Work Text:
it’s been years since namjoon was called to make his home here.
--
when they first came here, the frost crackled under their boots, and they were walking the direct opposite of roads diverging in a wood. instead, their once-distinct paths to the city came together like arteries feeding into a bright, beating heart, and there were no yellow leaves — only skyscrapers and food sellers nestled in the most melancholy bend of the han river.
even back then, it was a place they all knew, in the way that famous and faraway places are a familiar touchstone for even the most culturally-distanced workman. they learned seoul in different ways, from different angles, from k-dramas and school trips and stories, and, now, they were a (near-invisible, replaceable, blank-faces-on-a-train-platform) part of it all.
--
like any city, seoul is the caller of a high-risk, high-reward game. their company knows this; they are willing to play along. big hit bet all their money on them, and now they work, day in and day out, until their number is called (or, until it isn’t). it’s too much for one person to shoulder on their own: the impossibly-disparate, lofty possibilities, the antecedent of plath’s figs ripening and blackening on a tree too tall to climb, the kind of pain from patterned rejection that makes a person curl up on themselves in their bed, thinking why have i done any of this, why did i try to be better than i am, why did i buy these sheets in this color, who was i trying to be?
who do i think i am?
whenever he feels uneasy, namjoon bets on black, but he puts his faith in lucky sevens.
--
the city softens over bowls of noodles, in the corners of his friends’ eyes when they crinkle in laughter, at the bottoms of soju glasses. it takes time, but after a year or two, the softness doesn’t fade away with his hangover; he doesn’t leave it on the backseat of a taxi alongside his phone.
when he does leave his phone in taxis, though, he knows now how to navigate himself from their dorm to the samsung store to replace it.
that’s growth. it’s not love, not yet, but it’s close.
--
sometimes, namjoon hates this place.
it breaks his back to bear it, the pressure, the expectation. he bears it for them, for his friends, for the people that believe in him (in them, and what they can do). that’s his job; that’s what he’s here for. but it’s hard, harder than he could ever have prepared himself for. he is still human; in fact, he is human first and foremost. the formality, the professionalism, is just a mask.
he covers his nose and mouth in black fabric and takes a walk along the river. in his mind, he scripts a song. he wonders how similar his thoughts are to those that have walked this gravel path before him, thirty years ago, last winter, this morning. he knows that the han river has a reputation, a sorrowful song of its own, marred by eternal rests. he will not let this city wash him out.
사랑과 미움이 같은 말이면, then perhaps he loves this place after all.
--
things are better now, and not just better, but good. all right. there’s hope. slowly but surely, they are drawing people in, closing in on the kind of music that feels right, paying the studio’s rent. it feels good, but they can’t rest. not just yet.
namjoon pushes through the glass door, the black umbrella obscuring his vision as he opens it against the spitting rain. when he raises it above his head, the city is revealed: monochrome streets painted yellow and red and blue by the blur of motion both fast and slow; some uncountable smattering of strangers in black padded jackets clutching bags and phones and hands; silvery spires pushing up through the air as if to pierce the smog that settles thickly over everything, even in the cold, even in the rain.
it’s changeless, tasteless, soulless. what does it say about him that he’s here? is he complicit in this directionless drone? what can he give to seoul that would light it up again, like how it was before, in his imagination as he bulleted towards it on the train for the first time?
that night, he watches the sunset from the dorm window, purples and blacks blotting the smog like dip-dyed cotton. he watches the sunrise, too, pinks and oranges bleeding up from the horizon, spreading far and wide, slower than namjoon would like.
he takes comfort in the fact that, eventually, the light touches everything.
--
all of a sudden, the dam breaks loose.
it’s calculated, but hardly expected. it’s intentional, but not predictable. how could anyone pretend to know the formula for success like this? no one has ever had success like this.
they spend very few nights in the city, now. instead, they find beds in cities scattered across the world, all very alike in their bones, but none of them feel at all like his own seoul.
at first, namjoon thinks that no one could understand exactly how he feels when they finally return, but he corrects himself: everyone feels exactly the same — but for different places, different times, different cities, different beds. what our homes are to us is not a map, or a street, or a look or a language or a landmark.
we do not recognize home by its features, not really. instead, we spend years layering thin filters of rose paper over what our eyes can see, what our hands can touch, what our hearts can understand. we trim the edges in gold. we build familiarity in this way. it doesn’t matter what base we use; it all looks ours in the end.
when we fly over the arteries of our lives, converging on one central heart, we all press our foreheads to the airplane window and see the same thing.
soul.