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The screech of shoes on the practice room floor feels like a tight rubber band snapping around my head.
I can already feel that something isn’t quite right. I overexerted myself at the shoot yesterday - all in the name of entertainment.
In animated tones, members discuss the best way to change up the choreo.
“Teuk-hyung, we’re ready!” Eunhyuk calls out. As I stand up from the couch, this woozy feeling takes over my extremities, but I ignore it and keep moving to the centre of the room.
In that moment, a delicate hand touches my shoulder, and I hear a voice speeding toward me, like the split seconds of a rollercoaster descending.
I watch you, getting further away, and start to see what seems like a narrative of all the times and figures you have embodied through the millennia. I see flashes of colour and blurs of motion, but your face stands out. It only takes a few seconds of real time to happen, but the fast-forward sinks fully in - like all this knowledge has been dropped on me, but I can’t fully decode it.
I see you before we were even born, in a bar, sipping a drink with a lazy cigarette in hand, complaining about your time at the office, and smiling at me.
I see you in a field, dressed in beautiful garb, picking flowers that you hand to me.
I see you, in a cloistered monastery, sneaking your beautiful hand through the bars of a window to hand a letter to a man on a horse.
You’ve been man and woman and every essence in-between, and in that moment, I feel I knew you in every single one.
I come to, and a crowd of concerned faces is around me. I am on the ground.
Your face isn’t one of them.
But then I hear your voice.
“Hey, most of you, clear out! Give him space to breathe, damn it! Donghae, go get some electrolyte drink or something like that!”
The sea of people parts, and you come into full view, like a monarch reaching his throne.
People help me stand up and get to one of the couches in the practice room.
“I must have forgotten to drink water. I’m fine now, really”, I say to immediately calm everyone’s nerves as I move to get up.
“I dare you to stand up, Park Jungsoo, I will make you sit down myself,” you raise your voice from across the room, scrunched up expression on your face. I resign myself to sitting back on the couch, half by the peer pressure of it all and half knocked down by the use of my birth name.
“It’s okay, Heechul, it was just a moment, I’ll be fine.”
“You promised you would take care of your health, right? How many times do I need to play the bad guy, huh?”
A small flash passes me by. How many times in the history of the universe have the atoms that make me me done this? Worked themselves to exhaustion, denied themselves contentment, strived to please above all else? And how many times have the sparkles that form you scolded me, and loving concern and frustration, knowing the spiral all too well?
I find the voice to speak up and, strangely, it comes out in a deep and steady tone, dripping with familiarity. “You’re right, I pushed myself way too much. I’ll get going after you guys finish this part.”
“Nah, nah, nah”, you say, wagging your finger. “We’re calling the manager to get you checked out at the hospital, and you’re getting yourself into bed right after a meal.”
“We don’t want you, of all people, screwing up this comeback, right?”, you say after a pause, deflecting from the care you just showed. Vulnerability is your poison. And truthfully, we’ve been dodging seriousness for years. I let out a little laugh.
I’ve been trying not to care for the past months. I send out hints, trying to confirm you’re still up to what you promised in the past few years. I watch you pour dedication into practice, recovery, and putting other schedules aside. But I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not that I don’t trust your commitment to the group but I’m always expecting you to get too tired, too hurt, too annoyed. Perhaps too annoyed with me? I refuse to allow myself to fully enjoy the fact that you’re here, even though it makes me feel so comfortable.
I take some sips from a blue electrolyte drink, and members chat around me, trying to maintain a cheerful tone as we always do when memories of tough times creep back in.
Sitting in the van driven by the manager on the way to the medical centre, I feel enveloped by a physical sensation of all the memories of our push and pull, our dance of care and dismissal. I’m afraid of the period of separation that could come next.
“I can’t suffer in anticipation,” I tell myself, trying to indulge in the comfort of our current familiarity.
When I wake up the next morning, already in the safety of my own home, band-aid on my arm from getting IV fluids the night before, I see your message.
“Hey, saw the manager’s message in the group chat. Message me tomorrow to tell me how you’re doing. I hope you’re already asleep, you bastard.” A little smile escapes my lips.
It feels a little less heavy, but how can I justify these strange flashbacks? Logic tells me it’s nothing but the hallucinations of a tired and dehydrated man. In the end, how can two people who have argued so much, been so awkward together, be destined to meet in a loop? Wouldn’t that just be the universe torturing us?
But the sense that I can decode your feelings by a simple glance doesn’t go away. I keep trying to guard myself, but I am greedy for your attention, feeling the glow of reward when I get it. It’s scary because when I look into your eyes, more than just being able to see the real, not broadcast-worthy version of me, you see all the past versions too. It’s just silliness, really. I can’t bring myself to put faith in fate like that.