Stop Wtf. - Blog Posts
┈─ 𖧷 A DOLL’S FIRST MISTAKE, OH-SO FRAGILE ﹕ NAIYANA’S FIRST HEARTBREAK. set pre-debut. genre, angst. ( you can find me, right ? you can find me .. right ? ) featuring cracks in pseudo motherhood, themes of homophobia, and disappearances.
wide-eyed and afraid, naiyana is twelve when she first enters the jeong mansion. stark white, fluorescent pearl, soft creams. she’s almost hesitant to touch, scared to run her hands over silk curtains and velvet cushions lest they crumble underneath her feather light touch. like a mouse caught before slit eyes, the young girl jumped at every sound—foreign to her ears used to heavy silence and a gaping hole she knew someone had left but could never find the courage to open her mouth to ask. but it was never her fault, she was always reassured, treasured moments where her father would card his fingers through her hair with a reverence she’d always thought held both fear and awe. like she was a creature he was both proud and horrified of.
in the jeong mansion, she’d soon learn, there were rules. bow when you greet your elders. say good morning when you pass her, good night when exhaustion begins to gnaw at your senses. get ready for school with the perfectly tailored uniform already hanging on your closet door, but leave your hair alone until the miss—until jiho joined you and brushed your hair herself. just routine, she’d remind her every morning with a smile, and she would smile back perfectly just as she’d expect. routine was good. routine ensured progress, which in turn ensured stability. naiyana liked stability, so she worked her damndest to perfect her routine.
don’t wince when she brushed a little too hard. pretend not to hear the whispers of a daughter once lost, just like she was. she was here now. she was perfect.
at school, she meets ████, and her world alights in colors she’d never thought imaginable. long black hair almost onyx colored in some lighting, soft skin, pink lips that curved in a smile she couldn’t forget even if she tried her hardest. the gentleness ████ held her with left the now fifteen year old spiraling into a series of confusion and want, embarrassingly so, pertinent enough to hide shaking hands behind her back. her laugh, her touch, the echo of her voice. smitten. terribly so.
routine slips through her fingers like rainwater, rushing downwards with vigor. rumpled uniforms hastily thrown on to beat her to the bus stop, sock sliding down one leg, shirt half tucked. ████ would only laugh, unaware of naiyana’s poor heart beating, bursting to life as she crouched down to pull her sock up, as she drew impossibly close to straighten her collar and tuck her shirt back in. gentle, her touch fleeting, gone just as quick as it would make an appearance. it should have been an omen of sorts and yet it lit her skin up aflame, breath stuck in her throat as ████ lifted her fingers to brush wayward strands of her hair away from her face.
routine crashes and burns as naiyana falls head first into what she thinks might be love. how could this be love? she half-listens to the girls that surround her gush about their own fleeting crushes, hopping from one nameless boy to the next as soon as the one prior loses his aura of cool or mystique. how could this be love when the thought of ████ makes her want to light her very soul on fire with the knowledge that she would burn with her in tandem? that when she leans into her for too long, when her fingers brush hers when they walk side by side, when she so much as looks at her for a second too long, naiyana feels the very center of the universe blossom in her chest? how could that be love when she’s here bursting to the brim with want?
her first kiss is underneath a bus stop in the rain, sharing an umbrella and giggles and shrieks as cold water soaks into their short-sleeved shirts. wet hair plastered to her face and socks drenched wet and ████ has never looked more beautiful to her than now, stopping right in her tracks to tremble with a vigor the other girl foolishly mistakes as cold. concern flits over her features in a way that makes her heart trip and stumble, gasping wetly as wet fingertips gently run over her cheeks.
naiyana holds the umbrella when ████ kisses her, her palms warm against her face despite the chilled wind, and she thinks the world could end right then and there and she would die happy. she’s foolish when she asks for another, begs for a third, and promptly forgets about her surroundings until the telltale sound of a horn startles them apart with shy laughter and hastened running to catch a missed bus.
routine is promptly disregarded, waking up hours before the miss—jiho—does, out of the door before the older woman can even utter a good morning. naiyana wakes up with tiny braids in her hair and kisses long seeped into flushed cheeks, and forgets where she is for too long. forgets the house she’s living in, whose roof she rests her head under.
they get caught tangled in each other's arms in her garden, flower crowns in each other’s hair. jiho screams, curses ████, yanks her off their picnic blanket and back into the house before naiyana can utter a single word. she’s disheveled, a mess and a half of frazzled nerves, but she doesn’t care. she follows after them, tears budding in her eyes as her heart thuds in her ears.
she begs on her hands and knees, crying before the wild eyes of the woman who had taken her in. ugly sobs caught in her throat, she begs until her voice runs shot and her tear tracks seem to be permanently etched into her face. all she receives is a prim once over and an order to return to her room. the last time she sees ████ is when she risks a terrified glance over her shoulder, meeting the girl’s soft smile before she’s quickly ushered into her room by househelp.
jiho wakes her up now. jiho stands by as she gets ready, red hot shame lighting a fire down her spine when she settles back into her routine, brushing her hair back as if the girl in the mirror before her hasn’t been promptly unraveled. she once tried to ask about ████’s whereabouts, why she hadn’t been seeing her at school, in the halls, by the bus stop. jiho’s reflection had turned chillingly still, pausing with her hairbrush in midair like a marionette. she’d never had the guts to ask again.
she kept her head down, hid her tremors behind the perfectionism this mis—jiho wanted, and smiled when she was smiled at. said her good mornings and good nights, made sure she left the house without a single hair out of place, and tried not to cry when the lights dimmed low. jiho hated when she looked too puffy in the morning.