dream for me
dream for me
Junho/Suzy
Mostly angst with slight romance | 2808 words
-- this is a congratulatory gift fo se0ulmate because I promised and because I love her ♥
Junho first meets Suji when she watches his performance.
Every Saturday, unless if he needs to catch up with his assignments, he would strum his guitar by one of the streets of Insadong and sing. Often he sings the songs he likes, or the songs he thinks he is good at. Sometimes he sings songs that people tell him to. Once in a while, when he feels like it, he sings songs that he wrote.
Suji starts coming some time in spring, when the coldness has subsided and flowers start to bloom. Most people usually only pass by, some stopping to listen and watch for a minute or two before leaving. Suji, on the other hand, stays for the rest of the performance, which is why he recognizes her. She wears a beige knitted cardigan over a navy floral dress the first time he sees her. There is a marigold coloured scarf wrapped loosely around her neck and her long black hair is tied back almost as loose. He thinks she is pretty.
But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t smile, she doesn’t frown either. Her stare gives him chills and he wonders what she thinks of him.
It isn’t until summer after he goes missing for a couple of weeks that she finally talks to him.
“You didn’t come last week,” she said matter-of-factly, the tone of her voice flat and expressionless. “And the week before too.”
You noticed, Junho thinks but doesn’t say it out loud. “I had finals,” he tells her. She nods in reply while slipping her hair back behind her ear with her fingers. She kicks an imaginary stone on the asphalt as he packs, and once he finishes, he slides his guitar bag on his shoulder and looks at her. “Hey,” he calls, and she looks up. “See you next week.”
The next week he takes her out for coffee after he is done. He leads her to a café nearby which he describes as nice and she offers to help carry his guitar for him out of awkwardness which he responds with a laugh, followed by a shake of head. They learn each other’s name in between.
“Ah, so you’re studying at Baehwa,” Junho begins once they’ve sit and placed their orders. He lets her pick their table and she chose at a corner the next to window where they can see the people passing by outside, some rushing as they head to a certain destination, some strolling leisurely, enjoying the sun, and some walking hand in hand. “That explains why you’re always around.”
“It’s such a pain to have a class on Saturdays. Good thing I found an entertainment along the way,” she replies, smiling. Today she wears her hair down and pairs her plain loose white shirt with a pair of jeans. He thinks she looks as pretty as she always does.
“I appreciate your compliment.”
“I appreciate the noises you create.”
He chuckles as so does her. The waitress comes later and serves them their drinks, and they fall into a silence which neither feels uncomfortable in. He thinks he’s read somewhere in one of the books he borrowed from Chansung about this kind of silence, and when he gazes at Suji as she takes a sip of her green tea, he thinks that maybe those things about destiny and The One do exist.
It has become a routine now ― Junho taking her out after his little gig. Sometimes they would go some bookstore if one of them needs a new book, sometimes he takes her to his favourite instruments store to have his guitar serviced or fixed, where she would play the same old happy birthday song every time they’re there because that’s the only song she can play on piano. Once in a while they go to the cinema and catch some new movies, and dinner at a nearby diner would follow afterwards. Somewhere along the line they begin to wait for each other’s classes to be over on the other days.
He’s not sure if he can call them dates, especially not after she introduced him to a friend of hers once.
“Your boyfriend?” Minyoung raises her eyebrows questioningly.
“We’re just hanging out,” Suji answers in her standard casual tone.
He smiles politely at her answer and thinks he hears a sound of something breaking from far away. He doesn’t really want to start with the labels either. But then again, there are days when he looks at Suji and wonders what they are and if he should start drawing the lines.
“So you’re saying that the noises you’ve been making aren’t really for nothing. You actually want to be a singer?” Suji questions during one of their walks. Their hands brush against each other at times and each time they do, Junho feels a jolt of electricity and there’s a fluttery feeling in his heart but he decides to ignore them all.
“Does my dream sound that funny to you?”
“I don’t mean it that way,” she nudges him on the arm.
He nudges her back slightly harder. “I know. Just kidding.”
“But that’s pretty amazing actually,” she adds after a while. “Having a dream, I mean.”
“You don’t have one?” he raises a quizzical eyebrow.
She shakes her head and scrunches up her nose. “Nah, I don’t have any. Not that I can think of,” she explains. They arrive at the train station where they part ways, and she turns to look at him with a smile. “Good luck with your dream.”
Junho shoves his hands into his pockets, his face breaks into a smile, causing his small eyes to form tiny slits. “Good luck in finding your dream.”
It turns out that for Suji, she doesn’t need to find her dream because it finds her instead.
Three weeks later she hands Junho a fancy and expensive looking business card. “Someone stopped me in the streets earlier and said he’s a talent scout and looking for someone new to be the face of a skincare product or something, I don’t know. He wanted me to go audition,” she explains lazily.
He studies the card. The company is quite a household name and the card seems convincing enough. “Are you gonna do it?”
“It doesn’t hurt to try, does it?” she shrugs. “Besides I can always use some extra cash.”
“Of course,” he agrees, at the same wondering if the ramyun he found hidden away in the back of the cupboard and ate that morning has gone bad and is the cause of the churning and funny feeling in his stomach.
He drops by the studio where the filming is being held on his way back from university. The place, he observes, is spacious yet crowded and chaotic with the crews going around and yelling out instructions and cluttered with wires of the cameras, lights and other equipment he doesn't recognize.
“Junho!” she calls out the second she spots him there, waving her hand around as if they’re the only ones in the room.
He makes his way over, bowing and greeting the crews awkwardly as he walks past them. Suji is in the middle of doing her makeup. Somehow she magically passed the audition in which she only “read the script they gave me and smiled when they told me to” and is now preparing for her first shoot for the commercial. Her makeup is light as they want to maintain her fresh look, and she is dressed casually in a white cotton dress that falls just above her knees. She looks like the normal Bae Suji he knows but for some reason she appears to be glowing.
“How do I look?”
“Perfect,” he answers a little too quickly and scorns himself soon after for being corny.
She smiles in response. “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem,” he shakes his head. “Can’t miss out your first modelling gig, can I?”
She smiles again, and before he can add more, they hear a voice calling her name. Junho turns around and finds a guy no older than he is behind. “The PD is calling for you. Are you ready yet?” the guy asks.
“I am,” she replies and jumps out from her chair. “Wish me luck!” she tells Junho and winks before heading off to the set.
Junho stands amongst the staff, careful to keep his distance to avoid any disturbance, and watches Suji mumbles and stumbles with her lines like she always does in her normal conversations, but still manages to look pretty as she always does.
Less than a week after that, he gets an ecstatic phone call from her while he’s in the middle of cramming for the next day’s test. “TV! Now!” she almost yells into the phone. He sprints outside hurriedly to the living room, snatches the remote from Wooyoung’s hand, earning himself another yell, switches the channel, and finds Suji smiling at him on the screen.
Less than a month after that, she receives another offer, and another, and another. “They call me Suzy now,” she told him once before the calls start decreasing. He sees her face almost everywhere now even when she’s not walking next to him. (They see each other less frequently now that she has gotten busier, or at least she sees him less frequently since he sees her on TV and posters and billboards every day.
Sometimes when he’s sitting alone after finishing his performance or when he gets bored in a lecture, he types out the words ‘I miss you’ on his phone and stares at the screen a little too long before hitting yes to Save, yet another entry to his draft folder.)
As he gazes at her smiling face, her crescent eyes, her bunny teeth, pink lips and the extra baby fat in her cheeks, every detail of her that he loves frozen forever on a piece of paper, he wonders for a moment if she belongs in a world different from his.
There are knocks on his door one midnight, which turn into bangs that almost cause the door to fall off and his housemates to mutter every curse word they know as they yell at each other to open it.
Junho finds Suji at his doorframe, eyes red and messy hair and breathless, carrying a bulky bag with her. “I had a fight with my mum and I need a place to stay. I can’t stay at Minyoung’s because she lives with her boyfriend and because that’s the first place she’d go, so you’re the only option I have.”
He wants to protest. No, go back to your home. No, you can’t stay here, we’re all boys. No, you can’t turn up at my door out of the blue and expect me to accept you in an instant after not even texting for weeks. No, you shouldn’t have made me your last option. No, you shouldn’t have had any other options at all. But instead he lets her in without asking further.
At least not until the next day.
“What happened?” he asks as she helps herself with the leftover rice and side dishes from last night’s dinner.
“We had a fight,” she simply replies with her mouth full.
“About?”
Her chewing speed decreases, and with a voice weaker than before she answers his question. “She was complaining about my grades and told me to quit modelling.”
“Since you’re here eating our leftover dinner as your breakfast ― brunch actually, I’m assuming you’re not going to do that.”
She looks away and points at his guitar. “Did you write any new songs that I haven’t hea―”
“Don’t change the subject, Suji,” he interjects.
“It’s my life!”
“But this is not―”
“You’re the one who wanted me to find a dream, Junho! Now I have one and here you are criticizing my decisions. What do you want me to do? Leave everything I have now and stick by your side while you chase your own empty daydreams?” She slams her chopsticks down, gets up and dashes to the door.
He receives a call that night, from the ID he’s been longing to see on his screen. But it’s a different voice when he picks up.
“It’s Minyoung. Suji is dead drunk, has been babbling nonsense for a while now and she needs her knight in shining armour to come rescue her.”
It’s almost a habit ― Junho dropping everything else just for her despite wearing only his trusted worn out jacket and tattered jeans instead of the expected shining body armour. He finds the girls by the street, Minyoung helping to rub Suji’s back as the latter throws up the alcohol she consumed, losing all the gracefulness of the exemplary poster girl he sees on magazine covers.
“She’s been mumbling things like everybody not being understanding and letting her live her dream and lots of sorrys in between, I don’t know,” Minyoung explains. “Is it even her dream, actually?”
“I have no idea,” Junho shrugs as he wipes Suji’s mouth with the tissue Minyoung gave him. “But I guess if it is, then we should support her.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
“I guess that goes without saying, though I’m not sure if that’s the case with this girl here.”
Minyoung looks at him and smiles sadly. “You know, we’re human. We tend to take things for granted, especially the ones who are always by our side, thinking they’ll always be there forever. But then one day forever is cut short, and then they’re gone, they’re not there anymore. It’s only when we lose that we realize its importance. And I don’t think she notices the importance of your presence yet.”
“Wonder when she will,” he returns her smile bitterly.
“I hope when she does, it’s not too late.”
“Yeah, I hope so too.”
“It wasn’t fair,” she tells him later the same night, when the lights are off and he’s almost drifted asleep.
“I know. You’re doing great now and I shouldn’t have―”
“No, I mean I wasn’t fair. What I said was harsh and you don’t deserve that.”
“That’s alright.” They fall into a silence that feels different from the one they had the first time. He wonders if it has always been this way, only he either did not realize it or refused to realize it, or it’s because it’s just not meant to be. They are just not meant to be. “Hey Suji?”
“Yeah?”
“What am I to you?”
She is quiet for a moment. He’s almost sure she’s not going to answer but she does. “You’re a wonderwall, I think.”
He nods in understanding although she can’t see him.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“I’m really sorry,” she repeats over and over, and he doesn’t remember who fell asleep first.
He wakes up the next day and finds the bed vacant and her bag missing. He checks his phone and her name is gone too. Even the draft folder is empty. He dials the number he has memorized by heart and is greeted by a cold voice, informing him that the number is no longer in service. The staffs tell him that she has dropped out when he checks at her school later.
There’s a lingering scent of alcohol and her faint perfume in the room. He looks outside the window and realizes it’s snowing. When did winter even arrive? he wonders. It seems like he has been losing track of time all these while. He opens the window and lets the biting chilly breeze in. It’s cold, so cold and cruel and merciless and reminds him of unrequited love.
Junho quits his street performance not long after that and sells his guitar. The tuition fees have increased so he needs more money in his hands and less time to fool around chasing nothing. He takes up a job of waiting tables at a diner near the apartment he shares with the other boys.
He still sees her every day like he always did, passing by her posters in the streets and on TV screens. But the one he sees now is not the pretty and quirky Suji who lives in her own world, but perfect and beautiful Suzy who lives in a whole different world from his. Sometimes he misses her, but most of the times he just walks past her with his hands in his pockets, trying to keep warm. It’s winter after all, no longer spring when tiny buds start to bloom, or summer when they all are blossoming and everything is perfect, or even autumn when leaves are changing colours and things fall apart. But it’s winter now, and everything’s cold and bitter in winter. He lost his dream somewhere in between the seasons and she found hers. And it’s alright.