“It’s time… It’s time… Today’s a new day!!”

Jongup opens his eyes to the infuriating echo of his alarm clock, blaring the too-cheerful sounds of morning singing.

He groans loudly, furrowing his eyebrows and covering his eyes with his arm.

“It’s time… It’s time… Let’s wake up and– ”

He slams his fist on top of the contraption, effectively shutting up the high-pitched voice that hid itself behind the safe walls of metal speakers.

Jongup drags himself out of bed, successfully heaving his heavy feet off the blankets and bed sheets.

He rubs his eyes roughly, feeling his nails tear into the skin just above his eyebrows. His teeth almost chatter under the cold that invades his hollow bones.

He saunters into the washroom, passing the plain white walls that enclose him into the small cell.

No, not a single spark of colour is present in his confinements. Not even a hint of pastel.

In the austerity of his surroundings, the blinding light that shines through his windowpanes, his curtains drawn out in a terrible façade to hide his corrupted interior, Jongup works his way through endless streams of his daily routines.

He brushes his teeth. He combs his hair– or more likely attempts to run his comb through the roughness and tangle of it all. He stares at his reflection in the mirror.

His eyes are haunting– burning pupils within their bloodshot surroundings. His eyelids are slowly falling, betraying his attempt to stay awake. He rubs his frozen nose, but the redness still remains. And his lips quiver from the lack of warmth.

His face is a mess. But his body is worse. He clenches his hands into small fists, his knuckles white under the thin skin.

His muscles are toned– nothing but carved indentations on his physique. But they look underutilized. His arms fall to his side, heavy and well-built.

His legs are simply strong calves and energy– those of a ballet dancer. The curves of his developed muscles stretches as he moves.

They creak and groan as Jongup forces himself to stand still in the washroom.

Sure, he looks thinner, but not sickly.

That’s what they had told him; that there was nothing wrong or different about him. That he was a beauty– perfection, even.

Yet, Jongup turns away from the blurry mirror, his reflection merely a piece of himself that he refused to accept.

No, he isn’t perfect.

This isn’t perfection.

It is a staged act.

Merely a deception in his daily rounds of humiliation– as he stands on stage and performs as he is supposed to.

He will dance, he will sing, he will bow when the time comes, and he will bite his lip as they applaud him.

Because the people here only love him for his pretense.

They are ignorant fools, blinded by their own perceptions of beauty and elegance.

But Jongup is a fool, too.

For he is never his own, simply a player in the game of society.

~~~

Jongup quickly scans his worn-out calendar. Many days have passed, with crossed-out boxes and meaningless notations.

He has lost track of time– the days, the months, the years.

But there is always one date that he refuses to forget.

And that specific date haunts his sleep; tampers with the uniformity of his life.

It embeds, in his life, a little spark that keeps him going.

Jongup anxiously crosses his fingers, his eyes searching desperately for the date– which is highlighted, circled, and arrowed at.

It is right in front of him, yet he cannot see.

But maybe it is because Jongup hadn’t expected it to come so soon.

His eyes widen briefly as he finds the date right next to the one he had crossed out yesterday.

Today was the twenty-sixth.

Jongup abandons his usual tights and ballet shoes, his arms searching for the black jeans and studded jacket that hid in the back of his closet.

He pulls out a shoebox from under his bed and opens it hastily. It reveals a layer of grime and dust, of which a pair of sneakers hide beneath it.

They fit snugly on his feet, the price tag still attached– in case Jongup encountered a day when he could not keep them anymore.

He slings his bag across his shoulder, in it burying his wireless speakers and secret stash of music players.

He walks down the stairs with his head held high in confidence, though he still makes sure that his footsteps make no sound.

The carpeted floor muffles the squeak of his barely-used sneakers that drag against their will.

Jongup peeks into the kitchen, only to find a tray of carefully laid-out pastries in the middle of his wooden dining table.

Next to the tray is a little sticky note, ruined with the print-like calligraphy of his mother.

Dear Jongup,
I have left for work early today.
I am sorry, but we will not have breakfast together.
I hope you don’t mind.
From, your mother.

Jongup smiles bitterly at the formality of it all, crumpling the small paper in his hands.

He throws the note down the rubbish bin, along with all the pastries. Heading for the microwave, he decides to preheat last night’s dinner.

Forcing the hard and tasteless food down his throat, he makes sure he grabs an extra nutrition bar, before stepping out into the cold atmosphere and slamming the door shut behind him.

He pulls the jacket hood over his head, shoving his hands into his front pockets.

Ducking his head so that his fringe shades his eyes, Jongup breaks into a slow jog.

And every time his feet hit the pavement, his sling bag slams against his back. He lets out a harsh breath, which condenses and forms a small trail of mist in front of him.

As he passes the neighbourhood, he finds himself jogging faster. And then, he is running– sprinting, even.

He cannot wait.

He cannot contain his childish excitement as he nears the abandoned park.

Jongup ignores his aching soles and irregular breath. For right now, the only thing that catches his attention is the evocative view of the place standing before him.

The playground is stained and dirty, the swings creaking as they sway from the slight breeze.

The grass around it has overgrown, with weeds and little insects peeking through.

The slide is worn out, smeared print of vandalism and profanities written across its surface.

Jongup slides his fingers across the rough playground walls, skimming over the scratches and spray-paint.

It is all simply stunning.

For his whole life, Jongup had been trained to remember that the sky was picturesque, the rain was scenic, trees were elegant…. And ballet was classic.

Yet, he could only find the real beauty in the imperfections he encountered.

He could only appreciate the dark and the gloomy.

He only looked at the ruined and the destroyed– though they didn’t seem like that to him, he preferred to think of it as reincarnation; transforming something perfect into brittle pieces of the unwanted.

“Hae Rin. Hae Rin-ah? Are you there?” Jongup opens his mouth slightly and let the words escape on their own, as they reverberate across his lips.

A mere shuffle of the bushes behind him– and he knows she is present.

The edges of Jongup’s lips curve slightly as he sets up his speakers on one of the playground stairs.

He shuffles through the pieces on his music player.

The songs scroll pass his eyes, like little jagged edges that fly when a glass is broken. And if he looked closely enough, Jongup could see the connotations embedded deep within them.

He skips the classical songs, the instrumental accompanies, the romantic era, as he moves to the darker side of his playlist.

The heavy metal, the screaming echoes, the rock beats, and the vulgar rap.

Jongup has a hard time deciding which song to pick.

But soon, his scrolling halts and he finds his index finger hovering over his favourite song.

The song, which he had fallen in love with.

The song that had torn him apart from the grips of culture, tradition and consistency.

His finger trembles as he touches the screen, gently selecting the song. He attaches his music player to the wireless speakers.

And the music plays, unsteady and broken drum beats that clatter behind the electric guitars and basses.

Jongup starts to move.

His muscles cannot keep up at first– but soon, they find the tempo, and Jongup finds himself lost in his own world.

His movements are now merely instinctive; his arms dance on their own and his legs no longer remember the forced, rigid movements of his ballet performances– but rather spin and fall naturally.

For now, Jongup is no longer in the playground, but trapped within his own memories, recollecting pieces of his past.

Ghostly images of his first performance.

He is a fleeting glimpse of lean muscles.

The faded print of his ballet diploma.

He glides across, like a fluid grace.

“Hello there, I am Jongup,” the 12-year-old boy greeted the tiny girl standing before him, with a broad grin on his face.

Sharp crescendos– as his heels forcefully slide across the moist grass.

“I am Hae Rin,” the girl spoke, rather unemotionally. “I like the way you dance.”

His palms slice through the wind.

“Really? Most people think it’s terrible,” Jongup rubbed his arm awkwardly.

The music has reached its peak, blaring metallic sounds against the small speakers– its ambient roar ringing through his ears.

“Well, I think it’s beautiful,” Hae Rin spoke, her voice soft and gentle.

The singer’s voice is quiet now; the song is ending.

Jongup looked up at the small girl with curious eyes– she was probably the only girl who didn’t look at his strange dancing with disgust.

The instruments stop playing one by one, leaving only the drums as they return to the original beat that the song had started with.

“It’s hip-hop dancing, isn’t it?” she questioned, “Not many people have the guts to do that around here.”

Jongup’s movements slowly come to a halt.

“You’re different, Jongup. It’s not a bad thing, you know. It’s unique,” Hae Rin stated simply, smiling at the young boy.

Jongup returns to his speakers, switching them off and placing them back into his bag.

“How was it, Hae Rin-ah?” he asks softly as he pants.

Almost immediately, from behind the bushes and trees, a tiny girl emerges.

She smiles as she claps her hands slowly, “that was amazing, Jongup.”

A few painful coughs leave her lips and Jongup turns around to face her fragile frame.

Hae Rin is wearing a white dress today. It falls gracefully down her entire length, yet it doesn’t seem to touch her body.

The dress hangs loose from her shoulders, her collarbones peering out– rather visibly.

Her arms appear far from her emaciated sides, as if she is holding them away from her body.

But she isn’t.

Each of her bones shows through the fabric of her dress. And Jongup can count every piece of her ribcage.

Unlike the man, she has very little muscles– almost none– with just enough strength to push her through the day.

Her skin encompasses only her veins and the desire to survive– if not, live. There is no flesh, no colour, no traces of humanity kept within her at all.

Her fingernails are broken, their jagged edges cutting deep into her fingers, with dried blood stuck in between.

Jongup looks at her face: dark circles, dry skin, evident cheekbones and an uneven smile.

Her eye sockets are close to becoming hollow caves, with only little of her eyes actually peeking through.

Her hair is thin and messy, with bald spots forming on the top of her scalp.

And her lips have lost their colour, pale and chipped at the corners.

She still continues to clap, though the sound barely reaches her own ears.

And Jongup can tell that it takes great effort for her to raise her hands.

So, he decides to clap for her.

He envelops her hands in his, and gently claps them together, the echo vibrating through the wind and disappearing into the atmosphere.

Hae Rin looks up at him gratefully, the skin near the corners of her eyes crinkling as her smile broadens.

For a moment, Jongup feels his heart becoming heavier– an added burden to his chest.

His eyes depict sorrow and fear, because he suddenly realises that Hae Rin is growing older.

They are the same age, they think the same thoughts, they speak the same words– and yet, Hae Rin is dying faster than him.

Jongup almost wants to catch up with her, to hold her hand as they walk forward and embrace the probability of their imminent death.

However, he knows that Hae Rin wouldn’t want him to.

She would want him to carry on.

For only he can show everyone that in their plain and heartless decline, they fail to see the beauty of the unbeautiful.

It is his duty to open their eyes.

And he will one day have to accomplish it.

But in the meantime, Jongup chooses to be nothing more than the girl’s arms and legs, carrying her, feeding her, and caring for her.

Because it was true, Jongup did love the unlovable.

~~~

 AUTHOR'S NOTE 

Why did I choose the “special date” to be the twenty-sixth, you say?
Look at the date of B.A.P’s recording debut ^_^

And no, I am not– in any way– criticizing the art of ballet and its movements.
It’s just that in Jongup’s world, the idea that ballet is the “perfect dance” is emphasized too much and Jongup refuses to believe that his own, different ways of dancing is any less beautiful than the ballet moves that he has been taught.

I guess you could look at this story in a metaphorical sense; I personally think that even though this world doesn’t ostracize the idea of hip-hop dancing and everything, there are certain things that people do, which society deems as “inappropriate” and “rebellious”. And I guess, sometimes, they are really just unique ways for others to express themselves.

But I’ll leave it to you to interpret this story however you like ^^

I don't know why I’m writing this really long author’s note, but… oh well :/