Challenge #4 - Entry 2
Title: No End in Sight
Pairing: Yoochun/Changmin (DBSK)
Rating: pg13
Summary: Yoochun dies and discovers a life that’s not really a life at all.
Song(s) used for inspiration: “Laura Plays the Piano”, Akira Yamaoka
No End in Sight
Yoochun opens his eyes and he’s not lying on top of his bed anymore. He’s looking down at himself, at a face so pale and papery that the single light that illuminates the room almost shines through it. He doesn’t remember dying. He recalls a pain in his chest, a series of gasping breaths, a sea of darkness that felt almost like sleep coming down over him, but he doesn’t know how long it’s been since any of that took place. He doesn’t remember a bright light or his life flashing before his eyes, but he wouldn’t be surprised if neither of those things had happened to him. If he died for the reason he thinks he did, then he was probably already unconscious, anyway.
He realizes he’s hovering just above the ground, because the bed is at about the same height as it always was but he can’t feel anything solid beneath his feet. He steps away. The sensation feels almost the same as that of walking, but there’s something lighter, something smoother about it that makes it more surreal than even the knowledge that he’s watching the body he used to inhabit. He moves towards the door and when he reaches it, tries the doorknob. His hand goes through the door instead so he simply follows it and then makes his way down the stairs and outside.
He lives in Seoul, so the streets are bright enough to see by even though the sky is a mass of black punctuated by fuzzy points. He looks down at himself and finds that he appears solid. He’s dressed in ripped jeans and a white v-neck with a fading stain at the hem, the same clothes as those the body that used to be Yoochun was wearing. He pushes the neckline of his shirt down and discovers that the tattoo he had put there years ago remains, too. It’s a phrase his mom used to use, back when they lived in America, “Always keep the faith”. He could never quite figure out if he’d really realized that it had a religious undertone when he’d gotten it in honor of his family, but he figures it doesn’t matter now. There hasn’t been any faith left in him for a long, long time.
It’s 12:16 in the morning, according to the wristwatch he has on. He wonders if it’s still keeping time or if it stopped when he died. He wonders what’ll happen to him if the world ends, and why there aren’t any other ghosts around with him. People pass by him and he walks through one just once, to know what it feels like. It’s a youngish woman who shivers as he moves out, and Yoochun feels all of her inner conflicts pressing down on him, trying to squish him into what he imagines would be called oblivion, and it’s frightening. He decides he’s never going to do that again.
Yoochun ends up at Jaejoong’s apartment building and discovers, after a few mistakes that send him a bit higher in the sky than he’s comfortable with being, that if he imitates the motion of jumping, he floats upwards until he tries to start walking again. Diving sends him back to the ground, but he can’t enter into it, which strikes him as a bit weird, considering he can walk through pretty much everything else.
He jumps up to the sixth floor, where Jaejoong’s place is, and walks in the sky until he reaches the window he knows is his. He’s never liked heights, so it’s a bit disconcerting, but something about knowing that he can’t really die again makes it less nerve wracking than he figures it would have been otherwise. He enters through the window, noticing that buildings don’t feel like much of anything to pass through, at least not compared to people.
Jaejoong is on his couch and Yunho is on top of him. There are a few bottles of soju on the floor and a couple on the table, one of which is still half-full, which means it’s probably Yunho’s. Yoochun goes over to dip his finger into it, and it feels the same as air, except thicker. It doesn’t make his finger wet.
He watches the couple. They’re making out and it’s going places. He’s seen them having sex before, usually after he’s been wandering around the city high or drunk and he comes across Jae’s place before his own. He sits down on the chair across from them and watches shirts fall to the floor with none of the art always associated with the same action in movies, watches lips move across skin, hears little sighs and animal groans pulled from ravished lips and hoarse throats. It’s disappointing, though, because he doesn’t feel a damn thing besides a half-hearted desire to finish off that soju. Yunho picks Jaejoong up and they make their way to the bedroom, kicking aside the green glass and stumbling into the wall on the way. Yoochun follows them but then he remembers that Yunho calls Jaejoong “Boojae” in public and decides he doesn’t really want to know what endearments come out of his mouth in bed. He doesn’t think he can handle them while fully lucid.
When he’s back outside and on the ground, he spies a tall figure coming down just like he did. The man somersaults so that he lands on his feet a few meters from Yoochun.
“Um, hello?” Yoochun calls.
The man turns around and raises his eyebrows. He’s young, younger than Yoochun, with a wide mouth and square black spectacles across the bridge of his nose.
“What do you want?”
Yoochun is surprised by the flippancy in his tone. It crosses his mind that he’s probably been dead a lot longer than Yoochun has and he’s probably all the more jaded for it, but he can’t bring himself to believe that as fact.
“I just… I don’t know.”
“When did you die?”
“A few hours ago.”
“And you know how to go up and down and that you can’t touch things?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all you need to know. You can do whatever the hell else you want.”
The man turns away and starts moving. Yoochun follows.
“Wait up!”
“Why?” he asks without looking back.
“Don’t you want company?”
“No.”
Yoochun doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t stop following him, either.
“Why are you following me?”
“I don’t have anything better to do.”
“Don’t you have a family to stalk? That’s what most ghosts do.”
“They’re far away.”
“Look,” he says, stopping and turning around, “I really don’t like people, whether they’re the living or the dead ones, okay? You seem like a nice guy. I get the feeling you’re following me because I’m so young and you feel kind of bad. That’s fine, but really, I’d prefer it if you just leave me alone.”
“Oh. Alright.”
The man nods, corners of his lips still in a slight pout, and continues on his way.
Yoochun wanders around the city for a couple of days. He meets others, a Sunwoong who’d been a writer, a Donghae who’d known Yunho a long, long time ago and whose funeral he vaguely remembers, and a lot of elderly people who spend their entire days watching not just their own great-great-great-grandchildren, but any and all children across whom they come. He plans on making his way to the States to find his family, except he discovers via a newspaper lying open on a table in a coffee shop that his funeral is being held in Seoul. He wonders why the hell anyone would want to read the obituaries on a Tuesday morning in early May, but he doesn’t exactly mind because now he knows how he died. He overdosed on heroin, which is what he assumed. He goes to the funeral and watches his family cry and say nice things about him, watches Yunho and Jaejoong look as solemn as they’re capable of, watches his last ex, Junsu, cry on the shoulder of some guy he doesn’t recognize. He goes before they put his body in the ground.
He leaves Seoul after that and discovers how amazing it is to walk through the ocean. He dives into it one day when he’s somewhere between the Korean peninsula and the Philippines, and discovers that movement works the same way in water as it does on land. He watches sharks and crabs and fish he’s never seen before swim past him, through him, and it’s so utterly foreign he doesn’t really want to go back up.
He meets the tall man again, under the waves, in the near dark of a storm. He’s lying on his back when Yoochun spies him. He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out, so instead he just approaches him and jabs his side, causing him to right himself immediately. Yoochun points up and the man shrugs.
“So… Here we are,” Yoochun says, sea grey and rain pelting through them once they’re above water.
“Yeah. We’re pretty close to Australia at this point.”
“Cool. I’m Yoochun, by the way.”
“Changmin,” he replies and readjusts his glasses.
Yoochun learns over a span of months that Changmin was 20 and in college when he died four years ago. He got some bacterial infection that was fairly common in dorms, except he apparently managed to stumble across its drug-resistant form. The concentrated, rarely administered antibiotics he was taking weakened his immune system and he caught pneumonia, which killed him. He was studying literature and business and aimed to become a magazine editor. He also sang on the side, in a band with three other guys. He had a girlfriend once, and then a boyfriend, but neither of them had been particularly notable. He spent his first year dead trying to find a way to escape, a way to get reborn, a way to move beyond the infinite limbo of eternity, but he learned from people who’d been dead for centuries that there was no such thing. For humans there was only the Earth, whether they wanted it or not, and they were from and of it alone.
Yoochun discovers that he doesn't hate people. He just hates the ghosts who can't let go, who refuse to accept the unfortunate fact of their humanity.
Yoochun tells him how he wanted to be a musician, when he used to want things. He tells him about how he lived in the States and about how it ripped his family apart, about how he went back to Korea and lived with his grandparents and managed to get a scholarship to a well-respected university to study music, about how he graduated and got a job as a cashier and played piano in bars on the side, about how he met drugs and Jaejoong and Yunho. He tells him about all the different ways Junsu tried to help him, about how he used to cry every night when he lived in America, about how he was fired from his fifth job cashiering before he gave up and started singing in subway stations and on the street to pay for drugs. They both discover that even though you can feel as a ghost, you can’t cry.
They wander across the world, neither wanting to stay anywhere for long. They traverse Antarctica, Europe, South America, maybe even the entire globe, jumping off of mountains and buildings and screaming all the things they wish they’d said when they’d been alive, hoping maybe there’s some way they can be heard.
It’s years before they return to Korea, maybe even decades. They break out into songs in more languages than they can count, harmonizing without even thinking now. The technology they see makes no sense to them but they still try and figure it out, anyway, although in all honesty, they prefer the deserted corners of the planet to those crowded with people.
“I hate this city,” Yoochun says when they’re sitting on a rooftop in Seoul, “I liked it when I lived here, I guess, but I hate it now.”
Changmin nods. “I hate all cities now. There are too many of us hanging around them, watching over people...”
“Trying to pretend we’re still human.”
“Trying to forget that we can’t go back. Trying to imagine that we’re free now, completely free.”
“Except we’re still trapped here, and even though we’re not confined by bodies anymore, we’re confined by being a human spirit.”
“We’re trapped by emotions,” Changmin says with a sigh before standing up, arms outstretched.
Yoochun imitates him. It’s a pointless gesture, really, because they can’t feel breezes anymore. They can’t feel anything except emotion, and it’s made them all the more sensitive to not only their individual thoughts, but each other’s as well.
That’s why Yoochun’s not all that surprised when Changmin says, so softly that maybe, if they were still alive, he wouldn’t hear him,
“If I had another life to live, I’d choose to live it with you, Yoochun, but I guess we have to make due with this.”
Pairing: Yoochun/Changmin (DBSK)
Rating: pg13
Summary: Yoochun dies and discovers a life that’s not really a life at all.
Song(s) used for inspiration: “Laura Plays the Piano”, Akira Yamaoka
No End in Sight
Yoochun opens his eyes and he’s not lying on top of his bed anymore. He’s looking down at himself, at a face so pale and papery that the single light that illuminates the room almost shines through it. He doesn’t remember dying. He recalls a pain in his chest, a series of gasping breaths, a sea of darkness that felt almost like sleep coming down over him, but he doesn’t know how long it’s been since any of that took place. He doesn’t remember a bright light or his life flashing before his eyes, but he wouldn’t be surprised if neither of those things had happened to him. If he died for the reason he thinks he did, then he was probably already unconscious, anyway.
He realizes he’s hovering just above the ground, because the bed is at about the same height as it always was but he can’t feel anything solid beneath his feet. He steps away. The sensation feels almost the same as that of walking, but there’s something lighter, something smoother about it that makes it more surreal than even the knowledge that he’s watching the body he used to inhabit. He moves towards the door and when he reaches it, tries the doorknob. His hand goes through the door instead so he simply follows it and then makes his way down the stairs and outside.
He lives in Seoul, so the streets are bright enough to see by even though the sky is a mass of black punctuated by fuzzy points. He looks down at himself and finds that he appears solid. He’s dressed in ripped jeans and a white v-neck with a fading stain at the hem, the same clothes as those the body that used to be Yoochun was wearing. He pushes the neckline of his shirt down and discovers that the tattoo he had put there years ago remains, too. It’s a phrase his mom used to use, back when they lived in America, “Always keep the faith”. He could never quite figure out if he’d really realized that it had a religious undertone when he’d gotten it in honor of his family, but he figures it doesn’t matter now. There hasn’t been any faith left in him for a long, long time.
It’s 12:16 in the morning, according to the wristwatch he has on. He wonders if it’s still keeping time or if it stopped when he died. He wonders what’ll happen to him if the world ends, and why there aren’t any other ghosts around with him. People pass by him and he walks through one just once, to know what it feels like. It’s a youngish woman who shivers as he moves out, and Yoochun feels all of her inner conflicts pressing down on him, trying to squish him into what he imagines would be called oblivion, and it’s frightening. He decides he’s never going to do that again.
Yoochun ends up at Jaejoong’s apartment building and discovers, after a few mistakes that send him a bit higher in the sky than he’s comfortable with being, that if he imitates the motion of jumping, he floats upwards until he tries to start walking again. Diving sends him back to the ground, but he can’t enter into it, which strikes him as a bit weird, considering he can walk through pretty much everything else.
He jumps up to the sixth floor, where Jaejoong’s place is, and walks in the sky until he reaches the window he knows is his. He’s never liked heights, so it’s a bit disconcerting, but something about knowing that he can’t really die again makes it less nerve wracking than he figures it would have been otherwise. He enters through the window, noticing that buildings don’t feel like much of anything to pass through, at least not compared to people.
Jaejoong is on his couch and Yunho is on top of him. There are a few bottles of soju on the floor and a couple on the table, one of which is still half-full, which means it’s probably Yunho’s. Yoochun goes over to dip his finger into it, and it feels the same as air, except thicker. It doesn’t make his finger wet.
He watches the couple. They’re making out and it’s going places. He’s seen them having sex before, usually after he’s been wandering around the city high or drunk and he comes across Jae’s place before his own. He sits down on the chair across from them and watches shirts fall to the floor with none of the art always associated with the same action in movies, watches lips move across skin, hears little sighs and animal groans pulled from ravished lips and hoarse throats. It’s disappointing, though, because he doesn’t feel a damn thing besides a half-hearted desire to finish off that soju. Yunho picks Jaejoong up and they make their way to the bedroom, kicking aside the green glass and stumbling into the wall on the way. Yoochun follows them but then he remembers that Yunho calls Jaejoong “Boojae” in public and decides he doesn’t really want to know what endearments come out of his mouth in bed. He doesn’t think he can handle them while fully lucid.
When he’s back outside and on the ground, he spies a tall figure coming down just like he did. The man somersaults so that he lands on his feet a few meters from Yoochun.
“Um, hello?” Yoochun calls.
The man turns around and raises his eyebrows. He’s young, younger than Yoochun, with a wide mouth and square black spectacles across the bridge of his nose.
“What do you want?”
Yoochun is surprised by the flippancy in his tone. It crosses his mind that he’s probably been dead a lot longer than Yoochun has and he’s probably all the more jaded for it, but he can’t bring himself to believe that as fact.
“I just… I don’t know.”
“When did you die?”
“A few hours ago.”
“And you know how to go up and down and that you can’t touch things?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all you need to know. You can do whatever the hell else you want.”
The man turns away and starts moving. Yoochun follows.
“Wait up!”
“Why?” he asks without looking back.
“Don’t you want company?”
“No.”
Yoochun doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t stop following him, either.
“Why are you following me?”
“I don’t have anything better to do.”
“Don’t you have a family to stalk? That’s what most ghosts do.”
“They’re far away.”
“Look,” he says, stopping and turning around, “I really don’t like people, whether they’re the living or the dead ones, okay? You seem like a nice guy. I get the feeling you’re following me because I’m so young and you feel kind of bad. That’s fine, but really, I’d prefer it if you just leave me alone.”
“Oh. Alright.”
The man nods, corners of his lips still in a slight pout, and continues on his way.
Yoochun wanders around the city for a couple of days. He meets others, a Sunwoong who’d been a writer, a Donghae who’d known Yunho a long, long time ago and whose funeral he vaguely remembers, and a lot of elderly people who spend their entire days watching not just their own great-great-great-grandchildren, but any and all children across whom they come. He plans on making his way to the States to find his family, except he discovers via a newspaper lying open on a table in a coffee shop that his funeral is being held in Seoul. He wonders why the hell anyone would want to read the obituaries on a Tuesday morning in early May, but he doesn’t exactly mind because now he knows how he died. He overdosed on heroin, which is what he assumed. He goes to the funeral and watches his family cry and say nice things about him, watches Yunho and Jaejoong look as solemn as they’re capable of, watches his last ex, Junsu, cry on the shoulder of some guy he doesn’t recognize. He goes before they put his body in the ground.
He leaves Seoul after that and discovers how amazing it is to walk through the ocean. He dives into it one day when he’s somewhere between the Korean peninsula and the Philippines, and discovers that movement works the same way in water as it does on land. He watches sharks and crabs and fish he’s never seen before swim past him, through him, and it’s so utterly foreign he doesn’t really want to go back up.
He meets the tall man again, under the waves, in the near dark of a storm. He’s lying on his back when Yoochun spies him. He opens his mouth to speak but no words come out, so instead he just approaches him and jabs his side, causing him to right himself immediately. Yoochun points up and the man shrugs.
“So… Here we are,” Yoochun says, sea grey and rain pelting through them once they’re above water.
“Yeah. We’re pretty close to Australia at this point.”
“Cool. I’m Yoochun, by the way.”
“Changmin,” he replies and readjusts his glasses.
Yoochun learns over a span of months that Changmin was 20 and in college when he died four years ago. He got some bacterial infection that was fairly common in dorms, except he apparently managed to stumble across its drug-resistant form. The concentrated, rarely administered antibiotics he was taking weakened his immune system and he caught pneumonia, which killed him. He was studying literature and business and aimed to become a magazine editor. He also sang on the side, in a band with three other guys. He had a girlfriend once, and then a boyfriend, but neither of them had been particularly notable. He spent his first year dead trying to find a way to escape, a way to get reborn, a way to move beyond the infinite limbo of eternity, but he learned from people who’d been dead for centuries that there was no such thing. For humans there was only the Earth, whether they wanted it or not, and they were from and of it alone.
Yoochun discovers that he doesn't hate people. He just hates the ghosts who can't let go, who refuse to accept the unfortunate fact of their humanity.
Yoochun tells him how he wanted to be a musician, when he used to want things. He tells him about how he lived in the States and about how it ripped his family apart, about how he went back to Korea and lived with his grandparents and managed to get a scholarship to a well-respected university to study music, about how he graduated and got a job as a cashier and played piano in bars on the side, about how he met drugs and Jaejoong and Yunho. He tells him about all the different ways Junsu tried to help him, about how he used to cry every night when he lived in America, about how he was fired from his fifth job cashiering before he gave up and started singing in subway stations and on the street to pay for drugs. They both discover that even though you can feel as a ghost, you can’t cry.
They wander across the world, neither wanting to stay anywhere for long. They traverse Antarctica, Europe, South America, maybe even the entire globe, jumping off of mountains and buildings and screaming all the things they wish they’d said when they’d been alive, hoping maybe there’s some way they can be heard.
It’s years before they return to Korea, maybe even decades. They break out into songs in more languages than they can count, harmonizing without even thinking now. The technology they see makes no sense to them but they still try and figure it out, anyway, although in all honesty, they prefer the deserted corners of the planet to those crowded with people.
“I hate this city,” Yoochun says when they’re sitting on a rooftop in Seoul, “I liked it when I lived here, I guess, but I hate it now.”
Changmin nods. “I hate all cities now. There are too many of us hanging around them, watching over people...”
“Trying to pretend we’re still human.”
“Trying to forget that we can’t go back. Trying to imagine that we’re free now, completely free.”
“Except we’re still trapped here, and even though we’re not confined by bodies anymore, we’re confined by being a human spirit.”
“We’re trapped by emotions,” Changmin says with a sigh before standing up, arms outstretched.
Yoochun imitates him. It’s a pointless gesture, really, because they can’t feel breezes anymore. They can’t feel anything except emotion, and it’s made them all the more sensitive to not only their individual thoughts, but each other’s as well.
That’s why Yoochun’s not all that surprised when Changmin says, so softly that maybe, if they were still alive, he wouldn’t hear him,
“If I had another life to live, I’d choose to live it with you, Yoochun, but I guess we have to make due with this.”