#constantly pushed apart by fate and self sacrifice

[im-trying-guys]

need one yaoi that isn’t doomed PLEASE

[charmsonlinechatter]

one step forward, two steps back

ive gone through this before, ill get myself out of this

When I set out on this journey, little did I know the emotional rollercoaster it would become. It was a journey of love, of self-discovery, and of pushing my own limits. Every twist and turn left me breathless, unsure of what lay ahead. Yet, amidst the chaos, a small voice within me clung to the hope of a second chance.

I thought I was making progress, slowly but surely moving on from the past. I was finding my footing in a world without him, piecing together a new version of myself. But then, in a twist of fate, he reappeared. It was as if the universe conspired to bring us back together, teasing me with false signs of interest. And just like that, I found myself back at square one, feeling the raw pain and longing once more. Regret washed over me, knowing that the progress I had made was slipping away, and I was left with the daunting task of starting over again.

We found ourselves on the same wavelength, our desires and dreams aligning like stars in the night sky. He yearned for stability, for a love that could weather any storm, and I had always longed to fully commit myself to him. It was as if love itself was urging us to take a leap of faith, to give it one more try. And how could I ignore the magnetic pull, the undeniable connection that refused to fade?

In our shared daydreams, we painted a picture of a future filled with promises and shared laughter. The air was thick with desire, creating a symphony of passion and yearning. It was in those moments that I knew, without a doubt, that he loved me. Words weren't necessary; his actions spoke louder than any declaration of love.

But trust, oh, trust. It became the fragile thread that threatened to unravel our love. The wounds of past betrayals cast a shadow over our present, creating a divide that felt impossible to bridge. Love alone couldn't mend the rift; it required both of us to take a leap of faith. I wrestled with my fears, torn between protecting my heart and giving him the chance to prove himself. I poured my soul into our conversations, hoping he would understand the depth of my vulnerability. Yet, his resistance left me feeling alone, adrift in my own sea of doubts.

In my desperation, I clung to the remnants of what we had, refusing to accept that it might slip away. I believed that if I just tried harder, found the perfect compromise, we could rebuild what was broken. But reality shattered my illusions, leaving me with fragments of shattered dreams. Love shouldn't demand contortions of the soul, nor should it require sacrifices that tear us apart.

We tried, or at least I tried. I poured every ounce of myself into salvaging our love, but it became clear that he wasn't willing to fight alongside me. It was a battle fought in solitude, where I fought for us while he stood on the sidelines. In that moment, my heart broke once more, the weight of his indecision crushing the fragile remains of my hope.

Now, I stand at the precipice of uncertainty, questioning everything I thought I knew. Am I truly seen and cherished? Do I deserve a love that doesn't leave me constantly doubting myself? Tears flow freely as I confront the painful truth that sometimes, love isn't enough to sustain us. It's a terrifying realization, leaving me feeling lost and adrift, searching for the strength to find my own way.

As confusion swirls around me like a tempest, I find myself standing at the precipice of a heart-rending decision. It's a terrifying crossroad, where the echoes of our love mingle with the doubts that haunt my weary soul. I search for answers that elude me, questioning if I've done enough, if I've been fair to myself. Tears stream down my face, tracing the path of my shattered dreams, as I wonder if I've somehow erred in this delicate dance of love.

I reflect on the love I poured into this relationship, on the sacrifices made and the vulnerability exposed. It feels as though I've exhausted every ounce of my being in an attempt to breathe life into something that now hangs in the balance. But the painful truth remains: perhaps this is where our story concludes, where I must gather the broken fragments of hope and find the strength to let go.

In the solitude of my anguish, I wrestle with the haunting question of whether I have the courage to embrace a future without him. The prospect of untangling our lives, of healing the wounds inflicted by shattered promises and faded dreams, fills me with both fear and a glimmer of liberation. It's a bittersweet symphony of emotions that threatens to overwhelm me.

I take a final, trembling breath, and with tear-stained cheeks, I confront the stark reality before me. The time has come to bid farewell to what could have been, to honor the love we once shared by acknowledging that it's no longer enough. In the depths of my heartache, I must find the strength to forge a new path, to believe that there's something greater waiting beyond the pain.

As I turn away from the remnants of our love, the weight of uncertainty still clings to my spirit. But in this moment, I choose to trust in the resilience of my own heart. I may not have all the answers, and the road ahead may be treacherous, but I owe it to myself to seek the happiness and peace I so desperately deserve.

So, with a heavy heart and a soul that trembles with both sorrow and hope, I take my first tentative step toward a future unknown. And as I venture forth, I carry with me the lessons learned, the scars earned, and the belief that one day, the pain will fade, making room for a love that will embrace me wholly and unconditionally. Maybe this is the end, maybe this isn't, but i tried, and I need to get out of here.

[xoruffitup]

Burn This 7/14: Final Show Recap

Burn This is over and I’m a mess of feels. This play has gifted me with four solid months of incredible performances, late NYC nights with friends both new and old I will treasure forever, and short but beautiful moments of dreams coming true at stage door. The final performance was overwhelming, hysterical, and oh so bittersweet. 

First – A conclusive update about the letter book! After Adam didn’t come out to stage door on Friday or Saturday (understandable tbh because both nights had giant, rowdy crowds), the crowd was absolutely MASSIVE on Sunday after the last matinee. People were pushing, crowding, yelling Adam’s name and it was absolute madness. When Adam got down to me, the crowd was literally pushing in from every angle and there were about ten people reaching their Playbills out to him around my head, but I just started talking. Given the manic atmosphere I only had time to get out something like: “I’ve seen the show several times and had incredible dialogues about it. This is a collection of messages from people about what the show meant to them.” Adam literally could not stop moving or else the crowd would have caged him in, but he looked back at me, still listening, and when one of the security guys took the book Adam looked straight at me to acknowledge and thank me! Both he and the security guard assured me it would get to him. I didn’t get to explain it fully but I think he understood what it was and the book will speak for itself!

This is the cover I made for the collection:

You can see me hand over the white laminated book right at the beginning of this video, and Adam look back to say thank you. 

My friend next to me also took this video where he looks back at me for half a second :’D And gives a tiny smile! (in the middle of that pandemonium, poor bb) 

Let me quickly say a big THANK YOU to everyone who contributed. <3 After that insane crowd at stage door, those wholesome, thoughtful messages about his work in this play would be the perfect remedy. Thank you so much to all of you for taking the time to write out appreciation for everything he gives us. :’)

NOW, the show!

Okay so firstly, the downside: I was NOT impressed by the audience. A lot of people seemed to have seen the show before (not that I’m judging, clearly) but were laughing CONSTANTLY at everything Adam did. To the point where you couldn’t even hear his lines half the time, and the audience failed to grow appropriately somber in the moments when he falls apart. Not a very courteous audience at all.

But the cast!!!! There were some poignant moments when it really seemed to be their real emotions coming through, bleeding into the way they played certain scenes. During the infamous, always-entertaining exchange in Act 2 while Adam’s sitting on the couch in the robe asking “Who’s the apple and who’s the orange? You never had an apple tart glazed with orange marmalade?” I SWEAR there was a second where that grin was all him, having an absolute ball of a time. When he said “who’s the orange?” he literally kicked his feet up like an overexcited little kid and it was THE. PUREST.

Okay so in the interest of remembering as much as I can, I’ll go in order from the beginning!

First, a bit of textual analysis. Every time I see the play, I’m struck by how incongruous the first twenty minutes seem in comparison to the rest. I know that’s on purpose, because Pale’s entrance is very much supposed to shake up and tear into Anna’s world with pure chaos – turning everything on its head. But knowing everything that’s going to come after, all the lofty discussion in that first scene about myths and epic love tropes all seems terribly self-aware. It’s more than foreshadowing. It literally seems to be a self-narrating framing device for everything that’s about to follow after:

“The wives of the sailors out at sea. The women waiting for years and the men never coming back. What sustains them through loss? Through pain? I think they felt things in a more profound way.”

Robbie is never coming back, and Anna is searching for something inside herself – some feeling – in order to push through this mess of grief and frustration that she can’t make sense of even to herself. She has a shell around herself at the beginning, and nothing to break through it or guide her way; no direction.

“The Flying Dutchman – Senta throwing herself into the sea to save the Dutchman from perdition.” (I mean come on – In this story Senta literally “has this boyfriend hanging around” getting in the way of the epic love and this couldn’t be more meta if it tried.)

Knowing what’s to come, it’s striking that Anna doesn’t seem to realize she is the real subject of conversation here, not Burton’s lofty novel ideas. Even a mere ten minutes after she recounted the funeral where she swore she was expected to “throw herself over the casket” – she doesn’t seem to relate herself to the story about Senta hurling herself into a watery grave because of the love and loss of a man.

In some performances, I think Anna is closed off because she’s purposely trying to avoid such a fate for herself. After losing Robbie, she doesn’t want to “sacrifice herself” through deep connection to another person ever again – Not even to Robbie’s memory as she refuses to give in and confront her grief. And hence her resistance to starting a real relationship with Pale. In other performances, it seems that she’s genuinely blind to the walls she has put up around both herself and her own emotions. You can see the walls in her physical body language – How she always seems to be sitting in defensive, closed-off positions when Burton tries to get near her. (Contrast that with how she literally wraps herself around Pale while he’s crying on that same couch later.)

Anyway, I just find it incredibly cool that what at first seems to be snobby, “arty” (to take Pale’s word) aimless talk at the beginning is actually all the characters indirectly reflecting on everything that’s about to happen to them – to Anna, particularly. This same exact self-examination resumes in the first lines of Act 2, when Anna finishes reading Burton’s draft script.

“It’s so sad.” “I thought they were having fun.” “But beneath it all, they’re so lonely.”

There it is – The deceptively simple three lines that sum up the entire play and spell out the tragic beauty of Pale and Anna’s relationship.

OKAY I’ll stop with the analysis now. On to the details everyone cares about!

So when Adam charged out, holy shit his voice sounded SHOT. It took a good few minutes for his yelling to warm up enough for his voice to stop sounding completely hoarse. It clearly cracked a few times and I just wanted to brew him some tea. (A pot, of course, because a cup wouldn’t even be economical…)

But by around the time he got to my favorite, side-splitting monologue about imagining you’re a tree and you get made into toilet paper or money to get passed around or parchment for a restaurant or music paper for the Boss to write on… but either way you end up drifting down to get stuck in some Saudi Arabian oil tank propellers. (Bending down and spinning his arms like propellers and cue me absolutely falling apart each and every time.) …. His voice finally sounded fine by then! :D

I’ve forgotten to write this in previous posts, but in plays I always LOVE moments when the actors come right to the front of the stage and just stand there for a long moment, wordless and motionless, just staring out into the theatre without really seeing anything, lost in the gravity of their own emotion. Keri has a moment like this before Pale’s entrance (I think when she says, “I thought everything important to the future of dance was going to happen in this room.”) Adam has his moment while Anna is talking about Robbie’s dancing, how good he was and how Pale would have liked it. Adam just stares out into infinity for a long moment, while it demands physical effort from him in order to take in what Anna’s saying. He doesn’t smile while he says, “You saw him and say he was good. I never saw him and I know he was shit.” His long moment of stillness here – finally facing the audience in close proximity and unnerving silence (a striking moment after he spent the last fifteen minutes raging around the stage and often having his back to the audience) is when you can see the very beginning of him unraveling. This is when he starts to plateau – tumbling from his coked-up high into a dark, helpless pit that cleaves him clean through.

After bitching about his pants getting ruined and putting his leg up on the sofa to show Anna, he did the most RIDICULOUS twirl this time! After slowly lifting his leg over the table, never breaking eye contact with her once, he then did this slow, melodramatic twirl - complete with extended ballet fingers and everything. It was nothing short of glorious.

After he kneeled down and screamed, he rose completely shattered. I don’t think I’ve ever heard his voice so devastated with sobs and tears – to the point where you could barely understand him. “No, I don’t do this. This ain’t me” sounded like he was begging desperately, but had no idea what for. There are a lot of stunning things Adam does in this play, but rising and sinking and rising again through these completely polar opposite, all-consuming emotional states within the span of twenty minutes has to be the most incredible. He truly embodies the transformations with his entire body – The way he paces around aggressively then helplessly, the way he spends long, silent minutes simply rubbing at the same place on his chest in pain, the way he doubles over as the brunt of his grief settles upon him like a crushing physical weight. The way he channels his very physicality to embody menacing one moment, then vulnerable and helpless the next. It’s just nothing short of breathtaking and awe-inspiring.

Okay okay, after he drops the hilarious bomb out of nowhere: “You know you got no tits at all.” And when the exchange ends with “It makes a man want to look, see how much there is” – Afterwards he just looks over at her with this hilarious, seedy smirk that was GOLD. Almost like “so is this hapless seduction working????”

Watching the couch kissing scene was, again, like being seduced yourself. He just stares at her for such a long moment before finally leaning in for it. She knows what he’s thinking – she knows what he’s going to do, and she’s completely mesmerized by the intensity of his single-minded focus; even as his hand reaches out for that gentle, tentative brush along her hair. Making sure she really wants this before he slides into it.

And then…. God, the way he delivered the lines that are some of my favorites: “Let’s start the engines real slow here. Go halfway to the city, stop for something to eat. You’ll find there’s times I’m a real good listener.”

jsdfjadlj his voice is so soft and deep, while he’s looking at her so intently, almost communicating the words with his gaze alone. He speaks so slowly and purposefully. The words themselves might be flippant in the double entendre, but there’s a sincerity behind them that wraps itself around your heart completely. You can see it wrap itself around Anna, as she falls into him completely. Every single person in the audience would probably do the exact same.

When he leaves the next morning, it never fails to make the audience crack up how he just waltzes out the door with no great to-do as he calls “Alright people, I’m outta here!”

CLASSIC.

Act 2:

After Burton flips him onto the floor and keeps yelling at him, the way Pale just rolls away onto his side and goes “Good night” all mischievous and cutesy asldfjsadlkfj. And then “Good night, Bruce!” after Burton finally leaves.

Other honorable mentions from this scene:

Pale, from offstage: What the fuck do you know?! Larry: Hmm… what do I know? That’s one of those questions you don’t know whether to answer with hubris or humility.

“Who’s Bruce Lee?!”

After Anna and Larry left the room, Pale’s fighting with his coat was extra aggressive this time. He was basically windmilling his arms as he repeatedly yanked at the back of the jacket until finally flipping it up and off and over his head.

Okay okay so I know I already talked at the beginning about the robe scene but I swear this one was EXTRA delightful. He was just grinning and cheesing all over the place at his own cleverness with the “hat trick” joke. Looking SO pleased with himself and just infuriatingly adorable for a giant brickhouse of a man in a stupid purple kimono I mean wtf!!!!

Oh and right before that! When he brought Anna the cup of tea after sabotaging her phone call with Burton and then hiding his face behind the robe sleeve all coyly, he was extra sweet about it this time :3 After handing her the mug he kissed her twice on the forehead, then just stared for a second at her grumpy face before kissing her on the nose too. (!) Then he proceeds to do the cute thing where he tucks her hair behind her ear while asking, “You want some eggs?”

Even when Anna shuts him down, the way he went over to sit on the couch, picked up his tea, then gave these awkward looks to both Anna and Larry like “welp, guess we’re all sitting together now” was sO funny. How the man can deliver such comedic effect without saying a word is beyond me.

Then, Anna starts to blow up at him. When she delivers the final, most devastating blows of “I have nothing for you. I don’t like you, and I’m frightened of you” – I’ve taken to watching Adam as the blows land. He stands there completely still and his face barely moves, and yet there’s this unmistakable, silent devastation about him. The man’s been called the “King of micro expressions” for a damn good reason. This time, after several long moments of tense, pregnant silence – He just did this minute shake of his head as he looked right at Anna. Even for all her anger, he still doesn’t really believe that she means what she’s saying. But that tiny shake of his head spoke volumes. It was almost disapproving, almost pitying, maybe a touch frustrated. While in previous performances he often seemed to be completely crushed – all spark drained from him; There was this bare, subtle moment of disbelief and lingering defiance. Disbelief that Anna was really deluding herself so thoroughly. He is so sure in this scene – while he’s telling her she’s not really afraid of him, she’s only afraid of caring and feeling something – that she feels the exact same way he does. He’s sure their connection is on equal terms; just like he’s sure it’s the only honest, true thing in either of their lives. And in this performance, rather than being crushed by Anna denying it all, he seemed more upset on her account – That she wasn’t letting her walls down to let the truth in, as he already has.

That^ is Adam Driver’s talent, ladies and gentleman. I literally just wrote a whole paragraph about one barely-perceptible nod. Damn. Okay. Give me a second here to pick up the pieces of my feels.

Okay, so I have detail-level and meta-level thoughts on the final scene from yesterday. Detail-level first: Last night was the only time I’ve ever heard Adam deliver the “That was me and you up there” line softly and earnestly, rather than pitching it into a teasing joke with “me and youuuuu up there.” Instead, he kept the tone of the scene gentle and almost timid. I adore in this scene the way he asks her about her dance piece. How at first, he’s not there for himself or even for the idea of them together. He tells her how much he enjoyed the piece, and when he says that he knew it was Robbie – that he could see Robbie in it – there is no greater or more moving praise Anna could receive. Nothing could mean more to her in this moment.

This scene is so quietly gorgeous, and it was simply spellbinding yesterday in how the tone remained so tender all the way through. Throughout the entire scene, the two of them mirrored each other with absolute perfection. A large part of that is because you can tell these are two actors who’ve been playing off each other for months and developed such keen awareness of each other’s physicality and tiniest displays of body language. Even in the way they stand at opposite sides of the stage at first – It’s like they’re tied together by invisible threads. They face each other directly – neither turned away or trying to hide – and when one moves, the other seems to respond exactly the same way. It continues once they sit down together to burn the note. From the way they sit beside each other to watch it burn, to the way they slowly turn towards each other and draw together, they move in perfect harmony and symmetry. They are tuned into each other simply effortlessly and it’s so satisfying and beautiful to watch.

At a higher scene level: It’s so lovely how different this scene feels in comparison to their explosive earlier scenes. (One with sexual energy and another with an angry fight.) There’s this feeling of undeniable rightness and ahhfinallyrelief when they’re back together for this final scene. And as they talk about Robbie through Anna’s dance piece, everything feels different. It feels peaceful for the first time, even a touch reverent as they speak with a shared understanding of each other’s loss that no one else in the whole world could take part in. While earlier in the play, discussion of their shared feelings of loss led to negative acts of self-destruction, aggressive frustration, or self-denial; this time there is finally the feeling that these two can come together and create something positive out of the loss they’ve shared. Thanks to what Pale unlocked in her, Anna’s feelings of loss that were once so unbearable she could not even face the honest thought of it, now became the fuel for an act of creation she’s been striving for her whole life. And the fact that Pale made time to come see it; the fact that he appears in her apartment and can voice so precisely her same sentiments that went into the piece – It means they’ve finally reached a place together where their connection becomes a source of creation and positive beginnings.

Adam does such beautiful acting in this scene. “I don’t know what to do with myself here. I’m 36. I’ve got a wife, two kids…” He paused here, and when he spoke again his voice quavered with feeling that simply overflowed, “I ain’t never felt anything like this.”

One of my favorite images from the whole play is when they both silently sit together on the couch, watching the note burn away in the ashtray together.

(For the first time, I thought back to Act 1 when Pale cryptically answers Anna’s question about what he does with “I’m a roving fireman. I put out fires. Sometimes… just let it burn.” In this case, perhaps this fiery thing between them would be safer if it were put out. But they watch the flames dance and dwindle together, and the warmth and light slowly growing between them is something neither of them have the will to put out.)

And then, that touching, movingly desperate final moment. After “I don’t want this” / “I don’t want it too” – when Anna sinks into his arms and he hurriedly gathers every bit of her in his lap and in his arms that he can fit. He clutches her like she’s part of his very being, rocks her, and reaches up to smooth her hair back so he can kiss her head. His voice breaks again when he confesses, “I didn’t expect nothing like this.” Another moment of desperately holding each other, until Pale half-sobs in helpless apology, “I’m gonna cry all over your hair.”

Every single time, the way Adam says it delivers a swift, sweet blow straight through the heart. Honestly, I would do anything to relive that wrenching heartache again. <33

It’s been an incredible run. I miss the show already, but I couldn’t be happier with the moving, magnificent nights I spent in the Hudson Theatre. Thank you to Adam and the whole cast for touching so many of us every night with this beautiful play. :’’) It has been such a thrilling, joyful ride!

-Until Adam’s next play!!! :)

[millennium-thejiaqiverse]

Chapter 2: Past, Present and Future

Summary: This chapter is possibly the longest and most challenging to write in the Millennium series (I hope), because there are not one but THREE different time travelers each on their own merry way, one of them being a god. I tried my best to organize all the stuff from the past, present and future (no pun intended) for this to be easy to read. Hint hint, the main focus is still on Miles, main events are in the same universe on the same timeline, and the main points in time are one cool summer day (Miles’s past), then the day before Orientation Day (present), and a cold winter night (further in the past). Let’s see how the present shapes the past, which shapes the future thereafter (ties to Chapter 0’s cancerous plane of existence).

This is the last part of the 9th personal assignment, after more than a month’s hard work, Miles is more than ready for this stage.

Doing a last check then taking off when instructed with his small self-built aircraft, Miles relaxes a bit and smoothly makes the journey to the finish line—a small nearby airport. His class tutor is already waiting for him there. “I knew you would excel on this assignment,” the tutor says, “your results and feedback will be in on the 2nd day of next week. Good luck with your midterms!” “Thank you for the extra day of good weather conditions Ms. Sonmi, thank you so much for your help and understanding.” Miles goes to the tutor after parking his aircraft. “Of course, you were on sick leave Miles,” she says, “everyone has one of those days.” “Yep, one of those days...” to battle a parasite fungus that could kill you. Miles can’t help but think to himself as he replies.

It is around 18 in the VR simulation when Miles finished but in fact 22:26 in real life (he had also spent lots of time with his team to complete their group assignment). Miles goes to the toilet to freshen up and prepare to take the shuttle home.

“Heyyy...” Jason Finn Lee was looking into the mirror above the sinks when Miles enters the toilet, he quickly turns to greet him (but things get awkward fast because this guy can’t remember Miles’s name to save his life). “Hey Jason,” Miles breaks the awkward silence, walking to a sink to wash his hands. “There’s my favorite redhead! How was you day?” Jason inquires. Miles answers while washing his hands, “Well, I’ve finally got everything done. It was fun flying an aircraft for my PA (personal assignment), over some fields, and some red maple trees...” “You’re so organized man, my assignments are a mess, and I’m so stressed over midterms!” Jason just starts rambling on.

Miles’s mind wonders off. He thinks of the red maple trees around his parents’ house—well, it’s just his dad’s house now; Miles has a tent he would bring out to the maple trees every now and then, he remembers he used to carry this tent out there everyday when he was about 4 or 5, and hang out there for hours. Miles again recalls that one day, that day he had the strange encounters when he was 5.

That summer day started as normal, little Miles finished doodling some cartoony multicolored trains in his tent, he was walking up to the front door of the house to bring in his drawings when he just had this feeling he had to see something. He looked, only to see someone almost identical to his 5-year-old self, a little Miles #2 but with torn up cloth, leaves in his messy hair and an unexplained look of sudden realization in his eyes; he looked on as little Miles #2 ran to hide in the tent, pulling the zipper shut. He was about to go to the tent to confront this strange kid...

Right now, Miles’s recollection is semi-interrupted with utter silence and a feeling of dread his 5-year-old self had experienced at that very moment back then on that fateful day. “Jason?” Noticing that Jason has abruptly stopped making a sound, Miles looks over to him, only to see an apparition grabbing onto the nose and mouth of his struggling schoolmate.

“... The ghost!” Miles stammers, “not again!” Distorted frozen face, hateful eyes, it is the same apparition little Miles’d seen moments after seeing little Miles #2 that day! “You! I know what it means to see your doppelgänger!” What they said as they charged his younger self echos through his mind, “you are going to die!”

Miles is in shock. This apparition is very dangerous! Jason cannot breathe, he tries to fight back, but the apparition isn’t effected at all. Seeing the apparition hurting his schoolmate, Miles immediately snaps out of it and throws the apparition off of Jason then keeps them at bay, and as soon as Jason caught his breath, Miles pushes him out of the room, taking his memory of the attack and planting a sense that he’s done his bathroom trip on autopilot. “Ah, you’re stronger than I thought,” the apparition speaks. “I’m taking you off this plane of existence!” Miles says as he restrains them.

On that cool summer day, after little Miles was jumped by the apparition blocking his way home, he gave up on confronting little Miles #2, dropped his drawings and darted off running away from them. “Why would it turn out like this?! Everything is horrible!” The apparition screeched and chased after him with a machete, “why must I suffer? Why must we part? The love towards her was so much yet you’d never get to spend a life with her! Never even said ‘I love you’ before leaving!!” “Leave me alone!” Little Miles was very scared, he went off the neighborhood roads and ran into the red maple woods—bumping into low branches and tearing his clothes—straight to a cliff. “Stop this futile attempt to get away child, die for me!” Waving the machete, the apparition taunted him, slowly passing through the trees, “you are horrible, let me end this.” Running a little ahead of the apparition, little Miles’s legs were giving out, at that moment he wished so much that all this wasn’t happening and he was back at the front door, going back into the safety of his home—

—Suddenly, there he was, out of the woods, but at this strange train station, not at home. Parked at the platform he stood on was one of the cartoony trains he doodled whilst imagining it making a stop in the yard of his home some day. With no idea where else to go and this train being the relatively more comprehensible option, little Miles boarded it to test his luck. And before he knew it, he was there in the yard of his home again, and he saw “little Miles #2” going to the front door with some drawings, except he didn’t have torn cloth and... little Miles suddenly realized there was no doppelgänger little Miles #2 at all, it was just himself all along—somehow he time travelled through that strange train station! Remembering this was when the apparition would charge his past self, little Miles ducked into the tent and shut himself in, hugging his legs to wait it all out.

Right now, Miles is once more traveling with a train through the Junction—his strange train station—to the past. The apparition gave up on fighting him (they decided they are powerful enough and didn’t need to hunt to gain more power at that moment), escaped his grip and went on a volatile plane to crawl their way back in time to quote on quote “end their suffering from its beginning” (despite Miles telling them this is not how time travel works after he realized the apparition didn’t recognize him at the moment), so Miles now needs to track them down and make sure they don’t cause a ruckus for nothing.

Boom, the train shakes as it enters a field of light, Miles stops by to see what that was about.

This is a freezing snowy winter night. Miles meets a gang of robed sorcerers maintaining an intricate puzzle box of their design—a cluster of volatile planes of existence piled at one spot, like an invisible labyrinth, imprisoning a sacrificial lamb, a girl, pleading for her release. The sorcerers are repeatedly chanting something in Latin, something along the lines of “take this innocent sacrifice and bring forth the apocalypse”, classic stuff. Miles enters the puzzle box attempting to free the girl, it is clear this puzzle is not just a day’s work: Each plane there is built by the ghost who haunts it, judging from their robes they are from the same society of sorcerers, Miles has to fight constantly to survive their attacks. Miles plans to pull the girl out of the puzzle box before she is sacrificed, but after going through some layers of this puzzle, he realized this whole thing has to be torn down in order to free her—she would somehow always be on a different plane than Miles, and Miles’s magic is limited by the structure of this puzzle box therefore cannot reach through to her. Time is running out, her organs are bleeding, Miles blows the puzzle box apart, weakening the sorcerers around it tremendously; he heals the girl, she runs off screaming as soon as her feet touches the ground, scared out of her mind.

“You fool! You thought we didn’t know there would be time traveling fools like you who’d try to stop us?” Says the one who seems to be the head sorcerer with a weak but stern voice, “the apocalypse will be upon us regardless of you efforts. My daughter’s innocent soul is just one of many sources of the energy we’d use to grow our cancerous dimension, the energy you supplied to our labyrinth before destroying it was needless to say far more than what a few souls can provide, the cancer will now root on our universe and thanks to your little retaliation you kickstarted this process! You have achieved nothing! Oh well, another pawn of the Court will cease to exist in our hands!!” Miles has to think about this, meanwhile he’s just looking at the sorcerer. “Be surprise you idiot!” The sorcerer gets angry at Miles’s lack of proper reaction. Miles carefully words his sentence, “I can tell you first hand that your efforts here are not in vain.” “Hah,” the sorcerer lays his head down, “people will thank us for doing this.”

Just what kind of maniac would sacrificing his own daughter? Walking in the winter snow, Miles thinks to himself after he’s a distance away from the scene, “at least I saved the daughter and she’d be alright, that wasn’t all for nothing... wait, that reminds me—the thing, the real idiot I’m here to watch!”

A gust of summer wind blows through the air. Making sure the apparition wasn’t in sight anymore, little Miles ran through the front door, slamming it behind him. “Miles? Is that you?” It was his mom coming to the door. Little Miles panicked, he wrecked his clothes and he was a mess, mom would be so mad! That was when everything stopped, leaving little Miles puzzled. “This is quite an unconventional first meeting.” a voice came from the living room, “Don’t be alarmed Miles,” the words brought a sense of calmness, little Miles walked into the living room to see a man looking out of the floor to ceiling windows, “I’m Atlas, some guy who carries the cosmos. Good job throwing that thing off your trail.” Everything around them was frozen in time, little Miles saw his mom on the stairs, about to turn the corner to the living room. “Atlas? A titan?” Little Miles asked. “Yes, that’s me,” Atlas turned to face him, “furthermore, the information about me you downloaded into your head is quite correct—I must admit that’s a pretty handy way to acquire knowledge.” “But what about that angry man who chased me?” Little Miles wanted to know more, “he is strange.” “The apparition you encountered breached the veil which separates your plane of existence and another volatile one, and I’m here to capture them.” Atlas gave him an answer, “however, that’s not the purpose of our meeting. Miles Millward, you have a unique talent with magic. A long journey of self discovery and learning lies ahead of you, this journey wouldn’t be easy. I cannot tell you you’ll have no worries or fears in the future, but I will be there for you when and only when you need my help. You know where to find me, in here.” He gestured to his head. The next thing little Miles knew was that everything was back to normal, his mom greeted him with a raised eyebrow and a “what were you up to?” regarding his clothes and hair, Atlas was nowhere to be seen.

The snow is falling. “This is my chance,” the apparition bursts through the redwood gates of a mansion. “Stop it right there!” Miles yells. “There you are child, having fun lost in your thoughts?” The apparition takes notice of him. “For the last time, you can’t change what you wanted to change no matter what you do here! Think about it!” Miles tries to reason with them. “I’m not listening!” The apparition taunts him. “What in the world?” A maid has rushed to the broken down gates. Miles quickly shrouds himself and the apparition from her sight, not wanting to scare her. “I don’t know why, but you think of me again and again,” the apparition roars to Miles, “the more you think, the more you wonder about me you’d feed my power! I just never thought we’ll be here this soon. Now I’ll finally get what I want no matter what!”

“Eric?” A voice from the landing facing the gate, “Eric where have you been?! You can’t keep chasing after some ‘supernatural’ nonsense and running off disappearing like that, I worry!” That’s when Miles noticed a lady rushing down to a figure that appeared at the gate during this mayhem. “Yes, there she is,” the apparition cheers. Miles looks at the figure at the gate then at the apparition, then it hits him. That figure is actually the ghost of this Eric guy, while the apparition he’s been dealing with isn’t any ghost as he initially believed, but a mindless manifestation of a burning desire, they certainly have very little reason in them. “Don’t do that ever again!” She is crying with joy. “Come to us and be united!” The manifestation demands. Apparently this powerful manifestation worked a deal with Eric in Miles’s absence. Eric is lured back from the dead and made visible to the living, probably on the promise he could join his love forever, this manifestation possibly planned on binding this lady Melanie and Eric for eternity which will certainly fail at some point and further harm all that are involved! It is clear the apparition sees joining them together as their purpose and not completing this job as their torment.

“This is sick!” Miles is really close to just annihilating that manifestation at this point, but he was stopped. “Calm down Miles,” it’s Atlas, putting a hand on his shoulder. “They’re... Melanie and Eric are in a very bad situation!” Miles is confused. “You have a drive to help and save people, this is good, but you have to keep this in mind,” Atlas explains, “we learnt that history runs on cause and effect, the cause and effect that we’re not always a part of. This couple don’t really need any help you know?” “Huh?” Miles questions his mentor. Atlas points to Eric and Melanie to tell him to watch on. “I’m leaving you Melanie,” Eric says unexpectedly. “What?” Melanie’s jaw drops, “but after all that we’ve been through?” “We’ll never see each other again,” Eric keeps the now agitated apparition away from Melanie with all his might, “this is for the best! You shouldn’t have had faith in me!” “What are you doing?” The apparition is ready to pounce on everyone here, “we end this now!” Eric notices and runs out through the gates, leaving Melanie behind, now crying with heartbreak and anger. “What ever did I see in him?” Melanie shakes her head. The apparition of course chases him outside. “You know you love her! You wanted to say you love her, you wanted to be with her!” The apparition screams, “you wanted this so much you created me!! And I’ll never let you off with that! Even in death, I’ll make sure you never rest until you man up and fulfill your desires!”

Through the snow, Miles and Atlas chase after them. “The manifestation is distorting even more,” Miles refers to the apparition who’s growing increasingly grotesque, “the more this guy suppresses his feelings the more this manifestation has a reason to grow...” “Although it doesn’t look like it but Eric will prevail,” Atlas isn’t very worried, “marriage at this day and age is hardly about love, it is a union of two families. He’s done the right thing letting her go, all he has to do now is accept his sacrifice.” “Then I’ll tell him that!” Miles teleports in front of Eric, stopping him in his track. “Miles! He has to do this by himself!” Atlas informs Miles.

“This is all my fault...” Eric sighs, “you know, in fact I couldn’t give her the life she deserves in the first place, I’m just a nobody with no status. She is to be wedded to the Brickdales tomorrow, and that’s probably for the best.” “We’re not done, you are coming with me,” the apparition catches up with Eric. “I feel the most difficult thing isn’t the goodbye to my love, but to let go of the fact that we will part forever.” Eric continues. “But you don’t have to, it was a mistake, we’ll go back and fix...” the apparition is then cut off by Eric. “I know Melanie,” Eric stands against them, “she will moved on, and William loves her no less than I do, I would only have one last gift to her now that I’m dead. If this fiend is truly just my longing for Melanie, then I set it free.” “Well this is a load of crap,” although much weaker since Eric punched them by letting it go, the apparition isn’t finished, “but I’m not giving up on the reason I exist! I still suffer! I’ll just have to regain my strength and try again!”

The apparition disappears onto a volatile plane. “Unnatural! The manifestation survived being cut off, and now they’re traveling through time again!?” Miles jumps. “This is indeed unnatural. I’ll handle this Miles,” Atlas goes after the apparition. “Ahh, I’ve never been so at peace,” Eric finally relaxes.

Miles follows his mentor, “Atlas, I can help!” Hearing that, Atlas turns around to him, “Settle down Miles, you’ve had quite a long day, I came to your aid earlier because I sensed you’re already exhausted. I’ve got this. Here, you’ll be at home right on time if you exit the plane now.” “You’re right, my mind’s getting jumpy,” Miles agrees, “and it’s in my favor to take a break before midterms.” Atlas sees Miles off then continues after the apparition.

Arriving at the cool summer day, Atlas comforts little Miles who’s just been jumped at the front door of his home, and thereafter goes on to capture the apparition his after.

“So, Atlas, you’ve got another one.” Atropos greets Atlas, her eyes focused on her freshly completed tapestry, “know that the Court will be happy to take over this matter.”

@cadewrites

[naferty]

Time for a little something-something based on the Stony theory about finding the soul stone by sacrificing Tony or Steve.

And heavily inspired by this beautiful work by @shaliara

Naturally I choose to sacrifice Tony.

After finally reuniting and putting the past to the side in order to save the future Steve and Tony find themselves at odds. Neither are able to apologize and neither are able to say more than four words to each other at a time. Emotional wounds are running deep and making it hard to find forgiveness.

They are still able to work side by side, however. Make sure the other is okay while they run and chase after the infinity stones during their time jumping. The others helping the lessen the tension that is constantly there.

If you were to see them in this state you would think the two can't stand to be so close to each other, and you’d be partially right. Each time Tony looks at Steve he feels a burning in his chest. The sounds of his mother’s soft and panicked breathing always coming back, but he knows what's more important so he pushes on. Keeping as much emotional distance as he can while getting the job done.

This isn't about them anymore. It's now about the universe and he'll be damned if he doesn't give it his all for this last chance to get it back.

They don't communicate much at the start, relying on others to get the words out, but that's exactly how Tony wants it. Then they end up alone together while waiting to jump into action at Thor’s signal and Steve does the unthinkable.

He talks to him.

“For all it’s worth, I am sorry, Tony.”

And Tony wants to say something scathing, a passive-aggressive comment, to let all the bottled emotions he once experienced in the past 3 years free and give him a piece of his mind, but he's tired and emotionally exhausted and he just wants everything and the half of the universe missing back. He wants the Spider-Kid, Happy, all the children who were taken too soon and all the parents and wives and husbands, sons and daughters, grandparents and friends taken from their loved ones.

So he remains quiet and doesn't fight. It's not worth the pain at this point. But Steve keeps talking, trying to justify his choices, trying to say he's wrong for the way he went about the whole thing, trying to make him see his point of the entire event, trying to say he's sorry for not giving Tony the benefit of the doubt.

It all goes out one ear and comes the other. Steve can say his apology and pat his own back and move on. Tony will allow that. He's just done with it all. A shell of his former self who just wants Pepper by his side and Rhodey to tell him he's being dramatic and Happy with a big ol’ smile while he tries to ignore Peter asking him something.

He never sees or notices how much it all affects Steve, how much the man is hurting, how much he wants the past to change. All Tony sees is a man sorry for getting caught.

He doesn't respond to Steve’s bleeding heart, choosing to remain focus on the task and moving on without a word. Something in Steve breaks when he sees Tony leave.

It continues on like this. With Tony trying his hardest to stay indifferent and Steve wanting something he can't have. They're all emotionally compromised and it's proving to be difficult for them both. They can only last so long until something gives.

The hug that happens between them after a moment of vulnerability they hadn't expected is not seen by anyone, and they never speak of it.

Then they are sent to go after the soul stone. Just the two. Together. Alone.

They don't know what to expect but they're ready for anything thrown at them. This isn't the final stone they need, but it's another step forward and they're ready to lay down their life for it.

Steve isn't expecting to see the Red Skull, and Tony could do without the damn poetry in order to make the stone appear.

“Sacrifice what you love,” he mocks over the edge of the drop. “What kind of fairy tale bullshit is this.”

Steve appears torn by it. Not finding it funny it seems.

“You be got to admit it's ridiculous,” Tony continues. “Make a stone of unlimited power appear you have to sacrifice something you love.”

His face soon turns grim, understanding the severity of the situation. “Someone else should've come. Like hell I'm sacrificing Pepper or Rhodey for this. And Barnes is gone so there goes yours. We've got no one.”

Steve has looked away now, facing the ground. The quiet is getting to Tony.

“What? You've got someone? Is it Romanoff? Carter?”

Steve remains still, choosing not to say anything. It's getting on his nerves.

“If we have no one there's no point sightseeing.”

“There is one,” a grainy voice says, gasping for air. It doesn't come from Steve. “One the Captain loves,” the Red Skull says while looking at him.

“Be quiet,” Steve nearly growls, glaring at the supposedly dead man.

“So Rogers here has someone left. Great. We're not sacrificing them in order to get this stupid stone. There has to be another way,” Tony peers over the drop, trying to figure out a loophole. “The kid got taken from me. Isn't that enough?”

Red Skull shakes his head. “Must be by your own hand.”

“Like hell.” The very idea of killing someone for gain left him shivering in disgust. “I’ll throw my armor in there. I put my heart and soul into it. Put devotion and love. That has to be enough.”

“Must sacrifice a soul to obtain the soul.”

“There has to be another way!” Tony glares at the red man. “I did not go through years of paranoia and anxiety for the fate of the universe to be decided on us sacrificing someone else to save it. I don't care if the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few. We are not doing it.”

“You do not have to,” skull man mocks. “Only the Captain has a soul present to sacrifice.”

“I said be quiet!” Steve barks, blue eyes turning cold.

Tony blinks, caught off guard. Present? Unless Steve ended up shrinking someone with Lang’s help and he's keeping them in his pocket there can't be someone present for him. “What do you mean?”

“Don't ask him anything, Tony,” Steve turns, at last, begging him.

Skull man continues to stare pointedly at Tony as if knowing something very interesting that will change everything. “Only the Captain can sacrifice.”

Tony’s gaze goes to Steve, realization slowly dawning at him. “What is he saying, Rogers?”

Steve's face goes grim, eyes endlessly sad and mouth in a thin line. It's the answer he needed.

“Me? Really? After everything that's happened?” Tony wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “You have a strange way of showing affection.”

“I wanted to keep you both,” Steve says as if that explained everything, as if it shined a new light.

“You jumped through a lot of unnecessary hoops to keep me as a friend.”

“Not a friend,” Steve admits softly, “not after, not as we lost 3 years,” and that? That changes it all. They have a chance now.

“Get the stone, Rogers.” Because he will not sacrifice someone else for the sake of gain, the fate of the universe be damned, but sacrifice himself? He can do that with his eyes closed no problem.

But Steve won't allow it. “No. I can't. I won't.” He takes steps back as if standing near distance to Tony will somehow cause the deed.

“Steve,” he tries again, “get the stone.”

“I can't,” there's panic in his tone. Steve won't do it. The supposedly love is preventing it.

Tony’s heart belongs to someone else. Always has and always will, but for Rogers? There's a piece he could give just for him. A young piece that remained from his childhood and adolescent years. A piece that has survived through everything against his will. An old friend he long wished to forget, but his heart wouldn't let go.

He walks towards the soldier without a word until he's within distance, until he can grab Rogers’ face with both hands and see those blue eyes shine. “I’ll help you.”

He kisses him. Drags his head down so their lips touch and holds him until Steve understands what is happening. Tony pulls away to see a series of mixed emotions go through his face. He kisses him again and this time Steve is ready for it, placing his arms on his hips, desperately keeping him close.

“Stay with me,” Tony says against his lips as he takes small steps back. “One step at a time. Together.”

When he pulls back a third time there are unshed tears in Steve's eyes. He kisses once again, not wanting to see or else he'll break himself and they couldn't afford that.

“Do you imagine in another life it could've been different?” Tony asks, the cruelty of those words ripping his very being. “A happy ending for us?”

Steve chokes on a sob against him. His kissing had become harsh. Not wanting to let go.

“Maybe in another time, there could be an us. Together, with nothing tearing us apart,” Tony can feel his own tears building but he doesn't let them fall. He keeps taking step after step backward until he feels the edges of the cliff when the back of his shoe feels nothing. “I'd like to imagine we could've been happy, and maybe we will one day, but you've got to let me go now.”

He balances back, making absolutely sure Steve's hands were on him. He kisses one final time, the last goodbye, before he feels nothing but wind and sees the horror on Steve’s face. Their time together coming to an end, but that's okay.

Maybe their sequel won't turn out so bad.

[bearogenes]

Dear Bearogenes: I often hate myself because of my sexuality.

Hey um I’m really uncomfortable with my sexuality. To the point that I go through extended periods of hating myself. Can you help me 

Bear in mind, this is like asking a random person to paint the Mona Lisa using nothing but their breath and a sheet of steel. You've given me two pieces of information that are so generic I could write almost anything and it would sound like it was getting to the point, but I would be swinging blind and you’d know I’d missed completely but I wouldn't. That, however, has never stopped me from trying which is all I can do here without more information.

In the broadest of terms ‘being comfortable’ with one’s self is an intensely complex challenge. It’s up there as one of the ‘big ones’ like finding purpose, meaning, happiness or uncovering ‘destiny’. Even discovering this about yourself can be intensely emotional. I've seen boys breakdown because they weren't ‘normal’, having just discovered a new kink or even an aspect of their sexuality they hadn't explored yet, or that they were improperly gendered.

The revelation of ‘challenges’, which those things represent, can cause frustration, depression, self-depreciation, and much more as all non-’straight’, non-cis folk know well as all of us have experienced it first hand in varying degrees.

For the record: I hate labels with such a passion and fire that I do everything I can to dismantle them as thoroughly as I can because if there was a ‘demon’ in with the skeletons in the closet, it’s labels about who we ARE, what we ARE, and our value when what matters is that we ARE. To hell with those other notions, but that’s a much longer rant for another time.

Your ‘comfort’ is most likely, again speaking in the broadest/statistically common factor, the result of that kind of ‘challenge’. It represents you not being ‘average’ or ‘normal’ (insert angry bear sound at those words) and that means you have to either sacrifice being in the ‘normal crowd’ (insert laughter at the idea of normal crowd) or you have to do horrible things to yourself that have only one end: the destruction of any stable psychological/emotional/spiritual sense of self.

Upon discovering your uniqueness, the very first choice you are given is to be alone (which is untenable because of the nature of things) or to ‘end’ that self that is different. Is it any wonder we have such universal challenges like depression, anxiety, and the rest? We’re virtually never welcomed ‘into the world’ before the ‘world’ tells us we’re wrong. The truth is that none of that is real or true or both. This may sound a little counter-intuitive but I think that’s where we need to go here to find your answer: away from ‘cognitive intuition’ and into something deeper.

There is no such thing as those things that are pushing you to be different from who you are; They are the lie you've been told and accepted. There is no ‘normal’ person and if it does exist, it’s so rare that in 7 billion, you might find it every few generations. This person who is just like everyone else.. the idea frightens me really. A ‘blank’ who fits in everywhere wouldn't be a ‘person’ because what makes us so is that we don’t fit in everywhere.

We aren't meant to. That’s not how the universe works on any level so it’s rather deluded to assume that on our ‘level’ it does. That’s like saying you wouldn't get drawn into a black hole because you’re made of ‘special atoms’ because you’re homo-’sapiens’. There’s no amount of ‘fabulous’ that can change the way things work in the universe. 

As much as we’d like to think so, you just can’t ‘out Queen’ a black hole.

The universe has some pretty simple rules: Everything has a place, everything fits and it all works when it is where it belongs. Please note that ‘getting it’ or ‘understanding’ really aren't in those basic principles because what we do as humans (drawing lines, making connections between concepts and assigning value to unrelated things) has little to do with the universe itself and more to do with what we do in that structure.

Everything “Fits” :

There is nothing that isn't created using the same template, a base code of atoms and chemicals and structures. It manifests in an incredible diversity worthy of the duality of it’s source because it is both simple and complex in the same breath. You are you because billions of atoms obey the rule of “Fit” and “purpose” set out by that ‘template’ that created the code that became the chains of color pallets known as DNA. Every single human has the same base code because we all ‘fit’ in that same sense as an extension of our ‘atoms’ fitting in the cosmos.

This means that from long before you could possibly have existed, you were ‘right with the cosmos’ and belonged here but you aren't always aware of it or able to sense those things because you aren't yet ‘where’ you (as grand component) fit yet. This happens at every level as well. Things come together, form shapes, change and separate making new bonds and forming new things but ultimately nothing remains ‘rogue’ for long at all. It just FEELS like you don’t fit because you aren’t ‘fitting’ at the moment. You’re not wrong but you aren’t right about the grander scale on which you do, and will again, fit perfectly. By way of this metaphor for life, nothing is a ‘universal’ fit because we all have unique bonds to make as part of creating a structure.

Everything has a “Place”.

You are here. Virtually every map in a building has this marker so you know where you start your journey. There’s no indicator, on said map, of where you’re going or a hint or guide of how to get to that place you have an idea of but no clue where it resides. You’ve got an idea that the world is a big place and that somewhere in all of it, there’s somewhere you fit and are happy, but no clue how to get there.

This is where ‘feeling different’ becomes a threat to happiness. A triangle isn’t going to fit in a round hole of the same size without being bent, turned or cut down to fit but it will NEVER be a circle no matter how hard it’s ‘shaped’, it will always be what could have been a triangle. That’s what we do to ourselves when we try to conform every part of our uniqueness to the ‘hole’ given to us at the start. That’s the thing though, it’s just the ‘start’ and virtually never does a piece begin and end in the same spot. “You are here” is only the first rung on the ladder you’ll climb and no indicator of where you’ll go or what you’ll do on your journey. Those are as unique as you are.

So why does the map exist at all then?  It’s the result of people who have been before you but it’s not meant to say ‘this is the only way’ but it is the only ‘example’ you could be given: the result of someone’s journey who went before you. They weren’t ‘constructed’ like you are, weren’t meant to fit the way you will because they weren’t YOU.

Following the atomic metaphor a little further, atoms are passed along because of environmental stresses. Sometimes we come together to form greater structures and other times the bonds aren’t stable (read: aren’t the right fit) and so we break apart and then move along following that ‘ladder’ or ‘chain’ of elements as we move along searching for that ‘fit’.

It’s scary but the only way to truly find that ‘place’ is to be you. In the absence of a genuine sense of self, you can never find a sense of belonging because it won’t be YOU that belongs, just that version of you that was created (by you and outside pressures) for the sole purpose of fitting in. It denies the idea that you could fit in better somewhere else and that to one degree or another you must do so because that’s why you are here after all. Denying that creates false self of place that leaves us feeling uneasy, nauseous because it’s unstable, and we always turn to ourselves as source of that problematic perception. It is, again, a fallacy. The situation/place isn’t wrong and neither are we, but the fit is because you aren’t yet where you need to be.

Everything has purpose.

This one gets ‘sticky’ and is very messy because it can challenge everything else because it’s the big ‘debate’ in philosophy, religion and psychology. Do we have purpose? Does that purpose entail a ‘power’ creating that purpose? The questions go on and on but are a byproduct of assumptions about the universe that are entirely our own creation. They don’t ultimately have any impact on the fact that everything has purpose and that the purpose has no ‘value’ in and of itself.

What I mean by the last is that since we assign value, one of our many human traits, we create this sense of measure that one thing is better than another. We discriminate. It’s our nature.We choose left or right based on one of those being better because of experience/learning but as we are constantly evolving, those choices aren’t always the ‘right’ ones. We push concepts onto the fabric of the universe and somehow expect it to ‘agree’ with us but that’s not how it works.

We’re all the same basic things, a few different kinds of atoms being shoved around until we form shapes by Forces like gravity and such. So too with the nature of human existence. It has no ‘value’ in and of itself, but we create those things when we ascribe meaning and purpose to it which is why we so desperately search for something outside ourselves to give it to us: because we know we can make mistakes and being mistaken about our purpose feels like a terrible fate we want to avoid.

Let me tell you a little about me as a way of illustrating this point. I have chosen to move, to follow the ‘pattern’ and to ‘drift’ a little now and again. I go where I am ‘needed’ rather than where I feel like I ‘should’ go because I know that should is an expectation and not a reality. The reality is that where I am now is a byproduct of being tugged at by a situation, a need in a specific area, or just a sense that ‘this’ is the new ‘place’ for a time. I’ve migrated my whole life and what I’ve learned is that I belong everywhere. I’m far from ‘normal’ but what I do and who i am IS needed virtually everywhere I have landed.

I build connections, create community, strengthen bonds and heal rifts. I weave things and mostly spend my days ‘healing’ the fabric around me. It’s what I do here on tumblr in spite of my original intention of just being a dirty old man since that wasn’t a side of me I got to really express in my day to day because it didn’t ‘fit’ with that situation. Instead my natural tendencies came to the surface as reflex because they were needed by people like you who felt alone, lost or just frightened.

When I was younger I tried to take my own life because I didn’t feel ‘connected’ didn’t have a ‘group’ I felt I ‘belonged to’ because my sexuality made me feel ‘different’ and that in discovering it I had become disconnected. The terrible truth was that I didn’t ‘belong’ anywhere.

In.

Particular... 

Where I was at the time, the place and social groups, were made of disparate ‘isolated’ elements that came together around me. I brought those like me together, the ‘isolated’ lost and ‘cast out’, and formed communities. Eventually I found myself drifting away from that and to a new place where there was ‘nothing’. Only to repeat the process there.

How do you find “Purpose” when you have no “place”? You come to understand the illusion of those things while accepting that it was your understanding of them previously that created the illusions. The truth is, I belong wherever I am because I am needed there. Time will come, as it always does, that I will ‘move’ again. While I may yearn for the ‘quiet life’ of house, fence, kids and dogs, my ‘purpose’ is to ‘create spaces’ as I do here and to share what I have learned of being ‘place-less but with purpose’ because it allows me to form ‘greater’ structures around me than you might if you had a perfect fit in a particular place. My place, it seems, is the whole confusing, complex, crazy, thing. Anywhere. Everywhere. Right here and now because you reached out to me.

It is why I so desperately try to engender a simple understanding in others: that you are critical in your natural state. I don’t mean ‘younger you’ I mean the real you, the deeper true you, because that is what bears purpose and can help find or create place. I may have tried to be an artist, danced my way through years of my life, and been a warrior who defends those at risk around him, but those were never the real me. The real me.. you get to glimpse him here. None of this would exist if I had continued to fight the fact that I was endowed with my unique tool set and that with that came a ‘purpose’ that didn’t ‘fit’ everywhere.

You’re struggling with ‘fitting in’ and understanding why you are the way you are, but the struggle isn’t really with those ‘facts’ about yourself: it’s with the way they ‘fit’ with society and your environment. While it can be a survival strategy to ‘conceal’ those parts of yourself you must explore them safely. I don’t mean go out and do everything your sexuality entails, I mean explore: read, discover that you’re not the only person out there with your sexuality and that in such a discovery find community and get to know what it’s like when people with a shared trait create such a space together.

Remember to breathe. Give yourself a little time. Discover the borders of the pieces of your ‘self’ that don’t ‘fit’ where you are and the discomfort they create and then set yourself on the journey of finding that ‘place’ and ‘fit. It could be as simple as fitting with just one other piece with complimentary borders.

While the map may read: YOU ARE HERE, it’s only the beginning.

I know there’s much more specific you want to ask me. This was, you could say, a primer for what comes next. Ask me what you will and I’ll answer as best I can, but remember I’m the kind of person that will write a book in an answer because I feel you are worthy of it and because what YOU are enduring is a battle other people face daily and if I can ‘double down’ on what my work can do, I will do so.

Tell me what is truly bothering you about your sexuality and we’ll go from there but remember this lesson as a ‘square one’ “you are here” moment. The next steps we’ll take together and see what road opens for you that you might not have seen before.

Until then, you have  my best wishes,

Bearogenes

[threenorth]

TW; 3 weeks. Featuring months before.

Everything and Anything extremely triggering.

This is because i saw your video and it crushed me so if you wanted to see my year a bit more before this wrecking ball smashed..

28 days.

Sooooooooo hell on earth raganrock...

January I moved cities by February I started my new job in March i started getting my life sorted gym and all the things i couldn't like new glasses and new shoes and orophedics for my very flat feet. I remembered my old goals..

Go to university.

Get a good tech job.

Move to San Francisco.

Marry the girl.

I got the first two then it hit me my San Francisco was to be closer to you... Then marry you every goal i made was centred around you...

I started thinking how best to retalk to you but i thought id explore this later in the second half of April closer to May for that day we had in May years ago...

But it was the start of April it's a new month and it's Monday things were going good overall but the jenga game began... i hit new goals at the gym i can lift more than zero i was hitting 5's on my arms and 10s on my legs oh yeah small steps... so i decided to go out for a drink that week...

Friday April 9th i thought id make a song about the time I was loosing myself for the first time and repick up song writing again it's been a couple of years since I've put pen to page. That night I had been bullied in a bar, I herd you speak to me in a way you never had and i freaked out.

You told me to run.. Run fraz-run...

It it scared the living shit out of me but i knew i had to run and i disosated almost hit by a car but that didn't matter to me just to run from my past.

I got home alive but destroyed. I decided to research where you might be on social media and I looked on my instagram post to find your still tagged on that awful rock. I told you I don't think i was reday because i wanted to research more about how to be freinds with someone that you would do anything for...everything I read said i was still in love and i guess i was, it said i was in greif for the years prior and that probably was true. And ultimately I booked to see my doctor in the meantime.. I decided it was best i told you to Ingore me as I started feeling the truma of that night wasn't going away I felt the gun shot in my brain like the day i knew i had leave from you per say... I felt every laugh i herd brought me back to my childhood...

I asked my doctor for a mental referral my doctor said he would and gave me a pill to try help me sleep at night's with axeinty and depression all he can diagnose me with..i started drinking on the Fridays so one of those nights and some flashes of light in my eyes and everything came back to me. I should of called an abluance but i told myself i can do this.. I started feeling like I could die at any moment and you wouldn't know anything... Just that i told you to leave. In the meantime i got a cynical psychologist to help before my full assessment and he told me to write..so Write i did but i put it in the wrong places, i wanted you to know that i was thinking of you even when i said to Ingore me... I couldn't stop thinking about you... even the faintest laugh in the office sent me back to that bar where I was bullied and back to when i was a mere boy again everyday was hell and I couldn't do any thing about it so I thought this would hold me... one night on a fender bender i got a flashback from flickering lights and i told myself everything things seemed okay again I didn't feel the game of jenga had already begun before i noticed it started. I was told to wait and i was beginning to loose my hope... I wrote and and i wrote i fucking wrote to my fingers bled because that was the only relief he was trying to teach me mindfulness this was around the time second truma of seeing a lady being beaten up on the street and i could of been seconds earlier i might of helped more but i stood up to her whatever and told him to get the fuck lost i didn't care if i was beaten up because i don't like bully's i don't care who they are... I tried to shake off my truma but I was good but I remembered it because that's what i do... i had all my truma i bottled up and it started to unwind it's self... I tried to push though it again but this time after bottling 23/24 years of abuse and truma it couldn't fit... I went to the dentist and got two cavities to find the taste of blood in my mouth sending me through hell... But in my pain I felt your arm in my hand telling me everything will be okay and I remembered that awful trailer truma... I still hung on to keeping head strong but jenga doesn't wait for anyone and I was getting closer to worse.

As the days became weeks...the day got closer...i started loosing my mind... I ended up finding my emgercy folder on my computer about you in search of my old folder of you and my song lyrics of many years ago and my playlists i made you... I told myself I couldn't call this number now or never but I couldn't force myself to delete it either.

I told myself this was for emgercies... Little did I know what was coming next.

I remembered calling the emergency number i had for you because i wanted to hear your voice... Your voice it calms my seas and the tiktoks on repeat, the worse one was your poetry as it was the only bit of you that speaks to me in ways other things didn't. I don't remember much but... I made calls to people some you probably herd but the others you probably might hear that i tried to call a shelter and ask their pricing i was going to try to find out how to protect you even from me...

Around this time We had a delta lockdown, (I'm in Auck so level 3 atm) my weak 25mg pill couldn't save me from everything hanging on by that one last few blocks... i accepted my fate, i was felt i was due to die and i knew my time was running up...I had a breakdown on my way to get my injection while in the at risk group mental and physically yet i walked out of my house to get the injection and at the same time might as well risk my little bit of sanity i had to get my 25mg ap. I got my ap and poped one fast... About an hour later I then got my injection and felt nothing... Nothing at all No needle truma or no physical pain at all? I didn't feel a thing.... This scared the living shit out of me but i told myself it's the start of a new chapter... In the meantime I felt the burn... that i was on fire.. I've felt this before but it was gone in seconds this was constantly getting worse and i didn't know if i should go into the cold shower or what so i called an abluance. I called for an abluance they didn't want to come because i had mental health problems because of Asamtha with covid is pretty game over... I can only use 62 percent of my lungs anyway... They calmed me down and i went back to normality i thought but at work they told me to take it easy and i put my favourite album on ai and that tore me apart in ways I've never had it do it before... I poped my pills but it was to late i was about to topple. I started feeling good again but that's how the drug tricks you into normality... My polar opposite now i felt my death this was it I'm at peace i will die and that will be it, i ruined everything i made peace i was due to die my last words would be in my letters to you and how much i loved you.

I left because it was the only way i saw you becoming happy without me, i didn't see the signs you knew it but my demise never left I've been chronicaly depressed since 17... I wrote my last words out maybe one day yourd knock on the door to where i lived to find out i died. I called for an abluance on the second time they finally came out... August 28th...

I went to hospital, they had taken my blood i requested not to have a nerve block I wanted to see if I could feel anything i didn't feel it...I couldn't feel anything anymore I use to be super sensitive to pain now I'm thinking I'm the high pain torlance but I didn't have anything sharp to test my theory... And a promise to a girl never to self harm again. They wrote their notes was dismissed out from ed because i wasn't harm to myself or others with violence or self harm... Because i kept my promise never to self harm again since i kept my promise with you i never met a redline crisis in their opinion and were confused by my symptoms.

I started getting reday for my birthday trip to Auck which ultimately then became the time i might need to look how to store my stuff while I'm up here for medical..

I had to packup the little I could to come back to Auckland and now also sacrifice my apartment my work has been kind to me but i am spending 1700 on someone packing up my 3m x 4m box.

I want to send you money to help your endo but then all my savings had taken a hit too...

I sent $100 I sent the little i could risk to afford currently... I thought you knew it was me, the wallpaper of the stars of your blog... And the tfios... and then birthday wish from someone unknown to me made me confirm what i thought you knew... So i told you it was me... Then you typed out that message and it broke me... I wanted to come out to tell you that i was there to help but I forgot what you said before and that hit me and jenga collpase had happened....

I started my last letters... Many things were said but..

One is to that guy... I told him that if knew the girl i knew for 2 years while he had 6 years that i knew it didn't have to be a big ring, it could even be a pawn shop ring i told him to marry you.

all my words don't work... My brain is in fragments... And now all i do is the wrong thing...

it appears you do maybe read these.

I won't be writing here. I can't put more pressure on you, you already have enough to deal with but you want to know what kept me going it was the day I'd make you smile like i use to. But life doesn't go to plan... Or the one you might think...

All my plans led me to how I'd buy a log cabin and give you it and go back to my hole. Then i remembered that it was you and my log cabin i wanted all these years I've suffered without any help. Just to see you smile...

Everything i tried to do with all that i could was for you even if you didn't know it i know it, you only knew a bit of me... I never let anyone in not even you and the time i did i wanted you to know that i too am changing... But my plans for you...every single one to get back to my best even if it appears i never had that ever but everything was for the girl i loved...

Now we're going around the darkside of the moon.. I'm still waiting for a psych to drug me and help me to walk on my feet... Things are rocky here for the first time as i fight on because i know this soon will pass and we're getting closer to the day i will be me again... The punches keep coming but i can take them all... As i battle my first battles in your last battles when the light is dim... My secerts are everywhere if you notice my words... In my mental rambles on rk2 i talk breifly about grounding, and a totem but my shield protects me before it hits my core... I can do this all day.

I fight everyday because of my compass i hold close...

I am confused about many things..

but... I look in my mind where I see a girl, i see a log cabin in the woods coming home to her after being destroyed to rebuild myself again... In my log cabin cooking and watching art making art but I felt at ease that everything was going to be okay... This will be okay and am now closer to the day it would be okay .. But days became months and years... And the more i tried to remember her words to keep me to my goals... In my hard dark days of disoatision and psychosis my walls that look like her face... I wait to dream and drift off into my sleep i see the day i come home to my woodcabin and, she whispers to me...

She once told me,

everything will be okay.

He whispers,

Everything will be okay.

[teavious]

i’d do it all again

fandom: boku no hero academia

pairing: midoriya izuku & everyone

summary: midoriya izuku: origins. (also on AO3)

commission for @heeeky !!! thank you so, so much! 

It starts like this: Midoriya Izuku, aged 3. Coming back home from grocery shopping, noticing an opulent figure on the screens at the store next to the second right turn, his hold over his mother’s hand tightening when he takes in the blue and the red, the strong arms carrying civilians like they’re made of feathers. He’s glued to the glass in a second, happy sounds of admiration escaping his mouth, his eyes shimmering with unshed tears of overwhelm. His mother approaches him, a hand softly patting the top of his head, reading the name of the hero that enraptured him so. They take a detour, Izuku now rather clutching at his chest a figurine and a poster- of All Might.

It starts like this: Midoriya Izuku, aged 4. In his class, everyone wants to be a hero when they grow up; imagining oneself in a costume and able of anything is an easy task for fragile minds. And yet, few say it like they mean it, like their words will actually be remembered years to come. Bakugou Katsuki is the only one that sticks out from the crowd: maybe because he’s loud, maybe because he speaks those words like a man getting ready for battle. A young Midoriya gets the same gut feeling of immense potential and immediately follows the steps of a bold and self-assured boy, in simple admiration.

It ends like this: Midoriya Izuku, on the chair that he once jumped on in excitement, watching the video that changed his life for the hundredth time and crying his heart out. His own mother, on her knees in front of him, breaking down because of the smile he hoped would save her of this pain. They both cry, together, each with their own failure.

The story doesn’t end like this: a Quirkless boy giving up in front of relentless bullying, putting aside his childhood dream just because of a setback decided by fate and his own body, trusting the voice of those around him than the one telling him not to give up.

It goes on like this: one lonesome figure and the same notebook x 13; one lonesome figure and a villain; one lonesome figure and a hero.

***

The deeper the darkness, the more dazzling the light shines.

***

You know that moment when you meet someone you’ve admired, someone whose image you’ve relied on to get you through life – and your whole body turns to liquid, your tongue forgets to work? Midoriya Izuku would like to say that’s how his own fateful encounter went. No realities hardened, no dreams shattered by the figure who’ve made them possible in the first place. You know that when things are at their worst, they can only get better?

Maybe Midoriya Izuku didn’t have the stuff that heroes are made of; but he is hero enough to put others to shame.

When he leaps to defend; he leaps towards his destiny: trembling in fear, panicked beyond measure and ready to face whatever it is thrown his way.

***

If Midoriya is to be honest, he loved Kacchan. He loved that back when nothing was differentiating them, he was brave and bold in ways he’d never be – kind in a violent way that kept him strong and fierce. Maybe that’s why he followed so willingly: Kacchan was the closest thing to the hero he ever dreamt to be, to the hero whose strength could overcome all obstacles. It made sense, back then: Katsuki Bakugou has been the strongest person he ever encountered, and every meeting left him enraptured and aching and empty and less.

In time, he learns differently. It comes with having no Quirk, with being taunted for having no Quirk, with being in a whole class of weirdly skilled kids. It comes with All Might, the inspiration he can give, the power he gives, the smile ever returning on his face. A hero is made for sacrifice; and who else would be more fitting than the oh so scared boy, pushing through crowds to jump in front of dangers for others, even useless as he had been?

He had been pleased with his position: overcame and defeated, nursing a slight hope at greater things simply because he was left to, because no one actually told him that he can’t do it and given him necessary proof. Objectively speaking, his raw force would never reach that of his childhood friend. It took him a decade to sit next to Kacchan from equal grounds; and only from now on do they actually grow into the roles of rivals, pushing each other constantly one more step forward – and when Deku this time says they’re friends, the term doesn’t seem so foreign, so outrageous anymore.

If Midoriya is to be honest, the only real recognition of his new powers, of his new role, of his dream that he ever needed was that of his oldest friend. The support, afterwards; the knowledge ingrained in so many other heroes that whatever he’s doing (because even he is not so sure) is good – is overwhelming.

***

Heart, skill, body, wisdom and knowledge.

***

He’d like to tell his mom – let her know that her son is trying his best, on his way to fulfilling a dream thought futile for so long. He wants to tell her: it would have meant the world if you would have told me otherwise, but now I know it was your own way of protecting me later on. The world is cruel, mom. The world is vile. The world is evil. But I will fight it all. Please be proud of me.

***

When he runs on the beach, his chest heaving in pain, his throat aching; when he soaks t-shirts in a matter of minutes after he started; when he eats servings after servings, ending up coming home still hungry; when he barely lifts objects that he should have no deal trying to lift – he’s not sure if he does it for All Might or for himself.

When he swallows a hair, when he goes through a hellish examination where he ends up making the same heroics he’s been noticed for in the first place, when he wears the costume his mother sewed – he knows the answer.

***

There's nothing more fragile than a heart that's swelled to bursting.

***

“I’ll support you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry,” is what his mother told him, after the first time she saw him using his powers in the reckless way of someone who just learnt to walk wants to start running.

Nowadays, it’s easier to put her nerves at ease, though he suspects that from time to time she uses up a tissue box even when he’s safe at school, simply because he’s all grown up. He thinks worrying became natural to the people in his life, mainly because of his own fault. But it’s nice to know that he has a support net of persons that are ready to cheer him on, his own mother with her tears and sometimes overbearing carefulness at the head of the crowd.

In time, the circle just gets larger – and having people wishing him the best, even as strangers, just because they appreciated his performance, his heart and guts bleeding on a cold floor, will probably never not make him blush.

***

When All Might smiles, things fall into place: one knows for certain that peace is to be restored, justice to be brought, evil to be defeated. In that smile, in that laugh of his lies the essence of a hero.

But when All Might came to save his (but don’t tell others) favourite class, he was not smiling. He once told Izuku that he smiles to hide the fear, but in that moment, all those golden eggs, bright minds and youthful souls that he learnt in such a small time to care so much about were in danger, and that fear have kept his lips frozen in a most menacing smirk. Later, there would be other things to blame: the pain, the knowledge that power stays only for a while, and the wounds his juniors had suffered through in his absence. They’ve all been devastating: continuously tearing apart at the broad figure, and the smile has been absent until the very bitter end.

Midoriya Izuku still doesn’t know what to make of his hero, of his teacher. In his heart, he wants to make All Might proud, bring honour to the image that he has to represent, as the one with power such as the symbol of peace. But even deeper, behind the desperate need to please someone who’s shown him light when he thought he was engulfed in darkness, is the equally annoying nagging to be better, to surpass the one he once looked up to. Such is the destiny of young pupils.

A hero… goes beyond.

***

1-A is a class that holds potential for greatness: best of what the youth can offer mixed with best of the Quirks. It’s been hard not to feel like a poser sitting next to these people who’ve been honing their skill since they found out about it; sit still and act like he knows what the hell he’s doing while breaking the bones in his body, each at a time, as need asks of him. It is unfair towards his classmates, all who have been welcoming and accepting (as rule of thumb, Bakugou is excluded from all group mentions), who actually look at him and consider him a possible threat to their own luxurious future. A possible companion for years to come, a friend to rely on when things get back. Sometimes, he can’t take it: how blessed he feels simply by having his feelings reciprocated by those around him.

When it comes to Uraraka Ochako, he keeps finding more and more amazing sides to her. He feels like he can’t really do anything for her, cannot reciprocate the kindness she has shown him over and over again, the support she has given him even in the worst of times. He’s not worthy of being looked up at, he’s nothing that special when compared to this girl who’d rather collapse than admit defeat. Everyone learns what their heart yearns for in different ways, and it is always a moment of immense magnitude. When Midoriya realizes he wants this: a family away from home, Uraraka is the first he reaches out for.

Iida Tenya is the next one; gesture as natural as saving him a seat or waiting after him whenever he gets hurt is for the class president. The passion in these people, the intricate pattern of events that brought them in the hero class, with a clear road ahead of them… fuels his own. Growing alongside Iida feels like an honour, especially after knowing exactly the kind of feelings that lie in his heart.

Others follow, naturally. Asui, the one who kept asking of him to call her by her first name and kept her tongue as honest even in the direst situations, and as such being the saving grace of the class several times. Takoyami, whose approval is soft but firm, whose Quirk is the coolest Midoriya had seen, whose trust in his ideas make him blind with happiness.

***

The phrase “worthy opponent” can also mean “friend”. When it comes to Todoroki Shoto, he’s the worthiest of them all. He looks at a young and desperate Midoriya Izuku and thinks: this is what a real hero is, a person that puts his own feelings aside and tries his damn hardest for others, even if those are the enemy. Even with both ice and fire aimed at his body, Midoriya finds a way to slice with his words, to awaken a truth that’s been frozen inside his heart for the longest time.

Prompted by such a fierce dreamer, how can he be left behind? How can he not be prompted to action?

***

I have to live up to the hopes of those who supported me.

***

It really ends like this: Midoriya Izuku grows to be the greatest hero of his generation, still. Plus ultra.

[beingheldby-you]

won’t let it go down (’til we torch it ourselves)

He’s dreaming.

He has to be because there is no way she’s just casually sipping a martini at the one hotel bar he decides to go to, on a night where he specifically needed to get some serious alone brooding time.

“Who even hangs out at a hotel bar?” He thinks to himself.

But the answer is glaringly obvious; people who stay at hotels hang out at hotel bars. And Addison Fitzgerald is staying at the hotel because, well, because she bloody well can.

Niall Horan on the other hand, is there because, well, he’s not sure why exactly.

It’s almost as if his pulse knows when she’s in a room before his head does. It speeds up, jumps and delights towards her, racing out of his heart and veins and very being, al over her like an invisible bloody mess.

Catching a glimpse of her, just a glimpse, and his throat has apparently decided to walk out of its usual job scope of bodily function; his skin is cold and the world suddenly feels a stranger place. His shoes are too tight, his shirt it too big, and it feels like he’s in school all over again, walking into class a newcomer.

The uppity lounge is surprisingly crowded but she stands out from the other faces, as she always does, conspicuously discernable. Always always so bright that she could probably direct ships in the dark. She’s not quite aconite like before, but something more subtle, leaving a trail of violet in her movements.

And Niall could already feel every inch of her presence inexplicably imposing on him like moonlight grazing over exposed skin.

The memories creep over him like ghost fingertips; her hands on his, dancing in delight, her fingers on the back of his neck, and his heart constantly fluttering in its offbeat rhythm in his throat.

He contemplates pushing and shoving his way out of there, possibly making a small scene, before he realises that he had no reason to leave at all. Apart from cowardice, that is.

It’s a terrible thought, selfish even maybe, but he just wanted to invade the places that she paints and writes from. A place that was just hers and untouched by anyone else, alone.

Especially on this night.  

“Bardot?”

Her voice rings out, cutting through the clutter, and all blood rushes from his head to his fingertips and toes in an automatic fight or flight response.

Niall takes the moment of complete lack of brain-limb cooperation to remind himself that cowardice is always always the most viable option. But she’s making her way over with a dainty drink balanced in her hand and it becomes entirely too late for flight.

“So fight it is,” he thinks to himself.

Niall feels something twist in his stomach when she looks at him the way she is, but doesn’t quite know how to react to it. She stops short in front of him, about three feet worth of unsteady breathing, erratic heartbeats, and awkward wild eyes eating up the sight of one another, raising a quizzical brow.

“Thought I’d find you here, Red,” he says wry smile, without thought or any regard of its possible repercussions.

“Did you now, Dr. Horan?”

He lets out a delicate chuckle, the tension between the two of them palpable.

The moment sits between them uneasily.

And then, she smiles and he thinks that if she asked him to sacrifice his left lung right then, he would have gladly offered it.

“Come on, then,” she says, the silkiness of her voice and the unanswered question lingering like an expensive bottle of Vodka.

She grabs him by the wrist easily, maneuvering them both towards the bar with ease. She always did have that going for her; the slow deliberate manner of which she articulated and conducted herself was so smooth that you don’t quite taste the subtle quiet danger in its distilled notes. The type that lulls you into a sense of security that doesn’t quite exist.

Once seated, she signals to the bartender for two more martinis.

The barkeep complies and starts on the drinks right away. Because Addison Fitzgerald will get what Addison Fitzgerald wants. And as they launch into the pleasantries of old friends getting reaquainted, he decides that she’s exactly like Vodka. The kind where you don’t feel the burn until it’s too late and the fire is blooming through your chest and spreading to every inch of your body.

//

This is incredible reckless, he thinks to himself.

Evidently, the words slip out of his mouth too because she’s turning around and looking at his like she’s the cat who got the bowl of cream and it’s as though all his trepidation evaporates.

You can’t plan for everything, she smirks, sometimes it’s good to be reckless.

His entire life had seemed full of the things that are too big for him. He’s wearing all these shoes he can’t possibly fit and all these prospects are whizzing by him and he’s just there. Absentmindedly drowning.

A waiter slips by with a tray of champagnes and she lifts two glasses easily, one for her and one for him.

They chink their tall chutes of bubbly and he reluctantly takes a giddy sip, almost as it to toast their sneaking into a private party at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. Although he’s not quite sure how unplanned the whole affair is; she had the forethought to buy a one way ticket to his dorm in Stanford and two tickets to New York with a fitted suit for him in tow, after all. It seems highly unlikely that she had not known that there would be a private function that they would not be allowed into without a bit of craftiness and a whole lot of on-the-fly lying.

But seeing her there in that dress, the whole ordeal is a red and gold mess in his mind. One minute she’s flailing alone in the intricate red dress she has on, hardly coalesced into the crowd of black gowns and black ties and barely making sense of her own lie, and the next he’s right there next to her selling the same story.

By some stroke of dumb luck, they’re let past the velvet ropes and she’s beaming so vibrantly that she’s everywhere. Seeping in through him and the layers of the suit she brought for him like rain covered clothes, sticking to his skin.

He expects for museums to be boring and hazy, but the colours are so bright that it looks like someone has just cut a glow stick in half and poured them everywhere. She is practically aglow as they weave between people and she points out certain works and talks and talks and talks about them for hours on end. But she’s kissing him between sips of champagne and shaking hands with people who introduce themselves and he feels like an overflowing sink.

She’s laughing and he’s laughing, and they are pretending to be descendants of some Dutch painter and married, and she’s kissing his laughter and it tastes better than anything in his twenty years of living.

//

In the entire scope of the universe, he is hardly important. That’s how he feels when she’s talking to him. The thing, whatever it is between them, hardly matters at all in the grand scale of things and he takes comfort in that. Because that makes the fact that so many of their firsts are intertwined, irrelevant.

The fact that he is hers completely and utterly, is only a peripheral matter.

Because she’s smart, and funny, and full of wit. Because he can see himself without her, just that it feels like something’s a little... off. Like his body is suddenly missing the important proteins that keep cells bonded together.

When he was thirteen and developed a crush for the first girl that he’s paired with for assignment and she barely bats an eyelid his way, he had yet to proper discover girls quite yet. He didn’t yet understand the softness of their touch and the harshness of their swelling hearts. But about just over a decade down the road, he’s like to think that he knows the one in front of him pretty well.

Even though about half of the decade was spent half a world from one another.

“So why haven’t you been painting?” Niall questions just as they are finishing up martini number five.

The crowd has dispersed somewhat, he can actually hear the soft tinkling of lounge music from somewhere, and he’s pretty sure he’s slurring. But he’s sick of the pretense. He’s sick of his heart and his head and his whole self and he really wants a little honesty. None of that pleasant small talk and exchanging little tidbits of their life.

“I have been painting,” she sits bolt upright, some kind of utter annoyance spelled across her features.

“No. You haven’t.”

“I send you those postcards.”

Often, he lays awake at night thinking about the said postcards. Handpainted on the front and handwritten on the back about everything and nothing.

The very postcards he never returns to sender but never responds to either.

He thinks about all the scenarios where that fateful day in the museum could have played out differently. If it had been raining and he didn’t get a chance to walk right out and leave so easily. If she had planned for their museum trip to be a Tuesday instead of  Thursday. If he was a blue whale and could not understand the concept of human speech.

Instead, he finds himself avoiding her eye and taking way too long to verbalise his responses even though she is right there in front of him.

He sighs, hazily considering changing the topic before the words slip out before he could catch them, “I meant for your show, Red, it’s been four years, what happened to going big? Your first big gallery show?”

She shrugs, eyes devoid of any real emotion or answers, “I got busy.”

“With martinis at Dukes and planning charity galas?”

He doesn’t mean it the way it comes out, but she’s stumped at his words.

He doesn’t say anything further because her fingers are now running around the rim of the martini glass and his heart is clogging his throat.

The conversations run drier than their martinis and when she speaks again, breaking the ice once more, it’s not some sort of a monumental thing.

“You know I used to love coming here.”

“Yeah?” He says, filling in the gaps unnecessarily.

“I think you might have just ruined it for me,” she raises the martini glass to her lips, downing the remnants of the liquid in one graceful gulp.

Before he could stop himself, he asks, “How?”

He braces himself for the comeuppance. He knows how wildly, ridiculously fun she finds it, being sarcastic. And he’s accustomed to the quick quips. The witty repartee and the threats of I-will-remove-your-tongue-with-a-butter-knife-and-leave-it-in-your-mother’s-letterbox.

But for a moment, for that moment, her guard is down and she’s being bridge-burningly, disarmingly honest.

“By being here,” she says pointedly.

She says nothing and everything, and he feels like he already knows what she means by the three simple words.

“I think we’ve had quite enough of this,” he says, sliding the martini glass away from her reach. The glint in her eyes is distracting him far too much. The wiring in his head, he’s sure at this point, is similar to blown fuses.

His brain is completely overrun and overwired.

He can never concentrate when he’s around her.

He never could, really.

//

Everything is sweet and heady and too much for his weak weak heart.

Niall cannot be in the same room as her anymore. He also can’t be away from her for more than ten minutes. It makes the nights she spends in his room, his and Harry’s, absolute hell.

He bends over his notes and tries to concentrate while she in on his bed, sprawled on what was meant to be his space, with his guitar laying flat on her stomach as she plucks at random notes and says almost anything and everything that comes into her head.

Her voice in his head is cracking fissures into his spine.

Something bothering you, Bardot? She asks.

It’s become somewhat of a thing, she sneaks into their shared room and the boys pretend to be annoyed by it. She takes up far too much space in the already small space where he does his homework on the tiny desk.

Often, she ends up hovering over him and correcting his work because he’s apparently a monumentally crap scholarship student. But it’s hardly weird as fuck like Zayn says it is.

It’s just how they are.

But this particular night, he feels like the walls are closing in on him and the words on his coursework are rearranging before his very eyes too fast for him to catch let alone focus on.

Her question still hangs in the air unanswered like a thick fog rolling in from the horror pictures. Her fingers hit a low and mellow note on his guitar, months of fiddling with the thing without instruction has taught her a thing or two about plucking the right strings, and all he wants is to feel is her hands on his stretched paper thin skin.

He wants to say yes. Yes, Red, you’re bothering me. I’m trying to finish this coursework and not get my scholarship retracted but all I can think about is the fact that I want to be alive in every room that you are alive in for the rest of my life.

But he doesn’t say anything. Just shakes his head and goes back to his coursework.

Harry snorts and offhanded says something about sexual tension and Niall thinks he might have to kill his roommate now.

It’s probably more of a Buridan’s Ass situation, she muses aloud, deflecting Harry’s comment.

Buridan’s Ass, she repeats again into the silence that covers them as though it would make more sense the second time around. You know, a starving donkey put between two stacks of hay at an equal distance would probably starve himself in indecision?

And at once he’s taken aback by just how amazing this specimen in his bed is.

He is in love with a fourteen year old who can’t play the guitar but throws in quips about 14th century French philosophers into daily conversation like it’s nothing.

This new bit of information, however, is met with confounding astonishment from Harry even though she’s technically his friend first and the only reason why she feels so comfortable coming over and invading their space almost on the daily; Seriously Dee, there is something wrong with you, you know that?

She laughs it off and Niall wants her to stop, because it feels like he’s about to implode.

His finger and toes grow cold and he’s afraid because she’s right there within reach. Her eyes are boring holes into his back and he knows that what he wants is something he cannot have.

And he’s terrified because his heart is one step beyond broken, it’s missing, and he’s pretty sure she has it.

You’re a fuckface, Styles, she says instead, still laughing.

Her voice tinkering into the dead of night between just them three, and he wants her stop. Because he would bathe in that sound forever, drown in it like a bee drowning in honey, if he could.

//

He helps her find the keys in her little tiny clutch which is weirder than it sounds because he would never have thought she'd be one to carry clutches. But then again, he never pictured her as one who stays at hotels because she can, sipping martinis alone by the car either.

As she dumps out the surprising amount of content in the bag to find her room key, her phone lights up as it hits the ground. Half a dozen messages take over the mass spectrum that is her phone screen, lying ignored, as she goes straight for the keycard and inserts it into the slot triumphantly, dashing into the room soon after to take her shoes off.

He doesn’t mean to, really, but he inadvertently sees messages from group chats he’s not in. And individual messages from Poppy and Harry and even Zayn.

Niall passes the phone and her lipstick and her wallet and a small bottle of Channel back to her and even half drunk she knows that he knows and it’s weird and awkward and uncomfortable that he’s in her room all of the sudden.

He misses being a part of that. And it’s not that he wants to be in the exact same circles and the exact same group chats, talking about the exact same things.

He just misses her.

He misses her and it’s awful because it’s his own doing and he has his own friends and his own life, but the worst part of it all is that he would give it all up.

He would give it all up to have her back.

Not the her now, but the her before he left her in the museum alone. Her when they were fifteen and unsure, when they were sixteen and wading into unchartered territory, when they were seventeen and it was all bright and light and lovely. Even when they were eighteen and she goes off to France and it got... difficult. More difficult than before anyway.

The door shuts behind him with a thud, some kind of finality weighing down on them and anchoring him to reality.

The silence that follows clings to the air, thick and suffocating.

Silence.

And then.

“I was clearing your shit out,” she says loudly. Too loudly.

He’s confused with the silent rage burning below the surface of her voice.

“I was clearing your shit out, pissed off my arse, tossing them into a box when Poppy came over and asked me what I was doing and I coughed blood into her face because I’d come to California to see you and flown us both out to New York and—”

He starts to say something but she’s still going on, pacing around the room with her heels in one hand, waving them them as she spoke unsteadily. “I turn around for one second in the Met. One. Second.”

She pauses, almost for the dramatic effect tossing her shoes aside and swiping a cigarette pack he han’t noticed off the tea table in one dramatic move, “And you were just gone.”

“I know,” he says, lump in his throat back again and catching himself looking at the champagne coloured drapes and the possibly antique lamps and how his shoebox of an apartment also has off white curtains for an entirely different reason. Opposite sides to the same coin.

Always always on opposite ends.

She slides the doors to the balcony open before her hands deftly light a cigarette.

“You didn’t even leave a note or a text or an email,” she prods on at the never ending hole chewing away at his gut.

“I know.”

“You just packed up your things and left.”

“I know!” Niall snaps, jolting out of his long-concealed guilty man stupor for the first time, “I had just moved my entire life to a new country and was knee deep into a med degree, I was too tired to figure out what you being there meant.”

“Well, it should have meant that you wanted to spend some time with me,” she snaps right back, going for the jugular.

Her eyes soften and she looks over, gently, like he’s delicate and breakable, easily startled, “You left. You put yourself first and you left, so you don’t get to come back and poke holes into the life that I built without you just because you feel like it.”

She is staring at him, and it’s only then it dawns how goddamn awful the whole thing must feel from her point of view.

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“Well, that’s what it feels like.”

“I’m sorry.”

She stares, like she is about to say something, and then she just takes a long drag of her cigarette and sits. So he sits too. And they talk, and they don’t, and then they talk some more, sitting there for hours.

He’s there, all there. And no one knows better than he does how good it feels to whispering a secret aloud to scorch the ground before you.

Even if it’s just for yourself to hear.

She’s talking about doubt. And how she doubts everything now, because she’s stuck in this moment of just before. The moment just before your brush hits the canvas where anything is possible. She doubts every stroke and every move and the canvas is more daunting than freeing, so she just stopped painting.

He feels as though his brain is melting through his teeth as she looks at him, because she’s looking at him the way she’s always looked at him and that is all that there is.

He wants to say something but Niall had never been good with words the way she is. They come tumbling right out of him, spilling carelessly from his mouth before it hits the ground running, far too late for take backs. And he knows for a fact that if he’s going to try to explain to her why he ran from the museum or how when she looks at him it feels like she’s the earth’s gravity and he is the moon, it’d probably all come out wrong.

He can’t explain how his life has been split into two parts, before her and after her.

Because how could she understand? How can he explain to her that there are no small moments in his head, only things that give him shots of joy that course through his veins. That everything since her has been metaphors and bits of poetry he can’t memorise and swirling technicolour he can’t catch.

How can he begin to explain to her that all he ever wanted is her? Just her. Only her. That he had known on some level that she wanted him, but he wanted her more. But he waited then until she saw it too and then it’s like the stars fell straight into his mouth and down his stomach. He is so filled with her light that he spends most nights lying awake thinking about all the ways it could work.

And how hard he wishes that it would be enough.

It wasn’t then, but maybe it can be now.

She’s looking at him with those damned eyes and if he is dead right now, he knows he would come back for her. He would swallow the dirt and walk across the ocean to where she is.  So when she leans in to catch his lips with hers, he drinks it in reverently as though he lived and breathed for it.

Despite knowing that in less than twelve hours, she’s set to marry someone else, he kisses her back, their bodies pressing impossibly closer and closer and closer together.

Because the feelings are there even if the courage isn’t.

//

He grabs her by the waist before she can fall.

They plan something stupid and reckless and childish and the boys are off celebrating. Poppy has disappeared halfway through the night and although the prank goes off without a hitch and without a single way of being traced back to them, Niall momentarily wonders how she can stand to be friends with them all.

Because it has to be more than just a shared childhood that bonds them.

But she is swaying in the dark in his room to some unseen music, and he catches her just as she is about to topple over.

It’s just the two of them. He can’t seem to remember a time where it’s just them both. Because the boys would always be there, crawling out and popping up from wherever they’ve been hiding like termites from woodwork at every opportunity.

But suddenly, they’re alone. They’ve been all drinking from the flask he has in his coat pocket all night but suddenly it’s just them and her hand is on his collar and he’s sure there isn’t much or any thought behind her movements, except the feeling of his heartbeat against his ribs and her hair curling across his throat spins the room on its axis.

Her hand sitting between them like some kind of a smoke screen from a really bad magic show.

Tension hung in the air like old curtains, all thick and heavy and swallowing. Their proximity far too intoxicating to be uncomfortable.

And then time came to a complete impenetrable halt.

Lips moving deftly over his, Niall’s head erupts into a series of volcanic reactions and an unrestrained hazy, burning heat.

He distantly feels himself kissing back, what with the alcohol running through his veins, but that was about the extent of his brain’s involvement. Conveniently shut off for the moment, he melts into the touch of the soft girl in his hands, every brush of skin eliciting some kind of other physical response.

Niall’s thoughts were swimming, the burning feeling of her touch, taste, scent of her. But common sense was teetering on the edge, waiting for the opportunity to jump in.

He pulls back, Red, how drunk are you on a scale of one to ten?

She blinks.

What’s a ten?

Of course, he thinks to himself.

He wraps her arm around his neck and carry her towards her room, lugging the surprisingly docile for a drunk girl across four hallways and a flight of stairs, wondering how she makes this journey almost every night without getting caught.

Propping her against her headboard, her roommate surprisingly still missing since she disappeared earlier in the night, her eyes trail him across the room as he moves things nearer to her bed like the bin for throwing up and water for hydration. He pulls her blanket up and ignore her steady gaze as she slurs, sounding all sloppy and tired.

Are you going to stay?

He freezes momentarily but she shifts on the single bed and he lies down next to her because... well, because.

And it’s like he’s ten years old again, poking inside three point power socket because he’s trying to stuff a two point plug in there, except he can’t feel the electric jolt. He’s holding onto the fork which he’s using as the third pin and he feels nothing.

Everything is muted the way the entire world seemed to have stopped when their lips touched.

He’s doing a stupid thing again, he knows on some level that it’s a stupid thing, like stabbing a three point power socket with metal cutlery. It feels odd that as a child he would do dangerous things without noticing. And odder yet that as an almost adult, he would dive head first into danger without a second thought.

If she is trapped in a painting she can never paint then he will lie, sneak and steal into art halls to be by her side, wandering around in empty hallways until he can find her.

Control is an illusion.

And he surrenders to it, an able bodied servant.

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON KOALA.T’S SOLOIST LIM SEOLHEE...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: Sophia CURRENT AGE: 28 DEBUT AGE: 17 as a Clover member / 24 as a soloist TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 14 COMPANY: Koala.T

IDOL IMAGE

SUNFLOWER.

they call her chameleon–the judges.

it’s not an insult, they reassure with a flash of teeth and blood red lips. you’ve got a pretty face and a powerful voice. (pause.) but no personality.

she learns later–much, much later–what it means to be a blank slate.

-

it takes three years to break the bones of a girl who constantly feels out of place in a room full of her peers. three years to perfect the art of makeup, to dress to impress, to walk in sky-high heels like she was born for it.

all it takes is three years behind closed doors in an industry where survival of the fittest means fighting with everyone and anyone for a chance at becoming the next big thing for her to learn that the world of fame is paved with sacrifice.

three years to realize that to stand on that brightly lit stage, she must murder herself; set herself on fire and reborn from the ashes someone stronger, brighter, warmer.

.

trainee days spent isolating herself as the quiet, hardworking girl is buried under rigid lessons and rules of thumb on how to construct a new layer of skin to stitch around herself. years of crying behind closed doors and missing home is replaced by a sweet-faced girl with a too soft smile who blushes rose after performances well done.

from practice room to the bright stage, koala.t sinks their claws into a lost girl with stars in her eyes and molds her into something whimsical and ethereal. they take all the broken parts of her that seep through the cracks and tell her to bury it behind a shy smile and a duck of her head. they create a mask for her to wear by exploiting all the mismatched parts of her that make her who she is: the dazed look of a dreamer, the seaside accent that still roils under seoul’s modern cadence, her restless hands, the purity of her lilting voice.

they take all that and slip onto her the delicate skin of a fumbling girl, the daydreamer with a heart of gold who gets a little tongue-tied when the cameras pan towards her. the same girl who would stay quiet during interviews and on variety show appearances, only speaking when her far more outspoken members remembered to reel her in from the outskirts of conversations, gaze a little dreamy, a little faraway, her voice perpetually whisper soft.

on stage and on camera, she is clover’s wallflower, a budding sunflower stifled by the blossoming radiance of her brighter members. she’s shy, a little absentminded, not quite there, but innocent all the same. it’s that charm–that little dimple in her cheek–that captivates. sets her apart. if only for a little bit.

she doesn’t mind it–not really.

it’s just another mask she wears. another role she plays.

she’s young. she has time. to change, to mature, to grow out of the novelty of it all.

(she doesn’t.)

STARLIGHT.

seven years later and she’s mastered the art of muffled peals of laughter hidden behind small hands and eyes creasing into half moon crescents. she’s softly uttered words of praise, advice, encouragements to her faithful fans on instagram live or a whole chorus of a newly uploaded acoustic cover sung in a voice almost too soft to hear above the strum of guitar strings, gratitude embedded in three minutes of heartfelt lyrics and shining eyes. to the world, seolhee is someone fragile and in need of protection.  too good for the world. almost too untainted and pristine. almost too good to be true.

from her endearing attempts to interact with and befriend fans and fellow idols alike to her occasional variety show appearances where she’s the living doll with the dimpled smile hosts have to subtly prompt and prod for answers to their questions about her trending airport fashion, her faithful fansites and fancams in 4k depicting her shining bright like a diamond on stage (her smile perpetually stitched on her face. never faltering. never wavering. her voice forever soaring), growing up pains, childhood in busan, her lingering accent.

there’s always a bit of lasting unconventionality hidden in those moments when they ask about home, about family, about transitioning from the carefree, quiet life on busan’s sandy shores to the pulsating thrum of the big city with its too fast pace and perpetual anonymity.

how did you survive, they ask. i didn’t. she wants to confess. i adapted. i changed, is what she says instead.

and it’s the truth. koala.t had taken her hand-me-downs and thrift-shopped dresses and replaced them with sponsored one pieces with the tags still on them, shiny mary janes in place of worn converses, her sea salt-scented braid of hair combed and styled in soft waves tumbling down her back and smells of peaches, her unruly tongue fixed under an iron fist to master the straight-laced way of seoul-speak.

older now and alone once more, she goes to sleep every night with her face scrubbed clean, the skin of her sweetheart persona somewhere on the floor. every morning, she wakes when the sun rises and pulls her skin back on, pats her face dry of tears, and presses two fingers to the corners of her mouth, pushing up until a small dimple forms on her cheek. there, transformation complete. operation sophia is a go.

every day is a vicious cycle. it’s walking on eggshells and pretending someone else isn’t living beneath this suffocating skin, wallowing in years of self-deprecation and the perpetual ache of longing (for something, for someone, for the taste of home—wherever that may be).

MOONCHILD.

a decade later and she’s still dreaming. still smiling. a little dimmer. a little softer.

she’s got this look about her now–almost fragile; whimsical in a way that garners second glances when people first meet her or see her sitting in a corner of the room, staring into space. a waifish doll; an effortless kind of beauty. ethereal; almost surreal.

she talks softly with a touch of poetic elusiveness and practiced eccentricity, designed to fluster or to purposely dazzle. she stares like she’s trying to see through you. into you. she’s a soft kind of beautiful when she’s caught in between camera flashes or in the midst of whispered conversations with a fan during a fansign.

catch her off-guard and all alone in the dead of the night with her face scrubbed clean and swathed in a too big hoodie and you’ll notice there’s a strange kind of dichotomy when you realize the girl you watched on tv belting high notes or listened to on the air waves in the dead of the night, spilling her heart, her soul, her secrets with the moon for company is vastly different from the doll-like beauty who looks the spitting image of her.

strip sophia of the pristine makeup and the delicate clothes and all that’s left are the bits and pieces of a bumbling seaside girl with a mouth full of words and a chest full of sorrow. sad and blue all over. still holding back, still biting her tongue. stifled, her real voice stolen long, long ago.

find her in the moments before the sun sets sitting for hours in front of a painting in an art gallery or by the han gazing into the waters. softer, sadder, still as lost as ever.

(take a moment to stare, to look closely, and tell her you don’t see the misty-eyed gaze, the glimmer of tears. tell her you don’t smell the ocean lingering on her skin under the barest hint of cherry blossom and peach.

tell her you don’t see the chains, the cage she’s been placed in for years and years. tell her she can fly free. it’s been ten years. more than. it’s enough. she’s good enough now. she always was.

watch her shatter. watch her look you in the eyes and smile despite the heartbreak. because she’ll tell you a bird with clipped wings can no longer fly as it pleases.

not now, not ever.)

IDOL HISTORY

PRELUDE.

appa falls in love with eomma in italy, five years after their fateful first encounter in the circus that is high school. a whirlwind romance between a budding photographer and a piano teacher. must be fate, the wedding guests whisper when they vow eternity to one another in a church filled with friends and family who wish them well with warm smiles and teary eyes.

so they love and love and love and somewhere in between, a baby girl is born.

eomma cries; she’s so happy. relieved, she admits years later with a kiss to her forehead. they’ve been trying and trying, after all.

appa cries too. because here she is; another girl for him to love, to protect. a gift from heaven.

they name her sophia, after the saint.

ONE.

they return home after the honeymoon phase fizzles and fades, settling in busan with halmeoni amidst student loans and living on budgets. there, she grows up a free-spirited daydreamer, often associating the world and the people around her in streaks of color and a symphony of sounds. her childhood consists of sand between her toes, sea salt in her hair, ocean-soaked dresses, and the sound of tinkling laughter.

her four seasons of growing up on the sandy shores of busan goes a little like this:

spring: an almost brand new knee-length dress made of white lace her mother buys from a thrift shop at a discounted rate, sunflowers and daisies dancing in the wind, chasing butterflies, and flower bookmarks pressed into the pages of a journal.

summer: ripe with music, her spread eagle on a blanket and sunset golds streaked across her face, the drone of cicadas, cherry popsicles, the whir of electric fans, knee-deep in the sea, her mother calling her name off in the distance.

autumn: a waterfall of warm colors, halmeoni’s cozy handmade sweaters with the sleeves hanging past her fingertips, gingham skirts and leggings, pumpkin pies, spiced lattes, a night sky filled with paper lanterns and the glimmer of stars, father’s phone ringing off the hook in the middle of the night; every night.

winter: soft pink mittens and oversized pea coats over chunky sweaters and chunkier scarves made with love, homemade hot chocolate, footprints in fresh snow, one hand clasped in mother’s hand; the other grasping air, perpetual cold; lingering emptiness.

she’s seven, wide-eyed and curious, watching a master chef work her magic. it’s halmeoni in a soft yellow dress and a spongebob apron around her waist singing deulgukhwa hits and humming to joo hyunmi and patti kim. it’s little seolhee perched on the counter by the fridge singing right along in a game of monkey see, monkey do.

early evening always starts with the swell of a sobangcha song, halmeoni wielding a carrot under her chin and seolhee’s little face crinkling up in peals of laughter. in the living room, her parents smile indulgently, hands busy tucking unpaid bills under week-old newspapers and balls of colorful yarn. and ends with seolhee curled in halmeoni’s lap, both hands clutching her parents’ sleeve in her sleep.

days and nights like these are normal—until they’re not.

one cold night in december, dinner prep is a somber affair. the radio is turned off and secondhand vinyls gather dust—buried under boxes full of knick-knacks and memories. there’s no halmeoni twirling in the kitchen, no tongue-in-cheek adlib to the latest hit trot song, no laughter.

home is quiet. empty. and little seolhee aches with the feeling of missing someone no amount of singing or wishing could ever bring back.

TWO.

she’s ten when she learns to make friends with an old guitar she buys off a neighbor moving to the big city, learns to strum awkwardly, clumsily; a cacophony of sound. it takes a full four seasons for her to learn to love the vibrations of nylon strings beneath the pads of her fingers. learns to put herself back together singing acoustic covers and soft little ballads with her face turned up to the stars. puberty comes and goes with her seated on the rickety steps of her porch, strumming nostalgic chords to the ghost of her youth.

her parents say nothing as they watch her from inside the house, smiles wilted, wistful, watery.

(there’s so many things their daughter could be, should be, and hurting, cradling sadness and turning grief into old-timey blues shouldn’t be one of them.)

they leave her be when she starts going to the market in the sticky heat of summer, guitar strapped to her back, playing for small crowds and neighborly regulars. from dusk to dawn, seolhee fixes a soft smile on her face as she strums and strums and strums, voice light and whimsical as she sings requests as a thank you for listening.

she comes home with a straw hat full of notes and red fingers, knowing full well it’s not enough to make up for this month’s expenses. so seolhee ventures back out again, haunts local markets and side streets, the sandy beaches during tourist season, trying to make the most of a life that seems to pass her by too quickly, too quietly.

-

sometimes, she tells herself that when she sings something inside of her heals. as if the soft blue notes become a makeshift stopgap measure filling up the gaping hole in her chest, easing the perpetual emptiness, soothing the ache—the want—for a different life.

sometimes, when she closes her eyes, seolhee pretends she doesn’t hear the sound of her parents fighting, the front door slamming, and her mother’s muffled crying.

sometimes, when she lets herself sink in between lyrics about a dreamer wandering away in search for herself—for an adventure—seolhee swears that some day it could all be possible.

THREE.

family is four. then, three. then, two.

home is no longer sand in between her toes and the ocean clinging to her skin, but the veins of seoul—harsher and all concrete jungle. it’s sleek skyscrapers and cold cityscapes and soon, the roads she used to bike down back home is replaced by honking taxis and the congestion of too many strangers.

home is now a shoebox; a cramped one bedroom apartment on the outskirts of seoul.

FOUR.

school is but a circus and, sometimes, she finds herself center stage. an unwilling spectacle. her accent is the only thing she has left of home and her peers mock her for it. turn her into the punchline of inside jokes and over-the-shoulder remarks about a bumbling seaside girl who doesn’t belong. she’s not ashamed, but it hurts all the same.

so she keeps to herself, minds her own business, and makes herself at home on the rooftop and the empty bleachers in an emptier field. she has her guitar and her ocean of sounds. starts spending more time with her head down, hair in a loose braid, writing the world and the people she watches and meets down in the pages of secondhand leather-bound notebooks.

-

“you have a pretty voice.”

it’s rooftop prince. only this time, they meet in the middle of the soccer field. it’s seolhee with her guitar in her lap and a curious tilt of her head, one hand shielding her eyes and feeling like she’s looking at the sun. blinded, she looks away. embarrassed, a little flattered. it’s been a long time since someone has complimented her, after all.

“why do you sing?”

so i can heal. one day, some day.

seolhee smiles and turns her face up to the sky. “because it feels like i’m home.”

FIVE.

she’s two days shy of her fourteenth birthday when she wraps herself in a chunky sweater and a soft scarf stitched with halmeoni’s love and makes her way to a quiet corner in hongdae with her guitar strapped to her back. braves the bite of the cold with numbed fingers and a voice that carries.

she starts with sobangcha and joo hyunmi, hesitant and almost stuttering as she tunes her guitar with nimble fingers and her heart in her throat. somewhere, somehow, she hears halmeoni telling her to be brave as she plucks strings and closes her eyes, body swaying to the ebb and flow of a bygone song. with halmeoni in her ear, she lets the world fade away, pays no mind to the small audience finding their way to the nostalgic croon of an old soul.

she comes awake to the sound of applause and a case full of clinking coins and a tiny pile of notes. she thanks everyone for their time and sets off to trudge home with her earnings. she’s pulled from her afterglow by a tap on her shoulder and whirls around to a man in a suit, all coiffed and perfect, voice velvety smooth. her early birthday gift is an invitation that sounds too good to be true.

-

her mother is apprehensive. she’s heard stories about the life of an idol. doesn’t want her daughter to live life under perpetual scrutiny, robbed of her youth, and always struggling to catch up to changing times and new trends.

“you’ll have to give up everything.”

“not everything.“ not you, she means to say. never you.

impending goodbyes has her losing her grip on the impression of a budding city girl society has pressed upon her, slipping right back into the soft drawl of dialect and settling right at home in the wake of her desire to chase after a flimsy dream. like this, she’s doe-eyed and wears the heart of a dreamer, curls around her mother like she’s five years old and afraid of the dark.

“i guess this means my baby’s all grown up now.”

am i? doesn’t feel like it. seolhee swallows back a sob and presses her face to her mother’s neck.

goodbye shouldn’t have sounded so definitive. so painful.

SIX.

three years into training and she realizes her voice has stopped being her own, shaped by the company and molded into the image of an innocent girl with the unpolished voice of a would-be angel.

three years and she realizes she’s signed her youth away as dreams of singing on stage with just a microphone and her guitar are replaced by backhanded compliments, veiled sabotage behind closed doors, and a sense of something sacred being stolen from her.

she’s forbidden from ever bringing up a possible solo debut in the future where she can sing about a girl who’s just trying to find her place in the world. the answer is no almost every time. sometimes, if she’s good—when she ranks on top during evaluations, when she ends up being amongst the shortlist of girls for an upcoming girl group—she gets a backhanded maybe. always baited, always rebuffed. lulled into a sense of security with empty promises of what-if’s and what-could’ve-been’s.

three years in and she learns to bite her tongue and does as she’s told. sings what she’s given. dances as she’s practiced. smiles as she’s commanded.

all the while, hours spent in the dead of the night writing lyrics that read like poems, like stories of a thousand lives not yet lived in her notebooks are laid to waste, buried under rejection after rejection in the bottom of a box full of remnants of her childhood and reminders of a home away from home.

like this, she muffles the cries of a girl homesick for a place she’s never been, sings and dances like it’s the only thing that matters and tells herself she’s happy.

tells herself it’s all she wants.

tells herself it’s enough.

(it never is. never will be.)

SEVEN.

lim seolhee is buried—erased—the day she debuts as clover’s main vocal.

(because lim seolhee is the sunshine girl who looked at people like they hung the moon and the stars. because lim seolhee is tousled hair and tinkling laughter in the middle of the sea. because lim seolhee is made of old songs and picture books, flower crowns, and grass stains.

because lim seolhee is the kind of girl easily broken and taken advantage of.

because lim seolhee, naive and kind, has no place in a world full of backstabbing and desperate survivors trying to make it to the top.

so, she creates herself a persona—someone soft-spoken and unassuming, who seemed unlikely to stab you in the back than she is to hold you while you cried. someone who always seemed a little dazed and absentminded; her gaze faraway, her voice a whisper.

someone like halmeoni—all soft around the edges, always so poised and graceful in her mannerisms (from her mysterious little smile, to the tilt of her head, to the way she walked and talked), her voice a balm to her soul.

she takes all the things she loves most about her and creates a persona in her grandmother’s shadow.

like this, sophia is born to weather all the storms seolhee doesn’t have the strength to handle on her own—just like halmeoni had been there, once upon a time, to hold her hand while she dusted the dirt off her knees and got right back up to face the world.

-

her father calls three days later. when she picks up, all she hears is his rumbling laughter, sounding much fuller than it had in their rickety old house filled with the scent of spices and long-time struggles.

“are you happy? how’s it feel to be on stage?”

like i’m flying. like i’m dying. “how are you, daddy? are you happier now?”

“…yeah, i guess i am, seol-ah. i think i am.”

“that’s good. that’s all i ever wanted—for you to be happy.”

(what she means is—i miss you so much, it hurts. will you come home? will you come back? do you miss me too?)

“i’m proud of you. be good. keep shining, dad will always be by your side.”

don’t lie. don’t lie. don’t lie, she thinks as she cries silent tears and thanks him for everything. for the moments of happiness when she was but a child too curious, too naive, too loving for her own good. for the lifetime of loneliness and always getting left behind when things get too hard—too tough—for people to stay.

“i’m always good.“ always. then and now.

EIGHT.

clover was no overnight sensation. they didn’t capture the hearts of the public right off the bat. their debut less of a gunshot than it was a moderate splash, making ripples large enough to catch the eyes of hotblooded male fans eager to support another promising girl group.

they seemed to have it all: pretty girls singing catchy songs and a choreography with signature killing parts to endear them to the public. over the years, they’ve forged themselves a niche on stage, monopolizing the market with solid dance-pop tracks and a sound that rocked between sugary cute and bouncy playful and a fandom full of passionate fans ready to fanchant the house down at concerts.

clover had what it took to be the next big girl group.

except nothing lasts forever. fame was fleeting.

and, sometimes, all it takes is a tiny fracture in the foundation for the whole dream to shatter.

NINE.

she enters a mid-life crisis at the ripe age of twenty-three.

the zeroes in her bank account don’t mean anything when all she sees staring back at her in the bathroom mirror is a tired, lonely girl (a skinny, pretty little thing. all hollowed out by time, youth chipping away at the edges), who doesn’t know what she wants. doesn’t know where she belongs or who she is.

her members do, though. they want out. seven years is long enough. they tell her it’s not her, that it’s nothing personal. but she knows better. ten years is a long enough time to read the uneasy quirk of a feigned smile and the flash of bitterness in their eyes.

it’s time to let go, they tell her the night before they’re supposed to renew their contracts. maybe, you should too.

she doesn’t know how to tell them she can’t. she doesn’t know how.

like this, clover withers, falling prey to the curse of seven years and the broken remnants of a bond corroded by fame, fortune, and favoritism.

-

while her members forge a path forward onto bigger and better things, she remains at a standstill. stalled and locked in time. left behind and alone once more.

koala.t offers her a second chance, an opportunity. sing, they coax, eyes gleaming. sing to your heart’s content.

when she signs her name on the dotted line a second time, something inside of her breaks.

TEN.

koala.t thrives on how quickly she gives away her freedom for the promise of a new beginning (of being in the spotlight, of living a dream. the old one, that pipe dream she’d thought would never be within reach). it’s easy to take a lost little thing in need of guidance and shape her into something otherworldly, push her onto a gnarly road and tell her to simply go straight to find her way back home, to where she needs to be.

but if one were to ask where she’s needed, she thinks of her old childhood home in busan, the pale yellow paint peeling on patches on her ceiling, the glow-in-the-dark wallpaper brittle and gathering dust. thinks of being waist-deep in the sea, thinks of halmeoni in her spongebob apron and a carrot as her makeshift microphone, thinks of her father somewhere (surviving, thriving, happy—she hopes), thinks of her mother and her work-roughened hands and the small shoebox apartment tucked in the tiniest corner of a heartless city.

if one were to ask what it is lim seolhee wants in private, watch her freeze, her smile slipping just slightly off her face—like a deer caught in headlights. watch her eyes, those sad lonely eyes, well up in tears she won’t let spill. watch her closely and carefully as her body seems to curl in on herself—as if the weight of the world suddenly looms on her shoulders. watch for the tremor when she speaks, fingers twisting at her sides, voice impossibly soft and fragile: i don’t know…no one’s ever asked me before.

and no one has. no one cares either. koala.t simply takes and so do her fans. everyone breaks off little pieces of her; pieces she willingly gives because she can’t say no—until there’s nothing left for her to give. nothing left for anyone to take.

all that remains is the hollowed out shell of a girl drifting aimlessly, her heart never here or in one place, her mind lingering on faraway places not yet traveled and the sound of ocean waves crashing on sandy shores like a neverending siren’s call.

RESET.

the next time she stands on stage, it feels empty. too big. and for the first time, she wonders if this is what her members mean when they tell her that greed—her ambition—is a double-edged sword.

she realizes it when her re-debut falls short of a blip on the radar. a soulful ballad’s not powerful enough to penetrate a market full of trendy edm dance bops and girl crush numbers. realizes that, maybe, just maybe she couldn’t make it on her own. not without the fallback of having her firecracker members filling in the silence with warm laughter and loud voices. brighter and warm and fuller than she could ever be.

still, she perseveres.

there’s an art to singing, after all. a ballad is but a love story sung in heartbreak overtures and a beguiling sense of longing that bleeds blue, reeking of tragedy. she’s knows this well enough and channels it in soaring high notes pulled from bone deep, soul deep. she sings of love lost, lovelorn, and love learned. sings of blue bygones and midnight melancholy.

slowly, the public begins to stop and listen. slowly, they fall in love.

-

still, the stage becomes yet another battlefield to conquer, she realizes she’ll never get to where she wants to be without ruffling a few feathers.

after all, survivors don’t make it to the top without sacrificing a little something.

(she learns this the hard way.)

ZERO.

her mother once told her names were dangerous things—that a girl should remember the names of men who tried to steal her heart, who loved her like she was the only thing that mattered, who left her all broken, bruised, and ugly. her mother tells her it’s the name of men she should be afraid of. the sons of women who lured her in with their heated gazes, their charming voices, their body full of power. her mother warned her that men were dangerous; their names a warning sign—a temptation.

her fall from grace comes as a surprise and at the hands of an up-and-coming actor.

when she meets him, he is boy blue with a heart of gold. all gentle hands and a dirty mouth. their first kiss is a shy affair—all bumping noses and awkward lip grazing—and done in the quiet of his penthouse suite.

they’re on their third date when they’re caught on camera; their rendezvous splashed front page on gossip rags and dispersed on the internet.

the world explodes. her heart does too.

koala.t does damage control. spins the fairytale narrative of a love born between friends. of close encounters, bad timing, and years of pining. the company pins everything on her longstanding image as the shy sweetheart who would shoulder the world if asked to. pleads for the public, the fans, the media to support this budding romance between two close friends who made it through thick and thin as trainees all those years ago.

but the damage is done.

the fandom and the public remain divided.

when the hate comments begin to seep through the cracks and make it way up top, koala.t realizes what could’ve been a good publicity stunt to boost her popularity backfires. realizes they overestimated her value. realizes she’s not quite enough, not quite there. not yet—that her reputation, though pristine prior, could not support the weight of negative public scrutiny and immense backlash.

so koala.t pulls her. benches her until the heat dies down.

gone are the love calls from magazine editors and brand representatives and a slated end of year comeback. gone are the ever present promises that she would have the freedom to unwind, unravel herself, layer by layer, to be given a platform where she could mature and bloom softly, be it through bare-faced youtube covers of hit songs or as the gentle, heartwarming radio dj whose voice accompanied tired souls through the night.

everything disappears.

all that remains are endless speculations from fans and haters alike, pointing fingers and slinging mud on the internet, inciting fan wars and heated arguments, digging up past fancams and clips to pin the downfall of clover on her weary shoulders.

forever lens-locked into the living caricature of a living angel who could do no wrong, all she can do is bite her tongue and bow her head in apology, swallow the excuses, the truths, from spilling out. in the wake of a blowback that cripples her, koala.t doesn’t take any chances.

under lock and key, prison has a new name and it’s the four pillars that are fame, fortune, reputation, and public perception that traps her within its midst.

2018 begins with a bang and ends with a whimper.

-

she’s twenty-seven when he kisses her goodbye the night before their breakup goes public. twenty-seven when the internet reports that they’ve called it quits, lamenting the tragedy of yet another “perfect” couple succumbing to the woes of distance and busy schedules.

she doesn’t cry, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t smile when she’s unfrozen. she says nothing when koala.t warns her to behave and simply nods.

days turn into weeks into months. and, slowly, her heart mends itself. suture by painful suture, scar over invisible scar. healed over by the weight of time and a perpetual kind of numbness that seeps through skin, through muscle, through bone and into her very soul.

she stands back up and trudges on forward—an energizer bunny running on the last dredges of its batteries.

holding out as long as she can. as hard as she can. as always.

INFINITY.

2019 and she’s found herself embarking on a new journey. a new chapter to write.

she’s got a budding radio hosting career ahead. her status as the nation’s sweetheart still intact. the road to stardom is long yet, but she’s getting there.

slowly, but surely.

all the while, the sound of the ocean calls, roils and ripples beneath the sweet smile she wears. as time passes, it only grows dimmer, sadder, as the clock ticks. one day, perhaps, her time will come. when the spotlight stops shining on her and she can breathe again.

maybe, just maybe, she’ll realize then that she was always good enough.

a born singer—starlight in the flesh. forever bright, forever shining.

-

deep down—some day, somehow, she prays for anonymity. wants a life shrouded in mystery, no longer talked about in superlatives, made infamous by gossip, speculation, and rumors.

maybe in fifteen years, lim seolhee can be found again in a small town off the coast of some river city. a wanderer, an anomaly amidst a sea of faceless people.

there, a modern-day wraith finally content with her place in the world.

once lost, now found. just a woman. plain and simple.

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON CHERRY BOMB!’S MAIN VOCAL LIM SEOLHEE ...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: Sophia CURRENT AGE: 23 DEBUT AGE: 17 TRAINEE SINCE: 14 COMPANY: MSG SECONDARY SKILL: Acting

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): sunshine for her image as the energy pill, saseumi for her doe-eyed beauty, bookworm because she’s been captured in airport and fansign photos holding well-read books on multiple occasions, seolcasso–seolhee + picasso for her artistic talents, heethoven– seolhee + beethoven as derived from her initial vlives where she would ask fans to send in requests for piano covers to do. INSPIRATION: her love for music is hereditary–what with her mother being a piano teacher and her grandmother’s blessed voice. she thinks she was born to embrace and to fall in love with the sound of music and, thus, desires to inspire others with her voice. SPECIAL TALENTS:

drawing & painting–her mediums being charcoal and watercolor, respectively.

a walking jukebox, which came from a few variety show appearances during group promotions where she was able to sing acapella to every single song requested by the mcs.

plays the piano, guitar, and guzheng & has been known to fulfill fan requests for her to cover other idol groups’ songs.

NOTABLE FACTS:

speaks korean, english, italian fluently.

graduated from seoul’s school of performing arts & attending seoul institute of the arts.

a huge fan of harry potter and has been quoted in an interview saying luna lovegood is the character she relates most to.

loves cooking & baking as a way to de-stress.

a known lover of dogs and children–has been captured in fancams with her signature dimpled smile playing with a dog or taking pictures with older fans who bring small children to fansigns.

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

she wants cherry bomb! to gain more notoriety as a whole–perhaps, a first music show win to show that they’ve reached a level of public reception that would propel her and her girls further on their individual paths. maybe then, she can utilize her group branding to help give her budding acting career a much needed boost.

LONG-TERM GOALS:

she wants to shatter expectations for idol actors. because despite her dramas not achieving much success/critical reception in terms of rating, she’s really fallen in love with acting and wants so desperately to be taken seriously as an actress, to be recognized for her craft. eventually when she’s broken the mold–hopefully via a breakout role in a successful drama–she wants to then ask msg if she can pursue a solo career in music–venture into singing osts or actually debut with a song she’s composed or written herself. somewhere further down the line, when the novelty of being in a girl group has well and truly faded, she hopes to be established as a well-rounded artist in music and in film/television.

IDOL IMAGE

BEFORE.

they call her chameleon–the judges.

it’s not an insult, they reassure with a flash of teeth and blood red lips. you’ve got a pretty face and a nice voice. (pause.) but no personality.

she learns later–much, much later–what it means to be a blank slate.

-

it takes three years to break the bones of a girl who constantly feels out of place in a room full of her peers.

three years to perfect the art of makeup, to dress to impress, to walk in sky-high heels like she was born for it.

all it takes is three years behind closed doors in an industry where survival of the fittest means fighting with everyone and anyone for a chance at becoming the next big thing for her to learn that the world of fame is paved with sacrifice.

three years to realize that to stand on that brightly lit stage, she must murder herself; set her innocent self on fire and reborn from the ashes someone stronger, brighter, warmer.

TABULA RASA.

trainee days spent isolating herself as the quiet, hardworking girl is buried under rigid lessons and rules of thumb on how to construct a new layer of skin to stitch around herself. years of crying behind closed doors and missing home is replaced by a fresh-faced girl who laughs at everything, smiles at everyone, and bounces back with enthusiasm after a fall—sunshine in ecstatic motion.

from practice room to the bright stage, msg sinks their claws into a lost girl with stars in her eyes and molds her into something whimsical and ethereal. they take all the broken parts of her that seep through the cracks and tell her to bury it behind a radiant smile. creates a mask for her to wear by exploiting all the mismatched parts of her that make her who she is: the dazed look of a dreamer, the seaside accent that still roils under seoul’s modern cadence, her restless hands, the purity of her lilting voice.

they take all that and slip onto her the delicate skin of a walking ray of sunshine with a heart of gold and a thousand watts smile.

on stage and on camera, she’s cherry bomb!’s little energy pill. she’s warm, a little absentminded, not quite there, but innocent all the same. it’s that charm–that little dimple in her cheek–that captivates. sets her apart. if only for a little bit.

she doesn’t mind it–not really.

it’s just another mask she wears. another role she plays.

she’s young. she has time. to change, to mature, to grow out of the novelty of it all.

(she doesn’t.)

AFTER.

four years in the eyes of the public and she’s muffled peals of laughter hidden behind small hands and eyes creasing into half moon crescents. sometimes, she’s softly uttered words of praise, advice, encouragements to her faithful fans on instagram live or a whole chorus of a newly uploaded acoustic cover sung in the voice almost too soft to hear above the strum of guitars, gratitude embedded in three minutes of heartfelt lyrics and shining eyes. to the world, seolhee is someone fragile and in need of protection. almost too good for the world. almost too untainted and pristine. (almost too good to be true.)

from her endearing attempts to interact with and befriend fans and fellow idols alike to her occasional variety show appearances where she’s the perpetually 4d absentminded girl with the dimpled smile hosts have to subtly prompt and prod for answers to their questions about her trending airport fashion, her faithful fansites and fancams in 4k depicting her pristine and perfect on stage (not a hair out of place, her smile perpetually stitched on her face. never faltering. never wavering), growing up pains, childhood in busan, her lingering accent.

there’s always a bit of lasting unconventionality hidden in those moments when they ask about home, about family, about transitioning from the carefree, quiet life on busan’s sandy shores to the pulsating thrum of the big city with its too fast pace and perpetual anonymity.

how did you survive, they ask. i didn’t. she wants to confess. i adapted. i changed, is what she says instead.

and it’s the truth. msg takes her hand-me-downs and thrift-shopped dresses and replaces them with sponsored one pieces with the tags still on them, shiny mary janes in place of worn converses, her sea salt-scented braid of hair is combed and styled in soft waves tumbling down her back and smells of peaches, her unruly tongue fixed under an iron fist to master the straight-laced way of seoul-speak.

she’s made to rid herself of all the things that make her her.

every night, she goes to sleep; her face scrubbed clean, the skin of her good girl persona somewhere on the floor. every morning, she wakes when the sun rises and pulls her skin back on, pats her face dry of tears, and presses two fingers to the corners of her mouth, pushing up until a small dimple forms on her cheek. there, transformation complete.operation sophia is a go.

every day is a vicious cycle. it’s walking on eggshells and pretending someone else isn’t living beneath this suffocating skin, wallowing in years of self-deprecation and the perpetual ache of longing (for something, for someone, for the taste of home—wherever that may be).

-

six years later and she’s still warm. still smiling. just a little dimmer. a little softer.

she’s got this look about her now–almost fragile; whimsical in a way that garners second glances when people first meet her or see her sitting in a corner of the room lingering on the outskirts of conversations, staring into space. a waifish doll; an effortless kind of beauty. ethereal; almost surreal.

she talks softly with a touch of poetic elusiveness and practiced eccentricity, designed to fluster or to purposely dazzle. she stares like she’s trying to see through you. into you. she’s a soft kind of pretty when she’s caught in between camera flashes or in the midst of whispered conversations with one of her members. and yet, on stage and on television wearing the skin of someone else–someone polished and manufactured, she’s danger in high heels.

catch her off-guard and all alone in the dead of the night with her face scrubbed clean and swathed in a too big hoodie and you’ll notice there’s a strange kind of dichotomy when you realize the girl you watched on tv belting high notes or crying her heart out in her latest drama is vastly different from the lonely girl who looks the spitting image of her, sitting for hours in front of a painting in an art gallery or by the han gazing into the waters.

softer, sadder, dreamier.

still as lost as ever.

IDOL HISTORY

PRELUDE.

appa falls in love with eomma in italy, five years after their fateful first encounter in the circus that is high school. a whirlwind romance between a budding photographer and a piano teacher. must be fate, the wedding guests whisper when they vow eternity to one another in a church filled with friends and family who wish them well with warm smiles and teary eyes.

so they love and love and love and somewhere in between, a baby girl is born.

eomma cries; she’s so happy. relieved, she admits years later with a kiss to her forehead. they’ve been trying and trying, after all.

appa cries too. because here she is; another girl for him to love, to protect. a gift from heaven.

they name her sophia, after the saint.

ONE.

they return home after the honeymoon phase fizzles and fades, settling in busan with halmeoni amidst student loans and living on budgets. there, she grows up a free-spirited daydreamer, often associating the world and the people around her in streaks of color and a symphony of sounds. her childhood consists of sand between her toes, sea salt in her hair, ocean-soaked dresses, and the sound of tinkling laughter.

her four seasons of growing up on the sandy shores of busan goes a little like this:

spring: an almost brand new knee-length dress made of white lace her mother buys from a thrift shop at a discounted rate, sunflowers and daisies dancing in the wind, chasing butterflies, and flower bookmarks pressed into the pages of a journal.

summer: ripe with music, her spread eagle on a blanket and sunset golds streaked across her face, the drone of cicadas, cherry popsicles, the whir of electric fans, knee-deep in the sea, her mother calling her name off in the distance.

autumn: a waterfall of warm colors, halmeoni’s cozy handmade sweaters with the sleeves hanging past her fingertips, gingham skirts and leggings, pumpkin pies, spiced lattes, a night sky filled with paper lanterns and the glimmer of stars, father’s phone ringing off the hook in the middle of the night; every night.

winter: soft pink mittens and oversized pea coats over chunky sweaters and chunkier scarves made with love, homemade hot chocolate, footprints in fresh snow, one hand clasped in mother’s hand; the other grasping air, perpetual cold; lingering emptiness.

she’s seven, wide-eyed and curious, watching a master chef work her magic. it’s halmeoni in a soft yellow dress and a spongebob apron around her waist singing deulgukhwa hits and humming to joo hyunmi and patti kim. it’s little seolhee perched on the counter by the fridge singing right along in a game of monkey see, monkey do.

early evening always starts with the swell of a sobangcha song, halmeoni wielding a carrot under her chin and seolhee’s little face crinkling up in peals of laughter. in the living room, her parents smile indulgently, hands busy tucking unpaid bills under week-old newspapers and balls of colorful yarn. and ends with seolhee curled in halmeoni’s lap, both hands clutching her parents’ sleeve in her sleep.

days and nights like these are normal—until they’re not.

one cold night in december, dinner prep is a somber affair. the radio is turned off and secondhand vinyls gather dust—buried under boxes full of knick-knacks and memories. there’s no halmeoni twirling in the kitchen, no tongue-in-cheek adlib to the latest hit trot song, no laughter.

home is quiet. empty. and little seolhee aches with the feeling of missing someone no amount of singing or wishing could ever bring back.

TWO.

she’s ten when she learns to make friends with an old guitar she buys off a neighbor moving to the big city, learns to strum awkwardly, clumsily; a cacophony of sound. it takes a full four seasons for her to learn to love the vibrations of nylon strings beneath the pads of her fingers. learns to put herself back together singing acoustic covers and soft little ballads with her face turned up to the stars. puberty comes and goes with her seated on the rickety steps of her porch, strumming nostalgic chords to the ghost of her youth.

her parents say nothing as they watch her from inside the house, smiles wilted, wistful, watery.

(there’s so many things their daughter could be, should be, and hurting, cradling sadness and turning grief into old-timey blues shouldn’t be one of them.)

they leave her be when she starts going to the market in the sticky heat of summer, guitar strapped to her back, playing for small crowds and neighborly regulars. from dusk to dawn, seolhee fixes a soft smile on her face as she strums and strums and strums, voice light and whimsical as she sings requests as a thank you for listening.

she comes home with a straw hat full of notes and red fingers, knowing full well it’s not enough to make up for this month’s expenses. so seolhee ventures back out again, haunts local farmer’s markets and side streets, the sandy beaches during tourist season, trying to make the most of a life that seems to pass her by too quickly, too quietly.

-

sometimes, she tells herself that when she sings something inside of her heals. as if the soft blue notes become a makeshift stopgap measure filling up the gaping hole in her chest, easing the perpetual emptiness, soothing the ache—the want—for a different life.

sometimes, when she closes her eyes, seolhee pretends she doesn’t hear the sound of her parents fighting, the front door slamming, and her mother’s muffled crying.

sometimes, when she lets herself sink in between lyrics about a dreamer wandering away in search for herself—for an adventure—seolhee swears that some day it could all be possible.

THREE.

family is four. then, three. then, two.

home is no longer sand in between her toes and the ocean clinging to her skin, but the veins of seoul—harsher and all concrete jungle. it’s sleek office buildings and cold cityscapes and soon, the roads she used to bike down back home is replaced by honking taxis and the congestion of too many strangers.

home is now a shoebox; a cramped one bedroom apartment on the outskirts of seoul.

FOUR.

school is but a circus and, sometimes, she finds herself center stage. an unwilling spectacle. her accent is the only thing she has left of home and her peers mock her for it. turn her into the punchline of inside jokes and over-the-shoulder remarks about a bumbling seaside girl who doesn’t belong. she’s not ashamed, but it hurts just the same.

so, she keeps to herself, minds her own business, and makes herself at home on the rooftop and the empty bleachers in an emptier field. she has her guitar and her ocean of sounds. starts spending more time with her head down, hair in a loose braid, writing the world and the people she watches and meets down in the pages of secondhand leather-bound notebooks.

-

“you have a pretty voice.”

it’s rooftop prince. only this time, they meet in the middle of the soccer field. it’s seolhee with her guitar in her lap and a curious tilt of her head, one hand shielding her eyes and feeling like she’s looking at the sun. blinded, she looks away. a little embarrassed, a little flattered. it’s been a long time since someone has complimented her, after all.

“why do you sing?”

so i can heal. one day, some day.

seolhee smiles and turns her face up to the sky. “because it feels like i’m home.”

FIVE.

she’s two days shy of her fourteenth birthday when she wraps herself in a chunky sweater and a soft scarf stitched with halmeoni’s love and makes her way to a quiet corner in hongdae with her guitar strapped to her back. braves the bite of an impending winter with numbed fingers and a voice that carries.

she starts with sobangcha and joo hyunmi, hesitant and almost stuttering as she tunes her guitar with nimble fingers and her heart in her throat. somewhere, somehow, she hears halmeoni telling her to be brave as she plucks strings and closes her eyes, petite body swaying to the ebb and flow of a bygone song. with halmeoni in her ear, she lets the world fade away, pays no mind to the small gathering of an audience finding their way to the nostalgic croon of an old soul.

she comes awake to the sound of applause and a case full of clinking coins and a tiny pile of notes. she thanks everyone for their time and sets off to trudge home with her earnings.

she’s pulled from her afterglow by a tap on her shoulder and whirls around to a man in a suit, all coiffed and perfect, voice velvety smooth. her early birthday gift is an invitation that sounds too good to be true.

-

her mother is apprehensive. she’s heard stories about the life of an idol. doesn’t want her daughter to live life under perpetual scrutiny, robbed of her youth, and always struggling to catch up to changing times and new trends.

“you’ll have to give up everything.”

“not everything.“ not you, she means to say. never you.

impending goodbyes has her losing her grip on the impression of a budding city girl society has pressed upon her, slipping back into the soft drawl of dialect and settling right at home in the wake of her desire to chase after a flimsy dream. like this, she’s doe-eyed and wears the heart of a dreamer, curls around her mother like she’s five years old and afraid of the dark.

“i guess this means my baby’s all grown up now.”

am i? doesn’t feel like it. seolhee swallows back a sob and presses her face to her mother’s neck.

goodbye shouldn’t have sounded so definitive. so painful.

SIX.

three years into training and she realizes her voice has stopped being her own, shaped by the company and molded into the image of an innocent girl with the unpolished voice of a would-be angel.

three years and she realizes she’s signed her youth away as dreams of singing on stage with just a microphone and her guitar are replaced by backhanded compliments, veiled sabotage behind closed doors, and a sense of something sacred being stolen from her.

she’s forbidden from ever bringing up a possible solo debut in the future where she can sing about a girl who’s just trying to find her place in the world. the answer is no almost every time. sometimes, if she’s good—when she ranks on top during evaluations, when she ends up being amongst the shortlist of girls for an upcoming girl group—she gets a backhanded maybe. always baited, always rebuffed. lulled into a sense of security with empty promises of what-if’s and what-could’ve-been’s.

three years in and she learns to bite her tongue and does as she’s told. sings what she’s given. dances as she’s practiced. smiles as she’s commanded.

all the while, hours spent in the dead of the night writing lyrics that read like poems, like stories of a thousand lives not yet lived in her notebooks are laid to waste, buried under rejection after rejection in the bottom of a box full of remnants of her childhood and reminders of a home away from home.

like this, she muffles the cries of a girl homesick for a place she’s never been, sings and dances like it’s the only thing that matters and tells herself she’s happy.

tells herself it’s all she wants.

tells herself it’s enough.

(it never is. never will be.)

SEVEN.

lim seolhee is buried—erased—the day she debuts as cherry bomb’s main vocal.

(because lim seolhee is the sunshine girl who looked at people like they hung the moon and the stars. because lim seolhee is tousled hair and tinkling laughter in the middle of the sea. because lim seolhee is made of old songs and picture books, flower crowns, and grass stains.

because lim seolhee is the kind of girl easily broken and taken advantage of.

because lim seolhee, naive and kind, has no place in a world full of backstabbing and desperate survivors trying to make it to the top.

so, she creates herself a persona—someone soft-spoken and unassuming, who seemed unlikely to stab you in the back than she is to hold you while you cried. someone who always seemed a little dazed and absentminded; her gaze faraway, her voice a whisper.

someone like halmeoni—all soft around the edges, always so poised and graceful in her mannerisms (from her mysterious little smile, to the tilt of her head, to the way she walked and talked), her voice a balm to her soul.

she takes all the things she loves most about her and creates a persona in her grandmother’s shadow.

like this, sophia is born to weather all the storms seolhee doesn’t have the strength to handle on her own—just like halmeoni had been there, once upon a time, to hold her hand while she dusted the dirt off her knees and got right back up to face the world.

-

her father calls three days later. when she picks up, all she hears is his rumbling laughter, sounding much fuller than it had in their rickety old house filled with the scent of spices and long-time struggles.

“are you happy? how’s it feel to be on stage?”

like i’m flying. like i’m dying. “how are you, daddy? are you happier now?”

“…yeah, i guess i am, seol-ah. i think i am.”

“that’s good. that’s all i ever wanted—for you to be happy.”

(what she means is—i miss you so much, it hurts. will you come home? will you come back? do you miss me too?)

“i’m proud of you. be good. keep shining, dad will always be by your side.”

don’t lie. don’t lie. don’t lie, she thinks as she cries silent tears and thanks him for everything. for the moments of happiness when she was but a child too curious, too naive, too loving for her own good. for the lifetime of loneliness and always getting left behind when things get too hard—too tough—for people to stay.

“i’m always good.“ always. then and now.

EIGHT.

msg thrives on how easy it is to break her and fit her into a mold of their design, how quickly she can give away her free will for a promise of an adventure (of life never being dull, of living a dream). it’s easy to take a lost little thing in need of guidance and shape her into something otherworldly, push her onto a gnarly road and tell her to simply go straight to find her way back home, to where she needs to be.

but if one were to ask where she’s needed, she thinks of her old childhood home in busan, the pale yellow paint peeling on patches on her ceiling, the glow-in-the-dark wallpaper brittle and gathering dust. thinks of being waist-deep in the sea, thinks of halmeoni in her spongebob apron and a carrot as her makeshift microphone, thinks of her father somewhere (surviving, thriving, happy—she hopes), thinks of her mother and her work-roughened hands and the small shoebox apartment tucked in the tiniest corner of a heartless city.

if one were to ask what it is lim seolhee wants in private, watch her freeze, her smile slipping just slightly off her face—like a deer caught in headlights. watch her eyes, those sad lonely eyes, well up in tears she won’t let spill. watch her closely and carefully as her body seems to curl in on herself—as if the weight of the world is suddenly looming on her shoulders. watch for the tremor when she speaks, fingers twisting at her sides, voice impossibly soft and fragile: i don’t know…no one’s ever asked me before.

and no one has. no one cares either. msg simply takes and so do her fans. everyone breaks off little pieces of her; pieces she willingly gives because she can’t say no—until there’s nothing left for her to give. nothing left for anyone to take.

all that remains is the hollowed out shell of a girl drifting aimlessly, her heart never here or in one place, her mind lingering on faraway places not yet traveled and the sound of ocean waves crashing on sandy shores like a neverending siren’s call.

NINE.

she enters a mid-life crisis at the ripe age of twenty.

the zeroes in her bank account don’t mean anything when all she sees staring back at her in the bathroom mirror is a tired, lonely girl (a skinny, pretty little thing. all hollowed out by time, youth chipping away at the edges), who doesn’t know what she wants. doesn’t know where she belongs or who she is.

so when the stage starts to feel like a burden, she finds a niche on the small screen. makes peace with esoteric scripts and starts creating a name for herself. slowly, she learns to find temporary homes in between lines and in fictional universes. slowly, she finds becoming someone else exhilarating, being on set like stepping into another world. acting becomes second nature—another job; one she actually likes.

but like the stage, the set too becomes another battlefield. people say you won’t get to where you are without ruffling a few feathers or stepping on someone’s toes.

after all, survivors don’t make it to the top without playing a little dirty.

(she learns this the hard way.)

-

mother once told her names were dangerous things—that a girl should remember the names of men who tried to steal her heart, who loved her like she was the only thing that mattered, and who left her all broken, bruised, and ugly. mother tells her it’s the name of men she should be afraid of. the sons of women who lured her in with their heated gazes, their lilting voices, their body full of power. mother warned her that men were dangerous; their names a warning sign—a temptation.

her fall from grace comes as a surprise and at the hands of an up-and-coming actor.

when she meets him, he is boy blue with a heart of gold. all gentle hands and a dirty mouth. their first kiss is a shy affair—all bumping noses and awkward lip grazing—and done in the quiet of his penthouse suite.

they’re on their third date when they’re caught on camera; their rendezvous splashed front page on gossip rags and dispersed on the internet. a tentative relationship captured for all of posterity.

the world explodes. her heart does too.

msg does damage control. spins the fairytale narrative of a love borne between friends. of close encounters, bad timing, and years of pining. the company pins everything on her longstanding image as the sweet girl who would shoulder the world if asked to. pleads for the public, the fans, the media to support this budding romance between two close friends who made it through thick and thin as trainees all those years ago. 

but the damage is done.

the fandom and the public remain divided.

when the hate comments begin to seep through the cracks and makes it way up top, msg realizes what could’ve been a good publicity stunt to garner her more individual branding backfires. realizes they overestimated her value. realizes she’s not quite enough, not quite there. not yet—that her reputation, though pristine prior, could not support the weight of negative public scrutiny and backlash.

so msg pulls her. benches her. gone are the growing piles of scripts and role offers. gone are the ever present promises that she could eventually get that solo she wanted and has begged for year after year.

all that remains are the cyclical group promotions.

prison has a new name and it’s the four pillars that are fame, fortune, reputation, and public perception that traps her within its midst.

2016 begins with a bang and ends with a whimper.

-

she’s twenty-one when he kisses her goodbye the night before their breakup goes public.

she’s twenty-one when the internet reports that they’ve called it quits, lamenting the tragedy of yet another “perfect” couple succumbing to the woes of distance and busy schedules.

she doesn’t cry, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t smile when msg unfreezes her. she says nothing when they warn her to behave and simply nods.

days turn into weeks into months. and, slowly, her heart mends itself. suture by painful suture, scar over invisible scar. healed over by the weight of time and a perpetual kind of numbness that seeps through skin, through muscle, through bone and into her very soul.

like this, she stands back up and trudges on forward—an energizer bunny running on the last dredges of its batteries.

holding out as long as she can. as hard as she can. as always.

TEN.

twenty-three and she’s found herself embarking on a new journey. a new chapter to write.

she’s got a budding acting career ahead. cherry bomb! is still afloat. the road to stardom is long yet, but she’s getting there.

slowly, but surely.

-

deep down—some day, somehow, she prays for anonymity. wants a life shrouded in mystery, no longer talked about in superlatives, made infamous by gossip, speculation, and rumors.

maybe in fifteen years, lim seolhee can be found again in a small town off the coast of some river city. a wanderer, an anomaly amidst a sea of faceless people.

there, a modern-day wraith finally content with her place in the world.

once lost, now found. just a woman. plain and simple.