and when you find love: victon realizing they have fallen in love.
— requested ✧ ot7 | victon masterlist
♡ han seungwoo
desire to hold you close to him; wants to either hold your hand or cuddle with you. sometimes, he’d just settle with sitting next to you.
♡ kang seungsik
your favorites are becoming his; questions himself when did he begin liking things he’d usually not favor, why are your interests becoming a part of him, affecting him in a way that even his taste is shifting.
♡ heo chan
finds himself staring at you; a subconscious act, his friends would ask him why he would end up looking at you. though he’d deny it, the query going down on him. why do i keep on looking at them?
♡ lim sejun
doing the silliest thing just to make you happy; whatever it is that grants a laugh from you he’d do. sejun had directed new goals: to cheer you up whenever you’re down, make a smile appear on your lips, and hear your laughter.
♡ do hanse
mirroring your actions; the same gestures you’d usually do had affected him in a way that he’d find himself doing the same. when the two of you are talking, if you pick up an item on the table, he’d be also doing the same.
♡ choi byungchan
everything reminds him of you; slowly plaguing his mind. when he sees something, he’d initially be reminded of you may it be shared memory or it is just something you mentioned days ago.
♡ jung subin
dropping things to give you his time; quick to put down the things he’s doing just to become readily available— something he doesn’t usually do. a message coming from you? he’d put down the game he’s playing just to reply. wanting to hang out? he’d be there as soon.
request: hi!! could i request a smut with all the members of victon..? thank you!
[warnings]: mature content, sexual content, gender-neutral!, possessive tendencies, marking/biting/hickies, dirty-talking, safe word, hair-pulling, oral (giving and receiving), unprotected sex (don’t do it), creampie, mentions of using of pet names, nervousness, testosterone overload tbh
do not interact with this if you are under 18.
seungwoo
sits off to the side and watches everyone get you riled up first. usually comfortable on a chair watching you with his chin in his palm, focused.
enjoys seeing others marks on you before going over them with his own, but always kisses them first.
the others request him to join minutes in so he can use his longer fingers to press buttons inside of you that others cannot reach.
“keep doing so well and maybe we’ll give you more.”
maneuvers over everyone easily. stands over other’s shoulders just to give them directions or to tell them to find another place because he wants that one.
you have to orgasm twice before he’ll even try to reach for himself.
can easily get off by you receiving pleasure without him, but will turn it all around and make him the star of the show when you ask him to join in.
finishes inside of you due to his lack of interaction and more-so attentive witnessing.
seungsik
lips are always attached to your neck. soft kisses, tender licks, purple love bites covering your skin. finds his way to your collarbones before he tries going for any other areas that you need him.
even with all of the sounds around, from you and them together, he makes his voice easy to hear.
“speak if you want something, and don’t forget to use the safe word if you need to.”
politely listens to you telling him what you want while the others continue to ravish at your body. loves seeing you struggle to concentrate on speaking while being pleasured, and will add onto it if he’s feeling playful.
snatches at the other's necks or hair when they start losing themselves and forget that you can become overwhelmed.
closed eyes and sideways smile when he feels you reach out for him and hears you call his name over all the commotion.
laughs at you ignoring others directions by following his own.
finishes on your chest like a gentleman before wiping you clean with a wet rag. heavy into aftercare.
chan
has a fixation with biting and nibbling at the softest parts of your body (neck, earlobes, stomach, thighs). always marks you before anyone else.
pouts when you don’t call him in to play with you. smirks when you call him over alone and let him have at you while everyone else can only watch.
“who do you like best?” “am i doing well?” “can we keep going?” assurance is everything to him.
better at stepping back when he’s told to let someone else get their chance, but he will find somewhere else to be useful for the time being.
big eyes the entire time watching everyone else do what they do while he tries to keep you surprised.
full on breaks out in a fit of laughter over the entire ordeal like it’s not still going on.
soft kisses to your lips before his time starts and the most back arching orgasms only come from him.
finishes in his own hand out of respect from not feeling like marking you with his liquid is necessary.
sejun
the first to pull out toys aside from using himself to pleasure you. vibrators, rings, things to put on everyone else to maximize the pleasure. you’ll be seeing stars when his turn comes around.
extremely egotistical with the others around. cocky when it’s his turn, in denial when it’s another's.
smirks when you start making louder sounds than you did with the others. won’t give up until you get there, either.
a little more into himself using you than you using him. thrusts deep, hips slow then fast, sucking at your tongue to get more of your taste while his hands roam whatever else of you he can find.
“what if i touch here? what about here? I know how much i’m affecting you right now, let them hear.”
leaves a single hickey on you because he finds it more significant than marking you all over.
doesn’t care about his own noises at all. moans at full volume, groans against you, makes the dirtiest noises just for entertainment purposes.
finishes on your stomach so he can see his own liquids move with your rising and falling body as you attempt to catch your breath.
hanse
his hands are everywhere and nowhere all at once. holding onto you for dear life as he takes you, holding your hand while others get their chance. physical contact is constant.
puts his face against your skin to cover his own sounds/so only you hear them.
has to tell you everything he’s thinking so he stays grounded. “it feels so good.” “i want help with this.” “can i get my own turn now?”
pretends like he knows what he’s doing while mentally panicking and trying to stay focused. still manages to pry a few orgasms from you on his own before others get to you.
uses his mouth and fingers like everything he’s ever worked for lead him to this moment and he’s being graded.
you make twice as much noise as he does, but he still believes he’s done better than the others combined.
can’t finish unless you’re yanking his hair and calling him pet names, which he’ll never live down.
finishes on your thighs because he couldn’t brace himself before he came so he panicked and went for the first place he saw.
byungchan
constantly stops to run his fingers through your hair and press loving kisses to your forehead and temple.
won’t admit he doesn’t mind the team effort and thinks you look beautiful with all seven working at you.
but enjoys his own space the most. wraps your legs around his waist, pulls you into hugs, lets you hold onto him by his neck during his turn.
holds his breath watching others go down on you while wishing he was at least in their place. sort of a pushover when the others come by and want where he’s at, their own chance. most patient with waiting his turn, but takes his sweet time with you.
completely focused on you and not himself. “where do you want me?” “let me get you some water first.” “where did the pillow go? i need it for your lower back.”
whiny. silently, but whiny.
finishes down your throat because you made him stop being so shy and use you like he should.
subin
out of his element being with others, but enjoys seeing you get off in so many ways.
doesn’t know where to start so he’ll just use his own moves like he’s putting on a show for the others.
snickers every time he sees something he’s never thought of but will use again later.
hesitant at going to a spot someone’s already been and will most likely hover in one place until it’s his full turn going at you.
nervous around the others and knows he’s being watched. uses his turn to go absolutely wild and makes you orgasm a handful of times before he finally takes his place on a couch or against the wall to watch someone else go.
kisses more than giving hickies because he enjoys feeling you vibrate against his mouth, and later his entire body.
the weakest when it comes to receiving oral. will absolutely love it like no one else is in the room, but it will definitely be something hung over his head to joke with him later.
finishes wherever you tell him to instead of choosing on impact.
Summary: You were in love with Seungwoo. He was the man of your dreams, until he broke your heart. Enter Subin, a mysterious individual you had a faithful encounter with. He was someone you began to slowly fall in love with, but you knew nothing much about him. Would you tell him the truth, or keep your feelings to yourself?
Genre: Fluff, Heartbreak, Cheating, Possible Romance
Pairing: Reader x Han Seungwoo (Ex Boyfriend)~Reader x Jung Subin!
WC: 1376
Part 2 ==>
Love. An expression of feelings for someone. You always felt if you told someone you loved them, they’d feel the same way. For you that was Seungwoo. He was the love of your life. He was everything that you had ever asked for in a guy. He was the person you saw your entire life with, until he wasn’t anymore. For 3 years what came with happiness also came with sadness. As your relationship grew, you felt him growing apart from you. You would do your best to make him smile, but nothing seemed to work. You would cook for him, go on dates, and even try to change yourself for him, but nothing seemed to work. You felt like you were running out of options, and out of time. You knew you were losing him, but you didn’t wanna think about that ever happening.
“I’m going out y/n. Please don’t wait up for me.”
“Again? I-I thought that we could spend some time together… What could be so important that y-“
“It’s guys night. Maybe another time.”
“Fine…”
He gave you a weak kiss on the cheek making you feel less than special. You always wondered what did you do for things to be this way between you two. You always saw yourself as the problem. You could never blame him for anything.
“Where could he be going? Why does he always leave….?
You did your best to keep yourself from overthinking. You didn’t wanna think he was doing other than what he said he was doing, but you couldn’t help but think there was more than that going on. You eventually stopped yourself from overthinking, and made your way to your bedroom. You laid in bed by yourself wishing that your boyfriend was there, but he was no where to be found. You sat up waiting even though he said not to. It was 2:00 a.m when he finally walked through the door.
“I thought I said not to wait up for me.”
“Well I’m sorry for being a concerned girlfriend… you’re just now getting home. Where were you?”
“I told you I was out with the guys.”
“But until 2 in the morning. I-“
“I’m not going to argue with you y/n.”
“Whatever…”
He walked past you, throwing his phone down. He made his way to the bathroom closing the door behind him. You waited for him to get out, but he took forever. Growing tired of waiting, you decided to just go to sleep. You laid in bed slowly dozing off, until you heard a phone ringing. It was your boyfriend’s phone. By the time you picked it up it had stopped ringing. You couldn’t see who it was because he had his notifications muted in his phone. Thankfully you knew his password to get into his phone. You scrolled through his phone until you came across a name that you weren’t familiar with, “My Boo Bear 💓😘”. You saw all the messages when he was lying to you about where he was. You saw where he was saying he loved her. That sent a chill to your heart. The one thing that you didn’t believe was happening turned to be true. Your boyfriend was cheating. Reality set in at that moment. He walked out to you crying.
“So who is she Han?”
He knew you were serious whenever you called him Han. He knew he couldn’t lie his way out of it. He was caught.
“I’m sorry…”
“Wow…after all this time this is what you have been doing behind my back? How long Han? How long has it been?”
He put his face down in shame. He was caught. He didn’t know what to say.
“I’ve known her since before we got together. I’ve been in love with her for years. I was unsure but I know now that she’s the one I wanna be with. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
You were hurt as you heard those words come out of his mouth. It all made sense now. All the times he wasn’t interested in anything you did with him. All the nights he would leave you alone. It was no denying it anymore, he was so unhappy being with you.
“I can’t believe you… after everything I did for you. Breaking up with me would’ve a lot easier to do…”
“Y/n I’m sorry it’s come to this. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
You couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore. You didn’t know who the person was in front of you. Seeing his word were falling on deaf ears, He grabbed his bag, and made his way to the door. You wanted to stop him but at this point what good would it do? He wasn’t happy with you.
“I’m sorry…”
And there it was. Your relationship was over. You fell to your knees crying your eyes out. The man you thought you were spending your life with just walked out the door without thinking twice. You had felt this so many times before but this one felt different. You gave everything to this man. You cut off loved ones and friends for him. You gave him your word that you would never break his heart, but did he keep his? He was gone, leaving you to pick the pieces of your broken heart up off the ground.
______________________________________
A year and a half passed from that night. You were still trying to heal from the pain that he caused you. You would see him out and about every once in awhile. He seemed to be doing good for himself. He was still talking to same girl that he cheated on you with. You would them all hugged up at the same market that you and him had shopped at. You hoped that he would recognize you, but it was like you were a ghost to him now. He wasn’t the only one that changed. You did as well. You had colored your hair from jet black to a frosty blue color, and cut most of your hair off. You dressed a lot more common outside of the casual outfits you were used to wearing when you were with him. Your personality was still the same, but you were more guarded when it came to your heart. You hadn’t talked, or dated anyone since your last relationship. You were focused on yourself. The thoughts of dating would cross your mind every now and then, but you would quickly dismiss the idea of dating again. You got your head straight, and made your way to the market. You made your way downtown in a hurry. You rushed and ran through the crowded downtown area to get into the market.
“Ack!”
“Oww!”
You were so focused on getting to the market that you didn’t pay attention to what was in front of you. You had ran into another person. You came back to your senses when you saw that you had knocked his items out of his bags.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry! Are you ok?”
“Ahh my head… I’m so sorry miss. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Are you ok?”
“Yes I-“
You froze as you stared at the guy in front of you. He was handsome. You were captivated by his dark colored eyes, silver colored hair, and his pleasant attitude.
“Y-yes I’m ok. I’m so sorry let me help you.”
“Thank you. Again I’m so sorry.”
“Its ok.”
He help you up to your feet, bowed his head, and was on his way. You watched as he walked off through the crowd. You hadn’t seen him around town before. Was he new? What was his name? Where was he from? You continued walking to the market wondering if you would see him again.
A/N: Sorry for the delay with this one! I went back and rewrote the story. I honestly think this is much better than the first draft of the story. Victon is one of my fav groups btw 😊. I have more stuff coming soon! Enjoy! Also readers/writers feel free to interact with me. If there are any changes you would like to the story please feel free to let me know! Part 2 coming soon!
REQUEST : OMG I literally just read Seungsik's 2:32am scenario that you write and that picture you used as the cover.... omgggggg I'm feeling ALL types of ways from him rn 😳 so here I am, if your request are opened of course, asking whether you could write another seungsik smut? Anything of your choice but nothing too crazy because he holds a soft yet hard spot in my heart 🙃
NOTE : I have sinned. I have no excuse. No thoughts, Head Kang Seungsik.
Also i have warned what i think is important but please do comment if I should add something else to the warning.
“I’m sorry but I don't think my client can compromise like that. We’ll have to go for trial if you’’ll keep being like this during the negotiation.” She said as Seungsik asked for a few minutes alone with his own client. He and his client came back after a few minutes and took their seat in front of her and her own client.
“We’ll double the alimony and she can have the house. That's the most we can do.” he declared and she side-eyed her client who nodded.
“We have a deal then attorney Kang.” she said as she stood up and they shook hands, an easy smile taking over his features.
After seeing off their respective clients, they both turned around to their own cabins until seungsik catches her hands and tugs her towards his.
“We should talk.” he said, not waiting for a response as he moved, knowing she’ll be following him behind.
“Today was easy, you could have gotten us more.” she said and he turned around to raise an eyebrow at her.
“And why would i have done that?”
“Because you know she deserves it. Your client is an asshole.”
He barked a quick laugh at that. “Don't make me think of that asshole then when I'm thinking of other things.” he said as he unlocked his office and looked at the ones beside his - empty. Convenient.
“And what are these other things?” she said, teasing in her tone clear as she took off her coat as soon as she entered the office.
She was suddenly pulled back as her back hit his front and she heard the sound of the door being locked.
“Things which include you-” he spoke softly near her ear as his hands started untucking her shirt, “-me and definitely not all these clothes.”
In a span of a few seconds, her shirt was discarded on the floor as she turned around and pushed at his coat while tugging at his belt.
“Not so soon.” he spoke as he took off his coat and she stole a look at the clock.
“I have an appointment in half an hour.”
He stopped to stare at her face.
“Quick it is going to be then.” as she smirked, mirroring the expression on his face as she unbuttoned her pants and he took off his coat and unbuttoned his shirt.
“Come here.” as he pulled her closer with her hands on her pants.
“Where's the condom?” she asked as he bent lower to kiss her and she pulled back.
“Where it always is, come on now!” he said as he pulled her closer, kissing her as if he could not get enough as he walked her till her back hit the desk and she pulled back to stare at him.
“Seriously?” she asked as he leaned behind her to clear his desk, dropping the documents at the chair behind.
“You gotta take the chance doll.” he said as he kissed her again, his hand going inside her pants and underwear as she whimpered when he touched her folds.
He cursed as his first finger went in smoothly, and after a couple of thrusts, he pushed the second one in too. Usually he would take his time to finger her (and maybe steal an orgasm too) but you have to be quick on days like these so he pulled his fingers out, shushing her as she whimpered and turned her around, her groaning as her elbows hit the table and she cursed.
“A little warning first!” she said and he chuckled, bending over her to hear her gasp as he pressed against her naked back as he pulled out a condom from the first drawer.
“You don't know what discreet is.” she spoke again and he tsked as he unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock, wearing the condom.
His hand went around her waist and pulled her back as he pulled her pants down, and he kissed her neck and bit at her sensitive spot, “You're awfully talkative today.” he said as he pushed her down again, one hand pushing her panties aside as he pushed inside her, the other hands thrusting his fingers in her mouth before she could make any noise.
“Tis the office doll, you know you have to stay silent.” he said with a cocky grin as he leaned down to kiss her shoulder, waiting for a few moments to let her adjust until he felt her clench. And then he pulled back completely out until his tip rubbed her folds and pushed back inside. Knowing the lack of time they had in their hands, he was quick to set up a bruising rough pace that would get both of them to their climax soon as he kept on thrusting in her, his other hand bruising her hips and would probably leave a mark, he thought.
He pulled his fingers out of her mouth and leaned down to thrust harder and hear her whimpers.
“Seungsik-ah..” she whimpered as he cooed at her.
“Wait for me doll, I know you can!”
When he realised he was close to his own orgasm, he quickly sneaked his hand down to rub at her clit and heard her almost yell, “cum baby, you’re so good for me.”
She came a few seconds later with a muffled yell of his name as he had covered her mouth at the moment and she clenched so hard around him that in a couple thrusts he was also cumming.
He pulled out a few minutes later, wincing at the way she groaned and fetched the wet wipes he had in his office and cleaned her up.
“You’re an ass.” she spoke as he lifted her up and settled her on the couch and he had the audacity to giggle, like he didn't just fucked her like his life depended on it.
An alarm went off in her phone and she sighed and got up and he stared at her.
“You set an alarm?”
“Can't be late because of you, love~” she said in a sing-song voice and let out a high pitched shriek when he came close to her.
“I have to leave Seungsik-ah!” she said amidst laughter as he picked her up again when she bent down to pick her shirt up.
“Don't go!” he said, nuzzling in her neck and she pushed him away.
~
“Hello, I’m sorry I'm late, the meeting with my partner went on longer then expected.” she said as she entered her office, the coat in her hands and a scarf around her neck no thanks to Kang Seungsik and his obsession with her neck.
“It’s alright.” the client responded as she took her seat in front of them.
Her phone pinged and she looked at it, a message from seungsik and she opened it.
‘The office smells like sex.”
She smirked.
‘Not my problem.’
‘We’ll see who’s problem it is when you get home doll.’
Turning her phone on DND, she smiled at the clients.
“hurry up you two, we’re gonna miss golden hour”, a visibly restless subin protested from a couple of metres ahead. seungwoo and the boys had lugged you from your spot on the sofa to go to the lake nearby and get some fresh air. it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, you thought, as you looked ahead to see your boyfriend and his six best friends, all grinning from ear to ear as the lake came into view. the water was a deep teal and the spiralling trees wrapped around the landscape, branches intertwining like yours and seungwoo’s fingers as you made your way to a spot where you could see the lake in all its glory. to say that the boys were in the water as fast as humanly possible was still an understatement. their shirts forgotten at the side of the lake, they were content with swimming and splashing one another, meaning that you could just sit back and relax.
you were just about to pull out a book you had brought in your bag, one of the only things the boys had given you a chance to grab before practically pulling you out of the house, when a figure made its way towards you. the golden light of the afternoon sun illuminated the defined torso of your boyfriend, seungwoo, as he sauntered out of the lake and navigated his way onto the picnic blanket you had spread out on the grass. he began to lay down so his body was almost parallel with the ground, propping himself up with his elbows and gesturing with a nod of his head for you to move closer to him. he took your hand, fingers interlocked, and guided you over to his side of the blanket. holding out his other hand for you to grab, you found yourself climbing over him so your thighs were placed at either side of his waist and you were sitting comfortably on his stomach. you took no time to lean down so that your lips were inches away from his neck, hovering for a second to see what his reaction would be. you could feel the heat radiate from seungwoo’s skin after pausing so you started peppering his neck with kisses, leaving a trail of tinted lip balm from his jawline to his collarbone and everywhere in between.
leaning back up to see his contented face, you looked into his puppy dog eyes, a subtle glint of mischief within the hazel brown orbs and a sense of chaos written all over his face. you knew from his expression that he was planning a counterattack. without any warning, his fingers started poking at your sides as his face lit up, travelling up to meet your ribs and down to graze over your hips. you started giggling uncontrollably as you fleetingly lost control of your body, instinctively wriggling from his grasp and trying to release yourself from his control over your torso. following a couple of minutes of laughter, he paused his tickling antics and sweetly looked up, forcing your eyes to meet his own.
after regaining your posture onto his stomach, you reached down and cupped his face with your hands. “i love you han seungwoo”, you stated, as clear as day, “even if you’re a pain in my ass sometimes”. you leaned your face down and hovered once again, lips only inches from his. this action prompted a shy smile to be painted across his perfect face. you finally make contact with his soft lips and they moulded so perfectly onto your own, you forget what it had ever felt like to kiss anyone else but him. breaking away momentarily from the kiss, you kept your hands placed around his face, thumbs lovingly caressing his now rosy cheeks. turning his head towards the palms of your hands, he leaves kisses on every part of your hand that he can reach and then nuzzles into the familiar warmth of your touch. “i love you too”, he speaks softly as you melted inside. transferring all of your weight onto his body, you lay yourself down into his embrace, positioning your head at the crook of his neck. he smelled like pine and peppermint, scents that were so completely seungwoo. his hands quickly found their place: one resting on your waist, bringing you closer to his body, and the other placed gently on top of your head, carefully threading your hair through his fingers as he started to hum an aimless tune.
your moment was cut short, however, by the piercing sounds of the boys making their way out of the lake and joining the two of you on the bank beside it. “is y/n asleep?”, a curious seungsik asked. prompted by his older brother, subin leant his face down so it was only inches from yours, checking to see if you were indeed asleep. opening your eyes and adjusting to the light, you were met with the adorable face of one of seungwoo’s dongsaengs as he jumped back in surprise. “ahaha i guess now we know she’s not asleep”, piped sejun from the distance, grinning from subins reaction. “come on you guys, let's go before it gets too cold”, chan insisted, already at least ten strides ahead of the group. forcing your weight back onto your arms, pushing yourself up from your comfy position on seungwoo, you sat back up. as you stood up, you dusted off your clothes, shifting them back into a suitable position before putting your hand out for a still dazed seungwoo to grab onto.
after yanking his body up to join yours, you carefully wrapped the picnic blanket up and placed it back in your bag. you started to walk towards the gaggle of wet haired boys in front of you, trying to catch up with seungwoo who had already put his long legs to good use and was quite far ahead of you. when you had finally caught up with him, you reached forward and placed your hands on either side of his waist, pulling yourself forward so you were taking the exact same strides as him. he looked over his shoulder at you, placing his own hands on top of yours and giving you his signature dopey smile. you felt a warmth inside that you had only ever felt with seungwoo.
the rest of the way home was filled with smiles and the occasional jokey comment made by one of the boys about how shamelessly affectionate the two of you were. you thought to yourself as you neared the door of your house ‘maybe going to the lake wasn’t such a bad idea’.
can i request byungchan and writing your name on a new notebook 😊
w/ c.bc + reader
g/ fluff
w.count/ 205
a.n/ [romantics era team]: we hope it’s up to your expectations!
t.w/ none
To My
Apple of my eyes
The object of my affection
Byungchan groans and lets his head strike against the desk, his pen tumbling to the floor. How does one write a letter? Why is it so difficult? Every line progresses from bland to cringe and that is merely the greeting. He doesn’t know what to put in the actual letter yet. The words in his head formed faster than his hand could keep up.
Love letters aren't his forte. He should have said it to you straightforwardly but no, he just had to love the courtship, the thrill of the chase. He wants to linger in your mind. Thus his current predicament. Why couldn’t he simply leave a carton of milk on your desk? That would still boggle your mind. Choi Byungchan, you’re stupid!
He takes a deep breath, hand reaching for the fallen writing instrument. It’s not like him to give so early. He stares down at the ruined first page of his new notebook and rips it off, the crumpled paper now replacing the pen on the floor. Don’t overthink, Byungchan. On the fresh page, ink flowing out of the nib of his pen smoothly, the first line he writes is your name.
Strangers, fear, and death around every corner, the borderland is no place for the weak. You have made it this far without scars, and aren't stopping yet. But when an outlandish man risks his life to save you outside of a game, you’re forced to remember that people weren't always bad and connections can be lethal in such a dark world.
DETAILS — [ 18+ | fic | 11k ]
PAIRING — seungwoo x gender-neutral! reader
GENRES — alice in borderland! au, thriller, romance, angst, smut
WARNINGS — mature content and some sexual content, deadly games, near-death experiences, death, breaking of fingernails, use of weapons (knives + blades), blood/cuts/scars/bruises, heights (acrophobia), unprotected sex, hair pulling, creampie, heart surgery, claustrophobia (fear of cramped spaces), lots of easter-egg theories to the plot whoops
NOTE: it is highly suggested that you watch alice in borderland on netflix before reading this story due to the plot being very traumatic & disturbing and for an understanding of the concept!
prologue.
The world had run still. Spinning on its axis, it was like every other person had vanished in the blink of your eyes. Cars parked sideways, tumbling trash down the streets, everything around read that life was inches away but only going farther and farther from you.
When the new world seeped into your life, you had grown so used to the silence. No common traffic meant no looking both ways to cross the street. Not a single soul around to take the last bag of your favorite food the grocery store had to offer. It was all peaches and cream until you realized just what the world had shifted into.
Lights cascading in the distance every night, you found yourself in constant dismay from the games meant to take or give you more life to live. Games where everyone could leave in one piece, some be dealt death by an unknown ruler, and others that were most horrid where only one was issued to leave, all alone in the world like it was that first day again.
You had lost your sense of courtesy for others. Forgotten what it was like to hold a door open for a stranger, wave at an old friend, even hug someone you found dearest. Up until now you believed the world to be against you.
Game long ended, and the vast night was ironically the scariest. Bad people seemed to hide in the shadows, one in particular catching you in their peripheral and tossing some sharp object directly towards your head. Outside of the games where living and death were just as uncertain, people were still going mad. No rest meant a build up of late night thoughts. No moral feelings left in anyone's bones meant the world was up for grabs, and lives came with it.
You had limped street after street, every dark space becoming closer and every block aching your cut thigh. Such a clean, deep gash, your hand covering it wouldn't suffice the bleeding until it was properly cared for. Aching and fatigued from a long day and even longer game, your body sought out for the cold hard cement only to land in a pair of two taut arms.
Han Seungwoo, the man that had pulled you onto his back and carried you four more blocks despite the blood soaking into his pants from your leg. Not a selfish bone in his body, even he had agreed his way of living could cost him everything.
But he survived off the same saying. "As long as I know we can make it until the next." A large grin on his face and sparkled eyes like the new, grim world hadn't destroyed him quite yet; you never knew what he was referring to. The next day, night, game, maybe even next time you're held within his arms.
"Until the next, we can make it." We.
one.
Time flickers when you rest in the borderland. Hours can go by like seconds or years. Your eyes had peeled open three times that night, the cold air from outside sweeping in through the cracks of the glass. A once power-fueled factory now abandoned lies around you, the scent of a burning fire in your nose to make your tear ducts release the soft liquid.
Some parts of the city appeared clean like it was still that day everyone disappeared. But others were so abandoned, metals rusted, trash blowing across the ground, lights flickering when switched on. As if the world had become coated with omission, everything felt so empty.
The first time your eyes opened you couldn’t have even counted to ten if you had tried. Tall ceiling, the sound of rainfall dripping through the broken roofing, and the heat on one side of your body radiating so hot it kept your whole form warm. The second time you had more consciousness, but the night was too dark to see anything. Shadows surrounded you, the fire growing duller until a single log was tossed in. A long arm extended into your view, the inferno intaking the burning wood and swallowing it whole to release a pit of smoke into the air that made your nostrils burn. His face, side-profile almost chiseled from being out in the world for too long. Strenuous veins poking from his skin, he had offered you all the water he had on him to drink. Only two sips of the cold refreshment made it down your throat before exhaustion took over again.
You weren’t normally like this. Weeks had passed where you stood alone. You played games to have four visa days on tap if worse came to worse, weakness growing in your bones from trying to find other arenas. No plans to originally seek out life around you, shops locked or broken into, old motels and new hotels abandoned and stocked; you could have made it alone. But the borderland can’t stay so vacant, it was common sense. No people around means less people to go up against in a game, those of which cannot be played alone. The arenas move along with migrating others, and if you happen to be out of range for long enough, that’s just the world’s end for you.
Rounds of games within the large spaces would occur every night only to be illuminated brighter by the bright red lasers descending from the sky. Even the stars didn’t mean as much to those alive as the murderous lasers did, their only task to be sent down and skewer people for their souls until lifeless corpses were scattered in places no longer inhabited all because the games moved around and the people went with them.
Third and final rise from sleep, his face was finally fully in your view. Legs crouched beneath his figure, tucked to hold himself upright, a cloth ran across your temple so gently it felt like a cloud was embracing your face. His features were ardent, eyes filled with so much light and calmness that you could hardly divert your gaze to find anything else out about the man. A breath from your lungs thick enough to have him rocking on his heels, the words slipped from your lips in a swift way that only he could have ever heard what you said.
“Thank you.” Soft and able to go right to the man’s heart, the words seem to ring in his ears for a moment. His lashes batted in tandem with your own, but only you were dozing off.
“It’s no problem at all.”
Some things you’re meant to hear, others you’re never meant to. You overheard his bag zipping and his shoes scuff the ground. With the man once in arms reach quickly becoming inches, feet, and then oh-so-far away, you still couldn’t bring yourself to rise from the comfort of his extra sleeping bag and go after him.
A month since everything was at a loss, including your mind. Nothing felt better than hearing the chirping of birds singing from outside of the factory. Warming sun heating your limbs instead of the fire at your side, the first object you felt around you was the note written by the knight in shining armor that had not only kept your sleeping form company all night long but helped tend to your wound.
Pen marks scribbled onto the torn page from a miniature notebook, the words written brought you relief from the stranger now named. “See you soon, I hope.” But his name meant a thousand times more than his cherishable goodbye. Seungwoo, the one who had gone out of his way to help you, now meant more to you than any other person in reality or the borderland.
Life is funny in the way it changes. You make choices every day that can affect the rest of your life, no matter how simple they seem. You eat meals that could potentially make you sick or better for multiple reasons, create a relationship from speaking to a person, or even have your entire world redevelop from just walking out your door.
In the realm of all things moral, those options also can shift by the others involved. Things are always in your peripheral or mind whether you put them there on purpose. Any piece of a situation can be considered important or not. When you step out of your box—when you get placed into a world where few rules apply and acquaintances isn’t one of them, how do you know how to measure the significance of each and every move you make? And more than that, who do you know who to use your morals and common gestures for?
That was the game within the game. Arenas were only open for long, and you still had to survive the rest of the hours of the night and day. With Seungwoo now in your world, the one you believed to stay forever still and slim, do you make the effort to consider your decisions and future in order to meet more like him? The only answer was the one most moral, of course.
A twelve hour meeting with the man had brought you to use your time wisely. Give a hand to those reaching for one, watch all directions around you in and outside of games, and most importantly: survive.
One thing the man failed to mention or tell, he’s essentially a ghost. All arenas around, you never caught up with him. Didn’t find him in any buildings, walking to a new destination, moving in the direction of others—he had vanished into thin air. Hope is just a forum used to make it to the next day, hour, minute, and second of your life. Nothing as rough as the rug being pulled out from under you, that being the confrontation with someone you believed to no longer exist, who soon truly came to no longer exist. Your eyes would watered until tears broke, worry engulfing you each time you went to sleep not knowing if you’d see Seungwoo’s face again or even know if he made it.
A game of spades is crucial to the borderland. Focused on physical abilities, it was a make or break task every time. Whether or not you’re athletic isn’t the point, it’s your ability to be clever and mobile that brings the card and visa days to you.
The tallest building around, stories so high that lights of planes used to illuminate even the darkest rooms inside. You had seen the high tower so many times and still never thought to stare, to determine how hard it would be to ascend it. It never filled your mind before now, the red line closing off the game as figures surrounded you. Phone in your hand, your restful day had used one of your four visa days, the gut feeling that you still needed more always swirling constantly. If you can’t support yourself game after game in a repetitive way, you still had trust in knowing you had days to pillow yourself. But when that number decreases, even by one, it feels like your life flashes before your eyes each time. There was no preparation for this world, you were just winging it the entire way.
The ding of the devices in every person’s hand was always the most startling, such as a church bell sounding through a town to notify of a death. The vital understanding of every game was that no matter how many people stood around you, some might not make it out. It became so discouraging, so you stopped looking at faces and trying to learn names with those you played with.
Instructions are always as clear as they can be. This game was centered around a physical activity. And while most are usually meant for anyone, the task of the game made your stomach churn. Windows with ledges gave platforms to the building, each spaced out enough to get you to the next floor. The climbing was half the battle, anyone with the fear of heights being the rest.
Ten stories up, the second the phone chimed to signal ‘Game Start’ everyone was off. Your hands held tight to the platform of each window, eyes focused on your own reflection in the glass panes instead of the deep drop four floors down to the ground. Never one for climbing but muscles strong enough to manage the game, you were halfway up before you saw a figure moving at your left.
You didn’t look at faces. You stopped asking names. The pain of knowing the person next to you could live or die in this very moment or in the time remaining of the game was too much to bear for your cadence of survival. You can offer help to others without trying to fit into their place or keep them in line, it was simple to learn that. But his familiar scent caught your nose first, once balanced with the smell of smoke, it was now clear to you that the common musk of the man that you were in debt to was right beside you once again.
“Glad the rain moved out this morning.” His wide smile in your peripheral nearly caught you off guard. Seungwoo had moved across two different window platforms to be at the column next to yours. How he had the guts to swing from terrace to terrace, you didn’t understand.
The second time you did something for the first time in a while: you looked around at the people you were in the game with. An older man three stories above you, a woman to your far right, a younger boy below you struggling to climb, and Seungwoo by your side. You wanted to gift your palm to the one below you, ask for guidance from the man above, but as you felt the sweat increase in your palm just as you reached for the fifth platform and your grip loosen, Seungwoo’s unsaid message came into light. You can’t help them if you can’t help yourself, his hand wrapping around the duration of your wrist with enough room to connect his fingertips and pull your forward back to the window.
“Stay focused.”
Your feet paired together side by side as your phones dinged in tandem, ten minutes passing with ten minutes left and only five points won. You needed to reach the top to get ten; ten was your living number or else you may lose the chance to even leave the arena with your entire body. Death in all directions, the subtle laughter of your knight brought your brows to knit.
“Think we have a chance?” His eyes read lighthearted, but the weight of his question still frightened you without meaning to. “I think we do.”
One ding turned into two, and the seventh platform was pressed into the sole of your shoes before the game turned into what it secretly was from the beginning. The man reaching for the second to last platform didn’t have someone to catch him, fingers scraping against the smooth surface until his nails were left to cling to the edge. Tissues breaking, his voice croaking out a plea, and his body went barreling down. The woman in his line of fire, their phones sounded with rapid dings to notify their loss of points until the final sound of their bodies colliding with the ground shattered the devices and their lives.
Seungwoo’s hand enveloped your wrist again, not for protection but for comfort. In times like this, you forgot what it was like to have someone to grab onto when you feel fear or anguish. His head tilted upwards, voice soft as he tugged you to keep moving. Five minutes was claimed taken, the call of your phones only making Seungwoo look to his side at your panicking face more often.
“We’ve got this.” His reiterated words brought comfort to you for a third time, your hands holding securely onto each ledge until the ninth ding rang louder than the others. You were now higher than the man had gone, Seungwoo’s voice continuing to bring you assistance until your knees were hitting the edge of the last floor’s platform and the final ding chimed.
Your eyes blinked, you and Seungwoo now secure on the roof of the skyscraper-like building. Hardly able to bring yourself to look over, the younger boy had made it as far as the sixth platform before you could overhear his fist colliding with the window. His voice sharp and broken, the window opened for him to climb inside.
Moments like these, when someone takes an easier route within a game that is ultimately cheating, the only turn out was to sit back and watch. Seungwoo thought faster than you, moved faster than you, and his hand caught the collar of your shirt to bring you backwards. Falling down onto his front, his arms wrapped instinctively around your waist and held you tight to his body. His response was discarded by your mind, the red beam flashing from the sky much more urgent in the moment. The lazer broke inches from yours and his feet, the piercing line drilling through the building’s ceilings and floors like they were cardboard until the sound of the boy’s scream could be perceived. A wish for death is what he went with as soon as he slipped through the sill of the window, the third person out of the original five players now dead with only you and Seungwoo standing.
‘Game Clear’ The passive voice was deafening to anyone who heard it. Lifting from Seungwoo’s lap to offer him your hand to stand, the tall frame of the man made you feel safer than the five of spades on the adjacent table waiting to be picked up by one of you. Five more days added to your three, a sigh of relief was released from your lungs as you fell into Seungwoo’s chest and wrapped your arms around his torso.
“I told you we could do it.” Grin soft and skin smooth with sweat glistening off every limb, his hand opened for you to take his grasp and move towards the open staircase.
You had been waiting for him, the man returning to his original form and existence right before your eyes. So much to ask him, stars in the sky above, you almost spoke at the same time as your shoes hit the first steps to descend the building.
“Where have you been?”
two.
The extravagant feeling of physical contact when you believe you’ll never receive it again, Seungwoo didn’t release your hand for the extent of the walk to his apartment. His long fingers created heat in your cheeks each time he’d run a shape across your skin, the entirety of his palm cradling your hand alone. Skin on skin, the feeling of his laughter vibrating all the way from his throat down the limb to his hand to shake yours. Quickly but surely, Seungwoo was becoming the person you couldn’t bear to be without, and that was dangerous.
“Everything is open on this side of town. I’ve never seen anything like it.” His eyes wandered over the world around yourselves, captivated by the bright mid-morning sky filled with puffy white clouds.
Seungwoo was right, this side of town was most busy during the unknown hour you were walking through it. A place turned absent by those moving with the arenas, if anyone from the original world saw it like this, they’d be convinced this was the end. An apocalypse where the world functions on still having a vital community. In theory, a world like this can only last for so long. With each arena taking lives every night, the numbers of the population would decrease rapidly. But still, you found a handful of others playing games with you until now.
The game of spades was the first time you had played with less than ten people. And seeing as Seungwoo was one of them in such a big section of the town with multiple arenas going at once, that population number must be well below what could be considered exigent.
A meal heated by an electric stove, no bowls and only two spoons, you felt like college roommates eating alongside the man. Sat across from each other at the small dining table, your eyes would linger before shifting away. The building he had chosen as safest was a little more worn than the rest of the space, still liveable and lively with the walls painted colors of the seventies era.
The air thin and breathable but buoyant due to the strangeness of the scenario, your entire mindset was forged in breaking the awkward new-found part of the relationship between you and Seungwoo. Where you could look each other in the eyes without laughing and parting, keep a conversation going instead of it being small talk, but Seungwoo didn’t seem to mind any part of it.
“We’ve been here a while.” Ice breaker, but not the one you could have imagined he’d use.
“It feels like it’s been longer.” Your half smile masked that the sentence was hard to say, but even harder to admit that pieces of your life have been lost due to the odd shift.
“Almost three months. I’ve been alone this entire time.” His eyes blinked slowly, tracing the features of your face as he watched your reaction. Knitted brows, eyes moving to the table, fingers loosening their grip on the spoon at the same time your hands began to shake.
If you count the seconds, minutes, and hours of the day systematically and consider how much you can do or have happen to you in that frame of time, your brain may explode. It takes seconds for something in the world to settle into reality, minutes to become a bruise on someone’s body or life, and hours to make someone digress into insanity from everything changing so significantly.
Education can take place for up to twenty plus years. Marriages can last anywhere from a day to a lifetime. Friendships can be ephemeral or bountiful. You can physically move to a new place once a week. You can travel across countries in a month. And you had been stuck in this realm of fear and pain for three months with your original world, and all things in it, a mere memory.
But his statement caught you the most off guard. Seungwoo, too, had been alone through all of this. With the amount of cards from each arena, games able to be played multiple times, and the loss of the nameless people around you, Seungwoo had been fighting this entire time just like you. A place filled with nothing but greed, darkness, and death, and you still managed to find another person in your same shoes a block from where you had been living.
You already learned this, that the significant impact Seungwoo had on you was now lethal. Which is why the sun setting outside made your face fall pale, the conversation die down, and total silence take over. “You know I have to leave again tonight, don’t you?”
It had been written on his face the entire time. Even without asking, you knew Seungwoo had a similar thought process as you when it came to visa days. The time he spent with you was crucial to your meeting, but the previous hours were compelling. You had played a game that night he found you, but the real game was feeling the rush of the weapon piercing your skin and not knowing if the perpetrator had done it on purpose for a kill or maybe for fun. And, quite possibly, would want their sharp object back. For Seungwoo, his night had clearly been dismantled the second he saw you injured and he acted on his feet. It didn’t take you having a degree to know his crisis, the fact that the man had not played a game that night swallowing away extra days he could have started spending with you now.
“Will you at least be careful?”
Sorrow-filled eyes scared with your response, you seemed to trade places with him and be the one to put him at ease. A breath from moving into him, raking up past his Adam's apple and through his lips followed by his tight skin clinging to his chest—the man seemed more rested now knowing that you were on the same page instead of having to sugar coat it and tell you directly.
“For you, of course I’ll be careful.” A sentimental thing to say in the borderland. There was no going back from this. Seungwoo was rightfully important to you now, despite your debt needing to be paid back to him from saving you and tending to your wound. And even if he hadn’t admitted it, the energy around him assured you that he felt the same for you. “Just promise me you’ll be here when I get home in the morning.”
“I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
Wide shoulders pressing through the doorframe of the apartment right at nightfall, two tear drops left your ducts. You had never had to experience the constricted feeling of your chest holding in a breath, much less a wish that everything would be okay, inside of the borderland. The world here was too grim, everything appearing just as your world had until darkness prevailed and life was meant to come together to choose who lives and who dies that night. Watching Seungwoo leave and not look back, it had your heart pumping blood through every vein like you’d feel something happen to him, if it does, the moment it takes him over. A safety net, your mind holding tight to your emotional connection with one another to now hopefully warn you if anything bad was to come to him tonight. Hard part is, you hardly believed yourself.
The apartment sat silent, your form still sat in the same chair you ate dinner at only with the table now cleared. The scent of lavender in the air from a nearby fragrance dispenser, the tears that left your eyes drew pale, wet lines down your face until the buoyancy of the salt water escaped your skin and fell to leave two drops on your pants.
It was hell not knowing if Seungwoo was still alive before you had the convenience of meeting him in the spades game, but now it was an eager death sentence for your own sanity awaiting his return for a single night. Until dawn takes over the horizon, you knew you didn’t have the chance of him returning to you, and that forced the air to accumulate into nothing but cold and bitterness.
Feet pressing into the old, tiled flooring after two hours of sitting in your own thoughts, the chair rubbed wrongly against the ground and squealed a sound that normally caused your palms to cover your ears. But here in the moment, shadows swallowing you away from the little yellow lamp turned on in the far corner, you couldn’t find yourself to care.
As soon as you felt other objects, life returned to you. Body fragmented but returning to one piece, you knew it was bad to snoop around, but the short, skinny book with a hardcover was displaced. Not aligned with the others, the book was too obvious to the naked eye while layered with the fiction and nonfiction books stacked on the bookshelf. Used as a nightstand by Seungwoo from him sleeping on the couch, it was useful. Cool touch to your fingertips, pulled into the extent of your hand and opened, Seungwoo’s handwriting gave a sense of familiarity. You had held the page from this same notebook for weeks, kept it safe to reread the kind note he left you to wake up to. Similar tone in the first sentence, there was no question that you had stumbled upon his personal diary.
Even with him at a distance, even though you had heard his voice on a few occasions, the way he spoke in the small journal was just as he talked to you. Like you could hear him reading it out to you, see his bright face creating visual emotions as his eyes met the letters forming his own words, feel his pain and contentment. Seungwoo’s connection to you here in the borderland was the same, but his original world was vastly different.
“Day Five: The world seems to have stopped turning. This was the day of my final exams. I was meant to be stuck behind a desk for at least four hours, leaving that building I always dreaded walking into with a smirk on my face and a ‘passed’ stamp on my form.”
His tone was overbearing in this part, like he was speaking on behalf of something he had been hoping for his entire life.
“Why couldn’t things have waited another week? What exactly would have changed? That day everyone vanished: I was standing in a fully packed ER, and I only stepped out for a second to grab that ladies purse from the ambulance. They were gone in a blink of an eye, all from me leaving for a moment. Why did I have such an impact on my surroundings, and why must I continue to bear that loneliness and frightening feeling now?”
He was vehement. Speaking with anger and passion like his shoes were too tight and his head throbbed with his heartbeat as he wrote. Seungwoo seemed so calm, but this was an insight that he too had been screwed over by this world.
“Seven years of cramming so much information into my head to pass that exam, and it was over before it even began. What was the purpose? If I had known what I know now, I would have ripped up my notes and left out with my friends on so many different occasions. I lost them all in that same second, and I have yet to know if they are unknowingly around me. Everyone here is off their rockers, some even like being here. My purpose was back home, meant to be saving lives in that same ambulance I touched before everything changed. So why am I here?”
Everything about what Seungwoo said shook your bones. You wanted to wrap your arms around him, tell him he means something to you and the world, but he was blocks away playing the very game that could fluctuate your worlds just as inexorably as when the world changed around him. You had your own, fair share of these thoughts by now. But reading Seungwoo’s own writing, like a memorial for what once was before it is now, the world grew even colder that someone with his head on his shoulders could still suffer like this.
“I was alone before now. My apartment was shallow and suffocating, but it was still my piece of the world that I could control. Here I have nothing permanent.”
He was speaking on behalf of this same apartment. It was hard to tell on site that this was originally his considering how the arenas shift, but it was his decision to make the longer trips to play and stay in his own safe zone. You hadn't taken Seungwoo as one for constant comfort, but this seemed like a precondition that traveled over with his personality from world to world.
“So many people around me. My shifts at the store on the corner were nothing now compared to the two or three people maximum I see night after night. Even people at the games have grown slim. Is this my doing? Have I done this? If I believed myself lonely at work, on shifts, studying my heart out, where does my purpose now lie?”
The optimistic man had been at his wits end. You didn’t need a visible calendar to know what was coming, your appearance bone chilling compared to the dark tone he had before the next entrance.
“I do still have my purpose. Sick or not, I am still meant to help others. A blade in someone’s thigh tonight showed me that. I’ve stopped to write this down, but I know I won’t forget the face of someone so tired yet so hopeful. Eyes opening and shutting, fighting to speak every chance. I hardly said anything, but I left a note. Maybe I’m not so alone as I thought, but I still fear what once happened around me will come again. I can’t lose someone else.”
The sparkles in his eyes were true. Seungwoo had chanced himself, placed himself into danger by getting you into that factory, and especially could have lost his life had the person that stabbed you come knocking. He cared for you like he knew you because that’s what he had been tailored to do in his original life. His sense of direction had been misguided by his actions from the empty world here in the borderlands. Seungwoo still has a heart of gold and magic fingertips to heal, and because of you he was no longer blind to himself.
“Is it a good read?”
Your mind rose from his voice reading the diary in your head to the real Seungwoo standing in your line of sight. Hands clasped behind his back, smile wide and skinny, the same sparkle you imagined perfectly in your head returned to your visual.
“You’re okay!” Book falling from your grasp down to the sofa you didn’t know you had sat down on in the first place, the smooth feeling of the four of clubs card was ignored by your hands running the length of his arms before wrapping around his neck. He no longer seemed stunned by you, his own arms finding place around your waist as he pulled you tighter into the hug. Wind leaving your lungs, his tall frame bent down to hug you even closer before releasing you and standing straight.
“Team effort. Although I’ve played a few clubs, I’m still not used to having to work with others here. All of us won the card together though,” His smile was grateful, mantled cheeks due to your hands holding onto his arms like he was only your imagination giving him nothing but happiness. His story seemed to stop, index finger tugging your chin to seek his level. “Hey, I’m right here.” Arms engulfing you a second time, it felt like you hadn’t known him to be so significant until you felt his warm skin pressed into the soft fabric of your shirt like it is now.
Even with the moment at hand, he continued with his story like two friends catching up over drinks after work. “Everyone got visa days. It was nice to see everyone relieved at once despite our differences for appearing in this world, but I still felt like I was missing something. There wasn’t any real danger to that game somehow, and it felt like a kiddy game just for more days. I think everyone felt that way. Like there was meant to be more, or more is coming.”
You couldn’t bring yourself to look up at him, hearing his voice with your own ears was all you needed right now.
“This world isn’t meant to be fun. You’re not supposed to feel true relief. But I don’t think anyone can help feeling relieved or satisfied with their own knowledge when a game ends and they’ve won. People may have died, possibly lived, and maybe you’re walking out of the arena alone. But you got another day to live, and that’s mostly what fills your head. That’s the only relief they will let us feel here. We need it. It’s human nature to want to continue on.”
“So let’s keep going until this ends.”
three.
Boxes surrounded you, four sections of small vaults within the bank—your contest. Diamond games were considered foxes of the borderland. One wrong move and you could lose everything, but the right move could open another passage to a second half of the game. You had been cornered before in a situation like this, your only escape being that you didn’t trust anyone else in the game.
Your eyes followed the pattern of the floor to his shoes, Seungwoo’s faded sneakers turning grimer every day from all of the action. His long legs, skinny waist, large shirt, and spatial eyes each stationed in the direction of two of the sections. He was focused on his gut, following with where the air took him. That was Seungwoo’s way of always winning, and it worked up until now.
Your partner has kept by your side for two weeks now. A hand to hold, a smile to return, a soft kiss to be placed on your temple before falling asleep beside one another. Every game before you met Seungwoo was considerably easy. You didn’t have a reason to keep going, lived off memories and what could be. He gave you a message, one irreplaceable: to not give up hope.
Hundreds of the small vaults, all unlocked and waiting to be opened—you knew better than to go searching one by one. Five tries, and your stomach twisting with the sight of the clock ticking down from two hours, you felt his warm touch clutch around your hand.
“It’s a diamond. The intimidation is part of the game.” Always the perfect approach to calming your nerves, he had a point.
“Five tries, four sections, two hours.” Numbers were a focus for each arena. Number of players, number of losses, number of chances, number of the card. But this arena laid open for twenty minutes only to welcome and enter in only you and Seungwoo.
Your apartment had grown scarier. Warmer weather during the day usually brings the sun out for longer, meanwhile the darkness at night was thicker. All arenas that had moved farther out now retaking their places. You counted the nights just as if it was a significance to a game before you came to the realization; old arenas had been revived with new games, and a new vision was upon the world. Higher numbered cards were now the tokens, lights would cascade through the streets surrounding your shared apartment to guide any and all around to the closest arena. It was a gratifying experience knowing you came this far, that the end was contiguous, but it also scared you more.
The games rejoining the abandoned section of the city meant that those left in the world had to travel with them. In a game where only you and Seungwoo were the players, an intelligence game originally meant for a team to fight and argue, you held a wonder for what was next.
“So much going on in your head.” Seungwoo bent forward to stare at your face evenly. Eloquence paired with instinct and intuitiveness, the triple threat made Seungwoo a light in a dark room. “And you’ve said nothing more than a sentence.”
Heat in your cheeks and eyes gazing at the floor, your heartbeat rapid while your brain took in every piece of information that you could see. Intelligence games didn’t just focus on being smart, being quick witted, or once having a degree. They are about perception, thinking outside of the box, and then getting back inside to perform the task in an outlandish way that is meant to single one person out in the group and make them appear delirious.
“What’s your shoe size?” Your gaze didn’t lift from the floor, your peripheral vision giving you enough of the image you were too distracted to witness.
The man’s long leg bent, his palm cupping the side of his worn sneaker to lift up his foot and read the number on the bottom. The shoes were too old now, in need of replacement. His head shot up, tongue ploying the words like a joke. “Large, but nothing specific about the number.”
“You could take it off and look.” Your head finally twisted, sight set on the man attempting to keep his balance like a flamingo in running water.
“Oh, right.” His follow up didn’t change his actions, Seungwoo’s comical grin as he placed his foot back down gearing you up to continue on your search. “What is it?”
“There’s a large scuff of a shoe in front of this vault tower. Like someone’s been here recently.”
“This game was just put in. No one’s been near our apartment since the games moved down six blocks.” By the look of the confused to conscious expression on his face, Seungwoo was moving back into the flow of the game. His eyes found the same mark on the smooth flooring you found moments before, lids falling over his brown irises until he was squinting down at the small pattern. “Hey, that looks close to my size.”
“Okay, if someone stood here and it wasn’t a player or their opponent.” But even without the need for extreme ingenuity, involvement with understanding patterns and what dismantles them is a necessity to the intelligence games. “Then this must have come from whoever set up the game.”
His tall body moved ahead of you, shadow from the yellow and orange lighting of the old-style bank leaving him to cover your sight. A step over before you moved up, and you already knew where he was leaning. The mark meant the third vault was the biggest clue, the holder of whatever was meant to be found, and was your next assignment of the game.
“Five rows, five columns, and five tries.” The man looked like the need to roll his eyes was killing him from within, his body falling slump until his head laid on your shoulder from the awkward sideways angle that he stood. A huff from his chest blowing out of his nose, Seungwoo’s late nights of not sleeping well, even beside you, was catching up with him.
Your sign evened out the tone of the little communication you always held with him. “This bank is old because it was one of the firsts built in the city. Which means we can’t look at the locks because they’re all going to be corroded from overuse and dull keys.” You wanted to keep your end of the bargain, each game giving you and Seungwoo more time to bond outside of eating together and sleeping in each other's arms. Time had ticked slowly for two weeks, the bright man holding together what kept you on your toes. But with a tricky game like this, hope was scarce.
“Same concept, different pattern.” By the way Seungwoo spoke during games, you knew his original world was abbreviated. He had worked as an EMT, all things said having to be quick and to the point—something he carried over with him to the borderlands.
He coiled down, knees at his chest as he took the first leap. Handle lifted and pulled, the first of five was opened and the vault laid empty.
Your fingers toyed with the cool metal before doing the same as he did, opening a vault directly in the middle of the section. Another dark space, and your heartbeat bumped to the sound of music you couldn’t hear.
Seungwoo’s toes lifted him higher, the man finding sight of the top row. Your eyes ran in tandem, his trailing over the second biggest clue of the game.
“Except this time it’s a fingerprint and not the mark of a shoe.” You rose to your own toes, balancing with your hand on his shoulder as your opposite pointed out the mark on the vault. Seungwoo followed your index finger, finding the small print of someone’s thumb on the surface. From first glance, it seemed so simple.
Seungwoo smiled at you like you had just won an award, his hand removing yours from his shoulder just to lean on your own form and reach for the top vault. The handle clicked louder, the room grew colder, and just as twice before—nothing was inside. A painful sigh came from the man, his furrowed brows making you stare harder at the clue you believed was an insight to the answer. A soft little pattern created like an arrow, your hand slapped against the open vault to shut it.
But the print that came from your sweating hand happened to be different. “Wait— look.” His body leaned in with attentive eyes and a sweating temple, Seungwoo’s stance once again awkward. “The marks from me closing it are too soft. If someone had touched the vault we just opened, then these should have shown up higher.” Point from point, eye for eye, and you had solved what you believed to be impossible from first glance at the four sections of small boxes.
“Then this is the right one?” Seungwoo’s fingers shook as they lifted towards the vault. Box the length of his hand and just a little wider, your only safety net was knowing you had one last try after this.
“It’s opening.” His voice low, eyes wide, and a sigh of relief leaving him just as the game of spades you gained each other as companions at. His fingers took it between two, smooth texture rewarding. Seven visa days and another game finished, “Diamond!”
‘Game Cleared’ sounded through the room, the ring of the phones allowing the doors to unseal and reopen. Red lasers once holding you hostage inside the vault room now disappeared before your eyes, you and Seungwoo leaving the bank hand in hand—as always. His palm clutching yours, fingers lacing together. Your breath intake concealed by your large shirt that was once his, the feeling of intimacy filled your mind with serotonin as your feet shuffled out the front door of the frequently busy domicile now emptied.
Smiles on your faces, eyes looking at each other from the sides as you walked, the night had dwelled in the realm of all things good. But most things good in this world didn’t last, the dark sky above holding puffy nimbus clouds. Small drops of rain grew larger, the cold water from above chilling your bones as Seungwoo lost his grip on you and swayed his coat over your heads to race back home.
Those few good things left in this world always brought you back to the one you considered best, Seungwoo’s smile even in a dim moment. Rain covered your forms despite the coat being over your bodies, the run causing more water to catch your heads and smooth your hair down to your skulls. Porcelain skin letting the liquid pour down his face, his large frame halted in the middle of the street. Face to the sky, hand reaching out to you through the blinding rain, and your fingers connected between one another as you both stood in awe of where you were in life.
“Would you have ever imagined this?” His voice was high pitched enough to reach your ears through the sound of the rainstorm, eyes sparkling similarly to his bright teeth through his lips. “Us being here together, doing okay?”
“I thought I was going to lose my life as soon as I was brought here, Seungwoo.” Admittedly, it was true. Some things in life shift perspectives so absentmindedly, you don’t even realize their significance until years later when you reminisce on the past. But Seungwoo was still your gift in this world, the one to show you not to fear what was around every corner. “I couldn’t be here without you.”
In all of two weeks, this was the first you had said his name. The syllables rang out through the mild storm, thunder overhead not at all clearing his ears of you speaking his name. Visually, the man looked like he prized your tongue releasing his name.
“May I kiss you?”
His question leered you forward, lips placed between his plump ones to take in his taste. Tongues dancing together, lips moving in sync, his hand holding you at your jawline; the bolt of lightning a block away didn’t startle either of you. An unknown lesson of this world, your good luck charm being the man currently in your arms. You both had learned that the true luck here was each other, and not everyone had that. Together you feared nothing abnormal: none of the games, the lasers that brought death, nor the other people that roamed the streets and brought more pain to an already cruel world. You were untouchable.
Rain water dripped down your bodies, falling into the crevices and cracks of your forms to make chills run up and down your spines. It only brought you to hold one another closer, the remaining blocks of the walk home a blur up until you felt your back pressed firmly against the door of your shared apartment and hear the knob click open from his key.
Your arms clamped around his neck, his face falling into the crook of your own to place a swift kiss. Each time you felt his soft lips on your skin you released a small sound, the arcane feeling something you believed couldn’t occur in the borderland. Back pressed into the sofa, Seungwoo sat up to pull his shirt over his head and pants down his legs, you working your own clothing off before uniting your bodies. His long frame over you, eyes shallow and gleaming continually. Your eyes shut as you felt his long fingers brush over your body, sensitive spots across your skin bringing more chills to break. His hiss as he felt the heat of your inner thighs before his fingers pressed patterns into you had your back arching against the soft couch. A whisper of his name and Seungwoo tampered with your underwear, pulling it down before gliding himself into you. Your walls clenched tight around him, legs shaking and head thrown back from the pleasure.
A growl from the back of his throat as you swallowed his cock whole, a whimper left your lips as you felt him throb from within you. Your eyes glazed over with lust, Seungwoo’s moans nearly overpowering yours as his head fell into the crook over your neck for another kiss and a resting place. His forehead ran warm, the heat of his own skin nothing like the friction as he pumped into you, your ankles connecting at his lower back to hold him in place. Beats and thumps, the sofa bouncing against the wall, and his fingers clenched the hair at the crown of your head in warning that he couldn’t form the words to tell you that his orgasm was close.
Thumb pressing into his chin, you caught his attention long enough to place a deep kiss on his lips. The man that had catered towards you, taught you how to enjoy life again, who you loved with every string of your heart, whispered your name just as he filled you and felt you quake around him with your own orgasm.
“Oh— fuck.” At a loss for words as he pulled out of you, your lips could only smile as you pressed back the hair sweated down to his forehead. Seungwoo, now sharing his second most vulnerable moment with you, seemed to find the words on the tip of his tongue. “I love you. I truly do love you. I couldn't walk away from you that night. You were so fragile, so scared. If only I had known how much you meant to me right then, things wouldn’t be as they are.”
The man fell down behind you between your body and the back of the sofa, the cushions supporting you just as they did every night. His lengthy arm over your waist, his soft-toned words in your ears, what he said didn’t make any sense. For the first time, Seungwoo seemed genuinely scared.
His voice hushed. “Everything here isn’t meant to last.”
“We know this already, Seungwoo.” Your eyes caught sight of him from behind you, his lids falling heavy and the ranting of his mouth falling faint.
“If only I had said no, we would be even. No difference in each other, no significance or detrimental states. We could go on, survive and maybe even leave together one day. But you’re just a player in the game.”
four.
There are days you wake up and know something is off. Human nature applies to instincts, including emotions and mental state. The borderland has a way of twisting nerves and bending rules until neither apply. You can look at an arena and know of the dangers that lie ahead and not feel a single ounce of fear. You can step into a resting area, one where you’re meant to feel safe, and have everything taken from you in under five minutes by someone you’ve never met. The borderland changes any and everything you knew from reality and turns them into something you’re unable to comprehend. And that was what caused the most threat.
Three weeks beside Seungwoo, the moon in the sky and street lamps guiding the way, the entirety of your mind was telling you to turn around. Every fiber of your being knew this was it, something was bound to happen. When you take a test and every answer is the same letter choice, you become suspicious. Things had run well for too long, and even Seungwoo wore a half smile instead of his normal goofy look like he didn’t have anything to fear.
Witnessing Seungwoo’s progression outside of your own was otherworldly. The man had gone from being just like you, not caring for most other people around him especially in games, to chancing his neck to hold your hand and get you through something together. His balance was good, but your eyes could only see so much. He was losing his equilibrium with every step.
Like an out of body experience, it’s not difficult to realize when someone is encountering a situation from within. His eyes read something that gave you chills, that he had been down this road before.
Seungwoo, the guy who threw a chance at everything and gave you even more, stopped in place right before the lasers read that you were inside the next arena. Bulged eyes suffering from tears he could hardly release, heavy pants of his breath bringing fog before his lips from the cool night air. It was your voice that pulled him from wherever he had gone.
“Something’s wrong.”
His slow blink, his hand reached out for you without looking. You had long ago gained a trust for Seungwoo, one hard to break. But taking his hand and stepping through the electronic doors for the game to read you in, you knew you were bound to get that second-hand screw over from doing well for so long. Seungwoo’s chances had counted up, he had used them all. But you still held onto yours.
Evolution taught humans to sense danger. Watch the hair on their arms rise, feel something change in the energy around them, use their five senses to detect what it is. Four more players entered without a word, strangers by chance. The phones rang and centered you into what the game is about, your hands growing shaky just from the sight of the card.
High numbers meant more danger, meant you may not make it out. But the heart symbol on the card was a death sentence more than any other, Seungwoo’s face falling and keeping his eyes on the ground. His fear was your first clue.
Seungwoo’s past life was considerably more purposeful, one you’d believe to be his reason for being in this world as it is. A trained EMT, someone who can save lives and keep more people playing. Therefore, those running the games could keep it up longer. He was the perfect target. And as he said that night, you were just a player.
The arena for the hearts game was a hospital, the very same that Seungwoo had been working at the day he was put into this new world. You didn’t want to make the connections, assume the worst about the man you had most faith in, but everything pointed to him.
A rectangle table gifted you your task, heart monitors to be placed on your wrists. Written directions read that the normal heart rate ran anywhere from eighty to one hundred beats per minute. But that was at a casual rate, not when your life could end any second. The anxiety of the game is meant to break ninety beats, giving you a yellow light as a warning sign. If you exceed the highest number, the light goes red and you’ll be visited by the friendly red laser to take you away. You had been fighting since the first game, one where you were against everyone else in an endurance game. You had felt dread and horror from the games before, but the sound of the chiming phone speaking ‘Game Start’ had your heart in your throat and your hand reaching for Seungwoo’s wrist.
His hand lifted before you could catch it, his own hand taking your wrist instead to pull you along to the game. heart games are meant for betrayal, they feed on it. Entertainment for those in control, you could only shake in wonder for what was about to bring you to fear or possibly despise Seungwoo.
Dummies laid on surgery tables in the middle of the ER, paired teams walking to the figures. Your eyes trailed the fake rubber, so thin and invasive. A tray of tools to use, a call from one of the other teams didn’t detour Seungwoo pulling a blade from the silver tray and gliding it across the heart of the dummy.
“Heart surgery. That’s why it’s only from the abdomen above.” His quick wit showed everyone that he was accurate to the game, the dummy’s lower half nonexistent. “Take this and cut a small line right here.” Seungwoo’s directions turned to you, his hand holding a skinnier blade to give to you as the blade in his opposite hand showed you where to cut. Moving aside, you felt the rubber separating with the little force you applied with the sharp knife. Your heartbeat was regular, a green light on your wristband the last of your worries as sudden squabbling came from behind you.
“I don’t know! I’ve never performed open heart surgery before!” Yellow, the small dot on the ladies wrist made your eyes shut to focus on your own heartbeat.
Her partner's rebuttal made your teeth clench, Seungwoo’s left hand placed on the small of your back to guide you to open your eyes and look at him. “Just us. It’s just us here.”
“Well then at least try!” The knife in her partners hand glided into the dummy just as yours had, only it went too deep. A small gash, a rushing fake artery, and the light ran red on their wristbands.
Seungwoo’s fingers clasped over your eyes, his hand lifting your knife close to the dummy away. You could only hear the laser sizzle through the building’s floors, feel the energy of the room shift, and hear the subtle thump of the bodies falling to the ground.
“Let’s keep going.” Focused, cutting at the dummy gently like it was a person, Seungwoo was far more cut out for this predicament than you. He had trained for years, studied night and day, and even had his world end and rebegin in this very building. It was all too systematic, your gut turning from thinking about what he had dealt with.
But those very thoughts brought something to your mind.
Open skin-like rubber showing the cavity of the dummies chest, Seungwoo turned on the small saw to cut at the fake bones and continue the surgery. The second pair babbled, their lights going yellow every few seconds before changing back to green. They watched him like he was teaching a lecture, eyeing in on his movements and repeating them on their own dummy.
Bones out and placed properly, heart intact and being repaired by Seungwoo’s soft hands, the second pair couldn’t see his actions from within the rubber body and could only eyeball what he was doing. A shift in the air, their tools moving too quickly, and the body of the dummy vibrated violently on their surgery table.
Halted, Seungwoo called to them with fear in his voice. “You did something wrong. It’s going into cardiac arrest.”
“You mean it’s having a heart attack? A dummy is having a heart attack? Something inanimate is in control of our lives right now?” Their argument was real, everything they said made sense. But hearts games are all about betrayal, whether emotional or legitimate. Their tension managed to keep their own heart rates at a yellow-lighted pace, but not their dummies. They had missed out on the point of the game, in which Seungwoo seemed to have outsmarted the second the first tool touched the fake heart of the fake person.
Their lights ran red, your eyes staying put on the back of Seungwoo’s head as you awaited more directions for your task. His voice didn’t speak instructions to you, only telling you what he knew from the game. “The heartbeat monitors-” His wrist rose for a second to show you his, the number reading on the small screen the exact same as yours. “It’s not ours. It’s the dummies.”
His actions, his knowledge, his training; although he had lost his original world where he was meant to use it all for twenty-four hour periods at a time, Seungwoo’s purpose held true. Your wristband’s lights stayed green, didn’t shift to yellow even once. “A simple artery in need of a stent.” Seungwoo claimed, but you knew better than to think it was so easy. Everything here was based around knowledge and luck, luck leading most situations. If he wasn’t your partner, you’d be as good as the people on the floor.
‘Game Clear.’
The gloves pulled from his wrists like he was ripping off a bandage, the tears finally falling from his eyes safely. Morality told you something was in him, bothering him to his core. Seungwoo seemed the type to bottle up until he exploded, but he only pulled you into his chest for comfort.
“It all began here for me.” He recalled his past that you read in his diary, but the thickness in the room was a separate feeling then what you read. “I walked out and back in, and suddenly I couldn’t leave.”
He had explained that hundreds of people disappeared in seconds all because he went out to retrieve a patient’s purse from the ambulance. A single second changed everything, your eyes catching sight of the same doors he had gone in and out of so many times now.
“After everything, I was still forced to come back here. If this is how things are—”
Riddled with confusion, this was how it is. Things Seungwoo said made sense or didn’t, the rambles of the man bringing your brows to rise. He spoke of you being a player as if he wasn’t, shook with fear like he couldn’t tell the difference between what was and what is. All of what he spoke of, they were just more clues.
His trouble with sleeping, the way he clings to you like he could lose you at any minute, how he fears nothing about the game or the world but mainly you and how you exist. You had mentally recycled the mark of a shoe print in the bank vault so similar to his own, watched him play it off. He knew the run around of the games so well, you had noticed it but decided to ignore it in order to feel close to someone else in this gruesome world.
“—then they can be beat.” His eyes still held light, hope in his veins keeping him talking like if he shut up he’d implode. “I know we can beat them. If we’re like everyone else still around, those few who are really good at the games, we can win.”
“Like us?”
‘We’re all here with a purpose, some more than others. Some of us did things in the original world that carried with them here. We’ve used those things in the games before, which means we know our purpose. We can figure things out together. But these games—they didn’t come out of thin air, did they?”
“People here, around us, helped create them.” Finally, things clicked. The man you had given yourself to, fallen in love with, and relied on so much: Seungwoo is a game moderator. The explanation almost hurt, he had known so many things because the creators trusted him. He built the game in the ER, that was why he shifted there. His original purpose fit too well. Your theory was correct, he was here to keep the game running.
“Which means we can beat them.”
Never fluctuating, never letting you down, never giving you real reason to be suspicious. Although Seungwoo was part of why you were here, part of the game—he was still a human being forced to survive off the same games he created, to live off the visa days he won, and make it to the finale.
You didn’t know what was ahead. Surviving like you had wasn’t ideal but it worked. Keeping from others, but taking the few chances to help someone in order to assure they will make it another day like you swore to do since you were once saved. If you even had a chance to make it out of this hell-like world and back to reality. But you knew one thing: if you got out of here, you surely wouldn’t lose a partner like Seungwoo in any form of reality, game or real.
