Challenge #4 - Entry 3

[sparkaperture]

Title: no cars go
Pairing: Joon, mentions of Rain/Jihoon
Rating: PG
Summary: Jihoon leaves Changsun with his grandmother, intending to pick him up after a week. But unforeseen things happen, and Changsun finds himself taking care of a complete stranger, pretending to be Jihoon.
Song(s) used for inspiration: Maxence Cyrin - No Cars Go (Arcade Fire cover)



”Don’t worry,” Jihoon says and smiles kindly. The sky is dark above them, and there are only a few stars shining overhead. The cold light from the lone streetlight nearby flickers over Jihoon’s face, and Changsun tries to smile back. He pretends he isn’t cold and closes his arms tighter around himself. “I’ll be back.”

Jihoon leaves in his car, and no matter how much Changsun hates the old vehicle, he starts to miss the loud rumble of the engine even as it starts to drive away. He watches the car for as long as he can, and when all that remains is a small spot of dust and fumes on the horizon, he turns around and walks towards the nearest, the only house.

The small building is grey and dirty and looks like it’ll fall apart if you close the door too hard. Changsun sneaks inside, taking extra care not to wake the old lady who he knows lives there. He finds Jihoon’s old bedroom easily, and he removes the dusty and smelly sheets, opting instead to lie directly on the mattress.

The air is full of dirt and dust and he covers his nose and mouth with his scarf so that he can breathe. He can barely see anything through the grimy window on one of the walls, and he’s sure there are rats crawling below the floorboards.

Changsun wants to trust Jihoon, he really does, but he can’t. Far too many times he’s been let down; far too many times he’s been led astray by the older man, only to be crushed between reality and Jihoon’s harsh words.

Changsun falls asleep to the soft ticking of a clock, and hopes that Jihoon won’t forget him.

He wakes up to pots clanking and for a brief moment he wonders if Jihoon is on his way already, even though Changsun has to stay here for a week. He removes the scarf from his face and rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

There’s a mirror hanging in the corner opposite of the bed, and he inspects himself. Changsun has never looked more like Jihoon, he thinks and pushes the black hair out of his face. He can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not.

He opens the door and tries not to wince as it creaks, walking to the kitchen, hoping he won’t scare the lady. She’s standing by the oven, slowly and carefully boiling a pot of what seems to be rice. The flames are flickering steadily underneath and are making the room hotter than Changsun is used to.

“Hello,” he says, and she turns slowly in his direction; her bent body seems to be aching with every move and her hands and fingers curved and twisted in unnatural directions. Her face is too old and wrinkly and her eyes are too gray and dusty, just like the house she lives in.

“Jihoon,” she greets and her face is slowly starting to smile. Her voice is surprisingly clear in comparison of the rest of her body, but her teeth are yellow and most are missing. “When did you come here?”

“Yesterday evening,” Changsun admits and hates himself, hates Jihoon for making him lie. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“You should have told me you were coming,” she says and turns back to the rice, checking it quickly before starting to take things out of cupboards and the old fridge. There isn’t much food, and Changsun feels guilty for not bringing anything, for being here in the first place. “I would have been able to prepare a better breakfast for you, maybe clean a little.”

Changsun wonders how much she would have been able to clean - from what Jihoon told him, there’s next to no electrical appliances in the house, and definitely no vacuum cleaner.

He helps her set the table, and earns an affectionate pat on the hand and a smile, and together they sit down. Between bites of food he tells her about his work and his handsome friends and his pretty girlfriend. He tells the story Jihoon has forced him to repeat time after time until he knew it by heart, but it still feels weird to talk about Jihoon’s life as if it was his own.

The rice is overdone and the bread is hard to chew and tastes like fungus, and the kimchi smells weird, but he eats it all. He’s starving and he doesn’t want to disappoint the lady, even if they just met. Changsun hopes Jihoon will feel guilty when he dies of food poisoning.

The next day he borrows one of the old bikes standing in the shed in her backyard, and bikes to the nearest town. After an hour, he can see the outline of houses on the horizon, and although it feels great to stretch his legs after a longer period of doing nothing back in Seoul, he wishes he had a car, and an image of Jihoon’s Bentley flickers through his mind.

He buys meat and fresh vegetables and milk and rice and eggs and flour and some seeds and hopes it’s enough. The owner of the small shop and the few other costumers stare at him curiously, but they ask no questions, don’t talk to him more than necessary.

The way back feels much shorter than it should, and Changsun walks into the house on tired legs and replaces all of the old food with the new items, and the lady applauds him and promises him with laughter in her voice to make a really good meal for him.

The next days are full of cleaning from early morning to late night. Changsun didn’t realize that a house as small as this could gather this much dust and grime, but every time he cleans a floor and sees the brown wood shining through the dirt, he feels accomplished.

He imagines the filth is Jihoon, and every time he removes part of it, he feels calmer and more at peace with himself. If Jihoon can’t take care of his own old grandmother, then what does that make him? What does that make Changsun, who voluntarily helps a stranger out, asking nothing in return but food and a place to sleep?

The fifth day Changsun stays with Jihoon’s grandmother, he plants the small seeds in rows upon rows in her backyard and hopes they’ll grow and give her food even long after he’s gone back to Seoul.

On the seventh day he removes all the weeds from the front porch as he waits for Jihoon to show up in his old car and with his stupid smile. He waits for Jihoon to save him from early mornings and late nights and stale bread and from the rats playing house underneath the floorboards.

It’s not that Changsun hates it here, but he misses his computer, music, talking to people his own age, taking warm and long showers. He misses civilization, the always present roaring of engines just outside his window and the fumes and waking up in a soft bed next to a warm body.

The hours pass, and when all the weeds have been removed and put into a pile in the backyard, it’s well past noon, and he sits on the few steps leading up to the porch, waiting for Jihoon.

He probably should start doing something else, he thinks, just to keep his mind occupied and to make the time pass faster, but he can’t.

It turns out being distracted and having his mind wander aimlessly is enough, because he barely notices how the sun seems to fall out of the sky so quickly, and soon enough the canvas loses its warm colors and turns black save for the stars twinkling and laughing at him from above. It starts to rain and the small drops hit the dry ground with a small sound of dust flying away.

His shoes get wet, but the rest of him is safe under the roof, so Changsun doesn’t move. He briefly wonders if this is one of the many times Jihoon disappoints, or if he’ll actually show up. He shivers slightly and feels like a dog never failing to look at its master with anything but pure joy and loyalty.

A week after Jihoon fails to show up, and two weeks after Changsun started living with the old lady, she calls him in to the small living room where she’s sitting in front of a fire. She motions to the floor at her feet and Changsun sits down.

She hangs a thick woolen scarf she’s just finished knitting around his neck, and Changsun ignores the suffocating heat from the fire and the sun that’s barely begun to set and he smiles at her. She smiles back.

“Jihoon-ah,” she says and her voice is too scratchy. “Do you remember the time you fell into the river and almost drowned?”

Changsun murmurs something that sounds like both yes and no, and she nods, pleased, her hand slowly stroking his hair.

“It was spring,” she begins, and Changsun closes his eyes so that his anger at Jihoon won’t take over. “And you were excited for school, remember? But you were down with the flu, so you had to stay home.”

Her voice is soft and soothing just like a grandmother’s voice should be, and Changsun falls asleep against her knees in the comforting heat and the gathering darkness outside.

It's been three months after he arrived, and Changsun has to take care of everything in the house by himself. The grandmother is down with a cold and is lying in her bed, covers neatly tucked around her. She looks even paler and more frail than normal, and Changsun feels guilty for not taking better care of her.

He has to cook all the food, but all he knows how to make is instant noodles. There are no noodles in the house, and he wouldn’t feel like making her that anyway.

He tries to make a chicken soup out of the available ingredients in the old fridge, and he hopes he won’t make her even sicker. He cooks the chicken first and checks all the pieces are white all the way through, but they feel like they’re overdone.

The finished soup doesn’t taste too good, but it’s the best Changsun could do. The grandmother eats it like it was the best thing on earth and demands a refill with a smile. Changsun feels proud and happy and decides to tell her childish stories to make her laugh.

It takes a week for her to recover, and when she does, Changsun tries his best to not get her sick again. He learns how to knit from her even though she insists he should remember how to do it because she taught him just the other year.

The mittens are different sizes and they creak when you clutch them and they look weird, but when Changsun gives her the mittens she lights up like a thousand suns and puts them on immediately, wearing them for the rest of the day.

Changsun would do anything to make her this happy.

Winter comes and the grandmother starts wearing the mittens inside. There’s a fire in the hearth burning all day long, and the last thing Changsun does at night is put the burning embers in a tin so that they won’t have to restart the fire completely the next morning.

It’s difficult falling asleep when it’s so cold and it feels like his feet are burning. He’s used to the comfortable warmth of an apartment in Seoul, underneath thick blankets. He imagines there’s white mist rising from his mouth when he breathes out.

Sometimes Changsun wonders if Jihoon has completely forgotten about him. Sometimes he wants to walk to the nearest village and borrow the old phone hanging in the lone shop. Sometimes he feels like calling Jihoon to say that he’s still here, still waiting to be remembered.

He never does, because he’s afraid of the rejection and the smiling voice and the I’m sorry Changsun-ah, I forgot about you, I’ll come as soon as I can. He’s afraid of being let down once again - he’s safe here in the small, cold house with an elderly woman he barely knows, the freezing chicken in their shed and the rats beneath the floorboards he hopes won’t die inside the house.

Instead he closes his eyes and pretends his name is Jung Jihoon instead of Lee Changsun and that the old lady is his real grandmother and that he never left to pursue a career, a better life, in Seoul. He dreams it’s spring and that he’s eager to go to school for the first time in a really long time.

At Christmas they exchange gifts and Changsun gives her a pair of socks he’s been taking extra care on to make them look nice, and a scarf he’s actually proud of. They both ignore that most of the yarn has come from her own stash, and the grandmother is surprised and awed with her new things and she puts them on to model the gifts, pushing her feet in Changsun’s lap to make him put the socks on for her.

She gives him a sweater Changsun supposes she’s been knitting when he’s been outside shoveling snow and checking the birds, because he’s never seen it before. It’s grey and soft and there is a small patter of dogs running along the hem.

It’s early May when Changsun gets back inside the house after working all day repairing a fence, and the silence stops him in the door. It’s too quiet, too still, and the grandmother isn’t sitting in her usual spot by the fireplace or the window, and she’s not in the kitchen.

Changsun kicks off his shoes and pretends not to notice the feeling of dread creeping up inside of him. His feet are sweaty and leave damp footprints on the wooden floor, and his hair is clinging to his forehead and the back of his neck.

Her bedroom is the only room upstairs, and Changsun tries not to wince as the stairs creak underneath his weight. There’s a fine layer of dust on the floor and there are cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling - he hasn’t had time to clean yet.

He opens the door to her bedroom, and the air drafting out smells like sweets and wet sheep and old. It’s usually a nice smell, but the figure lying on the windy bed makes him forget about everything else in the room.

She’s lying absolutely still, and she’s dressed in everything Changsun has ever given her - the scarf and the socks, and the apron he made for her for Valentine’s Day, even the ugly mittens that she has worn so many times they’re barely hanging together.

She isn’t breathing, and Changsun sits next her on the floor, too afraid to touch her. He doesn’t know how long she’s been lying like this, and he hates himself for not being next to her when it mattered.

Her hair is combed and pulled into a perfect bun on the back of her head, and she’s wearing her finest skirt and jacket that Changsun remembers she wore on New Year’s Eve and on thanksgiving. Her face is relaxed in what seems to be a smile, and he can’t look away.

This is the most peaceful he has ever seen her, the most relaxed. For once her face isn’t marred by the pain that always ran through her body, and Changsun carefully pulls a loose hair away from her face.

She looks perfect in her sleep, and Changsun sits by her side and watches her until it darkens outside.

They bury her after three days - the coffin has to be made and a nameplate for the grave. Changsun stays with a young family - the parents are barely older than himself, and the youngest child just learned to walk.

She didn’t know many people - most of her old friends are long dead and the rest can’t remember her, but most of the village still attends the funeral. Changsun stands by the foot of the grave as they lower the coffin down, and he feels like a complete stranger.

That night he sits awake on the borrowed bed, a single candle burning on the table near him. He wants to go home to his own family, to spend more time with his own mother. He wishes none of this ever happened.

The mother of the house knocks on the open door, and she steps inside with a kind expression on her face.

“They found your grandmother clutching this,” she says and holds out a letter for Changsun to take. The writing on the front is scratchy and uneven, as if the writer couldn’t really see. He holds the letter lightly in his hand, the paper feeling rough in his hands.

“Thank you,” he whispers, his eyes still on the letter. She smiles slightly.

“If you want some company, we’re just downstairs,” she says and leaves him alone in the room, closing the door after her.

The paper smells like dust and mold and Changsun holds it against his face. They hadn’t even known each other for a year, but Changsun still wishes it was longer, that she was still alive, that she was his real grandmother.

He falls asleep holding the letter against his heart, pretending he can see her smiling at him again.

He forgets about the letter the next day when he wakes up and he spends the days immersed into hard work at the fields, and at the evenings he falls directly asleep, exhausted.

It’s not until he cleans his room the week after that he sees the white letter lying on the floor next to the bed. He picks it up and it feels like nothing but paper.

Dear Jihoon-ah, it says. I know you’re not my real grandson, but I appreciate everything you did for me. Thank you.

His hands are shaking and wet stains are appearing on the paper, blurring the words. His head is pounding from exhaustion and suddenly he’s on his feet, running down the stairs and out of the house in the direction of the only shop.

As usual, there’s nobody inside but the old shop attendant, and Changsun mumbles a hello and an I’ll use your phone, before picking up the heavy receiver and quickly dialing the only number he still has memorized.

“Hello?” Jihoon’s tired voice answers over the static of the phone, and it sounds like he’s been working too much again.

“I hate you,” Changsun hisses. “You had this all planned out, hadn’t you.”

He ignores the sharp intake of breath, he doesn’t want to hear, doesn’t want to listen. “Changsun-”

“Shut the fuck up, hyung,” Changsun says slowly and he disregards the shop attendant is trying to listen in on his call. And then he starts rambling, spewing words he's been holding inside for too long, words he couldn't say while he was keeping his facade in check for his grandmother - no longer Jihoon's, because someone so horrible doesn't deserve someone so kind. "I've had enough of you and your stupid games. I'm sick of you stupid inability to think of your work as less important than your family or your friends."

“Listen-”

“No, you listen to me for once. If you can’t find it in yourself to take care of your own dying grandmother, or to even visit her once in a while, I don’t think-”

“Listen, you little shit-”

“I don’t care anymore,” Changsun interrupts once again and he ignores the way his eyes are tearing up and how it feels like a piece of cotton is stuck in his throat. “I don’t care anymore. I hate you, Jung Jihoon. I fucking hate you.”

When he hangs up, his hands are shaking and his cheeks are wet, but he feels stronger than ever.

Jihoon picks him up two days later, and Changsun quietly packs his things into his bag and sits in the seat next to Jihoon. The air inside the car is cool and the seat is softer than he remembers, but the motor is still as loud as it was when he was left here.

Jihoon’s eyes are red from the long drive, but Changsun can’t really find himself to care. He stretches his legs and presses some of the buttons on the dashboard, just for the small pleasure of seeing Jihoon getting irritated.

The open landscape full of rice fields is flying past them, and Changsun wonders if he will miss this quiet place when he gets back to the never sleeping city.

“She wished I was her real grandson, you know,” Changsun says and watches Jihoon’s face in the mirror. He shows no surprise or emotion, but his hands tighten briefly around the steering wheel.

“Yeah,” Jihoon says, and his eyes briefly flicker to the mirror to meet Changsun’s, and suddenly Changsun wonders why Jihoon really sent him to take care of his grandmother. Jihoon clears his throat.

“Yeah,” he repeats, and his eyes are back on the road. “I know.”