Thread by @ShweezyLiz

[Part 2 of the Joongdok Venom AU]

YJH stares at his reflection, watching the strange tendrils curling and weaving around his body. The bathroom is a mess, he’ll have to clean it up later, but his mind lingers on the disconcerting events that happened the night before...
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Previous part here:

https://twitter.com/ShweezyLiz/status/1379266980180500483

Yjh recalls the strange, horrifying creature that came upon him in the darkness of the night. A sickening grin that would split its face in half, mouth adorned with rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth, white eyes that churned on its face and two signature horns on its head.

“You’re... My ‘companion’?” He asks

“Precisely,” It grins.

Yjh is confounded, how did this thing came to the conclusion that it is his companion? He’s only ever met the thing for a total of minutes, and not to mention he wouldn’t call something as gruesome as him his companion

“Its rude to talk so crudely to your companion who’s right in front of you.”

Yjh was taken aback. “You can read my thoughts?”

“To an extent, yes.”

Yjh shakes, so he can’t hide anything from him. He frowns.

“Just, what the hell are you?”

“There is no need to dwell on ‘what’ I am. What you do need to know is that I am capable of things beyond your kind’s abilities.”

“...What do you want with me??”

“To continue to be my host. We are compatible, you and I. Thus we are companions.”

Host? The hell does that mean?

“The ‘configuration’ of your body is the perfect environment for me to thrive in. You are the only human I’ve come across who provided me such stability.”

“... So you’re using my body, like a parasite,” yjh shudders

“Oh no, I can offer you something beneficial in return.”

“Like chomping the heads off of those men?”

“They were a threat to your safety. But I can also offer you my own abilities. My strength, senses, power, all under your discretion.”

So the deal is to let this thing live inside him and he gets cool superpowers in return huh?

Yjh frowns, “and what if I refuse?”

Suddenly, a sense of dread ran down his spine. He felt as if all his insides were suddenly on the verge of being expunged from his body. Something is seething dangerously inside him.

The creature leans in, “who said you had the choice to?”

Yjh grits his teeth. It turns out he didn’t have a choice in the matter after all. The creature seems to understand his resolve, and receded its control over his organs. His body returned to normal, allowing yjh to find his breath again. So it was like this...

If he’s going to have this parasite inside him for—god knows how long, then he might as well use this parasite for all its worth. Suddenly, his mind flashes to the photograph once more.

“One question. Do you have anything to do with my parents?”

“Unfortunately, I do not know them at all. I’ve been on this planet for such a short time.”

“That photograph looked like it had you on it.”

“I will tell you now that it is not me,”

Goddamnit, there were more of it’s kind?

“Yes,” The voice snickers in its head. Yjh groans.

The creature’s face finally recedes into yjh’s body. Yjh notes that it wasn’t as painful as last time. He stands up, and looks out at the bridge far beyond the horizon. Then he looks down on the patch of dirt in the middle of this large, endless lake.

“You got me here, now get me out of here,”

And suddenly, a black mass envelops all of his limbs.

“Go ahead and jump,” the voice urges on. Reluctantly, yjh goes into a crouch. He feels power surging through his muscles, foreign yet very much familiar.

Yjh gathers as much power as he can will it, and the black mass seem to respond obediently in return. He feels like a spring about to lunge out at any moment. Then, yjh steels himself and finally pushes his feet off the ground. Within seconds, he shoots off across the lake.

Yjh watches as his reflection on the water blurs as he flies across its surface. He could feel the cool wind beating against his face. Adrenaline courses through his veins. the sight of the bridge grew closer and closer, he could even see the city lights flickering from afar.

Then as he nears the descent of his trajectory, a black tendril shoots out from his shoulder, then attaches itself to the bottom of the bridge. He swings off this tendril, and with its strength alone, yjh is smoothly pulled up onto the bridge at the maximum height of his swing.

He lands gracefully on the sidewalk, the adrenaline buzzing off his veins. Well, he could actually get used to this. Yjh however garners startles from a couple passerby’s nearby. He looks to them, “Uhh... Parkour,”

They nod, though they gave him odd looks.

The darkness of the night must have hidden the tendrils. Yjh then rolls his shoulders, “how fast can you make me run?”

“As fast as your body can allow it,”

“Then get me to my house as soon as you can.”

His neighborhood is silent as he skids to a halt before his house. Stars begin to sail across the night sky and the sound of crickets lingered about in the air.

He huffs as he shifts through his pockets for his keys, then hastily begins to unlock the front door and enter.

He turns on the light in the entrance hallway, and steals a glance of his reflection on the mirror. The tendrils slowly retract into his body, and he is left standing there disheveled but looking normal as always.

He tosses the keys into the bowl by the door and goes until—

“And where the hell have you been dipshit?!”

Yjh stops and turns to the living room, where hsy stood with a hand on her hip, her mouth loudly crunching away at a poor lollipop.

“We thought you were kidnapped and taken hostage, the fuck happened to your ugly ass?!?”

“Where’s yma?” He ignores her questioning.

“She’s with ysa at my house— and don’t you try to steer this conversation elsewhere buddy, the fuck happened to you?! You weren’t answering your phone, you even told me to call you when yma’s with me!”

Yjh reaches for the phone in his pocket, frowning when he finds the screen cracked. He shoves it back into his pocket. “I was busy,”

“Busy with what?? Getting your ass kicked or something? Cuz you look like shit by the way, what the fuck happened to you?”

“Move, there’s something I have to do,” yjh tries to manuever his way out of hsy but she doesn’t budge.

“Oho, buddy I ain’t moving a goddamn inch until you tell me where the fuck, were you?? You were a headache btw,” she leans in and pokes a finger straight at his chest.

Yjh goes to grab her shoulder and move her until his nose picks up the sweet scent of candy lingering off of her. Right, hsy is particularly fond of sweets. But he’s unnaturally concentrated on the scent.

“That woman has an appetizing smell on her,” the voice grins maliciously

Yjh feels his mouth begin to salivate and that dreaded rumble in his gut, and yjh freezes. Fuck, does it plan on biting off hsy’s head?? Yjh immediately moves away from her and walks off to gain some distance between them, but this seemed to agitate hsy and follows him instead.

“Hey, you’re not going ANYWHERE asshole! Come back here, I’m not done questioning you!”

Yjh curses as she follows him hot on his heels, and the voice inside his head begins to taunt him of this fact. Taunting to him how easy it is to just bite her head off.

This ticks yjh off and he lashes at the voice, “Shut up!”

Unfortunately, it looked as if the statement was directed at hsy, and a furious glare contorts her face. “Are you— you fucking telling me to shut up?!” She grabs his collar and harshly pulls him down to her level.

“Listen here dipshit, I’m trying to look out for your stupid ass and even helping you out OH SO graciously and you’re telling me to shut up??!! You better strap up buddy because I’m going to fucking wring your tongue right out of your mouth and gut you into tiny pieces ya hear?!”

Yjh knows hsy is just being hsy, simply being loud mouthy self. Her threatening him like this is the norm. But the sudden shift of pressure in his head, and a foreign sensation rising within his body has him remembering the incident in the convenience store when he was threatened

He realizes that this creature doesn’t recognize that hsy won’t actually gut him, but the threat was perceived as a real threat on his life as the creature’s mood shifted from mischievous to downright murderous.

“I will get rid of her,” the voice growls out

Dread fills yjh, and before he could say anything to stop it, a large tendril shoots from his arm and coils itself around hsy’s neck. The smaller woman immediately freezes, her hands shooting up to grasp at the mass around her neck to no avail.

Hsy wheezes and gasps as she is pulled up into the air, the tendrils tightening and threatening to snap her neck off if the pressure continued to build. Yjh immediately acts and tries to scratch off the black mass surrounding his arm.

“Stop! Put her down she’s my friend!”

The voice tilts in his head, “she’s a friend who’ll willingly kill you?”

“No, fucki— she doesn’t actually mean it! It was an exaggeration! Put her down, don’t kill her!”

The tendrils loosens around hsy’s neck and is gently put back down.

Hsy quickly takes in huge gulps of air, coughing and sputtering as she tries to regain her breath.

Hsy then looks back up at yjh, fear trembling in her eyes. “W-what the f-fuck, wh— what the fuck was that?!” She croaks out, pointing at the mass that remain’s at yjh’s shoulders.

Yjh watches as the same head from earlier began to form from his shoulder. And from there he watches the same horrifying grin etch into its face.

“Holy shit— what the FUCK?!?!”

Yjh realizes the new, terrible predicament he’s in.

Hsy looks between the floating head and yjh interchangeably.

“I-I’m guessing... This, fucking h-happened to you,” hsy shakily points out.

Yjh frowns at the floating head beside him, “Don’t try anything else,” he warns. The creature seemed to purse its lips, before nodding.

Yjh turns to hsy, sits her on the couch and tells her everything.

After everything is said and done, hsy looks at him with a contemplative look on her face. There was also disbelief and indignation mixed in there, but she remained silent throughout his explanation.

“So... Now you have an alien parasite in you?”

“I’m not a parasite,”

The creature answers abruptly, causing hsy to jolt. “Fuck, it speaks!”

“Don’t tell anyone else about this, I’m still figuring it out myself.” Yjh says.

“Hmm, so that’s why you had me pick up yma earlier.” Hsy sighs and grabs a chocolate bar from her pocket.

Yjh knows hsy must have been extremely stressed, hence why she grabbed a sweet to calm herself. But then his stomach suddenly grumbles as the scent of the chocolate hits his nose. He realizes that smell had made hum hungry.

Wait, can this thing eat chocolate too?

The head beside him seems to pick up on the smell as well, and it immediately floats just in front of hsy’s face. Hsy tenses and yjh readies to reprimand the creature until it says—

“I’ve never smelled something so appetizing as this before,” he points at the chocolate.

Hsy narrows her eyes, unwraps the chocolate bar and waves it in front of the creature.

“Uhh, you want it? You can have it, only after you’ve apologized for nearly breaking my neck off.” She says.

The creature seemed to debilitate something, before nodding its head.

Yjh watches humorously as the creature bowed its head before her.

“I sincerely apologize for my indecency,” it says with strange gusto and genuineness. Hsy smirks at the hilarious display.

“Alright, here you go!” She throws it up in the air, expecting him to bite it like a dog

But instead the face retreats immediately back to yjh and he feels his entire body shift into something larger. The same black mass encompasses his entire body and within a millisecond he finds himself in the same black, large, demonic shape he had donned earlier.

With the fierceness of a voracious beast, he lunges at the chocolate bar hanging from the air, crunching and destroying it between his ravenous teeth. Hsy screeches at the suddenness of the entire ordeal, and just as suddenly as it happened, yjh returned to his normal state.

Yjh blinked at hsy, even he was stunned at the sudden shift. Hsy looks back at him with wide eyes. “W-well... that happened,” she says.

Yjh finds that his hunger however greatly satiated, and a deep satisfaction settles in his head.

However, as the creature seemed to relish the sweetness of the chocolate in his head, some of the chocolate’s texture remained in his mouth and some part of him reels back in disgust at the overbearing sweetness.

Yjh hates chocolate, yet at the same time also loves it. Strange.

It was a very divisive thing, feeling both incredibly satiated yet also repulsed at the taste. Yjh involuntarily shakes.

“So uhh, cool. Uhm, now what?” Hsy breaks the silence.

Yjh remembers the task at hand. The photograph, he was going to search for it.

“The photograph, it should be in my room,” yjh stands up, walks up the stairs and into his bedroom, hsy follows close behind.

Everything is the same as it was just as he left it.

Hsy fiddles around with yjh’s setup, “nice to see you living the gamer life,” yjh rolls his eyes.

He goes to his bed, and upon the duvets there it lay. Not a single disturbance in the room. He picks it up, examines it closely.

It’s no doubt, the figure in the centre of the photo was the same species as the parasite he has inside of him right now.

Upon closer inspection, the creature in the photo was held inside what seemed to be a glass enclosure. Strange equipment and computers surround it though, its as if it was under intense surveillance in its enclosure.

“Looks like an experiment gone wrong,” hsy adds.

Yjh nods, he notices the faded writing on the bottom of the picture. ‘1989’, it notes. Must be the year the picture was taken. How does this photo connect to his origins though?

“Hey look, there’s something written behind it,”

Yjh flips the photo, and his eyes strains.

There’s a single phrase written on, the ink faded by the years but still clear enough to read.

“— The Most Ancient Dream” it reads

Yjh and hsy comes to the conclusion that this is the ‘name’ given to the photograph, as it was the title of a painting. An odd name.

“Hey, goo-face, this you?” Hsy calls out, presumably to the inhabiting creature inside of yjh. A black tendril amasses from his shoulder once more, and the same face appears. His toothy grin remains, but his eyes narrow to a squint, looking as if it was inspecting the photo.

“Like I have told my host before, no it is not me. But I can say, we are similar,” the creature says. “We used to be one, but now divided.”

‘What the— the fuck does that mean?“

“It is difficult to explain the way we are to humans,” it concludes, leaving it at that.

Yjh senses something in its tone of voice. It remained the same, smooth yet otherworldly tone, but he hears a hint of sorrow —or was it resentment? He couldn’t observe long enough to distinguish it, because the creature retracts back into yjh’s body before he could question it.

“Welp, there’s your photo. You satisfied?” Hsy shrugs at him. Yjh shakes his head, his brows furrow in deep contemplation. “It has raised more questions that answers,”

Why was this photo in an abandoned house connected to his parents? What did his parents have to do with this?

And how is this creature related to the thing in the photo?

“I’m guessing that, that its kind can basically divide and conquer,” hsy rambles on as they sit in the living room. “Like amoebas, they reproduce asexually by splitting in half.” She drones on, combing through theories.

The creature has been strangely silent after that ordeal with the photo.

“Maybe that thing is your parasite’s child or sibling— oh wait hold on, what if your parents are like, mad scientists working at some top secret alien organization?!” She jumps up. Yjh groans.

“Don’t be ridiculous,”

“Dude, we have a LITERAL alien right inside you! And with the shit it can do, basically anything is fair game right now. The possibility of your parents being mad scientists may not be far off from the truth,” she explains.

Yjh sighs and leans back, raising an eyebrow as if to say ‘fine, go on,’. Hsy grins in excitement, the gears in her head turning with vigor.

“It would explain why you don’t know who your parents are. Because it could be that they’re just hiding their identity,”

“Say that your parents are researchers or scientists. They find this strange alien thing, study it and find out what its capable—which is can kill humans it deems incompatible— and because of its deadly nature choose to put it in an enclosure and hide it from the public,

You know, cuz it might cause panic and chaos blah blah, all that. Then they have you and because their occupation requires them to keep their identity a secret, they send you away. Damn, what a sad backstory for you if it was true,” hsy concludes with her toothy grin.

As much as how cliché it sounds, it is the only plausible explanation that they have as of now. And if this theory of hsy’s was indeed true, then yjh would have to stop searching for his parents altogether as it may endanger them and the nature of their work.

Yjh doesn’t like how that sounds in his head, and if this was indeed all true, then he would come to resent his parents.

Yjh fiddled with the photo in his hand. There’s a gnawing feeling in his chest, as if there’s more to this story than what was concluded.

Why was he compatible with this alien species? Was it simply by a chance? Or was there something else at play?

But for now, yjh is just simply at a loss of what to do next. His desire to uncover his origins remains but he doesn’t know how to go about it. Yjh sighs and leans back

“I want to rest...”

“Yeah, with the shit you’ve gone through in just two days, I wouldn’t fault you if you slept for the next two months.” Hsy pops a candy in her mouth. “I’m guessing you don’t want yma around for a while,”

“Yes...”

Yjh has hsy grab some of yma’s belongings/clothes to last a couple days. He calls her through hsy’s phone, explaining that he has ‘business’ to attend to. Yma is saddened, though accepts.

“Make sure to call me when something happens alright?” Hsy pokes at yjh before leaving.

Yjh trudges back inside his house, where the accumulated stress begins to weigh on his bearings. It’s all so much. After he washes up, he lays on his bed and lets his exhaustion take hold.

He dreams of his earlier days in his sleep.

He must have waken fairly early in the morning, because his room is dyed a mix of purple and red. The sun has yet to peek its face upon the horizon.

“You have an incredible resolve,” the creature’s voice rings gently. Yjh tilts his head.

“What do you mean?”

“I was watching your dreams as you slept. They were memories of the time when you were far younger than you are now,”

Yjh doesn’t know what to feel about this creature who can not only read his mind, but ‘read’ his dreams as well. He was an open book to this foreign entity.

Yet at the same time, he felt strangely comforted. With his memories came all the struggles he’s faced. Having someone understand them without having to rely on words, which he desperately lacks, lifts a weight off his shoulders he didn’t know he had. Yjh watches the sun peek.

He gets off his bed and goes to wash up in the bathroom when he’s greeted with chaos and disarray. There’s splotches of blood that trail towards the toilet, where it seems his stomach vomited out its gruesome contents.

“... what happened when I was asleep,”

“The stress from the night before combined with the painful memories of your past deeply unsettled your head. Your body tried to purge the stress in some way. I took the chance to expel certain ‘parts’ from our meal that is not needed while your body did so.”

What the fuck.

There are the crushed, acidified remains of certain ‘body parts’ in the toilet.

“What exactly do you digest when... eating those heads?”

“I ingest a certain substance within your kind’s brain to maintain my physical integrity.”

“So the rest is just... collateral damage?”

“Perhaps,”

Yjh sighs as he leans into the sink. He stares at his reflection. The bathroom is a mess. Small black tendrils curl around his neck and hands.

Yjh has to find a way to minimize as much casualty as possible while also making sure to feed this guy what he needs.

And thus commences yjh’s mission of finding alternatives to feed this gnarly little parasite inside him.

He lays out a variety of food items from his fridge before the table, the creature’s little head poking out beside him by his shoulder. It eyes yjh questioningly.

“We’re going to have to compromise. If we’re going to... ‘coexist’ for some time, I can’t have you going around and biting off random civilian heads.” Yjh narrows on the little creature.

“If I don’t find something to sustain myself, I might turn to eat you, you know?”

“That’s why you tell me which of these appeals to you.” Yjh points at the food before him. The creature seems to give him a side eye (a vein pops on yjh’s head) but inspects each item closely. He notices it completely skips over the vegetable and fruit section,

It even seems particularly disgusted by a certain bright red produce. It hovers around the meet section, though it doesn’t seem satisfied with it. “Not even this is enough,”

Yjh sighs and walks back to the fridge to pull out what he can find.

But then he feels the little floating head move towards the living room and on the couch where hsy sat during their long discussion last night. It goes under the cushion, and pulls out with its teeth the chocolate wrapper which hsy must have discarded maliciously that night.

It was then yjh remembered the strange interaction he had with her last night. When he ate that bear he felt the same satisfaction just as when he bit off those robbers’ heads.

He looks on as the little head nips at the wrapper, like a kitten pawing and playing with a yarn.

Yjh internally winces as he comes to a conclusion. “I’ll get you as much as the food the woman from last night gave you,” yjh says, and the head nods eagerly.

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Yjh hates chocolate, he doesn’t like how it sticks to his teeth or how obnoxiously sweet it is.

Yjh sighs inwardly as he dumps whatever brand of chocolate and sweets the little tendril on his pinkie points to according to its liking. He doesn’t know why but this act humiliates unreasonably so.

“You are very greedy,”

“It is what it is,” the voice snickers back.

“Jonghyuk-ssi?!” Yjh winces as a voice suddenly calls out. He knows who it is, and he does not want to deal with her right now. He pulls down the tip of his hood further down his face

“Oh my god Jongyuk-ssi! You’re here! I thought something happened to you!”

Yjh groans.

“Uriel,” he greets blankly.

“What happened to you?! You took a day off so suddenly and then didn’t come to practice yesterday or today! I was even calling you all evening, I had to call hsy last night if you were alright—“ Uriel tears up, shaking his shoulders with such force.

“I had something personal to deal with,” he manages to say through the shaking.

Uriel’s eyes drift down to yjh’s basket, “What’s this? You’re buying chocolate?! But you hate chocolate... w-wait is this for someone else? Is that why you’ve been gone?!!” Uriel tears up further.

Though this time they seem to be from excitement, “you should have told us! Omg, the great yjh having his heart stolen by someone?!”

“Drop it or I’m leaving Uriel.”

“Ah wait I’m sorry!!”

He tells her to notify the team that he won’t be able to attend training for at least a week due to ‘personal affairs’ that he needs to attend to.

“Ah they’ll get mad at me... But if its so jonghyuk-ssi can spend time with their girlfriend—or boyfriend then I’ll do it—“

He smacks her head and finally takes his leave, piles of chocolate in tow.

He makes his way back home and dumps the chocolate onto the coffee table. “This should be enough,”

The little head appears and pokes out of his shoulder as it grins widely like a child.