we search for eternity
we search for eternity
Kai/Krystal
Angst | 3820 words
Looking back, she was always there for him whenever he needed someone. She made sure to reply his messages and never forget to return his calls, no matter how long it might take; laughing at him when his jokes weren’t funny. She was already there when he first arrived at the company, with bright eyes and brighter dreams, although she wasn’t an official member of the town, as they liked to call the company, until a year later. She was there holding his hand when he finally came to a realization that his dream was actually coming true, in the midst of blinding spotlights and camera flashes and deafening screams chanting their names, with sparkly little confetti floating around like dreamy snowflakes.
She was always there for him. So he wonders now, as he stares at an old photo of them taken years back, her eyes crinkling into thin crescent slits and her smile wide and genuine, why can’t she let him do the same?
“She still doesn’t contact you?”
Jongin shakes his head brusquely before downing his glass of mixed soju. The drink warms his insides up a little bit. After all, winter is settling in, so the air gets colder every second. He exhales a sigh and watches the white mist coming out from his mouth. “Nope,” comes as his only reply. “She doesn’t contact you either?”
“Just a birthday wish, and a reply for hers. But she contacts Minho-hyung though.”
He narrows his eyes at his friend, brows knitting and forehead creasing. “She does?”
“Every once in a while, as far as I know. Sometimes she tells him to say hi to me. But other than whether she’s doing fine I never asked anything else,” Taemin explains. He grabs a small piece of meat with his chopsticks and pops it into his mouth after blowing the heat off. “They’re good friends. You know that too, right?” he adds later when he notices the colours in Jongin’s eyes washing out.
“I know,” he says, and he truly means it. That is not Jongin’s actual concern. He has heard about her from others―Jinri definitely, sometimes Jessica when they run into each other, Joonmyun and even the stylists who used to work with her. It seems that she keeps in touch with everyone but him, and that is what bothers him the most.
“She just needs time, I guess. And space too,” Taemin tells him with a shrug.
“I gave her that. I am.”
“Maybe she needs more.” A smile tugs on Taemin’s lips, warm and encouraging as it has always been all these years of their friendship. His overgrown bangs are covering his eyes and Jongin thinks it’s funny that Taemin looks almost the same as he was back in their trainee days. “And you, you need to stop drinking. You’re really something when you’re drunk,” he laughs a little as he pulls Jongin’s glass away when the latter is about to pour himself more alcohol.
Jongin smiles back, or at least tries to because he knows not to let his friend worry needlessly over him. When Taemin mumbles something about the two of them should be heading back, he only nods and lets his mind drifts away while he sits in the almost empty train staring into spaces.
He was getting a drink from the vending machine when he heard soft giggles coming from the hallway. When he peeked outside, he saw two figures of young girls walking side by side, hairs long and black and shiny.
“Did you see Yunho-oppa’s hair? He always looks so scary but I couldn’t stop laughing just now!”
The shorter of the two turned slightly so Jongin could see her side profile. Unlike most of the kids there she was wearing her school uniform. There was laughter escaping from her mouth as she told the other girl something funny that she probably had seen or heard earlier. Her eyes were crinkling up into perfect slits that reminded him the brilliant moon he sees during his train rides home.
That was the first time he saw Jung Soojung.
The news of f(x)’s disbandment was announced seven years after their debut. The group never achieved the kind of success that the company had aimed for them. Soojung saw it all along, or so she told him.
She was the second to pack her things and leave the apartment she shared with her members. The first was Amber, all eager to start working behind the scenes with the crews. Sunyoung and Jinri left together, the former heading towards her newfound love of musicals and stage plays while the latter stays behind and acts in the kind of dramas she doesn’t watch and endorse labels she doesn’t wear. Qian was the last to go, because there is a lot of baggage to pack to Rotorua, the place of her dreams where her new life awaits. It wasn’t that hard anyway, since the five of them didn’t really stay in the dorm that much unless during promotion periods.
She was going to see the world, Soojung said before she left. Finishing the remaints of her bucket list too. He couldn’t understand it at first because they had seen almost every part of the world touring with the others from the company. They travelled to places they saw on television and magazine spreads, and places they never even heard of before.
But the more places Jongin visited with his members, the more stages he stands on, the more people he meets, the more he begins to understand the kind of world she wants to see. Almost two years have passed since her departure, sixteen months since she last came in contact with him. Now and then when he looks out from the window of airplane and stares at the earth beneath him, he wonders what kind of world Soojung is seeing.
“Someone spotted her in Macau.”
Jongin looks up only to find Kyungsoo settling down next to him, back leaning against the wall, towel hanging around his neck, sweats beaded on his forehead. “Who?” the former raises a brow before he offers the older boy his bottle of water.
“Krystal. Soojung. Whatever name she goes by now,” Kyungsoo mumbles before taking a chug.
“How’d you know?”
“Internet,” he says it like it’s the most obvious thing ever. “People saw her at some street stall, dressed in t-shirt and jeans, pretty much like an ordinary person.”
Jongin wants to ask more, like what is she doing there, or if she is doing alright, and he also wants to say that Soojung is never ordinary, that the adjective should never be used to describe her, no matter what she does or wears. But he keeps silent instead and pretends it doesn’t bother him as much.
“Go find her,” Kyungsoo adds later when the silence continues.
“We have a photoshoot tomorrow. And the day after―”
“Is photoshoot more important to you?” he deadpans. He doesn’t budge when Jongin glances at him, legs outstretched and gaze seemingly fixed on something that is not within the four walls. “Go.”
Jongin doesn’t respond. He doesn’t go to look for her either. But he keeps her whereabouts in check, and his phone close to him as usual, just in case she calls. But she never does.
Sometimes Jongin would wonder how they would meet in an alternate universe. Perhaps they would meet in the deserted corner of their school’s library, her snoozing off with her book open. Perhaps they would run into each other in front of a coffee house on a rainy day, he would accidentally knock the coffee she’s holding off, it would spill onto her shirt and annoy the hell out of her. Perhaps they would just be two normal teenagers walking past each other on the streets while holding someone else’s hand, not even giving one another a single glance.
He wonders if he should be grateful that he met Soojung in this universe despite their circumstances. At least, they are not two complete strangers who don’t even know the other’s existence. At least, Jongin thinks, in this crooked universe, they are in love with each other, however painfully so. At the very least, he does.
A little more than two months later, Jongin flies in to Sydney with the rest of EXO. It’s the final leg of their world tour, and the second last one before Joonmyun and Minseok head to the army for the sake of getting it done early. They will be going on hiatus after that. Words are going around that there might be sub-units in the meantime, but Jongin knows better than to get his hopes up.
In their free time he sneaks out of the hotel dressed as casually as possible, the bill of his cap tugged down, bare faced and bouncy steps. He goes to wherever his feet lead him to, making turns and taking detours and still keeping his location in check. Without realizing his steps bring him to a quiet street, and somehow a certain convenience store wedged between faded blues and washed out whites, lined up in a row of an old building, attracted him in.
He wanders through rack after rack, passing by fridges after fridges before finally settling on the cheapest coffee out of the many cans. He takes time searching for enough dollar notes amongst the wons, and while he does so someone else cuts the line but he doesn’t really mind.
Until he hears the voice that appears so much in his dreams every night yet still misses every day. He drops his coins along with his jaw. Hearing the clanking of the coins against the tiles, the girl turns around and helps gathering them all up. His foot stayed glued to the floor. He blinked and blinked to make sure this is not one of his recurring dreams he’s had for the past few years before finally calling out her name, delicate and brittle as if she might break.
She looks up with a stunned expression on her face, eyes widened at the name she hasn’t heard people addressing her with in a while, more upon seeing the person with a parallel look on his. Time seems to stop for them, but then again maybe it has a long time ago.
He ran into her once at the emergency staircase that anybody hardly uses. Jongin was running down because the elevator was taking too much time and he didn’t have enough of that ― the new volume of his favourite manhwa was coming out on that day and he was dying to know the continuation from the previous one.
She was somewhere in between tenth and fifth floor. Jongin can’t remember the specific details, but he remembers the way her long raven hair covered most of her face as she sat hugging her knees with her back against the wall. She was crying when he found her.
He was never good at consoling anyone, but he didn’t feel right to leave her all by herself either, so he just stood opposite her with his hands inside his jacket. “It’s pretty cliché to cry alone at the staircase, y’know.”
“Shut up,” she returned, face still buried.
“Want to hear a joke? It might make you feel better.”
Soojung looked up and met his eyes, hers red and damp. “Okay.”
He settled down next to her, suddenly his favourite manhwa was no longer his priority. He told her a joke that he had heard from Taemin, who heard it from Kyuhyun, who gotten it from Changmin. It was one of those things that were passed down from generations to generations. Her face stayed frozen though her eyes had begun to dry up.
“You call that a joke?” she asked, raising a brow.
“It’s not funny?”
“Not a bit.” A shake of head. She still broke into laughter nevertheless, though not really because of his joke. “But I do feel better.” A smile, more blinding the spotlights and flashes he will ever see.
At that moment, Jongin thought he would give anything just to see her smile.
Anything, he thinks about it now.
He imagines meeting her again sometimes. Maybe it’d be at some nice café in Paris, freshly brewed coffee and delicious croissants fragrances filling the air. Maybe they would stumble upon each other when their umbrellas collide at the streets of London, or while waiting for their hotdogs in New York. Maybe she would just randomly turn up at the company, smiling as if nothing ever happened.
“How have you been?” she asks, as if she never left.
Having a reunion with her in a rundown convenience store is not something he ever expected. After all fate has always been funny to the both of them, always finding a way to intervene and twist things around.
Her hair is slightly shorter now, and darker too. Somehow she appears so much more mature compared to the young girl in school uniform with bouncy steps in his memories. Her smile is more confident, her eyes clearer and brighter, her words flow more freely.
Jongin smiles back. “Same old, same old.”
“Still cooped up in the clouds?”
“Yeah. Still in the clouds.”
The practice room has always been referred to the clouds, a name derived from the infamous walls. Some call it the sky, but the two of them prefer the former just for the irony of the joke not having your heads in clouds while being ‘in the clouds’.
“But now I get to tour too,” he adds.
“I heard.”
“It’s the second last leg though. Seoul’s the last one. Joonmyun-hyung and Minseok-hyung are going to enlist soon.”
“I heard.”
“You kept in touch with everyone but me. That’s a little unfair, don’t you think?”
“I know.”
He lifts his gaze from the passing cars and pedestrians to glance at her. They’re sitting close enough, shoulders barely touching. He stretches out his legs and wishes the bench is smaller. “Did you ever find it?” he asks after a while.
“Find what?” It’s her turn to look him, but he’s already redirected his gaze back forward.
He gives a slight shrug. “Whatever you said you were looking for before you left.”
She gives a small smile. “Not quite. But I think I’m getting there.”
“Will you come back once you find it?”
“I don’t know. Should I?”
“You should. Everyone misses you. Jinri, Taemin, Sehun too, the hyungs …” he trails off.
Across the street, the light turns red for the pedestrians while the cars start moving again. Just like the young girl standing beside the lamp post whose life is put on hold for a moment, Soojung waits for more from him. It never comes.
Jongin remembers that magical moment of his life when it finally dawned on him that his dream that he fought hard for came true. The confetti, the chants, the lights. Every pain and fatigue in every inch of his body vanished in less than a microsecond.
“Hey?” He heard a familiar voice calling for him, snapping him out from his reverie. “You okay?” she asked. He didn’t reply but there was a smile on his face. Soojung held out her hand for him, which he accepts after a few blinks.
He remembers the kids they were, the adults they become and everything they shared in between. He remembers her when he looks out the window and sees the pitter-patter of rain against the pane, when he sits alone at the emergency staircase and no one is there to listen to his jokes, when the spotlight is too blinding for him to see the audience so he just imagines her face instead.
He remembers, as he crushes the coffee can under his shoe before throwing it into the trash can on his way back to his hotel room, that he forgot to ask her if she missed him too.
“What do you mean you met Soojung?”
Joonmyun’s eyes are wide, creases forming in his forehead and a look of concern painting his face. Jongin sees sincerity filling the brown of his orbs, not the normal worry the older one usually gives as a leader, but from a human being to another human being. He doesn’t know how to react to that so he averts his gaze away and nods. “I ran into her at some store during our free time,” he responds.
“So? Did you guys talk?”
“A bit.”
“A bit?”
He fiddles with his earplugs and keeps his focus back and forth from the material of his pants to the safety precautions memo on the seat in front of him, still avoiding Joonmyun’s eyes. He nods again.
“What did you talk about? What is she up to now? Did you ask about her, what she’s been doing all these while? Did you ask her where she’s been and if she’s alright?”
“Ah, hyung!” Jongin glowers.
“I’m curious, okay?”
“Okay, I get it!” he rebukes, cracking a small smile afterwards. He thinks back and recalls his conversation with her as he continues to fiddle with the earplugs between his fingers. “She’s been studying a lot. Taking classes here and there. She learned Mandarin properly. A little bit of French and Japanese, too. Took up some basic cooking lessons. Explored the old homes and castles in England. Surfed and dived. And now she’s learning sign language.”
When Jongin is done recounting his answer, Joonmyun blinks and takes time to register the whole thing. “That’s a lot of stuff,” he remarks later. They fall silent for a while as the plane takes off and expands the distance between Jongin and Soojung once again. A little after the signal for seatbelts goes off, Joonmyun speaks again. “Did she mention if she’s ever coming back?”
Jongin throws his gaze outside the window, watching the island beneath the clouds becoming small until it vanishes completely from his sight. Shaking his head, he finally stops fiddling and puts on his earplugs. “No,” he murmurs softly. “But she said she’s happier now.”
“How do you measure happiness, Jongin?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Does topping the music shows still make you happy? Does hearing your fans chanting your name still make you happy? Do you still feel happy when you look at your reflection in the mirror, out of breath and drenched in sweat? Does it still worth it?”
“I don’t kn―”
“Are you happy, Jongin?”
He doesn’t know the answer. Even after Joonmyun and Minseok left, and he’s sitting amongst the thousands of fans at SHINee’s 10th anniversary concert, watching as the five of them shed tears while the crowd bursts into deafening cheers and chants, he still can’t figure it out. Jongin studies each and every member’s glowing smiles on their tear stricken faces, and wonders if that’s the kind of happiness that he is looking for.
After the concert ends, he goes to drink with Taemin and Sehun, makes fun of the former crying, makes fun of the latter puking somewhere on their way back, and mumbles her name in his sleep. When he wakes up at 5 in the morning and finds himself in “the clouds”, his two friends still knocked out and sprawled on the hard floor, snoring away not far from him, he thinks about the kind of happiness she meant.
He stares at his phone. Still no message from her.
Jongin turns down the offer to be the lead of a drama about star-crossed lovers from two different worlds, and even one to be in the new sub-unit. Instead he’s going to Japan with Taemin, Moonkyu and Kwonho. The fantastic four, as they’re dubbed. Jongin had laughed at that. They used to joke about publishing a book on the best street foods back in the trainee days, hopping on and off the train as they throw their heads back laughing without a care of the scrutinizing eyes. Maybe they can do it for real now.
While he arranges his clothes to fit into his bag, Kyungsoo looks on worriedly. All ten members are gathered in his room, and suddenly it feels a lot smaller. Baekhyun says nothing but his concern, too is clear. Luhan only smiles. Even Chanyeol is quiet.
“Don’t worry about me,” he says, one hand on Sehun’s shoulder. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
“It’s not because you’re a kid that we’re worried,” Kyungsoo returns.
“Yeah. You didn’t even invite me along.” Sehun’s mouth quirks.
“You still want to be on stage and dance.”
“And you don’t?”
Jongin fiddles with his phone, thoughts running in his mind. “Not now,” he answers, voice surprisingly strong. “Now I just want to be Jongin.”
It is Baekhyun who breaks the silence that fell between them. He places a hand on the younger one’s shoulder and squeezes it. “We understand.”
“I’m gonna miss you.”
Jongin casts his gaze the other way and see Yixing far at the corner, his head low. When the latter looks up and their eyes connect, he gives a small smile and recounts his blessings.
He doesn’t run into Soojung again. But there are occasional texts, especially after he informed her about his travel plans. She was happy for him, and told him that she mastered the sign language and off to learn braille next. He was happy for her too.
The question never floats again.
Six years after she left, four after they last saw each other, two after he enlisted, Jongin stands on the stage again. EXO is ten years old now. He laughs with the others when Sehun makes fun of Joonmyun’s age, and again when Jongdae jokes about his face when he cries.
“Shut up.” And the laughter erupts again.
When the concert draws to a close, he starts tearing up as well, so he hides behind his members and quietly wipes his tears. The encore stage is frenzied and somehow melancholic, and Jongin stands alone at one end of the stage as he watches the confetti cascading down like glittering snowflakes.
Before making his way back to the main stage after Baekhyun calls everyone to gather around for their final bow, Jongin glances at the left side of the audience, and in the front row he finds Taemin who has a pair of long confetti pasted on both side of his face to make a crying expression. He laughs at his friend, and then his eyes fall on the person next to Jinri who wasn’t there in the beginning.
Suddenly a new wave of emotions comes rushing in. The flashbacks from all those years return like a personal film in his mind. He remembers the kids they were, the adults they are now, and everything in between. Her eyes are still pristine and she is still beautiful. He knows she remembers, too. A smile forms across their lips. He’s happy.
Kai/Krystal
Angst | 3820 words
Looking back, she was always there for him whenever he needed someone. She made sure to reply his messages and never forget to return his calls, no matter how long it might take; laughing at him when his jokes weren’t funny. She was already there when he first arrived at the company, with bright eyes and brighter dreams, although she wasn’t an official member of the town, as they liked to call the company, until a year later. She was there holding his hand when he finally came to a realization that his dream was actually coming true, in the midst of blinding spotlights and camera flashes and deafening screams chanting their names, with sparkly little confetti floating around like dreamy snowflakes.
She was always there for him. So he wonders now, as he stares at an old photo of them taken years back, her eyes crinkling into thin crescent slits and her smile wide and genuine, why can’t she let him do the same?
“She still doesn’t contact you?”
Jongin shakes his head brusquely before downing his glass of mixed soju. The drink warms his insides up a little bit. After all, winter is settling in, so the air gets colder every second. He exhales a sigh and watches the white mist coming out from his mouth. “Nope,” comes as his only reply. “She doesn’t contact you either?”
“Just a birthday wish, and a reply for hers. But she contacts Minho-hyung though.”
He narrows his eyes at his friend, brows knitting and forehead creasing. “She does?”
“Every once in a while, as far as I know. Sometimes she tells him to say hi to me. But other than whether she’s doing fine I never asked anything else,” Taemin explains. He grabs a small piece of meat with his chopsticks and pops it into his mouth after blowing the heat off. “They’re good friends. You know that too, right?” he adds later when he notices the colours in Jongin’s eyes washing out.
“I know,” he says, and he truly means it. That is not Jongin’s actual concern. He has heard about her from others―Jinri definitely, sometimes Jessica when they run into each other, Joonmyun and even the stylists who used to work with her. It seems that she keeps in touch with everyone but him, and that is what bothers him the most.
“She just needs time, I guess. And space too,” Taemin tells him with a shrug.
“I gave her that. I am.”
“Maybe she needs more.” A smile tugs on Taemin’s lips, warm and encouraging as it has always been all these years of their friendship. His overgrown bangs are covering his eyes and Jongin thinks it’s funny that Taemin looks almost the same as he was back in their trainee days. “And you, you need to stop drinking. You’re really something when you’re drunk,” he laughs a little as he pulls Jongin’s glass away when the latter is about to pour himself more alcohol.
Jongin smiles back, or at least tries to because he knows not to let his friend worry needlessly over him. When Taemin mumbles something about the two of them should be heading back, he only nods and lets his mind drifts away while he sits in the almost empty train staring into spaces.
He was getting a drink from the vending machine when he heard soft giggles coming from the hallway. When he peeked outside, he saw two figures of young girls walking side by side, hairs long and black and shiny.
“Did you see Yunho-oppa’s hair? He always looks so scary but I couldn’t stop laughing just now!”
The shorter of the two turned slightly so Jongin could see her side profile. Unlike most of the kids there she was wearing her school uniform. There was laughter escaping from her mouth as she told the other girl something funny that she probably had seen or heard earlier. Her eyes were crinkling up into perfect slits that reminded him the brilliant moon he sees during his train rides home.
That was the first time he saw Jung Soojung.
The news of f(x)’s disbandment was announced seven years after their debut. The group never achieved the kind of success that the company had aimed for them. Soojung saw it all along, or so she told him.
She was the second to pack her things and leave the apartment she shared with her members. The first was Amber, all eager to start working behind the scenes with the crews. Sunyoung and Jinri left together, the former heading towards her newfound love of musicals and stage plays while the latter stays behind and acts in the kind of dramas she doesn’t watch and endorse labels she doesn’t wear. Qian was the last to go, because there is a lot of baggage to pack to Rotorua, the place of her dreams where her new life awaits. It wasn’t that hard anyway, since the five of them didn’t really stay in the dorm that much unless during promotion periods.
She was going to see the world, Soojung said before she left. Finishing the remaints of her bucket list too. He couldn’t understand it at first because they had seen almost every part of the world touring with the others from the company. They travelled to places they saw on television and magazine spreads, and places they never even heard of before.
But the more places Jongin visited with his members, the more stages he stands on, the more people he meets, the more he begins to understand the kind of world she wants to see. Almost two years have passed since her departure, sixteen months since she last came in contact with him. Now and then when he looks out from the window of airplane and stares at the earth beneath him, he wonders what kind of world Soojung is seeing.
“Someone spotted her in Macau.”
Jongin looks up only to find Kyungsoo settling down next to him, back leaning against the wall, towel hanging around his neck, sweats beaded on his forehead. “Who?” the former raises a brow before he offers the older boy his bottle of water.
“Krystal. Soojung. Whatever name she goes by now,” Kyungsoo mumbles before taking a chug.
“How’d you know?”
“Internet,” he says it like it’s the most obvious thing ever. “People saw her at some street stall, dressed in t-shirt and jeans, pretty much like an ordinary person.”
Jongin wants to ask more, like what is she doing there, or if she is doing alright, and he also wants to say that Soojung is never ordinary, that the adjective should never be used to describe her, no matter what she does or wears. But he keeps silent instead and pretends it doesn’t bother him as much.
“Go find her,” Kyungsoo adds later when the silence continues.
“We have a photoshoot tomorrow. And the day after―”
“Is photoshoot more important to you?” he deadpans. He doesn’t budge when Jongin glances at him, legs outstretched and gaze seemingly fixed on something that is not within the four walls. “Go.”
Jongin doesn’t respond. He doesn’t go to look for her either. But he keeps her whereabouts in check, and his phone close to him as usual, just in case she calls. But she never does.
Sometimes Jongin would wonder how they would meet in an alternate universe. Perhaps they would meet in the deserted corner of their school’s library, her snoozing off with her book open. Perhaps they would run into each other in front of a coffee house on a rainy day, he would accidentally knock the coffee she’s holding off, it would spill onto her shirt and annoy the hell out of her. Perhaps they would just be two normal teenagers walking past each other on the streets while holding someone else’s hand, not even giving one another a single glance.
He wonders if he should be grateful that he met Soojung in this universe despite their circumstances. At least, they are not two complete strangers who don’t even know the other’s existence. At least, Jongin thinks, in this crooked universe, they are in love with each other, however painfully so. At the very least, he does.
A little more than two months later, Jongin flies in to Sydney with the rest of EXO. It’s the final leg of their world tour, and the second last one before Joonmyun and Minseok head to the army for the sake of getting it done early. They will be going on hiatus after that. Words are going around that there might be sub-units in the meantime, but Jongin knows better than to get his hopes up.
In their free time he sneaks out of the hotel dressed as casually as possible, the bill of his cap tugged down, bare faced and bouncy steps. He goes to wherever his feet lead him to, making turns and taking detours and still keeping his location in check. Without realizing his steps bring him to a quiet street, and somehow a certain convenience store wedged between faded blues and washed out whites, lined up in a row of an old building, attracted him in.
He wanders through rack after rack, passing by fridges after fridges before finally settling on the cheapest coffee out of the many cans. He takes time searching for enough dollar notes amongst the wons, and while he does so someone else cuts the line but he doesn’t really mind.
Until he hears the voice that appears so much in his dreams every night yet still misses every day. He drops his coins along with his jaw. Hearing the clanking of the coins against the tiles, the girl turns around and helps gathering them all up. His foot stayed glued to the floor. He blinked and blinked to make sure this is not one of his recurring dreams he’s had for the past few years before finally calling out her name, delicate and brittle as if she might break.
She looks up with a stunned expression on her face, eyes widened at the name she hasn’t heard people addressing her with in a while, more upon seeing the person with a parallel look on his. Time seems to stop for them, but then again maybe it has a long time ago.
He ran into her once at the emergency staircase that anybody hardly uses. Jongin was running down because the elevator was taking too much time and he didn’t have enough of that ― the new volume of his favourite manhwa was coming out on that day and he was dying to know the continuation from the previous one.
She was somewhere in between tenth and fifth floor. Jongin can’t remember the specific details, but he remembers the way her long raven hair covered most of her face as she sat hugging her knees with her back against the wall. She was crying when he found her.
He was never good at consoling anyone, but he didn’t feel right to leave her all by herself either, so he just stood opposite her with his hands inside his jacket. “It’s pretty cliché to cry alone at the staircase, y’know.”
“Shut up,” she returned, face still buried.
“Want to hear a joke? It might make you feel better.”
Soojung looked up and met his eyes, hers red and damp. “Okay.”
He settled down next to her, suddenly his favourite manhwa was no longer his priority. He told her a joke that he had heard from Taemin, who heard it from Kyuhyun, who gotten it from Changmin. It was one of those things that were passed down from generations to generations. Her face stayed frozen though her eyes had begun to dry up.
“You call that a joke?” she asked, raising a brow.
“It’s not funny?”
“Not a bit.” A shake of head. She still broke into laughter nevertheless, though not really because of his joke. “But I do feel better.” A smile, more blinding the spotlights and flashes he will ever see.
At that moment, Jongin thought he would give anything just to see her smile.
Anything, he thinks about it now.
He imagines meeting her again sometimes. Maybe it’d be at some nice café in Paris, freshly brewed coffee and delicious croissants fragrances filling the air. Maybe they would stumble upon each other when their umbrellas collide at the streets of London, or while waiting for their hotdogs in New York. Maybe she would just randomly turn up at the company, smiling as if nothing ever happened.
“How have you been?” she asks, as if she never left.
Having a reunion with her in a rundown convenience store is not something he ever expected. After all fate has always been funny to the both of them, always finding a way to intervene and twist things around.
Her hair is slightly shorter now, and darker too. Somehow she appears so much more mature compared to the young girl in school uniform with bouncy steps in his memories. Her smile is more confident, her eyes clearer and brighter, her words flow more freely.
Jongin smiles back. “Same old, same old.”
“Still cooped up in the clouds?”
“Yeah. Still in the clouds.”
The practice room has always been referred to the clouds, a name derived from the infamous walls. Some call it the sky, but the two of them prefer the former just for the irony of the joke not having your heads in clouds while being ‘in the clouds’.
“But now I get to tour too,” he adds.
“I heard.”
“It’s the second last leg though. Seoul’s the last one. Joonmyun-hyung and Minseok-hyung are going to enlist soon.”
“I heard.”
“You kept in touch with everyone but me. That’s a little unfair, don’t you think?”
“I know.”
He lifts his gaze from the passing cars and pedestrians to glance at her. They’re sitting close enough, shoulders barely touching. He stretches out his legs and wishes the bench is smaller. “Did you ever find it?” he asks after a while.
“Find what?” It’s her turn to look him, but he’s already redirected his gaze back forward.
He gives a slight shrug. “Whatever you said you were looking for before you left.”
She gives a small smile. “Not quite. But I think I’m getting there.”
“Will you come back once you find it?”
“I don’t know. Should I?”
“You should. Everyone misses you. Jinri, Taemin, Sehun too, the hyungs …” he trails off.
Across the street, the light turns red for the pedestrians while the cars start moving again. Just like the young girl standing beside the lamp post whose life is put on hold for a moment, Soojung waits for more from him. It never comes.
Jongin remembers that magical moment of his life when it finally dawned on him that his dream that he fought hard for came true. The confetti, the chants, the lights. Every pain and fatigue in every inch of his body vanished in less than a microsecond.
“Hey?” He heard a familiar voice calling for him, snapping him out from his reverie. “You okay?” she asked. He didn’t reply but there was a smile on his face. Soojung held out her hand for him, which he accepts after a few blinks.
He remembers the kids they were, the adults they become and everything they shared in between. He remembers her when he looks out the window and sees the pitter-patter of rain against the pane, when he sits alone at the emergency staircase and no one is there to listen to his jokes, when the spotlight is too blinding for him to see the audience so he just imagines her face instead.
He remembers, as he crushes the coffee can under his shoe before throwing it into the trash can on his way back to his hotel room, that he forgot to ask her if she missed him too.
“What do you mean you met Soojung?”
Joonmyun’s eyes are wide, creases forming in his forehead and a look of concern painting his face. Jongin sees sincerity filling the brown of his orbs, not the normal worry the older one usually gives as a leader, but from a human being to another human being. He doesn’t know how to react to that so he averts his gaze away and nods. “I ran into her at some store during our free time,” he responds.
“So? Did you guys talk?”
“A bit.”
“A bit?”
He fiddles with his earplugs and keeps his focus back and forth from the material of his pants to the safety precautions memo on the seat in front of him, still avoiding Joonmyun’s eyes. He nods again.
“What did you talk about? What is she up to now? Did you ask about her, what she’s been doing all these while? Did you ask her where she’s been and if she’s alright?”
“Ah, hyung!” Jongin glowers.
“I’m curious, okay?”
“Okay, I get it!” he rebukes, cracking a small smile afterwards. He thinks back and recalls his conversation with her as he continues to fiddle with the earplugs between his fingers. “She’s been studying a lot. Taking classes here and there. She learned Mandarin properly. A little bit of French and Japanese, too. Took up some basic cooking lessons. Explored the old homes and castles in England. Surfed and dived. And now she’s learning sign language.”
When Jongin is done recounting his answer, Joonmyun blinks and takes time to register the whole thing. “That’s a lot of stuff,” he remarks later. They fall silent for a while as the plane takes off and expands the distance between Jongin and Soojung once again. A little after the signal for seatbelts goes off, Joonmyun speaks again. “Did she mention if she’s ever coming back?”
Jongin throws his gaze outside the window, watching the island beneath the clouds becoming small until it vanishes completely from his sight. Shaking his head, he finally stops fiddling and puts on his earplugs. “No,” he murmurs softly. “But she said she’s happier now.”
“How do you measure happiness, Jongin?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Does topping the music shows still make you happy? Does hearing your fans chanting your name still make you happy? Do you still feel happy when you look at your reflection in the mirror, out of breath and drenched in sweat? Does it still worth it?”
“I don’t kn―”
“Are you happy, Jongin?”
He doesn’t know the answer. Even after Joonmyun and Minseok left, and he’s sitting amongst the thousands of fans at SHINee’s 10th anniversary concert, watching as the five of them shed tears while the crowd bursts into deafening cheers and chants, he still can’t figure it out. Jongin studies each and every member’s glowing smiles on their tear stricken faces, and wonders if that’s the kind of happiness that he is looking for.
After the concert ends, he goes to drink with Taemin and Sehun, makes fun of the former crying, makes fun of the latter puking somewhere on their way back, and mumbles her name in his sleep. When he wakes up at 5 in the morning and finds himself in “the clouds”, his two friends still knocked out and sprawled on the hard floor, snoring away not far from him, he thinks about the kind of happiness she meant.
He stares at his phone. Still no message from her.
Jongin turns down the offer to be the lead of a drama about star-crossed lovers from two different worlds, and even one to be in the new sub-unit. Instead he’s going to Japan with Taemin, Moonkyu and Kwonho. The fantastic four, as they’re dubbed. Jongin had laughed at that. They used to joke about publishing a book on the best street foods back in the trainee days, hopping on and off the train as they throw their heads back laughing without a care of the scrutinizing eyes. Maybe they can do it for real now.
While he arranges his clothes to fit into his bag, Kyungsoo looks on worriedly. All ten members are gathered in his room, and suddenly it feels a lot smaller. Baekhyun says nothing but his concern, too is clear. Luhan only smiles. Even Chanyeol is quiet.
“Don’t worry about me,” he says, one hand on Sehun’s shoulder. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
“It’s not because you’re a kid that we’re worried,” Kyungsoo returns.
“Yeah. You didn’t even invite me along.” Sehun’s mouth quirks.
“You still want to be on stage and dance.”
“And you don’t?”
Jongin fiddles with his phone, thoughts running in his mind. “Not now,” he answers, voice surprisingly strong. “Now I just want to be Jongin.”
It is Baekhyun who breaks the silence that fell between them. He places a hand on the younger one’s shoulder and squeezes it. “We understand.”
“I’m gonna miss you.”
Jongin casts his gaze the other way and see Yixing far at the corner, his head low. When the latter looks up and their eyes connect, he gives a small smile and recounts his blessings.
He doesn’t run into Soojung again. But there are occasional texts, especially after he informed her about his travel plans. She was happy for him, and told him that she mastered the sign language and off to learn braille next. He was happy for her too.
The question never floats again.
Six years after she left, four after they last saw each other, two after he enlisted, Jongin stands on the stage again. EXO is ten years old now. He laughs with the others when Sehun makes fun of Joonmyun’s age, and again when Jongdae jokes about his face when he cries.
“Shut up.” And the laughter erupts again.
When the concert draws to a close, he starts tearing up as well, so he hides behind his members and quietly wipes his tears. The encore stage is frenzied and somehow melancholic, and Jongin stands alone at one end of the stage as he watches the confetti cascading down like glittering snowflakes.
Before making his way back to the main stage after Baekhyun calls everyone to gather around for their final bow, Jongin glances at the left side of the audience, and in the front row he finds Taemin who has a pair of long confetti pasted on both side of his face to make a crying expression. He laughs at his friend, and then his eyes fall on the person next to Jinri who wasn’t there in the beginning.
Suddenly a new wave of emotions comes rushing in. The flashbacks from all those years return like a personal film in his mind. He remembers the kids they were, the adults they are now, and everything in between. Her eyes are still pristine and she is still beautiful. He knows she remembers, too. A smile forms across their lips. He’s happy.