(no subject)
Motherland
Author’s Notes: I had a cohesive story in my head while I was brainstorming, but when I actually started writing, it ended up into something more like a set of thematically related drabbles coexisting in the same universe.
One paragraph in Part 3 is a pastiche of my favourite passage in Vladimir Nabokov’s The Original of Laura. I don’t own that third paragraph.
Many thanks to envoler for teaching me how to format like a pro. :)
Motherland
For all the shit this city gets for being some kind of godforsaken land of no sunshine, Seattle is the only place Jay will ever call home. Today is Thursday, cloudy with 100% chance of rain, but even without looking outside the window Jay knows this weather like the back of his hand.
The rain comes down softly like velvet. The air is still and damp; and by January, the winds have died down so it feels like all that blustery energy goes up swirling in the sky instead. Outside, Jay walks down the driveway in Nikes, jeans and a sweatshirt, and pulls up the hood to keep off the drizzle. He stops when he gets to the street corner, and looks up expectantly for a white sedan.
Junior comes to pick him up for practice. On the drive to actual Seattle, he and Junior talk about what’s happening to their crew. Chico needs to find a new place to settle down. Charles wants to travel abroad to study and teach. And so on and so forth. “Things change,” Junior says, “but we’re still a part of AOM.” Jay nods and watches the pine trees whoosh by as they’re speeding down the interstate highway, Mt. Rainier an ever-present backdrop in the hazy distance. He thinks about that, how you can always see snow on the mountain no matter what season it is, it’s so painted onto the sky. It was as if you were living inside a snow globe, only without the snow.
In Korea, Jay thinks a lot about Seattle, its weather, its trees, and its corner of the sky. In Seattle, Jay just thinks a lot about Korea.
It is probably snowing over there right now.
After particularly intense recording sessions on nights like these, Junsu is too tired to even bother greeting his band members when he comes home. But from the moment when he inserts the key and opens the door, and hears the five of them shuffle noisily around the dorm, even he notices that something is amiss.
“Ahh,” says Wooyoung. Junho makes an unreadable face, Nichkhun is looking at his split ends, and Taec is awkwardly sprawled on the couch engrossed in an upside down BLEACH manga. Chansung, who is holding a very familiar notebook and looking very confused, practically beams at Junsu like the good magnae he is.
It takes about half a second for calamity to break out. The air is soon filled with various claims of innocence (I wasn’t the only one!), misguided compliments (I liked the way you rhymed pain with rain. It’s, uh, really deep), and distracting tangential remarks (Wooyoung you loser, why’d you bother to memorize that).
In the middle of it all, somewhere between Chansung ducking behind Nichkhun and the thick body limbs that belong to Taec and Junsu and Junho, Wooyoung pulls away and complains loudly, “Yah, it’s not fair for you to keep secrets away from us.” Everybody except Junsu stops pointing fingers and nods in collective agreement.
EVERYBODY ELSE: Who’s the girl?
JUNSU: What?
TAECYEON: The one you wrote the poems about.
JUNSU: What girl…
CHANSUNG: -is she cute
JUNSU: What the hell are you guys
TAECYEON: -is she shipjeom manjeome shipjeom
JUNSU: -talking about
WOOYOUNG: -why do you care, she wasn’t even your ex-girlfriend
JUNSU: My ex what
TAECYEON: -I thought Junsu broke up with her a few months ago
WOOYOUNG: Don’t the entries date back before that one
JUNSU: I wasn’t writing about a girl!
JUNHO: -why do you remember this?!
JUNSU: I was writing about Daegu!
CHANSUNG: -maybe it was unrequited
JUNSU: I was writing
TAECYEON: Wait, how do we know that it’s about a girl
JUNSU: -about
JUNHO: Who else would he think about all the time
NICHKHUN: His mom?
JUNSU: -home…
WOOYOUNG: -why are you like this, do you think about your mother that way
TAECYEON: -now that I think of it, maybe it’s metaphorical.
JUNHO: So it’s not about a girl?
TAECYEON: But I thought he referred to a person.
WOOYOUNG: Huh.
CHANSUNG: Then what the hell did we did read all night?!
NICHKHUN: We could always ask Junsu.
TAECYEON: Oh yeah.
EVERYONE ELSE: …
TAECYEON: Where’d he go?
His name is Park Jaebum and he is your leader and he is someone you never want to forget. This is the man who stood at your doorway slouched like the bags on his shoulders, yet to carry more airport tags, and barely able to carry himself. Deliberately, obligingly, he tells you to take care of the younger ones and avoids all the words you want him to say: WAIT and AGAIN and PROMISE choked in your selfish throat instead of spilling out of his. If you were asked if you remembered what it felt like to die, you’ll say that you don’t know but that is a lie. It is not a choice you want to make, because you never wanted to see him leave when the seconds of your lives flashed before your eyes.
Because this is the stuff dreams are made of. This is the man who schooled you in what it meant to belong, to a new place and to a new family and most importantly, to yourself; you never thought that a dancer could teach you anything about singing, but he did. You learned to love to sing the way he loves to dance, and what that meant was not extra hours of practice, but phone calls made long distance reaching across oceans and silences shared because you both wished you were hopeful instead of cynical and bitter, and because of that, he is the better man. This is a better man than you.
This is Park Jaebum of the smile shy, cat-shaped eyes and the slim-set shoulders carrying the well-worn edges of Seattle and Seoul, with his dreams lost or pushed down underneath all his belongings, FAM[ILY] crushing LOVE and HAPPINESS, in a foreign motherland of familiar faces, this is he. Everything about him is bound to stand out, even his bow which seems to have suggested nonchalance, rebellion, or tiredness by the speculative onlookers who thought they knew him. Of fame, of ambition, of the difference between holding on and letting go he knew nothing about but would have given you everything had the world given him a second chance.
You could be Park Jaebum, but you’re not. You are Kim Junsu, you are from Daegu, and you remember, exactly, how it felt the first time he met you, shook your hand, and said your name in Korean with the unpretentiousness of an American native.
He said it perfectly.
Author’s Notes: I had a cohesive story in my head while I was brainstorming, but when I actually started writing, it ended up into something more like a set of thematically related drabbles coexisting in the same universe.
One paragraph in Part 3 is a pastiche of my favourite passage in Vladimir Nabokov’s The Original of Laura. I don’t own that third paragraph.
Many thanks to envoler for teaching me how to format like a pro. :)
Motherland
For all the shit this city gets for being some kind of godforsaken land of no sunshine, Seattle is the only place Jay will ever call home. Today is Thursday, cloudy with 100% chance of rain, but even without looking outside the window Jay knows this weather like the back of his hand.
The rain comes down softly like velvet. The air is still and damp; and by January, the winds have died down so it feels like all that blustery energy goes up swirling in the sky instead. Outside, Jay walks down the driveway in Nikes, jeans and a sweatshirt, and pulls up the hood to keep off the drizzle. He stops when he gets to the street corner, and looks up expectantly for a white sedan.
Junior comes to pick him up for practice. On the drive to actual Seattle, he and Junior talk about what’s happening to their crew. Chico needs to find a new place to settle down. Charles wants to travel abroad to study and teach. And so on and so forth. “Things change,” Junior says, “but we’re still a part of AOM.” Jay nods and watches the pine trees whoosh by as they’re speeding down the interstate highway, Mt. Rainier an ever-present backdrop in the hazy distance. He thinks about that, how you can always see snow on the mountain no matter what season it is, it’s so painted onto the sky. It was as if you were living inside a snow globe, only without the snow.
In Korea, Jay thinks a lot about Seattle, its weather, its trees, and its corner of the sky. In Seattle, Jay just thinks a lot about Korea.
It is probably snowing over there right now.
After particularly intense recording sessions on nights like these, Junsu is too tired to even bother greeting his band members when he comes home. But from the moment when he inserts the key and opens the door, and hears the five of them shuffle noisily around the dorm, even he notices that something is amiss.
“Ahh,” says Wooyoung. Junho makes an unreadable face, Nichkhun is looking at his split ends, and Taec is awkwardly sprawled on the couch engrossed in an upside down BLEACH manga. Chansung, who is holding a very familiar notebook and looking very confused, practically beams at Junsu like the good magnae he is.
It takes about half a second for calamity to break out. The air is soon filled with various claims of innocence (I wasn’t the only one!), misguided compliments (I liked the way you rhymed pain with rain. It’s, uh, really deep), and distracting tangential remarks (Wooyoung you loser, why’d you bother to memorize that).
In the middle of it all, somewhere between Chansung ducking behind Nichkhun and the thick body limbs that belong to Taec and Junsu and Junho, Wooyoung pulls away and complains loudly, “Yah, it’s not fair for you to keep secrets away from us.” Everybody except Junsu stops pointing fingers and nods in collective agreement.
EVERYBODY ELSE: Who’s the girl?
JUNSU: What?
TAECYEON: The one you wrote the poems about.
JUNSU: What girl…
CHANSUNG: -is she cute
JUNSU: What the hell are you guys
TAECYEON: -is she shipjeom manjeome shipjeom
JUNSU: -talking about
WOOYOUNG: -why do you care, she wasn’t even your ex-girlfriend
JUNSU: My ex what
TAECYEON: -I thought Junsu broke up with her a few months ago
WOOYOUNG: Don’t the entries date back before that one
JUNSU: I wasn’t writing about a girl!
JUNHO: -why do you remember this?!
JUNSU: I was writing about Daegu!
CHANSUNG: -maybe it was unrequited
JUNSU: I was writing
TAECYEON: Wait, how do we know that it’s about a girl
JUNSU: -about
JUNHO: Who else would he think about all the time
NICHKHUN: His mom?
JUNSU: -home…
WOOYOUNG: -why are you like this, do you think about your mother that way
TAECYEON: -now that I think of it, maybe it’s metaphorical.
JUNHO: So it’s not about a girl?
TAECYEON: But I thought he referred to a person.
WOOYOUNG: Huh.
CHANSUNG: Then what the hell did we did read all night?!
NICHKHUN: We could always ask Junsu.
TAECYEON: Oh yeah.
EVERYONE ELSE: …
TAECYEON: Where’d he go?
His name is Park Jaebum and he is your leader and he is someone you never want to forget. This is the man who stood at your doorway slouched like the bags on his shoulders, yet to carry more airport tags, and barely able to carry himself. Deliberately, obligingly, he tells you to take care of the younger ones and avoids all the words you want him to say: WAIT and AGAIN and PROMISE choked in your selfish throat instead of spilling out of his. If you were asked if you remembered what it felt like to die, you’ll say that you don’t know but that is a lie. It is not a choice you want to make, because you never wanted to see him leave when the seconds of your lives flashed before your eyes.
Because this is the stuff dreams are made of. This is the man who schooled you in what it meant to belong, to a new place and to a new family and most importantly, to yourself; you never thought that a dancer could teach you anything about singing, but he did. You learned to love to sing the way he loves to dance, and what that meant was not extra hours of practice, but phone calls made long distance reaching across oceans and silences shared because you both wished you were hopeful instead of cynical and bitter, and because of that, he is the better man. This is a better man than you.
This is Park Jaebum of the smile shy, cat-shaped eyes and the slim-set shoulders carrying the well-worn edges of Seattle and Seoul, with his dreams lost or pushed down underneath all his belongings, FAM[ILY] crushing LOVE and HAPPINESS, in a foreign motherland of familiar faces, this is he. Everything about him is bound to stand out, even his bow which seems to have suggested nonchalance, rebellion, or tiredness by the speculative onlookers who thought they knew him. Of fame, of ambition, of the difference between holding on and letting go he knew nothing about but would have given you everything had the world given him a second chance.
You could be Park Jaebum, but you’re not. You are Kim Junsu, you are from Daegu, and you remember, exactly, how it felt the first time he met you, shook your hand, and said your name in Korean with the unpretentiousness of an American native.
He said it perfectly.