#reeling you in with such heavy weight of etching curiosity and enticement

[mrsoharaa]

Shoko asks if you and Suguru are dating, hence almost being around each other and always seem to hang out beyond Jujutsu Tech. And as you were about to reply to Shoko’s question, from the glimpse of the corner of your eye, you can see Suguru “talking” with his students, timely blinking slowly up at you, starring directly at you patiently waiting for your answer. Curiosity immensely pooling in his lingering eyes, wearing nothing short but a slant of a playful grin.

Butterflies immediately swarming wildly in the pit of your stomach and your breaths hitching at the ridge of your rib cage.

[paranoiakrp]

         CITIZEN FILE RETRIEVED: LEE MARISOL ...

STATS

name / lee marisol d.o.b. / 06.21.94 age / 25 pronouns / she/her job / projectionist at a theater societies / necronomicon groups / n/a

WHATS YOUR WEIRD?

finding the necronomicon is like a promise from the cosmos that the world can be better. she’s been a burden, a tempest in a teapot, since the day she was born. there has always been too much inside her to contain, lashing out in fits and starts. emotions that burst electric and crackling from her unbidden, the vacillation of fierce pride and utter self loathing. like a wind chime in a storm she shakes and sings, a furious clang and clatter more discordant often then sonorous. 

the book becomes her conduit. she pours over the pages that teach her ancient runes and long lost symbols, a language relegated to the depths of time. the witches’ alphabet, theban script, the inscriptions of lines and angles and circles that channel that overpowering and overwhelming will of hers into something useful, a focused stream of ability and desire. 

becoming a witch is based in will and want and marisol has been overflowing with desperation and desire for as long as she can remember, and it becomes a promise of something greater on the horizon. her stomach turns the first time she slides a knife over her palm to give of herself for this magic. the charcoal that often etches over the woven length of canvas now graces the wood flooring of her room, inscribing circles and runes, a deft and delicate hand intent not to smudge or obscure the lines lest the incantations run awry, the effects dimming. 

she takes, and takes, spends days in bed or bandaging her hands as she trades of herself for good fortune, for favor, for financial security. she secures for herself the things she thinks she deserves. she delves deep into the arts of summoning, never attempting but always tempted, the promise of the otherworldly too enticing, piquing a desperate curiosity. who could she help with this, and who could she hurt? 

WHATS YOUR STORY?

the first thing her mother gives her is a burden. 

a name to bear like a cross. 

marisol, marisol. 

a strange name for a strange girl, stumbling in too many syllables to trip up a tongue. it’s heavy. it bears the weight of her mother’s expectations and of her indifference. 

marisol is an infant and unassuming, unimportant. round cheeks and a squalling, healthy cry and a mother who is happy to begin smoking again, to return to the bottle, to lose the baby weight. she will always bring that up, she will always tell marisol - as she strokes waving, tousled hair, as she bandages her knees and elbows, smothers her in sunscreen, as she makes halfhearted bibimbap from leftovers - you ruined me, little girl, she’ll say to her. singsong. musical. she smells of whiskey and cigarettes and musky perfume. 

the wallpaper is peeling. just a little bit in the corners, where few would notice, but marisol does. marisol sees the tarnish on her mother’s jewelry and the threadbare bottoms of her socks. marisol is hawk eyed attention to detail. picking out weaknesses in the facade of a woman who paints herself as someone bigger than the world. 

she watches her mother as one might a performer. 

lee minyoung has a damningly average name and disposition and intellect and beauty. in all respects she is exceedingly, incredibly typical but for one desperate need, an overpowering urge to be beloved. she desires power and adoration and builds herself, to the best of her ability, into the image of that. soft silks and glasses of champagne, expensive bags purchased with maxed out credit cards, a score that begins to drop. layers of makeup painting heavy over flaws both imagined and existant. 

marisol is born a burden and a stain, a tarnish on her reputation. the divorce follows swiftly after her birth, a man who becomes a child support check sent from busan every so often, a check that lines her mother’s pockets with borrowed finery, while marisol listens to her mother twitter and laugh on the phone, in the hall, in the living room. 

lee minyoung has a reputation around town. little tweaks and fixes here and there have earned her a greater beauty than she once boasted, and there are plenty who are happy to buy into her delusions of presented grandeur, her falsity of regality and noblesse. lee minyoung sweeps around the room as if on a film set, black and white film reels of leading ladies inspiring the grace and poise of each gesture and movement. affected and fictitious but in a small town like this no one bothers to look too deep. they’re happy to coo about her lost love and how cruel it was of him to leave her, how unfair it was for him to take her youth and leave her with a child to raise alone. 

and lee minyoung uses that sympathy to work her way upwards. it’s a slow and steady move, with many heights and hollows, peaks and valleys, and marisol learns to focus on other things. to take the gifts when they come in an attempt to curry favor with her mother ( as if her mother were to care a bit for her opinion )  and to turn a blind eye when things fade. she learns that her mother will always define herself by the power of others and she learns to believe it pathetic, affected hubris that churns her stomach. 

her mother is a tyrant in her life, a figure that whispers in her ear so sweetly, oh marisol, you ought to watch your weight. oh marisol, darling, shouldn’t you do a bit better? oh marisol, you stupid little thing, shouldn’t you know better than that? marisol, don’t you see how hard you’re making things for me, your poor dear mother? marisol, can’t you be a good girl, a kind girl, can’t you be my dear little sunflower and listen nicely, sweetly, shine brightly? 

marisol learns to hate the sound of her own name. marisol learns to hate her mother, a revulsion for the pathetic creature that she is, so pitiably dependent on the world around her for validation. she stomps through the greenery of the forests and rolls across the cobbled hills with the clack of skateboard wheels, wind in tangled hair and the sun painting red across her cheeks, freckles blooming in place that her mother advises her to have removed - laser treatments aren’t nearly so expensive these days. 

she’s twelve when she meets him. with wide haunted eyes and a family shrouded in mystery, in a real wealth. he can be like your brother, her mother cooes at her,  and mari answers with a scowl and fingers pushed back through her hair, squinted eyes skeptical on the boy. she doesn’t want to play this game again. the game of pretending she thinks this is some kind of misguided playdate. pretending that this is simply her mother’s new work friend. that her mother hadn’t taken on this stenographer position in the hopes of working her way up the ladder like this. besides, it’s better than the ones that look at her funny and the anger in her mother’s eyes now, as she grows up. like there’s an unspoken contest marisol was never made aware of, never asked to enter. his father is an overbearing man, powerful and full in the knowledge of that, proud and suffocating. she begins to choke beneath the weight of them, smoke in her lungs. 

marisol learns to find comfort in her own strength. spits venomous barbs at those that call her a bastard child, bruises her knuckles against the jawbone of the boy who calls her mother a whore, screeches and grapples like a wild, rabid thing when the girls corner her to mock her. it goes against the proper and the expected. she smokes until her lungs burn black and acrid, drains the screaming in her chest with alcohol stolen from corner marts. scowls in the back of the living room when the local police officer hauls her home with a warning and lectures her mother, who turns the favor on her. 

her mother would love to say that with age comes a softening of sensibilities but this is in point of fact untrue. with age comes fire and fury, with age comes a mercurial energy that likens her to a wildfire or a sandstorm. she is a scourge, consuming, a frenzy of self loathing and second guessing. she is the smell of smoke and evergreens and honey mint tea. 

she is a creature born of secrets and burden and she grows to find currency in that. to fit together the puzzle pieces around her, to delve deeper into the secrets of a strangeness she has always taken for granted. obsessive she dreams of a greater power and capability. her ferverish passions illuminate themselves in charcoal stained fingers, in smudged pastels. she paints herself as much as she does her canvases, leaves the mark of it in her wake. books fill with scribbled words and sketchpads pile up. she has never been a stranger to expression, this girl who breathes emotions like fire from the mouth of a dragon. she loves ferociously and needs desperately and does this with an intensity that may perhaps astonish. as if the suppressed and cold machinations of her mother must have created a girl who can do nothing but feel and express with the most honest and unflinching expression. 

when fire and fate steal from her the closest of her friends, she sends herself away to a nearby city, to a modestly sized university. for three years she wastes her life pursuing a degree that in the end means less than the paper it’s printed on, she presumes. she crafts herself into something more, and by the time she returns to junae she’s got an apartment leased, the key money painstakingly hoarded. it’s small but it’s hers, and in direct reaction to her mother’s overbearing and crowded decor it is a stark and clean minimalism to be found there. soft fabrics and sharp edges in equal measure. an easel in the corner and a tarp beneath it, a scattering of books on shelves, a two monitor rig on the desk that doesn’t quite fit in the room, but she cobbles together her scraps of wealth in freelance work, graphic design and writing, proofreading and transcribing. whatever she can get her hands on. she wastes  away on endless shifts running the old school projectors at the art house theater in the town’s center, a relic of a lost time. 

she waits and she seethes and she burns, and one day, one day she finds something. 

it’s in the library. she is a frequent visitor of dusty tomes and quiet halls, and there is a moment she stands transfixed, fingers on the papery, thin spine of the book. the words inside are a mangled and garbled expression at first, notes in the margins and overwrought detailing, exquisite coloring and intricate detail. it tells of casting bones, of blood magicks, of secret runes that promise untold power, whisper of fulfilled desires. and she is a greedy thing, this hellion girl, and she falls too eagerly into the waiting trap, jumps into the maw of the beast. 

she takes to witchcraft like a fish to water. that overwhelming will in her finds a conduit in this and she bestows upon herself power her mother could only ever have dreamed of. it is little things at first, small steps forward, and more later. but her greed grows as great as her mother’s ever was, and more, and she drowns herself in the possibilities of it, wades deep and deeper until she is in full over her head.