( TXT / Jeyun ) “Your best suit is at the dry cleaner’s”
( TXT / Jeyun ) That one was from Mom
( TXT / Jeyun ) “I’m already home and I’m not fetching your clothes, so figure it out like the big kid you are now”
( TXT / Jeyun ) That one’s from me. Don’t be late 👋
NOW
She's chasing time, if not by her limbs, then by the way her eyes dart from the hands of the antique cherry grandfather clock in the foyer to her lap and back again. There could be metaphors of perpetual restlessness here, spun pretty to the imagery of beating wings, a blur of dove feathers and whatever else. But there’s nothing inherently lovely about her deep lack of patience, which only ever keeps Jeah on the constant edge of her seat, nude ankle strap heels tap-tap-tapping against the tiles.
Tonight’s game plan: a clean sweep of handshakes, backhanded compliments, handed off flutes of bubbly before it’s hand over hand at the wheel with the car driving the hell out of there. Funny to think back she’d been of the belief that these gatherings would be the last of her troubles, only to find they’re at the very forefront.
With the baby to thank for all of this, naturally.
Heavy lies the head that wears the crown, or something. In other words, responsibilities that most certainly don’t count in her track record.
The whine of the door hinges has Jeah standing, the sigh that escapes her lips something along the lines of Finally. “Awesome.” She grabs the keys and her purse. “Kim’s off for tonight, so it’s on us to get there.” Pause, curious glance over her shoulder. “You got everything?”
[ squirt » 21:37 ] Is there any reason you look good today, Jeyun-ssi?
[ squirt » 21:37 ] ^___^
( / taps on your shoulder in passing, hands retreating to himself in pretense of not having touched you at all. his phone’s shoved back into his pocket, no real urgency in needing to see your potential reply all nice and pretty on his lock screen. at the corner of his eye, the ceiling lamp flickers over your head, the latter sleek but not slick. it’s 9-something, yessir. close to 10. hoping you don’t mind that he’s only showing up now (smellin’ like a seven-course-meal haphazardly reduced to three-and-a-half merely due to survivors’ guilt, at that), he sighs and makes his way back to your side of the room, steps measured, careful, slow. )
( / smiles with the corners of his mouth pulled in, taking the liberty to perch himself on the edge of your workspace, arms crossed over his chest as he watches you in curiosity more than anything else, ^___^’ing out loud once he’s done giving you the nth once-over within the span of your ten minutes together. )
it’s early in the evening and the envoy is on a flight bound for hong kong, lounging in her business class seat with a glass of red wine in one hand and a book in another. unfortunately, there’s no one accompanying her this time, aside from a personal guard sitting behind her. last minute decisions and such didn’t give her enough time to call someone to join her.
but that’s fine.
she has plenty of contacts in hong kong as well.
its a four hour flight and for the most part, liying kills time by having the attendants refill her glass as she reads her novel, earphones tuning out the noise from the other passengers with some mondo grosso. not exactly ideal reading music, but the woman could care less. for the first three hours, she remains silent in her seat, immersed in the tale of queen briseis.
in the final hour, she lifts her gaze from the page to finally survey the other passengers, dark eyes landing on the young man in the seat on the other side of the aisle. there’s some familiarity in his features, but liying doesn’t recall ever seeing him. her stare rests on him for a few more seconds before a flight attendant stops in front of her, asking her if she’ll have another refill. of course, she nods.
( TXT / Jeyun ) .image_attachment( TXT / Jeyun ) Caldo de castillo. Works miracles on hangovers apparently 😃( TXT / Jeyun ) What did you have for breakfast?
☎ — A RUSHED TEXT
( TXT / Jeyun ) K
ø — A LATE NIGHT TEXT (PAST)
( TXT / Jeyun ) No…I won’t be able to come home at all until tomorrow morning( TXT / Jeyun ) Could you relay that to mom for me please? 🙏( TXT / Jeyun ) If she asks just tell her I’m studying over at a friend’s IDK be creative
✘ — A HATEFUL TEXT
( TXT / Jeyun ) For fuck’s sake, it’s not that hard.
@ — A SCARED TEXT
( TXT / Jeyun ) Please pick up.
& — A LOVING TEXT
( TXT / Jeyun ) Okay, but that bowlcut was hilariously endearing.( TXT / Jeyun ) Our very own future gagman, Oh Jeyun 👏
% — A CURIOUS TEXT (PAST)
( TXT / Jeyun ) So dad finally told you huh( TXT / Jeyun ) Batter up, baby bro
ツ — AN EXCITED TEXT
( TXT / Jeyun ) Guess who bagged the internship?
$ — AN ACCIDENTAL TEXT
( TXT / Jeyun ) What the fuck is wrong with you? Is your brain smaller than your stupid puny dick? Are you out of your goddamn mind? ( TXT / Jeyun ) Get that shit done BY TONIGHT, Jehan. ( TXT / Jeyun ) Oh shoot
D.O.B. 23 December 2024 (23)
I.D. Mob, Heir Apparent, Joker
Oh Jeyun is born to mother Seo [omitted] and father Oh [omitted], the youngest of three and three weeks premature but it’s nothing three nannies at the Oh matriarch’s constant beck and call can’t offset.
He is pushed to the wayside as concerns regarding the first son and daughter take precedence. Bully for Jeyun, he learns to expect and accept his status as youngest for what it is:
Freedom. More specifically, the freedom to shut himself away—nothing but painful noogies from his despot of a brother await outside.
Jeyun is more than happy to keep to himself as his siblings stir beyond the confines of his rooms. He is the precocious, reticent youngest with an appreciation for the outdated: dusty books, a Meiji-era baduk board, the African mahogany Steinway some ten times his age.
It is with nose nuzzled into the Kingdom of Narnia and while musing about how the Oh clan might benefit with one more girl in the mix when Papa Oh shakes him out of his reverie to announce the arrival of another sausage. And a dirt-streaked one, at that.
He voluntarily plays accompaniment for his sister for as long as he can remember but when she drops out of the competition circuit he voluntarily steps in her place. It is something of a life-changing moment and a cog in his head begins to crank.
Jeyun steps up to claim his first trophy days after his older brother earns himself a shiny new badge of his own. Before Jeyun can begin to process how suspect his brother’s attendance at the awards ceremony is, he ducks out of the auditorium and it is the last Jeyun’s seen of him.
A few accolades later and Jeyun matriculates to music school to nonexistent fanfare.
When a year passes with no word from the exiled tyrant assface, his sister on the fast-track to a legitimately respectable livelihood, and the dirt-streaked sausage afflicted and looking less appetizing by the day, he conscripts into the military and waits it out.
He returns to his favorite: spicy roe cream pasta, a welcoming gift from Mama Oh. But mid-first-bite Papa Oh drops the news that the dirt-streaked sausage has shed its casing and passed the kingdom to him and so Jeyun pretends to choke most violently on a noodle.
They’ve finished with self-introductions and a quiet blankets the air. Jeyun picks at the assortment of fruits that he’s just ordered, slimy cantaloupe and fuzzy bananas and grapes on the cusp of fermentation, then depletes the remainder of his drink. He stabs one of the grapes with the edge tine and point of his fork, watching with keen detachment as juice bubbles out of skin.
“Hey, Jeyun,” the other man says.
“Yes, Minho?”
Minho lowers his voice. “I... have a question for you.”
Jeyun’s eyes are bright and he leans forward. “Please.”
“Do you love bugs?”
“They’re all right,” Jeyun replies, leaning back. “Why, do you?”
“Yeah,” Minho says. “Because even though they can run, and sometimes fly, I can catch them in my hands.” He claps his hands and reveals his palms slowly to demonstrate.
“Hm…” Jeyun scrunches up his face in thought. “You’re onto something. I don’t think I’ve ever caught anything that can run or fly apart from a bug.”
“Exactly.”
Jeyun takes a bite of melon that snaps and melts between his teeth. He munches ruefully. From the way they are both boring holes into the surface of the table it’s clear they’re both thinking about a good follow-up. “Well, now that we’re on the topic,” Jeyun mumbles first, covering his mouth to retain propriety, “I’ve just thought of something.”
“Shoot.”
“I think it must have been one of those weekends where I didn’t have much to do but didn’t want to stay holed up in the house.”
“Uh-huh.” Minho nods.
“I’d just finished getting lunch with a former high school classmate who now works as a paralegal in a medium-sized firm in Yeoksam. We were both in a weird place that day. I’d just come from a blind date the previous night where the other girl turned out to be an underclassman who’d famously stalked me for a semester, while my friend had just flunked his bar exams—his dreams of becoming a high-profile prosecutor effectively dashed. You know, the bigger the dream, the worse failure sits with you.”
Minho knows the feeling well. But where was Jeyun going with this? He nods his head again. “Yeah.”
“Anyway, we decided to spend the afternoon together without concrete plans and ended up at a subway platform. It was there that I happened to step on a piece of gum. Attached to the gum was a flyer for insect and pest extermination. Initially I panicked and pulled my foot out of my shoe because all these ants had encircled the wad of gum and were I to lift my foot I would have lifted the flyer and the colony with it. The gum must have been for bubble-blowing instead of breath-freshening. The sugary stuff.
“But the panic quickly vanished and I took a closer look at the scene while hobbling on one foot. I thought it was terribly funny. How these ants were running up and down and all around the surface of the flyer. Thrown into a harsh urban environment where they had to fend for themselves. Only to end up finding refuge on this lonesome, ratty flyer. A flyer whose express purpose was to spray them into extinction, or at least advocate for as much.”
“Dark territory you’re treading into here, Jeyun.”
“And the flyer itself was something else. On any other day I might not have paid it any attention. Just a photo of an ant scaled large enough to inspire disgust, a silhouetted figure in bib-and-brace overalls poised to kill, and a toll-free phone number. But I found that I couldn’t stop staring. Were the ants even aware of what they were standing on? Did they recognize this larger-than-life ant as a friend? When they saw the bright pink wad of gum this probably hadn’t crossed their minds. So was this their way of making their stance clear? Stomping their tiny feet over the mystery exterminator as means of exacting revenge? Overcoming the distance, running across the body of their giant-friend so all they could see and feel was this giant-friend, as if somehow this would lift the giant-friend from the paper? And was I the only one watching this tragedy play out? I must have been staring for five whole minutes.”
“That so,” Minho manages, voice hoarse. He can barely recognize it himself.
The conversation breaks a second time and they both wait for something to come of their drunkenness but for a long while nothing does and they sit in silence.
Jeyun’s story has gotten Minho into a funk. He envisions Time at the end of this bar, one skeletal finger tracing around the rim of his drink as another finger pages through a black book of names and he settles on one name, Minho’s name, and recognition lights up Time’s face. Time waves at Minho and tells him not to worry, mortal, the exterminator will be swinging by any time now.
A heady peat lingers at the back of his mouth. Minho chalks it up to the last swig of rye. When he brings the glass down, Jeyun has his head knocked back with eyes shut and the bump of his throat painted in chiaroscuro. Minho spares a few seconds to ponder upon and admire the image before questioning it. “Hey, Jeyun,” he says, a little incredulously.
“Yes, Minho?”
“You’re not lying to me, are you. All of this. For show.”
Jeyun braces one hand on his chair and sits back up, blinking red eyes rapidly. “No,” he says, and his voice is clear. “No no no, Minho, I’m not.” Minho eyes him carefully, but Jeyun remains unfazed, “I’ve wanted to tell this story for quite some time. The opportunity just happened to present itself tonight. So thank you.”
