𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗵 for @silenthowls
growing up, juyeong’s grandfather etched the statue of the perfect man into her consciousness. time and time again, he’d hammer home the image of a knightly figure - valiant and unyielding, no room for vices or wavering, whose lineage glistened with the prestige of a celebrated last name. did juyeong buy into this? depends, but she mostly just treated it like what she did with most things in life. accepted it, and then adopted duplicitous coping mechanisms — indulging in transient romances, chasing euphoric highs with passing lovers who never stood a chance against her grandfather’s exacting standards (take your pick: misguided exes, wrong gender, bastard child).
that is until she meets jin yohan. a few months into the king’s club and she finds that his grandfather’s lofty ideals had coalesced into flesh and blood. as improbable as it had seemed, the very embodiment of all she ever needed in a man managed to materialize in front of her. so, she lets herself believe this was all orchestrated by the heavens themselves, a divine affirmation of inevitable love. (never mind that he only offers her perfunctory smiles and hollow conversations — such trifles are mere tests of faith. after all, 1 corinthians 13:4-7: "love is patient, love is kind. it always hopes, always perseveres.”)
but, what the scriptures fail to mention is that love can be as blind as it is seraphic. as much as she prides herself on her discerning eye for detail, juyeong is unfortunately no better than anyone else and finds herself ensnared by the deceptive allure of the man yohan appears to be. and it is only eight years after that she learns the inconvenient reality from a friend of a friend: yohan is adopted. fuck. in some twisted way, the revelation strikes her with a (unwarranted) harsh sting — how could he let her cling onto such an outlandish fallacy? why did no one ever speak up? (no, she isn’t projecting. this is not because there’s a raging inferno threatening to raze all that she’s ever known. nope, not at all. and she most definitely does not act disproportionately — no, she wasn’t the one who advised her parents to divest in his company with some fictitious financial fib. not her!)
and so, she spends the weekend giving yohan the cold shoulder but eventually, like all good starcrossed lovers, their paths cross in the most mundane of scenarios — at the literal eleventh hour of freedom. she’s reversing out of the parking lot, only to find his fucking car blocking her exit with an audacious defiance. juyeong could handle this with grace, but there’s no one else around them and what is juyeong, if not just a tad bit dramatic and self-gratifying? with a huff and a slam of her door, she exits her car, antagonistic stance with arms crossed over her chest. “can you move your car, please?” she demands, “a liar, a shit driver and from a no name family. triple homicide at this rate.”
𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀. for @ciiielos
if juyeong had her way, the king’s club would be far more selective, gilded gates tightened to exclude those who soil its sacred floor. although she’s never taken the time to pen a list, if she had, jung chanyeol’s name would be etched close to the top of her exclusions. all these years, juyeong can barely fathom what merit he brings to their sacred circle. sure, he’s easy on the eyes. sure, he's fairly decent at football. but he lacks the lineal wealth that course through their veins. lacks the pedigree that should be his birthright. jesus, at this rate, they might well open their door to every other person on the street - what’s the point of an elite society, if it admits those who are more pedestrian than noble?
unfortunately for juyeong, the only substantial weapon in her arsenal is the force of her voice, but even its thunderous opposition is muted by the screeching majority preaching rationality and merit. (which she argues is a hollow pretense because this is a world that thrives on neither!) and so, eight years later, she’s still condemned to share the same air as him. still not the worst of it — the true affront lies in his legion of rabid fans who have seized their interactions, immortalizing them in contentious and grainy images, weaving a gaudy narrative of a romance between him and mbc’s problematic heiress. if you asked her, it’s an utterly scathing and libelous assault, and she would much rather her competitor news channel run another story about her family embezzlement.
she'd already been reeling from the catastrophic ordeal of her weekend, but now, juyeong has to bear through the added torment of encountering chanyeol yet again on a monday. if it weren’t enough that they were both in jeju that weekend, he is also the face of one of their hit variety shows and she has to greet his smiling face on every poster in her fucking office. jesus. she’s shifting through some financial statements when he walks in, and an exasperated sigh eludes her lips, almost as if an instinctive response. she refuses to acknowledge his presence, and it goes unnoticed until someone decides to ask a moronic question — if their hostile air between them stemmed from a nocturnal quarrel. “are you having a lover’s spat?” they tease and it takes all in juyeong not to tell the person to fuck off and die. (she does respond with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes, which in itself is an answer, and juyeong watches, with barely-concealed ire, as he mumbles a hurried apology and retreats with unseemly haste. dumbass.) “can’t believe it,” she grumbles to no one in particular, “can’t believe people think i’m dating you of all people.”