mental hospital au · k-pop · surreal · liminal · trauma · psychological horror · group dynamic · dark healing · atmospheric
The house stands stark against a sky the color of a fresh bruise, its walls streaked with rust and weeping cement, childish scrawls of crayon and chalk crawling up the bricks like vines. Inside, a bright, frenetic pulse beats through the old bones—shrieks of laughter, the scramble of bare feet on gravel-spiked grass. Outside, feral cats scatter, spitting, as seven figures tumble through the overgrown yard, blood smearing their cheeks from falls they don’t seem to feel. They laugh when slingshots shatter bird nests, when pillow feathers blizzard the air, when they paint the white walls with secrets in stolen lipstick. There was never any room for tears here, they always said, but later, in the dark, they’d cling to each other and weep when someone vanished, when a wall was scrubbed b…