#yoojin's a lot less easily flustered now. high mentality baby!

[wovenstarlight]

:OOO more cached au stuff. i love it so much

in celebration of banned tags it is #girl time. general warnings for the Inherent Stranger Danger distress of hyj approaching byr, from her perspective

-

"Excuse me?"

Yerim screams, lurching forward and stumbling undignified onto her feet. "Wha-ha-ack?!" comes out of her mouth, completely indecipherable to both herself and the stranger before her, who looks just as startled at Yerim herself.

"Uh," he says, clearly thrown, and raises his empty hands. "Sorry for startling you?"

Yerim stares at him, blinking away lingering tears, and clears her throat. "What do you want?" she demands. It's a little sharper than she would've liked, but... hey! What's this guy's problem, anyway, sneaking up on girls having themselves some private time!!

Um. Actually, yeah, why's this guy here. She's here so she can be alone. There's pretty much no one around except for the two of them.

She's wondering how fast she can get her shoe off to throw it at him when he grins apologetically. "Just wondering if you were Bak Yerim," he says. "I've been looking around for you, and—"

The shoe's off faster than she had planned, nice. She raises it threateningly. "STALKER?!" she demands, loud in the hopes it'll carry.

"Whoa!" The guy raises his hands even higher, and despite his yelp, he only looks mildly startled, moreso offended. "Hey, I'm not a stalker, I just— Look, you know about Hunters, right?"

This is so weirdly off topic that she lowers her shoe, startled out of her wariness. "What? Yeah, why?"

"I'm a Hunter," he explains, "and I was wondering if you were interested in being one yourself."

Yerim blinks at him. That— sounds really interesting, actually, but also there's still something about him that's making her hair stand on end. "And how do I know you're telling the truth," she says, hating the slight wobble of uncertainty in her voice.

The guy drops a hand to dig through his pocket, retrieving what looks like an ID card and holding it out to her. She approaches; she's never seen a card like this before, but it's got the Hunter Association's seal in the top right, so—his Hunter license? Her mouth drops open when she reads the rank marked alongside. "You're an A-rank?!" she demands. "What guild?"

His expression—or what little she can see of it, between the mask and the cap—turns... strange. His eyelids droop, as if he's tired, and she feels tense again, at least right up until he says, "You know Haeyeon Guild? The guild leader's my younger brother."

That's. Well, she can't really tell if there's a family resemblance, what with the covered face and the scrunched up eyes, but— Holy shit. "Holy shit. Haeyeon Guild? That's— That place is incredible," she blurts, unable to stop herself from gushing. "You're really—?"

She stops dead halfway into the next word. Wait, she thinks. What's an A-rank doing here? A Haeyeon Guild A-rank Hunter, claiming to be the guild leader's brother, here to see little old nobody Bak Yerim, whose stupid fucking family has everyone around them believing she's worth nothing?

She wouldn't know what a Hunter license looked like, anyway. And if he's really from Haeyeon Guild, shouldn't he have some sort of membership proof?

She's gotten very close to him, looking at this ID card of his.

"Okay," she yelps, high-pitched, stumbling backwards and raising her shoe again. "Okay! Sure you're a Hunter! What do you want with me!"

He sighs, and Yerim's whole body goes painfully and abruptly tense. She can barely breathe, suddenly. Something's— Something's—

And then he looks at her, and his eyes are exasperated but somehow amused, and there's this sort of—weight—to his gaze that settles about her shoulders like a physical thing.

She thinks, suddenly, of evenings spent dozing off in her neighbour's garden, blinking half-awake and lifting her head from a dog's warm stomach, only to feel a soft blanket settling on top of her, the whisper of his fond voice telling her to go back to sleep, he'd wake her when it was time to go home.

The strange weight on her shoulders, she finds, is warm. It's comfortable. She lowers her shoe unconsciously, then drops it on the ground consciously.

Yerim meets the weird guy's eyes and thinks—knows—he doesn't mean her any harm at all.

"You said," she starts in a whisper, and has to restart to speak more loudly, forcefully reminding herself that she is not in a garden, she is not asleep with a dog as her pillow, and it is not late evening. "You were wondering if I was interested in Awakening?"

*

He introduces himself as Han Yoojin and apologizes for the mask-cap combo making him look so suspicious, citing his recent Awakening and explaining that he didn't want to run the risk of being recognized by strangers. At her demand, he readily offers his Hunter license again, and she draws closer (more warily this time) and checks his claims against the card. He's telling the truth, looks like, but he must notice that she's still wary, because he offers to continue their conversations at a restaurant instead of their current isolated location. When they head back the way they came, they find Kim Sunghan (Kim Sunghan! Of Haeyeon Guild!) waiting for them. He turns down Han Yoojin's offer to join them (is Yerim imagining the stiffness in their interaction? It's hard to say, she's so starstruck that her mind is way overclocking right now), and instead he follows them as they walk, a few steps behind them.

Han Yoojin explains his skill as they go, and Yerim shivers with excitement. She's at least B-rank! Yoojin ahjussi says that an A-rank like himself already gets really good treatment and would have his pick of guild if he wanted, so Yerim's got good prospects for the future.

"So I can leave home and stay at the guild?"

"If you want. You'll essentially become independent, anyway, since you're over 14—you are over 14, right?"

"Yeah, I'm 15." She feels light. Almost buoyant, like the wind could lift her right off the ground, and Yoojin ahjussi's weirdly heavy (if comforting) presence wouldn't do a thing to stop her. "You said—Independent?"

"You'd have an adult's rights, more or less. Except on some dungeon-related fronts." He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, frowning slightly. "You want to leave home? What about your family?"

She scowls, suddenly tethered back to earth. "I hate them," she snarls, as vicious and cutting as she can make it. "My uncle, and all the rest, they're really— They're no good." He hums questioningly, brows furrowed, and our comes the story, the money hoarding and the house stuff and the two-faced outright lying, god, fuck that guy so much, she wants to do—things to him that would probably get her in big trouble if she said them out loud near law-abiding company, so she shuts up while she's ahead.

She finishes and glances at Yoojin ahjussi. He's watching her with real concern, now. She'd bristle, but there's a charged feeling to the air around her now, and it's not doing any good for her nerves. "If they're mistreating you," he says slowly, "we can get you help. Legal help."

She shakes her head. "I just want to leave," she mumbles.

"Okay," Yoojin ahjussi says quietly, and the stormcloud tension around her softens, replaced by that warmth from earlier. It's more intense this time, somehow. Like being wrapped up tight in a scarf right before she steps into winter cold. Is this an Awakened person thing? She's starting to realize she doesn't usually get sense-memories like this when she meets new people.

*

Her uncle is in front of them, and he looks scared out of his mind. Her aunt is frozen stock-still in the doorway. Both of them look ready to throw up, and she thinks she can guess why.

That weight from before is back. This time, though, it's in full force; if the air was charged like an oncoming storm before, then now they're in the thick of it, a feeling like ozone in the air, like lightning is not two seconds from striking and you're standing exactly where it'll hit. The force of it is oppressive, heavy enough to force her uncle to his knees, trembling violently, eyes wide.

Yerim stands just behind her Yoojin ahjussi, very much in the blast radius of the terrifying force he's exuding, and she feels—

Yerim feels wrapped up toasty warm, like a blanket around her shoulders, like a hug that knocks the breath out of her, like her head tucked secure under the chin of someone taller than her, face hidden in their shoulder. She feels like there's a hand in hers, telling her it's okay now, I'm here, let's go home and get you out of the cold, okay?

Yerim feels safe for the first time in years, and she thinks, ohhh yeah, this is definitely an Awakened person thing.