howdy !! dash here, bringing you coldest in the game, choi sera, the first faith pledge ! she’s quite the mean girl and commands the attention of every room she graces ( think regina george mixed with a little holly golightly ) she would happily have you believe she’s all thorns, save the flower. she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’ll have her, let’s just say it pays to be on her team. take a gander at her bio & dossier, if you wish, but below you’ll find the tldr. if you wanna plot, show this post some love and i’ll slide into your dms like its cuffing season ! alternatively, you can hit me up on discord ( 𝓮𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓿𝓮𝓼𝓬𝓮𝓷𝓽#3337 )
scorpio sun, virgo moon and virgo rising ( hELP )
born to the CEO of a global mass media company and renowned model turned socialite, it was a given that sera would have everything she wanted. what could she possibly have to ask for ?
only her father was barely around and her mother was beseechingly lonesome thus sera had to pose as her sole purpose
which meant everything sera did was closely monitored and scrutinised, picked apart until she was her mother’s idea of perfection. her mother basically tried building herself again through sera and it worked, sadly
she wasn’t allowed to have a childhood of normal conventions. she was put before a camera before she could utter her first full sentence, her chubby wrists and neck in the trapped in the utmost opulence. at the elaborate parties her mother would throw at choi manor, instead of playing with the other kids, her mother would parade her in front of her friends. mother was all about keeping up appearances and so her daughter was her greatest mirror
sera looked towards her mother as her only caregiver, so she was easy to manipulate. her mother would guilt her into behaving accordingly, would blame sera for her ailments and sorrows, if she ever tried to defy her. so sera did what any child would do and obliged, lest she be without love
so she was obedient for the most part; she did as she was told, smiled on cue, sung for those who asked. she was pleasant for the most part but that was all due to mother’s ardent control
but she had something that her mother could not account for in her ploys and that was her knack for observation and execution. sera, being privy to the adults’ conversations at parties, knew how to read not only body language but how to disambiguate truth from farce in their parleys. she could tell what someone wanted just by how they behaved, how they spoke, her hyper-vigilance burnished by mother’s orthodox way of loving
she quickly found she could use this skill to her own advantage and she was able to manipulate her friends at school and her reach would extend to her teachers and her father even, who was hard to pin down
( tw bullying ) so her mother, not coping so well with the power shift, sent her off to an all-girls boarding school where she wasn’t so successful off the bat. she was significantly hardened by bullying and all the other usual shenanigans that go on in a boarding school
however, she was able to turn it all around with a little chicanery of her own and orchestrated her way into popularity ( mostly through fear, not so much love ) and her penchant for reading people and using their weaknesses against them was utterly refined
which is why when she moved back to seoul, her mother was eager for her to resume her place in high society by her side and continue full time modelling which sera didn’t mind at first. she was at a peak in her career and this newfound attention from the men she encountered was a driving force of its own. but she had a hunger to create a life of her own, seize agency from her mother’s white-knuckled grasp
she still models part-time but under her timing, not her mother’s and her affinity for dating powerful rich men remains, though, no one is ever quite sure of the terms of engagement. if you ask her, she’ll end you
sera craves power, she has a thirst to be the best of them all in whatever she pursues and pretty much her schemes allow for her ascension. but she has learned that in order to guarantee her place on top, she has to work with others in some capacity. cue insoo
don’t get the girl wrong, she actually does value friendships and if she fucks with you that means she’s aware of your potential ( perhaps even more than you’re aware of yourself ) and will make it her mission to help you reach it, without breaking a sweat
but make the mistake of becoming her enemy, then well, just pray she doesn’t deem you a threat or she’ll find some way to destroy you and make it look like an accident
“adults don’t fuck around in other peoples’ homes, sera,” perhaps some way, somehow, the castle intruders had found their way into the palace, and instead of desecrating its walls, they’ve robbed the golden prince from his crib and in his place, they leave a parasitic mole, all rows of glinting teeth and dubious intentions. why, here he exists now, judas with his pickaxe in one hand and sturdy rope in another, a threat to the golden castle’s pristine shine. once charming, his features now morph into something sinister, and as the diatribe spits from his loose lips, you may catch a sliver of his mother’s losing cards from his gaping mouth, “they stay in their own fucking lanes, drive around in their own fucking cars, and when they’re done, they go the fuck back to their own fucking families.”
an observation: there is a lot to be said about the way in which our pyrite prince wanders off-script, when he had once crawled, tripped and ran well within mother’s lines drawn in concrete. and there is a lot more to be said about the way in which he spectacularly fails to heed mother’s lessons, one. unable to cut sera off the way he would anyone, anything else, and two. to remain unfeeling and unbothered no matter if she backs him into a wall, knife on his throat. these are lessons he had revised daily, and yet they fail to cross his mind in these pivotal moments. instead, all he thinks of is that she is here, and she is tangible, so he will hold her here and scream until his lungs are sore. he doesn’t realise the alternative.
“the fuck do you see in insoo, anyway ?” this one leaves when he is breathless, shoulders rounding in defeat. and when all is said and done, all his chaos and treason committed, he balances his cards in useless deliberation and, with a sigh in surrender, folds, “do you like him?”
give the girl an inch and she’ll take a mile.
it was adolescence that purloined her fervent belief in fairytales. her reveries besmirched by the facsimiles of her everyday. sera envisioned for herself an unhappy marriage where wine would stain the lips bloody, where a man would leave her lonesome and lacking. where children would leech at her life source, where money no longer provided reprieve. such vague premonitions taunt her into heinous acts. i’ll never be that woman, she thinks. she holds her fate in her hands, her fingers splayed. had she paid attention in sunday mass she would know that when man makes plans, God laughs.
she listens to his ministry, the night air a gasp upon her bare skin. curious as to who exactly he is trying to save, she notes how his gospel is mostly incendiary in its delivery. should she deign to direct her vespers to his impassioned rage, perhaps redemption is in his approval and it would do her well to repent. but the model is stubborn in her constitution and so she does not fold into prayer but lifts her chin even higher, lengthens her spine further.
forgive me father for i have… lived ?
“ home. ” she lets out a cruel laugh then and it stains the night in cool tones, drains it of all its colour. “ let’s not be cute, jae. calling what they have a home is a little bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think ? ” she shoots back, defensively, a little resentful even. yes, of course the boy with the gilded smile could paint such a picture of perfection and it is a privilege that she does not share. sera pictures her own home, with its empty rooms and empty promises. empty smiles outlining empty hearts. there is a particular memory that insists itself into impression; a mother and her woes wrapped around a poison of promise, she asks for the mercy of her husband’s gaze. he does not lend it, only closes doors quietly behind him. so as he waxes poetical, she can only assume the dichotomies of their versions of home.
she waits for the cadence, the pause to his unholy barrage and lets his question suspend in the air. does she like him ? it is easy to think of of the ways in which like or love has failed her. she pulls up the tortured gaze of yoohyeon to cognition, notes the fury which settles in between jaehyun and herself and creates a ravine of disparity. she teeters on the very edge, looks down.
it’s safe up here.
“ what’s it to you, jae ? ” she deflects because he would disambiguate her folly, pick apart her lies as if they were mere dinner. he knows her best and she holds on to the very thought, sleeps well at night knowing that someone in this pathetic moil and toil sees her truly. and she sees him, not only for the gleam in his smile but the gold in his heart
kit takes a seat upon the other end of the leather-bound sofa, and it would be hard to tell whether or not the question were for sera if not for the lack of others close by. truth be told, he doesn’t know exactly why he’s trying. kit’s input has always paled in comparison to his brothers’. it’s not hard to reach the conclusion that any possible advice he has to offer would be cast aside - plus, when people love insoo, they tend to love him wholeheartedly and extremely unreasonably - just look at saeri, for god’s sake.
maybe he’s just sick of it. all of the… playing with feelings, and leaving people behind. kit is exhausted of seeing the trail of husks left in his brother’s wake. “i don’t think you should bother with him anymore,” he says. it pains him to deliver this particular fact. “he’ll keep hurting your feelings. and, you know…” a hand shuffles through the hair at the back of his head, voice halting as he picks through his words, filtered from one language to another with a bit of careful delay. “he’s already involved with someone… it’s not worth it… i think.”
even so, he can’t help but wince at the way it sounds when it all leaves his mouth. not comforting in the slightest. “i’m sorry,” he mumbles after a pause, shoulders slumping.
humour and darkness.
there is something about the two, perhaps an overlapping or a weaving concepts. pardon her, sera does not know the science nor the mathematics that explains the convergence. only knows of the way in which darkness can tickle laughter from a braver throat. how condition and circumstance can embody itself into comedy just by how fragments of lights balance upon it. how sometimes laughter sounds like crying. or perhaps vice versa.
anyway.
sera hears jaehyun before she sees him, as dapper as ever. to the nines, and all that jazz. she watches, indiscreetly, as he addresses saeri and this sort of poetic justice sticks in her throat, all serrated and all too hurry to cut. her eyes well up as she stifles the heartache down and replaces the barb with the hot burn of rage. and what is it about her, the fucking madonna to her mary magdalene, that she should command his attention ? and what of the secrets, undivulged, that he utters in her ear and her ear only ? insoo’s frame blots out the image and blocks the two from her line of sight and she fights the urge to scream.
she’s not sure if its timing but kit’s arrival and his stagger of words rescue her from a solitary perdition, no longer on the periphery. she considers him, his position beside insoo. in her mind’s eye, she has committed to memory the way in which derision curls insoo’s lips into a snarl whenever he speaks of his stepbrother, how the mention of kit’s name always seems to punctuate the end of a jibe. she bends a small smile in his direction before she angles her body towards him and wonders if he knows of the ways in which her pity coils around his own as if a serpent. “ you have a point, ” she says finally, clearing her throat.
“ it’s complicated though. you don’t simply fall for a guy like him, you plummet. ” sera sighs, hates that she’s being profound, hates that she’s not even speaking about insoo but jaehyun instead who at the corner of her eye has waltzed off with her former best friend.
she could confide in this one, she could tell him that her heart knows another but the model finds safety in being cryptic, however, and continues, “ he’s never going to choose me, is he ? not over her… she’s perfect but even in her perfection she’s not enough so what’s the point ? ” comfortable enough to share this amount of vulnerability, she is curious if he feels the same. it couldn’t hurt, after all, to build a bond with the forsaken stepbrother. “ do you apologise because you know how it feels ? ”
SOMETIMES THE WORLD ISN'T ENOUGH — feat. @saerinity
sometimes the world isn’t enough and sera considers her hunger for all things. as a mutable youth, it was her mother’s mother that rested her rheumy gaze upon the toddler and noted that this one would be trouble. that she could command the stars in the night sky if she so wished and they would hearken her. that venus, too, would linger into the dawn just to glimpse her pulchritude and prowess. too green then to comprehend her prestige, how could she know that her belly would forever rumble for more ?
“ we have the yacht to ourselves for the night, ” she hears insoo intone, the tintinnabulation of the keys completing the excitement in his voice. “ it’ll just be you and me out on the open water. y’know, that romantic shit. ” she has learned the ways in which he has mastered the art of doublespeak. knows that what he truly means is this; you are mine to do with what i want. this is an illusion she is happy for him to believe.
he continues, his hand resting on the small of her back as he guides her along the docks, mentions something about a private chef and gourmet entrées that await them on this godforsaken boat. mistake her not, she does not mean to appear an ingrate but these days her appetite wanes and waxes, not quite a fully formed thing anymore. nothing is quite the same when constants become zeros and the people in your life seem to evanesce into the ether of her unfathomable existence. the people that matter, that is. in her reveries, sera tries to mourn them but sorrow is as hypothetical as the silver rim of a cloud. t’is a shame that this summer has been all too clement.
“ is that what we’re calling it ? ” she makes a sound at the back of her throat, something to signal amusement at his choice of words. romance. would he know what that looked like, even if it bludgeoned him bloody ? insoo turns towards her, mirth playing about his expression. find it in the crease that breaks the lower left half of his face. this is all a game to him. she is not even on the chessboard, neither queen nor pawn. she is the ticking seconds on the clock delineating a player’s turn.
he pulls her in for a kiss but he stops short of her lips. “ fuck. ” the expletive condenses against his own and sera follows the line of his gaze, discernment a forlorn thing in the dark until she takes in the silhouette at the far end of the dock. a frame so frangible, so delicate, it could only be her.
indeed, sometimes the world isn’t enough.
she steps away from insoo, her expression devoid of any indication of guilt. perchance you can find it in the way her teeth sink into the plush bed of her lower lip. “ saeri, ” she breathes, throwing a glance in insoo’s direction but he takes on a new form. for a second, she’s sure she witnessed panic flit across his countenance. it’s foreign territory for him, she can tell. he’s never truly lost anything, men like him rarely do. they walk this earth as if it is theirs, step on anything that dares to caution them that it is not. this sort of poetic justice is pure pathos and sera holds it neatly.
“ saeri, ” he starts, finds pause, then again, “ saeri, what the fuck — what are you doing here ? ”
see, jaehyun may be a lot of things, but like his father, alot of these great things can come quickly undone at the threat of his impatience.and here is his impatience now, lending itself to his rapid footfalls as he racestowards sera’s image in a passenger seat. she doesn’t notice him at first,instead turns to the man who’s driven her home, and he watches through tinted windowsas she leans into his warmth, into his lips.
han insoo.
like a child of summer doused by ice and water, he comes to astartling stop. and again he waits, though this time, he hardly knowswhat for. perhaps he doesn’t care to admit it.
“so it’s true,” suppose with all this waiting, hiswould be a tone of irritation, but it’s short of that. instead, it’s more the melancholicsort, his words ferried out in something akin to a sigh. he offers himselfa moment, perhaps steals a few more, before he progresses to the next stage of…
( you know. )
here, anger is a twisted puppeteer with an overabundantnumber of strings attached so carelessly to his features. and so they morph intosomething ugly, something almost indescribable, and the words spat from his mouth is so filled with hate,as though she means to cause him harm, as though she had spent all her yearssharpening her tongue just to sink them into the flesh on his back, as though shemeans something more to him outside of being just friends— “insoo,sera? really?”
( call it a robin hood sort of justice, whatever theword means now. )
this is okay, right?
it begins with a murder of sorts, it always does. that puerile composition of muscle and sinew ( just left of centre ) that doses the mind with trepidation, puts pause to the very driving force that moves one to do just what they do best. sera knows, in the worst way, just how to kill it. blade between the ivory ribs of doubt, sinking into the carmine blood-heat of human condition. it is almost a ritual of profound proportions, to do away with one’s inhibitions, to silence the qualms of one’s heart. a necessary evil in the art of getting things done.
and thy will be done, she thinks, as she thumbs the white-gold of the rosary around her neck. there are some small comforts to be found in the promise of redemption at the denouement of this mortal coil, but the model is more concerned with the promise of today, the glory that awaits her should she find herself able to claim it. outside the car window, the night blurs cruel and stark not unlike the man in the driver’s seat and sera considers the way in which his fingers press into the bed of her exposed thigh. there are times, much like this one, where his yen for possession seems arbitrary. she has ( countlessly ) surrendered herself to him and yet, it isn’t until the car comes to a halt and she’s met with an horizon in the east of his smile that he unhands her. when they kiss, it feels as though his hand is closing around her throat though in truth, it is caressing the half-moon of her powdered cheek.
this is okay, right?
aye, this is okay. this is a means to an end but where does this end ? insoo’s appetite rarely wavers and now people are beginning to talk. small rivers of accusatory stares seem to follow her around campus, the he-said, she-said lapping at the soles of her feet. he becomes more brazen, boasting their intimacy in public and they become more vile in their need to pin her as the villain. this is a necessary evil. but just how many homicides has she committed ?
enough.
sera is quick to quell any ill feelings that threaten to fissure her facade and she offers him a smile, rare and raw in its appearance. once he likened her beam to that of a supernova. she wonders, often, about what it means to be dying star. soon she is out of his car and into the climax of a balmy summer’s eve. though it is clear as day, the welcome party that awaits her is not of a midsummer night’s dream, rather, the tempest.
from the crease of his perfect brow to the vicious snarl of his sweet, sweet lips, she reads jaehyun’s rage as if glancing upon a page of a book. she doesn’t blench when he nears her nor does she recoil when his voice leaves him with a sharp, thorny cadence. she simply tilts her chin upwards to meet his gaze, her honeyed hues drinking him in. “ you too ? come on, jae, ” a sigh condensing upon her lips, her own irritation highlighted. to be picked apart by his scrutiny is a first for her. she pulls down at the hem of her dress, pats down the loose tendrils of hair. “ can we just be adults about this ? ” and why should he lose his temper ? why should he, like the rest of them, fix his mouth to condemn ?
there’s a joke about a man holding a muleta who does not know he’s a matador.
now that sera thinks about it, perhaps it’s more a tragedy, but the punchline remains the same. the man holding the muleta does not know that he is a matador nor does he realise that the ground beneath him is a bullring. he’s trapped in his traje de luces, his suit of lights, the weave all sun floss and flux rope. the frill of the muleta cascades between the fleshy folds of his fingers, its sanguine hue stark against the pale of his complexion.
behind him is the charging bull.
and it is so she rests her eyes on changho, notes the ways in which her paramour does too. here lies the punchline. sera is hasty in her volition, she moves towards insoo where she slips a sweet nothing into the pocket of his desire. he offers her one back, unrefined and unbecoming, but the exchange lends a certain diversion and she can almost spy the premonitions that he conjures up in the gloss of his gaze. in this way she appeals to the worst of his nature, no matter the debt, and there is a lot to be lauded from his affections. if faith is to be her virtue, then her vice is surely greed.
he steps away from her, his ire farewelled and forgotten, and she is quick to find changho’s flank. “ a fistfight on our first night as pledges, ” she begins, her champagne flute perched between finger and thumb, the rim never quite reaching her lips despite how much she wants to drown in those ever-effervescing bubbles. despite how much she has quarrelled with the inevitability of circumstance. dying feels like this; a loosening of a blindfold to see your best friend but he has rendered you from his existence, that when you try to chase the spotlight of his gaze you’re left in a cool darkness. if an oblivion promises the sweet relief from the ache in her heart ( yes, even she has one of those ) then she should claim it. but it is unlike the model to break, perfection both a causality and casualty, and so she absorbs it all, sober.
“ not sure if that will leave the best impression but really, i don’t want to see either of you bleeding on your suits. ” she finds temporary pause in it all with a friend, his architecture made for the fury and chaos that follows his frame. they share the same age, same birthday. so it isn’t too unlikely that they both have a penchant for all that is unsavoury and insipid. “ anyway, what are your thoughts on the rabble ? ”
