off to the races (12 pt.1/?)
off to the races (12 pt. 1/?)
~ 6100 w, r, (krystal/kai) l part i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. x. xi.
She claims she’s got a third eye ‘cause she’s a woman. What a load of bullshit.
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It was her. It has to be her.
“Tao!” rips out from him like a desperate cry for help. Yixing starts to run before he even breathe; that’s how much he wanted her back. “Tao! Tao!”
“Dude, what the fuck” Chen mumbles, poking his bed head out from his bed room and rubbing his bloating eyes.
Quickly and demanding, he asks, “Where’s Tao?”
“Uh…I don’t know? He came back about an hour ago, don’t know if he’s still hanging around -“
“Fuck,” Yixing mutters under his breath, striding right pass the other boy and to Luhan’s room, knocking frantically until the door is yanked opened by the said boy. He stared back at him with wide eyes, pulling ear buds out of his ears, “Was that you yelli -“
“Where’s Tao?”
Luhan blinks, says in a dazed, “In t - the garage - wait, hyung, what’s going on?!”
Yixing could hear Luhan hollering more questions after him; he doesn’t have the time to answer him. He needs to find Tao now, now that Kris cannot be trusted if he comes back before they can figure out where she made the call - this was their only chance, it’s been weeks. They might never get her back; he doesn’t know to deal with the mere thought of it.
“Tao!” He tries again once he reached the entrance of the garage; the roller door was left opened with just enough gap for someone to slip through. Pushing it up further, Yixing scans the empty space for any sign of the raven haired boy, “Tao!”
“Look under”
And so he does until he meets the other boys’ eyes. They’re covered by safety glasses, Yixing figures he had been working on manipulating a stolen motor piece to work on one of their own. “’Sup, man.”
“I need your help,” He goes straight to the point, swallowing as he continues, “Someone called me, let it ring for two times then hung up before I could pick up. I -“
“You think it’s Krystal,” Tao too, wanted to get to the point. He pulls the glasses over his head, sliding out from under the newest addition to the sport cars section and sits up enough to level with him, “You think it’s Krystal and she’s trying to give us a sign.”
Yixing nods. “We have to try. We should find out before Kris finds out.”
“Look, man, I feel for you,” Tao says sympathetically, reaching a hand over his shower and shaking him slightly, “We all feel shit about Krystal and,” he takes a deep breath, “Kris means well, he didn’t think it would end up like this. I know you’re angry with him, I am too but we’re a team, man, we can’t turn on each other.”
“I am not turning on him!” Yixing snaps, “If I was turning on him, I wouldn’t still be here. Doesn’t mean he needs to know everything we’re doing -“
Tao looks flabbergasted. “So you want to go hiding things from him now?”
“I don’t trust him, Tao.”
This is what it comes to in the end; Kris doesn’t have their backs - he didn’t have Soojung’s when she needed him.
Running a hair through his tousled hair, Tao snatches the cell from his hand. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
-
“Can you fucking stay still?”
“I would if you’d remove your elbow from my stomach,” Jongin hisses, feeling her bone digging in deeper into his rib cage.
Like an electric shock, Krystal jumps back and murmurs defensively, “Well jeez you could have said something.”
Before he can rivals her snarky remark with his own, she’s got one alcohol soaked cotton ball on the smaller cut next to the brow and two stuffed his mouth.
“I work better when it’s quiet.” She returns his murderous glare with an innocent smile, says, “Besides, I’m the nurse here. I get to order the patient around.”
Jongin would scoff but he’s too afraid that he’d choke on the cotton she’s shoved down his throat. After firing a string of curses inwardly, he’s finally relaxed enough to feel the pro-longed restlessness caused by the violent turn of his day. At least he doesn’t have Sehun to worry about. Krystal has told him over and over that Chanyeol had left to his mother’s shop and taken the other boy along. He found it hard to take her word for as it is but what other choice did he have now anyway? If they were caught by the school then there’s nothing he can do for Sehun now; he’d be expelled in a second. The education board at Daemoon has been looking for a reason to get rid of him for years now and now they have one - a very good one.
“You are such a poser,” Krystal grumbles, moving onto another injury on his left side of his jaw, “Obviously it hurts, I mean I am putting alcohol on the biggest fresh wound on your face and here you are, pouting like some kid who lost his lunch on the school yard.”
He grunt irritably; not only as a response to her unnecessary comment but also for the fact that he, with the help of Krystal, snuck into an empty room of one of Suho’s family’s clinic and now they’re sitting on the bed, in the dark as she tends to his injury.
She purposely accidentally hit him at the back of the head with the flash light. He hates everything about this, including her.
“Oops,” she sounds far from genuine about it, “Aww…you look so miserable. I’ll tweeze the cotton balls out of your mouth - don’t want cooties or anything - if you promise to not lose your shit at me.”
He’ll lose his shit at her, but later. For now, he nods and takes multiple deep breaths when his throat is no longer clogged up.
“You’re kind of cute when you don’t talk,” Krystal muses, covering his cut with a small strip of band aid, “In a beaten up puppy kind of way though.”
“Are you done?”
She pauses, staggering back a step or two with the tweezers in her hand. “With what?”
“With all this,” he motions to his face then nodding at her, “You’ve got a couple of cuts yourself.”
“I do?” Krystal asks warily, moving her fingers around her cheeks as if to feel for any pain, “I feel fine -“
Jongin interrupts her, jumping off the bed in one swift movement, “Sit down”
“What are you -“ Jongin doesn’t have the patience to have this back-and-forth now. Grabbing her by her forearm, he gently sits her down on the mattress and taking the flashlight away from her grasp when she’s still puzzled enough to forget how to speak. “I swear you’re actually going to hurt me more than help me. Do you even know what you’re doing?”
God, she never fucking shuts up.
“It’s first aid,” He tells her frankly, “Not brain surgery. I don’t think we’ll need to call in Suho this time.”
“You never know,” she shrugs, “But alright, I guess I can trust my life in your hand just this once.”
Jongin rolls his eyes but finds him laughing seconds later. He has barely dressed the wound and she’s already wincing with every press of the cotton ball to her cheek bone. “You said you feel fine.”
“Until now,” she murmurs begrudgingly, her head turned to the side and arms crossing her chest, “Sorry, I’m not all macho like you.”
“I thought I was posing,” he throws her words back at her, amused as he watches her wrinkled her nose at the strong smell of alcohol. The damage done to her is nowhere as bad as all the angry bruises on his face but he can’t help himself to stare at the line of red decorating her frail feature. “He hit you”
Her gaze slides towards his before returning to the wall. “Yeah, if I moved back quicker then he would have missed completely. Not that he had much of an aim anyway.”
Jongin’s clenching the tweezer so tightly in his hand that it could and would draw blood if he doesn’t stop jabbing the sharp end into his palm. He had to rely on her to finish off Seunghyun. The image of Seunghyun’s battered fist meeting her porcelain skin makes his insides boil. It reminds me of how useless is he - what a fucking coward.
“It’s not that bad,” she says softly, sneaking a glance up at him. He pretends not to have noticed; he thinks she’d prefer it if he didn’t. “Just a little scratch, nothing I can’t take.”
“That one on your leg is going to scar,” Jongin states matter-of-factly, dabbing away at her more recent wounds.
“We have your friends to thank for that souvenir,” Tugging down the hem of her school skirt, Krystal feigns a cough to fill the awkward pause between them. Slowly but surely, her pouting lips split into an indecent smile as she asks, “Were you looking up my skirt, Doctor Kim?”
He nearly drops everything in his hands. Why he’s still taken aback by these types of comments coming from her, he doesn’t really understand himself.
“Now, now, that’s a highly inappropriate way to treat your patient,” She purrs, licking her lips and edging her knee dangerously close to that place between his legs, “You’ve been very naughty, haven’t you, Doctor Kim?”
Jongin swallows, his Adam’s apple scratching against his dry throat. It’s hard to keep up with how easily she switches from Soojung to Krysal and vice versa. She plays her part well but it’s not going to cut it - not for him anyway. Wiping his hand on the dirtied rag discarded next to the metal tray of equipments, Jongin tip-toes around the rather sinister idea of wrapping it around her neck, tightening it until she learns to not be such a fucking bitch.
But that’s all in his twisted imagination. Instead, he goes down the easier route and reaches under her thigh, roughly pushing it away from his body. “If you’re that desperate to role play then join the drama club.”
She sulks, rubbing her kneecap. “You’re no fun”
“Chin up,” he orders, agitated by the stunt she just tried to pull.
“God, you sound sexually frustrated - Ow! Can you go easy on the disinfectant? You can smell it from the other side of the room.”
“I’m hurrying along the process,” Jongin answers in a bored tone, “You took up all the time with your talking.”
“You are such a pain,” right back at you, he itches to retort but settles for pressing down a little harder on that cut and reveling in her hiss of pain. “Again, you are such a pain,” if only looks could kill, he’d be shot dead on the floor right now. With a sigh, Krystal reaches into her pocket and digs around, says, “Just for that, I should keep this to myself for a little while longer but since I am such an angel, here’s your phone. Someone texted you around….two minutes ago, by the way -”
Taking his phone off her, Jongin’s eyes narrow as he scrolls through several missed calls and text messages, “And you’re only reminded to give it to me now?”
She shrugs nonchalantly. “It buzzes so often that it just felt like a continuous butt massage - why are you looking like Sehun when he - never mind, what he usually looks like? W - what’s going on?”
“Come on, we’re leaving.”
-
“You were throwing a bitch fit on how late but decide to make a stop here!” Krystal’s unsure if this is how his humor works but since he’s still looking all straight face, she’s either going to have to reboot his robotic self for some kind of explanation or… ”Oh my fucking god...”
She’s really hit the jackpot this time - a dancing competition, really?
“Don’t - just don’t,” He hisses, bristling pass her and squeezing through group of rowdy girls with his ‘Calvin Klein’ underwear model body; one percent fat and ninety nine percent pure hotness. Krystal could see all their desperate heads turn and also, the dirty fantasies within them.
“Get in”
Cockily, “Why should I?”
Face crumpling into one of the many “intimidating” faces he’d like to think is effective, Jongin yanks the glass door hard enough for it come unhinge. “I swear to god, if you don’t get in here right now, I will -“
“You will what?” She challenges, not budging from where she‘s been standing on the bottle of the steps. He isn’t going to yield anytime soon, is he? Grumbling behind a huff of annoyance, Krystal stomps her way up to the door he’s kept opened for her, “Ugh, you don’t have to be such a drama queen about it.”
She wouldn’t miss this for the world, Krystal wants to tell him with an accompanying giggle of a three-year old. But judging by how pissed off he’s looking, she should give him a little break. Who knows? He might be nervous and she definitely wouldn’t want to make his stage fright worse. Did he get those? She couldn’t imagine him, the ever-so-cold Kim Jongin, hyperventilating and peeking behind curtains. But then again, he couldn’t imagine him taking part in this sort of thing either.
Krystal had been too busy making fun of the situation to notice that they’ve ended up in a vast, empty corridor. They were standing outside the performance hall; looking through one of the few square glass windows she could see enthusiastic crowd filling in room and quickly finding themselves seats that were yet to be occupied. Around her, there were only four chairs lined up against the wall (which badly needed to a touch up paint job by the way), the wooden floor creaked with every step they took and the carpets thrown casually on top of another was most likely only to cover up the true demolished state of the flooring boards. A strong scent of pesticide makes her nostril flare; she tried to hide her disgust but she’s not so sure that that’s working out for her. There’s honestly no nice way to put this: the place is rundown.
“You’re staying out here.”
Ready to protest, she had all the arguments at the tip of her tongue. But someone else beat her to it.
“You know the rules, Jongin,” another voice besides his and hers drawls, “Get in or get out.”
“She’s not competing -“
“Don’t care,” the twenty-something guy brushes him off, his back firm against the door, “A rule is a rule. We don’t want a last minute “burst of creativeness”,” his voice drips with sarcasm but never did once his face expression change from not giving one fuck to mildly interested, “I know you and your crew are no copycats but no one wants to deal with finger pointing, the least of all, me.”
Stubborn as ever, Jongin reasons, “You can watch her.”
“I can,” he agrees, “Doesn’t mean I want to.”
“Oh come on, Yunho -“
“You’ve got about eleven minutes and twenty two seconds before your team goes on,” Yunho cuts him off briskly, turning his wrist over to check with his watch, “If I were you, I wouldn’t be wasting time, standing around here and having this discussion with me.”
He seems to resign himself to accept the finality in Yunho’s tone and turns to her for the first time since they got here, leaning in close enough for the words to only be shared between them, he whispers, “If you even so much as make a move -“
“I’m not going to run,” she couldn’t even if she wanted to, but he didn’t know that, only Sehun did, “You’ll be lucky if I don’t fight a bitch for a seat at the front. Now go.”
Krystal makes a point to ignore the look Yunho’s throwing her when she goes in. She can still feel his eyes burning a hole in her back; he is staring at her like it’s all wrong that she’s standing here, walking in front of him and bumping shoulders (literally) with all these teenagers on her hunt for a seat. Admittedly, she doesn’t think she’s supposed to be here either but like he said, right? Get in or get out.
-
He’d been waiting for them to come for him a long time now. Often enough, he wondered if the waiting was a part of the torture method but why they would want to waste time torturing a bastard son like him, was lost to him. A clean kill - a bullet to the chest, to the head would be messy - hard to clean, a knife to the throat would do too. Whatever method it was; he knows they would come at night. The following morning is when they will discard of his body, that night an unfortunate stranger will stumble across his corpse. They always know where he’d be at night.
He’s considered it more times than he can count: death. If they were quicker to rid of him, he might have not fought. But he’s older now, with more purpose to life than serving the house he lives under, he’s over self-loathing too. He’s ready to fight them.
His clammy hands clench tighter around the Kendo sword; he’d practiced hard enough to have excelled at the arts. But they wouldn’t know that - they wouldn’t know what’s coming to him when he hits down hard enough on their skulls to crack it into two.
“Yixing”
Swiveling around, he nearly lost hold of his weapon.
“W - what are you doing?” Soojung sounds out of breath. Coming out of her hiding in the shadows, she reveals herself to him. The moonlight shine enough light on her for him to catch the frightened look on her face, “Why a - why are you walking around the hall with that?”
Letting out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he’d been holding in, Yixing quickens his strides towards her until he could reach for her. She’s ice cold against his body; something that has never occurred in all their years together. “You’re not supposed to be back until Monday.”
“Did you think I was one of them?” Soojung asks in a hushed voice, pulling away slightly to get a better look of him, “Did you think your dad finally sent his men to kill you?”
He didn’t say anything to day. It’s only fair; she still hasn’t given him a reason to why she’s back early. How many times he had told her not to come down here to see him during the night time, he has lost count. She never listens to him anyway; Jung Soojung listens to no one.
Still he knows he didn’t to supply her with an answer. She knew that it’s in his faith that his father would come to rid his hand of the illegitimate son; afraid what he’ll do to get his hand on the inheritance money. They both knew he had no interest in that man’s money. He was raised as a servant and he was happy to die one.
“Let’s go to your room, I need to talk to you”
“What happened to you?” Yixing asks, taking in her askew hair to her bruised knee, “You’re not wearing your own clothes. Where are your shoes? What’s going on, Soo?”
“I’ll tell you,” she says warily, marching over to the window and flicking open the blind then closing it again, “Just not here, in your room.”
“You can’t stay here,” Yixing protests, knowing full well that if she asked to remain he very well couldn’t say no to her, “If your parents catch you down here with me, they’re going to throw me onto the streets -“
Shaking her head, she tugs at his hand, “They won’t”
“You don’t know for sure.”
“They won’t,” she whispers with finality, swiveling around to meet his square in the eyes; silently asking him to trust her. He does, he always have. “They didn’t come back with me.”
His eyes widen, “You came all the way back from Jeju alone?”
“Yixing, I -“
Soojung averts her gaze to the floor, nibbling at her thumb as words fail her. She’s holding out on him; that realization scares him than the earlier occurrence of the night. He’d rather die than have her keep something from him. Hadn’t they sworn that there would be no secrets between them? No matter how dark, how unacceptable it might seem to the rest of the world. Because he wouldn’t care, not if it was Soojung.
“Something’s wrong,” he says faintly, “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll take care of it -“
“I want you to know that whatever your answer is to what I’ve got to say next; I won’t love you any less. You are my family - you are my only family, that kind of love doesn’t fade. Y - you, I know you know that already,” she sputters helplessly but every word that escapes her was firm with unchanging devotion, “I’m leaving, tonight.”
“Don’t say things you can’t - “
“And when I go, I’m never coming back.”
His first instinct is to stop her; to get on his knees and beg her not to take off. But what was there to hold her back? Him, the revelation hits him with both heartwarming sense of importance but also, the dreadful desire to follow her to the ends of the earth if she had wished him to.
“Leave with me, please,” Soojung’s on her toes, her lips pressed a fleeting kiss onto the hollow of his shoulder, “I don’t want to see the world alone. Don’t let me go out there alone.”
Yixing smoothes back her hair to look into those eyes he’s found a home in; they are pleading. She is frightened to ask him this, a part of her had doubted the capacity of his loyalty to her. Why, he doesn’t know, because what has he to live for but her?
“You won’t ever be alone.” And that’s a vow that he’s made.
“Yixing! Hey, hey!”
Tao’s hand waves off the vivid images of packed bags and uncertainties.
“Yeah,” he clears his throat; straightening on the cushion he found no comfort in, “Jus tell me, Tao.”
Breathlessly, Tao announces with no restraint on his flooding relief, “It’s her - it’s definitely Krystal.”
For the first time in weeks, Yixing feels the crushing weight lifting from his chest. She’s still alive; not safe but still breathing. “Where is she?”
Ruefully, he says, “I don’t know”
“Then how do you know it’s her?”
Tao sets down next to him on the ground, shoulders slump as he looks up into the indigo sky but not at him. A part of him is grateful for that; he knows how he must have looked - desperate. That’s the man he is now days, just sitting around and waiting (dreaming) for the day she turns up on their doorstep.
“You’re upset” He says frankly, then with a sigh, “I didn’t like Krystal when you two moved in. The rest of us did, I couldn’t see what they saw in her. She could tell, you know how that girl is, she claims she’s got a third eye ‘cause she’s a woman. What a load of bullshit.”
Yixing nods in agreement. “She can always tell even when we, ourselves can’t.”
“I thought she was a defect in our team because she’s a girl,” Tao confesses, “The way I see it? Just ‘cause she could smoke Chen on his third run with an Audi doesn’t mean she can take on the streets. It was going to take more than a two minute ahead win to get my respect.”
Shaking off his nostalgia, Yixing tosses the cell into his lap. “First thing I ever taught that brat: pound key followed by number, then finish off with another pound key, temporarily disable the keypad, two quick push to the on off button. That’s the call you got.”
“I don’t understand -“
“That trick,” Tao cuts him off, “Allows the caller to send a signal to the recipient’s number without giving away their current location. What you thought was a call from her, wasn’t a call at all. Unless it’s a postpaid sim card, I can’t trace her. She knows that.”
“She made the call using prepaid,” Yixing surmises quickly, and so the cloud of confusion over his head clears only to be replaced by even a bigger one, “She doesn’t want to be found.”
-
“Who are you?”
Krystal’s too distracted by the overwhelming amount of smelly teenagers squashing her into the wall to even try and read him. She doesn’t have to think hard about her answer. “Kim Krystal”
“I didn’t ask for your name.”
She stops in her track before getting knocked over by some outlandishly loud college girl. “What was your question again?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Kim Krystal”
He shakes his head and lets the crowd carries him. It’s like a tuna can in here; they’re all sliding around in one small packed space. “I asked who you are. I don’t care what your name is.”
He’s so tall that she has to tilt her head back to get pass that jaw line. “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realize that this was a philosophy 101. Ka - ,” Shit, her non-existing anger management always fucks her over, “Jongin doesn’t seem like the type to ponder about the wonderment and all its questions.”
She can’t tell if his mouth is quirking up because of her sassiness or the slip-up. The prick begins to say something completely stupid, she can tell because of how much he looks like a horse when he tries to get his vowels out.
“I can’t hear you over…this - like everybody here in general…”
“You go to school with Jongin?”
She can’t really deny it with the uniform on, can she now? “What do you think?”
Finally! Krystal wants to shout from the rooftop. This isn’t exactly the front seat she’s joked to him about, nor is this a royal theatre either. The inside of this thing is just as bad as the outside. It’s shocking that the whole building hasn’t been torn down yet. Can she catch some deadly disease by sitting down on one of these chairs? Krystal glares down at the one nudging at her kneecap. There’s an ugly brown stain in the middle of its stiff plastic green glory. She guesses this will have to do, she sure isn’t going to suffer anymore of the shit smelling canal she’s been flowing through with the rest of these junkies.
He’s looking at her perceptively; she really doesn’t like when he does that.
“What?”
“Close?”
“Again, what?”
Krystal figures she’d be getting on his nerve right about now. She’s wrong. “Are you two close?”
Swallowing, she stares up at the vast, empty stage in front of them and replies, “Yeah, I guess we’re friends.”
“You’re not a friend,” he says without missing a beat, roaring with laughter, “He doesn’t treat his friends the way he treats you.”
“You mean with no respect, bossy and mean?” She retorts, squinting at how bright the spotlights are turned up. What are they trying to do to the dancers up there anyway, break a leg?
“What?” Krystal snaps, irritated at his constant staring, “Are you trying to say that we’re more?”
“That you’re a girlfriend?” The guy laughs again, only this time it’s condescending, “He doesn’t take on girlfriends and he doesn’t treat girls he “crushes on” the way he treated you when you came through the door.”
“Can I see your PHD certificate on the inner workings of Kim Jongin?”
Ignoring her snarky comment, he goes on blabbing, “I’m just curious. He’s never brought anyone here at all?”
Side eying him, Krystal tries hard to not let her burning curiosity shine through. It’s not working. “Never…? Are we really sure about that? Like are we only talking people you don’t know or including people you both know mutually or -?”
“He gets on stage, gets off then goes home,” he’s musing to himself and not to her anymore, “Actually…don’t listen to me, you’re probably a tag along so nothing special.”
Okay, true - she is a tag along but to say she’s nothing special, that is putting it too harshly. A friendly reminder to self: You are important, even as leverage.
Krystal sharpens tongue, ready to slice his patronizing remarks into pieces. Where doe Jongin find all these fuckers to associate himself with? But she unclenches her jaw for long enough to clench them again. The speakers thump with irrelevant hip hop (it’s definitely not a Drake track), the heavy bass blaring right into her face. Oh okay, she sees why there’s only allowance dependant people here because anyone over the age of twenty five would rather be back home with a cheap bottle of wine and over the age of forty will mostly drop dead due to a heart attack. She just finds this obnoxious. Clearly the rare exception, judging by the enthusiastic cheering and whooping.
A group of saggy-pants wearing boys in their “thug” get-ups (culture appropriation anyone?) waddled onto stage, either looking down and wiping at their chins ‘cause they think it made them look cool or like her, couldn’t stand how bright the lighting is up there. Her eyes move over their faces in quick but headless motion (except those wearing a hood, ugh). No, Jongin, thank god, she wouldn’t (he too, she suspects) wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she has to witness him dressing up like a hoodlum.
Krystal likes to think when she left, she had enough confidence in how Jongin’s going to live his life. She is seriously beginning to doubt that sentiment.
One of the shorter boy steps up, pleased with himself (why when dressed like that, she isn’t sure), probably relishing in how big of an audience he (thinks) and his fellow dancing pimps have attracted. Abruptly, the music cuts off and the crowd too, simmer down and squishes their ass into a chair. Finally, the ginger moves, his feet sliding back two steps then -
She’s unsure what’s causing more of an earthquake; the underground hip hop track or all the emergency exit doors flinging open and rebounding off the barely standing walls. Suddenly, Krystal isn’t sure where exactly too long. There is so much going on that without being aware of it, she is up on her feet and sticking her head to the left and right and everywhere like a goddamn peacock. Some girl in front of her screams so loudly that she’s sure she broke her wind pipe.
The girls on the team spread out onto the stage, knocking shoulders with those stunned amateurs as they pump out the crowd. Footsteps hammer away on the staircase, swiveling around Krystal feels something akin to excitement, watching a pack of boys descend with certainty that the way they’re moving is cooler than cool. She’s only understanding now why they were all fighting for the aisle seat: to stick their hands out for a fleeting high five and if you’re lucky enough, a fist bump.
“Krystal?”
The turmoil in the faint voice is clear. She didn’t think this one through when she turns around to face trouble: “Taemin?”
Shit, how is she going to explain this one? He’s staring at her with that unchanging horrified expression and she in turn, doesn’t know how to remove that very same look off her face.
“What the fuck, man,” A loud cuss breaks the uncomfortable stance they’ve found themselves in. A particularly muscular boy, clasps a capable hand over Taemin’s shoulder and gives it a shove, “What did you stop for? Keep on movin’!”
Whatever shock he had gotten from finding her here, Taemin shook it right off and sprinted off to catch up with the rest of his dance crew.
She hopes that the nosey man on the seat next to hers missed that exchange between them. He didn’t.
The crowd doesn’t show any sign of quieting down, only getting louder once all the dancers reach the stage. She nearly got punched (again for the second time in the last six hours) by the guys behind her, pumping their fists high up in the air. Now that the fancy entrance is done and over with, the dancers jumped on the chance to go first. The stage divided into two, making it clear that the both of the crews are ready to attack.
The first team (that just got seriously upstaged) sent up an abtastic but regrettably, eighties throwback pants wearer. Luckily for them, he could bust a move. She’d only ever done traditional dancing in her life but even she can appreciate how effortlessly he popped and locked; the precision in his movements. Unlike her, the other team is not even the least bit bedazzled. Krystal can’t tell if they’re booing him down because they were sure they had something better in the bag or to hide how fucked they are. Distracted by the dope triple hand glide the boy is executing, she fails to notice the speedy footing that’s making way across the stage. The dancer spurs on by the crowd, double flips into the circle and forcing the opponent out.
“Holy shit,” she lets out before she could contain herself, “That’s -“
“Lee Taemin” Yunho helps finishes her sentence, which she is secretly grateful for because she doubts she could have done so herself, “Lead dancer for the second year in a row. There are bets that he’ll make captain next year.”
“H - he’s good”
And he is - more than good; he’s great. If they all thought the other team pulled out the big gun, they were all wrong because he is nothing compared to this boy in front of them. It’s clear to Krystal that he has mastered all the toughest moves because what appears to be impossible to do to one’s body, he has done without breaking a sweat. She doesn’t know what’s more priceless: how Taemin switches from air flares to a dougie or how the other team looked like they’re about ready to shit themselves now.
“In a few years,” it startles her how proud Yunho looks, “He could go pro if he wanted to.”
Startled by the consecutive screaming produced by the girls at the front, Krystal looks back to the stage despite her uncertainty of what it is they are fangirling over.
“Took that brat long enough”
She blinks at Yunho, forehead creasing, “Wh -“
Taemin drops to the floor, his palm flat across the surface and head pulled to his chest. Another spurt of screams follow and Krystal’s burning with curiosity to know what they do and she doesn’t. The opponent’s conspiring must be pure bitching or else they would have sent someone else from the team already. Instead they stand motionlessly, like they’re - “They’re waiting. What are they waiting for?”
Smirking knowingly, Yunho nods to the stage, “Him”
She looks back in time to see the red snap back slides out from the wall Taemin’s crew has made with their bodies. Jumping off two of the dancers’ backs, the owner of the cap touches hands with Taemin and taking over. And between the intricate arm waves, every twist and turn of his hips, how his feet hit every beat like his life depended on it. He looks up into the audience that he has captivated completely without even knowing. Did he know? The spell he has casted on all of them - on her. Because she did think about him, didn’t he? Never entirely sentient but mingling in the stream of her restlessness; how many seconds, minutes, hours, days do those clumsy few seconds that dissipates into unconsciousness amount to? The answer to that would terrify her, just as it would terrify her if he looks at her now and looks hard enough to register that this isn’t Krystal that is staring back at him but the girl he lost his first kiss to.
PT 2 >>>
~ 6100 w, r, (krystal/kai) l part i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. x. xi.
She claims she’s got a third eye ‘cause she’s a woman. What a load of bullshit.
■ fanmix/soundtrack
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It was her. It has to be her.
“Tao!” rips out from him like a desperate cry for help. Yixing starts to run before he even breathe; that’s how much he wanted her back. “Tao! Tao!”
“Dude, what the fuck” Chen mumbles, poking his bed head out from his bed room and rubbing his bloating eyes.
Quickly and demanding, he asks, “Where’s Tao?”
“Uh…I don’t know? He came back about an hour ago, don’t know if he’s still hanging around -“
“Fuck,” Yixing mutters under his breath, striding right pass the other boy and to Luhan’s room, knocking frantically until the door is yanked opened by the said boy. He stared back at him with wide eyes, pulling ear buds out of his ears, “Was that you yelli -“
“Where’s Tao?”
Luhan blinks, says in a dazed, “In t - the garage - wait, hyung, what’s going on?!”
Yixing could hear Luhan hollering more questions after him; he doesn’t have the time to answer him. He needs to find Tao now, now that Kris cannot be trusted if he comes back before they can figure out where she made the call - this was their only chance, it’s been weeks. They might never get her back; he doesn’t know to deal with the mere thought of it.
“Tao!” He tries again once he reached the entrance of the garage; the roller door was left opened with just enough gap for someone to slip through. Pushing it up further, Yixing scans the empty space for any sign of the raven haired boy, “Tao!”
“Look under”
And so he does until he meets the other boys’ eyes. They’re covered by safety glasses, Yixing figures he had been working on manipulating a stolen motor piece to work on one of their own. “’Sup, man.”
“I need your help,” He goes straight to the point, swallowing as he continues, “Someone called me, let it ring for two times then hung up before I could pick up. I -“
“You think it’s Krystal,” Tao too, wanted to get to the point. He pulls the glasses over his head, sliding out from under the newest addition to the sport cars section and sits up enough to level with him, “You think it’s Krystal and she’s trying to give us a sign.”
Yixing nods. “We have to try. We should find out before Kris finds out.”
“Look, man, I feel for you,” Tao says sympathetically, reaching a hand over his shower and shaking him slightly, “We all feel shit about Krystal and,” he takes a deep breath, “Kris means well, he didn’t think it would end up like this. I know you’re angry with him, I am too but we’re a team, man, we can’t turn on each other.”
“I am not turning on him!” Yixing snaps, “If I was turning on him, I wouldn’t still be here. Doesn’t mean he needs to know everything we’re doing -“
Tao looks flabbergasted. “So you want to go hiding things from him now?”
“I don’t trust him, Tao.”
This is what it comes to in the end; Kris doesn’t have their backs - he didn’t have Soojung’s when she needed him.
Running a hair through his tousled hair, Tao snatches the cell from his hand. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
-
“Can you fucking stay still?”
“I would if you’d remove your elbow from my stomach,” Jongin hisses, feeling her bone digging in deeper into his rib cage.
Like an electric shock, Krystal jumps back and murmurs defensively, “Well jeez you could have said something.”
Before he can rivals her snarky remark with his own, she’s got one alcohol soaked cotton ball on the smaller cut next to the brow and two stuffed his mouth.
“I work better when it’s quiet.” She returns his murderous glare with an innocent smile, says, “Besides, I’m the nurse here. I get to order the patient around.”
Jongin would scoff but he’s too afraid that he’d choke on the cotton she’s shoved down his throat. After firing a string of curses inwardly, he’s finally relaxed enough to feel the pro-longed restlessness caused by the violent turn of his day. At least he doesn’t have Sehun to worry about. Krystal has told him over and over that Chanyeol had left to his mother’s shop and taken the other boy along. He found it hard to take her word for as it is but what other choice did he have now anyway? If they were caught by the school then there’s nothing he can do for Sehun now; he’d be expelled in a second. The education board at Daemoon has been looking for a reason to get rid of him for years now and now they have one - a very good one.
“You are such a poser,” Krystal grumbles, moving onto another injury on his left side of his jaw, “Obviously it hurts, I mean I am putting alcohol on the biggest fresh wound on your face and here you are, pouting like some kid who lost his lunch on the school yard.”
He grunt irritably; not only as a response to her unnecessary comment but also for the fact that he, with the help of Krystal, snuck into an empty room of one of Suho’s family’s clinic and now they’re sitting on the bed, in the dark as she tends to his injury.
She purposely accidentally hit him at the back of the head with the flash light. He hates everything about this, including her.
“Oops,” she sounds far from genuine about it, “Aww…you look so miserable. I’ll tweeze the cotton balls out of your mouth - don’t want cooties or anything - if you promise to not lose your shit at me.”
He’ll lose his shit at her, but later. For now, he nods and takes multiple deep breaths when his throat is no longer clogged up.
“You’re kind of cute when you don’t talk,” Krystal muses, covering his cut with a small strip of band aid, “In a beaten up puppy kind of way though.”
“Are you done?”
She pauses, staggering back a step or two with the tweezers in her hand. “With what?”
“With all this,” he motions to his face then nodding at her, “You’ve got a couple of cuts yourself.”
“I do?” Krystal asks warily, moving her fingers around her cheeks as if to feel for any pain, “I feel fine -“
Jongin interrupts her, jumping off the bed in one swift movement, “Sit down”
“What are you -“ Jongin doesn’t have the patience to have this back-and-forth now. Grabbing her by her forearm, he gently sits her down on the mattress and taking the flashlight away from her grasp when she’s still puzzled enough to forget how to speak. “I swear you’re actually going to hurt me more than help me. Do you even know what you’re doing?”
God, she never fucking shuts up.
“It’s first aid,” He tells her frankly, “Not brain surgery. I don’t think we’ll need to call in Suho this time.”
“You never know,” she shrugs, “But alright, I guess I can trust my life in your hand just this once.”
Jongin rolls his eyes but finds him laughing seconds later. He has barely dressed the wound and she’s already wincing with every press of the cotton ball to her cheek bone. “You said you feel fine.”
“Until now,” she murmurs begrudgingly, her head turned to the side and arms crossing her chest, “Sorry, I’m not all macho like you.”
“I thought I was posing,” he throws her words back at her, amused as he watches her wrinkled her nose at the strong smell of alcohol. The damage done to her is nowhere as bad as all the angry bruises on his face but he can’t help himself to stare at the line of red decorating her frail feature. “He hit you”
Her gaze slides towards his before returning to the wall. “Yeah, if I moved back quicker then he would have missed completely. Not that he had much of an aim anyway.”
Jongin’s clenching the tweezer so tightly in his hand that it could and would draw blood if he doesn’t stop jabbing the sharp end into his palm. He had to rely on her to finish off Seunghyun. The image of Seunghyun’s battered fist meeting her porcelain skin makes his insides boil. It reminds me of how useless is he - what a fucking coward.
“It’s not that bad,” she says softly, sneaking a glance up at him. He pretends not to have noticed; he thinks she’d prefer it if he didn’t. “Just a little scratch, nothing I can’t take.”
“That one on your leg is going to scar,” Jongin states matter-of-factly, dabbing away at her more recent wounds.
“We have your friends to thank for that souvenir,” Tugging down the hem of her school skirt, Krystal feigns a cough to fill the awkward pause between them. Slowly but surely, her pouting lips split into an indecent smile as she asks, “Were you looking up my skirt, Doctor Kim?”
He nearly drops everything in his hands. Why he’s still taken aback by these types of comments coming from her, he doesn’t really understand himself.
“Now, now, that’s a highly inappropriate way to treat your patient,” She purrs, licking her lips and edging her knee dangerously close to that place between his legs, “You’ve been very naughty, haven’t you, Doctor Kim?”
Jongin swallows, his Adam’s apple scratching against his dry throat. It’s hard to keep up with how easily she switches from Soojung to Krysal and vice versa. She plays her part well but it’s not going to cut it - not for him anyway. Wiping his hand on the dirtied rag discarded next to the metal tray of equipments, Jongin tip-toes around the rather sinister idea of wrapping it around her neck, tightening it until she learns to not be such a fucking bitch.
But that’s all in his twisted imagination. Instead, he goes down the easier route and reaches under her thigh, roughly pushing it away from his body. “If you’re that desperate to role play then join the drama club.”
She sulks, rubbing her kneecap. “You’re no fun”
“Chin up,” he orders, agitated by the stunt she just tried to pull.
“God, you sound sexually frustrated - Ow! Can you go easy on the disinfectant? You can smell it from the other side of the room.”
“I’m hurrying along the process,” Jongin answers in a bored tone, “You took up all the time with your talking.”
“You are such a pain,” right back at you, he itches to retort but settles for pressing down a little harder on that cut and reveling in her hiss of pain. “Again, you are such a pain,” if only looks could kill, he’d be shot dead on the floor right now. With a sigh, Krystal reaches into her pocket and digs around, says, “Just for that, I should keep this to myself for a little while longer but since I am such an angel, here’s your phone. Someone texted you around….two minutes ago, by the way -”
Taking his phone off her, Jongin’s eyes narrow as he scrolls through several missed calls and text messages, “And you’re only reminded to give it to me now?”
She shrugs nonchalantly. “It buzzes so often that it just felt like a continuous butt massage - why are you looking like Sehun when he - never mind, what he usually looks like? W - what’s going on?”
“Come on, we’re leaving.”
-
“You were throwing a bitch fit on how late but decide to make a stop here!” Krystal’s unsure if this is how his humor works but since he’s still looking all straight face, she’s either going to have to reboot his robotic self for some kind of explanation or… ”Oh my fucking god...”
She’s really hit the jackpot this time - a dancing competition, really?
“Don’t - just don’t,” He hisses, bristling pass her and squeezing through group of rowdy girls with his ‘Calvin Klein’ underwear model body; one percent fat and ninety nine percent pure hotness. Krystal could see all their desperate heads turn and also, the dirty fantasies within them.
“Get in”
Cockily, “Why should I?”
Face crumpling into one of the many “intimidating” faces he’d like to think is effective, Jongin yanks the glass door hard enough for it come unhinge. “I swear to god, if you don’t get in here right now, I will -“
“You will what?” She challenges, not budging from where she‘s been standing on the bottle of the steps. He isn’t going to yield anytime soon, is he? Grumbling behind a huff of annoyance, Krystal stomps her way up to the door he’s kept opened for her, “Ugh, you don’t have to be such a drama queen about it.”
She wouldn’t miss this for the world, Krystal wants to tell him with an accompanying giggle of a three-year old. But judging by how pissed off he’s looking, she should give him a little break. Who knows? He might be nervous and she definitely wouldn’t want to make his stage fright worse. Did he get those? She couldn’t imagine him, the ever-so-cold Kim Jongin, hyperventilating and peeking behind curtains. But then again, he couldn’t imagine him taking part in this sort of thing either.
Krystal had been too busy making fun of the situation to notice that they’ve ended up in a vast, empty corridor. They were standing outside the performance hall; looking through one of the few square glass windows she could see enthusiastic crowd filling in room and quickly finding themselves seats that were yet to be occupied. Around her, there were only four chairs lined up against the wall (which badly needed to a touch up paint job by the way), the wooden floor creaked with every step they took and the carpets thrown casually on top of another was most likely only to cover up the true demolished state of the flooring boards. A strong scent of pesticide makes her nostril flare; she tried to hide her disgust but she’s not so sure that that’s working out for her. There’s honestly no nice way to put this: the place is rundown.
“You’re staying out here.”
Ready to protest, she had all the arguments at the tip of her tongue. But someone else beat her to it.
“You know the rules, Jongin,” another voice besides his and hers drawls, “Get in or get out.”
“She’s not competing -“
“Don’t care,” the twenty-something guy brushes him off, his back firm against the door, “A rule is a rule. We don’t want a last minute “burst of creativeness”,” his voice drips with sarcasm but never did once his face expression change from not giving one fuck to mildly interested, “I know you and your crew are no copycats but no one wants to deal with finger pointing, the least of all, me.”
Stubborn as ever, Jongin reasons, “You can watch her.”
“I can,” he agrees, “Doesn’t mean I want to.”
“Oh come on, Yunho -“
“You’ve got about eleven minutes and twenty two seconds before your team goes on,” Yunho cuts him off briskly, turning his wrist over to check with his watch, “If I were you, I wouldn’t be wasting time, standing around here and having this discussion with me.”
He seems to resign himself to accept the finality in Yunho’s tone and turns to her for the first time since they got here, leaning in close enough for the words to only be shared between them, he whispers, “If you even so much as make a move -“
“I’m not going to run,” she couldn’t even if she wanted to, but he didn’t know that, only Sehun did, “You’ll be lucky if I don’t fight a bitch for a seat at the front. Now go.”
Krystal makes a point to ignore the look Yunho’s throwing her when she goes in. She can still feel his eyes burning a hole in her back; he is staring at her like it’s all wrong that she’s standing here, walking in front of him and bumping shoulders (literally) with all these teenagers on her hunt for a seat. Admittedly, she doesn’t think she’s supposed to be here either but like he said, right? Get in or get out.
-
He’d been waiting for them to come for him a long time now. Often enough, he wondered if the waiting was a part of the torture method but why they would want to waste time torturing a bastard son like him, was lost to him. A clean kill - a bullet to the chest, to the head would be messy - hard to clean, a knife to the throat would do too. Whatever method it was; he knows they would come at night. The following morning is when they will discard of his body, that night an unfortunate stranger will stumble across his corpse. They always know where he’d be at night.
He’s considered it more times than he can count: death. If they were quicker to rid of him, he might have not fought. But he’s older now, with more purpose to life than serving the house he lives under, he’s over self-loathing too. He’s ready to fight them.
His clammy hands clench tighter around the Kendo sword; he’d practiced hard enough to have excelled at the arts. But they wouldn’t know that - they wouldn’t know what’s coming to him when he hits down hard enough on their skulls to crack it into two.
“Yixing”
Swiveling around, he nearly lost hold of his weapon.
“W - what are you doing?” Soojung sounds out of breath. Coming out of her hiding in the shadows, she reveals herself to him. The moonlight shine enough light on her for him to catch the frightened look on her face, “Why a - why are you walking around the hall with that?”
Letting out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he’d been holding in, Yixing quickens his strides towards her until he could reach for her. She’s ice cold against his body; something that has never occurred in all their years together. “You’re not supposed to be back until Monday.”
“Did you think I was one of them?” Soojung asks in a hushed voice, pulling away slightly to get a better look of him, “Did you think your dad finally sent his men to kill you?”
He didn’t say anything to day. It’s only fair; she still hasn’t given him a reason to why she’s back early. How many times he had told her not to come down here to see him during the night time, he has lost count. She never listens to him anyway; Jung Soojung listens to no one.
Still he knows he didn’t to supply her with an answer. She knew that it’s in his faith that his father would come to rid his hand of the illegitimate son; afraid what he’ll do to get his hand on the inheritance money. They both knew he had no interest in that man’s money. He was raised as a servant and he was happy to die one.
“Let’s go to your room, I need to talk to you”
“What happened to you?” Yixing asks, taking in her askew hair to her bruised knee, “You’re not wearing your own clothes. Where are your shoes? What’s going on, Soo?”
“I’ll tell you,” she says warily, marching over to the window and flicking open the blind then closing it again, “Just not here, in your room.”
“You can’t stay here,” Yixing protests, knowing full well that if she asked to remain he very well couldn’t say no to her, “If your parents catch you down here with me, they’re going to throw me onto the streets -“
Shaking her head, she tugs at his hand, “They won’t”
“You don’t know for sure.”
“They won’t,” she whispers with finality, swiveling around to meet his square in the eyes; silently asking him to trust her. He does, he always have. “They didn’t come back with me.”
His eyes widen, “You came all the way back from Jeju alone?”
“Yixing, I -“
Soojung averts her gaze to the floor, nibbling at her thumb as words fail her. She’s holding out on him; that realization scares him than the earlier occurrence of the night. He’d rather die than have her keep something from him. Hadn’t they sworn that there would be no secrets between them? No matter how dark, how unacceptable it might seem to the rest of the world. Because he wouldn’t care, not if it was Soojung.
“Something’s wrong,” he says faintly, “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll take care of it -“
“I want you to know that whatever your answer is to what I’ve got to say next; I won’t love you any less. You are my family - you are my only family, that kind of love doesn’t fade. Y - you, I know you know that already,” she sputters helplessly but every word that escapes her was firm with unchanging devotion, “I’m leaving, tonight.”
“Don’t say things you can’t - “
“And when I go, I’m never coming back.”
His first instinct is to stop her; to get on his knees and beg her not to take off. But what was there to hold her back? Him, the revelation hits him with both heartwarming sense of importance but also, the dreadful desire to follow her to the ends of the earth if she had wished him to.
“Leave with me, please,” Soojung’s on her toes, her lips pressed a fleeting kiss onto the hollow of his shoulder, “I don’t want to see the world alone. Don’t let me go out there alone.”
Yixing smoothes back her hair to look into those eyes he’s found a home in; they are pleading. She is frightened to ask him this, a part of her had doubted the capacity of his loyalty to her. Why, he doesn’t know, because what has he to live for but her?
“You won’t ever be alone.” And that’s a vow that he’s made.
“Yixing! Hey, hey!”
Tao’s hand waves off the vivid images of packed bags and uncertainties.
“Yeah,” he clears his throat; straightening on the cushion he found no comfort in, “Jus tell me, Tao.”
Breathlessly, Tao announces with no restraint on his flooding relief, “It’s her - it’s definitely Krystal.”
For the first time in weeks, Yixing feels the crushing weight lifting from his chest. She’s still alive; not safe but still breathing. “Where is she?”
Ruefully, he says, “I don’t know”
“Then how do you know it’s her?”
Tao sets down next to him on the ground, shoulders slump as he looks up into the indigo sky but not at him. A part of him is grateful for that; he knows how he must have looked - desperate. That’s the man he is now days, just sitting around and waiting (dreaming) for the day she turns up on their doorstep.
“You’re upset” He says frankly, then with a sigh, “I didn’t like Krystal when you two moved in. The rest of us did, I couldn’t see what they saw in her. She could tell, you know how that girl is, she claims she’s got a third eye ‘cause she’s a woman. What a load of bullshit.”
Yixing nods in agreement. “She can always tell even when we, ourselves can’t.”
“I thought she was a defect in our team because she’s a girl,” Tao confesses, “The way I see it? Just ‘cause she could smoke Chen on his third run with an Audi doesn’t mean she can take on the streets. It was going to take more than a two minute ahead win to get my respect.”
Shaking off his nostalgia, Yixing tosses the cell into his lap. “First thing I ever taught that brat: pound key followed by number, then finish off with another pound key, temporarily disable the keypad, two quick push to the on off button. That’s the call you got.”
“I don’t understand -“
“That trick,” Tao cuts him off, “Allows the caller to send a signal to the recipient’s number without giving away their current location. What you thought was a call from her, wasn’t a call at all. Unless it’s a postpaid sim card, I can’t trace her. She knows that.”
“She made the call using prepaid,” Yixing surmises quickly, and so the cloud of confusion over his head clears only to be replaced by even a bigger one, “She doesn’t want to be found.”
-
“Who are you?”
Krystal’s too distracted by the overwhelming amount of smelly teenagers squashing her into the wall to even try and read him. She doesn’t have to think hard about her answer. “Kim Krystal”
“I didn’t ask for your name.”
She stops in her track before getting knocked over by some outlandishly loud college girl. “What was your question again?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Kim Krystal”
He shakes his head and lets the crowd carries him. It’s like a tuna can in here; they’re all sliding around in one small packed space. “I asked who you are. I don’t care what your name is.”
He’s so tall that she has to tilt her head back to get pass that jaw line. “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realize that this was a philosophy 101. Ka - ,” Shit, her non-existing anger management always fucks her over, “Jongin doesn’t seem like the type to ponder about the wonderment and all its questions.”
She can’t tell if his mouth is quirking up because of her sassiness or the slip-up. The prick begins to say something completely stupid, she can tell because of how much he looks like a horse when he tries to get his vowels out.
“I can’t hear you over…this - like everybody here in general…”
“You go to school with Jongin?”
She can’t really deny it with the uniform on, can she now? “What do you think?”
Finally! Krystal wants to shout from the rooftop. This isn’t exactly the front seat she’s joked to him about, nor is this a royal theatre either. The inside of this thing is just as bad as the outside. It’s shocking that the whole building hasn’t been torn down yet. Can she catch some deadly disease by sitting down on one of these chairs? Krystal glares down at the one nudging at her kneecap. There’s an ugly brown stain in the middle of its stiff plastic green glory. She guesses this will have to do, she sure isn’t going to suffer anymore of the shit smelling canal she’s been flowing through with the rest of these junkies.
He’s looking at her perceptively; she really doesn’t like when he does that.
“What?”
“Close?”
“Again, what?”
Krystal figures she’d be getting on his nerve right about now. She’s wrong. “Are you two close?”
Swallowing, she stares up at the vast, empty stage in front of them and replies, “Yeah, I guess we’re friends.”
“You’re not a friend,” he says without missing a beat, roaring with laughter, “He doesn’t treat his friends the way he treats you.”
“You mean with no respect, bossy and mean?” She retorts, squinting at how bright the spotlights are turned up. What are they trying to do to the dancers up there anyway, break a leg?
“What?” Krystal snaps, irritated at his constant staring, “Are you trying to say that we’re more?”
“That you’re a girlfriend?” The guy laughs again, only this time it’s condescending, “He doesn’t take on girlfriends and he doesn’t treat girls he “crushes on” the way he treated you when you came through the door.”
“Can I see your PHD certificate on the inner workings of Kim Jongin?”
Ignoring her snarky comment, he goes on blabbing, “I’m just curious. He’s never brought anyone here at all?”
Side eying him, Krystal tries hard to not let her burning curiosity shine through. It’s not working. “Never…? Are we really sure about that? Like are we only talking people you don’t know or including people you both know mutually or -?”
“He gets on stage, gets off then goes home,” he’s musing to himself and not to her anymore, “Actually…don’t listen to me, you’re probably a tag along so nothing special.”
Okay, true - she is a tag along but to say she’s nothing special, that is putting it too harshly. A friendly reminder to self: You are important, even as leverage.
Krystal sharpens tongue, ready to slice his patronizing remarks into pieces. Where doe Jongin find all these fuckers to associate himself with? But she unclenches her jaw for long enough to clench them again. The speakers thump with irrelevant hip hop (it’s definitely not a Drake track), the heavy bass blaring right into her face. Oh okay, she sees why there’s only allowance dependant people here because anyone over the age of twenty five would rather be back home with a cheap bottle of wine and over the age of forty will mostly drop dead due to a heart attack. She just finds this obnoxious. Clearly the rare exception, judging by the enthusiastic cheering and whooping.
A group of saggy-pants wearing boys in their “thug” get-ups (culture appropriation anyone?) waddled onto stage, either looking down and wiping at their chins ‘cause they think it made them look cool or like her, couldn’t stand how bright the lighting is up there. Her eyes move over their faces in quick but headless motion (except those wearing a hood, ugh). No, Jongin, thank god, she wouldn’t (he too, she suspects) wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she has to witness him dressing up like a hoodlum.
Krystal likes to think when she left, she had enough confidence in how Jongin’s going to live his life. She is seriously beginning to doubt that sentiment.
One of the shorter boy steps up, pleased with himself (why when dressed like that, she isn’t sure), probably relishing in how big of an audience he (thinks) and his fellow dancing pimps have attracted. Abruptly, the music cuts off and the crowd too, simmer down and squishes their ass into a chair. Finally, the ginger moves, his feet sliding back two steps then -
She’s unsure what’s causing more of an earthquake; the underground hip hop track or all the emergency exit doors flinging open and rebounding off the barely standing walls. Suddenly, Krystal isn’t sure where exactly too long. There is so much going on that without being aware of it, she is up on her feet and sticking her head to the left and right and everywhere like a goddamn peacock. Some girl in front of her screams so loudly that she’s sure she broke her wind pipe.
The girls on the team spread out onto the stage, knocking shoulders with those stunned amateurs as they pump out the crowd. Footsteps hammer away on the staircase, swiveling around Krystal feels something akin to excitement, watching a pack of boys descend with certainty that the way they’re moving is cooler than cool. She’s only understanding now why they were all fighting for the aisle seat: to stick their hands out for a fleeting high five and if you’re lucky enough, a fist bump.
“Krystal?”
The turmoil in the faint voice is clear. She didn’t think this one through when she turns around to face trouble: “Taemin?”
Shit, how is she going to explain this one? He’s staring at her with that unchanging horrified expression and she in turn, doesn’t know how to remove that very same look off her face.
“What the fuck, man,” A loud cuss breaks the uncomfortable stance they’ve found themselves in. A particularly muscular boy, clasps a capable hand over Taemin’s shoulder and gives it a shove, “What did you stop for? Keep on movin’!”
Whatever shock he had gotten from finding her here, Taemin shook it right off and sprinted off to catch up with the rest of his dance crew.
She hopes that the nosey man on the seat next to hers missed that exchange between them. He didn’t.
The crowd doesn’t show any sign of quieting down, only getting louder once all the dancers reach the stage. She nearly got punched (again for the second time in the last six hours) by the guys behind her, pumping their fists high up in the air. Now that the fancy entrance is done and over with, the dancers jumped on the chance to go first. The stage divided into two, making it clear that the both of the crews are ready to attack.
The first team (that just got seriously upstaged) sent up an abtastic but regrettably, eighties throwback pants wearer. Luckily for them, he could bust a move. She’d only ever done traditional dancing in her life but even she can appreciate how effortlessly he popped and locked; the precision in his movements. Unlike her, the other team is not even the least bit bedazzled. Krystal can’t tell if they’re booing him down because they were sure they had something better in the bag or to hide how fucked they are. Distracted by the dope triple hand glide the boy is executing, she fails to notice the speedy footing that’s making way across the stage. The dancer spurs on by the crowd, double flips into the circle and forcing the opponent out.
“Holy shit,” she lets out before she could contain herself, “That’s -“
“Lee Taemin” Yunho helps finishes her sentence, which she is secretly grateful for because she doubts she could have done so herself, “Lead dancer for the second year in a row. There are bets that he’ll make captain next year.”
“H - he’s good”
And he is - more than good; he’s great. If they all thought the other team pulled out the big gun, they were all wrong because he is nothing compared to this boy in front of them. It’s clear to Krystal that he has mastered all the toughest moves because what appears to be impossible to do to one’s body, he has done without breaking a sweat. She doesn’t know what’s more priceless: how Taemin switches from air flares to a dougie or how the other team looked like they’re about ready to shit themselves now.
“In a few years,” it startles her how proud Yunho looks, “He could go pro if he wanted to.”
Startled by the consecutive screaming produced by the girls at the front, Krystal looks back to the stage despite her uncertainty of what it is they are fangirling over.
“Took that brat long enough”
She blinks at Yunho, forehead creasing, “Wh -“
Taemin drops to the floor, his palm flat across the surface and head pulled to his chest. Another spurt of screams follow and Krystal’s burning with curiosity to know what they do and she doesn’t. The opponent’s conspiring must be pure bitching or else they would have sent someone else from the team already. Instead they stand motionlessly, like they’re - “They’re waiting. What are they waiting for?”
Smirking knowingly, Yunho nods to the stage, “Him”
She looks back in time to see the red snap back slides out from the wall Taemin’s crew has made with their bodies. Jumping off two of the dancers’ backs, the owner of the cap touches hands with Taemin and taking over. And between the intricate arm waves, every twist and turn of his hips, how his feet hit every beat like his life depended on it. He looks up into the audience that he has captivated completely without even knowing. Did he know? The spell he has casted on all of them - on her. Because she did think about him, didn’t he? Never entirely sentient but mingling in the stream of her restlessness; how many seconds, minutes, hours, days do those clumsy few seconds that dissipates into unconsciousness amount to? The answer to that would terrify her, just as it would terrify her if he looks at her now and looks hard enough to register that this isn’t Krystal that is staring back at him but the girl he lost his first kiss to.
PT 2 >>>