Big Day For Minwoo Stans (nobody) - Tumblr Posts
HANGRY : A BANG MINWOO CHARACTER STUDY
"I am cruel, I am gentle, I can make you laugh / I am cruel, I am gentle, I can make you laugh / I've loved many boys, I've loved many girls / I don't think about the past, it's always there anyway / Don't think about the past, always there anyway."
starring: Bang Minwoo;
featuring: Bang Woohyun, Lee Hanjae. / *fellow LOOPiN members and Minwoo's mother are mentioned in passing;
set in: somewhere in between early to mid 2021;
word account: 5,142 words;
trigger warning(s): the whole piece is centered around Minwoo and his relationship with his uncle, who was a drug addict, so there's no way around mentions of drugs and violence. very in deep display of childhood trauma caused by poverty and the presence of an addict as a guardian. some banalization of an addict's actions and behaviors trought Minwoo's pov (which is not condoned by the author herself). Minwoo recalls, trought a nightmare, about being crushed by a loved one when he was a kid. Minwoo has ptsd symptoms.
*note(s): 1. English is not my first language, and it might show to a native speaker or someone who's more fluent then I am. I tried my best to iron this piece out, but if any grammatic errors flew over my head, I hope they don't ruin the experience. With that out of the way, have a good read 🙃
Bang Minwoo has, through the course of his premature career, accumulated quite the fame. Not exactly because he's a great idol (which he is), a highly talented rapper (which he is), a notorious producer (which he is), or an way above average dancer that shouldn't even have to ask for solo dance breaks at this point, because it goes unsaid that he deserves solo dance breaks at this point, as an act of providence (which he is).
But because Minwoo is, actually – and he quotes –, the worst. BBC and New Wave's ruthless greyhound, out to get anyone who he deems unfitting to set foot into their studio. A professional Bad Cop who's running around without a Good Cop to ease his bit. An insomniac dipshit that runs on coffee and other people's miserable moods.
The Antichrist of the Nugu realm, as was even proclaimed and spread around by Haruki, LOOPiN's residential Judas.
Isn't that fitting.
Honestly? Minwoo does not give a single flying fuck about what a handful of interns and trainees or whatever whisper about him, unless they dare to say it to his face, which none of them do, ever.
It was never his goal to be nice to them in particular. That's not a clause in his contract. And it's not like the people who work with him haven't been warned that all his fake niceness and politeness will always go into Minwoo, The Idol, and won't be wasted around anyone he meets backstage.
Minwoo, the professional musician and real person, is a dickhead. There's no sugar coating around his awful personality and he knows that. That's why he always warns.
That's also why he doesn't mind if people choose to cope with him by giving him ridiculous nicknames, not really. The aliases he's gotten so far aren't even offensive or annoying enough for Minwoo to feel like he needs to do something about them – except for the insomniac one, that is utter bullshit and irritates him quite a bit.
Minwoo can sleep at any time he wants. He's not like Taesong, who drags himself around like a zombie because he can't help it, or Haegon, who runs on too much energy through the day to be able to lay his thick head on a pillow and stay still at night.
Minwoo is just so good at sleeping, actually, that he has to fight himself all the time to keep being awake, because his whole body feels like it's about to shut down every time he sits on a chair or supports his back against a wall for more than six minutes.
So let it be known that being constantly awake is not a condition but his own damn choice, and it's a smart, calculated one.
It's also healthy regardless of what Dylan insists on telling him, because Minwoo does sleep something close to the recommended 8-ish hours. He just spaces it out through the day in 30 to 40 minutes long naps when he can, and it works out for him just fine.
He recommends the masses to try his method and see for themselves that the effect it's not only the equivalent of a full night's sleep, but an elevation of it.
For once, he's productive as fuck, ever since he started sleeping this way. Minwoo always rises from his slumbers feeling ready to go, feeling like he can get more done.
The breaks also do wonders for him creatively, as Minwoo tends to get inspiration like crazy after naps, and multiple sleep breaks mean multiple song ideas flowing. A win.
And the best pro of them all; by sleeping like this Minwoo is almost never out long enough to fall on REM territory, and has no recollection of any of his dreams. His naps are all glorious blackouts that feel like blinks and they don't torment him at all, which is the opposite of what his cursed dreams always do.
If they can be even called that.
They're definitely not nightmares because nightmares this frequent are not something you're supposed to have when you're 24, in Minwoo's opinion, as that would be embarrassing. Kids are the only ones who get a pass on having their dumb little heads filled with bad dreams because they know nothing about anything, so their minds can wonder off to the scary and the unknown, and they can wet their beds about it because again; children are idiots.
Minwoo is a full grown adult, therefore not a conditioned idiot, so he doesn't have nightmares, thank you very much.
Maybe 'hallucinations' would be the right word, given how vividly real they feel; real enough to keep on replaying in fragments in the back of his head for the rest of the day, when he gets unlucky and fails his system and has them – sometimes only as an image, sometimes only as a sound, but often as both. Them both and a voice– always the same raspy voice, attached to a smile with yellow gapped teeth and nicotine breath saying Look at you go, pausing to laugh breathy and leave a phantom huff on his hair; I knew you had it in you– that drive. That hunger.
They always start like this. With his uncle. Playing at his best memories of him, keeping them sweet for long enough for Minwoo to feel safe before twisting everything up, taunting them all, and he hates it and hates it and hates it so, so much.
He doesn't get why his brain does this. Why it keeps wanting everything to be fucked up and painful, trying to make him hate and be angry and love the people from the past less, as if they aren't all he's got.
Isn't he already bitter enough as he is now? Everyone seems to be in a consensus that's the case, but apparently, his mind disagrees.
Well, good fucking luck to it on trying to ruin uncle Woohyun to him. That just won't happen. Minwoo loves his uncle more than he has ever loved anything– was loved by his uncle in the brief spam they had together more than most people will ever be loved by anyone in their whole lifes.
He was never, ever scared of him. Not even when he was at his worst, high out of his mind on coke, banging doors and breaking windows and forcing everything out of his way like a natural disaster, did Minwoo not love him, or be grateful for him.
That's what he's thinking, sitting on a couch, face to face with his uncle inside his own head. How there's nothing to fear when Woohyun is kneeled in front of him, shushing his cries away and applying medicine all over his hurt knee.
When Minwoo says his dreams are realistic enough to feel like whole new memories, he really means it – he can picture the outline of their old living room around them, even pick on the mold taunting the corner of the walls and the vivid red of his bruise.
He's not startled by it. Blood was never an odd sight inside the Bang household. It couldn't be when it always lingered on Woohyun, like he was cursed by it – be it in the unremovable stains on his t-shirts, the dried bits under his nails or at the trace along his steps when he came back late at night, which stayed on the floor until the morning afters for Minwoo to stare at and wipe clean.
"It's not fair," Minwoo hisses in the memory-dream, a kid again. He's not sure what age he's supposed to be, but he's small enough for his feet to not touch the ground. "You and mom get hurt all the time, and I don't scream about it!"
He says the last line loudly, trying to talk back to his mother, who he can't see but can listen to in the background, unsurprisingly, screaming about his soaked clothes and muddy shoes.
She's not always this menacing, when she appears, because that wouldn't be accurate to Bang Younghee at all. Minwoo has always thought of her as someone who fought hard to keep herself bright despite it all, and he still does, so often enough she's just another component of the happy sections, with the sound of her laugh echoing through their barely furnished house.
But she can be nothing but an arm, sometimes, painfully pulling Minwoo away from everything he's ever known, whispering in his ear that all the hurt is for his own sake.
She fought very hard to keep herself bright, yet, didn't always succeed. He remembers that well.
He doesn't know what he's done to be all dirty and wet and hurting at the knee. Could range from anything between tripping on the tricky path that took him to the hill they lived in, or stealing something from a neighborhood kid and getting pushed into some puddle and kicked for his troubles.
His uncle levels him up with a gentle look that shouldn't look gentle at all on his hollow eyes, but does. In life he was never mad for more than a minute, when he was sober, and he seems to be now.
"You know your mom is very fragile at heart," uncle Woohyun says, and Minwoo knows there's no way he still has any memory of what his voice sounded like, but in the dreams he always has this feeling that he's got his soft candace just right. It's the only good thing about them. The peaceful feeling he gets from hearing him speak; "You shouldn't go out of your way to make her upset."
"I wasn't trying to!"
"Then what happened?"
Minwoo had always been a smart kid. He knew basically from the womb that there were too many troubles biting at his mom and uncle's ankles, and that he shouldn't ever add to their bother.
So as would be typical for him to do as a child, Minwoo pointly crosses his arms and keeps his mouth shut, pouting at the air.
Uncle Woohyun sighs, defeated, and lifts himself up from the floor.
He taps Minwoo lightly at the shoulder, and offers him a grin. "If you don't wanna talk to me, that's fine. I guess we'll just have to forget it, and drag your funny face to the Oh shop, hm? I'll get you something to eat."
"I only want Apollo Straw," Minwoo mutters, as a warning. "Mom said they're too expensive now."
"Oh, c'mon. How expensive can candy be?" Woohyun asks, wiggling his eyebrows playfully at him. Minwoo has to frown extra hard for his lips to not curl up. "I'll get you a ton of that, you'll see. Now, up you go."
At the very least, Minwoo is grateful that his mind doesn't make him walk all the way through the uneven streets of Guryo, as he would do back then, for them to get to the Oh shop – owned by an elderly and equally wrinkly couple, and attached to a bar.
Like a smooth transition into a next movie scene, he's inside the micro looking store, waiting in the cashier line side by side with his uncle.
There are only two shadow figures in front of them, one skinny and almost reaching his uncle's shoulder, holding the hand of a smaller one with pigtails and a jeans dress, so familiar despite their lack of faces that it stings.
If Minwoo dared to name them even here, in his subconscious, he would probably combust.
(The two of them are always faceless and mute, when they show up, even though Minwoo knows what they look like, back then and especially right now. But it's kind of his mind, he supposes, to keep them blurred.)
They're being screamed at like he'd been a minute ago, accused of being damned thieves and dirty little liars, until uncle Woohyun steps in, talks the old shop owner into serenity and slides won notes at him. He helps the kids put what they bought in plastic bags – a lot of instant noodles, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter – and gives them each a pack of the Apollo Straws he grabbed, to Minwoo's absolute terror.
None of them even bow to him, or say a thankful word. They just take their things and flee.
"I wish I had more to give them, little man," his uncle tells him as they both watch the kid and the teen make their clumsy way down the hill, holding hands to keep each other from falling. "But that's all I can help with now. Some sweets." He turns his head to look straight at Minwoo, who's already looking at him, and grins; "Let's hope that makes them smile a little."
He was a fucking good man, his uncle. Had his demons and senetaded them the ways he could, the only way everyone around them knew how, but he was good in a way Minwoo just won't ever be, even if he spends the rest of his life trying.
What right does he have, to be scared of a good man trying his best, when he's such a hard to tolerate guy who can't be bothered to put any effort into being nice.
Still at the top of the hill in the too real dream, looking down at the brother and sister finally make it to their door, he hears himself say, irritated: "What did you give them so much candy for? They're too mean."
"An angry child is just a hungry child," uncle Woohyun answers simply, and then takes the remaining pack of Apollo Straw from his pocket and puts it in between Minwoo's hands with care.
That, he knew, was something his uncle had truly told him once, back when Minwoo was pushing 12 but could be mistaken for an 8 year old. One of the earliest things that he remembers ever making sense.
Angry because you're hungry, because there's something missing. That's how the kids from the slums are all like, with their small and scrawny bodies and proneness to bite. Of course their tempers are just as short as their spines, that they're quicker to fire than loaded guns.
Here's how Minwoo got so sharp and lethal with words alone; he didn't have any other choice. He would never grow the strength necessary to throw a punch and deal with the aftermath of it, so he just had to find something to use as a shield, an alternative way to hurt back.
The first rhyme verse he ever came up with was about that; about making yourself be what it needs to be. Uncle Woohyun was the first person he had shown it to, making a show out of reciting it to him inside his room in one of his worst days, because Minwoo wanted him to know that he understood him, in that. He understood why Woohyun couldn't help but be sick, addicted to filling in the void.
"Did you come up with that?" his uncle asked as he finished his little one minute performance, with wide, surprised eyes.
Minwoo only nodded as a response, shy maybe for the first time ever.
"Look at you go!" Woohyun told him, then clapped. So happy it overflowed out of him, shining in his eyes. "That was so smart. I liked it so much."
"Really?"
"Really. You know, I knew you had it in you– that creative drive. That little artistic hunger," he laughs, sounding amazed, motioning with a hand for Minwoo to come join him where he's lying on his bed. "You should keep writing things and showing them all to me. Forever."
Minwoo pushed the sheets out of his way and sat with his legs crossed beside his uncle on his thin mattress. It was sunny and hot, he remembers, but his uncle still buried himself under layers and layers of blankets as if they were in winter.
"Maybe I will," he shrugged, faking nonchalant, when what he truly wanted to say was 'You don't even have to ask'.
And that's how he chose to remember Woohyun, at last. Happy with him, in cahoots. Happy because of him, and what he had to say. Minwoo had this gut feeling back then that joy would be a rare feeling he would bring to anyone, and life has proved him to be right. Minwoo's hands are weak and bony, even now, years into the future. Not strong enough to hurt; not soft enough to hold. So he keeps his dirty fingers to himself.
Since his dreams are the very opposite of kind, of course they don't take him there, to another happy memory with its finale. Instead, they take a cold, odd turn.
Minwoo is suddenly being violently shaken awake, in the almost nightmare, and being made to sit before he can fully open his eyes. He blinks and sees his uncle right in front of him, an odd sight in his and his mother's room so late. All the lights are on, weirdly, so he can clearly see the way he's glittering with sweat.
From the corner of his eye, he spots his school bag open and empty, and a bunch of his clothes tossed on the floor.
He lets out a confusing and complaining noise, but Woohyun places a finger in front of his own lips and silently asks him to shush, so he does. He's not being moved by obedience, exactly, but rather instinct, like the one of moving slowly in front of a watching animal.
"Hey. Hey. Sorry– sorry to wake you now," he whispers, words spluttering together. "I didn't want to, but she didn't leave me any choice. But it's alright. All right. None of her talk matters now. Now, I just need you to get out of bed and listen, Minwoo. More than anything, I really, really need you to listen to me now."
His sweaty hands shake like a leaf as they cup his cheeks, and Minwoo was too young to understand back then and he's still young in the dream-not-dream, just a kid, but he gets what's coming now.
And he starts to fear it.
"You have to keep in mind that you're very much like me, for things to make sense right now," Woohyun tells him with clear urgency, looking him eye to eye. His pupils are blown ridiculously wide. "You took a lot after me– not your mom. Not the guy who gave you to her. Me. I gave you this," a firm grip at the top of his head, "and this," a tug at the hem of his shirt, followed by a series of not so gentle pokes at the center of his chest; "and all that, okay? Remember. Remember. She can't take you away from me. I'm not gonna leave you. You're my kid. You're her son, but you're my fucking kid. You know that, right?"
Minwoo feels himself nod. It makes his uncle smile and give his cheeks excited little pinches.
"Good. I knew you knew. Now! We're gonna hide from her, you and I. And then we're gonna leave…" he trades off for a minute, turning his head left and right, scanning the whole room like a maniac. "Oh! There! Through that window. That one. Get it?"
"I don't want–" he starts to say, but his uncle shoves his palm over his mouth and nose, muffling the rest.
"You do," Woohyun hisses at him. "That's part one of our whole plan to get out. If you don't hide and wait, then she'll take you away and I'm never gonna see you again. And you don't want that. I don't want that. Yes?"
Minwoo swallows dry, and answers shakily. "Yes."
"Then get up!" Woohyun demands, agitated enough to make Minwoo hince as he complies. "Get the fuck up right now! Move!"
Before he can take a step out of bed, however, he hears the sound of the door bursting open, and freezes. Woohyun turns and curses and grabs Minwoo by the arm harshly, then pushes him to stand behind his back. When he realizes that won't be enough to keep him hidden he starts backtracking, forcing Minwoo to move clumsily with him until his face is pressed against one of the walls on the other side of the room.
His positioning is rough, and his uncle starts to put on too much weight against him, as if he's trying to make him merge with the concrete. Minwoo is being squished between his uncle's much taller body and the hard wall, so much so that points in his rib cage and neck hurt, and that pushing air into his lungs gets hard enough for him to panic.
Words can't help him in anything right now– Minwoo keeps on biting his tongue every time he makes an attempt to talk out loud. You're hurting me, he tries to say, again and again, and only tastes blood. I know you don't want to, but you're really hurting me.
Dots taunt his vision, and tears pool in his eyes. He doesn't want to go out fighting. Not like this, and not against Woohyun. But he also doesn't want to go, so he kicks and pushes but he's still too confused, too weak to do anything but let himself get hurt–
Minwoo wakes up – really wakes up – with a jump, twisting and turning on his bed, fighting his blankets like they're out to get him, loudly gasping for air. His heart is beating so fast he can feel his jugular vein pumping in his neck.
"Shit, shit, shit," he mutters, just to say something– to prove to himself he can, now–, shoving his trembling hands over his face.
It takes him a couple of seconds of quiet respiration and disturbed murmurs to find strength to get up, and he does so in slow motion; Minwoo sits on the edge of the bed and places the sole of his feet in the ground first, focusing on the shock from the freezing tiles against his skin to keep himself grounded as the fog in his mind dissipates, and he breathes, and breathes, and breathes again.
The room around him had been pitch black, when he first opened his eyes, but now they have grown used to the lack of light and everything looks blueish. He glimpses at the clock on his nightstand and looks at their curtainless window, and understands why.
It's 5:11 AM. Fuck. Fuck. He had an alarm set for 4:15, whatever happened to his shitty phone that didn't ring–
He pats around the bed and at his nightstand, trying to not let himself get choleric as he finds nothing. Great. He probably left it somewhere back in the studio, like a fucking idiot.
Whatever. Not worth it crying over an abandoned cellphone, he tells himself. Minwoo finally takes a trembling step forward, just to step on something sharp and be forced to backtrack immediately.
His dorm room is a mess, because any room being shared with Seungsoo it's doomed to be a mess, despite his and Hanjae's efforts to keep things tidy. He truly should have known better and put sleepers on first.
Minwoo shoves a hand in his mouth to not loudly yelp about his still stinging feet, and at how he can only see one goddamn sleeper right beside his bed where both should be, but he's just– all weird and out of his own mind even now, because he can't not say every single curse he's ever learned at an inappropriate volume.
From the lower bunk bed on the other side of the room, a head like a bird's nest turns to squint at him.
"You're alright, Minwoo hyung?" Hanjae whispers, his ridiculously baritone morning voice barely comprehensible over Seungsoo's snoring in the upper bed. "You were kind of… agitated, for a while."
Minwoo shrugs and grumbles at him, not worried if he's making himself understandable or not. Fuck Hanjae and his light sleep, acknowledging his freak out has been seen, and making him feel even worse.
If only Minwoo had just slept over at the studio, like he always does, all of this could have been avoided. He wouldn't be feeling himself growing nauseous from running on empty and from everything else, and he wouldn't be all hunger and anger, seeing red everytime he blinks.
"What was it about? Your dream." Hanjae pierces through his thoughts again.
His bed makes an awful creeking sound as if he's moving, and Minwoo hates that it seems like he's about to get up and come to him, even though there's a minefield of junk in between them, and he's barefoot and blind as a bat without his stupid contact lenses.
Even though he's clearly exhausted and needs all the sleep he can get.
Even though Minwoo hasn't bothered to be consistently nice to him enough to deserve this much worry.
God, Hanjae and his need to reach, no matter what. Emotionally masochistic fucker.
"Stay where you are," Minwoo tells him, and it kind of comes off sounding like an injunction, even though that's not what he wanted it to sound like originally.
As always, he can't really regret it when it gets the job done – not a single sound is made for a solid minute from Hanjae's side of the room, and Minwoo takes that as his cue to keep on moving, quickly and silently so his bandmate can go back to his regular night of sleep, like the outdated loser he is.
Hanjae seems to understand him still being in the room differently, as he promptly starts talking non stop.
"It's just that– I have nightmares too, you know," he says, then laughs an embarrassed and contained laugh. "So I understand how it can feel. But it's alright, hyung. I'm not gonna hold it against you, or judge you or anything. This– this is a safe space. And it's okay if you want to talk about it."
Good Lord, no. Minwoo is not having a heart to heart with Hanjae of all people, in these or any other circumstances. It's baffling to him that he's seriously trying to make them even go there.
A man gets local cryptic Fukunaga Haruki to open up to him once, and suddenly he's convinced he can make everyone in the world talk about their feelings.
To demonstrate that Hanjae is essentially talking to the wall, Minwoo doesn't respond, only squats on the floor and ducks his head under the bed, patting under it to try to find his missing sleeper. He's beyond unsuccessful and ends up inhaling a handful of dust, sneezing and bumping his head on one of the bed's feet with a painful and notorious sounding thud.
Hanjae goes quiet as he watches him get up from the floor, takes a look up to make sure that Seungsoo is still sleeping – he is, because he's a beast like that –, and then keeps on rambling when Minwoo finally stops furiously cursing under his breath.
"I know dreams like those can be tough even when they're nonsensical, hyung. You see, I have nightmares about falling off the third floor of the dorm a lot. I know it probably won't ever happen because we don't even have a third floor, but I still think about it," he offers. "I tend to also have this one where I break my bad heel again and get put down for good. You know, past experiences, when they're traumatic–"
"Are you fucking done?" Minwoo cuts him off, drily and this time, all the rudeness is intentional; "'Cause I have a sleeper to find and I'm sure that if you had shut your mouth five minutes ago, I would have found it already."
Hanjae blinks at him, startled into silence, then sighs deeply through his nose – a pretty rare reaction to get out of him so quickly. He's almost as patient as Teasong and Beomseok are, normally, but everyone's a little out of themselves, this early in the morning.
Minwoo would know. He's about to lose it because of a fucking shoe.
He should just leave, at this point. He should have fled this room as soon as he woke up. There's no use being around anyone in the state he's in.
But something in the way Minwoo can feel Hanjae's eyes carved into him make him freeze in his tracks. He knows for a fact that he's probably seeing him as nothing but a blur at best, but still, Minwoo feels so uncomfortably perceived that he has to keep switching his weight from one feet to another.
Hanjae asks him finally, voice no longer deep beyond recognition; "What haunts you, hyung?"
'What haunts you?', like that's a normal question to throw at your roommate that's not even your friend, barely a colleague, at five in the morning.
Like he wants to really fucking know. Like his answer matters.
Minwoo is speechless– not because he has no words to say, but because he has too many wanting to come off his mouth at once, and he might choke on them all. Mostly, he feels the urge to shout I have never left anything haunt me in my fucking life, and I never will, which is a lie.
Minwoo is too weak for that to ever be true.
He's stomping out of the room before he can make a single deeming sound, banging the door shut loudly behind him because fuck Hanjae, he decided, and fuck Seungsoo too, and fuck the entirery of the first floor, and fuck the second floor too, if the sound got to them, which he hopes it did.
Fuck this entire dorm, that gets to sleep in peace while he can't even dozze off for two hours without having to face the fact that the last time he saw his uncle, Woohyun almost killed him, and that right now, he can only think that he should have fucking succeeded.
Minwoo looks down at his mismatched shoes and almost screams in distress as he sees what he ended up putting on his left foot in his rush. It's one of Hanjae's Gudetama themed sleepers, because of course it is. What else would it even be?
He feels the petty need to storm back into the room and throw it out the window, just so Hanjae could lose something like he feels he just did.
Although a single shoe wouldn't even be an equivalent loss.
With his fists flying to his grap at tousled head, Minwoo rests his forehead against the wooden door, makes himself breathe deeply through his nose a final time, and then drags his exhausted and flushed red body to the kitchen.
If he's lucky, all the stress will pass after he's eaten.