Tucked away inside your sleeves -- 2.1
Sixty-two miles; Jinki/Taemin; PG-13
note: Too many days of not being able to sleep when I'm supposed to be asleep and wanting to sleep when I'm not supposed to be asleep. End result is too many hours spent awake and utterly unproductive in all aspects of life. And at some point of my intermittent headache, this was born. Accidentally.
part 1.1 | part 1.2 | part 1.3 | part 1.4 | part 1.5 | int. i | part 2.1
Six -- bruit gris
It was a struggle to open his eyes.
He felt as if he had been the butt of someone’s prank and his eyelids had not only been superglued to each other but to his eyeballs as well. Groaning quietly, he pressed down with enough force to send a flurry of bright sparks scrambling across the charcoal backdrop. And when that backdrop finally peeled away, what filled up his vision were the hazy quadrilaterals that made up Jinki’s bedroom - eggshell walls and vanilla furniture and lavender sheets, all jaundiced by virtue of the watery sunshine filtering in through the curtains.
Lifting a hand to his throat, he curled two fingers around the thin cord that was almost strangling him and tugged, freeing a small hard object - an earbud - from underneath his shoulder. Pulling upward with his left hand, he ran the length of the other branch of the cable between his right thumb and index finger till the second earbud turned up as well. The pair dangled in the air, drawing out lazy ellipses above his nose.
The boy twisted his head to the side, and there it was: the blurry form of Jinki’s futon, a blob of a pillow being its sole occupant. But several forceful blinks later, those fuzzy edges still refused to sharpen and the involuntary furrows dividing his brows grew deeper.
Had his vision gotten this bad?
Pulling himself into a sitting position against the wall, the boy let lose a yawn big enough to crack his jaw. When he did so though, he felt the skin around his eyes stretch and grow taut in an odd way. Running exploratory fingertips along the ridge of one cheek, his lips twisted themselves into a grimace at the crusty texture of the residue from last night’s tears. But at least the stuff flaked off easily enough. Half-swallowing the next yawn, he squinted at the plastic Mickey Mouse clock hanging over Jinki’s old desk.
It was a quarter past seven or something like that.
Friday, April first.
Taemin drew the duvet up to his chin, a soft monotonous buzz persisting in his ears.
......
You haven’t done anything wrong.
Jinki stares at him. He stares at him long enough for the tears to subside. Then he lets his line of sight shift to a box sitting behind Taemin. There is this tightness in the corners of his eyes that refuses to let his eyelids fall all the way and it is this tightness that ensures his lashes are lowered just right - ...and there! Right there. Taemin sees them again: those faint watercolor shadows blotted against hollow space beneath the older boy’s lower lids.
Jinki’s lips vaguely pull into a wan smile.
You’ve said that to me before.
Taemin blinks, a little taken aback, but he remembers the occasion soon enough.
Right. He has. The exact same words, in fact.
And they remind him of something.
Taemin beams at Jinki with as much assurance and determination as he can muster. Gingerly removing his hands from Jinki’s jaw, he lets the older boy hold up his own head. With well-practiced motions, he then combs the wayward strands of hair out of Jinki’s face and mops his cheeks clean. And once he is satisfied, he sits back on his heels and dries his palms over his thighs, eyes shimmering.
What… Jinki croaks.
The younger boy motions for him to wait and leans over to grab Jinki’s tea, the heat from the sunflowers prickling his skin. He picks up Jinki’s left hand and then his right, and wraps each of them around the body of the mug. Layering his own hands on top, he tightens their collective grip. This time - with his hands, with his eyes, with his lips - this time, with everything, he’ll tell him-
I’m here.
......
Maybe I shouldn’t-
“Ow!” The thought was interrupted when Taemin managed to walk into the bed in the process of pulling on an old faded sweater. Hissing and clutching at the newly blossoming bruise, he crumpled onto the mattress. Ow, ow, ow. When he finally sorted his head and upper limbs through the right holes in the pullover though, he figured it was just as well. This wasn’t the time to be worrying about himself.
Smoothing down his static-possessed hair, Taemin tiptoed down the hallway and timidly stuck his head around the corner. The girls were nowhere in sight but he found Jinki sitting cross-legged at the far end of the living room couch, his head laid back. The older boy was cocooned in the navy blue comforter he’d pulled from his futon, limbs all tangled up in the folds and nose peaking out from under his makeshift hood. The ceiling light had been left on and in front of Jinki, spread across the coffee table, were separate stacks of envelopes and paper.
The younger boy held his breath.
Was he asleep?
Taemin waited for a few more heartbeats before venturing closer. He gingerly lowered himself onto the other end of the couch, eyes never leaving Jinki's face. Framed by the dark blanket, the older boy's complexion looked ashen. Taemin’s lips thinned at the observation; he shoved his hands a fraction deeper into his already sagging front pocket.
Dropping his eyes down to the thin booklets lying open on the couch between the two of them, Taemin recognized that they were old tax forms. All the pages had been uniformly completed in black ink, but between the different reports, there were two sets of handwriting.
Looking up again, Taemin jumped a little when he saw that Jinki’s eyes were open. In that instant, wham, his heart threw itself against his sternum like a battering ram. Those glassy orbs drifted slightly in the younger boy’s direction but never quite made it far enough to actually look at him. And so Taemin waited. He kept on waiting - for eye contact, for some sort of reaction - but after a whole minute of staring at Jinki staring at the ceiling, he realized that Jinki wasn’t going to do anything.
His tensed shoulders dropped back into place.
In the background, the fridge stirred to life with a rather loud hum.
Taemin glanced at Jinki occasionally but the older boy stayed perfectly statuesque, eyes trained on the expanse of stucco overhead. Worrying his bottom lip, the younger boy began picking pills off his sweater. One, two, three… At some point, the fridge lapsed back into silence and nothing was there to keep singing harmony to the soft static in Taemin’s ears. Another pill, and another, and another… Somewhere in the building, a telephone went off. Five and a half rings later, someone picked up.
It didn't take long before he had accumulated a small wad of dark cotton fuzz in one sweaty palm and no more pills to harvest. His other hand, which he’d kept over the mp3 player tucked secretively inside his pocket, tightened its grip.
Now. Now! He pulled out the small rectangular device and turned it on. Fitting the left earbud into his ear, he hesitated with the right one in hand. Should I? Should I? Should I…? The song was two lines into the third verse by the time he plucked up the courage to edge closer to the navy mountain and stuff the thing into Jinki’s ear. Taemin then pulled back and stared: no response. Gathering up the tax forms, he moved them onto the coffee table before settling down more comfortably. Head pillowed on the back of the couch, he joined Jinki in scrutinizing the stucco ceiling.
It was like stargazing, he thought, except this night sky was off-white and its stellar bodies were aligned to the same rectangular plane.
Pareidolia.
After a while, he started to connect those grains and follow their shadows, making supposed sense of what didn’t make any sense at all.
Four Einsteins, six dyneins, three pi electron clouds, and two chicken wings later, the music abruptly stopped as he was just beginning to trace out his first bicycle. Eyes flying down to the blank darkened screen, he realized that the battery had just run out. Little wonder, considering how he'd left it on all night. Next to him, Jinki showed no signs of having noticed.
Just as he was racking his brain for what to do next, a thin voice broke the silence.
“I grew up in this apartment, you know.”
Taemin’s head snapped towards the older boy, eyes wide.
“The nineteen years I spent living at home. I’ve never moved before in my life, unless you count me moving into our dorms. And Haerim, she grew up here too. And so did Joohyo.” He paused, slowly taking the earbud out of his ear. Taemin wasn’t sure if that was his cue to make some small interjection and settled for winding the cord around his mp3 player.
“Actually, this used to be my grandparents' place. They moved here when my dad was in sixth grade, so he kind of grew up here too. He even went to the same junior high and high school as me; we’re alumni if you think about it that way. But then my grandpa passed away the winter of my dad’s senior year. Pneumonia, I think it was. Started out as something like a pretty bad cold, except it never went away. And since he didn’t believe in going to the doctor’s, my grandma asked around and got him some antibiotics - someone else’s prescription - thinking that it'd be enough. But by the time they started taking things seriously…”
Taemin began drawing on the stucco. Curly clouds and triangular trees; a two-storey house with a chimney even though this was a second floor apartment; trapezoidal torsos and sticks for limbs; smiley faces both right side up and upside down; bow ties and pearl necklaces…
Jinki continued his steady narrative.
“After high school, my dad went to work in the same factory as my grandma and great-uncle - ah, I forgot to say, they used to share this place with my great-uncle and his wife and kids. Pretty crowded back then. But their younger son - my younger uncle - died rather bizarrely and their marriage broke down. One day my great-aunt just got up and left, took their older son and all the money lying around the house along with her. After that…I forget if my great-uncle took off out of the blue first or if my mom and dad met first, but yeah. He disappeared. And my parents met. They met, they fell in love, they got married and then I came along. I don’t really have many memories from that period of time, but there were four of us in this place till my grandma passed away. I think I was three when that happened? Or four maybe? My dad thought about moving us somewhere smaller, but apparently I put up quite a fight against the idea. Mom told me I said I was waiting for grandma to come home. I guess I didn’t quite understand that she had died. Or what death was. She had a…what was it, a ruptured aneurysm? They took her to the hospital, but I didn’t know. I stayed over for a few days with the old couple that used to live next door, but even after my parents picked me and took me home, they never clearly told me what had happened. And then my mom found out she was pregnant with Haerim and so we stayed.”
His voice softened.
“…We stayed. So how many years does that make?”
Taemin shoved his hands under his thighs and sat on them, fingernails digging shallow crescents into the cushion like two sets of teeth marks. He twisted his head to the side in order to look at Jinki and, if only for a moment, it looked like Jinki would turn and look back at him with those dark eyes, redder now, wetter now.
“Haerim says she doesn’t want to move and Joohyo doesn’t want to either.” He breathed, something like exasperation coloring his tone. “But it’s not like this is something I want. It’s not like I want to give this place up. I spent nineteen years here! God, I was a few hours short of being born here, right in this damn living room! So why, why would I ever……but we can’t. We can’t-I can’t…I…”
Jinki’s arms emerged from beneath the comforter and he waved them around in frustration as he slipped into incoherence. He had so much he wanted to say but, overwhelmed as he was, the right words just kept on running away. Eventually, he fell silent and his hand dropped into his lap.
Taemin swallowed the lump in his throat and grabbed one of Jinki's wrists. Their eyes met for the first time that day.
The younger boy opened his mouth and both of them waited for something to come out.
“I’m…I’m-”
“Joohyo is sick.” Haerim padded into the room with puffy eyes and bed hair, dressed only in her pajamas - baby blue with yellow stars. “She hasn’t been feeling well these past two days but now she has a cough and a fever.”
Jinki flung off his comforter at the news, revealing that he was still fully dressed in the clothes that he'd been wearing yesterday. He jumped to his feet, swaying for a precarious second and upsetting a pile of letter-sized envelopes in the process. As he picked them up off the floor, he said. “Don’t walk around barefoot and go put something thicker on. You’ll get sick this way too.”
Haerim hid one foot behind the other, biting back a reflexive retort.
“Have you checked her temperature yet?”
“Only with my hand; she’s pretty warm. I was planning on getting out the thermometer after I told you.” She followed Jinki's movements with her eyes and when he headed for the front door, she automatically made to follow. “Where-”
“I’m gonna go pick up something for her cold. Pears and honey too.” He doubled back for his jacket and wallet when he realized he didn’t have them. “Won't cure her but they’ll make her feel better.”
Haerim jabbed a thumb in the direction of the bathroom. “It's true that we don't have pears but I’m pretty sure we still have some medicine in the-”
“They’re all expired.”
“What? But I took them last month…”
“They were expired back then too.” Jinki buttoned himself up.
“Oh. Is that bad?”
“Just…make sure you check next time.” He stepped into his shoes.
“But wait, how do you know that they’re ex-”
“Haerim, go put on some socks and a cardigan, then make Joohyo something to eat. Fluids, blankets, wash your hands often, you know the drill. And you guys can go ahead and start breakfast without me. I’ll be back in a bit.” The sound of the door closing left no room for disagreements.
Haerim threw up her hands. When she whirled around, ready to stalk back to the room she shared with her younger sister, she paused at the sight of Taemin on the couch. The two of them shared a stiff, awkward smile. Growing self-conscious, she patted down her hair and tucked the loose tresses behind her ears.
“Morning…”
“Morning.” Taemin rose up and gave her a little wave.
Silence.
“Um, why don’t you go keep your sister company? I’ll make breakfast.”
“Oh don’t worry about that. I’ll get to it after I get dressed. You’re the guest so…”
Taemin almost flinched at the term.
“It’s okay. Let me make myself useful. I’m not doing anything else anyway.” He moved towards the kitchen, tossing her what he hoped was an appropriately cheerful and appropriately casual grin. (Sometimes he wished he had been born with Jonghyun's crooked smiles and easy charm.) “My cooking is edible and I won't set the place on fire, I promise! What does she usually have when she’s sick?”
“Juk or soup. Plain juk this time I guess, since there’s rice left over from last night. She probably won't eat all of it so I'll have whatever is left over.”
“Right.” He pulled out the small tub of rice from the fridge and lifted the lid, peering down at its contents and making quick calculations inside his head. Opening the cabinets where the cookware was stored, he plucked out one of the pots and spun around to show her. “Can I use this?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Okay. I’ve got this. You go wash up and check up on your sister.” He gave her a thumbs up.
Turning back, he made himself look busy. Juk, juk - rice, water, chicken broth. Rice, water, chicken broth... Over the sound of the tap as he rinsed out the pot and measured out the amount of water needed by eye, he caught Haerim’s quiet murmur of thanks. Rice, water, water, water...
Once he was sure that the girl was out of sight, Taemin’s shoulders slumped a little and he stopped exaggerating the lightness of his motions. Water, water, check. Rice, rice, rice... He scooped it all into the pot and broke the big lump into smaller pieces. Rice, check. Broth, broth, broth... A few minutes later, he leaned back against the counter, staring at the watery white concoction as it began showing signs of life.
Haerim returned with her hair pulled up into a ponytail and her small frame draped under a large woolen cardigan. She smiled again in greeting, a small uncertain quirk to her lips, and Taemin smiled back. Her eyes - very much like Jinki’s, he noted - slipped from his face to the slightly grubby-looking pot sitting on the stove and her gaze darkened.
“How is she?”
“How is he?”
They asked in startling unison.
Taemin fidgeted a little, toes curled against the linoleum. “Jinki-hyung’s….”
“Has he been sleeping okay? Since I-since, you know, Tuesday?” She leaned herself against the entryway to the kitchen.
He contemplated the degree of honesty with which he should answer that. “He...he has, well, not much. Not enough, I guess. The most he slept was probably on the train here.”
She nodded grimly. “He didn’t eat much last night either.”
“I’ve tried making sure he doesn’t skip meals, but…well, he doesn't skip exactly. He eats. He gives in and eats. Just, not much...not enough...”
The corners of her mouth turned downward and she crossed her arms over her chest. “And he says I’m the child. Why does he do this? He clearly knows better and yet he doesn’t do better.”
Taemin couldn’t answer her.
She yanked on her sleeves and rearranged the loose folds. “Just who does he think he is?”
“I’ll talk to him!” He offered almost too eagerly. “I’ll talk to him. About it. Again. And I’ll get him to take care of himself, I'll try, but…but don’t be hard on him.” He thought back to Jinki’s earlier monologue, to his vulnerability, and he couldn't help the little bit of resentment that crawled up his spine. It pulled him up to his full height and deepened his voice. “He’s struggling too, so don’t blame him for anything.”
“I don’t.” Haerim scowled and hunched her shoulders defensively. “I just…I don’t. I wouldn’t do that.”
“He really needs you to be on his side right now.”
“I know, I know!” She bristled. “Don’t you think I’d know?”
Taemin shrank back at the boom in her voice. “Sorry…”
“It’s just…” Her voice wavered and suddenly she dropped down into a squat, face in her hands. "I know. It’s just..."
They remained motionless in their respective positions, Taemin frozen against the counter and Haerim huddled on the floor, a tableau of helplessness. Then someone began to cry, except not really, because those weren’t tears. They were words, too real for human hands to catch, trickling out between skinny fingers into the semi-silence, filling up the spaces left around the low rumble of the porridge bubbling in the pot.
“There’s so much I want to do, so much, so much. I want to do something for him too, because he can’t do it all on his own. And because I love him and it hurts and I know he hurts too. I know he thinks he needs to make everything alright and that maybe we expect him to, but that’s not how it is! I just need him to be okay too. I just want to do something so that he’s okay too. And yet I can’t. I’m old enough, aren’t I? But somehow there’s this distance between us and he’s over there and I’m here and here is the wrong place to be because I can’t, I just can’t do anything. And I hate it. I hate this…”
I want to do something for him.
Because he can’t do it all on his own.
Because I love him.
And yet I can’t.
Taemin felt a tremble working its way down from his lips to his knees and back up again. Like seismic waves washing over him, shearing his bones into splinters.
And for a moment, he forgot how to stand.
......
____a/n: hurr. the lee siblings ramble in the same way: by abusing conjunctions and agglomerating all their sentences.
[definitions]
Bruit gris. /bʀɥi/ /ɡʁi/- n; un bruit blanc aléatoire soumis à une courbe psychoacoustique d'intensité constante de telle sorte qu'un auditeur ait l'impression que l'intensité est égale pour toutes les fréquences. (a random white noise subjected to a psychoacoustic equal loudness curve such that a listener has the impression that it is equally loud at all frequencies.)
Pareidolia. /pɛɹ.aɪˈdoʊ.li.ə/ - n; the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist.
Common cold. Cannot be cured; the available medications - pain reliever, antihistamine, decongestant, cough suppressant - treat only the symptoms.
Pears. 배는 동의보감, 본초강목 등 한의학서적에서는 폐를 보호해주고 기침을 억제해 감기와 기관지 질환에 효과가 있다고 적혀있다. (In Dongui Bogam, Bencao Gangmu [Compendium of Materia Medica] and such oriental medicine books, pears are said to be effective in protecting the lungs and suppressing coughs in the case of colds and respiratory diseases.)
죽. ♥ It's congee; called it juk since I'm using Korean food names.
I can see your eyes and I
can see your face »
......
part 2.2
note: Too many days of not being able to sleep when I'm supposed to be asleep and wanting to sleep when I'm not supposed to be asleep. End result is too many hours spent awake and utterly unproductive in all aspects of life. And at some point of my intermittent headache, this was born. Accidentally.
part 1.1 | part 1.2 | part 1.3 | part 1.4 | part 1.5 | int. i | part 2.1
Six -- bruit gris
It was a struggle to open his eyes.
He felt as if he had been the butt of someone’s prank and his eyelids had not only been superglued to each other but to his eyeballs as well. Groaning quietly, he pressed down with enough force to send a flurry of bright sparks scrambling across the charcoal backdrop. And when that backdrop finally peeled away, what filled up his vision were the hazy quadrilaterals that made up Jinki’s bedroom - eggshell walls and vanilla furniture and lavender sheets, all jaundiced by virtue of the watery sunshine filtering in through the curtains.
Lifting a hand to his throat, he curled two fingers around the thin cord that was almost strangling him and tugged, freeing a small hard object - an earbud - from underneath his shoulder. Pulling upward with his left hand, he ran the length of the other branch of the cable between his right thumb and index finger till the second earbud turned up as well. The pair dangled in the air, drawing out lazy ellipses above his nose.
The boy twisted his head to the side, and there it was: the blurry form of Jinki’s futon, a blob of a pillow being its sole occupant. But several forceful blinks later, those fuzzy edges still refused to sharpen and the involuntary furrows dividing his brows grew deeper.
Had his vision gotten this bad?
Pulling himself into a sitting position against the wall, the boy let lose a yawn big enough to crack his jaw. When he did so though, he felt the skin around his eyes stretch and grow taut in an odd way. Running exploratory fingertips along the ridge of one cheek, his lips twisted themselves into a grimace at the crusty texture of the residue from last night’s tears. But at least the stuff flaked off easily enough. Half-swallowing the next yawn, he squinted at the plastic Mickey Mouse clock hanging over Jinki’s old desk.
It was a quarter past seven or something like that.
Friday, April first.
Taemin drew the duvet up to his chin, a soft monotonous buzz persisting in his ears.
......
You haven’t done anything wrong.
Jinki stares at him. He stares at him long enough for the tears to subside. Then he lets his line of sight shift to a box sitting behind Taemin. There is this tightness in the corners of his eyes that refuses to let his eyelids fall all the way and it is this tightness that ensures his lashes are lowered just right - ...and there! Right there. Taemin sees them again: those faint watercolor shadows blotted against hollow space beneath the older boy’s lower lids.
Jinki’s lips vaguely pull into a wan smile.
You’ve said that to me before.
Taemin blinks, a little taken aback, but he remembers the occasion soon enough.
Right. He has. The exact same words, in fact.
And they remind him of something.
Taemin beams at Jinki with as much assurance and determination as he can muster. Gingerly removing his hands from Jinki’s jaw, he lets the older boy hold up his own head. With well-practiced motions, he then combs the wayward strands of hair out of Jinki’s face and mops his cheeks clean. And once he is satisfied, he sits back on his heels and dries his palms over his thighs, eyes shimmering.
What… Jinki croaks.
The younger boy motions for him to wait and leans over to grab Jinki’s tea, the heat from the sunflowers prickling his skin. He picks up Jinki’s left hand and then his right, and wraps each of them around the body of the mug. Layering his own hands on top, he tightens their collective grip. This time - with his hands, with his eyes, with his lips - this time, with everything, he’ll tell him-
I’m here.
......
Maybe I shouldn’t-
“Ow!” The thought was interrupted when Taemin managed to walk into the bed in the process of pulling on an old faded sweater. Hissing and clutching at the newly blossoming bruise, he crumpled onto the mattress. Ow, ow, ow. When he finally sorted his head and upper limbs through the right holes in the pullover though, he figured it was just as well. This wasn’t the time to be worrying about himself.
Smoothing down his static-possessed hair, Taemin tiptoed down the hallway and timidly stuck his head around the corner. The girls were nowhere in sight but he found Jinki sitting cross-legged at the far end of the living room couch, his head laid back. The older boy was cocooned in the navy blue comforter he’d pulled from his futon, limbs all tangled up in the folds and nose peaking out from under his makeshift hood. The ceiling light had been left on and in front of Jinki, spread across the coffee table, were separate stacks of envelopes and paper.
The younger boy held his breath.
Was he asleep?
Taemin waited for a few more heartbeats before venturing closer. He gingerly lowered himself onto the other end of the couch, eyes never leaving Jinki's face. Framed by the dark blanket, the older boy's complexion looked ashen. Taemin’s lips thinned at the observation; he shoved his hands a fraction deeper into his already sagging front pocket.
Dropping his eyes down to the thin booklets lying open on the couch between the two of them, Taemin recognized that they were old tax forms. All the pages had been uniformly completed in black ink, but between the different reports, there were two sets of handwriting.
Looking up again, Taemin jumped a little when he saw that Jinki’s eyes were open. In that instant, wham, his heart threw itself against his sternum like a battering ram. Those glassy orbs drifted slightly in the younger boy’s direction but never quite made it far enough to actually look at him. And so Taemin waited. He kept on waiting - for eye contact, for some sort of reaction - but after a whole minute of staring at Jinki staring at the ceiling, he realized that Jinki wasn’t going to do anything.
His tensed shoulders dropped back into place.
In the background, the fridge stirred to life with a rather loud hum.
Taemin glanced at Jinki occasionally but the older boy stayed perfectly statuesque, eyes trained on the expanse of stucco overhead. Worrying his bottom lip, the younger boy began picking pills off his sweater. One, two, three… At some point, the fridge lapsed back into silence and nothing was there to keep singing harmony to the soft static in Taemin’s ears. Another pill, and another, and another… Somewhere in the building, a telephone went off. Five and a half rings later, someone picked up.
It didn't take long before he had accumulated a small wad of dark cotton fuzz in one sweaty palm and no more pills to harvest. His other hand, which he’d kept over the mp3 player tucked secretively inside his pocket, tightened its grip.
Now. Now! He pulled out the small rectangular device and turned it on. Fitting the left earbud into his ear, he hesitated with the right one in hand. Should I? Should I? Should I…? The song was two lines into the third verse by the time he plucked up the courage to edge closer to the navy mountain and stuff the thing into Jinki’s ear. Taemin then pulled back and stared: no response. Gathering up the tax forms, he moved them onto the coffee table before settling down more comfortably. Head pillowed on the back of the couch, he joined Jinki in scrutinizing the stucco ceiling.
It was like stargazing, he thought, except this night sky was off-white and its stellar bodies were aligned to the same rectangular plane.
Pareidolia.
After a while, he started to connect those grains and follow their shadows, making supposed sense of what didn’t make any sense at all.
Four Einsteins, six dyneins, three pi electron clouds, and two chicken wings later, the music abruptly stopped as he was just beginning to trace out his first bicycle. Eyes flying down to the blank darkened screen, he realized that the battery had just run out. Little wonder, considering how he'd left it on all night. Next to him, Jinki showed no signs of having noticed.
Just as he was racking his brain for what to do next, a thin voice broke the silence.
“I grew up in this apartment, you know.”
Taemin’s head snapped towards the older boy, eyes wide.
“The nineteen years I spent living at home. I’ve never moved before in my life, unless you count me moving into our dorms. And Haerim, she grew up here too. And so did Joohyo.” He paused, slowly taking the earbud out of his ear. Taemin wasn’t sure if that was his cue to make some small interjection and settled for winding the cord around his mp3 player.
“Actually, this used to be my grandparents' place. They moved here when my dad was in sixth grade, so he kind of grew up here too. He even went to the same junior high and high school as me; we’re alumni if you think about it that way. But then my grandpa passed away the winter of my dad’s senior year. Pneumonia, I think it was. Started out as something like a pretty bad cold, except it never went away. And since he didn’t believe in going to the doctor’s, my grandma asked around and got him some antibiotics - someone else’s prescription - thinking that it'd be enough. But by the time they started taking things seriously…”
Taemin began drawing on the stucco. Curly clouds and triangular trees; a two-storey house with a chimney even though this was a second floor apartment; trapezoidal torsos and sticks for limbs; smiley faces both right side up and upside down; bow ties and pearl necklaces…
Jinki continued his steady narrative.
“After high school, my dad went to work in the same factory as my grandma and great-uncle - ah, I forgot to say, they used to share this place with my great-uncle and his wife and kids. Pretty crowded back then. But their younger son - my younger uncle - died rather bizarrely and their marriage broke down. One day my great-aunt just got up and left, took their older son and all the money lying around the house along with her. After that…I forget if my great-uncle took off out of the blue first or if my mom and dad met first, but yeah. He disappeared. And my parents met. They met, they fell in love, they got married and then I came along. I don’t really have many memories from that period of time, but there were four of us in this place till my grandma passed away. I think I was three when that happened? Or four maybe? My dad thought about moving us somewhere smaller, but apparently I put up quite a fight against the idea. Mom told me I said I was waiting for grandma to come home. I guess I didn’t quite understand that she had died. Or what death was. She had a…what was it, a ruptured aneurysm? They took her to the hospital, but I didn’t know. I stayed over for a few days with the old couple that used to live next door, but even after my parents picked me and took me home, they never clearly told me what had happened. And then my mom found out she was pregnant with Haerim and so we stayed.”
His voice softened.
“…We stayed. So how many years does that make?”
Taemin shoved his hands under his thighs and sat on them, fingernails digging shallow crescents into the cushion like two sets of teeth marks. He twisted his head to the side in order to look at Jinki and, if only for a moment, it looked like Jinki would turn and look back at him with those dark eyes, redder now, wetter now.
“Haerim says she doesn’t want to move and Joohyo doesn’t want to either.” He breathed, something like exasperation coloring his tone. “But it’s not like this is something I want. It’s not like I want to give this place up. I spent nineteen years here! God, I was a few hours short of being born here, right in this damn living room! So why, why would I ever……but we can’t. We can’t-I can’t…I…”
Jinki’s arms emerged from beneath the comforter and he waved them around in frustration as he slipped into incoherence. He had so much he wanted to say but, overwhelmed as he was, the right words just kept on running away. Eventually, he fell silent and his hand dropped into his lap.
Taemin swallowed the lump in his throat and grabbed one of Jinki's wrists. Their eyes met for the first time that day.
The younger boy opened his mouth and both of them waited for something to come out.
“I’m…I’m-”
“Joohyo is sick.” Haerim padded into the room with puffy eyes and bed hair, dressed only in her pajamas - baby blue with yellow stars. “She hasn’t been feeling well these past two days but now she has a cough and a fever.”
Jinki flung off his comforter at the news, revealing that he was still fully dressed in the clothes that he'd been wearing yesterday. He jumped to his feet, swaying for a precarious second and upsetting a pile of letter-sized envelopes in the process. As he picked them up off the floor, he said. “Don’t walk around barefoot and go put something thicker on. You’ll get sick this way too.”
Haerim hid one foot behind the other, biting back a reflexive retort.
“Have you checked her temperature yet?”
“Only with my hand; she’s pretty warm. I was planning on getting out the thermometer after I told you.” She followed Jinki's movements with her eyes and when he headed for the front door, she automatically made to follow. “Where-”
“I’m gonna go pick up something for her cold. Pears and honey too.” He doubled back for his jacket and wallet when he realized he didn’t have them. “Won't cure her but they’ll make her feel better.”
Haerim jabbed a thumb in the direction of the bathroom. “It's true that we don't have pears but I’m pretty sure we still have some medicine in the-”
“They’re all expired.”
“What? But I took them last month…”
“They were expired back then too.” Jinki buttoned himself up.
“Oh. Is that bad?”
“Just…make sure you check next time.” He stepped into his shoes.
“But wait, how do you know that they’re ex-”
“Haerim, go put on some socks and a cardigan, then make Joohyo something to eat. Fluids, blankets, wash your hands often, you know the drill. And you guys can go ahead and start breakfast without me. I’ll be back in a bit.” The sound of the door closing left no room for disagreements.
Haerim threw up her hands. When she whirled around, ready to stalk back to the room she shared with her younger sister, she paused at the sight of Taemin on the couch. The two of them shared a stiff, awkward smile. Growing self-conscious, she patted down her hair and tucked the loose tresses behind her ears.
“Morning…”
“Morning.” Taemin rose up and gave her a little wave.
Silence.
“Um, why don’t you go keep your sister company? I’ll make breakfast.”
“Oh don’t worry about that. I’ll get to it after I get dressed. You’re the guest so…”
Taemin almost flinched at the term.
“It’s okay. Let me make myself useful. I’m not doing anything else anyway.” He moved towards the kitchen, tossing her what he hoped was an appropriately cheerful and appropriately casual grin. (Sometimes he wished he had been born with Jonghyun's crooked smiles and easy charm.) “My cooking is edible and I won't set the place on fire, I promise! What does she usually have when she’s sick?”
“Juk or soup. Plain juk this time I guess, since there’s rice left over from last night. She probably won't eat all of it so I'll have whatever is left over.”
“Right.” He pulled out the small tub of rice from the fridge and lifted the lid, peering down at its contents and making quick calculations inside his head. Opening the cabinets where the cookware was stored, he plucked out one of the pots and spun around to show her. “Can I use this?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Okay. I’ve got this. You go wash up and check up on your sister.” He gave her a thumbs up.
Turning back, he made himself look busy. Juk, juk - rice, water, chicken broth. Rice, water, chicken broth... Over the sound of the tap as he rinsed out the pot and measured out the amount of water needed by eye, he caught Haerim’s quiet murmur of thanks. Rice, water, water, water...
Once he was sure that the girl was out of sight, Taemin’s shoulders slumped a little and he stopped exaggerating the lightness of his motions. Water, water, check. Rice, rice, rice... He scooped it all into the pot and broke the big lump into smaller pieces. Rice, check. Broth, broth, broth... A few minutes later, he leaned back against the counter, staring at the watery white concoction as it began showing signs of life.
Haerim returned with her hair pulled up into a ponytail and her small frame draped under a large woolen cardigan. She smiled again in greeting, a small uncertain quirk to her lips, and Taemin smiled back. Her eyes - very much like Jinki’s, he noted - slipped from his face to the slightly grubby-looking pot sitting on the stove and her gaze darkened.
“How is she?”
“How is he?”
They asked in startling unison.
Taemin fidgeted a little, toes curled against the linoleum. “Jinki-hyung’s….”
“Has he been sleeping okay? Since I-since, you know, Tuesday?” She leaned herself against the entryway to the kitchen.
He contemplated the degree of honesty with which he should answer that. “He...he has, well, not much. Not enough, I guess. The most he slept was probably on the train here.”
She nodded grimly. “He didn’t eat much last night either.”
“I’ve tried making sure he doesn’t skip meals, but…well, he doesn't skip exactly. He eats. He gives in and eats. Just, not much...not enough...”
The corners of her mouth turned downward and she crossed her arms over her chest. “And he says I’m the child. Why does he do this? He clearly knows better and yet he doesn’t do better.”
Taemin couldn’t answer her.
She yanked on her sleeves and rearranged the loose folds. “Just who does he think he is?”
“I’ll talk to him!” He offered almost too eagerly. “I’ll talk to him. About it. Again. And I’ll get him to take care of himself, I'll try, but…but don’t be hard on him.” He thought back to Jinki’s earlier monologue, to his vulnerability, and he couldn't help the little bit of resentment that crawled up his spine. It pulled him up to his full height and deepened his voice. “He’s struggling too, so don’t blame him for anything.”
“I don’t.” Haerim scowled and hunched her shoulders defensively. “I just…I don’t. I wouldn’t do that.”
“He really needs you to be on his side right now.”
“I know, I know!” She bristled. “Don’t you think I’d know?”
Taemin shrank back at the boom in her voice. “Sorry…”
“It’s just…” Her voice wavered and suddenly she dropped down into a squat, face in her hands. "I know. It’s just..."
They remained motionless in their respective positions, Taemin frozen against the counter and Haerim huddled on the floor, a tableau of helplessness. Then someone began to cry, except not really, because those weren’t tears. They were words, too real for human hands to catch, trickling out between skinny fingers into the semi-silence, filling up the spaces left around the low rumble of the porridge bubbling in the pot.
“There’s so much I want to do, so much, so much. I want to do something for him too, because he can’t do it all on his own. And because I love him and it hurts and I know he hurts too. I know he thinks he needs to make everything alright and that maybe we expect him to, but that’s not how it is! I just need him to be okay too. I just want to do something so that he’s okay too. And yet I can’t. I’m old enough, aren’t I? But somehow there’s this distance between us and he’s over there and I’m here and here is the wrong place to be because I can’t, I just can’t do anything. And I hate it. I hate this…”
I want to do something for him.
Because he can’t do it all on his own.
Because I love him.
And yet I can’t.
Taemin felt a tremble working its way down from his lips to his knees and back up again. Like seismic waves washing over him, shearing his bones into splinters.
And for a moment, he forgot how to stand.
......
____a/n: hurr. the lee siblings ramble in the same way: by abusing conjunctions and agglomerating all their sentences.
[definitions]
Bruit gris. /bʀɥi/ /ɡʁi/- n; un bruit blanc aléatoire soumis à une courbe psychoacoustique d'intensité constante de telle sorte qu'un auditeur ait l'impression que l'intensité est égale pour toutes les fréquences. (a random white noise subjected to a psychoacoustic equal loudness curve such that a listener has the impression that it is equally loud at all frequencies.)
Pareidolia. /pɛɹ.aɪˈdoʊ.li.ə/ - n; the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist.
Common cold. Cannot be cured; the available medications - pain reliever, antihistamine, decongestant, cough suppressant - treat only the symptoms.
Pears. 배는 동의보감, 본초강목 등 한의학서적에서는 폐를 보호해주고 기침을 억제해 감기와 기관지 질환에 효과가 있다고 적혀있다. (In Dongui Bogam, Bencao Gangmu [Compendium of Materia Medica] and such oriental medicine books, pears are said to be effective in protecting the lungs and suppressing coughs in the case of colds and respiratory diseases.)
죽. ♥ It's congee; called it juk since I'm using Korean food names.
I can see your eyes and I
can see your face »
......
part 2.2