chineseink | [Super Junior] the things i couldn't see, pg, IDEK, hanchul (Reply)

the things i couldn't see
super junior, pg, hanchul, 710 words

you only knew him for one day, but you will remember him for the rest of your life.

it happens on a tuesday, late in the afternoon, when the sun is hot and lazy and bleaching the paint from the buildings and turning the sidewalk painful under your bare feet. you're running home from school, elated at your freedom, and laughing silently as you streak through empty streets. no one is outside at this time of day if they can help it, when the heat is so oppressive, like the heavy hands of your father when he is leaning over your shoulder to inspect your homework.

you are free now, running, wind tangling your hair behind you. it's growing long and your mother frowns at it almost daily now, but you don't care. your shoes swing in your hand and your bag bumps along your back, but you don't care.

you see him that day, standing in the little park three streets away from your house, the one that's grassy and overgrown with weeds, but a popular place for the elderly to walk after dinner when the world has cooled. he's standing there, under the shade of the tallest tree, small and thin and - you think all at once, in a sudden rush of surety - foreign.

for years afterwards, you're never quite sure why you stopped and went over to him, why you spoke to him, voice bright and loud and hiding your anxiety.

he looks at you with dark eyes, confused.

you repeat yourself, louder, slower, as if maybe it will help. you're only thirteen. you don't know better.

he only tilts his head, shrugs a shoulder. he seems indifferent to your presence and your words, letting them wash over him like water rushing over the pebbles in a river bed. anger rises in you, heated. you suddenly want to curse at him, to shout at him, to see if he will still let it slide by. can he ignore you then?

but you stop yourself. instead, you stare at him. "i don't know why you're even in our country if you're not even going to bother to learn the language," you tell him at last, and your voice is ugly but it is quiet. you spin on your heel, feeling the prickly grass underneat your feet, blades curving into your skin even as you crush them carelessly.

as you turn your back, he finally says, awkwardly and with a heavy accent, "i don't understand."

you don't stop as you continue walking away. you don't care. it's not your problem, because there is surely someone he knows around, someone who will come look for him when they discover he's missing. it's not your problem, on this afternoon that is heavy with heat and heady with freedom.

you walk away, angry with yourself for trying to speak to him in the first place, angry with him for not understanding, and you don't think about him for years.

then you meet hankyung. han geng. his name feels odd on your tongue, as foreign as he is, but the look in his eyes the first time you meet him brings back a rush of memory you didn't know you forgot. you remember a smaller boy, skinnier, more angles and knobby joints, shorter hair, bigger eyes - but the same uncertainty lurking under those lashes, reflecting your own face.

"hello," hankyung greets you. his accent is bad.

you look at him. "hello," you reply, evaluating.

he smiles at you. it is an awkward smile, one born of discomfort and the uncertainty of what to do next, but he smiles and suddenly you care again.

that boy from your childhood - you only knew him for a day, hardly even that. remembering him is like trying to hold sand as it slips between your fingers, more elusive than you think possible, but still there, achingly present in the back of your mind. you only knew him for a day but you will remember him forever, because you've spent the past five years replacing him with hankyung.

"you're korean now," you say to hankyung.

when you do, he only looks at you with those eyes, still dark and still closed off to an entire world you will never quite understand.

Notes: YOU WANT THESE? AM I ALLOWED TO GIVE THESE? THIS NOT MY FAULT, OKAY.

present tense - check
second person - check
all lowercase - check
flowery imagery - check
blockquoted - check
pretentious spacing - check
GOAL IN LIFE - check!

Alternative scene:

"hello," hankyung greets you. his accent is bad. "i'm dying of an unidentified and thus incurable terminal illness."

wow, you think admiringly. he knows a lot of big words even though he's murdering their pronunciation.

he smiles at you. it is an awkward smile, one born of discomfort and the uncertainty of what to do next, but he smiles and suddenly you care again.

you don't want him to die. you think this desperately to yourself when you're alone and you realize there is absolutely nothing you can do. you remember the way that boy from your childhood looked at you, eyes dark. hankyung looks at you that way now, and you can't stop the tears leaking from your own eyes as you lock yourself in your bathroom and press the blade into the pale, pale skin of your wrist.

you watch the rose-red blood bloom from the wound and trickle away like hankyung's life.

why do you always have to go and fall in love with the dying ones? you think. your life, it's so unbearably tragic.

(LOL I THINK I'M FUNNY RITE?)