[ Sent towards the end of the morning news, after the entire country and all of its investors have been informed of his sixteen-year-old self's narrowly avoided criminal record—the one everyone had assured his father would be completely buried if he exiled his firstborn son to the States: ]
[ It starts as reconnaissance, a way to get one over on Vincenzo before he's even truly struck: sitting here close enough to wrap his hand around the frail little woman's throat without Cassano even knowing and relishing in the knowledge of how upset he'd be if he did. The simple joy of violating him in the deepest way he can, all while familiarizing himself with the target to make the kill feel more like his own.
He plays pretend, for the most part, like he always does. He smiles when he's supposed to, furrows his brows and softens his gaze when he's supposed to, expresses the right sentiments in the right order: that must have been so hard for you, I'm glad you're reunited, et cetera. Jang Hanseok has had thirty years to become very, very good at emulating emotions he's never once experienced, when he feels like it.
He's not so devoted to maintaining the image of a normal, likeable young man, however, that he doesn't disclose that his father didn't love him when it comes up. Offhanded, like he's discussing the weather, because that's about how much emotional significance it holds for him. Old bastard's dead now anyway. Her reaction is so disproportionate, so incongruous with his own, that Hanseok has to resist the urge to laugh, instead schooling his features into a faint, appreciative smile. Why the hell should it matter to her? He's a stranger, and feeling sorry for him isn't going to do anything for her. She's a cancer patient, for fuck's sake. It's pathetic.
He'll never understand why the general population doesn't just choose to separate themselves from these feelings, why they let themselves be overtaken. She's pitiful, but he talks to her, anyway. She doesn't insist that no, his father must have loved him, really, like his American peers did every time blandly stating facts made them uncomfortable—interesting. She just sits with the discomfort, and he finds himself vaguely disappointed. Maybe he wanted to unsettle her with it.
She asks about his mother. 'He cheated on her and then she died.' Again, a bland statement of basic reality—and she makes a sympathetic sound, reaches out, rests a hand on his wrist uninvited. 'That must have been hard,' she says, and he resists the urge to answer with No fucking shit, lady.
Oh Gyeong-ja thanks him for listening to her at the end of all of this. Says she hopes they'll see each other again, but she probably won't be around for much longer. Not attempting to pressure him, more observing the obvious to save him time should he feel the need to visit a year from now. She doesn't seem overly afraid of dying.
He does visit her again, a week later. Circling his prey. He wants to get a sense of the person he's going to destroy from afar. It's been too long since he's killed.
He ends up telling her about his exile to the states. 'I was a juvenile delinquent,' he says, without elaborating fully as to the nature of the crime. She's a murderer too, though, and there's a satisfaction in that knowledge. She's clueless, of course; there's no genuine interest in her life, only a vague curiosity as to what will happen if he shares parts of his. How far can he push the accepting veneer before Mother Teresa recoils from the vileness in his very bones?
Five or six visits later and he still doesn't have an answer; she's seemingly happy to be strung along. Vincenzo, too, remains none the wiser, at least until visit number six. Then the consigliere looks up from his phone in the middle of the hallway at the same time Hanseok's passing through it and they lock eyes. What are the fucking chances.
Hanseok comes to a halt an arm's reach away, smiles at him without bothering to affect his eyes. It's meant to be cloying, not convincing. ]
Consigliere. Visiting someone?
Edited 2023-05-23 03:03 (UTC)
@hyeongje / cw emeto mention, nonconsensual drug use, institutionalization
[ 'Combative Patient'. There are words for people like him, an entire fucking word bank of words for people like him as he's learned over the past week, and that's the one they stick to anyone who's justifiably upset with being fucking detained . Combative Patients get Clozapine in the mornings. So do people labelled violent psychopaths.
Hanseok gets good at manipulating the pill with his tongue and quickly stashing it above his gums; the nurses get better at making sure he's not just swallowing water in the morning. Hanseok learns to induce vomiting like the wannabe-idols in the women's ward; his new masters learn to start sending someone to accompany him on the morning bathroom breaks. Corners, corners, corners, constantly backing him into corners. It's infuriating, and the only thing that's kept him from wringing the morning shift charge nurse's fat neck like a fucking pheasant's are the horse tranquilizers they've been shoving down his throat this entire goddamn time. He's smarter than them, stronger, more clever. The only way they can keep him under their thumb is to drug him like a circus animal; the lack of chains is only for optics, no doubt.
He's tired and bored and angry, so, so fucking angry, the only emotion that interrupts the monotony and flatness. There are no visits other than lawyers who talk to him about his coming relocation to the States and the Babel-paid psychiatrist tasked with teaching an utterly disinterested audience of one to act normal and not let the world know - at least until he's informed that at the end of the week his idiot brother will be coming to talk to him for God knows what reason. Dad's probably forcing him to under the misguided belief that his presence will help, that there's some kind of brotherly fucking bond to be had.
Friday comes; he sits at the same kind of table a prison visitation room would have, long arms stretched out on the surface in front of him, hands fiddling with a piece of macrame. At least they don't seem to have many pretenses; the place is a prison and they don't mind pointing that out with the decor.
Hanseo enters the room with that stupid open-mouthed look he always has, the one that makes Hanseok's blood curdle, even now with the dampening of the few things he's still able to feel in earnest. His half-brother sits. ]
Hanseo-ah. [ He gives his best insincere grin. ] Did you miss me? I've been thinking of you.
[ Hanseok opens his hand and slides the unmistakably noose-shaped pantomime of a bracelet in his direction, then adds, as though it not being knit is what will stand out to his visitor: ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
@mafiacornsalad
Now you're just trying to annoy me.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
@mafiacornsalad
He plays pretend, for the most part, like he always does. He smiles when he's supposed to, furrows his brows and softens his gaze when he's supposed to, expresses the right sentiments in the right order: that must have been so hard for you, I'm glad you're reunited, et cetera. Jang Hanseok has had thirty years to become very, very good at emulating emotions he's never once experienced, when he feels like it.
He's not so devoted to maintaining the image of a normal, likeable young man, however, that he doesn't disclose that his father didn't love him when it comes up. Offhanded, like he's discussing the weather, because that's about how much emotional significance it holds for him. Old bastard's dead now anyway. Her reaction is so disproportionate, so incongruous with his own, that Hanseok has to resist the urge to laugh, instead schooling his features into a faint, appreciative smile. Why the hell should it matter to her? He's a stranger, and feeling sorry for him isn't going to do anything for her. She's a cancer patient, for fuck's sake. It's pathetic.
He'll never understand why the general population doesn't just choose to separate themselves from these feelings, why they let themselves be overtaken. She's pitiful, but he talks to her, anyway. She doesn't insist that no, his father must have loved him, really, like his American peers did every time blandly stating facts made them uncomfortable—interesting. She just sits with the discomfort, and he finds himself vaguely disappointed. Maybe he wanted to unsettle her with it.
She asks about his mother. 'He cheated on her and then she died.' Again, a bland statement of basic reality—and she makes a sympathetic sound, reaches out, rests a hand on his wrist uninvited. 'That must have been hard,' she says, and he resists the urge to answer with No fucking shit, lady.
Oh Gyeong-ja thanks him for listening to her at the end of all of this. Says she hopes they'll see each other again, but she probably won't be around for much longer. Not attempting to pressure him, more observing the obvious to save him time should he feel the need to visit a year from now. She doesn't seem overly afraid of dying.
He does visit her again, a week later. Circling his prey. He wants to get a sense of the person he's going to destroy from afar. It's been too long since he's killed.
He ends up telling her about his exile to the states. 'I was a juvenile delinquent,' he says, without elaborating fully as to the nature of the crime. She's a murderer too, though, and there's a satisfaction in that knowledge. She's clueless, of course; there's no genuine interest in her life, only a vague curiosity as to what will happen if he shares parts of his. How far can he push the accepting veneer before Mother Teresa recoils from the vileness in his very bones?
Five or six visits later and he still doesn't have an answer; she's seemingly happy to be strung along. Vincenzo, too, remains none the wiser, at least until visit number six. Then the consigliere looks up from his phone in the middle of the hallway at the same time Hanseok's passing through it and they lock eyes. What are the fucking chances.
Hanseok comes to a halt an arm's reach away, smiles at him without bothering to affect his eyes. It's meant to be cloying, not convincing. ]
Consigliere. Visiting someone?
@hyeongje / cw emeto mention, nonconsensual drug use, institutionalization
Hanseok gets good at manipulating the pill with his tongue and quickly stashing it above his gums; the nurses get better at making sure he's not just swallowing water in the morning. Hanseok learns to induce vomiting like the wannabe-idols in the women's ward; his new masters learn to start sending someone to accompany him on the morning bathroom breaks. Corners, corners, corners, constantly backing him into corners. It's infuriating, and the only thing that's kept him from wringing the morning shift charge nurse's fat neck like a fucking pheasant's are the horse tranquilizers they've been shoving down his throat this entire goddamn time. He's smarter than them, stronger, more clever. The only way they can keep him under their thumb is to drug him like a circus animal; the lack of chains is only for optics, no doubt.
He's tired and bored and angry, so, so fucking angry, the only emotion that interrupts the monotony and flatness. There are no visits other than lawyers who talk to him about his coming relocation to the States and the Babel-paid psychiatrist tasked with teaching an utterly disinterested audience of one to act normal and not let the world know - at least until he's informed that at the end of the week his idiot brother will be coming to talk to him for God knows what reason. Dad's probably forcing him to under the misguided belief that his presence will help, that there's some kind of brotherly fucking bond to be had.
Friday comes; he sits at the same kind of table a prison visitation room would have, long arms stretched out on the surface in front of him, hands fiddling with a piece of macrame. At least they don't seem to have many pretenses; the place is a prison and they don't mind pointing that out with the decor.
Hanseo enters the room with that stupid open-mouthed look he always has, the one that makes Hanseok's blood curdle, even now with the dampening of the few things he's still able to feel in earnest. His half-brother sits. ]
Hanseo-ah. [ He gives his best insincere grin. ] Did you miss me? I've been thinking of you.
[ Hanseok opens his hand and slides the unmistakably noose-shaped pantomime of a bracelet in his direction, then adds, as though it not being knit is what will stand out to his visitor: ]
"No sharps on the ward."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
cw heavy ableism, suicide mention
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)