#pa.monstrous

[paranoiakrp]

          CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: PARK BONHWA ...

STATS

name / park bonhwa d.o.b. / 07.12.97 age / 22 pronouns / he/him job / waiter societies / monstrous › psychometry groups / n/a

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

A simple touch, and he’s immersed in whatever imprint is left behind, be it a person or object. He doesn’t know what to call it, or why it happens to him, but it’s something he knows he has to hide, something he can’t just tell people about. Sometimes he thinks he really is crazy, when his fingers brush a cup or chair and suddenly he filled with a deep sorrow or sees a flash of a person’s face, like a snap shot image pushed into his head. It doesn’t happen all of the time, but it does happen enough for him to have to control his reactions tightly, to reign in his messy mind and pretend like everything is perfectly normal. Sometimes it’s more, like a whisper of a thought or spoken words, and still even more rare, a vision. 

He acts like he doesn’t know what he knows or that he feels what he feels, instead continuing on with the smile everyone expects of him and hiding behind his carefully carved mask.

WHATS YOUR STORY?

Park Chanri was never made for child rearing. She was a free spirit, a wandering soul that never wanted to tie herself down with the burden of a child or husband. It was unfortunate that she fell into the bed of a man passing through town, even more unfortunate that the night of passion resulted in an unwanted pregnancy.

She very nearly terminated the pregnancy. All it would take was a discreet trip out of town for a night, then her burden would be gone, but something in Chanri resisted. Despite the odds, despite the feeling of utter panic and terror at the thought of having a child caring for their every need, she decided to at least give this baby a chance.

When Bonhwa was born, his mother was alone in the hospital, crying endlessly in an odd mixture of happiness and fear for the tiny little baby she brought into this cruel world. He was chubby and pink and everything she never knew she wanted out of life. Chanri knew though, quite early on that her baby was different. He was sweet as pie, the gentlest little child, but he also knew and said very odd things. It was strange to watch when he was a toddler, the way he would touch things or people sometimes and go through a surprising mood swing. From happy and giggly to tears, anger, shock, and so on, she feared he had some sort of mental illness. It wasn’t until he could talk that Chanri realized her baby was a little more special than she thought.

It was an evening that Chanri went to pick him up from his babysitter after her work at the local bar, tired and upset over something her boss did that night before she left. He had been scolding her on customer etiquette, using the opportunity to proposition her as a means of letting the incident slide.

She was jobless (after slapping her boss) and terrified about trying to find a new one.

As he did every time she picked him up, Bonhwa came sprinted out to his mom and clung to her, happily folding himself into her arms. Except this time his face crumpled, a look of worry too mature for his young face looking up at her. “Everything will be okay.” He spoke softly, “you’ll find a new job mommy.”

And then suddenly it became so clear. It happened again and again over the course of a few years, Bonhwa touched something or someone and something happened. Sometimes, he told her, it was just a feeling imprinted on him, like one time he touched an old toy she brought home from a thrift store and he burst into tears, overwhelmed with a feeling of sadness while holding the toy. Other times it was images, people, places, things, but then sometimes, less frequently, it would be thoughts or words, a thin stream of a whisper connected to whatever or whoever he had touched. Most rare of all, something Chanri knew had only happened once, were visions. Bonhwa helped her set the table one holiday, barely four but so eager to help his mom. She pulled out the nice china she took after her parents both passed away, the kind only used for special occasions, warning him to be very gentle with it. Bonhwa’s tiny hands curled around two of the china plates, but they never fully closed. The plates hit the floor with an echoing sound of broken glass, Bonhwa’s eyes wide in shock.

After she calmed him down and gently got him to talk about it, Bonhwa explained what he saw with his lacking vocabulary. He said it was like a movie playing, one where his mother was barely a teenage as she watched her father slap her mother across the face, the fine china clutched in her mother’s hands. It was a brief vision, there and then gone, but it left Bonhwa feeling weak and tired, his tears slowly dripping down his face for hours afterward.

When it came time for him to start school, Chanri felt terrified for her child all over again. She felt that frantic feeling she felt at his birth, the sense to protect her baby at all costs from the cruelty of the outside world. She sternly told him never to speak about what he saw and felt to other people, to keep his secret locked deep down. She was nearly hysterical as she held his shoulders, making him promise it to himself.

He promised her, but Bonhwa was only a small child, and small children slip up. The worst of it was his early grade school years where he really had trouble reining in his reactions. Sometimes he would cry randomly in class or become angry and throw fits over seemingly nothing. It took a long time for Bonhwa to learn how to live behind a mask, cutting off himself every time he touched something or someone and felt a rush of emotion or a flash of an image. It got easier, but he felt restrained, closed in.

Once he was relatively more in control of himself, though slip ups still occasionally happened, Bonhwa’s school life wasn’t too difficult. He was a very friendly and sweet kid, quick to makes friends and endear others to him with his genuine happiness. He was kind to a fault.

In high school he started working after school and on weekends to help his mom out. He worked at a little hole in the wall food place after school, then the gas station on weekends when he could take the graveyard shifts. It was tough to balance, between his school work, social life, and jobs, but it paid off when he and his mom could finally afford to move into a two bedroom apartment that was slightly better than before.

After graduation he stayed at the gas station and food place for a few months more until he could manage to get a full time job at a diner. He’s been there for a few years, putting any extra money he makes towards helping out his mother and keeping them afloat.

[paranoiakrp]

        CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: HAN GOEUN ...

STATS

name / han goeun d.o.b. / 05.08.93 age / 26 pronouns / she/her job / convenience store clerk societies / monstrous › visions groups / n/a

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

at this age, she’s too old to excuse what she sees as a childish fantasy, though the alarming conclusions of her youth still soak into her adolescence and later life like a plague. demons. holy shit there are demons in my room.  

shadows indent themselves into her walls as remnants of a monstrous existence which escaped her dreams. they dilate and pulse while scaling the length; the rise of dawn steering them towards her window, but some escape through her door too. she wonders over the tinnitus ringing in her ears if her father sees them in the halls as he prepares to leave for work. if he’s ever peered close enough and realized — my shadow isn’t mine. 

religious influence has never been the cause of her explanations. halmeoni was too wretched to believe in a god, and appa is a drunkard. no holy influence spurred from his inebriated late-night preaching. 

but still, the idea gnaws at her brain, dissolves into the fissures of her thoughts and the walls of her skull. that she’s cursed, and not entirely her own. in her depictions, monsters are always partially human — through their system of lungs, the coils of hair or the bite of their teeth. but these are intangible creations and she’s a vessel used as their escape.  

goeun’s aware that even if she leaves, the invisible mark which stretches upon her chest and lurches her toward the center of this spiraling chaos will never let her go. not entirely at least. maybe as pieces of insanity and insomnia.  

WHATS YOUR STORY?

she’s born in junae. it’s obvious in the kind of gaze she enforces. like dead foliage, a wet morning, the dewy rise of dawn circling the black pits of her eyes. the idea of the town swells in its bitter taste through the bite of her growing molars; the pith of intelligence blossoming with the ravenous flavor. it’s intoxicating truly. living here, being here, existing among all the rumors and vibes that define it into the town of a thriller setting and sad sound. it’s like they’re born gutted. empty of the reasoning to leave. just void shadows lingering in the background of the world as it parades forward. 

—-

sept. 2008. — and goeun, baby, i miss you much. i’m so sorry i had to go. just know i love you.  oct. 2008. — i miss you too. are you coming back?

eomma tells her there are two modes to life. there are those who do and those who don’t. and one is never without the other.

the latter kinda looks like this. an abominable design. certainty — like something planned out, written in neat lines. a dichotomous blend between cowardice and intelligence. it’s never sudden. always half a beat late. always somewhat expected, such as this: eomma spends eleven years meticulously planning her escape and cutting free of the roots that have planted her here. she can’t stay, won’t. goeun and junae are pliable parts of herself she will peel off and chuck. 

the former is sort of rugged. you can see it one of two ways: brave or reckless. this is impulse and the sensation of being caught after a long chase. it’s the brazen look after a rush of adrenaline. her mother arrives in junae with a desire to escape and thinks she’s found love. a sense of permanence keeps her cemented to the small town she’d wandered off to, and she does it all; the dutiful wife, the kind mother. then it wears off, and she finds herself paying penance each day until she flees. 

three letters await goeun. the last is from sometime in january of 2010, seven months after she stopped replying. she looks at them, gives them vile satisfaction to fill an ugly void in herself and then shoves them under her bed. fuck that bitch. fuck her. fuck her. the mantra repeats until she’s found a stable distraction.

halmeoni finds them one evening. she gazes at her with haggard eyes and mumbles something incoherent. goeun is reckless ambivalence as she is calculated thought. eomma left years ago, she’s not coming back. there are rumors that she’s not doing so good out there, and others that proclaim she’s married now. properly. and has a kid. 

then halmeoni takes the shoebox with her and goeun cries herself to sleep.

—-

the first thing he says to her is hardly offensive. it’s funny. you’re becoming your father, goeun. and she’d agree if her visits here were more recurrent. ha! as if. instead, it shifts like clockwork. a ritualistic friday rendezvous. some excuse to see him, maybe, or seek an odd sort of solace in the debonair build of his cozy bar. but then his teasing turns into chiding, and his chiding becomes her burdening annoyance that makes the drinks sit heavy. 

“you know this tab can’t go on forever.” (she mutters something distractedly in response.) “goeun, im serious.” (she’s aware, really, of how serious he can get. how midnight confessions turn into booty calls. sweet smiles curled into this impish smirk she’s all too familiar with. friends. sure, if fucking is what it means to be friends. what about when i’m being serious? hey, what are we?)

she stares at him with a jaded glint to her glare. it’s the kind of exhaustion she remembers from being a child. when she’d trip up and lean against her father’s leg, eyes half-open, heart already steadied to the pace of a sleeping body. appa. appa, i’m tired. it’s sometimes a painful memory. how small she was, face round, swollen cheeks. it’s like her childhood features have been grafted on her present skeleton. goeun looks too much the same. she guesses she’ll never grow out of it like she’ll never grow out of this.

“okay, geez. i’ll pay your tab.” “when.” (goeun doesn’t give him a clear cut answer, she never actually does.) “you know, if this is about the weird shit your halmeoni said, you gotta understand that it’s not real.” (halmeoni grabs her arm one morning. “do you see it? do you see them? they’re in the shadows.” she was recently diagnosed with dementia, still goeun’s breath chokes up and she recoils from her hold.) “she was crazy.”  (she feels the unasked question in the way he shapes that last word. goeun, are you crazy?) “i know, right?”

he gives up with a dramatic sigh and stands straighter to move away. “go home, your nightmares aren’t real.” for a moment again she regrets confiding in him, only to throw her head back, swallow, and ignore the lack of options she’s got. junae’s a small pond full of the same kind of people she’s grown sick of. 

[paranoiakrp]

         CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: MAE HANJAE ...

STATS

name / mae hanjae d.o.b. / 11.01.92 age / 26 pronouns / he/him job / lawyer societies / monstrous › feral anger groups / town hall

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

trigger warnings: violence, mention of self-harm

NAVER SEARCH:

multiple personality disorder

hanjae reads the first article that shows up as an awful, all-encompassing feeling of anxiety rises in his chest. he bites on his fingers and for a second there he almost tastes blood. he looks down, terrified, inspects every corner, every inch of the skin of his hand, around his nail. it’s clean, pristine. there’s no blood, and yet he can taste it. hanjae closes his eyes, and he can feel his hands shaking. the words of the article don’t fit, not completely. it talks about blackouts, about voices. that’s not it. hanjae doesn’t blackout, though he wishes he did. he remembers everything he does while in one of his episodes. he remembers every word, every second. 

fuck, he breathes out and stands up. the only light in his room is the light of the computer screen. hanjae walks from one corner of his room the other, scared of waking up his mother. he takes a look at the clock, and it’s 4am. he should sleep. there’s school tomorrow. but he can’t. he can’t sleep. because when he sleeps the nightmares come.

and in his nightmares, he always turns. something feral, terrible. and in nightmares what he wishes to do during the day comes to life. in his dreams hanjae tastes blood, he rips skin apart, he breaks things, bones, people he kills. 

but the worst part is how much he enjoys it. in his dreams, when he’s free of judgment, his own judgment. how much he wants it. how much this side of him wants to destroy even the things he loves the most. 

hanjae sits by the computer again, starts typing.

NAVER SEARCH:

symptoms: feeling like there’s someone else inside you

Top Results:

Are You Possessed?

In this article…

“what? no,” he shakes his head, types something else. there are a million answers. bipolar disorder, sociopathy. every site tells him one thing, but nothing fits, not really. hanjae bites down on the back of his hand, and he wants to scream. he wants to throw himself out of his window. he wants to run somewhere far away and never come back. he wants to be cured. fuck, he wants to be cured so bad. 

he turns off his computer, lies down. he doesn’t know what is wrong with him. how can someone be liked this, that torn? he’s not like that. he’s a good person, isn’t he? he has friends. he has people he cares about. he has a family he’s terrified of hurting even further. he’s good. he’s good. he has to be good. 

please god, make me good. 

he sleeps.

and he dreams of blood. 

WHATS YOUR STORY?

trigger warnings: violence

mae hanjae has a secret:

there’s something wrong with him.

something deep. something that eats and gnaws at the edge of his soul, plays with threads and pieces of him. it’s something that isn’t always there, not always. not all the time. it’s like a face that hides underneath his skin, like a small voice that sometimes speaks in lower tones and sometimes screams. he wonders, from time to time, when did that start happening? when was it? there was a time when he was fine, wasn’t it? he is sure there was. 

here’s what he remembers:

hanjae remembers the church, mostly. where else did he spend most of his childhood days and then his teenage days? if not in church, at the back of it, some girl on his arms, the taste of first times holier than any mass. but he remembers the church, and he remembers peace. hanjae remembers prayer the way he remembers rainy afternoons, sitting on his mother’s lap as she read to him. he remembers something close to nirvana, a quietness as deep as the ocean inside of him as he closed his eyes and let it take over. 

but he remembers the first time that it happened. the first time he felt it. 

it was a foreign feeling and yet too familiar. like something that had always been there, but not really. his little brother was playing by his side, the two of them on their backyard. his little brother reached out and took the toy he was playing with out of his hand, something that happened more often than not. they’d fight for it, his mother would come and ground them. but it wasn’t what happened on that day. 

his little brother took his toy away from him.

and hanjae choked him. 

his vision went red. something inside of him roared, took over his limbs, his mind. hanjae knew little but the fact that he hated, and that he wanted to kill him. so he wrapped his hands around his little brother’s throat, pushed him on the ground and choked him.

next thing he knew his mother was trying to take him away. next thing he knew they were in the hospital.

his brother was fine. physically at least. all he got from it were purple bruises around his neck and a whole life of leverage on hanjae. it didn’t affect their relationship at the moment, they were kids, hanjae couldn’t have been older than ten but it was something his little brother would never allow him to forget. 

his family wasn’t fine, though. 

it changed them. the way his mother looked at him changed. she’d be closer whenever he was around his little brother, they didn’t allow them in closed doors anymore. it hurt, at first. and hanjae had apologized time and time again, cried himself to sleep with guilt and hurt. i didn’t mean to, mom, he’d say and she’d nod and cry and he didn’t know what to do. and he really didn’t know what to do. at the time, hanjae could barely understand what happened. all he knew was that when his brother touched his toy, took it away, he felt angry. he was angry. in the literal sense of being, it was all he was. 

but it didn’t happen anymore and after a while everyone willingly forgot it. it was a one-time thing, they said. hanjae became more careful around his brother, his mother. even when he did get annoyed he would suppress it, smile, cried whenever he was by himself. his mother allowed him to be alone with his brother again. things were fine. 

and then they were not anymore.

waiting in the principal’s office that afternoon was probably one of the most nerve-wracking moments of hanjae’s life. he waited and waited and when his parents arrived he couldn’t even look them in the eye. the whole meeting went by like some sort of gray daze. 

“did you really do that?” his mother asked after the principal’s description of the situation. he didn’t know if it relieved him that his mother still doubted he was capable of such a thing, or if that hurt him even more.

“yes,” he replied and his mother looked away. he didn’t blame her. yes. your fourteen-year-old son punched this boy for talking shit to his friend. and then he kicked him on the ground. and then three other boys tried to stop him, and he fucked them all up too. one of them had to go to the hospital. 

the fight at school got him into suspension, sure, which wasn’t good for his image. rumors about the fight spread around school, though his father did make some phone calls to get things under control. some money here for the family to the kid in the hospital, some nice donor to the school. corruption ran deep in junae as it ran anywhere else and for the first time hanjae took a good look at it. he was made to apologize to all of them. 

after that, everything definitely changed. 

they sent hanjae to a therapist, to doctors. they tried to understand what was wrong. he’s such a good boy, he heard her mother telling doctor after doctor in seoul. he has amazing grades, he’s in the baseball team. everyone looks up to him, he’s so well-liked. 

hanjae himself didn’t know what was wrong with him. this is what he knew:

in one moment he was fine. in the other he was rage. 

and this is the other thing he knew: 

it was getting worse.

because at first it would be triggered. hanjae was fine, but something would make him pop-off, rile him up to the point that violence was the only answer. but not anymore. now it was like it was getting mixed to his core, twisting with his insides, changing the way he was made. every wire, every single cell started to shift blent with it and there was nowhere else for him to go. 

it wasn’t that hanjae was angry all the time, no. but he was just one step away from it. he felt it inside, boiling, burning. he was at school, and one single comment was enough to make him pause, breathe deeply. he had dreams every night. he dreamt of violence. he dreamt of rage. his dreams were red, and angry, and he’d wake up every morning drenched in sweat, palms bleeding by how deeply he craved his nails in them. 

so he hid it, as best as he could. therapy helped to some extent. the breathing exercises he learned. he threw himself into exercises, learned how to best cope with it. even if it came to rise from time to time. hanjae learned how to lock it, even if it now was him. 

and he got good at it. because he wasn’t pretending. it wasn’t that hanjae wore a mask for the world to see. he was, indeed, the bright boy that he always showed at school, he was friendly, nice, proactive. he was a good person. 

but again,

he had a secret. 

one that he still carries.

once he goes to college, things get easier. for whatever reason in seoul his anger doesn’t show as much, it gets calmer, easier to deal with. almost normal, really. for a second there, it almost made hanjae believe he was cured. he got fine. it was a puberty thing, maybe. the woes o being a teenager. hormones that got way out of control. and once he gets a internship at seoul, an important law firm, he decides he’s not going back. he can stay. he can make a life in seoul. why would he go back anyway? he’s top of his class, his professors are always telling him how well he can make it. and he can make it, he knows it.

but family is family, his father tells him one day. they helped him through college. he owes them. he can’t simply leave. 

“your father already got you a place in the town hall and all,” his mother tells him over the phone one day and hanjae closes his eyes, feels a tight rope around his neck. and he feels angry, so fucking angry. but not like before. here, it’s never like before.

“but i have a good job here, mom,” he says. “and i’m fine here.”

“i know,” she says. “you’re still going to your therapist?”

“no. i stopped a year ago, he said i’m fine.”

“okay,” she says, and he can hear her relieved sigh. “so you can come home, sweetheart.”

and hanjae does.

maybe because he feels guilty. after all he did, after all his family went through thanks to him. once he’s done with college, once it’s over, he packs his things and leaves. he packs his apartment, he leaves the big city behind and drives home. he rents a nice apartment around downtown and he tries not to notice how every inch of it, how every aspect of it it’s not as good as what he had. hanjae doesn’t want to come back but he does, because it’s his duty. and he’s a good son, isn’t he?

around the second week, the nightmares start again. around the third week, he beats a man on the back alley, behind the bar. he beats him bloody over something stupid. he feels his veins popping on his neck, he feels ravenous. for blood. for violence. for decay. 

the man is found the next day but people don’t seem to mind it much. junae is a city mostly free of crime, but the man wasn’t known, some good for nothing. the police rule it out as a bar fight and they’re done with it. the man was too drunk to remember anything that happened. 

hanjae almost goes to the hospital. he almost goes to the police station. it was me, he wants to say. i did it. lock me up. do something. get me out of here. 

but he doesn’t. what hanjae does is:

he suits up, looks at himself in the mirror. he looks for traces of the monster, something that people can see, find. there’s none. he’s good for another day. 

he closes his eyes, makes a silent prayer.

may god protect us all from evil.  from me.

and hanjae is off to work. 

[paranoiakrp]

       CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: CHO YURO ...

STATS

name / cho yuro d.o.b. / 09.24.93 age / 25 pronouns / he/him job / library’s archival assistant & hotel gardener societies / monstrous › mediumship groups / n/a

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

many things are first written off as the innocence and imagination of a child. a reckless streak is chalked up to the terrible twos, and threes. a moodiness is relegated to the sensitivity of a child testing out the world. the odd stories he tells are merely fiction and dreams. the voices he speaks too without response, the one-sided conversations, these must be simple imaginary friends. 

for many years yuro is content to believe those explanations offered to him, because he is young and they have been a constant in his life, and it is easy to believe what you are told when you desperately want to make sense of something. 

and when he is older, his mood swings become temper tantrums, and older still they are described as hormones. his bad dreams and insomnia are of the pressures of school, his sensitivity to sound must be normal enough, just a problem of the ears and senses. his preference for wide, empty spaces out in nature is deemed to be a simple wild heart for a wild boy. 

and then he’s twenty, and it’s getting worse. and it reaches a breaking point, and blood is spilled - his - and finally, finally they think that something must be wrong. 

the problem is that there is no one to tell him these voices are real. the problem is, there is no one who can definitively say to him, you’re not crazy yuro. they’re spirits, they’re ghosts. because no one can know that, even in this strange limbo of a town that is junae. they can hint it or claim it, they can try to explain it with science, but none of the answers will ever feel definite, they never fit right. 

so some days he thinks himself a mad man, and some days he thinks himself a prophet. some days a conduit beyond the veil and some days a tormented soul. and always tired, and always drowning in the white noise around him. 

WHATS YOUR STORY?

perhaps his first real memory takes place in the greenhouse. the air is heavy and thick with mist and the ends of dark hair curl. his mother coaxes a towering plant towards the stint that will help it’s base grow upright. he eyes a pot of flourishing mushrooms, thick grown and strange, in their frills and smoothed edges and odd shapes. 

“smash it,” he hears, a whisper in his ear, and without a thought he complies. 

the ceramic of the pot cuts into his knees when his mother tells him to help her clean it up. she’s frustrated with that, too, but he remembers tender fingers coaxing shards from his skin, bandaging him up. 

she’ll spend many years taking care of him like that. 

the little family lives in the caretakers quarters of the sprawling hotel. it’s a strange and out of place structure on the edges of town, with few residents and fewer guests, but those compelled to the city tend to stay long enough that the family makes ends meet. his father is the manager of the hotel, his mother the garden staff, and yuro grows like a weed between them, taking on odd jobs and doing his homework in the lobby. he checks in guests as soon as he can see over the counter, learns to fix small problems. he screws on door knobs or deftly folds even the most annoying of fitted sheets. little tasks to keep an idle boy busy. 

and sometimes, he gouges at his ears. 

and sometimes, he screams in the gardens, protestations at empty air. 

and sometimes, he kneels, in the quiet corners of the ballroom, hands clasped over his ears and small body shaking with sobs. 

he’s just a little sensitive. 

that’s what his mother says at first. he’s sensitive, imaginative. he’s been tired lately, his grandma died and he’s not handling it well. there are always reasons, always excuses. at school children are understanding, kind even. his teachers do their best with him. they note his intelligence and his sweet disposition, but his comments are always making note of how chatty he is, how he rambles off into stories without prompting, how the games he wants to play are a little strange, how he seems to know more about things than a child ought to know, how he stares at nothing and seems to have a habit of pulling at or stopping up his ears. they find him with wads of tissue stuffed in, or his fingers, or humming loud enough for white noise. 

he doesn’t seem to like the quiet, they say. 

his parents put a white noise machine in his room so that he can sleep. by the time he’s ten years old dark circles seem to be requisite on his features, painted beneath his eyes with a broad stroked brush. he steals away into the woods whenever he can, seeks out remote corners to camp or hike. hides by lakes and streams. he says he likes the quiet out there, and his mother points out that the town itself can hardly be considered noisy, but the wild haired boy just shakes his head. 

his father likes to bring up fairytales. ghost stories. “have you heard of changelings, yuro?” he says, tousling a hand through the boy’s hair as he fiddles with the earplugs pushed in his ears. yuro shakes his head, glances with curious eyes at the man as he continues. “people once thought, in some countries and places, that babies were occasionally switched out. with fae children, you see. they would suddenly become different, and strange. as if they remembered a world that they’d lost. as if they didn’t quite settle correctly into place.” 

the implications are left unstated. but his father means well. he wants to give a lost boy some way to conceptualize himself. that he’s different. that he’s always going to be different, maybe, that he doesn’t quite settle into place the way he should. 

as he gets older it gets worse. 

the voices become louder, impossible to tune out. by the time he’s twenty it’s excruciating. nothing helps. not white noise, not slipping into the forest. nothing. they tell his parents that, in truth, this is the age when major disorders tend to manifest. in the early twenties, the warning signs of schizophrenia and so on are much more likely to appear. 

and so the treatments begin, with hope and fervor. eventually his parents move him to seoul for better care, thinking the inadequate small town facilities were the problem that impeded his restoration. and while in seoul he did fare a bit better. the medicines never sat right but the quiet began to return, as if the whispers were far away, distant and veiled, and yuro found himself once again with hope. he went to school, eventually. got his masters in library sciences, specifically archival studies, and returned to junae with a job offer and with hope. 

he helps his mother tend the gardens at first and so the return isn’t as obvious. the whispers start again slowly. infiltrating once more. he has plans now. pills and mechanisms to survive. he has his own rooms at the hotel and he outfits them with sound blocking materials and a white noise machine he never turns off, takes his pills in a faithful routine. he spends his days in the archives digitizing the oldest records of the city, faithfully scanning and sorting and he finds comfort in that. in pages, in words that he can control, can read line by line and stop or start. 

and if he twitches away from phantom words, or bites at his lip until he draws blood, if he trembles and shakes and looks a bit too pale beneath the dusting of his tan, well, no one says anything about it. 

it’s junae, after all, no one is normal here. 

[paranoiakrp]

         CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: SON YUL …

STATS

name / son yul d.o.b. / 06.14.1993  age / 26  pronouns / he/him  job / freelance video editor and photographer  societies / monstrous › enhanced charisma groups / vlog › host

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

on paper, son yul shouldn’t get away with as much as he does.

he’s a punk, per his father’s words, that grew up with a propensity for fists first, words later. words that are deceptive, sarcastic, all lies or half-truths, deflective and meaningless in every way. a liar, not compulsive, but purposefully. he’s fast hands, sleight, with a grin so crooked anyone would think he must be too. cheap whiskey is his cologne of choice, with a mix of smoke and the perfume of whomever he saw last. and he puts himself first, second, and third, not hesitating to double-cross or hurt someone to keep it that way.

and so, again: on paper, son yul shouldn’t get away with as much as he does.

but there’s something about him.

something hard to put a finger on, exactly, because it’s not tangible. not visible, not really. and yet, there’s something about that grin, that damn crooked grin, that reels one in, lowers defenses. just enough that even when his words are so clearly lies and easy to disbelieve, the exact opposite happens. because, god, you just want to believe him, as if compelled, but not. a silver-tongue so crude that anywhere outside of junae, he wouldn’t be classified as such. but here, hidden away in between the mountains, his voice is his weapon and his smirk is his shield. and he wins the fight every time.

as a child, he thinks it’s because they feel bad for him. it’s not hard to overhear when the whispers are barely that. poor thing, they say, practically growing up without a mother and having sanghoon as his father. so when he’s six and his hands are still untrained and clumsy, fumbling to stuff ice cream bars he can’t afford into his backpack and the grandma running the corner convenience shop catches him – yet lets him go after he pleads without so much of a slap on the wrist, he thinks it’s just that. pity. pity for poor son yul.

as a teenager, he thinks maybe it’s just him. maybe he really is just good at turning on a natural charm. maybe he’s not so bad. junae is weird, but it’s not so weird for someone to love him, is it? teenagers “fall in love” every day, as it were, so why would it be odd for him to be on the receiving end of that? it’s not, he convinces himself. it’s not strange at all that she agrees to even the most absurd things he can think of just to see if she would, not strange that sometimes all it takes is a smile, a touch of his hand to persuade her, and it’s not strange that he doesn’t feel any remorse about it.

as an adult, he’s fully aware that it’s not him. well, it is him, but it’s not his words. it’s not that he has an award-winning smile, because he knows he sure as hell doesn’t. it’s not anything but a side-effect of being junae born. an unnatural charisma so enhanced, so innate, it’s hard to deny him anything.  

WHATS YOUR STORY?

tw / ppp, depression, allusions to suicide, abuse, and alcoholism

vhs thirty-nine, untitled. 04:54 PM / JUN. 14 ‘93

▷ PLAY

the video opens slowly, static filling the screen first before it crackles to life. a muffled, pained cry growing louder, louder until it’s all that can be heard. there’s not much on screen save for a blank, white wall, shadows dancing frantic on it every so often.

and then, a new cry. piercing, infant.

then, panic. a male’s voice can be heard, asking about the other baby, about his wife, about what the hell is going on, and will someone please answer him? other voices answer by asking him (sanghoon, the viewers then learn is his name) to please step outside. gently at first, then stern when he refuses, pushing him out of the delivery room.

the video is shaky all the while, the sound loud and frantic until he’s out in the hall. it almost seems silent, but sobs can be heard. weak knocks on the delivery room door, too.

it carries on like this for another minute until the camera falls to the ground, giving viewers an angled view of: white linoleum (1993), junae hospital

▢  STOP

stillborn, they say later of the other baby. unstable but still hanging on, they say of mikyung, sanghoon’s wife. but, the first baby is alive and well, and did they have a name in mind for him?

back when the newly weds found out they were having twins, mikyung and sanghoon toiled over names that would match until they landed on the perfect pair.

now, though, that doesn’t matter to him. this baby, who sanghoon now associates with bad luck, with everything going wrong, doesn’t deserve either name. instead, he names him somewhat offhandedly just to stop them from asking again.

yul, he says, after his grandfather. son yul. he fails to mention how much he hated him.

instead, he shuffles off to sit by his wife, holding her hand between his iron tight.

mikyung wakes up days later in a panic, but she’s fine. physically, anyway. the doctors keep her and yul a few more days to keep checking in, but in a town as small and as weird as junae, and in a time like the 90’s, there’s nothing alarming about her behavior. about how oddly she regards the nurses, the doctor, and even her husband at times. about how skeptic she is about everyone just wanting to help her. refusing food for fear of poison or bugs in them because she swears ‘they’re’ watching her or that she can hear all the insects crawling in between the walls of the hospital. about how she just wants to get out, get out, get out of there now.

it’s just the stress of giving birth and losing a baby, the doctor says. it’s just a side-effect of junae, the doctor leaves implied. she’ll be fine to go home now, the doctor urges, unable to usher them out of the hospital quickly enough.

-

vhs forty, untitled and scratched up as if intended to be broken. 10:11 AM / JUL. 25 ‘93

▷ PLAY

the video opens to a birthday cake with a single, lit candle. there’s jellied writing that reads ‘happy birthday mikyung!’ and strawberry decoration laid on top of white cream. a door comes into view and muffled crying can be heard behind it. the cameraman knocks on the door, starts saying, “oh were you up already? happy–”

the camera falls to the floor as soon as the door opens, followed by the cake. white cream is all that’s in view, but yul’s cries become clearer, less muffled by fabric, and become accompanied by two, older, more full sobs and arguments that tell of a struggle.

▢  STOP

this isn’t the first time.

every time, mikyung just says she’s trying to help yul. that he’s crying because the lights are harming him, that there’s infectious dust in the air and she just doesn’t want him to breathe any of it in. that junae is weird, and she doesn’t want yul to be too.

she doesn’t get help because it’s junae in the 90’s and so, she never gets over it fully. the hallucinations and delusions fade away after a good amount of months, but the depression stays deep-rooted.

-

vhs fifty-one, simply titled with tired handwriting: yul’s first day 06:54 AM / MAR. 02 ‘99

▷ PLAY

the video opens to the door of yul’s childhood bedroom. mikyung’s voice can be heard telling him to wake up or he’s going to be late. there’s shuffling behind the closed door until it pulls open, yul standing behind it with a small smile on his face. his black hair is messy, to say the least, and mikyung’s hand reaches out to smooth down the flying strands.

it’s a fairly simple video that carries on like this, following yul from the dining table to the front door where he waves goodbye to his mom as he hops onto his bike. the video ends here, closing on mikyung saying goodbye.

▢  STOP

when yul comes back home later that afternoon, police are in front of their old, worn-down house that has belonged to his father’s family for two generations now, residing on the outskirts of the outskirts of town.

he finds out that his mom had said her last goodbye that morning.

he doesn’t realize it yet, but yul loses both his parents that day.

-

vhs sixty, simply titled with childish handwriting: yul’s second first day 07:01 AM / MAR. 03 ‘00

▷ PLAY

the video opens to the floor of yul’s childhood bedroom. it pans, quickly, around his messy room before landing too closely on his face. his eyes are tired, barely awake, as if he’s not gotten nearly enough sleep. but, he grins at the camera anyway and talks about how it’s his second first day at school. he shows off his uniform, his old backpack, and a few pencils he may or may not have stolen.

he accidentally closes the door too loud as he leaves his room and he freezes. his eyes widen like he’s no longer tired, fully alert. there’s a loud grumble, then a loud, slurred shout, then loud stomps and a loud slam of a door.

the video ends abruptly.

▢  STOP

yul bolts out of the house before his dad can make it out to the main room. he’s too hungover to make it out quickly, but yul will pay for it in the afternoon anyway.

he leaves without breakfast, but that would have happened regardless. there’s not much in the son household’s fridge anymore. yul stops to visit the grandma next door for scraps of breakfast instead. she’s grown fond of him, lately. she likes his gummy smile and hasn’t noticed some of her food and money gone missing after he comes over to help with simple chores.

this becomes his routine over the next few years. he grows up fast, as a child without parents usually does. he may still have his dad physically, but vhs sixty is just one of many prime examples of his spiritual absence since the year prior. so, yul fends for himself. grows up mostly outside of their dingy little, alcohol-stenched home. feeds himself with five finger discounts and the power of his smile alone. he learns how to be slick with his hands, how to lie with a straight face and charm the hell out of everyone. he learns how to stop at nothing to get what he needs or wants, and grows into his teenage years stubborn and brazen when it turns out he always does.

he also continues to record almost everything from big milestones and little daily occurrences in between because it’s all he has left of his mother.

-

dvd ten, digitally titled: sia application rough draft. 08:09 PM / FEB. 28 ‘12

▷ PLAY

the video, now played on a laptop screen instead of a television, fades in to a cave located on the foot of doryeongsan. a title pops up on the screen that reads: the strangeness of doryeongsan. a subtitle in smaller font shows up underneath that reads: by son yul.

the video carries on in documentary style with yul narrating on about the origins of the mountain while aesthetic shots of the mountain play on screen. he continues, talking about the myths and superstitions, goes into detail about some of the caves, including one rumored to be a mouth to hell. there are a few interview cuts, too, of the hotel staff, of junae residents, of himself.

in the end, it’s a rough video to say the least. one that ends on a black screen of rolling credits in white font that almost all read accredited to: son yul.

▢  STOP

needless to say, the video doesn’t get him into the seoul institute of arts film program. nor any university in seoul. to keep his pride, he tells anyone that asks it’s because he couldn’t afford it. they believe him, somehow.

it doesn’t stop him from continuing to shoot videos or shoot photography, nor does it stop him from enrolling into a small, much more local college that he pays for with part-time work at the gs25 in town – although four years and a useless degree later, he wishes it did.

-

online video, title: the secret history, an introduction. UPLOADED JAN. 2019

▷ PLAY

the video starts nicely stabilized, focused on the two hosts of the show, yul included, with the green woods out-of-focus behind them. they briefly introduce themselves and the premise of the vlog, seeking to get to the heart of the weirdness in junae.

▢  STOP

for yul, the vlog is nothing more than a sort of game, a way to bide his time doing the one thing he loves.

he’s long known that he’s weird in a way that can only be an effect of junae (maybe there was truth in his mother’s delusions after all). he had his suspicions growing up, getting away with as much as he did. but he officially confirmed after surprisingly convincing his dad to move out of the house and leave it to yul. they’d both been shocked by his agreement, but in the end yul was left with the small, run-down house out near the river and he hasn’t seen his dad since.

and yet, in the vlog, yul plays the skeptical role. continuously denouncing the strangeness of junae, finding absurd reasoning for everything, laughing in the face of weird occurrences.

for now, it’s all fun and games.

[paranoiakrp]

         CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: MAE JINSOL ...

STATS

name / mae jinsol d.o.b. / 10.31.93 age / 25 pronouns / he/him job / layabout societies / monstrous › possession groups / n/a

TW: violence, blood, infidelity, possession

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

that mae jinsol. there’s something off about him.

have you heard? it wasn’t a cat that scratched up the mae family’s nanny. it was that jinsol boy. it’s so strange. he’s only ten, isn’t he? what could’ve possessed him. something’s not right with him. have you seen the way he stares?

have you heard? they say some kid fell out of the second story window, but nobody was playing. jinsol pushed him. and he just stared and stared, until the teacher pulled him out of the room.

have you heard? they say jinsol set his own house on fire. he’s so fucked. seriously.

have you heard? have you heard? have you heard?

jinsol has. to match the echoing inside of his own head. blackouts and waking up in the middle of the forest. clothes too thin, bare feet numb, arms torn raw from bramble bushes. an ache in his head. dried blood underneath his nails. it’s like sleepwalking, but worse. childhood memories suppressed. washed over in too many pills and the forced concept of religion.

an urge for violence that creeps up his spin. a reckless abandon. a will to catapult himself out of his own body. lost memories. lost time. a shift in setting, a shift in personality. his body moving unbidden (or is it bidden? maybe he’d like it to, after all). electrical surges and rattling objects and jinsol can’t remember any of it happening. 

mae jinsol has always been off. it’s hard not to be when he’s gripped with possession. when he shares his body with terror, uninvited.

WHATS YOUR STORY?

there’s a box locked away in a safe. inconspicuous. it holds too many papers. the carboard’s bent. a disfigured crumple near the edges. the safe’s locked away in the mae family home. an illustrious looking building. as illustrious as any building can be in a offshoot suburban sort or town. but the family is an important one, connected to the mayor. or, the man of the mae household is. mae youngchul. known for his charismatic nature and ability to put out fires while simultaneously sweeping anything less-than-pretty underneath the rug. no bones left out in the open in the soot-scattered aftermath. long buried in a makeshift grave, a toppled tombstone of easily palatable lies.

layered away are bundles of papers, documents. letters with thick, waxy letterheads. contracts and secrets spilled on fading ink.secrets meant to be kept out of sight. secrets that can be built up to construct the twisted life of mae jinsol.

it starts with a birth certificate. the first lie of jinsol’s life.

born to mae youngchul and kim kyunghee. 

the painstakingly handwritten letters underneath that immediately betray the truth of the situation. secretive whisperings drawn out at the tip of a pen. hidden romance. fun and games, and then not. then she’s pregnant. an apology letter. she’s unimportant in the grand scheme of the town. religious, despite being a married man’s mistress. infidelity, a sin. until you repent, then it never seems to count anymore. jinsol never really understood that. but he’s yet to be born, so it doesn’t matter what his slow-forming opinions are.

i think i need to keep the baby. i don’t have any other options. we need to place him in god’s hands. with all my love,

and here, the name is smudged. lost to time. but her name isn’t relevant to jinsol’s story anyway. mother by birth and not much else. not that it was her fault. not that he even knew for the grand majority of his life.

but with elaborate lies comes elaborate stories. 

the deed to a house, worn and water stained near the corners, in a provence shoved even further out in the countries. bowed apple trees and the promise of pure air ushered in on the coast of an ocean. the papers confirming that a sale has been made for the same property ten months later. 

pregnancy checks and health documents for a woman who is, decidedly, not kim kyunghee. but that’s not the story. the story around town is that her health was declining. she needed better air. more room. and she was spirited off while waiting for the baby to come. there are rumors, of course. some that circle around the truth, or accusations of plastic surgery. 

jinsol’s birth mother is a footnote. the legacy she leaves behind are suspect love letters, and a receipt for a hefty deposit placed into her bank account the day before she left town. 

wonder what happened?

but that question fades with time, too.

jinsol’s life is built from lies.

the house is sold, kyunghee returns with a wailing baby. colicky and fitful. he is hers. they all swear up and down. 

after that there’s paperwork and tax forms for a stay-in-home nanny. because it’s presumably hard to face a child your husband had out of wedlock. jinsol is passed off, and jinsol is largely unwanted. a man who’s focused on a career, a marriage broken and held together with layers of tape. his eyes still wander. despite his circumstances, jinsol is their only child. 

as he grows, his personality doesn’t mellow. he’s fickle and small. sickly, with wide eyes that read peculiar and unsettling when he stares. he has a temper. there’s a few scattered pictures of jinsol as a child in the box. posing awkwardly near his mother’s elbow. a length of space between them. discomfort, something that looks unnatural in a picture with a four year old. 

his nanny raises him. proof is in the forms tied tied with fraying rubber bands. documentation of what they’d done on the day-to-day, or if something went wrong. notes between her and his parents. 

there’s a home video of his birthday party at the park. the tape is scuffed and jumps with static. his parents aren’t there, but his nanny is along with a few similarly aged family members. he looks to be around seven, eight. he’s sitting in the grass, pulling up tufted handfuls while the other children jump and scream. eventually, fingers and hands climb up tp his head, press against ears. an angry expression. and a heavy toy truck locked in his grip as he winds his arm up and brings it down on top of the child nearest to him. the camera shakes, tumbles, clicks off.

the payments to the nanny stop by the time jinsol’s ten. 

there’s also a letter from the doctor, and another receipt for a large sum of money directed into another account.

a detailed account of pain and suffering, costs for potential cosmetic surgeries in the future. slivered gouges left by tiny nails in a fit of fury along arms and face and throat. 

why did you do it, jinsol? 

but jinsol doesn’t know. he’d wanted to, at the time. there’s a build up sometimes. something that compels him. he can’t remember it now, exactly. the sensation as a child. how very easy it was to give in. to let that curiosity for the macabre take over. but jinsol doesn’t remember a lot from his childhood. like spilled paint across a canvas. colors bleeding into each other, until it’s nothing but a blurry mass, a dependency on others’ second hand accounts. 

the lies build.

another receipt. a signed, makeshift contract. a payout to the head of a school and another teacher detailing a nondisclosure agreement. it was all a big accident, don’t you know? how that boy fell out of the second story window.

jinsol wasn’t smiling down at him at all.

gossip is diluted overtime. but strangeness sticks. 

he plays by himself in their home. there are only a few scattered pictures to document his life during this time. his crumpled, forgotten drawings are tucked away too. faces with gaping holes for eyes. intensely scribbled out masses of color. jagged lines, and trees that bubble bright with fire underneath a twelve year-olds unlearned hand. 

his dad tried to occupy his time. keep him out of trouble in a disinterested second-hand sort of way. there were days spent with family he was being pawned off on. and he’d turn a blind eye toward the next girl his father wanted to chase, a slow-growing understanding of infidelity that’s hard to nail down entirely as a child.

he’d get a playdate if they had a kid, too. 

more receipts. a fistful, by now. failing report cards when he got into high school. slips from the principal. missed blocks of classes, and one time jinsol didn’t come home for a week. didn’t go to school either. that time’s lost to a void, but most people called him a stubborn runaway. 

but jinsol never had many friends. just a reputation, and enough money doled out to him that he could pretend like he might’ve whenever he got lonely enough for it.

it was his third year of high school when he pushed the limits too far. when his father snapped. 

there’s another deed, for another house. bundled with it is an insurance payout. a chunk of small-town political documents that have the edges burned off, dusted with soot. the other’s are missing.

their home engulfed in flames. jinsol’s hands smelled like gasoline.

he’d been smiling. his father saw it. 

more lies.

it was a gas fire. a miracle everyone got out alive.

ignore the burnt tips of jinsol’s fingers, and ignore the charred edges of his bangs.

to ensure that this goes according to plan, send him away.

there are stubs for a train ticket, one way. a hospital far enough off where nobody might run into him. if they did, it would ruin everything. after all, his father told the town they sent him away, off to america to study abroad. a blatant lie, but what’s one more too add to the pile?

not that they discovered anything but a seemingly deranged teen. they gave him scripts anyway. enough to zone him out. a detached sort of consciousness. his father wasn’t okay with that, the no definitive answers (who cared about the pills). not for the typical reasons, like jinsol’s well being. he was angry, a destruction of his property and apparent documents. the tipping point, a selfish reaction. so he kept him there, under the supervision of a long-care doctor. 

three and a half years later, and they said he was cleared to go home. that he was cured. or as close as he could be.

there’s a medical report confirming this. confirming his lack of outbursts, that his leaning toward violence has diminished. that he keeps to himself. that the medication must have made a difference. that his father should keep him on this continued regimen. 

so he’s sent back. but whatever unholy thing inside of him isn’t gone. pulled away and dormant, a lulled state under a medical cocktail. 

it is, perhaps, unsurprising that eventually, jinsol weans himself off of them. the pills. handfuls of them stashed away in boxes and loose floorboards. but the act of this, along with the consequences, take drawn out years to come to fruition. there’s still that excuse, that he studied abroad. his suspicious lack of english language skills don’t add up well with the story, but he’s an outlier of a person now. who cares to ask?

for a while, he’s cured. strange still, perhaps. an intense desire for attention, something undoubtedly born from being removed from his life and removed from his own self. growing up all but estranged from his own parents. he spirals. 

another receipt, paid off small town police for parties thrown too loudly. he tries to make up for lost time, an added urgency of recklessness. 

it continues on. 

he’s forced into the small college in town, if only for an excuse that he should be doing something. his grades are still terrible. he’s not sure what he wants to do with himself. what he cares about. everything’s confusing.

and then it builds when the blackouts start again.

the beginning of the year, and a new snow dusted the ground. the crackle of dead, frozen grass underfoot. jinsol can feel it, because he isn’t wearing shoes. it burns through the soles of his feet. an ache he can’t escape. body shivering, a bag of bones clacking together unruly. swollen knuckles and a bloody nose in the middle of a meadow. 

he doesn’t know how he got there. 

but he doesn’t tell. he doesn’t want his father to send him back there. he doesn’t want to lose his mind again. not in that way.

he wakes up again two months later in his own bathroom. there’s blood on his hands, underneath his nails. pools of it across the floor. he scrubs everything down with bleach until his skin’s raw. body trembling. nauseous, inescapably nauseous. he’s already dry heaved six times, but it refuses to leave him.

he won’t tell.

more lies.

jinsol isn’t sure who he is. a collection of lies stitched together. a being that isn’t whole. a paper-doll cutout of a man.

but selfishly, he continues on. he reaches out, an attempt to grasp at people. anchor them to him. a strangeness settles over him. his own paranoia. his own doubt. shapeless memories, a voice that sounds like his own rocketing around his skull. goading and vile. 

jinsol can’t run from what’s in his own mind. 

it’s a secret.

but his father always loved secrets. maybe he’d be proud of him.

[paranoiakrp]

         CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: JUNG SEOJOON ...

STATS

name / jung seojoon d.o.b. / 03.03.95 age / 24 pronouns / he/him job / assistant for the wildlife division, town hall societies / monstrous › luck groups / town hall

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

sometimes, when the town hall organizes fairs, they do raffles to raise money for some town project. 

seojoon no longer participates in this.

he has a collection of small prizes he has won over the years. a robot toy, a bicycle he is too big to use anymore, a set of pots, two ugly as sin vases, an old cuckoo watch. every year he would stare at the prizes with big eyes and wait and every year he would be the one awarded with whatever small thing they were giving away. some people were suspicious of foul play, so he stopped participating.

once, when he was a teenager, seojoon won three different teddy bears for his girlfriend on a game during a carnival and by the time he tried the fourth booth he was denied. he was ruining the game.

at age seven seojoon really wanted a fancy chemistry set he saw on tv for christmas, but his mother didn’t have enough money to buy it. on a walk back home seojoon found a wallet on the ground. no documents, no identification, nothing but money. money enough to buy his gift.

at age ten he became, as many children with dotting mothers do, addicted to a particular brand of chocolate. it was popular with the kids, but somehow, every time seojoon walked into the mart with his coins to buy a bar, there was always one left on the shelves, as if waiting for him.

at age sixteen he wears a necklace that belonged to his mother; a golden leaf on a golden chain. protection, his grandmother says. seojoon laughs. he wears it because it’s cool, it’s what he tells everyone, he wears it because it was hers, it’s the real reason. some kid thinks it would be funny to try to take it from his neck. he tries it when seojoon is in class, but seojoon always moves his neck away from the boy’s grasp. he tries again when seojoon is at a party, but he slips and falls when trying to reach it. no matter what seojoon always slips away when anyone tries to hurt him.

these are only the small things. little occurrences that could happen to anyone.

the older he gets the bigger they get, too. a door slamming right after he moved his hand, tree trunks that fall as soon as he walks past a trail missing him for a few seconds, a car that stops working in the middle of the road when seojoon is crossing it, going through flu season as healthy as ever, his boss giving him a free afternoon when he should be working.

seojoon tries gambling just once. it’s late, he is twenty three and fresh back in town, a few beers in as he sits at the back of the bar, watching a group of men play poker. he learned to play it in the army, so he asks to join. they see a drunk kid, thirty or forty years younger, and decide that he should be an easy one to trick. he wins the first round, they say they let him, to make him bet more. he wins the second and they say it’s beginner’s luck. he wins the third and the fourth and fifth and by the time one of the men, a retired police officer, has to give seojoon his watch they are angry.

they take him out of the bar, decide to teach him a lesson for what they can only describe as cheating. they try to hold him but his skin feels slippery, they try to punch him and keep missing, they try to kick him and trip on their own legs. they give up because this is junae and strange things happen in this town, a lucky kid can’t even be classified as freaky. when seojoon wakes up the next morning he looks finds the watch by his bed and throws up.

he doesn’t need games or a rabbit’s paw or anything of such, luck seems to follow him like his shadow. no, it’s not something that he carries, it is something that carries him, that envelopes seojoon in a coat of protection, something that comes from within him, that remains dormant most of the time, but always wakes up when seojoon needs it.

he still doesn’t know if this is good or bad. all seojoon knows is that he is lucky.

WHATS YOUR STORY?

I: THE WOMAN

jung hyunmi was a determined woman and as many determined women before she had the misfortune of being born in a sleepy town of name junae. the bright young woman always felt her life should be more than working at the mart and bagging groceries until she died, and she didn’t wait for her destiny to find her, of course not, she went away after it at the ripe age of nineteen.

but this is not hyunmi’s story.

perhaps that is a funny, sweet story of a woman who was determined but got unlucky, or maybe it was the adventure of a foreign trying the american dream, but that is only for the people who lived it to know. this is the story of a boy.

II: THE BOY

jung seojoon was born six months after his mother returned to junae. spring was just beginning and the lakes were still frozen when he came to this world, but to his mother and her parents he couldn’t come at a better moment. hyunmi didn’t plan to have a son, but she loved him from the very first moment and her parents, although at first disappointed at their daughter and her mistake, were good people who wouldn’t turn their backs on her when she most needed them.

for the adults junae may be a prison, a place some would like to escape from or a place many have grown used to, but for a kid junae was an endless adventure. with a retired park ranger for a grandfather seojoon grew up in the forest as much as in the town. he learned the ins and outs of the trails and how to find his way back into junae if he got lost there – but that never happened, his grandfather was always a good guide and smart enough to only take the boy with him to least dangerous areas and only during the day, for the forest is no place for a boy during the night.

then there was grandmother, kim youngsook, junae’s saju reader.

she was the one who chose seojoon’s name (seo means auspicious, joon means handsome), who predicted how his life would go – something she hasn’t shared with him until this date. “don’t worry boy, your fate will find you,” she always said, mysterious as always. like her daughter she was a determined woman, with an iron will and a soft smile every time seojoon was in her arms.

“but will it be a good one?” seojoon asked her every time.

“it will be lucky.” she answered.

III: THE LUCK

as all other junae citizens seojoon grew up aware of the stories and legends behind the city. grandfather warned him far too many times about the forest and the claw marks on his right leg were more than enough to convince seojoon that something hid there. he too heard about the ghost stories and heard laughs coming from empty places before. it was something one gets used to in junae, something that becomes nothing more than the background of one’s life. for seojoon, an awkward boy who had to deal with the uncertainty and angst of his teen years, the legends and ghost stories were nothing but a way to try to impress girls and to be who had the guts to sleep in the forest or spend two hours inside the abandoned amusement park.

until he got lucky.

he didn’t pay it mind at first. a teacher forgetting to ask for their papers when seojoon didn’t finish his or canceling a scheduled test when he didn’t study. finding money on the ground was a common occurrence for him, more than the average person, and once or twice, in moments of need, seojoon found a couple of bills. he never tripped and if he bumped into something seojoon would never drop anything. he avoided crashing his bike into the trees in the forest more than once, and when walking there he was able to avoid falling into slopes more times than he could count.

deep down seojoon always knew that whatever was happening to him wasn’t normal and often he would lay awake at night and ask himself if perhaps his grandmother had magical powers and gave him the luck. or maybe, and that was a scary thought, maybe it was the city. maybe he was turning into a part of its stories as much as the ghost children in the park.

it was luck that saved him, but that took his mother.

seojoon was fifteen when they planned the ten days trip to jeju island, just him and his mother. they had barely left the region when the truck hit their car. a blind spot on the tortuous road of the mountain region, the police would say later. a very dangerous area that had taken many lives before and would take again. except seojoon, the boy who was taken from the car with nothing but a few scratches and a broken hand. his mother, however, wasn’t so lucky.

seojoon would trade all the luck in the world to have her back, would curse himself with a lifetime of misfortune if she could live but as grandmother had told him over and over, life doesn’t work this way.

after his mother’s funeral seojoon ran into the forest, nothing but his grandfather’s screams ( and his grandmother’s “leave him be” ) to follow him. from this moment on his memories are confused by the grief and hurt, but he remembers following the hiking trails at first, going deeper and deeper into the forest as the night fell, not tripping once.

when seojoon woke up it was morning and he was in a clearing. after blinking away the sleep he looked to his side and saw it there, as if waiting just for him: a four leaf clover.

from that moment on seojoon knew there was no escaping his fate, for much like the marks on his grandfather’s leg, junae had set its claws on him.

IV: THE INTERLUDE

there was a short period of time when seojoon wasn’t lucky: the nearly two years he spent away from junae and at the army. on his first day of basic training seojoon tripped and fell twice, and after this his gun didn’t seem to work well and his shift was the worst possible. for nearly two years seojoon was a normal person with a normal luck.

until he got a call from home.

his grandfather was a healthy man for his age but it didn’t stop him from having a heart attack and dying while he ate his breakfast. that can happen, it was what the doctor said. for a second time in his life seojoon buried a loved one.

this time, older and wiser, seojoon didn’t run into the forest. instead, when the funeral was over, he walked with his grandmother back home and cooked dinner. life goes on, it was something he learned after his mother passed.

life goes on, but it changes.

before seojoon had plans that although vague included staying in seoul, starting a new life there. a friend offered him a job as a waiter on his father’s restaurant and with it seojoon would be able to prepare himself to go to university, study biology as he always dreamed of.

but that was before and after saying goodnight to grandmother on the night of his grandfather’s funeral seojoon knew he couldn’t go back to seoul, he couldn’t leave her alone. sure, she was known in the city and the community liked her, but it was not right to leave an old woman alone.

and just like that junae claimed him again.

V: THE MAN

his grandmother doesn’t only do saju, she reads tarot and palms too, if she is feeling like it. she does it for everyone but seojoon. when he was a boy seojoon used to cry over it, as any other person he too wanted to know his fate, what sorts of predictions would his grandmother tell him.

now, as he watches yet another person leave her shop with tears in their eyes seojoon is thankful that isn’t him.

he is lucky again, luckier than he has ever been. maybe it’s his age, or the certainty that he isn’t leaving the town so soon, but seojoon finds money on the ground almost every day, dodges small accidents like it’s his job and excels like no other at his actual job.

working for the town hall is not what seojoon had in mind for his future, but it’s a good job and he is good at what he does. they needed someone who knows the forest and who could aid the environment sector with field work coordinated with the park rangers. it can only be described as luck that just as seojoon decides to stay in town an old employee retires and they look for someone new.

maybe one day seojoon will be able to go to college like he wanted, to leave as he wanted, but for now his life isn’t bad and his fate seems to be a lucky one, or as lucky as one can be in such a town. as the future starts to look foggy and his sense of purpose seojoon can still count on his luck; in junae he will always find money on the ground, will always win a raffle at the mart and make a couple of bucks on a scratch. he might not know what he is doing what his life now, but at least he has good fortune.

and life goes on, it always does.

[paranoiakrp]

          CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: LIM HYEJUNG ...

STATS

name / lim hyejung d.o.b. / 06.29.93 age / 26 pronouns / she/her job / seamstress & laundromat attendant societies / monstrous › premonitions groups / n/a

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

sometimes the migraines blind her.

it’s the kind of pain that drags her down to her knees, robs her of her senses until all she can focus on is the consuming nature of the pain.

halmeoni says it because she works herself half to death, this is the price she has to pay for trying to spread herself as thin as possible, for trying to make an honest living.

the doctors say there’s nothing wrong with her, nothing that shows up in a cat-scan or x-ray anyways. but the migraines keep coming and hyejung can only gasp and writhe after each wave of pain hits.

“i’m not sure what to tell you,” the old doctor says at the end of each visit, “there’s mysteries even in the world of science and you’re one of them.”

( she never tells anyone of the things she sees in the midst of the pain. images flash by at breakneck speed always illogical and always true.

she sees old lady cha’s death three weeks before it even happens. watches the old lady fall down by the edge of a lake and call out for help as the life leaves her body. she knows the boy who works nights at the bar will get arrested for burglary far before he commits his crime. she sees entirely too much and never breathes a word of any of it to anyone, never willing to intervene

their fate is their own. her fate is her own.

“it’s pure coincidence,” she lies to herself each time a premonition comes true, “just pure fucking coincidence.” )

WHATS YOUR STORY?

i. “some times life just works out the wrong way.”

that’s what appa likes to say. that life is a game of chance and sometimes things go right and other times things go wrong, very wrong.

appa’s life is like that.

once he was young, and the world felt like it was at the tips of his fingers. he married the prettiest girl he saw, had enough money to buy a way out of town, once the lim family meant something to people.

he takes a drink as he talks about the past, about the golden years long before hyejung ever existed. mediocre never used to be a word to describe a man like him, he says.

“sometimes life just fucks you hard little girl, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

( imo says they’re cursed, but appa says to never mind her. “she’s a psycho,” appa says, so does everyone else. )

ii. eomma claims marrying appa was her greatest mistake. the source of her folly.

she used to be the prettiest girl in town once, used to have dreams and hopes to be someone, to escape the clutches of mundane existence and make something of herself. and then she met appa, and his pretty words and even prettier promises.

eomma says she’s only ever met disappointment since the day she agreed to stay with him. she says the migraines, and the lack of money, and every other thing they suffer through is just a consequence of eomma’s idiocy, of appa’s trickery.

now she invests all of her hopes and dreams into her daughter. her daughter who’s just as pretty as she used to be. her daughter who’s sickly and clings to her parents like they’re fallen gods.

“never settle,” eomma says while she brushes hyejung’s hair, “never end up with a man just because he’s handsome and talks well. never end up in a place you hate for something as silly as love.”

there’s a life outside of junae, eomma says, a life they both deserve that’s far better than anything a shithole town can offer.

hyejung dreams of it when she closes her eyes.

iii. halmeoni says it’s hard for appa, that’s why he drinks so much.

it’s hard to be the only man in a family, hard to carry the weight and responsibility of a family on his own. he has to pay for halmeoni who gets older and more feeble with each passing day, he has to afford his pretty wife who grows more and more discontent as time wears on, he has to deal with his sister and her insanity, he has to deal with hyejung and her sickness.

it gets to be too much.

“appa,” she says one summer night, long after halmeoni, eomma, and imo have gone to bed and appa sits at the table with his head in his hands and a bottle of soju half drunk. “you know i could get a job too. make things a little easier for you and help out.”

appa only laughs, in a mirthless and sad way.

“no, you won’t. you should study well and get out of here, that’s the only way to be.”

iv. imo is mad, everyone says so.

it’s something to do with the way she mumbles under her breath, always unintelligible, always fluttering out of her like a wave of white noise.

she says she can see the future, says she knows what’s coming. junae’s own cassandra who mumbles nothing to no one. harmless and mad, hyejung can only manage a mild form same sort of disdain everyone else gives her.

“you know hyejung,” imo whispers into her ear one night after the migraine goes and hyejung can feel the world return to her piece by piece, “i looked into the future and i saw you’re just like me.”

it’s the gleeful tone in imo’s words that set her on edge, the joy of finding kinship. hyejung tries to ignore the way goosebumps decorate her skin as imo continues to talk.

“the things you see are real, you’re just like me my love.”

hyejung can only roll over and close her eyes.

“imo you’re crazy. i’m nothing like you.”

v. hyejung finds a dead-end job two weeks before appa dies of a stroke.

she doesn’t tell anyone she saw it coming, doesn’t mention the way the image came to her over and over again in the midst of her pain haunting her for weeks before it happened.

it’s her turn to drink too much, to feel the weight of a family sit upon thin shoulders and struggle to find the strength to carry them both. it’s not the life she dreams of, not one she even wants, but it’s the life she’s given and hyejung can’t find any other option but to continue on.

“hyejung, you don’t have to live this way.” eomma lectures from the comfort of her the couch, “you could sell the house and move to seoul. we could have an easier life now that you’re father is gone. he wouldn’t want you to be this way either. don’t settle for a life like this.”

hyejung sighs in response.

“what do you know of the world? what do you know about responsibility? what do you know about what my father would want? you’re just a bitter old woman looking for an escape plan.”

eomma only meets her with silence, and the pain at the back of hyejung’s skull blossoms.

this has happened before, hyejung knows it has.

“mind your business or get out.” hyejung sneers as she slips her work shoes back on and takes a step out the door, “this is just how life goes now.”