Ko Munyoung, South Korea's celebrated artist whose illustrations are throned in art galleries.
Moon Kangtae, Hotel Blue Moon's devious & unwilling owner. For some reason they're drawn into each other's paths; destiny you can say.
an: i'm really excited also pbio is ending tonight and this is how we can cope together :(( tell me if you'd like to be notified when chapter#1 is posted
Pairing: Moon-young/Kang-tae
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Poor attempt at smut.
Genre: Alternate universe (literary agent!Kangtae); friends with benefits
Notes: I blame Seo Ye Ji and that pink dress for this.
Their fights felt like dancing, their teasing felt like flirting. Their chemistry was undeniable. It simmered and brewed until it could no longer be ignored.
"There are a lot of people in this world who deserve to die. And some thoughtful freaks kill them for us in secret. That's why clueless civilians can sleep peacefully at night, completely unaware. Which one do you think I am?"
“Which one do you think I am?"
part 2 | read on page (not for the mobile app, but prettier)
There were a lot of things Moonyoung did not enjoy doing. Smiling unnecessarily. Being touched. Having to censor her books for the general public when their intended audience had no problems with her content. Meeting with obnoxious directors of large hospital chains that took advantage of people's suffering to make billions while looking like great philanthropists.
Ham and Gam hospitals hosted the largest paediatric wards in all of South Korea, with the country's best (highest paid, inflated, overconfident) paediatric doctors and surgeons on their staff. The ugly posters of smiling doctors (couldn't they have hired models?) and smiling children with assorted bullshit statistics stared at her as she sat there, doing one thing she hated so she wouldn't have to do another thing that she, unfortunately, hated more.
The earliest reviews of Zombie Kid were not looking good. Sangin was crying or yelling every time he spoke to her. The art was too gruesome, the story was too violent—of course it was too violent for the timid reviewers that read it from the safety of newspaper positions that afforded them the right to have no critical thinking whatsoever. Themes? Metaphors? These were the people who ate Cinderella up and pretended no feet were harmed in the making of this fairytale.
Still, she had a fanbase. Her books would sell, and, per Sangin, if she went to a hospital and read her books to children who needed money and medicine and possibly new organs, everyone would clap about her good deeds and forget all about the child that ate his mother.
If that had been all, Moonyoung wouldn't have minded. She liked readings; the terrorised but delighted little eyes staring up at her, eating up every word, learning something that a good many adults would never understand. The reading of this book did not have nearly as much drama as she would like, and any more cannibalism-based artwork had been ruled out, but it was still a good read. She made chewing noises as she read, and the children were delighted.
But it was not all.
And the truly generous Ham Kojeon had then had the audacity to postpone their meeting.
Moonyoung had nearly turned around and walked for the stairs, but Sangin was getting scarily fast at keeping up with her; his arm had popped up in her way before she could take a step down, and he'd dodged when she'd gone for her purse, then said something and gone to argue with the secretary.
"The director's been called into an urgent meeting," the secretary had told Sangin half an hour ago. "But the director has arranged snacks for you in the waiting room."
The waiting room in question surrounded the director's office, separated by frosted windows that gave a nice view into the room itself. Nothing was clear, but she could just about make out a pair of nice broad shoulders walking around the room. "Oh my," she said when the shoulders visibly walked around the desk to stare down at where the director was presumably sitting. "Has he delayed us to meet with a personal guest? How impolite."
Sangin glared at her. On the other side, his makeshift assistant giggled into her folder.
"Well, maybe I should go join them. Better view from inside. I deserve some entertainment too if he's going to keep me waiting."
Sangin hissed something about the people listening, even though it was just them and the director's secretary. Moonyoung rolled her eyes and turned away. Sometimes—just sometimes—she almost wished she valued her creative autonomy less than she did.
She shifted to relieving her frustration with all of this by grinding the metal heel of her boot into the metal leg of the chair and enjoying Sangin wincing every time she did it. The trick to something like that was variation. A few seconds of relief meant he wasn't expecting it when—
A thin distant alarm bell began to peal throughout the building, and Moonyoung laughed. "Can this day get any worse?"
Sangin groaned. "Wait a minute, let me go find out what's happened. Don't go anywhere!" he commanded, then gave the art director a look that said make sure she doesn't go anywhere. Then he ran off, presumably to interrogate someone poorly.
Moonyoung gave it a second, then got up and left. "Ms. Ko!" Poor little Seungjae called, but didn't make to follow. Moonyoung ignored her and went down the stairs. If nothing else, she needed a smoke break, especially if she was really expected to shake hands with Ham Kojeon after this.
She was halfway down the stairs when she saw it; a man in a patient's uniform dragging a child into what looked like a supplies closet. She followed at some distance, eyes narrowing, mind whirring uncomfortably. The girl was crying, but the alarm bells were loud enough on this floor that she wasn't audible over them—was that smoke she smelled? Had the man taken advantage of the fire, or had he started it?
When she slipped into the still-open closet door, the man was on his knees in front of the sobbing girl. "I'm your father!" he insisted. "I'm really your father! Why are you crying?"
"My father's dead!" the girl was repeating, eyes screwed shut, "You're not my father!"
"Listen to Daddy! I'm not dead! We both have to go together, do you hear me? Children can't live alone without their parents, that's why we both have to go at the same time!"
Moonyoung clicked her tongue. "What is this? Some kind of personality disorder? Delusions? I didn't realise it was that kind of hospital." She did hope the contempt came through. It worked; the man dropped the girl's arms, and turned to glare at her.
"Who the hell are you?" the man's voice faded between ordinary and not-quite-ordinary. Moonyoung frowned despite herself as his face seemed to shudder into something grotesque for a second—but when she blinked, it was just a grey-haired man with yellowing teeth. "This is between me and my daughter! Stay out of this!"
"She said she isn't your daughter," Moonyoung said. "If you want to die, die alone. If you want to live, don't steal others' children."
The man scrambled off his feet and came towards her. "Do you want to die? What the hell do you know? This is my daughter, and I'll do whatever the hell I like."
"Hearing problem?" she yelled, making an exaggerated gesture towards her ear. "I said, she—"
The man lunged towards her, and she slammed the hard end of her purse into his face, knocking him clean to the ground. The purse flew open, and her knife—too pretty for this place, with its carved handle and its surgical sharp tip—flew out of it to land somewhere beyond the man's hand.
He reared towards it, but he was on the ground, she was faster, and she stamped on his hand, keeping him from reaching the knife, and kicked it out of the way but somehow the man was up again. He jumped, and reached for her throat, grabbing her in a violent choke and banging her head onto the tile. A storage shelf crashed to the ground somewhere behind him. Her legs froze. The hands on her throat went from warm to cool to warm to cool to warm. "Die! Die! Why won't you just die!" a familiar face screamed. Hair floated in her vision, and the face blurred out.
The pressure on her throat lifted abruptly. She grabbed at her throat, air coming in way too fast, the imprint of cold—cold? warm—no—they had been cold, hadn't they?—hands around her throat still stinging, along with every uncomfortable nightmare they drew up.
When her vision re-adjusted, the man was wrestling with another man in a waistcoat. Consciousness returned. She was in Ham and Gam hospital. She was awake. She was an adult. And a piece of shit had just—fucking—strangled her—
She got to her feet and grabbed the knife.
Waistcoat had won, but that didn't help her. "I'll kill you all! All of you!" the man was shouting, even on the ground and clearly restrained by something. Her ears were still buzzing; the man's voice phased again, into something wrong, before it came back.
She lifted her arm, and brought the knife down—
It was a sharp knife. Moonyoung always ate her steak rare, red and raw enough to bleed if she cut into it too quickly—tough enough that no dull knife would cut through cleanly, without ugly ragged edges. This knife cut through her meat perfectly, even with little pressure. That was why she liked it.
It sliced cleanly through flesh, catching on bone too tough for it. She felt the fingers that closed around the knife in her own grip on it, surprisingly sensory. Blood dripped down a forearm and stained the cuff of a sleeve.
Waistcoat stared at her, and she stared back.
"I'd appreciate if you stayed out of this," she said.
The man with the knife currently embedded in his palm said, "Do you know how difficult it is to get stains out of a suit like this?"
"Are you with the hospital?" she asked. "There's a vermin infestation. I was just helping." she glanced down at the man whose arms were bound behind his back —by what, she couldn't see. He started shouting again as he realised her meaning, then promptly fainted, mid-word. She frowned, about to say something, when Waistcoat wrenched the knife from her palm, wringing his arm like a dog shaking water out of its fur. Little drops of blood landed around her heels. He began to wrap a bright silk handkerchief around the knife.
Moonyoung scoffed. "What, is the knife hurt? Why are you wrapping that around the knife?"
He didn't respond. She opened her palm in front of him. He looked up—finally. "Your hand," she said, "not the knife."
Waistcoat smiled. "Haven't you injured me enough right now?" he asked, and slipped the bandaged knife into his pocket.
"That's mine. "
"You tried to kill someone with it," he said.
She shrugged. "If he's Non-Compos Mentis, I can say I acted in self-defense. I was only going to give him a small cut with the knife, but you overreacted and injured yourself," she said, placing her unnerving smile on her lips. The man's lips quirked up, too—he had little dimples at the very corners, which made the smile far too cheerful for his otherwise unsmiling face.
"It landed in my palm, so it's mine now," he said, then cocked his head. "That was a lot of power for a small cut."
She smiled, and grabbed a handkerchief from her own purse. "There are a lot of people in this world who deserve to die," she said, grabbing his palm—apparently, she hadn’t injured him enough just yet. She began to wrap that around his hand, and it stained the red immediately, creating a deep blush in the center—blood in blood. "And some thoughtful freaks kill them for us in secret. That's why clueless civilians can sleep peacefully at night, completely unaware." She tugged the handkerchief shut, smiling when he shuddered. "Which one do you think I am?"
Waistcoat's smile widened. He looked to the unconscious man on the ground, then to his hand, and then to her. "Just a clueless civilian,” he said, after she had stabbed him clean through the palm, held hard enough that the steak knife would go through skin and artery easier than meat. “But which one do you think I am?"
The happiness that bubbled up at her unforeseen appearance has twisted and crystalized into a rancid pool of disappointment and melancholy at her just as sudden disappearance.
Excerpt from Stronger Part 3 when the GT gets a wake up call and the groveling starts! Hoping to post it tomorrow or Wednesday. I just really like this paragraph and wanted to share.
A/N: A drabble-ish thing set somewhere during and at the end of episode 6
Rating: K
Summary: In which the cursed castle begins to see a ray of light.
A hand to the cheek.
Soft and spreading a sense of something she doesn't quite know, but that she knows she wants more of.
A smile that that crinkles at the corners and seems to light up the room. It’s dazzling and it sparks that unnamed thing inside her. She wants to reach for it. Wants to keep it and hold it close.
Sounds of the living in a once empty house. A haunted house, cursed with ghosts that lurked in every corner, where formless hands scrape along the wood and soundless whispers shriek in the night.
“You’re mine,” it said.
“You will never escape.”
But the windows are open, and she hears the puttering of people, living people in the kitchen below, and somehow, in the midst of it all, the whispers fade away.
The nightmares come again. But perhaps nightmares aren't the correct term. Night terrors? It holds her in its grasp, claws deep into her skin and pins her to the spot. The chill seeps into her bones, leaching away the precious warmth she so managed to grab. It surrounds her with its emptiness. Cold hands lock her down and she tries not to make a noise. She strangles her voice before the specter above her can do so.
It stares her in the face even as she wants to look away. It reminds her of its strength. How she is nothing but its creation. That her childish grab at that unnamed thing does nothing but rouses its anger. And its anger is dangerous, she remembers.
“Ko Moon-young!” She hears again. This time much closer and a terror awakens her screams. He cannot be here. She will come for you! She wants to say, but she can’t stop crying, can't stop screaming. Because he is here and she will come for him. And he needs to leave, this man who somehow shines with something that feels warm.
“Ko Moon-young!” A voice sounds in the distance, muffled through the pounding of her heart.
She clutches on to him even as she tells him to go. But he doesn't.
Instead, he wraps his arms around her. Solid arms that block out the chill of the Specter. A ghost she doesn't see anymore. Doesn’t hear anymore. He holds her closer wrapping her completely up in him, entangling them so that all she can feel is his pulse. All she can hear is the beats of his heart.
