side effects include

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

[pr0cayne]

Hey everyone! So excited for this rp to open, I love surreal and paranormal. 🔥 I am Belle and my hobbies include writing gremlin bois and oscillating wildly between regular capitalization and lapslock. I also live on like the opposite timezone of basically anyone in the US so sorry if my replies come at weird times. I also work and am dramatic abt my energy levels so often I’ll either post on weekends or queue things (tho we’re out here w a 3 day weekend bc I have Monday off this week 😎)This is Noh Harang, resident gremlin, morally ambiguous and in the trade of plots that verge on the wrong side of functional. Here is his about and profile page which has the more relevant of information, but I’ll drop some additional quick facts under the cut along with some attempted plot ideas! If you want to plot just like or dm + I have a discord on request if it’s easier to plot there. 

if you want the full gist of why he is the way he is i’d rec reading his bio + checking his profile page, bc this is like: scenario, this is me trying my best, but my best is never good enough 😔 his apt details are:  B2, #08(?), West  🔥

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

has a pet centipede. he’s so gross, why does he have one? he didn’t even buy it at a pet shop he just found it. i hate him for it. it doesn’t even have an official name, it changes depending on what harang feels like calling him ✨in the moment ✨

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

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

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

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

so i think it would be fun to have a plot that throws them both immediately in a relationship, but this relationship is falling apart and is kind of on its last leg? i’ve always wanted to do a dying relationship plot but it’s so hard to work through the whole thing from beginning to end so this is a solution perhaps?? they can still have like feelings if we want but clearly something is not working out and it is collapsing. the only kind of requirements i want here are A. it’s falling apart because for reasonings on both of their ends, i don’t really want it being one person is doing everything wrong and the other is doing everything right and it’s one muses fault and B. nobody super really younger than him. (we would also need to plot a lot probably to set up the ground work but if you’re up for it i think it could be really fun to write out 👀 )

if nobody takes the above just an ex that was messily resolved and has complicated vibes is fun too!!!

one fwb (if the above gets filled, it could’ve been something from his past, or even if it’s not filled it could still be from his past), purely physical with no overlapping emotions (at least on harang’s end, if u want it be more complicated Who Am I to say no), we meet bc we’re horny kind of vibes. i don’t care who you are kind of vibes. i don’t have you saved in my phone kind of vibes.

conversationalists. they keep meeting on the rooftop at the same time during smoke breaks. but the strange part of it is there’s no real set schedule, and the time that they go up to smoke often changes, sometimes drastically. could be fun if they know some deeper pieces of each other’s life without knowing the like basics of each others personalities (like an inverse of basic friends, unbasic not-friends, if you will)

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

me, sweating and running out of plot ideas i’m brainstorming on the spot, someone who’s into harang’s webtoon. ofc it would need to be  ✨developed ✨ so it could be interesting, but yes. or his anti!!!

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

if someone wants to kill his centipede they can, he will be v upset but it’s so gross and i had to look up aesthetic centipede pictures for his pinboard and i’m officially Done.

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

[pr0cayne]

MIASMA.

f0ulfellow​:

“you ever tired but the moment your head hits the pillow your thoughts take off running? that’s what this is the cure for.” he could probably take up meditation, too. it’s similar enough; inho just doesn’t care about his lungs enough to stick to it. “and also i felt like it. you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t nice enough.”

“What kinda footprints?” out of context and it’s benign. Mud tracked in, a custodian who hadn’t yet been witness to the defiling of pristine linoleum. Nobody to mop away anything unsightly above the floors of over-median rent. In context and it’s a little less, but Harang hadn’t been paying all too much attention on his tired climb to the roof. “Are they around your door? Maybe someone’s set up a murder and is looking to frame you,” a natural progression from a man who pens out murder on the regular, but the slope of his lips as he glances over at Inho makes it clear it’s a joke. He leans forward to ash his cigarette on the dipped glass tray now made communal. 

“Any reason for the looping?” the building’s weird. But its weirdness is a way that permeates the air. That makes him wonder if he’s slept enough. That makes him wonder if someone poured too much fever-reducer into his morning coffee without him knowing. Where everything starts to go a little loopy and reality gets stretched like a saltwater taffy pull between the teeth. Can that be caught on camera? It makes Harang curious though, almost wants to find where the security room is and convince someone into letting him watch it in the name of a fabricated university-funded research assignment. 

“And you have a lot of experience?” Harang drawls it back, vowels rounded out around the filter caught between his lips, in on the joke enough to heckle.

“You one of those people who can just fall asleep like that?” idle talk and with a snap of his fingers, a naturally progressed scaffold from one question or another. Does Harang care enough about Inho to be genuinely concerned about his sleep schedule? No. But does he hold enough interest for him now to pretend like he does? It seems like it. Harang hasn’t yet decided if that’s a flawed choice or not.

A stretch, a shared flame, and a moment where the air clouds into a smog between them. “Yeah?” Harang tips his head back, this time to exhale out above their heads, so the wind can carry it off and away from his eyes. “In theory I’d agree. When I can’t sleep, I come up here. Then I smoke too much and make myself nauseous. Then I go work until I don’t.” it feels like oversharing, but usually people like that kind of thing, Harang’s observed. Where you offer them pieces and pretend they’re all pretty and unique. Everyone likes feeling special, even during coincidental night-chats when you’re still feeling someone out. 

“Roof’s better than the alley. When nobody’s up here anyways.”

[pr0cayne]

CREAK.

98huii​:

“does it smell?” am i in your way? “i’ll be done soon.”

then, you fold into yourself; small and hidden. out of sight like a dead rat.

Disintegrating cardboard and a smell of beer than had turned murky, a swamp puddling damp around the bent corner of it. There’s something to be found in that syllable; surprise maybe, at the company. Harang can re-map it all up in his head later and rework it into a side-plot for his comic; can sketch out a bent boy and a monster swaddled up in garbage, turning and twisting and dripping bile across the linoleum. Something terrible caught in the in-betweens of rooms, a crack in normalcy. Lately that’s been feeling like real life, too. (Or would it be a lie to say lately when it’s seems to stretch on so much farther than that now?)

He eats another chip. This time it doesn’t taste as nice.

If he tilts his body forward at just the right angle he can find a slight gap between the frame and the door. Piles of too much, the kind of too much where nothing separates anymore and its hard to distinguish between the overstuffed bags of used clothes and decorative figurines. It feels sticky, and Harang’s only standing in the hall. “I think there’s cleaners for that. For hire, I mean.” out of his mouth and it could be overstepping, but intended and it’s a selfish thought. Trade places and Harang wouldn’t want to deal with it. Whatever it was. Either way, that it is an ugly thing.

Harang can’t really remember the body that belonged to the room before him. Harang doesn’t remember a lot of things like that. The useless things. The useless people. 

“Kinda. Must be fun to sleep in.” it’s not said unkindly, because who likes anyone who says things unkindly? Instead, he tilts it down, a slow slide into sympathetic. It’s not real, it usually isn’t. But it doesn’t need to be; maybe Hanhui’s smile’s not real either. 

“It’s fine though, it’s not like I heard you. I just...needed to get out.” had the ghost started haunting him yet? But that’s not the sort of question to ask someone gutting the insides of a lived-in life and dragging it from its home. Hanhui could be unleashing more ghosts, tepid and melancholy things that will start to wail about their missing coat hangers and kitchenware. 

“I’m Harang, just there.” he jabs a thumb over his shoulder toward his door. He thinks, if he closes his eyes, he can still hear that creaking. He doesn’t add on a ‘knock if you need anything’ because Harang isn’t the sort of person who has an anything to give. And if he did have it, he’d like it to keep it for himself. “Don’t let me keep you though, you seem busy.”

[pr0cayne]

STUPOR.

taeaoh​:

if this is a dream… he can punch his dad with no consequence, right?

not even registering his thoughts, taeoh has made a beeline towards his father.

The apartment’s too small and too cluttered. It’s filled up with clothes, mismatched furniture, and memories that try to stick to him with the same persistency of that gummy adhesive that welds price tags to the bottom of cheap coffee mugs. It’s the kind of thing that makes one try to stuff it all into boxes, taped tight and slid under a bedframe, out of sight. Like this and it’s all unpacked again. It’s not pleasant and it’s not asked for. Maybe he won’t remember in the morning, will wake up groggy with a head full rocks and that inconsistent blur of a dream that refuses to creep its way back into consciousness. 

But at the present he’s subjected to it all again. The way it makes his throat choke up with cotton, heart trembling in his chest, all in front of his newfound audience. Lovely. 

“Everything. But also nothing, I guess.” Vague and, despite it being truthful, hard to make out. But it’s not as if an imagined ghost needs an in-depth explanation of his mother’s psychosis. Harang already knows about that what, so the whole therapeutic breaking-it-down for himself seems pointless. 

There’s the bed, his body. And his mother, hummingbird-flitting around with her self-made purpose. There’s his crying, and the rounded spoon of bitter medicine. Harang turns himself away, asks for a way out. His company doesn’t seem to have an answer, a nice one, at least at first. And then it starts to fade, like watercolors dragged down under a relentless stream of water, everything thinning out, into a twist down the drain. And then, water.

Briny again, the same as outside his apartment. But this time there’s sand wadded up underneath his feet and the cackle of gulls loud enough for Harang to find grating. Another place, better this time - mostly because Harang can’t recognize it as a memory from his own head. Curious, but welcomed (at least for him).

There’s another child, and it takes Harang a little too long before he realizes that he looks strikingly similar to the man he’s with. If he were a little less disoriented, he could have put something together. But it’s strange, isn’t it, the concept of intertwining dreams? Strange for someone who’s never experienced it before. It’s not something that should happen, and so much easier to pretend he’s creating problems out of nothing so he has someone to commiserate with. 

He trails after him, in that unwieldy gate that uneven sand sets you on. Reaches out so he won’t be left behind, fingers brushing near the crook of his elbow. “Why?” he asks, though there should be more words. An actual question. “Is that bad?” he finishes, uses his grip to leverage closer and match gait as he glances over at the man on the phone. What conversation could be so terrible as to twist up that expression on his face? The gnarl between his brows and the jagged set of his frown. 

“Has it already happened?” a terrible memory, to match his own. It seems like it, anyway.

[pr0cayne]

LURCH. Side alley, stuck somewhere in twilight, ft. Sungho @yoosunghos

Harang hasn’t checked the time since about fifteen minutes ago, but it feels like longer. The sky drips down in that heavy, waterlogged gray; like water drained out the back of a washing machine. It’d stopped drizzling long enough for Harang to consider pushing his hood back down, but the look of the clouds are threatening enough that Harang doesn’t bother. Just contemplates the headache that chain smoking might bring him before he goes ahead and lights that second cigarette anyway. After that, he’ll stop. A tinny promise, he feels it breaking the moment he thinks it aloud.

On his way out of the building the alley had seemed like a better place than his apartment, dropped what seemed like ten degrees in a minute and left his teeth chattering in a dismal bone-rattle. The rain’s not all too much nicer though; it always makes his knees ache. Here he is anyway, crouched in a squat and inhaling deep enough that his body readies itself for a cough (not that it takes much for his body to ready itself for a cough). The smoke’s comforting at least, strong and sweet and in no way a reminder of home. Harang lopes off in the opposite way of nostalgia whenever he needs a pick-me-up. 

It’s empty, and that’s a comfort too. It’s empty, until it isn’t. Then it’s not so comforting anymore. At least a human’s more regular to look at than the shape of a ghost or a shadow that’s gone wobbly around the edges. Harang keeps himself still, and half the time that works. Pastes himself up against the wall and waits for people to slip by when he doesn’t have the energy to deal with them in the way society dictates. Wind himself up, mirror back a smile, curse at the weather, pretend you’ll be happy to see them again later. Cyclical, a washing-machine reload to match the sky. 

He doesn’t though, the man, just lands a drunken foot in a puddle, and when he leans into the lurch Harang meets his eyes. Caught. It feels like a game of hide-and-seek, the one time his mother’d let him out of the house for long enough to play it anyway. Harang knows him, sort of, but he’s not sure if that makes this moment better or worse. “Forget the door code?” he half-hopes that the answer will be a yes, because that’ll leave Harang the whole alley for himself, content to smoke his lungs into a darker shade of unhealthy. 

“Sungho, right?” he says it just to settle on familiarity. There’s few things more terrifying than a bewildered drunk man, reasonably speaking. 

[pr0cayne]

MIASMA.

f0ulfellow​:

that’s the thing they might relate on most closely: inconsistent sleep schedules. inho’s been on this rooftop many a time in the middle of the night, and more often than should coincide, harang had been there, too. and it’s not because inho’s actually monitoring the cameras. (he’d have to care enough to do that.)

he slouches back into the chair, shakes a cigarette out of the pack and slips the rest back where it belongs. “you got a light for me? i’m so beat i left mine downstairs.”

“Dunno. Point ‘em around here for long enough and it starts making me think I’ll see a ghost or something. Not so much on the streets.” Believing, not believing. The air of incredulity that sits stifling and pungent. But what is real? That’s what’s really been haunting Harang after all this time. What’s that line drawn in the sand that differentiates it all, that sorts the sane from the crazy? Sometimes the wrong reality can feel so real, aching and hard and unavoidable. And it’s still fake. But how can a person reason with that? Isn’t it it’s own version by that point - Frankensteined up from desperation and lies, turned into something sorta-real and sorta-not. His entire childhood can be laid out like a lie, that not-reality. But he lived through it all. He felt it all. So what’s the difference? And what’s the difference between a ghost and someone who believes, genuinely believes, they’ve seen one? 

Those kind of thoughts just make Harang’s head hurt more than usual. He takes another drag and ignores the screaming protest of thin aluminum ground down against concrete.

“Or maybe that’s why you’d prefer watching the street - scared of the things that go bump in the night?” he’s not so sure whether or not he means it to be teasing, but it’s probably safer for it to come out that way. Reorients his posture and reaches forward to knock the ashy clumps from the tip of his cigarette. “Sure, I sleep. But my schedules more flexible. And I’ve got blackout curtains.” Harang doesn’t sleep as much as he should, as much as doctor would tell him is healthy and right for his body. But he’s been sick of doctors making up what’s healthy and right for his body for years now. It’s easier to fall asleep when exhausted anyway, no fighting off a creeping conscious and errant thoughts. Just a deep plunge and the hope he won’t catch cobwebbed nightmares on the way down.

“What’s your excuse?” It could be that Inho can’t give him a real answer either. 

He searches around in his pocket for the lighter at the question, flicks it lit and holds his arm out for Inho to lean over and borrow it. Harang’s careful about that, lending. Little things like that, like pens or lighters, those are easy to forget. To pretend to forget. To tuck away and lose. (Or maybe the ghost is just starting to make him paranoid. Jokes on it, Harang’s been paranoid long before it went and materialized its ass into the picture). 

“The cure to being beat isn’t to go smoke. Why are you avoiding it?”

Sometimes people’s problems make a good jumping off point for an idea. Twist it between his palms until he can rework it like clay into a storyline he’s built up writers block on. And sometimes other people’s problems just distract Harang from his own.

[pr0cayne]

OUT OF TOUCH.

caelumms​:

but it couldn’t be harmful to try? sunghyun couldn’t necessarily avoid the tug of concern spotting the other man anyways. his steps are a bit uneasy as he steps towards the other, a pleasant smile on his face, “um hi, i don’t know if you remember me but, i think we spoke once at the lobby of our apartment building, you don’t mind if i take this seat right? this cafe is super packed.”

There’s a stale taste of coffee that clings in a grime to the flat of Harang’s tongue. The knobby bone right at the end of his spine is starting to ache from where it’s pressed to the hard wood of his crooked, aesthetically-built chair. He’s been awake for long enough now that the pictures he’s sketching onto his tablet are blurring into twinned images, warped and weaving together at the seams. Every so often and Harang squeezes his eyes shut hard to try and right the distortion. 

It’s while he’s in the middle of debating between whether to get a refill on the not-so-great blend of the day to go with the still uneaten sandwich near his wrist, or go home to fall asleep at - what, twelve-thirty in the afternoon? - when there’s an unannounced and uninvited body now sat directly across from him. 

Since when has societal norms forgiven this; marked it as non-transgressional? 

“Don’t let me stop you.” and he thinks, as he says it, that it wouldn’t have stopped him anyway. The same way that a glare and rigid posture that had free-rolled into an ‘I’m good, thanks’ in the lobby a good three weeks ago hadn’t stopped him and his unsolicited advice. If he were more oriented, if he wasn’t running on six hours of sleep had twenty-five hours ago, maybe Harang could’ve dredged up a name. As it stands, it’s that doctor, but where you say with a snap of the tongue to the roof of the mouth, like trying to rid the taste of sour pennies. 

The shift in body language is a little funny, elbows knocked to the table and shoulders rounded off in a stiff hunch, an animal defending a den. Only, it’s a weedy little table trapped in the middle of an overcrowded café, and there’s no real reason for Harang to feel so territorial over it past stubborn entitlement and ill-will. It hadn’t mattered until someone else put their hands all over it, a forgotten toy at the playground turned popular only when a child stakes claim. Maybe later when he’s home and well rested he’ll feel ashamed. Or maybe he just won’t give a fuck. 

And besides, he hadn’t eaten his food yet. Like a reminder, he tugs his plate closer and swallows down a bite. Doesn’t bother tasting it on the way down. 

[pr0cayne]

STUPOR. Overlapping dreamscape, late, ft. Taeoh @taeaoh

The wiry hands of 2 AM catch Harang by the throat and pull him under. They drag him down deep, to memories locked inside of wooden coffins and laid to rest. Death by a forced forgetfulness. Crack it open and this is what’s left inside; the sloped exterior of the old building him and his mom used to live in, the heavy salt-brine that clings to the air, to his clothes, embeds into his skin until he start to feel seasick with it. 

Harang shifts his weight, the grass crushed under him is fuzzy around the edges. So is the building next door, and the neighbor’s old two-door sedan on the left. But the man’s not. Five paces back and unfamiliar. Harang doesn’t know him, but somewhere in his head he must. A picture ripped from the front of a vinyl, a singer maybe. An actor he caught flipping through channels, or a model plastered up on the side of a building advertising canned coffee. 

“I used to live here.” Harang explains to this person, this animated figment of his own imagination. “It’s not very nice.” He doesn’t have to say that, it’s obvious. 

He steps forward, and that’s only because he feels like he’ll be locked inside of his own head forever if he doesn’t. He can hear the man behind him, one step back now. Harang can’t decide if that’s comforting or not. 

Taking the stairs up to his old unit is familiar, cracked and with dirt stuck to them in film-grime layers. The walls stretch up, impossibly high, like he’s six all over again. Inside the front door, unlocked and waiting, there’s a wail. Shrill, amplified in the dream until it’s nails on a chalkboard. Harang takes a moment, fits his back to the wall; the living room’s splayed out before him. A chaotic burst of unfolded laundry and cheap plastic toys. A basket in the middle of the coffee table, a collection of medicine that had been rifled through. 

Which day was this? Which unexplainable bout of illness? Harang can’t remember. But it doesn’t really matter.

“I was sick.” Harang explains, lolls his head to the side to stare at the profile of the man beside him. He opens his mouth again, though he’s unsure what to fill that gap of space with. The nightmare-skewed version of himself fills it for him, another cry. “Kind of.” he adds on anyway, nearly lost under that ear-split of a noise. Incessant. Did he bother the neighbors? He wonders at it now as he trails down that old, familiar hallway. The kind of familiar that settles like a stone in his gut. 

There’s his old room, old doorframe, and he leans against it. Peers inside and watches the strange image of his mother flutter around, details warped. She almost looks like a painting in the lighting. “It’s annoying, isn’t it?” Harang asks, and even as he does he can feel his attention slipping, like he’d gone and yanked free a handful of wires in his head. An emotional disconnect from this scene, this memory. Harang folds his body away, looks over at the face of his companion. “Do you know how to leave?” 

He wants to. Badly. 

[pr0cayne]

CREAK. Floor B2, evening, ft Hanhui — @98huii

There’s a particular creak Harang’s come to know, like the full weight from the ball of a foot is jammed down right in front of his door, loud enough to see-saw its way into his brain. It’s subtle enough that he could probably blame it on something in the apartment if he wanted to. The same way he could blame the slip of pictures on the brittle wind of an oscillating fan, or the rattle of his door on the obnoxious pre-teens who live two floors above him (don’t question why they’d come and play on the floors below). The same way any person might try to rationalize the irrational. The problem of it is that Harang’s been living in this building, in this flat, for long enough that every time he hears That Particular Creak the hair of his nape raises and the backs of his knees shiver. 

Sometimes the creak meanders its way around his room, a flat-footed drag to match the (slightly warped) record Harang has spinning music to life. Sometimes the creak seems to sink into the gaps of slotted floorboards and disappear. Sometimes he can hear it fainter, a room over, rattling at ceramic cereal bowls. Sometimes Harang is so sick of it invading the sanity of a perfectly normal Monday that he jams his wallet into the worn pocket of his sweatshirt and slips out the door, snaps it shut behind him before it creaks right after him. 

For a moment, he rests with his back against it, like the full weight of him might keep it locked inside. The hallway’s empty enough, though that bleak wash of grey he’s grown to normalize is broken up, one door propped open and letting artificial light spill out in a river. Unconsciously, he hops over it while walking back toward the vending machines, some lingering childhood superstition about cracks. 

By now and it’s late enough that the machine’s already decided what it’ll sell him, a wall of chips color-split down the middle, blue for vinegar and red for ketchup. Harang opts for vinegar, feeds in a couple of coins and pops the bag on his way back up the hall. The taste of them stings at his tongue. This time he stops at the edge of the light, can hear the static buzz of it past the sour crunch at his molars. Stops because he sees Hanhui, arms full of cardboard like he’s cleaning out the recycling. Harang doesn’t offer to help, but he does tip his head like he’s pretending to contemplate the idea of it. 

“They didn’t clean the place out for you?” they is a nebulous term, but sometimes that’s all this building has to offer.

[pr0cayne]

miasma.

The roof, around 2 AM, ft Inho — @f0ulfellow

That slow-climb up to the roof of the building is always a long one. A spider creep that takes him from the basement up to windows. Rectangle slashes of light to flood the stairwell, that’ll bring him higher and higher, until the city’s all laid out and bare for those who can afford to cut it up, present it like a backdrop. An aesthetic familiarity to their home. Harang, with cement-rough walls and stretched out shadows that cling and crawl can’t necessarily relate, but that also doesn’t stop him from banging his way thick-soled up to the top. He could take the elevator; sometimes he does, when his lungs pitch themselves forward into a tremble (blame it on the maybe-pneumonia of his youth, not the nicotine, like any good addict in denial would), or he’s too dazed out, that slow-drip of a mind without caffeine to filter through it. 

This late — early? — and it’s not often crowded. That’s when Harang likes to come up, avoids homemade picnics and puffed-up breeder mill puppies trotting around and yapping at pigeons. Can kick a forgotten chair real close to the railing, hunch himself up and smoke until the thick smell of cherry tobacco clings stubborn to the cotton of his sweatshirt. Two washes and maybe it’ll come out for good, but by this point Harang’s come to like it. 

He’s about halfway through a cigarette, legs folded up like a misshaped pretzel, an ashtray balanced on the inside of a thigh, when he hears the loud, metallic-snap of the door popped open again. There’s that immediate rush of irritation to the gut; something that’ll sit and churn it’s way up into a frothy anger if he ever lets it (sometimes he does). It’s not a rational anger, everyone else has the same right to use the roof at two in the morning, same as he does. 

Despite it, Harang looks casual when he relocates the ashtray and leans the chair back on two pronged and spindly legs. His head folds back over the end of it, just to see how many people might be funneling out. Just one, and he almost ignores them until they start trekking their way over. And by then he almost picks himself up to scrub his cigarette out on the bottom of his heel and leave before he notices the look of them. Inho, and so he lets the chair drop back in a hollow clack and fits the filter back between his lips. “Lonely enough to monitor the hallway cameras?” he says it when Inho gets close enough to hear. Even if it is a joke, it comes out conversational. Dry enough to match the shriveled up bed of radishes someone had planted and forgotten about shoved into the corner gap of the roof. 

“Not sleeping?”

[pr0cayne]

[lifeinpoetry]

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.

Gillian Flynn, from Sharp Objects (via lifeinpoetry)