#26. B1A4/f(x) [Gongchan/Krystal]
Fandom: b1a4/f(x)
Title: under the iron sea
Rating: pg
Pairing(s)/Focus: gongchan/krystal
Length: 6059w~
Summary: a story of two dreamers
Notes: Though I couldn’t have done a single thing to make this fic more perfect than it already was, I do hope that I did some good with it. Thanks for giving me the chance to remix this wonderful, wonderful piece bb ♥
Remixee author: mekimigure
Link to work you remixed: until our dreams come true
When she is a child, Soojung is told of beauty and miracles and things that don’t always exist for everyone in the world. They are things out of reach for some, handed in a golden picnic basket to others, priceless dreams that she doesn’t make sense of but is given anyways.
Soojung is still a child, but there are new views of life, and beauty and miracles and things that don’t exist for everyone in the world are just part of a to-do list that she is to achieve and never to understand.
It is one thing to love, and another to have talent - Soojung is born with the outward appearance, but love is just another step to perfection that she has yet to grasp.
Soojung moves from California to Korea when she is six years old, what her family calls a vacation but ends up being much more than that. She is sad at first - after all, what first grader wouldn’t be? - but Sooyeon tells her she will make new friends. People like her, with the same physical distinctions (soojung doesn’t know what those words mean yet, but she nods her head anyways) that don’t make her feel as ugly as she thinks she is. “You’ll be fine,” Sooyeon tells her, when Sooyeon was nice and caring and big-sister Jung, and so Soojung chooses to believe her and tells herself that she will be fine.
Freshman year is the start of something - Soojung doesn’t know what that something is, but it happens one year and suddenly she is beautiful. Sooyeon has always had that innocent, attractive aura, but Soojung has just been her hiding shadow that no one really notices. So when freshman year comes, and she is no longer concealed, there is a spark that sets off, lights a sky that has for so long been casting a shadow.
(sooyeon is gone in a talent with eight other girls that are perfection just as she, and so soojung finds it somewhat of a relief that she is no longer living up to something that she couldn’t ever be.)
No one is flawless, but Soojung tells herself that that year, that is what she will become. Broken fantasies and torn promises and shattered hopes are things that have never once encountered Soojung and all that is to become.
That year, Soojung comes across her equivalent in the grade ahead of her, Jinri (except this one has fair skin and glowing eyes and a bright smile that lights up just as her scowl darkens). She is vividly perfect in a way that is so different and so similar to Soojung, and they become linked arm in arm even though Soojung is the one holding on and Jinri just loosely allows her to dangle there, for the rest of the world to barely graze. Jinri becomes Soojung’s savior in a way neither of them can comprehend, and it just so happens freshman year is a different story all together.
Sophomore year, Soojung becomes an artist.
Sunyoung sneaks her into the choir room one afternoon after a late practice, handing her sheets of papers and telling her she will become more than just that. Soojung reads (sings) endless pieces, lyrics of heartbreak and throbbing pains and things that don’t make sense to a fifteen year-old not yet (never to be?) in love. They pass her lips and flow through the air in a way that music doesn’t go, but Sunyoung tells her it is perfection anyways and growing is just part of the process.
Jinri is the definition of exquisite, and she poses here and there, flaunting precision and radiance to worlds that Soojung didn’t know existed. She teaches Soojung how to place herself, alluring, charming, tempting cameras to snap away so that suddenly she is classically perfect. A flick of her hair and there are flashing, endless lights, as if she is walking down a red carpet that has been specifically laid out for her future. A wave of her hand and she can almost see them at her feet, fans and admirers of all sorts. A smirk, pink lips and a glimpse of whitened teeth, teasing at lovers here and there. She is fifteen and with a dream that doesn’t exist for most, but it is there, Jinri’s teachings proof enough.
Amber holds her hands and moves her one step to the left, two steps to the right, twirling her toes in ballet shoes that don’t quite fit. There are shortcuts to happiness, and one of them is dancing, but Soojung has long forgotten happiness, replacing it with flawless and ideal and supreme, over things that can liken joy. She dances anyways, and lets the music run through her veins so that she is moving in ways she didn’t think were possible. Graceful becomes enticing, and suddenly she is dangling on the last threads of innocence. Tight shirts, short shorts, stilettos that graze towering and loose hair that oozes appeal, they become her best friends in ways she finds more feasible than most.
Sophomore year is the true awakening of the glowing inside of her - Soojung doesn’t know whether it is appropriate, then, to call it stardom, what she has become. Maybe idolism, fame-consumed, words that can’t become involved with naïve children and their childish hopes. (but stardom is simpler, and so she just leaves it at that.)
Sooyeon begins dating pretty boy Lee Donghae the summer before Soojung’s junior year. He has soft lips, fair skin, and big brown eyes that are pure and wide and much more than Soojung thinks Sooyeon deserves.
(blonde hair and doll features and the simple things that make sooyeon perfect and so much more are just that, though, and so soojung isn’t surprised. not really, anyways.)
Donghae is best friends with a simple Hyukjae and a complicated Kyuhyun, a trio that Soojung doesn’t think makes sense anymore than math lessons when she is dreaming about name brand love and high-class lifestyles. Hyukjae is a matching dirty blonde and runs the dance studio two doors down her high school, and soon she is professionally learning steps to songs that she’s heard on the radio and never made sense of until now.
There, she meets Bae Suji, a girl who kind of reminds her of Jinri but gives off a dirtier aura, something Soojung isn’t familiar with and doesn’t think she wants to be. There is Taemin, awkwardly limbed and popping Taemin as if he is Hyukjae’s prodigy - and for all she knows, he could be. Minhyuk is the kid that stands in the corner of the room, trying to follow along with movements that don’t quite look right. Sometimes Soojung sees him during break, tapping his fingers against the floor, and she sits next to him and offers him her help if he offers her his, and it’s an unexpected mutualism that only sometimes works along the lines of fame.
Heechul runs the accommodations, and runs the two other studios down the street too - she’s been to Kyuhyun’s recording loft one too many times to finally realize that her voice isn’t as good as good can be, and Siwon’s modeling academy gives her an off awareness of society’s constant push to be better, better, better, as close to perfect as one could get even though perfection doesn’t exist and God made everyone equal in a world that equates equality with irrelevance, insignificance, peripheral nature and all those other things Soojung could name off the top of her head.
Peripheral nature, she tells herself, and that is the day she meets Chansik, a trifling nature that for someone so unaware is alerted beyond belief.
A quarter through her junior year, Soojung realizes how easy it is to slip and fall. She begins losing interest in all things except that infinite obsession, something like perfection and no matter how much she runs she just never seems to get far enough. Her grip on friendship is dying, too, and even Jinri doesn’t have strength to hold on; Sunyoung and Amber have long graduated, Sunyoung a year early with the senior class, and while her contact with Amber exists occasionally (how’s school? still dancing? how’s jinri? you sound depressed, what’s wrong?), her link with Sunyoung becomes another once upon a time.
Soojung starts skipping classes, things like math and science and dance she used to love with such an undying passion. Jinri calls her the first couple of times, now in the academy too, and asks the same as everyone else, but even she stops after a while, and Soojung just resides in the comfort of her room. Her parents are workaholics, Sooyeon’s communication practically died once she left, and Soojung has all but learned to care.
Then one Saturday, one uneventful Saturday, Jinri throws open the door to Soojung’s room, a pink duffel bag hanging off one shoulder (soojung’s always hated pink - it is too bright and too cheerful and too desperate of a color to pick her up at a time like that), looking flawless even on a workout day.
“You’re coming with me,” she says, grabbing Soojung’s arm with one hand and her black duffel bag, shoved in the corner of the room, with the other. “I can’t stand to see you dying away like this.”
They arrive at the studio and Soojung notices the familiar stains on the wall of spilled drinks and accidental tears, a scratched and tattered floor, and mirrors that are clean and give her an almost too-honest visual of herself. Suji and Taemin are practicing on their own at separated ends of the room, and Hyukjae is in the front of the class, aiding Minhyuk who Soojung didn’t realize she missed after so much time. He smiles when he sees her and she answers with a slight grin, upturned lips that are a distant feeling.
Her and Jinri take their usual (former, now currently) spot at the back, and it is at that time she sees Sunwoo and an alien face standing at the door. Sunwoo is a weekly visitor, an unsurprising, everlasting admirer of Jinri’s even though he is a year older, but it is the sudden guest that catches her attention.
The mystery figure looks over in her direction, then, and next to him, Sunwoo waves - Soojung flickers her fingers in response slightly and then turns back to the front, where Hyukjae is stretching and class is about to begin.
Soojung comes back to the class next Saturday, stepping back into movements that she hasn’t yet forgotten. The warm air and unrestricted space and the continuous line of actions is a lovely sentiment, and it has been a long time since she has found anything lovely, let alone likable.
When the class ends, she counts the heads departing and notices one missing, one of which she has not titled.
Hyukjae pulls her back when she is leaving, and even though he is sweaty and worn and dead-beat, he’s got a loud smile that brings his stupidity back to attraction. “So you’ve decided to join us again?” he says, and she gives him this weary grin. Then his eyes darken a little bit, and he straightens and coughs anxiety out of his throat. “Hey, I’m glad you could make it back. We missed you.”
She nods, and remembers an unknown person that came seven days ago. Chansik, Hyukjae calls him, but he doesn’t really like dancing, and now that Soojung has a name to go with a face, she decides maybe life is actually worth enjoying even if just for one thing.
She gets his number through Jinri, who gets it through Sunwoo, who supposedly almost requested a date before deciding it was wrong to ask of things from the love of his life when already longing for one favor too many.
Soojung decides to go the same way and only requests of one thing: /come back/, and even though she gets no response, she sees him back again that third week, graceless limbs and inelegant movements but a continuous push anyways.
Amber arrives at her door one unexpected evening holding a platter of odd-looking desserts, smiling with an expression in her eyes that Soojung’s seen too many times. “My Chinese roommate made a whole bunch, they taste delicious,” but Soojung never gets the chance to try them because Amber pushes her out the door and to a nearby park, one they used to play at as children.
They sit on a bench that is usually reserved for the elderly that take their grandkids to the park during babysitting hours; when she was younger, Soojung used to wish her grandparents did the same, that she didn’t have to go playing with Amber or Sunyoung’s parents because hers were always too busy. Now she is just glad to not have to deal with that.
“What’s with the sudden visit?” she begins. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Just wanted to see how you were doing.” Amber smiles, looking at her through her uneven bangs. “Jinri told me you quit dance lessons, what’s up with that?”
Soojung shrugs. She glances down at her fingers and thinks of long, thin, beautiful people, people she wants to be. “I went back a couple of weeks ago,” she answers. A new kid joined, she wants to say, and he’s not a very good dancer, but for all she knows he could be better than her and Soojung is just hidden like she always is. “I’m getting back into it.”
“That’s nice to hear.” Amber goes on to tell her stories of college, of things that she expected and didn’t get. There is the normal, there is the unusual, there is everything that Soojung can’t wait to get to, and Soojung listens to her stories with open ears and closed eyes. She doesn’t look back at the reunion again, but she hopes to one day tell Amber stories too, just like she hears.
Soojung immerses herself into dance once she rejoins, different than in the way before. She’s never paid attention to the others, but suddenly, she is comparing herself to Suji, and Taemin, and Minhyuk, and even Hyukjae, who she never once sought to be like even after all of his years of teaching her.
Chansik is there, too, suddenly. She notices his every being, and soon, they begin talking. His voice is soft and light and easy to listen to, though he doesn’t talk all that much. It is a relationship she’s never had before, the type where she is the one telling the stories about dreams and prospects of lives she has never had the chance to live before. He listens with open ears and wide eyes; sometimes he asks questions, too, but soon she is able to read them from him.
Soojung thinks half of the attraction just might be his looks, though. Chansik is beautiful - he is beautiful in a way that she doesn’t know how to explain. It is just there, always there like another presence, his beauty.
They begin staying in class longer, minutes before and hours after, like a separate mutualism. He’s got similar pursuits as her, in different ways of being able to share his own music with elegant, long fingers skimming over piano keys she never properly learned how to play. They remind her again of perfect people, and Soojung thinks of how premeditated the situation is, two perfect people meeting together as one.
She tries not to dwell over it (them) often, though. It is just an existing fact, like the trees that grow and the sky that is different shades of blues and grays, and things that are just meant to be.
Sooyeon is waiting for her at home the day Soojung arrives late from practice. Hyukjae ran overtime, she had homework, Chansik was being Chansik, none of them seem like proper excuses, so she leaves to her room only to be interrupted again through the door, Sooyeon holding a steaming bowl of rice that isn’t for her.
(soojung reminds herself she shouldn’t eat rice - white rice, at least, because that will make her bloat and she can’t be famous and bloat and so she sticks to foods that are bland and tasteless and won’t loosen a notch on her belt.)
“I don’t get the stunt you are pulling, Soojung,” Sooyeon begins - her voice is lined with candies and flowers and yet it is still pungent, like flavored medicine that tastes more like the depths of hell than it does grapes.
Soojung kicks her shoes off and glances over at her older sister, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This? Dancing, singing, modeling, where exactly do you think this route will get you?”
“I like doing it. Does it bother you?”
“Yes. It bothers me very much.” She licks her lips and puts the bowl on the table, and Soojung almost throws herself at it but she refrains herself because Sooyeon is testing, testing, testing. “You should stop going for something that won’t get you anywhere.”
Sooyeon is the type of sister that doesn’t want good things to happen to anyone but herself. Soojung has learned this many times over and over again, after being thrown hand-me downs and given the less of the schooling and more of the scolding, and the way Sooyeon doesn’t let her get anything until Soojung is at the age Sooyeon once was. She is a bitter soul hiding inside of a Barbie’s body and so Sooyeon does what any Bratz would do. “I like doing it, and just because you never had the talent to get somewhere with this doesn’t mean I don’t.”
The colors dim as springtime approaches - it is a bit ironic, really, that the season of blossoms and vibrance is when she finally loses it all, but it so happens to be when school is ending and Soojung as a junior isn’t so much as that as she is mentally still just a child.
The seniors begin wrapping up just like the rest of them, except in a different way, and Soojung drops dance lessons. She doesn’t show up one class; the next, she calls Hyukjae and whispers, “I don’t think dancing is for me. I’ve lost it again.” She doesn’t give him the chance to respond (though she hears threads of it, what are you saying? you were the best-) before she hangs up and tells herself that is why, because she doesn’t think it is for her.
Jiyoung asks her about it during a biology class that neither of them ever pay attention in. “I heard you dropped dance lessons again. Jinki said Hyukjae told him.” She bumps her slightly - the teacher, for some reason, never catches on to precious Jiyoung - and Soojung shrugs. Jiyoung leans in, then, and whispers something along the lines of, sooyeon? is it because of your sister?
She turns over to her, and half smiles this broken smile. “Don’t tell anyone,” Soojung whispers, although Soojung is a liar and the only reason she ever returned to dance in the first place is the exact same reason she left. Maybe her dreams lie elsewhere in the fame direction, just not something she can do on her own. Chansik, Gong Chansik, she begins to overwrite, but Soojung never let anyone impact her future to that extent so she seals her lips and just repeats to Jiyoung, “Not a single person.”
The move is unexpected. It is two weeks after the end of the school year and suddenly her room is filled with boxes. They are an ugly faded brown, thick, black printed letters labeling items and rooms and so many things that Soojung didn’t even know she owned. She pulls out CDs of old artists that died away, people she once wanted to be like, and photo booklets of her as a child, laughing innocently as if she wouldn’t grow up to be what she is.
Soojung shoves them at the bottom of the boxes, along with old, dusty memories thrown in the back of the attic. Dates that she had been on so many years before, thinking she was in a love that completed her life and instead just a chance to become Jung Soojung’s one and only. Story books her mother had read to her when she was just beginning primary school, words of fairy tales and infinite happiness and things she once thought existed.
It is only her and her parents that leave. Sooyeon is finishing college in Korea, working to become a successful daughter that blows any image of perfection off of the stand. Soojung thinks about asking her to keep up with Chansik, but she holds her tongue and closes her eyes instead, and then they are gone.
She begins her senior year at the same high school she would have attended in San Francisco if she had stayed there since elementary school, and she recognizes a girl that once used to make fun of her for having slanted eyes. Jamie, some weird English name that doesn’t leave as fluidly from her mouth as it once would have. Now Jamie sits at the back of an academic class alone, hair dyed a thick black with wild highlights and an electronic cigarette dangling from pierced red lips, bloodshot eyes that push people away. Soojung doesn’t sit next to her.
They spot her in the midst of shopping, and she is recruited immediately - it is as if looks were all that were needed and they would have trained the rest of it out of her. Soojung’s parents are ecstatic, and they book flights without realizing their little girl is growing up, and Soojung thinks that maybe she never was their little girl and just another flawless prodigy. They want to call Sooyeon, but she refuses, saying she will find out once Soojung’s name is on the billboards and the advertisements and topping the charts. She is too optimistic, maybe.
The day before her flight, Soojung heads to the dance studio near her house. It is only three blocks down, ten minutes max as she files her way down the street. The studio is high-class and only for the top, so much she had to try out when she first joined (but of course, she made it; after all, what is soojung if not perfect?)
The floors are glossed and cleaned every day, a shining wood that she always feels like she will slip on, and the mirrors are the same. They surround her like a box, unlike back home where there was only at the front so she was able to turn away. Here, she is forced to accept herself like it is, and here, the people are just as poised as she and so there is no pride in being the best, and here, Soojung is the odd one out, American but still so, so different.
Soojung thinks about Chansik while making her way back home. She wonders if he still dances, if he is still like her. But probably not, because no one can be like her for too long, and he is no exception.
Korea is not as she imagined it would be, and neither is Chansik. The city isn’t any brighter, any louder, any busier - maybe three years wasn’t that long for it to have changed so suddenly. Chansik is taller, though, so much that she has to tilt her head to look at him in the eyes. His hair is lighter, but she isn’t sure whether that is the sun or her imagination. He reminds her of a sort of prince that has nowhere to go but ahead. His fingertips graze hers and she does not hold on because she is no sort of princess in return.
They walk somewhere across the streets, but Soojung isn’t exactly sure where. She follows his feet, afraid to look up just in case he is looking and their eyes meet and there is something there, like a spark or shock or whatever they describe it in the songs.
The meeting (reunion, outing, date) ends abruptly with a phone call. It is her casting manager, “We’ve got news,” and his voice is so straight that she doesn’t know whether it is good or bad.
His eyes darken a bit as she is leaving, but she refuses to have him walk her home (wherever she can call home, the side apartment of her manager’s house), and so she just attempts a smile and says she will call him later. Afterwards, there are texts, and e-mails, and sometimes she sends him a post card even though they are mere hours away, but the call never comes and Soojung sometimes wishes she could work up the nerve to hear his voice and not fall to pieces.
The fatigue begins into the third practice. Her voice begins faltering during vocal practices, her dance steps are lackluster and don’t follow the beat, and her smile doesn’t reach the corners of her eyes like she had rehearsed for so long. Her trainers warn her, in a way - there are no encouraging words, just insults at weakness and puns on falling.
Soojung spends hours upon hours trapped in a little glass box, singing lyrics and thinking she might know how to express it right. It makes her feel claustrophobic, but she ignores it, because she can do it. They end up telling her otherwise every time, though. No emotion, no soul, nothing but an average voice, and Soojung ends up believing little lies that are there to tug and tease until she is a torn and tattered rope, trying to grasp the last filaments of weakening threads.
It is like a newborn emotion. Her limbs ache and she can’t ever shake it off. It exists within her, a soul and a mind and everything except a body, and so it ends up taking her over.
Her parents tell it is worth it, that she will get somewhere with all of this hard work, but the other trainees hate her for being tall and thin and the photographers’ model face and favored and foreign, something that no matter how hard they will try to be they won’t ever. Soojung is bilingual and bicultural and everything the media is looking for - broadening horizons, expansion, her company calls it, but Soojung thinks of just usury.
She loses her voice three months into the training period. The vocalist teacher keeps telling her to go higher, higher, higher, all the other female trainees can hit that note with ease (but even though soojung has seen most of the girls struggle at her starting level, she chooses to stay quiet), when her voice gives up and nothing comes out. The teacher stares at her with this disbelief in her eyes and Soojung is almost proud to see it, proving her dedication with such complexity, until the teacher says, “Go to the dance room. You’ll be practicing there until your voice comes back.”
The process becomes a pain she has never experienced before. Soojung wonders if she was ever cut out for this, or if Sooyeon was right and this is just a phase that will get never pass just that.
Soojung debuts a year later with a mini-album and two music videos. It is a majority pop EP with two ballad songs she had forced out of her throat two and a half weeks before release - Animal Style, it is titled, and it kind of reminds her of In N’ Out burgers back in California. The album debuts straight at number one for a full four days before dropping to second, and then another position down after one week.
Her EP begins losing its position around the third week and she remains at eighth for the rest of the album promotions. It is a success her company had yet to achieve with a rookie artist; she expects better treatment but it only gets worse, jealousy and resentment and all the things Soojung learned to let go of in her early years of high school.
It is like a different fame, she thinks. An acidic type, where she burns everything, turning everyone around her bitter and harsh.
(her inbox is flooded with texts and calls and she begins deleting numbers of those she had once fawned over for so long. even sooyeon calls her after a month and tells her she bought the album. soojung’s cheeks flame red at that and she wonders why she hadn’t had the sense to buy her own sister an album, because it wasn’t like they hated each other, they just- “sorry for being such a bitch earlier. i was envious, but i think you’ll make off as a much better singer than i ever would.”
“you don’t have to say that, sooyeon-”
“and don’t listen to what anyone has to say to you. it’s just jealousy, soojung, just jealousy. trust me, i’d know.” sooyeon laughs and soojung kind of cracks a smile because she knows from somewhere, sooyeon is watching and being a bratty sister just as much as an overprotective one.
she looks back at her inbox and sees unopened texts from chansik, gong chansik, and wonders if he’ll want to leave her alone after this. maybe this popularity is getting to her head. the last text she reads is a simple one, just i miss you, but soojung still smiles to herself because she knows she misses him too.)
The process begins all over again a year later. She does the whole routine once more, as if the hellish deviation of the first one hasn’t already pinned itself permanently to her memories, and it goes through a little less smooth for some reason.
Soojung puts in a different amount of energy this time around. It isn’t as much of a motivation as it is of an assertion, proof that she isn’t a one hit wonder and something that will last forever.
When she explains it like that, it is simple, and forever isn’t that hard to grasp. But in reality, infinity is a concept that Soojung doesn’t really understand, where she doesn’t know if she actually wants to live forever, be known forever, be compared to future generations that Soojung probably couldn’t live up to if she looks at it now - realistically, at least. What is a legend, really? Just someone that’s made a name, and she isn’t sure Jung Soojung is all that deserving of a legendary title in her book.
Her album is released that winter. Pretentious - the album cover is an imitation of her at some winter photo shoot, all snooty and arrogant and ostentatious, and Soojung thinks she looks kind of like a slut. It doesn’t fit the season, and she thinks that might have to do with why it did worse on the charts.
(she can’t bring herself to blame her singing, when she spent hours training her vocal chords to go from octave to octave in milliseconds, or her dancing, which she spent hours perfecting, or her promotions, which is all soojung did spent doing for the last two months. she can’t blame herself, when there is nothing she has ever worked harder on.)
The album reaches #16 at its highest peak.
Soojung learns to appreciate one-hit wonders.
It has been almost six months since she last met Chansik. In person, at least. They video chat sometimes, phone call once in a while, but most of the contact is limited to text, short messages that Soojung sometimes relies on to get her through the day (the week, the month, the lifestyle).
He catches her doubt before she decides not to let herself fall. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this,” Soojung whispers to him, and his hand is warm and soft compared to the rest of the world. “Maybe I should quit.”
She doesn’t believe it, and she isn’t so sure Chansik believes it either, but there are doubts in everyone.
“If this is what you want, what you wanted, you should keep at it.” He gives clichéd advice. Soojung wants to believe it, wants to accept that if it really is what she wants, what she wanted, that she should stick through to the end and maybe something will change and maybe something will get better and all of her maybes will come true.
“I don’t know what I want, to be honest,” is what she says instead.
His hand kind of tightens on hers, unconsciously or purposely, she doesn’t really know, but Soojung kind of likes it. Gong Chansik is something different. He doesn’t kiss her awake and sing her to sleep and cry with her and laugh with her and stay with her through it all. Chansik is just her friend and Soojung thinks that that is a lot more in itself. “Why?” he asks, his voice soft, but she thinks he might know the answer already.
“The Soojung they wanted seem to have it easy. She seemed happier.”
It might seem strange given all that is, but sometimes Soojung has trouble differentiating between herself. She can’t tell when she is Soojung, sexy and strong and fierce, thick defining contours, and then Soojung, reserved and independent and detached, blurred and distorted lines streaking here and there, like runaway mascara and smudged eyeliner.
She thinks that just might be why Chansik is always there, hidden in the background, because he knows, even when she doesn’t. He knows the difference between sexy and strong and fierce, and reserved and independent and detached.
Soojung thinks that just might be why she can’t ever let go of Chansik.
Chansik happens almost suddenly. Him and Jinyoung, she should say, but Jinyoung has always been flawless. He is different from Chansik, from her even, who work to get where they are, and for that Soojung doesn’t know whether she hates him or wants to be him.
Their digital single drops and she begins to feel like she is losing. Losing what, she doesn’t really know, because she’s always been kind of behind on life anyways, and this isn’t a different story. Maybe it is him.
/ I miss you / she messages him one day, and he responds two days (forty-seven hours, thirty-six minutes) later, / just keep going /, like he isn’t what keeps it from happening.
Later, Soojung realizes she was doing the exact same, but for then Soojung just watches and waits and pretends like one day he will knock on the door of her shabby apartment and come back. It isn’t a perfect ending, but it is realistic and in a world where it is hard to tell realities from dreams, she thinks she has done pretty well.
Her third album is scheduled to release in six months.
Soojung holes herself up in the recording studio and the words flow from the tip of her pen like water, water from a hidden stream that the humans can’t find and the animals drink out of. The lyrics are choppy and the composition isn’t all that smooth, and when she tries to sing along, her voice cracks at notes she usually hits with ease, but it is a step forward anyways.
She could never write all that well, but Chansik taught her things once or twice, and so Soojung writes anyways.
“I’m scared,” she confesses to him, her breathing heavy over a silent line, and he listened to her so well. “I’m scared that it will flop. That I’ll become a nobody.” That I’ll fall from too high up and never come back.
He doesn’t tell her it will be okay, because neither of them actually knows that, and Soojung has been promised false hopes for too long. “It’s frightening,” his voice is different - he sounds like a singer, one of those ballad singers that puts her to sleep, and she smiles, “but there is always light where there are shadows.”
They have their differences. Chansik lived as a writer, as a true musician, and Soojung was born to be a performer, on stage with feet hitting the ground and arms circling gracefully.
That is when Soojung thinks she might have fallen in love.
So for me and you
To become two and two
Cheers, my love
And Soojung just keeps dancing.
Title: under the iron sea
Rating: pg
Pairing(s)/Focus: gongchan/krystal
Length: 6059w~
Summary: a story of two dreamers
Notes: Though I couldn’t have done a single thing to make this fic more perfect than it already was, I do hope that I did some good with it. Thanks for giving me the chance to remix this wonderful, wonderful piece bb ♥
Remixee author: mekimigure
Link to work you remixed: until our dreams come true
When she is a child, Soojung is told of beauty and miracles and things that don’t always exist for everyone in the world. They are things out of reach for some, handed in a golden picnic basket to others, priceless dreams that she doesn’t make sense of but is given anyways.
Soojung is still a child, but there are new views of life, and beauty and miracles and things that don’t exist for everyone in the world are just part of a to-do list that she is to achieve and never to understand.
It is one thing to love, and another to have talent - Soojung is born with the outward appearance, but love is just another step to perfection that she has yet to grasp.
Soojung moves from California to Korea when she is six years old, what her family calls a vacation but ends up being much more than that. She is sad at first - after all, what first grader wouldn’t be? - but Sooyeon tells her she will make new friends. People like her, with the same physical distinctions (soojung doesn’t know what those words mean yet, but she nods her head anyways) that don’t make her feel as ugly as she thinks she is. “You’ll be fine,” Sooyeon tells her, when Sooyeon was nice and caring and big-sister Jung, and so Soojung chooses to believe her and tells herself that she will be fine.
Freshman year is the start of something - Soojung doesn’t know what that something is, but it happens one year and suddenly she is beautiful. Sooyeon has always had that innocent, attractive aura, but Soojung has just been her hiding shadow that no one really notices. So when freshman year comes, and she is no longer concealed, there is a spark that sets off, lights a sky that has for so long been casting a shadow.
(sooyeon is gone in a talent with eight other girls that are perfection just as she, and so soojung finds it somewhat of a relief that she is no longer living up to something that she couldn’t ever be.)
No one is flawless, but Soojung tells herself that that year, that is what she will become. Broken fantasies and torn promises and shattered hopes are things that have never once encountered Soojung and all that is to become.
That year, Soojung comes across her equivalent in the grade ahead of her, Jinri (except this one has fair skin and glowing eyes and a bright smile that lights up just as her scowl darkens). She is vividly perfect in a way that is so different and so similar to Soojung, and they become linked arm in arm even though Soojung is the one holding on and Jinri just loosely allows her to dangle there, for the rest of the world to barely graze. Jinri becomes Soojung’s savior in a way neither of them can comprehend, and it just so happens freshman year is a different story all together.
Sophomore year, Soojung becomes an artist.
Sunyoung sneaks her into the choir room one afternoon after a late practice, handing her sheets of papers and telling her she will become more than just that. Soojung reads (sings) endless pieces, lyrics of heartbreak and throbbing pains and things that don’t make sense to a fifteen year-old not yet (never to be?) in love. They pass her lips and flow through the air in a way that music doesn’t go, but Sunyoung tells her it is perfection anyways and growing is just part of the process.
Jinri is the definition of exquisite, and she poses here and there, flaunting precision and radiance to worlds that Soojung didn’t know existed. She teaches Soojung how to place herself, alluring, charming, tempting cameras to snap away so that suddenly she is classically perfect. A flick of her hair and there are flashing, endless lights, as if she is walking down a red carpet that has been specifically laid out for her future. A wave of her hand and she can almost see them at her feet, fans and admirers of all sorts. A smirk, pink lips and a glimpse of whitened teeth, teasing at lovers here and there. She is fifteen and with a dream that doesn’t exist for most, but it is there, Jinri’s teachings proof enough.
Amber holds her hands and moves her one step to the left, two steps to the right, twirling her toes in ballet shoes that don’t quite fit. There are shortcuts to happiness, and one of them is dancing, but Soojung has long forgotten happiness, replacing it with flawless and ideal and supreme, over things that can liken joy. She dances anyways, and lets the music run through her veins so that she is moving in ways she didn’t think were possible. Graceful becomes enticing, and suddenly she is dangling on the last threads of innocence. Tight shirts, short shorts, stilettos that graze towering and loose hair that oozes appeal, they become her best friends in ways she finds more feasible than most.
Sophomore year is the true awakening of the glowing inside of her - Soojung doesn’t know whether it is appropriate, then, to call it stardom, what she has become. Maybe idolism, fame-consumed, words that can’t become involved with naïve children and their childish hopes. (but stardom is simpler, and so she just leaves it at that.)
Sooyeon begins dating pretty boy Lee Donghae the summer before Soojung’s junior year. He has soft lips, fair skin, and big brown eyes that are pure and wide and much more than Soojung thinks Sooyeon deserves.
(blonde hair and doll features and the simple things that make sooyeon perfect and so much more are just that, though, and so soojung isn’t surprised. not really, anyways.)
Donghae is best friends with a simple Hyukjae and a complicated Kyuhyun, a trio that Soojung doesn’t think makes sense anymore than math lessons when she is dreaming about name brand love and high-class lifestyles. Hyukjae is a matching dirty blonde and runs the dance studio two doors down her high school, and soon she is professionally learning steps to songs that she’s heard on the radio and never made sense of until now.
There, she meets Bae Suji, a girl who kind of reminds her of Jinri but gives off a dirtier aura, something Soojung isn’t familiar with and doesn’t think she wants to be. There is Taemin, awkwardly limbed and popping Taemin as if he is Hyukjae’s prodigy - and for all she knows, he could be. Minhyuk is the kid that stands in the corner of the room, trying to follow along with movements that don’t quite look right. Sometimes Soojung sees him during break, tapping his fingers against the floor, and she sits next to him and offers him her help if he offers her his, and it’s an unexpected mutualism that only sometimes works along the lines of fame.
Heechul runs the accommodations, and runs the two other studios down the street too - she’s been to Kyuhyun’s recording loft one too many times to finally realize that her voice isn’t as good as good can be, and Siwon’s modeling academy gives her an off awareness of society’s constant push to be better, better, better, as close to perfect as one could get even though perfection doesn’t exist and God made everyone equal in a world that equates equality with irrelevance, insignificance, peripheral nature and all those other things Soojung could name off the top of her head.
Peripheral nature, she tells herself, and that is the day she meets Chansik, a trifling nature that for someone so unaware is alerted beyond belief.
A quarter through her junior year, Soojung realizes how easy it is to slip and fall. She begins losing interest in all things except that infinite obsession, something like perfection and no matter how much she runs she just never seems to get far enough. Her grip on friendship is dying, too, and even Jinri doesn’t have strength to hold on; Sunyoung and Amber have long graduated, Sunyoung a year early with the senior class, and while her contact with Amber exists occasionally (how’s school? still dancing? how’s jinri? you sound depressed, what’s wrong?), her link with Sunyoung becomes another once upon a time.
Soojung starts skipping classes, things like math and science and dance she used to love with such an undying passion. Jinri calls her the first couple of times, now in the academy too, and asks the same as everyone else, but even she stops after a while, and Soojung just resides in the comfort of her room. Her parents are workaholics, Sooyeon’s communication practically died once she left, and Soojung has all but learned to care.
Then one Saturday, one uneventful Saturday, Jinri throws open the door to Soojung’s room, a pink duffel bag hanging off one shoulder (soojung’s always hated pink - it is too bright and too cheerful and too desperate of a color to pick her up at a time like that), looking flawless even on a workout day.
“You’re coming with me,” she says, grabbing Soojung’s arm with one hand and her black duffel bag, shoved in the corner of the room, with the other. “I can’t stand to see you dying away like this.”
They arrive at the studio and Soojung notices the familiar stains on the wall of spilled drinks and accidental tears, a scratched and tattered floor, and mirrors that are clean and give her an almost too-honest visual of herself. Suji and Taemin are practicing on their own at separated ends of the room, and Hyukjae is in the front of the class, aiding Minhyuk who Soojung didn’t realize she missed after so much time. He smiles when he sees her and she answers with a slight grin, upturned lips that are a distant feeling.
Her and Jinri take their usual (former, now currently) spot at the back, and it is at that time she sees Sunwoo and an alien face standing at the door. Sunwoo is a weekly visitor, an unsurprising, everlasting admirer of Jinri’s even though he is a year older, but it is the sudden guest that catches her attention.
The mystery figure looks over in her direction, then, and next to him, Sunwoo waves - Soojung flickers her fingers in response slightly and then turns back to the front, where Hyukjae is stretching and class is about to begin.
Soojung comes back to the class next Saturday, stepping back into movements that she hasn’t yet forgotten. The warm air and unrestricted space and the continuous line of actions is a lovely sentiment, and it has been a long time since she has found anything lovely, let alone likable.
When the class ends, she counts the heads departing and notices one missing, one of which she has not titled.
Hyukjae pulls her back when she is leaving, and even though he is sweaty and worn and dead-beat, he’s got a loud smile that brings his stupidity back to attraction. “So you’ve decided to join us again?” he says, and she gives him this weary grin. Then his eyes darken a little bit, and he straightens and coughs anxiety out of his throat. “Hey, I’m glad you could make it back. We missed you.”
She nods, and remembers an unknown person that came seven days ago. Chansik, Hyukjae calls him, but he doesn’t really like dancing, and now that Soojung has a name to go with a face, she decides maybe life is actually worth enjoying even if just for one thing.
She gets his number through Jinri, who gets it through Sunwoo, who supposedly almost requested a date before deciding it was wrong to ask of things from the love of his life when already longing for one favor too many.
Soojung decides to go the same way and only requests of one thing: /come back/, and even though she gets no response, she sees him back again that third week, graceless limbs and inelegant movements but a continuous push anyways.
Amber arrives at her door one unexpected evening holding a platter of odd-looking desserts, smiling with an expression in her eyes that Soojung’s seen too many times. “My Chinese roommate made a whole bunch, they taste delicious,” but Soojung never gets the chance to try them because Amber pushes her out the door and to a nearby park, one they used to play at as children.
They sit on a bench that is usually reserved for the elderly that take their grandkids to the park during babysitting hours; when she was younger, Soojung used to wish her grandparents did the same, that she didn’t have to go playing with Amber or Sunyoung’s parents because hers were always too busy. Now she is just glad to not have to deal with that.
“What’s with the sudden visit?” she begins. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Just wanted to see how you were doing.” Amber smiles, looking at her through her uneven bangs. “Jinri told me you quit dance lessons, what’s up with that?”
Soojung shrugs. She glances down at her fingers and thinks of long, thin, beautiful people, people she wants to be. “I went back a couple of weeks ago,” she answers. A new kid joined, she wants to say, and he’s not a very good dancer, but for all she knows he could be better than her and Soojung is just hidden like she always is. “I’m getting back into it.”
“That’s nice to hear.” Amber goes on to tell her stories of college, of things that she expected and didn’t get. There is the normal, there is the unusual, there is everything that Soojung can’t wait to get to, and Soojung listens to her stories with open ears and closed eyes. She doesn’t look back at the reunion again, but she hopes to one day tell Amber stories too, just like she hears.
Soojung immerses herself into dance once she rejoins, different than in the way before. She’s never paid attention to the others, but suddenly, she is comparing herself to Suji, and Taemin, and Minhyuk, and even Hyukjae, who she never once sought to be like even after all of his years of teaching her.
Chansik is there, too, suddenly. She notices his every being, and soon, they begin talking. His voice is soft and light and easy to listen to, though he doesn’t talk all that much. It is a relationship she’s never had before, the type where she is the one telling the stories about dreams and prospects of lives she has never had the chance to live before. He listens with open ears and wide eyes; sometimes he asks questions, too, but soon she is able to read them from him.
Soojung thinks half of the attraction just might be his looks, though. Chansik is beautiful - he is beautiful in a way that she doesn’t know how to explain. It is just there, always there like another presence, his beauty.
They begin staying in class longer, minutes before and hours after, like a separate mutualism. He’s got similar pursuits as her, in different ways of being able to share his own music with elegant, long fingers skimming over piano keys she never properly learned how to play. They remind her again of perfect people, and Soojung thinks of how premeditated the situation is, two perfect people meeting together as one.
She tries not to dwell over it (them) often, though. It is just an existing fact, like the trees that grow and the sky that is different shades of blues and grays, and things that are just meant to be.
Sooyeon is waiting for her at home the day Soojung arrives late from practice. Hyukjae ran overtime, she had homework, Chansik was being Chansik, none of them seem like proper excuses, so she leaves to her room only to be interrupted again through the door, Sooyeon holding a steaming bowl of rice that isn’t for her.
(soojung reminds herself she shouldn’t eat rice - white rice, at least, because that will make her bloat and she can’t be famous and bloat and so she sticks to foods that are bland and tasteless and won’t loosen a notch on her belt.)
“I don’t get the stunt you are pulling, Soojung,” Sooyeon begins - her voice is lined with candies and flowers and yet it is still pungent, like flavored medicine that tastes more like the depths of hell than it does grapes.
Soojung kicks her shoes off and glances over at her older sister, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This? Dancing, singing, modeling, where exactly do you think this route will get you?”
“I like doing it. Does it bother you?”
“Yes. It bothers me very much.” She licks her lips and puts the bowl on the table, and Soojung almost throws herself at it but she refrains herself because Sooyeon is testing, testing, testing. “You should stop going for something that won’t get you anywhere.”
Sooyeon is the type of sister that doesn’t want good things to happen to anyone but herself. Soojung has learned this many times over and over again, after being thrown hand-me downs and given the less of the schooling and more of the scolding, and the way Sooyeon doesn’t let her get anything until Soojung is at the age Sooyeon once was. She is a bitter soul hiding inside of a Barbie’s body and so Sooyeon does what any Bratz would do. “I like doing it, and just because you never had the talent to get somewhere with this doesn’t mean I don’t.”
The colors dim as springtime approaches - it is a bit ironic, really, that the season of blossoms and vibrance is when she finally loses it all, but it so happens to be when school is ending and Soojung as a junior isn’t so much as that as she is mentally still just a child.
The seniors begin wrapping up just like the rest of them, except in a different way, and Soojung drops dance lessons. She doesn’t show up one class; the next, she calls Hyukjae and whispers, “I don’t think dancing is for me. I’ve lost it again.” She doesn’t give him the chance to respond (though she hears threads of it, what are you saying? you were the best-) before she hangs up and tells herself that is why, because she doesn’t think it is for her.
Jiyoung asks her about it during a biology class that neither of them ever pay attention in. “I heard you dropped dance lessons again. Jinki said Hyukjae told him.” She bumps her slightly - the teacher, for some reason, never catches on to precious Jiyoung - and Soojung shrugs. Jiyoung leans in, then, and whispers something along the lines of, sooyeon? is it because of your sister?
She turns over to her, and half smiles this broken smile. “Don’t tell anyone,” Soojung whispers, although Soojung is a liar and the only reason she ever returned to dance in the first place is the exact same reason she left. Maybe her dreams lie elsewhere in the fame direction, just not something she can do on her own. Chansik, Gong Chansik, she begins to overwrite, but Soojung never let anyone impact her future to that extent so she seals her lips and just repeats to Jiyoung, “Not a single person.”
The move is unexpected. It is two weeks after the end of the school year and suddenly her room is filled with boxes. They are an ugly faded brown, thick, black printed letters labeling items and rooms and so many things that Soojung didn’t even know she owned. She pulls out CDs of old artists that died away, people she once wanted to be like, and photo booklets of her as a child, laughing innocently as if she wouldn’t grow up to be what she is.
Soojung shoves them at the bottom of the boxes, along with old, dusty memories thrown in the back of the attic. Dates that she had been on so many years before, thinking she was in a love that completed her life and instead just a chance to become Jung Soojung’s one and only. Story books her mother had read to her when she was just beginning primary school, words of fairy tales and infinite happiness and things she once thought existed.
It is only her and her parents that leave. Sooyeon is finishing college in Korea, working to become a successful daughter that blows any image of perfection off of the stand. Soojung thinks about asking her to keep up with Chansik, but she holds her tongue and closes her eyes instead, and then they are gone.
She begins her senior year at the same high school she would have attended in San Francisco if she had stayed there since elementary school, and she recognizes a girl that once used to make fun of her for having slanted eyes. Jamie, some weird English name that doesn’t leave as fluidly from her mouth as it once would have. Now Jamie sits at the back of an academic class alone, hair dyed a thick black with wild highlights and an electronic cigarette dangling from pierced red lips, bloodshot eyes that push people away. Soojung doesn’t sit next to her.
They spot her in the midst of shopping, and she is recruited immediately - it is as if looks were all that were needed and they would have trained the rest of it out of her. Soojung’s parents are ecstatic, and they book flights without realizing their little girl is growing up, and Soojung thinks that maybe she never was their little girl and just another flawless prodigy. They want to call Sooyeon, but she refuses, saying she will find out once Soojung’s name is on the billboards and the advertisements and topping the charts. She is too optimistic, maybe.
The day before her flight, Soojung heads to the dance studio near her house. It is only three blocks down, ten minutes max as she files her way down the street. The studio is high-class and only for the top, so much she had to try out when she first joined (but of course, she made it; after all, what is soojung if not perfect?)
The floors are glossed and cleaned every day, a shining wood that she always feels like she will slip on, and the mirrors are the same. They surround her like a box, unlike back home where there was only at the front so she was able to turn away. Here, she is forced to accept herself like it is, and here, the people are just as poised as she and so there is no pride in being the best, and here, Soojung is the odd one out, American but still so, so different.
Soojung thinks about Chansik while making her way back home. She wonders if he still dances, if he is still like her. But probably not, because no one can be like her for too long, and he is no exception.
Korea is not as she imagined it would be, and neither is Chansik. The city isn’t any brighter, any louder, any busier - maybe three years wasn’t that long for it to have changed so suddenly. Chansik is taller, though, so much that she has to tilt her head to look at him in the eyes. His hair is lighter, but she isn’t sure whether that is the sun or her imagination. He reminds her of a sort of prince that has nowhere to go but ahead. His fingertips graze hers and she does not hold on because she is no sort of princess in return.
They walk somewhere across the streets, but Soojung isn’t exactly sure where. She follows his feet, afraid to look up just in case he is looking and their eyes meet and there is something there, like a spark or shock or whatever they describe it in the songs.
The meeting (reunion, outing, date) ends abruptly with a phone call. It is her casting manager, “We’ve got news,” and his voice is so straight that she doesn’t know whether it is good or bad.
His eyes darken a bit as she is leaving, but she refuses to have him walk her home (wherever she can call home, the side apartment of her manager’s house), and so she just attempts a smile and says she will call him later. Afterwards, there are texts, and e-mails, and sometimes she sends him a post card even though they are mere hours away, but the call never comes and Soojung sometimes wishes she could work up the nerve to hear his voice and not fall to pieces.
The fatigue begins into the third practice. Her voice begins faltering during vocal practices, her dance steps are lackluster and don’t follow the beat, and her smile doesn’t reach the corners of her eyes like she had rehearsed for so long. Her trainers warn her, in a way - there are no encouraging words, just insults at weakness and puns on falling.
Soojung spends hours upon hours trapped in a little glass box, singing lyrics and thinking she might know how to express it right. It makes her feel claustrophobic, but she ignores it, because she can do it. They end up telling her otherwise every time, though. No emotion, no soul, nothing but an average voice, and Soojung ends up believing little lies that are there to tug and tease until she is a torn and tattered rope, trying to grasp the last filaments of weakening threads.
It is like a newborn emotion. Her limbs ache and she can’t ever shake it off. It exists within her, a soul and a mind and everything except a body, and so it ends up taking her over.
Her parents tell it is worth it, that she will get somewhere with all of this hard work, but the other trainees hate her for being tall and thin and the photographers’ model face and favored and foreign, something that no matter how hard they will try to be they won’t ever. Soojung is bilingual and bicultural and everything the media is looking for - broadening horizons, expansion, her company calls it, but Soojung thinks of just usury.
She loses her voice three months into the training period. The vocalist teacher keeps telling her to go higher, higher, higher, all the other female trainees can hit that note with ease (but even though soojung has seen most of the girls struggle at her starting level, she chooses to stay quiet), when her voice gives up and nothing comes out. The teacher stares at her with this disbelief in her eyes and Soojung is almost proud to see it, proving her dedication with such complexity, until the teacher says, “Go to the dance room. You’ll be practicing there until your voice comes back.”
The process becomes a pain she has never experienced before. Soojung wonders if she was ever cut out for this, or if Sooyeon was right and this is just a phase that will get never pass just that.
Soojung debuts a year later with a mini-album and two music videos. It is a majority pop EP with two ballad songs she had forced out of her throat two and a half weeks before release - Animal Style, it is titled, and it kind of reminds her of In N’ Out burgers back in California. The album debuts straight at number one for a full four days before dropping to second, and then another position down after one week.
Her EP begins losing its position around the third week and she remains at eighth for the rest of the album promotions. It is a success her company had yet to achieve with a rookie artist; she expects better treatment but it only gets worse, jealousy and resentment and all the things Soojung learned to let go of in her early years of high school.
It is like a different fame, she thinks. An acidic type, where she burns everything, turning everyone around her bitter and harsh.
(her inbox is flooded with texts and calls and she begins deleting numbers of those she had once fawned over for so long. even sooyeon calls her after a month and tells her she bought the album. soojung’s cheeks flame red at that and she wonders why she hadn’t had the sense to buy her own sister an album, because it wasn’t like they hated each other, they just- “sorry for being such a bitch earlier. i was envious, but i think you’ll make off as a much better singer than i ever would.”
“you don’t have to say that, sooyeon-”
“and don’t listen to what anyone has to say to you. it’s just jealousy, soojung, just jealousy. trust me, i’d know.” sooyeon laughs and soojung kind of cracks a smile because she knows from somewhere, sooyeon is watching and being a bratty sister just as much as an overprotective one.
she looks back at her inbox and sees unopened texts from chansik, gong chansik, and wonders if he’ll want to leave her alone after this. maybe this popularity is getting to her head. the last text she reads is a simple one, just i miss you, but soojung still smiles to herself because she knows she misses him too.)
The process begins all over again a year later. She does the whole routine once more, as if the hellish deviation of the first one hasn’t already pinned itself permanently to her memories, and it goes through a little less smooth for some reason.
Soojung puts in a different amount of energy this time around. It isn’t as much of a motivation as it is of an assertion, proof that she isn’t a one hit wonder and something that will last forever.
When she explains it like that, it is simple, and forever isn’t that hard to grasp. But in reality, infinity is a concept that Soojung doesn’t really understand, where she doesn’t know if she actually wants to live forever, be known forever, be compared to future generations that Soojung probably couldn’t live up to if she looks at it now - realistically, at least. What is a legend, really? Just someone that’s made a name, and she isn’t sure Jung Soojung is all that deserving of a legendary title in her book.
Her album is released that winter. Pretentious - the album cover is an imitation of her at some winter photo shoot, all snooty and arrogant and ostentatious, and Soojung thinks she looks kind of like a slut. It doesn’t fit the season, and she thinks that might have to do with why it did worse on the charts.
(she can’t bring herself to blame her singing, when she spent hours training her vocal chords to go from octave to octave in milliseconds, or her dancing, which she spent hours perfecting, or her promotions, which is all soojung did spent doing for the last two months. she can’t blame herself, when there is nothing she has ever worked harder on.)
The album reaches #16 at its highest peak.
Soojung learns to appreciate one-hit wonders.
It has been almost six months since she last met Chansik. In person, at least. They video chat sometimes, phone call once in a while, but most of the contact is limited to text, short messages that Soojung sometimes relies on to get her through the day (the week, the month, the lifestyle).
He catches her doubt before she decides not to let herself fall. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this,” Soojung whispers to him, and his hand is warm and soft compared to the rest of the world. “Maybe I should quit.”
She doesn’t believe it, and she isn’t so sure Chansik believes it either, but there are doubts in everyone.
“If this is what you want, what you wanted, you should keep at it.” He gives clichéd advice. Soojung wants to believe it, wants to accept that if it really is what she wants, what she wanted, that she should stick through to the end and maybe something will change and maybe something will get better and all of her maybes will come true.
“I don’t know what I want, to be honest,” is what she says instead.
His hand kind of tightens on hers, unconsciously or purposely, she doesn’t really know, but Soojung kind of likes it. Gong Chansik is something different. He doesn’t kiss her awake and sing her to sleep and cry with her and laugh with her and stay with her through it all. Chansik is just her friend and Soojung thinks that that is a lot more in itself. “Why?” he asks, his voice soft, but she thinks he might know the answer already.
“The Soojung they wanted seem to have it easy. She seemed happier.”
It might seem strange given all that is, but sometimes Soojung has trouble differentiating between herself. She can’t tell when she is Soojung, sexy and strong and fierce, thick defining contours, and then Soojung, reserved and independent and detached, blurred and distorted lines streaking here and there, like runaway mascara and smudged eyeliner.
She thinks that just might be why Chansik is always there, hidden in the background, because he knows, even when she doesn’t. He knows the difference between sexy and strong and fierce, and reserved and independent and detached.
Soojung thinks that just might be why she can’t ever let go of Chansik.
Chansik happens almost suddenly. Him and Jinyoung, she should say, but Jinyoung has always been flawless. He is different from Chansik, from her even, who work to get where they are, and for that Soojung doesn’t know whether she hates him or wants to be him.
Their digital single drops and she begins to feel like she is losing. Losing what, she doesn’t really know, because she’s always been kind of behind on life anyways, and this isn’t a different story. Maybe it is him.
/ I miss you / she messages him one day, and he responds two days (forty-seven hours, thirty-six minutes) later, / just keep going /, like he isn’t what keeps it from happening.
Later, Soojung realizes she was doing the exact same, but for then Soojung just watches and waits and pretends like one day he will knock on the door of her shabby apartment and come back. It isn’t a perfect ending, but it is realistic and in a world where it is hard to tell realities from dreams, she thinks she has done pretty well.
Her third album is scheduled to release in six months.
Soojung holes herself up in the recording studio and the words flow from the tip of her pen like water, water from a hidden stream that the humans can’t find and the animals drink out of. The lyrics are choppy and the composition isn’t all that smooth, and when she tries to sing along, her voice cracks at notes she usually hits with ease, but it is a step forward anyways.
She could never write all that well, but Chansik taught her things once or twice, and so Soojung writes anyways.
“I’m scared,” she confesses to him, her breathing heavy over a silent line, and he listened to her so well. “I’m scared that it will flop. That I’ll become a nobody.” That I’ll fall from too high up and never come back.
He doesn’t tell her it will be okay, because neither of them actually knows that, and Soojung has been promised false hopes for too long. “It’s frightening,” his voice is different - he sounds like a singer, one of those ballad singers that puts her to sleep, and she smiles, “but there is always light where there are shadows.”
They have their differences. Chansik lived as a writer, as a true musician, and Soojung was born to be a performer, on stage with feet hitting the ground and arms circling gracefully.
That is when Soojung thinks she might have fallen in love.
So for me and you
To become two and two
Cheers, my love
And Soojung just keeps dancing.