Work Text:
Han Sooyoung is an author.
She couldn’t tell you when it started; the idea may have started when she won her first mini-fiction contest, or it might have been when her literature teacher held her back after class to compliment her on an essay. It might’ve started farther back from then — when she was just a baby. It’s in her blood, as her mother would say. It’s in a Han’s blood to be passionately entangled in the arts, to breathe performance like it was air to their lungs, like it was food for their soul.
Though — Sooyoung wouldn’t know much about her mother anyway, considering how she’s spent her whole life locked up in a glamorous cage with white walls. On the occasional weekends her mother visits, she might get a glimpse of her personality. But sometimes, Sooyoung would wonder: Was it an act too? Was everything her mother did, an act?
When Sooyoung was thirteen, she took a class at school about literature. She was bored. She was lazy. Mostly though, she wanted to spite her parents, who were determined to force her to be a doctor, or an actress, or a politician. She would scowl, rolling her eyes as she read their furious text messages. Then she’d switch off her phone, pretending she wasn’t hurt. Hurt at their selective--
Anyway.
The teacher was nice. He was always encouraging Sooyoung to do well in her studies, even though all her other teachers had agreed she was a waste case. He was smarter than any adult Sooyoung knew, which was surprising to her considering he was teaching middle schoolers. He would often be pestered by questions about why he chose to study literature, why he was so smart, why he was so perceptive, and eventually, even Sooyoung succumbed to the fanatical question, asking him quietly at the end of class.
He gave her an odd smile, as if he were about to let her in on a secret.
“Often,” he whispered, “the characters we find in books appear all too similarly in real life.”
Sooyoung frowned, puzzled at his answer. He sighed and ushered her out the classroom, citing a meeting as his cause, and that was the end of the conversation.
So Sooyoung started watching her mother’s movies. And then she would read books about acting, books about deception, books about promiscuous women and low-commitment men who refuse to take responsibility and—
She found them quite boring. They were all chock-filled with cliches, a trope she hated seeing. While she could understand how some characters relate to her mother, it wasn’t enough to explain everything she did.
Often, Sooyoung wished people around her were characters. Maybe it would make it easier to understand them.
Sooyoung couldn’t find a character that was similar enough to her mother.
So she created one.
The story that ensued might have been her first real piece of fiction. It was a story about deceit, lies, trauma and family bonds weaker than water, and it was also her first prize-winning novel.
When Sooyoung penned the character Han Lee, she broke down her mother’s personality. She demolished it to tiny pieces she could comprehend, and then let the magical flow of her pen connect the rest. Then, she submitted it to a mini-fiction contest held at her school and won. Her name was heralded among the greats at the school, with her teachers praising her name. She even read an excerpt from her book at a school assembly.
Her mother never visited her again.
That was alright though, because Sooyoung already had Han Lee to tuck her in at night, to kiss her forehead, and to wish her a good night. The character Han Lee had already done more than Sooyoung’s own mother had done for her, so in Sooyoung’s eyes, it was alright if her mother left.
Next was her father; her absent father who had never publicly acknowledged her since birth — too fearful of a scandal forming that would threaten his position. The only times he spoke to her was when she was choosing career paths, of which he vehemently suggested becoming a doctor or politician. She glared.
Her father became the basis for Kang Seun, the main antagonist of her new mini-fiction. The book-loving protagonist, Ban Dokja, heroically rescues Kang Seun’s daugter from her white-walled cage and adopts her, letting her live a better life with him.
Her teacher, Ban Dohwa, raised an eyebrow when proofreading her short story. She chuckled nervously, hoping he didn’t misunderstand. She didn’t intend for Ban Dohwa to adopt her, because Ban Dokja was already enough for her.
Kung Jeewon, her father, continued ignoring her.
Sooyoung continued writing and fell into a well-snared trap. At first, she was writing just for characters, but then, she realized: the struggles a character goes through…couldn’t they be mirrored off of reality?
So Sooyoung’s world expanded, until her thoughts were filled with characters and plots and all sorts of worldbuilding that bamboozled other minds, but to Sooyoung, this was enjoyment. This was living. In her world, she was in control of her characters. She understood them so well that they might as well be naked to her, and it wouldn’t make a difference. How she adored that — being able to perfectly understand something! She loved Kang Seun because of how easily he could fit into Kang Jeewon’s role, and she loved Han Lee because of how easily she could fit into Han Leila’s role.
Inspiration would grip Sooyoung’s arms, binding her together as it drowned her in her imagination, and Sooyoung didn’t mind. If anything, she loved it. She loved being able to create, to breathe life into beings unlivable. She crafted these characters with her bare hands, and they were living all thanks to her.
She graduated middle school, and never saw Ban Dohwa again.
Sometimes, Sooyoung wished her characters were real. While they were alive in her imagination, she yearned to feel their touch, their hands intertwined with hers, and their warmth. Her hands ached for something more.
All was well. Until.
When Sooyoung was sixteen years old, her dreams began to plague her constantly. It grew from what it used to be at thirteen, to an ache in her bones, a yearning for something, a twitch in her hands urging her to please write this story please write this. And who was she to deny herself the sensation?
So she wrote a webnovel titled the SSS Grade Infinite Regressor. The principle seemed fairly simple — a regressor attempts to live in the apocalypse — but for some reason, the main character kept eluding her. Yoo Joonhyun evaded her puppet strings, refusing to bow to her control as she wrote his story. She wanted to write him off as a heartless, brutal murderer, but something nagged at her brain, telling her that this wasn’t all to the story. She tried to change perspectives, but it didn’t help her.
To Sooyoung’s horror, a character had grown past her control.
Unable to accept this, she stuffed the story chock-full with cliches and ended it prematurely. The webnovel had received enough views for her to make some serious bank, and the plagiarism allegations coming from that one reader (who must have thought he was soo intelligent by naming his account the Korean name for it) were getting annoying anyway. But still, on some nights Sooyoung found Yoo Joonhyun drifting into her dreams, just lightly dancing about her fingertips but never quite in grasp. She would wake up with her hands in the air, as though reaching for something that didn't quite exist yet, and she felt irritated, albeit also fairly disorientated because of her sleepwalking disorder.
Regardless, it just left a bitter taste in Sooyoung's mouth. She never wanted that kind of incident to happen again. She wrote to avoid disappointment -- being disappointed by her own lackings as a writer was preposterous! No, Han Sooyoung was better off writing cliches. Adding slight twists, minorly subverting a few tropes: her imagination got away with a few tweaks to the standard cliche, but her heart yearned for more. Every time she typed, it was like the letters were taunting her, reminding her of the shackles placed on her creativity. The boundary in her mind marked off by yellow caution tape, while Yoo Joonhyun loomed ominously in the distance.
Han Sooyoung quickly discerned the most popular tropes that her audience would eat up. She became a commodity-writer, feeding her readers what they wanted to see as opposed to what she wanted to write. Before, she had been the puppeteer of her characters, but perhaps now, she was the puppet of her readers. And she performed gladly. Her formula for writing, however restricting, was also successful: by her twenties, she had more money than her parents ever made, and twice as much (online) fame. There had even been talks about adapting her webnovels into k-dramas! Han Sooyoung was living the best of her life, so why did she still feel so...
Empty?
And then one day, her characters came to life, and she forgot all the boundaries she limited herself with. Her writing was alive! Yoo Joonhyun, or rather, Yoo Joonghyuk, was alive! How exciting!
Her thoughts were cut off by the sounds of someone being clubbed to death, and with a cold shiver, she remembered her dire situation. She wasn't in a place to be fantasizing now -- this was a situation of life and death. She could die.
A smirk formed on her lips, strong enough to replace her urge to hurl. She would find a way to survive somehow. She was a writer, after all. It was in her nature to make up stories. She just needed to fashion a story compelling enough to keep her alive. This was a challenge, if anything.
Blood splattered on her shoes, and she found her smirk faltering. Were her parents among those who died? She steeled her expression. No, they were already dead to her for a while. Just as her fiction had replaced reality back then, now she would live on in this new fictional world. She had to live on to see the story this world would create. Perhaps she could even meet Yoo Joonhyun.
Han Sooyoung is a writer. This is her way to survive in a ruined world.