“best, in terms of testin’ my patience? probably.” he eyes DB, hand in pocket withdrawn to ruffle the younger’s messy hair. their child-like inquiries evoke a dumbfounded laughter on his part, and lai does some adding ups before deeming himself in need for receptivity. “y'know, there’s this thing called hateful affection. it’s when ‘ya grow fond through all that bickerin’ and punchin’. keep it goin’ and you just might be, but the position’s gotta be mutual.”
“So I’m your favorite brother to fuck around with?” Jungsu snorts, a quick shake of the head as if to say he can’t accept this title, won’t accept this title. If he were to, it would be scrutiny! A crime! Against nature! No, he’s got to be the best for all reasons just. He lands a punch against Lai’s upper arm. The punch says: playful. The force he uses says: I’m gonna bash your face in. But he won’t. Listen to the Punch, not the Force. “You’re my fave’ if I’m your fave’. You know this.”
A huff of air, a kick to a small pebble (yeah, take that pebble) (don’t fuck with Dead Boy).
Then, an inhale. And the air tastes like poverty. Like a bag of refrigerated ready-to-eat bacon crumbs that weren’t refrigerated after all. Tastes like a bag of crackers on the verge of death, with mold looming around the corner. Stale. Tastes like soggy bread. Tastes like tears. Tastes like shit. And Jungsu heaves a sigh. He’s exhausted. “You know...” he begins with care. “If, for whatever reason, we just...” Pause. “Make it out of all this alive...” Pause again. Inhale. Then exhales his response, “I want us all to stick together.” Little does Jungsu know, he’s got less than a year to live. Time is ticking. “Do you think you’ll ever grow sick of us?”
( & july. ) so it all comes down to returning the favor. pay back? whatever you’d like to call it. but you know, that doesn’t really work out when the latter is not as hot-headed as he is. dead boy’s not at all riled up as lai wished for him to be, and he’s bummed out, bemused. he stares at the younger’s monotonous response, slits narrower than when poised. “ if that gives ‘ya gangrene, maybe you should reconsider being vagrant. ” words for response are spewed effortlessly, like a businessman would throw a dollar bill to a homeless (you know, much to his personal analogy). he palms his hand nevertheless, faint guilt trickling down his back.
but what would be of july’s entity if he stops here? his border-line dementia doesn’t even apply. not yet, at least. thumbs click at the lighter in his pocket as he watches the younger pick himself up. boring, boring. he has this deep, juvenile urge to set the other’s forbearance on ire ; part in curiosity, and part in repayment, but mostly out of twisted ‘endearment’ (or so he calls it) not the best caring older brother out there, quite visibly. “y’know, let me tell ‘ya somethin’. you piss me off. it’s like i can’t get rid that piece of gum that got stuck on my shirt. so if i ever do somethin’ to ‘ya, blame it on your irritability.” he really can’t filter words even with just an ounce of tenderness! a guileless smile that puts his words in dichotomy. “but you know, at least it’ll be out of affection.”
”I’m more a man than you are. I’ll live.” Takes everything in him not to punctuate that statement with the nickname “princess.” But DB would like to think he’s got a firm grip on his own actions, so he bites it back for another time. He’s sighing lightly as he rids the remaining pebbles from his skin, and he glances up at the elder.
“I piss you off?” He chuckles, swaying sideways to bump shoulders with July. “The feelings are mutual, my friend.” Of course, all jokes aside, the other rouses very little exasperation from Jungsu. He’s got bigger fish to fry, larger problems to tackle. He’d say, these problems are larger than life! And in a way, they are. They are his own life, and the lives of others. It’s called survival. He feels that immature bouts of annoyance are sort of like a game with the devil, it’s a bargain. In which you’re ungrateful, and worry over things with no significance. This is what he calls, picking your battles. He chooses not to go to war.
“Love you too, Lai. You know I’m the best though, don’t even deny it.” Dead Boy takes a moment to think. “...Aren’t I your favorite brother?”
you can’t really hate your brother. and that’s a thing. affections are twisted, sort of like an elementary schooler’s clumsy display of affection towards the other. probably the same case for july and dead boy, and it’ll be in continuum for whoever knows how long ; ‘till death do them affection, maybe! blame it on the toe of his sneaker that unwittingly merged to a collision with the other’s, no harm intended ( oh, really? ) it all unravels at the count of one, two and three, before lai sends him tumbling down the ground. his hand just gave slight aid to confirm the fall, you know, it slipped. such is followed by a gleeful echo of laughter, his shoulders flittering up and down ; genuine menace is nicely wrapped with this pretty little thing called playfulness. “ –––yeah, you’re just playin’. and guess what? so am i. ”
Annoyed. Annoyed. What’s annoyance to a vagabond, whom has endured far worse? Consider: pain, hunger, dissociation, despair, and all that fun-fun stuff! But hey, that’s just what’s included in the package deal; there’s a few hidden gems. For example, the feeling of dread coiling black in the pit of your stomach, when you’re waiting for the lamentable consequences of your actions. When you’re just a sitting duck, watching the minutes tick by before you’re royally fucked. Well, isn’t this what they asked for? So, what significance is annoyance? Jungsu can’t find it in himself to feel passionate remorse. He’s more sorry that his words reached the point of Lai turning on him, than for the words themselves.
And maybe he deserves to get tripped. Before he knows it, he’s on his hands and knees, staring at the ground. Hello, dirt. Hello, bugs. He’s picking himself up immediately, staring down at small pebbles printing into his skin. He rubs his hands together, grit between his palms and plummeting back toward Earth. Swipes his hands over his bare knees for the same effect, thinks he might be bleeding just a tad. Gravel burn, so to speak. “Hm,” he hums low, averting his gaze toward the elder. “I’m going to get fucking gangrene because of you—” That’s nearly impossible, Jungsu. “—If you keep trying to wreck me.”
( & july. ) at this point, the word annoyed itself doesn’t do his feelings justice! he’s failing miserably at keeping his poise, jaw locked to the side out of effervescent distemper. the more and more he pulls him closer by the hem of his shirt, and the more and more he peers down at dead boy’s self-contented grin, there’s this perception of defeat that rings in his head. the inevitable ending : dead boy’s the one with a smile, and lai’s the one huffing in his own hissy fit ( lord, how he wishes to just throw him in that bonfire! ).
“ ‘ya fuckin’ sick freak. ” he’s in disgust, and he lets his expression scream so. idea of pain is in bare existence when it comes to dead boy, and as much as biha knows so, it’s the mere idea of implementing his oh-so-petty rage. impulsive emotions are strenuously tossed away, lineaments unlacing on the other’s dusty shirt. witty joke. mildly appreciated. “ and wipe that stupid grin off ‘ya face, you’re not funny. ” a weighty shove on the younger’s chest, and he’s walking away.
“Oh, aren’t’cha just a big bully?” He feigns this snobbish little pout, brows upturned in faux apprehension. The kind a child plasters on their face when they’re caught drawing on the walls, and you scold them, but they’re too proud of their work to listen to your squawking. “I beg to differ– I think I’m pretty funny. Could be a comedian, y’know?”
Brisk laughter tumbles from those chapped lips as he stumbles backward, arms extending outward to somehow balance himself. One of the boys snickers off in the background; Jungsu disregards it. Instead, he’s pattering after the elder, bumping shoulders when he makes pace with them. The sitcom concludes here.
. . . “Are you really upset, though?” A pause. “Y’know I was playing.” The issue with Dead Boy is that he enjoys putting on a show, often as the cost of another’s security. Even with his street brothers. But when the curtains have drawn and the audience has parted, Jungsu is making the rounds to atone for the mistreatment. That is, only with his brothers. With outsiders, he is as shameless as ever.
A young boy sits in a steel chair, his feet just barely dangling above the ground as though he’s hanging from a noose around his neck. And he might as well. He scribbles the name “Oh Jungsu” with a pen in the fist onto a line following the word “patient,” then slides it back across the tabletop toward his counselor. And his eyes feel swollen because he hadn’t gotten much rest the night before. Those beady fucking eyes of his… he looks like a taxidermy rat with marbles plopped into his sockets to make him look more — alive. His mother doesn’t like his eyes, she says they lack soul. Says the stark contrast between wan complexion and dollops of onyx give him the image of ashen vermin. And he fidgets as much as one, not to mention. He’s got his hands shoved beneath his thighs and he tries not to look at the light that’s been pointed at his face. Because if he does, he swears he’s the world’s youngest criminal. A whopping eight years old and looking like a suspect in a mystery murder. Or rather, the crime of impending self-destruction.
We’ll flash back to the night prior. Before laying his head to rest in his jail cell of a bed, barred in by railing to prevent him from falling out, he worried of this particular day. An interview, an interrogation. Of one of the few people who had congenital insensitivity to pain in their very own South Korea. An interview, because they wanted to milk him for all he was worth. He had nightmares. He was an experiment. He was a frog with limbs divergent and was laid belly-up. The same light was directed at him, but he was sprawled against a steel plate rather than scribbling his name atop a steel table. His eyes quivered and he studied his assailant (some people call them a scientist) and a scalpel lowered in this cinematic sort of slow-motion, with the threat of pressing against his flesh. And then they began to unroot his guts, and his liver, and his lungs. They finished off by ripping out his heart. And Jungsu didn’t feel any of it; he could only watch each part of him tossed away like it was nothing more than something to take notes on.
His counselor leans in closer, and this moon of a face snaps Jungsu out of it. He blinks.
The doctor clears their throat, “When you see someone else in pain, what do you associate?”
The young boy’s marble eyes flicker around the room, a reassurance to onlookers that he is indeed a living being. He looks for his mother for help, but she isn’t there to help him — she’s left him for dead. “I think, that must really hurt.”
“What is hurt?”
As if in deep thought, the boy squints his eyes and stares desperately at the medical practitioner. He couldn’t answer them.
“i don’t care, put it back.” he’s trying to be somewhat intimidating, voice stern, taking small steps closer to the other. he gets a good look at what he’s dealing with: a skinny, dirty teenager. there’s a part in his mind that’s suddenly feeling bad for this stranger. what if he’s homeless? what if there’s no other way for him to get clothes? what if.. what if.. but the much louder other part is reminding him that, homeless or not, he’s committed a crime. there are laws for a reason. “if you had a business and some kid took from you, you probably wouldn’t be happy about it.”
Each step in his direction has him taking a cautious step backward. Not that the other boy would really do much — they look like a gerbil! What’ll they do? Chomp him to death? Gnaw on his shoulder? But his honest lack of fear is sub rosa. Dead Boy has this image to uphold. That is, to say: pitiful.
“If I had a business and someone like myself took something, I’d be a little more sympathetic.”
Winter is rolling around the corner, and the boy is wearing a hideous tee shirt. While it goes without saying that he can’t feel the wintry sting anyway, how’s this stranger to know the difference? Atop ashen skin, a sort of dusted rose is splattered across his cheeks, over his nose. Paints his chest, his elbows, his knees. This is how he knows it’s cold. Because his skin reacts, but he does not. And Jungsu eyes the man with this faux chagrin, and takes one more step back. “Have a heart, would ya’? Consider it an early Christmas present, or your good deed of the day to the homeless.” Jungsu may be having too much fun here. He’s feeling like Annie the Orphan! Of course, his acting would not be in vain. He needs the hoodie, he doesn’t want to turn into a fly-ridden Popsicle.
“Make sure you get it all off, you’re not tracking that shit into my building…” again, he holds back a laugh, a little too pleased with the other’s misfortune. “I’ll make you some soup when we get indoors, it’s too fucking cold to eat anything else.”
“Dog with rabies, huh?” He finally blesses the stranger with some eye contact, but quickly averts it downward to drag his foot out of the grass and back to the sidewalk. He’s about ready to kick the dog crap into the lawn but knows it’ll back-fire. Like shit in his face! Both literally and metaphorically. Now we can’t have that, can we? (As funny as it would be—)
The mention of this being their building really lassos a rope around Jungsu’s attention. Ties a knot to keep it in place, and yanks it forward. You can see the interest rippling through his onyx eyes, bringing color to his otherwise inscrutable features. Because, you know, the man is looking real close to Big Bucks McGee over here. But what he chooses to pay attention to differs: “Soup?” He’s feigning this child-like curiosity that he’s perfected over the years, and offers a weary smile. “Well, if you insist. I love soup. I want miso if you can pull that one out’ta your hat, mister magic.”
Swimming is a lot more fun when you’re trespassing. Now make that the header of some angsty teen drama and you’ve got a hit! Well, isn’t Jungsu the pure definition of juvenile melodrama? So, where would he be if he didn’t do stupid shit like this?
He’s latching onto the bars of the gate’s door when she speaks up, “It seems like you’ve done this before.” His foot perches atop the iron knob, and he’s hoisting his dead body up and over the barrier. He drops to the cement on the other side with a gruff heave of air, and opens the gate from inside. “Yeah? Well, I have.”
already a fist curled around dead boy’s collar, he seethes, and laughter among them has long died. he hears namkyu and a few other voices telling him to settle down, albeit barely at this point. biha justifies that it’s the derogatory factor that he fails to appreciate–––but who knows what really irks him. on the other hand, you know what they say : add insult to injury, and you’ll get burnt ( at least in biha’s case, that is! ) except no one knows about that injury, not even the boy himself. a tragic case, truly.
“ say it one more time, i fuckin’ dare ‘ya. then i’ll make your witty little name a thing. ”
When a fist coils it’s way into the fabric of his shirt, he’s raising his hands defensively, mirth etched into his features. “Whoa there, cowboy.” And despite the groans of protest from the others, he’s not worried. Lai couldn’t hurt him even if they desired. And that’s no one’s fault except Jesus Christ our lord and savior (amen). Because hey, this is just how Dead Boy was constructed in the lab of his mother’s disgustingly fleshy womb. Maybe it’s his mama’s fault, after all.
“You mean, you’ll make me a dead boy?” His shoulders leap and shake with laughter, and head tipping back slightly with the impact of his guffaw. “If you’re gonna kill me—” and if Lai knows Dead Boy well at all (which he does) (probably too well) then he’ll know that anything that follows those words is deserving of a punch in itself. “—then at least choke me to death so I can kiss the lousy world au revoir with a hard-on.” Whoop, there it is.
The definition of bad has variation to many. To the girl holding her mother’s hand, trotting down gum-clad sidewalks, bad is drawing on the walls.
To that man with the five o’clock shadow, stumbling down his front steps and spilling out into the world, bad is cheating on his wife — which has been instilled by his wife, in fact, after finding him guilty of such a carnal sin.
To Dead Boy himself, bad is murder. Bad is rape, sometimes. Bad is abusing a small child. Bad is his parents, is Gemini’s parents, is the law. Bad is not theft, nor is assault. This is what he calls life. Living is not bad. So when a vaguely familiar face suggests something ‘bad,’ which of the few evils might it be?
“Um…” He’s interested, it peaks his attention. His eyes are surveying the man inquisitively. “As long as you don’t get my ass thrown behind bars, I’m down.”
In an existence where stars can not survive, men endure no better. Stars are drowning: humankind is drowning. And Dead Boy does not know Jangmi well, but he does know that they’re both sailing a boat made of the same poor materials. This means they are not bound to drown, but already are in the process of sinking lower. Water envelopes their ankles, swallows their legs. Maybe Jangmi is only knee-deep, but Jungsu is up to his pectoral region. They are already with the stars, with their fate.
So when Jangmi questions the man as she does, he finds no reason to lie. “Well, this girl—” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, backpack clutched in his dirty paws. He’s stuffing a wad of bills inside. “She was easy to win over.” There’s a hint of pride to his tone, and Jungsu knows Jangmi will understand.
"Yeah? Whatever, princess.” He rolls his eyes, pulling a leg out from under himself to swing a blunt kick to the elder’s thigh.
Now, you’ve got seven boys huddled beneath moth-eaten blankets around a crackling fire. It spits flecks of ember at them, threatens to light up anything favorable they’ve gathered. At least, at first glance. Because those blazing pellets are not much more than harmless. They disappear a moment after harvest, and are disregarded. Kind of like the men in mention.
The young street urchins chat merrily among themselves, about girls and about drinking. About smiles offered from complete strangers and about a good meal they had that week. And Dead Boy really appreciates this moment. Among them, bliss is hard to come by. It’s not easy to just joke with a brother, call them a princess. Get threatened with your life. Then, laugh it off.
“Why are you such a drama queen? You act like a princess, might as well accept yourself as what you are!”
The Dead Boy freezes like a deer in headlights, eyes wide and cautious. His skin is drained of color, and his attention is averted to the hoodie he’d just pulled out from under his aged once-white tee shirt. He hugs the hoodie against his chest defensively.
Suddenly, he’s at a stranger’s disposal. He is a victim of denunciation. “And now…” And now he’d like to run. And now would be a good moment to kick them in the balls! Now would be a great time for a handful of wise decisions but he instead he deems the man possibly sympathetic — key piece: pathetic.
“…you could rat me out here for trying to survive the winter. Or just walk away… because you know, it doesn’t impair your life the way it will mine.”
“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”“What the fuck is that?!”
Gemini must have pestered Dead Boy with the same question twenty times within the past hour. And he was getting real tired of it, gosh darn it! His answers began as “I don’t know what you’re talking about”s and slowly transformed into irritated “It’s nothing”s. It’s certainly not a gift for your upcoming birthday, Gemini. He’d been attempting to hide it away all day, but with homelessness comes lack of hiding spaces.
The younger man had been saving up for two months just to be able to afford a pair of nice sneakers. And not just any old sneakers, but sneakers of his brother’s favorite brand. At least, it was their favorite brand in their past lives. Before everything went to shit. And not just crusty, dry shit. But the shit you step on when your new puppy’s got the runs, and it leaves a liquidy fat one in the middle of your bedroom. And your foot sloshes right through it in the middle of the night during a mission to get water. Yeah, that kind of shitty turn of events. And now he’s trying to shove the shoes inside his cramped backpack.
your muse’s aesthetic. anyone can do this, list your muse’s aesthetic from tastes, smells, outfits, and scenes. add as many subjects as you like, it can help with people tagging you in aesthetically pleasing things towards your muse.
SOUNDS: have you ever been home alone, completely alone? you sit on the couch, the television is a black void. suddenly, you hear the house settling. crackling in the walls, the sputter of a wooden beam wheezing under it’s own weight. suddenly, there’s foot-steps upstairs. you think you just heard a whisper. your arteries become taut, and your skin runs cold. your hair stands up, and you’re desperately searching for a source to the sound. this is the same obscurity as the dead boy. not only this — he is the sound of an otherwise muted concert-hall, only drowning in the soft keys of a grand piano. he is this grand piano, filling you with woe. with this phenomenal illusion that maybe you’re displaced in society. you’re moved by the chords, and this is the same effect the dead boy’s voice has on you.
SIGHTS: he is the fog rolling over a lake. a lake, calm and still, undisturbed. nonthreatening until you lean over the water and realize it looks more like ink. black, and you can’t see even a foot into the depths. the moon is all that provides direction -- an absence of city light pollution. he is the black water, idle beneath his fog. he is the bodiless, pale hand (a claw, you’d claim) reaching out from the depths. blue veins outlined by pale, sunken flesh. he is the pointed fingers curling around your shirt, balling the cloth up in a restricting fist. he is the act of pulling you in, and drowning you.
SMELLS: have you ever smelled the ocean at night? surely you have. have you smelled it in combination with a crackling bonfire? charred wood, for that earthy note. then, overcome with a spray of salted ocean. you take this all in, you inhale it. suddenly, someone beside you is taking a drag, and the scent of singed tobacco is smothering you. this is jungsu. he is earthy, he is smothering. he is the smell of fresh dirt beneath your fingernails after a long day of hard labor. hard labor, know anything about it? do you know about work? spoiled children, living off daddy’s money: break a sweat, maybe you’ll smell like jungsu for half a moment.
TASTES: you wonder what a dead boy tastes like. as a whole, he’d taste akin to excessively sweet lollipops, the kind that coat your throat and tongue in sugar. and it’s too saccharine, too suffocating, so you find yourself scrambling for a glass of water to wash it all down. sometimes he tastes like mud, like dirt, like the sludge you find behind a dumpster. he’s dirty, he’s foul. you take this boy who can hardly taste at all, and so you stuff spice and menthol down his gullet. just, you know, to get a reaction from his taste buds. don’t kiss him. his lips and tongue are a mix of red pepper, morning breath, and old gum. sometimes he sells gum for money.
SENSATIONS: we suddenly lack abundance in the sensations he can be closely compared to. what did you expect, from this young man, immune to your touch? rather than a sensation, he is the bruise upon your flesh that you didn’t know was there. an injury undetected. he is not the sensation, but rather the lack thereof, when you stub your toe and expect a spike of pain that never comes. he is the sensation of being painless. simple.
OUTFITS: if you’d like to get technical, dead boy’s wardrobe is made up of greasy tees and wrinkled sweatpants. tees with nonsensical words and phrases littering the front-side. without the exact technicality, you could say he is the boxes you pull out from the attic when winter rolls around. when you need to hang up warmer clothes, and toss the summer ones aside. he is the disappointment when you find that moths have found refuge in your apparel, leaving holes and loose threads behind. heavy cotton. knitted sweaters. browns, blacks, and forest greens. the fur of an animal, or maybe it’s artificial? fake, just like his entire being,
BODY: first, he is the rose, the cardinal wings, in the center of his forehead. when you see this, you know he’s smashed his head against the wall one day that week. a little too hard. this is his fault. what’s not his fault though, are the blues and the yellows and the greens and the blacks all across his skin, like a painted canvas. he is surrealism, when you can’t make out the shapes. you know he’s beautiful, but you can’t decode the symbol behind the surrealistic strokes of color. he says, no, they’re flowers. they are rose, they are hyacinth. morning glories, calendulas, and dianthuses. but no matter how hard you look, you see nothing more than bruises.
