The Scars in the Braille (5/?)
Title: The Scars in the Braille
Pairing: baekhyun/chanyeol, various side parings
Length: chaptered (5/?)
Rating: pg-13
Summary: A story told through the eyes of their classmates and relatives, this is the rare and ultimately twisted romance of Park Chanyeol, a boy that suffers from a severe facial deformation, and Byun Baekhyun, a little genius who was born blind.
chapter 1: I am, chapter 2: Unreliable, chapter 3: It'll Be Okay, chapter 4: Sum of Their Parts, chapter 5: Pulls of Memories; word count: 3.8k
I am Kim Jongin.
First Class is a privilege, a gratuitous luxury. The soft leather compartments are just spacious enough and the tray tables don’t dig into your stomach. The food is delectable and comes to you at the snap of your fingers. The plane is loud but it only takes the unlimited amount of free movies to muffle out the sound.
Nothing can change the fact that you must sit still for fourteen hours only to awake from disorienting naps without alleviation to the arising vertigo.
The inclination to fly over to Seoul remained no matter what the cost. The reasons piled up and New York City would wait for me anyway.
I hadn’t loved living in Korea when I was a child as much as I enjoyed my life in the States. Seoul had become sterile and repetitive. Fads and style came and go while the people conformed to the cycles of the years. The buildings were too geometric and the prices were high.
I loved New York City more than any other place I’ve lived in the world. I loved the diversity of the attitudes and the determination of the common worker. Style changed here and there and it only took a step around the block to find it. Fridays kissed away the natural light and welcomed the liveliness of the nocturnal. The mornings after prodded at you to make something out of the day.
Nevertheless, Seoul begged to say hello. There were family members who needed reuniting and drinks to be bought for old friends.
There was only one reason that had me resolved to step one foot into the airport gates.
His name was Do Kyungsoo.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was the largest in the country. Tourists flocked to it like moths to candlelight and it was only two blocks away from my apartment. I went there like I needed it to sleep. I would roam around with the metal ticket buttoned to my collar. Exhibits came just as quickly as the previous left, and I felt I had memorized the contours and crevices of each statue.
Kyungsoo was anxious yet enthralled, avoiding eye contact with the appreciators but committing the appreciated into sheets of a thin sketchbook.
There was the lingering sentiment that he was a tourist. He sat at the wooden chairs converting currency and plucking his own twenty dollars to get into the exhibit.
Nobody paid twenty dollars to get in if they weren’t local. The sign over the head of the lady at the counter read, “Suggested Admission: $20”
‘Suggested’ meant you could slip a penny under the small window of the payment, and they’d welcome you back with a warm hello.
I raced after him when he scurried for that payment booth with all that money that could have bought him something better. He was inches away from sliding two tens under the window when I reached over and slung my arm around his shoulder while handing the woman two singles.
He froze in my hold and his eyes darted from my face to my hand that clung tightly to his small frame. I dragged him away into the first exhibit and laughed when he wouldn’t stop stuttering and squirming.
“This place is known for taking advantage of tourists. Use your money for something else.” We ended up in a light green room, adorned in Indian textiles, and for the first time I noticed how much his eyes widened when he looked up at you. He was pale and tiny, with black hair swirled at the front and red, plump lips that quivered with every word I whispered.
“Mian-…I-I can’t…English…thank you…sor...ry.”
He turned as red as an apple and forced his head down to look at our shoes. I moved closer and bent down to make eye contact, but he kept his eyes shut and did his best to look away.
I couldn’t help the pull at my lips before telling him that he could calm down and that I could speak Korean. He beamed at me and his hair bobbed in place with his sketchbook held tight to his chest.
His smile was so rounded at the ends and it was the first expression I had ever seen to be shaped like a heart. He was adorable and every little thing he did was implausibly endearing.
I offered to take him around and translate the descriptions under each of the works in the exhibits. He told me how wonderful it was to finally have someone who could understand him, and he spoke with his hands flying around for animation, even when he clumsily dropped the sketchbook and squealed with worry.
He said he had always wanted to come see this museum and that he loved the feeling that the city gave him.
I didn’t even come to the museum that day for anything specific. I was happy I had, though, when I held his bags and led him all the way to the rooftop. He wouldn’t stop talking about how much he loved art. He ran through the meaning of efflorescence, polyvinyl acetate, and the charm of a semi-gloss finish.
I listened even though I hardly knew a thing. I bought him lemonade on that rooftop as he played around a structure of mirror surfaced hexagons, stacked on top of the other where the sun danced around the floor. He laughed and took my hand to help me climb inside. There were mirrors surrounding us and duplicates of his smile on every panel and plane.
He looked so blissful and beautiful; he dazzled when he spoke and his eyes shone at every corner. The sun seeped through cracks in the dome and painted stripes of light across his face. I took his hand in mine and helped him hop down, my eyes glued to the way his smile turned to a solemn look of concentration.
He looked at me when we stepped outside the museum, sitting on the steps while he nibbled on each piece of a soft pretzel from the nearest concession stand. He told me he could throw up the honey roasted nuts and catch it in his mouth, and I almost sighed out all the air in my body when he reached so hard that he almost fell backwards just to get a bite.
The street performer fought for the attention and lured the people with the sharp melody of a worn out saxophone.
He asked me if I remembered my life back in Korea. I told him I would rather not. He said there was a chance that maybe it had gotten better from whatever it was I was thinking about.
He was two years younger than me but he whispered with the wisdom from books and the experiences of the immortal. He was philosophy all in himself and I fell in love with the inimitable air he exuded.
Reminders and realization stabbed me and suddenly I remembered that Do Kyungsoo was a tourist and that he was leaving today to go back to school.
“I wish that you wouldn’t have to go.” I mumbled through the saltiest end of the pretzel. “I had fun.”
He kept quiet, huddling his knees to his chest. “Me too.”
The endless chatter of the multitude of languages muffled around the paralyzing tune of the heavy saxophone. It escalated to a point of numbness, with the honking of taxis and the glances of the entertained.
There was the breeze that blew through the black swirl of Kyungsoo’s hair and the touch of his palm on my kneecap. His eyes were imploring and sad, they that told me of the need to go home but the want of staying still.
A frown creased my face at the airplanes I wouldn’t chase and the meetings that wouldn’t come. But he was smiling before saying I’m sorry with a hand pushing something into mine.
He leaned into me, pressing his chest into my knees and tilting his head up to touch his lips, full and warm, to mine. He reeled back when I pushed forward, yet he hadn’t let go and I met his red cheeks and widening eyes. My mouth felt numb and passive, immobilized with need to feel the sweetness that lingered at its corners.
I wiped the repentance away with my thumb on his lips when he pulled back and I only kissed him again, languid and indolently because the first one was too short and awfully fleeting. He drew back once more and stood up, shocked and flustered with colored pencils falling from his bag, because he kissed an older guy who had only shown him a couple paintings and bought him lemonade.
“Bye, Jongin!” He turned on his ankle and ran down the steps, I begged for the purchase of time and regret lodged itself in my stomach, but he turned around. He hugged his sketchbook to his chest like he did all the time, then he smiled-the heart-shaped smile that had my brain in disarray with a tilt of his head and a shrug of his shoulder. “See you again, okay?”
He ran around the corner and I watched him, crumpling the piece of paper he shoved into my palm with ephemeral sorrow.
‘Don’t forget me, please! -Do Kyungsoo’ it read, characters bubbly and small followed by a series of digits and dashes that had me smiling to the point where my jaw began to ache and I looked up again to see a swirl of black hair peeking out of the corner of a building and the heart-shaped smile that congratulated me on simply existing on that day.
He was sixteen and I was eighteen.
Now he’s eighteen, and now I’m twenty.
And I was desperate to see him again. I hadn’t had much contact with Do Kyungsoo during the past two years. The text messages began to fade as his workload weighed him down, and they were gone by the time the next August came around.
I never pestered him more, and I never packed an I love you into those messages. He’d tell me about his day but his days kept getting shorter and there was no more room for me.
I thought of him constantly, wondering about everything from his social life to his eating habits, from his grades to the kind of video games he played. I imagined if he still knew all those terms they use in art class and exactly nowhere else.
It was on a whim two years later that I had my thumb hovered over a button with his name on it. I had called him with nothing to say except I’m coming to America. I didn’t forget you. and the sound of him crying on the other end.
I never forgot what he looked like, but I hadn’t even told him where I would meet him. I knew what school he went to and now here I stood, walking the white halls of where he studied. I strolled around awkwardly in a black dress shirt, noticing the freshman who stared from inside their crisp, navy blue uniforms.
The visitors’ pass was neatly tucked into my shirt pocket, and I was bent on finding out how I would even begin looking for the boy named Do Kyungsoo.
I scratched my head and idly wandered around with frustration and impatience when the distant patter of running footsteps grew louder in my ear.
I turned around towards the sound only to be met with a body hurdled into mine and papers falling out of everywhere.
I shook out of the bewilderment when the boy was fidgeting around on his hands and knees, papers floating around as he tried to gather them into one, neat rectangle.
I crouched down to help him, stacking paper after paper slowly, looking at the pictures on each one. Some looked simple and others intricate, but they all had a certain style that had my eyes lingering on every stroke and detail.
“These are amazing.” I muttered through the frantic rustling.
“Thank you!” He laughed a little but returned to a solemn tone. “I hope none of them were ripped.”
I was frozen into tranquility at the first words that left him. He noticed the sudden silence and turned to look at me and I was shaking at the sight of those large eyes and soft lips.
“Jongin?” He shuddered, stepping forward to take it all in. I was even taller than him than before, but that hadn’t mattered because he seemed to have tripled in physical beauty and maturity.
My lips quivered into a smile and I had a glimpse that his did too, but I couldn’t see because his arms were tight around my neck and his feet weren’t even touching the floor. I wrapped my hold rigid and firm around his waist, relishing in the way he buried his face into the crook of my neck.
It was really him.
“I can’t believe… you’re here… in person.” He muttered between sniffles and I only laughed to fight back my own. “I almost didn’t believe-that you would actually come!”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” I let him down gently as he rested his head on my shoulder and slipped out of my grasp.
He was breathtaking, and I remembered that he was this beautiful in the museum but it wore out with the brevity of Skype calls that had entailed pain to meet the time zones.
“Why,” I breathed out at the sight of him. “were you running around the hallway like that?”
He seemed to relax once it had finally gotten through to him that we were finally less than a hemisphere apart.
“Oh, lunch ended a while ago but I wanted to see my friend. He came back from the hospital recently and I wanted to cheer him up.” He pouted, sitting on a nearby bench as I followed.
“What happened?”
“He,” He inhaled sharply and let out a harsh sigh. “got beat up on his way home from school.”
“Wow, that’s horrible. Is he okay now?”
“He’s been fine for a few days already but everyone is watching over him because he's blind.”
“This just keeps getting worse.” I mentioned cynically, and he only nodded but smiled at my concern.
“I still feel bad about Chanyeol.”
I felt my heart physically clenching under my ribs and the sound of his name. I knew that name. It was so clear and I couldn’t escape the peculiar prodding in my brain that had me teetering over the edge of insanity.
“Who is Chanyeol?” I remained calm and forced my facial expression to stay stagnant.
“Please don’t think I’m mean when I say this.” He looked up at me and begged while I only tightened my fists behind my back in anxiety. “Park Chanyeol is a new student at school. The thing is that he has a facial deformation and people can’t seem to get past that.”
It really was Park Chanyeol. I slumped into the bench and watched all the nervous energy shake through the tapping of my foot.
“I don’t even understand why they don’t try to get to know him first.” Kyungsoo fumed. “He’s in my art class and he hides in the corner so that nobody stares at him, but he’s the nicest guy I’ve ever met and people just keep saying he’s retarded.”
It’s been the same for years. Nothing changed for Chanyeol.
I just ruffled Kyungsoo’s hair and told him I was proud that he had a wonderful point of view. I told him I would see him later and I watched him rush to wherever it was he was going.
Once he was out of sight, I was slipping out of rest. I broke out into a cold sweat, wiping my forehead with my sleeves and pushing through the metal doors to get outside as fast as possible.
I shouldn’t have come. There were reasons I didn’t want to come back to Korea and this had to be somewhere near the top of that list. I never wanted to deal with my mistakes and I was perfectly fine washing the guilt away on the other end of the world.
I started to run blindly, aimlessly following the path of the sidewalk and the tips of my shoes scuffing along the road.
“Kim Jongin?” I looked up at the sound of the deep voice behind me. The foot steps came closer and I couldn’t keep focusing on the streetlights or the passing of cars. I stood there, without purpose, grabbing at the seconds that were slipping from my grasp.
I turned around slower than I could manage, buying the time that would distance me from the horrendous sensation eating away at my insides.
“Chanyeol.” I mustered up all the confidence in my body, but with every shake and shudder of my voice, I realized that there wasn’t any left.
“What,” His face hadn’t changed. Nothing had changed for Park Chanyeol. “are you doing here?”
“Do Kyungsoo is my boyfriend.” I swallowed hard, but couldn’t get the lump out of my throat. “The boy in your art class. I’m visiting him.”
Cars passed, the wind blew, and birds chirped, but nothing drew Chanyeol’s eyes from the stare that burned holes into mine.
“Where did you go?” He got louder and more furious, and I only became smaller with every minute that passed. “You just-you fell off the face of the earth, Jongin.”
“Chanyeol,” I pleaded, voice unclear and cracked. “I’m sorry. I’ve been meaning to say it. Please, Chanyeol-”
“You had six years to say you were sorry.” His voice began to wheeze, and his shoulders tightened up.
“I didn’t know how to say it!” I shouted out, loud and dipped in shame. “I was fourteen, and you wanted me to tell you myself, that your own mom paid me to hang out with you?” The louder I said it, the more cruel I saw myself. I accepted the money because I wanted arcade coins and candy.
That’s all I wanted. I wasn’t thinking about him.
“When I think about it, Jongin,” He laughed, forced and cynical. “I was an embarrassment to be seen with you. You hid me away from your friends and came over when they hadn’t even finished their homework. I thought I was lucky to have you, but it turns out that luck came at a price of fifteen dollars a week.”
I hadn’t improved since then.
His left eye closed shut and his right eye followed it in delay. He was frustrated and angry and all I could feel was my throat closing in on itself.
“I was an asshole for doing that to you, Chanyeol. For accepting the money. But I liked you! You were kind and all you thought about was me, but this is what I gave you in return and the guilt has been eating away at me for the past six years, and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
I always remembered you.
“Jongin.” A shaky, bandaged hand grabbed the row of buttons on my shirt. He was threatening to rip the fabric-his nails were basically clawing into the material. His head looked down at the pavement, and I was either relieved or ashamed that he wouldn’t even face me. “You were the only person I told. About what happened. About how I became like this. I trusted you, but all I got was the For Sale sign on your lawn and not even a phone call explaining why.”
I remembered the pictures of what he looked like when he was ten. He smiled in each one and he had trusted me enough to look at them.
He was beautiful, with porcelain skin and white, natural teeth. People envied the shape of his eyes and he couldn’t be happier.
“Please, Chanyeol. Listen to me.” His grip on my collar loosened, and I grabbed his wrist, watching him fail to fight back. “In the years I was gone from your life-”
“You left such a big hole.” He whimpered, burying his face into his arm and I watched the tears trickle from his eyes through my own blurred vision.
“-I never commended myself for leaving you. I never looked down on you when we were kids or thought you were as disgusting like you claimed you were. It’s not easy for people to love you, Chanyeol, but you have to let them know you so they can do just that.”
His hand wrenched out of my grasp and he looked straight at me. One eye had a yellow pigment traced along the lines of sickly dark, thin veins. This was the face that people used to envy.
Yet, each eye was melted down with the weariness of the constant torment that ate away at his brain throughout a life he didn’t want to have.
He was only twelve when he was sure that nobody would ever fall in love with him.
“I’m struggling,” He choked into his sleeve. “to believe you, but I can’t do it that easily. You left me and you had me searching and wondering for six years-whether you would come back or if you meant what you were.”
“Chanyeol, please,” I groaned until the air left my lungs. “I care about you, Chanyeol.”
“No matter how much I should believe you, what if I waste that second chance? What would I do then? What if I trust you, and you turn right around and leave me in the dust again?”
“I won’t do it again, Chanyeol. Just let me do anything to show you-”
“You were my best friend, Jongin.”
“Let me be that again, I-”
“I need to forget you.”
The air became hazy and Chanyeol stepped around me, walking behind me, down the road. He was leaving me and the feeling he endured because of me had never been less surreal.
I broke Chanyeol, I never tried to fix him, and I would have to live with that for more years than I could count.
“Yeol.” My voice shaky and with wavering confidence, I turned around and he looked up at me with sadness seeped through the crevices of his stare. “The more you struggle to forget me, the more I'm only going to try harder to remember you.”
He spun on his heel, and walked away. The words vanished like smoke as they lingered in the air but there was nobody to breathe it in.
Park Chanyeol was growing up, everybody was changing around us. I wished, that in the future, someone would care for him. Park Chanyeol deserved to be loved without a price-unconditionally, wholeheartedly. Someone would take Chanyeol’s hand, and hold it tenderly, with bliss.
Chanyeol would meet that person, and they would look past all the scars.
chapter 6: My Best Friend