In which Achlys and Junhui fear what could happen.
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October 7, 2018
HOW DREAMY ARE OCTOBERS — reality can't be told from delusion.
Achlys knew it was cruel of her to be so optimistic, to delude her mind in fantasies, but in her rare solitude, she couldn't resist the urge and basked herself in soft daydreams of a baritone voice.
One afternoon, sat under the shade of Seoul's skyscrapers in the dorm's balcony, she had a dream so visceral that when she woke from her mind, she couldn't separate reality from delusion. She spent a moment thinking it was all a memory — the stretch of her arm as she went to grab her water bottle, the buzz of a car meters below and the warmth of the sunlight. In it, she was still herself (Achlys Lī, 23, Chinese) but her heart had a softer beat and she was known in a way she thought she would never be.
The dream was innocuous, irrational: they walked through the city; they visited his family; they had a concert; one second she was in Shanghai, the next she was in Seoul, and, then, she was in Shenzhen.
The love and the trust — it was the love and the trust that swelled between them that had her lungs aching for air. She was overwhelmed with such unadulterated happiness, unaccustomed to those soft feelings.
Achlys wanted to curse him for mindlessly playing with her hands when they sat beside each other, for lightly stroking her knees or playing with her hair, for fuelling October's daydreams — but what she most wanted to curse at was herself, for fearing what could happen if she ever grew the courage to ask for that kind of love her dream had described without thinking of it as an absurdity.
In all honesty, she knew her wants were baseless and idiotic; succumbing to them meant proving the dark voices of hate (those that said that she was a corrupting force in the group) correct and going against the statu qui they had managed to rise within after years of hard work.
She didn't want to imagine the glances of pity thrown her way as she walked down Pledis' corridors, or the quick hushes when she walked into a room. The mere image of her bandmates hiding away or of the disappointment of fans infused in her worry and sent her into a silent frenzy. She could only beg October to stop her mind from foraging for hope. Guilt seeped into the crevices of her mind, realising what her childish crush could result in.
And, heavens forbid he was affected in anyway!
She wouldn't forgive herself for hurting him — she had promised herself to never to feel like that, but suddenly it was 6 p.m. and they were laughing way too hard and she felt herself childishly happy and knew she had broken her promise.
In a last attempt to partially forgive herself (forgive and forget, they said, but she really couldn't forget an insistent feeling so she decided to only forgive), Achlys chided in her head she was much better at being alone than at being in love — for it was true, she justified.
Being alone came naturally to her, accustomed to a life of deliberate solitude. If loneliness crept it's way inside her heart, she knew how to build its path out or, otherwise, how to embrace its strange comforts with welcoming arms. So, she repeated at herself like a mantra, she didn't need October's delusion, for the dream was exactly that (a delusion, but a sweet one at that).
She didn't need to feel like that. She didn't need to feel silly and fragile and good. She didn't need the excitement. She didn't need his smile. She didn't need his laugh. She didn't need his touch, his voice, or the depth of his thoughts.
Although she wanted to go against her nature as her eyes fell on Junhui's wide smile when he spotted her in the terrace, she didn't need him (she chose not to listen to the echo that yelled back that it was the mere act of wanting she despised, not needing).
The sound of the glass door being opened effectively broke her train of thought, and the light conversation they shared for some seconds before falling into a warm silence closed the door to the room of the what-ifs she liked to go over.
Again, together, they were lurking in that dangerous in-between.
Junhui, sat beside Achlys, felt his shoulders destress and back collapse into the whicker chair they shared. He looked subtly at her, eyes cruising across her shoulders, her hair, her profile, and remembered.
Achlys once, climbing the stairs; Achlys again, writing in that notebook he gifted her; Achlys later, playing against him in a video game; Achlys afterwards, smiling behind her fist at him. Achlys. It was always Achlys he remembered first.
Junhui found himself in front of Achlys again. He wondered — he always wondered, it was one of his favourite intrusive habits — whether they were really friends, or was it his memory grasping desperately at something he couldn't place?
How could they be (he chided at himself some days when he wanted to be hopeful) with her breath against his neck and their fingers laced? And, how tightly would he need to press her against his chest in those hugs they secretly shared before either admitted it wasn't for warmth?
How many times would his thumb brush against her lips accidentally before they admitted they were too far in to be friends?
When he internalised this thought, distractedly looking at Achlys side-profile, Junhui wanted to curse at himself for having let his painful crush develop into a hopeless love.
It was October, always so cruel.
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