above us only sky

Pop goes my SuJu cherry

windstalk — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 07:09:10 GMT

Foreword (of sort): This will most likely not make sense for a lot of people, unless they possess my bizarre, haphazard wavelength of thought. Most parts are based on canonical events tampered with an unfortunate abuse of bad imagination and creative license. Cue abundant confusion. But regardless, a mother cannot despise the labouring of her child, so here it is in all its sad, painful unglamour for the world to see.

99% Perspiration

1.

The first and clearest thing Heechul remembers about him is his voice. Not his face of a morning sun or the crinkles at the edge of his eyes when he smiles. This industry has a million of such faces and to Heechul they all look the same. You sound like you are speaking underwater, Heechul tells him when he introduces himself.

"I am sorry. I do not understand what you said."

"What is your name?"

"I am Han Geng."

A little rudely, "Han what?"

He leans closer and repeats, softer this time, "Han Geng." Heechul can detect a hint of uncertainty in his tone. The door way suddenly feels a little claustrophobic for him to be standing there, talking to Han–

"Hankyung."

"Yes."

"My name is Heechul."

xi che, Hankyung articulates. Heechul listens. It sounds like water flooding his ears, a diver gurgling under the sea with bubbles coming out of his mouth. You got marbles in your mouth or something? says Heechul, petulant, unable to help himself. Hankyung frowns and tilts his head to one side.

"I have been standing here for a long time."

At that, Heechul gapes at him, feeling mildly incredulous.

The fluroscent lamp on the ceiling of the corridor glows above Hankyung's head like a white halo.

So this is how it looks like: Hankyung with his towering height and his enormous suitcase wedged between the narrow door frame, the way he files away the sharp edges of Heechul's name with his foreign tongue, how the light surrounding him seems to be swallowing him up, as if trying to turn him into light itself.

Heechul smirks.

He lets him in.

2.

It is not that Heechul hates him. He just hates how Han Geng will not let him sleep in for five more minutes or the way he rearranges their toothbrushes in the bathroom. He hates the sound of someone making breakfast early in the morning, rousing him from his slumber, and the schizophrenic state of their wardrobe, in which a neat stack of T-shirts and jeans resides on the left and a rainbow pile accumulates on the right.

But more than anything, he hates the fact that, over months, what Hankyung has come to occupy was not simply a fraction of living space in this house.

As such, Han Geng soon discovers one particular knowledge about Kim Heechul, who currently sits across him at the small square table in their kitchen, wolving down spoonfuls of kimchi fried rice: he has an uncanny ability in landing himself, and those around him, in these paradoxical situations.

"What?" says Heechul, suddenly.

Han Geng gives him a surprised look.

"If you want kimchi fried rice just say so. You want some, right? I'll give you some."

It amuses Han Geng a little, Heechul's exaggerated gestures as he speaks and the slight exasperation in his eyes ("Real men speak with their eyes," Heechul will say, years later on a popular talk show, and this will be the exact moment Han Geng remembers).

He watches Heechul get up from the chair and move toward the pot on the stove, listens to the sound of spoon clanging against bowl, utters a careful gamsahapnida when Heechul gives him his fried rice. Hopes his Korean is okay. Forgets to tell Heechul he already had dinner.

Later, Heechul is looking for his pyjamas and pesters a laundry folding Han Geng for it.

"Is it this?"

"Ah, yes." Heechul holds it up by the edges and aligns it on himself, mumbles as he changes into it, "It didn't wear well when I first had it. But after a few years in the wash it's comfortable now."

3.

Heechul has never been good at dancing. Some days he observes Yunho and Donghae so intently during class that he trips over himself. Still, he dances, not because he is a particularly aspiring trainee or anything, but he thinks this is probably the best way to deal with inadequacy.

The day Yunho and Donghae get promoted from Class B to Class A, though, Heechul learns the difference between his hard work and theirs.

"I danced to the point where my bones were about to fall off," says Heechul miserably, kicking off his shoes. He walks to the sofa and free falls on it on his back. Han Geng returns to the sitting room with a chilled bottle of soju and touches the cold glass on Heechul's cheek.

"Yah! Hankyung!" Heechul sits up immediately, rubbing the momentarily numbed spot on his face, and catches Han Geng's eye. "What is it? Out with it."

Han Geng starts to unscrew the bottle cap as a way of diversion, but Heechul stops him.

"If you don't say I'm going to be angry." He stares daggers at Han Geng, eyes wide and serious.

Han Geng exhales. Gives in. "I am in Class A. Donghae is in my class."

"You jumped from C to A?" asks Heechul in disbelief. "Why, you rascal." He drags Han Geng down onto the sofa and takes the bottle from him.

"Fine. Go to Class A, all of you. Leave poor Heechul alone in Class B dancing his bones off," he continues to singsong, leaning himself against Han Geng's arm, and Han Geng starts to feel sympathy in his chest, but something else tells him Heechul will disown him if he allows that sympathy to manifest.

"Heechul," he says, then, a little helpless, a little frustrated with himself. He puts his head on Heechul's and stares tiredly at the forlorn reflection of them in the empty television screen.

"Frowning will make you old." Heechul rouses suddenly, jabbing a finger at Han Geng's forehead. The clear, sharp smell of soju hangs in the air between them. Han Geng wonders, wildly for a moment, if he will know what it tastes like if he licks at the air molecules jostling in the space that separates Heechul's face from his.

It seems inappropriate to think of these things at such a time, but this afternoon is too warm for him to be rational and cool-headed, so Han Geng makes do with the cool glass surface of the soju bottle pressed against his chest as a drunken Heechul lays over him, sprawl-eagled and limbs askew.

4.

After a year-long hype about Four Seasons, December 26 arrives.

Heechul receives a text message from Yunho the morning after. He reads it once and deletes it. No matter if it has to do with his ability in dancing. No matter if it is because he is less pretty than Jaejoong. Nothing matters because today is the twenty-seventh and everything is already set in stone.

Donghae calls during lunch and tells Heechul did you see him on television? he looks so suave and everything and I am so excited, Heechul, I am so excited and Heechul is silent to the point where Donghae suddenly stops and asks, "Heechul? Heechul, are you there? Can you hear me?"

"What is there to be excited about?"

"Our Yunho," Donghae gasps, slightly breathless.

Heechul hangs up. Congratulations never sounded more hypocritical.

In the end, he thinks he should heed Youngwoon's advice after all, to save himself from the needless misery.

"Get over it. We would never get along anyway," says Youngwoon in a moment of wisdom as he pours another shot of soju into Heechul's empty glass. The atmosphere is kind of awkward, although Heechul is not unreasonable to the point of being blind to the fact that he is not the only one suffering.

"Go home, Youngwoon," says Heechul, getting up to leave.

"Can't even last us one bottle of soju, eh?" says Youngwoon with a theatrical tone of maudlin.

"Like you said, we would never get along," answers Heechul despite knowing perfectly well that Youngwoon was referring to a different 'we'. "Besides, you're underaged."

He walks all the way back to the academy, to the level where the Class A classrooms are located, to the sole lit classroom where the light indoor spills into the darkened corridor from a rectangular window pane on the door.

He enters the room and there is no one - it is already so late into the night - save Hankyung with a jazz melody blaring from the CD player on a chair at the far corner.

"Hankyungie," says Heechul when he stands in front of him. Presses his forehead to Hankyung's shoulder. Honestly, "Maybe I'm not good enough."

At this age, Heechul thinks he should have matured, thinks there should not be a strange emotion gnawing and gnawing in his chest. He thinks maybe he is a little possessive, gets irritated at the thought of Jaejoong, thinks about Youngwoon and his sad voice before he left him just now. He thinks he should call Donghae and apologise or respond to Yunho's text message.

He doesn't do any of those, just listens to the music fill the room and stares at the steady rise and fall of Hankyung's chest.

In this particular room of the countless rooms in the SM dream factory, Han Geng learns a second knowledge about Kim Heechul: he can be stubborn about a lot of things, but only about things he deems worth caring for.

5.

"Why did you come to Korea?" Heechul asks one morning with an outstretched hand, to which Han Geng passes a comb.

"To be a performer, why?"

"But you can be one in China, too."

Han Geng stops adjusting his collar and looks at Heechul, still arranging his hair. Heechul can see Han Geng's expression clearly in the mirror, but he ignores it.

"You think I shouldn't have come?" says Han Geng.

"Don't ask me a question only you can answer."

"Did you have breakfast?"

"Don't change the topic."

"You must have not eaten, or else why are you saying things I don't understand?"

"So you're happy in Korea."

"Yes."

"You are sure."

"Yes."

"Your eyes look horrible. Didn't sleep well?"

"I guess." Han Geng pauses for a second, as if recalling something, before tossing the water bottle on the counter into his bag.

"Walk me home this evening?"

"Don't you end earlier than me?"

"Yeah, Class B and all. But I'll wait."

"I'm going to end rather late."

"I said I'll wait. Run along now, we're late."

Their conversation resumes after midnight, after Heechul is half frozen in the corridor outside the Class A classrooms, after Han Geng emerged with a slightly surprised expression, as if he never expected Heechul to be there.

Heechul sneezes.

Throughout the way home, Heechul doesn't speak at all, so much so Han Geng is compelled to say something.

"I think you caught a cold."

"And you will have to take care of me."

"You go and get yourself a cold and ask me to take care of you."

Heechul winds his arm around Han Geng's to keep warm. "Aren't you colder than me?"

"No, I'm not."

"You're lying. I saw you trembling last night."

6.

Han Geng doesn't remember much about that night. Save a series of swear words spat out of Heechul's mouth in the filthiest manner he has ever heard, pressure of the grip on his wrist, and cold wind cutting across his face as Heechul stormed down the deserted street, dragging him along. And later, the expression upon Youngwoon's face when Heechul slammed the door shut behind them with herculean force ("Hyung, what's wrong–" "What is wrong with the world!") and a hiss of "go back to sleep" when Kibum comes out from the room, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and asked what was going on.

Han Geng knocks on the door.

"It's me."

Again. "Open."

He turns the knob. It is not locked.

Heechul is sprawled on his bed and wrapped into a colourful bundle. Han Geng lifts the blanket off him but Heechul tugs it back.

"You will die without oxygen," says Han Geng matter-of-factly, spying Heechul face down on the pillow.

He kneels beside the bed and touches the back of Heechul's neck. Heechul squirms.

"Yah!" cries Heechul suddenly, flinging the blanket at Han Geng. Han Geng looks at him and a slow sort of ache spreads in his chest. ("Are you gay?" "Sissy." "Good-for-nothing pretty face." "Heechul, let's just go–" "He's just a foreigner, why do you care?" "Shut the fuck up." Somewhere in the commotion, a stick was thrown. More sticks. Some blood.)

Heechul fists his hand in Han Geng's shirt and tells him, "They are not worthed trash compared to you, you understand? How could they even think!"

"Heechul." He is shaking. "Heechul! I'm okay." Softer, "I'm okay. Let me see your arm."

But Heechul shrinks back when Han Geng touches him, launches into a rapid monologue, "I'm sorry. Did I scare you, Hankyung? I know I went out of line. I don't know what came over me. I was just so. Furious! I couldn't do a thing. I could have hit them, but I couldn't. You must really hate living here–"

He is doing that wild gesticulating thing again, Han Geng realises, hands flailing about and eyes begging for affirmation and Han Geng's heart clenches, harder this time, and he is finding words, finding words and feeling helpless again, useless and–

"Shhhh."

–Heechul is momentarily shocked, stunned into silence with Han Geng's arms around him. "Shhhh." Hands steady and warm, stroking his hair.

He is unused to this, as much as he is used to Hankyung. This, Heechul hazards, is probably what they call a paradoxical situation.

7.

On colder days, Heechul thinks of quitting, sometimes.

"My childhood dream was to become an aerospace engineer," he tells Han Geng on a day off, over cereal with milk and the burnt toast he made.

"My childhood dream was to become a performer," says Han Geng as he takes a bite out of the toast.

"You shouldn't eat that. The black bits, I mean. It will give you cancer."

"You don't always make breakfast."

"I don't make good breakfasts."

"But I do."

This is the difference between them, Heechul discovers, as if struck by an epiphany. SM Entertainment is a dream factory and Heechul will not belong. Heechul never dreams, he only lives. But Hankyung is different. Hankyung lives and dreams simultaneously, and just this knowledge alone makes Heechul kind of exasperated, in a way like how he feels about his burnt toast giving people cancer, and somehow everything starts to make sense. That he should have quit a long time ago.

It seems too late to turn back now.

8.

It is the same kind of sound Heechul hears when he steps onto the stage. Water flooding his ears the same way lights flood under his eyes. He can feel his heart ramming against his ribcage as the music comes on, pounding away every single doubt he has now that they have come this far.

Superstar, superstar.

He feels breathless. Breathless as Donghae throws an arm over his shoulder, hollering hyung! hyung! chukhae! Breathless as Youngwoon threatens to crush his bones with a bear hug, as the sound of applause carries them forth like a tidal wave, as he is ushered along a narrow walkway surrounded by eleven bodies, limbs messily tangled in congratulatory stupor, until someone grabs his hand and pulls him to an empty space to stand.

He can feel the rhythm still alive on Hankyung's skin, electrifying.

"Drink?"

Heechul stares into Hankyung's beaming face. He accepts the bottle of water, smudges his lipstick as he gratefully gulps down a few mouthfuls and stains the edge of the bottle red, feeling his voice return to him.

"You were good out there," says Hankyung, after touching his mouth to the reddened edge when he drank from the shared bottle, and Heechul doesn't wait for his pulse to return to a normal rate before leaning forward to kiss Hankyung, knocking the bottle out of his hand and splashing water all over the dressing room floor.

Hankyung backs against a deserted cupboard, ruining his hair, and holds Heechul by the sleeves of his shirt. Thanks to you, Hangeng, says Heechul, distinctly clear, I'm good everywhere.

Around them, the hairspray polluted air buzzes with some charged intoxication, ten other members too caught up with the excitement of future promises coursing through young veins to pay any attention.

Breaking the laws of DNA

windstalk — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:54:27 GMT

Dead now. Be back later.

for riiche ♥

THE NTH REPEAT
it's a vicious cycle
Fuji/Yuuta. 1,785 words. Prince of Tennis.

1:

It rains in sleets on the day you leave. The temperature is cold outside but he insists on seeing you off at the station. I can help you carry the luggage, he says, smiling benignly. You watch him put on his long-sleeved coat, one thin arm through a cloth tunnel and then the other, nimble fingers pushing a black button, large as a beetle, through its corresponding eye, then another, then another, securing the right flap of the apparel over the left.

I'm done, he tells you, smoothing his hands down the coat, and it startles you. Your collar, you point out stiffly, mouth set into a rigid line. Oh? He cocks his head to one side, hands moving to the back of his neck to flip the collar out. Watching him. It is like watching him make love to himself.

Your father sounds the horn. Hurry up, you say irritably, hoping, at the same time, for him to take as long as possible to put on his boots. You are not ready to leave, not really. He does, though, and opens the black umbrella. Come on, he beckons. You frown and pick up your duffel bag, duck under the rain shield as the both of you wet your boots in a puddle. He huddles against you, taking wide strides down the front yard of the house toward the car. You struggle to keep up.

His body is warmer than usual in the cold. Your bag gets heavier.

2:

At St. Rudolph, you make quick friends with Mizuki and Yanagisawa. Mizuki trains you hard, making sure you get no rest until your shirt is so soaked with sweat you can wring it out and fill a small bucket. Give the boy a break, Yanagisawa will sometimes say, arm lazily slung over Atsushi's shoulder and racket limp in his other hand. You thank Yanagisawa-senpai for his concern with a respectful bow, ask if Mizuki-san would teach you how the Twist Spin Shot works again.

That kid is suicidal, Yanagisawa tells Atsushi later when they are alone in the club room. What do you reckon he trains so hard for? To beat you, says Atsushi offhandedly, throwing his tennis shirt at Yanagisawa. Yanagisawa dodges. Pass the towel please, Shinya.

He looks at Atsushi in bewilderment, at Atsushi's outstretched hand.

Quit joking, he says, stripping to his waist and tosses his own shirt at his doubles partner. The bunched up shirt hits Atsushi right in the face.

That day onwards, Yanagisawa hangs around you often, asking you to practices and bringing you to his favourite sushi bar. Later you find out he is good at mathematics and is not stingy to help. I like your spirit, kid, is what he tells you with a hand on your shoulder like a proud brother when you question his generosity. With him, you slowly forget what drove you here. The dorms feel more like home than home now, and tennis is what makes you happy instead of angry.

3:

You miss the air at St. Rudolph when you return home during the vacation. In this period of time, you have made a total of five telephone calls and received seven, one to Mizuki and four from him, not necessarily in that order. Your other correspondence is Yanagisawa. Soon, your mother complains about the bill.

If you are bored why don't you play tennis with your brother or something, she says. You concentrate on your video game and ignore her, but this is the fourth time you are doing this quest. When she disappears into the kitchen, you switch off the television screen and go back to your room.

It is stifling in your own house, or maybe the summer is to blame. Every day is humid. You try to sleep the heat off without your shirt and with the air-con on full blast. Your mother will throw a fit if she finds out what you are doing. You can catch a cold, for goodness sake! you can already hear her say.

The cool temperature lulls you into sleep. You dream of the tennis courts at St. Rudolph, you and Yanagisawa and Atsushi racing Atsushi's pet turtles down the length of the court. Evening. The three of you are slurping ramen soup noisily, mouths oily and laughing.

You wake up with a fever.

The room is dark and the air-con is still on full blast. You throw your hands out blindly, feeling for your shirt. Your head is heavier than your feet and you stumble out of bed. The floor is hard. As your eyes adjusted to the dark, you realise you are not in your dorm.

Dinner is tasteless and you suddenly crave for the katsu don they serve in the school cafeteria with too much soy sauce, even though you know you can get a kidney disease from the overdose of salt. Are you unwell, he asks suddenly. Everyone looks up from their rice bowls and stares at you.

No, you reply, but he can hear the strain of virus in your voice. You only hope your mother does not notice.

The fever burns you up in the middle of the night. You are no longer sure if it is the air in this house or the absence of the well-worn familiarity of your dorm that makes you sick, like an allergy. You let your head swell along with the rising temperature, bundle it up with your blanket to contain the germs or to suffocate yourself.

Then you hear it, can picture the shape of his mouth as it wraps around your name.

He pulls the blanket off you and shakes you awake. Take these, he says, arm over your shoulder. You wonder, in delirium, if you would scald him. The tablets bump their way down your throat unsmoothly with a washdown of water. The back of his hand is pasted over your forehead, cool as jade. He slides his hand down your cheek, cups it over the column of your neck. You're hot, he says, removing the glass from your hand.

My head hurts, you say dully, thinking he just complimented you. It'll be alright, he soothes, cradles you in the crook of his arm, protective like a mother of her child, and you think you are splitting at the seams, your resistance giving way to another kind of disease.

4:

Which do you love more, tennis or me?

You don't think. You use the Twist Spin Shot. He returns it half-heartedly, still expectant of your answer.

Pay attention, you tell him, deeply annoyed.

He does because you ask him to. You hate it when he is like that.

It's a love game, he announces the score later.

He throws his racket on the ground. Leaves.

5:

He waters his cactus once every week. He has a small red plastic watering can that perches on the ledge of the window in his room beside a pot of cactus. You don't know this, but he spends most of his free time staring at the plant, pressing a gentle finger on one of its needles.

Loving a cactus requires patience. He cannot give it too much water, but he cannot not give it water. It is proud. It does not allow him to hold it, self-defense always at the ready, warding him off when he comes too close. He has already resigned himself to love at a distance.

You spend the day packing things in your room. You don't switch on the light even when it gets too dark to see. He slips in like a ghost, hiding in the shadows and watching you, how your back arches over the opened suitcase, a disarray of clothes littered around it, your rough hands folding a shirt carelessly.

Let me help, he says, materialising out of nowhere all of a sudden. He is neater than you, folds shirts in near perfect rectangles that fit nicely into the suitcase. You sit on your heels, notice the way his shoulders are angled in the dark, the jeans fabric stretched across the expanse of his thighs as he kneels on the floor, still folding shirts.

Tennis reminds me of you, you say suddenly and he looks up. You are staring at his wrists now, counting the skips of his pulse in a purple vein.

Then what do I remind you of? he asks.

That love game, you think.

Say, I can't outplay you.

You are not sure if this is even about tennis anymore, but he knows exactly what you mean.

Both of us can't win this time.

You hold his wrist. His pulse slides under your thumb like pearls.

Deliberate or by accident is unimportant: you tilt forward, losing balance off the pivot of a heel and crash into him, knocking the neatly folded shirts into a crumpled mess. You put your hands on his face.

You're hot, you tell him.

I don't have a fever, he says, breathless.

I know.

You kiss him, define the shape of his mouth with your tongue as he defines yours.

He places his hands, flat, under your shirt. They touch cold, hot, start to move, across your belly, across your ribcage. This is not love, you think, closing your mouth over his neck. Not the kind the world needs it to be and everything you want it to be. You were made in the same womb, written with the same genetic code; you can see the DNA strands twisting themselves into grosteque shapes in protest. But you are marking him all the same, carving a scroll of taboo incantation in his flesh that sounds like the way he chants your name like a possessed sorceror.

I wish I'm not me, you whisper to him as you rock him, and repeat, I wish I'm not me.

No, he says, let me wish that. Then he makes shushing noises so everything is okay and everything is quiet save his breathing and yours.

Eventually, you miss your train back to the dorm.

0:

The sky is as clear as day. You lie on the grassy court and shield your eyes from the sun with an arm. The St. Rudolph supporters erupt into cheers. Mizuki walks over to you and offers you a towel.

This year. This year the team will make it to the nationals.

When the boys throw a celebration party at your dorm, Yanagisawa almost knocks over the pot of cactus on your desk. You replace it high at the top of your bookshelf, unreachable without a stool but where the sunlight can still touch, like an open secret tucked away in a corner of your life.

You start to call St. Rudolph home.

A/N: Unwitting plagarism all over the place. Please don't kill me.