Do I Know You?

Seojun Perspective:

"I think it's pretty ingenious that you downsized after that sasaeng* found you," Minhyuk said as he opened the doors of the refrigerator, only to let them fall back shut after noticing nothing but a single bottle of water. "But are you sure hiring more bodyguards wasn’t a better move? You easily could have just moved to a different apartment complex, especially with the recent ‘building boom’ in places like Yongsan-gu. "

Eyes still closed, I rolled my neck and let out a soft sigh: it felt so nice to be in a brand new place with a clean slate, yet there still seemed to be a dulling but present cloud of wariness that had somehow found a way to follow me all one hundred miles from my old place to here. “You really think I sit on money, huh?”

   “Well, your group’s recent album was on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart and your very first drama finished airing last night, so yeah, I would definitely say you’re doing pretty hot,” Minhyuk replied, falling onto the couch right beside me.  

With a short moment of hesitation, I pulled the pillow from behind my back and slapped it right onto his face. “Ah, shut up. Go home and start packing. If you miss your flight, I’m not driving you to the airport.”

“Alright, alright,” he relented, just before smacking the pillow right back at the dead-center of my face. Sputtering in spasms of short protests as I tried to recover from the unprecedented blow, Minhyuk got up and added, “Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone, and don’t spend your entire break unpacking. Go out for a run or something, but don’t forget to bring security, ok?”

“Hey, I can take care of myself,” I murmured. The slight throb that had hung over my head like a thin veil the entire day was beginning to get more and more angry. I promised myself I’d get up and find my pills once Minhyuk left…hopefully, they were in one of the boxes within arm’s length. Even making it over to the door to walk my friend out was starting to look like a stretch.  

By the time I managed to pull my mind out of my thoughts and myself to my feet, Minhyuk had already made it to the door and was just starting to put his shoes on. 

Catching sight of my movement from the corner of his eye, he raised his head slightly. 

“Oh, I thought you fell asleep! Don’t worry, I can see myself out,” smiled Minhyuk as he slipped his foot into the last shoe. “Take care and see you in a week!” he said, waving a good-bye and slipping through the door.

I had just barely managed a brief “bye” in the short amount of time it had taken Minhyuk to say his entire parting speech. Sometimes I wonder if he was a rapper in his past life. 

A soft breeze carries through the room, its signature of April’s spring chill wrapping around me with a delicate shudder. It tastes sharp with its slick cut right at my collarbone, but it sits at the v like the mellow sweet drop of a honey melon. As I make my way across the room, savoring the scent and running the taste of nature’s flick over my bare skin, I promise myself that once the balcony doors were closed, I would head straight to bed and see if sleep was interested in visiting me tonight. Yet as my fingers found the cold silver handles of the door, my eyes really saw the night and my heart screamed for it.

Sujin Perspective:

I had always been deathly afraid of heights. 

During the last night of my hometown’s fair, I would sit on the bench and eat my purple rice crackers as I watched my friends run in circles on the ferris wheel, advertising myself as a snack to the thick summer night’s mosquitoes.  

On the Saturday of my birthday trip to New York, I sat in the hotel room and discovered my maximum room service intake while all of my cousins took pictures of themselves on the top floor of the World Trade Center. 

When my uncle surprised us with tickets to Switzerland and told us about the paragliding lessons he had booked for the last few days, I had just barely managed to stumble like a drunkard to his bathroom before vomiting. Even the idea was sickening.

Yet, here I was, leaning as far over the edge as the glass railing of my balcony would let me before I tumbled right over and fell like a leaf slow and fast into Seoul’s night. Had I been told a month earlier that I would be hanging limply like a forgotten rag left to dry through the sun and deep into the moon, I would’ve laughed. Just a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have even dreamt of stepping foot onto my balcony. I had bought the unit on the highest floor so I could wake up to see the Han River glow under the sleepy sun’s kiss every morning and so I could go to sleep with the view of Mount Namsan glittering like a sword of stars against a black velvet curtain every night. All viewing purposes, of course, were to be done solely from the comfort of my four walls and transparent balcony doors. 

But time does a lot, especially when it decides to collaborate with God for fun. 

On the night I had learned I would debut in a five member Korean pop group, I had never felt such intense relief for my group mates, knowing that they had put their all into every training session, year after year. I had never felt so proud of myself because I knew that I could show my father where all my missing days and nights had gone and that I had succeeded because I had believed in what he could not see. But most importantly, I was happy. I was happy at that time to know that my hard work had paid off well and I was finally holding that star of a dream that my fingers had never seemed to quite touch. I was happy to know that my five-year old self would be overjoyed to hear that I was finally going to be the girl on the stage I would doodle during class and envision during daydreams.  

I didn’t know that the star was a mirage in my desert, and the sandstorm had only just begun. I watched as each single’s numbers went down by a few hundred and as our videos went down by a few thousands. I watched as my family got more and more tired, legs aching, head hurting, and eyes coloring a darker sad everyday. I watched as the head and co-founder of our entertainment agency lose himself in scandals until the public dragged him down from his seat. I watched, but I told everyone it would get better. It had to because the sand can only stretch so far and the sun can only shine for so long before the rain comes to clean and the river finds your hand. I guess I never thought that maybe the water would come too late. When the rain finally falls, what if the drops are just tears because I’m already gone?

They’re falling fast now and my cheek becomes sticky with small beads that hold heavy pain. As I wonder if the liquid of my heart is falling like rain, racing down the city night and slapping the concrete pavement below, the heaving begins to come and my body starts to shake. The sobs tear through everything in me, and when I look at my heart, I cry—I cry even more, and it’s never hurt so much. My eyes couldn’t find the warm comfort of success nor the blinding brilliance of excitement and awaiting anticipation anymore because it was now paper with frayed and soft edges that tore too tenderly from themselves and weak ashes that sat singed and faded after seeing the blinding light that they had thought…was hope.    

“Hey!” 

I felt disgusting. My face folding into the tears and my tears melting into my face, I was awake again. Completely disregarding the fact that I was wearing the new sweater my sister had gotten me to celebrate my group’s debut date a few days ago, I hurriedly wiped my face clean with the sleeves as I turned to look around me.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” the voice began tentatively. It was that of a guy, and while it held a tone of solidity and firmness, it held the dual delicacy of a cello’s deep and rich bass. It was beautiful. “I’m your next-door neighbor and I just wanted to check and see if I could help you…”  

 I glanced to my right, releasing a breath that I didn’t know I had been holding. While the balconies had been built so that they were connected, standing in between each unit—almost like the markers of a boundary—was a stone pedestal with clouds of green leaves and stems tucked deep into its pot of dirt that reached almost as high as the walls did. It would be a trip through the Amazon rainforest to try and peak through the thick greenery, so while my guts may have been sobbed out and my wails may have had an uncanny resemblance to that of my stepmother’s hairless cat when she somehow ends up on top of the fireplace, no one had managed to catch a glimpse of the terrible state I was in. 

I wanted to run back inside and pray to whoever would bother listening that I wouldn’t ever have to run into the neighbor next door because there was no dignity left to be saved, but there was a part of me that just couldn’t take the extra five steps back into the building: I needed the late spring night’s soft hugs as they kissed me beneath the nape of my neck and past the tips of my ears. I needed to hear the muted honks and protesting screeches of Seoul’s midnight traffic that played like a lofi playlist during midterm season. I needed someone to talk to.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you or anything.” What the hell was I doing? 

“Oh, no worries. I just needed some air, and then,” the voice trailed off just as awkwardly as I had ended the line before. It was ironically amusing, borderline endearing? And oh, how I loved that voice. 

“How are you doing tonight?” I needed someone to pick me up, drag me to my room, and never let me out again.

I waited as I listened to the faded screams of Seoul’s eccentric night wanderers, partiers that had finally lost their ground to the officials and drunkards wandering on a leg and a half with soju** bottles in both hands alike.

 “Tired. Very tired.” There was a thoughtful pause before he picked up again. “And you?”

“Can you sing me a song?”

At the same time the last word fell off my tongue, I decided that I would not talk to any of my neighbors for a minimum of a year in hopes that within 365 days, this neighbor—who quite honestly deserved the world for putting up with me at such an ungodly hour—would forget my voice and not recognize me. I could only hope that I could salvage my reputation and the conversation before he realized he needed to head back inside immediately.

Yet, a small part of me, a ripple in an ocean that pleads quitely and a petal in a valley that prays hopefully, I wished that this voice would give me a hug. 

“What song?”

“Anything,” I whispered.

I wonder if he heard me.

But as the city played its 3:28 AM soundtrack, I heard the sound of fingers sliding across records, searching, looking, feeling. 

And as I placed my head on the glass railing, I listened. I watched as fire crackled into fuzzy flames that blurred into the smeared streaks of pastels. I watched as the water with foamed tips swayed back and forth in the ballroom of gold under a burning diamond.

I watched my heart come back and as each shard looked for one another, I sang with him.

*sasaeng - In South Korean culture, a sasaeng is an obsessive fan who intrudes on a public figure's life.

**soju - Korean alcoholic drink