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Love,

Ainihaya

Chapter 5 : Paper Canoe

Words: 5203

         Kyungsoo

            Jan. 10, 20xx.

            Last night, I had a dream. Not a kind of redolent scented dream I want to retrace while sipping my usual morning cammommile, it was just a usual obscure pieces of visions which was hard to memorize. A sad love story, probably, for it was too difficult not to assume that way since my slumber was crushed by grey color and dejected blue. Like one of the scene on those melancholic movies. Dark, cloudy, and I remembered crying alone on that abandoned roof top (still in my dream), weeping in slack. A bitter feeling of wakefulness transforming itself into tiny haze of droplets, and then the January breeze found me self asleep between Jongin’s embrace, snuggling my face like an unborn fetus alongside the strong grasp.

            “Why are you looking at me like that,” I studied his face, slightly annoyed by the fact that he had been watching me struggling with a very bad dream for minutes without trying to wake me up.

            He never answered, but smiled in response; and again with an addition of a handsome smirk. And after that, I kissed him. He didn’t fight back. I kissed him one more time. He pushed his tongue inside. The only air I was able to inhale was the one that was coming out from his breathing. He hadn’t brush his teeth after our last night lovemaking, but I didn’t complain. I still imbibed all of Jongin’s pant with no remain; he was after all an embodiment of perfectness at any time. We bit, pecked, smooched, moaned, tasting each other’s saliva, lost in the touch of the reckless passion of lust. When the kiss was complete, we parted with a loud slick feeling. His hands were coiling me and my hands were gripping his , playing with the wetness of its demanding head.

            He knew I was angry. I knew he was hiding something. We both knew that the kiss was just an impingement of our own grievance.

            “Stop,” and so he told me, as his fingers rested on my shoulder when suddenly I moved down to tease the stiff shaft between his spreading thigh, my lips was full of anger and appetite. “Kyungsoo,” he called my name but didn’t finish the full sentence. Outside was raining again. We exchanged glances for a brief second before, carefully, I loosened my grip around the heatwave of his groin, lowering my head until the peak of my nose touched his . I could watch the circumtances, below and above our bounding bodies, the clatter and hunting noise among the sullen morning. Add to that there was a frozen nuance sneaking inside of our room through the square air vents, and it caused Jongin’s to pulse harder that the muscles looked as though they wanted to explode.

            We exchanged another glance. One look at his face and I understood that he was holding some unexplored desire in a guise of reluctance. We began redoing the kisses. Only this time he was just kissing some limpid air as I shoved his length into my burning funnel, hollowing my cheeks so that the tip could step in exactly before my throat. I don’t suppose I’m good enough in giving , but Jongin screamed, and he screamed my name the long way. His cheeks were getting red with every single trick I created.

            “You know something. You’re hiding it,” I said amidst the fullnes of Jongin’s manhood in me. Before he could respond, I deeper until the saft turned thin, and twitched like a fast flutter it was when white fluids started to spray out from Jongin’s and he groaned in a mixed sound of pleasure and pain. “Tell me,” I said again after he was done with his , gesturing towards my faintly glaring rib cage (I need to eat more, he state many times) to prevent him from staring at his young that was sprinkled all over my face. “Tell me about it, I want to know.”

            “Are you sure? Because it’s no something important and—oh, I’m afraid you’ll regret it in the end.”

            “I won’t,” I was getting techy. Through the abandoned moisture on his lips, and his fingers at the shape of my hips, my doe eyes glared at him. Jongin rewarded it with a grin, clearly oblivious. He looked like a child who was smiling at his long lost puppy, and somehow the smile had hurt me. “Please,” I whined, voice half strident, “I want to know.”

            “But you’ll get angry,” he reasoned a while later.

            “It’s not that you haven’t seen me so.”

            “But I don’t like seeing you—oh, look at your face! What happened with this piece of art? What’s with all the mess?”

            “Nothing much, you accidentally, or purposefully, came on it when you were reaching your cli—hey, don’t just casually change the topic on your own!”

            Jongin grabbed some tissues that we always placed on our nightstand to cope with sudden situation like this and cleaned . He took about one minute and twenty seconds to answer my request while throwing the then dirty tissues into trash can at the very corner of the room. He failed, however, and the tissues fell on our scattered clothes. I laughed at him. He laughed with me before grabbing more tissues and wiping my face with them. I assume he had noticed his remaining there and felt bad about it. It’s always been Jongin to feel bad about everything. “It’s still early to talk about it,” he tilted his head to side and saw me frowning.

            “Just tell me.” It was not a mere request. It was a demand. Other people had delicate lovers; Jongin got an annoying one like me.

            A few seconds later I heard Jongin chuckled at something. I would’ve liked to know what was so funny about it that he clutched, not just at his stomach, but my shoulders too. That even when his laughter wasn’t audible anymore, he was still beaming; early in the morning, on the edge of our rocking matress. Then he closed his eyes, slowly—my heart roared when I witnessed it—and tried to adjust his breath. I waited. I hate waiting but I’ll wait for him; this wasn’t the first time. And this also wasn’t the first time he laughed at something distant, someting far-off. Just like that, as if he had seen a clown parade.

            “Let’s sleep first,” he put himself under the blanket, eyes half peeping. I gave him a dirty look. I was ready to raise my voice at Jongin, although I perhaps would just do it dipassionately—in order to assure him that I was being deadly serious—, when he purred on my swollen cheeks to let out hot wheeze and said, “We slept really late last night and you were having a nightmare.”

            I wanted not to obey him, telling him playfully, “I slept well, well enough to give you another kiss and maybe and after that we could do morning run around Han River together because I’m getting meaty and I need to lose some kilos for you to keep loving me,” but unlike most people, Jongin knows better how to affect others.

            It’s like all of sudden your tongue goes numb when you look at him, even when he doesn’t do anything. Our past four years together weren’t much better. People got their hearts taken by him everyday. There wasn’t enough words to fill his sacks of magnetism, I’m telling you. It was no ordinary appeal. It’s like a flowing river. He was like a flowing river, you roam with the stream and sometimes when you’re not lucky it drowns you out, you’ll find yourself stranded on the coast of no man’s land. And even though you try to glide yourself away, it’s too late because you’ll keep thinking about the sight of moonlight sown above his eyelashes at lagging night. And then you don’t understand why, you have to stare at him, mouth agaping, mystified by your seeing as if somehow he isn’t real, but he is. He was, and still he continues to be.

            It was unfair when I think about it, Jongin and his attraction. People attracted to him like nothing to it and there is no turning back.

            He shines daily. Dark lock scrambling to get in touch with tan skin. His face was like a handful of wellspring, one couldn’t deny the untaintedness within although I’d fouled it with my mouth, my fingers, and my lack of chastity; on so many occasions and in every sole corner of our small apartment. He was a beast in camouflage. A very hungry one at its prime. He smiled a nostalgic, tender smile in the morning, and a naughty, mischievous one in the lewd evening. I know enough about his badboy image people loves to fantasize—Hyunsik went around telling me the whole story—and each night before going to sleep I would hang a little closer to him and stare at this flawless being, praising my luck to be the one to own Jongin’s entire existent—his laugh, his love, his lust—that, in the end, only makes my guilt deepened.

            He was unintentionally mean.

            But I was meaner.

            Still I was much meaner.

            In no time he already drifted off to sleep; his breath was the first one to tranquillize. During that soundless span, I laid down next to him, my right hand was reaching for his back but never found its way. Alone together, on that sleeky bed and within the embrace of hard rain outside, I had no guts to just caress the outline of his lean spine. It couldn’t be much worse than going astray in touching your own lover. I could almost see myself putting on a pretty much pathetic facial expression when a gentle stillness pulled in the gape of our extending space, dissolving as just quick as sugar in water. “Hey, Jongin,” I tried to call him. There was no answer. “Jongin, wake up, we have work at nine.”

            His respond was a long grunt.

            “Hey—”

            But I stopped there, realizing that it was impossible to waken a sleeping Kim Jongin.

            Fingers on pillows, I turned to stare at the calendar, marking the dates with my round orbs albeit to which I didn’t have any idea why I even cared to do so. I could actually close the distance between us and smooch Jongin’s inviting nape, but I wasn’t sure how and I decided that that wasn’t the right time to hug Jongin because he seemed real sleepy and tired. He even snored hard a couple of times. Every vibration he made sent fear to soar up from my shoulders.

            “Did I mutter something in my sleep?” I wanted to ask him. It was uncomfortable. The question was all playing a mini juggle with my mind. “Because I don’t want you to hear it. But you were awake all the time, so you must knew. You know something. You’re just trying to hide it. Did I happen to call out Cha—did I happen to call out someone’s name while you were watching me dwelling with my nightmare? Someone’s name, perhaps. And it’s not yours. If so, then what’s next? Do you hate me now? I don’t want to be hated. At least I don’t want you to hate me. Someday you will, though. Someday which isn’t today. Exactly isn’t today.”

            Alas, they never reached him. Both my questions and my fingers. They just stopped there. Before the end of Jongin’s lining radiance, and beyond, there was a bolt of yearning that got me splitted in two. One that developed into small nameless fragments, and the other that overlapped those memories about my sleep intruder. But even then the thing called nightmare hadn’t been bored to heat me up.

            That morning, as we slept next to each other, I was having another bad dream.

            —I dreamt about Jongin leaving.

****

            Jan. 9, 20xx.

            It all first happened when Jongin met Chanyeol.

            “Jongin, right?” he emphasized his words by stretching his long arms, hands spreaded in five sprouting fingers, and it had ceased in front of Jongin’s kneading palm. “I’m Park Chanyeol, the new guitarist. I’ve heard so much about you from the other staffs. Well, duh, you’re our boss. Nice to meet you, anyway. You can call me Chanyeol or just Yeol, both nicknames work just fine. Out the topic, tho, but oh, wow, you’re really handsome I think I might be your biggest fan.”

            I saw Jongin backed away—to a more modest range—from the grinning giant before him and not long after that, my boyfriend’s confusion showed clearly on his face—and even without spectacles, which I didn’t need to put on, I knew that Jongin was surprised by the overwhelming compliment—as he rolled his eyes, up, down, and down again to take a longer glance at Chanyeol’s expensive Allen-Edmonds wingtips shoes. It went for few minutes, then he muttered something (I could see the corner of his mouth moving) to himself, or perhaps to Chanyeol, while slowly shooting his gaze at the man’s twinkling eyes. I figure I couldn’t stand watching their eyes locked at each other without having my mind filled with the tought of my dream about Chanyeol (and his temptation) and my mute betrayal to Jongin, so I excused myself and waited from the other side of the door where I could only stare at their exchanging gaze and not the gushing speech sound. That was most likely what I only wanted to witness when the man of my life met the muse of my nightly dream, although it never onced crossed in my sense that this moment would someday come; Jongin finally met Chanyeol, and they shook hand with each other, and I had no choice except to watch the whole scene with slight cold sweat that was only the tip of the iceberg.

            I closed my eyes, waiting for morning to quickly elapse. My vision was black and only black to one or two minute afterwards. Soon I was looking outside the balcony and during that moment I half regretted coming to my restaurant too early in the morning when I knew that Chanyeol would be there, spending hours to wait for me to talk about his bad behaviour from the last night event when he drove me to pick Jongin up. I flinched in annoyance when I remembered the scene and I realized what was happening. It felt like I had been tricked by fate and the whole universe. The stench of karma mocked me as I opened my eyelids. And beneath things and my shaking knees, my vision gradually adjusted from black, to ashen, to blinding sunshine, then I caught them there, my two lads, one having a role as my faithful home and one having a secret job as my obsession, stood over six blocks from my spot completely covered by thin layer of morning mist and longing.

            Silent, that was, when Jongin peered at him through squinting eyelashes. But at last in the fine morning his smile flamed with the help of sunshine threading through our restaurant windows, and the man in front of him almost fainted from too much happiness. I knew that when Jongin flashed his shady smile, he was only being nice to people. I mean, it’s Kim Jongin, ‘nice’ is absolutely somewhere in the middle of his name. It didn’t really startle me when I got them already chattering like two old friends, or when they laughed together right across the dim aisle as the pneumatic morning ate me from flesh to bone without even sparing me time to pull any shift. Because I knew.

            I knew that life hated me, and that Chanyeol was one hysterical being. Not in my dream, certainly, since that Chanyeol, that illusive boy who often swung by my sleep at night, acoustic folk guitar hugged his back, was calmer than real-life Chanyeol in many ways. For almost everynight, when I examined his backview then dragged my attention down the narrow nape of his and guitar strap that always there to envelope his shoulder; he turned to stare at me and we would talk together under all the dust-b dishonesty. That was where my dream had always ended. And it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter at all. I would get him in another, more animated, dream. Returned, to our fanciful globe; our fantastic world. Perhaps it was a place from our previous lives. And we had been there. Stayed there, a long time ago. Him being mine and me being his—I was sure we had. Those visions of my dream probably were just the remaining memories of ours. And the acoustic folk guitar was how I remembered who he was.

            —Until I stopped dreaming about him two days in advance.

            “Today is very cold.”

            Later after staff’s lunch break, he walked towards the back balcony besides me. I didn’t tell him to leave. Partly because I wanted to see him and partly because it was too cold to speak. He went past the slightly ajar door, past my mini garden at the corner, and along the process I had my beam avoiding his every move. Standing with his back pressed against the fence, he leaned his head behind and stared at me, his orbs not moving when he did that. He looked tremendously handsome and somewhat pitiful at the time that January breeze just stopped rushing. He took minor gesture to slant his head to side, and I couldn’t believe the number of internal screams he reft from me as seconds passed. I reckoned the Chanyeol from my dream had a funny habit to do exactly the same as what the real life Chanyeol had done then. I remembered that. And I wasn’t happy about it.

            “Winter is no winter in Seoul without the freezing cold,” I ruffled the air with my small fist in hoping to distract myself from glancing at his direction. But I knew I couldn’t fully withstand my feelings, thus I swished what I had within my unfolding palm and pretended that I didn’t do anything stupid.

            To be honest I could picture that my actions looked like what you would find on a gag show. I was expecting Chanyeol to laugh, but all he did was just smile and raise his brow in ever so slightly. After this he dug something in his pocket, other than some restrained sigh I heard nothing coming from his pretty rosy mouth. But somewhere in the sequel, he got his voice back. And with a low, Chanyeol-ish pitch he asked, “Getting out to on some cigarettes too?”

            “Nah, I don’t smoke,” I told him, wanting to say that smoking is not good for anybody’s health, but that growing smile and flimsy dimples on both of his cheeks cut me off. So I asked back to Chanyeol, “Do you?”

            “Oh, not in summer or any other seasons,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “But whenever winter comes, I do,” added Chanyeol. The tip of the cylindrical object in between his middle and index finger was as fiery as crimson lake. “Is that okay with you, ehm, if I, uh—”

            I winced from the shakiness of his voice and the scent of burning cigarettes. I tried to laugh it off, but there was nothing to laugh about in his way of speaking or our surrounding that began to smell like nicotine. In the end I did finally laugh, but not too much and still not facing him. “I’m having a little difficulty with what you’re trying to say but, yeah,” I continued, eventually, “do whatever you want. And I’m not going to repeat my words in future. Just enough to say that I’ve been dealing with Taemin—who also smoked—for more than half a year.”

            “Well, , that’s even more difficult to understand, Boss,” he chuckled, spelling his sentence slowly. “I’ll take your words as a yes then because you owe me two long rides, so I hope they’ll be plenty more reward for me in meantime.”

            I rolled my eyes to that. “Smoking break is what I’ll only provide to make you shut up.”

            “Damn, Boss, you’re way too sassy,” and next thing I heard was Chanyeol’s relaxed laugh.

            At a later time no one spoke between us. Chanyeol was already on his cigarette—he kept his gaze fixed steady to the road across my restaurant, mouth blowing tobacco smoke, and his fingers were clenched into uneven grip to prop the left side of his head. Lunch break was still ten minutes to go. Turning away from his trapping shadow, with my arms flat against fencing surface, I looked out to where Chanyeol’s eyes were engaged. Cheongdam-dong street was as busy, but not too packed, as usual. The pavement was filled with pedestrian—perhaps because it was Sunday and college students were roaming the city to relieve some stress by strolling aimlessly—and the flower shop aunty in front of my restaurant was just finished selling her last bucket of rose to a pink-flushed-cheeks gentleman in suit. He probably bought it for his wife, I tried to play a guess; or his husband, if he were gay like me. Judging from how he asked the aunty to put along a sweet love card inside, both of my assumptions were likely. The rose was pretty, spanking, and red.

            Flaming red like the burning part of Chanyeol’s cigarette.

            “Anyway, he is amazing, Boss,” my dream man said suddenly.

            A gentle interlude perched on our surroundings. The world, the afternoon, the sweeping branch of cherry blossom tree were all spreading wide behind Chanyeol’s back. “He who?” asked me, knitting a brow.

            “Your boyfriend,” he answered, and he on his cigarette one more time as he stared at me through the lilting wind, “he really is amazing.”

            “Yeah, he is amazing, right? He is a knack, an art. He is my past and my present and should be my tomorrow too, therefore your existence here (and inside of my dream) is bothersome, you know that?” it didn’t successfully escape my lips. Instead, my respond to his very statement was just a short, toneless, tedious,“Ah.”

            And Chanyeol didn’t seem to be happy with that.

            “Jongin is every mother’s ideal son-in-law,” he breathed slowly and thereupon tobacco smoke that smell as bad as burnt sugar cane was blown through the gap of his shipshape teeth. I nearly giggled at the word mother, but as soon as the urge to laugh torted off from me, I felt pathetic to myself. I couldn’t help but to get embarrassed acting as miserable as that. I wondered if my unfortunate childhood showed at the moment. But then again everybody had problems, it’s not like I was the most unfortunate kid out there.

            Moving over to make a room for another wind to pass through and trying to hide my embarrassement, I whispered to him, “Yeah, my brother says that too.”

            “And that Petrushka performance with Yixing was beyond perfect,” he was referring to Jongin and Yixing’s small gift to our customers before staff’s lunch break, “you never told me that he also dances.”

            “He who?”

            “Yixing,” he replied briefly.

            I thought for a longer answer this time. “Ah. You never asked.”

            Chanyeol smiled. A small, ambiguous smile. In the instant he flaunted me his signature creepy smirk, I knew there was no reason for my heart to flutter. But it did and the throbbing sound was inaproppiately pretty loud. Nothing I had seen gave the same taunting vibe as his smile before; crisp, and wide, and soft at the rightest end, his chestnut colored hair swayed to side as the wind rushed faster.

            As we stood there listening to the sound of the wind, Chanyeol pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. Five minutes to go and lunch break would be over. I looked up to him, then at the universe behind his back, hesitated, then halted at the redness of his cigarette’s head. He was folding the paper in half with his long fingers, from top to bottom and next right and left corner into the middle. His cigarette was still burning the same flaming red, and I questioned to myself whether I had been hypnotized. “I’m going to be his biggest fan,” he blurted out when his paper canoe was done. “Jongin’s biggest fan, I mean,” added him, playing with his artwork as though it was a plane rather than a sad looking paper canoe. “Now I know why everyone likes him. He’s so generous. And polite,” and after that he said in a near mumble, “not to mention that he’s so handsome.”

            “That’s pretty agressive. You almost sound like a maniac.”

            “I’d tell you people call me maniac so many times, but you probably wouldn’t find it funny so I’ll restrain myself.”

            I pursed my lips and let out a hmph noise. “Example?”

            “Tao. A week ago.”

            “Wow, you were being called maniac by a maniac himself,” despite this, there was no surprise in my voice.

            He laughed suddenly. He always laughed, even when the weather was frosty. I often tried to write something about him—a month after his appearance in my dream—but all I could carve on my book was the way he laughed (and the acoustic folk guitar that always hugged his back too) but it was another story. “I know right, it’s sad,” he said, brushing the dust from his jacket, a matter of factly. “But you’re indeed so lucky, Boss. Jongin is... nice. No, he is amazing. Perfect, actually,” there was a half-dead silence, hollow as deserted valley. He on the last sniff of his cigarette, so deep that I could imagine all the chemicals going straight to his lungs. “And you both look good together,” the words ejected along with a whiff of tobacco smoke, “your love life with him must be so blithesome. He must be the man from your nightly drea—”

            I honestly didn’t know what would happen if we didn’t hear Jongdae shouted “Chanyeol, the show is starting, we need you and your sleazy here!” from the floor below. I waited for him to utter something, to continue with his bags of words. I couldn’t see the rest of the world anymore, my everything was attached to the sound of our chasing breath and Chanyeol. He didn’t say anything, I waited still. I waited without pulling my gaze out from him; the wind resting on my arms, the afternoon whistling through fading skyline two rows behind. But it wasn’t quiet or anything. I could still hear Jongdae calling on Chanyeol’s name, tagging a high pitched scream—but actually not irritating enough to be called a scream—along, like a mother on podium looking over her bratty lost kid. Thereafter it was finally silence. All that was left for me to do was waiting for him to pull whatever he had out of his troath.

            But he only stared at me, face tinted pink.

            I looked back at him, face pale as mannequin.

            There was something between our windy surrounding, something I had no time to explain. With the tip of my nose I felt the air disappeared into microscopic train. Come on, I pulled in my chin, come on, tall one, you say something right now. And then Chanyeol managed a smile and straightened his position. “Uh, the restaurant sure is getting so busy. Guess I gotta head back first,” he turned around, ready to leave. From here, the world was gradually moving, following Chanyeol’s steps in silence—ducked onto the tender track, and scraping the last of our afternoon dialogue into abandoned reflection nobody cared enough to recall.

            I couldn’t catch on his breath. I guess he was hiding it. I was just in the midst of picking up his falling paper canoe when Chanyeol, with careful intonation, held back from his pace and told me, “Congratulation, though.”

            Close your eyes, Kyungsoo, close your eyes and he’ll be gone and you can shout as much as you want after that. “For what?”

            He was walking directly into the door. His back was thin, hid underneath oversized jacket, yet not large enough to wipe away its melancholic beauty. I remembered my dream Chanyeol had a kind of tracing scar on it. Ramified, tracing scar that I used to nurse with my voice as he played a slow, romantic song with his guitar, his chin rested just above my brow and my fingers were on his elbow, but it was all in the past.

            It was just a part of dream even.

            Next thing, the wind had cleared up before I realized it. If he had taken a step back, and turned around to where I was standing, he would’ve seen my eyes red from tears. It was a miracle that he didn’t. I wish a had a sunglass with me. I wish I was wearing any. So that when the miracle broke off, I had no worry about him catching a glimpse on me. With every seconds my visions about him grew. For how many years had I dreamed about him? Five? Six? No, it was seven. Sometimes my dream went a little darker, at midnight he was an illusive man that appeared just in time I fell asleep, legs crossed beneath saggy looking pants, head high under the vivid horizon, folk acoustic guitar hugging his back. Not only that, the image would be constantly repeated, on and on, the night after that, and after that, and after that, and after—

            And after that, it was just... nothing.

            Nothing.

            “For everything. Congratulation for everything.”

            Because in the end what tied us both was just a mere dream.

            —Because in the end, Chanyeol never loved me.

****

            Days later, my world was like a spinning ferris wheel.

****

            Jan. 11-10, 20xx.

            Jongin began to feel suspicious towards me.

****

            Jan  12-15, 20xx.

            We took five days off from work to celebrate our birthday.

****

            Jan 15, 20xx.

            Jongdae called in the morning that he was sick and that he couldn’t perform with Yixing’s band and that Chanyeol had taken care of the matter by bringing along his wonderful bestfriend named Baekhan or Bikhyun or whatsoever to my restaurant.

****

            Jan. 15, 20xx.

            I was .

            And I couldn’t sleep at all. Not even a second.

****

            Jan. 16, 20xx.

            I woke up, dreaming about a crumpled paper canoe, still . My butthole was sticky from Jongin’s virile fluid.

****

            Jan. 16, 20xx.

            Halfway through our flight back to Seoul, Jongin proposed to me. There was no ring, no rose, no kneeling down with his toes touching the ground. It was just a simple proposal, he only had red velvet in one hand, and I—

            I turned him down.

            I turned Jongin’s proposal down.

****

            Jan. 16, 20xx.

            That night, we slept in separated beds. And I dreamed about another crumpled paper canoe, this time it was painted red. Flaming red. Like the burning part of Chanyeol’s cigarette.

            Like the color of my crumbling heart when Jongin cried. 

To be continued