10 — what is the biggest lie you've told?
tw. descriptions of death & horror movie violence
"it was to my sister, i think." kiyeon blinks at how easily the answer comes to him. he watches the lines swirl around his hands and his fingers. "the last time i looked at her, it was because she asked me to. she said it was okay, but i know i scared her. at least i know she was lying to me too."
but that isn't the question.
"i saw a lot. she likes scary movies, so i had to see a bunch of that, y'know, all the monsters and ghosts and blood and guts. sometimes that's easier because you can tell it's not so real, but you don't always stay there because usually there's other things they're afraid of. the real things—they're just wearing the monsters as masks. sometimes i wish i didn't have to look deeper than that, but i can't pick and choose that. the monsters still have eyes so i'm looking at them too, and i'm seeing their faces."
he turns to rifle through his shelf of dvds, speaking over his shoulder still, "there's this one movie she really liked—they filmed some of it here actually, do you know slashing star? there's a scene where the lead is stabbed by her girlfriend because her girlfriend doesn't realize that it's her under the mask, doing all of the killings. i saw that, but instead it was my sister laying there, looking up at her girlfriend, and it wasn't because she was wearing a mask. no, the mask was off and her girlfriend knew who she was—she was just so appalled by my sister's true face that she put a knife in her anyway. my sister was scared of that. i felt it, like i was the one getting stabbed."
he lets out a small aha when he finally finds the right case, tugging it out of the shelf. it's not his favorite in the anthology, but he's got a soft spot for it as his sister's.
"anyway, there's another scene after that where the lead goes back home. you'd never seen her house at that point, only her apartment, so at first you think she's breaking in for her next victim, until you realize it's really her parents' old house. but that's not how i see it happen with my sister. i see her at home, and we both know it's our old house. we both know she's home. i see her see our parents again, and me, and herself back in that house where everything’s the way it used to be, and i feel how terrified she is of that. she was afraid of waking up and realizing she was back there again, i think. she was afraid of waking up and realizing she still had to take care of me."
kiyeon nudges the dvd back into its place. he lingers. "she asked me afterwards what i saw. i told her i saw this instead, 'cause i knew she got nightmares when she saw this one too." he draws out a different case, touch-me-not, another installment in the series about a hopeless romantic who ironically couldn't touch anyone without petrifying their nervous systems and killing them.
"anyway, i decided to move out the week after that." kiyeon smiles placidly and holds up the new movie in lieu of meeting their eyes. "you seen this one before?"
