02: fade to black

“Dude, I saw your Snapchat.” Vernon’s whisper is more so of a loud speaking voice than it is a whisper. “Who gets wasted on a Monday night?”

“Apparently people who get a 39 on the first exam of the year.”

Mingyu frowns at the new voice and tilts his head upward to meet the disapproving gaze of Wonwoo and the open mouth of Vernon.

“What gets a 39?” Vernon quotes Mingyu’s quote from the day before, and the latter goes back to pressing his warm forehead against his cold textbook. “That was you? You got a 39?” Although Mingyu can’t see anyone in the darkness he makes against his head and textbook, he knows that people have begun to stare. “What the hell? Hey!”

Vernon’s shoves manage to get Mingyu leaning against his fist with a scowl. “Shut up.”

“Shut up?” Wonwoo seats himself in front of Mingyu. “It’s literally only a few weeks into the year. You’re not going to manage to get through third year with grades like these.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine!” Vernon shoves Mingyu again, and the latter is still too dizzy to do anything as retaliation. “How can we be Choi, Jeon, Kim and Associates if Kim isn’t a lawyer?”

“We were illegally drunk when we talked about that,” Mingyu grumbles. His friends have a knack of remembering things they shouldn’t be and forgetting things that they should really not forget. “It’s just a joke, okay? Like me.”

“Hey, you’re not a joke.” Wonwoo grabs Mingyu by his shirt collar and shakes him a little. “Listen to me. We can still make this up. I can help you study for tomorrow’s quiz and next week’s exam.”

Mingyu sighs loudly. His own breath still smells like tequila—an added dash of salt to a throbbing cut. It’s as if Wonwoo wants to fix a broken wall with a piece of duct tape. “There’s no point, okay? I’m going to fail. And you know what, I’m going to be okay with that.”

“The ?” Vernon can’t control his loud mouth, and the librarian strides over to their table.

“Listen up, young man. I have had it with your constant—”

“We’re leaving.” Wonwoo holds his hand up to stop the librarian from further scolding. He then grabs Mingyu by the arm and pulls him up. “Come on, Vernon.”

Vernon closes his mouth and huffs as he follows Wonwoo’s lead.

“What’s up with you, man?” Wonwoo has to hold Mingyu by the arm since the latter is still too wobbly to walk in straight lines. “What happened to the dream? Our dream?”

Mingyu scoffs. Dream. Our dream. “I told you, okay? I was never that interested in becoming a lawyer, okay? I want to be a filmmaker. I only did this because my mom wanted me to.”

“And your mom is ing poor, dude.” Wonwoo shoves Mingyu against the wall. They have only made it past the library doors, so people coming and going stare as they walk. “Like mine, she had big dreams for their son. We can’t let them down. You can’t let her down.”

Mingyu tries to maintain eye contact with Wonwoo, but his head is still spinning from last night’s drinks.

“Hey guys, come on.” Vernon tugs at Wonwoo’s sleeve. He looks around at the passing eyes of other people. “Why don’t we just go to Gyu’s place and watch him as he studies?”

“No,” Mingyu immediately objects. The idea of doing something as foolish as studying repulses him. “I’m not going to study—”

“That’s a great idea,” Wonwoo interjects. He throws a disapproving glare at Mingyu. “Come on, loser.”

- - - - -

When Mingyu leads the way to his apartment, he thinks to himself that his new neighbor might still have boxes outsider her door, but to his surprise, there are none. Very carefully, he looks at the chipping paint of her door and wonders how she moved everything so quickly.

“Someone new move in?” Vernon catches Mingyu looking at the door.

“Yeah,” Mingyu ponders out loud, “but I don’t know really know who she is.”

Vernon’s voice perks up. “She? Is she hot?”

Mingyu shrugs and opens his door to reveal his messy and rather bare apartment. It’s 300 square feet of space, but he still has trouble filling it up with things. In one corner is a foldable table he bought for five dollars at a garage sale all the way in Brooklyn, by the door is a neat row of all two pairs of his shoes, by the window is a plastic chair he found on the street, beside an empty closet is a shelf he stole from Ikea—filled with all 17 books he owns, and by the window is the couch his old neighbor gave to him.

Vernon and Wonwoo have the same thing at their own apartments, so neither of them make a comment about Mingyu’s things—or lack thereof. In fact, Vernon quips up with nice couch because his apartment only has stools (but he does have a TV).

Wonwoo throws his backpack onto the couch and heads for the kitchen space.

“I’ll get snacks.”

Vernon unwraps the plastic mat that Mingyu brought from the Dollar Tree store so he has a place to sit on the floor. That boy likes to lay down when he’s studying for some reason, and the couch isn’t big enough for that.

“Hey, Gyu?” Wonwoo doesn’t have to shout since the kitchen is so close, and there’s only a counter instead of walls. “Why do you only have leaves and half a chicken in your fridge?”

“He has a live chicken?” Vernon curls up in curiosity. “Where?”

“What? No.” Wonwoo scoffs and takes the bag of spinach Mingyu has out of the fridge and holds up in the air like a dirty pair of underwear. “But what is this? Why do you have a random bag of leaves?”

“It’s called breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Mingyu rolls his eyes and s his backpack.

“Breakfast, lunch, and dinner?” Vernon mumbles, and Mingyu hears it.

The past few weeks have not been great, Mingyu can say, but he doesn’t. His friends have enough on their plate, and talking about it is highly unfavorable. As binding as it is to have people who can empathize with the sullenness of chipping paint and stale bread, it is also disgustingly numbing, and no one would rather talk about it. Besides, it’s not like it matters.

“Whatever, dude. At least get lettuce and some kale. And get more fruits. Also—a better variety of meat.” Wonwoo comes back from the kitchen with a bowl of grapes. “You can’t be eating such a careless diet without enough electrolytes and protein.” He pops a grape in his mouth, takes a bite, and makes a face. “At least get seedless grapes too.”

“Whatever.” Mingyu brushes it off. (In reality, he feels sorry for himself because seedless grapes cost more by the gram and are also significantly smaller.) “I thought we were going to study and not talk about my living situation.”

“That’s right,” Vernon quips. “Come on. Open your book to page 78. What was the precedent that came out of Miranda v. Arizona?”

Mingyu scoffs. “That’s too easy.”

“What is it then?” Wonwoo challenges. “Entertain me.”

At that, Mingyu tenses up, and he can’t exactly remember. He knows it’s something about police officers…or something.

Vernon shoves him by the shoulder, and Wonwoo laughs. “I thought so.”

- - - - -

Mingyu wakes up at 5:30 every morning.

For a few hours, the sun rises in such a way that his fire escape is doused in sunlight. It is during this time that he takes his plants from the windowsills in the kitchen to the ones in front of fire escape so that they can have their share of the sun. By noon, the sun goes back to streaming in through the kitchen, so he has to make sure to place them back there.

After he places the small, five-centimeter tall pot with only a few saplings in it by the windowsill, Mingyu opens the window and seats himself there to watch the shadows of cars below change as the sun slowly rises from the horizon.

There are already cars honking in the distance, and some of his other neighbors have begun their day too.

Only a few minutes of white noise have passed by when Mingyu’s ears perk up at the sound of a woman of crying. At first, it’s subtle. It might be a soap opera on someone’s TV. But it doesn’t go away. Not after five minutes and not after 20. Curious, he looks around him to see where the source is. Below him, Dean’s fire escape is still empty. Above him, Mrs. Park isn’t sitting and reading her newspaper. So, he looks to the left—towards his new neighbor’s window.

Her curtains are open, and once Mingyu cranes his neck, he can see her crouched down against a few boxes. She holds a phone to her ear as her shoulders shake like she was sobbing. Slowly, she raises her head from the box she was leaning on, and her black hair moves away from her face but sticks to parts of her temple.

DING!

Mingyu falls backward into his apartment. He doesn’t care if his neighbor saw him or not; he crawls on the floor to silence the alarm of his phone.

It’s 6:00 already. He needs to get ready to do today’s Saturday chores.

- - - - -

“ my life, my life, my life…” Mingyu wishes he could take the email into his own hands, crumple it up, dump it in the trash, and set the trash on fire. But it’s an email. Emails can’t be burned, and the satisfaction of emptying a virtual trash bin is nowhere close to the satisfaction of watching cinders fall. Not only that, it’s an email he needs if he wants to get into film school.

If.

He needs to make a short film. It needs to be about what happens “behind closed doors.” The due date is late June.

The only camera he owns is the one on his phone. Nothing happens behind the chipping paint of his door. Granted, it is only September, but time goes by quickly. Last year and the year before that, the film school only accepted portfolios of older work, and though years and years had gone, Mingyu still had nothing to show.

“ my life,” he curses one last time.

Mingyu sighs loudly and tries to stretch his legs, but his legs dangle off the edge of his small bed. His mother raised him to think of the positives in every bad situation, but he can honestly think of no positivity in this predicament. In frustration he walks out to his living room and throws his slipper at the wall. After the paint on the wall chips even more, he sighs again and heads out to the fire escape for a fresh breath of air.

A floor below, Dean is smoking.

The sun is setting, but Dean is still wearing sunglasses that look like they have mirrors for lenses.

“Want a smoke?”

Dean asks that every time, and every time, Mingyu says no, he doesn’t want to get his lungs dirty. For some reason, however, Dean still asks, and Mingyu really doesn’t mind the smell of smoke. What he does mind is how it makes his eyes watery (but it’s not like he not used to having watery eyes—especially after nights of studying).

“You working on new music?” Mingyu walks down the metal steps of the fire escape, closer towards Dean, into the gray blanket of smoke.

“Nah.” Dean takes a long drag of his cigarette. “Just trying to get inspo, though. What about you? You never come down here unless you’re sad or something.” He spares Mingyu a glance from under his black locks. “You sad or something?”

Mingyu shakes his head. “Angry.”

Dean nods in response and specks of ash fall out from his cigarette. He taps it against the railing of the fire escape. “You can’t do that too long without at least telling someone about it. What’s wrong?”

“Ah, just film school stuff.”

“Film school?” Dean takes off his sunglasses and blows a few smoke rings into the air between them. “What the hell are you talking about film school for? I thought it was your dream.”

“Yeah, I mean, I still have to get in.”

“You haven’t gotten into film school yet?” Dean coughs, and Mingyu imagines his lungs to be covered in black flowers. “I thought you got in like two years ago. What the have you been doing then?” He takes another drag. “Don’t tell me you’re still hanging out with those dumb friends of yours.”

“They’re not es.”

“I’m not saying they are. I’m saying that they’re dumb friends, though. Don’t they know you want to shoot scenes or whatever?”

“Yeah, but… It’s not that simple.” Mingyu bites his lip and glances across the street onto the other apartment building. Half of the lights are on and half are turned off. Perhaps in the window adjacent from his is exactly someone like him. Half of a human, more of like a walking disappointment than a person. “I have to be a lawyer. My mom sacrificed everything keeping me in the states. I have to give her this at least.”

“You don’t owe her , though, you know that, right?”

“She gave birth to me.”

“Ugh.” Dean’s gag turns into a cough. “I’m not talking about that. I get that she’s your mother and all, but you can’t keep going back and forth like this. Are you trying to live the life you mother wants for you or the life that you want? Choose a path. Your path.”

“I don’t know.” Mingyu shrugs. “It’s not that easy.”

“Sure, it isn’t.” Dean flicks the of his cigarette over the railing where it inexplicably lands in someone’s hood. “So, why’re you mad again? How can you be mad about film school if you’re not even in film school?”

“That’s the thing. To get it, I need to submit a short film.” Mingyu leans on the railing and stares forward at the apartment building across the street. In his head, it looks like something out of a movie. His movie, if he could ever be a director. “It has to be about ‘behind closed doors,’ though, which is why I’m ed. Nothing interesting ever happens in my life.”

“Well, why can’t you film that dumb friend of yours? Vernon? He looks like he leads an interesting life.”

“No, the most interesting thing he does is play with his antenna so he can try to reach channels other than Fox.”

“What about that other one then? Or what’s wrong with your life?”

“Dean,” Mingyu appreciates the help, but it’s not really “help” if it’s not helping him. “I’m telling you. The most interesting thing that’s ever happened in my life is watching Immigration and Customs take my mom away from me.”

“Oh .” Dean whistles. He lightly shoves Mingyu, but it’s not enough for the latter to actually budge. “Don’t tell me depressing like that. , man.”

Mingyu smirks at Dean’s reaction. Although Dean isn’t much older than he is, Mingyu feel as if it’s him that’s the elder. “You know how it is. How about I film you? You’re a singer, aren’t you?”

“Nah.” Dean scoffs. “All I do is sit in my room all day. Stare the wall. Think of high school. About that girl who looked at me once. Write a song about it. Post it on Soundcloud to see people comment ‘nice.’ Maybe earn a few bucks at the club. But nah, I’m not a singer. You wouldn’t get in if you submitted a film about me.”

“Well, I would have a better chance than submitting nothing.”

Dean cackles. “True.”

Cars pass by, people yellow, a light goes out in the building across, and Dean coughs again.

“What about that new girl?”

Mingyu frowns. “New girl? What new girl? The show?”

“No, not some chick flick.” Dean groans at Mingyu’s thoughts. “I’m taking about the girl that moved in next to you last week. She seems interesting. I saw her wearing a big, fancy ring. I think she might be someone’s sugar baby.”

“So what makes you think that she’ll let me film her?”

“I don’t know.” Dean scowls at the direction of Mingyu and glances up and down. “You’re tall, handsome as , and pretty young too—way young, actually. A lot of women are into that, if you haven’t noticed. I’m sure she prefers young guys who get hard in seconds over old s who need pills.”

Mingyu grins at Dean’s compliment (or is it?). “You’ve seen her around, though? I only saw her once, and I was too drunk to remember what she looked like.”

“Oh yeah.” Dean whistles again, and a woman a few fire escapes away takes notice. “Shut up, you !” Dean yells to the blonde. “You’re ugly as hell. Jesus can me in the the day I think you’re pretty enough to catcall.”

Mingyu peeks from behind Dean and catches a glimpse of Jennie Kim—the snarky tenant who makes a living off hairdressing and other suspicious activities—with wide open. For a moment, he thinks about making her the subject of his film, but then he remembers she hates his existence (for what reason, he’ll never know). Regrets fill Mingyu because Jennie is a pretty girl, and he’s sure that she does interesting things from a day to day basis.

“What was I saying?” Dean frowns, trying to recall. “Oh yeah, the new girl. She’s a ing goddess, man. A little small in some places, but just right, you feel?”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says though he doesn’t “feel” it at all. “You mean to say that she’s pretty.”

“I wonder what her deal is, though. Pretty girls with expensive jewelry don’t just show up in janky neighborhoods for no reason.”

Something goes off in Mingyu’s head. Something about backstories. “A shot in the dark. Why do you think she’s here?”

Dean scoffs and spits over the railing. “To prove something.” He turns his head to meet Mingyu’s gaze. His eyes are tired, and Mingyu has to wonder if his neighbor is secretly dealing with other stresses besides an unsteady musical career. “Girls like that always have a statement to make. She’s probably trying to win a bet with her other rich friends.”

Mingyu purses his lips. The suggestion sounds like an absurd one, but he knows nothing about rich people and rich people behaviors, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“But,” he says after a momentary silence of passing cars, “why here?”

“To hell if know.” Dean shrugs. “Girls are ed. That’s not to say that guys aren’t either, but they’re hella ed. I’m scared of them, actually.”

Mingyu laughs at Dean’s remarks, and the two end the conversation with slaps on the back and another dismissed offer for a cigarette. When Mingyu returns to his apartment, a feeling of overwhelming loneliness suffocates him and forces him to sleep with a blanket of his darkness over his eyes. In the morning, he knows that his jacket will be wrinkled from him sleeping in it during the night, but it’s much better than dying of hypothermia. And it’ll help him fall asleep—help him escape that cage of nightly hopelessness.

- - - - -

“You better ing study this time.”

“Yeah, I know, dad.”

“ you, bro.”

Mingyu hangs up the phone on Wonwoo so he can actually start studying. Tomorrow is the day of yet another exam covering certain historical precedents, and his memory isn’t the best. Unfortunately, when Mingyu leans over to turn on the lamp to illuminate the room, no light comes forth.

He forgot that he hasn’t replaced it yet.

Normally, he would have just gone to the store to buy a new one, but he already spent his week’s money on buying breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He can steal one, but he’d rather not risk the chance of getting arrested; he barely got off with a warning last time. Mingyu glances at the window in answer. The sun is already low in the horizon, and darkness will set in soon.

It’s not a problem.

Mingyu walks over to his small bathroom and flicks on the light there. The space is not ideal for studying since he has to stretch his legs every once in a while, but it works. There is a toilet he can use as a seat, and the counter beside it with the sink provides a place for him to place his papers. In addition, the lighting is bright.

A few minutes of quiet quizzing and flipping through flashcards pass by when Mingyu hears his neighbor—the mysterious lady who moved in just a few weeks ago—turn on her shower. The walls aren’t the thickest, so he can hear her twist the squeaking knobs of the shower, the sound of her shoving the curtains, and the water beginning to flow.

The water sounds like it fills half the tub before someone on the other side sighs loudly with exaggeration.

Mingyu scoffs, knowing how it is. On his first day in apartment 1104, he couldn’t figure out for the life of him how to turn on the hot water. There was a hot water knob no actual hot water. To make matters worse, the landlord was a phone call away, and Mingyu was not yet that fluent in English to understand fast New Yorker speech. So, in his frustration, he would buy packs of crayons (candles were and are still somehow quite expensive, and it wasn’t like he was about to waste money on a gas stove), wicks, and heat up his own water—with fire.

It seems like his new neighbor hasn’t figured out how to summon the hot water.

Mingyu places his books on the counter to his right, leans over to his left where his shower is, and knocks a few times—not too loudly, of course. But in a loud voice he says, “You have to jiggle the hot water knob until it’s basically loose because the piping is old.”

There is nothing but silence on the other side, so Mingyu assumes that she went off to call the landlord.

Three hours, a hundred vocabulary terms half-memorized, and two muscle cramps later, someone knocks on the wall.

“Thank you,” a small voice on the other side says.

Mingyu, with his eyes ready to fail him, manages half a smile. “It’s not a problem.”

- - - - -

Please don’t be me. Please don’t be me. Please don’t be me.

Mingyu flips over his exam, expecting it to have a 29 in bold red pen since the professor said that was the lowest test score in the class. To his surprise, however, the numbers are nowhere near 29. In fact, he has a 72.

“Well, me,” Vernon mumbles beside Mingyu. When Mingyu glances over towards his friend, he bites back the urge to snicker. The tables have turned, and it is now Vernon with the lowest exam grade.

“It’s okay. There’s still a next time.” Mingyu wants to feel sad with Vernon, but he can’t bring himself to feel any other way than happy. This is the first time all year that he hasn’t failed a test or quiz. “I can help you study.”

“No, you can’t. After this, there is no hope.”

Mingyu snickers at Vernon’s sudden change of outlook. “Come over sometime.”

When the professor dismisses class, Wonwoo saunters to them from his seat at the very front and smacks his papers on Mingyu’s desk. He exposes his exam grade to Mingyu and Vernon, and Mingyu gasps while Vernon whines. As expected, Wonwoo, the prodigy and teacher’s pet, managed to snag the top score. 99.

“What’d you losers get?” Wonwoo snatches Mingyu’s paper and nods in approval. It’s a rare sight and warms Mingyu’s heart. “I told you,” he glances up at Mingyu, “that studying helps.” He takes Vernon’s paper. “Oh god.”

“ off. I had a tough week, okay?” Vernon rubs his head and snatches the paper back. He shoves it into his bag and stands up.

“Everyone’s had a tough week,” Wonwoo says. He and Mingyu hurry their steps to catch up with Vernon’s strides. “There was a power outage at my place at around 3AM. You know how inconvenient that is? I couldn’t even go outside to use the damn sun. I had to pull up a word document on my laptop and blind myself for light.”

“And I had to use my bathroom light since my lamp wouldn’t turn on,” Mingyu pipes up expecting a laugh, but Wonwoo frowns, and Vernon only shakes his head, still wallowing in his own sadness.

“You guys don’t understand, okay?” Vernon shoves past other students. “I lost my job, so you know what that means.”

By this point, the overflow of walking students has thinned, so standing in the middle of the hallway isn’t disruptive. Vernon’s shoulders sink, and he heaves great breaths in and out…in and out. A silence fills the gaps between them.

Mingyu knows all too well the struggle of being employed. Last year, he lost his job at the laundromat because he forgot to clean the lint filter for one of the dryers and unwittingly caused a fire. That was the same day he seriously contemplated going to the Brooklyn Bridge and jumping off. He couldn’t imagine what he’d do. Death, however, sounded a lot better than being homeless without even a college degree. Looking back, he could have probably just asked Wonwoo or Vernon for a place to stay, but after another few minutes of contemplation, Mingyu decided that death was better than becoming a burden to a brother.

“Drugs?” Wonwoo whispers to Vernon and places his hand on his shoulder.

Mingyu swallows. Again, he knows it all too well. “Package delivering” is popular with immigrants with like him because it’s easy, and everyone assumes they don’t speak English to understand the consequences of being caught.

“No,” Vernon answers. He turns back to his friends. The dark circles under his eyes don’t match his usually fair complexion. “But I wish.”

“You wish you were a drug delivery boy?” Wonwoo says in a loud whisper. “What the ?”

“Just shut up. Let’s go study or something.” Vernon waves them off.

As Vernon walks down the hallway, Mingyu and Wonwoo follow wordlessly. Mingyu’s concern for his friend stretches through every existing medium and dimension, but the impact of his worries can only so far. It takes two to get through.

“Hey, man?” Wonwoo grabs Mingyu’s arm suddenly. Mingyu looks over to his friend’s stoic expression. “What you were saying back there,” he motions to the hallway they have just existed, “was any of that… Do you mean it? You’re studying in your bathroom?”

Mingyu shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Really?” Wonwoo’s voice is a lot somber than it was a few minutes ago. “You’re sitting on your toilet and just…studying?”

“Yeah?”

“Ugh, dude.” Wonwoo shakes his head and rolls his eyes. He takes something out of his jacket pocket and shoves it into Mingyu’s. Mingyu takes it back out and sees that it’s a five-dollar bill. Confused, he glances up at Wonwoo’s now stoic expression.

“Uh, what’s this for?”

Wonwoo stares forward—away from Mingyu’s eyes. “Buy a new lightbulb, Gyu. Your bathroom is too small for your legs.”

Mingyu is glad that his skin is tan. It makes the embarrassed sort of blush covering his cheeks less visible.

- - - - -

What Mingyu likes best about Koreatown in New York is that a lot of the locals there can understand him. Besides the fact that he can speak to them in his native language, the restaurant owners identify with his struggles of being poor and immigrant in America. They give him discounts, sometimes he eats for free, and he always has someone who talks to him.

“Eat more, son,” Mr. Lee tells Mingyu as he eats a dish of jjambbong (or as regular Americans know it, a spicy seafood stew). “Have you been eating well?”

Mingyu shakes his head. The last time he remembers eating something hot had to be at least a month ago. Since his last visit at Mr. Lee’s restaurant, he has only been eating salad with bits of turkey or chicken. “Thank you