hunting feast

everyone felt it.

[imnay]

fingers curled around the steering wheel, a hand clutching at the gearshift, she drove off to her destination, heart pumping with excitement the closer she got around her boyfriend’s neighborhood. she hadn’t told him much. she kept the conversation casual - “let’s raid a convenience store, buy as many snacks as we can and eat at the park. it’ll be fun.” yeah…. that’s totally casual. years of preparing new projects with her group in secrecy had forced her into lying from time to time, even though in the end, everybody still saw through them, but she at least knew not to throw any hints while texting him. she wanted to take him by surprise.

100 days, 1000 days, they’re numbers she always remembered to celebrate. whether it was a personal achievement or an anniversary with her members, nayeon always remembered every important date in her life and now that it was time to experience that with him, she wanted to make it memorable. a memorable celebration for her special someone.

and after a short drive, she parked her car in front of his building, taking her phone into her hand to write up a text, letting him know she was waiting for him outside, a small smile creeping around the corners of her lips as she waited for a response.

[thundercoil]

excitement was a perennial mood whenever he'd receive a text from nayeon. it was a lot less frequent that they had been meeting, what with him kind of on a run. a shift in his life after having been found once again. it also meant jooheon hadn't been inviting her to his place (his brother's, really), and it worried him whether that made nayeon feel special to a smaller degree. he was hoping not. she had already been worrying about more things than usual; a stalker riddling her days on top of exhausting tours outside the country. jooheon went on thinking one fragmentary thought after another amidst the waiting. he had not a thing to lose aside from his twin. he had no social position, no future to speak of. but since nayeon, all of that had changed.

that day, at least, things were as calm as could be. a muscle-stretching session was due, not much in a chaste sense. nayeon, in her text message, mentioned a convenience store raid and a visit to the park but the man that jooheon is had other ideas he was more excited about after such activities. she always did skillfully drew a week's worth of desire out of him, took care of it with great efficiency. he knew the worries would wane as soon as she had arrived. alas, a text is sent his way informing him of her presence beyond the door.

he perked up, pushing himself off the couch and very quickly opening the door with a big smile on his face. he scooped her body, giving her a slight squeeze before planting a peck on her lips, then another, this time soft and drawn out. eyes closed, he continued on leaving prolonged kisses and whispering "i missed you," in between a jagged breath.

[thundercoil]

[thundercoil]

hands curled around the railing, eyes fixed on a stray tropical fish. part of his brain admired the fish. it reminded him of fall leaves: vibrant and thin. beneath the scales of impossibly bright yellow were guts, a heart, muscles... yet looking at it head on, it almost disappeared except the bulging eyes. another part of his mind was on the glass itself, the tank. water is heavy; how these sheets held together with glue strong enough, he thought. his finger trailed downward leaving a rainbow sheen under the dimmed lights of the hallway. without visible effort, the fish moved from plain sight. it averts his attention. back to nayeon, who gleamed against water contained within walls, he looked. he smiled.

he's seen it on tv before. it was always the medium that gave him a sense of a future, though it seemed unattainable in his condition. it was perfect. it was supernatural. super natural that it was superficial. but superficial was good. superficial meant safe, for him. it made him feel as if he was part of this world, that there was no invisible wall between him and everyone else. everyone normal. he was getting used to it, perhaps a bit much. he reveled in it despite everything.

he's heard it’s in the name of god. he's heard his pastor speak for god too, quoting scripture from his book. words like abomination popped off jooheon's skin like hot grease as the pastor went on to describe a lake of fire that god wanted him in. he's heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor. he's heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed. he's heard the news say he was one of us. it could be him pined for it. anything could link back to him. anything that doesn't involve him to begin with.

it's why he didn't exist. but he was okay with this. this moment with nayeon, where it was quiet and loud. heavy and calm, all the same. she was a star, but the most normal he could ever have for as long as she allowed it.

[thundercoil]

the piezoelectric effect.

the concept might sound unfamiliar to most but millions of people have seen the effect in practice. it’s what happens when the needle of an analog record player reads the grooves of a disk. those vibrations the needle makes are transformed into electrical impulses and those impulses then are turned into sound waves. at its most basic level, the piezoelectric effect is how mechanical movements generate electricity and then how that electricity can be used elsewhere.

while the silver-haired neet virgin seems like most everything we’ve seen before, he’s a mediocre, unlikely model superhero that embodies this effect. despite appearances, he survives death after death through unconventional means. he can deter enemies with his cannon’s electrical blasts. how this happens? by applying pressure. more specifically, it’s triggered by stress. yes, stress. test his limits! combine it with his mobility, his power to generate stress-produced electricity, a weapon that can deal devastating damage at both short and long range, and voila! this formula makes him a persistent menace that can easily disrupt his opponents through constant harassment.

when his stress levels are at its peak, the electricity that his body generates are stored within electron charge packs which powers his cannon. this weapon causes continual damage and automatically targets anyone within a cone’s range. but that’s not all of it. whenever in contact with tears or he himself shedding some of it, his body charges a power-boosted energy surge.

anyone would imagine what a grand and adventurous life this underachiever might lead but it paints a much bleaker picture in reality. with the world shaken by the discovery of his abilities, he had become sought after by government agencies for research purpose. to protect himself, he had been forced into incognito. quitting his job and cutting ties with most people who once knew him, jooheon lived the life of a hermit. instances of assassins being sent to track him down has caused great casualties which the media orchestrated to be in favor of the government while also marketing the research’s potential to be useful for every facet of life. painted as the devil, the conspiracy had broken out the general public into protests calling for the freak’s head.