#lmn:app

[liminalrp]

WELCOME TO CENTER POINT, NA SAEM

Age Twenty Five Occupation Music Producer Length of Residence 4 Months Apartment Top Floor, Even Unit, North-Facing Add-Ons Floor T10, Unit #10

Those on Floor T10 have something to hide. 

Tenants that live in units that start with #1 should avoid using cameras past 11:30pm, as they’ll see something that they won’t want to see.

Trigger Warnings: None

saem is born into a world where he’s given everything but the things that he needs. barefoot on the hardwood floor, he wakes up and wanders the apartment, lonely and cold. outside the new york skyline is covered by a thick fog of what he realizes is snow. his parents are gone. the nanny is reading a magazine from a year ago in the sitting room. he plays with his toys alone, silently. for as long as he can remember, it’s always been like this.

he grows up, moves to a new country and in this place, he’s going to school wandering the halls looking for something. like a wallflower, he’s wilting. he’s just barely into his teens now and he realizes that something’s wrong with him. a dread builds up in him and when he looks around him and realizes he’s alone in an empty house.

he becomes a trainee because it seems like the right thing to do, he’s aways been interested in singing and dancing. lone in the spotlight, being judged by a panel of corporate music faces, he’s decided to be worthy and given a contract. being a trainee is hard, it sucks, and he grows to resent dancing being forced to do it for hours a day. even singing sucks, he’s never allowed to be apart of the process, his voice being critique and pushed in such a way that it doesn’t sound much like himself anymore. but at least he’s not alone, he has friends, all going through the same thing.

saem thinks he’s ready for this, prepared for the spotlight. but with all eyes on him, he can’t picture anything worse. the support from millions of people he doesn’t know doesn’t make it better. it feels phony, like he’s constantly living a lie, having to wear such a thick mask it doesn’t feel like himself. so he finds time to escape, in one night stands, in things that help numb him, steady the shake in his hand.

he leaves. he doesn’t tell the company about the text he’s gotten from one of his flings telling him that she’s pregnant. saem somehow finds a way to get out of the contract, telling them that he really can’t cope anymore. and once he’s free from some of the obligation, he feels... different. not necessarily better but different. he allows himself time to heal, for the birth of his daughter, and to experience things that he once loved.

saem finds sanity in making music, not for himself, at least not always. he sells a lot of it back to the same companies that he hates so much. every single time he regrets it, hearing the technical changes to his music that’s made mainstream and easily digestible. but he needs to keep himself busy and make some kind of money. when he looks around himself, things haven’t changed much. his apartment is lonely, except for the two furry animals that prance around on their padded paws. his daughter is far away in another country, forgetting about him until he becomes a name on a check or a tasteless, generic gift.

saem is living the same day, everyday, in the hope that something will change. but he’s afraid, confident, it never will.

[liminalrp]

WELCOME TO CENTER POINT, SEO YEJUN

Age Twenty One Occupation Unemployed Length of Residence 4 months Apartment Bottom Floor, Odd Unit, East-Facing Add-Ons Odd Unit #11, Floor B2

Tenants that live in units that start with #11: Every tongue that rises against them shall fall. Figuratively speaking (for the most part). Only no amount of horrid luck on their enemies is going to change theirs for the better.

Those living in Floor B2 are being terrorized by strange happenings that appears to be the work of a vengeful ghost.

Trigger Warnings: None

walk.

yejun is afraid. he walks the corridors of his childhood home, remembering all the times he cowers in its corners. his father’s deep booming voice drowning out his mother’s voice, his sister’s laugh. all he remembers about the house is pain, an uncomfortable gnawing feeling that had always chewed his insides and left him with an empty hollow feeling afterward. even now, the house doesn’t seem so scary, with its clean floors and polished china. nothing is out of place, the picturesque family home that any young family would dream of. but to him, it’s just a bad dream, one that seems so distant but comes back to him like overwhelming waves when he’s smells something like his mother’s perfume or sees the brand of white button downs his father used to always wear.

sleep.

yejun was in love. his childhood best friend, the one he’d always looked for when things felt like too much to carry on his weak and tired shoulders. yejun learned to share some of it, to let him carry some of his burden and in turn yejun learned to carry his. wrapped in his arms, it would seem so natural, a moon orbiting the earth and pulling its waves to shore at a gentle lull. yejun felt no pain here, even when they argued, it was always out of love and respect. yejun found himself able to tell him things, things he never told anyone, about his father, those men at clubs who treated him nice only to want something at the end of the night, his mother who he missed so much. and in turn, he’d be rewarded with a light airy feeling at the base of his chest where a weight used to sit, fester. it was healing now, shrinking into a size so small, it hardly existed.

wake.

yejun wakes up. he’s not sure whether he was just a dream, or maybe he wasn’t and died in yejun’s sleep. some part of him can still feel his warm fingertips grasping his wrist, pulling him up from his sinking hole of addiction, trauma, and neglect, but in most moments it just feels like a ghost knocking on his door, only to be gone when yejun finds the courage to investigate. he doesn’t cry; can he? for someone he’s not sure he ever knew, for a lover that he’s not sure he’s ever lost, for a life he’s not sure he’s ever lived? when he wakes, his addiction is still running it’s course in his bloodstream and his thought still raging back and forth between two extremes of high highs and low lows.

walk.

he’s in a new universe now, where everything bad still exists, vivid memories like terrible hauntings, and everything good, he’s lost, like waking up too fast from a dream. he lives in a universe without his soulmate but remembers every single part of him. and exists, craving what he’s sure now he never had, not in this lifetime anyway, too scared to sleep and dream of a boy he once loved, in a distant place somewhere between real life and the next.

[liminalrp]

WELCOME TO CENTER POINT, TOUKA HIROSE

Age Twenty Four Occupation Radio Host Length of Residence 6 months Apartment Middle Floor, Odd Unit, South-Facing Add-Ons Odd Unit #1

Tenants that live in units that start with #1 should avoid using cameras past 11:30pm, as they’ll see something that they won’t want to see.

Trigger Warnings: None

“we’re getting close to the end of this program, so thank you everyone for allowing me, your host; none other than your always caffeine driven-widely awake kahi to be with you on this quiet night with your favorite songs, stories, and everything else your heart wants to share with all of us. we have one last song for all of you, it was a suggestion by an anonymous caller and it’s… oh, come on, you guys! really? thriller?! i guess it’s because we’re close to halloween! Here‘s a 1984 hit song, ‘thriller’, by the amazing and incomparable legend, michael jackson.”

on cue, the song begins to play. she sinks back into the chair. she is wearing the kind of sweater that swallows her up instead of hanging off her shoulders in a fitting form. when she closes her eyes, it feels just like 3am back in her bed.

‘… under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart …’

touka hirose is a strange creature. a strange creature who is folded twice over her own soul. as a child, her smile was wide and effortless. the dry heat of the summer could be layered onto the island and yet she would be going at it for days. a weary traveler, a foolish and gentle spy. sneakily filling her stomach with strawberries from their backyard and feeling the soft grass tickle her toes were among her favourite things. a young sakura lurks through life like it is an old house, teasing the wallpaper until it falls down. layer by layer, story by story. motions to people with the edge of her voice, with a change of expression. they say her talents overflow, they stem from her never-ending curiosity.

‘… you fell the cold hand and wonder if you’ll ever see the sun …’

mid november and the sky is greying. she doesn’t say much from behind the window as she watches droplets of rain hit the glass with a ‘tap' and by now she knows better than to light all the dark rooms in her house. and she can feel it, the tide of the past july. it’s like this one morning she looks across the dinner table and everything that has ever been left unspoken was being said. no one ever had to tell her anything, she always managed to catch snippets of what was happening around her, observation had been but a hobby to her for as long as she could remember and the sight of her mother crying was something unfamiliar to her, something she would notice right away. touka can see it now, the way her mother speaks in dim lit words, the way her father’s name escapes her mother’s. how often do we wear smiles that hurt, smiles that tell us we have endured too long? touka feels heavy and the worst thing is, she knows the weather of departure; the humid air, the rain pouring announcing that winter is near.

‘…. this is the end of your life. they’re out to get you. there’s demons closing on every side …’

by now, she is a messy book, filled with half read sentences, marked up paragraphs, folded corners and empty pages. she doesn’t let people in, only a few have trickled deep within the small gaps between the pages, and somehow the book opens up a little and she gives them a chapter. she feels with a terrible intensity. too many vowels in her mouth, too many crumpled up pages in her pockets. her mouth twisted into rivers, pouring into too many oceans at once. at times, she says quite a lot and nothing at all. she always takes too little and gives too much. reaches for anything, finding joy in the most rare of places. comes and goes, disappears like mist rising in the sky. maybe she is a liminal space. an in-between. a gas station on a longer journey. blurry, dreamlike. a threshold. an exhilarating parenthesis. she is simply someone searching for — a phrase, a light, a fire. the signs along the way.

she leans forward towards the microphone when the song begins to finish.

“… it’s now my time to go. and like always, i leave you in this late night with a song of my choosing. this is Thank you by Led Zeppelin. sweet dreams, everyone.”

[liminalrp]

WELCOME TO CENTER POINT, FRANCESA ABE

Age Twenty Four Occupation Unemployed Length of Residence 6 months Apartment Top Floor (Serviced), Odd Unit, North-Facing Add-Ons Odd Unit #1

Tenants that live in units that start with #1 should avoid using cameras past 11:30pm, as they’ll see something that they won’t want to see.

Trigger Warnings: None

Fill in the gaps.

The story sounds more exciting than it actually is. Father is a guy who’s a big deal in the 80s and 90s but people don’t care so much anymore when they hear his name. Marcel Wilson means barely anything in 2021. Mother is a girl all of 19 named Madoka, a flight attendant. The two of them meet at an airport bar, and for two weeks they’re a thing. Then three months late Madoka finds out she’s pregnant, hits Marcel up and when he denies any responsibility she hits him with a paternity suit. It’s a whole ordeal in the tabloids for a few months, stuck sitting in the bottom corner of US Weekly but it doesn’t matter, it’s not really important. Only the ending result is: the court says Marcel is the dad and both Marcel’s marriage nearly collapses. Nearly.

Here’s the collateral: Marcel doesn’t want the kid, neither does Madoka, there’s never any accounting of what actually happens to the baby once the lawsuit is over and the money is paid out, just a simple of statement of fact that no one actually wants her. So Madoka leaves her in Honolulu at her parents house when maternity leave ends. Then she gets on another flight off to somewhere better, away from the shitty old house her parents raised her in. She names the baby Francesca before she goes because little girls need pretty names, even the unwanted ones.

Grandma says a lot of things, mostly how girls shouldn’t be made of vices. Incidentally, Francesca is a girl filled with vices; flawed to the very core. She’s no good in school, spends too much time staring out the window daydreaming about this and that and any free time is spent with Uncle’s record collection or skating up and down the street until the street lights come on and Grandma calls out to her in her raspy voice with her heavily accented english. “Too much like your mother”, Grandma likes to mumble under he breath, “no good. no good. no good.”

She’s always trying to fill some endless void. Like Sisyphus with that fucking boulder. Looking for love in the wrong people, looking for approval in people who don’t care, searching for things eternally denied. The process goes on ad nauseum. There are words for people like her, most of them boil down to something near masochism. “I just want to prove to myself,” She tells her therapist in her very last session before she ghosts for good, “I just want to prove that I’m something people can love. I just want to be the little kid who’s parents put their artwork up on the refrigerator. That’s not a crime, is it?”

Side story: First time in a long time she sees Madoka they’re both at LAX. “You drink right?” Madoka asks, and it dawns on Francesca that maybe Madoka can’t remember her brithday, doesn’t know if her only daughter is 21 yet or maybe she’s a little younger. Doesn’t matter, Madoka takes her back to the bar anyways and orders her a manhattan. “It’s good.” she says. It’s not. And for an hour Madoka talks her ear off. Talks about her flight to Buenos Aries and the shitty guy in business class, and how fight attending isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and how she’s got to borrow from her 401k to stay afloat sometimes. And the whole time Francesca can’t stop bouncing her leg and watching the way condensation accumulates on the glass. Her flight is probably boarding right now, and all the while Madoka is talking ceaselessly, saying more to Francesca in the instance than she’s said over the course of her own life, but if she listens closely Francesca swears she can hear someone calling the final boarding call for her flight. “You know,” Madoka says while Francesca’s slowly getting up, trying to figure out the best way to make a polite exist and praying to god the plane hasn’t taken off, “You know maybe I should’ve been a mother to you. Maybe we both would’ve ended up better off for it.” The plane ends up taking off without Francesca.

She runs away a lot, probably gets it from Madoka. First she goes to New York under the idea that maybe for once in her life she’ll try to get closer to Marcel. Then the rug gets pulled from under her and Marcel dies* and some stupid boy breaks her heart and Francesca’s too sensitive and weak to deal with any of it so she runs to California under the guise that it’ll fix her depression. (Spoiler Alert: LA only makes depression worse). Then back to Hawaii, back to Honolulu because Grandpa is getting old and senile and Grandma can’t really handle him on his own. “It’s time to grow up,” Grandma tells her, “you can’t run forever your feet can only go so far.”

*Footnote: Marcel leaves his entire estate to Francesca. There’s a threat of litigation from his last wife but nothing ever materializes. His only child gets the whole $200 million. Doesn’t make up for a father. Doesn’t hurt either.

The shocker is Grandma dies first, peacefully in her sleep after visiting Grandpa earlier that day. No suffering, no pain. Just Francesca crying at her bedside before the paramedics take her away. Grandpa asks what happened to the nice woman that used to visit, he can’t remember that she was his wife, though he asks about her too. The staff says he tells the picture of Grandma good night every night, just like he did when he was home. And then on some unimportant Tuesday not long after Grandpa goes to be with Grandma because everyone knows he could never bear the thought of being away from her and Francesca is alone again.

Madoka comes back, just for the funerals and to settle the estates. She hugs Francesca for the first time in what feels like forever, and apologizes that she had to deal with it all alone and something in Francesca wants to breakdown but instead she claps her mother on the back and tells her it’s okay, and comforts Madoka as she drowns in her own loss and self pity. “I’ll be the mother you wanted now,” Madoka tells Francesca, “the mother you always deserved.“

Epilogue: Francesca runs out one night. She’s good at running, feet hitting the pavement, going going going until she ends up in Ville City. Madoka leaves her a voicemail, asks her where she’s run off to and why. Francesca never replies, she just keeps running.

[liminalrp]

INCOMING RESIDENTS

Until 10/27

Bae Joohyun (Irene) › Red Velvet

Until 10/28

Komatsu Nana › Actor* 

Until 10/29

Im Nayeon › Twice

For 10/29

None as of now!

[liminalrp]

INCOMING RESIDENTS

Until 10/24

Im Jaebum (JAYB) › Soloist*

Until 10/25

Komatsu Nana › Actor

For 10/29

None as of now!

[liminalrp]

WELCOME TO CENTER POINT, REID WEITZMANN

Age Twenty Four Occupation Electrician Length of Residence 6 years Apartment Middle Floor, Odd Unit, North-Facing Add-Ons Floor M6

Those on Floor M6 are sometimes struck with a strong, inexplicable sensation of vertigo. Some say that it’s because the floor itself physically shifts.

Trigger Warnings: None

model of the week: reid weitzmann was booked for alexander mcqueen the same weekend he was signed

august 14, 2021

reid was shot exclusively for models.com by vincent ogunleye, with styling by hsiang-chien so, in london.

name reid weitzmann

agencies img models (london) next (paris) morph mgmt (seoul)

instagram @reid.weitzmann

place of origin auckland, new zealand

ethnic origin my mum’s korean and my dad’s a settler (white)

how were you discovered? i was visiting family in london, actually. we ate at some touristy pizza parlor that apparently had the best nolio in town, real stuff, no dominos or hell pizza. i stood around with my sister trying to find our way through to another destination using google maps, until hunter stopped me and handed over a leaflet from img models. seemed legit. did a few test shoots, walked a few times. i thought i was gonna get swindled, then a few days later i’m backstage with alexander mcqueen, working on vacation.

what was your first modeling job? not entirely sure if this counts, but i’m in a band and we had to shoot the jacket cover to our ep. my friend is a photography student so she hooked us up with editing, the images, so forth. my first actual modeling gig was when i got flown out to berlin to shoot a lookbook for hugo boss. on the flight back home i got food poisoning. maybe it was a bad sausage, i don’t know.

what do you like to do when you’re off duty? i practice a lot. i enjoy touching up my rudiments, so thank god for electronic drum kits or else i might’ve pissed off my neighbors. i also like watching movies, psychological thrillers and dark fantasies are some of my favorite genres. i’ve been slacking lately but i can also catch some waves as i’ve recently invested in a new surfboard.

what are you listening to at the moment? everyone dubs me as the “rock guy” but i listen to everything. i think to be a musician, really, should mean appreciation for a little bit of everything. some days i find myself chilling to sarah vaughn, other days fka twigs or talking heads. the one album i’ve had on heavy rotation is danny brown’s atrocity exhibition.

what were you doing before modeling? i had just graduated from high school. i don’t know how people miss those five years but y'know, i guess. umm, i was mostly gigging around town whether with my group or with other local musicians. going in and out of recording sessions. should’ve been contemplating something like university but didn’t really feel the need to.

do you have a memorable experience from modeling? i love meeting new people from all over the world, it makes me realize how new zealand is so small. my work husband turned brother is from senegal, and i think he’s about the coolest person to walk the earth. i met him after a jacquemus show in paris, so now we complete each other.

favorite designer and/or beauty product? i think fendi is pretty cool. i really liked the outfit i walked in during milan fashion week, then again green is my favorite color so i could be biased. i also like the punk-rock/edgy energy saint laurent has, so i’d like to get booked one day, who knows. i’m not really a fashion head to be honest? i also can’t live without lip balm, so i always have one on me. drunk elephant!

what was your family’s reaction with modeling? my mom laughed, though she thought i should give it a shot. she’s been pretty supportive, but i agreed and thought my agent was high when he was like, “he’s got a good face! a good, unusual face!”. as someone who grew up ugly, it’s kinda weird seeing how the tables have turned.

any funny story times from your career? fun fact but actually sad fact, my recent digitals were taken just three hours after i had a thirty-minute crying session because my girlfriend of two years broke up with me. the polaroids are my best though, i think.

is there something you would like to say about the industry? a job is a job. i don’t think i’m doing anything boundary breaking. the industry is still pretty white, able bodied and pertaining to a specific bodily aesthetic. every time you take ten steps into inclusiveness, twenty steps seems to go back.

[liminalrp]

WELCOME TO CENTER POINT, JONAH TANILON

Age Twenty Five Occupation Electrician Length of Residence 1 year Apartment Middle Floor, Odd Unit, North-Facing Add-Ons Odd Unit #07

Tenants that live in units that start with #07 at a glance look like every sense of the word blessed. The kicker here is that they’ve been siphoning luck off of everyone they come into contact with ever since moving to Center Point.

Trigger Warnings: Death mention 

love, you find, usually takes one of two shapes:

(1) on a good day, it’s dad’s laughter — on july 20th, 2007, he’s laughing at the intense color of your sunburned shoulders.

(2) on an average day, it’s mom’s scolding — on july 21st, 2007, she’s telling you off for not wearing sunscreen and telling dad off for not making you.

it’s always like that, isn’t it?

always you and dad, getting into some kind of trouble, from sunburns so severe that the freckles persist over a decade later to stealing candy and flowers from the supermarket, and it’s always mom telling you exactly what you did wrong before she picks up your pieces. it’s a good life, you’ll recall years down the line, when dad’s face isn’t quite as clear in your memory and mom’s stopped answering your calls.

/

2010 is when it happens. the summer of 2010, at that.

dad’s gone in a flash (“i’m sorry,” the doctors say, because what else can they say to a fourteen-year-old boy who’s just lost the most important figure in his life?) and the funeral’s held on a perfect weather day. something about it digs at you. the sweat in your eyes, maybe, or the fact that no amount of hoping is enough to make the clouds move in, make the weather match the occasion.

something breaks. you’re moving too much and mom’s elbow keeps rubbing up against yours — she tells you to keep still and you tell her you wish it had been her.

neither of you will speak another word to each other for the next month.

/

you learn that things will never go back to normal.

still, that doesn’t mean that you don’t try. you let mom cut your hair when it gets too long, let her show you the ropes of being a beautician, running a salon. sometimes you even humor that idea of hers — working with her after graduation, making it a family business. both of you know it won’t happen, because you’re already too deeply dedicated to a different craft if those callouses on your fingers and packs of shoplifted guitar strings are anything to go by, but it’s the thought that counts and you’ve (almost) always meant well.

it’s just that your grades aren’t what they used to be and business isn’t what it used to be, either. all your pants keep ripping in the same place (always behind the left knee) and mom’s tired of reminding you that she doesn’t have the money to replace your wardrobe every other month. (you’re equally as tired of telling her that you’re not sure how it’s happening).

you can try all you want, but things still get worse and you slowly forget how to say the important things to mom, like “i love you” and “i’m sorry” because you’re always too busy avoiding her stare in the salon mirror.

she looks at you like she doesn’t know you, let alone know what to do with you.

/

the music thing didn’t work out. the ‘film school’ thing didn’t work out, either — and could you believe that interior design fell through, too? (you applied to a ‘gap year’ program, but they told you that they didn’t accept drop-outs. it put some things into perspective.)

you’ve always been a dreamer, so when you leave ville city for a year and come back a certified electrician, your friends aren’t sure what to say beyond ‘good for you…? i guess?’ and you’re not sure what to say, either. your life wasn’t supposed to be like this. at twenty-four years old, you’re certain that you’ve already peaked.

but after six unsuccessful weeks of apartment-hunting and couch-surfing, you find a not-too-big, not-too-small apartment for less than some of the one-rooms you’ve checked out, and it’s the last one available.

(you must have finally paid off your dues, the way your luck’s been looking up ever since.)