howlin' 404

do you believe you're missing out? that everything good is happening somewhere else?

[mousettrap]

hey everybody! first things first, allow me to apologize: i’m bringing in two m*n at once (the second being @tokycinn) and they’re both A Lot, but they’re also both old characters of mine who i hold very dear to my heart, soooo... hopefully that makes up for it? second, i currently work a full-time graveyard shift job so my activity can be very spotty at times, but always always always feel free to double message me for plotting or to encourage me to reply to a thread if it’s been a while... i do Eventually get back to everything, but extra communication can definitely speed things up on my end LMAO. anyway, this is ma ilseong mouse — i’ve got some necessary and some unnecessary links for him (bio, info, pinterest, playlist) and everything else worth knowing should be below the cut.

abt mouse

first things first, no one’s really sure why he goes by mouse, being Six Feet Tall And Super Strong and all that... if you ask him, he’ll say it’s “the only thing [he’s] ever been called”

doesn’t Always introduce himself as mouse. depending on the situation, he might also say his name is miles or il, but (1) these are both reserved for more formal settings and (2) it’s not like either of those are (fully) true either

son of second-gen korean-american immigrants, but he grew up a military brat soooo he doesn’t really consider himself american (or korean) since he was always leaving before he could get comfortable. he remembers places ((korea, italy, bahrain and [redacted country] are the ones that stand out the most in his mind)) but he hardly ever remembers people and doesn’t remember many of his experiences, either

pretends that he likes to be mysterious but the truth is that there’s a huge gap in his memory and even if he wanted to tell stories, there aren’t a whole lot to tell

so he has a very loosely-defined sense of self. doesn’t think of himself as having a home, considering he’s never lived anywhere long enough to carve his own place — if you ask where he’s from, he’ll say “nowhere” or “everywhere” depending on his mood

sad kid, but “outgrew” it with age. didn’t go to college but uhhh he’s still a frat boy

“oooohh you want me soooo bad” energy, look at him too long and he’s gonna be like “what? you thinkin’ ‘bout kissing me?” so naturally he chases everyone off the rooftop at night

has the vengeful spirit + “all ur enemies should fail” add-ons so i’m hc’ing that he hasn’t noticed the bad luck of his shit-talkers yet but once he does, he’s probably gonna think his poltergeist fell in love with him or something idk don’t ask me

ok so speaking of the poltergeist... umm mouse can’t hold a job, so he mainly does short-stint “acting” work (escape rooms, themed parties ((yes he’s been a prince before but a little girl said ‘aren’t princes supposed to be handsome?’ so he’ll never do it again)), pr events, m*rder mysteries, haunted houses) unless there’s no acting work atm and then he’ll do whatever pays, but right now he’s a scare actor (until nov 14)

his character is called “mousetrap” ((yes fr)) and he’s kind of unhinged so he’s been taking tips from the poltergeist on how to scare people better...... pretends like it’s a game or like the ghostie is fr giving him tips because it helps him stay sane

anyway… event actor… you’d think he’s a wannabe actor actor, right? right? well, he isn’t. he’s not very ambitious. he got into this line of work through a bizarre string of chance happenings and his employer is sponsoring his visa so that’s kind of the only reason he’s still doing it. not that he hates it (because he definitely doesn’t), but he wants to live a stupidly average life and be remembered by the people closest to him for being With them rather than always leaving so acting is a #no

has been living in ville city for roughly 6 months, has been living in the apartment complex for 4 of those months. moved here from some obscure village ((where he thought he’d “find himself” but he never did)) because it seemed halfway decent in his memories and he got tired of trying out new things

kind of fucked up from 19 years as a military brat - harsh discipline, uncertainty that led to a feeling of uhhh existential helplessness, having to learn to be okay with ripping up roots before anything of substance could grow and now having commitment issues because of it, literally no identity at all it’s sickening, (undiagnosed (unmedicated)) depression but on the bright side, he’s really culturally aware? Congrats Dad, You Were Right, ‘Adventure’ Does Have Something To Offer

enjoys doing really mundane shit because he missed out on so much growing up. he’ll PAY you to let him run errands with you… a trip to the laundromat is like a night out… what do you mean pumpkin patches are real???!?

as far as his personality goes... tbh i’m gonna figure it out as i go but for a base, i do see him being very #yolo because ((from his experience so far)) he really thinks no one will remember the dumb shit he says and does anyway, half playful and half plain annoying, really lonely which manifests as him bothering the hell out of his neighbors but i think he grows on people? the kind of guy that you don’t really know why you keep around but you just Do.

other: likes to scare people for fun so yes he WILL jump out from behind that slightly-open door / living in [redacted country] on a really nitpicky visa so if he quits his lame ass job he’ll probably have to leave idk / vaguely inspired by “the rat” from haruki murakami’s ‘the rat trilogy’ ((along with some other nameless murakami protagonists)), lee sejoo from tempted, schmidt from new girl, joonhyung from weightlifting fairy and 212 from squid game LOLLL / big swimmer ((swam competitively for a while before finally transferring to a school that didn’t have a swim team. feels bad man)) / dad literally joined the military so that he could guarantee a college education for his future kid but uhhh mouse decided not to go so you already know he’s a fuckin disappointment / if your muse (or u) just really hates the name mouse, feel free to call him/have ur muse call him miles or il instead, it’s no biggie!

plot ideas

someone he’s ((vaguely)) friends with and they’ve been thinking about becoming #roomies to cope with this shithole building better but they can’t decide whose apartment is the lesser of two evils so idk maybe they’ll never move in together at all

people he knows from his history as a military brat. doesn’t matter where they’re from because he’s fr been all over the place...... age doesn’t matter a ton either. maybe they were classmates ten years ago or maybe they held his hand and helped him find his mom fifteen years ago because he was crying in the supermarket and SOMEHOW they remember him ((or at least they remember ‘mouse’...))

an older woman who’s the victim of mouse’s unrelenting questions. you’d think this man has never lived alone with everything he asks, from “how much detergent should i put in the washing machine?” to “do you know how long i’m supposed to cook spaghetti?” ... yea, sure, she told him to ask if he needed anything when he first moved in, but she didn’t expect him to become her SHADOW!!!!!!

someone he met at the haunt he’s currently working at. they don’t recognize him outside of his makeup/costume (obviously) but he recognizes them...... and that amused smirk he keeps doing every time he sees them is getting on their goddamn nerves

someone who packs a mean punch... and mouse found out the hard way. they came to the haunted house he works at and mouse, recognizing them, messed with them a little extra. unfortunately they did NOT recognize him and after one too many jump-scares, they punched him square in the face. now they’re sitting with him in a hospital waiting room while he’s still half in costume, clutching his bleeding nose. this is Exactly how they both saw their nights going!!!!!!! (how they react is utp... maybe they could not care less and are only here because they don’t want to be sued, maybe they’re very very very sorry and he’s like alright damn it’s FINE!, maybe they’re arguing that the stress he put them through is 10x worse than the pain in his nose, etc)

someone he’s been in like a 6-month long game of tinder-tag with, always talking about meeting up and never following through... letting weeks pass in between messages... idk i feel like neither of them are actually interested, they’re just bored as hell. maybe they meet on the rooftop one night and have a half-conversation half-argument about who’s out of whose league and why (alternatively: they arranged a meeting but then one ((or both)) of them decided not to show....... and they meet on the rooftop that same night)

someone who hears him screaming up a storm after a particularly frightening experience with his #poltergeist and shows up at his door..... now u’re his roomie for the night

(ville city native, around the same age, female) i have this idea in my head of a stupid ass playground romance that took place in the ~1 year mouse’s family was stationed here years ago….. really cute (if not kind of #toxic… ‘i’m breaking up with you unless you give me ur silly bandz’) and his parents have tons of pics of him with this girl but he doesn’t remember her too well????? anyway they meet again and it’s platonic this time but he’d probably d*e for her

someone mouse feels comforted by for whatever reason so he keeps going to them when his poltergeist is particularly active and they think he’s just desperate 4 attention...... not believing any of the ghost bs.... “don’t you ever get tired?”

orrr the one person who he complains to and they’re like “bro just move out” and he’s like “no...... this is the most excitement i’ve ever had in my life” (now they think he’s crazy)

someone living in a #stinky unit (probably on b2) but they’re soooo convinced that the smell is coming from mouse’s apt,, they keep complaining to the landlord about him “stinking”, he keeps complaining to the landlord about them “bullying him” and nothing’s being done about either problem. everyone in the building prob knows about this stupid ass conflict... and now that they’re on his bad side, their luck’s about to start getting real worse!

also: someone he was on bad terms with but maybe they (somehow) pieced together that their days were worse when they were mean to him so now they’re kissing his ass

hospital employee who kinda hates him right now because he showed up after a shift at the haunted house, still with some special effects makeup on just for the lols

(m lock) someone who met mouse through a dream before they met him irl and they had a whole fist fight..... so now, naturally, they get angry when they see each other around the building but you can’t really say “i fought you in a dream - i want a rematch” without sounding crazy, huh?

someone with a little sister/daughter… and she’s the one who called mouse ugly when he was hired as the #prince for her birthday party

people who’ve hired through his agency and met him through it in general. he does all kinds of crazy shit so if u need an actor… he’s ur guy

[aseaofquotes]

Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

[mousettrap]

october ‘21, ft @rawoptics.

late enough for the windows around center point to stand between civilization and an endless abyss, early enough to know that the sunlight will return soon enough — still, mouse isn’t sure exactly what time it is, and he doesn’t really want to know. knowing equals accountability, and he’d rather say time ‘slipped away’ from him when his boss undoubtedly asks why the circles under his eyes are so dark, why he keeps yawning. 3am, 4am, the distance between. he progresses alongside reid, both smelling of alcohol and secondhand cigarette smoke from over-indulgence and rubbing shoulders at bars all night.

it is what it is, anyway. he’s happy enough to disregard the ache in his head and the glitch in his steps that he already feels coming, happy enough to be smiling on the way up through the elevator, one foot in dreamland and one in reality. he feels wide awake, really, watching the number above the elevator doors change, but if it weren’t for the back wall supporting his weight, he wouldn’t be standing upright at all.

his head jolts with the cab as it reaches b2 and he steadies himself with a hand against the railing, takes a second before pushing himself into independence. he takes one step forward, stops. there’s a man standing outside his door, all the way on the opposite end of the hallway. somebody he’s never seen before. adrenaline kicks in, and suddenly both feet are in reality again while the smile is left behind. (is that guy trying to look into the peephole? why’s he standing so close? fuck, where’s his face at?)

he closes his eyes and rubs the back of his hand across his eyelids. when he looks again, the man is gone — but he swears he’d caught a sliver of his shadow rounding the corner.

on a normal night, he would leave the elevator and say a quick goodbye to reid, let the cab continue its journey upwards and they’d meet again tomorrow, maybe. the day after, if not. but this isn’t a normal night, so he jabs the ‘stop’ button with a little more force than necessary just to be sure that the system feels his request. he takes another couple of steps to stand between the open doors. “well, shit…”

he wouldn’t say that he’s scared. nah, not scared at all — scary would be if the man had been trying to break through the door with an axe, all ‘here’s johnny!’ and wild grin straight out of a movie. he’s not scared, but he’s not not scared, and he’s definitely intrigued.

“you saw that too, right? fuck, i don’t know which would be worse — if you did or if you didn’t.”

[mousettrap]

seesiyeon:

( ... )

“does it matter,” siyeon answers the question about being busy. you might say she’s a freelancer: she works on her own schedule. that might be way it’s easier to accommodate the weird hours he finds her at. a scolding look is sent his way but she opens the door further to let him in and takes the packs of ramen from him. “wash your hands first,” she says, again out of habit, similar to how ilseong seems to apologize to her out of habit. sorry this, sorry that, sorry siyeon, sorry for today. it’s tempting to tell him not to apologize so much, to wear it on his chest like a sheepish signature, but she also doesn’t want this (trips up to her apartment) to be something taken for granted; so she just keeps her mouth shut. 

“you really shouldn’t eat instant food so often.” for a brief moment, siyeon considers opening the noodles, but puts them on the counter and instead brings over a pot from the refrigerator. “i have some yukgaejang from last night that i was going to finish.” the first move is never hers and she never straightforwardly tells him that they should eat together, but he nevertheless always seems to understand, as if that’s the only thing he’s waiting to hear. at least, that’s the reason (she guesses) for the smile that he wears all the time.

somehow, she reminds him of home. not necessarily of his home, but certainly of the concept itself. how she tells him to wash his hands and he says “yes, ma’am” but the nuances of his tone always read as more of a taunt than a relent, how he always washes his hands in the kitchen sink anyway. while he knows he’ll never receive the warmest of welcomes, he’s grown comfortable in the idea that he’ll be let in regardless, and what is a home if not the place you can go when no other doors are open?

maybe he takes her for granted. maybe, but he doesn’t think too hard about it now (or ever), just counts on her to stay the same while knowing she’d tell him off if he dared to claim that this place is his second home. probably, anyway. it’s a line that he never crosses, pushing his luck but never enough to suggest that he’s gotten too comfortable. “thanks for letting me in.” an attempt to stay humble when his sneakers are walking the same exact path that they always do, undetectable indents where his steps land. the feeling is lost while he’s pulling out a chair.

“i never got around to learning how to cook,” he tells her, speaking like it’s something to be proud of. he knows that it isn’t—god knows enough of his exes have told him as much—but the catch is that with siyeon, he doesn’t feel like he needs to hide. he’s pretty sure that he knows how he looks through her eyes, pretty sure that he could tell her anything and it wouldn’t make him look any worse (or better), so he might as well hold each and every flaw up to the light. he stops just short of saying and i usually don’t have any money for take-out, either, in case she thinks he’s looking for a handout. he isn’t.

not in the traditional sense, anyway. he’d rather have her company than her money, something about how a picture is worth a thousand words — a similar metaphor begins to take shape in his head, but it’s lost before he can fully grasp it, as most things are. perhaps it’s hiding with his reasoning for pestering her like this, despite her absence of reciprocation and his overstock of eagerness. he sits at her kitchen table like he belongs there, but he knows that he doesn’t. it’s in this knowledge that he finds a back-up excuse, some poor understudy that he’d put to work if she ever asked him why: when there’s nothing else that’s guaranteed, she’s consistent. she feels like somebody he could rely on, even if it’s an convenience to her. even though it is an inconvenience to her. 

so he isn’t really looking for handouts, but he isn’t turning them away either. there’s a part of him that’s always expecting something, somehow. this time, it’s: “maybe when you’ve got an open afternoon, you could teach me something.” at face-value, it’s open-ended. i’d like it, but you don’t have to. but coming from mouse, the feeling that it carries leans more on the side of won’t you? and he tries to dilute the potency with a compliment on her culinary skills. “it smells really good, by the way—so much better than ramen. let’s share it?”

there it is: she throws the bait, he bites. it’s a one-two punch routine that never grows stale.

[mousettrap]

hey besties 🤩 if ur interested in some event-specific plotting plz like this & i’ll be in your ims asap / applies to both jonah & mouse / might cap this or not idk if it flops i never posted it

[mousettrap]

october ‘21, ft @planetearths.

sometimes life is nothing more than a montage of dismal moments playing over the best soundtrack you’ve ever heard.

it’s water running red in a one-bedroom apartment and malaise pooling in the bathroom sink, it’s deciding to file away that persistent drip as a figment of your imagination, it’s losing half of your pocket money to a run-down washing machine/dryer combo and the other half to 7-eleven, all the while the clock keeps ticking, pushing you into a night that you ought not to be awake for. it’s having the gall to keep your eyes wide open through it all.

sure. that’s what life is. at least, that’s life as experienced by mouse — maintaining an upturned chin and ‘hit me with your best shot’ attitude through the same stale routine day in and day out, pretending that he’s doing something other than a whole lot of nothing. maybe in his head, he is: after all, the average joe doesn’t blow a fraction of his rent money on pay-as-you-go mildew and all the miller lites he can afford unless he thinks that he’s getting something better out of it. in this case, the ‘better’ is luca groeneveld. three feet away, sitting in a flimsy lawn chair identical to the one mouse has long-since claimed as his own. just uncomfortable enough to keep patrons from overstaying their welcome and definitely not intended for men of their stature.

he looks over, meets luca’s gaze, and he laughs. no reason in particular, he would say if asked. just felt like the thing to do. (truth is, he’s laughing because it’s suddenly crossed his mind that he broke his budget on beer intended to act as an incentive when it’s such a rudimentary understanding that luca would stay even if mouse had nothing to offer at all.)

life crumbles and crumbles and crumbles some more, but there’s a melody spinning in some distant background. it manifests as the steady hum of the dryer and the pair of sneakers knocking up against the sides to keep rhythm. “the first time i went to a party,” he says suddenly, half-smile materializing in the same way that it does every damn time that he speaks, chasing ‘just kidding’ nonchalance irrelevant to the topic. “... i stood in a corner and googled whether or not beer is kosher.” there’s no reason to tell luca, really. the story ends without a characteristic punchline because when the mask is shed, it’s really just an apology.

he swallows a mouthful of lukewarm beer, then pulls the tab from the can. tosses it at the trashbin underneath the folding table ten feet away, misses. figures. “your turn,” split-second decision to make a game out of convenience store trash comes out as a taunt.

[semiotextiana]

im so sexy and fun and fucking doomed

[mousettrap]

october 4, 2021 blue icing on the cake reads, ‘happy 23rd, ilsoeng’ and nothing more.

then again, when has the face of a one-layer vanilla cake ever been anything but underwhelming?

it’s not that he expects something the likes of a birthday-card letter, it’s just that there are no hearts or half-assed sparkles thrown in to accentuate the message and blue hasn’t been his favorite color since he was fifteen. nuances that anyone with half a conscience would let slide, but he’s perpetually the one feeling like he’s been wronged — not by the entire world, but definitely by mom and dad. he doesn’t mean to frown, but he doesn’t try to smile.

“what’s wrong?”

well, he’s not sure where to start. could be that their first words to him hadn’t been ‘happy birthday’, but ‘we have to fly back out in a few hours’ or it could be the fact that they’d come empty-handed aside from the cake itself (he doesn’t think of himself as materialistic, but if you can’t expect something from the ones who created you, what the hell can you expect?), but the part that really digs at him is the name. not only misspelled, but not his.

“nothing. i’m good.” a lie spoken easily, as per usual. some things things learned in self-defense are never lost, and his genetic predisposition to tirelessly defend still serves him well. still, it doesn’t change the fact that he is upset, and he can say whatever he likes but his actions will give him away in the end. it’s something that he’s tried to renounce so many times before, wasting birthday wishes on becoming a better liar but he chooses to weaponize it now.

he draws a line through the icing with his index finger, smearing that damn ‘ilsoeng’ beyond legibility.

“who’s ilsoeng?” “don’t be an ass. we were in a rush to get here. we would’ve had it corrected if we’d seen the mistake earlier, ilseong.” “who’s ilseong?”

for some reason, mom’s laughing. he bites his tongue on the ‘what the hell is so funny?’ remark because at least she tries and besides, he can feel dad staring at him with the look that’s always been able to push him into silence. he pretends he doesn’t notice.

“you’re still going by mouse?”

he meets his father’s eyes. he searches for love—something that he knows is there, even though he’s always fallen short when it comes to expressing it—but all he finds is exhaustion.

“i am,” he confirms, voice softer and more forgiving than it was before. doesn’t matter, anyway. he’s already soured the mood. “it’s what everyone knows me as, so why should i change that now?”

“because you’re not a kid anymore.” “is mouse a kid’s name?” “is it an adult’s?” “yeah, it’s mine.”

the icing is still on his finger. he’s hungry, but he doesn’t want to try it (not in front of them, at least), so he wipes it off on the tabletop. who the fuck cares, anyway? it’s his house.

fifteen minutes with his parents and he’s already pushing them out the door, saying something about how he’s got plans when there couldn’t be anything further from the truth. at best, he can travel a few doors down and see if he’s welcome; at worst, he can go up to t12 and plead his way into company. he wouldn’t tell her it’s his birthday because there are certain levels of pitifulness that not even he wants to reach, he’d just say he’s lonely.

but he’ll probably just stay here instead, feeling guiltier by the second. it’s always ‘why did i do that?’, never ‘they deserved it’. 

at 1:03am, he finally finds the courage to text his mom.

to mama: listen... i’m sorry for how i acted earlier to mama: i’ve been going through a really tough time lately to mama: it’s a lot to explain but i guess it all just boiled over to mama: i didn’t mean to chase you guys off, thank you for visiting to mama: i hope you can come again sometime & stay longer to mama: i love you, you know. i love dad too. can you tell him for me?

his phone dings a couple minutes later, but he misses it completely — too distracted by the sound of something falling. a trip to the kitchen shows him that it was the cake. 

refrigerator door flung wide open (he’s absolutely certain that he closed it), tupperware pushed aside and an empty space where the cake (still untouched, damn his bad attitude) ought to be. great. now he’s going to have blue stains on the floor, too. good luck getting his security deposit back, right?

“fucking bastard ghosts.”

[mousettrap]

i take your indiscretions all in good fun. october ‘21, with @seesiyeon.

a slow progression of muscle memory: he takes the stairs (always the stairs, as if giving his conscience time to kick in and turn him back around — it never does) all the way from b2 to t12, takes two-and-a-half minutes to regain his composure and then he knocks on the door of siyeon’s unit. siyeon, who he’s pretty sure hates him, but she always lets him in anyway. the final step involves him slouching against the doorframe and equipping his best ‘you love me, right? right? right?’ look that he hopes will appeal to whatever maternal instincts she may have, but if they’re there, then he doesn’t think they’re there for him. a silent question, but he keeps asking it and when he looks at her, the silent answer keeps being ‘no’.

still, he’s here anyway. just like he has been for the past four months and counting. he holds two packs of instant noodles in one hand, maybe because he’s more than capable of eating two alone or maybe because he wants siyeon to share a meal with him — the story always changes depending on how tired the look that she gives him is. on a good day, it’s ‘i’m here to see you, i missed you, will you hang out with me?’. on a bad day, it’s ‘i’m sorry, but. i’m sorry, but. i’m sorry, but.’ (in retrospect, he’s always sort of sorry.)

the door opens, and he smiles on instinct. the same shit-eating grin as always. but then he remembers that he’s supposed to look pitiful, not like he just won the goddamn lottery, so he neutralizes his expression again as if she’d somehow missed the mischief so thick in his dna. 

“you aren’t busy, are you?” he wonders, slipping one foot forward to wedge his shoe in the doorway in case she thinks to shut him out. still slouched, though — always making himself smaller for her sake, so that she never has any reason to feel threatened by him. not that she would, anyway. between the two of them, he knows he’s the pitiful one. feels it as his smile is creeping back in again, betraying him. he’s just happy to have her attention.

“look. i’m sorry, but my stove went out, and i’m...” he holds his hand up in her line of view, showing off the noodle packs, “really hungry.”

[trevorlmao]

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[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

To the Bone, Dorothy Allison 

[ID: That summer I did not go crazy / but I wore / very close / very close / to the bone.]

[mousettrap]