Imaginary & Delusional
imaginary & delusional. dark comedy. some people have bonnie & clyde. onew's got sunny. who might be a figment of his imagination. or might be the realest thing ever.
It’s ridiculous that he’s getting so much flack for having an invisible girlfriend, but he is. And he’s getting a lot of it. It’s not his fault though, she’s the one who shows up just randomly one day at his chicken shop, laughing at the way his hair folds under his hat. And then she walks him home, holding his hand when they cross the street for safety reasons and then that is that. Girlfriend. How is he supposed to know she is imaginary?
She is the kind of person who doesn’t believe in rainbows but looks out for them in joyous disgust. She curls her toes whenever she sits on the toilet. She doesn't believe that dinosaurs had ever existed even with scientific evidence. She likes to sample television shows, only watching the first five minutes of a show and never getting back to it but swearing it is her favorite. She likes the taste of sour milk and slightly pink meat and she sometimes eats things with a knife even though you aren't supposed to. She says the only way to understand a song is to either put the volume on full blast or to put it on complete silence and just let the feelings wash over. She isn't a fan of people under 50 and people over 40 or people who were born in the country Croatia but she insists this doesn't make her racist. She loves the way fire smells. And she loves chicken - just like him, or at least pretends to.
He learns all of this in his first week of meeting her, because she loves to chat and although their conversations are mostly one sided, Onew never minds. It’s probably the chicken bond that gets to connect them the most rather than their stimulating talks because their first introduction statements go a little like this:
"Your mouth reminds me of the Chesire cat from Alice in Wonderland." he said when she wouldn’t stop staring at the top of his hair and wouldn’t stop laughing about it (he had just tried to color the tips red and somehow they turned an awful shade of pink so he was covering it with a hat.)
"And you have a really big Adam's apple."
Profound.
So it doesn’t really make any sense that his friends are on his balls, giving him the most utter grief, telling him in various ways that he’s got to cut her loose.
“You guys are just jealous that I’m in a relationship.”
“Delusion number 1,” Key states. Key’s his friend that has great hair. He’s also the one that advises Onew to dye his tips red and subsequently is the one who laughs the most when he attempts to do it. “You can’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t exist.”
“Okay, but she does exist. Her name is Sunny like the SUN.” Onew says proudly as if she’s listening in and taking notes on what he remembers right. (It’s short for Sunkyu she claims, and she frowns when she tells him this, her curvy lips turning downward like a puzzle. It was the worst thing ever being named Sunkyu, not even worth a real acknowledgement and as soon as she was able to talk she had coined herself the nickname Sunny, dropped the -kyu. SUNNY was so American, so bright and bold, and telling. Sunkyu would have hid in the back of the room answering questions only when called upon but Sunny would have been the teacher's pet answering every question without raising her hand, would have been able to catch every animal on her parents farm with bare hands without being told to, would trade weed for advice in order to be considered a good friend to absolute strangers. So the name stuck.)
“Delusion number 2 ,” Key continues, eyeing Onew up a bit when he continues to smile with his whole gum baring, staring at the back wall of the shop where nothing is. “No one is named Sunny. That is just social suicide.”
“Sonny and Cher.”
“SU-nny, not SO-nny.”
“The movie Sunny.”
“So she’s a movie now? Not a person?”
“How about Sony?”
“The electronic brand, hyung?!”
“She’s a great person guys. You guys will just have to meet her in person. There’s no way you won’t like her.” Onew pats Minho and Jonghyun on the back for reassurance because they’ve both been quiet with fret and worry this entire time, their eyebrows hunched and their chins quivering in unison.
“It’s not that we don’t believe you hyung, it’s just…” Minho starts and then stops because he has no point to make with no point given.
“You’ll love her, trust. She’s got a smile, like this,” Onew points to his own lips and imitates a funny shaped curve stopping when he gets to his left ear, and then he leans over with a whisper, coyly sticking his hands above his chest with huge circular motions, “and she’s got really great tits you guys. HUGE.”
This might peak Jonghyun and Minho’s interests a bit but Key remains unimpressed, shellacking the corner of the coffee table while rolling an eye or two.
It’s true though. Sunny’s got a great rack.
She lets Onew take a peek at it the first time she’s over at his place. They always meet at his place, never hers. She tells him she’s going to take a shower and maybe this is a missed cue because Onew’s always a bit slow on the uptake but she leaves with a disgruntled sigh and when she comes back she’s in a better mood, peeking around his wall, waiting for a reaction.
Onew’s making popcorn however, so he completely misses the chance to see Sunny in a towel, and instead he has to make due with seeing her in nothing but a wet shirt and a pair of his crusty old boxers. The wet shirt does him in fully, and the popcorn pops at the cataclysmic right time in the background, almost like a sonnet in rhythm when she walks towards him, almost bouncing with glee. She bounces right to him, the full weight of her breasts exposed in this little white shirt and Onew cheeses hard, offering her popcorn when she suggests letting something else pop instead.
And then there’s this other time, Onew remembers it so fondly he has it etched into his head as one of his top ten greatest living moments, where it’s just the two of them and they’re playing an intense game of parcheesi when she suddenly yawns and feigns boredom. Her hair is short and purple now and she cites that it’s inhumanly scratchy and requests that he scratch for her. So he does, he scratches it with great care until she’s not itchy anymore.
“You would make for a great professional hair scratcher,” she tells him after when they decide to watch television. A new serial drama is on and it is one where there is a lot of espionage and pretty people combined. Sunny swears this is her new favorite show. “You should really take it up as a profession.”
“Thanks! But I do really love my chicken shop...it took me years to obtain.”
“True.”
“Yup. Chicken.”
“Well what about a body scratcher instead?” Sunny suggests, lifting her shirt up a bit to reveal the flatness of her tummy and the tease of a lime green bra. “My breasts are feeling kind of itchy, do you think you can scratch the underside?”
“I’ve never um, scratched breasts before, I don’t know…”
“It’s the same as hair silly, just let your hands do all the thinking.” And then without much else Sunny grabs Onew’s joker hands and places them on her stomach, her weird lips curving and demanding him to scratch. So he lifts the edge of her bra up, letting his fingers creep in, and where his fingers meet skin is so divine because it is where the skin folds and creates mounds of cuppery. Onew touches breasts like he likes it and now he can officially declare and represent truly that Sunny’s got a great rack.
Because she does.
He tells her this when they are on the way to meet his friends at Taemin’s new place.
“You’ve got great boobs. Taemin’s going to love them. He’s a bit of a pervert.”
“Can’t wait to meet him.”
It’s a housewarming party but no one else is invited except for Key, Jonghyun and Minho. This is because his friends don’t want anyone else to see the crazy but they tell Onew it is because they want to keep it intimate. Onew’s so bad at seeing through bullshit lately that this flies by him, completely okay, and there he is with Sunny at the $.99 store trying to find a bouquet of flowers that looks presentable to take.
“It’s not that I don’t have any money,” he explains in his serious but hardly used grown up tone, “I just never think about getting other people presents until it is too last minute and all the good shops are closed.”
“What are you going to give me on my birthday, Jinki?” Sunny calls Onew by his real name Jinki because she accidentally stumbled upon his yearbook while trying to find the bathroom one night and discovered that his real name is Jinki and well, that is a keeper of a name.
“Whatever you want, sunshine.”
“I don’t need anything materialistic.” Onew beams at his girl, finally picking up a fruity corsage that’s been painted on. Sunny is simply awesome because she doesn’t believe in the superficial needs of today’s society and Onew loves that about her. It has nothing to do with the fact that she doesn’t exist and therefore things of property have no value to her. Not that.
They get to the party late because they make one wrong turn and it turns into a makeout session in an alleyway until a cat spots them and Sunny tells Onew that cats are a good omen which is a sign they need to continue on. Taemin opens the door unsure of what to expect but Onew’s wearing a burly coat and he’s raising his arms so that even if a girl of substance was standing behind him it would be hard to tell. They hug and cheer since it’s been a while since they saw each other and suddenly the three drunk stooges are joining in, and the five of them are hugging with absolute joy and excitement before Key brings up what’s forgotten in between sips of the Chardonnay that’s been spilling on Jonghyun’s back the entirety of the group hug.
“That’s right, where’s this girlfriend of yours man?”
“Ah, Sunny! She’s right over there!”
Onew points to the entrance, his round eyes crinkling into half moons and the other guys look to where Onew is pointing. Sunny is there, and she’s lovely. She dyed her hair two night ago to blonde getting rid of the funky purple and she’s put on some pink lipstick that accentuates how flowery her lips can be. She’s still there, taking off her shoes and when her heels finally come off she giggles, because she’s shorter than Onew led on, almost pocket sized. She bows politely and Onew motions for her to come closer, her large breasts gleaming in the new panel of lights and he wonders what the other guys think of them. And her, of course. The guys all look at each other first, quizzically, and then they bow towards the foyer.
“Ah, hello there,” Jonghyun says first, his voice unsteady and unsure. The other guys do their greetings and Onew stands with his chest out, prideful.
“Everyone, this is Sunny. Sunny these are the guys.” Sunny waves.
“Hi, I’m Sunny. This is a great place you’ve got Taemin.” she then turns to Onew and whispers in a girlish voice, “can I use the restroom?”
“Well can she?” Onew asks Taemin, an impatient eyebrow flailing.
“Can she what?”
“Use the restroom!”
“Oh...uh...sure.”
“Well. Where is it?”
Taemin points to the end of the hallway and Sunny follows the pathway, carefully making sure not to touch of the guys on her way.
“So, what do you think!” Onew jumps in the air a bit and Key heads into the kitchen, grabbing a few more bottles of wine.
“I think we’re going to need a bigger corkscrew.”
They retire at the end of the night to the living room, complacent and drunk while sitting in massive piles of body parts and exchanging stories about the dumbest things they've ever done or said.
“Oh, tell them the one about the time you did that thing to the Eiffel Tower, Sunny.” Onew pleads, his arms curled between her legs, tickling her toes when she refuses at first.
“Okay, fine,” she says and then she goes into a twenty minute story about how she stole a box of macaroons and threw them at the tower from all sides in a drunken stupor. The guys follow the story first, completely engaged and nodding their heads and looking at each other for hints as to if this is a funny story or sad story but then it just turns boring and the guys all nod off, arms and limbs splayed all over the couches and each other in a resigned fate of sleepiness.
“I guess that’s our cue,” Onew chuckles and slouches an arm around Sunny ready to head out.
“Oh but I’m too wasted to walk home,” she pouts irresistibly, her eyes drooping in action as she speaks. “let’s just stay here until the morning.” Onew shrugs his head, because sure, why not and they knock out in Taemin’s room where it is quiet and starkly clean and very brand new.
When Onew comes to, it is morning and the nightingales are fluttering away from the far window and Taemin, Jonghyun, Minho and Key are all hovering above him with concerned expressions and a box full of alka seltzer plus to wake up.
“Where’s Sunny?” Taemin hesitantly asks, sitting at the edge of the bed and then getting up because he is scared she might still be hiding underneath the sheets or something. Onew takes a good look around the bed and then the room, lazily rubbing an eye open.
“Huh. Guess she must have walked back home in the middle of the night. I supposed I should go back home and make sure she’s alright.”
“She’s...uh...a very nice girl, hyung.” Jonghyun offers semidetached, rubbing Onew’s pink tips with affection. The other boys nod slowly together like obedient pets. Onew feels great because this is all he’s ever wanted in his new life. His chicken shop, his boys, and his girl all together in one happy and irreplaceable time.
“Really? Thanks guys, she likes you too,” Onew pulls the sheets back and gets up to gather the boys into another soul searching ribs expanding group hug. “So what did you guys like the most about her?”
“Uh, her lips that you always told us about,” Key mentions first.
“I liked that story you told her to tell us about the Eiffel Tower,” Minho softly answers.
“She had great boobs. Just like you said.” Jonghyun replies still patting Onew’s hair with a tender pat.
“Uh...you guys have said it all,” Taemin looks at the others for help. “Oh, I know. Her hair. It was so pretty and purple.”
“The fuck!” Onew breaks out of the circle and steps back a bit, his toes curling up and his lips working their way into a curvy and funny frown. “Sunny’s hair is blonde now.”
“Blonde...right…” Taemin says after the room is filled to the brim with tension. “Well, then.”
“I’ve got to go back home and make sure she’s okay,” Onew brushes past the guys and puts his shoes on, noticing Sunny’s heels are still in the entrance. For a second he muses over the idea that maybe the guys killed Sunny when he was sleeping, but nah they wouldn’t do that no matter how crazy they thought he was, so he grabs the shoes and heads out, walking past that surly looking cat in the alley and back to his own place.
Sunny’s there when he opens the door and Onew feels a bit of relief. She’s in the kitchen cutting tomatoes with a fork, upset about the weather because it’s supposed to rain and it’s not and that’s clearly unjust. Onew walks up behind her and grabs her by the waist, resting his head on her bare shoulder, getting a good whiff of her no scent perfume and newly dyed blonde hair smell wafting through her scalp. He sighs for a bit, closing his eyes and then opening them again quickly just to make sure she’s still there, gripping her even tighter until her breasts heave up from all the pressure. She giggles a bit, putting the fork down to caress Onew’s ears and leave him a kiss on the bridge of his nose.
“What’s wrong, Jinki?”
“I just thought I’d lost you for a second,” he sighs again, letting his eyes close once more and fall deep into thoughts of the amounts of chicken they are going to eat for lunch.
“Everything’s alright Jinki,” Sunny absentmindedly says back, refocusing on the plump tomatoes that are leaking sweet juice all over the counter which needs to be cleaned immediately, “just remember not to start taking your meds again.”