ARTIFICE.
the lights go out and she moves to afterlife. so what, she can’t lose herself in a virtual reality land more appealing than her own. so what, she can’t hide in a pixellated world that promises clean air and green grass and the ruffle of wind in trees. all she does is hide, these days. from others, from herself. with pills and powders and masks, she hides...from everyone except jinsol, maybe. but in the nature of that, too, comes weakness. there’s the fear that the more she exposes the less time she’ll have with him. one misstep, one ugly truth from solitude. she doesn’t know how to live like that. the prospect of it terrifies. she’s wedged between a rock and a hard place and she chooses indecision, inaction, avoidance. it’s not her finest hour. so she’s people watching at afterlife, when she sees him.
with a face like that he’s every bit believable as the prophet he claims himself to be. he fits the role of a sainted man to perfection, this twisted promise, this fallen creature. like lucifer brought down from heaven. it’s funny, to think of gun creating the narrative of himself as savior, and to see taesun selling it part and parcel like that. the serpent tongued figurehead and the power that rests behind him. how fascinating, to thrive in borrowed power and to beg the attention of the world for it. but then, is it all that different from she herself? perhaps not. just shades of grandeur and bravado.
when the glamour stops, however, what is she left with? a bare face she barely shows jinsol and her heart on her sleeve in a way that sends her pulse rushing, head spinning. the world around her devolves into utter chaos as augmentations shut off in a wave. the anxiety of it becomes a physical thing that presses around her with the weight of a hundred worlds. her hands fly up, as if to cover her face and she pulls her hood up over her head thereafter, tugging at the strings. the crowd around her becomes riotous and she’s jostled, tumbling into the boy she had, a moment before, been examining from a distance. what stupid luck. but he’s a friendly face in a maelstrom so she grabs him by the arm, presses her face into his shoulder. “taesun, get me out of here,” she commands him, as if there isn’t a waver in her voice and the tremble of an anxiety attack mounting in her bones, rattling her from shoulder to fingertip to toes. someone else collides into them on their way past and she yanks at his arm, “now? now.”
@neotaesun afterlife, beginning of phase 3