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Attention is Han’s speciality. Han knows exactly how to manipulate it, when to shrink into the background of a scene, when to dominate the frame, when to command focus. The art of shaping and moving his body to be appealing to the eye, snagging a stray gaze, and the skill to keep it there. How to modulate his voice, strip or inject it with emotion, quiver or scream his throat raw. The features on his face are nothing more than clay to be moulded to a script, to engage an audience. On the silver, he has a deadly charisma, a presence hard to peel your eyes from. In the interviews and to fans, his smile is sincere and endearing. Han is a chameleon. He has no true personality, and yet, to an onlooker, to a journalist, director, marketer, co-actor, fan he is real and definable and loved.
Han wears attention like a second skin.
Jisung not so much.
Jisung is most comfortable in his room in the middle of the night, head on Chan’s lap and Changbin’s voice not too far off, warbling over the soothing narration of a much replayed documentary. With Chan’s hand carding through his hair, parting the knotted strands. He’d massage a wipe to his face to remove the make up after a long day without jostling Jisung too much that he can’t see the panther wiggling its butt in preparation to pounce. Changbin would call out from the kitchen, “Aga, what do you want for dinner?”
And Jisung would bury his face into the meat of Chan’s thigh and mumble out some high fat, high calorie oily food – something that maybe he wanted to get when he was young, something his TG manager’s would’ve easily denied him, something that’d make him put on undesirable weight – and Changbin, with all of his cooking skills of a twelve year old child, would try to make it.
Because he loves him. Because Changbin and Chan love Jisung and not Han. Because to them, the figure captured on film reels is as much a character as a person he cares about. They care about the entirety of Jisung, not a piece he fractured off and sculpted to perfection – a perfect gem to be loved.
But that’s not exactly attention. It’s something different.
Infamy and renown and fame and popularity, his name in starring credits and his face in the full glow of the spotlight. He earned it. He earned it and yet–
Jisung doesn’t know how to be looked at.
Giving and receiving are entirely different things. He is a master at putting on a show, doing what needs to be done. He excels. He does it best when he doesn’t know he’s doing it at all. Like autopilot, moving through the waves of his stardom as if on a cruise. Someone smiles at him and he smiles back. He gives. A paper is held out and he takes the pen to sign. He gifts. A woman sidles up to him in the middle of the red carpet, takes a photo and moves on right over without even a greeting. It’s okay. He poses for the selfie, peace sign raised and expression schooled into magnanimity.
Han is a star.
Jisung is not.
Jisung is a person and he wants it to stop.
He wants the eyes hands cameras flashes thoughts feelings posts forums mouths words comments replies news tabloids fansites updates scripts interviews journalists questions explanations boredom hustle love infatuation hated envy loathing adoration discourse controversy obsession devotion idolisation worship attention attention attention attention attention attention attention to just stop.
Please just stop.
The fracture splits off from him. He got so good at sectioning off Han and Jisung that now they can no longer be the same person. There’s Han. And then there’s Jisung. It’s no longer a path he can access if he walks far enough. It’s gone. Cracked off. (Maybe it’s for the better. Mom loved Han. Wouldn’t it be easier to forget her if he doesn’t exist at all.)
Attention is not Han’s realm.
The weight of a gaze makes him want to flay his skin off, peel it strip by strip. Any word to him burns. Eye contact feels like the act of gouging. A week ago Chan touched him from behind in the lobby of the director’s building and he screamed. In the past week, he hasn’t been out of his apartment for more than one hour and every second within the open space – open and visible – was like oxygen pulled directly out of his lungs.
Yesterday, it felt both cowardly and resigned to tell the company that he needed a hiatus.
Today, he wants to flee the shell he calls his body and hide inside of Chan.
But that’s physically impossible so he settles for pressing his body as close as scientifically possible, pulling the bucket hat over his eyes and staring down the label on his plastic cup of iced americano. It still doesn’t stem the distinct sensation of Minho-ssi’s darting eyes, flitting between Jisung and Chan, obviously confused. Jisung squeezes Chan’s palm to offload the electricity building up in his chest, clenching his fingers down into the back of his hand so hard he momentarily fears he’s pressing crescent marks into them.
“So Minho-ssi, what do you like to do in your free time?” he hears Chan ask. It sounds a galaxy away. Like Jisung’s buried six feet underground.
His unoccupied finger tingles and he busies it by scraping at the order sticker on the cup, made less adhesive by the dripping condensation. The ice jiggles loudly as he does, prompting another wayward glance, but he staunchly ignores it and proceeds with his endeavour, picking at the remains and rubbing at the strings of glue left on the cup.
The prickle of confusion thickens and as Minho naturally rattles off some answer about spending time with friends and family, and the conversation veers towards dramas, Jisung’s apprehension curdles along with it. He doesn’t want to know what Minho-ssi thinks of him. To look at him again. The greatest miracle of the twenty-first century would be if he could just melt into Chan’s skin and cease to exist until they got home.
Turns out Minho-ssi likes melodramas. Although, he must be feeling judged because he quickly follows that up with: “I’ve been getting into suspense drama’s lately though. Sect of the Sun was really interesting.”
Chan lights up. He adored the show, when they watched the episodes at home, even more so because Jisung couldn’t stop brimming with pride at how his character had come out. Obviously there was a lot of editing, writing and technical behind-the-scenes work to be thanked, but he couldn’t help but feel like Myeong-o was one of his best trysts yet. Hot-headed and gung-ho but not in the cheesy childish way that Eun was in the earlier seasons of Devil Boy. There was a maturity to the character hidden beneath the layers that Jisung implicated. Seeing Myeong-o on the screen, with all those conflicting emotions highlighted and performed so evidently, and so diligently analysed by fans – to have a director passionate enough to allow Jisung to experiment with his script, add meaning where there wasn’t one.
It was a dream project.
Chan tries coaxing a response out of him, and he jerks his head at a question, not quite understanding or caring what it is as long as his input can move the conversation along. If this was any other day, any other person, he’d have a million things to say about Sect of the Sun, but as it is, no words are forthcoming. Chan takes it in stride and fills in for him, regurgitating all the opinions he’d voiced late at night as Minho-ssi fumbles to keep up.
It’s glaringly obvious he’s never seen it.
Which is fine, of course. Sect of the Sun isn’t for everyone. He’s sure there’s something in his filmography that Minho-ssi’s enjoyed. Han is known for his range.
Unsurprisingly, he does have a favourite. Unfortunately, it’s The Last Worst Day.
Jisung can feel Chan freeze beside him. He doesn’t bother to look up. Of course Minho-ssi has a favourite. He’ll have questions too, naturally, if he loves the film as much as he says. Jisung painstakingly pulls up his armour and prepares for the barrage of forthcoming questions, the needling for gratitude and praise, the unceding expectation of a performance.
He prepares to exist again. To put on a show.
But the question never comes. Minho rambles on about the film, the lighting, the direction, the script and yes, Jisung’s acting, but Jisung isn’t pulled away, pulled up to the surface of the water, out from the grave.
The earth settles over him and his heart is at ease, beating a steady stable rhythm, undisturbed as the dead. All he has to do is breathe, in this little box that might as well be a coffin and Chan will be right next to him, sitting by his headstone and waiting for him to climb out and Changbin will be at the car, strolling out with flowers in his hand, and maybe Minho-ssi would just walk right past without defacing the engravings or overcrowding it with truckloads of bouquets. Maybe he can rest in peace.
Perhaps, peace is an attainable thing.
Chan and Minho’s conversation washes over him like a wave, like a sonorous breeze that brushes past growing weeds. It lulls him halfway to sleep and the burn of fresh air simmers down to a manageable warmth.
Jisung lifts his gaze for the first time in an hour, and for the first time in what feels like forever he isn’t thinking about what his own face looks like. He meets Minho’s eyes for just a second and really a second is all it takes.
Minho is breathtakingly beautiful, bright to the point of stinging his eyes, haloed by the light streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Jisung ducks his head to escape it. With a screech and a clatter, Minho-ssi is gone.
A hand flutters behind Jisung’s head, combing down his disturbed hair.
“Aegi-yah, how was it?”