"is that your favorite sort of breakfast item jam?" / @vel-misol
the light spills pink and red hues along his fingers as sumyeong holds it to the window. the small seeds of raspberries line the bottom to top of the small jar. sumyeong turns it in his hand, a look between something solemn and anticipation swimming in this eyes / the past was always something that would haunt him. his family then / his family now. it's this thought that chips at the hesitation / the wall sumyeong had built around himself since childhood as he turns to misol. he walks over and places the jar in front of her before turning back to the counter to begin toasting bread.
"no," sumyeong answers gently as he pops two slices of bread in before pulling out plates and cups for the two of them. "it was my— your mother's." there's a slight pause as sumyeong considers what more to say. "my favorite type of spread has always been apricot, but the ones used just before it's fully ripened for something less sweet."
he moves naturally and it's surprising how quickly he seems to relax as he talks about himself / in a way he hadn't done so in years. was it because misol had asked about him? had it been that long since someone had asked about him in a way that wasn't just for pleasantry but to bridge a gap?
"i… once tried a peach and pear jam that came all the way from hano-dulum— it was the first time i had tried something like that but i remember it tasting wonderful," the story he recounts is a short one / almost insignificant with broader context. but he hopes his effort to connect with misol is coming through as the aroma of toast begins spreading throughout the kitchen. "is there a certain jam that you like best?"
activity check! (task 029)
a star is worth a hundred wishes —
as sumyeong walks down the steps of town hall, a light above catches his eye. a streak of white light crosses the sky and falls towards starfall field. these little sights used to ignite wonder in sumyeong / made him believe that things could be better / enticed him to hope. but there is nothing that rings in his mind or heart as he watches the star flicker out of sight. a part of him almost weeps / wishes that he wouldn't be so stoic in the face of something miraculous. but sumyeong was point of believing in miracles, wasn't he?
sumyeong descends the rest of the stairs, tracing the path back home when he's suddenly stopped as a child / no less than nine years old / appears in front of him. he seems bashful, lips locked tight as he stares at sumyeong before holding out a small satchet and scrap piece of paper. when sumyeong takes it into his hand, the child darts away, disappearing behind a row of buildings leaving him alone.
when he unfolds the paper, it reads you gave my family food during the festival while dad was sick. this sachet is to scare nightmares away!
the sachet smells heavily of mugwort and rosemary / and something in sumyeong shifts as he looks back up towards the direction the child disappeared. the small sachet in his hand is stuffed to the brim and he can feel the weight of something else in it. he lets the feeling settle into his palm before looking back towards starfall field. maybe he no longer believed in miracles / but gratitude and kindness / seeped into his aching bones. sumyeong wraps his fingers around the sachet and continues on his way home, only now, something beautiful has taken root in his mind and he feels that maybe it's okay to hope for better days ahead.
activity check! (task 026)
on the first night at three in the morning, your muse wakes up to three knocks against their bedroom door. upon opening the door, there is no one. on the second night, at two in the morning, your muse awakes to two knocks against their window. when they check there is no one there. on the third day, your muse wakes at one in the morning to a hard knock against the top of their bedroom wall.
three am
sumyeong jerks awake, breath shallow, steeped in disorientation as he stares at the side of his bedroom wall. the sound of three resounding knocks scracthing softly againt the back of his skull / the quiet creak of something at his bedroom door. sumyeong inhales once and exhales twice as long as his limbs slowly remember what it feels like to be awake. sleep clings to his arms as he pushes his blanket off his body and stands / bare feet planting on the wooden planks of the floor before he travels the quiet stretch of his room. hand on iron, a twist, and the whisper of who—
there is no one when sumyeong pulls his door open. nothing but the dark of the hallway and the gentle ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs below to fill the empty space in front of him. sumyeong's eyes adjust to the darkness as he stares down the hall / listens for the sound of anyone that might be awake. the quiet is deafening as he drowns out the low rhythmic tock of the clock. had he dreamt the knocks?
sumyeong stands still for three more seconds before closing his door / the lock secured with a low breath before he retreats back to bed, sleep whispering in his ears.
two am
sumyeong's eyes fly open as the sound of his window rattling vibrates through the wall. breath held in silence, sumyeong lays wide awake as he waits / waits for another knock / another noise. his mind circles itself, questioning if what he heard was real or if he had manifested it through his dream. but his body / tense / seems to say it knows better. his gut instincts say that the sound of something solid rapping against his window was as real as the breath he was holding.
sumyeong remains still as he strains his ears, listening for any sort of noise that might reveal itself in his room / in the hall / in the walls of the old farmhouse. nothing speaks to him / not even sleep / the sensation of rest slipping from his hands, escaping him entirely into the night.
the only sound that fills the space that sumyeong has become acutely aware of is his own breath as he rises from his mattress, footsteps slow to the window at the end of his bed. his curtains are drawn open where they had been closed when he laid down to rest just hours earlier. past the glass pane, the fields outside are as they always are beneath the moonlight / calm and collected. nothing disturbs the fields except for the breeze that comes and goes bringing with it the first frost of winter.
the view in front of him suggest that nothing is amiss. sumyeong's mind tries to digest this belief. however, as he walks away, there is a smudge against the glass that looks like fingers prying through / fingerprints smudged in the bottom right.
three am
his mind is awake before his body is as three hard knocks thump on the wall above his head. sumyeong, on his side can sense there is something that does not feel right. in the way he understands what it feels to be absolutely alone in the world / there is someone that stands behind him. something.
the floorboard creaks beneath its weight / creaks in a way unfamiliar to him as if there is too much pressing against the aging wood. then something that skims across his body / a featherlight touch that turns his entire body numb / freezes his limb inch by inch / stops his breathing.
sumyeong is certain of this much. he is not alone.
something has made its way into his room and there is nothing he can do as his body falls prey to its paralysis.
"were you wanting to use the kitchen? i didn't mean to be in the way..." / @vel-misol
he watches her from the corner of his eye / much like he's been doing between misol and hansol. always keeping his distance, watching on the sidelines in case if they might ever need him. he never expected they would, not unless if it was for something official like work or the farmhouse. but in this moment, it almost feels as if he's begging for it to be different. he's scared to think this moment is different from all the silence that has existed between them thus far / he's terrified it might be the same and nothing has changed at all.
"no!" sumyeong is quick to object at her comment before he pulls the strings to puppeteer himself / to reconstruct. "no," he says again, softer. "you're not in the way. i just meant that if you haven't eaten- maybe we could eat together before starting the day?" he waits a quiet second before he moves into the kitchen, into the space that misol was occupying. a part of him wants to run before she can, to be the one that messes up so that if she wants to be angry at him she can. but he can sense the difference. misol stands wounded, but this time she doesn't look at him as if it were his fault.
he rummages around the cupboards aimlessly, before his hand lands on an unopened jar of honeyed raspberry jam. he'd made this a few months before hansol and misol had arrived / thinking of yesol. he wonders, if misol knows that was his sister's / her mother's favorite type of jam spread / wonders how different the yesol he knew may have been to the one that misol knew. his fingers dance on the cover as he sits between that line of diving into his past and opening the door to his future / one without yesol.
he grips the small jar and pulls it from the pantry, turning to misol with silent resolve, "have you ever had honeyed raspberry jam?"
solo. dreamwalkers prompt for event 003.
location. the fields n farmhouse.
day one /
"you're never going to catch me, sumyeong!" / "you're playing unfair, yesol!"
he's out of breath, lungs bursting with excitement, happiness, life. ahead of him, yesol and hanmyeong run through the fields / they're framed so beautifully by the fall prairie grass. the sunlight against the sky sings / sumyeong is sure the saints have descended and blessed each and every one of them. beautiful children, they deserved to be loved unconditionally / to no end.
"wait for me!" sumyeong calls after the two of them as he fights against the fields. he had always been the slower one. yesol was older by a few years, it was a given that she had the energy and strength to be lightyears ahead of sumyeong. but between sumyeong and hanmyeong, hanmyeong had always been the more athletic. he'd always been stronger, more headstrong, livelier.
what if he had been the one to live?
sumyeong stops in his tracks. where had that thought come from? his breath is heavy as hanmyeong and yesol continue to go further from him. the sound of their laughter bounces in the air as they push each other / both trying to outrun the other. so sumyeong lifts his legs and begins running again. the excitement that had been so blindingly bright in his chest sits sour. he runs as if something is biting at his feet. he runs because suddenly, it feels as if there is something chasing him.
"yesol! hanmyeong! wait for me!" sumyeong shouts, now filled with desperation as a canopy of trees suddenly rises from the ground in front of them. sumyeong watches as his sister and brother run in further, faces still alight with cheerful smiles. he keeps his eyes forward because he is terrified to look back.
"wait!" sumyeong yells.
it's hopeless though.
you're hopeless, sumyeong.
the thought scares him so bad that sumyeong trips over his own feet, tumbling to the ground. his shoulder hits the dirt first and the grass around him flattens as he rolls to a stop. the only thing sumyeong can hear is his heartbeat, pounding loudly in his ears as he picks himself up. only, instead of the open field, sumyeong comes to the entrance of the woods that had suddenly appeared.
a cold sweat has come over him, chills running through his body as sumyeong steps forward. the forest is quiet around him / void of birdsong, animal chatter, absent in life. sumyeong walks until he finds a small clearing where he spots yesol and hanmyeong sitting together. a crown of flowers woven together is in yesol's hands, and in hanmyeong's, the flowers she had been picking from.
he wants to call out to them again, but the cold that has seeped into his body turns him to stone. sumyeong can only watch in silence as the two of them lay their flowers down onto the ground before they take each other's hands and walk away from sumyeong together.
sumyeong chokes, as he fights against the sensation of marblezing / his legs locked in place. he falls to the ground and, with his hands, drags himself to the flowers. it's only as he lies on the ground, flowers in his hands, does he realize they had been placed on two graves.
couldn't they have been loved? sumyeong wonders. couldn't they still have been loved even if they had been cursed?
couldn't i still be loved?
sumyeong wakes with a start.
a wood ceiling above him. sunlight bleeding into his room. the smell of something cooking.
he was in his room.
but something felt off.
sumyeong sits up in bed and looks around. everything was in place. his shotgun by his bedside. his boots by the door. yesterday's flannel on his desk chair.
a handful of flowers on his desk.
so he stands / two strides / and reaches for the flowers. only then does he see the dirt staining his hands / under his fingernails.
"you did this as a joke. i get it. and now you want me to help you." / @velhansol
sumyeong gnaws on his bottom lip, standing on the line between paranoia and skepticism. he's run the different ideas through his mind what feels like a hundred times in the amount of time that they've stood staring at the sheep, trying to rationalize every bit of it. of the hundred, sumyeon could only surmise that someone had to have put the sheep up there. by what reason, that he couldn't pinpoint.
a part of his attention is taken away as he watches from the side of his eyes as hansol pulls out his notepad and scribbles something down. it occupies sumyeong's thought for a second / he had seen hansol around the farm a few times with that notepad, but had never known what hansol was notating during his time in velgrove thus far. the curiosity sits there and the question almost slips from his mind / what are you writing about? / but with his lip caught between his teeth, sumyeong manages to keep it to himself. the last thing he needed for his niece and nephew to think was that their uncle was going to pry himself into their personal lives.
to hansol's response, sumyeong emits a dry laugh, feeling a bit embarassed at how logical it was. "that's… true. i think it might be even harder trying to use a ladder to force it down if there's another way we can maneuver it off the roof."
"maybe… one of the other farmhands found a way to put it up there as a joke…" sumyeong mutters under his breath. he tries to hide the chills that runs down his spine as other ideas start to swim through his mind. but then what hansol says next catches him offguard.
"that sounds like it'd make sense, right?" a part of sumyeong debates if he should just agree / if it would be easier for hansol if sumeyong just said yes. could it be that hansol thought sumyeong did this so they could spend more time together?
sumyeong basks in the soft sounds of the field. exhaustion hangs heavier than he's ever felt on his shoulders / in his bones / in his blood. he's terrified of the truth, how he feels, and what he thinks. there is so much pain that sumyeong has ingested, he doesn't know how much more he can take. he tries to remind himself that she was his mother once, in more than just name when she calls him someone he isn't. when she looks at him as if he's the most precious thing in the world as she calls him by that name / hanmyeong.
there is so much guilt that stretches through sumyeong, he doesn't know where to begin. to be upset at his mother for the ways she abandoned him. the ways she sided with his father, to let sumyeong take the blame / to take fault for what they all knew no one could explain. because it was easier to use sumyeong as a scapegoat, than to confront the truth that there was nothing anyone could do / that hanmyeong was lost forever. that there was nothing that could ever bring him back.
nothing, except a frail mind.
he could never decide if he wanted to curse his mother or let her hold him in an embrace / one that his buried youth still yearned. it felt wrong, to play into this delusion of hers, that hanmyeong was alive and well. to allow himself to pretened he was hanmyeong in these moments didn't feel like a betrayal, it felt like a punishment. a reminder that these moments he had wished for all his life, had become reserved only for hanmyeong. sumyeong desperately tried to push that thought out of his mind whenever his mother lost touch / looked at him with all the love and adoration in the world. he told himself that maybe it was for the best. who did it hurt after all?
if sumyeong was able to preserve any sort of memory with his mother that didn't taste like neglect and bitterness, that was for the best. if it meant, gritting his teeth when looking in the mirror to make sure he represented the best version of who his brother would have been, sumyeong would do it with no hesitation. to ensure that his mother's reality wasn't shattered any more than it already was, this was the sacrifice sumyeong had accepted for himself.
of everything, sumyeong doesn't know if he's glad to be going through this with another / an outsider. he doesn't know if eudora's presence softens the blow. if it forces him to maintain the facade he's chosen to upkeep / if it forces him to keep his own silent word. had his mother called him hanmyeong with no one around, sumyeong thinks he might have lost more than he's already had taken from him.
eudora's steady presence was a new constant in his life that sumyeong hadn't anticipated. most who came through on the farm kept to themselves, but the way she brought comfort and warmth to his mother… sumyeong thinks this is what has made things more bearable / for both him and his mother.
so when he hears her behind him, sumyeong is not disturbed. for the first in a long time, he's at an odd peace as he turns to look at her from where he stands.
"eudora," sumyeong nods as he observes the way her arm rests behind her back, "i was just about to come in to start on dinner. is there something you need help with?"
in these rare moments that sumyeong has, where it doesn't feel as if the weight of the world has been placed on his shoulders, he simply basks in silence. more so, doesn't realize he's spaced out in the quiet that haeil has let fill between them following his intruding question. he hadn't meant much by it, at least not consciously. he's barely recognized the full extent of what he's asking haeil as he stares into the forestry that surrounds them. could there be such a world where sumyeong had family that he wouldn't treat like this? even with hansol and misol now residing in the farmhouse, sumyeong finds it a little difficult to believe what he would truly do for them and what he wouldn't / as much as sumyeong believed he'd do his best.
his mind falls apart and everything he'd tried so hard to keep tucked away / stitches sewn over and over again / it bleeds past his eyes and into his mouth. attaches itself to his tongue and holds his words and thoughts hostage as he listens to haeil. did families have to be large for them to be beautiful? his family had been large and beautiful too. had the loudness of life / the sincerity of unconditional love. only unconditional wasn't quite so. it seemed — grief — was the changing factor in what made something unconditional or not.
so when haeil tells him, words that seemed so simple to say / yet, words no one had ever graced him with / sumyeong finds himself lost. this hand that holds a solution so easily / a voice that tells him — it doesn't have to mean what sumyeong believes… sumyeong is faced with the fascinating idea that reality can shatter in more ways than one. a world can break to separate something whole / a world can break to create something new.
it's unprecedented. but perhaps, their entire conversation is and sumyeong is intrigued at how forgiving haeil is. sumyeong knows he's not an easy person to get along with. the empty stares / the hands that pull someone close to whisper something in passing / the tense smiles people give him because sumyeong suffocates the life and joy out of things, even when he doesn't mean to. he knows the circumstances change from time to time, but that tends to be when they've already been so filled with fear or desperation that any reaction is better than no reaction when it comes to sumyeong.
"untethered," sumyeong echoes haeil with a quiet voice. he can't help the small smile that spreads across his lips as the gears in his mind slowly turn. of all the things sumyeong's experienced in his life, the one that he always believed was as incredible as the ground they walked on was how one person could change everything. sumyeong dusts himself off with two pats before standing to face haeil. "i think a break would be nice. clear the mind."
he only drowned like this when he was forced to face certain truths. this was an ocean he no longer wished to swim in.
"forgive me for my earlier question," sumyeong asks as he takes a deep breath, allowing the fresh air to clear the clouds in his mind. though he speaks to haeil, his eyes drift across the raft as he lets it settle in his bones once more / rearranges it in a way that reminds him — he knows of its presence rather than letting it idle along in silence. "it seems i expected certain things to settle once my mother passed. working on this raft… had seemed like some sort of closure. rather, it's only made me realize how wrong i was in thinking… hoping, that would…" sumyeong trails off, at another loss for words, only this time, he's consciously aware he's thrown the two of them into another loop when they had just escaped one.
"how about that break? i, uh, i brought some bread and homemade jam actually. a bottle of blueberry mead too, if you'd like to try that."
activity check! (task 020)
your muse seems to have fallen under a sleeping spell on the beach shore. they find themself placed as an outsider watching in on a past moment in their life.
the crash of the wave against shore is a comforting lullaby that pushes and pulls at sumyeong's consciousness until he himself slips under the water of dreams and nightmares. breath heavy / deep as the blue in ocean coils / dark as the underside of the moon.
it's a full moon, one that looks too full, too bright, and much too close in the sky. a soft breeze burrows through the fields / shakes the corn stalks from side to side as if trying to bring something to life. then it unfurls into something softer, a gentle caress on sumyeong's cheeks until it raises a shadow from the ground that turns into a girl. a girl on a dirt path that leads back to a dark farmhouse.
yesol.
sumyeong recognizes this scene in an instant. as he pushes and pulls the stalks out of his way, slowly making his way to the road his heart bursts / folding into itself in the way a galaxy does when it dies. this was the moment that cemented sumyeong's fate / tangled and tied to those who would determine what an unloved soul might look like. with the leaves bowing and waving, crossing in front of sumyeong's line of sight, he's able to make out the window of his old room on the second floor. from the corner of the window, he sees himself from all those years ago / a boy knowing nothing and everything at once. understanding what it was he was losing, watching his sister walk away, leaving behind everything that meant anything. that he hoped meant something.
she had never looked back. not once, as she walked away from their family. as she left sumyeong behind in the ashes that their family had fallen into, drowning in the grief.
sumyeong finally breaks through the last of the cornstalks, boots hitting the gravel road as yesol comes closer. and it's only now, with the moonlight shining so generously down on the two of them that sumyeong sees the silver streaks on her cheeks as she bites her lip to hold back the sobs / shoulders shaking incontrollably as she weeps.
it twists something inside him, and sumyeong thinks this is what it is to break. to fall into a million pieces and let the current take you away to the furthest lands / to the deepest parts of the ocean. sumyeong had always wondered why yesol never looked back, and as he watches her cry he realizes, he would never have let her go if he had known how hard it was for her.
"yesol." his voice cracks, and sumyeong begins moving towards her, hands outstretched. in a matter of seconds, the steps he takes bring him down as yesol looks up. confusion flashes across her face and sumyeong tries to call for her again but is overcome by the waves that have suddenly crashed into him, pulling him to the bottom of the ocean.
sumyeong.
the crash of an intense wave shakes sumyeong awake from the sand where he lays. the sun beats down on him, but a light rain has descended / sprinkling on him like silver teardrops.
this is the first time sumyeong has dreamt of this memory in this way. it leaves his limbs feeling heavy and his heart heavier. if the ocean could bring forth something so unwelcome, it would only be right for it to take it back, no?
"did you...need any help with anything?" / @vel-misol
sumyeong had never quite been one who believed in gods or saints. how could you believe that mercy existed in a place like velgrove? to him, it didn't change his quality of life or way of living / was there reason to hang onto false hope in such a way? this is what sumyeong has always believed in and nothing has ever shaken this belief. but when misol disappeared / those agonizing days of wondering if she was alive or not / sumyeong had never wished more for there to be any god out there listening to his prayers.
when he found misol in jane's arms / sumyeong didn't recall much. only pulling misol into his arms before leading him and jane out of glassmire / the unforgiving trap that it was / back to safety, a cruel irony in the face of their reality. the day that something worse than velgrove had arrived and brought sumyeong's worst nightmare to life. and even though misol had been retrieved, alive, it was too close to his comfort. nursing misol back to health was wretched / to see how haggard she had grown over the course of a few days. sumyeong had to remind himself that she was home now, but there was little he found to help dispel the fears that still existed.
so the last thing that sumyeong expects that morning is to find misol waiting for him / a blank sheet in front of them for something he hadn't expected. the expression in her eyes before she looks away, it tugs somewhere deep in him, and sumyeong is whisked back to the night misol was finally brought home. crying in earnest / in secret. he's shocked, but it's a mixture of so many different things that lifts him. still, he too, struggles.
"you should still be resting," sumyeong opts for, he hopes it sounds gentle rather than patronizing. his nerves win though, and he speaks up again. "i-i mean you don't have to overexert yourself. there's plenty to do, but also plenty of hands to make sure things get done, so you don't have to worry."
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