once upon a time, there was a little girl who saw things she should not have seen. 1) monsters who looked and walked like her but bared skeletal smiles, ashen fingers cold when they dissected her bone-by-bone 2) the destruction unraveling from the seams of a broken city and poison rupturing beneath it– bloodless massacre of the innocent 3) a sick, twisted game sung like this: oh, sweet child, wouldn’t you like to play with us? they called her a tragic hero, antigone incarnate as if being noble was a crime (and maybe it was, and maybe she wasn’t the victim but the perpetrator). what a twisted, twisted world.
this was meant to be a tale of one, but it’s disturbed by an unanticipated entrance of another. misery demanded company- they had blindly accepted. in between the blistering pain she manages a lopsided grin, short laugh bursting jaggedly into the dense chill of the air. “hey, you’re alive, right?” even when the wind howls for her, powerless in its attempt to satiate the terrible ache, she laughs still. (a delirious (beautiful) sort of sound.) the concrete numbs her into comfort and a sigh escapes, limbs splayed out and eyes cast upon the mottled stars above them. his question goes unanswered; there’s nothing to say to defend what she’d done moments before.
eventually she speaks up again, absentmindedly licking her lips as a hand lifts to touch a thin cut lining one cheek. “you weren’t paying attention, huh? they were looking for trouble. any idiot would’ve caught on, but there you were, walking straight into their trap like you were asking for the shitstorm.” not that she hadn’t done the same, but he warrants an explanation. something softens- in the dark, it’s hard to determine if its her, or the pitying night.
kyungsoo sees too much. the parade of rabbits on the moon, the suit-clad octopus with silver cuff links, the contortion of concrete and the stretch of steel. the mercilessly clear, chartreuse sky glimmers with constellations of violet in one second; the next, it’s doused in splashes of swirling vermilion and turquoise. sometimes the pavement tremors with an unbridled insouciance, twisting and turning beneath the hefty weight of a modern era, and the city will always, always push back. this is why seoul never sleeps, perpetually plagued by a deep-seated agitation that underlies the curtain of neon lights and buzzing teeth. this is why kyungsoo doesn’t sleep.
temptation takes the form of daisy petals, white as ivory and light as feathers. on the wings of the breeze, they dance flirtatiously in the streams of moonlight and tease the flushed skin of his cheeks, though never quite touching. temptation turns into distraction, and distraction becomes a danger. he can hardly make out the strangers’ faces in the downpour of flora, but he feels the shove to his shoulder and he knows that is real. beneath the rush of blood behind his ears, hearing the scuffle that quickly breaks out is difficult, but muscle memory yanks at his limbs and the protrusions of his spine, nothing more than the ingrained desperation to survive.
how the fight concludes is just as clear as his daisy-obscured vision, and before he knows it, the city is quiet again. the pavement beneath his feet still buzzes with faraway life and the shrill cry of an ambulance siren some number of miles away, but it’s quiet enough. he makes to answer the stranger’s question but stops just short of the first syllable, his jaw aching with a hellish burn. a bruise is sure to settle in by morning. “i didn’t know,” is all he can manage first, the reddened peaks of his knuckles stinging when he rubs at the back of his neck. (damn those nervous habits.) “thanks, though,” he starts again, gaze drifting away from a swaying traffic light and towards the stranger on the concrete. “i probably would’ve gotten beat up worse if you didn’t help. d’you need t’get to a hospital?”
