What if...? || Markhyuck

-20-

[november 2019 - may 2020]

[minhyung]

In fact, it wasn't until I arrived at the airport in Edmonton that I fully realized what I had done. I was far from New York. I couldn't go back there anymore.

I was almost three and a half thousand kilometers from home, family and work.

Three and a half thousand kilometers from all problems.

Three and a half thousand kilometers from Lee Donghyuck.

I wanted to believe that it was a sufficient distance to rest and break away from everything that hurt me.

Sufficient distance to feel that I really escaped from that life.

After all, I also had the impression that this distance is illusory, that I would not free myself. Kilometers are just numbers that don't reflect forgetfulness. The further north, the colder my heart seemed, which instead of removing the negative elements of the past from its interior, mummified them somewhere in the dusty recesses. It didn't let go of those injuring elements that seemed to stick to every ventricle and every single muscle, still breathtaking with its aching weight.

I sat on the bench and looked at people running around. They passed me thoughtlessly, staring blankly at the trajectory of their path to the goal. They were smudging in front of my eyes, which were absent-mindedly following this innocent picture. Some were in a hurry and others were still bored waiting for their flight or stood in queues to pick up their luggage. I myself was all of them and none of them at the same time. My individuation process seemed shaken and too bumpy to be fulfilled in the near future. I was in no hurry but I would prefer to know where I was going and when I would start my journey. Standing in place tired me, destroying even more. This whole trip to the deep north was shrouded in a huge secret. I didn't literally know any details. I was to learn everything firsthand from the head of the mob. Who he was, what he did and when I was supposed to see him, of course I couldn't know. I just had to wait in the hope that finally the person who should have picked me up from here a few hours ago would be found.

Meanwhile, the crowd hypnotized me and wondered. 

Was I part of it? 

Recently, I felt more like a separate entity that by its intrusion would disturb the continuity of this homogeneous mass. Modern people seem to be all the same. Universal fashion, universal behavior - finding yourself in the culture of personalities who, paradoxically, rushing to originality reach the same level of kitsch to meet their need for consumption. The absurdity that attracts absurdity is a definition of this society that I probably didn't want to belong to. I was unhappy myself but I preferred not to make it worse by the additional thought that I could be as bland and colorless as the shit-color mass that surrounded me. Shhit-color mass of kitsch.

"Mark Lee?" I heard a calm, questioning voice behind me. I turned slowly without getting up from the bench and looked at the boy who said my name. A tall blond with intense blue eyes appeared to me. His Scandinavian beauty strongly contrasted with the black clothes he was wearing, giving a somewhat spooky, but still beautiful effect. As a guy, however, he didn't have anything special for me. "I'm Brian," he introduced himself, reaching his hand to me. I got up slowly, wanting to face him.

"Mark" returned the handshake but didn't return the boy's enthusiasm. The man seemed to sense that my answer was not hostile, distrustful or rude. He just had to acknowledge that I already have such a personality - dry and distant because he didn't lose his cheerfulness.