SAVE SOME FACE,

smile like you mean it

[r4bbitsrun]

WILLING AND ABLE, with @starrygze

today was a pleasantly warm day, and it has turned into a pleasantly cool night. doha likes this part of the year the most, when the weather temporarily lets go of extremes. it never lasts long enough.

he's sitting on a swing beside jian, shoes pushing against the ground to rock back and forth slightly. he can see to the edge of the park property, but everything else is lost in the night. it's comforting to be here with her and no one else; much better than the alternative of being home, with nobody at all. it doesn't matter that he's tired. he'd fight off the heaviest of eyelids to stretch time out with her.

he's gripping cool metal swing chains in each hand, and his head is tilted to the side, leaned against a clenched fist. close enough to the chain to smell the rust. it reminds him of childhood.

"there was this time when i was a kid," he starts, breaking the comfortable silence, "that my parents were going to take my siblings and me to an arcade that we'd all been begging to go to, but they took us to a park first to get our energy out so we wouldn't be too crazy in the arcade, i guess. i was pushing my sister on the swing and she tried to jump out, but she jumped at a weird time and landed in this little puddle of mud, so she didn't want to go to the arcade anymore. my parents offered to buy her new pants at a store so we could still go, but she refused. we just went home instead, and she was in a bad mood all day. we called her 'mud' for months after that. we even got some other kids at school in on it." he leaves out the detail that it was an arcade he'd been begging to go to, and that it happened on his birthday. he doesn't tell it as a complaint, or as a bad memory—he's smiling a little and it carries over to his tone, fondly recalling something from the past, something the smell of rust reminded him of.

he exhales slowly. he's looking straight ahead, into the far darkness. "probably kind of mean of us, in retrospect." he turns his head to look at her, smiling just a little. "i don't think i appreciated my siblings enough until i moved here. i liked playing pretend as an only child when i'd visit my aunt back then, but now that i live here, i kind of miss them, you know?"

he glances up at the sky, pondering, and then looks back at her. "what was it like for you, getting to grow up here?"

[r4bbitsrun]

hi hi! apologies for the late intro, this past week was much more exhausting than i had anticipated. anyway, this is denver (she/they, 23) with kim doha (pinterest). as per usual, all the important details are below the cut & please like this post if you want to plot!

born december 5, 2000, in sokcho as his parents' firstborn & eldest son. followed by one younger brother and three younger sisters. had a good couple years where he was extensively doted on, and then naturally the affection had to be split up and the younger kids needed it more than him and the girls needed a little extra of course which left not a whole lot for doha. he was loved, of course, but it was in a different way than the younger kids were.

wasn't a bad kid. quiet by nature, raised to be mild-mannered. type of boy to sort of blend into the background; didn't have many friends growing up because his instinct was to say "no" when invited to hang out or do things together - not because he didn't want to, but because he thought the polite thing to do was to be unobtrusive. to not be there.

historically, has almost always put others first. kind of had to with four younger siblings. he tried the putting his foot down and demanding fairness thing for a short stint, but he realized getting his way doesn't actually feel that good when it's at the cost of someone else getting their way. hasn't really tried since.

anyway, he has lifelong ties to seomri. has a cool aunt in the area whom he visited nearly every summer and over some other school breaks. was the whole family at first, but then it dwindled to just the kids because their parents wanted a break, and eventually it dwindled down even more to just doha when his siblings started to find seomri boring. his aunt never married nor had children of her own, so she was always welcoming - treats doha a bit like he's her own. secretly he probably likes her more than his actual mom.

the older he got, the more he started to realize that city life wasn't really for him. he never got used to the crowds or the fast pace of life, and he worried he wouldn't live a fulfilling life in the city. in a way, felt like his existence was too small to mean anything in sokcho? (he has anxiety and very low self-esteem if you could believe it)

so after graduating college, he moved to seomri with some financial help from his aunt. that was about two years ago now - still has a bit of an outsider vibe, can definitely tell he's from the city, but he's trying to grow roots here :) genuinely loves seomri - every part of it, the history and the newer arts scene!

as of current, he's working as a photojournalist for seomri daily news. likes it a lot - it's the line of work he went to school for, and a career that feels fulfilling to him. has no higher ambitions. would be content to live life just like this forever.

.... but maybe with a few more friends? still battling the anxiety + low self-esteem thing, but doesn't outwardly seem like it, so he might just come off as unfriendly with the first few interactions. has been a bit more lonely since leaving all of his old college friends (however fairweather they were) in sokcho, and has consequently been trying to default to saying yes instead of no; has gotten pretty good at it. really just wants to have fun now that he's gotten everything else mostly sorted!!!