#re.event1

[reaygul]

open !

there are remnants of her life that she still can’t kick in the programme. insomnia is one of them; li’er is far too used to staying up well past a healthy time, obsessively working. in the afterlife, there’s no need for that particular bad habit, but there’s also no need for actual sleep — so she finds herself giving in to the circadian rhythms that came pre-progammed into her avatar. it’s not unusual for her to be wandering around late at night, anyway; there are familiar faces, night owls taking advantage of a body that never tires.

it’s been years, but part of her still wonders at how real the afterlife feels. there’s a slight breeze against her cheek, soft and smooth, pavements cracked in just the right places to make it feel believeable. it’s late enough that the moon is bright against midnight, li’er wandering around without needing to worry too much about the people around her. there shouldn’t really be anyone around who’d need help, though she likes taking these walks just in case she could be helpful. if anything, at least she’ll be awake and around.

there’s the sound of a few PCDs beeping all at the same time, her’s included. li’er is, as always, on top of it, activating the device to find the message — but there isn’t really one to read. at first glance, the characters are jumbled and missing strokes. what she can make out, she doesn’t like. someone around her sucks in a breath audible enough for her to hear, but when she turns her head to look, the message blinks out, deleted. if the ominously worded and encrypted message she’d received hadn’t been obvious enough that something’s wrong, their response definitely makes it so.

“hey,” li’er catches up to them easily, reaching out to get their attention. “are you okay?”

[rebhb]

unstable.

After so many hours sitting in his room alone, with his notebook and pen in hands, and fingers bruised red from all the writing he has been doing the entire night about what he had seen just a couple of hours earlier, Hanbyeol finds himself curled up against his couch, his head hanging low between his knees as he wraps his arms tightly around his legs. His head hurts after so much thinking, and the thumpering of his foot on the floor is a clear sign of the anxiety that has been creeping inside of him ever since he received that notification on his PCD.

He still hasn’t found out a way to truly enjoy his second chance in life, and the paranoia of a previous life living under constant watch only makes it worse for him. Hanbyeol does have his moments when he actually lives — when he meets Xiwang and Yongjin, when they encourage him to leave his apartment and make him feel a little bit safer in the outer world —, but that doesn’t mean he is entirely comfortable in this new life, it doesn’t mean he feels safe to be outside like the normal person he craves to be so badly.

After all, he’s still in a world where it’s so easy to be observed, so easy to be controlled... Who knows who’s controlling afterlife, who knows what the professionals in AFTpex can or can’t see in this world that they have created? These questions send adrenaline in his loodstream, and that adrenaline ends up in a peak of anxiety that Hanbyeol can almost compare to what he felt when he was alive, when he was still an idol. Most of the times, he’d prefer to be left alone in this situation, but right now... That’s the last he wants.

SMS SENT TO : JIN . jin, arw you homr?

His hands shake as he types the messages and he struggles to see the little letters behind the tears that form on his eyes, but he does his best to be understood as his fingertips tap the screen before him.

SMS SENT TO : JIN . i’m npt feeling well could yoi comr over?

— @reyongjin !

[rebhb]

shock.

Living a second life after his death means not having to stick to the same routine every single day like he used to. A day that once used to be filled with dance practices, vocal training, lyric writing and playing on the piano, is now filled by almost nothing; Hanbyeol doesn’t make plans anymore, he does whatever he wants and sleep happens whenever he feels like it — which sometimes might happen at 10pm, sometimes at 4am, and this time is the latter.

Music is playing on his tv as he writes something on his diary, just a little note about how he didn’t do anything that day other than lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling, but he makes to describe all of the thoughts he had with details. He writes to distract himself, and having a diary to write about small things he does as well as the notebook he has to write things he witnesses in afterlife really helps him relax when he isn’t feeling the best.

But this time, after seeing what he sees, not even writing on his diary or listening to music will help him relax and get his mind off his worries.

The notification surprises him, he doesn’t usually receives messages so late at night since not everyone’s sleep schedule is so fucked up like his, and when Hanbyeol reads ( or tries to ) the new message on his PCD, he can’t help but widen his eyes in completely shock. In all these years, after so many glitches that has seen in the past, nothing had ever come close to that message.

Hanbyeol immediately feels his heart stop, as impossile as that would be in this universe he’s now located in, and after a couple of seconds he lets out a breath that he didn’t know he has been holding this entire time. It almost feels like a blackout, when he blinks again and finally looks at the message again, his hands are shaking in a mix of fear and confusion.

With no hesitation, once Hanbyeol feels good enough to start writing again, he grabs the notebook where he keeps everything related to afterlife. His handwriting doesn’t look like it usually would, it’s a bit messy and not so easy to read and that’s a pattern through most of the pages in that notebook — results of other moments like this, when something uncommon happens and catches him off guard, resulting in shaky hands and uneven breath.

And then comes the official message, only making things look more scary.

Sometimes paranoia ends in some obsessive behaviors, and in moments like this it is the need to document everything he has just seen right before his eyes. At this point, Hanbyeol’s notebook could easily become a source of research for the professionals working for AFTpex.