Chaennie One-Shot Collection

🛢Jetsam

Genre - angst

Warnings - none?

Words - 26K+

Original by - rinsed

Summer break angst yaas

(Sorry if there are any lower case letters where they shouldn't be. this was all originally written in lower case)

Chaeyoung's bike carves a line through the dirty, ambiguous brown-mush-that-used-to-be-leaves-laden floor of the forest, a winding rattle at the disposal of her bike chain echoing through the rustling of the leaves above, the way the sound of a cricket might. The weather is still. It's not warm, but it isn't cold, and there's no sign of any kind of breeze or life. It's all still. It's like she's in a painting. The sky is a paperwhite, shrouded in what looked like one huge, singular cloud like a long bedsheet had been draped over the town. That would explain the absence of airflow, as well as the mildly suffocating feeling which seems to permanently linger in the atmosphere that no one else seems to notice.

It's somewhere on the cusp of spring and summer, and she doesn't know the exact day. It's just another day. Another day in the long, drawn-out haze of days that seem to idly pass as she wiles them away, doing nothing, waiting for nothing. The only difference she notices between the days is that the trees increase in the number of leaves, and the leaves themselves increase in the amount of green.

All of her friends are going to college when the summer wanes and the leaves begin to change. She, however, has no plans in the slightest, and, as such, her days have opened up to be an aimless, vacant, and seemingly endless mass of undirected and purposeless days after days after days.

Her room has become too stuffy.

A laugh cuts through the stillness and she slows, as if she's trying not to spook a deer, listening for a repeat, an indication that it was real.

Another sound comes in the form of talking, the words too muffled by distance for her to properly understand them. She steps over her bike and leaves it on its side, walking in the general direction of the noise. This isn't smart, but she's bored, and with idle time comes willingness.

Her feet take her toward a body of water that she recognizes. She remembers herself, seven years old, big-eared and doe-eyed, crouching down to the floor in old boots her mom had given her, picking up a caterpillar with a leaf, surrounded by classmates from her school. She'd come to it a couple of times, each time warned not to go too close to the edge.

The sounds came from two figures to her left, about a hundred feet away from her, and she darts behind a tree upon recognizing one of them.

It's Seulgi who she recognizes, a member of her friendship circle, and she's about to approach when she's stopped in her tracks by the other figure.

She recognizes her, her voice, stature, despite the apparent differences that have appeared since the last time she's seen her.

"I don't know. I guess I should go home, but my mom doesn't even know I'm here."

"She doesn't?"

She shakes her head.

"Does anyone?"

"Just you."

"Oh. What are you gonna do?"

She shrugs.

"Stay at my place, if you want."

"That's okay. I have to go home at some point."

It's Jennie. Kim Jennie; the same Kim Jennie who has known Chaeyoung since they were infants, clinging to trees with the backs of their knees and teaming up in gym classes, the same Kim Jennie who left two years ago without a word, the same Kim Jennie who they assumed had gone to boarding school, the same Kim Jennie who took the spirit of the city with her when she went. The same Kim Jennie who'd had rumors spread that she'd been expelled and sent to military school, or left because her dad was in the secret service, or because her younger brother had to go into witness protection, or because she'd been offered a job as a model because, holy shit, look at her, or because she'd left to go to an art school and reinvent herself, which is why she never said anything. Nothing had been certain, except that she was definitely not dead.