[blockb] your "everything better" plan
your "everything better" plan
in a little town called sunset valley, jaehyo finds himself in the midst of a crisis.
jaehyo | PG | 2300 words
a/n: for youniqorn for the blockbtime exchange. original post: here.
The first time Jaehyo wonders if there might be more to life is during a particularly mundane sunrise, when the only exciting part is a seemingly unnoticeable glitch in one of the rays of light. It falters for only a nanosecond, a horizontal streak of blankness only someone who scrutinizes the sun each and every morning would notice. The brief shock of nothing terrifies him, and it seems, despite the infinitesimal effect it had on the entire neighborhood, that in that moment his world had been turned entirely upside down, that something as infallible as the sun could cease to exist.
Jaehyo expresses this revelation to his soon-to-be-life-partner-but-currently-a-nuisance-of-a-roommate, Minhyuk, who only responds with a red 'x' in a thought bubble. Minhyuk finishes smoothing out his side of the bed and leaves Jaehyo to daydream and drown in his own thoughts.
It's a little later-mid-breakfast and post thought bubble-that the notion would fully click: Jaehyo thinks there must be a higher power at play. There has to be. It was a certain Destiny that had wanted Jaehyo to come downstairs and make breakfast when all he wanted to do was lay in bed. So here he is at the dining table, but what does it mean?
Jaehyo relates his confusion in the only way he knows how, through a series of frustrated arm flails and a firm stomp of his left leg. Nothing happens. His roommate responds with his distaste at the loud noise in another red 'x' in another thought bubble. "Renato! Renato!"
The words are foreign and meaningless to him. Jaehyo finds no comfort in them and thinks that it seems like just yesterday that they were still speaking the same language.
While Minhyuk is at the sink washing the dishes, Jaehyo stretches his limbs, relishing in the lazy feeling of Sunday morning, still mildly upset that he didn’t get to sleep in.
Through an appropriately informative moodlet, Jaehyo learns that the distress and confusion he's currently experiencing is something called a mid-life crisis, which only exacerbates his crisis because he's certain he is not yet near his mid-life.
But when he revisits all of his memories and realizes he really did let his young adult life slip away, the only thing he can think of to do is complain and pester his roommate.
Minhyuk, who only knows how to express himself through negative thought bubbles, is no help.
So after Jaehyo rummages through all of five books on their bookshelf, finding only cooking books he vaguely remembers reading, he resorts to the only other alternative he can think of-maybe he should hit the library.
This is when his suspicions of his Destiny are confirmed. As he's making the drive to the library, turning a particularly sharp corner and stopping briefly to allow a deer to cross, it would seem that Destiny doesn’t want him going to the library. Destiny wants him to go back home and bake a pie. Just like Destiny had wanted him to get up early.
Unsure of how it happened, Jaehyo suddenly finds himself standing in the kitchen, measuring out cups of flour for key lime pie. It's a purely mechanical process, kind of a miracle actually, and he’s freaking out on the inside, but seemingly has no physical control to express it. Jaehyo is positive he has no clue how to make key lime pie, yet, a few hours later, a steaming key lime pie sits on the counter. Jaehyo doesn't know whether to thank Destiny, or to blame it. He silently wonders how long he’s been obediently following it.
When it becomes clear that Destiny wants him to eat the pie alone, Jaehyo decides: enough. For one, it’s taken him way too long to achieve the figure that he wants, and two, he’s not even remotely hungry. He refuses to let this power, no matter how high it is, control in him such a way. He’s let so many of his years slip away, blindly abiding to his set path in life; he’s going to take a stand. He’s not going to eat the pie.
It’s then, during the internal struggle with Destiny, that he hears the rumble of his neighbor’s old pick up rolling into the driveway. Through the window in the kitchen, Jaehyo can see Kyung climbing out of the vehicle. Jaehyo waves, not entirely sure Kyung can see him.
He remembers how they use to be Close Friends, maybe even Romantic Interests back when Jaehyo, young and on the cusp of adulthood, first moved to the neighborhood. Now they’re simply just Distant Friends. He frowns at the thought. Along with all of his young adult years that slipped away, Jaehyo wonders how that happened. When Kyung smiles and waves back rather cordially, Jaehyo gets an idea.
He tucks the key lime pie into his inventory, fighting the little voice in his head that is telling him to eat it, and starts walking out the door towards Kyung’s house. Destiny immediately rejects this maneuver before Jaehyo even makes it off of his own porch. Similar to how it happened before, he suddenly finds himself inside again.
Determined, Jaehyo walks out again, but once again finds himself back inside. Even more determined, he tries it again, but to no avail still. Minhyuk watches the whole fiasco, his head swiveling back and forth as if he were a spectator at a ping-pong match.
“Jowlenin!” Minhyuk, amused, claps his hands.
Jaehyo stomps his feet and points disapprovingly at the door. Fueled with frustration, he runs outside as fast as he can. He’s then forced to run back inside just the same. Rather than giving up just yet, he continues to dash out the door quicker and quicker each time, but he’s defeated every time. Minhyuk chuckles like someone just told him a joke.
Just when Jaehyo’s almost fed up with this entire thing, he sees the same quiver as earlier, except instead of only a small ray of sunshine, it’s happening all around him.
Everything freezes and flickers on and off to black. It’s quite frightening. This time his entire world really is getting turned upside down. Even Minhyuk is frozen mid-chuckle.
Without thinking, Jaehyo takes one last tentative step onto the porch, and after meeting no resistance, sprints towards Kyung’s front door.
He makes it and pulls out the pie as he rings the doorbell. He smiles the smile he’s practiced many times in the mirror while attempting to increase his charisma.
The flickering ends and the normal bustle of the neighborhood resumes. Then one minute he’s holding the pie at his neighbor’s door, heart swelling with hope and triumph, the next he’s walking down the sidewalk back to his house. No, no, no. Jaehyo tries to turn around, but his feet keep moving forward. When he’s back on his own porch yet again, he manages to steal a look over his shoulder just as Kyung opens the door.
Jaehyo attempts to shoot electrical signals conveying I’ll be back, mostly it’s a facial expression resembling a scowl, and he’s not sure if communication really works that way.
Kyung waves back at him. Maybe it does.
Jaehyo huffs, dissatisfied at having wasted the whole day. He stands cross-armed at his bedroom window and stares at the forbidden front porch of Park Kyung. Daylight slowly fades away and Jaehyo is glad Destiny doesn’t have anything planned for his evening. He’s not particularly in the mood to do anything.
Ironically the sunsets in Sunset Valley aren’t that great. The sky just goes from light, to something darker, to night. It’s not nearly as charming as a sunrise, or maybe mornings are just nicer in general.
He climbs into bed, despite it still being early. Jaehyo’s eyes are closed as he pretends to be asleep. He figures that maybe in this way Destiny won’t even try to bother him.
Now his thoughts can wander freely. His thoughts can go outside, figuratively speaking, without being forced to go back inside. But the more he thinks about it, the more he becomes disheartened by the fact that his thoughts are really nothing but electrical impulses: images spun out of algorithms. Part of him, the part in a mid-life crisis, doesn’t want to accept that this is all there is to life.
The pie is still in his inventory and it’s probably going to spoil soon. He doesn’t have much time. In between devising a plan to share it with his neighbor and entertaining questions of ‘who am I?’, Jaehyo falls asleep wondering if maybe Destiny is really just something he can’t escape.
He wakes up in more or less the same mood as the morning before: irritated at having to get up early and more irritated because he’s about to make watermelon pancakes for the fifth consecutive day.
He really doesn’t understand what Destiny’s grand plan is, but as he’s cracking the eggs he always cracks, Jaehyo comes up with a plan of his own.
Since he is rather skilled at the culinary arts, Jaehyo rarely burns any food, but sometimes these things do happen. Sometimes he spaces out and leaves the food on the heat for a few moments too long. Sometimes the food catches on fire. Sometimes the entire stove catches on fire, and then sometimes the entire kitchen starts to go up in flames.
Jaehyo, satisfied that his plan is working, takes advantage of the distraction a home fire creates to make a run for his neighbor’s house, much like he did the day before.
He successfully makes it across the yard and this time he doesn’t waste time with knocking. He barges in, grabs Kyung who is conveniently standing around doing nothing, and begins to run.
Kyung is initially dazed, then very alarmed at the sight of the fire next door, and before he can even remotely protest, he’s being dragged along under Jaehyo’s death grip. Jaehyo silently chants this is the only way in the back of his mind. The pie is seemingly weightless in his pockets, but he doesn't forget it's there.
Minhyuk runs out of the house, frantically waving his arms, but Jaehyo keeps running. He tries to read his lips but remembers they don’t speak the same language. He tries to read his thought bubbles, but they contain no viable information other than Fire! They run past him without even slowing down.
Jaehyo knows the distraction is only going to last briefly and he’s running with no idea of where to go. Where in the world can he run to escape Destiny?
They make it into town, and do a U-turn at the end of Central Park because Jaehyo suddenly spots Divisadero Budget Books. His face breaks out in a manic smile as he tugs a frightened Kyung behind him.
Once they’re inside, Jaehyo lets out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Kyung wrenches his arm from Jaehyo’s grip and seems to shout to above rather than to his captor. He stomps and points disapprovingly at his surroundings.
Jaehyo blinks. “Woah.”
He blinks again. “I can understand you, woah.”
Kyung blinks. “Woah, I can understand you.”
They stare at each other in the blankness, blinking being the only movement.
“What do you think this means?” Kyung says after a prolonged moment of silence, seemingly overcome more by wonder than by the fact that he has just been essentially kidnapped. He wonders if it’s possible that his neighbor of all these years is also questioning Destiny, and if so, whether he has any answers.
Jaehyo shrugs, the timer on his mid-life crisis moodlet ticking down until it disappears. Then it’s like a weight being lifted off of his shoulder. This is one of the few places Destiny can’t control them. Technically they’re in the bookstore, but it feels as if they’re no longer even in Sunset Valley. Jaehyo doesn’t know how to describe it, or let alone where he thinks they are. He just knows, although it’s only temporary, that he has out run Destiny; he can feel it.
Jaehyo finally procures the key lime pie from his inventory and extends it towards Kyung in a friendly manner.
“I think it means we are meant to share this pie.”
---
“Minhyuk. How long have you been here?” Jaehyo says as clambers in around midnight looking very exhausted; he begins changing into sleep appropriate attire. “I left for practice this morning. You look like you haven’t moved since then.”
Minhyuk, startled, clutches his laptop tightly and stares like a deer caught in headlights at Jaehyo with his bloodshot eyes.
He wipes a few crumbs from his cheeks while his mind is still swimming in the confusion at what the hell went wrong with his game. One minute everything was going fine-he and Jaehyo are living a nice apple pie life, he’s about to be promoted, and they’re about to adopt children-the next his screen starts freezing and the entire house, along with the matching curtains, designer furniture, and hot tub on the roof, burns down; then he dies in the tragic fire, thus ending their cohabitation. Are these tears in his eyes? They must be irritated. He blinks to rehydrate them.
“What are you even looking at?” When Jaehyo tries to peek at his screen, Minhyuk slams the laptop shut before he can do so and tosses it to the end of his bed.
“Nothing. It’s broken. Leave me alone.”
Minhyuk turns away and burrows into the blankets, hugging a pillow close to his chest. His head throbs and the pillow becomes slightly damp as he mourns the loss. He thinks about the nice sunsets in Sunset Valley and decides that, regardless, it was still twenty hours well spent. Then he realizes he had quit without saving.
in a little town called sunset valley, jaehyo finds himself in the midst of a crisis.
jaehyo | PG | 2300 words
a/n: for youniqorn for the blockbtime exchange. original post: here.
The first time Jaehyo wonders if there might be more to life is during a particularly mundane sunrise, when the only exciting part is a seemingly unnoticeable glitch in one of the rays of light. It falters for only a nanosecond, a horizontal streak of blankness only someone who scrutinizes the sun each and every morning would notice. The brief shock of nothing terrifies him, and it seems, despite the infinitesimal effect it had on the entire neighborhood, that in that moment his world had been turned entirely upside down, that something as infallible as the sun could cease to exist.
Jaehyo expresses this revelation to his soon-to-be-life-partner-but-currently-a-nuisance-of-a-roommate, Minhyuk, who only responds with a red 'x' in a thought bubble. Minhyuk finishes smoothing out his side of the bed and leaves Jaehyo to daydream and drown in his own thoughts.
It's a little later-mid-breakfast and post thought bubble-that the notion would fully click: Jaehyo thinks there must be a higher power at play. There has to be. It was a certain Destiny that had wanted Jaehyo to come downstairs and make breakfast when all he wanted to do was lay in bed. So here he is at the dining table, but what does it mean?
Jaehyo relates his confusion in the only way he knows how, through a series of frustrated arm flails and a firm stomp of his left leg. Nothing happens. His roommate responds with his distaste at the loud noise in another red 'x' in another thought bubble. "Renato! Renato!"
The words are foreign and meaningless to him. Jaehyo finds no comfort in them and thinks that it seems like just yesterday that they were still speaking the same language.
While Minhyuk is at the sink washing the dishes, Jaehyo stretches his limbs, relishing in the lazy feeling of Sunday morning, still mildly upset that he didn’t get to sleep in.
Through an appropriately informative moodlet, Jaehyo learns that the distress and confusion he's currently experiencing is something called a mid-life crisis, which only exacerbates his crisis because he's certain he is not yet near his mid-life.
But when he revisits all of his memories and realizes he really did let his young adult life slip away, the only thing he can think of to do is complain and pester his roommate.
Minhyuk, who only knows how to express himself through negative thought bubbles, is no help.
So after Jaehyo rummages through all of five books on their bookshelf, finding only cooking books he vaguely remembers reading, he resorts to the only other alternative he can think of-maybe he should hit the library.
This is when his suspicions of his Destiny are confirmed. As he's making the drive to the library, turning a particularly sharp corner and stopping briefly to allow a deer to cross, it would seem that Destiny doesn’t want him going to the library. Destiny wants him to go back home and bake a pie. Just like Destiny had wanted him to get up early.
Unsure of how it happened, Jaehyo suddenly finds himself standing in the kitchen, measuring out cups of flour for key lime pie. It's a purely mechanical process, kind of a miracle actually, and he’s freaking out on the inside, but seemingly has no physical control to express it. Jaehyo is positive he has no clue how to make key lime pie, yet, a few hours later, a steaming key lime pie sits on the counter. Jaehyo doesn't know whether to thank Destiny, or to blame it. He silently wonders how long he’s been obediently following it.
When it becomes clear that Destiny wants him to eat the pie alone, Jaehyo decides: enough. For one, it’s taken him way too long to achieve the figure that he wants, and two, he’s not even remotely hungry. He refuses to let this power, no matter how high it is, control in him such a way. He’s let so many of his years slip away, blindly abiding to his set path in life; he’s going to take a stand. He’s not going to eat the pie.
It’s then, during the internal struggle with Destiny, that he hears the rumble of his neighbor’s old pick up rolling into the driveway. Through the window in the kitchen, Jaehyo can see Kyung climbing out of the vehicle. Jaehyo waves, not entirely sure Kyung can see him.
He remembers how they use to be Close Friends, maybe even Romantic Interests back when Jaehyo, young and on the cusp of adulthood, first moved to the neighborhood. Now they’re simply just Distant Friends. He frowns at the thought. Along with all of his young adult years that slipped away, Jaehyo wonders how that happened. When Kyung smiles and waves back rather cordially, Jaehyo gets an idea.
He tucks the key lime pie into his inventory, fighting the little voice in his head that is telling him to eat it, and starts walking out the door towards Kyung’s house. Destiny immediately rejects this maneuver before Jaehyo even makes it off of his own porch. Similar to how it happened before, he suddenly finds himself inside again.
Determined, Jaehyo walks out again, but once again finds himself back inside. Even more determined, he tries it again, but to no avail still. Minhyuk watches the whole fiasco, his head swiveling back and forth as if he were a spectator at a ping-pong match.
“Jowlenin!” Minhyuk, amused, claps his hands.
Jaehyo stomps his feet and points disapprovingly at the door. Fueled with frustration, he runs outside as fast as he can. He’s then forced to run back inside just the same. Rather than giving up just yet, he continues to dash out the door quicker and quicker each time, but he’s defeated every time. Minhyuk chuckles like someone just told him a joke.
Just when Jaehyo’s almost fed up with this entire thing, he sees the same quiver as earlier, except instead of only a small ray of sunshine, it’s happening all around him.
Everything freezes and flickers on and off to black. It’s quite frightening. This time his entire world really is getting turned upside down. Even Minhyuk is frozen mid-chuckle.
Without thinking, Jaehyo takes one last tentative step onto the porch, and after meeting no resistance, sprints towards Kyung’s front door.
He makes it and pulls out the pie as he rings the doorbell. He smiles the smile he’s practiced many times in the mirror while attempting to increase his charisma.
The flickering ends and the normal bustle of the neighborhood resumes. Then one minute he’s holding the pie at his neighbor’s door, heart swelling with hope and triumph, the next he’s walking down the sidewalk back to his house. No, no, no. Jaehyo tries to turn around, but his feet keep moving forward. When he’s back on his own porch yet again, he manages to steal a look over his shoulder just as Kyung opens the door.
Jaehyo attempts to shoot electrical signals conveying I’ll be back, mostly it’s a facial expression resembling a scowl, and he’s not sure if communication really works that way.
Kyung waves back at him. Maybe it does.
Jaehyo huffs, dissatisfied at having wasted the whole day. He stands cross-armed at his bedroom window and stares at the forbidden front porch of Park Kyung. Daylight slowly fades away and Jaehyo is glad Destiny doesn’t have anything planned for his evening. He’s not particularly in the mood to do anything.
Ironically the sunsets in Sunset Valley aren’t that great. The sky just goes from light, to something darker, to night. It’s not nearly as charming as a sunrise, or maybe mornings are just nicer in general.
He climbs into bed, despite it still being early. Jaehyo’s eyes are closed as he pretends to be asleep. He figures that maybe in this way Destiny won’t even try to bother him.
Now his thoughts can wander freely. His thoughts can go outside, figuratively speaking, without being forced to go back inside. But the more he thinks about it, the more he becomes disheartened by the fact that his thoughts are really nothing but electrical impulses: images spun out of algorithms. Part of him, the part in a mid-life crisis, doesn’t want to accept that this is all there is to life.
The pie is still in his inventory and it’s probably going to spoil soon. He doesn’t have much time. In between devising a plan to share it with his neighbor and entertaining questions of ‘who am I?’, Jaehyo falls asleep wondering if maybe Destiny is really just something he can’t escape.
He wakes up in more or less the same mood as the morning before: irritated at having to get up early and more irritated because he’s about to make watermelon pancakes for the fifth consecutive day.
He really doesn’t understand what Destiny’s grand plan is, but as he’s cracking the eggs he always cracks, Jaehyo comes up with a plan of his own.
Since he is rather skilled at the culinary arts, Jaehyo rarely burns any food, but sometimes these things do happen. Sometimes he spaces out and leaves the food on the heat for a few moments too long. Sometimes the food catches on fire. Sometimes the entire stove catches on fire, and then sometimes the entire kitchen starts to go up in flames.
Jaehyo, satisfied that his plan is working, takes advantage of the distraction a home fire creates to make a run for his neighbor’s house, much like he did the day before.
He successfully makes it across the yard and this time he doesn’t waste time with knocking. He barges in, grabs Kyung who is conveniently standing around doing nothing, and begins to run.
Kyung is initially dazed, then very alarmed at the sight of the fire next door, and before he can even remotely protest, he’s being dragged along under Jaehyo’s death grip. Jaehyo silently chants this is the only way in the back of his mind. The pie is seemingly weightless in his pockets, but he doesn't forget it's there.
Minhyuk runs out of the house, frantically waving his arms, but Jaehyo keeps running. He tries to read his lips but remembers they don’t speak the same language. He tries to read his thought bubbles, but they contain no viable information other than Fire! They run past him without even slowing down.
Jaehyo knows the distraction is only going to last briefly and he’s running with no idea of where to go. Where in the world can he run to escape Destiny?
They make it into town, and do a U-turn at the end of Central Park because Jaehyo suddenly spots Divisadero Budget Books. His face breaks out in a manic smile as he tugs a frightened Kyung behind him.
Once they’re inside, Jaehyo lets out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Kyung wrenches his arm from Jaehyo’s grip and seems to shout to above rather than to his captor. He stomps and points disapprovingly at his surroundings.
Jaehyo blinks. “Woah.”
He blinks again. “I can understand you, woah.”
Kyung blinks. “Woah, I can understand you.”
They stare at each other in the blankness, blinking being the only movement.
“What do you think this means?” Kyung says after a prolonged moment of silence, seemingly overcome more by wonder than by the fact that he has just been essentially kidnapped. He wonders if it’s possible that his neighbor of all these years is also questioning Destiny, and if so, whether he has any answers.
Jaehyo shrugs, the timer on his mid-life crisis moodlet ticking down until it disappears. Then it’s like a weight being lifted off of his shoulder. This is one of the few places Destiny can’t control them. Technically they’re in the bookstore, but it feels as if they’re no longer even in Sunset Valley. Jaehyo doesn’t know how to describe it, or let alone where he thinks they are. He just knows, although it’s only temporary, that he has out run Destiny; he can feel it.
Jaehyo finally procures the key lime pie from his inventory and extends it towards Kyung in a friendly manner.
“I think it means we are meant to share this pie.”
---
“Minhyuk. How long have you been here?” Jaehyo says as clambers in around midnight looking very exhausted; he begins changing into sleep appropriate attire. “I left for practice this morning. You look like you haven’t moved since then.”
Minhyuk, startled, clutches his laptop tightly and stares like a deer caught in headlights at Jaehyo with his bloodshot eyes.
He wipes a few crumbs from his cheeks while his mind is still swimming in the confusion at what the hell went wrong with his game. One minute everything was going fine-he and Jaehyo are living a nice apple pie life, he’s about to be promoted, and they’re about to adopt children-the next his screen starts freezing and the entire house, along with the matching curtains, designer furniture, and hot tub on the roof, burns down; then he dies in the tragic fire, thus ending their cohabitation. Are these tears in his eyes? They must be irritated. He blinks to rehydrate them.
“What are you even looking at?” When Jaehyo tries to peek at his screen, Minhyuk slams the laptop shut before he can do so and tosses it to the end of his bed.
“Nothing. It’s broken. Leave me alone.”
Minhyuk turns away and burrows into the blankets, hugging a pillow close to his chest. His head throbs and the pillow becomes slightly damp as he mourns the loss. He thinks about the nice sunsets in Sunset Valley and decides that, regardless, it was still twenty hours well spent. Then he realizes he had quit without saving.