WHAT EUNJAE REMEMBERS OF HER CHILDHOOD has been smattered across her life, like paint thrown on a wall that's since started to crack. most times, the fragments are too small and to derive whatever bigger picture they used to be. other times she'll find the color of one thrown over something by pure accident: a student's blue sweater that reminds her of the old peeling slide five minutes away from her childhood house, a scarf in the window that reminds her of her mother, a song that reminds her of old routines that her bad ankle still wants to dance to.
jeju reminds her of something she can't quite remember anymore. it must be one of those splatters cast out too widely to be recognizable anymore. she just knows that when she saw the late afternoon sun from the hotel lobby, she'd felt regret for something she couldn't even name.
malcontent doesn't suit her well these days. the feeling was too heavy and didn't have anywhere productive to go, and all signs blared BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE in her mother's voice. she's got a roof above her head, meals everyday, and enough money to fuck around. why shouldn't she be?
she's out drinking tonight anyway.
she must be missing daemon. the vacation's nice, but there's not enough adrenaline here. the bar she's found tonight is good enough, not too far from the hotel and still close enough to the beach that she can still sort of smell it under all the booze, and she's been singing with a very nice old man who was apparently vacationing here after a rough divorce. sometime between her second and third shot, she forgot his exact story, but she imagines she would be just as upset if she were to ever lose a wife, so she'd volunteered to get their next round from the bar.
except when she comes back to what she thought was their table, it isn't nice old mr. baek there anymore.
eunjae trips on nothing and almost dumps her drinks right into the other bar-goer's hair. "whoops!" she manages to avert disaster at the last second, whisking the glasses up and over their head as she comes to lean on the table for balance. errant little clouds poof up from her frizzy hair. "you're not mr. baek."
then she really sees their face, and she realizes she knows them.
"it's you!" eunjae says a little too loudly, shock and mild indignation flitting across her face. she's always been an honest drunk. "you're the one who..." she pauses. a memory itches the back of her brain. "who's always brooding around the building." jihye! she remembers at the last second, though she'd been much closer to saying, the one who keeps running away from me, or that other name, na---
nope. no melancholy tonight. "if i give you this drink," she says solemnly, waving her glass in front of jihye's face like she's casting a spell, "will you stop hating me just for tonight?"
eunjae's eyes haven't left the poster plastered outside of the restaurant. HALF OFF LUNCH, FREE DESSERT FOR LOVEBIRDS. below it is a picture of little mountain-shaped pastries. hallasan bread, the poster says, available now in four different flavors. eunjae's stomach rumbles. she sneaks a glance at minsi, the inner cogs of her mind churning.
there's no time to back out. the couple in front of them follows a server to their table, leaving eunjae to step up with minsi.
"hi!" she says, a little too loudly.
if the hostess finds that distasteful, she just keeps smiling about it. "hello. how many?"
"two, please." eunjae plasters on a saccharine smile and places a light hand on minsi's back. the hostess wordlessly begins to flag another server to take them to a table, but eunjae's nervous, chattering away, "we're on our first anniversary trip and we thought your desserts looked amazing. right, baby?" she turns to minsi sweetly.
oh, god. is this what she's become? someone who scams businesses out of free desserts? she's not even a "baby" person.
[...]
she glances between her neighbour and the three men, leaning into her slight embrace easily to make them — or rather, herself — appear more comfortable with each other. more familiar and convincing, at the very least. "i thought i texted you...? i wasn't feeling well earlier," she lies, puppy dog eyes in full effect. "i only stepped out to get some medicine — and snacks — but i haven't been able to get back to rest..."
eunjae silently thanks her gift for "overhearing" things, because she's fairly sure that she's heard this one call herself sarang before. eunjae flashes her a look of incredulity. "nuh-uh, sarang. don't puppy eyes me. don't i always call you back when you text? if i knew you were sick, i would've gotten you something while i was out." she hums, turning expectantly to the men. "who are you guys?"
"we're friends," one of them says.
eunjae blinks. "are you sure? i'm her best friend and i've never seen you before, so..."
she gives them a second to give her an excuse, though sarang's body language tells her that one won't be coming. eventually, the one on the far right lets out a discontent grunt. maybe she still looks a little feral from the pit, or they've been here longer than she thought, but apparently that's a silent code for them to disperse. as soon as he starts walking away, so do the other two.
"weird," eunjae says to sarang with a little laugh, in case they're still listening. she starts chattering away about this non-existent lunch date they'd had planned, until she hears the door chime again and the rest of the store goes quiet. then her smile loses that edge of exaggeration, brows furrowing in faint concern instead — a familiar look, when it comes to sarang.
"do i have the best timing or what?" something she's learned from the last few times they've run into each other — or, rather, her running into sarang and noticing a concerningly distant look in her eye — is that she can't say it. what it is, exactly, she doesn't know and doesn't know how to tactfully ask, so every time goes a little bit like this: she slips her arm free from sarang's shoulder, leans towards the shelves next to them, and says like she doesn't notice how nervous sarang seems to be, "are you actually sick? there's a pharmacy a lot closer to the building, you know."
eunjae pauses. "a lot closer for me to fly down and beat up any creeps," she adds, then mimes one-two punching the line of headache medicines in front of them.
[...]
"Eunjae," he echoed her name with a nod, acknowledging it. "It's nice to meet you, Eunjae. I'm Li. Or Sparky. Or Dr. Sparky, depending on who you ask, it's a whole thing," he added with a scrunch of his nose. "Sublevel. That's my room right there," he continued with a brief gesture of his head in the direction of his open door and the lantern light spilling into the hall. As for the snake, he just smiled and nodded to the serpent on his hand. "Approach from the front so she can sense your fingers. Let them hover just in front of her mouth there so she can smell you. Let her touch you first and then you can stroke under her chin slowly."
"isn't that what we want? for her to go back to wherever she came from," eunjae muttered, half to herself as she contemplated the possible thought process of a snake in an unfamiliar environment. she supposed she couldn't make any assumptions—the first time she left home and landed in her first apartment, she'd been terrified, but someone would have had to drag her kicking and screaming back home.
the thought softened her. who was she to keep the snake from finding a new home?
she reached out tentatively. it watched her as her hand drew near but did little more than adjust itself around the stranger's — li's — wrist. that seemed to be a good sign, but eunjae still held her breath until the snake curled forward, tongue flickering out. it could probably smell the fear on her, she thought. but then it swayed back slightly, and eunjae felt a flicker of an odd understanding — was it its eyes? the subtle hunch to its posture? — and wondered for the first time if maybe it was just as afraid of her.
"shh," she cooed, crouching lower and tilting her hand so that her knuckles brushed against the underside of its chin instead. "you're okay. nothing's going to hurt you."
she thought of herself years younger. she thought of that scared thing she still carried inside her these days. suddenly, she felt sorry for wanting to throw it out in the first place.
"is this your home now too, baby? do you live out in the garden?" the snake didn't answer, of course. eunjae glanced up at li with a small grin. "maybe she's here for the same reason we are." because that was inevitable, wasn't it? li didn't look like the type of person she expected to be here, but if he was, then there had to be a reason for it.
"well, now that you said that, i really want to ask why 'sparky.' is it because... hm, because you're like a spark? a light in all the gloom down here?" she dropped her back on the floor so she could sit on it and talk to him more easily. "i visit a friend here sometimes, but even when i'm with her, it's still a little...not scary, but unsettling? knowing there's so many people over your head, i mean, and they're all just walking around with their own lives, their own business..." she trailed off. shuddered. "that's crazy."
[...]
gyuri’s smiling, the leather on the palms of her fingerless gloves dragging on fabric, a bit like the winner of a bet, a very lucky fortune, as one of her hands comes up, chipped black nail polish tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, lingering to brush a gentle thumb against eunjae’s cheek. her eyes gleam with the satisfaction of running into her when she would’ve gone looking for her anyways, hands linking together at the low curve of her back.
“looks like i found you all lost in the dark, hm? how long’s the power been out?”
gyuri's greeting brings a matching, if not more smug, smile to eunjae's face as she steps into her orbit. she feigns innocence as she slips her arms over gyuri's shoulders. "sorry. i didn't recognize you from behind," she says easily, as if she doesn't have years of experience seeking gyuri in crowds, from a distance, through the pounding beat of daemon's music or the roar of a match. she'd know her by her shadow, she thinks. it only seemed fitting; in those months before she found seonjae again, when the dark seemed so oppressive and heavy, it felt like there was nothing with her as she stumbled through it.
now the dark isn't so frightening. in the dark, she could pretend it's gyuri, wrapping in close like this.
it's rare that she's not the one reaching for her first, so eunjae figures they're alone. eunjae's also never been one to refuse a gift.
"it's been four hours, maybe? i was coming to check up on you." gyuri brushes against a tender spot on her cheekbone and eunjae winces at the sweet sting, laying a hand over her wrist and helping move her arm lower instead. eunjae shakes her head a little, letting the same strand of hair come loose again to cover that smarting bruise. "i didn't see you at daemon last night, so i figured i got my days wrong and you were working tonight instead. wasn't sure if you got all the emergency announcements earlier."
she leans in to nuzzle the ghost of a kiss along gyuri's jaw. gyuri's brought home the air of daemon with her, leather and alcohol and copper—or maybe eunjae's still tasting the blood from the night before. she rolls two fingers over the back of gyuri's neck, massaging that strip of skin above the collar of her jacket because gyuri's clip is messy in her hair again and eunjae knows all about stupid hair accessories inflicting headaches or worse. she clicks her tongue. "maybe you didn't see. the sublevel's off limits for maintenance, which means you actually shouldn't be here," she points out, playfulness gleaming in her eyes.
[...]
"Again?" he sighed. "Probably the laundry room then. Someone keeps over-filling the washer with all their laundry at once." He lifted the snake a bit closer to his face, redirecting his attention to it. "That's what happens when someone doesn't want to pay for multiple loads of laundry. Someday, we'll find the culprit, won't we?" he asked the little reptile.
"Hm?" he replied to whether or not the creature was his, glancing toward the stranger. "Oh no. This is definitely a wild snake. They're just a docile species. You want to pet her?" he asked with an arched brow. "She's not venomous."
so it wasn't his. eunjae's eyes flitted to the snake uncertainly again as the stranger brought it up to his face with seemingly no regard for its hissing tongue, but when a moment passed and it didn't attack, she reluctantly withdrew her bag. venomous or not, maybe it would just slither off if they left it alone. "you're sure?"
she crept forward a few steps, partly intrigued by the snake and partly intrigued by the stranger himself. they didn't sound like someone who'd just sneaked into the building, especially if they knew about the laundry room culprit and the garden door that people were always leaving open. "i knew it was the laundry. i've been trying to figure out who it is for the last month—they keep messing with the laundry rooms on the other floors too."
she paused near the edge of the desk, her original intent temporarily slipping her mind in favor of curiosity. "i'm eunjae, by the way. third floor. nice to meet, you, snake charmer." she poked out a finger, but she couldn't decide where she was supposed to reach out. these days, finesse wasn't her strongest suit. if he knew a thing or two about venomous snakes, though, maybe he'd know what to do if something did go horribly wrong. "where can i do it that's least likely to make it angry at me?"
[...]
"Oh." A simple, soft sound of acknowledgment. Without fear, he reached out his hand, allowing the reptile to slither over his fingers and curl around his wrist. "Now what are you doing here?" he asked, though whether this was directed to the creature or the stranger was left up to interpretation.
"no, it's a—"
not a raccoon. eunjae's eyes widened at the sight of the snake, which finally slid into the small spotlight created by the stranger's reading light. worse yet, it was wrapping itself around their wrist, probably ready to kill.
"it probably got in through the drains," eunjae whispered, angling her flashlight lower so that she didn't aggravate it. "i heard people saying something flooded down here. just hold still, i think i can..." she slipped off her cloth bag, which looked big to contain the thing, but she'd just taken another step forward when she finally realized that the snake wasn't poised to attack. the stranger didn't look startled either.
a pet? she drew her bag back cautiously. this wasn't what she expected to find on her way down to the sublevel—she hadn't expected to find an unfamiliar face at all. she thought she'd finally met the last of her neighbors a couple of months ago. "is that...yours?"
EUNJAE ALWAYS FELT CLOSEST TO THE WORLD'S SECRETS after nights at daemon. in the walk home afterwards — or sometimes bus ride, if she didn't think that the state of her would draw too much unwanted attention — the city's face always seemed more honest than it did in the day. she felt light on her step, honest little puffs of mist curling out from her heels, but it wasn't even that. it was the resounding ache of her new trophies from tonight, mostly the wicked hurting in the soft meat of her shoulder where the other fighter had jammed her elbow in until she tapped out. the pain was nothing like dancing and everything like dancing. the crash was a reminder that, even for just a moment, she had been aloft.
usually she took the quiet path back home, burned off that adrenaline in peace. trouble was good in controlled doses and better kept within daemon's seedy underground and she definitely didn't need anyone there asking seonjae about where they'd seen her, but calling any part of eden peaceful was funny, like calling an electric fence safe just because she couldn't see cartoon sparks flying off of it. and when she ducked into a corner store only to run into an apparent confrontation, she wasn't exactly surprised.
there were three strangers, talking to someone who had their back to her. harmless looking, but she glanced curiously towards the front counter just in case. the cashier didn't seem to care or notice, their dead-eyed stare fixed on their phone.
eunjae pursed her lips. sure. in the spirit of secrets.
she grabbed a packet of candy and waltzed over. "hey!" she cut in cheerfully, falling in beside the outnumbered one and slinging an arm across their shoulder. "i can't believe you ditched lunch today, i waited two hours for you to show up. do you still want to hang out?" she cast a curious look at the others, like she'd just noticed them there. "oh, sorry, are you busy?"
@invsibl said: "do you think they'll still serve us our food?" — for event 001!
"IT LOOKS LIKE they wouldn't even notice if we just took it." eunjae perched her chin on her knuckles wistfully, staring in the direction she'd last seen their platter waiting for the server to come pick it up. in the dark, the diner was quickly filling up with clamor, probably because everyone here had figured they would be safe with the backup generator. maybe jaeyeol had come for the same thing; eunjae was just glad she knew someone else around when the lights went out here too.
"it's okay, everyone calm down!" one of the cashiers was trying to speak above the noise, her hands raised placatingly. "the manager's checking on the generator. the power should come back on soon."
"it's been more than ten minutes," someone from one of the booths said. "that's not getting fixed. i'm out of here."
more agreements. eunjae saw a few shadows rise up from their booths and move towards the exit.
"you don't happen to have secret tech powers too, do you?" before jaeyeol could answer, eunjae raised her hand and called towards the poor cashier, "we'll go check on him!" she slapped the booth between them cheerfully and hopped up, wiggling her fingers beckoningly in jaeyeol's direction. "come on, maybe he got zapped and they'll give us the food for free if we rescue him."
@recollectionblue said: "it's like these people have never seen the power go out before." — for event 001!
"I MEAN, do you remember the first blackout we had?"
she's clearing the condensation from seonjae's window, wiggling her fingers against the glass to leave little outlines. outside, beyond the trees whose wispy leaves brush up against the third floor, the street is eerily dark. a few phone screens float by, glowing from passerbys' hands and resembling fireflies from a distance. eunjae watches them for a few seconds, before collapsing on her back, landing on the semi-permanent sheets and pillows she'd set up on the floor of seonjae's room.
"that night with the storm, when the window broke and mom lost her mind. there was, like, ten minutes that i didn't know where you were, and i lost my mind."
seven years old and inseparable. the storm had turned the clouds black that night and nearly bent the trees sideways with the force of its winds, debris clacking up and down their house like starving birds. she'd think of it again years later in the utility closet she'd locked herself in, where she manifested powers for the first time. superstitious, she's always wondered if that played a role in it; if that first juvenile fear of losing seonjae struck something so deep in her that when she finally grew out her powers, they came out bearing the old wound of it. probably not. there's a science there, she knows, things that people better than her can explain better. and anyway, if it were true, it doesn't explain why it didn't help much to keep her from losing him again years later.
eunjae cranes her head back, searching for seonjae's outline past the edge of his bed.
it's been 3 months now. she's still always checking.
"maybe when people are panicking less, we can go out. i want food," she says with a yawn, smacking the side of his mattress to make sure he heard her and, by extension, himself; when she's hungry, that means seonjae's hungry, and when seonjae's hungry then she's hungry. "besides, aren't you supposed to go out at least two times this week."
this is part of our ongoing EVENT #001: LIGHTS OUT IN PARADISE.
to participate, reblog this post onto the blog(s) of your participating muse(s). in the tags, indicate whether you are open to question prompts only, OR question prompts and starter prompts.
if participating, please try to send at least one question prompt to other participating muses!
all event-related posts should be tagged #rj:event001. remember to tag any triggers accordingly!
while the starter prompts were created specifically to foster new threads, feel free to convert any responses to the question prompt list into threads as well.
the starter prompts were written with mostly the event-related locations in mind, but feel free to place them in different settings!.
responses can be posted until the end of the event, sunday, july 7th.
QUESTION PROMPTS
tell me 3 truths and 1 lie, without naming which one is which.
do you wish you had a different ability?
what's your most vivid childhood memory?
when was the last time you lost your temper?
what's the worst thing you've ever done to someone?
if the building were about to burn down, what are the first three things you would grab?
do you think you're redeemable?
what was the moment you realized your life wouldn't go the way you thought it would?
do you think you'll ever make it out of here?
what is the biggest lie you've told?
when was the last time you cried and why?
what's something you used to love but now hate?
if your life paused for a day and you could go anywhere you want and do anything you want, where would you go?
what are three things you like about yourself?
how do you define "home"?
is it easier to make people love you or hate you?
if you could have any other ability, possible or impossible, what would you want?
how do you ask others for help?
in another life, where do you think you would be? what would you be doing?
what (or who) is your silver lining?
describe how your room looks.
what's something no one else knows about you?
do you believe in heroism? in heroes?
how do you escape your reality?
when was the last time you told someone honestly how you felt about them?
STARTER PROMPTS
"it can't get worse than this... right?"
"don't panic, but i think there's something behind you."
"what were you thinking?!"
"did you hear that?"
"i managed to get a candle before they ran out. you want to share?"
"forget this, i'm going to the pool. you want to come?"
"forget this, i'm going out. you want to come?"
"no, you don't get it, you have to help me find [object]."
"my [apartment]/[room] was getting too hot, can i stay here for a while?"
"the scanner won't read my card and i can't get back in, so..."
"do you think they keep the breaker box in the sublevel? i bet i can fix it."
"no way. i'm not going there in the dark."
"come on, we have to see it. when are we ever going to get another chance?"
"i think we're stuck here."
"i didn't know where else to go."
"okay, okay. just stay calm, stay calm, stay calm."
"i'm going out to get food. who knows how long this will last."
"is this a bad time to mention i'm not good with the dark?"
"i heard there's a bonfire at the drive-in."
"it's like these people have never seen the power go out before."
heyyy part 2 except this time i'm trying to be shorter dear god. this is my second muse eunjae, cloudstepping her way through life and vibes tbqh. she's the younger and cooler of the moon twins at #301. recently on a bit of a reckless & self destructive streak after spending most of her life trussed up in her family's trophy case. see under the cut for more info, and like this post if you'd like to plot & i'll reach out if we aren't already talking!
eunjae, '97
she/her for convenience but any pronouns really. her pronouns aren't indicative of her gender (to her!) anyways, so she dgaf how people refer to her
cloud manipulation is v much what it says on the tin. she can manifest cloud bodies from existing moisture through some science that i shamefully don't 100% understand.
cold/dry environments are v detrimental to her abilities. they make it difficult, if not impossible, for her to use her powers. if she pushes herself anyway, it very quickly becomes painful
minor ability: cloudwalking ! allows her some minor "flight," though it's very contingent on her focus and she constantly needs to be on the move from one cloud to another bc they can't sustain her weight for long.
aesthetic ability but otherwise....not a lot of useful applications. thank god, she thinks
the journey so far:
was a gifted ballet dancer in her youth
the tldr is that her parents were hoping that she and her twin would both be gifted with precognitive abilities, something to bring some respect to the family name yk. instead, ironically, she manifests clouds.
it's a bit of a slap to the face, she has clouded vision, etc etc. it honestly checks out: she only got into ballet bc she saw how proud her mother was of her, and that was all that defined her for a while. she never had anything self defined for a v long time. anything that could have been considered hers, she always shared with her twin (hey seonjae @/recollectionblue). formless, faceless, aimless, like of course you're cloud aligned 🫵
at least after she manifests her ability, she's able to work it into her routines. the audiences go wilddd they love watching her dance on clouds, sooo light and graceless and lovely, and she's so deep in that safety blanket of approval that she doesn't really think to look for anything else.
she gets separated from her twin eventually bc their parents are assholes. she doesn't even hear about it, cities away training for the big leagues; by the time she finally does, he's gone and no one will tell her how to find him. their parents say that seonjae went somewhere that can help him with his powers. they say that she can't distract him, just like she can't let this distract from her performance. they say he wanted to go.
it doesn't sit right with her. that is her TWIN she can literally feel smth is wrong. but at the same time, what does she know? he's the one who was gifted with precognition, he's the older twin, how can she possibly imagine the pressure he must be under?? what it must be like??
so she stays and keeps her parents happy. keeps performing and tries to ignore the growing weight in her chest.
in the middle of one of her big performances, she feels it: something's gone wrong with seonjae. she doesn't know what it is, but she suddenly knows so clearly that she has to get out of here, she has to find him.
so, mid-air, she lets go and falls. shatters her ankle, successfully puts herself out of commission. her mother is inconsolable!!!!!
she's been staying at silver line for a couple of years now, but she only recently found seonjae in a bad way. she practically dragged him into staying at silver line with her where she can keep an eye on him.
very much the type to nag (sorry for being her mother's daughter ough) but hypocritical about it. every other week, she's in daemon joining fights ( as suan ) purely for the adrenaline rush and feeling like she has more agency over herself and her body. maybe if she hadn't spent 85% of her life both metaphorically and literally posing for stages and upkeeping a physically pristine image, she'd go about this more......erm.......well adjustedly, but . that is not the case rip.
predictably always banged up in some kind of way. she tries to avoid face injuries bc she can't explain that away to her ballet students.
current arc is v much inspired by the philosophy of kintsugi pottery. mostly, she's sick of smoothing over her feelings every time she feels something remotely unpleasant. maybe she wants to be a little fucked up a little chipped a little deranged! and maybe she wants to stop pretending that those messier nastier parts of her don't exist!
otherwise, she teaches beginner classes at a little balet studio in the city !! it's very casual, very much her trying to be the person for these people (usually kids) that she wishes she had when she was younger. does NOT want those two sides to mesh, so if u know her from daemon, you shall NOT mention it outside of daemon.
seeking connection / thread ideas:
her unfinished plots soz...
(fem/gnc/nb muses) targets of her affection... unfortunately she is the type to fall in love a bit with anyone who seems to reciprocate her attention. it's okay if ur muse doesn't reciprocate, i think a lot of her just comes out naturally flirty + she's touchy as hell
this is my second fighter muse but i still have NOT gotten to write any fight threads so please . please other fighters fight with her.
it's not exactly like she's covering her face up around daemon so maybe you saw her there and then you saw her around the building. she'll Lose it she needs you to promise not to tell her twin.
shy/quiet people who she can try to pull out of their shells, she's always been the "they asked for no pickles" friend ykwim
someone she keeps trying to drag out but doesn't realize that she's continuously annoying them lmao
someone who's in trouble one night and she happens to run into them -- and wow, her powers actually come in handy for once? she brings a wall of thick fog down on them and gets ur muse OUT of there
in the rare times her mind is quiet and doesn't compel her to go gallivanting around just to feel something, she's usually up on the roof, maybe smoking something. i'd love someone who actually gets to know her past her v dynamic/almost frenetic exterior. at the end of the day she's just someone trying to protect the family she's got left while trying to carve out something that's finally well and truly Hers :|
How’s it feel to be at the center of magic
To linger in tones and words?
I opened the floodgates and found no water, no current, no river, no rush
How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers
To captivate every heart?
Projеcting your visions to strangers who feel it, who listen, who linger on еvery word
areudirty
jacobvanloon
kaledo-art
titsay
jbbartram-illu
ellievsbear
stormborns
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
