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hippo-euphoria · 6 years ago

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Empty Streets and Neon Lights | Bildungsroman Challenge

Hey, so I finally finished the sequel to Sea Turtles, and because it lined up so nicely with the challenge I decided to use this as my submission. I specifically focused on the themes of these quotes:

“I wondered if that’s how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

- Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn’t stop for anybody.”

-Stephen Chbosky, Perks of Being a Wallflower

“You have to accept that sometimes that’s how things happen in this world. People’s opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process.”

- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Empty Streets and Neon Lights - read on ao3 (can’t link bc of tumblr purge but ( https:// archive of our own .org/works/16758763 ) )

pairings: yoonkook, namjin

word count: 33,931

genre: slow burn, hurt/comfort, light angst

warnings: light angst, sexuality crisis

summary: Jeongguk tries to find his place in Seoul's art scene as well as the balance between JK, the artist, and himself. But how can he do that when he doesn't even know his real self; maybe the real Jeongguk is still in America, reliving all those Moments he's tried so hard to forget, and when his hand hurts too much to actually create anything, can he even call himself an artist?

Jeongguk, a freelance artist, at some sort of science-y convention with his chemist friend, Jimin. He doesn’t want to be here, he finds things like this painfully disinteresting, but Jimin didn’t want to come alone, and Jeongguk supposes he does kind of owe him, seeing as Jimin has attended almost every single one of his pop-up galleries and exhibitions. Also, he promised to buy Jeongguk dinner.

“Stop scowling,” Jimin pinches his arm, creating a briefly noticeable crease on Jeongguk’s nice, situationally appropriate white button-up.

“I’m not,” He hisses, flinching away from Jimin and smoothing over his sleeve.

“You are,” Jimin insists, and he’s honestly probably right. “You look like you hate everyone here because one time you held the door for them and they didn’t say ‘thank you’ or something,” Okay that’s fair.

Jeongguk would’ve been annoyed regardless, he doesn’t understand most of this stuff, so he probably would’ve spent the evening scrolling through various social media platforms and maybe lowkey stalking the couple thousand fans who follow his art instagram. He doesn’t really stalk them, he just goes through and tries to pick out if any of the accounts are other artists or journalists or something along those lines. Anyway, the point is he would’ve been bored if it was any other topic, but this conference is about the ocean, and Jeongguk is leaning more towards irritated rather than passively annoyed.

Jimin conveniently forgot to mention that this conference is geared towards the ocean, finding new ways to clean it up and what not, and Jeongguk hates the ocean, hates the beach. Okay, maybe he doesn’t hate it, he just tries his best to avoid anything to do with the marine world. This all really is a noble cause because yes, the ocean is a mess and could do with some light spring cleaning, but he’d just rather be left out of it all, if he’s being totally honest.

In the art gallery of Jeongguk’s mind, where memories hang like paintings and decorate the hallways - all Good, Bad, and In Between Moments - he doesn’t want to think of the room holding every Moment he wants to forget. A room roped off and where the lights of his consciousness went out years ago and he hasn’t yet bothered to change the bulbs; everything is perpetually dark and dusty, almost each Moment is from his one semester in America. He doesn’t want to remember anything he shoves in that room, but perhaps above all, he doesn’t want to remember the boy with oceans in his eyes.

But here he is, trying to follow Jimin while staring intently at his back or messing around on his phone, anything to ignore the innocent enough posters depicting dolphins leaping from the water, sea turtles on a shore, or shells half-buried in the sand, because each time he catches a glimpse, the lights flicker just the slightest before going dark again.

Jeongguk tried to forget, he really did, but for months after they’d come home, it hurt. He couldn’t visit the beach in the early morning with his mother to pick up shells, he couldn’t tag along with Jimin and their friend group for beach parties or bonfires, all because he couldn’t be there without remembering.

So he tried to bury everything and pretend like America never happened, and eventually succeeded, to a point. After breaking down with Jimin, he began actively forcing away thoughts of him; he buried the memories as deep as he could, and pushed everything into that room in the back of his gallery to be shut away and ignored. But they were still there, and this conference was threatening to bring them up to the surface.

Jimin leads him through a set of double doors into a room where the floor goes from beige tiles to flat carpet that’s got to have a hundred or more chairs, facing an elevated podium. Someone is supposed to speak - there was a poster outside probably, but Jeongguk was too busy focusing on Jimin’s back to notice. They take their seats, choosing the last row because even though Jimin is somewhat small, he doesn’t really need to see the presenter. Also, if they sit in the last row, the pair can whisper to each other without eyes boring into their backs, and Jeongguk can be on his phone without too much judgement. Jeongguk busies himself with a pointless match-three game, the seats fill, and eventually someone steps up to the podium and provides an introduction of the speaker. Jeongguk doesn’t hear the speaker’s name or any of the introduction, probably because he doesn’t care to pay attention, but when he starts talking, Jeongguk recognizes his voice, the lazy syllables all too familiar. Jeongguk’s head jerks up to see none other than Min Yoongi standing at the podium, speaking with the force of the ocean in his words about something - he’s too panicked to listen. His heart stops, Jimin speaks next to him.

“Isn’t that-” Jimin begins asking, then takes one look at Jeongguk’s wide eyes and sudden pallor. “Yeah okay, bathroom,” He whispers and tugs on Jeongguk’s arm, and they sneak out of the lecture and across the convention center to the restrooms. It’s noisy and crowded, people milling around different exhibits and speaking over each other as scientists do when they have a point to prove, and Jeongguk suddenly feels small. As an artist he is very out of his element here. He reaches out a hand to grasp Jimin’s sleeve, and lets himself be led through the maze of bodies, too many wearing white lab coats, and when they finally reach it, Jeongguk locks himself in a stall and dry heaves, nothing comes out.

Jimin leans casually against the sink when Jeongguk lets himself out of the stall, arms crossed and eyes holding thinly veiled concern.

“You okay?” Jeongguk shakes his head and proceeds to splash cold water on his face because maybe this is all a horribly fucked up dream or like, three nightmares in one. “Thought so, I really can’t leave, but how about you take an uber home and I’ll see you there?”

Jeongguk nods. It’s not like he really has a choice, because Jimin had apparently already ordered the car and it’s there by the time Jeongguk composes himself enough to exit the bathroom - Jimin had locked it, much to the dismay of other attendants; Jeongguk tries not to think of the assumptions behind two men locking themselves in the bathroom, about how that looks to everyone else. He sends Jeongguk off with a gentle squeeze to the swell of his shoulder, and then Jeongguk watches through the window as he rushes back up the stone steps, probably back to the presentation. He leans his head against the glass as the city passes by, street lights and skyscrapers and nameless, faceless strangers all merging together into one stereotypical young adult novel introduction. Rain drizzles gently, fat drops rolling lazily down the windshield, and Jeongguk loses himself watching their trails. He thinks back to when he was a kid, and he would imagine the drops to be racing one another.

“Rough night?” The driver - a brunette woman with her hair cut to a short bob - asks, eyes meeting his in the rearview mirror.

“Something like that,” He mumbles, leaning forward and pressing his head against the back of the passenger seat.

“A girl?” She asks, and he grunts in disagreement. “Oh, a guy?” This is Korea, Jeongguk should not have boy troubles.

“Mhm,” She laughs quietly. “How’d you guess?”

“You look like you’ve just had your heart broken,” No, he just saw the person who broke it years ago for the first time, and he thought he’d gotten over it; but maybe he didn’t, maybe seeing Yoongi up there on the podium lit his gallery like a Christmas tree and broke it all over again. He doesn’t answer because Uber rides aren’t supposed to include personal conversation, and she turns on the radio to fill the silence.

By the time he’s left in front of the apartment he shares with Jimin, the rain has stopped, the air is muggy and thick, and the wet pavement appears to give off its own light as it reflects street lamps and headlights. It’s the type of night he could get lost in, where he could walk around for hours just thinking, but he’s exhausted, and he’s seen enough dramas to know what happens when you walk the streets and a past love happens to be in the city, so he sighs and walks up the steps, buzzing to let himself into the complex and taking the stairs up to the fourth floor, where he kicks off his loafers and collapses on the couch.

For months, everything he painted had to do with the ocean. Animals, landscapes, everything had some connection to the marine world, to Yoongi, and he hated it because somehow each piece was perfect. As a college junior, some of his pieces were being featured in actual galleries, not the mock presentations all students participated in, ones where people paid to see his work.

His best work was a landscape of the beach at night, with soft moonlight illuminating ocean swells and the beach vegetation appearing to sway gently and stars dotting the night sky - people loved it, called it surreal, hyperrealistic, a masterpiece. He’d spent weeks working on it, and apparently his dedication showed, because people told him how beautiful it was, how they could imagine themselves in the scene, and Jeongguk had to bite his tongue because no, they couldn’t. Jimin was the only one with context, and after he saw the painting for the first time, he sighed and helped cover it with a sheet and lean it carefully against the wall, where it remained until it was time for showing.

Everyone loved it, but Jeongguk hated it because Yoongi was in every fucking stroke - and though Jimin too thought it was beautiful, he hated it right along with him because that’s what friends are for. He received his highest mark on that painting, and his professor recommended it for an exhibition, and Jeongguk spent the entire night outside, a glass of champagne abandoned on the railing next to him because he couldn’t bear to go inside and see his own work with a small plaque next to it reading:

Title: Confession

Artist: JK

Medium: Watercolor

So he waited outside, nameless faces approached and complimented him, and when it was finally over and everything was being cleaned up and put away, he went in to find a small pink tag hanging off his plaque - someone had made an offer. He didn’t ask who or how much, just let employees take it away, he never wanted to see it again.

When Jimin returns nearly two hours later, Jeongguk is sitting alone at their four person dining table with an open bottle of wine and wine glass in front of him; he’s both the optimist and the pessimist: the bottle is half empty, his glass is half full. This is a Bad Moment, he’s just tipsy enough that the earlier shock of seeing Yoongi has ebbed away, and his eyes droop just barely; Jimin sighs when he sees him.

“That bad?” He asks, stepping out of his shoes and into a pair of slippers.

“Mhm,” Jeongguk hums, swirling his glass. Jimin simply shakes his head, then goes into the kitchen and retrieves a glass for himself. He sits across from Jeongguk and tips the wine into his glass, filling it halfway.

“I had no idea he’d be there,” Jimin says after a moment of contented silence - well, it’s contented on Jeongguk’s end, anyway.

“It’s fine, I don’t blame you,” He takes a sip of his wine, wincing slightly at the bitterness.

They’re drinking a cheap red tonight out of stemmed wine glasses, which isn’t right honestly, because red is supposed to be drank from stemless glasses, as it’s served room temperature. White wine is meant to be served chilled, and is drank from stemmed glasses to keep it from getting warm from being held.

“I thought you got over him,” Jimin says, and Jeongguk knows he’s been waiting until the right time to broach the subject of himself and Yoongi and what exactly happened way back then, what better time than now?

“I wanted to but, I just kinda, buried it all, you know?” He takes a long drink from his glass, draining it despite the bitterness and reaching for the bottle, to pour himself another glass. “I didn’t want to think about him, about any of that.”

“You know that’s not how you deal with things, this isn’t how you deal with things,” Jimin leans his glass forward, and Jeongguk clinks his glass against it even though there’s nothing to be toasting.

“I know, but it’s easier.”

“So, we’re back at square one, then. Do you still have a thing for him?” Jeongguk pretends he doesn’t hear the question, instead he lays his arm out across the table, resting his head on it as his other hand toys with the edge of the wine glass. “Jeongguk, we need to talk about this.”

“I hate him,” Yoongi has made it to where Jeongguk, born in Busan, can’t be near the ocean. Can’t even think about it.

“So you do.”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s go to bed,” Jimin hasn’t even touched his wine, he takes both glasses and dumps them down the sink, then shoves the cork back in the dark bottle and puts in the refrigerator. Jeongguk slides out of his seat and heads to his bedroom, where he collapses into the comforting security only his bed can provide.

Jimin comes in, sighs, and makes Jeongguk get up and undress because apparently it’s not a good idea to sleep in a button-up and slacks. He sits on the edge of Jeongguk’s bed, speaking mostly to himself.

“It’s fine that you hate him, I mean, no one can control that. But you gotta get over him, you can’t let what happened control you. I know a lot of your best art came out of it, but I mean, come on, when was the last time you went to the beach? Hell, the last time you even dated someone?”

Jeongguk hasn’t dated anyone since Yoongi, hasn’t dated anyone in six years. He can’t. He’s still stuck and maybe a little bit afraid when it comes to the topic of his romantic life, and that’s because after all these years, he still hasn’t figured himself out. Is he straight? Gay? Both? Neither? He doesn’t know, he hasn’t tried to find out. He slept with one girl when he came back, one, and the entire time he wasn’t thinking about her, but am I gay? He can’t, not completely if he made out with a guy more than once. But he’s tired, in no mood to deal with these thoughts right now, so he listens to Jimin talk speak and his eyes droop steadily. Before he’s out completely, Jimin tugs his duvet over him. He’s a good friend, Jeongguk should keep him around.

continue reading on ao3 - Empty Streets and Neon Lights by sleepy_time_tea ( https:// archive of our own .org/works/16758763 )

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