#subaek wip
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DOG GOSPEL (?)
The weight of the pendant on his chest only becomes noticeable in moments of suspension, when nothing is set to stone and everything stands to collapse. Baekhyun’s thumb passes across the heavy, golden face of it—his print feels the grooves of its engraving—and watches as his step-brother greets Se Horangi’s Jung Jaesang with a distinctly false smile. He’ll be feeling slighted (Baekhyun knows him well), but he’d be a fool to make a scene, not after the gift Se Horangi bestowed upon him.
The decision for Baekhyun’s senior to assume his father’s position, regardless of actual birthright, is one that has not affected Baekhyun’s mood. It is not that he is disinterested in the organization, nor that he feels any sort of derision for Hayan Dal-pa, but when the mechanisms of this great hydra begin moving all at once it is time to pay attention, to duck one’s head, and to wait to see how it will ride out. Baekhyun might have a personal-ego about himself, an interior understanding that he can (and one day, will) outwit Baekbeom at his own game, but like his brother… he is not stupid. He knows when to recognize what is within his hands, and what is not.
Hwang Daesik stands at his back. His thumb is wrapped over the lip of his plate and his thick, ringed fingers splay across the bottom of it. He’s eating, because if he’s not eating he’d be talking and the things he’d like to say would have Baekbeom splitting his skull right outside of the building door.
Considering it’s a funeral home, Baekhyun can’t help but think it’s fitting.
“How long will we have to stay here?” His mother stands at his side, even though she was the woman scorned. Her lash-line is thick with unshed tears, but her lips do not tremble and he will pretend as if her hands are just as steadfast (they are not). A flash of guilt runs through him at asking the question in the first place, but it just as easily succumbs beneath a wave of anger.
His father was not cruel to him. Never.
Nor did he ever raise a hand to his mother.
But, he scorned her. He disrespected her.
All for the politics.
“Once Baekbeom leaves.” Kang Sang-mi will not allow her son to chance his brother’s ire; she will not allow her son to die for something foolish. “Will you be remaining in Busan?” She has floated her own ideas, all of which involve moving back to Bucheon, where Baekhyun was born (though he doesn’t remember the neighborhood and would never call it his birthplace). He has not decided one way or another. He thinks that moving back home with ensure his getting killed, and will put his mother in the crossfire.
Staying close is almost as certain a death, but she will be left to her own. “I’ll be staying,” he says slowly. “Baekbeom has promised to show me the business.” Nevermind that Baekhyun already understands the business. He was tolerant of his father, up until he treated Baekhyun’s mother as he did. He learned the business like he would inherit it. If he were a few years older, it is likely he would have inherited it, regardless of Baekbeom’s own closeness to the Byun patriarch.
“So he says.” Sang-mi understands danger. She also understands her son; his need to try and protect her. She’ll allow it too; it is part of his growing up. “You’ll visit.” She doesn’t say this like a question, nor like a command. It is a statement of fact—a close understanding of what will happen based off of what she already knows of her son.
Baekhyun nods, rocking on the balls of his feet, then stepping into motion. He weaves through black-suited bodies, ignoring each hand that reaches out in fealty. The casket lies beyond each of these soldiers. Its cushioned interior is revealed by the open lid, and as Baekhyun strides more closely, he follows the quilting down into the bed of the coffin.
The mortician did well cleaning the old man up, but make-up cannot easily hide the injuries one knows to look for. Baekhyun had been in the car as his father bled. He’d been in the car as it crashed. He’d been plucked from it like a stray cat from a gutter—wet with rain, motor oil, and screaming like his life depended on it—and brought past the body (as they bagged it) on a gurney that rattled across the asphalt. Not that Baekhyun had needed it. He’d been unscathed in both altercation and accident.
“You almost can’t tell.” Baekbeom is too loud for the circumstances. His voice grates on Baekhyun’s nerves, fraying the patience he’s kept wrapped around himself for the entirety of the proceedings so far. “Don’t look so hard.”
“Fuck off,” Baekhyun drawls, rolling his eyes. “Junhee’s looking for you.” He jerks his head towards the waspy-woman standing in their peripheral. He doesn’t say anything else to his brother.
Baekbeom’s hand closes around Baekhyun’s bicep: “Watch your tongue, little brother.” The threat falls flat. Baekhyun has nothing more to fear than he already does. He’s almost resigned himself to his fate anyway. His lip quirks into a semblance of a smile and he watches as Baekbeom retreats towards his own mother. A trio of mourners descend upon the two of them (Baekhyun is not unhappy to be recognized as the more unapproachable son, not if that is how strangers treat Baekbeom).
His attention returns to the casket.
He steps closer to it. Places his hand on the side.
The wood feels strong (strong enough to hold beneath the weight of the world?) and sturdy. The scent of flowers and perfume wafts up at him—cologne too, the one his father often wore. Baekhyun can almost imagine his eyes blinking open. He can almost imagine the man crawling out of the case. But he will not. What is dead tends to stay dead. Baekhyun stews in conflict for a minute, then another, and another. He hears mourners passing behind him, murmuring about his place before a dead man, but it is secondary to the thoughts whirling through his head.
He reaches into the casket. His manicured nails scrape metal, then his fingers close around the pendant resting on his father’s own chest. A golden scapular means nothing—the Madonna promise does not extend to those engraved for appearances.
Baekhyun considers the medal, the man wearing it.
Then, he tugs with a pitiful amount of force.
And the chain breaks.
#sneak peek?#this is either the opener or its getting scrapped#i had a funeral theme with dog gospel#so i almost want to do a wedding theme with this one#i think itd be fitting since we close out dog gospel with a wedding invite#subaek wip
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Me: Wanting to write Suchen, Sudi, and Subaek
My Laytao WIP: Guiding me by the shoulders back into my house
#thinking out loud#fic talk#tbf i don't have fleshed out ideas for those fics it's just a goal i have eventually#i was thinking of setting subaek in a fire emblem au actually#with jm being a prince and bh being a thief#but i don't really have any good stories for that premise#so those three are just marinating for now
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The Nikeulom-neu is one of those places within the takaengdom that stands residual of an ancient time, long before the streets surrounding it converted to brick and adobe houses from the pit-houses lining the roads in the past. It is a pagoda, built of lime-stone (as is the traditional way), which sits atop the tallest peak within Opalayeon’s walls where it can catch the most direct beam from the sun-on-high (a time which sets it alight in shining, white-fired glory).
Opposite the temple, beyond the sheer salt-white cliffs and across the bay colored in swathes of jade and wine, is what the people call Noyalapo, or the Wall of Water. It is a crashing of the exterior sea with the interior bay, a great impenatrable wall of water which stretches into the clouds—at which point it turns to froth and foam and eventually becomes a cloud itself, floating in the atmosphere up above.
According to the legends, there will come a day the Noyalapo is brought down—and the outside can merge with the inside. The people of Opalayeon teach their children, who in turn teach their children, that upon this coming they are to greet the newcomers with open arms and gentle hearts; as the legend has it, the people who dismiss the Noyalapo are a sister-people—brethren in experience, perhaps even those who had once called the land of Opalayeon home.
Junmyeon wakes on the first of Tajen with breath misting in front of his open lips and the dew of the morning frosting his eyelashes. The winter has crept through the sliding doors between his bedchambers and the cliff-side walking bridge.
He hasn’t a guard to dismiss—not like the places outside of the bay’s serene niche, where there are assassins at every step and poisons notched delicately between the threads of sheets—nor does he have a servant to call to his aide. Perhaps, where he to call out (in a sleep-laden voice, tinged with a whine), someone passing through the palace’s walls might heed his command. Perhaps. As it is, he chooses to instead sit up, smacking his lips as he does so (hating the dreadful feeling of dry flesh meeting dry flesh).
It takes a moment.
Another.
Then, he notices the singing of the bells.
After, he notices the absence of salt-brine on the breeze.
And this can only mean one thing: the Noyalapo has fallen.
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For the first few days he spends alone, Junmyeon truly does spend them alone. He draws his curtains and climbs into his bed and he sleeps like the dead. It’s as though the second he does not have to worry about Sehun and his studies, that lethargy tugs at his bones and knocks him out cold. By the end of the week, he has slept for more hours than he has been awake, but by the end of the week his head feels clearer and his heart less worried.
On the ninth day he spends in his villa, he opens his balcony and lets the sea-breeze into his home. It’s still horribly cold—it is the wintertime, after all—but Junmyeon simply piles on pounds of fur and fabric. He leaves the balcony door open every day, and the waves soon become akin to a lullaby.
On the thirteenth day, he finally hears the song, but he does not go outside. No, he remains inside his marble house and continues to work on the heavy fishing net he’s been studying. He ties each knot meticulously, braids each section in such a way that the siren won’t be able to wriggle or fray itself free.
On the fifteenth day, he lays his trap. Each morning after that, and he sings a verse on his balcony, waiting patiently to hear its refrain. And on the seventeenth day, he hears it crest into a scream.
He is asleep when it happens. He’d figured that, after receiving no immediate response to his song, there was no use waiting outside for the siren’s appearance. That he’d merely have to wait and try again the day after. But, the sound of that scream—frustrated and hateful—tells him there’s no need. The siren’s response had been tardy, but that is all.
Junmyeon flips his blanket off of him and grabs a robe, bundling himself into it and tying the front. Then, he strides quickly into his main lounge and out onto the balcony, where the sound of splashing has crescendoed with no sign of lessening. There, struggling at the surface of the water, is the silvery siren, wrapped and tangled in a net of Junmyeon’s design.
He reaches for the hook-ended pole he’s been keeping on his balcony for this very purpose, and leans over the rail. He snags a specific piece of rope with the hook and pulls it up. There, he wraps the rope around his hand and begins to pull, throwing his weight against the end of it.
Slowly, torturously, the net rises up from the sea.
Eventually, he gets a specific knot (used as a marker) over the edge of the balcony, and being careful not to let the rope slide back down, he ties off the end and lets it go. The new knot holds tight, and the net remains suspended half-way between the balcony and the sea. Junmyeon repeats the process, hooking up another loose rope, and tugs the creature up the rest of the way.
By the time he has wrestled the wriggling figure over the rails and let it fall to the marble ground with a thud, the creature’s struggling has lessened and grown lethargic. Junmyeon does not take the bait. Instead, he waits and watches as the siren’s stamina runs out. After about an hour outside of the water, the skin and scales of the creature’s tail begin to peel and crack.
Still, Junmyeon watches.
He ignores the whimpering, and then the dry, heaving sobs that wrack through the siren’s frame. He ignores the blood that begins to seep across his white tile terrace. He has to wait for the transformation to complete in full.
That said, he grows wary of having the sea so near to the beast, and so he undoes the ropes and takes a handful of net in hand. Then, he drags the creature across the tile and into his home properly. Brings him through the lounge and into the private, indoor garden. There, mist hangs in the air, and water trickles down the walls, but it is not enough to trigger a change. Not to Junmyeon’s understanding of the siren’s workings.
If it changes, it won’t be able to go anywhere.
He locks the door and strings the key back around his neck before he turns and faces the netted monster. With a practiced hand, he finds the knots holding the net together, and undoes them.
The siren is so out of energy that it can’t even lash out at him. It just stares at him with wide, black eyes.
Junmyeon says nothing, only sinks to a seat on the rocky ground. The garden is far quieter than the balcony, the crashing of the waves hardly audible through the wood and glass walls.
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