Round 08: Together Anywhere (Part 2/2)
Previous
So today (25th May, time doesn't matter), Luhan plans to continue with the letters. He looks at the stacks of them, messy characters and lettering in smudged ink all over the pages, and decides that tonight he'll read them.
But today, Luhan is laying on the floor of the practice room thinking, they really need to sweep this place more. Yixing laying beside him, clutching his wrist and gritting his teeth, Luhan's thinking, this floor gets dusty really quickly.
Not even one minute into their run-through of History, he's slid too far forward during one of the position switches and collided with Yixing. Yixing's gone down hard. And the thing is, Luhan would feel bad about it, but he isn't even surprised. This has happened many times before. The last few weeks leading up to their debut stage (9th April, he remembers it clearly), the managers and choreographers were always yelling. A few missteps, a few wrong moves, and he was sending Zitao stumbling or knocking over Jongdae. It was quite ordinary. At least, to him.
So the managers and choreographers yelled and yelled (it's only a small choreography change Luhan, why can't you get this, our jobs are on the line here, look we understand you're upset right now but are you even fucking listening) until it was perfect. Until everyone stayed upright during practices. Until, in their first live performances, no one tensed up and braced themselves when Luhan's timing was just a half-second off.
But that's exactly the problem. Over time, the altered choreography worked its way into his muscle memory, and he stopped thinking so much. He stopped tripping Wufan and pausing half a second short of careening into Minseok.
And now, suddenly, he's doing it again.
Yixing is laying on the dusty wood floor, his fingers closed around his swelling wrist and his eyes squeezed shut, and all Luhan can say is, "Sorry." And with the way they're all looking at him, this mixture of confusion and frustration and something less obvious (pity, maybe?), Luhan knows sorry isn't going to be enough.
And it's not.
"It's not your fault," Minseok says, a few hours later, once Yixing's sprained wrist has been put in a brace and Luhan's been viciously reprimanded by nearly every member of SM staff. "It was just a mistake."
Luhan's exhausted, worn out from the three extra hours of practice he was assigned as punishment; it won't be the last time, either. He leans his head back against the wall of his bedroom, where he's locked himself in to avoid the accusing and scornful looks of the other four. "You're just telling me what I want to hear."
Minseok smiles, bitterly. "What else do you want me to do?"
And Luhan doesn't know. He doesn't know, either, why all of a sudden he's screwing things up again -
- Except, he thinks, that maybe he does. Because there, doing those routines, he was suddenly stuck somewhere in the past (December 2011, maybe, or sometime around then, he's not really sure). Running through those moves on autopilot, he was reacting to a different, older version of the choreography. A version he ran through time and time again during the months leading up to debut, before it was changed.
In his mind, everything was where it was in December 2011. Everything was in its place.
But in the real world, it was all wrong. Jongdae was in half the places Minseok used to be, and Luhan couldn't keep up. Zitao was too far forward half the time, filling up some of the spaces left by Jongdae, and Luhan was confused. With the way Yixing was moving much more than usual, seamlessly closing every little gap in the choreography and every little break in their formation, Luhan was lost. And with the way Minseok was further away in the back somewhere, over on the side, Luhan had no idea where he was. Because Minseok used to be his marker, the one he looked at to figure out where he was and where he was supposed to be -
He did this, really, because he could never take his eyes off Minseok when Minseok was dancing. He was always looking for Minseok. But now, looking for Minseok, he's looking in the wrong places.
Tonight (25th May, but with the way his mind's somewhere else entirely, it doesn't fucking matter), he reads the letters. Sitting on the floor of his bedroom, his back up against the wall, he lets Minseok hold him as he closes his eyes and opens the Cabinet.
It takes him a while to get through them all. There are stacks upon stacks of them, the middles crinkled and the edges torn, and in places the ink is smudged or faded so badly that he can barely make out the words. Some are in Mandarin, some are in Korean, and some are in a mixture of both; they were all for Minseok, really, but he never saw a single one of them.
During the three years they were together, Luhan wrote so many of these letters that he can't even remember what half of them say. One day, he thought, he'd show them to Minseok. He'd let Minseok see, in the rawest form possible, how Luhan had slowly fallen for him.
Three years, he wrote these letters. And now, he thinks, Minseok will never get to see them.
It's an hour. Maybe two. He loses track.
The first letter is simple - I saw you once, and now I see you wherever I go.
The second letter is a bit less simple - I don't mind, though.
The letters in the middle are complex - If all good things come to an end, I'd rather this thing between us become a bad thing than watch it disappear.
And the last letter he reads, the second-to-last one in the pile, he tears to shreds the minute he finishes it - I wish that you were here, or I were there, or we were together anywhere.
When Luhan opens his eyes, they're wet. So are his eyelashes and his cheeks. It surprises him a bit; he doesn't cry, he never really has, so at first he's not sure what's happening. He's not sure why, either. But Minseok doesn't say a word about it. He doesn't dry Luhan's tears. Doesn't acknowledge them, either. Just pats Luhan on the shoulder and gets up to leave without a word, closing and locking the door behind him. In the silence Luhan takes a deep breath, waiting for the tears to dry on their own.
(And he thinks, he never saw the final letter, the very last one in the pile - but now we are.)
When he wakes up, all the letters are gone, including the one he left unread.
Today (beginning of June, it doesn't matter, it could be anytime for all he cares), Luhan thinks he'll open the jar of invisible kisses and let them scatter out into the wind. And today, Luhan's got his camera out again. Five fucking months later, he wants another picture of Minseok. A new one, to replace all the ones in the Cabinet that he's imagined burning a hundred times over.
Both of them laying on the floor of the dorm, Luhan holds his phone up above their faces and examines their reflections on the screen. It's hard to see Minseok's face, with the way the sunlight streaming through the windows of their dorm is so bright; taking him by the arm, he scoots them over a bit. Minseok wrinkles his nose, trying to brush his unruly fringe to the side; it's getting long enough that he has to keep shaking it out of his face every few minutes. Luhan moves the phone up and to the side, looking for a better position, then shakes his head.
"We need to sit up. This angle makes me look like I've got a double chin."
"What makes you think it's the angle?" Minseok snickers, then scrambles into a sitting position as Luhan tries to wallop him with a nearby pillow. "Okay! Okay. Point taken."
Sitting next to Minseok, their legs stretched out beside each other on the hardwood floor, Luhan unlocks the screen of his phone again and turns it back to face them. The lighting is bad, really; he has to re-focus the camera to see Minseok's face on the screen next to him.
"On three?" Minseok asks.
"On three," says Luhan, then takes it on two. Minseok makes a noise of protest the second the shutter clicks. Luhan smirks, going back to the camera roll to laugh at Minseok for whatever stupid face he must've been making at the time - and then it's his turn to protest.
Minseok ducked out of the picture at the last minute. Luhan didn't even see him do it, the bastard. Snatching up the pillow again, he beats Minseok over the head with it, ignoring Minseok's laughter. Minseok grabs another to defend himself, and it's not too long before the living room floor is a mess of fluff and inside-out pillow covers, the two of them slumped on their backs laughing breathlessly at the ceiling.
And in the back of his mind, he opens the Cabinet. He picks up the clear glass jar on the middle left shelf, the one that's filled with hundreds of little invisible kisses. To anyone else it might look empty, but Luhan knows better. He knows it's filled with the memories of kisses that he caught out of the air when Minseok blew them to him, that he scooped off his cheeks and forehead and sometimes his lips, while Minseok laughed and said you're so weird. By then, he'd accepted this as just another part of Luhan's bizarre and complex personality. It made Luhan smile, the way he took it in stride. And Luhan smiles now, too, as he carries the jar out of the Cabinet, out of his mind. As he opens it. As he watches the things inside slowly stir, caught up in a slight gust of wind, and lift up and out of the little glass jar until there's nothing left inside it.
Laying here like this, looking at Minseok's flushed cheeks and the grin on his face, Luhan thinks that he missed this. Watching the invisible kisses float away in the breeze, he thinks that he missed it so much. He thinks that five months later, they might be okay. Five fucking months later, maybe they can get a fresh start.
But he wonders, just briefly, if he's really getting over Minseok or if he might be falling in love with Minseok all over again.
Jino wonders this too.
Today (beginning of June, doesn't matter when, could be any time), Luhan thinks that today he really will burn the photographs. Get rid of them once and for all. Because now, he's not burning them to give them some kind of misguided significance. And now he knows he can't cling onto them forever, not with the way that he's slowly but surely letting go of the past so that he can accept Minseok into his present again.
But today he's laying on his bed, laptop in front of him, a video chat with Jino open on the screen. And Jino is frowning.
"I thought you'd be proud of me," Luhan says, and furrows his brows. "I'm letting go of the past. I'm moving on. Isn't this what you wanted?"
"I didn't want it like this." Jino's voice is soft, and Luhan has to lean forwards and turn up the computer's volume to hear it. "Letting go is good. But, hyung, that's not what you're doing. You think you're getting a fresh start, but you're making it all about Minseok. You're fooling yourself."
Luhan's eyes narrow. "What did you say?"
He can see the way Jino flinches. The way he swallows hard. Poor little Jino, he's nervous. He's never talked back to his hyung before. But sitting there in the darkness of his dorm room, far away in Seoul, he takes a deep breath and continues.
"You're getting obsessed with him again, just in a different way. All this is, is a different form of lying to yourself. But this time, you won't even admit you're lying."
Sweet, respectful little Jino. He's never spoken like this to Luhan before, not with that accusatory tone. Not with that shadowed look in his eyes. Luhan digs his nails into his palm.
"But I am moving on. I'm getting better. I'm following your own advice, and now you don't like it. What more do you want from me?"
Precious little Jino, his comforting escape from reality, is turning on him. Turning against him. It's like a slap to the face.
"But I didn't say - all I told you was to come back to the present. Not to cut yourself off from the world forever. But you just - look, I talked to Joonmyun, okay? I talked to Joonmyun and Wufan. You never talk to them anymore. You don't talk to anyone anymore. You're just off somewhere, preoccupied with Minseok, wrapped up in these memories and acting as if never thinking about anything but him is progress."
Loyal little Jino, going behind his back. Sneaking around, whispering about him out of earshot.
"It is progress." Luhan grits his teeth, his tone heated. "You just don't understand how -"
"They pity you, Luhan!" Jino cries, sharply. It shocks Luhan, and he recoils like he's been hit - it hurts him, scares him, more than any punch he's ever taken. Caring little Jino, abandoning all formality. Raising his voice. "Don't you see? They see you acting like this, caught up in these false dreams, obsessing alone over the past, and they pity you. They think you're mental!"
"You're wrong. I'm not alone." Luhan laughs, softly, and shakes his head. "I have Minseok."
Jino is pleading now, his voice breaking. "Please, hyung, come back to reality."
"I am, Jino. I promise I am." Luhan laughs again, and this time he's not sure why (but he thinks, maybe, he just doesn't know what else to do). "Really, I'm almost done. Just two more things to let go of, and then everything will be normal again. Isn't that good?"
And Luhan doesn't understand, he really doesn't, why there are tears in Jino's eyes. Strong little Jino, Luhan doesn't understand why he's crying.
"All you're doing, Luhan, is making your exterior world just as delusional as your interior one."
Luhan wants to snap at him. He wants to fight back. He wants to tell Jino, you're the delusional one. He wants to say, you don't even know what you're talking about. He wants to say, if you could see the things inside my head, you'd understand. And he almost does, he's a second away from it, but then Minseok walks in. He's frowning.
"Is everything okay?" he asks, from the doorway.
Luhan turns, shaking his head. "It's alright. I can handle it."
"Who are you talking to," says Jino, in a low voice.
Luhan grabs his laptop and turns it further to the side, to keep Minseok offscreen. Out of Jino's view. "Nothing. No one. It's fine."
And a funny thing happens then. It happens so gradually that Luhan can see all the stages of it, one by one. It starts with Jino taking in a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds. It continues with his shoulders slumping, his back arching forward. And it finishes with the dark, empty look in his eyes, a shake of his head.
"You told me I could say anything I wanted to you. Remember that? You said we were friends. I'm only saying this because I care. But if you don't want to listen, then I've done all I can do."
The screen goes black. Jino's ended the chat. Luhan curses, lowering his head into his hands; after a moment he can feel Minseok beside him, resting a hand on his back.
"Don't worry about him," says Minseok. "He means well. I'm sure they all do. They just don't know your way of dealing with things."
"It's funny." Luhan laughs, bitterly. "All of this is your fault, really, but you're the only one that understands. The irony is sickening, right?"
(And come to think of it, he's not really sure if he said it out loud or just thought it, but Minseok sits there and rubs his back without a word.
Somehow, Minseok always knows what he needs.)
That night (beginning of June, doesn't fucking matter when, could be any time), Luhan bangs open the doors of the Cabinet and burns the photographs.
It's just like he imagined. He picks up the photographs one by one, holding them between his index finger and thumb by just one corner. He tries not to look at them; if he sees those photographs, looks at their faces, remembers those moments, he might not be able to raise the lighter to the bottom of them and watch them burn.
But he does.
Luhan's draping himself over a laughing Minseok's back in the expensive restaurant with the terrible, washed-out orange lighting, and Luhan's hands are sweat-slick and nerve-racked on the red plastic lighter as the flame touches the edge of the photograph.
Make it stop.
Minseok's tangling his fingers in Luhan's long hair, the messy waves half-braided, and the edges of the picture are blackened and curling inward in the acrid air.
Take it away.
Luhan and Minseok are dishevelled and inseparable on a beach at the end of a sunset, and the fire's covering so much of the photo that it's just the inevitable slow burn of ashes waiting to happen.
Destroy it.
Minseok's alone and pretending he's not lonely to comfort Luhan, and Luhan's dropping the picture before the fire can lick up his fingers and burn him, because that's the last picture he's got of Minseok before -
Let it fucking burn.
It's just like he imagined, down to the very last detail. Vivid and real and raw and precise. And just like that, the memories are gone.
(But ah, wait - now that he thinks about it, there is something that's different. Because when he's burning those photographs, he's thinking. Unlike all those times he imagined burning them, again and again and again, he's not mourning the irreplaceable past moments with Minseok he's destroyed. He's not remembering all those individual split-seconds of perfection that will never happen again. He's thinking only that, now, they'll have all the time in the world to replace those lost memories with new ones.)
Tonight (8th June, just before SMTown Taiwan, could be just before the end of the world for all he cares), Luhan curls up in his tiny hotel bed with all the lights off and opens the Cabinet for the second-to-last time. He leans over to the top left shelf, the second-to-last remaining one, and picks up the three small white candles with the wicks half-burnt down and the drops of dried wax dripping down the sides.
And the thing is, Luhan doesn't understand. Looking at the candles, he doesn't remember where he got them or what they were for. Doesn't remember how they got burnt down. And he's never been one to cry, not really, but he can feel tears running down his face again. With the heat in the room, they make his skin itch as they drip down his cheeks and soak into the pillow he's using to muffle the sobbing noises he's not sure why he's making.
Because he doesn't remember. Picking up the red plastic lighter he used to destroy the photographs, the pain is numbed. Unlike the other memories, he can't feel the full impact of it. It's dulled. There's something holding it back.
Through the blurry haze of tears clinging to his eyelashes, the ones he doesn't understand, Luhan sees the key on the top right shelf. But he thinks, not yet. He thinks, it's not time.
And he thinks, maybe, I'm not ready.
Luhan lights the candles, one by one, and watches the tips of the wicks disappear into the fire and the wax drops roll slowly down to the bottom of the candles.
But the problem is, when he's done, they don't disappear.
But tonight (9th June, he lost track of time about sixty-two minutes ago, he's vaguely aware of this), Luhan is onstage at SMTown Taiwan thinking, tonight this is all going to end.
Tonight, once this is all over, he's going to open the Cabinet. He's going to reach straight for the top right shelf, the one with the key on it, the thing he's been avoiding this whole time. He's going to pick it up, that key; the one that's nothing special, just the same brass material as the handles of the door, no unique design or anything. But if you squint through the darkness there's a door on the back wall of the Cabinet, small and shallow, locked from the inside. That key, it's nothing special, but it's just the right size to fit into that lock.
And the key's been there on the top right shelf, slowly gathering dust, untouched since the first day it was put there. But today, Luhan is going to pick it up. He's going to lean all the way into the Cabinet until he reaches the back wall, and then he's going to fit that key into the lock and turn it.
Because the last thing, really, is behind that door.
And once he lets it out, this will all be over.
So tonight, Luhan is onstage. Tonight, he stands side-by-side with the other eleven EXO members and looks out into the stadium. With the way the screams from the crowd are so loud, so piercing, so overpowering, they should be making his head ache; he barely hears them. With the way the lights are so bright, so focussed, so pointed, they should be making his eyes sting and his balance falter; he barely sees them. With the way their costumes are so heavy, so thick, so tight, he should be burning from the heat; he barely feels them.
Because tonight he's too busy thinking that, soon, this will all be over.
But with the twelve of them standing side-by-side, Luhan begins to think. He begins to wonder again what would happen if he stands here and says Hello, we are EXO, and we are one without ignoring the sound of his voice. If he keeps listening after that, no matter what names he hears. He begins to think that if he's letting everything go, if this all ends tonight, maybe it's time to listen.
And so he does.
Tonight (9th June, he's lost track of time and he doesn't care), Luhan says, "Hello, we are EXO, and we are one". Tonight, he stands side-by-side with the other eleven and listens.
Hello, I'm EXO-M's Kris.
One more.
Hello, I'm EXO-M's Lay.
His turn.
"Hello, I'm EXO-M's Luhan."
Keep listening.
Hello, I'm EXO-M's Chen.
Don't block it out.
Hello, I'm EXO-M's Tao.
Stay present.
Hello, I'm EXO-K's Chanyeol.
Wait.
Hello, I'm EXO-K's D.O.
No.
Hello, I'm EXO-K's Sehun.
This is wrong.
Hello, I'm EXO-K's Kai.
This has to be a mistake.
Hello, I'm EXO-K's Suho.
Pretend it's not happening.
Hello, I'm EXO-K's Baekhyun.
No. Block it out. Block it out fast, before -
Hello, I'm EXO-K's Jino.
Twelve members.
In the back of his mind, Luhan is opening the Cabinet.
He's pulling open the engraved wood doors, revealing the dark space inside, and he's thinking no, stop.
He's leaning into it, scanning over the five empty shelves until he sees the last occupied one, and he's thinking not yet.
He's reaching into the darkness, closing his fingers around the key; the cold metal is heavy in his palm, and he's thinking I'm not ready.
He's sliding it into the lock in the back wall and turning it, feeling the click as five months later it finally opens, and he's thinking no, stop, I'm scared, I'm so fucking scared -
And this is when the door bursts open.
This is when the thing locked away in the back of his mind is freed.
9th June, and the twelve members of EXO are standing onstage at SMTown Taiwan. Together, side-by-side, they're holding hands. They introduce themselves down the line, one-by-one. Minseok doesn't speak.
5th June, and Luhan's on a video chat with Jino. Minseok's walking in, and Luhan's trying to hide him from view; who are you talking to? asks Jino, because he doesn't see Minseok.
4th June, and Luhan takes a photograph with Minseok. Both are them are smiling into the camera for the first time in months, five fucking months. When Luhan looks at the photo, Minseok's not in it.
25th May, and Luhan collides with Yixing during dance practice and sprains his wrist. He's trying to follow an old choreography, one where Jongdae and Yixing and Zitao and Wufan aren't closing up the spaces where Minseok should be. The spaces where Minseok isn't.
19th May, and Luhan's wandering through an amusement park. He's laughing softly to himself as he stands with the bags, looking up at the roller coasters and thinking about his fear of heights.
18th May, and Luhan's tucking a pillow behind his head before laying down for a nap. While he's asleep, Jongdae plays his game and leaves it exactly where Luhan left it. When he wakes up, Luhan opens it and smiles.
16th May, and Luhan's storming out of Zitao's bedroom after what he thinks was an argument but he isn't really sure. The others are looking at him with worry and confusion and something that might be pity; they heard Luhan's side of the argument. They didn't hear Minseok's.
15th May, and Luhan's not listening to their interview introduction. He doesn't want to hear Hello, I'm EXO-M's Xiumin. Or maybe he doesn't want to hear Hello, I'm EXO-M's Xiumin and I'm not actually here -
13th April, and the truth is that Luhan doesn't listen to introductions. He thinks he's afraid of what he'll hear. Truly, he's afraid of what he won't hear.
24th April, and nothing in the airport is what it looks like. Because it looks like Luhan alone and leaning against the side of a chair holding his own hand and it's sad, so fucking sad.
Today (4th January, sometime between seven and eight PM, he's vaguely aware of this), it's cold.
Luhan's shivering like he might never get warm. Standing there in one of the SM building's practice rooms, running through familiar routines, he's cold. And he's paused for a minute, just a minute, when the door creaks open. When hesitantly, step by step, a man enters the room.
His name is Im Hyunkyun, and he's been assigned to be one of EXO-M's future managers.
This is when the happy couple thing ends.
It starts with Hyunkyun saying, Luhan, have you got a moment?
Of course he does.
It continues with him saying, We really need to talk.
Of course they do.
It approaches its conclusion with Hyunkyun moving forward, resting a hand on Luhan's shoulder, taking a deep breath, It's important.
Of course it is.
And it ends like this: with five words. Five words is all it takes.
Kim Minseok died this morning.
Poll Round 08: Together Anywhere