as you reach (you fall). - prologue
Title: as you reach (you fall).
Pairing: baeklay; minor layhan
Genre: romance/angst
Rating: PG-13 (might get bumped up to NC-17)
Length: multi-chaptered; prologue: 517 words
Summary: Everyone tries to tell Baekhyun that he's not perfect except Yixing who only repeats the compliments he overhears outside the bathroom door.
The word ‘perfection’ is subjective.
When you ask the master artist what his latest project looks like, perhaps he’ll offer you a grimace or the simple shake of his head. But the attendees of his art gallery will describe it as perfection.
If you ask a mother to describe her infant child in a single word, she’ll jokingly respond with the word ‘trouble’ while her husband chuckles in agreement. But the way that the couple adores the sleeping babe says it all: she’s perfect.
The author that writes and writes until the early hours of the morning will describe his work as mediocre as best; surely nothing special. But when someone finally stumbles upon his secret journal, they’re in awe, because it takes courage to release your very soul onto something as insubstantial as mere sheets of paper. And those sheets become worth so much more than they were before because now, instead of being empty, they’re full of perfection.
Objectively, the word ‘perfection’ should never be used. Perfection is something that is not naturally created in the world that we live in. And if it is, then it’ll be destroyed before it can truly be appreciated.
A blooming flower begins to crumple in on itself as soon as it’s reached its maximum potential of beauty. For a few short minutes, passerby will call it gorgeous, beautiful, absolutely perfect.
But in the infinite space that time occupies, minutes mean nothing. And once that short moment in the spotlight draws to a close, the flower is no longer radiant. Now the petals are slightly discolored and the fragrance isn’t as sweet as before and the splendor of it is withering, withering, withering away until it becomes nothing. Until it’s left as nothing but a dead memento of something was once called perfection.
Because when the next new artist comes along, the glory of that painting instantly becomes nonexistent. It gets torn down from the wall and chucked into the waste bin because no one wants to look at something that’s no longer chic.
Because that perfect baby girl is born with an incurable disease and the new parents don’t have enough money to pay for even a month of treatment. She dies almost as soon as she’s given her name.
Because those papers were nothing more than paper. And when the next man decides to empty his feelings out through words once more, those old sheets are suddenly filled with error upon error upon error. Nothing but worthless.
Perfection is something that is not naturally created in the world that we live in. And if it is, then it’ll be destroyed before it can truly be appreciated.
Byun Baekhyun is perfect.
He has the perfect face, the perfect hair, the perfect body, the perfect voice.
And Byun Baekhyun has been living for a long twenty-one years now, so he’ll be damned if he doesn’t live a perfect, long life either.
Because Byun Baekhyun knows that whatever other people say is only said to tear him down, and he’ll have none of that rubbish.
He’s worth so much more than that, after all.
And anyone that tries to tell him otherwise is worse than the dumb Chinese kid that follows him around murmuring nothing but praise after praise after praise directed at only him.
Baekhyun doesn’t need compliments to remind him of his perfection. Because compliments are subjective things that only matter on an individual scale, and Baekhyun’s sure that his flawlessness is something that’s factual - as set in stone as the rules of his industry.