parallel
idk i think the main point of this is to show that kyuhyun and younha will work out forever while every other pairing fades into the background (!!!!!)
..lol jk i was just bored ok. or it's just a subconscious effort to include the both of them even though this is some angsty piece about poor donghae and sunye. lol i probably got a lot of dates wrong.. but just take it as a bit of creative license on my part
2008
“You remember Younha?” Sunye asks him suddenly during one of their phone conversations, when he’s in Beijing and she’s in Seoul and distance doesn’t matter one bit at all.
Yeah, he says. “Is there something I should know?”
Sunye laughs, a breath of fresh air in the city of Beijing, smothered with fog and the misery of not having her next to him. “We - Yubin and I, I mean - kinda thought it would be good to set her up with someone for her birthday.”
He laughs at her for being such a matchmaker. Remember how they tried to introduce Heechul to Sohee that one time? “That didn’t turn out so well,” he reminds her, teasing.
“I know, I know,” she says, unfazed, “but that was because Sohee didn’t know how to handle Heechul when drunk. Nobody does, actually.”
He agrees, and they laugh a bit more about Heechul’s fascination with Sohee, the girl with fat cheeks and a single expression and the kindest heart in the world.
“You can bring her along to the party when we get back home,” Donghae tells her when they’re close to ending the call, “and we’ll try to forcibly pair one of the guys up with her, okay? That should be fun.”
Sunye laughs again, and something in his chest stirs, heavy and sweet. “Okay.”
They both remain silent for a while, and he wonders if he should put down the phone first.
“I miss you, Donghae,” she says, voice crackling a little over the line, quiet and tender. “I can’t wait for you to come home.”
He clutches the phone a little tighter, and looks at the expanse of city lights and smog just outside his window. Beijing looks a little like Seoul if he tries, but it can never be because she isn’t here.
“I miss you too.”
2011
They’re in Singapore for an award ceremony, all nine of them (the present them, at any rate) together for the first time in two months. It’s hot and salty and wet in this country all at once, and they are the same, but not quite. It reminds him of he and her, actually, and then his head starts hurting again so Donghae just gives up thinking about it all together.
So he walks out of the dressing room and leaves the rest of them behind. He’s not hungry, and they’re eating McDonald’s for dinner so he leaves for some fresh air. It’s not really fresh air per se, Donghae muses wryly, but it will do for now.
The corridor is long and white and lit by fluorescent lights, just like any other corridor he’s used to in the TV stations back home. It makes him want to laugh a little, actually, at how everything is the same but different, but he just walks and walks until he hears someone on the phone, voice low and a little tired.
It’s Kyuhyun, leaning on the wall, head slightly bowed, phone clasped against his left ear. He doesn’t notice Donghae’s presence, though, so he just listens in unabashedly.
“Have you taken your meds and vitamins?” he hears Kyuhyun ask, softer and without the usual edged tone in his voice, “Are you still running a fever?”
Kyuhyun is a funny little boy, he thinks. It has been five years since he turned up one day with their manager and became a part of them, this little dysfunctional family of some sort. It has been five years, Donghae concludes, and he still doesn’t understand Kyuhyun very well.
He suddenly recalls the party that Heechul threw them when they first returned from Beijing three years ago, still disorientated and feeling like foreigners in their own land. He remembers a lot of alcohol and Siwon’s mild disapproval; he also remembers Kyuhyun smiling a lot brighter than usual, and Sunye’s arms around him, tight and warm and safe.
Ouch, he smiles, lip curling. He hears Kyuhyun murmur a low “I love you, please take care”, and then footsteps that stop squarely in front of him.
“You’ve changed,” he tells Kyuhyun without looking up from his shoes, eyes still slightly closed, “is it a good thing?”
Kyuhyun pauses for a moment, and Donghae finally looks away from his shoes and at him, the youngest member of his odd, mish-mash, hotchpotch little clan called Super Junior.
“You love her,” Donghae says again, as good-naturedly as he would when talking about the weather, “you love Younha, and it has changed you. Is that a good thing?”
Kyuhyun lowers his eyes and the sides of his lips curve up just a little before he nods. It is a good thing, he says, the best thing that has happened to me.
Donghae asks, why.
“It’s just - I love her a lot, you know? And loving someone can change you, no matter how stupid that sounds.”
Kyuhyun puts a hand on his shoulder, suddenly.
“You’ve changed too.”
2009
Funny, how we leave each other in successive turns. I don’t like it too much, but it leaves me comforted to know that you are home and living the life I want to for me.
She emails him often, sometimes every day, sometimes every two. He reads them all and keeps them in a special folder named “Sun”, in honour of her new name in America.
He emails her back often too, telling her about their stages and their digital sales and their physical sales and how their managers are more excitable these days.
They say we’ll win everything this year. Like how you did last year. It made me happy, somehow, to hear that. Makes me feel like we’re on the same level. Awards-wise, ha ha.
The press doesn’t forget about the Wonder Girls initially - they churn out articles about them in America, how they’re going to conquer the Billboard charts and be the most successful Koreans there in the business. Donghae reads these articles on the Internet, sometimes with Heechul, and picks out nice phrases to put in his emails to her.
I like how they have so much confidence in us.
And then they start to slowly stop. Donghae is happy when Girls’ Generation succeeds with Gee, of course, because they’ve trained together before and the nine girls have worked so, so hard. But sometimes he takes a long, hard look at the newspapers and wonders how it’d be like if she were here now.
Apparently the Wonder Girls are the only viable rivals to Girls’ Generation now. The entire entertainment industry is at war with each other, at this rate.
He tries to sound light-hearted, even funny, with his words as the months go by. They still exchange emails, but now Sunye only replies him when she has the time. It’s tiring, she tells him one time when they manage to talk on the phone, but enriching too.
“Hard work is always more fulfilling,” she says, voice muffled but he can hear the smile in it, “you know that right, Donghae?”
He says yes, of course, but there is a growing, nagging voice in him. It says Sunye is different now; she is not the same anymore but you are just here, at the same spot for eternity, maybe.
Donghae tells it to shut up.
They do win lots of awards at the year-end ceremonies, and he silently thanks Sunye when Leeteuk is making the acceptance speeches. He texts her every single time they win something, and she replies back warmly with congratulations and reminders for him to wrap up warmly for winter, but they always come late because of the time difference.
It doesn’t matter though, Donghae thinks, because he loves her and she loves him and it will take more than time difference to get in between them.
2010
Kyuhyun is one of the most affected when Han Geng leaves their group. Heechul himself is too distraught to offer any comfort, so when Younha rings their dormitory ’s doorbell, Donghae isn’t too surprised when he goes to answer the door.
“I’m sorry to bother all of you,” Younha says as she steps in, “but I thought I’d just come over and take a look…”
The managers don’t know, surely, so Donghae leads her to Kyuhyun’s room and closes the door behind her.
They have been together for two years now, he thinks, Kyuhyun and Younha. The rest of the boys don’t say anything much about them, but Younha is clearly family now. Why don’t you introduce anyone to us like you did for Kyuhyun, sometimes Hyukjae asks him when they drink beer in their room, just the two of them.
He laughs it off, mostly.
But love is a funny thing, he wants to reply. There’s a reason why the two of them ended up together, and then there’s another why he and Sunye did.
He loves her, because she is the girl who will hold his hand in times of pain and need and endless helplessness. She is the girl who is different, who is the little piece of heaven he needs to continue his dream and his father’s.
She is Sunye.
Kyuhyun comes out of the room after an hour with Younha, hand in hand, fingers interlaced.
They wait as Younha insists on cooking ramyeon for the both of them, and he doesn’t miss the gentle look in Kyuhyun’s eyes as they watch her busy herself in their kitchen, with pots and bowls and packets of instant ramyeon.
“Are you happier now?” Happier now that you’re in love and that she is willing to do anything for you, and you for her?
Kyuhyun plays with his chopsticks for a while.
“Yes.”
Donghae cannot say the same for himself.
2011
They win three awards, and he pulls out his phone to text her when he remembers. It’s an ingrained habit now, to text her whenever something big happens for him and his little Super Junior family. Not anymore, Donghae reminds himself.
The waiting room is a mess, with crying members and sniffling coordis and loud, happy managers. Everyone is everywhere, and he tries to make his way out, unnoticed.
Kyuhyun is near the door and on the phone again, when he brushes past Ryeowook to step out.
“I’m not crying,” he hears Kyuhyun say, voice a little thicker than usual, eyes red-rimmed.
Neither is he, but something inside is cracking, peeling, disintegrating.
The corridor is strangely comforting when he walks out again, harshly bright, his shadow cast against the whitewashed wall opposite. Everything looks foggy and blurred, and it takes him a while to understand that like Kyuhyun, he is tearing up.
Fingers fumble and he dials the number most familiar to him.
The dial tone seems to go on forever.
“Hello?”
And then she picks up.
“Hello?”
She asks again, more hesitantly this time. He doesn’t say anything, just listens to her voice and holds the phone against his right ear, taking in everything that is on the other side of the line. It has been months since they’ve last talked, since their breakup.
I don’t think we love each other like we did anymore, she’d said. “Do you understand, Donghae?”
He’d said yes, I do, but he doesn’t, not even now when he’s here, in another country without her and listening to her voice over the phone, not even daring to speak because he’s afraid it’s an awful, awful dream.
“Donghae?”
His chest feels hollow, empty even.
“Donghae? Are you okay?”
No, no, no.
He cuts the line off.
..lol jk i was just bored ok. or it's just a subconscious effort to include the both of them even though this is some angsty piece about poor donghae and sunye. lol i probably got a lot of dates wrong.. but just take it as a bit of creative license on my part
2008
“You remember Younha?” Sunye asks him suddenly during one of their phone conversations, when he’s in Beijing and she’s in Seoul and distance doesn’t matter one bit at all.
Yeah, he says. “Is there something I should know?”
Sunye laughs, a breath of fresh air in the city of Beijing, smothered with fog and the misery of not having her next to him. “We - Yubin and I, I mean - kinda thought it would be good to set her up with someone for her birthday.”
He laughs at her for being such a matchmaker. Remember how they tried to introduce Heechul to Sohee that one time? “That didn’t turn out so well,” he reminds her, teasing.
“I know, I know,” she says, unfazed, “but that was because Sohee didn’t know how to handle Heechul when drunk. Nobody does, actually.”
He agrees, and they laugh a bit more about Heechul’s fascination with Sohee, the girl with fat cheeks and a single expression and the kindest heart in the world.
“You can bring her along to the party when we get back home,” Donghae tells her when they’re close to ending the call, “and we’ll try to forcibly pair one of the guys up with her, okay? That should be fun.”
Sunye laughs again, and something in his chest stirs, heavy and sweet. “Okay.”
They both remain silent for a while, and he wonders if he should put down the phone first.
“I miss you, Donghae,” she says, voice crackling a little over the line, quiet and tender. “I can’t wait for you to come home.”
He clutches the phone a little tighter, and looks at the expanse of city lights and smog just outside his window. Beijing looks a little like Seoul if he tries, but it can never be because she isn’t here.
“I miss you too.”
2011
They’re in Singapore for an award ceremony, all nine of them (the present them, at any rate) together for the first time in two months. It’s hot and salty and wet in this country all at once, and they are the same, but not quite. It reminds him of he and her, actually, and then his head starts hurting again so Donghae just gives up thinking about it all together.
So he walks out of the dressing room and leaves the rest of them behind. He’s not hungry, and they’re eating McDonald’s for dinner so he leaves for some fresh air. It’s not really fresh air per se, Donghae muses wryly, but it will do for now.
The corridor is long and white and lit by fluorescent lights, just like any other corridor he’s used to in the TV stations back home. It makes him want to laugh a little, actually, at how everything is the same but different, but he just walks and walks until he hears someone on the phone, voice low and a little tired.
It’s Kyuhyun, leaning on the wall, head slightly bowed, phone clasped against his left ear. He doesn’t notice Donghae’s presence, though, so he just listens in unabashedly.
“Have you taken your meds and vitamins?” he hears Kyuhyun ask, softer and without the usual edged tone in his voice, “Are you still running a fever?”
Kyuhyun is a funny little boy, he thinks. It has been five years since he turned up one day with their manager and became a part of them, this little dysfunctional family of some sort. It has been five years, Donghae concludes, and he still doesn’t understand Kyuhyun very well.
He suddenly recalls the party that Heechul threw them when they first returned from Beijing three years ago, still disorientated and feeling like foreigners in their own land. He remembers a lot of alcohol and Siwon’s mild disapproval; he also remembers Kyuhyun smiling a lot brighter than usual, and Sunye’s arms around him, tight and warm and safe.
Ouch, he smiles, lip curling. He hears Kyuhyun murmur a low “I love you, please take care”, and then footsteps that stop squarely in front of him.
“You’ve changed,” he tells Kyuhyun without looking up from his shoes, eyes still slightly closed, “is it a good thing?”
Kyuhyun pauses for a moment, and Donghae finally looks away from his shoes and at him, the youngest member of his odd, mish-mash, hotchpotch little clan called Super Junior.
“You love her,” Donghae says again, as good-naturedly as he would when talking about the weather, “you love Younha, and it has changed you. Is that a good thing?”
Kyuhyun lowers his eyes and the sides of his lips curve up just a little before he nods. It is a good thing, he says, the best thing that has happened to me.
Donghae asks, why.
“It’s just - I love her a lot, you know? And loving someone can change you, no matter how stupid that sounds.”
Kyuhyun puts a hand on his shoulder, suddenly.
“You’ve changed too.”
2009
Funny, how we leave each other in successive turns. I don’t like it too much, but it leaves me comforted to know that you are home and living the life I want to for me.
She emails him often, sometimes every day, sometimes every two. He reads them all and keeps them in a special folder named “Sun”, in honour of her new name in America.
He emails her back often too, telling her about their stages and their digital sales and their physical sales and how their managers are more excitable these days.
They say we’ll win everything this year. Like how you did last year. It made me happy, somehow, to hear that. Makes me feel like we’re on the same level. Awards-wise, ha ha.
The press doesn’t forget about the Wonder Girls initially - they churn out articles about them in America, how they’re going to conquer the Billboard charts and be the most successful Koreans there in the business. Donghae reads these articles on the Internet, sometimes with Heechul, and picks out nice phrases to put in his emails to her.
I like how they have so much confidence in us.
And then they start to slowly stop. Donghae is happy when Girls’ Generation succeeds with Gee, of course, because they’ve trained together before and the nine girls have worked so, so hard. But sometimes he takes a long, hard look at the newspapers and wonders how it’d be like if she were here now.
Apparently the Wonder Girls are the only viable rivals to Girls’ Generation now. The entire entertainment industry is at war with each other, at this rate.
He tries to sound light-hearted, even funny, with his words as the months go by. They still exchange emails, but now Sunye only replies him when she has the time. It’s tiring, she tells him one time when they manage to talk on the phone, but enriching too.
“Hard work is always more fulfilling,” she says, voice muffled but he can hear the smile in it, “you know that right, Donghae?”
He says yes, of course, but there is a growing, nagging voice in him. It says Sunye is different now; she is not the same anymore but you are just here, at the same spot for eternity, maybe.
Donghae tells it to shut up.
They do win lots of awards at the year-end ceremonies, and he silently thanks Sunye when Leeteuk is making the acceptance speeches. He texts her every single time they win something, and she replies back warmly with congratulations and reminders for him to wrap up warmly for winter, but they always come late because of the time difference.
It doesn’t matter though, Donghae thinks, because he loves her and she loves him and it will take more than time difference to get in between them.
2010
Kyuhyun is one of the most affected when Han Geng leaves their group. Heechul himself is too distraught to offer any comfort, so when Younha rings their dormitory ’s doorbell, Donghae isn’t too surprised when he goes to answer the door.
“I’m sorry to bother all of you,” Younha says as she steps in, “but I thought I’d just come over and take a look…”
The managers don’t know, surely, so Donghae leads her to Kyuhyun’s room and closes the door behind her.
They have been together for two years now, he thinks, Kyuhyun and Younha. The rest of the boys don’t say anything much about them, but Younha is clearly family now. Why don’t you introduce anyone to us like you did for Kyuhyun, sometimes Hyukjae asks him when they drink beer in their room, just the two of them.
He laughs it off, mostly.
But love is a funny thing, he wants to reply. There’s a reason why the two of them ended up together, and then there’s another why he and Sunye did.
He loves her, because she is the girl who will hold his hand in times of pain and need and endless helplessness. She is the girl who is different, who is the little piece of heaven he needs to continue his dream and his father’s.
She is Sunye.
Kyuhyun comes out of the room after an hour with Younha, hand in hand, fingers interlaced.
They wait as Younha insists on cooking ramyeon for the both of them, and he doesn’t miss the gentle look in Kyuhyun’s eyes as they watch her busy herself in their kitchen, with pots and bowls and packets of instant ramyeon.
“Are you happier now?” Happier now that you’re in love and that she is willing to do anything for you, and you for her?
Kyuhyun plays with his chopsticks for a while.
“Yes.”
Donghae cannot say the same for himself.
2011
They win three awards, and he pulls out his phone to text her when he remembers. It’s an ingrained habit now, to text her whenever something big happens for him and his little Super Junior family. Not anymore, Donghae reminds himself.
The waiting room is a mess, with crying members and sniffling coordis and loud, happy managers. Everyone is everywhere, and he tries to make his way out, unnoticed.
Kyuhyun is near the door and on the phone again, when he brushes past Ryeowook to step out.
“I’m not crying,” he hears Kyuhyun say, voice a little thicker than usual, eyes red-rimmed.
Neither is he, but something inside is cracking, peeling, disintegrating.
The corridor is strangely comforting when he walks out again, harshly bright, his shadow cast against the whitewashed wall opposite. Everything looks foggy and blurred, and it takes him a while to understand that like Kyuhyun, he is tearing up.
Fingers fumble and he dials the number most familiar to him.
The dial tone seems to go on forever.
“Hello?”
And then she picks up.
“Hello?”
She asks again, more hesitantly this time. He doesn’t say anything, just listens to her voice and holds the phone against his right ear, taking in everything that is on the other side of the line. It has been months since they’ve last talked, since their breakup.
I don’t think we love each other like we did anymore, she’d said. “Do you understand, Donghae?”
He’d said yes, I do, but he doesn’t, not even now when he’s here, in another country without her and listening to her voice over the phone, not even daring to speak because he’s afraid it’s an awful, awful dream.
“Donghae?”
His chest feels hollow, empty even.
“Donghae? Are you okay?”
No, no, no.
He cuts the line off.