they paved paradise
title: they paved paradise
rating: PG
pairing: Dongwoon/OC (Tran Linh)
genres: angst/romance/idek i suck at labeling fanfics
length: ~5.2k words
notes: requested on tumblr~. hurp.
The first time Son Dongwoon meets Tran Linh, she is a gap-toothed brat with short, wild hair tamed with a pink flower hairband (he remembers thinking she was gap-toothed; her front teeth were missing). She speaks in tongues-- clumsy tongues, he thinks-- because the other children say she does when they tease her. Dongwoon doesn't tease-- he is a good son-- but hears her shriek back in what he assumes to be the referred "tongues," a language that isn't Korean but isn't a sign of demon possession. He wants to ask her what language it is, but he's afraid she'll just screech at him like she does the other kids.
He has nightmares about her and her voice, small and squeaky, as she screams at white walls with now windows, trying to get someone to hear what she has to say. The dreams give him courage to finally talk to her, to offer her a little friendship when everyone else pulls the rug out from underneath her feet to see her fall. For days, he plans what to say to her, how to ask her how she is doing, if she would like a friend.
When he finally gets her alone, all that comes out is a terrified "hi."
Linh doesn't say anything back. She just stares back at him. Thinking that she is sure he's teasing, he starts babbling. "My name is Son Dongwoon, I'm in your class. I just wanted you to know that I don't think you're speaking in tongues or anything, and that I thought we should be friends."
Linh is quiet. Dongwoon worries he offended her somehow. Just when he's sure that turning on his heel and running is his best bet, she opens her mouth.
"Vietnamese," she says, her face red. "Korean isn't good." Dongwoon stares dumbfounded at her for a moment, until he understands that she's telling him she can't speak his language very well. "Moved in next door." It isn't hard to tell she's struggling with her words; Dongwoon feels like he is playing one of the games on the back of a cereal box, trying to decipher a secret code to send in box tops to get x-ray glasses that he can't even see through. Her face gets redder and it's then it hits him:
Tran Linh, speaker of foreign tongues, with wild hair and missing front teeth, is Son Dongwoon's new next door neighbor.
--
Friendship with Linh is an adventure, living life on the edge. Scraped knees, bruised shins, climbing trees to touch the moon and gather stars with dirt-covered fingers. Every afternoon, it's running until his legs and lungs hurt, standing in ankle-deep water at the river to feel minnows nibble on his toes, climbing impossibly high rocks to shout to the world of his triumphs. In exchange for taking him on adventures, Dongwoon teaches Linh Korean. Her tongue is clumsy-- he tells her this frequently with the most affection possible-- but she is no longer a front toothless banshee child and he finds that she smiles more when she isn't struggling to communicate.
Linh grows her hair out. It is still wild-- frizzed waves that curl around one another like chocolate smoke-- but he likes it because she twirls it around her fingers all the time and he wants to do the same but his mother has told him that he can't touch other people without permission and he is too afraid to ask. So he watches her do it in a sort of morbid fascination, dreaming of how her hair would feel if he twirled it around his fingers. The drive inspires him to grow his out, too.
When they are twelve and all out of baby teeth to lose, Dongwoon is wearing his hair in neat ponytails. His mother is proud of him-- she says he looks handsome sitting at the piano with his hair pulled back-- like an artist-- and Linh practically lives at his house. They do their homework together. Linh sprawls out on the wood floor underneath the grand piano while he plays, drumming her fingers along the underside in time with Pachelbel and Beethoven. He wonders if it's possible for life to get any better, but that is when Kim Yongjoon moves to town.
He ignites spite for Dongwoon's ponytails, calls them girly, yanks them hard and shoves Dongwoon into walls like seeing him face down in his own dignity is his only form of sustenance. Before he knows it, Dongwoon is considered an outcast and the Linh he remembers from kindergarten is back, screaming, pushing the kids around. This time though he knows what she is saying because her clumsy tongue is his clumsy tongue now; she fights for him with sharp words and small fists. But it gets to be too much. Dongwoon caves under his own pressure and walks into school one morning with short messy hair. Linh doesn't notice, or pretends not to, anyway. Life goes on.
The next day, Linh walks in with hair reminiscent of a dark dandelion-- wild and short and held in place with a sleek pearly headband-- and Kim Yongjoon is found in the coat closet hogtied with Linh's floral-print coat and gagged with her sparkly violet gloves. He misses her twirling her hair around her fingers, but at the same time she makes a cute dandelion so he lets it go.
He dreams about pearly headbands and the way they catch the light of fireflies. All is right with the world.
--
"I'm trying out for JYP." He says this over dinner one night-- dinner at Linh's place, where Linh translates for her parents and they suck down steaming bowls of noodles the size of both his hands-- like this is the most normal thing in the world, like it means he won't be gone. She stares at him, mouth overflowing with noodles and broth. "I just wanted to tell you, you know? So you weren't surprised."
"Oh," she says slowly. It's a hollow sound without a heart. It doesn't even sound like her. The silence between them is full of tension and unspoken words, so full it threatens to burst. "God, you'd make it in no problem. You've got the voice of an angel." Linh laughs it off, smiles, flings a noodle at him. "Just promise me one thing, okay?"
"Anything." He answers quickly. Part of him hopes she'll ask him to stay, beg him not to audition, because he knows that if she did, he'd listen. Linh has roots in the very core of his heart. She reaches out to touch his hair. Her hands are warm.
"Grow your hair out, okay? I love your ponytails. I'd better see you debut with one." Gentle fingers brush his hair back and he wants more than anything to keep her there forever. His stomach twists and turns over and over itself.
"It's a promise."
--
Training for JYP is a magical world of blisters and sore muscles. Every day, they break him over and over again to build him back into an idol and he crawls into bed every night feeling like he's drifting out to sea, away from the home he grew up in, the people he loves.
Away from Linh.
She writes him letters in handwriting reminiscent of her clumsy tongue and they give him just enough strength to get out of bed in the morning. At first, it's every day, but the frequency dwindles. Soon Dongwoon hardly gets any letters from her. He wonders if she's forgotten him, replaced him, found someone who makes what they had seem like playground pinky promises sealed with nothing more than four-leaf clovers and spit. When he thinks he'll never get any letters ever again, he gets one from her, the last good bulb on a string of broken Christmas lights. Her parents are moving back to Hai Phong, but she's staying in Korea.
She doesn't say where. He writes her back to ask where she's going to be living, but weeks turn into months and nothing comes. They're only sixteen. She has no relatives here. He worries, dreams she's a vagrant on the streets, covered in dirt and struggling to stay warm. Chance encounters on the street between dance practices among dandelions shooting through the cracks in the sidewalk; he just wants to bring her home and clean her up and feed her.
In the midst of his worry, he befriends Lee Kikwang, another trainee. Kikwang smiles a lot and doesn't worry, something that Dongwoon finds contagious. While he occasionally still wonders where Linh is, the dreams aren't so bad anymore.
"So who's the girl in this picture?" The first time Dongwoon brings Kikwang back to his dorm, the first thing the other boy grabs for is the picture of he keeps next to his bed, one of the few in existence where both he and Linh have long hair and are smiling. "She's cute. You look happy."
"My best friend back home." Nostalgia hits him hard, like a bucket of ice water over his head. For the first time in months, he worries again, wonders if Linh is okay. Part of him hopes she ended up back in Vietnam with her family because then at least she is safe, even if she is a million miles, a million worlds away. "Her name is Linh." Kikwang smiles a big, goofy smile and sets the picture back down.
"You love her."
Dongwoon stops breathing for a split second. "Wh-what--?"
"I can see it! Your eyes light up when you say her name. Did you ever tell her?"
No. Never had the courage. Didn't want to lose her.
"What? No, because I don't know what you're talking about."
Kikwang beams. "Of course you don't."
--
"You're being transferred to Cube." Dongwoon sits in a chair across a desk feeling something like yesterday's cold pizza. He's bone-tired and in the middle of his second day without sleep (too much work to do, too much practice, not good enough at anything to debut) and can't feel anything underneath his skin. "They'll find a place for you."
"But-- but I--" How will Linh find me? I don't know where she is. I can't find her to tell her. "I thought I was doing well."
"It's out of my hands." It isn't the answer Dongwoon wants to hear, but he knows that he can't fight it. Dejectedly, he bows, mumbles a thank you, and stumbles out of the room. The worry comes flooding back, this time accompanied with a homesickness so strong he breaks down in the elevator and cries. He wants to see his mother and Linh, to be eight again and missing his two front bottom teeth, to spend the night in a sleeping bag underneath a canopy of thick pink blankets at Linh's while she whispers Vietnamese lullabies to him. JYP doesn't want him; Cube might as well be a death sentence.
Life doesn't feel very much like worth living anymore.
--
Dongwoon's mother welcomes him home with kisses and warm food to start his three-day vacation between companies. He worries he'll spend most of it crying, but seeing her face helps ease the ache in his heart. Settling back into the pace of things at home takes a matter of hours (miserable hours, but hours nonetheless). Finally, he has time to sleep, recuperate, gain some of his color back. The food his mother prepares is tastier than he remembers and he savors every bite because he knows that once he's at Cube, it'll be another few years before he's able to sit and eat it again.
Despite his promises not to dwell on it, he ends up visiting Linh's empty apartment. Barren white walls and wood floors greet him, hold nothing of the memories that were created, the lives that used to take up the space. He sits in Linh's old room where he used to put his sleeping bag next to hers, where her tiny fingers used to make spindly shapes silhouetted against light dimmed by blankets (his fingers were longer, made different shapes; he just remembers the way hers look, the way her face looks drenched in light tinted by the color of fabric). Seeing the emptiness-- the space she and her family used to take up-- makes him wonder if any of it was ever real. Perhaps Tran Linh is a figment of his imagination conjured to fight childhood loneliness.
Ironic. In the end, that's all he feels: loneliness.
"You miss her, huh?" Dongwoon returns home feeling more defeated and numb than he can ever remember feeling. His mother sits down on the couch next to him and puts a soothing hand on his thigh, like the warmth from her hands will somehow fix everything. Because she is his mother, he feels a little better, but his heart is still a choppy mess, the victim of an emotional cuisinart. "She stayed here for a while after her parents left." Dongwoon turns to look at her and tries his hardest not to look as miserable as he feels. "But one day, she packed up and left. There weren't a whole lot of words. She thanked us for all of our kindness, and told us that she would make both you and us proud of her in return. She's written a few letters, but she hasn't specified where she is."
He should be relieved. Linh is alive, she wrote letters.
Just not to him. The sting is almost unbearable.
For the second time in a matter of days, he breaks down and cries again.
--
Standing in front of the Cube Entertainment building, he feels oppressed against its size, like he is about to be consumed, chewed up and swallowed and never seen again. Dongwoon feels like he's seven again, having nightmares about a tyrannosaurus rex with sharp teeth bent on snatching him from his bed and eating him like one of Linh's mother's crispy fried Vietnamese rolls. It takes several moments of self-encouragement to get the courage to walk through the front door, but once he does, his voice is utterly gone. The receptionist greets him and asks for his name and in nervous misery he sputters, "Son Dongwoon." Rapid-fire, she spits out directions, wishes him good luck, and then returns to answering phone calls. Belatedly-- it takes him a minute to absorb all the information and realize that she was even speaking in Korean-- he thanks her and stumbles off, chanting the directions she gave him the best he can.
They bring him to a fancy-looking door that leads to a practice room filled with people-- trainees, he surmises from the tired, hopeful looks he gets-- with one somewhat small boy standing against a wall performing. His voice is smooth and rich-- like cream, pouring right from the carton into his father's morning coffee-- and suddenly Dongwoon is incredibly intimidated. With talent like this, what can they possibly hope to do with him? The boy's song finishes and he bows at the applause he receives. Dongwoon is so caught up in being simultaneously terrified and miserable, he doesn't see who goes on next.
It's probably the next Kwon BoA. Dongwoon doesn't stand a chance.
He honestly isn't expecting to hear one of the most familiar voices in the world. Smooth rap in clumsy tongue Korean, frizzed curls kept in long pigtails. All he can think of are her Vietnamese lullabies, the way her voice echoes off the buildings in their old neighborhood, the feeling of invincibility when he has her backing him up.
It's Linh. She's a Cube trainee. Dongwoon can't feel his extremities. She executes her piece well, bows, steps forward, and stops dead in her tracks.
"Dongwoon." He doesn't know how long he has waited to hear his name in her voice again. It sounds different-- more mature-- but he likes it. Seventeen years old and she still sounds like the six-year-old gap-toothed brat he met in kindergarten. "I-- but you were with JYP." As hard as he tries, he can't get a read on her, but he can't blame her because he doesn't know how he feels either. He has so many questions he wants, needs to ask-- why didn't you write? why are you here? what happened?-- but he can't find his voice to speak.
"I got transferred," he tells her with his voice sounding foreign in his own ears. "I..." There is so much to say, so very much, he doesn't even know where to begin. He wonders if she even missed him. "We'll be trainees together now."
For a second, she looks disappointed. He knows he missed his chance to tell her something, anything meaningful.
"Welcome to Cube, then."
--
Things aren't the same and Dongwoon hates it. He wants to ask her more than anything why she didn't write him, didn't even tell him anything. She auditioned and made it into Cube and he didn't even know. The sting doesn't lessen as he'd hoped it would; seeing her interact with other trainees and smile only makes it worse. He wants things to be like they were again, but there is a rift between them that only grows every time they talk and awkwardly skim around the obvious, shuffling and tiptoeing around the sleeping dogs because it is easier to let them lie than to deal with what would happen should they wake. Things fall into a rhythm again: blisters, soreness, crawling into bed each night more tired and broken than the last but inching closer to the elusive goal that is debut.
Kikwang mysteriously shows up, as well, from JYP. He makes coping with everything and making more friends a little easier, even if the growing distance with Linh still bothers him. Dongwoon settles into Cube more than he ever did JYP, and before long things look up. Kikwang debuts as AJ-- Ace Junior; it's a catchy name-- and Dongwoon knows that this is a sign, a positive sign. Things can't be far from getting better.
One late night practicing with his friends-- his friends who also know the sting of rejection-- Doojoon and Yoseob and Hyunseung and Junhyung and Kikwang-- the boss shows up. They are bone-tired and sweaty and full of hope and dreams and when he walks in, he says the words they had been waiting so long to hear.
"You will debut as a team of six."
The night is filled with tears and hugs and Dongwoon can hardly believe it, that he is really debuting. He knows it is a long and hard road, but it's worth it, he knows he can make it, that his five brothers can make it. 3 AM, they leave the practice room tired and still on the verge of another batch of happy tears. Back to the dorm they go, or so they try. Linh catches him before he leaves the building, smiling as brightly as she can in the wee hours of the morning.
"I heard that you're debuting." He wants her to notice that he kept his hair long just for her, for her to curl it around her fingers a bit and admire him for remembering her and the promise he made despite the fact that she didn't even tell him she was auditioning for the industry. "You'll do so well. I... you are all so talented and you deserve it." There's part of him that believes she's holding something back. He wants to ask, but his voice is lost in the distance between them. So close, he's so close to finally asking her what happened, why they aren't close anymore.
"... Thank you. I really appreciate it." But it won't come out. He doesn't give her the chance to be disappointed-- he knows she will be, he knows he blew it again-- before he bows and walks away to catch up with the rest of his new group.
Each step echoes with words unspoken and stinging cuts on his heart.
--
BEAST-- Boys of the EAst Standing Tall-- or B2ST-- Boys 2 Search for Top-- is a success. Hard work and sweat and tears are poured into a year's worth of recording and appearances and Dongwoon finds his niche with these boys. Things don't come easy, but things come well and he knows in his bones that this is where he is meant to be. They go all over Asia and meet their fans-- their B2UTIES-- and live together and become a family.
Life is hard, but worth it. They are rewarded with their own concert (B2ST Airline-- "Are we going somewhere?" Yoseob asks jokingly) and the world is BEAST's oyster.
But the one pearl Dongwoon wants, he can't seem to have. He just wants Linh back, but he can't find a way to voice his feelings, any of them. There is so much to be said that he can't untangle it into workable sentences so he just continues to skirt around it, tread the thin ice in hopes that it won't break and plunge him into icy water with cement shoes.
One day during the fall, Dongwoon finds Linh in a practice room with Junhyung. The door is ajar and they are talking loud and laughing; he is drawn to the sound instinctively. He waits outside and listens, feeling more than a little terrible for eavesdropping.
"Your flow is so much better than mine." Linh wrinkles her nose and repeats a line from the song they're practicing. "See? I'll never debut with that kind of sloppiness." Junhyung rolls his eyes and puts his hand on her shoulder reassuringly. Dongwoon doesn't like it; the action makes his throat tighten and his skin crawl.
"Come on, you're doing fine. You just need to loosen your mouth up a bit." He recites some vocal exercises and Linh repeats them. Her tongue is still clumsy-- it always will be-- and Dongwoon finds himself smiling. "Now try it again." She does, and while it is better, it hasn't quite reached Junhyung's level of expertise yet.
"I've always had a clumsy tongue," she tells him sourly. "Ever since I was a kid. It took me years to learn how to speak Korean correctly." Dongwoon laughs a bit, quietly enough so that he's sure they can't hear him. The air shifts. Junhyung moves in close and his voice drops to a low hum.
"I think I can help you with that."
He kisses her. Yong Junhyung leans in and kisses Tran Linh on the mouth. Dongwoon can't believe it. His stomach drops and his heart stops and he can't feel his legs or his arms or anything at all; he just wants to scream and break something. They are kissing and he can't watch, so he turns and he runs. His heart breaks loud in his ears and it takes everything in him not to collapse under the weight of his sobs.
The only thing in the world he truly wants, he can't have.
--
Life loses its color. The holiday season comes around, but Dongwoon can't seem to find happiness in anything. Tensions are high with Junhyung but Dongwoon doesn't say anything because that means admitting that things with Linh ever happened at all. He just wants to crawl into his skin and never come out.
Everyone notices. Dongwoon pretends they don't.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on with you?" Junhyung corners him one day and try as he might Dongwoon can't get away. "You've been out of it for weeks, and don't think I haven't noticed that it's whenever I'm around. So what, what'd I do?" Dongwoon bites his tongue.
"Nothing, I'm just tired."
"Bull," Junhyung bites out. "Just come clean."
"You kissed her!" It comes flying out of his mouth so fast that he can't even hope to stop it or anything that follows. He's kept it bottled up for so long that all it took was Junhyung's vigorous shaking to have it explode much like the bottles and cans of coke he enjoys so much. "You kissed Linh, I can't believe that you kissed her!"
Junhyung stares. "You saw that--?" He shakes his head. "I know you guys are friends, but I didn't see you making any moves. Is that why you're mad, because she's like your sister?"
"Just shut up," Dongwoon snaps angrily, "you crossed the line."
The conversation ends there and tensions are even thicker. Dongwoon doesn't know what happens between Junhyung and Linh and he tries to tell himself that he doesn't care, but he knows he does. Christmas approaches and with it the Cube Christmas party, but Dongwoon doesn't care.
He doesn't care. It's for that reason that he brushes Kikwang off when he approaches him with what looks to be a stack of letters. "You might want to take a look at these." They're from Linh, addressed to him.
"No," he replies calmly, "just throw them away." Kikwang looks at him imploringly.
"Please. This'll put everything in perspective, I promise--" Dongwoon takes the stack of them tied with ribbon and he drops them on the floor.
"I don't care. Burn them, throw them away. I don't care."
He leaves the room before he can see Kikwang picking the stack of letters up.
--
The company Christmas party is at a fancy Karaoke establishment on the far side of town. They all crowd into a room and hug one another and exchange gifts and wish one another good tidings. Dongwoon avoids Linh and Junhyung (and everyone; he doesn't feel like socializing) like the plague in favor of sitting on the couch and browsing the song selection. When he picks one and music fills the room, everyone stops and looks at him, stares blankly because no one knows quite what is going on.
2AM explains it best, so he lets them, pours his heart and soul into every note as the entirety of the room watches in dead silence. The song twists and turns and he feels like he is singing his guts out, his throat hoarse. He isn't sure if he cries or if it's imagination, but by the time the song is finished, there are tears on his cheeks. For the briefest of seconds he locks eyes with Linh and all of the courage leaves his body.
Again, he runs. He runs until he is outside, standing in the park across the way surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights. They flicker and sparkle and he feels mocked. The pain in his heart is unbearable.
"Yah, look at you! Why did someone so heartbroken go somewhere so romantic?" He turns to see Linh standing there bundled up in a thick coat with anger in her eyes. She looks like she means to say more, but can't find the words and Dongwoon isn't in the mood to hear it.
"Why did someone dating Yong Junhyung follow me out here?" He shoots the words at her like venomous darts, jaw clenched so hard he feels like he could break the bones like peanut brittle.
"What?" Her eyes widen and she stares incredulously at him. "Y-you-- I'm not! I... I mean he did kiss me, but I... I didn't-- We aren't--"
"Save it!" he shouts. "I wrote you, I wrote you so many times, but you couldn't even be bothered to tell me you were auditioning for Cube, or even where you were!" Linh recoils like he's burning her with scalding hot water. "I even doubted that you were ever real. I went back home and nothing was there. You wrote mom, but you didn't write me--"
"I wrote you so many letters, Dongwoon!" Her voice sounds bigger than he remembers, but it's still hers, still pierces the air with the same spark. "So many. Begging you to come back because I missed you, telling you that I never ever forgot, that I worried every day. I saved them so that once I debuted, I could give them to you." The letters Kikwang had-- those were the letters she wrote. "I wanted to make you proud, Dongwoon. I wanted to train and debut so that I would be good enough for you. I was getting Junhyung's help with my rapping so that I'd be more ready."
She's crying. Dongwoon can't believe it. Never in the time that he'd known her had he ever seen her cry. "I was so blessed to have met you and your family. I just wanted you all to have someone you could be proud of. I'm so sorry, I should've... I should've said something. I don't know what. I just wanted you to think that I was good enough. What if I didn't make it? What if I told you and they'd rejected me? I'd be a failure." She sniffles and wipes her eyes miserably.
"But recently, you were just so cold. You saw Junhyung kiss me and I can't imagine what you thought, but I thought you hated me, so I threw the letters away. I just... you deserve so much better than me."
Dongwoon forgets the anger and holds her. It feels right, holding her like this; it soothes the sting in his chest. She apologizes again and again and he just tells her it's okay-- what else can he say? When she's finally calm, he dares to speak again.
"You were always good enough, Linh. You didn't have to... you're perfect. You always will be."
He leans in and he kisses her. Everything falls into place and all of the work and pain and emotion are worth it all for this one moment. One kiss turns into two turns into numerous because Dongwoon loses count. She holds his coat like she's afraid of losing him and he has his fingers in her hair. Years of dreaming of having it around his hands don't do it justice.
Dreams don't do her justice. Dongwoon just wants the moment to last forever.
"I love you. I always have." Linh whispers the words against his mouth with sparkling lights illuminating her skin. His heart erupts like a volcano and fills his chest with liquid warmth and he smiles so impossibly big that he knows satellites can see his teeth from space.
"I know," he replies softly, tugging on one of her pigtails. "I love you, too. You and your clumsy tongue." She laughs shyly as she pulls him closer, into her like she hopes she can take him into her heart and keep him there forever. Dongwoon doesn't mind; he'd stay willingly.
"I don't want to go back," she says with a smile. Dongwoon takes her hand and leads her off deeper into the park-- a sea of glittering lights and Christmas spirit-- and Linh follows, putting her heart in his hands where it has always belonged. He takes it and she takes his and things are right.
"Let's get dinner." Linh looks over at him and smiles. "My treat. We have some catching up to do." Her answer is another kiss, one so tender it almost makes him cry (but there have been enough tears for the day).
"Anything. It's the Christmas of miracles and the night is young." Christmas of miracles indeed, Dongwoon agrees to himself, turning to fully face her again and he holds her face in his hands. She's warm and fits there perfectly and he wants to just carry her with him always.
"I'm gonna kiss you again. Just to make sure it's real. I mean this Christmas might just be perfect." Her fingers drum his chin, fingernails scraping gently as she strokes, and her eyes lock with his.
"Might need to triple check that."
He couldn't ask for a better, more perfect Christmas.
rating: PG
pairing: Dongwoon/OC (Tran Linh)
genres: angst/romance/idek i suck at labeling fanfics
length: ~5.2k words
notes: requested on tumblr~. hurp.
The first time Son Dongwoon meets Tran Linh, she is a gap-toothed brat with short, wild hair tamed with a pink flower hairband (he remembers thinking she was gap-toothed; her front teeth were missing). She speaks in tongues-- clumsy tongues, he thinks-- because the other children say she does when they tease her. Dongwoon doesn't tease-- he is a good son-- but hears her shriek back in what he assumes to be the referred "tongues," a language that isn't Korean but isn't a sign of demon possession. He wants to ask her what language it is, but he's afraid she'll just screech at him like she does the other kids.
He has nightmares about her and her voice, small and squeaky, as she screams at white walls with now windows, trying to get someone to hear what she has to say. The dreams give him courage to finally talk to her, to offer her a little friendship when everyone else pulls the rug out from underneath her feet to see her fall. For days, he plans what to say to her, how to ask her how she is doing, if she would like a friend.
When he finally gets her alone, all that comes out is a terrified "hi."
Linh doesn't say anything back. She just stares back at him. Thinking that she is sure he's teasing, he starts babbling. "My name is Son Dongwoon, I'm in your class. I just wanted you to know that I don't think you're speaking in tongues or anything, and that I thought we should be friends."
Linh is quiet. Dongwoon worries he offended her somehow. Just when he's sure that turning on his heel and running is his best bet, she opens her mouth.
"Vietnamese," she says, her face red. "Korean isn't good." Dongwoon stares dumbfounded at her for a moment, until he understands that she's telling him she can't speak his language very well. "Moved in next door." It isn't hard to tell she's struggling with her words; Dongwoon feels like he is playing one of the games on the back of a cereal box, trying to decipher a secret code to send in box tops to get x-ray glasses that he can't even see through. Her face gets redder and it's then it hits him:
Tran Linh, speaker of foreign tongues, with wild hair and missing front teeth, is Son Dongwoon's new next door neighbor.
--
Friendship with Linh is an adventure, living life on the edge. Scraped knees, bruised shins, climbing trees to touch the moon and gather stars with dirt-covered fingers. Every afternoon, it's running until his legs and lungs hurt, standing in ankle-deep water at the river to feel minnows nibble on his toes, climbing impossibly high rocks to shout to the world of his triumphs. In exchange for taking him on adventures, Dongwoon teaches Linh Korean. Her tongue is clumsy-- he tells her this frequently with the most affection possible-- but she is no longer a front toothless banshee child and he finds that she smiles more when she isn't struggling to communicate.
Linh grows her hair out. It is still wild-- frizzed waves that curl around one another like chocolate smoke-- but he likes it because she twirls it around her fingers all the time and he wants to do the same but his mother has told him that he can't touch other people without permission and he is too afraid to ask. So he watches her do it in a sort of morbid fascination, dreaming of how her hair would feel if he twirled it around his fingers. The drive inspires him to grow his out, too.
When they are twelve and all out of baby teeth to lose, Dongwoon is wearing his hair in neat ponytails. His mother is proud of him-- she says he looks handsome sitting at the piano with his hair pulled back-- like an artist-- and Linh practically lives at his house. They do their homework together. Linh sprawls out on the wood floor underneath the grand piano while he plays, drumming her fingers along the underside in time with Pachelbel and Beethoven. He wonders if it's possible for life to get any better, but that is when Kim Yongjoon moves to town.
He ignites spite for Dongwoon's ponytails, calls them girly, yanks them hard and shoves Dongwoon into walls like seeing him face down in his own dignity is his only form of sustenance. Before he knows it, Dongwoon is considered an outcast and the Linh he remembers from kindergarten is back, screaming, pushing the kids around. This time though he knows what she is saying because her clumsy tongue is his clumsy tongue now; she fights for him with sharp words and small fists. But it gets to be too much. Dongwoon caves under his own pressure and walks into school one morning with short messy hair. Linh doesn't notice, or pretends not to, anyway. Life goes on.
The next day, Linh walks in with hair reminiscent of a dark dandelion-- wild and short and held in place with a sleek pearly headband-- and Kim Yongjoon is found in the coat closet hogtied with Linh's floral-print coat and gagged with her sparkly violet gloves. He misses her twirling her hair around her fingers, but at the same time she makes a cute dandelion so he lets it go.
He dreams about pearly headbands and the way they catch the light of fireflies. All is right with the world.
--
"I'm trying out for JYP." He says this over dinner one night-- dinner at Linh's place, where Linh translates for her parents and they suck down steaming bowls of noodles the size of both his hands-- like this is the most normal thing in the world, like it means he won't be gone. She stares at him, mouth overflowing with noodles and broth. "I just wanted to tell you, you know? So you weren't surprised."
"Oh," she says slowly. It's a hollow sound without a heart. It doesn't even sound like her. The silence between them is full of tension and unspoken words, so full it threatens to burst. "God, you'd make it in no problem. You've got the voice of an angel." Linh laughs it off, smiles, flings a noodle at him. "Just promise me one thing, okay?"
"Anything." He answers quickly. Part of him hopes she'll ask him to stay, beg him not to audition, because he knows that if she did, he'd listen. Linh has roots in the very core of his heart. She reaches out to touch his hair. Her hands are warm.
"Grow your hair out, okay? I love your ponytails. I'd better see you debut with one." Gentle fingers brush his hair back and he wants more than anything to keep her there forever. His stomach twists and turns over and over itself.
"It's a promise."
--
Training for JYP is a magical world of blisters and sore muscles. Every day, they break him over and over again to build him back into an idol and he crawls into bed every night feeling like he's drifting out to sea, away from the home he grew up in, the people he loves.
Away from Linh.
She writes him letters in handwriting reminiscent of her clumsy tongue and they give him just enough strength to get out of bed in the morning. At first, it's every day, but the frequency dwindles. Soon Dongwoon hardly gets any letters from her. He wonders if she's forgotten him, replaced him, found someone who makes what they had seem like playground pinky promises sealed with nothing more than four-leaf clovers and spit. When he thinks he'll never get any letters ever again, he gets one from her, the last good bulb on a string of broken Christmas lights. Her parents are moving back to Hai Phong, but she's staying in Korea.
She doesn't say where. He writes her back to ask where she's going to be living, but weeks turn into months and nothing comes. They're only sixteen. She has no relatives here. He worries, dreams she's a vagrant on the streets, covered in dirt and struggling to stay warm. Chance encounters on the street between dance practices among dandelions shooting through the cracks in the sidewalk; he just wants to bring her home and clean her up and feed her.
In the midst of his worry, he befriends Lee Kikwang, another trainee. Kikwang smiles a lot and doesn't worry, something that Dongwoon finds contagious. While he occasionally still wonders where Linh is, the dreams aren't so bad anymore.
"So who's the girl in this picture?" The first time Dongwoon brings Kikwang back to his dorm, the first thing the other boy grabs for is the picture of he keeps next to his bed, one of the few in existence where both he and Linh have long hair and are smiling. "She's cute. You look happy."
"My best friend back home." Nostalgia hits him hard, like a bucket of ice water over his head. For the first time in months, he worries again, wonders if Linh is okay. Part of him hopes she ended up back in Vietnam with her family because then at least she is safe, even if she is a million miles, a million worlds away. "Her name is Linh." Kikwang smiles a big, goofy smile and sets the picture back down.
"You love her."
Dongwoon stops breathing for a split second. "Wh-what--?"
"I can see it! Your eyes light up when you say her name. Did you ever tell her?"
No. Never had the courage. Didn't want to lose her.
"What? No, because I don't know what you're talking about."
Kikwang beams. "Of course you don't."
--
"You're being transferred to Cube." Dongwoon sits in a chair across a desk feeling something like yesterday's cold pizza. He's bone-tired and in the middle of his second day without sleep (too much work to do, too much practice, not good enough at anything to debut) and can't feel anything underneath his skin. "They'll find a place for you."
"But-- but I--" How will Linh find me? I don't know where she is. I can't find her to tell her. "I thought I was doing well."
"It's out of my hands." It isn't the answer Dongwoon wants to hear, but he knows that he can't fight it. Dejectedly, he bows, mumbles a thank you, and stumbles out of the room. The worry comes flooding back, this time accompanied with a homesickness so strong he breaks down in the elevator and cries. He wants to see his mother and Linh, to be eight again and missing his two front bottom teeth, to spend the night in a sleeping bag underneath a canopy of thick pink blankets at Linh's while she whispers Vietnamese lullabies to him. JYP doesn't want him; Cube might as well be a death sentence.
Life doesn't feel very much like worth living anymore.
--
Dongwoon's mother welcomes him home with kisses and warm food to start his three-day vacation between companies. He worries he'll spend most of it crying, but seeing her face helps ease the ache in his heart. Settling back into the pace of things at home takes a matter of hours (miserable hours, but hours nonetheless). Finally, he has time to sleep, recuperate, gain some of his color back. The food his mother prepares is tastier than he remembers and he savors every bite because he knows that once he's at Cube, it'll be another few years before he's able to sit and eat it again.
Despite his promises not to dwell on it, he ends up visiting Linh's empty apartment. Barren white walls and wood floors greet him, hold nothing of the memories that were created, the lives that used to take up the space. He sits in Linh's old room where he used to put his sleeping bag next to hers, where her tiny fingers used to make spindly shapes silhouetted against light dimmed by blankets (his fingers were longer, made different shapes; he just remembers the way hers look, the way her face looks drenched in light tinted by the color of fabric). Seeing the emptiness-- the space she and her family used to take up-- makes him wonder if any of it was ever real. Perhaps Tran Linh is a figment of his imagination conjured to fight childhood loneliness.
Ironic. In the end, that's all he feels: loneliness.
"You miss her, huh?" Dongwoon returns home feeling more defeated and numb than he can ever remember feeling. His mother sits down on the couch next to him and puts a soothing hand on his thigh, like the warmth from her hands will somehow fix everything. Because she is his mother, he feels a little better, but his heart is still a choppy mess, the victim of an emotional cuisinart. "She stayed here for a while after her parents left." Dongwoon turns to look at her and tries his hardest not to look as miserable as he feels. "But one day, she packed up and left. There weren't a whole lot of words. She thanked us for all of our kindness, and told us that she would make both you and us proud of her in return. She's written a few letters, but she hasn't specified where she is."
He should be relieved. Linh is alive, she wrote letters.
Just not to him. The sting is almost unbearable.
For the second time in a matter of days, he breaks down and cries again.
--
Standing in front of the Cube Entertainment building, he feels oppressed against its size, like he is about to be consumed, chewed up and swallowed and never seen again. Dongwoon feels like he's seven again, having nightmares about a tyrannosaurus rex with sharp teeth bent on snatching him from his bed and eating him like one of Linh's mother's crispy fried Vietnamese rolls. It takes several moments of self-encouragement to get the courage to walk through the front door, but once he does, his voice is utterly gone. The receptionist greets him and asks for his name and in nervous misery he sputters, "Son Dongwoon." Rapid-fire, she spits out directions, wishes him good luck, and then returns to answering phone calls. Belatedly-- it takes him a minute to absorb all the information and realize that she was even speaking in Korean-- he thanks her and stumbles off, chanting the directions she gave him the best he can.
They bring him to a fancy-looking door that leads to a practice room filled with people-- trainees, he surmises from the tired, hopeful looks he gets-- with one somewhat small boy standing against a wall performing. His voice is smooth and rich-- like cream, pouring right from the carton into his father's morning coffee-- and suddenly Dongwoon is incredibly intimidated. With talent like this, what can they possibly hope to do with him? The boy's song finishes and he bows at the applause he receives. Dongwoon is so caught up in being simultaneously terrified and miserable, he doesn't see who goes on next.
It's probably the next Kwon BoA. Dongwoon doesn't stand a chance.
He honestly isn't expecting to hear one of the most familiar voices in the world. Smooth rap in clumsy tongue Korean, frizzed curls kept in long pigtails. All he can think of are her Vietnamese lullabies, the way her voice echoes off the buildings in their old neighborhood, the feeling of invincibility when he has her backing him up.
It's Linh. She's a Cube trainee. Dongwoon can't feel his extremities. She executes her piece well, bows, steps forward, and stops dead in her tracks.
"Dongwoon." He doesn't know how long he has waited to hear his name in her voice again. It sounds different-- more mature-- but he likes it. Seventeen years old and she still sounds like the six-year-old gap-toothed brat he met in kindergarten. "I-- but you were with JYP." As hard as he tries, he can't get a read on her, but he can't blame her because he doesn't know how he feels either. He has so many questions he wants, needs to ask-- why didn't you write? why are you here? what happened?-- but he can't find his voice to speak.
"I got transferred," he tells her with his voice sounding foreign in his own ears. "I..." There is so much to say, so very much, he doesn't even know where to begin. He wonders if she even missed him. "We'll be trainees together now."
For a second, she looks disappointed. He knows he missed his chance to tell her something, anything meaningful.
"Welcome to Cube, then."
--
Things aren't the same and Dongwoon hates it. He wants to ask her more than anything why she didn't write him, didn't even tell him anything. She auditioned and made it into Cube and he didn't even know. The sting doesn't lessen as he'd hoped it would; seeing her interact with other trainees and smile only makes it worse. He wants things to be like they were again, but there is a rift between them that only grows every time they talk and awkwardly skim around the obvious, shuffling and tiptoeing around the sleeping dogs because it is easier to let them lie than to deal with what would happen should they wake. Things fall into a rhythm again: blisters, soreness, crawling into bed each night more tired and broken than the last but inching closer to the elusive goal that is debut.
Kikwang mysteriously shows up, as well, from JYP. He makes coping with everything and making more friends a little easier, even if the growing distance with Linh still bothers him. Dongwoon settles into Cube more than he ever did JYP, and before long things look up. Kikwang debuts as AJ-- Ace Junior; it's a catchy name-- and Dongwoon knows that this is a sign, a positive sign. Things can't be far from getting better.
One late night practicing with his friends-- his friends who also know the sting of rejection-- Doojoon and Yoseob and Hyunseung and Junhyung and Kikwang-- the boss shows up. They are bone-tired and sweaty and full of hope and dreams and when he walks in, he says the words they had been waiting so long to hear.
"You will debut as a team of six."
The night is filled with tears and hugs and Dongwoon can hardly believe it, that he is really debuting. He knows it is a long and hard road, but it's worth it, he knows he can make it, that his five brothers can make it. 3 AM, they leave the practice room tired and still on the verge of another batch of happy tears. Back to the dorm they go, or so they try. Linh catches him before he leaves the building, smiling as brightly as she can in the wee hours of the morning.
"I heard that you're debuting." He wants her to notice that he kept his hair long just for her, for her to curl it around her fingers a bit and admire him for remembering her and the promise he made despite the fact that she didn't even tell him she was auditioning for the industry. "You'll do so well. I... you are all so talented and you deserve it." There's part of him that believes she's holding something back. He wants to ask, but his voice is lost in the distance between them. So close, he's so close to finally asking her what happened, why they aren't close anymore.
"... Thank you. I really appreciate it." But it won't come out. He doesn't give her the chance to be disappointed-- he knows she will be, he knows he blew it again-- before he bows and walks away to catch up with the rest of his new group.
Each step echoes with words unspoken and stinging cuts on his heart.
--
BEAST-- Boys of the EAst Standing Tall-- or B2ST-- Boys 2 Search for Top-- is a success. Hard work and sweat and tears are poured into a year's worth of recording and appearances and Dongwoon finds his niche with these boys. Things don't come easy, but things come well and he knows in his bones that this is where he is meant to be. They go all over Asia and meet their fans-- their B2UTIES-- and live together and become a family.
Life is hard, but worth it. They are rewarded with their own concert (B2ST Airline-- "Are we going somewhere?" Yoseob asks jokingly) and the world is BEAST's oyster.
But the one pearl Dongwoon wants, he can't seem to have. He just wants Linh back, but he can't find a way to voice his feelings, any of them. There is so much to be said that he can't untangle it into workable sentences so he just continues to skirt around it, tread the thin ice in hopes that it won't break and plunge him into icy water with cement shoes.
One day during the fall, Dongwoon finds Linh in a practice room with Junhyung. The door is ajar and they are talking loud and laughing; he is drawn to the sound instinctively. He waits outside and listens, feeling more than a little terrible for eavesdropping.
"Your flow is so much better than mine." Linh wrinkles her nose and repeats a line from the song they're practicing. "See? I'll never debut with that kind of sloppiness." Junhyung rolls his eyes and puts his hand on her shoulder reassuringly. Dongwoon doesn't like it; the action makes his throat tighten and his skin crawl.
"Come on, you're doing fine. You just need to loosen your mouth up a bit." He recites some vocal exercises and Linh repeats them. Her tongue is still clumsy-- it always will be-- and Dongwoon finds himself smiling. "Now try it again." She does, and while it is better, it hasn't quite reached Junhyung's level of expertise yet.
"I've always had a clumsy tongue," she tells him sourly. "Ever since I was a kid. It took me years to learn how to speak Korean correctly." Dongwoon laughs a bit, quietly enough so that he's sure they can't hear him. The air shifts. Junhyung moves in close and his voice drops to a low hum.
"I think I can help you with that."
He kisses her. Yong Junhyung leans in and kisses Tran Linh on the mouth. Dongwoon can't believe it. His stomach drops and his heart stops and he can't feel his legs or his arms or anything at all; he just wants to scream and break something. They are kissing and he can't watch, so he turns and he runs. His heart breaks loud in his ears and it takes everything in him not to collapse under the weight of his sobs.
The only thing in the world he truly wants, he can't have.
--
Life loses its color. The holiday season comes around, but Dongwoon can't seem to find happiness in anything. Tensions are high with Junhyung but Dongwoon doesn't say anything because that means admitting that things with Linh ever happened at all. He just wants to crawl into his skin and never come out.
Everyone notices. Dongwoon pretends they don't.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on with you?" Junhyung corners him one day and try as he might Dongwoon can't get away. "You've been out of it for weeks, and don't think I haven't noticed that it's whenever I'm around. So what, what'd I do?" Dongwoon bites his tongue.
"Nothing, I'm just tired."
"Bull," Junhyung bites out. "Just come clean."
"You kissed her!" It comes flying out of his mouth so fast that he can't even hope to stop it or anything that follows. He's kept it bottled up for so long that all it took was Junhyung's vigorous shaking to have it explode much like the bottles and cans of coke he enjoys so much. "You kissed Linh, I can't believe that you kissed her!"
Junhyung stares. "You saw that--?" He shakes his head. "I know you guys are friends, but I didn't see you making any moves. Is that why you're mad, because she's like your sister?"
"Just shut up," Dongwoon snaps angrily, "you crossed the line."
The conversation ends there and tensions are even thicker. Dongwoon doesn't know what happens between Junhyung and Linh and he tries to tell himself that he doesn't care, but he knows he does. Christmas approaches and with it the Cube Christmas party, but Dongwoon doesn't care.
He doesn't care. It's for that reason that he brushes Kikwang off when he approaches him with what looks to be a stack of letters. "You might want to take a look at these." They're from Linh, addressed to him.
"No," he replies calmly, "just throw them away." Kikwang looks at him imploringly.
"Please. This'll put everything in perspective, I promise--" Dongwoon takes the stack of them tied with ribbon and he drops them on the floor.
"I don't care. Burn them, throw them away. I don't care."
He leaves the room before he can see Kikwang picking the stack of letters up.
--
The company Christmas party is at a fancy Karaoke establishment on the far side of town. They all crowd into a room and hug one another and exchange gifts and wish one another good tidings. Dongwoon avoids Linh and Junhyung (and everyone; he doesn't feel like socializing) like the plague in favor of sitting on the couch and browsing the song selection. When he picks one and music fills the room, everyone stops and looks at him, stares blankly because no one knows quite what is going on.
2AM explains it best, so he lets them, pours his heart and soul into every note as the entirety of the room watches in dead silence. The song twists and turns and he feels like he is singing his guts out, his throat hoarse. He isn't sure if he cries or if it's imagination, but by the time the song is finished, there are tears on his cheeks. For the briefest of seconds he locks eyes with Linh and all of the courage leaves his body.
Again, he runs. He runs until he is outside, standing in the park across the way surrounded by twinkling Christmas lights. They flicker and sparkle and he feels mocked. The pain in his heart is unbearable.
"Yah, look at you! Why did someone so heartbroken go somewhere so romantic?" He turns to see Linh standing there bundled up in a thick coat with anger in her eyes. She looks like she means to say more, but can't find the words and Dongwoon isn't in the mood to hear it.
"Why did someone dating Yong Junhyung follow me out here?" He shoots the words at her like venomous darts, jaw clenched so hard he feels like he could break the bones like peanut brittle.
"What?" Her eyes widen and she stares incredulously at him. "Y-you-- I'm not! I... I mean he did kiss me, but I... I didn't-- We aren't--"
"Save it!" he shouts. "I wrote you, I wrote you so many times, but you couldn't even be bothered to tell me you were auditioning for Cube, or even where you were!" Linh recoils like he's burning her with scalding hot water. "I even doubted that you were ever real. I went back home and nothing was there. You wrote mom, but you didn't write me--"
"I wrote you so many letters, Dongwoon!" Her voice sounds bigger than he remembers, but it's still hers, still pierces the air with the same spark. "So many. Begging you to come back because I missed you, telling you that I never ever forgot, that I worried every day. I saved them so that once I debuted, I could give them to you." The letters Kikwang had-- those were the letters she wrote. "I wanted to make you proud, Dongwoon. I wanted to train and debut so that I would be good enough for you. I was getting Junhyung's help with my rapping so that I'd be more ready."
She's crying. Dongwoon can't believe it. Never in the time that he'd known her had he ever seen her cry. "I was so blessed to have met you and your family. I just wanted you all to have someone you could be proud of. I'm so sorry, I should've... I should've said something. I don't know what. I just wanted you to think that I was good enough. What if I didn't make it? What if I told you and they'd rejected me? I'd be a failure." She sniffles and wipes her eyes miserably.
"But recently, you were just so cold. You saw Junhyung kiss me and I can't imagine what you thought, but I thought you hated me, so I threw the letters away. I just... you deserve so much better than me."
Dongwoon forgets the anger and holds her. It feels right, holding her like this; it soothes the sting in his chest. She apologizes again and again and he just tells her it's okay-- what else can he say? When she's finally calm, he dares to speak again.
"You were always good enough, Linh. You didn't have to... you're perfect. You always will be."
He leans in and he kisses her. Everything falls into place and all of the work and pain and emotion are worth it all for this one moment. One kiss turns into two turns into numerous because Dongwoon loses count. She holds his coat like she's afraid of losing him and he has his fingers in her hair. Years of dreaming of having it around his hands don't do it justice.
Dreams don't do her justice. Dongwoon just wants the moment to last forever.
"I love you. I always have." Linh whispers the words against his mouth with sparkling lights illuminating her skin. His heart erupts like a volcano and fills his chest with liquid warmth and he smiles so impossibly big that he knows satellites can see his teeth from space.
"I know," he replies softly, tugging on one of her pigtails. "I love you, too. You and your clumsy tongue." She laughs shyly as she pulls him closer, into her like she hopes she can take him into her heart and keep him there forever. Dongwoon doesn't mind; he'd stay willingly.
"I don't want to go back," she says with a smile. Dongwoon takes her hand and leads her off deeper into the park-- a sea of glittering lights and Christmas spirit-- and Linh follows, putting her heart in his hands where it has always belonged. He takes it and she takes his and things are right.
"Let's get dinner." Linh looks over at him and smiles. "My treat. We have some catching up to do." Her answer is another kiss, one so tender it almost makes him cry (but there have been enough tears for the day).
"Anything. It's the Christmas of miracles and the night is young." Christmas of miracles indeed, Dongwoon agrees to himself, turning to fully face her again and he holds her face in his hands. She's warm and fits there perfectly and he wants to just carry her with him always.
"I'm gonna kiss you again. Just to make sure it's real. I mean this Christmas might just be perfect." Her fingers drum his chin, fingernails scraping gently as she strokes, and her eyes lock with his.
"Might need to triple check that."
He couldn't ask for a better, more perfect Christmas.