do you have two different sides or do you just pretend?
✧ ┊ honesty hour ┅┅┅┅ catching up on ancient memes
he begins with one of his traditional smiles, all bright sunshine, fabricated, presumably. “what do you mean?” he asks, innocently, but it’s more for fun than anything, because he’s supposed to be honest.
his expression evens out. it’s harder these days. “i used to think i really had two sides,” he admits, and he shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, and maybe, in the end, it really doesn’t. there was no doubt he flashed all of his smiles and batted all of his eyelashes to get in good graces– to earn favor and snatch attention and fondness. he did it so they’d think he’s innocence– pen him as weak, and someone that would never take advantage of them, though jihoon was far from it. jihoon was really a nightmare.
“i don’t know if i have two sides anymore. i guess the fact that i don’t means it must’ve just been an act, right? i guess i fooled even myself,” and he smiles again, but not as wide. the greatest scam of all time, it would appear.
“it’s not like being friendly and energetic was completely a ruse, even if i was trying to mislead people. that’s just something i was upon meeting people, and i think in the end, it really did become a part of my personality,” he says it lightly. he feels like he has to use past tense, since it’s so hard for him to get back in touch with that part of himself. he misses it. he wishes it still felt natural– hopes it does again.
“i think there are three sides to me, actually. there’s that one. the second one is…what made the first side. the manipulation, the need for control, the…irrational…need for attention.” he knows himself, even if he doesn’t like to admit these things. “angry. strong but dark, not afraid of and not above anything.”
“they both exist to protect the third side which is…what i am now.” emotional. insecure. desperate for love and so afraid despite fooling himself into thinking he wasn’t afraid of anything, fragile and quiet in its existence. it’s the realest, rawest, and truest version of jihoon, so rarely bared, now exposed for everyone to see, unguarded, because for now, he is broken. his defenses are broken, and he isn’t quite sure how to rebuild yet.
all he can do is fake it like he always has, and so he smiles.
✧ ┊ honesty hour ┅┅┅┅ catching up on ancient memes
it’s a difficult question, but have any of these been easy? this answer takes longer to come to him, and the words even moreso. “i guess just…who i really am?” it sounds so juvenile when he says it out loud, and he wrinkles his nose in disgust. it doesn’t feel entirely right, either, but he doesn’t know how else to say it. “i want people to like me.” he wants the attention. he wants to wrap them around his finger, and to be worshipped if he can get it, but he’ll take friendship, too. he’ll take any sort of favor.
he’s so afraid of losing it. it’s why he detests his own vulnerability– why he keeps his walls up and insists on strength, and even has that walled off by a bright bubbly persona manufactured for the purpose of getting on good sides and earning trust and affection. he is so afraid of anyone knowing he is damaged. he hides his darkness behind bright smiles not just to make it cut deeper when he unveils it, but because he wants to control everyone else’s fear. he wants them to be afraid of him on his own terms– never wants to put himself in a position where he is unwanted.
bomin saw who he really is more than anyone did, and bomin is out of reach now. it doesn’t help matters. it leaves him unsteady and turbulent, unstable and insecure. he’ll always wonder if it’s him that drove bomin away in the end– if he wasn’t a good enough friend, or he was too much of a reminder of the life bomin wanted to escape from. in the end, he wanted to escape from him too, and jihoon doesn’t know how to come to terms with that. he doesn’t know if he ever will, or if he’ll ever believe he’ll be wholeheartedly accepted for who he is again.
what is something that you feel the most guilty about?
✧ ┊ honesty hour ┅┅┅┅ catching up on ancient memes ( mentioned: @mixspencer)
these questions are far too difficult for his liking. jihoon doesn’t like to think about guilt. there was a time he didn’t feel any– not really. he doesn’t know what’s changed since then, or why his heart has softened, or why he’s so vulnerable and…weak. he knows he can’t afford to be, but the events of the past few months have worn him down so he can’t be anything else in his honesty.
maybe he felt guilty about all of this before, too. there are two things, and he can’t pick one over the other, so unfortunately, he needs to admit both.
“i feel guilty about woojin,” he says, looking down, recalling the memories. woojin– their relationship one jihoon only got into based on physical attraction, no feelings involved, as they never were. it was just like his past relationships: for fun, to kill the time, for the attention and all the adoration he could get. he always took and took and never gave back anything genuine, everything a sham from his end, as he did to everyone, but something about woojin was a little different. something about woojin made jihoon lose a little bit of his control– a little shaky, a little uncertain, near the end. real emotions started to rear their head: real attachment, real appreciation, and it brought about real fear. so jihoon did what he does best when he feels that rare emotion of fear, and ruined it before it got any farther to protect himself. he cheated on woojin, partially as a test of his dedication and potential love for him– to see if he still stayed with him, but mostly to end the relationship, and make it clear how little he cared. in retrospect, it’s so cruel and irrational, because he did care. now jihoon knows, and that caring was what drove him to act as he did back then. that underlying guilt is likely why he hasn’t been in a relationship since, too.
“and what i’m doing to spencer,” he adds. so much of his time with spencer has been based out of manipulation, trying to reel him in and capture him ever since the intangible and unintelligible shift– since the start of it all. he wanted spencer the same way he wants to steal shiny things, compulsive, because spencer was and still is something beautiful– something he’ll defend and protect and keep. spencer was almost an object to him, and jihoon had no problem using him– no problem devouring all of his attention and admiration and affection, taking and never really giving, as always. anything he gave was carefully crafted to keep stringing him along, but even from the beginning, he felt guilty. even from the beginning, jihoon cared enough to want to protect spencer’s feelings, too. he forced himself away from his usual nature– gave spencer a way out, and when he stayed, his manipulation only continued, even as he knew he would never like spencer as much as spencer liked him. he would never love him, and yet he let it all continue knowing spencer felt differently. he still does. “i care about him, but i can’t…let him go. he doesn’t want to leave, either, and i love that for me, but i hate it for spencer.”
✧ ┊ honesty hour ┅┅┅┅ catching up on ancient memes ( mentioned: no one by name! and yet )
“what do you mean?” he asks, with a ghost of that trademark jihoon, manufactured, sugar-sweet smile, eyes disappearing into crescents at all, but he can’t keep it up, and the expression falls. he resents it– how hard it is to pretend to be happy since his best friend’s departure. it’s like losing the safe space he had to be himself leaves the real jihoon to bleed into every other area of his life unwelcome. he needs those smiles to run a restaurant, and to get his way– for his sternness to be more effective and to win trust.
it just doesn’t feel as important as it once did, trying to weasel his way onto the good sides of everyone he meets meaning nothing to him when the person most important to him was off in another country. it wasn’t like he died, and if he stayed in myeongcho he very well could have, so there’s a part of jihoon that understands. jihoon is the only one making their friendship end here, and he knows if he can get over his resentment, that friendship will likely still be there, even if it won’t be the same.
will jihoon be the same? it’s like relearning how to live. he’s trying to rebuild into someone better, even if he doesn’t know what that looks like– if he wants to be stronger or kinder, and if he’s capable of either.
“i don’t really know what the act is anymore,” he admits, and he smiles, this time sincerely, albeit also sincerely out of place. “i thought i would be able to keep it up forever. i guess i never really considered…things changing. i never really considered losing anything, which was…stupid.” he frowns. “i always thought ‘the act’ wasn’t entirely an act, like it was just another part of me, but now that i can’t do it well anymore, i don’t really know. i used to mean it more, so maybe that counts for something.”
are you currently happy with where you are in life?
&h✧ ┊ honesty hour ┅┅┅┅ catching up on ancient memes ( mentioned: @mibomin @mixspencer )
before bomin’s departure, this would’ve been an easy yes. he has the job he’s worked toward for his entire life, is surrounded by people he likes, has a loving family, doesn’t want for money. he laughs and he smiles and he has a (couple) place(s) to lay his head at night.
it’s just different now. with bomin’s departure, he can’t see the other friends in his life as clearly anymore. now all he can see is how much he took up, and the space he’s left behind. he’s had time to process him leaving, but that feeling is still here, even as he tries to fill the emptiness with everything he can, after that first week of moping. he’s still not really over the moping, he’s just over showing it now, locking it up and tossing away the key to continue on and be professional, as he always does. the fake smiles don’t come as easily though, nor does being friendly, so his customer satisfaction may not be as high as before, and he’s not happy with that.
he’s not happy with how lonely he feels, and not happy about how he treats spencer, and that he can’t just replace bomin with more of spencer like he hoped he could, even for as much as spencer helps, and has done everything in his power to. he’s not happy in an empty dorm, by himself, studying a subject at myeongcho university, which he only enrolled in because his former best friend, now on the lam, did.
he’s not, but he knows there’s so much that’s still right. even so, he doesn’t feel bad for feeling wrong. “i will be,” he answers with a shrug. “i think i need to drop out of school,” he adds absently.
who are your top three favorite people? top three least favorite people?
✧ ┊ honesty hour ┅┅┅┅ catching up on ancient memes ( mentioned: @miseoah @mixspencer @mibomin @babyxmi @mihyunjin )
jihoon isn’t really one to play favorites– at least this is what he claims. he’s supposed to be honest, so he knows it isn’t really true. he just knows so many people; sorting them is difficult, and yet names emerge anyway, but somehow, those are difficult to accept too. “do i have to rank them in order?” he asks. it would be an extra challenge, and jihoon never shies away from those. “i can do it in order.”
but can he? most of his top three is hard to admit– things he’d rather change his heart on or not talk about, lest of all honestly. the favorites will be much harder than the least, likely because some of his favorite people have so shaken him up lately– one in particular. one in particular would’ve previously earned the top place without contest, and he would’ve talked about him happily: bomin. now, however, bomin isn’t here; bomin is in hawaii, the place he ran away to, only telling jihoon in the day he was catching his plane. jihoon doesn’t know if he’ll ever come to terms with it, or ever be able to forgive him– both for leaving him after all the life they spent together, and for not thinking he deserved to know and prepare himself for the way his entire world would change.
he can’t say bomin is first anymore.
“seoah,” he says, and he grins, and this is sincere. she’s an easy choice– but is she an honest one? he thinks so. she’s close at the very least, so she’s the one he says. “seoah is like a good older sister. maybe other people may not think she’s good, because she’s not a conventional older sister, but i’m not a conventional guy,” he smiles again, teasingly this time. “she takes care of me in her own way– in a way that knows i don’t really need to be taken care of, but she just…offers support, always good conversation, and doesn’t treat me like a child like some of the staff that have watched me grow into my role do. she’s tough and she’s funny and she’s capable in everything she does,” his admiration and gratitude to her is clear, even when he doesn’t say it outright. “plus, she’s useful.” that medical background does always come in handy.
second is easy too, and easier to talk about than he wants him to be. jihoon stares off, thoughtful, lips quirking up in an involuntary smile. “spencer is second,” and he could probably be first, if he didn’t still want to take the easy way out– if he wanted to still deny his fondness for him, which he clearly still does. “spencer is– i don’t know,” he bursts out into a laugh. “he’s loud, and annoying, and playful and bold and funny, i guess, at all of the wrong times, intentionally. he really gets on my nerves but…” he trails off, suddenly troubled, but exaggeratedly so– a little staged. “i kind of like it,” and he grins.
“the way spencer cares about me is different. it might be different than the way anyone has ever cared about me. nobody has seen what he’s seen of me and been even more drawn to me. he’s fucked up,” another laugh, and he almost groans. “but i like that too. i like how he looks at me, and being his…gravitational pull.” he doesn’t know if it’s an appropriate analogy, but it’s what it feels like. he knows this isn’t about spencer anymore, but about jihoon, and what spencer gives him, but he also knows that’s why spencer is his second favorite person. he hums, trying to think of what else to say– where this favoritism stems from, but some things he just can’t explain. “he’s soft with me when i let him be, and affectionate too, and he’s so willing to just…do what i want, even if he pretends he’s not. he’s warm, and he has such an unarguably good heart, and it’s not that i’ve never had that, really, it’s just that i’ve never had that where i have spencer.” he might be able to keep talking about him, but he doesn’t want to. this is more than enough, and more than he thought he’d ever admit. “i…love all of that about him.”
that was unsettling enough; now he has to go onto the third favorite, which is the hardest choice, and the hardest admission. it’s the saddest too: this fall from grace, this hole in his heart. “third is bomin,” he says, and his hands ball up into fists. “he was…is…? was…my best friend. i was always afraid this would happen, but we always assured each other that it wouldn’t, and i still can’t really believe it did. i’m so mad at him.” he doesn’t know what to do without him. his vision starts to blur, and maybe it’s rage, or betrayal, or heartbreak, or all of it. “i’ll never forgive him,” it’s not fitting for a third favorite person, but maybe jihoon will never forgive him for how much he still cares about him, either. “i don’t know how he can still make it on this list,” and he rubs at his eyes. “but we’ve been through so much. i owe him so much. he knew me better than anyone, and supported me for so long, no matter what i did, even when i treated him like shit, and–” he chokes on his words and shakes his head. “i really miss him, but i hate that i do.”
he wishes he said his least favorite people first. he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to will away this emotion– these tears. he doesn’t know how to keep talking after this.
“my least favorite people,” he begins with a deep breath, reminding himself of the task at hand. “jisu is the worst,” and he’s the easy way out too. it’s easier to put him in first than think he might be any lower, but it is hard to think of anyone else to surpass him. “jisu ruined my life,” he says simply. it’s an exaggeration now, but his life is different. he’s had to make space, and make adjustments he never wanted to. “he changed it for the worse. everyone around me thinks he’s so cute, and are so glad he’s with us, blah blah blah, they love giving him attention and oh boy, does he love getting it.” they are brothers, after all. “jisu is a whiny ungrateful brat, and every time i look at him he’s crying or throwing a fit. my parents love him and are so happy he found us again but he’s weak and isn’t going to survive here.” he can’t think about jisu without thinking about execution day, and that gun held up to his head, and jihoon arriving just in time. he can’t help but think about jisu cowering, and how he comforted him, and as much as it supports his claim, it also invalidates everything he’s said, because he knows he would do the same again. he knows, that as much as he wishes jisu wasn’t in his life, he doesn’t ever want him to lose his.
“second is…” surely there are more people he dislikes. he pretends to be friendly, but surely he isn’t on that good of terms with everyone, right? his primary annoyance comes to mind then, and his eyes light up in joy at discovering who earns this position. “hyunjin,” he says easily. “hyunjin has been a lifelong annoyance and i can’t get away from him because our families are friends, so that makes it even worse. he’s my worst enemy.” he’ll leave it at that because he doesn’t really have that much worse to say about him. hyunjin infuriates him, and sometimes he hates him, but ultimately, they’re…friends, and jihoon knows it in his heart, even if he’d never admit it.
third hurts again, but he knows this one is true. “third is bomin too.”
would you be willing to let me out of your life if i asked you to?
✧ ┊ honesty hour ┅┅┅┅ catching up on ancient memes ( mentioned: @mibomin )
“why are you asking?” jihoon is the one to ask, and he feels a panic welling up in his chest. they said they would never leave each other, so it must be a question out of curiosity. they’ve fought over this too, jihoon reassuring bomin that he won’t leave, bomin doing the same in the face of jihoon’s own insecurities, and who is jihoon if he doesn’t trust bomin? he doesn’t have any reason to doubt bomin, but bomin knows him better than anyone, and jihoon has always feared that anyone knowing who he really is won’t want anything to do with him anymore.
and yet, he’s had bomin for years. they grew up together early on, corrupt parents finding friendship in each other, and they did the same, even as bomin grew to resent his and jihoon grew to follow in the footsteps of his. they stayed together, despite their differences and their unconventional friendship, destined to never be normal, mostly jihoon’s doing. nothing with jihoon could ever be normal, inevitably some kind of dark and tumultuous, and jihoon knows how much bomin wants a normal life. that panic stays. “bomin, why are you asking?”
jihoon knows he’s the best version of himself around bomin, too. they’re both far from the best people– maybe far from good in the first place. jihoon knows he is, but he knows there’s potential for better for bomin. he always thought they may not make each other better, but that they didn’t make each other worse, and that was all that mattered, but in this moment, he realizes differently– realizes bomin is the only person he’s ever wanted to be better for. he’s the only person he’s really felt remorse over manipulating, and the only one he ever actively tries to resist manipulating.
but jihoon is just manipulative by nature, and if bomin is asking– if there’s even a thought in his mind about leaving him, jihoon has to do everything he can to make sure it doesn’t happen, even not realizing his own toxic behavior. “you’d never leave me, right?” he asks, crooked smile, and jihoon already knows his own answer to this question is no. he knows he’d never be able to let bomin go, and he’d do anything to keep him in his clutches. he was already willing to do anything to ensure he was bomin’s only best friend– obsessed over whether he was the most important person in bomin’s life or he wasn’t, always wanting to ensure the former. even being nothing to bomin would be better than a life without him.
he can’t keep it up. he can’t smile, can’t summon any of his usual bright facades, and he’s never really been able to with bomin; he’s never had reason to. this is the only place he can be himself and accepted for it– with bomin. how could he ever let go of that? “i don’t think i could let you go,” he admits, and he smiles, but it’s watery, and his throat feels tight, and he laughs, low, to try and cover it up.
jihoon would do anything to keep bomin in his life, even if it meant making him miserable. “but if you really wanted to leave me, i don’t think i could stop you no matter how much i wanted to,” and it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. it would be because bomin knows him better than anyone, and might be able to resist him better than anyone, too.
