pikasu
in
crosswards
synapse
Title: Synapse
Pairing: Yunjae
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama, Romance, Angst, Supernatural
Word count: 4,018w
Summary: Jaejoong could hear little voices at the back of his head when he was young, though he dismisses them as something normal, it didn't fade away when he grew older. Soon, Jaejoong finds himself trying to reach the voice, and discovers something so much more...
synapse.
in a neuronal system, a synapse is a junction that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell. it occurs in a flash - so fast that humans would never be able to catch it, but it's always there. always.
--
Since young, Jaejoong felt as if he had someone else living inside his head, that he shared a connection with someone. It started off at first as a small tingling back voice in his head when he was around four, where occasional little thought bubbles or "behind-thinks" would float to the recesses of his mind. Sometimes, Jaejoong found himself with brief flashes of little playthings he never possessed, or even flickers of random sceneries - the rustle of trees in the park, a bowl full of kimchi - that he had never seen before.
Jaejoong had dismissed it at first though, thinking that it was normal, but as he grew older, the images never stopped coming in. In fact, they had grown stronger, where there would even be lapses in time where Jaejoong finds himself staggering at the intensity of it.
Jaejoong knew that this wasn't normal.
So Jaejoong resigns to his fate, thinking that maybe he had some other alter ego somewhere in a parallel universe, or that his overactive imagination stimulated some sort of other counterpart to himself. But he keeps his ability - or so he likes to call it - a secret. His own very little secret shielded from the rest of the world, and his parents of course.
(Sometimes Jaejoong feels a little proud of himself when he manages to prevent his parents from finding out - they found out about his things too much.)
The voices grew more frequent when Jaejoong was seven. Now, it carried emotions too. Sometimes, Jaejoong suddenly feels a flash of anger or a faint bubbling of happiness coursing through his body, though Jaejoong wasn't experiencing any of such emotions at that time. The voices also grew to become more distinct, and it wasn't just random thought shapes that popped up now, but coherent strings of words.
Although Jaejoong knew that it was wrong, he couldn't help but listen in sometimes. He finds that if he concentrates hard enough, he could magnify the intensity of the voice.
"How could you be so stupid?" Jaejoong hears a foreign voice ring throughout his head.
Jaejoong notes that the voice was much coarser, and the pronunciation was so very different from the one he uses in Gongju. But Jaejoong strains to make out the words anyway.
"I'm sorry, Appa, Umma," Jaejoong's voice says.
And suddenly Jaejoong feels a white lash of anger and pain, and he recoils back from the shock, mind immediately thrown out of the conversation. What in the world just happened?
Jaejoong tries again some days later, his persistent self unwilling to give up so easily, where the throbbing pain disappeared from his body, and the sun no longer appeared too bright to his eyes.
"No,"
"But Appa, Umma, Ms. Park says I need money or I won't be able to go for the school tr-"
"Enough is enough! Don't go for the school trip then!"
This time, Jaejoong nearly quits when he feels a rush of sadness plowing through, but determined to find out more, Jaejoong presses on.
"Why must Appa and Umma treat me like that?"
"Do they really hate me that much?"
"Why must it be me?"
"Why?"
Jaejoong bites his lips when he feels the torrents of garbled up thoughts racing through his mind. He couldn't just sit here and do nothing, he thinks. So Jaejoong decides to try. He takes in a deep breath and bravely plunges into the abyss of his mind, searching every crevice for the source of the voice.
"Hello?" Jaejoong says timidly.
The voice freezes mid-sob, "W-Who's there?" it says hesitantly.
"Don't be sad," Jaejoong pauses. "I'll be here for you, if you need me."
"Are you the voice that's always in my head?" Jaejoong quirks an eyebrow. So he wasn't the only one that could hear the other's thoughts.
"You're the one that's always in my head!" Jaejoong says indignantly, unconsciously puffing up his cheeks.
"Am not!" And Jaejoong could almost see the other sticking out his tongue.
"Are too!" Jaejoong huffs.
"Am not!"
Not long after, Jaejoong finds himself quietly giggling in the corner of his room, tears of laughter streaming down his eyes.
"I like you," he says.
"I like you too," the voice replies happily back. It pauses, then,
"Would you really be there for me? Forever?" it says cautiously.
"Forever." Jaejoong replies confidently.
Jaejoong feels a slight bubble of happiness simmering in his body, and he lets a small smile ghost his features.
His other self was happy once more.
"Do you have a name?" Jaejoong hesitantly asks.
"Yunho," the voice says.
"Jaejoong," he says.
And they both melt into companionable silence.
--
So the voice becomes Yunho, and Yunho, Jaejoong thinks, is someone he can't really not talk to every single day. Jaejoong feels as if Yunho was more of a best friend than his other friends ever did - they were too fake, too annoying and god were they childish.
( Not that Jaejoong considers himself very mature though, but after talking to Yunho, he feels as if he'd grown up more. )
"Yunho," Jaejoong whines, just like every other day when he finally finishes school.
Jaejoong pauses; counts one, two.
"Yes, Jaejoong?" Yunho's voice reverberated strongly; amused.
"Siwon took my pencil again!" Jaejoong huffs, fat bubbly tears threatening to spill.
"Tell your mom, or your teacher," Yunho suggests.
"B-B-But I don't want to rely on them all the time!" Jaejoong protests.
"Why? Is it bad?"
"You never rely on your parents," Jaejoong quietly says.
A pause.
"...T-thats because my parents wouldn't help me anyway,"
"Why, Yunnie? How can they not help you?" Jaejoong bites his lips in curiousity.
"...They hate me," Yunho says sadly; Jaejoong remembers.
"Why must it be me?"
"Why?"
Jaejoong feels like whacking himself for his stupidity - how could he have forgotten? It was the entire reason why he found Yunho in the first place.
"I'm sorry Yunnie," Jaejoong says guiltily, fists clenched.
"It's not your fault,"
"But-"
"Hey Jae, I gotta go now, I'll talk to you later!" Yunho says abruptly, and pulls his mind out of the conversation such that Jaejoong could only hear faint murmurings and tiny sparks of emotions flying about.
Jaejoong sighs. He was indeed an idiot.
--
"Yunnie-"
"Sorry Jae, not today,"
Jaejoong feels a lump growing in his throat, and tries his best to swallow it. No, he won't cry. He couldn't.
Ever since that incident, Jaejoong finds himself getting ignored by Yunho more frequently.
"Does Yunho hate me now?" Jaejoong finds himself with a frightening thought, and forcibly tries to shake it out of his head.
But Jaejoong decides to give Yunho some time, Yunho would hate him even more if he continued to disturb him, he thinks. Perhaps there was a reason for the avoidance, perhaps Yunho was really busy. Jaejoong tries to confirm his thoughts, though he finds himself persistently blocked out from Yunho.
(Jaejoong hears a faint tinkling of a piano sometimes, his heart unconsciously clenching in sorrow, wondering if Yunho was not so busy after all.)
"What's wrong, my little Jae?" his mother had asked him one day when he felt all too sad to put on a happy mask.
"It's nothing, Umma," Jaejoong softly responds.
His mother hesitates, wondering whether to press on - Jaejoong sees it in her eyes, flickering in doubt.
"Sometimes Jae," his mother says. "Things turn out the least you expect it to be, so sometimes you just have to wait, and it'll be better again."
Jaejoong looks up curiously, eyes widening. "Really?"
"Yeah," his mother beams. "So cheer up and go wash your face. We're having dinner in ten."
"Okay."
As Jaejoong walks to the bathroom, though his heart indeed felt lighter, he still had his doubts. How long did he have to wait until Yunho was willing to talk to him again?
--
"Yunho-"
"I'm sorry Jae, but not today"
--
"Yun-"
"I'm sorry Jae, but I'm rather busy today"
--
"Yunnie-"
"I'm sorry Jae, but-"
"Shut up," Jaejoong screams. He couldn't take it any longer. Yunho had already been avoiding him for a whole week, and he was even planning to avoid him on his special day.
It's my birthday today," Jaejoong quietly says.
"Wait wha- Isn't it on the 26th?" Yunho voice comes in, almost to a shout.
"Today is the 26th, you idiot," Jaejoong wipes his tears.
"Oh gosh, I'm sorry Jae I really didn't kn-"
I hate you," Jaejoong says firmly, tears now streaming down his eyes.
"You know what I wished for when I blew out my seven candles, Yunnie?"
Silence.
"I wished that you would stop avoiding me," Jaejoong says in between sobs.
"Oh Jae-" Yunho says guiltily.
"I said I was sorry already!" Jaejoong shouts, completely ignoring Yunho. "Why do you still hate me so much?"
"I don't hate you Jae,"
"Liar."
"No, I really don't."
"Then why," Jaejoong says accusingly. "Did you avoid me?"
"Oh that, I was-"
"See, you admit that you were avoiding me! Doesn't that mean you hate me forever and ever and ever? Jaejoong says hysterically. "But I like you Yunnie, you can't leave me here all alone!"
"I SAID I WAS PREPARING A PRESENT FOR YOU," Yunho shouts exasperatedly.
"You were wha-" Jaejoong eyes widened in shock.
"It isn't completed yet, though I tried my best," Yunho says quietly.
Jaejoong hears the faint tinkling of the piano again, the notes resounding melodically in his mind.
"Happy Birthday Jae."
And Yunho began to sing, of soft lullabies and losing things then finding them again, of unexpected occurrences in his soft yet hesitant voice, and of love.
Jaejoong finds himself drifting off, lost in a world of his own. Yunho's voice flowed so beautifully through his mind, immediately calming his restless heart.
"We'll be together forever, won't we?" Yunho hesitantly asks.
"Always," Jaejoong says, his mind constantly berating himself for ever doubting Yunho in the first place.
"This is the best birthday present ever, Yunnie," Jaejoong eventually says happily.
"But I don't know what to give you for your birthday now," Jaejoong bites his lips.
"You're my best birthday present, Jaejoong."
And Jaejoong couldn't help but blush.
--
Jaejoong makes it a point to hug his mother after he made sure that his tears were all dried and his eyes were no longer red and puffy.
His mother had laughed delightedly then, complaining to a grinning Jaejoong about how he was going to hug all the breath out of her.
Jaejoong's mind couldn't help but ghost back to Yunho's situation then, Did Yunho's parents act like that to him?" Jaejoong thinks with a frown.
He dismisses the thought though, thinking that all parents must act like that to their children.
--
"Yunnie! I cooked my first bowl of Kimchi soup!" Jaejoong squeals excitedly one day, after his mother had reluctantly allowed him into the kitchen. Surprisingly, she found that Jaejoong could indeed cook after all, without blowing up the kitchen like the rest of his sisters did.
"Thats great!" Yunho says encouragingly. "I bet it tasted weird though," he adds in teasingly.
"It tasted fine!" Jaejoong pouts.
"Right, it did," Yunho says, voice full of amusement.
"It really did!" Jaejoong protests.
"I believe you.
"Hey!" Jaejoong huffs as he senses the sarcasm in Yunho's voice.
"One day, I'll make you say that I cook the greatest kimchi soup ever!"
"I'll be looking forward to that day then," Yunho says teasingly, letting a stream of protest from Jaejoong fill his head.
Inside his heart though, he couldn't wait for the day to come.
--
Yunho continues writing music, though he made sure that he kept Jaejoong in the loop, lest he started crying again - Yunho hated it when Jaejoong cried, it made him feel powerless and made him want to cry himself.
Somewhere along the road - Yunho can't be sure when - he found himself falling in love with Jaejoong. Though people often said that nine-year-olds could never know the meaning of love, Yunho thinks that if such intense feelings of his isn't love, then he would never experience it.
He isn't quite sure though, but he knows that Jaejoong was someone he couldn't live without, and the mere thought of separation or losing contact with him scared him so bad he thought he could die.
But Yunho keeps his love for Jaejoong a secret, though he wants it so badly to confess to him and be loved back. He knows that love isn't merry and beautiful like how it was always portrayed to be - his parents were clear examples - so he shuts his mouth. Better friends than having Jaejoong hate him, he thinks sadly.
Yunho sings for Jaejoong almost every other day, perfectly content with it. (Jaejoong always smiled and laughed so happily after he finished singing.) Yunho tries to get Jaejoong to sing with him too, but Jaejoong had refused him outright.
"My voice is horrible," Jaejoong says sadly. "Umma says I'm...deaf or something."
Yunho's eyes widened. "You mean tone deaf, right?"
"Oh yeah, that," Jaejoong giggles. Yunho sighs in relief.
"I'll sing for both of us then," Yunho says determinedly.
"When I grow up I'm going to be a famous singer, so famous that you won't be able to not recognize me. Then you'll be able to find me," Yunho says.
(It's not as if they didn't want to meet as they were now, but they agreed that their parents would find it peculiar if they had suddenly demanded to go to Gongju, or Gwangju.)
Jaejoong laughs. "I'll be a chef then, so you can taste my awesome greatest bestest kimchi soup every day."
"Deal?" Yunho says hopefully.
"Deal."
--
Jaejoong wakes up on a dreary Monday morning to find Yunho softly crying, waves of sadness crashing through his head.
"Yunnie? Yunnie what's wrong?" Jaejoong says concernedly.
"Jae, oh Jae," Yunho voice breaks. "M-my parents s-said t-that t-t-they were getting a-a di-di-divorce."
"What's a divorce?" Jaejoong bites his lips helplessly.
"T-T-They're go-going to s-se-sepa-separate." Yunho says in between tears.
"Oh Yunnie..." Jaejoong says, screaming himself for his uselessness at comforting his best friend.
"I'm here, Yunnie, I'll always be here" Jaejoong really wants to envelop Yunho in a hug and tuck him in a blanket, safe from the world.
Jaejoong lies to his mother then, that he was feeling sick and didn't want to go to school, so that he could stay in his room and comfort Yunho.
(He doesn't know why he feels as if his heart was cracking though, whenever Yunho lets out a particularly hard sob.)
--
"Umma," Jaejoong hesitantly says, lowering his eyes timidly as his mother looked up from the television.
"What's wrong Jae?"
"M-My friend says h-h-his parents are getting a di-divorce," Jaejoong waves his hands helplessly. "I don't know what to do to make him happy again."
"Oh, who is it?" Jaejoong's mother asks, curious.
Jaejoong bites his lips, shuffling his feet uneasily.
His mother sighs. "Nevermind then."
"So-"
"Do something for him that he likes, Jaejoong-ah," his mother says smiling. "I'm sure he'll be happier." Her eyes revert back to the TV screen, leaving Jaejoong to ponder about his mother's words.
--
Yunho felt as if his whole world was crashing down on his shoulders - he couldn't even feel his legs anymore. Sure, his parents didn't treat him very well, but they were his parents after all. He lets out a choked sob at that thought, body once more numbing again. He wishes that this was all a very bad dream, and he was going to wake up and find that his parents were with him once again.
But all Yunho sees is a deep dark abyss, shadows waiting to engulf him into despair.
"Yunnie," Jaejoong's voice comes in clear as day.
Yunho subconsciously thinks that if it weren't for Jaejoong, he wouldn't know how he was going to survive.
"Don't laugh okay," Jaejoong voice trembles.
Yunho remains quiet, too caught up in his own sorrow to reply.
Until Jaejoong started to sing.
Yunho feels his heart gripping and his eyes widening when Jaejoong's voice trembles, singing of happiness and hope and bad dreams. Even though his tune was shaky and his notes were off, Yunho never heard something so beautiful, so pure his entire life.
"Cheer up okay," Jaejoong softly says.
And Yunho breaks.
Yunho lets out all his fears, his monsters of the past and every single thing that he kept bottled up ever since he was young. He knows he sounds like a blubbering mess to Jaejoong, but because it was Jaejoong and only Jaejoong that he bothers to do it.
"I think I love you, Jaejoong-ah"
Yunho doesn't realize that Jaejoong remains silent throughout.
--
Yunho doesn't realize it at first, that Jaejoong stops talking to him ever since that incident. He tries to reach him at first, though Jaejoong's thoughts were always blocked by some weird fuzzy uncertainty.
Yunho dismisses it at first, thinking that something important must have cropped up at Jaejoong's side, but after days, Yunho begins to suspect otherwise.
"Is it because of my confession?" Yunho thought worriedly.
Yunho tries reaching Jaejoong with a renewed desperation, tearing and screaming at the walls Jaejoong built around his mind, unwilling to let anyone in. Days turned into weeks as Yunho tries again and again to contact Jaejoong, though all his attempts were fruitless.
"Jaejoong-ah, let me in, Jaejoong-ah, why won't you let me in?" Yunho whispers brokenly.
Yunho finds something breaking inside of him then, his emotions dulling and his body going completely numb. It was even worse than when his parents had gotten divorced. Yunho thinks it might be his heart breaking, though he isn't completely sure, and doesn't give a damn anymore anyway.
--
Jaejoong wakes up with a headache.
"Three months, fourteen days, five minutes and twenty-six seconds since I've ignored Yunho," Jaejoong thinks sadly.
Jaejoong didn't want to ignore Yunho, he really didn't. But his head was in such a mess and everything he thought about was Yunho's confession, and Yunho, Yunho, Yunho. He didn't know how he could face Yunho with such improper thoughts, and he knew he had to give Yunho his answer - but he wasn't ready yet. So Jaejoong blocks Yunho out until he sorts out his thoughts, until he can be really sure of his response to Yunho's confession.
Jaejoong wants to love Yunho.
He wants to spend his days with Yunho, wants to cook for Yunho, wants to be the one first to know about Yunho's worries, Yunho's problem.
He wants to be the only one Yunho sings for.
But Jaejoong fears - he fears that his family would hate him, that everyone would hate him. He's seen what happened to couples when both were males before, seen the passers-by disgusted looks thrown at them, and the constant pressure they had to live in.
Jaejoong fears he wouldn't be good enough for him.
--
Jaejoong wakes up again, but his headache still remains. This time though, he hears Yunho's desperate voice at the back of his head.
"Yunho?" Jaejoong murmurs sleepily, then freezes, realizing that he was supposed to be blocking Yunho out.
"Jae, oh Jae, Jae, Jae!" Yunho says desperately. "Please don't fade, don't fade..."
Jaejoong's eyes widened in shock as he abruptly sat up on his bed.
"Yunho?" Jaejoong says. "Yunho!" he says with more desperation as Yunho's voice grew softer and softer.
"Don't fade, Yunho-yah," Jaejoong tries not to cry. "You can't fade, you can't."
"Jaejoong!" Yunho shouts desperately when he senses that they were on the brink of falling apart. "We'll always be toge-"
"Yunho-yah!" Jaejoong screams, tears spilling down his cheeks incessantly. "I-I love y-"
And then all was silent.
"You," Jaejoong whispers brokenly into silence, breaking down, his body wracking so bad with sobs that his heart hurts.
--
Jaejoong feels as if he had lost a part of his body after the absence of Yunho's voice echoing in his mind. It was as if the days became indistinguishable from the nights, as Jaejoong drifts about, uncaring of the world.
His mother notices it first though, as always, when Jaejoong tries to force a smile that didn't reach his eyes. She feels her heart wrenching, when her eyes meet Jaejoong's.
Something must have happened, she thought, after she saw Jaejoong's soulless eyes.
They said that people's eyes were like windows to their souls, so, she thinks; frightened, if their eyes were just blank, nothing at all, does that mean that they had no soul?
"Jaejoong-ah, what happened?" she asks softly, more hesitantly now, careful of his reaction.
Jaejoong appeared as if he might break anytime.
"It's nothing Umma," Jaejoong forces his lips to crinkle into a smile, but failed. "I just lost something really important."
Jaejoong's mother nearly broke down when she sees whispers of her son's tears sliding down his cheeks.
No, she thinks. This was something she couldn't interfere with, even if she wanted to.
(Sometimes, she wonders when did her child grow up so fast, wonders how could a twelve-year-old be so mature, so knowing of the pains of the world.)
"Jaejoong-ah," she says shakily. "Sometimes, things are meant to be lost, it just depends on how you want to find them again."
And for that moment, she thought she saw a flicker of something in Jaejoong's eyes.
"Thanks Umma," Jaejoong says, sounding more sincere and happier than he had ever sounded ever since a few days ago.
--
(Jaejoong's mother still wonders if she had done the right thing though, as ever since then all she hears from her son are tuneless notes in the middle of the night, singing and singing until his voice cracked. )
(Even then, he had continued to sing.)
--
A few years later, Jaejoong turns seventeen in the corner of some nameless kitchen in Seoul, face stained with oil and hands sore from holding the wok too long.
There were times where Jaejoong felt like giving up, especially when he was thrown out of his house when he couldn't pay his rent, or when he nearly starved to death in the middle of the night. But Jaejoong pressed on, he didn't travel all the way to Seoul, ignoring his mother's silent pleas, for nothing.
"Just you wait, Yunho-yah," Jaejoong thinks determinedly. "I'll find you. I'll definitely find you."
--
After too many sprains and bruises from exerting himself, Jaejoong finds himself one step closer to his goal.
"You're a promising kid," a man says. "So don't let me down okay?"
Jaejoong bites his lips and nods, mind set on accomplishing what he had set out to do for the past five years.
--
Months later, Jaejoong ends up in an overly-polished meeting room, face to face with the stern man that took him in.
"You're ready, Kim Jaejoong," he says. "From this day on, you will be Kim Jaejoong no longer, instead, you'll be Youngwoong Jaejoong. Remember the name well."
"Yes," Jaejoong bows.
"You'd be debuting together with four other promising trainees, they-"
A loud bang interrupts his speech, and Jaejoong swerves around to find himself face to face with a giggling boy.
"Sorry?" the boy says, giggling.
"Oh Junsu, did you really had to do that?" the person trailing behind says exasperatedly.
"Sorry Yoochun," the boy, apparently called Junsu says.
"Well, just in time then," the man says. "Jaejoong, meet your new group mates."
Jaejoong meets a pair of warm, chocolate brown eyes and a cheerful smile. And suddenly he feels as if it closes a circuit he never knew existed in his body, and all he feels are overwhelming thoughts of love, love and love.
"Hello Jaejoong," the man with the brown eyes says warmly.
"Nice to meet you, my name is Jung Yunho."
--
end
A/N: SWAFNDIUGBF i was supposed to update HS fic but THIS came out instead >< /bows and apologizes
Pairing: Yunjae
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama, Romance, Angst, Supernatural
Word count: 4,018w
Summary: Jaejoong could hear little voices at the back of his head when he was young, though he dismisses them as something normal, it didn't fade away when he grew older. Soon, Jaejoong finds himself trying to reach the voice, and discovers something so much more...
synapse.
in a neuronal system, a synapse is a junction that permits a neuron to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another cell. it occurs in a flash - so fast that humans would never be able to catch it, but it's always there. always.
--
Since young, Jaejoong felt as if he had someone else living inside his head, that he shared a connection with someone. It started off at first as a small tingling back voice in his head when he was around four, where occasional little thought bubbles or "behind-thinks" would float to the recesses of his mind. Sometimes, Jaejoong found himself with brief flashes of little playthings he never possessed, or even flickers of random sceneries - the rustle of trees in the park, a bowl full of kimchi - that he had never seen before.
Jaejoong had dismissed it at first though, thinking that it was normal, but as he grew older, the images never stopped coming in. In fact, they had grown stronger, where there would even be lapses in time where Jaejoong finds himself staggering at the intensity of it.
Jaejoong knew that this wasn't normal.
So Jaejoong resigns to his fate, thinking that maybe he had some other alter ego somewhere in a parallel universe, or that his overactive imagination stimulated some sort of other counterpart to himself. But he keeps his ability - or so he likes to call it - a secret. His own very little secret shielded from the rest of the world, and his parents of course.
(Sometimes Jaejoong feels a little proud of himself when he manages to prevent his parents from finding out - they found out about his things too much.)
The voices grew more frequent when Jaejoong was seven. Now, it carried emotions too. Sometimes, Jaejoong suddenly feels a flash of anger or a faint bubbling of happiness coursing through his body, though Jaejoong wasn't experiencing any of such emotions at that time. The voices also grew to become more distinct, and it wasn't just random thought shapes that popped up now, but coherent strings of words.
Although Jaejoong knew that it was wrong, he couldn't help but listen in sometimes. He finds that if he concentrates hard enough, he could magnify the intensity of the voice.
"How could you be so stupid?" Jaejoong hears a foreign voice ring throughout his head.
Jaejoong notes that the voice was much coarser, and the pronunciation was so very different from the one he uses in Gongju. But Jaejoong strains to make out the words anyway.
"I'm sorry, Appa, Umma," Jaejoong's voice says.
And suddenly Jaejoong feels a white lash of anger and pain, and he recoils back from the shock, mind immediately thrown out of the conversation. What in the world just happened?
Jaejoong tries again some days later, his persistent self unwilling to give up so easily, where the throbbing pain disappeared from his body, and the sun no longer appeared too bright to his eyes.
"No,"
"But Appa, Umma, Ms. Park says I need money or I won't be able to go for the school tr-"
"Enough is enough! Don't go for the school trip then!"
This time, Jaejoong nearly quits when he feels a rush of sadness plowing through, but determined to find out more, Jaejoong presses on.
"Why must Appa and Umma treat me like that?"
"Do they really hate me that much?"
"Why must it be me?"
"Why?"
Jaejoong bites his lips when he feels the torrents of garbled up thoughts racing through his mind. He couldn't just sit here and do nothing, he thinks. So Jaejoong decides to try. He takes in a deep breath and bravely plunges into the abyss of his mind, searching every crevice for the source of the voice.
"Hello?" Jaejoong says timidly.
The voice freezes mid-sob, "W-Who's there?" it says hesitantly.
"Don't be sad," Jaejoong pauses. "I'll be here for you, if you need me."
"Are you the voice that's always in my head?" Jaejoong quirks an eyebrow. So he wasn't the only one that could hear the other's thoughts.
"You're the one that's always in my head!" Jaejoong says indignantly, unconsciously puffing up his cheeks.
"Am not!" And Jaejoong could almost see the other sticking out his tongue.
"Are too!" Jaejoong huffs.
"Am not!"
Not long after, Jaejoong finds himself quietly giggling in the corner of his room, tears of laughter streaming down his eyes.
"I like you," he says.
"I like you too," the voice replies happily back. It pauses, then,
"Would you really be there for me? Forever?" it says cautiously.
"Forever." Jaejoong replies confidently.
Jaejoong feels a slight bubble of happiness simmering in his body, and he lets a small smile ghost his features.
His other self was happy once more.
"Do you have a name?" Jaejoong hesitantly asks.
"Yunho," the voice says.
"Jaejoong," he says.
And they both melt into companionable silence.
--
So the voice becomes Yunho, and Yunho, Jaejoong thinks, is someone he can't really not talk to every single day. Jaejoong feels as if Yunho was more of a best friend than his other friends ever did - they were too fake, too annoying and god were they childish.
( Not that Jaejoong considers himself very mature though, but after talking to Yunho, he feels as if he'd grown up more. )
"Yunho," Jaejoong whines, just like every other day when he finally finishes school.
Jaejoong pauses; counts one, two.
"Yes, Jaejoong?" Yunho's voice reverberated strongly; amused.
"Siwon took my pencil again!" Jaejoong huffs, fat bubbly tears threatening to spill.
"Tell your mom, or your teacher," Yunho suggests.
"B-B-But I don't want to rely on them all the time!" Jaejoong protests.
"Why? Is it bad?"
"You never rely on your parents," Jaejoong quietly says.
A pause.
"...T-thats because my parents wouldn't help me anyway,"
"Why, Yunnie? How can they not help you?" Jaejoong bites his lips in curiousity.
"...They hate me," Yunho says sadly; Jaejoong remembers.
"Why must it be me?"
"Why?"
Jaejoong feels like whacking himself for his stupidity - how could he have forgotten? It was the entire reason why he found Yunho in the first place.
"I'm sorry Yunnie," Jaejoong says guiltily, fists clenched.
"It's not your fault,"
"But-"
"Hey Jae, I gotta go now, I'll talk to you later!" Yunho says abruptly, and pulls his mind out of the conversation such that Jaejoong could only hear faint murmurings and tiny sparks of emotions flying about.
Jaejoong sighs. He was indeed an idiot.
--
"Yunnie-"
"Sorry Jae, not today,"
Jaejoong feels a lump growing in his throat, and tries his best to swallow it. No, he won't cry. He couldn't.
Ever since that incident, Jaejoong finds himself getting ignored by Yunho more frequently.
"Does Yunho hate me now?" Jaejoong finds himself with a frightening thought, and forcibly tries to shake it out of his head.
But Jaejoong decides to give Yunho some time, Yunho would hate him even more if he continued to disturb him, he thinks. Perhaps there was a reason for the avoidance, perhaps Yunho was really busy. Jaejoong tries to confirm his thoughts, though he finds himself persistently blocked out from Yunho.
(Jaejoong hears a faint tinkling of a piano sometimes, his heart unconsciously clenching in sorrow, wondering if Yunho was not so busy after all.)
"What's wrong, my little Jae?" his mother had asked him one day when he felt all too sad to put on a happy mask.
"It's nothing, Umma," Jaejoong softly responds.
His mother hesitates, wondering whether to press on - Jaejoong sees it in her eyes, flickering in doubt.
"Sometimes Jae," his mother says. "Things turn out the least you expect it to be, so sometimes you just have to wait, and it'll be better again."
Jaejoong looks up curiously, eyes widening. "Really?"
"Yeah," his mother beams. "So cheer up and go wash your face. We're having dinner in ten."
"Okay."
As Jaejoong walks to the bathroom, though his heart indeed felt lighter, he still had his doubts. How long did he have to wait until Yunho was willing to talk to him again?
--
"Yunho-"
"I'm sorry Jae, but not today"
--
"Yun-"
"I'm sorry Jae, but I'm rather busy today"
--
"Yunnie-"
"I'm sorry Jae, but-"
"Shut up," Jaejoong screams. He couldn't take it any longer. Yunho had already been avoiding him for a whole week, and he was even planning to avoid him on his special day.
It's my birthday today," Jaejoong quietly says.
"Wait wha- Isn't it on the 26th?" Yunho voice comes in, almost to a shout.
"Today is the 26th, you idiot," Jaejoong wipes his tears.
"Oh gosh, I'm sorry Jae I really didn't kn-"
I hate you," Jaejoong says firmly, tears now streaming down his eyes.
"You know what I wished for when I blew out my seven candles, Yunnie?"
Silence.
"I wished that you would stop avoiding me," Jaejoong says in between sobs.
"Oh Jae-" Yunho says guiltily.
"I said I was sorry already!" Jaejoong shouts, completely ignoring Yunho. "Why do you still hate me so much?"
"I don't hate you Jae,"
"Liar."
"No, I really don't."
"Then why," Jaejoong says accusingly. "Did you avoid me?"
"Oh that, I was-"
"See, you admit that you were avoiding me! Doesn't that mean you hate me forever and ever and ever? Jaejoong says hysterically. "But I like you Yunnie, you can't leave me here all alone!"
"I SAID I WAS PREPARING A PRESENT FOR YOU," Yunho shouts exasperatedly.
"You were wha-" Jaejoong eyes widened in shock.
"It isn't completed yet, though I tried my best," Yunho says quietly.
Jaejoong hears the faint tinkling of the piano again, the notes resounding melodically in his mind.
"Happy Birthday Jae."
And Yunho began to sing, of soft lullabies and losing things then finding them again, of unexpected occurrences in his soft yet hesitant voice, and of love.
Jaejoong finds himself drifting off, lost in a world of his own. Yunho's voice flowed so beautifully through his mind, immediately calming his restless heart.
"We'll be together forever, won't we?" Yunho hesitantly asks.
"Always," Jaejoong says, his mind constantly berating himself for ever doubting Yunho in the first place.
"This is the best birthday present ever, Yunnie," Jaejoong eventually says happily.
"But I don't know what to give you for your birthday now," Jaejoong bites his lips.
"You're my best birthday present, Jaejoong."
And Jaejoong couldn't help but blush.
--
Jaejoong makes it a point to hug his mother after he made sure that his tears were all dried and his eyes were no longer red and puffy.
His mother had laughed delightedly then, complaining to a grinning Jaejoong about how he was going to hug all the breath out of her.
Jaejoong's mind couldn't help but ghost back to Yunho's situation then, Did Yunho's parents act like that to him?" Jaejoong thinks with a frown.
He dismisses the thought though, thinking that all parents must act like that to their children.
--
"Yunnie! I cooked my first bowl of Kimchi soup!" Jaejoong squeals excitedly one day, after his mother had reluctantly allowed him into the kitchen. Surprisingly, she found that Jaejoong could indeed cook after all, without blowing up the kitchen like the rest of his sisters did.
"Thats great!" Yunho says encouragingly. "I bet it tasted weird though," he adds in teasingly.
"It tasted fine!" Jaejoong pouts.
"Right, it did," Yunho says, voice full of amusement.
"It really did!" Jaejoong protests.
"I believe you.
"Hey!" Jaejoong huffs as he senses the sarcasm in Yunho's voice.
"One day, I'll make you say that I cook the greatest kimchi soup ever!"
"I'll be looking forward to that day then," Yunho says teasingly, letting a stream of protest from Jaejoong fill his head.
Inside his heart though, he couldn't wait for the day to come.
--
Yunho continues writing music, though he made sure that he kept Jaejoong in the loop, lest he started crying again - Yunho hated it when Jaejoong cried, it made him feel powerless and made him want to cry himself.
Somewhere along the road - Yunho can't be sure when - he found himself falling in love with Jaejoong. Though people often said that nine-year-olds could never know the meaning of love, Yunho thinks that if such intense feelings of his isn't love, then he would never experience it.
He isn't quite sure though, but he knows that Jaejoong was someone he couldn't live without, and the mere thought of separation or losing contact with him scared him so bad he thought he could die.
But Yunho keeps his love for Jaejoong a secret, though he wants it so badly to confess to him and be loved back. He knows that love isn't merry and beautiful like how it was always portrayed to be - his parents were clear examples - so he shuts his mouth. Better friends than having Jaejoong hate him, he thinks sadly.
Yunho sings for Jaejoong almost every other day, perfectly content with it. (Jaejoong always smiled and laughed so happily after he finished singing.) Yunho tries to get Jaejoong to sing with him too, but Jaejoong had refused him outright.
"My voice is horrible," Jaejoong says sadly. "Umma says I'm...deaf or something."
Yunho's eyes widened. "You mean tone deaf, right?"
"Oh yeah, that," Jaejoong giggles. Yunho sighs in relief.
"I'll sing for both of us then," Yunho says determinedly.
"When I grow up I'm going to be a famous singer, so famous that you won't be able to not recognize me. Then you'll be able to find me," Yunho says.
(It's not as if they didn't want to meet as they were now, but they agreed that their parents would find it peculiar if they had suddenly demanded to go to Gongju, or Gwangju.)
Jaejoong laughs. "I'll be a chef then, so you can taste my awesome greatest bestest kimchi soup every day."
"Deal?" Yunho says hopefully.
"Deal."
--
Jaejoong wakes up on a dreary Monday morning to find Yunho softly crying, waves of sadness crashing through his head.
"Yunnie? Yunnie what's wrong?" Jaejoong says concernedly.
"Jae, oh Jae," Yunho voice breaks. "M-my parents s-said t-that t-t-they were getting a-a di-di-divorce."
"What's a divorce?" Jaejoong bites his lips helplessly.
"T-T-They're go-going to s-se-sepa-separate." Yunho says in between tears.
"Oh Yunnie..." Jaejoong says, screaming himself for his uselessness at comforting his best friend.
"I'm here, Yunnie, I'll always be here" Jaejoong really wants to envelop Yunho in a hug and tuck him in a blanket, safe from the world.
Jaejoong lies to his mother then, that he was feeling sick and didn't want to go to school, so that he could stay in his room and comfort Yunho.
(He doesn't know why he feels as if his heart was cracking though, whenever Yunho lets out a particularly hard sob.)
--
"Umma," Jaejoong hesitantly says, lowering his eyes timidly as his mother looked up from the television.
"What's wrong Jae?"
"M-My friend says h-h-his parents are getting a di-divorce," Jaejoong waves his hands helplessly. "I don't know what to do to make him happy again."
"Oh, who is it?" Jaejoong's mother asks, curious.
Jaejoong bites his lips, shuffling his feet uneasily.
His mother sighs. "Nevermind then."
"So-"
"Do something for him that he likes, Jaejoong-ah," his mother says smiling. "I'm sure he'll be happier." Her eyes revert back to the TV screen, leaving Jaejoong to ponder about his mother's words.
--
Yunho felt as if his whole world was crashing down on his shoulders - he couldn't even feel his legs anymore. Sure, his parents didn't treat him very well, but they were his parents after all. He lets out a choked sob at that thought, body once more numbing again. He wishes that this was all a very bad dream, and he was going to wake up and find that his parents were with him once again.
But all Yunho sees is a deep dark abyss, shadows waiting to engulf him into despair.
"Yunnie," Jaejoong's voice comes in clear as day.
Yunho subconsciously thinks that if it weren't for Jaejoong, he wouldn't know how he was going to survive.
"Don't laugh okay," Jaejoong voice trembles.
Yunho remains quiet, too caught up in his own sorrow to reply.
Until Jaejoong started to sing.
Yunho feels his heart gripping and his eyes widening when Jaejoong's voice trembles, singing of happiness and hope and bad dreams. Even though his tune was shaky and his notes were off, Yunho never heard something so beautiful, so pure his entire life.
"Cheer up okay," Jaejoong softly says.
And Yunho breaks.
Yunho lets out all his fears, his monsters of the past and every single thing that he kept bottled up ever since he was young. He knows he sounds like a blubbering mess to Jaejoong, but because it was Jaejoong and only Jaejoong that he bothers to do it.
"I think I love you, Jaejoong-ah"
Yunho doesn't realize that Jaejoong remains silent throughout.
--
Yunho doesn't realize it at first, that Jaejoong stops talking to him ever since that incident. He tries to reach him at first, though Jaejoong's thoughts were always blocked by some weird fuzzy uncertainty.
Yunho dismisses it at first, thinking that something important must have cropped up at Jaejoong's side, but after days, Yunho begins to suspect otherwise.
"Is it because of my confession?" Yunho thought worriedly.
Yunho tries reaching Jaejoong with a renewed desperation, tearing and screaming at the walls Jaejoong built around his mind, unwilling to let anyone in. Days turned into weeks as Yunho tries again and again to contact Jaejoong, though all his attempts were fruitless.
"Jaejoong-ah, let me in, Jaejoong-ah, why won't you let me in?" Yunho whispers brokenly.
Yunho finds something breaking inside of him then, his emotions dulling and his body going completely numb. It was even worse than when his parents had gotten divorced. Yunho thinks it might be his heart breaking, though he isn't completely sure, and doesn't give a damn anymore anyway.
--
Jaejoong wakes up with a headache.
"Three months, fourteen days, five minutes and twenty-six seconds since I've ignored Yunho," Jaejoong thinks sadly.
Jaejoong didn't want to ignore Yunho, he really didn't. But his head was in such a mess and everything he thought about was Yunho's confession, and Yunho, Yunho, Yunho. He didn't know how he could face Yunho with such improper thoughts, and he knew he had to give Yunho his answer - but he wasn't ready yet. So Jaejoong blocks Yunho out until he sorts out his thoughts, until he can be really sure of his response to Yunho's confession.
Jaejoong wants to love Yunho.
He wants to spend his days with Yunho, wants to cook for Yunho, wants to be the one first to know about Yunho's worries, Yunho's problem.
He wants to be the only one Yunho sings for.
But Jaejoong fears - he fears that his family would hate him, that everyone would hate him. He's seen what happened to couples when both were males before, seen the passers-by disgusted looks thrown at them, and the constant pressure they had to live in.
Jaejoong fears he wouldn't be good enough for him.
--
Jaejoong wakes up again, but his headache still remains. This time though, he hears Yunho's desperate voice at the back of his head.
"Yunho?" Jaejoong murmurs sleepily, then freezes, realizing that he was supposed to be blocking Yunho out.
"Jae, oh Jae, Jae, Jae!" Yunho says desperately. "Please don't fade, don't fade..."
Jaejoong's eyes widened in shock as he abruptly sat up on his bed.
"Yunho?" Jaejoong says. "Yunho!" he says with more desperation as Yunho's voice grew softer and softer.
"Don't fade, Yunho-yah," Jaejoong tries not to cry. "You can't fade, you can't."
"Jaejoong!" Yunho shouts desperately when he senses that they were on the brink of falling apart. "We'll always be toge-"
"Yunho-yah!" Jaejoong screams, tears spilling down his cheeks incessantly. "I-I love y-"
And then all was silent.
"You," Jaejoong whispers brokenly into silence, breaking down, his body wracking so bad with sobs that his heart hurts.
--
Jaejoong feels as if he had lost a part of his body after the absence of Yunho's voice echoing in his mind. It was as if the days became indistinguishable from the nights, as Jaejoong drifts about, uncaring of the world.
His mother notices it first though, as always, when Jaejoong tries to force a smile that didn't reach his eyes. She feels her heart wrenching, when her eyes meet Jaejoong's.
Something must have happened, she thought, after she saw Jaejoong's soulless eyes.
They said that people's eyes were like windows to their souls, so, she thinks; frightened, if their eyes were just blank, nothing at all, does that mean that they had no soul?
"Jaejoong-ah, what happened?" she asks softly, more hesitantly now, careful of his reaction.
Jaejoong appeared as if he might break anytime.
"It's nothing Umma," Jaejoong forces his lips to crinkle into a smile, but failed. "I just lost something really important."
Jaejoong's mother nearly broke down when she sees whispers of her son's tears sliding down his cheeks.
No, she thinks. This was something she couldn't interfere with, even if she wanted to.
(Sometimes, she wonders when did her child grow up so fast, wonders how could a twelve-year-old be so mature, so knowing of the pains of the world.)
"Jaejoong-ah," she says shakily. "Sometimes, things are meant to be lost, it just depends on how you want to find them again."
And for that moment, she thought she saw a flicker of something in Jaejoong's eyes.
"Thanks Umma," Jaejoong says, sounding more sincere and happier than he had ever sounded ever since a few days ago.
--
(Jaejoong's mother still wonders if she had done the right thing though, as ever since then all she hears from her son are tuneless notes in the middle of the night, singing and singing until his voice cracked. )
(Even then, he had continued to sing.)
--
A few years later, Jaejoong turns seventeen in the corner of some nameless kitchen in Seoul, face stained with oil and hands sore from holding the wok too long.
There were times where Jaejoong felt like giving up, especially when he was thrown out of his house when he couldn't pay his rent, or when he nearly starved to death in the middle of the night. But Jaejoong pressed on, he didn't travel all the way to Seoul, ignoring his mother's silent pleas, for nothing.
"Just you wait, Yunho-yah," Jaejoong thinks determinedly. "I'll find you. I'll definitely find you."
--
After too many sprains and bruises from exerting himself, Jaejoong finds himself one step closer to his goal.
"You're a promising kid," a man says. "So don't let me down okay?"
Jaejoong bites his lips and nods, mind set on accomplishing what he had set out to do for the past five years.
--
Months later, Jaejoong ends up in an overly-polished meeting room, face to face with the stern man that took him in.
"You're ready, Kim Jaejoong," he says. "From this day on, you will be Kim Jaejoong no longer, instead, you'll be Youngwoong Jaejoong. Remember the name well."
"Yes," Jaejoong bows.
"You'd be debuting together with four other promising trainees, they-"
A loud bang interrupts his speech, and Jaejoong swerves around to find himself face to face with a giggling boy.
"Sorry?" the boy says, giggling.
"Oh Junsu, did you really had to do that?" the person trailing behind says exasperatedly.
"Sorry Yoochun," the boy, apparently called Junsu says.
"Well, just in time then," the man says. "Jaejoong, meet your new group mates."
Jaejoong meets a pair of warm, chocolate brown eyes and a cheerful smile. And suddenly he feels as if it closes a circuit he never knew existed in his body, and all he feels are overwhelming thoughts of love, love and love.
"Hello Jaejoong," the man with the brown eyes says warmly.
"Nice to meet you, my name is Jung Yunho."
--
end
A/N: SWAFNDIUGBF i was supposed to update HS fic but THIS came out instead >< /bows and apologizes