The Boy

“SHINee, ten minutes before we start! Please keep close to the stage and be ready when called upon!” the young stage manager gives the instruction professionally, not even looking around him; his left hand holds a bottle of mineral water without its cap on, getting ready to gulp it down any minute now, and his right is jotting something down on the written scripts sprawled across the table in the middle of the preparation room. His brain is making mental notes at each interval of which artist should enter the stage according to the previously arranged schedule. Concentrating, his glasses is sliding down off his nose bridge as he unconsciously pushes it back up to where it sat earlier. His walkie talkie is hushing busily and sometimes turns into a constant static sound before he picks it up and listens to the report being made over the charity concert’s statuses all around.  Jinki watches him from a corner with wonder and a bit of admiration; his fingers are running through his greasily well-fashioned hair.

Holding his breath in for a mere second, he then sighs exasperatedly.

“Hyung, you still haven’t got your make-up done!” Kibum appears out of nowhere while fixing the hem on the wrists of the light purple shirt he has on. His eyes are heavily drawn with the thick eyeliner and Jinki decides that Kibum will always look as gorgeous as he always did in the past, no matter how ugly his make-up is. He shakes his head and points at the make-up artist who is running back towards him after successfully borrowing a bottle of liquid eyeliner from her colleague. Jinki sighs again. He always hates the way his eyes look like with eyeliner.

“Noona, we’re up in less than ten minutes, do hurry up!” Kibum reminds the panic make-up artist who are trying to settle the right intensity of the brush onto the outlines of Jinki’s small eyes. She nods towards Kibum who is now trying to fix Taemin’s hair in front of the dressing mirror to Jinki’s left because he has always been dissatisfied with the maknae’s hairstylist work (or because Kibum is just a goddamn perfectionist, perhaps).

“Where’s Minho?” Jinki asks out of responsibility as a leader. Taemin shrugs his shoulders and Kibum slaps his back, telling him not to move around while he’s getting the bangs right in its place. Jonghyun who had just came back from the gents are now invading Jinki’s dressing mirror, checking for any leftovers from their pizza dinner half an hour ago on his teeth.

“Minho’s getting some coffee from the hallway. He said he’s sleepy so he needs something to boost his head up. I think we need to let him get some sleep once this concert’s finished,” Jonghyun finally comments a minute later after he is sure that his teeth are clean from any peppers or seaweed (because they ordered the Hawaiian Sea special for the pizza earlier). Jinki grunts, orders Kibum to be enough with his fascination over Taemin’s hair and go drag that sleepy brat into the preparation room right away. Although whining, Kibum obeys him.

Jinki sighs again after his make-up is done.

He still hates the way his eyeliner covers the outline of his eyes.

-

He shakes his head, trying to get the remaining confetti off from his hair. The charity concert ended almost perfectly, if it wasn’t for him dragging his on the stage floor twice while doing the ‘Ring Ding Dong’ performance. Now that is one thing he is going to protest towards the management later. How could they change the songs decided so abruptly at the last minutes before the concert begun? For god’s sake how many years has it been since the last time they’re performing that dance live on stage? He didn’t even have the time to rehearse properly for the selected songs, let alone a song taken from the album years ago.

“Hyung, you did well today,” Taemin tells him, and Jinki can hear the sympathy dripping out from every word spoken by the maknae. Kibum watches them and smiles; he has already washed away his ridiculously thick make-up and changed into his casual wears, so does Minho. Jonghyun is nowhere to be seen and it is only until eight minutes later that Jinki receives a text from that guy telling him that he’s going straight for a gathering after the concert. Jinki’s tongue tutting at the text, and looks up to the clock on the wall of the dressing room; ten past eleven. Jonghyun’s going to come back to the dorm intoxicated, he is sure.

“It’s not the first time, Jinki hyung. Don’t be such a girl about it,” Kibum finally breathes when they are in the van much later, driving back towards their dorm. He had been keeping his words from the after party and Jinki was starting to feel uncomfortable with the silence, to be honest. Jinki is watching the dancing lights of the city and traffics from the window when he feels Kibum’s palm across the nape of his neck. When the hand falls slowly on his shoulder blade, Jinki squirms avoiding the warm and good intentioned contact, telling Kibum that he’s okay and Kibum retreats his hand back to his own lap. His lips pursed at the rejection.

“You don’t seem to be okay, though. You know I can read you, Jinki.”

“I am well aware of that. So please, can you not read me?” his index finger is resting its tip on his temple as his elbow is rested on the edge of the window, and his thumb is making circles on his cheekbones. Kibum grunts, almost angry.

“Fine. Just trying to be nice.” He relaxes back into his chair, and pulls the eye-cover over his eyes then crosses his arms across his chest.

Jinki smiles, and shakes his head apologetically.

It’s not like he hates Kibum, or Jonghyun, or Minho and definitely not Taemin. He loves them. They are his brothers, and he is willing to put his life at the end of every sword if he has to for them. But for now, he is tired.

Jinki backs away from the window, and looks over his shoulder to check on the back seats. Minho is leaning against the same side of the window as he is; iPod’s earphones plugged into his ears and Taemin is resting his head on his shoulder; his pretty mouth gapes a little as small breaths flow out from there.

Seriously, Jinki is starting to get tired of this life. Dipping back his weight into his seat, his fingers laced on his lap and his eyes closed, letting his mind drifts back to the memories of six years ago, when they were brought in into the management office and the CEO was smiling as he read out the names that will be publicised in the course of six months onward. Jinki’s was the first to be called out, and he almost jumped.

He remembers the part when they accepted every job offered their ways from the television broadcasting companies, and getting bruises when the stunts sometimes were wrongly coordinated. The performances done for the stage of music award ceremonies; from the opening line ups to the middle, and then they were picked to do special stages before finally; they were listed among the successful sunbaes and performed for most of the closing stage afterwards. Their songs hit the charts; one by one the MVs were going international and more viewership on their Youtube account. They wanted more viewership, more fans, and more stage. And they got more fans. They got more stages. They got even more programmes to be guested on. He thought he’d be happy with the result.

But then, that was when Jinki started to feel tired. Really tired. Waking up in the morning for the early schedules has become a burden, and he starts to wish for longer hours in bed. The laughs become faked, and his back pain digs deeper into his spine. Sometimes his legs start to give out without warning on the stage, and he needs to be rushed to the nearby medical facilities. Fan’s hopeful wishes for him to get better becomes a curse, because once he had thought that he didn’t want to get better. He wants to rest his tired bones on the bed and shuts his whole world out. Let him be alone for a day. Just for a day, that is all he wants. He starts to think that his conviction towards this life that he himself Leese is getting weaker day by day, and his motivation is losing. He hates himself for feeling this way, and he eventually starts to get annoyed at his life’s every day’s routine, too.

His gentle smile covers that up pretty smooth, though. Fans like it, and the media thinks it’s pretty convincing. So Jinki keeps on smiling. Funny, it used to feel so easy to draw up a smile whenever someone is speaking to him. Now, even the newspaper boy to their dorm is getting harder to be faced each day.

Can someone please grab his wrists and pulled him out from this misery? Just for a few hours will do. Or Jinki thinks he will start hating himself to the point of no return.