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Yeonjun is good at dancing. It’s his thing, the only thing he has besides a confident smile and a flirty nature. It’s his language, his emotion, the way he understands the world. He pours his feelings and all the unsaid words into the movements, revealing himself to the world as he swirls and twirls and jumps and ducks. His audience, unbeknownst to them, experiences his true self as they watch him fly, bathing in all the darkness and the light that pours from his soul.
Yeonjun is scared of dancing. It’s his biggest fear, something that plays on his mind when he makes his way through the studio door. Because dancing is his skill, his talent, his thing, and if he doesn’t do well on his course, if his grades form shackles around his ankles that make him drag his feet, then what is left of him? What is there, apart from a confident smile with cracks around the edges, and a flirty nature supported by an empty heart?
They say a dancer dies two deaths: the first, the day they stop dancing, the second, the day they move on from the world, into whatever is after. Yeonjun will die three. He’s dying his first right now; refusing to try just in case he realises that he isn’t as good as he thinks, that he won’t spend his days floating between the notes.
It’s self-sabotaging. He’s aware of it. He knows that if he doesn’t try then he can’t get good results. He knows that. But the knowledge doesn’t stop the sleepless nights that lead to skipped practices and lack of work. It doesn’t stop the idea that even if he tries his absolute hardest, he might not go anywhere. It doesn’t stop the fear that reaches down his throat and pierces his heart with clawed fingers.
Desire to be better burns within his soul. It tells him to fix his sleep schedule and go to all his practices, to work hard and harder and hardest , to put the effort in because dancing is all he’s ever known and dancing is what he’s good at and dancing is all he is. He doesn’t want to set it free from the clutches of his shaky fingertips because if he does, he’ll fall into an abyss that few have escaped.
At the same time, the abyss is already in his head. It’s settled into his brain, whispering discouraging words to his mind, turning all his silver-lined dreams into storm-cloud nightmares. What if you’re not as good as you thought you are? What if you try, and try and try again, only to fail and fail and fall back down? Who are you, then, if not a dancer?
Yeonjun doesn’t know how to express himself when he’s paralysed from fear, body refusing to move. Some days he feels like he has no muscles, just a heap of bones inside a bag of skin, left to rot in his small university room. His enslaved emotions, the trapped words, the captured thoughts find escape in the only way left; through his eyes, racing out into the world down his cheeks in the form of salty teardrops.
But Yeonjun is not a crier. He finds it hard to cry. So, he stores everything away for later, in a special box inside his mind that he crams his emotions and all the unspoken words into, pushing and shoving and sitting on the lid just so he can force the lock shut. He returns to the chair at the front of his head, by the two big monitors where the backs of his eyes should be, and plucks his best smile off the shelves next to them. He wears this on his face as he witnesses life pass by, detached from the characters and the events as if he’s watching a Brechtian play.
Yeonjun is numb. Null. Void. Every day he collapses on his bed and stares at the white of the ceiling, no thoughts behind his eyes because they’ve all been jammed inside that box at the back of his brain. It only takes one new thought to break the lock, to have the box bursting open and all of the captured thoughts rushing to his eyes. This happens when he’s held it in for too long, when he doesn’t have the capacity for anything else, and he will watch helplessly as his prisoners make their escape.
When he cries, he will do so silently, something trained into himself from a young age. He can’t attract any attention, can’t alert anybody to the fact that he’s slipping further and further off the edge to the abyss because he doesn’t even have the words to explain how he feels. He’ll choke back his sobs and gasp into his hands and if sound starts escaping from the cracks between his fingers, then he’ll smother his face with his pillow, suffocating himself just to avoid the attention the sounds may bring.
Nobody can see. Nobody can hear. Nobody can know.
Because Yeonjun is the boy with the confident smile and the flirty nature who laughs in the face of tragedy. He’s the one to tell your problems to, to seek comfort from, because he’s the playwright who turns tragedy to comedy. He’s so funny, he cheers everybody up with his silly life anecdotes and cheesy jokes. The boy who is in university chasing his dreams, having the time of his life, making his parents so proud.
The boy who dances so beautifully, so sorrowfully, floating from note to note, telling a story that nobody can read.
So, it petrifies him when he finishes his dance, his body reflecting from all the mirrors in the dance studio around him and hears the one question he avoids like a dark figure at night.
“...Are you okay?”
The words force into his soul, puncture his heart and smash the jail in the back of his mind, letting all his convicts free. He falls to his knees and a sob jostles from his lips at the impact of his body hitting the hardwood flooring, the sound bouncing around the many mirrors reflecting his pitiful face.
It feels like a trap. Everywhere he looks, he can see the miserable Yeonjun looking back at him, no escape from the emotions he so harshly imprisoned as they invade his expression.
Hands come up to cover it as a defence, the final wall between himself and the rest of the world, but there isn’t much point now. He’s let them escape, the feelings, and they’ve notified the world of his torture.
Not the world. His world.
Soobin.
Soobin, the person Yeonjun had tried so desperately to hide from.
Because Soobin is a candle that shimmers so brightly in the darkest night, guiding Yeonjun through the abyss around him. Yeonjun is drawn to him like a moth, enchanted by the yellows and oranges that dance from his soul, enraptured when receiving the warmest hugs from the homeliest arms, enamoured by the existence of a brightness he’d figured couldn’t exist.
Soobin is passionate and kind and helpful. He’s sure of himself and works hard to get what he deserves, what Yeonjun always knew he deserved. Soobin tries once and tries again and tries a third time, just for good luck.
Who is Yeonjun to poison Soobin with the darkness that infects him? Why should Yeonjun be allowed to smother out the flame the way he smothers his cries? How is Yeonjun ever meant to forgive himself if he dulls the blazing wonder that radiates from the very core of Soobin’s soul?
He won’t, he won’t, he won’t, he won’t, he won’t —
But Soobin doesn’t give him much of a choice.
He kneels in front of Yeonjun and wraps his large hands around the latter’s wrists, tenderly removing the last defence. Soobin’s eyes are steady as they stare into Yeonjun’s own, which flicker around the room like the flame he’s trying to protect.
“Look at me. Hyung, look at me. Breathe.”
“I-” It’s a desperate attempt at finding something to say, anything that can excuse the breakdown of his prison walls, but words have never served Yeonjun the way movement does. Eventually, all that manages to break free is a feeble I’m sorry , followed by choked sobs.
Soobin wraps his familiar arms around Yeonjun and uses his body to shield him from the misery mirrors. Large palms cup the back of Yeonjun’s head and guide his face into delicate skin, Soobin’s soft scent of vanilla and coffee beans pouring into his nose, giving him a comfort he isn’t sure he deserves.
And they fall;
and fall;
and fall;
down into Yeonjun’s abyss.
This wasn’t meant to happen. Yeonjun wasn’t supposed to let this happen.
“What are you sorry for?” Soobin asks with a light-hearted tone.
“I wasn’t—I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want you to—” As usual, words fail Yeonjun. He doesn’t know how to describe the chaotic explosion that’s wrecking him from the inside out.
But Soobin has never understood Yeonjun through his words. After years of friendship, he’s learned to read Yeonjun’s mannerisms, his motions, his movements, because the words that fall from Yeonjun’s mouth aren’t reliable representatives of what goes on in his best friend’s mind.
“You’re funny, hyung,” Soobin says.
“W-what?”
“I find it funny that you think you can hide how you feel from me. You don’t have a choice; I’m your best friend, I can read you better than I can read Korean. I know you’re upset. I know you’re struggling. You can’t keep me out forever.”
Bewildered, Yeonjun leans back in Soobin’s arms to look into the sure, steady eyes that have always brought him a strong sense of clarity. Whenever Yeonjun speaks, Soobin insists upon eye contact. It’s something he does to reassure people that he’s listening to them, Yeonjun has learned over the years. It’s a behaviour that’s always comforted him; he can never express himself properly with his words, but he knows Soobin is listening anyway.
“I didn’t want to hurt you with my own hurt.”
It’s the best way Yeonjun can think to describe himself but as an explanation, it sucks. It doesn’t cover the why , or the how , or the what .
But Soobin understands anyway.
“You won’t hurt me. I’m here to help you clear that big, beautiful brain of yours. I want to know when you’re sad, even if I’m having the happiest day of my life. Isn’t that what friends are for?”
But I would never want to ruin your happiest day , Yeonjun thinks. You are the best and the brightest, you deserve happiness. I am nothing but a bad day.
“I don’t want to make you unhappy.”
“It makes me unhappy when you hide away from me. It makes me unhappy that I can’t do anything to help you. It makes me unhappy to see you suffering by yourself. What’s the point in me as your best friend if I can’t shed light on your darkness? Let me support you the way you support me, hyung. Please.”
As he stares into Soobin’s sincere eyes, realisation hits Yeonjun like a full-speed freight train, leaving him feeling rather stupid, because he knows now that the sensation he can feel isn’t falling.
It’s flying .
Together, they’re a comet soaring through the depths of space to a new world, a shooting star in the night sky that a child will look up to and whisper wishes, a firework rocketing up into the air and making people gasp with the bright colour that lightens up the black night.
Comets and space. Shooting stars and the night sky. Fireworks and black nights. They go hand in hand, like candles and the dark because, really, what’s the point in lighting a candle if you’re not in the dark?
It’s true that Yeonjun and Soobin are opposite ends of the spectrum, different sides of the argument, opposing armies in a war. They’re black and white, yin and yang, light and dark. They’re completely different people.
But maybe Yeonjun forgot that, in all these situations, one can’t exist without the other.