the genius next door.
the genius next door
kiwoon (kikwang/dongwoon/kikwang), pg-13, goosebump-inducing unbeta'd
a quick something inspired by regina spektor's song of the same title again,
for kigae because he's lovely ♥
They say that when the sun rolls away and the moon rises from the depths of darkness beyond the horizon, the largest lake in the village would turn murky and thick with secrets.
The villagers speak of it occasionally over morning tea, stuffing their mouths with soggy eggs and stale bread to keep themselves quiet. They say that food should be eaten in silence and every morsel should be appreciated.
Each forkful of bacon tastes too salty, peppered with irony and unspoken fears.
In the morning, children play in open fields, breathing innocence into the frozen air. They pretend to be monsters and leave dead, frosted daisies in their wake until they hear their mothers screaming in the distance, time to go now.
In school, they learn about sharing and caring, making friends and being polite to each other. Their tiny fingers connect in song and dance, and warmth is felt everywhere, even in water-bright eyes, round and full of joy.
Lee Kikwang spent some of his happiest days spinning in the giant teacup of childhood.
Son Dongwoon was Einstein.
He excelled in his studies, played the violin since he was four and became known as 'the genius next door'. To make more people seethe in jealousy, he possessed deep eyes that had many ladies drowning (willingly) and a perfect smile to melt anyone's heart.
When he was ten, he painted landscapes with perfect brushstrokes that had aging artists cursing and shaking wrinkled fists, even as they welcome eternal slumber.
When he was twelve, he learned that Santa Claus was not God. So he cleared away the Christmas stockings, the glass of sour milk and the lonely cookies on the table.
When he was seventeen, he learned that happiness is something unattainable.
His neighbours liked to gossip and the other kids in school liked to joke, saying that he grew up too quickly and looked too old to hang out with anyone his age.
He hid himself behind books and pressed the tip of his pen to paper, waiting, willing it to spill forth pent-up emotions in tears of ink. The teachers shook their heads at this poor genius, and told him to search for your soul in lost and found.
Dongwoon did, and found his old locker keys stuffed in a dusty jacket there. That dusty jacket belonged to one 'LEE KIKWANG'.
As he walked home, dodging curious stares and careless insults, Dongwoon lowered his head and hoped for darkness to cover him.
It is midnight and the sky is sprinkled with white dots
that they call stars.
The lake is thickened, its viscosity frightening, but
comforting, like the long-awaited wrap of a lover's arms
around me, or a mother's slack embrace. Fluid, solid, all
at once.
Let the neighbours talk, let the schoolmates jeer. I don't
need them when I have the greatest secret of all. They
don't need to know anything about me anyway.
When a shooting star crosses the sky in one dizzying streak of light, Dongwoon peels off his jacket, shirt and pants by the lake and dips his feet into the cool water. Ripples follow his wading form until he nearly reaches the middle where it is deepest. The moon beams upon him and he feels himself sinking into the water when there's a voice in the distance.
"Hey, hey you! W-What are you doing out here at this time?!"
Dongwoon sighs and watches his reflection disappear beyond creased waters.
"You-"
Death is the easiest way out, a flashing green sign that
speaks of relief and perhaps, joy.
Kikwang never expected to find the neighborhood genius attempting suicide in the middle of the haunted lake (in his opinion, at least). His good friend Yang Yoseob told him many stories about that lake. "It eats up people if they swim to the middle, that's why it's so thick, because it's full of blood and dark souls," He whispered and Kikwang shivered.
He thought he'd never enter that lake until that night, when the genius was trying to drown himself. Kikwang squinted past the spindly tree branches and yelled out to him, only to be ignored. In his panic, he tripped over a bulging root in the soil and fell into the shallow waters. That was when he decided to rescue the drowning genius and be hailed as a hero later on.
Unfortunately his plan was foiled when he found that it was extremely difficult to swim in the freezing lake, and ended up only reaching the other boy after what seemed like an hour of struggling against defiant waters. He reached below the surface and groped blindly for a hand or a leg, hoping that the genius wasn't too far gone. Kikwang felt something and tightened his fingers around it, realising that it's an ankle. Before he could pull, the weight of the other boy dragged him beneath. Bubbling syllables that didn't make sense anymore, Kikwang shut his eyes and waited for the cold to swallow him up.
The next morning, a man is hailed as the new hero of the town after he rescued two drowning boys.
Kikwang's mother bawls like a baby over her precious son, covering his trembling self with multiple layers of towels and quilts and kissing his pale purple lips warm.
Meanwhile the genius is tucked away in the corner of his room, assuming the foetal curl of a prawn bent to the boil of his parents' wishes, turning pink with humiliation. The door slams shut in final disappointment.
Dongwoon glances up, eyes reddened with scalding tears and stares at the door, hoping for it to be open. He maintains his position for an hour, then picks himself up off the floor and crawls over to his bed. He sleeps for two days, only waking up to take his meals or to wash himself. As he shuffles by his work desk, Dongwoon hesitates for a moment before sitting before it. He flips through his textbooks, scanning through his untidy scrawls and sketches, wondering what he has been doing with his life. The numbers don't connect in his head anymore.
Son Dongwoon is .
He opens up his diary and thumbs through until he finds a fresh page. He picks up his pen with stiff fingers and writes in slow, thoughtful letters:
Perhaps Death is the easiest way out, but to find it
in the first place is not easy at all.
This is the beginning.
OTL forever
this is just my take/twist on the original song lyrics.
if you read it, you'll find that it's really open to all sorts of interpretations...
please accept my sincere apologies on the lack of kiwoon interactions /cries
kiwoon (kikwang/dongwoon/kikwang), pg-13, goosebump-inducing unbeta'd
a quick something inspired by regina spektor's song of the same title again,
for kigae because he's lovely ♥
They say that when the sun rolls away and the moon rises from the depths of darkness beyond the horizon, the largest lake in the village would turn murky and thick with secrets.
The villagers speak of it occasionally over morning tea, stuffing their mouths with soggy eggs and stale bread to keep themselves quiet. They say that food should be eaten in silence and every morsel should be appreciated.
Each forkful of bacon tastes too salty, peppered with irony and unspoken fears.
In the morning, children play in open fields, breathing innocence into the frozen air. They pretend to be monsters and leave dead, frosted daisies in their wake until they hear their mothers screaming in the distance, time to go now.
In school, they learn about sharing and caring, making friends and being polite to each other. Their tiny fingers connect in song and dance, and warmth is felt everywhere, even in water-bright eyes, round and full of joy.
Lee Kikwang spent some of his happiest days spinning in the giant teacup of childhood.
Son Dongwoon was Einstein.
He excelled in his studies, played the violin since he was four and became known as 'the genius next door'. To make more people seethe in jealousy, he possessed deep eyes that had many ladies drowning (willingly) and a perfect smile to melt anyone's heart.
When he was ten, he painted landscapes with perfect brushstrokes that had aging artists cursing and shaking wrinkled fists, even as they welcome eternal slumber.
When he was twelve, he learned that Santa Claus was not God. So he cleared away the Christmas stockings, the glass of sour milk and the lonely cookies on the table.
When he was seventeen, he learned that happiness is something unattainable.
His neighbours liked to gossip and the other kids in school liked to joke, saying that he grew up too quickly and looked too old to hang out with anyone his age.
He hid himself behind books and pressed the tip of his pen to paper, waiting, willing it to spill forth pent-up emotions in tears of ink. The teachers shook their heads at this poor genius, and told him to search for your soul in lost and found.
Dongwoon did, and found his old locker keys stuffed in a dusty jacket there. That dusty jacket belonged to one 'LEE KIKWANG'.
As he walked home, dodging curious stares and careless insults, Dongwoon lowered his head and hoped for darkness to cover him.
It is midnight and the sky is sprinkled with white dots
that they call stars.
The lake is thickened, its viscosity frightening, but
comforting, like the long-awaited wrap of a lover's arms
around me, or a mother's slack embrace. Fluid, solid, all
at once.
Let the neighbours talk, let the schoolmates jeer. I don't
need them when I have the greatest secret of all. They
don't need to know anything about me anyway.
When a shooting star crosses the sky in one dizzying streak of light, Dongwoon peels off his jacket, shirt and pants by the lake and dips his feet into the cool water. Ripples follow his wading form until he nearly reaches the middle where it is deepest. The moon beams upon him and he feels himself sinking into the water when there's a voice in the distance.
"Hey, hey you! W-What are you doing out here at this time?!"
Dongwoon sighs and watches his reflection disappear beyond creased waters.
"You-"
Death is the easiest way out, a flashing green sign that
speaks of relief and perhaps, joy.
Kikwang never expected to find the neighborhood genius attempting suicide in the middle of the haunted lake (in his opinion, at least). His good friend Yang Yoseob told him many stories about that lake. "It eats up people if they swim to the middle, that's why it's so thick, because it's full of blood and dark souls," He whispered and Kikwang shivered.
He thought he'd never enter that lake until that night, when the genius was trying to drown himself. Kikwang squinted past the spindly tree branches and yelled out to him, only to be ignored. In his panic, he tripped over a bulging root in the soil and fell into the shallow waters. That was when he decided to rescue the drowning genius and be hailed as a hero later on.
Unfortunately his plan was foiled when he found that it was extremely difficult to swim in the freezing lake, and ended up only reaching the other boy after what seemed like an hour of struggling against defiant waters. He reached below the surface and groped blindly for a hand or a leg, hoping that the genius wasn't too far gone. Kikwang felt something and tightened his fingers around it, realising that it's an ankle. Before he could pull, the weight of the other boy dragged him beneath. Bubbling syllables that didn't make sense anymore, Kikwang shut his eyes and waited for the cold to swallow him up.
The next morning, a man is hailed as the new hero of the town after he rescued two drowning boys.
Kikwang's mother bawls like a baby over her precious son, covering his trembling self with multiple layers of towels and quilts and kissing his pale purple lips warm.
Meanwhile the genius is tucked away in the corner of his room, assuming the foetal curl of a prawn bent to the boil of his parents' wishes, turning pink with humiliation. The door slams shut in final disappointment.
Dongwoon glances up, eyes reddened with scalding tears and stares at the door, hoping for it to be open. He maintains his position for an hour, then picks himself up off the floor and crawls over to his bed. He sleeps for two days, only waking up to take his meals or to wash himself. As he shuffles by his work desk, Dongwoon hesitates for a moment before sitting before it. He flips through his textbooks, scanning through his untidy scrawls and sketches, wondering what he has been doing with his life. The numbers don't connect in his head anymore.
Son Dongwoon is .
He opens up his diary and thumbs through until he finds a fresh page. He picks up his pen with stiff fingers and writes in slow, thoughtful letters:
Perhaps Death is the easiest way out, but to find it
in the first place is not easy at all.
This is the beginning.
OTL forever
this is just my take/twist on the original song lyrics.
if you read it, you'll find that it's really open to all sorts of interpretations...
please accept my sincere apologies on the lack of kiwoon interactions /cries