#hawrites

[thisismyaha]

yjh: let's have a wedding on the beach. it'll be horrible. our friends will throw you into the ocean. the children will have a sand fight. and then someone will actually start a fight.

yjh: our footprints will fade slowly on the soft sand. they'll be washed away by gentle tides. i'll marry you with the sea salt winds.

yjh: kim dokja, let's live our life together.

[heavensarcher]

ok but imagine you’re harry wilson’s kid. say you live predominantly with your mum because Dad knew, even back when he ‘didn’t take sides’ that the people he was working with weren’t safe people. 

you don’t see your dad all that often. you visit on the holidays, you call every other night, you send him stupid memes he doesn’t quite get or play video games together when he’s not busy with clients and you don’t have too many assessments. 

you’ve had arguments about his line of work before. don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t say too much - confidentiality you know - but as anyone with parents that work in confidential workplaces knows you typically get to know just enough to have Opinions. and you have Opinions about the people you see his name next to in the papers some times. 

you live a pretty privileged life. those people you hate him working for makes sure he’s able to more than take care of you - more than what the ‘law’ says he has to do. you think sometimes he feels a bit guilty but it’s not like it’s his fault mum wanted to move back to near her family. you tell him constantly - as you start seeing cracks appear - that you’re old enough now. that he doesn’t need to worry about supporting you as much. you have scholarships! a part-time job! sure it’s not lavish and his money really helps but at the end of the day you want your dad happy. cos deep down he’s a good person - he’s just forgotten that. 

then one day he lets you know he’s on a sabbatical from work. ...ok...sure...usually any time off he takes coincides with a visit to you but dad can do his own thing. good for him finally taking some time for himself! then your nightly calls start having...interruptions? he spends a lot of time in this jazz bar and there’s randomly a woman in the rafters sometimes? or like a man cooking a 5 star meal? a woman reciting Shakespeare? a girl about your age yelling back and forth with some dude on a phone as she does something to wires??

and sure Dad seems stressed, and he seems weighed down (that’s been something you’ve noticed a lot recently but he’s always brushed it off) but he also looks so...free. serious. focused. like he’s finally got some kind of goal back when the last few years has just been the motions. So one night you’re playing your mobile game game together and you just stop and say “...I don’t know what you’re up to these days, dad. But i’m happy for you. I’m glad you found something you believe in again.” and he gets all teary and does the Dad Face that he does when touched and you keep playing the stupid game.

And sometimes you’ll be venting about an issue and one of those strangers has a Tip so you get slowly introduced. You’re making a meal for a date and suddenly you meet Eliot, who takes you through a delicious cheap meal step by step. You lock your keys in your car and are complaining about needing to call a locksmith and meet Parker, who tells you how to BREAK IN. You have to take a speech credit and Sophie is there with performance tips. You start playing games with Breanna and listen as she complains about her brother and walks you through Spirit’s Ruse while you teach her the rules of DnD.

And then you see something really weird at your job. And you mention it to your sketchy boss but 2 days later he fires you for ‘being late’ - you’ve never been late in your life! and you’re crying to your dad cos he’s a lawyer surely he can help fix it and then the next day at your shitty one bed dorm your dad is there flanked by 4 other people you’ve only ever seen through a screen and they promise you they’re gonna fix it. 

[thisismyaha]

i genuinely believe reading is a practice in empathy. to read and to feel the emotions of the character, for their feelings to pierce my heart with lightning and devastation and the europhia of connection. to feel joy at their joy, pain at their pain, to viscerally and vicariously and viciously feel them, to consume and climb into their bodies and become embodied in the language of their emotions and become a part of them as they have become a part of me.

[thisismyaha]

joongdok would be the disgustingly cute e-couple who would have matching usernames in online multiplayer games but their form of being cute is using each others literal government names

random1: yoo joonghyuk? isn't that the terrorist?

yoo joonghyuk: Yes, I kin him.

kim dokja: stfu

[thisismyaha]

yjh: live, kim dokja. this world will continue even without me

kdj yoo joonghyuk, you son of a bitch. i cannot continue in a world without you

[thisismyaha]

kdj: Why? Why for someone like me?

yjh: Why not? Why not for someone like you?

[thisismyaha]

this is yjh's third regression, there is a tiredness and pain and suffering already laying upon his restless shoulders. he disembarks from the thrice damned beginning expecting to find his people. the two of them were useful. instead, he finds that one is dead.

and there is a man.

this man knows yjh's name. yjh has never seen him before. he says he is a fan.

he knows yjh, answering back in ways that are suspicious but almost too reasonable. his hand tightens around the man's neck. a prophet.

"companion," he says.

kdj looks him in the eyes and grins at yjh as he throw him off the bridge, into the mouth of a waiting monster. who knows what goes through yjh's mind but he smiles back. yjh believes him.

he finds his other companion but he is different. his shield is devoted to this strange man. (yjh finds out later that this man had been the cause death for his other companion - a teenager. one of his.)

later even when yjh's hopes had already been laid down, he comes back with the very same smile. so suspicious, so annoying. but he saves his group. but he hands over the child. he so pampers those around him.

he saves yjh in the theatre dungeon.

he gathers and protects a group of people, surrounding him with both familar and unfamiliar faces. among them are ones that yjh had journeyed with before and ones he hadn't. they are all useful. but there is more to it. yjh doesn't realise until kdj saves lsh for him.

so suspicious, so annoying. how could one man irritate him so much, yjh doesn't understand.

and then he saves yjh again.

kdj pushes him aside and dies for yjh.

[thisismyaha]

"sometimes happiness had felt like a game i played with myself, seeing how fast i can lose it and finding the quickest input i needed to get it back," kim dokja said. "back then i just needed to read a bit of your story to be okay again - to cheer up. well. maybe it wasn't quite happiness but neither was it sadness. just a little lonely."

yoo joonghyuk pulled him closer, arms tight around his waist and hard as iron. his face was buried into kim dokja's neck, it tickled like forgotten loneliness. he said, "you make me happy too."