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neo-shitty · 3 years

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somewhere only we know — j.wy

description. your friendship with wooyoung hangs on a tightrope, walking the thin-line between rekindling and severance when he contacts you for the first time in years.

pairings. jung wooyoung x gender-neutral reader

genre. angst, slice of life, best friends!au, amusement park!au, idol!au

warnings. none

word count. 2.5k

notes. to j, high school was fun but you’re better off a memory. | taglist: @dominonation @sanccharine @lixiesbabyhands @rae-blogging @cavaree @xhazmania

“Same place then?”

The other side of the line muffles with a rustle, his voice following moments later. “Yeah, same place.” You nod, shuffling across the room to settle your own erratic heartbeat down. One ‘see you’ and an echo later, the line goes dead.

Of course it’s the same place, you wonder if he remembers it’s the same time of the year too. It’s June again, the festivities have just begun. Party streamers hung like clotheslines over city streets, crisscrossing from building to building in webs of bright color. People were everywhere; in the shops, on the road, brushing or pushing past you. Music blasted from enormous speakers, a different tune on every other street corner, and the cacophony of noises boils down into one singular buzz in your ear. You always hated the summer festival, it’s always too hot and too crowded. Only one person managed to drag you out and after so many years, he’s done it again.

The call details don’t disappear when you blink, his name in white ink engraved across the glass screen above a timer counting the seconds of shared breathing. You’re both waiting for the other to end the call, a habit from a shared past reverberating in the present. Seconds tick by one by one with no one uttering a word until finally his laugh comes, high and light through the speakers. “See you later,” he repeats. And the call ends before you could say the same thing back like you always did until you grew tired of each other. The timer stops, the caller ID disappears. The blank lockscreen stares at you from below then the screen shuts to black.

Jung Wooyoung hasn’t called you in years.

The first pang of nostalgia hits when the wall comes to view, its reddish brown bricks almost black with the fading sunlight. You’re still half a block away but the wind carries their laughter over. Engines chug, carts rattle, children giggle. The carnival takes shape behind closed eyelids, rides towering over one another and littered all around the block. There are countless shops in between, prizes ranging from snacks to stuffed toys. You once tried out each one, walked out without a single coin to your name. Your pulse picks up as you get closer, nostalgia washed out by nervousness and excitement.

The line heading in is no longer as long as it used to be, ticket staff replaced by a singular robot. It spits out a ticket, stamps your outstretched hand, and pushes you in.

You’re fifteen again, watching as cotton candy flies out of the machine and into your hand — matching hues with the pink clouds as if it had been plucked right out of there. Before you manage to say your thanks you’re swept into the crowd, a centrifugal force dragging you out of your comfort zone. The ocean of curious park-goers swallows you, your only tether to the shore is a hand wrapped around your forearm. Wooyoung swims from one stall to another, his voice muffled beneath the noise of the amusement park.

He’s but a blur in the crowd, buzzing from one shop to another with ‘Free Taste!’ treats as his pollen. That night he dunks a stranger into a tank, knocks a pyramid of plastic cups down with a toy gun, and loses all his money in petty gamble.

You glance at your phone when it chimes, vibrating in your hand as it ushers a message in. I’m here. Where are you? Your last message turns from delivered to seen as his message comes in. In line. Heading in.

Maybe it was impatience or eagerness that made the wait longer. You round back to the entrance, the flashing spectacle impossible to miss amidst the bright lights of the park. The queue moves and people flurry in but Wooyoung isn’t one of them.

At a distance, steam is blown and an engine roars to life. The pirate ship begins to swing and you’re sixteen again, trying to talk Wooyoung out of it. But your tickets have been paid and you were two people away from getting in. There’s a bright glint bouncing off his glossy eyes, the thrill of thinking of the ride already exhilarating for him. When you try to back away, his grip tightens. Before you know it, you’re buckled into the last row.

“It will be fun,” he said. That’s before the boat swings too far back and your body hovers off the seat. Every profanity you know rapid-fires out of your mouth, echoing Wooyoung’s own screaming before he hears you and starts laughing instead. You walk off the ride feeling weightless, one tick off your bucket list and one ear still ringing from your seatmate’s screaming.

He doesn’t apologize, he doesn’t know how to articulate the word out loud. But he drags you to a ride you’ve been eyeing, one he rendered a waste of money earlier that night. It’s a light ride wedged between all the heart-stopping ones, a handshake to your fearful self. Bumper cars and you’re the first and only people in line. The five minute interval between rides passes with no other people queueing up besides a few kids too short to be let in.

Payback comes in the form of getting a better car, driving school doing no good with the dysfunctional controls. It’s a chase when he realizes it, because you’re on his tail as he drives from one corner to another. The world mutes and for a few minutes, it’s just you and him clashing bumpers and exchanging taunts between laughter. The memory remains fresh even after all those years, encapsulated in a snowglobe and untouched by everything that followed.

“What are you looking at?”

You’re twenty-three now, reeled back from a trip down memory lane by a voice that breaks through your thoughts. You blink away from the swinging pirate ship, the amusement park’s noise muting into a quiet hum when you turn to the person standing in front of you.

He isn’t looking, his eyes fixated on the ride with the same glint as they did all those years ago. “Wooyoung.”

“He-llo.” The years vanish like bubbles blown in the wind because you look up and nothing has changed. He’s already breaking into a laugh, his eyes disappearing and their corners crinkling. You graduated this year and it’s been a while since you’ve last seen each other, the summer tradition kept alive with him home. “Did I keep you waiting for long?”

The answer is simple but the words are nowhere, lost and buried beneath other things waiting to be said. “No,” you say, shaking your head. “Not that long.”

“Great,” he beams and you wonder if he has anything else to say but he remains quiet, no longer rambling on like he used to. “You have what I asked for?”

There is a sense of urgency when his voice seeps in through the phone speakers and into your ears, like he isn’t calling to catch up but to get one task off his things to do. It’s an idol thing, you’re assuming, always having a time set for anything and everything because there’s always somewhere else to be at all the time. But right now, he’s here, on the other side of the line.

“I was calling to ask if you still have my things?” he asks, tone hiking and uncertain.

You turn your heel, eyeing an untouched corner of your bedroom. A box sits collecting dust, safeguarding four years worth of memories in its carton walls. “Yup, came across them while cleaning actually.”

“Can I pick them up?”

“You’re home?” The surprise bleeds into your voice, the distance between Iksan and Seoul blurring in a single moment. He’s home, breathing the same air in the same city for the first time in so long.

Wooyoung shuffles on the other end of the line. “Yeah. Our company gave us a break.”

The tide wanes and the line between your worlds comes clear. Company, because he’s no longer just your classmate. There are people beyond this small town who know him now, his name chanted by millions or more. “I can’t have an idol dropping by my house. I don’t want any speculation.”

He laughs, the Wooyoung from all those years ago showing himself when you feel the need to distance your ear from the speaker. “I doubt anyone followed me here though. So where can we meet?”

“Well, it’s June again and you’re home.”

His end of the line is quiet, static, and you worry that you’ve finally taken up too much. But he gleams, “Summer festival! The park!” The same place, the bright red wooden bench sitting in the middle of the block of whirring metal chunks.

Dust flurries about your bedroom when you nudge the box out of its corner. It’s half full of things that aren’t yours, trinkets from your past from friends and classmates you barely talk to anymore. Most of them are Wooyoung’s and they’ve been untouched for years.

Some days, your eyes would brush past his drawer on your cabinet — a shelf full of the little things he leaves behind during his visits. There are shirts and sweaters, fidget spinners and rubik’s cubes, little things and little memories trapped in that enclosure. You’ve only gone through his things to arrange them, fold and unfold them as memories from younger years resurface as you go through his things. Sometimes Wooyoung is dancing around with his footfalls muffled by the rug, other times he’s sprawled out on the bedroom floor staring at the empty ceiling. He moves to the capital after high school graduation and his things become more of a waste of space rather than fond memorabilia, demoted from your cabinet and moved into a box in the corner.

But emptying the box is easier said than done. A slideshow of memories pan as you fold and unfold each item for what could be the last time. Your hands clutch onto the fabric longer, fingers tinkering with the same things for minutes on end and refusing to let go. They’re the last of him still in your hold, still tangible when he isn't.

“_____, my things?” Again, his voice is urgent.

Wooyoung’s eyes are no longer glued to the rides but following a clump of people walking down the path to other rides, people you don’t recognize and people he doesn’t bother to introduce. One waves him over and he raises a hand to wait up. They glance through narrowed eyes, their silent judgment washing over — suffocating you.

Your cheeks heat with embarrassment, no one at fault for the situation but your assumptions and crushed expectations. He didn’t really say anything about reliving old traditions, no, he just said he needed his things back and nothing more. This wasn’t him making up for lost time after years of being away. It’s him wedging you in between an already filled schedule, one where you were never fit to be in the first place. But you couldn’t help but hope, could you? It’s the same place, the same festival, the same season, just different years. Just too many Junes apart, familiarity long gone.

“Here.”

The pack leaves your lap, its weight shifting to your arm then to its recipient until you’re no longer holding any of it — any of him. You’re standing a foot apart from each other, close enough for you to catch a quiff of musky perfume, and there’s still too much distance in between. Because you’re no longer teenagers holding back laughs in the back row, no longer running the same halls and making fun of the same teachers. There’s no shared struggle to pass impossible exams and no common people to talk about anymore.

“Did you come with someone?”

You shake your head, honesty overruling your need to make some excuse to say. “Just me.”

“Maybe you want to join us?” Wooyoung asks, but he’s looking far as if planning where to put you in his schedule while your own only had him in mind.

So you save yourself from the embarrassment because you know he isn’t asking out of genuine interest to let you stay but common courtesy. You recognize it, that tone, because he uses it on others when he wants to spend time alone with you.

“It’s fine,” you reassure him. “I have somewhere else to go anyway.” The town was wide and there were other places to go, just not where you wanted to be with for the night. Your night reshuffles in your head, alternatives for the amusement park coming up in charades because anywhere was better than being in a crowd you didn’t belong in.

You stand up and Wooyoung steps back.

“Okay.”

When you catch his eye, he’s looking back but the glint is no longer there. It’s still Wooyoung, just taller and more muscular. His hair seems darker, box-dyed instead of its natural darkness. He carries himself better, standing with more confidence that he’s almost unrecognizable when he’s on stages. But tonight he blends with the rides and the city lights.

He doesn’t know where to place his hands, they hang awkwardly beside him. There must be an urge to reach out to put your head, to open up and give a hug because your own are itching to close the distance in between. There’s too much to say, too much time to fill in but your words fail and the reunion is sealed with a hi-five.

“It was nice seeing you.” He says but he’s already mixing with the crowd before you say it back and before long, he disappears.

It doesn’t hurt as much as you expect it to. The real tether is long worn out, time and distance thinning the ropes that bind. The blades have long been drawn, gnawing on the line with 9-5s. He’s training for the same hours you’re in class and you’re both catching sleep in between. Same time zones feel different with mismatched schedules. Messages were left unreplied for days, then weeks, then months, until all you ever messaged each other for were New Years and birthdays. Even those stopped coming too. One day, his birthday was just November Twenty-something and when the date comes you remember a birthday but not the person it belongs to.

This was just the final severance, the mere acceptance of a reality long drawn out. Your worlds have long fallen apart, no longer revolving one another. You were pendulums in reverse; once in sync, now swinging past one another. Your clocks now ticked on different beats of the same second, common ground split into two different things long ago.

The amusement park disappears behind you as you walk away into the night, going about your night without Wooyoung just like you’ve gotten used to all those Junes without him. Loss is sad but it happens. You’ve lost him long ago and you can’t miss what you didn’t care to keep around. So you let the blade cut through, threads of lingering attachments lost to the void. You’re each other’s stepping stones, significant parts of the past that helped mold the present and you convince yourself there’s nothing lonely about being left when you’ve done well on your own even without him. He’s a piece of your past, a fond memory to look back on, and he’s still a part of your life even when he doesn’t walk with you in the present anymore.

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