Fast-Forward – Rewind

“Your face is a form of cheating.” Kim Minseok’s bowlike lips curve wryly up at the memory of their maknae’s accusation as he studies his reflection in the mirror of the lavish restroom of the still more extravagant hotel that’s been allotted him and two of his eight group-mates for the day’s photo-session. Since childhood, this small face, with its large, kittenish, single-lidded eyes, high-bridged nose and cheekbones and prettily plump mouth has been his fiercest weapon, his one way ticket to escaping the life of dreary drudgery that would have surely been his lot when he had little else to recommend him to greatness. A little teapot, short and stout, a fair student, a fair singer, a fair dancer but nothing spectacular. Only when he’d slit his eyes suggestively, or widen them in affected innocence, smile as though his veins were the conduits of honey rather than blood, this unremarkable little teapot would be transformed into a most extraordinary one. Fair voice, fair moves, flawless features, this was the arsenal with which he auditioned for S. Korea’s chief star-makers, SM. They signed him on the spot. His body they worked into fitness, his skills into solidity, his face…well, his face they left untouched. Some weapons won’t be honed when they’re already deathly sharp. He his tinted lips, smacks them and grins a second time. From understudy to leading man in the course of six months – Kim Minseok, EXO Xiumin, who would have thought it, mm?

“Hyung.” His group-mate and shoot partner, Kim Jongdae, suddenly peers in, his puppyish face, as always, blindingly bright. “They’ve nearly finished setting up; we’re starting in fifteen.”

Minseok nods reassuringly. “I’ll be there in five.”

“Ne,” the younger calls and promptly disappears behind the elaborately carved wooden door.

They don’t do things by halves, our Chinese neighbours, I’ll give them that, Minseok reflects as he sweeps his gaze over the marble panelling and gilded basins in the restroom of the seven-star Shanghai hotel. Meticulous, that’s the word for them. The pictures should turn out nicely enough.

He turns on the faucet and rinses his hands, dries them, readjusts his outfit in the mirror and makes for the exit. Before he can reach for its handle, the door swings open on its own. Minseok gasps. “Luge? How?”

Standing on the threshold is his former group-mate and lover, Lu Han.

“Kim Minseok,” the younger cries, his dollish face contorted in confusion at this most unexpected of encounters. Nervously he and bites his lips, working to collect his thoughts, while the elder stares at him in overwrought silence. In the year since his departure from the group, SM and S. Korea, the two have exchanged not one phone call, not one message. They were strangers, they were friends, they were group-mates, they were brothers, they were lovers, and then they were done. Luhan returned to China and straightway embarked on his solo career – a triumph by all accounts. Minseok stuck to the course they’d set out on together two years previously, alongside s conquering as many summits as he’s sought to climb.

 “Long time no see,” Lu Han says at last with an awkward smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

This laughably clichéd greeting, given the circumstances of their parting and reunion, finally jolts Minseok out of his trance. If there’s one thing he cannot stomach it’s cheesiness. “Yeah,” he returns with an inflectionless voice and an equally flat smile that cause the three weeks younger man to flinch at the censure implicit in them.

“Are you here for work? I’d heard something about a shoot with a few of the members, but didn’t know it was today…or that you’d be one of them.”

The members. Don’t call them that as if you were still part of the team. You left, remember? And never once bothered to look back. “We were supposed to shoot the day after tomorrow, but they had to move it up at the last minute for Yixing’s filming schedule. It’s an M shoot. Well…what’s left of M.”

Wonder diluting his self-consciousness, Luhan replies: “Yeah. I didn’t think Zitao would go through with it; he always seemed the uncertain type.”

Minseok smirks prettily, the softness of his features a buffer to the sharpness of his speech. “It this the pot calling the kettle black?”  

The younger gives a sheepish grin, duly allowing the reprimand. “Well, I guess I’ve earned that, haven’t I?” He scans Minseok with measuring eyes that narrow with mal-concealed carving as they go – a look that sends a shock through every inch of the elder’s small body. “You look good. Healthy. I’m glad.”

“Well, you know how it is,” he retorts, stooping to sarcasm in a bid to pilot the tension to safer planes, “we old ones have to take better care of ourselves than most, if we want to push back our expiration date.”

“What old?” the younger counters, his beam this time an honest one. Minseok shrivels at it, his heart shrinking to half its natural size. “You looked fifteen when I met you at twenty, and you don’t look much older five years on.”

Is this the sun calling the moon bright? Minseok reflects admiringly at the changeless image of the younger, with his faultlessly proportioned features, the androgynous quality of which so compliments that of his own. “Ditto…uri dongsaeng.”

Luhan chuckles at the exaggeration of the title, but then turns abruptly rueful. “I’m sorry.”

“What in particular about?” pursues the elder, his air a blend of dignity and embitterment.  

The younger’s face distorts at its tang. “I should have called. At least that.”

You’ve got some nerve, haven’t you? ‘At least that…’ “Once would have been nice,” he returns conversationally, his aversion to melodramatics muzzling his resentment, “you know, just to let me know you’d gotten home safely. But here you are – alive and well and doing better than most. I’m happy for you. Really, I am.”

His expression signalling to the elder the words he’s left unspoken have been heard just as clearly as those uttered, Luhan replies, "Thank you. By the way, I watched your web-drama,” he adds to Minseok’s irrepressible surprise. “It was good; I liked it. Female lead was a bit on the plain side,” his eyebrows coil up critically as he supplements. “Or let’s just say she wasn’t up to your standard. But all in all you made a pretty cute couple. I liked the clown scenes best – you were always more compelling in your silence than in your speech.”  

Minseok sniffs, unsure as to whether he should take offense at the review or give thanks. “Should I have opted for a mummer’s career instead of a singer’s, then?”

“Nah, be a waste of those high-notes, wouldn’t it?” Luhan returns, easily dodging the bullet. “Your Dome performance?” He nods and smiles in approval.   

Minseok shakes his head wonderingly. “You really have been following us, haven’t you?” 

“Of course I have,” Luhan confirms, his doe-like eyes deepening with hurt at Minseok’s bemusement, a reaction that in turn unnerves the elder.

I’m not the one who should be feeling guilty here, you know. His gaze averted, he says, "The others will be wondering what's taking me this long. Take care of yourself, alright?" then turns to leave the room. 

“Minseok-ah, aren’t you going to ask me to call you at least?”

Minseok recalls their final days together, the air of mourning that hung about the dorm, the practice-room, even the stage. In all his years of knowing, working and living with them, he’d never seen s in such a state of wretchedness. Even Jongin – the consummate professional – could scarce do more than go through the motions as they practiced and performed their last stages together. From the moment he entered SM to the moment he resolved to exit it, Luhan had been the crutch of his group, the older brother his dongsaengs relied on blindly, without reservations. Kind, judicious, supportive, hard-working and humble, a man whose exterior perfectly mirrored his character – beautiful. Losing him was a blow to their very foundation, both as a group of performers and as a band of brothers. It took more than any would care to remember for them to recover. “We’ll call each other every week; I won’t let this business break us apart.” Wasn’t that what you said when you were leaving? Every week? It’s been fifty-two of them now, Luge – how many times have you called? “What for?” he asks, his back still to the younger, knowing that what control he exerts over his tone will not extend to his countenance.

“I tried,” the younger pleads his case, his voice thick with emotion, “I really did. I must have dialled your number a hundred times in the past year, but I just –“

“What? Couldn’t think of what to say to me?”

“That’s right, I couldn’t." He sighs deeply before concluding, “What do you say to someone after leaving them like that?”

Minseok’s body turns cold, as cold as if he really were touched by frost. “Oh…someone, was that what I was?” he asks in a tone of heartbreak adulterated with humour, the type the best leading-men use in dramas when let down by their lovers. “Some One. Well, you weren’t just some to me, but I guess you are now – some one I used to know, some one I used to live with, some one I used to lo – This is pointless, and what’s worse, tacky. Let’s leave the cheesy lines for work, yeah? I’m running late. Goodbye.” He twists the handle and unlocks the door.

“The.”

“What?”

“Not some, the. Leaving you has been the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life, and I don’t mean just you, Minseok-ah. But once I’d decided to do it, I couldn’t look back. You taught me that when I was struggling alone in a foreign land. Don’t look back at who you were, at who you loved before you came here. We can’t walk backwards if we want to reach the top. I thought you were cold-hearted when you said that, the type who only loves himself. I didn’t understand… I was wrong, you were right: we can’t look back. But, walking forward, I still imagine sometimes that you’ll be waiting for me when I get there. If you’re my past, but I keep wishing you for my future, what does that make you, us?”  

The elder stands unspeaking a long second, his hand that’s clutched about the handle and his heart that’s clutched within his chest both immobile. At length he mutters, “Keep walking forward, alright?” then, following his own advice, leaves the restroom with never a look back. Halfway to the set, he realises he’s left his phone in the washroom. Damn! Just leave it there, he resolves and puts his right foot in front of his left, but then turns on his heels and grudgingly retraces his steps. Well done, Kim Minseok! So much for dramatic effect. Gods, please don’t let him still be there.

Warily he opens the carved wooden door and inwardly curses. Propped against the golden basin with the elder’s phone in his hand and expectation in his eyes is the younger. Wordlessly, Minseok walks up to him and extends his arm, signalling Luhan to hand over the device. The younger obeys. Yet as the elder fists his fingers round the phone, Luhan suddenly grabs his wrist and yanks it so that Minseok’s body crashes into his own. With his free hand he cups Minseok's flushed face and forcefully kisses him. He starts to struggle, but the familiar, too long unfelt sensation of those soft fleshy lips on his own, that sinewy body – firm despite its seeming brittleness, the scent of his skin, its warmth soon overpower him. They kiss until their mouths grow sore and swollen, till their lungs grow weak, overfeeding to compensate for a full year of fasting.

Afterward, without meeting the older man’s eyes, Luhan lets go his body and leaves the room in silence.

For the first time in fifty-two weeks, four days, seven hours and twenty-three minutes tears roll down Kim Minseok’s face. He turns toward the mirror and studies his reflection. Pretty – pretty when it smiles, pretty when it cries, always so pretty. He clenches his eyes, hangs his head and breaks out in sobs as his mind rewinds and replays their story from first encounter to first kiss to first night and all the nights that followed it, the strain of the stage and the splendour of their silver ocean, the laughter and the tiffs and the reconciliations, Luhan’s tearful apology as he told him of his decision to leave and the image of him waning into the horizon as he did. He cries until his tears run dry.

We can’t walk backwards if we want to reach the top.

He turns on the faucet and rinses his hands, then his face, neatly dabs them dry, readjusts his outfit in the mirror, leaves the restroom and makes his way up to the set.

“Hyung, what took you so long?” Jongdae cries anxiously at his approach. “I was just about to come fetch you. Did you lose your way coming up? This place is huge, after all.”

Before he can reply, Yixing appears beside him and wraps his arm about Minseok’s shoulder. He smiles at the elder meaningfully, a conspiratorial smile Minseok knows all too well – the smile of his closest ally. “He didn’t lose his way,” Yixing says as he slips Minseok a small piece of paper folded in half, “just took the longer route.”

Minseok takes out the slip, unfolds it. A ten-digit number and a four-letter word. Some.