We [Chapter 1]
[We - Chapter 1] Yesh! Finally had time to continue this fic! x3 (Omg. It's 12am over here and there are like 30 yapping girls in the dorm room across the hall that won't shut up. They won't even fricking close the door! Hello? There is a "quiet time" between 10pm and 8am. Ummm...can I ask them to shut the door or shoot themselves?)
lost Me in the rain
Duffel bag. Check.
Clothes in duffel bag. Check.
iPod. Check.
Choreography. Check.
Memorized lyrics...Check.
Directions. Check.
A clue as to what the directions actually mean. No check.
Yunho sat squeezed between a middle aged woman holding a bag of groceries and a college student staring at the same page in his textbook for the last twenty minutes. The subway roared through the dark tunnels as Yunho tapped his foot anxiously.
There wasn’t anything in the world Yunho wanted more than this. He was a like an abandoned puzzle piece that refused to fit anywhere else but in this dream. The dream he struggled with and fought to keep himself from stuffing it somewhere in the back of the closet for so long.
The subway came to a halt and Yunho listened as silence blew in through the doors and settled around the moderately occupied subway car. It didn’t last for long.
Without warning, a surge of people shoved their way onto the car, pressing and squeezing past each other in subdued irritation and impatience. Yunho breathed a sigh of relief that he at least had a place to sit as free space decreased into nonexistence and he was nothing but another human sardine along with the other passengers.
It would have been just another city experience to Yunho he had not glanced up to a welcoming scene of someone else’s large, round, protruding buttocks in his face.
Lovely.
It’s not so bad. This kind of thing happens all the time. Just be patient and ignore it, Yunho thought, while suddenly taking immense interest in the screen of his iPod.
The owner of the butt began tapping his foot murderously and shifting from side to side without guilt or restraint in front of Yunho’s nose.
So much for patience.
“Hey,” Yunho said without looking up from the screen of his iPod. The owner of the constantly moving sin in his face didn’t seem to hear him.
“Hey,” Yunho kicked the stranger lightly across the back of his calves until the person swiveled around in surprise.
“Yes?” The stranger’s wide, brown eyes connected with Yunho’s curiously.
No response scavenged its way out of Yunho’s throat. Instead, he focused on the air of innocence this man carried with him even in the middle of a packed subway car, although he couldn’t have been much younger than Yunho. Maybe twenty? Twenty one?
The other man gazed inquiringly down at Yunho as silence washed over them, but rather than turning around like an average citizen and ignoring the random nuisance sitting on the subway who had kicked him without an explanation, he cocked his head to the side and smiled.
The gesture yanked Yunho out of his reverie and he blinked up at the stranger almost wondering what it was he had been doing in the first place.
“Ummm, you...uhhh. Could you...?”
“Yes?” The man repeated with a soft, alien laugh.
Yunho fought the blush creeping into his cheeks as he realized his incompetent side was coming out again. “Move your butt out of my face, please,” he said hurriedly.
The man’s smile melted into confusion and he cocked his head to the other side. “My butt isn’t in your face.”
Angrily crumpling the list of directions in his hand, Yunho found himself wishing he had never spoken up. “Well, it was,” He choked. “Just move, please, cause now something else is in my face.”
The stranger’s mouth formed a panicked ‘o’ as he attempted to back away from Yunho, but ended up ramming into the woman standing behind him with no effect.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean...”
Maybe if I avoid eye contact, he’ll just leave me alone, Yunho thought as he strained his eyes toward a section of wall across the subway car next to a young man whose formerly black hair looked as if someone had poured bleach on top of it.
If the man caught Yunho’s attempts at retaining solitude, he didn’t show it.
“Can...Can I help you with something?” Yunho’s peripheral vision warned him that the man’s innocent smile had returned. “What’s this?” Without further warning, the other snatched Yunho’s crumpled paper from his hand and read it before Yunho could respond with flailing.
“Hey, that’s mine-“
“Do you need help getting here?” The man pointed at the scrap of paper and smiled generously.
Yunho opened his mouth to protest, but stopped, leaving his jaw hanging without a sound. Once he got off at his stop, it was basically a series of random guesses as to where the directions were leading him. Help would, you know, help.
“Um, sure...”
“Cool!” The stranger exclaimed happily and buried his smiling face into the paper.
What have I just done? Yunho couldn’t help thinking to himself.
“Okay, okay. Looks like you’re getting off at the next stop. I think we have a while...”
The train came to a halt and the doors slid open with a ding.
“Oh! This is it!” Without so much as hello, goodbye, or follow me, the other man shoved his way through the sea of passengers streaming through the exit and disappeared before Yunho’s brain could register the last the five minutes.
“Wait for me! Um, um...” What is that guy’s name? I need something to call him when I’m yelling at him.
Clumsily, Yunho yanked his iPod from his ears, shoved it in his duffel bag and miraculously made his way through the exit without losing any limbs in the closing door. Almost panting, but not quite, he searched around for the man and found him already heading up the stairs with his eyes glued to the crumpled piece of paper. Yunho shrugged his sliding bag on his shoulders and took off after him. Good thing I only gave this kid a piece of paper instead of a diamond ring.
“Hey! What’s-your-face!” Yunho’s nimble legs took him up the stairs and into the buzzing life above ground where the strange man was standing with his eyes flitting from one street sign to the other.
“Excuse me?” The other man looked at Yunho with those innocent eyes as if Yunho was the strange man bothering him.
Now Yunho was breathing heavily. “I won’t have to call you What’s-your-face if you give me your name.”
Something in the man’s eyes hollowed, if only for a fraction of a second. He merely stood there letting streams of people brush around him while Yunho fought the urge to glare openly at him.
“Look, it’s only fair. I need something to call you when-“
“What is your name?” The man’s peculiar, high pitched voice dropped half an octave, but his gaze remained steady.
“Ah,” Yunho suddenly felt a gust of cold wind blow through his chest. It was the middle of August. “Jung Yunho...”
The man’s eye’s suddenly regained light as he smiled once again. “Cool. My name is Junsu. Follow me!” With that the man turned and began wandering off on his own without so much as a clue that he even cared whether Yunho was actually following him or not.
Pre un...Deux...Trois...Et quatre...Cinq...Six...
Yunho had heard once that counting to ten can help calm you down. Doing so in French made him feel as if his rising hostility would disappear twice as fast. Realizing he only knew how to count up to six in French drew his eyebrows so close together they were massaging each other through the throbbing vein in Yunho’s brow.
There was nothing more Yunho wanted to do than strip his possession from the clutching hands of this man named Junsu and go off to find his destination on his own. But the clouds were darkening and Junsu had already was already on the other side of the street in deep concentration. And the clock was ticking.
Yunho sighed and jogged after Junsu, barely shirking oncoming traffic. Me and my useless dreams.
*
“Just listen. Are you listening? Okay, this is the last time, Yunhyun-“
“Yunho...”
“Yunho. Cool. First you keep going straight down this street, make a left at the first-no, second traffic light. Go a little further down, but once you’ve hit the bridge, you’ve gone too far. Go right, then left, then right, then right again-Beware of that one-way street. Those people drive crazy. Go straight again, curve to the right. Don’t turn...Curve. At the lopsided stop sign, follow Youngbae Boulevard all the way over the hill and the building should be right there. Bye!”
Yunho simply stared at the smiling man and waited for him to laugh that alien laugh of his and say, “Ha! Just kidding, dork. Let’s keep going.”
Junsu’s eye remained steady as he silently encouraged Yunho to disappear, but remained firmly in his spot.
“Ha! Just kidding, dork. Let’s keep going.”
Junsu blinked. “Wha?”
With a frustrated grunt, Yunho slammed his head into his palm for confusing his thoughts with his words again. “I mean...Why can’t you just take me the rest of the way?”
Yunho watched as the stranger’s gaze drifted off further down the city block and hung there like murky smog on Beijing.
“I can’t go any further.”
“Why not? Do you honestly think any human being could follow those directions? And what you just said isn’t even on this sheet of paper.”
“I’m not going any further.”
In a flash, Junsu’s face brightened as he re-established eye contact with Yunho. “But you can do it! Trust me. Those directions you have are just worded funny. I’ve been everywhere in this city, so I know I'm right. Just go.”
Yunho’s patience burst. He completely balled up the directions Junsu had just handed back to him and held it high in the air, lengthening his already well extended height, posed to hurl it towards the ground and grind it into the concrete under his Nikes. In mid-throw, he hesitated, jerking forward, then rolling back, tensing and finally falling limp with the ball of paper still in his hand. What exactly did he want to do?
He wanted to dance.
“Fine,” Yunho seethed and brushed past the other. There was no use getting angry at a perfectly bizarre stranger. This was his battle, no one else’s. It had never belonged to anyone else.
And so the two departed without a goodbye, without a word of gratitude, without a word of concern, a smile still painted across one’s face and look of determination sewn into the other.
This is my fight.
*
I can’t do this anymore I can’t do this anymore I can’t do this anymore I can’t do this anymore I can’t do this anymore....
Yunho was crouched against the brick wall of an unnamed building with not so much as a living soul around him. The rain fell down in torrents, dragging the city’s grime, regret, and sins into the gutters.
He had walked for what felt like miles before the black clouds caved in. He remained drenched and fixed to his spot, waiting for it to pass. It just had to pass. Yunho shivered.
“Hi!” A voice soared over the sound of raindrops pounding the sidewalk. Yunho responded with another shiver but didn’t look up.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with my directions from earlier, does it?”
Yunho finally looked up at the speaker and a familiar set of warm, brown eyes greeted him in that perpetual smile. He shivered again and blinked the water out of his eyes.
Yunho watched Junsu tip his head back against the deep, gray sky and laugh wholeheartedly. It was a strange sight, but then again, everything this man did was strange.
“How’d you end up all the way over here? I left you hours ago. Ah, you turned instead of curved, didn’t you?”
Yunho blinked again blankly.
“Are you okay?”
Yunho let out a shaky breath.
“Then get up. You’re going to get sick.” Junsu pulled on Yunho’s arm, but the other never budged.
“Why not?” Junsu demanded almost incredulously. “Are you upset about something?”
Yunho shivered.
“Well, it’s not going to get better if you just sit there.”
Yunho inhaled thinly.
“Look,” Junsu put his hands on his knees and leaned closer to Yunho’s soaked form crouching in a puddle. “You’re feeling down right?”
Yunho blinked.
“Well, if you stand up, then you’ll feel better,” Smiling wider with streams of rain trickling off of his chin, Junsu brought one hand up level with his head. “‘Cause you’ll be up. Get it?”
Yunho shivered and closed his eyes tightly. Slowly, with much effort, he gathered himself and pulled up into a standing position. Junsu laughed again and uselessly wrung out a river of water from the hem of his shirt.
“Where are you going?” He inquired.
Yunho inhaled and fought the urge to cringe again and resume his shameful spot on the concrete. “I’ll follow you,” There was no use trying to get to his original destination now. Time was up. “Where are you going?”
Junsu cocked his head to the side and cheerfully responded. “I don’t know.”
Before Yunho’s heart could fall any lower, a monstrous clap of thunder throttled the air and earth. Yunho choked back a strangled gasp and pressed himself against the brick wall and began counting fruitlessly to ten. However, now even Korean numerals had left him.
Junsu’s smile vanished as he watched the larger man shrink himself against the wall, fighting back the fear that consumed him.
It was time to find shelter. Fast.
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Yay! Okay, 12 bonus cookies for the first one to find the ninja!Yesung in this chapter. >:) And yes, I went there. I stuck 9095 in there. Whatcha gonna do???