He was the first of them to walk into the bar, an alluring figure with y hips and tousled hair covering a cold expression. He grimaced, as all did in the beginning, at the emptiness of the bar. He sat at the counter ordering a cold beer; the strange bartender with a blank face obliged and slid him a cold one.

He slurped it loudly as she stared at his face. He had a beautiful face with an angular nose, young looking eyes and lips plump and pretty enough to make anyone fall at his feet. He was the type women cried over, she noticed.

She wiped out highball glasses with her familiar white rag. “How old are you?” he asked her with narrowed eyes, unbeknownst to her, he’d been staring at the mysterious barkeep ever since he’d swallowed half the glass.

She told him, flat out, no lies and he raised a brow at her. “Pretty young.” He mumbled.

She shrugged and continued cleaning out the glassware, thinking the same about him, wondering if she should’ve ID’d the fellow; she, herself, wasn’t old enough to drink alcohol exactly but this job was a secret to everyone.

“My friend has the same bracelet.” He mumbled into the mug. She lifted her wrist to stare the row of wooden beads bound by an elastic cord wrapped around her wrist, her gaze returned to him. “Me and him, we’re dancers.”

She shaped into an ‘o’ of understanding. “If it weren’t for him,” he said, focusing hard on something on the floor before smirking and shaking his head. “I would have quit a while ago.”

She leaned against the counter waiting for him to continue; he did. “It hurts, a lot.” He emphasized the last word with a raise of his eyebrows. “The training, I mean.”

She noticed how he rubbed his lower back, his eyebrows knitting together as a groan of discomfort left his lips. “They say we look alike.” He said, grabbing a plain, silver phone out the pocket of his jeans producing a picture of him cheek to cheek with a boy about the same age with nicely coifed ginger hair.

She beamed and nodded at the picture; indeed, the resemblance was uncanny.

“I wonder if I could ever make it,” he said, as the atmosphere suddenly turned quiet and serious, his words dripping with frustration and a bit of sadness. She tilted her head at him. “Sometimes I wonder if the years wasted doing this were worth it.”

She puffed out her cheeks. “If you love it,” simply those words were said. She wasn’t a huge talker, in fact, she said nothing to him afterwards after that.

He let out an accidental smile. “Cliché,” he chuckled, lifting the mug to his lips again. “But you’re probably right.”

The popped her lips and started refilling the little trays with new rounds of mixed nuts as the man began regaling her with random snippets of his life. He was a dancer, he enjoyed cartoons, he had two dogs, he liked Johnny Depp (go figure), and once again, he was a dancer.

“I’m a dancer.” He repeated, as if he were reassuring himself of that certain reality. I am a dancer, I hear myself say it and it is no lie, I am a dancer. “My name is Jongin and I am a dancer.”

She watched him carefully, leaning her bag against the alcohol cabinet, as he stood up pulling out a crumpled bill and looking at her with a flustered smile. “I... I think I’ll go practice now.”

As he walked out, she saw take another few confused looks at the bar and disappear into the night. She grabbed his stained mug, noting the thin layer of beer left at the bottom, pouring it down the drain as she imagined a stage, surrounding darkness, a circled sanctuary of light on the floor dropping onto Kim Jongin, dancing with grace and with assurance.

She’d slid the mug under the counter with the rest, patting her hands against her apron.