TURNSTILES — @shuteyed
It's late. Super late. The night sky is a dark, inky indigo with a dusting of stars. Jiyeon can hear laughing and singing, even from outside. They're celebrating her great uncle, a man closer to death than whatever life he was still clinging onto. Aunts, uncles, and cousins have all come together to celebrate what might be the man's last birthday. Jiyeon can imagine that after a certain age, you start to just wish for it. She likes to think that she'd live to see mid-50s at most, or rather she just hopes.
There's really no telling how much longer the party will go on for. Jiyeon sighs, and starts heading back inside.
They're a rambunctious bunch, to put it lightly. She squeezes past close and distant cousins, narrowly escapes the troupe of aunties desperately trying to set her up with someone (anyone, you're not getting any younger Jiyeon!), and incoherent uncles. It's a skill, honestly. Luckily, she makes it back to her seat in one piece. Jiyeon eyes Seongmin wearily, and sighs again.
"I mean, why even bother going all out? The old man was put to bed hours ago." She picks up her drink, which had gone warm and flat some time ago. "But I guess they've been looking for any old excuse to all get together, huh?"
Her relationship with Seongmin was ... tepid at best, apathetic at worst. Everything was so much easier when they were kids. Maybe that was just how adulthood worked. Still, Seongmin is her favorite distantly-related cousin. That surely had to mean something. "Well, how's Ilwoo? No doubt spreading good and joy to the world."
seongmin has always liked this part of parties the most, when the sun has long dipped below the horizon and the conversations shift from small talk to the truly riveting stuff they can come up with instead, like the newest season of the dating show all the cousins have watched or the juiciest bit of neighbourhood gossip.
they're a big clan, the hans. it's a natural consequence of the land; there had been many of them, or seongmin's been told, when the town was thriving, and none of them left. in a small town like onyang, children of the truly local families can bump into their peers and are likely to find some relation if they bother to dig far enough back. and somehow, for some reason, seongmin's so-called uncle has invited all of them.
jiyeon squeezes in next to him during a lull of the conversation, which had started around a card- turned drinking game and then devolved into storytelling, tales all of them have heard often enough before that they bore seongmin to tears. he shuffles his chair around to face her, putting his back to the group of younger cousins too deep into their cups, and slips his phone back into his pocket.
"any excuse to party is good enough," he snorts, surely imparting wise advice. they're words he's lived by all his life. "why, jiyeon, not having fun?"
they don't know each other that well, not anymore. or, rather: at these things they talk plenty, and when they bump into each other in the street. jiyeon gets invites to backyard parties seongmin and ilwoo host. but they don't hang out the way they used to as kids, the natural consequence of growing up and the loss shared between them.
"ilwoo's doing great. we've been thinking about redoing the kitchen. pull out that backsplash, the works." or rather, seongmin has been thinking about it and they've talked about it twice, each time noncommittal while distracted by a show on tv. it's one of those projects you put on an endless list and never intend on getting to, not really.














