( septembers longing ; monthly prompt )
oh. the long dark. cw bullying things, drowning symbolism, blood mentions, guilt things, emetophobia warning. overall just dark? whoops. mentions of: miyeon.
jisung remembers a story about the thing that lives in the well. it lies in wait in the dark for someone to draw up the bucket to retrieve the water. countlessly, people go to it and one by one, they're pulled in.
mulgwisin. and then their existence is one in the same; they are the thing in the well, and they call others to them. that's really all he is. that's all his longing is.
a monster at the very bottom of the dark.
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when he's young there's no name for what it is yet. but it puppets him, really.
there is something like a knife in the sound of laughter. it cuts so deep when he's 12 years old and all that matters is that people like him. he stands with his friends in the hall; he sticks his ankle out to tip a boy because it'd be funny they said. their laughs are intoxicating, really.
is it funny? not really. he doesn't think so even then. the grin that stretches thin is different. it's a hungry thing. it's calling from the bottom of the dark.
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the strangest of the longings comes when he wants to follow someone else into the dark, for once. he pushed her into those shadows, no doubt about that— and then he wanted to run in after, and get her out.
he hadn't really thought of the dangers when he asked her to go in past caution tapes, while he laughed with his friends (laughter is the sound the monster in the dark speaks through)— he watched her go and chewed on his fingernails (they bled and the blood ran between his teeth and danced on his tongue), and he wondered if his friends would still find him funny if he went to find her. told her that in spite of what he'd said ("come on! what are you, afraid? that's kinda pathetic though.... thought you weren't afraid of anything."), it wasn't quite so simple. he knows this.
he's afraid of everything.
but he doesn't go and get her. not until it's been 40 minutes, and his friends are shaking their heads and sneering a bit and saying they want to go home.
jisung makes that trip alone. finds her there. the laugh that bubbles up in his throat that time is nervous, terror really. all that blood.
there's no amount of explanation in the world to paint a clear enough picture for how badly he longs to go back through time. to go back into that long dark.
to stop that blood from slipping.
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he longs for so many little things after that, and it's selfish to do so. how can he want to be a kid again? he's lost that right, his father says.
no door, he doesn't deserve privacy in his bedroom because his father doesn't trust the things he might do.
no concerts with miyeon, no malls with her, no friend outings with miyeon.
school assignments must be done, chores must be done. the room must be clean like the mind. therapy sessions must be attended even when he feels sick. he has to be sick into a plastic bag on the way to one when he's 17 because while he's ill, this is more important.
no hobbies. responsibilities can replace those.
his father fixes the holes in him. the long dark of his longing is so encompassing at some point that the voices in him go entirely silent. nothing left. he longs so desperately that it loops around to nothing.
we call that the void.
jisung lives in a perpetual state of falling in and out of it. toeing the line like limbo, with so much longing that it cancels itself out.
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it's true that jisung has learned to run from his longing. it only brings him pain. and truthfully, none of it can be good, right? his father taught him his instincts are poor. his judgement of character is poor. his decision making is poor. his heart is poor, his head.
somewhere a girl sits rather than stands and he longs for her never to have to think of him again.
that's the only one he can claim with confidence.
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he longs for connection. to be loved and feel whole, to feel right. mostly he longs to feel good. maybe that's why he's retooled himself. repurposed the long dark into a crowbar to pry into the surface; laughter, simple pleasures, quick fixes, "oh hi jisung, was wondering when i'd see you again!" and then in 10 minutes, he would disappear again.
become just a wonder again.
that's all he can afford, now.