The dark air is thick and almost silent, barely broken by whispers made for an audience of one. Yet one is actually two, and the first whisper is the last. The quiet following the panicked sweet nothings is cut short by a single bullet. Only the ringing of the shot and the rapid trickles of blood and tears remain. And so her life ends with a bang and also a whimper, a pained cry belonging to her lover supporting her shell of a body. His fingers tremble uncontrollably, one set dabbing the scarlet stain on her front while the other slowly reaches for the cold metal instrument within his pocket. A small movement of his finger and a click resounds. The sound is strangely comforting, probably because of its finality and how close it means to the end of the agony streaming down his face. A final shaky breath cold and quivering in his lungs, he grips the trigger and begins to pull. Until someone calls out to him.

“CUT! Hey, you’re supposed to be one of the top actors in Korea! When you cry, have your tears fall from your eyes simultaneously, got it? It’s already windy, so your eyes should be watery anyways! Acting is all about control: learn how to exercise it!”

Sehun puts his heavy camera down and sighs. Park PD seems to get more excited when the rest of the crew becomes exasperated, as if he’s feeding off their energy. They’re so close to the end of the final episode, and it’s like he’s testing everyone to see how long they can last. Sehun hasn’t eaten anything but ramen for the past three days and has probably slept for ten hours total in that same period, which is the reason why he nodded off during the last take. At least Park PD is too preoccupied with the main leads to notice his shaky filming.

“Hey, camera two!” Oops. He spoke, er, thought too soon. Park PD is trotting in his direction, huffing and a little red-faced.

“I liked the way you unfocused on both the actors and the skyline in the end. The fuzziness of the lights makes me think of how the dying characters would see it, their vision all blurry as their lives come to an end. And the red adds to the feeling of blood and violence and torment. Interesting work, kid.” He grunts before heading back to shout at other members of the crew.

Sehun thinks that might just be the longest string of words excluding insults that he’s ever heard Park PD say. A success won without even being conscious. Funny how when Sehun actually tries, it’s never good enough.
 

Sehun opens his computer and waits for Youtube and Naver to load. Both show the same video as the most popular in Seoul for the last forty-eight hours, with views, shares, and comments steadily growing.

Another loss. Sehun makes a mark of it.

Cut.

Call Sehun old-fashioned, but he actually checks the employee bulletin board at SBS every day and keeps track of the various flyers and post-its, always noticing when a new colored leaflet pops up. There’s an opening for another cameraman position on an upcoming primetime drama, but he rejects the idea. The new directors only care about making money, not art. Hence, their unaesthetic posters with the bolded salary based on hours of work, not quality. Today there’s surprisingly one new paper that doesn't have numbers jumping out at him.

Sehun untacks the sheet from the bulletin board and folds it in his pocket, knowing that it won’t be missed around here. It’s not even the temptation of fame that intrigues him, but the challenge. A small smirk appears on his face for the first time in days. What kind of Seoul surrounds him? They just might be getting more than what they asked for.

As he sits and sips, Sehun watches the people in the coffee shop whiz by and remembers that he needs an actor. Or an actress. He can’t very well be in the movie and be shooting it at the same time; it’s not like he’s going to use one of those cheap handheld video cameras and pretend he’s a vlogger. His eyes temporarily unfocus, following his mind, and the scattered lights outside the window fade into scarlet bokeh. The silhouettes of the pedestrians outside dissolve until only a suffocatingly rosy blur is visible, false luminous petals outshining all shadows. He needs someone who looks particularly vulnerable in the neon glow. A girl would probably be more suitable, more vulnerable and easily susceptible to the surrounding steel jaws. Someone who could play a deer in the blinding red headlights on the speeding highway of society.

A soft but sharp gasp cuts through Sehun’s train of thought, and the people passing outside the window come into focus again, no longer overwhelmed by the surrounding lights. The aroma of coffee is stronger than it should be. It drips onto the floor and seeps into the clothing of a thin boy with clumsy hands, hands that no longer hold a once very hot and very full paper cup. Sehun’s eyes follow the path of the boy’s slim fingers to a thin vein on his wrist, up the curves of his arm and neck and dance around the delicate features seeming freshly sculpted on his face. An elegant porcelain doll that hasn’t hardened fully yet is out of place, not ready to be tossed into the hands of reality yet standing here still wincing from the sting of hot coffee. As he looks up to face his observer, the look in his sparkling eyes is just lost enough for Sehun to know that he has found what he needs.

Sehun has never been an impulsive person. Everything is planned and written out beforehand: a list on his refrigerator greeting him hello in the morning, reminders popping up on his phone’s calendar, storyboards sketched in notepads and stowed in various pockets. Yet how to convince a total stranger to act in your independent film is not a script he’s written and read over. No one was there on the sideline telling him to awkwardly grab the other boy’s wrist, then let go and sheepishly start talking. If in the past night Sehun’s learned anything valuable, it’s that improvisation, even if it’s not good, isn’t always a synonym for failure. And that the boy’s name is Luhan.

The video camera is a comfortable size and almost weightless. One hand holds it up with the help of a worn fabric strap, and it feels like a natural extension, cool metallic silver blending seamlessly with pale fingers. It’s almost like it permanently belongs there attached to Sehun’s palm. He looks back at the lens he points at himself, and a distorted face that’s familiar but unrecognizable returns his glance with the same tentativity shivering in its eyes. The shivering grows and spreads to his fingers, until it shatters along with the camera dropping on the floor and Sehun’s state of mind. All he sees is red: small red lights twinkling outside the window of his flat, the red light of the camera blinking at him, neat red slits on his forearms appearing and swelling. No matter how hard he claws at himself, knuckles white with fury, he can’t touch the thoughts and the old recordings shooting around inside his head. Clamping his fingers over his ears doesn’t muffle the voices, but traces of red drip down his digits into the swirling cartilage and help drown out the soft chanting.

Sehun’s first thought is that Luhan is like a snowflake, a fragile beauty that might melt away at the slightest touch. His second thought is that snowflakes are colorless. Snowflakes don’t have rosy tinges across their cheeks and lips or dark lashes casting gray shadows on their lower eyelids. Snowflakes are clear and pale and if they land on something, they take on that color before disappearing. And while a snowflake may dye its hair blond, succumbing to the high standards of the culture surrounding it, that snowflake may thrive amidst the suffocatingly cold air. It could blend in with the other snowflakes around it. You’d think a snowflake blown in from China would be weaker in Korea after traveling such a long distance, but it just might form a newer, paler layer.

Sehun’s third thought is that he should stop thinking of long-winded metaphors that don’t make proper sense. Especially when it preoccupies him to the point that it takes him a whole six seconds to notice the coffee he ordered hovering in front of his face, held by the delicate fingers he was just thinking about.

“Sehun-ssi. Sehun-ssi!” Luhan breathes out a chuckle when Sehun jumps at his name, and the contrast between his speaking voice and his laughter is surprising. When he talks normally, Sehun almost wants to sink into the soft, malleable tones of his voice as if it were a bed of sand, to let the subtle differences between the slightly musical “Lùhán” and the monotonous, Koreanized “Luhan” wash over him. Luhan laughing is as if he's holding a handful of sand over Sehun’s face and letting it slide through his fingers, drier and grittier than before but also warmer. Sehun sips his coffee to mask the smile forming on his face, but ends up drinking too fast and nearly chokes after scalding his throat. He blinks a little faster for the next minute, convincing himself that it’s because of his watery eyes and not Luhan worriedly patting him on the back.

They make their way through the bustling streets, strolling too slowly for the cars and people hurrying past them. Sehun finds himself walking on the outside of Luhan, letting others bump into his body instead of his companion’s. There’s an intrinsic need to protect the boy next to him, even if Sehun’s the younger one. But Sehun can’t shield him from much. Advertisements for cosmetic stores plaster the windows around them, pushing the glaringly pale faces of perfection at the city. He notes to Luhan that exactly zero of the faces have single eyelids. They reach the next level of the game: pointing animatedly at the actresses and singers that have gotten plastic surgery. While waiting for the crosswalk to clear, Sehun asks one student if she knows anyone that seriously wants to have their features rearranged. She merely shakes her head and laments, “Don’t we all?”

That night, Sehun dreams of lying on a gleaming white surface. He watches his face projected on a screen above him, magnifying all his pores and the red forming in his eyes. An invisible hand holds a thick black pen and begins to mark dark dashes and lines down his cheekbones, along his eyelids, across his lips, until finally the features of his face are indistinguishable and only black nothingness remains.

The top of Sehun’s building is bare, just cold gray cement with plenty of room for standing. He doesn’t like to come up here often. Red lights and white billboards are too frequent and swallow him until he feels lost, even though he’s only a few floors above where he lives. Standing here with Luhan at his side is a new feeling. Sehun hates cliches, but he can’t help thinking that practically everything he does involving Luhan is new. Unfamiliar, yet comforting and a little too easy. Like turning Luhan around on the last few stairs before they reach the roof and gently arranging a pair of glasses on the soft bridge of nose. Like gingerly guiding the frail shoulders in front of him to the edge of the roof, too busy making sure Luhan doesn’t fall to keep himself from stumbling over his own nervousness. Like feeling nervous when there’s no reason to, except the reason is Luhan.

And Luhan wheels around excitedly when Sehun reluctantly lets go of his shoulders, lips parting in delight as he intakes a sharp breath. Sehun lets him gaze at the skyline for a minute, not wanting to have to be the one to tear him away and return him to reality. Just as delicately as before, he takes the glasses and therefore the illusion away in his hands. What Luhan once saw as rosy, gently glowing bokeh dotting buildings and streets are now harsh, almost blinding crimson spots in his vision. Luhan sees the normal city lights every night, but then they look vibrant and alive with the spirit of the city, as some say. But to see them as soft and lovely only to have the view ripped from his eyes reveals a bluntness that wasn't quite there before, hidden under all the patriotic chatter that flys around. Sehun starts to explain all of this to Luhan, but he sees the uniform look on the other's face and falls silent. The wash of deep red painted on his face is stunning in a heart wrenching way. Usually there are stars sparkling in Luhan's eyes, but here there aren't even any in the sky to be seen, all drowned out by the tsunami of red.

"So how does it feel to see the world through rose-colored glasses?"

Luhan purses his lips for a moment, and Sehun ignores the swooping feeling in his stomach. "Are you asking what it feels like to see the world every day?"

Sehun's definitely found his actor.

He’s going to do it. If so many people watch it, it can’t be that bad, right? It’s a way for him to get his name spread, so that the next time he walks into a coffee shop some of the chattering will include his name and his videos. And if these videos are popular, who’s to say that his real ones won’t be once he finishes them? These are like rehearsals, only practice sketches of hidden sides of him. The more of these he releases, the more followers he’ll gain, and then the more people will see real art once he releases it.
Sehun holds the camera in front of him and stares into the lens. The red light begins blinking, imitating the city around it, and he starts talking.

Sehun and Luhan begin writing stories for the film together. Luhan is the main character in each one, and he tells them with his own words, because no one might believe him otherwise. Sehun puts the frames around those words, shaping and molding them into different colors and streaming them in an intentionally shaky line. And so a story goes.

For years it was typical for Luhan to spend more hours studying than sleeping, barely allotting time for eating because it didn’t do him much good. Consuming rice wasn’t going to turn his skin the same white color, and it wouldn’t lighten his hair either. Staying inside to study might have an extra bonus: if he wasn’t outside playing soccer, his skin wouldn’t be so dark! Or so he was told. No one ever stopped telling him ways he could improve himself, because why would an elder ever withhold their wisdom? So Luhan did as he was told, and kept studying and studying. Success in studying led to more studying, only in a different city in a different country. He had heard that Seoul was not bigger but better than Beijing, more wealth and more beauty growing by the minute. If you’re smart and you study, you’ll succeed! But three years later the only thing Luhan has accumulated is growing debt and awareness of the impossibly high standards around him. So many study and try so hard, but only the very fewest break the surface of success without money, connections, or most commonly both. It’s a tragic cliche that everyone’s heard some version of before, but when Luhan tells it there’s a hard sliver of something extra in his eyes, shining bits of determination breaking the surface of liquid black irises. The red light on the camera blinks for a few too many seconds after Luhan closes his lips and rests his palms on his knees, for it takes Sehun a moment to reorient himself after losing himself in the other’s eyes.

Sehun and Luhan are so caught up in creating the perfect story that at first they don’t realize they’re writing their own at the same time. Luhan puts far more effort into the project than Sehun ever expected him to, scratching out various scripts for hours until the paper is disfigured with black marks but the words are just right. His earnestness is another first that Sehun sees, making him shine even brighter while he works under the beam of a desk lamp at two in the morning. Soon enough Luhan’s in Sehun’s flat more often than not, and when Luhan’s not there he still is because he’s always lingering in Sehun’s thoughts. But Luhan’s butterfly fingers can’t write forever, and sometimes he can’t help but let his eyelids flutter closed and his lips part in the gentlest of snores right there in the flat. Sehun doesn’t have a dream catcher to hang above Luhan’s golden wisps of hair, so he places the rose-colored glasses on the milky slope of the other’s nose in hope of making his thoughts a little happier. Unlike reality, dreams can be too pleasant without consequence.

Sehun jumps at the sudden thunk on the table as Luhan slams his coffee cup down and carelessly throws off his silver glasses. He looks over, but Luhan is already behind him, hands warmly gripping Sehun’s shoulders, and Sehun’s not sure if the slight gasp he makes is from the sudden weight or the sudden touch.

“Sehun-ah! Guess. What.” Luhan had quickly dropped the -ssi after the first night of sleeping on Sehun’s couch. His words to Sehun are less delicate, spoken excitedly like the whizzing of a whirring bicycle wheel and not braking for a response from Sehun.

“I finished the last script. The last one! We can start filming now.” His face lights up like a child’s as his voice drips with glee. “I’ve never been on camera before. You have to do your job and make me look good, okay?”

You don’t need the help of a lens and lighting to draw people in. You don’t need my help. “I’ll do my best.”

Luhan extends his arms for a double high five, and when their palms smack together in minor victory Sehun unintentionally curls his fingers around Luhan’s, as if to say together. He almost punches himself out of stupidity and recklessness, but his hands are trapped as Luhan’s fingers squeeze his back. Luhan’s smile is the final thing completely reeling him in.

Improvisation doesn’t always .

Luhan’s eyes are almost as beautiful closed as they are when they’re open. Sehun’s finger traces the perimeter of one lid, underlining the shadows made by thick lashes and not enough sleep. Next is the slope of his nose, shining in the early morning light, and Sehun gently rests his finger in the smooth indentation above Luhan’s upper lip, bathing in the warm of fragile exhalations. He skips over to the jawline, following the prominent curve to the swirls of cartilage that form an ear, until his hand is Luhan’s hair, glinting in pale sunlight. Distance between their two faces decreases until there is none left, and the part of Luhan that Sehun saved for last is the sweetest. Luhan’s lips succumb to Sehun’s, soft skin giving in to soft skin, and Sehun stays put until he’s entirely intoxicated by the other’s rosy breath. Pulling away just enough so that their lips are barely brushing, he breathes a whisper into Luhan’s warmth.

“It’s time to wake up.”

Sehun opens his eyes to a chilly December breeze ruffling the curtains, no morning sun, and no Luhan. He removes the rose-colored glasses and casts them on his bedside table, deciding he’ll use them next in a world where he doesn’t need to worry about reality.

You’re really funny! and cute :o) all your videos make me lol~ I wish I could make as good vlogs as you!! --posted five hours ago

A snort escapes Sehun before he can even try to repress it. By good vlogs this commenter must mean something along the lines of random chitchat that he writes out beforehand yet still manages to ramble and stammer on, filmed with the cheapest camera in the tiest lighting without any regard to quality. Even the “and cute :o)” part of the comment is horribly wrong, and Sehun has to stop himself from thinking if you think you’ve seen cute you should see this boy named Luhan :o). The :o) particularly bothers him, the commenter obviously taking this in a light matter not knowing how deadly serious this is to Sehun. Casual, convenient, used when there’s an empty space needing to be filled after a thought’s already finished. I tried studying, but obviously I didn’t try hard enough because I didn’t get into the right school :o) studying is too hard here, so I think I’ll do something in the entertainment industry :o) oh oops I can’t be a model, singer, or actor, I’m not appealing enough without surgery :o) see even my nose looks like that!! :o) I can’t earn enough money anyway, why don’t I become a cameraman :o) I don’t have enough money to make my own movies, so I’ll buy the least expensive camera and make the cheapest kind of videos :o) the only thing that people like from me is the thing I hate most, my last resort :o)

Sehun doesn’t even remember turn the camera on, he just remembers reading one little comment and then the rest that escalated from it. Only one was typed on the screen but the rest are floating in the way of his vision, echoing monotonously in his head and still visible even when he nearly gouges his eyes out with his fingers. There’s a uneven, panicky humming buzzing in his ears and it takes him a second to realize that it’s him. Red blinking is his only distraction, and he destroys it by taking the small silver body and hurling it across the room. The small light is gone, dark and hidden in the shattered remains of the camera scattered on the floor. He picks up a single shard of what was his only release but also his prison. Crimson trickles down his finger, and a single sigh leaves his body as weariness enters it.

It’s disgusting, really, how Sehun immediately smiles when he hears a knocking on the door of his flat, and how he nearly skips to the entrance to let his favorite (and only) regular visitor in.

“Sehun-ah! Since today’s the last day of filming, I brought my friend to watch the process! Minseok’s really interested in movies, is that okay?” If Sehun’s not mistaken, Luhan’s eyes have an extra edge of excitement in them today. Dark irises stare him down, pleading him not to say no as his answer.

“He’s already here, isn’t he? What am I going to do, tie him up?” Sehun says it with a joking smile on his face, but his words aren’t far from his wishes. He’s heard Luhan address this other on the phone before, always cheerfully and maybe with something else that he can’t quite put his finger on.

“That’s a relief. You almost looked a little scary there for a second.” Minseok’s smile matches Luhan’s in brightness as he glances at him out of the corner of his eye. “Luhan and I are pretty close.” And Sehun realizes what close might really mean.

Close might be the reason that while Luhan’s fingers brushed against Sehun’s once in a while, they never reached for his first. Luhan’s smiles were always bright, but never lingering too long, just like his gazes. And Luhan bounced around, always happy in Sehun’s presence, but he never slowed down entirely and revealed himself to Sehun. Sehun knows a lot about Luhan, but Luhan doesn’t know so much about Sehun. Every time he stayed was because he didn’t finish his work, not to eat dinner or watch a movie with Sehun. It was always about Luhan, but it was never about Sehun.

And really, it’s fitting that it was all about Luhan from the start. Luhan is the one in front of the camera, not behind it. Luhan is the one who reflects city lights off his cheek the best, the one whose voice carries the most velvet, the one who shines with an irresistible glow. He’s simply built for a lens, ready to magnified and only show off more of his perfection.

Sehun tries to wave these thoughts off, but he keeps whispering them to himself as he adjusts lenses and filters. When he rewatches takes, Luhan is behind him, not over his shoulder but next to Minseok’s. Subtle grazings of forearms and whispers in the other’s ear are louder than they should be, but Sehun can’t cut off his senses. Sehun can’t stop thinking of how wrong he was. Although he obviously approached and needed Luhan first, he thought Luhan needed this job and even needed him, Sehun, too. Sehun needed someone to take him above the skyscraping, blinking walls of the city, but Luhan had had wings from the start. And Sehun’s still stuck on the ground.

“Hey. Luhan. You’re obviously busy right now, so I’ll just fill you in. The results for the film competition are out. We didn’t win, but we had the most popular movie just taking online views into consideration. I guess we were a little too real for the judges, huh? And you’re probably going to be a lot more famous now, since your face is plastered everywhere on the internet these days. Don’t worry, you look good. Anyways, thanks so much for working with me. It really was a special experience. I hope you have a merry Christmas, and say hi to Minseok for me! Bye!”

There’s not much else to say, really. Sehun’s tried so hard every time, and he’s never quite made it. Every time he thinks he’s taken the rose-colored glasses off, something else puts them back on him again, and the world looks so pretty until the glasses are ripped off. So for old time’s sake, he slides them up the bridge of his nose. They probably won’t get that much use elsewise.

Having a light, silver object in his palm is familiar and comforting. The knife seems to have its own luminous field surrounding it, although it could just be the glasses making him see red. Sehun smiles at the sight of it, and a chuckle quivers in his throat. His fingers shake for the last time as he fingers the cold metal blade, a sharp, clean edge for a clean ending. His scene has come to a close. Cut! He laughs at how all of a sudden the skyline of the city outside seems pretty, maybe because he won’t have to be trapped in it for any longer. Red spotted by a few hot white tears seeps and stains the floor, matching the surrounding lights that begin to blur as his vision fades until everything is black like the sky above.

He’s home for the holidays.

Merry Christmas.

:o)