Work Text:
on stifling hot summer days in korea, gyuvin would terribly miss his mother’s bibimnaengmyeon.
whenever the heat becomes too unbearable and the practice room mirrors fog up with condensation — both from the approaching summer and the sweaty bodies dancing all-day across mopped wooden floors — amidst the hazy mist resurfaces a favourite childhood memory of gyuvin’s. a precious fractal of a time halfway buried into some recess of his mind, occasionally unearthed to smile upon.
gyuvin can see his mother at the kitchen, hunched over the counter, with her hair scrunched into a hasty bun on top of her head, and a haphazardly thrown on green apron across her cotton browns. she is hard at work, mixing her homemade spicy sauce with the long thin brown noodles, arms moving vigorously while stirring it all in a large blue bowl. even as she is busy, somehow she senses gyuvin’s presence and looks up, locking eyes with him and smiling, lines near her eyes crinkling with fondness.
he can hear the muffled screams from his younger siblings from the neighbouring living room and the scuttling of eumppappa’s paws dashing across creaking floorboards, but still his mother’s voice rings clear in his mind: are you hungry, gyuvin-ah?
he nodded yes.
then come sit, i’m almost done anyway.
time and adolescence are funny figures, racing ahead and dragging gyuvin along with them, as ambition wraps around his heart and propels him to chase a dream to stand onstage one day and perform. young gyuvin first auditions at yg, the baby fat not having yet fully shed from his face and an awful bowl haircut visible in his mirror reflection. he leaves yg. tries dps media. leaves. stays in yuehua entertainment.
he spends less time at home, has less chances to unlock the metal grill of the door and walk in to see his mother at the kitchen, looking up to smile and ask if he’s hungry. he traded those little moments of domestic normalcy for something much bigger than he can grasp, comprehend, handle. his days are spent in the peeling walls of humid practice rooms, filled with fatigued gasps for air during the day and hushed sobs during the night. both times, oxygen feels like knives in his insides.
he spends more time in front of full-length mirrors than the living room television, sings more notes under the gaze of a scrutinizing instructor than laugh with his siblings, and lies awake longer in a dorm bed that begins to feel more like home than his actual one back with his family, always made ready in case he returns to them suddenly. ready for whenever he returns to them.
trainee kim gyuvin, with all his long limbs and sharp moves and long training time, dreams of a future where he can soar and be under the dazzling stage lights. but kim gyuvin, with his fluffy hair and gummy smile and overly big heart, also misses home. a home that he isn’t even sure if he deserves to miss, because he doesn’t know where home is anymore.
can he call a place his home when he hasn’t stepped back into it for months on end now?
he thinks of everytime he manages to visit, when his mother looks at him with a melancholy imbued in her lingering gaze, fond, hungry eyes eager to drink in every inch of him, to memorize every part of the eldest son she had in her for 9 months.
shouldn’t home be where he gathers comfort from?
he thinks of the ruffled bedsheets from his bed in the dorms, crumpled under shaking fists in cool moonlight, and wrestled closer to his chest in an attempt to feel any warmth capable to allow his heart to repair itself, to beat again, to make it all hurt less.
kim gyuvin wants to carve open his chest, let the blood out. he wants to remove his ribs and his lungs. he wants to make more room around his heart for people to stay there. he wants to make his muscles and his bones the very foundation of their home. kim gyuvin wants to find home again, and know where to go when he looks for it.
so on a stifling hot summer day in korea, when gyuvin walks into the yuehua pantry craving something , he searches his lungs for a breath that never comes.
in the middle of the pantry, under the fixed shelves and cupboards filled with an ungodly amount of instant noodle packets, stands a young scrawny boy, no more than fourteen, in a plain shirt and pair of shorts, hard at work mixing his noodles in a large orange bowl.
it’s odd, the way when gyuvin’s eyes fall upon the boy, the first thing that comes to mind is his memory of his mother mixing noodles in the kitchen, and despite both events being parallels — they are still so starkly different.
because his mother is an upright and full-grown woman in a clean kitchen with firm, precise arm movements. this boy still had baby fat lining his cheeks and probably would need a stool to reach the topmost shelve, surrounded by the cluttered madness of this untidy pantry, huffing as he inexpertly, clumsily mixed his food. his brows — strong and full of character, gyuvin can hear his mother comment — were furrowed in concentration.
gyuvin doesn’t notice he’s staring until the boy looks up from his bowl and locks eyes with him. he stops his diligent work to stare at him, wide-eyed and adorably flustered.
“hi,” gyuvin says. two simple syllables, but it’s a nice start.
“hello,” the young boy replies, quickly spinning to him and folding himself into a polite ninety bow. “i’m han yujin, a trainee here. i’m born in 2007.”
instantly gyuvin was faced with information to mull over in his mind. han yujin. a name to finally put to this boy’s face. then—
“2007?!” he exclaimed, a momentary panic flashing across yujin’s face, believing he had unknowingly committed an atrocious act of disrespect to his elder. “you’re practically a baby.”
yujin’s face crumpled in relief, but almost immediately, he bristled at gyuvin’s offhand comment.
“i’m not a baby,” he said indignantly, an endearing frown on his face that almost made gyuvin coo, “i’m fourteen.”
“sure you are,” gyuvin bit back a smile threatening to pull on his lips, moving forward to stand next to yujin. “i’m kim gyuvin, born in 2004. also a trainee here. what are you making?”
“bibimnaengmyeon,” yujin answered, “but it’s hard to mix the sauce with the noodles. if you’re hungry, you can have the pantry to yourself first, i can just bring my noodles with me outside.”
it was at that moment — that precious fractal of time where a clumsy little boy inexplicably stumbled his way into gyuvin’s heart — when gyuvin thought to himself, ah, i have to raise him for my entire life.
before meeting han yujin, kim gyuvin always thought there would be a day where all the blood would trickle out of his opened chest, until there was only hollow space around his heart.
after meeting han yujin, gyuvin learns how to piece his ribcage back together, nestling yujin closer to the pumping muscle in his chest, and make it all ache less.
and so, kim gyuvin, after years of being torn between familiarity and ambition, with the help of a han yujin, finally learns how to decide where is home.