Fearless
Description
After her parents’ unexpected fatality in a car crash, Han Iseul lived her life in what ifs, putting extra caution and care into every turn. To her, life was a fragile thing, and it was to be treated as such.
After his parents’ unexpected fatality in a car crash, Byun Baekhyun lived in the moment — he didn't care about tomorrow, never took responsibility for his past actions. It was only now that mattered to him. He acted on impulse; regret wasn't in his vocabulary. He didn’t want it to be.
So when seeing Baekhyun, drunk, risk his life in a ridiculous dare of scaling the wall of a private property, Iseul wonders if she can detest someone more than this- someone who is throwing their life on the line for something so stupid, treating life like it's a joke. She has an immediate definition for him. Idiot.
And she doesn't plan on changing that definition.
...at least not willingly.
Foreword
fear
/ˈfir/
noun
An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.
verb
Be afraid of (someone or something) as likely to be dangerous, painful, or threatening.
_________
When I was young, I couldn’t wait to grow up.
When you were five, the scariest things in life were the monsters hiding under your bed, waiting to gobble up your toes if they peeked out too far under the blankets, or the shadows that stretched across your room, or the oversized dollhouse in the corner that gave you goosebumps- but you could make those things disappear as soon as you buried your head under the covers. Even bikes were scary; they liked to trip you and send you flying.
So at five, I wanted to grow up. I couldn’t wait to get older, to reach the point where the monster under the bed would be scared of me, and I would finally be fearless. By then, I'd even have had practice with my bike, and it’d finally stop trying to kill me.
Except the problem was that the older you got, the more fears you developed. I happened to figure that out too late, and it happened to be the wrong way to figure it out, too. When you were a child, those fears you had could disappear, dissapate when the light of your room was switched on. They would fade into oblivion when your parents smiled at you, and everything would be alright. But when you got older, those fears didn't disappear. They stayed, they got stronger.
Normally, it doesn’t take a car crash that kills both your parents to figure out that you, in fact, are not fearless, but that’s what it took me. And it took that car crash to scare me off every corner and twist down the road. It took that car crash for me to realize that hiding under the covers or using training wheels on your bike weren't the solutions to your fears, because sometimes, there were no solutions.
I started playing safe with everything — I was never out after dark, and on the rare occasion that I was, I carried a pocket knife. I never took shortcuts down alleys. If I was ever in a less-populated area, every noise would make me jump.
Life was a fragile thing, a preciously given gift, and it was supposed to be treated as such. It had to be treated as such. Must be. Wandering into the unknown, taking risks — those were probably the dumbest things there were to do. I discovered it was impossible to be what I wanted: fearless.
Wasn't it?
_____________
Author's Corner
>This story was written for Korekrypta's writing contest, Tender Rose, for the short long haul section. Cover and background credit goes to Yifanforever.
>The lovely ilikestars will be beta-ing for me since I like to binge write at midnight and have like 123457987231 grammar mistakes. Edit: white-petal is beta-ing for me as of now, as my previous beta had to leave >.<
>Additional tags, because there's a tag limit: fluff, high school, aND A WHOLE BUNCH OF AWKWARDNESS.
>Originally planned to be 5 chapters, which didn't actually happen, seeing it's 30+ now..
>Was an attempt to take cliches and turn them around; my readers can judge how well I succeeded in doing that (probably not well lol).
Start date: October 3rd, 2015
End date: May 22, 2016
Chapters: 28+5 rewinds & epilogue (and 6+ bonus chapters)
Word count: 133, 500 (minus bonus chapters)
Advertised: May 23rd, 2016
Featured: June 18th, 2016 -- Thank you guys x10000.
Credits
Bby Promotions Advertisement Shop
KUMA -- A Graphic and Review Shop
Reading is Beautiful Multi Shop
Posters:
By Aesthereal
By YifanForever
By antixheroic
By Beauty Lies Within Graphics
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As an author, I love hearing everyone's opinions on the story etc, so if you're comfortable with commenting, do comment! I reply to every single one of them.
I honestly didn’t think I needed to put this here because it should be clear, but it’s happened once and I don’t want to deal with it again. Do not plagiarize. I spend hours of my time writing almost daily, and having someone just copy and paste the story and claim it as their own is horribly frustrating.
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Second place for 2016 EXO Fanfiction Awards, in Best Baekhyun Fic. Thank you guys for voting for me!
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