When He is Gone

He picks up the mails scattered on the doormat: there is a brown envelop that looks like a bill, a bank notice with his name on top, a bunch of leaflets squeezed in by probably blind people because there is a clear warning at his door that says ‘NO JUNK MAIL!’ He dumps the useless junk papers into the bin as he walks back to his room. There is also a reminder-card from his dentist about his next visit through it should not be due until another nine months or so; god he hated this dentist! Desperate is the only word he can think of to describe her; whenever he is there she is all over him, rubbing her big over his slender arms, leaning her bloody fat lips so close to his mouth that the mint sting in her breath sickens through his nose. He hated mint so much, perhaps not as much as he hated this dentist. It’s time I change my dentist he think as he crumbles the reminder in his fist and aims at the bin by his table; he misses it. Ignoring that, he squats on the floor, his bed bearing his back and shuffles through the rest of his mail. There is one more letter; To Mr Lee Jong Suk it says. The envelope is thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the name is written in emerald-green ink. There is no stamp and no address, means it was personally delivered.

Turning the envelope over, he gasps. His hand trembles when he sees the red ink seal bearing the large letter H.

Bent close to the paper, Jong Suk traces the curves of the letter; a soft tingle of pain twinges at his heart when he recognises that seal. It is something he had known in the past; two years ago to be precise. He slowly begins to open the yellow envelope. A Chantilly laced pure white card with a silver diamante buckle greets him with the words Wedding Invitation printed at the top. He doesn’t need to read the names, because he already knows who it belonged to; silver white is his favourite colour.

Perhaps it is his own fault…Jong Suk thinks, now that he realises how stupid he had been to let go of that person…it is already too late…by two years.

Jong Suk can still sniff a snippet of the scent in that room—the pungent of mascara, the heavy crayons like plastic smell of lipsticks mixed with the heated sweats of half- models crumbling out of one outfit to another, shirts diving off broad muscly shoulders slithering down toned bodies and plunging on to the ground, trousers unbuckling at the waist and sliding down the hips, people sprinting, jumping, running, screaming, bumping off the shoulders and running again without a second to spare for an apology—a crowded back stage blasting with rock music, rumbling with the commands screamed at the next in line models; that was the room they first met.

He first thought that they seemed to expand in opposite directions, Jong Suk and that person. Jong Suk’s face had shrunk with his hair falling down to his neck and his waistline was not really a man’s waist at all. That person, on the other hand, was authentic and muscular, his broad shoulders and handsome torso with toned abs that stood out like a sore thumb in Jong Suk’s eyes. It was Jong Suk’s wish to acquire those masculine abs, but his sloppy stomach never quite reached that stage—not that he had particularly set his mind into making it there either.

They followed the protocol; they said ‘hello’ like strangers forced into an awkward encounter, did some small talk that neither of them really seem to understand well, and they parted their ways.

Winter melted away into a green lush and the earth was alive again after four months. Jong Suk had almost forgotten that person when their destinies crossed once again in a stadium overwhelmed with the scent of ketchup mixed with the pungent of sweat, and the sound of music exploding everywhere, the crazed fans yelling at the top of their lungs. The enormous stage had started to rumble with the tingling of a single guitar as the band shifted into their next encore performance and that’s when Jong Suk’s eyes met those authentic eyes staring back at him from the crowd.  A smile tugged at both of their lips.

They were the first to leave the overheated stadium and enter the refreshing spring breeze in the Seoul streets. They sauntered down the streets, halting at a street vendor for spicy-rise-cake or hotdogs, popping into a street food restaurant for a bowl of ramen then ambling again in the nameless streets until the sun dipped down the horizon and night crawled in on them. They had walked their ways with a new number saved into their contact lists.

The cool spring gobbled into a blazing hot summer and the days they spent together gradually became weeks and then months that became years. There came a time when Jong Suk felt that person’s company as casual yet critical as breathing into his lungs, a time when no words were needed to know what the other felt, a time when just one look into each other’s eyes was enough to tell what they wanted.

Jong Suk was the first to lose that ability. He no longer saw the pure emotions written in that person’s authentic eyes. He no longer felt the sweet tingle that ran through his skin when that person touched him. He no longer felt that person’s need to breath. Suddenly he had unveiled a world where that person no longer existed.

Back then, in the heap of their teens, most of their time got trapped between runway shows. Jong Suk’s exhausted body would crawl into an empty bed, feeling the unusually cold nights poking at his heart. He would watch the light flicker in his hollow apartment as his lonely nights froze into a cold veil around him, waiting for that person to come and shred away that veil and wrap him into that warm embrace. Sometimes that cold veil wrapped around him too tight that for days he was stuck crooked in that world that person had once created and painted in warm colours.

It wasn’t always like this. They used to have springs of sweet weekends when they spend their time away from the polluted air in the city; mornings when he staggered up the steep grassy bank of the sea wall on the edge of Busan and walked along the top, creek to his left, road to his right. The odd waves sent spray flying up, and the wind curling between his legs, snapping at the edge of his shirt. ‘Get down!!’ that person would scream and grab his hand, almost as if Jong Suk was walking on the edge of his life and death. When Jong Suk refused to listen, that person would clutch his hand tighter and wrap his arm around Jong Suk’s thin waist as he guides Jong Suk safely across the bank top.

There were also springs of impossible, violent blue skies in their lives. Once, that person and Jong Suk had both attained a successful contract for a commercial and they had bounced into their apartment, rushed into the kitchen and brought back a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“David Gandy,” Jong Suk had said, touching his glass to that person’s.

“Mark Vanderloo,” he had said.

This was the game they played, naming best models of all. This was how they celebrated a step ahead into their future in modelling, planning how they would succeed and reach the top, making their hearts glow with a gentle warmth.

But slowly it became clear as each year passed that that freezing loneliness was stealing days from their spring, until eventually that spring froze solid and the time stopped somewhere in the past.

Jong Suk remembers the last true spring in their lives. That person came in the middle of the night, like a thaw into the frozen lands. The sun had set early, so the sky was black and thick as darkness could ever be. He heard a crumbling of clothes, the creak of steps and the rumbling of bed sheets. And he felt the warmth of a broad chest lean onto his back, a pair of soft lips gently brushing against his cheek.  

When Jong Suk walked out of that person’s life, or when that person screamed his heart out for Jong Suk to grip on to their breaking world, or when that person’s heart shattered into tiny pieces and pricked at his whole self, bleeding until he was no longer recognisable, until his sweet smile disappeared under a dark shadow that was devouring him inside out, until that sweet angel he once knew was engulfed into the depths of the darkness, Jong Suk did not realise what he had left behind when he walked in a new path that led its way up to the new world of a celebrity.    

Jong Suk feels a droplet trickle down his cheek. He watches it dripping onto the invitation in his hand, blurring the letter H in the groom’s name; Kim Hyun-Joong.

Note: Hello my lovely readers :) This is a new story (one shot) I have written and hope you would enjoy this!