part two hundred and twelve

[exomeme]

      

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5cm per second ep 3

[(Anonymous)]

three.

one two three four five six seven and eight

Jongin counts the beats out in his head, his bangs dripping faintly with sweat. His headphones dangle loosely around his neck, and he tries to ignore the way they smack against his chin when he dips down sharply. There's no mirror here which makes it difficult to tell, but Jongin thinks he's still having trouble with the third beat. He pushes his bangs away from his face, and runs it through again, slowly this time.

one two three—

He rips his headphones off in frustration, before he remembers that they weren't even on. They end up being yanked out of his music player and jittering across the floor. Jongin stares at them for a moment before he throws himself down next to them.

He can't focus.

He can't focus at all.

It's all because of that kid he keeps being partnered with in gym. It's all because Zitao, that kid, had made an off-handed remark about how it was okay to like people no matter what and for the rest of the day, instead of math, he'd thought about someone's smile. Instead of language (which he struggled with on the best of days) he'd remembered obnoxious laughter. Instead of science, he thought about strawberry milk, and he hated it.

Hated all of it.

And now his beats were all tangled and his moves weren't sharp and he kept being distracted and—

"I thought I heard something. Zhongren, shouldn't you be going home?"

Speak of the devil. Zhongren - only his teachers called him that, he wants to say. Call him Jongin. His name is Jongin.

He doesn't, though. Jongin just looks up, arches his neck so far back that Lu Han appears in view and upside down. "Hyung, it's you," he says. There's a flicker across Lu Han's face. Jongin knows he doesn't like it when he calls him that. Because he's not Korean, Lu Han had said. Jongin blinks. Well, he's not Chinese either.

Lu Han walks across the room and sits down next to Jongin. He loops an arm around Jongin's shoulders and pulls him upright. Jongin's heart is racing in his throat; maybe three hours of non-stop dance is finally catching up with him.

Jongin has always been an optimist.

"You're all sweaty," Lu Han says, and Jongin pulls a face.

"I know."

Lu Han ruffles his hair and Jongin ducks his head, feeling increasingly like a petulant child. "Go home and shower," Lu Han says, like Jongin hadn't been planning on doing just that.

"I will," Jongin says.

Lu Han stands and waits as Jongin tidies up, his hands busy on his phone. Jongin watches him out of the corner of his eye as Lu Han remains in the corner of the room - Lu Han is not looking at him, but neither has he moved. Supressing a sigh, Jongin pulls off his damp shirt and tugs on the spare he'd stuffed in his bag that morning. He feels his back prickle, but when he turns around, Lu Han is still singularly focused on his phone. Girlfriend? Jongin wonders, but all he knows is that Lu Han had asked out the most popular girl in the school only to be rejected. He wonders when that had happened. Rejection carries with it a weight of sadness that should be only too apparent, but Jongin sees Lu Han almost every day now, and never once does he remember the elder being anything but chipper and full of joie de vivre.

"Ready to go?"

Lu Han's voice startles him out of his reverie - Jongin jumps. Lu Han laughs, and beckons towards the door. Silently, Jongin follows. Three steps behind, then two (as he turns off the lights) and then he jogs the remaining steps to trail just beside Lu Han.

December evenings fall cold and black, and Jongin shivers as they push through the doors. He sees Lu Han do the same - and no wonder, because Jongin is wearing a thick down jacket and Lu Han...isn't. It's too cold - too icy, to bike these days. Jongin knows that Lu Han can take the bus from school. When he'd brought it up, Lu Han had simply shrugged and said he liked the walk. Jongin isn't one to argue, not about things like this.

Somewhere in his bag is a scarf. It's not his scarf, not really - it belongs to one of his sisters who decided they no longer wanted it because it wasn't "cute" enough, and so his mom had shoved it into his bag where it had stayed ever since. Now, Jongin digs it out from underneath the few textbooks he carries and the sweaty shirt he'd just peeled off. Now, Jongin has to jog forward again because he's fallen behind, and he loops the scarf rather messily around Lu Han's neck. He attempts to loop the scarf around Lu Han's neck - he succeeds in dumping a pile of knitted yarn on his head.

"Huh--?" Lu Han stops suddenly in surprise. He pulls the scarf off his face, and turns to stare at Jongin, a bare handspan away. Lu Han had stopped too quickly. Jongin counts five centimeters between their faces before his eyes cross, and he takes a step back.

"Use it, hyung," he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He walks forward quickly, past Lu Han, his face warm. Ice glints off the railing, reflecting the street light and the lights from the towers far, far away. Like stars, only frozen. Only cold.

Snow falls faintly. Flakes drift down in miniscule clumps, landing on his eyelashes, seconds apart. Beside him, the snow has caught in Lu Han's hair, and in the scarf he now has wound around his neck, around his face. His mouth is obscured, but Jongin can still see the smile through it all.

"Thanks," Lu Han says. His eyes crinkle a little, tiny crowsfeet spanning from the corners. Jongin ducks his head and murmurs a quick you're welcome.

Within his chest, Jongin has the muted recognition of an off beat, a syncopation, a half-step followed too quick by the full step and inside his chest he stumbles. His breath catches and then blooms in wisps. Jongin glances up—a streak of light crosses the sky.

"What's that?"

Jongin stops, feet rooted to asphalt covered thinly with scattered ice. Another streak, and then another. He cranes his head upwards. The last two are dimmer, fainter, barely visible through the snow-swollen clouds, but there. Lu Han stands beside him.

"Gemenids."

"Huh?"

"It's a meteor shower."

"Why is it called..."

"Gemenids? No idea. Something about twins."

Jongin stares at the night sky, but there is no light, there are no firey blazes. Only the shadowy grey of clouds, both emitting and swallowing the faint glow of night. His neck hurts, and Jongin cannot remember the last time he saw stars. Under Beijing's skies, he's convinced himself that stars do not exist, and have never existed. Stars are a remnants of the rockets sent up at Jiuquan nearly two thousand kilometers away, but the light of their memories can never compete with the light of the living, pounding fiercely down on the ground.

Many years later, Jongin will remember this moment. He will remember standing in the middle of a deserted street, and he will remember the clouds. He will remember the way Lu Han steps closer, and then closer, and the way Lu Han rests his cheek against Jongin's shoulder. Jongin has yet to truly grow - by the time he says goodbye to Lu Han for the last time, he will have outgrown him, but right now, Lu Han still has the advantage in height.

He will not remember the way Lu Han's breath had played against his neck, nor will he remember the faint radiant trail through the sky, just as he turns his head, ready to walk away. He will not remember that Lu Han had walked home with his scarf and never returned it, just as he will not remember where Lu Han had said he had gone. Instead, he will stare at a sky peppered with stars, and remember this moment, and wonder where Lu Han was.

But this is not many years later, this is not yet a memory.


-


A cool breeze brushes the clouds through the night sky. Sweat cools from skin, leaving him like a breath of fresh air, a quiet sigh that sloughs off his limbs, slips off his neck. the lights by the river seem near blinding in the darkness, despite them being no brighter than they usually were.

Whenever he remembers that night, he remembers it happening here, even if it had been a sea away, hundreds of hours, so many years.

Lu Han didn't need to walk with him that far that night. Jongin wonders if he'd simply forgotten - but the older boy is so deep in thought that he can't bear to break through the odd serenity on his face. Lu Han, Jongin knows, is anything but serene. Lu Han is loud, wild, brash, ugly - but when he's with Jongin, it comes through so rarely. Lu Han is strangely careful - as if Jongin cares, as if Jongin is only allowed to see what is good.

So instead, he walks with Lu Han, side by side.

"The supermarket." He blurts this out quite suddenly, surprising even himself.

Lu Han glances at him, his brows furrowed.

"Let's go to the supermarket," he says. He grabs Lu Han by the wrist and half drags half leads him as he runs down half remembered streets. Lu Han is the one who has to steer him in the end, laughing as Jongin pouts. I knew that he wants to say, but his throat is strangely dry.

He tells Lu Han to wait for him, he'll just be a minute - he emerges just over a minute later, which Lu Han points out.

"Shut up," he grumbles. He stuffs a carton into Lu Han's hand. "For last time."

"Strawberry milk?" Lu Han looks up at Jongin and quirks an eyebrow.

Jongin bites down hard on his lip. "I'm just paying you back," he says. "I...I don't like not paying people back."

Whatever happens next, Jongin doesn't remember. They walk, they talk about school, about the weather. They stop, stand. There's a river, and there's a tree. The stars are hidden, but the stars are almost always hidden. There is no breeze and the air is oppressively still.

Jongin knows that tomorrow, there will be no Lu Han.

Tomorrow, he will move, again. He hasn't said anything. Lu Han doesn't know.

Jongin knows now that it's not like he's in love with Lu Han or anything - that'd be dumb. Not because they're both guys or something like that - Zitao had insisted that there was nothing wrong with that anyway and Jongin had given up arguing - but because. Well. Because.

Besides, to Lu Han, Jongin's always gonna be that kid. Just like how he looks at the middle schoolers now, and knows that to him, they'll always be kids. Jongin's just the kid that Lu Han happened to be nice to. That Lu Han happened to take under his wing, the kid that he's playing hyung to even though Lu Han keeps telling him that he's not his hyung, he's not Korean.

Sometimes, when Jongin looks at Lu Han, he sees Lu Han looking away. Far away. Like he's staring into the distance. Maybe staring at someone who Lu Han cherishes, treasures, just like Jongin treasures Lu Han but in a better way, a proper way. He thinks they must be far away, so far away that Lu Han has never mentioned her, never mentioned them.

The light ripples off the surface of the river, and casts Lu Han's profile in shadow. There'd been a rocket launch earlier that day. A flurry of excitement had overtaken the school - one of the astronauts on it was an alumni. They'd crowded around tiny TVs, watching as the long, steel pencil was carefully latched into place, and then counting down as one as flames gathered at its base before the entire ensemble disappeared into the sky.

Maybe, he muses, that person is like that rocket. Cherished and protected, but once the countdown was over, they would only ever get further and further.

Maybe, he muses, Lu Han's person is like the meteor shower. Bright and blazing, circling away, closer, finally falling in a doomed arc back to earth. Back to Lu Han.

Maybe, he muses, it was Lu Han who was the rocket, and every day they'd been spending together had been counting down.

2...1...

His phone rings. Without looking, Jongin scoops it out of his pocket, holds it up to his ear. "Yeah?" he answers.

"Yo, where are you?" It's the choreographer. Jongin blinks the sweat out of his eyes, and swallows.

"Sorry hyung," he says, walking away from the river. "I'll be right there."

Strange, he could've been sure he'd wiped the sweat from his hair before he'd left the studio. It must be warmer than he thought.

wc 2213