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The Walkman opens with a clunk and a whir as the CD stops spinning. Hwanwoong’s fingertips graze along the pale pink finish like bike brakes, and then without hesitation he pops the disc free and fumbles around for the plastic case lost amongst his blankets. Just like every weekend, his bed has become a rock-face of jewel cases prodding into his back at all angles, half of his beloved CD collection spread out as he listens through album by album. Heavy headphones squash his ears, silencing all other sound, and they block out the whole world.
He stares up at the ceiling as he places in the next album and hits the play button. None of the white paint is visible, the ceiling covered in peeling posters and stickers, artists from every country staring down at him. Musicians, painters, dancers. All of his favourites are plastered in this room. They’re his closest friends and his confidantes, because he talks to all of them. Every day after classes since the first day of school he has told them his troubles. They’ve always understood, especially back when he struggled to make friends.
The first song on the album is one of Hwanwoong’s favourites. Before he can even think about it, his body carries him from the bed and to his feet. Night has fallen so he has to be quiet, but the tinny sound from outside his headphones will not carry through their small house. His feet move on instinct, and his arms soon follow, but he’s always had to work harder on training them. They push through his hair, bleached blond even though he knows he’s the only boy on this side of town who colours his hair. That’s the thing with this town: no one likes to live their life in colour.
Hwanwoong pops his body. They’re moves that he’s learned from visiting the local college and watching the dance students. He brought back a lot with him. Then he twists his body and finds fluidity in his arms; they’re the steps that he learned growing up, watching his parents dance together in the living room. They used to push the furniture back against the walls to make way. They don’t do that anymore, but Hwanwoong remembers.
He can’t be locked inside any longer.
Without a backward glance, he creaks open his bedroom door and tiptoes down the stairs. The house is small, a two-up-two-down terrace packed between other dwellings on this steep street. So fierce is the incline that the sidewalk gives way to steps every few yards, and his push-bike can hardly make it to the door even at the highest gear. Light rain patters on the room and Hwanwoong can hear it on the street when he reaches the front door.
He’s dressed only in his loose sweats and a thin long-sleeved shirt but it’s a summer shower and there is a hint of humidity in the air. Hwanwoong pulls on his sneakers and pushes his hair back from his face. There is a mirror just by the front door because his mother likes to check her hair and make-up before she goes out every day. Hwanwoong has inherited her attention to such things, that and his father’s unabashed love for music.
The song changes and a bright beat hits his ear-drums. The bass drum thuds but the hi-hats shimmer. Hwanwoong opens the front door with a click and slides out into the night.
At this time, the residential area is silent of human intervention. Only rain and wind break through into sound. Hot summer droplets hit Hwanwoong’s hair and he turns his face up to the sky, Walkman gripped between the fingers of his right hand. He closes his eyes and lets the water run from his forehead, down his soft cheeks and to his skin and throat until the neck of his shirt starts to soak. This Walkman has survived worse. One time, he dropped it in the bath.
His feet lead the way again. Some people say that soul is in the chest or the head or the stomach but Hwanwoong thinks that his soul is in his feet. They twist and turn and he pops up on pointe for a second in worn-soled sneakers. The music channels like electricity from his shoulders to his toes and then to the top of his head and he wonders if it funnels out there into the world, or down through his feet into the earth. He grips his own wet shirt with one hand because it’s the only way that he can catch a hold of the feeling.
Steadily, his heart finds pace with the beat.
The cobbles underfoot back his feet turn with every step but they add a texture to his steps that he’s not sure he could replicate in any dance studio. There are almost no lights on in the houses on both sides of the street; one glows yellow when he glances up and he wonders if there is a student inside, studying hard, or an adult reading a novel or someone like him, headphones glued to their ears. His heart swells at the thought.
When the bridge starts, Hwanwoong feels the urge to sing but he swallows it down. This street is quiet, even when the world is loud. He looks up to the sky again and finds the moon. Tonight is a full moon. White glow floods through the rain clouds. They’re beginning to drift apart as the rain lessens, but Hwanwoong likes their grey blue tones and the iridescent effect that the refracting droplets bring to the rays of light which hit the puddles on the street.
Hwanwoong loves to watch the moon.
He knows that the moon shines because of light reflected from the sun. In his darkest hours, he remembers that even at night when the blackness is impenetrable, the sun is still shining somewhere that he can’t see it. It beams on, glancing from the moon down to spill its light upon his face even in the depths of night. When that light illuminates his face, he reminds himself that this is the same moon that all of his idols are watching. He imagines them in their studios, watching the moon through arched windows while they work. He shares this moon with them.
The music is warm in his chest.
It spreads out like the heat from a warm fire in winter. Hwanwoong thinks it could dry his wet shirt just with the vibrancy of it. He supposes that it is joy. That’s what music is:
Joy.
He skips down the street, energy flooding to his fingertips as the song changes again and the tempo picks up. If anybody is looking out of the window, then he does not care. He’s never cared. Hwanwoong thinks that if they watch him, then maybe they’ll learn something about happiness.
With a kick of his feet together he jumps and lands in a deep puddle at the side of the street. Silver-grey water splashes over the sidewalk and up his sweats and he laughs, grabbing the nearest lamppost and swinging himself around once, twice, three times. He could keep spinning until he’s dizzy. Maybe he will. The beat vibrates through his entire body.
When he releases the cold, wet lamppost he stretches out his fingers and dances to their tips. That’s what it’s about. Hwanwoong can dance with just one hand. Sometimes he does during class. He lets his fingers make shapes on his desk and imagines that they’re his whole body. Then he stops.
He has reached the end of the street.
Cars trickle past on the main road. Their headlamps glow orange and red and yellow and they’re nothing like the soft nature of the moon. Even though the volume dial on his Walkman is turned up high, he can hear the groan of engines, and he slides off his headphones to remind himself of the real world for a moment. Behind him, everything is quiet, and ahead of him everything is loud. Neither of them bring him joy though, not the way that his music does.
He turns back and looks up the steep, steep hill to home. The houses are a little run-down, but some have tended plants out the front spilling onto the sidewalk and the shutters are repaired with new wood. Hwanwoong wants to move to a bigger city soon, where there might be more music and more people who look and dress like him. Just a little further, he thinks, as he trudges back up the hill and pauses his music. The batteries will be dead soon and he needs to go to the convenience store tomorrow to buy more.
Stars twinkle overhead and Hwanwoong pauses. In one of the puddles before him, the moon is reflected, one yellow-white orb that shines down on all the beautiful cities that he’ll visit one day. Once he makes it out of this town, there will be no stopping him ever again. He’ll dance in the street every day of his life and sing out loud too, and if people stare at him then he’ll smile and try to pass on some of that joy in his heart. Picking up the pace, he runs through another puddle and shakes his head when he feels the water soak through to his socks.
When he reaches his front door again, Hwanwoong glances over his shoulder. The street is as still as it was when he left the house. It is as if nothing has happened, as if it has never been disturbed. He imagines that if he comes back here in fifty years’ time, it’ll still have that same unchanged stillness. Quiet as a mouse, he slides off his shoes and tries to scale the stairs without creaking. Though the house is old, it is sturdy and reliable. The walls are peeling yellow and green paper patterned with gold flowers. He recalls a time when he would trace those flowers onto paper and try to make sense of their natural beauty.
Hwanwoong slips back into his bedroom and throws his Walkman onto the bed. Avoiding the dresser, he turns to the wall mirror and examines his damp hair. The roots are beginning to show through but he thinks that they add a certain nerve to his appearance, a suggestion that he’s too busy with everything else to even think about checking on his bleach. Beside the bed stands his speaker system, assembled from second-hand parts that he bought from the one electronics store in town. During the days when his parents are both at work and he doesn’t have school, Hwanwoong cranks up the volume as loud as it will go.
Even though the music has stopped, a buzz of energy in his body makes him stretch out his arms in one fluid movement, a last piece of rhythm that he has to shake from his system, and then he looks back to the dresser again. Propped against the wall is a letter. It is innocent-looking, plain white paper, with his full name and address printed on the front. But it is the letter that means everything. This letter has been resting on the dresser for two days. Quite nondescript in appearance but completely all-consuming in its meaning. The time has come for Hwanwoong to open it, but he cannot seem to make his feet cross the room.
He closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath.
All of a sudden, his heart is pounding to the beat of his own fear rather than his music. Sweat pools on his palms as his body betrays the worst dread in his mind. His eyes flicker around the room at the posters of his idols and he picks up his feet, crossing the room in two steps. They would all open the letter, he thinks. Perhaps they did, a long time ago. The paper is rough in his hands and he tears the envelope in his haste to open it. Blood rushes in his ears. There’s nothing that he can do to stop the shaking of his hands or the way that his mouth turns dry.
Everything has come down to this. His after-school job hauling fruit crates that strengthened his arms but risked his back, just to raise the money for a bus and then a train to Seoul for his audition. Every hour in the one small studio at school, drenched in sweat, spending his lunch breaks hauling his way through routines far beyond what class could teach him. The sacrifice, the blood and sweat, the way that he can only wear one pair of sneakers around town because anything else makes his blisters scream. It’s all contained in the weight of this letter.
He unfolds the thick wad of paper and tries to read it all at once. Doing so, he manages to read nothing at all and has to force himself to drag his eyes back up to the top of the page.
‘Dear Yeo Hwanwoong,
Writing on behalf of the admissions team at the Royal Academy of Dance, Seoul, I am delighted to inform you that you have been accepted into the program commencing spring semester.’
He scans the words.
The pulse in his ears races and then calms. Hwanwoong holds the paper so tightly that it crumples in his fingers. He lifts his arm to push the hair back from his face and sinks down onto his bed without even realising where his limbs are taking him. The sentences make more sense the more times that he reads them. He consumes them like a starving man at a grand banquet, picking at every morsel and leaving no scrap in his wake, analysing each turn of phrase, savouring it all. Somewhere in the house, his parents are sleeping.
He ought to wake them.
Right now, he cannot.
Hwanwoong flops back and fumbles around for his Walkman, sliding his headphones back on, and starts his CD from the beginning. The music spreads warm and reassuring from the top of his head down through his body, to the tips of his toes, which itch to dance. For the first time, the melody sounds different, like it were written just for him. He imagines himself dancing down another street in a different place, and he lets the image fill him up. Bright city lights, building so tall that he can’t see the penthouses. The ceiling of his bedroom becomes the night sky, jets soaring overhead with silver trails like comets.
Living under a flight-path? Living somewhere that everybody wants to fly to? That’s some kind of dream.
He has to dance, but the rain has grown heavier outside. It spills on the one window at hammering pace, like it wishes to celebrate with vibrancy too. A moment of contemplation, and then Hwanwoong jumps back up out of bed and runs to the door. He jogs back only to fold his letter back up and place it on the dresser again. There’s nothing to be done. If the rain is inviting him then he’ll meet its call. There is no way, in this moment, that he can do anything but dance.
He’ll dance all the way to the big city.