#llsp:co2020

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the only and only KWON MINWOO. the kwon minwoo? yes, that’s right, him. you know him, don’t you? TWENTY-SEVEN, WEBTOON ARTIST? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, he’s a little special—not everyone blows bank on designer clothes, faking as someone well off to fit in, but actually lives in a rundown apartment, after all.

                                 interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                  lucky for you i always deliver.

                             ( TW BLOOD MENTION, KIDNAPPING MENTION )

he’s six when he first acts upon his curiosity. the kitchen had always been off limits for him, something forbidden and taboo, but that only draws him to the room more. he’s observed for months and the first place he goes to is the refrigerator. he grabs a carrot before heading to one of the drawers to grab a knife. with the counters still being too high for minwoo, he takes a seat on the floor, carefully placing the carrot down before picking up his knife. he copies the cooks as one hand holds the carrot still while his other struggles to hold the knife up. the first few cuts go as well as they could for a six-year-old and he swells with pride and confidence. a few more cuts and the carrot is almost completely chopped up. it’s when there’s only a little bit left that the carrot slips and with one wrong move the floor is filling with blood and minwoo starts wailing as tears appear. his parents find him quickly and luckily the situation is handled in a panic but quickly. he’s told that he’s lucky he didn’t lose any limbs and finds himself staying far away from the kitchen.

maybe that event took too heavy a toll on such a small child, but minwoo never went against his mother’s words again. pain or any type of suffering he didn’t want to feel any of that again. he spent hours in cram school, made friends with the children his mother asked for him to get along with, and attended all the events his mother made him go to with perfect charm.

at eleven he’s kidnapped for the first time. it’s winter and it’s cold, but he sits quietly and waits for people to come because he knows that they’ll be here soon. he can hear them asking for the money in the other room. when he’s finally back home, cuddling up into his heated blanket and drinking soup that his nanny made it’s cemented in his mind: money is comfort.

he’s in his final year of college, about to graduate with a degree in business and ready to take over the family business when he comes home to an empty home. he finds his mother sitting in the middle of the floor, only a few of their possessions surrounding her. he’s twenty-one when he has to drop out of college. he’s twenty-one when his father abandons him.

his mother takes it worse than him. unable to accept reality she tried anything to mimic that life that the two of them were so comforted by. she starts to take up an incredible amount of debt. opening credit card after credit card before she got caught and even going as far as to convince him to do the same for her. he does, of course, like the filial son that he was. it gets bad enough that at one point she asks him to try to borrow money from his friends but he knows that there are certain appearances that he still has to keep up. their home is more of a shack than a house, but his mother and him still drive expensive cars and dress in designer clothes. even when minwoo tries to convince his mother to accept the truth she continuously comes back with more and more clothes for him and he knows that he can’t say no. not when it was the only thing that made her smile anymore.

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the only and only AHN KYUNGMIN. the ahn kyungmin? yes, that’s right, him. you know him, don’t you? TWENTY-SIX, MEDICAL INTERN AT GOSAN HOSPITAL? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, he’s a little special—not everyone slept with their step-sibling so their biological parent would get divorced, after all.

                                   interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                     lucky for you i always deliver.

cat’s out of the box. she asks if you regret it. you answer with a resounding, firm no.

it’s how you’ve forged a path forward for as long as you can remember, but you don’t like remembering things or dwelling in the past so you quickly change the subject as soon as you recall the unwelcome truth that your only obstacle in life had been your curmudgeon of a father.

or well, make that two fathers.

although if you really sat down to think about it and if you were so inclined, you could easily categorize your mother—bless her guileless, pit-a-pat heart—as a nuisance.

the inclinations you do have, you don’t question. a proclivity towards promiscuity, the frequency with which you flee from any situation that puts you in a bind. you dip your toes in the water but never do you make the dive.

and so you continue to preen. like a cat, you are smug, bored, lonely. you skip town for seoul and isolate yourself in its metropolitan must and for a while you think the chaos is great fun. but you’re soon sucked back into the monotony of routine: lab, hospital, apartment, rinse, repeat.

some twist of fate casts its line and you’re reeled back to gosan, to familiar and tepid waters, to good tidings.

you left your regrets behind—so why are they washing ashore anew?

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the only and only JULIEN MOON. the julien moon? yes, that’s right, him. you know him, don’t you? TWENTY-SIX, INVESTMENT BANKER? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, he’s a little special—not everyone cheated on their girlfriend after getting drunk, after all.

                                     interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                        lucky for you i always deliver.

julien moon, reputation born in the year 2000 & dead in the year 2020. the perfect child, the perfect student, the perfect boyfriend. he’s always ignored the flaws of his parents - a father who was couldn’t resist an attractive woman, a mother who was too weak to stand up for herself. julien’s gaze became cold as the years passed. he did not tolerate flaws, he was meant to be the example in his household.

moving away from his hometown, lyon, was difficult for him at first. the south korean atmosphere was much different than the beautiful french town. the habits were different and so were the people. however, he found himself in a familiar ambiance at gosan. rich kids like him were living there and, although he secretly despised most of them, he showed them a soft smile. a charming one, that made people melt in seconds. he was aware of the power of a good smile and he used that in his favor.

he even fell in love with a girl, something that left not only his parents surprised, but even himself. high school sweethearts, holding hands as they walked through the hallways. until the party. yes, you know what party i’m talking about.

it was a spring evening and all the kids in gosan were on their spring break. “why not throw a party?”, one of them suggested. “my parents are off to italy this weekend, we can hang out at my place.”, another one added. and that’s how julien found himself inside one of the rich kids’ huge mansion, a plastic cup in hands filled with vodka, and a pretty girl on his lips. the music was pounding and he wasn’t thinking straight. they hooked up.

the morning after felt awful. he had to tell someone about it, but he made them promise no one would know about what happened. oh, what a fool he was! it was a matter of days until the entire class - or better, the entire town - knew about what he did. including his now ex-girlfriend.

the poor rich boy was never the same after that. broken and with trust issues, he went on with his life. now graduated from gosan university in business and a successful investment banker, he seems to have moved on from his traumatic little secret being spilled to the whole town. but he can’t be fooled - people in gosan never forget. alise doesn’t let them forget.

and from a dirty little secret to another. someone’s told me that he seems to be following his dad’s steps and that he keeps a mistress hidden in an apartment downtown? i wonder if that’s true. we shall find out soon.

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the only and only KANG TAEK. the kang taek? yes, that’s right, him. you know him, don’t you? TWENTY-SIX, HOTEL CEO? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, he’s a little special—not everyone sleeps with their stepmother to get back at their father, after all.

                                        interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                             lucky for you i always deliver.

it takes a lot to be this shameless.

it takes power, of which he possessed as the heir to the kang palace, south korea’s leading hotel chain, founded by his father. when your father is the man everyone fears, you become the boy everyone coddles. no one dares to even think of stepping on his toes, for the only side they can survive on is his good side. whatever he wants, he gets — things and people alike.

it takes money, the one thing he has an abundance of; the only thing he was surrounded with growing up. money replaced time, just as it replaced love. whatever he lacked as a child, his father compensated with money. toys he never wanted filled his colossal bedroom — at least it made his room a little less empty and a tad bit less lonely, right? he grew to think of money as the most important thing in life. after all, it was all he had when he had no one by his side.

it takes guts, to challenge the only person that holds more power than him — his father. he knows, whatever he has today, he has because of his father. but he also knows, whatever he lost, he lost because of the same cruel man. the same man who cheated on his mother and banished her to another city when she tried to sue him for adultery; the same man who took his mother away from him when he was a young boy with no one else to count on.

but mostly, it takes hatred to do the things he does to his only kin. taek hates his father, and it’s a hatred that became a part of him. it’s a hatred so deep he started up his own hotel, to compete with his father’s, the very one he was supposed to inherit; a hatred so deep he slept with his stepmother, to get back at his father, for the destruction of his family, his childhood, and his life.

taek hates his father but he doesn’t realise that he is exactly like him — they’ll do anything to get what they want, trampling on everyone else to get to where they want to be — at the very top.

biography. kang taek lived all his life with the sole goal to destroy his father, tantamount to how he believed he had destroyed his life. he endured it, as he watched his father cheat on his mother, sending her across the country, to a city unknown to him. he endured it, as his father disallowed him to contact his mother, with not even the exception of a mere email — he hasn’t heard from her for a decade now. he endured it, again, as his father remarried and brought home his mistress, a woman just 8 years his senior. he endured it all through his life, up until the very moment he was powerful enough to declare war against his father and destroy everything he has today — even if it means self-destruction.

personality. what makes a good liar? charisma. lucky for him, he has lots of it. he can charm his way in and out anything, just as he can wrap you around his finger with a mere curve of his lips. cocky, obnoxious, but frustratingly charming. he claims to enjoy the finest things in life but his hedonistic nature stems from his need to drown out his inner demons. sex and money are the two things that keep him going, just as alcohol serves as his morning coffee. gosan’s very own chuck bass — you think you hate him, but really, you just want to be him.

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the one and only CHOI BYEOL. the won aeri? yes, that’s right, her. you know her, don’t you? TWENTY-SIX, ART CURATOR? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, she’s a little special—not everyone had an abortion, with it rumored to have been a teacher’s, after all.

                                         interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                              lucky for you i always deliver.

                                 ( TW ALCOHOLISM, DUBCON, ABORTION )

she never understood the appeal of gin.

as a child, she thought it smelled disgusting. and when she dared to take a sip, she spit it back into the glass immediately. the young girl didn’t know why it was her mother’s drink of choice, but she dutifully brought her the bottle when she asked for it.

on nights like that, byeol found herself tucking her mother into bed and curling up next to her until she fell asleep, usually mumbling something to herself.

“my star, don’t marry someone like your father. all you’ll know is loneliness.”

byeol asks her mother how she can be lonely when they have each other, but her mother is already asleep and snoring softly. she places a cup of water and an advil on her nightstand before tiptoeing out of the room and into her own.

the next morning, things are back to normal. her mother is fussing over her hair and making sure she’s properly buttoned her shirt. she returns to making seating charts for her next event and answering invitations sent by the other society women. when byeol brings up their conversation from the night before, she sighs.

“don’t be too hard on your father. he’s providing for both of us. he’s doing his best.”

even as a child, she’s certain his best isn’t good enough.

-

parties and get togethers of any kind become the perfect excuse to stay out of the house and away from her parents. the older she grew, the more obvious it became that they didn’t care much for each other and byeol spent most nights cleaning up after her mother and wishing the two would get a divorce. it’s a fruitless dream, so instead she distracts herself.

“take this and drink this whole glass of water.” she hands her friend the painkiller and glass and watches to make sure she does as she’s told. they thank her with a kiss to her cheek and she rolls her eyes and turns them back towards the dance floor. she likes the parties for the social aspect, not so much the drinking. but her friends like to drink and she’s used to taking care of others.

it’s out one night with these friends that she runs into one of her teacher.

he seems concerned that a top student is out, reeking of alcohol but she assures him she’s probably the only sober one.

conversation flows easily with him. easier than she thought. they bond over a mutual loneliness and a love for art.

art has always been her favorite class, but senior year it becomes special.

a stolen kiss after class turns into a night spent at his apartment. their meetings become more and more frequent and byeol thinks she’s found something all her own.

her stomach drops when the test comes back positive. used to being the one in charge, she welcomes the older man’s guidance when he suggests she get an abortion. he doesn’t want to lose his job and she doesn’t need her name or her family’s named tarnished.

so she does as she’s told, but the emptiness she feels afterwards makes her wonder if it’s the right choice.

-

he stops talking to her altogether when their secret comes out.

her parents are shocked, her father can barely stand to look at her. they get an apartment for her, seemingly as a graduation gift but she knows it’s so they only have to see her on holidays.

byeol graduates university with a degree in art history and joins the family business, working in one of their galleries. she tries to repair the bond with her parents, but she’s not sure there even was much of one to begin with.

as if trying to find something in common with her mom, she picks up the bottle one night and decides to drown her loneliness.

as the months go on and the stack of empty bottles grow, she starts to understand why her mother likes this stuff: it’s the only escape that works.

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the one and only WON AERI. the won aeri? yes, that’s right, her. you know her, don’t you? TWENTY-SIX, PRIVATE BANKER AT HANA BANK? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, she’s a little special—not everyone had plastic surgery done and “debuted” in college with a whole new face, after all.

                                          interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                                lucky for you i always deliver.

( TW EATING DISORDER, BODY DYSMORPHIA, SELF-HARM, SUICIDE IDEATION )

step one.

won aeri is born to loving parents – a kind mother who takes pride in makeup and clothing, a father who dotes on his two daughters. there’s nothing extraordinary about her childhood; aeri grows up with love and support, spends her time playing with her sister, looking at her as though she held the stars in her eyes.  

(it all goes downhill from there.)

step two.

she’s fourteen when she realises her sister is an unattainable dream, some sort of perfection moulded by expert hands. “you’ll look like her one day,” her mother tells her gently, as they watch some silly variety show, her head on her mother’s lap. aeri wants to scream because she just knows her mother is lying through her teeth, just sprinkling sugary niceties around the inevitable truth. there are so many things she doesn’t tell her mother because her mother doesn’t need to worry more than she already does. she thinks about her friend’s father who once laughed at her and said, jokingly, “guess good genes can only go to one person!”  her teachers who look at her with placid smiles hiding their disappointment, as they tell her, “oh, i knew your sister! very pretty.” (they omit the ‘not like you’ but aeri feels the icy burn anyways.)

aeri just smiles. because she’s a nice girl. because she’s soft-spoken and sweet and docile. sometimes, she wonders if she was born into the wrong family. a seed of resentment is planted in her – she knows she’s lucky, she has a wonderful family and she hates that she sticks out like an odd, ugly thumb. she throws herself into studying because that’s the only thing she’s good at. and when she gets into a prestigious high school, her parents celebrate. they bring her to a theme park.

(aeri thinks that’s the last time she’s ever felt truly happy.)

because the next day, a photo of her circulates. it’s an unflattering angle so aeri just looks terrible from every single angle. she’s making some silly face, her clothes are too tight so there’s an inch of fat spilling, and that’s enough to send the trolls off. she gets posted in some stupid forum, some stupid title like ‘what a fucking eyesore can’t believe her sister is so pretty lmfao’ and the post takes off. it goes viral. she gets made into some stupid meme, and the comments are brutal – the thoughts that have always plagued aeri materialise in the form of their opinions. aeri’s never really loved herself but this? this kills her.

her parents laugh the post off – “they just think you’re cute, aeri!” aeri smiles. because that’s her default reaction. (but deep down, she knows better. the photo is a cruel joke, a reminder that she’s ugly and fat and undesirable and worthless and a waste of space. her sister stops speaking to her in public because it’s embarrassing to even be associated with the fat, ugly girl from lotte world. her classmates snicker in her face, some even paste her photo on her desk. but aeri just smiles. pretends like she can’t hear a thing. puts her head down in her books and studies. talks to her friends, as if she doesn’t notice that they give her one-word replies.)

she’s fourteen when she first drives the blade down her upper thighs. the sting makes it feel real – after days of faking smiles, pretending like there’s no weight pressing down on her chest, acting as though it doesn’t fucking hurt.

(it starts with small scratches, but it grows and grows until her thighs are fully embellish and she can never wear shorts again.)  

step three.

she’s fifteen and in high school. no one talks about the picture anymore – it’s a distant memory for all but her. aeri learns how to diet – to be specific, aeri learns how to treat food as an enemy. everything has a number – a bowl of rice: 200 calories, a piece of deep-fried pork: 336 calories, that one fried egg: 70 calories. she learns that to lose weight, she needs to be in a calorie deficit and so, she starves. she eats less and less and less and slowly, when the numbers drop, when her ribs start protruding, when her face loses any trace of baby fat, aeri finally feels powerful. finally. (she never wants to lose this feeling – and so, when she eats a bit too much, 200 calories above her deficit, she does anything she can to get rid of it.)

life seems to be getting better - the smart boy who sits beside her is nice to her. he brings her grapes, brings her strawberry milk, tells her to study hard, work hard. before she knows, aeri looks at him like how she once looked at her sister. her heart flutters involuntarily and she starts dreaming of a life with him by her side. jinseok, she thinks dreamily as she shoots him a shy smile, jinseok.

a few weeks later, she hears some gossip. someone tells her that jinseok said he might actually like her if she had better teeth, if she was prettier. “good luck!” they add. they mean well – like every one of those insidious comments. so casually cruel in the name of being honest.

a part of aeri dies that day. she’s never enough, it’ll never be enough, she’s not worth anything – she doesn’t eat anything for the next day. her punishment for being alive.

(‘ugly,’ she carves into her skin, ‘so fucking ugly.’)

step 4.

she’s seventeen and she now weighs less than a hundred pounds. her mother tells her to eat more and aeri makes up constant lies about how she had a big dinner with her friends, she’s full from the night before. her words don’t match her actions and her mother knows, but aeri manages to leave before she can say anything every single time. at school, her friends look at her with concern. “you can’t live like this, aeri,” they tell her one day, worry flooding their eyes after aeri passes out during pe. aeri just laughs it off, tries to ignore the perpetual growl of her stomach and changes to conversation by giving another compliment to her friends. “you have nicer eyes!”

(that’s what aeri is known for – she’s sweet and nice and full of compliments. she may not be the prettiest but she’s friendly and caring, and she’ll drown for you even if you won’t even step into a puddle for her. doesn’t matter if she’s too needy, too clingy, desperate to hold on to anything that resembles acceptance and love.)

that’s why she lets that boy into her life. deep down, aeri knows that he doesn’t like her but it’s okay. it’s a win-win situation – he gives the temporary affection, feeds her with the validation that she needs. at least someone’s giving her attention and for once, she feels good enough.

step five.

she’s eighteen when she stops getting regular periods. she’s eighteen when she can barely walk five minutes without huffing. she’s eighteen when her parents sit her down, begging her to be better. (aeri doesn’t know how to tell her she doesn’t want to be better – she wants to die.) “we’ll do anything,” they plead, eyes watering with tears. there is no one she despises more than herself at this moment; for wounding the two people who’ve given her nothing but unconditional love, for being stuck in this endless cycle of self-hate, for trying to reach an impossible goal.

aeri turns away from them. because she’s not smiling anymore and she feels her throat burn, tears prickling at the edge of her eyes. she forces her attention on the  the photo of her sister on the wall with her perfect smile and perfect body that she never had to work for. looks at the reflection in the mirror – her red-rimmed eyes, her asymmetrical face, her too-thin lips. looks at the concerned faces of her parents, tears dried on their face.  

“i want plastic surgery,” is all she says.

(and so she does. she fixes her nose and the tip of it, gets double eyelids, reshapes her jaw.)  

step six.

she’s in her first year of university and she feels like a different person. it’s nice, aeri thinks, she can be someone that isn’t herself for the first time in twenty years. but then, alise drops the news and aeri feels like her whole fucking world is crumbling down, as if she was back to being fourteen and being exposed for her mistakes. she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe – it’s back to square one and this time, she stops eating for a week and drives the blade deep enough that she needs to get stitches.

(once a fuck-up, always a fuck-up.)

step seven.

she’s twenty-six now and working as a private banker in one of korea’s top banks. she wishes she could say that life gets better and sometimes, it does but sometimes, when it’s late and aeri feels like she’s losing every bit of her sanity, she falls back into old habits and it’s ugly. aeri’s so scared so scared that she’s going to be a laughing stock again and she can’t have that. not anymore.

(aeri still keeps that photo from twelve years ago in a drawer. she tells herself, that maybe, one day she’ll finally learn to love herself and throw it away but it’s never today.)  

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the one and only NOEL PARK. the noel park? yes, that’s right, him. you know him, don’t you? TWENTY-SEVEN, PHOTOGRAPHER? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, he’s a little special—not everyone had to take a leave of absence during high school to go to rehab, after all.

                                          interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                                lucky for you i always deliver.

                                                       ( TW DRUG USAGE )

he’d tried out a few names, before deciding on noel. he was born a few days after christmas, anyway, and he liked the idea of his new name meaning birth. like a new, better him was being born. if you ask him, he’ll say it’s because he’d ended up moving to rhode island for college, and he wanted a name that was easy for his new classmates to pronounce. now it’s printed on three best-selling photo books and is the handle of an instagram with more than 200,000 followers; he’s done a relatively good job of escaping everything, compared to some of his classmates. he would’ve escaped it forever, if it wasn’t for his father’s death, but that’s how it goes; his name is new, but the choices he made back then had to catch up with him, again, eventually. but noel’s learned to deal, since then — he won’t be weak like he was when he was a kid. he won’t. he was never the most popular of 2020’s class — always just a little bit shorter and more awkward than everyone else, park sungwon (as he was known then) was less likely to be found at a party and more likely to be found in the dark room, developing photographs or just listening to music. if anything, he’d be disdainfully wondering why his peers were always acting so ridiculously. the middle child that never quite got as much attention from his judge father or his jewelry designer mother, he didn’t start taking the pills to try to get them to notice anything, or to improve his art, though that’s certainly what people speculate. he’d just taken them one day, right out of the medicine cabinet, with the intention to get high, no more, no less. he liked the sense of contentment that had come with taking them, and decided to keep chasing after it. and to his credit, he’d kept things hidden pretty well, for a while. who would suspect that sungwon, of all people, was popping pain pills like they were candy? he was always the good boy, the well-behaved one to a fault, the responsible kid with a pulitzer in his future. he did, of course, have to take more and more to get that same high, but he was careful; he made rules for himself. don’t take pills at school. wait ‘til dad’s asleep before you sneak into his bathroom. if his father didn’t notice that more and more disappeared from the bottle each time, he didn’t say anything. his sister, of course, sure did. noel’s still grateful that whatever god is up there didn’t have him catch him taking his oxy at school (because by that point, the dark room was less a space to develop photographs and more a space to space out); she ratted him out immediately, and the park family moved elsewhere for a month. one of the best teen rehab facilities in the world, his mother found, was in brisbane, australia; they told the school that they were dealing with the death of a distant relative who’d lived there. sungwon came back to school a month later, with a sense of discipline and practicality and a drive to graduate quietly; the yearbook that year was award-winning, thanks in part to the photographs sungwon took for it. the lie was perfect, and for a year, it rested just like that. how alise found out where he really was that month, sungwon still isn’t sure. but she came with receipts and even a selfie with one of his companions in recovery. it was a blindside to his fellow students (this kid was doing those that whole time?) and a blow to the reputation of his parents (as relatively good as the parks were, the fact they were oblivious to what sungwon was doing didn’t reflect well on them as parents). it’s no wonder that sungwon’s reaction was to get the hell out of gosan at the earliest opportunity and to change his name; he wouldn’t let it follow him. in the years since then, noel’s developed a love of rugby and a real sense of charisma; it makes him look broody instead of gloomy when he’s sulking over something-or-other, and it makes his determination for perfection in every shot seem artistic, not mean for no reason. and his sense of discipline hasn’t faded any; he drinks socially, he nearly has to, but doesn’t smoke, and he hasn’t touched anything else addictive since he was a teenager. he spends his days taking photographs by the beach for his fourth photo collection, tentatively called home, dealing with the classmates who’ve known him at his darkest, and wondering just what gosan has in store for him now that he’s back.

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the one and only YANG DOYOON. the yang doyoon? yes, that’s right, him. you know him, don’t you? TWENTY-FIVE, PART-TIMER AT ETUDE HOUSE? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, he’s a little special—not everyone got paid to date his girlfriend in college, after all.

                                          interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                                lucky for you i always deliver.

expectation is a boot on his neck. pressure building with every passing formative year. yang doyoon is the second born in his family and tacked with a list of predetermined goals. he is to succeed, to lift himself from the ashes of lower middle class. to achieve what their parents never could.

he always thought it was such bullshit.

unsurprising that his formative years were spent fighting them every step of the way. rebellious by birth, with the exception of accepting the scholarship to gosan u (which, fine, five hours away from them? more than fine), dayoon had never been one to do as his parents wanted. hadn’t the slightest interest in being playing dutiful son like his brother. instead, he’s made it his life mission to do the complete opposite. had taken japanese instead of chinese. had chosen soccer over taekwondo. had spent his years dating for a lump sum instead of sticking his nose in the books.

which, speaking of, hadn’t been particularly noble of him either. which part? the getting paid to date her? or the kissing him behind her back?

funny, how he, much like his parents, are willing to bend morals for money.

though, he should’ve known he would’ve ate shit for it sooner or later. and gosan—like a giant mutated spider with appendages in every crook and cranny and fine tactile hairs on every limb—gosan chewed him up and spat him out when shit hit the fan with alise. leaving him with little options but to duck back to daegu with his tail between his legs.

from there, let’s fast forward a bit. it’s really not that interesting. it’s getting into the first university he stumbles upon despite objections to get a regular, usable major. it’s enlisting as soon as he can after to avoid their bitching. it’s operating on pure spite alone for four years after to study in traditional medicine. it’s leaving as soon as his diploma is in hand.

it’s coming back to the cursed gosan now and walking into the first we’re hiring establishment and another after—all while ignoring their calls.

the way he figures it, he can handle being poor but he can’t handle being someone’s puppet.

and gosan, he’s never really left it.

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the one and only MAE IL. the mae il? yes, that’s right, him. you know him, don’t you? TWENTY-SEVEN, BODY PIERCER? no? eh—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, he’s a little special—not everyone was (wrongly) accused of sexually assaulting their best friend, after all.

                                          interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                                lucky for you i always deliver.

                ( TW UNDERAGED DRINKING, MENTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT )

the mae’s are old money. titans of the metal industry and the energy sector. they were around for the creation of korea’s bourgeoisie, noblemen and courtiers in the day, and it seems they’ll be around until the very end. much like the materials they peddle, this quiet family of opportunists, has not once wavered. so, it seems almost wax poetic that the eldest son of this family, purveyors of the very alloy that prison bars all over the country are made of, should grow to feel locked up. too soon realizing that money doesn’t buy one’s freedom, it pays for one’s prison. literally. and it’s with this shocking, sobering sense of what he first called realism that il abandons his trust and flees. but, let’s rewind a little. set the scene. a good boy grows up taught good values, and for a while, because they’re repeated into his ear so often, they stick. he’s a little bit shy for the first few years. a little pudgy, big for his age. the other kids are scared of his size so he doesn’t make many enemies, but he doesn’t make too many friends, either. a gentle giant, they call him. still, despite his mother’s push for friends, his father says there’s nothing wrong with solitude. il believes him and lives by his words. there’s nothing wrong with solitude. it becomes his dogma. he sits quietly by himself in the back of the class and tries his best. ( so maybe he punched three kids in the last year of primary school because they tried to push him around, so what ? ) then there’s the bloom. like a flower to sun, like rust peeling back. he’s big and he becomes strong and by freshman year, all thanks to maternal pressure, he’s a star tennis player. sophomore, soccer. junior, judo. average grades, bustling social life. people start to notice him. the attention makes him uncomfortable until he realizes what he can do with it. then he runs with it. eventually caught between the quiet of his past and the noise of his present, he starts living a kind of double life. triple. quadruple. quintuple. quiet, charming, church-going model student by day, party-going underage-drinking future frat boy by night. and a hundred other things to a hundred other people. he’s quick to recognize his own faults, and almost as quick to build up a new person out of himself to correct them. he goes into university already half a legend, half a person. he’s a different guy for different people and different occasions. a hundred faces—up until he finds a friend and decides to stick with one; the one this dear friend likes most. the loyal friend, someone almost fully human. it’s an understatement, and ironic, to say that this person brings out the best in him, but they do. until they don’t. everyone gobbles up the secret like dessert. so many shocked, so many unsurprised, so many eager to drag him down and see him fall, sleeping dogs finally waking. others come forward spouting the same untruths, lawsuits piling up. solitude knocks on his door, and il welcomes him back like an old friend. it’s this long-overdue time alone with his thoughts that brings everything to a head. a culmination of years, but the change seems overnight. there seem a hundred possible reasons for him to have done it, but il never really says why he gave up his trust and ran into the night. why he never came back even after the accusations were proven false. a million rumors and a handful of years later, he returns. pierced up to his face and tatted up to his neck. a quiet stirring in a loft in the corner of the city, like a brewing storm. 

[littlelieshq]

hey my loyal readers, ALISE here, your one and only source of gosan’s finest. aren’t you curious about what i have in store for you today? don’t lie, of course you are! well, today’s highlight happens to be the one and only JIAO JIAN. the jiao jian? yes, that’s right, him. you know him, don’t you? TWENTY-SIX, NATIONAL SALES MANAGER? no? well—i don’t blame you if you don’t, if you’ve seen one gosaner, you’ve seen them all. but this one, he’s a little special—not everyone in an effort to hide their sexuality, dated and slept with someone for their entire high school career, after all.

                                          interested? well why wouldn’t you be?

                                                lucky for you i always deliver.

It would be a little off-kilter to say that Jian lived anything but lavishly. He’s always been fully aware of what privileges he had, and that meant that he had some kind of reputation to uphold. Any other circumstance, he believes that it wouldn’t matter. He could go on living the life he wants to lead, if only he weren’t the heir to his family’s broadcasting company. And by all technicalities, his twin brother, Liang, would be just as eligible for the position if it weren’t for his more reckless tendencies. Even for twins, they seem to think quite differently.

They went to different high schools, and for better or worse, he didn’t think he could trust anyone. Jian claimed no best friend, no close friend, or anything even remotely labelled a friendship. But he did have vultures. The ones that would stick around him just for the wealth and status. He wouldn’t pay much mind to them, and in turn, they’d get past his more brazen attitude and condescending speech style. And other than that, he had connections. The ones he could be friendly with as long as they could help each other with their goals. It felt so empty.

Bored, he would discover things for himself. The odd musical instrument, another form of martial arts, a new training regiment, a different sexuality… Now that was where he seemed to miss the mark. Jian ignored, belittled, and scolded that part of himself. He realized that he was queer a few years before high school, and only learned the term for it then. But naturally, that little tid-bit couldn’t possibly get released into the oh-so-conservative general public. He didn’t mind who he dated to get the feelings to go away. He’ll distract himself with his very first girlfriend. Yeah, that’ll work.

Years after high school, and even more years after the release of that dire information, he’s chosen celibacy. If he doesn’t make moves on any person, there won’t be anything to report. Jian returns to repressed emotions and even more work. He might be the heir to the company, but he intends to deserve that position. Emotions are rather useless, aren’t they? Ineffective, and a waste of time. People around him would consider him cold, arrogant, self-centered, and enigmatic. But what’s new?

Furthermore, he’s discovered that ‘no comment’ for even true things is the best way to go. It certainly helps that he’s in the media industry. What better way to manipulate the public than through new tech?