volchitsa

most people / blush before death / she just / steps off

[hpjsj-blog]

in an effort to be more active, i’m dropping a starter call! like this post and i’ll start something up for us (probably pre-established, so i’ll message you if we haven’t plotted yet). max 4 for my sanity.

[funeraryfairy]

That girl you just called a bitch? That’s actually sasuke uchiha 

[hpjsj-blog]

hpjseokbeom:

“why, where are you going?” his tone is sharp and cold, formalities set aside for a moment. “at least have breakfast first, soojung. what’s the rush?”

It always hurts the most before anything ever happens. She thinks it’s strange, misaligned somehow. Like a process gone awry, like she’s bleeding before she even feels the skin tear, the bones rattle. The words she’s about to say bite back in her throat, bite so hard she has half a mind to not let them out at all.

But Seokbeom deserves an answer. She’s kept so much more from him that she can allow this small reprieve. Not that what’s about to ensue will leave either of them satisfied, but the premature squeezing between her ribcage is nothing compared to what she does to him every time. They’re a burning home on repeat; black burns on their palms, both crumbling into nothing at all.

His tone catches off-guard. It’s rare to see someone so like her sun be so cold. She almost apologizes — almost.

“I’ve got work.” (Lie. Somewhat; not until afternoon, anyway.)

“And I really shouldn’t overstay.” (As if she hasn’t made his arms a home already.)

He deserves more. She can’t give that.

“Seokbeom,” half a sigh, half a plead. If there’s anything she’s good at, it’s going through the pain. “Don’t be like this. You know this isn’t what we do. We’re not like that, and you know that. Don’t make this hurt more for you.” Don’t make this hurt more for me.

[hpjsj-blog]

hpjongin:

“you’re cruel.” dark eyes wander down the bend of her nose, the curve of her lips, before meeting again with her own. “why would you ask me that when you already know the answer? just to hear me say it? have you that much in you to hurt me?”

she slips into violence like it’s a second skin. the type of brutality that comes with a soft smile over sharp teeth, ruin on the tongue; the type of awful that twists spines, never relenting. and soojung wears it well, too — impeccably so. something like practice making it perfect, she supposes. how easy it is, now, to be her own particular brand of cruel.

jongin’s just another one of many victims; the first being herself.

“consider it payback,” she fires back in return —all parts gentle and blurred. there’s no bite; just cold fact, wrapped in the softness of her tone. “for all the times you’ve done the same to me.” she thinks of them: opening her door just to see his face; gifts with no note; . neither of them were faultless here.  “guess we’re both not very good at goodbyes, huh?” not very good at moving on, either.

she holds his hand. it staves off the urge to do more, for now.

she remembers the last time this happened — same story, a different setting. her place instead of his; jongin the one pulling old strands of memory, soojung crumbling. the weight of them — the nothingness that feels oddly like something — was always too much to stand against. the last time, she’d kissed him goodbye — told him it was the final thing she’d ask of him.

but that’s the thing about her promises — she never manages to keep them. never when jongin is concerned. which is why she turns her head and presses her lips to the tip of his mouth. it’s a well-worn action, heavy with the past. “last time, i promise,” even as the words sound hollow to her ears.

[hpjsj-blog]

she sees his face and nothingness at the same time. two am and too many glasses of soju has her in fragments, feelings outstretched in so many directions she's succeeded in losing herself in her own mind. grasping hands pull on one thread of emotion; heels follow, and she's at jongin's doorstep before she can make sense of it all. (not that they make sense these days, but it's beside the point now.)

four explanations on the tip of her tongue — poor excuses, all of them — but instead she says: "let's drink!" and doesn't wait for his response. because she doesn't need one, really; not when he's so suited to bending for her, just like she does for him. which is they're both here now, wine-hazy and side-by-side, her head on his shoulder because it's too heavy for her hands. she blinks slow, knocks the rim of her glass on her teeth, and drinks it clean.

"i shouldn't be here, i know." it's a sombre fact, but she's grinning anyway. one of those grins that aren't grins — the ones he's familiar with, because he's kissed them so often. "but the ahjumma that runs that food stall by your place asked me today why we hadn't been there together in a while. i should've told her we weren't together anymore, but instead i told her we'd be there on friday. i couldn't disappoint her like that, you know?" as if she doesn't carry disappointment in her blood; as if she hasn’t left him hungry one too many times.

"but i can leave. if you want me to."

she shifts; tilts her head and looks at him with glass eyes, misty little smile. "should i, jongin?"

déjà vu @hpjongin​, june ‘17

[soojunqa]

[hpjsj-blog]

hpjnao:

“Please. I want to meet a beautiful boy and fall in love. I’m sure there’s one waiting for me on the dancefloor somewhere in this city.”

World Spins Madly On ft. @hpjsj — October ‘14

she doesn’t know what time it is. doesn’t know if it’s nine, just after the sun’s set low over the tide; or maybe it’s three in the morning and all the ghosts have come alive. it’s a meaningless concept now, when all normality’s fallen to the wayside in the midst of all of the running away — from the dead and the living alike. she’ll pick her world up in the morning, along with the rest of her mind. she doesn’t need sanity tonight.

they call it courage. she calls it something different — same start, different means, same end. whatever it’s called, nao needs it, and soojung provides willingly. a friendship of the worst kind, but they’ve always thrived off of the feeling of the fall. at the very least, she’s loyal — just as high and just as sad as her ruin of a friend.

“club sounds good.” it’s a smile that’s not a smile, eerie in its greatness. she smiles like the devil— a smile that terrifies, that shivers. in the haze of street lights, nao’s tears look impeccable. the type of beauty that’d stop her heart if she hadn’t left it behind. (the type of face that made a boy lose his mind. he loved her; she didn’t love him enough.) “better than good. club sounds right. let’s go.”

pavements weave in and out as she follows a vague direction, fingers firmly gripping nao’s, the two of them against the city. they end up somewhere where the lights flash too bright and the crowd’s faces blur, and she decides that this is where they’ll stay, for now; finds something that she thinks says club (only to be confirmed by nao’s nod), scans the sprawling people with pupils that have swallowed her eyes whole.

“line’s long,” she says, more to herself than anything. “c’mon.”

in the face of her, half girl half god, the boy at the door is powerless. just looks and smiles and she’s gifted with his soul in the heart of her palm. he lets them in without a word, without a care about the repercussions. she doesn’t care, either. just heads down into the belly of the beast armed with nothing but false bravado.

“not feeling a line right now,” she says once they’re inside. nose pointed towards the bar, she turns around to face her friend properly. might as well taste all the vices now. “want a drink?”

smile's back; so awful she thinks reality shudders in face of it’s glory.

october ‘14

[hpjsj-blog]

hpjseokbeom:

“do you think soojung noona will like this?” he asks doyou who is comfortably curled up on floor as he sets up his kitchen table for two and not one lonely boy and his dog. doyou looks up at him nonchalantly and seokbeom takes it as a yes. “thanks, buddy. i love you.”

last night, she’d taken the shirt he’d left strewn by the bed and worn it to sleep. because it reminds me of you, she’d said - never mind the fact that the whole of him was right in front of her, all hers, down to the mark her teeth had left on his neck. and because you always take all the blankets at night, seokbeom.

(funny, the thought that he would ever leave her to feel cold.)

sunlight seeps through shut eyelids, but she lets them rest a moment longer. instead, an arm reaches outwards, fingers pulled apart, to the other side of the bed. the empty is foreboding. a sign that if he's not here, he's out there - where reality waits for her to come in shamefaced and penitent. this is why she doesn't look forward to late mornings: because they always invite bad endings.

her body moves reluctantly, resolute despite the inevitability of the fallout. she straightens up and unfolds arms out wide. mid-stretching, eyes dart around the room. it's not a surprise anymore, the way it looks three-quarters his and the rest hers. her books in the corner, her clothes in the closet, and her favourite shampoo perched by the shower, near-empty. she leaves what can be tossed away, but never what he wants most.

before leaving, she stuffs his shirt into her bag. because she's selfish, and she knows it. "hey, i can't stay. sorry 'bout it." polite and detached - even as she can't help but to kiss him goodbye. "text you later, maybe, okay?"

cruelty suits her better than one would think.

[hpjhaesol-blog]

three pints, a line of salt, and crushed ice

[hpjsj-blog]

hpjhaesol:

“…We’re going to the men’s bathroom next time.”

Tonight, she wants to be a god.

Mortality is a currency she gives up freely. Longevity is exchanged for emotion; for forgetting, if only for a second, that there is something rotting inside of her, that it has a mouth that cradles her heart, gnaws frequently and without warning. Addiction is the new black, and she wears it well. Golden seconds for white lines, for courage weighed in grams. She doesn’t aim to live long, just to live high. To say to what’s made her human, what’s fashioned her broken, that she’s doing just fine.

(She’s not fine. But that’s beside the point.)

Despite the rush, her fingers remain precise — practiced and poised despite the way the lights shiver even when she’s still. The same blurry gaze settles on the crown of Haesol’s head, and she watches absentmindedly as he cleans up another line; third time this night, and it’s only just begun.

“But the boys’ bathroom never has stalls, Haesol.” She snorts at his discomfort, mannerisms lost with her sobriety. Kindness is a virtue she's granted only when she feels like she's got everything to lose; but here, now, there's little else important but the time until the next one. “Are you suggesting I do a line off of a sink, out in the open? With boys unable to aim at the toilet beside me?” Never again, she adds to herself — not after the past February’s fiasco. The mental scars had remained for weeks.

“And anyway, this one’s my bag.” Courtesy of step-father’s personal graduation gift, along with a note apologizing for not being able to make it. She’d thrown that out after barely a glance but kept the money, because what else were step-parents for? Certainly not a source of affection, much less a self-forgetting sort of love. Note might as well have been blank. “When you finally share yours, I’ll go wherever you want. Deal?”

She doesn’t wait for his answer — just reaches past him, unlocks the door with deft hands, and slips past him to the outside world. The action arrests two girls at the sink, who eye her with affront; she smiles, makes a show of wiping invisible lipstick from her mouth (just to fuck with them, of course), and then turns to her friend. “Ready to head out when you are! Let’s get a drink first. Kinda need one. My treat!”

[hpjsj-blog]

hpjwen:

“new chapter’s - something,” he offers, wrinkling his nose a bit. “nonexistent, mostly.” how long have i been out of it? what year is it? then her words finally register, and he breathes out a heavy sigh, the tension purposely melting away into goo by his feet. “when do i not need one?” often, he doesn’t need to add. and it still surprises him how much he genuinely trusts soojung to know when that is.

comfort settles into the space between them - the slow, easygoing affinity that accompanies their closeness. not that a gap existed before in their shared silence, but soojung finds that junhui absorbed in his work and junhui absorbed in reality are two different sides of a coin she’s been lucky to keep clasped in her palms. two parts of him she’s studied well, knows deeply.

“can’t rush genius,” she says in response to the cynicism on his progress. the grin slides effortlessly on to her face, cheeks dimpling with her amusement. “and you’re definitely some type of genius, junhui.”

the fact is she’s an expanse of poor ideas, originality splintering young, never allowed a chance to breathe. she’s accepted it long ago, thinks of the loss of it a part of her. now, the hollowness is apparent: here she is, promising some great scheme to relieve the pressure from his shoulders, and she comes up empty handed.

think.

her hand reaches for junhui’s spare pen, twirls absentmindedly before she realizes: oh, alright, why not. nothing to lose, anyhow. she’d already stuck out her neck with her proffered gesture of kindness. “how about you teach me how to draw?” the suggestion hangs in the air, takes even her by surprise. it’s not like he’s never seen her artwork before - poor caricatures on scrap paper, pale imitations of his own. the challenge seems less like a distraction and more a punishment. “i mean- or not. i know i’m hopeless -” wryly, the corners of her mouth perk up, into a smile that looks like a frown - “so we can do something else. it’ll be embarrassing for me anyway.”

[hpjsj-blog]

✆♠⁇✘ ✺ ☼

send ✆ for a morning text

( kkt: 로로 ) did you even sleep before you left today?

send  ♠ for a drunk text

( kkt: 로로 ) outside( kkt: 로로 ) need. Lighter( kkt: 로로 ) PING( kkt: 로로 ) !!!!!

send ⁇ for a worried text

( kkt: 로로 ) you sure you’re alright?( kkt: 로로 ) you haven’t really been outside recently( kkt: 로로 ) haven’t eaten much either( kkt: 로로 ) wanna talk about it?

send ✘ for a text that should never have been sent

( kkt: 로로 ) fucking clean your room you gross shit

send ✺ for a saucy text

( kkt: 로로 ) i can’t stop thinking about your bra( kkt: 로로 ) that is also technically my bra( kkt: 로로 ) matching bras, this is a new level of friendship

send ☼ for a congratulatory text

( kkt: 로로 ) i heard from bora!( kkt: 로로 ) congratulations on being published!!!( kkt: 로로 ) stop telling yourself it’s not that big a deal( kkt: 로로 ) it is a big deal and i’m proud of you

[asianmovie]

Su-ki-da (2005)

[hpjsj-blog]

This is what occurs in the expanse of a heartbeat:

Eyes lock. Silence falls. Sharp inhale, tight throat. It’s happened before, her world falling apart. The quiet ending of something burning up into dust. Within another second, it’s all too much; the quick gasp of air before the scream. Now it’s blood pounding and her mind whirling and the blinding urge to turn and never look back. Maybe that’s why she’s always been a good runner — she’s always chosen flight. Better that than to look transgression in the eye, to ever accept her wrongs. She’s apologetic about trivialities, but never about what matters.

But it’s different, this time. He’s worth more than her leaving without a goodbye. They’re worth more than that.

“Hey. I — I just dropped by to say hi to your mom. I was in the area.” A lie that her clean appearance betrays; the bank is too far for her to imply that, but it’s better than the alternative: her standing outside the restaurant to the tune of a ticking clock, bullet in her hands waiting for the bite. Gun powder, she finds, tastes exactly like pride after she swallows it down.

He looks strange. Or maybe she’s the strange looking one, nervousness folding her into herself, leadening her spine. But it can’t be just her who’s view has changed. She sees his shoulders and thinks of her hands on them; sees his mouth and thinks of it on her own. Thinks that it should not have happened, but now that it has, there’s no use in pretending it hasn’t. They’re friends first and foremost, and anything else second.

“Skip,” his name feels heavy between her teeth — unfamiliar in the worst way, “we- we should talk. About it. Please?”

The truth, for once. No running now.

@hpjskip, june ’17

[aseaofquotes]

Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay”

[hpjsj-blog]

It always returns to this.

The stagnancy of a normal routine unnerves her. There’s something eerie about it, in the same way bitterness lingers on the tip of her tongue even after she’s long swallowed the pill. Because why should something that doesn’t exist — that has no space, nothing to take it up — make her want to crawl out of her own skin?

But the answer is something she doesn’t care (doesn’t dare) to know, so instead, she resists. Never stays too long in one particular place or form; leaves before the morning from a bed that’s almost home to seek newness, difference. Routines never last. Never the ones close to the heart, anyway. She’s a girl with no roots to gnaw on, and that’s just the way it is.

And yet here she is for the third time this week, sitting beside this boy that looks at her with kind eyes, and she figures that maybe some habits are just too hard to break. That maybe the mundane doesn’t have to be bitter. That maybe she can start to settle down.

Being beside Junhui entails the following: elbows tight against the ribcage, so that she doesn’t jostle him with her clumsy arms. Closed mouth. Attentiveness. She knows better than to disturb a work in progress — until, that is, she sees his fingers slacken and his eyes dim, because then she’s free to talk. “New chapter not going so well?” she asks, peering overtop gold frames curiously. “Want a distraction?”

(maybe She hasn’t been able to grasp routine quite yet.)

@hpjwen, june ‘17

[hpjsj-blog]

Endings always come too quickly.

They’re standing outside the theatre, two bodies against the current of the crowd. And in the yellow light of the street lamp she thinks that he’s something like a god, like an artwork in the flesh; his normally sharp features soft — blurred as if they’re brushstrokes — like a portrait come to life just before her eyes. She thinks that this suits him well: Taehyung is all fine lines and a set jaw, but never anything more than gentle to the touch. That’s why he’s here, beside her, shaking hands and crumpled brows, asking her why she’s always taking him to horror movies when she knows he doesn’t like them. A lesson he never learns: never trust a girl with a smile like her’s. He trusts too easy, and she’s always taken too much for her own good.

“I think the girls in the row in front of us still had popcorn in their hair when they left the theatre,” the little tease is inflected by her small laughs at his expense, “I don’t think they appreciated you throwing it around after that one obvious jump-scare tactic, Tae.”

Predictable movie. Bad plot. She hadn’t really wanted to watch it, but it’d been a while since she’d seen him so she’d taken liberty and called him up anyway. “Wasn’t really that good, right? Or did you only watch the upper left corner of it again?”

@taehpj, june ’17

[hpjsj-blog]

Sundays filter through lapses in memory. A persistent languorousness that ends her week, causes hands to move slow and heels to drag. Her body’s not her own on Sundays; goes through the motions in a warped normality before life starts moving on to face the Monday ahead. Bank’s closed, so she heads in early to the PC Bang — that, or the elusive day off. The former fits today more, and it’s near four in the afternoon when she lets the store door swing shut behind her, late for a promise she’s nearly too lethargic to care for.

But it’s London, and she’s Soojung. There’s not enough caring in the world.

Room 415 — ‘struggling poet who wears a black beret even in the sweltering heat’ — throws disdain her way when she shuffles in late to the complex’s bi-weekly book club meeting. The vexed look she volleys in return is dulled by her stumbling over her chair leg.

“I hate him,” the bitterness drips heavy from her teeth, near tangible in its intensity, “stupid beret boy. Not like we’ve started yet anyway.” She tilts then, neck craning towards the girl beside her, effervescence a matter of course. There is always a something about London that makes people smile. “So did you read what we needed to or not? I didn’t.”

@hpjlondon, june ’17