❝cygnes decadents❞

it takes pain to be beautiful.

It was not a blessed fall, as she arced up to the pinnacle of the air, before the wrong movement…suddenly a cold tongue of fear touched her shoulders, and like a song she suddenly decrescendos…into the polished wood.

"Shjangmi!" the french director mewled from her perch on a valentine pink cushion, she pronounced the name like this always. The waiting arms of male dancer drawled down to his sides in despair as he watched her break her scattered self from the ground, sitting up, and gracefully pulling her legs under the mass plumage of her tutu.

"I'm alright,"  she spoke back in broken french, she refused the helping hands of the other dancers and stood up.

"Darling, that is distasteful. You must do better, you have to complete the jump into his arms. Look here!" growled the teacher back in her best tough and gritty korean, even those from Busan could never understand her.  Although the print of her finger touched the biceps of the male dancer,

"He is strong, and he will catch you," her hands drooped down under both of his biceps and she pulled his arms up to flex, "I promise you, Shjangmi. He will not let you fall," she took her cane, that was embellished with the images of cherubs and roses, the handle that her hand masked was a glass rose, and she would stab the wooden ground with it to signal to start again.

"Again," she commanded, returning to her self-made pedestal. Well, the grime maids did that work.

The male dancer looked towards her 

"Trust me," he insisted, but it was not him she didn't trust it was herself. Nonetheless she smoothly raised her arms elegantly, and tightened every muscle and myomere in her legs, daintily curling one leg up to reach past her torso, and level with her body before the hands of the male raked from her ankle, to her knee, and swept her hip. He watched her eyes, and she seemed to be shushing all her doubts as she pricked her fingers up on his shoulders, pinching his skin lightly. Jangmi's leg scaled down to hook at his hip and she felt him firmly grip her thigh, before whirling them around, and she span off her side, painfully spinning on the pointe of her shoes. She stopped in front of the back-up swans, her hands furling out like the wings of silken birds. They picked her up, twirling her backwards so she was forced to flip, she broke the rough fall with a smooth foot that tapped the ground, and the other followed. Then she leapt, back towards them, the girls having to catch her together. Holding her up as if she rode a mobile throne, the girls ed her up into the air, her legs snapped up into those angelic splits, and there he was, ready to catch her. in order to not drop again she would have to keep her legs at this precise movement, straight, unvaried…like an arrow. Jangmi felt like time stopped, and her front ankle began to wing left, and in a chain reaction her leg crumpled inwards and she dropped. Before she could hit the ground, and possibly break a limb, the male moved from his position and reached out for her, Madam Rousseau could be heard huffing loudly at the incompetent  dancer, and the male closed his hands around her body, watching as she gasped.

"SHJANGMI!" she yelled angrier than before, "You are destroying the beauty of this dance! You are to practice three times more, or you will be sent back to Premiere Danseur. Etoile's do not get scared, and they do not mess up," Madam Rousseau looked away, walking off.

"Lunch break begins, eat quickly and continue on to my class to Director Chway," she called out through her studio. Jangmi broke from the male's arms,

"Thank you, Yixing," she said under her breath, under the stench of disappointment and fear. Seeing this, Yixing walks after her about to utter her name, to beckon her back, so he could clear her mind. To stop him, Madam Rousseau snapped her cane in front of Yixing before he could walk further, biting her lip.

"And where do you think you are going, darling?"