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💌
Happy birthday.
ft. Fireworks
” 우리가 지난 길이 별자리처럼 나와 너 그 길을 따라서 “
–
The word tension must’ve been a joke before today.
There was supposed to be an afterparty for everyone that was involved in the play right after, it but was clear at least two people would be absent from it. Neither of them returned home right after, thinking the other was occupying the space. On the opposite sides of the block, walking in circles without ever meeting each other. Y/n couldn’t feel the wind nipping at her nor the snow seeping into her sneakers. Mind running at unseen speeds, but was never as blank as it was today. Everything felt like a bad fever dream.
It was as if she was still under the scorching stage lights, staring at the indigo skies that unfolded before her. The music still echoed in her ears in a cruel cacophony along with her raging thoughts.
Street lamps. Icy snow mixed with dirt that thawed away day by day. Parked cars. She scanned everything around her in poor hopes that it would distract her poor mind and her lips that still tingled as though it would burst.
…What was the most mature way to deal with this sort of situation?
House. Another house. Then another. Mailbox. Fence. Manhole. Woman. —Woman?
A few yards away, a lady around her height was staring off into the distance while sitting on a bench. Y/n brushed off the fleeting thought and decided to keep walking on a debate between doing so and turning back. But with every step grew the uneasiness. She took a quick breath in and slowly exhaled, telling herself she was just on her toes because of what just happened. Agh— that just made it worse!
She finally passed the woman. A subconscious sigh of relief left her lips in a foggy white breath. Mid February was still cold, but the days were growing longer. Trees. Grass poking through the snow. Road sign. Footsteps.
A hand on her shoulder.
“…Y/n?”
That voice. Oh, that voice. That voice that haunted every corner of her room for the last mid twenty years of living. Soaking into every action of the day, every thought that crossed her mind. It took at least a gallon of tears and years, years of praying, begging, hoping for any sort of relief to have finally pushed everything to the back of her mind. That voice. That voice which became the flat and meaningless lines that circled all around her. All while knowing she could step over them any time, her feet glued in one place.
That godforsaken voice.
“Y/n, is that really you??”
Her lips quivered. Maybe blood did run thicker than water. Overlooming the rage that still boiled to this day was hate towards her own self, which still wanted to turn around and hug that voice. Hate couldn’t properly describe it. It would’ve been better had she hated that voice instead. At least she would have something to blame.
Mother. Everything what she once imagined a perfect being was. The words and wisdom of god itself. If she said night was day, then so be it. She knows everything, and she knew everything best for her own child.
The almighty god didn’t look all that mighty in the court room, screaming like a madman. Faith was an interesting thing humans possessed towards just about anything. To believe in something that didn’t have a direct evidence in front of their eyes, sole trust and belief in that something. This trust destroyed civilizations and built relationships. Faith. That day, the reverend god that surrounded, made up her entire world crumpled and left her with nothing in the real world to stand on— dragged away by tall men in suits.
That very god, was in front of her in the form of but a mere human now.
“…I— I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are.”
“Wait, Y/n—”
“Let go of me!”
With that, she took off running blindly. Like she always did. Her heart felt like it was going to melt into acid and come out as bile into her mouth. Everything was burning. Her eyes, her feet, her arms, her lungs. A car honked at her on the crosswalk, headlights flashing. But she kept running. Lights. Blurry lights. Shapes. Shadows. Hair blocking her view. How long was she going to run? Even if she wanted to stop, her body refused to listen to her commands. And frankly, she didn’t have the energy to control her limps by this point.
Too much. It was too much. Please, no more for today. The smell of dinner coming from houses that swirled in nauseous circles. The sound of her ragged breaths and the thudding from her running. Her thoughts were fragmented, like shattered glass piercing through her mind, each jagged edge adding to the chaos. Every breath felt stolen, ripped from the air and forced into her burning lungs. There was no rhythm to her steps anymore, just frantic, uncoordinated slams against the pavement. The world spun around her, each step making the ground seem more uncertain, more unstable beneath her.
She couldn’t remember why she had started running. Was it fear? Panic? She could barely focus on the details now. All she knew was that if she stopped, something would catch up to her—something far worse than the burning in her chest or the fire in her muscles.
The neighborhood’s sounds merged into a single distorted hum: sirens in the distance, a dog barking, the clattering of metal against metal. But it was all drowned out by the pounding of her heart, thundering in her ears, threatening to consume her. Y/n only pushed herself harder, her legs wobbling, her vision darkening at the edges.
Her foot caught on something—a crack in the sidewalk, a piece of litter, she wasn’t sure. Suddenly, her body lurched forward, gravity taking over, and she slammed into the ground. The concrete was unforgiving, scraping her hands, her knees. But for a second, the pain felt real, grounding. The spinning stopped, the nausea subsided, and for the first time in what felt like hours, she could breathe.
She lay there, chest heaving, the cold pavement pressing against her fevered skin.
Tears began to come out in choked sobs.
The cold felt good. Too good. She pressed her cheek against the concrete, as if it could cool down the burning inside her. For a moment, she let herself stay there, crumpled and broken, her body shaking with exhaustion. The world around her buzzed with life—distant conversations, the hum of streetlights, the roar of traffic—but it all felt distant, like she was underwater.
“Y/n—!”
The world fell into delicious silence.
☆
The courtroom smelled like cheap wood polish and cold metal. Everything felt dull and distant, as if someone had turned the world’s volume down. The lights overhead flickered in her peripheral vision, humming softly. She stared blankly ahead, eyes unfocused, watching the judge’s mouth move but not hearing the words. Like a blubbering fish. Everyone around her was talking—lawyers, spectators, her mother’s voice cutting through the buzz like a knife—but none of it reached her. It was all just noise.
She didn’t belong here. None of this was real.
Her hands rested limp in her lap, pale and trembling. She should have felt something. Grief, fear, anger— anything. But all she could manage was a dull ache in her chest, like a hollow, pulsing bruise. The fluorescent lights cast a harsh glow on everything, turning the room into a place that felt unreal, like a set in a cheap play. Nothing felt solid anymore, nothing felt right.
Father was dead. That was real.
She blinked slowly, her gaze drifting to the witness stand where her mother sat. The woman’s face was twisted into something that didn’t look like her anymore—her features contorted, eyes wide and wild, her lips moving at a frantic pace. She was shouting now, but the words blurred, blending with the distant murmur of the room.
“He was carrying a weapon! You people should take that corpse and hang it up for everyone to see— a father who tried to kill his own child. Had I known he was getting out with that knife, I would have stabbed him first.”
Her mother’s eyes darted wildly, as if searching for someone to understand her, to take her side. But the courtroom was filled with blank faces, indifferent and detached. No one believed her anymore. They hadn’t for a long time.
The girl—she wasn’t even sure of her own name anymore, it felt so far away, felt her fingers curl into the fabric of her shirt. She didn’t want to be here. She had told them that. She didn’t want to be a part of this nightmare, but every time she tried to escape, she found herself back in this chair, in this room, listening to her mother unravel. In fact, she didn’t really know how to feel that woman up and shouting to defend her for the first time.
Her father had died on a road she knew well. She could picture it perfectly in her mind—the narrow bend near the old gas station, the trees that pressed close to the road, casting long shadows. He had been on his way to her friend’s house, to find her, to drag her back home. She hadn’t meant for him to follow. She hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.
The weapon they’d found in his car… She hadn’t even known he had it. What had he been planning to do? The girl didn’t want to think about it. Every time she tried, the thoughts twisted into something too dark, too sharp, cutting her from the inside out.
The judge was speaking now, trying to calm her mother down, but the words felt like they were coming from underwater. The girl’s eyes traced the cracks in the wood of the bench in front of her, the way the grain twisted and turned, weaving in and out of itself. She focused on it, trying to pull herself back to the present, to something real.
But everything was slipping. The walls were too close. The air too thick. Her breath caught in her throat.
She had tried to leave. She had wanted to leave so badly.
Her father’s face appeared in her mind, not the angry one she had come to know, but the softer version from when she was younger. The one that used to read to her, tuck her in at night. That version of him didn’t exist anymore. Hadn’t for years. Maybe it never had.
The courtroom blurred again. She could hear the rustle of papers, the murmurs of the audience, the occasional click of a camera from the back of the room. Her mother’s sobs echoed against the walls now, filling the space with a haunting, guttural noise. It was too loud. She wanted it to stop.
Her mother’s eyes locked onto her for the briefest of moments, filled with a raw, seething emotion that she couldn’t name. It was terrifying. There was something unhinged in it, something that sent a shiver down her spine. The woman who sat there now wasn’t her mother. Not really.
Had she ever been?
The girl’s throat tightened, her pulse throbbing in her ears. She needed to get out. Needed air. But her body refused to move, as if the weight of everything—the past, the guilt, the lies— had pinned her down to this chair, to this suffocating room.
She tried to remember what it had felt like to breathe freely, to feel the wind on her face, the warmth of the sun. But it felt so far away now, like a memory from someone else’s life. All she had left was this dull, choking numbness. And the feeling that everything was unraveling, slipping away from her.
She glanced over at her mother again, watching as the woman’s wild, frantic movements were subdued by the guards, her arms flailing as they tried to take her away. Her mother screamed, cursing at them, at the judge, at her. But it was all fading. The girl felt herself detach, her mind floating above the chaos, distant, removed.
This wasn’t real. None of this was real.
She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut so tightly that stars burst behind her eyelids. If she wished hard enough, maybe she would wake up. Maybe she would find herself somewhere else, somewhere far away, where the air wasn’t so thick, where the world wasn’t falling apart.
But when she opened them, the nightmare was still there. The courtroom. The people. The suffocating walls.
Her mother’s voice, still screaming in the distance, was the only thing she could hear. And her own heart, pounding so loudly it drowned out the rest of the world.
The judge’s voice broke through the chaos, steady but cold. She blinked, barely aware of the moment when his words pierced through her daze, pulling her back to the sharp reality of the courtroom.
“In light of the evidence presented, and after careful consideration, it is the court’s decision that the defendant be remanded to a state psychiatric facility for a period of no less than three years. The defendant is confirmed to have not been involved in sir L/n’s attempted assault and possible first degree murder. During this time, the defendant will undergo evaluation and treatment, with the possibility of extended care depending on her condition.” His stoic voice cut through the air and lingered there, for quite some time.
Y/n stared at the judge, trying to process what he had said, but his face blurred, became just another shape in the swirling, feverish dream she was stuck in. The walls around her seemed to tilt and bend, the fluorescent lights buzzing louder in her ears. She couldn’t breathe. The air was too thick, too heavy. Her chest tightened, and for a moment, she thought she might suffocate right there in her seat.
“What… You— can’t do this! I’m not mentally ill!!” The mighty god shouted from her seat, standing up. “What about my daughter?? Who’s going to take care of her while I’m gone?!” She yelled out in protest. The judge wasn’t fazed at her outburst, probably having been seeing this reaction for years judging by his silvery white hair.
“Madam, your daughter has reached the age of majority. She is a legal adult with no need for supervision any longer. It is in fact, against the laws to restrain her from doing as she wishes to a certain degrees.” He calmly explained. He continued speaking after that, for quite some time in fact. But those weren’t words. They were just some empty noise. Y/n balled up in her seat and pressed her palms against her ears, squeezing with trembling hands.
The gavel hit its block with a thud, ringing in her ears for many years to come. Like the beheading of a sinner at the guillotine, the small wooden mallet that reshaped her life sliced through the air.
When she opened her eyes, her mother was being ungracefully dragged out by two men out the door. That was the last of the tyrant god who made a world of glass around her that came shattering apart when she exit those doors.
☆
Love can come in many different forms. The comforting bond between family that transcends the blood and DNA that connects them in a physical manner. In the name of family, they love without condition, for that sole reason. This love often hurts the most, because it’s not the sort of love in a fleeting high school crush you can forget about in a decade or two. It stays for life.
Then there’s the buzzing cloud nine of crushes. The fuzzy and tingly feeling that overtakes one’s youthful heart, often called puppy love for a fairly self explanatory reason. It’s like a passionate flame that seems like it’ll never die out, but rarely makes it through a single whiff of strong wind that scatters it to embers.
And among those dying embers that flicker in the dark, one grows. Small, but it’s there. Although it may seem like a spec of dust compared to the fiery first crush, not even storms of hail and thunder can ever fully extinguish it. Just like family, that flame flickers and dims from time to time. But with enough care, its amber light always remains to illuminate the void called the heart.
Within the span of less than half a year, Kunikuzushi managed to feel all three towards one single fucking person.
The lighthearted but persistent fondness of family that’s toughest on the outside, often unrecognizable through playful banters or sharp words each other can share with trust in each other. Much deeper rooted than what it seems on surface. That stupid first crush rendering him into the same level as lovestruck teenage boys he hypocritically clicked his tongue at. And the surviving embers that continued burning no matter what side of her she showed him.
“…Stop running away from every inconvenience you face. They’ll only come back with more on their side like rabid dogs.” Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, he blinked slowly. “Hah… The hypocrite I am.” Finding his roommate motionless on the sidewalk almost made him a heart attack victim. He carried her home and tucked her in bed after taking her outer layers off, leaving her in a plain black shirt over sweatpants. She must’ve changed while she was in the class.
Scaramouche didn’t consider himself an easily impressed person. Nevertheless meaningless flattery. “There’s so many around you that would sit down for hours and comfort you instead of staring at your face like a mute. Just—why me of all of them?” But she was probably one of the strongest people he had ever met. The last few words sounded more of a frustrated grumble, voice becoming smaller with each syllable that left his mouth and eventually became but a small whisper. With a heavy breath, his fingers dared to linger on her face for just a little longer than necessary.
“I can’t even face my own feelings after pulling that. Hell, I’ll probably run away like nothing happened by the time you’re up. I’m.. I’m sorry.” The lamp he clicked on by her bedside drawer lit the room in an ambient glow that only made the air feel heavier. Warmer. “You’re probably going to have everything figured out soon even if I don’t do anything. You always do. You always did.” Who would she have found had he never entered her life? Whoever they may be, they would probably more mature with their emotions and words than he could ever be. With words as sharp as razor and the pettiness of a teenage boy, he really was no man.
Instead of growing over them and outstretching his roots, he tripped and stumbled over every little scar he received. Even the ones years ago. And there was no one to validate those feelings, nevertheless himself. The result was a raging hot mess of a grown ass man.
“You’ve got so much ahead of you. And I have… Nothing.”
Boom, crackle. Heart shaped fireworks popped in the nearby park in celebration to Valentine’s day. He gave up and leaned down against her chest, hand across the other side of her body clutching onto the mattress. “After giving me everything, I still have nothing but my own burdens to offer you.” Her heart beat steadily in the safety of her ribcage, emitting warmth and life throughout her body.
The room occasionally illuminated in pink and reds from the fireworks.
“Happy birthday, idiot.” He whispered inaudibly, closing his eyes for what he swore was going to be a brief moment. “…Thank you, for being born.”
The twitch of her finger went unnoticed.
——
A/n here it is!!!
Sudden scara ooc looks a bit off ig but what would you expect from bro after seeing his little gf crying and laying down in the streets after kissing her
Shits ab to go down real soon as we’re slowly inching to an end so stock those tissues up (i aint paying for them. Tissues are expensive)
☺️
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