missinghan

[missinghan]

Limbo's Fic Recs

this list is a collection of my all time faves. please message me if you want your fic taken down or if a link does not work.

disclaimers: (1) some works are nsfw so minors dni. (2) i will be providing limbo thoughts after the recommendations but they are by no means meant to characterize anyone else's experience. (3) i am not modifying the warnings/descriptions the authors put themselves.

last updated ⇢ 26.3.24 | * ⇢ limbo thoughts

bang chan

Pieces of you | fluff, angst, singledad!chris, mutual pining, neigbors!au. (wc: 8.7k) @astraystayyh

* ⇢ omfg sahar is one of the best writers i've ever come across in my entire life. i beg of anyone who comes across this rec list to please check out her masterlist.*

series

queenmaker | ninth member au, angst, fluff, coming of age, social media, cancel culture, anxiety, depression, forbidden love. (ongoing) @kangaracha

* ⇢ i had never read a 9th member au before but wowowowowow i love this one so so much*

⇢ to be updated

lee minho

youngblood | college!au, best friends to lovers!au, angst, fluff. (wc: 17.4k) @changbeanie

* ⇢ this may have been the first lee know fic i read (or at least one of the longer ones). this fic is just amazing. slow burns are my weakness.*

your heart & your headache, too. | stray god au, fluff, humor, angst, action. (wc: 9.6k) @missinghan

* ⇢ another one of my introductions to stayblr and wow. this fic is still one of the best i have ever read. the characters are so funny, relatable (at least mc is for me), and there is a deeper message that just amazes me every time i read it. check out their masterlist.*

Invisible thread - 1, 2 | fluff, angst, academic rivals to lovers, slow burn. (wc: 37k total) @/astraystayyh

* ⇢ sahar, when i catch you sahar. banger right here. i love this so so so much. i'm limiting myself to one fic of hers per member or else i'd be putting everything she's ever written here. oops, what's this? you should check it out -> masterlist*

cold as ice | figureskater!minho, fluff, first love, suggestive smut. (wc: 11.7k) @linospuddin

* ⇢ this fic is my roman empire. if you're ever going to choose something from this list, this better be one of the top contenders. oh no, i dropped this masterlist*

piece by piece | college au, mutual pining, fluff, angst. (wc: 6.2k) @godslino

* ⇢ take my nonexistent money please. this work is so cute and funny and sweet and i just love it so much. yet another case of i can't include everything or else all of ina's works would be here. this masterlist over here is looking pretty temping rn*

2:45am | established relationship, fluff, dad!minho. (wc: 2.5k) @/godslino

* ⇢ ignore what i said above, i have to include this one omggggggggggggg i'm dying*

the enemies to lovers project | enemies to lovers, college au, slight angst, fluff. (wc: 18k+) @softukiyos

* ⇢ one of the first fics i ever read for skz. i feel it deserves to be shared, the development is so good*

I'm my mother's daughter | fluff, angst, smut. (wc: 29k) @jisungparker

* ⇢ highly suggest reading the warnings before continuing with this goddamn masterpiece. omg this fic is so good and amazing and just so original*

7 days | fluff, best friends to lovers au, college au. (wc: 3.7k) @yyxgin

* ⇢ so much fluff. it's so cute, i love friends to lovers so much*

a marriage story - pt.1, pt.2 | fake marriage au, angst, fluff, suggestive. (wc: ~10.6k total) @scxrlettwxtches

* ⇢ another case of friend to lovers i've caught. i love how there is a sequel that expands upon their relationship*

not so bad | friend-to-lovers, roommates, college au. (wc: 13.7k) @luvknow

* ⇢ i did not realize the amount of college friends-to-lovers i've read, but i love this one. it is very much worth the read and every time i reread, i feel a little happier*

bunny - one, two | strangers to lovers, neighbors!au, smut, fluff, angst. (wc: 12.7k total) @tasteleeknow

* ⇢ *ahem* ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh read it read it read it. another case of i just have to include one fic or else i'd be putting their entire masterlist. oh, oops looks like i just did*

series

one last dance | smau, crack, angst, fluff, non!idol au, major character death, friends to lovers, soul mates, first love, roommates. (wc: 37k+) (sc: 271) @feelbokkie

* ⇢ sobbing, i loved this couple and their friends so much. queen of angst for a reason (don't mess with seungmin's wife)*

hello stranger | smut, angst, fluff, soulmate!au, enemies to lovers, jealousy, pining, unrequited love. (wc: 45k ongoing) @/tasteleeknow

* ⇢ i love this series holy.... the character developments are amazing and i'm so excited for the next chapter*

counterpunch | friends to lovers, boxer!minho, hurt/comfort, angst, fluff, eventual smut. (wc: 6.1k ongoing) @/godslino

* ⇢ i'm screechinggggg. this series only has one chapter so far but there is so so so much potential here. minho is characterized in the most human way possible and i love it*

Force Quit // Episode III: Spider | dystopian, cyberpunk, mutually-pining fuck buddies, smut, angst. (wc: 23.5k) @eoieopda

* ⇢ "limbo, why is this in the series category?" that is because it is part of an amazing series that has outstanding and immersive world building. i just wanted to highlight this specific episode because omfg this is one of the best pieces of writing i have ever had the pleasure of reading. you should definitely read the two episodes before this one to get the bigger picture*

seo changbin

how to tame a prince | dragon prince!changbin, fantasy/royal au, enemies-to-lovers. (wc: 11.6k) @/luvknow

* ⇢ grinning from ear to ear because of this fic. i don't read changbin fics as often as i should (i need to read more). the world-building is so cool too*

Burning in the winter wind | romcom vibes, (fake) enemies to lovers, fluff. (wc: 4.4k) @/astraystayyh

* ⇢ spare me please. i beg of you. i keep getting hit with arrows to my heart*

hwang hyunjin

summer strike | strangers to lovers, found family, comfort fic, heavily inspired by the kdrama. (wc: 23k) @soobnny

* ⇢ i feel so warm inside, so why are tears leaking out of my eyes. this fic is so so so so good, please give it a read*

The snow falls, we fall apart | roommates to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, slow burn, longing. (wc: 13k) @/astraystayyh

* ⇢ don't look at me right now please i haven't even been able to give my full review on this masterpiece yet i'm sorry*

ace | college!au, sports!au, fake enemies to friends to lovers, fluff, humor, hurt/comfort, slice of life, mutual pining, slow burn. (wc: 15.2k) @forlix

* ⇢ haikyuu inspired, uh don't mind if i do. seriously though, banger after banger after banger. i still haven't had time to give a review on this one either i'm sorryyyyy.*

han jisung

Volcano | enemies to lovers, slow burn, fluff, angst. (wc: 13.2k) @/astraystayyh

* ⇢ sahar you can't escape my praise. this is such a great rendition of han jisung. i loved each of the characters' developments and their natural progression in their relationship. enemies to lovers (in my opinion) is such a hard trope to get right and she nailed it*

series

young god | serial killer!au. (wc: 87.5k total) @maatryoshkaa

* ⇢ read the warnings for each chapter!!!! this series is amazing but covers dark topics that may be triggering. there is a series trailer (video) but be cautious since there is some disturbing imagery. everything is so well put together and cohesive*

Let's Fall in Love, IRL | smau, crack, angst, fluff, non!idol au, pen pals to lovers, friend of a friend to lovers. (wc: 24k+) (sc: 324) @/feelbokkie

* ⇢ first bokkie series i was able to read from when it first released to completion. each upload had me hanging on the edge of my seat. i love this series, the couple is so cute*

⇢ to be updated

lee felix

felix navidad | strangers (to friends) to lovers, Christmas Evel!au, fluff, angst. (wc: 16.4k) @candlewaxandp0lar0ids

* ⇢ i feel so happy every time i read this. it's so perfect and cute. the touch on the heavier topics is also handled very well*

everything has changed (besides myself) | babysitter!au, girldad!lix, toothrotting fluff, angst, exes to lovers, hurt/comfort, happy ending, non-linear storyline. (wc: 5.4k) @/forlix

* ⇢ my heart whyyyyyyyyyy. permanent tears have built up into my eyes because of this fic*

kim seungmin

eighteen | best friends to lovers, college au, slow burn, angst, fluff. (wc: 19.8k) @/soobnny

* ⇢ one of the first seungmin fics i read, i love it so much. i feel like this is a classic on this side of stayblr*

(Don't) Like You a Latte | Cafe AU with a hint of a college AU, fluff. (wc: 8.3k) @getcooler

* ⇢ i have this tumblr's user memorized because i lost this fic once and could not find it again for months. never again. it's so adorable and the banter is great.*

In my dreams | (Fake) enemies to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, slow burn. (wc: ~4.5k) @/astraystayyh

* ⇢ i'm not crying, you are. i love this work so much omg. i'm fighting air from the cuteness*

yang jeongin

blue dream | smut, explicit sexual content, fluff. (wk: 6.1k) @charmercharm3r

* ⇢ this fic...i think about it every once in a while...maybe a little more often than i should*

⇢ to be updated

ot8

skz + the habits you share | fluff, humor, borderline crack, established relationship(s). (wc: 3.7k) @/forlix

* ⇢ this work is so adorable and made me laugh, i love it so much. forlix really nailed each personality*

series

no nut november | smut. (completed) @sluttywonwoo, @gimmeurtmi

* ⇢ I-, well-, yk-, it's just as the title says. this series is so good*

Winter falls | (ongoing 6/8) @/astraystayyh, @/forlix

* ⇢ read the individual warnings for each fic as they are all conceptually very different. i am now realizing that i included like basically all the fics in this series within the individual member rec, but oh well. the more places the merrier*

#tysm for the mention <3

[missinghan]

my favorite trope to write is two people knowing the other is developing feelings for them and them thinking to themselves “how can a heart like yours love a heart like mine?” because their self-worth is absolute shit.

but what they don’t realize is they can bring out both the best and the worst in each other and no one else can wholly see and embrace all that there is to who they are so they are essentially stuck together until the end of the universe.

#m. waft #I love these two but I’m never posting it on tumblr #it’s just too much

[missinghan]

maya’s writing afterthought —

I was debating whether to do it on this one or illicit & priceless but I was like “why not both” because I’m a menace that thinks way too much. So I was pondering to myself if Chan were able to propose properly, would he do it with his deceased mother’s ring?

If it were the me of a month ago, I would have said yes. Simple reason right, because it creates a nice silver lining. The one thing that brought them together at the beginning was now the thing that tied them to each other for the rest of their life together. But now, I would say no. Chan would simply put it in a box and place it in a drawer, not in the glass display of his father’s museum because it’s his way of moving on from his trauma and leaving his mother to finally rest in peace.

To make it worse, if it’s not enough angst already, Chan must have already bought MC a brand new ring but his shitty self-worth was holding him back. He was afraid of things that may never even happen. As someone who was raised to be a killer leading other killers, he never thought of how he could be gentle with someone like he’s touching glass. Oh my god NOT TO MENTION because he was forced to kill his own mother, the one person that wholeheartedly loved him, it created this negative association when it comes to affection and being tied down with someone for life.

Therefore, Chan wouldn’t propose with his mother’s ring.

falling asleep in a time machine ⤖ bang chan

❖ genre : mafia au; fluffy angst; hurt/comfort; female reader insert

❖ word count : 6,9k.

❖ warning : swearing, implied major character death, mention of arson, depictions of vomiting, killing, blood, death, can be brutal (!!!), delusional happy ending. 

❖ summary : four times you try to go back in time and save chan; or alternatively, you keep dreaming about chan to see if there is a way to undo his death when in reality there isn’t — from the world of illicit & priceless.

❖ author’s note : just finished my first term of uni (like actually the first term ever) and I’m so dead inside so here’s a silly little something. I can’t use pts anymore so pls bear with the banner *cries and dusts off this old blog* also I try to explain here why Chan was so attached and pissed off when mc stole his mother’s ring even though it’s accidental.

first attempt —

There are three missions that have altered the course of your and Chan’s relationship.

The first mission goes back to when you were still going on heists and Ryujin had foolishly put a piece of Chan’s mother’s sentiments into your pocket. Neither you nor Chan have come to know or like each other much before it.

The second one is the mansion with a bomb planted in the basement and Chan got locked inside a conference room with a three-layered door, one of them made from the same metal as the fucking Titanic. The third mission involves a casino where the Germans and Italians came together to push Chan toward a dead-end they had cultivated for the Devil himself, to his ultimate demise. They are all too arrogant to admit that Chan will take over the entirety of the East Asian market before any of them can start rolling in their graves.

Three missions of importance and not long after that, you and Chan have agreed to never go on a mission without each other. An unwritten contract. An unspoken promise. Nothing that the mafia engages in is legal so everything runs on trust, on how much faith you are willing to give those who you keep close.

However, there is a fourth mission that the Underworld records will fail to keep because even only a minuscule part of the Bang family is informed about this—how their precious heir has been summoned to bring home the girl he loves.

“Would you do laundry and taxes with me?”

“That’s an odd way to propose to someone, Y/N. And please, you’re asking an obvious question.” Chan looks up at you from his book. His smile is gentle, soft at the corners with his dimples sinking in—it’s how you know that he means it—the way it usually is these days. The way it has been for the past year. It is almost obscure, you think, how you both would have wanted each other’s head on a stick a year ago before one of you managed to make the other person cry out of gratitude.

You lift the book away from his face, glimpsing at the cover. Because Chan is an absolute heathen, he has been reading No Longer Human and you’re being annoying about it because he hasn’t come out to train with you for two days already. “Are you telling me you’ll say ‘no’?”

“We’re already doing laundry and taxes together. We will just have matching rings and a signed piece of paper,” Chan gives you a pointed look; he always looks so serious whenever he wants to correct you as if your sarcasm is that dry. “So it naturally implies as a ‘yes’, idiot,” he nags, even though he doesn’t mean the last part.

“Oh how you wound me, love,” you bite back, even though you don’t mean it either. “Chan, come on. You’re locking yourself up in a prison.”

Chan lets out a long, heavy sigh as if he’s insulted that you have just called his room a prison—which you never verbally hinted at, he simply interpreted it that way. He reaches over to grab the book from your hand, seemingly giving up his reading time for you, and places it on his bedside. 

“What are you–” You watch as Chan walks over to one of his mahogany drawers. “-doing?”

“I need caffeine to talk to you.”

Despite your bristling, he stays true to his words and finds himself a mug, a tea bag, along with a boiler. By the time Chan finishes filling up the boiler with water and turns on the heating switch, your legs are dangling over the edge of his bed as you puff up like a cat, baffled and offended. 

“So,” Chan inquires, a steaming mug of tea in his hand. “What’s up?”

“I find your current state distressing to look at,” you elaborate with glee, a glint coming into your eyes that Chan knows you’re up to no good. “Take a week off with me. We can go anywhere you want, it’ll be a short getaway, just the two of us.”

Chan’s back is turned toward you because he’s too busy searching for a spoon but you can boldly assume that he’s smiling. It’s hinted in his tone when he asks, “You mean a vacation?”

“Brilliant interpretation, Chan,” you smile wryly. “Of course, I meant a vacation!”

“No, you can go have fun by yourself. You have my permission,” he shakes his head. “I have things to attend to. Meetings, banquets, important business transactions. You know how boring the mafia lifestyle is.”

You still, voice low and suppressed in something Chan can’t seem to grasp at. “You’re going back to your family.” It’s barely a movement, a small enough action. Any passerby would think that you have only faltered a little but Chan has observed you for a good while now to notice you’re holding your shoulders back from trembling. 

“I am going back to my family,” he repeats calmly. “Only for a week, though. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“Chan, I know they want to see me.”

Chan tries not to let anything show on his face. “And they may very well kill you because that is what they are. Godawful, egoistic, and incapable of compassion.”

“Let me go with you, I—” you begin, though you cut yourself off almost instantly. The room is suddenly steeped in silence, unwieldy at the absence of your words. Every noise seems amplified in the quiet: the boys’ chatters echoing dully from the living room, the ticking hands of the clock, and every breath you take to calm the anxiety in your rib cage.

I do not fear death, sickness, or anyone’s hatred. What I fear most is losing you, Chan. It’s all so beyond you because a year ago, you were a thief, taking things as you please and sending them away when they’re no longer of use for your benefit. Now there is someone who you will live for and his kiss you will kill for, his laugh you will die for.

“Chan, do you have any idea what I would turn into if you left me?” You have always worried loudly, from the volume of your attentiveness and the anxiety beneath your skin all lie in the tender manner of how you love Chan—the same goes for him, that you can be certain of.

“I will never leave you, Y/N. We will be okay,” he assures you, unbearably calm.

Chan is a liar. 

second attempt —

Chan is supposed to go back to the Bang family’s estate with Yuriko for the New Year. Yuriko is the housekeeper whom he has retired for about a year ever since you came into the picture. The boys, especially Jisung, have been forced into keeping their surroundings clean because, for some wicked reason, they think you are absolutely terrifying when you’re upset about their muddy shoes dirtying the floor after a mission. Yuriko always giggles at that, her Young Master surely knows how to pick a partner. 

“I’ve got word that your father wants you to back to the estate, Young Master,” Yuriko tells Chan when she finds you and Chan in the archive because you have insisted on reading about something you won’t say a word to him. Surely, Chan recognizes what you’re searching for but he doesn’t mention it. 

“He said he wanted to make sure you are ready to take over his position. And there is a dinner he wants your attendance for,” Yuriko continues, hands clasped behind her back. You didn’t even realize when she stepped in and approached Chan—for a mere housekeeper to be so swift and quiet with her movements, you have long guessed that she’s not just any old woman to be hired by the Bang family.

The way Chan stiffens in his seat is telling all on its own. You are suddenly struck with the recurring memory of how Minho used to babble about how much of an ass Chan’s family is when he has had one too many drinks. “You don’t know how bigshot mafia families treat their children, do you? They kept the world from knowing for a reason. I’m surprised Chan didn’t turn out to be a monster like them.”

“Forgive me, Yuriko, but you can tell the old man to suck it up,” Chan says softly but his voice is dark, tense, riddled with a sharpness you haven’t heard from him in a long time—you were threatened just the same way when you had stolen his mother’s ring. Now you realize Chan only ever speaks so heartlessly if something precious to him is hanging on the verge of being taken away. 

“Young Master,” Yuriko frowns for two reasons; firstly, Chan has never been able to decline his blood family of anything and secondly, there isn’t much that she can do to solve the problem at hand. She’s a mere servant for the Bang family; she doesn’t have much power to begin with and therefore, she can’t exactly tell them ‘no’. 

“No, you can’t make me,” Chan grits because he knows, he understands it all too well. Unsaid words of all the things money can buy hang in the air like bile. 

“Young Master Christopher, you must know what happens if you defy your father.” And there goes Yuriko’s final warning along with Chan dashing out of the archive, straight through the hallway and the front door of the mansion, completely vanishing in the white curtain of December snow.

Yuriko murmurs something under her breath, unintended for you to hear her. You continue staring forward, the file in your hands completely forgotten. “He can come home with me,” you say without actually thinking about it until she turns to stare at you, expressionless before breaking into a fit of giggles.

“I think Young Master would like that.”

With that, you set off to find Chan.

“No one will love you unconditionally like we do.” “You belong to us, so do as we say.” “Work to kill, kill or you’ll die. You were born to kill, it’s a gift that not everyone receives.” “The world will bow before you and sway the way you want it but you’ll have to-”

“I don’t want any of that,” Chan hisses but the voices keep coming back louder, harsher, with more bite than he has ever heard from them. “None of you ever gave me anything that matters! You just can’t admit that you made me a murderer!!” 

The snow around him sinks with each step he takes, their words still echoing in his mind and sending shivers down his spine, driven so deeply inside his skull that he wishes he could have nothing of this reality. “Be mindful of yourself. Control it.” “Your fangs and claws are too sharp for you to be swinging just at anyone,” he hears them again

His nose burns in the cold but Chan doesn’t notice something warm and wet trickle down his cheekbones. “You never cared about restraint. You said I must kill or I would die. You all just want to possess me, you want me not as an heir but as a commodity!!”

“It’s how we’ve been running this family. It’s how we keep things in order. You’re one of us, Christopher, you are this family.”

With a huff, Chan eventually gives in and listens because he has no other choice but to; he slides down against concrete with a white-out vision, a quivering figure with nothing on but his cardigan. “Then you’re just as godawful as any of them,” he tells himself, knees curling against his chest, almost justified in his own lie that he wants to burst out laughing.

Chan knows they have made him more of a weapon than a child, more of a monster than a man and he is stuck with it for good. He has been holding onto life just because he can, not so much that he wants to. Because he never truly wanted anything before or was wanted in any way.

“Oh my god, you’re a fucking man-child!”

He hears someone’s nagging from afar and ignores it, hugging himself impossibly tighter because asking for comfort is unacceptable, they taught him so. “Chan!!” He hopes it goes away with all of the other voices. 

It doesn’t. Instead, it comes closer in a humane form, boots crunching against the snow and warm breaths sounding rhythmically. “It’s been an hour. Do you have any idea how worried we all were- how worried I was?! What the actual hell,” you snap. “Now I’m going to hear all this shit from Seungmin again because I let you run off and he’s too terrified of you to properly lecture you. God-”

Your rambles cut off when you kneel down next to him, rummaging for a scarf, a pair of gloves, yet another pair of gloves, his puffer jacket, and a hat from your bag. Chan quietly watches as he tries to blink away the oncoming tears but he can’t—they keep coming. He doesn’t reply when your scolding goes on because even though your voice is sharp, Chan can catch the worry hidden along the edges. Being cared for and cherished like this has made him realize how much he doesn’t want to come back to his family and he wants to cry like he’s the fourteen-year-old boy who used to refuse to pick up a gun all over again.

A child who was unable to stuff down the overwhelming agony and grief forced upon him. A child who was weaponized. A child who was threatened into killing his own mother. “If you can’t kill what you hold near and dear, you’ll never be able to kill anyone to save yourself.”

“Chan?” you call out to him, unbearably soft. There’s a certainty, a sort of gentleness in the way his name is said that only makes his tears come hotter, more and more of it because your love feels big, overwhelming.

Chan hates crying so he never did, not when they had locked him up in his room, not when they had starved him because of his disobedience, not when they had made him pull the trigger with the gun’s mouth pressing against his mother’s chest. Chan hates crying but it seems to be all he’s doing now. 

You’re wrapping him up so gently and trying to warm him up because you know he’s just as human as any mundane individual out there. Humans shiver when the temperature drops, they shed tears when they’re upset, and they bleed and bruise at the right amount of impact. That’s why humans are so clingy toward each other so they can prevent harm from coming the other person’s way. Because no one enjoys getting hurt and there is no good reason to voluntarily get hurt; it sounds like common sense but Chan never grew up with such things. He never came to think he was deserving of such things.

“Chan, come home with me. Forget your family. I don’t need to know about them,” you smile at him, somehow empathetic and so understanding when Chan has barely given you an explanation, when he is desperate to fill the silence but he knows his voice will be weak with tears, stumbling, and pitching all over the place.

Chan sniffles, finding the courage to say something back because he wants to, not because he feels like he has to, “Can I really…come-come home with you?”

“I’m sure the girls wouldn't mind, they might be a little annoying. Yeji, though, can be wary of strangers,” you shrug, something so relaxed about your posture tells him that you have learned to accept something without telling him. 

A breathy chuckle. “Especially when they’re a mafia leader.”

An exhale. Chan shudders when you embrace him wholly—every moment of pride and arrogance, betrayal and hurt that he has been boxing away—as the beautiful mess that he is. You’re the safest person on the face of Earth not because you are on equal terms with him in power but because you never care about those things. You will let him break something, burn something down, cry, and laugh however he pleases but you won’t ever let go of his hand. You never ask him for anything in return while continuing to save him over and over again.

He’s so unbelievably lucky, Chan thinks but doesn’t say it aloud, instead, he tells you, “If you’ll have me.”

The night after you drive Chan back to your mansion, the place goes up in flames. Only you are able to open your eyes to see the next daylight.

“Welcome home,” you want to whisper but can only watch a last smile bloom on the face of a ghost amidst the orange blaze.

third attempt —

You decide to come home with Chan.

For a non-mafia family, it might go like this.

Meeting Chan’s parents will be the hardest thing you have ever done—and that is coming from someone who has broken through the world’s most modern security systems and got your hands on objects worth billions of dollars. 

You will bow when you meet them, use the politest speech you have taught yourself last minute, and desperately try not to remember how Chan was forced to shoot his own mother as a child. They will pinch your cheek and call you lovely, chuckling at how stiff you are and offering you a ‘Come on in! Don’t mind the mess, it’s always how our house is.’

You will smile and you will play along because you want them to like you so badly it hurts. 

Chan will gawk at you without even trying to hide it because you have given him a completely different experience upon your first encounter. Casual, timid, and quick with your tongues when it comes to those witty retorts.

They will then ask you, ‘‘What are your hobbies? Any sports? Instruments?’’ Purely in the Asian parents’ style. 

You will be so nervous that you forget you play the violin and practice meditation occasionally. You will sit at their dinner table in their cozy, lived-in home, and rack your brain for a proper answer that might be deemed reasonable for a mundane girl. “It can be anything you do for fun, honey. No need to be nervous,” they will say again and you will give them a small grimace in return. 

It’s probably deeply fucked up when the first thing that comes to your mind is ‘I retired from heists a year ago because museums are fucking boring so I have moved on to finding new and creative ways to eliminate anything that might be the cause of Chan’s suffering.’

“…You play the violin beautifully,” Chan will suggest quietly beside you, his hand laced with yours beneath the table. “And you interrupt my reading time whenever you need attention.”

“I…I like to be with you,” you will finally find the courage to say with a firm squeeze of his hand, and the strength to smile when his eyes widen faintly, flustered yet not surprised. 

Still, it doesn’t matter whether Chan was born from a mafia family. You don’t hesitate to hold his hand beneath the table when Chan tenses up from the disappointed gaze of his father, lean over ever so slightly, and whisper, “I like to be with you.” He almost gasps but refrains. “Wherever we are. As long as you allow me to stay by your side.”

For once, Chan lets himself think that he won’t fuck up something before he even gets to have it in his arms. 

You did come home with Chan even if the dinner is anything but cozy and mundane. Their smiles are cold porcelain, a familiarity with death so staggering you feel nauseous. They are all here, though. Every single one of them. “I’ll be back,” you say and excuse yourself to use the restroom, he assumes.

Chan finds an uneasy slick in his throat, almost thick like blood when he sees a bright thing in your eyes. He lets you go anyway. Will things happen differently if he holds you back? 

Minutes after your withdrawal from the dinner table, an explosion goes off downstairs. The mansion quivers with a long string of rumble, a horrible feeling looming over everyone in the room like an ugly shadow. Though, no one bats an eye. Maintaining such a high position in the Underworld for so long is more than enough for the bounty on each of their heads to go up to millions of dollars. 

As much as Chan detests his blood family, he doesn’t want to die here, a horrendous place for his corpse to be found. So he stands as the rest of the room begins arming themselves, doing his best not to pay any heed to his father, and bolts downstairs. 

In situations like this, he is taught to close his heart and kill. Hence why there was barely any screaming when the commotion occurred, only the metallic sounds of bullets being clicked into their chamber. Truth be told, there is a weapon vault on the main floor of the mansion. Chan knows the most efficient shortcut there and can run through any hallways even without any lights on. He did grow up in this terrible place, and now he will make use of that to get you out of here before anything else. 

Chan arrives at the main floor and there is nothing but a giant hole and crumbled metal pieces in the weapon vault—or what used to be the weapon vault, blown up by a bomb it seems. Well, shit, he doesn’t even know how to register this. The entrance to his father’s most treasured place in the mansion has a three-layered door with an extremely lethal surveillance system, who and how the fuck-

He stops. He doesn’t so much as twitch. It gives him a moment of pure chill when the main floor has gone completely muted, both audibly and visually, like his life has just tipped off balance and leaned towards the bad part of a zombie movie. Upstairs, there is a cry for help and the sound of bullets continuously firing. 

“My fucking god,” Chan curses and turns on his heels, steeling himself mentally while rushing up the stairs. 

Upon arriving at the scene, it’s difficult to say whether turning up just five minutes earlier would have made much of a difference. Fuck, but if he had held you back, would things have taken a different turn?

There is a lot of blood. Too much blood to be explained away, and too much evidence to be traced back to no one else other than you. Well, to be fair, you’re the only person still standing and kicking aside from Chan anyway. The shotgun in your hand with a silencer attached speaks volumes, a knife between your teeth, and your left hand is fisted tightly. 

“…Y-Y/N,” Chan utters, in disbelief. “You’re Y/N, aren’t you?” 

You release something in your left hand and several fifteen-bullet magazines drop to the ground, the sound scratching his spine in the wrong way. The knife also hits the ground, metal echoing loudly against hard marble. 

“You’re here, Chan,” you reply, like your hands and clothes aren’t painted red. Swiftly, you duck to fumble for something beneath the dining table. Chan’s gaze follows you suit, prompting uneasiness to crawl down his throat when he realizes everything is, quite literally, drenched in blood. When he manages to snap out of it, you are unwrapping something from a white blanket—Berry, his eight-year-old Spaniel. 

You don’t look one bit surprised to see him—you have been expecting him. You simply keep on tucking Berry neatly into the blanket, murmuring something along the lines of ‘it’s over now’ and ‘I’m sorry I scared you’. Berry offers you a small whimper in return, still startled and recovering from the loud ruckus. 

Chan inhales very slowly. Exhales. “What did you do?”

“I killed everyone here,” you say levelly, as if mass murder is no big deal. “You’re a little late. I thought your intuition would be keener than that.”

“This is no time for a fucking joke,” he snaps. Chan has snapped because he’s mad at himself. He has been living purely by his intuition for more than two decades already, without it he would have died a long time ago. Yet when it comes to you, he’s always the most irrational. 

Your lips twitch like you’re about to smile but realize he’s upset. “You’re right, sorry.” 

Chan moves further into the room, his shoes squelching with each blood-drenched step he takes. He takes the scene in once again and keeps calm because that is what he has trained himself to do ever since the first time he got kidnapped. When his gaze brushes over the corpse of his father, he tries not to think about anything just yet. What’s done is done but Chan can piece the scene together from the explosion downstairs—a bait that anyone will be eager to take and a good way to disarm your enemies—to the scattering of hole-filled bodies, their blood blooming against the marble floor like a grotesque bouquet.

The crux of it is you know all too well he will run to find you without question, lending you the space and time to kill whoever remains.

“Why?”

Your eyes sweep over the mass of bodies, dull and distant. “Does it really matter?” You don’t think it’s fair to say you did it because you love him; it will become a curse that haunts him for as long as he lives. Yes, you love Chan with your entire soul but you also simply want to act as you please, allowing yourself to have your selfish ways of declaring your love for him. 

His chest heaves without any stability. “I thought you said you’re used to taking many things but you don’t take lives!!”

You cut right in, all glass. “Will anyone be able to do anything about it? Can anyone possibly arrest me, Chan?” 

Chan shudders, a sour thing gnawing at the back of his throat. It’s a morbid feeling he knows will become recurring at night, on the bad days. Chan wants to be furious, it feels like a moral obligation to be. Then again, everything the world has learned about empathy is already torn up by his family, they smeared it beneath their feet like it’s common trash. In the end, all of his nightmares and source of fear amounts to this, a mass of corpses with no resolution. 

“Do you want to kill me, Chan? If so, do it. You’re your own person, you are free.” 

Your eyes have turned into ice, and suddenly you have become so intangible that Chan slowly grows afraid. He thinks of terrible things, Am I allowed to have you? What makes you want me so badly? Why am I different from any of them?

The sound of retching interrupts his train of thought. It takes him precisely half a second to stare at how you are folded over your knees, dry heaving at the marble floor with Berry fumbling for help right at your side. Chan rushes to you to keep your hair out of your face as you gasp for air, choking on stomach bile and body raking with shudders. Once his hand smooths over the fabric on your back, you eventually cough and hack out the last of whatever is left that your system rejects. 

You breathe as shallowly as you can. Quiet wheezes, hollow breaths that pull in and out of your lungs too quickly. Chan rubs small, gentle circles on your back and doesn’t expect it when you snap up to look at him with wide, pained eyes as though you didn’t just murder his entire family in cold blood minutes ago, like you didn’t just take out the Underworld’s most feared lineage of demons by yourself.

Chan decides not to say anything, lets you lean into him shakily, and tries to figure out what you’re attempting to do with your hands. Dry blood makes your skin itchy every time your fingers twitch but you don’t mind it. 

“I’m here, I’m here,” he finally whispers with you sitting in the circle of his arms; you’re shaking like you’re sobbing even though you make no noise and cry no tears. Chan lets you squirm with a wild mania in your eyes, frantic and lost. He can’t quite pinpoint what you want until he gets it. 

You stop shaking the moment your head leans against the left side of his chest, right where his beating heart is. A pattern in his rib cage and a rhythm in your ears, relief so immense you feel like you can finally breathe. What you want is just to hear the sound of his heartbeat. It makes Chan feel a little exposed, somewhat scrutinized but he really doesn’t mind taking himself apart to hand his heart over to you. 

“I’m sorry,” you mumble, your tone wet and warm with oncoming tears. 

Chan presses his lips into a thin line, feeling like a hypocrite when he keeps you caged in his arms. “What are you sorry for, silly?” From the bottom of his heart, it’s abominable, he thinks—that even amidst such gruesome bloodshed created by your own hands, Chan is relieved that you are not hurt.

“I’m sorry this isn’t real.”

fourth attempt —

Chan is coming home with you. The childhood home you used to grow up in with two extremely loving, a little too oblivious parents who never once questioned their daughter’s occupation in the big city. 

It takes time to adjust but Chan is sliding into your little family without noticing it himself. He manages to impress your mom with his cooking and discusses politics with your dad. You might be going delusional but you swear you saw him chuckling faintly at your parents’ terrible taste of reality TV. 

The house might only amount to one-tenth of his mansion but it smells like fresh laundry all around, tender and soft, smothered in the love of ordinary human beings. So everything just feels that much bigger, a love so warm and overwhelming it stains Chan’s eyes with unfamiliar myriads of emotions. It takes him a few days to finally laugh a little louder, not refraining his speech to specifically formal phrases, and allowing himself to nag you in front of your parents. He even makes a sound of disbelief when you keep telling them he’s only a friend from work.

“Oh my god, why are you so salty about it,” you chide and close your bedroom door. “If I had said you’re my boyfriend, they would have started interrogating you!” 

Chan sits on the duvet you have laid on the floor for him—your childhood bed is too small to share—and mumbles something morbid under his breath, “I am quite good at tolerating any methods of torture thank you very much.” However, he doesn’t miss the look your parents give you whenever you bid them goodnight with Chan hovering over you in a way that’s nowhere near platonic.

You snort, actually, no, it’s too bitter for you to even react. “The worst they will do is leave you out when we watch TV,” you grin to relieve the inevitably building tension, shit-eating and all.

“That’s cruel. You know I love reality TV,” Chan replies, completely monotone. He flings an arm over his eyes like he’s putting in effort to mimic a dying body trying to convey his love in a Shakespeare play. Wrestling with like ten other housewives to buy those eggs on sale for your mom was more of a workout than any gun fights he has engaged in.

“Sleep. Mom said we’re going outside tomorrow,” you huff, tossing him a teddy bear from your bed—the amount of stuffed animals you own is impressive, they easily take up half of your bed so Chan had to accept his fate with the duvet. 

“I thought we’re heading back?”

“We will after going out with her. She said she wanted something from the bakery.”

Chan hums in response, his gaze skimming over the interior of your room again. Light pink wallpapers, white bookshelves and wardrobe lining the corners, and soft hues of blue on your bed and curtains to top it all off. “Truly, you are the designer of a generation.”

“Toddlers usually don’t like black. And I was eight, Chan, shut the fuck up,” you laugh, the sound so hearty it makes him want to bottle it and keep it all to himself like a child hiding his favorite candy. 

“Hurts my eyes a little, but I like it,” he declares and unwinds for the day.

You never realize you don’t really walk around town every time you visit your parents. Maybe it’s because you didn’t have many friends growing up, meaning there’s no one to call up for a hangout, or maybe it’s because all of the memories you want to relive here are with your parents, in the warmth of their home. So you walk down the sleepy streets with laziness on your shoulders, somewhat at peace when Chan can’t seem to keep his eyes in one place, secretly comparing the imageries of bright, colorful Seoul with this hazy rural area.

“What is that place over there?” He asks when you stride past a sketchy-looking building when in reality, it’s a spa run by this really nice old lady upstairs.

“Did you go to school here?” He ponders when you glance at what looks like a middle school; no kids are running and shouting in the playground since it’s the New Year holiday. 

Your mom notices how much curiosity Chan has for an apparent mid-twenties young adult so she giggles, offering to point out something she thinks he might be interested in, “That’s a small park Y/N used to play at. She wouldn’t leave when I came to pick her up after work.”

You can’t decide if you should scowl at your mom or burst out laughing at her implication that Chan, the leader of a notorious mafia group, should go and sit on one of the swings while she heads inside the bakery. “Come on, Chan,” you quickly make your choice. 

Chan sighs, though the sound is fond because he sees a sort of excitement blooming loud and clear in your pretty eyes. You have observed Chan long enough to know when he has given in so you laugh, turning to your mom and saying, “We’ll be back in a minute.” The familiar promise melts Chan inside out but he doesn’t tell you that. 

You accidentally drop your phone while walking down the stone steps so you turn away for half a second. And when you look back, Chan is seated neatly on the swing which is definitely not fitting for his age—his long legs dragging against the soil as his arms are crossed in front of his chest. As serious as he tries to look, you find the whole imagery so ridiculously unserious. He senses your gaze burning holes on the back of his neck so he stands, reaches upward, and lifts himself to sit on the metal bar that the chains rain down from.

“Chan, what the fuck, that’s not how you use a swing,” you chide, nearly rolling on the ground and barking a laugh. “If I take a photo of you right now, how dead am I?”

Chan doesn’t even need to turn his head. “What do you think?”

He looks down when your footsteps squish against the snow and he tries to imagine how a little you would hang around this place for an entire afternoon, up to no good things while waiting for your mom. “Concise as always, boss,” you purse your lips at him, nostalgia a heavy weight on the curve of your shoulders as you peer over places you used to designate as your hiding spots. 

Chan catches something shifting on your face and he ponders; why would you voluntarily involve yourself in outlaw doings when you could have had a perfectly normal life? “When did you start stealing?” 

“Probably when my parents sent me away for university. I hated it. School was hard and the expenses were awful for their bank accounts but they wouldn’t tell me that,” you mutter and decide to join him, legs dangling over the edges, a confession dragged from your lips unwillingly. 

Chan scoots a little closer, a hand reaching over to your left side to keep you from falling. “And you figured you were pretty good at it?”

“Nothing to be proud of, obviously,” you shake your head and can’t help a small grin. “Okay, maybe just a little. I was making money from racing on the side as well.” 

It takes him a moment to register your words when surprise halts the words in his throat. No wonder you’re better at handling car chases than any of his teammates who have been involved in this business for years. You look over at him, seeing that he’s having trouble reacting so you pinch his nose teasingly, “I know, so sexy, ain’t it?” 

Chan rolls his eyes, neglects the warmth spreading on his cheeks, and simply sits with you. The swing creaks and groans beneath the weight of two adults, rust staining his hand when he lifts it to check. 

“It was enough money for me to graduate and I was fine with that. Mind you I was always the top of my class,” you scoff, thinking of long days when you used to get little to no sleep, of when you had mustered the best smiles for your parents through FaceTime, of how you had begun not caring for how much money the jewels you had stolen were worth. 

None of it matters anymore, you think as you lean into Chan, and he lets you. “I’ll guess this, you were homeschooled?”

Chan doesn’t answer immediately as realization tightens his ribs. You don’t talk about home or how you grew up, and Chan doesn’t talk about his parents. Perhaps you both are similar in that way so neither of you mind when the other person never initiated it. “I was. Everything I ever learned was taught in that forsaken mansion. Most of it, actually.”

“Everything?”

“You can’t run away from what you’re surrounded with,” he says, and there’s a chilling edge to it, an icy kind of shiver that makes your fingers more numb than the winter cold ever can. 

“Chan, you’re not them,” you declare out of the blue, eyes crinkling up in adoration. “You are free, okay? No matter how hard they try to ruin you, you can’t become them.”

When you look up again, his eyes have a glassy shine when he says, “I know that now.”

“Don’t cry,” you huff out a breath.

“I’m not crying,” Chan shakes his head slowly, voice suspiciously shaky. “I guess I just thought you had a lot to live for and I was…you know, it was arrogant of me to keep you by my side.”

You laugh, a sharp, crisp bark of a sound that cuts right through his doubts. “Who do you think you’re talking to? If I wanted to run, I would have and no one could catch me, not now, not ever.”

“Well, I did,” Chan retorts, though there is no bite to it.

“Only because I let you,” you play along sedately. It’s the soft hum of your voice that makes breathing for him feel easier, and his shoulders feel lighter. When Chan exhales, it no longer tastes like the unfathomable, untouchable nightmares that he was so used to choke down, swallow, and not allow himself to throw them up as proof to show anyone else. 

Your mom returns perhaps in about an hour, a box tucked in her arms and groceries hanging from her elbow. “Time to go back,” she yells from the top of the stone steps. “We need to cook dinner, kids!”

You don’t dare budge. Chan notices it and nudges your shoulder gently, sensing your discontent. “You heard your mom, come on now.”

“I don’t want to go back,” you disagree. “Let’s stay here. I want to go to the beach with you when it gets warmer. And diving, kayaking, too!”

“You told me to leave my credit cards back home. You’ll have to feed me and pay all of my expenses,” Chan reminds you.

“Guess what, I left mine at home too,” you reply breezily. Maybe you both need to find new jobs. You don’t think Chan should worry about that because there’s nothing that he can’t do if he puts his mind to it, he’s just that great. Chan is the greatest thing there is, the best thing that has ever happened to you.

You watch rosy lips part, brown eyes widening as his grip on your shoulder falters faintly. “I don’t deserve good things, Y/N. I can’t stay here with you,” Chan says like he means it. “Tell me to leave.” He really is stupid until the very end.

“If you’re worried about that, I’ll kindly decline my spot in heaven and go to hell with you,” you assure him, your voice chirping with mirth but even that doesn’t seem to elevate his gloom at all. A groan. “Fine then, as the most wonderful person alive, I now denounce us of all our wrongdoings. And I announce us to be the best of normal friends as normal people!”

His solemn expression crumbles and now he just looks straight up insulted. “It’s supposed to be ‘husband and wife’,” Chan nags while fighting off a grin of his own.

A light feeling burgeons in your chest. “I thought you didn’t care about that kind of thing? We’re already doing laundry and taxes together, right? It’s not like we have enough money to buy the rings either.”

“I suppose I’ll have no say in that,” Chan sighs in defeat, finally smiling brightly as he reminds himself of what he has, and what he wants to become for you. “But I like to be with you as well. If you’ll have me.”

You look back at him, wanting nothing more than to burn those words into the flesh of your heart. “I already have you right here, don’t I?”

Because Chan’s existence is etched deeply somewhere inside your soul. And you love him everyday for that.

❖ note (yet again) : hello there, if you have reached the end, thank you so much for reading! I wish 2024 will bring you and your loved ones nothing but happiness and great health! (no one asked but I really tried to simplify their speech of affection towards each other here compared to illicit & priceless because all they really want is to be normal people living a normal life)

#m. waft

[missinghan]

also, I don’t know who would see this but if anyone’s bored or down to be a beta reader for a really long hyunjin fic, hmu for more details or I’ll add you on discord so it’s easier to ramble my heart out

#I can’t really pay you and idk how this thing with beta readers work #I just feel like I need a second opinion #stray kids imagines #hwang hyunjin

[missinghan]

LEE KNOW SKZ CODE, EP.45

#hide the damn scissors

[missinghan]

maya’s writing afterthought —

So I think I have (intentionally or not I don’t really remember) carved Minho into an intentionalist forced to embrace the philosophy of consequentialism, meaning the end justifies the means.

I pretty much rushed through his past and lore but to be clear, he wasn’t that good at being a god and heaven definitely was fucked up in its system one way or another. He was an idealist, or heaven simply conditioned him to be that way. Evil should be obliterated so only good things remain, a very black and white principle. In reality, the world is not ideal; not to mention, there exists an agonizing amount of gray areas.

Minho was constantly trying to help anyone and everyone because he’s a god, he’s supposed to know everything and able to do anything. Gods don’t complain, gods don’t feel pain, gods don’t bleed. “I am only human,” is what many would think when faced with impossible hardships but what about non-humans? Gods are worshipped, gods are whatever labels people stick onto them without asking for it. If they don’t answer a prayer, they are cursed at. If they do answer a prayer, every expectation and condition must be met, no accidents or slacking would be tolerated. It's a big deal because it has a lot to do with a mortal's life, right? Mortals are weaklings because they bruise and bleed and cry and eventually die. What about gods, then? Does their life and well-being mean any less just because they are not able to physically die?

I was going in circles a little there but get this, when faced with that reality of a grey world, Minho could only hold on for so long before shattering under the pressure. Good intentions could only get him so far. Because how many times had he saved someone because everyone deserves salvation and that person had gone out to kill other people? If he knew even just the approximate number of it (consider the fact that he’s 800 years old), he would throw up.

The fic is set during the period long after his banishment from heaven and I think I did subtly hint at the fact that he has begun to accept consequentialism. He was homeless for months not because he couldn’t make enough money but he thought a house wasn’t necessary. He didn’t need food either because, well, he wasn’t allowed to die. Minho was working diligently and saving up a bigger amount for something significant in the future. He didn’t want to relax, he was afraid of rewarding himself in any way because the good consequences he was expecting overruled mundane things like good food or nice clothes. As someone who was conditioned to believe he only deserves good things when he delivers good results, it’s difficult to not associate satisfaction with trauma. (He had to so constantly switch jobs because as a god, he found it hard to control his strength and would often break things or create opportunities for people to question his inhumane capabilities).

MC was the first human to acknowledge his intentions and didn’t expect anything from him. She knows that he acts tough but is a soft-hearted fool, talks smack but his insults are never a personal offense, and that he is always doing his best. Think of it like two children who receive two different compliments “you are so smart” and “you must have worked hard”. When they fail to do something, the first child would think “I’m supposed to be smart why can’t I solve this problem?” meanwhile the second one would tell themselves “I’ll try again. I can do hard things, I can solve this.”

your heart & your headache, too ⤖ lee minho

❖ genre : stray god (?) au; fluff; humor; angst; action

❖ word count : 9,6k.

❖ warning : swearing, mentions of violence, blood, injuries, stitches

❖ summary : a self-proclaimed god shows up at your door in the middle of the night for a place to stay. you let him and hope the unconventional encounter doesn’t become a regular thing. of course, it becomes a regular thing.

❖ sequel blurb : read it here!

❖ dedicated to @poutylino​ : happy birthday robi! i hope you’ll like this mess of a fic ♡

There is a stranger in your living room.

There is a stranger in your living room.

There is—holy shit…you need to call the cops.

“Out of the way,” the stranger spats calmly. 

“Show me your face.”

He is unfortunately very good-looking; the kind of face that all beings envy for God only has one favorite and that’s him, the kind of face that makes the most expensive diamond look dull in comparison, the kind that screams ‘tougher in body and nobler in heart than any creature in the world’ like any novel’s protagonist. Oh yeah, did you mention that he has a really nice physique too?

“I said, move.” He stumbles forward, heavy and inconsistent breaths.

In any case, he’s someone you’ve never met before in your life. Therefore, your brain is overworking itself to figure out what the fuck is going on (as if it’s not overworked on a daily basis already). One moment you were minding your own business on the couch and stressing over your homework. The next, there’s an explosion of light and there he was. Meaning, this absolutely skeptical, worthy-of-being-reported man can’t just expect you to simply move.

“Last time I checked, this is my living room, which you’re not supposed to be in,” you tilt your head curiously at his silhouette being cast on the white wall. “You should move.”

Keep reading

#m. waft #if you read through my rambling you are a real one

[missinghan]

so uh I’m bored (not in the way that I have nothing to do I’m just purely bored) but I can’t really write due to the workload so I might try to relieve my crave for creativity on something else

#m. waft #btw it stands for maya’s writing afterthought #or just post fic rambling basically

[missinghan]

Cross my Heart, | Hwang Hyunjin

◤“To break was merely human, and they were no gods to defy that nature.” In which a boy born to become a god meets a new friend who simply won't stop crying. ◤Disclaimers: Female reader insert. Chapter three from the ‘dead men don’t speak’ series. Heavy angst. Dark themes. Allusions to cults, torture, and death, but no direct or graphic descriptions. Major character death. ◤Word count: 2.1K ◤Note: This idea is a 100% mine and any case of similarity with someone else’s is purely coincidental. Events are pure fiction. Please do not take my content without my consent. Masterlist.

Previous Chapter | Series Masterlist | Next Chapter

It hurt. 

Once upon a time, he might have befriended the pain, but Hyunjin only writhed in silence now. Pain could be no friend of his if it only caused him agony, and he wasn’t so desperate as to allow himself the indignity of surrendering to torture.

Besides, friends were difficult to keep in this place. He would know. The other bed across the room had been occupied by three different kids before it had become cold.

To break was merely human, and they were no gods to defy that nature.

Neither was Hyunjin.

In the haze of his delirium, he discerned the telltale squeak of the doorknob turning. He didn't bother sitting upright and greeting his visitors. It hurt, so all he could do was flop to his other side and watch with heavy lids.

“Hyunjin, you’ve got a new friend.”

Mercy. Where could they have found this one?

He blinked once to look at a figure barely tall enough to reach the teacher’s hip. The blue lapels on her plain tunic were like a flame in darkness.

She’s a special one.

Squinting, he made out the stitched lettering on her breast pocket.

G-6-3.

Y/n.

How unfortunate. She was younger than him.

“Go on, Y/n. And you be nice, Hyunjin.”

He pushed himself to sit, his answer slurred, “Yes, teacher.”

The teacher smiled. It was as unfeeling as the crisp, white coat dressing his body. Though when he turned, the emblem of a black iris embroidered on his back seemed to sneer with wicked glee.

The door closed, and the girl’s eyes bored into him relentlessly. Hyunjin was sure she expected something from him, but he was content to disappoint.

Flopping back on the mattress, he grumbled, “Your side is over there. Sleep or figure out something else to do. I don’t care.”

“But I can’t sleep!” her protest was immediate. “Mama said if I was a good student today, she’ll take me to the toy store later.”

Hyunjin pulled his blanket over his head, muffling the scoff that slipped from his lips.

Some promise that was.

•⭓•

Hyunjin’s new friends always cried after the first day of being in this room, and you were no different.

“Come on, now, Y/n. If you do as you’re told—”

“No! I want Mama! She said she’ll take me today!”

“Yes, yes. If you come to class with me, I’m sure—”

“No! No! No!”

Hyunjin buried himself deeper under his blanket in a fruitless attempt to drown out the racket. Class was of the utmost importance for all children, so no matter how loud or how insistent your wailing was, you wouldn’t win against the teacher.

Gradually, your voice would wither away, your tears would dry, and you would find yourself seated in a classroom, listening to the teachers drone on and on about creation and mortality.

One step at a time. One day at a time. Until you forgot your mother’s promises.

It was only the natural course of events in this school.

Through the warm cocoon of his blanket, Hyunjin heard the teacher sigh. Deep and uncomfortably long.

“Your mother won’t be happy to know how disobedient you’re being.”

His stomach twisted for the briefest moment. He had seen children be forcefully dragged to class before, and it never ended prettily.

But you didn’t know that, so you screamed.

“I’m not going!”

This was stupid. You were only making trouble for yourself, and it annoyed him.

Stupid.

This is so stupid.

And because it was so stupid, Hyunjin flung the blanket off himself, sprung upright, and called out, “Teacher!”

The teacher looked at him, clearly exasperated.

“What is it, Hyunjin?”

Your crying hiccuped to a halt as you stared. Cheeks glistening with tears and snot trailing down your chin, he would say you looked pathetic, but what else would he expect of a six-year-old?

If anything, he found himself to be the pathetic one.

“I’ll go to class.”

There was silence, and he repeated, “Let me go to class in her place.”

“Oh?” the teacher frowned. “But you don’t have class today.”

Hyunjin could still feel a dull ache in his bones, but he ignored it as he hopped off the comfort of his bed.

“Let me go.”

He stepped toward the teacher and grabbed the sleeve of his white coat. His gaze had lost all feeling years ago, but the teachers seemed to like seeing that depravity in him.

Hyunjin grinned and his words felt like mouthfuls of filthy dirt.

“I want to become a god, after all.”

•⭓•

It wasn’t always like this.

Hyunjin remembered the beginning.

B-0-2.

Hyunjin.

He was born within these walls, hence the zero in his identification number.

A normal school. A normal family. He grew up alongside five brothers and two sisters.

And they were to become gods.

So they studied well and played little and listened to their teachers. Gods were wise and all-knowing and did not indulge in trivialities, after all.

But one day, the teachers watched them bleed and cooed that the gods had to bleed for their people too. That only through suffering were they born.

Then, one by one, his family slept and never reawakened. Somehow, he remained, like a curse, like the stubborn blood stains on the floors of class.

Though, there were always new friends to join his family, so maybe it wasn’t so bad.

They studied, then bled, then left him like clockwork.

Hyunjin was sure that would be your fate too, and you were crying today as well, as though you knew.

“Hey.”

You ignored him, and he shifted to sit, hugging his blanket close to his body.

“I can’t sleep. Shut up.”

You were slouching against the room’s door, still wailing as though it hadn’t been nearly a week since you were brought in. Perhaps it was precisely because it had been a week did you continue to cry for your mother. Either way, Hyunjin was tired of it.

He tsked, muscles spasming as his feet touched the carpeted ground. Leaving the safety of his blankets, he reached for the bookcase snugly positioned between your two beds. The uppermost shelf of the case was empty, for his arms could not reach it, but the rest carried a neat collection of books and toys.

Like his spacious bed and warm blankets, they were his rewards for being such an outstanding student.

Hyunjin grabbed the smallest book then stepped toward you with a wince.

“Hey.”

No use.

“Look at this book,” he said, waving the item in blue binding with the most interest he could muster. “Seems fun.”

You blinked at him once as if assessing the so-called ‘fun’ then decided that it wasn’t worth your time and resumed your tearful performance.

Sighing, Hyunjin stared at the ceiling.

This was so stupid, and he was too exhausted to deal with it.

So, he did not bother.

Ignoring the jolt of pain, he lowered himself to sit in front of you and opened the book to read as loudly as he possibly could.

“Do you know the color of the sea?”

•⭓•

“Read for me! C’mon, Jin-Jin!”

Hyunjin rolled further into his blanket as if the action would block out your voice.

“Read by yourself. And stop calling me that.”

“But that’s no fun,” you whined, and he felt the dip of your small hands on the mattress. Faint thumps accompanied your badgering, “Get up, get up, get up. You’re no fun.”

Your battery of his mattress wasn’t going to change a thing, really, but you continued.

Hyunjin supposed he had no one but himself to blame for this becoming a routine. He was the one who tried to distract you by reading books in the first place. It worked, and you stopped crying, but now his precious sleep time was squandered by your requests to read and play instead. Maybe it was because he knew a few more words than you did, or maybe it was because you were bored, but you insisted to such a stubborn degree that eventually, he would find himself relenting.

Despite his most earnest wishes, today was no different.

After ten or so minutes, Hyunjin huffed in annoyance and untangled himself from his blankets to sit upright.

“Give me that book,” he grumbled, snatching it from your hands as you cheered, undeniably victorious.

It was a small book in blue binding.

He frowned. This old thing again?

He’d read the same book for you over and over again for the past week because you kept bringing it to him, much to his utter bewilderment.

It was a book for toddlers, so why were so obsessed with it?

Hyunjin’s mouth opened to ask, but then he closed it. He wasn’t that interested in understanding your thought process. Besides, finishing this easy little book meant that he could go to sleep sooner, so perhaps he should mind his own business.

You placed your elbows on the edge of his bed, leaning in to watch as he flipped over the first page.

“Do you know the color of the sea?” he read, and you recited along with him, somehow finding enjoyment in the simple words.

“The color of the sea is blue, like a big, shiny sapphire.

“Do you know the color of a sapphire?

“The color of a sapphire…”

And so it continued, the book of blue things, which seemed to be your favorite.

Hyunjin turned the last page, eyes taking in the sprawling illustration of an endless, open azure. The words printed in white jeered at him.

“Do you know the color of the sky?”

Even when his voice dwindled, you chanted, “The color of the sky is blue, like the beautiful, wide sea!”

That was it. He should’ve closed the book and buried himself in his blanket, but Hyunjin did neither. Instead, he asked, almost to himself, “What is the color of the sky?”

You looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “It’s blue.”

“You think so?” he let out a curt, dry laugh.

Hyunjin had never seen the sky. In all his eleven years, he’d only caught glimpses of it from beyond the school’s towering walls.

That blank, blue, never-ending canvas pictured in the book, blanketing every living being, was almost terrifying to imagine.

He shut the small book and flopped to lie on his bed, proclaiming, “I think the sky is green.”

“What?” you deadpanned behind him. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Maybe you were right. He didn’t really care because at that point, he could no longer feel his arms. “I don’t know.”

If he couldn’t see the sky, then he couldn’t see this blue you spoke of. As far as he was concerned, the sky was any color he wanted it to be.

“You’re wrong. It’s blue. I saw it myself.”

You were so stubborn it made Hyunjin want to laugh as he sank further into the suffocating warmth of his blanket.

He truly pitied himself.

“Right. I’m gonna sleep now so don’t bother me.”

•⭓•

It hurt, and Hyunjin thought this would finally be it.

He’d been floating in a sea of his own consciousness for days. In and out of sleep. In and out of pain.

Sometimes he would catch your voice and feel you tug at his blanket to wake up. Sometimes he would bask in the eerie quiet of his blank mind.

Sometimes he would imagine his brothers and sisters running across the halls, laughing their hearts out, calling his name.

Screaming.

Or maybe he was the one screaming, because it felt like he was falling, tumbling helplessly into the bottomless abyss.

Hyunjin was jolted awake, his body half rising before it slumped back on the bed, lifeless as doll’s.

There was a gasp somewhere in the room, followed by the soft padding of feet.

“Are you awake?” you asked, seemingly unaware of his suffering.

He could only groan in response. Neither affirming nor denying because if he were to be honest, Hyunjin wasn’t sure himself. He could be hallucinating.

He probably was.

You were silent for a few long moments, and then—

“Will you read for me?”

Soft, hesitant, scared. Perhaps you weren’t so unaware after all.

For some reason, he felt sorry.

“Later, maybe,” he forced his voice through his throat. “Wanna sleep right now.”

“Do you promise?” Hyunjin could guess the expression you wore as you said that. Wide, hopeful eyes. He might’ve only known you for a month, but you were so easy to read.

So open and honest to still believe in promises.

“Yeah. Promise.”

“Really?”

You never did allow him a moment of respite, did you? But Hyunjin was tired. So, so tired, and he wanted nothing more than to fall asleep. So he let his heavy lids fall and his breathing settle with one last reassurance.

“Cross my heart.”

Some promise that was.

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Third installation to the series and this was a glimpse into mc's backstory! The events and settings here carry a great importance to the central plot, so do keep them in mind. Once again, thank you for reading this far! A reblog and any feedback would be greatly appreciated, and I hope you have a nice day! ♡

#maya’s bookshelf #wtf is this furat #I demand ANSWERS #yknow what actually I demand HAPPINESS FOR HYUNJIN #DID HE DIE WTF HELL NAH #do you understand what you’re making us (me and the characters) go through right now #*hugging a box of tissues because I need to be mentally prepared* #it’s giving the promised neverland except the kids aren’t being fed to demons- or are they #jk jk... unless? #I love this thank you #yknow if I were the mc I would go crazy and say the sky is green too #because girlie probably got trauma stocked up enough for generations #I don’t think you can tell from all the coping I was doing #but your writing has left me in awe all over again #every time I read your stuff I am immediately proud and humbled at the same time #because look at she go *pops a confetti* #this series is so good #I can’t even *shakes something violently* #mwah ily you evil genius remember that you’re a genius

[missinghan]

Dead Men Don't Speak | Lee Felix

◤“Perhaps he should have been afraid then, when she smiled and her eyes reflected nothing but an endless, unfeeling void.” In which a detective's assistant seeks the aid of an infamous killer to find his missing friend. ◤Disclaimers: Female reader insert. Chapter two from the ‘dead men don’t speak’ series. A sprinkle of angst. Descriptions of violence, murder, injury, and blood. Mentions of death and dead characters. Sparse use of vulgar language. ◤Word count: 2.5K ◤Note: This idea is mine and any case of similarity with someone else’s is purely coincidental. Events are pure fiction. Please do not take my content without my consent. Masterlist. ◤ From the author: This series has been a while in the making and I'm super excited to finally share it with you all! Fair warning, though, many characters here are very violent and borderline unhinged so if that isn't your cup of tea, feel free to steer away and find something else to read! Thank you for dropping by, and happy reading!

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Felix was afraid of many things—the dark alley behind his apartment building, the rowdy drunks in the dead of night, the stern department head at the station—but he was not afraid of the gun being pointed at his head. 

Behind the barrel was a woman he’d only heard of in frightened whispers. The Shadow Front’s Left Claw, the burgundy-dressed killer. 

“Nice work, detective,” she said, and when Felix remained silent, she laughed. “Don’t worry, kid, I won’t kill you just yet.”

Kid? He frowned. He was twenty years old. He’d hardly consider himself a kid.

“Had fun snooping around?” she tilted her head. “Tell me, what were you doing here?” 

His snarl was like a crack of thunder. “What did you do with Chan?”

“Chan? Ah, your detective friend.”

Felix’s blood became ice in his veins.

“Hah. And you think I know something about him?”

“Of course you do,” he clenched his jaw. “He was investigating you when he disappeared. Tell me what you did to him.”

“That’s exactly what I’m curious about myself. Why were you investigating me?”

“What?”

As though the chill he felt coursing through his body wasn’t enough, another wave slammed into him.

“Surely you didn’t think it would be this easy to track me down?”

It was easy, and it was unbelievable, but Felix had paid it no mind at the time.

“W-Wait…”

Now, though, it felt like the ground was caving in beneath his feet.

“You mean you lured me here…and only to ask that?”

Here, cornered in an alleyway behind the abandoned warehouse which he had been eavesdropping on.

“Look at you. You’re quite adept at your job, detective,” the humor in her voice was as cold as the gleam of her gun, still magnanimously directed at his skull. “Now, tell me. What were you looking for?”

So what if it was all a setup? If answering her questions would give Felix his answers, then so be it.

“There’s a plot of land that the City Council wants to purchase,” he began, holding her cool gaze in defiance of the gaping gun barrel, “But the owner is unnamed and the land itself is suspicious. Senior Investigator Bang Chan was appointed to the task, and our investigation led us to you before he deemed it unsafe. One day later, he’s missing. And you want me to believe it wasn’t your doing?”

There was a stretch of silence before she sighed, retracting her weapon and turning away, “I thought as much.”

Just like that?

Felix peeled himself off the grimy wall and forced his legs to trail after her. “Hold on!”

She was dangerous.

She was dangerous.

She was dangerous.

He knew that, and he was sorry to the friend who relentlessly cautioned him, but he needed her.

“Isn’t your partner dead?” 

The Shadow Front’s Left Claw, the infamous, burgundy-dressed killer, halted in her step. An excruciating stillness swallowed the narrow alleyway, squeezing the air out of his lungs, and it seemed to last a lifetime and a half—

But then she shrugged her shoulders without a care.

“So they say. They didn’t let me see his corpse, though.”

Whispers of his death had been rippling throughout the underworld. The Shadow Front’s Right Claw, the one-eyed brute who always appeared alongside that murderous woman.

Invoking his name was sure to stir something in her, and Felix was prepared to lie to obtain her aid.

“But it’s curious, isn’t it?” she swiveled around to face him again before he could say anything, and the nonchalance in her tone unnerved him. “My partner dies, and the next day, your detective disappears, both having been investigating a similar case.”

She raised a finger in the air, an eerie imitation of a teacher in a classroom. “My theory is that the two of them stumbled upon information they shouldn’t have and were eliminated as a consequence.”

It was an excellent theory and the worst possible scenario Felix could imagine.

Eliminated?

It couldn’t be. He refused to let it be.

But it made sense. The coincidence was glaring.

“Here’s a deal for you, kid.”

Her voice startled him, suddenly too close as she pressed a single finger square against his chest. Perhaps he should have been afraid then, when she smiled and her eyes reflected nothing but an endless, unfeeling void.

“Work with me and I’ll find your friend for you.”

•⭓•

He wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but there was something amiss about the atmosphere in this car. Felix glanced at your reflection in the tinted window, shuffling through the case files he’d smuggled out of the station.

It was unnerving, this silence of yours.

As though all that had transpired in the alleyway were but an act, you sat there devoid of emotion. Not once did your brows furrow or did your lips press into a concentrated line, body as still as a statue. It was unlike the image Felix had constructed of you after collecting all those street rumors—that wildcard of a mafioso you were in his mind.

Could it be because of that man? Felix wondered.

Perhaps criminals felt grief, after all.

“What’s wrong?”

The other man in the car asked, his eyes not once straying from the road he was driving through.

The righthand man, Felix determined, having nothing but his prior intelligence to piece his identity. The third person in this car was known across the city for his frightening loyalty to none other than the Left Claw—you, who sighed after a moment’s contemplation, “These files are both useful and utterly useless.”

Felix couldn’t stop his shocked interjection. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing here is new information, though I had hoped otherwise. And yet…” you trailed off, flipping through the most recent file.

 “You say your detective disappeared on the twenty-third?”

Felix’s balled fists tightened where they were placed over his thighs. “Yes.”

“And his car was found on the highway bordering the Angelrise Forest.”

“Yes.”

“That’s impossible,” you proclaimed, tossing the file in your hands back into the box snugly seated beside you, and your nonchalance caused Felix’s heart to race, panicked.

“What do you—”

“We wiped out the head of the operation that occupied the plot of land on the twenty-second of this month,” you provided, and he exhaled, vaguely relieved.

“So, you do know who the land belonged to.”

You fell into that disconcerting silence again, before scoffing so softly, “No. Seems I never did.”

It wasn’t only grief, Felix concluded then, high on the rush of meeting you and sneaking the case files out of the station. There was something dark and bitter twisted within your words. A glimpse that was urgently replaced by a commanding tone, “Jisung, let’s head to the warehouse in the West Port.”

“Are you sure? There might be nothing left there,” the righthand man, Jisung, expressed his concern with the slightest frown, but his doubts were cast aside by your despondent murmuring.

In the reflection, Felix saw you rest your head against the window, solemnly gazing at the passing scenery.

“Who knows? We might’ve missed something there.”

•⭓•

“Looks like they cleaned this place out already,” Jisung commented, glancing at your surroundings, and you strode past him.

“Still, let’s see if we can find a clue.”

Somehow, Felix had tagged along this search and now found himself trudging through the rubble and soot-covered remains of this dubious warehouse. The structure of the building survived the minor explosion, miraculously, but the roof of the once-warehouse had been completely obliterated. So, the rosy sunset sky made for your canopy instead.

Felix didn’t know what exactly he had to be seeking. Amid all the destruction, he doubted anything survived in the first place, and if what Jisung claimed was true, then the chances of finding clues were even smaller.

Yet, he scoured the burnt wreckage because that was what you were doing too. It was only after half an hour’s worth of quiet work did he notice some commotion coming from your direction and stopped his searching.

You were clutching a small item in your hand, blackened and indiscernible, and before Felix could ask about it, you fished your phone out of your pocket and made a hasty call.

“Hey, I found a phone—scorched, practically melted—but do you think you could salvage something from it?”

•⭓•

It had been bothering Felix.

“Good. This might just lead us to them,” you said as you stuffed the burnt phone in your burgundy coat, which was marred with the slightest smudges of soot.

“I hope so,” Jisung concurred. His own suit was all-black, so no evidence of the past half-hour’s work showed on him. “Let’s leave for now. This area is too exposed.”

“I don’t understand,” Felix’s voice cut through your exchange, and the two of you stopped in your tracks to stare at him questioningly.

“I thought you said they were likely eliminated, yet you speak as if they’re merely lost.”

“Oh, I don’t know about your detective, but I know my partner isn’t dead,” you shrugged, and there was that unsettling calmness again. Where he found the courage to keep speaking with you, he didn’t know, but a meager voice in his head whispered that maybe he should cease garnering that mysterious bravery.

That maybe he could live his life without needing to know the inner mind-workings of an infamous killer.

You ambled toward him in lazy steps, hands stuffed in your pockets as you went on.

“I mean…a warehouse explosion is simply too dramatic, it makes no sense. His death would most likely be by a gunshot to the back or something just as anticlimactic.”

But death had no rhyme or reason, that much was a truth Felix knew wholeheartedly. Trying to find justification behind fate’s workings would only extend one’s grief and expend their will.

You came to stand a couple of steps before him and declared with all your twisted normalcy.

“I’m going to find him and kill him myself instead.”

What the actual hell.

“What about you?”

You inquired in spite of the sheer horror that spiked his heartbeat. Kill him?

And there he thought you were grieving.

“He’s your home, isn’t that why you want to find your detective?” you prompted, and you were right. Chan was the only person on this terrible earth he’d consider family.

“That’s good. Homes are nice,” like a random busybody on the street, you kept talking, entirely disregarding the one-sidedness of the conversation. Or maybe you were simply unbothered by it. “I left mine when I was barely a teenager.

“Wanna know what I did when I left?”

Felix wasn’t particularly curious, now, given your recent record.

“I burnt it all to the ground.”

There was no gravity in your tone and clearly not a shred of remorse. Felix was glad he couldn’t see your eyes then, for you had tilted your head to face the darkening sky amid your confession.

“I let the children escape, of course, but everyone else? Gone in a brilliant blaze.”

Arson, murder, and what he could only assume was the world’s most staggering collection of crimes seemed to make up your past. It should’ve made him ill simply thinking about it.

But perhaps he wasn’t thinking, otherwise he would’ve missed the barest whisper that left your lips.

“The sky was beautiful that day. Though, I suppose today is different.”

You brought your attention back to him, mysteriously revitalized despite his non-participation in this conversation. “Tell me, what do you think is the color of the sky?”

“Uh…” Felix blinked, entirely taken aback by both your question and your multiplying scrutiny. For once, you didn’t answer in his silence, and he felt his mouth dry up with sudden dread.

He stole a glance toward Jisung who stood a few steps away in the background, and the man only gave him a pointed look as if to say, ‘just humor her for a moment’.

Left to fend for himself, Felix looked at the sky replacing the roof and found no special answer to give. The sun had set a while ago, and the somber blues of dusk had enveloped the world. Was there something he was missing?

Felix ventured, having nothing else to offer, “I guess…it’s blue?”

You appeared neither disappointed nor satisfied with his response, merely shrugging, “I see,” before turning around and walking away.

As though you had not spent the last few minutes in some strange monologue.

“We’re leaving, detective.”

•⭓•

“Figures you’d bring backup,” your steely voice sliced through the pained groans filling the air.

By all accounts, Felix had no place in this fight, but somehow he found himself a front-row seat, standing alongside Jisung who played with his gun in boredom.

It was all too much for him.

The phone you found in the warehouse did have a salvageable memory chip, despite all the damage it suffered. Once its data was recovered, you did not hesitate a beat to reach out to its owner. As a result, you found yourselves in this present situation.

A man in a standard black suit was in some sort of cruel standoff with you, having been cornered to a dead end. The comrades he brought with him were all down, either dead or dying, and he alone remained to point his gun at you.

“Stay back! The boss won’t— Argh!”

He was cut off by his own scream when you shot at his hand, forcing him to abandon his weapon and drop to his knees in agony.

“Yes, do tell me more about this boss of yours,” you said, that same expressionlessness that unsettled Felix yesterday returning. He watched you from the sidelines as you walked up to the doubled over man and crouched beside him. With the ease and patience of a kind nurse or a goodhearted Samaritan offering help, you placed your hand on his shoulder and pushed him to lie down.

And he obliged, no doubt courtesy of the gun you so politely pressed against his heart.

Felix was beginning to feel it then.

This was all wrong.

Everyone around him was wrong.

“Who do you work for?” you asked simply, gazing down at him, and the man squirmed, hissing through the pain that was surely pulsing through his arm.

“The boss won’t let this slide— He’ll hear about this—”

“Right, so tell me.”

You were bored much like your righthand man standing beside Felix, and it was wrong. So, utterly, disgustingly wrong.

“I’m not telling you anything. You’re fucking insane—!”

His gasps were interrupted by a simple yet catchy tune, and it sounded from somewhere within the man’s suit jacket.

Jisung stopped fidgeting with his gun. Your slow gaze traveled to the source of the sound. And the adrenaline that had been fueling, blinding, Felix for the past thirty-seven hours was finally snuffed out.

You made your mind up in a breath’s time.

“Well, that’s too bad.”

The shot that rang in the air pierced Felix’s ears, immediately killing the mysterious assailant. Without so much as a moment of respect for his death, you reached into the man’s jacket and pulled out the ringing phone.

Felix wanted to scream until his throat bled. Until the savage sickness in his stomach disappeared.

You stood up and answered the call, letting the voice on the other end crackle through the speaker.

“What the hell is your squad doing at the West Port, Jonah?”

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The mystery begins! This entire series is comprised of short fics with bits of the plot sprinkled in for you, the reader, to piece together. That being said, I'd love to hear your thoughts as we go! As usual, a reblog and any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I hope you have a lovely day, and I'll see you again on the 11th of February for the next chapter! ♡

#maya’s bookshelf #ahhhhh #mc we know you’re attractive and bad #*badass #but damn give felix a break he can’t keep up with what color the sky is girlie #I’m kidding I’m kidding #I love how unhinged she is #and the suspend!! #it makes me all the more curious about what happened because it seems with every chapter there will be a connection #like a mastermind plan in which the mastermind is you furat #the way their dialogues alone tell me a lot about them and at the same time I realize I know nothing at all #just the right amount of drama and mystery #I am very much looking forward to the next part *waves my lightstick like a fangirl*

[missinghan]

#999A92 | HAN. JISUNG.

genre | hurt/comfort, found family au/brother!han & brother!jisung

word count | 1955

warning | mention of being sick, mention of puking 

note | i remember puking once. didn't like it. 

universe | tciu

your splitting headache hummed at a frequency too high to hear, but han knew it only lasted for a few seconds because his blurred eyesight immediately regained perfection. the glass cup previously in his hand was broken into tiny pieces from the faint moment of uncontrolled strength caused by your headache.

jisung perked up from the couch, the side of his face illuminated by the colors on the television screen. his eyes were wide from the abrupt noise han made, although the breaking of cups itself hasn't been uncommon today. he would know. he was in charge of reversing the process of every breakage. "you broke another cup?"

"it's in the sink. thanks," han grumbled as he turned away from the ingredients he carefully laid out for a cup of hot tea. he needed something to combat your fever and its unsurprisingly severe effects on him.

jisung watched han from his peripheral vision. his brother sluggishly moved from one point of the kitchen to another, grabbing a cup of water, it seemed. he could tell han was annoyed, but more so defeated than being doused in a fit of rage because he hadn't been able to do anything successfully today.

it started with your abrupt migraine this morning. the twins were grossly unprepared for the pain spiking in your head to be the first thing they experienced. they could not guard against it, causing the ground to shake briefly and the light bulbs around the house to pop. changbin called the school about your absence on his way out to buy new light bulbs and over-the-counter medicine. meanwhile, han failed his multiple attempts to clean the shattered glass on the floor. everytime your headache spikes, he loses control over his actions.

trying to cook breakfast was a terrible idea. han should have known how much of a hassle it would be to make food, but he wasn't willing to deviate from his daily routine over inconsistently-timed outbursts. all that resulted was an uproar of stove fire and eggs flipped high to the ceiling. jisung was already pouring a bowl of likely overdue cereal three groans into the breakfast journey.

without school occupying their time, which at this point the twins weren't sure if they preferred, they decided to put a movie on while they waited for changbin's return. but trying to pay attention to the screen and take all plot points proved challenging, too. even though they've somewhat gotten used to being influenced by the flu you caught, the ringing noise in their ears and the increasing feeling of shared pain still took up most of the space in their head. using a movie as a distraction was useless.

"he's taking an awful long time to get medicine," han muttered when he was within earshot.

jisung chuckled faintly as he watched han drag himself to the other end of the couch and slump down. there was barely any space left after jisung laid himself down with a blanket over his knees, but he buckled his knees to avoid being sat on. as han dropped onto the couch, he raised a finger slightly to catch the hot water that spilled over the edge of han's cup and discreetly returned it to where it came from. han took notice of it, grimaced, and said nothing.

"maybe there's a lot of people at the pharmacy," jisung said.

han put his hand under the cup to further heat the water up. his chest heaved steadily with each clipping of commercials on the television, enjoying this strange moment of calm instead of refuting jisung's claim.

he didn't think there were a lot of people at the pharmacy or the department store, whichever changbin was at. he believed changbin was taking so long because he didn't know what kind of medicine to get for the flu. he never had to get one for himself, and he never had to for a child. he was now forced to gather information on which of the millions of options work best, which, if he knew better, all of them technically should work.

that was a roundabout way to say han didn't think changbin was fit to be a parent, let alone you three's parent.

"what do you think about him?"

jisung peered without turning his head. he was comfortable lying on his forearm. "who? changbin?"

"yeah." han nodded.

there was a soft, nonchalant him. jisung was thinking, but the hum could very well be an indifferent response, serving as the end of the conversation. that wouldn't be far off from what jisung thought about changbin. he managed to see into changbin's past the first day you met, and nothing was interesting. he cdetermine if the man was good or bad. if han was asked about what he saw in changbin's past, which was mostly blood and death, he wouldn't be able to use that to make up an answer about his character either.

all there was of changbin now was that he was stoic, straightforward, and didn't enjoy speaking to any of you. jisung didn't care for social interactions with him enough to dislike the fact that he was limited to it.

"there must be something you want to say," han urged quietly.

"i don't know him well enough," jisung said. "i'm waiting for him to mess up."

"and i want to go home," han took a short sip of water, "i want mom and dad back."

jisung raised a brow in mild surprise. han has never explicitly expressed his liking toward your old foster home. he was always the harder one to read; he would speak, usually on your behalf, but he would say anything about himself. he pointed out apparent things and kept his opinions to himself. it was easy to suspect he didn't like it there, so hearing him address the married couple you previously housed with as mom and dad in this context was unexpected.

"i don't understand why they never adopted us," jisung muttered.

han's eyes reflected the colors flickering across the television screen. a door down the hallway opened before another one was closed; you likely left your room to use the bathroom. at least you managed to get out of bed. he swore he felt a bad case of growing pains just now. his chest moved slowly once and stopped, then he softly responded, "i think you know why. we all know–argh!"

the glass cup in han's hand ripped a few cracks around its body before it shattered, letting the liquid inside leak onto his lap. jisung opened his squeezed-shut eyes to catch the television pause from its shaking. he inwardly sighed at the faint hum of the commercial jingle in the company of your weeping from the bathroom. the neighbors may have a complaint or two after today.

sparing han a brief glance while he got off the couch to check on you, he saw that han was trying to get all the glass pieces off his thighs and the couch surface. he didn't need any extra help, and even if he did, jisung wouldn't lend a helping hand when you were crying so loudly in the bathroom. bare feet pitter-pattered their way across the floor to the hall, where among a wall of shadow was the light beaming in the size of a single door. jisung approached the frame and peeked inside, finding you on the floor with your head resting on the toilet seat and one of your hands halfway into the toilet bowl.

he made a throaty noise of disdain upon your tear-stricken face as he crouched next to you. "han broke another cup. his–" he rolled his eyes skyward and hummed–"fifth one today."

you hiccupped away the acidic taste in your mouth. "i puked."

"i figured." he arched his neck to look inside the toilet. grimacing, he reached a hand up to press on the silver handle. "you also didn't flush."

"because i was puking!" you exclaimed, your teary voice covered by the rush of water draining the fluids down the toilet.

it started as a bad stomachache, then there was an abrupt rush of sourness at the back of your mouth, flooding onto your tongue with your saliva. you went to the bathroom to spit the phlegm, but the second you bent your waist, the urge to puke took over. the pain all over your body, your aversion to puking, the suddenness of its arrival, and the stamina it took forced you to burst into tears.

"i'm hungry," you muttered, featured scrunching up. "i wanna eat mom's porridge."

jisung stared at you in silence for a while. the consensus was that switching foster homes was a wrong arrangement. unfortunately, it wasn't an agreement came to by anyone who would be impacted by it. it never was. and han was right. he knew why you three were never adopted. the glass pieces on the floor and the rumbling of apartment walls were enough trouble. being under watchful eyes was a wicked responsibility not all parents would care to share.

he often wondered how your mother would have reacted. your mother–the woman whose womb he slept in for however many hours or days before you three were found. he wouldn't exist if she was alive, but he admitted he possesses a discreet yearning to be loved, always be your brother, and be normal. sadly, the current story was his birth acting as a result of her death. he would always be the remains of your mother's undoing–his mother's demise.

"i miss her food too," jisung said as he reached for a tissue to wipe your mouth. "come on, let's go outside."

he clumsily took you into his arms and stood up. han had already returned to his seat on the couch when you arrived. the water was gone from his lap and the glass pieces gathered on a tissue paper on the coffee table. he made space for you to lay down, your head on jisung's lap and your legs curled to your chest. the television program switched from commercials to an old drama show that was surprisingly intriguing. at least the human-spoken dialogues were better white noises than loopy commercial jingles.

"they puked and started crying," jisung informed.

"all of a sudden?" han scoffed out a chuckle.

he glanced down at you and frowned when he caught jisung secretly taking the sickness from you through his palm on the side of your head. you three have agreed to cut down on healing you at any minor inconveniences to hone your resiliency. besides, it was ironic that they wanted to be like other regular kids but wouldn't let simple things like a bloodied knee and catching a cold happen to you. your chest heaved according to your hiccups–you're just beginning to calm down from crying. han looked away from jisung's hand and decided he'd say something.

"changbin is gonna be upset when he comes back and finds out [name] doesn't need the medicine anymore."

jisung froze in surprise. he snapped his head to pull a face. "how would you know? are you two best friends?"

"he's always upset." han shrugged.

"i think that's just his face."

han waited a moment before he laughed. "he does look upset all the time."

"oh hey, here," the pharmacist said, holding out a small box of allergy pills. "seems like you need it."

changbin tilted his head with furrowed brows, his hand letting go of the cash in his wallet. "what?"

"you kept sneezing. it might be allergies," the pharmacist said. "either that, or someone is talking about you."

changbin sent a half glare toward the man. he didn't believe in those superstitions.

"give me the pills."

#i would start a fight every single day and plot mayhem for fun if I have siblings like these two #because just because #they are my problems and likewise I am their problem #maya’s bookshelf #also changbin lmao let the poor man rest

[missinghan]

[ 3RACHA ]

too busy carrying the industry on their shoulders 😔✊

#sobbing in a corner don't mind me

[missinghan]

teaser: ❝love, kim seungmin.❞

#lmao the fact that I did chicken out of this #it’s still there sitting in my google doc glaring at me #sadly missinghan doesn’t do domestic stuff anymore #shame

[missinghan]

2hwang face card

#face card cannot be declined period #they both look so good I can’t

[missinghan]

#awwh the cutest

[missinghan]

yes....you're the tallest....

#lmao why is he like this #he’s so silly

[missinghan]

falling asleep in a time machine ⤖ bang chan

❖ genre : mafia au; fluffy angst; hurt/comfort; female reader insert

❖ word count : 6,9k.

❖ warning : swearing, implied major character death, depictions of vomiting, killing, blood, death, can be brutal (!!!), delusional happy ending. 

❖ summary : four times you try to go back in time and save chan; or alternatively, you keep dreaming about chan to see if there is a way to undo his death when in reality there isn’t — from the world of illicit & priceless.

❖ author’s note : just finished my first term of uni (like actually the first term ever) and I’m so dead inside so here’s a silly little something. I can’t use pts anymore so pls bear with the banner *cries and dusts off this old blog* also I try to explain here why Chan was so attached and pissed off when mc stole his mother’s ring even though it’s accidental.

first attempt —

There are three missions that have altered the course of your and Chan’s relationship.

The first mission goes back to when you were still going on heists and Ryujin had foolishly put a piece of Chan’s mother’s sentiments into your pocket. Neither you nor Chan have come to know or like each other much before it.

The second one is the mansion with a bomb planted in the basement and Chan got locked inside a conference room with a three-layered door, one of them made from the same metal as the fucking Titanic. The third mission involves a casino where the Germans and Italians came together to push Chan toward a dead-end they had cultivated for the Devil himself, to his ultimate demise. They are all too arrogant to admit that Chan will take over the entirety of the East Asian market before any of them can start rolling in their graves.

Three missions of importance and not long after that, you and Chan have agreed to never go on a mission without each other. An unwritten contract. An unspoken promise. Nothing that the mafia engages in is legal so everything runs on trust, on how much faith you are willing to give those who you keep close.

However, there is a fourth mission that the Underworld records will fail to keep because even only a minuscule part of the Bang family is informed about this—how their precious heir has been summoned to bring home the girl he loves.

“Would you do laundry and taxes with me?”

“That’s an odd way to propose to someone, Y/N. And please, you’re asking an obvious question.” Chan looks up at you from his book. His smile is gentle, soft at the corners with his dimples sinking in—it’s how you know that he means it—the way it usually is these days. The way it has been for the past year. It is almost obscure, you think, how you both would have wanted each other’s head on a stick a year ago before one of you managed to make the other person cry out of gratitude.

You lift the book away from his face, glimpsing at the cover. Because Chan is an absolute heathen, he has been reading No Longer Human and you’re being annoying about it because he hasn’t come out to train with you for two days already. “Are you telling me you’ll say ‘no’?”

“We’re already doing laundry and taxes together. We will just have matching rings and a signed piece of paper,” Chan gives you a pointed look; he always looks so serious whenever he wants to correct you as if your sarcasm is that dry. “So it naturally implies as a ‘yes’, idiot,” he nags, even though he doesn’t mean the last part.

“Oh how you wound me, love,” you bite back, even though you don’t mean it either. “Chan, come on. You’re locking yourself up in a prison.”

Chan lets out a long, heavy sigh as if he’s insulted that you have just called his room a prison—which you never verbally hinted at, he simply interpreted it that way. He reaches over to grab the book from your hand, seemingly giving up his reading time for you, and places it on his bedside. 

“What are you–” You watch as Chan walks over to one of his mahogany drawers. “-doing?”

“I need caffeine to talk to you.”

Despite your bristling, he stays true to his words and finds himself a mug, a tea bag, along with a boiler. By the time Chan finishes filling up the boiler with water and turns on the heating switch, your legs are dangling over the edge of his bed as you puff up like a cat, baffled and offended. 

“So,” Chan inquires, a steaming mug of tea in his hand. “What’s up?”

“I find your current state distressing to look at,” you elaborate with glee, a glint coming into your eyes that Chan knows you’re up to no good. “Take a week off with me. We can go anywhere you want, it’ll be a short getaway, just the two of us.”

Chan’s back is turned toward you because he’s too busy searching for a spoon but you can boldly assume that he’s smiling. It’s hinted in his tone when he asks, “You mean a vacation?”

“Brilliant interpretation, Chan,” you smile wryly. “Of course, I meant a vacation!”

“No, you can go have fun by yourself. You have my permission,” he shakes his head. “I have things to attend to. Meetings, banquets, important business transactions. You know how boring the mafia lifestyle is.”

You still, voice low and suppressed in something Chan can’t seem to grasp at. “You’re going back to your family.” It’s barely a movement, a small enough action. Any passerby would think that you have only faltered a little but Chan has observed you for a good while now to notice you’re holding your shoulders back from trembling. 

“I am going back to my family,” he repeats calmly. “Only for a week, though. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“Chan, I know they want to see me.”

Chan tries not to let anything show on his face. “And they may very well kill you because that is what they are. Godawful, egoistic, and incapable of compassion.”

“Let me go with you, I—” you begin, though you cut yourself off almost instantly. The room is suddenly steeped in silence, unwieldy at the absence of your words. Every noise seems amplified in the quiet: the boys’ chatters echoing dully from the living room, the ticking hands of the clock, and every breath you take to calm the anxiety in your rib cage.

I do not fear death, sickness, or anyone’s hatred. What I fear most is losing you, Chan. It’s all so beyond you because a year ago, you were a thief, taking things as you please and sending them away when they’re no longer of use for your benefit. Now there is someone who you will live for and his kiss you will kill for, his laugh you will die for.

“Chan, do you have any idea what I would turn into if you left me?” You have always worried loudly, from the volume of your attentiveness and the anxiety beneath your skin all lie in the tender manner of how you love Chan—the same goes for him, that you can be certain of.

“I will never leave you, Y/N. We will be okay,” he assures you, unbearably calm.

Chan is a liar. 

second attempt —

Chan is supposed to go back to the Bang family’s estate with Yuriko for the New Year. Yuriko is the housekeeper whom he has retired for about a year ever since you came into the picture. The boys, especially Jisung, have been forced into keeping their surroundings clean because, for some wicked reason, they think you are absolutely terrifying when you’re upset about their muddy shoes dirtying the floor after a mission. Yuriko always giggles at that, her Young Master surely knows how to pick a partner. 

“I’ve got word that your father wants you to back to the estate, Young Master,” Yuriko tells Chan when she finds you and Chan in the archive because you have insisted on reading about something you won’t say a word to him. Surely, Chan recognizes what you’re searching for but he doesn’t mention it. 

“He said he wanted to make sure you are ready to take over his position. And there is a dinner he wants your attendance for,” Yuriko continues, hands clasped behind her back. You didn’t even realize when she stepped in and approached Chan—for a mere housekeeper to be so swift and quiet with her movements, you have long guessed that she’s not just any old woman to be hired by the Bang family.

The way Chan stiffens in his seat is telling all on its own. You are suddenly struck with the recurring memory of how Minho used to babble about how much of an ass Chan’s family is when he has had one too many drinks. “You don’t know how bigshot mafia families treat their children, do you? They kept the world from knowing for a reason. I’m surprised Chan didn’t turn out to be a monster like them.”

“Forgive me, Yuriko, but you can tell the old man to suck it up,” Chan says softly but his voice is dark, tense, riddled with a sharpness you haven’t heard from him in a long time—you were threatened just the same way when you had stolen his mother’s ring. Now you realize Chan only ever speaks so heartlessly if something precious to him is hanging on the verge of being taken away. 

“Young Master,” Yuriko frowns for two reasons; firstly, Chan has never been able to decline his blood family of anything and secondly, there isn’t much that she can do to solve the problem at hand. She’s a mere servant for the Bang family; she doesn’t have much power to begin with and therefore, she can’t exactly tell them ‘no’. 

“No, you can’t make me,” Chan grits because he knows, he understands it all too well. Unsaid words of all the things money can buy hang in the air like bile. 

“Young Master Christopher, you must know what happens if you defy your father.” And there goes Yuriko’s final warning along with Chan dashing out of the archive, straight through the hallway and the front door of the mansion, completely vanishing in the white curtain of December snow.

Yuriko murmurs something under her breath, unintended for you to hear her. You continue staring forward, the file in your hands completely forgotten. “He can come home with me,” you say without actually thinking about it until she turns to stare at you, expressionless before breaking into a fit of giggles.

“I think Young Master would like that.”

With that, you set off to find Chan.

“No one will love you unconditionally like we do.” “You belong to us, so do as we say.” “Work to kill, kill or you’ll die. You were born to kill, it’s a gift that not everyone receives.” “The world will bow before you and sway the way you want it but you’ll have to-”

“I don’t want any of that,” Chan hisses but the voices keep coming back louder, harsher, with more bite than he has ever heard from them. “None of you ever gave me anything that matters! You just can’t admit that you made me a murderer!!” 

The snow around him sinks with each step he takes, their words still echoing in his mind and sending shivers down his spine, driven so deeply inside his skull that he wishes he could have nothing of this reality. “Be mindful of yourself. Control it.” “Your fangs and claws are too sharp for you to be swinging just at anyone,” he hears them again

His nose burns in the cold but Chan doesn’t notice something warm and wet trickle down his cheekbones. “You never cared about restraint. You said I must kill or I would die. You all just want to possess me, you want me not as an heir but as a commodity!!”

“It’s how we’ve been running this family. It’s how we keep things in order. You’re one of us, Christopher, you are this family.”

With a huff, Chan eventually gives in and listens because he has no other choice but to; he slides down against concrete with a white-out vision, a quivering figure with nothing on but his cardigan. “Then you’re just as godawful as any of them,” he tells himself, knees curling against his chest, almost justified in his own lie that he wants to burst out laughing.

Chan knows they have made him more of a weapon than a child, more of a monster than a man and he is stuck with it for good. He has been holding onto life just because he can, not so much that he wants to. Because he never truly wanted anything before or was wanted in any way.

“Oh my god, you’re a fucking man-child!”

He hears someone’s nagging from afar and ignores it, hugging himself impossibly tighter because asking for comfort is unacceptable, they taught him so. “Chan!!” He hopes it goes away with all of the other voices. 

It doesn’t. Instead, it comes closer in a humane form, boots crunching against the snow and warm breaths sounding rhythmically. “It’s been an hour. Do you have any idea how worried we all were- how worried I was?! What the actual hell,” you snap. “Now I’m going to hear all this shit from Seungmin again because I let you run off and he’s too terrified of you to properly lecture you. God-”

Your rambles cut off when you kneel down next to him, rummaging for a scarf, a pair of gloves, yet another pair of gloves, his puffer jacket, and a hat from your bag. Chan quietly watches as he tries to blink away the oncoming tears but he can’t—they keep coming. He doesn’t reply when your scolding goes on because even though your voice is sharp, Chan can catch the worry hidden along the edges. Being cared for and cherished like this has made him realize how much he doesn’t want to come back to his family and he wants to cry like he’s the fourteen-year-old boy who used to refuse to pick up a gun all over again.

A child who was unable to stuff down the overwhelming agony and grief forced upon him. A child who was weaponized. A child who was threatened into killing his own mother. “If you can’t kill what you hold near and dear, you’ll never be able to kill anyone to save yourself.”

“Chan?” you call out to him, unbearably soft. There’s a certainty, a sort of gentleness in the way his name is said that only makes his tears come hotter, more and more of it because your love feels big, overwhelming.

Chan hates crying so he never did, not when they had locked him up in his room, not when they had starved him because of his disobedience, not when they had made him pull the trigger with the gun’s mouth pressing against his mother’s chest. Chan hates crying but it seems to be all he’s doing now. 

You’re wrapping him up so gently and trying to warm him up because you know he’s just as human as any mundane individual out there. Humans shiver when the temperature drops, they shed tears when they’re upset, and they bleed and bruise at the right amount of impact. That’s why humans are so clingy toward each other so they can prevent harm from coming the other person’s way. Because no one enjoys getting hurt and there is no good reason to voluntarily get hurt; it sounds like common sense but Chan never grew up with such things. He never came to think he was deserving of such things.

“Chan, come home with me. Forget your family. I don’t need to know about them,” you smile at him, somehow empathetic and so understanding when Chan has barely given you an explanation, when he is desperate to fill the silence but he knows his voice will be weak with tears, stumbling, and pitching all over the place.

Chan sniffles, finding the courage to say something back because he wants to, not because he feels like he has to, “Can I really…come-come home with you?”

“I’m sure the girls wouldn't mind, they might be a little annoying. Yeji, though, can be wary of strangers,” you shrug, something so relaxed about your posture tells him that you have learned to accept something without telling him. 

A breathy chuckle. “Especially when they’re a mafia leader.”

An exhale. Chan shudders when you embrace him wholly—every moment of pride and arrogance, betrayal and hurt that he has been boxing away—as the beautiful mess that he is. You’re the safest person on the face of Earth not because you are on equal terms with him in power but because you never care about those things. You will let him break something, burn something down, cry, and laugh however he pleases but you won’t ever let go of his hand. You never ask him for anything in return while continuing to save him over and over again.

He’s so unbelievably lucky, Chan thinks but doesn’t say it aloud, instead, he tells you, “If you’ll have me.”

The night after you drive Chan back to your mansion, the place goes up in flames. Only you are able to open your eyes to see the next daylight.

“Welcome home,” you want to whisper but can only watch a last smile bloom on the face of a ghost amidst the orange blaze.

third attempt —

You decide to come home with Chan.

For a non-mafia family, it might go like this.

Meeting Chan’s parents will be the hardest thing you have ever done—and that is coming from someone who has broken through the world’s most modern security systems and got your hands on objects worth billions of dollars. 

You will bow when you meet them, use the politest speech you have taught yourself last minute, and desperately try not to remember how Chan was forced to shoot his own mother as a child. They will pinch your cheek and call you lovely, chuckling at how stiff you are and offering you a ‘Come on in! Don’t mind the mess, it’s always how our house is.’

You will smile and you will play along because you want them to like you so badly it hurts. 

Chan will gawk at you without even trying to hide it because you have given him a completely different experience upon your first encounter. Casual, timid, and quick with your tongues when it comes to those witty retorts.

They will then ask you, ‘‘What are your hobbies? Any sports? Instruments?’’ Purely in the Asian parents’ style. 

You will be so nervous that you forget you play the violin and practice meditation occasionally. You will sit at their dinner table in their cozy, lived-in home, and rack your brain for a proper answer that might be deemed reasonable for a mundane girl. “It can be anything you do for fun, honey. No need to be nervous,” they will say again and you will give them a small grimace in return. 

It’s probably deeply fucked up when the first thing that comes to your mind is ‘I retired from heists a year ago because museums are fucking boring so I have moved on to finding new and creative ways to eliminate anything that might be the cause of Chan’s suffering.’

“…You play the violin beautifully,” Chan will suggest quietly beside you, his hand laced with yours beneath the table. “And you interrupt my reading time whenever you need attention.”

“I…I like to be with you,” you will finally find the courage to say with a firm squeeze of his hand, and the strength to smile when his eyes widen faintly, flustered yet not surprised. 

Still, it doesn’t matter whether Chan was born from a mafia family. You don’t hesitate to hold his hand beneath the table when Chan tenses up from the disappointed gaze of his father, lean over ever so slightly, and whisper, “I like to be with you.” He almost gasps but refrains. “Wherever we are. As long as you allow me to stay by your side.”

For once, Chan lets himself think that he won’t fuck up something before he even gets to have it in his arms. 

You did come home with Chan even if the dinner is anything but cozy and mundane. Their smiles are cold porcelain, a familiarity with death so staggering you feel nauseous. They are all here, though. Every single one of them. “I’ll be back,” you say and excuse yourself to use the restroom, he assumes.

Chan finds an uneasy slick in his throat, almost thick like blood when he sees a bright thing in your eyes. He lets you go anyway. Will things happen differently if he holds you back? 

Minutes after your withdrawal from the dinner table, an explosion goes off downstairs. The mansion quivers with a long string of rumble, a horrible feeling looming over everyone in the room like an ugly shadow. Though, no one bats an eye. Maintaining such a high position in the Underworld for so long is more than enough for the bounty on each of their heads to go up to millions of dollars. 

As much as Chan detests his blood family, he doesn’t want to die here, a horrendous place for his corpse to be found. So he stands as the rest of the room begins arming themselves, doing his best not to pay any heed to his father, and bolts downstairs. 

In situations like this, he is taught to close his heart and kill. Hence why there was barely any screaming when the commotion occurred, only the metallic sounds of bullets being clicked into their chamber. Truth be told, there is a weapon vault on the main floor of the mansion. Chan knows the most efficient shortcut there and can run through any hallways even without any lights on. He did grow up in this terrible place, and now he will make use of that to get you out of here before anything else. 

Chan arrives at the main floor and there is nothing but a giant hole and crumbled metal pieces in the weapon vault—or what used to be the weapon vault, blown up by a bomb it seems. Well, shit, he doesn’t even know how to register this. The entrance to his father’s most treasured place in the mansion has a three-layered door with an extremely lethal surveillance system, who and how the fuck-

He stops. He doesn’t so much as twitch. It gives him a moment of pure chill when the main floor has gone completely muted, both audibly and visually, like his life has just tipped off balance and leaned towards the bad part of a zombie movie. Upstairs, there is a cry for help and the sound of bullets continuously firing. 

“My fucking god,” Chan curses and turns on his heels, steeling himself mentally while rushing up the stairs. 

Upon arriving at the scene, it’s difficult to say whether turning up just five minutes earlier would have made much of a difference. Fuck, but if he had held you back, would things have taken a different turn?

There is a lot of blood. Too much blood to be explained away, and too much evidence to be traced back to no one else other than you. Well, to be fair, you’re the only person still standing and kicking aside from Chan anyway. The shotgun in your hand with a silencer attached speaks volumes, a knife between your teeth, and your left hand is fisted tightly. 

“…Y-Y/N,” Chan utters, in disbelief. “You’re Y/N, aren’t you?” 

You release something in your left hand and several fifteen-bullet magazines drop to the ground, the sound scratching his spine in the wrong way. The knife also hits the ground, metal echoing loudly against hard marble. 

“You’re here, Chan,” you reply, like your hands and clothes aren’t painted red. Swiftly, you duck to fumble for something beneath the dining table. Chan’s gaze follows you suit, prompting uneasiness to crawl down his throat when he realizes everything is, quite literally, drenched in blood. When he manages to snap out of it, you are unwrapping something from a white blanket—Berry, his eight-year-old Spaniel. 

You don’t look one bit surprised to see him—you have been expecting him. You simply keep on tucking Berry neatly into the blanket, murmuring something along the lines of ‘it’s over now’ and ‘I’m sorry I scared you’. Berry offers you a small whimper in return, still startled and recovering from the loud ruckus. 

Chan inhales very slowly. Exhales. “What did you do?”

“I killed everyone here,” you say levelly, as if mass murder is no big deal. “You’re a little late. I thought your intuition would be keener than that.”

“This is no time for a fucking joke,” he snaps. Chan has snapped because he’s mad at himself. He has been living purely by his intuition for more than two decades already, without it he would have died a long time ago. Yet when it comes to you, he’s always the most irrational. 

Your lips twitch like you’re about to smile but realize he’s upset. “You’re right, sorry.” 

Chan moves further into the room, his shoes squelching with each blood-drenched step he takes. He takes the scene in once again and keeps calm because that is what he has trained himself to do ever since the first time he got kidnapped. When his gaze brushes over the corpse of his father, he tries not to think about anything just yet. What’s done is done but Chan can piece the scene together from the explosion downstairs—a bait that anyone will be eager to take and a good way to disarm your enemies—to the scattering of hole-filled bodies, their blood blooming against the marble floor like a grotesque bouquet.

The crux of it is you know all too well he will run to find you without question, lending you the space and time to kill whoever remains.

“Why?”

Your eyes sweep over the mass of bodies, dull and distant. “Does it really matter?” You don’t think it’s fair to say you did it because you love him; it will become a curse that haunts him for as long as he lives. Yes, you love Chan with your entire soul but you also simply want to act as you please, allowing yourself to have your selfish ways of declaring your love for him. 

His chest heaves without any stability. “I thought you said you’re used to taking many things but you don’t take lives!!”

You cut right in, all glass. “Will anyone be able to do anything about it? Can anyone possibly arrest me, Chan?” 

Chan shudders, a sour thing gnawing at the back of his throat. It’s a morbid feeling he knows will become recurring at night, on the bad days. Chan wants to be furious, it feels like a moral obligation to be. Then again, everything the world has learned about empathy is already torn up by his family, they smeared it beneath their feet like it’s common trash. In the end, all of his nightmares and source of fear amounts to this, a mass of corpses with no resolution. 

“Do you want to kill me, Chan? If so, do it. You’re your own person, you are free.” 

Your eyes have turned into ice, and suddenly you have become so intangible that Chan slowly grows afraid. He thinks of terrible things, Am I allowed to have you? What makes you want me so badly? Why am I different from any of them?

The sound of retching interrupts his train of thought. It takes him precisely half a second to stare at how you are folded over your knees, dry heaving at the marble floor with Berry fumbling for help right at your side. Chan rushes to you to keep your hair out of your face as you gasp for air, choking on stomach bile and body raking with shudders. Once his hand smooths over the fabric on your back, you eventually cough and hack out the last of whatever is left that your system rejects. 

You breathe as shallowly as you can. Quiet wheezes, hollow breaths that pull in and out of your lungs too quickly. Chan rubs small, gentle circles on your back and doesn’t expect it when you snap up to look at him with wide, pained eyes as though you didn’t just murder his entire family in cold blood minutes ago, like you didn’t just take out the Underworld’s most feared lineage of demons by yourself.

Chan decides not to say anything, lets you lean into him shakily, and tries to figure out what you’re attempting to do with your hands. Dry blood makes your skin itchy every time your fingers twitch but you don’t mind it. 

“I’m here, I’m here,” he finally whispers with you sitting in the circle of his arms; you’re shaking like you’re sobbing even though you make no noise and cry no tears. Chan lets you squirm with a wild mania in your eyes, frantic and lost. He can’t quite pinpoint what you want until he gets it. 

You stop shaking the moment your head leans against the left side of his chest, right where his beating heart is. A pattern in his rib cage and a rhythm in your ears, relief so immense you feel like you can finally breathe. What you want is just to hear the sound of his heartbeat. It makes Chan feel a little exposed, somewhat scrutinized but he really doesn’t mind taking himself apart to hand his heart over to you. 

“I’m sorry,” you mumble, your tone wet and warm with oncoming tears. 

Chan presses his lips into a thin line, feeling like a hypocrite when he keeps you caged in his arms. “What are you sorry for, silly?” From the bottom of his heart, it’s abominable, he thinks—that even amidst such gruesome bloodshed created by your own hands, Chan is relieved that you are not hurt.

“I’m sorry this isn’t real.”

fourth attempt —

Chan is coming home with you. The childhood home you used to grow up in with two extremely loving, a little too oblivious parents who never once questioned their daughter’s occupation in the big city. 

It takes time to adjust but Chan is sliding into your little family without noticing it himself. He manages to impress your mom with his cooking and discusses politics with your dad. You might be going delusional but you swear you saw him chuckling faintly at your parents’ terrible taste of reality TV. 

The house might only amount to one-tenth of his mansion but it smells like fresh laundry all around, tender and soft, smothered in the love of ordinary human beings. So everything just feels that much bigger, a love so warm and overwhelming it stains Chan’s eyes with unfamiliar myriads of emotions. It takes him a few days to finally laugh a little louder, not refraining his speech to specifically formal phrases, and allowing himself to nag you in front of your parents. He even makes a sound of disbelief when you keep telling them he’s only a friend from work.

“Oh my god, why are you so salty about it,” you chide and close your bedroom door. “If I had said you’re my boyfriend, they would have started investigating you!” 

Chan sits on the duvet you have laid on the floor for him—your childhood bed is too small to share—and mumbles something morbid under his breath, “I am quite good at tolerating any methods of torture thank you very much.” However, he doesn’t miss the look your parents give you whenever you bid them goodnight with Chan hovering over you in a way that’s nowhere near platonic.

You snort, actually, no, it’s too bitter for you to even react. “The worst they will do is leave you out when we watch TV,” you grin to relieve the inevitably building tension, shit-eating and all.

“That’s cruel. You know I love reality TV,” Chan replies, completely monotone. He flings an arm over his eyes like he’s putting in effort to mimic a dying body trying to convey his love in a Shakespeare play. Wrestling with like ten other housewives to buy those eggs on sale for your mom was more of a workout than any gun fights he has engaged in.

“Sleep. Mom said we’re going outside tomorrow,” you huff, tossing him a teddy bear from your bed—the amount of stuffed animals you own is impressive, they easily take up half of your bed so Chan had to accept his fate with the duvet. 

“I thought we’re heading back?”

“We will after going out with her. She said she wanted something from the bakery.”

Chan hums in response, his gaze skimming over the interior of your room again. Light pink wallpapers, white bookshelves and wardrobe lining the corners, and soft hues of blue on your bed and curtains to top it all off. “Truly, you are the designer of a generation.”

“Toddlers usually don’t like black. And I was eight, Chan, shut the fuck up,” you laugh, the sound so hearty it makes him want to bottle it and keep it all to himself like a child hiding his favorite candy. 

“Hurts my eyes a little, but I like it,” he declares and unwinds for the day.

You never realize you don’t really walk around town every time you visit your parents. Maybe it’s because you didn’t have many friends growing up, meaning there’s no one to call up for a hangout, or maybe it’s because all of the memories you want to relive here are with your parents, in the warmth of their home. So you walk down the sleepy streets with laziness on your shoulders, somewhat at peace when Chan can’t seem to keep his eyes in one place, secretly comparing the imageries of bright, colorful Seoul with this hazy rural area.

“What is that place over there?” He asks when you stride past a sketchy-looking building when in reality, it’s a spa run by this really nice old lady upstairs.

“Did you go to school here?” He ponders when you glance at what looks like a middle school; no kids are running and shouting in the playground since it’s the New Year holiday. 

Your mom notices how much curiosity Chan has for an apparent mid-twenties young adult so she giggles, offering to point out something she thinks he might be interested in, “That’s a small park Y/N used to play at. She wouldn’t leave when I came to pick her up after work.”

You can’t decide if you should scowl at your mom or burst out laughing at her implication that Chan, the leader of a notorious mafia group, should go and sit on one of the swings while she heads inside the bakery. “Come on, Chan,” you quickly make your choice. 

Chan sighs, though the sound is fond because he sees a sort of excitement blooming loud and clear in your pretty eyes. You have observed Chan long enough to know when he has given in so you laugh, turning to your mom and saying, “We’ll be back in a minute.” The familiar promise melts Chan inside out but he doesn’t tell you that. 

You accidentally drop your phone while walking down the stone steps so you turn away for half a second. And when you look back, Chan is seated neatly on the swing which is definitely not fitting for his age—his long legs dragging against the soil as his arms are crossed in front of his chest. As serious as he tries to look, you find the whole imagery so ridiculously unserious. He senses your gaze burning holes on the back of his neck so he stands, reaches upward, and lifts himself to sit on the metal bar that the chains rain down from.

“Chan, what the fuck, that’s not how you use a swing,” you chide, nearly rolling on the ground and barking a laugh. “If I take a photo of you right now, how dead am I?”

Chan doesn’t even need to turn his head. “What do you think?”

He looks down when your footsteps squish against the snow and he tries to imagine how a little you would hang around this place for an entire afternoon, up to no good things while waiting for your mom. “Concise as always, boss,” you purse your lips at him, nostalgia a heavy weight on the curve of your shoulders as you peer over places you used to designate as your hiding spots. 

Chan catches something shifting on your face and he ponders; why would you voluntarily involve yourself in outlaw doings when you could have had a perfectly normal life? “When did you start stealing?” 

“Probably when my parents sent me away for university. I hated it. School was hard and the expenses were awful for their bank accounts but they wouldn’t tell me that,” you mutter and decide to join him, legs dangling over the edges, a confession dragged from your lips unwillingly. 

Chan scoots a little closer, a hand reaching over to your left side to keep you from falling. “And you figured you were pretty good at it?”

“Nothing to be proud of, obviously,” you shake your head and can’t help a small grin. “Okay, maybe just a little. I was making money from racing on the side as well.” 

It takes him a moment to register your words when surprise halts the words in his throat. No wonder you’re better at handling car chases than any of his teammates who have been involved in this business for years. You look over at him, seeing that he’s having trouble reacting so you pinch his nose teasingly, “I know, so sexy, ain’t it?” 

Chan rolls his eyes, neglects the warmth spreading on his cheeks, and simply sits with you. The swing creaks and groans beneath the weight of two adults, rust staining his hand when he lifts it to check. 

“It was enough money for me to graduate and I was fine with that. Mind you I was always the top of my class,” you scoff, thinking of long days when you used to get little to no sleep, of when you had mustered the best smiles for your parents through FaceTime, of how you had begun not caring for how much money the jewels you had stolen were worth. 

None of it matters anymore, you think as you lean into Chan, and he lets you. “I’ll guess this, you were homeschooled?”

Chan doesn’t answer immediately as realization tightens his ribs. You don’t talk about home or how you grew up, and Chan doesn’t talk about his parents. Perhaps you both are similar in that way so neither of you mind when the other person never initiated it. “I was. Everything I ever learned was taught in that forsaken mansion. Most of it, actually.”

“Everything?”

“You can’t run away from what you’re surrounded with,” he says, and there’s a chilling edge to it, an icy kind of shiver that makes your fingers more numb than the winter cold ever can. 

“Chan, you’re not them,” you declare out of the blue, eyes crinkling up in adoration. “You are free, okay? No matter how hard they try to ruin you, you can’t become them.”

When you look up again, his eyes have a glassy shine when he says, “I know that now.”

“Don’t cry,” you huff out a breath.

“I’m not crying,” Chan shakes his head slowly, voice suspiciously shaky. “I guess I just thought you had a lot to live for and I was…you know, it was arrogant of me to keep you by my side.”

You laugh, a sharp, crisp bark of a sound that cuts right through his doubts. “Who do you think you’re talking to? If I wanted to run, I would have and no one could catch me, not now, not ever.”

“Well, I did,” Chan retorts, though there is no bite to it.

“Only because I let you,” you play along sedately. It’s the soft hum of your voice that makes breathing for him feel easier, and his shoulders feel lighter. When Chan exhales, it no longer tastes like the unfathomable, untouchable nightmares that he was so used to choke down, swallow, and not allow himself to throw them up as proof to show anyone else. 

Your mom returns perhaps in about an hour, a box tucked in her arms and groceries hanging from her elbow. “Time to go back,” she yells from the top of the stone steps. “We need to cook dinner, kids!”

You don’t dare budge. Chan notices it and nudges your shoulder gently, sensing your discontent. “You heard your mom, come on now.”

“I don’t want to go back,” you disagree. “Let’s stay here. I want to go to the beach with you when it gets warmer. And diving, kayaking, too!”

“You told me to leave my credit cards back home. You’ll have to feed me and pay all of my expenses,” Chan reminds you.

“Guess what, I left mine at home too,” you reply breezily. Maybe you both need to find new jobs. You don’t think Chan should worry about that because there’s nothing that he can’t do if he puts his mind to it, he’s just that great. Chan is the greatest thing there is, the best thing that has ever happened to you.

You watch rosy lips part, brown eyes widening as his grip on your shoulder falters faintly. “I don’t deserve good things, Y/N. I can’t stay here with you,” Chan says like he means it. “Tell me to leave.” He really is stupid until the very end.

“If you’re worried about that, I’ll kindly decline my spot in heaven and go to hell with you,” you assure him, your voice chirping with mirth but even that doesn’t seem to elevate his gloom at all. A groan. “Fine then, as the most wonderful person alive, I now denounce us of all our wrongdoings. And I announce us to be the best of normal friends as normal people!”

His solemn expression crumbles and now he just looks straight up insulted. “It’s supposed to be ‘husband and wife’,” Chan nags while fighting off a grin of his own.

A light feeling burgeons in your chest. “I thought you didn’t care about that kind of thing? We’re already doing laundry and taxes together, right? It’s not like we have enough money to buy the rings either.”

“I suppose I’ll have no say in that,” Chan sighs in defeat, finally smiling brightly as he reminds himself of what he has, and what he wants to become for you. “But I like to be with you as well. If you’ll have me.”

You look back at him, wanting nothing more than to burn those words into the flesh of your heart. “I already have you right here, don’t I?”

Because Chan’s existence is etched deeply somewhere inside your soul. And you love him everyday for that.

❖ note (yet again) : hello there, if you have reached the end, thank you so much for reading! I wish 2024 will bring you and your loved ones nothing but happiness and great health! (no one asked but I really tried to simplify their speech of affection towards each other here compared to illicit & priceless because all they really want is to be normal people living a normal life)

#* #I am quite pleased with this

[missinghan]

ALWAYS IN THIS TWILIGHT • BC • a fallen goddess and every piece of herself she'd given to her beloved; angst; a somewhat toxic dynamic; fantasy; mentions of war; brief descriptions of gore and blood; 793 words.

If Chan would ask you for the sky and every little star in the infinite cosmos, you would hand them to him in a breath’s spell.

Yet, there he was, earnest and sincere as his eyes fluttered once, twice. Hesitant, perhaps. Regretful, like those of a man who had spent a fortune on the most joyous night of gambling.

You wanted to laugh, or cry, or both.

‘Your eyes, only.’

He was asking so little of you.

“I’m sorry.” Chan slumped to his knees at the foot of your shrine, fingers digging into the dirt as he brought his head low. He was a broken willow tree, and you, his torn moon.

“My love, don’t be,” a voice that was everywhere and nowhere at once, a declaration for the universe and a murmur only he heard. You reached a phantom hand to lift his chin from his dampened palms.

His shoulders trembled like leaves in a cruel wind, his tears a silent river that wreaked destruction in its path toward you, killing the ever-living essence in your ethereal existence.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” the words that left his lips were a mangled prayer that seemed to be deaf to your speech. There was nothing for him to be sorry for. Hadn’t you ripped your beating heart out of your chest for him before?

“Dearest…” you traced his features with the ghost of your fingers, watching his darling eyes flutter shut for the first moment of respite in years. His face—beautiful, broken, human—was one you knew from a thousand centuries past, when you first fell to the mortal realm and found yourself imprisoned upon this holy hill.

Chan was the human king who chased your fallen star, then with his many knights and subjects, erected this grand shrine for you to live in. He was kind, and his golden heart made him precious even to one forsaken such as yourself. You loved him, and by some heavenly jest, he loved you in return.

That was his sin—loving you, who had been banished from heaven, a love greater and mightier than the wildest storms. A love of which your kin deemed you undeserving, for your palms were tainted black with the divine blood of another.  

Yet, when the sky hailed with fire and heaven opened its doors to reclaim you, Chan stood in defiance, a sword of earthly steel in his grasp and a cosmic fury in his gaze. In the cage of his mortal flesh, your immortal heart beat, lending him the strength he so brazenly sought.

The war that ensued from his rebellion was one of a thousand centuries. For as long as he lived a human with a god’s heart, you were tethered to this realm. And he fought to keep it that way.

When your brethren stole his sword-wielding hands, you gifted him yours, divine so that he may strike with the force of every sun and every moon. When they severed the legs by which he stood before them, resentful, you offered him yours so that he may rise forever unhindered. And when they pierced his chest and he bled crimson rivers, you poured your blood for him, oceans so that his heart may never grow athirst.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t—”

The words that refused to leave Chan’s lips were heard by the heart of yours that beat in tandem with his.

‘Forgive me for my selfishness, for I cannot part with you. Forgive me, my love, for I cannot see you anymore.’

You brushed your thumbs over his closed eyes. His lashes were adorned with shimmering tears, strokes of liquid stars across his cheeks. Your most beloved’s vision had been taken from him by those seraphic hands, and there was no doubt in your mind as to what you had to do.

You touched the phantom of your forehead against his and closed your eyes, speaking a song of a thousand angels, “Go.”

“Wait! No—! Please, don’t—”

Chan’s eyes snapped open, and he attempted to push you away. Barely, softly, because he could never think to use any real force against you. But it was too late. The vision that he now gazed upon you with was that of a god, vast, boundless, true.

It made him double over, anguished beyond comprehension.

“No, no! Take it back, please! Y/n—!”

‘I don’t wish to do this to you anymore. You’ve got nothing left. You'll become nothing—’

You pressed your lips against the heap of his soft curls to silence his rampant mind. In truth, you could only smile, for you found no greater joy than in giving yourself away to him.

“Go and end this war, my love.”

#maya’s bookshelf #furat calling me the biggest anti of happiness #YOU HAVE NO RIGHT #TO DO THAT #BECAUSE WHAT IS THIS #THIS TWISTED THING #ladies and gentlemen #if there are days where you feel a little self-destructive just read this #literally a knife in your gut and furat just really twisting it in there #my morbid jokes aside- this has bested every blurb you have ever written #at least for me #your descriptions always amaze me because of how exquisite they are #it’s not an exaggeration I’ve told you that I always look up to you for a reason #this piece is pure insanity #just devotion slowly turned obsession turned blindness in love because girlie literally has nothing left to lose #really goes to show love is scary it’s a lovely thing on good days #on bad days it can just feel like a weight in your chest a burden maybe #I’m rambling incoherently like a 5 year old but atp YOU HAVE TO know this blurb made me LOSE MY DAMN MIND #if I’m the biggest anti of happiness then what does that make you- #this hypocritical world we’re living in smh smh