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luvpocket · 3 days ago

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Nothing New - 2

pairings: geum seongje x female reader

Summary: You follow the mysterious boy into a sketchy bowling alley where danger lurks beneath the surface. There, you are offered a place in a covert operation that uses women as distractions for theft, organised by The Union. Driven by desperation, you reluctantly agree, even as your instincts warn you otherwise. But as the lines between survival and exploitation blur, you begin to realize that escaping your current life may come at a certain price.

Part One!

Author's Note: is this slow burn? seongje has only said one line lol. but i wanted the scenario to be well described :') promise next part will actually have seongje in it

can you notice how bad i am at naming random characters pls

Genre: angst, eventual smut?, aged up characters, college au?, union operates like a gang, i'll make the characters suffer

Warnings!!: mdni, mentions of suicide and rape, language, reader is depressed, mature content

Word Count: 2033

˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　 . ✦　　　　˚　　　　 . ★⋆. 　　　. 　　˚　✭　　　*　　　　✦　　　.　　.　　　✦　˚ 　　　　 ˚　.˚　　　　　✭　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　　　　　　 ✦

A bowling alley was the last place you expected. After having attempted murder against him, the boy walked ahead of you with the calmest demeanor, as if he fully trusted in his ability to win any sort of battle against you. Sadly, that was the truth.

The moment you approached him, the boy received your attack as if he had been expecting it from the very beginning, even before opening the backpack and seeing its contents. He grabbed your wrist and stopped it mid-air while smiling slightly, clearly stating who held the power in the brief exchange.

"This is not new to me, but it is to you. Follow me." he said as he started walking without looking back. He spoke as though you had no other choice, as if the earlier questions had always had a yes for an answer. And although that wounded what little pride you had left, you followed the relaxed young man without questioning it for more than a few seconds.

The walk was not long, but it was silent, which left space for thousands of internal questions that could be summed up in a single thought: “Did I never learn about stranger danger?” Years ago, when your mother still offered coherent arguments, she used to warn you daily about the dangers people posed, strangers or not, especially if they were male. In fact, you had never trusted men, only your father when he was still around. You had learned the intentions of many the hard way, and how little female attractiveness truly mattered in the face of male lust.

And yet, there you were, at the door of a bowling alley lit only by flickering neon lights. In that moment, you quickly understood what the boy meant by “being obedient.” You had considered many solutions to ease your debt, and had already put several into work, but you had never contemplated using your body for it.

"Come on, don’t make those faces already. I haven’t even told you what this is about yet."

It was not necessary. Upon entering, you saw many men howling, celebrating while toasting and scoring points. Some young women were also part of the group, which calmed you for a moment. That feeling did not last long, since when you looked ahead, a tall and dangerous-looking boy was watching you expectantly.

"New acquisition." The first boy said, whom you had named in your mind as Jin. You had heard that name repeatedly while making your way through the sinister bowling alley. His comment and the slight smile on his lips made your skin crawl.

"She’s… an interesting choice, to say the least." The second boy, whose name you still did not know, let out a deep chuckle, as though the whole situation belonged right in a comedy script. You kept your head down, your whole body trembling at this point. You tried to subtly look around, searching for the eyes of the girls you saw earlier. Surely they had seen you and would not let these guys sell your organs, right?

"I don't think-"

"This is going to be a direct explanation, okay? So stay focused." Jin interrupted you, clearly not wanting you to back down now. You guessed the more girls each brought, the more they got paid, hence his insistence. "You heard about The Union, right? If you join and do your job properly, you get paid, got it? Motorbikes and other stuff are stolen, sold and then stolen right back. Someone has to distract those fuckers while we steal them. We used to do it all ourselves, all men. But our smart Han here once thought: why not use the power of women? Such a fucking feminist, isn't he?" Jin and the other guy, now called Han, laughed like hyenas plotting. The predatory remark mixed with their laughter made you choke on air. Still, he gave you no time to recover from his mind-blowing speech, since he kept on talking.

"No fucking them. Don't think this is about pimping you out for some quick cash. Just distracting them with some seductive female magic. Then you are out. If he gets fucking handsy, someone will be around at all times. The others will tell you, no raping cases yet." He spoke in the most casual tone while smirking, as if those insane statements were not coming out of his mouth.

"The bike gets stolen, you did your job right, so you get paid. And don't think this is the money you get from working in that stupid fucking store. Doesn't compare, baby. Ask the girls when you meet them." At this point, you did not have to ask if they had been stalking you, because you knew the answer. You guessed that was how they found their perfect victims: financially unstable girls who were desperate to make money. And you were about to be one of them, seemingly.

You had questioned your intelligence plenty of times throughout your whole life, but never like in that instance. Why were you not even asking how much money you would get for every mission? You simply were not thinking at that point, just trusting the universe with the opportunities it decided to put in your path, even though that had let you down in most occasions.

"Can I talk to them now?"

"Wow, she is a quick one. Didn't even think about it for a second, huh?" Han said while smirking, which made you blush in embarrassment. You just looked so hopeless, it was obvious money was not that accessible to you.

"I... I just wanna know about how they are treated from their perspective. And how much money they really get."

"Getting greedy now? How about a trial period? You say yes to joining The Union, then you can talk to them and see it for yourself. Do some missions and then we talk, mmh?" Jin spoke, almost in a daring tone, while trying to connect his gaze with yours. He was not able to do so though, since you nervously kept looking around for possible witnesses, just in case. The truth was that eye contact had never been your forté, with people looking at your face being your greatest fear. You just opted for shaking your head yes and thinking of possible questions about this illegal pact.

"So when-" You got interrupted for the second time in the fifteen minutes you had been in that flashy bowling alley. Either Jin — or people there in general — did not care that much for conversational maxims. How welcoming.

"Boss!" Suddenly, all the guys' heads dropped down, bowing at an entering presence. Another young man, 20-something years old, came into the room, but this time it was different.

"You fucking stupid bastards. Put your fucking heads up. This is not a fucking gang." The young man spoke while blowing smoke from the cigarette in his hand. He looked intriguing, like his presence could change the mood of a whole room. He was large, looked toned but not big. His clothes were wrinkled and stained with blood and dirt, as if he had been fighting someone on the floor. For the two seconds you looked at him, you were able to notice he wore glasses, which was a contrast to his image of an almost gang leader. You kept looking down, noticing all the details that your peripheral sight could offer, frightened enough to even dare to move.

"Seongje! Got a new one! Hope to get a fat check from this one, yeah?"

"Already told you all I don't give two fucks about this plan of yours. Still don't fucking know why Baekjin said yes to your stupid ass." Well, you had just met a ray of sunshine personified, you thought. Seongje gave you a quick, dismissive glance — completely uninterested — as he walked past right by the three of you.

"Don't mind him. He is just the asshole who basically runs all of this. You girls don't see the big guys much, usually" Han directed his eyes to you, suddenly sounding like the sweetest person to ever exist after being witness to all of those curses.

"So" Jin returned to the conversation casually, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "Are you joining then? I forgot to mention you got accommodation. If you want to live with the other girls so you don't have to pay for that flat of yours, you got the option. I know it's not fucking cheap, yeah?" The young man started to light a cigarette and blew the smoke right in front of your face. You could not stand the smell of it, and it already reeked of tobacco there, so you coughed as if your lungs were about to come out of your body.

"Get used to it, mmh? The smell is going to be practically permanent around here." He smiled lightly, almost trying to mock a gentle remark.

Getting out of that awful apartment and avoiding your crazy rent did sound like a dream. You were already expecting not the best conditions to live in, but you were not able to keep paying for everything. It was either uni, a place to live or food, and your stubbornness was not going to let you drop out.

"Can I see the place?"

"Sure. Wait here. I'll bring some of the girls." Every word that left his mouth sounded sarcastic, deceitful. His tone was constantly cheerful, in an almost degrading way, which was making you feel chills every second that passed.

The whole situation was sketchy, and your body's physiological reactions were telling you to run. Still, there you were, standing still and doing as Jin said, taking no notice of your survival instincts. An hour ago you were certain there would not be a tomorrow for you anymore, so you could kind of make sense of the lack of self-preservation you were showcasing. Still, it made you feel pathetic: if you were so sure about dying, why were you fighting so hard to keep going? You were invalidating your own feelings, questioning why you would put yourself in a situation that could end terribly just to stay alive. Just to get a damn degree. Gosh, why were you so fixated on it?

You did all of that thinking just to stay in the same exact position you were before, waiting. Three girls were walking towards you, the same girls that were watching the other guys play just moments ago. They looked like they were having fun, so you thought it could not be that bad, right?

"Hey. I'm Eunji and this is Bora and Nari. That stupid bitch told us you were joining. I'm the one who kind of leads this, so I'll show you what to do, yeah?" She sounded a bit strict, almost distrustful, but you could imagine why. It surprised you she insulted Jin in such a casual way, but she looked tough, so you guessed she had a bit of a reputation that allowed her to do so. The other two girls only smiled lightly, looking a bit uninterested, which popped your bubble of possible female friendship, something you needed greatly. You just nodded and took advantage of the opportunity to ask every question that popped into your head: money, conditions, sleep... You felt extremely awkward because of how desperate you sounded. Still, you just kept going, reminding yourself about the depressing financial situation that you were in, which had almost made you kill yourself an hour ago.

The three girls showed you the small building in which you could live in, almost next to the bowling alley. It consisted of bunk beds and two shared bathrooms, plus a tiny space saved for hanging your clothes. It was not cozy or comforting by any meanings, but as long as you had a roof over your head, you could be content. There was a small kitchen behind a closed door, but the convenience store close by was enough for you to survive. In that moment, you convinced yourself it was worth the risk; surely, nothing could be worse than your current situation.

Or so you believed.

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luvpocket · 4 days ago

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Nothing New - 1

pairings: geum seongje x female reader

Summary: You are a depressed university student drowning in tuition debts, so when you suddenly get a really convenient but dangerous offer, you might take it.

Author's note: first fic! i clearly don't know how to do this lol. english isn't my first language, so please be nice. correct any mistakes or make any suggestions too! i plan for this to be a series :) (btw the guy in the end isn't seongje yet)

Genre: angst, eventual smut?, aged up characters, college au?, union operates like a gang, i'll make the characters suffer

Warnings!!: mdni, mentions of suicide and self-harm, reader is depressed, parents death, mature content

Word Count: 2148

This was nothing new.

The thoughts had been there since you were twelve years old.

You remembered how your mother, when she was still mentally alive, would cry every day watching you waste away.

She always asked, “What can I do?”

And every time you thought the same damn thing: Go back in time and take plan B?

But you knew it was a useless answer that led nowhere, only to a kind of disappointment you did not want to make anyone feel.

And the truth was no one really knew because you had never tried to explain it. Perhaps at some point in your life, when you had friends and family around, if you had tried, someone might have understood. But it was shameful to admit that, no matter how hard you tried, you could not see yourself the same way you saw everyone else. Even if you changed your entire being, looking in the mirror was the worst torture you could ever imagine, and the experiences in your life had only confirmed this reality.

A reality you had tried to escape by abandoning your origins. Your father was gone now, which had made your mother disappear too. You did not believe in destiny, only in coincidences, but it was almost as if life had said the phrase: I’ll give you a real reason to cry now.

It was no longer just the thoughts about yourself that seemed pulled from a horror tale, now everyone was really gone — yourself and the others. You had never had many friends, but those few had once meant everything to you. But other friends, romantic relationships... All of that happened, all of that you hated. More specifically, all of that happened to others, but you only lived the consequences of it; hence the hatred.

That is how you ended up there. In a new country, with what you had saved over the course of a year. A year during which you survived on instant noodles and tap water. You thought it was what you needed, so you would do everything to achieve it.

You wanted to feed into that fantasy that whispered: new place, new me. But after just two months, you realized it was merely that: a fantasy. Your flat was a cubicle, and rent was not especially inexpensive. Not to mention your flatmate... You had heard of nightmares come true about living with strangers, but this felt more like a sleep paralysis in which you were helpless and unable to act. Living with a girl in her 20s like yourself did not sound so bad, but you had not had in mind her thirty-something boyfriend walking around as if he paid the same rent as you did.

You had not thought about the possibility of the girl being the reincarnation of Pandora herself neither. She used her attractiveness to deceive, but it did not work on you because you had analyzed people like that to death. This was due to a simple reason: you knew they were bad people, but you envied them incredibly. When Elle — that is how your lovely flatmate had introduced herself as — realized that her covert tactics wouldn’t work for the couple to do whatever they wanted, that’s when the war began.

And you were not at all a confrontational person — in fact, you had spent your whole life trying to work on that, trying to face injustice without feeling like you deserved death penalty for it.

However, you had a talent for ignoring. You had learned to lower your head like no one else, and this undoubtedly had its serious consequences, but it also gave you the great ability to avoid hearing what you did not want to. It was as if your receptive system had an on and off switch, and you turned it off every time your flatmate and her old boyfriend spoke. This certain skill seemed to infuriate the couple even more.

It seemed as if it truly did not affect you, but every night you stayed awake crying, having thoughts about a winning lottery ticket or a faulty traffic light at one of the crossings they — either the couple or yourself — used the next day.

You had always been an extremely sensitive person; the number of times you cried per week — or even per day — was comical. Nostalgia consumed you, not only for who you were years ago but for who you had been yesterday. You hated the passage of time because the only thing you had learned from it was that when something was bad, everything could get worse. But you also cried if you went to a café and the worker simply said “How are you?” instead of just asking for your order. You had always wanted to study Psychology, and although you had never questioned why, it was possible that you just wanted to find an explanation for your way of being. Or find a way to change yourself, instead of just question it.

And that is where the grand situation came in — the one that did not allow you to have anything else in your mind, not even your terrible self-esteem or your terrible flatmate.

Because there was nothing more horrifying than money. You questioned why humanity had decided that knowledge must be paid for every day of your life. You had thought of all the options, even the most twisted ones, to keep paying your university tuition. 2700 euros, a figure that haunted you every second — when you were in class, when you went to that nearly bankrupt little store to work, when you made telemarketing calls at night just to try to reach it. But you never could.

Your university kept sending you emails in red letters and exclamation marks, threatening to delete your virtual class space completely. It was so easy for them, while for you it meant destroying your whole life. Uni was the only thing you could truly enjoy — at that moment, it was what gave you life. It was the only time when you felt like someone, a nearly normal 20-year-old girl, someone productive who maybe could contribute something useful to this world in the future.

But every day you woke up in a panic, knowing that it would soon be over if you did not do something. Still, you saw no more solutions. You barely slept, had no social life (though this was not due to your availability), and sometimes it was impossible to focus because all you thought about was how to pay.

And that is why it was nothing new.

The situation was new, but the thoughts were exactly the same as the ones you had when you were twelve.

Why couldn’t you be like the other girls? You wanted to be someone else, you didn’t even ask to stand out. And even though your teenage self never acted on those thoughts, your 20-year-old self was being more immature and irrational than ever.

You knew it wasn’t so strange to have suicidal tendencies, but you had never imagined that one day you would carry them out. It was true that sometimes you self-harmed because it gave you an unfamiliar feeling that could momentarily relieve your stress, but you never had the real intention of dying.

And yet, there you were, at the edge of a cliff not far from the park you visited almost every night to question all your daily decisions. It was very high, but you didn’t feel much fear — you had never really been afraid of death. Still, what truly scared you was how easy it seemed. Besides, even if you did not want to admit it, it scared you to know that no one would notice, at least not for a long time.

But the temptation of how easy it was to end everything outweighed those fears.

The tears still fell, but that was nothing out of the ordinary, so they did not make you step back either. The decision was more than made, and nothing would change it.

"Before you kill yourself, do you want another chance?"

The question was so explicit that it made you realize you had been in a trance since arriving at the park. The tall, dark silhouette had awakened you with his voice; he had made you conscious of what you were about to do by the words he chose to use.

"I wasn’t going to... kill myself."

"Are you here for fun? Are you passionate about cliffs?" He was speaking in such a sarcastic tone it made your blood boil for a second. Who did this man think he was?

"I was just curious to see what was below." You replied casually, trying to turn around the situation and make him look like the insane one there.

You did not know why you were making so many excuses, but you felt like the voice of that boy demanded an explanation.

Suddenly, he laughed — a deep laugh that gave you goosebumps without knowing why.

"I suppose curiosity really did kill the cat. You wanted to see it so badly you almost threw yourself to it?"

You just remained silent, because you felt pathetic. Your whole face was covered in tears, your nose red and your mascara smeared, and still you had tried to act like you were not about to commit suicide. Even at the brink of death, you felt useless.

Shame made you step away from the edge and start walking back into the park.

You would try again tomorrow, when there wasn’t someone laughing at you in the process.

"So you’re not interested?" You heard that deep voice again that scared you a little.

Having walked a few meters, you could see him better. He was a big but slender boy, dressed entirely in black and had a backpack on. He looked about 20 years old and you couldn’t deny his attractiveness.

Still, it was obvious you were not interested. You knew you were easy prey for anyone who wanted to take advantage of you if they played it right. Emotionally and financially destroyed — was there a worse combination to be manipulated by a potential human trafficker? So you had to keep reminding yourself of this, had to be aware of your vulnerability and not fall into those traps.

Although... it wouldn’t hurt to hear what he had to offer, right?

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"How’s university going?" The question took you a bit by surprise, but you guessed he could tell you were a student because of your apparent age, similar to his.

"University... is just going"

"Seems like you’re not one for many words, are you?"

He asked it as if he already knew the answer. And the truth was you did seem very quiet, but that was only because you never had the chance to speak anymore.

In reality, when you used to have friends and family, you could spend hours talking about anything. You loved sharing random thoughts and opinions with other people, but now you weren't used to it. Now you only knew doctors and administrators who always sought the least possible interaction. His question made you reflect even more on how lonely your situation was, and in a few seconds you were crying again without being able to stop it. The little dignity you had left vanished in that moment. By tomorrow you would be dead and never see that person again, so you didn’t care anymore.

"If you’re obedient, we’ll help you. I promise you’ll be able to live for a while without worrying about your tuition."

Suddenly, you stopped breathing, and the tears halted. How did this stranger know about your situation? Was it that obvious you had financial problems?

Maybe he had seen the not-so-old scars on your wrists or your eye bags — but how had he guessed so precisely?

"How do you know that? Who are you?"

"It’s not that hard to see. I have a talent for recognizing poverty."

Ouch.

Yes, your lack of money was clearly evident. You felt so predictable in that moment, so obvious and transparent with just one glance.

"I’ll need to know what I have to do first, right?"

"It’s more fun if you agree beforehand." He smirked like he was having a joyous time, unlike yourself. You began shaking your head from side to side, giving a firm no before he even finished the sentence.

But then, suddenly, he opened the sinister backpack. Before your eyes was an unimaginable amount of bills, and your mind began to race.

What if you pushed the mysterious boy off the cliff and stole the backpack?

You did not consider yourself a bad person, but extreme situations sometimes called for extreme solutions.

You would never do it, but the thought was there.

"And now? Will you come with me?"

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