From that place you disappeared
| From that place you disappeared | pg-13 | super junior | yesung/ryeowook | 2512w |
there is no happy ending, but jongwoon didn’t expect one anyways.
note: written for kpop_olymfics, prompted by ft island's "raining."
Later on, Jongwoon will say that the story begins with Ryeowook falling down in the middle of dance practice.
It happens like this: Jongwoon steps in front of Kyuhyun, as per the choreo, to lip sync his line. He’s careful to follow the beat, put left foot before right, and keep his arms close to his body so not to hit Kyuhyun across the shoulders. Everything goes well because he doesn’t fall over like he did the last two tries, and he’s just about to step backwards into the line when he hears a tumble behind him. It’s a common happening during practice, and as expected, the formation breaks in a flurry of “oh my god,” and “are you alright?” and “Ryeowook, what happened?”
Jongwoon shoves Shindong to the side to see Ryeowook looking up at Sungmin with a sheepish smile on his face. “Sorry,” he says, chest heaving with rapid breaths, “I just felt dizzy for a second.”
Eeteuk extends a hand to pull Ryeowook up. He doesn’t hover, as he would have done two years ago, but he keeps his grip on Ryeowook’s arm long after the boy is upright, using his other hand to rub comforting circles on his back. “If you’re tired, we could take a break.”
“Hyung has some food in his bag. You should eat something.” Kyuhyun offers quietly, head tilted towards Donghae, who’s walking toward them while rummaging through his backpack.
Ryeowook brushes off their worried gazes. “I’m really alright. Let’s keep practicing; the dance is not going to learn itself.”
-
If you had asked Ryeowook, the story actually begins a week before, when he coughs up a handful of blood one morning while struggling to breathe.
-
“Lung cancer? From what?”
The doctor adjusts his glasses, “A number of things. Air pollution, asbestos in old buildings, and if he smokes, that could be the cause too-”
Jongwoon shakes his head, “You’re wrong. Ryeowook doesn’t smoke.”
“Then secondhand smoking, if he’s been around someone who does. Look, there are a lot of causes, and they’re just as likely as-”
He doesn’t hear the rest over the rush of blood in his ears.
-
Jongwoon will remember later the perfectly hand-rolled box of cigarettes that Ryeowook had gotten him for his second post-debut birthday. Post-debut birthdays are always a big deal, complete with crowded parties, a plethora of booze, and outlandish gifts, possibly to make up for the dearth of celebration during their poorer pre-debut days.
If I can’t stop you from smoking, the note said, I might as well get you something healthier for your lungs. The ahjusshi said these are organic, so they ought to be better for you, right? Your days with me may be numbered, hyung, but I’m hoping to squeeze a few more years out of you.
Ryeowook
The first time he lit one up, Ryeowook had beamed at him. Jongwoon didn’t have the heart to tell him that it tasted like shit, and instead smiled through the bitter, acrid smoke coating his tongue.
-
They can only cover Ryeowook’s hollow cheeks and sickly pallor with makeup for so long. It’s only a matter of time before his voice goes too, the higher-ups decide, and Ryeowook is shuffled out of the performances due to personal health reasons.
On more than one occasion, Jongwoon finds Ryeowook curled into mounds of blankets, surrounded by stacks of old performance tapes, his mouth moving silently to songs he will never perform again.
-
“It’s just not the same without you, Ryeowook. I mean, take KRY. for example. Take the R out, and you get Super Junior KY. Soon people’ll start wondering if we started a personal lubricant line.”
Ryeowook laughs so hard that he starts coughing. Jongwoon glares at Shindong and tells himself it’s because he made Ryeowook cough.
-
Ryeowook shows off his pills to anyone willing to stay long enough to listen, which nowadays means everyone who visits the dorms. Jongwoon usually sits in a distant armchair while Ryeowook goes though his usual routine of emptying the pills onto his bed and asking the visitor to help sort them into their proper containers.
“That’s one’s for the pain,” he says, pointing to the chalky white tablets between Sulli’s fingers.
“Does it hurt often?” She asks, mouth pursed into a moue of distress.
“Just sometimes. There are good and bad days.” He points to the red oblong ones with black lettering on them. “These keep my red blood cell count from depleting too quickly, since this one - ” he opens his palm to show a purple and yellow capsule, “has the unfortunate tendency of killing off my bone marrow.”
Sulli smiles, a little shakier than when she had first arrived, and scoops the pile of blue caplets back into its container.
“Why are you doing this?” Jongwoon finally asks one day. No matter how many times Ryeowook has asked him, Jongwoon has always steadfastly refused to help.
“Whimsy.” Ryeowook replies, smiling through the tight clench of his jaw. “I like to think their touch makes the medicine stronger.”
Jongwoon taps him on the forehead and presses two white pills past Ryeowook’s lips. “I’ll make these extra strong for you then.”
-
Jongwoon sets down a glass of water on the bedside table, where it clatters a little too loudly. Wincing slightly, he asks, “Ryeowook, you awake?”
Brown eyes flutter open. Ryeowook turns to face him, “Yeah, hyung, I am.”
“Thirsty?”
“Hm, a little.”
“I brought you some water,” Jongwoon says, picking up the glass and holding it towards him. “Drink up.”
Ryeowook’s hand goes to the bedside table, where it gropes empty air. Jongwoon feels his heart clench somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.
“How long?” He asks after a couple of deep breaths, and Ryeowook’s hand goes slack against the oak surface.
“Since last night . I didn’t want to worry you guys.”
Jongwoon laughs, sharp and humorless, and the sound scrapes along his throat and into Ryeowook’s ears. “Well the next time you go blind, please notify us as soon as possible so we can make the proper accommodations.”
“That’s not fair, hyung, I was only-”
Jongwoon shakes off Ryeowook’s pleading voice, “Just stay put. I’ll go tell manager-hyung that you need to go to the hospital.”
-
After that, the members refuse to let Ryeowook out of their sights. They take turns spending time with him, passing sunny mornings with guided walks along the river and rainy afternoons reading books aloud. It’s a good arrangement, but the problem is that nobody really keeps track of what they’ve read. So over the course of three weeks, Ryeowook has heard everything from spy stories to historical fiction to Starcraft strategy guides to a rough translation of the New York Times and, currently, to something that sounds suspiciously like a trashy romance novel.
“Tell me what you’ve been doing instead.” Ryeowook says, cutting off Hyukjae’s intonation of the heroine’s heaving bosoms and curvy hips.
Hyukjae trails off, and Ryeowook could hear him swallowing thickly before replying, “Not much. Not much at all, really. Same old same old. Work’s boring but you gotta do it, right?”
“Yeah, but I liked it.”
There’s an awkward pause after that, before Hyukjae clears his throat and starts again. “Page sixty three. Hye Sung bends down, her voluptuous figure silhouetted through the open curtains, and-”
“They told you not to talk about Super Junior around me, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but there really isn’t anything interesting happening.” Hyukjae closes the book with a sigh. “You’ve probably heard this a million times, but it’s really not the same without you.”
“But how are you guys doing? I haven’t seen Siwon hyung and Heechul hyung for a while.” He laughs and shakes his head, bangs sweeping his forehead in soft arcs. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“Siwon is filming his drama, and Heechul hyung is…he laments that there’s no one left to cook for him.”
“He must be devastated.” Ryeowook jokes feebly.
“Yeah, you could say that.” Hyukjae replies, and the clipped tone of his voice invites no further conversation.
-
Ryeowook once told him that his parents had always disapproved of his idol life. They called it frivolous and wasteful and wanted him to find a real job. “Like an office position,” they had told him repeatedly. “It’s nothing glamorous, but at least you’ll still be working ten years down the road.”
“They didn’t think I had enough talent to make it.” Ryeowook shrugged, offering Ddangkoma another piece of lettuce, “I don’t blame them. I have the tone of a girl.”
“I like it.” Jongwoon said plainly.
“But not many people do. My father used to say that it wasn’t proper for me to sing that high, and every time I see my uncle, he asks me if I’ve hit puberty yet.” He broke off with a short laugh and shook his head incredulously.
Jongwoon decided then that he would probably never enjoy the company of Ryeowook’s relatives and vowed to avoid them if possible. Unfortunately for him, Ryeowook’s parents come within the week to move him out of the dorm, and naturally, despite his negative feelings, Jongwoon follows.
-
“I’ll set up a cot for you beside his bed, if you want to stay the night,” Ryeowook’s mother says with her back turned to him, stirring the pot of tofu stew that will undoubtedly be left untouched on Ryeowook’s beside table. Her voice sounds thick to his ears and there’s pleading undertone that Jongwoon has never heard from her. “He’s not - he’s not the type to ever admit he’s lonely, but I think he’d appreciate the company.”
“Sure, that would be nice.” He says, and hands her a bowl from the cabinet.
-
“Hyung,” Ryeowook whispers, rubbing himself against Jongwoon’s back, soft breath tickling his ear, “Hyung, I love you.”
Jongwoon is still thinking of a proper reply when Ryeowook’s persistent hands tug down zipper and, after that, his jeans and boxers. Their eyes meet through the curtain of Ryeowook’s eyelashes, holding the contact even as he leans down and -
Ryeowook turns and coughs, a small puff of air blocked by the back of his hand. He coughs again, harder this time, and soon they become an unending chain like the cigarettes Jongwoon used to smoke. Ryeowook has both hands clasped over his mouth now, bent over and shoulders shaking violently, and through the dim lighting, Jongwoon could see something dark and thick dripping through the overlap of Ryeowook’s fingers.
Ryeowook looks up at him, his eyes black as tar. “Why did you do this to me, hyung? I thought you loved me, hyung. Hyung, I don’t want to die - ”
A stray drop splatters onto his bare thigh, where it burns on contact. Jongwoon tries to wipe it off with his hand, but only succeeds in spreading it around. He feels it eating through his skin, his hand, his armfacethigh, and wonders if this is penance.
Jongwoon startles awake to find Ryeowook sleeping two feet away, his body still and breathing even. He listens to those soft rasps and wills himself asleep.
-
It rains for a week after Ryeowook’s birthday, the sky alternating between chaotic downpours and misty drizzles. When the sun finally comes out again, Jongwoon takes one look at the grayscale figure in front of him and realizes that the rain has washed away the last of Ryeowook’s colours.
-
“I want to sing again.” Ryeowook whispers, voice hoarse from disuse. It’s the first thing he has said after three days of silence, and Jongwoon is startled into dropping his cup.
“I’ll ask the managers. I’m sure they could arrange something.” Jongwoon says, forcing a smile to his face, even though he knows Ryeowook can’t see it.
“You always were a bad liar, hyung.”
“Just when it comes to you, Wookie.”
“See? Caught you again.”
-
Jongwoon drops by the dorm on a Wednesday morning, when most of the members are either out on schedules or still asleep. He’s not avoiding them so much as avoiding the questions he’s not sure he’s ready to answer yet, so he tiptoes through the living room and enters their old room, closing the door quietly behind him.
He is just dropping turtle food pellets into the glass case when a knock at the door interrupts him.
“I’m not here,” says Jongwoon.
“Bullshit.” Sungmin replies, and strides in. “You look like crap.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s Ryeowook?”
Jongwoon stretches his lips wide and forces an upbeat tone into his voice. “He looks worse than I do, if you can believe it.”
Sungmin’s lips are pressed into a thin, disapproving line. “Just remember to take care of yourself too. Some days, I can’t tell which of you two is the real cancer patient.”
-
There’s a soft rasping sound coming from Ryeowook. It takes Jongwoon a couple of seconds to register that they are actually words. He scrambles towards the bed and tries not to jar it too much as he leans in.
“-were a swan. At least I’d be able to sing about now.”
“Don’t say that.” Jongwoon replies. The words slip out easily, having been rehearsed many times in his head. “We’re taking you to the hospital again tomorrow. The doctor wants to try a new treatment. He says it’s very promising, so you’ll get better, see, and then you’ll recover and perform again on stage with the rest of us, and we’ll go on variety shows and do our fan service and conquer Korea with - ”
“Our obnoxious gay love, yes.” Ryeowook’s chest quivers with amusement.
Jongwoon chews the inside of his cheek and wonders what he wouldn’t give to hear Ryeowook laugh again. “Exactly.”
By the time he has finished drawing a blank, Ryeowook has already fallen back asleep. Jongwoon settles himself back into the chair and picks up the book, staring at the sun outside until his vision goes blurry
-
The doctor lied.
-
Ryeowook looks particularly frail today, Jongwoon thinks, so he pushes their beds together and lies as close as he can without touching, afraid to breathe too hard for fear of hurting him.
The sun bleeds red across Ryeowook’s scalp, masking the grey pallor of skin stretched too tight over protruding bones. The light casts a shadow by Ryeowook’s nose, and Jongwoon keeps time by following its arc across his face. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but when the shadows into a mass of dark bruises, he blinks his watering eyes and tries to recall the last rise and fall of Ryeowook’s chest.
-
One day, Jongwoon will be able to perform on that revolving platform without being startled by the amount of elbow room he has. One day, he will stop losing his breath while singing lines that were never his. One day, he will no longer expect mellow alto to balance his adlibs in their strange harmony.
But today, he goes to the composing room and finds thin air behind dusty piano keys.
will rewrite/polish up one day. not today, but one day in the far off distance.
there is no happy ending, but jongwoon didn’t expect one anyways.
note: written for kpop_olymfics, prompted by ft island's "raining."
Later on, Jongwoon will say that the story begins with Ryeowook falling down in the middle of dance practice.
It happens like this: Jongwoon steps in front of Kyuhyun, as per the choreo, to lip sync his line. He’s careful to follow the beat, put left foot before right, and keep his arms close to his body so not to hit Kyuhyun across the shoulders. Everything goes well because he doesn’t fall over like he did the last two tries, and he’s just about to step backwards into the line when he hears a tumble behind him. It’s a common happening during practice, and as expected, the formation breaks in a flurry of “oh my god,” and “are you alright?” and “Ryeowook, what happened?”
Jongwoon shoves Shindong to the side to see Ryeowook looking up at Sungmin with a sheepish smile on his face. “Sorry,” he says, chest heaving with rapid breaths, “I just felt dizzy for a second.”
Eeteuk extends a hand to pull Ryeowook up. He doesn’t hover, as he would have done two years ago, but he keeps his grip on Ryeowook’s arm long after the boy is upright, using his other hand to rub comforting circles on his back. “If you’re tired, we could take a break.”
“Hyung has some food in his bag. You should eat something.” Kyuhyun offers quietly, head tilted towards Donghae, who’s walking toward them while rummaging through his backpack.
Ryeowook brushes off their worried gazes. “I’m really alright. Let’s keep practicing; the dance is not going to learn itself.”
-
If you had asked Ryeowook, the story actually begins a week before, when he coughs up a handful of blood one morning while struggling to breathe.
-
“Lung cancer? From what?”
The doctor adjusts his glasses, “A number of things. Air pollution, asbestos in old buildings, and if he smokes, that could be the cause too-”
Jongwoon shakes his head, “You’re wrong. Ryeowook doesn’t smoke.”
“Then secondhand smoking, if he’s been around someone who does. Look, there are a lot of causes, and they’re just as likely as-”
He doesn’t hear the rest over the rush of blood in his ears.
-
Jongwoon will remember later the perfectly hand-rolled box of cigarettes that Ryeowook had gotten him for his second post-debut birthday. Post-debut birthdays are always a big deal, complete with crowded parties, a plethora of booze, and outlandish gifts, possibly to make up for the dearth of celebration during their poorer pre-debut days.
If I can’t stop you from smoking, the note said, I might as well get you something healthier for your lungs. The ahjusshi said these are organic, so they ought to be better for you, right? Your days with me may be numbered, hyung, but I’m hoping to squeeze a few more years out of you.
Ryeowook
The first time he lit one up, Ryeowook had beamed at him. Jongwoon didn’t have the heart to tell him that it tasted like shit, and instead smiled through the bitter, acrid smoke coating his tongue.
-
They can only cover Ryeowook’s hollow cheeks and sickly pallor with makeup for so long. It’s only a matter of time before his voice goes too, the higher-ups decide, and Ryeowook is shuffled out of the performances due to personal health reasons.
On more than one occasion, Jongwoon finds Ryeowook curled into mounds of blankets, surrounded by stacks of old performance tapes, his mouth moving silently to songs he will never perform again.
-
“It’s just not the same without you, Ryeowook. I mean, take KRY. for example. Take the R out, and you get Super Junior KY. Soon people’ll start wondering if we started a personal lubricant line.”
Ryeowook laughs so hard that he starts coughing. Jongwoon glares at Shindong and tells himself it’s because he made Ryeowook cough.
-
Ryeowook shows off his pills to anyone willing to stay long enough to listen, which nowadays means everyone who visits the dorms. Jongwoon usually sits in a distant armchair while Ryeowook goes though his usual routine of emptying the pills onto his bed and asking the visitor to help sort them into their proper containers.
“That’s one’s for the pain,” he says, pointing to the chalky white tablets between Sulli’s fingers.
“Does it hurt often?” She asks, mouth pursed into a moue of distress.
“Just sometimes. There are good and bad days.” He points to the red oblong ones with black lettering on them. “These keep my red blood cell count from depleting too quickly, since this one - ” he opens his palm to show a purple and yellow capsule, “has the unfortunate tendency of killing off my bone marrow.”
Sulli smiles, a little shakier than when she had first arrived, and scoops the pile of blue caplets back into its container.
“Why are you doing this?” Jongwoon finally asks one day. No matter how many times Ryeowook has asked him, Jongwoon has always steadfastly refused to help.
“Whimsy.” Ryeowook replies, smiling through the tight clench of his jaw. “I like to think their touch makes the medicine stronger.”
Jongwoon taps him on the forehead and presses two white pills past Ryeowook’s lips. “I’ll make these extra strong for you then.”
-
Jongwoon sets down a glass of water on the bedside table, where it clatters a little too loudly. Wincing slightly, he asks, “Ryeowook, you awake?”
Brown eyes flutter open. Ryeowook turns to face him, “Yeah, hyung, I am.”
“Thirsty?”
“Hm, a little.”
“I brought you some water,” Jongwoon says, picking up the glass and holding it towards him. “Drink up.”
Ryeowook’s hand goes to the bedside table, where it gropes empty air. Jongwoon feels his heart clench somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.
“How long?” He asks after a couple of deep breaths, and Ryeowook’s hand goes slack against the oak surface.
“Since last night . I didn’t want to worry you guys.”
Jongwoon laughs, sharp and humorless, and the sound scrapes along his throat and into Ryeowook’s ears. “Well the next time you go blind, please notify us as soon as possible so we can make the proper accommodations.”
“That’s not fair, hyung, I was only-”
Jongwoon shakes off Ryeowook’s pleading voice, “Just stay put. I’ll go tell manager-hyung that you need to go to the hospital.”
-
After that, the members refuse to let Ryeowook out of their sights. They take turns spending time with him, passing sunny mornings with guided walks along the river and rainy afternoons reading books aloud. It’s a good arrangement, but the problem is that nobody really keeps track of what they’ve read. So over the course of three weeks, Ryeowook has heard everything from spy stories to historical fiction to Starcraft strategy guides to a rough translation of the New York Times and, currently, to something that sounds suspiciously like a trashy romance novel.
“Tell me what you’ve been doing instead.” Ryeowook says, cutting off Hyukjae’s intonation of the heroine’s heaving bosoms and curvy hips.
Hyukjae trails off, and Ryeowook could hear him swallowing thickly before replying, “Not much. Not much at all, really. Same old same old. Work’s boring but you gotta do it, right?”
“Yeah, but I liked it.”
There’s an awkward pause after that, before Hyukjae clears his throat and starts again. “Page sixty three. Hye Sung bends down, her voluptuous figure silhouetted through the open curtains, and-”
“They told you not to talk about Super Junior around me, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but there really isn’t anything interesting happening.” Hyukjae closes the book with a sigh. “You’ve probably heard this a million times, but it’s really not the same without you.”
“But how are you guys doing? I haven’t seen Siwon hyung and Heechul hyung for a while.” He laughs and shakes his head, bangs sweeping his forehead in soft arcs. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“Siwon is filming his drama, and Heechul hyung is…he laments that there’s no one left to cook for him.”
“He must be devastated.” Ryeowook jokes feebly.
“Yeah, you could say that.” Hyukjae replies, and the clipped tone of his voice invites no further conversation.
-
Ryeowook once told him that his parents had always disapproved of his idol life. They called it frivolous and wasteful and wanted him to find a real job. “Like an office position,” they had told him repeatedly. “It’s nothing glamorous, but at least you’ll still be working ten years down the road.”
“They didn’t think I had enough talent to make it.” Ryeowook shrugged, offering Ddangkoma another piece of lettuce, “I don’t blame them. I have the tone of a girl.”
“I like it.” Jongwoon said plainly.
“But not many people do. My father used to say that it wasn’t proper for me to sing that high, and every time I see my uncle, he asks me if I’ve hit puberty yet.” He broke off with a short laugh and shook his head incredulously.
Jongwoon decided then that he would probably never enjoy the company of Ryeowook’s relatives and vowed to avoid them if possible. Unfortunately for him, Ryeowook’s parents come within the week to move him out of the dorm, and naturally, despite his negative feelings, Jongwoon follows.
-
“I’ll set up a cot for you beside his bed, if you want to stay the night,” Ryeowook’s mother says with her back turned to him, stirring the pot of tofu stew that will undoubtedly be left untouched on Ryeowook’s beside table. Her voice sounds thick to his ears and there’s pleading undertone that Jongwoon has never heard from her. “He’s not - he’s not the type to ever admit he’s lonely, but I think he’d appreciate the company.”
“Sure, that would be nice.” He says, and hands her a bowl from the cabinet.
-
“Hyung,” Ryeowook whispers, rubbing himself against Jongwoon’s back, soft breath tickling his ear, “Hyung, I love you.”
Jongwoon is still thinking of a proper reply when Ryeowook’s persistent hands tug down zipper and, after that, his jeans and boxers. Their eyes meet through the curtain of Ryeowook’s eyelashes, holding the contact even as he leans down and -
Ryeowook turns and coughs, a small puff of air blocked by the back of his hand. He coughs again, harder this time, and soon they become an unending chain like the cigarettes Jongwoon used to smoke. Ryeowook has both hands clasped over his mouth now, bent over and shoulders shaking violently, and through the dim lighting, Jongwoon could see something dark and thick dripping through the overlap of Ryeowook’s fingers.
Ryeowook looks up at him, his eyes black as tar. “Why did you do this to me, hyung? I thought you loved me, hyung. Hyung, I don’t want to die - ”
A stray drop splatters onto his bare thigh, where it burns on contact. Jongwoon tries to wipe it off with his hand, but only succeeds in spreading it around. He feels it eating through his skin, his hand, his armfacethigh, and wonders if this is penance.
Jongwoon startles awake to find Ryeowook sleeping two feet away, his body still and breathing even. He listens to those soft rasps and wills himself asleep.
-
It rains for a week after Ryeowook’s birthday, the sky alternating between chaotic downpours and misty drizzles. When the sun finally comes out again, Jongwoon takes one look at the grayscale figure in front of him and realizes that the rain has washed away the last of Ryeowook’s colours.
-
“I want to sing again.” Ryeowook whispers, voice hoarse from disuse. It’s the first thing he has said after three days of silence, and Jongwoon is startled into dropping his cup.
“I’ll ask the managers. I’m sure they could arrange something.” Jongwoon says, forcing a smile to his face, even though he knows Ryeowook can’t see it.
“You always were a bad liar, hyung.”
“Just when it comes to you, Wookie.”
“See? Caught you again.”
-
Jongwoon drops by the dorm on a Wednesday morning, when most of the members are either out on schedules or still asleep. He’s not avoiding them so much as avoiding the questions he’s not sure he’s ready to answer yet, so he tiptoes through the living room and enters their old room, closing the door quietly behind him.
He is just dropping turtle food pellets into the glass case when a knock at the door interrupts him.
“I’m not here,” says Jongwoon.
“Bullshit.” Sungmin replies, and strides in. “You look like crap.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s Ryeowook?”
Jongwoon stretches his lips wide and forces an upbeat tone into his voice. “He looks worse than I do, if you can believe it.”
Sungmin’s lips are pressed into a thin, disapproving line. “Just remember to take care of yourself too. Some days, I can’t tell which of you two is the real cancer patient.”
-
There’s a soft rasping sound coming from Ryeowook. It takes Jongwoon a couple of seconds to register that they are actually words. He scrambles towards the bed and tries not to jar it too much as he leans in.
“-were a swan. At least I’d be able to sing about now.”
“Don’t say that.” Jongwoon replies. The words slip out easily, having been rehearsed many times in his head. “We’re taking you to the hospital again tomorrow. The doctor wants to try a new treatment. He says it’s very promising, so you’ll get better, see, and then you’ll recover and perform again on stage with the rest of us, and we’ll go on variety shows and do our fan service and conquer Korea with - ”
“Our obnoxious gay love, yes.” Ryeowook’s chest quivers with amusement.
Jongwoon chews the inside of his cheek and wonders what he wouldn’t give to hear Ryeowook laugh again. “Exactly.”
By the time he has finished drawing a blank, Ryeowook has already fallen back asleep. Jongwoon settles himself back into the chair and picks up the book, staring at the sun outside until his vision goes blurry
-
The doctor lied.
-
Ryeowook looks particularly frail today, Jongwoon thinks, so he pushes their beds together and lies as close as he can without touching, afraid to breathe too hard for fear of hurting him.
The sun bleeds red across Ryeowook’s scalp, masking the grey pallor of skin stretched too tight over protruding bones. The light casts a shadow by Ryeowook’s nose, and Jongwoon keeps time by following its arc across his face. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but when the shadows into a mass of dark bruises, he blinks his watering eyes and tries to recall the last rise and fall of Ryeowook’s chest.
-
One day, Jongwoon will be able to perform on that revolving platform without being startled by the amount of elbow room he has. One day, he will stop losing his breath while singing lines that were never his. One day, he will no longer expect mellow alto to balance his adlibs in their strange harmony.
But today, he goes to the composing room and finds thin air behind dusty piano keys.
will rewrite/polish up one day. not today, but one day in the far off distance.