no chance. (chapter one)
inside: grossprose, ryeowook, a piano and blood.
prologue
Kim Ryeowook, nineteen, wakes up with blood on his hands.
He isn’t surprised; it must’ve happened again because all that’s left is a dark red crust congealing around his fingers and half of his left palm. He checks the bedside table - yes, the glass of milk is still intact teetering on the side of it, and the unneeded glasses case is still there as well. He lets out a small sigh as he notices the blood, noticing immediately the stiffness of his lips as he breathes; dry, cracked and glued stiff in a way.
As he looks in his wall-length mirror, he moans inwardly at the swooping bags under his eyes; frequently staying up all night dancing on the whims of his mind that decides to inspire his compositions at four in the morning doesn’t do too much good for his skin. As a music major, he’ll have to live with it; the appreciative stares from his professors and the glares from his peers more than make up for the sleep lost - among other things.
And there it goes again.
It’s like a siren has combusted and ignited in his mind, pounding on the insides of his skull and sending tremors of heat all the way down to his toes and back up to his fiery hair, tousled from a restless night’s slumber. The outlines of his room seem to blur into one swirling mass of grey around him and it’s like the floor has been pulled out from under his feet; only now, it’s dragging him with it on its crazed inferno. It’s taking control, it’s overcoming him once more -
It stops almost as soon as it started and he breathes a sigh of relief; he should be used to these incidents by now but they always seem to catch him off guard. Sometimes he can’t remember what he was doing before, which explains his chaotic, mismatched compositions that have a tendency to include unsteady repetitions and puzzled notes that are somehow so out of place but seem to belong in an odd way. Today, it’s the same; he vaguely recalls getting up in the middle of the night and walking outside into the cool night air, piercing screams in the haunting breeze and the glint of moonlight on a smooth sheet of metal.
The smooth, dry feel of a paper under his foot brings whatever ounces of consciousness he hasn’t regained already; looking down, he realizes it’s one of his older compositions from when he was sixteen, titled Lust. He laughs as he picks it up, dazedly running his finger over the keys as he scans his eyes over the worn pages - how could he ever have been so hopelessly attracted to someone to have ever written that?
If he were to find last night’s composition in under an hour, it would be a personal record; his loft is littered with assorted sheets adorned with scrawled notes and ragged edges. Maybe a white ring from a glass of milk used to steady the paper on the table and stop it from flying in the wind like a bizarre bird, or maybe grey fingerprints from his fingers smudged by pencil lead. He doesn’t usually bring visitors home; sometimes a professor or two just to discuss various ways he can write his cadence or famous composers, and even they cast a disdainful eye on the fallen birds of music that litter the floor with their ragged feathers. It’s almost become a morning ritual, searching for the right sheet music, and it gets his mind ready to spend the next few hours sitting at the piano with a glass of milk and a pencil that, if he does well, should be worn down to a stub by the afternoon.
This time, the record is broken as he sees a smear of red against the off-white manuscript paper and curiously examines the sheet. The writing and notation is different from anything he’s ever written before; it’s bolder, the lead from the pencil darker and more confident, without a single mark of a scratchy eraser marring its smooth, collected surface. The note stems are higher, shooting along the length of the stave like needles, and for once there doesn’t seem to be a single pedal mark or a small p that demarcates for him to play softer and more delicately. Instead, the manuscript is peppered with hastily scrawled sforzando markings, accents and intense, pounding arpeggios. Multiple clashing notes in one furious beat reverberate through the lines without rest; one could certainly also look at the speed markings and proclaim that the piece was written by a psychopathic madman.
Even the smeared, red blotches of fingerprints on the edges of the sheet seem to lead to that conclusion. And the title tops it off; Aucune Chance, loosely translated as No Chance. There are three pages, all double-sided; it drives Ryeowook to the brink of insanity to turn over a page and have it sit there, blank and unwritten without a story to tell.
He sits down at the well-worn piano stool, settling into the comfort that the instrument in front of it promises him. And he gives up on his first bar. It is technically perfect, of course, given that Ryeowook has been learning how to play since he was four, but it lacks its intended chaotic feel. Perhaps it’s because the nineteen-year-old has only crafted delicate or yearning pieces to date, or perhaps it’s the morning stiffness acting up.
Perhaps it’s because he isn’t in the right mood. Yet he wants to be, because there’s such intrigue to the piece as there is to the murder story in the morning newspaper that Ryeowook’s eyes skimmed over as it lay outside the doorstep.
Perhaps he needs to think like a murderer; channel the psychopathic desires into his bloodstream and feel his heart pound with exhilaration as his target lies cold below him on damp grass with the moonlight spilling over the body.
And then he’s playing like he has never played before, the passion flowing through and around him like a second skin that he never knew he had. His fingers tremble over the keys and even the slightest movement produces a sound that almost seems to lift the hundreds of scores off the floor into a tornado of chaotic unrest.
Within minutes, it’s over and Ryeowook slumps at the piano, panting, his fingers throbbing and blood coursing through him in a venomous frenzy. He carefully wipes the blood stains off the piano keys before heading back to his room to slip a proper shirt onto him and conceal his rather effeminate frame under a thick jacket. The bruises from primary school are still there, when one of the bullies pushed him off the top of the school building because he preferred to stay inside, sing and play unlike the other boys. That brought about the dizzy trances, and Ryeowook has had enough taunting for a lifetime and beyond.
Carefully and silently shutting the door behind him as so not to wake the residents below, Ryeowook tiptoes down the stairs like a black cat in a lonely alley to the cafe on the street just opposite the apartment block. He’ll get a chocolate croissant, maybe an espresso if he’s in the mood for one; besides, he needs it, he’s stayed up all night.
The cafe is deathly silent; no-one usually arrives at seven in the morning for breakfast, and the cashier smiles at Ryeowook as he silently hands her the bundle of bills she needs. The bread is still warm by the time he carries it up to his apartment and he sets the scalding Styrofoam cup of coffee on the table with a sigh of relief, his fingers still throbbing from the warmth.
He doesn’t notice the cup stained with red, and his fingers still unwashed, stained with the same colour - the colour of death.
He doesn’t think twice about the newspaper headline either, ignoring the blaring headlines.
‘SERIAL KILLER R HAS STRUCK AGAIN’.
-
Please comment and tell us how you found this chapter! We promise you'll get to see interactions between the two characters very soon, but right now we just need to set the scene. Don't forget to leave a comment below and thank you for reading!
prologue
Kim Ryeowook, nineteen, wakes up with blood on his hands.
He isn’t surprised; it must’ve happened again because all that’s left is a dark red crust congealing around his fingers and half of his left palm. He checks the bedside table - yes, the glass of milk is still intact teetering on the side of it, and the unneeded glasses case is still there as well. He lets out a small sigh as he notices the blood, noticing immediately the stiffness of his lips as he breathes; dry, cracked and glued stiff in a way.
As he looks in his wall-length mirror, he moans inwardly at the swooping bags under his eyes; frequently staying up all night dancing on the whims of his mind that decides to inspire his compositions at four in the morning doesn’t do too much good for his skin. As a music major, he’ll have to live with it; the appreciative stares from his professors and the glares from his peers more than make up for the sleep lost - among other things.
And there it goes again.
It’s like a siren has combusted and ignited in his mind, pounding on the insides of his skull and sending tremors of heat all the way down to his toes and back up to his fiery hair, tousled from a restless night’s slumber. The outlines of his room seem to blur into one swirling mass of grey around him and it’s like the floor has been pulled out from under his feet; only now, it’s dragging him with it on its crazed inferno. It’s taking control, it’s overcoming him once more -
It stops almost as soon as it started and he breathes a sigh of relief; he should be used to these incidents by now but they always seem to catch him off guard. Sometimes he can’t remember what he was doing before, which explains his chaotic, mismatched compositions that have a tendency to include unsteady repetitions and puzzled notes that are somehow so out of place but seem to belong in an odd way. Today, it’s the same; he vaguely recalls getting up in the middle of the night and walking outside into the cool night air, piercing screams in the haunting breeze and the glint of moonlight on a smooth sheet of metal.
The smooth, dry feel of a paper under his foot brings whatever ounces of consciousness he hasn’t regained already; looking down, he realizes it’s one of his older compositions from when he was sixteen, titled Lust. He laughs as he picks it up, dazedly running his finger over the keys as he scans his eyes over the worn pages - how could he ever have been so hopelessly attracted to someone to have ever written that?
If he were to find last night’s composition in under an hour, it would be a personal record; his loft is littered with assorted sheets adorned with scrawled notes and ragged edges. Maybe a white ring from a glass of milk used to steady the paper on the table and stop it from flying in the wind like a bizarre bird, or maybe grey fingerprints from his fingers smudged by pencil lead. He doesn’t usually bring visitors home; sometimes a professor or two just to discuss various ways he can write his cadence or famous composers, and even they cast a disdainful eye on the fallen birds of music that litter the floor with their ragged feathers. It’s almost become a morning ritual, searching for the right sheet music, and it gets his mind ready to spend the next few hours sitting at the piano with a glass of milk and a pencil that, if he does well, should be worn down to a stub by the afternoon.
This time, the record is broken as he sees a smear of red against the off-white manuscript paper and curiously examines the sheet. The writing and notation is different from anything he’s ever written before; it’s bolder, the lead from the pencil darker and more confident, without a single mark of a scratchy eraser marring its smooth, collected surface. The note stems are higher, shooting along the length of the stave like needles, and for once there doesn’t seem to be a single pedal mark or a small p that demarcates for him to play softer and more delicately. Instead, the manuscript is peppered with hastily scrawled sforzando markings, accents and intense, pounding arpeggios. Multiple clashing notes in one furious beat reverberate through the lines without rest; one could certainly also look at the speed markings and proclaim that the piece was written by a psychopathic madman.
Even the smeared, red blotches of fingerprints on the edges of the sheet seem to lead to that conclusion. And the title tops it off; Aucune Chance, loosely translated as No Chance. There are three pages, all double-sided; it drives Ryeowook to the brink of insanity to turn over a page and have it sit there, blank and unwritten without a story to tell.
He sits down at the well-worn piano stool, settling into the comfort that the instrument in front of it promises him. And he gives up on his first bar. It is technically perfect, of course, given that Ryeowook has been learning how to play since he was four, but it lacks its intended chaotic feel. Perhaps it’s because the nineteen-year-old has only crafted delicate or yearning pieces to date, or perhaps it’s the morning stiffness acting up.
Perhaps it’s because he isn’t in the right mood. Yet he wants to be, because there’s such intrigue to the piece as there is to the murder story in the morning newspaper that Ryeowook’s eyes skimmed over as it lay outside the doorstep.
Perhaps he needs to think like a murderer; channel the psychopathic desires into his bloodstream and feel his heart pound with exhilaration as his target lies cold below him on damp grass with the moonlight spilling over the body.
And then he’s playing like he has never played before, the passion flowing through and around him like a second skin that he never knew he had. His fingers tremble over the keys and even the slightest movement produces a sound that almost seems to lift the hundreds of scores off the floor into a tornado of chaotic unrest.
Within minutes, it’s over and Ryeowook slumps at the piano, panting, his fingers throbbing and blood coursing through him in a venomous frenzy. He carefully wipes the blood stains off the piano keys before heading back to his room to slip a proper shirt onto him and conceal his rather effeminate frame under a thick jacket. The bruises from primary school are still there, when one of the bullies pushed him off the top of the school building because he preferred to stay inside, sing and play unlike the other boys. That brought about the dizzy trances, and Ryeowook has had enough taunting for a lifetime and beyond.
Carefully and silently shutting the door behind him as so not to wake the residents below, Ryeowook tiptoes down the stairs like a black cat in a lonely alley to the cafe on the street just opposite the apartment block. He’ll get a chocolate croissant, maybe an espresso if he’s in the mood for one; besides, he needs it, he’s stayed up all night.
The cafe is deathly silent; no-one usually arrives at seven in the morning for breakfast, and the cashier smiles at Ryeowook as he silently hands her the bundle of bills she needs. The bread is still warm by the time he carries it up to his apartment and he sets the scalding Styrofoam cup of coffee on the table with a sigh of relief, his fingers still throbbing from the warmth.
He doesn’t notice the cup stained with red, and his fingers still unwashed, stained with the same colour - the colour of death.
He doesn’t think twice about the newspaper headline either, ignoring the blaring headlines.
‘SERIAL KILLER R HAS STRUCK AGAIN’.
-
Please comment and tell us how you found this chapter! We promise you'll get to see interactions between the two characters very soon, but right now we just need to set the scene. Don't forget to leave a comment below and thank you for reading!