!! DO NOT PLAGIARISE MY WORK, DO NOT FEED IT INTO AI !!
tumblr is the only place i publish at, if you find my works on other sites like wattpad/ao3, please let me know.
my podcast blog!
most of my works (esp the full length fics) are nsfw and often deal with heavier subjects, please go through all the warnings carefully before reading.
askbox is always open!
permanent taglist form
FICS BELOW THE CUT!
CHOI SEUNGCHEOL
addicted to you
better together
YOON JEONGHAN
what friends are for ft joshua
acts of serv(e)ice
HONG JISOO
what friends are for ft jeonghan
until the poets run out of rhymes
JEON WONWOO
pulse spike
can i call you rose?
LEE JIHOON
look no further
city of stars
LEE SEOKMIN
vanilla pastotto
wrong side (ft. mingyu)
sweetest thing
KIM MINGYU
full length fics (15k words or more)
normal people -> PART 1 -> PART2
fashion show -> PART 1 -> PART 2 -> PART 3
fancast -> READ HERE
hit me hard and soft -> PART 1 -> PART 2 -> PART 3 -> PART 4 -> PART 5
one shots/drabbles (10k words or less, nsfw unless indicated)
here, i share my entire writing process with anyone who is curious and i also plan a whole new book with you in real time!
i hope this can be of help to the people who find themselves overwhelmed about where and how to start, feel free to make any suggestions if you have them or share the resources that help you plan your book!
please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.
you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.
first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.
now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:
in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.
and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.
and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.
it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:
• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.
• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.
• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.
• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.
• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.
• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.
and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.
what i'm asking:
if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.
if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.
india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.
pairing: grad student!seokmin x grad student! fem reader
genre: grumpy x sunshine, angst, university au, cohorts to lovers, fluff, secret relationship and the angst that comes with it, anonymous confession
rating: 18+
warnings: alcohol, seokmin is the grumpiest (lowk to the point where he’s an asshole), mentions of academic burnout, mentions of a sick parent, kissing, suggestive scenes (in part 2)
wc: 11k (for part 1)
summary: Your second semester of grad school has begun. Everything should be relatively easy, you’ve completed a semester and most of the people in your cohort adore your kindness and sunshine like disposition. Just as you’re getting settled, an anonymous post ignites your semester. Instead of an easy sixteen weeks of learning, you’re balancing teaching, a post that has the attention of literally everyone, and the personification of a gray cloud: Lee Seokmin. inspired by the k-drama: dear.m
author's note: this fic is part of the SVTFlix collab, thank you so much for hosting @100vern! i originally said july 10th for the release but life happened and i realized that this fic is actually going to be a lot longer than expected so i split it into two parts! as always thank you to the incredible @livmarauder for beta reading and for cheering me on even when i was very unsure. another big thank you to jewel for being so gracious with the timeline <333 i also wanna give credit to @diamonddaze01 bc i was very inspired by the email format in their fic: emails i can't send
i hope you enjoy your read! likes and reblogs are highly appreciated. part 2 coming soon <3 support the other authors of the collab here
Pre-Semester Prep
You normally plan your schedule better but a dead phone results in you hopping straight off a plane to attend a cohort meeting a week before the semester starts. You're trying to conceal how out of breath you are as you lean against the wall in the back of cohort leader's office. Your neck appreciates the cold wall behind you and gradually, you feel your heart regain its normal pace. Shotaro, another student in your cohort, gives you a slight wave when he notices you. You're about to return his gesture with a 'hello' then your cohort lead claps her hands together to gather everyone's attention.
"Alright, I think we can get started. Welcome back! I hope your winter break was rock solid". A collective mix of groans and giggles ring across the room. You make eye contact with your cohort leader and you shoot her a thumbs up as a means of encouragement. She continues through announcements about department funding and you aren't really paying too much attention until she mentions Teaching Assistant roles.
"Lastly, the assignments for the classes that you'll be assisting in this semester will be emailed by the end of the day. Meetings with your working professor should happen before the end of the week." She claps her hands together, signaling that the meeting was over and you saunter over to Shotaro. He envelopes you in a hug and asks about your break. You divulge all the details of your winter break as the two of you walk to the cafe across the street from your department building.
When you walk in, there's a table of your friends who flag you down when they notice the two of you. Warm greetings and hugs are shared within the group. Shotaro walks over to the counter and orders for the both of you, while you catch up with the others at the table. A feeling of deja vu falls over as you recount the details of your winter break. Shotaro returns with your iced London Fog, chastising you for drinking a cold drink even during the winter.
"I like what I like Taro, sue me!" You say with a shrug and everyone at the table laughs. Everyone is wrapped in their own conversations, including you, when all of your phones collectively buzz. You're the first to read the notification and announce to the group that TA assignments were out. Everyone scrambles to look at their phones. There's a bit of silence before they all starts reacting to the email. You're still scanning the email and then you finally see your name.
You try to hide the smile on your face when you read the little asterisk at the end of the email, but Shotaro immediately notices and nudges you.
"What's with the smile Y/N?"
All the eyes at the table have looked up from their phones and turned to you. The smile that was hiding breaks out when you tell everyone that you were assigned as a Head TA with Dr. Choi. Oooohs and claps ring around the table for you. Jeonghan, who was sitting across from you, lets out a whistle and gives you a high five when he realizes that the two of you would be working together again. He goes back to read the email and then he makes a face.
"What is it Jeonghan," you ask earnestly.
He bites his lip and shoots out a lie that it was something else. But you know him well enough to tell when he's lying. The two of you were in the same seminar in your first semester and spent enough time to be able to call his bluff the way you are right now. This captures everyone's attention and soon the two of you are being pestered to read out the list of TA's for Dr. Choi's class. Not seeing what the big deal is, you unlock your phone and start listing out the names.
"Chaewon." Everyone has nothing but nice things to say about Chaewon. You've seen her at department meetings and mixers. You don't know much except for the fact that her focus is in evolutionary biology.
"Chenle." The same thing as Chaewon, any person who knows him has nothing but nice things to say. You know that Chenle and Shotaro are quite close as they've been friends for a really long time. They went to the same school for undergrad and were part of the same fraternity, Sigma Mu. You've met Chenle several times during some of your hangouts with Shotaro.
"Obviously, Yoon Jeonghan," You say matter-of-factly and there are boos from the table. Several people utter the word menace and you laugh. You skip yourself on the list because that fact is what started this whole conversation in the first place.
"Altair," saying your friend's name brings a smile to your face. You're relieved that you know more than one person in this class. It just makes your life a hell of a lot easier when you can get along with the people you're spending an entire semester with. Everyone agrees when you talk about how welcoming she always makes anyone in her circle feel.
"And lastly, the other Head TA, Lee Seokmin."
A hush falls over the table. You yourself have never met Lee Seokmin, but you've seen his name plastered everywhere. Even in undergrad when you were compiling research for your capstone thesis, you used an article he published. The reaction from your friends made you feel a bit uneasy.
"Okay guys seriously, why is no one saying anything?" A beat passes. Everyone at the table is shifting glances at each other, like they were all thinking the same thing but waiting for the one brave person to actually let the thoughts out. Turning to Shotaro, you shoot him a pleading look and beg with your eyes to clue you into this weird reaction that everyone is having. You see him look across the table to Jeonghan who shakes his head no and you slam your hand down on the table.
"Someone tell me what the heck is going on," you whine towards Shotaro. You can see the pity in his eyes as he look towards Jeonghan. The two of them are having an argument with just their eyes and you break it by whining again. You don't mean to act like a child throwing a tantrum, but your nerves are already shot from the shared silence of the table. Thankfully, Jeonghan puts you out of your misery.
"Okay I'm gonna level with you. Seokmin's not… how do I say this…" He look towards the rest of the group for help to finish his sentence. They all murmur to themselves trying to fill in his blank.
"He's not exactly well-known for being kind." A look of shock appears on your face. This is what they were all having a conniption over? The fact that your co-head wasn't friendly? Before you can say anything Jeonghan continues. He resumes to tell you that Lee Seokmin is someone that you should probably steer clear of. That he doesn't play well with others, that he's clearly a burnt out senior grad student who doesn't really like sharing. It's like the floodgates opened once Jeonghan finishes because then everyone at the table starts chiming in with their own little tidbits and interactions with Seokmin.
All of their comments shared the same sentiment: Lee Seokmin is a gray cloud of human and you're bound for a storm.
WEEK ONE
The first day of class is tomorrow and you have yet to see or hear from Seokmin. After your friends took their turns warning you about him, it was safe to stay you were even more intimidated by him than ever. If anyone asked you right now though, you'd say you are mildly annoyed as you've had to assume all of the responsibilities of prepping for this semester since your "partner" had been missing the entire time. You also have the pleasure of having the first discussion section after the first lecture, so you find yourself holed up in the shared office space revising your section notes.
A ping comes from your laptop and you switch over to the tab that has your university email opened. You sigh when you realize that the notification was just an automated reminder email for the first day of class. Clicking out of the email, you eye the email that you had sent to Seokmin last week, there's an orange message in the preview line.
Sent 5 days ago. Follow up?
A frown crinkles your lips downwards, surely the senior graduate student with this much responsibility wouldn't just ignore your email? You sit up and begin to draft a follow-up
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Norming and Schedules
Hi again,
I just wanted to follow up on my last email to make sure you got it! We have classes in a week and I'd really love to get some 1:1 time to make sure we're on the same page.
I can work with whatever schedule you've
Something compels you to stop typing. The blink of your cursor matches the soft click of your wristwatch, both of them taunting you, waiting for your next move. Swiping your cursor down to the taskbar, you check the time. It's a half hour past eight and there are fifteen hours left before the first lecture of the semester. Staring a bit longer at the nudge notification, you decide that nothing will stop you from having a good semester and close out of your email tab. You don't need this jaded senior who has clearly shown no intention of caring about this class.
Being chosen as a Head TA when you were only in your second semester was a big deal to you. Especially when it was under the tutelage of Dr. Choi Minho. You'd known Dr. Choi for longer than most of your cohorts as you'd taken an intership in his research lab during your undergraduate studies. Highly revered in the academic space for his research, you knew that working with and for him was a coveted spot. To be chosen out of so many students in your department, especially those with more years under your belt, was not something you were going to take for granted. Not something you were going to squander over a guy you've never even met, a guy who couldn't bother to show up.
An endorsement from him was a golden ticket in the academic field of Anthropology. When the bell tower on campus signaled that it was now nine, you decided that you would do your absolute best to prove yourself worthy of this decision. Nothing was going to stop you from being the best, especially not Lee Seokmin.
The First Lecture
The lecture hall was empty when you arrived. Of course it was, who shows up 45 minutes early to a lecture?
You do.
After you comes Dr. Choi and the rest of the TA's in your lecture filter in. Dr. Choi is configuring his laptop to the podium while you and the others are making small talk. Your head is on a swivel as the students filter in. Lee Seokmin is nowhere to be found.
Soon enough the lecture hall buzzes with all of the students and there are only a few minutes until class begins. Whispering in Jeonghan's ear, you question the missing scary senior he'd warned you about. He cranes his neck around the hall and you follow his eyes. Turning back to you he shrugs, telling you that he doesn't see him. Another string of annoyance bubbles inside you. As you walk towards the back of the room to take your seat, there's a string of irritation worming its way through your head.
Missing prep week? Fine, that happens.
Ignoring your emails about prep week? Rude but not the worst thing in the world?
Missing the first day of class? You marveled at how this guy could possibly have been chosen as the other Head TA
Dr. Choi begins his lecture and as he walks through his introductions, your mind races through the list of reasons why your co-TA is missing. The annoyance that was running through your body immediately dissipates when you think that he might be dealing with something serious. Ever the empath, you start to feel bad that you'd been so quick to jump to conclusions. Especially about someone you've never really met. Before you can sink deeper into your spiral, you hear your name get called out for an introduction. Looking up you see that all the heads of the students are looking towards you, so you immediately stand up and wave.
"Hi everyone! My name is Y/N. I'm one of the Head TA's this semester, along with Seokmin, who I'm sure we'll see at some point." Looking down at the students, you get a couple smiles back, some of them even wave back at you. The rest of your cohort introduce themselves and when they finish, Dr. Choi lets the class know that any important announcements about the class will be coming from you.
You yell out that they'll probably get annoyed with all of your pings and that earns you some quiet laughter. When that dies down, you focus your attention to Dr. Choi who was wheeling out a cork board. The title of the class is posted on the board — ANTH218: Anthropological Explorations of Love.
"Everyone of us in this room, I'm sure, has experienced some form of love at one point in their lives. Platonic, romantic, or familial. In all three of those, the way love shows up can come in many forms."
Dr. Choi points at the board and exclaims that throughout the semester, everyone in this class is encouraged to post something on this board that reminds them of love. He picks up a box that was on the podium and lets the students know he has plenty of supplies. When he senses that the students have understood the plan for this ploy for class engagement, he moves in to actual lecture material.
The room fills with a cacophony of keyboard clicks and pages flipping for the next hour. Every once in a while, Dr. Choi says something in his lecture that catches your attention and you type it into your own set of notes to bring up during your discussion sections. An hour passes by quickly and the first lecture of this semester is over. As the students leave the lecture hall, you swivel your head to see if Lee Seokmin might have made an appearance. When he is no where to be found, you find yourself pulling up another email draft.
You're not able to type anything except the first initial of his name, as Jeonghan and Altair flank your side, inviting you out for a late lunch. The grumble of your stomach answers for you and the email you were drafting is forgotten as you slide your laptop in your bag.
You don't think about Seokmin again for the rest of the week, as your work begins to pick now that the semester was in full swing.
WEEK TWO
It's the last hour of your office hours and not a single student has shown up. You aren't that surprised as it is only the second week of the semester, but you did try to emphasize during lectures and sections that your office hours were not only for matters regarding class work or concepts. The iced tea you'd been nursing has formed a ring of condensation on your desk and you frown, using the sleeve of your sweater to wipe up the wet circle.
You finish your iced tea and whip out your phone to text your friends about grabbing dinner. As soon as you press send, a knock has your head perking up to check out the noise. The red oak door has swung open and you see a student from your discussion section has stopped by.
"Hi Y/N, sorry I know your hours are almost ov—"
"—Don't be silly! Come in!" You wave them over with a big smile on your face. Asking them to remind you of her name, she introduces herself as Sophia and you offer her the seat across from you. You turn the brightness of your star shaped lamp up higher and ask her what brought her to your office hours.
Pulling out her laptop, she admits that she is having trouble understanding the assigned reading for the week and you reassure her that Carsten's work is not the most accessible so it is no surprise that she was having a hard time with the text.
"Tell you what, why don't you pick out the parts that were the most difficult for you and we can work through them together," you say with a smile and gesture towards her laptop. Nodding back, she scrolls down a few pages to a highlighted bit of text. You read the passage aloud and when you finish, she explains that she thinks she understands the concept of kinship but can't see the connection to functioning societies. Gently, you guide her through the connection, taking the extra time to pause in between points in case she had any questions.
The two of you continue like this and before long, you've gone through every bit of text. When she finishes the last of her notes, she glances at her watch and her eyes go wide.
"Oh! I am so sorry, it's an hour past your scheduled office hours," she profusely continues, worried about the time she's impeded on. Assuring her that it was alright, you tell her that it was actually a delight to help her. That is what a good chunk of your job is as a teaching assistant. Quickly packing up her things, she apologizes one last time before leaving your office and yelling out that she would see you at the next lecture. The door shuts and you glance at your phone which is flooded with notifications from your friends confirming dinner plans and then being concerned since you weren't answering. Swiftly replying that you got caught up in your office hours, you said you would just meet them at the restaurant.
You are halfway through cleaning up when you hear the door open. Well less of an open, it actually slams into the wall from how hard it was opened. You're about to sternly scold whatever student rudely scared you but when you look up, it's none other than Lee Seokmin himself. You were starting to believe that he was just never going to show and you were gonna have to shoulder this entire semester yourself, but here he is. He's younger than you expected.
He's dressed in a navy blue button up, with a gray sweater vest and light blue jeans. Your friends described him as a burnt out senior, but this outfit screams "I have my life figured out and you should feel bad that you don't". Black square glasses sit on top of his unexpectedly handsome face. No one mentioned how attractive Seokmin was.
"Hi!" You gleefully say as you get up. No reply from him. Realizing that your thoughts are probably displayed all over your face, you straighten yourself out. Observing him some more, you notice that he has an earbud in one ear, deducing that he might not have heard you when you greeted him, you raise your voice a little when you start talking.
"Sorry, I'm sure you were expecting an empty office. I just had a student meeting run long—"
"—You done in here?" He sounded bored, almost irritated. He hasn't looked up from the phone in his hand since he got here.
"Oh… Y-yeah. All yours." Dejectedly, you swing your bag over your shoulder and make your way out of the office. Before you're all the way out the door, you turn around.
"It was nice to meet—" The door slams closed in your face. "You," you whisper to the door. Utterly confused by what just happened, you begin the descent downstairs in a questioning daze. You phone buzzing in your pocket pulls you out of your daze, you glance down and see that Shotaro is calling you. The second you answer, he's asking if you were still on your way. Answering that you'd be there in less than ten minutes, you also add on that you just had the weirdest interaction with Seokmin and will need to talk about it with everyone during dinner. Hearing him relay the information to your crew, they cheer at the fact that they can start eating soon. Shotaro tells you to get there safely and you hang up the phone after humming in response.
You get to PANG! and when you enter, you're greeted with the comforting smell of scorched rice and kimchi jjigae. It doesn't take you long to find your friends as you hear their unmistakeable laughter. The first person to make eye contact with you is Jeonghan who immediately waves you down, scooting over to make space for you. As you're skipping over, Seungcheol scowls at Jeonghan getting all up in his space, until he realizes that it's for you. When you arrive at the table, his eyes crinkle up in a smile when he greets you. The mention of your name has everyone turning to the end of the table where you're situated and you're welcomed with smiles and cheers. Jeonghan jokingly snarks that you were holding up dinner.
"God, finally! I was scared Cheollie was gonna eat me if you had been any later!" Sitcom like laughter goes around the table.
"Shove it, Yoon." You reply without a second thought.
There are small gasps that go around and there's even a look of shock on Jeonghan's face. Anyone who knows you, knows that you're not necessarily one to shoot back any sass. It's just not who you are as a person. You're the kind of person that cries at old people getting eliminated off The Great British Bake Off. The person who will be late to a meeting just because you wanted to help a bee out of the walkway. The type of person to immediately apologize when you say something remotely snappy.
"Sorry," you say squeezing his arm as you slide into the seat. He ruffles your hair, knowing that you had no ill intent behind it. Seungcheol pinches Jeonghan's side, or that's what you assume when you feel him jump next to you.
"Don't be sorry, Sunshine, someone has to put him in his place every once in a while." Seungcheol comments as he places a kiss on Jeonghan's cheek, after the younger one whines that the two of you are bullying him. Your group laughs at their antics and when the volume dies down, food starts being laid out on your table. The spice and heat of kimchi stew floods your nose and wraps you in a warm velvety hug. The clanging of spoons and slurping of soup are the only sounds that can be heard from your table for the next couple of minutes. Every once in a while an involuntary moan comes from Jeonghan and you have to keep your composure to make sure you don't choke on the hot soup you're funneling into your mouth.
The sound of spoons quiets down as everyone empties their bowls. Shotaro's the first to ask about what held you up. After cooling down your burnt tongue, you delve into your encounter with Seokmin.
Seokmin's POV
The door slams before she even finishes her sentence. He hears his mother on the other line click her teeth.
Unbeknownst to you, you are not the only one recalling this conversation. On the other side of campus, Seokmin is taking in the office space where you left him. The first thing he notices is how the room distinctly smells like jasmine and lychee. He wants to crinkle his nose in disgust at the sweetness of it.
"What is it eomma?" Thinking that his mother was in pain, Seokmin focuses his entire attention onto the phone.
"That girl seemed nice, it was rude of you to not even greet her. Thought I raised you better than that." She says. A quick glance at the time tells him that his mother should be going to sleep soon.
"I'll be honest, I barely registered her." A sigh crackles through the phone. He fusses at her that she can give her commentary on his etiquette tomorrow.
"Seokmin-ah, you know I'll be fine right? You can let go a bit this year. It's your last year," his mother begins coughing and guilt etches into his gut. Seeing the concern in his face, she waves him off saying that she just has a dry throat. After taking a sip of water, she continues making her case. That he should be trying to enjoy his last year of school. That he's worked tirelessly for the past two years and deserves to have a little bit of fun. Her pleas fall on deaf ears as Seokmin waves her off, replying that he can have fun when he's earned it. When he graduates.
Another click of her teeth, to which he responds with a grunt. This is not the first time the two of them have had this debate. Him constantly insisting that his education is his key to making sure the family is settled while she worries that he might to live to regret that philosophy. This certainly will not be the last time they have this bout, but the two of them concede for now. After a few more exchanges, Seokmin bids his mother goodnight and is left to the office by himself.
The office that still smells like jasmine and lychee. Like you.
WEEK THREE
Monday morning rolls around and you are more than happy to still have a full day before you inevitably have to face Seokmin again. The interaction between the two of you had left an uneasy feeling in your stomach. To be quite honest, you were actually a bit irritated with that interaction. Not because he was rude, well yes there's that, but you were more slighted by the fact that he had left you to do all the heavy lifting of being a Head TA, while he just carelessly strolled in.
The sunlight is just beginning to break in your apartment, the first rays of sunlight reflecting onto the butter yellow wallpaper. Deciding that you were not going to let this random man ruin your academic career, you begin planning for a very productive but relatively chill day.
Today was as relaxing as it could be until your phone buzzes at half-past four. You were mid Great British Bake-off episode when you thought a quick glance at this notification turned into minutes of staring.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Out for Lecture
Good afternoon you two,
It seems that I have somehow forgotten that tomorrow is the annual Humanities Department Spring Marathon. As I'm sure the both of you are familiar, this is something I take very seriously, to everyone's surprise, so I will not be in for tomorrow's lecture. I've attached the lecture slides as well as commentary in the slide notes, below.
Y/N, I trust that you'll be able to take the lead and do well.
Seokmin, I heard that you've returned to campus. Schedule a meeting with me before the week is up. Additionally, be a pillar of support to YN as the two of you cover for me tomorrow.
Take Care,
Dr. Choi Minho, Ph.D
Anthropology Department | Seoyeon University
Office Phone: +82 032 1290526 ext. 1991
Your breath catches in your throat as you reach the end of Dr. Choi's email. There are two lines of thought splitting your brain in half right now: you're honored that Dr. Choi is appointing you the lead, but you now have to lead an entire lecture by yourself. You obviously have some experience in teaching, but this would be the first time that you're teaching to a group this size, by yourself. Your nerves are even higher, anticipating your next interaction with Seokmin.
Mentally thanking yourself for looking through course material this morning, you open the lecture slides and get to work on familiarizing yourself with Dr. Choi's notes. You work at this presentation tirelessly for the entire day, your anxiety a driving force for you to do well.
The Following Day
Once again you show up to class earlier than usual. This time though you are shaking with nerves. You hate how unsure of yourself you feel, cursing Lee Seokmin for his absence. You have half the mind to back out last minute and ask Dr. Choi if you can just cancel class.
Realizing that doing that would not set a good impression, you beg Jeonghan to meet you early to help you prepare everything. He merely texts you back the saluting emoji and you feel yourself breathe a little easier. While you wait for him, you start setting up by yourself.
You fish out a connecting adapter from your bag and plug in your laptop. It successfully connects but then the projector is displaying the animal video that you were crying at this morning. You then take the extra measure to make sure that any extra tabs and windows are closed. Taking it a step further, you even turn off your notifications.
Once you're confident that you won't have any surprises on your laptop, you get to work on setting up the cork board. You find the board in its usual spot and you begin to wheel it out. Unfortunately for you, every little inconvenience is popping up for you today because, one of the wheels of the board gets stuck in a divot on the floor. The click of a door unlocking comes from behind you and you immediately assume that Jeonghan is here to rescue you from your misery.
"Thank God, you're here! Can you come help me with the bo—" The next thing you hear is a scoff and in surprise, you whip your head around. What you see isn't the blonde man you were texting this morning, but Lee Seokmin. You can feel the shock in your eyes. There was a question in your mind whether or not he would actually show up this week.
Since your unfortunate introduction to him, he still had not responded to your previous emails. You were mulling the probability of him showing up to class when you were preparing last night. And now here he is, wearing the same scowl on his face the night you two met.
"Hi again! Sorry I thought you were someone else. Could you uh, help me with the board? I think the wheel is stuck or something."
He wordlessly comes up and effortlessly gets the board unstuck from its spot. Squeaking out a thanks, you wheel the board to its normal spot. When you've finished, you notice him looking at the board. You're unable to make out what he's thinking and the silence feels uncomfortable, so you begin to fill it.
"Right, so I'm not sure how many of my emails you've read or if Dr. Choi has explained anything. Basically for the entire semester, the students can come before or after class to share examples of love." You give him the same spiel that Minho have gave the students on the first day of class. When you eventually finish, he scoffs and makes a comment that you can't hear.
"Oh, I wasn't able to catch that, I'm sorry."
"I said, that's pointless." He says, pointing to the cork board.
You're about to respond, but then Jeonghan comes bustling into the lecture hall. There's also a look of surprise on his face when he makes eye contact with Seokmin. The younger one merely nods and retreats to the back row of seats. Jeonghan joins you at the podium and hands you a coffee.
"Sorry would have gotten here earlier, but y'know Cheol is clingy in the mornings." He says and you laugh, remembering how you had to keep honking outside of Jeonghan's door last semester.
"Anyways, you all ready? I'll stay up here in case you need anything during lecture today." For the second time today, you're cut off from responding as your students file in.
Seokmin's POV
A little annoyed that he was having to walk into a class, completely unprepared, Seokmin was not having a great morning. When he opens the door to the lecture hall he, he's hit with the same lingering scent from last week. Before you face him, you're already rambling about how he was a lifesaver, immediately he deduces that you were not talking about him. There's no way that anyone who had the interaction you two had last week would call Seokmin a lifesaver the following one.
He sees you standing on the stage trying to pull out a cork board. You're dressed in black slacks and a long-sleeved white button up. A fairly normal outfit, but the thing that makes you stand out is the bright butter yellow scarf that's being used as a tie.
You're explaining the board to him and Seokmin finds himself getting annoyed at this exercise. He thinks to himself why Minho would even do something like this. He'd never done anything like this in the past, so why now?
He mutters his displeasure by muttering that it was pointless under his breath. When you ask him to repeat himself, he's a little stunned but he does so anyways. The drop in your face was definitely a sight to see. The door opens before you can say anything in response and Seokmin finds himself walking to the back of the room.
While waiting for class to start, he sees you nervously flitting at the podium. Every once in a while Jeonghan makes you laugh and Seokmin hates the way it makes him feel.
It's sweet, just like jasmine and lychee.
WEEK FOUR
"Alright, that's all for today's lecture," Dr. Choi announces as he ends the presentation. You look up from your notes and make eye contact with Dr. Choi. He signals to the rest of the class, reminding your students that the TA's are hosting a last minute drop-in session for questions about the upcoming midterm. When he makes that announcement, he directs their attention to you. All eighty of the students are blinking at you and you warmly smile at them in return.
"I'll send out a more detailed notice about the drop-in later tonight. Come with good questions!"
The chatter in the lecture hall dies out as the students leave. You head up to the stage to help the others pack up the board. As you do so, your professor is making small talk with you.
"This board has been gathering quite the attention."
You laugh in agreement and question if this exercise has had much success in the past. Dr. Choi shrugs and admits that this is the first time he's done the board and you cannot hide the look of bewilderment on your face. It seems that you are not the only one to have this reaction as Chaewon and Altair also have shock in their eyes. The three of you laugh in unison when you all make eye contact.
It's like all the joy gets taken out of the room when you hear the unmistakable scoff of Seokmin as he sees the board. You're shocked for a second time this morning, that he would openly mock something that is supposed to be a fun and engaging learning tool for students. You knew he was annoyed
"Not a fan, Seokmin?" Dr. Choi asks with a teasing lilt in his voice. You expect Seokmin to back down, but he doubles down and outright affirms his distaste for the board.
"Definitely not."
Jeonghan enters behind him and claps him on the back. You do not miss the irritation that is bubbling in the younger one's eyes.
"He only says that because he's never experienced a love that breaks through his grumpy wall," Jeonghan jokes. A few of the eager and early students catch Jeonghan's comment and snicker to themselves. You also stifle a giggle and walk over to smack Jeonghan on the back of his neck.
"Leave him alone, Jeonghan." The older man whines and pouts at you, rubbing his neck over-dramatically causing the students to giggle over him even more. You roll your eyes and begin to pack up your things. As you and your friends are making your way out, one of your students stops you. They tell you they won't be able to make it to the session tonight and had a question. Telling the bunch that you'll meet them later, you have a chat with your student.
Seokmin's POV
It's the end of class and Minho makes his way to Seokmin.
"I'm still owed a meeting, Seokmin."
Seokmin nods quietly. To the outside person, one would think that his focus is on the book he's carrying in his hands. However, just a little to the left is where you stand, getting ready to leave with the rest of the TAs.
Minho is able to snap Seokmin's attention back when he asks about his family.
"My sister is fine and my mother could be—" Just as easily as the topic of his family can take his attention, so does your laugh. Seokmin finds himself looking up and away the second he hears it. He feels the same funny feeling he did the week before, when he heard your laugh for the first time.
At the drop-in session
Seokmin is genuinely surprised by how many students have actually shown up to this drop-in session. Most of the time in his discussion sections, for this class and those in the past, it's mostly him talking. Occasionally, he would have one student who would chime in, but he'd never seen anything like this.
The five TA's are spread out across the department's conference room and students who came in could take their pick in TAs to ask their questions. It came as no surprise to Seokmin that found himself without a student a majority of the time. He quite honestly preferred it. The only reason he was there was because he had to be. Minho would've chewed him up if he missed another responsibility as a head TA.
This isn't the normal him. Or at least, it used to not be. Seokmin cared. So much. But then his mother fell ill and financial responsibilities began to pile up. The professor he was working under left Seoyeon and that meant there was nothing funding his post-doctoral career. To Lee Seokmin, Dr. Choi Minho is something of a guardian angel. Minho was a visiting professor turned full-time who happily took Seokmin under his care. Somewhere along the way, Seokmin found himself to be the current version that everyone steered clear from. He told himself it was better this way. No one to drag down. No one else to disappoint.
His reminiscing on his younger self is cut short when a student clears their throat next to him. Seokmin looks up and indifferently gestures to the seat in front of him. He tries not to be annoyed by the fact that he actually had to do his job, but the student literally had no other choice. The rest of the cohort were already working with their own students. Seokmin doesn't recognize the one sitting in front of him, he assumes that they must belong to someone else's discussion section.
The student, who introduces herself as Jihyun, pulls out one of the textbooks for the class. What shocks Seokmin is when she flips to the beginning section and asks a question that, by this point in the semester, she should have already known.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," he mutters under his breath. He must've not been quiet enough because the student stares at him. Her eyes are in shock and look like they're about to burst with tears.
"I-I'm s-sorry?" Jihyun quivers out.
Seokmin doesn't really know what comes over him. All he knows is that he cannot stop himself from the barrage of words that fly out of him.
"You should be. I mean, I cannot believe you're here wasting my time over a question that you damn well should know the answer to!"
A few heads have turned at the decibels of his voice raising. Jihyun is stunned into silence, unsure of how she should respond. It's shark week and her fear sends Seokmin into an emotional frenzy.
"I mean seriously! Do you actually expect to get anywhere in this class, much less life, if you can't get this?! This is a simple and foundational fucking concept!"
This breaks the dam in Jihyun because she runs out of the conference room in tears. Everyone in the room was staring at Seokmin, you included. Just a few minutes before his outburst, you had wrapped up with one of your own students. You'd heard the first comment and frowned at the harshness, but kept to yourself because you expected he'd at least have the decency to tone it down after. When he dug even further, you were sent into your own frenzy.
"Lee Seokmin!" You yell out from across the room. His head whips towards you.
"What the fuck is your actual problem?!" You yell, as you stomp towards him. He's a whole head taller than you but he feels himself shrinking.
"I don't know who you think you are! Where the hell do you get off berating MY students?!" Seokmin raises his eyebrow slightly at the possessive over the students. You don't miss it.
"Yes, mine. Since for the last three fucking weeks I've been doing all the fucking work as Head TA!"
You stick a finger in his chest and continue to yell at him.
"You do not get to act this way. You are supposed to be someone the students can come to, not someone they run crying from!"
Seokmin can do nothing but blink when you exit the room. You have Jihyun's things in your hands and he hears you call out for her. He turns his head to the rest of the conference room and when he makes eye contact with Jeonghan, the older one does nothing but whistle and laugh.
WEEK FIVE
It's been a couple of days since your outburst at Seokmin and you're sitting in Jeonghan's apartment stressing over it. The second you'd finished yelling at him, you felt awful. The way you were feeling honestly probably felt very comparable to what Jihyun felt.
You hated yelling. Especially when you were angry. There was just something about that night and the way he yelled at Jihyun that drove you over the edge.
"I don't know why you're stressing, he had it coming," Jeonghan says as he pours you a glass of water. The blond had invited you over for a movie night. Seungcheol appears before you can respond.
"Who had what coming?" The older man greeting his lover with a kiss on the cheek.
"Seokmin, I kinda lost it on him," you say sheepishly. Cheol comes around the kitchen island and gives you a hug.
"Mmm, Jeonghan's right, he probably deserved it."
You sigh and pout at the two of them. Cheol laughs and assures you that he was only kidding. You give him the full context of what happened and while he mulls over his response, Jeonghan chimes in.
"I'm being serious! Honestly it's about time someone stood up to him." Your friend goes back to the cupboards in search of snacks for your movie night. An eye roll comes from you while his back is turned and Cheol has to fight a giggle from coming out.
"Have you reached out to him?" Cheol asks. You nod, explaining that you'd sent him an email. He reassures you that Seokmin's probably just not used to someone putting him in his place or giving much of a fight. Telling you not to worry about it for the rest of the night, he retreats to the office space in the apartment for the rest of the night.
"Is Cheol working? It's a holiday week, why is he working?" You ask Jeonghan as the two of you sit down on his couch.
"Dissertation defense waits for no one," he says matter-of-factly. You let out a puff of air and express relief that you don't actively have to worry about that for quite some time. The two of you bicker over what movie to watch, but eventually settle on the LEGO movie.
By the time the movie's over it's late and Jeonghan's drool is dangerously close to getting on your lap. Gently, you make your escape from the couch. Rolling your eyes at the fact that he fell asleep, you quietly tiptoe out of the living room. The door to Cheol's home office is cracked open and you lightly tap on it. A hum from him has you poking your head in.
"Hey, I'm heading out for the night. Hannie's asleep on the couch," You say softly.
"Need a ride home?"
Shaking your head no, you jingle your car keys softly at him. He nods and hops up from his desk to walk you out. When you get to the door, you jerk your head towards the couch and remind Cheol to move him before he wakes up with a crick in his neck. The two of you share a laugh as he walks you to your car. Wrapping you in a hug he wishes you a good night and to drive safely.
You're backing out of their lot and start the drive home. It doesn't take you very long to get back to your palce, but your mind is focused on one thing: Seokmin. Well not necessarily him, more the emotional unloading you did on him last week. When park your car, you sit and thumb through the email you had sent profusely apologizing to him. You'd written it immediately after the session ended, which was right after you left the room to unite Jihyun with her items.
There was still no reply, the only thing in that email line was the familiar orange text of a nudge reminder. You sigh and contemplate whether or not you should write another apology email. Almost as if he had some sort of telepathic superpower, you get a text from Seungcheol asking if you had gotten home safely. You took that as a sign to head in for the night and not lose sleep over this.
It's Saturday when you actually hear from Seokmin.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: My Sincerest Apologies
Y/N,You were right I was out of line. I've since reached out to Jihyun.
Lee Seokmin
Ph.D Candidate
Anthropology | Seoyeon University
You are stunned to say the least. You're out with Jeonghan when you get the notification and you immediately show him.
He raises his brows in surprise, "Well that's… something."
It's your first email reply from him. It also happens to be outside of the working hours, so you're even more shocked.
Later in the evening, you're sitting in the department office after Dr. Choi asked for a quick meeting between all the TA's. He assured you all it was nothing serious, he was only sharing information about the class. True to his word, he gathered your group together to share some revisions to the syllabus and some deadlines he needed to switch around to accommodate some previous responsibilities he had. When the meeting started you hadn't seen Seokmin, but as it ended you found him leaning against the back of the wall.
Chenle turns to everyone and suggests going out for food and drinks since it's essentially the last day of break. All of you happily agree and start making your way out the office. As you're passing by Seokmin, you stop and let the others pass you.
"Hey, we're all grabbing dinner together. Would you like to come?" You ask the senior. From the corner of your eye, you see everyone has turned back in surprise. Seokmin is also quite surprised.
"Me?"
You nod enthusiastically. Telling him it would be fun and also sheepishly saying that you still feel awful about the last in-person interaction the two of you had. He hesitantly says yes and you squeal in delight.
"C'mon everyone, it'll be fun right?!" You don't miss the shared look between everyone else, but you pay them no mind. They all immediately get on board when you shout that you'd be buying the first round of soju.
You're all sitting around the table at PANG! Luckily with the holiday, the place isn't filled with students. You've all eaten your food and it's time for you to pony up and provide the first round. After asking everyone for their flavors, you head to the counter to pay for the bottles. Before you reach the counter, Chenle calls out and asks you to bring some beers too. You roll your eyes, knowing that this request is only being asked because he wants to play drinking games. As you wait for the server to ring you up, you see Seokmin come up.
"Hi!" You say as you lean on the counter. He smiles at you and you are dazzled by his smile.
"Can I help you with those?" He points to the bottles and cans that have appeared next to your elbow. You nod excitedly and begin to hand them over. He lets you go ahead and while you're walking back, you make eye contact with Jeonghan who is wiggling his eyebrows at the sight of you and Seokmin. You shrug and mouth for him to shut up as you hand out everyone's bottles. Everyone takes their first sips and return to their earlier conversations.
The second you sit down, Chenle yells out for a game of Titanic. Immediately, him and Jeonghan set up for the game and force everyone to sit closer to each other. Seokmin just happens to be sitting next to you and there is a scheming look from Jeonghan that you decide to question later. The younger one of the bunch explain the rules of the game.
"It's simple. Pour the soju into the shot glass, whoever sinks it has to drink the whole thing!"
Chenle suddenly yells for a game off rock, paper, scissors to determine who goes first. To his chagrin, he loses and has to start the first pour. When he fills the glass more than halfway full, Chaewon, Altair and you yell at him that he's not being fair. You turn to the two older men at the table and whine to try and get them to reign in Chenle. Jeonghan is no help, he just throws his hands up and laughs. Seokmin's response happily surprises all of you.
"A game's a game."
The three of you complaining start booing him and Chenle is quick to his defense, saying that Seokmin is right. It's Chaewon's turn and your jaw drops when she pours an amount that guarantees you to be the person sinking the glass. Chenle cackles and claps like a seagull when you call her a traitor. Unfortunately for you, a single drop is all takes and you're watching the soju and beer mix together. All in good fun, you shoot Chenle a dirty look and down the drink. It's been a while since you'd been out drinking, so the alcohol hits you not too long after.
A couple more rounds of Titanic are played and since Chenle wanted to play dirty, all bets were off. Elbows were being jerked during pours, some of you used Chenle's earlier technique, Jeonghan cleverly distracted Seokmin during a pour. By the end of the final game, three of you had to drink the loser drink.
The next game was sam, yuk, gu, better known as 3,6,9. Jeonghan gives everyone a refresher on the game. Going around the table, you all count off but any time the number three, six or nine was said you had to clap. The number of times you had to clap was dependent on how many times the number appeared. It didn't take you all very long until someone had to drink. That someone happens to be you when the alcohol in your system gets you to stutter at thirteen. The laughter and alcohol warm your cheeks as you take another drink. As the game progresses, the lot of you get drunker and before you know it you're all a laughing mess when Chenle yells the number three.
The last game of the night happens when you're down to the last shot. You're the one that initiates the game, your words beginning to slur as you explain. Gathering a bottlecap, you explain that whoever flicks off the metal rim will have to take a drink. Seokmin starts and the cap makes its way around, all the way to you. Luck was nowhere near your side because when you flick the end of the metal it goes flying. Everyone else cheers, but you groan and whine.
"Do I haaaave to?"
A resounding yes comes from everyone and you tip your head back to drink the last of the bottle. Your face twists at the slight burn of it going down and you slam the shot glass down on the table.
"W-well. I'm tapped!," you begin to get up, but the sudden move has the blood rush down and you get a little wobbly. Seokmin's able to get you in time and he steadies you. A giggle comes from you.
"Sunshine, you gonna be okay to get home? If you don't mind waiting, Cheol can drive you from mine." Jeonghan asks you when he sees your unsteady gait. You're about to whine that you're a big girl and can walk yourself back just fine, but Seokmin cuts in and says that he'll walk you home. You say your goodbyes and you drunkenly make everyone pinky promise to text you when they get home.
You and Seokmin start the walk home and you can barely keep yourself upright.
"Oops!" You giggle when you stumble on the sidewalk. His hand reaches out and steadies you. Turning to him, you turn and give him a wobbly curtsy. When you meet eyes with him, you're struck with the most genuis idea and you gasp. Concern is etched on his face and then you loudly say that you have a great idea.
"You should sooooo give me a piggy-back ride!"
Before he can fully object, you jump and cling onto his back.
Seokmin's POV
There isn't much he can do except accept his fate. Making sure that you're secure, he begins walking in the direction of your place, under your slurred instructions. He carries you in silence for a minute until you hiccup. You giggle to yourself and Seokmin swears he feels something bloom in his chest. He suddenly becomes very aware of his senses. Even though the smell of soju is strong, he can still find the scents that he's come to associate with you: jasmine and lychee.
After your hiccup, Seokmin feels your finger poking his cheek.
"Can I help you?"
"Yeah, why are you so grumpy all the time?"
"Not all the time."
You remind him that he literally made a student cry not that long ago. He sighs and reminds you that he had already reached out to Jihyun so that he could apologize. Under your breath, you slip out that apologizing to her was the bare minimum. He jokes that he can let you off his back and he hates how much he likes it when you cling onto him tighter.
"You still haven't answered my question. And you can't answer with 'I just am'. Because I know you're capable of not being grumpy, especially after today."
Seokmin stews in silence for a little bit. He mulls over the risk of being vulnerable with someone who isn't his family. When he hears you giggle to yourself about the stars, he concludes that you likely won't remember this conversation so he starts talking.
"It wasn't always like this. I actually used to be like you, believe it or not." You make a sound of surprise and he finds it incredibly endearing. Describing his younger self, he's reminiscing of a long-gone version of him like he was a few weeks ago.
"My funding got cut and then my mother got sick. Between those two things, I was burning the candle at both ends. Something had to give and I guess it was me…" he says wistfully.
"It became easier to care less, I don't know."
You're quiet and for a second Seokmin thinks that you might have fallen asleep. But then you pipe up and the first thing that comes from you is an apology. Sharing that while you may not understand what its like to be in his shoes, you can understand the demands and insane amount of stress he was under. Leaning your head on his back, you hug him tighter and tell him that things will be okay.
Eventually, the two of you get to your apartment and he gently lets you off him. The two of you are facing each other and the space between the two of you is pretty much nonexistent. You look up at him and in the warm glow of your porchlight, he can see the different shades in your eyes.
"Well this is me," you say with a dreamy smile. Seokmin nods and he wonders why he feels stuck in place. Your eyes take a slow blink and Seokmin finds himself closing the distance between the two of you. The scent of jasmine and lychee is full force when he grazes your soft lips. Before the kiss can go anywhere else the wind flows through your windchimes and it gets you to pull away from him. You unlock your door and start to head in.
Seokmin begins to turn to start his walk home, which happens to be in the opposite direction but you don't know that. Before he makes it far you call out to him.
"Seokmin?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm awfully fond of this side of you. I hope I get to see him more."
WEEK SIX
The week off from class has severely messed with your circadian rhythm. On top of the fact that you had been out drinking, it was truly a recipe for you being late. When your eyes open from the sun beaming in your face, you are hauntingly reminded of how little water you drank the night before. Grumbling, you roll over and blindly feel for your phone. Once you feel it in your hand, you take a look and immediately shoot straight out of bed. The speed at which you get up causes you to stumble over the duvet that you kicked off in your sleep. You are rubbing the sleep out of your eyes and mentally cursing yourself for not taking care of yourself the night before.
You step into the bathroom and quickly splash water on your face. When you come up and catch your reflection, you're relieved that drunk you at least remembered to clean your face last night. Scurrying to your closet, you grab a cream penny tee and some faded jeans. Normally, you'd like to be a little more put together especially when you have a class to teach, but you just don't have the time to do anything else.
You grab your phone and see an endless scroll of text messages from Jeonghan asking for your whereabouts. The last text he sent you was a threat to call emergency services if you didn't respond within the next ten minutes. Quickly responding that you'd be at lecture within the next twenty minutes.
It's worth noting that you aren't technically late as class hasn't even started yet. But you're the person that shows up at least thirty minutes early and normally you would have already been in the lecture hall setting up for class. Grabbing your scarf and a thick jacket from the back of your bedroom door, you speed into your living room. Thankfully, your work bag was still sitting on your couch, unpacked from two Friday's ago, you sling the straps over your shoulder as you're shoving your feet into a pair of heeled boots. Hoping that the added height makes you look a little more put together, you make your way out of your apartment.
You get to campus in record time and book it to your lecture hall. You walk into the hall and the entire room is buzzing. The students have all gathered at the front of the room, crowding over the board. So far this entire semester, you'd never seen them make a fuss over the board. Making eye contact with Jeonghan, you question why the students are so excited. He's about to answer you, but then Dr. Choi walks in and announces that it's time to start class. The two of you take your normal seats in the back and you forget about the board until the end of the lecture, when Dr. Choi makes an announcement about it.
"Before I forget! I appreciate the enthusiasm you all have shown towards the board. That being said, I wasn't intending for it to be a confession board."
Your eyes are wide and you smack Jeonghan's arm in shock. He giggles and shakes his head. Dr. Choi lists off another couple of announcements regarding class and then bids everyone goodbye. Turning to Jeonghan, you smack him again.
"Ah! Woman what is it and your penchant for hitting me as a strong emotional reaction?!" He says jokingly as he rubs his arm. You quickly apologize and all but run to the board. You get to the board and smack dab in the middle is the confession post that had everyone enamored.
the first time i saw you, it felt like clouds parted the sky
everyone has been talking about kinds of love
and you are the only person
i've come across that even makes me believe
that love might be real
is what i feel love or a deep infatuation?
honestly right now i couldn't tell the difference
i hope that when i do figure it out
i'll get the courage to tell you in person
one day
- m
There's a small chill that runs through your spine. You turn around and look for Seokmin, there's something in your gut that has you wondering whether or not he had something to do with it. Jeonghan pulls you out of your thoughts when he comes up behind you.
"You look like you've seen a ghost. You okay?"
"Uh. Maybe? I don't know I'm freakin' out a little."
The two of you walk out of the lecture hall and he prods you for more information. You wave him off telling him that you need to prepare for your discussion section later. He seems hesitant to let you go, but for as much as you know him, he knows you. And he knows that you have your reasons for keeping whatever this is close to your chest.
As you sit in your classroom, your mind is unable to focus on anything but the confession note. Something in your gut is making you wonder whether or not that note was about you. You thank your lucky stars that you had planned to watch a supplementary documentary during your section. It worked out because you knew the students were still quite hyped over the confession and this made sure they weren't talking about. You wrapped up your discussion section by reminding them to make sure they do the reading for this week as you have a quiz planned for them in the following week.
There luckily isn't another class that uses the same classroom you do for another hour, so you take your time packing up. You spend this time convincing yourself that the note just happens to be a coincidence. The note itself is very vague and could literally be about anyone. You also recount the fact that Seokmin has vocally shared his distaste for the activity and the idea behind it. The biggest thing that convinces you that this is a coincidence is the timing of it all. Of course you would think that it's about you, the two of you shared a nice moment very recently.
You finally finish packing up and make your way out of the classroom. Before you head home, you decide to stop by your office to drop some things off. As you exit the stairwell of the building, you run into Seokmin.
"Hey! Did you just finish up with a section?" He asks, and you swear you see the smallest smile on his lips. Nodding, you let him know that you decided that this was the week you were showing the documentary. You then ask him what he was doing in the same building.
"Weekly seminar," he says with a sigh. You nod in understanding, you lucked out this semester with not having to take a seminar, but you remember last semester. The two of you find yourselves at the front of department office building and it only then dawns on you that the two of you were walking the same way.
"Hey, can I ask you a kind of weird question?"
He's in front of you now and he raises a brow in anticipation.
Before you can get a word out, his phone rings. He's quick to apologize and you urge him to take the call.
"Find me later?" He says before connecting the phone to his ear.
You nod and wave goodbye as he walks in the opposite direction, back where you had come from.
You don't see him again that night. Instead you lie in bed, restless, thinking about the note and how soft Seokmin's lips were.
Welcome to the studioSVT Birthday Event! ✨A Midsummer Carat's Dream✨ is our way of thanking you for a wonderful 2 years, and we're handing the typewriters out in an open invitation to all! Find out how you can participate below.
HOW IT WORKS:
We have curated a list of prompts consisting of dialogue, premises, and openings below. Pick one (or more!) of the prompts and include them in one of your writings. Post it on Tumblr according to the guidelines below and we will reblog it!
This event will run from JULY 24TH - SEPTEMBER 18TH 2026.
GUIDELINES:
This event is open for anyone who would like to join. You do not need to be a member.
All fics must include one or more members of Seventeen x Reader.
All fics must include the use of at least one prompt from the list below. They can either be quoted directly or used as a heavy inspiration.
AI must not be used at any point of the process. This includes writing, planning, graphics, and plot. Anyone caught using AI in their work will be permanently blacklisted.
Open to blogs 18 and above ONLY. You must have an age indicator on your blog. (Legal, Adult, etcetera are acceptable indicators)
Blog must not be empty/inactive.
There is no minimum/maximum word count.
Fics posted after September 18th will not be reblogged.
Mature content/NSFW content must be flagged in the beginning of the fic.
A read more cut must be used after the first 500 words (includes foreword), and before any mature content.
Fics must not overlap with another external event (this does not include personally curated events for the OP's blog only).
Use #amidsummercaratsdreamevent in the first 5 tags.
Tag @studiosvt in the foreword or at the end of the fic.
Avoid tagging members not in the main pairings.
FICS NOT ADHERING TO THESE RULES WILL NOT BE REBLOGGED.
Note: Anonymous asks have been turned off temporarily to effectively and privately answer questions pertaining to the event. Please read through the guidelines before sending an ask.
PROMPTS:
“Is that legal?” “Define legal.”
A deity you thought long gone appears to give you a job offer
“I’ve been expecting you.”
“How long have you known about that?”
You went to sleep in your bed and woke up in a circus
“You think this is funny?” “It got you smiling, didn’t it?”
“That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had.” “Are you sure?” “Okay, it’s the second worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“No one is going to believe us.”
“You weren’t supposed to see that.”
You’re new boss is your ex from college
“Dont make me regret this.”
You inherit a magical pawn shop from a witch you never met
“Don’t look them in the eyes.”
You receive a text message from someone you thought was dead
“If anyone can hear me on this frequency, we found somewhere safe.”
“That’s not your blood, though.”
“Don’t panic.” “Too late.” “Okay, so medium panic.”
The magic in your world suddenly stops working - except for yours
You accidentally swipe right on your best friend’s dating profile
You become someone’s scapegoat after an assassination
You join a book club on the weekends only to find out it’s an occult group
“This looked so much easier online!”
An alien crash lands in your back yard and says they’ve been searching for you
The world ends while you’re at work
“Can you see them too?”
You discover an island that appears on no maps
You wake up to find that someone has stolen your memories
You wake up with someone else’s memories
“I feel like I’m finally home… with you.”
You receive a random invitation to an exclusive party
“Did you mean what you said last night?”
“Why do you insist on making everything so hard?”
The new neighbor’s lights randomly flashes in their windows between 3am-4am every night
“What’s your favorite scary movie?”
“So I hear you’re into racing.”
They showed up for you when you needed them the most
You go on a random road trip with a group of friends and it changes the trajectory of your life.
“Draw your weapon.”
Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—unless it’s livestreamed.
hi girls! i am planning to do an episode for the pod wherein you send your thoughts/unpopular opinions about caratblr or the carat fandom in general and I react to them. it'll be a segment of a broader episode where i will talk about my observations about the fandom and its culture so far - the good and the bad.
i'd really appreciate your participation in this one!! feel free to send in your thoughts to me here!
howeverrrr! keep the following in mind:
- anything snarky or hateful about anyone (the artists/author/readers/other creators) will be ignored so don't even bother if all you want is to gossip and stir up drama. but feel free to talk smack about the corporate greed that is ruining music.
- feel free to send them in if you have observed something that you can't really make sense of but think is worth being spoken more about.
- you can absolutely send in anon asks!
- you can even ask me random questions lol and i'll see if they fit into the episode's narrative and answer them in this one or subsequent ones
i'll try to keep my responses as nuanced, researched, and unbiased as possible but won't be talking about the things i feel ineligible to comment on :)
PAIRING: Detective!Mingyu x f. Reader
SUMMARY: In a city where technology makes it possible to shed your body as easily as changing clothes, Mingyu has built his reputation hunting criminals who disappear behind new faces. So when you become the prime suspect in a brutal string of serial murders, he should have no trouble closing the case. Except… the more he investigates you, the less he’s convinced you’re guilty.
CHAPTER WC: 9,415
AU: Cyberpunk, Mystery, Crime
GENRE: Strangers to Lovers, some angst, smut
RATING: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging in and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.
WARNINGS: This contains vivid depiction of a dead body that has been intentionally disfigured/messed with by a serial killer - I will call this body horror simply because I want to play it on the safe side, mention of dead bodies in general, depiction of gore and blood (in the dead body scene), bodies being referenced to as ‘Skins’ because replacing the body is possible in this world, lots of commentary on wealth gap, lots of references to how humanity just doesn’t care about human livelihood the same way it did once, mentions of deep poverty, mentions of throw away Skins (bodies) being dumped in an alleyway, Mingyu is kind of emo, Mingyu is a cigarette smoker because what is a detective fic without cigarette smoking, lots of reference to a terrible justice system, reader is a stripper and there is a brief scene of her dancing on Mingyu, lots of random body modifications but nothing super weird or in detail, Mingyu in general just has a lot of general dislike for the world, explicit language, um.... I think that's it for this chapter?
A/N: This is for the Cyberpunk: Reload Collab hosted by @studiosvt and I could not be more excited to be bringing this to you! This is heavily inspired by Altered Carbon, Ghost in the Shell, and Blade Runner. This fic is a bit gritty because we all know me. I do not currently have a schedule set for the second chapter, but I am going to try to write the remaining three in total and then post them on a quick schedule basis to shorten the wait between them.
A/N 2: No beta we die like Jedi during order 66
BANNER CREDIT: Thank you to @joshujin for the amazing, beautiful banner!
MAIN M. LIST | ASK | CYBERPUNK: RELOAD M. LIST | TESSELLATION TWO
it has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. - chaos theory
"THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IS A PRINCIPLE IN CHAOS THEORY THAT STATES THAT SMALL, SEEMINGLY INSIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN INITIAL CONDITIONS CAN TRIGGER MASSIVE, UNPREDICTABLE, AND VASTLY DIFFERENT OUTCOMES IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS-"
Mingyu knows what the butterfly effect is. In fact, the exact audio recording playing on loop throughout the penthouse apartment is the same audio that's been haunting his dreams and the moments of almost sleep he's been having at his desk while filling out piles and piles of paperwork at the station.
Now, the audio is playing again at the third crime scene in as many months, and he's had it.
"Turn that shit off," he barks, walking through the flickering holograph of the caution barrier. His legs disrupt the light only for a second, shadows bounding off the walls as he enters the main living area. "I'm tired of hearing about the fucking butterfly effect."
He was tired of researching it, too. Researching why a serial killer would leave the same recording playing at each crime scene over and over again, researching what the murders could possibly have to do with one another. So far, the first five victims have no connection to one another, nothing that clues Mingyu into what's going on beyond the same audio on loop. He doesn't expect this sixth victim will have any connection to their predecessors, but he has to try.
A grisly scene paints the penthouse. It's a nicer home than anything Mingyu will ever afford with floor-to-cieling windows that overlook the neon smear of the city. Rain blurs against the glass, turning the glow beyond to a muted opaque color that clashes with the bright caution banners and the lights of the investigative unit called to the scene.
The penthouse reeks of the metallic tang of blood and the faint tang of the chemicals the collection team uses to take samples all around the apartment. The victim lies splayed across the massive obsidian coffee table in the main entertainment area, arms and legs extended at unnatural angles. It's a male body, the torso filleted open from sternum to pelvis with surgical precision, the ribs cracked outward like grotesque wings.
Mingyu has seen five of these now. Each one has been more elaborate than the last. Each one leaves him with the same hollow frustrating gnawing at his gut.
"Lee," he barks at the lead forensic tech hovering nearby. "Anything different this time? Prints? Core signature? A confession, perhaps?"
Chan shakes his head, his rain-slicked jacket shedding beads of water onto the floor. "Same as the others. No prints, and the audio rig is the same ghost job as the last. The victim owns the building, his name is Harlan Voss. He got a new Skin a few weeks ago at Sync Corp. Nice model, nothing too extreme."
Mingyu crouches beside the table, his boots squelching in the thin layer of blood that has spread across the marble. Through the windows, the city pulses below, bright signs for body rental shops and upgrade clinics flashing in the downpour. Towering buildings disappear into the clouds, connected by old elevated trains that rattle in the distance.
Mingyu looks at the body. Chan had said the Skin upgrade was nothing too extreme, but in a world where people swap bodies regularly, the word extreme has lost most of its value, especially for people like Harlan Voss who are wealthy enough to transfer the Core implanted in their brain stem to a new body anytime they want.
It makes permanent death uncommon for people of this caliber. Mingyu tilts his head to the side, examining the back of Harlan's neck where his Core is. Like the others, it's damaged, which means Harlan is dead dead. No transferring his Core to a new body after the death of this one, no regeneration.
It unsettles something deep in Mingyu like satisfaction, and he pushes it down. He has no time to be disgusted by the Skin jumping of the wealthy while the people below scrap together money to upgrade their Skins to something new or broken just for the prestige of doing it.
Mingyu pushes up to his feet, joints popping and back aching. He groans - unlike the dead victim in front of him, he can't pay to have the tiny device buried in his neck to be transferred to some upgraded flashy skin. One would assume that as law enforcement, he'd get some kind of special discount or offers to enhance his speed, strength or something, but Mingyu has quickly learned that only the wealthy benefit from anything in this city.
He looks around the room slowly, eyes scanning for anything out of place. A broken glass on the bar counter. A half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey tipped over, mixing with the blood into a pink mess. Framed pictures on the walls show vacation spots in brighter cities, the kind most people only see in ads. One frame lies smashed on the floor, exposing basic wiring behind the fancy cover. Typical rich place that looks expensive on top but cheap underneath.
"Why butterflies?" Mingyu mutters to himself. "Chaos theory. One small change leads to big results. Like a butterfly flapping its wings and starting a storm somewhere else."
The killer isn't hiding the message. Each killing has happened once a month - not on a perfect timing, but approximate. Each scene is bigger - more wing shapes, more lights, the same audio. But the victims are never the same and thus far, there's no link between them. No shared friends, no common jobs, nothing on the basic records. A nobody found in a cheap rental unit. An escort pulled from a job. Nothing ties them together except this ritual.
But Mingyu doesn't know what this ritual is.
Frustration burns in his chest. Five months of this, nights bleeding into days at the station, staring at paper files and holoscreens while rain water leaks onto his desk. His own body feels worn out - aches deep in his joints, eyes burning constantly from lack of sleep. Unlike the dead man in front of him, Mingyu can't afford a new Skin on a detective's pay.
"Detective Kim?" Chan calls, voice unsure. Mingyu spins on his heel to find Chan crouched by the body, holding a small device in his hand near the core in the victim's neck. "I think the core is damaged but not dead."
"What?"
Mingyu strides over, his long legs making it easy. Chan crouches lower, the glasses on his face sliding down his sweaty nose. Mingyu leans over, tilting his head as Chan gently nudges the victim's head to turn it more. The Core is exposed to the elements and cut, like the attacker had been cutting it out to kill it, but as it catches the light, there's a small blip of cyan along the side, flickering as it tries to regain connectivity.
"Holy shit," Mingyu whispers. "If it's still alive, can you re-gen this guy?"
"Maybe, but it's potentially damaged enough that he would come back with high-level personality disorders or other cognitive issues. We might be able to repair enough to access memory or information, though." Chan hesitates. "Legal might get involved. If he's got family or others left behind, they might demand the Core be delivered to them to figure out what to do with it or refuse access to us."
Mingyu's hums, thoughtful. The possibility of interference is higher than he'd like to admit. In the few cases that Mingyu has dealt with the elite, their spouses or family left behind have always been nearly impossible in active investigations. He's since learned that those who sit in gilded glass towers have more to hide than the criminals crawling on the ground, and they'd rather a case go cold than unearth their secrets.
"Are we required to notify them?" Mingyu asks, glancing at Chan.
"Yes?"
"What if we only found it was discovered functional later in a proper autopsy."
Chan looks uncomfortable for a moment before nodding. "Yeah. That would make sense."
"Autopsies get delayed, right?" Chan sighs and Mingyu grins, slapping him on the back as he stands again. "Glad we understand each other, Lee. Take care of this while I walk around the area, yeah?"
"Yes, Detective."
Mingyu leaves the apartment and takes the stairs instead of the elevator, his knees protesting with each step. The exercise feels good though, so he jogs down the winding stairs, mind racing. By the time he reaches the ground level, he's sore and his heart is pounding, both reminders that he's human and that he's in his natural body, two things he's grown to be proud of.
The lobby is sleek, made up of polished obsidian and soft blue recessed lighting. Mingyu strolls through the automatic doors, the air locks hissing as he lets himself out into the rain, shoes tapping wetly on the pavement.
Reaching into his pocket, he fishes out a cigarette - an ancient, old world habit in comparison to the sleek vapes most people use - and sticks it between his lips, digging around his pocket for a lighter. He finds it and flicks it, the orange flame licking upward as he lights the cigarette, taking a brief drag. The flame catches and he flicks it shut, taking a heavy drag and lets the smoke settle in his lungs before he exhales into the neon smear of rain.
The street level is quieter this time of night, most of the storefronts closed, their holographic signs still flickering anyway. The street is full of advertising and marketing for Skin modification services, Core implant repairs, temporary Skin rentals for people too poor to own one permanently but desperate enough to spend a night as someone else.
Neon bleeds across the wet pavement in streaks of magenta and cyan, reflecting off the rain to create a blurry kaleidoscope of light that makes Mingyu's eyes water as he takes another drag, flicking ash into a puddle where it melts.
He walks, letting his feet guide him around the perimeter of the building, cool raing tapping down on his head and neck like soft fingers. He doesn't bother with an umbrella, the rain sliding off his jacket as he examines the exterior, cigarette wedged between his lips.
The neighborhood is a mix of high-rises towering over strip malls, luxury boutiques selling pricey mods next to hole-in-the-wall clinics offering illegal and questionable upgrades. It's one of common liminal spaces in the city where the almost wealthy clash with the lower glass, each fighting for dominance on the ground while the megaliths of the city exist in their towers far above.
Mingyu wonders what the rest of them look like from on high. He imagines that they can't even see people like him, rotting beneath the clouds and scurrying around like ants beneath a boot that's constantly waiting to step on them. Mingyu has been stepped on plenty of times, but he hasn't died yet and he doesn't plan on it now, heading to the back alleyway behind the building.
Dumpsters filled with broken tech litter the alleyway, but Mingyu pauses when he sees a bunch of old, rotted Skins. He lifts his arm, covering his face with it to ward off the smell. Skins are still bodies - they're still organic material like any other living organism, and they break down the same way. Seeing tossed Skins isn't uncommon, especially near body-mod shops, but Mingyu is unsettled to see them just tossed, flies buzzing around them.
Pulling out his phone, he dials Chan up stairs. "Send a team down to the back alley, there's discarded Skins. None of them look fresh or functional, but maybe our killer tosses theirs."
"On it."
"Also have someone dispose of these before someone wanders around and tries to take them. They're rotted beyond use, the last thing we need is some kind of infection going around because people are re-genning bad Skins."
"Understood."
Mingyu hangs up the phone and takes the final drag of his cigarette before flicking it toward the dumpster. He continues on his way, searching - for what he doesn't know. Something. Anything. He just wants to find something to help him unravel the mystery upstairs, something he's missed previously.
As always, he finds nothing except the smell of wet concrete and biological decay, the distant hum of an elevated train line cutting through the noise somewhere. He circles back to the front of the building and finds himself looking upward. The building is a vertical monument to wealth that juts up into the rain-soaked sky, but it's got nothing on the monstrosities the corporation owners and mega-rich of the city live in.
The rain grows heavier, coming down in sheets. Mingyu slips under the overhang in front of the building, watching as the world vanishes to a blur of light behind the rain. From here, he knows the city by heart - it spreads out in layers, the commercial district with aggressive neon signage, the old industrial zones still smoking from plants that are ready to collapse any minute, and beyond, the entertainment and wealthy districts.
Trains arc across the space between buildings while autonomous vehicles move through the streets in perfect formation, headlights occasionally cutting through the dark toward him as they pass by the building.
They city pulses on despite the death upstairs, the desperation and money and excess and filth all tangled together, and somewhere in it, is the person Mingyu is hunting, the butterfly that haunts his dreams and all of the hours in between.
Mingyu sighs, jaw clenched as he watches the rain, the same words on loop in his head: The butterfly effect is a principle chaos theory that states that small, seemingly insignificant changes in initial conditions can trigger massive, unpredictable, and vastly different outcomes in complex systems.
-
Mingyu stares at the six projected faces in front of him, the cyan of the holoscreen only broken up by the flicker as he switches from viewing all six of them at once to one at a time. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzes, glitching for a moment as it threatens to go out. It's been dying for three weeks now, humming like an insect trapped in a glass. No one has bothered to fix it, of course. The maintenance budget at the precinct is nonexistent, most of the funding funnelling into the new autonomous patrol units they send to patrol through the wealthy districts.
Down here in the bowels of the city, everything is falling apart. Water drips from a crack in the ceiling two desks over, landing in the metal track can with a constant metal drip that drives Mingyu nuts. The air smells like mildew and stale air undercut by the burnt coffee that tastes like battery acid every time he takes a sip. He drinks it out of a chipped mug anyway, needing the extra jolt of energy and unwilling to take any of the stimulants or quick fixes the young deputies prefer.
Mingyu's fingers drum on his mug to the rhythm of the dripping. He cannot unstick his thoughts from the six victims over six months, struggling to find the connection. He drags his finger across the holoscreen to pull up the first victim's file again, despite having read it a million times. The first victim is a male nobody, found in a cheap Skin rental unit in the lower districts, his body laid out with the same surgical precision and same butterfly effect audio playing on loop. The victim had no family, no friends, and the damaged Core had said unclaimed in evidence for two weeks unclaimed and uncared for before being incinerated per protocol.
Sighing, he swipes to the second victim, a female escort pulled from a job in the entertainment district. She'd been with a wealthy client a few hours prior, but the client had a clean alibi and had no problem letting them scan his Core for memories of the entire night. The escorts Core, like the first victim, had been damaged beyond recovery, just like the first, though the job had been done a little cleaner, a little better.
The third victim comes up as Mingyu stares. Mid-level corporate suit who worked in data analysis and had an entirely boring and normal life. No enemies, no debts, no reason for anyone to want him dead. His family had come to claim his Core two days after they'd been notified, and Mingyu was surprised to discover that in a world full of abnormal, the man had been even keel and plain with enough money to provide for himself and his family but not enough to do much else than that.
The fourth and fifth victims' only similarities were their involvement in the black market, though neither had crossed paths. The fourth had been a street vendor selling neural mods, but the fifth had been a retired surgeon who'd started performing illegal Core augmentations that had landed him with a fine and warning - not jail. Never jail.
And now Harlan Voss, the owner of an apartment complex. All of the victims had been from different parts of the city, the only thing linking them together was the ritual by which they had been left for him. Though Mingyu can't prove it, he feels like there's a joking edge to it now, like each death is meant to tease him and his inability to figure it out.
He leans back in his chair, the springs groaning under his weight. His eyes burn. He hasn't slept more than three hours in the past two days, and even that was broken up by the fragmented dreams of the butterfly effect audio bleeding into his fucking subconscious until he woke up gasping, the words echoing in his skull.
There's something he's missing. Mingyu knows he's on a timeline to figure it out now that Voss has been killed. Before, his superiors hadn't thought much of a serial killer stringing together some useless skins - people who didn't matter in the system. Though Harlan Voss doesn't matter, exactly, he's a step closer to the people up top that the city is obsessed with protecting, the people worth protecting.
Mingyu had learned a long time ago that people have become disposable. Bodies are just shells now, things you can rent or buy or discard when they stop serving you. Cores get pulled, transferred, reinstalled into something younger and prettier, and the person moves on. Humanity has been reduced to data, consciousness stripped down to the electrical impulses that can be copied, moved, and erased.
Death is so common to those at the top that it barely registers. But when real death happens - Core death - it turns heads, especially when it's a little too close to the gilded.
Mingyu's jaw tightens. His body aches, knees stiff, lower back throbbing from too many hours in this shitty chair, too many hours in the field in his original Skin. He feels every year of it, and though it makes him feel human, he can't help but be bothered how the wealthy don't age like this. They just buy new bodies by the dozen. Transfer over. Keep going. It's immortality for anyone who can afford it, cheating death over and over again.
Cracking his neck, Mingyu refocuses on the work at hand and pulls up the financial records again, cross-referencing bank accounts, transaction histories, anything that might link the victims. There's nothing, of course. Everyone has different banks and different spending patterns, different lives and different histories. The only thing they have in common is the way they died.
The butterfly effect is a principle in chaos theory…
Mingyu's phone buzzes on the desk. He picks it up to see Chan's name flash across the screen and he answers right away. "Lee, what have you got?"
"Core is ready," Chan says on the other side. "I've stabilized it enough for a read of the memory logs. You should come down."
"How long do we have?"
"Hard to say. It's pretty damaged. Could be an hour, could be less. If we're going to pull anything, it needs to be now."
"Heard. On my way."
Mingyu ends the call and stands. The holoscreen glows faintly in front of him, the six faces of the dead he can't seem to bring justice too staring back at him until he swipes again and they vanish. He grabs his jacket from the back of the chair and heads for the door, shrugging the leather over his shoulders.
The forensic lab is two floors down, a section of the station most detectives like to avoid. Mingyu takes the stairwell, refusing to get stuck in the elevator for a sixth time, leaping down the steps as he takes two at a time.
Bright, sterile light greets him as he pushes into the lab, making him squint. Banks of equipment link the walls, shelves full of neural readers, Core analysis stations, data extraction devices and a section for biopsy and medical analysis. The air smells faintly chemical, kind of like the inside of a machine. He prefers the smell of the burnt coffee and damp upstairs than whatever it is that permeates the forensic floor.
Chan is standing at the far end of the room, hunched over a workstation where a cylindrical containment unit glows with a faint, sickly cyan light. Voss's Core floats suspended in the translucent gel, its surface marred with dark fractures that spiderweb across the neural casing, damaged from the attack. Mingyu watches as the light flickers, pulsing in irregular intervals while Chan tinkers with it.
"Lee," Mingyu greets, crossing the room in a few long strides.
"We've got maybe thirty minutes before this thing goes dark," Chan says without looking up, his fingers tapping on a tablet next to him. A holographic interface appears over the desk, cyan numbers and date reflected in Chan's glasses. "Give me a sec."
"Can we reanimate him?" Mingyu asks, crossing his arms over his chest as Chan works.
The lab technician shakes his head. "No. The damage is too extensive. A system reboot would require full neural integration, and the Core can't support that kind of load. It would collapse the moment we tried to initialize consciousness."
He taps a section of the holographic display, pulling up a three-dimensional model of the Core's internal structure. Half of it is shaded black, dead zones where the neural pathways have been damaged beyond repair. Mingyu sighs, nodding. They're lucky they have anything at all - a damaged Core is better than no Core at all.
"We can access the memory storage," Chan says, tapping something. "It's fragmented and corrupted in places, but there's enough intact data that we can pull maybe a few minutes worth of his life from it. Maybe more if we're lucky."
"How much is a few minutes?"
"Hard to say until we're in. Could be five, could be ten. Depends on how much the Core was actively recording before it got damaged." Chan glances at Mingyu, his expression cautious. "This isn't like interrogating a living witness, Detective. We're pulling raw sensory data that will be from Voss's perception. It'll be disjointed - memory isn't linear."
Mingyu nods. "Do it."
Chan's fingers move across the interface, initiating the connection sequence. The containment unit hums, a low vibration that Mingyu feels in his chest, and the cyan light intensifies, brightening until it casts sharp shadows across the lab.
The holoscreen shifts and for a moment, there's nothing but static and a wash of grey noise that flickers and shifts. Then an image resolves, making both Mingyu and Chan lean forward as Chan tampers with the interface, sharpening the image.
A penthouse. Floor-to-cieling windows. Rain. The perspective shifts as Voss moves, walking across the floor of his apartment to his kitchen and grabs a bottle of whiskey and pours two fingers worth into a glass. Voss takes a swig and then walks back to the living room where Mingyu recognizes the space and the coffee table where Voss's body had been cracked open.
"This is from earlier in the evening," Chan says, his voice quiet. "Before the murder."
Mingyu doesn't respond. He's too focused on the screen, watching as Voss sits down on the couch, picks up a tablet and scrolls. Nothing else seems to happen, nothing that screams he's about to be murdered. Mingyu is about to complain when the perspective shifts again to show a new scene.
Marble floors reflect overhead lights. The sound of Voss's footsteps echo across his memory as he passes a doorman in a crisp uniform and a name tag that reads Martinez.
Rain hits the screen, rippling across the holo in temporary distortion as Voss gets into a car. The driver takes off and Minguy watches as the city blurs past in a mess of lights and umbrellas, the sensory feed blurring and glitching as it tries to accommodate for the sights and sounds and thoughts and feelings of Voss in that moment.
Suddenly the image blurs and shifts so that Voss is standing in front of a strip club. The entrance is unmarked except for a single neon sign that flickers in shades of magenta and violet, hearts climbing up the side as holograms of girls beckon him in. He passes through the door and strobing lights cut through the feed, blinding both Chan and Mingyu like they're seeing it in the flesh.
Heavy base pulses through the feed as Voss moves deeper into the club. A stage dominates the center of the space, and on it, multiple dancers move with practiced precision, their bodies catching the strobing lights in fragmented movements. Here, the feed breaks off into fractal images as the Core flashes - a leg extended, an arch of the back, a turn that sends hair flying.
Mingyu tries to catalogue the faces as he sees them - a woman with pink eyes, someone with a swirling tattoo, another with sharp eyes that seem to track the crowd even as her body ripples across the stage like water. It's your eyes that makes Mingyu pause, cutting him down to the bone, your gaze more present than that of the far-off look of the others.
But then you're gone as the perspective shifts and the image bleeds into Voss in the bathroom, drunk and leaning heavily against the urinal as he relieves himself. Chan makes a disgusted sound as the memory jumps again to a small ramen cart somewhere in an unknown district.
"This is jumping around," Chan says, his voice cutting through the feed. "The Core is pulling fragments non-sequentially. We're seeing his evening out of order."
Another jump. More faces. A man in a leather jacket, arguing with someone Mingyu can't see. A couple pressed against the wall, kissing. A group of young people clustered around a table, their faces illuminated by the glow of their handheld screens.
And then, for just a moment, another face that belongs to a woman standing near the back of the bar, watching the crowd.
Mingyu's breath catches. He knows that face.
"Wait," he says, his hand shooting up. "Stop. Go back."
Chan's fingers freeze over the interface. "What?"
"That woman. The one in the back." Mingyu leans closer to the holoscreen, his exhaustion momentarily burned away by a spike of adrenaline. "I've seen her before. In the club footage. She was on stage."
Chan rewinds the feed, pulling up the earlier memory from the strip club. The perspective shifts back to the moment on stage. A woman with pink eyes, one with a swirling tattoo, one with sharp eyes. Mingyu points.
"Her," he murmurs. "She's in two of his memories."
"Could be coincidence," Chan says, but his tone suggests he doesn't believe it. "She could work multiple venues. Dancers do that sometimes."
"Or she was following him," Mingyu says. The implications settle over the lab like a weight. "Or she was part of it."
The perspective lingers on you for a fraction of a second longer than the others, just long enough for Mingyu to register your face clearly, and then Voss turns away and you're gone, swallowed back into the crowd.
The memory jumps again. Voss is back in his car, then in the lobby of his building, then in the elevator ascending to his floor. The doorman from earlier is talking to someone Mingyu can't see. Security personnel stand near the entrance, their faces blank and professional. A woman in a business suit walks past, her heels clicking against the marble, her face turned toward her phone.
Then Voss is in his penthouse. The perspective shifts as Voss moves, walking across the floor of his apartment to his kitchen and grabs a bottle of whiskey and pours two fingers worth into a glass. Voss takes a swig and then walks back to the living room where Mingyu recognizes the space and the coffee table where Voss's body had been cracked open.
"We're back at the beginning," Chan notes."
In the memory, the doorbell chimes. Mingyu leans forward, his pulse quickening when he realizes this must be it - this has to be the moment the killer entered the apartment. The image flickers and static washes across the holoscreen, distorting the feed. When it clears, the perspective has put Voss back in the living room again as the sound of the doorbell loops.
"It's corrupting," Chan notes, hitting a few buttons on his tablet. "Fuck, it's going to fry."
"Push it anyway. We're right there."
Chan obeys but the containment unit's hum rises to a high-pitched whine as warnings flash across the screen about the Core overheating. The holoscreen sharpens but Mingyu lets out an angry sound when he sees the memory loop back to Voss walking into the apartment building again, ignoring Martinez at the door as he heads for the elevator. The feed glitches, harsh reds and blues blooming across the screen before Voss is back at the club again, with you leaning forward, your eyes piercing even in the corrupted feed.
"No, go back to the apartment!"
"I'm trying," Chan shoots back. "I told you, this thing is damaged and we've got way more out of it than expected."
Audio fragments layer over each other, the pounding bass of the club's music mixing with the ding of the elevator, and the doorman's greeting. It's a mess of sound, too much information compressed into too little time, the Core's final desperate attempt to dump everything before it dies.
"Come on," Chan mutters to himself, trying to sharpen the feed as the containment unit whines. "Fucking come on!"
The doorbell rings again and Voss walks toward the door as Mingyu leans closer, his heart beating in his throat. Voss reaches out with one hand toward the door and the holoscreen goes dark, the containment unit's light dying as the hum cuts off sharply. An acrid smell comes from the Core where it smokes, the electrical wiring fried, filling the air with a metallic, burnt smell.
"Dammit!" Mingyu swears, punching a fist down on the lab table. The containment unit rattles and Mingyu leans on his hands, head hanging between his shoulders as Chan tries to pry the dead, smoking Core out of the unit. "Fuck. Fuck."
"Well," Chan sighs. "At least I recorded it all."
Mingy lifts his head. "What?"
"The data. I recorded it while extracting." He raises his brows. "Do you think I'm an idiot? I put it on a backup file so at least what we have - even if it's fuck all - is on a drive. I can run some facial recognition on everyone who passed through the memory."
Mingyu straightens, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. "How long?"
"Couple hours, maybe more. Go home, Detective. Get some rest. There's nothing more we can do for a few hours and you look like shit, man."
Mingyu wants to argue, wants to stay and watch the facial recognition run in real time, but he knows Chan is right. He's been awake for thirty-six hours straight, his body running on caffeine and adrenaline, and his mind is starting to blur at the edges. He nods once, sharp, and turns toward the door.
"I'll call you when I have something," Chan says.
Mingyu doesn't respond. He walks out of the lab, through the sterile white corridor, and back up the stairwell to his floor of the precinct. It's quieter upstairs now, most of the day shift gone with only a few officers still lingering at their desks as they pour themselves over paperwork and their own cases. Mingyu grabs his jacket from the back of his chair, hits the power button on his computer, and heads for the garage.
Fluorescent lights flicker above his head as he jogs down the concrete stairwell, footsteps loud and echoing. The air gets cold and damp as he descends, the rain seeping in through the shitty insulation and clinging to the walls. By the time he reaches the garage level, he feels the moisture in his shirt and hair, clinging to him like a heavy second skin.
The garage is mostly empty, making it easy to spot his bike near the back. It's sleek and shining in the reflection of the light fixture above it, black surface gleaming. It's the single most expensive thing that Mingyu owns and his most prized possession, hours of learning how to take care of it and fix it because tune ups are out of his pay range poured into the machine.
He swings a leg over it and removes the helmet from where it hangs on the handle bars, popping it over his head where a cyan heads up display appears across the face shield. He presses the start button and the bike roars to life under him, vibrating as he nudges the footstand and rolls forward, twisting the throttle until he's coasting through the garage.
Rain hits him as soon as he hits the street level, cold and rushing off his helmet in neon rivulets. The streets are slick as glass beneath him, reflecting the towers of the city on either side of the road, ripping as he gasses it and his bike tears through the street.
He cuts through the lower districts and side streets, avoiding the elevated highways where there's always traffic and road closures because some rich asshole has paid a heavy fee for an expedited drive somewhere. Down here, the world is just like Mingyu likes it, all cracked pavement and burnt out street lights, the flickering holographic advertisements advertising very illegal clinics that he ignores because so long as they're not murdering anyone, he doesn't have time to care.
Mingyu doesn't go straight home, too wired to do anything but pace the walls of his tiny apartment in silence. Instead, he cuts into a mixed commercial district a few blocks from his apartment, heading for a stretch of storefronts and vendors that stay open late.
Above, the rain has softened to a drizzle, misting the air as he kills the engine and walks the bike forward to the curb before setting it on the kickstand. He pops the helmet off and takes it with him this time, not stupid enough to leave it unguarded downtown like he might in the garage of a police precinct.
He walks past a pawn shop with bars on the windows, the display cluttered with outdated neutral interfaces, cracked holoscreen displays and retro computers. The shop is closed, but he can see the security bot inside, patrolling as it tips back and forth while driving over uneven flooring.
Next to the pawn shop is a laundromat he's intimately familiar with from the apartment he lived in just two blocks away. In his earlier days on the job, he'd sit here on Sundays and listen to the machines hum, thankful for the warmth in the winter from the exhaust vents while he poured over cases and bitch work given to him until he could earn his keep.
Mingyu keeps walking, passing a convenience store with flickering signs and people that move with hunched shoulders against the drizzle. No one pays him much mind, everyone too preoccupied with their own lives as they scuttle along like beetles.
The automatic door of the 24-hour market hisses when Mingyu ducks in. Bright lights make him squint as he walks the aisle filled with bright neon prices and advertisements calling to him, products ranging from everything to instant meals, cigarettes and cheap liquor to disposable razors and batteries. A clerk sits behind the counter, scrolling through a tablet, ignoring Mingyu entirely.
Mingyu doesn't mind. He picks up a pack of ramen, a bottle of cold coffee from the refrigerated section, a pack of cigarettes, and a pack of caffeine gum in cherry flavor that he likes to chew late at night on the job for an extra kick of energy. The clerk rings him up without comment and Mingyu pays with his phone before scooping his things and heading back outside into the drizzle.
Pausing, he tears open the new pack of cigarettes with his teeth, rolling the plastic and tossing it into the trash. Fishing one out, he sticks it between his lips and searches for a lighter for a few seconds before lighting it and taking a deep drag, feeling his lungs expand as they feel with acrid smoke.
Mingyu can't help but think about you in Voss's memory, the dancer with the sharp gaze who appeared twice. It isn't much, but it can't be a coincidence - coincidences don't exist in Mingyu's line of work. He knows the city is full of people moving through the same spaces and crossing paths without meaning, but seeing you multiple times in Voss's memory is something.
The butterfly effect is a principle chaos theory that states that small, seemingly insignificant changes in initial conditions can trigger massive, unpredictable, and vastly different outcomes in complex systems.
Mingyu sucks in another drag and blows the smoke out in a sigh. As much as he hates for his killer to be right about anything, Mingyu feels instinctually that you are, that something about you has caused a ripple effect. He just needs to figure out how and why.
He finishes the cigarette and drops it, grinding it out under his heel while the smoke lingers in his lungs for a minute. Shuffling the bag in his arms, he heads back toward where he parked his bike, passing by a noddle stand on the corner with steam rising and the smell of frying garlic and chili oil cutting through the damp air. Mingyu considers stopping, but he's not hungry. He just needed to be somewhere that wasn't the station or his apartment.
Back at the bike, he opens the seat and dumps his belongings in the compartment before swinging back on and pulling his helmet on. The drive to his apartment is slow and winding, cutting through back alleys and misting rain until he's parking in the cracked-concrete garage and taking the stairs up to the fourth floor.
Mingyu shoulders into the apartment after unlocking the door, immediately toeing off his boots while he locks the door behind him. It's not much - just one room, a kitchenette, a bathroom with a shower that barely works and has no hot water, and one large window that overlooks the street, the view mostly obscured by the constant rain.
He sets the bag on the counter and pulls out the ramen before going through the motions, boiling water and tearing into the sauce packet with his teeth, mind far away from his little corner of the world while he thinks about you again, a thread among the chaos - a beat of a butterfly's wings, maybe.
-
Mingyu jolts awake in the dim glow of his apartment, his heart hammering against his ribs. The ringing that cuts through the haze is distorted and confusing until he realizes there's a small green hologram lighting up over his phone. He fumbles for it, hand knocking over his reading glasses, his pistol, and the tablet he'd been using to research the stupid butterfly effect again.
Chan's name displays as the phone continues ringing, lighting up the world as Mingyu fumbles to answer. "Hello?
"You sound like hell," Chan replies, the sound of a keyboard in the background. "Facial rec pulled a hit on that woman from Voss's memory. Cross-referenced with club surveillance feeds from the entertainment district, looks like she's a performer at the club Wings. High end joint."
Mingyu leans against his headboard, running a hand over his face. The single window in his unit lets in the never-ending neon glow from outside, casting dull patterns across his bedroom. He hears the rain tapping against the glass, a constant companion.
"Wings. Got it. Send me the address."
"On it. It's in the mid-tier entertainment strip near the old elevated line. I recommend caution. It's on the mid-tier strip but it leans high end - the entertainment there aren't standard rentals."
"Name?"
"Looks like the stage name might be Psyche."
Mingyu frowns as he gets out of bed and grabs a dirty pair of jeans off the floor to shove one leg in, jamming the phone between his face and his shoulder.
"Like the wife of Cupid?"
"Seems that way."
"Anything else?
"Clean on the surface. No priors, no traffic tickets. Nothing."
"Well his memory showed her twice. Can't be random."
Chan sighs. "I'm inclined to agree. Like I said, be careful. Security at these places crack skulls first and ask questions later. You don't have money for a new Skin."
"Heard. Talk later."
Mingyu finishes getting dressed, his heart hammering the entire time. This is the thread - the butterfly's wingbeat. He can feel it in his gut, something sharpening into something purposeful, an instinct that has led him on every hunt for a killer he's been on.
He moves quickly, pulling on a long-sleeved shirt that smells like sweat and cologne, pulling on boots with loose laces, and tucking his gun in the back of his pants before hiding it with the hem of his shirt. He tucks a badge in his pocket, and heads out of the room, knocking his shin against the corner of the bed and cursing loudly.
At the door, he grabs his helmet and heads out into the hall, nearly jogging as he takes the steps down to street level two at a time. Rain greets him outside, making his shirt cling to his frame as he straddles his bike. The engine roars to life, HUD on his helmet flickering alive with the address overlay. He twists the throttle and tears into the night, tires slicing through puddles.
The ride blurs into a streak of neon and the lower streets give way to the mid-level sprawl, where wealth brushes against grit. Autonomous cabs hum past, their passengers hidden behind tinted fields. Elevated tracks arc overhead, sparks occasionally flying from aging mag-rails. Mingyu leans into turns, the bike's vibration thrumming through his bones, chasing away the last dregs of fatigue.
By the time he pulls up to the curb outside Wings, the rain eases to a misty veil, but the air hangs heavy with the smell of gas and rusting metal, a permanent smell that never really seems to leave.
He parks the bike on a side street and heads toward the front door of the club, uncaring that he's a bit damp and messy. The club is impossible to miss, the facade bright with iridescent panels that shift colors under a massive holographic marque that reads: WELCOME TO WINGS, WHERE FANTASIES TAKE FLIGHT.
Security drones hover discreetly at the entrance, red scanner lights sweeping patrons as they stand in line. The line is mostly men who look better dressed than Mingyu, umbrellas in hand to keep the rain off their backs as a security guard stands at the door checking IDs and taking money.
Mingyu gets in line and ignores the way the others look at him, tucking his helmet under his arm. He's bouncing with energy now, craning his neck to look up at the holograms above, dancers in all manner of fantasy writhing and twisting in shades of fuchsia and red and lavender.
It takes about ten minutes to reach the door where a security guard with one augmented eye looks at him, his lens turning cyan as he scans Mingyu. He holds out his hand for an ID, which Mingyu hands over immediately.
"Cover is two hundred creds. If you want a private room, see the bar. Private rooms start at five hundred."
"Two hundred?" He asks, feeling himself stall out. "Fucking hell."
"Pay or get out."
Grumbling, Mingyu takes out his phone and transfers over the credits, swallowing thickly when he sees how close it brings him to the negatives. He's not sure this qualifies for reimbursement at the station, but he's going to file it anyway.
"Head in. Any trouble and you're out."
Mingyu steps by as the door hisses open. Inside, the air is thick with the scent of engineered pheromones being pumped in through the vents with the smell of liquor. Bass pumps through the room, vibrating through the floor and up his spine. The main floor sprawls under a vaulted ceiling alive with projected constellations that shift in real-time, stars turning as though the club is spinning in time with the world's real rotation.
Dancers move with unnatural grace, and it takes Mingyu a moment to realize that all of them have wings. He spots one with dragonfly wings that glitter as she spends, refracting light. Another has raven wings, inky black even as she twists around a pole under cyan light.
He hadn't expected the theme to be so literal, but he's glad that the wings are wearables and not uncanny body mods. He slinks through the room between patrons, noting the privacy feels that shimmer in the distance to hide the VIP booths from prying eyes. The private rooms are further back, a neon sign above a shadow hall with fly away above it.
Mingyu's eyes scan methodically, cutting through the sensory overload. He clocks exits, security nodes embedded in the walls, the faint hum of surveillance drones disguised as decorative moths fluttering near the ceiling. No sign of you yet, though, so he drifts toward the bar, ordering a cheap synth-whiskey to blend in, the glass cool against his callused fingers. The liquid burns familiarly as he sips, eyes never still.
Then he sees you and the world slows down a little.
You emerge from a side alcove onto one of the elevated platforms framed by gossamer curtains that part around you, moved by some sort of air effect. You're wearing delicate butterfly wings, spans of translucent fabric that looks like real membrane catching the light. You're dressed in minimal strips of iridescent material, accentuating each one of your curves while leaving the wings unobstructed.
Just like in Voss's memories, it's your eyes that make Mingyu freeze. It carries the same piercing quality as you dance, cutting through the room. It's not the same hazy allure of the other dancers, but something more focused like a predator among pretty things.
Butterfly wings. It makes him go cold, the butterfly effect audio recycling through his head over and over as he watches you dance, your wings fluttering. Despite being fake, they look real, catching the light as you shimmer, more beautiful than anything else he's ever seen.
Mingyu finishes his drink and sets it down harshly as he turns to the bar and hails down a bartender to ask for a private room. The bartender slides over a tablet and Mingyu scrolls until he finds your stage name - Psyche - and nearly vomits the whiskey back up when he sees the price.
"Eight hundred credits for thirty minutes?" He growls. He curses under his breath and charges it to his credit card, knowing he's never going to pay it off before it gains sixty percent interest. "Better be fucking worth it."
A room number flashes on the screen and he memorizes it before stalking off toward the hallway of private rooms, glancing at your platform as he does. You tilt your head, hand going briefly to your ear before turning to get off the platform. It's then that he realizes you have an ear piece in. He files that piece of information away.
The private room is small and blessedly clean, the seats plush with a low table in front of them. He throws himself down and shivers, the room unnaturally cold. He glances around but sees no clock or anything else in the room except a private bar which he knows will cost extra, so he doesn't dare, instead staring at the door until it opens.
Mingyu's heart starts to hammer as you slide into the room, sitting up straighter. It doesn't occur to him that up until this morning, he's never done this before. The realization makes him nervous, palms sweaty as you slink toward him, smiling and tilting your head.
"New face," you greet, sliding onto the seat next to him. You lean against the seat, facing him as you cross one leg over the other. "Pretty face."
Up close, the details on your face come into sharp focus: faint iridescence on your skin like starlight, the scent of jasmine and amber, pretty eyes that swallow him whole.
"Looking to forget the rain outside?" You ask him, voice sweet and soft. "I can fix that."
Mingyu leans back, forcing a lazy smirk that does not reach his eyes. He plays the part - client with creds to burn, interest piqued by the exotic. "Something like that."
A small smile tugs your lips. "What do you want tonight? Escape? Or just a pretty distraction?"
"Distraction sounds good. Start with a dance, yeah?"
If you sense his confidence is feigned, you don't show it. You stand, the wings spreading wide behind you, catching the low light and refracting it into soft gradients of color. The music shifts to something slower and heavier, the bass making Mingyu's skin itch. You move with practiced precision, hips swaying as you step closer, one hand trailing along the back of the couch.
Mingyu's breath catches. He reminds himself it's the job and that he's here for information, not this. But his body doesn't listen as he becomes hyper aware of you, his fingers twitching as he fights not to jump out of the booth and away from you. It's not that he's bad with women - he's not - but this is new to him, never having paid for a moment of attention this intimate and sensual.
You turn your back to him now, the wings folding slightly as you lower yourself onto his lap. The weight of you is real and solid, warm through the thin fabric of his clothes. You roll your hips slowly and Mingyu's hands grip the edge of the couch to keep from reaching for you or pushing you off - he's not entirely sure which.
Your hair brushes his jaw as you lean back, your head tilting to rest near his shoulder, and he feels the heat of your breath against his neck. He can't help but shiver, the smell of your jasmine and amber so overwhelming he feels his lashes flutter.
"You're tense," you murmur. "Relax."
He can't. His mind is racing, cataloging details like the way you move, the control in every gesture, the sharpness in your eyes when you glanced at him earlier. This isn't just a performance. There's something calculated about it, something that doesn't match the soft, breathy voice you're using now.
You turn again, straddling him now, your knees pressing into the couch on either side of his hips. Your hands rest on his shoulders, fingers light, and you lean in close enough that he can see the faint shimmer of makeup on your eyelids, the way your pupils dilate in the low light.
"Better?" you ask, smiling.
Mingyu swallows. "Yeah."
You laugh, soft and knowing, and shift your weight, grinding down just enough to make his pulse spike. The wings flutter behind you, a distraction, a spectacle, and he realizes that's the point. You're good at this and he doesn't know why but he hates that it works on him, even if it's your job to do this, to pull focus, to keep the client's attention where you want it.
He clears his throat, forcing himself to focus. "You're good at what you do."
"I know," you whisper, tilting your head so that your breath fans against his ear. "Don't you want to touch me?
"Actually, I uh - want to ask you something."
You pull away from him and though your smile doesn't falter, your eyes shift. "That's expensive."
"No," Mingyu protests quickly, grabbing you and pushing you back a little. You flinch when he touches you and he lets go immediately. "Sorry, I don't want to like - that."
"Okay. Then what do you want?"
"You know Harlan Voss?"
It's the wrong question to ask. Your entire body goes rigid and your eyes lock onto his as your delicate persona shatters immediately. What's left is sharp, cold, and predatory. Mingyu's pulse spikes as you get off of him and put space between you, your eyes icy.
"Who the fuck are you?" you ask. Your real voice is a little deeper than the breathy rasp you'd used moments ago. "And what the fuck do you want?"
Mingyu holds up his hands. "I just need to ask you a few questions-"
"Get the fuck out."
"Listen, I'm not here to cause trouble-"
You hit a button he didn't see near the door and the door opens immediately. Mingyu makes a sound of protest when he sees a security guard appear at the door, his eyes glancing between the two of you.
"Problem?" He asks.
"He needs to leave. Now."
Mingyu stands slowly, adrenaline cutting through the tension in his body. His pulse is still elevated from the dance, from the heat of your body on his lap. He pulls the badge from his pocket and the security guard stiffens further. So do you, taking a step away from him again.
"You need a warrant, buddy."
"Detective Kim. Homicide. I'm investigating a murder, and I need to ask her some questions."
"I don't give a fuck who you are," you seethe. "Get out."
He sighs. "Can we just-"
"Get a warrant," you snarl, barring your teeth at him like something feral.
Mingyu realizes you're afraid of him. Not like someone caught in a lie or someone caught with their hand on the gun, but like someone who is cowering, like he might strike. He thinks it's odd, watching as you shake, eyes wide and trembling.
He could push. He could insist, make this official, drag you down to the station for questioning. But something in him softens, and he pockets the badge, raising his hands. "I'll leave. No trouble."
The security guard steps aside and Mingyu walks toward the door as he looks at you one last time. Your wings are still spread wide, trembling slightly, and your eyes are locked on him. There's fear there, yes, but something else too. Recognition. Guilt. Something. Before he can decide what, the security guard steps between you and cuts off Mngyu's line of sight, ushering him into the hallway.
With a loud shout that's lost to the pound of music, you slam the door. Mingyu sighs, staring at the door for a few minutes before he turns and walks back through the club, the music vibrating through the walls as he winds past the stages and the strobing lights. His mind is stuck on you, of course. The terror. The gaze. The butterfly wings.
The butterfly effect is a principle chaos theory that states that small, seemingly insignificant changes in initial conditions can trigger massive, unpredictable, and vastly different outcomes in complex systems.
He pushes through the front door and into the rain, the cold hitting him sharply. Mingyu shivers but stands outside the door, letting the rain cut through him, washing away the smell of jasmine and amber, clearing his mind a little.
You know something. Mingyu doesn't know what, but he's sure of it. You're the butterfly at the root of it all, and now he just needs to know the cause of the effect.
sorry I'm gonna be unavailable today I'll either have Jude Bellingham on my lap as I wipe his tears if eng loses this humiliating third place match or I'm gonna have Jude Bellingham on my lap as i make out with him if they win
sorry I'm gonna be unavailable today I'll either have Jude Bellingham on my lap as I wipe his tears if eng loses this humiliating third place match or I'm gonna have Jude Bellingham on my lap as i make out with him if they win
sorry I'm gonna be unavailable today I'll either have Jude Bellingham on my lap as I wipe his tears if eng loses this humiliating third place match or I'm gonna have Jude Bellingham on my lap as i make out with him if they win
hi girls! i am planning to do an episode for the pod wherein you send your thoughts/unpopular opinions about caratblr or the carat fandom in general and I react to them. it'll be a segment of a broader episode where i will talk about my observations about the fandom and its culture so far - the good and the bad.
i'd really appreciate your participation in this one!! feel free to send in your thoughts to me here!
howeverrrr! keep the following in mind:
- anything snarky or hateful about anyone (the artists/author/readers/other creators) will be ignored so don't even bother if all you want is to gossip and stir up drama. but feel free to talk smack about the corporate greed that is ruining music.
- feel free to send them in if you have observed something that you can't really make sense of but think is worth being spoken more about.
- you can absolutely send in anon asks!
- you can even ask me random questions lol and i'll see if they fit into the episode's narrative and answer them in this one or subsequent ones
i'll try to keep my responses as nuanced, researched, and unbiased as possible but won't be talking about the things i feel ineligible to comment on :)
