socks
socks
Luhan-Nana; Nana-centric, (feat. Lay-Lizzy, Kris-Nana) ~ 8,016w
Romance, pg-13
This is a story about socks, and how insignificant one is without the other.
→ to kirakirashahida as a birthday present (and other shippers out there, if there are any), who gave me the prompt: "If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives". I wanted to write you something really fantastic but I just came up with this ugliness which is cliché all over I’m sorry but I love you Shida thank you for shipping them with me ♥ LJ's being really mean to me right now I'm sorry.
Im Jinah was fourteen years old when, all of a sudden, she decided to stop talking.
It had been the same year her father passed away, and the emptiness left behind did not ebb until much later. Bitter were the unfixed roof, the broken doorknobs, the undone jigsaw puzzle. Sadly they sat around her waiting to be repaired, fixed and finished. She knew she never would be.
She moved to China with her stepmother, going back to that side of the family, leaving behind her home, her sad memories, and under its literal sense, her voice.
The bedroom here emaciated along with her. She would never leave it either, the mere comfort of her sheets and pillow grew profoundly enough to get the through a day. Food was not really a necessity - she ate when she wanted to. Starvation in peace and hunger took the upper hand for the last three hundred days, before her surrogate mother eventually coerced spoon after spoon just to make her eat, and she cried and threw a fit and even shouted ‘You’re not my mother!’ with her hands, as how she always expressed her hostility.
“Know that I love you in a manner not ordinary mothers would love their children,” her stepmother explained one time.
A whole year passed with the same routine, Jinah turned 15 and developed signs of getting better -her willingness to eat on her own (and now even at the dining table), her decisions to listen more, her hints of emotion other than misery or hurt; she even smiled, but it was never out of happiness and she too knew that.
But she still refused to talk. Which had everyone confused.
The doctor said posttraumatic stress at its worst while other specialists claimed manic depression - or maybe even both, Jinah usually diagnosed herself when everybody else couldn’t make up their mind.
Jinah stepped out of the house on Day 395 in China to pay her psychiatrist a visit down two streets. He scheduled sessions with her on Mondays and Fridays at 2 in the afternoon to 5, just to see if she would like some cup of tea or something she would want to talk about. She attended them religiously, for tea, but she didn’t talk. She never talked.
Out of her doctor’s records, Jinah actually first spoke again on her 16th birthday, September 14 had it been and her mother promised either a cake or strawberry ice cream (she begged for both) when she came home from therapy.
That afternoon it rained after her session, and the fusion of orange, murky gray and blue melted the twilight sky.
Already drenched walking without an umbrella, she appeared like a sopping sock in a basket full of other sodden laundry, her hair damp against the back of her neck, chills starting now all over her body. The rain, as powerful as it had been, bullied everyone in sight; staying under a tree might lessen the blow, Jinah figured, and so she waited until it calmed down before sprinting home.
Night skies reminded her of herself: silent, mysterious, limitless and misunderstood - they were crying now. Perhaps they were hurt, too, like her by something from the past, she couldn’t be too sure. She watched as the darkness wept until it changed colors, to something blue in fact and it caught her off guard, that the tiny droplets now stopped hitting her.
Shifting views, to her side was a young boy reasonably around her age, and his delicate eyes held her aback even more, staring in wait like the night skies - deep and limitless - they were nothing special really, and she thought otherwise after a second when he smiled.
“Jinah, right?” He wore a tongue similar to her stepmother’s, but it definitely rang differently. She even wondered if ever her father had been alive now, he probably sounded like him, whatever he might have sounded like from centuries ago.
(it didn’t occur to her until much later that she had completely forgotten her father’s own voice, as if he only lived merely now as a memory.)
Startled, she nodded, moving out of his shadow and into the rain. He took a step closer at once, raising his blue umbrella higher to shelter her. She looked scared, but the warmth he gave off built some sense of trust in her that even she herself couldn’t deny.
“My dad’s your doctor. He realized how he sent you away in this damn rainstorm, so he asked me to catch up and walk you home. Is it okay?”
She, holding her breath, waiting for herself to decline the offer, in the end bobbed her head without complains. Quietly they walked, down the next lane where she lived, him still holding his umbrella up for her while she sustained distance, and he started talking about how he biked around town often and never realized she had lived here before. When she didn’t speak, he grew silent with the awkward disposition.
Her steps stopped on accord, bowing her head gradually at him when they reached home. He waved at her, an exchange of tight-lipped smiles, and instinctively, as he began walking away from her, Jinah had said, “Thank you” aloud, hands outstretched from her mouth to him.
And when he heard it, he turned his head and waved back again.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, then went his way.
At first she didn’t realize how she managed to speak, so when she did, it made her grin, wanting to yell at the top of her lunsthat she could talk again, only to find her stepmother drunk on the sofa, forgetting to buy cake or the dessert or the whole fact that today was her birthday.
She relapsed to the rotting muted child who missed Korea, and all the things there she knew she shouldn’t even miss. She slept in wet clothes, thunder and lightning clashing outside, and in the morning when she woke, her lungs had been stiff. Jinah remembered the boy a while ago and -in the middle of blankets suffocating her, hips aching from her passiveness- wondered how he’d react to seeing who she truly was.
The following Saturday she skipped therapy, claiming she would like to attend high school, even if she would’ve been quite late already.
The issue was not whether she would be able to cope up because Jinah was a brilliant child no doubt; her stepmother just worried because a high school for normal children would have not been ideal for someone as special as Jinah.
Homeschooling came up for debate and even a 1:1 tutoring was fine - but after consultations from the psychiatrist, this might very well be in fact a breakthrough to her cure, adding, “Exposure to a society closer to her age might give the boost she needs”.
While her stepmom insisted on something more closed, Jinah stepped out of the reception area of the clinic, eyeing the only two persons she had interacted in the past year.
“I’m ready,” she whispered meekly. Did she just talk in front of them? She wasn’t too sure if she heard herself or the one just inside her but by the looks on the two adults’ faces, she finally proved her point.
The doctor’s eyes were filled with pride, standing up and mouth wide open at the surprise, as if she just performed a stunt for him while her mother who had sacrificed time and effort for a daughter not by blood, embraced Jinah, who was near to tears as well.
“You can go to the same school as Luhan, my son. You’ve met him before, right? I’m sure you’ll like it there. I’ll help you and we’ll have therapy only on Saturdays so you’ll have time for your studies. Mrs. Im, I strongly suggest that she goes to school. It’ll help improve her speech, especially learn Chinese…”
Jinah saw Luhan entering the clinic while they were heading out. He wore a jersey, knee socks and a messenger bag, and even rubber shoes untied but he had the sweetest smile even before he saw her standing there, so when he did see her, the memory played in, before he bowed his head at recognition.
He looked the same, so she wondered if she did too.
Luhan, his name fitted him well - she practiced saying it in her head for the next few seconds, excited to start conversation.
“Jinah, right?” It was the first thing he had said to her before and now the same thing again.
Her mouth ran dry so she nodded timidly instead, her eyes still with enthusiasm. He saved me, he was the start of it all- Jinah couldn’t help but feel grateful, for the boy she wanted to meet again by chance stood in front of her, and they were face to face.
“Luhan, Jinah will be going to the same school as you starting next week. Will you help her adjust?” His father suddenly emerged, patting his head. Jinah observed at once, how Luhan didn’t seem to decline any chore his father had tasked him to do, although he didn’t seem too eager about it either.
As they exited, Jinah could hear his father briefing him about her condition, how she had just recently been able to speak, how she had been repressing certain things and how Luhan, as the big brother here, should understand all of that and not hurt her, because she was special.
Jinah thought Luhan was the more special one, except she couldn’t be too sure why, she just felt like he would be.
Her stepmother woke her up earlier than usual, the temperature of Beijing being so much hotter now than before. Pollution was evident, and then there was traffic, throttling tubes and subways, people of all lifestyles who start their day. The usual things she had seen from three years back, when she hadn’t actually feared people, or when she hadn’t been living a difficult life inside a box.
She memorized the route from home to here, how many trees it took, how many other buildings in between. She arrived at the school, excited but nervous, passing by a basketball court with boys playing. A basketball court, then two main buildings, then a playground at another hill - okay, she got this.
“Watch out!”
A ball landed on her head, and being the weakling Jinah was, she dropped to the ground, conscious still but dazed. Vision blurred, swirling. She thought about a submarine sinking into rock bottom, crashing with a loud unworthy thud that must have felt like this.
“Hey! Are you all right?”
She looked up, tried her best to focus on the face because the voice had been unfamiliar. Jinah would keep her mouth shut on normal occasions, and this was one of those normal things. The boy, as she was picked up from the floor, was taller than she was, sharp features that screamed gangster or you-can’t-mess-with-me or and sometimes stereotypes were all what Jinah had against other people, because that too had been used against her all the time.
“Are you okay?” He asked her again, eye to eye and trying to get Jinah to talk. Her gaze faltered, her cheeks abloom in red, for some other reasons they were so, because she swore, nobody had ever held her hand as tightly (yet at the same time so gently) as the boy right now. Her heart had beaten to a rhythm so unusual, so different, and she just hoped it wasn’t something people in love would diagnose her with.
“Jinah, are you okay?” She looked at her side slowly when another boy walked up, his bag by his shoulder, his face strangely marred with a frown. The first time she’d seen him this way, too.
With her head bent down in response, she pulled away her hand from the stranger and waited for Luhan to do something, say ‘you should’ve waited for me before coming to school’ or ‘don’t mess with the other jerks here’ or anything, but he didn’t, and Jinah realized Luhan might actually be one of those silent types.
“So Jinah’s your name? That’s pretty,” said the other boy. “I’m Wu Fan. Sorry about the ball earlier. It slipped.”
Luhan moved passed them without even looking at Jinah, as she herself had her head down, following him three steps behind. Silence. In between them, in what separated them. Silence, muffled but so loud, had Jinah looking up at the brother she had the other day.
They eventually passed the hallways and people were everywhere, when Luhan stopped, so Jinah, at their maintained distance, also halted for further instructions, for anything, he would say. Calmly, he turned around, head tilted to the side, one hand supporting his backpack, eyes averted. Why wouldn’t you look at me?
“First period for freshmen is to the left from here. You’ll be given your enrollment slip and your schedule there by your class adviser. You’re in class 1-C, I think.”
She nodded and Luhan’s friendlier side reappeared, nearing her now, one, two steps closer. “I’m a grade older than you, so you have to behave because I’m not exactly going to watch everything you do from here on. Everyone else will though, so you have to be nice, pretend you’re okay even when you’re not. Understand?”
Jinah acted out her affirmation, which made Luhan smile. “You have to answer me with words. I like words.”
Her lips twitching to a smile, Jinah replied, “I understand”, adding the movements again.
Luhan grinned, attempting to say some closure but ended up closing his mouth instead, ignoring her now as a horde of his friends came; he joined them, laughed and talked about the previous football game and the scores and the players, until they drowned in another sea of Mandarin chattering, and the bell ringing for the first class.
She felt so alone.
Oftentimes Luhan would be nowhere in sight when she needed someone to help her get books or ask directions - he was hopelessly rare, but she later would find him in the field, playing football with the rest of his group, kicking the ball too high for the goalie and aggressively handling the kicks. She once watched him play, and he saw her from one of the bleachers: he waved, she smiled, and that was all it had been then. Jinah did expect more from her brother, but she didn’t expect much from an acquaintance, which was all he was.
When he did have the time, Luhan stayed at the clinic, all hers during therapy, and he would sit across her, just beside his father who he had resembled so much. They would oblige her to read flashcards with Chinese words on them; sometimes she would mispronounce, forget its meaning, forget to use it in her sentences as she practiced them, but Luhan always corrected; right after laughing, of course.
“Read this one.”
Her eyes followed the doctor’s finger in silence.
Luhan would click his tongue and Jinah would roll her eyes on cue, before speaking.
“The rat ate the cheese. He found it very delicious and reminded him of home. That’s why he -” She used her hands again as if narrating, before Luhan held them together away, watching her eyes stare at him in horror.
“Without using this.”
Her eyes were focused on him, as if checking, and Luhan had been right there, gazing back, a brash smile at hand. “You’re getting better, you know.”
Speaking had been mandatory for her on weekends, but there was also one thing that Luhan found out of Jinah, something that she was very good at too, and getting better at it.
“It’s pretty.”
She graces her hands for a thank you, the tips of the paint brush in contact with her hair and cheek, adding some color to her paleness and it made Luhan, who sat beside her doing his own version of the theme, laugh. His thumb tried erasing the one on her skin, but it smudged some more, and Jinah frowned, flicking his hand away.
“What is your problem, it’s dirty!” Luhan cried, continuing to wipe off the paint, this time with his sleeves.
She pushed his hands away, brushes down. “Thanks for painting with me.”
He laughed, examining his two walls plainly covered in light baby blue and Jinah’s gorgeous ones so delicately drawn with swirls, flowery doodles, and a simplistic rainbow behind her study desk. The difference reminded him of his failure in art way back in kindergarten.
“You should always paint, and draw and… you know, do art. I’ll get you a sketchbook on Christmas.” (He did, he didn’t break his promise about that.)
“I don’t do it anymore.” Jinah flopped onto her bed, not wanting to talk about the hobby. “Just for today.”
Luhan smiled, sitting beside her and still admiring the beauty around him. “I’m glad I was first to see your comeback masterpiece then.”
Jinah liked that she could finally talk to someone about things like these, like a best friend or a brother, and she liked the idea of how there shouldn’t be any secrets kept from him starting from that day on.
January replaced December and Christmas, the unbinding winter melting into another month, and Jinah earned a friend who she could trust everything with. Aside from Luhan, Jinah could speak at school openly with Park Sooyoung, Korean, vibrant; she seemed to be everything Jinah had been not. Singing her way to popularity, batting eyelashes at boys she liked, acing all her classes especially math - Jinah wondered how the girl didn’t have a fan club yet.
Lizzy, Sooyoung had introduced. They shook hands not a minute too soon, with Jinah grinning the widest grin she ever pulled.
“You’re Korean, right? How come we never talked?”
Because I can’t talk, Jinah said painfully inside while the two ate their lunch.
“We should hang out more. I mean, we’re sort of outcasts here anyway. You know there’s a bunch of other Koreans here too. You want to meet them?”
Jinah interchanged between Mandarin to her mother tongue inside her head, until she decided Lizzy would understand anything except signage. “I love to.”
“You’re cute,” she told Jinah. “Do you use your hands often when you talk or are you just used to it? I noticed it when you talked one time to that senior of ours. Do you volunteer teaching the mute? Or charity work after school?”
She shook her head feebly, wondering if Lizzy will be able to understand she was the one who lacked speech work. “I’m used to sign language because this was my way of speaking before.” Long sentence, Jinah gulped, she wasn’t used to such things anymore - it made her a bit nauseous.
“You couldn’t speak before?”Lizzy asked.
Jinah nodded, testing her new friend if she could handle someone so difficult to communicate with. “Sort of a short interval then I learned to again.”
“Wow, that’s so cool!” The other girl awed, even muttering daebak. “So cool! And you can speak now? That’s a lot of improvement.”
“Thank you,” Jinah meant it.
“You have to meet the rest of us here,” she started again, fishing out her meatball from her plate. “A community of Koreans attends this school. You must meet Nicole. And Myungsoo. And Jiyeon, oh that sweetie. There’s Seunghyun, my boyfriend. He plays guitar in a band, you have to listen to them next time, remind me okay? Do you have a boyfriend, Jinah? I’m sure you do, you’re such a beauty…”
She wanted to say that she didn’t have one, but Lizzy seemed to be wrapped up in her own bubble, that Jinah realized Lizzy would eventually find out anyway, even without her trying to speak.
Lizzy asked about Jinah and Luhan one time, and as she had always been, Jinah was quiet.
Jinah had always thought of Luhan like how teenagers thought about their first love, except Jinah knew it wasn’t really something like that -definitely not. Luhan was her big brother and perhaps sleeping late, smiling to yourself when you think of him, came mutual. Maybe she liked Luhan just in this manner because she knew that he fitted the image of someone who would care for you. And that had been it, nothing more for now, and obviously nothing quite special either.
“Do you like Western food? You know, like hotdogs or fries?”
She shook her head in response one time when he walked her back home. He still anticipated a better answer so Jinah eventually laughed.
“Do I really have to speak?”
“To me, yes,” Luhan said. “Always.”
“But why?”
“Because,” he shrugged, looking at her. “I just want to hear you.”
“Yes, because it’s your job to make sure I do talk,” Jinah responded after.
“No, that’s my dad’s,” Luhan chuckled. “You have to talk, especially now that you can. I mean, look at you now. You can manage to keep up a conversation of five to six sentences. It’s not that hard to speak once you train yourself to, right? You said you were ready and you really should be because how will the world know you exist when you’re not going to voice out and be heard?”
Jinah made use of her hands again to respond, stretching a bit wider, then back again to her mouth, accurately delivering her point that it didn’t matter at all whether the world knew she was there, just the fact that the closest ones here had it otherwise would be more than enough.
“And that means -?”
“You, your father, mom, and Lizzy. The world doesn’t matter as long as you understand me,” Jinah told him and he laughed heartily, swinging an arm by her shoulder, dragging his soles while he maintained the smile painted on his face -it had been clearly platonic - but that was when Jinah stopped looking at him as a brother.
She had thought of him as someone she cared for and from an acquaintance to a study buddy to a senior she respected - she knew she had it in for this, knew the reason why Luhan was someone special. To her.
She liked him. And she absolutely didn’t know what to do about it.
Jinah had never been particularly good with words, especially ones the people around her would actually understand. So she improved her actions, consciously looking into every detail about herself every morning: would he like me when my hair is flipped to the right, or do I have to tie it, or should there be some falling off my shoulders - and that’s just the hair. She hated how her eyes were like mere slits, no folds on the lids, and the lashes had been too short for anyone’s taste, probably. And her smile was a rarity, and her cheekbones were too marked. She requested for dresses, pretty dresses and not boot-cut jeans anymore, for therapy.
She could imagine something like this:
“Jinah?”
She looked at the way his surprise flipped to a smile. “Yes?”
“You look pretty today.” She hears after tying her hair to an intentionally messy ponytail, and she bowed her head in thanks, with cheeks crimson.
But there should be some sort of conflict; that sounded too easy. She kept thinking of what to say to him, what words and how many words would it take Luhan to notice her today as she walked down the street over to the clinic. Do you want to have some tea after this? How about the carnival? Will I ever even spend time with you when we’re in school? She didn’t even realize how close she already was to the place when Luhan himself bumped into her, in some sports gear again with a helmet and kneepads, his bike to his side.
Luhan looked quite frail today, sickly even, and he took time to register who she was. He bowed his head in recognition but didn’t smile though, which made Jinah uncomfortable.
“Hey,” he said indifferently, before mounting on his bike. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” she told him.
He smiled (finally) right after. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
“About what?”
“That you don’t have to come here anymore for therapy? You don’t need therapy anymore. He says you’ve done well for the past year.” Luhan laughed, now on his bike when Jinah just looked stoned at the news, looking away with a pout.
“I know that,” Jinah said defensively. It meant whole other things now, she thought immediately. Luhan wouldn’t be her study buddy anymore, wouldn’t watch over her at school anymore, wouldn’t walk her home every Saturday afternoon so she could practice speaking with someone.
“You tied your hair,” he started. “It’s pretty that way. I can see your eyes better.”
Her whole system panicked, thinking she never had been so in control of anything in her entire life, especially when Luhan pressed the pedal, moved a ruler or two, and Jinah’s hand fell instantly to the wheel, stopping him.
“Wait, I -”
Luhan’s attention was on her, staring at her patiently until she blinked, until she could say what she wanted to say, but Jinah didn’t. She was muted. Frightened. Luhan couldn’t just do this to her without warning about an internal breakdown.
“Do you want a ride home?” He asked out of concern, treating her like a child again. Even though he didn’t look too well either, Jinah’s heart had been too defiant to tell him of how she truly felt.
“I can drop you off at your place.”
Her hands started to translate her words, tried it in a form of words without the sounds, and Luhan interpreted it with a surprised look in his eyes, because it read, “I like you” but he could be wrong, and Jinah could be wrong too.
She didn’t know what else to do or say, but she did know what she wanted out of this. She wanted a little romantic bike ride away even for the next five minutes with the boy she just lately realized she liked. She wanted to confess exactly that she wanted Luhan more than a friend did and she hoped he would feel exactly the same way. She wanted this and she wanted that.
However, this and that, after a long time of processing the odds, was not what Luhan could give her.
“I’ll walk,” Jinah said in a light tone, waving at him and Luhan shrugged before he speeded down the lane without a goodbye.
And he was gone.
She wasn’t expecting it to be the last day they would actually talk to each other. She still saw him at school of course, still smiled in his direction when he did, still waved and said hi when he did: Jinah had been reactive to everything he would throw at her. She waited until he would forget about her existence, waited for everything else to fade and disappear as if they never happened, like all the other things in this universe, lethal in slow motion.
It came, three months later, and prepared than ever, Jinah let go of the idea of being with her first love.
Im Jinah was not Im Jinah anymore at 17.
Nana, they all called her that. And just that, just Nana, the blonde captain cheerleader, hottest bitch on the block they all dubbed her. She wore cheery lips often, showed off her curves found in the right parts, walked in high heels and cut classes when she wanted to.
She and Luhan stood so close to each other once more after a long time. His scent reminded her of once upon a time, his laughter something she always knew as her heart’s playlist. They were watching the football game together today, for the first time because they never have done this before either since it was always her watching him and because today Luhan was actually benched for injury.
She couldn’t manage to say a single word to him even now, since he wasn’t initiating conversation either.
He looked the same, though, which made the butterflies in Jinah’s stomach flutter eagerly. He looked the same like before but she didn’t.
Lizzy squeezed herself close to her, wearing already the same outfit as Jinah. “How was the Mathlete? Did you win?”
Her friend shook her head in regret, holding out two fingers. “I came in 2nd. How about here? Who’s winning?”
“Not us because the visitor’s goalie is being a bitch,” Luhan joined them; Lizzy also more focused now on the game than Nana had ever been (Luhan’s fault).
“Damn it, Zitao! That should’ve gone in, we could’ve goaled! Let’s go, let’s go!” He shouted at the top of his lungs, louder than the coach did. He still seemed like his old self. Limping, he sat back down, relaxed more when the hype dropped.
“You, okay?” Jinah started, casually dropping off her concern.
“Yeah, if only the other team stops bitching around the net,” he answered, a chuckle escaped his lips. “How about you? How are you hanging?”
Jinah shrugged, shaking her head. “Zitao’s a pretty good replacement, I think.”
At the corner of her eyes, Luhan scowled for a second, and then the ends of his mouth curved to a smile. “I see. But I play better.”
“Of course you do,” Jinah rolled her eyes, crossing her arms in wait for anything more to talk about but they ran out of words. They didn’t before, Jinah remembering, and maybe that was what hurt.
In the end, their school won by 5-3 and it wasn’t much but at least the team’s winning streak remained. Luhan couldn’t walk towards his teammates so they came to him, hugged each other and lifted each other in joy. Jinah was somewhere in the background taking it all in, embedding everything of him into the shelves of her mind, with all the other memories she had of him from before. His lopsided grin, the wrinkles in his eyes, the way his laughter just sparked so much - all recorded down.
She suddenly missed him when Luhan pulled her into a half-hug, so she congratulated him, and he had been kind enough to say a few of the stupidest things in the world like I missed you, as if reading off her thoughts like that, as if they hadn’t seen each other in decades.
“Nana, we won! We won! ” Her feet no longer touched the ground, being carried around suddenly with strong lean arms and she felt lips crashing into hers and they were soft and familiar, and she knew it had to be Wu Fan the captain of the team.
“Party at Yixing’s tonight!” Lizzy, who Jinah later realized to have actually been right beside her in this mob, shouted and a louder cheer chorused in reply.
Almost everyone who was anyone had been invited over. Jinah came a bit late with Wu Fan, most of his teammates drunk by now. Wandering off, she looked for Lizzy first, to talk about what Luhan said earlier since it never left her mind, but Jinah found her on the staircase to the attic nearly half-undressed in Yixing’s arms and it would be rude to interrupt their intimate celebration just for it.
She turned her heels, only to bump into Luhan, spilling his drink on his shirt by accident.
“Shit, that’s gonna stain.”
“It’s okay,” Luhan said, looking at his clothes. He set aside his glass, lest it break with another surprising encounter and turned to her, “Came with Wu Fan?”
“Yeah,” she replied, still distracted. “The shirt, I’ll have it to the dryers -“
“Yixing, the damn bedroom please! Everyone can hear you from here!” Luhan cried, preoccupied with the other two not far from them, Jinah controlling herself not to laugh about it.
He clicked his tongue when they scurried away, his attention falling on the girl in front of him. “Have you seen their balcony? This place’s got a pretty view of the city, trust me, you’ll like it.”
Jinah felt like it had been a horrible excuse just to hold her hand and take her away from the blinding music from downstairs, but it worked efficiently, and it wasn’t like Luhan hadn’t held her hand before, either. But today she swore under her breathe, something in the air was too different.
They were the only two up here thankfully, the sky lighted by the moon though elusively covering itself behind the clouds. Skyscrapers of Beijing from not so far towered over the residence area, and the party kids were dancing on the other side of the house. So below them had been the elegant garden, to which Jinah had heard to be Lizzy’s favorite place in his house because of the heavenly appeal.
“How’s the foot?” She asked him.
“It’s fine,” he laughed, looking up to locate some stars. “Do you still paint?”
Surprised by the question she hesitated and looked too bothered to even hide it. “I… I told you I don’t do it anymore. It was just something I did when I got bored.”
“Did you fill up the sketchbook I gave you yet?” Luhan wondered.
She shook her head tiredly. “I didn’t and I won’t. Ever. I don’t even remember where I put it. I think I’ll give it to charity when I find it. Or I think I already gave it away.”
“I liked it better when you didn’t talk at all,” Luhan said, but still with a smile, making it look like he didn’t mean it but there were so many more things that Jinah could read between the lines, and she knew Luhan .
Jinah was quiet, and so was he. The distance between them faired as an odd pair, looking at the unexciting night in its aging, and before Jinah could understand where it all went wrong between them, when did a wall started tearing them apart, why did it seem that she won’t be able to mend this shit ever again, Luhan said, “I’m sorry, Jinah. Look, can’t we -”
“I’ll go find Wu Fan now,” Jinah finally decided. “It was nice talking to you again.” And she started leaving, knowing that his eyes followed, knowing that he always seem to follow, and she could hear him call out her name, she could even feel his hand gripping her wrist, but she didn’t turn back, not anymore, who said she would be waiting for him.
Wu Fan was in the kitchen, waiting for her.
Prom came. Jinah went of course with Wu Fan, Lizzy and Yixing in the back seat of the car. They pulled over where Wu Fan usually parked, then Lizzy nudged Jinah about the one pulling over across them.
Luhan unexpectedly came with someone, some geeky girl he probably picked up from the library but she didn’t look quite recognizable either, and his eyes traveled to the likes of them, waving before his attention fell on his date yet again, making small talk before they disappear into the music inside. It bothered her a little bit (what if they’ve been going out for quite a long time now?).
“Luhan didn’t tell me he has a girlfriend. Does he?” Jinah asked.
“He’s never mentioned,” Wu Fan answered. “I didn’t know you and Luhan were close.”
Jinah inhaled rather harshly. “We just… know each other. He’s in the team so yeah, I know him.”
“They go way back, though,” Lizzy suddenly joined in, Jinah’s eyes widening. “I actually thought they were dating before. I always see the two of them on Saturdays walking back to her -“
Jinah cleared her throat very loudly, an implication that she would absolutely kill the girl if she went on. Wu Fan didn’t seem to have the slightest hint of jealousy over this, Jinah guessed, but he didn’t seem that well after hearing it, either.
When a ballad played after some wild dancing, couples - from the most awkward pair to the newly established, to the longest and to the almost breaking apart, and even to the broken one like Lizzy and Seunghyun- flocked towards the center and danced, making most of the moment because the seniors would be leaving behind everything soon.
Wu Fan was in his 4th glass of cocktail when it played, and Jinah gripped his sleeve, a soft smile on her lips. “Come on, we should dance this. It’s my favorite song.”
“But we just danced the previous one,” Wu Fan said coolly. “Maybe later, baby.”
Her attention then fell on everyone else on the floor, happily in love, happily in the arms who love them back. She was with Wu Fan more often - they loved each other a lot too - and it was their friends’ idea that they start going out. They dated, fell in love a couple of times, fell out of it, screamed at each other, then made love before and after; it wasn’t like Jinah was asking for anything more. They were dating for almost a year now but something else just felt missing. Like the only piece left to complete a puzzle or something.
“Wu Fan, I’ll borrow Jinah for now, will that be all right?” Jinah’s heart took another swerve, their eyes not yet meeting but she knew he had been that missing piece.
His captain stared at him deadpanned, then at Jinah. “Just call me if he does something funny.”
“Like what, take her home. Please, you know me,” he laughed it off, a hand already extending to the girl. He picked her up from the seat, twirling her around as gracefully as he can to the dance floor, her hands fell on his shoulders, and they waltzed to the beat; finally, after a while their eyes met and they smiled with ease, without any barrage or guilt.
But there had been hurt, in the way Luhan smiled at her, in the way she looked at him back. He was singing to the song, in the sweetest voice she knew he could pull off - I’m never going to let you go, never, ever.
“Hey,” she called, deleting the distance between them, her head rested on his shoulder.
“Hey.” Luhan hesitated but his other hand dropped hers so they were draped around him instead, his by her waist.
“What about your date?” she closed her eyes. She closed them because by then she wouldn’t see anyone else, wouldn’t feel anyone else but him. Right here it was him. Right now (and even long before), it was him.
Luhan chuckled. “That was my cousin.”
She grinned in relief, before opening something momentous. “You know it wouldn’t have worked out for us anyway.” She wanted to knock some sense into him with these words, empty worthless words, wanting to believe in them too even though she didn’t sound like herself when she said it, and she hoped Luhan wouldn’t notice it.
“That’s why I never tried.”
But it sure as hell didn’t mean you didn’t love me.
He graduated and left.
She graduated a year later with Lizzy.
They didn’t meet for a long time, as she studied in Korea for college, while, he in France.
Jinah lied because her (his) sketchbook was filled to the brim. She flipped through the pages and thought of him, because the pictures she drew all had been (about) him. With the skies in a mixture of black and blue, a single blue umbrella floated above the other black ones at the lower portion of the paper and Jinah smiled in saying, “This was us under here.” She drew her first day of school, the boy and the girl smiling at each other in a distance with other students blurrily painted in peripheral. She saw a picture of the field, when he played for the team and kicked the ball so high. Then another one when he walked her home in the sunset - all of the things Luhan left behind in the shelves of her heart, she kept them in here.
She wanted to draw more, but she inched not a single move to pick up the brush. I can’t keep doing this and keep flipping back. It was just a crush. A crush’s just a crush, isn’t it?
She wrapped it up and sent it to Luhan in Paris (-she asked her stepmom for his current address) when she stayed in the dorm.
Another three weeks came and the package was sent back -no postcards, no letters, still unopened.
Im Jinah was back to being Jinah again and Nana died with the rest of high school. Lizzy still called her that though, just for fun, and now they were interns in a major firm. Lizzy was getting married to Yixing in a few days, Luhan was bound to attend it for sure and Jinah, after a couple of years, wasn’t truly prepared for that moment any time soon.
“Eh, please!” Lizzy groaned. “Forget him! I setup a date for you on Saturday to meet this guy. He’s perfection. Take him to the wedding if you want, just to make Luhan jealous I mean. Be careful though, he’s quite a charmer.”
Jinah didn’t believe it at first before she was actually there. She stared easily into the man’s eyes, and for a second saw Luhan in them, the way he said, “Jinah, right?” (which were Luhan’s first words to her), and he smiled gently, so softly. He was her age she decided but then later revealed he was older.
“Yang Seungho.” Oppa, the perfect time to call someone an oppa.
She copied his accent, nodded and embedded the name into her mind, throwing away some Luhan thoughts and replacing them with this, with him.
She brought him to the wedding, but no Luhan appeared thankfully, just hearing Yixing talk about how Luhan hadn’t left Japan yet because of some board meetings and it was impossible to book a flight on such late notice. He sent his regards by calling, and even calling about Jinah who blushed at the mention of his and her name in one sentence.
“Jinah’s kinda obsessed with him,” Lizzy explained to Seungho, who didn’t mind this at all.
Three years later, at thirty, Jinah was to marry Yang Seungho. The news stretched viral to friends of friends, to relatives including the one back in China, her stepmother flying right away to Seoul.
“Your real mom would have told you how pretty you look today,” her stepmom dropped a kiss on Jinah’s head.
“She couldn’t have told me about it because she was mute,” Jinah replied with a smile, still ever so fluent with the other language. “My real mom didn’t speak, but I did, and I think I inherited some genes on that, but everything’s all right now, and I didn’t mind if you weren’t my real mom because you’ve been very kind and so thank you for raising me since I was 7.” They had tears in their eyes, and while they hugged, someone stood by the doorway. Jinah expected it to be Lizzy, but she cleared her eyes and proved herself wrong.
He looked the same, and so Jinah wondered then if she did too.
His hands slid deep down his pockets, his tie still loosely hanging on his neck; he wore his suit primly, and overwhelmed at the hours not spent in between for the past years, Jinah jumped from her seat in her gown, running towards him, still almost in tears.
“Hey, it’s okay, come on,” Luhan comforted, patting her as he hugged her back. He smiled when she moved away and she too smiled back; they emitted identical smiles, identical and similar like a pair of socks, worthless without the other.
“I missed you so much, you asshole.”
“I’ve been busy, I’m sorry,” Luhan replied, smiling. “Sorry, okay?”
Jinah sighed. “I was hoping you’d come. And you did, I’m so happy.”
Unable to refrain himself, Luhan held her in his arms again for the next minutes, squeezing her for as long as they both manage, Jinah sobbing into his tuxedo, not to add drama to what already was, but because it seemed appropriate at times like these. This shouldn’t have been what it was supposed to look like; Luhan should’ve have been the one out there by the altar, waiting for her to exchange vows and be with forever happily ever after.
Now they didn’t know what they else were waiting for. Everything just fell apart at the wrong ends of waiting, always waiting for something that might never even show up. Had it always been that cruel?
“It would have never worked out for us anyway.”
Jinah whispered, “You can’t keep breaking someone who’s already broken.”
“Be happy,” Luhan addressed, nearing his lips to hers at that moment, and she at the same time waited, for him to give her the romantic childish first kiss that supposed to have happened years before. With eyes closed off from the world. With the heart beating only for one person.
Their lips were barely apart, but they didn’t touch, and instead of a kiss, Luhan cupped her face in his hands, and looked at her straight in the eye. It hurt that way but he couldn’t do anything about it. Not now, and perhaps not ever.
“Be happy,” he repeated.
And he was gone.
(“Jinah overcome her muteness, her fears, so why can’t you overcome your own anxieties?” Yixing protested.
“It’s not yet time,” Luhan responded.
“So when?”
“I don’t know.”)
(Yang) Jinah heard he married someone a year later. She still loved him, though - that was her problem.
Ages passed them, days, nights, and 3:10 am epiphanies how they were both so scared about being in love with each other, and they betted on dreams instead, where they owned each other in silence, like the first time, and living with memories in the pages of their lives didn’t take much of their time in the real world.
Jinah was 71 when she returned to China. Her stepmother passed away at an age close to a hundred, and the funeral had been for the only daughter not by blood with uncles and aunts only. Luhan came to visit her while she laid flowers on the grave, and she sat there with the wind blowing on her white hair, looking at the name engraved on the stone, Mrs. Im because she was married to a Korean.
They left together, climbed up a small hill nearby with under a great oak tree, and sat there in silence.
Jinah looked up to him, and moved her hands, as she could no longer speak that well again (old habits don’t die) but Luhan understood it so well.
“Just two kids,” Luhan answered her honestly. “And seven grandkids.”
“That’s wonderful,” Jinah responded. “You must have lived a happy life.”
Luhan shrugged, leaning back and lying on the grass until his back creaked, but he laughed it off, the same adorable laughter, the playlist of her heart. “Probably not as happy as yours.”
“Why didn’t we try to be happy… together?” Jinah wondered, sitting next to him.
He mused with all the possible answers to that question, played with words because he liked them a lot, ran a thousand hundreds of excuses that would satisfy Jinah and justify himself. He smiled at the woman he once had without really knowing she was his since Day 1, and he could just reason out the same thing they usually said: it wouldn’t have worked out, but that was too overused.
Jinah watched him as his eyes screamed he missed her again, and she thought he looked the same, except the gray hair, but there were them eyes more wrinkled than ever, and the smile, in jagged fake dentures now like her own, and his hands and his smell and his laughter.
He didn’t answer the question, and she didn’t wait for it (or anything else now) anymore, as they fell asleep that one cool afternoon of May.
Luhan-Nana; Nana-centric, (feat. Lay-Lizzy, Kris-Nana) ~ 8,016w
Romance, pg-13
This is a story about socks, and how insignificant one is without the other.
→ to kirakirashahida as a birthday present (and other shippers out there, if there are any), who gave me the prompt: "If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives". I wanted to write you something really fantastic but I just came up with this ugliness which is cliché all over I’m sorry but I love you Shida thank you for shipping them with me ♥ LJ's being really mean to me right now I'm sorry.
Im Jinah was fourteen years old when, all of a sudden, she decided to stop talking.
It had been the same year her father passed away, and the emptiness left behind did not ebb until much later. Bitter were the unfixed roof, the broken doorknobs, the undone jigsaw puzzle. Sadly they sat around her waiting to be repaired, fixed and finished. She knew she never would be.
She moved to China with her stepmother, going back to that side of the family, leaving behind her home, her sad memories, and under its literal sense, her voice.
The bedroom here emaciated along with her. She would never leave it either, the mere comfort of her sheets and pillow grew profoundly enough to get the through a day. Food was not really a necessity - she ate when she wanted to. Starvation in peace and hunger took the upper hand for the last three hundred days, before her surrogate mother eventually coerced spoon after spoon just to make her eat, and she cried and threw a fit and even shouted ‘You’re not my mother!’ with her hands, as how she always expressed her hostility.
“Know that I love you in a manner not ordinary mothers would love their children,” her stepmother explained one time.
A whole year passed with the same routine, Jinah turned 15 and developed signs of getting better -her willingness to eat on her own (and now even at the dining table), her decisions to listen more, her hints of emotion other than misery or hurt; she even smiled, but it was never out of happiness and she too knew that.
But she still refused to talk. Which had everyone confused.
The doctor said posttraumatic stress at its worst while other specialists claimed manic depression - or maybe even both, Jinah usually diagnosed herself when everybody else couldn’t make up their mind.
Jinah stepped out of the house on Day 395 in China to pay her psychiatrist a visit down two streets. He scheduled sessions with her on Mondays and Fridays at 2 in the afternoon to 5, just to see if she would like some cup of tea or something she would want to talk about. She attended them religiously, for tea, but she didn’t talk. She never talked.
Out of her doctor’s records, Jinah actually first spoke again on her 16th birthday, September 14 had it been and her mother promised either a cake or strawberry ice cream (she begged for both) when she came home from therapy.
That afternoon it rained after her session, and the fusion of orange, murky gray and blue melted the twilight sky.
Already drenched walking without an umbrella, she appeared like a sopping sock in a basket full of other sodden laundry, her hair damp against the back of her neck, chills starting now all over her body. The rain, as powerful as it had been, bullied everyone in sight; staying under a tree might lessen the blow, Jinah figured, and so she waited until it calmed down before sprinting home.
Night skies reminded her of herself: silent, mysterious, limitless and misunderstood - they were crying now. Perhaps they were hurt, too, like her by something from the past, she couldn’t be too sure. She watched as the darkness wept until it changed colors, to something blue in fact and it caught her off guard, that the tiny droplets now stopped hitting her.
Shifting views, to her side was a young boy reasonably around her age, and his delicate eyes held her aback even more, staring in wait like the night skies - deep and limitless - they were nothing special really, and she thought otherwise after a second when he smiled.
“Jinah, right?” He wore a tongue similar to her stepmother’s, but it definitely rang differently. She even wondered if ever her father had been alive now, he probably sounded like him, whatever he might have sounded like from centuries ago.
(it didn’t occur to her until much later that she had completely forgotten her father’s own voice, as if he only lived merely now as a memory.)
Startled, she nodded, moving out of his shadow and into the rain. He took a step closer at once, raising his blue umbrella higher to shelter her. She looked scared, but the warmth he gave off built some sense of trust in her that even she herself couldn’t deny.
“My dad’s your doctor. He realized how he sent you away in this damn rainstorm, so he asked me to catch up and walk you home. Is it okay?”
She, holding her breath, waiting for herself to decline the offer, in the end bobbed her head without complains. Quietly they walked, down the next lane where she lived, him still holding his umbrella up for her while she sustained distance, and he started talking about how he biked around town often and never realized she had lived here before. When she didn’t speak, he grew silent with the awkward disposition.
Her steps stopped on accord, bowing her head gradually at him when they reached home. He waved at her, an exchange of tight-lipped smiles, and instinctively, as he began walking away from her, Jinah had said, “Thank you” aloud, hands outstretched from her mouth to him.
And when he heard it, he turned his head and waved back again.
“You’re welcome,” he replied, then went his way.
At first she didn’t realize how she managed to speak, so when she did, it made her grin, wanting to yell at the top of her lunsthat she could talk again, only to find her stepmother drunk on the sofa, forgetting to buy cake or the dessert or the whole fact that today was her birthday.
She relapsed to the rotting muted child who missed Korea, and all the things there she knew she shouldn’t even miss. She slept in wet clothes, thunder and lightning clashing outside, and in the morning when she woke, her lungs had been stiff. Jinah remembered the boy a while ago and -in the middle of blankets suffocating her, hips aching from her passiveness- wondered how he’d react to seeing who she truly was.
The following Saturday she skipped therapy, claiming she would like to attend high school, even if she would’ve been quite late already.
The issue was not whether she would be able to cope up because Jinah was a brilliant child no doubt; her stepmother just worried because a high school for normal children would have not been ideal for someone as special as Jinah.
Homeschooling came up for debate and even a 1:1 tutoring was fine - but after consultations from the psychiatrist, this might very well be in fact a breakthrough to her cure, adding, “Exposure to a society closer to her age might give the boost she needs”.
While her stepmom insisted on something more closed, Jinah stepped out of the reception area of the clinic, eyeing the only two persons she had interacted in the past year.
“I’m ready,” she whispered meekly. Did she just talk in front of them? She wasn’t too sure if she heard herself or the one just inside her but by the looks on the two adults’ faces, she finally proved her point.
The doctor’s eyes were filled with pride, standing up and mouth wide open at the surprise, as if she just performed a stunt for him while her mother who had sacrificed time and effort for a daughter not by blood, embraced Jinah, who was near to tears as well.
“You can go to the same school as Luhan, my son. You’ve met him before, right? I’m sure you’ll like it there. I’ll help you and we’ll have therapy only on Saturdays so you’ll have time for your studies. Mrs. Im, I strongly suggest that she goes to school. It’ll help improve her speech, especially learn Chinese…”
Jinah saw Luhan entering the clinic while they were heading out. He wore a jersey, knee socks and a messenger bag, and even rubber shoes untied but he had the sweetest smile even before he saw her standing there, so when he did see her, the memory played in, before he bowed his head at recognition.
He looked the same, so she wondered if she did too.
Luhan, his name fitted him well - she practiced saying it in her head for the next few seconds, excited to start conversation.
“Jinah, right?” It was the first thing he had said to her before and now the same thing again.
Her mouth ran dry so she nodded timidly instead, her eyes still with enthusiasm. He saved me, he was the start of it all- Jinah couldn’t help but feel grateful, for the boy she wanted to meet again by chance stood in front of her, and they were face to face.
“Luhan, Jinah will be going to the same school as you starting next week. Will you help her adjust?” His father suddenly emerged, patting his head. Jinah observed at once, how Luhan didn’t seem to decline any chore his father had tasked him to do, although he didn’t seem too eager about it either.
As they exited, Jinah could hear his father briefing him about her condition, how she had just recently been able to speak, how she had been repressing certain things and how Luhan, as the big brother here, should understand all of that and not hurt her, because she was special.
Jinah thought Luhan was the more special one, except she couldn’t be too sure why, she just felt like he would be.
Her stepmother woke her up earlier than usual, the temperature of Beijing being so much hotter now than before. Pollution was evident, and then there was traffic, throttling tubes and subways, people of all lifestyles who start their day. The usual things she had seen from three years back, when she hadn’t actually feared people, or when she hadn’t been living a difficult life inside a box.
She memorized the route from home to here, how many trees it took, how many other buildings in between. She arrived at the school, excited but nervous, passing by a basketball court with boys playing. A basketball court, then two main buildings, then a playground at another hill - okay, she got this.
“Watch out!”
A ball landed on her head, and being the weakling Jinah was, she dropped to the ground, conscious still but dazed. Vision blurred, swirling. She thought about a submarine sinking into rock bottom, crashing with a loud unworthy thud that must have felt like this.
“Hey! Are you all right?”
She looked up, tried her best to focus on the face because the voice had been unfamiliar. Jinah would keep her mouth shut on normal occasions, and this was one of those normal things. The boy, as she was picked up from the floor, was taller than she was, sharp features that screamed gangster or you-can’t-mess-with-me or and sometimes stereotypes were all what Jinah had against other people, because that too had been used against her all the time.
“Are you okay?” He asked her again, eye to eye and trying to get Jinah to talk. Her gaze faltered, her cheeks abloom in red, for some other reasons they were so, because she swore, nobody had ever held her hand as tightly (yet at the same time so gently) as the boy right now. Her heart had beaten to a rhythm so unusual, so different, and she just hoped it wasn’t something people in love would diagnose her with.
“Jinah, are you okay?” She looked at her side slowly when another boy walked up, his bag by his shoulder, his face strangely marred with a frown. The first time she’d seen him this way, too.
With her head bent down in response, she pulled away her hand from the stranger and waited for Luhan to do something, say ‘you should’ve waited for me before coming to school’ or ‘don’t mess with the other jerks here’ or anything, but he didn’t, and Jinah realized Luhan might actually be one of those silent types.
“So Jinah’s your name? That’s pretty,” said the other boy. “I’m Wu Fan. Sorry about the ball earlier. It slipped.”
Luhan moved passed them without even looking at Jinah, as she herself had her head down, following him three steps behind. Silence. In between them, in what separated them. Silence, muffled but so loud, had Jinah looking up at the brother she had the other day.
They eventually passed the hallways and people were everywhere, when Luhan stopped, so Jinah, at their maintained distance, also halted for further instructions, for anything, he would say. Calmly, he turned around, head tilted to the side, one hand supporting his backpack, eyes averted. Why wouldn’t you look at me?
“First period for freshmen is to the left from here. You’ll be given your enrollment slip and your schedule there by your class adviser. You’re in class 1-C, I think.”
She nodded and Luhan’s friendlier side reappeared, nearing her now, one, two steps closer. “I’m a grade older than you, so you have to behave because I’m not exactly going to watch everything you do from here on. Everyone else will though, so you have to be nice, pretend you’re okay even when you’re not. Understand?”
Jinah acted out her affirmation, which made Luhan smile. “You have to answer me with words. I like words.”
Her lips twitching to a smile, Jinah replied, “I understand”, adding the movements again.
Luhan grinned, attempting to say some closure but ended up closing his mouth instead, ignoring her now as a horde of his friends came; he joined them, laughed and talked about the previous football game and the scores and the players, until they drowned in another sea of Mandarin chattering, and the bell ringing for the first class.
She felt so alone.
Oftentimes Luhan would be nowhere in sight when she needed someone to help her get books or ask directions - he was hopelessly rare, but she later would find him in the field, playing football with the rest of his group, kicking the ball too high for the goalie and aggressively handling the kicks. She once watched him play, and he saw her from one of the bleachers: he waved, she smiled, and that was all it had been then. Jinah did expect more from her brother, but she didn’t expect much from an acquaintance, which was all he was.
When he did have the time, Luhan stayed at the clinic, all hers during therapy, and he would sit across her, just beside his father who he had resembled so much. They would oblige her to read flashcards with Chinese words on them; sometimes she would mispronounce, forget its meaning, forget to use it in her sentences as she practiced them, but Luhan always corrected; right after laughing, of course.
“Read this one.”
Her eyes followed the doctor’s finger in silence.
Luhan would click his tongue and Jinah would roll her eyes on cue, before speaking.
“The rat ate the cheese. He found it very delicious and reminded him of home. That’s why he -” She used her hands again as if narrating, before Luhan held them together away, watching her eyes stare at him in horror.
“Without using this.”
Her eyes were focused on him, as if checking, and Luhan had been right there, gazing back, a brash smile at hand. “You’re getting better, you know.”
Speaking had been mandatory for her on weekends, but there was also one thing that Luhan found out of Jinah, something that she was very good at too, and getting better at it.
“It’s pretty.”
She graces her hands for a thank you, the tips of the paint brush in contact with her hair and cheek, adding some color to her paleness and it made Luhan, who sat beside her doing his own version of the theme, laugh. His thumb tried erasing the one on her skin, but it smudged some more, and Jinah frowned, flicking his hand away.
“What is your problem, it’s dirty!” Luhan cried, continuing to wipe off the paint, this time with his sleeves.
She pushed his hands away, brushes down. “Thanks for painting with me.”
He laughed, examining his two walls plainly covered in light baby blue and Jinah’s gorgeous ones so delicately drawn with swirls, flowery doodles, and a simplistic rainbow behind her study desk. The difference reminded him of his failure in art way back in kindergarten.
“You should always paint, and draw and… you know, do art. I’ll get you a sketchbook on Christmas.” (He did, he didn’t break his promise about that.)
“I don’t do it anymore.” Jinah flopped onto her bed, not wanting to talk about the hobby. “Just for today.”
Luhan smiled, sitting beside her and still admiring the beauty around him. “I’m glad I was first to see your comeback masterpiece then.”
Jinah liked that she could finally talk to someone about things like these, like a best friend or a brother, and she liked the idea of how there shouldn’t be any secrets kept from him starting from that day on.
January replaced December and Christmas, the unbinding winter melting into another month, and Jinah earned a friend who she could trust everything with. Aside from Luhan, Jinah could speak at school openly with Park Sooyoung, Korean, vibrant; she seemed to be everything Jinah had been not. Singing her way to popularity, batting eyelashes at boys she liked, acing all her classes especially math - Jinah wondered how the girl didn’t have a fan club yet.
Lizzy, Sooyoung had introduced. They shook hands not a minute too soon, with Jinah grinning the widest grin she ever pulled.
“You’re Korean, right? How come we never talked?”
Because I can’t talk, Jinah said painfully inside while the two ate their lunch.
“We should hang out more. I mean, we’re sort of outcasts here anyway. You know there’s a bunch of other Koreans here too. You want to meet them?”
Jinah interchanged between Mandarin to her mother tongue inside her head, until she decided Lizzy would understand anything except signage. “I love to.”
“You’re cute,” she told Jinah. “Do you use your hands often when you talk or are you just used to it? I noticed it when you talked one time to that senior of ours. Do you volunteer teaching the mute? Or charity work after school?”
She shook her head feebly, wondering if Lizzy will be able to understand she was the one who lacked speech work. “I’m used to sign language because this was my way of speaking before.” Long sentence, Jinah gulped, she wasn’t used to such things anymore - it made her a bit nauseous.
“You couldn’t speak before?”Lizzy asked.
Jinah nodded, testing her new friend if she could handle someone so difficult to communicate with. “Sort of a short interval then I learned to again.”
“Wow, that’s so cool!” The other girl awed, even muttering daebak. “So cool! And you can speak now? That’s a lot of improvement.”
“Thank you,” Jinah meant it.
“You have to meet the rest of us here,” she started again, fishing out her meatball from her plate. “A community of Koreans attends this school. You must meet Nicole. And Myungsoo. And Jiyeon, oh that sweetie. There’s Seunghyun, my boyfriend. He plays guitar in a band, you have to listen to them next time, remind me okay? Do you have a boyfriend, Jinah? I’m sure you do, you’re such a beauty…”
She wanted to say that she didn’t have one, but Lizzy seemed to be wrapped up in her own bubble, that Jinah realized Lizzy would eventually find out anyway, even without her trying to speak.
Lizzy asked about Jinah and Luhan one time, and as she had always been, Jinah was quiet.
Jinah had always thought of Luhan like how teenagers thought about their first love, except Jinah knew it wasn’t really something like that -definitely not. Luhan was her big brother and perhaps sleeping late, smiling to yourself when you think of him, came mutual. Maybe she liked Luhan just in this manner because she knew that he fitted the image of someone who would care for you. And that had been it, nothing more for now, and obviously nothing quite special either.
“Do you like Western food? You know, like hotdogs or fries?”
She shook her head in response one time when he walked her back home. He still anticipated a better answer so Jinah eventually laughed.
“Do I really have to speak?”
“To me, yes,” Luhan said. “Always.”
“But why?”
“Because,” he shrugged, looking at her. “I just want to hear you.”
“Yes, because it’s your job to make sure I do talk,” Jinah responded after.
“No, that’s my dad’s,” Luhan chuckled. “You have to talk, especially now that you can. I mean, look at you now. You can manage to keep up a conversation of five to six sentences. It’s not that hard to speak once you train yourself to, right? You said you were ready and you really should be because how will the world know you exist when you’re not going to voice out and be heard?”
Jinah made use of her hands again to respond, stretching a bit wider, then back again to her mouth, accurately delivering her point that it didn’t matter at all whether the world knew she was there, just the fact that the closest ones here had it otherwise would be more than enough.
“And that means -?”
“You, your father, mom, and Lizzy. The world doesn’t matter as long as you understand me,” Jinah told him and he laughed heartily, swinging an arm by her shoulder, dragging his soles while he maintained the smile painted on his face -it had been clearly platonic - but that was when Jinah stopped looking at him as a brother.
She had thought of him as someone she cared for and from an acquaintance to a study buddy to a senior she respected - she knew she had it in for this, knew the reason why Luhan was someone special. To her.
She liked him. And she absolutely didn’t know what to do about it.
Jinah had never been particularly good with words, especially ones the people around her would actually understand. So she improved her actions, consciously looking into every detail about herself every morning: would he like me when my hair is flipped to the right, or do I have to tie it, or should there be some falling off my shoulders - and that’s just the hair. She hated how her eyes were like mere slits, no folds on the lids, and the lashes had been too short for anyone’s taste, probably. And her smile was a rarity, and her cheekbones were too marked. She requested for dresses, pretty dresses and not boot-cut jeans anymore, for therapy.
She could imagine something like this:
“Jinah?”
She looked at the way his surprise flipped to a smile. “Yes?”
“You look pretty today.” She hears after tying her hair to an intentionally messy ponytail, and she bowed her head in thanks, with cheeks crimson.
But there should be some sort of conflict; that sounded too easy. She kept thinking of what to say to him, what words and how many words would it take Luhan to notice her today as she walked down the street over to the clinic. Do you want to have some tea after this? How about the carnival? Will I ever even spend time with you when we’re in school? She didn’t even realize how close she already was to the place when Luhan himself bumped into her, in some sports gear again with a helmet and kneepads, his bike to his side.
Luhan looked quite frail today, sickly even, and he took time to register who she was. He bowed his head in recognition but didn’t smile though, which made Jinah uncomfortable.
“Hey,” he said indifferently, before mounting on his bike. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” she told him.
He smiled (finally) right after. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
“About what?”
“That you don’t have to come here anymore for therapy? You don’t need therapy anymore. He says you’ve done well for the past year.” Luhan laughed, now on his bike when Jinah just looked stoned at the news, looking away with a pout.
“I know that,” Jinah said defensively. It meant whole other things now, she thought immediately. Luhan wouldn’t be her study buddy anymore, wouldn’t watch over her at school anymore, wouldn’t walk her home every Saturday afternoon so she could practice speaking with someone.
“You tied your hair,” he started. “It’s pretty that way. I can see your eyes better.”
Her whole system panicked, thinking she never had been so in control of anything in her entire life, especially when Luhan pressed the pedal, moved a ruler or two, and Jinah’s hand fell instantly to the wheel, stopping him.
“Wait, I -”
Luhan’s attention was on her, staring at her patiently until she blinked, until she could say what she wanted to say, but Jinah didn’t. She was muted. Frightened. Luhan couldn’t just do this to her without warning about an internal breakdown.
“Do you want a ride home?” He asked out of concern, treating her like a child again. Even though he didn’t look too well either, Jinah’s heart had been too defiant to tell him of how she truly felt.
“I can drop you off at your place.”
Her hands started to translate her words, tried it in a form of words without the sounds, and Luhan interpreted it with a surprised look in his eyes, because it read, “I like you” but he could be wrong, and Jinah could be wrong too.
She didn’t know what else to do or say, but she did know what she wanted out of this. She wanted a little romantic bike ride away even for the next five minutes with the boy she just lately realized she liked. She wanted to confess exactly that she wanted Luhan more than a friend did and she hoped he would feel exactly the same way. She wanted this and she wanted that.
However, this and that, after a long time of processing the odds, was not what Luhan could give her.
“I’ll walk,” Jinah said in a light tone, waving at him and Luhan shrugged before he speeded down the lane without a goodbye.
And he was gone.
She wasn’t expecting it to be the last day they would actually talk to each other. She still saw him at school of course, still smiled in his direction when he did, still waved and said hi when he did: Jinah had been reactive to everything he would throw at her. She waited until he would forget about her existence, waited for everything else to fade and disappear as if they never happened, like all the other things in this universe, lethal in slow motion.
It came, three months later, and prepared than ever, Jinah let go of the idea of being with her first love.
Im Jinah was not Im Jinah anymore at 17.
Nana, they all called her that. And just that, just Nana, the blonde captain cheerleader, hottest bitch on the block they all dubbed her. She wore cheery lips often, showed off her curves found in the right parts, walked in high heels and cut classes when she wanted to.
She and Luhan stood so close to each other once more after a long time. His scent reminded her of once upon a time, his laughter something she always knew as her heart’s playlist. They were watching the football game together today, for the first time because they never have done this before either since it was always her watching him and because today Luhan was actually benched for injury.
She couldn’t manage to say a single word to him even now, since he wasn’t initiating conversation either.
He looked the same, though, which made the butterflies in Jinah’s stomach flutter eagerly. He looked the same like before but she didn’t.
Lizzy squeezed herself close to her, wearing already the same outfit as Jinah. “How was the Mathlete? Did you win?”
Her friend shook her head in regret, holding out two fingers. “I came in 2nd. How about here? Who’s winning?”
“Not us because the visitor’s goalie is being a bitch,” Luhan joined them; Lizzy also more focused now on the game than Nana had ever been (Luhan’s fault).
“Damn it, Zitao! That should’ve gone in, we could’ve goaled! Let’s go, let’s go!” He shouted at the top of his lungs, louder than the coach did. He still seemed like his old self. Limping, he sat back down, relaxed more when the hype dropped.
“You, okay?” Jinah started, casually dropping off her concern.
“Yeah, if only the other team stops bitching around the net,” he answered, a chuckle escaped his lips. “How about you? How are you hanging?”
Jinah shrugged, shaking her head. “Zitao’s a pretty good replacement, I think.”
At the corner of her eyes, Luhan scowled for a second, and then the ends of his mouth curved to a smile. “I see. But I play better.”
“Of course you do,” Jinah rolled her eyes, crossing her arms in wait for anything more to talk about but they ran out of words. They didn’t before, Jinah remembering, and maybe that was what hurt.
In the end, their school won by 5-3 and it wasn’t much but at least the team’s winning streak remained. Luhan couldn’t walk towards his teammates so they came to him, hugged each other and lifted each other in joy. Jinah was somewhere in the background taking it all in, embedding everything of him into the shelves of her mind, with all the other memories she had of him from before. His lopsided grin, the wrinkles in his eyes, the way his laughter just sparked so much - all recorded down.
She suddenly missed him when Luhan pulled her into a half-hug, so she congratulated him, and he had been kind enough to say a few of the stupidest things in the world like I missed you, as if reading off her thoughts like that, as if they hadn’t seen each other in decades.
“Nana, we won! We won! ” Her feet no longer touched the ground, being carried around suddenly with strong lean arms and she felt lips crashing into hers and they were soft and familiar, and she knew it had to be Wu Fan the captain of the team.
“Party at Yixing’s tonight!” Lizzy, who Jinah later realized to have actually been right beside her in this mob, shouted and a louder cheer chorused in reply.
Almost everyone who was anyone had been invited over. Jinah came a bit late with Wu Fan, most of his teammates drunk by now. Wandering off, she looked for Lizzy first, to talk about what Luhan said earlier since it never left her mind, but Jinah found her on the staircase to the attic nearly half-undressed in Yixing’s arms and it would be rude to interrupt their intimate celebration just for it.
She turned her heels, only to bump into Luhan, spilling his drink on his shirt by accident.
“Shit, that’s gonna stain.”
“It’s okay,” Luhan said, looking at his clothes. He set aside his glass, lest it break with another surprising encounter and turned to her, “Came with Wu Fan?”
“Yeah,” she replied, still distracted. “The shirt, I’ll have it to the dryers -“
“Yixing, the damn bedroom please! Everyone can hear you from here!” Luhan cried, preoccupied with the other two not far from them, Jinah controlling herself not to laugh about it.
He clicked his tongue when they scurried away, his attention falling on the girl in front of him. “Have you seen their balcony? This place’s got a pretty view of the city, trust me, you’ll like it.”
Jinah felt like it had been a horrible excuse just to hold her hand and take her away from the blinding music from downstairs, but it worked efficiently, and it wasn’t like Luhan hadn’t held her hand before, either. But today she swore under her breathe, something in the air was too different.
They were the only two up here thankfully, the sky lighted by the moon though elusively covering itself behind the clouds. Skyscrapers of Beijing from not so far towered over the residence area, and the party kids were dancing on the other side of the house. So below them had been the elegant garden, to which Jinah had heard to be Lizzy’s favorite place in his house because of the heavenly appeal.
“How’s the foot?” She asked him.
“It’s fine,” he laughed, looking up to locate some stars. “Do you still paint?”
Surprised by the question she hesitated and looked too bothered to even hide it. “I… I told you I don’t do it anymore. It was just something I did when I got bored.”
“Did you fill up the sketchbook I gave you yet?” Luhan wondered.
She shook her head tiredly. “I didn’t and I won’t. Ever. I don’t even remember where I put it. I think I’ll give it to charity when I find it. Or I think I already gave it away.”
“I liked it better when you didn’t talk at all,” Luhan said, but still with a smile, making it look like he didn’t mean it but there were so many more things that Jinah could read between the lines, and she knew Luhan .
Jinah was quiet, and so was he. The distance between them faired as an odd pair, looking at the unexciting night in its aging, and before Jinah could understand where it all went wrong between them, when did a wall started tearing them apart, why did it seem that she won’t be able to mend this shit ever again, Luhan said, “I’m sorry, Jinah. Look, can’t we -”
“I’ll go find Wu Fan now,” Jinah finally decided. “It was nice talking to you again.” And she started leaving, knowing that his eyes followed, knowing that he always seem to follow, and she could hear him call out her name, she could even feel his hand gripping her wrist, but she didn’t turn back, not anymore, who said she would be waiting for him.
Wu Fan was in the kitchen, waiting for her.
Prom came. Jinah went of course with Wu Fan, Lizzy and Yixing in the back seat of the car. They pulled over where Wu Fan usually parked, then Lizzy nudged Jinah about the one pulling over across them.
Luhan unexpectedly came with someone, some geeky girl he probably picked up from the library but she didn’t look quite recognizable either, and his eyes traveled to the likes of them, waving before his attention fell on his date yet again, making small talk before they disappear into the music inside. It bothered her a little bit (what if they’ve been going out for quite a long time now?).
“Luhan didn’t tell me he has a girlfriend. Does he?” Jinah asked.
“He’s never mentioned,” Wu Fan answered. “I didn’t know you and Luhan were close.”
Jinah inhaled rather harshly. “We just… know each other. He’s in the team so yeah, I know him.”
“They go way back, though,” Lizzy suddenly joined in, Jinah’s eyes widening. “I actually thought they were dating before. I always see the two of them on Saturdays walking back to her -“
Jinah cleared her throat very loudly, an implication that she would absolutely kill the girl if she went on. Wu Fan didn’t seem to have the slightest hint of jealousy over this, Jinah guessed, but he didn’t seem that well after hearing it, either.
When a ballad played after some wild dancing, couples - from the most awkward pair to the newly established, to the longest and to the almost breaking apart, and even to the broken one like Lizzy and Seunghyun- flocked towards the center and danced, making most of the moment because the seniors would be leaving behind everything soon.
Wu Fan was in his 4th glass of cocktail when it played, and Jinah gripped his sleeve, a soft smile on her lips. “Come on, we should dance this. It’s my favorite song.”
“But we just danced the previous one,” Wu Fan said coolly. “Maybe later, baby.”
Her attention then fell on everyone else on the floor, happily in love, happily in the arms who love them back. She was with Wu Fan more often - they loved each other a lot too - and it was their friends’ idea that they start going out. They dated, fell in love a couple of times, fell out of it, screamed at each other, then made love before and after; it wasn’t like Jinah was asking for anything more. They were dating for almost a year now but something else just felt missing. Like the only piece left to complete a puzzle or something.
“Wu Fan, I’ll borrow Jinah for now, will that be all right?” Jinah’s heart took another swerve, their eyes not yet meeting but she knew he had been that missing piece.
His captain stared at him deadpanned, then at Jinah. “Just call me if he does something funny.”
“Like what, take her home. Please, you know me,” he laughed it off, a hand already extending to the girl. He picked her up from the seat, twirling her around as gracefully as he can to the dance floor, her hands fell on his shoulders, and they waltzed to the beat; finally, after a while their eyes met and they smiled with ease, without any barrage or guilt.
But there had been hurt, in the way Luhan smiled at her, in the way she looked at him back. He was singing to the song, in the sweetest voice she knew he could pull off - I’m never going to let you go, never, ever.
“Hey,” she called, deleting the distance between them, her head rested on his shoulder.
“Hey.” Luhan hesitated but his other hand dropped hers so they were draped around him instead, his by her waist.
“What about your date?” she closed her eyes. She closed them because by then she wouldn’t see anyone else, wouldn’t feel anyone else but him. Right here it was him. Right now (and even long before), it was him.
Luhan chuckled. “That was my cousin.”
She grinned in relief, before opening something momentous. “You know it wouldn’t have worked out for us anyway.” She wanted to knock some sense into him with these words, empty worthless words, wanting to believe in them too even though she didn’t sound like herself when she said it, and she hoped Luhan wouldn’t notice it.
“That’s why I never tried.”
But it sure as hell didn’t mean you didn’t love me.
He graduated and left.
She graduated a year later with Lizzy.
They didn’t meet for a long time, as she studied in Korea for college, while, he in France.
Jinah lied because her (his) sketchbook was filled to the brim. She flipped through the pages and thought of him, because the pictures she drew all had been (about) him. With the skies in a mixture of black and blue, a single blue umbrella floated above the other black ones at the lower portion of the paper and Jinah smiled in saying, “This was us under here.” She drew her first day of school, the boy and the girl smiling at each other in a distance with other students blurrily painted in peripheral. She saw a picture of the field, when he played for the team and kicked the ball so high. Then another one when he walked her home in the sunset - all of the things Luhan left behind in the shelves of her heart, she kept them in here.
She wanted to draw more, but she inched not a single move to pick up the brush. I can’t keep doing this and keep flipping back. It was just a crush. A crush’s just a crush, isn’t it?
She wrapped it up and sent it to Luhan in Paris (-she asked her stepmom for his current address) when she stayed in the dorm.
Another three weeks came and the package was sent back -no postcards, no letters, still unopened.
Im Jinah was back to being Jinah again and Nana died with the rest of high school. Lizzy still called her that though, just for fun, and now they were interns in a major firm. Lizzy was getting married to Yixing in a few days, Luhan was bound to attend it for sure and Jinah, after a couple of years, wasn’t truly prepared for that moment any time soon.
“Eh, please!” Lizzy groaned. “Forget him! I setup a date for you on Saturday to meet this guy. He’s perfection. Take him to the wedding if you want, just to make Luhan jealous I mean. Be careful though, he’s quite a charmer.”
Jinah didn’t believe it at first before she was actually there. She stared easily into the man’s eyes, and for a second saw Luhan in them, the way he said, “Jinah, right?” (which were Luhan’s first words to her), and he smiled gently, so softly. He was her age she decided but then later revealed he was older.
“Yang Seungho.” Oppa, the perfect time to call someone an oppa.
She copied his accent, nodded and embedded the name into her mind, throwing away some Luhan thoughts and replacing them with this, with him.
She brought him to the wedding, but no Luhan appeared thankfully, just hearing Yixing talk about how Luhan hadn’t left Japan yet because of some board meetings and it was impossible to book a flight on such late notice. He sent his regards by calling, and even calling about Jinah who blushed at the mention of his and her name in one sentence.
“Jinah’s kinda obsessed with him,” Lizzy explained to Seungho, who didn’t mind this at all.
Three years later, at thirty, Jinah was to marry Yang Seungho. The news stretched viral to friends of friends, to relatives including the one back in China, her stepmother flying right away to Seoul.
“Your real mom would have told you how pretty you look today,” her stepmom dropped a kiss on Jinah’s head.
“She couldn’t have told me about it because she was mute,” Jinah replied with a smile, still ever so fluent with the other language. “My real mom didn’t speak, but I did, and I think I inherited some genes on that, but everything’s all right now, and I didn’t mind if you weren’t my real mom because you’ve been very kind and so thank you for raising me since I was 7.” They had tears in their eyes, and while they hugged, someone stood by the doorway. Jinah expected it to be Lizzy, but she cleared her eyes and proved herself wrong.
He looked the same, and so Jinah wondered then if she did too.
His hands slid deep down his pockets, his tie still loosely hanging on his neck; he wore his suit primly, and overwhelmed at the hours not spent in between for the past years, Jinah jumped from her seat in her gown, running towards him, still almost in tears.
“Hey, it’s okay, come on,” Luhan comforted, patting her as he hugged her back. He smiled when she moved away and she too smiled back; they emitted identical smiles, identical and similar like a pair of socks, worthless without the other.
“I missed you so much, you asshole.”
“I’ve been busy, I’m sorry,” Luhan replied, smiling. “Sorry, okay?”
Jinah sighed. “I was hoping you’d come. And you did, I’m so happy.”
Unable to refrain himself, Luhan held her in his arms again for the next minutes, squeezing her for as long as they both manage, Jinah sobbing into his tuxedo, not to add drama to what already was, but because it seemed appropriate at times like these. This shouldn’t have been what it was supposed to look like; Luhan should’ve have been the one out there by the altar, waiting for her to exchange vows and be with forever happily ever after.
Now they didn’t know what they else were waiting for. Everything just fell apart at the wrong ends of waiting, always waiting for something that might never even show up. Had it always been that cruel?
“It would have never worked out for us anyway.”
Jinah whispered, “You can’t keep breaking someone who’s already broken.”
“Be happy,” Luhan addressed, nearing his lips to hers at that moment, and she at the same time waited, for him to give her the romantic childish first kiss that supposed to have happened years before. With eyes closed off from the world. With the heart beating only for one person.
Their lips were barely apart, but they didn’t touch, and instead of a kiss, Luhan cupped her face in his hands, and looked at her straight in the eye. It hurt that way but he couldn’t do anything about it. Not now, and perhaps not ever.
“Be happy,” he repeated.
And he was gone.
(“Jinah overcome her muteness, her fears, so why can’t you overcome your own anxieties?” Yixing protested.
“It’s not yet time,” Luhan responded.
“So when?”
“I don’t know.”)
(Yang) Jinah heard he married someone a year later. She still loved him, though - that was her problem.
Ages passed them, days, nights, and 3:10 am epiphanies how they were both so scared about being in love with each other, and they betted on dreams instead, where they owned each other in silence, like the first time, and living with memories in the pages of their lives didn’t take much of their time in the real world.
Jinah was 71 when she returned to China. Her stepmother passed away at an age close to a hundred, and the funeral had been for the only daughter not by blood with uncles and aunts only. Luhan came to visit her while she laid flowers on the grave, and she sat there with the wind blowing on her white hair, looking at the name engraved on the stone, Mrs. Im because she was married to a Korean.
They left together, climbed up a small hill nearby with under a great oak tree, and sat there in silence.
Jinah looked up to him, and moved her hands, as she could no longer speak that well again (old habits don’t die) but Luhan understood it so well.
“Just two kids,” Luhan answered her honestly. “And seven grandkids.”
“That’s wonderful,” Jinah responded. “You must have lived a happy life.”
Luhan shrugged, leaning back and lying on the grass until his back creaked, but he laughed it off, the same adorable laughter, the playlist of her heart. “Probably not as happy as yours.”
“Why didn’t we try to be happy… together?” Jinah wondered, sitting next to him.
He mused with all the possible answers to that question, played with words because he liked them a lot, ran a thousand hundreds of excuses that would satisfy Jinah and justify himself. He smiled at the woman he once had without really knowing she was his since Day 1, and he could just reason out the same thing they usually said: it wouldn’t have worked out, but that was too overused.
Jinah watched him as his eyes screamed he missed her again, and she thought he looked the same, except the gray hair, but there were them eyes more wrinkled than ever, and the smile, in jagged fake dentures now like her own, and his hands and his smell and his laughter.
He didn’t answer the question, and she didn’t wait for it (or anything else now) anymore, as they fell asleep that one cool afternoon of May.