sgnolivia

[sgnolivia]

sgnsungwoo

it’s at the half-hour mark that he’s belatedly hit with a rational idea, so he whips out his phone to dial up a number and waits, waits until the other end picks up. “hey! everything okay over there?” in his other hand is a box of color changing jello marked half-off for the day. “and how do you feel about…” he has to squint to read the label again. “foods that have identity crises?” 

“who is this,” she says, before the caller id catches up with her, “what?” 

the dog is adorable and the cat is, begrudgingly, cute as well. this makes the standoff they’re engaged in probably the most vomit inducing thing olivia’s ever had to see. the cuteness stabs her viscerally. it radiates out from her guts to her hands and back again. she wants to throttle something. this can’t be legal. 

olivia coos, “bring me back a hot pickle,” the dog perks its ears up at her tone of voice, giving the cat the opening to strike, “cat, no!”

there isn’t enough fine motor skill in the world for olivia to hold a phone, console a dog, and restrain a cat at the same time. in the hospital, she practiced tying her shoes and writing her name so often she started doing it in her sleep and those things are still difficult for her. 

this is nothing like that. 

she drops the phone and the cat screeches so loud she can’t tell if it even really happened, “two hot pickles!” 

yo, ma! is that a f*cking cat?

[sgnolivia]

sgnsungwoo

“beats me,” sungwoo throws back with a laugh. there’s other things he could’ve handed over just as easy. a puzzled look, a “what the fuck, liv,” half a xanax, maybe. he squints at her side profile from his periphery. maybe half of a half instead. “we’re not anywhere close to a beach, so i couldn’t tell you.” there’s an open bag of potato chips in his lap, which he holds up for her to take, a consolation prize. sea salt and grease, by all means, is the next best thing.

these chips are going to make her throw up but olivia takes them because they’re as good a thing as any to fill the gaping, metaphorical void she’s got rolling around in her skull. she’s either got wild animals for braincells or bojack goddamn horseman dicking around in there. which, makes sense. bojack is a horse.  “you didn’t think about it long enough.” 

her stomach aches approximately two seconds later which. while on brand, is absolutely the worst.

there probably aren’t rocks heavy enough to keep her down to begin with. where would she even finds rocks like that? do they sell them?

sungwoo could probably buy them. he’s got rock money. 

“i don’t think i’ve ever been to the beach,” she says, spraying little bits of salt and potato, forgetting that she’s supposed to swallow before she speaks.

she swallows now. 

“not that it matters, it’s not like i would enjoy it under the intense weight of societal standards,” olivia huffs, folding her arms around her gut because it’s starting to scream why the fuck did you eat that!!! thankfully, it’s drowned out by the other 10,000 signals her half-functioning body is trying to send to her. “jesus christ, existence is wack. i’m self-identifying as a croissant.” 

lilo

[sgnolivia]

why are we still here? just to suffer? every day a man somewhere wakes up and decides to become a film major

[sgnolivia]

pickerlicks

@sgnjisoo

too many choices in one small area triggers something in olivia. she’d call it a system override, but that makes her brain seem technical when it is, in reality, two geese screaming at each other. each goose represents a choice. two is fine, three is alright, but anything more than four makes everything unbearably loud. 

who knew there were this many frozen coffee drinks?

olivia isn’t even supposed to drink coffee but here she is, holding the store brand and looking at a starbucks (? what the fuck is a star-buck??) because this a vacation and if you’re gonna do something you shouldn’t do, vacation’s as good an excuse as any. there are so many flavors. so many brands. so many colors. how much espresso is too much espresso? what would pumpkin taste like when cold?

her head hurts. 

“which do you like?” she asks slowly, a hint of desperation creeping into her face. 

[sgnolivia]

sgnshin

“surely maths isn’t making you rethink your existence…” he says, slightly concerned. after all, it was quite presumptuous of him to assume everyone does maths in the maths library, because he sure wasn’t.

oh god. oh fuck. 

that’s exactly what her bullshit crazy people *~visions*~ would say. 

the library feels like an ice box and though it could 100% be because her body’s ability to self-regulate anything has been through a hydraulic press, she feels like it’s connected to this not-person-not-vision-maybe-not-anything??-fuck that’s haunting her. 

didn’t someone die in this building?

and if the soul is just a concept then maybe it’s not really dead? like, can a soul really die if it didn’t exist in the first place?

ah, yes. paranoia, her old friend. 

“um.” she says, eloquent and exhausted, after a long bout of silence has passed since her ~*vision*~ attempted communication,  “i asked you first.” 

apple taters

[sgnolivia]

sgnjisoo

“um…” he blinks, pressing his lips together into a friendly line so he won’t laugh. “no, uh, i just wanted to let you know it’s dark out now,” he says, as if that explains anything about anything. as with everything, he doesn’t feel the need to elaborate, only to do what feels like the right thing, “are you waiting for someone?”

literally who the fuck could she possibly be waiting for? and who just sleeps in the quad waiting for anyone short of oprah goddamn winfrey?

olivia visibly starts, surprised with herself for knowing who oprah is. 

“no,” she mumbles, and wipes a face across her eyes. her hip hurts from the way she’s been carelessly laying on it. sometimes a gift is actually a curse. sometimes sleeping anywhere leads to arthritis, “i’m just tired,” she continues, like that makes this anymore normal.

there’s a brief dillemma while she tries to decide if she should risk trying and failing to get up in front of this stranger but quickly decides, fuck it. if a poor crippled girl is the worst thing this rich boy sees his whole life, olivia would consider it a favor. 

after months of trial-and-error, she now knows to put her bag on her back before she stands up lest she risk toppling straight over. her blood pressure’s so fucked. is there a part of her that isn’t a disaster? she’s yet to find it. 

with a huff, olivia yanks her noodle legs underneath her and pushes. 

fly

[sgnolivia]

sgnseolhee

“you’re olivia?” she doesn’t bother to wait for an answer as she puts her books and bags down and stares down the younger girl. “you should probably show up to tutoring sessions on time if you actually want to make the amount you plan to charge. my dad says punctuality is key in the world of business. shows the consumer that you, y’know, actually care.”

 the spine of her cracks quietly as seolhee opens the book, it’s never been opened before and the pages still carry the manufactured smell of the factory they came from. in a few months, god-willing, she’ll forget it in some corner of her room and never bother with it ever again. 

“anyways, let’s maximize the rest of our study hour. what’s so great about trigonometry?”

this is a lot of questions at once and olivia’s half-cocked brain struggles to keep up with the cacophony of sounds this half-human, half-witch is spewing at her. she blinks, slowly, frowning a little, “what makes you think i care?” she says, as the two geese she has in place of brain cells attempt to make noise into words she can actually process. it is difficult. 

okay. trigonometry. 

right, okay, “there’s nothing great about anything if you don’t like it,” she murmurs, “but passing is cool and probably, like, Super Cool for you, i think.” 

olivia digs around in her bag, taking out her secondhand graphing calculator and a few sheets of paper, “let me see your homework,” she adds. 

what’s funnier than 24?

[sgnolivia]

[sgnolivia]

apple taters

@sgnshin

a really super fun thing about traumatic brain injuries is sometimes when olivia looks at words, all she sees are small dancers, doing their best at showing her what an electric slide would look like if performed by the characters that make up her name. they’re adorable, and fun, and olivia feels like ripping out every page in her philosophy notebook. 

i think therefore i am, she highlights, frowning. this means, by default, that these little dancing machines are real, living beings. are they trapped? do they even know they’re alive? does anyone? olivia sure fuckin’ doesn’t. 

olivia squints at the only other person stupid enough to sit in the locked down library in the math building.

unless he isn’t a stupid person. is he alive?

is he real?

olivia sits back in her chair a little. there’s a good chance that this guy is just made up. a projection, her therapist would correct, because olivia calls them her crazy people bullshit ~*visions*~ and ‘that isn’t a healthy thought, olivia. how can we reframe that?’

she reframes. 

“excuse me, do you exist?” 

[sgnolivia]

sgnjisoo

blue turns to yellow to orange to pink, then far too quickly, the day starts turning blue. jisoo glances at his watch, surprised to see that thirty minutes have gone by since he last checked (circa when he decided to give up on schoolwork.) time is strange like that, always running too fast whenever he’s walking slow. and he’s a slow walker. 

he packs his laptop into his bag and thinks about the rest of the night—how he’s going to spend it slouched over his computer screen because he spent the entire day throwing frisbees and playing guitar in the quad. the darker the sky gets, the more he feels like time is running from him. whoever said that the hands of the clock should be called hands instead of sneaker-clad feet clearly never spent an entire day procrastinating on an essay due in the morning.

he thinks about dinner, how he hasn’t eaten since lunch. he thinks about blowing off his assignment and faking a fever, how the new nurse at the student clinic has a crush on him and will definitely get someone to sign a medical certificate for him. 

he glances to the side and remembers the sleeping girl not ten feet away from him. he remembers seeing her sometime in the afternoon, while he was strumming strings and singing songs with a few friends and a handful of strangers. she was still there after he stopped playing and everyone left, but she’d already fallen asleep. at first, he thought she was waiting for someone, but it’s almost night time now, and he doesn’t think leaving anyone alone and asleep in the well-lit dark is a good idea.

he walks over, bag slung over one shoulder and guitar case in hand. he sets the case on the ground, crouches down and gently taps the girl’s shoulder to wake her. “miss…” he says as softly as he can. the sun has completely disappeared now, and there is nothing but dark blue and stars and light posts for miles.

it’s not like turning the human body into cucumber peels and back again comes with a litany of perks. if her doctor or her physical therapist or her regular therapist or her psychiatrist had any say, being alive is the perk. she lived through something very few do! she learned to walk again! she can talk now! she’s progressed so far it’s semi-safe for her to be alone!

thankfully, no one is asking them. as far as olivia’s concerned, only one thing has come out of her untimely transformation into casper the dumbass ghost:

no matter the background, no matter the time, no matter the place, olivia can go the fuck to sleep. 

her doctor says it’s because her body’s so exhausted from simply keeping itself upright it takes whatever solace it can get. olivia feels that and she respects it’s wishes by promptly knocking out whenever the opportunity arises. 

she dreams of her dog and yellow and heated pavement. 

“what?” she says, before she’s fully awake, blinking back into reality with ease that comes from being woken up approximately a million times a day. there is absolutely no recognition on her face because she has no idea who this guy is. do common areas have cleaning staff if they’re outside? is she being robbed? she says, “i don’t have any money,” but that’s redundant. anyone could look at her and determine she has maybe two slices of rotted cheese to her name. 

fly

[sgnolivia]

yo, ma! is that a f*cking cat?

@sgnsungwoo

someone has dropped the ball. 

and not a normal ball, not the ‘oh sorry! i forgot to pick up milk’ ball. they dropped the livelihood of five (5) whole living, breathing, shitting creatures off the top of lotte world tower. the ball is gone. 

one of them’s a snake.

this is more helpful than she originally anticipated as it requires no guidance whatsoever. olivia respects this, but immediately pays it very little attention. the cat is all over and cats are nothing like dogs. they’re picky and petulant and confusing and olivia can’t figure out her own moods, how’s she supposed to decipher what a kick-roll-roll-hiss-rub means? 

and how the fuck did a room acquire all these animals, anyway? is there no limit to what rich people can do? are there no bounds?

a distant part of her is panicking but, honestly, her body sends out a million signals at once. panic gets lost in the thrum of it. 

olivia watches the cat watch the hamster. 

“eat or be eaten,” she murmurs sagely, and scratches the cats butt. it’s the only place it’ll allow contact.

[sgnolivia]

what’s funnier than 24?

@sgnseolhee

money, like most social constructs, is hard and stressful and confusing. the fact that it’s a requirement at all is, in the words of her therapist, fucking wack. she’s supposed to just remember to pay for things? no reminders? no cutoff warnings? olivia can barely remember to tie her shoes on a good day. 

but money, like all social constructs, is vital for life and without it olivia might as well walk into the ocean right now. physical labor is out and she can’t do anything in customer service without attempting to stick her head in a fryer so tutoring feels like a good middle ground. 

and she’s good at math. numbers, weirdly enough, are just about the only thing that don’t cha-cha slide across her frontal lobe. they march in an orderly line, kicking their little numbery legs out and saluting her as they pass. this is different from literally every other concept which meringue’s past her in a blur. faces do this. names do this. 

olivia comes into the tutoring center ten minutes late since time is another construct that’s been eluding her as of late, and stares blankly around the room.

she forgot what her tutee’s name is. 

fuck. fuck.

she takes a seat at an empty table and wills the gods both above and below to bring her cashbox to her so she doesn’t have to trudge up to every single table and ask, are you looking for olivia? because i’m olivia. you’ve found me. 

[sgnolivia]

what it do babyy

this is olivia, freshman, 20, taurus, chaotic good, she/hers, biomed engineering major, stats minor

was supposed to go to harvard a year ago but thanks to someone’s superb driving skills, she was in a bad accident and had to postpone her whole life so she could glue her limbs back on 

it’s a 50/50 shot she’ll remember anything at all ever

would benefit from a support group for people who never know what’s going on

she’s— how do rich folks say?? like, dirt wagon, dusty ass, musty, okey smokey poor. 

i have some ideas for plots but i’m open to anything~ 

- you’ve introduced yourself to her at least three times and she still has no idea who you are - welcome to the broke club: population y’all!!  - if ur into having a gf who doesn’t like to be touched, may suddenly forget ur name, and has mood swings that put seesaws across the nation to shame, she’s ya gal - ugh we love bonding over newly recovered traumatic childhood memories *chefs kiss* - please make her stop eating shitty convenience food someone feed her please god anyone  - y’all wear the most chaotic, uglyass clothes on campus - she can barely read how tf is she supposed to pass this philosophy, soc, psych, history, etc. class

her vibe is here, bio is here (it’s mad long tho sry), and stats are here 

[sgnolivia]

(low blow cause he likes to get) blown

in tradition of lit majors across the globe, olvia’s mom has a twisted sense of beauty and names her first daughter beatrice. this goes over exactly as expected and when the second daughter stumbles out of her, so overwhelmed her little lungs don’t even work, she breathes out “olivia” like shakespeare himself will reach up from the depths of hell and jumpstart the reincarnation of his character’s lungs.

i. in tradition of lit majors across the globe, olvia’s mom has a twisted sense of beauty and names her first daughter beatrice. this goes over exactly as expected and when the second daughter stumbles out of her, so overwhelmed her little lungs don’t even work, she breathes out “olivia” like shakespeare himself will reach up from the depths of hell and jumpstart the reincarnation of his character’s lungs.

olivia spends four days in the nicu because she swallowed so much blood at birth.

beatrice, a whole seven years old, isn’t allowed in to see the baby— not that she’s particularly inclined to, it’s the principal of the thing— and spends four days on her father’s mother’s couch watching the news because the tv only gets six channels and none of them are cartoons. also, grammie invested her pension into the stock market at the advisement of a scamming financial advisor so she watches the screen in the same way a born again christian stumbles to the altar for penance. beatrice watches, and learns, and starts mumbling under her breath when the numbers are red, too.

ii. when olivia turns seven and beatrice fourteen, grammie dies. she leaves behind an unpayed mortgage and a stock profile worth exactly four trips to the aquarium.

dad is grammie’s only son. mom hates this and hated grammie so the house is tense for days. olivia stays in her room mostly, playing with beatrice’s old toys and drawing little houses with four smiling people and the dog she’s always wanted.

“what would it’s name be?” beatrice asks tiredly. she doesn't really care, and olivia knows this, but the deep, resonating sound of dad yelling is starting to make the wood floors rattle.  

but olivia has no fucking idea how to name things so she says, “dog!” in a loud voice, choosing to use tone over language to express the admiration and love she would bestow upon the possibility.

“yea, dumbass, but the name,” beatrice rolls her eyes to the ceiling like she’s saying a prayer, “nevermind, you’d pick something dumb.“

there’s silence for a beat while olivia squints. her mother starts shrieking in the background.

"the dog’s name is beatrice."

iii. beatrice the dog is bought by their father when olivia turns nine. she’s tiny and adorable and will only grow to be about twelve pounds. it’s an apology for the way he’s been working late nights but olivia is nine. she doesn't give a shit if her father wasn't home for the birthday dinner or missed out on her chorus concert last week or only remembered it was her birthday because she's been leaving post-it notes on his car for three days. she has a dog.

"she can’t fucking name it beatrice!” beatrice the human is shouting.

“watch it, bee,” mom growls, leaning on the couch like a retired circus tiger.

“why not? she can be beatrice the dog and you can be beatrice the bitch,” olivia sings to break her mom's gaze, and artfully ducks beatrice’s chemistry book.

iv. beatrice the bitch is seventeen when she kills beatrice the dog. “it was an accident”, she hiccups, perched over the toilet and puking up bright pink fluid. olivia cradles beatrice the dog in her arms, straight faced and quiet. there is the urge to have a full meltdown, of course, to scream and cry and wake her dad up from where he sleeps on the couch and demand he bring little beatrice back.

but she doesn’t.

she watches beatrice the bitch— the only beatrice, now— sob and groan and heave over the toilet. the bathroom smells like white wine and vodka.

"it's okay, bee," olivia whispers, and gently lays her dog on the bathroom rug so she can run her hand up and down her sister's back the way she's been doing for her mom for years, "i know you didn't mean it."

beatrice hiccups again, "she's just so tiny and i didn't see her ollie, i didn't—"

"i know."

v. "please don't leave me," olivia whispers so quietly beatrice could pretend not to hear.

and pretend she does.

vi. olivia does well in school. better than her older sister, better than even her mother, who was the first person in her family to go to school and still has the debt to prove it.

"you could go anywhere you want," her guidance counselor is telling her while olivia looks at the magnetic sculpture on his desk, "get a scholarship to any school you want."

she thinks about how the way her sister packed only two bags and left in the middle of the night. how the apartment still smelled like birthday candles.

"i want to go to america," she murmurs.

the guidance counselor smiles the same way creepy mr.choi on the first floor does whenever olivia gets home from school. it doesn’t matter. men have been smiling at her like this her entire life.

olivia graduates at the top of her class, clutching an ivy league scholarship to harvard in her grip like the ticket it absolutely is. she waves it in front of anyone who will listen. she draws up the floor plan to her room and makes amazon wishlists with the things she wants to fill it with. they can't afford any of these things, but everyone in the neighborhood is riding the high of her pride and want to help in any way they can.

three weeks before the plane takes off, a semi runs a red light and hits the passenger side of the taxi she's riding in.

vii. second and third degree road rash, olivia learns through a haze of exhausted moaning and the frantic sound of carts slamming around the room, is just a really mild way of saying fuckfuckfuck her skin is gone!!! she knows her skin is gone, though, so not saying it out loud doesn’t really make it feel better. 

the pain is so severe she can’t cry, or speak, or do much but attempt astral-projecting her soul into a different dimension. it creates an out-of-body dichotomy. on one hand, someone has taken a cheese grater to the very fragile bits of body she has left, and on the other, she’s at the park, beatrice the puppy bringing her stick after stick after stick. olivia throws them all and watches as beatrice tries and fails to find the same one she threw.

someone abruptly pops her femur back under muscle and olivia loses her dog, promptly throws up an impressive amount of bile, and blacks out.

viii. getting crushed by an eighteen-wheeler is the easy part. 

three months in the hospital with an injury list longer than her fucking brag sheet takes her to places she’s positive she’ll never come back from. her parents alternate days because they don’t want to be in the same room as each other and their vegetable daughter. 

“you’re lucky to be alive,” the physical therapist is saying on week fifteen, when olivia relearns how to stand up, “if you were on the passenger side, you’d’ve been a goner.”

it feels like she’s got cooked pasta for bones and beef jerky for muscle. it isn’t conductive for walking the twelve feet to the bathroom. her mother isn’t here to see her cry, so she does. cries, and falls, and tries to punch the nurse who helps her up.

lucky fucking her. 

harvard rescinds the scholarship. elitism waits for no one.

ix. olivia signs her soul to the first private loan company who offers to buy. seongnam will still take her, despite the scarring and memory loss, and olivia, exhausted from living as a guest in her own fucking body, agrees.

[sgnolivia]

💌

[sgnolivia]

[sgnolivia]

I know all the other boys are tough and smooth and I got the blues I wanna slow dance with you