#neoapollo

[machinakrp]

>> OPEN SONG JINSOL’S FILE …

:// AGE — 27 :// OCCUPATION — drug chemist :// CLASS —native

>> LOADING DEVELOPMENT …

:// MAGIC —  

jinsol’s magical is learned, and at the same time, seemingly twined into him. muscles and memory and nerves. it feels like it. something taught to him and adopted since he was old enough to let it manifest in his mind. it’s a second nature, nearly. infusing magic with medicine. or in his case, pseudo-medicine (he calls it medicine, at least). it’s something slipped in between measurement and chemicals and crushed herbs. built into molecules and compounding in a way that seems nearly impossible. should be impossible. but isn’t. a medical miracle, and maybe if he applied it different jinsol could be finding applications that would astonish, would’ve hefted him out of the slums of elysium on some miracle cure. but he doesn’t. just finds a way to manufacture emotion, to create a fabricated sense of bliss or love or warmth for people to envelope themselves in. like whiskey to warm yourself in the middle of a blizzard. a sort of danger ignored for that immediate sense of comfort.

:// MODIFICATIONS —

despite being an elysium native and building a large enough business that he has more means than most, jinsol doesn’t have many body modifications to speak of. just two.

the first is one he got done before he worked his way up, before he was able to pay enough for something above the books. but he’d needed it in the before period of his life. less now, though it’s a comforting reminder that it’s there. if you peel back the skin of his right wrist, there lies a hollowed out tube nestled between veins and bones. resting inside is a sliver of a knife.sharp and poised near a trigger spring. if he digs his finger in near his forearm and jams down on the end of the mechanism, it cuts out out. not entirely pleasant, considering it rips through skin on the way out. it also has to be manually wound back into his arm, meaning he has to seek someone out every time he hits the trigger. it’s meant as a last ditch defense system, for a hand ideally tucked up against a throat. he used to need it, back before he was working with hades. back when he was peddling his own goods and on his own. there’s a scar on his wrist now, a jagged sort of line left over from the two times he’s used it.

the second is less intrusive. a holographic tattoo on the nape of his head, a circle ring of a sun curved around the first jut of bone from his spine. something that shimmers and shivers and shakes before it implodes. then the hologram is looped back whole once again.

>> LOADING BIOGRAPHY …

tw: blood, drugs

RETRIEVING MEMORY…

21430102_sooji.vrml

a glitch – a vibrant flash of blue that reads so bright it hurts the retinas – the angle seems tipped. like the world’s off its axis. set instead on a lopsided table. baited breath, waiting for everything piled on top of it to slide off in a violent clatter. that’s the reaction the memory loop gives off when replayed. something not quite right that settles like nausea in the gut. trepidation. the unwanted kind. the memory holder’s perceptions, emotions flooding in. the room is sterile. blank-white floods the space. walls and sheets and floor. a glossy linoleum. there’s a rhythmic beep from a machine. a baby nestled in a set of arms – the memory holder’s – another glitch. the baby wails. the angle of the memory slips more. like the downward trajectory of a rollercoaster. from here, she plummets.

21430102_sooji.txt

lee sooji, a woman with too many secrets and unwillingness to divide interest from herself. naturally, a baby doesn’t fit well into the equation. even if it was planned. there’s not a lot of picture perfect anything that happens in elysium, but she’d always liked the idea of that. perfection. it’s hard to obtain though. even with a knowledge of chemical-infused magic that gave her the ability to create and shape her own world in the form of hallucinogens. is it a surprise that the marriage fell apart? probably not. a lot of things fall apart in elysium. dismantled by the society around them. he moved on, she was stuck with a baby that she didn’t really want. ignored at first. sharp cries, neglected fits. palms fit to ears of someone who constantly decided she was too young to deal with this mess of a life.

her feelings changed overtime. not dramatically, in a wild shift of personality. but slightly. when jinsol started to take shape more as a human than living soundbox. she liked some things, and she could list them off in a way that was reminiscent of explaining why one preferred a certain restaurant. she liked the adoration in his eyes. the way words could be pieced together into loving sentiments, something that seemed to runaway along with her ex husband. and sooji had always liked that. adoration. she valued it above nearly anything else. instilled the same beliefs into a young mind. he grew under fickle reliance. like a plant with a broken trellis, bent with the whims of her emotions. whether or not she felt like being a mother. whether or not she felt like being free of his shackling existence.

21490714_jinsol.vrml

it’s a humid day. it’s distinguishable based on that summer haze of warped air that makes the floor look bent. the click-whir of a broken fan. the chunks of ice jinsol has shoved into his cheeks, like an overambitious chipmunk. not that jinsol has any idea what a chipmunk is, he’s never seen one. just the scattered pigeons with broken-toed feet that loiter near the bottom step of his building. he looks like a wild thing. a smattering of band-aids covering scabbing, knobby knees. overgrown hair that hangs knotted in his eyes. a dirty smudge near his nose. gangly colt legs thrown over the edge of a dilapidated couch. he’s alone. some might say he’s too young to be alone, but he’d brustle up defensive at that. independent. biting off more than he can chew, but he’d rather swallow it down and half-choke than risk his pride and spit it back up. there’s a children’s cartoon projected up from an old holo-box sitting on a coffee table. sometimes it fritzes, and he stretches out a leg to thwack it with his heel. every ten minutes it seems like there’s a run of commercials hoping to sell him synthetically flavored juice. eventually, he loses patience and separates himself from the show, slips outside the door. some might say he’s too young to be running around the streets of elysium on his own. jinsol would cut them a smile, jagged and feral. a boy raised by chaos and the immediate impulses of a six-year-old.

21490714_jinsol.txt

jinsol’s youth is cut up into fractured pieces. the moments when his mother was there, and the moments when she wasn’t. his morals are ambiguous, lessons learned infrequent. and sometimes best avoided anyway. it depended on her mood, that’s what he learned. and it turned him desperate. seeking affection in a way that could turn near-violent. he’s a mirror image, in some ways. her reflection. has a constant needing for affection and validation. and when she gives, he takes. soaks it up. he likes it best when she’s at home with him, and jinsol babbles this out often. she regales stories in his ear, drifting off in the crook of her arm. humid ‘ i love you’s whispered against her neck, and she tells him just how much she loves him back. he can tell when she’s going to disappear by the look in her eyes. it’s like a lightswitch that only she can reach. a blank stare, or an emotion he can’t quite piece together yet, but he knows it’s bad. knows it makes him feel bad.

it’s resentment, but that’s a connection he makes later.

and then he’s on his own. raiding the fridge for non-perishables left behind and amusing himself. sometimes he skips school. it doesn’t matter, nobody notices he’s gone in the overcrowded classroom. wanders the streets instead, making friends with stray cats slipping through gaps of buildings too small a fit for most anyone else. a grand adventure, that’s what he’d tell himself to keep from feeling lonely. and then she’d come back, and it’d warm his bones. chase away that feeling. would try to grip to her with nails embedded into skin when he saw that look in her eyes. until he was pried off. he thinks he left scars, when he reminisces back nowadays, kept up late at night, sleepless. tries to reimagine his mother. but he can’t remember just how violent his longing for her to stay was.

21601130_jinsol.vrml

he’s older this time, pushing the bounds of maturity. stick-skinny still, and he drowns in his clothes. his hair is stained purple. so are the tips of his fingers. a smell of potent chemicals hang in the air, something nearly palpable. it’s either from the fresh dye or the burner he’s bent over. there’s a vial clamped above it. something bubbling and neon when the fluorescent flicker of the overhead light decides to work in brief moments of unsurity. his mother’s next to him, fingers tracing spirals up and down the line of his spine. every so often she redirects his hand. murmurs words into his ear. a palm pressed to the small of his back, and it’s nearly like a transferal. pressing magic into nerves. he doesn’t think it’s how it works, really. but it felt like it at the time, sitting in that tiny, cluttered apartment. a flicker of fire and warmth and belonging as his mother taught him secrets that were hoarded in his family. jinsol wonders if they’d ever been illustrious. if this strange magic ever mattered. there’s a sizzle-pop of a noise. a change in color. the vial’s removed from the fire. eventually, his mother tests it. he holds his breathe, waits to see if there will be a change in her eyes.

21601130_jinsol.txt

jinsol loves and hates it. the knowledge he has, the strange way he can cut chemicals with magic. something that grows larger and more complex as he does. now though, all of seventeen, and he loves the connection it’s forged between him and his mother. the way she’ll gravitate back to him, pass down this strange family heirloom. and he hates it, because it robs him from her too. how she’ll twist herself up in these strange moods and slip out of his life. to find someone, something, more capable than him. more fulfilling. but he took those mismatched emotions and jammed them into his own ambitions. his mother had never really scratched past the surface of capabilities.

jinsol became obsessive, in the same manic way he tends to become obsessive about a lot of things he cares about. and with that same strange of caring, an emotion caught halfway between love and violence. he found ways to bottle bliss, press desire into pills. a manmade euphoria, and he expanded his experimentation as he got older. found a way to coax out truth from an unwilling tongue and an addled mind. trust from the wary, if only they’d swallow down some of his magic. how much of jinsol’s success is luck? if one knew what he could make, the obsessive lengths he’d go to carve out what he decided he was owed, it would be a laughable question.

21630214_jinsol.vrml

the setting’s changed in this memory. the apartment’s even smaller, and the window’s stuck. the corner doesn’t fit down all the way. a cold gust slips underneath everytime the wind howls, angry and cutting with frost. a worn curtain flutters. there’s hardly a point in it, it’s nearly transparent from sun damage. jinsol’s fingers are white from the cold. there’s a scattering of pills on a table. his hands are sticky with blood. so is his wrist. half-congealed. his face is white too, but he looks ghost-startled over cold. the shock of a situation that saps the life, leaves everything devoid of color. eventually he fumbles for an old shirt, jams it over his hand. the blade’s still visible, sticking out from his arm. his own blade. his own modification. he slipped it into the side of a client broke enough to think wiping out jinsol inventory might’ve been a good idea. a heavy-sounding curse falls from his lips. a messy swipe of his hands as he tries to collect everything upturned on the table. manic eyes and chattering teeth. a glamorous life. it’s what he yearns for. he can’t meet his own expectations.

21630214_jinsol.txt

eventually, jinsol got sick of his mother’s dizzying circles that left them both lost. he moved out, on. hellbent on turning everything she taught him into a tool for himself. a way to crawl from the sheer desperation he seemed to live in. he craved opulence and wonder. awe and admiration. for all he’s seemingly worth now, jinsol’s initial endeavors were small, touch and go. dealt with the sorts of people that were elysium born and bred. namely: none too kind. but addiction’s a market all its own in this sort of place, and jinsol took advantage of it. he’s used his mod all of twice. a painful thing, and it’s left a scar. he doesn’t know what happened to either of the people on the other end of it. he’s callous enough to wish them dead. human enough that he wakes up in cold-sweat at four in the morning sometimes wondering if he’s a murderer.

it took a while to work his way up, and maybe he used some underhanded methods. doses meant to coax out secrets, understanding, trust. worked his way up and out of what seemed to be closets advertised as apartments. until he could afford a better supply, turned his brand into a necessity. ended up getting to know some bigger players around elysium. tried so very hard to pick up his mother’s mantle – to continue that endless, pointless quest of building a perfect life.

21680512_jinsol.vrml

jinsol looks almost garish. almost. draped in twined gold necklaces and delicate rings stacked along the lines of his knuckles. catch him in the right light of the fluorescent club-shifting-neon and he might glimmer like imitation sunlight. a white silk shirt and bottle service tucked away in a back corner of the afterlife. he has money, and he wears it like bragging rights. but he thrives on it. the stares. the attention. jealous, wanting. he craves it as much as people seem to crave his drugs. a symbiotic relationship. music thrums too loud around the room. enough to shake at bones. he spins a pill between he knuckles, and his eyes follow it. like he’s considering slipping it underneath his tongue. eventually, it’s pocketed. he doesn’t want to be his mother – as losing a battle as it seems to be.

21680512_jinsol.txt

twenty-five and he’s managed to carve out his own legacy. something built on the backs of vices. exploitative to be sure. but he’d argue a necessary one. doesn’t everyone deserve to be happy? he’s got connections, buyers, more than enough clients that he’s long ago been able to afford to move into an apartment with more than one room. he likes old school opulence. likes gold and velvet. likes paper-thin silk shirts, the subdued glimmer of diamonds. maybe he’d have more money if he didn’t waste it all so carelessly. it slips like water from his fingers. jewelry, furniture, perfumes, alcohol. anything that catches his whims, the unhoned impulse controls he’s given into all is life, only now he has the means for bigger mistakes.

21690326_jinsol.vrml

jinsol’s sprawled out on a couch. crushed velvet. it’d look lavish if not for the blotchy purpled wine stain near one arm of it. music spirals from a metal-boxed contraption in the corner. there’s a blanket tossed on top of it, maybe to hide a hologram it’s meant to simultaneously project. every time he takes a breath, it sounds wet. like pneumonia’s made a home from his lungs. his eyes are unfocused, and there’s a sheen of sweet on his brow. laid out next to him are vials in a shimmering variety of colors. an uncapped bottle of something that smells potent and alcoholic. there’s a retch of a noise, but nothing comes out. he rolls to his side and nearly topples. a manic laugh follows him.

21690326_jinsol.txt

new creations are in need of a willing test subjects. that’s what he tells himself, to keep himself from reflecting that warped image of his mother. bad habits catch up to him, pile up. he ignores the repercussions. it feels, sometimes, like he grew up wrong. like he’s constantly searching and seeking and coming up empty handed. but what he’s searching for is unknown, and without a name. despite it, he tries to continue his image of faux-perfection. what else is there to live for in the wasteland that is elysium?

[machinakrpx]

>> OPEN SONG JINSOL’S FILE …

:// AGE — 27 :// OCCUPATION — drug chemist :// CLASS —native

>> LOADING DEVELOPMENT …

:// MAGIC —  

jinsol’s magical is learned, and at the same time, seemingly twined into him. muscles and memory and nerves. it feels like it. something taught to him and adopted since he was old enough to let it manifest in his mind. it’s a second nature, nearly. infusing magic with medicine. or in his case, pseudo-medicine (he calls it medicine, at least). it’s something slipped in between measurement and chemicals and crushed herbs. built into molecules and compounding in a way that seems nearly impossible. should be impossible. but isn’t. a medical miracle, and maybe if he applied it different jinsol could be finding applications that would astonish, would’ve hefted him out of the slums of elysium on some miracle cure. but he doesn’t. just finds a way to manufacture emotion, to create a fabricated sense of bliss or love or warmth for people to envelope themselves in. like whiskey to warm yourself in the middle of a blizzard. a sort of danger ignored for that immediate sense of comfort.

:// MODIFICATIONS —

despite being an elysium native and building a large enough business that he has more means than most, jinsol doesn’t have many body modifications to speak of. just two.

the first is one he got done before he worked his way up, before he was able to pay enough for something above the books. but he’d needed it in the before period of his life. less now, though it’s a comforting reminder that it’s there. if you peel back the skin of his right wrist, there lies a hollowed out tube nestled between veins and bones. resting inside is a sliver of a knife.sharp and poised near a trigger spring. if he digs his finger in near his forearm and jams down on the end of the mechanism, it cuts out out. not entirely pleasant, considering it rips through skin on the way out. it also has to be manually wound back into his arm, meaning he has to seek someone out every time he hits the trigger. it’s meant as a last ditch defense system, for a hand ideally tucked up against a throat. he used to need it, back before he was working with hades. back when he was peddling his own goods and on his own. there’s a scar on his wrist now, a jagged sort of line left over from the two times he’s used it.

the second is less intrusive. a holographic tattoo on the nape of his head, a circle ring of a sun curved around the first jut of bone from his spine. something that shimmers and shivers and shakes before it implodes. then the hologram is looped back whole once again.

>> LOADING BIOGRAPHY …

tw: blood, drugs

RETRIEVING MEMORY…

21430102_sooji.vrml

a glitch – a vibrant flash of blue that reads so bright it hurts the retinas – the angle seems tipped. like the world’s off its axis. set instead on a lopsided table. baited breath, waiting for everything piled on top of it to slide off in a violent clatter. that’s the reaction the memory loop gives off when replayed. something not quite right that settles like nausea in the gut. trepidation. the unwanted kind. the memory holder’s perceptions, emotions flooding in. the room is sterile. blank-white floods the space. walls and sheets and floor. a glossy linoleum. there’s a rhythmic beep from a machine. a baby nestled in a set of arms – the memory holder’s – another glitch. the baby wails. the angle of the memory slips more. like the downward trajectory of a rollercoaster. from here, she plummets.

21430102_sooji.txt

lee sooji, a woman with too many secrets and unwillingness to divide interest from herself. naturally, a baby doesn’t fit well into the equation. even if it was planned. there’s not a lot of picture perfect anything that happens in elysium, but she’d always liked the idea of that. perfection. it’s hard to obtain though. even with a knowledge of chemical-infused magic that gave her the ability to create and shape her own world in the form of hallucinogens. is it a surprise that the marriage fell apart? probably not. a lot of things fall apart in elysium. dismantled by the society around them. he moved on, she was stuck with a baby that she didn’t really want. ignored at first. sharp cries, neglected fits. palms fit to ears of someone who constantly decided she was too young to deal with this mess of a life.

her feelings changed overtime. not dramatically, in a wild shift of personality. but slightly. when jinsol started to take shape more as a human than living soundbox. she liked some things, and she could list them off in a way that was reminiscent of explaining why one preferred a certain restaurant. she liked the adoration in his eyes. the way words could be pieced together into loving sentiments, something that seemed to runaway along with her ex husband. and sooji had always liked that. adoration. she valued it above nearly anything else. instilled the same beliefs into a young mind. he grew under fickle reliance. like a plant with a broken trellis, bent with the whims of her emotions. whether or not she felt like being a mother. whether or not she felt like being free of his shackling existence.

21490714_jinsol.vrml

it’s a humid day. it’s distinguishable based on that summer haze of warped air that makes the floor look bent. the click-whir of a broken fan. the chunks of ice jinsol has shoved into his cheeks, like an overambitious chipmunk. not that jinsol has any idea what a chipmunk is, he’s never seen one. just the scattered pigeons with broken-toed feet that loiter near the bottom step of his building. he looks like a wild thing. a smattering of band-aids covering scabbing, knobby knees. overgrown hair that hangs knotted in his eyes. a dirty smudge near his nose. gangly colt legs thrown over the edge of a dilapidated couch. he’s alone. some might say he’s too young to be alone, but he’d brustle up defensive at that. independent. biting off more than he can chew, but he’d rather swallow it down and half-choke than risk his pride and spit it back up. there’s a children’s cartoon projected up from an old holo-box sitting on a coffee table. sometimes it fritzes, and he stretches out a leg to thwack it with his heel. every ten minutes it seems like there’s a run of commercials hoping to sell him synthetically flavored juice. eventually, he loses patience and separates himself from the show, slips outside the door. some might say he’s too young to be running around the streets of elysium on his own. jinsol would cut them a smile, jagged and feral. a boy raised by chaos and the immediate impulses of a six-year-old.

21490714_jinsol.txt

jinsol’s youth is cut up into fractured pieces. the moments when his mother was there, and the moments when she wasn’t. his morals are ambiguous, lessons learned infrequent. and sometimes best avoided anyway. it depended on her mood, that’s what he learned. and it turned his desperate. seeking affection in a way that could turn near-violent. he’s a mirror image, in some ways. her reflection. has a constant needing for affection and validation. and when she gives, he takes. soaks it up. he likes it best when she’s at home with him, and jinsol babbles this out often. she regales stories in his ear, drifting off in the crook of her arm. humid ‘ i love you’s whispered against her neck, and she tells him just how much she loves him back. he can tell when she’s going to disappear by the look in her eyes. it’s like a lightswitch that only she can reach. a blank stare, or an emotion he can’t quite peace together yet, but he knows it’s bad. knows it makes him feel bad.

it’s resentment, but that’s a connection he pieces together later.

and then he’s on his own. raiding the fridge for non-perishables left behind and amusing himself. sometimes he skips school. it doesn’t matter, nobody notices he’s gone in the overcrowded classroom. wanders the streets instead, making friends with stray cats slipping through gaps of buildings too small a fit for most anyone else. a grand adventure, that’s what he’d tell himself to keep from feeling lonely. and then she’d come back, and it’d warm his bones. chase away that feeling. would try to grip to her with nails embedded into skin when he saw that look in her eyes. until he was pried off. he thinks he left scars, when he reminisces back nowadays, kept up late at night, sleepless. tries to reimagine his mother. but he can’t remember just how violent his longing for her to stay was.

21601130_jinsol.vrml

he’s older this time, pushing the bounds of maturity. stick-skinny still, and he drowns in his clothes. his hair is stained purple. so are the tips of his fingers. a smell of potent chemicals hang in the air, something nearly palpable. it’s either from the fresh dye or the burner he’s bent over. there’s a vial clamped above it. something bubbling and neon when the fluorescent flicker of the overhead light decides to work in brief moments of unsurity. his mother’s next to him, fingers tracing spirals up and down the line of his spine. every so often she redirects his hand. murmurs words into his ear. a palm pressed to the small of his back, and it’s nearly like a transferal. pressing magic into nerves. he doesn’t think it’s how it works, really. but it felt like it at the time, sitting in that tiny, cluttered apartment. a flicker of fire and warmth and belonging as his mother taught him secrets that were hoarded in his family. jinsol wonders if they’d ever been illustrious. if this strange magic ever mattered. there’s a sizzle-pop of a noise. a change in color. the vial’s removed from the fire. eventually, his mother tests it. he holds his breathe, waits to see if there will be a change in her eyes.

21601130_jinsol.txt

jinsol loves and hates it. the knowledge he has, the strange way he can cut chemicals with magic. something that grows larger and more complex as he does. now though, all of seventeen, and he loves the connection it’s forged between him and his mother. the way she’ll gravitate back to him, pass down this strange family heirloom. and he hates it, because it robs him from her too. how she’ll twist herself up in these strange moods and slip out of his life. to find someone, something, more capable than him. more fulfilling. but he took those mismatched emotions and jammed them into his own ambitions. his mother had never really scratched past the surface of capabilities.

jinsol became obsessive, in the same manic way he tends to become obsessive about a lot of things he cares about. and with that same strange of caring, an emotion caught halfway between love and violence. he found ways to bottle bliss, press desire into pills. a manmade euphoria, and he expanded his experimentation as he got older. found a way to coax out truth from an unwilling tongue and an addled mind. trust from the wary, if only they’d swallow down some of his magic. how much of jinsol’s success is luck? if one knew what he could make, the obsessive lengths he’d go to carve out what he decided he was owed, it would be a laughable question.

21630214_jinsol.vrml

the setting’s changed in this memory. the apartment’s even smaller, and the window’s stuck. the corner doesn’t fit down all the way. a cold gust slips underneath everytime the wind howls, angry and cutting with frost. a worn curtain flutters. there’s hardly a point in it, it’s nearly transparent from sun damage. jinsol’s fingers are white from the cold. there’s a scattering of pills on a table. his hands are sticky with blood. so is his wrist. half-congealed. his face is white too, but he looks ghost-startled over cold. the shock of a situation that saps the life, leaves everything devoid of color. eventually he fumbles for an old shirt, jams it over his hand. the blade’s still visible, sticking out from his arm. his own blade. his own modification. he slipped it into the side of a client broke enough to think wiping out jinsol inventory might’ve been a good idea. a heavy-sounding curse falls from his lips. a messy swipe of his hands as he tries to collect everything upturned on the table. manic eyes and chattering teeth. a glamorous life. it’s what he yearns for. he can’t meet his own expectations.

21630214_jinsol.txt

eventually, jinsol got sick of his mother’s dizzying circles that left them both lost. he moved out, on. hellbent on turning everything she taught him into a tool for himself. a way to crawl from the sheer desperation he seemed to live in. he craved opulence and wonder. awe and admiration. for all he’s seemingly worth now, jinsol’s initial endeavors were small, touch and go. dealt with the sorts of people that were elysium born and bred. namely: none too kind. but addiction’s a market all its own in this sort of place, and jinsol took advantage of it. he’s used his mod all of twice. a painful thing, and it’s left a scar. he doesn’t know what happened to either of the people on the other end of it. he’s callous enough to wish them dead. human enough that he wakes up in cold-sweat at four in the morning sometimes wondering if he’s a murderer.

it took a while to work his way up, and maybe he used some underhanded methods. doses meant to coax out secrets, understanding, trust. worked his way up and out of what seemed to be closets advertised as apartments. until he could afford a better supply, turned his brand into a necessity. ended up getting to know some bigger players around elysium. tried so very hard to pick up his mother’s mantle – to continue that endless, pointless quest of building a perfect life.

21680512_jinsol.vrml

jinsol looks almost garish. almost. draped in twined gold necklaces and delicate rings stacked along the lines of his knuckles. catch him in the right light of the fluorescent club-shifting-neon and he might glimmer like imitation sunlight. a white silk shirt and bottle service tucked away in a back corner of the afterlife. he has money, and he wears it like bragging rights. but he thrives on it. the stares. the attention. jealous, wanting. he craves it as much as people seem to crave his drugs. a symbiotic relationship. music thrums too loud around the room. enough to shake at bones. he spins a pill between he knuckles, and his eyes follow it. like he’s considering slipping it underneath his tongue. eventually, it’s pocketed. he doesn’t want to be his mother – as losing a battle as it seems to be.

21680512_jinsol.txt

twenty-five and he’s managed to carve out his own legacy. something built on the backs of vices. exploitative to be sure. but he’d argue a necessary one. doesn’t everyone deserve to be happy? he’s got connections, buyers, more than enough clients that he’s long ago been able to afford to move into an apartment with more than one room. he likes old school opulence. likes gold and velvet. likes paper-thin silk shirts, the subdued glimmer of diamonds. maybe he’d have more money if he didn’t waste it all so carelessly. it slips like water from his fingers. jewelry, furniture, perfumes, alcohol. anything that catches his whims, the unhoned impulse controls he’s given into all is life, only now he has the means for bigger mistakes.

21690326_jinsol.vrml

jinsol’s sprawled out on a couch. crushed velvet. it’d look lavish if not for the blotchy purpled wine stain near one arm of it. music spirals from a metal-boxed contraption in the corner. there’s a blanket tossed on top of it, maybe to hide a hologram it’s meant to simultaneously project. every time he takes a breath, it sounds wet. like pneumonia’s made a home from his lungs. his eyes are unfocused, and there’s a sheen of sweet on his brow. laid out next to him are vials in a shimmering variety of colors. an uncapped bottle of something that smells potent and alcoholic. there’s a retch of a noise, but nothing comes out. he rolls to his side and nearly topples. a manic laugh follows him.

21690326_jinsol.txt

new creations are in need of a willing test subjects. that’s what he tells himself, to keep himself from reflecting that warped image of his mother. bad habits catch up to him, pile up. he ignores the repercussions. it feels, sometimes, like he grew up wrong. like he’s constantly searching and seeking and coming up empty handed. but what he’s searching for is unknown, and without a name. despite it, he tries to continue his image of faux-perfection. what else is there to live for in the wasteland that is elysium?