Prophylaxis

[Cicada]

Mi-jeong had never thought much about how much taller she was than either of her daughters as it was merely a fact of reality.

She bemusedly wondered how it was Ji-hyun had wheedled Gyu-ri into doing what was really more the younger's job as opposed to the elder's.

Disrespectful, weak. Respectively. She called it as she saw it.

"Riri," she thus commandingly captured her daughters attention.

She noted with a mote of distaste that her daughter was fussing over the arrangement of knives in the drawer again. As if there was any relevance to ordering by size.

"Yes, ma."

She would have to remind her daughter at some point that the deferential tone was too syrupy. It fooled nobody, and Mi-jeong especially figured that her daughter's fear was just as crucial as her daughter's loving respect.

It was a hunch. Mother's instinct as it were. Tough love was a tricky concept but Mi-jeong was quite confident she'd struck the balance somewhere along the line.

"You're obsessing again," she pointed out curtly.

"Sorry, ma."

"Sorry means don't do it again. Yes?"

Mi-jeong bustled over and purposely shuffled the knives around so they were out of geometrical order. She could palpably feel the wince from her daughter transmit through the air between them.

"That's right," Gyu-ri said evenly. Good tone, supple. Mi-jeong felt a fairly warm zephyr up her spine as counterpoint. It was one of the things she felt most prepared her daughter for life in a harsh world- all any mother ever had to prepare their child for, yes?- that Gyu-ri was so obstinately immovable at times.

Mi-jeong tried her best to make sure Gyu-ri stayed her best. Honest work.

"You will do it again, however." Mi-jeong hovered over Gyu-ri's station by a fresh wooden chopping board loaded up with potatoes. Her hand flitted in and stole the knuckles off Gyu-ri's knife-bearing hand. A firm grasp, a motherly grasp. "I know you too well." Gyu-ri squirmed, and Mi-jeong grimaced a smile. Her poor baby was far too easily thrown off her game. Bad form.

"I-.."

Mi-jeong tightened her grasp a bit and nodded coolly. Steady handle on her wavering temper, steady as Gyu-ri's freakishly strong grip on her knife.

"It's been a while since you've slipped up last. Don't do it again," Mi-jeong warned as she began to draw away.

She contemplated hugging or kissing her daughter for good measure, but thought better of it. Best to stay measured with her affections. Gyu-ri reacted all manners of odd and unseemly against untoward emotional displays from anyone.

Ah, how Mi-jeong did not understand her strange daughter. She'd certainly not signed up for this, but that was merely part of the ultimate challenge any woman worth her womb would ever face in their lives.

Mi-jeong head the gentle thwack of a knife blade rhythmically slicing into vegetable pulp and skin. Stubborn, adorably, frustratingly stubborn. The Gyu-ri she knew and loved.

She headed for the front door of the house. It was snowing out so the commute would be miserable, but she was determined to meet her husband before he got out of work. Had to go out of your way to make the time for dates. And she figured her smitten daughter would benefit from not having her mother around the house while she was trying to impress a boy.

Ah, young love. How patently ridiculous.

----------

Gyu-ri did not like the silence because it was paradoxically loud.

She hated that particular phrase too. It was a weak pittance that did little verbal justice to the oddity of the constant screaming echo in her own head.

She was only dwelling on the lack of noise because her ma had bothered her. Gyu-ri was bothered, she knew well, the physical signs were all amplified and magnified into her senses via the medium of her own skin. The thudding boom of her elevated heart rate echoing into her ears. The rubbery cement paste of her sweaty fingertips and palms.

She pointedly reminded herself that her mother's stressing of her five senses- too close to touch, to hear, to smell- was only a problem because she allowed it to be. She couldn't help but let it be such an issue that suffused into her tired, knobbled skeleton from the surface of her skin plunging 'til the brine soaked. She, of course, cursed herself for such weakness. Audibly to herself, in a politely crass murmur in case others were around to hear, her thoughts assured her quite violently that she was beyond pathetic for letting something as trivial as a stray emotion out of place confound her knife-bearing hand.

So she didn't let it stop her. Her thoughts ran rampant but on a field she paid no attention to. Background noise, insipid, accursed, background noise. It was important, instead, to hone in onto the keenness of her knife in her hands.

She beheld it with a weary eye, with a dexterous flip of her palm that then trembled dangerously and she could thus focus additionally on that lurch in her stomach of presumptions that in the next second the fist-size meat of the blade would slide neatly between two of her ribs, any two would do. That thought lingered, as every thought she ever thought did, and she moved on with preparing dinner.

The vegetables would be left primarily raw for nutritional output. Gyu-ri knew from easily defined and recalled memories- unwillingly burned into the flesh of her brain- that the parched skin of an uncooked and starchy potato would be unpleasantly mealy and dry upon the tongue as it crumbled into a mash of distinctly chunky and infinitely tiny flakes. She would lightly sear the potatoes to provide some alternative crispy texture, at least. This, she planned. Otherwise her intent remained purely oriented toward the optimal release of bioavailable nutrients, as she was constantly worried about in terms of her family diet and was now more immediately concerned with as she wanted to be acceptably hospitable to their guest tonight, if not overly hospitable.

Underneath her hands the potato was cut to appropriate size chunks. At least, some of them were. The specific radius that Gyu-ri found easiest to look at in terms of cuts of vegetable was exactly the size of half of her pinkie finger. It was crucial that slices that were too large be pared down appropriately, and this would leave small piles of flimsy looking cut-up potatoes slowly accruing on the side of the board she shoved them to with brushes of the flat of her knife that was slowly growing more stained with potato juices, a wash of translucent shimmer that slightly bugged her.

She would be sure to, with one hand, store the well apportioned finished potatoes to a light yellow ceramic bowl which was number one of four in the family cabinet. She'd fussed over for two minutes because she didn't want the serving wastefully oversized or insultingly undersized in volume. It was important that the food be easily divided into equal portions to feed the three who would be eating that day.

Gyu-ri supposed she wouldn't be able to provide a coherent answer as to why the exactness of the volume of food served was specifically important enough to devote her energies to in the utmost. She continued to contemplate the specific amounts of still uncooked spuds with a physically close eye, swooping her back to shove her face at the bowl until her nose was almost sunken into it. Accounting for the slight puffing and inflammation some potatoes would accrue as they were cooked, she believed she had an ideal envisioning of the appropriate amount.

The potatoes were placed as she intended they would be and were carefully adjusted with cramping and skittering of her fingers on a nigh-microscopic scale.

She followed her mental map, recalling it in an instant as she often did. It was an zwischenzug- an inappropriate and inaccurate metaphor materialized out of habit, invoking the idea of a 'move' in between other 'moves'- that she carefully purify her cooking materials between usages so as to prevent cross-contamination, and indeed it often nagged at her that she would optimally not cut and prepare any two different vittles with one knife and set of accessory utensils. However, there was a practical limit in terms of amount of echos of her mother's stoic disapproval that she could bear per action.

Thus, she only washed the knife between distinct steps of the recipe, which she believed a fair compromise, even if the occasional smear of briny meat juice would pollute another given ingredient.

Thus, she would wash the knife now. She ritually clanged the broadside of the blade against the basin of the sink which produced a familiar hollow metallic tone. She glanced over her shoulder, vaguely concerned someone would be watching. That rarely stopped her, but it did make her feel more self-conscious about trying to scratch the itch of her occasional repetitive compulsions. She glanced back at the knife intently. She rose it to the gentle stream of the faucet, which was run at a low cascade of pressure so as not to splashback above the lip of the sink. She used a freshly soaped sponge, which exploded into a cloud of white suds that only contacted the underside of her one palm. She minimized exposure to the off-tone of soap color blending over her skin color by balancing the knife via it's handle, and sandwiching the sponge between the blade below and her hand above.

She finished.

Thus, she would wash the knife now. She ritually clanged the broadside of the blade against the basin of the sink which produced a familiar hollow metallic tone. She glanced over her shoulder, vaguely concerned someone would be watching. That rarely stopped her, but it did make her feel more self-conscious about trying to scratch the itch of her occasional repetitive compulsions. She glanced back at the knife intently. She rose it to the gentle stream of the faucet, which was run at a low cascade of pressure so as not to splashback above the lip of the sink. She used a freshly soaped sponge, which exploded into a cloud of white suds that only contacted the underside of her one palm. She minimized exposure to the off-tone of soap color blending over her skin color by balancing the knife via it's handle, and sandwiching the sponge between the blade below and her hand above.

Gyu-ri was consciously aware that her repetitive tendencies were pointless and actively wasteful. However she enjoyed indulging herself from time to time. It cleared the many overly active circuits of infinitely repeating thoughts in her mind's eye and allowed her to focus on the sensations of a singularity in the present.

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Okay, so, she's been nice to you. Is that really why you started dating? You're too young, bro!"

"Stop calling me bro, Milo. You don't understand, anyways. This is-"

"Real or something like that, yeah yeah, shut your trap, okay? You can't assume that this'll work out just because she's cute and nice."

The deliberations had begun the day that Lucas and Ji-hyun had started "dating," whatever that meant at their age. Milo had been wary of things, because that's just how elementary school age children are, and Lucas had gotten pretty sick and tired of it. Things felt real, and they were. There was no reason to feel anything other than pride in his accomplishments. He was the talk of the town, half of the power couple that had been going strong for so long that it was hard to count. What else in his life had gone on for this long? There really wasn't much to compare it to. All he felt all the time was happy, and that was all he knew. Eventually, Milo's pestering subsided. The couple had been together for long enough to let most of everything else fall by the wayside.

But when the invite came to visit for dinner one day in January, Milo's reservations regarding the relationship flared up again. All his life, he had been involved in Lucas' goings-on with people. He was friends with Lucases' friends, and was invited to their birthday parties. They walked home from school together. They went to the store and messed up paying for things together. Everything was fine until Ji-hyun entered the picture. That was a part of life that Milo was not allowed to share in, for whatever reason. With a couple weeks of Know-Your-Body under his belt, he knew where things might wind up going, and he didn't like it one bit.

Lucas brushed it off. Just an annoying tag-a-long brother who didn't understand his love for Ji-hyun. He didn't need the negative attention, least of all from his little brother. His mom and dad had already tried to make sure that he knew that middle school relationships aren't a thing that usually last, but he wouldn't listen. He hadn't ever felt this way before, and he was going to make the most of it.

So when the brisk January day rolled around—cold enough to wear a fleece jacket and warm enough to feel uncomfortable in it—and Lucas found himself standing in front of the door to Ji-hyun's house, he had a lot on his mind. Most of those things were how much he was excited to see his girlfriend, but some of those things were doubts. What if Milo was right? What if Ji-hyun didn't feel the same way about him as he did for her, and this was all some kind of miscommunication that spiraled out of control? It wasn't realistic, but what if she hated him?

What if all my love is for nothing? What would I do then? That won't happen, right? Just gotta change the channel. This line of thought ain't doing any good. Change the channel. Tell a different story.

He shook the thoughts from his mind while he still could and rang the doorbell. Just gotta do it.

Then, he took a deep breath, and waited.

[Cicada]

The next ingredient to prepare would be the carrot. Gyu-ri anticipated significant effort on her part, as the uncooked carrot was unyielding to knives. Not at least without Gyu-ri having to put what she believed was a dangerous amount of forceful effort per cut. Herein the problem was palpable, Gyu-ri would overly tremble, feel the slow knotting together of her wrist bones as she unwittingly contemplated the danger of a finger lost to mere kitchen work. At some point it was inevitable, and Gyu-ri could already feel the splatter of blood slickly paint her knuckles.

The doorbell rung. The tone was harshly mechanical, like the grating of cheese though both grater and cheese were particularly sharp and tinny rocks. Gyu-ri was aware of who it specifically was, and her memory rudely poked her. Repeatedly, repetitively, and she had already acknowledged who she was going to let into the family home. She merely experienced that information in a loop, and under her breath grumbled at that information, for sure it was useless to non-verbally cuss and whine at herself, but she was alone and it made her feel mildly better.

She did have to watch her odd mentality, that said. As Ma told her.

Gyu-ri carefully standardized her work station. Knife placed blade facing the wall, against the right most edge of the cutting board. The bowl of meticulously arranged potato cuts was moved to the opposite side so it formed a tangent line with the cutting board's opposite side, as per Gyu-ri's vague recollection of her class in geometry wherein she was not sure why that of all memories recurred to her in that exact moment. Gyu-ri wasted a few seconds thumbing at the carrots with delicate shoves such that they would all align in a single file relative to the bulky end. She sourly noted the board was still stained and splotched darker by potato juice that hadn't been washed yet, and she moved on, and she continued to sourly ruminate on the board being insufficiently clean as she went to answer the door.

The girl who opened the door for Lucas was already shorter than him despite having years of puberty to her advantage. She looked quite different from Ji-hyun, slightly pale, sharp, relatively lifeless. At least, Gyu-ri was biased to assume that was the image she projected.

"Very punctual." It was hard to tell if that comment was impressed or otherwise. Her voice was a pastry, airy and fluffy, but it had been allowed to flatten for lack of contextual emotion save a slight monotone note of sharpened irritation. "Ji-hyun is not here yet, and in any case she likely won't be until I'm already done cooking. You may come in."

[MethodicalSlacker]

The door opened, and Lucas looked down to see Ji-hyun's older sister. A possibility he had realized was very real, but not one he had really prepared for in any meaningful way. Gyu-ri regarded him somewhat dryly. As he understood it, he was closer to her in age than he was to Ji-hyun, but that didn't stop him from feeling a very real disconnect from her right off the bat. She looked somewhat hawkish in how she held herself, however short she was, and the impression he got was that he didn't really belong. Her words were not especially warm, nor her tone very happy, despite the words of what he hoped were a sincere compliment paid his way.

How did he respond to words like this? He had no idea.

"Thank you," he said. He bowed his head sheepishly and stepped into the house.

One look around was all it took for what remained of his confidence to slip away. In venturing out from the projects, he knew that the Christensen's probably were better off financially than his own family, and what he saw on the outside of the house did nothing to make that suspicion any less likely. What he saw on the inside, however, confirmed it for certain. The messy clutter he had taken for a given in the houses of those with siblings was gone. The spacious interior and Korean designs made him feel like he was stepping onto the set of a movie more than anything. He had been transported away into an unfamiliar land, a land where he did not know the rules, and a land without a guide to show him the way. If only Ji-hyun were here! That would make him feel far, far less uncomfortable than he was feeling right now.

The scent of cooking food drifted to his nose as he stood in the front hallway. That was something to latch onto.

"Smells really nice," he stammered out aimlessly. Maybe if he paid as many compliments as possible, he would be treated kindly.

Yikes.

[Cicada]

She reflected Lucas out of habit. While she had previously identified, of course, the innumerable likely sources of such a monkey-see behavior, she could not thresh among them for the truth. Thus she understood all of the causes in parallel: her childhood friends, her 할아버지 teaching her proper womanly manners, her own need to be quiet and do as she was told turned into social habit, and could not actually in good conscience assume any of the causes true. If they were all possible how could there be any process of elimination? It boggled the mind, and also gave the mind a headache.

Done saying a brusque 'thank you' and offering a brusque bow she shut the door behind Lucas, spending an approximately extra amount of time shutting the door. Gyu-ri successfully guessed the appropriate number several times over: none of them were thoroughly appropriate enough and the amount of background applications running in Gyu-ri's head continued to pile thoroughly, splitting her one-hundred percent of mental capacity further still. Gyu-ri ultimately focused merely on completion of the task, specifically by way of shutting the door so quietly even she wasn't sure she'd shut it, so she opened it and closed it again to be sure, as the hinges barely creaked into place.

Gyu-ri could also smell what Lucas smelled. The vapor of freshly cut vegetable, heady scents of the garden. The aromatic cloud of freshly boiled tea. The scents were harmonious, certainly, but they were also an inexact ratio, and Gyu-ri felt her frown deepen.

"Thank you. I've made tea." With business-like stride Gyu-ri swerved around both Lucas and the cozy little 'barely adequate for one person' kitchen island Gyu-ri disliked drastically specifically because it seemed to be an architectural waste of space. She identified her knife, placed meticulously where she'd left it, and she scanned it still for any micro-deviations from it's appropriate position.

Still, she did not pick it up until she was sure she could flesh out a proper action of Lucas' to react to. She did not feel comfortable doing things without a thorough assessment of her surroundings, up to and including that boy who was her sister's closest and most intimate friend at least for the appreciable future. Gyu-ri's appreciable future however, was small on thr magnitude of seconds. She tried not to speculate too far into the unknown, for it tended to paralyze her with anxiety and vertigo-induced nausea.

"Would you like to drink?"

[MethodicalSlacker]

Mmmmmmmmm.

Smelled goooooooood.

So good, in fact, that for a decent amount of time Lucas found himself trapped in his place. He could already taste the food cooking in his brain, bouncing from taste bud to taste bud, all around his mouth, echoing within him like the last note of a symphony, ringing out, leaving him hungry for more, hungry for anything, some kind of magic meant to steel him against a future illness, chicken soup for the soul-to-be. His mouth watered, and the moment was stretched out into a hazy eternity, a single sustained sense of savory serenity, hypnotic in its reach, already filling him up, up, up, all up until

Gyu-ri

asked

if he wanted

something

to drink.

The sound startled him back into wakefulness and hurriedly he stepped further into the house, wandering aimlessly in the direction of the kitchen. Tea? Tea would be nice. Tea would get him to sit down and think and process, and a seat was what he needed right now more than anything.

"Sure," he stuttered, "That would be great, thank you."

He found his way to the dining room, took a seat at the table, and stared the walls. He noticed that a little bit of paint was flaking off, and focused his attention on that.

[Cicada]

There was a moment in time where the conversation seemed to ebb out of being. Gyu-ri cautiously let her senses sharpen in that very instant of time, a weary touch to the idea of a conversation merely ending. Because if that was it, it was abrupt, rather shockingly so, to where it confused. Certainly not all exchanges of words were to have any sort of verve, and indeed Gyu-ri herself was hardly a captivating speaker, but there was merely a certain wrongness to such a silence, wherein things felt woefully incomplete and Gyu-ri felt anxious for it.

"Sure. That would be great, thank you." Sudden. Weak, rather, tonally neither here-nor-there, as in Gyu-ri almost seemed to want for the speakers location in space and time. Such a queer effect disoriented, and Gyu-ri had to check to make sure she was still speaking to a living being sharing a room with her. She was able to confirm that was still the case, and she jettisoned the unusual moment as irrelevant oddity.

Only the stoic, firm and unyielding as wood, could ward off ghosts. Yes, it would always do to remember.

"Alright, you'll have your tea." Gyu-ri smiled, with a polite brick-stiffness to her lips, and she truly meant the smile but she also meant it's lack of softness merely because she couldn't quite bring herself to be unconditionally warm in regards to a strange face lurking around her house. She'd done her research meticulously on the Diaz family of course, as was possible when they seemed to be fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Most of her contact had been with Milo, who at least seemed to have about him enough of a spark of life for Gyu-ri to feel annoyed as opposed to the hollow, ringing nothing this one made her nurse like a gaping wound in her own stomach.

She unconsciously, then consciously touched at her belly. Before she poured the pot, for she would never on any life entrusted to her pour a pot with no less than two hands: be the drink hot or cold, be her hands cramped or cold, be the universe beginning or ended.

She felt a stomachache coming on, though that might have been residual echoes of her own emotional disquiet. She didn't know, she never did. And she didn't want a cup of tea now, because she was sure the caffeine content would elevate her risk of spontaneous aneurysm- she just knew it- but she wanted to share the moment with her guest and so she did, sitting at the chair directly opposite him with deliberate movements that seemed to place their two cups, perfectly aligned against each other, on the table, on small saucers, with spoons, with sugar, oriented so even the pattern of leafy swirls on the cups matched from any point of view.

Gyu-ri seemed sluggish, but she responded as if not.

"Have you two planned to do anything after this."

[MethodicalSlacker]

"What sort of thing do you mean?" he blurted out impulsively.

If there was a greater kind of social suicide than this, Lucas did not know it yet. Gyu-ri's question was likely intended to be innocent, in its own shapeless, question-less way, but where Lucas' mind went, Lucas' mind stayed, and it was impossible to get it out. His brother's own reporting on Gyu-ri had left him unprepared for this kind of directness. He recalled Milo using the words "harmless" and "pleasant," which, reasonably, gave Lucas no reason to expect this kind of interrogative question from her. He'd have preferred the conversation strayed to politics or religion or some socially unacceptable thing that was, at the very least, something that didn't relate to Ji-hyun.

Regardless, he'd have to recover somehow.

"Uhm," he stammered, "I think we might have wanted to take a walk, or hang out in her room, or something? I mean, we don't really usually plan things all that much."

Shit.

If there was anything that could get on Gyu-ri's nerves, as far as Lucas had seen, it was the implication that things were going to be unplanned. The meticulous cleanliness of the house, the dinner she had been so careful as to start before he arrived, all of it suggested that Gyu-ri was someone to whom order had the highest priority. It was just the vibe he got, but maybe this was endemic of some kind of OCD? Probably not. In fact, he was well aware that OCD didn't really work like that. It's just where his mind went.

"Y'know, serendipity?" he added, hoping that his usage of words bigger than himself would help assuage any fears he just raised.

[Cicada]

"I mean that-"

Lucas' tongue was seemingly quicker than his substance. Gyu-ri let her unfinished sentence wither away, the slight partition of her lips resealing like the quick snap-together of a purse. The expression mutated slipshod, her lips stayed terse, and she was certain the irritation she felt in that moment radiated not only in countenance but in the sheer heat she ventilated. She could feel it trapped under her non-existent collar, flush against the paper of her skin like it were fresh from a printer.

She remained dutifully silent, contemplative to a fault as she digested Lucas' words with the exhaustive total of her energy.

"I was asking out of curiosity," she murmured in the gentle monotone that inflamed her own ears for it's droll crassness. She explained herself simply, for she at least detected that she'd possibly been too on-the-nose with what had only been intended as a simple prod. She did often punch with her words, on accident, on purpose, but it was only ever reflexive. As per usual, controlling herself was perplexing and frustratingly out of reach.

"Your plans seems typically in character. And I say that on her behalf, though I of course do not know too much of you." Her hands gingerly wrapped around her tea cup, she took a seat. There were great celestial motions, in line with Ptolemy's clockwork, wherein she predicted her own positioning to the infinitesimal magnitude of measurement, and stuck the landing not unlike a meticulously placed doll in it's collector's cache. The cup of tea was too hot, her hands wrapped to it like leaves shy of snapping off the tree.

Once, twice, thrice, with some rigorous counting of an unknown beat, Gyu-ri adjusted her fingers' interlocking, smoothly. She contemplated words with a plentiful berth of silence to rest uneasily in.

"What I do know of you comes from your brother. He is upstanding, mischievous perhaps but in an un-obtrusive manner. I rather like him."

[MethodicalSlacker]

Right. There was that aspect of things to consider. Gyu-ri and Milo had been, as far as Lucas could tell, in cahoots. Though the arrangement had originally been at Lucas' request, the partnership had spun off into its own weird quasi-friendship. The endgame of Lucas (winning Gyu-ri's trust and blessing) and the endgame of Milo (???) had diverged a long time ago.

From Gyu-ri's short description, it seemed that Milo regarded her as he did her other friends. Around them, the words 'upstanding' and 'unobtrusive' might apply, but at home he was a terror, simultaneously precocious and preternatural and predisposed to bouts of shouts and spoiled soreness that Lucas could not explain. One minute he was the sweetest kid ever, and the next he was tearing the entire house down. The persona he showed in school and with friends was the kind and lovable one exclusively.

So when it came right down to it, Lucas could neither agree nor disagree with Gyu-ri's assessment of his brother. She was at once both right and wrong, but always incomplete. The honest thing to do would be to whine, because that's how Lucas felt. The tactful thing to do would be to remark on how admirable his brother was. The absolutely stupid, horribly inadequate, immature thing to do would be to-

"Milo's a real swell guy," Lucas said as he reclined in his chair, "I taught him everything I know."

-take credit.

My commitment to self sabotage would be admirable, if I wasn't myself, if I wasn't doing it unconsciously, and also if it wasn't fucking awful.

[Cicada]

Gyu-ri noted the skew of Lucas' spine as he reclined. Or rather, she didn't intend to and it happened anyways as she felt the vaguest of warning lurches that pried at stomach and esophagus in a single downward yank like the drag of a hand over an udder. The false danger apparently was that a fall was imminent despite the body of the chair itself remaining firm and stable. The false reaction was thus an inappropriate gesture of two fingers: Gyu-ri didn't even realize she'd waved her hand at Lucas in non-verbal vernacular for 'sit straight' up until indicated by the annoyingly librarian-stern voice that rambled off-center of the depths of her brain in a triplet ping against the emptiness of her skull.

She let the gesture complete with a soft flourish of her hand, staring expectantly. Unbeknownst to her, though still felt in the tug of gravity tensing each side of her cheek, she smiled small.

"Well I couldn't tell you that it's obvious but that's only because I'm not sure." Gyu-ri rankled a bit. It was platitudinous verbiage she'd tried for and the emotional context and content was only part of the scene she could paint for herself- rather, she could also oddly imagine a mere scripting of her words would read poorly, and she did not like that fact. She'd spoken in advance of herself, though she also processed in parallel to her own irritation further irritants that inflamed the linings of her nerve endings. That was, she further disliked her own package, her own shipping and handling, in how she dwelt on irrelevant matters and then dwelt on dwelling on irrelevant manners.

"You've certainly done a better job than I," Gyu-ri murmured with a swell of fuss that was out of context if one couldn't hear her perpetually overclocked internal machine. Her tone shifted gears flexibly, neutral and idle in a slightly teasing pout. Her lips felt heavy with the expression, awkwardly pregnant with overly wrought theatrics even when she was in actuality barely even making a face. And, of course, she was fairly thoroughly aware, as far as she could trust her awareness, about her own overreacting.

"Whatever my sister inherits from me she'll run with the absolute opposite. She's also an amazing young woman but through no fault of my own."

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Ahaha, yeah," Lucas laughed, "My brother takes the lessons I give him and runs with them in a different direction too. Usually it turns out fine and he does something that's pretty nice and conscious and thoughtful, but other times he misunderstands completely. I like to boast and everything, but he's his own guy."

Yes, because he figured he'd shoot himself in the foot while he was at it. Right through the previous bullet holes. He couldn't hit them all with one bullet, so he used a shotgun. Poked holes in his whole narrative of being the cool, nice, smart older brother. His boat was sinking, and he started the leak. His metaphors were mixing, and he was stirring the pot. Nothing was turning out as he had hoped. Where, exactly, was Ji-hyun? What was holding her up? Was she with another boy?

Nah, that wasn't like her. Maybe she was just stuck in traffic. Or maybe she was in the home, and hiding? Questions like these were above his pay-grade, especially the thought that she could be hiding somewhere else in the house. Lucas' apartment was so small that if you stood in just the right spot by the front door in the living room, you could see all the way through the back door in the kitchen. During the gloaming hours of the summer stray beams of light would catch in the space between the two doors and form a beam right down through the center of the home.

And like that beam of light, a thought ran right through the middle of his brain.

"Say," he said, "if you had to define Ji-hyun in four, five words, which would you pick? From your perspective, as family."

[Cicada]

He still hadn't sit up straight. Only a problem in how it absolutely infuriated Gyu-ri to no end in a moment's of puerile frustration- the little spoiled princess' whining when she couldn't even be sure what it was she was angry about, as any barely developed child- and otherwise it wasn't really an issue. Gyu-ri's brow furrowed until the shadow of crow's feet began to dangerously hint at her possible future self onto her face. In her mind's eye, she envisioned yet another future: that of the damnable boy she was playing host to actually listening to her instructions and correcting the mush in her head that had resulted from overheating, and yet another future, that of the scoliosis he would suffer in many year's time, a future he clearly should have envisioned. Said no one, ever.

She still understood that she was being patently ridiculous, but she likewise refused to relax, so for a few seconds of silence she concealed a glare by staring at the shined varnish of the table- the fruits of her labor an hour and seventeen minutes precisely prior. Last she'd checked. She hadn't checked her phone in a while, an itch that she couldn't quite scratch. She had company, after all, and she was no brute.

She would, however, indulge the slight hugging of her shoulders closer into their sockets. It pushed her arms tighter into the nook of her waist, introduced a comfortable tension wound into the springs of her joints. She didn't know for sure if she was cold, or shivering, but the slightest off-tempo tremble was enough for her to respond appropriately, regardless of if appropriate or not.

"Interesting question." Her jaw was still a bit set, as she continued to pointedly fail to ignore Lucas' bad posture.

Too interesting, in that she had to digest it with the tired machinery of her brain. She'd already been worrying about the still cooking meal, or the questionable lateness of her sister, or the presence of a stranger in her household, all at once. She didn't like adding yet more questions of the abstract, for the imagination was blasphemously hungry when teased a morsel.

Hers more so. Too many words appeared in her brain to sift through.

"... Vibrant." She was nursing a headache.

"... Inspired." At least, she thought so.

"... Spirited." For she would hate to burst a blood vessel over a mere migraine, not that she knew that would for sure happen, but she had such an unusual hunch to that effect.

"... Cacophonous." As she always did.

"... Unstoppable." ... Dammit.

She already hated her five words.

Another few seconds had passed as she'd wrung her brain out like a towel, of all the fermented, souring juices. She gently cradled her temple with the fingers of one palm. It didn't help for symptoms that were likely phantom, but it did at least make her feel better by proxy. She happened to like her security blankets, as she often chided herself on.

"What words would you use?" Boring response. Insipid. She was patently a damn farce wasting human skin.

[MethodicalSlacker]

He shifted in his chair, remembering his posture and imagining that little marionette string thing his dad had told him about sitting up straight, imagining he was pulled up by some unseen puppeteer and couldn't help but sit up straight. If that puppeteer had a face, it would be Gyu-ri's. The gaze she fixed at him was, well, if looks could kill indeed it would. As she spoke (really spat) her five words about her sister, he couldn't help but find himself not listening to any of them. Not in terms of content, anyways. Syllabic meaning was the last thing on his mind.

Really, he couldn't help but hear the way she said them. He wasn't the best at reading people, and hadn't really ever tried, for that matter, to make a concerted effort to do so, but he felt like Gyu-ri's constant judgement and critique was a double edged sword. To pick apart someone else, you had to leave yourself open a bit. Or maybe you didn't. Lucas didn't really know, and couldn't really say, if asked, what exactly he was hearing in the way that Gyu-ri said the things she said. But he knew what he wasn't hearing.

Changing the channel back to reality just in time to hear Gyu-ri make note that it was, in fact, his turn to speak, Lucas couldn't help but feel like that wasn't part of the deal. What was it in asking a question that made people want to ask it back? Did they feel accused of something, maybe? It was called an interrogative for a reason, (a misplacement of etymological order that would likely never be corrected) right? It was only fair that Lucas answer her query back, though. And besides, even if he had the stones to say something foolhardy, he wouldn't dare to it in his girlfriend's house. Where was she, anyway?

"Those are some good ones," Lucas said, nodding, "Hard for me not to echo, really, but if I had to choose my own words, I'd have to go with..."

"...Passionate." That felt good.

"...Offbeat." Even more fitting.

"...Creative." He was nailing these.

"...Friendly." You didn't need to be a gamer to hear that "Perfect!" soundbite, from that one fighting game, what was it now, Street Brawler, yes that felt factual, right there.

"...Loyal."

A little less certain on that last one.

He let the words hang in the air for a few moments as he sat back in his seat a little more, not straight but at least now bent at an angle just a little bit over 90 degrees, if the vertex was his tailbone and his torso was one of the lines, the bent one. He didn't like math.

"Yeah. Sounds about right."

[Cicada]

Gyu-ri was relaxed, though not assuaged:

Lucas had fixed his ten-years-time bad back. Probably not voluntarily, therein lied the problem.

The conversation- illogically, per the flow of time in her own head where the grain of sand had rudely stoppered the hourglass many millennia prior- stiffly danced on. Gyu-ri continued to feel she'd made a mistake in parroting the question, still, she experienced Lucas' feedback in real time. Certainly 'hard for me not to echo' implied their similar stance on Ji-hyun's thoroughbred humanity and poise, only, Gyu-ri thought little of her own opinions on her younger sister. They were stupid to a polluted extreme and she'd prefer that Lucas' heart, misplaced as it probably was in the way all youth pursued merriment with abandon, be so misplaced wholesomely as opposed to her perpetually ridiculous internal monologue.

All his other words slipped smoothing into place. She surprised herself with that particular moment of pleasantly passed time, wherein her head was verdant, peaceful as a meadows.

The corners of her pubescent, weakly colored lips turned. Upwards. The problem was rather not that she was smiling wholeheartedly but it was that somehow even such an innocent moment for her was fraught with danger: or maybe the illusion, because, viz-a-viz that her own emotions marked her as vulnerable when expressed even as gently as a proffered smile. Patently ridiculous, but she couldn't help but try to haggardly bat back the creeping shadows of concerns as followed: from the petty 'her smile was crooked and gross' to 'she slings a bullet right into your little sister's relationship via her unfounded and completely vaguely defined indiscretions', so on 'til so on became an infinity of so ons.

She was used to that happening all the time anyways. She wore her smile with weary grace and cradled it with a doll-like hand propping up her chin.

"Cliche." Maybe a minute had passed since they'd started collecting adjectives. She counted a scant few left before the pot's contents would begin to boil to a pulp. Or in the particularly worst case scenarios she promptly assumed were truth, would spontaneously explode like a bomb left to ferment in her own precociously precious household.

"I like them all, and I'm modestly surprised. I didn't think you'd fall so deep into her orbit already, to be lauding her to the heavens."