invicto

yfxsunmi:

spent as she is from another long afternoon weekday practice, yang is determined to get this right. the spikes at the front row are no issue—it’s the ones from the back row that get her every time, when the ball lobs high above her head and she’s suddenly taking in the whole expanse of the court, from the teammates with limbs planted firm front of her, anticipatory, to the foreboding net and both sides of the antennae, to all of the bodies standing beyond the threshold on the other side, ready for a counterstrike. needless to say, it’s a scary place to be. when she’s up at the front, everything is much simpler. she just hits with all the force her lithe body can muster.

it’s clear that she’s not here alone though, as yang discovers after returning from a brief visit to the drinking fountain and sweaty pat-down in the locker rooms. she finds their team setter, sunmi, pacing around the wooden flooring with squeaking sneakers, and isn’t that apt, yang thinks smugly to herself, that her sneakers are as annoying as her pig face. the pig. the prickly hog. the freshly-slaughtered swine girl. yang has a whole jar full of insults she’s reserved specially for sunmi. she instinctively faux-gags as soon as she locks eyes with her.

striding towards the end of the court, yang raises her hands up slightly above her shoulders, an indication that yang intends to stay for after-practice session despite knowing full-well that sunmi probably has two sleeves of shit to throw her way after today’s rather subpar performance. “what do you think?” yang snarls, rolling her eyes back at the other girl. “just get on with it, piggy,” she follows up with a few quick snorts, crude, immature, and as completely uncalled for as they are.

personal investment

yfxjihoon:

“i’m sure they absolutely wouldn’t,” she says with a shake of the head. “some of my unnis tell me my year is one of the worst cases of entitled gremlin mob sunhwa’s come to know.” it’s certainly not something she’d be able to say beyond the safety of these thick glass walls; kids like kangmi and hyungsik wouldn’t hesitate to send their lackeys out for a blood hunt.

eager as she is, yang instantly glows at the prospect of a challenge. two challenges. it makes perfect sense, seeing it had been a challenge (an unspoken one, but not even an idiot could deny the true intent behind every one of mr. choi’s spine-chilling glares) that had brought her to the library in the first place. she likes to think of her contentious nature to be a blessing in disguise, as she credits it to be the root cause for her success—so far, anyway. that class ranking hadn’t come to her through willpower and natural talent alone. had she inherited her father’s more remiss approach towards life over her mother’s contrasting bloodthirstiness and seemingly unending desire to prove any and all dissenters painfully, painfully wrong, she would have been better off staying in beitou and taking over yeye’s dessert stall.

which is surprisingly a nice plan b. (it’s no shocker her friends back home are stress-free, spending every other night at karaoke venues and sparkling shopping centers.) but it’ll never see the light of day, not when her mother’s got her muzzled down for the next ten or twenty some years, and the thought quickly recedes to the back of yang’s mind, hiding steadfast behind her ambition and pride. all of these problems in an hour? she huffs audibly and withdraws her breath as soon as jihoon’s finger makes contact with the top of her head. it’s the smallest gesture but it sends her heart into a manic sprint and yang can’t determine if it’s because she

a) is furious that he’s forced his way into her physical bubble, excuse me, but who the hell do you think you are,

b) hasn’t the slightest inkling as to how to respond to this dashing third year’s fleeting touch like oh god is he moving way too fast they’ve only just met!! half an hour ago!!, or

c) is feeling the same uneasiness and anxiety that had consumed her only moments earlier, frightened by the pressure to perform.

it very well could be all of the above. it probably is.

“ok,” is all she manages to grit out despite herself, head retreating back into her neck and revealing a few flattering chin folds. her expression is unreadable and she intends to keep it that way (do not betray me now, don’t you dare) as she buckles down, setting pen to paper once more.

this time, she goes through the problems—all of them—in almost record time. she asks for a straight run-through of the solution for the first few problems, goes through the next four without a peep, gets jihoon to clarify two more core concepts, and powers through the remainder of the problems on her own. it’s full throttle on the struggle bus and it zips the life out of her, but yang makes it to the end of her notes in… she brings her pen down, plastic slapping hard against worn wood, and swipes at her phone. just under an hour and a half.

while her chances at earning cool first year rank number one are shot, rank number two doesn’t sound so bad. if she’s going to be honest, yang has to wonder who she’s even competing against. she’s just climbed a mountain and now she’s even hungrier than she was before, hungry for that ace grade, lobster ramen, and the promise of something she hopes to go far beyond a single gold star and jihoon’s vague blessing. but she might as well address the latter while she still can.

“so… anything i want?” yang repeats, uncertainty peeking through in the slowness of her words. she starts to piece a few ideas together. be my tutor forever? watch tv with me whenever i tell you to, even if it’s the dead of night and it means you have to sneak into my window in nothing but your tighty-whities? do you even wear white underpants? please hook me up with a prodigious prince unless maybe you happen to be one and i don’t even know it? what is happening?? yang bites down on her lip and looks to jihoon through a low, studying gaze. “are you secretly so all-mighty that you can actually promise that kind of thing?”

Does your muse

model behavior

His phone had been vibrating all throughout his morning classes. The temptation to pull out his cell came across his mind often, but with the hawklike vision of his homeroom teacher, Moon Bin would prefer to forgo getting caught and possibly given detention. But the moment class ended, the dark haired teenager pulls out the sleek device and reviews the ten messages and fifteen missed calls from his manager. Cursing under his breath, Bin checks his voicemail and the urgency of his manager’s tone sets him on edge.

“Bin-nim, it’s a travesty! The model you’re supposed to work with cancelled last minute—due to food poisoning no less!”

Hissing through clenched teeth, Bin pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. More problems for him to deal with.

“I’ve tried phoning for substitutes, but—funnily enough—everyone seems to be doing something!”

The voicemail continued with his manager going on a tirade on how cosmic intervation was cockblocking revenue. Exiting his voicemail, Bin goes straight to his contacts in search of one of the many Gretchen Weiners of Sunhwa.

“Hey, it’s me, I have a favor to ask of you,” Bin laughs. “Do you know any girls who’re free this afternoon?”

Lin Yang. That is the name of his saving grace. The apt description provided to him by his inside source was simply: tall Amazonian. Walking through the hallways, Bin gives every girl that passes by a once over, but Amazon doesn’t seem to quite fit the thin and petite girls of Sunhwa. As he reaches the end of the hall a shadow looms over him, causing him to do a double take.

“Holy shit, she wasn’t kidding,” Bin snorts. Quickening his gait, Bin catches up to the girl by touching her elbow.

“Excuse me, are you Yang? Lin Yang?” Bin inquires. “I’ve got a question to ask you, mind listening?”

@yfxyang

kkt → ok kkt → nothing better to do today

another day, another favor; she convinces herself that there’s little else to back up her line of reasoning. that’s what friends are for? i’m a good samaritan? non sibi sed patriae? she’d rather not abide to standard do-gooder expressions and mottos.

yang continues with her day.

somewhere in between the final play at practice and the excruciatingly long walk from the gymnasium to the dorms, yang second guesses the circumstances. she’s unsure of what she’s getting herself into here—this is an entire evening potentially on the line; one she could easily and joyfully waste away in front of her monitor screen. and yet she’s just as easily (and foolishly) agreed to give her time away to a stranger, albeit one who apparently occupies the homeroom class next to hers. she’d fallen victim to her friend’s attempts to sway her, shallow assurances that there’s nothing to worry abt [sic], he’s cute, and now yang’s fully aware that she’d fallen to simple temptation. she’s seen plenty of cute guys here. cute, awful, shitty guys.

to say that she’s skeptical would be a severe understatement.

yang shoves her arm back into the corners of her bag and fishes her phone out. 

kkt → wait actually kkt → can u text him and tell hi—

her fingers are a beat too slow. someone grazes her elbow before she can finish drafting the text. she recoils from the touch as the realization dawns on her that this person, audacious as he is to invade her personal space, is probably the very one she’d just planned to bail out on. “yes hi yes that’s me yes please ask away,” she replies, words jumbling together. “would you happen to be... moon bin ssi?”

personal investment

yfxjihoon:

the realization doesn’t kick in just yet, but yang gets a ticklish feeling that maybe the tutoring club did a good thing here by setting her up with this guy. there’s none of that cooing or blind encouragement that she’s used to hearing—an unfortunate but unavoidable given, as one of the members of the youngest class on campus—that she detests so much, and jihoon’s terse words of affirmation are just enough to keep her in the game. after this ordeal, yang believes a drama marathon is in order.

she catches a hint of a smile on jihoon’s face and can’t help but feel a little smug; not only has yang conquered one of the hellish concepts in her problem set, but she’s managed to break down a wall here, too. if she had a tail, it’d be wagging even more vigorously than ever. yang likes victories, no matter how mundane. she’s a simple girl.

but jihoon retrieves the notebook from her, and, head cranking down towards the page, yang returns to the problems at hand. her expression naturally flattens as she reads through the problem to herself; her left hand covers the solution so she’s not tempted to look. 

from the first read-through (and the consequent second, because the words escape her all too quickly), yang is happy to discover that the problem doesn’t rely on much conceptual knowledge—her weakness—but rather only requires a conversion and calculation. numbers are her strength and she’s at least thankful that a good portion of chemistry revolves around them (she is fully expectant that next year’s biology will be an even bigger catastrophe).

“any other cool first years? you’re implying that i’ve met at least one.”

it’s a snarkier response than she had anticipated, but yang isn’t one to back down from a provocation so small. she grins in response and brings her pen to the paper, working out a solution. “well,” she mumbles out, separating kilocalorie from conversation, “you have met one,” and there’s an unintentional, long pause that plays out as yang determinedly goes through the rest of the problem, pen scratching noisily. her left leg crosses over and her foot dangles loosely against her right ankle, a coy show of dominance.

she finishes the problem and uncovers the solution. it’s wrong.

she’d intended to finish the open statement with a resounding me! (as in, me, i am the holy cool first year of your dreams), but fate had different plans for her. to her relief, her solution isn’t entirely off–there was only a slight miscalculation made towards the end, as yang had misinterpreted the latter part of the two-part question. yang retraces, uncaps another pen, and circles the error in red. “i was going to say me, but on second thought, maybe it’s better if i rightfully earn it.” yang laughs and taps against the notebook. “unfortunately, most of the first years are a lot like me—fairly uncool. i can personally vouch for that.”

holler

yfxyang:

( kkt — 눈썹빠 ) what would u have done if i died down there oppa ( kkt — 눈썹빠 ) i got a taste of your panic but ( kkt — 눈썹빠 ) i wonder how you are when the panic escalates 1000000% lol ( kkt — 눈썹빠 ) mom calls me almost every day and that was the most interesting thing that happened to me in a week ): ( kkt — 눈썹빠 ) hahahahh are u crying ugly tears please take a selca and send to me ( kkt — 눈썹빠 )

HONESTY HOUR: Ask me anything,no questions will be deleted

AM444 - 坍塌的床 (Collapsing Bed)

personal investment

yfxjihoon:

yang’s korean isn’t perfect, but it’s at least good enough that she can understand everything jihoon is telling her. everything, except her brain refuses to wrap itself around what those words mean in sum or in relation to one another, or how those words work together to form a concept.

what the hell just happened?

she sits still, mouth sewn shut as her thoughts split asunder into a thousand dead-end paths.

in short, his explanation does little except remind her of her total incompetence. it’s not a feeling she particularly enjoys and it’s embarrassing for her to admit to any sort of flaw—the grades she once earned (albeit grades from primary school and junior high) affirmed she was someone with at least some modicum of worth. it was something she clung to especially in the face of her classmates’ jeers, which seemed to suggest otherwise.

yang is determined to see this thing to the end. “i’m alive,” she finally responds, words cautious as if she’s been caught mid-lie. it’s only one problem. there’s no reason she should get dramatic. “don’t worry about me,” she adds, masking anxiety behind sheepish laughter, thinly-veiled humility. her hand instinctively moves to scratch the back of her head, while the other reaches for her notebook. she tugs and pries it slowly away from jihoon.

the words kind of spill out. “so you’re saying that if it’s a spontaneous reaction, it’s automatically exothermic? or something?” it doesn’t take long for her to realize that it’s a stupid question. this sort of thing has happened enough times (feeling assured that everything might be okay? maybe there’s at least a 50-50 chance of getting this right? mr. choi could let this one miscalculation slide if she’s lucky, even though he’s never let anything slide past those crusty eyes of his in all the four excruciatingly long months she’s known him?) that it’s probably safer to assume it’s wrong.

yang buckles down in her seat and from the corner of her eyes, she steals a quick glance at jihoon’s expectant face, briefly wondering on a scale from dumb to dumber how jihoon would rank her.

like hell she would actually let that happen.

she grits her teeth and the gears in her head begin to crank into a steady, sure rhythm. there’s no point denying the default sort of reverence she holds for this third-year, or how that reverence works in sync with her desire to improve—and so she flips through to the next page, covered in notes.

there’s a quick scribbled blurb about gibb’s free energy in the margins of the page, something about occasional instances when a spontaneous endothermic reaction can occur. found you, fucker. yang uncaps her highlighter and, feeling only a little smug, circles the note one too many times, pressing too hard and letting the bright yellow bleed through to the other side. “scratch that,” yang says. “i think i got it.” she looks up to jihoon with a triumphant smile, pink tongue peeking out from between her lips. there’s a palpable energy around her now—a dog wagging its tail, waiting for its treat.

there’s still a fair number of other questions left in the set she’s brought for jihoon today, but yang switches topics, gives herself a bone to chew on. “so, jihoon-ssi…” her brain chugs on. what do third years usually talk about? boobs? college? she doesn’t care about any of those things. “…met any other cool first years?” 

yang wiggles her brows.