#w. song taehyun 001.

[littlemarie]

her arms are stained with wet soil and grass clippings.

every night, she takes a shovel to the ground and she digs. she stomps her boot to the step to break earth, and she does this over and over until she’s six feet deep. there is a girl within her, younger and with dirt under her fingernails, and she claws at sumi’s arm and begs for mercy. over and over, sumi chooses the same thing: to let go, to shovel dirt on top of her and bury her in the cold mud.

her and her mother are not so different. they do what it takes to survive. every night, sumi had gotten on her knees and pleaded for mother to take her home. even then, mother had looked her in the eyes and covered her with dirt. now, mother calls and begs for her to pick up. sumi longs to tell her what her mother had taught her then: there was never any use begging. instead, she picks up the phone and she smiles without teeth, lest it bares the dirt still caught between her molars.

tonight, she learns that the girl within her is more unforgiving. she is not the sort to play nice, to smile without teeth. tonight, when sumi swallows her medicine, reaches for the girl within her to toss her into the grave she dug, she comes up empty. the girl is here now, dagger within her fist as she bares her rotting fangs.

so sumi runs. all around her is chaos. the sky cackles DO YOU KNOW THE NAME OF THE SERPENT?, and she realises that she never learnt the name of the girl she had always buried. there are people around her screaming, and sumi tries to warn them. run!, she screams, run!, but she watches as the girl flings them out of her path to get to her. there was never any use begging. so she runs, turns deaf to the screams around her and she hides in a corner, pulls her lighter from her pocket because she’s learnt it’s the only thing that can keep her away. sumi flicks the sparkwheel with her thumb, once, twice, watches the spark fizzle out each time. “come on,” she whispers, flicks the sparkwheel again, “come on—” and the lighter falls from her hands and into a drain. the screams are getting louder, the girl’s footsteps getting closer, and she reaches her fingers into the gaps of the drain for her lighter, but it was never going to work. “fuck—” sumi slams the drain with her closed fist, “fuck!”

the girl is here now, dagger within her fist as she bares her rotting fangs.

shallow grave  /  @spltseconds​

[renegaed]

heroes bleed the blue of ichor.

it’s how they know they’re destined to save lives. a small nick on the finger of a child, newly born, and you’ll know. it brings him comfort, this belief that heroes are born, not made. it absolves him of the guilt from all the times he’s tried and failed. in times as those, he reminds himself that he just wasn’t born with it. his parents die when he’s four, and it brings him comfort to be able to shrug that blame onto this conviction. because if jaehyun were born a hero, a part of him thinks that he’d have known. somehow, he would’ve known that something bad was going to happen, and in some way, he would have been able to save them. the way heroes do. instead, the morning of their passing had felt like any other day to him: normal and uneventful, even as his parents were bleeding their ichor all over the battlefield.

there are no heroes to be found in men like park jaehyun and song taehyun. they can try all they like, but they’ll always fall short. it’s like reaching out for a falling wine bottle only to hear the crack and shatter. now they’re on their knees with a dry cloth, mopping up the spilled wine and they cut themselves on a shard. and they’ll wonder—they’ll always wonder—what it’d be like to be the kind of person to notice a second sooner. instead, they bleed red, and all they’ve left to do is to clean that shit up along with the wasted wine.

it’s why they’re running now. the festival’s a shitstorm and there’s a weird fire burning in their lungs, but they’re running anyway. away from the fucked up float and the sirens and all that fucking drama. there are people around them screaming and crying out for help, but jaehyun doesn’t hear them. he’s done this enough times to know that it’ll only end up with him on the floor, mopping up another bottle of spilled wine. there are no heroes to be found in men like park jaehyun and song taehyun.

( but sometimes, they try anyway. even if it’s guaranteed to end up in vain. )

it takes him awhile to realise that taehyun isn’t beside him anymore, so he slows his pace, turns around and catches taehyun staring at something behind them. jaehyun tries to look, but there’s too much chaos happening, too many stories ending in tragedy to know which one he’s honed in on.

“taehyun!” he calls out, runs to the latter and taps him roughly on the back, “wake the fuck up! we gotta to get the fuck outta here!”

red cape  /  @spltseconds