Chapter Text
Seoul, 1982
“And that was Stat-“
With a hiss, Junhee pressed the stop recording key of the cassette recorder. How come radio announcers never get the memo to start talking after the song had fully finished?
He sat back with a groan, rolling his aching shoulders. All his pain had been in vain.
That marked yet another failed attempt to record the newest Status Quo song without a flaw. He had to wait an entire week and it wasn’t even clear if they would play the song then.
He hadn’t much time to ponder on it since the guy in the radio already announced the next few songs that would be playing. Hopefully, this time without an early disruption.
Junhee once again shifted closer to the radio, a finger precautious hovering over the recording key. And when the last words were said, momentarily putting the world around him in silence, he pressed down.
For a while, he enjoyed the different tunes filling up the living room, bobbing his head along.
A smile formed on his lips when he recognised the first tunes of his current favourite song. He first had heard it in a clothing store, playing on a crackling radio. Since then it had been stuck in his head. Finally, he could record it.
A knock against the door and then:
“Junhee?”
His face fell at the interruption. With an aching heart, he pressed the stop recording key and turned the volume of the radio down. After he shifted around, his gaze fell on his father, standing in the doorway of the living room.
Junhee could never be angry at him – he loved his father way too much and although he was barely home due to his work, they had a good relationship. Right now though, he had to admit that his nerves laid a bit bare. But he also knew better than to push his bad mood onto him, so he forced down the clipped response burning on his tongue.
“Yes?”
“Dinner is ready,” his father explained, then added with a chuckle, “are you available?”
It was no secret that Junhee camped almost every Sunday afternoon in front of the radio to record songs. Their local radio station only playing the ‘cool stuff’ at one specific hour per week, interrupting the dreading classics his mother loved to listen to. His two older sisters teased him a lot about his music taste, but he chose to ignore them.
Junhee took a glance at his wristwatch. The program would be over in a few minutes and since he already missed his favourite song, there wasn’t much to record anyways.
“Give me five minutes to clean up,” he said with a slightly forced, but at heart still genuine smile.
A curt nod accompanied with a tender laugh and his father was out of the room again, the door quietly clicking shut behind him.
Junhee’s eyes fell on the dark blue recorder, illuminated by the late afternoon sun coming in through the window.
A high-pitched whine escaped him as he buried his face in his palms.
“Appa… why…”
He ranked his fingers through his hair, messing up the bedhead he was sporting even more.
Accepting defeat, he let his head fall towards his chest.
Another whine.
With a sad frown resting on his face the entire time, he stood up to put his things away. Just like he said he would. There was one part of the shelf in his room reserved for his recording equipment, the other parts overloaded with schoolbooks and a dusty, dried up cactus underneath a pile of notes.
After that, he headed to the kitchen, following the smell of hot spices and freshly cooked rice.
Later into the evening – the sun was almost down, coating the skyline of Seoul into pretty shades of orange and yellow – Junhee sat at the riverbank of the Han river. Hidden in the shadows of the bridge overhead. The sound of cars racing over the concrete construct was distant, covered up by the guitar riff trickling into his ears.
One hand supported his weight, while the other pulled a freshly lighted blunt from his lips. He exhaled the smoke, watching calmly as it dispersed in the cooling autumn air.
He shouldn’t be doing this. Weed was illegal in Korea. And he wasn’t even an adult with the nineteen years resting on his shoulders.
But considering how harsh the school system and how high the expectations of his mother were, he had all the reason to. However, that was just some twisted truth he told himself way too many times until he had started to believe it.
After a few drags, the effect of the weed slowly began to kick in.
His head felt light, worries disappearing like the smoke did from his lips. He laid back into the gras to search the night sky for stars. There were none, the heavy light pollution of the city made them disappear.
He mused about how they would look like, about the various constellations he only ever had read about in books.
He grew up in the big city, never having gotten the chance to observe the sky on the countryside. One day, he would go there. He had no idea when he would have enough money for the trip. But the one thing that he was sure of was that he would take Donghun with him.
The older would tease him for sure, about his simple need to see the stars. As if he wasn’t the same, a dreamer just like him. But if he ever said that into Donghun’s face, he would choke him.
The thought made him snicker. The other sure had a funny way of expressing himself.
He had no idea how long he laid there, smoking. But at some point, he began to shiver.
The light of the day was gone and his worn off leather jacket only provided him with a small amount of warmth. Summer slowly came to an end; days were getting shorter and nights colder.
He should go home soon, or he would risk getting sick.
But he didn’t want to.
He took a final drag, then pushed the glinting bud into the soft earth beside him, watching his exhale evaporate into the air.
After a while of watching the world buzz around him, he reluctantly stood up. Half-heartedly, he brushed dust away from his clothes. One longing gaze to his beloved spot before he forced his feet into motion.
He took the long way, mostly because he tried to delay the inevitable, but also that the smell of weed clinging to his clothes would’ve thinned out enough by the time he arrived there.
Strolling along the river, he lets his mind drift, eyes trailing over the dark water.
He thought about everything and nothing at all. School, his future, ideas he wanted to try out but never found the time to, song lyrics that were stuck in his head…
After a while he gently began singing them out loud, smiling at the foreign words in which the songs were written. His English was limited, only learning the bare minimum in university, but to him, music had a language on its own. He didn’t need to understand every word to catch the emotions worked into it.
The sound of small wheels on concrete and people talking made him go quiet.
Looking away from the river, he noticed that he was passing by a small skatepark where a group of boys was hanging out, showing each other tricks and chatting.
He stopped to watch them for a while, curious about their skills. When he was younger, he dreamed of skating himself, he even tried it a few times. But after a short period of time, he had to admit that he was more off the board than on it, unskilled landing on his ass or crashing into a random object.
He had wished to be free like them, to fly for a few milliseconds.
It also seemed like so much fun if you did it in a group. He never had a group of friends like that. There was only one person in his life he considered a friend. Donghun was his only friend, best friend even, one year older than him but that was never an issue in their friendship.
Just as he was about to turn away, to go home like he should, he noticed a boy sitting on his board, far away from the others in the shadows of a tree. Junhee frowned.
Why didn’t he join them?
Perhaps he was just taking a break, he thought to himself, watching as the boy took a sip from the plastic bottle in his hand.
Junhee decided to stay for a bit more, curious if the boy would join the others eventually. But even after ten minutes – not that Junhee had checked his wristwatch once in a while – he didn’t, still just watching them from afar, occasionally sipping on his bottle.
Weird. They clearly didn’t belong together, or the others would’ve called him over by now. Maybe he was just studying their tricks to try them out later.
As much as Junhee would love to stay a bit more, he had to wake up early tomorrow, classes scheduled for the whole day. And he had to sleep, at least for a bit.
With one last, sorrowful glance at the figure hidden in the shadows, Junhee began walking again. He kicked a few pebbles with his feet, not keen on leaving.
He let out a sigh.
Instead of creepily staring at the boy from afar, he could’ve gone up to him and maybe even made a new friend. He pondered about the missed chance on his way back home, tugging the headphones that had been resting around his neck the entire evening over his ears.
He almost tripped over his own feet as he climbed up the few steps to the entrance door, chuckling at his uncoordinated body. With a grin, he swung open the door of the apartment block he was living in.
But his joyous moment was short lived.
“Where were you?” Was the first thing he heard when he stepped into the apartment, his oldest sister standing in front of him with crossed arms, clearly not happy with the late hour he decided to arrive home.
“At the river,” he responded curtly, not set on explaining himself. He crouched down to take off his shoes.
“Alone? Or with that guy, how was he called again… Dong-“
He looked up with a glare.
“I was alone.”
His sister never liked Donghun, firmly convinced that he was nothing but a bad influence on him. But Donghun was anything but that, understanding him like no one else could. She never got that, and never would, only seeing the bad side of their friendship, unwilling to give Junhee a chance to state his reasoning.
His sister clicked her tongue. “No need to get angry with me, I just asked you a question.”
He groaned but didn’t say anything more, set on disappearing into his room for the day, maybe listen to some music before falling asleep. Definitively not discussing his one and only friendship with his provoking sister.
Wordlessly, he shrugged past her, upper arm tingling in slight anxiety, where she would grab him sometimes, pulling him back to talk some ‘sense’ into him. To his relief, she let him go this once, but not without a, “run away then, coward” hauled at his back.
And that he did, slamming the door of his room shut a tad too forceful for the late hours.
Not like he cared.
He hated when his sister tried to interfere with his life. It wasn’t just her, his mother and other sister always set to force their minds on him, his opinion never taken into consideration. Being it about his clothing – which he had little influence, wearing old shirts and jackets from his father – or his, to be fair, not very great grades. Everything he did was in some sort wrong to them, he had no chance.
After tugging off his clothes and throwing them in the general direction of the chair standing at the desk, he turned off the light. They were living here for so long; he knew his room well enough that he could navigate around it without running into anything in the dark.
He crawled underneath his blanket.
If he would ever find someone to date, they would rip that person apart. He was sure of it.
He let out a short, frustrated scream into the pillow he had in a tight hug against his chest.
He was sick of it, of the constant pestering. But being sick of something didn’t immediately make it disappear. It wasn’t easy like that. It was annoying, but he was just too worn out to try and flip his world upside down, to run away and start anew.
A sigh.
He would give anything to get ripped out of whatever his life was right now. Not even Donghun was able to pull him out of his head anymore like he used to do.
Something had to change… something, whatever it was.
He needed a change.
He needed it so badly.