like smoke you (dis)appear
The Walk is Long (but I have you)She wakes to the sounds of rustling, sounds of shuffling and mumbling and the occasional soft thud. It is easily past midnight — everything beyond an arm’s length away is shrouded in darkness. The luminescent numbers of the clock on her bedside table merrily confirm it is a few minutes to three.
Like clockwork, Eunwoo grabs her phone and treks, very carefully, to the living room. She hazily turns on the lamp by the door to the lowest setting, a nice amber hue that doesn’t hurt her eyes. The door unlocks the same time she pulls it open, right on cue.
“Again?” Eunwoo murmurs. A voice giggles in response, body stumbling in, and even in the dark Eunwoo catches Jieqiong just fine. “You—”
“Sorry about this,” Jieqiong breathes into her shoulder, Eunwoo’s hands around her toned waist as she holds her upright, soft and gentle exhales raising goosebumps across the exposed skin. The smell of cheap alcohol and light perfume and invade her senses. “I just miss you.”
“It’s alright,” Eunwoo hears herself say. She faintly recalls a memory from their childhood, a moment of deja vu, an echo of Jieqiong saying the same. It gives her vertigo, a chill, the sense that she might fall through the floor and into a void of faded memories to never return at all. Suddenly it is easier to just fix her gaze to the floor. “You know what to do.”
Jieqiong doesn’t reply, only hums softly to some tune Eunwoo hasn’t heard before. Arms circle round her in return, pulling her close like it isn’t three in the morning and the younger girl does this all the time, like she used to do.
“We can talk later?” Jieqiong finally says, and Eunwoo knows this won’t be the case but she nods anyway. More to herself because Jieqiong never seems to remember anything in the morning and Eunwoo is sure as hell not going to remind her. Maybe it is better for the both of them if neither remembers her racing heart and their subtle slips into the past.
“Okay.”
But like clockwork, Eunwoo wakes in the morning to the same alarm and the same empty bed as if nothing ever happened at all. She checks underneath the covers and finds a lone post-it note clinging onto its underside along with the familiar smell of her own shampoo mixed with a different light perfume, moving almost automatically in the way she peels it off and reads, then rereads and rereads again, the single phrase scribbled on the surface.
Thank you.
She doesn’t see Jieqiong for the next six months except through the television screen, performing in endless waves the melody that had once been hummed into her ear.
The very first post it had contained two phone numbers she has never tried to call. One was the same one from when they were children, Jieqiong’s old emergency phone with a Chinese landline that used to cost her an extra 200 won a minute to call. The other had been unfamiliar enough for her to assume it was for a new phone Jieqiong had managed to attain, the thought of which reminded her of something else Jieqiong had once said.
Now, many post-its later, she stares at the keyboard on the empty messaging screen with her thumb hovering over the key to bridging another gap they had burned a long time ago.
congratulations on your second win
Sending it throws her back to exactly where she had thought it would bring her back to, sitting on the cold hardwood floors of a room covered in mirrors and more mirrors and filled with nothing else but a sound system and thoughts.
“What if we,” a younger version of Jieqiong had to stop to catch her breath. Eunwoo had laughed and leaned over, equally sweaty from a routine of her own, rested her arms on Jieqiong's shoulders and tucked her loose hair behind her ears for her. Jieqiong had scoffed and smacked at her in return. “What if neither of us make it? What if either of us don’t make it?”
“Then you’ll have to tell Yaebin your crush troubles instead.” This at least makes Jieqiong smile. Eunwoo leans back. “We lose contact and think well of what we used to know. Don’t look at me like that. You know the company won’t let us keep phones.”
“As if that will keep me away from contacting you.”
“If you have to.” She snorts when Jieqiong furrows her brow. “Seriously. You shouldn’t let me hinder your dreams.”
The memory knocks into her so forcefully it drives the wind out of her lungs, compels her to move and head for the lessons that are hard reminders that she had left that reality long ago. She grabs her bag and sweeps leftover homework into her arms, stops mid-way to the door and leaves her phone on the tiny dorm table after a quick moment of hesitation.
She comes home to dead batteries and a phone that, once charged, flashes an array of notifications from things she has missed.
thanks :) catch up some time
same address?
Eunwoo doesn’t reply. Jieqiong comes anyway one month later.
To neatly summarise Eunwoo has discerned at least this much, kept her observations in the form of short and sweet anecdotes in her subconscious mind to keep it nice and simple:
1: Jieqiong only visits at night. Never before 11pm.
2: Jieqiong doesn’t visit every night. She just comes and goes.
3, and most importantly: Jieqiong is a celebrity. She should not be able to come and go.
(4: Eunwoo has absolutely no idea, not even an inkling of a clue, on what they are or what they should be.)
This time, Jieqiong is awake and in the kitchen when she rouses from her sleep, fiddling with the pots and pans and the boiler in an oversized shirt that just reaches the top of her thighs. The smell of tea and toast lingers in the air.
“Oh.” Eunwoo blinks. Jieqiong smiles gently at her expression, sets her heart going again and stops it in its entirety all at once. “Sorry. I just…expected you to be gone.” In fact, I didn’t expect you at all.
Jieqiong winces at the implication of her words. “I was being honest about catching up some time.”
They sit at opposite ends of the same tiny table and she is struck by the absurdity of the situation. Jieqiong is on the verge of becoming a full blown celebrity, she has tasks to do and practices to go for and a reputation to keep, she more likely than not gets recognised walking around the streets and yet she is sitting here — in the small dorm room Eunwoo had managed to successfully apply for in her senior year of college, surrounded by a bustling campus filled with individuals that are bound to recognise her eventually.
“I want to be here.” Is what she says when Eunwoo asks, eyes trained on the piece of pear she had sliced neatly into two. They flit briefly to her and back. “I just…I was on my way out before I realised I could stay.”
The irony of those words is not lost on her. Eunwoo swallows and chuckles dryly. “No celebrity friends to hang out with?”
“No.” After a moment of thought, Jieqiong shakes her head. She lifts her head and hesitates long enough for Eunwoo to look up in curiosity. The emotions in her eyes are sheathed by a veil of overwhelming sincereity. “None that can replace you.”
It hurts, of course it does, to hold her tongue. But Jieqiong belongs to a different world now, perhaps an entirely different galaxy, one that exclusively has no tolerance for romance and scandals like these. Then stay, Eunwoo wants to hold her face in her hands and plead, run her thumbs across defined cheekbones and whimper a soft stay with me please, but what good will that do when she knows this will just bring pain and problems for them both?
“Are you sure you aren’t being delusional?” Somebody she must have confided in had once asked her over the phone. She can’t remember, can’t be bothered to try and remember. “Nayoung and Chaeyeon are because of the whole superstar thing, sure, and so are Minkyung and Siyeon. But everyone else?”
And Eunwoo thinks.
They’re right. Not all her friends are popular. In fact, she’s seen Jieqiong go out of the way to befriend people who aren’t. There have been so many incidents Eunwoo could practically name at least seven on the spot.
“Then...what about me?”
“What did I do?” She asks again, when the phone has been silent for too long. These feelings hook on tight like burrs from a field, transforming into bitter bile as it claws at . “I don’t understand. Why does she only come to me drunk when she can’t look me in the eye?”
Maybe there is no reply to give.
“I’m sorry,” the phone finally says, and Eunwoo realises how ridiculous she must sound. “I don’t know how to help.”
Now, sitting in the presence of the girl she had once taken for granted, makeup wiped off her face and raw emotions left out for her to see, she realises the solution could have been simpler all along. She could have approached this differently and maybe in an alternate universe she had, earlier. Silence wouldn’t permeate the room and she could say something, any one of her million cheesy pickup lines to hint even remotely to this girl how she feels or receive confirmation that she feels the same, and maybe in that world Jieqiong wouldn’t have to leave again and again and again — tearing a piece of her very being everytime the door closes with a gentle, soft ‘click’.
There is a call from her phone one day.
“I can’t come over,” Jieqiong rambles off like a nervous teen. “We’re practicing for a new song and the manager won’t let us leave but I wanted to call. Siyeon says hi.”
“You told them you keep in contact with me?” She is still trying to process the call happening in the first place. There is a sudden pull in her gut at the mention of her former friends. “And Siyeon remembers me?”
“Please. They know everything. You know how it is,” The eye-roll on Jieqiong’s end is almost palpable through the phone, undermined just the slightest by the ever-present undercurrent of affection she has always had when speaking about the members. “And of course they remember you. You were one of us for years.”
“Oh.” Eunwoo exclaims, almost laughs audibly in the middle of the lecture theatre when a very familiar voice shouts Eunwoo! into the phone and scrambles to the door. “Hi Yaebin. Is the dance hard this time round?”
“Easier than usual,” Jieqiong answers. “And easier than whatever you’re studying now, I bet.”
“I’d bet that isn’t the case.” She grins and fiddles with her laptop screen, pauses and types out Zhou Jieqiong in the search bar and deletes it again. “And for the record, you were right. Latin is a terrible course to take for extra credit.”
“Should have taken Chinese like I told you to.” Jieqiong mutters. “I could have helped you with that.”
“That was five years ago! You aren’t even in college now.”
“And you aren't performing with me.” Jieqiong replies. Eunwoo opens to respond but is struck silent. It would be a lie to say that didn’t hurt. What else could she say? I’m sorry I couldn’t do it? I miss you, too?
They let the silence last a little longer.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“It’s alright.” Jieqiong says. After a few beats, she continues. “I just wished you could have stayed, that’s all.”
“I think I have your address memorised.” Jieqiong tells her as they walk to the bathroom, Eunwoo’s arm around her shoulder and her waist. She hiccups. “I don’t even know why I have it memorised. I can’t even memorise my lines like this.”
“You smell gross.” Eunwoo wrinkles her nose. “Shower. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
She wakes up with Jieqiong next to her for the very first time three months later, towards the close of the year, finally able to catch her before the inevitable pilgrimage back to her own disconnected world of bright lights and unending glamour. Jieqiong no longer consistently leaves at the crack of dawn but she still never stays past noon. Eunwoo either wakes up to her gone or shuffling around the room outside, the domesticity of which a new breed of pain in its own right. This too, then, will be a new monster to tackle.
Jieqiong had always been attractive. In a period of time long past Eunwoo had been all too familiar with every facial feature. She had traced the slope of her brows and the bridge of her nose with brushes of every quality and kind. A change in lighting and Jieqiong could shift to match her demeanour perfectly with the intended mood. Now, watching the way Jieqiong's chest rises and falls with each breath and the way the sunlight streams in to highlight her body in just the right way, Eunwoo equally as fond.
She traces the same features with her eyes and memorises the way Jieqiong’s hair falls gently over her face before brushing the strands gently to the side, fights her own embarrassment with the insistence that she might never get this chance again, ever. Words crawl up once more, rest on the tip of her tongue and threaten to spill. Eunwoo tries to let them out as softly as she can lest she suffocate and drown.
It stills her anyway, the action of releasing the affection she had held so silently and finally made known to the rest of the world. The barest whisper of the words “I love you."
For a moment Jieqiong seems to still as well and pure, unadulterated panic drives itself in, halts her hands and her breath and her thoughts until the younger girl finally, finally takes another deep breath and the cycle begins again. Eunwoo exhales.
I’m sorry, she adds on mentally, resumes her actions with a resigned calm. I love you, I do.
She comes back from the bathroom fifteen minutes later to the younger girl in the kitchen preparing a cup of tea. Their eyes meet and Jieqiong holds out a mug, gives her a soft smile that isn’t quite enough to mask the expression underneath.
Half a year passes.
“Your pitch is too low. You need to project your voice from here, not there.” Eunwoo holds her by the waist, gently pulling her back into position. Jieqiong groans.
“Can we take a break?” She tries. A sigh fills her ear but the hands relent nonetheless, allow Jieqiong to grin and slip back to rest in a lazy embrace. “Five minutes. Five!”
“Five,” She agrees, wonders whether she should tell Jieqiong her college application was accepted two days ago and she will have to leave in three. “If we finish early the vocal instructor might let us off for lunch.”
“If we finish early we can practice the dance I told you about!” Jieqiong turns around to face her, gleeful at the enduring smile Eunwoo can’t help but give her in return. “It could be our next evaluation piece. I’ll treat you to lunch."
“Sorry about this,” Jieqiong stumbles in again. Eunwoo catches her mid-breath, holds the girl upright and lets her nuzzle into her neck. This time, the fabric turns wet. “Sorry I took six months. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Eunwoo whispers. She wonders if Jieqiong had thought about this moment half as much as she had. If Jieqiong had sat in a different room and looked up to the sky and thought about it all the same. “Hey, it’s fine, it’s okay. We can get you cleaned up—"
“I miss you so much,” Jieqiong whispers into her ear, just before Eunwoo sets her down on her bed. She remembers how Jieqiong is just a google search away. It must be much harder to keep up with some random college student with a music major by comparison. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Hurting me?” Eunwoo furrows her brow. She thinks of every day spent waiting and the time wasted away with Jieqiong on the screen, Jieqiong in her mind. She reaches out to wipe away tears. “I—”
“Don’t say I haven’t. I know I have.” Jieqiong grabs her hand, tugs her closer until their breaths mingle and Eunwoo realises now that Jieqiong isn’t drunk. She doesn’t smell like alcohol or light perfume, there is no makeup to wipe off her face. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this. I love you too.”
And time stills. Eunwoo feels the words like a punch to her gut, feels like someone has suddenly plastered a burning wound with ice as she slowly unpacks what they mean. She blinks. “You do?”
“Oh,” Jieqiong scoffs and gives a tiny laugh, rolls her eyes even as another tear follows the tracks down her face and she’s missed this banter so much it hurts. Even now, she is beautiful. “You’re so slow. Of course I do. I always have.”
She wakes up to the smell of toast and tea but Jieqiong is not in the kitchen. Instead, she is seated next to Eunwoo on the bed with a stack of post-its in her hands. Her hair is brushed and falling to one side, knees drawn up to her face, gentle and soft in the way she reads them and adjusts herself to a suitable eye level upon the realisation that the older girl is awake.
“Hi.” Eunwoo says, not because she wants to sound poetic. She can’t think of anything else to say.
“Hey,” She grins, and Eunwoo wants nothing more than to kiss her breathless. “I have nothing on today. Or tomorrow.”
This relationship is running on borrowed time. There is so much more to work out — so many more obstacles to overcome and hardships to suffer and so many more things to do but for now, this will have to do.
And when Eunwoo finally pushes forward moments later, hands rising to meet soft cheeks as Jieqiong whimpers and twines her fingers into soft hair, she understands. Though this is not the happy end they had both hoped for it is enough. Whatever hardships come forth next they will endure together, like they used to do. Like clockwork, the cycle begins and ends again.
She wakes the next night to the sounds of rustling, shuffling and mumbling but doesn’t get up to open the door. This time, silhouette illuinated just enough by moonlight cutting through the dark, she can see Jieqiong returning with a glass of water.
this was SO DIFFICULT but with the recent fic drought...you know i had to do it to 'em dot mp3
sorry for the ending i got tired of writing this real quick but i, the biggest idiot sandwich, am refusing to post it anytime past 28/5 ... was tempted to end this in angst like idol!aus do but this fandom is dry enough jhfdjhfjfh also this idea was conceived nov 2017
come find me at @wooeuns on twitter to chat or tell me how bad this was in the comments or here !! either way...hope someone out there enjoyed this take it as a present for the beginning of pristin v
thanks to bigeunbi and kiwi for proofreading and validating me by telling me this is good...my best one yet...my loudest yeet ever..
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