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What else ought there be?
Oct. 26th, 2022 07:42 pmHere is the beginning and also the ending of something that would have been a highly specific 97z AU:
I wish not to release the string of fate
When I meet you again in years
I wish our story would continue
Because I will be waiting for you here
At the edge of the sea, there is a little green house.
The road to its door is perilous and carved into the side of a forested mountain. But there is a hidden path between the trees if you are blessed with the resourcefulness to discover it, or the charm to fish its well-protected route from the mouths of the wood folk.
*
The Moon, the Lovers reversed, the Tower.
A triad of cards lay on the pine table Mingyu shaped and sanded last week. He frowns and runs his index finger along the edge of the Tower. He believes what he can touch, and what he can touch he likes to understand. He asks Soonyoung what it means.
“Stormy weather,” Soonyoung answers from the window.
Soonyoung pets the bloom of the anthurium on the sill. Its crimson head is drooping. It’s too much in the shade as of late. Soonyoung is still in his courtly clothes and his hair catches the weak sunlight that comes through the window and becomes the silver of a new knife.
Mingyu was skeptical when Minghao requested a monthly appointment with Soonyoung a year ago. Mingyu has always been a pragmatic person. He is nobility by birth but a hunter by nature, a man of the earth and the salt of the sea. When he is with Minghao, though, he becomes a dreamer, willing, eventually, to learn to map planetary charts or spend the twilights walking the shores beside Minghao and helping to bottle broken seashells in jam-jars.
Now he asks, “The prophecy?”
Soonyoung, who can sense everything, asks with a sly voice, “Minghao, what do you think?”
Mingyu laughs, because Minghao thinks as much as anyone can possibly, and even more still. But Minghao would never say so himself. He finishes his tea in silence. When he sets the cup down on the table, the dredges ringing the bottom of the porcelain have formed a celestial body, and Mingyu puts his chin on Minghao’s shoulder and peers into the cup curiously.
The sun, silhouetted in green tea leaves.
Mingyu still carves reliefs with as much ease as he hunts game, makes beautiful things with his large hands, and he cooks and cleans and tries to slow-dance with Minghao barefoot on the pine needles in the moonlight. But the pine needles have grown too sharp for dancing. Something has been threading up through the ground around them, waiting to burst into bloom.
“I feel,” Minghao says, turning to the window, at the sea beyond, “that we may be receiving our visitor soon.”
*
The house itself is not green. The green is the moss of the forest, which has crept up between its undersunned stones in the last few years, dark and verdant, obscuring most of the windows. Unnatural green for the autumn.
There used to be music streaming from the open doors every night, and people coming and going and staying and leaving. But the warmth has faded and the house has grown quiet. It has little reason to make any sound at all anymore.
*
Wonwoo makes his appearance two days before the visitor is to arrive. He singes a protecting sigil right into Mingyu’s precious table, apparently on instruction from Soonyoung. At least until Mingyu catches him in the act. They argue about it till sundown, both too busy to realize when the table has sanded itself clean with the calm press of Minghao’s palm on the pine.
“Dark in here,” Wonwoo notes later at dinner, staring into a goblet of red wine. “And so quiet. Haven’t you two grown lonely? Or sick of each other?”
“Of course not,” Mingyu retorts. “We are all we need.”
“Minghao?”
Minghao hides his smile behind a sip of wine.
“It is a temporary arrangement,” he says after a measured pause, and Mingyu rolls his eyes with forgiving exasperation.
“So you’ve heard about the prince?”
Mingyu’s eyes dart to Minghao’s. Minghao takes another deep sip of his wine.
“Of course we have,” Mingyu says in his stead.
Next morning Minghao finds Junhui perched on the windowsill, twisting the vines that have now completely braided the glass. He is drenched in seawater from head to toe.
“Oh, you’re home,” he says with excessive innocence as Minghao sighs and starts to mop up after him.
“It’s my house, after all. You’re soaked.”
“I was sweaty. I took a bath in the sea. And as for why I’m here— I’m sure you’ve heard by now. The prince?”
“We’ve heard,” Minghao says shortly.
He sits at the table and takes up his stitching again. He’s making a moving tapestry of green and gold. A trap for unwanted visitors, a false door. Most of Minghao’s beauty is deadly.
“He’s on his way,” Junhui says. “The way they talk about his prophecy! Like it’s the end of the world! Don’t you like him already?”
“I wouldn’t know if I could say I liked him until I met him,” Minghao says, even though the corners of the house seem sunnier already.
“Alright,” Junhui says, but he can’t hide his sly smile even as he turns his face towards the sea. The vines begin to grow small green hanging blooms, like curtains. “Boy, they’re tenacious. You two have got to hire a better gardener.”
“Don’t let Mingyu hear that. He’s the one who does the clippings.”
“Poor little lord. He works so hard.” Junhui slides off the sill, floating two centimetres off the ground. “I don’t know how you can stand it here. The sea is so near, but you can’t quite see it.”
Minghao puts his stitching down.
He tries to say, I am perfectly content, we both are, we have won our freedom, in a way, even as we are still fulfilling the duties we have unknowingly inherited by being born. But the words don’t come out. Instead the clouds outside bunch up and tumble over each other and it begins to rain ocean water, lashing the side of Junhui’s face and drawing an inelegant yelp from him, and the grimoire on the pine table bangs open in a gust of salt-wind.
Minghao’s mother always told him leaving books open was bad luck. All the knowledge will leave your head, she’d say gently, the nights when Minghao, reading on spellwork, was the only salve for the loneliness of her work and her destiny. For the job of being a phrase in someone else’s prophecy.
He flips the book closed with a flick of his finger and ignores Junhui, who is wiping the water from his cheek with one gloved hand and saying with his mouth that he always did think Minghao would find his house by the sea quite boring without a little discord, while asking with his expression, Are you alright? Before he leaves the next morning he cups Minghao’s chin. He says a spell so ancient it closes its jaws around Minghao’s throat and steals all of Minghao’s languages for a full minute.
When it has passed, and Minghao’s eyes are still stinging, Junhui whispers, “Will you tell me, now, what’s wrong? You’ll be free after this is over. Won’t you?”
When Minghao was ten, his mother fished a prophecy from her mouth and held its smooth pearly shape in both of her palms. She cried for eight days and eight nights before sending him, her only son, to the faraway kingdom where he would live his life the way it was written.
Minghao does not tell Junhui, So much in this world is of greater importance than my own happiness.
Because things that are already known do not need to be said out loud.
Before the visitor comes Minghao studies himself in a scratched mirror. The scarring from years ago. The souvenirs of a lifetime of honing himself for his one purpose. Marks of utility, except the recent red on his shoulder and his neck, the ones he traces now, feeling vain and ashamed. Perhaps for letting Mingyu ask Wonwoo to their bed when the candles guttered out and it began to rain, or for allowing Junhui to press kisses into the sharp jut of his hipbones and tangle his hands into his hair.
But Wonwoo is droll and kind and wily. The only kind of animal who can bite Mingyu and get away with it. And Junhui and Minghao share the sort of commune that comes from someone who slips into your dreams and makes you laugh in your sleep, who sends you songs through the conch shells when you have none for yourself.
*
They were knights for some time, Mingyu and Wonwoo. They killed a great many people together.
And Junhui, he read the stars with Soonyoung and Minghao long before the house was built, when all they did was tell the King where to defend, where to attack.
Until the land grew tired of it. Until there was green everywhere. The green of decay, the green of the lichen that can survive only on dirt watered by blood.
*
At noon, the sun at its very apex, the visitor emerges through the forest on foot whistling a song the birds take up.
Mingyu greets him while splitting deadwood with his heavy axe. Minghao watches them talk from the bedroom window, through the tangles of vines. He only catches the visitor in fractions split by green— black curls, bright eyes, a face grimy and littered with cuts. A dizzying smile.
When the door opens Minghao is waiting. The visitor stops cold on the threshold, mid-step with his mouth slightly open, his face turned upward. His armor gleams despite its spattering of dried blood. His exhausted face is full of goodness. The sacrificial sort. Noble, devoted.
“My lord,” he says, sinking to both his knees before Minghao can protest. His head is bowed and the tips of his ears are red from the evening cold. “My name is Seokmin. Thank you for letting me rest here. Please take care of me.”
He is tired and dazed from his long journey. When they lead him to the spare room, he stands in its center, frozen like a lost doe.
“I’ll help with the armor,” Mingyu says, nudging past Minghao.
Seokmin lets Mingyu lift each of his hands to slide his gauntlets off carefully. A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead, cutting a clean path through the grime, settling at the corner of his mouth. His tongue darts out to lick it. He doesn’t dare make eye contact with Minghao in front of him as Mingyu unbuckles his breastplate and removes the chainmail from behind, the tall, broad form completely enveloping his own.
“Thank you,” Seokmin says when he’s standing only in a squire’s tunic and trousers. He bows shyly yet again, his sweaty hair falling into his face, and when he stands he stumbles to one side but catches himself with a palm on the wall. Apologizes then waits for them to leave.
At the dining table Mingyu asks, “Will you tell us what your quest is, sir?”
Silence.
“You don’t have to tell us.” This is true. Mingyu likes a challenge. “But we might be able to offer you assistance.”
Seokmin still is unable to look either of them in the eye. He has bathed and is wearing a cloak of green Minghao laid out for him. He glows, catches all the candlelight, maybe multiplies it, even.
“Oh, it’s— well, I must begin by telling you that I am very foolish.” Seokmin’s bright voice is carefully cheerful. “And naive. You see, I lost something. Well, I didn’t lose it… I gave it away. Because I was scared. And now I need it back.”
“Why?”
“I– I cannot say, my lord.”
“You cannot? Or you will not?”
Mingyu is leaning forward in his seat with a challenge in his voice. This is how Minghao knows he likes Seokmin already. His gentle prickling is working. Seokmin ducks his head, then covers half his face by draping a hand over his cheek.
His mouth is trembling. With what? Anger? Despair? A wish? How curious. He is not as open a book as Minghao had first guessed.
Minghao speaks for the first time. “You are secretive for a knight. You do not sing your own praises readily.”
“I am not a knight,” Seokmin says, low and tight like he is proving something.
“Indeed not. For you are the prince.”
Such a quiet thrill when Seokmin finally looks at him straight on, eyes wide with surprise.
“I’m not very good,” the prince says.
“What do you mean?”
“I am uncourageous. I don’t take many things as seriously as I should, and others I take too much so. I’m not as smart as I should be. And often I have selfish thoughts.”
“But what are you trying to be?”
“I am trying to be kind,” Seokmin says softly. “I am trying to be loved by the world, so I’m trying to love it, too.”
He leans over the edge of the bed to press his mouth to the crown of Minghao’s head. Perhaps to him, Minghao is the one who is a golden piece of the sun. Minghao’s heart settles and the light grows and embroiders the shifting sea beyond until Minghao is forced to close his eyes.
He shifts his cheek upward so Seokmin’s mouth can touch his temple. He will tell Mingyu to carve a wood relief to evoke the stark lines of Seokmin’s jaw, the sharpness of his nose, a crown of green vines to wreathe his head. But gold-leaf for the rest of him, for his eyelids and his collarbones, and a mirror for his mouth, catching all the warm light in the world and growing it.
Minghao opens his eyes. The bedroom window is clear of green. He can see the ocean, finally. It is calm and still.
This land needs Seokmin, for the light loves him so much it would follow him anywhere.
“I know I must leave,” Seokmin says.
“You are not the kind to run from your fate anymore, little prince,” Minghao whispers.
But when he looks at Seokmin sitting at the edge of their bed he lets himself be weak for a moment. The weakness that has allowed him to find happiness by the ocean even as his prophecy drew nearer, the same shadow of the knowledge of what he wants and what he cannot have. He puts his hand on the seashell curve of Seokmin’s cheek and bends down to kiss him.
Seokmin makes a noise of surprise which wakes Mingyu up. Minghao keeps kissing him, slow and sweet, swinging a leg over his and pushing him down into the bed, and he can feel the air change, can feel Mingyu stir with interest and nuzzle closer, like a sleepy dog on a warm hearth.
Minghao is dizzy with the magic of their own selfishness. Treasure hunters, pearl divers. He breaks away and shakes his head when Seokmin tries to follow his mouth.
“Tell us now, little prince. What is it that you want?”
“Everything,” Seokmin admits.
The sea has started to churn. A ritual as ancient and as sacred as any prophecy. Over on the sill, the anthurium is blooming.
*
“This has always been my very last dream,” Minghao says when the time has come.
And so it has. A house by the sea. No prying eyes. All the time he has ever needed. The only thing it is missing is the only thing that must leave.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t keep me,” Seokmin tells them, his eyes bright with unshed tears.
They kiss his cheek and whisper blessings into the gentle hollows of his collarbone. When he is gone, the world will be as grey as sea fog.
He waves and blows a kiss over his shoulder, and that is their last sight of him.
The leaves flutter. The sea settles. The pine trees sway. Green is the color of life, too.
[The Beginning: Tell me a tale of yourself, so I might know thee.]
I wish not to release the string of fate
When I meet you again in years
I wish our story would continue
Because I will be waiting for you here
At the edge of the sea, there is a little green house.
The road to its door is perilous and carved into the side of a forested mountain. But there is a hidden path between the trees if you are blessed with the resourcefulness to discover it, or the charm to fish its well-protected route from the mouths of the wood folk.
*
The Moon, the Lovers reversed, the Tower.
A triad of cards lay on the pine table Mingyu shaped and sanded last week. He frowns and runs his index finger along the edge of the Tower. He believes what he can touch, and what he can touch he likes to understand. He asks Soonyoung what it means.
“Stormy weather,” Soonyoung answers from the window.
Soonyoung pets the bloom of the anthurium on the sill. Its crimson head is drooping. It’s too much in the shade as of late. Soonyoung is still in his courtly clothes and his hair catches the weak sunlight that comes through the window and becomes the silver of a new knife.
Mingyu was skeptical when Minghao requested a monthly appointment with Soonyoung a year ago. Mingyu has always been a pragmatic person. He is nobility by birth but a hunter by nature, a man of the earth and the salt of the sea. When he is with Minghao, though, he becomes a dreamer, willing, eventually, to learn to map planetary charts or spend the twilights walking the shores beside Minghao and helping to bottle broken seashells in jam-jars.
Now he asks, “The prophecy?”
Soonyoung, who can sense everything, asks with a sly voice, “Minghao, what do you think?”
Mingyu laughs, because Minghao thinks as much as anyone can possibly, and even more still. But Minghao would never say so himself. He finishes his tea in silence. When he sets the cup down on the table, the dredges ringing the bottom of the porcelain have formed a celestial body, and Mingyu puts his chin on Minghao’s shoulder and peers into the cup curiously.
The sun, silhouetted in green tea leaves.
Mingyu still carves reliefs with as much ease as he hunts game, makes beautiful things with his large hands, and he cooks and cleans and tries to slow-dance with Minghao barefoot on the pine needles in the moonlight. But the pine needles have grown too sharp for dancing. Something has been threading up through the ground around them, waiting to burst into bloom.
“I feel,” Minghao says, turning to the window, at the sea beyond, “that we may be receiving our visitor soon.”
*
The house itself is not green. The green is the moss of the forest, which has crept up between its undersunned stones in the last few years, dark and verdant, obscuring most of the windows. Unnatural green for the autumn.
There used to be music streaming from the open doors every night, and people coming and going and staying and leaving. But the warmth has faded and the house has grown quiet. It has little reason to make any sound at all anymore.
*
Wonwoo makes his appearance two days before the visitor is to arrive. He singes a protecting sigil right into Mingyu’s precious table, apparently on instruction from Soonyoung. At least until Mingyu catches him in the act. They argue about it till sundown, both too busy to realize when the table has sanded itself clean with the calm press of Minghao’s palm on the pine.
“Dark in here,” Wonwoo notes later at dinner, staring into a goblet of red wine. “And so quiet. Haven’t you two grown lonely? Or sick of each other?”
“Of course not,” Mingyu retorts. “We are all we need.”
“Minghao?”
Minghao hides his smile behind a sip of wine.
“It is a temporary arrangement,” he says after a measured pause, and Mingyu rolls his eyes with forgiving exasperation.
“So you’ve heard about the prince?”
Mingyu’s eyes dart to Minghao’s. Minghao takes another deep sip of his wine.
“Of course we have,” Mingyu says in his stead.
Next morning Minghao finds Junhui perched on the windowsill, twisting the vines that have now completely braided the glass. He is drenched in seawater from head to toe.
“Oh, you’re home,” he says with excessive innocence as Minghao sighs and starts to mop up after him.
“It’s my house, after all. You’re soaked.”
“I was sweaty. I took a bath in the sea. And as for why I’m here— I’m sure you’ve heard by now. The prince?”
“We’ve heard,” Minghao says shortly.
He sits at the table and takes up his stitching again. He’s making a moving tapestry of green and gold. A trap for unwanted visitors, a false door. Most of Minghao’s beauty is deadly.
“He’s on his way,” Junhui says. “The way they talk about his prophecy! Like it’s the end of the world! Don’t you like him already?”
“I wouldn’t know if I could say I liked him until I met him,” Minghao says, even though the corners of the house seem sunnier already.
“Alright,” Junhui says, but he can’t hide his sly smile even as he turns his face towards the sea. The vines begin to grow small green hanging blooms, like curtains. “Boy, they’re tenacious. You two have got to hire a better gardener.”
“Don’t let Mingyu hear that. He’s the one who does the clippings.”
“Poor little lord. He works so hard.” Junhui slides off the sill, floating two centimetres off the ground. “I don’t know how you can stand it here. The sea is so near, but you can’t quite see it.”
Minghao puts his stitching down.
He tries to say, I am perfectly content, we both are, we have won our freedom, in a way, even as we are still fulfilling the duties we have unknowingly inherited by being born. But the words don’t come out. Instead the clouds outside bunch up and tumble over each other and it begins to rain ocean water, lashing the side of Junhui’s face and drawing an inelegant yelp from him, and the grimoire on the pine table bangs open in a gust of salt-wind.
Minghao’s mother always told him leaving books open was bad luck. All the knowledge will leave your head, she’d say gently, the nights when Minghao, reading on spellwork, was the only salve for the loneliness of her work and her destiny. For the job of being a phrase in someone else’s prophecy.
He flips the book closed with a flick of his finger and ignores Junhui, who is wiping the water from his cheek with one gloved hand and saying with his mouth that he always did think Minghao would find his house by the sea quite boring without a little discord, while asking with his expression, Are you alright? Before he leaves the next morning he cups Minghao’s chin. He says a spell so ancient it closes its jaws around Minghao’s throat and steals all of Minghao’s languages for a full minute.
When it has passed, and Minghao’s eyes are still stinging, Junhui whispers, “Will you tell me, now, what’s wrong? You’ll be free after this is over. Won’t you?”
When Minghao was ten, his mother fished a prophecy from her mouth and held its smooth pearly shape in both of her palms. She cried for eight days and eight nights before sending him, her only son, to the faraway kingdom where he would live his life the way it was written.
Minghao does not tell Junhui, So much in this world is of greater importance than my own happiness.
Because things that are already known do not need to be said out loud.
Before the visitor comes Minghao studies himself in a scratched mirror. The scarring from years ago. The souvenirs of a lifetime of honing himself for his one purpose. Marks of utility, except the recent red on his shoulder and his neck, the ones he traces now, feeling vain and ashamed. Perhaps for letting Mingyu ask Wonwoo to their bed when the candles guttered out and it began to rain, or for allowing Junhui to press kisses into the sharp jut of his hipbones and tangle his hands into his hair.
But Wonwoo is droll and kind and wily. The only kind of animal who can bite Mingyu and get away with it. And Junhui and Minghao share the sort of commune that comes from someone who slips into your dreams and makes you laugh in your sleep, who sends you songs through the conch shells when you have none for yourself.
*
They were knights for some time, Mingyu and Wonwoo. They killed a great many people together.
And Junhui, he read the stars with Soonyoung and Minghao long before the house was built, when all they did was tell the King where to defend, where to attack.
Until the land grew tired of it. Until there was green everywhere. The green of decay, the green of the lichen that can survive only on dirt watered by blood.
*
At noon, the sun at its very apex, the visitor emerges through the forest on foot whistling a song the birds take up.
Mingyu greets him while splitting deadwood with his heavy axe. Minghao watches them talk from the bedroom window, through the tangles of vines. He only catches the visitor in fractions split by green— black curls, bright eyes, a face grimy and littered with cuts. A dizzying smile.
When the door opens Minghao is waiting. The visitor stops cold on the threshold, mid-step with his mouth slightly open, his face turned upward. His armor gleams despite its spattering of dried blood. His exhausted face is full of goodness. The sacrificial sort. Noble, devoted.
“My lord,” he says, sinking to both his knees before Minghao can protest. His head is bowed and the tips of his ears are red from the evening cold. “My name is Seokmin. Thank you for letting me rest here. Please take care of me.”
He is tired and dazed from his long journey. When they lead him to the spare room, he stands in its center, frozen like a lost doe.
“I’ll help with the armor,” Mingyu says, nudging past Minghao.
Seokmin lets Mingyu lift each of his hands to slide his gauntlets off carefully. A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead, cutting a clean path through the grime, settling at the corner of his mouth. His tongue darts out to lick it. He doesn’t dare make eye contact with Minghao in front of him as Mingyu unbuckles his breastplate and removes the chainmail from behind, the tall, broad form completely enveloping his own.
“Thank you,” Seokmin says when he’s standing only in a squire’s tunic and trousers. He bows shyly yet again, his sweaty hair falling into his face, and when he stands he stumbles to one side but catches himself with a palm on the wall. Apologizes then waits for them to leave.
At the dining table Mingyu asks, “Will you tell us what your quest is, sir?”
Silence.
“You don’t have to tell us.” This is true. Mingyu likes a challenge. “But we might be able to offer you assistance.”
Seokmin still is unable to look either of them in the eye. He has bathed and is wearing a cloak of green Minghao laid out for him. He glows, catches all the candlelight, maybe multiplies it, even.
“Oh, it’s— well, I must begin by telling you that I am very foolish.” Seokmin’s bright voice is carefully cheerful. “And naive. You see, I lost something. Well, I didn’t lose it… I gave it away. Because I was scared. And now I need it back.”
“Why?”
“I– I cannot say, my lord.”
“You cannot? Or you will not?”
Mingyu is leaning forward in his seat with a challenge in his voice. This is how Minghao knows he likes Seokmin already. His gentle prickling is working. Seokmin ducks his head, then covers half his face by draping a hand over his cheek.
His mouth is trembling. With what? Anger? Despair? A wish? How curious. He is not as open a book as Minghao had first guessed.
Minghao speaks for the first time. “You are secretive for a knight. You do not sing your own praises readily.”
“I am not a knight,” Seokmin says, low and tight like he is proving something.
“Indeed not. For you are the prince.”
Such a quiet thrill when Seokmin finally looks at him straight on, eyes wide with surprise.
[The Ending: Why greatness? Why is goodness not enough?]
“I’m not very good,” the prince says.
“What do you mean?”
“I am uncourageous. I don’t take many things as seriously as I should, and others I take too much so. I’m not as smart as I should be. And often I have selfish thoughts.”
“But what are you trying to be?”
“I am trying to be kind,” Seokmin says softly. “I am trying to be loved by the world, so I’m trying to love it, too.”
He leans over the edge of the bed to press his mouth to the crown of Minghao’s head. Perhaps to him, Minghao is the one who is a golden piece of the sun. Minghao’s heart settles and the light grows and embroiders the shifting sea beyond until Minghao is forced to close his eyes.
He shifts his cheek upward so Seokmin’s mouth can touch his temple. He will tell Mingyu to carve a wood relief to evoke the stark lines of Seokmin’s jaw, the sharpness of his nose, a crown of green vines to wreathe his head. But gold-leaf for the rest of him, for his eyelids and his collarbones, and a mirror for his mouth, catching all the warm light in the world and growing it.
Minghao opens his eyes. The bedroom window is clear of green. He can see the ocean, finally. It is calm and still.
This land needs Seokmin, for the light loves him so much it would follow him anywhere.
“I know I must leave,” Seokmin says.
“You are not the kind to run from your fate anymore, little prince,” Minghao whispers.
But when he looks at Seokmin sitting at the edge of their bed he lets himself be weak for a moment. The weakness that has allowed him to find happiness by the ocean even as his prophecy drew nearer, the same shadow of the knowledge of what he wants and what he cannot have. He puts his hand on the seashell curve of Seokmin’s cheek and bends down to kiss him.
Seokmin makes a noise of surprise which wakes Mingyu up. Minghao keeps kissing him, slow and sweet, swinging a leg over his and pushing him down into the bed, and he can feel the air change, can feel Mingyu stir with interest and nuzzle closer, like a sleepy dog on a warm hearth.
Minghao is dizzy with the magic of their own selfishness. Treasure hunters, pearl divers. He breaks away and shakes his head when Seokmin tries to follow his mouth.
“Tell us now, little prince. What is it that you want?”
“Everything,” Seokmin admits.
The sea has started to churn. A ritual as ancient and as sacred as any prophecy. Over on the sill, the anthurium is blooming.
*
“This has always been my very last dream,” Minghao says when the time has come.
And so it has. A house by the sea. No prying eyes. All the time he has ever needed. The only thing it is missing is the only thing that must leave.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t keep me,” Seokmin tells them, his eyes bright with unshed tears.
They kiss his cheek and whisper blessings into the gentle hollows of his collarbone. When he is gone, the world will be as grey as sea fog.
He waves and blows a kiss over his shoulder, and that is their last sight of him.
The leaves flutter. The sea settles. The pine trees sway. Green is the color of life, too.
Love? You come for me with love?
Dec. 15th, 2021 07:41 am(or, avoiding plot-specific spoilers as much as I can, why HBO’s Succession is my second-favorite television show of all time)
[...]
In season 1 of Fleabag, which is my first-favorite television show of all time, there’s this scene where Fleabag is in the passenger seat of a car and her older sister Claire is driving. It’s a little tense between them. Fleabag cracks a somewhat inappropriate joke, and Claire starts laughing, and then crying, and then pulls over in the middle of traffic and sobs, “Don’t make this fun!”
In the latest episode of Succession, there’s a sort of similar scene. Kendall Roy is the oldest of the three siblings involved in this scene. The three of them have been on less-than-ideal terms for a long time now and Kendall has said something pretty earthshaking. He is sitting on the ground getting Italian gravel dust on his pants and he is perhaps the lowest he has ever been. His little brother Roman cracks a very dark joke, and Kendall starts laughing, and then crying, and then sobbing variations of, “No, don’t, man,” when instead of stopping, Roman just keeps going on and on with his terrible and inappropriate jokes and later slaps the top of Kendall’s recently-shaven head twice.
Which is, I guess, Roman’s own fucked up little version of affection towards his big brother. The only way he knows to say, “It’s gonna be okay.” How touching! How funny! How excruciating! I simply cannot stop watching.
In 2019, what kickstarted my initial interest in the show was a skit about M&Ms and a fan edit of an Arrested Development trailer in the style of Succession’s opening credits. Which, on its own, with that very iconic opening theme, was enough for me to go… Hmmm. Interesting. A little bit after that, I conveniently caught a cold for two days and watched the entire first season high on NyQuil in bed, after which I did not stop thinking about the show ever.
So, why? Why this show, a show that is famously about rich white incompetent businessmen and girlbosses (attempted)? I had to distill it down, I’d say it’s kind of emblematic of what Gets me in media, which is: Family Issues, Ruthless Writing, and Tragicomedy. Like Kendall puts it:
“You know…I was born lucky. I’m a lucky person. I realize that. And you’re so fuckin’ jealous, aren’t you? You’re so fuckin’ jealous of what you’ve given your own kids. You can’t handle it. You c—you can’t work it out.”
There’s a kind of itch I have as the eldest daughter of immigrants. I’ll call it the intergenerational itch. This show manages to scratch that itch. It is a show about terrible people modeled on the Murdochs, sure, but it’s also about cycles of trauma and violence, siblings who love each other the only ways they know how, and a parent who is smarter and more of a killer than they could ever be. Their father has succeeded too well, and now he is making his children pay the price for the privilege they were born with. It’s expert at manipulating audience sympathies week to week, but also effective at making its characters hamster-wheel down the nine circles of hell, doing more progressively terrible and desperate things to see their own situations clearly and to manipulate themselves, often less-than-successfully, to better positions.
Another thing that appeals to me is the writing. It has my favorite writing on almost any TV show ever. It’s by turns creatively disgusting, emotionally raw, hysterically funny, theatrical and heightened. It’s fantastic with the structural macro plotting level, intentionality, foreshadowing, subtlety, allusions to mythology and Shakespeare. But it particularly shines dialogue-wise.
This dialogue has range. There are powerful people stammering their way through half-formed thoughts and threats of castration as business strategy and one indescribable rap number. Uh-huh is a power play and Fuck off is affection, a humbling aside, or a way to break a heart. The show is as finely attuned to character as written dialogue could possibly be.
Some out of context bangers:
In the end, though, at its most raw, Succession is a story about love and addiction. There is a cyclical nature to it: who gets love, who needs love even if they believe they don’t want it, who scorns love, who believes love is a tool for manipulation. It can be surprisingly tender, which in its landscape of endless metaphors and business jargon and nobody saying quite what they mean hits a lot harder. And every time I watch an episode, I want to become a better writer.
To finish, I’ll quote Brandon Taylor’s thoughts on the show from his very interesting essay:
“We aren’t watching the show to figure out which one of them he will pick. We are now watching the show to see to what extent these people will degrade themselves in pursuit of the love of someone who is abject.”
I love this show and its funny sad terrible abject little people. It’ll keep kicking me, and I’ll keep coming back to it.
Psychopomp
deleted scenes:
[...]
In the performance class the next day they had a free write.
Writing was an intimidating prospect, although it hadn’t used to be. It had used to be all he’d ever wanted.
Their university wasn’t particularly famous, but it had produced several poets of renown, as well as some artists and actors who went on to become known globally. Anyways it hasn’t been the prospect of fame that called to Wonwoo when he’d decided to apply, or even some ideal that the education he'd get in writing would be incomparable. It had been something a little more difficult to communicate and almost subconscious.
He’d looked at photographs of the university at the PC bang every single night the term before he graduated from high school. The campus was like nothing he had ever seen before, rugged and mountainous. Wonwoo had imagined it to be very harsh in the winter. He hadn’t known then how accurate this was.
At the university orientation the first years were all warned away from the woods, especially in the colder months. One time a student had gone for a walk on the longest night of the year and became lost. He was later found dead of hypothermia.
When Wonwoo heard that he thought, I could see myself going like that.
He could imagine himself simply forgetting himself, his own body, his own physical needs in the perfect silent snow of the mountain.
“Alright,” their professor said. “I’d like you to read the line that you’re proudest of, and the line that scares you the most.”
Nobody volunteered.
“Jeon Wonwoo-ssi?”
Wonwoo stared at the point where the wall met the floor, acutely aware of Mingyu sitting in front of him, the back of his head tense and still.
“I’m sorry, seonsaengnim. I didn’t… I wasn’t able to write anything.”
“You have writer’s block?”
“No, I…”
“The point of a freewrite is to let it all flood in,” she told him.
“Yes,” Wonwoo murmured. He hadn’t blinked for so long his eyes were starting to sting, and the boundaries of the wall and the floor were blurring. “I know.”
[...]
“Hyung,” Chan said through a mouthful of meat. “Aren’t you hungry? You need some extra protein, if you ask me.”
“You have some sauce on your chin,” Wonwoo laughed, reaching forward with the napkin. He took his time dabbing the corner of Chan’s mouth. “Talk after you finish, what are you, three years old? I’m not that hungry.”
Chan shoved a piece of galbi across the table threateningly.
“I’m not even kidding, hyung. You don’t wanna know what Soonyoung-hyung said about you earlier.”
“What did he say?”
“I’d tell you if you listened to me about other things,” Chan replied, still wagging his chopsticks in the air. Wonwoo made an annoyed noise and took a bite. “Thank you. He said you were still pretty handsome, but he thinks lately you look a bit like— and I quote— an anemic failing novelist who needs to be on a supplement of Cheong Kwan Jang.”
“Wow,” Wonwoo said. “A novelist, huh. High praise.”
“Did you literally not hear anything else in that sentence or are you just ignoring it?”
“Chan-ah, if I needed someone to take care of me, you’d be second-to-last on my list.”
“Who’s last?”
“Kwon Soonyoung.”
This pleased Chan inordinately. There were lots of students eating close by, mostly other first-years like Chan who hadn’t figured out where the classy places were yet. But Wonwoo didn’t mind sitting near them openly watching Chan cackle away with a stupid grin on his own face.
Nobody paid attention when it was just them two together. That was why he’d been getting dinner with Chan in cheap places close to campus town limits. With Mingyu sometimes he’d go so far as to drive all the way down to the valley. He’d pretend it was extremely normal to do that. It sort of came to a head one night about eight months ago when they were driving back up after dinner and his car stalled on the side of the mountain.
“I don’t care if people see us eating together,” Mingyu had said suddenly while Wonwoo was trying to pop the hood.
Wonwoo could still remember his face under the moonlight, how truly hurt he’d seemed, his pink nose and his arms crossed over his woolen coat and his mouth twisted small. He looked older than he really was, burdened with the disappointments of reality.
“I don’t give a fuck about whatever they’d say about us,” Mingyu had continued. “Seriously, I don’t know why you care so much. And anyways is it so bad that they think about us like that sometimes?”
Chan asked, “How was your class yesterday, hyung? The one you were nervous about?”
“I wasn’t nervous about it exactly,” Wonwoo said distantly, then wondered why he was feeling so defensive. “It’s… well, I suppose it was interesting. They’re teaching us about performing our written work. It’s not really something I’ve learned about before.”
“You could always ask me for tips.”
Wonwoo laughed again and said nothing.
After they ate he picked the bill up. Chan had a class, and Wonwoo had nothing at all. He went walking along the treeline of the forest alone.
He liked the edge of campus. No one with any sense went near the woods at night. His hands froze up quick and his worn jacket didn’t do him much good. But he walked briskly, watching the distant glittering lights from the dormitories.
They were such wonders, those dormitories, the first year of university. The whole university was. It was worlds away from his school in Changwon.
Not that he was any more at home at university with the generationally wealthy students, people who were so aware of self-image that sometimes that was all that mattered. And Writer wasn't any nobler of a pursuit at university than it was in all the embarrassed notebook scribbles at his kitchen table at home. But it was something he could get good at. If he wasn't the richest or the handsomest or the funniest or the most popular, he had this. He could sit and try.
It displaced his sense of self in a new way. It made him realize the scope of everything outside of himself.
Which was good. Sometimes he could feel so vast and endless, like a deep well, falling and falling into an unknown place.
[...]
He sees Seokmin only once, at a vigil the school is holding for Seungcheol. It takes place in the chapel where Wonwoo first talked to Minghao alone.
It is quickly unbearable. The sobbing people, the stained glass windows. He walks outside intending to take a smoke break ten minutes into it when he notices Seokmin, leaning against a tree a little ways off, looking uncharacteristically blank.
Up close Seokmin’s eyes are dull and glassy. He looks like he has run out of tears. His roots are dark and he looks exhausted and disheveled. When he sees Wonwoo, the first thing he asks is if Wonwoo has seen Minghao at all.
“I haven’t,” Wonwoo says, honestly.
Seokmin looks at the ground, his mouth already trembling.
“I keep thinking about that night,” he mutters. “I don’t know if I remember it right now. But something happened. Didn’t it.”
“No. The only things that happened were that you got too drunk and then you got sick.”
“Hyung,” Seokmin says, suddenly very close, the fingers of his right hand digging into Wonwoo’s arm. “Myungho. Did you and him… did you ever—”
“Don’t be silly,” Wonwoo says abruptly. Because Seokmin’s gaze, the quiet desperation in his eyes, the suggestion, is a little too much to bear. He tries to wrench his arm away, but Seokmin presses closer, his nose almost brushing Wonwoo’s mouth, and Wonwoo stills, his heart thrumming painfully.
“Please,” Seokmin whispers. A single tear drips down his cheek.
“Nothing happened,” Wonwoo repeats, making himself cold and distant. “Nothing happened with Minghao. Nothing’s ever happened with Mingyu, either. Isn’t that what you want me to tell you? I know the way you used to look at them, you know.”
“But you used to look at them the same way,” Seokmins says, in that hurtful way innocent people have when they’re abruptly disillusioned. “Hyung. That was a cruel thing to say, just now. I just want you to be honest with me. I need you to be honest with me.”
Another tear escapes down the bridge of Seokmin’s nose. Stupidly, Wonwoo’s own jaw is trembling. His face is hot. He doesn’t say anything else, and he knows it must be excruciating for Seokmin to see how he really is on the inside, and he hopes this is what encourages Seokmin to repeat, helplessly, “That was a cruel thing to say.”
Wonwoo doesn’t respond. There is nothing else to say. Seokmin’s mouth is quavering. He lets go of Wonwoo and hugs himself tightly, hunching over, like he is in unbearable pain. He takes a few shaking, desperate breaths, his eyes squeezing shut. Then he leaves to go back into the chapel.
Wonwoo looks around, blinking hard. No one is watching. Finally, he is entirely alone.
author’s note:
[...]
I think you can tell from these (few of many) deleted scenes that the world of Psychopomp was initially larger, and the finished work could have been much, much longer. In the first few drafts I was more explicit about what exactly happened, and when, and how. But The Secret History is a detective story in reverse. Not the how, but the why. Risa (likewaterising on twitter) posted something about iceberg theory the other day and I think that was definitely what I was aspiring toward.
I’ve received a few comments about vagueness/confusion, which I’m fine with. This story isn’t about how a murder was committed, or the exact details of what happened afterwards. This story is about an unreliable character who is at once desperate to connect, terrified of being seen, and afflicted with the secret belief that he is truly alone in this world, and that is, perhaps, the only way he can ever really be.
mixtape liner notes: whenever you're lost
Sep. 8th, 2021 05:09 pmwhenever you’re lost, seokhan, 25.5k
playlist
[ selected tracks 🐄 ]
dorothea, Taylor Swift
You know, you'll always know me
You know, you'll always know me
“They’re going to love you,” Jeonghan says quietly. “It’s impossible not to. There’s no one who’s as good as you. One day you’re going to realize that and you’re going to forget that you were ever this scared.”
I first knew I wanted to write this fic in January of 2021, mostly on account of SVT Club episode 8. You know, the one with the cows? At first I really wasn’t sure what the plot could be besides There’s A Cow and Jeonghan and Seokmin, a.k.a. sort of like God’s Own Country or First Cow, just vibes and farmland. But then I listened to dorothea on loop one too many times and that video of Jeonghan talking about his experience watching Xcalibur kept coming up on my TL, and I was like, Oh. Right.
I kept thinking about a key thing I wanted to include in this fic and I hope I managed to do it in the end: This idea that Jeonghan is selfless to the point of backing away entirely once Seokmin has, in his eyes, self-actualized. The whole of chapter one has this sort of preemptive wistfulness from Jeonghan. He already knows what’s going to happen, where Seokmin is going to go, and he knows he’ll be unable to follow.
I kept thinking about a key thing I wanted to include in this fic and I hope I managed to do it in the end: This idea that Jeonghan is selfless to the point of backing away entirely once Seokmin has, in his eyes, self-actualized. The whole of chapter one has this sort of preemptive wistfulness from Jeonghan. He already knows what’s going to happen, where Seokmin is going to go, and he knows he’ll be unable to follow.
Strawberry Blond, Mitski
And the grass where you lay left a bed in your shape / I looked over it and I ached
And the grass where you lay left a bed in your shape / I looked over it and I ached
Hopelessly head over heels, idealistic and impulsive. Unprepared for what troubles and realities lie ahead.
The Yearning Song! Writing Seokmin POV doesn’t really come natural to me, and up until two weeks before the fic was due, the setting and many of the characters were completely different (it was originally gonna be like a Hollywood AU??? with a whole seokhao subplot inspired by this 17hols prompt idek) but then I decided to rewrite it entirely because I felt like I was very stuck and maybe overcomplicating things.
Instead of doing some structural things I had planned previously (switching POVs and nonlinearity and a bunch of other stuff), I took inspiration from the structure of Moonlight, only with 2 main chapters instead of 3. Definitely the brief scenes with just Jeonghan and Seokmin alone together, marinating in their mutual pining, were some of my very favorites to write and sort of put the rest of the story into focus for me.
Instead of doing some structural things I had planned previously (switching POVs and nonlinearity and a bunch of other stuff), I took inspiration from the structure of Moonlight, only with 2 main chapters instead of 3. Definitely the brief scenes with just Jeonghan and Seokmin alone together, marinating in their mutual pining, were some of my very favorites to write and sort of put the rest of the story into focus for me.
Thinkin Bout You, Frank Ocean
Or do you not think so far ahead? / Cause I been thinkin bout forever
Or do you not think so far ahead? / Cause I been thinkin bout forever
Jeonghan laughs. It’s a nervous sound. “No, no, don’t say that, you’re about to make it big. What’s the point of thinking about me?”
This is The Song that inspired this entire fic. I think what it represents in the context of this story could be taken from either Seokmin or Jeonghan’s point of view to varying effect. Like— in Seokmin’s eyes, forever is in relation to Jeonghan his feelings for him, but in Jeonghan’s eyes, forever is in relation to reality. Long-term reality. I also think the Verse 2 lyrics are so extremely Jeonghan. In this story I wanted to make him talented and smart but pragmatic, pushing Seokmin away because of that. He is trying his very best, but he believes his best is not nearly enough.
紅豆, Khalil Fong
Maybe you'll accompany me in persevering
Maybe you'll accompany me in persevering
“But it’s mostly about four theatre performers, like, how their lives change through time, you know? Oh, and my favorite part is, one of them says, How’s the big wide world? And the other one says, I kept moving.”
I think the start of chapter 2 has some On the Beach at Night Alone vibes. Except Seokmin isn’t alone, because he has Junhui. Yes this was me vicariously writing out my daydreams about actor Jun and also svt in Shenzhen one plus one am I right T__T Junhui is so important in this story as someone who is trying his best to locate and follow his true passions even if it’s difficult so I of course had to incorporate one of his wonderful song recommendations as inspiration.
Soonyoung and Junhui are both really important to the second chapter and its theme I think. Around the time I was really struggling with finishing it, I was also going through some big life changes and I kept wondering how anyone copes with diverging paths and change and the people you love becoming distant both literally and figuratively. But I really think it’s about the moments where you can be together and you’re able to recapture it briefly. Friendship is a mutual agreement to keep persevering together and apart and everything.
Soonyoung and Junhui are both really important to the second chapter and its theme I think. Around the time I was really struggling with finishing it, I was also going through some big life changes and I kept wondering how anyone copes with diverging paths and change and the people you love becoming distant both literally and figuratively. But I really think it’s about the moments where you can be together and you’re able to recapture it briefly. Friendship is a mutual agreement to keep persevering together and apart and everything.
Wasteland, Baby!, Hozier
Be still, my indelible friend / You are unbreaking
Be still, my indelible friend / You are unbreaking
Jeonghan doesn't move away. His chin digs into Seokmin's shoulder. Their shadows on the dusky green of the shed wall look like one body.
This song!!! How quiet and beautiful, but also how raw it is underneath all that. This is really what I wanted chapter 2 to feel like. The juxtaposition of the urgency of the present, how things feel so catastrophic and impossible, and also how that can be overcome by these hushed, warm moments. The two of them in the shed with So-yah as it snows outside, or the bathtub scene, or in the kitchen just before the sun rises.
Like Sylvia Plath said, We grow. It hurts at first.
Like Sylvia Plath said, We grow. It hurts at first.
[ outro ]
I think the ending of this story is one of my favorite favorite endings I’ve ever written. It was a big challenge for me to finish it, and honestly for a period I never thought I’d be able to, but I’m glad I did. I’m full of love for this Seokmin and this Jeonghan and in my mind, after this fic ends, I know they’re going to try and figure it out together.
I’m horrible at responding to comments because it feels like I can’t express my gratitude well enough. To be honest, before I finished this fic, I was feeling negative and strange about my writing, like I wasn’t utilizing it to its full potential, or that it wasn’t as meaningful/allusive as I’d like it to be. I’m not very generous to myself.
But when people tell me words I wrote made them feel something, I remember it. I really remember it. So thank you for everything, truly.
I’m horrible at responding to comments because it feels like I can’t express my gratitude well enough. To be honest, before I finished this fic, I was feeling negative and strange about my writing, like I wasn’t utilizing it to its full potential, or that it wasn’t as meaningful/allusive as I’d like it to be. I’m not very generous to myself.
But when people tell me words I wrote made them feel something, I remember it. I really remember it. So thank you for everything, truly.
scrapbooking part 2
Feb. 18th, 2021 05:16 pmaka: have not written a word for it in weeks but am percolating for a wip so maybe putting all this here will suddenly inspire me to form a coherent sentence. [dk voice] yeehaw
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
come home to my heart
Feb. 3rd, 2021 08:21 ama playlist for karina <3
This is music for a heart that has returned home, music for old friends, music for relearning what you’ve forgotten and music for reaching towards what is new. Why are we afraid? Change isn't loss, and anyways some things stay the same. We will learn to love all of it one day.
( stay steady, stay soft )
This is music for a heart that has returned home, music for old friends, music for relearning what you’ve forgotten and music for reaching towards what is new. Why are we afraid? Change isn't loss, and anyways some things stay the same. We will learn to love all of it one day.
( stay steady, stay soft )
author’s note: may it be fearless
Jan. 25th, 2021 10:40 amMay it be fearless is like a small piece of my heart. It was a joy to create it and sometimes it was very difficult, too. I guess most things I end up loving the most are like that. It took about four months to write, which is the longest consecutive time I’ve ever worked on a fic. It’s also the longest thing I’ve ever written. Here are some of my thoughts on the story and the writing process itself.
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17hols fills + reflection
Jan. 9th, 2021 11:29 amfills for 17hols round 1 (quotes):
1. Here, again. Two boys. A brief recap (mingyu/minghao, pre-breakup, vague happy together au)
2. beautiful words like the lines of a movie (seokmin/jeonghan, college au, confessions)
3. Password is "Love You for 10,000 Years" (seokmin/minghao, past seokmin/jeonghan, chungking express au)
4. Don't know what else to try, but you tell me every time (seokmin/jeonghan, idolverse)
5. I know, I know, I know (mingyu/wonwoo, college au)
( Read more... )
round 2 (alternate universes):
1. the only person standing in your way is (minghao/junhui, black swan au, major character death)
2. but you'll never have my heart (seokmin/mingyu implied 97z, bond au)
3. looking through a dusty window pane (joshua/mingyu, in the mood for love au)
( Read more... )
round 3 (screencaps):
1. be still, my indelible friend (seokmin/jeonghan, farmer au, from a current wip)
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Thoughts etc.
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1. Here, again. Two boys. A brief recap (mingyu/minghao, pre-breakup, vague happy together au)
2. beautiful words like the lines of a movie (seokmin/jeonghan, college au, confessions)
3. Password is "Love You for 10,000 Years" (seokmin/minghao, past seokmin/jeonghan, chungking express au)
4. Don't know what else to try, but you tell me every time (seokmin/jeonghan, idolverse)
5. I know, I know, I know (mingyu/wonwoo, college au)
( Read more... )
round 2 (alternate universes):
1. the only person standing in your way is (minghao/junhui, black swan au, major character death)
2. but you'll never have my heart (seokmin/mingyu implied 97z, bond au)
3. looking through a dusty window pane (joshua/mingyu, in the mood for love au)
( Read more... )
round 3 (screencaps):
1. be still, my indelible friend (seokmin/jeonghan, farmer au, from a current wip)
( Read more... )
Thoughts etc.
( Read more... )
scrapbooking
Nov. 22nd, 2020 05:02 pmaka: i can't really talk abt r*repair fic, but i sure can collate a bunch of screenshots of the Vibes. take care of urselves cos apparently i am Not
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