. The player is given an option to get out of the car to greet him or pass him by. Regardless of the decision, SeokJin knows that he can’t let his emotions steer his actions. In a previous loop (depicted in JungKook’s arc), he brought JungKook to see the cherry blossoms blooming on the university campus. SeokJin wonders if the JungKook from that loop enjoyed it at least a little. But ultimately, it was just a day and JungKook ended up alone with nothing changed. Not wanting to repeat his past mistakes, SeokJin drives by without stopping.

Later that night, SeokJin pulls into Naeri gas station. NamJoon greets him with a now-familiar look of surprise. “Oh. SeokJin?” “It’s been a while.” SeokJin is determined to make this the last time they repeat this conversation. (As mentioned in part 1, this sequence parallels their moment at the end of the Blood Sweat & Tears Japanese version MV.) As they move to a corner of the station to continue their conversation, the perspective shifts to NamJoon. Something seems a little weird to him, and SeokJin looks like he has a lot to say, but he manages to gloss over it. NamJoon is about to invite him to the meetup with the other guys after work, but his boss yells for him to do his job. An expensive foreign car pulls up to the gas pump, and the customer drops the money on the ground when NamJoon reaches for it. “Ah, butterfingers. What are you doing? Not gonna pick that up?” the man sneers. The player is presented the choice to pick up the money or not. In both paths, NamJoon unconsciously clenches his fists. “You don’t want it?” asks the customer. The paths converge with SeokJin easily picking up the bills and handing them back to the driver. “You dropped this.” Hands shaking, NamJoon is mortified by the situation that caused SeokJin to react, yet his friend continues to stand there between him and the customer. The man demands who he is, but SeokJin advises, “You must be busy… So you should leave.” Out of steam, the customer drives off. NamJoon thanks SeokJin. “It’s nothing. What were you going to tell me earlier?” NamJoon forces his mouth to move. “Ah. I’m meeting up with TaeHyung and HoSeok today after work. Do you want to come with me?”

Back in SeokJin’s perspective, these are the words he’s been waiting for. Nerves dry his mouth, but he tries to speak naturally and inquires about the others. NamJoon doesn’t really keep in touch with them, but offers to call HoSeok, who still talks to YoonGi. SeokJin knows that YoonGi will call JungKook after hearing from HoSeok—this is how he saves JungKook tonight. His phone buzzes with a call from his father. “Oh, I’m sorry… But I need to leave.” NamJoon’s expression reflects disappointment yet understanding. “That’s too bad. Let’s hang out another time.” “Yeah. Tell the guys hello for me.” SeokJin turns back as he arrives at his car. “NamJoon. If we can get everyone together… Let’s all go to the ocean.” NamJoon looks puzzled by the suggestion. “The ocean?” SeokJin smiles in lieu of an explanation.

The third episode begins with JungKook fighting a group of thugs in a covered alley. (The date is unspecified, but this is a continuation of the night of 11 April.) They kick his stomach and spit on the ground as they walk away, a sight that reinvigorates him even though he can barely sit up. He either says something to provoke them or hurls his bag at them. Riled up, they beat him again as he laughs, vision blurring. They’re gone by the time everything comes back into focus. JungKook got what he wanted: he deliberately provoked them, and when he laughed, they called him crazy and hit him harder. He watches a breeze flatten a tuft of grass in the pavement, just like him. JungKook forces himself to laugh again because he’s afraid he may cry. Where does he go now? He feels like a ghost at home: he’s never a priority for his mom, and dealing with his stepfather is a pain. JungKook closes his eyes, hoping that when he opens them, he won’t be here.

The scene that follows appears to be a memory of 7 April, although it is not specified as such and is written in present tense. (This encounter occurs in The Notes 1 as well as episode 4 of JungKook’s story.) While wandering the streets at night, JungKook is drawn by a familiar piano tune to a music shop with broken showroom windows. He sees YoonGi, for the first time in two years, playing within and looking like he will crumble at any moment. JungKook can’t muster up the courage to follow when he leaves and instead sits at the piano. The keys feel cold like no one has touched them. By memory, he stumbles through the song that YoonGi played this night and back in the classroom hideout. YoonGi appears beside him and corrects the notes like he did in their school days.

The story cuts to YoonGi in the present, possibly in the classroom. He ignores his ringing phone partly because of his drunken stupor and partly because he doesn’t want to talk, but he finally relents and answers. HoSeok offers that NamJoon wants to hang out later. “I’m not going,” YoonGi says immediately. “Hey, don’t be like that. SeokJin’s here, too. Do you want to talk to JungKook? I called him earlier, but he didn’t pick up.” HoSeok encourages YoonGi to call instead because JungKook may pick up for him. YoonGi hangs up, thoughts complicated as he remembers a time when he watched JungKook play piano. “Looking back, that kid was my shadow. I couldn’t ignore him, even if he wasn’t speaking to me. And I kept looking out for him… because it seemed like he’d fall apart if he was ignored.” He considers leaving it be, but his fingers are already dialing.

The perspective switches again: on a rooftop overlooking Songju, JungKook grows dizzy and stumbles. Darkness grasps his ankles, and his mind empties. “I don’t want to leave anything behind. This will just be the end.” At that moment, his phone rings. He sees YoonGi’s name, and everything sharpens, as though he’s awoken from a dream. “What took you so long to pick up?” asks YoonGi. When JungKook doesn’t answer, he continues, “Everyone’s meeting up later. Do you want to go?” After a pause, JungKook says, “YoonGi. Please come get me.” (From the thug beating to the rooftop, this is how his 11 April entry plays out in The Notes 1, but it ends before their phone conversation.) Waiting for YoonGi down on the street, JungKook recalls when they all used to hang out in the classroom. “I have a place to go. People to be with. Right now, that’s enough.”

On 2 May, SeokJin sneaks into YoonGi’s workroom, which is filled with oil-soaked papers as though he intended to set it on fire. (It’s dark, so as the later part of the episode occurs in the daytime, it must be past midnight or in the early morning.) There is no foolproof way to save YoonGi since he acts unpredictably between the loops, but SeokJin has determined that YoonGi needs someone who can tie him to the world—someone whom he won’t push away. Once, NamJoon told SeokJin that JungKook still carried the photo they took at the beach. (The photo depicted in the game is the one of the boys on the wall by the sea.) While NamJoon probably relayed this to show that JungKook hasn’t forgotten about SeokJin, it stirs a different memory for him. In high school when they ditched and went to the beach, hunting for a boulder that supposedly made dreams come true, SeokJin noticed JungKook ask YoonGi an important question while their voices were drowned out by construction noise. He has now realized that both JungKook and YoonGi have the same desperation in their eyes. JungKook knows that YoonGi is like him: a person who needs a string to hold him here. Therefore, JungKook is the key to saving YoonGi.

SeokJin places his copy of the photograph next to the mirror in the workroom, hoping it will lead to saving them both. Before he can leave, footsteps grow closer. Flustered, he chooses to either explain himself honestly or hide. In both paths, YoonGi stumbles inside and collapses on the sofa, too drunk to notice that someone else is in the room. In the second path, some extra information is presented when SeokJin notices a little water dish and paper cup with breadcrumbs as he hides beside the piano. “He must’ve looked after it again.” In another loop, SeokJin saw a small, weak bird that got mistakenly trapped in the workroom. YoonGi looked after it, most likely thinking of JungKook. (This particular episode is called Small Bird, so the title may only be meaningful to players who choose this path or are familiar with the bird from The Notes 1.)

SeokJin escapes undetected while YoonGi sleeps. Later in the day, he watches the workroom from his car. The most difficult part starts now: JungKook must follow the hints SeokJin has left to save YoonGi. After staring up at the second floor for a while with an unhappy expression, JungKook seems to make up his mind and enters the building. The story cuts briefly to YoonGi’s perspective. In the workroom, the mirror shatters. (The reason is unspecified, so we are left to wonder if a confrontation unfolded like the one depicted in the Run MV and implied in The Notes 1, or if something else occurred.) Dizzy, YoonGi falters but manages to stand up. (Again, standing up from what? Possibly because JungKook hit him.) “YoonGi…” JungKook is rooted to the spot in surprise. YoonGi runs, leaving him behind. Back in his perspective, SeokJin starts the car as soon as he sees JungKook dash out of the building. He hopes that leaving “a sign” will guide JungKook to the correct motel. (In The Notes 1, it is a bloody tissue that SeokJin drops by the entrance gate because YoonGi fled his workroom with busted lips. The game episode closely follows how this scenario proceeds in Notes 1, so I’m not sure why it is so cryptic around the details implying that a fight occurred between YoonGi and JungKook.) Inside the motel (once again matching the I Need U MV), YoonGi lights the bedsheets on fire. He regrets having JungKook by his side because the people close to him get hurt. The memories of his childhood burn along with the flames: fragments of the day he arrived home and found it collapsing in a fire. YoonGi hears JungKook shouting. “I’m sure… He’ll be sad because of me. But he won’t be unhappy anymore,” he thinks. JungKook shouts for him to get up, and YoonGi finally looks at him. His last view of the room encompasses the red flames, the air wavy with heat, and JungKook’s crumpled face. The episode ends with sirens playing over a black screen.

Episode 5, “Connecting Threads,” picks up on 12 May with SeokJin preparing to set events in motion for saving his next pair of friends. At the hospital, he waits for JiMin to show up and overhears a conversation between a nurse and doctor. If SeokJin stays where he is, they notice him and postpone their discussion, but if he steps out of sight, they continue. The nurse mentions “patient Park JiMin” who has “transferred down from the 9th floor.” She reports that he keeps roaming the hallways at night and wonders if they should stop him “just in case.” “He’ll be headed back up in about three days or so. Just leave him be. If it really bothers you, check with them,” advises the doctor. SeokJin moves to his precalculated spot when they leave, planning to lead JiMin to the stairs so that he’ll run into HoSeok on his way down. In his perspective, JiMin is troubled by his stiff wrist as he waits for the elevator. A familiar voice suddenly calling his name draws him to the stairwell, but the light makes it difficult to see its owner.

The story cuts to HoSeok wrapping up a consultation with the same doctor from earlier. The doctor states that they haven’t noticed any huge issues and that he’ll be discharged soon. “Do you have any discomfort still?” “Nope, I’m fine!” HoSeok answers energetically and even strikes an exaggerated pose, feeling that he needs to. “Please take care to avoid any future collapses,” the doctor adds. This comment makes HoSeok either recall the last time he collapses or the last moment he spent with his mom. In the first memory, he collapses on the bridge as he thinks about his sick Auntie leaving him alone after she has always been at his side. In the second, he stands at the merry-go-round and wonders if his mom will be standing there when he finishes counting. “Sir… Sir? Are you alright?” The doctor’s questioning shakes HoSeok out of the past. He wants to say hello to JiMin before he leaves the hospital, but JiMin’s bed has been empty for a while. Worried, HoSeok heads to the elevator to look for him. A woman dressed in a long skirt and hat passes by with her child. “Mom!” Convinced that she’s his mother, HoSeok chases after her. He shoves past people, breathing ragged and heart pounding. Afraid to lose her, he either yells out again or goes to the stairs. The results are ultimately the same because she doesn’t respond to his shouts and disappears into the stairwell. HoSeok skips steps down the stairs in his haste. “Mom!” His foot suddenly slips, throwing his weight forward. He flails, but there’s nothing to grab onto—and suddenly, his fall is arrested by someone grabbing his arm. “HoSeok?” “JiMin? How are you here…?” JiMin looks equally surprised. HoSeok realizes it’s obvious that the woman isn’t his mom. Though he can’t remember her face anymore, he still can’t let her go. “Are you alright, HoSeok?” JiMin asks. HoSeok figures that JiMin doesn’t inquire about what he was doing or why because he already knows. “I wonder if JiMin is like me… living trapped in the past. If he’s unable to get better and move on, stuck inside the memories that bind him…” “JiMin,” HoSeok says aloud. “Let’s get out of here.”

From JiMin’s perspective now, he notices that everything about HoSeok in this moment is different from normal. “Get out of here?” JiMin echoes. Outside is unfamiliar and scary, and he knows that even if he escapes the hospital, he will still have to return some day. “JiMin, I’ll come back for you.” HoSeok leaves without waiting for an answer. Not wanting to say goodbye, JiMin follows him secretly as he’s discharged from the hospital. He stops at the line where the hallway ends up on the ninth floor, watching the bright sunlight filter in through the open door. JiMin turns away, believing that the place to which he needs to return isn’t outside but the ninth floor. “Because… I’m a patient.” The rest of episode 6 follows the events in his 15 May Year 22 entry of The Notes 1, with only minor dialogue changes. HoSeok pulls JiMin out of his hospital bed the night before he is scheduled to return to the psychiatric ward. SeokJin and NamJoon meet them in the elevator, while JungKook, TaeHyung, and YoonGi are waiting for them in the first floor lobby. A nurse finds them and sees through YoonGi’s flimsy excuse that they’re having a birthday party. Throwing snack bags and plastic bottles, they all run toward the exit. (This sequence is likely the one depicted in the Euphoria MV, although in the video it’s staged during the daytime instead of at night.) JiMin unconsciously slows as he nears the invisible boundary in the hallway, but HoSeok’s urging grants him the courage to cross the line. Passing through the door, he draws in a breath of fresh air and feels on the verge of crying.

The beginning of episode 7 follows SeokJin’s preparations to prevent TaeHyung’s incident on 20 May in the same fashion as The Notes 1. He waits at the park on the hill behind TaeHyung’s apartment building until HoSeok escorts TaeHyung home from his night at the police station. With careful timing, SeokJin calls HoSeok after he sees the two part ways and asks him to invite TaeHyung to their beach trip in two days. HoSeok turns around toward TaeHyung’s apartment.

The next sequence provides more details of the confrontation (and notably unfolds a little differently than what is depicted in the I Need U MV). TaeHyung arrives home to a familiar stale odor of mold and stench of alcohol. “Where the hell have you been all night?!” TaeHyung turns to see his father’s bloodshot eyes and his sister standing behind him, face swollen. Defiance surges through him, but the desperation in Eunhye’s eyes roots him to the spot. “TaeHyung, tell Dad you’re sorry and go to your room.” TaeHyung either apologizes, holding his anger in, or tries to go straight to his room. In both paths, Kim SungHoon yells that a beating should set him straight. He seizes TaeHyung by the collar. Something bursts and rages inside him. “What have I done wrong?! You’re the one who needs to get things straight!” His father stammers in shock, “W-what did you say?!” while his sister calls his name in warning. TaeHyung chooses to shake him off or hold still. In the first path, he shoves his father to the floor. “Why are you doing this? How long? How long do we have to keep doing this?!” In the second path, Kim SungHoon snarls that he has a lot of nerve to look him in the eye and strikes his cheek. “Why do I need a beating?” TaeHyung thinks.

The paths converge with Eunhye begging their father to stop. The voice continues thundering in TaeHyung’s head: “Why does my sister need a beating? How long are you going to do this?” “You two are a double dose of pain in my ass today!” Kim SungHoon swings at Eunhye, who has thrown herself between them, and she sways at the rough blow. The injustice of it all stokes TaeHyung’s rage. “What have we done wrong? Why do we have to live in fear like this?” Heart pounding, he notices that the cold bottle he’s somehow picked up grows warmer from the heat of his hand. He roars and charges forward. A shattering sound plays over a black screen, and someone cries, “No—! TaeHyung, stop!” TaeHyung comes to his senses. HoSeok is hugging his midsection, his sister is crying, and his father is nowhere to be seen. He wonders whose blood is on his hand. HoSeok stands there silently, looking like he has a lot to say but holding back. “I’m sorry, HoSeok. I’m okay… So you can go now,” TaeHyung says, calm voice belying his inner turmoil. “I want to cry, to scream, to kick, break, shatter everything. I want to fall apart, but I can’t do any of the things I want.” The world spins as he closes his eyes. Mind blank, TaeHyung craves NamJoon’s presence and wants to talk to him—to tell him that he almost killed his father.

The eighth and final episode, “The Pier,” closely follows the version of 22 May in The Notes 1, with the addition of SeokJin’s perspective providing greater depth to the events. The boys make it to the same beach they visited in high school. The observation platform strikes TaeHyung as familiar. As the sun sets, he remembers this all occurring in a dream, except that SeokJin climbs the platform instead of him. Atop the platform, SeokJin is fearful and full of emotions. Memories flash by of their suffering and loneliness, his failures and desire to give up as the misfortunes repeated. He is relieved that TaeHyung does not follow him. At nightfall, they head to where they’re staying. (In The Notes 1, this location is simply called their lodging, and in The Notes 2 it is referred to as a lodge by the beach that SeokJin reserved under his name. In the game, the room appears like the one in the Run MV party scenes (0’57”, 3’00”, etc.), down to the same string lights and sconces—more on this in the Additional Commentary section below.) As the others dance and laugh, SeokJin realizes that this is the first time they’ve made it this far. “It’s something I hoped so desperately for… and a day I thought would never come. We were all lonely once. We hid our own scars and lived through it alone. But it’s different now. We’re all by each other’s sides. We’ll never be alone again.” Despite these thoughts, he has a nagging feeling because he hasn’t told them the truth. SeokJin is afraid of their reactions, but this will be the only way “to really see them properly.” He announces, “I have something to say.” Only TaeHyung turns to look at him through the chaos.

TaeHyung balls up his prickling hand, wondering if this is about the dream he asked SeokJin about several days earlier. (The location of this conversation is unspecified in The Notes 1, but the game provides a flashback shot of it at the bus stop.) His frustration grows when SeokJin begins to mention high school instead. TaeHyung interrupts sharply, believing that SeokJin is still cowardly avoiding the truth. “Are you talking about when you spied for the principal in high school and told him everything we were up to? Or were you going to mention how, because of that… YoonGi got expelled?!” The mood in the room chills. “I’m sorry.” SeokJin drops his head, while the others look away or stare in surprise. But TaeHyung doesn’t want to be unhappy without knowing why, even if the truth is worse than the nightmare. “Is that all? Or are you hiding more from us?”

The perspective switches back to SeokJin. He guesses that TaeHyung is asking about the dream but can’t reveal that the tragedies he experienced were real, believing that no one else should have to suffer with that knowledge. NamJoon approaches and tries to calm TaeHyung, but TaeHyung pushes him away. “Stay out of this, NamJoon. Why does it matter to you? You’re not my brother.” (In the album Note from Her and as a flashback in The Notes 1, TaeHyung overheard NamJoon talking on the phone while they walked to their lodging. NamJoon was speaking to his parents about his younger brother being old enough to take care of himself, but TaeHyung apparently took this to heart as something about himself. It hurt and angered him deeply.) “TaeHyung, I’m sorry,” SeokJin attempts to plead with him. “Stop it, Kim TaeHyung!” NamJoon warns. TaeHyung demands again that SeokJin explain everything. The interrogation unleashes all the memories of his friends’ tragedies that he has tried to forget. SeokJin feels like his nightmares are going to become reality, and his mind goes blank as TaeHyung and NamJoon continue to argue. “I repeated so many moments of suffering… for you… Why are you doing this to me?! I only wanted to be able to laugh together.” A little flame grows within SeokJin, an indescribable feeling cresting like a wave. This is what his countless attempts have led to? “What’s so great about being together?” Shaking off NamJoon’s arm, TaeHyung yells, “Who are we to one another? We’re all alone in the end!” “Alone…” The thing SeokJin has desperately been holding onto breaks away, and the shaking in his hands now consumes his entire body.

SeokJin hits TaeHyung. He remembers TaeHyung’s sudden jump off the seaside platform—a time he thought he saved them all. “I even kept that from happening—and he says we’re all alone in the end? The hopes I had for all of us to be happy, and for us to face coming days together… It all feels like it was for nothing. I thought I left my repeating misfortunes behind me, but I now see them again, taunting me from just ahead.” This concludes the Epilogue and the <I’M FINE> series. Notably, the glass does not break, suggesting that this loop continues from this event (as it does in The Notes 1) without yet resetting.

Additional Commentary

The only point I want to touch on here is the depiction of the boys’ lodging on 22 May after their beach trip and its potential implications. In The Notes 1, this location is simply called their lodging, and in The Notes 2 it is referred to as a lodge by the beach that SeokJin reserved under his name. In the game, the room appears like the one in the Run MV party scenes (0’57”, 3’00”, etc.), down to the same string lights and sconces.

As a standalone MV set, this location felt (to me) more metaphorical than concrete. It’s introduced after NamJoon opens the door of a train’s shipping container, a little film editing trick as though it’s a world inside—and it does feel like a space away from the real world where the boys are free to let loose, revel in their youth, and be themselves. While it seemed to serve as a more glamorous substitute for NamJoon’s shipping container where they often gathered, this location also appeared to stand in for the location of JungKook and YoonGi’s confrontation (2’24”-2’55”). An altercation between them is heavily implied in SeokJin’s 2 May entry from The Notes 1, but it occurs in YoonGi’s workroom. Since Run is an MV rather than one of the short films, which always present BU events and locations more literally than their song counterparts, it doesn’t seem too unusual that these sets are condensed to one in this video. YoonGi’s workroom isn’t portrayed until Highlight Reel, so we can kind of excuse one of the earliest MVs for artistic license.

However… the inclusion of this location in the game considerably changes the circumstances! Since it is both canon and animated, the creators had the ability to design the settings as they are truly intended to appear (within the general limitations of the game’s engine and visual style). It must have been a very deliberate choice that led to the reuse of the Run MV’s set for the 22 May beach lodging. (For what it’s worth, I have always interpreted SeokJin’s and TaeHyung’s fight in the Japanese MV for Blood Sweat & Tears to represent the fallout of that night, and that is staged in a different set.)

To further complicate matters, a date has been explicitly attached to one of the scenes in Run because it is matched shot-for-shot in the BU Story trailer Map of the Soul—and it is neither 2 or 22 May.

24 July Year 22 is not reached in <I’M FINE>, but in the Notes, this is the date the boys plan to gather at NamJoon’s container to celebrate JungKook’s discharge from the hospital. So far in The Notes 1 and 2 (and various album-accompanying Notes from MotS: Persona and 7), this event has hardly manifested as the celebration it is intended to be. This particular shot maps a little better to the circumstances in Notes 2, as not all of them even show up in Notes 1. But again, this gathering occurs at the container—so what, and where, is this shot really depicting? How is it linked to the beach lodging they visit in some loops on 22 May?

BU has been in development for years now, so I believe there is intentionality behind this location’s depiction in the game, even if it raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps it is foreshadowing a very different version of 24 July in which they return again to the beach lodging. This is my best guess for now, and it’s exciting to think that there are still hints embedded in the older MVs for aspects of the plot that have yet to be fully revealed in The Notes.

What do you think? Did you notice the location parallels if you played the game, and did they inspire any new theories for you?

----------------

As mentioned above, the following “tl;dr” commentary summarizes the parenthetical notes I provided in the summaries in case you want to review them on their own.

Heart’s Distance — tl;dr commentary

In the opening cutscene, TaeHyung’s photograph of his father holding him as a baby looks similar to the one he holds at 1’48” in the HYYH On Stage: Prologue short film.

During the gathering at NamJoon’s container after everyone freed JiMin from the hospital, SeokJin asks, “How long has it been since we’ve all laughed together?” This is a reference to the recurring phrase “we can laugh when we’re together” present throughout the Notes and occasionally this game.

On 19 May, TaeHyung is arrested for vandalism while painting graffiti on the streets. The bus stop depicted in the shot is the same as the one in Highlight Reel.

In the shot in the game illustrating TaeHyung’s choice on 20 May that he “can’t take back,” he approaches his father from behind and the sound of glass occurs on a cut to black. We know from the I Need U MV and Save Me webtoon that he fatally stabs his father.

When SeokJin asks Uncle JunHo for a favor to visit a construction site for practical training, JunHo expresses that SeokJin’s father seems to be interested, too. “Make sure to use this opportunity to take a thorough look around. It’ll all be helpful to you later,” JunHo advises. It’s helpful to know that Assemblyman Kim ChangJun is involved in some shady business with a construction company—this is revealed in The Notes 2.

After the foreman leaves his father’s hospital room, TaeHyung realizes how tense he has been when he loosens his grip and sees little crescents of his fingernails cut into his palms. His wounded palms are a recurring motif.

On 20 May, SeokJin stands at the bus stop and touches the graffiti for which TaeHyung was arrested the previous night. It’s the “I’m Fine” message depicted at the same location in the Highlight Reel.

The story ends with SeokJin losing consciousness after TaeHyung shoved him away and he slammed into something, marking another failed attempt while preventing the homicide. This is not the first time TaeHyung has caused SeokJin grave or mortal injury during his intervention: in the Save Me webtoon, he accidentally stabbed SeokJin with the broken bottle instead of his father.

Nightmare: Epilogue — tl;dr commentary

SeokJin and NamJoon’s conversation when they reunite at the gas station on the night of 11 April begins with 2 familiar phrases: “Oh. SeokJin?” “It’s been a while.” As mentioned in part 1, this sequence parallels their moment at the end of the Blood Sweat & Tears Japanese version MV.

In episode 3, the scene of JungKook finding YoonGi playing piano at the music shop appears to be a memory of 7 April, although it is not explicitly stated as such. This encounter occurs in The Notes 1 as well as episode 4 of JungKook’s story.

From JungKook’s beating at the hands of thugs to the rooftop, this is how his 11 April entry plays out in The Notes 1, but it ends before his phone conversation with YoonGi.

SeokJin reflects on a time NamJoon told him that JungKook still carried the photo they took at the beach. The photo depicted in the game is the one of the boys on the wall by the sea.

Episode 4 is called “Small Bird,” yet the bird is only referenced in one of the choice’s paths (SeokJin hides behind the piano in YoonGi’s workroom). The title may be more meaningful to players who choose this path or are familiar with the bird from The Notes 1.

The game is even more cryptic than The Notes 1 about JungKook and YoonGi’s apparent altercation on 2 May in his workroom. When the perspective cuts to YoonGi, the mirror has already been shattered. The reason is unspecified, so we are left to wonder if a confrontation unfolded like the one depicted in the Run MV and implied in The Notes 1, or if something else occurred. The “sign” that SeokJin leaves to guide JungKook to the correct motel is also unspecified, but in The Notes 1, it is a bloody tissue because YoonGi fled his workroom with busted lips.

The motel room that YoonGi sets on fire in this loop once again matches the I Need U MV.

JiMin’s escape sequence from the hospital is likely the one depicted in the Euphoria MV, although in the video it’s staged during the daytime instead of at night.

TaeHyung’s confrontation with his father on 20 May unfolds a little differently than what is depicted in the I Need U MV.

Some notes/thoughts on the 22 May post-beach trip lodging are included in the Additional Commentary section above.

TaeHyung has a flashback to several days prior to 22 May when he asked SeokJin about his recurring dreams. The location of this conversation is unspecified in The Notes 1, but it’s depicted at the bus stop in the game.

TaeHyung pushes NamJoon away physically and verbally when he tries to interrupt his interrogation of SeokJin at the lodging. “Stay out of this, NamJoon. Why does it matter to you? You’re not my brother.” In the album Note from Her and as a flashback in The Notes 1, TaeHyung overheard NamJoon talking on the phone while they walked to their lodging. NamJoon was speaking to his parents about his younger brother being old enough to take care of himself, but TaeHyung apparently took this to heart as something about himself. It hurt and angered him deeply.

Notably, the glass does not break at the end of the Epilogue, suggesting that this loop continues from this event (as it does in The Notes 1) without yet resetting.

----------------

This brings us to the end of the BTS Universe Story <I’M FINE> highlights! This series turned out a little different than I originally envisioned, but I hope you found these summaries helpful and worthwhile to read. If you have any questions, important details that you felt I overlooked, or theories of your own that you would like to share, feel free to send me an ask!

For more informational storyline content, please check out the Timeline project, currently in development!

91 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

Text

Facebook vs Robert Bork

Unless you're a certain kind of conservative, you probably haven't heard of Robert Bork, but he's one of the most important people you've never heard of. The best way to understand Bork is that he was Ronald Reagan's court sorcerer.

Reagan was an empty vessel with the hands of ruthless plutocrats shoved up his asshole*, operating him like a hand puppet for their collective will to power.

He served as a kind of dowsing rod for policies that would transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

*Hence the polyps

That dowsing rod pointed straight at Bork. Bork was an alternate history writer, a fabulist with a unique and wildly improbable theory of antitrust statutes: that if you studied the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act with Qanon-style fervor, you'd find hidden messages in them.

Specifically, you would discover that the lawmakers who drafted, debated, amended and passed these laws thought monopolies were good, actually. They were only concerned with a small and possibly mythical minority of monopolies that were "harmful."

Not just any harms: Bork said that these ancient sages were worried about *consumer* harms, which, practically speaking, means monopolies that use their power to raise prices. This, he said, was the only thing that the government should step in to prevent.

Since it is nearly impossible to prove that a given merger or tactic would result in higher prices before the fact, and *also* it's nearly impossible to prove that a price rise after the fact was attributable to monopolism we should probably just forget about antitrust.

Reagan loved this. By shifting antitrust's focus from *democratic* harms (like reducing choice, distorting regulation, hurting workers, etc) to *consumer* harms, he could demote "citizens" (who have a role in shaping policies) to "consumers" - mere ambulatory wallets.

Reagan tried to get Bork a seat on the Supreme Court, but there was a little problem. Bork had committed a string of disgusting crimes while serving as Nixon's Solicitor General, and the Senate refused to confirm him for a seat.

(Conservatives were outraged that committing crimes at the highest level of government disqualified you from the Supreme Court and coined the term "Borked" to describe rich, powerful people who had to face the unfair prospect of being held accountable for their actions)

But Bork - along with the Chicago School economists - went on to completely revolutionize the world's conception of anti-monopoly enforcement, as neoliberal leaders all over the world (Thatcher, Mulroney, Pinochet, Kohl, etc) took up his theories and tuned them into policy.

Bork was a fringe figure, but he was preaching a gospel that stood to make the richest people on Earth *so much richer*, and they bankrolled the hell out of his theories.

For example, 40% of US federal judges have attended "continuing education" seminars at an annual lush Florida junket where they are initiated into the bizarre world of "consumer harm" theory.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/10/18/law-and-economics/

40 years later, monopolism has surged in every industry, from bottlecaps to pharma, from poultry to pro wrestling, from eyeglasses to emergency rooms, from oil to car parts, from music to publishing to movies to online services to telecoms.

All driven by mergers, all resulting in higher prices (so much for "consumer harm") all wildly distorting of public policy (the decision to let Boeing self-certify the 737 Max is repeated in thousands of ways across hundreds of industries), all brutal news for workers.

It's a disaster, but it's one that we have been powerless to avert or address for so long as "consumer harm" ruled antitrust enforcement.

Finally, that's changing.

In 2019, Dina Srinivasan published a landmark paper: "The Antitrust Case Against Facebook," which made *incredibly* clever arguments showing that FB's democratic harms were also consumer harms, meaning FB could be sued without first undoing Borkism.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

But the magic of this work was in revealing the poverty of the consumer harm standard: she laid out the innumerable ways in which FB is bad for society and showed how a sliver of these harms were technically illegal, raising the question: why isn't *all* this stuff illegal?

Today, Facebook was hit with *two* antitrust suits, one from the FTC and the other from almost every US state (including California!).

The complaints say that FB's acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were anticompetitive.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/9/22158483/facebook-antitrust-lawsuit-anti-competition-behavior-attorneys-general

Of course, they *were* anticompetitive. We know, because Zuck - who specializes in tripping over his own dick - sent out memos extolling the acquisitions' anticompetitive advantages, proving he hasn't learned a thing since he traded incriminating IMs about founding FB.

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

The complaints build on Srinivasan's work and they carry the same flavor: claiming "consumer harms" in the acquisitions, but winking and nodding toward a broader, more democracy-focused (and less consumer-focused) critique of monopoly.

It's a weird tightrope act: they want to win, so their argument is designed to balance on the single, fragile hair that borkism stretches across the chasm of monopoly enforcement, but they wanna make sure we see that big sturdy bridge of nonbork antitrust right there.

If there was any doubt, it was erased by the remedies demanded in the complaints. The prosecutors aren't asking for money damages - a fine is a price, after all - instead, they want FB to sell off the companies it bought for illegal purposes.

And they want FB to get regulatory approval for future acquisitions (though the states will let it buy companies for less than $10m without approval). These are not "consumer harm" remedies - they're "democracy" remedies, aimed at removing the company's source of power.

Facebook has stood up a website explaining why it's a cuddly mom-and-pop business that's being bullied by mean government meanies:

https://about.fb.com/building-to-compete/

The argument's pretty similar to the one laid out in a leaked memo in October:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#dnr

Basically: it would be really hard for us to unwind these illegal, anticompetitive mergers. Seriously, it would cost a bundle and take so much work!

This is an unserious argument, and it shows how badly FB has misgauged the mood.

All of FB's arguments are garbage, really. Take the line that ex-British-Deputy-PM-turned-FB-salesdroid Nick Clegg has been peddling: "STOP TRYING TO BREAK UP FACEBOOK OR THE CHINESE WILL WIN!"

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-nick-clegiden-must-unite-global-powers-to-shape-internet-amid-china-threat

The company's best arguments are about "market definition" - to claim that they don't have a monopoly because of all the competitors they face, provided you define FB's market broadly enough.

Like, "Here at Facebook, we are in the 'using computers' business. Now, just think of how much time you spend using a computer without interacting with FB! Your car has a computer and it's not on FB! How can you say we have a monopoly?!"

If you want to see someone making this argument as well as it can possibly be made and literally getting laughed at by a University of Chicago (!) audience, check out this debate from 2019:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Jp-GJ9LM0

Forcing FB to divest itself of Whatsapp and Instagram is a no-brainer. The company lied to secure those mergers, broke the promises it made to get permission to make them, and the penalty for that should be unwinding those mergers.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

And if FB fights this for a decade the way IBM fought its antitrust action, fine - IBM outspent the entire DoJ antitrust division every year for 12 years (Bork called it "antitrust's Vietnam"), but even though Big Blue wasn't broken up, they had their spirit broken.

It was fear of another tangle with antitrust regulators that caused IBM to sit idly by while Phoenix cloned the PC ROMs and created the PC clone industry, which became the US computing industry.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

And it was the same fear that caused IBM to hire an outside company to make the OS for its PCs, getting a couple of nerds named Paul Allen and Bill Gates to supply one for them.

IBM's 12 years of antitrust hell focused the attention of every tech giant of the age, letting them know what was on their horizon if they acted like IBM had. It created the US tech industry.

Today, VCs call the businesses that Big Tech dominates "the kill zones" because they know that monopolists have the market power to destroy any startup that tries to compete with them.

There is an entire - better, more pluralistic - tech industry that's been suppressed by Big Tech. If FB and Goog and Apple and the other tech giants spend the next decades throwing billions at the FTC and the states attorneys general, it will be money well-spent.

Because it will be money that these companies don't get to spend destroying the next wave of tech companies, co-ops, and platforms.

#pluralistic

192 notes · View notes

alwaysahiccupandastrid · 3 years ago

Text

This Sarah Everard case is so terrifying for women. But not only am I terrified - I am furious.

⚠️ tw for mentions of r*pe, sexual assault, violence against women, murder etc. ⚠️

She was just walking, including walking by busy roads and not dark alleyways. She was dressed in winter clothes. Even if she HAD walked down a dark alleyway or been wearing something short or “revealing”, she still wasn’t doing anything wrong - she was just walking somewhere.

Her murderer - a police officer named Wayne Couzens - plotted to murder a woman to live out his perverse fantasy. He didn’t plot to kill a specific woman - he knew he would murder a woman, any woman he thought he could abduct, any woman who would be out at night on her own. Sarah was just there.

Not only did he drive miles and hours to kill a woman, not only was he a police officer… he used his badge, police belt, handcuffs and credentials to fake arrest her to get her into his car. If a police officer tells you to go with them, we’re told to not resist, to be obedient or we will be in even more trouble. Even if she HAD done what the MET have just said women should do - “question non uniformed officers!” - it wouldn’t have helped her because he was a police officer. He had the credentials. Why would she run away and resist a police officer? And if women do resist, the police commit violence against them (like at the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah).

He handcuffed her, drove her for hours, then raped and murdered her. This fucking monster strangled her with his fucking police belt. He burnt her body and disposed of her in a pond.

A police officer did this - a fucking police officer, a MET officer, the MET we’re supposed to trust. And you want women to trust them?!!

And I don’t want to hear that “don’t judge the whole profession based on one bad apple”, because guess what? This is not the first time a police officer has harmed a woman. There is misogyny rooted deep in the MET that needs to be addressed. Wayne Couzens was literally nicknamed “The Rapist” by other police officers and had offended in the past by flashing people, and that’s just what we know of - and yet not a single person did anything. The police joked about it. Several officers gave character references supportive of Couzens during the hearings for his sentencing, and female officers told the press that they did not feel as if they could report concerning behaviour by male colleagues.

It’s thought that at LEAST 15 serving or former police officers have killed women in UK since 2009, and HUNDREDS of UK police officers have convictions for crimes, including assault. There are many cases that do not go reported, and so it’s likely the numbers on both counts are actually higher. Why are they still allowed to serve? Why is our government giving them more power and freedom to arrest whoever they please? “It’s not that many” - IT SHOULD NOT BE ANY.

If you can’t see why there’s a huge problem with our police force and why we say “fuck the police”, you’re part of the problem.

And the fear and anger we feel isn’t new - this has been a problem for literally all of our lives.

At 11, I learnt to come home before dark, and if it was dark in the winter on my way home (meaning: every night in winter), I was taught to not go down any dark lanes, and if I was walking the dark lane I had to go down if I got the bus home, I was to walk as fast as I could and to not have earphones in because i wouldn’t hear attackers. Every day from September 2009 to July 2014, coming home from secondary school, I was told to either wait for my dad or grandad to pick me up or to walk down the busiest road that ran near my house and had constant cars on it. I couldn’t take the shortcut down the public footpath on my way home from sixth form college because it was too dark and isolated - I had to go around it and through the village instead, which took more time but was vaguely safer. Since university, I’ve made a point of waiting for the hourly bus that stops just round the corner from my home and on the busiest road, even though I have to wait up to an hour for it usually, because getting the bus that comes every 15 minutes means walking up the dark quiet lane.

At age 13, I learnt not to talk to even very friendly men, even not in broad daylight, even with a female friend, when some old man approached us and started complimenting us, telling us we had “nice smiles” and “I can hook you up with someone who can help you get into acting” and “here’s £10, you go down to the garage down the road and get whatever you girls want”.

At 14, I learnt not to sit in trees in the park by the gate, not even during the day when it’s sunny, when an old man entered the park, took one look at me, and said “you’ve got a nice arse”. I couldn’t prove he had said anything, and I would see him on my way to school sometimes and panic.

At 19, I learnt that I could not trust friendly men online. Apologies to any decent men I have spoken to online - there’s a few who are nice and not weird, I’m not talking about them. I learnt this when a guy I was speaking to on my old blog - who had for weeks just been generally nice and checking in on me - started to send intimate and sexual messages that started with “*hugs you*” and became “*spanks your ass*”, “takes your clothes off”, “f*cks you hard”, just to name a few (and these were the milder ones). When I asked his age, he merely said “older” than me - “more than twice as old as you”, actually. I learnt to not talk to men online, and if I did then I had to set very clear boundaries in a way that wasn’t too obvious - not say it outright but make it clear I am “unavailable”.

I have to carry a rape alarm on my keys, just in case. I could go out to bars if I wanted to, I could have at university when all my peers were - but doing it meant risking the chance of being harmed while intoxicated or on my way home. I have to send my location to my mother if I get any Ubers, if I go out to theatres or cinemas in the evening I have to text my mum to say I’ve arrived safe. I only feel safe out at night if I’m with a man that I trust like my dad or grandad - I got very lucky at Uni because not only did one girl make sure I got home safely at 1 in the morning by calling me a cab, but one boy even stayed with me on another night until my dad arrived to pick me up, because he knew leaving me intoxicated at 2:30 in the morning was dangerous. I have even phoned my grandmother while walking home in the dark because being on the phone to someone means you’re less of a target to an attacker.

Men do not have this experience - or, if they do, it’s nowhere near the fear and worry women feel every day. Women can’t even walk somewhere without being worried of being attacked - we cannot go anywhere without asking ourselves “am I safe?”. Are we wearing the “correct” clothing, so as to not give off the wrong idea? Are we walking down the well lit roads where it’s busy? Are we aware of our surroundings, of every single person nearby? Do I have my keys in my hand, ready to defend myself if I’m attacked? Women are blamed if we are attacked - not men, but women. “She was dressed slutty” “she was passed out drunk” “she was walking down a dark lane” “she was out late”.

When doing safe guarding training at my current TA job, I came across this phrase: “always think it can and will happen”. Just as a teacher or TA should not think “none of my students will be victims of abuse”, women should not for one second believe that they are safe and “it will never happen to me” - every day we have to think of how to prevent our own assault or murder, just in case.

Every time I’m walking home in the dark, I have the fleeting wonder of “what picture(s) of me will they use if I’m attacked or go missing?”. I was not really surprised when I saw that other women said the same thing. Women wonder it so often it’s almost a joke, an absent minded thought. But it’s not a joke - it’s real life for us, every single day.

Sarah Everard is not a one off case. Sabina Nessa, a 28 year old primary school teacher, was murdered on 18th September this year, her body discovered the next day by a dog walker. So far in 2021, 110 women have been murdered in the UK by men (or men are the prime suspects). Only a handful get national attention because at this point, violence and murder against women have become normalised in this country.

I am not only heartbroken for all of these women and their families - I am scared for my own safety; I am scared for the safety of my mother, my grandmother, my aunts. I am scared for the safety of my 20 year old sister, the safety of my 17 and 14 year old cousins, for the safety of my older male cousin’s two daughters who are only 4 and 1. I am scared for the safety of every single girl and woman I have worked with, the safety of every woman I have ever spoken to.

But I am also furious and filled with rage. Women should not be scared to go out or have fun, we should not have to take such precautions or measures that still won’t completely prevent our assaults or murders. I am sick and tired of the victim blaming when a woman is murdered, of the indifference of “oh another woman”, of this being how women are expected to live their lives.

I’m tired of this problem being ignored by our government, tired of no one giving a shit about us or our safety.

#sarah everard #wayne couzens #tw violence against women #tw rape discussion #tw crime #tw murder #tw assault #tw rape #tw police murder #tw police brutality

16 notes · View notes

dionysianfreak · 4 years ago

Text

some spicy things I do in my practice because of ADHD

given that it's literally my brain, adhd takes over a lot of things in my life. it finds a way to wiggle into everything I do in both bad and good ways. it's just how it is being neurodivergent and it's just how life goes for me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't aid me in many ways. growing up we aren't taught about mental divergency. we're taught the abled and neurotypical way and that's it, but in truth neurodivergent people only struggle due to not having the resources to do things the way that'll let them work efficiently. so here is a list of ways my personal adhd effects my pagan practice and ways I incorporate it into my worship !

stimming

stimming ! i stim a LOT and sometimes, if the emotion I feel is strong enough, they turn to uncontrollable tics. this also means that when during things like rituals, I'll have to pause so I don't tic and ruin something. this is totally normal and okay ! I've never once had a problem with it, and the Gods just patiently waited for it to pass as it always does. we both know it's just something that happens and it's apart of me, it isn't something to be ashamed of or hide.

accepting stimming once I was diagnosed was also something I did as a devotional act to Dionysos ! instead of trying to mask or push down the urge to stim, I'd allow myself to just let it out. my stims vary between very overt to covert, and accepting the overt ones as normal was a feat worthy of devotion imo. you can also keep stim toys on your altar when you're not using them, if you wanted to.

time and schedules

consistent worship ????? never heard of her. same goes for offerings. sometimes I give 294894 offerings in a day and sometimes I've given one offering in a week, it just depends on my ever changing behavior. there's no need to be stuck on a schedule if you don't want to or even make one to begin with. when I first started out, I asked Hermès, Apollon, and Dionysos (who I worshipped at the time) if I should make a schedule and the no was so hard I haven't asked since. my worship is a part of my daily life, as just like I don't drive places every day I don't worship every day. both are still important in my life regardless if I'm actively doing it or not. if you stuggle with consistency, I urge you to speak with the Gods you worship and see if making things more fluid would help !

hyperfixation is also a pain in the ass sometimes, especially when it becomes something other than paganism. due to the free nature of my practice and that I've chosen to devote, it sometimes translates into "well I don't haveeee to do this" and suddenly poof, all the motivation is gone. it's VERY hard to come back when your brain is so wired on something else entirely, and I understand the feeling. during these times I personally do very small things to keep up. if I make dinner for myself, I'll offer a portion and eat with the Gods just to show that I'm participating even when I'm struggling to. the small things count.

RSD - Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

my RSD is crippling in my life, and it's reach extends to paganism sometimes as well (if you're unaware, RSD is the extreme sensitivity to perceived rejection in any form). sometimes during readings I receive a card that I believe is saying something "negative". sometimes it's criticism, sometimes advice, sometimes it's a slap on the wrist, but no matter what it is in reality I'm at the mercy of my brain to interpret it. so this has lead to meltdowns, long depressive/anxious episodes, and crying fests when I think a deity is angry with me. it has gotten so bad before that delusions have appeared and made me believe false memories or feelings of hatred from the Gods.

it's so hard and I'm so sorry if anyone else has to deal with it. to help with this, I have to fight to remind myself that advice is not an attack. the Gods are trying to help me and, even if They were angry at me, I've made mistakes before and They've allowed me to grow from them. i also have a checklist of questions I ask myself to allow logic and reality back into my head. a few questions include "have i done anything recently that's worthy of anger from a God ?", "is this something that will last forever ?", and "is this a message that has something to teach me ?".

impulsiveness

ask most people with ADHD about being impulsive and you'll probably receive a nervous side glace. we're impulsive often, which can do a multitude of things in paganism. one, starting a devoting and never finishing it. i am SO guilty of this one, and it make me feel bad even now. i have plenty up unfinished plans, drawings, and other devotional items that look around and guilt me. I've been in this cycle for a year and I don't think I'll ever grow out of it, but from what I've noticed the Gods don't mind. doing some of a devotion is a wonderful feat, and the energy that took is a wonderful offering even if you don't finish it.

I'm sure other adhd people and probably some autistic people have been in the position of "I just discovered this new Deity and oh my god I NEED to worship them RIGHT NOW or I'll DIE". They're just SO COOL and you automatically feel a connection. then three weeks later you feel demotivated to worship Them and now you feel terrible about it. don't worry, me too. to help with this nowadays I personally honor for a bit then worship if the worship relationship doesn't involve any help between us. this is what I did with Pan, and it worked VERY well for me. i recognized our connection but I didn't feel the pressure to consistently worship Him.

back to the start of the second paragraph, if you're stuck in that situation just communicate with the Deity. it can be hard to admit you're wrong, especially with adhd. however, just sitting down and calling to Them to let them know how you feel and that you think you made a mistake is a huge communicative step !

demotivation

this. one. sucks. inbetween hyperfixations, being stressed out or anxious, going through a depressive episode, and more can cause very deep demotivation and loss of energy in people with ADHD and other disorders. sometimes I'll just lay in my floor with my headphones on for hours because I literally can't find the energy to get up. a lot of people worry that this directly conflicts with Paganism and would slow progress. i understand why it seems that way, especially since adhd is a very "GO FAST, DO THIS THING N O W" disorder. there's actually a few solutions here I can think of

devote your personal healing to the Gods as this can give your brain a "reward" and can help you personally feel better in many ways. after weeks without a shower, devote a bath to a Deity or maybe eat breakfast at Their altar if you haven't been eating much. allow Them to be your motivation

take a break entirely. paganism certrainly isn't a 24/7/365 commitment and your practice molds to your needs. if you're just absolutely knocked out and need rest, take a break. I've taken MANY breaks before. I've been forced on breaks too because the Gods noticed my mental health declining before I did. never feel ashamed for needing time for yourself

do multiple small things rather than big things. a little bit of your dinner when you eat, redecorate Their altar or space, listen to music that reminds you of Them, think of Them when you're out and about in case you see something. you can weave devotion into daily acts in order to reinforce mundane things you need to do and calm your mind about paganism.

and finally, miscellaneous list of other things I do that are too small for their own section.

if you need to keep track of divination readings, no need to write down every reading you've ever had in detail. you can voice record them as you go, take photos of the cards, or use apps like Labyrinthos that can act as a tarot log.

your altar doesn't need to look perfect, it should reflect your worship and your devotion to a Deity. this means if your altar looks like a mess, as mine ALWAYS do, it's perfectly okay ! clutter aesthetic altars are the most beautiful altars in my eyes, and they're so worthy of adoration. I've never once heard of a Deity disliking an altar, They appreciate our work to put in a space just for Them. let your altar look messy and wild as you want, altars don't need to be aesthetic or color coordinated

you see everywhere that many of us are devoted to one deity in particular or multiple, I fit in here too. i just wanted to say that you never have to devote to any Deity if you don't want to. you could worship when you need help from a specific Deity or worship a different deity every month. never feel like you have to tie yourself down just because other people feel comfortable doing so.

you don't have to celebrate every festival. it's okay to skip celebrations that don't really apply to you or are at an inconvenient time ! you could also reschedule if you find yourself wanting to celebrate but burnt out or busy.

#hellenism #pagan #Paganism #hellenic #hellenic worship #hellenic pagan #hellenistic polytheism #polytheist #polytheism #greek gods #deity #greek paganism #adhd #neurodivergent #neurodivergent pagan #tips and tricks

116 notes · View notes

killemwithkawaii · 4 years ago

Note

HELLO MITCH ur blog is so cute i come here all the time for the Good sally face content im rlly going thru it rn with university so reading ur sally face imagines rlly helps <3 could i request something for sal and/or larry w an s/o that has obsessive compulsive disorder and struggles a lot?? like thinking theres only Two Possible Options for things sometimes, feeling like they have to be Perfect or theyre nothing, etc? tysm if u can, i just dont see enough fics for that sort of thing </3

I’m so happy to hear that my content has helped you when you’ve been struggling! I totally agree that there aren’t enough fics/imagines regarding mental illness- I hope that these headcanons bring you some comfort 🤗💕

Note: While I did quite a lot of research while writing this, I don’t personally have OCD. If any of this information is off, please don’t hesitate to tell me and I will correct it ASAP!

Sal and Larry with an s/o who has OCD-

Sal

-Though he generally keeps himself and his things clean, he usually isn't one that's bothered by germs or unsanitary things. If his s/o is someone who has a preoccupation with contamination, he'd volunteer to touch or clean whatever they perceived as unclean (ex: opening doors, steering shopping carts, handling raw meat, disposing of spoiled food, cleaning bathrooms, etc.) when necessary and wouldn't be offended if his s/o requested he participate in a certain decontamination ritual afterword to put them at ease. He would also reassure his partner that they and the things they've touched are not 'dirty' if they believed that THEY were the cause of contamination, despite them believing otherwise.

-His patience comes in handy if his s/os compulsions lead to 'obsessional slowness' when things aren't 'just right' and s/o feels compelled to repeat tasks, or if s/o needs frequent reassurance about certain things (he could use some reassurance of his own when things 'don't feel right', so it will be a two-way street)

-He has first-hand experience with mental illness and understands that delusions and intrusive thoughts (strange, disturbing or otherwise) aren't a reflection of a persons actual desires. He knows they can't help having these unwelcome ideas pop into their head and that they don't want to act on them, so he talks his s/o through them and reminds them that they aren't a bad person for having these kinds of thoughts.

-Sal is a collector, so he kind of understands if his partner has a tendency to hoard things, even if their motivation is more about 'keeping things just in case,' instead of 'keeping things because they're interesting or hold sentimental value'. He'd make an area in their living space for them to keep their objects organized. At the same time, he'd try to help them keep their collection manageable so that it doesn't take over the house.

-Sal doesn't have the best memory, but he would make more of an effort to keep records/a calendar if his S/O is the type to worry that they may have done something harmful in the past that they cannot recall.

-If his S/O has fears of breaking moral rules, Sals emotional knowledge and understanding really comes in handy. He's been through plenty of therapy sessions and has a lot of tools at his disposal to deal with feeling as if you are inherently bad or have done something unforgivable without meaning to. He'd talk through his S/Os fears with them to help them feel better about any social faux pas they may or may not have committed and will willingly step in to help if he sees that S/O is struggling in a social situation/obligation.

Larry

-Would make an effort to keep his living space more tidy so it wouldn't trigger his s/os compulsions for organization or cleanliness. He would not be offended if his s/o felt the need to organize his things in a certain way so they 'feel right,' as long as he can find what he needs and they don't throw anything important away.

-He TOTALLY gets being easily grossed out, so he's very understanding when his s/o reacts with disgust to things others might not be phased by. He'll do his best to handle what he can stomach for them, but there might be times where he and his s/o decide to mutually bail on a situation or conversation that's just to nauseating to handle.

-His spontaneity and enthusiasm can come in handy when his s/o has been procrastinating or having difficulty making decisions- he'll give them the jump-start they need or help to make a final call if they find themselves floundering between choices

-Larry deals with his own delusional thoughts (specifically that he's cursed and that every bad thing that happens around him is somehow his fault), so he understands when his partner makes cause and effect connections in their mind that aren't actually true. He'd be there to talk through those connections with his s/o and would gently but firmly assure them that they haven't inadvertently caused some catastrophe with an unrelated action (though he wouldn't put them down for thinking that way, and he might need them to do the same for him sometimes.)

-Is great at helping his S/O tackle perfectionism and needing things to be 'just right'. He's a strong believer in the serendipitous, and that projects don't have to be 'just so' to be great work. He also knows that burn-out can be detrimental to creativity and would encourage his S/O to take breaks when they find themselves compelled to complete a task with very high standards.

-His knowledge of home maintenance and repair comes in handy when S/O needs reassurance or feels a compulsion to check that their living space is 'safe'. He would check wiring, make sure locks are in working order, test smoke detectors regularly, etc. and would quickly fix anything that posed a potential (or perceived) threat.

#Sally Face #sally face headcanons #sally face imagine #sal fisher #larry johnson #sal fisher x reader #larry johnson x reader #OCD #tw mental illness #tw unsanitary #tw delusion #K.E.W.K. answers #K.E.W.K. writes #i say i dont have OCD but the more i read the more im like 'HMMMMM'#is it autism? is it ADHD?? is it OCD???#we'll just stick with neurodivergent and mentally ill for now i guess lol

80 notes · View notes

jimlingss · 4 years ago

Text

The Weekend Massacre

➜ Words: 19.7k

➜ Genres: 90% Angst, 10% Action?, Serial Killer!AU

➜ Summary: Receiving an invitation to a party, Jimin finds himself in a room of serial killers and a game to see who can gain the most notoriety.

➜ Warning: vomiting, toxic relationship, murder, gore, homeless abuse, mentions of sexual abuse, cults, mutilation etc. I don’t condone the actions of my characters.

cr.

[Friday, 10:00pm] Jimin grips the envelope. It’s a dark blue, glittering when he holds it up to the light and silk-like to the touch. A complete blank front, it’s without a return or delivery address. He had tossed the first envelope out, supposing it was a mistake. But then another one was sent. And another. And another. Another. Until he broke the floral red seal that was seemingly dripping off the page. It didn’t make sense to him — it was an invitation to a party on the far outskirts of the city with his name on it. He’s not sure how anyone found him. Who it was that sent this. Or what this was. Then, as if to add to his confusion, he received several phone calls. Whispers. Incoherent. In the middle of the night. Between hours of the day. Startling as it was jarring. It was as if to show these people were watching constantly, as if to tell that he shouldn’t ignore this any longer. So here Jimin was. Standing in front of a ragged wooden door with the envelope in hand, shrouded in the middle of pitch black without the moon’s luminescence. He knocks twice. The door slot slides open. Beady eyes look through. “Password?” Jimin recalls the instructions laid out for him. “Never look in the eye of the beast.” The slot slides shut and the noise of lock gears unwinding soon becomes replaced with the hinges creaking as the door widens. The hall is narrow with a set of descending stairs, a tiny bulb swinging from the moldy ceiling. The man is burly, over six feet with bulging biceps and tattoos wrapped around them. Jimin swallows hard, burdened with the stranger’s intimidating air and averts his eyes. But the man isn’t dissuaded and reaches into his pocket to hand Jimin a rectangular business card. It’s black, but golden looped letters etched into the smooth card reads welcome. Jimin isn’t sure what to do with the card and receives no explanation. The man simply moves ahead. “Follow me.” Jimin complies wordlessly, stuffing the card into his pocket, suffocating the many questions he has in his throat. The man leads him down the rickety stairs, knocks on a steel door that opens with another stranger behind it and then past yet another door. It opens to a room of thumping music and neon strobe lights that Jimin’s eyes have yet to adjust to. But the man doesn’t walk into the room, merely stepping aside. He stares at Jimin. And Jimin enters on his own. The bass is boosted, trembling the walls of the underground room in a beat he doesn’t recognize. The scent of alcohol is thick and people are dressed in lavish outfits and laughing. Jimin self-consciously grips the hem of his hoodie, feeling out of place with his jeans he threw on haphazardly. He awkwardly shuffles amongst the crowd, looking around, squinting when the pink flashing lights cast into his eyes. He’s unable to recognize the people around. There’s fifteen or twenty so, a mix of women and men— Jimin’s shoulder collides with another. “S-Sorry.” He locks eyes with the older man, thick framed glasses around kind eyes and wrinkles, a dimpled smile and blonde locks. “Don’t worry about it.” The man brushes past him. Jimin doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t know where he is, for what purpose he’s come here for, why the invitation was sent to his name. He feels disoriented. Lost amongst the crowd, dizzy from the strobe lights and the high-pitched laughter closing in on him. Suffocated. He gasps for air, swinging his head around to look for a wall to lean on, a corner to seek refuge in, where he won’t be swept away by strangers. But no matter where he turns to, it seems like the darkness is encompassing him— Or at least until he catches another’s eyes. Across the room. Jimin meets your curious pupils, your quirked head, the edge of your mouth slightly pulled. You’ve been staring at him and that alone captures his attention, roots him back to the ground. You’re in a black dress with white frills that makes it look like it’s a child’s attire. And as he muses this, you’re approaching faster than he can panic. Cutting through the horde. Beelining straight to him. “You’re cute. What’s your name?” “Jimin,” he stutters out and finally blinks. “Nice to meet you. I’m Y/N.” Your smile expands and before he can utter your name to memory, you lean in close. “I know what you did.” Immediately, Jimin frowns. “What do you mean?” You don’t answer or at least not in the straightforward way he wishes. Instead, you chuckle and Jimin discerns a moment too late that your gaze has always been predatory. “The both of us are quite alike, you know. But haven’t you noticed? Everyone in this room is a serial killer.” “W-What?” Jimin stutters, his head whipping from side to side, from person to person as he pales. You watch him carefully with an amused expression, how his eyes are widened like a puppy’s, how his mouth has downturned. It’s funny — how he acts when he’s not any different. But the chance to ask, interrogate or escape is stolen when the music lowers and the lights dim. “Oh.” You tug on Jimin’s sleeve. “It’s starting.” He follows your line of sight to the stage at the back, a shimmering spotlight shining down and showing him where the end of the room exactly is. Yet the figure that stands there is obscure. Hidden by their black clothing, their hood, a mask on their face. The voice booms when it speaks. “Welcome all to the first Weekend Massacre!” Jimin’s reeling and his eyes travel across the room. Amidst the crowd, he finds the blonde man from earlier, another shorter man with darker hair and a taller brunette. It’s then that the realization strikes him across the face. He’s seen some of these people before. On the news. In the newspaper. “Each of you who have received an invitation have been specifically chosen to be a participant in our games.” Games? Jimin’s attention is taken back to the stage. “Forty eight hours to commit as many crimes as you can with the promise of endless notoriety and being the first victor.” He’s nauseous, afraid, petrified of what these people around him have done, what he’s gotten himself into. And he barely has half a mind when you peek at him with another smile. “Each crime will be weighed differently on a point basis. You will be able to call in at any time to know your rank and the rank of one above and below you. There are two rules. Do not kill another participant and if you are caught by the authorities, then you are suspended from participating any further. The games will officially start in an hour and end on Sunday at this same time.” “I wish you all luck. The victor is somewhere standing in this room tonight and I look forward to meeting them.” It’s a game of killing people. A competition to see who can cause the most harm. A crowd of serial killers who have committed the most heinous crimes against women and children. Jimin feels bile reaching up his throat. He’s dizzy. He can’t hear anything until there’s a crisp call of his name and curious eyes peering into his. “Jimin? Are you alright?” No. He isn’t. Not in the least bit. He wants to run, tell someone this is happening, but he wonders if anyone would even believe him and telling anyone would mean giving himself in. It would mean being tracked down by those who organized this event and the police. It’s the last thing he would want. And he has a feeling that choosing not to participate isn’t an option either. Not with what happened when he threw out all those invitations, when he tried to ignore those phone calls. They’ll find him, whoever they are, and make him play. Jimin doesn’t get a chance to make a peep. You grab both of his hands into yours, smiling sweetly and tenderly. “Don’t be scared, Jimin! How about this? I’ll take you under my wing!” He stares at you. And an answer comes to him. It might be the perfect escape, a medium between participating and not — watching from the sidelines. Would that be enough to consider that he’s taking part but without having to do such a heinous thing? Would he truly be resolved from needing to act? More importantly, Jimin doesn’t understand. All he knows is your name. There’s no reason for you to offer your protection, to let him come along. He’s just met you. “W-Why?” “Because people like me and you need to stick together, silly! You don’t look like you can survive a second! So how about it, pet? You can join me. I don’t make this offer just to anybody!” Jimin gazes at the way you hold your hand out to him.

[Friday, 11:34pm] He fiddles with his fingers in his lap. Jimin swallows hard and steals a glance at you. You’re humming some light tune and tapping your hands against the steering wheel — the fluorescent street lights illuminating your face as you drive by before you’re brought into darkness again a second later. He’s not sure who’s the crazy one. The one who doesn’t even bat a lash after suddenly being thrusted into a murder game. Or the one who’s cognizant enough to be aware of how insane this is but is still following along anyhow. “So!” Your loud voice startles him. “We should get playing, shouldn’t we, pet?” Jimin’s tone stays timid. “What if we don’t?” The game is obscure and the realm of possibilities seems endless. Maybe the repercussions won’t be that bad if he chooses not to play. Yet at the same time, Jimin feels like he’s back at the party, placed in the crowd, shrouded in the darkness, being swept along by the tide without escape. A helpless follower. You scoff, looking at him. “And what would we do instead? Sit around and wait for someone else to be crowned the winner? How boring would that be?! I don’t think so. This is a once in a lifetime chance to compete with other killers. Why should we give it up when it’s so much fun?!” You command, “Pick someone.” “What?” Jimin’s eyes widen. He grasps his hands, feeling them shake even more. “I’ll help you kill someone, Jimin.” You smile at him. “I’ll give you the first pick.” “I...don’t know.” “It can be anyone you want! Anyone you’re upset with or you don’t like or you think makes your eyes sore!” You have a Chester's grin, eyes that twinkle in the night skyline’s lights. “Pick!” Jimin can feel the car accelerate dangerously down the empty street. And he sweats, placed under the pressure. He’s frightened of you, of your presence, how it seems like you know a million things about him, but he doesn’t know a single thing about you other than your name. It feels like you can see right through him. He wonders what crime you’ve committed. What you’ve done to be considered a serial killer. “Ji-min~,” you sing-song and he meets your eyes. “Pick already!” He glances out the window, head swirling, legs quivering. He has to choose the victim. But there’s no one he hates, no one he has malice towards, no one he wants to see dead. Out of sheer fear and compulsion, feeling the seconds ticking down and your impatience growing, Jimin bites the bullet and impulsively points straight out the windshield. “H-Him.” It was the first person he saw. A person merely at the wrong place at the wrong time. A homeless man with a parked shopping cart, digging through a garbage can. Oblivious. The car slows down at once and Jimin hears your hum. “Good choice. No one will miss someone like him!” Jimin feels nauseous. He feels queasy when the car is parked across the street, when you get out and dig into the trunk, telling him not to worry about it and how it’s actually a stolen vehicle you got your hands onto. He feels queasy when you cross the road while hugging his arm, how you approach the disheveled man casually and how the stranger looks up with a tired, worn expression yet retains a compassionate smile— “Is there somethin’ I can help you with?” “Yes. My boyfriend and I were actually wondering if we could get directions to—” And most of all, Jimin feels absolutely sick to his stomach when the homeless man innocently turns away to point to the roads, explaining the directions, and you bear a hammer from the sack you have dangling from your other arm. It’s mid-sentence. Mid blink when you reach over to smash the man’s head. Without warning, without reasoning, without hesitation. You’ve detached yourself from Jimin smoothly and slammed the head of the hammer onto the stranger’s skull. Allowing him to stumble back on the park bench, wheezing, eyes widened from shock. The sound of the cracking bones echoes. “P-Please!” The man is petrified, shaking with death setting in his eyes, gripping his head as blood pours down to his face and through his lashes. “I-I have k-kids! I have kids!” The pleading voice jarring to the ears. Jimin is horrified. You loom over the man with an impassive expression. And as the man begs with tears in his eyes, you slam the hammer on his head again, loud enough that Jimin, himself, cries out. “Stop!” You turn around, crimson splattered on your cheek. The homeless man’s no longer conscious, flopped over as his head continues to pour out blood. “What’s wrong, Jiminnie?” You loll your head to one side. But he ignores you. Jimin looks at the man. The victim he chose. Bile reaches up to his throat. Jimin collapses on his weak knees. And he throws up. Chunks of his partially digested microwavable dinner spew out as he wheezes. His stomach contracts as he coughs to the ground, face littered with loose teardrops and cold sweat. The pungent scent is sharp against the acid in his throat. Jimin wipes his mouth with the back of his quivering hand. “Oh my fucking god. W-we...we need to take him to the hospital!” “Now why would we do that, silly?” you giggle. “We need to finish him off!” You’re insane and he was insane to come along with you, for taking the invitation and going to the party, for thinking he could go along with this and be safe watching from the sidelines. “I-I’m not a killer!” Jimin sobs into his hands, unable to look at the man any longer. Jimin doesn’t know why he was picked, why he was given an invitation. They have the wrong person. And like he’s at a confession, he professes, “I’m not a serial killer!” But instead of a priest, it’s the devil itself. “And what would your family say about that, Jiminnie?” You lower yourself down to him, carding your bloodstained fingers through his soft brunette locks as he trembles. Your murmur is consoling as it is tantalizing. The silence isn’t as eerie as it should be. “I heard about it, you know. I saw it on the news. I know you did it. It takes one to know one.” “Stop.” Jimin hyperventilates between tears, shaking his head, but you don’t. “You mutilated them.” Beneath his eyelids, he sees it. The crimson coated floorboards, splattered on the yellow paisley wallpaper, on the popcorn ceiling of the living room. He covers his ears. “Stop it!” “You flushed your younger brother down the toilet.” The chaos of the entire scene projects before his eyes. The knocked over chairs, the picture frames thrown, the stench of iron in the two bedroom house heavy, the warmth of the blood. And Jimin feels the same warmth after you’ve pried his hands off of his ears and you hold his cheeks between your hands. You force him to look you in the eye. “It...it was an accident,” he sobs, the words barely stuttering out of him. “I b-blacked out. I was angry. I d-didn’t know what I was doing.” He had no control of himself. And worst of all, he never got to repent for his sins. He had an alibi — a timesheet at work that told them he was at another place at that time, yet in reality, he had forgotten to clock out. But by then, he was too much of a coward to fess up to his actions, to tell them that he was the perpetrator, to be looked at as the monster he knows he is. But somehow, even with all these facts, you don’t look at him like he is one. “Something like that is never an accident, Jiminnie,” you coo and with a sweet smile, you stand and finish the man off. The last pained grunt lingers. Jimin follows along on auto-pilot as you drag the body yourself with much effort. You bury him by the playground where the soil is softest, where in the morning, old couples and children will trample by the dirt without a single thought. It takes thirty minutes for you to get rid of it, for you to pour two bottles of water over the bench to wash the blood into the nearby gutter, to shove the shopping cart onto the road as a traffic hazard. Then, you’re grabbing Jimin’s palm, interlacing your fingers between his, staining his skin with the blood on your hands like it’s part of a ritual. You’ve imprinted the patterns of your palm on his. And then you’re pulling him along like a doll, laughing down the street in a high, in a drunken madness in spite of being sober. “You helped me kill someone, Jiminnie.” Your eyes seem to shine brighter, more excited than before. “You know what this means? It means we’re connected now! Forever and always.” It’s unsettling, but you’re right. He’s an accomplice. A bystander. A follower. No worse than you are. He let this happen. Chose the victim. Watched you do it. He allowed himself to become your pet. “I wonder how many points that gave me,” you hum with pouty lips before turning down the alley. Jimin’s not sure where you’re going but he doesn’t care to ask. As if he wasn’t susceptible to being pulled along by the crowd, he feels exceptionally inclined to follow your whims. He wonders who you are. How he feels somehow feels grounded when he looks at you, even after everything that you’ve done. “Hurry the fuck up!” There are two shadowy figures at the end of the dark alleyway the pair of you turn into. You loll your head to one side, curiosity gleaming in your irises. “I wonder what’s going on.” “T-This is all I have!” The panicked voice tears out of the stranger’s throat. “Please! Let me go!” Jimin automatically stumbles back, ready to escape to where he came from. But you lean over, interest piqued and you quicken your steps, tugging him along. “Who’s there?!” The tall brunette points his revolver towards you and you lift your hands up, stepping into the light with Jimin behind you. “What are you looking at, huh?!” You greet the man with a smile, not at all frightened with the gun being pointed at you. “Relax. I’m a part of the game too.” “Who the fuck do you think you are?!” he yells from the pit of his stomach, “Don’t tell me to relax!” Jimin’s eyes search the scene, the stranger with his pockets pulled out, wallet on the floor, shaking incessantly. The one holding him hostage and robbing him is a tall brunette with sharp features. He has a deranged look in his eye, chest rising and falling, sweat built at his hairline. He recognizes him from the party. “Taehyung, right?” you chime, “From the infamous Kim family.” “The hell do you want?!” The victim looks at Jimin and their eyes meet. The desperation and fear is tangible, and he mouths ‘help’. But then Jimin tears his eyes from the stranger, looking away. There’s nothing he can do to help him. He can barely help himself. “Nothing. We’re just passing by. Didn’t think we’d run into someone so soon, but looks fun. I’ll leave you to it then.” Taehyung glares and gestures away with his gun after a beat. You wave goodbye enthusiastically and pass by humming. Jimin follows after you, quickening his steps until the two figures become distant again. “H-How’d you know who he was?” “It’s not hard to know about the Kim family. They might all be imprisoned, but they’re famous,” you tell him as if he should know. “Even if I didn’t know about them, I would’ve, since I had to scope out my competition. I did research on everyone.” You turn to the boy with a sly smirk and your index finger pokes his chest. “Even you, Jiminnie. How do you think I know what you did? But when I read up on you, I knew I’d like you.” Your smile widens and you turn onto a suburban street. “I’ve always wanted to be part of a Bonnie and Clyde duo.” He walks with you, shrouded in the darkness while watching a flickering lamp post in the distance. You audibly play eenie, meenie, minie, moe with the houses lined on the avenue and once you land on one, you walk towards it. Jimin stalks after you. “What are you doing?” “Watch and see,” you whisper with the corners of your lips curled, twirling around to him as you walk to the front door. From the sack thrown over your shoulder, you come out with two silver pins and you show off to Jimin with your sly smile. He doesn’t expect you to pick the front lock, but he looks around and hopes no one’s watching. Within a minute, the door opens. “Nice and easy.” You skip inside like it’s your own house, but Jimin remains hesitant at the step. It takes a deep inhale before he steps through. There are shoes haphazardly thrown on the side by the closet, the entrance small. He’s led into a hall and then a living room. Enveloped in the dark, the little street lights cast in and help him find his way. Jimin’s eyes eventually stray to a shelf of frames, old wedding photos of a young couple to pictures of the family gathered around one another with enormous grins. Yet one photograph takes his attention in particular — one of a little girl in a polka dot dress, showing off her missing front tooth in a wide smile. You seem to pay no mind to the pictures. Instead, you’re leaning over to shut the open window by the armchair. The floorboards creak subtly as you creep along the walls, quietly shutting all the windows. Jimin follows along at a delayed pace, confusion written across his face. At least until you come to the stove and turn all four gas stove tops on with a smile. “What can I say? I like to get creative.” Jimin pales with the realization. You’re getting rid of an entire family with little to no effort and all you can do is silently giggle. You walk around the kitchen, up the stairs and on the way, you stop by the carbon monoxide detector to rip out the batteries from it and toss it aside. You’re methodical and careful every step of the way, always controlling the crime scene, playing it like a game of chess. Jimin’s not sure if he’s scared of you or if he admires you. The door creaks as you peer into the bedroom. He squints into the darkness over your shoulder but then you slip away to the next door. The following room is brighter. The open window is next to a street lamp outside, so Jimin can make out the princess posters pinned on the pink walls, the toy boxes shoved in the corner, and the little girl asleep soundly in her bed, covers rising and falling every so often. You don’t blink, taking three strides to reach over and shutting the window. You lock the latch. Jimin steps into the room as well, but he doesn’t see the doll on the ground. He doesn’t notice it until he accidentally kicks it aside and the thing sounds, greeting him with a deafening — “I love you!” You whirl around. His entire body freezes. The girl under the covers shuffle. She twists, turns and audibly sighs. “Mommy?” Immediately, you move. Like it’s your sheer instincts. Before Jimin can stop you, before he can call your name and tell you to spare her. You rip the pillow from underneath the girl’s head, shocking her awake, and before she can scream aloud, you press the pillow to her face. Her legs kick out, but you push your entire body weight onto her, suffocating the girl. Jimin’s knees weaken, his breath staccatos as he sees red beneath his eyes — recalling the splatter of the ceiling, of the paisley wallpaper. He should cry out, shove you off. But whenever he opens his mouth, his voice is lost. He can’t utter a word. He knows it’s too late. Stopping you would make the girl cry for her parents. They would waken. They would call the police. And he would get caught. Jimin’s too much of a coward. So he looks away.

[Saturday, 3:28am] The harsh red and blue spinning lights flash through the alley. The moment it swirls away, the scene is clouded in darkness before another shade floods inside. Seokjin releases a heavy breath, shuts his car door and strides down. He shakes away the sleepiness that still lingers after being rudely shaken awake. There wasn’t even time to get a coffee. “Detective Kim!” someone calls out. A younger man with brown doe eyes waiting for him. Seokjin wonders how he got here so soon when he wasn’t on a shift. But the new upcoming ones are always like that — ambitious and keen. Give them a few years and they’ll learn to mellow out. Or at least most of them do. He’s not so sure about Jeon Jungkook. “When’d you get here?” “Five minutes ago.” “So I suppose you’ve had enough time to take a look?” Seokjin receives gloves handed to him and puts them on. “A little.” The two of them bend over the yellow tape wrapped around the perimeter of the scene. There’s forensics in their white garbs, marking bullet casings and blood splatters, the flashes of their camera blinding to the eye. They set up their lights and the entire alley becomes illuminated. The victim is lying face up in the middle of the alleyway. His eyes are still wide open. Blood poured out in a pool and staining the pebbles. It’s splattered on the brick wall nearby. Seokjin’s brows furrow, noticing several bullet holes on the victim’s forehead. His face has been mutilated from the wound. His left shoe is also missing, but Seokjin’s eyes trail to see the leather loafer a meter away. “What’d you think?” When the older man is met with silence, he turns. Jungkook swallows hard, quiet as he stares at the corpse. Seokjin doesn’t blame him. It always takes a long time to get used to seeing dead bodies in such a way. The department might praise Jungkook for being a prodigy with the newer techniques — the whole fancy profiling spiel that Seokjin’s old mind has yet to wrap his head around. But Seokjin has one thing Jungkook lacks. Experience. Maybe that’s why the chief linked them up. They both could benefit from this partnership. “Jeon.” “Sorry.” He snaps back to it and clears his throat. “His name is Park Chanyeol. Twenty eight years old. Works in construction. He was shot in the face six times.” “Bullets?” “Point three five seven magnum. They think it’s most likely from some kind of revolver.” Seokjin hums and Jungkook continues, “His pockets are empty and his wallet is gone. It looks like an armed robbery. Most likely the victim has no connection to the perpetrator. There’s a bruise on his left cheek. He probably had a physical altercation with the perpetrator before he was shot. His knuckles are bloody, so they’re collecting DNA samples to see if it belongs to someone else. That’s most likely going to be our best bet in catching this person considering there aren’t any security cameras in this area or witnesses.” He nods and after a beat, their eyes meet again. Seokjin asks, “What else? Aside from the main facts of the case.” Jungkook inhales a deep breath. “The scene is disorganized. There’s no need to shoot someone six times. Whoever did this, not only left the body but left physical evidence. And if they have no connection to the victim, that means they did this spontaneously.” “So?” “We’re most likely looking at someone who has poor hygiene and nighttime habits. I’m guessing a man in his early twenties. Below average intelligence. His motive…..is quick financial gain and also being able to feel a sense of superiority and power.” Seokjin’s eyes narrow into the boy and his soft facial features. He’s not inclined to believe in pure speculation, but Jungkook’s proven himself right on several cases they’ve worked on together and he’s not one to disregard credit where it’s due. So, he takes his word for it. They cross the tape once more, walking back to the parked cars. The noisy static of the radios and snapshot of cameras fade into the back. “Call Baekhyun. He might want to see this for himself.” “Detective Byun is down at seventh avenue, Detective Kim.” He lifts a brow and Jungkook explains, “I heard there was a homicide case there.” “It looks like it's a busy night tonight,” Seokjin exhales, a cold cloud of air emitting from his lips. He recalls a number of police cars rushing past in the other lane while he was driving here. Jungkook gets into the passenger seat as Seokjin slides into the driver’s. “Actually, there’s multiple homicide cases being reported at the same time. More than the usual amount. It’s almost like they’re being committed at the same time.” He puts the keys into the ignition and the engine roars to life with the head beams. “Is it gang related?” “Hard to say,” the younger sharply inhales. “From what I heard, all the crime scenes are starkly different.” Seokjin frowns and casts a glance down the busy alleyway. At the same time, the DNA sample on the man’s knuckles are swabbed and bagged to be tested.

[Saturday, 7:58am] You cackle, leaning on the arm of the armchair with your legs thrown over the other. Even though Jimin was against entering the house again, you weren’t dissuaded by the lingering traces of carbon monoxide. The open window nearby is enough to air out the area and what better place is there to hide out than a definitely empty home. It gave you a chance to steal more comfortable clothes, rid of your dress and burn it too. “Nearly two hours ago, a suspect has been arrested in the second degree murder of Park Chanyeol whose body was found in the alley between Third Street and Canons Boulveard.” You’re seated on the armchair like it’s your throne as Jimin stands on your right side, less like a loyal guard dog and more of a scared puppy who’s not sure what to do. But he’s endearing like that. “Nineteen year old Kim Taehyung, the youngest member of the notorious Kim family, has been charged with second degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery and illegal possession of a firearm—” You laugh as you watch Taehyung on screen cuffed and led out of the car. He’s screaming at the reporters while his lawyer at his side tries to cover his face, but to no avail. It hasn’t even been twelve hours since the game started and he’s already caught red-handed. In all honesty, you’re a bit disappointed. It’s pleasant to have less competition, but you thought Taehyung would put up more of a fight than that. Well….you suppose this is the consequence of being as reckless as he is. “Breaking news that we just received.” The screen flashes to the news anchor. “We believe a bomb has been detonated at the city hall. That happened within the last two minutes, major evacuations are now taking place. Police have still yet to confirm the number of casualties or if this is the act done by a terrorist organization. Stay with us. The scene is now live.” Your brow quirks. Jimin stumbles forward. His hands tremble, expression stunned. The news channel gives a helicopter view of city hall, the smoke plumes rising in the air, the chaos on the road with firetrucks and police cars rushing into the scene. “Is this…” “A part of the game?” You throw your legs off, feet touching the carpet as your back straightens. It’s not time to be sitting back anymore. “Probably. I’m guessing this is Min’s work.” When Jimin remains confused, you smile and explain, “Min Yoongi. He’s a guy who likes doing flashy stuff like this. Don’t be too impressed, pet. He might have a high fatality rate, but it draws too much attention for my tastes. It makes the cops go cuckoo to find him.” You stand up and stretch your limbs over your head, groaning as you do so. Finally — there’s some real motivation. The game’s definitely more fun with characters like Yoongi. “Time to go, Jiminnie.” Your grin is enormous and your eyes gleam. “We can’t just sit back and let someone else win, can we?”

[Saturday, 10:03am] Even from the distance, the smoky air still permeates through his mask. The scene is largely cleaned up. Just a few hours ago, there were victims crying outside and tens of fire trucks parked on the curb, first responders at the scene rescuing those stranded inside and carrying out the bodies. The site is still somewhat chaotic, yellow tape lining the perimeter, debris and remaining rubble scattered all over the steps and the road; the shadows of the atrocity committed not long ago. “In all my years of work, can’t say I’ve ever seen something like this.” After closing the Kim case in record time, Seokjin only had an hour of sleep before he was abruptly called here. But it’s not just him. All investigators were pulled and dozens of homicide cases have been pushed aside in view of this event. “How many casualties?” “Twenty so far.” “So far?” Jungkook nods solemnly. “They’re pulling out more bodies from the rubble.” Seokjin sighs, feeling his dark circles deepen in its lilac shade. A moment later, he catches a familiar figure approaching from his peripheral vision. Someone with a sharp jawline, darkened hair and a five o’clock shadow around his mouth. Said man appears even more exhausted than Seokjin is, as if he’s aged an additional ten years. He’s not at all like the strapping, energetic friend he had at the academy all those years ago. Seokjin manages a smile to the all too familiar Chief of Police. “It’s not often I see you out on the field anymore. I always thought you would get a stroke in that office chair of yours.” “Sometimes the time calls for it, Jin. I can’t always sit back with my hands clean.” “And here I thought you forgot what it’s like to get down and dirty.” “Sir,” Jungkook greets Hoseok, lowering his head just an inch out of respect. Hoseok nods. “You must be the new profiler that was transferred over. I believe we met once.” “At the gala.” “Yes. How have you been managing? I’ve been hearing great things about you.” “I’ve been doing alright. Just trying my best.” “He’s keen,” Seokjin says and Hoseok’s lips curl, knowing full well how he feels about keeners. “Good. Maybe that’ll inspire you to be less grumpy.” He scoffs and ignores him. “What do you have for me?” In spite of the difference in their positions, their friendship allows them to be casual with one another. After all, they started at the same time and it was Hoseok who chose to climb the ladder and make his way to the top. Seokjin, on the other hand, has never been one for bureaucracy. Many find his brash way of speaking displeasing, and it’s not what he signed up for either. “The bomb was sent in a thin package.” The file folder is passed to him as they walk. Seokjin flips it open and studies the photograph of the dollar sign symbol carved into a metal piece, the signature trademark. “So it’s the Unabomber copycat?” “I don’t know if I’d go as far as to call him a copycat.” “Then he’s at least a more advanced version.” Seokjin flips through the report. “It seems like he’s more sophisticated. Are you planning on setting up a task force to find the guy?” “I don’t know yet.” Hoseok drags a hand over his face. “I have a few investigators in mind that I might assign.” “But not us?” “We’re full hands on deck. I’d rather have my most efficient detectives on standby in case something else happens which I have a feeling it just might.” Hoseok’s cautious, always saving his best cards. “In the last twelve hours, crime in the city has spiked to two hundred percent, but there are no connections at all to any of them. I want you to look into it and see if you have any theories. As for this case, the bombing of city hall, I just wanted to hear your thoughts.” Seokjin hums and turns to the younger man who’s been listening in. “What do you think, Jungkook?” It takes a second to collect his thoughts. Then, Jungkook’s doe eyes lift, unwavering. “Whoever did this, they left little evidence to work with. The origins of the package can’t be tracked either. So not only did they make the explosive themselves, they controlled every step of it.” “Above average intelligence.” Jungkook nods. “And most likely an outcast of society. In the past, this bomber targeted high members of society. And of all the places they could’ve sent it to, they chose city hall this time. Not to mention, his trademark is peculiar. It’s not any initials, it’s a symbol. The dollar sign. I think this person has an ideological motive.” “Then he’ll most likely be in contact with the police or news outlets soon to spread whatever message he has,” Seokjin adds. “Most likely. I think we’re looking at someone organized and nonsocial, someone who lives alone and follows the news closely.” Hoseok smiles. “That’s more than enough to work with.”

[Saturday, 12:01pm] “Where are we going?” Jimin struggles to keep up with your determined strides. “Winning the game isn’t just about who kills more, Jiminnie,” you teach him with a sly smile. “You also have to strategize how to take down your competitors.” The pair of you step up the driveway to the door and you hold the doorbell down with your index finger for an extended amount of time. Then, you knock thrice. There’s silence. “Who’s house is this?” “His name is Kim Namjoon. He’s a big competitor.” Jimin’s head whips towards you. “We’re at his house?!” You grin. “Pretty sure. What’s the issue?” He opens his mouth, but no words are uttered. Jimin can’t wrap his mind around how he’s on a serial killer’s doorstep, how you’ve knocked on it, expecting it to open. “How do you even know this is his?” “I told you. I did my research on everyone, Jiminnie. And don’t worry. If this is really his place, he’ll let us in. It’s not like he can leave us on his porch.” You turn around to wave enthusiastically at an elderly neighbour walking her dog. You’re clinically insane — Jimin’s sure of it. But even if you come off as deranged, it’s apparent you’ve thought things through, that you’ve strategized every step. He wonders if that’s why he feels a sense of calm, why it always feels like Jimin’s rooted in the ground when he sees you. There’s a shift at the door and you look towards the peephole with a massive smile. The door cracks open. There’s an older man in his forties, thick framed glasses around kind eyes and wrinkles, a dimpled smile and blonde locks. They recognize each other from the party. “What are you doing here?” “Seeking refuge obviously,” you sing-song. “Can we come in or what?” Namjoon’s glare turns menacing. His pupils are blown, eyes bulging from their sockets as his mouth lopsides. The facade of the friendly neighbour crumbles instantaneously and Jimin instinctively shuffles back in intimidation and fear. But then the door widens a moment later. “Ugh.” You step aside from the large puddle of blood on the floorboards. Jimin’s eyes expand. The streaks of the crimson fluid are pulled towards a closed door meters away as if a body was dragged. “Clean that up, will you?” Jimin’s knees shake, but he follows after you, stepping aside and slipping into the house. The door is slammed shut. You’re humming, looking at all the decor of the cozy abode. “Nice house. I like the green drapes.” “What do you want?” Namjoon stalks after the two of you. “If you’re looking for someone so you can be a trio, I’ll have to refuse. I don’t work well with others and I don’t like anyone interfering with my business.” “That’s disappointing. I’ll just take breakfast then.” You round the corner, plopping down on the wooden chair by the small dining table. “Have anything good to eat? I’m starving!” The man glares. You prop your elbow on the table, pouting at him. “Just let us hide out for a while and we’ll leave. Promise.” “You should’ve done this somewhere else,” he warns, yet turns towards his kitchen. Jimin releases his held breath from his tense body and comes to sit next to you. He leans in close to whisper, “What are you planning?” “You’ve never poked a bear before, Jiminnie? It’s all part of the fun. Relax,” you coax him with a crooked smile. Jimin doesn’t know but it’s because of him that you’re even able to pull this stunt off. He has this permanently scared look on his face, his features etched with fear and regret. It’s endearing, but because of that, Namjoon is sincerely fooled into thinking that you came here as a last resort to escape from prying eyes and just to have a meal. Jimin has the ability to disarm. And if it wasn’t for him, Namjoon would never believe you. You look around at the fake flowers in the vase, the nature calendar on the wall, the table without a smudge. Then your eyes trail to a thick pile of photos across the table and you lurch over to grab the stack. You hum. Jimin pales. “Is that….” “Yep.” Jimin immediately looks away. It’s dark pictures of dismembered bodies, naked and tied up women caught in the camera’s yellow flash, and women who are just walking on the street, unaware that they’re being stalked and captured from afar. But each photograph is meticulously labeled with a date and name, sometimes with a phone number at the back. Namjoon’s one of those types who like to call the family of victims just to taunt them, to record conversations he has with victims to play it back for them. Even for your standards, you know he’s sick. Your study session is interrupted by a meow. An orange tabby cat with narrowed pupils jumps onto the table and then suddenly, the pictures are being snatched out of your hands. Namjoon’s jaw is clamped, teeth gritted together. He plops down a plate of baked pastries and jams, and quickly collects the stack of photographs. “That’s not yours to look at.” “Sorry.” You loll your head to one side. “Got curious.” There’s an ear-piercing, muffled scream that makes Jimin flinch — a bloodcurdling ‘help’ echoing along the walls. It’s coming from the basement. You whirl your head back to your host. “Shouldn’t you go take care of that?” “Don’t touch anything,” Namjoon warns in a low voice and steps away. You grab the croissant and your teeth tear into it. Your other hand reaches for the cat and the animal allows you to scratch underneath its chin. Its tail curls and it hops off the table. “Y/N.” For the first time, Jimin calls you by your name and you turn to him. He’s timidly eating his cream cheese pastry with strawberry jam and you reach over with your sleeve to wipe the corner of his mouth free from crumbs. “Yes?” “Would...you ever kill me?” He wonders what it would be like if you considered him a competitor. Or if he wasn’t competing at all, if he could be your victim. Part of him wants to trust you just because it’s easier that way. To be a follower. Hold zero responsibilities. Make no decisions. But he’s not sure if he should allow himself to. Jimin still has yet to figure out how much he should lean on you and believe in your methods. He doesn’t want to win and you know it too. All he wants is to just be kept safe from the organizers of the event, from the other serial killers, from the police. And it looks like as long as he follows you, everything will work in both of your favours. “Why would I, silly?” Your smile softens. “It would be too much of a waste if I did.” It’s not long after the breakfast shenanigans at Kim Namjoon’s house that you make your exit with a ‘see you later’ and slip back onto the suburban street undetected. The older man is happy to have you gone, but if he knew what was up your sleeve, he wouldn’t feel that way. “A-Are y-you sure this is a good idea?” Jimin’s shaking again, wide-eyed as he grips the phone in the red phone booth. You’re forcing him to make the call purely because it’s too cute to see him sweat under the pressure. “There aren’t any rules against being a snitch, Jiminnie.” You grin. “And since when did serial killers follow any rules or moral conducts in the first place?”

[Saturday, 6:00pm] Jungkook scrubs his hands. Once his skin is free of soap, he turns off the tap and braces himself against the porcelain sink. He exhales staggeringly. He’s seen stuff like this before — made to listen to countless interviews and interrogations, watched tons of videos. It was all a part of his training. But it’s different when it’s not through a screen and when he’s sitting on a cushy chair behind a desk. It’s different when he’s the one apprehending the criminal and collecting the evidence with his own hands. Jungkook swallows hard and goes for more soap, trying to rid himself of the disgust he feels. Kim Namjoon was taken in not even a half hour ago. Luckily, it’s an airtight case. At least with the stack of photos Jungkook found and the two victims barely alive in his basement that was sent away on ambulances. The man might remain silent, but the evidence is insurmountable. Jungkook turns the tap off, wipes his hands with paper towels, discards it in the trash and walks out of the bathroom. He puts on a stoic expression. He has a job to do. He was assigned this case when they’re short-handed with other detectives and officers, so there’s no choice but to detach himself and be professional. He finds his partner in his office, seated in his chair and fiddling with a rectangular card. “Detective Kim?” Seokjin looks up. “They found this on Kim Namjoon when they were booking him in.” It’s black, but golden looped letters etched into the smooth card reads welcome. Seokjin flips it over but there’s nothing else on the card. “Kim Taehyung had the exact same one,” the older man reveals on an exhale and that immediately piques Jungkook’s attention who cocks a brow. “Then they know each other. Or at least, they’re connected somehow. If this isn’t gang-related then is it possible that Namjoon knows the Kim family somehow?” “It doesn’t seem likely. The Kim family is high profile. They wouldn’t have anything to do with a middle class man in his forties living in the suburbs.” Seokjin leans back, scrutinizing the black card and the golden letters. He thinks about the big picture. “But what if this was indeed organized? But by different criminals banding together.” Their eyes meet. “Like they picked a date to have a massacre.” Jungkook frowns. It’s improbable — an almost outlandish theory. The logistics of it seem too difficult to be feasible. How would a bunch of serial killers with no connection whatsoever be able to meet, arrange and agree on something doing something like that? And for what reason? Yet that would serve to explain how crime has escalated so drastically in the city within the past day, how there seems to be homicides happening on every single corner. Jungkook’s train of thoughts crash when Seokjin tosses the card on his desk and sighs, “Have they traced who gave the tip yet?” “It’s from a phone booth on the corner of Westminster lane.” “I didn’t know people still used phone booths,” he muses, threading his hands together. “There weren’t any security cameras, but there was one down the road by a jewelry store. They caught two figures there at the same time the call was made.” Jungkook moves a file folder on his cluttered desk forward and the older man finally flips it open. It’s a fuzzy black and white shot of the camera. He’s barely able to make out the two distinct shapes next to one another. But Seokjin’s unable to study it for long when his cellphone starts blaring. He sighs and picks it up. “What is it?” Seokjin’s silent for a long while and then he hums that he’ll be right there before hanging up. That’s never a good sign, so Jungkook braces himself as Seokjin stands and grabs his coat. “A family was just found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. They suspect there’s foul play.”

[Saturday, 6:00pm] The curdling shriek tears through Jimin’s eardrums. He shrinks back, shutting his eyes as tight as he can until they hurt. He doesn’t allow a sliver of light to come through. He can’t look. He won’t. Even when he knows that right in front of him, you’re choking an old grandma, pinning her to the floor, your grip loose enough so she can still scream. After a long moment, there’s silence and he hyperventilates. “You can look now, Jiminnie. I’m not finished but you can still look.” “No.” He shakes his head furiously, curled into a fetal position. He won’t risk it. So he stays where he is, against the wall, on the floral carpet on the floor. Jimin hears your sigh and then there are footsteps. What follows is the noise of fabric tearing, threads being roughly pulled. He hitches his breath and automatically flinches when he feels you behind him, your warm breath against his neck. “Relax. I got you a blindfold.” You delicately wrap the black cloth around his eyes. And you tie it into a pretty bow behind his head while humming a light tune. Jimin’s fingers brush against the silky material. He hesitates but trusts you enough to finally peel back his lids. He encounters the comfortable darkness. “You don’t need to look if you don’t want to,” you chime and he feels your presence fade away from his backside. He exhales, loosening the tension in his body. But he still doesn’t understand. Jimin can’t comprehend how you can be so accommodating and thoughtful to him one moment and the next, your eyes are cold to others. “Why are you doing this?” “Because I want to and it’s fun.” Your giggle tinkles. “Don’t you think so, pet? To have someone at your complete mercy. To see the fear in their eyes and hear them beg.” With his vision gone, his other senses are in overdrive. Jimin perceives the sharp scent of iron in his nose, tastes the sultry air, and hears rustling. He catches the way you’re panting, how each breath seems heavy from your lungs. “Lots of people do it for different reasons. For sexual pleasure, the thrill, for their beliefs, or even because they get angry like you do,” you state nonchalantly and he flinches. “There doesn’t need to always be a complicated reason. You can do it out of sheer spite even.” For the next minute, it goes eerily quiet. Jimin doesn’t know if you’re gone, if you’ve left the room, or if you’ve abandoned him entirely. His arms lift up into the air, batting at the empty space. He’s about to call your name, but then hears your footsteps. “All done!” you sing-song. You reach behind him, undoing the ties and the blindfold slips off. There isn’t a body in sight. Jimin’s met with your smile.

[Saturday, 7:48pm] “What is happening is very unfortunate and our hearts reach out to all the families of these victims. These senseless crimes will not go unpunished. The terror these criminals have inflicted on the population will not dissuade this country from seeking justice. I have called upon the best personnel who will be involved in these criminal investigations. We ask that during this process all people take caution and stay inside. And I ask that people send their thoughts and prayers…” Jimin’s focus on the President’s press conference happening in the corner television fades as you start singing to the country music playing overhead. He turns his attention to you. His expression must be impressed on how you know all the lyrics since you lean in with a grin. “I love this song.” He never took you to be much of a country music lover. The retro diner is cozy, a long counter with stools, classic red booths and yellow lights. It’s as if time has stopped in this place and the emptiness only adds to the eerie atmosphere. The waitress with a half white apron and dress comes out and places two plates on the table. “Here’s your regular stack of pancakes with a side of fruit and bacon, and the strawberry avalanche french toast.” You smile. “Thanks.” The woman nods with a “you’re welcome” and returns to the back. Jimin doesn’t have much of an appetite. But he tries his best to stomach the food, cutting through the bread and piercing it with the fork. You, on the other hand, visibly blanch at the sliced strawberries, banana and oranges on your plate and one by one, you transfer them over to his. The corner of Jimin’s mouth twitches. “You don’t like fruit?” “Not really. I only like grapes.” You grab the maple syrup and Jimin watches with his bugged-out eyes how you nearly empty half the canister. By the time you’re satisfied, your pancakes are drowning in the syrup. Yet you grin happily, excited as you cut into them. You fill your cheeks and Jimin lets his entire smile slip. “I’m guessing you like pancakes.” “I love them.” Your knife scrapes the plate as you saw down into the fluffy texture. You muse, “I never got to eat them much as a kid.” “What did you eat then?” “A lot of vegetables, fermented food, canned stuff,” you say while chewing in your cheek. Jimin pushes the strawberries around on his plate for a moment before his eyes lift and his voice lowers. “When...did you start killing people, Y/N?” “I don’t know. Ever since I was born, I guess,” you deadpan. And after he stares at you for an extended period of time, you elaborate, “I grew up in a cult. Anyone who disobeyed or did bad things was killed. It’s normal.” You shrug. “I don’t know why people make such a big deal about it. People are okay with killing pigs and cows to eat, but not humans.” It’s jarring to hear and it makes it hard to swallow down his food. “Well, it’s different.” “Is it?” you ask. “We’re all animals. Having exceptions seems hypocritical. Plus, some people deserve to die, right? That’s why the death penalty exist.” It’s an odd sense of logic. But what’s even stranger is that he can discern where you’re coming from. “Why do some people deserve to die more than others? Just because of their actions?” You cut into your pancakes. “If the government kills someone, that’s somehow okay. But if I kill someone, then that’s bad. Who decided that?” “The world is full of contradictions.” You swallow a mouthful. “At the end of the day, aren’t laws just made by people trying to govern and control other people? Burning witches at the stake used to be legal, you know.” Jimin’s unable to keep his gaze away from you. If it wasn’t against the law, he wouldn’t be so scared of getting caught. He wouldn’t have had to spend the last year constantly looking over his shoulder and afraid of sirens. But if it wasn’t against the law, would he even be sitting with you right now and having this conversation? The games wouldn’t exist. There would be no reason to come up with something like the Weekend Massacre. Then again, it’s because they didn’t catch him that he could be sitting here at this time. The flawed system made up by people to regulate others failed to accomplish their goal. You finish the pancakes in a flash and somehow, Jimin finds the strength to finish his too. Once he’s done, he pushes it aside and your eyes gleam. “Ready?” “For what?” “Running, silly.” You grab his hand across the table, stand and yank him out from his seat. “Have you never dined and dashed before?” You start running before he can protest. Jimin hears the shout and curses of the waitress from behind as you shove the door open and it bangs against the wall with the golden bell up top. You’re giggling, sprinting as fast as you can, ducking and moving between the crowd. Jimin struggles to keep up but he widens his pace and quickly matches your speed. He steals a glimpse of you, catching the fleeting moment of the wind twirling through your hair, the way your eyes are crinkled with your playfully devious smile, how your expression is innocent as you’re committing such a juvenile crime. Hands held, Jimin interlaces his fingers with yours. You turn your head, locking your eyes with his, and softening your gaze. “People like us need to stick together, Jiminnie. We’ll always be marginalized for what we do.” You’re right. He’s been living like an outcast out of fear, and if people knew the crimes he’s committed, he would be casted away either way. But the realization sinks into Jimin — you’re the first and probably the only person who wouldn’t look at him any differently for what he’s done. You don’t treat him like he’s a monster. Even when he’s scared of himself, you aren’t. His hand holding yours tightens.

[Saturday, 9:07pm] Seokjin hasn’t slept. He doesn’t think he’ll get the chance to tonight. There’s no time to when he was being called left, right and center. There are crime scenes behind dumpsters, on the fifth level of a downtown apartment, murderers on every corner of the city. Every officer off duty and on duty have been called, spread thin throughout, and with every hour, there seems to be more and more murders. It’s impossible that this is done by one person or even by five. But Seokjin doesn’t know what to make of it. He doesn’t know what to do. He hasn’t experienced something like this before — this massacre. He leans back into the uncomfortable chair, scrubbing a hand over his face. Seokjin studies the black card with golden letters etched into it, the word welcome catching the light. If this was indeed an organized massacre, then how and who? How could this many killers come together and be this organized? Who is behind it and orchestrating it? And why? Could it be for fame alone? For chaos? It feels like it’s all part of some sick game. “Jin, you wanted to talk to me?” He’s snapped out of his thoughts by his old friend unlocking his office. Hoseok is disoriented and exhausted, coat hanging off of his arm, briefcase swinging in his hand. He doesn’t look like he’s had the chance to sleep either. Seokjin stands from his seat, having waited for the man, and he follows him into his office. It’s monotone except for the dog figurine on top of the file cabinet and the many awards and certificates framed in a line on the wall. They offered this office to Seokjin once. He refused. He’s starting to think he shouldn’t have. Seokjin shuts the door behind him. With the blinds still opened, he witnesses some officers rush past. Hoseok throws his briefcase onto his desk and collapses into his chair. “Did you take a look at the monoxide poisoning case?” “I have, but there aren’t any leads yet. The extended family’s not looking to do autopsies.” “Give them some time.” Hoseok rolls up his sleeves. “They might change their minds. What did you want to talk to me about?” Seokjin leans forward, palms flat on the wooden oak of the desk. “I think we should call a citywide lock down.” For the first time, Hoseok appears alert again. His posture straightens. “What?” “We need to tell people to stay inside, Hoseok. That’s the best way to protect them.” “The best way to protect them is to be out there on the street.” “And that’s what we’ve been doing.” His index finger juts against the file folders piling up. “This is getting out of hand and you know it.” But Hoseok merely shakes his head. “It would never bode well.” “We can’t have people running out on the street to get killed,” he spits. Jung Hoseok stands and the two of them come face to face. “A lockdown would only increase hysteria. This is the time to keep people calm. Mass panic won’t help anyone.” “People dying won’t help anyone either.” “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Hoseok shouts, red in the face, anger overwhelming exhaustion. Someone outside the windows halts before quickening their pace. “You do your job and I’ll do mine!” Seokjin’s jaw ticks. He feels frustration’s urge to launch himself forward, shake the man until he’s heard. But instead, he steps back and swallows hard. “Fine.” He’s powerless to Hoseok’s authority and he can sense it — neither of them are willing to budge. “I’ll take my leave then.” As Seokjin shuts the door, Hoseok collapses into his chair again with a sigh. “Is everything alright?” Jungkook’s stopped in the hall, doe eyes rounded. Seokjin nods. He doesn’t dwell on the subject. “How did the interrogation with Kim Taehyung go?” “It was unsuccessful. He refused to talk without his family lawyer.” He’s not surprised. “They’re about to start on Kim Namjoon, right?”

[Saturday, 9:33pm] Jungkook hesitates, left hand on the steel knob. But then he takes a deep breath and opens it. The room is small, brightly lit, a rectangular table on one side of the cream wall with uncomfortable chairs adjacent to each other. One of them is occupied with a glasses-clad, blonde man. He’s dressed in jeans and a flannel, sitting straight, eyes following Jungkook. “Hello, you must be Kim Namjoon.” The corner of his mouth politely quirks. “I’m officer Jeon Jungkook. It’s nice to meet you.” Jungkook’s open hand is refused. Namjoon never shakes it. He simply stares at him. Yet the detective is undeterred and his smile remains, although it never reaches his eyes. He takes a seat and places the file folder on the table. He mimics Namjoon’s posture and leans forward to be closer to the man. “I believe you know why you’re here.” It’s quiet. “We’ve been looking into several cases of missing women and they’ve all been traced to your house, Namjoon. We found the photos as well and two witnesses are still alive. I’m here because I want to know why you did this. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. I want to understand you.” Namjoon stays silent. His eyes cold. Expression blank. It’s not looking good. “Look, I’m here to help you, Namjoon. We’re beyond denial. Silence won’t help you anymore. It would be better for you to come forward and let me know what’s going on. It’s not like a person wakes up one day and decides they’re going to kill someone. If it’s something in your childhood or if it’s because these women have wronged you somehow then I want to know, so I can help you.” A minute passes, but the forty-year old man refuses to utter a single syllable. Jungkook flips open the file folder. There’s the black business card on top of the paperwork, the golden letters looped into the word welcome. He picks it up and shows him. “What is this?” There’s not a single peep. “Can you tell me where you got it from, Namjoon? Do you know who gave this to you?” Jungkook continues, “It was on Kim Taehyung as well and unless you want to be responsible for his crimes on top of yours, then I think it’s best if you tell me how the two of you are connected with one another. I know this isn’t normal. The both of you are from very different backgrounds. You don’t know him personally, do you?” Jungkook is steadfast, searching the man’s expression for some sort of clue. But Namjoon is motionless, unresponsive, as if he’s prepared himself for this situation before. The man has no intentions on revealing a single thing — he plans to make it as difficult as possible. Jungkook concedes this time and switches his tactics. He puts the card down and flips to the back of the folder. There’s a flash photograph of a corpse without their arms. Jungkook swallows hard upon looking at it and then slides it across the table. “Do you know who this is?” There’s silence. Namjoon looks right at Jungkook. “This is Lee Wendy. She’s a mother of a five-year old boy.” He exhales in staccatos. “You stalked her, didn’t you, Namjoon? We have the pictures you took when she was grocery shopping and when she was taking out the garbage.” There’s a pause. “After you took her, you called her family and told them…that...she cries out for her son a lot, right?” Jungkook drops his hands into his lap, trying to hide the shakiness of them. Yet he forces his voice to remain steady with the picture of Wendy still on the table. “Why did you do this?” “You knew all of their names, didn’t you? And you followed each of them for weeks.” “Have you ever—” The older man finally speaks up in a baritone, nearly startling the young officer. But finally Namjoon’s listless eyes aren’t glazed over. Instead, they’re looking straight into Jungkook’s pupils, ogling deep into his soul. “—felt drawn into someone so much that you felt an itch to do it.” His voice doesn’t come. Jungkook’s pinned to his spot, scrutinized by the monster’s fixated, terrifying gaze that’s a mere inch away. The same eyes that had looked upon countless women. That lured them into his home. Chained them in his basement around the water pipes. Torn into their bones with the hacksaws— Jungkook stands. He can’t do this anymore. He can’t take it. “If you’ll excuse me,” he manages to mutter. He staggers out. And once the door shuts, Jungkook braces himself with his hands on his knees, wheezing. From the adjacent room, Seokjin emerges in alarm. The others in the room look out at him. “Jeon! Are you alright? You were getting somewhere!” Jungkook shakes his head. “I-I’m sorry. I just...her photo was right there and I...I—” “Hey. It’s alright.” There are firm pats on the back, a comforting squeeze at his shoulder. “We can get someone else in there.” Jungkook tries to straighten himself out, but his professional facade has crumbled. He’s ashamed as he is nauseated. “I really tried, Detective Kim.” “And you did good,” Seokjin reassures. “You got him talking, even if it was just a sentence. Better than any of us could. He’ll crack sooner or later.” Jungkook takes deep breaths and nods. But before any of them have a chance to say much else, an officer runs towards them with panic-stricken over her face. It’s not a good sign. “There’s been another bombing.”

[Saturday, 11:19pm] He picks up the black handle of the payphone. The dial tone is monotonous on the other end and he carefully slips the nickels into the slot. “Five four six,” you read off the numbers you scribbled on your wrist with permanent marker and Jimin follows, pressing the number pad. He was innocent when he asked you earlier how you knew the number, but it wasn’t a big secret. If Jimin didn’t come late to the party, he would’ve had a better grasp on what the games are about, the details and the how-to’s. He might’ve been able to meet a few others as well. But it was fine by you. He doesn’t need to know anything or anyone when he knows you. After you read the string of numbers, he stays quiet. After a moment, you hear the muffled voice on the other end. Jimin glances at you. “I’m calling on behalf of Y/N.” Thirty seconds pass and then he’s hanging up. You look expectedly at him, lashes batting, bright smile spreading into your cheeks. “So?” “You’re in second place,” Jimin informs, swallowing hard to deliver the news. “Behind Yoongi. There’s a person behind you by two.” “And Yoongi?” “He’s ahead by ten. There are nine others left in the game.” You sigh, backside hitting the brick wall of the seedy strip mall. It’s not terrible, but not as good as your estimations. “We need to step up our game if we want to win, Jiminnie.” His confused and curious expression reminds you of a puppy. Jimin’s too cute, especially when he follows after you when you walk off. He’s always trailing your shadow, one step behind your heel. You can’t help turning around just to take a peek at him. “Y/N.” “Hmm?” Jimin’s brows are furrowed, pouty lips lopsided, voice tender and quiet in the night. “Do you know who started this game?” “I don’t.” You face the dark road dimly illuminated by the streetlamps again. Before the games, you did a lot of personal research, but you were never quite able to dig that deep. “People like you and I probably, or people who just want to watch the world burn. Or maybe…” “Maybe?” “People who don’t like the current police force and want to overthrow it.” It’s plausible. A theory you never really thought about, but it sounds good. You shift over your shoulder with a glimmer in your eye. “What better way to mess with an institution than by throwing it into absolute chaos? And what better chaos is there than a bunch of criminals running rampant in the city?” Jimin has that conflicted look on his face like he’s not sure if he should believe you. But you’re not even sure if you should believe yourself. It’s been a long time since you could differentiate between your own lies and truths. Your bad habit of running your mouth and saying whatever you want, whatever comes to mind, has long engrained itself into your behaviour. “What’s the prize for doing all this? I mean, what’s in it for everyone else?” “Notoriety, of course,” you giggle at Jimin’s naivety. “Don’t you want to be remembered as the first ever champion, pet? Come on, stop asking so many questions and hurting your head with it.” You grab his hand, pulling him along while you laugh. Jimin stumbles after you but catches up. You’ve noticed — Jimin doesn’t seem so hesitant or scared of you anymore. And it’s a change you welcome happily. This is a partnership after all and it’s not right if he’s frightened of you. The pair of you careen in the middle of the road as you sing songs from musicals you’ve never seen, disrupting the peace and quiet. And when you turn to him, Jimin’s smiling tenderly at you, in a way you’ve never witnessed before. “Have you ever thought of giving this up, Y/N?” he asks a little later. “Have you ever thought of trying to live a normal life?” You’re not sure why he’s asking something so useless or what even constitutes a normal life. But any semblance of doing anything different than what you are now seems entirely unnecessary. There’s no reason to when you’re enjoying it so much. When this is who you are. “Why would I?”

[Sunday, 6:21am] It’s a sick and twisted game. Jimin picks and you kill. It’s eenie, meenie, minie, moe with the worst consequences, where he chooses the victims at their face value — lone, drunk gangsters making a ruckus, the old man trying to convince an intoxicated woman to come along with him, the girl that seems to be harassing her classmate. He doesn’t know their name or their story, but he tries not to think about it. Jimin doesn’t dwell as he makes his choice. And as you follow through with his decision, he never once looks. He can’t. Not when he’s blindfolded himself and can only catch the noises. The begging. The screaming. The crying. The squealing. The silence that follows. “You can look now—” is the only cue from you that allows him to slip off the black blindfold and not to have to witness the victims looking at him, pleading with their eyes, blaming his passivity. Most of the time, you’ve moved the body out of the way. Rolled up in a carpet to be abandoned, buried, thrown into the river, or bagged and ready to be burnt. Or even simply laying in their bed as if they died of natural causes. You know how to control the crime scene — every trace and clue has its own purpose, to distract, to mask. You don’t even so much as leave a hair behind. But this time, none of that is the case. The corpse of the man lays in front of him and Jimin tries to find his voice again. “W-Why is the body convulsing? What did you do?” You kick the stranger’s leg and after a moment, it stops moving. You shrug. “I found pills in the medicine cabinet. I made him take it all and covered his mouth with my hand so he wouldn’t try to spit it out.” Jimin looks at you. And you flash a smile. “Changing up the method makes it harder for the police to capture us. Plus, isn’t it more fun that way?” “How….a-are you going to dispose of the body?” You hum, tapping your chin as if you’re picking from a long list inside your head. Then your eyes suddenly light with amusement and you lean closer to him, irises twinkle with the first crack of dawn’s light. “What if we dumped it in front of the police station?”

[Sunday, 6:48am] Jimin’s driving this time and he’s sweating bullets with the corpse in the backseat. He constantly ducks his head when a police car drives by and he looks in the rear-view mirror more often than out the windshield. It’s endearing to watch. He won’t relax even if you tell him to, so you do his part for him. Your feet are propped up on the dash, window rolled down to feel the breeze as you hum to the tunes of the radio. Jimin really shouldn’t act so suspicious unless he has something to be sorry for. Everyone likes to talk about how valuable human lives are until their own interests get in the way — polluting the environment, refusing refugees, entering wars for economics. They’re so, so hypocritical. “There it is!” You sit straight and Jimin’s breaths become laboured as he parks across the road on the curb. The precinct is an old cream brick, sitting right on the corner with the flag on the side of the building. You grin. “Let’s go!” “Y/N, I...I-I don’t think this is a good idea—” But there’s nothing to worry about, not when your faces are covered with your hoods and the stolen sunglasses. Jimin really needs to live a little. Everything you do is a calculated risk and this just happens to be on the higher end, but it’s fun that way. He really needs to learn that caution should only be practiced in moderation or else he’ll spend the rest of his life quivering in fear. You get out of the car before Jimin can finish. His eyes widen and he’s forced to follow after you. You round the stolen vehicle and pop open the passenger side of the door. “If we’re doing this, we need to do it quickly.” The edges of your lips quirk. “Help me out, pet.” You grab the man’s ankle and Jimin fumbles before grabbing the other. He winces and looks away. But the both of you pull with all your might. The skull cracks as it lands onto the concrete. Limbs tangled. Body dumped. You slam the door shut and run. Jimin slides back into the driver’s seat as you take shotgun again. He shifts the gears into drive, pumping the gas hard as you cackle. The precinct is left in the dust. “Oh my god.” Jimin exhales. “I can’t believe we just did that. We...w-we just dumped a body in front of the police station!” “I know!” You grin, riding on the rush of exhilaration. It was done right under their noses without them even noticing. “I knew you could do it, Jiminnie!” As Jimin drives back to the house to swap cars again, the sun rises over the horizon. It pierces its golden light into the lightening blue sky, the air feeling crisp this morning. You know there’s a lot in store for the rest of the day — in just a few hours, you might be crowned the champion. “Jimin! Stop the car for a second!” You tap him on his arm and alarm takes over his expression. The vehicle comes to a screeching halt, wheels marking the asphalt. Luckily, there’s no one on the road to rear-end him, but you don’t dwell on the fact. You undo your seat belt and climb out. Jimin watches with his hands on the steering wheel as you rush to the phone booth on the corner of the street. You roll the loose change you have from your pocket into the slot. And you dial 911. It rings only once before a woman’s calm voice comes alive on the other line. “911, what is your emergency?” You’re still catching your breath from the excitement of it all. “I killed them, you know. I did it.” “W-What?” The dispatcher's voice is pitched and you smirk. “Who did you kill?” “Enjoy that body I left. Good luck catching me.” You drop the handset while laughing, leaving it dangling on its wire. The echoing voice of the woman with her helpless — “Hello? Hello?” — fades as you walk away. It’s always a joy to mess with them. You get back into the car and Jimin whisks you away.

[Sunday, 9:14am] Seokjin is being driven crazy and he knows it. Between caffeine stops and the piles of file folders growing on his desk, his head throbbing was worsening. But there’s no room to complain, not when the other officers and detectives in the department have their hands full as well. Several other criminals have been caught, charged, interrogated within the past day. All with the same black card reading welcome. Yet most of the crimes left to tackle remain unsolved. Namely the Capital Bomber, as they started calling him, and whoever left the tip. Or rather, the taunt. The body of Choi Soobin was dumped in front of the station two hours earlier — the two shapeless figures were seen on the security cameras — the victim’s car was being driven and then somehow returned to his home in perfect condition without a fingerprint to dust for. And that mocking voice provoked everyone. It came from a phone booth again. But it was a woman’s voice this time. “Detective Kim.” Seokjin looks up from his desk. The young man’s hair is in a disarray — it looks like he followed Seokjin’s instructions to get some shut eye on the couch in the break room. There’s no point in working oneself to exhaustion and inhibiting cognitive function. He would’ve slept too if the multiple cases on his plate didn’t keep him up. “I know we’re not officially on the task force, but there’s been some new developments with the charity bombing.” “What is it?” Seokjin urges him to step forward and Jungkook hands him the folder. Inside, there are close photographs of some penciled scribbles on pieces of metal. “This was found inside one of the parts of the bomb. It looks like notes of some kind. The lab’s still doing their analysis, but we might be able to match it with someone.” The corner of his mouth quirks. “They always slip up at some point.” “I took a look at the list of suspects as well.” “And what did you make of it?” “These three particularly stand out,” Jungkook says and Seokjin flips the page. He encounters a brunette with big eyes. “His name is Boo Seungkwan. He’s twenty five. Single. Living alone. No family alive. He has a background in physics. But oddly enough, he’s been unemployed for the past five years. He had been convicted of animal cruelty a while back and has been on the down-low ever since.” “Sounds isolated.” Seokjin nods. “Worth looking into.” “The next person is Mark Tuan. Thirty. Immigrated here back in o six. Divorced two years ago with one daughter who’s five. He’s a mathematics professor but he’s been on a sabbatical for over a year now. His sister called in and said he thinks the bomber might be him because of some conversation they had.” He hums, staring at the picture for a moment before he flips the page. Seokjin finds a darker hair man with a tender face and sleepy eyes. He skims over the information provided as Jungkook elaborates, “He’s Min Yoongi. He’s thirty two. Single. Lives alone. His older brother works in accounting, but they seem estranged. He spent three months in a youth detention center once, but somehow managed to pick himself back up and graduated from Yale ten years ago with a Master’s degree in biochemistry. But strangely, he never worked a day in his life. I can’t seem to find an address on him either.” “What was he in the detention center for?” “Trying to burn his school down.” “That’ll definitely get you in there,” Seokjin exhales in surprise. “It was a particularly bad case too, so they never sealed the records of it.” Somehow, Seokjin feels less exhausted now that there was a direction in the case. He muses how beneficial it is to have such a capable partner, to have someone to depend on. Seokjin feels a tinge of guilt for denying the young profiler all those months ago. “Good work, Jeon.” Jungkook’s timid smile disappears as quickly as it comes. “I still haven’t drawn up any suspects for the carbon monoxide family case or the duo responsible for the phone booth calls.” “We still have some time, so don’t beat yourself over it,” he notes. “I’ve been looking into it myself. I don’t know if this is a purposeful pattern or just a coincidence, but have you realized one similarity between all the crimes being committed in the past two days, Jeon?” Jungkook’s brows furrow and he shakes his head. “What is it?” “They’re all people who have done this before. They’re experienced criminals.” Criminals that have never been caught, that are responsible for dozens of cold cases. None of them are first-time offenders. From Kim Taehyung to Kim Namjoon, and the three others that were caught red-handed by other detectives. Even the Capital Bomber has set bombs before, albeit on a smaller scale. It’s clear — this isn’t the first time for any of them. The look on Jungkook’s face confirms Seokjin’s theory and tells him this new detail isn’t unfounded. “So I’ve been looking into the suspects of unsolved cases and older crimes. As for the poison monoxide case, no matter how many times I look at it, it appears like it’s done by one person. But for some reason, I can’t shake off the idea that it was done by two.” It’s just a hunch that keeps plaguing Seokjin’s head. A thought comes across Jungkook’s mind. In the past day, there’s two particular people that have come up twice now. “You don’t think….the carbon monoxide case has any connection to the phone booth duo, right?” “I don’t know,” the older detective admits honestly. There's no point in just sitting around speculating. He gets up and grabs his coat. “Well, we should take a quick visit to all the bombing suspects first and foremost. The other cases can wait for now.” There’s not enough to incriminate anyone or build a solid case, but it’s better than nothing.

[Sunday, 2:53pm] He feels a tap on his shoulder. A quiet call of his name. “Jimin.” It’s soothing, a comfort seldom found and one he has always yearned for, even as a child. So he savours it, the notes of his name spoken on gentle lips— “Jimin.” He can’t resist floating in the darkness. It’s too hard to open his eyes. To face reality. But then the shaking becomes insistent. “Jimin, wake up. Stop sleeping.” Taken out from his slumber, the world is fuzzy as he blearily blinks awake. The sunlight is blinding and his limbs ache, body folded to the side as he slept in the passenger seat of the car. You’re in the driver’s and you look at him with a blank expression. Jimin holds back a yawn and his voice is groggy when he asks, “What’s wrong?” “I have an idea.” That’s what you told him. And then, he was crossing the road in the seedy part of town by a strip. Face covered, hood up, hands dug into his pocket. “We only have a few more hours before the results are out.” The people behind the stand didn’t speak the same language as he did. They looked at him skeptically with his suspicious attire — even the children nearby were staring. But he still managed to purchase the fireworks. “We need to drag the lion out of its den.” You praised him when he got back into the car and Jimin had to admit to himself that it felt good. It feels good to listen to you, for you to look at him so proudly. He’s happy when you are. “So what are you planning?” “We’re going to frame Yoongi, of course.” The pair of you stopped by a gas station for a cardboard box and some duct tape — it felt like you two were making crafts in the car. But soon, he was gripping the package under his arm while walking up the stairs, brushing past the dozens of strangers during the rush. “Drop the package at the city center train station. Go as close to a crowd as you can.” He was here. The intercom making announcements was noisy over top the many conversations of students and families, businessmen and women getting back from late lunches. It becomes even more clamorous with the jingle signaling the train’s arrival, the whir of the doors opening. No one notices him. Not in the bustle. Jimin’s shoved roughly aside when he slows. There aren’t any apologies, no glances over the shoulders. It’s always like this — those who can’t keep up are pushed behind. “I don’t think I can do this, Y/N.” “Why not? We’re not harming anyone, silly. We just want to scare them.” Jimin takes a deep breath, steals a glimpse of the clock and slides the lighter from his pocket. He lights the end that sticks out of a hole in the corner. And once it catches the flame, he drops it and turns around. “Don’t you trust me?” He walks away, blending into the crowd with his hood up and his eyes covered. When he’s at the stairs, the explosion is deafening above the noise and the petrified screams echo behind him.

[Sunday, 4:23pm] “Maybe he decided to change it up,” someone says. Seokjin is hunched over the screen, watching the footage of the man dropping the box and then turning abruptly on his heel before disappearing. Moments later, the orange explosion takes up the entire screen. Three were left injured. Seokjin plays the clip again. “It’s too sloppily done,” he mutters, turning over his shoulder to glance at his partner. He knows that Jungkook agrees. But what’s even stranger is that the figure of the man is eerily similar to the fuzzy one at the phone booth. Seokjin wonders if this is a set up. If so, why? “You don’t think this is the Capital Bomber?” Hoseok asks. “It can’t be,” Jungkook speaks up to bolster Seokjin’s professional opinion. “Up until now, he used explosive bombs. This was five fireworks stuffed together and the package it was put in is completely different to what it usually is. No one needed to open it either.” “So you think there’s a copycat?” Detective Byun stands from his seat, sighing heavily. He drags a hand over his face, shoulders slumped and posture tense. “Maybe it was a failed package,” Captain Chou suggests, reading the room. A few others nod along. “Or maybe he decided to change his techniques.” “Why would he?” Jungkook’s voice pitches up in growing frustration, startling a few officers and the sergeant standing by him. They’re turning a blind eye to logic just because it’s easier that way. “This is someone who’s come up with sophisticated explosives that have killed tens of people! Why would he resort to using illegal fireworks?!” Captain Chou whips her head towards him. “Are you shouting at me, officer Jeon?” “Jungkook.” Seokjin squeezes at his shoulder and the younger shifts. Their eyes meet and Seokjin steps forward to redirect the attention back onto him. “I agree with him. There’s too many disparities for this to be the Capital Bomber. He wouldn’t have done something like this. It looks more like a poor attempt to pretend to be him.” “How will the people react when they find out there’re copycats now?” Detective Byun collapses in his seat. “And we haven’t even caught the real one yet.” It goes quiet around the room. The Chief of Police clears his throat. “Do you have solid evidence this is a copycat?” Hoseok is looking at both him and Jungkook. Seokjin’s jaw clenches when he knows where he’s getting at. The answer is ultimately— “No.” “Then it’s still entirely possible that this could be the work of the real Capital Bomber.” Anger flares in Jungkook’s eyes. “Sir.” Little can be said when someone knocks on the conference room doors and an assistant enters, whispering into Hoseok’s ear. Said man stands a moment later. “The press conference is starting. We’ll resume the meeting afterwards. Try your best to follow this lead.” When he leaves, everyone settles down. The murmur of conversations spark throughout the room in between fatigued sighs and Jungkook turns to Seokjin with irritation. “Detective Kim,” he unintentionally whines, like a child to a father. “This is obviously not him.” “I know you’re upset, but control yourself, Jeon.” His own anger is palpable, but knowing someone is on his side helps his sanity. “It won’t help our case if we can’t remain calm.” Suddenly, a woman bursts into the room. All heads turn and she hyperventilates, “S-Someone claiming to be the bomber is on a call with the dispatcher.” Chaos follows. “What?!” Seokjin rushes forward, his facade of composure amplified. “Can you put us through?” It takes seconds before the deep baritone is fuzzy over the speakers around the room. He’s shouting. “—wasn’t me!” “Sir, please stay calm. Where are you?” “Listen here.” The rumbling timbre is menacing, each syllable punctuated with animosity. “I want them to know that it wasn’t me. They’re saying it’s me.” The dispatcher on the line is amiable. “Who’s saying it’s you, sir?” “Everyone.” Heavy breaths pant. “It’s all over the news. But I would never do something so stupid to soil my message. Everything I have done up to this point has been crafted to perfection. It’s been masterpieces after masterpieces. But this….this is a distraction! How dare they try to copy my method—” “Trace the call,” Seokjin commands. “It’s already happening,” they inform.

[Sunday, 8:20pm] It took four hours — tracking, planning, putting it in action. And the efforts have paid off. Min Yoongi is caught, arrested, and charged. He was the Capital Bomber, the one who killed and maimed so many, who caused terror on the streets and panic through the people. Now, he’s safely behind bars and the whole department is celebrating. Seokjin can hear it through the walls. But it’s not right. There are too many missing puzzle pieces. Crucial fragments that aren’t part of the story. Until the last second of the interrogation, he denied any affiliation to the explosion of the train station and with every breath, he denounced such an act. Then who was it? And why now? Min Yoongi is a cautious criminal, an intellectual with a message of anti-capitalism to send to the world. He knows how to target the right people, how to make the media talk about him. But for him to contact the police directly from sheer fury, for his temper to flare beyond his rationale — whoever was behind the attack of the station played Min Yoongi. They knew that mimicking him so poorly would rile him up. They knew it would tarnish his message. And they knew that his message was the most important part of his actions. Yoongi would be scrambling to separate himself from stupidity. To clear his name. And he did. Whoever did this set him up. But Seokjin doesn’t know the reason for it. He doesn’t have even an inkling as to who it could actually be and why. It always feels like he’s three steps behind. Seokjin knocks on the door lightly, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. Hoseok is busy organizing his files, stacking them neatly into piles. When he looks up at the sound, he smiles meekly. “Shouldn’t you be out there celebrating with the rest of them?” “Shouldn’t you be?” Hoseok’s eyes crinkle. “Don’t tell the rest of them, but I was planning to sneak out of here within the next ten minutes. I haven’t gone home in two days and all I want is a shower and some shut eye.” “I won’t tell them,” Seokjin assures. “We all deserve some rest, especially after the last few nights. But god knows we’ll have to be here tomorrow at nine sharp.” The man smiles and grabs his coat. “You should take a vacation day, Jin. I know you have a ton of them saved up. I don’t want the department to force you to take leave.” In spite of their civil exterior, the air still hangs tense with the last argument that erupted right here. “But that’s no fun. What would I do at home?” “Always the workaholic,” Hoseok muses and the next words are full of implication— “You should take it easy.” His stare lasts a fraction longer than normal. And Seokjin knows his old friend long enough to recognize what he’s implying. But he’s not so willing to give in. “A break doesn’t actually sound so bad. When I’m back, I could look at the station bombing with fresh eyes.” The smiles fall, silence strained. “It’s over, Jin. The bomber’s been arrested.” “Not all of them.” Not the phone booth duo, not the carbon monoxide poisoning case. There are still a lot of crimes to be solved, questions to be answered. It isn’t time to be celebrating. “For all we know, he’s responsible for the station bombing.” “Then why does he keep denying it?” The detective steps forward. “He was happy to take credit for the rest of them. City hall, the charity event, the one on—” “Seokjin.” His entire name said firmly aloud. When their eyes meet, Seokjin is caught off guard — Hoseok’s is listless. Defeated. “I’m not going to have a job after this.” His voice catches in his throat and his brows furrow a moment later. “What do you mean?” The man looks at him without trying to impose his authority, without the professional demeanour that took years to craft. It’s human to human. Hoseok is frank with him. “Someone has to take the fall for how things turned out this weekend. For letting so many people die and failing to do our jobs. We might’ve caught him, but it was still too slow for them. You know how the media and the politicians are. My name is going to be dragged through the mud for how inefficiently the department ran.” “But why does it have to be you? We can fight this—” Hoseok shakes his head. “It’s useless.” “Why are you giving up?!” Anger surges through Seokjin but all Hoseok can do is muster a smile. “If I resign, I can still get a severance pay. Enough to last me a long time. It’s better than if any of you took the fall,” he says and quietness simmers throughout the private office. “We did the best job that we could, Seokjin. We caught him and a bunch others. We’ve done our part. They’re serial killers who will be locked behind bars forever. But this needs to end somewhere.” He continues— “Do you think whoever replaces me will let you continue this?” Not much is said after that. Not when Seokjin can’t gather any defenses or further arguments. Not when Hoseok takes his briefcase, exchanges a sad smile and flicks off the lights of his office to drown the walls in darkness. Seokjin slips out when he starts feeling suffocated. He leaves the office and escapes outside, in favour of leaning on the brick at the back of the precinct where there are rats scurrying by the dumpsters. He lights the cigarette he swiped from Baekhyun’s desk and brings it to his lips. Seokjin hasn’t smoked in years. He muses that a break does sound nice. The steel doors creak and Seokjin turns his head. He least expects to see the dark-haired young officer with doe eyes. “Detective Kim?” “Shouldn’t you be inside?” “I just wanted some fresh air.” The door swings shut while Seokjin taps the ash off of the cigarette bud. “You were having fun, weren’t you?” He manages a small smile. “Looked like that girl had some plans for you tonight. She works in the dispatch department, right? What’s her name again?” “Yoo Jeongyeon.” With the single incandescent light on the wall, the blush on Jungkook’s cheeks is visible. “She’s alright.” “There’s no policy against workplace romance, you know. You might hear it from the others, but all you have to do is take it up with HR.” Jungkook gives a disgruntled hum, not furthering the subject. Seokjin watches the smoke curl. “Actually, I wanted to come out here to tell you that I was looking into the list of suspects for the station bombing. I think I’ve narrowed it down, so—” “This is the best we could do, Jungkook,” Seokjin interrupts and sighs out a puff of smoke. He drops what’s left of the cigarette onto the ground and the toe of his shoe snubs it out. “Pardon?” “They’re not going to let us continue investigating the case, Jeon.” He turns to him. It's painful to see the disappointment on his face because Seokjin’s sure he has a mirror image on his. “They’re going to replace Jung Hoseok. And even if they didn’t, he wouldn’t let us continue. They want it to end.” They want to pretend that all the loose ends are wrapped up, that Min Yoongi was the last. Of course they would. It’s the picture perfect finale. The main criminal is caught after the string of others. No one wants to imagine that there’s more. “This is it?” “This is it.” “But what if they strike again?” Jungkook persists. “We’re just going to let them go free?!” “Then we’ll have to treat it like a whole separate incident and not part of this weekend massacre.” He opens his mouth — speechless, frustrated, disappointed. If there’s one thing Jungkook lacks, it’s experience. And with experience, he’ll come to know these emotions well. Being a part of the system doesn’t necessarily mean fighting crime and striving for justice. It’s much less righteous than that. The two of them stand side by side, watching dusk set into night as all the events in the past forty eight hours sink into their shoulders. It’s not until the older, worn detective speaks up that the silence is shattered. “What did you think about the phone booth duo?” There’s a beat and then Jungkook answers. “I was considering the theory you brought up.” “That they’re responsible for the monoxide poisoning case?” He nods. “And that maybe they were responsible for the station bombing too.” Seokjin’s brow quirk. The figure on the footage certainly resembled the fuzzy shape of the security camera. “So?” “None of the crimes are excessively violent. They’re unobtrusive and all the victims don’t have any connections to each other. It’s likely they didn’t plan who to kill but planned how they would do it.” The corner of Seokjin’s mouth curls while he watches as Jungkook’s eyes light up again, his mind at work. It’s relieving to know that the future has an intelligent boy in its midst. “The crime scene wasn’t messy. It was organized. Even Choi Soobin’s car was spotless and they were seen driving it on camera. Not to mention the house. It shows self-control.” “They were prepared,” Seokjin affirms. Jungkook nods. “And they used restraints. Whoever did it is competent. Likely to be above average intelligence and probably has some kind of education. They have to be healthy enough to carry a body to a car too.” He continues on his profiling, “They most likely alternated between walking and driving between each crime scene. They follow the news, taunt the police. They probably have nonsocial habits.” “Then what about the power dynamic of the duo? It was a male voice who gave the tip and the female voice who taunted us, remember? Do you think it was the male who did these acts and the female who’s the accomplice?” Jungkook shakes his head. “I don’t think so. That’s what I thought at the beginning, but then I listened to the recordings again and again, and for some reason, the male who gave the tip sounded...scared. While the female, it sounded like she was enjoying taunting us.” The older detective hums. It’s an interesting thought. Jungkook arrives at the end of his analysis. Having nothing left to say, he turns to his partner. “What do you think, Detective Kim?” Seokjin’s head knocks back on the wall as he considers the facts. But truth be told, he already has a theory of his own. “If the pattern still holds, then the phone booth duo are experienced criminals. They likely have some kind of history, some criminal background. They knew what they were doing.” Jungkook knows by the way he’s talking that he has an idea. “You were looking into the suspects of unsolved cases, right?” “I was.” “What did you find?” “L/N Y/N.” By the look on Jungkook’s face, it’s an unfamiliar name to him. “She was the only daughter of a cult leader. They were out in the middle of nowhere and called themselves the Seventh Sect. They murdered disobedient followers, women, children, the usual. She would’ve experienced emotional abuse as a child growing up in a place like that. She was educated though. Homeschooled. Got her GED.” Jungkook speculates, “So she’s likely to be socially competent.” “Probably on some level.” He pauses. “The entire cult was wiped out six years ago.” Jungkook turns his head and Seokjin can feel his stare piercing into his profile. “Most of them died by rat poisoning. The leader was ruled dead by suffocation and the others by carbon monoxide poisoning.” There’s a pattern that resembles the most recent cases and the realization makes Jungkook’s eyes widen. He’s sure now more than ever they have the person. “Funny enough, the only daughter of the cult leader disappeared. They couldn’t find her body. So they ruled her dead after a few months and that’s what everyone assumed.” Until now. “But maybe she isn’t.” It’s a theory, conjecture that would never be accepted by the general attorney or even the department. It’s circumstantial evidence at the end of the day. Yet deep down, Jungkook and Seokjin know what the truth is. It feels like they’ve solved the case together, albeit all in hypotheticals. “Then what about her accomplice?” Jungkook eagerly asks. “Do you know who he is?” “That’s where I have the most trouble,” Seokjin admits with a sigh. “All we know is that he’s about five foot eight, average physique, dark hair. Likely to be of Asian descent. And he most likely has self-control too.” “But I don't have any ideas on who he could be.” Seokjin looked hard enough that his eyes still sting and his brain throbs. All the people he considered fell through with one qualification or another. “I don’t know how much involvement he had. If he was strung along. Or if he orchestrated it.” “He probably orchestrated it,” Jungkook guesses, “It makes sense if Y/N was the one who did the killings, then it would make sense if he was the one who manipulated her and planned it all. He’s the mastermind. The one who came up with the idea for framing Min Yoongi, who wanted to leave the tip for Kim Namjoon, and who made Y/N taunt us. He used her like a puppet.” He hums. It’s all possible. “Maybe he’s someone from the Seventh Sect,” Jungkook offers. But Seokjin knows it’s all just hunches built on top of hunches. There’s no point in playing this game and naming potential criminals. There’s nothing they can do when they’re just standing at the back of the precinct as the rest of the department celebrates inside. It’s worthless when they’re unable to pursue their leads, follow through with their investigations. It’s merely another day of letting criminals go free. “Maybe.”

[Sunday 9:36pm] You’re about to be crowned the victor. Everything you’ve calculated played right into your hand and now all the efforts are going to be paid off. Jimin’s holding your hand as the two of you walk down the desolate road on the outskirts of town. The entrance to the underground area was just over the horizon. He would’ve driven instead of abandoning the car and walking, but you had convinced him the walk to victory is a lot better. Plus the weather was too nice to not take advantage of it and Jimin has to agree. The breeze is whisking against his cheeks, the sliver of the moonlight guiding your way, and he feels warm with you beside him. Especially with you happily humming. Jimin’s grown to quite like your voice. He could hear it forever if you’d let him. “After we win, I’ll treat you to whatever you want, Jiminnie. We can have all kinds of desserts if you want, how does that sound?” His cheeks are rounded with his grin. “Okay.” “Only okay?” You turn, pouting at him. “I’m giving you a gift here! Shouldn’t you show more appreciation?” He laughs. “Fine, I love it, alright?” You scoff playfully. “You make it sound like I’m forcing you.” Jimin grins to himself. The quietness away from the city is serene. He can’t hear the engines of cars or the noisy conversations of strangers — he doesn’t feel left behind. In this place, there’s only the hitch of your breaths, the synchronized footsteps, and every thought of his amplified to a thousand. “What are you planning to do afterwards, Y/N?” he asks after a moment. Jimin wonders if you’ll let him come with you. The pair of you could go to a place far away from here, where it’s just as quiet. Where he won’t have to worry. Where you both can leave all of this behind and no one could ever find him. It would be the perfect end. “I don’t know yet.” You spin to face him with another brilliant smile. “Maybe prepare.” He squeezes your hand. Forever with you sounds like all he wants. “For what?” “To play again next year, silly.” Jimin’s steps slow. The vision of going somewhere far away, of leaving it all behind, shatters just as quickly as it manifested itself inside his mind. The realization comes crashing down to him — there’s no end. “What?” “The games are annual, Jiminnie. Did you forget? I’m going to have to keep my title. If you follow me, I’ll even get you second place in no time!” There’s no end. “The two of us need to stick together.” There’s no end in sight. The past two days will repeat itself for the rest of his life. He’s stuck to you. Jimin halts on his heel and you turn your head with a frown. Your lips part as if you’re about to ask him what’s wrong, but you’re interrupted by the roar of a car. Attention taken, your eyes light up as you squint past the head beams piercing through the darkness coming closer and closer. “Look! I don’t think they’re a part of the games. How about we go for one more, Jiminnie?” Before he can say a word, you’ve left him behind — flagging down the vehicle, standing in the middle of the road. And the car screeches to a stop. It’s a young woman sitting in the driver seat alone. She looks at you and Jimin, but it’s hard to see him when he’s standing in the dark. The stranger rolls down the window as you round the car. “Are you alright? Do you need a lift?” He hears the stranger ask, oblivious to how her compassion is a demise. “No, it’s alright. My husband and I have a farm right around here. We were just taking a walk.” Before she can express her bewilderment, you beat her to the punch. “I just wanted to tell you that I think you have a flat tire.” “Oh my god! Really?!” Jimin flinches when he hears the seat belt come off. He looks up to see her get out of her car. “It’s over here,” you indicate. Then he hears a thump, a cry, a snicker. Jimin rounds the vehicle to see the young woman on the floor, her head bleeding as you grasp the pen from your pocket in your left hand. You stab her crown again with it, digging the tip into the skin and bone. The stranger shrieks in agony. “Y/N.” “N-no, p-pl-please.” The stranger is crawling away, fingernails scratching the asphalt. “Pl-please. I’m….sorr...y.” “Put on your blindfold, pet.” You smile at him and when he remains motionless, feet rooted into the roadside, you close the distance in three strides. You reach into his hoodie pocket for the strip of black cloth. All he sees is your smile before you’ve covered his eyes, tied the blindfold around with a bow at the back. “I’ll tell you when you can look.” Jimin hears the crunch of the pebbles as you walk away. This will never end. He hears the woman’s cries become panicked, breaths quick in hyperventilation. This will never end. He hears her screech and it reverberates in his eardrums. “P-Please!” This will never end. It will never be enough for you. He will never be enough for you. “S-Stop….s-som..eone!” Jimin’s hands reach up. He tugs down his blindfold. It flutters into his palm. It’s so easy — he barely had to graze it. Jimin takes one step towards your bent backside and as he does so, he reaches down, taking the jagged rock on the side of the road. It fits into his hand perfectly. He takes another stride and holds his breath. In the heat of the moment, Jimin swings his arm. The rock slams against the side of your head. You fall to the ground, gripping the wound, the in-between of your fingertips holding blood. “J-Jimin?” you whimper, eyes enlarged. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jimin never once looks away. He keeps his pupils trained on you, eyes bulged, not wasting a blink. While you’re still down, he gets on top of you, pinning your body to the concrete. He swings back again as you cry his name. “—imin.” He will never be enough for you. Why? Why?! After all he’s done! The blood splatters onto his cheek, his expression impassive as you sob. He remembers. The crimson coated floorboards, splattered on the yellow paisley wallpaper, on the popcorn ceiling of the living room. “Ji—…” The knocked over chairs, the picture frames thrown, the stench of iron in the two bedroom house heavy, the warmth of the blood. The same warmth he feels now sticking to his skin. He had no control of himself then. He was so angry. It was the heat of the moment. His mother spat on him for not giving her his money to buy her cigarettes, his father threatened to divorce her again and his younger brother stood by and just cried. They always liked him more than they liked him. Maybe that’s why Jimin dismembered his arms. Jimin might’ve blacked out then, he might’ve regretted when he came to his senses, but you were right. It wasn’t just an accident. And he most certainly has control of himself now. “J..i..m..in.” You’ve wrapped your hand around his wrist, but there isn’t any strength left of you. Jimin’s deranged when he swings. The image of running away with you cracks. He swings again. The vision of the peaceful and quiet life with you he’s yearned for splinters. He swings once more and there are no more calls of his name. The dream he had of you bursts. He’s maddened. Overwhelmed in the shade of crimson. You would never fulfill his delusion or even try to. And he would’ve been trapped, stuck by your side or become your enemy, forced to relieve this fearful nightmare over and over again. Your skull is cracked, eyes rolled to the back of your head, the whites of your eyes red. Streams of tears stain both sides of your cheeks. But Jimin never once looks away. Not until you’ve taken your last breath. Then, he’s finally free. Jimin tosses the rock dented by your head aside. He looks off at the distance where your last victim is still alive, slowly crawling away by her fingernails without ever glancing back. She’s still breathing to see the next day. He turns away from her, stumbling into the head beams of the car. His shadow is casted on the ground until it fades away. Jimin leaves behind the only person who would ever understand and accept him. The person he would never be enough for. … He knocks twice. The door slot slides open. Beady eyes look through. Jimin mutters the password and the door opens a moment later. The man standing by doesn’t comment even when he’s dripping in your blood. It’s a blur, the music playing, the bustle of the after-party, the way the others ironically move out of the way as if they’ve never seen blood before. Jimin’s no longer pushed aside. He wishes he could kill everyone here. Soon it all stops. The lights dim in favour of a shimmering spotlight on stage. He feels the person’s eyes on him with everyone else's, hears the clearing of a throat, listens to the useless congratulations and acknowledgment of efforts. Then, the announcement is made. It doesn’t make any sense. Yet, Jimin finds himself climbing the stairs, standing right on stage in the spotlight, being awarded some heavy metal like he just saved someone’s life. He looks into the eyes of the representative and exhales, “I killed Y/N.” “Yes, you did.” He says it like it's some kind of honour. “And for that, you took on all her kills.” “Isn’t it against the rules?” Jimin deadpans. It’s strange — he can’t really feel anything anymore. “Since when did serial killers follow rules?” the stranger jests. “Plus, isn’t it more interesting this way?” “Congratulations!” He turns towards the faceless audience a beat later. “The winner of the first annual Weekend Massacre is Park Jimin!”

#bts fanfic #bts scenario #jimin fanfic #jimin angst #jimin scenario #this idea's been sitting in my files since 2017 #just never had the balls to write it lol #but I've always wanted to write a Hunger Games esque kind of thing and decided to combine it with serial killers #anyway I didn't want to romanticize killing in any way so I tried not to hold back.

258 notes · View notes

drxwsyni · 4 years ago

Text

Willing ︱Yandere Dabi x f!Reader

@riarora asked: “Could you do yandere Dabi x reader where the reader is one of those people who reads yandere fanfic and knows almost everything, including how to get out, but she doesn’t want to, cause it’s weirdly her dream?”

a/n: ahh yes some good ol’ self awareness. thanks for the request bby, i really liked writing this!

warnings: violence, swearing, kidnapping, suggestive themes

(2.5k words)

_____

It wasn’t hard to tell where Dabi’s intentions lied.

You’d spent more than enough time indulging yourself in mindless scrolling, reading piece after piece pertaining to a certain genre. One that in reality wasn’t the healthiest, but my god was it ever alluring.

Maybe you were lonely, or just apathetic to the red flags that this behaviour presented. Either way, the developing relationship you had with the man was one that you were all too familiar with.

At first it wasn’t obvious―you disregarded his actions as him shamelessly flirting. Dabi had a habit of pushing your buttons, getting you flustered and squirming under his gaze. You could tell he was enjoying himself, seeing what his words did to you.

Once he got bored of the verbal sentiments it moved on to something much more physical. An arm lazily draped around your shoulder, a grip on your chin forcing you to look at him when you turned away in embarrassment. He seemed to enjoy the temporary fear he placed in you when he came up behind you only to wrap his arms tightly around your waist, pulling you firmly into his chest. Every time he did it took you a moment to register the guilty party, but one glance down at the semi-scarred arms and you knew exactly who had scooped you up. If that wasn’t enough, the hot breath against the shell of your ear as he greeted you would do the trick.

If you didn’t know any better you would’ve assumed it was just his personality. The teasing nicknames and lingering stares could be seen as endearing for the most part.

It was when certain attributes bled into the relationship were you able to pick up on the motivation behind his mannerisms.

He had a temper―that much was obvious.

It was never a problem until you idly mentioned in passing conversation that you were saving up money to move away for college. He just...stopped. You thought he didn’t hear you, but not a moment later and he was laughing at you.

“The fuck do you need college for doll? You know that shit is a fucking scam.”

To be fair you never thought he’d have such a strong opinion. As far as you knew you were just some side chick he’d like to mess with when he was bored.

“Well I can’t just keep a dead end job forever. I’d like to move on eventually―meet new people, make better money, y’know…”

The two of you were at his apartment, your back turned to him as you made something to drink in the kitchen. You jumped slightly as one arm wrapped around your waist, the other coming to rest atop the counter in front to you.

His frame leaned into yours, your hip bones digging into the countertop. “What, so you’re just gonna abandon me for some shitty frat boys and student debt?”

The idea almost made you laugh. He was partly correct―the piling debt wouldn’t be fun, but you would have to deal with it just like every other student. As for the college hookups, well it wasn’t something you had actually thought about. You were feeling bold tonight, thinking that perhaps he should get a taste of his own teasing medicine. “Aw, you're not jealous of a few college goers, are you Dabi?”

The hand that was placed on the countertop came to drift towards your face, moving a wayward strand of hair behind your ear. “No need to be jealous of people who I know I’m better than sweets. Just worried about a pretty little thing like you getting hurt is all.”

You smiled at his concern, “I’m sure I can fend for myself, thank you very much.”

The grip on your waist tightened ever so slightly. “Can you though?”

“I don’t―”

“You can barely fucking handle when I mess with you.”

You turned around at the statement, slightly offended, coming face to face with his cold scowl. “Well maybe they won’t be as rude to me.”

At that Dabi’s lips formed into a smirk. “Oh, you think I’m being rude? You’ve got no idea what those little shits might get up to.”

His gaze was piercing, something you could never look at for a long time. You dropped your head slightly and averted your eyes to something else in the room to distract you. “I’ll never know if I don’t go, not like there’s much holding me back here anyways.”

The sudden feeling of Dabi gripping your chin between his thumb and forefinger was momentarily jarring. It forced you to look up at his as he spoke, his other arm still pulling you close into his chest. “So you’re gonna let a bunch of strangers put their filthy little hands all over you? Not sure I like the sound of that princess.”

The closeness flooded your senses with the smell of smoke and cologne. You tried to put some distance between the two of you, but the counter was still pressed firmly into your back leaving no room for escape. “I’m not saying that―I just don’t see myself having a future here. I’ve gotta move on eventually.”

He gave a laugh in response, but it was closer to an exasperated huff. “Nah, fuck that. College is a waste of time, and I’m all the goddamn company you need if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Listen, as boring as sitting through lectures sounds, I'll take it over my lame ass job any day. And no offence but you do tend to give me headaches with all the shit you put me through.” You made an attempt to move out of his grasp, but you were only met with him pushing you back into the counter quite roughly.

“You’re not going to fucking college.” He was still smirking, but the look in his eyes that was normally vibrant seemed...empty.

Well this wasn’t the turn of events you were expecting.

You liked to think you were a strong person, but his persistence in the matter was unnerving to say the least. “That’s not your decision to make.”

He laughed at your attempt to sound confident, “I can do whatever the fuck I want princess.”

His cocky attitude could almost make you scoff, if it weren’t for the subtle feeling that maybe, just maybe you shouldn’t push him.

...But where’s the fun in that?

“Whatever, I’m sure you can find someone else to annoy.” You turned back around to keep working on the abandoned drink, leaving him to settle his hands on your waist.

“There is nobody else.”

That made you feel a little better, having assumed he only kept you around for entertainment purposes before moving on to something―someone―more serious. But at the same time it was concerning―what was so special about you to him? “Well that’s too bad, I’m not staying here because some asshole is lonely.”

Dabi appeared to be amused with your attitude, hearing the low chuckle from behind you. He went back to having his arms wrapped around you from behind, leaning the side of his head up against yours.. “Aw, you sure dollface? I’ve heard I can be very convincing, bet I could get you to stay somehow.”

You shook your head at his response, “Doubt it. You’d have to do something pretty big to keep me here.”

“Well, I do have my ways sweetheart. Just not so sure you’d agree with what I have in mind.”

Threatening, but not explicit.

“That’s comforting.” This time when you moved to escape his grasp he let you, drink in hand while heading towards the living room couch. You settled on to the worn out cushions, sending Dabi a glare as he used your lap as a footrest when he draped his body across the free expanse of the seating.

Without another word on the subject he chose a movie, letting the room fall into a peaceful absence of conversation.

_____

It was only in your nature to reflect on that encounter with the scarred man, given your expanse of knowledge in regards to the certain kind of behaviour he briefly held.

To be honest it was the first time he showed any real commitment to your questionable relationship. The first time he made it clear that you were his sole focus.

It was nice, but you couldn’t help but pick up on the red flags.

He was a villain. An extremely powerful one at that. He’d mercilessly slaughtered countless people―surely that had some effect on his psyche? If there was any evidence for that, it was this. Nobody with his history just implies something so vaguely ominous without being serious.

But you would never know how serious he was if you didn’t do a little more prodding on the subject.

Just to be on the safe side, you didn’t tempt him with anything that’d make him specifically pissed over one person. If he truly was the person you thought, then you’d have to avoid being the reason he killed someone.

Instead, you took the passive route.

By now you’d given him your phone number, or rather he forced you, saying he would stop teasing you if you did so. Of course he didn’t stop, but that was behind you now.

After that night he seemed a little more...insistent. Usually Dabi wasn’t very talkative, but now he’d taken a liking to keeping up with you through text.

Sometimes it was just idle conversation, but it always had something to do with what you were doing: where you were, who you were with. The talks were still short, but he made the point to ask nonetheless. It gave you the perfect opportunity to push his buttons.

You wouldn’t answer him right away, or you’d be vague with your responses to his interrogative questions. The endeavour to irritate him did little at first, but the more you persisted, the more he got attached to you, the demanding side of his personality started to bleed into your life.

He’d get angry with you for ignoring him. Dabi wouldn’t obsessively spam you with texts―no, he preferred the few he did send to simply disturb you into replying. Warning you that this wouldn’t end well for you. That he knew you were ignoring him. That he’d make you regret acting so stuck up.

Should you have heeded these blatant warning signs? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Yet as time passed and he only got worse, the more you wanted to see just how far he’d be willing to go.

In hindsight, the idea wasn’t the best. You really were going to move away for college, start a new life, maybe meet that special someone.

But Dabi had other plans.

As much as you thought you were being delicate with his temper, his destructive practices proved that everything you had done to avoid violence was in vain.

You should have seen it coming.

He could’ve killed you―should’ve killed you―but he knew this was what he needed. You were what he needed. And the prospect of watching you slip out of his grasp wasn’t something he was ready for. But you were ready for it, and that was the problem.

So Dabi smoked you out of the only place you could call home, along with destroying anything that’d keep you living with any semblance of independence.

The putrid smell of burning materials and, what you prayed wasn’t searing flesh, was the first to hit your senses. You were awake at the ungodly nightly hour the menace chose to send your apartment complex up in flames. If it weren’t for that you were convinced you would have perished in the fire. But Dabi probably planned for that, much like he probably planned for you to be forced out of the only exit that wasn’t being slowly cremated.

Out of the back exit and right into his arms, all the while you were still choking on the air that was riddled with deadly smoke just a few seconds ago. But he didn’t care, not when he had to stifle your screams with his hand, his other arm wrapped around your lower half, pulling you away from the complex where emergency first responders wouldn’t find you.

He let you look at the building that was gradually succumbing to the devastating effects of his quirk. You knew why he was doing it, but it still scared you.

“You see baby, this is what happens when you don’t listen to me. Take a good look at it, cause you’re never fucking comin’ back here again.” His voice was devoid of empathy, but why would he care in the first place? If anything, he was having fun with the matter.

It was your fault, you’d forced his hand. He wanted to be patient with you. Let you come to him.

But no, you had to piss him off. You deserved this for how much you put him through.

Maybe it was the lingering effects of the smoke that was making you lightheaded. Or perhaps the constricting feeling of Dabi’s arm wrapped around your throat. Realistically, it didn’t matter which was the final nail in your coffin. Soon enough you were passed out, body limp and defenceless in his arms to do whatever he pleased.

And so, when you finally came to, your predicament did not come as a surprise.

A chain wrapped around your ankle, secured firmly into the floor. You laid haphazardly on a bed in what you already knew to be Dabi’s old, fairly run down apartment.

He didn’t bother to wait for you to wake up, just leave you alone in the cold room to figure out what had happened.

But you were very aware of the situation.

This is what you wanted, right?

You pushed him. And now he was pushing back.

Out of pure instinct you gravitated towards yanking at the chains, doing anything to loosen them. Only after a few minutes of doing so you remembered just how you’d done your hair that day. Nothing special, but adorned with a few bobby pins.

And yet, when you removed one to pick at the lock, you stopped. Out of curiosity you taught yourself how to use the makeshift key to open such a device, but what was the point?

He’d only track you down if you got out. And judging by his character he wouldn’t be against some less than comfortable forms of punishment. It was clear that he wouldn’t hesitate to burn down anyone or anything in his way either.

And when you spent so much time tempting him to do exactly this, why would you ruin it?

It wasn’t healthy, but it proved how much you meant to him. In an equally disturbing and endearing way, he cared about you. More than anyone else had cared about you before. College plans be damned, you could settle for this at least for the time being.

So you put the pins back in your hair, laying back against the firm mattress.

You didn’t entirely know what Dabi had in store for you, but that made it only the more intoxicating.

Eventually you heard the telltale heavy footsteps approaching the locked bedroom door.

You should’ve been scared. You should’ve been fighting tooth and nail to escape your bindings. But as the sound got louder, and the locks on the door shifted open, you could only think of one thing.

It was dangerous, but you still wanted to know the extent of his pent up desires. And subsequently, how you had to play your cards to reveal these traits without getting yourself or anyone else killed.

But no matter what happened, you wanted this.

#yandere bnha #yandere my hero academia #yandere dabi #yandere dabi x reader #yandere mha #yandere

459 notes · View notes

sunshineseung · 4 years ago

Text

Sinner Part 2 // Felix

💌 Info: Stray Kids Felix x female!reader smut 💕 Includes: dom!reader x sub!felix, themes of religion, teasing, exhibitionism/fear of being caught, first time, loss of innocence, establishment of safeword, degradation and praise, oral/fingering (receiving), unprotected sex, riding, cum play, slight aftercare ✏️ Word Count: ~4.2k

Please read part one of this series first :) Thank you!

The rain was pouring in the pitch black outside, but the lights inside the church hall were bright as day. The only occupant of the church on this night was Lee Felix deep in prayer, oblivious to the storm outside. With hands folded and head bowed, he whispered his prayer through his lips, a slight echo of his words spreading through the otherwise empty room.

Felix jolts up at the sound of the main entrance being opened and slammed shut quickly after. A feminine sigh can be heard, and Felix lets out a shy “hello” to the intruder of his private repentance time.

“Oh, you’re here?” You say while entering the main hall, throwing your wet jacket over one of the pews. “I thought this place would have been empty.”

“What are you doing here?” Felix retorts immediately, slightly offended that of all people to walk in at this moment, it had to be you.

“I should be asking you the same thing, little boy.” You shuffle the hair on his head, earning an annoyed grunt from him. “The bitch ass pastor’s making me clean the archives in the basement since I... caused some trouble earlier this week.”

“Caused some trouble? Is that all you have to say for yourself?” Felix was beyond offended at this point. If it wasn’t your name-calling of the pastor, it was your dismissal of your actions. “You and your group of friends painted sinful phrases on the side of the church!”

“It was all in good fun, damn. Chill out.” While, yes, spray painting God Loves Lesbians on the wall of the church was questionable, it was fun! And best of all, the pastor said he wouldn’t call authorities if you cleaned the basement. “It was worth it anyway. Did you see the look on his face? Priceless!”

The boy was boiling with rage, but he held his anger back in fear of cursing or saying the Lord’s name in vain. Despite hating you, part of him wanted to save you. While not being the healthiest mindset, Felix felt like he could save anyone from sin, and he was going to try to save what he called the rodent of the congregation.

“Now, if you don’t mind me asking, why are you here?” Your tone of voice edged on sarcasm, you having full knowledge of his nightly prayer. He had calmed down, remembering that he was in a place of the Lord. His face returned from red back to it’s normal hue, and he looked to you with gentle eyes.

“I was praying. I did some questionable things this week too.” His admission to sin took you aback. You didn’t expect everyone’s favorite boy to openly confide in you that he committed an act against his God, something you never thought he would do.

“What kind of questionable things?” Your interest was piqued, and his sudden bluntness was just what you wanted to see. What resides in the mind of Felix?

“I shouldn’t be telling you this.” He looks into his lap, a sudden wave of shyness clouding him. You sit next to him on the pew, patting his back to comfort him. Despite him being so critical of your actions, you did have a soft spot for the sweet boy. “I... pleasured myself.”

You almost burst out into laughter, but you had to suppress that for now, because the most holy person you knew just said he masturbated, and he felt bad about it. As someone who was not shy to doing that specific act among other ungodly things, to see someone repent for doing something totally natural in your eyes was otherworldly.

“It’s okay, Felix. Sex is natural.” You attempted to comfort him, but you could tell by the deepness in his eyes that he still regretted what he did. Also, when you so casually said the word sex, he winced a bit since he hated the word so much. “You have nothing to be ashamed for. Everyone masturbates.”

“You don’t understand!” The raise in his voice boomed through the desolate church hall, and you darted your look towards him in shock. “It wasn’t just that.” His voice got soft again, almost a whisper. You lean in to hear him. “I watched the most sinful videos. I thought about myself doing those horrid things. I feel filthy.”

“Lix, I understand completely. Do you think I haven’t done those exact name things?” You raise your eyebrow at him, and he timidly shakes his head. “You’re a young adult. This is normal. Don’t let it eat you up, okay?”

“Okay.” His deep voice sent shivers down your spine, and it just hit you that you were basically giving him the birds and the bees talk. A comforting smile graces your face as you get up from your seat next to Felix.

“I should go start cleaning the basement. Mind helping me?” You hold your hand out to him, offering some more time to spend with you. He reluctantly takes your hand, and you help him stand from the pew. You two silently make your way into the damp basement of your church.

Dust, cobwebs, and the sent of mold cover the dreary basement as you and Felix step down. The conversation in the basement is much more lighthearted, but you can’t shake the image of Felix masturbating out of your head. You’ve never thought of the star child like that before, but his confession made you see him in a new light. He wasn’t above you. He was a teenager driven by sex and hormones like everyone else.

Once the basement was tidy, books arranged on shelves and dust swept away, you exchanged phone numbers with the boy and headed on your merry way, but that was far from the last time you would hear from Felix.

Over the next two weeks, Felix would text you casually. It started as a nice, wholesome friendship: discussing classes, complaining about personal things, and sharing homework. No matter what the conversation topic was, your mind would wander to the more dark and depraved side of your persona. You wanted to pick his brain on a multitude of topics, but most of all: sex. Since confessing his scandal to you, you wanted to know if he did it again, what he’s into, or even if he’s thought about you.

One night, in a heightened state of mind, you text him a simple question: Have you jerked off since that night? Sure, you regretted it when you sobered up, but you got the answer you wanted... sort of.

I’ve wanted to, but I also want to get into heaven unlike some people. Wow, pointed. However, I have watched more... pornographic films??? Sometimes the girl puts the mans... in her mouth, and it’s scary. Why would someone want to do that?

After explaining to the poor boy what a blowjob is and why it’s amazing, he takes two days to respond to your text, something he’s never done before. It was radio silence, and you didn’t bother to try to garner a response, because you knew Felix was busy

After waiting what seemed like an eternity for a response, you got what you were praying for, and you were worried this would happen.

I’m sorry if this comes off as aggressive, but will you show me a blowjob? Like, perform a blowjob on me? I take back what I said about getting into heaven. I can always beg for forgiveness, but right now, I’m really frustrated.

You’ve created a monster.

When Felix escapes the attic after you give him what you believe to be his first sexual encounter with another person, you quietly reenter the congregation as if you didn’t just cause the prettiest church boy to bust a load on himself minutes before.

“Darling, there you are!” Your mother holds her arms out to you after what you presumed to be a particularly moving speech from the pastor. “We’re having dinner with the Lee family tonight, and I’d expect you to be on your best behavior. Would you like to join us?”

“I’d be happy to go, mom.” Fuck fuck fuck. This was supposed to be a one time thing, and as much as the idea of teasing Felix in front of his family excited you, you’d hate to get caught by your own family, although the devil in you was very willing to take that risk for the slightest bit of sexual satisfaction.

“Great! We’ll head over at 5 o’clock. Please dress up, dear. Your current shirt looks wrinkled. What were y-”

“I’ll dress up, don’t worry!” You cut her off, and her face scrunches, but you’d rather not have to deal with the wrath of your mother. Your father returns to your mother after having a short conversation with Felix’s father.

“Mr. Lee said Felix could be a good influence on you, Y/n.” The temptation to roll your eyes was strong considering the preceding events. “Pay attention to how he talks to his parents. You could learn something, sweetheart.”

As much as you wanted to cause a scene in the church from your father’s condescending tone, you were more focused on getting home and changing your soaked, ruined panties. Your family says their casual goodbyes to the other churchgoers, and you make your way back to the family car, hoping your father speeds home.

“Honey, it’s time to go!” Your mother puts in her second earring as she yells up to your room from the bottom of the stairs. Your door wings open to reveal you in a short red skirt, low-cut white shirt, white dress shoes, and bright red lipstick. “You’re wearing that?”

“It’s fine, ma! Nothing they haven’t seen before!” You whisk past your mother and slide into the backseat of the family car, ready to have dinner with the boy of your nightmares.

When you enter the Lee family household, you can tell Felix’s parents are judging you, but you didn’t dress like that for them. When Felix turns the corner and faces you, his eye practically bulge out of his head. His gaze is glued to your thighs, hips, bust, and lips, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Judging by the sudden tightening in his pants, he clearly enjoys the view.

“Hello! Welcome to our house,” Felix’s mother escorts you inside to the living room. “Make yourself at home until dinner is ready.” She disappears into the kitchen while Felix’s father sits down on the couch and invites you and your family to sit with him. Felix shyly sits next to his father, although there was hardly any room for him to sit there.

Your father and Felix’s father start talking about sports, while your mother goes on her phone. You make eye contact with Felix from across the couch, and his whole body tenses and he breaks into a nervous sweat. Aw, she’s so pretty, what do I do, what do I do, frick, frick, fuck.

Without saying a word, Felix gets up and runs out of the living room. Everyone darts their attention towards him, but no one tries to stop him.

“Dinner’s re- where did Felix go?” His mother enters the living room, but her announcement is halted by the absence of her son. Everyone looks at each other, no one having answers for Felix's tantrum. "Would someone go get him please?"

"I got him." Your devious smirk should set the crowd off, but you make your way up the stairs to where you see Felix's bedroom door. His door had his name on it, so it was pretty clear what room was his.

"Go away." The second he hears your knock, he throws a pillow at his door, as if that would stop you from barging in. You see him sat on his bed, arms crossed, another pillow over his crotch, and his lip in a pout. "Why did you come here wearing that?"

He was definitely on the defense, and you've never seen Felix this angry since the night in the church. "I just thought this outfit was cute." Playing innocent might not have been the best idea at this moment, but you just had to calm him down and get him out to dinner.

"Yeah, it's a nice outfit, but I can see your butt whenever you turn around, and your cleavage is out, and I'm just very confused." He was frustrated at himself more than you. You sit next to him and put your hand on his shoulder, a familiar scene.

"Come down for dinner, and afterwards, I'll show you what I have under this outfit, okay babe?" Felix was so painfully tensed, every nerve of his was on edge. Your words were filthy, but he loved it so much.

He can't stop thinking about you. He wants to do everything to your body: eat you out, fuck your tits, spank your ass. He wants to do every sinful thing he's seen in those videos. Just imagining seeing you in your underwear makes him want to bust in his pants. You're driving him insane, and if Felix from a few weeks ago had seen what he has become, he would be disgusted.

You two make your way downstairs, Felix staring at your ass the entire time, and take your seats at the table. The dinner table was a circle, so you were seated right between Felix and your mother. Not the sexiest setting, but that wouldn't stop you.

The food was delicious, but halfway through, you placed your hand on Felix's thigh, and although you had him pecking the back of your throat earlier that day, he was still extremely sensitive to every touch. When your hand slid up his leg, he let out the quietest moan, and although the table was full of chatter between your parents, you were able to hear the precious sounds leaving Lee Felix as you swiped your hand across his twitching bulge.

Felix grabs your wrist and throws your arm back to you. He gives you a death stare, but his eyes are dark, and he looks so fucking needy. You meet his gaze and adjust your top, pulling it even lower than it already was. His eyes are glued to your tits, but you point down to your crotch, where you're fingering your self under the table. Felix bites his lip, but goes back to eating his food.

You take your wet finger and wipe it against his pant leg. Jesus fucking Christ, you were breaking this boy. His bulge was painfully large, and again, he felt like he could bust in his pants.

"I'm wet for you, baby boy. When dinner's over, do you want to taste me?" You whisper in his ear, and he closes his eyes tightly, trying not to fully fall for your tricks. His pathetic nod is all you need to go back to finishing your dinner, and he does the same, but his mind is fogged with the image of your naked body bouncing on his cock. So pathetic. So, so pathetic.

Dinner ends, Felix's mom takes the plates, and you and Felix disappear back into his room while the adults have their alone time to drink and chat. When he locks the door, you pin him to the wall and lick your lips. You stare him up and down, watching him as he panics. Everything he wanted to do to you escapes him, and he's putty in your hands.

Speechless, Felix rests his hands flush against the wall and tilts his head backwards, giving you full access to his neck. You take the opportunity to make dark hickeys along his neck, which will definitely be visible to his parents later. Your tongue against his skin makes him shudder, and mindless whimpers escape his lips.

"If you ever want to stop, the safe word is red, or snap twice. I'll only go as far as you want to, Lix." He nods, repeats what you said, and you go back to work on his neck.

"C-can I taste you?" His words are feint, but you're more than happy to take his request. You slip your skirt down to the floor and take off your tight shirt, giving Felix a full show of your lingerie you wore just for him.

"You've become such a whore for me, Lix." You traced his body with your hands, sliding your fingertips over his abs and chest. "Do you even know what to do with my pussy, huh? You're so innocent, I doubt you'd be able to make me cum."

His heart was racing, and he wanted nothing more than to prove you wrong. While, yes, he had no idea what he was doing, he wanted to taste your sweet release coat his tongue.

"Teach me." He was being bold. You'd never thought you'd see Felix this confident in this setting, especially since he was admitting to being inexperienced. You took his hands in yours and lead him to the bed. He watched you as you sat on the edge of the bed and spread your legs, giving him full access to your dripping cunt.

"Get on your knees, baby boy." He did as instructed, but this was the first time he was on his knees next to his bed to do anything other than pray. His hands ghosted over your thighs, scared to touch you without your permission.

"May I take off your panties?" You nod and lift your hips, allowing him to slide them down your legs. A string of wetness connected you with your panties, and Felix's mouth was watering. Your panties were discarded across the room, and you unhooked your bra and tossed it with the rest of your clothes. "Woah, you're so gorgeous."

You pet his blushing, freckled cheek, and coax him closer to your heat. His lips are hardly centimeters away from you, and you gently tangle your hand in his hair. "Lick my pussy, naughty boy. I know you want to."

Felix bites his lip before diving into your pussy, his tongue exploring every fold. Even though he doesn't know where the clitoris is, he knows that when he licks the top of your pussy, your thighs shake around him, so he circles his tongue through your cunt, and you give him the sweetest praise.

"Such a good boy for me, yeah?" You smile down at him, and the eye contact is intoxicating. You tighten around nothing when his tongue perfectly flicks over your clit. "Finger me, please, baby.”

He inserts his index finger into your core, and it feels like heaven to both of you. Felix imagines it's his cock inside you, and the thought of you tightening around him urges him to take his tight pants off without removing his mouth from your pussy.

"Bend your finger, my slutty little boy. Make your mistress cum on your pretty face." Your high was approaching, and you wanted Felix to work for it. He fucked his finger into you, adding his middle finger in the process. The more he looked at your heat, the more nervous he got, but from the wetness covering his fingers and lips, you didn't notice how nervous he was.

His fingers perfectly pushed into your g-spot, and your orgasm got miles closer. Your moans got louder, and no matter how close your parents were to hearing, you didn't quiet down. Felix loved your moans, and his cock twitches in his underwear.

"You're so hot, Y/n, please cum for me." His voice was hoarse and desperate, but you weren't that easy.

"Suck my clit. Make me cum all over your face, cutie." He aimlessly sucked at your folds, but when he found your clit, he never left that spot. Your violent moans of pleasure made him groan onto your clit, sending you over the edge. Your essence covered his fingers, and he lapped up every bit of your release. "Good boy."

You were out of breath, but Felix just started. He stood up and sat in your lap. You placed your hands on his hips, squeezing him and making him jolt. His erection was painfully pressed against his tight boxers, and you hooked your finger around the waistband and pulled them down his thighs. Although it had only been a few hours, his length never failed to impress you.

"Please fuck me, Y/n. I want to feel you on me." He was so desperate for any sort of touch. You lazily wrapped your hand around his cock and started stroking, but he grabbed your wrist, stopping you. "Ride me."

"Very demanding for a little slut, don't you think?" You throw him off your lap, his back harshly slamming onto the bed. Your legs surround his hips as you line your entrance with his cock, and he squeezes his eyes shut. His hands held onto your thighs as if it were life or death, and for him, it was.

Right before you lowered yourself onto him, he felt every negative thought enter his mind. What if I'm not good enough? What if I cum too soon? What if she hates me? What would my parents say if they caught us? God, please forgive me.

You see him grit his teeth, and you stop. You gently pet his cheek again, bringing him back to earth, and more importantly, bringing his attention back on your dripping core hanging over his cock.

Without warning, Felix grabs your hips and pushes you down onto him. He loses all control, and you love it. You stay still once he bottoms out, his face contorting into questionable expressions from the pleasure overwhelming him. He calms down, and you start to ride him, his cock sliding against your walls and filling you up perfectly.

You throw your head back and quicken your pace, chasing your second orgasm. Felix feels himself on the edge, but he holds back, fearful of what will happen if he cums inside you.

"Fuck, Felix, you feel so good." Your moans are so load, and the creaking of the bed is deafening. Felix's deep grunts and growls sound amazing, and his grip on your hips is tight enough to bruise. "So good, baby boy, so good."

His finger lingers to the familiar spot that is your clitoris, although Felix doesn't know that fully. He circles his finger around your sensitive bud, and his other hand grips your tit. His hands feel so good, and with one more press into your g-spot, you coat his cock in your cum. He thrusts into you when you tighten around him, and his orgasm is threatening to release, but he refuses to be the father of a child with someone who he is not married to.

You ride out your high on his cock, and when you return back to earth, you remove yourself and harshly wrap your hand around his cock. Your pumps are violent, and his body is aching for an orgasm. You bend over and lick the tip, his cum coating your tongue and face. He opens his eyes, cum squirted onto your face, and he's sure you'll be mad at him, but you lick your lips, collect his cum from your face, and swallow every last drop.

Without a word, you topple over next to him, and you rest your head on his chest. He hesitantly wraps his arm around you, and you muzzle into him.

"You're so good for me, Felix." You whisper into him, but he hear every word. He smiles, unable to speak after the intense orgasm he just experienced. "We need to go back downstairs, you know?"

After a few moments of silence, Felix speaks up. "Y/n, this is... wrong." He sits up, your head falling onto the bed and his arms holding him up. "We shouldn't have done this."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Yes, b-"

"Then nothing is wrong." You pat his back, admiring the defined muscles. You sit up with him and look at the clothes scattered across the room. "Sex isn't bad, Lix."

"This just goes against what I've been taught my entire life." He pauses, deep in thought. "Sex is good." He repeats under his breath.

You stand up and stretch, your ass catching Felix's eye. He sighs and accepts his actions, clearing his floor of the discarded clothing and getting dressed again.

"Felix, can I borrow a hoodie?" You hold up a hoodie from the local Christian radio station, and Felix shrugs. "Thanks, babe."

"Y/n, do you like me?" You stop in your tracks after Felix's question, and you honestly don't know how to answer. Did you like Lee Felix?

"I'm not sure, but maybe we could go on a date sometime." Your tone was casual, but your mind was racing. Before this, you thought you didn't have feelings for the cute little church boy, but now that you've been confronted with it, you didn't know how to feel.

"... Sure."

#ur-net #staysmutblr #stray kids #skz #stray kids fanfic #stray kids fan fiction #skz fanfic #skz fan fiction #stray kids smut #skz smut #kpop smut #kpop fan fiction #kpop fanfic #kpop #skz felix #stray kids felix #skz felix smut #stray kids felix smut #felix smut

269 notes · View notes