#job:hotel district

[nwkrp-blog]

                                  ⋆ — WELCOME HOME, TRAVELER.

THE SHORES HAVE GIFTED US A NEW RESIDENT. born on FEBRUARY 14TH, 1994, KANG SEULGI has been on the island for 2 YEARS and is currently a FRONT DESK ATTENDANT AT A LOVE MOTEL. you can always find them at BITNA STUDIOS, 501.

                                          ONWARD !

                                           ⋆ EVERY STORY HAS A REASON

after obtaining lackluster results on the korean college entrance exams due to a poorly timed panic attack and a patented helping of “completely giving up,” seulgi’s personal decisions came back to haunt her. high school had not been entirely kind to her, from a scandal that prompted her to be ostracized, to a move to a new town, new school system, and with it a whole new set of troublemaking friends. it wasn’t a huge surprise to her that she bombed the test, but it did mean she had to go back home and face the music.

seeing as she was from (and returning to) in a small town on jeju island with few opportunities, this meant she spent a good year drifting and not doing much beyond longboarding and fussing around on the internet, occasionally leading tourist hikes and the like for pocket money. when her mother approaches her about the mido youth program, she’s one hundred percent sure it’s just another excuse to get rid of their troublesome and unsuccessful daughter, but frankly, seulgi is at that point entirely emotionally wrecked and disinterested in remaining in her hometown (for reasons expanded upon below).

thus, she lets her mother prepare it all and push her out the door, packs up her longboard and her collection of grayscale streetwear outfits and heads for mido, where she quickly finds fascination and affection for the city life (though modest, it dwarfs her small town background), moves into the central area into a studio that might not be much to look at but has the bonus of being entirely her own. she’s started taking classes part time in coding and computer science, works at a love motel (and finds it both hilarious and disturbing), and has enjoyed a slight boost in her ego with the smalltime success of some of the longboard dancing videos she’s put out on her social media of late. on the whole, while her reason for entering the program and escaping her old life was both suspect (i.e. running away from her problems) and largely unplanned (or at least, she let her mom deal with all the planning, since she was the one who wanted to be rid of her anyway) it has treated her pretty well so far, if only because there’s no one breathing down her neck and evaluating her every move. the fact that she has had prior experience with working and living in a tourist based economy likely helped her in her pursuit of the program.

                                          ⋆ EVERY STORY HAS ITS ROOTS

KANG SEULGI MIXTAPE. SIDE A - INNOCENCE.

TRACK ONE.

birth is an uneventful affair. she isn’t a planned baby but she isn’t unwelcome either, youngest of three by enough years that her older brother’s dote on her in the abstract but aren’t really fans of actually having her around. it’s sort of a theme. her mother hires a nanny and goes back to work immediately - she took time off with the boys and she’s not willing to do it again. her father is as distant as he was with the elder two, unsurprisingly.

seulgi grows up this way, chasing after affection and attention, calling out for the same things that were doled out to the other two so easily. she wants her brothers to play with her - dolls or tag, she’s not picky, she’ll take what she can get. they play hide and seek but she always hides, and they never seek, just let the little girl coop herself up in the closet for a half an hour, or until she dozes off. eventually she stops asking.

TRACK TWO.

she grows into the hand she’s been dealt. she wears a tan like a shield, testament to hours spent outside in the sun, relentlessly scrambling over the landscape. they live on the outskirts of a little town on jeju island, and the sun and surf and sand and rocks and mountains are her company. she takes after her brothers, athletic and enthusiastic, seemingly immune to the scraping of her knees and the scabs on her elbows, bruises on her shins.

seulgi feels the freest on the skateboard she inherits from her brother - or, more specifically, steals from his room when his interest in girls and his worry about entrance exams takes over his free time. she spends hours on it, rolling through town to the ultimate displeasure of the ahjummas who sit outside the town hall and gossip. a girl should be more demure, she should be more careful, she’s going to hurt herself or someone else, they say, but seulgi is past the point of craving approval now.

TRACK THREE.

high school treats her well. there are only so many other kids in town, so it’s not like there’s enough trouble for cliques. not when they’ve all known each other from birth. there isn’t much reason to come to the little excuse for a city, unless you’re a tourist or you’ve got a burning passion for the fishing industry, and even then there are better choices in destination. she studies well enough, but seulgi is prone to distraction. her attention wanders and she spends plenty o time staring out of the window, as opposed to anything else. but she’s clever, and when she does apply herself she catches up just fine.

a young teacher moves to town, when she’s seventeen, and he’s tall and handsome and has a sweet smile. he teaches math, which she’d hated, but it becomes her new favorite subject. enthusiastically she applies herself, sits in the front row, doesn’t doze off. it starts off so sweetly that way. her parents notice her for the first time, the fact that she’s so fond of math lately, the fact that she’s doing so well in class. finally, some of the validation she’s wanted for so long.

TRACK FOUR.

he takes advantage. he sees a girl desperate for validation and so eager, earnestly open about her childish crush, and he uses that. despite the crush, this isn’t at all what she’d had in mind in practice. there’s something that twists in her chest. uncertainty, and fear. there is an imbalance, there is a problem.

and then, there’s a picture.

it’s not incriminating, not really. someone sees them, after class, together, int he classroom. his hand is on her cheek, the other on her waist. it’s not much, but it’s enough that when it spreads through the school like a wildfire, it ends up double edged, two pronged.

he’s fired. she’s sent to geoje, to live with her aunt.

KANG SEULGI MIXTAPE. SIDE B - DECAY.

TRACK FIVE.

at first, she thinks it doesn’t bother her. she’d had a crush on him. it had gone south. she’s mad at miyeon, that stupid bitch, for taking the picture. she’s mad at her parents for sending her to live with an aunt. she’s mad at everything else in the world but him, but herself.

she’s angry and reckless in the way only a teenager can be, lashes out and shuts down in turn. she doesn’t talk to her aunt beyond curt, terse responses. she hates this stupid city, hates being away from her friends - not that they would be her friends now, she supposes. she hates that he doesn’t contact her, that he got in trouble. she falls in with all the wrong new friends, the kinds that the ahjumma’s back home would have been horrified by if they thought her simple skateboarding was so bad. she hates her parents for finally having their wish, getting rid of her entirely.

TRACK SIX.

seulgi finds her affection in new ways now, but it never really helps. it never fills that strange chasm in her, no matter what she does. it’s like she’s six years old again, still chasing after something and never quite catching up.

she buys a longboard on a whim, when her skateboard finally gives up the ghost, worn down and ancient. she devotes her time to this again, rediscovers her affection for winding through crowds, the satisfaction of landing a new trick. impulse has her exploring the art of “dance” on the longboard, making use of her own nimble nature and the length of the board relative to a skateboard, has her friends film her, starts an instagram to chronicle her progress.

she still likes math, puzzles that fit together neatly, black and white answers. but as for her future? she’s not sure.

TRACK SEVEN.

she fails the entrance exams.

this isn’t surprising to her, because halfway through she has a panic attack. it feels like a heart attack in the moment, the whole world crashing around her, her lungs deflated and breath thin and head pounding, eyes swimming with tears. she goes to the bathroom and sits silently in a stall, dead eyed with her head in her hands. she doesn’t finish the test.

maybe she doesn’t have a future.

TRACK EIGHT.

her parents are horrified, they bring her back, and it isn’t until she’s at home again that she realizes it all bore down on her in a much more real way than she’d ever thought. seulgi hasn’t been chasing affection or validation this whole time. there hasn’t been some distant goal she’s running toward. no, seulgi realizes all at once, confronted with the faces of her past, that this whole time she’s been on the run alright, but she’s been running away. away from what had happened, from manipulation and secrecy at the death of innocence.

TRACK NINE.

her mother hands her a pamphlet, sits her down at the kitchen table. it’s a brand new program in mido, she tells her. seulgi could get a job, maybe take night classes - they have a community college there, and more opportunities than in their own, small town. there’s a city, and a seaside, and she could visit whenever she liked.

TRACK TEN.

and thus, seulgi sets off again, still on the run (or on the roll, if you take into account the fact she skates more than she walks these days), trying to find her footing on the island of mido.