The Beacon; My Siren - Chap 19
Title: The Beacon; My Siren
Author: wild_terrain (ie. fi_chan)
Banner (Made beautifully by love_cassiopeia):
Chapter: [19 / ?]
Rating: MA15+
Genre: AU [FLANGST, mystery, spirituality, romance]
Summary: Philophobia… The fear of falling in love or being in love. I didn’t know such a thing existed until I met him… Kim JaeJoong was my age-a youthful 25 years-and the owner of a popular café, yet he was already known around town as the mysterious hermit who had chosen to completely withdraw from the world. How on earth could someone so young be afraid of loving others to the point of secluding themselves from all human beings? What was he afraid of? What was he hiding? I just didn’t understand it. And by that stage, the need to understand it was all I could think about... In fact, he was all I could think about…
Jung Yunho… For all of my life I had grown up away from the limelight. I couldn’t stand being noticed by anybody, and for a long time I thankfully never was. But then you came and suddenly you were everywhere - waving to me as I swept the café after closing, saying hello to me as you cycled past the bench I was sitting on, helping me carry my groceries inside whilst talking non-stop to me as if we were actually friends… Why are you always around making my heart thump erratically? Why do you even care? The more you try to explore this town, the more I need to step up and protect you from your own curiosity, because I know It is out there and I know It wants to harm you…
Trailer: CLICK TO WATCH~~
A/N: Heyaaaa. Me again. You do remember me, right? You don't? Oh nooooo! *sobs* lols
Warm water splattered over my head and I moved further under the showerhead to soak the rest of my hair. It had been a rather chilly morning when I had woken up, half covering JaeJoong’s body. I was used to the cold air whenever I had to get up early to start one of my hikes, but this particular morning seemed to bother me more than usual. I didn’t want to have to deal with the cold air when I already had so much on my mind.
JaeJoong’s story was bothering me. When he had been telling it to me yesterday afternoon, I had listened with a curious ear. He had information about the island I had always been curious about after first arriving in town; of course I wanted to hear about it, regardless of how absurd it might have sounded. It wasn’t just that though that made me want to hear his tale-it was also my chance to learn more about the man who fascinated me day by day.
I was used to hearing some pretty crazy legends-a lot of the places I had explored were full of them. It was like human tradition to pass down myths surrounding old, mysterious landscapes. Yet, I had to admit that JaeJoong’s tale was right up there with the most peculiar. I’d always found it fun listening to myths and comparing them with the scenery that surrounded me, wondering about the possibilities with half of my mind, whilst laughing at the bizarre stories people actual believed in during the olden days when scientific discoveries were more scare.
As much as I adored the man telling me his own personal tale and beliefs, I found my mind halving down the middle as always. JaeJoong wasn’t a stupid guy. In fact, most of the time he was so serious about everything that it could be a real challenge to even make him laugh sometimes. His humor was different to most people. You almost had to excavate it and then feel rejoice at the treasures you unearthed-namely, his smile and laughter.
Yet this guy, so serious about life, had told me with a straight face about this terrible curse that had followed him throughout his childhood and adolescence. Knowing JaeJoong as well as I did, I knew his words couldn’t be taken lightly. If he said he believed that there was a curse out there affecting him, then he meant it. JaeJoong called a spade a spade; he didn’t waste time sugarcoating anything.
But a curse? A real curse? I couldn’t quite believe it as much as JaeJoong did. The world was full of possibilities-I couldn’t deny it, but I’d never seen any evidence of a real curse and had, for a long time, swiped away any belief in them.
JaeJoong’s tale had me stumped. He’d really gotten me this time. I was well and truly unsure about everything. Right now, at this moment, after I had given myself a chance to sleep on it, my cynical side was prevailing. Yet… Gahhh! I didn’t know anymore. Maybe what JaeJoong said was true. Who knew? It hurt my head to think about. Really, it did.
Relaxing a bit under the calming water spray, I let my mind shut off again and lathered up my hair with JaeJoong’s shampoo. The smell was so familiar; it was great to be able to smell like him again. In Seoul I obviously used my own shampoo, but I had to admit that I did miss the smell of JaeJoong’s. It was so sweet yet subtle-just like him.
Oh, JaeJoong… Even if I wasn’t sure what to make of his tale, there was one thing that was definite-that kid had gone through so much shit. He’d lost his brother and his mother. He’d even witnessed his own father committing suicide and completely abandoning him, leaving him, a small child, to fend for himself on a huge isolated island…
The thought of someone doing that to a small child made my fists curl up in anger. The man who called himself JaeJoong’s father had obviously had some issues going on that were too overwhelming to live through. I sympathized with the guy for that. But couldn’t he have stopped to think that maybe he needed to live for someone else? Someone still so innocent and vulnerable and ignorant of the world?
JaeJoong could have died out there! He would have been so tiny! He didn’t know how to cook or anything! He didn’t have anyone to show him how to fend for himself and to survive the harsh seasons. It was a damn miracle that the old man from town had happened to even find JaeJoong on that island and taken him under his wing.
I’d always known that JaeJoong was strong-his independence was certainly evidence of that-but after hearing about all the guy had been through from such an early age only made me admire him more. That teeny, petite, scrawny excuse for a man had secretly been the strongest man out of everyone I knew. I was really proud of him…
I almost jumped when I heard the sudden knocking against the bathroom door. Leaning away from the gushing water to hear better, I called out a confirmation.
“Yunho? Your phone is ringing.”
“Oh, really?” I called back. “Don’t worry about it then. I’ll check it out later.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeh, it’s fine.”
“Okay then.”
Finishing up my shower, I toweled myself dry, running my fingers through my messy hair whilst I was at it. My brush was somewhere hidden in my bag and I couldn’t be bothered retrieving it.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, pajamas in hand-yes, I always brought pajamas when I slept over at JaeJoong’s place, despite Junsu’s mocking-I stopped in my tracks as JaeJoong blocked my exit. He was holding my phone and the screen hung open. He’d probably tried looking at the caller ID for me. It was hardly a strenuous activity, and yet his face looked oddly tense.
“Who was it?” I asked slowly, absentmindedly stroking the bunched up cotton pajamas hanging over my arm.
JaeJoong didn’t answer me. He just stood there staring down at my phone like he was in some sort of trance.
“JaeJoong? Oi, JaeJoong,” I used my foot to tap his ankle and bring him out of his reverie. He glanced up at me, speechless. It was a bad kind of speechless though-definitely not the good kind.
I stepped up to him in confusion, bowing my head to glance at the screen that had transfixed him for some reason. There was nothing there. The missed call notification lay in the middle beneath my phone network. Other than that there was just the usual reception indicator and my phone background. My background was currently the photo Yoochun had sent me before, the photo he had sneakily taken when JaeJoong had been teaching me how to bake cookies.
“What’s wrong, JaeJoongie?” I slowly asked, staring at his face but unable to read any hints that might explain his strange behaviour.
“T-This picture… Where did you get it?”
“Oh, my phone background? Yoochun sent it to me the day we made cookies. You don’t like it?”
“Get rid of it.”
“Excuse me?” I gasped.
“I said, get rid of it.”
“What on earth for? It’s harmless. You can’t even see our faces properly. It’s no big deal. I really like it…”
He stared at me and I stopped speaking. He looked furious. Really furious. Like he could have punched me at any moment or something. Well, that kind of ruined things… I really did love that picture of us, but if it enraged JaeJoong so much for me to have it as my phone background wallpaper then it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to think of an angry JaeJoong whenever I saw it…
Reaching out to take my phone back, I had to pull hard to even yank it a centimetre further from his fingers. “It’s okay, I’ll change it,” I said. Only then did he let me take it back from him without a fight.
“Look, all gone,” I insisted, showing him the screen again. In its place, I had put up an older photo of the misty view I had seen whilst working one day near the mountains.
He nodded his approval, still tense. Well, that was just crazy! I couldn’t understand why an innocent photo of the both of us could have frazzled him so much. It almost angered me for a moment. What was wrong with the both of us together? How could it have been so offensive?
“Thank you.” His words sounded forced. Well this was turning out to be a pleasant morning, wasn’t it?
“You’re welcome,” I muttered back, shaking my head angrily and walking away from him as I scrolled through my missed call list and began to ring Junsu back.
Standing up to the curse to protect Yunho had been all I wanted to accomplish. Since I was a young kid, I had been played with and pushed about by that curse. I had thought that finally I’d be able to have the guts to just stand up straight and tall and say: FUCK OFF. I’d almost done it, too…
But then…
I’d had to tell Yunho about it. Despite all of my wishes and best intentions to tell Yunho about the curse for his own benefit, everything had backfired on me. Dredging up old memories that had been successfully buried within my heart to give Yunho a glimpse at the bigger picture had undone me. I’d let the fierce lion out of its cage, and now it had once again cornered me.
Who the hell had I been kidding? I couldn’t stand up to that thing! I’d never had the upper hand with it. There was no way I could have ever stood a chance against it even with Yunho by my side. I’d been such a fool.
That curse was dangerous. It wasn’t a joke. It had killed people before, and it could kill again by all means. I couldn’t mess around with something like that.
And then seeing that photo on Yunho’s cell phone… Oh god.
He meant so much to me… I couldn’t lose him. Not like everyone else. I’d somehow managed to survive through everyone else leaving me, but I knew that if it ever happened again, it would be the end of me too. Now that Yunho had stepped into my life and drawn back the curtains I couldn’t forget about him. I needed to know he was somewhere in this world still breathing. Even if he wasn’t always by my side, I could live with that, as long as he still looked at the same sky as me.
Being with him had taught me that I could never be without him. Having something special in your life meant that you had something that could be lost. It had been so much easier before when I was by myself-I had absolutely nothing to lose. No more pain could reach me. I’d made sure of that.
Losing Yunho had suddenly become a real possibility to me.
It had all been too good. Too good to last.
Within my heart, Yunho had remained. The things we felt for one another were something only he and I had shared. It was metaphysical and oh so lovely. But there, upon his phone screen, was us for the world to see. Evidence of us. Evidence that we were real and could be broken. I could barely even look at it…
I’d been stupid! I’d let myself grow far too attached to him even though I knew that in the end it would come back to haunt me.
The rest of Yunho’s stay that weekend turned rather uneventful. I had volunteered to help out in the kitchens during a rather busy Sunday lunch, leaving Yunho with no choice but to amuse himself. He’d gone hiking as always, although he hadn’t told me where exactly he had gone.
We’d maybe kissed a little bit from time to time, but mostly I felt uncomfortable doing so. Perhaps Yunho had sensed my discomfort, for he didn’t ever engage me in kissing for too long. I’d been glad.
By the time he left on Monday morning, I felt exhausted. Ever since I had told Yunho the truth about my past, I’d become drained and overly sensitive. I needed time to think to myself without Yunho’s ever-present gaze. Now that he had left, I finally had time to stop worrying and just fall back into my normal daily rhythm.
I met up with Changmin for lunch on Wednesday, feeling a little apologetic for pushing him aside in favour of spending more time with Yunho. He’d thankfully been fine about the whole thing and almost immediately plunged into conversation with me about some interesting books he had found during one of his many trips to the local library.
There weren’t many people at Café JaDe that afternoon, so we were able to grab a nice seat nearby the window and dig into our meals. Our conversation had just started to die down when three girls entered the café, talking loudly amongst themselves. They sat down at a table a few metres from ours and started to immediately giggle as soon as Yoochun strolled over to them. I recognized each of their faces, but that was about it. They looked younger than me, probably closer to Changmin’s age or even younger. Nineteen years old perhaps?
I wouldn’t have cared so much about their age had they not been discussing a very sensitive topic to me-sexual intercourse. If they really were as young as they looked, I was a little stunned. I hadn’t realized that young girls were gallivanting off with men and getting naked at the drop of a hat. Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I was so surprised by their conversation that I couldn’t help but continue listening in.
“What an asshole!”
“I know!”
“He just left you as soon as you two had done ‘it’?!”
“Uh-huh!”
“Men, are pigs. I swear. If there is a decent man left in this place, I’d like to meet him.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“I won’t.”
“So wait, he really hasn’t spoken to you at all after you guys had sex?”
“Nope. I tried sending him texts but he only replied to like one of them. Kept making up excuses so that he wouldn’t have to meet up with me again.”
“Maybe he really is busy?”
“Hell no! That guy is a lazy-ass! He was such a slob and would only leave his house to work or smoke weed down at the park with his friends. There is no way he decided to pick up extra shifts. And there is definitely no way that he is studying more because his parents are making him. He’s always been able to fool them in the past about his awful studying patterns. I’m sorry, but the answer seems pretty clear to me now. He used to wait on me hand and foot, showering me with attention and phone calls. And now, as soon as he got what he wanted, he just lost all interest in me. Didn’t find it fun anymore. The excitement and thrill just disappeared. Apparently I’m not exciting enough for him to actually do more than once!”
“Asshole!”
My eyes widened as each girl suddenly started swearing louder. They were really pissed off. I didn’t blame them though. By the sounds of things, the girl’s boyfriend was a real jerk. But…
“Min?” I quietly called out, nudging him to take his attention away from the girls.
“Mm?”
“Is that stuff true?”
“What stuff?”
“What the girls are saying about men. How after they have sex they lose interest in their partner. Is that true?”
Changmin shrugged, sticking a lukewarm fry into his mouth. “Wouldn’t know. Never done it. Only watched it.”
“But I did hear things right, yeh? That girl had slept with her boyfriend because he seemed to be really into her, but then after they had sex he became bored with her and moved on to find someone new?”
“Yeh, seems like it, Hyung. What an idiot… That girl is pretty hot.”
“Not the point, Min,” I chuckled lethargically. “I didn’t realize that that sort of thing happened after sex. I thought sex was a good thing, deepening someone’s relationship, not ruining it.”
“I guess it depends, Hyung. Everyone is different. Some guys, I guess, just don’t want to have to settle down with someone, and find the thrill of the chase more exciting than having seconds.”
“I see…” I murmured thoughtfully, finishing up my hot chocolate.
Sex. I hadn’t really thought about it before because it seemed quite complicated and awkward. I had always assumed that doing stuff like that with your significant other was meant to expand relationships and bring them up into a whole new level. Never had I even considered it having the opposite affect.
The more I thought about it though, the more it started to make perfect sense. Some men loved the thrill of the chase. It was exciting trying to get someone and prove to themselves that they could do it. Once they got that person though, there was nothing left to look forward to, nothing new to explore. Those two people would have already given everything they had to give to one another. Once each body had been properly explored, there was no point sticking around anymore.
It could be the key to all of my problems! I had a rich, untapped source right in front of my eyes the whole time, and I hadn’t even realized it until now!
Saying my goodbyes to Changmin, I ran upstairs to my flat and plugged in my computer. Waiting for the slow old thing to boot up and connect onto the internet, I tapped my nails against the desk in impatience. When the search bar finally popped up onto the screen, my fingers hesitated over the keyboard before carefully typing in a few key words.
I wasn’t even sure if there would even be any websites written about the things I needed to know about, but if there were I’d be so thankful.
As expected, it took quite a while to sort through the strange unrelated junk that came up until I was about to find a hidden forum discussing the very matter I needed to research. My cheeks reddened as I began reading through the long list of comments. Glancing away from the screen briefly to make sure I definitely was the only person in the room-although I had no idea why I thought there might have been someone else in my flat-I pulled my chair in closer to the desk and began to take in all the words in front of me.
///TBC///
A/N: Ah Jae… Stop thinking. It’s always seems to lead to bad things when it comes to you, haha. ^^;;
Sorry this chappy was uber short, but the original chapter was uber long and I decided to cut it down into two halves so that I could spend more time on the second part, hehe. I’ll hopefully be able to update that next part soonish. Depends on how long it takes for me to finish two essays of mine. ^^;; Wish me lucccck, I’m dying over hereeeeeee lol! But on the positive side of things, it means I've only got 2 weeks left of semester~~ *_*
I thought I better update tonight because tomorrow morning in my Creative Writing class I’m scheduled to once again workshop-ie. give the class copies of some of my writing for criticism and stuff. For someone with nerves like mine, it’s like torrrrture sitting there in silence as people read your stuff in front of you, scribbling notes everywhere. GAHHHH I’m freaking myself out. But yeh, the point is, I wanted to update tonight incase I lost my nerve after tomorrow’s criticisms. T___T Wish me luck for that too…
LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH! You know that, right? Right??
And I promise, on my Yunjae posters, that I will get to replying to the comments from the previous chapter when I next have the ability open my eyes. Lol~ typing this half asleep is such an unattractive look. :P
EDIT: whoo ho guys, it's a good omen! For once those LJ ad spaces are promoting something worthwhile and totally applicable to this journal! Burst out into a grin when I saw it down the bottom of this journal:
