[amorphous]
ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from modern Latin amorphus, from Greek amorphos ‘shapeless’ (from a- ‘without’ + morphē ‘form’) + -ous.

Youngjae and Jongup munches on a giant bag of Cheetos (the irony) they bullied Yongguk into buying, as per usual.

Or maybe Yongguk is just trying to make up for at being a sensible leader everybody seems to think he is.

With his mouth full, the main vocalist tattles, “Well, ‘the guy’ used to be her sunbae in high school. You know, the loving but badass oppa type. Then when ‘the guy’ found out she was crushing on him, he started taking her for granted.”

Yongguk growls, “Can’t you just tell me his name?”

Jongup eyes Youngjae worriedly.

“You probably won’t like his name, anyway.” The vocalist brushes off with a flourish.

“Why? Is it as ugly as his face?” Yongguk retorts.

“Uh, hyung. He–“ Jongup chokes and starts coughing violently. Youngjae gives him an unmercifully slap on the back.

Yongguk winces, because badmouthing someone had never really been his style. But this jerk deserves more than just words, seriously.

“How old is the guy?” he perks up.

Youngjae replies lightly, “Same as you,” then shrugs, “I think? But anyway, it probably won’t be easy for her.” Then he looks solemnly at Yongguk, speaking in a drawl, “She likes you, hyung, I’m sure. But right now she’s just well…” he glances at Jongup for help.

“Confused,” the other finishes.

Yongguk blinks.

Youngjae sighs as if he is explaining why one plus one doesn’t equal eleven. “Look, they’ve known each other for a very long time. Kinda. And, besides, he’s still pestering her. But hyung, she’s been ignoring all his calls for, well, since that night at the park.”

Yongguk’s heart almost stops. “Really?”

-

Two days after Yongguk met you at the bookstore, he is moping in front of the television with manager Kang reading the newspaper.

It is around eight in the evening. Nobody is around, since Jongup’s high school is housing a dance and Youngjae being an alumni took the opportunity to go chaperone with Himchan chaperoning him chaperoning. That is to say, making sure Youngjae doesn’t get himself caught hitting on anyone.

Junhong is there as well, and Daehyun tags along only because high school dances equate to junk food without anybody to tell him no.

“Hey, you there,” manager Kang strikes up a conversation from the side sofa, nudging Yongguk’s knee with his socked foot. The leader lets out a depressed grunt. “What happened at the bookstore?”

Yongguk takes his time to sit up, his mind on some sort of inertia. “What?”

Manager checks his phone and looks up confusedly, “It’s just– a few posts on the fancafe and cyworld, they’re talking about Jae hitting on a girl?”

“What?” Yongguk repeats. He knows what, of course, but just to be safe, he needs to find out how much the older man knows.

Distractedly, manager Kang grumbles, not looking up. “Weren’t you with him that day? Saw anything strange?”

Yongguk scratches his chin, contemplating on his best choice of an answer. “Uh, no?”

Manager Kang raises a brow. “You don’t sound so sure,” then he added. “There are pictures, you know.”

“Pictures?” Yongguk’s blood drains.

-

The next time he visits his family, they went on a picnic. The three siblings, if he may, are kind of rough around the edges ever since toddlers, so a picnic does not sit particularly well with any of them.

Especially not with his twin, who is alternating between checking his phone and scribbling away lyrical lines, eraser dusts flying everywhere.

“Still hung up on the same girl?” Yongguk nudges and Yongnam only grunts in response.

A second later the guy quips, “What ‘bout you? You’re just about as hopeless, I heard.”

Yongguk laughs, “Things are looking up for me.”

“Girls, man.” Yongnam grumbles, finally glancing up from his pad paper. “Seriously.”

Feeling his twin’s agitation brewing, Yongguk arches his eyebrows at him questioningly.

The other brother snorts, stashing his papers away. “Isn’t it hilarious how we’re both having the same problems at the exact same time?” He sighs, staring off somewhere ahead. “At least one of us is getting the better end of this luck.”

Yongguk pats him on the shoulder sympathetically. “She’ll come around.”

“Yeah, whatever. It’s not like I’m serious ‘bout her.” Yongnam shrugs disdainfully. “She’s just a girl, you know?” a pause, then, “Just kinda worried something happened. She’d never vanished this long.”

Yongguk frowns, not really grasping. Or maybe he knows, that’s why he’s so reluctant to believe it. “This happened before?”

Yongnam grunts. “The longest had been two weeks. Now, it’s been, like, I dunno, two months or something.”

Jokingly but still a little wary, Yongguk nudges his twin. “Maybe she’s had enough of your crap.”

An uncomfortable silence stretches between them. When it becomes clear that Yongnam isn’t going to answer any time soon, Yongguk sits up slowly from the picnic mat.

“You really were crap to her weren’t you?” he hisses, but his twin doesn’t as much as flinch. Yongguk wonders if he’s been just as insensitive in the past, or did his idol life soften him up. Maybe those two are exactly same the thing.

But anyway, the sudden thought of Yongnam mistreating a girl suddenly seem personal. Yongguk thought of you and your situation, and the gazillions of girls stuck in the same situation as you. It’s probably wrong of him to hate the male specie right then, but at the moment, Yongguk does so with a burning passion.

“So, you were. You’ve been an idiot weren’t you?” he says, recalling what their sister had told him a few weeks ago.

Yongnam turns to him, his jaw tense and eyes emitting frustration. He spits, “You’re not that better, Yongguk,” he twists his head, eyeing him tauntingly. “Don’t you remember the girls you hit on in high school? Waking up in some stranger’s beds? Begging me to cover up for you every other day?”

Yongguk’s mouth goes dry when he tries to swallow. His shoulders are so tense that he isn’t sure if they are his shoulders anymore. Maybe they belong to a sculpture. Maybe he’s better off as one.

For a while, he doesn’t say anything. But when he does, it comes out robotic and a little empty. “Don’t talk like you weren’t as screwed as I was. I’ve covered your messes as much as you did.”

Yongnam nods with that mocking grin. He looks everything like him, but somehow, Yongguk feels as if his brother is wearing Yongguk’s expression all wrong. Yongnam clucks his tongue, resting his elbows on his knees.

“Yeah.” Yongnam snorts. “At least I’ve always been honest about it.”

Yongguk narrows his eyes, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The other his head to the side disdainfully. His expression isn’t serious, but it’s still gnawing at Yongguk’s nerves. “You’re living a lie. Don’t deny it. Or have you forgotten?”

His eyes are brown; yet they are steely and spiteful. He looks out of it and terribly grim, with purplish bags beneath his eyes and his lips forming a smirk. He is him, and yet he isn’t.

-

(vii)

He watches, in between conscious and subconscious, as flecks of dust settle on the pixelated screen when he presses a button. He takes a breath, and his phone still doesn’t ring.

Exhaustion is a curious feeling. It’s different than feeling merely tired, or sleepy.

You feel exhaustion in your bones. It’s the physical incapability to stay awake, to remain conscious for a moment longer.

And yet, he does anyway.

Yongguk’s upper lids yearns for his lower lids as he gazes lifelessly into the rectangular screen in front of him.

The phone has been surprisingly quiet tonight. Yongguk chuckles mirthlessly.

Because it’s always been quiet. He’s waiting a little longer tonight. He’s on edge, and restless and he’s hoping it’ll happen tonight.

Whatever Yongnam had said, the truth is, Yongguk can never forget the deformed shadows that stretch thin on concretes, on gravels, on featherlight couches and unknown beds, on every surface he had once touched. The residues of who he used to be clatter inside the hollow of his chest, and vibrates into his veins like the bells of churches he’s never been to.

But he can imagine.

Forgiveness,

Sins.

Guilt,

Forgiveness.

He isn’t sure if these things matter. Life is life, death is death, there is nothing more or less; no rhapsodies, no languages, no lyrical lies.

And yet, those things do exist. They exist because people exist. People, created by higher powers of some kind, possess a hunger for the things they cannot name. But they name them anyway.

Maybe that’s where it’d all started to go wrong.

Things go wrong when you defy the laws of nature.

Yongguk wonders if the nature of people ever change. He’d heard it many times. ‘People don’t really change, bro’ Yongnam laughs. ‘We’ll all stay the same, and the same and the same until the day we die.’

Yongguk scrunches his eyes shut.

‘You know it’s true.’

He doesn’t. He really doesn’t know. All Yongguk wants is to stop thinking and just live. But he can’t when his past is a clink and a clunk as it bumps onto every nook and cranny of his soul. Yongguk wonders if there are such things as too late.

More specifically, can he still be saved at this point, he wants to know.

What if he isn’t meant to be good? What if he’s defying the laws of nature with this surreal image that mummies his wrecked heart?

His phone beeps.

Yongguk’s eyes snap open—the illuminating screen is a bright light. Himchan groans somewhere from his left, and there is the sleep induced ruffle of bedsheets. Yongguk picks up his phone and stares until his pupils dilate.

Hi..

There is a message. The phone number is unfamiliar. For a second, he wonders if it’s from a stalker.

This is my number

There is a grin on Yongguk’s face. He’s been waiting for this. He’s always been waiting for this. His chuckle is deep and low when the next beep breaks the shrill of the mangled thoughts that are the contents of his mind.

I mean if you’re still waiting..

Yongguk takes no time to type back at a speed he didn’t know his blunt fingers are ever capable of.

I am still waiting.

-

Ten minutes of aloof silence, Yongnam voices out, forefinger tapping the coffee table. “Can’t you check on her for me?”

Yongguk is supposed to meet you today. But Yongnam wants to meet him today, spontaneously. Yongguk is feeling giddy and restless because he doesn’t want to make you wait. He really doesn’t want you to be the one who waits anymore.

“You know where she lives?” Yongguk raises his rows. “Why can’t you do it then?”

Yongnam averts his eyes. “I only know where she volunteers part-time, but the people there don’t like me much.”

“And, what difference does it make?” he purses his lips, annoyed. “I thought you said you weren’t serious about her.”

Yongnam’s eyes turn defensive. “I’m not,” he spits.

Yongguk sighs. “Then why do you even bother?” he knows he’s being harsh, but he really can’t help it. “It’s been months, hasn’t it? Why can’t you–”

“Just check on her, please.” Yongnam presses, looking a little desperate. The tapping stops, and he leans forward, eyes dark from across the table. “Check on her for me, Yongguk.”

For a moment, they do nothing.

Then, Yongguk twists his lips in doubt. “Are you sure she doesn’t mean anything to you?”

Yongnam’s pleading eyes turn into a glare, and his jaw is set tense. He doesn’t say anything to that. Instead, Yongnam’s tone drips out like an order. “Check on her. I can’t go back there. They remember me.”

And Yongguk wonders if this is some kind of joke, or Yongnam is actually a lot more stupid than he once thought. The look Yongguk gives his identical twin is so ing flat that Christopher Columbus is sure to fall off the face of the earth.

“Dude, if you didn’t notice, we kinda look the same.”

-

(viii)

Although Yongguk spends a lot of time on his phone texting you, his work performance, surprisingly, is better than ever. Both his trainer-producer and his dance trainer no longer eye him as if he is a dead weight.

Yongguk had never been a dead weight, of course. However, the expectations do weigh on him twice and thrice of the burdens placed upon the other members’ shoulders. Dead weight or not, it is still ing heavy.

But nobody says anything about his phone time. Not even manager Kang. And though Yongguk feels the suspicious and careful eyes on him every time he pulls out his phone, everybody seems to let it slide, especially when the stupid grin becomes Yongguk’s new default and nobody is heartless or hateful enough to take that away.

Yongguk’s gratitude for this is so immense he resolutes to work twice as hard as he had ever done in the past. The times that were originally ingrained as his moping and worry hours are now used to cough out raps, melodies, lyrics and laughter.

“Hey,” Yongguk lightly knocks you on the head with his knuckles.

You look up from an art history book you’ve been skimming near the architecture section. Yongguk stands in front of you, deliberately violating your personal space because he knows it sets you on edge. Looking up at him, you warily shut hug the hardcover book to your chest as if it will provide you some sort of defense.

“Hi,” you say airily, stepping backwards to put the book back on its shelf.

Yongguk’s smile is mischievous and he nods to the book in your arms, “Need help with that?” Despite the tiny shake of your head, he reaches out a hand to close on your wrist while the other slowly wrenching the book out of your grasp.

His gaze doesn’t stray from your face, when you purse your lip as your stubborn fingers pointlessly hold onto it, until the book is raised far too high. Yongguk chuckles quietly, placing it onto the random shelf above your head, knowing you wouldn’t be buying it anyway. (Not when, as you once put it, ‘I can read it for free, so what’s the point?’)

“I was gonna buy that,” you blink, convincingly earnest.

“No, you weren’t.” Yongguk rolls his eyes, guilefully pressing you against the shelf.

“Yongguk,” you mutter dourly. Yongguk grins, dark eyes glinting a devilish light when he steps back and tentatively take your hand instead. He knows he’s allowed this much.

“‘kay, let’s go. Those idiots are waiting.”

-

(ix)

Yongguk doesn’t like it.

He doesn’t like it when Youngjae tags along and with an occasional Jongup from time to time. Because the unknowing vocalist tends to steal away all your attention once he immerses himself in a conversation with you.

You two get along well. Too well that, sometimes, the unlikely friendship keeps Yongguk at an impenetrable distance. It’s a distance he cannot close.

The way you laugh at the sarcastic remarks Youngjae makes, the familiar way Youngjae wounds his arm around you for support when a joke gets too funny and he doesn’t have the strength. What Yongguk hates the most is how Youngjae seems to know everything there is to know about you, and maybe Yongguk is just petty or something, but he can’t help but eye the way you allow Youngjae cling onto you, or plaster himself onto your back when he greets you or as simple as putting a book back on a shelf.

Worst of all, you and Youngjae are the same age. You two also have the same sense of morbid humour that even Jongup doesn’t seem to understand.

“Why? Are you jealous?” Youngjae says one day at the dorm, hands on his hips, brows raising in slight surprise.

Yongguk growls and doesn’t say anything after being unreasonably passive-aggressive.

“She likes you. Stop being ridiculous, hyung.” Youngjae says, flinging an arm in the older’s direction dismissively. But he doesn’t leave the room as if he knows it is a sensitive topic.

Yongguk grumbles under his breath. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Youngjae is seriously looking for a fight, or something. “Can’t you just give her some more time? She’s going through something right now—”

“Ugh, why do you keep doing this?” Yongguk groans. “This knowing everything thing.”

For a bit, nothing is said. Youngjae seems to be contemplating something.

When a sigh escapes the younger’s lips, his sarcasm also seems to drain out to point zero.

Somberly, Youngjae speaks carefully, “Look. I wish I could tell you what it is, but it’s not really my right. Either you have to figure it out on your own, or wait for her until she’s ready to explain.”

Yongguk presses anyway, “And you’d know all about it.”

Youngjae’s smile is nowhere near amuse. It is bitter. “I put you two together, of course I had to know. I figured it out. Even before I went looking for her.” He flings a hand in Yongguk’s direction. “For you.”

The older’s eyes are dark, but the fight leaves his body. Quietly, staring at his hands, Yongguk says. “You told Jongup.”

“Of course I did.”

When Yongguk looks up, Youngjae’s eyes are just as mirthless. He ruffles his black hair, looking more bony and gaunt than ever before. Then Youngjae smiles, it looks forced, but his eyes crinkles in the way that mirrors a real smile, “Jongup isn’t the one she likes, hyung. Please wait.” Youngjae rubs his own elbow warily. “Just, whatever happens, don’t give up on her.”

The look he gives is unexplainably genuine and heart-wrenching to the point that Yongguk wants to cringe. It’s the same look Jongup gives him.

It feels like pity.

Yongguk doesn’t understand.

“I don’t plan to,” he says anyway.

[amorphous]
ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from modern Latin amorphus, from Greek amorphos ‘shapeless’ (from a- ‘without’ + morphē ‘form’) + -ous.