Branded
Fragments of Memories
Title: Branded
Characters: IU, Suho
Genre: hurt&comfort
Inspired by: The Scarlet Letter
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
Lee Jieun is branded.
She is marked by a stain, a stain that is impossible to remove or hide away. Her past clings so tightly onto her that it is now the present time that she continues living in. She tries to ignore and block out the loud whispering, the direct pointing, and the merciless criticizing; she tries to rationalize it all as a part of her everyday life, a piece of what she will have to handle for the remainder of her existence.
But never does she prevail.
Every time, she is hurt. Every word, every finger, and every curse leaves a tear in her heart. Every reason she gives herself for being treated in such a way does not do anything but raise questions and cries of unfairness.
She is alone, and no one is by her side—until he comes into the picture.
“I’ll be your guardian,” he whispers into her ear as he pulls her into a warm embrace. “I’ll hold you, cover you, and protect you.”
His offer is that of the impossible, Jieun thinks. It is too sweet, too pure to be true. So she tells him that she is undeserving, and that his efforts are all in vain.
But Joonmyun holds her back. “If you cannot erase it, overwrite it,” he says. “I’ll brand myself over your scars.” Then, he places a light kiss on her forehead, as if he is leaving a mark on her skin.
Lee Jieun is branded.
But she no longer needs to hide it.
Author's Crap
I'll just type down anything I was thinking of as I was writing each chapter...as the heading says up there, it's simply my useless 'oh shoot her mind is running around crazedly' kind of thing so please feel free to disregard this bulk. Anyway. I've always wanted to write a hurt&comfort kind of thing. It's a new genre and honestly, I at the 'comfort' part. OTL But this was one of my first tries (can't really recall if I've done it before). The first thing on my mind when I think of comfort is protection...and in one weird poof moment, I thought of Suho from EXO/EXO-K. The primary reason is because of his stagename...which every one of you probably know means'guardian' in Korean. Plus, he has the fatherly or motherly or whatever you call it image and face so I might as well. The thing about The Scarlet Letter--if any of you noticed the inspiration note up there somewhere--is that a woman (named Hester) living in seventeenth century Massachusetts. Religion (Christianity) was a big thing, so when she committed adultery (cheating), she had to embroider a big, fat, and red "A" on her clothes. That marked her basically as a wrongdoer and allowed everyone else to know of her wrongdoings. That's the focus for this drabble; what our poor aiyu did wasn't specified because I kind of wanted to broaden and generalize it depending on the perspective of the reader. It might be the adultery in the original novel, or it can be an embarrassing past. Whatever it is, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it isn't the best idea for one to dwell on their mistakes; if possible, learn from it instead.
Well, that was longer than the drabble itself. .-. Cheers if you read it all!! You get...nothing! :)
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