It’s coded into their DNA:

He was always gonna meet her,

but she was always gonna leave.

The first time he sees her, she’s standing in the rain, make-up wiped off onto the sleeve of her soaked hoodie, drops like tears sliding down her cheeks. She could be crying. He covers her with his umbrella, his jacket beginning to soak at the shoulders instead.

“Are you ok?” he asks. She shrugs. Here, she’s up close, more high definition than the TV screens and internet could show, more real than any music program or variety show could make her seem.

The drops collect at her tear ducts, release – he’s watching too closely but his jacket is beginning to stick to his skin – slide down her face, curve around the chin, disappearing from sight. She exhales and it’s just steam between them. When it clears, her eyes are hard and dry again. “Are you?” she replies.

“That’s not an answer.” Some part of him didn’t expect one. (In)human machines aren’t supposed to be standing out in the rain after their performances, aren’t supposed to be soaked to the bone, aren’t supposed to feel.

She exhales again. “Well, that wasn’t a question.” And it’s just them, the rain, umbrella covering her and the front of his body, and the steam, the steam between them.

To each other, they’re just Mark, just Wendy. There’s no attempt of intimacy, no Seungwan’s or Yi-en’s – they’re both from North America, that’s good enough, no need to push it. She smiles and he smiles back, and it’s just an attempt to pretend to have someone else there, to pretend that they’re friends, maybe, the term loosely associated with their disconcerted discourse.

Sometimes the industry is just too much to take in, factory fumes churning them out. At some point, they meet up in September and she won’t even talk to him because her voice is tired from exertion and dieting and over exhaustion, just lays her head on his shoulder and it reminds him of his jacket, like a second skin, from their first encounter. They sit there, listen to each other breathe. It’s strangely personal, yet a touch removed, as if they are going through the motions with a filter, like they are so used to. Sometimes the filter breaks down and he knows her shoulders are shaking because the wrong words came out of – and oh well, can’t take those back, but she’s still hurting, regretting. They’re homesick and homeless, no amount of Skype calls and text messages can amend time passing and holidays spent at the dorm, alone.

It’s disconcerted discourse, he convinces himself, when he’s crying in front of her because he’s tired, just let me have a little time to be ungrateful, and she takes his face in her hands and thumbs away the tears. It’s ok, Mark – that is his name, it’s not impersonal, far from it. It’s ok, Mark, and she presses her lips against his, chaste.

Convinces himself as he reaches back, tears still streaming down his face, and kisses her again.

It never lingers. Some days, it is a brief brush of the fingers passing by the hallway but never eye contact, or a longing glance over the shoulder. It makes him feel hollow, going through the motions but creating empty actions. But what is fullness anymore? He tries not to half- his performances, his routines, but then there’s them – and there exists no criteria, no one to please, no one to pretend to. It feels startlingly real when he holds her in his arms and she holds him in hers, strange dyes in their hair and foundation shading all the cracks in their facades into the shadows, pretending that they don’t exist. But they do.

He thinks that they take advantage of that fact – occasional one-sided rendezvous becoming more frequent, watery words into each other’s ears because they won’t listen otherwise, falling asleep on each other. Even when he tries and she tries to keep it together, keep it full, it is as if it is the inevitable way to go about things is in a state of empathetic lethargy. They can’t help it – it’s biological, as biological as a stolen kiss here and there, almost-more-than-whispers harshly grating against each other’s eardrums, the ears pressed against backs as they drape their bodies together like forgotten but washed linens, listening to hollow hearts empty and fill themselves repeatedly to keep everything going.

And just like those hollow hearts that work out of the brain’s accord, everything keeps going.

They’re lying beside each other one day, dawn beginning to break and flushing color into the monochrome of night. His eyes drift between completely shut and half-open, according to how hard she squeezes his hand. He ends up falling asleep by the time they have to go, anyway.

When he opens his eyes, his left hand is empty. Cold. The air around him smells like dew, morning, beginnings. Inhales, exhales. Her scent does not linger. The absence of her hand in his reminds him of the one time his brother let go of his hand as he was running around with him in circles. They both ended up with bruises, his brother with a cast on his right wrist. The thought, the emptiness, lingers, unlike her.

It’s just hard. You know? Mark.

Yeah. (exhales) It’s hard.

(the phones shifts) I know we feel the same way – we’re tired, we’re homesick, we’re both trying to figure out how we fit into this entertainment world – it’s just, I don’t know if I can keep doing this, this is just hard

I’ve never heard your voice over the phone before.

(pause) You’re changing the subject.

Isn’t that what this is? Changing the subject?

(silence).

Maybe they’re both just husks, beginning to be spooned out, spoon-fed carefully to the public. Maybe there exists no fullness, and maybe it is ok to know that you will not be full like you were before. They probably weren’t meant to be – she was not embedded with the patience to maintain such discourse, he was not born without the romanticist fatality to believe it would all work out in the end – they are both too hollow to make two full wholes.

Maybe two wholes isn’t the point of all this. they aren’t the same people as they were when they entered the business – filters attached, smiles for every performance stitched on meticulously – emptied out just enough to create a void for the other. A purposeful emptiness.

Maybe that’s what fullness is, for them, now.  

This time, the unreliable penultimate time, she sees him, standing in the rain. They could be crying, but there is nothing to cry about, nothing to cry over. Here, they’re up close, more high definition than the TV screens or internet could show, more real without the foundation shading the cracks into the oblivion of the shadows.

She holds the umbrella over his head. The raindrops scintillate off the surface, collecting into puddles at their feet. Disconcerted discourse, he thinks when he meets her eyes, hard and dry. Her lips part, posing a question, and he, in anticipation, exhales – and it’s just them, the rain, umbrella covering them, and the steam, the steam between them.

It’s coded into their DNA:

He was always gonna meet her,

but she was always gonna leave.

They were always going to end up back together

(but not really.)