three hours had never felt longer to seokjin. the anticipation bubbled in the back of his throat as he glanced towards his younger brother asleep next to him in the plane.
a family trip to japan to see his father train and play, and the must see sights followed by the amusement park trips. every pause for a photo, every smile, every breath stolen by the view -- and all seokjin could think about was him. the him. the him that he had had at his side for years, since birth, since first words. the him that he had a crush on since he knew what crushes were. the him that he admired from afar, up close, lying next to him in bed. the him that know quivered an awkwardness in the pit of his stomach at the last memory of them together; flashes of their lips together, of his hands pushing him away, of the gazes averted and stilted promises of nothing changing.
( but everything had felt like it had changed. )
a weak unsteady breath on his lips as he pulled the carry-on bag down for his brother, and then his own. two steps in the back as they headed through customs, followed in a trail behind his mother and his older siblings until they’re greeting the heated air in the airport. in his mind, there’s a moment of fear that he won’t be there, and then there’s the anticipation again, leaving him nauseous as he glances around the faces, searches for the only one he’s wanted to see since he’d left seoul, comic book in hand and a promise that he would text him when he could.
text through a screen was never close enough to satisfy seokjin. but sleeping in the same room was never close enough either. his teeth sunk into his bottom lip as he heard his mother voice in the periphery of his mind, telling him something that he likely needed to know.
( there was only one thing--one person--that he really needed know though. )
Kookie + remember me (after an accident or something! Gimme the angst :P )
MEME (not accepting)Leave a “Remember Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character trying to get yours to remember them [be it from an accident, meeting them after years apart, feel free to specify.]
❝ – hongbin hyung? ❞
his voice is an echo but nothing is more hollow than the withered boy before him, a husk of ashen cheeks and bags below the eyes too heavy to keep upon the face. the boy supposes this is what an accident will do to someone - he wonders if this is how his parents would have looked too, or perhaps they would look as ethereal as ever, even their ash holding a luminescence that he did not inherit. jisoo said he did and yerim agreed too, but he thought his noonas the stars against the frightening obsidian sky. hongbin too had been a nebula, a nebula now scattered. crushed.
there had been a forewarning that he could have been forgotten, but somewhere inside him, the fleeting hope had lit so bright, lit so bright it burnt itself out when he can only see dull eyes no matter how long he stays. fingers are dry, so dry but his eyes feel oddly too moist yet he could not call it tears. sadness, but not quite tears. there are no stained drops of cold to dapple his face - perhaps it is the shock that conceals them, the causticity that burns at his heart.
in the theater of his mind, he introduces himself as jeon minwoo the boy the other met once upon a time. in his mind, he can recite all their memories perfectly and everything about himself too that would be important for the other to know. played out perfectly, he could tell the other things about them too that could hopefully evoke a reaction out of the other from. but that is all ideals and while he is a being crafted upon skipping through clouds of dreams, he didn’t want to scare the other. not as a stranger. and he would never want to do more harm than good, never no matter what came to him.
❝ – ah i should correct myself. hello hongbin-nim. ❞
a retraction, hands and lanky arms folding in upon themselves for a brief second, limbs feeling as if they encompass too much space in a foreign room of sterile white. his eyes linger upon the tiles of the floor, briefly wondering about the dirty cracks in between before he allows a smile to breach the muscles of his skin, glancing up again, eyes scrunching together to hide the only window to his soul.
❝ – i’m jeon minwoo. do you like puppies by any chance? i find small animals quite cute, and apparently, this hospital has a lot of therapy sessions with them. ❞
he hides the scattered pictures he has printed, behind his back.
two fourteen year old boys were not the typical suspects for a weekend sleepover, but that hadn’t stopped seokjin from arrived on hongbin’s doorstep, cheek still wet from the kisses his mother had laid on him and forcibly made his younger siblings add to. a backpack full of sweets, stuffed under clothes, and jostled with comics was hung on his back. bouncing on his sneakers as he glanced over his shoulder at his parents car disappearing down the street. as soon as the front door was opened, he was greeting hongbin’s mother with a bow and smile, asking where his friend was and thanking her for letting him stay over. not that he even doubted that the acceptance of himself into the house. their families went back to high school, and their mothers had been pregnant together--with hongbin and seokjin respectively--at the same time. seokjin and hongbin interchangeable between the families with the status of, ‘like another son’ hung over them.
there was a collision of laughter and excitement when the two boys finally met, dashing towards hongbin’s room with the call for them to settle down coming behind them. seokjin’s stifled smile behind his hoodie sleeve as the bedroom door was closed to muffle as much of their noise as they could. rules were not a strict contingency in seokjin’s house; five children would never make for a clean or quiet place. the overflowing energy was polar to that of hongbin’s house, not that that stopped seokjin when he was in a good mood and he was in a terrific mood as he stood in the center of hongbin’s room, pulling the bag from his back and unzipping.
“bin-ah, look,” seokjin urges as he pries open the zippers teeth, turns the bag upside down and dumps the contents onto the floor. comic books, his clothing, the sweets that he’d hidden in there to share with his best friend while they were reading the latest adventures of spiderman. his glasses tipping lopsided in his eagerness to show hongbin what he’d smuggled in. the tremble of his shoulders simpering as he glanced to the door. there was a particular pride for the middle child of five to be able to buy and keep safe anything of the sweets variety in his house. one finger pressing to the edge of his black rimmed glasses as he glanced from the spilled contents of his bag and his best friend. “i got everything you liked. for later.”
Just a head’s up that I am not going to be around this weekend because I will be in anime heaven aka an anime convention so my 3 boys will be MIA as well. I shall be back on Monday for replies.
This is like...3 months late but it’s finally here. I apologize for the length of it all.
( REPUTATION )
Academics: Hongbin is really good in science-related subjects and maths. He also loves history. He attends all of his classes and always takes notes. He reviews for quizzes and studies for exams, not because he feels pressured to have good grades but rather because he gets disappointed in himself if he gets a bad grade. It makes him feel as if he didn’t give the best of himself so that’s why he always works hard to get good results.
Personality: Hongbin is a cinnamon roll. I keep repeating it everywhere, but it’s true. He genuinely likes helping others so if you are looking for a tutor or someone to teach you how to ice skate, he’s your guy. He is very respectful of those who are older than him and will talk politely to them. He is the kind to great everyone he knows with a smile, although he will also smile and offer a slight nod in your direction to acknowledge your presence if he walks by you in the corridor, even if he doesn’t know you. At the same time, he suffers from stress and anxiety from being constantly worried of having his sexuality found out. He tries to hide it, but sometimes it gets to be too much and he usually has a breakdown.
With that said, he is not without faults. If he sees someone being bullied (being called a ‘faggot’ or being made fun of because of their sexuality), he will turn a blind eye and will pretend like he doesn’t know that this is happening. He’s not going to get involved because he doesn’t want to turn into the next victim. But that always weights heavy on his conscience afterward.
As for how the others view him? It would be best to ask them, but in general, I highly doubt they would have anything bad to say about him. He is charming and an extrovert so he doesn’t have problems interacting with others (despite pretending to be someone he’s not). His past girlfriends would say that he has always treated them well, but the only bad thing they would have to say about him is that he never tried to move the relationship forward, to take the next step.
The clubs and sports they’re in: He is only part of the hockey team (as vice-captain).
( FAMILY BACKGROUND )
For a very detailed background, you can click HERE.
But here is a tl;dr:
Mother: Lee Youngmi. She’s a bacteriologist. She went to Sunhwa and was a member of Baek Ho. She loves throwing parties hosting soirées and doing volunteer work.
Father: Lee Sang Chul. He’s the Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency. He was a member of Cheong Ryong when he attended Sunhwa. He is racist, homophobic, sexist and very authoritarian.
Hongbin is an only child so his father’s expectations are heavy on his shoulders.
( LONG TERM GOALS )
He currently doesn’t know what he wants to do. His father expects him to either join the Armed Forces or the police. He likes science and gets good enough grades that he could easily apply for a medicine program in university, but he doesn’t really see himself working in a laboratory or being a doctor. A part of him would really love to become either a writer or an architect. He still has a year to figure everything out…
Speaking of dreams, he wants to get married (to a boy) and have kids one day.
( RELATIONSHIPS )
Uisoo: They have known each other since they were both kids as they were both having Taekwondo lessons at the same place. Then one day Hongbin invited Uisoo to his birthday party and things went from there. In a certain way, they come from a very similar background what with their fathers having outdated ideas about what makes a man, so there is a sort of understanding between them. Because Uisoo is older, Hongbin treats him accordingly (aka full of respect) but sometimes he will tease him and force Uisoo to leave his books for two minutes and get some fresh air. Uisoo was his ‘brother’ during initiation.
Kangjin: They are on the hockey team together and they are close friends. They are two nerds who don’t mind having superhero movie marathons and their birthdays are literally one week apart. Also, to quote Kangjin-mun: “they should run a dating company because Hongbin gives great dating advice and Kangjin is great at breaking up with people.” Basically, they’re bros and their bromance is strong.
Jaeho: Well, Jaeho is the captain of the hockey team and Hongbin is vice-captain. Hongbin respects him a lot. He believes that Jaeho is an excellent captain and basically views him as a role model. To Hongbin, Jaeho is like the walking definition of masculinity like, all the things Hongbin’s father wants him to be but that he isn’t? Well Jaeho is. He’s convinced that Jaeho doesn’t have problems or anxiety or anything like that.
Leonard: Leo is a fellow initiate. For now, they are communicating via notes (and they don’t know each other) but they will become friends (eventually).
Chanhwi: Chanhwi is Hongbin’s childhood friend, best friend and roommate. Interestingly enough, they aren’t in the same class this year (which is a good thing, lbr otherwise they would be stuck together 24/7). Lately Hongbin has been trying to distance himself from him because he is really attracted to his best friend and he is too afraid of the consequences to actually do anything about it.
Mun note: he really needs to interact with girls >_>
( INITIATION )
Hongbin is a legacy initiate. His parents were both elite house members, but it was decided he was lacking a few things and had to go through initiation if he wanted to join the house. Hell week was made a bit more tolerable from being partnered with Uisoo. Or at least for the time he had to be at the beck and call of the older boy. The rest of hell week is another story. Hongbin did everything that was asked of him without complaining once even if sometimes he felt sick, tired, stressed, etc. The reason behind that is that he has been raised to obey orders from those who are older than him. So it didn’t matter if he didn’t want to do something or felt disgusted by what was being asked, he did it anyway. And because he is so nice, he didn’t get out of hell week unscathed. Sometimes he has nightmares, which he doesn’t talk about to anyone because what if others thought he was a wimp or something. Nowadays, he just wonder if he will be accepted into the house or not, and prays that he was able to convince the people who matter that he has what’s needed to be a member.
( HOUSES )
Hongbin doesn’t really understand what’s so great about the elite houses. He’s heard many great things about them from his mother and from his father, but he wonders if it’s really necessary for people to go through such traumatizing experiences just to feel like a family afterward. And what kind of dysfunctional family is that anyway? He finds it hard to believe that the elite kids all genuinely like each other and look out for each other.
That said, he is determined to get in, not because this is something he wants but rather because it is something that his father expects. His father wants him to follow in his footsteps so he wants Hongbin to be in Cheong Ryong and he wants him to date a Baek Ho girl and eventually get married (that’s not going to happen). Plus, being friend with some of the members actually reassures him a little. He thinks it might not be bad to be in CR if his friends are there with him.
He envied those with free time and while he didn’t have trouble with managing time, he felt guilty not reviewing his coursework when he didn’t have practice or attending his extracurricular meetings after class. He felt that if he didn’t review there was a chance he would overlook a topic and with his luck, that would be one of the questions that weighed the most. He didn’t think he was a perfectionist but others might believe otherwise. He could relax and leave his books unattended. He could, couldn’t he?
He had messaged his close friend to meet him in his room to watch a movie as a method of unwinding and proving to himself that he wasn’t as uptight as his bestfriend had teased him earlier. He currently sat on his bed, back against the headboard and his laptop on his lap as he searched for a movie to watch. He didn’t know what types of movies Hongbin was into and while he could have waited to search for one together, he needed something to do and keep his mind preoccupied.
His room currently smelled of butter and fresh popped popcorn. He had opened the window but the smell was clinging to the room. He heard the knock on the door and placed his laptop beside him on the bed before shifting on the bed to reach for the bag of popcorn. “Come in!” He finally voiced out loud, a smile tugging on the corner of his lips as the male entered his room.
“Do you get frighten easily? Because I was thinking we should watch a horror movie but I don’t know if you’re into gore.” He held the bag towards the other male as he set the laptop in the middle of the bed for the two of them to be able to view the screen.
