RIBBON CONNECTIVITY
DISCLAIMER:
The following work(s) are fictitious in nature, including but not limited to characters and events. The content herein, coincidental or otherwise, is in no way a true reflection of the actual celebrities depicted, and is purely created for personal entertainment. No profit is being made. Any artwork is made by me unless otherwise stated.
ribbon connectivity
yonghwa/seohyun, implied geun suk/shin hye ⌖ 2007w → pg
death by string is not the way he wants to go, except it's the only way he's going if he remains stagnant.
Hallucinations, figments of imagination, a mirage. Sometimes pretty, often believable, but easily collapsible with a few, additional hours of sleep. Yonghwa has no time for silly dreams, but he finds that the real world is not much better either. Not anymore, anyway. Things are in constant disarray, and the clocks are falling apart. Even the music notes in his recent composition are rearranging themselves and bleeding against the measures, and the lyrics are fading as though he'd never written them.
And then there's the string that is knotted uncomfortably around his neck. It's new, a little chafing, and it scares him a little bit. It reminds him of copper twine. Yonghwa has a fear of strings pulled tight in opposite directions, shrinking space and cutting skin. He likes his neck and his head by extension, thank you very much, and he has genius yet to be fulfilled.
When he doesn't think too much about it, it intrigues him in the way science is intriguing to someone who doesn't care about scientific concepts: curious, but distant, needing enough information to sate it. A single thread, vermilion, wrapped once around his neck. Sometimes it moves and pulls back on him when he plays with it, as if telling him to stop or else.
Or else it'll sever my head straight off, he thinks, sleepily. Jung Yonghwa, you're kind of a lunatic.
Yonghwa stares at his plastic cup of ice, watching the frozen chips melt in a pool of water. If he thinks about it hard enough, it's like watching bamboo shoots grow. He remembers a solo trip he took once in Japan, finding solace in a bamboo forest not often tread by tourists. An old man with a fisherman's hat, cane, crooked knees and missing teeth told him to sit down on a rickety bench and to watch the columnar grass plants carefully. He remembers the man's voice feeling like leather at every uttered syllable - leather that was perfectly broken in with time.
Ever wanted to see bones grow? Here's your chance. My bones are nothing like they used to be, but they still have some life in them.
And true to his word, he had seen those shoots grow. Miniscule, perhaps, but it had fascinated him to see an occurrence with his own eyes. He's not a fan of things happening while he's asleep or not paying attention; it reminds him of the way people sneak up on others to scare them spineless, or how things go missing and magically reappear in the dead of night. He wonders if this is why he puts off sleeping - not because he has things to do, responsibilities to fulfill, or because he can't sleep. It's intentional, a self-induced insomnia in an attempt to feel something when he should otherwise be unconscious. It comforts him to know that he's living in a world that works alongside him and not when his back is turned.
So, what'd you think?
Yonghwa looks up and sees Jungshin pacing back and forth across the room. They're waiting for their manager to come pick them up, but he's busy talking to the producers.
It was okay.
Seohyun-ah, I love you, he mimics in a high-pitched, sing-song voice under his breath, avoiding eye contact.
He thinks his 동생 is quite smart because he thinks he might have it in him to kick the taller boy's shins if he so much as glanced at him like he knows something that he doesn't. Yonghwa likes to know things, and Jungshin has picked up an uncanny habit to look like he's privy to secrets or on the inside with everyone else - like Seohyun, maybe, and of course he's not going to like it.
Absently, he fingers the string around his neck. It's still there; it hasn't left, which brings to reason that he's not hallucinating about this. There's another loop now, and he doesn't quite get it.
Jungshin stops in his tracks and looks at him, puzzled. Something wrong with your neck?
Nope, not at all.
Every day, the string circles around his neck, adding one more round on top of another, and he wonders if this is some kind of symbolism for the French Revolution. He knows very little about it except that there had been cake and a guillotine. His neck is going to be completely red one day, and it bothers him that no one's even noticed it. He could be bleeding - dying, even - and all anyone can do is look at him like he's gone completely round the bend.
Even worse, he has a feeling it knows when he's watching. He stays up on most nights now, sometimes to compose and sometimes to catch it in the act of suffocating him. Nothing happens when he's awake or paying attention, like most everything else around him. Nothing is ever that easy or simple.
Obviously.
He's starting to notice a pattern.
That the more he talks about her - directly, indirectly, often in his head - the more restless the thread becomes. He's not sure he likes the idea of inanimate things taking life of its own, but he swears he's felt it vibrate more than once. It's as if the sheer mention of Seohyun, Seo Ju-hyun, rattles it in the worst way.
So he stops talking about her and stops thinking about her, says things like he fancies girls with long, pretty hair and the clearest of eyes because it sounds plain enough, and he also makes friends with other girls his age and older in order to stamp out the fire. It works for a while except for the times he thinks of her on accident. It happens unexpectedly, like when he's eating ice cream or drawing lazy cartoons, or the time he'd teased a fellow idol and all she had done was laugh when he had been preparing himself to be playfully shoved aside. And it's as if the damned fibrous cord knows it's been ignored for so long and multiplies ten-fold when he least expects it. (He doesn't do this anymore.)
I think there's a ghost in our dorms, he deduces. I think we should move.
He says this as he's examining himself in a hand mirror. It could look nice if it didn't look like it was ready to split him in two. Jonghyun is towel drying his hair and looks at him funny.
Or maybe-
No, Yonghwa interrupts. It's a ghost. I can feel her strangling the life out of me.
Her? Maybe it's a he.
No, it's definitely a her.
Maybe she's telling you that you have some unfinished business to take care of.
Yonghwa frowns. He's not sure he likes the sound of that. Or maybe it's telling you to go to sleep.
Uh-huh.
Yonghwa first notices it when he's got more string than he knows what to do with. He knows he should've picked up on it sooner, but he knows he's not the most observant crayon in the box. He has no sense, as she would say. Every girl he talks to - and sometimes those he doesn't - has their necks wound with string, though never looped more than once or twice. Sometimes he wants to ask them about it, but he's not even sure how he'd go about posing the question.
Say, you have a piece of string around your neck and so do I.
He rolls his eyes at the thought of it. He knows some perfectly cheesy pick-up lines, but he's certain there's a connotation there he'd like not to entertain.
Working with Park Shin Hye is fun. More than fun, really, and he nearly forgets that he has a problem with something about as harmful as lint. But when he acts in front of the camera and pretends to fall in love (and if he were being honest, he almost believes it), it doesn't bother him. It doesn't pull, it doesn't multiply as quickly, and it nearly convinces him that it's falling loose. Unthreading, perhaps.
But it still grows, just slower and with less fervor. He refuses to say he misses it because he doesn't - not when he can breathe better and he can sleep without the fear of being smothered. Except it feels empty. Like you're holding someone, and they're disappearing, or worse - they're holding you and slowly letting go. Resignation, maybe, and a solemn understanding that you don't want them.
Yonghwa growls under his breath and kicks a pile of leaves.
Shin Hye reaches up to touch the gnarled branches of a cherry tree. Japan is overflowing with them, coloring the green landscape with pale rose and white.
You sound frustrated. Or repressed.
He shoots her a pointed stare, and she laughs. Shin Hye loves to laugh, but it doesn't resonate with him - at least not where it matters.
Want to see bones grow? he asks. They have a two hour break, and the forest isn't too far from here.
She smirks and slaps him on the back, as if she were petting her dog for doing a trick she hadn't asked it to do and knowing it won't get a treat as a reward. She says she's going to practice more of her lines, rehearse the inevitable kissing scene because she'd rather avoid any potential awkwardness between them.
Not that it completely gets rid of it, she shrugs. But maybe it won't make a difference because I'm not the one you like.
Yonghwa makes a face like he doesn't know what she's talking about, exhaling a sigh of disregard.
She laughs at him. He wonders how Jang Geun Suk deals with her, but he imagines he'd just laugh alongside her. They're like that. Simple.
Threadless.
It surprises him that she's here or that she even knows of this place. He knows she's here for her concert tour, but he doesn't talk to her enough to know that she'd be here. It's a little off the beaten path but, then again, he's not sure why he's surprised. He takes her for a Robert Frost kind of girl (she would be proud to know that he knows who Frost is), preferring the road less taken in an attempt to broaden her already vast horizon.
Seohyun, Seohyun, Seohyun.
He greets her with a tentative grin. She looks up only briefly, muttering a strained hello, her face contorted with anxiety and concern. Normally poised and upright, it's a sight to see her falling apart at the seams. She's fiddling with something and, upon closer inspection, a definite force to be reckoned with. Like strands of fairy lights stuffed in the closet and coming out hopelessly tangled the following year, she's struggling with yards of bright red string that almost seem to weigh her down and bury her.
It's been like this all day, she whines. Help?
Yonghwa pinches the bridge of his nose before drawing up close behind her, kneeling down and picking up a loose thread. Curiously, he tugs on it, feels the one around his neck pull on him. She slaps his hand away.
Don't do that.
He purses his lips and exposes his neck to her. She gapes.
You too?
He shrugs. Could be worse. Could be Jungmo.
Seohyun snorts and pushes him away, but she's hiding her smile behind her hair as she continues to unwind.
What does this even mean? she mumbles.
I don't know. He grabs a handful of her string and wraps it around his hand. Does it have to have one?
I just like it when things make sense.
Yonghwa feels like his smile could split his face open. Red has always been his favorite color for a reason.
This forest grows, you know. You can see it.
She's only partially paying attention, but he can see the intrigue in her eyes. Really?
Yeah. Want to watch it?
Seohyun is already sitting on the ground beside him. And as the shoots shiver and climb out of the ground, they're unravelling.