the art of femininity
THE ART OF FEMININITY
1,273 words. krystal/sulli.
She was a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl, as Bjork said. And really, all teenage girls are like that, Sulli presumes.
jungli's backstory to my other fic, hey, lolita, hey. i think i like this, but i'm not sure.
The week that Sulli meets Krystal, they are seventeen, the peak of girlhood, and they are apart:
Krystal welcomes the slow morning as she does always, in the shadows and the remaining dark. The sombre air spreads thin and lighter by the minute, as if the sun was angry at it's presence. The day shades the room in pinks, an intimate tea rose, licking the mauves and bruised blues away.
Spider veins, red webs - ones that came in matching pairs with those on Sulli's cheeks - crawl across her cheekbones and her hair drapes over her shoulders in lazy curls. She exhales and puts out her morning cigarette in a jade china plate, watching the ash clouds and smoke curl in placid silence. She adjusts the lace cups of her bra, and internally criticizes her waist, her odd collarbones, the strawberry mark on her hip bone. The vanity shows her things she doesn't want to see.
She looks to her window sill, double-checking that her vacancy sign was still in its place and that her father had not removed it in the middle of the night. Still there, letting the world know that this room is up for rent, empty, that there is no one inhabiting in this room, and that if anyone did see a person, it is only a mere ghost.
Missing, she was. Soojung. Still living with her, but older, different, sadder now. More disappointed. Grey with age. Not the Soojung she knew. No more of the tears of diamond, the little giggling queen. Her perfumes and lipsticks didn't match her anymore either. The sweet mint one in the frosted glass case smelled too light, too fresh; the small one, the one like pink champagne, too feminine, too much; the others, too subtle, too childish, too flowery, too much honey, too not like her.
-
Frustration - and what's more pathetic is that she doesn't even know why. The transition from a girl to a woman is always hard, they'd said.
She misses California air, Bel Air, L.A. and the city of angels, palm trees and Bacardi chasers, the salt paradise, carefree litheness and hearts full. Korea, acidic and ascetic, obviously, is not California. Korea might have worked when she was five and not already fucked up inside.
She decides to go look for lipstick, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do when the world has wronged you - she did like looking for lipstick. Something for the older her. Like pomegranate seeds, like cherry wood, like browsed, old red wine. She decides to buy plum blossom lipstick and a flask of Chanel No. 5, both for their poetic name.
-
("What are you doing nowadays?"
"Committing suicide by cigarettes.")
-
She eats an apple, slowly and surely, dainty bites into the blood red skin, daintier bites into the flesh. It rests in her hand like a roughly cut ruby, a family jewel, or maybe the heart of a boy. These sort of things belonged to her anyway, or so she believed.
Seventeen: Krystal, not Soojung, in clothes that others would call provocative lingerie, cat-eyed with the sunglasses to match, Miu Miu, pink with olive-tinted lenses, cried lightning, dazed and confused, bitter like cold medicine, young, but not really. She sits in the subway train, on the edge of her seat, Krystal, not Soojung.
-
"She's vicious," the girls come to say, indifferent to if Krystal could hear them or not. "She's like a spider, in all ways."
I am, Krystal thinks with teeth, hot and hostile. The spider crawling slowly down the lining of your throat, the one you swallow in your sleep. About six of me will pass through you in your lifetime. And you will be poisoned, and you will never know.
Everyone reels back in distaste, whisperlings of a waste of a pretty face, critiques of needed maladaptive personality adjustment.
She remembers, once upon a time, she wanted to be good and liked.
-
The day that Sulli meets Krystal, they are seventeen, the days when youth thinks they're old enough for life, and they are not apart: close enough to fall for each other. Even the simplest of things could effect so much.
Seventeen and they meet, in a bathroom, classic high school, Krystal applying her lipstick with an unfamiliar intricacy, Sulli laughing at her sleepy reflection, eyes blushing and threatening.
Choi Sulli, but of course, tongue red from the two lollipops she'd eaten earlier in the morning. Choi Sulli, a teenage angst phase, a sweet little tart, they label her, “first loves” and all of that. Lips the envy of women, a pout made of secret Valentine kisses and x's and o's. She talked with such hesitance that only a certain naïveté promised.
Krystal parts her lips, smacks them together twice, and Sulli looks at her, lovely and lovingly.
"I like your lipstick," Sulli chimes. "What is it?"
"Plum blossom," Krystal says calmly.
Somewhere in the middle of their exchange and the next few exchanges, Krystal gives Sulli her tube of lipstick as compensation for a strawberry candy pop.
-
Sulli is like a toothache, a fire in the crevices of your jaw, Krystal thinks. She probably burns the roof of everyone's mouths with such sweetness.
In fact, she's probably everyone's favorite flavor.
And that is why, two months later, understandably, Krystal still thinks their friendship is a façade, theatricalities; somewhere in Sulli's docile nature, she is a liar at heart, and is thinking of how Krystal needed maladaptive personality adjustment.
-
("We all have to put up with you."
"I didn't realize you had to put up with me.")
-
"She's vicious," the girls come to say to Sulli, indifferent to if Krystal could hear them or not. "She's a devil, in all ways."
"No," Sulli would always respond.
Krystal; no. Only had a bad head that gleamed mean. She is a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl, as Bjork said. And really, all teenage girls are like that, Sulli presumes.
-
It is not difficult to describe how their time goes when they are together: nothing really matters between them, nothing ever really happens. Sad summer nights are less sad with Sulli, and that's all.
(She fills up Krystal's empty spaces with something less angry, a bit like air, more like the old Soojung - but she'd never admit that, she never will.)
-
Krystal bares her teeth too often, too many times, even she thinks so herself.
"I'm sorry, Sulli."
"For what? I didn't realize there was something to apologize for," she responds, and her tongue licks the curve of her lower lip.
It's an amazing thing, what Jinri can do. All in words, she's able to kiss Soojung's cheeks with tiny pecks of comfort, and it is like the weight of the world leaves naturally, like air, inhale, exhale.
-
They are only girls, even if the world occasionally forgets it, even if they forget it - or want to - sometimes themselves.
-
It is not difficult to describe how their time goes when they are together; except now they are Jinri and Soojung, and for some reason, it changes how everything was before. Lining their lower eyelids with glitter, like nuanced pastel sparklers; blowing kisses and smearing lipstick on the photo of Jean Paul Belmondo pinned to Jinri's mirror, flirtatious prayers to his French soul; eating candied cakes or chinese take-out with cognac shots après-midi until they became drowsy.
-
Soojung takes the vacancy sign down, shares a room with Jinri. They grow up, but they do not grow apart. They only grow out of drawing hearts around each others names, and only occasionally.
1,273 words. krystal/sulli.
She was a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl, as Bjork said. And really, all teenage girls are like that, Sulli presumes.
jungli's backstory to my other fic, hey, lolita, hey. i think i like this, but i'm not sure.
The week that Sulli meets Krystal, they are seventeen, the peak of girlhood, and they are apart:
Krystal welcomes the slow morning as she does always, in the shadows and the remaining dark. The sombre air spreads thin and lighter by the minute, as if the sun was angry at it's presence. The day shades the room in pinks, an intimate tea rose, licking the mauves and bruised blues away.
Spider veins, red webs - ones that came in matching pairs with those on Sulli's cheeks - crawl across her cheekbones and her hair drapes over her shoulders in lazy curls. She exhales and puts out her morning cigarette in a jade china plate, watching the ash clouds and smoke curl in placid silence. She adjusts the lace cups of her bra, and internally criticizes her waist, her odd collarbones, the strawberry mark on her hip bone. The vanity shows her things she doesn't want to see.
She looks to her window sill, double-checking that her vacancy sign was still in its place and that her father had not removed it in the middle of the night. Still there, letting the world know that this room is up for rent, empty, that there is no one inhabiting in this room, and that if anyone did see a person, it is only a mere ghost.
Missing, she was. Soojung. Still living with her, but older, different, sadder now. More disappointed. Grey with age. Not the Soojung she knew. No more of the tears of diamond, the little giggling queen. Her perfumes and lipsticks didn't match her anymore either. The sweet mint one in the frosted glass case smelled too light, too fresh; the small one, the one like pink champagne, too feminine, too much; the others, too subtle, too childish, too flowery, too much honey, too not like her.
-
Frustration - and what's more pathetic is that she doesn't even know why. The transition from a girl to a woman is always hard, they'd said.
She misses California air, Bel Air, L.A. and the city of angels, palm trees and Bacardi chasers, the salt paradise, carefree litheness and hearts full. Korea, acidic and ascetic, obviously, is not California. Korea might have worked when she was five and not already fucked up inside.
She decides to go look for lipstick, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do when the world has wronged you - she did like looking for lipstick. Something for the older her. Like pomegranate seeds, like cherry wood, like browsed, old red wine. She decides to buy plum blossom lipstick and a flask of Chanel No. 5, both for their poetic name.
-
("What are you doing nowadays?"
"Committing suicide by cigarettes.")
-
She eats an apple, slowly and surely, dainty bites into the blood red skin, daintier bites into the flesh. It rests in her hand like a roughly cut ruby, a family jewel, or maybe the heart of a boy. These sort of things belonged to her anyway, or so she believed.
Seventeen: Krystal, not Soojung, in clothes that others would call provocative lingerie, cat-eyed with the sunglasses to match, Miu Miu, pink with olive-tinted lenses, cried lightning, dazed and confused, bitter like cold medicine, young, but not really. She sits in the subway train, on the edge of her seat, Krystal, not Soojung.
-
"She's vicious," the girls come to say, indifferent to if Krystal could hear them or not. "She's like a spider, in all ways."
I am, Krystal thinks with teeth, hot and hostile. The spider crawling slowly down the lining of your throat, the one you swallow in your sleep. About six of me will pass through you in your lifetime. And you will be poisoned, and you will never know.
Everyone reels back in distaste, whisperlings of a waste of a pretty face, critiques of needed maladaptive personality adjustment.
She remembers, once upon a time, she wanted to be good and liked.
-
The day that Sulli meets Krystal, they are seventeen, the days when youth thinks they're old enough for life, and they are not apart: close enough to fall for each other. Even the simplest of things could effect so much.
Seventeen and they meet, in a bathroom, classic high school, Krystal applying her lipstick with an unfamiliar intricacy, Sulli laughing at her sleepy reflection, eyes blushing and threatening.
Choi Sulli, but of course, tongue red from the two lollipops she'd eaten earlier in the morning. Choi Sulli, a teenage angst phase, a sweet little tart, they label her, “first loves” and all of that. Lips the envy of women, a pout made of secret Valentine kisses and x's and o's. She talked with such hesitance that only a certain naïveté promised.
Krystal parts her lips, smacks them together twice, and Sulli looks at her, lovely and lovingly.
"I like your lipstick," Sulli chimes. "What is it?"
"Plum blossom," Krystal says calmly.
Somewhere in the middle of their exchange and the next few exchanges, Krystal gives Sulli her tube of lipstick as compensation for a strawberry candy pop.
-
Sulli is like a toothache, a fire in the crevices of your jaw, Krystal thinks. She probably burns the roof of everyone's mouths with such sweetness.
In fact, she's probably everyone's favorite flavor.
And that is why, two months later, understandably, Krystal still thinks their friendship is a façade, theatricalities; somewhere in Sulli's docile nature, she is a liar at heart, and is thinking of how Krystal needed maladaptive personality adjustment.
-
("We all have to put up with you."
"I didn't realize you had to put up with me.")
-
"She's vicious," the girls come to say to Sulli, indifferent to if Krystal could hear them or not. "She's a devil, in all ways."
"No," Sulli would always respond.
Krystal; no. Only had a bad head that gleamed mean. She is a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl, as Bjork said. And really, all teenage girls are like that, Sulli presumes.
-
It is not difficult to describe how their time goes when they are together: nothing really matters between them, nothing ever really happens. Sad summer nights are less sad with Sulli, and that's all.
(She fills up Krystal's empty spaces with something less angry, a bit like air, more like the old Soojung - but she'd never admit that, she never will.)
-
Krystal bares her teeth too often, too many times, even she thinks so herself.
"I'm sorry, Sulli."
"For what? I didn't realize there was something to apologize for," she responds, and her tongue licks the curve of her lower lip.
It's an amazing thing, what Jinri can do. All in words, she's able to kiss Soojung's cheeks with tiny pecks of comfort, and it is like the weight of the world leaves naturally, like air, inhale, exhale.
-
They are only girls, even if the world occasionally forgets it, even if they forget it - or want to - sometimes themselves.
-
It is not difficult to describe how their time goes when they are together; except now they are Jinri and Soojung, and for some reason, it changes how everything was before. Lining their lower eyelids with glitter, like nuanced pastel sparklers; blowing kisses and smearing lipstick on the photo of Jean Paul Belmondo pinned to Jinri's mirror, flirtatious prayers to his French soul; eating candied cakes or chinese take-out with cognac shots après-midi until they became drowsy.
-
Soojung takes the vacancy sign down, shares a room with Jinri. They grow up, but they do not grow apart. They only grow out of drawing hearts around each others names, and only occasionally.