Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

- John Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn

To start with, there was a look. The sort of look lovers give each other when they think no one is looking. Intimate without elaborating, unwavering, conspiratorial. It is the promise of despair, the tide coming and going, the roar of the waves hitting the shore. All in one fleeting look, so quick and gone in a moment so you might scarcely believe it was ever directed towards you. But it was, and Suho knew it.

Chunae was an intern, fresh off of her third year in a commerce degree with a major in accounting. She was summering, in the most ironic sense of the verb, at the office of a mid-tier accounting firm. Her desk was two away from Suho’s, and he had barely even noticed her at all. One thing every employee going into the third year at a job will understand is that once you hit the second year, the staff begins to blur into an amorphous mass. It is constantly replenishing itself without much interference or acknowledgement of any long-time employees, so it is left alone and unthought of. This was especially true of a summer intern, who was so low in the tier that to even be seen sitting still in the office was tantamount to the greatest insult. Interns were always to be busy, whether that was getting coffee at the local chain joint, or filing various accounts and invoices. There was always work to be done, and even Suho was busy.  

In the office, he liked to keep to himself. He wasn’t exactly antisocial, but he liked to work quickly and efficiently, and he saw socialisation as an impediment to this goal. As such, office banter and jokes often flew quite literally over his head and desk. It didn’t matter to him, he was comfortable into his own relative anonymity. Like a piece in a puzzle, or a cog in a machine, he simply existed to fit a greater whole. He did not need to believe that he had to be the same person inside and outside of work, because it simply didn't matter. After spending years in the same spot, doing the same tasks, day in and day out, questions of identity and purpose slipped away. This was adulthood, pure and simple, and Suho had let it eat him until he could not answer a simple question like, ‘What do you do for fun?’.

It was summer, and most of the time sunlight fell through the windows and bathed the open-plan office space in its coquettish glow. Suho felt like complaining and suggesting the installation of blinds, but two days later it was raining and everything changed.  

Today, there was a party. After work drinks framed or justified by the celebration of the birthday of a coworker whose face Suho couldn't put a name to. He hadn't been feeling very festive, but his lack of plans and excuses compelled him to make a show of going along. He knew a few names, but the rest of the time he simply was content to sip his gin and tonic and make casual conversation with whoever was nearby. After a while, the conversations seemed to come easier and he began to enjoy himself. That was when Suho knew he had hit the sweet spot with his gin intake. Most of the time, he was a man of sense and structure but when it came to drinking, these traits were noticeably absent, and he would often lose track of how much he had had through the night. Feeling the urge to leave the crowded bar for a moment, he headed for the bathrooms.

One of the nice things about being twenty-five, or about being Kim Suho, was that three weeks of late nights at work and early starts, combined with intermittent nights of epic drinking with his friends, didn't do much visible damage to his face. As he stared into the dimly-lit bathroom mirror, he was entranced by his own features, which appeared more foreign to him the more he stared. He ran his hands through his hair, finger combing it back into its previous style where strands had hung out of place. Except for a slight puffiness around his eyes that came with the exhaustion, he looked like the same person. The symmetries of his face - the straight nose, the soft jawline and cheekbones - were almost mathematical in their precision. Only the slight furrow in his brow gave evidence of the slightly anxious person that Suho felt himself, intrinsically, to be. Comforted by the familiarity and yet confused by his own strangeness, and at how the more he stared at himself the less he could see, Suho paced shakily out of the bathrooms.

As he rounded the darkened corner back into the main space, he felt himself collide with a smaller body. Instinctively grabbing onto the person to steady them, he peered down, his senses damped and slowed by the alcohol. Unaware to him, his hands continued to softly grip the elbows of the girl whose eyes he now met.

She seemed shaken, like she had seen a ghost, and Suho felt a vague concern which he had not the sense to voice in a coherent way. He wondered if he was the ghost, but felt that his presence was as benign as could be.

‘Did I scare you?’ he murmured, his voice smooth, as though all his imperfections and idiosyncrasies had been wiped away by the alcohol.

She considered a moment. ‘You’re not exactly scary,’ she said.

He accepted this good-naturedly, not having the capacity in the moment to fully unpack the loaded statement. ‘Right, more like scared. Actually, I’m hiding.’ If he really focussed, her could see that she was beautiful. Not in the way that it would be obvious to anyone who saw her. It was the sort of beauty that made itself known in subtle ways, through the soft curve of her lips, the dark lustre of her straight black hair, or the somberness of her eyes, which held yours like they were trying to convey untold secrets. He did not recognise her, but felt like he should. He supposed that they worked in the same office, for it was unlikely that anyone else but his co-workers had packed into the tiny, boutique bar.

‘Do you usually come to parties to hide?’ she asked.

‘Parties bring my misanthropy into focus,’ Suho said, ‘Why are you out here?’

‘Same reason,’ she said, surprising Suho by laughing, a rich tone that was unashamed of its own loud amusement, completely unapologetic. He was entranced, like a fool. It was always unexpected when he found himself liking someone. It was as if his mind was shocked, bewildered by its own sudden attachment, at the space it now had to reserve for another in its thoughts. But surely, as he was living and breathing, and blinking rapidly like a confused child in the wake of his first crush. As an adult, he knew the feeling, but it was always unexpected.

Shortly after learning that the girl’s name was Chunae, Suho watched her melt back into the crowd, wishing the moment between them had lasted longer. He was interested in her, like you might take interest in something you know nothing about. He felt somehow ignorant, like there was much to learn and he was a student. But he would see her at work, he told himself, and the thought comforted him.

As he too returned to the crowd, he felt him ease back into the persona of work. His addled mind left the moment between him and the girl behind, so far behind that a part of him thought maybe he might forget their interaction altogether. In a way, he didn’t mind if that happened. Feelings hurt, whether they were reciprocated or not. He wanted nothing more than to keep his head down and live a perfectly forgettable life, to be a perfectly forgettable person. But at the same time, a part of him dared himself to do more. And so he felt trapped between two desires, and simply decided that the end of the night and the dawn of a new day would decide for itself.

The night outside was balmy when he left, and the cigarette sparked alight as he drew his first breath from it. Leaning against the alleyway wall outside the bar, he felt he could play the moody lead in a film noir. Smirking experimentally, as though wanting to test whether the image he was constructing could be played out in any other way, he blew the smoke out through the side of his mouth and watched it dissipate into the darkness. All he needed was a dishevelled suit, he mused, and the look would be complete. He was waiting for a taxi, but it was a Friday night, so he wasn't in any real rush. His hair was back in his eyes again, and he reached nonchalantly back up to adjust it.

If his life was a film noir, he would be the cynical private detective amongst the fatalistic urban jungle, and things would look a lot different right now. But as it was, his existence was beginning to look fairly comical and Shakespearean: He was an accountant, who had developed emotions, but had the emotional control of an inanimate object, and was also regrettably very drunk. Being alone, outside and waiting to depart, didn't end this romantic farce, but it certainly got Suho offstage.

But there had been a look, he was certain of it. Chunae had looked at him like that. A flash of brightness in the blur, a moment of humanity among the pretence. And tomorrow, maybe he would remember it.

A/N: This is another installment in our Universe series, it'll have a slightly different style of writing than the other fics - so we hope you enjoy!