First fic ever on here. First fic that I've ever been so passionate about. It started as a fleeting thought of what would happen if the DBSK members worked in a café. Eventually, it spawned into this.
Apparently, there was too much in this chapter for LJ to handle. Therefore, two separate posts. Click at the bottom for more. [Points down] Look there for the links.
--Well, then. Let's do the basic rundown of what this story will be about, I suppose. Then...let the story begin. Here's to hoping I'll actually finish this one...
Title: Café Bisco
Fandom: Dong Bang Shin Ki / Tohoshinki / TVXQ
Rating: For now, PG-13
Concrit: Please do. Comments, complaints, and constructive criticism are all always appreciated.
Summary: It starts as a simple meeting between five men. Destiny had other plans in mind.
- Prologue -
“We may run, walk, stumble, drive, or fly,
but let us never lose sight of the reason for the journey,
or miss a chance to see a rainbow on the way.”
- Gloria Gaither
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
One, then two; then four, then more. Each raindrop that falls a solemn reminder of the seasons (spring, summer, fall - and now? He’d almost forgotten) long past. How many have passed, he doesn’t know. Too many. Too long.
Too late for regrets.
He hasn’t been back here in years.
Chungnam seems smaller somehow; confining. He wonders if that was the reason he left originally. Then again, his tiny apartment in Seoul is hardly anything to write home about (no pun intended).
Everyone leaving in black. Suits, dresses, skirts, shirts - all black. He’s the odd one out, soaked to the bone in his white jacket and blue jeans. He didn’t know what to expect upon arrival. All he thought as he ran out yesterday was that he would be able to see her, hoped that he would be able to meet her at last.
She’s gone, son. Just passed on yesterday.
No such luck. He took the last train out from Seoul last night the moment he knew the address, not wanting to wander around aimlessly. Now it seems so effortless, wandering past the houses and shopping district and the small shanties at the edge of town, everything small, barred, like jail cells all in a row. Like purgatory.
“-Do you wish for redemption?”
A whisper of a voice, barely discernable against the pounding rain. He turns to his right, the source of the sound, to find a slim hooded figure all in white standing under a shop pavilion. White.
The color of death.
Walking closer, he can make out full lips and a round nose from beneath the hood. A woman, most likely. “Come a bit closer,” she says. “I’ll give you a proper reading…if answers are what you seek.”
“Answers?” He steps back when she tries to move closer to him, water sliding from his long bangs across the exposed skin on his neck. “Answers to what?”
For some reason, he could imagine her downcast gaze on the pavement, contemplative. “- Kim Jaejoong. I knew your mother well. She wouldn’t want you to carry on life feeling empty like this.”
That did it.
He grabs the woman in white by the shoulder, whirling them both around to face the abandoned shop window. “What could you possibly know,” he grounds out, not sure if the trembling in his voice is anger or fear, “about my birth mother?”
Her hood slips down to reveal a startlingly petite young lady with chestnut wisps of hair falling past her chest. Jaejoong freezes. He can’t place it, but this woman’s face reminds him of…something. Someone, even. He struggles for a name to no avail.
“Jaejoong-sshi.” Her smile is surprisingly serene for someone pinned against the wall by a man a good head taller than her. “It’s alright. The loneliness you’re feeling, the doubts you’re still fighting against…I can give you the key to conquer them.”
In the blink of an eye, her hands stroke the sides of his face. He doesn’t pull away. “But that is all I can do for you. I can give you the key, but you are the one who must find the door.”
Circular logic. He’s heard it all before. Still, Jaejoong feels the dissent rising in his throat, but something tells him to hold it back and just listen.
Something in this woman’s vague speech makes sense; the genuine concern in her voice prevents him from walking away. And at this point - the both of them stuck out in the middle of nowhere, a good mile from the rest of the townsfolk - what else was there to do?
An empty life. It’s the very last thing that he wants.
“First of all,” Jaejoong sighs, letting her go, “I want a name. You seem to know me too well, but if I don’t even know that much-”
“Boa.” Again, those tender downcast eyes gaze at him. “I have no family or relatives to name, I’m afraid. And I don’t keep track of the days that pass, so I have no idea of my age on this Earth.”
“So what would your age be in lunar years?” He can’t help it. The glare he receives from Boa silences him quickly, however. “Nevermind. G-Go on, then.”
Boa smiles at him, inviting him closer. Jaejoong chooses to lean against the wall with her instead. “Give me your hand, Jaejoong-sshi. I’ll do a proper reading for you.”
Fortune-telling? Jaejoong obeys, reluctant the moment her cold hands place themselves across his. “Please, relax. I won’t be able to tell-”
It’s the moment she lets their pinkies entwine that Jaejoong feels a spark of something pulsate through his body. Like electricity, only much warmer. He gasps, letting go of Boa’s hand. From the look on her face, she felt it, too.
“-Well.” She’s smiling now, Jaejoong realizes, wondering if she had seen something good. “I already know the answer, then. Would you like to know what I saw in store for you, Jaejoong-sshi?”
He blinks, not expecting it to help Boa’s words make any more sense. “I-In…in my future?”
“Only three years from now. I didn’t feel the need to look further than that.” Her reply is so flippant they might as well have been talking about tomorrow’s weather. “-Of course, there were only images. Your mind was surprisingly hard to penetrate right away.” Jaejoong stares. “And, of course, images are always open to interpretation.”
“Then what is it?” Boa glances at him, a wan smile quirking her lips. “Your interpretation, I mean.”
She takes a deep breath and Jaejoong lets out the breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding in. “Well…I suppose I should start from the top.”
“Your next year in Seoul will be a year of discovery. The injured lion tells me you will discover the meaning of pride. A lesson in humility, gentleness, and knowing when to speak your mind.”
“Learning how to lick my wounds, so to speak.” Boa nods. “Then…what else, Boa-sshi?”
Her almond hues darken. Jaejoong starts at the sound of thunder rumbling overhead. “After that…was the image of a round table. After next year, expect to find companionship and good company. Friends you can count on.”
Boa turns to him. “You are…about to turn twenty-two in February, correct?” Jaejoong nods, shivering a bit from the settling cool air around them. “-Then it’s due time for a change of course. Perhaps that’s what the round table also suggests. Like Sir Arthur and his knights…plan to embark on a new journey. That may be what you need to fulfill the last part of your heart’s deepest wishes.”
Jaejoong rubs at his arms, sweat jacket doing little to shield his skin from the settling cold. “Last part of…?”
“The last image I saw,” a tight-lipped smile, baring small rows of white teeth, “was of the red rose. Now, normally the red rose indicates lifelong passion. But when coupled with the white rose indicating purity, it means you may find lifelong love.”
Jaejoong stops pacing to keep himself warm, the cogs in his brain coming to a screeching halt as well. “L-Love?”
“Your soulmate.” Boa gestures with her hands, a wide sweep of the open air around her. “Your other half.”
If he wasn’t already in a strange enough situation, (standing on the edge of Chungnam and talking to a complete stranger about his future), he would have walked away right then and there hearing something so ridiculous. His soulmate?
“-Bullshit.” The words fly out of his mouth without meaning, helpless fluttering birds. “I don’t believe in love. You expect me to believe in soulmates?” His neckline itches, but he’s frozen to the spot. “I’m sorry. I trusted you up until now, but-”
“If I gave you an exact date,” Boa holds him transfixed with her gaze, “would you believe me then?”
The world seems to stop, all his worthless opposition fading away to silence. Past the tarp covering, gray skies glowed vermillion. Sunset was coming. On any normal evening in Seoul, he’d be getting ready to go club-hopping, prowling the streets for someone to spend the night with, anything to relieve the boredom that came with the monotonous rhythm of everyday life. Strangely enough, he didn’t feel the desire to do that anymore.
No more. I’m sick of it. On the inside…was that what he always felt?
“September 5th.” Shaken from his reverie, Jaejoong turns to Boa. “September 5th of next year, you’ll meet your soulmate. You both will be searching for something and, in the process, will find each other.”
Jaejoong opens his mouth and then shuts it. It’s a silly question. Boa grins - the first, real, unrestrained smile he sees from her.
“‘How will I know,’ you were going to say?” Her laugh rings out like sirens in the night, a sharp piercing sound. “Simply put, Jaejoong-sshi, you’ll just know. Talking with them will be like talking to an old friend - except it will happen the moment you meet. Like you’ve found your other half.”
“A bond deeper than friendship…or between family members…or with any girlfriend or boyfriend you’ve ever had.” The way she knows this much about me, I’m starting to doubt all my theories on psychics. “I’m sure you’ll sense it the moment you both meet.” Her smile is softer this time, her laugh a warmer chuckle. “And now, Jaejoong-sshi…I shall take my leave.”
She steps out from under the pavilion into the light drizzle. Jaejoong holds out his hand. “W-Wait!” Despite all his reservations, there was still one thing he felt he had to know. “Boa-sshi…how did you know my mother? M-My…my birth mother, I mean.”
Obscured by the clouds, the sun comes out in patches. When it strikes Boa’s head, he swears an unearthly light swallows the crown of her hair - like a halo. “I can only tell you,” she intones, “that we knew each other well. Someday…we’ll see each other again. I will explain everything then.”
“I believe…by that time, you will have met ‘that person.’” She smiles, moving out of the hazy sunshine to take his hand. “I’m sure we’ll have a nice long talk, then.”
A pink tongue darts out to moisten dry lips. Jaejoong shakes her hand, feeling all at once terribly awkward. “I-I’ll be holding you to that.” Less stuttering, you fool. “Don’t leave me hanging, Boa-sshi.”
That laugh again, high-pitched, almost childlike. “I won’t. And I hope you won’t disappoint me, Jaejoong-sshi.”
Until we meet again.
He blinks, watching her go down the path heading up the mountain in the opposite direction.
It’s the moment he steps out from the makeshift roof, the sun streams down from above - a difference in light Jaejoong squints to let his eyes adjust to - that he loses track of everything. He tries to blink back the stinging tears that gather under his lids in vain, vision blurring. It was only a moment, but…
Down the trail heading up the mountain, Jaejoong looks as far as he can to find Boa has disappeared.
==========
Everyone knows Park Yoochun for all the wrong reasons.
Because his father is “Korea’s No. 1 Fashion Designer.” Because his brother Yoowan won Seoul’s National Cooking Competition. Because his mother runs the Twice Remembered Seoul-based store. If someone living in Seoul hadn’t heard about the Park family, one would have to assume they were living under a rock or something similar.
Jealousy wasn’t Park Yoochun’s style, but there are moments when he wonders if good luck is purposely trying to pass him by.
Then again, it could just be the effect of living in a city like Seoul for ten years. He remembers Virginia - wide open skies, wide open spaces; plenty of breathing room for him and Yoowan and his parents (of course he misses it, although not for the difficulty he had learning English). Then again, that was when they all felt like family.
Nowadays, he isn’t so sure.
It’s the typical broken home story: father buries himself in work, mother struggles to help run the house and work to help pay the bills, and both children spectators to their petty fights turning much more severe over time. Yoowan, three years younger than him, was the one emotionally-affected by it.
Of course. He was an ‘adult’ now. His parents’ decisions wouldn’t affect him - shouldn’t affect him. The only reason he lives with them is because he’s sharing the rent space. That’s all.
(It’s lonely in a one-room apartment at the edge of town in a city like this.)
Recently, he took a night job at a local jazz club playing piano until the wee hours of morning. To pass the time during the afternoon, he runs little errands for the hired help around the house and practices on the grand piano in the parlor. It’s become a routine, but he welcomes it. Anything to pass the time by quietly.
(He doesn’t like the limelight, the publicity, the probing questions. It wouldn’t be a far stretch at all to say he hated it.)
It’s when the piano needs replacement strings that he ends up checking out one of the only places in the area that sells a particular kind - for ‘Old Reliable,’ as he calls his beloved instrument. The moment he walks into that tiny corner store on a side street downtown that he sees something he’ll never forget for the rest of his life.
The boy looked not a day over 16, gelled spikes of hair gravitated right, thick-rimmed glasses over smiling dark eyes. His gaze focused solely on the piano in front of him, his fingers skated across the keys (like ripples in the water; like magic) with the firmness of a professional pianist. But he was still so young, cheeks still slight with baby fat and round fingertips gliding across the keys ever so carefully, his tongue sticking out from the side of his mouth in concentration.
Yoochun didn’t have the heart or the nerve to disturb him.
-Except his foot slipped at the doorway, sending him headfirst into a pile of boxes stationed beside the cash register. The boy yelped, turning to Yoochun lying in a dazed heap on the ground, spare keys and other odds and ends scattered on the ground beside him. They stared at each other voiceless for what felt like one long mortifying minute. Then the boy did something completely unexpected.
He broke into a smile.
“Are you okay?” It was easy to see he was trying not to, but Yoochun could see the grin threatening to split his jaw wide open. “That sounded sorta…”
Absently, he rubbed at his sore bottom. “Don’t think I broke anything, so…yeah, I’m alright. Probably.”
A shrill giggle rang through the air; Yoochun turned to the boy, who had his head thrown back in laughter. “S-Sorry, I’m so sorry! I was just thinking about somebody coming into the hospital with a broken butt…and having to explain how it happened to the doctor…i-it’s just too funny,” the boy fell into another fit of hysterics, “I’m sorry~…!”
Smirk. Yoochun hated to admit it, (my ass actually kinda stings right now), but the kid did have a point. And the thought of it was pretty funny. Soon enough, a slew of baritone chuckles met with the boy’s unrestrained tittering; a juxtaposition as sudden as it was strangely comforting. The two of them laughing like good friends would over a private joke.
It was a sensation he hadn’t felt this much in earnest since he was a child. Pure and simple contentment. It was as puzzling as it was breathtaking.
“-I’m Kim Junsu.” This strange and smiling boy licks his lips (out of habit, probably) and holds out a hand to Yoochun. “I help out here on weekends. It’s nice to meet you!”
Yoochun takes the other’s smaller hand and shakes it, marveling at how soft Junsu’s palm was. It takes him a good three seconds to remember how to speak.
“Y-Yoochun. Y’know, your piano playing…that was really something else. But that song you were playing before. It sounded familiar.”
“Yeah. It was - umm - NELL’s ‘Yearning’! Have you ever heard of them?” Ah, that was it. When Yoochun nods, Junsu’s smile glows brighter than the midday sun streaming in from the open window. “Awesome, that’s so cool! I never knew anybody who came in here and kindasorta knew what I was playing.” Kindasorta? “You seem pretty cool yourself. You play piano, too?”
“Been playin’ practically all my life.” It wasn’t an exaggeration. “And I’m self-learned, too.” Yoochun feels a swell of pride well up in him at being able to say that honestly. “No formal lessons or anything. Sometimes it’s easier to replicate a song by ear, y’know?”
Junsu nods vigorously, wide eyes regarding him with obvious admiration. “Yeah, totally! But wow…you must be ten times better than I’ll ever be. No fair, I’m jealous~” He pouts, making the action of a spoilt brat seem a lot less spoilt and a lot more…cute.
“Hmmm. Anyway. Guess I’d better clean this up.”
Junsu kneels to retrieve the fallen boxes and their contents, shaking his head when Yoochun bends down to help. “S’okay, I got it. You just go ahead and take a look around.” That sunshine smile again. “I wanna hear you play. I’ll let you try out the piano I was playing on. Trial run’s free for you.”
Yoochun opens his mouth to protest - and quickly closes it. Junsu was doing him a favor; it would be a waste of his kindness if he refused. “Sure thing. -Thanks.” And with that, he walked toward the back to grab the spare strings he saw hanging on the southernmost wall.
After he turns back to the entrance of the shop, he finds Junsu tucked in the corner with the piano again. “Sorry if I’m bugging you to play for me and you really don’t want to.” It’s the downcast, rejected puppy dog look that makes Yoochun reconsider his protest on lingering here any longer. “If you really don’t want to, that’s okay. I’ll just ring you up and-”
Yoochun doesn’t have the heart or the nerve to say no to Junsu.
“-Any particular requests?” Yoochun grins at him, settling down on the bench laid out in front of the piano. “I’ll take ‘em if you sing along. -Unless your singing voice sucks, of course,” he adds, teasing.
Junsu laughs. Eukyangkyang. The sound might have been grating to anyone else, but Yoochun figured it was like an acquired taste. “I know a lot of songs, so just play anything! And I’ll do my best to sing along.”
He plays a Brown Eyed Soul that Junsu croons along to in startlingly smooth tenor, followed by a Loveholic song where Junsu adds a different tone altogether with a strained falsetto. When Yoochun finally stops playing bits of cover songs, he turns to a recent unfinished composition of his own, letting the notes flow past his nerve endings to the ends of his fingertips.
It’s the moment Junsu starts vocalizing along that Yoochun has to stop playing.
“Your voice is amazing, Junsu.” After talking a bit during his choppy rendition of a Fly To The Sky song, he discovered Junsu -was- 16, making him Yoochun’s junior by barely a year. “Where did you learn to sing like that?”
“My mom’s taught me some stuff, but I guess…I always liked singing.” Junsu’s cheeks are rosy when he takes off his glasses to clean them off on his shirt. “Maybe that’s all it takes - just a little love and ambition.”
“Pfft. If that was the case, then all the tone-deaf people in the world would be as good as you, Junsu. And then there’d be no competition,” he pokes the younger boy’s stomach, eliciting a tiny squeak of remonstration, “for naturally talented people like you.”
They sit and talk for what felt like hours, (about school, about music, about life; it’s an exhilarating experience, talking with someone that Yoochun can never quite figure out what will be the next topic of conversation), Junsu leaving his side occasionally to take care of the customers that came in.
He really hadn’t meant to stay past six o’clock, but by the time he looked at his watch, it was already seven.
“-Shit, I am so late.”
Junsu peers at him, curious. “Ahh, it’s just - I promised my little brother I’d be home to eat dinner with him.” Yoochun scrubs at his face, awkward. “Y’know how it is. You got a brother, too, right?”
“Mm. But we’re twins…and he’s busy most of the time.” Junsu looks a bit sad after this remark, but Yoochun doesn’t mention it. He has a feeling Junsu wouldn’t want to tell him, anyway. “-Umm, but, yeah…you probably should go, right? Family’s important ‘n all that…” He doesn’t hide his reluctance at letting someone he gets along with leave.
Yoochun feels the same way, but just ruffles the kid’s hair a bit in response. “Well, I’ll call you if you give me your number. We can hang out sometime. Maybe outside this piano store next time?”
Junsu chuckles, not pulling away from Yoochun when he ruffles his hair a bit more. “Okayyyy. But you promise you’ll call?” His expression actually becomes a bit more melancholy then. “I don’t wanna give my number to someone I won’t hear from after a week…”
“Hey,” he says in English, then switches right over to Korean again, “what kind of guy do you take me for? We’re fast friends, right? Don’t worry, we’re gonna stay that way.” He means every word, of course.
After they finish exchanging numbers, Junsu holds out his pinky to him. Yoochun’s eyebrows raise. Seriously?
“C’mon, it’ll be fun - pinky swear we’ll stay in touch and stay friends?” Such a childish gesture, but Yoochun just chalks it up to Junsu being Junsu. “Remember, you’re gonna be cursed if you break your promise!”
“I know, I know,” he intones in mock-exasperation, gripping Junsu’s pinky with his own. “Pinky swear. We’ll be friends ‘til one of us croaks.”
“…How about ‘til one of us finds a new best friend?” Junsu grins. “It sounds nicer that way.”
Yoochun laughs and gives Junsu’s pinky a firm shake. “Whatever you say, Junsuk. Whatever you say.”
He couldn’t even fathom back then that, three years later, his promise will still hold true.
==========
Part 2:
sakuranbokissx.livejournal.com/823.html