Twenty Four Thousand Words wowie.. i can't even say that i didn't mean for it to be that high without sounding like i'm lying but honestly, i went into this thinking it'd be 10-15k maximum, so imagine my shock when we were already 7k words in and only a third of the way through the plot.. jesus
background
i didn't intend for this to be the case when i first started writing, but it appears that a goal has appeared in front of eyes: write for every major holiday and significant date within one calendar year. and so, with seollal (korean new year) coming up, we've cooked this up! (im also on track to writing 100k words before my one year anniversary. wow!)
i tried to research seollal customs to the best of my ability, including sebae, saju, foods like tteokguk, watching the sunrise on new year's day, etc. so hopefully it came across well! of course, im always open to making appropriate corrections.
plot
im a sucker for fake dating, especially if it involves family, so that's how this was born. i Personally am also a big fan of the concept of 121 sisters/456 sisters/145621 cousins like yummm.
also, about the backstory on seoyeon's parents/late father: i figured i needed an actual explanation for Why seoyeon has to jump through hoops to prove to her mom that she Does have a stable relationship, because otherwise the whole scheme falls flat. and, by giving her mom that level of complexity, it also made for (what i think is) a compelling mother-daughter arc, so in the end i think it worked? i hope, at least
this plot is self-indulgence central i'm sorry i just wrote them in love for 24k words straight i don't know what else to say ðŸ˜
references
it's like catnip and my pen is the dumb cat. which is to say i Could Not resist putting Various references in here
1. the strawberry girl schtick (+other nicknames like vitamin N, casanova, etc) 2. the mud balls story
i so this is not actually a reference to any other media except My Life. when nien said that she used to make rocks by scraping mud out of her shoes after recess, i was actually calling on my own memories because i did, in fact, make rocks out of mud balls in third grade and blame it on my seatmate afterwards. hopefully he wasn't too mad, and hopefully he never reads this (sorry hoang)
3. the "seoyeon touched my lips while i was sleeping in the car" incident
if we recall in the 250313 03z live, seoyeon was talking about how when cometruez had their last NA stop in LA, they hit up a six flags and she had a blast on the rollercoasters with nien, in stark contrast to the others (like dahyun and sullin) who were not so adrenaline oriented like sunnyz are
now, i know everland is no six flags (and i've never even been to six flags myself) but the idea is still the same: they goad each other into riding the insane coasters together (especially since seoyeon's said that she's gotten way better at riding regular rollercoaster rides after the badge war s2 final game [did anyone catch that reference?])
plus, the idea of them participating in everland's rent-a-school-uniform date thing was just soo cute. i don't even know if puppy and hamster headbands exist but let's pretend they do.
4. nien falling from the second story of her school
misc
Nien claps her hands like Seoyeon just gave her the last Lego during recess.
(If Nien’s newfound presence has anything to do with how well she sleeps, that’s nobody’s business but hers.)
ladies and gentlemen if i could redirect you to sleepless nights
When they claim a spot at the corner of the patio Seoyeon thinks that it is nice to watch the sun rise, how it bathes the sky in an ethereal ombre of fiery orange that blends into a clear blue.
dude... i actually think about this All The Time like it is such a crazy coincidence that on sunny days, the sunrise and sunset both make the sky blue and orange. like Woah. they're actually embedded in the universe
“That was you?!” I did go fix my schedule before orientation. “How do you remember something small like that?”
something that i find funny is that seoyeon constantly keeps being bewildered that nien would remember small things about her, except a big thing that her memory keeps emphasizing is when she saw nien for the first time in the lecture hall. like girl, you remember little things about her too!
final thoughts
yall... 😠realizing in january that valentine's day and seollal are mere Days apart in february nearly gave me a heart attack, and i was Crunching to finish this. like, im writing this commentary less than one week before publishing, which usually is not the case unless it's a one-shot i've also started hours prior.
and, this isn't even considering the fact that, at the same time, i was Also preparing for lny celebrations in my personal life (where are my viet/asian wavs at wooo) while balancing this. whew. but stress builds character! and i finished this in time, so it's a win-win.
in line with how last-minute this whole thing was, i also didn't think of a title until today, february 14, when i finished proofreading (which also means i didn't finish proofreading until today ðŸ˜). i wanted to play on the word "lie" having two meanings: a sham, and the physical position of being horizontal. the first part of the title ("lie in your eyes") might seem like it's referring to the former, but the subtitle ("i could stay here forever") points to the latter. in the end, it's both! also, my proofreading made me realize that seoyeon mentions nien's eyes a not-insignificant amount of times, so i felt it was fitting.
something i've also noticed is that as i write more and more, i've started having a habit(?) of writing a Lot more at a time. perhaps because i'm writing scenes with more detail as opposed to writing more scenes, because this one is much longer than tutor your heart (24k words vs 17k words) even though the story itself takes place over less time (a couple days vs. more than two months). just something interesting to me! in any case, happy new year and let's all love sunnyz 🤞
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