OVER & OVER

THIS WORK NEVER ENDS.

[4ftersunset]

OVERVIEW

[ currently viewing this page as @/4ftersunset ] … did you see? yesterday, AHN TAERIN TAEJUN (HE/HIM, ANY) was spotted at the airport! you know, that 27 year old who was part of that one film's EXTRAS? the cursed one that they never finished? yeah, they were the CIRCUS WORKER / THE ROPE DANCER! i know everyone already knows they’re RESERVED and DEBILITATINGLY SUPERSTITIOUS, but i heard that THEY WOULD "CALM" PEOPLE'S FEARS ON SET THROUGH TOUCH. apparently they’re a CRISIS CHAT OPERATOR now, but i guess they’ve got unfinished business with this movie, or this movie’s got unfinished business with them.

RELATED LINKS

introduction

search results for “ahn taejun”

4ftersunset’s user profile

followed by 4ftersunset

liked by 4ftersunset

[4ftersunset]

— WITH OPEN.

believing a change of scenery might help ease their minds, taejun and MUSE hope to spend one night away from the overlook, and arrive at a motel in town instead.

the sign of the midnight motel stands like a low lighthouse at the end of a long, dark street. a pale neon yellow, its glow makes taejun's sweater turn a sickly shade as he waits politely for the receptionist to click around on her bulky computer. she looks young, like she should be in university instead of a dead end town, which is maybe why she looks so disgruntled.

"what are you looking for, again?" she says. "room for a couple?"

taejun glances over his shoulder at the silhouette standing in front of the motel's front windows. moths circle the light above their head. he's the one who had brought up this motel to them and the one who proposed that they might have a better night's sleep away from the overlook, in case it was somehow its very walls and floors that was responsible for everything going wrong this week. there are other reasons taejun wanted to spend a night in the town, but because he's the one who told them about the motel, they are his responsibility, and he has to make sure this works.

his bag rustles by his knees as he shifts uncertainly. "there are two of us, yes," he says.

"right. perfect." the receptionist taps away at her keyboard. she asks, a bit briskly, for a means of payment. taejun counts out the amount in cash and hands it over and she takes that briskly too, and he has a fleeting thought of how everyone is a bit rude nowadays.

"one key or two keys?"

"i'm sorry?"

"do. you need. one key, or two keys."

"two?" taejun answers, puzzled.

"okay." she reaches for a set of keys behind her and hands them to him. "checkout's at noon. have a good stay."

taejun would like to ask more questions, but she looks impatient to go back to doing nothing, and he doesn't think she'd know any of the answers anyway. he picks up his duffel bag again and thanks her, then exits the front office to rejoin the other.

"i got them." he offers one of the keys to them. "two rooms weren't that expensive at all." he smiles slightly. it's a small win, but in light of recent things, he's just grateful there was room for them at all. "i'm sure we'll be right next to each other. second floor, i think." he looks down at the 226 engraved on his own key and thinks, birthday numbers. what a coincidence. "are you ready to go?"

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @forselunes:

[...] “no one ever really asked what i saw,” he says. “i never got to tell it… not the way it actually happened.”

he listens quietly to the things that hyunsik tells him, things which he had hoped would clear the haze of uncertainty for him---things which did, but only to reveal a more puzzling picture. "you're not the first i've heard say that," taejun says tentatively. "about not remembering certain times, but also seeing things you aren't sure were real or not. i've heard the others talking about feeling, seeing, hearing all kinds of things back then and even later. i can't remember a lot of it clearly either, except maybe towards the end? some of it's starting to come back now that we're all here, though. now that you're here too, i'm sure you'll start to remember more."

like most things he says, it's wishful thinking at best, but taejun has learned that wishful thinking is seldom effective. he had to say it like it was going to happen, or else he'd leave room for doubt to creep in. when he catches hyunsik searching his face for some semblance of familiarity, he becomes more certain this is the right thing to say.

"it was easy for me to question it because i knew a bit of you from before. i can see how it would have been easier for others to believe the first thing they heard about you, but i can't imagine what it must have been like to hear all of that. i'm sorry." he slows as he notices hyunsik lagging behind, eventually stopping altogether to look back at him. "i do want to hear it from your side, if you're ready to talk about it."

behind him, the chapel rises into the sky, staunch and stoic.

though taejun is not intimately familiar with the god that this place worships, it feels fitting for a confessional.

"come through here. this door opened for me a few days ago."

he's gesturing along the side, where a part of the fence has been folded down by the wind and allows them through. the rear entrance of the chapel is a wooden door, simple and unassuming. taejun tucks his bag into the crook of one arm, then stretches out the other plainly in hyunsik's direction. "you can tell me inside."

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @koisriver:

there's something unpleasant about waiting for a decision from somebody else, out of his control. taejun can't put a finger on why, but feels it manifest as the dread of— of what, he can't name. there is more and more of the past these days, week-long rainfalls of it, flooding slowly into the house he's built for himself. as he stands there waiting for the producer to clear him, he can feel it creeping up to his ankles, cold.

i'm here to help, all right? i promise that they won't know you're the one who told me. you're safe here.

"she might have a few more questions for you," the producer tells him. you should sit and wait outside in case, but you're good for now, taerin.

"what?"

"i said you're good for now, taejun." the producer claps him on the back. taejun flinches. "can you tell kiyeon to come in next?"

stiffly, taejun nods, then leaves the room. the investigator's taken over the hotel lobby and the manager's office for standard questioning, which means that the cameras were ordered off for the sake of hiding it from the livestream, but taejun still can't shake the weight of eyes on him. he returns to the small row of chairs that have been arranged across reception and quietly tells their makeup supervisor that it's his turn, waiting until he leaves to sit in his place.

doah is there, another seat down. taejun wonders why no one else has been asked to stay. he hesitates for a second, looking at the empty seat between them, before he looks at doah herself. memory laps at his ankles again: doah under the support beams of his ropes, on the platform where the contortionist performed on display. how a stage light had flicked on, blooming over her silhouette like a halo, and taejun had been moved by the sign before he even processed that the beam was coming down. the lance of pain in his leg, afterwards. the way it echoes in his body now.

he fears that there is not much common ground between them; it has been made clear to him that even the overlap of their values compelled them to act in uncomfortably different ways.

still, he can't help but remember the halo around her. he can't help but think of her now.

"are you doing all right?" he asks across the distance, voice soft. "are you waiting to be called back, or waiting for your first turn?"

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @rottingc0re:

[...] he drags a hand over his face, rubbing at his temples, cold chill at the edges of his fingers. "and then you can leave me the fuck alone, okay? don't lock yourself out like you did earlier and we won't have any more problems."

of course i know, taejun thinks, though his mind can't quite conjure the memory that he thought he had. must be more phantoms. he cocks his head at the idea that no one might have come and found him after all. a bleak thought, but not impossible. he can't be so self-important to think that someone had to remember to look for him.

he watches byeonghun go to the door, mirroring the exact same motions he'd done about an hour ago. of course the door doesn't budge. "the bodies wouldn't whisper, byeonghun. they would no longer be living," he explains patiently, like one would to a student, just like how the door is locked and taejun told him so. however, byeonghun seems to be a little like him after all, needing to touch something to believe it, so taejun lets him find this out for himself.

he does hear what they say about him; he also reads them. maybe it's a fundamental difference in their beliefs, but taejun thinks there are worse things to be thought of as, like somebody who couldn't sleep or dream, or somebody who was wholly closed off to the source. taejun has always needed music to dance. byeonghun, on the other hand, can move without even thinking. without even opening his eyes. byeonghun didn't like to listen to him, but if the rumors were true, then he listened in his sleep to something greater than them both, to something that guided him along a path that no one else could possibly understand.

"people will always reject what they can't comprehend, but i think you are lucky," taejun says, and decides to leave that there too. he does remember that this is a touchy subject, and byeonghun already looks very agitated by the notion that taejun might see him in the shower. he must be shy, taejun reasons. he hops off the counter and follows byeonghun to the door to his room. "mm. you know how it is. i can't make promises that i can't guarantee i can keep. but yes, i will go look for more keys, and i promise that i..." his eyes drift to the running water, the pulled-back curtains, the place where byeonghun used to be standing. "...will knock on the door each time before i come in, so that you know that it is me and i am there. four knocks. one--two--three--four." four demonstrative knocks to the doorway, separated by short, even beats.

"thank you for finding me, byeonghun. i hope i can repay the favor someday." smiling, he lays a light hand on byeonghun's arm and squeezes. he lingers, and then he leaves harmless as a ghost, and the door to byeonghun's room clicks shut quietly behind him.

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @forselunes:

one step, two.

since he heard, the world seemed to begin sinking and rising under his feet, like walking across the stomach of a sleeping behemoth that he musn't wake.

one step. two.

hyunsik, who he hasn't seen since those last, scattered days of filming, looks well—as well as he can be, under these circumstances. taejun didn't think that he would come after all, but he'd heard of his arrival just after that morning, and for a moment it had felt like a cosmic trade. taejun has always known that the universe and whatever governed it wouldn't be so concerned about a couple of small, human lives, but he has never considered the true callousness of it. perhaps if he had helped heesung more--- perhaps if he'd helped him learn how to listen to it earlier.

but he is with hyunsik now. hyunsik's case deserves his full attention. taejun will not make the same mistakes twice.

"i heard about what happened," he tells hyunsik quietly as their footsteps crunch on the path into town. it's eerily quiet now, none of that after-sundown noise as people make their way home. today, it feels that none of them left home at all. it gives them a clear path through town, at least. no questions, no cameras. he's glad that hyunsik agreed to help him with this. "i...read a few things, too," he admits.

the worst ones called hyunsik all kinds of names. an uncomfortable number of them flaunted insider information, what really happened between that crazy cast, and fuzzy, unrelated pictures that supposedly proved some timeline of events. all taejun could remember was the quiet conversations they'd had on set, content to sit back and watch everyone else under the stage lights.

asking his memory to reconsider something he feels so sure about remembering is difficult, especially when it's one of the rare things he remembers at all. he glances at hyunsik, concern plainly written across his face. "but i didn't think any of them sounded like you."

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @lvnderhaze:

[...] "step away from the window, taejun-ssi. it's not safe." the lights on the lamp posts began to flicker and if mikayla wasn't scared right now, she would roll her eyes at the cliché but her stomach wouldn't settle down - telling her to get away from the window. "i'm serious - stop looking at it." at this point, the female wasn't sure if she was saying it for his sake or for hers, especially since she was still staring at the figure.

"do i?" taejun echoed.

the shadow wasn't doing anything. it was standing there and it was watching them—watching over them? taejun thought wistfully, almost raising his hand to wave again. the view was almost the same view from his apartment window, four stories up, an island of light in the middle of the road before it became one big stretch of darkness.

he jolted when he felt her hand on his wrist, not realizing how far he'd begun drifting until the contact reminded him of the real ground he stood on, and her real presence next to him. he looked at her for a second, disoriented. it was the kind of daze that fell over his eyes when he looked at a screen for too long.

"why wouldn't it be safe?" he caught himself about to turn back to the window, pulled by some kind of magnetism. fascination? like seeing a closed curtain and needing to look behind it, just in case there was something there.

was seeing believing, to mikayla? was that why she was afraid? there were so many things they couldn't see but could hurt them at any moment, and that didn't make them any less real. for him, it had always been touch. anything that could hurt him had to touch him first, even at the smallest, most atomic level.

"shouldn't we see if it's really there?" he closed a hand over the back of hers, gentle, soothing. he drew her away from the window, since it was scaring her, and towards the elevator instead. "if it wants something, if it's real, shouldn't we try to know? to appease it?"

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @5eraphism:

[...] "i'd really like the company," she says then, fingers curling against the fabric of her sweater. there's something in the way she says it, something almost too soft, too hesitant like admitting she doesn't want to be alone might be too appealing to the shadows lurking beyond these four walls. "i . . . didn't bring a whole lot, just a few things," she continues, deciding it'd be best to not just stand there, and makes her way to where some sweaters sit stacked and folded, waiting to be put away into the drawers. "did you . . . find out who your neighbors are?" she asks after a pause, eyes drifting from where the two of them have settled to the adjoining bathroom. she's thankful to be able to have her own room, but the thought of sharing such a space either way makes her a little unnerved. "are you sharing with someone you know?"

"oh, in that case. i'll keep you company until you become sick of me," he hums, petting her elbow as he goes to help with the sweaters. he's never liked being alone for too long, and especially being alone in silence—ironic, given the sad and quiet state of his apartment these days, but the midnight calls helped fill that silence. before agreeing to come, it had crossed his mind, whether he would be able to still take calls, but the reception's given him very little reason to trust it. he wonders just how much can be heard through the walls anyway, and whether he'd really like anyone else to hear the things that people confess in the dead of night.

"mm. yes, byeonghun is in the room next to mine." he pauses, then shares a humorous little smile with her as he opens another drawer. "i don't think he is happy about it, although i guess i have never seen him happy at all. i hope you're sharing with someone a little..." again he pauses, trying for a few seconds to find a good word for him, before he eventually settles on, "less like byeonghun? you know how he is."

he vaguely remembers seeing them in conversation around set back then, but the specifics, like much of the others, are fuzzy. "do you remember much from that time?" he's sure that byeonghun's hostility towards him comes from some deep-seated neuroses that neither of them have yet to uncover, but he'd seemed to get along better with hyejin, from taejun's observations anyway. he folds a sweater aside, hesitating for a few seconds before he brings up something that's been weighing on his mind.

"some things are fuzzy for me. or. sometimes, i try to remember a specific day, but i can't." he glances at her, gauging. he doesn't mean to worry her; upsetting her matters a little more to him than with others. but there's only so long he can turn his doubts in his own head before he starts to feel a little not-sane. "there are these black spots in my memory from that time, full days that are just gone. i don't understand why. i'm sorry to ask. i am...not sure who else i can talk to about it." he rests his hands lightly on the open drawer, imagining their memories filed away neatly like sweaters in a dresser. was there some case in hyejin's skull that held all of her missing memories? or were they just gone, having never been folded into one to begin with?

[lovestereo]

Visit Original Link

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @murmurline:

[...] they came all this way, so might as well. he slides one out of the stack like it's a jenga piece and holds it in front of the male, eyeing him for any signs of curiosity. "they've got unlabeled ones. should we see what's on it?"

the amphitheater strikes taejun as a lonely place: all its seats, all its room for all these bodies within hand's reach of each other, all turned to an impassive screen. he wouldn't have willingly come here by himself.

he was tentative at first, when he saw heesung again. time has effaced certain parts of their last summer and makes it more difficult to remember where he had left off with certain things. for heesung, he remembers the time closer to the end, when his leg put him out of commission and forced him to spend more time on the ground like a bird with a clipped wing. he remembers that heesung was one of the few who didn't outright dismiss him when he let slip that the accident mustn't have been an accident at all, that there was something at play that was beyond the depths of their understanding.

and yet he remembers unease. this is perhaps why he goes slowly. he reaches out to heesung's arm and squeezes briefly, before leaning in to look at the projector. it's familiar somehow, until he remembers that he saw one in a museum before, in that place he found that the studio worked with. it looks worn.

he accepts the tape that heesung offers, turning it over in his hands curiously. "it's been played before." his fingers drift over the soft, subtle scorings on the side. "more times than i would think."

wordlessly, he slots the tape in. there's a moment when his thoughts go quiet and his hands work without him, clicking the projector into place and turning it on. taejun doesn't think anything of it until light flickers through its lens, painting a bright spotlight on the wall ahead of them. has he done this before?

taejun looks at his hands. he looks up at heesung.

a woman with a silver neck looks back. she smiles and opens her arms in welcome.

taejun blinks. heesung, who is heesung again, has half of his face illuminated by the light. "heesung," taejun says gently. between them, the tape clicks and begins to roll. their shadows flicker on the walls. "will you tell me if you hear anything out of the ordinary, please?"

[4ftersunset]

@/anonymous said: what is something about you that no one else knows?

@/4ftersunset said:

a few months ago, on the phone, i spoke to a ghost. some people will say that i can't really say that for sure, because you can't see anyone on the phone. but you feel it. i think you know when you feel it. have you heard a ghost in your ear before? their voice comes in twos, all stereoscopic. like those 3d movie glasses, where one is dead but the other hasn't realized it yet and for a moment they exist together in a dimension higher than us. so this ghost, who went by lacewing, told me that she was going to visit her brother but that she was afraid. why? i asked, but she said she didn't know. they hadn't seen each other in years, and she didn't even quite know where he lived, so maybe she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find him again. she would just follow the moths to him, she said. why moths? i wondered, and she said because he'd always liked them, and because they always flocked to the light. to keep her company, i stayed on the phone with her until sunrise, until i heard her start to fall asleep. when she went quiet, i ended the call. i was a little hungry by then, and for some reason i missed the sun, so i went out for breakfast. i came back sometime in the afternoon later, where i passed my neighbor's door and noticed a little moth sticker by their peephole. wasn't that coincidental? the neighbor in question found me standing there a few minutes later, and they didn't even ask what i was doing. their eyes were ragged and they couldn't look at anything higher than the floor. i asked what was wrong, but they told me they were fine, and they went inside and i didn't see them again for a bit. later on i learned that that morning, they had received news that their sibling had passed away a week prior. as soon as i found out, i looked at my call history, wondering if there had been a mistake, and sure enough there was the 8-hour call i made that sunday evening. only—when i redialed the number, a restaurant picked up instead? i still wonder if i really talked to someone or something that night. i haven't told anyone else about it, though i used to think about telling my neighbor. i don't know if it's good or bad that i didn't. they moved out a few weeks before i came here but not, i noticed, without adding a second moth to their door. it's starting to peel now, but it's still there. every time i walk past it, i think of its voice. thank you for talking to me. :)

[4ftersunset]

@/hittingreppppppeat said: i think i heard your voice before? it was late at night sometime in the winter so it was a bit scratchy. but i am sure it was definitely you

@/4ftersunset said:

oh, maybe. i've spoken to too many people to count now, especially in the coldest and quietest season. i hope we had a nice conversation.

[4ftersunset]

@/user19980226 said: come home

@/4ftersunset said:

please leave me alone.

[REMOVED]

[4ftersunset]

@/redthread_ said: if there was a mask for you in real life, what would yours be/look like?

@/4ftersunset said:

i would like to be without a face. without eyes, without a nose, without a mouth, and so without the weight of those needs. sometimes in my sleep, something will come to borrow them from me, and in those happy blank hours before i have to wake up again, i feel fulfilled. like i am finally how i was meant to be. it would be nice to walk around feeling like that all of the time, don't you think?

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @lvnderhaze:

TAEJUN IS STANDING IN FRONT OF THE WINDOW, tablet in hand, when he finally sees the silhouette.

it's subtle. standing just behind the fence, far enough away from the lamp posts to be swathed in darkness, it's too tall to be an animal and too still to be tree. around it, blades of grass and overgrown weeds sway. the longer taejun looks, the deeper the pit in his stomach grows. it isn't quite fear, but the dread of the arrival of something that was long inevitable.

tentatively, he raises his hand.

i can see you. can you see me?

the sound of a door opening startles him. turning, he sees a flash of #417 and mikayla's familiar face, leaving her room. "mikayla?" he calls, withdrawing his hand.

she can be trusted, he thinks. she was the one who checked on his leg when he hurt it on set, even when he tried to insist that it was fine. it was rare that he let anyone decide better on that front. he'd admired how she could help, really help, and by that he meant help with a tangible proof that she had made something better, not worse: a bandage, a sling, a lasting balm for that place of hurt. it was wrong to envy others, but he envied her for it.

"can you come and look? i think something is outside." he steps aside so she can step in front of the window and the quiet night beyond it. fear is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishment of reasonable patterns, so yes, taejun knows that this isn't fear, because he still asks to confirm, "do you see anything?"

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @rottingc0re:

[...] "i'd prefer not to have an audience while i shower." he grumbles, hand pulling back the curtain, fingers reaching to turn on the spray, looking away from him, from the mirror, from the reflection.

"okay. i only thought you looked scared." maybe he was seeing something else. for a second, he thought he had the edge of a memory—but the moment's passed now. all he knows of byeonghun is what stands before him, and the vague weight of the film they share.

he considers the mirror again, imagining the dark layers of the wall behind it and what space might be there for creatures to nest in. "i don't know if it's mice. the walls are thicker than they look, from what i've seen. i think they could fit whole bodies." his gaze wanders back over to byeonghun and his apparent displeasure about sharing a bathroom. taejun's mouth twitches, pursing briefly. "i said reason, not meaning, byeonghun. i think things can happen for a reason that don't mean anything to you at all." he shakes his head. "i don't need the shower, so you can have it. they said there will be no cameras in our bathroom, so there's no audience for you here."

he relaxes against the wall again, eyes returning to the idle spot in the opposite wall that he had been staring at in the dark before. then, as swiftly as the light had clicked on, he straightens up and remembers: "oh. byeonghun, i've been locked out of my room."

he points at the doorknob, which he already tried shaking and bargaining with when he first realized his mistake. this is the reason that byeonghun is here, he decides, because someone eventually had to, because taejun's work isn't done yet, and because it cannot be finished in the confines of a tiny bathroom for the rest of his life. he would have tried if that was the way things needed to be, but byeonghun was sent by something to open the door, so something must have wanted him out. "i already tried to open your door but it was locked on that side, which makes sense, i guess. i thought if i just waited, then someone would come through on the other side eventually, and i'm glad i was right. do you have something i can borrow to get it open with, please?" he looks expectantly at byeonghun. in the recesses of his memory, there's a flash of silver. "maybe one of your knives?"

[4ftersunset]

— WITH @5eraphism:

[...] "not yet," she says after a moment passes, her fingers tightening slightly around his, focusing on the warmth of his hand and the comfort that it brings. "you're the first person i've seen," she continues, and that fact alone, coupled with the sense of peace she feels now, knowing he is here, knowing they're together, gives her the strength to offer him another small smile. she keeps the secret close to her chest that she's relieved he's the only person she's seen so far — she isn't sure how to engage with the others, how to fall back into socializing and pick up where they may have left off, especially when she can't remember the details for some. "h-how about you?" she asks then, wondering if he's run into any hazy faces himself since arriving.

he tilts her head at her initial answer, and feels the caveat even before it comes a few seconds later.

he's heard this before in hundreds of other voices, in thousands of other words. sometimes the conversations were in languages they each could only half understand. pain, taejun found, was the basest and most lonely human condition. the nature of his work required him to wait for people to come to him first, to reach out, to ask for the help, but he always thought of how many more there were that he couldn't reach. after filming, he had thought that hyejin would join that ever-growing list. staying in contact helped ease his worries, but there was always the distance. the separation of words on a screen instead of contact, like this, hand to hand. taejun is relieved when she takes his. he lays his other hand over hers and squeezes.

"it's a strange new place with people we didn't think we'd see again. and all of the cameras." he keeps forgetting the cameras. "i'd be worried about anyone who isn't anxious about this, really."

he isn't anxious about this. but that isn't a fair litmus test. he doesn't really feel anxious anymore. most days, all days, he feels like a typewriter with its ink ribbon run dry, pressing its letter keys uselessly to a paper that stays blank. but there's nothing to be done for that.

"i saw a few more people coming through the front, but i haven't really talked to anyone either." he shares a sheepish little smile with her. at least with hyejin, admitting to these things doesn't feel like a failure in character. "i think they said there won't be any cameras in our rooms, so honestly, i was just going to stay in mine for the rest of the night. do you need help unpacking? i have time." he releases her hand so he can take another look around the state of her room, assessing the work it'll need. "it might help you take your mind off of things?"