{absolute perfection}
Kim Heechul. He’s the up-and-coming, sharp witted wonder leaving a blazing trail of Absolute Perfection everywhere he goes. From the tip of his grey-white checked Fedora to his more than fairly expensive and newly acquired Burberry Novas, he radiates confidence so blinding it almost hurts to see. While it almost hurts to see, it doesn’t, and teenage girls and boys line up for miles around the block to see that ridiculously famous smirk, claw through themselves to rip off the hat that so cleverly dips its brim to just under his eyes - he was always a fucking tease - but they can’t quite make it and it’s probably just as well they don’t.
Management is scared by him and it’s probably for this reason Heechul returns to the dormitory to find his manager gone with a hollow emptiness reverberating through the room and into his veins - but that’s okay because contrary to what the media and fans believe, hollow and silent is just they way Kim Heechul likes his life. Correction, that’s the way he’d like it to be. Because in actuality - Heechul has tosses the thought around in his head like he tosses his keys onto the kitchen bench - his life is a goddamn pain in the region just lower than his lower back. The constant screams and the nights spent dealing with headaches like migraines on steroids, that time he kissed Lee fucking Sungmin and copped so much flak that he kissed Siwon just to piss everyone off again and get some satisfaction for once - and God, how he misses the days when he could drink with Hankyung without his delusional following screaming that OHMYGOD THEY MUST BE MARRIED AND THEREFORE HEECHUL MUST BE GAY, because then that led to awkward questions in interviews and forced skinship and truth be told it made Hankyung want to punch him into North Korea which made Heechul want to slap somebody, and hard.
The fridge is opened, hums for a beat, to be slammed shut again. Sneering at it, Heechul turns on his heel and moves through the silence pressing in on him to the bathroom. You’re losing too much weight, they said. There’ll be prepared meals in your dorm every day, make sure you eat them, they tried to insist, to which Heechul had snorted and almost told his dieticians to shove their prepared meals up where it might possibly hurt - but had caught himself at the last second. It’s not like he’s on a mission to become the next person to die from anorexia but the thing about his career is that once he’s seen doing something the entire nation just latches onto his back about it and forces him to do it for the rest of his life - so Heechul takes the greatest pleasure he can possibly wring out of doing exactly the opposite of what everyone wants him to do. It’s sad - he glares at the reflection in the mirror - because they pay isn’t even that great, it’s not like he actually uses the free shit he gets from promotions, and he doesn’t really know why he still drags his behind onto stages with their burning hot spotlights except for maybe that yeah, it was because his parents had told him not to become an entertainer.
Somehow he’s left the dormitory as hollow and empty as it was before, maybe with a tinge of anger colouring the otherwise bleak atmosphere and finds himself staring blankly into some other guy’s eyes. He can see a stylist busily coating strands of hair in wax and gel like she’s curing cancer, and he knows that the world only wants this man for his pretty face and fast tongue. If he could he’d pity this man, but then in this business who isn’t wanted just for their face, except for Shindong? Then there’s the fact that the man he’s thinking about pitying is really his own reflection in a dressing room mirror as he’s surrounding by bustling make-up artists with their choking stench of perfume and foundation caked faces - and Heechul doesn’t even have to come to a conclusion to know that only idiots pity themselves.
Side stage he has his head tilted to the right watching the newest rookies dance their hearts out on stage. It’s a condescending tilt, he knows, with an angle of scorn. He watches these little baby girls prancing around to some hastily composed piece of trash - what the hell is candy funky style anyway - and he hopes, as harsh as he knows it is, that they soon get a taste of real fame and realise that the life they dream of is harder and more painful than falling off a cliff onto a bed of sharp nails. They won’t, he concedes to himself, because none of them are more blinding than the sun and that’s the least it takes to stun this mindless audience into paying out the dollars to make them millionaires. As the last few notes signal that his time for internal monologue is up Heechul places his hat onto his painstakingly styled hair. It doesn’t cover his eyes this time - eye contact with the audience is always a prerequisite for screams - but it still fits him perfectly, all sharp angles and nothing even. The smirk is the last thing to fall into place, as he steps out in front of cameras and steady eyes watching his every move, and effortlessly becomes the idol they’re all clamouring for - the one that he’d give anything not to be.