Title: Stay
Author: pinkelatta (sohye.wordpress.com)
Length: 1518 words
Rating: NC-16 for yaoi references
Summary: At a time like this, a lot of things don’t matter. Or do they?
Author’s note: I went traveling, to a beautiful place in Taiwan called Jiufen where I set this story, and I wondered what would happen if a romance like this were to take place?
<DBSK’s Yeo Haeng Gi or Travel Log>
The word goes unuttered, like a child unborn.
Hands in my pockets, hood pulled up against the rain that is beginning to fall, I tell myself as I stand there staring back at him, It doesn’t matter anyway.
The way it doesn’t matter that it’s starting to rain – exactly like that day when he first arrived, all lean pockets, dirty sneakers and loose sweater, a scruffy guitar case slung carelessly across his back and everything he had cased in a small duffle. Travel-weariness was evident on his face, but it couldn’t hide the brilliance of his smile when I went up and introduced myself as being his host from the bed-and-breakfast.
The way it doesn’t matter what I said, because he could hardly understand most of what I said anyway. I spoke Mandarin and a little English, he spoke Korean and understood very limited English. But he saw my heart through my art, and I saw his soul in his song. The wonder in those deep dark eyes when I told him I had painted that mural in his room, and the other in the stair landing, the feather-lightness in those string-worn guitarist’s fingers as he traced the pregnant woman’s painted face. The rapture evident on his face as he crooned in the dining room every other night of the two weeks he stayed, enchanting every guest we had with his smooth husky voice and charming with his clean guitar chords. The way he covered his mouth and laughed at me from behind his hand when Ma caught me standing at the kitchen door, entranced, and scolded me roundly for skiving when there were so many other guests to serve.
The way it doesn’t matter where I go in this little town anymore, because he is imprinted in every nook and cranny of it – his laugh echoing through the dank dead cinema and bouncing off the rubble; his eyes staring back at me from across the bay as if deep in contemplation, like he was wont to do to the darkness of the sea in the balcony at night; his cold white hands clasped around the warmth offered by a bowl of my favourite taro balls in sweet soup from the snack shop on the old street; his footsteps echoing behind me along the narrow stair-stacked alleyway en route to our next destination; the delicate curling of his fingers over the teapot handle in Auntie Mei’s teashop down our narrow street as he brewed the tea Korean-style, not so very different from our own at all.
The way it doesn’t matter how the same characters are pronounced differently in Korean than in Mandarin – their Hanja, our Zhengti. Late one night over tea in the tiny loft he told me in four words why he was here in Taiwan: father, mother, marriage, dreams, he wrote. It turned out that he had come because his parents were pressuring him to get married, and he’d insisted on taking a year away to pursue his dreams before he would settle down. I could see the bitterness in his eyes, the set of his jaw as he stared at the words and numbers he’d written on the paper. And instead I’d written my name and asked him to translate it. Since that night, he called me by my new Korean name – the name no one else would ever call me by because it didn’t roll off anyone else’s tongue as easily as it did his.
The way it doesn’t matter what the names in any language are, because in the language of love there is no need for any names. I think it’s in the way I couldn’t tear my eyes from him when we were at the top of Jilongshan, on the swell of the pregnant woman’s belly watching the sun come up, where previously I would be content to simply take in the view and listen to the birdsong begin. I felt it in the way he would come into the kitchen in the morning despite my mother’s objections and insist on helping me make the other guests’ breakfast, working shoulder to shoulder in the cramped confines of the kitchen. I noticed it in the way he would always check if I had enough to eat at mealtimes, even though I was supposed to be the host and he the guest. And somehow I always knew when his eyes met mine across the dining room that it wasn’t because he didn’t have the words to express himself that he preferred to communicate mostly with me.
The way it doesn’t matter where in the world we come from, or where we are, because we are who we are. That night on the beach when I pressed my lips to his, everything else ceased to matter except that he responded to me, that his tongue danced an eager tango in the embrace of mine, freed from having to wrap itself around a foreign language, liberated from having to find the words for his thoughts. And when our hands reached for one another, it was the same shuddering pleasure we felt that had no need of words to convey. The keening moans he released into the chilly night air were in my ears a siren’s song that didn’t need any form of translation. Yet as we held each other tightly on the wind-swept rocky shore, I could see in his eyes the same doubt that lurked in the back of my own mind – the doubt that he finally voiced by tracing in the sand the Hanja character for ‘male’, and then again, the same character beside the first. I had no reply for him, even as he snuggled deep into my shoulder and the waves grew loud in my ears.
<Jaejoong’s Insa>
The way it didn’t matter that he had practically nothing to pack, yet I insisted on staying over in his room that last night. The way sleep didn’t matter to either of us as he strummed his guitar and sang me one last song, a song for my ears alone, tears stealing from the corners of his eyes and streaking his cheeks such that I couldn’t bear it anymore and folded him and his guitar into my arms. The way it didn’t matter that I never knew how that song ended, much less understood the lyrics. And when dawn crept in through the windows to touch that angel’s face, I hadn’t the heart to wake him, fast asleep in my lap, hands curled around the neck of his beloved guitar. Instead I made him one last breakfast, and we ate in a silence that was at once routine, yet unusual.
Hands in my pockets, hood pulled up against the rain that is beginning to fall, I tell myself as I stand there staring back at him, It doesn’t matter anyway.
Especially now that it’s starting to rain – exactly like that day when he first arrived, with the rain darkening the grey sweater that he’s wearing again, soaking into the duffle he carries in his hand, glistening in tiny rivulets on his guitar case and pooling around his sneaker soles. None of it matters, because it’s time for him to go.
He hesitates a moment as if he’s waiting for me to say something. When I say nothing, he worries his lower lip like he always does when he’s uncertain, looking as if he is biting back something he wanted to say. He moves his lips to form a word, but before it can become clear, he stops.
He smiles, a smile laced with bitterness, drops his eyes and turns to go. Halfway to the door of the bus, he turns around once more and stands there staring at me. For a moment, I’m glad it’s raining – I can’t tell if the drops of clear liquid that run down his cheeks are rain or tears, yet I ache to go to him and wipe them away.
And so I turn my back on him and the wings on which he will fly from me, resolute in my trek back down the slope where I first saw him. It’s hard for me, but I know that to have it any other way would only make it harder.
Footsteps behind me quicken my pulse, falling into step with its padumpadumpadum even as I quail and hold my heart against hope.
“Yunho-yah!”
I pause, then turn around at the last moment and he almost collides with me. I’m not given a chance to voice my surprise at having his face a lash-length away from mine, because he takes my breath away with a kiss designed to drown me in its desperation, throttle me with its tenderness, meld us into an indelible memory.
Then I’m left, airless and alone, again, as he flies like the wind he’s knocked out of me, out of my reach, out of my life.
As abruptly as he appeared in my world, he is gone, and the word goes unuttered, like a child unborn.
Stay.
omg you updated!!!
awww this was so beautiful and sad .. especially how jae still left after he kissed yunho