Mown Grass and Fallen Leaves
Mown Grass and Fallen Leaves
gongchan/krystal; 1732 words
Soojung’s first dance school is tucked away behind a row of tall maples and a white picket fence. She is seven when she puts on her first leotard, has her hair pulled into a bun. She is twelve when she receives her first pair of pointe shoes, and uses twenty bobby pins in order to put up her hair. Thirteen, when she finds herself uprooted from a haven of oak floors and dusty sunlight. There is a new house, a new city, a new school. New dance studio. She starts there, amongst other girls, in front of a new teacher. There is a grimy ball of anxiety and nerves squirming in the depths of her abdomen. Mouths move, sounds come out. Soojung stands in front of them, eyes running up an down her form, silent judgements passed amongst peers, she sees, she feels. She stumbles.
Rushes to make amends. Is too late.
Soojung pulls off her shoes and hears a remark. “If you have pointes, use them.” She doesn’t look up to identify the speaker.
Finding her way up again pains Soojung. It is scarring, the fall from excellence to an unspeakable murky dimness. She takes light, tentative steps at first, gains a stronger step and stride when she meets a couple of fellows. There is Jieun, a Jinri. They stand close, explain the workings of her new universe. Jinri tells Soojung, they are all seeking brilliance and stardom, competition is an unfortunate consequence. Jieun smiles and pats Soojung’s shoulder, then goes off on her own way, all pleasant smiles and french braids. Soojung slings her bag over her shoulder, steps out into the evening, notices a boy, cross-legged on the statue in front of the building. He perches atop the turtle’s back, striped hoodie pulled over his head. She turns away before she can be certain that he smiles at her.
Her mother pulls over and Soojung hurries to the car. She glances backwards for a split second and just manages to capture the sight of him leap off the stone turtle and flash the dance school’s logo on his messenger bag. She finds herself wondering what class he attends, and how good he must be to get a scholarship.
The next week, she finds him lingering at reception. He springs up as soon as she walks in. It’s unexpected and frankly a little creepy. He introduces himself, basically throws his name into her existence. He is Chanshik, Soojung catches on. Who is she - he asks, seemingly genuinely curious. She gives him her name, states the letters and numbers which identify her dance classroom and tosses in her lesson start time - in exactly three minutes time. Chanshik gets the point and politely backs off, smiling some kind of awkward and exhilarated. “Can I see you later?”
She raises an eyebrow at him, five metres down the hallway. “When is later?”
Chanshik shrugs, still grinning, “After your lesson?”
Soojung doesn’t dare give anything more than an uncertain smile as an answer before she turns and heads to class. She tries to dance the thought of him away, but instead, the image of him, unbalanced mixture of cocky and sweet, lends a peach tint to her cheeks. Jinri leans over and stares at Soojung as she pulls off her pointes. “What’s got you head over heels?”
Soojung huffs. “You tell me.”
You tell me indeed.
There’s something about Chanshik that sends Soojung a level higher on the metaphorical elevator of happiness. She doesn’t really know where to begin, whether it’s that when he laughs, his eyes form a graceful curve. Or when he shows off his beginner ballet steps in an attempt to impress her while she waits to be picked up. Or if it’s how when he stands next to her, Soojung suddenly realises that he’s tall, different from the boys she used to play soccer with in her hometown, more a man than a boy, but not quite there yet. There’s something special to him, and Soojung starts to welcome his presence in her life. She opens up a space for him, a spot somewhere in the vicinity of her heart. She has no place card for him, at least not yet, and Soojung finds that oddly satisfying. She doesn’t need to label Chanshik anything, doesn’t need to, doesn’t have to. Why can’t he just be somebody important - isn’t that enough? It’s why Soojung high-fives him when the school adds another lesson to her timetable, it’s their way of saying that she’s improved and Chanshik is the first person she celebrates with.
The weeks pile up on one another until Jinri starts rolling her eyes and smiling in that knowing way of hers. “When did you get on such good terms with this dance academy’s pride and joy?”
Soojung doesn’t know how to respond, so she shakes her head and rolls her own eyes in return, “You’re seeing things.”
They both know better, of course.
Chanshik birthday is in the later days of summer, when the air starts to grow lighter and the clouds start to pass overhead again. Soojung gets a text from him when she’s in maths class - he spends his days at the academy, and is otherwise home-schooled - /can you come over to the studio today?/
She runs through the options as the other students keep their heads down and pens moving. Taps out a /yes. When?/
Soojung arrives at his usual classroom after a phone call to her mother, offering a white lie of staying back at school for special club activities. She peeks through the glass in the door and finds him dancing. The music is muffled, but the bass makes it through the wood, and Soojung can feel her heart beat along with every movement of his. He is not the hip hop dancer most male students are, he is passionate, heartbroken, elated. Gentle, uncertain. An angel. His eyes eventually flicker to her at the door, through the glass, and he rushes to the door, pulls it open.
She can see his breath heaving, hair sweaty from the intensity of his practice. Soojung manages a small smile, starts to say “congratulations” but is cut off by the kiss he lands on her lips.
“Thank you,” he whispers to her, centimetres apart. Pulls her closer to him.
They waltz to the complex rhythm of their heartbeats.
Chanshik is shipped off to a national competition in spring. Soojung is pulled out of ballet lessons. She starts to pirouette on her bedroom floor because there is nowhere else. She doesn’t wear her leotard anymore, the hair nets and bobby pins lie in their respective positions, undisturbed, unused. What bothers Soojung though, is that she doesn’t feel nearly as empty as she should. Ballet used to dictate every part of her life. Like when she was nine and fractured her femur and cried, not only from the pain, but also largely from the fear that she would not be able to dance again. Like how she’d shop for legwarmers and leggings instead of skinny jeans and blouses. Now that it isn’t part of her regular routine, why doesn’t she feel disorientated? How is it that she can simply fill up the new spaces in her lifestyle with different things?
But this is not completely true, Soojung manages to realise on the nights when she finds that her eyes can’t shut. Her legs ache to run through the familiar routines, take her high in the air, so that she can do the impossible for even the shortest moment possible. She calls Chanshik at midnight just once, and hangs up just as it starts ringing.
He is still flying. She can’t take that away from him, just because her wings have been clipped.
Chanshik comes home, filled with mixed thoughts and emotions. He could have been better, should be satisfied, so why is he not? He places these uncertainties on Soojung when they meet again, in front of an electronics store, a spot in the busy world they do not spare much time for at all. Asks her if she’s alright, how is ballet?
Soojung finds that the dam breaks then, shatters, tumbles down. Her tears keep coming down, she wants to say that she still wants to dance, still, even though it’s been weeks since she last set foot in a heaven filled with mirrors. She wants to dance, at a perfect balance, in complete synchrony with Jieun and Jinri. Wants to, cannot.
Did you fight the decision made for you?
Soojung hears all the words she flung at her parents, at the words they threw back. Bouncing back and forth, hurting, scratching, scarring. Hears and sees the rotation of a key in a lock, the click of a doorknob that can no longer be turned. Feels the energy in her limps leak out, disappearing. She did fight, she did, yes. But not enough.
His arms pull her into a gentle embrace, and she finds her ear on his chest. And she can hear it, his heartbeat, slow, steady, her rock in a raging storm.
Chanshik makes time for Soojung, fiddles with his own timetable, makes his way to Soojung’s school right when the bell sounds. He takes her hand, leads her to the nearest park and orders her to start dancing. She refuses at first, how is she supposed to dance? She has not practised properly for a long time, her formerly graceful movements will be awkward and clumsy, she will not position her feet and hands correctly, what if she has forgotten?
It does not matter. Dance.
Spring becomes autumn. Green becomes red. Soojung starts bringing her pointes to the park.
She dares only dance on the wooden surfaces of the pavilion when she has them on. They are a key to the cage she has allowed to be built around her. They are precious. Once she slips them off, though, Soojung finds that she is still free. It is not ideal, that she cannot chase a future built from polished floors and mirrors, but that does not mean that a stage of mown grass and fallen leaves is not nearly as beautiful.
Especially not when Chanshik is her audience, he who applauds the most, cheers for all her sincere efforts and loves her with a great intensity.
I am dancing for you.
A/N: It's been a while. I'm trying to get the hang of writing again.