hide and seek (interrupted)
a/n: these are a lot of drafts/unfinished beginnings i don't think i'll ever get around to completing. some of these are quite old, from earlier this year orz. just wanted to post and undust them.
spin me round (again)
pg-13; seungah/kiseop
dead eyes, staring into yours.
a/n: from may, my first attempt at writing something based off of black swan.
Seungah has always been a nice girl.
It starts with her mother, holding her close and telling her that is why she loves her. Soon, it is anyone and everyone, telling her it is one of her best qualities. She likes their compliments, likes being a nice girl, but in the back of her head is a voice telling her nice girls never come first.
She recalls she was friends with a girl named Jaekyung in high school. Jaekyung wasn’t a nice girl, not with her black nail polish and dreams of being a singer. She remembers her mother clicking her tongue disapprovingly at every little thing that went wrong with Jaekyung, though Seungah liked her spirit.
Do you have a dream? She remembers Jaekyung asking her one time. It is her mother’s dream for her to be a ballerina, so she settles for this. Jaekyung just watches her, silently.
But is that really what you want?
She thinks it is then that she realizes that she has spent eighteen years of her life chasing a dream that isn’t even hers.
(But she does not stop because she is a nice girl, a nice girl who loves the feeling of melting into her mother’s warm hugs.)
She first sees him on a Saturday morning.
She remembers this clearly because the rain slaps against the skylights of the studio and it never rains quite like this when she is there Monday to Friday. Everyone looks so grey in worn leotards and practice clothes, with ashen faces and pointed toes but minds all over the place. They are lost and wandering, Seungah remembers thinking to herself. She points, points, points to the one, two, three of the music and is bending her leg a little to avoid stepping on another girl’s toes.
That is when he walks in. He is in the corner of her eye but she doesn’t stop their warm up exercises for him because the music still floods the studio. She sees him open his mouth and speak but he is too far away from any of them to hear.
The warm ups continue and he is still unheard. She looks over at him as they begin plies and his eyes meet hers for a moment.
His blonde hair is bright under the pale lights as he gives her a small smile. His eyes are even brighter, rimmed with excitement. She smiles back because she likes the way he brings color to the room, likes the way he seems like a nice person.
He is gone when she turns around again for the next exercise but she wonders about the nice, handsome boy for the rest of the day.
(She remembers first calling him the boy with bright hair and even brighter eyes because she does not know his name.)
“Did you hear?” Woori’s red hair flies in the wind. It’s windy on the rooftop, their rooftop (because no one else trusts the railings to stay where they are), but Seungah doesn’t feel cold.
“There’s a new director in town.” Woori likes to answer her own questions so Seungah just lets her. She thinks it is because she’s not curious enough or too scared to be curious also, but Woori seems content so Seungah doesn’t try to change. “And you know what this means?”
There is something that swirls in Seungah’s chest but she just laughs it off. “The fight to become prima ballerina.” Woori throws her arm around her with an appreciative squeeze of understanding.
“We should just let the others fight over it. Us two sane ones need to stick together.” Woori’s eyes sparkle as her laughter is carried away by the wind. There is more swirling in her chest and she thinks it could be churning but she smiles even though it’s uncomfortable.
She thinks Woori doesn’t need to throw such pointless words into the air because she is the best dancer in their company. She just sits, watching the cars move beneath them as Woori just talks, smiles, and laughs in her carefree nonchalance.
Seungah wishes they could have more similarities than just being sane.
It is not until Thursday when things begin to happen.
The new production is Swan Lake, the new director is young, and the ballerina chosen for the role to be announced. There are hushed words and sharp cut offs but she can already hear the crying in the girl’s bathroom.
There is that swirling in her chest again and she can feel it climbing up her throat as the new director walks out, bright blonde hair and even brighter eyes.
I am Lee Kiseop, he says. (And tall. And very, very handsome.) I will be your director for your winter show.
The churning is everywhere in her body now. She briefly wonders if this is how it feels to want something the way Jaekyung told her about all those years before.
Seungah is twenty-three when she realizes she finally has a dream.
they were here first
pg-13; hyorin/soohyun
it's all for the best.
a/n: from june. soohyun/hyorin in this universe.
The first thing Hyorin feels when she wakes up is the lukewarm spot next to her, the indentation on the mattress that hasn’t quite disappeared yet. She takes a deep breath, in and out. The smell of coffee is still lightly peppered in the air, black, just the way he likes it.
“Good morning,” she says to an empty kitchen. The kitchen does not echo the phrase back. There is a bag of whole wheat bread left on the counter with a variety of different spreads, stacked on top of one another in a haphazard hurry. She thinks about organizing the piles but stops herself from doing so.
This is not her apartment.
And he didn’t leave her any note.
It’s seven-thirty in the morning when she just leaves, appetite disappearing under a wave of nausea and disgust all directed toward herself as she tosses his spare key into the potted plant next to his doorstep.
They don’t text each other often, he realizes. Calling is absolutely off limits, a silent law between them. He doesn’t feel obligated to do either, so he doesn’t, not even out of courtesy.
He likes the way Hyorin never brings it up, the way she doesn’t pester or pry, just understands.
There are moments when Soohyun wonders why they aren’t something more, why they aren’t really friends or lovers, just somewhere forgotten in the middle of it all. He likes to compare it to knitting a sweater, something that can be neglected but readily picked up again whenever. An easy way out, for both of them.
He guesses it’d be a very dysfunctional sweater but it wouldn’t matter because he’d never wear it.
She hears people tell them that they are perfect for each other in those moments when they stand on stage, harmonizing together. He usually smiles and blushes while she just laughs and lets the words go in through one ear and come out the other.
bypass
pg; seungah/kiseop
he wants to say goodbye. she holds on.
a/n: from the beginning of july, when i was unsatisfied with everything i wrote.
It is dark and silent and still, so still that he thinks the world might not be spinning. He reminds himself that it is, that it always turns, but some part of him still won’t believe it. These parts of him are scattered all over, nonbelieving and nonsensical, but all still unhappy.
He turns on their bedside lamp, the one she saw at the antique shop. The one he didn’t see the use for. Their house has a lot of these kinds of things, decorative pieces, she calls them. Their rings sit on the table, golden and eternal. He sighs while she stirs beside him, fingers tangled into his shirt.
“Five more minutes,” she mumbles sleepily, golden hair catching in the dim light. There is something biting and itchy at the back of his mind, but he pushes the feeling away and smiles down at her.
It is the only thing she ever asks for, the only thing he can ever give her, so he lays back down and watches her breathe.
He doesn’t tell her he counts the seconds until their separation, all three hundred of them.
People that know them tell him he’s lucky, lucky to have such a wife and such a job and such a house in such a neighborhood.
I know, he says when Jaeseop tells him Seungah is smart. I know, he laughs when Soohyun tells him Seungah is pretty. I know, I know, I know is all he says with a tight-lipped smile, again and again and again, though he doesn’t understand what they’re talking about anymore.
He remembers he did, at least he used to. He used to know when he’d come home and wrap her in his arms, when they’d make a mess raking the leaves in the yard in the fall, when she’d burn their food slightly and leave the smell of her cooking all over the house.
Now, all he knows is that smart is not genius and pretty is not beautiful.
Seungah is perfect, plain and perfect, but nothing special.
from me to you
g; supposedly seungah/kiseop
a little piece of beautiful.
a/n: extremely unfinished. this was supposed to be about artsy couple seungah/kiseop but it didn't get far orz
He finds them one afternoon when he’s cleaning out the attic. Boxes, dusty and neglected in the very back corner, shoved in a haphazard halfway in the dark and halfway in the light fashion, as if whoever put them there was torn between leaving them to rot or keeping them.
He thinks they must’ve been moving them around sunset, because the light that filters in from the tiny window hits the left corner of the top box in a way that makes even the dust particles in the air twinkle.
He nearly falls down the stairs to grab his camera, but can’t find anything amidst the messy piles. It’s all his stuff, all things he knows, but they’re thirty miles away from the right places.
This is not home, he remembers as he slumps back up the stairs.
He settles for staring at the boxes and the sunbeam until the light fades away.
go with the wind
pg; kiseop/kibum
late afternoon sunsets, blue evenings.
a/n: superold!shot. this one's from april, when i was just starting to break my writer's block. was supposed to be for the u-kiss fic challenge, but i didn't like where it was going so i discontinued it orz.
Kiseop likes to fly paper planes in his spare time on the cold, windy days, the days that they stay up in the air the longest. He likes watching the way the wind carries them up, up, up, until gravity wins out and sends them down. He always shuts his eyes before they crash but can hear the paper crinkling at the nose-dive nonetheless.
But a smashed-in front is an easy fix for him. There is something magical about repairing a crashed plane or folding a new one, so he does so often. Sometimes out of old newspapers, sometimes out of construction paper. Sometimes out of imagination where they are iridescent and ever-changing, sparkling in the sunlight.
They are all there in the back corner of his closet, old and new and remembered by how long they stayed up in the sky.
(They are all there but the imaginary ones. The imaginary ones that only know how to fly higher and higher, sparkling in the sunlight.)
Beauty is what makes the world worth it. This is what Kiseop remembers his father telling him and his mother laughing and nodding to. The scene is full of the fiery glow of the setting sun that tangles through their hair and fingers in a warm embrace.
Sometimes Kiseop remembers these times and thinks it’s fate. Fate in the way his parents were patrons of the arts, fate how he wishes to be an artist.
His parents used to take him to art museums and galleries every Saturday afternoon, where the three of them would walk hand-in-hand-in-hand down the corridors filled with splashes of vibrant hues and monochrome canvases. Some would be twisted shapes and strange colors, but there was always a gem in the displays. A hidden gem that he would declare to his parents as his favorite of the week.
There is only one hidden gem Kiseop remembers clearly in his mind’s eye. It was a bold orange and pink canvas, a tad smaller than the one next to it. It was off center and unaligned with the others and he recalls huffing to his parents in annoyance about the subject.
Watch, his father said. His palms were on his shoulders. Don’t you see the paper airplanes flying?
Kiseop didn’t see it, not even when he squinted his eyes. It was a strange piece. No, I don’t.
They went around the whole exhibit twice, and each time, he would try to find the paper planes. They didn’t appear to him and he found it fascinating how they did to everyone else. They came back the next week and the two weeks after that and he tried so hard to see them until the painting was switched out of the exhibit.
(He never declared it as his favorite, but in a way, they all kind of knew.)
Kiseop often finds himself painting with soft reds, oranges, yellows, and pinks with a dapple of the lightest blue violet. It is in these colors he finds the most beautiful and the most wistful of his works arise.
maybe they exist
pg-13; none
oily marks appear on walls.
a/n: wrote this for my project when i was in a very avenger-happy mode. casting would be kiseop for smoker, hoon for evanesce, jaeseop or huang xiaoming for angel, and krystal for krystal lmfao. from may, right before my mini writer's block hit.
one
It’s twelve o’clock and he’s smoking a cigar.
He’d think it unethical, blowing puffs of cancerous smoke into a little girl’s face, if he didn’t need the embers and smog so badly. But she doesn’t look up or seem to care, so he simply continues with a deep inhale.
She’s been scribbling nonstop since four in the afternoon, mouthing words silently between her rosy lips. He doesn’t know what she’s seeing now, just knows that she’s seeing something, so he keeps waiting, waiting, waiting even though her little face has been downcast for so long that he can’t remember what she looked like.
He wonders how much longer she will live before the visions of other people’s futures drive her to insanity.
12:01 and she looks up. She isn’t much more than ten years old, an innocent face with wide, pale eyes, staring into his with quiet dignity. Her picture is an abstract scratch of shapes and colors that he can’t decipher.
He squints a little and leans forward. “What is this?” He picks up the paper and holds it closer to his eyes. She just smiles, looking pleased with herself.
“It’s an ostrich, don’t you see?”
“And does the ostrich have a name?” He peers over the top to meet her gaze. Seers were generally weird and cryptic, and she no exception.
“Krystal.”
He leaves twenty minutes pass twelve, biting his tongue and crushing his burnt out cigar with his shoe before he tries to ask the little girl her name too, because she might not be there the next time he comes.
(don’t get attached, don’t get attached, don’t get attached.)
two
Krystal, they say, has a problem.
She finds it funny that they replace “is” with “has” because she’s really a mix of both, which is even worse. She’d laugh, but no one would laugh with her, so she just keeps the joke to herself.
Five times and no passes, so she stopped taking the tests so she wouldn’t have to feel the weight of failure. It’s a bit sad, she thinks as she walks, that they think the problem is her lack of sympathy and the fact that she wouldn’t put a random civilian’s life before hers. The wind whistles and the late winter air leaves her nose red and runny, but she’s sure that she’s not apathetic, just practical.
“Aren’t you cold?” The voice comes from behind and she turns. Wings are spread and reaching up to the sky, sharp eyes among youthful features looking back at her. The early morning sky turns everything blue, their faces, silhouettes, and shadows.
It’s not hard to guess which one he is when she’s seen (and heard of) him a few times before. “What are you doing here?” she calls back, tucking her hands into her sweater. He walks up toward her, a friendly smile on his face and she can’t help but think that he’d make the perfect hero if his wings weren’t so ugly.
He tucks in his wings and sits down on the bench nearby, still looking annoyingly complacent and amused. They are the same age, Krystal vaguely remembers. The same age yet he seems a little happier while she is just lost.
“Smoker sent me to look for you.” His dark eyes twinkle as she takes in his words, forehead creasing.
Smoker. Smo-ker. Ssmo-kerr. She tests the name on her tongue. She remembers the smell of tobacco smoke and ash, a clean-shaven face and white-blonde hair and fiery brown eyes, the West Sect made of secondhand superheroes.
She said no because she did not want to be a misfit and a failure. “And what does he want?” Her voice feels bland and the words dry on her tongue. The boy with wings looks up, meeting her eyes for a moment before she turns away.
“He wants you to run again.”
(the wind whistles again and krystal guess that she really does feel a little cold.)
three
Hoon remembers a time when he knew someone named Evanesce.
Evanesce was one of those superheroes of the East Sect, the kind of superhero who had a thing with water. He could bend it to his will and transform his own body into the liquid (and these things came with major bragging rights). That old Evanesce wasn’t so bad, he thinks, a half smile on his face.
One September mission gone wrong and Evanesce never came back.
It makes him sad to know that Evanesce is gone and that everyone in the West Sect bullies him for only being able to turn into something that’s not quite water and not quite solid, just gel. They call him Dr. Scholls and make wisecracks about “are you gellin’?” and Hoon likes to laugh with them about it because at least when he’s gel, he stays whole.
(though he wonders if the public remembers evanesce sometimes even though he’s dead.)
four
The three of them are sitting on the rooftop of the headquarters high above the city, late afternoon sun casting lazy golden beams like stripes across their faces.
Smoker exhales while Krystal inhales, sending her into a coughing fit because she decided to face him at that second. She briefly wonders how badly he needs the ash and smoke in his system to live when it only endangers the lives of others.
“How long has it been since you ran?” No hello, just business, but she expected that. She shrugs in forced nonchalance. The boy with the wings, Angel, watches them carefully (as he has been for the past two weeks as they tried to pointedly ignore each other).
“Are you scared to run again?” Run, run, run. She wishes he would stop saying the word because all she can hear between the three letters is crashing into the asphalt and things snapping and hurting and breaking.
“No,” she lies. The world feels still, the scent of burnt embers reaching her nose, details that she painstakingly takes the time to see. She watches him as he lights a new cigarette with the snap of his fingers and takes a long drag out of it, but she wants to slap it out of his hands because tobacco, honestly, does not benefit anyone.
They challenge eachother in silence for a while until she caves first. “Why does the West Sect even exist?” she screams at Smoker, Angel, both of them, and stomps off to erase the sympathy she realizes she almost felt.
five
Hoon sits by the pool and just watches the water reflect the recessed lighting like a faceted diamond. He’s sure he looks stupid, but he thinks that just being near water might make him remember how to be water.
He’s sure he’s stupid common sense wise, but he doesn’t really have a reputation (being Dr. Scholls man hardly counts) to sacrifice so he keeps staring.
“Trying again?” Smoker crouches down beside him. They’ve known each other for a long time, even before Hoon knew Evanesce, and he can’t help but wonder why Smoker still hangs around the failures of the West Sect when he has the potential to be a superhero.
He nods and Smoker cracks a smile. “You’re one of the good ones, you know? Even if you are gellin’.” Hoon nearly pushes him into the water as vengeance for his joke. They laugh for a while, sounds echoing off the walls and water.
Smoker gets up to leave a little bit after that, taking the trail of smoke with him.
(he almost doesn’t catch him whisper “at least you’re not scared” under his breath.)
six
Krystal wishes there was a way to not see Angel’s wings and a way to not feel so uneasy around his good natured personality.
“You could be a hero, you know.” He’s been quietly accompanying her for the past few weeks and the silence between them has grown into something comfortable so when she says the words aloud, they feel awkward.
He laughs. His wings are tucked in, bound behind his back and hidden under the shirt and jacket he wears so she can almost pretend that they don’t even exist. “I can’t be a hero,” he says, smiling as if the whole concept is one of those nonsensical jokes that go in circles.
She frowns. “But you can fly.”
He grins, but his eyes convey something that isn’t happiness. “You could, too, if you tried.”
(it is then that krystal realizes that super is just an epithet for something that is still very, very human.)
seven
Ignoring Smoker’s bad habits has become one of hers, though she still hates the ash tray scent all over his clothes.
“You’re so full of bullshit,” she tells him one day as he flicks his cigarette into the trash can. He looks up slightly and she can see the amusement in his eyes.
“What?” He doesn’t look particularly offended or curious about what she has to say and she doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t understand him or his motives, why he tries so hard with the failures and why he won’t try to reach for the better in the East.
“I’m not the only one who’s lying.” She points a finger to the dissipating smoke in the air, leaving the unsaid words hanging over them like something tangibly thick until she brushes past him.
(you don’t need to breath smoke to survive.)
eight
Krystal hates a lot of things, people mostly, but hypocrites are the worst. She’s come to this conclusion from her stay with the West Sect, the losers of losers who complain for change but do nothing to enact it.
She doesn’t want to be one of them, not if they’re like that.
She stares contemplatively at the purple sky and realizes it’s spring. Spring was track season back in high school and she vaguely remembers running sprints, the wind tangling through her hair and slapping against her face. The air is still so she takes a step, just to feel a little breeze.
It’s not enough for her so she takes another and another until the currents feel warm and soft against her face. The world is moving again and she keeps stepping and stepping and stepping until everything blurs and the wind is all that’s there, slapping against her face.
(this time, nothing crashes or hurts or snaps and she remembers the reason why she kind of liked spring.)
nine
Hoon gets into the pool one day because he decides there’s really nothing to lose, not anymore.
It’s not like before, when he didn’t have time to be selfish because there were other people’s lives on the line. He wades into the pool, one, two, three steps before submerging completely and trying to shift.
The change comes a little slower than he thought it would, the liquid feeling starting near his limbs before moving inward towards his torso. He keeps walking as the tension between his body and the water lessens, keeps walking because he knows he’s only three-fourths of the way there.
He’s two feet from the edge of the pool when the flimsy feeling comes again, starting from his neck. Cursing, he slams himself against the edge of the pool in a desperate attempt to get out of the water before he is water.
He collapses on the ground. The tingling sensation reminds him that he is solid again, the flexing of all his limbs, fingers, and toes reminds him that he is still very much whole. His chest heaves shaky breaths in and out and out and in.
He guesses this is what he’s been waiting for and hoping would never happen again.
(evanesce would be turning in his grave if he knew.)
ten
His wings are out again, the tips reaching majestically towards the moon, his head looking up at the polluted city sky. They are a muddy, splotchy brown, like a vulture’s, and she thinks it’s ironic to call him Angel when he looks anything but that.
“Do you have a real name?” Krystal asks him. He shifts his position on the ledge of the rooftop to face her slightly. There is the same easy smile on his lips with the same dark eyes that are anything but happy.
“I’ve always been Angel,” he replies. She’s not satisfied with his answer and wants to pry but decides against it, snapping her mouth shut before the words can come out.
“I saw you running again the other day.” She raises her eyebrows and he runs a hand through the starless sky. “If you jumped from that speed, you could probably fly.”
Krystal starts to believe that Angel wouldn’t make the perfect hero because his wings are so ugly and he’s really not that happy, just lost.
eleven
Smoker watches as the little boy across him doodles with markers. The little girl with the pale eyes he saw last time isn’t there anymore, he was a few days too late. He remembers he never got around to asking her for her name and regrets it a little now.
The boy draws neatly, straight lines and clean cut figures. He’s been using the light brown to shade in the boxy shape he created that looks suspiciously like a chair.
“Do you know Absinthe?” the little boy inquires harmlessly, eyes still down on his picture. Smoker looks up.
“Do you know her?” he asks back. He wants to cover his ears with his hands because he can almost hear her screams just by the sound of her name. The boy shrugs.
“She says she knows you.”
twelve
Krystal takes away his cigars and cigarettes.
It’s cruel, he thinks, and even though she’s starting to reason with her apathy, it’s in all the wrong ways.
He sputters and sputters just on oxygen and realizes that maybe he didn’t really need smoke and embers to breath, just the tobacco.
thirteen
“There’s this girl they keep over at the East Sect, but she’s not a hero.”
Krystal doesn’t turn to look at him, but Smoker knows she’s listening so he continues. “You know what her power is? She’s hard to kill.”
They have an interesting relationship, she and him, full of spite and sharp words but not really full-out hate. He picks up a broken bit of stone from the concrete cracks and chucks it down, all the way down to the empty sidewalk. “And you know what they do to her? They torture her. Break her bones everyday but she just heals because they can’t kill her.”
“And do you know this girl?” Krystal pushes back her hair and Smoker remembers how young she is. How young they all are, yet so defeated.
He laughs a little and picks up another stone. “You don’t really forget the screaming once you hear it.”
“So what’s the problem?” Smoker stops, coughs, thinks about it.
“She keeps trying to break out.” He sets the stone on fire and drops it, watching the bright flame fall to the ground like a star until he can’t see it anymore.
(he doesn’t tell krystal that her name is absinthe and that he once thought they could be heroes together.)
fourteen
He coughs all afternoon and all night after that.
At midnight, he chokes on air and stops breathing.
(he wheezes and flickers but by morning, he thinks he’ll be ok.)
fifteen
The pool is what they call Hoon’s territory now.
He can’t bring himself to transform anymore because he knows now after several tries that he can do it, but he doesn’t want the bad things (separated limbs, crooked joints) to happen again. So he just stares, stares and wonders why this thing people called a blessing feels so much like a curse.
(evanesce does not actually have a grave because he never really died, just fell apart.)
sixteen
There is a manila envelope sitting on the round table in Smoker’s office when everyone comes in.
Krystal still doesn’t know everyone, or what they’re capable of, but she knows that the envelope is there to turn one of them from a misfit to a hero. She stares at Smoker who doesn’t really smoke anymore but still smells like ash and the envelope, eyes going back and forth continuously.
He puts up his hands. Silence. Someone walks in late, she turns and sees Angel, tall head bobbing through the crowd. Angel and everyone looks at him as the syllables leave Smoker’s lips.
Angel! And he still turns back to the direction where he came from, Krystal thinking he should’ve just not come at all if he was going to be late.
seventeen
“I don’t know why they want me.” This is the first thing he tells her after she finds him, sitting at the staircase.
“I don’t know why they want you either,” she snorts back and Angel looks up. He wonders why they wouldn’t want her and why the East Sect would want him, ugly wings and nonbelieving.
Quiet settles over them again and he remembers that this is how they are most comfortable.
“There was a boy once,” he starts. He shoots her a questioning look, asking for permission to continue on, while she just shifts against the pole she leans on. “He had parents. And a real name.”
They listen to eachother breath for a second, then another. “And what happened to this boy?” She almost sounds concerned, sympathetic, even. He smiles a little and shakes his head.
“He had to die for Angel to live.”
Krystal crosses her arms a little tighter at that and leans back until the sliver of light coming from the crack in the ceiling fades into nothing more than a slice of yellow against gray. She squints and the world turns blurry, unsquints and the world turns clear again, Angel there in both places.
She thinks she finally understands. “Maybe he still exists.”
(maybe they all still exist, in the cracks and crevices, just forgotten and hidden from their eyes. but she thinks if they squint, maybe, just maybe, they might see them again.)
eighteen
He doesn’t know why he’s back at the pool and doesn’t want to know why. He’s given up, promised it hundreds of times, yet he still comes back. The water sloshes as he lets it slip from his fingers, liquid against solid.
Hoon’s not quite content so he absentmindedly scoops up more and more, sure that he looks psychotic and mental but guessing he’ll never really be far from it. The trickles become whispers that turn into roars and suddenly the water is everywhere but in the pool, all around his fingers and body so he slips into the current and just floats along.
He hears someone clapping, guesses it’s Smoker, and supposes that he’s finally done it, so he smiles. He’s not quite content, but not unhappy either, just glad to be able to come out of the water feeling whole and knowing that maybe the blessing isn’t so bad after all.
(evanesce never really died and dr. scholls man never really lived, but hoon realizes they are just names, synonymous to his.)
nineteen
Smoker nearly has to search the whole ward to find the little boy who draws neatly.
They sit across from each other in the same little rainbow-colored plastic chairs and he just watches the boy draw and draw and draw, trying to find the right words to say to him.
The little boy reaches for the crayons across the table and Smoker hands them to him. He watches and waits until the picture is finished, an unbalanced scale with perfectly drawn stick figures on each side.
“What is that supposed to represent?” he asks. The boy turns the paper so it faces him, eyes meeting his unflinchingly for a brief moment.
“This is the east.” A small finger points to the higher side. “And this is the west.” The finger moves to the lower side.
Smoker picks up the piece of paper, looking at it carefully. He mentally goes over the compass rose in his mind; north, east, south, west in the clockwise direction. The boy wrote the east on the left instead of the right, west on the right instead of the left.
“Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake here?” He grins a little, handing the paper back. The boy thinks about it, creased forehead and furrowed eyebrows.
“No.”
Smoker chuckles, still sure he did because he feels a little too content in the West to accept that the East is better. “What’s your name, boy?”
twenty
“Guess you’re leaving, then.”
The corners of his mouth twitch up a little at her words. “Guess I am.” She doesn’t look particularly concerned, just nods and keeps walking with him.
Angel doesn’t want to answer any of the questions he knows she wants to ask and she’s doing a good job of holding her tongue. Maybe she does care, maybe she has some sympathy now, he thinks. Maybe she’ll be the next name in the manila envelope, maybe they’ll see each other again soon.
“You’re wings aren’t that ugly, you know.” She says it nonchalantly, testing how Angel will respond. There are just breaths between them for a while, blending into the early summer air. He looks at her and grins again, this time lighting up his whole face.
“Guess they aren’t.” He waves at her as he gets in the van and it feels like a promise, but she’s not sure what kind.
She doesn’t wave back until the van is a speck on the horizon.
(it is the first time she sees him really smile and she thinks his face might’ve just broke from it.)
spin me round (again)
pg-13; seungah/kiseop
dead eyes, staring into yours.
a/n: from may, my first attempt at writing something based off of black swan.
Seungah has always been a nice girl.
It starts with her mother, holding her close and telling her that is why she loves her. Soon, it is anyone and everyone, telling her it is one of her best qualities. She likes their compliments, likes being a nice girl, but in the back of her head is a voice telling her nice girls never come first.
She recalls she was friends with a girl named Jaekyung in high school. Jaekyung wasn’t a nice girl, not with her black nail polish and dreams of being a singer. She remembers her mother clicking her tongue disapprovingly at every little thing that went wrong with Jaekyung, though Seungah liked her spirit.
Do you have a dream? She remembers Jaekyung asking her one time. It is her mother’s dream for her to be a ballerina, so she settles for this. Jaekyung just watches her, silently.
But is that really what you want?
She thinks it is then that she realizes that she has spent eighteen years of her life chasing a dream that isn’t even hers.
(But she does not stop because she is a nice girl, a nice girl who loves the feeling of melting into her mother’s warm hugs.)
She first sees him on a Saturday morning.
She remembers this clearly because the rain slaps against the skylights of the studio and it never rains quite like this when she is there Monday to Friday. Everyone looks so grey in worn leotards and practice clothes, with ashen faces and pointed toes but minds all over the place. They are lost and wandering, Seungah remembers thinking to herself. She points, points, points to the one, two, three of the music and is bending her leg a little to avoid stepping on another girl’s toes.
That is when he walks in. He is in the corner of her eye but she doesn’t stop their warm up exercises for him because the music still floods the studio. She sees him open his mouth and speak but he is too far away from any of them to hear.
The warm ups continue and he is still unheard. She looks over at him as they begin plies and his eyes meet hers for a moment.
His blonde hair is bright under the pale lights as he gives her a small smile. His eyes are even brighter, rimmed with excitement. She smiles back because she likes the way he brings color to the room, likes the way he seems like a nice person.
He is gone when she turns around again for the next exercise but she wonders about the nice, handsome boy for the rest of the day.
(She remembers first calling him the boy with bright hair and even brighter eyes because she does not know his name.)
“Did you hear?” Woori’s red hair flies in the wind. It’s windy on the rooftop, their rooftop (because no one else trusts the railings to stay where they are), but Seungah doesn’t feel cold.
“There’s a new director in town.” Woori likes to answer her own questions so Seungah just lets her. She thinks it is because she’s not curious enough or too scared to be curious also, but Woori seems content so Seungah doesn’t try to change. “And you know what this means?”
There is something that swirls in Seungah’s chest but she just laughs it off. “The fight to become prima ballerina.” Woori throws her arm around her with an appreciative squeeze of understanding.
“We should just let the others fight over it. Us two sane ones need to stick together.” Woori’s eyes sparkle as her laughter is carried away by the wind. There is more swirling in her chest and she thinks it could be churning but she smiles even though it’s uncomfortable.
She thinks Woori doesn’t need to throw such pointless words into the air because she is the best dancer in their company. She just sits, watching the cars move beneath them as Woori just talks, smiles, and laughs in her carefree nonchalance.
Seungah wishes they could have more similarities than just being sane.
It is not until Thursday when things begin to happen.
The new production is Swan Lake, the new director is young, and the ballerina chosen for the role to be announced. There are hushed words and sharp cut offs but she can already hear the crying in the girl’s bathroom.
There is that swirling in her chest again and she can feel it climbing up her throat as the new director walks out, bright blonde hair and even brighter eyes.
I am Lee Kiseop, he says. (And tall. And very, very handsome.) I will be your director for your winter show.
The churning is everywhere in her body now. She briefly wonders if this is how it feels to want something the way Jaekyung told her about all those years before.
Seungah is twenty-three when she realizes she finally has a dream.
they were here first
pg-13; hyorin/soohyun
it's all for the best.
a/n: from june. soohyun/hyorin in this universe.
The first thing Hyorin feels when she wakes up is the lukewarm spot next to her, the indentation on the mattress that hasn’t quite disappeared yet. She takes a deep breath, in and out. The smell of coffee is still lightly peppered in the air, black, just the way he likes it.
“Good morning,” she says to an empty kitchen. The kitchen does not echo the phrase back. There is a bag of whole wheat bread left on the counter with a variety of different spreads, stacked on top of one another in a haphazard hurry. She thinks about organizing the piles but stops herself from doing so.
This is not her apartment.
And he didn’t leave her any note.
It’s seven-thirty in the morning when she just leaves, appetite disappearing under a wave of nausea and disgust all directed toward herself as she tosses his spare key into the potted plant next to his doorstep.
They don’t text each other often, he realizes. Calling is absolutely off limits, a silent law between them. He doesn’t feel obligated to do either, so he doesn’t, not even out of courtesy.
He likes the way Hyorin never brings it up, the way she doesn’t pester or pry, just understands.
There are moments when Soohyun wonders why they aren’t something more, why they aren’t really friends or lovers, just somewhere forgotten in the middle of it all. He likes to compare it to knitting a sweater, something that can be neglected but readily picked up again whenever. An easy way out, for both of them.
He guesses it’d be a very dysfunctional sweater but it wouldn’t matter because he’d never wear it.
She hears people tell them that they are perfect for each other in those moments when they stand on stage, harmonizing together. He usually smiles and blushes while she just laughs and lets the words go in through one ear and come out the other.
bypass
pg; seungah/kiseop
he wants to say goodbye. she holds on.
a/n: from the beginning of july, when i was unsatisfied with everything i wrote.
It is dark and silent and still, so still that he thinks the world might not be spinning. He reminds himself that it is, that it always turns, but some part of him still won’t believe it. These parts of him are scattered all over, nonbelieving and nonsensical, but all still unhappy.
He turns on their bedside lamp, the one she saw at the antique shop. The one he didn’t see the use for. Their house has a lot of these kinds of things, decorative pieces, she calls them. Their rings sit on the table, golden and eternal. He sighs while she stirs beside him, fingers tangled into his shirt.
“Five more minutes,” she mumbles sleepily, golden hair catching in the dim light. There is something biting and itchy at the back of his mind, but he pushes the feeling away and smiles down at her.
It is the only thing she ever asks for, the only thing he can ever give her, so he lays back down and watches her breathe.
He doesn’t tell her he counts the seconds until their separation, all three hundred of them.
People that know them tell him he’s lucky, lucky to have such a wife and such a job and such a house in such a neighborhood.
I know, he says when Jaeseop tells him Seungah is smart. I know, he laughs when Soohyun tells him Seungah is pretty. I know, I know, I know is all he says with a tight-lipped smile, again and again and again, though he doesn’t understand what they’re talking about anymore.
He remembers he did, at least he used to. He used to know when he’d come home and wrap her in his arms, when they’d make a mess raking the leaves in the yard in the fall, when she’d burn their food slightly and leave the smell of her cooking all over the house.
Now, all he knows is that smart is not genius and pretty is not beautiful.
Seungah is perfect, plain and perfect, but nothing special.
from me to you
g; supposedly seungah/kiseop
a little piece of beautiful.
a/n: extremely unfinished. this was supposed to be about artsy couple seungah/kiseop but it didn't get far orz
He finds them one afternoon when he’s cleaning out the attic. Boxes, dusty and neglected in the very back corner, shoved in a haphazard halfway in the dark and halfway in the light fashion, as if whoever put them there was torn between leaving them to rot or keeping them.
He thinks they must’ve been moving them around sunset, because the light that filters in from the tiny window hits the left corner of the top box in a way that makes even the dust particles in the air twinkle.
He nearly falls down the stairs to grab his camera, but can’t find anything amidst the messy piles. It’s all his stuff, all things he knows, but they’re thirty miles away from the right places.
This is not home, he remembers as he slumps back up the stairs.
He settles for staring at the boxes and the sunbeam until the light fades away.
go with the wind
pg; kiseop/kibum
late afternoon sunsets, blue evenings.
a/n: superold!shot. this one's from april, when i was just starting to break my writer's block. was supposed to be for the u-kiss fic challenge, but i didn't like where it was going so i discontinued it orz.
Kiseop likes to fly paper planes in his spare time on the cold, windy days, the days that they stay up in the air the longest. He likes watching the way the wind carries them up, up, up, until gravity wins out and sends them down. He always shuts his eyes before they crash but can hear the paper crinkling at the nose-dive nonetheless.
But a smashed-in front is an easy fix for him. There is something magical about repairing a crashed plane or folding a new one, so he does so often. Sometimes out of old newspapers, sometimes out of construction paper. Sometimes out of imagination where they are iridescent and ever-changing, sparkling in the sunlight.
They are all there in the back corner of his closet, old and new and remembered by how long they stayed up in the sky.
(They are all there but the imaginary ones. The imaginary ones that only know how to fly higher and higher, sparkling in the sunlight.)
Beauty is what makes the world worth it. This is what Kiseop remembers his father telling him and his mother laughing and nodding to. The scene is full of the fiery glow of the setting sun that tangles through their hair and fingers in a warm embrace.
Sometimes Kiseop remembers these times and thinks it’s fate. Fate in the way his parents were patrons of the arts, fate how he wishes to be an artist.
His parents used to take him to art museums and galleries every Saturday afternoon, where the three of them would walk hand-in-hand-in-hand down the corridors filled with splashes of vibrant hues and monochrome canvases. Some would be twisted shapes and strange colors, but there was always a gem in the displays. A hidden gem that he would declare to his parents as his favorite of the week.
There is only one hidden gem Kiseop remembers clearly in his mind’s eye. It was a bold orange and pink canvas, a tad smaller than the one next to it. It was off center and unaligned with the others and he recalls huffing to his parents in annoyance about the subject.
Watch, his father said. His palms were on his shoulders. Don’t you see the paper airplanes flying?
Kiseop didn’t see it, not even when he squinted his eyes. It was a strange piece. No, I don’t.
They went around the whole exhibit twice, and each time, he would try to find the paper planes. They didn’t appear to him and he found it fascinating how they did to everyone else. They came back the next week and the two weeks after that and he tried so hard to see them until the painting was switched out of the exhibit.
(He never declared it as his favorite, but in a way, they all kind of knew.)
Kiseop often finds himself painting with soft reds, oranges, yellows, and pinks with a dapple of the lightest blue violet. It is in these colors he finds the most beautiful and the most wistful of his works arise.
maybe they exist
pg-13; none
oily marks appear on walls.
a/n: wrote this for my project when i was in a very avenger-happy mode. casting would be kiseop for smoker, hoon for evanesce, jaeseop or huang xiaoming for angel, and krystal for krystal lmfao. from may, right before my mini writer's block hit.
one
It’s twelve o’clock and he’s smoking a cigar.
He’d think it unethical, blowing puffs of cancerous smoke into a little girl’s face, if he didn’t need the embers and smog so badly. But she doesn’t look up or seem to care, so he simply continues with a deep inhale.
She’s been scribbling nonstop since four in the afternoon, mouthing words silently between her rosy lips. He doesn’t know what she’s seeing now, just knows that she’s seeing something, so he keeps waiting, waiting, waiting even though her little face has been downcast for so long that he can’t remember what she looked like.
He wonders how much longer she will live before the visions of other people’s futures drive her to insanity.
12:01 and she looks up. She isn’t much more than ten years old, an innocent face with wide, pale eyes, staring into his with quiet dignity. Her picture is an abstract scratch of shapes and colors that he can’t decipher.
He squints a little and leans forward. “What is this?” He picks up the paper and holds it closer to his eyes. She just smiles, looking pleased with herself.
“It’s an ostrich, don’t you see?”
“And does the ostrich have a name?” He peers over the top to meet her gaze. Seers were generally weird and cryptic, and she no exception.
“Krystal.”
He leaves twenty minutes pass twelve, biting his tongue and crushing his burnt out cigar with his shoe before he tries to ask the little girl her name too, because she might not be there the next time he comes.
(don’t get attached, don’t get attached, don’t get attached.)
two
Krystal, they say, has a problem.
She finds it funny that they replace “is” with “has” because she’s really a mix of both, which is even worse. She’d laugh, but no one would laugh with her, so she just keeps the joke to herself.
Five times and no passes, so she stopped taking the tests so she wouldn’t have to feel the weight of failure. It’s a bit sad, she thinks as she walks, that they think the problem is her lack of sympathy and the fact that she wouldn’t put a random civilian’s life before hers. The wind whistles and the late winter air leaves her nose red and runny, but she’s sure that she’s not apathetic, just practical.
“Aren’t you cold?” The voice comes from behind and she turns. Wings are spread and reaching up to the sky, sharp eyes among youthful features looking back at her. The early morning sky turns everything blue, their faces, silhouettes, and shadows.
It’s not hard to guess which one he is when she’s seen (and heard of) him a few times before. “What are you doing here?” she calls back, tucking her hands into her sweater. He walks up toward her, a friendly smile on his face and she can’t help but think that he’d make the perfect hero if his wings weren’t so ugly.
He tucks in his wings and sits down on the bench nearby, still looking annoyingly complacent and amused. They are the same age, Krystal vaguely remembers. The same age yet he seems a little happier while she is just lost.
“Smoker sent me to look for you.” His dark eyes twinkle as she takes in his words, forehead creasing.
Smoker. Smo-ker. Ssmo-kerr. She tests the name on her tongue. She remembers the smell of tobacco smoke and ash, a clean-shaven face and white-blonde hair and fiery brown eyes, the West Sect made of secondhand superheroes.
She said no because she did not want to be a misfit and a failure. “And what does he want?” Her voice feels bland and the words dry on her tongue. The boy with wings looks up, meeting her eyes for a moment before she turns away.
“He wants you to run again.”
(the wind whistles again and krystal guess that she really does feel a little cold.)
three
Hoon remembers a time when he knew someone named Evanesce.
Evanesce was one of those superheroes of the East Sect, the kind of superhero who had a thing with water. He could bend it to his will and transform his own body into the liquid (and these things came with major bragging rights). That old Evanesce wasn’t so bad, he thinks, a half smile on his face.
One September mission gone wrong and Evanesce never came back.
It makes him sad to know that Evanesce is gone and that everyone in the West Sect bullies him for only being able to turn into something that’s not quite water and not quite solid, just gel. They call him Dr. Scholls and make wisecracks about “are you gellin’?” and Hoon likes to laugh with them about it because at least when he’s gel, he stays whole.
(though he wonders if the public remembers evanesce sometimes even though he’s dead.)
four
The three of them are sitting on the rooftop of the headquarters high above the city, late afternoon sun casting lazy golden beams like stripes across their faces.
Smoker exhales while Krystal inhales, sending her into a coughing fit because she decided to face him at that second. She briefly wonders how badly he needs the ash and smoke in his system to live when it only endangers the lives of others.
“How long has it been since you ran?” No hello, just business, but she expected that. She shrugs in forced nonchalance. The boy with the wings, Angel, watches them carefully (as he has been for the past two weeks as they tried to pointedly ignore each other).
“Are you scared to run again?” Run, run, run. She wishes he would stop saying the word because all she can hear between the three letters is crashing into the asphalt and things snapping and hurting and breaking.
“No,” she lies. The world feels still, the scent of burnt embers reaching her nose, details that she painstakingly takes the time to see. She watches him as he lights a new cigarette with the snap of his fingers and takes a long drag out of it, but she wants to slap it out of his hands because tobacco, honestly, does not benefit anyone.
They challenge eachother in silence for a while until she caves first. “Why does the West Sect even exist?” she screams at Smoker, Angel, both of them, and stomps off to erase the sympathy she realizes she almost felt.
five
Hoon sits by the pool and just watches the water reflect the recessed lighting like a faceted diamond. He’s sure he looks stupid, but he thinks that just being near water might make him remember how to be water.
He’s sure he’s stupid common sense wise, but he doesn’t really have a reputation (being Dr. Scholls man hardly counts) to sacrifice so he keeps staring.
“Trying again?” Smoker crouches down beside him. They’ve known each other for a long time, even before Hoon knew Evanesce, and he can’t help but wonder why Smoker still hangs around the failures of the West Sect when he has the potential to be a superhero.
He nods and Smoker cracks a smile. “You’re one of the good ones, you know? Even if you are gellin’.” Hoon nearly pushes him into the water as vengeance for his joke. They laugh for a while, sounds echoing off the walls and water.
Smoker gets up to leave a little bit after that, taking the trail of smoke with him.
(he almost doesn’t catch him whisper “at least you’re not scared” under his breath.)
six
Krystal wishes there was a way to not see Angel’s wings and a way to not feel so uneasy around his good natured personality.
“You could be a hero, you know.” He’s been quietly accompanying her for the past few weeks and the silence between them has grown into something comfortable so when she says the words aloud, they feel awkward.
He laughs. His wings are tucked in, bound behind his back and hidden under the shirt and jacket he wears so she can almost pretend that they don’t even exist. “I can’t be a hero,” he says, smiling as if the whole concept is one of those nonsensical jokes that go in circles.
She frowns. “But you can fly.”
He grins, but his eyes convey something that isn’t happiness. “You could, too, if you tried.”
(it is then that krystal realizes that super is just an epithet for something that is still very, very human.)
seven
Ignoring Smoker’s bad habits has become one of hers, though she still hates the ash tray scent all over his clothes.
“You’re so full of bullshit,” she tells him one day as he flicks his cigarette into the trash can. He looks up slightly and she can see the amusement in his eyes.
“What?” He doesn’t look particularly offended or curious about what she has to say and she doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t understand him or his motives, why he tries so hard with the failures and why he won’t try to reach for the better in the East.
“I’m not the only one who’s lying.” She points a finger to the dissipating smoke in the air, leaving the unsaid words hanging over them like something tangibly thick until she brushes past him.
(you don’t need to breath smoke to survive.)
eight
Krystal hates a lot of things, people mostly, but hypocrites are the worst. She’s come to this conclusion from her stay with the West Sect, the losers of losers who complain for change but do nothing to enact it.
She doesn’t want to be one of them, not if they’re like that.
She stares contemplatively at the purple sky and realizes it’s spring. Spring was track season back in high school and she vaguely remembers running sprints, the wind tangling through her hair and slapping against her face. The air is still so she takes a step, just to feel a little breeze.
It’s not enough for her so she takes another and another until the currents feel warm and soft against her face. The world is moving again and she keeps stepping and stepping and stepping until everything blurs and the wind is all that’s there, slapping against her face.
(this time, nothing crashes or hurts or snaps and she remembers the reason why she kind of liked spring.)
nine
Hoon gets into the pool one day because he decides there’s really nothing to lose, not anymore.
It’s not like before, when he didn’t have time to be selfish because there were other people’s lives on the line. He wades into the pool, one, two, three steps before submerging completely and trying to shift.
The change comes a little slower than he thought it would, the liquid feeling starting near his limbs before moving inward towards his torso. He keeps walking as the tension between his body and the water lessens, keeps walking because he knows he’s only three-fourths of the way there.
He’s two feet from the edge of the pool when the flimsy feeling comes again, starting from his neck. Cursing, he slams himself against the edge of the pool in a desperate attempt to get out of the water before he is water.
He collapses on the ground. The tingling sensation reminds him that he is solid again, the flexing of all his limbs, fingers, and toes reminds him that he is still very much whole. His chest heaves shaky breaths in and out and out and in.
He guesses this is what he’s been waiting for and hoping would never happen again.
(evanesce would be turning in his grave if he knew.)
ten
His wings are out again, the tips reaching majestically towards the moon, his head looking up at the polluted city sky. They are a muddy, splotchy brown, like a vulture’s, and she thinks it’s ironic to call him Angel when he looks anything but that.
“Do you have a real name?” Krystal asks him. He shifts his position on the ledge of the rooftop to face her slightly. There is the same easy smile on his lips with the same dark eyes that are anything but happy.
“I’ve always been Angel,” he replies. She’s not satisfied with his answer and wants to pry but decides against it, snapping her mouth shut before the words can come out.
“I saw you running again the other day.” She raises her eyebrows and he runs a hand through the starless sky. “If you jumped from that speed, you could probably fly.”
Krystal starts to believe that Angel wouldn’t make the perfect hero because his wings are so ugly and he’s really not that happy, just lost.
eleven
Smoker watches as the little boy across him doodles with markers. The little girl with the pale eyes he saw last time isn’t there anymore, he was a few days too late. He remembers he never got around to asking her for her name and regrets it a little now.
The boy draws neatly, straight lines and clean cut figures. He’s been using the light brown to shade in the boxy shape he created that looks suspiciously like a chair.
“Do you know Absinthe?” the little boy inquires harmlessly, eyes still down on his picture. Smoker looks up.
“Do you know her?” he asks back. He wants to cover his ears with his hands because he can almost hear her screams just by the sound of her name. The boy shrugs.
“She says she knows you.”
twelve
Krystal takes away his cigars and cigarettes.
It’s cruel, he thinks, and even though she’s starting to reason with her apathy, it’s in all the wrong ways.
He sputters and sputters just on oxygen and realizes that maybe he didn’t really need smoke and embers to breath, just the tobacco.
thirteen
“There’s this girl they keep over at the East Sect, but she’s not a hero.”
Krystal doesn’t turn to look at him, but Smoker knows she’s listening so he continues. “You know what her power is? She’s hard to kill.”
They have an interesting relationship, she and him, full of spite and sharp words but not really full-out hate. He picks up a broken bit of stone from the concrete cracks and chucks it down, all the way down to the empty sidewalk. “And you know what they do to her? They torture her. Break her bones everyday but she just heals because they can’t kill her.”
“And do you know this girl?” Krystal pushes back her hair and Smoker remembers how young she is. How young they all are, yet so defeated.
He laughs a little and picks up another stone. “You don’t really forget the screaming once you hear it.”
“So what’s the problem?” Smoker stops, coughs, thinks about it.
“She keeps trying to break out.” He sets the stone on fire and drops it, watching the bright flame fall to the ground like a star until he can’t see it anymore.
(he doesn’t tell krystal that her name is absinthe and that he once thought they could be heroes together.)
fourteen
He coughs all afternoon and all night after that.
At midnight, he chokes on air and stops breathing.
(he wheezes and flickers but by morning, he thinks he’ll be ok.)
fifteen
The pool is what they call Hoon’s territory now.
He can’t bring himself to transform anymore because he knows now after several tries that he can do it, but he doesn’t want the bad things (separated limbs, crooked joints) to happen again. So he just stares, stares and wonders why this thing people called a blessing feels so much like a curse.
(evanesce does not actually have a grave because he never really died, just fell apart.)
sixteen
There is a manila envelope sitting on the round table in Smoker’s office when everyone comes in.
Krystal still doesn’t know everyone, or what they’re capable of, but she knows that the envelope is there to turn one of them from a misfit to a hero. She stares at Smoker who doesn’t really smoke anymore but still smells like ash and the envelope, eyes going back and forth continuously.
He puts up his hands. Silence. Someone walks in late, she turns and sees Angel, tall head bobbing through the crowd. Angel and everyone looks at him as the syllables leave Smoker’s lips.
Angel! And he still turns back to the direction where he came from, Krystal thinking he should’ve just not come at all if he was going to be late.
seventeen
“I don’t know why they want me.” This is the first thing he tells her after she finds him, sitting at the staircase.
“I don’t know why they want you either,” she snorts back and Angel looks up. He wonders why they wouldn’t want her and why the East Sect would want him, ugly wings and nonbelieving.
Quiet settles over them again and he remembers that this is how they are most comfortable.
“There was a boy once,” he starts. He shoots her a questioning look, asking for permission to continue on, while she just shifts against the pole she leans on. “He had parents. And a real name.”
They listen to eachother breath for a second, then another. “And what happened to this boy?” She almost sounds concerned, sympathetic, even. He smiles a little and shakes his head.
“He had to die for Angel to live.”
Krystal crosses her arms a little tighter at that and leans back until the sliver of light coming from the crack in the ceiling fades into nothing more than a slice of yellow against gray. She squints and the world turns blurry, unsquints and the world turns clear again, Angel there in both places.
She thinks she finally understands. “Maybe he still exists.”
(maybe they all still exist, in the cracks and crevices, just forgotten and hidden from their eyes. but she thinks if they squint, maybe, just maybe, they might see them again.)
eighteen
He doesn’t know why he’s back at the pool and doesn’t want to know why. He’s given up, promised it hundreds of times, yet he still comes back. The water sloshes as he lets it slip from his fingers, liquid against solid.
Hoon’s not quite content so he absentmindedly scoops up more and more, sure that he looks psychotic and mental but guessing he’ll never really be far from it. The trickles become whispers that turn into roars and suddenly the water is everywhere but in the pool, all around his fingers and body so he slips into the current and just floats along.
He hears someone clapping, guesses it’s Smoker, and supposes that he’s finally done it, so he smiles. He’s not quite content, but not unhappy either, just glad to be able to come out of the water feeling whole and knowing that maybe the blessing isn’t so bad after all.
(evanesce never really died and dr. scholls man never really lived, but hoon realizes they are just names, synonymous to his.)
nineteen
Smoker nearly has to search the whole ward to find the little boy who draws neatly.
They sit across from each other in the same little rainbow-colored plastic chairs and he just watches the boy draw and draw and draw, trying to find the right words to say to him.
The little boy reaches for the crayons across the table and Smoker hands them to him. He watches and waits until the picture is finished, an unbalanced scale with perfectly drawn stick figures on each side.
“What is that supposed to represent?” he asks. The boy turns the paper so it faces him, eyes meeting his unflinchingly for a brief moment.
“This is the east.” A small finger points to the higher side. “And this is the west.” The finger moves to the lower side.
Smoker picks up the piece of paper, looking at it carefully. He mentally goes over the compass rose in his mind; north, east, south, west in the clockwise direction. The boy wrote the east on the left instead of the right, west on the right instead of the left.
“Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake here?” He grins a little, handing the paper back. The boy thinks about it, creased forehead and furrowed eyebrows.
“No.”
Smoker chuckles, still sure he did because he feels a little too content in the West to accept that the East is better. “What’s your name, boy?”
twenty
“Guess you’re leaving, then.”
The corners of his mouth twitch up a little at her words. “Guess I am.” She doesn’t look particularly concerned, just nods and keeps walking with him.
Angel doesn’t want to answer any of the questions he knows she wants to ask and she’s doing a good job of holding her tongue. Maybe she does care, maybe she has some sympathy now, he thinks. Maybe she’ll be the next name in the manila envelope, maybe they’ll see each other again soon.
“You’re wings aren’t that ugly, you know.” She says it nonchalantly, testing how Angel will respond. There are just breaths between them for a while, blending into the early summer air. He looks at her and grins again, this time lighting up his whole face.
“Guess they aren’t.” He waves at her as he gets in the van and it feels like a promise, but she’s not sure what kind.
She doesn’t wave back until the van is a speck on the horizon.
(it is the first time she sees him really smile and she thinks his face might’ve just broke from it.)