𝗦𝗜𝗗𝗘 𝗦𝗖𝗘𝗡𝗘 ⨾ vernon

16.1 | 𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻'𝘀 (𝗲𝗺𝗼)𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗴𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲

Darren Jisol Chwe was born after his mom's most cathartic cry. One push and the man gone. He came out of his mom's womb with the biggest eye roll a baby could ever perform. The doctor was so embarrassed, he wanted to push the little monster back inside.

To say the least, Darren finds catastrophes very interesting. Count in zombies a hundred times. He would love to be in one some day. So that he can bring in his heroic spirit in power and destroy all evil in the world. He loves to be in the delusion where he can empower himself and fight through any obstacle in life. His soul is that of a king who sacrifices himself for his kingdom.

Except the catastrophe always seems to be his family and his kingdom is his capacity to be able to survive in it. His score is at 3/4, with the mom dead and the rest of the family half-dead. He doesn't know his father well, nor is he interested. His brother and he aren't the best of friends but they also don't need to be anything else. He keeps his brother away, but from time to time is elated to let him know that he isn't going to stay afloat.

All Darren needs is another hand that can help him recover from his fear of the endless possibilities of him dying at any point from laughing at his own existence. He knows his life doesn't mean much to anyone. He doesn't take care of it too. But Darren knows that even though he doesn't play a particular role in anyone's life, he would actually love to make a non-joke of it.

That's why he loves the drugs. The ones that make him dimmer and dimmer and non-existent from his own skin. He feels as though he vanishes from a place of a concealed embodiment of chaos. He stays afloat. He stays safe.

He loves to listen to cows cry on the radio. His room is decorated with faint memories of him and his mom, dark gunks of waste paper and some torn strings of instruments he doesn't bother to throw away. To be precise, he cannot throw them away. He does fade away for most of the day, but there's one hour that he likes to take in the world. That he likes to embark as his own hour. In that hour, he writes, watches videos, gets out of his room, sits quietly on the still-unpacked sofa, eats a little, drinks some water and throws dirty dishes in the sink for his brother to clean later. He doesn't want his golden hour to be wasted being a dishwasher.

Darren knows he can go outside, photosynthesise, meet people, live. But he does none. The writer isn't concerned about him or his part or when it's going to play a role in Yeonhee and Wonwoo's story, he just exists in his mind as Hansol's older brother. Maybe the writer will pick Darren up and think about what he can do about him. To the writer, Darren needs a lot of character development. But to Darren, he's perfect. Even though he doesn't usually function as a normal human, he is aware that he has the potential to function like one.

To someone who only exists in shadows and haze, Darren has millions of reasons to be the way he is. In his golden hour that he lives everyday, he makes sure to learn how to build his character. He makes sure to put what he likes and dislikes in a list and what can make people like him and what can make people hate him.

He does that so that he can let people know he's not scared of pushing anyone away. He puts lists everywhere in the house. Lists of people he hates, lists of places he hates, lists of children he hates, all sorts of lists.

But he only makes these lists because he knows deep down he cannot hate anyone more than he hates himself. The lists have the names of people who get to soak daylight without being trapped in the mind of a writer.

Hate isn't the right word to describe what he feels for anything that exists apart from him, it's pure envy. And okay, maybe a little bit of jealousy.

He is jealous of his brother, Hansol, very much.

So when Sanghee came up to the doorstep with new establishments of hope, Darren woke up and chose violence.

If you ever wonder about his awareness of Sense, he wouldn't know because he's never been in any Scene till now. But he is a warning to the writer. He must make some good use of Darren soon. Repercussions exist, they are what Darren and characters like him become, and they don't look too fancy.