soft landings
soft landings
yunjae
pg13, 2011 wc
four member DBSK AU
soft landings
This scene exists in two parts. One, that two men meet in a hotel corridor and that their eyes meet for a second. Kim Jaejoong has just taken the elevator to this floor and is fitting the key to the door of his room when Jung Yunho emerges from his room next door. Jaejoong opens his door just as Jung Yunho closes his own.
Two men in a hotel corridor. They look at each other, and are struck with the sensation that they know each other. It is as though there is a hole within both, a gap in themselves that is the precise shape of the other man’s silhouette. For a split second, each man is the other man’s childhood friend, or their ex-lover. They have played together, kicked soccer balls across grassy pitches, skinned their knees, licked ice-cream from their fingers, kissed under the moon, fought with fists, drunk soju until they were sick, fucked in crumpled bed sheets.
Then the moment passes. Jung Yunho walks past, reaching the elevator just before its doors close. He presses ‘G’ for ground floor. Kim Jaejoong tugs the key out of the lock and he steps over the threshold to his room.
The second part of this scene: neither man looks back.
They arrive within minutes of each other. Jaejoong checks in at the hotel lobby. He is relieved that the money order from the college has reached the hotel without issue. He is on a scholarship and the college has paid for him to stay two days because the dorm he had been allocated was flooded by a burst water main and will take time to be dried and fixed. Jaejoong has just shut the door to his hotel room and locked it behind him when he hears voices in the corridor. He can’t discern the words, but he hears the door to the large suite beside his smaller one open and close. He puts his luggage by the bed and goes to the window to peer outside at the smoggy Seoul night. The stars are not visible here in the city. Instead it is lit by a myriad of street lamps and lit windows and shop fronts. The buildings in the distance are invisible to him, but their windows hover in the air, suspended as squares of yellow.
Jaejoong can hear the dim sounds of his temporary neighbours settling in next door. The window by his is slid open, and Jaejoong catches sight of a pair of hands resting on the sill for a brief moment before they are withdrawn. Someone laughs.
He looks back down at the street. It is noisy, and unnaturally crowded. Jaejoong squints; a passing car illuminates the scene and he makes out the characters ‘Dong Bang Shin Ki’ on a cardboard sign clutched by a girl. And with a tremor of surprise, he realises who must be in the room next door.
Dong Bang Shin Ki debuted five years ago with four members. Yunho is the oldest, the
leader. There are always dark shadows under his eyes that are smoothed away with concealer every morning by his stylist. Love is tiring, smiling for the fans as he climbs into the company car or stands around for photo opportunities. There’s enough love to drown in, so why is he hungry for more?
Jaejoong wakes early. He has a vague sense that he had been dreaming of something that he should remember, but cannot. By the time he has risen and brushed his teeth and washed his face in the small bathroom, even the memory of having dreamt has faded in the bone white dawn. For a moment he gazes at his own reflection, stark against the darkness of the room behind him. Then he dresses, and leaves. He pauses before the door by his, hesitating, before he reaches out and touches the wood of the door with his fingertips. Then, quietly, he walks down the corridor and takes the elevator down to the lobby. In a room upstairs, four men sleep undisturbed.
The street outside the hotel is crowded with the same girls Jaejoong had seen from his window last night. He has to squeeze past them to get to the convenience store down the street. The convenience store, too, is crowded with girls clutching signs and CDs, purchasing chewing gum and bottled water. Dong Bang Shin Ki are endorsing a particular brand of bottled water and that is the brand that they buy. On the bottles of water are individual pictures of the four Dong Bang Shin Ki members. Jaejoong sees Jung Yunho’s in the fridge, next to the organic yoghurt, a photo of him in a white suit and smiling directly at the camera. Jaejoong buys a newspaper and pack of cigarettes. He declines a plastic bag. He returns to the hotel, squeezing past girls drinking their water until he is in the cool air-conditioned space of the lobby. He is holding the newspaper under one arm and the cigarette pack is sticking out of the pocket of his jacket and he is unlocking his room door when Jung Yunho opens his own door.
We know how this chance meeting will play out. We also know that Yunho will leave to go to an interview, and that he will dutifully answer all of the questions and allow a few photographs to be taken of him. He will miss breakfast and lunch and he will eat a salad in the company car as dinner. We know that Jaejoong will sit down on his bed and smoke one of the cigarettes that he had just purchased in the convenience store. He will read the paper. The heat will rise, as he had expected it to, and the ink of the paper will stick to the skin of his hands. Soon there will be words on his palms and fingers, and when he goes to the bathroom he will raise both hands as though in surrender to the mirror. On his left thumb: stranger. On his palms, in the bold lettering of headlines: coincidence. He will wash the ink off his hands.
The thing that is certain about both men is that the memory of that meeting in the hallway remains in their minds throughout the day. Like a dream that you struggle to remember, it lingers on the threshold. Suppose such dreams and memories come to you when you blink; for a split second it is there, and by the time you have opened your eyes it is too late.
Another thing: we know that they will meet again.
It’s on the fire escape. The hotel is not on fire, but Jaejoong climbs onto the stairs when he finds that he can’t sleep, intending to chain-smoke his way to dawn. He sits on the landing below his window and watches the burning ashes crumble onto the metal of the stairs. It’s 4am when Yunho comes out, climbing legs first out of his window. Pale curtains spill out after him, shifting in the breeze. Jaejoong removes the cigarette from his mouth to blow out a cloud of smoke. ‘Hi,’ he says.
Yunho sits down a couple of steps above Jaejoong’s landing. ‘Um, hi,’ he says, a little awkwardly. ‘Do you mind?’
He hasn’t shaved and the lack of makeup means that the shadows under his eyes show. There’s a beauty mark above his lips, to the left. There is a small healing cut on his jaw. Jaejoong can picture it: Yunho standing in the small hotel bathroom, shaving, his hand slips, the razor nicks him. He’d hiss and raise the back of his hand to the cut, dab at the blood.
Jaejoong finds his voice. He says, ‘No, it’s okay.’ Then he realises that Yunho might have meant the cigarette, so he stubs it out and crams the box back into his pocket.
They are quiet for a while, Jaejoong fiddling with his shoelaces and Yunho looking out at the smoggy Seoul night. The heat of the day has finally faded, but when the sun rises in an hour or two it will seep back into the city. Finally Jaejoong says: ‘So, Dong Bang Shin Ki, huh?’
It’s Yunho’s turn to shrug. ‘At your service.’
‘What’s it like?’ Jaejoong lets the words escape.
Yunho doesn’t seem to mind the abruptness of the question. ‘It’s busy, I guess. There isn’t much time to think.’
Jaejoong, still flushed from his outburst, can’t help his mouth quirking into a smile. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I almost auditioned back then.’
Yunho blinks in surprise. ‘No kidding.’
Jaejoong goes back to playing with his shoelaces. He has his knee drawn up to his chin and his face is lowered, muffling his voice. He is pulling his shoelaces out of the eyelets and threading them back in. There’s something subtle and sensual about the way he does it, like he’s unlacing a woman’s corset and running his hand down her bare back.
‘Yeah, I was kidding,’ he says.
Yunho laughs quietly. He has a beautiful smile. His eyes crinkle, his teeth show. ‘You got me.’
Jaejoong doesn’t tell him about that day five years ago, when he’d used all of his savings to get a train to Seoul and a tiny room above a noraebang. He had listened to the sound of singing filtering through the floor, vibrations travelling through the thin plaster walls of the room. He had stayed for a week. He had dressed in his best clothes and to save what was last of his cash he had decided to walk to the company building, six blocks away.
Jaejoong doesn’t say to Yunho, what if I had decided to take a taxi? It was fucking hot, I was thinking about taking a taxi or asking for directions because I didn’t know my way. I wouldn’t have crossed that street and I wouldn’t have been hit by that car and bled all the way to a hospital where I didn’t have health insurance.
And so. He doesn’t talk about missing the auditions. He used to dream about it, on constant loop on dark nights, of singing in his basement on a portable karaoke machine, the long clanking train ride past the rice fields and stained buildings into Seoul, the tiny room where the plaster dust came away white as flour on your hands. He used to dream of the moment of impact, the panic that set in when he drew a wheezing breath and found he couldn’t find his voice. It had come back later, long after the auditions were over and he was back at his parent’s house. Sometimes he dreams of strobe lights, but always at this point he will wake to the sound of a passing plane or a car door slamming, and he will lay awake in bed for the rest of the night.
Jaejoong looks up at Yunho’s profile, silhouetted against the white glow of lit hotel windows above them. He thinks: I could lean over and kiss him, right now. In this cold hard light we could kiss.
Yunho opens his mouth to take a shuddering breath as though to speak, but he does not. The silence would sit unbroken on the shoulders of these two men. They do not speak, and they do not kiss. Soon the sun will rise, and Yunho will stand and dust off his trousers, saying, ‘well, bye,’ and Jaejoong will nod and smile a little. Soon the city will wake and Yunho will wake his band mates and press the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn. Jaejoong will wait until he sees their van leave before returning to his room, washing his face with hot water and meeting the eyes of his reflection in the mirror. Yunho will never see Jaejoong again, but Jaejoong will see Yunho, on billboards and bus stops and on the television screen at night.
But for now, they sit and they are quiet.
yunjae
pg13, 2011 wc
four member DBSK AU
soft landings
This scene exists in two parts. One, that two men meet in a hotel corridor and that their eyes meet for a second. Kim Jaejoong has just taken the elevator to this floor and is fitting the key to the door of his room when Jung Yunho emerges from his room next door. Jaejoong opens his door just as Jung Yunho closes his own.
Two men in a hotel corridor. They look at each other, and are struck with the sensation that they know each other. It is as though there is a hole within both, a gap in themselves that is the precise shape of the other man’s silhouette. For a split second, each man is the other man’s childhood friend, or their ex-lover. They have played together, kicked soccer balls across grassy pitches, skinned their knees, licked ice-cream from their fingers, kissed under the moon, fought with fists, drunk soju until they were sick, fucked in crumpled bed sheets.
Then the moment passes. Jung Yunho walks past, reaching the elevator just before its doors close. He presses ‘G’ for ground floor. Kim Jaejoong tugs the key out of the lock and he steps over the threshold to his room.
The second part of this scene: neither man looks back.
They arrive within minutes of each other. Jaejoong checks in at the hotel lobby. He is relieved that the money order from the college has reached the hotel without issue. He is on a scholarship and the college has paid for him to stay two days because the dorm he had been allocated was flooded by a burst water main and will take time to be dried and fixed. Jaejoong has just shut the door to his hotel room and locked it behind him when he hears voices in the corridor. He can’t discern the words, but he hears the door to the large suite beside his smaller one open and close. He puts his luggage by the bed and goes to the window to peer outside at the smoggy Seoul night. The stars are not visible here in the city. Instead it is lit by a myriad of street lamps and lit windows and shop fronts. The buildings in the distance are invisible to him, but their windows hover in the air, suspended as squares of yellow.
Jaejoong can hear the dim sounds of his temporary neighbours settling in next door. The window by his is slid open, and Jaejoong catches sight of a pair of hands resting on the sill for a brief moment before they are withdrawn. Someone laughs.
He looks back down at the street. It is noisy, and unnaturally crowded. Jaejoong squints; a passing car illuminates the scene and he makes out the characters ‘Dong Bang Shin Ki’ on a cardboard sign clutched by a girl. And with a tremor of surprise, he realises who must be in the room next door.
Dong Bang Shin Ki debuted five years ago with four members. Yunho is the oldest, the
leader. There are always dark shadows under his eyes that are smoothed away with concealer every morning by his stylist. Love is tiring, smiling for the fans as he climbs into the company car or stands around for photo opportunities. There’s enough love to drown in, so why is he hungry for more?
Jaejoong wakes early. He has a vague sense that he had been dreaming of something that he should remember, but cannot. By the time he has risen and brushed his teeth and washed his face in the small bathroom, even the memory of having dreamt has faded in the bone white dawn. For a moment he gazes at his own reflection, stark against the darkness of the room behind him. Then he dresses, and leaves. He pauses before the door by his, hesitating, before he reaches out and touches the wood of the door with his fingertips. Then, quietly, he walks down the corridor and takes the elevator down to the lobby. In a room upstairs, four men sleep undisturbed.
The street outside the hotel is crowded with the same girls Jaejoong had seen from his window last night. He has to squeeze past them to get to the convenience store down the street. The convenience store, too, is crowded with girls clutching signs and CDs, purchasing chewing gum and bottled water. Dong Bang Shin Ki are endorsing a particular brand of bottled water and that is the brand that they buy. On the bottles of water are individual pictures of the four Dong Bang Shin Ki members. Jaejoong sees Jung Yunho’s in the fridge, next to the organic yoghurt, a photo of him in a white suit and smiling directly at the camera. Jaejoong buys a newspaper and pack of cigarettes. He declines a plastic bag. He returns to the hotel, squeezing past girls drinking their water until he is in the cool air-conditioned space of the lobby. He is holding the newspaper under one arm and the cigarette pack is sticking out of the pocket of his jacket and he is unlocking his room door when Jung Yunho opens his own door.
We know how this chance meeting will play out. We also know that Yunho will leave to go to an interview, and that he will dutifully answer all of the questions and allow a few photographs to be taken of him. He will miss breakfast and lunch and he will eat a salad in the company car as dinner. We know that Jaejoong will sit down on his bed and smoke one of the cigarettes that he had just purchased in the convenience store. He will read the paper. The heat will rise, as he had expected it to, and the ink of the paper will stick to the skin of his hands. Soon there will be words on his palms and fingers, and when he goes to the bathroom he will raise both hands as though in surrender to the mirror. On his left thumb: stranger. On his palms, in the bold lettering of headlines: coincidence. He will wash the ink off his hands.
The thing that is certain about both men is that the memory of that meeting in the hallway remains in their minds throughout the day. Like a dream that you struggle to remember, it lingers on the threshold. Suppose such dreams and memories come to you when you blink; for a split second it is there, and by the time you have opened your eyes it is too late.
Another thing: we know that they will meet again.
It’s on the fire escape. The hotel is not on fire, but Jaejoong climbs onto the stairs when he finds that he can’t sleep, intending to chain-smoke his way to dawn. He sits on the landing below his window and watches the burning ashes crumble onto the metal of the stairs. It’s 4am when Yunho comes out, climbing legs first out of his window. Pale curtains spill out after him, shifting in the breeze. Jaejoong removes the cigarette from his mouth to blow out a cloud of smoke. ‘Hi,’ he says.
Yunho sits down a couple of steps above Jaejoong’s landing. ‘Um, hi,’ he says, a little awkwardly. ‘Do you mind?’
He hasn’t shaved and the lack of makeup means that the shadows under his eyes show. There’s a beauty mark above his lips, to the left. There is a small healing cut on his jaw. Jaejoong can picture it: Yunho standing in the small hotel bathroom, shaving, his hand slips, the razor nicks him. He’d hiss and raise the back of his hand to the cut, dab at the blood.
Jaejoong finds his voice. He says, ‘No, it’s okay.’ Then he realises that Yunho might have meant the cigarette, so he stubs it out and crams the box back into his pocket.
They are quiet for a while, Jaejoong fiddling with his shoelaces and Yunho looking out at the smoggy Seoul night. The heat of the day has finally faded, but when the sun rises in an hour or two it will seep back into the city. Finally Jaejoong says: ‘So, Dong Bang Shin Ki, huh?’
It’s Yunho’s turn to shrug. ‘At your service.’
‘What’s it like?’ Jaejoong lets the words escape.
Yunho doesn’t seem to mind the abruptness of the question. ‘It’s busy, I guess. There isn’t much time to think.’
Jaejoong, still flushed from his outburst, can’t help his mouth quirking into a smile. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I almost auditioned back then.’
Yunho blinks in surprise. ‘No kidding.’
Jaejoong goes back to playing with his shoelaces. He has his knee drawn up to his chin and his face is lowered, muffling his voice. He is pulling his shoelaces out of the eyelets and threading them back in. There’s something subtle and sensual about the way he does it, like he’s unlacing a woman’s corset and running his hand down her bare back.
‘Yeah, I was kidding,’ he says.
Yunho laughs quietly. He has a beautiful smile. His eyes crinkle, his teeth show. ‘You got me.’
Jaejoong doesn’t tell him about that day five years ago, when he’d used all of his savings to get a train to Seoul and a tiny room above a noraebang. He had listened to the sound of singing filtering through the floor, vibrations travelling through the thin plaster walls of the room. He had stayed for a week. He had dressed in his best clothes and to save what was last of his cash he had decided to walk to the company building, six blocks away.
Jaejoong doesn’t say to Yunho, what if I had decided to take a taxi? It was fucking hot, I was thinking about taking a taxi or asking for directions because I didn’t know my way. I wouldn’t have crossed that street and I wouldn’t have been hit by that car and bled all the way to a hospital where I didn’t have health insurance.
And so. He doesn’t talk about missing the auditions. He used to dream about it, on constant loop on dark nights, of singing in his basement on a portable karaoke machine, the long clanking train ride past the rice fields and stained buildings into Seoul, the tiny room where the plaster dust came away white as flour on your hands. He used to dream of the moment of impact, the panic that set in when he drew a wheezing breath and found he couldn’t find his voice. It had come back later, long after the auditions were over and he was back at his parent’s house. Sometimes he dreams of strobe lights, but always at this point he will wake to the sound of a passing plane or a car door slamming, and he will lay awake in bed for the rest of the night.
Jaejoong looks up at Yunho’s profile, silhouetted against the white glow of lit hotel windows above them. He thinks: I could lean over and kiss him, right now. In this cold hard light we could kiss.
Yunho opens his mouth to take a shuddering breath as though to speak, but he does not. The silence would sit unbroken on the shoulders of these two men. They do not speak, and they do not kiss. Soon the sun will rise, and Yunho will stand and dust off his trousers, saying, ‘well, bye,’ and Jaejoong will nod and smile a little. Soon the city will wake and Yunho will wake his band mates and press the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn. Jaejoong will wait until he sees their van leave before returning to his room, washing his face with hot water and meeting the eyes of his reflection in the mirror. Yunho will never see Jaejoong again, but Jaejoong will see Yunho, on billboards and bus stops and on the television screen at night.
But for now, they sit and they are quiet.