cardboard reality; sungyeol/myungsoo; pg-13
~3,185 | au | warnings: slight insanity | a/n: something small for a reprieve from school ^^" for feixing because your ambitions will never be too big for you to conquer. ♥
Cardboard reality
“One thousand…two thousand…three thousand…”
It was Autumn when the back of Sungyeol’s eyelids glowed golden orange. Warm liquid sunshine fell full on parts of his face unshielded by tiny palms, eyes hiding behind cupped knuckles.
“Nine thousand…ten thousand! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
The new kid, Myungsoo, moved in a week ago, right across the street into the vacant house with its staring windows and History floorboards. Standing around cupboard boxes packed tight on the pavement, Sungyeol thought he was staring at a sceptre, translucent in the evening light. Chalk skin and Night’s hair. Ethereal. Cupboard boxes brown and real. Hands, dead white and urban myth.
“Found you!” Sungyeol yells, right into empty space behind the mountain of leaves.
-
They began talking when Sungyeol wrote him a letter.
Hello,
Are you a ghost? Let’s be friends.
- Sugyol.
They had only five years on each head, the burden of life but a mystery box slowly undone by time. Names were abstract concepts; offence was uncalculated as was honesty.
Hello Sugyol,
No I am not a ghost. I am Myungsoo. Sure, let’s be friends.
- Myungsoo.
“I give up,” Sungyeol complains. It’s been over half an hour. It’s him and the playground. “Myungsoo, I can’t find you!”
The horror when Sungyeol received a reply from the ghost was equalled by the horror on his mother’s face at what her son had sent their new neighbours. He nearly wet his pants and cried in his seat at school when the teacher walked in, talking about introducing a new student, and the ghost floated in.
-
It was Summer (on their heads ten years more) that Myungsoo becomes the colour of cardboard. He becomes real enough for Sungyeol to feel his heat, real enough for their shoulders to bump down hallways.
“Remember when you used to be whiter than me?” Sungyeol wondered out loud once.
Myungsoo gives him a cursory look before returning to his laces. He had track in five minutes.
“You were like a ddeokbokki, you know? Without all the sauce, I mean. It’s frightening.”
A loud rap echoes inside Sungyeol’s head when Myungsoo’s knuckle knocks him over the skull.
“What, you want to be a ddeokbokki?”
“You’re the ddeokbokki now.”
“Just trip while sprinting and land on your face. It’ll solve the sauce you’re missing.”
Sungyeol is not in track.
So when Myungsoo pushes his head and disappears into the blinding sunlight, he is left alone on the bench.
“Don’t eat unfamiliar things. Do your homework on time. Save every week. Stock up your stationeries every month. Sleep -”
“Sungyeol.”
“Wear underwear when you sleep - ouch!”
And Sungyeol’s parents do not move jobs to miles away.
So when Myungsoo pushes his head with his knuckles, disappearing into the deafening blare of the train’s horn in Autumn, Sungyeol is left alone in Seoul.
-
26 days.
-
They keep in contact through letters. Mobile phones and emails belonged to the world of technology. Their world is different. It is not wired up, or powered by electricity, or anything of the sort. Instead, shades of nostalgia paint their memories and childhood laughter makes up the missing voices.
Perhaps it’s because they began this way that made it right for everything to end the same.
-
Ddeokbokki,
How have you been?
My examinations are coming up. Do you remember when we used to head to each others’ houses to study? Each time we never got anywhere, but it was still fun. How’s auntie? I miss her kimchi.
Write back to me soon.
Myungsoo.
-
“Hyung!” Sungjong chirps, clambering into the seat in front of Sungyeol, forcing him to look up from math. “Are you going for the sports meet?”
“Sports meet?” It takes a second before a grin breaks through Sungyeol’s face. “Oh. Yeah. Let’s support Dongwoo and Hoya.”
Myungsoo’s chuckle rumbles pass Sungyeol’s ears. He glances around.
“Hyung?”
Concern-creased eyebrows hung above Sungjong’s eyes, both darting past Sungyeol’s head and around the room.
“What?”
“You were looking so I thought…”
“I want to surprise them,” Sungyeol says quickly, smile flashing and completely believable. “Ssh.”
Sungyeol swears he heard something.
-
How does a person believe in his own existence?
How does a person believe in the existence of others?
These are things Sungyeol wonders about, because they are inconsequential trivialities.
Trivial inconsequence.
-
His neck is prickling with the afternoon heat, cotton clinging thinly to his body as he watches feet and hands colliding above dust clouds, maroon ball lost in a tangle of limbs.
Myungsoo is real some times.
Myungsoo sits beside him on this metal bench, skin baked cardboard reality by the sun, and his teeth are a startling white against the pallid world. It had been almost terrifying, the way Myungsoo’s teeth were flushed and painfully, unbelievably, real, and Sungyeol remembers what is happiness and life.
There is a shuffling of feet next to him, a gentle gust of air, carrying with it paint-streaks of a familiar softener. Myungsoo is beside him, laughing at the circus on court, eyes sliding sideways to meet Sungyeol’s, as if asking - did you see that too?
Sungyeol blinks.
The teacher is frowning at him from a distance.
Sungyeol gets up.
-
Ddeokbokki,
I haven’t been writing recently because I’ve been involved in tournaments. We won. How is your foot? Stop closing the door with your injured foot, I know you still have that habit. Congratulations on passing your exams; I know you can do even better.
Myungsoo.
-
“You haven’t been eating well,” Mrs. Lee points out.
“Yes I have,” the assurance in his voice is faulted, broken, artificial. “I love your cooking, ma.”
“Your plate is always full,” there’s a clacking of metal on porcelain as she scrapes unfinished mashed potatoes into the bin. Her back is turned to him.
“It’s not always full.”
“It is. Sungyeol,” his name is where the foundations of her voice give way. “You’ve been worrying me so much.”
Nails dig into Sungyeol’s throat, a foam clogging up his airway, and his chest threatens to collapse in on itself.
“Ever since your dad died -” Mrs. Lee’s words become pregnant pauses and muffled hiccups.
“I’m sorry,” Sungyeol tries to claw out his parched throat, feeling it peel like ripping sandpaper.
His voice cracks the second time he says it.
-
It had been a week off school.
Mrs. Lee has stopped talking.
Sungyeol pours over the internet for a good half of the week, and spends the remaining on discarded appliances. A clock, a calculator, LED lights, wires.
He’s making a count-down timer. It counts upwards though.
Indefinitely.
Right now, the makeshift recycled alarm clock screen reads: 249 days.
-
“Sungyeol!”
Dongwoo is running up the hallway, nearly crashing into a few girls and his geography teacher, waving something in the air.
“Oh look, it’s Bulldozer Jang,” Sungyeol jokes, and Dongwoo grins through his panting. “Almost flattened a few girls there, you did.”
“You dropped something,” the boy said between breaths, handing him a Polaroid. “In biology class.”
It was four years ago, frozen into silver chloride. They were out on Hoya’s porch, Sungyeol by the basketball hoop, Sungjong on Dongwoo’s back, and Myungsoo right at the edge, sitting on the ball. The Polaroid is photochemistry gone wrong, a fading out of orange creeping up the borders, and Myungsoo is almost melting into the light.
It’s rather poignant, Sungyeol thinks.
Burning into the sunlight, even.
“Hoya!” Dongwoo yells, brushing past Sungyeol into the throng of students spilling out from a nearby classroom. It takes a second for Sungyeol to become indistinguishable in the swelling hall.
To hide.
-
The sportsmeet passed as a string of invariable events, the same event after the other, which is most unusual for Sungyeol. It used to have a break between - a moment of icy cold lucidity and burning hot searing throat pains.
He hadn’t told Myungsoo about skipping class to watch him run once. It was unnecessary pressure, Sungyeol thought. Close, but not close enough - Myungsoo won.
Arms were embracing tanned reality as he descended the steps, lunchbox in hand. Black eyes glassy with jubilation passed him once, twice - returning, before the glass breaks. Myungsoo’s smile faltered for a second, people parting to both give him space and watch the next race.
“What are you doing here?” Myungsoo asks, right after approaching with slow steps.
“To watch you run.”
Red flushes the spectre’s cheeks, a finger automatically reaching up to scratch his nose in embarrassment, head tilting downwards and eyes flitting sideways. Sungyeol laughed at the adorable display of bashfulness - but it really came out more like a goat bleating.
“What’s that,” the boy points to the box, trying to pass off unaffected but failing with his arm retracting too quickly.
“Food. Rice balls with lots of cool stuff in it,” Myungsoo eyes him warily. “Only two, so you won’t be so full that you can’t have lunch with your team later.”
Words fail the boy for an instance and Sungyeol burns the doe-eyed image into his memory.
“Idiot. I’ll eat all of it.”
Myungsoo is smiling, sweat clinging to his eyebrows, and Sungyeol takes a while to register it. The boy is chewing on rice and chicken floss, grinning as if to say it’s really tasty, and Sungyeol recoils backwards into the seat.
A few students around shot him quick glances, before cheering for the purple house began again.
There’s nothing in front of him, except a multitude of heads, and the empty running track.
-
302 days.
-
Walking home from school has been unbearably freezing, and Sungyeol has a jumper on despite the blazing sun.
They used to walk home together, Myungsoo silent and Sungyeol talking at the pace of a bullet train. He liked seeing Myungsoo smile, the crinkle of eyes a jolt to his chest.
Liked bumping into him. As if pushing him onto the road.
Something dark flits at the corner of Sungyeol’s eyes - he glances up.
It’s Myungsoo, hands in pockets, wearing the awful scarf Sungyeol knitted. His feet stumbles backwards, small rocks crumbling against his soles, and the yell bubbling forth dissipates because Myungsoo isn’t there anymore.
Fading dust motes hung in the Autumn sunlight, slanting columns of golden coldness, piercing past dirty thick clouds. If Sungyeol squints hard enough, the motes could make up Myungsoo’s shape.
Maybe.
Then he notices the rusting playground behind Myungsoo’s ghost. There’s a sharp wind, or something, because Sungyeol’s eyes are stabbing a thousand pinpricks per second. The leaves are not rustling though; not the mustard tree by the slide, nor the creepers on the fence, nor the mountain of leaves raked against the breaking gate.
But there had to be wind. And a cold one at that. It’s the only reason for his stinging eyes.
He doesn’t realise it, but Sungyeol begins whispering, “one thousand…two thousand…three thousand…”
-
Sungyeol,
What are you doing. I’ve heard from Woohyun that you’ve been skipping school and lunch. You’re not replying me either. And what was that about punching Sunggyu when he tried to stop you from going to that playground?
What’s going on?
Myungsoo.
-
Nights are good for walking, Sungyeol realises. He’s walking by the road, on concrete pavements that feel like marble oceans in the dark, and the constellations above more than hold his gaze.
One step in front of the other, one foot forward and another, it’s a linear mechanism. It’s always left, right, left, right, left, right, never up or down, or disappear.
Headlights of passing vehicles throw monster shadows flat against the brick wall of somebody’s garage. They flicker black white black white like broken clips from a film reel, a fleeting memory of existence, a proof of living for a second - ancient tales left untold; all the telling left to the shadows and mysteries of the night.
Does anybody ever hear the night’s stories, Sungyeol thinks.
They don’t exist, do they? So it’s not worth believing in them. They last for the moon, and leave when the sun comes back.
Why should life be like walking? Sungyeol wonders.
He doesn’t understand why we call people from “all walks of life” when life is nothing like walking. People don’t move left right left right left right, like feet. People are not linear mechanisms. He doesn’t understand why people are from “all walks of life” when people don’t walk. They disappear, vanish, flicker black white black white.
Sungyeol wonders if people are worth believing in.
-
322 days.
-
There is snow this morning.
The first time it began snowing, Myungsoo had come right across the road, face flushed and tiny eyes gleaming, water in his upright palm.
“I was trying to catch a snowflake for you,” Myungsoo had said. Sungyeol fascinated with the boy’s fascination with snow. “Do you know that every snowflake is different?”
Every snowflake is different.
Sungyeol hadn’t packed a parka, so all he had was his notebook, pencil case, and his school blazer. The aged slide was covered with frost, the steps, icicles. He doesn’t know that he is shivering, or that his lips have gone purple.
He’s too busy watching snowflakes disappear into puddles on his palm.
Because they are all different, like how people are all different.
They, like people, melt as fast.
-
Lee Sungyeol,
You’re worrying me. You haven’t been speaking to people. You haven’t been speaking to me. I thought we were better friends than this. What’s wrong?
Myungsoo.
-
It takes an hour to bring his counter to the playground, packs of extra batteries in his bag. The snow is freezing salt on metal, but Sungyeol is too busy trying to get the connections right to bother.
Red wire into this terminal, black wire…
The timer said: 344 days.
When Sungyeol is done, he hugs the timer and brings his knees up, shoulders a frosting of snow and ears freeze-bite. There are exhaust sounds behind him, and migratory squawks of geese overhead, but they are all muted lines in Sungyeol’s ears.
He’s counting: one thousand, two thousand, three thousand…
Counting the flakes of snow drifting closest to him, landing indiscernibly, silent and cold. Another flake, and another, and another, two hundred thousand. Sungyeol might have swapped to counting the cars passing by behind, each time tires screeched, four hundred thousand.
He’s been counting for a year. Sungyeol checks the timer.
344.
Something sharp splits inside him, and it takes concrete will to push it away. Sungyeol blinks. He’s lost count. That’s good. It means it hasn’t ended yet.
One thousand, two thousand, three thousand…
He knows it will never end. He checks the timer again.
344.
The words are bright red and angry.
344.
Sungyeol doesn’t hear his voice tremble like his hands, but it’s shaking. It’s shaking so hard that when he flings the timer against the mustard tree, it crashes on its corner and spins, breaking into its useless parts in midair.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Sharp icy breaths down his chest. Sungyeol realises he’s standing.
Please.
His cheeks sting. His hands sting. There’s a liquid red on his palms that might have passed for cherry rum underneath that coat of snow.
There’s a hic that chokes him. The concrete collapses. It rips through him.
The second hic gets stuck somewhere between his nose and lungs.
I give up.
A hand rests on his shoulder.
“Sungyeol?”
Heartbeats freeze and sounds pause. Every hair stands on end. It feels so unnatural it’s as if his skin is crawling out underneath him.
“Sungyeol,” baritone says again, two hands on shoulders now, turning him around.
Myungsoo.
Sungyeol breaks.
-
Lost somewhere between insanity and reality, relief and horror, elation and sadness, Sungyeol refuses to believe Myungsoo is real.
Violent convulsions rocking his frame in Myungsoo’s arms, snot and saliva smeared over an exquisite overcoat, scents of summer return.
Of softeners and track shoe starch.
“Why are you out here in the cold, silly.”
“Do you exist,” Sungyeol manages to get out, clogging throat restricting coherent speech. “I hate you.”
“And I came back just for you,” Sungyeol knows Myungsoo is speaking more than usual, but that’s because he’s crying like he’s back when they had only five years on each other’s heads.
Somewhere in Sungyeol’s fist, buried in Myungsoo’s coat, and the desperate pulling of the boy’s sleeve, must have said I couldn’t find you.
Because Myungsoo pulls away and raps him over the head.
“I’m supposed to do the seeking this time.”
-
Myungsoo is real and back for winter vacation. They make up for lost time the next day, preparing pancakes and maple syrup for Mrs Lee in the morning, exploring the winter magic of toasty cafes, and tracing out constellations on the roof of Sungyeol’s attic.
“Hey ddeokbokki,” Myungsoo murmurs in the quiet of the night.
Sungyeol doesn’t turn. His bedroom is still a scrapyard. He has fallen behind a month of studies. He needs to apologise to all his friends.
He hears snow being scraped away. Cold fingers find his, crawling in between and holding tentatively.
“You worried me.”
“I know.”
A series of hollow bumps follow as Myungsoo turns onto his elbows, supporting himself right above Sungyeol with a stern expression.
“Aish, it’s dangerous. Stop that,” Sungyeol’s eyes skirt the sides as fire runs up his face.
Myungsoo doesn’t move.
It takes an unfamiliar pause, but their gazes connect. Sungyeol finds in Myungsoo’s eyes the reality of the human soul - a tenderness that cannot be forgotten, or reproduced in words, or film, or any matter. It is at that moment, that Sungyeol realises Myungsoo is more than cardboard reality; he is human, and the thing that makes him real - the heart - is beating a different pulse inside of Sungyeol already.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
“When the new year starts,” Myungsoo’s voice is a thundercloud rumble. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand… “Are you going to play hide and seek again with me?”
“If I feel up to it,” Sungyeol tries to laugh, but it ends up awkward. Like a goat.
The bleating stops halfway because love touches his lips, chafed and dry, and nothing like gentle. But the air in Sungyeol’s lungs are forced empty, helium seeping into his bloodstream and making his fingers itch with a burning. He is dizzy when Myungsoo pulls away, a little delirious, and very much on the top of the world.
“I’ll seek. You’ll never be able to hide from me.”
-
Maybe how Myungsoo had left in Autumn and is found again in Winter holds some special meaning, or maybe not. It’s kind of like life - it doesn’t work linearly - never left right left right, but rather black white black white and up or down or disappear. Counting down will bring nothing but the future.
And like how Life doesn’t connect sometimes: this is not a love story. This is also not a happy ending. This is a story of searching, because those who search will find what belongs to them -
- just as those who hide can only be found by those who seek.
end.
Cardboard reality
“One thousand…two thousand…three thousand…”
It was Autumn when the back of Sungyeol’s eyelids glowed golden orange. Warm liquid sunshine fell full on parts of his face unshielded by tiny palms, eyes hiding behind cupped knuckles.
“Nine thousand…ten thousand! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
The new kid, Myungsoo, moved in a week ago, right across the street into the vacant house with its staring windows and History floorboards. Standing around cupboard boxes packed tight on the pavement, Sungyeol thought he was staring at a sceptre, translucent in the evening light. Chalk skin and Night’s hair. Ethereal. Cupboard boxes brown and real. Hands, dead white and urban myth.
“Found you!” Sungyeol yells, right into empty space behind the mountain of leaves.
-
They began talking when Sungyeol wrote him a letter.
Hello,
Are you a ghost? Let’s be friends.
- Sugyol.
They had only five years on each head, the burden of life but a mystery box slowly undone by time. Names were abstract concepts; offence was uncalculated as was honesty.
Hello Sugyol,
No I am not a ghost. I am Myungsoo. Sure, let’s be friends.
- Myungsoo.
“I give up,” Sungyeol complains. It’s been over half an hour. It’s him and the playground. “Myungsoo, I can’t find you!”
The horror when Sungyeol received a reply from the ghost was equalled by the horror on his mother’s face at what her son had sent their new neighbours. He nearly wet his pants and cried in his seat at school when the teacher walked in, talking about introducing a new student, and the ghost floated in.
-
It was Summer (on their heads ten years more) that Myungsoo becomes the colour of cardboard. He becomes real enough for Sungyeol to feel his heat, real enough for their shoulders to bump down hallways.
“Remember when you used to be whiter than me?” Sungyeol wondered out loud once.
Myungsoo gives him a cursory look before returning to his laces. He had track in five minutes.
“You were like a ddeokbokki, you know? Without all the sauce, I mean. It’s frightening.”
A loud rap echoes inside Sungyeol’s head when Myungsoo’s knuckle knocks him over the skull.
“What, you want to be a ddeokbokki?”
“You’re the ddeokbokki now.”
“Just trip while sprinting and land on your face. It’ll solve the sauce you’re missing.”
Sungyeol is not in track.
So when Myungsoo pushes his head and disappears into the blinding sunlight, he is left alone on the bench.
“Don’t eat unfamiliar things. Do your homework on time. Save every week. Stock up your stationeries every month. Sleep -”
“Sungyeol.”
“Wear underwear when you sleep - ouch!”
And Sungyeol’s parents do not move jobs to miles away.
So when Myungsoo pushes his head with his knuckles, disappearing into the deafening blare of the train’s horn in Autumn, Sungyeol is left alone in Seoul.
-
26 days.
-
They keep in contact through letters. Mobile phones and emails belonged to the world of technology. Their world is different. It is not wired up, or powered by electricity, or anything of the sort. Instead, shades of nostalgia paint their memories and childhood laughter makes up the missing voices.
Perhaps it’s because they began this way that made it right for everything to end the same.
-
Ddeokbokki,
How have you been?
My examinations are coming up. Do you remember when we used to head to each others’ houses to study? Each time we never got anywhere, but it was still fun. How’s auntie? I miss her kimchi.
Write back to me soon.
Myungsoo.
-
“Hyung!” Sungjong chirps, clambering into the seat in front of Sungyeol, forcing him to look up from math. “Are you going for the sports meet?”
“Sports meet?” It takes a second before a grin breaks through Sungyeol’s face. “Oh. Yeah. Let’s support Dongwoo and Hoya.”
Myungsoo’s chuckle rumbles pass Sungyeol’s ears. He glances around.
“Hyung?”
Concern-creased eyebrows hung above Sungjong’s eyes, both darting past Sungyeol’s head and around the room.
“What?”
“You were looking so I thought…”
“I want to surprise them,” Sungyeol says quickly, smile flashing and completely believable. “Ssh.”
Sungyeol swears he heard something.
-
How does a person believe in his own existence?
How does a person believe in the existence of others?
These are things Sungyeol wonders about, because they are inconsequential trivialities.
Trivial inconsequence.
-
His neck is prickling with the afternoon heat, cotton clinging thinly to his body as he watches feet and hands colliding above dust clouds, maroon ball lost in a tangle of limbs.
Myungsoo is real some times.
Myungsoo sits beside him on this metal bench, skin baked cardboard reality by the sun, and his teeth are a startling white against the pallid world. It had been almost terrifying, the way Myungsoo’s teeth were flushed and painfully, unbelievably, real, and Sungyeol remembers what is happiness and life.
There is a shuffling of feet next to him, a gentle gust of air, carrying with it paint-streaks of a familiar softener. Myungsoo is beside him, laughing at the circus on court, eyes sliding sideways to meet Sungyeol’s, as if asking - did you see that too?
Sungyeol blinks.
The teacher is frowning at him from a distance.
Sungyeol gets up.
-
Ddeokbokki,
I haven’t been writing recently because I’ve been involved in tournaments. We won. How is your foot? Stop closing the door with your injured foot, I know you still have that habit. Congratulations on passing your exams; I know you can do even better.
Myungsoo.
-
“You haven’t been eating well,” Mrs. Lee points out.
“Yes I have,” the assurance in his voice is faulted, broken, artificial. “I love your cooking, ma.”
“Your plate is always full,” there’s a clacking of metal on porcelain as she scrapes unfinished mashed potatoes into the bin. Her back is turned to him.
“It’s not always full.”
“It is. Sungyeol,” his name is where the foundations of her voice give way. “You’ve been worrying me so much.”
Nails dig into Sungyeol’s throat, a foam clogging up his airway, and his chest threatens to collapse in on itself.
“Ever since your dad died -” Mrs. Lee’s words become pregnant pauses and muffled hiccups.
“I’m sorry,” Sungyeol tries to claw out his parched throat, feeling it peel like ripping sandpaper.
His voice cracks the second time he says it.
-
It had been a week off school.
Mrs. Lee has stopped talking.
Sungyeol pours over the internet for a good half of the week, and spends the remaining on discarded appliances. A clock, a calculator, LED lights, wires.
He’s making a count-down timer. It counts upwards though.
Indefinitely.
Right now, the makeshift recycled alarm clock screen reads: 249 days.
-
“Sungyeol!”
Dongwoo is running up the hallway, nearly crashing into a few girls and his geography teacher, waving something in the air.
“Oh look, it’s Bulldozer Jang,” Sungyeol jokes, and Dongwoo grins through his panting. “Almost flattened a few girls there, you did.”
“You dropped something,” the boy said between breaths, handing him a Polaroid. “In biology class.”
It was four years ago, frozen into silver chloride. They were out on Hoya’s porch, Sungyeol by the basketball hoop, Sungjong on Dongwoo’s back, and Myungsoo right at the edge, sitting on the ball. The Polaroid is photochemistry gone wrong, a fading out of orange creeping up the borders, and Myungsoo is almost melting into the light.
It’s rather poignant, Sungyeol thinks.
Burning into the sunlight, even.
“Hoya!” Dongwoo yells, brushing past Sungyeol into the throng of students spilling out from a nearby classroom. It takes a second for Sungyeol to become indistinguishable in the swelling hall.
To hide.
-
The sportsmeet passed as a string of invariable events, the same event after the other, which is most unusual for Sungyeol. It used to have a break between - a moment of icy cold lucidity and burning hot searing throat pains.
He hadn’t told Myungsoo about skipping class to watch him run once. It was unnecessary pressure, Sungyeol thought. Close, but not close enough - Myungsoo won.
Arms were embracing tanned reality as he descended the steps, lunchbox in hand. Black eyes glassy with jubilation passed him once, twice - returning, before the glass breaks. Myungsoo’s smile faltered for a second, people parting to both give him space and watch the next race.
“What are you doing here?” Myungsoo asks, right after approaching with slow steps.
“To watch you run.”
Red flushes the spectre’s cheeks, a finger automatically reaching up to scratch his nose in embarrassment, head tilting downwards and eyes flitting sideways. Sungyeol laughed at the adorable display of bashfulness - but it really came out more like a goat bleating.
“What’s that,” the boy points to the box, trying to pass off unaffected but failing with his arm retracting too quickly.
“Food. Rice balls with lots of cool stuff in it,” Myungsoo eyes him warily. “Only two, so you won’t be so full that you can’t have lunch with your team later.”
Words fail the boy for an instance and Sungyeol burns the doe-eyed image into his memory.
“Idiot. I’ll eat all of it.”
Myungsoo is smiling, sweat clinging to his eyebrows, and Sungyeol takes a while to register it. The boy is chewing on rice and chicken floss, grinning as if to say it’s really tasty, and Sungyeol recoils backwards into the seat.
A few students around shot him quick glances, before cheering for the purple house began again.
There’s nothing in front of him, except a multitude of heads, and the empty running track.
-
302 days.
-
Walking home from school has been unbearably freezing, and Sungyeol has a jumper on despite the blazing sun.
They used to walk home together, Myungsoo silent and Sungyeol talking at the pace of a bullet train. He liked seeing Myungsoo smile, the crinkle of eyes a jolt to his chest.
Liked bumping into him. As if pushing him onto the road.
Something dark flits at the corner of Sungyeol’s eyes - he glances up.
It’s Myungsoo, hands in pockets, wearing the awful scarf Sungyeol knitted. His feet stumbles backwards, small rocks crumbling against his soles, and the yell bubbling forth dissipates because Myungsoo isn’t there anymore.
Fading dust motes hung in the Autumn sunlight, slanting columns of golden coldness, piercing past dirty thick clouds. If Sungyeol squints hard enough, the motes could make up Myungsoo’s shape.
Maybe.
Then he notices the rusting playground behind Myungsoo’s ghost. There’s a sharp wind, or something, because Sungyeol’s eyes are stabbing a thousand pinpricks per second. The leaves are not rustling though; not the mustard tree by the slide, nor the creepers on the fence, nor the mountain of leaves raked against the breaking gate.
But there had to be wind. And a cold one at that. It’s the only reason for his stinging eyes.
He doesn’t realise it, but Sungyeol begins whispering, “one thousand…two thousand…three thousand…”
-
Sungyeol,
What are you doing. I’ve heard from Woohyun that you’ve been skipping school and lunch. You’re not replying me either. And what was that about punching Sunggyu when he tried to stop you from going to that playground?
What’s going on?
Myungsoo.
-
Nights are good for walking, Sungyeol realises. He’s walking by the road, on concrete pavements that feel like marble oceans in the dark, and the constellations above more than hold his gaze.
One step in front of the other, one foot forward and another, it’s a linear mechanism. It’s always left, right, left, right, left, right, never up or down, or disappear.
Headlights of passing vehicles throw monster shadows flat against the brick wall of somebody’s garage. They flicker black white black white like broken clips from a film reel, a fleeting memory of existence, a proof of living for a second - ancient tales left untold; all the telling left to the shadows and mysteries of the night.
Does anybody ever hear the night’s stories, Sungyeol thinks.
They don’t exist, do they? So it’s not worth believing in them. They last for the moon, and leave when the sun comes back.
Why should life be like walking? Sungyeol wonders.
He doesn’t understand why we call people from “all walks of life” when life is nothing like walking. People don’t move left right left right left right, like feet. People are not linear mechanisms. He doesn’t understand why people are from “all walks of life” when people don’t walk. They disappear, vanish, flicker black white black white.
Sungyeol wonders if people are worth believing in.
-
322 days.
-
There is snow this morning.
The first time it began snowing, Myungsoo had come right across the road, face flushed and tiny eyes gleaming, water in his upright palm.
“I was trying to catch a snowflake for you,” Myungsoo had said. Sungyeol fascinated with the boy’s fascination with snow. “Do you know that every snowflake is different?”
Every snowflake is different.
Sungyeol hadn’t packed a parka, so all he had was his notebook, pencil case, and his school blazer. The aged slide was covered with frost, the steps, icicles. He doesn’t know that he is shivering, or that his lips have gone purple.
He’s too busy watching snowflakes disappear into puddles on his palm.
Because they are all different, like how people are all different.
They, like people, melt as fast.
-
Lee Sungyeol,
You’re worrying me. You haven’t been speaking to people. You haven’t been speaking to me. I thought we were better friends than this. What’s wrong?
Myungsoo.
-
It takes an hour to bring his counter to the playground, packs of extra batteries in his bag. The snow is freezing salt on metal, but Sungyeol is too busy trying to get the connections right to bother.
Red wire into this terminal, black wire…
The timer said: 344 days.
When Sungyeol is done, he hugs the timer and brings his knees up, shoulders a frosting of snow and ears freeze-bite. There are exhaust sounds behind him, and migratory squawks of geese overhead, but they are all muted lines in Sungyeol’s ears.
He’s counting: one thousand, two thousand, three thousand…
Counting the flakes of snow drifting closest to him, landing indiscernibly, silent and cold. Another flake, and another, and another, two hundred thousand. Sungyeol might have swapped to counting the cars passing by behind, each time tires screeched, four hundred thousand.
He’s been counting for a year. Sungyeol checks the timer.
344.
Something sharp splits inside him, and it takes concrete will to push it away. Sungyeol blinks. He’s lost count. That’s good. It means it hasn’t ended yet.
One thousand, two thousand, three thousand…
He knows it will never end. He checks the timer again.
344.
The words are bright red and angry.
344.
Sungyeol doesn’t hear his voice tremble like his hands, but it’s shaking. It’s shaking so hard that when he flings the timer against the mustard tree, it crashes on its corner and spins, breaking into its useless parts in midair.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Sharp icy breaths down his chest. Sungyeol realises he’s standing.
Please.
His cheeks sting. His hands sting. There’s a liquid red on his palms that might have passed for cherry rum underneath that coat of snow.
There’s a hic that chokes him. The concrete collapses. It rips through him.
The second hic gets stuck somewhere between his nose and lungs.
I give up.
A hand rests on his shoulder.
“Sungyeol?”
Heartbeats freeze and sounds pause. Every hair stands on end. It feels so unnatural it’s as if his skin is crawling out underneath him.
“Sungyeol,” baritone says again, two hands on shoulders now, turning him around.
Myungsoo.
Sungyeol breaks.
-
Lost somewhere between insanity and reality, relief and horror, elation and sadness, Sungyeol refuses to believe Myungsoo is real.
Violent convulsions rocking his frame in Myungsoo’s arms, snot and saliva smeared over an exquisite overcoat, scents of summer return.
Of softeners and track shoe starch.
“Why are you out here in the cold, silly.”
“Do you exist,” Sungyeol manages to get out, clogging throat restricting coherent speech. “I hate you.”
“And I came back just for you,” Sungyeol knows Myungsoo is speaking more than usual, but that’s because he’s crying like he’s back when they had only five years on each other’s heads.
Somewhere in Sungyeol’s fist, buried in Myungsoo’s coat, and the desperate pulling of the boy’s sleeve, must have said I couldn’t find you.
Because Myungsoo pulls away and raps him over the head.
“I’m supposed to do the seeking this time.”
-
Myungsoo is real and back for winter vacation. They make up for lost time the next day, preparing pancakes and maple syrup for Mrs Lee in the morning, exploring the winter magic of toasty cafes, and tracing out constellations on the roof of Sungyeol’s attic.
“Hey ddeokbokki,” Myungsoo murmurs in the quiet of the night.
Sungyeol doesn’t turn. His bedroom is still a scrapyard. He has fallen behind a month of studies. He needs to apologise to all his friends.
He hears snow being scraped away. Cold fingers find his, crawling in between and holding tentatively.
“You worried me.”
“I know.”
A series of hollow bumps follow as Myungsoo turns onto his elbows, supporting himself right above Sungyeol with a stern expression.
“Aish, it’s dangerous. Stop that,” Sungyeol’s eyes skirt the sides as fire runs up his face.
Myungsoo doesn’t move.
It takes an unfamiliar pause, but their gazes connect. Sungyeol finds in Myungsoo’s eyes the reality of the human soul - a tenderness that cannot be forgotten, or reproduced in words, or film, or any matter. It is at that moment, that Sungyeol realises Myungsoo is more than cardboard reality; he is human, and the thing that makes him real - the heart - is beating a different pulse inside of Sungyeol already.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
“When the new year starts,” Myungsoo’s voice is a thundercloud rumble. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand… “Are you going to play hide and seek again with me?”
“If I feel up to it,” Sungyeol tries to laugh, but it ends up awkward. Like a goat.
The bleating stops halfway because love touches his lips, chafed and dry, and nothing like gentle. But the air in Sungyeol’s lungs are forced empty, helium seeping into his bloodstream and making his fingers itch with a burning. He is dizzy when Myungsoo pulls away, a little delirious, and very much on the top of the world.
“I’ll seek. You’ll never be able to hide from me.”
-
Maybe how Myungsoo had left in Autumn and is found again in Winter holds some special meaning, or maybe not. It’s kind of like life - it doesn’t work linearly - never left right left right, but rather black white black white and up or down or disappear. Counting down will bring nothing but the future.
And like how Life doesn’t connect sometimes: this is not a love story. This is also not a happy ending. This is a story of searching, because those who search will find what belongs to them -
- just as those who hide can only be found by those who seek.
end.