cold girl fever

oh byul 1990.03.28 / investigative journalist

[hrsbyul]

jooyoung​

[ ... ] 

he clicks his tongue and tucks his hands into his pockets. “If you’ve got some free time in between sleuthing we should grab a drink sometime - I’m not hitting on you, by the way. It’s just… You know how boring Ilmyo can be and it’d be nice to talk to someone who’s still connected to the outside world.”

he shoots her a half-smile, thinking back to their previous run-ins in Seoul. “Besides, maybe now we can actually have conversations that don’t just revolve around code and trade-deals.”

justice, is it? she tilts her head ever so slight, expression unreadable. the weight, the consequence, the cost—where do you even begin to unpack it all?

the thing is, you don't. not if you have the balls to pluck those rose-colored glasses off of those that want it the most. even if it's got as much value as a measly, miserly dime, tossed about only to be dropped right into a wishing well. even if it invokes the worst kind of passion. 

even if there's no bringing back what's been ripped from them for good. 

byul glances down at her feet, presses against that odd blue moon urge for a smoke. hope is about just as thin and wispy as a pipe dream, but that's not her bubble to burst. not like this.

“well,” she raises her head at last. “you never know. it might just be both.”  and they’d be back to square one all over again. same old game, with a fresh new body. if there’s a glint in her eye at all, it’s gone as soon as it’d been caught.

the backpack that's been sitting by her stool is grabbed by the strap and zipped open. the way it'd been feeling uncharacteristically light all day hadn't sat well with her. scooping up the laptop, she gives it a once-over, clicking it open then shut, before sliding it into the bag. 

“you’d know better not to.” whether she means it with making a move or conversations go beyond being strictly business, it’s just open air and a judgment call that’s not hers to make. 

“maybe.” an echo of the suggestion that she muses out loud. byul zips up and shrugs the backpack on, the weight against her spine familiar and much missed.

“i’m gonna have to see just how much ‘better’ my computer is first.” the smile in return is there, then it isn’t. “so.” 

until then. 

[hrsbyul]

did NOT mean to dip so hard like that but work is back in full gear and the summer semester just started...given recent events in the states as well, to say things have been crazy is an understatement lol 

i WILL get to messages soon though, thank you for your patience! and i’m so sorry for being slow 😭 

[hrsjooyoung-deactivated20200819]

✄ malfunction

[hrsbyul]

jooyoung‌

[ ... ] 

this was fact. after years of alcohol abuse his recollection was getting worse and worse. the geezer was still asking about an ex-girlfriend from six years ago and wondering where jooyoung stashed all the catalogs from his sales job ( which he told him were in the basement each time he visited ). he wasn’t handling retirement well. 

“What do you make of all this anyway? Cold case in the making or serial killer on the loose?“ any leads? the question is implied. the flyer got everyone talking, she was bound to stumble upon something interesting.

what he drops, she picks right up to toss back. “you’re not in any position to settle.” byul arches a brow, a little in disbelief at the audacity. all or nothing, her way or the highway, it’s the same old story when her temperament's involved. reaching across the desk, she taps at the machine that stays stuck in its work-in-progress state. “hurry up." 

but there’s no rush, not with how the evening has slowed considerably, or how jooyoung keeps the ball rolling. the mock dramatics earn him a bemused snort at most, but she'll takes that last pinch of honesty for what it is. the plight of parents getting older—if it doesn't hit now, it will. getting mama down to the optometrist’s the other day had been an uphill battle of the highest order. "i get that." 

slowly, byul’s line of sight turns away from the table to the window in the back, left slightly ajar for some fresh air to slip through. no prying eyes or ears to be seen from here, but this time of night has never been one to hold anyone to such promises. hesitation? hardly, but she'd be a fool to ignore the creeping feeling that's sunk in ever since she'd stepped back into these parts.

“there hasn’t been much to look at.” where there should be exasperation heard in her voice is reduced to a leveled edge. truth be told, it all feels too clean. no blood, ruptures, any signs of violence in intent. either someone’s meticulous, or the act itself hadn’t inspired much passion. 

she folds her arms. against the growing chill of the room or the gruesomeness of it all, it’s hard to say. 

“all i know is that nothing good is going to come out of it.” 

[hrsbyul]

know where

[hrsbyul]

kitaek‌

[ ... ] 

he turns toward the scatterings of footprints and trampled down weeds next. likely from all the onlookers, but he takes a picture of that also.

“you even looking to solve it, or are you hoping it stays a mystery?” he’s always been a little curious. it’s not technically her job to.

thoroughness is key, and the best way to go about it is to work from the inside-out. begin here for their center before marking territory, ring after ring around the tree, the next one wider than the last. eyes flitting from the paper to the bark to the paper once more. with a gloved thumb,  she turns the ripped corner to check the back of the page. letting that go, she makes enough distance to mark a one-foot wide radius for surrounding ground and gives that a once-over. 

no finger smudges, scratch marks, fine print that's easy to miss. nothing. in the back of her mind, an initial list of findings starts to form. 

"don't see anything that suggests that." she steps aside by another foot. the lack of caution tape being left behind is one thing, the fact that the flyer is still there another. anyone with enough faith would consider the possibility of a decent clean-up, but oh byul has too vivid of memories to follow such a cause so blindly. god knows what they did—what they didn't do—when chaekyung had gone missing. 

her jaw clenches involuntarily at the thought, contempt a familiar burn. time has failed to let it die. she swallows the feeling down to revisit elsewhere. 

for now, a note to self: a visit down to the station is long overdue.  as a precaution? might as well.

byul crouches down on one knee, hand reaching out for the dirt. pen caps, memorabilia, something.

“neither,” she answers. “wanted to get a draft up and be done with it.”

her fingers continue to sweep over the soil, damp from the morning mist. at the end of it: a facade to be torn free to reveal the blood of the truth, or they’ll make that slow, familiar descent down to limbo. ilmyo will never be the same, and never learn in spite of it. 

a thankless job from start to finish, but someone’s got to do it.

“didn’t go as planned, not with all these conspiracy theories flung around.”  she picks at a stone unearthed from the mound and casts it, watches it land in a bush before she moves along. “so i’m making my own.” 

[drewberrymohr]

'TIL IT’S OVER

[hrsbyul]

ahra

[ ... ] 

What a shit actress she is.

“You scared the fuck out of me,” she admits, and walks towards Byul, cigarette pack in hand as a peace offering. “Do they train you to tail people in journalism school? Or have you just been hanging around with Kitaek and Minseok since you got back?”

people crawl up taller, rougher peaks than this, and for a greater cause; a means of pilgrimage, accomplishment, or relishing in that minute feeling of being human. 

nothing about this however is ritualistic, not anymore, and byul isn't people. here is a dirt mountain that she's done more hikes on in a single week than she has in the past ten years, and who the hell is she to say no to one more? 

it's a solitary effort. no map, no compass, no walking stick. just pine after pine needles after pine and the steady burble of water heard through the thick of them, distant and calm. by day: light scatters, and any and all ghosts disperse. the dead continue to tell no tales. 

(and lee chaekyung most certainly isn’t dead, what with the way she’s now ilmyo’s very own urban legend, larger than life itself. like the mermaids she’d imagined dwelling in the watery depths, a myth in her own right.)

one’s so-called mortality means little against the unprecedented force of nature. so byul thinks nothing of it, and for once, lets her senses take charge. reveling the sensation of her lungs filling up then letting go, the rustle of dead leaves beneath her feet, and the blue wide eye-ness of the sky overhead, unblinking. it’s just byul and the uninhibitedness of the world for one whole moment. 

because it’s just the one, it’s not meant to last long.

the snap beneath her boots doesn’t grab her attention, but the startled look does. through tinted glass unsuspecting eye meets eye and she stills in an instant. recognition feels less like whiplash and more like dead-weight, almost vexing in the way it makes her take pause. 

silence pools ice-thin between them. byul is in no hurry to break it. as ahra’s face twists in and out—alarmed to uncertain to overtly eager—she zeroes in on the new, the old, and everything else that hangs in limbo: the tightness of the corners of her lips, premature laugh lines, the point of her nose. between the held out marlboro, these picked up details, and the offhand way she throws darts for conversation, something does byul in. 

a scoff. 

“that’s on you, stupid.”

she trudges over to where the other’d been perched. at the rock’s edge, byul sits down with a huff, feet shy of breaking the roaring current beneath them. “sounds like you’ve been the one doing the tailing⁠.” she pulls out a cigarette but leaves it hanging between her fingers, unlit. the box lays discarded. “i’m not that bored.” 

you know me. 

“what are you running from this time?” 

[hrsjooyoung-deactivated20200819]

✄ malfunction

[hrsbyul]

jooyoung‌

[ ... ] 

there. immaculate once more. he brews a fresh cup, inhaling deeply to catch a whiff of the scent as it fills the air. “I guessed that. Why would anyone choose to come back here of their free will?” 

a lead into her follow-up question. “What? Who couldn’t be nostalgic for spotty cell reception and nosy neighbors watching your every move? It’s a dream.” the sarcasm practically oozes onto the kitchen floor. he takes his cup and returns to his seat with a shrug. “I just needed…a break. I won’t be here for long.” much longer. he hoped.

it comes off a little too stilted, she notes, but it's not deliberate. discretion can be likened to a virtue if you play it off right. byul watches him as he finishes that thought, brows furrowing slightly. here it's definitely a misstep. "i'll pass." 

between the vapid banter on the regular and that single strictly-business exchange for their first encounter from a few years back, there's little that's known beyond the surface level semantics of who they are, what they were, and what they might be. nowhere near groundbreaking, but when has any aspect of adulthood come anywhere close? 

"i'll consider it a chance for you to make amends. y'know," casual shrug here, "since this was your fault." 

it's funny, the way murder gets constantly reimagined by the expanse of human language. as a metaphor, a fine art, a mere number out of many put out by the census. can she blame anyone? with just how easy it is to grow impartial to it? 

"impact is relative," is all byul has to say for it in the end. "why wouldn't it be the same for people's reactions?" 

she shifts in place, legs now half criss-cross, the jut of one ankle against the point of her knee. a break, huh. 

"most moneymakers can afford to go elsewhere for one." there's something in her tone that seems to suggest that she doesn't quite buy it, but it's a plainly put remark at best.

"you and me both." the sooner, the better. for everyone's sake at the very least, and hers the most. 

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

The self is a patchwork of the felt and the unfelt, of presences and absences, of navigable channels around the walled-off numbnesses. Perhaps it’s impossible for anyone short of an enlightened being to carry the weight of all suffering, even to recognize and embrace it, but we make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies.

Rebecca Solnit, from “Wound,” The Faraway Nearby (Penguin Books, 2013)

[hrsjooyoung-deactivated20200819]

✄ malfunction

[hrsbyul]

jooyoung‌

[ ... ] 

tongue click. “You know, this wouldn’t have happened if you knew proper cafe etiquette. Who leaves their cup hanging over the side of the table like that? It practically assaulted my elbow! No wonder it spilled…” his harsh tone is dulled by the curve forming at the corners of his lips. she knew him well enough to know he was joking - partially, at least. “And for the last time, I told you I can bring it to your place when I’m finished. I don’t mind the drive. You really that worried about me knowing where you’re staying now?” 

he crosses his arms and rests them on the edge of his desk, settled on taking a quick break from tinkering to catch up with an old friend ( well, something like that ). “Oh, I never did get a chance to ask… What are you doing back here in Ilmyo anyway? Don’t you have some hard-hitting stories to chase?”

take away the pileup of bolts, wires, and the standard tech-enthusiast subscriptions and jooyoung's got himself a decent run of the mill bachelor pad. but byul's the last person to think interior design, let alone scour the place with any intent to criticize. 

the teasing lilt lands, but she's far from amused to follow up. "doesn't change anything," byul deadpans, her eyes remaining glued to the magazine in her hands. "your elbow, your damage, and now your repair job. free of charge."  the answer to the last question goes without saying. 

in truth, the laptop incident is less of a grievance and more of an inconvenience, but that can be said for just about anything that occurs within ilmyo's limits. absently, she reaches to feel for the flash-drive buried deep in her the innermost pocket of her windbreaker. always better to be safe than sorry. 

she flips to the last page and lets the magazine drop into her lap, swivels in the barstool to push it back to some lower shelf. "murder isn't hard-hitting enough for you?" an empty drawl of a question, like she’s bored of the subject already, but it’s easier to speak of such things from a distance. never mind if her thoughts snake back to it more times than she’d like, but it’s also easy to tack it up to being tuned into the work headspace for far too long. 

she clarifies anyway: “i’m here on hq orders.” 

byul straightens back in her seat, makes brief eye contact before her gaze falls around to the four walls of his apartment. “didn’t take you for the nostalgic type, coming back here and all.” 

[hrsbyul]

know where

note(s) the flyer in question @hrskitaek​

half a flyer, and the townsfolk see a missed chance. 

half a flyer, and byul sees an in. 

when the news reaches her ears, the next step meant to be taken couldn’t be more clear, and she knows just who to call to complete the bigger picture quite literally. their objectives are simple and designated: what to look for and just where to find it. 

the trek along mountainside is easier around this time of year, the residual snow from a heavy winter long melting to slide off into the riverbends below. her heel digs into the soft of the earth with her weight before she hoists up further into the climb, friction against the natural push of gravity. kitaek is ahead by a slight measure of steps, in the way a man knows the lay of the land like the back of his hand, or she simply hadn’t explored this part of ilmyo as often as she should’ve.

finally, it comes into the view: in the midst of some small clearing, the lone birch. 

byul slows as she nears it. gathers a small breath, silently counts to two, before braving a look.

even in distortion, the broader details are unmistakable. the sharp thinness of the nose, mouth, eyes wide and empty. the timing of the snapshot eludes her completely—a handful of hours? minutes? seconds? another possibility, another tick that tallies up far too fast but ends in the same outcome: choi goeun, dead and gone. 

byul pulls away from the picture to look at kitaek, expression hardened. “footprints, rubbage, anything out of place. you know the deal.” 

[hrsgyeowool]

say you’ll haunt me

[hrsbyul]

gyeowool

[ ... ] 

it takes her a second to spot her inside the coffee shop, and once she does there’s something inside of gyeowool that shits, changes. she stares at the woman sitting by the window, too captured by her own phone to notice gyeowool arriving and for the split of a second, it’s like gyeowool is back in the past. byul’s eyes, her trembling hands. her-

“hello,” she says as she approaches her, bows in her greeting. even tries a smile. gyeowool is not too sure of how to proceed. they were once so close but they’re not friends anymore, but where do they stand now? gyeowool doesn’t need much time to get her answer, the way byul looks at her says it all. they’re nothing. “may i sit?”

even in the budding of spring, ilmyo looks as unforgiving as she's known it to be: the dense green of the woods overgrown, thick with shadows and dark premonition as the morning mist looms, delicate and lace-thin. the cold of it never goes away, seeping deep into the ground. to dwell the way the people do around these parts, you have no choice but to embrace the feeling or linger long enough to let it swallow you whole. 

for those that leave, penance is inevitable. 

she could speculate if what's at play here is karma, believe in it if it offers any solace or strength as if it's a matter of blind faith. but byul's no believer, merely a warm body that is intimate with the way it builds consequence in rounds. you leave, and the longer you're gone, the bigger the price you pay by the time you're right back where you began. 

on paper, the cost in question is the double-homicide. in actuality, the true pull of the teeth is the blur of faces that are beginning to sharpen in clarity, then recognition as she brushes by. 

a decade has come and gone, and jung gyeowool somehow manages to look like neither. the ambivalence of it is perhaps the cruelest thing of all. caught in the limbo, between the light of their better days and the murky unknown that chaekyung’s body has long been claimed by. 

two days prior, byul walked past her small frame and hadn't felt a thing. not a pinprick, a sinking sensation, nor a need to look the other way or look again. just the thin, bristling air of the weather and the singularity of a moment where their shadows overlapped on the sidewalk, then slipped free with distance. in another life, she might've bloomed at the thought, cherished it maybe. in this one, teenage infatuation ceases to mean a thing.  

the same woman slowly comes to view in her periphery. byul waits until she speaks to acknowledge her presence, gaze flicking up from the screen to watch gyeowool duck her head in greeting. "you're here." the phone is shoved into her jacket pocket. she eyes the empty seat across the tabletop. "unless you'd prefer standing. not really something where you need my permission." sarcasm from the onset is in obvious poor taste, but it’s no better than the forced attempt at niceties. no harm in starting off on an even playing field. 

a waitress slides by, asking for their drink of choice. byul orders none, waits until gyeowool makes her decision before they begin. from her bag comes out a notebook and a pen which she keeps capped, twirling idly in her fingers. 

“i’m only following protocol.” byul says at last. “been asking everyone about the same questions if they haven’t been answered yet, and that’s all there is to it. you can talk as little or as much as you’d like.” she pauses to gauge gyeowool’s expression, wonders if there’s something she should’ve been expecting. 

but expectations always lead to disappointment, don’t you know? 

“any questions for me before we begin?”

[hrsbyul]

this is a queued post cause 10/10 i’ll be out like a light when hrs opens loool but hullo! i’m the mun for miss journo oh byul who’s back to put together what may be the biggest scoop she didn’t ask for :–) her backstory is just a prosey extension of the heron’s canon description, but i’ll expand a little more on what hasn’t been touched on either of the links i’ve put up!

so so pumped for plots so hmu whenever! tumblr ims are great but if you’d prefer disc you can find me at lame impala#3702 as well 🥂

family’s money comes from running a strawberry farm for years on end. dad marries into the clan and takes their name, and subsequently, the farm expands into brewery dealings as well

mom's supposedly the resident iron lady bitch who can't be assed to join in on the housewives’ gossip and whatever else they do for “fun.” while it isn’t exactly wrong (she’s not the warmest person out there), her parents must be doing something right if there’s no emotional baggage in sight for this girl...

at the end of the day mama and baby byul are all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  because the flow of playdates and invites aren’t stopping any time soon 

genetically predisposed glaucoma @ ma: neither am i :–) (hence shades worn everywhere but it only strengthens the arrogant, better-than-thou narrative people are spinning about when they don’t know any better lol) 

grows up, high school hits, and byul’s pretty much the 2.0 that people feared she’d be. never felt the need to say shit until she had to, and at the most unexpected times, which left most dumbstruck/speechless; icy, aloof with a lot of bite (aka not afraid to chew you out if you cross the line) to those she couldn’t care for, nonchalant and blunt to those she could; was good at writing/anything that involved critical thinking, but that’s between her and the select few; 0 regard for school hierarchy when she knows she’s above it and can get away with it (see: the once in a while school vandalism stint)

chaekyung disappears around the time she’s ready to pack up for college and long story short the absolute tone-deaf manner that people continue(d) to speculate pisses her off. ready to get outta there asap

ends up in daejeon for school and stays there to pursue a journalism career. leads a normal content life until the paper kindly requests that she pack up for ilmyo to investigate the latest missing persons case (byul: 🙄 i mean i Guess)

pre-established (canon) connections 

chaekyung (good friend), goeun (starling’s sister), starling, nightjar, tern, hawk 

open connections 

the chance meetup where you 100% remember byul but she doesn’t (how embarrassing)

the one(s) who are lowkey highkey bitter that she never joined their clique 

the first, and it was rocky from start to finish

the last, and it was an almost because one of you would be leaving

the cynic who wonders why byul even bothers 

the empath that thinks it’s in poor taste to prod about like this 

[hrsbyul]

[pinkjukebox]

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