[2011]

Reaching out to you

Shim Changmin has never been the affective kind of guy: he doesn’t hug people all the time, he doesn’t whisper goodnight wishes as well as he doesn’t hold hands with his friends. He likes his own space and he doesn’t like his little world to be invaded, crowded by people he doesn’t feel comfortable enough with. From the outside, sometimes, that might look like he’s being mean, cold, even angry, when in reality he’s just defending his little home like a hermit crab defends its shell.

Shim Changmin has never been the emotional kind of guy either: he doesn’t cry easily, he doesn’t fall in love easily as well as he doesn’t give emotions the importance others would, avoiding to name those feelings he realizes being too difficult to deal with. Some might say he’s a coward, that he should face his own weaknesses, but he has always found it easier and less complicated to just let emotions go and develop and grow and change and come back to him in different shapes: new, lighter, and more easily accepted.

However, there is a moment in his life in which Shim Changmin finds himself helpless, vulnerable for the first time in front of a new emotion that starts growing inside of him day after day, unchanging through time, and that rebels against himself from that same little home he had tried so hard to protect.
Shim Changmin doesn’t know how to address this new feeling, he doesn’t know how to name that sense of emptiness and longing he feels gripping over his heart, he doesn’t know how to explain that feeling of missing something that keeps chasing him everywhere now.
Shim Changmin doesn’t know what to do with this new reality he has suddenly found himself into, this new world in which everything gets stuck with him, everything awakes emotions and memories, everything gives life to flows of never-ending thoughts that keep him awake making his nights sleepless — until one day he just knows.

It happens quickly and unexpectedly, and Shim Changmin suddenly understands the simple logic of life that he had always been avoiding, he suddenly realizes the reason his emotions were working ok until one day they just weren’t anymore.

Shim Changmin is walking with his dear friend Yunho: it’s a lazy Sunday morning in Japan, and they’re walking through the streets of the capital city, enjoying the warm weather of the newly born spring. They’re walking together until a car passes by them, a little bit too close, and Shim Changmin loses his balance and falls down ungracefully, Yunho’s scream raising in the background. It’s when he’s on the ground, knees scratched and hands hurting from the sudden fall, and about to get up, that a thought crosses his mind, revealing a whole new world he had unconsciously tried to suppress, revealing the reason why his emotions had suddenly changed at random moment in his life — which was not so random after all.

He shouldn’t have been on the external side of the sidewalk.

He should have stayed on the internal one.
That’s what Jaejoong had always told him at least. That’s what Jaejoong had always done when they were going out together: he would’ve taken his hand and he would’ve moved him to his right, bragging about how kids shouldn’t stay near cars, how it was too dangerous. And Shim Changmin would’ve let go of that same hand, bragging back about how he was not a kid anymore and how he could take care of himself, but he would’ve remained on the side he had been sent to. And Jaejoong would’ve smiled under his long fringe, he would’ve folded those red lips of his upwards and he would’ve suppressed a giggle behind his hand.
Shim Changmin is still on the ground and he can still hear Yunho’s talking, now closer and on his same level, asking if he’s ok, if he has got hurt.
And Shim Changmin suddenly can’t breathe, his hands start to tremble and he feels his eyes burning and his cheeks getting wet, while he allows himself to break down for the first time in a very long time. Yunho’s face is stricken with worry when the guy looks at him, and for the first time he allows himself to be the affective and emotional guy he has never been. For the first time, he admits the feelings he feels exploding inside and he faces those same feelings, finally managing to name them, finally managing to find in them the answer to all his unspoken questions.
They’re nostalgia.
A suppressed and avoided nostalgia. A hated and painful nostalgia.
And for the first time, Shim Changmin is honest with Yunho about it and confesses what has been unconsciously destroying him from the inside for the past few years.
He tells him that he’s not ok. That things are not ok. That he should have been on the left side of the road, that he should have thought of not letting him stay on that side, as he’s just a kid, and that Jaejoong would’ve thought about it beforehand, because Jaejoong had always known he was a little bit on the clouds and never paid attention to his surrounding. He tells him that he knows he’s feeling something now, something powerful and that he’s scared of it; he squeezes his t-shirt over his heart and tells him that it hurts, that it , that he’ missing something and that he cannot avoid it anymore. That when he didn’t know what he was missing — when he didn’t know he was missing something at all — it was easier because he wasn’t always brought back to those memories he was now trying so hard to suppress. He tells him that he knows Jaejoong’s gestures were always made out of love and care and that he regrets pushing them away so many times, out of embarrassment or shame, because now he’s missing those little attentions so much, but he cannot have them back. Now it’s too late. He tells him that he wishes he could go back in time and punch Jaejoong a little lighter, that maybe those punches hurt him over time, maybe he found himself wondering if Changmin actually loved him, if he ever even cared for him — which he did, of course, but maybe Jaejoong never knew it. He tells him that he doesn’t want to keep on going like this, that it hurts too much, and Yunho finds himself spacing out at that sudden revelation: he doesn’t understand how an accidental fall has been able to awake the storm of feelings that were now crushing his fellow bandmate.

And Shim Changmin knows that Yunho cannot understand it, because he doesn’t see what he’s seeing right now.
He sees a simple fall, but Shim Changmin sees an act of caring, a caress, a hidden laugh he should have treasured and that now is gone. Yunho doesn’t see them, but there are a series of gestures which should belong to the past, which shouldn’t keep coming back like a boomerang, but whose emptiness speaks loud now and Shim Changmin cannot avoid it anymore.
There is a post it with a good luck wish hidden among his school books.
There is a snack left on the top shelf of the fridge, always in the same place and always at the right time.
There is a not so desired hug waking him up on snowy days, but whose warmth he longs for now.
There is a soft caress on his shoulder before a big performance, there are words of support always catching him before falling, there are light punches and big laughs, homemade dinners and shared wine glasses Shim Changmin didn’t even know he loved before suddenly finding their absence unbearable.
He looks at Yunho right in the eyes and searches for an answer he knows he cannot find behind his dark pupils, but surprisingly as soon as he starts looking for it, the older guy places his hand over his shoulder and nods imperceptibly.
“I know”
And Shim Changmin would like to tell him that it’s impossible that he knows it because those moments weren’t his, they were theirs, forged by their words and actions and personalities, but then he suddenly realizes that he isn't the only one Jaejoong shared memories with. And his eyes get bigger and his mouth opens a little bit in the hope that maybe Yunho does have the answer he’s looking for.
But Yunho is now smiling and Shim Changmin would like to ask him how can he be ok with it, how can he still smile and laugh and joke around, when he has just realized that those daily pills of happiness had been taken away from him forever, but then again a bell rings in the noisy storm of his mind and everything appears clears for once.

Jaejoong is not gone.

Yunho pulls him up and weeps his tears away.

Jaejoong is not gone. 

He looks at him deeply into his dark deer-shaped eyes.

Jaejoong is not gone. 

Shim Changmin can see it so clearly now, as if an invisible wind had blown away all the clouds and left a clear sky above him.

Jaejoong is not gone.

Not forever. 
He’s there. Not really there, but there.
And all Shim Changmin has to do to reach him is to stretch out a hand.