Round 6: no place for virtue
Title: no place for virtue
Team: future
Rating: pg13
Fandom: exo
Pairing:jongin/kyungsoo
Summary: kyungsoo doesn't believe in bending the rules for special people. jongin agrees, sometimes, but kyungsoo is more than special.
Warnings: war, angst, drastic physical injury
Prompt Used: 12:30 - b2st
Three weeks before Kyungsoo is set to serve out his mandatory two years of military service, the long-building tension between North and South Korea shatters into the windows of an elementary school in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province. Twenty-six bullets fished out in the autopsies of the victims: sixteen students, two teachers, the janitor and the security guard. Five missing kids. One unidentified corpse with a cracked skull and stab wound lying next to the third grade teacher under a fallen chalkboard, speculated to be North Korean.
Jongin looks at the pictures on the news and stares at the bloodied pair of scissors lying a half-meter away from the chalkboard. Across from him, Kyungsoo sits cross-legged on the edge of the mattress, staring out the window of their dorm. It’s sunny. An airplane passes by.
People like us, Jongin thinks in his head, trying to form coherent words, a speech for Kyungsoo. No, it wouldn’t work if he started it like that. Words are supposedly what he’s good at, but they’ve all run away from him now. You can still change your mind. Jongin purses his lips and closes his laptop, kneading the comforter between his hands.
“For me, hyung. Please. I love you.”
Kyungsoo exhales, almost laughing.
“Everyone has someone who loves them, Jongin.”
x
Six years ago, a long time after both of them started to see this coming, Kyungsoo had been filming for his third drama and Jongin was in New York for an invitational dance competition he’d been asked to perform solo at. There had been a scene in Kyungsoo’s drama where his character, Shin Namseon, runs away from home and wants to let his parents know, despite running away from them, that he’s safe, and then call a friend who can give him a little monetary support and a place to stay for a few nights. It’s winter, and if Namseon doesn’t call his friend or let his parents know he’s alright, he risks freezing to death or losing fingers and toes from frostbite or the authorities labelling him an urgent case and coming after him, and the last thing Namseon wants is to be found lying in the snow with missing fingers and toes, being talked about in the newspapers like another stupid, spoiled, failed runaway.
Namseon has only a few coins in his pocket for the payphone. He’d thought that his cell phone would last him, but realized the cops would be able to find him if they could trace his signal and promptly left it on his neighbor’s window ledge. When he gets to the payphone, there’s an old man in the booth, and as Namseon stands outside and waits, he can hear the man talking even though he’s trying to keep quiet. His voice keeps cracking, and maybe it’s just because he’s old but Namseon is pretty sure he’s trying not to cry by the way he keeps stopping mid-sentence to take a deep breath and recollect himself. He’s talking to his daughter, trying to explain something, and the daughter is yelling so loudly than Namseon can hear her better than the old man.
“I’m sorry,” the old man says, “I’m so sorry. If you would just listen to me, please, I don’t have anymore change, if you would just listen to me now-please, please just-I’ve been doing my best, alright-please just-”
The phone says, “You have one minute remaining.”
The old man makes a fist and pounds on the wall of the booth, letting out a sob. The girl is still screaming on the other side.
“You’ve never done anything for me and you’ve never done anything for my mother. All you ever did was laze around on the couch and now she’s sick, probably from working her whole life, and I don’t care if you’re working three jobs now because you deserve that. I wish it were you and not her.”
“You have thirty seconds remaining.”
Namseon pulls the coins out of his pocket and tries to smile at the man in the booth. “You can have these,” he says.
The old man blinks at him, covering the mouthpiece, and waves his hand weakly as if to reject the coins.
Namseon puts them down on the counter below the phone and says, “You need them more than I do.”
In the end, Namseon leaves the old man to his business, and during his brief search for shelter is found by a pretty high school girl, who becomes Namseon’s love interest for the rest of the drama.
Jongin knows that Kyungsoo doesn’t expect to find some pretty girl or any other reward waiting for him at the end of the road when he gives away his metaphorical coins. Kyungsoo never seems to expect anything in particular out of being a good person, and that’s probably why Jongin’s so in love with him. But in three weeks, Kyungsoo will be off to war with Jongin’s heart tucked in his pocket and the full knowledge that if he dies, he’ll take it with him to his grave. All for a bunch of strangers.
What is love worth when it can sink into six feet of dirt, just like that?
Next to him, Kyungsoo turns toward him and scoots closer under the covers, wrapping his arms around Jongin’s waist.
“I’m not gone yet,” he says, bumping Jongin’s cheek with his nose. “You don’t have to cry alone.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Jongin turns around and buries his face in Kyungsoo’s chest. “I didn’t know I was crying,” he says, heaving out sobs now. “I didn’t know, but maybe it’s good practice.”
Kyungsoo rests his chin on Jongin’s head and tightens his grip. Jongin cries, and cries, and cries, and Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything at all.
x
The day Kyungsoo leaves, time freezes like it did all the nights Jongin cried into his chest and Kyungsoo said nothing at all, skin soft, hands warm, but heart too cold for the universe to keep time without shivering to a stop. Like it did all the nights Jongin only cried for five minutes, but it felt like forever because every second was stuck and he didn’t want to move the clock hands.
Even though he was crying and hurting and Kyungsoo wasn’t kissing his wounds, he would have stayed hurt forever if it meant Kyungsoo would keep holding him.
The day Kyungsoo leaves, Jongin holds his hand all the way to airport security, jamming the line when they reach the front because he can’t bring himself to let go. He remembers the bloody scissors next to that third grade teacher’s hand and all of their differences suddenly fall together: Jongin thinks about the bloody scissors; Kyungsoo thinks about the valiant corpse lying crushed under the chalkboard.
He blinks, and Kyungsoo’s lips are lingering on his cheek, soft and freezing; brushing against his ear to whisper, “I love you, Kim Jongin.” His throat feels as though it’s coated in dust, and Kyungsoo’s hand slips through his. I love you, too, hyung, he tries to say, and before he knows it he’s on the ground, curled up in a ball with his forehead pressed against the floor, crying. Alone.
It wasn’t good practice. Nothing could have prepared him for this.
By the time the tears clear up enough for him to see, he notices that half of the fans and the news reporters have their equipment down. Some of them are crying with him. Security has him by the arms, hoisting him to the exit. He imagines Kyungsoo seeing him like this on the news and shrugs the staff members’ grips away, straightens up, and starts walking. He stumbles a few times, trips over things because he can’t see all that well. The least he can do is let Kyungsoo know he’s alright.
A little white lie never hurt anyone.
x
At the beginning of the year, things are fine. There is military training and Kyungsoo has just enough time for weekly, half-hour Skype calls, though they often go longer and Jongin always wakes up to the “Call Ended” alert in his earbuds when Kyungsoo has to leave for morning routines. But the war picks up and Kyungsoo is a hard worker, and in the blink of an eye he’s in the air force stealth planes doing surveillance work almost 24/7. If he isn’t piloting, he’s sleeping, eating, or stopping the plane for fuel. Their skype calls become monthly, and then less than that, until Jongin hasn’t seen Kyungsoo’s face since Chuseok, three months ago. Kakao messages go from several lines to choppy, bullet-point style, “Miss you, love you, am well, be happy”s. And Jongin feels more and more alone, lying in that room with only Chanyeol, whose attempts at cheering Jongin up earn him nothing more than a fake smile or a quiet, “Haha.”
The first performance of EXO’s fourth solo tour coincides with the anniversary of Kyungsoo’s leave for service. Still no call since Chuseok. Jongin tries not to think about it after shooting a message to Kyungsoo in the morning, but when the closing VCR of The Lost Planet and EXO’lution start playing and the fans start singing “Tell Me What Is Love,” he can’t help himself. It’s so difficult, every time, to know when he starts crying, but he knows he is because the fans start wailing and Jongdae’s arm is around his shoulders and Chanyeol sprints over from the other side of the stage to tackle him with the biggest hug he can manage. Baekhyun and Sehun are next, then Zitao, then Minseok, then Yixing. Then Junmyeon cries into the microphone and Jongdae points the screen, and everyone, even Jongin, has to laugh at the way his face contorts.
Just as Jongin’s preparing for bed that night, all cried out and smiling for probably the first time since Kyungsoo’s leave, his phone buzzes.
>> kyungsoo hyung: skype now, ~30 min?
His hands move before his mind does, pushing him up on the mattress so quickly the covers fly off, grabbing his laptop off the nightstand. He types so furiously that the sound of the clicking keys wakes Chanyeol, who’s been snoring for the past fifteen minutes.
“Mmffff,” Chanyeol groans, turning to face Jongin with half-lidded eyes, duvet cover pulled to the bridge of his nose. “Kyungsoo?”
Jongin nods, smacking the return key so hard it gets a little looser in its place. “Come on come on come on,” he whispers at the Skype screen, tapping his laptop. “Come on!”
A thud sounds from the other side of the room as Chanyeol rolls out of bed and lands on the floor. Jongin snorts and clicks Kyungsoo’s name violently on the contact’s list until the dial tone starts. Just as quickly, Kyungsoo picks up.
“That was fast,” Kyungsoo says, chuckling.
Jongin tries to say, “Hi,” but his voice cracks and he’s crying again.
“Jesus,” Chanyeol says, slipping under the covers and ruffling Jongin’s hair. He turns to Kyungsoo. “And I thought the kid was all cried out after the concert today.”
“What happened at the concert today?”
“They were playing the closing VCR and there were some bits from TLP, and when your solo came on, all the fans started singing and Jongin just lost it.”
“In front of everyone?”
“Shut up,” Jongin says, sniffling and pulling the covers over his head so Chanyeol can’t ruffle his hair anymore. “Shut up, I didn’t lose it.”
“He totally lost it. He just started crying like, ten times harder than you at the Prince of Tenn-”
“I am a decorated member of the South Korean Air Force and I will fly over there and shoot you. Do you want to die?”
Someone from Kyungsoo’s end of the line shouts, “Do Kyungsoo, that is abuse of your military position and also kind of rude!”
“I do what I want,” Kyungsoo shouts back, then looks back to the camera. “Go on.”
“So he starts crying, right, and Jongdae is kind of laughing but he goes over there and gives him a hug, and it’s like it’s contagious or something because as soon as he hugs Jongin, he starts crying, too, and then I gave him a hug and I probably didn’t cry but my eyes were like, on fire, and then everyone came and hugged Jongin but then everyone started crying except me with my fire-eyes, and Junmyeon did his ugly-face crying and Jongdae pointed it out to everyone on the big screen and then everyone was crying and laughing and, you know, shit.” Chanyeol takes a deep breath and turns away, rubbing his eyes. “Shit. We all miss you, man. And we’re all worried. Never thought you were the type for this self-sacrificial stuff.”
“You obviously didn’t know him at all,” Jongin says, poking his head out from under the covers. “Are you coming home soon?”
“I requested to be on the waitlist for non-active duty like everyone else, but as you can imagine the list is huge. I mean, it’s not like I want to be here fighting all the time, and you know that. But I didn’t want to be a part of that wimpy idol bullshit. That’s not fair.”
“Nothing is fair,” Jongin says.
“No, things can be fair. Let’s not argue about this again. In the end, shit happens and the world is cruel but that’s different from it being unfair. The least I can do is not buy into this system of idols’ choices having priority over other citizens’.”
No one says anything for a while, listening to Jongin’s laptop whir and Kyungsoo’s breaths on the other side. Chanyeol tentatively reaches up to ruffle Jongin’s hair again.
“You know, this guy, my ex-co-pilot, got to go home today, for non-active duty.” Kyungsoo smiles. “He’s got a wife and a son who hasn’t seen him since the day he was born. He’s going to do office work for the district government. How much longer would he have had to wait if I took my dumb idol privileges, you know? Or, maybe I didn’t affect him but it’s nice to think that someone like that will be going home earlier-”
“I don’t get it,” Jongin snaps. Kyungsoo looks taken aback. Chanyeol brings his hand down to rest it on Jongin’s shoulder, but Jongin shrugs it off. “You could come home for non-active duty, too. What about me? I love you more than anyone and anything on the planet and you say you love me, too, but you seem to care so much more about a lot of complete strangers you don’t even know exist yet. The world isn’t fair, and everyone has someone they love, but why do you insist on doing this big righteous thing, giving up your opportunity to come back, when everyone wants to go home and would probably have done the opposite had they been in your position?”
Kyungsoo inhales on the other end, ready to speak, but Jongin shakes his head. “Don’t you think there are people who resent you for this, too? Sure, a ton of people will think you’re doing the right thing and they’ll be grateful to you because maybe it means they’ll go home sooner than they would have otherwise. But how much does it really change? So, one idol decides he’s not going to take the priority he’s being given to enlist in active or non-active duty, great, honorable-but does it really make that big of a difference? In the end you’re just sacrificing a choice that so many people wish they could have. Aren’t you being a little too idealistic? Isn’t this a little self-centered, thinking you and your sacrifice can change so much? A little selfish of you to hurt me and everyone else like this for it?”
“Jongin…” Chanyeol says, quietly. “You’re being-”
“Fuck off. This is a real war, hyung. It’s not like before, when there was basically a non-existent fatality rate for people doing active, mandatory service. But you’ve already been deployed because this is a real war now, after that bombing, and you could die out there. They could shoot you out of the sky any day.” His lip quivers, and he knows he’ll break down in subsequent words, but he keeps talking anyway. “Don’t you ever think about me, hyung?” His voice cracks, and he has to stop for a few seconds before he can say the rest of it. Chanyeol looks at something on his side of the room. “Don’t you ever think about all of us?”
After a while, Kyungsoo says, “Why didn’t you say this to me before?”
“I don’t know. You were supposed to know. You were supposed to do this for me, maybe. It wouldn’t have changed your mind, and then all I would have done is sent you off knowing that I hated what you were doing, and if you died out there, all you’d remember is me saying this, saying you died not for some valiant sacrifice, but out of your own idealism and, I don’t know, self-importance.”
“I wouldn’t have thought about it like that at all, Jongin. Maybe I wouldn’t have changed my mind and maybe I would have, but if I kept going forward with it, I would’ve still believed I was doing the right thing. No one does the wrong thing on purpose.”
“Okay.” Jongin says. “I’m tired.”
“I’ll think about it,” Kyungsoo says. “I’m sorry I hurt you like this. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. More than anything I’ve ever missed in my whole life.”
“And I love you a lot.”
“I love you, too. More than anyone I’ve ever loved in this life or the one before that.”
Kyungsoo sighs. For a split second, Jongin hears his breath catch. Maybe Kyungsoo’s going to cry. But he wouldn’t do that. “Sleep well. I’ll be home sooner than you know it.”
“I hope so,” Jongin says.
The world shakes. Chanyeol turns the lights off. Jongin keeps his laptop open beside him, just like he used to. They don’t say anything, and Jongin wonders how cold Kyungsoo’s heart has to get before time is so frozen that it shatters over them, sharp pieces of glass-hard ice re-opening all the wounds they try to hide.
x
A month passes by with nothing from Kyungsoo. No messages, no calls, nothing. Jongin hears time crackling, bits and pieces of ceramic and glass and metal chipping off and digging into his skin, breaking him into the silence every time he thinks about whether or not Kyungsoo is still alive. If Kyungsoo is angry, and if he is, if he will die angry.
The netizens keep commenting on Jongin’s performances going down the drain. That his dance is all technique and no feeling, now, that he never speaks during concerts anymore, and when he does, it’s just the same generic thing, over and over. He says thank you to Seoul when they’re in Beijing, and when the fans start crying, he looks out, over all of them, into the black, unlit corners of the stadium, and waits for his cue to exit stage. Chanyeol apologizes on his behalf, says he and Kyungsoo were really close, tells that story from a million and two years ago about how Jongin had initially been scared of Kyungsoo and now they were so close they didn’t use honorifics anymore.
Once, when the closing VCR comes on, Jongin starts singing “Tell Me What Is Love” by himself, and management decides that they’ll have Jongin sing it every time, with all the same stage effects and backing vocals as Kyungsoo had. He cries the first few times. And then he only cries at the end. And then he only tears up, and walks away every time, wiping his eyes when he gets away from the spotlight.
Another month passes, and then a few weeks, a few days. Kim Youngmin gets a call from the military, saying Kyungsoo’s been honorably discharged from service due to permanent physical impairment, and Jongin doesn’t know what to do. He takes out his phone and opens Kakao, puts it back in his pocket and takes it out again.
are you alright, hyung? No. welcome home, hyung. No. what happened? No.
i’m sorry, hyung. i miss you. i love you.
When Jongin checks his phone again, Kyungsoo’s seen it. And Jongin cries, and cries, and cries, because Kyungsoo isn’t saying anything at all.
x
In the end, Kyungsoo never replies, but Jongin goes with Zitao in his Maserati to pick him up. When Jongin sees Kyungsoo, standing there in his jeans and with his hair just a little longer than it would’ve been if he were still in the military, with his wide eyes searching and hopeful, hands folded together, Jongin forgets all of it. That Kyungsoo didn’t respond, that Kyungsoo never said anything when he cried, that the last time they talked they fought-none of it matters. Before Kyungsoo even sees him coming, he’s run out and tackled him to the ground. Even with the bags under his eyes and the faded scars on his skin, it’s the most beautiful he’s ever been, and Jongin doesn’t even remember they’re in public until Kyungsoo laughs and places his hand between their faces so Jongin doesn’t kiss him.
“Are you real?” Jongin says, lying there on Kyungsoo, “Are you really here right now?”
“Home before you know it,” Kyungsoo says. He sits up, and pulls Jongin into a sitting position with him. “How are you?”
“How am I? How are you? Are you alright? What happened?”
Kyungsoo hesitates, then pulls up the leg of his pants to reveal the bottom of a prosthetic leg. It takes Jongin a while to get it, what that silver pole is doing inside Kyungsoo’s socks.
“Shot me right out of the sky,” he says. “Wasn’t too far off the ground when they blew holes in my parachute, but far enough for this. Foot got caught in a tree branch and I was going too fast for everything to stay together all that well, so they had to chop it all off. Guess I’m lucky.”
Jongin sucks in a deep breath, then reaches out to touch it. Even though it’s cold, as much as he’d convinced himself that Kyungsoo’s heart was an Antarctic wasteland while he was gone, something about it is comforting. Maybe it’s just that he’s touching Kyungsoo, a part of Kyungsoo. Maybe it’s just the way Kyungsoo hasn’t taken his eyes off him, smiling all the while. That even now, Kyungsoo doesn’t regret his choice, because he’s here, alive, and Jongin’s there with him.
“Do you regret it?” Jongin says. Before Kyungsoo even really shakes his head, Jongin says, “You’re amazing, you know that?”
“Nah. You were probably right, in the end. I don’t regret it, but I guess I figure making the other decision would have saved me a whole lot of this trouble. And my leg.”
“You did all this and you don’t regret it. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world with as much virtue as you’ve got.”
“Maybe,” Kyungsoo says, and takes Jongin’s hand in his. It’s warm, and Kyungsoo’s home, and all the clocks have thawed out and time presents itself to them in the form of forevers to come. “But war is no place for that, after all.”
Poll
Team: future
Rating: pg13
Fandom: exo
Pairing:jongin/kyungsoo
Summary: kyungsoo doesn't believe in bending the rules for special people. jongin agrees, sometimes, but kyungsoo is more than special.
Warnings: war, angst, drastic physical injury
Prompt Used: 12:30 - b2st
Three weeks before Kyungsoo is set to serve out his mandatory two years of military service, the long-building tension between North and South Korea shatters into the windows of an elementary school in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province. Twenty-six bullets fished out in the autopsies of the victims: sixteen students, two teachers, the janitor and the security guard. Five missing kids. One unidentified corpse with a cracked skull and stab wound lying next to the third grade teacher under a fallen chalkboard, speculated to be North Korean.
Jongin looks at the pictures on the news and stares at the bloodied pair of scissors lying a half-meter away from the chalkboard. Across from him, Kyungsoo sits cross-legged on the edge of the mattress, staring out the window of their dorm. It’s sunny. An airplane passes by.
People like us, Jongin thinks in his head, trying to form coherent words, a speech for Kyungsoo. No, it wouldn’t work if he started it like that. Words are supposedly what he’s good at, but they’ve all run away from him now. You can still change your mind. Jongin purses his lips and closes his laptop, kneading the comforter between his hands.
“For me, hyung. Please. I love you.”
Kyungsoo exhales, almost laughing.
“Everyone has someone who loves them, Jongin.”
x
Six years ago, a long time after both of them started to see this coming, Kyungsoo had been filming for his third drama and Jongin was in New York for an invitational dance competition he’d been asked to perform solo at. There had been a scene in Kyungsoo’s drama where his character, Shin Namseon, runs away from home and wants to let his parents know, despite running away from them, that he’s safe, and then call a friend who can give him a little monetary support and a place to stay for a few nights. It’s winter, and if Namseon doesn’t call his friend or let his parents know he’s alright, he risks freezing to death or losing fingers and toes from frostbite or the authorities labelling him an urgent case and coming after him, and the last thing Namseon wants is to be found lying in the snow with missing fingers and toes, being talked about in the newspapers like another stupid, spoiled, failed runaway.
Namseon has only a few coins in his pocket for the payphone. He’d thought that his cell phone would last him, but realized the cops would be able to find him if they could trace his signal and promptly left it on his neighbor’s window ledge. When he gets to the payphone, there’s an old man in the booth, and as Namseon stands outside and waits, he can hear the man talking even though he’s trying to keep quiet. His voice keeps cracking, and maybe it’s just because he’s old but Namseon is pretty sure he’s trying not to cry by the way he keeps stopping mid-sentence to take a deep breath and recollect himself. He’s talking to his daughter, trying to explain something, and the daughter is yelling so loudly than Namseon can hear her better than the old man.
“I’m sorry,” the old man says, “I’m so sorry. If you would just listen to me, please, I don’t have anymore change, if you would just listen to me now-please, please just-I’ve been doing my best, alright-please just-”
The phone says, “You have one minute remaining.”
The old man makes a fist and pounds on the wall of the booth, letting out a sob. The girl is still screaming on the other side.
“You’ve never done anything for me and you’ve never done anything for my mother. All you ever did was laze around on the couch and now she’s sick, probably from working her whole life, and I don’t care if you’re working three jobs now because you deserve that. I wish it were you and not her.”
“You have thirty seconds remaining.”
Namseon pulls the coins out of his pocket and tries to smile at the man in the booth. “You can have these,” he says.
The old man blinks at him, covering the mouthpiece, and waves his hand weakly as if to reject the coins.
Namseon puts them down on the counter below the phone and says, “You need them more than I do.”
In the end, Namseon leaves the old man to his business, and during his brief search for shelter is found by a pretty high school girl, who becomes Namseon’s love interest for the rest of the drama.
Jongin knows that Kyungsoo doesn’t expect to find some pretty girl or any other reward waiting for him at the end of the road when he gives away his metaphorical coins. Kyungsoo never seems to expect anything in particular out of being a good person, and that’s probably why Jongin’s so in love with him. But in three weeks, Kyungsoo will be off to war with Jongin’s heart tucked in his pocket and the full knowledge that if he dies, he’ll take it with him to his grave. All for a bunch of strangers.
What is love worth when it can sink into six feet of dirt, just like that?
Next to him, Kyungsoo turns toward him and scoots closer under the covers, wrapping his arms around Jongin’s waist.
“I’m not gone yet,” he says, bumping Jongin’s cheek with his nose. “You don’t have to cry alone.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Jongin turns around and buries his face in Kyungsoo’s chest. “I didn’t know I was crying,” he says, heaving out sobs now. “I didn’t know, but maybe it’s good practice.”
Kyungsoo rests his chin on Jongin’s head and tightens his grip. Jongin cries, and cries, and cries, and Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything at all.
x
The day Kyungsoo leaves, time freezes like it did all the nights Jongin cried into his chest and Kyungsoo said nothing at all, skin soft, hands warm, but heart too cold for the universe to keep time without shivering to a stop. Like it did all the nights Jongin only cried for five minutes, but it felt like forever because every second was stuck and he didn’t want to move the clock hands.
Even though he was crying and hurting and Kyungsoo wasn’t kissing his wounds, he would have stayed hurt forever if it meant Kyungsoo would keep holding him.
The day Kyungsoo leaves, Jongin holds his hand all the way to airport security, jamming the line when they reach the front because he can’t bring himself to let go. He remembers the bloody scissors next to that third grade teacher’s hand and all of their differences suddenly fall together: Jongin thinks about the bloody scissors; Kyungsoo thinks about the valiant corpse lying crushed under the chalkboard.
He blinks, and Kyungsoo’s lips are lingering on his cheek, soft and freezing; brushing against his ear to whisper, “I love you, Kim Jongin.” His throat feels as though it’s coated in dust, and Kyungsoo’s hand slips through his. I love you, too, hyung, he tries to say, and before he knows it he’s on the ground, curled up in a ball with his forehead pressed against the floor, crying. Alone.
It wasn’t good practice. Nothing could have prepared him for this.
By the time the tears clear up enough for him to see, he notices that half of the fans and the news reporters have their equipment down. Some of them are crying with him. Security has him by the arms, hoisting him to the exit. He imagines Kyungsoo seeing him like this on the news and shrugs the staff members’ grips away, straightens up, and starts walking. He stumbles a few times, trips over things because he can’t see all that well. The least he can do is let Kyungsoo know he’s alright.
A little white lie never hurt anyone.
x
At the beginning of the year, things are fine. There is military training and Kyungsoo has just enough time for weekly, half-hour Skype calls, though they often go longer and Jongin always wakes up to the “Call Ended” alert in his earbuds when Kyungsoo has to leave for morning routines. But the war picks up and Kyungsoo is a hard worker, and in the blink of an eye he’s in the air force stealth planes doing surveillance work almost 24/7. If he isn’t piloting, he’s sleeping, eating, or stopping the plane for fuel. Their skype calls become monthly, and then less than that, until Jongin hasn’t seen Kyungsoo’s face since Chuseok, three months ago. Kakao messages go from several lines to choppy, bullet-point style, “Miss you, love you, am well, be happy”s. And Jongin feels more and more alone, lying in that room with only Chanyeol, whose attempts at cheering Jongin up earn him nothing more than a fake smile or a quiet, “Haha.”
The first performance of EXO’s fourth solo tour coincides with the anniversary of Kyungsoo’s leave for service. Still no call since Chuseok. Jongin tries not to think about it after shooting a message to Kyungsoo in the morning, but when the closing VCR of The Lost Planet and EXO’lution start playing and the fans start singing “Tell Me What Is Love,” he can’t help himself. It’s so difficult, every time, to know when he starts crying, but he knows he is because the fans start wailing and Jongdae’s arm is around his shoulders and Chanyeol sprints over from the other side of the stage to tackle him with the biggest hug he can manage. Baekhyun and Sehun are next, then Zitao, then Minseok, then Yixing. Then Junmyeon cries into the microphone and Jongdae points the screen, and everyone, even Jongin, has to laugh at the way his face contorts.
Just as Jongin’s preparing for bed that night, all cried out and smiling for probably the first time since Kyungsoo’s leave, his phone buzzes.
>> kyungsoo hyung: skype now, ~30 min?
His hands move before his mind does, pushing him up on the mattress so quickly the covers fly off, grabbing his laptop off the nightstand. He types so furiously that the sound of the clicking keys wakes Chanyeol, who’s been snoring for the past fifteen minutes.
“Mmffff,” Chanyeol groans, turning to face Jongin with half-lidded eyes, duvet cover pulled to the bridge of his nose. “Kyungsoo?”
Jongin nods, smacking the return key so hard it gets a little looser in its place. “Come on come on come on,” he whispers at the Skype screen, tapping his laptop. “Come on!”
A thud sounds from the other side of the room as Chanyeol rolls out of bed and lands on the floor. Jongin snorts and clicks Kyungsoo’s name violently on the contact’s list until the dial tone starts. Just as quickly, Kyungsoo picks up.
“That was fast,” Kyungsoo says, chuckling.
Jongin tries to say, “Hi,” but his voice cracks and he’s crying again.
“Jesus,” Chanyeol says, slipping under the covers and ruffling Jongin’s hair. He turns to Kyungsoo. “And I thought the kid was all cried out after the concert today.”
“What happened at the concert today?”
“They were playing the closing VCR and there were some bits from TLP, and when your solo came on, all the fans started singing and Jongin just lost it.”
“In front of everyone?”
“Shut up,” Jongin says, sniffling and pulling the covers over his head so Chanyeol can’t ruffle his hair anymore. “Shut up, I didn’t lose it.”
“He totally lost it. He just started crying like, ten times harder than you at the Prince of Tenn-”
“I am a decorated member of the South Korean Air Force and I will fly over there and shoot you. Do you want to die?”
Someone from Kyungsoo’s end of the line shouts, “Do Kyungsoo, that is abuse of your military position and also kind of rude!”
“I do what I want,” Kyungsoo shouts back, then looks back to the camera. “Go on.”
“So he starts crying, right, and Jongdae is kind of laughing but he goes over there and gives him a hug, and it’s like it’s contagious or something because as soon as he hugs Jongin, he starts crying, too, and then I gave him a hug and I probably didn’t cry but my eyes were like, on fire, and then everyone came and hugged Jongin but then everyone started crying except me with my fire-eyes, and Junmyeon did his ugly-face crying and Jongdae pointed it out to everyone on the big screen and then everyone was crying and laughing and, you know, shit.” Chanyeol takes a deep breath and turns away, rubbing his eyes. “Shit. We all miss you, man. And we’re all worried. Never thought you were the type for this self-sacrificial stuff.”
“You obviously didn’t know him at all,” Jongin says, poking his head out from under the covers. “Are you coming home soon?”
“I requested to be on the waitlist for non-active duty like everyone else, but as you can imagine the list is huge. I mean, it’s not like I want to be here fighting all the time, and you know that. But I didn’t want to be a part of that wimpy idol bullshit. That’s not fair.”
“Nothing is fair,” Jongin says.
“No, things can be fair. Let’s not argue about this again. In the end, shit happens and the world is cruel but that’s different from it being unfair. The least I can do is not buy into this system of idols’ choices having priority over other citizens’.”
No one says anything for a while, listening to Jongin’s laptop whir and Kyungsoo’s breaths on the other side. Chanyeol tentatively reaches up to ruffle Jongin’s hair again.
“You know, this guy, my ex-co-pilot, got to go home today, for non-active duty.” Kyungsoo smiles. “He’s got a wife and a son who hasn’t seen him since the day he was born. He’s going to do office work for the district government. How much longer would he have had to wait if I took my dumb idol privileges, you know? Or, maybe I didn’t affect him but it’s nice to think that someone like that will be going home earlier-”
“I don’t get it,” Jongin snaps. Kyungsoo looks taken aback. Chanyeol brings his hand down to rest it on Jongin’s shoulder, but Jongin shrugs it off. “You could come home for non-active duty, too. What about me? I love you more than anyone and anything on the planet and you say you love me, too, but you seem to care so much more about a lot of complete strangers you don’t even know exist yet. The world isn’t fair, and everyone has someone they love, but why do you insist on doing this big righteous thing, giving up your opportunity to come back, when everyone wants to go home and would probably have done the opposite had they been in your position?”
Kyungsoo inhales on the other end, ready to speak, but Jongin shakes his head. “Don’t you think there are people who resent you for this, too? Sure, a ton of people will think you’re doing the right thing and they’ll be grateful to you because maybe it means they’ll go home sooner than they would have otherwise. But how much does it really change? So, one idol decides he’s not going to take the priority he’s being given to enlist in active or non-active duty, great, honorable-but does it really make that big of a difference? In the end you’re just sacrificing a choice that so many people wish they could have. Aren’t you being a little too idealistic? Isn’t this a little self-centered, thinking you and your sacrifice can change so much? A little selfish of you to hurt me and everyone else like this for it?”
“Jongin…” Chanyeol says, quietly. “You’re being-”
“Fuck off. This is a real war, hyung. It’s not like before, when there was basically a non-existent fatality rate for people doing active, mandatory service. But you’ve already been deployed because this is a real war now, after that bombing, and you could die out there. They could shoot you out of the sky any day.” His lip quivers, and he knows he’ll break down in subsequent words, but he keeps talking anyway. “Don’t you ever think about me, hyung?” His voice cracks, and he has to stop for a few seconds before he can say the rest of it. Chanyeol looks at something on his side of the room. “Don’t you ever think about all of us?”
After a while, Kyungsoo says, “Why didn’t you say this to me before?”
“I don’t know. You were supposed to know. You were supposed to do this for me, maybe. It wouldn’t have changed your mind, and then all I would have done is sent you off knowing that I hated what you were doing, and if you died out there, all you’d remember is me saying this, saying you died not for some valiant sacrifice, but out of your own idealism and, I don’t know, self-importance.”
“I wouldn’t have thought about it like that at all, Jongin. Maybe I wouldn’t have changed my mind and maybe I would have, but if I kept going forward with it, I would’ve still believed I was doing the right thing. No one does the wrong thing on purpose.”
“Okay.” Jongin says. “I’m tired.”
“I’ll think about it,” Kyungsoo says. “I’m sorry I hurt you like this. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. More than anything I’ve ever missed in my whole life.”
“And I love you a lot.”
“I love you, too. More than anyone I’ve ever loved in this life or the one before that.”
Kyungsoo sighs. For a split second, Jongin hears his breath catch. Maybe Kyungsoo’s going to cry. But he wouldn’t do that. “Sleep well. I’ll be home sooner than you know it.”
“I hope so,” Jongin says.
The world shakes. Chanyeol turns the lights off. Jongin keeps his laptop open beside him, just like he used to. They don’t say anything, and Jongin wonders how cold Kyungsoo’s heart has to get before time is so frozen that it shatters over them, sharp pieces of glass-hard ice re-opening all the wounds they try to hide.
x
A month passes by with nothing from Kyungsoo. No messages, no calls, nothing. Jongin hears time crackling, bits and pieces of ceramic and glass and metal chipping off and digging into his skin, breaking him into the silence every time he thinks about whether or not Kyungsoo is still alive. If Kyungsoo is angry, and if he is, if he will die angry.
The netizens keep commenting on Jongin’s performances going down the drain. That his dance is all technique and no feeling, now, that he never speaks during concerts anymore, and when he does, it’s just the same generic thing, over and over. He says thank you to Seoul when they’re in Beijing, and when the fans start crying, he looks out, over all of them, into the black, unlit corners of the stadium, and waits for his cue to exit stage. Chanyeol apologizes on his behalf, says he and Kyungsoo were really close, tells that story from a million and two years ago about how Jongin had initially been scared of Kyungsoo and now they were so close they didn’t use honorifics anymore.
Once, when the closing VCR comes on, Jongin starts singing “Tell Me What Is Love” by himself, and management decides that they’ll have Jongin sing it every time, with all the same stage effects and backing vocals as Kyungsoo had. He cries the first few times. And then he only cries at the end. And then he only tears up, and walks away every time, wiping his eyes when he gets away from the spotlight.
Another month passes, and then a few weeks, a few days. Kim Youngmin gets a call from the military, saying Kyungsoo’s been honorably discharged from service due to permanent physical impairment, and Jongin doesn’t know what to do. He takes out his phone and opens Kakao, puts it back in his pocket and takes it out again.
are you alright, hyung? No. welcome home, hyung. No. what happened? No.
i’m sorry, hyung. i miss you. i love you.
When Jongin checks his phone again, Kyungsoo’s seen it. And Jongin cries, and cries, and cries, because Kyungsoo isn’t saying anything at all.
x
In the end, Kyungsoo never replies, but Jongin goes with Zitao in his Maserati to pick him up. When Jongin sees Kyungsoo, standing there in his jeans and with his hair just a little longer than it would’ve been if he were still in the military, with his wide eyes searching and hopeful, hands folded together, Jongin forgets all of it. That Kyungsoo didn’t respond, that Kyungsoo never said anything when he cried, that the last time they talked they fought-none of it matters. Before Kyungsoo even sees him coming, he’s run out and tackled him to the ground. Even with the bags under his eyes and the faded scars on his skin, it’s the most beautiful he’s ever been, and Jongin doesn’t even remember they’re in public until Kyungsoo laughs and places his hand between their faces so Jongin doesn’t kiss him.
“Are you real?” Jongin says, lying there on Kyungsoo, “Are you really here right now?”
“Home before you know it,” Kyungsoo says. He sits up, and pulls Jongin into a sitting position with him. “How are you?”
“How am I? How are you? Are you alright? What happened?”
Kyungsoo hesitates, then pulls up the leg of his pants to reveal the bottom of a prosthetic leg. It takes Jongin a while to get it, what that silver pole is doing inside Kyungsoo’s socks.
“Shot me right out of the sky,” he says. “Wasn’t too far off the ground when they blew holes in my parachute, but far enough for this. Foot got caught in a tree branch and I was going too fast for everything to stay together all that well, so they had to chop it all off. Guess I’m lucky.”
Jongin sucks in a deep breath, then reaches out to touch it. Even though it’s cold, as much as he’d convinced himself that Kyungsoo’s heart was an Antarctic wasteland while he was gone, something about it is comforting. Maybe it’s just that he’s touching Kyungsoo, a part of Kyungsoo. Maybe it’s just the way Kyungsoo hasn’t taken his eyes off him, smiling all the while. That even now, Kyungsoo doesn’t regret his choice, because he’s here, alive, and Jongin’s there with him.
“Do you regret it?” Jongin says. Before Kyungsoo even really shakes his head, Jongin says, “You’re amazing, you know that?”
“Nah. You were probably right, in the end. I don’t regret it, but I guess I figure making the other decision would have saved me a whole lot of this trouble. And my leg.”
“You did all this and you don’t regret it. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world with as much virtue as you’ve got.”
“Maybe,” Kyungsoo says, and takes Jongin’s hand in his. It’s warm, and Kyungsoo’s home, and all the clocks have thawed out and time presents itself to them in the form of forevers to come. “But war is no place for that, after all.”
Poll