Dear Neighbor
DEAR NEIGHBOR; PG-13
(au)
He remembered his next door neighbor growing up like the back of his pale, slender, always sweaty hands. Song Qian - Victoria - the foreign girl who moved in to the room across from his, only holding one box in hand down on the street and into her house, letting her parents carry the rest.
She was never one for believing in curfews and she snuck back home, late nights when the air had already turned frosty, heels in fingers, always the expert on tip-toeing to the highest point a foot could take inside her house, noiselessly closing that big white door behind her. She must have done this three times a week at least, he counted.
Kyuhyun later learned the magic behind those noiseless steps, the art of walking beautiful. ‘Beijing Dance Academy’ that one box had read in big sloppy English letters, a prestigious school that only a few could get in; at least that’s what the internet shouted at him as he inquiringly researched. He glanced out his window from time to time, hoping to get a peek of her dancing in her room through those thinly veiled pink curtains - but she never did.
She laughed that one day she finally caught him leering through the windows, he wasn’t as quick and agile as she was and ducking behind his computer desk took him a good five seconds too long after realizing she had been consciously looking over her shoulder as she got dressed; it was her fault after all, her fault that Kyuhyun had practically foamed at his adolescent lips at the first sight of bare skin and the curves of her backside, only masked by some lacy silk bra. And she was the one who laughed again when he reluctantly opened his door, minutes later in a robe, her broken Korean awry and Kyuhyun was sure he had never heard anything more beautiful.
“Stop watching me, nerd.”
Kyuhyun got contacts when the semester started, and he tried to comb his hair over in some manageable way to give him something else, but he still looked the same - he’d always be Kyuhyun - that slightly tall, supremely average, smart freak - the one who could calculate all the whole numbers multiplied by the square root of pi and then some, the kid who teachers would always call on for the right answer even if he sat in the back of the class just because they knew - they knew he was dependable.
And cram school was hard, and Kyuhyun hating going but he’d go everyday and even though he’d act like he didn’t care, his mind still wandered to thinking about that girl next door.
Sometimes, when he’d get to a particularly hard problem, he’d even trace her initials into the back of his notebook, alternating between ‘SQ’ and ‘SV’ depending on how his day was.
SQ was for Song Qian: the exotic ballerina who did pirouhettes in her backyard when she thought no one was looking and whose neck was long and elegant even from afar, the one who appeared most gracious and revered.
SV was for Song Victoria: the new girl in his school who created a ruckus with all the boys and an obstacle for all the girls, the one who walked as if the planet and all the surrounding ones belonged to her, the one who kept her mouth constantly slightly open in a disappointed ‘W’, the one who treated Kyuhyun and his new lack of glasses as if he was air - there, but forgettably nonexistent.
Kyuhyun loved both, watched both with his lights turned off and his shades drawn low, hoping to make no sounds, no sights - being invisible was okay as long as he got to see her in some proximity or one another.
She eventually went back to undressing with her curtains pulled open, never looking over her shoulders, confident in her own right; pools and masses of pink lace flying off and on and some days just staying on her carpet (she was kind of a mess and never cleaned up after herself), and Kyuhyun would guiltily watch on with his binoculars pulled as close to the floor as they could go - she never showed signs of knowing someone was watching again -
but Kyuhyun had a feeling she knew.
“Help me with math,” was the second time that familiar broken Korean was directed to him again, and Kyuhyun almost thought that it was a delusion, an impossible delusion that someone other than him and the other two mousy middle school kids would be in his after school cram class in some magnificently shitty and expensive hagwon his parents shelled out the money for.
“What are you doing here?” were the first words he ever said to her, not by careful thought or consideration.
“Help me with math, neighbor. Or I’ll tell my dad that you are a perv that keeps watching me undress - he’s part of the biggest mob back in China.”
Kyuhyun nodded his head along, yes, and made room for the pretty girl to sit down next to him, in between his piles of neatly organized papers and assortment of study books - something surely to impress her by.
He never bothered asking her if her father was really part of the boss why would she have moved to such a modest neighborhood on the western side of Seoul - but then, Kyuhyun was book smart - not street smart.
It could be argued that Song Victoria was the opposite.
He learned how the female specimen were quite the opposite when she let him study the caricatures of the curves of her back, the ones that he had always been so content with studying from afar, up close and personal, she let him touch those bare curves with his shaky and sweaty fingers - snickering when he faltered to touch at first, nervously only daring to linger. Study sessions, these were called, when he climbed in to her half-open window and she’d have a smile on, the bad kind, the kind where he knew she was up to no good as she lit the candles all over her room (rose scented, of course it was always something pink) and then she crossed over to him, draping her fingers slyly on his sides and then the lights were off, something he used to be so disappointed in when he was across in his room, but it was different when he was actually there, there in that room, there in that room with that girl.
“What are you doing?” there were those creative words again when she pushed him on to her bed, pink satin sheets too slippery to hold as he tried to get up and away before she pushed him back again, with force and his head fell on to those dangerously plush pillows - pink. Pink, pink, pink, even her lipstick was pink as they left the faintest trail at the edge of his neck and pushed their way up to the bones of his jaw and Kyuhyun felt like closing his eyes, but then told himself ‘No, don’t,’ wanting to watch the way she bent down over him wordless and with ease, like a gazelle as she nipped him here and there playfully, as if this was some kind of art form Kyuhyun had been missing out on all along.
“I’m going to teach you my anatomy, Kyuhyun-sshi.” She always had called him formally, perhaps not wanting to break the barrier of their slight age difference, but Kyuhyun sort of liked it, drew attached to the fact that he’d call her ‘Noona’ anytime a pink lacy under piece would fall from her skin and he was a bit closer to that impeccable skin, and he definitely loved how she would stop herself from just plain calling him Kyuhyun - even when she was teaching him all the ways of her anatomy, legs deliciously open and fingers curled under the nape of Kyuhyun’s neck - all for teaching purposes of course.
“Quixien,” she called him one day after class ended and Kyuhyun almost didn’t look up from his locker, unsure of that strange hiss of a tongue was aimed towards him; it had been the first day she had ever acknowledged him in public, at school nonetheless - secret cram rooms and hopping over to each other’s bedrooms didn’t count.
“Quixien,” she said again, shoving a stack of his obediently written notes back to him, “thanks for helping me study.”
“Quixien?”
“Quixien is the equivalent of Kyuhyun in Mandarin,” she matter of factly stated, raising an eyebrow. It was as if she expected him to retort back, stomp his feet and say he didn’t like it, but he didn’t say anything at all - the idea of Quixien meeting Song Qian on top of a stage where he could flip her in the air as she flew across in a billowing tutu to him until their noses met romantically flooded his conscious and Kyuhyun was blushing, almost dropping his notes in carelessness.
“Cool,” was all he could think of saying and then Victoria looked around for a second before sighing in self-frustration, leaning in and upwards leaving Kyuhyun with a brief kiss, so brief the sensation of something touching his lips came late. He opened his eyes but Victoria just rolled hers and left, breaking away and walking far, but Kyuhyun smiled all the way home that day, never forgetting the fact she had tip-toed all the way to the very top to give him that miniscule moment of a kiss.
“I like being around you sometimes, Kyuhyun-sshi. You know why?”
“No, why?” Kyuhyun asked, and thought about this for a moment as they kept their feet dug in the sand, sitting on the swings at the park near their homes. It was nightfall and they were the only people in the whole park, no kids in sight, and Kyuhyun found himself enjoying the solitude more so than giving Victoria better conversation.
“Because. Because you never ask about me. About my past.”
“Oh. Right.” he said, as they went back into the momentum of swinging, kicking their feet in the air.
He had never had to ask her of course, he’d been so good at making her past all up in his head. (And quite content with that too.)
Victoria was the girl who - in a fleeting moment of real feelings and vulnerability - gave Kyuhyun her first and very old pair of ballet shoes in a delicate little pink box with a sherbet bow. The soles were all worn and the lace that was meant to trail up her ankles barely hung on to the side of the shoes but they were hers, from her and she gave them to him timidly, refusing to make eye contact.
“By the way, I’m moving back home.” she said, when Kyuhyun was still focused on the quizzical yet meaningful present, unable to tear his eyes away, even with the funny words coming out of her mouth, “I’m going back to my old academy.”
Academy.
He knew what that meant. Beijing Dance Academy. That place where she could finally make her dreams come true, the ones her parents had put a hold on, the ones she had been so defiantly rebelling to go back to. Back to the place where she could practice those pirouettes - the ones she had officially quit doing, only doing once in a blue moon those nights Kyuhyun saw her outside in her yard, standing alone and somber. A pointless tryst with the feeble kid next door who she had bullied into tutoring her meant nothing in the long run - Kyuhyun was nothing compared to the idea of grand stages and classical music and the ability to spin around rapidly until you spun to somewhere unknown. China was unknown to him; even Quixien knew that was uncharted territory.
“I’ll come visit you,” he laughed, not really meaning it, fingering the broken laces with those wonderfully clever and shaky fingers of his.
He told her once, once before she left when he had finally gathered the courage to climb through her window without asking and she had her head hung low, wiping her face before turning around to see him and smile, pretending that she wasn’t crying, to wrap her in a hug, embrace those gentle and knowing curves once more, his last chance to memorize the feel of her close, the touch of her soft skin in reality. He wasn’t dreaming, but sometimes he felt like he was with her.
“You look pretty with your bangs back, Qian,” he said, no mention of ‘noona’ anywhere as he looked down, deeply into those warm and deceitful eyes, pushing her heavy bangs with his fingers, admiring her beauty - all of it. He had never told her this before, not even a mention, but it had always been something worth mentioning and now he had - he had told her the truth and he was proud of it, he thought, as he sent her a final impetuous kiss on the forehead, his lips lingering sadly for a moment before settling back into the hug, both of their eyes shut tight.
Victoria might have cried again that night, but Kyuhyun promised her that he hadn’t seen it, even if he had.
-
(au)
He remembered his next door neighbor growing up like the back of his pale, slender, always sweaty hands. Song Qian - Victoria - the foreign girl who moved in to the room across from his, only holding one box in hand down on the street and into her house, letting her parents carry the rest.
She was never one for believing in curfews and she snuck back home, late nights when the air had already turned frosty, heels in fingers, always the expert on tip-toeing to the highest point a foot could take inside her house, noiselessly closing that big white door behind her. She must have done this three times a week at least, he counted.
Kyuhyun later learned the magic behind those noiseless steps, the art of walking beautiful. ‘Beijing Dance Academy’ that one box had read in big sloppy English letters, a prestigious school that only a few could get in; at least that’s what the internet shouted at him as he inquiringly researched. He glanced out his window from time to time, hoping to get a peek of her dancing in her room through those thinly veiled pink curtains - but she never did.
She laughed that one day she finally caught him leering through the windows, he wasn’t as quick and agile as she was and ducking behind his computer desk took him a good five seconds too long after realizing she had been consciously looking over her shoulder as she got dressed; it was her fault after all, her fault that Kyuhyun had practically foamed at his adolescent lips at the first sight of bare skin and the curves of her backside, only masked by some lacy silk bra. And she was the one who laughed again when he reluctantly opened his door, minutes later in a robe, her broken Korean awry and Kyuhyun was sure he had never heard anything more beautiful.
“Stop watching me, nerd.”
Kyuhyun got contacts when the semester started, and he tried to comb his hair over in some manageable way to give him something else, but he still looked the same - he’d always be Kyuhyun - that slightly tall, supremely average, smart freak - the one who could calculate all the whole numbers multiplied by the square root of pi and then some, the kid who teachers would always call on for the right answer even if he sat in the back of the class just because they knew - they knew he was dependable.
And cram school was hard, and Kyuhyun hating going but he’d go everyday and even though he’d act like he didn’t care, his mind still wandered to thinking about that girl next door.
Sometimes, when he’d get to a particularly hard problem, he’d even trace her initials into the back of his notebook, alternating between ‘SQ’ and ‘SV’ depending on how his day was.
SQ was for Song Qian: the exotic ballerina who did pirouhettes in her backyard when she thought no one was looking and whose neck was long and elegant even from afar, the one who appeared most gracious and revered.
SV was for Song Victoria: the new girl in his school who created a ruckus with all the boys and an obstacle for all the girls, the one who walked as if the planet and all the surrounding ones belonged to her, the one who kept her mouth constantly slightly open in a disappointed ‘W’, the one who treated Kyuhyun and his new lack of glasses as if he was air - there, but forgettably nonexistent.
Kyuhyun loved both, watched both with his lights turned off and his shades drawn low, hoping to make no sounds, no sights - being invisible was okay as long as he got to see her in some proximity or one another.
She eventually went back to undressing with her curtains pulled open, never looking over her shoulders, confident in her own right; pools and masses of pink lace flying off and on and some days just staying on her carpet (she was kind of a mess and never cleaned up after herself), and Kyuhyun would guiltily watch on with his binoculars pulled as close to the floor as they could go - she never showed signs of knowing someone was watching again -
but Kyuhyun had a feeling she knew.
“Help me with math,” was the second time that familiar broken Korean was directed to him again, and Kyuhyun almost thought that it was a delusion, an impossible delusion that someone other than him and the other two mousy middle school kids would be in his after school cram class in some magnificently shitty and expensive hagwon his parents shelled out the money for.
“What are you doing here?” were the first words he ever said to her, not by careful thought or consideration.
“Help me with math, neighbor. Or I’ll tell my dad that you are a perv that keeps watching me undress - he’s part of the biggest mob back in China.”
Kyuhyun nodded his head along, yes, and made room for the pretty girl to sit down next to him, in between his piles of neatly organized papers and assortment of study books - something surely to impress her by.
He never bothered asking her if her father was really part of the boss why would she have moved to such a modest neighborhood on the western side of Seoul - but then, Kyuhyun was book smart - not street smart.
It could be argued that Song Victoria was the opposite.
He learned how the female specimen were quite the opposite when she let him study the caricatures of the curves of her back, the ones that he had always been so content with studying from afar, up close and personal, she let him touch those bare curves with his shaky and sweaty fingers - snickering when he faltered to touch at first, nervously only daring to linger. Study sessions, these were called, when he climbed in to her half-open window and she’d have a smile on, the bad kind, the kind where he knew she was up to no good as she lit the candles all over her room (rose scented, of course it was always something pink) and then she crossed over to him, draping her fingers slyly on his sides and then the lights were off, something he used to be so disappointed in when he was across in his room, but it was different when he was actually there, there in that room, there in that room with that girl.
“What are you doing?” there were those creative words again when she pushed him on to her bed, pink satin sheets too slippery to hold as he tried to get up and away before she pushed him back again, with force and his head fell on to those dangerously plush pillows - pink. Pink, pink, pink, even her lipstick was pink as they left the faintest trail at the edge of his neck and pushed their way up to the bones of his jaw and Kyuhyun felt like closing his eyes, but then told himself ‘No, don’t,’ wanting to watch the way she bent down over him wordless and with ease, like a gazelle as she nipped him here and there playfully, as if this was some kind of art form Kyuhyun had been missing out on all along.
“I’m going to teach you my anatomy, Kyuhyun-sshi.” She always had called him formally, perhaps not wanting to break the barrier of their slight age difference, but Kyuhyun sort of liked it, drew attached to the fact that he’d call her ‘Noona’ anytime a pink lacy under piece would fall from her skin and he was a bit closer to that impeccable skin, and he definitely loved how she would stop herself from just plain calling him Kyuhyun - even when she was teaching him all the ways of her anatomy, legs deliciously open and fingers curled under the nape of Kyuhyun’s neck - all for teaching purposes of course.
“Quixien,” she called him one day after class ended and Kyuhyun almost didn’t look up from his locker, unsure of that strange hiss of a tongue was aimed towards him; it had been the first day she had ever acknowledged him in public, at school nonetheless - secret cram rooms and hopping over to each other’s bedrooms didn’t count.
“Quixien,” she said again, shoving a stack of his obediently written notes back to him, “thanks for helping me study.”
“Quixien?”
“Quixien is the equivalent of Kyuhyun in Mandarin,” she matter of factly stated, raising an eyebrow. It was as if she expected him to retort back, stomp his feet and say he didn’t like it, but he didn’t say anything at all - the idea of Quixien meeting Song Qian on top of a stage where he could flip her in the air as she flew across in a billowing tutu to him until their noses met romantically flooded his conscious and Kyuhyun was blushing, almost dropping his notes in carelessness.
“Cool,” was all he could think of saying and then Victoria looked around for a second before sighing in self-frustration, leaning in and upwards leaving Kyuhyun with a brief kiss, so brief the sensation of something touching his lips came late. He opened his eyes but Victoria just rolled hers and left, breaking away and walking far, but Kyuhyun smiled all the way home that day, never forgetting the fact she had tip-toed all the way to the very top to give him that miniscule moment of a kiss.
“I like being around you sometimes, Kyuhyun-sshi. You know why?”
“No, why?” Kyuhyun asked, and thought about this for a moment as they kept their feet dug in the sand, sitting on the swings at the park near their homes. It was nightfall and they were the only people in the whole park, no kids in sight, and Kyuhyun found himself enjoying the solitude more so than giving Victoria better conversation.
“Because. Because you never ask about me. About my past.”
“Oh. Right.” he said, as they went back into the momentum of swinging, kicking their feet in the air.
He had never had to ask her of course, he’d been so good at making her past all up in his head. (And quite content with that too.)
Victoria was the girl who - in a fleeting moment of real feelings and vulnerability - gave Kyuhyun her first and very old pair of ballet shoes in a delicate little pink box with a sherbet bow. The soles were all worn and the lace that was meant to trail up her ankles barely hung on to the side of the shoes but they were hers, from her and she gave them to him timidly, refusing to make eye contact.
“By the way, I’m moving back home.” she said, when Kyuhyun was still focused on the quizzical yet meaningful present, unable to tear his eyes away, even with the funny words coming out of her mouth, “I’m going back to my old academy.”
Academy.
He knew what that meant. Beijing Dance Academy. That place where she could finally make her dreams come true, the ones her parents had put a hold on, the ones she had been so defiantly rebelling to go back to. Back to the place where she could practice those pirouettes - the ones she had officially quit doing, only doing once in a blue moon those nights Kyuhyun saw her outside in her yard, standing alone and somber. A pointless tryst with the feeble kid next door who she had bullied into tutoring her meant nothing in the long run - Kyuhyun was nothing compared to the idea of grand stages and classical music and the ability to spin around rapidly until you spun to somewhere unknown. China was unknown to him; even Quixien knew that was uncharted territory.
“I’ll come visit you,” he laughed, not really meaning it, fingering the broken laces with those wonderfully clever and shaky fingers of his.
He told her once, once before she left when he had finally gathered the courage to climb through her window without asking and she had her head hung low, wiping her face before turning around to see him and smile, pretending that she wasn’t crying, to wrap her in a hug, embrace those gentle and knowing curves once more, his last chance to memorize the feel of her close, the touch of her soft skin in reality. He wasn’t dreaming, but sometimes he felt like he was with her.
“You look pretty with your bangs back, Qian,” he said, no mention of ‘noona’ anywhere as he looked down, deeply into those warm and deceitful eyes, pushing her heavy bangs with his fingers, admiring her beauty - all of it. He had never told her this before, not even a mention, but it had always been something worth mentioning and now he had - he had told her the truth and he was proud of it, he thought, as he sent her a final impetuous kiss on the forehead, his lips lingering sadly for a moment before settling back into the hug, both of their eyes shut tight.
Victoria might have cried again that night, but Kyuhyun promised her that he hadn’t seen it, even if he had.
-