upside down

“i just don’t see the logic to have a wide-scale promotion for another comeback,” fingers pressed to his temple, he shakes his head when his eyes flee back onto the stage fittings that have him and the rest of his group identical — a spectacle, something to laugh at in his opinion. “we’re essentially all thirty, and bc has the audacity to make us prance in colored suits and fill our schedules with promotions — our peak ended in 2011, it’s time byungchul lets us rest. don’t you think?” 

immediately after taejin replies, daeil huffs a breath and straightens his spine. he agrees. if the years of annoyance and petty remarks haven’t made it transparent enough, his attitude sure as hell should: he’s been sick of being an idol for years.

after all, nothing is exciting about fame when you’ve hit all the milestones.

“glad we’re on the same wavelength,” daeil sulks. his heavy stare follows taejin’s agitated pacing before he runs a finger across his forehead to move the sweat-lined hair out of his eyes.

“well,” he begins, heaving a sigh as he pushes himself to stand, “i guess all we can do is wait for our contracts to be up.” with that remark, daeil shoots him a sideways stare. thing is, taejin’s always held a particularly firm grip on his role as the leader. so much so that holding everyone together has become his trademark symbol. sure daeil has his intentions set and mind (almost) made up, but he’d be blown away if taejin actually left the group when the time came.

bc pumps out the same old shit, nothing he hasn’t seen before. it’s that cheesy tagline again: sweet-boys-next-door, the ones you’ve always known — a usual pull at the fans that persist after a decade long charade. it doesn’t mean he gets used to it.

quite the opposite, actually.

daeil lives his life on an idol outline, answers and actions predetermined down to the minute. he can barely pencil in time for himself, and even then those private moments are spent in weariness and anger and late-night calls he can’t bring himself to answer. frankly, daeil still gives too much of a shit for a routine that’s long expired.

maybe it’s cause he’s fucking sadistic.

he stretches his legs and glances at the figure that lingers around his shadow.

or maybe it’s cause there’s more at stake than his interests.

“spit it out,” he mutters, words brisk and lazy. the exhaustion is heard before its seen as he tends to his sore calves and the burn that sears his muscles. “you look like you’re about to explode,” daeil’s eyes flit to taejin and back, “or maybe it’s the chestnut head,” he adds as an afterthought. it’s a sad attempt at humour, but it’s better than silence and the click of the recording starting over again.

“two brains will surely be better than one! thank god you passed by so quickly. i felt like some kid during halloween dressed in some disguise just so she could yell ‘trick or treat!’ to whomever walked by first.” she shivered at the thought of having to be stuck inside the maze for longer than she already was. “similarly, i’m not sure how much help i’m going to be either. it’d be great if there was some kind of magic portal that got us out of here, don’t you think so?” she looked around the maze to see if there was some kind of emergency exit, but all that came into her eyes were all kinds of decorations such as moon shaped lanyards, spider webs and different kinds of insects. 

to put it simply: mazes creeped the hell out of daeil, and deciding to give one a try — for whatever cause he had mustered — was beyond his realm of reason. still, he wasn’t alone, and he had games on his phone to thank for until some luck showed him the exit. he assumed jaein was in a similar boat. that or the party was annoying enough that she’d decided getting lost in the dark was a better choice — not that he would blame her.

“i just started my search, actually, so i haven’t found any yet. want to point me in the direction of the one you found or should i be worried you’d only lead your competition astray? i won’t judge you. i heard something about a resort stay. that’s not the worst thing to turn to sabotage for. ”

“that’s reasonable,” daeil remarks, gaze briefly drifting astray. he would’ve stuck around at his table more had there been more to do than sit and socialize with strangers he wasn’t all that fond of. if there was one thing he’d learned is that self-inflicted wounds don’t heal well, and the entire loner status that he’d put himself in a corner with was not paying off. not that it was entirely terrible. small talk was never his thing anyway.

“hey, you lost? because if you are me too, but i no longer have the brain power to try to find my way out so do you mind if i join you on your little journey?” she tries her best to sound enthusiastic, but she doubts the complementary smile she put on her face is really reaching her ears.

while there were many attractions at the event gold star was hosting, daeil was not suspecting to find himself involved in so many of them. truthfully, his perspective of the entire ordeal had been so pessimistic that the last place he expected to find himself was lost inside of a hedge maze. at first, it hadn’t seemed so bad. sure it was getting late and he felt a chill in his bones, but he’d laughed out loud, muttered a brief, ‘ah, fuck, how bad can it be?’ and gone on with his life.

that was about five minutes ago, and at this point he’d tugged off a lose branch and was tearing off the leaves one at a time, stare glancing down at his phone every once in a while to see if any of the decipher members had received his call for help. the downside of being such a loner was that the options for help were limited. would’ve been useful to be more popular in the industry right about now.

“hey, found any of the white pumpkins yet? scavenger hunts aren’t usually my thing, but a free trip doesn’t sound so bad. or are you more of an escape room person?”

while the scavenger hunt is usually something daeil wouldn’t be interested in — focus attuned to easier, simpler tasks like socializing and lounging at his designated table — the prize is definitely enticing. a trip to jeju island, enjoying the sea-side, no frantic worry about schedules, and definitely no mothering taejin to barge in on his lazy mornings. all of it sounded more than ideal so it’s not a surprise he found his interest piqued enough to actually give the search a try.

daeil supposes that the walk around the venue was a good way to stretch his legs anyway.

“yes. quite sturdy. one of the most sturdy floors i’ve come across. you should check for yourself.” she pushed herself up from her sitting position and stood up beside the other idol.

daeil glances around at the stream of bodies pooling past the doors, ideas sewn into their jackets, in the trim of their masks and the hem of their sleeves. he gets it. it’s fun. cheesy, but fun. regardless, it makes him tense, the performative aspect of idol glory tightening around the collar of his neck. he runs a finger along the edge and tugs at it. maybe it’s obvious how little he enjoys it through the tightness in his shoulders or the way he shifts his weight from his toes to his heels.

he looks at her when she replies, a toothy grin pushing at his cheeks, “would that make you feel better?” it’s bad enough to be here, public embarrassment would just be worse. “i trust your judgement. you seem to know better about floors than i perhaps would.” the teasing is compulsive, but he salves over the words with a guiding hand to her elbow and the pairing of a — surprisingly — gentle smile.

“anyway, somehow that led me to thinking about another thing that i wish i never knew about because i still cannot wrap my head around, which is you and joo. i was heavily considering finding ways to erase that out of my memory because like, what in the absolute fuck is that?” she wasn’t mad or upset about it, but it was something that she couldn’t imagine happening. “you two in the same sentence just breaks my mind now. i wish for the pointless suffering to end.”

ah. of course. sohee was bound to find out about him and youngjoo soon enough (whatever the hell they were). he had hoped — or assumed, actually, that he would’ve had more control about how she found out. it wasn’t an easy conversation to have, and why he’d put it off for so long. after all, where does he begin? there isn’t a clear-cut explanation to something so complicated. especially now that it's ended.

“if it helps, we’re not ‘seeing’ each other anymore.” air quotations are necessary in this context, but sohee isn’t looking.

“look, i’m sorry, i was gonna tell you about it, but it was never supposed to be something i was supposed to tell you about until it was?” the explanation is lousy and daeil only sounds more guilty. at last, he settles for a sigh and runs his fingers through his hair before sitting across from her, a bag of mcdonalds extended in one hand as a peace offering.

perfect feelings don’t exist. love fractures, splinters, spread apart into shards, and he finds himself in bits and pieces of a reflection that never sits whole. (this is the best of him. tender. hand guiding around her waist and expression softening — if only for a moment. his movements give him away, clear as day, yet never in the absolution youngjoo desires. that’s not possible. that’s not him.)

yeah, he messed up.

if not entirely, a large majority is still his fault. all the moves he instigated, hope he fueled, the bitter way he hung her dry too. excuses pool in his mouth and he’s tempted to lay them out one-by-one to present his case, declare his innocence, and remind her that it’s him — shin daeil, the mess of a boy she met at thirteen, that same mess that’s never shed his cruel skin.

instead, he buckles down. the wool blanket he got her for her 22nd birthday lays across his lap, and he digs into the bag, fingers prying for a fry or two.

she was happy to be at the party. it wasn’t like they had a choice. they were required to make an appearance and stay. she enjoyed parties. she was walking into the lobby when she stumbled falling onto the floor face down. some people fall gracefully, but huiseon wasn’t so lucky. she made her way to get up when she felt someone behind. she turned around to come face to face with whoever saw her embarrassing fall. “hi. just checking out the floor. making sure the floor is sturdy.” she said with an awkward smile trying to hide her embarrassment.

it’s not that daeil hates parties, he just hates business parties, and despite all that gold star does to convince otherwise, he’s well aware that this isn’t the right place to let loose. he likes to compare events like this as a title track on repeat. it sounds good after the first couple listens — hell, it’s even fun, but after a while, it’s exhausting, and all you want to do is skip.

this event is a song he’s heard far too many times before. the pretense of halloween cheer — or whatever the fuck it’s supposed to be — is not enough to lure him into enjoying a couple drinks too many, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone.

the woman before his feet is proof.

ten minutes. that’s how long it takes for everything to fall apart. ten short minutes that welcome an eruption of commotion. revelations, hurt, all the empty feelings in between that borrow no definition and exist solely to exist. for daeil, those ten minutes are the call his mom makes after halmeoni gets sick, and then the ten minutes again when it all comes to an end.

sohee has lived through many of these minutes with him whether they’re joyous, reckless, plain dumb or terribly sad. she’s counted down the seconds in tandem, fingers curved around his shoulder, support and love at their usual distance.

it’s a perfect harmony, a routine give-and-take that lacks daeil’s customary selfishness. there’s an affection that time warrants, but an even greater love that trust delivers one struggle after the next, and with sohee, there’s no echo unheard or shadow unseen. every nook and corner of him is delineated to memory like the lines on his palm. it goes unsaid that she knows him better than he knows himself.

suffice to say, he’d do anything for her, even if it means driving to her place half-past three in the morning the instance she calls.

“you said we had to talk,” daeil announces as he enters, shoulder shoving against the door to close the gap. he’s tempted to probe and tease, but concern takes residency where his sarcasm normally persists. “what’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait until morning?”