Chapter Text
Jisung keeps his head down in classes. He’s always been a little shy, a bit of a loner, and it serves him well in university.
He works on his assignments, gets occasional praise from his professors, and hurries home before it gets too dark. It’s never a good sign to be out late, only people who are up to no good get home after ten. His aunt reminds him of this often, interspersed within lectures that he’s not living out in the countryside anymore.
He’s acutely aware of it, has been aware of it since he followed his brother to the capital for college. His family wasn’t particularly rich, his aunt had married up a little and that’s how he could afford to live anywhere near campus. His parents are laborers in a small town in the country side but they had managed, somehow, to create two incredibly brilliant kids.
His brother had left years and years ago, now about to start his residency at the People’s Hospital. Everyone was very proud of him, a small town boy that grew up to become a doctor. Their parents talked about him all the time, and it had bled into their expectations for Jisung.
He had read every letter he sent back, every text after his brother had visited and brought him his first and only cellphone. It hadn’t worked great with the town’s spotty service, but it works much better now.
He had followed his brother a year ago, earning entry into the State University’s music and arts program. It wasn’t quite a medical degree, but it was still university and his parents had bragged about his acceptance to anyone who would listen.
His brother had been there to receive him when he had stepped into the train station, startled by its enormity. Together they had hefted his two suitcases, one having to be carried the entire time because of a shattered wheel, to the taxis and eventually to their aunt and uncle’s squished little townhome near the city center.
He hadn’t seen his aunt since she had left the village to get married, some fourteen years prior. It was a bit of an awkward first day, no one quite comfortable enough to be friendly, but family enough to not be strangers. His brother had stayed the night before he would go back to the flat he shared with several other medical students near the hospital.
He and his brother had chatted late into the early morning, sharing news from home and updates about their lives. It felt amazing to be around his brother again, to be with the person he had looked up to as a kid but also the only one that had ever really understood him.
Before they went to sleep though, his brother’s tone had turned serious.
“Be careful at university.” He had said. “There are state agents everywhere, and they watch the arts students even more carefully. Don’t draw attention to yourself and never, ever do anything that could be perceived as being anti-State.”
Jisung had nodded once his brother continued to stare at him in silence. He hadn’t been too worried, state agents were more of an abstract boogey man back home. Something you’d bring up if you were mad at someone and wanted to threaten them a little.
It had taken less than a month of classes to learn they weren’t abstract at all in the capital. Two men in black uniforms has marched into his classroom, the professor stopping his lecture on the spot. The entire auditorium had held its breath as the men marched with confidence up to the podium.
“Kim Chanyeol?” One of them had said into the microphone, the other looking to the professor pointedly.
There was a gasp two rows behind Jisung and it had taken everything in him to not turn around and look. The professor pointed and the two men climbed the central stairs, the silver hawks on the collar of their otherwise plain uniform glinting under the lights.
Kim Chanyeol was the only sound in the room as they pulled him from his seat, the man pleading that he hadn’t done anything. That it was a false accusation, that he was loyal to the President, to the regime.
“If it is false, it will be uncovered in the trial.” One of the men in black said, his hands steady on Chanyeol’s squirming shoulders.
The class watched in silence, holding their breath as they carted the man out of the room, deaf to his pleas. The door slammed behind them with finality.
The professor cleared his throat and continued his lecture.
Jisung hadn’t processed a word, neither had most of the other students. No one saw Chanyeol for the rest of the semester.
Luckily, Jisung hadn’t seen another detainment since. He had heard of them, sat next to classmates that whispered about someone else being taken, someone referred to the administrative building, someone who hadn’t shown up to enough classes for it to be suspicious.
Now that he has seen them, knew what they actually looked like, he saw them everywhere. He could spot the silver hawks without lifting his eyes from the tiled floors of the arts building. Could see them standing in the halls and observing the crowd, cornering and talking to a student, coming in and out of the administrative building.
During his second semester he learned how fragile his safety was.
A student from the visual arts program had been detained pending trial, which on its own wasn’t too much of a novelty. What made it shocking, the news rippling through the student body overnight, was that he had been reported by a student because his girlfriend had joked with her friends that she thought he was cute.
The girlfriend had learned about it and yelled at him in the hallway in between classes. She’s been so shocked she broke up with him on the spot, her shouts echoing across the marble halls.
The boyfriend’s father worked decently high up in the regime, he bragged about it often. Two weeks later the girlfriend was no longer seen walking to her classes with her friends.
The ‘cute boy’ was back this semester, Jisung had seen him in the fine arts wing once when he had been looking for a quiet place to work on an assignment in between classes. He had looked intact, painting at an easel with the rest of his class. It was impossible to ignore the man in a dark uniform standing in the corner of the room, watching.
So Jisung didn’t stand out, made a point not to. His assignments were handed in on time and as directed. This year he was taking fewer introductory classes and more music courses, and his submissions were rote, banal. He analyzed the songs as the professor would, picking apart composition and lyricism with an eye for what the State approved. His own songs mimicked the aspects his professors highlighted as particularly patriotic.
They were uninspired, nothing like the music he wanted to write. Gone were the folk inspirations that had gotten him so interested in music back home, the lyricism was careful, calculated, and bland. But it was safe.
He got decent grades for them, received praise every so often from a professor for an ‘innovative’ composition. It had really just sampled from one of the patriotic songs that played on the radio all the time, breaking up the pop music with a reminder of where you were.
Sampling from any of the State songs was guaranteed to get you a higher grade, most of the students did it all the time. You just had to do it in a way that fit the rest of the music – it needed to look like indoctrination, not reluctant compliance.
He was staying late working on one such piece, it had a tasteful sampling of a boys’ choir singing their praise for the President under the chorus. When he was finally satisfied with the melody, he realized it was way too late.
He packed his things in a hurry, unhooking his laptop from the studio computer and slipping it in his backpack. He needed to make it home asap, before the police patrols thought it was too late for someone to be going home and stopped him.
The halls were empty when he exited the studio, all the other students being more responsible than him.
He makes it out the door and other the street quickly, turning sharply left so he can make his way to the bridge that takes him to his aunt’s neighborhood. He debates it the entire time, but finally decides to take his usual pit stop at the little cat colony under the bridge when he can hear their forlorn meows.
His uncle gives him a small allowance for necessities, and he spends it on supplies for school and the cheapest canned meat he can find at the discount mart near campus. The three days a week that he has later classes, he makes a quick trip under the bridge to empty one of the cans onto the smooth stones that make up the river’s canalized wall.
He hesitates on the last couple steps. There’s a person in the middle of a swarm of cats, crouching and petting them as he whispers praise at them.
He hesitates for too long, and the man raises his head to look at him.
Jisung recognizes him instantly. He’s a fourth year, in the dance program if he can remember right. People talk about him all the time, mostly girls. Jisung understands why, he’s stunning in a way that demands people’s attention.
Jisung blames the way he can feel his heart rate increasing on being startled, and not the moonlight that falls across his face.
“You feed them too?” The man, Minho, says. Jisung nods dumbly, flipping his backpack around so he can fish out the can he had brought for today. It’s a decently sized tin of chicken chunks, having long ago learned that the cats swarm him too fast to cut up the homogenized meat blocks so they can share.
Minho smiles from where he is, petting a tabby cat who seems very into it. Jisung smiles back shyly, finally going down the last two steps. Some of the cats start to migrate to him now, recognizing him. When he pops the can open, the remaining stragglers all scramble to him, meowing up at him desperately as Jisung tries to clear a space to pour out the can.
Minho is standing up when he backs away from the swarm, letting them eat in peace. He’s holding a bag that crinkles in his grasp, and Jisung sees a picture of a paw print when he moves in the path of the streetlight on the bridge above.
He is glad Minho brings them actual cat food, and he feels a bit ashamed that he isn’t doing the same. Instinctively he hides the can so Minho won’t be able to tell it’s the cheapest thing he can find.
Minho doesn’t seem to be in any rush, watching the cats eat with a small smile on his face. Jisung needs to get home though, and he inclines his head in a sort of goodbye before walking as calmly as he can up the stairs. He throws the can away in the trash bin on the bridge and scurries out across it.
There are less patrols in his aunt’s neighborhood since it's where most of the government workers live. His uncle isn’t very high up in the hierarchy, and the house had cost him a lot to secure, but it is a safer neighborhood.
He does run into one patrol, but they simply nod at him from across the street and don’t do anything more. He holds his breath through the entire interaction, making sure his pace is hurried but not worried until they’re well out of sight.
His aunt and uncle are both asleep when he finally makes it home. He eats what he can find in the fridge for dinner, not daring to use the microwave in case it wakes them up, and finally he tiptoes into the guest room and passes out.
He doesn’t forget himself in the studio again, he feeds the cats when it’s still light out and doesn’t know if Minho continues to feed them too. He sees him on campus though, like he always had.
The man attracts attention wherever he goes, casually walking through the building with a confidence very few have. Girl whisper about him often, talking about how alluring he is but at the same time so unapproachable.
He’s never dated, never even shown an interest. They say he’s married to his craft, and can be found dancing in the practice studios until late into the night. Everyone expects him to be hired into one of the State dance troupes after graduation, and no one would be surprised if he became one of their soloists.
Jisung tries to ignore him, he’s too visible. He’s seen what happens to people that are that popular, that known. None of the gossip has mentioned his parents either, and that means he doesn’t have the protection of a family high up in the state’s hierarchy.
He’s honestly surprised nothing has happened to him yet. Maybe it’s because he gives no one any reason to think their girlfriends are at risk.
Either way, Jisung tries to ignore him, tries not to get attached to that smile he saw under the bridge. Knowledge that he’s a real person with a kind heart would only make it worse if something eventually happens to him.
Try as he might, he can’t avoid him when Minho knocks on the door to his studio one afternoon.
“Sorry to disturb you.” He says as Jisung removes his headphones. “My friend said he left a demo for me on this computer, and this is the only time I have in between classes.”
Jisung’s in the middle of trying to brainstorm a fix for a melody that isn’t working with his lyrics at all, so he nods, lifting his laptop to the side and rolling backwards on his chair so that Minho can have access to the studio computer’s keyboard.
He seems like he knows what he’s looking for, clicking decisively until he finds the file. Jisung has to scoot his chair further out of the way so Minho can stick his flashdrive into the PC.
“You still feed the cats?” Minho asks and Jisung is briefly startled by the fact that Minho remembers him. No one really pays attention to him in class, he’s quiet and shy and only answers questions if the professor calls on him specifically.
But Minho, a guy who has the eyes of half the School of the Arts on him, remembers him.
“Yeah.” Jisung says, tapping the can in his backpack.
Minho looks at him then, a fond smile on his face before reaching back over to the PC and pulling the flashdrive out. “I’ll be out of your way now, then. See you around.”
Minho is out of the studio in the next few seconds and Jisung takes a moment to calm himself before pulling the chair back in front of the desk. It feels like he’d just interacted with a celebrity, the rush of adrenaline and anxiety slowly leaving his system.
The folder is still open on the monitor, but it’s empty. Jisung closes out of it carefully, bringing up the audio mixing software again and going back to fiddling with the melody until something feel s right.
He doesn’t see Minho again for a while. He knows he’s not gone, the girls that sit behind him in music theory lecture and gossip about all the pretty boys in the program bring him up often enough. He’s working hard in the studio, and they have plans to walk by and stare through the windowed door after class.
Jisung has his own work to do though, as a second year he has individual tutoring now, voice work and composition classes and his vocal tutor convinced him to join the school choir. That last one means a lot of events, because they are the ones brought in to sing the national anthem during every major or minor event at the university.
It’s exhausting, to be perfectly honest, but his uncle is finally happy about him living in the guest room, and asks for updates about who was in the audience when he performs. He loves the idea that his nephew is singing for the upper echelons of society, and talks about him being a performer for the state one day.
Jisung doesn’t tell him he has no intention of staying in the capital. It’s too stressful here, there’s too many eyes looking for any missteps and his anxiety can’t handle it. He wants to stay until he gets his degree and leave to go teach somewhere in the countryside were state agents don’t roam the halls of his institution.
His uncle is an ambitious man though, constantly looking for the next rung on his career ladder.
Jisung is too busy at school to be very involved in his uncle’s social climbing. He has all his assignments, choir practice and performance, and a couple of ‘commissions’ he has to do for students for the winter showcase. His composition professor had recommended him to a set of ballerinas and a contemporary dancer and he had to process their jumbled mess of a musical request into a piece for each of them. The ballerinas were performing together, so at least that was one composition, but they were all very opinionated and it had three times the comments to incorporate.
He finishes both pieces well before the showcase, since they have to practice to them, and that gives him just enough time to frantically try to catch up on his other assignments before the end of the semester.
He has to attend the winter showcase in the end, since the choir is to perform the anthem at the beginning. He might have gone regardless, just because he wants to see how his compositions were interpreted by the dancers.
They’re both in the middle of the program, part of the third years. There are ten performances from each year, though he doesn’t know what the order is within the year groups. The whole thing is slated to be two and a half hours long, and he scans the programs to see what songs will be used.
It’s a lot of classical music, which makes sense for a fine arts program. One senior is performing to a state-produced patriotic song titled “Victory Day” and Jisung barely keeps himself from rolling his eyes at how desperate it looks. Near the end of the program, third to last, he sees Minho’s name printed neatly. He’s dancing to an original composition according to the booklet.
Victory Day looks a lot less desperate when the choir files onto the stage and he sees the gleam of uniform buttons shining from behind the glare of the stage lights.
It’s not the uniforms he’s used to, these ones olive drab and covered in medals and ribbons. They’re interspersed by men in fancy suits and severe faces, nodding absently as others talk into their ears.
The dean of the school fine arts rises from his seat amongst the suits, a man in uniform patting his side in a friendly manner as he makes his way to the podium tucked away on stage right.
“Welcome all…” the dean begins, and Jisung tunes him out, focusing all of his attention on the choral director instead. The anthem isn’t complicated, they’ve done it a million times, but a mistake is even less permissible with this audience than it would have been otherwise.
Jisung ends up closing his eyes for most of the performance, the visual too nerve wracking. The anthem goes smoothly though; no voices crack and the soloist, one of the stronger seniors, sings his praise to the regime for liberating them flawlessly.
They all bow at the end, to thunderous applause and pleased smiles from the front rows.
Many of the choir members disappear out the side door, busy with their own lives. Jisung follows the group that walks to the back of the auditorium, cramming into the last few rows that have been reserved for them.
Each performance is introduced by a professor who announces the name of the student, their specialty, and the name of the piece they will be dancing to. Jisung isn’t exactly an expert in dance, but once they reach the third year’s performances he realizes that the second years had much safer choices. The ballerinas he composed for receive glowing applause for their work. The contemporary dancer, who had requested ‘Vivaldi’s Spring in E Major with jagged cuts to Mozart’s Requiem’, does a very interesting piece that compliments the abrupt changes in emotion.
Jisung is quite pleased with his work, it was very hard to try to conceptualize the request at first, but he thinks he pulled the best excerpts to keep the transitions shocking without being dissonant. At least the student had been pretty hands-off about his corrections, unlike the ballerinas who had nitpicked at his very bland (per their request) reworking of the Nutcracker forever.
With his compositions over, Jisung relaxes into his seat and watches the rest of the performances.
While the dance quality doesn’t increase to his eye, the effort the seniors put in is a lot more visible. Many of them are using the showcase as an advertisement to dancing companies, the leaders of which probably sent recruiters into the audience.
It’s also interesting to watch how some of the songs that he’s been bludgeoned over the head with in his classics class are interpreted by the dancers. It’s giving him ideas for how to reframe some of his compositions, and he can’t wait to go home tonight and write some of them down.
“Up next: Lee Minho, a senior in contemporary dance, performing to an original composition.” A professor announces and Minho strolls out into the middle of the stage. He’s dressed in all black, not unlike many of the other performers, but the audience seems to hold its breath as he gets into his starting position.
There’s three beats of silence before the music starts up, something from Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 if Jisung’s memory is correct. He just had his classics exam two days ago and it’s yet to fully vacate his brain.
Minho moves as if he was built to dance, with a strength and precision that most of the other performers lacked. They were good, some even great, but Minho captivates in a way that they had not.
The song builds up, strings and trumpets crashing upwards and Minho is launching himself into the air along with them and then there’s the triumphant call of trumpets before a fall into something more solemn and the wailing voice of a woman builds up from the distance and they’ve very much left the first movement of the symphony.
Jisung can’t recognize this bit of the composition, but it feels familiar. The symphony fades to nothing as the woman’s voice rises, soon joined by others and her guttural wail becomes the chorus of one of the folk songs Jisung grew up with. A song of resisting oppression, of standing up to power.
Sung in their ethnic language instead of that of the state.
The auditorium is dead quiet, the only sound the music blasting through the speaker system. No one breathes, no one moves but Minho who is leaping on stage, his body moving powerfully along with the music that cries for freedom.
Abruptly the music is cut off, people in the front row standing and shouting. Jisung can’t tear his eyes from Minho though, who takes a quick bow to the audience with a pleased smile on his face before breaking into a sprint through stage left.
There are people in black rushing up the stairs on stage right, a scream coming from backstage and more shouting from the audience along with some pleading from the dean, but the rest of the audience takes a few more seconds before breaking into frantic chatter.
“He’s dead.” A guy stage whispers to his friend beside Jisung and he can’t help but agree.