Let You Go - K.HJ + S.MG (Ateez Short Story)

Behind The Story

So, I'm writing this extra part to talk a little about the creative process and inspirations I had before and while writing this story! ^^

First of all, this story was heavily inspired by Black Mirror Season 2, episode 1 'Be Right Back', watch it and you'll see what I mean. Except I wanted a different ending to it so I decided to write this and play with the plot a little. As I wrote the story, I initially had plans of doing things a bit more similar to the BM episode, however I ended up having different ideas and only the main details are similar, like how Mingi's droid was activated in the bathroom, and can't go any farther than his activation point without Hongjoong guiding him. The droid is also perfectly able to have sex, however it can't feel anything or react to anything, and just like in the show, Hongjoong enjoyed that at first, but then the lack of humanity in the copy started to make him miserable, we all get that.

Another small inspiration for this is also related to my cover, which was a fanart (I think) of the main character from the game Detroit: Become Human (Connor), in it, he's bleeding blue. I darkened the image A LOT to try and not make it so obvious that the story had something to do with robots and stuff.

I wanted Honggi's relationship to be a mystery at first, and I had a friend who was reading it ask me to show more of Mingi when I was around chapter 2 or something, and I loved that, because not showing Mingi's feelings, thoughts and reactions was on purpose: he didn't have any.

The preview chapter was the first thing I wrote, for some reason I just really wanted to write that phone call scene, and we can't know for sure what's going on and who he's talking to, turns out he was actually calling customer service to figure out a way to deactivate the droid (which for being a beta trial, was only made to last a long time and be resistant to basically anything).

Anyways~ this was supposed to be my second oneshot, but the story was just too detailed to just be published all at once, so I decided I wanted to play with it a little more, and then I had the idea for making it 'a week long', literally hahahah

I had the first days of the week perfectly planned and the last three days. But how the story came out in the end was quite interesting, some chapters ended up being completely different to what I had planned!

Monday was according to plan, I wanted that smut and angst from the very beginning and it was supposed to be confusing, I hope I did a good job with that. Tuesday, was also as I planned, but the addition of futuristic elements wasn't, they just seemed fitting on this occasion!

Wednesday is when it's pretty clear that Mingi is a bit off... Hongjoong ends up venting to him about how he wasn't Mingi, I didn't plan to reveal that Mingi could not be really Mingi here, but I thought it added to the drama, and I wasn't feeling it at first, but in the end I liked that chapter... Thursday I had planned a fight for them actually, and I wanted the call to happen on Friday, but then I changed my mind and decided to make Friday the day he'd get his hands on the 'fatal product', which was what I originally wanted to happen, except I did not plan the moment where they were looking through their pictures at all, but I thought it was a nice way to show Hongjoong was ready to let him go.

Saturday and Sunday went just how I wanted it to, except the final part where Hongjoong meets Seonghwa was NOT supposed to be there, I had that idea right on the spot and I got a bit too excited and had to include that there hahaha I didn't even consider including Seonghwa in this at all for a single second as I planned and wrote this story!

And lastly, the pairing and the idea for the story. I was watching Honggi ship videos just because~ and they're just adorable honestly, I love the way they interact and how their personalities don't match at all, but they still seem to respect each other a lot! (and I'm weak for their height difference too ngl)

Sorry if this may seem dumb to any of you, but I myself REALLY enjoy seeing how people come up with ideas for stories and plots, and I just like talking about stories in general, and I really had fun writing this and wanted to share just in case anyone out there was like me in that aspect! ^~^

Feel free to ask if you have any questions, and you can contact me whenever if you also like to talk about writing or want some encouragement to start writing stories yourself. I've never been a writer whatsoever. I'm very happy I started writing here, it's been a challenging, yet enjoyable experience, so if you want to give it a try, you totally should!! :D

If you've read up until here, thank you for everything!

Love, vecafe_latte.