i will take the sun into my mouth
i will take the sun into my mouth
4,573w; pg-13 (jonghyun/krystal, implied jonghyun/jessica and minho/krystal)
to keep a promise is to fulfill two wills.
In her mind, promises are subjective things. To keep a promise is to fulfill two wills - the one you promised with and the one that carries out the promise, and it’s with the latter that people usually go back on their word. Promises, she’s learned to come to terms with after another birthday spent without her sister, are not to be depended upon. No one can be depended upon, really.
They say it’s like selling your soul. Once you debut, you are not your own anymore, he learns a little too slowly, two years too late. It’s better that he knows now, he thinks one night, too tired to close his eyes. It’s better that he knows now, but if he had known four, five years ago, would this be what he’d choose for himself?
2013
How many years? She clutches the phone against her ear. It’s painful, really, just talking sometimes. It’s painful, eyes upon eyes staring as she bares her stomach, trademark abs she’s rather just not have. She closes her eyes, and it makes it all worse. More real. She opens them again.
How many more years? He knows. Jonghyun knows a lot of things, he just doesn’t always let on about the fact that he does, so people pretend that he doesn’t. But she knows he knows, she knows Jonghyun and Jonghyun knows her.
Three. She pushes the fingers down. Three fucking more years. And then the eyes, the unnecessary judgment, the hate from people she doesn’t even know, can dissipate, fade into a memory, fade into a bad dream.
2012
He told her to give up on cigarettes a long time ago, and she did, but she kept the lighter. It’s some kind of tiny glassy thing, not anything classy or outrageous, just kind of subtle and dark. Like her. She has this habit of flicking it on and off when they’re on the rooftop together, talking or not talking about shit that happened to them.
“Did you keep that because Minho gave it to you?” Her head whips around toward him. She’s sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the railing, short shorts out of place in November. She scowls at him when she sees he’s only looking for trouble.
“Fuck off,” she snaps. He shrugs. She had a thing for Minho for a while, he wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t over it completely. He sits down next to her.
They stare at the rooftops for a while. The world is still, so still for such few moments before they’re thrown back into their work, their schedules, their lives. “Now you have Kai,” he racks his brain for the other name. “And Sehun.”
She shakes her head. Flicks the lighter again. They’re not like us (broken, jaded, older and more tired than we should be, not yet). Turns toward him, and really, really looks at him, like this is important. They’re not like you and me.
Sometimes, he drinks just to get shitfaced. Today’s one of those days. If he’s lucky, he doesn’t end up trying to call her, Jessica, ex-romantic interest, or so he’s trying. If he’s really unlucky, he hits the wrong contact number and ends up calling Soojung instead. Today’s one of those days.
What the fuck, Jonghyun. She sounds tired, like he woke her up or she wasn’t sleeping anyways. It’s four in the morning.
He takes another sip of his beer and almost drops his phone in the process. You know, he starts, slurs, spits. Sometimes I really wish that, you know, things worked out between me and your sister. Sometimes I really wish that they had because sometimes it’s so lonely sitting here, knowing that you’re not even yours, you’re your company’s, and you can’t do anything about it. And I think, that maybe, I love her because I want a chance at something normal, but normal doesn’t exist when your sister’s in Girl’s Generation, so I guess that was a miscalculation on my part, but I’m kind of a dumbass in the end anyway, aren’t I?
She’s silent. One minute. Two minutes. God, I’m fucking sorry, Soojung. Another sip. Just pretend I never said that. I’ll hang up -
Where are you? He can hear her rummaging through coat hangers on the other line. I’m coming to get you. Tell me where you are?
Soojung can’t even drive, he forgets, but passes out after he tells her. He wakes up to her sitting next to him, one of her winter coats over his shoulders, and the pink really doesn’t suit him, but he’s in no shape to spite her. Let’s get you home, she says, gently, like he’s about to break or fucking lose it or both. She helps him to the taxi and he can feel his heart cracking completely when she lets him have practically the whole backseat. Does he even deserve this?
It takes a while for him to realize they’re driving in circles. The cab fare is twenty dollars too high once he gets off, but he’s sober and she shrugs, so he promises to just pay her back later.
2011
to: krystal
congrats on your first win! ^^
It’s Soojung, she tells him, rather annoyed, when he greets her as Krystal. She can’t take the way he mispronounces it anymore.
Ok, he smiles, all toothy grin. Soojung.
2009
They’re in the middle of preparing to film “Juliette” and the girl who’s starring in the music video comes onto the set. Taemin’s the one staring when it happens and he runs over to them excitedly after she greets the crew. He’s already head over heels, Kibum laughs when the younger boy gushes about how pretty she is. Jonghyun and Jinki laugh too.
This, the director introduces them when she comes over. Is Jung Soojung. She bows, raven hair covering her face before she comes back up, and he just looks at her for a moment. Dark eyes, almost black, in the child-like way rather than devil incarnate, glance over his. It’s Krystal, actually.
Nice to meet you, Kuh-reas-si-tal. She covers her face with a hand as she breaks out into laughter, and he’s clueless. Once she leaves, Jinki tells him the problem lies in his pronunciation - he’s separating a two syllable name into four. He practices her name for the rest of the day after that, as Minho’s shooting his scenes, as Krystal’s shooting hers, and when he says goodbye, Krystal, at the end of the day, she just cracks a smile, eyes forming into little crescents, and that’s all he gets before she disappears out of his life.
2011
It’s really obvious sometimes, when she’s staring off into space, lips pressed together. She’s broken. He’ll tell her he’s sorry when he can’t take the silence, when he can’t take watching the aftermath of a first love gone wrong. It’s not even his fault, it’s Minho’s, really, but not really all again.
She takes out a pack of cigarettes and presses one to her lips. Lights it up. He wonders why she’s torturing herself, why she’s holding onto already crushed hopes. Maybe it’s the sixteen-year-old thing to do. He’s, what, twenty now? How would he know, anyway?
Guilty by association, she calls it. But it doesn’t matter now. She takes the stick out from between her lips and drops it on the ground. Crushes it with her sneaker. She’s shaking and he wants to tell her to stop, stop smoking, stop hanging onto him, stop listening to the world, just stop, stop, Krystal.
It’s not your fault, she says, voice surprisingly strong. Intact. She sits down and her shoulders shake more and more before he realizes she’s crying. She’s sixteen, he remembers, arms around her shoulders, t-shirt soaking up her running mascara. It’s not your fault, but he takes her cigarettes away, takes her to the bathroom, and waits for her to dry her eyes and reapply her make up before going back home.
2013
She ends up laying down beside him in his hospital bed one night. This is their unwritten pact - whenever one of them ends up in the hospital somehow, they visit each other. It started when she had no one, he thinks. But now you do, he tells her as she’s shifting her position to get comfortable, wires crushed beneath her rib cage. She turns toward him, nose grazing his shoulder. So what’s the point?
There’s a bruise blooming on her left knee. He prods it with a toe gently. She blinks. They don’t fucking care, you know? The sheets he offered her muffle her voice. He thinks she’s going to scream, like she used to when the sadness dug a cavity into her and refused to come out. He finds her hand and counts to ten, instead. But we, she breathes, whispers, this is the secret, the clandestine affair. We care.
They lay like that for a while.
2012
She’s only going to break your heart, you know, Jinki tells him one day in the middle of dance practice.
Jessica? He stops stretching and looks around to see what triggered the conversation. No one’s there.
Jinki gives him this weird look before the instructor plays the music again.
2009
They win four times with Juliette and Jonghyun jokes one night that Krystal’s their muse.
Jinki raises an eyebrow. You do know she’s fourteen, right?
He nearly spits out the water he just drank. Fuck.
2010
“Fuck you,” he tells Minho when they’re back at the hotel after SMTOWN L.A. Minho stares at him, eyebrows knitted and frown apparent.
“Excuse me?” Jonghyun sighs. Fifteen is too young to be smashed up into pieces, sad eyes and broken heart hanging down from the feather earrings he complemented her on before they went out for the finale. Minho is seventeen and ignorant, approaching the girl he likes without even knowing he’s led someone on.
He doesn’t even know what he’s doing anymore. “You’re just such a dick sometimes,” he says, and leaves.
2009
She’s walking down the hallway one day when he shouts her name, and she cringes at his bad pronunciation. You know, he tells her, when he finally catches up. We should get to know each other.
She tries not to roll her eyes. I’m fourteen, she tells him, pulling her hair away from her face and wishing her strange layers would just grow out already. He laughs at that and shakes his head.
We should be friends. His eyes are twinkling to her glaring. I mean, you always hang out with Minho, but not the rest of us? She blushes at that.
Whatever, she snaps. He takes that as a yes.
2011
Hey, he says, reaching for her hand beneath the sheets. She blinks at him, there’s this light on the ceiling right behind his head, so he shifts a little to the left. I’m here.
This is their unwritten pact - whenever one of them ends up in the hospital somehow, they visit each other. She doesn’t smile or frown. She just lays there and looks at him, tired. You have a schedule today, she whispers, though there’s no one else in the room.
So do you, he replies, just as quietly. But this is an emergency. She opens her mouth. Closes it. He’s there, and he’s holding her hand.
She falls back asleep and wakes up a few hours later. He’s still there, playing with his phone. She pretends she’s still sleeping. She didn’t expect him to be.
2012
to: soojung
congrats on not fainting this year! cheers to your good health! :)
2010
He finds her on the rooftop one day. “Hang out here often?” She shrugs, like she doesn’t particularly want him here, but doesn’t really care now that he is, either.
“You’re lucky,” she tells him after a while of just silence, back leaning against the railing. “You and Shin Sekyung.”
“What are you, fourteen?” he tries to tease. “You’re too young to date.”
She corrects him. Fifteen. You’re the one who’s fucking old here, she says, like it’s no big deal, and somewhere between the shock of her backlash and disrespect of her words, he finds it kind of amusing.
They don’t see each other that often, it’s mostly when they’re walking around the building or when their schedules overlap. Their lives aren’t intertwined, really, and she likes it that way. No more unnecessary people to be involved with. Sometimes, he tries to hang out with her, and sometimes he succeeds when he brings Jinki along (Luna forces her to tag along). They talk when she can’t find a way out of it, and he’s pretty nice, she thinks. Good head on his shoulders, optimistic about what the future holds for them in this world - the idol life, tethered and chained to it. She wants to believe in what he’s saying, and she kind of does, she realizes one day, when she nods along to what he’s talking about.
Their lives aren’t intertwined, really, and she likes it that way, but she also likes the way his face lights up when they pass each other down the hallway, the way they’ll casually wave to each other every now and then. Just the little things, Soojung thinks, innocuously. Little things, and nothing more.
2011
“They don’t get you,” he tells her one night. She’s hiding under the covers, cell phone pressed against her ear, sad as hell and tired as fuck and she doesn’t even give a damn if she has to wake up in two hours, she needs someone right now. “They don’t even know you, Krystal.”
She inhales. Closes her eyes. Exhales. “How do you know that?”
He laughs a little. “I just do, you know?” And she believes him, hook, line, and sinker. “I just do.”
2012
She stares at him for a bit. Eyes sunken, pushed beneath the ocean to the depths. There’s no laughter on his face. She glances at his hand, wondering if she should take it, but his skin looks so pale and papery that she think he might flake away in her palm. She leaves it be.
You don’t wallow, Jonghyun. Head in his hands. This isn’t you.
He snorts. His nose is runny, so it sounds pretty disgusting to her, but she tries not to frown. How would you know that?
She glares at him. Balled up in a corner, shell of the friend she knows. I just do. Like this is the scientifically proven answer. I just do.
“What do you think of Jonghyun?” Jessica asks her one day, their off day, when they just sit around the house in pajamas. They see each other too little that they don’t dare to argue when they do get time together. Soojung likes it like this - simple, yet familiar. It’s nice.
She flips the channel and some kind of anime comes on. Jessica scrunches her nose at it, so she flips the channel again. “What do you mean?” she says over the gunfire of the Hollywood action movie. “He’s a good friend.”
Jessica lowers the volume. “I mean,” she smiles, expectantly. “What do you think of me and Jonghyun.” Pause. Deep breath. “Together?”
She stares at her sister. She’s still smiling, and she looks happy, genuinely happy, so Soojung lets her have her happiness. That’s great. She pushes the corners of her mouth up. That’s really great.
2013
She worries him sometimes. No, a lot. She worries him a lot.
Promise me, she tells him one day. That when I leave, you’ll come look for me one day?
He doesn’t even blink before he answers. Of course. Of course I will.
2017
It’s all over the internet. The tabloids, the gossip, the websites - the things she really hated. That’s where he learns it’s happening, really happening, and he could do nothing to stop it.
He drinks that night, drinks to get drunk and shitfaced. He tries to drink enough so he can forget her name, but he forgets his first.
She’s leaving. It guts him, and Jinki, Kibum, Taemin, they all know it. Minho’s crying too, bastard, you bastard, he screams at him, caring only when things you thought loved you suddenly don’t anymore. She’s going.
February. She’s gone.
2014
She doesn’t realize when she lets go, but she does, and it kind of hurts. He’s standing across the room, ready to come over, ready to say, happy new year Krystal! because he’s a little tipsy and alcohol convinces him that he doesn’t completely butcher her name. Sometimes, she thinks then, he’s a little stifling. She goes out on the balcony, finds her sister. When did they start caring so much? she wonders when Jessica asks if something’s wrong. I want to go home, so they do.
What are they, even, anymore? She rests her head against the window just before the clock strikes twelve. She feels a little like Cinderella, except she has both her shoes, and no prince, not really. She wasn’t supposed to in the first place.
2012
“I’d never, ever date another idol,” she tells him. She was supposed to make him feel better, but he frowns.
“At least you have enough sense to do that,” he groans. It’s getting better, he told her a couple weeks back. His heart. It’s getting better, and she thinks it is too.
“You’re kind of simple,” he contemplates, after she’s told him about her ideal, normal relationship. She punches him in the back. What’s that supposed to mean? He laughs and defends himself with his arms. “I mean, you know. As in, simple life, simple pleasures.”
She sits back. Thinks about it. “So how’d you end up here?”
“I don’t even know.” It takes her two days to realize she really doesn’t.
2015
You’re not my brother, she tells him one day over the phone, accusingly. He told Kai to go fuck off the week before after Krystal cried about him. He guesses the news only got around now. You don’t have to protect me from everything, you know.
It stings more than it should. She’s right, it’s none of his business. So why does it hurt? We’re friends, Soojung, he frowns, fingers ghosting over the keyboard keys. The computer’s shut off. Isn’t this what friends do?
She sighs. He can imagine her cover her forehead with her hand, run that hand through her hair. I don’t know.
Pause. One minute goes by. Two minutes. Ten. Are we even friends, Jonghyun?
2014
Girls like her, she thinks every time she sees him. Don’t get someone who will love them unconditionally until the end of their days. There are too many walls to get around, too many thoughts they don’t bother to understand, days when she doesn’t want to talk, days when she can’t stop talking. It’s girls like Jessica who get their prince charmings and fairy tale endings, or close to that, for that matter.
And then there’s guys like Jonghyun. She doesn’t know where he falls into the picture.
2016
to: soojung
congrats on your music bank win!
2018
He’s having lunch with Jessica for some reason. Jinki was supposed to come, but something came up, and the reservation cost money, so he told them to go without him. That’s how they ended up here, he guesses, and it’s not as awkward as he thought it would be. They’re old enough to joke about things, went through enough heartbreak with each other to know what can and what can’t be talked about. It’s actually pretty nice, and by the time they order desert, he’s kind of glad Jinki didn’t come and force him into third wheel position.
“It’s funny,” she says. “How people think you’re meant to be with someone, and then you think so too.” She picks at her chocolate mousse. “I mean, Yuri used to think we’d,” she gestures toward him, “be the perfect couple.”
“Really?” he smiles. It’s kind of funny, she insists. We fought all the time, you know?
“But now I’m with Jinki,” she smiles, and she’s radiant, he really sees that and it makes him happy, genuinely happy for her. “Strange how things turn out this way, isn’t it?”
He nods. She continues on, especially since. She looks down at her lap. I’ve seen the way you used to look at Soojung. And I always seemed to think, you know what? If it wasn’t you and me, it’d be you and her.
He stands up abruptly. Soojung. She’s leaving, she’s going, she’s gone. Are we even friends, Jonghyun? Did he say it once? I will, I just do, I love -
Excuse me, he says. Pays the bill on the way out and leaves.
2012
“If you could be reborn,” she whispers into the receiver. He wants to tell her to speak up, because sometimes, the reception sucks in the dorm. “Would you still choose this life?”
He thinks about it. “What’s up with the philosophical questions?” Deal with it, she says. He thinks about singing, the stage, the lights, all the fans screaming, the fatigue, the non-stop schedules, the three hours of sleep each night. Then: her, this phone call, Soojung, Krystal, their unwritten pact.
Krystal’s their muse. Seventeen now, eighteen next year, eighty in sixty. I’m glad I met you, he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how to say it. “I think I would,” he settles for instead. “If you were here, with me.”
2016
The thing is, maybe girls like her don’t get their prince, their fairy-tale ending, because they don’t let themselves have it.
She doesn’t renew her contract.
2017
Sometimes he thinks he’ll still see her when f(x) walks by. One, two, three, four. She’s not here, he remembers belatedly. It’s the worst reflex, that buoy of hope that only gets deflated by the storm. That storm is reality. And the reality is, he tells himself when there’s no one to call at two AM, when there’s no one there when he’s at the hospital, she’s not here anymore.
She flies back to America after it’s all done. She travels the country for a bit - doing touristy things like sightseeing in New York, Washington D.C, buying overpriced I heart NYC shirts and Lincoln Memorial snow globes. She sends her sister some stuff time to time, post cards and pictures, some really scratchy wool gloves with a matching beanie (she doesn’t expect that Jessica will ever wear them, but it’s the thought that counts). Sometimes she thinks of him, strange shot glasses, weird scarves that she think he’d find interesting. She never buys them, though. That’d only make everything worse.
She goes back to San Francisco after that. Thinks about applying to college, she took the SAT once in Korea, a long time ago. She doesn’t remember what her score was. She wants to learn how to drive, public transit can only sustain one for so long in America. The world’s huge, she realizes one day, eyes looking at the ceiling, mind thinking about all the possibilities, when there’s nothing to keep you from it.
2018
She tries calling Jessica with the new international call card she got at the Chinese supermarket a block away after someone helped her translate what she wanted to the lady at the counter. She doesn’t pick up.
She thinks about calling Jonghyun. She dials his number in. Is this ok? She hits call. It’s not, she realizes belatedly.
He picks up. She decides to waste three dollars and twenty-five cents.
2019
Of course I will. He thinks about the years he has left. One. Will she remember that he promised?
Soojung doesn’t forget, he tries to remember. The memories flicker, slow, one by one, like a roll of film. Her smile, the taxi, she came looking for him that night, she couldn’t even drive, she told him to call her Soojung so he did, it was easier to say than Krystal, she left because she wanted a life that was hers, he stayed, but if you were here, with me -
2018
to: soojung
twenty-four on the twenty-fourth! happy birthday!
2019
to: soojung
happy birthday, soojung! you’re twenty-five now!
2020
to: soojung
happy twenty-sixth! i’d send you something, but i don’t know your address. ㅠㅠ
2019
f(x), after ten years, two years after Krystal’s left, finally decides to disband.
2020
SHINee follows suit.
2015
She hangs up first. I think I -
The static turns to silence. If he looks at his phone and sees “call ended,” he might chicken out. He keeps going.
Soojung, I -
2021
He gets off at LAX, fourteen hour flight and airplane smell sticking to his hair. No one’s mobbing him as a greeting. It’s - like Soojung always wanted - normal. Simple life, simple pleasures. That’s her.
He’s thirty-one now. She’s twenty-six. So fucking old, he thinks. Smiles a little. It’s then he realizes he misses her a lot more than he thought he did. He takes the train from the airport to San Francisco and he wonders: does she miss him? Four years, one call, hung up on before she even spoke. That’s not enough, after all they’ve been through. That’s not enough, but he’s free now, and he thinks that counts for something.
2012
Jessica breaks two hearts that night: Jonghyun’s and her own. She cared, she sobs into Krystal’s shoulder, but nothing’s going right between the two of them. It’s too hard for her.
It doesn’t have to be, she wants to say. She’s angry, and she doesn’t know why. Jonghyun, Jessica, Krystal, Soojung, whatever names they want to be - they’re all cracking at the fingertips, fractures running down their sides. One day, they’ll wake up and realize that they should’ve fucking cared more, Jessica really should’ve fucking cared more, because it’s this kind of life that’s breaking them, slowly but surely, and she hates it. Not even love, cliché superglue of the ages, amour vincit omnia, can save them.
She reads him this poem she really likes, first in English, then translated into Korean. It doesn’t make sense to him either way, but he likes the way her voice sounds, so he just goes along with it.
2014
She calls it depression by association. You’re making me sad, she sighs after he sighs. He’s not even sad, he counters.
Oh. They just sit there. Maybe, she thinks, she’s sad because they can’t be anything more than this, because he doesn’t love -
2021
He’s there, he’s right there, on her doorstep, on her stupid welcome mat that she tried sewing for herself, but the stitches turned out horrible. There’s a little heart where his left foot is standing, and he’s crushing it. She wonders if that matters.
Hey, he says. She leans against the door frame. All the platinum’s out of his hair and he’s just. She looks for the word. Normal.
Simple life, simple pleasures. Promises, subjective things, freedom, what they really want from life. This is her, this is him, and he’s here, really here, and a smile threatens to fracture her face.
She reaches for his hand, holds it in hers, the warmth of the sun on his skin tingling her fingertips. Hey. She closes her eyes, and his hand in hers just feels all the more real.
i will wade out
till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun into my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
4,573w; pg-13 (jonghyun/krystal, implied jonghyun/jessica and minho/krystal)
to keep a promise is to fulfill two wills.
In her mind, promises are subjective things. To keep a promise is to fulfill two wills - the one you promised with and the one that carries out the promise, and it’s with the latter that people usually go back on their word. Promises, she’s learned to come to terms with after another birthday spent without her sister, are not to be depended upon. No one can be depended upon, really.
They say it’s like selling your soul. Once you debut, you are not your own anymore, he learns a little too slowly, two years too late. It’s better that he knows now, he thinks one night, too tired to close his eyes. It’s better that he knows now, but if he had known four, five years ago, would this be what he’d choose for himself?
2013
How many years? She clutches the phone against her ear. It’s painful, really, just talking sometimes. It’s painful, eyes upon eyes staring as she bares her stomach, trademark abs she’s rather just not have. She closes her eyes, and it makes it all worse. More real. She opens them again.
How many more years? He knows. Jonghyun knows a lot of things, he just doesn’t always let on about the fact that he does, so people pretend that he doesn’t. But she knows he knows, she knows Jonghyun and Jonghyun knows her.
Three. She pushes the fingers down. Three fucking more years. And then the eyes, the unnecessary judgment, the hate from people she doesn’t even know, can dissipate, fade into a memory, fade into a bad dream.
2012
He told her to give up on cigarettes a long time ago, and she did, but she kept the lighter. It’s some kind of tiny glassy thing, not anything classy or outrageous, just kind of subtle and dark. Like her. She has this habit of flicking it on and off when they’re on the rooftop together, talking or not talking about shit that happened to them.
“Did you keep that because Minho gave it to you?” Her head whips around toward him. She’s sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the railing, short shorts out of place in November. She scowls at him when she sees he’s only looking for trouble.
“Fuck off,” she snaps. He shrugs. She had a thing for Minho for a while, he wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t over it completely. He sits down next to her.
They stare at the rooftops for a while. The world is still, so still for such few moments before they’re thrown back into their work, their schedules, their lives. “Now you have Kai,” he racks his brain for the other name. “And Sehun.”
She shakes her head. Flicks the lighter again. They’re not like us (broken, jaded, older and more tired than we should be, not yet). Turns toward him, and really, really looks at him, like this is important. They’re not like you and me.
Sometimes, he drinks just to get shitfaced. Today’s one of those days. If he’s lucky, he doesn’t end up trying to call her, Jessica, ex-romantic interest, or so he’s trying. If he’s really unlucky, he hits the wrong contact number and ends up calling Soojung instead. Today’s one of those days.
What the fuck, Jonghyun. She sounds tired, like he woke her up or she wasn’t sleeping anyways. It’s four in the morning.
He takes another sip of his beer and almost drops his phone in the process. You know, he starts, slurs, spits. Sometimes I really wish that, you know, things worked out between me and your sister. Sometimes I really wish that they had because sometimes it’s so lonely sitting here, knowing that you’re not even yours, you’re your company’s, and you can’t do anything about it. And I think, that maybe, I love her because I want a chance at something normal, but normal doesn’t exist when your sister’s in Girl’s Generation, so I guess that was a miscalculation on my part, but I’m kind of a dumbass in the end anyway, aren’t I?
She’s silent. One minute. Two minutes. God, I’m fucking sorry, Soojung. Another sip. Just pretend I never said that. I’ll hang up -
Where are you? He can hear her rummaging through coat hangers on the other line. I’m coming to get you. Tell me where you are?
Soojung can’t even drive, he forgets, but passes out after he tells her. He wakes up to her sitting next to him, one of her winter coats over his shoulders, and the pink really doesn’t suit him, but he’s in no shape to spite her. Let’s get you home, she says, gently, like he’s about to break or fucking lose it or both. She helps him to the taxi and he can feel his heart cracking completely when she lets him have practically the whole backseat. Does he even deserve this?
It takes a while for him to realize they’re driving in circles. The cab fare is twenty dollars too high once he gets off, but he’s sober and she shrugs, so he promises to just pay her back later.
2011
to: krystal
congrats on your first win! ^^
It’s Soojung, she tells him, rather annoyed, when he greets her as Krystal. She can’t take the way he mispronounces it anymore.
Ok, he smiles, all toothy grin. Soojung.
2009
They’re in the middle of preparing to film “Juliette” and the girl who’s starring in the music video comes onto the set. Taemin’s the one staring when it happens and he runs over to them excitedly after she greets the crew. He’s already head over heels, Kibum laughs when the younger boy gushes about how pretty she is. Jonghyun and Jinki laugh too.
This, the director introduces them when she comes over. Is Jung Soojung. She bows, raven hair covering her face before she comes back up, and he just looks at her for a moment. Dark eyes, almost black, in the child-like way rather than devil incarnate, glance over his. It’s Krystal, actually.
Nice to meet you, Kuh-reas-si-tal. She covers her face with a hand as she breaks out into laughter, and he’s clueless. Once she leaves, Jinki tells him the problem lies in his pronunciation - he’s separating a two syllable name into four. He practices her name for the rest of the day after that, as Minho’s shooting his scenes, as Krystal’s shooting hers, and when he says goodbye, Krystal, at the end of the day, she just cracks a smile, eyes forming into little crescents, and that’s all he gets before she disappears out of his life.
2011
It’s really obvious sometimes, when she’s staring off into space, lips pressed together. She’s broken. He’ll tell her he’s sorry when he can’t take the silence, when he can’t take watching the aftermath of a first love gone wrong. It’s not even his fault, it’s Minho’s, really, but not really all again.
She takes out a pack of cigarettes and presses one to her lips. Lights it up. He wonders why she’s torturing herself, why she’s holding onto already crushed hopes. Maybe it’s the sixteen-year-old thing to do. He’s, what, twenty now? How would he know, anyway?
Guilty by association, she calls it. But it doesn’t matter now. She takes the stick out from between her lips and drops it on the ground. Crushes it with her sneaker. She’s shaking and he wants to tell her to stop, stop smoking, stop hanging onto him, stop listening to the world, just stop, stop, Krystal.
It’s not your fault, she says, voice surprisingly strong. Intact. She sits down and her shoulders shake more and more before he realizes she’s crying. She’s sixteen, he remembers, arms around her shoulders, t-shirt soaking up her running mascara. It’s not your fault, but he takes her cigarettes away, takes her to the bathroom, and waits for her to dry her eyes and reapply her make up before going back home.
2013
She ends up laying down beside him in his hospital bed one night. This is their unwritten pact - whenever one of them ends up in the hospital somehow, they visit each other. It started when she had no one, he thinks. But now you do, he tells her as she’s shifting her position to get comfortable, wires crushed beneath her rib cage. She turns toward him, nose grazing his shoulder. So what’s the point?
There’s a bruise blooming on her left knee. He prods it with a toe gently. She blinks. They don’t fucking care, you know? The sheets he offered her muffle her voice. He thinks she’s going to scream, like she used to when the sadness dug a cavity into her and refused to come out. He finds her hand and counts to ten, instead. But we, she breathes, whispers, this is the secret, the clandestine affair. We care.
They lay like that for a while.
2012
She’s only going to break your heart, you know, Jinki tells him one day in the middle of dance practice.
Jessica? He stops stretching and looks around to see what triggered the conversation. No one’s there.
Jinki gives him this weird look before the instructor plays the music again.
2009
They win four times with Juliette and Jonghyun jokes one night that Krystal’s their muse.
Jinki raises an eyebrow. You do know she’s fourteen, right?
He nearly spits out the water he just drank. Fuck.
2010
“Fuck you,” he tells Minho when they’re back at the hotel after SMTOWN L.A. Minho stares at him, eyebrows knitted and frown apparent.
“Excuse me?” Jonghyun sighs. Fifteen is too young to be smashed up into pieces, sad eyes and broken heart hanging down from the feather earrings he complemented her on before they went out for the finale. Minho is seventeen and ignorant, approaching the girl he likes without even knowing he’s led someone on.
He doesn’t even know what he’s doing anymore. “You’re just such a dick sometimes,” he says, and leaves.
2009
She’s walking down the hallway one day when he shouts her name, and she cringes at his bad pronunciation. You know, he tells her, when he finally catches up. We should get to know each other.
She tries not to roll her eyes. I’m fourteen, she tells him, pulling her hair away from her face and wishing her strange layers would just grow out already. He laughs at that and shakes his head.
We should be friends. His eyes are twinkling to her glaring. I mean, you always hang out with Minho, but not the rest of us? She blushes at that.
Whatever, she snaps. He takes that as a yes.
2011
Hey, he says, reaching for her hand beneath the sheets. She blinks at him, there’s this light on the ceiling right behind his head, so he shifts a little to the left. I’m here.
This is their unwritten pact - whenever one of them ends up in the hospital somehow, they visit each other. She doesn’t smile or frown. She just lays there and looks at him, tired. You have a schedule today, she whispers, though there’s no one else in the room.
So do you, he replies, just as quietly. But this is an emergency. She opens her mouth. Closes it. He’s there, and he’s holding her hand.
She falls back asleep and wakes up a few hours later. He’s still there, playing with his phone. She pretends she’s still sleeping. She didn’t expect him to be.
2012
to: soojung
congrats on not fainting this year! cheers to your good health! :)
2010
He finds her on the rooftop one day. “Hang out here often?” She shrugs, like she doesn’t particularly want him here, but doesn’t really care now that he is, either.
“You’re lucky,” she tells him after a while of just silence, back leaning against the railing. “You and Shin Sekyung.”
“What are you, fourteen?” he tries to tease. “You’re too young to date.”
She corrects him. Fifteen. You’re the one who’s fucking old here, she says, like it’s no big deal, and somewhere between the shock of her backlash and disrespect of her words, he finds it kind of amusing.
They don’t see each other that often, it’s mostly when they’re walking around the building or when their schedules overlap. Their lives aren’t intertwined, really, and she likes it that way. No more unnecessary people to be involved with. Sometimes, he tries to hang out with her, and sometimes he succeeds when he brings Jinki along (Luna forces her to tag along). They talk when she can’t find a way out of it, and he’s pretty nice, she thinks. Good head on his shoulders, optimistic about what the future holds for them in this world - the idol life, tethered and chained to it. She wants to believe in what he’s saying, and she kind of does, she realizes one day, when she nods along to what he’s talking about.
Their lives aren’t intertwined, really, and she likes it that way, but she also likes the way his face lights up when they pass each other down the hallway, the way they’ll casually wave to each other every now and then. Just the little things, Soojung thinks, innocuously. Little things, and nothing more.
2011
“They don’t get you,” he tells her one night. She’s hiding under the covers, cell phone pressed against her ear, sad as hell and tired as fuck and she doesn’t even give a damn if she has to wake up in two hours, she needs someone right now. “They don’t even know you, Krystal.”
She inhales. Closes her eyes. Exhales. “How do you know that?”
He laughs a little. “I just do, you know?” And she believes him, hook, line, and sinker. “I just do.”
2012
She stares at him for a bit. Eyes sunken, pushed beneath the ocean to the depths. There’s no laughter on his face. She glances at his hand, wondering if she should take it, but his skin looks so pale and papery that she think he might flake away in her palm. She leaves it be.
You don’t wallow, Jonghyun. Head in his hands. This isn’t you.
He snorts. His nose is runny, so it sounds pretty disgusting to her, but she tries not to frown. How would you know that?
She glares at him. Balled up in a corner, shell of the friend she knows. I just do. Like this is the scientifically proven answer. I just do.
“What do you think of Jonghyun?” Jessica asks her one day, their off day, when they just sit around the house in pajamas. They see each other too little that they don’t dare to argue when they do get time together. Soojung likes it like this - simple, yet familiar. It’s nice.
She flips the channel and some kind of anime comes on. Jessica scrunches her nose at it, so she flips the channel again. “What do you mean?” she says over the gunfire of the Hollywood action movie. “He’s a good friend.”
Jessica lowers the volume. “I mean,” she smiles, expectantly. “What do you think of me and Jonghyun.” Pause. Deep breath. “Together?”
She stares at her sister. She’s still smiling, and she looks happy, genuinely happy, so Soojung lets her have her happiness. That’s great. She pushes the corners of her mouth up. That’s really great.
2013
She worries him sometimes. No, a lot. She worries him a lot.
Promise me, she tells him one day. That when I leave, you’ll come look for me one day?
He doesn’t even blink before he answers. Of course. Of course I will.
2017
It’s all over the internet. The tabloids, the gossip, the websites - the things she really hated. That’s where he learns it’s happening, really happening, and he could do nothing to stop it.
He drinks that night, drinks to get drunk and shitfaced. He tries to drink enough so he can forget her name, but he forgets his first.
She’s leaving. It guts him, and Jinki, Kibum, Taemin, they all know it. Minho’s crying too, bastard, you bastard, he screams at him, caring only when things you thought loved you suddenly don’t anymore. She’s going.
February. She’s gone.
2014
She doesn’t realize when she lets go, but she does, and it kind of hurts. He’s standing across the room, ready to come over, ready to say, happy new year Krystal! because he’s a little tipsy and alcohol convinces him that he doesn’t completely butcher her name. Sometimes, she thinks then, he’s a little stifling. She goes out on the balcony, finds her sister. When did they start caring so much? she wonders when Jessica asks if something’s wrong. I want to go home, so they do.
What are they, even, anymore? She rests her head against the window just before the clock strikes twelve. She feels a little like Cinderella, except she has both her shoes, and no prince, not really. She wasn’t supposed to in the first place.
2012
“I’d never, ever date another idol,” she tells him. She was supposed to make him feel better, but he frowns.
“At least you have enough sense to do that,” he groans. It’s getting better, he told her a couple weeks back. His heart. It’s getting better, and she thinks it is too.
“You’re kind of simple,” he contemplates, after she’s told him about her ideal, normal relationship. She punches him in the back. What’s that supposed to mean? He laughs and defends himself with his arms. “I mean, you know. As in, simple life, simple pleasures.”
She sits back. Thinks about it. “So how’d you end up here?”
“I don’t even know.” It takes her two days to realize she really doesn’t.
2015
You’re not my brother, she tells him one day over the phone, accusingly. He told Kai to go fuck off the week before after Krystal cried about him. He guesses the news only got around now. You don’t have to protect me from everything, you know.
It stings more than it should. She’s right, it’s none of his business. So why does it hurt? We’re friends, Soojung, he frowns, fingers ghosting over the keyboard keys. The computer’s shut off. Isn’t this what friends do?
She sighs. He can imagine her cover her forehead with her hand, run that hand through her hair. I don’t know.
Pause. One minute goes by. Two minutes. Ten. Are we even friends, Jonghyun?
2014
Girls like her, she thinks every time she sees him. Don’t get someone who will love them unconditionally until the end of their days. There are too many walls to get around, too many thoughts they don’t bother to understand, days when she doesn’t want to talk, days when she can’t stop talking. It’s girls like Jessica who get their prince charmings and fairy tale endings, or close to that, for that matter.
And then there’s guys like Jonghyun. She doesn’t know where he falls into the picture.
2016
to: soojung
congrats on your music bank win!
2018
He’s having lunch with Jessica for some reason. Jinki was supposed to come, but something came up, and the reservation cost money, so he told them to go without him. That’s how they ended up here, he guesses, and it’s not as awkward as he thought it would be. They’re old enough to joke about things, went through enough heartbreak with each other to know what can and what can’t be talked about. It’s actually pretty nice, and by the time they order desert, he’s kind of glad Jinki didn’t come and force him into third wheel position.
“It’s funny,” she says. “How people think you’re meant to be with someone, and then you think so too.” She picks at her chocolate mousse. “I mean, Yuri used to think we’d,” she gestures toward him, “be the perfect couple.”
“Really?” he smiles. It’s kind of funny, she insists. We fought all the time, you know?
“But now I’m with Jinki,” she smiles, and she’s radiant, he really sees that and it makes him happy, genuinely happy for her. “Strange how things turn out this way, isn’t it?”
He nods. She continues on, especially since. She looks down at her lap. I’ve seen the way you used to look at Soojung. And I always seemed to think, you know what? If it wasn’t you and me, it’d be you and her.
He stands up abruptly. Soojung. She’s leaving, she’s going, she’s gone. Are we even friends, Jonghyun? Did he say it once? I will, I just do, I love -
Excuse me, he says. Pays the bill on the way out and leaves.
2012
“If you could be reborn,” she whispers into the receiver. He wants to tell her to speak up, because sometimes, the reception sucks in the dorm. “Would you still choose this life?”
He thinks about it. “What’s up with the philosophical questions?” Deal with it, she says. He thinks about singing, the stage, the lights, all the fans screaming, the fatigue, the non-stop schedules, the three hours of sleep each night. Then: her, this phone call, Soojung, Krystal, their unwritten pact.
Krystal’s their muse. Seventeen now, eighteen next year, eighty in sixty. I’m glad I met you, he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how to say it. “I think I would,” he settles for instead. “If you were here, with me.”
2016
The thing is, maybe girls like her don’t get their prince, their fairy-tale ending, because they don’t let themselves have it.
She doesn’t renew her contract.
2017
Sometimes he thinks he’ll still see her when f(x) walks by. One, two, three, four. She’s not here, he remembers belatedly. It’s the worst reflex, that buoy of hope that only gets deflated by the storm. That storm is reality. And the reality is, he tells himself when there’s no one to call at two AM, when there’s no one there when he’s at the hospital, she’s not here anymore.
She flies back to America after it’s all done. She travels the country for a bit - doing touristy things like sightseeing in New York, Washington D.C, buying overpriced I heart NYC shirts and Lincoln Memorial snow globes. She sends her sister some stuff time to time, post cards and pictures, some really scratchy wool gloves with a matching beanie (she doesn’t expect that Jessica will ever wear them, but it’s the thought that counts). Sometimes she thinks of him, strange shot glasses, weird scarves that she think he’d find interesting. She never buys them, though. That’d only make everything worse.
She goes back to San Francisco after that. Thinks about applying to college, she took the SAT once in Korea, a long time ago. She doesn’t remember what her score was. She wants to learn how to drive, public transit can only sustain one for so long in America. The world’s huge, she realizes one day, eyes looking at the ceiling, mind thinking about all the possibilities, when there’s nothing to keep you from it.
2018
She tries calling Jessica with the new international call card she got at the Chinese supermarket a block away after someone helped her translate what she wanted to the lady at the counter. She doesn’t pick up.
She thinks about calling Jonghyun. She dials his number in. Is this ok? She hits call. It’s not, she realizes belatedly.
He picks up. She decides to waste three dollars and twenty-five cents.
2019
Of course I will. He thinks about the years he has left. One. Will she remember that he promised?
Soojung doesn’t forget, he tries to remember. The memories flicker, slow, one by one, like a roll of film. Her smile, the taxi, she came looking for him that night, she couldn’t even drive, she told him to call her Soojung so he did, it was easier to say than Krystal, she left because she wanted a life that was hers, he stayed, but if you were here, with me -
2018
to: soojung
twenty-four on the twenty-fourth! happy birthday!
2019
to: soojung
happy birthday, soojung! you’re twenty-five now!
2020
to: soojung
happy twenty-sixth! i’d send you something, but i don’t know your address. ㅠㅠ
2019
f(x), after ten years, two years after Krystal’s left, finally decides to disband.
2020
SHINee follows suit.
2015
She hangs up first. I think I -
The static turns to silence. If he looks at his phone and sees “call ended,” he might chicken out. He keeps going.
Soojung, I -
2021
He gets off at LAX, fourteen hour flight and airplane smell sticking to his hair. No one’s mobbing him as a greeting. It’s - like Soojung always wanted - normal. Simple life, simple pleasures. That’s her.
He’s thirty-one now. She’s twenty-six. So fucking old, he thinks. Smiles a little. It’s then he realizes he misses her a lot more than he thought he did. He takes the train from the airport to San Francisco and he wonders: does she miss him? Four years, one call, hung up on before she even spoke. That’s not enough, after all they’ve been through. That’s not enough, but he’s free now, and he thinks that counts for something.
2012
Jessica breaks two hearts that night: Jonghyun’s and her own. She cared, she sobs into Krystal’s shoulder, but nothing’s going right between the two of them. It’s too hard for her.
It doesn’t have to be, she wants to say. She’s angry, and she doesn’t know why. Jonghyun, Jessica, Krystal, Soojung, whatever names they want to be - they’re all cracking at the fingertips, fractures running down their sides. One day, they’ll wake up and realize that they should’ve fucking cared more, Jessica really should’ve fucking cared more, because it’s this kind of life that’s breaking them, slowly but surely, and she hates it. Not even love, cliché superglue of the ages, amour vincit omnia, can save them.
She reads him this poem she really likes, first in English, then translated into Korean. It doesn’t make sense to him either way, but he likes the way her voice sounds, so he just goes along with it.
2014
She calls it depression by association. You’re making me sad, she sighs after he sighs. He’s not even sad, he counters.
Oh. They just sit there. Maybe, she thinks, she’s sad because they can’t be anything more than this, because he doesn’t love -
2021
He’s there, he’s right there, on her doorstep, on her stupid welcome mat that she tried sewing for herself, but the stitches turned out horrible. There’s a little heart where his left foot is standing, and he’s crushing it. She wonders if that matters.
Hey, he says. She leans against the door frame. All the platinum’s out of his hair and he’s just. She looks for the word. Normal.
Simple life, simple pleasures. Promises, subjective things, freedom, what they really want from life. This is her, this is him, and he’s here, really here, and a smile threatens to fracture her face.
She reaches for his hand, holds it in hers, the warmth of the sun on his skin tingling her fingertips. Hey. She closes her eyes, and his hand in hers just feels all the more real.
i will wade out
till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun into my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive