hey all! super excited to be here and write with everyone,.this is my kid—lee hanhui (or, just hui), 23, aint ever learned how to live on his own. he’s a newbie to center point (ville city in general) and has only been here for a whopping FIVE (!!!) days! originally from songpagu, seoul, he’s here because he has no choice to take over his dead uncle (distant uncle, never met him)’s apartment and photo studio (MORE ON UNCLE UNDER THE CUT TW: HE’S CREEPS). in other words he’s here with no friends or family so please be nice (: (or not!!!) you can find his about page HERE and more under the cut! please smash the like if you’re down for plots! i’m faster on disc so hmu w your tags and ill add you!
ABOUT HIS UNCLE (u can skip if u dont wanna read it)
TW // STALKING, DEATH
lee jongsoo (46) has been living in center point for most of his life. his apartment, bought cheap off a friend, houses more than just him. though, not that he’s ever known, or ever cared about his fellow ‘housemates’ (ghosts, brO). years of sharing a space with these spirits has drastically changed his personality. paranoia racked, he’s extremely hostile and guarded to his neighbors, comes off as snappy and v unwelcoming (nosy though) but all at once prefers keeping track of everyone in center point (find him staring at you for too long etc). in turn, he’s got quite the extensive collection of snapshots of all his neighbors holed up (in his apartment, in a compartment in his photo studio). recently DIED (yay) in the darkroom of his studio, body was found by employee early morning and was cleared out before most people even woke up (bad for business yk?). it’s v unclear how he died though (it’s the ghosts man). and following his death, his properties were handed off to next of kin, his dead brother’s wife who then passed it onto his nephew.
// END TW
ABOUT LEE HANHUI (pre-center point era)
born and raised in songpagu, hui’s of the plain jane variety that never even been on a plane (or ventured outside of busan) in his life
TW ABUSE //
standard bad drunk dad who was very hands on with childrearing growing up i.e. lots of bottles and money thrown at his feet, late night soju runs to the store etc
learned very early on how to make himself small and Unnoticeable so to not annoy his pops
// END TW
TW DEATH MENTION //
saw his first dead body when he was 7, (local homeless drunk freezes to death in the neighborhood park, sad to report it was not dad)
felt? contemplative rather than scared - idk why this literal boy scout is Deep Thinking about death but he was
dreams about the man (alive) and the man (dead) often
he had a few more incidents after that (with death) but it’s mostly just your everyday thing, yk, roadkill etcetc that he overthinks entirely
pops finally kicks the bucket when he’s in his teens, cause of death: [REDACTED] just know ma could never look at him the same again (growing up to look too much like pops anw)
// END TW
from there > graduated high school > kissed/slept with his first boy > got into a junior college > didn’t know what he wanted to do so enlisted after a year in after his ma remarried > after finishing his service was immediately strong armed into moving to ville city.
NOW
since he’s only been here for five days he’s got 0 idea about what’s to come so tbh he just thinks the place is a bit Weird(?) and that he ate something bad (to have all these shit nightmares)
generally has a “strong stomach” so things like death and ghosts and blood etc doesn’t really affect him the way it should
has eaten fried egg and rice and kimchi for the last 5 days b/c a) he can’t cook b) most restaurants has cursed at him and hung up when he gave them his address lol
started working at the studio (after “revamping” the place) and its basically getting bullied by toddlers day in and out due to the recent “discounted family photos” special they got going on (but hey, money!)
currently trying to air out and clean through his uncle’s apartment > found a suspicious amount of photos of faces that he can recognize and some that he can’t under the bed—Not. Sure. What. To. Do. With. These. Help.
who wanna be friends fr :))))
PLOTS (they’re bad)
first friend, best friend, and also only friend maybe neighbors on the same floor? maybe they met somewhere, clicked, then realized they lived together. IDK he just needs a buddy :(
don’t i know you from somewhere i’m sucker for childhood friend who moved away etc plots!!!
???? Knows you but doesn’t really know you (knows you from uncle’s photos yike)
my brain short-circuited but i’m open to anything just hmu!!!
HELLO!! i know i’m still kinda sorta behind on replies/msgs but i also wanna throw out some halloween plots cause i love the spooky 👻some very very brief ideas below the cut if anyone’s interested but also please like to plot!! ty
NIGHT ONE
AROUND THE CITY would love someone to go w and maybe spend the night!!
AROUND THE COMPLEX 100% getting lost in the fog, he gets lost normally but with the fog...
NIGHT FOUR
AROUND THE COMPLEX cue: hanhui knocking at your door “dID yoU hEaR thAt OnO” alt: ur a neighbor n he thinks u might have been axe murdered
NIGHT FIVE
AROUND THE CITY in an attempt to advertise for the studio, he’ll be going as THIS alongside @wepts‘s camera costume (pls don’t say anything). i want party threads!!!
There’s a particular creak Harang’s come to know, like the full weight from the ball of a foot is jammed down right in front of his door, loud enough to see-saw its way into his brain. It’s subtle enough that he could probably blame it on something in the apartment if he wanted to. The same way he could blame the slip of pictures on the brittle wind of an oscillating fan, or the rattle of his door on the obnoxious pre-teens who live two floors above him (don’t question why they’d come and play on the floors below). The same way any person might try to rationalize the irrational. The problem of it is that Harang’s been living in this building, in this flat, for long enough that every time he hears That Particular Creak the hair of his nape raises and the backs of his knees shiver.
Sometimes the creak meanders its way around his room, a flat-footed drag to match the (slightly warped) record Harang has spinning music to life. Sometimes the creak seems to sink into the gaps of slotted floorboards and disappear. Sometimes he can hear it fainter, a room over, rattling at ceramic cereal bowls. Sometimes Harang is so sick of it invading the sanity of a perfectly normal Monday that he jams his wallet into the worn pocket of his sweatshirt and slips out the door, snaps it shut behind him before it creaks right after him.
For a moment, he rests with his back against it, like the full weight of him might keep it locked inside. The hallway’s empty enough, though that bleak wash of grey he’s grown to normalize is broken up, one door propped open and letting artificial light spill out in a river. Unconsciously, he hops over it while walking back toward the vending machines, some lingering childhood superstition about cracks.
By now and it’s late enough that the machine’s already decided what it’ll sell him, a wall of chips color-split down the middle, blue for vinegar and red for ketchup. Harang opts for vinegar, feeds in a couple of coins and pops the bag on his way back up the hall. The taste of them stings at his tongue. This time he stops at the edge of the light, can hear the static buzz of it past the sour crunch at his molars. Stops because he sees Hanhui, arms full of cardboard like he’s cleaning out the recycling. Harang doesn’t offer to help, but he does tip his head like he’s pretending to contemplate the idea of it.
“They didn’t clean the place out for you?” they is a nebulous term, but sometimes that’s all this building has to offer.
he’s starting to get the impression that his uncle had been somewhat of a serial hoarder. not that this hadn’t been evident from the initial impression, but the more he digs into the unit—behind closed doors and cabinets and drawers and under the floorboards—the more he realizes what plagued his uncle was more than just incessant need to hoard. rather it teetered on the line of obsessive, maybe even paranoia leaning.
but from the feminine products of razors and sanitary napkins to wide range of empty bottles varying from perfume to aftershave, hanhui simply couldn’t put a finger on who it was exactly that pilfered his uncle’s attention.
whether it had been any specific person at all—or merely just an inane fixation to collect general clutter.
well, what did it matter? it's all going in the trash.
and though that conviction was enough to drive him through the first four boxes of junk shuffled along the way to recycling, wear and tear (on the muscle and brain) began to rear its head on his 5th round back. only this time, a body stands in his way.
a living body, for once.
“oh,” hanhui blinks, nitrile clad fingers flexing absently around cardboard edges. this box in particular smelt, ever the nostalgic waft of stale beer and cigarettes and wet cardboard with every drag of his foot; it even went as far to speak to him—a multitude of broken bottles on the bottom that clinks a mocking sort cacophony somewhere along the lines of lee hanhui you silly thing, picking up after a dead man you barely know. but that’s what happens when it’s blood. you do everything for each other—or something like that.
“no...” he starts slow, tongue wetting his lower lip in thought. there’s a choice to be made here and hanhui debates on the what-ifs of lying. the benefits of claiming to be someone else, someone not in the slightest related to the former terror that occupied his flat. but what’s the point in that? when the landlord already knows.
who’s to say nobody gossips in a building like this?
“they said it was best i do it, next of kin and all...” his lips purse, biting back the rest of his train of thought. he’s sure, by now, that they also didn’t want to do it. but can he blame them? the boy shifts his weight idly, nose scrunching slightly at the odor seeping out between the cracks. “ah, i’m sorry,” hanhui speaks quickly around belated mortification, hugging the box closer to his chest. as if this stench, his predecessor’s reputation is now his to bear.
and because he’s new, new and unknown, he feels especially pressured to be on the good side of his future neighbors. so, as seen by mom, apologies and a smile first.
“does it smell?” am i in your way? “i’ll be done soon.”
then, you fold into yourself; small and hidden.
out of sight like a dead rat.
there’s nothing like black coffee on a thursday morning to cure a hangover in the works: four shots, no sugar, and a mug filled to the brim. the stuff is pitch black, almost like her partial memory of last night, and the scent of freshly made caffeine wafting from tinted froth barely keeps her eyes open. that, and the sunlight piercing through the thin curtains of her little place; the light of noon is so bright that it’s almost jarring. honestly, she just wants to go to back to sleep, maybe knock out till 4 pm and then roll out of bed for instant ramyun and cheap beer. but as the owner of haesu restaurant who needs to maintain a believable facade, sleeping in on a workday is a bit too much to ask for.
low mumbles of complaint leave her lips as they sip what looks like poison, the bitterness of it hitting the back of her throat like holy water. everyday in the publicly available floor of this goddamn restaurant seems to be the same. don’t get her wrong, siyeon adores her diner—small, homey, with a cozy interior—mostly because it reminds her of the person she named it after, but she also knows that she’d much rather be spending time in the basement, tending to her actual profession. using her brain rather than just her hands. letting her fingers sketch rather than hold a (cooking!) knife. two jobs, one real, one semi-real, mean double the work, and double the work means half the sleep; and she needs at least four hours to function.
for good or the bad (she can’t choose yet), something other than just coffee keeps her awake today, however; about half an hour ago, a moving truck had passed her shop window and had parked only two blocks over. while her body is still in denial from being dragged out of bed, her mind is alert and on edge, and for two reasons: one, because she’s not super perceptive to newcomers, especially if it requires her to smile for the camera and be all hospitable, and two, because she knows that place two blocks to the left. it belongs (or, well, had belonged) to some creep from her apartment complex, and he had taken photos for a living. at least, until he’d been rolled out of the building on a stretcher, the studio surrounded by people in suits and flashing red lights. a lot of weird things go down in ville city, but it’s not every day an ambulance and police car pulls up to her street, lights and all; that had been an unusual, almost a surreal moment, the sound of sirens deafening in her ears. and though her knowledge on the guy is limited, and she only has seen him a couple times a week from behind her windows, it’s hard for siyeon to forget how dead he had looked when the night wind had slightly pulled away the white cover off of his stale face.
brr. the image of it sends shivers down her arms, and she rubs them out of habit. she doesn’t have anything necessarily against death, she supposes, but she isn’t one of those adulators, more a realist. she’ll think about it when the time comes is the plan. in the meantime, she decides to check out exactly who it is that’s moving into that creep’s old business. you know, just out of neighbourly curiosity, really. nothing more, nothing less.
downing the rest of what’s left in the steaming hot cup, siyeon puts her hair in a messy low bun, grabs a bag of jjang-gu, a korean snack, for brunch, and makes her way over to the photo studio, eyes following the workers still unloading furniture and whatnot from the back of their vehicle. she can make out the silhouette of a tall young man who looks, to put it plainly, utterly lost.
“you new here?” she asks, nonchalantly popping a jjang-gu chip into her mouth. it’s natural for her to wonder who he is, considering that her first guess would be that he’s the son, although he looks nothing alike to the man who used to live here.
he’s seen death. cut to ages 7, 9, 13, 15, and 22. so much so that, at night, when peers his age would dream of magic and superheroes and crushes, hanhui dreamt of the guy at the park, roadkill dragged across asphalt, dead birds, dead dad—in special cases, an amalgamation of carcasses and maggots and other things that brings chill down to the bone.
so yes, he’s seen death. in fact he knows her. chased after her coattails throughout youth to now; tragically, unconsciously, always one step behind. but spying her from afar translates exceedingly poor when up close and personal, where the decay is jarring and the rot is pungent—not exactly this is the case here, though hanhui reckons it comes quite close.
for one, it’s not the sight of death, but the smell.
this, he’s picked up on not once, in the apartment left behind, but again at the photo studio. it’s musty, wet, something fetid and stale, dry and humid all the same—offensive to the olfactory organs all the same. he sleeps with this miasma and wakes head swirling, chest congested, numbness in the arms and an unexplainable tremor in his left leg.
is it him? is it what he ate? is it the apartment? no, he hasn’t gotten around to meeting any neighbors officially, but here and there wise, they looked perfectly fine.
but maybe it’s just one of those things, you know, the human body and its many mysteries thing. hanhui didn’t dwell too long on it. day 2 of settling into ville city has left him swamped with many unchecked tasks on his mental to-do list already. and as the tremors and numbness had disappeared by the time he left center point for his uncle’s his studio—he opts to file it under let’s worry when we have to worry and focuses on the task at hand instead.
which, as the new owner to a space which had previously occupied his dying (decaying? cold, dead and festering? he’s not too clear on details) uncle—quite literally, he’s heard, on the battered coffee table in the break room—meant that first on the list was to clear everything out.
out with the old, in with the new. here, his mind wanders—tips precariously over the proverbial ledge as his gaze settles on the splatters of old blood across the table: whether or not this means he’d die here too. sooner or later. whether he’d prefer sooner or later.
as it is, when you’re currently carrying the table in question that might’ve killed your uncle, death, or the wanting of her, is a rather difficult topic to stray from. hanhui tries his best not to breathe in the screwy air (every single one of the movers had masks, should he have worn one too?) whilst quickening his pace out the door—only to find that he had no idea as to where one would recycle old furniture slash potential murder weapon.
“murder weapon”, would be used loosely here, because no one could really murder someone with a table when said someone was alone in the studio—but who made him smash his own head against it? but again, let’s worry when we have to worry. the dead is dead, after all. what’s more pressing now is that he has no idea what to do with this table. what was ville city’s laws for recycling would-be-maybe-so death furniture?
he’s interrupted before he’s gotten a chance to pull out his phone and google, startled eyes turning to the woman he didn’t even see approaching. hanhui clears his throat, twisting his body to set the table beside his feet, discreetly turning the blood stains away from her line of vision. “uh, yes, i’m taking over since my—uh—died.” he stammers around his nerves, rubbing his palms against old denim once he faces her, quickly bowing his head in good manners.
