[Guest Writer: Takenoko] – To Meet the Height of Birds (4/?) – A SKKS fanfic

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
-- Langston Hughes

Title: To Meet the Height of Birds (Episode #5)
Genre: General, Romance
Characters: Jae Shin, Yoon Hee
Words: 1000
Summary: …But you are starting to scramble them into poetry.

o.o0o.o

Yesterday, when he first heard the quiet sniffles interrupting his mid-afternoon nap, Jae Shin was ready to get up and haul into whoever had the nerve to wake him up. But as soon as he lifted his head and spotted Kim Yoon Shik huddled up into a miserable ball just a few desks away from him, the first thought that ran through his mind was, “Shit, did that asshole get to him again?”

A quick scan revealed no acute bodily harm had been inflicted on the boy since he left Jae Shin’s care, so he started to lie back down- but who knew what could have happened between the infirmary and here?- then sat up again. The rustle of clothing made Yoon Shik look up, but he immediately looked away and tried to blink away his tears.

Jae Shin realized that crying was probably the last thing one would want to be caught doing after fainting like a girl on the archery grounds only hours ago, so he attempted to reassure Yoon Shik that hiding his tears was pretty masculine. When it looked as if he was going to run anyway, Jae Shin closed the distance between them with one graceful leap and stopped the younger scholar with a decisive hand on his shoulder.

“You can stay here, I’ll leave,” he said quietly, trying to ignore the other’s anguish, the slight catch in his breathing as he swallowed a raw sob.

“Hey Daemul, cry out loud, like a grown man,” he instructed, uncomfortable but earnest.

As the door closed behind him he had to ignore a strong urge to turn around and offer his services in beating up Ha In Soo, who would deserve it any day even without this latest cruelty, this “lesson” that may scar a young man for life. But Moon Jae Shin knew, perhaps better than anyone, that there was a time for grief, and a time for anger, and sometimes nothing of the latter could help ease the former, no matter how hard you tried.

o.o0o.o

Today, he gets the idea to carve the gakji* during lunch, after Kim Yoon Shik comes in from his morning of archery practice pale and withdrawn. The pressure that Lee Sun Joon puts on him is heavy and excessive, this Jae Shin acknowledges, but Kim Yoon Shik looks rather like he is carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders instead of the expectations of just one irrational, pig-headed man. Jae Shin watches as the Namin scholar sits listlessly between Kim Woo Tak and Bae Hae Won, slowly stirring his porridge in alternating clockwise-counterclockwise circles. Even gentle nudges from his friends fail to coax him into conversation, and eventually Bae Hae Won just eases the bowl out from under his arms (‘rescuing it’ – he calls it) and helps himself. Yoon Shik does not protest and continues to sit, rubbing his reddened thumb absentmindedly.

Jae Shin remembers how he got blisters on his fingers within the first day of archery lessons, and how they popped and bled and eventually scabbed over and turned into calluses that serve him well now, more than ten years later. By the time his brother came home from Sungkyunkwan to visit, it was too late to prevent the injury, but he’d shown him how to soak his hand in wine to numb the broken skin, how to carve a teardrop-shaped release aid that protected the pad of his thumb from friction against the bowstring. This, he decides, is exactly what Kim Yoon Shik needs.

After Lee Sun Joon’s injury, he doubts if it’s worthwhile to carve the contraption at all, since it appears that all the occupants of East Wing’s second middle room are now incapacitated in one way or the other. But as he’s already picked out a good-sized piece of basswood and sharpened his pocket knife, it seems like a waste to stop halfway.

So he sits in his tree and carves, watching as Kim Yoon Shik watches Lee Sun Joon, and wonders if either of them will have a chance to prove themselves. Even if they get the miracle they need, he knows without a shadow of a doubt that he himself will not be participating on the day of the archery competition. Common sense dictates that he would risk discovery if he revealed his remarkable skill in front of the king and all of Joseon’s highest officials. For the mere sake of a bowstring and bragging rights, it is a gamble he is unwilling to take.

But in the early hours of the morning, when he awakens to find both bedrolls beside him empty and another quiver of arrows gone, he is forced to reevaluate his stance. Out of the three of them, who truly has the most at stake? He could lose his life. Lee Sun Joon, his reputation. As for Kim Yoon Shik…

“While you were leisurely playing with your bow and arrow, I was busy providing for my family,” he’d said fiercely, when pushed to the limits by Lee Sun Joon’s training. “Do you even know what I’m going through now?”

No, Jae Shin thinks. No, he doesn’t understand at all, but he can’t get the look in Yoon Shik’s eyes out of his mind. He had been so angry, yet underneath all the bitterness and frustration directed towards Lee Sun Joon, there was something more: an aching, brittle longing, a soul reaching out desperately to catch a dream that was falling to pieces. Somehow, it seemed as if Kim Yoon Shik had already lost, and what he was missing was tearing him apart.

o.o0o.o

Tomorrow, when he slips the completed release aid onto Kim Yoon Shik’s rain-soaked hand, Jae Shin will curl those slender, ivory-cool fingers into a tight ball and pray that it is enough to protect him.

“You, think that as long as you have the heart, you can change the world, right?”

No, but maybe, just maybe…tomorrow, the world will hurt a little less.

o.o0o.o

*Footnote: Gakji – the thumb ring that he gives her at the end of episode 5 appears to be an essential part of traditional Korean archery; see here for more detail.

The mood of this drabble is somewhat more somber than the previous ones because I think a large part of episode 5 is focused on Yoon Hee's internal anguish as she struggles to reconcile her hopes of succeeding at Sungkyunkwan with her desire to protect her secret and her family. In the scene where Jae Shin and Sun Joon both grab onto her arm, I saw a great amount of concern for her driving both of them, but they express it in different ways. In the show we saw how Lee Sun Joon threw everything he had into creating that "miracle" for Kim Yoon Shik to believe in. Here, I wanted to highlight Jae Shin's POV.

[Link] Taming the Crazy Horse - A SKKS fanfic

Chapter 3 up!

Title: Taming the Crazy Horse (by akane47)
Genre: Drama, Romance (Post-drama)
Characters: Jae Shin, OFC (Original Female Character)
Words: TBA
Summary: N/A

Link to Chapter One: http://akane47.livejournal.com/2832.html
Link to Chapter Two: http://akane47.livejournal.com/3476.html
Link to Chapter Three: http://akane47.livejournal.com/4054.html

[Guest Writer: Takenoko] – To Meet the Height of Birds (3/?) – A SKKS fanfic

Title: To Meet the Height of Birds (Episodes #3-4)
Genre: General, Romance
Characters: Jae Shin, Yoon Hee
Words: 976
Summary: The words in my mind are not displaced yet…

o.o0o.o

The morning after, he wakes to warm rays of sun settling across his face and finds himself the only one still in the room. The bedding is all neatly rolled up and put away, and for a short moment Jae Shin feels aggrieved that his roommates didn’t bother to wake him up for breakfast. Then he remembers that he is the one who kicked them out of the room in the first place.

As he stretches languorously, he tries to justify why he’d let himself fall asleep with two strangers in the room. Never, in all his years at Sungkyunkwan, had Jae Shin ever had a roommate. Usually it only took one candle length’s time for him to terrorize the prospective person or persons into fleeing to another dorm room for the rest of the semester. Those who gathered up enough courage to actually go to bed the first night were quickly apprised of their mistake when the “sleeping” Geol Oh started to issue ominous threats or wrestle with imaginary foes dangerously close to their bodies. The night before, though, he’d been utterly exhausted from all the running and jumping around as the Hong Byuk Seo, and his already poor mood was only aggravated by Lee Sun Joon’s witty yet insulting twist of logic. All he had wanted was for the talking to stop so he could get some much-needed shut-eye. And seeing as how the shorter of the two men in the room was clearly the very same individual who’d saved his butt earlier by lying to the royal guards, and the other was a Noron pansy with a stick up his butt, Moon Jae Shin had felt that further harassment of the freshmen could wait until morning.

After kicking the whimpering pretty boy into the middle spot as a buffer between himself and the Noron punk, Jae Shin had let his mind drift, waiting until he could be sure that the two posed no threat. He’d meant to work on composing a new message for his next midnight outing, but as Kim Yoon Shik’s hyperventilation gradually slowed into deep, even breath sounds, he had found it harder and harder to follow a steady train of thought. And so it was that amidst the placid hush of wind-blown leaves and the autumn-wood scent of the boy sleeping next to him, Jae Shin had let his guard down and slipped into a dreamless sleep.

o.o0o.o

After catching Lee Sun Joon leaving the Analects of Confucius class and giving the arrogant fool a piece of his mind, Jae Shin walks around the corner and runs straight into Kim Yoon Shik, who is accompanied by the three students who’d been antagonizing Lee Sun Joon just a moment ago.

“Sa-hyung!” Kim Yoon Shik has the same open-mouthed expression of nervous surprise that Jae Shin’s seen him wearing every time he’s ever bumped into the fellow. Jae Shin wonders if he doesn’t mind being manhandled, and glances at Ahn Do Hyun, who has an arm slung around the kid’s shoulders, out of the corner of his eye. The brief eye contact is enough to make the older man flinch and drop his arm precipitously.

“U-uhm, we’re headed to Banchon for some drinks. Want to come with?” Yoon Shik looks sincerely hopeful, albeit still likely to faint at any moment.

“Hey! I told you, not the old guys, just us fresh-“ Ahn Do Hyun’s blustering is cut off abruptly when Jae Shin takes a single step forward and lifts his head slowly to glare at him.

“Oy…Get. Lost.” Each word is punctuated deliberately with another step closer to the three trembling freshmen, and suddenly their group bravado cracks and they’re stumbling backwards, leaving Kim Yoon Shik staring after the cloud of dust they leave in their wake. The fading sound of their panicked voices travels back up the hill: “We’ll meet you there, Daemul!”

Said “Big Shot” turns to look at Jae Shin reproachfully. “I don’t know how to get to the village bar.”

He sighs inwardly. Newbies.

“Walk with me,” he says, jerking his head for the younger boy to follow as he leads the way to the entrance gate. This will be the perfect opportunity to figure out if Kim Yoon Shik suspected anything after coming face to face with the Hong Byuk Seo last night.

They match each other’s pace perfectly as they walk across the school grounds, Kim Yook Shik staring intently at his own feet, while Jae Shin looks everywhere except directly to the right of him. He clears his throat and begins, casually, “About last night…”

Kim Yoon Shik’s head shoots up like a startled wren. “Ah, yes. Did you sleep well, Sa-hyung?” Jae Shin pauses and turns to look carefully at Yoon Shik, who slowly turns scarlet under his scrutiny. He wonders what the other is thinking of when his eyes drift ever so slightly to the side and widen as if in remembrance…

“Why do you ask?” he returns. (But in answer to his question, the truth is, he’d never slept better).

“Well, you kind of,” -here, a painfully embarrassed gesture, “rolled over onto to me while you were sleeping. I thought maybe you had a bad dream?” Yoon Shik peers up at him from underneath ridiculously long, dark lashes, and he freezes. All thoughts of interrogation have flown the way of the migrating geese, completely emptied out of his head as he feels his own cheeks start to burn. What had possessed him last night? He can’t imagine what it must have looked like to the poor kid, crushed by some crazy upperclassman on his first night at Sungkyunkwan.

Jae Shin shakes his head to clear some unwelcome images from his brain. “I slept fine,” he replies gruffly. “Next time, wake me up for breakfast.”

In the future, you’ll sleep here. Forever.

o.o0o.o

This drabble is a combination of two snapshots in time- the first being my favorite scene from episode 3, when Moon Jae Shin bullies poor Yoon Hee into sleeping in between himself and Lee Sun Joon (though I wouldn’t mind if he kicked me into the spot right next to him, not at all! ^^;) – and the second being a product of my imagination: how would the legendary Geol Oh react to his new sleeping arrangements “the morning after”? The fact of the matter is, he was probably so comfortable sleeping next to Yoon Hee, he wasn’t able to issue a single complaint!

[Poem] Perfume - A SKKS fanfic

Oh. Dear. God. –is that poetry?

………Nope, it’s worse. It’s EMO poetry. XD

Ah, well, Yoo Ah In writes it, too, so there. =P (Gotta pay a tribute somehow!)

***

#4 in the [10 Moments] series:

Ten different scenarios, ten different women --- ten different ways for Jae Shin to love again. Told in ten self-standing short stories. (Or poem, in this case.)

Title: Perfume
Genre: Poetry, angst (Drama-verse)
Characters: Jae Shin, Cho Sun

Words: 27
Summary: The heady scent of blood and roses haunts him wherever he goes.

Musical inspiration: My Medea by Vienna Teng [Youtube] [lyrics]

---So come to me, my love, I'll tap into your strength and drain it dry...

o.o0o.o

dance

your death on the knife-edge of danger

carve

your lust on my sweat-soaked flesh

inhale

exhale

the bloodsexroses---

(i scratch my sins on your scarlet slips.)

o.o0o.o

Author's Note:

This actually took me a whole friggin' hour to write. I kid you not. After writing and editing and piecing together and taking apart and generally tearing out my hair, I distilled the original 60-70 odd words to the bare-boned 27 you see now. ...As you can probably tell, poetry is NOT Tofu's forte. XP Don't worry, though, it shall be the first and last time I'll be dabbling in this style for Lunar Annals!

Let me know your thoughts (positive or negative) on this, regardless! =D

(Written in the perspective of Cho Sun.)

[Guest Writer: Takenoko] To Meet the Height of Birds (2/?) – A SKKS fanfic

Thanks so much for the kind encouragement and feedback, everyone! Here's the next installment - even though we didn't catch a glimpse of our dear Geol Oh during the welcoming ceremony, I'm sure he was hiding around there, somewhere ;)

Title: To Meet the Height of Birds (Episode #2)
Characters: Jae Shin, Yoon Hee
Genre: General, Romance

Words: 777
Summary: …But I can feel stardust catch in my throat.

o.o0o.o

The welcoming ceremony is not one of Moon Jae Shin’s favorite events. In fact, of all of Sungkyunkwan’s year-round pomp and circumstance, it is probably the one occasion he has the least amount of interest in. Year after year, the same ghoul costumes, the same tedious heckling, the same trite “delicacies” presented to greedy or bored seniors who are merely upholding school tradition. This year, however, he goes because Gu Yong Ha is a senior and will be one of the ones presiding over the reception, and he doesn’t want to hear the meticulous recounting of events and all the gossip that Yong Ha will surely regale him with if he admits he wasn’t at the ceremony. Still, just because he’d promised to go to forestall any whining from the manipulative Yeorim, doesn’t mean he personally has to go bump elbows with the newbies, so he perches himself strategically in the shadowy nook of a tree just outside the courtyard and settles in for a nice, long nap.

The muted sounds of the offering of beef and watermelon are nothing new, over-exaggerated though their merits may be. There is a pause, and then the next speaker, someone with a quiet, somewhat familiar voice, offers his gift.

Jae Shin cracks open one eyelid as Byung-choon kicks the freshman’s basket aside, sending what looks like homemade mung bean rice cakes into the dirt. He scoffs to himself. The mockery is nothing new, either. Any second now, the young man kneeling before the table (why does his stance remind him of someone he’d seen just recently?) will crawl back to the waiting crowd and disappear shamefully into anonymity. Jae Shin closes his eye.

But wait. The footsteps have stopped. A sharp turn, and then they head decisively back in the direction of the crackling flames. A resolute tenor rings out over the silent crowd, who is held captive by the following words:

“Studying literature and searching for the truth is what a scholar should do right? In the midst of all the books around you, is there any one that says you can throw food of a poor family’s onto the ground? “

Jae Shin’s eyes snap open and he looks down.

“Please answer,” the young man demands. He’s facing away from the students so Jae Shin can’t see his face, but he can see his slender frame, clad in pale goldenrod, practically quivering with indignation. Yong Ha has removed his mask and the crowd’s murmuring is making Byong-choon’s blustering hard to hear.

Now Lee Sun Joon, whose voice he recognizes from the rare Left State Minister’ dinner that he’s actually made it to, is interfering.

And now Yeorim is going around, forcing people to try a morsel of this newest offering, so unexpected in its simplicity.

“Because it’s the hardship of the citizens, everyone take a bite.”

Jae Shin smirks a bit at that. Trust Gu Yong Ha to figure out how to make even steamed homemade rice cakes seem like a treat. Though perhaps a treat it truly is, for not a single student has grimaced or spat out his mouthful in distaste. In fact, even Byong-choon continues chewing doggedly as Ha In Soo steps in to confront the new student. It looks as if, for tonight at least, this -Kim Yoon Shik, was it?- will be safe from the president’s wrath. Jae Shin breathes a small sigh and sits back, subconsciously letting his muscles relax from their tiger-like tautness.

Later, after everyone has disbanded in haste to complete the tasks they’ve been assigned to, he spots the discarded straw basket among the rest of the shredded packaging and silk wrappings piled together for disposal, and plucks out the last of the rice cakes to hold up to the moonlight. It looks a dull green, not shiny or crispy at the edges like those he remembers eating at summer festivals in years past. Kim Yoon Shik’s family, he theorizes idly, probably isn’t one to indulge in pan-fried rice cakes. He is curious about how much sugar they could afford to put into them, as well.

‘Hardship of the citizens,’ Yong Ha had called it.

He takes a bite, and the subtle glide of sweetness against his palate takes him by surprise. The texture of the rice cake is just right, not too sticky nor too grainy, and its fragrant aroma is pleasantly mellow, like freshly brewed green tea.

Hm. Kim Yoon Shik’s rice cakes are nothing to be ashamed of, he allows approvingly.

Jae Shin shoves the rest of the cake into his mouth and wipes his hands perfunctorily on his pants, then saunters off towards the dorms.

o.o0o.o

Come on, guys, who else thinks those rice cakes were probably delicious? XD