Tao

                It was just the way I liked it: utterly quiet. One could hear the faint puttering of my heart beat from the seat in the last row.  The delicate morning breeze pushing the clouds along was singing through the walls and into the hush.

                Unfortunately, the silence would not last much longer.

                I tucked a pencil behind my ear and grabbed my materials. I laid out as many paintbrushes as I could on the table but I refused to give them paint, yet. They would have to learn the basics, first.  Those barbarians would not be able to paint a slab of wood without intense guidance; it had yet to be accomplished in my four years here.

                Let’s just say I’ve lost my patience for actors. I had hoped to find one-just one- with common sense. Rather, I’ve found hundreds with a lack thereof.

                Acting is considered an art, but I’ll ask myself where there are artists in my midst?  I’ve observed a sort of trotting around on stage to be a normal happening, especially while the actor gargles an embarrassing monologue about some nonsense.

                By itself, there is no art. Without me, there is no art. I am the artist; they are just part of my canvas.  But, when the canvas, the actors fill into my theater screeching like owls and snorting like pigs, what am I supposed to do? My mind freezes up and I reach for the bottle of pain-killers, yet often those don’t even ease the pain.

                How do these types of monsters exist? They’re only here for my annoyance. Bring in the true artists; bring them in now!

                The rest of my followers congregated behind me, eyeing the assembly of pests in the audience. I had taught them well; glare at the underlings as they are below us. We are those who control the theatre. We manage the lights, the sounds, the set, everything. I can personally take away anyone’s spotlight with just one word. It’s all at my fingertips; they are merely my puppets.

                The boy to my right handed me a microphone. I cleared my throat and transformed into a smiling dimwit, “Good morning, my friends, it’s nice to know that you all care about theatre so much that you’d put in your time this morning to help. I’m sure that each and every one of you will be a big help.”

                Inside my head, I was creating a fantastic speech that would destroy the hopes and dreams of each of these actors, but I didn’t dare say a single word of it. As he walked in the door, late, nothing came out my mouth. I was frozen.

                I dropped the microphone to my side, letting out a whimpered, “He came,” before sinking into an introverted state. Nervously, I flung the device in my hands behind me, to one of the underclassmen. She instructed for all of the actors to come on stage to receive job instructions and the crowd awkwardly started emptying out of the seats and forward through the aisles. He approached; I nearly forgot to breathe as he winked in my direction.

                Now here was a living, breathing artist; Byun Baekhyun was, if not the best, one of the greatest actors to ever walk these halls. He’d been a senior during my freshman year and he’d caught my attention during each and every performance. As I had watched from backstage, I was paralyzed in awe as ordinary words became extraordinary when leaving his lips. I was caught trembling nervously when he exited stage right and asked me for his props. I had become mute in his presence causing him to chuckle.

                He knew he was hot, he knew I thought he was hot, and he knew all the things that would tease me: that wink, as he knew, could set me on fire.

                “Hey handsome,” He purred in my ear, settling his chin on my shoulder and his arms around my waist, “Have any particular jobs you’d like me to do today?” His warm breath collected over my skin and pulled a gasp straight from my lungs, “I’m sure there’s something,” He nibbled on my ear, sending chills down my spine and weakening my knees, “Important that you picked out for me to do?” My whole core crumbled, there, and I nearly toppled to the ground. Had he not grabbed onto my thin waist, I could have collapsed in front of the entire crowd.

                Here I was acting like a girl when I was supposed to be more of an overlord of technical theatre. I had to power through this; I turned around and glared at him to the best of my ability, coldly pulling his hands away from my sides and to his own, “Actually, you’ll be working alongside Jacqueline, today. I cannot afford to deal with your antics, today. Go, now. She’ll find you a screw driver or something and you can do what you do best, lots and lots of screwing.”

                Judging by the amount his jaw dropped, I assumed that I had won this game, for now.

                I grabbed my group of able actors and led them to the row of several ladders, “These,” I proceeded to make them sound like elementary school students, “Will get you to the ceiling. From there, you’ll have to dissemble all the fixtures one at a time with these wrenches laid out here. It’s not too hard, you just turn the knob here to tighten and loosen the grip around the bolt.”

                “Like so,” I took hold of one of the pars and motioned to the area that would eventually need tightening. With the wrench, I carefully adjusted the fixture as though I were doing it up on the ladder, connecting it to the piping and wire that hung above.

                “It might take a few tries before any of you understand, but I reckon eventually you’ll get the hang of it,” I smirked, knowing well what happened every year when I gave a bunch of dumb actors heavy objects and the extra challenge of height: disaster. “Are there any questions?” A couple of them gave me puzzled stares, but there was one hand raised in the back of the group, “Yes?”

                Of course, it had to be him; he was, once again, infringing on my territory. I glowered at his curling fingers as they desperately clawed at the sky. I eventually glanced at his face, something that I had internally sworn not to do for the following reason: I was infatuated with every dip and peak of his dimpled face, particularly as his mockingly brilliant grin broke down my barriers. “Baekhyun, you’re not even supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be over there with the screw drivers.” He pouted, clearly disappointed in my reaction. His eyes grew large and teary so my walls broke down and I surrendered, “Fine, what’s your question?” I braced myself for anything under the sun to come out of his mouth

                “So, Tao,” He sung, “You want it to be tight like that? Are you sure that’s tight enough? Sometimes, what does the trick is strangling it, you know, with the wrench and all.” He was smiling as though he had outwitted me, which at the time I had known nothing about. I’d sighed at his dumb question that he shouldn’t have bothered asking and looked for further ponderings of the other actors. However, all of them seemed to be tied up in an inside joke; a few of them had fallen to the ground, guffawing about something that was probably low-level humor; primitive, most likely.

                Yet, it became impossible to focus on the agenda with the hooting and hollering so I tried to calm them down with whatever means of which I could conjure, “What the hell are you all---“ I felt the blood race to my head as I realized what he had suggested.

                How could this angel of the stage, this nymph of musicality, be so demonic and erted away from the spotlight? He could turn his true personality on and off with the blink of an eye; he could go from charismatic to not so.

                He had some sort of switch that could mysteriously switch the inner beauty, on, but it was hiding. I wanted to see the boy who could control the emotions of an audience, as well as of those behind the curtain- the confused Chinese freshman who had just needed somewhere to be, something to do, someone to admire.

                I was that boy and I’d latched onto Byun Baekhyun as such an idol to admire; was I regretting this decision? The answer was so complicatedly frustrating.

                I thought that I knew everything about the theatre world. I could maneuver my way around a sound system or any lighting structure. I could create a masterpiece out of scrap wood given only a couple of hours and my painting skills were fantastic. For the most part, I even excelled in the exceptionally difficult task of herding the actors. Oddly enough, there was this one kid who I couldn’t seem to control.

                His name is Byun Baekhyun, and I’m so ing tired of his clowning around. This time, I mean business. 

                As I stalked up to him, the actors parted, creating a path leading me to my prey. Snarling, I latched onto his collared shirt and pulled him in close, “You listen and you listen well, Baekhyun, I’m sick and tired of you messing with me and my theatre. You don’t even go here anymore so why the do you even bother showing up? Are you too pathetic to leave the only thing you’ve ever excelled at- theatre- to step into the world, be an adult, and maybe mature a little bit? You’ve ing come back here every year just to lark about and make thoughtless comments as though you’re still wanted here.” I realized, only then, that I’d never shown my raging self to the rest of the program. For the last four years, I’d kept it under control pretty easily, but now, I had erupted, entirely.

                I still couldn’t look him in the eyes, for that would betray all prior intentions. Rather, I set my sights on the wall just behind the boy and pointed at the door, “Out! Get out of my theatre before I ing beat you up. “

                As he retreated, shocked, I murmured, “You see what you do to me, Byun Baekhyun? You make me unpredictable. You make me wild. You make it impossible, even after all of this, to fall out of love with you.”  I touched the tears that clung to my skin, listening to the faintest words of Jacqueline telling me to sit down in the office and let it all out. Cue the emotion.

                I sat there for the rest of the three hours; leaving my theatre in the hands of the technical crew underclassmen wasn’t ideal, but screaming at Baekhyun hadn’t been either; sobbing until I acquired an intense headache was, also, not the best.

                Occasionally, someone would check in on me, whether it was an actor or Jacqueline, herself. The most inspirational talk I’d had was with some new freshman actor who’s name I forgot right as he told me.

                I couldn’t remember his name because I was too busy burning his words into my heart, “Listen to me, Tao. From what I see, you love that older guy, the one who was bothering you. Now, look at you; you’ve severed ties with him for only a couple of hours and you’ve brought yourself to ruin. You need to talk to him.” I shook my head, stubbornly, hoping that the kid would just leave me in my pitiful state, but instead he put his hand on my shoulder, something strangely comforting, “You know he had tears in his eyes as he left the stage. When you screamed at him, you hurt him, Tao.”

                Continuously going through his advice in my head was distracting and it took two hours for me to even realize that the boy had left; I’d been so entranced. Unfortunately, I concluded, he was right; I had publicly humiliated Baekhyun, in front of all of his admirers. I’d probably hurt his pride. I had to talk to him and apologize.

                Patience is something I have no knowledge about, so waiting for the clock to strike at four o’clock was a nightmare.  Still, I wouldn’t have dared leave before then. By that time, the actors should have been gone for a half an hour and thus I wouldn’t have to talk to any of them.  I couldn’t handle talking to the pack of them; they would try and make me feel better which, in turn, would make me feel like the most slipshod loser to ever walk this place.

                The long walk to my apartment seemed incredibly daunting as opened the door to the humid air. First of all, I wanted to get home to continue planning my confession to Baekhyun. Second, I couldn’t help thinking that every single guy on the street was him; I stopped six times seeing a similar haircut as his, hoping and fearing that it was him.

                It never was.

                My toes were getting dirty from the amount of times I scuffed my feet against the pavement, admitting defeat in my romantic pursuit of some guy who I couldn’t distinguish from any other guy on the street.   

                Cars nearly ran me over as I crossed the street. Drivers honked their horns while strings of curses echoed throughout the streets. If only I actually cared; their efforts were so wasted.

                The woman at the front desk of my apartment building greeted me, but I, of course, ignored her. The elevator was full so I glared at the woman who took the last spot, groaned, and headed for the stairs. I tripped on the last step going up and stubbed my toe. Life was and there was nothing I could do.

                Fumbling with my keys became thoroughly frustrating and I threw them to the ground angrily. “I can’t believe how far downhill my day has gone.” I finally saw the right key hiding between two others, “There you are.” I snatched it from the floor and wedged into the lock before entering my apartment.

                There were lights on. I never left lights on.

                The chairs at my table were all pulled out and one was even thrown to the floor; that was not how I left it.

                Finding the first heavy item I could find, the frying pan, I crept into my bedroom to find that nobody was there. From there, I took to searching the bathroom, the closet, the kitchen, everywhere; all that was left was the dining room.

                While I hadn’t noticed it before due to a near perfect camouflage, left on my dining table was a wooden block of wood and note. Eyeing the block more carefully, I found that it had an excessive amount of screws in it, barely making out the word “Sorry.”

                The note was carefully folded, but the elegance of the creasing betrayed the content.

I thought: what the hell? I’m so good at screwing; might as well put it to good use..

                -Byun Baekhyun