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"Enter any body of water and you give yourself up to be swallowed. Even the stones know that."
"beauty is terror"
"Would you fall in love with me again, if you knew all I've done? The things I can't undo. "
Calling all lovers of poetry and prose, rhyme and reason, screen and stage. Welcome to the Quotes Round, where every prompt must cradle a quotation (or two, or three). Mix the media and let the synergy birth a new order, or keep it short and let the subtext speak its secrets to the right writer.
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[FILL]: a little house; a big hunger
Major Tags: mcd (as a part of reincarnation)
Additional Tags: reincarnation, possession, ghosts, idolverse (but it's not very relevant), there's two jeonghans, and one of them is kinda fucked up, supernatural, hand-wavy logistics to this world bc idk either
Permission to remix: Yes!!
hi wren! this is probably wildly different from what you envisioned, but i hope you enjoy nonetheless. happy new year!
***
1
The two lovers spend their days in secrecy in a little house tucked in the edges of the woods in Daegu. It is winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. They don’t mind. More time to themselves, for each other.
One trips over the doorsill and stumbles, flushing crimson, awashed in the gold of fading daylight. The other giggles, sweet, and kisses the flustered ramblings off his lips. Palms press against skin press against hearts. In the honeyed drizzle of evening light they build dreams that fortify these walls.
Sometimes it’s hard to muster up joy, but they do for each other, clinging onto wispy hopes for a brighter and kinder future.
It is here they dare commit their most offensive rebellions.
Here, they dream of being free.
1.5
The little house embraced the two lovers again and again. In a world that rejects the very idea of them, this little house becomes their haven. Their future. The two lovers promise to never leave one another. But promises are flimsy things.
They break easily.
One never gets to see their dreams come true. The other learns what it’s like to bury a lover.
The little house stands vigil over it all.
2
Sounds of construction wail through the streets. The days are turning colder and crueler. The people of his country walk briskly, heads lowered, morale even lower. Uncertainty, exhaustion, hunger, and grief ravage even this little town on the outskirts of Daegu. He seeks refuge in a little house he finds right next to the trees. He’s never been here before, but it feels familiar. He settles a hand against the warm wooden beam supports and remembers a face. It smiles at him, fond, beautiful, loving.
A blink, and there’s a man in front of him, wearing that familiar, beautiful face. He’s translucent, dressed in clothes of a century past.
He gasps a little, steps back until his back hits the wall. The man tilts his head, smile crumbling a little.
My love, don’t you remember me?
He pauses for a second. His heart is racing but he is strangely unafraid. He studies this man. His chin-length hair. The twinkle in his eye. The slope of his neck. The elegance of his fingers.
My love. The man spreads his arms. Inviting. Compelling.
The heart remembers the hands that used to hold it; the feet remember the path it takes toward home.
He walks forward into the embrace, and lets it swallow him whole.
2.5
He breathes and walks again for the first time in a century. But he doesn’t recognize the world he steps into.
Soldiers of the occupation search the little house and find him curled up in a corner.
He dies a second time, in a different body, and howls silently at the loss of his love. His freedom.
3
Seungcheol moves into the little house tucked into the edges of the woods in Daegu on a winter solstice.
The place is spare, his belongings even sparer. He’d felt compelled to leave most of his items of luxury with his brother, at that apartment they used to share in Seoul. His name is off that property now.
His brother had expressed profuse confusion. He’d worked his ass off for most of his life to be where he is. Why would he leave it all behind now?
Seungcheol is 36, and he has no good answer. Just a whisper of a desire for a place far away, a call heard only in the darkest hour of the loneliest nights. He hasn’t understood why he chose to follow that whisper either.
No matter. His family is well taken care of, with the wealth he’d fought for and steadfastly invested. They’re comfortable, and he’s…here.
The house is nothing special, on the smaller side but still the typical traditional Hanok, mildly renovated with gentle modern touches. His furniture is arriving tomorrow. For now, Seungcheol opens the windows and doors to let the cold air brush through the house and sits on the front steps, surveilling the little town.
Much like the little house at his back, there is nothing special about it. Cobblestone paths wind in the direction of destinations he cannot see. Hanoks line the paths, the roofs gently curving over their front steps. Snow dusts every surface. There are few people out and about, a world away from the bustle of Seoul, but Seungcheol finds himself content and at peace. Something in his chest is settled, in a way it hasn’t been perhaps for all of his very long career.
A breeze ruffles through his hair. It’s chilly, but not unbearably so. The sun winks from the sky. At his back, the wooden beams on the little house creak gently, as if saying, welcome home.
-
That night Seungcheol briefly regrets opening all the windows and doors, for the chill lingers even after he’s figured out how to turn on the floor heating. As he nestles himself into the temporary bed he made on the floor out of duvets, a persistent chill hovers over his nape. He tosses and turns for hours deep into twilight.
When he finally falls into fitful sleep, he dreams of a beautiful, blurry face.
-
Seungcheol spends the better part of his morning directing the furniture around.
Once the dust settles and he’s haphazardly wiped down most surfaces and deemed everything clean enough, he sets off into the town.
He chances upon a little local market, bustling with the noise of vendors hawking their wares, food stall owners shouting out deals, customers haggling prices. He pauses in front of a chestnut stall, inhaling the smoky sweetness of freshly roasted chestnuts. The ahjussi behind the stall glances at him.
“You want chestnuts?” He asks, gruffly but not unkindly. Seungcheol’s chest warms something smoky and sweet. He hands the vendor three thousand won and says, “just a bag, please.”
Soon he’s strolling through the market with mouthfuls of sweet chestnuts, blowing gusts of steam out of his mouth into the cool winter air. He passes a stall selling homemade tteokbokki, another wafting the nuttiness of fresh bungeoppang. A third is selling little sculptures stacked from stones, complete with faces and stick arms and clothing. Unbidden, he buys one for Jeonghan. He doesn't even know when he might see Jeonghan again.
He returns to the little house not long after, the cold starting to really burrow beneath his coat, carrying his empty chestnut bag and his little stone Jeonghan.
-
There’s a beautiful but translucent man waiting in his house, dressed in garbs of two centuries past.
-
Seungcheol stares. He hears a crack that might have been his jaw hitting the floor, then he looks down and sees the broken form of Stone Jeonghan, fallen from his slack hand. So much for that.
The man—ghost? God. It can’t be—huffs a laugh, a sound like wind whistling through barren branches. He tilts his head, watching Seungcheol. There is something odd in his eyes, like fondness, but left to ferment for too long, gone sour.
My love. His voice is in Seungcheol’s head, and he jumps, staring hard at the apparition. He sounds just like Jeonghan. Finally you have returned.
“Who–who are you?” His voice quivers. He reaches a hand behind him and tries to discreetly fumble for the door knob.
I am Jeonghan, of course, the—thing—says. I am the love of your life.
Jeonghan.
“What?” He manages, fingers finally landing on the door knob. “Jeonghan is–”
Alive. Not here. The apparition’s face sours, like he’d tasted the words in the air.
Yes, it says, vitriolic. It seems God is enjoying a good laugh at my expense. You were not supposed to find another.
“What?” Seungcheol says again, faint. Maybe the chestnuts contained hallucinogenics? Surely that wasn’t legal—
Look at me. Ghost Jeonghan is nearly nose to nose with him. Seungcheol gasps as two bright points of cold dig into either side of his throat—a ghostly hand gripping him by the neck.
You were always supposed to be mine, love. For two lifetimes this house has been sacred to us. We promised to never leave each other.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Seungcheol gasps. But he then does. A cold tide of memories washes over him. Laughter and kisses, hidden away in the corners of this house. Whispered dreams. Falling snow. A grave, and a body, and a sharp, piercing pain. Returning to this house. Falling into Jeonghan again, Jeonghan breathing him in. He gasps again, and there are tears on his face.
You left me here. You always leave. Pain shudders through the voice in his head. He hardly sounds like Jeonghan now.
“I came back for you, didn’t I? The second time?”
You always leave, no matter how hard I call for you, how hard I try to hold onto you.
“Because I die too!” It tears out of Seungcheol’s throat.
And even then you leave me behind, bound to this house, chained to decades of waiting. The ghost shakes him, surprisingly strong.
That’s hardly my fault, Seungcheol wants to argue. Then he looks into the wild and terrifying face in front of his own, and fear freezes the words in his throat. He can see how, once upon a time, he might have found this…man breathtakingly beautiful. And yet, as the centuries slipped by and the ghost stewed in its own anguish, loss, and bitterness, its humanity corroded, leaving behind a vengeful spirit wearing a beautiful mask.
You promised we’d be free one day. And I have waited, for so long, my love, for you to set me free.
He pulls back a little, his eyes startlingly grey and mournful. I will wait no longer.
“Wha–” Seungcheol starts to say, but the realization dawns too slow. Ghost Jeonghan’s lips burn cold against his own, and Seungcheol frantically tries to push him away, only to realize Jeonghan is no longer solid enough to touch.
He watches, wide-eyed, panic pushing like vomit up his throat, as Jeonghan melts into frosty air, and seeps into his own body.
He hasn’t had a body in so long.
It’s cumbersome, at first, relearning how to move around as flesh and bone. But he’s satisfyingly solid, and when he takes his first steps outside the house in yet another century, nothing holds him back. Nothing shatters his essence and reforms him inside the house.
He takes another step, and joy blooms through him, thick and vicious.
He runs.
BREAKING: Star Yoon Jeonghan, Member of Former Hit Band SEVENTEEN, found dead in his own apartment.
9:05 AM
Read More…
Re: [FILL]: a little house; a big hunger
I know this story is less than 2.5k but it feels a lot longer with how much ground (and how many years) that it covered. I love the descriptions of the house and the wind, how it's personified at times to feel like a lover because it could be, because it is, moving in ways that Seungcheol does not understand yet.
Re: [FILL]: a little house; a big hunger
Re: [FILL]: a little house; a big hunger
Re: [FILL]: a little house; a big hunger