(aka ur fav local obsessive psychopathic cannibal-core)
Han Kang, The Vegetarian // I.B. Vayache, “Loved via Purpose” // Venetta Octavia, “I set in Stone” // Haruki Murakami, "Sputnik Sweetheart" // Margaret Atwood // Anne Sexton, “A Self Portrait in Letters” // Fortesa Latifi // Anne Sexton, "A Self Portrait in Letters" //
He thought Moonjo was the only person that he can relate to, but after the conversation they just had, he realized how that was absolutely not the case. Okay, he can admit that Moonjo was actually much more normal than the rest. Maybe he was overthinking after his little statement about killing people, cause he can sense how he liked to scare people in the first place. Or maybe he just became abnormal after staying in a place like this. He can't blame him.
Cause he too, in fact, started losing his patience.
Maybe Moonjo wasn't aware at all of his behavior after staying with these people. Whatever the case, Jongwoo didn't yet want to lose the little bond. He was the only escape from this hellish place.
The next day, he tried talking to his girlfriend about the events, but she actually sounded pissed. Well, she was having a hard time too and he wanted to know the reason behind it. Maybe if she vents it out to him, she might actually feel better. But ever since he came here, it felt like she didn't care enough to talk to him.
Almost like she found him annoying and sensitive.
All of it, starting from the people in the building, his boss, the insecure colleague to his girlfriend, everything was starting to take a toll on him. Maybe these little jabs to him won't bother any other person, but it was a headache to him. He just wanted one day to relax instead of worrying 24/7 about what was going on around him.
That was probably the reason why he got impulsive and thought of having a beer with Moonjo later. Yes, he was creepy but currently, he was the only one who actually made him feel a bit at ease. Moonjo made him feel like he didn't need to have everything under control. He can do whatever he wanted to do.
"Mr. Jongwoo?" Hearing the voice, he got startled and looked back. It was the police officer who came searching for a person who went missing.
"Oh, I didn't mean to scare you! I'm sorry," she apologized and then asked, "Are you not feeling well?"
Of course, people who are observant will definitely notice the struggle on his face. How come Jieun didn't?
"Me? I didn't get much sleep last night," he said fidgeting and opening his backpack, taking out a small notepad, "and this belonged to the foreigner that lived there before."
"Thank you," she said.
"I'll get going now," he said and started walking away but stopped, hearing her call him once again.
"Jongwoo, did anything strange happen in the studio?"
"Anything strange?" he asked, contemplating if it would be a good idea to let her know about his suspicion.
"Yes."
"Well, I was told that nobody lives on the fourth floor, but I keep hearing sounds."
"What sounds?"
"Thumping sounds. I keep hearing them but..." his voice trailed off as he looked at the end of the street. Jongwoo felt shivers down his spine.
Wasn't that the landlady?
He looked back at the police officer and quickly said, "I don't know," before leaving for his office. His mind was filled with questions.
What was she doing here? She has nothing to do on this street in the first place. Was she following him? He halted by his steps as he crashed into a girl. She was yelling at him for dropping the coffee she was carrying, on her. For some reason, maybe because he was too busy to think about the landlady, he tried to help her in a way that he would've never thought of before. Why did he even try to clean the stains on her dress with his shirt? What was he thinking?
He was not sure why so many things were going wrong when the day began. But he was sure of one thing.
Beer just won't do it for him. He needed a damn drink after his shift was over.
Jongwoo felt under the weather. He sat up on his bed with a splitting headache and looked at his surroundings, and then at himself. He felt his heart drop.
Not only was he in a different room, but he was also not wearing clothes. He tried his best to remember the last night's events but he just couldn't remember them clearly. All he remembers is how he met up with Moonjo after his shift was over and had some drinks. He started talking about his career, and books, and somehow the conversation slid toward the residents.
He groaned and got up, finding his clothes neatly kept on the table. Jongwoo realized he must've been a huge hassle to Moonjo. At least he was a gentleman enough to not enter his room when he was intoxicated. But he was a bit worried.
He felt an uncomfortable pain in his lower back. Well, the building didn't offer much comfort in the first place. It was a surprise Moonjo was still living in this hellhole.
As he was about to leave the room, he came face to face with his drinking partner.
"Did you sleep comfortably?" Moonjo asked quirking his head to the left, looking at him.
Jongwoo kept his eyes fixed on his face. He was extremely wary of this person at the moment, knowing the man before him stood with a bare chest and wearing jeans, a towel around his neck, and somewhat of wet hair. Why was he suddenly so focused on his presence? Why were his cheeks feeling hot?
"Uh yes, thank you for taking care of me last night," Jongwoo smiled, "I'm sorry but I need to get ready for work. Thank you." He quickly went off toward his room.
Throughout the day, Jongwoo was a bit out of it. He tried his best to remember the events of last night but he wasn't able to. At the end of his shift, when he got invited to drink with his colleagues he couldn't decline. Although drinking quietly, his mind kept going back to him.
"Oh, looks like someone had a busy night yesterday," Yoojung whispered to him. He looked back at her, his heart started beating fast. Yoojung pointed out towards his neck and then fixed his collar, to hide something that he could only understand as a hickey.
Hickey?
And then he remembered something from this morning. When he looked at Moonjo's face, from his peripheral vision, he could make out that there were some red marks on his body. Earlier he tried to ignore it but now that he thinks about it carefully, there was a mark on his shoulder that he was clear about. A bite mark.
As his thoughts were jumbled, his office colleagues left the restaurant to go for a second round at another place. On the way he seemed to see the face of the same guy whom he has been thinking of the whole day. But when he looked back again, he disappeared. Running into the alley, he tried to find the familiar face once again but much to his dismay, he wasn't able to.
He was starting to feel scared and angry. Jongwoo was too scared to go back to that building. What happened last night? Why do the people living in the building keep following him?
I am never not thinking about moonjo’s special “shoulder touch” for his jongwoo.
also how come i didn’t notice how he slowly smiled while he was walking away?? i can def see his cheekbones rising? IM LITERALLY SCREAMING RN MAN WHY IS THIS PSYCHO DENTIST SUCH A TEASE
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 타인은 지옥이다 | Strangers From Hell (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Seo Moonjo/Yoon Jongwoo
Characters: Seo Moonjo, Yoon Jongwoo
Additional Tags: Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), with some liberties and inacurracies because i was not a greek mythology kid, Hades!Seo Moonjo, Persephone!Yoon Jongwoo, Suggestive Themes, jongmoon are the only named characters sorry, Fluff and Angst, Pining, moonjo kinda looks like a pimp and im only realizing that a year after writing this fic, made for user braceletofteeth on tumblr, moonjo kinda looks sick most of the time, Possessive Behavior, Mild Smut, but not rlly tbh its very mild and only lasts a few moments, its mostly soft foreplay, Not Beta Read
Summary:
Moonjo looked at his hands while Jongwoo spoke, observing the milky white of his palms. How different they look just a few feet away from Jongwoo’s own hands. “I can show you what happens to those who love. The good and the bad. It may change your mind.”
He went silent, turning to meet a deeper set of eyes. “Really?”
Moonjo paused. Held a breath for a moment, saw those doe eyes and felt his own soul start to slip into the depths.
“Of course.” He grabbed Jongwoo’s hand and dragged him into the darkness below.
-
A JongMoon Hades & Persephone AU where Moonjo learns to fight his own destiny.
okay so we know moonjo and jongwoo are similar in the fact that they’re both capable of and willing to kill, but can we talk about how they differ and why that brings them together so well???
let’s start with the differences first:
to start off with, we have yoon jongwoo. upon introduction into the show, the first impression is that something bad happened to this guy who, as the first episode progresses, just seems like your normal dude who just happens to be down on his luck. he’s moving to a new city on his own, has a girlfriend, and is starting a seemingly normal job at an up-and-coming graphic design company founded by his senior. you’re kind of given the impression in the first episode that everything unfortunate happening to jongwoo has nothing to do with himself. for the most part, you’re right.
but then we move on into later episodes and you get to see what these different unfortunate situations bring out inside of him. understandably, he’s reluctant to have anything to do with the people living in the residence, until he happens upon moonjo. he’s an aspiring writer, so he gets noticeably excited when someone wants to know more about his work, but the focus here is how much he hones in on the murderer character. how passionate he is about it.
and then as the show progresses, we see through fantasies and memories that jongwoo is actually very volatile, and despite the posture that gives off an air of timidness, he is not to be fucked with.
he left busan with a warning from his mother--that hell is other people--and i think with the scene where he’s acknowledging this in the bathroom at work, he’s realizing that he’s not so different without actually realizing it. at the end of the day, yoon jongwoo is paranoid, unpredictable, and very willing to choose the path of violence once that path becomes clear to him.
his relationship with jieun is important as well. min jieun isn’t inherently a bad person--she was just so caught up in her own situation with work that she dismissed a lot of the things that were happening to jongwoo. this unfortunate behavior sort of gave viewers a set in stone realization that jongwoo was very, very alone during all of this.
which brings me to seo moonjo. depicted initially in the show as your local handsome, friendly dentist who just so happens to be good with kids. he comes off as ever the good samaritan, willing to stay after hours to help a local police officer address a situation in need of immediate attention. but you already know something’s not right with him. even before you learn that he’s going to be staying in the eden residence, something’s not right with him.
and then he kills kihyuk, upset that the guy had killed someone so impulsively. ‘what i do is art’, he says, ‘not just murder’. following that sequence, we see him introduce himself to jongwoo, and he immediately seems interested in getting to know him better. by the end of the conversation, it’s obvious he’s set his sights on him. we as viewers know this show is going to have a lot more of the creepy dentist in it because of his interest in jongwoo’s murder story, and the line about how he got the feeling jongwoo was one of his kind.
everything with moonjo following that operates based on some sort of unspoken plan. something he has worked out among everyone, and especially ms. eom. everyone seems to be afraid of him. he speaks almost coldly to most of the others, but also politely. it’s obvious moonjo is very refined, and it’s also obvious that those around him do not matter to him. in fact, the only one he seems to care about is jongwoo.
i’m not going to go into detail about how he pops up everywhere in the show, because the only one that can truly be said isn’t a hallucination before the last episode is when junghwa sees him while she’s out with her dad. but it is obvious in plenty of other ways that he’s a stalker.
do i need to touch up on human meat at this point? if you know you know.
moving on, how this ties them together:
there’s been discussion in the tag before about how ‘jagiya’ translates directly to something like ‘oneself’. the differences aren’t important at first glance, but how they connect to lead to the one big similarity is important. jongwoo is paranoid and doesn’t trust people. he’s lonely, and he feels like he can’t get out. he feels trapped.
and moonjo, obviously using this to his advantage, has a handle on this. despite the fact that he downright terrifies jongwoo, he’s the one person in this entire situation who has jongwoo’s back. he understands where he’s coming from. if jongwoo would let him, he would listen. he’s good at listening, even. he’s patient. he’s probably gotten more attached to jongwoo than he intended, even if he’d known from the start he was going to fall in love with his own masterpiece.
the point i’m getting at is that these two were fated from the start. they’re both depraved in their own way, and they’re unique characters, but they also come together so well that the only way they can not be together at the end is for moonjo to not be alive. and even if he is dead, he’s still there, because jongwoo has become all-but an extension of him. or rather, because that part that was always moonjo is awakened within him.
they are, quite honestly, two halves of a dark, twisted, but somehow perfect whole.
