#( words unspoken: yoojin. )

[butterfirefly]

3. Last Week

“Yoojin...”

“Hmm?” Yoojin finished stripping off his drenched jumpsuit and turned his head to the front to see his friend practically vibrating in his seat with anxiety.

“Are you sure we should be driving this slowly?” Myeongwoo fretted. He kept looking at the speedometer before shifting his eyes back on the road. "They must've heard you've gone missing by now."

“Oh. Don’t worry about it," Yoojin replied, putting on the plain white shirt and dark jeans that Myeongwoo prepared for him and stuffing his ruined uniform in a plastic bag before it could drench the entire backseat with bloody water. “I made sure to drop the ambulance in the middle of the river. And with just how strong the storm is going, it’ll take them a while before they can start searching for it, much less me in particular.”

“The paramedics…?”

“Don't worry about it,” he said again, offering him a reassuring smile when Myeongwoo looked at him in the rearview mirror.

Myeongwoo was not reassured— he hunched over the steering wheel even more.

“Oh…” he said weakly.

They drove in silence for the next several minutes, and Yoojin took the chance to simply savor the sensation of being in a moving car for the first time in five years.

“Ah, right," he said all of a sudden, remembering another thing he'd missed. "Can we go grab some burgers along the way?”

"What?" Myeongwoo twisted around and blinked at him like he couldn't understand what he just said.

“Eyes on the road, Myeongwoo-yah,” he said mildly, then let out an aggrieved sigh once they were no longer in danger of getting into a car accident. “It’s been ages since I’ve had a cheeseburger. They didn’t serve those at the penitentiary. No fries either, can you believe it?”

Myeongwoo fidgeted in his seat.

“Yoojin, you…”

“Yeah?”

“... no. It’s nothing,” he said after some time, but his unspoken words reached Yoojin's ears loud and clear.

You've changed.

Yoojin found himself looking at his reflection in the window at that and imagined seeing something similar yet also different. A stronger jawline. A sharper nose. A handsomer face framed by dark, curly hair instead of straight and made softer with youth. Without warning, Yoojin was overcome with an all-consuming curiosity, making his heart painfully slam against his chest and setting his nerves on fire—the desire to sate it nearly suffocated him.

Did you change, too?

By the time they rolled up in the drive-thru, Yoojin felt exhausted. He lay sprawled across the backseat with an arm thrown over his face, the other one hanging bonelessly over the edge of the seat. He listened as Myeongwoo gave a quiet murmur of thanks and waited till he felt the car moving again before rising back to a sitting position. Taking the paper bag from the passenger's seat, he fished out his burger and quickly dug into his meal, eager to get some energy back into him.

“Fries?” Yoojin offered, holding the cone towards Myeongwoo’s mouth with his free hand.

“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug, dropping some into his mouth straight from the cone. "How long do you think it'll take before we reach Merit?"

Myeongwoo consulted his GPS. "We should be entering the city before sunrise. Do you have any specific destination in mind?"

“Any hotel somewhere in the middle is ideal—that'd make it easier for us to move around. But first, we need to find an ATM to get some cash, then we can get you a c—kid…”

“A what?”

“Pull over,” Yoojin suddenly ordered, sliding across the seat and leaning his face against the window, not wanting to lose sight of the figure moving slowly along the shoulder of the highway. “Myeongwoo, pull over.”

Myeongwoo did as he said. Yoojin didn’t bother to wait for the car to roll to a complete stop before stepping out of it, jogging over to the young girl moving at a snail's pace. He saw her face through the downpour and found she looked no older than thirteen. 

“Hey, kid,” he called carefully once he was standing a few feet in front of her, just loud enough to be heard over the rain. “Do you need help?”

“Go away,” she hissed, taking a wobbly step back.

Yoojin took note of the way she cradled her arm against her torso protectively—it was too dark to be sure, but he thought he could see a darker patch on her sleeve.

“Look," he said, raising his hands placatingly. "I know you shouldn't trust strangers and all that, but you should really get out of the rain and get that arm checked. Do you need me to call your guardian?"

“I need you to go away.”

Yoojin considered her for a long moment before jogging back to the car and dipping his head inside. A few seconds later, he ran back to the girl and lobbed something at her.

“Catch.”

She fumbled to catch it out of reflex, nearly dropping it to the ground, then stared at the small object in her hand before looking back at him with uncomprehending blue eyes.

“It’s a switchblade,” Yoojin explained helpfully, pointing at one side of the knife. “You press that button over there and a blade pops out from the other side."

The girl glared at him. "I know what it is. Why did you give it to me?"

"So that you can feel at ease. With that, there won't be any problem coming with me, right? If you feel unsafe at any point, just stab me wherever and leave. You can even rob my friend if you want—I'm sure he has a few bucks on him. Just try not to scare him too much, if you can. He's very timid."

“You’re crazy,” she said, staring at him with her mouth hanging slightly ajar.

“And you’re hurt and standing in the pouring rain, so let’s at least solve two of the three, shall we?”

Yoojin waited patiently as she looked between him and the knife a couple of times, then sighed in relief when she pressed the button to release the blade and pointed it directly at him.

“I won’t hesitate to use this, ahjusshi,” she warned.

Yoojin saw the coldness of her gaze and the steadiness of her hand and knew she was telling the truth.

"Good."

Note: Vicious jumps from 10 years, 1 week, to 1 day ago with each chapter till the story catches up, which is why this one is yet at another point in time.

@ukiyolatte @just-in-e

#bff writes #sclassvicious

[ofgentleresolve-a]

ahn yoojin. immortal. waiter. 

#( threads: yoojin. ) #( verse: one thousand years. ) #( verse: one thousand days. ) #( mirror: yoojin. ) #( words unspoken: yoojin. ) #( dash commentary: yoojin. ) #( dash games: yoojin. ) #( aesthetics: yoojin. ) #( headcanons: yoojin. ) #get your wish ( ft. yoojin & hyerin )

[minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong]

Penumbra: An Interactive BTS Horror Story Part VII

Premise: Seven friends return to their old high school for one last night of mayhem before the building is condemned. But everything is not as it seems… What will the group do when they find themselves trapped in a warped hellscape with no means of escaping?

That…is up to you.

The Rules: To participate in this story, all you need to do is vote. At the end of each chapter, you will have five hours to make a decision via the poll provided. Do this or do that: you decide. Whichever option receives the majority of the votes is the path we will all follow together so please…choose wisely.

Another prudent decision. You have chosen well once again. Jimin and Jungkook leave room 104 to find the others.

Now what will the boys do? Your final decision is here. Want to know more about the characters before you vote? Read this.

Previous Chapter - Next Chapter

Masterlist

WARNING: This story contains material that some readers may find frightening, disturbing, or unsettling. If you are sensitive to graphic imagery or dark situations, proceed with caution. Please read at your own risk.

Seokjin runs a hand along the warped wallpaper, tracing it with his fingers. The three boys had been wandering for a while, searching for any familiar corner or corridor that could lead them to their friends. Armed with the bloody, ripped papers and not much else, they decided to at least try to figure out the newspaper clippings. But even though they’d encountered plenty of bulletin boards in all their endless walking, it yielded little in the way of information.

“After a series of mysterious structural malfunctions, the building has been condemned indefinitely. Local rumors speculate that the contracting company plans on building a new high school on the grounds, but this has yet to be confirmed. Yoojin Han, theater teacher at Haneul Academy of the Arts, says he would be happy to donate to the construction of a new school.”

And that’s all they could find. Printed several times on each bulletin board they passed, this seems to be the most important article. None of the newspapers mentioned Minnie. The only trace of evidence Seokjin could glean from the stained old papers tacked on the boards was the mention of an ‘accident’. Nameless, without so much as a detailed description, there’s not much to the accounts. Truthfully, he’s had a bad feeling about the clippings from the beginning, and he’s managed to convince Taehyung not to go grabbing them for the moment. But after what he pulled with that tongue…

Seokjin isn’t so certain that Taehyung won’t do something reckless again.

Taehyung walks behind Seokjin while Namjoon leads the charge as per usual. Seokjin tries to read his expression but can’t quite place the cocktail of emotions that he finds there. Or perhaps it’s the lack of emotions in Taehyung’s eyes that sets Seokjin on edge. He turns back to the wallpaper, dragging his hand along it with a sigh. He vomited any food he had been storing in his stomach back in the auditorium, and now his gut is grumbling with waves of hunger pangs. Seokjin’s mind keeps wandering and that’s no good for him.

This whole place, all these spirits, all this roiling energy…it reminds him of Eunjin. She would have found this building fascinating. She might have even sickly enjoyed it somehow. Back then, he might have thought the same himself.

Not now. Not after everything that happened.

Seokjin shakes his head to clear it and takes a bracing breath of chilly air. He watched Namjoon’s back, his flashlight fading in and out of life as its beam sweeps around the unfamiliar corners and glints on the foreign class number placards.

“I think we should go back and collect the clippings,” says Taehyung.

Here we go, thinks Seokjin as he pauses mid-step. He turns to Taehyung and raises his brows. “Haven’t we collected enough?” he asks, gesturing with his eyes to Taehyung’s full pocket. He crosses his arms over his chest.

Taehyung’s back stiffens a little and his Adam’s apple bobs with a measured swallow. “We need information. Know your enemy-,”

“Who cares if we know the enemy or not? Clearly, learning more hasn’t exactly been our golden ticket out so far!” Seokjin exclaims, remembering that horrible, mangles tongue from before. His painfully empty stomach churns again.

“What if it has to do with that man that Hoseok saw? Or the man in the diary entries?” asks Taehyung with a charged glance at Seokjin.

The two share a brief exchange, neither speaking for a long moment, until Namjoon clears his throat and plants a hand on the bulletin board beside him. He stares at it for a long moment then glances over his shoulder at the boys. Ever since the auditorium, Namjoon has been strange. Like the thin threads holding him together are beginning to unravel, like the very fabric of him is beginning to fray at the edges. Seokjin is hyperaware of this shift. He can see it even in the set of his friend’s jaw.

“How much worse can it really get?” asks Namjoon, his hand seizing on one of the clippings and ripping it off the board.

Seokjin’s heart races and he lurches forward, reaching out for Namjoon’s arms. “No!” he shouts, but it’s far too late.

Namjoon pockets the clipping and the building shakes, rumbling as if it may collapse and rearrange once again. The lights overhead flicker and in the darkness, Seokjin catches the brief glimmer of something. A specter or maybe an orb. But the thing is gone as soon as the lights return and Namjoon stares at him with wide eyes.

“I told you,” says Seokjin under his breath, gripping the bridge of his nose.

“What’s going on?” asks a familiar voice.

“Let’s go,” says Jungkook, looking at Jimin seriously as he two stand breathless in room 104. “That guy could come back any time. Staying here…,” he begins, but stops when he realizes how much his voice is wavering.

He clears his throat and watched Jimin furrow his brow. He’s worse for the wear. Blood spotting on his shirt where he was hit, his skin splotched with dirt and sweat, his hair clumping here and there. His eyes are feral as he looks back at Jungkook. There’s something in his expression that Jungkook never noticed before. Something…strong.

“You’re right,” he says, then levels his wild eyes with his. “Are you sure you’re not scared?”

Jungkook swallows hard and rubs his hands together, watching the ground for a moment. So much has happened, it’s impossible for Jungkook to lie and say he’s not. Besides, Jimin’s always been the sort of person who can pick up on people’s moods. There’s no use playing tough with him.

But something in Jungkook outweighs his fear of dying.

And it hits him like a ton of bricks as he looks at Jimin by the doorway, still panting from the exertion of fighting that man.

He stiffens and nods his head. “I��m scared,” he says. “But if the others are out there right now, and if they’re scared too…we have to find them.”

Jimin’s stoic expression breaks into a soft, tired smile and he nods his head once. “Okay,” he says gently. He places a hand on Jungkook’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “This is really brave, Jungkook,” he says.

Jungkook nods and clears his throat. “Let’s go,” he says, maneuvering around Jimin and walking carefully out into the hallway. “Maybe we can try checking the entryway or something.”

Immediately, he hears a groan that makes him jump a little. But the memory resurfaced of Jimin shielding him from that shadowy man, his arms wide, protecting him with all the force his body had. And he found the strength to keep going. He squeezes his eyes shut and angles past a corpse lying on its stomach, arms reaching out into the hallway, deteriorating ankles crusted with long-dried blood.

Jimin winces beside him. “Looks like his Achilles tendon was cut,” he says.

Jungkook scowls. “How do you know?”

Jimin jerks his head toward the body. “You can tell from the wounds on the backs of the ankles. Makes it impossible to walk.”

“Where did you learn that, Jimin?” he asks, peering down at his friend.

“I…I read a lot of scary shit online, alright?” he says before sighing and waving his hands. “Forget it. Point is, that must’ve hurt a lot.”

Jungkook glances back at the corpse splayed out on the rotting ground and surpasses a shiver. “This place…it really is merciless isn’t it?” he asks.

Jimin is quiet for a moment as the two walk through the darkness. “I guess so.”

“Doesn’t this hallway look a little weird?” asks Jungkook carefully as he glances around the corridor.

Without Namjoon’s flashlight, the place is too dim to make out any concrete details. But certain things stand out. Doors and windows, vending machines, sharp turns down undiscovered hallways. And from those things alone, Jungkook can say with relative certainty that this place is new.

“We must’ve taken a wrong turn,” says Jimin. “I didn’t recognize that corpse earlier either.”

Jungkook sighs. “Of course,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “Well, maybe if we retrace our steps we can get back.”

The two turn to look back behind them and are greeted with what looks like an endless stretch of hallway, curving into dark nothingness. Surely, they haven’t walked that far. No words are exchanged between the two, but there’s an unspoken understanding that something is wrong. Not only that, but with one frightened look, Jungkook knows that Jimin sees what he’s seeing. There’s no way to go back.

“I…I guess…um…maybe we should just f-follow this hallway?” asks Jimin. His tone and body language have both shifted back to how they were when Jungkook first saw him in this twisted building. Timid, scared, thrown off.

Jungkook quickly places a hand on his shoulder and meets his wavering brown eyes. “Maybe the building is leading us somewhere,” he says quietly. “Maybe this is where the others went.”

Jimin is quiet for a moment before swallowing hard and offering a curt nod. He takes a steadying breath and nods again. “You’re right,” he says. “You’re probably right. Let’s just…keep going then.”

Jungkook nods and pats Jimin’s back before turning on his heel and leading the way down the corridor. He’s sick of Jimin and the others taking care of him. The image of Jimin with his arms splayed out, gaze steely, ready to greet death for his sake, is burned in Jungkook’s mind. He wants to be someone worthy of that effort.

Minutes pass of mindless, silent walking in the dark when the lights overhead begin to flicker, fading in and out. The building rumbles and seems to shake with the force of another earthquake. Jimin and Jungkook grab one another and Jungkook pulls the two into a crouch. A few ceiling panels crash to the ground with a clatter, sending plumes of dust into the air.

“What is this?” asks Jimin, eyes wide.

Jungkook shakes his head. “Let’s wait it out!” he shouts over the clamor.

It takes only moments for the building to settle once again and Jungkook peels his eyes open, staring down the hallway once more. This time, the lights seem slightly brighter, less unsteady. Slowly, he eases himself back to standing and Jimin follows suit. The two stand side by side before Jungkook steps down the hallway. Because, standing just a few feet away are his friends.

Namjoon stands rigidly with his back to Jungkook, clutching a crumpled piece of newspaper in his hand while Seokjin rubs his face in distress. Taehyung watches with wide eyes and parted lips.

Quietly, Jungkook approaches from behind and asks, “What’s going on?”

“Jungkook?” asks Seokjin in a whisper before his whole chest collapses and he runs toward Jungkook, throwing his arms around the boy’s shoulders and pulling him close in a crushing hug. “Oh my God,” he whispers, his voice cracking with tears.

Taehyung and Namjoon approach as well, and no sooner has Jin released Jungkook than he is swept up in another hug. Embraces are exchanged all around, and the awkward atmosphere from before Jimin and Jungkook found the others has all but dissipated. Jungkook doesn’t stop to wonder what the three were arguing about or why they seem so tense. All he can think of is how relieved he is to be able to see them again, to hug them tightly and know they’re here, they’re breathing.

It’s a nameless fear he never thought he’d experience.

Jungkook leans away from Taehyung, his final embrace, and examines him. His eyes look tired, purplish bags hanging from them, and his expression has been poor since Jungkook approached. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Taehyung stiffens and his eyes shift. “I’m fine.”

Jungkook knows better. He inhales slowly and nods his head nonetheless. “I’m just glad you guys aren’t hurt,” he says softly, then glances over Taehyung’s shoulder at the hallway. “What’s down that way?” he asks.

Taehyung turns and raises his brows. “I…it’s not supposed to be like that…”

Jungkook blinks. “What do you mean?”

Namjoon, Seokjin, and Taehyung begin looking about themselves frantically. Namjoon flashes his light down the hallway in the direction they’d come and his beam catches on a placard. Namjoon’s eyes go wide as he looks at it. The color drains from his face. He quickly guides the flashlight toward the end of the hallway and stops on two large, beautifully-decorated doors.

“What’s that?” asks Jimin.

Namjoon turns over his shoulder and stared at the two newcomers. There’s something in his eyes that frightens Jungkook. “It’s the auditorium…”

“What-what is that?” asks Hoseok in a whisper. Yoongi is stiff beside him, and Hoseok can’t get him to budge.

Below them, crouched on the landing, is a young girl, black hair draped over her translucently pale skin, her body contorted. Her arms are bent awkwardly and all of her joints seem to be stitched together. Her head twitches a little as she lifts her gaze to look at them. Hollow, black eyes. Her fingernails are long and scratching against the cement landing. She seems to glow slightly, an unearthly, sickly yellow light. She’s sustained wounds on all of her limbs, and in her crouched position Hoseok can see the beginnings of where her stitched-together body parts are coming loose at the seams. White spots of bone poke through. She’s small, but her presence is loud and Hoseok can feel something malignant in her. She opens her mouth and releases a high-pitched, blood-curdling wail. As her blue lips part, Hoseok notices something is missing in her mouth.

This girl doesn’t have a tongue.

“Yoongi!” Hoseok shouts over the screaming.

Yoongi slowly turns his eyes to Hoseok and for the first time, Hoseok sees fear there. His heart begins to race. Without so much as a second’s pause, the girl begins scaling the stairs on all fours, horrifyingly fast. Her every move is accompanied by a disgusting clicking, like her bones aren’t quite in the right places. She crawls toward them so quickly Hoseok is nearly dizzied by the flash of white. Before he can react, the girl is upon him, taking him to the ground. Her touch burns like fire and Hoseok screams in pain as she digs her long nails into the flesh of his legs. He scurries out of her grip, but she’s relentless and terrifyingly strong. As soon as he is back on his feet, the girl has already begun sprinting toward him again. This time, he dodges her attack. But she’s wild and she has her sights set on him. She clings to the wall and, despite the very laws of physics, begins climbing it. Her hair hangs in long black tendrils around her face and torso, and as she pauses on the wall, she turns her head at a disturbing angle to stare down at Hoseok. She parts her lips in a smile that’s far too wide and a giggle echoes through the stairwell.

“Run!” Hoseok screams, but Yoongi seems to be in shock.

He grabs Yoongi’s hand and begins dashing madly down the stairs. Hoseok’s speed is affected severely by the attack and by his previous injury. He’s no match for this wild girl. She is quickly behind them, still running on hands and knees, screams intermixing with laughs that bounce off the walls. She reaches her clawed fingers out and rips the fabric of Yoongi’s jeans. Hoseok doesn’t have time to wonder if she drew blood. He tears around the corner out into the hallway of the second floor. They haven’t spent much time up here, and the whole place is foreign.

Without thinking, he sprints with Yoongi beside him down the corridor. He turns to see the girl is right behind them, her unnatural smile even wider now as she runs like an animal. Hoseok can’t fight the guttural scream that escapes him. He sobs as he drags Yoongi along. The girl shouts something garbled after them before Hoseok takes a sharp left down a hallway. She is quick to follow, but she can’t quite reach them in time. Because just as she rounds the corner, the building begins to shake and tremble.

“Another earthquake?” asks Yoongi, his eyes flashing around and his hand shaking in Hoseok’s.

Hoseok shakes his head. “I don’t know!” he calls over the racket.

The girl seems stunned into stillness, pausing mid-step on the ground. The lights flicker, launching the second floor into darkness for a moment. Panic seizes Hoseok’s heart. Fuck. If he can’t see her, he’s dead. She won’t stop this time.

But as the lights return, he sees that the girl is no longer there. In her place is a pool of what appears to be fresh black blood. Hoseok swallows hard and stares at Yoongi. The two stand perfectly still for a moment as the building stops rumbling. Neither of them says a single word. They simply stand panting, Hoseok’s heart racing and his pulse drowning out any sound.

Taehyung sits on one of the old auditorium chairs, nestled between Jimin and Jungkook. Namjoon and Seokjin are still treating him strangely, and the papers feel like they’re burning a hole through his pocket. He shifts uncomfortably and clears his throat.

The group decided it would be best to take a moment to reconvene in the auditorium, and with the way the building keeps shifting to bring them back it seems that they’re exactly where this place wants them to be. Taehyung glances around. Seokjin and Namjoon sit a row below, twisted around in their seats to listen as Jimin begins detailing what happened in their absence.

“Hoseok ran off and Yoongi followed after him,” says Jimin quietly.

Namjoon stiffens. “I told him to stay with you guys?”

“Would you rather he let Hoseok go off on his own?” asks Jimin. He raises his brows and Namjoon quiets down. “We don't know where they went, but they haven’t been back.”

Seokjin stiffens. “So that means…”

“They’re missing,” supplies Jimin with a set jaw. “After they left, that man came. The one Hoseok saw. I think he preys on vulnerable people.”

Namjoon peers at Jimin for a long moment. “And you got away?” he asks.

Jimin produces the knife Jungkook had found and holds it in his palm, which now is stained with black liquid. “It looks like we can hurt him,” he says. “Not much, but enough to scare him off.”

“We can fight him…,” says Namjoon.

Seokjin rubs his jaw. “Doesn’t mean much if we don’t have food or water. How much longer can any of us really last?”

Namjoon gives Seokjin’s arm a pinch and offers a stern look. “Jin,” he says.

“He’s being realistic,” Taehyung says softly with a shrug. “We’re getting weaker by the hour.”

“Regardless,” says Jimin with a shrug, “we fought him off but he did a number on the classroom. We didn’t think it was safe to wait there anymore so we left to find you guys.”

“And Hoseok and Yoongi…?” asks Seokjin, a quiet hopefulness in his eyes.

Jimin shakes his head. “We couldn’t leave a note or anything telling them where we were going. I just hope they don’t stay in room 104,” he says. “That man…he was pretty mad when he left.”

Namjoon swallows. “I…have a theory,” he says.

All eyes point to the leader. “What theory?” asks Jungkook.

“We…well, there’s no delicate way to say it, but we found…a human tongue in this auditorium,” he says.

Taehyung fishes around in his pocket and pulls the papers from inside. “These were underneath it.”

Jungkook recoils and stares at the papers with a horrified look. “You took them?”

Taehyung nods. “It could help us.”

“My theory is that the man is the same man Minnie mentioned in her diary,” says Namjoon. “Mr. H,” says Namjoon, then shakes his head. “Yoojin Han.”

“How do you know his full name? Wasn’t it crossed out?” asks Jimin.

Namjoon nods. “It was,” he says, then produces the newspaper in his palm. “In the diary. But on here, it says the theater teacher was willing to donate to the construction of a new school on these grounds.”

The auditorium grows cold.

“He was wealthy…,” says Seokjin, eyes growing distant. “Which means that whatever he did to Minnie…what if it was covered up?”

Namjoon is quiet for a moment. He swallows visibly before nodding. “That’s what I wonder too.”

“And the newspapers, the diary…,” begins Seokjin.

“Are her way of telling her story,” Taehyung adds with a nod. Silently, he unfolds the papers and stares at them. They’re horribly damaged and bloodied, and the words are difficult to decipher. But with a little squinting, Taehyung and the boys can discern it.

mr. h - - is a b - - man i don’t know why he did that after my performa - - - - i’m sc - - red of him now i don’t know wh - - he wants to d - he said i was smart and i am i k - - - he’s gonna do so - - - - - - - he said he knows Mins - - - and that if i say any - - - - - he’s gonna k - - - hi - i don’t k - - - what to do

i went to mr. h - - - office today and he sat beside me it scared me i thought he might do some - - - - - but he didn’t i got scared anyway and i sh - - - - - i shouldn't have done that i shouldn’t have done that i shouldn’t have done that i shouldn’t have - - - -  - - - -

Two entries. Barely legible past the blood and the handwriting. She was scared. She was scared of Mr. Han. Taehyung looks up at the group and his heart pounds. He doesn’t know what this means, or what that man did to make Minnie so scared, but one thing he knows for certain: Mr. Han is a dangerous man.

And he’s somewhere out there with Hoseok and Yoongi.

“We’ve gotta get the others,” says Taehyung, shaking his head.

Namjoon’s eyes are wide and frightened and he looks at Taehyung with only fear. “How?”

Taehyung wrings his hands and stares at the rest of the group. He knows Seokjin and Namjoon don’t trust him now, that they think he’s losing his grip. He knows they’re worried about his mental state, or worse that they’re worried that he might be dangerous too. But the thought of his friends being stuck out there is almost too much for him to bear. He stands up.

“Maybe the intercom still works,” he says.

Namjoon stands too. “No, you can’t go out there now-,”

“They’ll die!” he shouts, tears in his eyes. His composure is slipping. His heart is aching with fear. “Namjoon, we’ve gotta try!”

Seokjin stands and stares at Taehyung, his own eyes welling with tears. “We can’t leave them out there,” he says with a nod. “I’ll go with you.”

“Me too,” says Jungkook, standing. His jaw is set staunchly and his gaze is hard like glass. “I won’t let anyone else get hurt because of me.”

The three of them stand together, resolute, for a long moment. But Namjoon’s pleading gaze beseeches Taehyung’s heart. There’s something genuine there, something terrified. Taehyung stiffens. If he and the boys go out there, they really might not come back. And this gamble, this unspoken prayer that the intercom will not only work but they’ll be able to find it at all, isn’t certain. Isn’t guaranteed.

“Please…,” says Namjoon. Jimin stands up too and grabs Taehyung’s hand tightly. His eyes are watery. The two of them stand paralyzed by fear.

And Taehyung is beginning to feel that fear too…

#bts #bts horror #bts fanfiction #bts horror au #bts au #bts imagines #bts reactions

[disorientedblog-archive]

On my last night in Beijing: 五味俱全 - The Five Flavors of Life

by Esther Yoojin Song / photo: the author

It’s my last night in Beijing and I’m walking down Jiubajie, or bar street, with my friend behind me. Around us, the whole street is nothing but a streak of blaring lights and sounds, interjecting hands and bodies trying to steer us towards open doors regurgitating the all too familiar beats of hackneyed tunes. Here, the simple task of two people walking side-by-side for more than a few seconds is no longer so simple; one needs to mark positions, strategize, exchange signals, swerve, slow down, and speed up at the right timing—It’s a tiring process, really, which is why I feel particularly happy when we come across a little secluded bar at the quieter end of the street. Finding a table in the corner furthest from the door, we settle down, the walls around us dulling the chaos of before into a muted buzz.

A few half-hearted flicks into the menu, we settle for fries and some kind of carbonated drink. One familiar character, qi, meaning steam, is more than enough to make us eagerly point the item out to our waiter. At this point, the excitement for something ‘new, authentic, Chinese’ that we once had has long fizzed out into an arbitrary eagerness that emerges only occasionally. Tonight, our standards aren’t too high— we came in seeking refuge more than food— and we’ve both agreed that we’d rather not spend any more time trying to decipher the awkwardly literal english translations of drink names that our translation app shamelessly churns out: 贤妻良母- Good wife and good mother and 燃情百加得 - Hot burglary are the last two that we see before putting our phones away.

要两个这个。

Please give me two of this.

I say to our waiter. He nods after checking where my finger is pointing at. He’s been eyeing our table for some time now, the rhythmical sound of his clicking pen a constant reminder of his presence as well as his growing impatience.

再加个薯条。

And fries too, I add hastily.

The words come out rushed, different from how they’d sounded being rehearsed in my head. After eight weeks of living in Beijing while taking daily Chinese classes in a rigorous summer program, ordering food still remains a stressful ordeal. When the waiter leaves, we laugh at our own incompetence. It’s funny how we can talk about things like China’s skewed sex ratio or Deng Xiaoping’s “One country, Two systems” policy with comparable fluency, but fumble around when a waiter asks us if we’d like straws with our drinks.

In an individual session I had with my laoshi a few weeks back, we’d talked briefly about this very real issue of ordering food. Listening to my complaints on how difficult it is to decode food names, and how thick the menus can be (some of them literally like books), she nodded sympathetically and began to tell me how some Chinese restaurants would go a tad bit too far with their creativity.

Guess what this dish is, ‘A white dragon stranded in the sea’.”

I blink, confounded by the sudden literary allusion that’s been dropped in the middle of a conversation about food.

Um… Some kind of soup with something white in it?

I respond after some hesitation; I’m bad at guesswork, and hope my perfunctory answer will be good enough to lead us to the part where she discloses the actual answer.

That’s actually really close! It’s a soup with a single white radish in it. 

A single white radish?

I don’t understand the word radish in Chinese, so she has to show me a picture of it on her phone.

Yeah, haha- You see, names like these, even I wouldn’t be able to tell what dish they were referring to.

I crack into a smile at the thought of someone ordering something as lofty-sounding as ‘A white dragon stranded in the sea’ only to find out that it’s nothing more than a bowl of soup served with a single radish sunken at its bottom. ‘That’s so Chinese,’ I remember thinking to myself, not really knowing what I meant by it.

When our drinks come out, we’re pleasantly surprised by how good it is—it’s a sweet fruity flavor with a zing of fizziness to it. And the fries are just as divine as always, except better, because there’s a poached egg sitting on top that makes the whole thing look and taste ten times more expensive than it actually is. I’m starting to feel a lot better about the way this evening’s turned out.

Turning a fry around in egg yolk to make sure it’s evenly soaked on all sides, I point out how fitting it is that we spend our last night in Beijing having fries in a tapas bar in the most westernized part of the city, a slab of sarcasm tinged with laughter. My friend nods enthusiastically to reciprocate my feigned sincerity, and then reminds me how the McDonalds outside our campus would be brimming every weekend with people from our program on their way back from a night out. “Dididaodaode Maidanglao”, we’d say jokingly, calling McDonalds the ‘true authentic Chinese food’ while unashamedly munching on our McSpicies as we strolled back to our dorms. Any self-deprecating humor that made fun of our own detachment from Chinese culture, our obvious ‘otherness’ in what seemed like an impenetrably homogeneous community, was the unspoken buzzword of our makeshift community. If the program had brought us together through our shared interest in Chinese language and culture, what kept us together afterwards was oftentimes the very opposite—our ignorance of and indifference towards the very same subject— a sense of comradeship budding with every passing joke, a low giggle followed by discrete exchanges of glances when we encountered something so blatantly ‘Chinese’.

I slurp the last few drops of my drink until I hear the loud crackling noise of straw sucking on air. In the opposite corner of the bar, a giant fan sits rotating, sending periodic whooshes of cool air in our direction. The whirring sound that slightly amplifies whenever the fan’s head turns our way is only just audible over the sea of chatter that floods my resting ears. I sit back and try to listen in on the conversation that’s taking place in the table next to ours. A handful of familiar phrases and words stick out amidst a stream of incomprehensible sounds, exaggerated intonations and constant interjections distorting their speech into incomprehensible forms. I let my ears grapple with the sounds for a few more seconds, and then stop trying. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the past eight weeks, it’s how to sit comfortably in my own ignorance and not grow too self-conscious of it.

Last nights are always a little bittersweet. The idea of something coming to an end softens your senses with sentimentality, making everything appear a little bit more romantic in retrospect. I look over at my friend who is finishing the last few sips of her drink and realize that we’ll probably never see each other again after tonight. This idea saddens me, a premature wave of nostalgia taking over.

“Bittersweet,” I tell her, “that’s the word I wanted to say in that farewell video Lu laoshi filmed. But I couldn’t remember it in Chinese so I just said something about how unforgettable these eight weeks will be instead.”

“Ooh, I know Bittersweet in Chinese. Ummmm……...Wuwei something. Wuwei.. Wuwei.. Wuwei…..juquan? Yeah, that’s it. Wuweijuquan.”

Of course, it’s a Chengyu that we’d learned in class, a four-character idiomatic phrase that translates directly into ‘Having all five flavors,’the flavors of life—sweet, bitter, sour, spicy… what was the last one? Neither of us can remember.

The image I have in mind when I think of this phrase is that of a faceless Chinese cook skillfully shaking a giant stir-fry pan above a blazing stove fire as he throws in one Chinese seasoning after the other, his finished dish nothing other than a delectable stir fry of life, Chinese style. It’s impressive how four characters gleaned and sewn together from banal everyday speech manage to convey so much with so little. It gives the language a certain poetic quality that I revel in. Instead of settling for the binary ‘bittersweet’, why not pack in three more flavors with one extra syllable? From our cozy nook in the bar with less than 24 hours left in this country, I suddenly feel a new surge of appreciation for the very language that has beset my past eight weeks.

Wueweijuquan. As I continue to turn the word over in my head as we step out of the bar, a loud jeering noise comes from the corner. Turning our heads in the direction of the noise, we see a throng of people emerge from a narrow alleyway we hadn’t noticed before, women dressed in skin-tight dresses and high heels, men in expensive-looking shirts and loafers. They’re headed in the direction of the busier part of Jiubajie where we’d been previously.

I look down at my phone; it’s slightly past midnight. Our flights tomorrow aren’t until late afternoon, and I don’t feel like going back to my dorm to pack just yet.

“Plus, there’s that club street we’ve been meaning to check out for the longest time but never got around to doing.”

My friend adds. I nod, smiling—we both know where this is going.

So when the crowd gets close enough for us to smell the wafts of alcohol coming from their happy drunken singing, we turn in the direction that we came from. In front of us, Jiubajie moves in the same stream of clashing lights and sounds that we left it in, only this time, with a conviviality that I hadn’t quite noticed before. A few steps in, we are greeted by the familiar hodgepodge of lights and sounds, the numbing sensation of countless bodies knocking against your own, moving forward but also sideways and backwards at the same time… and just like that, we are once more back where we started. On my last night in this city of unruly sounds and tangled bodies, I decide to let myself be engulfed by its sweet chaos for one last time.

Esther Yoojin Song studies English and Statistics at Amherst College, and spent the summer of 2018 participating in a Chinese language program in Beijing.

#China