(click to enlarge)
Jihoon knelt in the dirt of the pitcher’s mound, his breath coming in thin, burning pulls.
Across the diamond, Lathandro twirled a charred baseball bat slowly in one hand. Casual. Patient. Like a man warming up before a game already won. He looked flawless in his white uniform, shoes clean, collar crisp, entirely untouched by the smoke and ruin.
"Do you hear them?" Lathandro asked lightly, his voice carrying over the crackle of the flames.
Voices echoed faintly through the smoke. Muffled. Distant. Real. Jihoon lifted his head. The sky above the dreamscape trembled.
"They’re worried," Lathandro said, a cruel smirk touching his perfect lips. "How sweet."
The scent of clove.
It drifted through the acrid smoke, ancient and entirely out of place.
Jihoon looked towards the scent.
Suddenly, the bat came down. Crack.
Light exploded behind Jihoon’s eyes. He collapsed into the dirt, tasting copper and ash.
"You don't deserve your best friends. You didn't even tell them your birthday," Lathandro continued conversationally, stepping over him. "But I understand."
Another swing. Crack.
"You were born under a bad star, the asteroid Apophis," Lathandro whispered, crouching beside him. "An ill omen. The day that almost ended the world. Imagine how they’d react if they knew you were always cursed."
The crack rang in Jihoon's skull.
"You always knew something was wrong with you. Too quiet. Too strange. Too afraid to exist properly. You watched life from the bleachers while better people played the game." He spread his arms to the burning stadium. "But me? I am the player."
The glitching scoreboard above the stadium spasmed back to life, letters crawling through static until they held in place.
HITS
AWAY: SOMEBODY: 347
HOME: NOBODY: 0
Lathandro glanced up at the board and smiled faintly. “Scorekeeping matters.”
Suddenly, the ground convulsed. A violent earthquake ripped through the dreamscape, collapsing a section of the bleachers. Jihoon’s real body was being moved.
Through the fissures in the sky, a voice bled through. Deep, broken, and wet.
Kyle.
“He didn’t want this! Look at him! Jihoon never wanted to be a monster!” Kyle’s voice cracked with a guilt so profound it made the ground in the dreamscape shudder. Kyle, the guy who treated joy like a personal insult, was weeping for him.
Jihoon flinched and closed his eyes.
"Oh?" Lathandro murmured, his eyes narrowing. He raised the bat. "Still clinging to them? Pathetic. Just forget them already."
Before the bat could fall, a new voice sliced through the haze, cold and sharp with fury. He knew that voice. The nurse from the hospital.
“You think Master Ginerva forced this upon him?” Her voice sneered from the waking world. “You think your precious friend is a victim? Look at the footage, you ignorant children. He begged for it.”
The melting jumbo screen flickered violently. Then a new image forced itself across the burning pixels. It was shaky halophone footage from inside the velvet madness of Club Apophis.
Jihoon saw his own face, his old, 000unremarkable face, looking up at the towering silhouette of MasterGin.
Something inside Jihoon recoiled. The words felt familiar. Like overhearing himself through a wall.
“I’m tired of being a nobody. Tired of being weak. I can't even tell the girl I like how I feel,” his old self on the screen whispered, his voice trembling with raw, desperate hunger. “I don’t want to be small anymore....”
"Forget it!" Lathandro roared, his composure snapping. He brought the bat down viciously. "Forget! Let it go! I am the one keeping us alive! Your life ended the moment you walked into Club Apophis. Mine is just beginning!"
The bat came down again. Crack.
The scoreboard clicked.
HITS: 348
Above them, the real world was descending into chaos.
“He's coming. Enforcers in the corridor,” Paine’s voice snapped. “Here. Take this. Go.”
Jihoon's heart sank. But then, a hand reached through the sensory void. It was warm. Small. Real. He felt it.
Minjo’s voice broke through the static, closer than the rest. “Jihoon.”
Her hand tightened around his. “I thought sunscreen would be enough.” The words trembled, then hardened.
For a moment she said nothing. The silence carried everything she couldn’t.
“I will not fail you again.” Her grip tightened. “I don’t care what they are. Vampires. Cults. Gods.”
A breath against his cheek. “I watched you burn. Your arms on fire reaching to me, begging me to save you. So that's what I'll do. This is not over.” A pause. “Do you hear me?”
He felt the whisper of her lips against his cheek. Warm. Human. Alive.
Her touch was real. A kiss.
A jolt of pure, living electricity shot through his paralyzed limbs.
"Forget her!" Lathandro roared, swinging the bat for a final, memory-erasing blow.
Jihoon moved.
He didn't dodge. He reached up and caught the barrel of the bat, his bare, bloody hands stopping the wood cold.
Lathandro's grip faltered. Something crossed his perfect face that had no name in his vocabulary. The firelight flickered across their mirrored faces. One majestic, one bruised and bleeding.
"I kept you alive," Lathandro hissed.
Jihoon tightened his grip on the wood, staggering to his feet. "I know," he rasped, looking his shadow dead in the eye. "But you’re not all I am."
Jihoon twisted. The bat tore free from Lathandro’s grip. With a snarl of all his pent-up rage, he swung it back and cracked it across Lathandro's flawless jaw.
The scoreboard shrieked with feedback. The team names scrambled like a broken machine, then went dark.
The beautiful boy spun and collapsed into the ash. Knocked out cold.
The moment Lathandro fell, the inferno shattered like glass. The nightmare purgatory of Jihoon’s death dissolved, replaced instantly by the familiar, damp neon of the alleyway outside his old dorm. A mechanical bark echoed through the brick corridor. Scrappy 2 bounded from the shadows, tail wagging.
Jihoon dropped the bat, his chest heaving. He screamed at the sky, "Minjo! I'm here!"
But the voices were fading. The heavy, rhythmic clicking of MasterGin’s heels approached in the real world. His friends were gone. They had fled. But he was still unconscious in the heart of Monstrum.
The alley lights suddenly dimmed. Neon signs flickered. A low hum vibrated in the ground.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The slow, deliberate sound of applause drifted from the shadows of the alleyway.
Jihoon spun around.
A towering silhouette stepped into the dim light, draped in black, his golden dreadlocks arranged like a Pharaoh’s nemes. The air immediately chilled, smelling of ancient stone and clove cigarettes.
The Ruler of the Night looked down at Lathandro's unconscious body, then up to Jihoon, his gold eyes bright with something that might have been amusement if amusement could also be a threat.
"I have watched this infestation try to break you," the Ruler said, his voice a resonant baritone that vibrated in Jihoon's chest. "You have proven yourself. I did not expect such resilience from a human. It is fortunate your rescuers forced my Lucien to move you away from that cursed energy."
Jihoon backed up, his hands trembling. "Who are you?"
The ancient vampire took a slow drag from his cigarette, the embers flaring orange in the dark.
"I am known by many titles," he purred smoothly. "But you may think of me as the Instrument of Order. My servant, the Instrument of Chaos, has laid a claim on your flesh, but I see you are not entirely his." The Ruler extended a massive, armored hand toward Jihoon. "Let us speak of a mutually beneficial arrangement. A deal to balance the scales."
Jihoon looked at the extended hand, then at Scrappy sitting patient in the neon dark, then back at the oldest person he had ever seen.
When I saw STOP's robot dog, thought I had gone to heaven for a moment. Its perfect. And perfect for for this story as the dream symbol of Minjo, guarding poor Jihoon. Lovely. Just lovely. ... Blaze is his real name, and he comes in different color selections. You just wear him, and he's fully animated with cool sci-fi noises. He's a good boy. ....From Diaboli Designs is Voidcore boots. Like all DD boots, it comes with a hud full of texture options and texture animations. It's so fun. I went with a Lime Green ad Black look to match the jacket. ...Savage's Yuri Jacket has backpack built in the back. The front can your pick from several colors, and the back and backpack are black. ...Matching the lime theme is the T-AB headphones by Lavu. You can get in several colors, and then modify is even more with a hud. The headphones are unrigged and mod, so you can get a perfect fit. ... In the background, I used the mod version of ZEROICHI's KABUKI X Backdrop. Its detailed L shaped set with built in lights and PBR textures. With the mod version you can tint, or move pieces around. It includes stand alone props bottles, and an option without built in lighting. ...And a subtle detail in the back, is the EC3D neon sign of the Dog which I combined with the ZEROICHI's Love sign. ... Just an another little nod to our Snow White (Jihoon) finally getting that kiss from his love (Minjo) that awakens, not his body, but his agency. -- My own cyber twist to the famous fairytale.
On him, Yoon Jihoon:
Jacket: Savage - Yuri Jacket, Legacy M [mesh](Cyber Fair)(250L)
Shoes: Diaboli Design - Voidcore Boots, Legacy M [mesh](Cyber Fair)(999L)
Pet: STOP - Blaze-Yellow [mesh](Cyber Fair)(1500L)
Heaphones: Lavu - T-AB, black heaphone [mesh](Cyber Fair)(239L)
Rings: MANDALA - Legacy(M)_Ring []Sinra Rings season-3-HD [mesh]
Baseball Bat: Top Shed Model_Baseball Bat [mesh]
Hair: Raven Bell - Nova Hair Short w Bangs ~Shimmer~ [mesh]
Pants: AVEC TOI Kai Pants, Turmoil, LegacyM [mesh](595L)
Hairbase: Volkstone - Percy Hairbase / Dark Black [BOM]
Tattoo: 𝐒𝐀𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐆𝐄 - [p] the damned - bloody mouth [BOM]
Eye makeup: maledictus - Lacrimosa - Blood [BOM] [BOM]
Tattoo: Hexed - Lonely Soul Blood Mouth [BOM]
Tattoo: Broadwing - Mouth Wound - Fresh Bloody [BOM]
Skin: MUDSKIN - Hajimu - Scarface - Brow - WINTER [BOM]
Skin: MUDSKIN - Hajimu - Scarface - Brow - WINTER [BOM]
Eyes: IKON - Perspective Eyes - Oxidation [BOM]
Body: TheShops - [BODY] Athletic Meshbody (Legacy)(m) (1.7.1) [mesh](5000L)
Pose: momomuller 3M_sc0_m_3 (40L)
Setting:
Skybox: ZEROICHI - KABUKI X Backdrop Ambientlight [mesh](Cyber Fair)(580L)
Neon sign: EC3D - Cyber Dog Static [mesh](Cyber Fair)(200L)
BONUS IMAGES: inworld raw shots, hi-res, midday sky:
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