One | Space-Hair | Jongyu
Space-Hair | SHINee oneshot collectionAt first, Jinki wasn't partial to Jonghyun’s silver hair.
He'd believed that it hadn’t suited the younger – it was an inherent attempt to showcase a serious, yet artistic, side to the aspiring musician, and a bloody awful one at that – but he'd overlooked it, because that's what Jinki did. He had pretended not to care upon first visiting Jonghyun with his new look, and had spent more time contemplating his coffee than the silver-blue strands. The second occasion he'd bumped into Jonghyun with the cosmic space-hair (because that's what Jinki called it, space-hair) he'd laughed it off, he'd offered a wary compliment, he'd even gone as far as to mumble that it had matched his shoes, or something along those lines.
But he'd never actually liked it. Not really.
However, when Jonghyun caught on to Jinki’s distaste, for he was an observant musician with a keen intellect, he'd instantly decided he wanted to change it, to which Jinki had protested; he didn’t think it right that Jonghyun should change himself for his newfound lover, because Jinki would love him either way. Even if Jonghyun returned home with no hair he'd still hold a place in Jinki’s thoughts, a secret place no others could touch, and so he'd managed to stop his quick-to-jump-the-gun boyfriend.
Despite this, Jonghyun had been upset, quite clearly, and so Jinki had attempted to make it up to him, to prove the hair was a minor care in the grand scheme of their relationship. He'd arranged a candlelit dinner and had walked hand-in-hand with Jonghyun along the beach, then later, when night tempered the horizon and they reclined to their tiny apartment near-but-not-viewing the coast, they'd made love. It had been long, gentle, full of misspent caresses and distant pines for breath, but once it had ended, Jinki had rocked Jonghyun’s cold, shivering, body in his arms, singing softly into the nape of his neck as the younger drifted to sleep. As he'd succumbed to the aether of his dreams, Jinki had his head carefully, and had figured that, maybe, the space-hair wasn’t quite as bad as he'd once thought.
Jinki and Jonghyun had always held a succinct relationship, one that required little argument and fall-about. They both were so one-in-mind that any slight telling of friction dissipated quicker than a man's patience at a watched pot that never boiled. However, like every pot, tensions boiled over with inevitable accountability. One Sunday afternoon – the day of rest, as Jinki had been raised to believe – Jonghyun had been scampering around their apartment with his guitar, plucking strings like an excessive madman would pluck the flowers of his insane garden. Jinki had asked once for cessation, then twice, then a third time, until he'd told Jonghyun that, “If he wanted to play that goddamn guitar he could go play it to Taemin."
And Jonghyun had. He'd stormed out of the apartment with his guitar in hand, not even bothering to throw on a jacket despite the plummeting temperatures.
At the time it'd been a small disruption Jinki had believed he could fix with another candlelit dinner and moonlight serenade, but he was wrong. He was so very, very wrong.
Prior to the argument, to the space-hair and the roots of their relationship, Jinki had met Jonghyun at a nearby restaurant. It was one of the all-suits affairs that flaunted the heavenly scents of the finest ingredients and the most luxurious of atmospheres for the finest of guests. Too penniless to afford a meal that would've cost him his arm if he'd wanted it, Jinki had been hired as a waiter, his well-meaning manner and the chip-off-the-old-block attitude he'd inherited from his father lending to the charm that gave him his decently-paid employment. Jonghyun, on the other hand, had been hired as a pianist, performing every Friday night, the same regalia of tunes, battering at the keys until his eyes fell shut upon closing hour. Jinki remembered fondly how the musician would slump in his stool as the final guests departed, head practically crashing atop the fine piano and small shoulders sinking so far down he thought they'd disappeared. Always working the late shifts on Fridays, it was a sight Jinki quickly became accustomed to, but he'd never spoken to the musician. Not once.
By the time he'd been working at the restaurant for upwards of six months, Jinki found himself beginning to lose interest in his work; it paid and provided for his ever-growing string of debts, but it offered him little enjoyment. He'd considered throwing in the dish-cloth (literally) but had been stopped by his own slight fascination with the ever-quiet musician, who preferred to talk to the piano keys than the other staff. Various women had attempted meagre flirtations, to which they'd been dismissed, and even Jinki himself had tried catching the musician’s gaze a few times, to which he'd been dismissed also. It seemed the musician thrived in a world of his own, unaffected by the stigma surrounding the golden guests of the upper-class establishment, and disembodied from the myriad of working-class waiters around him. He was self-contained, self-preserved, but Jinki soon discovered that he was by no means self-obsessed.
One night, long after closing, Jinki had found himself seemingly alone in the restaurant, with the responsibility of locking up. He'd been nervous, for to lock up wrongly meant to risk the integrity of the business amidst the gritty lifestyles of petty thieves. It was also late, dark, rain smattering the large windows and the shadows around him morphing in the ever-present gloom. Jinki had wanted to leave as quickly as possible, but soon found himself confined to his work-place, confined because of the musician.
Jonghyun had been sitting in the corner of the bar crying over a barely-touched spirit, eyes leaden and limbs exhausted. Jinki had stared. He'd blinked. He'd tilted his head. But, eventually, he'd approached the broken male, hoping to patch him up and send him on his way and hide the discrepancy of the stolen alcohol before his boss found out.
That hadn’t happened as quickly as planned.
One thing had lead to another, introductions stringed with confessions stringed with admissions and then to a new aether created by both men’s drunken fancies. Jonghyun’s hand had tamely touched Jinki’s thigh and then they were kissing, hands everywhere, pressed against the bar for support as they discovered what it was to discover. Jinki still felt the way his heart tampered with his emotions on that first night, rattling throughout his entire body as he'd begged his mind to focus. They'd cut short before they'd done something regrettable, but hadn't forgotten to exchange numbers and slight flirtations before vanishing into the darkness.
The relationship evolved quickly; a date led to their first night together, which had been an odd thing, like a tree amidst a field of corn or a thistle in a rose-garden. Jinki hadn't been entirely sure what to do with his lover and nor had his lover been sure what to do with him, but they soon worked it out, pleasuring each other until all that had been left was panting and perspiration, prickled skin and pulsing headaches. Learning about Jonghyun had been enjoyable and Jinki had soon uncovered that the younger man had dreams grander than playing the piano for the judgemental and absurd, and so they'd both quit their jobs simultaneously, searching for bigger and better things.
With a degree in art-history (a degree in “doing nothing and knowing nothing" as his mother liked to condone) Jinki had found it hard to obtain work, but had eventually struck lucky as a tour guide in a local museum, educating the masses on the paintings of the renaissance and the upsurge of cubism. Jonghyun, on the other hand, had devoted his life to composing, and he did so constantly, locked away in a box-room full of specialist equipment he'd purchased years ago, using every penny he'd bled out. Knowing this wouldn’t sustain him monetarily, he worked shifts in a nearby grocer’s, stacking shelves and manning tills, mind-numbing work, yet not as in-the-spotlight as his last career pathway.
It'd all been running somewhat smoothly, up until the space-hair.
The first time Jonghyun had actually confessed to loving Jinki – for loving was a step further than simply being boyfriends – was a couple of days after he'd availed of the shiny space-hair. They'd been sharing a dull dinner of instant ramen as the rain battered against the windowpane of Jinki’s flat, scoring streams down the glass that Jonghyun would watch curiously, more enthralled than was probably adequate for such mundane conditions. During the constant rat-tat-tat of the fat raindrops, Jinki had been studying his boyfriend carefully. It wasn't just the dim light that created a make-believe crease in his brow, nor was it distant rumbles of thunder lending to Jonghyun perpetually clearing his throat. The younger was nervous, and that much was practically palpable.
After about five minutes of Jinki staring at him bluntly, long-since finished his meal but awaiting the younger to join him, Jonghyun had just blurted it out, as if the most casual statement to ever ring true in the four-walls accommodation. At first, Jinki had been startled. Not that he was shocked, rather touched, and felt his very being blossom at the idea of Jonghyun meaning the mantra: “Jinki, I think I love you."
Jinki had smiled, wrapped his lover in his strong arms, breathed the same into his hair until they'd fallen asleep on the couch, a tangle of limbs and bleak fantasies, captured within one another so intrinsically that neither could let go. Despite expectations, there had been no rampant love-making, no bouquets of flowers or fluttering kisses. There had been a desolate solitude beneath the roof of the storm, and a content silence that permeated the strongest of wills to break it.
Even given the space-hair, it had been a wonderful moment.
The next day, Jinki recalled that Taemin had visited. Until then, Jinki had lived in suspicion of the plucky young dancer, with his perfect eyeliner and glinting smile, his playful laughter and friendly touches. He'd been friends with Jonghyun before Jinki had even began working at the restaurant, and both men had bonded over two common factors in their lives: they both lived for music, and had a preference for men. Jonghyun had assured Jinki on multiple occasions that Taemin had never been more than a trustworthy friend, a reliable metronome that ticked on a constant cycle, always there, always caring, always ensuring the best for his hyung. Although Jinki had honoured Jonghyun’s friendship with the dancer, he was still reluctant to leave them alone together, lest their bond intensify and Jinki get replaced by the scent of peaches and hair-dye.
These were simple doubts, however, quashed as soon as Jonghyun had spoken his true heart.
After Taemin’s brief stop-by (to borrow their printer, for he didn’t have the luxury and was too tight with money to pay for his document otherwise), Jinki had considered many things. He thought that he'd marry Kim Jonghyun. He thought that he'd raise children with Kim Jonghyun. He thought that he'd grow old with Kim Jonghyun – to the age where the colour of his silver space-hair was natural. However, in Jinki’s eyes all of these things were impossible. It wasn't legal for men to marry, nor could two males conceive, and the impressive strand of cancer in Jinki’s family line had lectured him that he wouldn’t live beyond fifty. His father hadn’t, his grandfather hadn’t, his great grandfather hadn’t, and he probably wouldn’t either.
He thought he'd end up leaving Jonghyun as an elderly widow. Of course, Jinki’s future predictions were wrong.
About a week ago, before the argument and the distaste and the tension, Jinki had upset Jonghyun, by not holding his hand in public. It seemed an idiotic thing – desperately pathetic now – but at the time had created a cataclysmic rift between the lovers. Jinki didn’t like the stares he was thrown at him by onlookers, the simmering glances and giggled titters, the conservative comments and homophobic jibes. He'd told Jonghyun that they should limit their show of affection in public, for those around them didn’t view their love the same way. Jonghyun didn’t agree.
Later that night, they hadn't traded kisses or secrets or beautiful imaginings. They'd laid at opposite sides of the bed, backs facing each other, breathing as quietly as they could. Jinki figured Jonghyun had cried himself to sleep that night, wondering why he wasn’t normal, why he couldn’t be with a woman, why he had to be with a man. Jinki had stayed awake, listening to the quiet shudders that rimmed the cold darkness like frost on a wayside, and had found himself thinking the same.
Sometimes, Jinki liked to wonder what his life would have been like if he did love a woman. Disembodied from the norm as he was, maybe to be with a woman would have dragged him back into the social circle he'd been forced to abandon with Jonghyun. He could have been married, a father – for Jinki had always wanted to be a father – with a middle-class standing and a dog that he'd take on walks every evening. The perfect life, the dream life, the life he was raised to believe was the right one. But Jinki more-than-often nipped these thoughts in the bud before they could blossom – he was with Jonghyun, and that was all that mattered.
Well, he had been with Jonghyun.
Jinki twitched and stared at the linoleum flooring. There was something about the flooring in hospitals that led him to distant thoughts, to deep thoughts, to running his fingers through the locks of memories and aspirations. He figured it was the blankness of it all, the way that, no matter how hard he stared at it, it'd always stare back with the same lifeless demeanour, one that cared little for the vicissitudes of those above it.
“Coffee,” Minho offered, waving a take-away cup in front of Jinki. When Jinki didn't move, Minho set it on the seat beside him, and wandered away again, mind too enraptured in its own dysphoria to even begin to contemplate Jinki’s.
Jinki creaked his neck, squinting at the limpid cup cautiously, before ignoring it and resuming to his staring. He heard someone walk past, but the low buzz of the hospital was so maudlin that it easily sank into a world of its own, one detatched from Jinki and his lethargic limbs.
Jonghyun had never liked hospitals. Jinki supposed nobody truly liked hospitals, bleach-infested buildings that stuck out of the landscape like opposable thumbs, but Jonghyun had a very apparent objection to them. He'd watched his father pass in a hospital when he was young, and had since then held the resolute belief that he'd never die in a hospital. Jinki had nodded, joked about how the interior matched his space-hair, but at the time had said no more.
He shivered, wrapping his jacket further around himself, and decided it would be for the best to go on a walk. He didn't ever want to return, and he didn’t have to, but there were things to discuss, Jonghyun’s family and paperwork and arrangements for the upcoming days. The doctors were giving Jinki some time to reflect, but that time he'd only ill-spent. Jinki wanted to change that.
He stood on shaking legs and began to walk in trepidation. The coffee cup remained on its duck-egg blue seat, staring, as its owner left it uncherished. As Jinki walked, he passed many wards. He wasn’t sure what each ward was for, given that hospitals had a plethora, but with each ward were frantic nurses and frenetic doctors, pallid patients and fretting families. A few caught Jinki’s eye, but nobody greeted. It seemed they understood, for his ashen skin and frail movements communicated what he'd seen and heard. Jinki thought that his mind was tricking him when he heard a distant cry, for it sounded too similar to Jonghyun.
It couldn't have been Jonghyun.
Something Jinki had noticed as he'd walked was that the skin of every doctor seemed jaundiced, and the lips of every nurse seemed chapped. It was as if they'd all been heavy smokers their entire lives, though lacking the yellowed stumps for nails and the haze of smoke to shroud them. He wondered if such an affliction was caused by the stresses of their work. Day-in, day-out, clocking the dead and scattering the ashes. A sullen profession, Jinki thought. He didn't know why one would choose it.
By the time he made it back to his original seat, along a perpetual corridor that seemed to have no end, it was well past midnight, possibly three or four. There were less people around, the graveyard shifts undesirable for even the keenest of employees, and so the only other figure present in the corridor was the figure in the seat beside the one Jinki had recently claimed. The coffee cup was now gone, and it was as if it had morphed into the image of a fully grown man, who wore a business suit, torn from his hectic life.
He blinked up at Jinki with dead eyes. His tie was loose, purple shirt beset with what appeared to be the tiniest of tear stains, though his face showed no signs of sadness, for Kibum had never been one to cry.
Jinki sat beside him in silence.
Kibum was the busy, city-type – rich and modern, adorned with luxuries the common man decided were foolish but to Kibum were insignificant. He'd been the driving force behind the space-hair, having once told Jonghyun he needed to change his look to garner more attention as a musician. Though cold and riddled with arrogance, Jinki had figured many months ago that Kibum had loved Jonghyun. He cared for the elder, reached out to him in times of need, but could never suppress the lilt in his voice or the spark in his eye as he saw the bumbling musician, and for this reason Jinki had always decided to avoid Kibum, and Kibum had always decided to avoid Jinki.
“There's nothing left to say,” Kibum whispered, a tear falling down his cheek as he blinked once again. His breath held the wretched scent of alcohol. He'd been drinking before he'd received Minho’s call, quite clearly. “I'm sorry, Jinki.”
Jinki just nodded. He didn’t thank Kibum, for his words were empty things, composed of what was viewed as the social norm and years of dealing with such sadness. Past his wealth, Kibum wasn’t fortunate, not at all.
“Maybe this is all a dream,” Kibum mused, leaning forward and resting his arms on his knees. “Yeah, a ing dream. I think I'm drunk.”
Given the slur in his voice and the flushed pallor of his cheeks, Jinki could only silently agree.
A memory ghosted across his thoughts as his body twitched, and so Jinki allowed it entry, keen to pay attention to anything but the dreaded here-and-now. It was of Jonghyun, snuggled beneath the most tattered and ragged salmon-pink blanket in Jinki’s possession, drunkenly singing over an empty bottle of beer – over several empty bottles, in fact. Jinki too had been somewhat plastered – maybe not to the same extent, but certainly to a degree higher than recommended by the casual drinker – and had started throwing subtle comments at Jonghyun about his space-hair. Jonghyun had smirked, kicked him with a socked toe, and eventually they'd succumbed to each other's embraces, minds too embalmed with alcoholism to do anything else.
“ this world,” Kibum breathed, eyes widened in his disbelief as he broke Jinki’s tangent of thought. “Seriously, it, Jinki. There's no God out there. If there is, he's just a sadist.”
Jinki stared at Kibum, who had, up until a few hours ago, been a devout catholic. Although he wanted to mutter something about God’s mystery and divinity, the words fell short as Jinki’s mind snapped back to the reason why he was in the hospital, the reason why he was on a rigid seat beside a rigid man, the reason why he wasn’t toying with Jonghyun’s space-hair and singing gently to soothe him to sleep.
Clutching his own arms in a need for comfort, Jinki began to cry. His shuddered sobs raked down the entire corridor as each inhalation stabbed into his lungs, screaming for cessation for he no longer felt he had the strength to live. Subconsciously, Jinki elapsed, folding into Kibum’s strong arms as soon as the businessman offered. Kibum rested his chin atop Jinki’s forehead and the elder’s back with slender fingers, all the while evoking the tirade of tears that threatened to infect him as it had Jinki. As Jinki cried, he heard the pulsation of Kibum’s heart beside him, separated from sight by nothing more than skin and bone, by sinew and vein. The heart was such a fickle thing, such a temporal thing, broken before it had the time to truly appreciate great beauty, just like Jinki hadn't appreciated Jonghyun’s stupid space-hair.
“You'll live, Jinki,” Kibum offered, voice choked with sadness. “You have to, now. You'll live your life without him, because that's what he would have wanted.”
Jinki broke away, wiping his eyes, as he heard the quiet approach of footsteps behind him. Taemin was a withered tree, eyes two wide slats that bled innocence and betrayal, body trembling erratically, limbs the spindly branches that retracted like ink in water.
“His mother is on her way,” Taemin departed, words feeble in the long, long corridor. “His sister is getting the first flight over.”
And with those words, Jinki decided he needed to be alone.
The colours in the sky were beginning to drift into dawn by the time Jinki had escaped the labyrinth. Nuances of lilac and pastel-pink intricately curled around the deep navy of night, creating a silver cascade of clouds that blotted out the final few stars. The moon could still be seen as a vague reminder that before day-time there was darkness, but the sun was rising, its half-lidded light beginning to unfold atop the bonnets of the parked cars, the modern façade of the bricked building. The silver cascade was the same colour as Jonghyun’s space-hair, a transient twinkle that would soon fade out, just as Jonghyun had.
Jinki removed something from his pocket and set it on the waist-height stone wall by his side. After the argument, as he'd stormed off to meet Taemin, Jonghyun had been shattered, limb by limb, in a car crash, mown down by a speeding driver. Any will he'd had within him to live was snubbed out quicker than his fingers could tap piano keys. He died, the blood staining his space-hair a mottled crimson. With every limb folded inwards and his small shoulders crushed just as his guitar by the speeding driver's prison sentence, he'd lost everything he'd grown to achieve. He'd lost his future, his lover, his music and his aspirations. Kim Jonghyun had lost it all, and Jinki hadn't even told him how bloody beautiful his space-hair was.
As Jinki let another tear fall, body colder than nature could prepare him for, he regarded the thing on the wall with an amiable curiosity. He'd asked the doctor to let him have it, as if a souvenir, and the doctor had allowed, for no further tests could be run on a corpse to confirm its state. It was a small lock of Jonghyun’s silvery hair, barely bigger than the length of his index finger, and it curled inwards perfectly. There was no blood on it, just the scent of embers and smoke. Though the rest of his body had been unrecognisably charred, the one thing that had been left undamaged was the space-hair. A cosmic love, Jinki supposed, for the hair really was at one with the cosmos.
Laughing slightly, Jinki lifted the strand of hair in the pushing sunlight and analysed it. It was the one thing he had left of his lover. He hadn’t yet considered how to return to the apartment and quantify the traces of the musician, hadn’t yet pondered suitable funeral attire or how to continue with life as if Jonghyun had never existed, but he had thought about one thing – the fact that now, finally, he would appreciate the space-hair, for it was the last thing he had.
Clenching it tightly in his fists, Jinki watched the sun rise. He thought of the past, of forgettable nights made memorable in the restaurant, and of lustful fantasies made whole in the dead of night. He thought of snuggling beneath blankets and whispering I love you, and he thought of arguments, of lacking appreciation, and of a broken body on the pavement, with cracked bones and peaceful eyes.
Jinki fell asleep with these thoughts, clutching the strand of hair as he did so.
Jinki fell asleep with these thoughts, clutching the strand of hair as he did so.
At first, Jinki wasn't partial to Jonghyun’s silver hair.
He'd believed that it hadn’t suited the younger – it was an inherent attempt to showcase a serious, yet artistic, side to the aspiring musician, and a bloody awful one at that – but he'd overlooked it, because that's what Jinki did. He had pretended not to care upon first visiting Jonghyun with his new look, and had spent more time contemplating his coffee than the silver-blue strands. The second occasion he'd bumped into Jonghyun with the cosmic space-hair (because that's what Jinki called it, space-hair) he'd laughed it off, he'd offered a wary compliment, he'd even gone as far as to mumble that it had matched his shoes, or something along those lines.
But he'd never actually liked it. Not really. Though now, in the dying hours of the first night without him, amongst the conversations and the comfort, it was the space-hair that Jinki missed most, that Jinki wished to run his fingers through again, and that Jinki wished to see once more.
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