Chapter Text
January 2018
It was rather funny that Kyungsoo had a bad knee when he was only 29. Never had much fancy for sports and had managed to avoid overexerting his body even when he served as an active-duty soldier. Yet here he was, sliding in the medicated knee band while easing the dull pain that throbbed whenever he pressed on the skin. It wasn't entirely intolerable, but winters were especially hard as the ache would reoccur in the most inconvenient times.
He couldn't go back home during Chuseok so his mom was a little upset with him. He promised her that he would bring Jongin and drive them to her house but they never made it. Mainly because of Kyungsoo's asshole boss and his own inability to say no to extra pay. He made good money now. Really good money for an unmarried man in his late twenties, living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Growing up, there were only him and his mom. He couldn't say he was a country bumpkin. After all, Goyang was a big city, right next to Seoul and it only took a thirty-minute drive to get to the blinding Capital. He remembered riding his mom's company car to get to the small elementary school on the outskirts of Seoul.
He wasn't particularly studious so his grades were average and recess was the highlight of his measly elementary years. He however was the tiniest in his batch and would get uncomfortable when his classmates used to tease him affectionately. When his mom got promoted, they moved a little closer to Seoul so he bid goodbyes to his old school.
His mom never moved again. For the price of a one-story house back in Goyang, they got a two-bedroom apartment that had a big-joint balcony with the next-door neighbor. It was one of those late 70s socialist regime concrete buildings so it was sturdy and safe but was also ugly as hell. His mom had tried multiple times to sand and repaint that one yellow stain on their living room wall. None of her efforts bore fruit. Years later, Kyungsoo covered that spot with custom wallpaper that cost like 80,000 won a yard.
Kyungsoo was a sociable kid. He had plenty of friends back in his hometown and elementary school. He would never run out of people who would pick him up for school or invite him to catch bugs on the weekend. They moved during the summer vacation so he couldn't make new friends until his new school reopened.
Bummed out and a little homesick, he would sulk on the spacious balcony with his little legs dipped comfortably inside the inflatable kiddie pool while sipping on home-made lemonade.
When the cicadas would chirp loudly, he would sing the English songs the American youth preacher sang during Sunday service. For a while, his audience was his not-so sneaky mother taking snapshots of him and tired little sparrows taking an afternoon break in the ceramic basin. In the second week, his audience tripled in the form of three almost identical kids staring at him from the little metal bars separating their joint balcony.
Kyungsoo said almost identical because he was ten and not stupid. The tallest of them had soft droopy eyes to which she shared them with the smallest. The middle one had a mean pinch in her eyebrows and Kyungsoo wasn't sure he would like to be her friend. But as an aspiring social butterfly, he did greet them with glee after all it was lonely inside an empty apartment.
As expected, the middle one ignored him straight on as if he had interrupted her precious afternoon nap while the tallest just acknowledged him politely with a small nod then went on her merry way. It was the youngest who had a shy little smile on his face and the twinkle in his eyes that said "let's be friends"
In the summer of 1999, Do Kyungsoo met Kim Jongin.
October 2018
He woke up with a sharp pain in his chest. Everything was pitched black. He strained his eyes to adjust to the darkness around him. Nothing prevailed but the feeling of static electricity buzzing in his veins. There were hands all over him, on his chest, arms, legs, and over his stomach. There was so much noise, clipping of paper, the rustling of sheets, continuous beeping from machines, and frantic footsteps.
The cold, chilling cold was what he felt later. He remembered it being Fall so the temperature around Seoul would drop a couple of degrees but never this cold. Not this kind of cold that seeped into your bones and sucked out all the warmth in you. Suddenly, he had remembered reading something about this in some morbid book that Jongin had bought when they were in college.
"First, you lose your eyes then your touch. Your nose loses its way and so does your mind. The last you hear will be the last you find."
It was oddly poetic for some lines that depicted death. In the back of his mind, Kyungsoo was denying the overwhelming possibility that he was dying. He didn't even notice the cold was the indication that his body was steadily seeping out energy. His limbs won't cooperate and even though his scent of smell remained stagnant and dull, he was pretty sure that he might be in an ER because the strong saturation of anti-septic alcohol was wafting intensely into his nostrils. In the last effort to climb out of his battle with death, he strained to concentrate on what his surrounding was saying. He only caught a part of a somber voice then nothing at all.
"16 October 2018, 19:35, I pronounce-"
-In between- Living Room
Strange. Death, that is. Out of all the scenarios, he didn't think death was physical. He did not expect to be sitting in his childhood home living room. The stained yellow spot still hadn't been covered by the wallpapers yet.
"Ah" Kyungsoo audibly said. He must be in limbo. That must be it. All texts in the bible and all the notions of the afterlife, but still it was curious to be conscious of your own death.
Curious. That was bullshit. Uncontrollable rage. Anger was what he was feeling. In this weird reimagination of his childhood home, Kyungsoo couldn't believe that he had died.
The need to let out this newfound information had led him to kick down the old telephone stand from his peripheral. It tumbled with a crushing boom onto the floor into minuscule pieces of plastics and one of its cheap wooden legs flew across as it landed at the corner of the wall.
So there was still sound. Kyungsoo squeezed his palms and dug his short fingernails into them. Heat and pain rushed into him. So there was touch as well.
He wondered how did he die? In movies, ghosts had the appearance of what caused their death. At least that was what most movies showed.
Kyungsoo patted all over his body, from his head to his limbs. Nothing felt out of ordinary. He should look at himself. If he couldn't feel it, he should be able to see it.
He rushed to the door on the left. He used to frustrate his mom when he wouldn't come out of their only bathroom during the morning rush to their prospective daily activities.
He turned the doorknob and swung it open. There he was greeted by the same yellow stain on the wall. The door closed with a dull thud.
The telephone stand that he kicked moments ago was standing in its original place, unbroken as if nothing had happened.
He collapsed back onto the brown sofa. Its old spring cushions groaned lowly. How frustrating. How so very frustrating. He punched the old fabric until his knuckles chafed raw and red. He had begun to cry and scream.
Fatigue slowly caught up to him and he fell asleep. How funny. Even in death, he needed sleep.
September 2004
Kyungsoo had skipped cram school for the very first time since his mom enrolled him in this private high school. He was academically average and athletically pathetic. It was by some miracle that he got into this school in the first place.
Jongin had argued that Kyungsoo should stop downplaying his artistic merits. Who would have thought organizing multiple middle school festivals was how he landed in the Chaebols' Eden?
He was also pressured into joining the student council and he was the only first-year among a bunch of upperclassmen. He still hadn't gotten used to their rich brat lingo and their charitable smiles. Their social circle didn't really concern nor their consistent need to keep up with appearances. For them, Kyungsoo was just another pissed-poor-good-merit kid whom they would never encounter after graduation.
He sneaked into the empty bicycle stands where the lone bicycle chained carelessly was his shiny Samchully. He unlocked it and fasten his helmet. After a quick check to see if the coast was clear, he was on a swift cruise to Gwangjin-gu.
Jongin told him that his entrance exam interview would be done by six in the evening. If Kyungsoo biked fast enough, he would make it to Sunghwa Academy by five forty-five.
His stomach grumbled loudly, he would appease it when he and Jongin walked around Hongdae later.
When his bike stopped in front of the white brick gates, Jongin was already waiting for him outside. The younger's bike was nowhere to be found.
Jongin had always been tall. Now at the age of fifteen, he was towering over the high schoolers exiting from the gate. He would however shy away when curious eyes land on him. When asked about his bike, the younger told him that he had left it at home because he didn't want to strain his muscles before the interview.
"How was it?" Kyungsoo asked as he tried to catch his breath from the long bike ride.
"It was fine," Jongin replied softly. His voice was light and airy. Kyungsoo guessed the interview must have gone well.
"Oh well done. Let's get something to eat, I am starving," Kyungsoo chirped as he prepared to hop back onto his bike. But Jongin stopped him.
"Let me do it. You must be tired, Soo. And besides, I need to shake off the extra energy." Jongin hovered his hands over Kyungsoo's as he maneuvered the handlebar to his direction.
Fall was early this year so the wind had already picked up and the weather was pleasantly cool but Kyungsoo felt his neck and ears burning with heat.
-In Between- TV
When he opened his eyes, he was still in the living room. The sun had set and there were freckles of streetlights dancing on their eggshell ceiling.
Kyungsoo was still dead and still stuck in this ridiculous living room limbo. He had a dream. No. More like revisiting a distant memory, it was vivid. It felt real as if he was physically experiencing it.
He smiled fondly. Jongin had passed the interview with Sunghwa Academy and he enrolled in the prestigious arts high school the following year. Jongin had been doing ballet since he was five and it had remained his passion for many years.
Kyungsoo's chest hurt with revelation. If he heard the date right at the hospital, then he wouldn't be able to see Jongin opening "The Nutcracker" for Korea National Ballet Company at Christmas.
He bit into his fist to muffle the scream, it had hurt him. He looked at his knuckles that he punched raw before he had fallen asleep. They had healed as there was no redness or abrasion visible on them. He looked around the living room, judging from the positioning of the furniture, the setup felt like it was around a year or two since they moved into this place. Before the water pipe running the floor busted and they had to redo their entire floor. The white crowning from the wall was mix-matching with the old dingy wooden panels.
If Kyungsoo remembered correctly, the apartment came with a couple of old appliances that the previous residents couldn't be bothered to take away. There were this ugly green industrial refrigerator, the TV and its steel stand, and finally, this leather sofa he was lying on.
He forced himself to get up from the sofa. He tried opening the light switch and the fluorescent lights flooded the room. It was far too white that it momentarily stung his eyes.
The old box TV was propped over the steel tv stand. Under it, were the brand new LG CD player and the old gray Sony VHS player.
He switched them on as well. He might as well try to see if the living room was functioning. The television switched on with static noise and its visual slowly stabilized. There were options for him to choose either cable or VHS.
Kyungsoo wanted to humor himself so he clicked the button to turn on the cable. As expected, nothing showed up and static replaced the blue screen.
There already was a tape inside the VHS as it whirled in a creaky groan when he pushed the play button.
The tape played and the intro was a big bold string of 13 January 2000. Then it morphed into his mother's youthful face, free of wrinkles and full of rosy cheeks.
"Happy Birthday my babies," she said into the camera then the lens switched to him and Jongin.
There, they were sitting side by side in their matching birthday hats. Jongin had already caught up to his height. The quality of the video made it seem like it was being taped with a microwave which might as well had been true at that time.
His mom always had a hard time letting go of old technology and her insistence to continue to use the videotape had been a pain in the ass for Kyungsoo when he had to digitalize the home videos in fear of the great enemy, 'Mold and the Great Seoul Humidity'.
"I will copy them so that you can keep one for yourself, Young Seo-ssi." Kyungsoo's mom called from right behind the lens. He had long forgotten how she used to sound so young and full of energy. A tall, lean woman came into the frame as she gently took hold of the camcorder as its focus shook from the exchange.
"Go'on now. Ya had enough of us in da video. Go sit wit ya son," the other lady offered. When Jongin and his sisters had mastered the art of hiding their Satoori, the older Kims didn't even bother to change how they sounded.
Kyungsoo continued to watch the home video, observing how his mom strode towards him and Jongin then proceeded to plop herself between them. He chuckled at his eleven years old self who whined petulantly when she smothered him with loud kisses on his chubby cheeks. Young Jongin had giggled delightfully when Kyungsoo shoved him for laughing at his embarrassed self.
"Dear, could ya please come 'ot the bin and take a pic of the kids?" Jongin's mom yelled over the room. The camera then panned to a solemn and tanned man exiting out of their family bathroom. He looked a lot like Jongin.
"T'was workin perfectly fine yesterday." The man complained, looking pitifully at his black film camera. He shook his head in disappointment.
"A good smack or two works like magic for me." His mom suggested out of nowhere. Kyungsoo couldn't believe the home video had managed to capture all the moments happening like a movie.
Jongin's dad reluctantly hit the camera at its back with a hard enough smack. For a second, nothing had happened but then it shuttered loudly and a flash went off.
"It worked!" The man exclaimed. The camcorder didn't catch it but Kyungsoo remembered how his mom had looked so please with herself that day.
"Now get ready. Let's test out this old thing." Jongin's dad chirped happily as he moved to take a shot of the trio.
The video took an abrupt stop and static reappeared with a loud whistle. For a moment, Kyungsoo stood and stared at the television. Its rolling waves of electric currents stared back at him in contempt.
He was quite sure that when he woke up in this living room the second time, there was no trace of personal totems lying around in plain sight. Yet, there was the glaring proof that a picture frame was propped right on top of the box TV. Inside the frame, there sat two little boys in their toothy grin with chocolate smears on their little faces.
Maybe it was his intuition or maybe it was his soul calling. Oddly enough he turned to the bathroom door. His heart was beating violently in his chest as he slowly twisted the doorknob. He had feared if he ended up opening the never-ending loop to his childhood home's living room, he would go insane, no matter if dead or alive.
One could never believe how happy Kyungsoo was to witness that in his first line of vision, there was the green-tiled monster of a wall that his mother adored yet he despised his whole stay in this house. He had hated how tacky it looked and in the Summer how it would resemble the green grimes clinging on the sewage walls.
He took careful steps inside the bathroom. So petrified that his reality would be shifted if he were to make a sound. The slight cold of the wet floor was as strange as the familiar waft of lavender body soap permeating into his nostrils.
Death or limbo, he truly didn't know nor did he had the courage to try to find out. Maybe that was why he had closed his eyes so tight even when he gripped the corners of the sink to lean in and to look at his reflection.
In films, ghosts had always dressed their death as the final testament to their last moment on the mortal plane. He wondered how horribly wounded was he to die so abruptly. He didn't even remember how did he get to the hospital.
When he had panic attacks after being yelled to the filths by his many bosses during his younger days, he would hide inside the last stall of the public toilet with his head hanged low and his breathing slowed down. It had always worked.
In a rhythmic one-two-three, he peaked at his reflection on the mirror above the sink. His first thought was 'ah how anti-climatic'. He had looked the same as the day before he wound up dead at some hospital. There wasn't even a single scratch marring his face, well, aside from a tiny split on his lower lip.
The frustration that he had managed to ignore just welled up in his chest as it burned his eyes with tears spilling out like floods. He hastily twisted the faucet as cool water spilled into the white ceramic basin. He splashed his face with more water than necessary as if trying to convince himself that he would soon wake up from this terrible terrible nightmare.
April 2003
He knew he was the one who volunteered but the demand for physical and mental strength to take care of a terminally ill patient was beyond a fourteen-year-old boy. On the last day of his week-long hospital duty, Kyungsoo couldn't bear longer to look at Mr. Kim in the eye.
The man had always been lean but he had a glow to his skin that all the Kim siblings had very fortunately inherited. Now he had gone from that to paper white and sickly thin. The hollows of his eyes ran till his cheeks, the croaking cough that would rumble up from his chest, and the shaking, oh the shaking, of his hands were all that Kyungsoo could see and hear all these seven days. It felt so horrible to witness all this but there was no way he could truly empathize with how the Kims had felt, how Jongin must have felt.
It must have been the guilt for Kyungsoo's part as well. He had volunteered to be an accomplice in the little white lie that the adults had been planning the past month. He had overheard them talking about the plan when he was dropping off their lunch after school.
People would always say, "Kyungsoo, you are so mature for your age." He must have let that non-sense got to his big head. He had thought he could handle it. He had thought the adults were too ignorant of how observant the Kim siblings were. How they had needed another kid to convince the trio to even partook in the little trap.
It may have been true. Jongin and his sisters would have never left their father's side, not when he had been in a critical condition for the last three months. Not when all the specialists and doctors were updating them with one bad news after another. Not when they were on the verge of financial suicide with all the hospital bills and insurance piling up on top of their living expenses.
There was no way, the siblings would have taken a week-long trip back to their home town when their father was lying sick in bed. They were good and responsible like that. Kyungsoo had known them for maybe a measly five-year but kids knew kids better, just like how adults did to their own. The original plan was for the sibling to go back to their hometown by themselves and the parents would follow them, disguised as a well-deserved family vacation. But it was far too obvious from the start that the older Kims didn't want their children to witness their father's impending death.
Kyungsoo knew it would have never worked and would only boil down into a massive fight between the family, which would cause unwanted mental strain on all of their barely-there sanity. He had suggested to them; his mother, and the Kims that they should come up with a better plan. The idea of a break shouldn't come from Mrs. Kim. For that, Kyungsoo and his mom would bear the burden by off-handedly mentioning how Mrs. Kim needed to rest, how the siblings should accompany her while Kyungsoo would help nurse Mr. Kim so that he could follow them half-way to the trip.
Little white lies and fake promises, Mrs. Kim had first refused to ever involve them more than they already were. Kyungsoo had no excuse for that. It was his mother who had perfected the plan. She had chided him the plan was equally childish and irresponsible from the adults part. Mrs. Kim would take the trip on her own at first, following through with Kyungsoo's plan of how she had needed a break.
Then they would need to convince the siblings to accompany their mom per their father's request and their neighbors' reassurance of how he would be taken care of while they were gone. If things had turned out well, Mr. Kim could actually follow them to their home town.
However, things had not turned out well after the fourth day of Mrs. Kim's departure and the second day that of the siblings. Mr. Kim's left kidney had collapsed and the doctors had to transfer him into Renal Critical Care as well as immediate transition into intensive dialysis treatment. Although Mr. Kim had stabilized the day after, the slim chances of him ever going back home had gone down to negative.
Kyungsoo and his mom took turns taking care of Mr. Kim. But with a full-time job and on track to promotion, his mom had taken a lot of responsibility and was on the verge of exhausting herself as well. Kyungsoo had stepped up, spouting some nonsense about how it was the summer holidays and how he was a young healthy boy with acute inability to sleep at night. Then he was forced to recognize the extreme difference between voluntary insomnia and one's body crushing need to send itself to deep slumber.
The days were excruciating blare of changing IV drips, smooth glides of the pen on the today's checklist, hourly monitoring and answering back to nurse on duty and uselessly talking to Mr. Kim who was in and out of consciousness. Kyungsoo had passed out exhausted with his body bent in an unnatural position right beside Mr. Kim's hospital bed. He then would wake up with a warm blanket over his shoulders and the comforting smell of chicken soup when his mom would come by to bring him food the next day.
On the last day of the hospital duty, Kyungsoo was splashed with the cold reality that how all he had done was broken promises and spewing lies. He had promised Hyun Sik that he would come to practice with the band all summer but all he did was wallow in self-pity while feeding his ego and his growing savior complex.
As he laid awake with his head handing over the back of the uncomfortable hospital chair, grief, guilt, and all those ugly emotions materialized into his tears, uncontrollably streaming down like a floodgate. He put no effort into wiping them down nor sought enough willpower to stop himself from brawling his eyes out. But all it took was a weak squeeze to his trembling hand from shaky and bony fingers.
He and Mr. Kim had made a grand total of 5 words in exchange. Mr. Kim from an inability to speak more than one syllable without coughing his lungs out and Kyungsoo from an inability to verbalize his guilt into words.
"Thank you." Mr. Kim said with a voice so shaky and barely audible.
Jongin and his family returned to Seoul promptly on the eighth and they had never left their father's side until he passed away a week later.
The plan had appeared to be a major waste of time and ended up becoming just another excuse to run from the inevitable. Although Mr. Kim's death wasn't untimely, the onslaught of grief from his passing that hit the family wasn't any less.
However, if one thing that Kyungsoo had noticed or dared to even suggest, all of them were more at peace with the reality of their father's situation.
Kyungsoo had attended his first funeral at the age of fourteen. He got to wear the armband of a male member of the family as he greeted the many guests that came to honor and bid goodbye to Mr. Kim. He couldn't bear to stand more than five minutes near Mr. Kim's portrait nor had he speak any word of condolences to Jongin.
Even after everyone had left, Kyungsoo had stayed behind with the funeral parlor staff to help clean up the place. It was already late in the night, most of them were minors so there was no alcohol served. His mother had already taken the Kims home as she entrusted him to make it back home safe.
When he was about to take his leave, toeing into his beat-up Skechers to speedwalk to the bus stop, Jongin had called out to him. As he turned and looked at the younger, Jongin looked at peace. Although his face was puffy from the hours and hours of crying, for some reason Kyungsoo could tell that Jongin was finally letting go of his father.
Something unknown well-up in Kyungsoo's chest and before his mind begun to label the said feeling, he smiled up at Jongin. He didn't know for sure if it was appropriate but he guessed it was since Jongin gently smiled back at him.
They walked slowly along the deserted sidewalk. They had already passed the nearest bus stop from the funeral parlor but it was the weird cool breeze of the evening and the serene look on Jongin's face that prompted Kyungsoo to not mention getting onto the metal box.
It would take another fifteen-minute or so for them to reach the next bus stop that would take them home. He could phone his mom to pick them up but he guessed Jongin needed this walk.
The funeral parlor was one of the cheaper options for Jongin's family since they were already riddled with hospital bills. The place was far from the area where they lived but they served good food. Mrs. Kim had jokingly mentioned that after her multiple fits of hysterical cries over the past week after Mr. Kim's passing.
The flicker of streetlights that blinked in and out of existence and the cicadas chirping around the bushes surrounding the pavement would sometimes synchronize after a beat or two. They walked in silence, enjoying each other company as the warm air breezing between them in rhythmic waves.
From his line of vision, Kyungsoo could already spot the old metal stand and the wooden bench where they would wait for the bus to take them home. He unconsciously sped up his walk, stopping abruptly when Jongin spoke something to him.
"I have a recital tomorrow," Jongin hummed with a steady and even voice. Kyungsoo looked behind to find Jongin standing with his eyes looking above the night sky.
"It's such a star-less night," Jongin commented which made him look up the sky as well. It was true and there was a thick layer of dark clouds covering the moon.
"Do you think it will rain tonight?" Kyungsoo questioned offhandedly, he had also stopped walking as they both stared up at the sky.
"Nah. The weather forecast this morning said this week will just be cloudy," Jongin supplied. Kyungsoo hummed back and settled his eyes back to Jongin. He came face to face with a long column of honey skin, glistening under the twitching fluorescent lights from above. Kyungsoo swallowed and the heat rising up to his ears would have made him groan out loud if this was the first time he had ever caught himself staring at Jongin or his gorgeous features.
He wanted to slap himself for reacting like this even in these solemn circumstances. He had hoped for the night sky to cover his slowly reddening face. While he was fighting with his teenage angst, Jongin had finally stopped looking at the sky but he was looking longingly at something far behind Kyungsoo.
"I haven't practice this whole week, and we have been preparing for this play for months now," Jongin added again after a beat of silence. Kyungsoo mumbled an 'I see', he had to somehow show Jongin that he was willing to listen and he was listening.
If Kyungsoo had remembered correctly, Jongin had told him that the funding for their ballet club was dependent on how much awards, trophies, and national recognition each batch could achieve in every school term. Kyungsooo wondered if Jongin's school had forgotten that the dancers were only thirteen and were not court jesters for the King.
"Do you want to practice now?" Kyungsoo cracked a joke before he could even stop himself. Mortification came into his mind with a swift kick but his ego let out a crackle of cheer when Jongin laughed out loud. A genuine full-body laugh that shook his shoulders as he held up his hand to cover snorts of heinous hyena screeches that would rattle the peaceful night.
"I sure should," Jongin indulged Kyungsoo after he had managed to calm himself down. Kyungsoo said something along the line that he would be the judge when Jongin strode over to a generously lit spot right under the big lamp post. It was the only streetlight that wasn't flickering like the wings of a dragonfly.
Jongin stood on his toe and begun to dance. Kyungsoo had no knowledge of what ballet should look like, he had watched "The Nutcracker" at Jongin's house when the younger pestered him into watching it and stating it was his favorite of all time. Maybe for the multiple amounts of reruns that took place behind his retinas, Kyungsoo could recognize a few moves Jongin was making under the impromptu spotlight.
All Kyungsoo could think was how beautiful Jongin had looked under the ghostly streetlight and how happy it had made Kyungsoo witness this kind of joy on someone else. Maybe this someone else was who he cared for the most. He had thought the music and rhythms of the world were what he cared about the most and how singing had been bringing joy to his little unimportant life.
For he had thought music was his first and last love but oh how wrong he was as he stared and awed over the dancing boy under the cascading streetlights. Kyungsoo at the age of fourteen had come to a realization that boys loved boys like the way he loved Jongin.