"How was your first day of school?" Balloon Tits. Globs of heavy red sauce drip off her serving ladle, some landing on the plate in front of her, some slipping down onto the faded wood of the dining table. The glistening droplets taunt Gregory cruelly, gleaming like the blood that's streamed from his nose far too many times. The meat in the pan she's scooping from is thick and fatty, three heart attacks in a single dish. Still, it doesn't stop Gregory's traitorous stomach from growling madly, because the food smells far better than it looks.
He turns away, refusing to let Balloon Tits hear the cry of his deprived belly. He doesn't want her pity. He doesn't want her hovering over him as usual, begging him to eat something other than the paper-dry sandwiches he's been living on for dinner ever since she'd moved in. He doesn't want her staring at his protruding ribs with concern, silently noting how his oversized jackets and worn t-shirts can't hide the concave slope of his stomach anymore.
He doesn't want her to care. It's so much easier that way.
Gregory slumps further down in his seat. He wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for his father's insistence that he eat with them. He doesn't know what to tell Balloon Tits. I fucked up. I met the guy that I kissed two years ago while Mom---my real Mom, not you---was taking her last breaths. Except it wasn't just a fucking kiss, was it? I bitched at his friends because I was pissed off at you for existing. He hates me now. And did I mention the guy opened his stupid fucking mouth and told his---fuck, our---classmates that I bitched at his friends, and he's apparently kind of popular because now no one wants to be friends with me? Fuck, that was expected, to be honest.
He can't tell her all that, obviously. "Fucking horrible," Gregory mutters instead. Not that your slut ass would understand. At his side, his fingers curl into his palm, pressing until his ragged nails shift through the surface of the calloused skin.
Skin-deep isn't enough. Not for Gregory.
"You have to eat something," Balloon Tits presses, her pretty face creasing in worry. Her breaths are shallow, her oversized chest heaving with every sharp inhale. Gregory imagines the dark depths of her cleavage coiling into Aladdin's cave, rock with a tiger's head. It would rear from her chest, roaring like the beast it would be, and it would swallow her whole. Never to plague his existence again.
He crosses his arms over his own chest. "I will."
"Not...those things. Proper food."
Gregory's stomach moans desperately at the mention of actual food, a pleading crescendo, but he refuses to give in. "I wouldn't exactly call your cooking proper food," he remarks flippantly. His nails sink deeper into his palm, poco a poco. Flesh against blood. Rust against rhyme.
The lines rippling across Balloon Tits' face deepen, but they do nothing to hide her golden youth. Gregory finds himself curling up his lower lip in disgust.
Gregory still remembers the first time he'd met her, coming home from school to find a strange woman peering at the photo frames scattered across the mantlepiece. She'd jumped back at his entrance with a nervous giggle, pressing one hand to the abnormally large, evidently surgically-enhanced rack she sported. "You scared me!"
"Who are you?" Gregory had demanded to know, sharp eyes drinking in every inch of the woman's features. Every second that passed had only served to convince him that the female standing in front of him was not even a woman---merely a young lady still trying to cling on to the slip of girlhood in a short plaid skirt and a tucked white blouse, dyed blonde hair gently curling over her shoulders.
"You must be Gregory," she'd responded instead of answering his question. Gregory had immediately snatched up the nearest book---his father's prized anthology of Sherlock Holmes---and hurled it at her face.
She was his father's girlfriend of six months, as Gregory had found out later on, and she became his wife just two months after. Just seven years older than Gregory himself. And on the wedding day, Gregory's mother had only been dead for a little over a year---fourteen months. Four hundred and twenty-six days. Ten thousand, two hundred and twenty-four hours. Gregory had known that.
After all, he'd counted every single one of them.
Seeming to sense that she's getting nowhere, Balloon Tits puts the pan down and settles into the seat at the other end of the table. There's an ocean of wood between them, but she's still too close for Gregory's liking. "Are you comfortable with me talking to your father about you potentially seeing a counsellor?" she asks, voice soft as the melancholy lullaby of sakura petals hitting the ground.
The anger in him rises to a feverish peak. Gregory leaps up from his chair, slamming both hands down on the table. The plates and glasses spread across its hard surface quiver madly before falling estinto once more, sauce and water spilling over their overfilled sides. "I'm not going to see a counsellor," he snarls, voice shaking with rage. How dare she? She sees me accidentally falling out of a window once and she thinks I need help. Bullshit!
"Gregory, please. The other day..." Balloon Tits bites her lower lip nervously. "I was...I'm worried about you."
It's all fake, Gregory thinks, just like the rest of her. Fake tan, fake hair, fake breasts, fake worry. There's sincerity in her wide blue eyes, but he knows it's fake too---just an act to further shove herself into his fucked-up life. He gets up, pushing his chair away, the demanding growl of his stomach quelled with spite. He turns to Balloon Tits, stone wrapping itself around his heart in an icy fist.
"Go fuck yourself," he says.
He doesn't wait for his father to come back. He doesn't wait for Balloon Tits to cry. He just leaves, because it's what he does best.
٩( ᐛ )و
The next day, school goes as Gregory had expected, with him curled up in the corner of the class, the corner of the cafeteria, the corner of the courtyard. Even though he's practically been forced into those corners, he likes them---they're quiet, unbothered, and their uninterrupted peace gives him time to finish up his work.
He's got a lot to catch up on, after all.
And those corners are secluded, alone, no one but the walls to bear witness to the way Gregory digs his fingernails into his covered arm whenever Jeong-Soon walks past. He can't help it. It's almost a reflex at this point.
He detests it. He detests how Kang Jeong-Soon is happy now. How he laughs with his posse of cheery friends, his dark-skinned, curly-haired girlfriend hooked over his slender arm. How everything about him seems minted and new, from the absence of his frayed denim jacket to the new brown hair he sports, no black teasing the roots yet. How he's moved on so well, and all Gregory can do is hate---and fall, spiralling down an abyss of moments long lost, down a rabbit hole of what if and could have would have should have.
He can't pull himself up. Not now. Not anymore.
Music class isn't much better. Gregory drags himself to class against his will, mentally reminding himself that it's to push himself back into his father's good graces---and so he won't owe Balloon Tits anything for saving him from the road two storeys below.
Gregory plays the part of the emo loner perfectly, hands shoved in the pockets of his threadbare red jacket, dark hair brushed thickly over a thin, gaunt face. He adds a slouch to his step and hunches his back, making sure he comes off as the most unapproachable he can manage as he slips into the tiny room.
Balloon Tits is already there, seated at the piano in the middle of the room. She's dressed a little less sluttily today, in a pair of ripped jeans and a white crop top that bares her flat belly to the world. Her eyes light up when she sees him, and Gregory resists the urge to gag. She doesn't make the mistake of saying anything this time, though, and Gregory sinks into one of the chairs at the back of the classroom, praying that this one isn't somehow Jeong-Soon's seat too.
It isn't long before the boy he's been agonising about all day walks in. A pretty girl on his arm. A pair of grinning friends at his side. Jeong-Soon doesn't even spare him a second glance, and Gregory tries to keep his heart afloat in his chest. But despite his efforts, it still sinks, leaving nothing but a gaping hole in his ribcage.
I don't know him anymore, Gregory reminds himself. He has his life, and I have mine. We're still the strangers we'd been two years ago.
And what we'd had was just a fairytale.
Out of the corner of his eye, a quick movement catches Gregory's attention. He looks up, just in time to see Jeong-Soon's head whipping back to the front of the room at the speed of light. As if he had turned, just for a second. As if he'd been unable to resist a quick peek at Gregory.
Balloon Tits pushes herself off the piano, raising her hands high. "Alright, class! Get out your manuscript books!" she commands, pulling her palms together once more and clapping twice. A flash. Another rapid swivel of Jeong-Soon's head, one so fast that it would be easy for Gregory to blink and miss it.
Gregory reminds himself that fairytales don't come true.
٩( ᐛ )و
"Hey, dude! Wait up!"
Gregory turns, a frown spreading across his face at the sight of the dudebro with the weed-whacker blonde locks sprinting after him, his pink-haired girlfriend trudging along in tow. Out of the corner of his eye, Gregory watches Jeong-Soon walk away, and he lets him do it.
"Dude!" Weed-Whacker Dudebro runs straight up to him, not even panting. "I'm really sorry about last week, man." He has the muscular body, sun-bleached hair and tanned skin of a surfer.
Colin had been no slouch when it had come to surfing.
Gregory feels his teeth clench together so hard his jaw cracks. "Leave me alone." His right hand balls itself into a fist. His left grips the faded hem of his jacket in a iron grasp.
"I'm really sorry, dude. I shouldn't have brought that Instagram thing up last week," Weed-Whacker Dudebro persists, as if intent on getting Gregory to accept his apology. By his side, Gregory notices the pink-haired girl roll her eyes, tugging at her boyfriend's hand impatiently.
"Leave. Me. Alone." Everything around Gregory is spiralling, twisting, turning, falling down the rabbit hole. A ringing void fills the space between his ears, white noise in his mind. Blood gushes from his nose, from his mouth, from his wrists and his ears and his eyes. He knows it's all fake, all a hallucination created by his addled brain, but he can't loosen himself from its deadly hold.
"What's your name, man? I'm Magnus, and this is my girlfriend Aimee. I know we got off on the wrong foot, but no man is an island, and you look like you could use some friends."
"I don't need any friends," Gregory hisses, feeling his bleeding eyes blaze to life, his bleeding heart dying just a little bit more. He imagines Weed-Whacker Dudebro hand in hand with his punk-pink girlfriend, and his mind flickers: back to Jeong-Soon, back to the curly-haired girl occupying his side, back to first kisses and invisible fireworks and the inescapable crash, crash, crash.
Just like that, Weed-Whacker Dudebro is pulling away, one hand cupped over his nose. His girlfriend is screaming bloody murder---profanities, curses, threats. Gregory's fist is throbbing, and his fingers hurt, clenching and unclenching in their mortal shells.
"You're fucking crazy!" the pink-haired girl screams, and her features contort---a boy, a demon, a thousand evils at once. She is no longer a girl, she is a monster, and Gregory staggers away from her, watching her lean over her boyfriend. He sees her cupping his face, fussing over him, gently pressing two fingers against the side of his now-vermillion nose. Her shadow claws its way out from beneath her, stretching across the emerald grass, reaching for Gregory.
"Leave me alone," Gregory pants out, his voice a ragged gasp to his own ears. "Don't try to talk to me ever again." Then he turns and runs, sneakers pounding on the pavement, jacket flapping in the wind. He can't feel his hands anymore, and his face has gone numb. Clear blood streams from the edges of his destroyed nails to the tips of his ebony bangs.
I'm fine.
Hurtling down the street, Gregory is a cannonball---tripping, falling, sinking down a million miles. His breath runs ragged in his chest, and his lungs burn, begging for mercy until he finally stumbles over a crack in the pavement and tumbles to his knees. Head spinning, heart gone.
I'm fine.
poco a poco — little by little
estinto — dying away, lifeless
REALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION!!! this could potentially affect the story's ending so answer wisely 🙃: Happy Endings or Bittersweet Endings?
repetition + rule of three have become my best friends istg
heyo, my precious smol beans. if you haven't been up on everything that's been happening with TSP, just check out the announcement chapter before this. it's been wild.
also, i've removed the ONC 2021 tag from my title, because that chapter of TSP's journey is closed. it's been closed too early, but it's still been closed. maybe it's for the best. as you can tell from the length of this chapter, at least i don't hafta worry about word limits now xD
friendly reminder that while not everything here has a double meaning, most things do, so reading in between the lines is crucial in uncovering why tf Gregory and Jeong-Soon are so salty towards each other. but at the same time, don't overthink things, because some people's theories have been...very off-track, let's just say. but on the other hand, some people are nearly there. you just need a few more puzzle pieces ;) (i swear my Romance book has a better mystery than my actual Mystery book)
okay so like i know this chapter was Absolute Crap, but keep in mind that i wrote it at 1am, and like any normal person, i am Very Tired at 1am. which means that although all my creative juices come out at night, i am unfortunately unable to write very well at that time. (actually i'm unable to write well at any time but let's ignore that) so yeah, crappy chapter from a crappy author, we been knew ✌
(to those who are no doubt about to smack me with a chancla for the self-depreciation, keep in mind that i am tRyIng to keep my ego down and my own opinion of my writing really low so i don't get hurt again when TSP inevitably fails once more---)
thank you so so much for all the support you guys have been giving TSP 🥺 i really don't know what i'd do without you guys, just know that i love y'alls so much 💙 my boys love you guys tooooo
xoxo, Alex