side effects include

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort ———————————————————

[gswharang]

Hey everyone! I am Belle and as a heads up this is a queued post bc I live on like the opposite timezone of basically anyone in the US so this site is opening before dawn on fri for me and I have work. I'll try and hop on fri night, otherwise I'll get back to everyone on my sat! Anyway, I'm excited for this rp to open, I love surreal and horror. 🔥 My hobbies include writing gremlin bois and oscillating wildly between regular capitalization and lapslock. Also ToF/genshin (hmu if u play tho). This is Noh Harang, resident gremlin, morally ambiguous and in the trade of plots that verge on the wrong side of functional. Here is his about and profile page which has the more relevant of information, but I’ll drop some additional quick facts under the cut along with some attempted plot ideas! If you want to plot just like or dm + I have a discord on request if it’s easier to plot there (i usually prefer it A Lot, so if you want me to add you just drop your user in my ims and when i get online later i can add 6v6 ). 

if you want the full gist of why he is the way he is i’d rec reading his bio + checking his profile page, bc this is like: scenario, i'm trying my best, but my best is never good enough 😔 if not, ig you'll have to go by this image:

was born in ulsan, his dad died when he was pretty young and was largely raised by his mom w help from other family members. he is  ✨inspired ✨ by sharp objects (bc i Love it), only less murder-y, but his mom has FDIS (munchausen by proxy) and it influenced his emotional development a lot. 

moved to the island as a teen when his mom remarried, which meant there were new and exciting doctors to visit who weren’t suspicious of her yet. cowabunga, dude. spent a lot of time in his room drawing when he was ~sick~

he’s decently smart, and he did go onto uni for art, but then he got pissed at someone else and sabotaged their assignment by breaking into somewhere he shouldn’t have been and prob broke like 4 school rules in the process and was kicked out his second year. so he never finished. good life choices? check. clearly.

he is vindictive and revenge-driven and will act immediately on those feelings without considering the consequences on getting caught. harang in the moment is always like: i will definitely not get caught. and the narrator is like: that bitch did, in fact, get caught.

is he a good person? no. does he try to better himself every day? also no. memes aside, he does have good qualities but he’s def not sugar and spice and everything nice. if you enjoy complicated, emotionally wrought, and sometimes dark plots 👀 👀 👀 pls come to me, that is what i’m weak and design my chars for.

he’s a webtoon creator/artist. he’s into horror, esp supernatural/paranormal horror. his webtoon is similar in storyline/vibe to something like stagtown? but his art style is different. he takes inspo from junji ito of course. likes consuming horror media/projects as well.

obsessed with herbal tea, has So Many flavors in his apt. 

really into vinyl, though he usually collects based on cover artwork first and music second. likes playing atmospheric music when he’s making art.

he smokes, his favorite is cherry tobacco. they’re bad for his body but he’s pretty sure his body was basically destroyed in his youth so what does it matter anymore anyway?

he has a weird vibe but he’s good at covering it. will default to auto-mirroring people’s gestures and personalities around him without super realizing he’s doing it. if you spend enough time around him though it fades, it’s mostly done for people he doesn’t interact w regularly. 

he has long hair, and yes, that is a personality trait

he’s not always the nicest person but he’s also not mean for the sake of being mean. it can take him a while to emotionally connect to people. he doesn’t frequently get into romantic relationship because of it, def finds casual to be easier. his sense of love and how it should be expressed is ✨very off ✨

can turn himself into a victim in 4 minutes flat (i_got_it_from_my_mama.mp3)

he hates doctors, not in a take it personally sense, more just going to the doctors and being treated sense. will avoid going to the hospital At All Costs. 

can be manipulative, and isn’t always the most empathetic person (in this house we support morally grey chars 👏 )

plot ideas -- tbh i often prefer to like talk apps and come up with something organically, but here are a few ~general ideas~ that might be nice to have, and a few that could be starting off points if we’re really stuck.

an ex that was messily resolved and there's some baggage there is always fun. would love if it imploded due to reasons on both their ends rather than like one person being the Saint and the other being a Villain. I want mutually assured destruction and angst tyvm.

conversationalists. they live in the same area and keep running into each other, harang takes frequent smoke breaks outside for instance. but the strange part of it is there’s no real set schedule, and they just keep running into each other even though they're leaving at drastically different times every day. could be fun if they know some deeper pieces of each other’s life without knowing the like basics of each others personalities (like an inverse of basic friends, unbasic not-friends, if you will)

a bff? like we really click together and even though you make bad life choices and are lvl 500 dumb sometimes i’ll still help you with whatever mess you invite upon yourself. can go both ways, of course.

me, sweating and running out of plot ideas i’m brainstorming on the spot, someone who’s into harang’s webtoon. ofc it would need to be ✨developed ✨ so it could be interesting, but yes. OR his anti!!! OR a mix and they're obsessively into it to the point of being creepy. a creepy stan stalking a creepy artist, creep² if you will

i Am a fan of antagonistic plots, i think they’re really fun, esp when both chars are kind of catty about it and it’s not just one being the ~evil~ one, tho i don’t have any ideas on how to get there but if someone really wants one and to figure out a reason why i’m down!!!!

okay i think that’s it i’m out of ideas, but i’m v excited to plot and write so pls don’t hesitate to let me know if you like something or have another idea or wanna create something organically 👀

[gswharang]

OOC —

Just wanted to say that since I know I have some threads with people from the last (or last-last) event ago and there’s a new one now, if you want to do something new surrounding the new event (or even if we just have an old non-event related thread) just lmk and we can ditch the old thread and start a new one! Or if we don’t have a thread and you’d like one as well! Pls just know I’m easily overwhelmed and work at a glacial pace and managed to get COVID so I may be slower than usual on account of having to nap every like hour rip 🥲 just im me on tumblr or discord if so!!

[gswharang]

[gswharang]

After the night of the 31st comes to a close, you will feel a certain compulsion. Your mother has not gotten a visit from you in quite some time, has she? When you arrive there, the door is ajar. The house still looks lived in, not at all like someone packed up and left. In fact, there is a meal being prepared on the stove, your favorite. You look around but she is ... gone. All that seems left of her is a pair of slippers that seem to have been thrown around the living room, as if she was simply plucked out of thin air. The necklace you got in the mail pulsates angrily against your sternum, shakes, then stops. It stings then soothes you. A voice echoes in your head: Every wish comes with a price.

OOC // Your wish has been fulfilled. The result of this wish will have echoes throughout your character’s  journey. Answer the submit with your character’s reaction to the result; doing so will count for activity.

She’s gone.

Static splits his ears and rubs his thoughts raw, it’s just this ringing. A constant, pitchy ringing that grows to overwhelm him. Knocks any sense to hear from his head and leaves room for little else, this sound born from panic. This sound that isn’t one.

 It’s just that she should be here, should have left something behind to show the shuffled steps of leaving. A neat kitchen, suitcases taken, a text, or a letter, or an anything but the door thrown wide open. It’s all washed out in that same unnatural coating, like water dredged up from an ocean housing giants and flooding his life; drowning out sense and reason and- what should he call the absence of his mother? Him. It’s flooding him. Until he can’t breath, and it’s literal.

He’s pulling air in, and in, and in, and in and-

It has nowhere to go. No room to breathe out. Until his chest’s expanding with it, inflating, and hurting, and aching and he still can’t find room to breathe; until it it builds into a panic and he’s desperate, grinding the heel of his palm into his sternum, trying to quell the angry buzz he doesn’t quite register as that necklace.

Even though he’s sitting against the wall in his mother’s living room, no ocean in sight. No water forced down past his jaw.

He finds it eventually, the way out of his own body. An exhale that fractures into something guttural and wrong. He’s been sitting here, back stiff and pressed to drywall for hours. Made calls on his phone until it was wrung dry of charge, kept calling past sense when he could hear his mother’s phone rattling away on the kitchen counter anyway.

She’s not here. She won’t be here. And that voice is still crawling through his head, rending through filmy static. Every wish comes with a price. “What wish?” Harang mutters it towards his knees, garbled and incomprehensible. There’s nobody around to hear him though, so what does it matter? What wish, and he thinks it over and over, like it’s possible to reason with disembodied voices echoing through his head. Like this isn’t a sign of insanity. All he’d wanted was a little inspiration to weave through the latest chapter of his webtoon, really, a wish he didn’t even think would come true. He’s not sure how this fits. If she’s gone in the way that she feels like she’s gone, he’s not sure when he’ll be able to summon the energy to block out a chapter again.

“What wish?” he says it again, on a numbed voice and to nobody in particular.

Somewhere down deep and hidden, swept away where he can’t find a way to observe it, he knows lives a desire. To escape. To lash out, lash back. Be finished with whatever project or toy she saw him as. But as much as he hates her, genuinely, Harang loves too. In equal measure, in a way he can’t quite understand. It’s hard to express how he doesn’t know who he is or what his purpose could be without her looming in the knowable distance. A comforting threat of violence.

Now, with her gone, he feels raw.

The intangible warmth bleeding out from the pendant tucked in against his skin doesn’t fix it, not really. But he doesn’t take it off later either, a similarly learned acquiescence to escape pain in whatever dose is doled out to him.

[gswharang]

GROVE gswnoeul​:

As the pattern continues of passing, chilly breezes and crunching leaves beneath shoe soles, he quickly realizes that he is losing his years with each jolt of his heart, needs a plan to get both of them out of this. “Let’s go back. I’ll even buy you food. Or more booze.” Because Noeul can tell Harang has drunk. “Or we can go buy you ten mugs.” he continues, lips rubbing together. Noeul is never nervous, never timid, but sleepless nights and the fear of the unknown have a tendency to alter someone’s behavior, tinging it with foreign, inexplicable nuances that are often forgotten, often ignored. “Come on.”

Harang fades into the lines of trees mid-sentence.

Ducks under low arching branches and lets himself bleed into the night, that hard to discern shift from dark fabric to shadow. He doesn’t expect the footsteps that follow him in, the soft shuffle of tangled grass and muffled crunch of half-decayed leaves. He glances once over his shoulder to watch as Noeul stalks his way after him. It’s not with his well-worn surety though, it’s hesitance that cords around him until he’s stiff with it, arms swinging unnaturally at his sides. Harang turns back to face the guts of the orchard with a laugh he’s sure Noeul can’t really hear.

“It’s as safe as any other night.” Harang tucks his hands into the front pockets of his sweatshirt as he walks, turns half a step and kicks a scatter of dead leaves toward Noeul’s ankles, an attempt to make him jump. This time, when he laughs, Noeul can undoubtedly hear it.

“You can go back.” Harang suggests instead, turns himself around entirely, though doesn’t stop walking. The trees are laid down in neat rows, as long as he ducks his head he presumes himself safe enough.”I didn’t tell you to follow me in.” he reminds him with a quick arch of his brow. He smiles back, a little conniving, though filled with humor. Something he likely hasn’t shown Noeul in, well, how long has it been since they’d last been happy together?

Around then, he supposes.

“Hey. Jeon Noeul. What’s so scary about persimmon trees?” Harang lets the slow drag of his shoes stop, waits long enough to let Noeul catch up to him. “There’s nothing here. Just us.” In demonstration he twists his finger around in a slow circle, eyes mostly following the trajectory. “Didn’t take you to be scared of shadows.” It’s teased out, though not unkindly, despite the sharp edge of his smile. A tentative reach for something past the disregard they’d been stuck in.

“Who’s going to pop out and eat us, a bird?” he jabs a couple of fingers in near Noeul ribs before he turns again, follows the same row of trees deeper into the orchard.

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

I felt there was no point in telling anyone anything that was happening inside me.

Christa Wolf, tr. by Jan van Heurck, from “Cassandra: A Novel & Four Essays,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[gswharang]

gswgain​:

but the noises from the celebrating families down the road are more grating tonight than ever, and it’s still too early to return to her bare bones apartment where she has to gamble her chances on sleeping without dreaming. so gain takes in another long draw, fishes through her pocket, and curls her fingers around a crumpling packet before lightly tossing the half-smushed choco pie onto his lap.

“wasn’t bad enough to warrant vomiting into the gutter though.”

The wind acts as a balm to clammy skin, leaves him stuck on the cusp of discomfort, fingers wavering in midair as he offers her up a cigarette; preparing for a full-bodied shiver. His hand falls, the edge of his forearm knocking against his knee. Being sick is an awful thing, a confusing thing rolled up in an expectation of comfort and love. Nostalgia blooming from rot. He can never figure it out, how he feels when he’s like this, energy gone and body lethargic. He scrubs the back of his hand over his mouth, ignores the feeling as he tries to swallow down the taste of coins.

“Isn’t that how it always goes?” His voice sounds raw, he clears his throat once. “You just come back?” he wonders out. He doesn’t know her, not really. Not enough to care about the banalities of her life. How she’d navigated the holiday, the dynamic that waits under that roof. But it’s a distraction from his own family, from his own body. Harang, desperate for a way to escape from his own head, lunges at the opportunity.

He notices the package a beat too late, it’s halfway into his lap before he moves his hand like he might catch it.  It lodges itself in lucky near the bend of his waist. He squints at the label through the dim streetlight before he tears at vinyl and eats through a bite. Chocolate tastes better than stomach acid, ask anyone.

“Well, you haven’t met my mother.”

But then, meeting her wouldn’t explain his reaction away. That had always been the problem. She has that way of collecting sympathy and draping it around herself. The kind of woman people would murmur apologetically about when they pass her by in the mart. It doesn’t quite match, that statement, but he’s not so sure how to reword it to make sense. Not in a way he wouldn’t have to go out of his way to explain.

[gswharang]

BRINE gswhan​:

“What exactly are you trying to say though? About me not doing anything about this? You think that… maybe he might…” His eyes dart again. The behavior is increasingly uncharacteristic — from the stoic man Hangyeol presents himself as to an internal simper based on deeply buried traumas. For once, he seems afraid. The conclusions his mind catapults to are nothing short of extreme. “Th…that he might try to kill me or something like that? That I might have to kill him…?”

“For someone who believes in an awful lot of rumors, it’s a weird place to decide to live then.” Oddly, Harang doesn’t sound judgmental when he says this, it’s just tinged in that same curiosity. The sort where you want to know, you want to look, even if the picture of it is grotesque. Even if it makes you regret. Harang can never seem to rid himself of that desire. Lodged somewhere inside and dictating his recent obsession with the wrongness growing around them, sprouting up like tufts of weeds, roots wild and strangling out whatever sense of normalcy still lingers. 

He gnaws at his nail until it stings, and it’s only then that he yanks it free. The skin still throbs, a tell that he’s picked at it too much over the course of the day, week, at this point maybe month. He needs to break the habit. The easiest way would be to replace it with another. His focus is drawn from pain and back to Han when he starts talking though, in a way that raises Harang’s brows until they’re hidden behind his hair. 

“Uh, no. I meant like, maybe indoctrinate you into his weird cult, if you’re sure he’s in one.” He presses his weight down against the sole of his shoe hard enough that he can feel the sharp point of it start digging in at his heel. “So, what made you leap to straight up murder?” As far as he can figure, the thought doesn’t sit spring loaded and waiting to jump unless something happened, something a little more ominous than what he’s described so far. Naturally, Harang wants to know about that too. Wants to know too many things, perhaps in a distraction to knowing so little about himself. 

“You get threatened or something?” He tilts his head back the way he came, like he expects to be able to peer through the trees, the walls of the lighthouse, to see some spectral form of the man caught mid-ritual. He can’t, there’s just skinny branches wearing too much fog to see the leaves. “Or you just really want him gone?” That kind could sound a number of ways, judgmental, accusatory, suspicious. But it doesn’t. It’s quiet, his voice, with something like understanding carrying the meaning to him. He’d get it if Han said yes. He gets resenting someone dangerous in ways that others can’t always see. 

“Mm. I won’t snitch on you to the cops if he ends up dead.” He doesn’t figure Han to be the type to go through with anything like it. “But also if you want to go less extreme I can just help you, like, creep on his secret shit.” It sounds a little more doable, anyway. 

[gswharang]

TIME&PLACE gswdaejung​:

“it might not be illegal, but being drunk and disorderly is. especially at a family event. there are kids around.” maybe not those of the young variety given the movie on show was not exactly intended for young minds. daejung decided to pointedly ignore the last comment, just pressing his lips together as he looked at the bottle in harang’s hand, guessing that the contents properly weren’t apple juice. “so, unless you want to avoid a 100,000 won fine, i would advise trying to avoid doing anything stupid.” 

“Noted, maybe the insurance payout will give you something that doesn’t predate the advent of DVD players.” Hyperbolic, and Harang doesn’t actually know all too much about cars, but it’s a small island and it’s not like it’s known as the epicenter of criminal actively. He can’t imagine they’re well funded. If there were, Daejung wouldn’t waste his time milling around and pretending at Harang having a hidden agenda. Harang slips his phone from his pocket and clicks through apps, a universal sign of ending the conversation. Daejung, impervious to hints, continues bulldozing on like Harang might care about his opinion. He well and truly does not.

“And when have I ever acted disorderly? Just because you went and did something you regret doesn’t mean you can project whatever bullshit you’re carrying around onto me. Your past — or whatever — isn’t mine to make up for. So, kindly...” here he pauses, teeth catching at the tip of his tongue to keep the fuck off caged in. “Get out of my face. Or I’m going to start thinking you’re trying to goad me into doing something because you have it out for me.” He laughs, the sort devoid of humor, more air than voice. “Try and fine when I’ve done nothing, give me your badge number.”

Would they care if Harang reported him? Likely no. But if he’s earned himself a tail for nothing he might as well piss him off through the respective channels for his trouble.

He lifts a hand to swipe it under his eyes, drags across thin skin and dark circles. Considers, as he does it, whether it’s worth trying to suffer his way through the rest of a movie he’s already seen with Daejung talking in his ear the whole time. He comes to the an overwhelming no, twists the cap back onto his bottle and tucks it underneath his arm to pivot himself off the chair, dip back behind Daejung to walk away from the projector, away from him, away from people that feel too claustrophobic. He really hates bored cops. 

[gswharang]

MAZE

gswataru​:

a smile, faintly mischievous and playful grows after she took a sip of her own questionable order. they never seemed to make hers sweet enough; but coffee, was coffee. “hmm, what if i said it was a little bit of both?” the journalist’s head tilted, leaning in her seat. “i did some serious reading last night.” ataru sniffled, the red in her nose finally feeling warm enough to fade to pink from the heat radiating from her hot drink. “-and this town has got something weird going on, harang. weird.”

The coffee ripples as Harang tips the mug back and forth, the angle of his wrist keeps it from spilling. They settle like tremors above the murk, and it reminds him of then. Of an ocean stirred by too many limbs, sediment kicked up until the water was gray and then red. Waves spilling and breaching and—

Harang breathes in and then holds it for seven seconds. That’s what the internet told him he should do when anxiety creeps up his spine. Everyone knows you should listen to the internet. He closes his eyes, exhales for eight. She’s not back when he opens them, so he pulls his hand from the mug, presses heat-scalded fingertips together as he waits to hear the familiar clatter of her shoes against pavement. It doesn’t take long; lets her presence pull his attention away from thoughts of the ocean and the beasts it harbors. 

(It has to be true. They all saw it. Real.)

“Both?” Harang drinks his coffee instead of looking at it. “Well. The weird is kind of obvious at this point, that wasn’t-” here he gestures broadly to the ocean, “like...subtle.” Is a collective delusion ruled out at this point? Despite Harang’s interest in the odd, it doesn’t feel natural. A different artist scribbling over an already finished comic, a blending of styles that refuse to match. He drinks again (he doesn’t need the caffeine with the stutter-stop running of his heart). 

“But...what book? Or, I don’t know, reading material.” He laughs, though perhaps it’s too quiet to be properly classified as one (can they overhear them, these things? And that’s just a bit too paranoid. Probably. Fuck.). He taps at his phone again, until it lights up, unlocks it with a press of his thumb and scrolls through the stacks of web page tabs he has open. “Something online?” he asks again, re-finds that strange site everyone seems to have stumbled their way onto just to see if something new was posted. 

“Well, what’re the weird discoveries? Aside from giant fucking squid.” His eyes dart back to the ocean briefly, subconsciously, and then he tries to scrub the curiosity from them with the palm of his hand. “I don’t know if I’ve had as much luck about finding, like, real stuff.” If she did find read stuff. He shifts back in his chair and waits. 

[quotemadness]

I had no idea what I wanted, only that I wanted something, which is the worst kind of wanting.

David Levithan (via quotemadness)

[gswharang]

wondaegsw​:

before he’s able to speak, however, harang’s arm weaves alongside his and he’s being tugged towards the door; a fond smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he follows the other’s lead. he has a feeling that doing their own thing is going to be far more exciting than sticking around the party. wondae made his appearance, he thanked the hosts, so he supposes he can say that he officially attended the soiree if anyone asked. “might bum one off of you tonight, if that’s cool. been at it since dawn. thankfully we killed it in sales today, so it was worth it, i guess. did you happen to snag one of the cupcakes in there?” he asks, ambling further into the night; waiting to see where harang wants to anchor them for the time being. “if you didn’t, i have a couple leftover at the bakery that you can have. y’know, if you like sweets.” 

“Nah. I blend.” Harang shakes his head as he says it, and in the process his hood slips down lower until it settles somewhere above his eyes. He doesn’t bother correcting it, he likes when he’s able to pile up degrees of separation between himself and everyone else around him, even as small as this. “And anyway, everyone wants to check out interesting costumes, not some fucker in a black sweatshirt.” Harang curves a brow at that, like he’s proving a point, though it’s lost in the shadow of fabric and messy hair.

“Like I’m gonna sit here and explain the greatest genre of the decade to you.” Harang is pretty sure it might a genre, synthwave is from the 80′s, that seems disco-adjacent. He’d bet at least 25,000 won on it. He doesn’t have much more to say about a genre he pulled out of a hat though (is this even disco? Maybe a remix), distracts from the bit to tug at synthetic hair until it slides free from his fingers. The whole thing will be a knotted birds nest in the morning, especially if Wondae faces the wind in it, and the party’s too stifling to consider not. To Harang anyway, and in this moment that’s all Harang really cares about. Not how Wondae feels, or even if he wants to stay locked inside the party rounding up conversations to bide his time with. Harang just knows he’s done with it, but that he doesn’t want to be alone.

So that’s how it’s settled. Wondae doesn’t fight it though, so maybe he’d been sick of it too. Lucky coincidences. 

It’s colder outsides, strips away the humidity of too many bodies and leaves sweat dampened skin near the base of his neck prickling up into a shiver. Harang ignores it, knocks his hood down to let more heat escape as he lists off the stony-faced path and onto grass dry enough to crack underfoot. He’s careful when he lights the cigarette he fishes out from his pocket, inhales on the flare. 

“Here, open.” he twists it in his grip as he talks through the smoke, props it between Wondae’s lips and crosses his arms as he lets him steal a few drags. “I don’t usually go for sweet.” Harang admits, waits a good thirty seconds before his patience wears out and he’s reaching back across that gap to take his cigarette back. When he exhales, he tips his head back, lets his eyes skate down the curve of the moon before he decides that it unnerves him, turns his back on it and faces Wondae instead. 

“So what was your plan for the night, isn’t shit like that boring sober?” Harang doesn’t say it to try and steer him off the path of sobriety, Harang doesn’t really care what Wondae does as long as it doesn’t include dictating that Harang should follow suit. He just thinks it would be boring. “Fishing?” he makes a guess, laughs at himself and walks farther away from muffled voices and disjointed music, until there’s more dirt than grass underfoot so he can scatter at ashes.

[gswharang]

GROVE gswnoeul​:

He opts to bypass the question about the wishes; Harang should know Noeul is not a believer, not the sort of human to place his faith in things or people he can’t see or touch. The moment he finds himself standing above him is oddly reminiscent to when he watched Harang lay right next to the stained rug. Except this time there’s nothing but ugly leaves and dirt he’s sure is now lodged in the man’s hair, even when he holds his hand out to help him up. “You’re going to catch a cold for real and we all know how you get when you’re sick.” Noeul adds quickly, because feigned distraction and bravado can only cover so much fear. The thought of an unknown someone loitering anywhere them is enough for Noeul to flick his wrist, as if telling Harang to hurry up and accept his help.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?” It’s a little past the point where people were bunching up in groups, clustering their wishes into pretty lines on low-hanging branches, but it’s still in the general area of the festival. Even if time has stretched beyond the assumed end point. “I’m not in a forest. I’m not even, like, actually inside the orchard.” Harang corrects him as he slides his elbows against the grass. Not to get up, but to let his body fall back into a lazy heap. He’s got nowhere else to be, and he likes the feeling of being sprawled out and half-hidden from the world. 

Harang closes his eyes as he pulls in a breath of air long enough that his chest swells and starts to ache with it. He holds it and waits to hear the soles of Noeul’s shoes grinding at gravel again, back on whatever purpose he’d been walking out here for in the first place. Instead, there’s a too close shuffle of grass. Harang cracks his eyes open just barely, glances through the gaps of his lashes. It leaves Noeul blotchy and featureless, but he catches on enough to tell Noeul’s come closer and is expecting to pull him up, turn him into company. Harang’s not sure he has the energy for it, but that’s around the time when his lungs starts shivering, desperate for an exhale. He lets it out, a slow leak as he blinks his eyes open fully.

It’s repetition, Harang reaches out and past his hand, digs fingers in at his wrist, thumb gouging at the soft bend of it in a way he knows can hurt. He doesn’t regret doing it, especially when Noeul goes and opens his mouth, talks about things Harang hates like he has any right to it. (Ignore the fact that it’s a perfectly reasonable conversation point. Ignore the fact that it’s a benign statement of hollowed out concern and teasing). “Hey. Jeon Noeul, shut the fuck up.” He turns enough to corkscrew an arm behind his back, brushes at dirt and stray foliage. The frown pressed into place means he’s not looking for help doing it.

Noeul’s still standing there though, like they might’ve made plans to meet at the mouth of the orchard for Harang to buy his used laptop. They hadn’t though, which Harang takes to mean that Noeul’s either bored or hoping to looking to use him as a distraction for whatever life problem he’s currently avoiding. He could be wrong, it’s been two years, but Noeul’s done nothing to tell him otherwise so Harang continues assuming. 

“Keep standing there staring and you’ll be the one getting sick.” Only, the way Harang says it makes it sounds like he hopes it’ll happen. Steps around him and into the orchard, mostly because he thinks Noeul won’t willingly follow him in. 

And anyway, he has nowhere else to be.

[gswharang]

MAZE Oceanside café outdoor seating, 4:05pm, ft. Ataru — @gswataru

The coffee tastes burnt, but it always does. It seems like the closer a café is to the ocean the less effort they’ll put into the product. He’s not some coffee connoisseur though, so Harang doesn’t really care when he swallows down a mouthful of it. It’s the reason he’s never bought tea here, it might start to matter to him then. So he goes for the view unfolded around him, well, kind of. The view was home to the unnatural, and it made sense as a logical starting point to talk things over with Ataru. Now it’s ritualistic. Come winter and he might even begrudge the owner’s decision to lock the weather-proof tables up in storage and force them inside.

The cold is sneaking up on him, but Harang likes when Autumn catches. He doesn’t really enjoy swimming, and he’s not sure what else the summer has to offer. Now and there’s only the dregs of tourists left, milling about confused at how dull the island is when the drip of heat and beach-fun propaganda is wiped away. They’ll leave soon enough. 

Harang slides his pinky over the crack in his phone screen as it vibrates, taps at the preview to read over Ataru’s message that she’ll be there soon. He grabs at a chunk of his hair, mostly what makes up the top layer, to twist it up into a half-ponytail as he waits; tired of the wind blinding him with it. He probably needs a trim, but what’ll likely happen is Harang getting sick of sheepdog-chic in a month and chopping at his own bangs in the mirror. It’s not like he’s known for being put together anyway.

Another mouthful of coffee, one leg drawing up to balance his heel on the edge of the chair, and that’s when Ataru shows. Harang can rattle out the three step process that will follow without fail. 1. Bag thrown on chair as she relocates herself into the café leaving behind a noise that could, maybe, be considered a hello. 2. Four and a half to five minutes later she’ll reappear and settle opposite him with drink in hand. 3. She’ll finally look up, and that’s when Harang will greet her back.

“What’s the occasion, bored?” he taps a finger against the eggshell-ceramic of his mug. “Or is it a work call?” not that he works with her, but it seems like a normal-to-neutral label he can stick onto whatever their relationship is becoming.

[gswharang]

You might expect to see a person on the other side of the door but instead you find no one, only a small package resting at your doorstep. It is an envelope of sorts, thick yellow paper, lined with bubble wrap to secure whatever is inside. Your name is scrawled on the front in clumsy writing. When you go back inside and open the package, inside you will find a necklace. The pendant hanging from the silver chain appears to be some sort of gem, one that twinkles like a black star and shimmers differently at every angle. It gives off a faint sweet scent, one you cannot place. Cherry, maybe. Familiar. But it does not seem to be all, stuffed further unto the package is a note that reads, “The gem dark as night glistens in the light of the Moon. It chooses you.”

OOC // Provide your final answer to the random encounter in character. You may respond as you see fit in a reply to this submit. This will count for activity.

In the midday burn of sun, Harang twists the pendant back and forth. It refracts into colors that he can’t seem to name. It’s not a rainbow, not technically changed from black, just different. That different that’s been haunting him lately. Rearranging the rules of reality subtly enough that Harang can’t quite place if he’s just remembering the order of all things incorrectly. It keeps his attention trapped between the odd sheen and something that smells familiar, a familiarity rooted in addiction, even if he can’t recognize that himself. He stares with the greedy curiosity of a magpie drawn to the glitter of a lost coin as he twines the chain around his finger. His skin starts to welt up red, loses track of proper blood circulation as he glances back to that note. 

He can’t really figure out who’d want to give him much of anything, let alone a necklace that looks like it has the chance of being worth more than 30,000 won. 

Harang looks to the necklace again, and then note, and continues to copy the pendulum-swing the gem makes as his attention flips between them. He can’t tell if it’s meant to be a descriptor, that message, or some kind of puzzle. Harang likes puzzles well enough that he decides to wait for the sun to tick its way down the sky and for the moon to swallow up its lingering warmth just to see if anything about it will change. Not that he can guess at what would change, the possibility of it makes about as much sense as the note itself. He slackens the posture of his hand, lets the necklace uncord from his grip until it’s hanging from a finger. 

“What chooses?” He mutters it out to himself mostly inaudibly, not that it matters, he’s alone. Then comes to choice to stow it away on his desk or to actually wear it (option three: pawn it for quick cash, but Harang’s never been one to follow the option of maximum effort — and anyway, he’s curious). It’s the scent, he thinks, that wins him over. It jerks at that pavlovian response in his brain of almost-cherry leading to a nicotine spark of pleasure.

It takes him three tries to peel back the spring ring clip to open the chain with how far he’s gone and bitten down his nail. Twists it around his neck and lets it join the small collection of necklaces he tends to keep on just because it’s less work than taking them off. They’re not really a statement piece, considering he often forgets to tug them out from the neck of his shirt. 

Maybe someone will recognize it though, help him piece together whatever the fuck it means. That’s all Harang can seem to hope for lately. 

[gswharang]

[gswharang]

BRINE gswhan​:

“That or he’s sick with something… inhuman. You could see it, right? He looks… weird. Like someone stretched rice flour over his bones. There’s no other explanations I can come up with, really. He’s changed a hell of a lot in the past year or so since I got back here. He comes back, mumbling and humming something I can’t make out, then kicks me out of the place to do whatever it is he does in private. Caught him writing some stuff down once in a book but I couldn’t read it. He even tried to attack me once… Came at me all wild-eyed and making weird noises. That’s it. I don’t have anything else.”

He glances over his shoulder. The paranoia is clear as day, even in the misty fog. “Listen… You have to promise not to tell anyone about this. Just for your own safety,”He should have known. Another cost of allowing himself to get close enough to someone. The idea stings, despite the harsh disposition lingering around him as of late — and to who coild be considered a rare friend, at that. “And mine.”

There’s a scatter of confusion cast inside him; at the situation, the change of mood, the slightly-off way he keeps seeing the world around him. Confusion is one of those emotions that can quickly pile up into frustration, anger, both more easy to enact than the vulnerability of fear or hesitation. Harang’s been fighting against vulnerability since he was old enough to recognize it, so it’s not surprising he sidesteps out from the possibility, not if you know him. The unfortunate thing about it is that not many people do. 

Harang expects for the conversation to stop, at least partly. Most of what Han had set out to accomplish seems tied up — to get Harang out of the lighthouse and to keep him from asking questions, and besides, usually when you stop acting the way people want from you they tend to not care if you’re gone. Harang has molded the majority of his pseudo-friendships around this concept, like it’s a trick to finding a closeness that’s nearly real. Han ends up back at his shoulder and matching pace with him though, and Harang sneaks a look at him from the corner of his eye. Sometimes he wishes decoding emotions were just as easy as puzzles.

Harang slows when the trees start threatening to thin themselves out, their conversation feels like it needs to stay hidden behind the shadows, where the sun can’t flush it out and expose them. He wings out an arm, lets his sketchbook frisbee its way onto the shelf of a rock, follows after it, though settles himself more carefully. He’s frowning by the time he looks up at Han. “Why a cult, why not just...dementia or something?” He’s not trying to dissuade Han from the opinion, he’s no skeptic, but he assumes than Han has more reasoning past odd behavior and symptoms, and Harang wants to know.

“Who am I even going to tell?” Harang slivers the edge of his thumb nail between his teeth as he thinks. There’s follow-up questions in his head, a tangled mass of them that becomes hard to pick apart. The who would even hear about it if I did tell?, which he smooths out with his own answer, that maybe Han’s scared of reputation and more people coming to kick up dust near the lighthouse. But then there’s — why are you even staying, what noises, what was he writing down?, and none of it dampens at the curiosity that had sparked into a flare the moment Han had tried to hide everything away with too much urgency. 

“I won’t. Tell, I mean.” He bites down at his nail and doesn’t stop until he feels it sting. “But you know, just staying there and doing absolutely nothing doesn’t make you safe, either.” He pulls his legs up to balance his heels against the edge of the rock, splays his fingers out across the hilltops of his knees to keep from picking at them. “Just because you don’t know what someone’s doing, it doesn’t make you safe from it. That’s not how it works.” Harang knows that for certain.