BRICK BY BRICK @wxjunho - Tumblr Blog

slim shady vc guess who’s back 🤓 too late it’s gemma!! back at it again w another muse 🤪 this time i bring u hwang junho, a brickmason who decided to rebel for the first time in his life and embark on a Journey 2 b the greatest guardian fairy of All Time!!!! ( yes he calls that a rebellion just 2 giv u an idea of how goody-goody-2-shoes he is ) brace urselves for the antonym-of-wtv-a-summary-is of my man junho under the cut and as always, hit that LIKE button and i’ll come runnin 2 plot!! ok thank u 4 tuning in mwah

#████ OUT OF CHARACTER.#wx:intro #2 all u beautiful peeps who sent me welcome mssgs #i lov yall #catch me in ya dms tmr bc it's 1.30am rn rip

𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 the academy’s south wing, second floor 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 1827, 1°C, cloudy

it is a cautionary tale come to life. the shadowed beasts nestled under beds ever ready to grab at little ankles, the devil you know sitting cross-legged atop your chest, pushing deeper and deeper until you’re left gasping for air. it is tradition for the hwang matriarchs to sit their daughters atop their rocking right knee, to whisper grave warnings in their ear lest they forget the tragedies that befell their ancestors. he must admit, perhaps the warnings had lost their edge, had blunted into old wives’ tales. but the witches are here now, lurking in the shadows with their glowing eyes as a threat to pounce.

junho doesn’t place his warhammer neatly against its notch in the arsenal. instead, he flings it to the ground, lets metal smash against metal so hard, it shouts a thunderous clang. these witches are liars, he hears grandmother say. they’re never as they seem, mother chimes in. and just as they had warned, they have once again shown the extent of their deceit, have painted the water guardians—the fallen hwangs amongst them—as renegades to their bastardised fairytale. it is blasphemy, the sorts to stir a righteous believer such as he, and so the violent anger crawls upwards from the balls of his fists. as it passes his ear, he hears it whisper, he should’ve been there.

and what this means is he should’ve been in the west, where the battle had taken place, where devilish witches and guardian fairies meet. what this means is junho thinks himself capable of murder— even if it means he will surely die in the process. it is in this way that he realises his devotion to the hwang legacy, a religious zealot turned martyr, to kill or be killed if it means he gets the honour of defending his family’s name.

in this way, junho finally realises his purpose. see, all along, he had felt this conviction to be the hero to save faekind, to preserve the good work of his ancestors, but in some ways, he had wondered why him? and why now? why had no one else in the hwang lineage felt the same conviction as he, since the hwangs had retired their post as defenders of the barrier? but he sees now. because mother water knew, just as the hwang ancestors had protected faekind, so must he now protect them, and so must he now rise up to finish what they had started. junho runs battered fingers through his tousled hair, smooths the wrinkles in his combat gear, and takes a steadying breath.

yes, he understands perfectly. his higher purpose has, and always will, lie with family.

#████ THREADS.#wx:witches #just a lil solo for character development #surprise junho is not the upright hero yall thought him to be whoops

𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 the academy’s south wing, second floor 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 1329, 5°C, cloudy 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 @haksuwx

he must hide it well, within the mounting of his squarish shoulders and equally squarish personality, beyond the courtesy of his easy smile. for what stands in his place, beneath skin, is a rabid dog with the wound of an infectious bite. though he denies it well, there are times when it shows. the gleam in his eyes, tucked away as it wrinkles into crescents when he smiles, and what of that smile? mother has always mentioned that he had big teeth.

indeed, there’s this way that he’s greedy, always bites off a little more than he can chew. he blames it on his heroism—aren’t all heroes irrationally optimistic?—but perhaps the truth is a little less gallant than it seems. and there’s this way that he escapes the self-reflection, ends the sentence with a period even if it doesn’t make much grammatical sense.

here is the rest of it: perhaps the truth lies in something more sinister, something more fallen, something to be plucked from the underbelly of personality traits. mother pinches his chin and pulls him closer. my, she wonders, what big teeth you have.

but he leaves it undefined, this thing, only knows it as a spectre that pulls him into situations that he finds the need to justify. situations like these, where he creeps up on his dormmate with palms curled around the base of his warhammer. the sharpened end kisses the back of haksu’s neck and he pauses, just before the dig, holds it threateningly there like a thought, then the better part of him pulls it safely away. junho grins, “we sparring?”

and there’s a skill imbalance, like how haksu is a whole tier above him, but junho justifies that it makes haksu the better sparring partner, offers a tough challenge to better hone his skills and discover his weak points. the truth: haksu’s intelligence, and he’s combat. tier above or not, he wants that to mean something. and what it means, he won’t let himself define this either, simply squares his shoulders to make room for the spectre to swell within the cages of his chest.

#████ THREADS.#w. im haksu 001.#haksuwx #wow this is like 2 months late but ilu

nature 🤔

who is hwang junho without the academy? ( he thinks himself a dreamer plagued with sleepless nights. )

suppose he’ll be back with the hwang brickmasons, and it’ll be like he never left. the days will bleed into one another, brick after neverending brick, and one day he’ll turn thirty, and it’ll be just like any other day. but it’s tradition to make a big deal out of birthdays so for his celebration, he’ll invite haksu, of course, that one friend he’s made when he was contracted to renovate the latter’s farm. junho will make the obvious age joke, nudge and tease that he’ll join him in the thirties club come next year, and somewhere along the conversation they’ll maybe start to reflect on the past. the typical ‘did twenty year old you see yourself here, at thirty?’ that draws out the unexpected pause, the surprising negative. suppose it’ll call for an explanation, and through foggy memory, junho recalls a time when he could still sleep the full eight hours and he’ll talk about this radical dream that haunts him to this day. ‘i wanted to save the world.’ ‘so save it.’ and he’ll do it. trek the full ten miles again until he ends up in the military. it won’t be as easy as the academy, and maybe that’s why it’s taken him this long, but he’ll get there. somehow. in some way. he’ll always find his way back.

#████ ASK MEMES.#haksuwx #thank u ilu

light: how many bricks do you think we'll need to build maruhan's wall outta, y'know, bricks?

his days were a motif repeated into an infinite pattern. he doesn’t mean for it to sound so negative, but it’s true. so when he’d finally picked up the courage to break away from life’s endless loop, he’d known to anticipate some unpredictability coming his way. and unpredictability, as it seems, is finding the most nonchalant, buoyant types of people in a place like this, a no-nonsense academy that trains its students to be the esteemed guardian fairies. in other words, no, he does not know how many bricks it would take to build maruhan’s wall. he must admit it’s quite ironic, that breaking free from the hwang brickmasons would land him here, his tongue at the mercy of a fairy he barely knows, asking a question about bricks. “probably a couple thousands of billions?” if there’s contemplation atop his brows, it is but the faintest wrinkle, “i haven’t visited the outskirts of the barrier—especially the west—so it’s hard to get an estimate.”

#████ ASK MEMES.#wxseulki #yes can u believe i still have ask memes left

movie-gifs

Titanic (1997) dir. James Cameron

#████ CHARACTER STUDY.

jihyun:

[ 🛠️ ]

“hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!” she waves a piece of flimsy triangular foolscap. it’s ¾ garish highlighter pink, and ¼ yellow— her highlighter’d run out of ink midway through her colouring it and she’d had to nick bitna’s— with ‘JIHYUN’S CAMPUS TOUR’ hastily written across it in eyeliner. a last-minute addition she’d tacked on when she saw him fidgeting with his bag, because well, what if he didn’t know she was jihyun of the famed jihyun’s campus tour?

she takes his hand with a firm shake— jihyun’d taken a seminar on how to give effective handshakes back in university— and a beam. “i am, indeed! han jihyun, fire fairy, at your service. it’s nice to meet you.” she gives him a quick once-over, and her beam brightens impossibly. “did you get here okay? what about the rest of your bags?”

beaten down nine times, gets up the tenth. it’s this persistence that’ll be the death of him, mother says. it’d been the first time he’s mentioned his lofty dreams of being a guardian fairy, an idea shot dead by mother’s chastising. or so she thought. because at the end of the day, it’s this persistence that gets him here, within the great walls of this academy. and hadn’t mother once complimented this same persistence back when it served the hwang brickmasons? lock him in a room and he’ll manage to figure a way out, mother praises.

well, he’ll see how well it does in the thick humidity of his nerves.

breathe in, breathe out. the grip around her palm is a little too tight, so he adjusts it within a fraction of the second. she’s as chipper as the admin staff he’d talked to, but this one feels more like a personality trait than a means to pacify him. so he smiles, thinks he’s pulling it off.

“yeah, i did,” except she’s speaking quickly, or maybe he’s just finding it hard to hear her over his concern with his sweaty palms, or the thump, thump, thump of his chest “oh—” the reflex is to appraise his bag, and he frowns at the implication. was he meant to bring more? she’s the one with the technicoloured list here, not him. there’s a look he pays her, halfway between a smile and a grimace, and it communicates his unfortunate resignation. point is, it’s too late now: it’s not like he can run on home to the family he’d forsaken just to grab a few things, and not expect them to haul his ass back and cuff him to a chair, “this is the only one, ma’am.”

and he knows she doesn’t mean it, but her comment’s given strength to his nerves and so they creep up his biceps, past the curve of his neck and seizes his jaw and tongue. point is, he’s nervous, like the sorts of nervous that makes a man blab, like “do you know where…”—he glances at the yellow sticky note the admin staff gave him, the one he’d stuck onto his bag’s handle—“…‘west wing room 1A’ is?”

when he looks up at her, he makes sure to pay her a polite smile. catches the intimidating foolscap note she holds in her hand yet again, then shuts his eyes and wrinkles his nose in mild chagrin, “sorry, i’m… skipping ahead, aren’t i?”

so… how well is this persistence doing?

the chuckle falls from the smile and he shakes his head. gestures a palm out to request for her to proceed.

#████ THREADS.#w. han jihyun 001.#wxjihyun

seulki:

[ 🛠️ ]

but the academy sent them out in teams, and she spots a semi-familiar face. “ hey! ” seulki yells, swears she got his name on the aircraft. she’s lost it already? the stress is really doing a number on her, huh. “ hi! help! specialist guy! hey! ” her hands are occupied, trying to keep those jagged pieces of what used to be a display window suspended in her air. seulki throws out a swipe of wind across his cheek, hopefully strong enough to turn his head. “ over here! ” she uses her nose to point at the teetering beam, face scrunching up as she wiggles her nose in the right direction. “ can ya’ get that? not the whole thing! just, ” a chomp of her teeth, for emphasis, “ snap that part in half! ”

no matter where you run, family always comes with you.

it’s inescapable, like the wrinkle of his brows to precede the low grunt when he’s speechless from all the structural damage central has seen, like the tensing of his grip around his warhammer as a nonverbal sign that he’s ready to fix something. and well, his first aunt has always said he has his mother’s smile. see, he doesn’t know what it’s like for others, but the hwang family is like a guiding phantom—living not beyond, but beneath flesh—and this time, it coaxes his fingers to trace the hairline fracture running diagonally along the west wall.

the situation is… tricky.

knock on wood. drywall or brick? the sudden gust of wind pulls him from his mind, and he frowns, like the overwhelming feeling of shifting suddenly from one complex situation to the next. the threat of seohae mall’s devastating collapse, to the eccentric gu seulki he’s not supposed to know. it’s a tale for another day, because she’s directing him to the dangling beam that’s threatening to smash into the wall. he hears mother’s deep timbre, a palm placed disapprovingly on her hip and she points to him with a hammer. how far will you run, boy?

“it can’t smash through the wall: it’s concrete brick,” his answer is succinct, spoken in an obvious tone as if he’s among family. and so the prodigal son returns, “but when it falls, it’ll pull the roof down.” junho points to the glass and concrete she balances with her air, “you need to let those down gently. this building can’t handle much more before it’ll collapse. i can—” an intake of breath through gritted teeth, and he’s vexed. because hwang junho feels useless, because hwang junho doesn’t have the tools he needs to fix things. in other words, he can’t. he lifts a palm to indicate that he needs a moment to think, looks around as he takes in the whole situation before he whips his head back to her direction, “i have an idea. if you fly up to the beam, i can tell you what to do.”

#████ THREADS.#w. gu seulki 001.#wxseulki #wx:witches

HAPPY GIVING DAY, JUNHO! the giving tree acknowledges the kindness you’ve shown and coaxes its little sprout to blossom into a magical flower! if you look it up during your potionology class, you’ll find that it’s actually a flower of ELEMENTAL SUMMONING. consuming it will grant you the ability to summon ten miniature entities of your maternal element to do your bidding for 2 hours. it can only be consumed once. isn’t that something special for winter! or, you could display it in your dorm room until you need it—a gift from the giving tree won’t wilt, of course. have a lovely giving day with your new plant, JUNHO!

OUT OF CHARACTER DETAILS please feel free to use your new gift in any way you’d like, whether it be a plot point for threads, a solo for character development, or anything you’d like! whether your muse chooses to use it or not, please post this on the dash so others can see what gift you got!

#wx:givingtree #YALL BITCHES HE GOT SUMMONS????????#someone fight him now guarantee he'll win this time @haksu @kinam

𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓 a large indigo bud surrounded by freckles of seeds soon to sprout. the bud peeks through the windowsill of one of the academy’s CLASSROOMS on a co-ed floor. 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 @winxrp

he can’t say for sure if he’s seen it before.

it’s not to say that he’s confident the giving tree’s never visited him, because there was that one time when he thinks he’s seen a similar sprout like it happened once upon a dream, a soft pink petal weighed down by a drop of drying cement right before he places a brick on top of it. and what this means is junho’s never really cared for the holiday. it’s hard to appreciate it when your life plays out like a broken tape recorder, when the only difference between august and october is the heavy rain.

but life is different now. seasons change in more ways than just the temperature, and junho balances his testimony on his tongue. today, he learns not to just look at it like a pretty landmark that loses its flair after the tenth second. today, junho embraces it. gently reaches a finger out and the bud curls warmly around his index finger, and he thinks he finally understands what it means to be a fairy. to be a creature of magic. junho cups the seeds the sprout’s left behind.

“i have to go,” he tells his seatmate, balances his stack of books in one arm if only to ensure he doesn’t accidentally crush the sprout that embraces him softly in the other.

but junho’s not a plant person. he’s never claimed to be a nature fairy, never cared to embrace his father’s side because this is what it means to be a hwang— or at least, this is what it meant to be a hwang, that one would toss aside their selfish wants and their distinctive qualities to feed into the unstoppable machine that was the hwang legacy.

but seasons change, so he’s here, at the forest of flowers, asking for a pot. and some soil. and all other tools required to care for the sprout he’s got wrapped around his finger.

“you can get fresh soil from outside. the giving tree likes it better. you know, if you put in effort.”

fine, so junho digs. grips the newly bought hand shovel in his nondominant left hand because the sprout has claimed his right. and he clumsily shovels snow from soil and soil into his polka dot pot—it was all they had left—and when it’s at a level he’s happy with, he deposits the bud carefully into its centre and scatters its seeds around it. impatiently waits for it to grow, “come on, buddy…” he coaxes between gritted teeth, and when it doesn’t, he fists some snow desperately atop the potted soil if only to give the bud some water, “you’ve got this.”

…right?

#████ THREADS.#wx:givingtree #can u tell i also dont know shit ab gardening 🤡

aight hoes yall know what time it is

#████ OUT OF CHARACTER.#will venmo u for threads

ashstfu

screaming and crying !!! (sitting in my bed completely silent and staring stoically at the wall)

#████ CHARACTER STUDY.#junho during the witches event #yes i rb 2 non thread posts in a row n what ab it

jingoos

050317 Janus Entertainment Update

#████ MIRROR.

𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 the academy’s central dome, ground floor 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 0649, 1°C, cloudy 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 @wxkahi

sorry, we cannot connect your call at the moment.

irony is a cruel, unforgiving teacher. here, she presents him the ethical dilemma: the hwang lineage on the right, the hwang legacy on the left, and she charges forth with a fifteen-tonne train. which will he choose?

junho phones home.

“eomma—”

sorry, we cannot connect your call at the moment.

“shit. fuck.” it’s unlike him to lose his composure like this, for expletives to roll off the tongue of a man who is known to be so polite. always with a smile, and he wears friendliness in a way that exhibits his enthusiasm to help. he begs for forgiveness, hopes the good he has done is enough to excuse him of the bad he portrays now. after all, is there an appropriate reaction to the end of the world? make no mistake: when the world ends, it is his final wish to be buried with the hwangs.

junho phones again.

“eo—”

sorry, we cannot connect your call at the moment.

“fuck!” his phone is held in his fist, and his fist punctures the brick wall. or tries to, anyway. see, junho should know better. he is a hwang brickmason, after all. knows these walls to be solid, impervious to the kinds of brute force any fairy of his stature could possibly manage. ironic, isn’t it?

“ah, fuck—” he draws his fist back, poorly nurses the bloodied knuckles to follow the punch. junho looks around for a cloth, and it’s at this point that he catches sight of kahi staring at him. a soft red sits in the apples of his cheeks, and he parts his lips to speak, but it takes him a moment to get the words out.

“kahi, hey… what are you—” is there a point to the pretence? he sighs, “i’m—” winces, but he’ll say it’s the throbbing pain to accompany his battered fist, “—i’m sorry you had to see that.”

#████ THREADS.#w. kang kahi 001.#wxkahi #wx:witches #wuhu it's hereee

milyeon:

the academy’s corridors are busier than ever. every student has scattered in a thousand different directions, all panicked and desperate to find something to distract them from this morning’s announcement. milyeon is no different, and as she soon realizes, neither is junho. the duo first meet when she sees him begging the faculty to let him help, whether it be going out with them to hunt witches or patrolling the building’s parameter; they let him do the latter, but only after she steps in to save the day. that’s when they introduce themselves and set off together. “i never realized just how well fortified this place is,” milyeon murmurs in front of herself once they’re outside and walking side by side. the lazy late morning sun is only barely hanging over them. “any specific spots you wanted to check out?”

“yeah, it’s a structural marvel.” they say old habits die hard, and suppose it is in this way that junho’s comment falls nonchalant, not because he doesn’t care. rather, hailing from a line of brickmasons meant that it’d been the first thing he’d instinctively taken note of, a mindset he’s had to shake because he’s not that guy anymore. no, hwang junho is a guardian fairy now, just like the ancestors before him, and he wants nothing more than to prove himself. and in this way, his past affords him the understanding that proving oneself often means starting from the very bottom, like the grunt work of patrolling.

“let’s head to the back of the academy,” the time between milyeon’s question and junho’s suggestion lies the interval of his practical thought. namely, he understands witches as the deceptive sort, and what’s more cunning than attacking one’s opponent from the back? he moves towards the southeast wall and there’s this way in which he’s always a step ahead of her, as though he’s ready to leave her in his tracks. this is not to say he’s a coward, ready to forsake her at the first threat of danger— no, it will do you well to remember that hwang junho longs to be a hero, and so he wears his enthusiasm like a vibrant, admittedly impractical cape. it is in this way that he addresses her belatedly, only after a substantial gap in which the silence readily fills, as though a word on the tip of his tongue that he’s finally managed to grasp, “thanks for helping me out with our instructors. pretty sure they’d leave me hanging if you didn’t come around.”

#████ THREADS.#w. soo milyeon 001.#wxmilyeon #will i ever learn 2 b succinct

𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 the academy’s south wing, second floor 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 0743, 2°C, cloudy 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 @wxkinam

history has this way of repeating itself. see, everyone sees time as a sprinter to race from point a to b, and it is this school of thought that lends itself to deceivingly motivational quotes that incite urgency, as though we’re always running out of it. but junho knows better. and what he means is this: time is a relay on an oval field. the runners may change, but the track always stays the same.

more simply: the invasion of these dastardly witches was only a matter of time. grandmother had warned him of this, had spoken heatedly of their deception and prowess, bound to lend itself to their violation of the treaty laid out by the great fairy leaders. in this way, she had predicted their return, and junho had taken it all in stride. now the time has come, just as she had predicted, and he receives it in his open palm, this baton his hwang ancestors have handed to him. it is in this way that he’s tasked to run the anchor leg of his race, and it is in this context that the thought comes to him: he needs to train.

because hwang junho has been a student at this academy just shy of a month, and he’ll be damned if he disappoints his ancestors by being the academy’s weakest link. no, the anchor leg of a relay is always handed to the strongest runner on the team, so junho needs to train.

it is with this resolve that he finds himself in the specialist’s training pad, and the first thing he notes is that he’s not alone. no, at its heart is son kinam, the dormmate he’d gotten to know back in the pre-enrolment assessment. something overcomes him, this spirit of competition that lands in a wicked smile. junho reaches for the arsenal of weapons arranged neatly along the wall of this room, finds himself drawn to the silver glaives to sit prettily atop its throne. he learns to grow familiar with its weight as he balances it in his hands.

“head’s up!” and he shoots. misses kinam just shy of the left of his head, of course, and he’ll say it’s on purpose. junho reaches for the warhammer next. this, he grips onto with familiarity, like a friendly embrace one pays an old friend. “need to get outta your head, kinam. the witches aren’t gonna spare you like i did.” he smiles, yet it holds a taunt. and like this, junho circles.

“show me how you passed.”

#████ THREADS.#w. son kinam 001.#wxkinam #wx:witches

[ light ] fuck, marry, kill: nabi, jihyun, seulki

“wow.” junho’s still getting used to it, this… playfulness to accompany the majority of the students here, at this academy. that’s not to say it’s a bad thing. he’d just been more prepared for a more serious undertone, considering what they were all here for. you know, to defend fairykind against the looming threat of the mythical beasts and protect the magical realm— but that’s not to say it’s a… bad thing. “that’s a… that’s a big question.” just takes some—a lot of—getting used to, is all.

“well, j— jihyun and i have a… a bird together, so—” these days, he barely recognises his own voice. it’s not to say that he’s grown in his short time in the academy, more the am i correctly hearing these words come out of my own mouth? variety. but hey, if that’s what it takes to be a guardian fairy… “that makes us bird parents.” his lips curl downwards in equal parts judgement and shame, “to birdi—” he cuts himself off, unable to call forth the full name that jihyun’s christened their shared pet, “—so it’d make sense to marry her.”

a sigh falls past his lips in equal parts exhaustion and relief. but the reprieve comes short and sweet, because soon, he’s reminded that he’s only one-third of the way through this particularly difficult question. “i would…” there’s a pause, the way his eyes stare into the distance, not because he’s undecided, but because he’s contemplating if it’s appropriate to answer this section. the answer, very simply, is no, but it’s a pity the truth potion doesn’t discriminate, doesn’t come with its much needed rules, “…fuck nabi—” and here comes the wince “—because we met through wink so it just… yeah.”

like all things, the last stretch is always the easiest, and here, it’s clearly reflected in the composure he’s managed to pick up off the floor. there’s a minor furrow at his brow to echo the guilt he feels, but alas, a game’s a game, and it wouldn’t be fair to pull out now when he’d already thrown the other two fairies painfully under the bus, “and i’d kill… seulki, was it?” junho presses his lips into a tight smile, “yeah, i don’t know her, so… sorry.”

#████ ASK MEMES.#junho the only sane person in sma

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