From the small black speakers on the floor, twinkling, delicate music filled the equally dainty room: music so beautiful that even the white leotards hung up on the peach pink curtains seemed to tremble with each note.

Everything in the little studio apartment was at peace…

Until a tall girl tumbles through the front door. Hair tied up in an immaculate bun, she runs through the door and past the peach pink curtains, before sitting in front of the PC near the window.

“Aigoo,” she mutters, clicking on a tab labelled YouTube, “I left the music on.” The girl props a slender leg onto the table, knees locked and toes curled into an expert pointes and begins to pull several pins out of her hair. Deciding to scroll through her Facebook newsfeed, she turns to the screen and does so.

The first thing she sees is a post from some distant relative. Find out the meaning of your name! it says. Sighing (has she become this bored, to actually care about what her name means?) she clicks on the link.

Type in your name appears in big red letters across the screen. Rolling her eyes, she places her  fingers on the keyboard and taps in: Subin.

The results come out, and Subin bursts into laughter, clutching her stomach.

“Hilarious,” she spits out, laughing even if no one else is in the room. “That’s just really, really funny.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 2012

Eight AM

Dance Studio, Korea National Ballet (KNB)

 

“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry!”

Subin rushes into the dance studio, drops her knapsack onto the floor and begins bowing repeatedly.

A thin woman in her forties, standing at the head of the room, clicks her tongue. Subin turns to her and bows once more. “I’m really very sorry, Jiyoung-sunbaenim.”

The prima ballerina glares at her. “Would you care to tell me why exactly you are late?”

I left early, but some parade took place on the road from my apartment (which is a lot farther from the studio then yours is, sunbaenim) and I was stuck in traffic.

It is a perfectly true and reasonable explanation, Subin knows. But she takes one look at the intimidating woman standing in front of her and decides to just shut up. Explaining would take even longer, she reasons to herself.

So instead she simply bows again. “I’m really sorry, sunbaenim,” she repeats, before scurrying off to the other side of the room to join her fellow coryphées in stretching.

“Aish, you!” Eunjin slaps Subin’s legs, which are spread in a perfect split. “You know you can’t be fooling around like this.”

Sunhee, another coryphée , turns to them. “Neh,” she chips in, “you know we just got out of doing the corps de ballet, where we had to dance with like… thirty other dancers. I hated that.” She shudders and rests her forehead on her knee, which is propped up on a bar.

“See,” Eunjin continues, “we have to work hard if we want the limelight. That means no tardiness for us, Im Subin!”

All three girls sigh as they turn to the elite group of dancers at the other side of the studio. “Soloists,” they breathe at the same time, a tone of utter reverence in their voices. Subin still couldn’t believe she was just one rank lower than them: so close. So, absolutely close.

Their stupor is interrupted by a loud call of “KNB!” All heads turn to Kim Jiyoung and begin to listen intently.

“As you all know, our production of La Bayaderes is coming up soon. As a result, we’ll be needing to promote one dancer to the rank of soloist.”

She turns to the coryphées, and Subin gasps. This is her chance, she thinks. She’d trained all her life for this.

“Therefore, I’d like each of the coryphées to perform a solo variation…”

Subin taps her finger against the floor, wondering what she can begin practicing. Don Quixote, perhaps? Or Aspiccia?

“… in ten minutes.”

All eleven coryphées in their breath. Ten minutes? Jiyoung was well into her thirties: was it possible she had contracted some kind of mental disease?

“But sunbaenim,” Nanhee Yoo, a girl who seemed to have a permanently pissed expression, complains, “we need a lot more than that if we want to perfect our variations!”

Kim Jiyoung only pins the girl down with a frosty stare. “No. As junior soloists, I trust you girls have had enough training to at least have a couple variations in your repertoire.”

Subin silently agrees with Nanhee, but she keeps shut as she always has. Now is not the time, she chides herself, you have ten minutes!

 

---

 

 

“Aish, I should have done better!” Eunjin groans and throws her hands up in the air. “I can’t believe we just had ten minutes.”

Subin nods in agreement, but she doesn’t join in. She is still trying to bring back to her mind the way she danced her variation, wondering if her technique had been the way it was supposed to be. I don’t think I’ll become soloist, she thinks wistfully, pouting.

“Oh please, you did great.” Eunjin, who has taken notice of Subin’s expression, shoves her in the shoulder.

The other girl only smiles in reply. She doesn’t think so, after all, she had lost a little balance in that last pirouette….

“Im Subin! Into the office, now please.”

The entire company of dancers, gathered in the studio, turn to look at her. Could it actually be? This was the way it had always been when promoting dancers: the ballerinas would do their dances, and afterwards, the chosen one would be called into the office.

Was she really about to be promoted? Already, Lee Soohee, a soloist, was studying her intently. Subin rose to her feet and entered the office, legs trembling.

“Choi Taeji-sonsaengnim,” she says quietly, bowing to the Korean National Ballet’s artistic director.

Taeji leans forward, his eyes roving her body. Subin knows he isn’t being the least bit erted, though: he simply wants to see if she’s been following her diet well. Which she has.

“Im Subin,” he begins finally, “you haven’t been with us for a very long time. Four years, to be exact.”

Subin’s eyes are still trained on the floor as she nods.

“However your technique is quite impressive, and you have shown an appropriate amount of discipline. Therefore-“

 

“Sonsaengnim!” Suddenly, Eunjin bursts into the room, her pointes shoes untied. She looks dishevelled.

“Eunjin?” Subin stares in surprise at her friend, but it seems that Eunjin won’t look her in the eye.

“Sonsaengnim,” she repeats, breathing heavily, “I have a family emergency. May I be excused to leave early?”

Taeji raises an eyebrow at Eunjin, then looks back at Subin. “Miss Lim, do step out of this office for a moment.”

Subin does so and sits back among the other dancers, albeit worriedly. What could have happened to Eunjin? They had trained together for quite some time, and Subin likes to think that they share a certain bond, if not a friendship.

After a few minutes, Eunjin rushes out of the office. Subin attempts to ask her what is going on, but she is strangely quiet and can’t seem to meet her eye. Subin sighs and zips shut: perhaps the other girl is just having a hard time.

 Suddenly, Jiyoung calls out once more. “Bang Sunhee! Into the office now, please.”

Subin’s eyes widen. Why am I not being called back into the office? She thinks to herself, and decides not to speak up. Taeji-sonsaengnim is to do as he pleases, after all.

 

Her eyes widen even more when Sunhee prances out of the room, an extremely joyful expression on her face.

“KNB,” Jiyoung calls, jerking her head in Sunhee’s direction, “meet our new soloist.”

Subin can only stare in shock as Sunhee joins the soloists at the other side of the studio, right at the foot of the stage. Everything is flashing before her: the late nights spent at KNB practicing her variations, the endless stretching and practicing and the extra hours- It just wasn’t fair, she thought to herself.

It just wasn’t fair.

The words echo inside her head, and they are all she hears as she grabs her knapsack and runs out the door, into the street.

Subin watches an empty taxi speed by the streets of Seoul, but she doesn’t raise her hand to call for it. She has no idea why, but she does not want to get into a cab and drive home: maybe because she doesn’t want to see the leotards hung up on her curtains, the pointes shoes placed to dry on her windowsill.

She wants to forget that world, even for a little bit.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

Blinking a little bit, she stares at the city before her. She can hear the scratching of insoles against the pavement, the loud and insistent dialogue exchanged among businessmen on their way to meetings in the tall, gray buildings that are made silver by the sunlight. The cars honking and the people yelling

Everything around her is so consistent, loud, and sure of itself. How could she become like that?

Subin doesn’t know, so instead she plugs her earphones in and heads over to the nearest tteokbokki restaurant.

 

 

Subin pushes the glass door open, causing a light twinkling sound from the wind chimes hung above. For a while as she sits down, she closes her eyes and takes in the sweet sound of the chimes (she had always been the crajji one, after all): but soon, her daze is interrupted by a boy’s loud blabbering.

She opens her eyes and looks curiously at the boy standing in front of the counter, right by the entrance. He is arguing furiously with who seems to be the manager of the restaurant.

All she can see of him is his blonde head, but from the tone of his voice Subin can already imagine the frustrated expression on his face.

“Hyung!” He exclaims, and Subin giggles to herself as she hears the lilt of Busan behind his (obviously forced) Seoul dialect. “Personally, I’ve suffered a great deal. How are you going to make up for it?”

The manager looks curiously at him, head cocked to one side. “Only a small amount came out-“

“But it still came out, didn’t it?” The boy’s voice rises an octave higher as he adds, “That’s a clear truth.”

The manager opens his mouth to argue, but no words come out. “I- I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were allergic to wasabi.”

The blond head nods in understanding, and an arm reaches out to pat the other man’s shoulder. “I’ll make sure to inform you in the future,” he concedes. He turns back just as the sunlight streams through the glass doors and bathes his face in a golden glow; Subin feels herself in her breath. He is handsome, she observes, with features that are soft and inviting, eyes a slender shape of almond.

She likes his eyes, she decides. Not too round, not too small either. They are just right.

 

Those eyes scan the restaurant urgently, and light up as he smiles in her direction. Subin quickly looks back, and then around her, but no one else is sitting nearby. Could it be…?

 

Before she has time to process what is going on, he has plopped himself into the seat opposite hers, flashing an easy smile.

“Let’s play a game, noona,” he says, “when somebody says something, you have to say yes to it no matter what.”

Why on Earth are we playing this? We’ve just met! Subin is overflowing with surprise, but she doesn’t say so. Instead, she says, “The sky is blue.”

The boy nods, his eyes crinkling into crescents as he grins again. “Yes,” he says, loudly and surely. “Blue is a color,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Laptops are cool.”

“Yes.”

“Green bunnies are awesome.”

“Yes.”

“The floor is awesome.”

“Yes.”

“Shin Yongjae is dope.”

“Yes.”

“Pomelos are tasty.”

“Yes.”

“Will you go out with me this Friday on this very same restaurant at seven pm?”

“Yes- wait, what?” Subin’s eyes widen, and the boy bursts out into a loud, hearty laugh.

“I was just kidding. Jung Daehyun, you?” He grins (for the nth time, but still Subin is taken aback) , and stretches out his hand.

“I- Im Subin,” she stammers, shaking it. His hand is warm and his grip is firm: Subin finds herself wanting to hold on for as long as possible. But she pulls away anyway, because, she chides herself, that would be weird.

“That’s a pretty name,” Daehyun comments. “You should find out what that means sometime.”

“My name?”

“Yeah, what your name means. They’re like words, they all have some pretty interesting backgrounds and meanings.”

I knew that, Daehyun. It was what you said about my name being pretty. Nobody’s ever told me that before.

Again, Subin keeps quiet. She isn’t very sure what she was thinking would be appropriate to say, and so the two lapse into silence as Daehyun fiddles with his phone.

Finally after a few moments, he looks up. “You… have nothing to say?”

Subin stares and shakes her head wordlessly, no idea of what he means at all.

Daehyun leans forward, fixing her with an intense gaze. “Subin, you walk into a restaurant expecting a nice peaceful meal. However you are interrupted by some random dude arguing with the manager: soon after, this very same dude sits at your table, and after playing some random game with you, proceeds to ask you out. Only after this does he tell you your name. You’re telling me you don’t need to say anything?”

“N-no, I don’t,” She stammers. What on earth is he talking about? Is this some kind of trap?

“But you do!” The Busan saturi resurfaces again as Daehyun launches into chatter.

“You were uncomfortable then, I knew it. We both knew it. You were pissed when we played a game and I didn’t ask for your name, you were shocked as hell when I asked you out. You- you have to learn to say those things!”

Subin simply stares, agape, as he continues.

“You have to learn to stand up for yourself. If something isn’t right and you don’t like it, you say so. You don’t deserve to be treated badly, because you’re-“

Daehyun takes a deep breath, and at the speed of lightning his hand is on Subin’s, clutching it tightly.

“Let’s play another game,” he says, smiling. “We will talk, and we will go around, you are going to tell me exactly what you think and feel. No holds barred,” he adds, as his eyes light up and Subin cannot ever bring herself to say no.

 

 

---

 

 

The two are at the ice cream stall in front of the tteokbokki restaurant. Daehyun turns to Subin and grins. “Strawberry for you?”

 

Subin bites her lip. It was nice of him to offer, after all, and he was paying so she shouldn’t be picky-

“Yah.” Daehyun jerks his head and grins. “Our game, Miss Lim?”

She takes a deep breath.

“No, Daehyun. Thanks for your offer, I like ice cream, but I hate strawberry. I’d rather have pomelo ice cream, but since there’s none could you buy me mango?”

Daehyun yells, throws his hands up in the air, and begins shaking her shoulders.

“Yes, Im Subin! Yes! I’ll buy you twenty mango ice cream cones if you want to,” he begins chattering like always as he pays the man for his ice cream.

“Oh, really?” Subin laughs, a jokingly derisive tone in her voice. “What if I asked for three hundred?”

The two peer at the small ice cream cart, which clearly can’t contain more than fifty, and laugh.

“Yah, you’re getting better at this,” Daehyun remarks, grinning, as they walk back into the restaurant.

“This is only the beginning,” Subin promises, and he laughs.

(Subin is too busy grinning to notice how Daehyun’s arm is slung around her back, hand rested on her shoulder.)

 

---

 

 

“So you’re a ballerina, right?” Daehyun looks at Subin’s outfit (leotards, leggings and pointes shoes: she had rushed out of the studio without even thinking of a change of attire), grinning.

“Y-yes… and, yeah.” The two are back inside the tteokbokki restaurant, at their ice cream cones (and ignoring the manager’s angry stares at the fact that they haven’t ordered any tteokbokki at all.)

“Miss Im, there’s something there you’re not saying…” Wagging his fingers at her and pretending to click his tongue, Daehyun laughs.

“How’d you know?” Subin grins back. “Well, I’m a junior soloist at the Korean National Ballet,” she replies proudly, “and we only have eighty dancers in the entire company.”

“Not bad!” He exclaims, impressed. “For that,” he declares solemnly, “I am going to buy you a milkshake.”

“Why, thank you.” Subin sticks her tongue out at him and adds, “How about you? Any achievements I should know about?”

Daehyun shrugs good-naturedly. “Nothing really, I just sing here and there. Pick up a few awards at singing contests, you know the usual…”

“Not bad!” Subin grins. “For that,” she declares solemnly, and Daehyun’s eyes widen in anticipation, “I am going to allow you a sip of my milkshake.”

Daehyun shakes his head, but goes along with it anyway. “Why, thank you,” he replies, sticking his tongue out the way Subin had.

 

 

---

 

 

The hours speed by quicker than Subin would have thought it. Before she realizes it, night is falling over Seoul.

“Daehyun-ah, I’m going to the restroom,” she says, standing up and putting her phone down. Still at his ice cream cone (you didn’t think they’d have stopped at one, did you?), he simply nods.

 

 

When she returns to the table, no blonde boy is sitting on the chair opposite hers.

“Ahjusshi,” she says, turning, “did you see the boy who was here a while ago?”

“He left.”

Subin sighs and drops herself onto her chair. Why would he have left like that, she wonders? Had she done something wrong? Been too-

Her thoughts are interrupted by the sight greeting her at the corner of her eye. It’s her phone, but a new wallpaper is set: Daehyun, his mouth curled into a faint smirk and his eyebrow raised.

“Aish,” she mutters to herself, “that crazy man.” But still she smiles, a smile that cannot be wiped off her  face as she exits the restaurant and hails a cab and enters her room and finally, falls asleep.

 

---

 

 

The next morning, Subin is woken by the light shining through her window. It’s a lot brighter than usual, she thinks to herself: it must be an omen, she decides.

And then she remembers what Daehyun’s eyes look like bathed in the glow of the sunlight, and suddenly she likes everything around her a lot more than usual.

 

---

 

 

Subin is at the dance studio at seven sharp: only the principal dancers and a handful of soloists have arrived. They stare at her with thinly masked scathing as she walks in, and Subin is sure they haven’t forgotten her less than polite walk out from the previous day.

She walks straight up to Choi Taejin’s office, knocks, and enters.

 “Sonsaengnim, first, I’d like to apologize for my walk out the other day. That was absolutely wrong of me, and I promise not to do that again.”

Taejin’s gaze is cold, but Subin continues. “I’m not saying this excuses what I did yesterday, but I walked out because I was distressed at not getting the rank of soloist. To be honest, I thought I would… I’ve been practicing very hard these past years, sir, a lot more than my fellow junior soloists and I believed-“

“Have you or have you not been working at a nightclub?”

“What?”

“I have received some information that you have been working at a nightclub in Gangnam, Miss Im.”

 

Yesterday morning, Im Subin, classic quiet good girl, might have zipped . She might have told herself it was no use arguing, she would prove them otherwise and work harder than ever before-

But she was not that Im Subin anymore, because that Subin… had not met Jung Daehyun.

 

So today she opened , and spoke clear. And loud.

You have to learn to stand up for yourself.

“I haven’t had any jobs outside this company, sir, I’ll definitely prove that to you.”

If something isn’t right and you don’t like it, you say so.

“Whoever gave you that information is a liar. It was Kim Eunjin, wasn’t it?”

Subin saw it now, understood the way Eunjin had barged into the office, the way she had never met her eye, the way she had told Subin that she had done well.

You don’t deserve to be treated badly, because you’re-

“-very deserving to become a soloist, Choi Taeji-sonsaengnim. I am very sure that I am very deserving.”

 

 

---

 

 

Later that night, Subin is standing in front of a tteokbokki restaurant. The watch reads exactly 7:00 PM.

She pushes the glass door open, and again the beautiful, twinkling sounds of the chimes above her are interrupted by loud chatter.

“Yah, Im Subin, I didn’t think you’d come!” There they are again, those eyes: only this time they are alight with a much wider smile than she has ever seen.

Subin grins.

“I said yes, didn’t I?” she replies, smiling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Present Day

 

The results come out, and Subin bursts into laughter, clutching her stomach.

 “Hilarious,” she spits out, laughing even if no one else is in the room. “That’s just really, really funny.”

 

 

 

“Yah, jagi!” She calls, and a blond man skids into the room, grinning slyly.

“Yes?”

Subin motions him over, pointing to the screen that reads:

http://www.birthvillage.com/Name/Subin

Meaning of the word Subin

People with this name need to learn how to speak up, or they may be taken advantage of.

 

“AHA!”

Daehyun lets out a cry of victory before wrapping his arms around Subin. “I’m awesome, aren’t I? I was right! Now buy me a milkshake, girl.”

Subin laughs and whacks him on the shoulder. “Be careful with your words, Mr. Jung. Remember that you’re talking to a soloist of the Korean National Ballet.”

“Of course I remember,” Daehyun smiles (it’s been more than a year, but the way his eyes crinkle to crescents still unhinge her). “I always remember.”

“Yah, Ms. Im,” he whispers solemnly, his forehead against hers, “if something isn’t right and you don’t like it, you say so. You don’t deserve to be treated badly, because you’re-“

Subin feels her breath stop as Daehyun places a peck on her lips. “-beautiful, Im Subin. And I love you.”