seoulfulness fills
Jesus Christ, Girl, What are People Gonna Think
SHINee/f(x), Jonghyun/Kyrstal, Krystal/Amber
540 words
prompt
original
Soojung finds out when she wakes up face-down on the asphalt, her nose still bloody from the car crash, that being dead is just like being alive. Things look the same. The sky is blue, her skin is warm in the sun, the soles of her feet are sweaty in her shoes, but she doesn't hear any birds. She wipes her face, and her hands are streaked red. She's wearing the same clothes as she was before; the black party dress feels all wrong on her now, as she sits crumpled in the street. She stands up and her face twists as she follows the road.
There are houses and people inside, although not the people she loves. They give her a bed and a room and they tell her that she can start over now. They tell her, in even tones, that she can find new people to love, and she starts to believe them, until night comes and she tries to fall asleep but she swears that she can feel a familiar hand squeeze hers, a hand whose curves she's memorized, and she bolts upright. When she closes her eyes, she can still see the SUV's tires climbing up the windshield, right before the glass shatters and gives in.
There is a dead boy, Jonghyun, who rests his chin in his palm and looks at her, his tan, slender fingers curling against his cheek. She drinks her coffee and stares straight into his eyes, daring him to ask her the question that everybody always needs to know, the “how did you die?” Instead, he asks her to pass the creamer.
Jonghyun takes her to house parties and although he's short, he's strong, his arm is warm when it brushes hers, and his voice calms her down. They first kiss in a bathroom. As soon as he locks the door, Soojung's whole body throbs with need and she grabs his cheeks, her fingers hooked around his jaw. His mouth is warm and wet in the way that all mouths are. Her spine is bent against the counter, his lean chest pressed against her. His hands are soft and gentle on her shoulders, but it feels like her head is caving in.
“I can't,” she says. He lets go, and she slides down until her bare knees hit the tile. The light flickers as a moth bumps against the bulb.
“You have to move on,” he says. “You've been dead for three months now.” His voice is soft, but she can see the patience waning in his eyes, and she hates him.
She stumbles out of the bathroom, her hair matted. She hates everybody in this dead world. She shoves a lamp off of a coffee table on her way out of the house, relishing in the sound of it breaking. She hates Amber for surviving the accident and leaving her here. Soojung makes it five steps down the driveway before her legs give out and her palms hit the dirt. She imagines herself grabbing Amber by the throat and squeezing, feeling the muscles underneath the skin resist. She imagines them falling in the grass, Amber clawing at the front of Soojung's dress with her hands. Soojung imagines kissing her, feeling Amber's lips again. She imagines curling into Amber's side, Soojung's breasts pressed against Amber's ribs.
The Feast of Stephen
SHINee, Minho
655 words
prompt
original
The first time Minho feels it, he is ten. His fourth-grade English teacher is Mr. Lee, a tanned man in his thirties who speaks in calm and even tones to children who pass notes under their desks and stare stubbornly out windows. Mr. Lee looks tired most days, the skin around his eyes full of shadows and his white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. The class notices this, and they torture him by feigning ignorance when he asks them how to say “thank you.”
But Minho catches himself staring at that button. There are a the few hairs creeping along Mr. Lee's sternum, curly and black. Minho goes home and stands shirtless in front of the mirror, studying his own chest. It is bare and bony, his ribs stretching against the skin.
Mr. Lee comes to class ten minutes late. His hair is unbrushed and there are two buttons undone today, and that second button is enough to undo Minho. Minho locks his hands into fists and looks at the ceiling, then the carpet. Every now and then he sneaks a glance at the sliver of brown skin, feeling a strange thrill, like jumping off the swings when the playground monitor looks away.
Mr. Lee is fired that spring. Minho overhears his mother talking about it.
“He was having an affair with another teacher,” she says. She is whispering but he can hear that she is angry. Minho goes into his room, puts his face into the pillow and cries.
Next he is fifteen. His best friend on his soccer team is Minsu. They joke that they're twins, separated at birth. Minsu is only one letter away from Minsuk, after all, and Minsu resembles Minho's brother-smart, practical, handsome. Minsu is tall, has hair the color of maple syrup and shorts that he pulls down below his hipbones, so that they seem to be held up only by the spheres of his ass.
In the locker room, Minsu's shorts slip down along with his boxers. Minsu doesn't panic and grab for his towel. He stands, naked, digging languidly through the locker for his missing watch. Minho studies him, studies the sweat gathered on his shoulders and slim thighs, and thinks that this--this unabashed, dirty nakedness--is what it means to be a man.
Minho masturbates to the image for a week before he tells Minsu that they can't be brothers anymore.
“Why not?” Minsu asks, the pain broadcasting in his wide eyes.
“You're a loser and you suck at soccer. The team would be better off without you,” Minho says.
Minsu quits the team and Minho never forgives himself. He stops speaking for a month, resorting to grunts and nods, terrified of the things that he feels and the way he doesn't deal with them. He lies awake in bed, isolates that dark and dangerous part of himself, chokes it, and buries it. It feels like burying a limb, but he learns to forget he ever had it.
He is scared to move into the SM dorms, scared that the proximity to attractive young men will bring things to the surface. It doesn't. He meets people who are handsome and magnetic and all Minho feels is jealousy, which is powerful and humbling. He spends extra hours in the dance studios until his legs twitch and tremble from fatigue.
One day, there is a boy in the dance room with Minho. He is very good, his body fluid and small, and Minho resents him. The continue until it's dark outside. The sweat gathers in unattractive splotches on their shirts, mostly around their stomachs and armpits. Sometimes it gathers around their crotches, too, staining their shorts. At first they pretend not to notice, although the darkness spreading on their thighs is blatant in the studio mirrors. Eventually Minho, feeling bold, cracks a joke about it. They laugh and the boy's hand brushes Minho's shoulder and Minho sucks in a breath, because the earth is ripping open below him, chasms forming, something molten rising inside of him.
Vertigo
Younha/Yubin
1032 words
original
In the seventh grade, Younha had the same dream for almost a month straight. She was on the beach: the one she used to live by four years ago, the one her younger sister almost drowned at, except there was no ocean in the dream. She was running, sand kicking up behind her, and she could feel the grains between her toes. She could never see what she was running from it, but she could feel it behind her, the way she felt open closets at night--dark with possibilities.
She decided to tell Yubin, because she told Yubin everything, and because Yubin could explain solutions in a way that made them seem obvious. It was lunch hour, and they had moved their desks to face each other. Yubin crunched baby carrots between her molars, looking deep in thought. Yubin had cut her hair that morning, and a single blade of black hair rested on her collarbone. Her hair was short again, to match Younha's; they had made a pact. Yubin looked brighter, somehow, with the cropped hair. Younha caught herself staring, but didn't feel a trace of embarrassment.
“So, stop running,” Yubin said. “It's just a dream.”
“It doesn't work like that,” Younha said. “The running is automatic.”
Yubin threw up her hands. “I don't know, then.” But, almost immediately after speaking, her eyes widened. Younha knew this look.
“Take me into the dream with you,” Yubin said, nearly jumping out of her chair in excitement.
“How?”
“Think about me really hard, before you go to sleep. If I'm in your dream, I'll definitely help you figure it out.”
Younha lie in bed that night and thought about Yubin, as hard as she could. She thought about how dumb Yubin was for being so excited over this idea. She thought about how Yubin had smiled while they were walking home, wide and stupid but easy to get lost in. She thought about Yubin's other smiles: the grin when her team won a game, the sarcastic smirk usually accompanied with air quotes. Then there was the way she looked at Younha sometimes, so happy and comfortable that Younha felt doors opening inside of her, sinks running over. She thought about Yubin's hands, which were feminine in shape but calloused on the palm from softball. She thought about Yubin's lips, and then forced herself to stop thinking about Yubin.
When she finally fell asleep, the dream was the same. She was running on the beach, alone, unable to stop moving forward, sinking deeper in the sand with every step. It started to change, though, when she reached the edge of a cliff, and her body jerked to a halt. What do I do now, she asked to no one, and turned around. Yubin was there behind her, smiling. Yubin reached out her arms, Younha felt the impact of Yubin's palms on her chest, and then Younha was falling.
“Did it work?” Yubin asked, before Younha had time to sit down. Younha dropped her backpack onto her desk and slumped into the chair.
“You were there. But you pushed me off a cliff,” she said.
Yubin looked horrified, her mouth open.
“Why would I do that!”
“That's a question you'll need to ask yourself, murderer.” Younha was only partially teasing. She felt hurt by the dream, although she knew it was unreasonable. The teacher arrived then, and they were forced to direct themselves to Algebra.
The dream repeated in this way for the next three days. It would always end with Yubin, cocking her head slightly to the right, smiling, and sending Younha to her death. The dream was starting to hurt their friendship in real life, creating a strange distance between them. Yubin stopped asking about the details, and Younha stopped offering them. Younha knew she was being stupid, but the dream felt so real. She woke every morning with a huge emptiness, a black hole, in her abdomen, which swallowed even more of her whenever she saw Yubin in class. Yubin seemed ashamed of herself, but also hurt that Younha could see her as an enemy. They talked less and less, until the third day, when Younha was walking home by herself.
“Hey!” It was Yubin, running down the hill, her spine arched back to control her speed.
“Hey,” Yubin repeated, softly, once she had caught up. She bent over, panting.
“Hey,” Younha said.
“I have something to show you,” Yubin said. She stood up straight, something unreadable on her red face. She wrapped a rough hand around Younha's wrist, and Younha's body tensed. Yubin dragged her into a narrow alleyway that separated two houses. There was a garbage bag near their feet, and it smelled like old oranges. Younha felt anxiety rising her throat and looked for an escape route.
Yubin pressed a palm onto Younha's shoulder, and it felt like the dream again, so Younha closed her eyes and waited for the vertigo, but instead she felt the wall against her back and Yubin's lips on hers. It was a short kiss. As Yubin moved back, Younha felt her exhale against her cheek, like she was ready to say something. Instead, they looked at each other. Yubin's hands were shaking, but she was grinning.
Then Yubin ran away, her backpack bouncing around the corner. Not out of fear, Younha didn't think. It had been playful, and the smile had said, “see you tomorrow.” Younha stayed in the alley for a moment, smelling the rotting oranges, before continuing on her way home.
That night Younha looked at the ceiling and everything was confusing. She didn't know what to focus on, her mind shifting from the alley to the cliff. She wondered what Yubin's hands would feel like on her face, rough as a cat's tongue. She wondered what Yubin's tongue would feel like. She curled into a ball, hands wrapped around her cold feet, and fell asleep.
In her dream she was running on the beach, again. This time she was laughing, and Yubin was ahead of her, kicking sand up onto Younha's legs.
SHINee/f(x), Jonghyun/Kyrstal, Krystal/Amber
540 words
prompt
original
Soojung finds out when she wakes up face-down on the asphalt, her nose still bloody from the car crash, that being dead is just like being alive. Things look the same. The sky is blue, her skin is warm in the sun, the soles of her feet are sweaty in her shoes, but she doesn't hear any birds. She wipes her face, and her hands are streaked red. She's wearing the same clothes as she was before; the black party dress feels all wrong on her now, as she sits crumpled in the street. She stands up and her face twists as she follows the road.
There are houses and people inside, although not the people she loves. They give her a bed and a room and they tell her that she can start over now. They tell her, in even tones, that she can find new people to love, and she starts to believe them, until night comes and she tries to fall asleep but she swears that she can feel a familiar hand squeeze hers, a hand whose curves she's memorized, and she bolts upright. When she closes her eyes, she can still see the SUV's tires climbing up the windshield, right before the glass shatters and gives in.
There is a dead boy, Jonghyun, who rests his chin in his palm and looks at her, his tan, slender fingers curling against his cheek. She drinks her coffee and stares straight into his eyes, daring him to ask her the question that everybody always needs to know, the “how did you die?” Instead, he asks her to pass the creamer.
Jonghyun takes her to house parties and although he's short, he's strong, his arm is warm when it brushes hers, and his voice calms her down. They first kiss in a bathroom. As soon as he locks the door, Soojung's whole body throbs with need and she grabs his cheeks, her fingers hooked around his jaw. His mouth is warm and wet in the way that all mouths are. Her spine is bent against the counter, his lean chest pressed against her. His hands are soft and gentle on her shoulders, but it feels like her head is caving in.
“I can't,” she says. He lets go, and she slides down until her bare knees hit the tile. The light flickers as a moth bumps against the bulb.
“You have to move on,” he says. “You've been dead for three months now.” His voice is soft, but she can see the patience waning in his eyes, and she hates him.
She stumbles out of the bathroom, her hair matted. She hates everybody in this dead world. She shoves a lamp off of a coffee table on her way out of the house, relishing in the sound of it breaking. She hates Amber for surviving the accident and leaving her here. Soojung makes it five steps down the driveway before her legs give out and her palms hit the dirt. She imagines herself grabbing Amber by the throat and squeezing, feeling the muscles underneath the skin resist. She imagines them falling in the grass, Amber clawing at the front of Soojung's dress with her hands. Soojung imagines kissing her, feeling Amber's lips again. She imagines curling into Amber's side, Soojung's breasts pressed against Amber's ribs.
The Feast of Stephen
SHINee, Minho
655 words
prompt
original
The first time Minho feels it, he is ten. His fourth-grade English teacher is Mr. Lee, a tanned man in his thirties who speaks in calm and even tones to children who pass notes under their desks and stare stubbornly out windows. Mr. Lee looks tired most days, the skin around his eyes full of shadows and his white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. The class notices this, and they torture him by feigning ignorance when he asks them how to say “thank you.”
But Minho catches himself staring at that button. There are a the few hairs creeping along Mr. Lee's sternum, curly and black. Minho goes home and stands shirtless in front of the mirror, studying his own chest. It is bare and bony, his ribs stretching against the skin.
Mr. Lee comes to class ten minutes late. His hair is unbrushed and there are two buttons undone today, and that second button is enough to undo Minho. Minho locks his hands into fists and looks at the ceiling, then the carpet. Every now and then he sneaks a glance at the sliver of brown skin, feeling a strange thrill, like jumping off the swings when the playground monitor looks away.
Mr. Lee is fired that spring. Minho overhears his mother talking about it.
“He was having an affair with another teacher,” she says. She is whispering but he can hear that she is angry. Minho goes into his room, puts his face into the pillow and cries.
Next he is fifteen. His best friend on his soccer team is Minsu. They joke that they're twins, separated at birth. Minsu is only one letter away from Minsuk, after all, and Minsu resembles Minho's brother-smart, practical, handsome. Minsu is tall, has hair the color of maple syrup and shorts that he pulls down below his hipbones, so that they seem to be held up only by the spheres of his ass.
In the locker room, Minsu's shorts slip down along with his boxers. Minsu doesn't panic and grab for his towel. He stands, naked, digging languidly through the locker for his missing watch. Minho studies him, studies the sweat gathered on his shoulders and slim thighs, and thinks that this--this unabashed, dirty nakedness--is what it means to be a man.
Minho masturbates to the image for a week before he tells Minsu that they can't be brothers anymore.
“Why not?” Minsu asks, the pain broadcasting in his wide eyes.
“You're a loser and you suck at soccer. The team would be better off without you,” Minho says.
Minsu quits the team and Minho never forgives himself. He stops speaking for a month, resorting to grunts and nods, terrified of the things that he feels and the way he doesn't deal with them. He lies awake in bed, isolates that dark and dangerous part of himself, chokes it, and buries it. It feels like burying a limb, but he learns to forget he ever had it.
He is scared to move into the SM dorms, scared that the proximity to attractive young men will bring things to the surface. It doesn't. He meets people who are handsome and magnetic and all Minho feels is jealousy, which is powerful and humbling. He spends extra hours in the dance studios until his legs twitch and tremble from fatigue.
One day, there is a boy in the dance room with Minho. He is very good, his body fluid and small, and Minho resents him. The continue until it's dark outside. The sweat gathers in unattractive splotches on their shirts, mostly around their stomachs and armpits. Sometimes it gathers around their crotches, too, staining their shorts. At first they pretend not to notice, although the darkness spreading on their thighs is blatant in the studio mirrors. Eventually Minho, feeling bold, cracks a joke about it. They laugh and the boy's hand brushes Minho's shoulder and Minho sucks in a breath, because the earth is ripping open below him, chasms forming, something molten rising inside of him.
Vertigo
Younha/Yubin
1032 words
original
In the seventh grade, Younha had the same dream for almost a month straight. She was on the beach: the one she used to live by four years ago, the one her younger sister almost drowned at, except there was no ocean in the dream. She was running, sand kicking up behind her, and she could feel the grains between her toes. She could never see what she was running from it, but she could feel it behind her, the way she felt open closets at night--dark with possibilities.
She decided to tell Yubin, because she told Yubin everything, and because Yubin could explain solutions in a way that made them seem obvious. It was lunch hour, and they had moved their desks to face each other. Yubin crunched baby carrots between her molars, looking deep in thought. Yubin had cut her hair that morning, and a single blade of black hair rested on her collarbone. Her hair was short again, to match Younha's; they had made a pact. Yubin looked brighter, somehow, with the cropped hair. Younha caught herself staring, but didn't feel a trace of embarrassment.
“So, stop running,” Yubin said. “It's just a dream.”
“It doesn't work like that,” Younha said. “The running is automatic.”
Yubin threw up her hands. “I don't know, then.” But, almost immediately after speaking, her eyes widened. Younha knew this look.
“Take me into the dream with you,” Yubin said, nearly jumping out of her chair in excitement.
“How?”
“Think about me really hard, before you go to sleep. If I'm in your dream, I'll definitely help you figure it out.”
Younha lie in bed that night and thought about Yubin, as hard as she could. She thought about how dumb Yubin was for being so excited over this idea. She thought about how Yubin had smiled while they were walking home, wide and stupid but easy to get lost in. She thought about Yubin's other smiles: the grin when her team won a game, the sarcastic smirk usually accompanied with air quotes. Then there was the way she looked at Younha sometimes, so happy and comfortable that Younha felt doors opening inside of her, sinks running over. She thought about Yubin's hands, which were feminine in shape but calloused on the palm from softball. She thought about Yubin's lips, and then forced herself to stop thinking about Yubin.
When she finally fell asleep, the dream was the same. She was running on the beach, alone, unable to stop moving forward, sinking deeper in the sand with every step. It started to change, though, when she reached the edge of a cliff, and her body jerked to a halt. What do I do now, she asked to no one, and turned around. Yubin was there behind her, smiling. Yubin reached out her arms, Younha felt the impact of Yubin's palms on her chest, and then Younha was falling.
“Did it work?” Yubin asked, before Younha had time to sit down. Younha dropped her backpack onto her desk and slumped into the chair.
“You were there. But you pushed me off a cliff,” she said.
Yubin looked horrified, her mouth open.
“Why would I do that!”
“That's a question you'll need to ask yourself, murderer.” Younha was only partially teasing. She felt hurt by the dream, although she knew it was unreasonable. The teacher arrived then, and they were forced to direct themselves to Algebra.
The dream repeated in this way for the next three days. It would always end with Yubin, cocking her head slightly to the right, smiling, and sending Younha to her death. The dream was starting to hurt their friendship in real life, creating a strange distance between them. Yubin stopped asking about the details, and Younha stopped offering them. Younha knew she was being stupid, but the dream felt so real. She woke every morning with a huge emptiness, a black hole, in her abdomen, which swallowed even more of her whenever she saw Yubin in class. Yubin seemed ashamed of herself, but also hurt that Younha could see her as an enemy. They talked less and less, until the third day, when Younha was walking home by herself.
“Hey!” It was Yubin, running down the hill, her spine arched back to control her speed.
“Hey,” Yubin repeated, softly, once she had caught up. She bent over, panting.
“Hey,” Younha said.
“I have something to show you,” Yubin said. She stood up straight, something unreadable on her red face. She wrapped a rough hand around Younha's wrist, and Younha's body tensed. Yubin dragged her into a narrow alleyway that separated two houses. There was a garbage bag near their feet, and it smelled like old oranges. Younha felt anxiety rising her throat and looked for an escape route.
Yubin pressed a palm onto Younha's shoulder, and it felt like the dream again, so Younha closed her eyes and waited for the vertigo, but instead she felt the wall against her back and Yubin's lips on hers. It was a short kiss. As Yubin moved back, Younha felt her exhale against her cheek, like she was ready to say something. Instead, they looked at each other. Yubin's hands were shaking, but she was grinning.
Then Yubin ran away, her backpack bouncing around the corner. Not out of fear, Younha didn't think. It had been playful, and the smile had said, “see you tomorrow.” Younha stayed in the alley for a moment, smelling the rotting oranges, before continuing on her way home.
That night Younha looked at the ceiling and everything was confusing. She didn't know what to focus on, her mind shifting from the alley to the cliff. She wondered what Yubin's hands would feel like on her face, rough as a cat's tongue. She wondered what Yubin's tongue would feel like. She curled into a ball, hands wrapped around her cold feet, and fell asleep.
In her dream she was running on the beach, again. This time she was laughing, and Yubin was ahead of her, kicking sand up onto Younha's legs.