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canyouhearthelight · 5 years

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Sneak Peak!

I have decided to give you all a sneak peak of my longest (time wise) work in progress. This story was intended to be my first novel, some 6 or 7 years ago. Back in January, I decided to go back to it and take another swing. This is nothing like The Miys, and doesn’t even take place in the same universe.

That said, I would be deeply honored if my followers could give me their feedback on this portion of it.

Silas Rask woke to the cold wind whipping across his body, the gray sky backlit by the early morning sun. Briefly, he tried to remember the last time the sky had been clear, giving the train of thought up a heartbeat later as a lost cause. Maybe it had always been covered in a blanket of clouds, and what he thought were memories of clear and bright skies or starry nights were instead memories of pictures in a text. Then again, he was trying to find the memory through what felt like a partial lobotomy done by a rat. It was an all-too-familiar feeling, a constant companion for the past several years.

Groaning, he sat up and inspected himself in an attempt to get his bearings. Coat and clothes were present and accounted for, that was a plus. However, his shoes were gone. Again. Fortunately, his credits and keys were still in his pockets, along with all the miscellaneous junk that had managed to manifest itself in every coat he had ever owned. That would probably be courtesy of the fact he had been lying on top of it; mornings like this were becoming entirely too common if he could remember to lay on top of his stuff to protect it, but could not manage to remember how to get home.

Speaking of home, Rask looked around to figure out where exactly he was and how to get back to said residence, but he saw nothing but open, grassy field. His heart sank as he realized what this could mean – it certainly was not a good sign if he was where he thought he was. Trying to prove himself wrong, he stood to get a wider view, only to see the field stop abruptly in a drop-off about a hundred yards to his left. Other fields floated in the distance on all sides, covering the tops of enormous structures.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, rubbing his face and jaw in disbelief, “I’m on top of a damned Tower.” The incredible structures known only as ‘Towers’ made up the vast majority of the stronghold now known only as the Citadel. They functioned like self-contained cities within their isolated nation, each owned by a different corporation, with the employees both living and working within. Most of the massive buildings had carefully maintained parks that served double duty as recreation areas and filters for the air that was drawn into the building via strategically placed vents beneath the surface.

And somehow, Silas Rask had gotten on top of one of them.

While drunk.

Taking a deep breath, Rask muttered a prayer to any listening deities – plus a few he probably made up on the spot – as he looked around at his surroundings, squinting to make out the nearby structures more clearly. To one side, he saw the sigil of Dapevoro Amusements, and he relaxed slightly when he saw to the opposite side a stylized badger – Letelm. That confirmed that he was, in fact, on top of his home tower, Zilacen Industries. The breath he was holding exploded from his lungs in relief.

“Thank the gods,” he sighed to himself. “I’m home. Kinda.” Which explained how he had gotten to such a high level filter park: he worked with corporate security with Zilacen, so he had access to all public spaces throughout the entire building. His panic calmed somewhat as it occurred to him that it would be both easier and less necessary to come with an excuse as to what he was doing up here than if he had managed to get on top of, say, the Tower where he had started his drinking binge the night before, for example. Waking up in an awkward location was a situation that had happened more often than he cared to admit, and was never one he cared to repeat.

He braced himself as he headed for the edge of the field to begin the journey back to his quarters in the heart of the Tower, and suppressed the trickle of fear that struck his spine as he looked over the edge to locate the staircase. In the twenty years since he had come to the upper tiers, he had never gotten used to the view. Specifically, he had never adjusted to the openness and the fact that he could not even see the mist that always swirled around the lowest tier and the power plant – give him tight, closed spaces any day, thank you. However, there was no other way to get down from the top of the tower. With this in mind, he very carefully found the walkway that wrapped around the outside of the structure, and made his way inside at the first opportunity he could.

The filter park where Rask had woken up was over a hundred levels away from his quarters. It would have been a daunting enough distance if there had been a direct route. Unfortunately, he also had to navigate the distances between public lifts along with the teeming crowds he was forced to wade through to make his way. By the third lift, he started to hunker in on himself, conscious of just how badly he smelled and regretting more and more the loss of his shoes. Apparently, nobody paid attention to whose feet they may be stepping on. Two more lifts, and Silas arrived to the level where his quarters were located, albeit he was on the wrong side. He ignored the glide walk that would have been faster in exchange for the opportunity to stretch his legs as he walked the remaining distance to his quarters. As he cut through the crowds, he took in the boisterous noise and the mingling scents of the population of his tower. He could not deny that on any other day the sheer amount of life around him would have made him smile.

Today, it just gave him a bigger and bigger headache.

Finally, Rask made it inside his quarters and was able to close out the noise and crowds he had just spent nearly two hours enduring. He took a calming breath, removed his coat, and tossed it over the back of his couch. He loosened his tie and shirt from the night before as he walked toward his room, the lights automatically coming up to the dim levels he preferred. Once he reached his bedroom, he tossed the shirt and tie, plus his slacks, into a pile of similarly dirty laundry that had taken over one corner of the room. He finally managed to shuffle into his bathroom, and more importantly his shower, in hope of washing away most of his hangover.

When he felt reasonably human again, Rask dug a not-too-filthy pair of sleep pants from a pile closer to his bed and shuffled back out of his bedroom for a little hair of the dog. The lights in the apartment followed him, dimming in one room as he entered another, shining brightest in the kitchen. Selecting the cleaner glass of the two that he owned, he briefly contemplated a shriveled lime on the counter before deciding to let it die in peace and just drink his whiskey on the rocks. He paused briefly in the door between the kitchen and living room to take a sip of his drink, feeling the last tension leave his body as the warmth of his drink radiated from his stomach.

Looking into his living room, Rask told himself (not for the first time) that he needed to clean. It was not so much that his apartment was dirty - he did not own enough for that, frankly. But every smooth surface was coated in a film of dust and short, dark hairs. Rask assumed the hairs were his, and fortunately the furniture that was bolted in place when he was assigned the space was something between gray and tan and looked cleaner than he knew it was. In fact, all the furniture in the apartment came with it. The only color in the living room was a plant Jynx had given him, “to brighten the place up.” Even it was starting to turn brown to match everything else. He could have sworn it was a bright, vibrant green when it had taken up residency on top of a bookshelf, but it was certainly more brown than green now.

Having finished his first glass of whiskey, Rask poured himself another and then resigned himself to checking the alerts on his console. The indicator had caught his eye as he came through the room the first time, but a shower had been infinitely more important. Unless he wanted to actually clean – like he swore he would at least twice a week – he had run out of excuses to avoid it any longer. As expected, most of the alerts were unimportant, mostly just local news. Since he was in security, he was usually pretty ahead of any alerts sent out to the general populace. One message made him drop his head back and groan loudly at the potted plant: in his absence, Jynx had left him a message. His best friend, drinking companion, and personal pain in the ass loved to nag him when he got lost while on a bender.

“Hey, just checking to see if you’re still alive. Since I’m talking to your console, I’m pretty sure you passed out in an alley somewhere - again. Get in touch with me when you get this, and don’t worry, I promise to send your liver straight home if I run across it wandering around on its own in protest. Later, bitch!” Rask smiled despite himself. It had, in fact, been Jynx’s fault he had gotten so drunk the night before, to begin with. Something about her latest project being done, she needed to celebrate, along those lines if remembered correctly. For her, “celebrate” meant “get Silas Rask just drunk enough that he will drink anything I hand him so long as he doesn’t have to pay for it”, unfortunately. Of course, Jynx also loved to find the most disgusting concoctions she could, just to see if he would drink them anyway.

The last such ‘drink’ – he used the term loosely – he could remember from the night before was a vibrant purple, obscenely named liquid that smelled like used hydraulic fluid and probably tasted worse. He would have to taste used hydraulic fluid to be certain.

Rask took the time to send a response to Jynx, letting her know that he did make it home and had not, in fact, passed out an alley. He left out the part about waking up on top of Zilacen Tower. Then, he resigned himself to getting caught up on his backlog of cases. Most of what he did was low-level grunt work: breaking up fights, chasing petty thieves, and just generally being a visible presence of security within the crowded populace. Sometimes, this led to him stumbling across a small part of a larger problem, and those cases were currently lined up in a rack within arms’ reach of his console. Ordinarily, those cases would have been assigned to a detective and he would never see them again until someone was apprehended. In more recent months, however, Rask had decided to hold on to them and try to find those responsible himself. He did not want to be low man on the totem pole forever, and he considered this an effort to better himself in hopes of moving up the chain of command.

He started with the oldest case from the rack. Someone at work told him when he first started that case files had once been large, sloppy stacks of paper, held together by various means, and prone to losing vital information. However, nearly a century ago, Security Command had started using more secure pencil files to store cases on, and for that Rask was grateful. Otherwise, instead of a rack of long, thin, crystalline rods, he would have shelf upon shelf of flammable, unreliable paper files in his apartment. No, thank you. Instead of digging through a mountain of paper to review the case, he only needed to grab the crystal, and set it point-down into a hole in his console designed to read and display the information. No chance of pieces falling out and getting lost.

This file was one that had been pulling at the back of Rask’s mind for nearly a year, and it was the reason he started paying more attention to these cases, if he was honest with himself. The day of the initial arrest, which had been the beginning of the whole thing, he was patrolling a level in Middle Tier. Rask had walked past a food vendor only for a small child to run into him so hard that it knocked them both to the ground and sent the bag in the child’s hand skidding across the sidewalk. As he had helped the child up, he saw a look of sheer terror on the boy’s face and heard someone shout from inside the store.

“Come back here you little furball! You have to pay for that!”

The boy had tried to run at that point, only for Rask to hold him firmly but gently. A man – who later turned out to be the owner of the food stall – marched up to Rask and shouted that the boy had stolen from him, that it was not even the first time, and that he wanted the little creature arrested immediately along with damages paid for the merchandise he had lost.

Rask gritted his teeth every time the words ‘furball’ and ‘creature’ had come out of the man’s mouth, but put on his most professional demeanor, offered to pay for the food the boy had stolen along with lunch for himself, and promised to talk to the boy. The disgruntled vendor had agreed, but as he handed Rask the lunch he had ordered, the man made it clear that he still wanted to press charges against the child later. Rask had not argued, simply promised to take a statement as soon as he finished eating, and pointed to a table where the vendor could watch and make sure he kept his promise.

Rask had then walked the now-shaking and confused child over to the table, opened his bag of food, and promptly handed half of it to the boy before starting to eat his own share. The boy had eyed him skeptically, but the food had still disappeared long before Rask had finished his own. As he ate, Rask used the opportunity to look at the boy. He had not noticed at first, in the chaos of everything going on, but now saw that the boy did, indeed, have fur. It was not uncommon, as many denizens of the Citadel were not completely human. Further observation showed that the boy was a feline of some sort, with blondish gold fur, ringed spots, and distinctively cat-like ears.

Suddenly Rask was glad he had ordered a tuna sandwich, especially since he had been considering something vegetarian.

“So,” he said to the boy, leaning back and stretching, “Did you actually steal from him?”

The boy looked down and kept silent.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Rask sighed with genuine reluctance.

The boy just mumbled something at his lap.

“Can’t hear you,” Rask leaned forward, straining to hear.

“I was hungry,” the boy replied, so quiet that Rask could still barely hear him.

Rask chuckled, which made the boy snap his face toward Rask and scowl angrily. “It isn’t funny!”

“I’m laughing because I already knew you were hungry. Why do you think I bought you lunch?”

The boy’s face softened slightly and his ears twitched a little. Rask knew that was generally a sign of interest, so he continued. “Whether you bought the food or stole it, no one goes to a food vendor unless they are hungry. And if you stole to food like the man says you did, then you had to be very hungry to do that. So, did you steal it?”

The boy looked down again. “Yeah.”

“If you were hungry, why didn’t you tell your parents?”

“They’re gone,” the boy had whispered.

They’re gone. Those words had convinced Rask that this was not a simple case of sending the kid to juvenile lock-up for theft. As they had continued talking, he found out that the parents were not dead, did not pack up and leave, they had just vanished. The boy, Tyn, had been scared to report it because he had not wanted to become a Ward of the Tower. Rask could not even bring himself to blame the boy: the entire Citadel tended to treat non-humans as something between a child and a pet. It had bothered him his entire life, and it had bothered him when he sat in front of a scared, starving boy who had just been repeatedly called a speciest slur in front of a security officer, because it was considered perfectly normal behavior. While it was bad enough for human children to become wards, Rask could not imagine how much worse it would have been for Tyn.

#the citadel #sneak peak #original fantasy #future fantasy #writing #mine

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idolizerp · 6 years

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[ LOADING INFORMATION ON GALAXY’S MAIN DANCE WINTER…. ]

DETAILS

CURRENT AGE: 24 DEBUT AGE: 21 SKILL POINTS: 06 VOCAL | 13 DANCE | 00 RAP | 11 PERFORMANCE

INTERVIEW

true to his name, winter is as cold as ice. more stoic than stern, he holds about him an air of seriousness and enigmatic mystification that one might expect from a vampire from a tween romance novel rather than an idol. constellations are able to discern slight variations in his expressions –– he softens when speaking to fans, his furrowed brow smoothing out into friendliness and even concern; he actively fights back any sourness in his expression when speaking to seniors or people he respects ( the only thing that saves him from any attitude scandals, really ).

and when he’s on stage, a fire lights up in his eyes. when he dances, when he performs, that’s really when winter comes alive. motion is his preferred avenue of communication, telling stories with the way that his body moves. it’s more common to see the corner of winter’s lips move upward –– a smirk, seldom a smile –– during performances more than it is whenever he’s doing anything else. his laughter is rare, a gift bestowed by a blue moon.

winter doesn’t seem like he belongs in a boy group known for their youthful energy and exuberance. he’s bright, but in a binding way. he’s the kind of person who makes you wonder if you ought to be looking at him. regality and mystery to offset the more approachable members, one might suspect. he’s not quite the bad boy, not daring enough for that, but he is the brooding, quiet one that girls always seem to fall for. he’s not haughty enough to be an ice prince, though that doesn’t stop his fan sites from adopting ice-themed names. they aren’t quite wrong –– they are, after all, meant to capture moments when he “ thaws. ”

truthfully, winter owes his entire existence to xuedong’s anxiety. the sheltered son of cinema royalty’s ineptitude at socializing understandably hinders the conception of a friendlier persona. it’s easier for him to appear detached more than the talkative type, and xuedong prefers it that way. there’s a reason he’s never on variety. and while he feels terrible about seemingly pushing off those duties to his other members, he feels he more than makes up for it by making sure that everyone’s in sync.

where the ice prince seems to be lacking, the main dancer overcompensates. there’s not much else xuedong has to offer.

BIOGRAPHY

december 1993.

lau suo makes headlines with her swollen belly as she announces the golden globe nominees for the 1995 award ceremony. everyone wonders who the father is, what sex the child is, who the little fetus will become once it enters the world and becomes a person. when she announces her engagement to bai ming two months later, china erupts into applause. the daughter of an auteur, a capable actress and budding director in her own right, and the nation’s heartthrob make a beautiful couple. they will have a beautiful baby.

june 1994.

the beautiful baby is born. the public knows he is a boy. that is all.

june 1999.

xuedong asks if he’s going to be able to go to school. his mother, stroking his hair, says no. his father watches on, brow marred with concern. but he does nothing to stop his wife as she ( metaphorically, thankfully ) locks their son in his gilded, ivory tower. the boy’s fifth birthday party is attended by his parents, his nanny, two cousins, and the chef that baked his three-tier birthday cake.

november 2002.

as they continue to pay paparazzi to keep images of him the few time he leaves the house from leaking, xuedong continues to be nothing but a nameless mention in his parents’ wikipedia pages. it should be a good thing. such a famous mother and father should gain him some level of notoriety, the world watching with bated breath to see if he’ll take after his parents or if he’ll crash and burn like many a child star. xuedong never gets the chance.

( september 1997. xuedong cameos in his mother’s drama, the lowest-rated one in her career. he played her husband’s illegitimate son, a bit role where all he had to do was tug on an actor’s pants and call him father. unlike most of his family, he was not a natural at it. his mother took one look at his befuddlement in between takes and decided that he would never act again. she asked him later on if he enjoyed the experience and he told her “ no, ” but she wasn’t going to put him in front of a camera ever again anyway.

the drama was never broadcast outside of hunan. it still sits at a 4.1/10. )

or, at least, that’s what his mother would want.

his father is her complete opposite.

bai ming is overjoyed when his son asks him about dance. the boy is almost worryingly quiet, so any vocalization is given the utmost attention. though stained lightly by the thought that dance does not require xuedong to become more loquacious than he already is, ming is eager to have his son do something other than get coddled by his mother. without consulting his wife, he signs xuedong up for lessons from one of the best dance instructors in the country. he’s on the fast track to the beijing dance academy.

for an eight year-old, he shows remarkable growth.

just as remarkable as his mother’s fury when she finds out her precious baby has left the nest.

august 2007.

xuedong’s mother has given up on trying to stop him.

“ fine, if you think you know best, then do whatever you want. ”

“ he’s thirteen years old , ” his father argues. “ of course he doesn’t know best –– but he’s following his dreams, and i don’t want any son of mine to be held back from that because of his paranoid mother ! ”

“ you didn’t want him at all ! ”

the silence that follows is deafening.

xuedong always suspected it. to have his hypothesis confirmed was something he was unprepared for.

he moves into the trainee dorms of a moderately-famous entertainment company in beijing after two half-hearted hugs, one of which seems to drag on forever. he doesn’t make ripples with his entrance; somewhere along the line, it’s become an established rule not to ask the quiet boy named xuedong about his family. the kicked puppy look is enough to make anyone feel bad.

it’s perfectly fine to acknowledge his talent, though. his voice hasn’t cracked yet ( not that anyone hears much of it anyway ), but the skill with which he dances is undeniable. some prodding has the boy admit that he focused on ballet when he was younger but began to transition into modern dance, a blend of different styles to create pure art out of movement rather than old techniques recycled in various formations. his smile when someone says that he’s amazing lights up a room. and thus, people warm up to him. he makes friends for the first time in his life.

xuedong wonders if they’ll be the first people to love him.

may 2009.

the kiss is too much. a boy ten months and sixteen days younger than him takes xuedong by the shoulders and presses their lips together. he tastes like the cherry chapstick xuedong saw him putting on earlier. was that in preparation for their kiss ? xuedong never finds out, running out the door before the other boy can say anything. he might’ve blurted something out during his great escape. he doesn’t remember it.

it hasn’t even been two years since he left home, but so much has changed. he’s changed.

round cheeks have since begun to sharpen, puberty turning boyishness into chiseled features. getting used to growing limbs was a challenge in and of itself, to say nothing of the acclimation to living with other people. xuedong was kind and considerate enough to not make much of a fuss, though that didn’t change the fact that a boy who lived mostly in isolation for the first ten years of his life was understandably flabbergasted by the notion of cohabitation. it took some work, but his roommates were patient with him and he was willing to learn.

xuedong started to come out of his shell more. when he danced didn’t count; it was almost like xuedong retreated into some sort of subspace and the embodiment of performance took over his body. his peers already knew that he was good, and if he wasn’t absolutely fantastic, then he had more than enough charisma and stage presence to make up for it. and beyond that, he was starting to make friends. he went out of his way to take meals (few and far between) with others, becoming close to several trainees in particular.

he might’ve accidentally fallen in love with one along the way.

if he believed that people could love him in return, it would’ve worked out all perfectly, because this trainee happened to be the one that kissed him a day before his birthday.

but xuedong didn’t, and he returned to the place that taught him that no one loved him in the first place, promises of debut forgotten and lost to the wind. how could he think about that anyway, when the proposed group was a duo with the boy who caused him to run away to begin with ?

it isn’t all one boy’s fault. it just ended up being too much. a kiss that pushed him over the edge.

it started with mounting pressure from his dance teacher after a twisted ankle, berating him for failing when he was so close to perfection. for being unable to keep up the momentum that propelled him to the top of the bunch in the first place. then the radio silence from his mother, who threw herself into her work and whose acceptance speeches, once thanking her “ gift from god ” for almost a decade now simply citing her “ supportive family, ” nudged him farther along. someone figuring out who his parents were, managing to put together that his last name is bai and that his hometown is changsha and his reluctance to speak on his home life, was almost the straw that broke the camel’s back. accusations of nepotism were thrown carelessly, and while his closest friends stuck by his side, the mere whispers of his lineage were enough to have people distancing themselves from him. his injury, though relatively minor, and his abysmal recovery did not help matters. add to that a direct challenge to his long-held belief that he was likable but unlovable, and now xuedong doesn’t know what to do.

xuedong sometimes wonders if the kiss was meant to serve as reassurance. “ i’m still here. i still care. ” ( likely just wishful thinking. )

if it was, it didn’t work. if anything, it backfired.

and it sent him all the way back to changsha, back into the ‘ safety ’ he always hated.

at least his mother has the grace not to tell him “ i told you so. ”

july 2010.

bai ming did not raise a quitter.

he did not raise anything at all, but that’s a dark thought that xuedong would like to avoid entirely.

still, for all his gung-ho attitude towards his son reaching for the stars, he’s a little surprised when the boy says he wants to go to korea. to his credit, the man listens to the entire memorized speech about how msg is the company for him, that the one he joined when he went to beijing wasn’t quite the right fit and that he felt as though they were squandering his talent.

xuedong does not talk about the fact that his old crush debuted as a soloist a year ago, and that xuedong was supposed to be right there with him. that they were supposed to be a pair. two sides of a coin, two halves of a whole. they’re separate singularities now. and xuedong is not escaping him by running to korea. that’s only about a third of the reason why he wants to leave the country to pursue his passions elsewhere.

if he really wanted, he could just return to dancing. but he had a taste of the forbidden fruit. he has a decent voice, according to his old vocal trainer. if he practiced, he could actually be a good singer. and yes, he hasn’t done anything in the last year, but he’s taken the right amount of time to psyche himself up. he’s ready to get back in the ring now. he wants to be an idol, not a dancer.

he’s already started self-studying korean. the internet is a wonderful place.

his father either sees his point or does not care enough to argue. xuedong chooses to believe it’s the former. the only question he asks is “ did you tell your mother ? ” it is a question he should already know the answer to. and the sigh that bai ming releases signifies that he does.

xuedong takes the first flight to incheon, head raised high. it’s a new beginning for him.

november 2014.

that newfound confidence didn’t last long. though he was sufficient at communicating ( or, at least, formulating sentences in his head ), it seemed like extended periods of isolation were, in fact, detrimental to one’s social capability. he found himself in the same place he was when he was thirteen years old, young and afraid of the world around him, but ready to take it on.

back home, he was a trainee for about seventeen months before they told him that they were planning his debut. he had some reservations, young as he was, but there was the promise of stardom nevertheless. two months after he left, a soloist debuted from his company at age fourteen. xuedong still remembers the choreography –– initially created for two people –– to this day.

it’s been four years since he joined msg, over twice as long as his training period in china, and there has been no word of anything remotely similar to a promotion. dancing, ever his forte, came back to him gradually. talent went recognized. vocal lessons worked in, peppered with light praise –– a little generic, though he appreciated it nevertheless. and then … nothing. he supposes that’s the way it’s supposed to be. everyone around him works hard, but only a select few make the cut into becoming actual stars. he’s heard rumors of there being a boy group in the works, but he’s gotten to the point where he doesn’t think he’s in the running at all.

which, of course, makes the delivery –– pulling him aside while he practices for his next evaluation, catching him mid-pirouette –– all the sweeter.

it’s finally come. his chance.

yet, for some reason, he can’t muster the same enthusiasm that he had way back in february of 2009.

( it probably has something to do with his past catching up to him. or, as it were, having caught up to him last year. )

maybe it’s prudence. maybe it’s fear.

may 21, 2015.

he should feel something. it’s been a month since debut. already people are talking about how mesmerizing he is. and how pretty, though that’s nothing new. winter is a cool stage name. a little funny for a boy born in june, though the incongruity and contradiction is what apparently serves as his charm. a boy that handsome should smile more, some say.

he agrees.

there should be something akin to joy. he’s waiting for it to kick in.

it should be soon, he hopes. luckily, xuedong is very good at being patient.

december 2016.

galaxy has five comebacks under their belt. he’s somewhat unhappy with the type of music they’ve put out, though he has no right to be, because he was informed beforehand of their concept and should’ve long accepted that they weren’t going to go the mature route he felt he embodied best. yet while xuedong cannot say that he’s satisfied with the music he’s put his name to ( as few lines as he has anyway ), he’s rather pleased with the choreography instead.

it isn’t quite the joy he was looking for, but it’s an approximation. ‘ very nice, ’ as exhausting as it is, is his favorite –– contested only by ‘ clap. ’ if he can’t focus on the disappointment he’s foisted upon himself for not becoming an immediate success, then he can at least throw himself wholeheartedly into the work placed before him.

perhaps he thought too highly of himself. rome wasn’t built in a day, so xuedong shouldn’t have expected galaxy to become superstars within the span of a year. they were still lacking in many ways, mostly in areas that xuedong couldn’t control, and thus he should also not be so hard on himself. he did the best he could. he worked himself and the other boys to the bone making sure that they were perfect ( or as close to perfect as they could be ) in every performance. things like concepts and genres were out of his hands. it’s a strange thing to take comfort in. in fact, he knows many others would chafe under that sort of control. but the way xuedong sees it, he’s not to blame for galaxy’s failure and lack of growth, and that’s enough for him.

it’s not his fault, so he can’t reasonably be hated more than he already is.

( or, rather, more hated than he thinks he is. )

may 2017.

“ happy second anniversary. i think i actually heard your voice in highlight. ” xuedong supposes it’s meant to be a joke, though his father’s never been much of a comedian. most of bai ming’s career has been him sitting around and looking pretty. now that he’s reached middle age, though, he’s been taking more passion projects. he hasn’t won an award yet, but xuedong agrees with the public’s general consensus that his father deserves at least something for pretending to crawl into a bull carcass after being nearly mauled by snow leopard. “ i guess you’re doing pretty well. ”

not as well as he would like, if xuedong’s being extremely honest, but he isn’t. instead, he smiles at his father and ducks his head gratefully. “ thank you. i read that grazia interview you did. i can’t wait for your new film to come out. ” he shouldn’t sound this detached, not from his own father. this is the first time they’ve actually been able to do anything beyond a quick fifteen minute call in months, and thus he’s made sure to chase out his roommates so that he could facetime his father in peace.

reminding himself of the overwhelming gap between himself and the people who gave him life is an appreciated respite from reminding himself of the overwhelming gap between galaxy and cherry bomb ! and honey. galaxy seems to have fallen into middle child syndrome, which xuedong can’t say that he laments not experiencing as an only child. though it’s been two years since his debut, he can’t tell if the mystery shtick is working for him or not. he’s tried to be more talkative but only in instances where he can rehearse what he wants to say in his head a thousand times before opening his mouth, which means that he’s still relatively quiet in comparison to the other members.

he’s glad that his role as main dancer is appreciated –– he wonders if his sharpness during practice scares the other boys, though he’s sure they also bask in the praise of their strong performances, courtesy of xuedong’s diligence in making sure that no member gets left behind –– he’s just a little disheartened that people don’t ask him to speak up more. do they recognize that he’s shy ? or do they think his speech ( overly formal and superfluously sophisticated, he’s seen some constellations call it ) too cringeworthy to listen to ? either way, it makes him feel a little unwanted.

and objectified, because he still sees those comments about his abs and his thighs. they seem to be the only parts of him worth caring about for people who chose other members as their bias.

( he treasures the ones that call him a sweetheart, that are filled with crying emoticons when they ramble about how softly he held their hands and the deep attentiveness with which he pays attention to fans. those ones make everything else worth it. )

this is what he signed up for though, he supposes, so he bears it. this is what he chose. all because he loves being on stage. he still does. when he walks off, covered in sweat and pressing a towel to his forehead and neck, however, it seems like the world comes crashing back down on him.

“ you should come back home when you have the time, ” his father says. “ your mother misses you very much. ”

xuedong blinks. “ and what about you ? ”

his father looks a little taken aback. sheepish.

that’s all the response he needs. xuedong will continue to stay here in seoul, where he is wanted. for his skill if not his body. for his dedication if not his introversion.

june 2018.

to his surprise, he actually likes ‘ thanks ’ quite a bit. xuedong thinks it might be the slower tempo. although the choreography is nowhere as difficult as some of the others that they’ve had to learn over the three years they’ve been active, he finds that the song is … more his style. he resonates with it lyrically more than any of their other music even if it is still blatantly romantic. it’s just more wistful, he supposes, a little more bittersweet, which is one out of many words he could use to describe his own love life ( like pitiful or miserable or barren ). either way, he hasn’t been this excited to return to promotions.

xuedong doesn’t think that he’s grown tired of his work, per se, but it’s definitely lost some of its lustre. the glamorous lifestyle he was deprived of first by his mother has become an ugly reality to him now. he’s not living the high life he was expecting. where he might’ve spiraled downward due to negative influences had he been the child star so many expected him to be, he’s still remained something of a nonentity to this day. he’s not sure where he stands, not sure of who he is beyond what people have carved out for him.

is he really as cold and standoffish as some make him out to be ? he could be closer to his members, sure, but he likes to think that they’re friends. is he really quiet because he has something to hide ? it’s become common knowledge who his parents are, considering that search engines are free and he takes after his father more and more with each passing year. other than his parentage, though, he can’t think of any secrets he’s ever had –– except for his affinity for cherry chapstick. what does xuedong think of himself ? he has no answer to that question.

according to his enjoyment of ‘ thanks, ’ he’s a romantic. he isn’t some sort of dance machine, programmed only to perform and soak up difficult routines like a sponge. he supposes he’s not a cynic, either. but those three things are as far as he gets with descriptors before he starts drawing up a blank.

oh –– he forgot hope.

he hopes that future will allow him to draw out more truths from himself. another comeback, another revelation. it must be a little sad that he’s so inextricably tied to his work that it takes music releases for him to discover things about himself, but he can’t think of any other way. xuedong never really stopped looking forward to the future; now, though, it’s no longer through a lens of ambivalence.

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