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maayacolabackup“Chaerin, you need to hit that note a little more softly.” Jiyong clicks 'delete' on his macbook, because the sound byte is useless, and licks his lips. “You’re struggling too hard to hit that note.”
“Yes, sir,” Chaerin says playfully, and she flips her hair over her shoulder before she resumes a serious expression. “I don’t know why you won’t get Bom to do this part.”
“I don’t need a voice like Bom’s. It’s too strong. Maybe Dara’s would work, but it’s just… too girly.” Jiyong runs a hand through his messy purple hair and sighs. “It needs to be soft, but still sweet, and-“ He sighs and pounds his fist on the table, narrowing his eyes at his computer like it’ll have the answers.
“Are you being anal?” Chaerin asks. “Because we all know you’re anal. You don’t have to prove it to me, or anything.”
“No, I just-“ Jiyong is usually better with words. It’s just that the studio is too hot and Jiyong can’t think. Jiyong’s also been in the studio since 4am, and he’s running on two hours of sleep stolen on a dance studio sofa. He hasn’t been home in five days.
Chaerin walks out of the recording booth, slipping past the glass doors, and her heels clack against the flooring as she walks. She comes to stand beside him, leaning slightly against the table, knee brushing the arm of his chair. Her hair is shorter, Jiyong notices. She must have just cut it recently, since he saw her two days ago and it had been swinging down past her breasts. Maybe those were extensions. You never know, in this business, what anyone really looks like.
She presses her lips thin, like she wants to say something, and her lip-gloss shimmers in the fluorescent light. “Hmm.”
“What?” Jiyong asks, running his tongue over his teeth. He’s not sure when the last time he brushed them was—it’s been an intense week, and Jiyong is running too close to the deadline. In six days it’ll be over, and Jiyong can sleep the sleep of the dead; turn off his mobile for twenty-four hours and pretend the rest of world doesn’t exist. After that, of course, he’ll be getting ready frantically to promote the album. But that twenty-four hours of nothing but the back of his eyelids will be glorious. “If you’ve got something to say, you should say it. My schedule is tight.”
“It sounds like you need-“ She stops, and seems to think better of whatever she was about to say. She licks her lips. “Let me go back in the booth and try again.”
“Sounds like I need what?” Jiyong hates it when people start sentences and don’t finish them. Then he has to waste his time clarifying when he could have dismissed the subject already. And it’s not like he can ignore it; Jiyong is obsessive, about everything, and he’ll sit and think about that unfinished sentence for hours after Chaerin has already left if she doesn’t finish it now. “Don’t start things you don’t intend to finish.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything at all. You’re so fussy. Let’s just move on.”
“You know better.” Jiyong’s shirt is sticking to his back. It’s disgusting. He needs a shower. He doesn’t have time for this.
“Oppa, let it go,” Chaerin says, and the way she says it, it’s like she’s still the teenager he recorded with for the first time, just sassy enough to let Jiyong know she would be great. Now she’s twenty-five, and half the time she thinks she already knows it all. She doesn’t, but neither does Jiyong, so he doesn’t call her on it.
Jiyong picks up his hat off the table and pulls it down over his ears to stop himself from messing with his hair. It’s greasy and disgusting and it makes Jiyong depressed to touch it.
“You might as well just tell me, or we’ll be sitting here all day.” Jiyong taps his feet against the ground impatiently, his Adidas making squeaking sounds as he kicks at the laminate. “And you know I don’t have all day.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re a total pain in the butt?”
“Yes,” Jiyong says. “Usually at that point, I helpfully remind them that it’s my job to be a pain in the butt, and who is rolling in royalties right now?”
“Control freak.”
“Smart-ass.”
She sighs. “It’s sounds like you need Seungri,” Chaerin says. “Seungri’s voice seems like it would be exactly what you’re looking for.” She examines her nails as she speaks. They’re painted in a cheetah print or something, but she’s been wearing the same design this whole promotion cycle so Jiyong knows she’s not so much looking at her nails as she is looking away from him. “Seungri’s voice would be perfect for this song.”
Jiyong’s throat is dry. He takes a sip of flavored water, from the same bottle he’s been nursing for the past four hours, because he hasn’t had breakfast and he needs to fill his stomach with something, and as he does, Chaerin’s gaze flickers up to catch his for just a moment, before she finds something else to look at.
“Oh,” Jiyong says, and then he chuckles. “That’s not going to happen.”
“It doesn’t sound right with my voice,” Chaerin says. “This is YG family. You’re supposed to ask another YG artist to be in your song, oppa. No one else in the company fits the bill.”
“Seungri isn’t just another artist,” Jiyong says, and he tugs his pink knit cap down so the eyes embroidered on the fold can look out at the world instead of him. “Plus, he wouldn’t do it.”
“I don’t know why you think-“
“He wouldn’t do it,” Jiyong says, and there’s ice in his voice that makes Chaerin snap her mouth shut. “Especially not for me.” Jiyong closes his eyes for a second, and inhales. “I mean, he would if he was forced to. But I’m not going to force him to.”
Chaerin looks like she wants to ask more questions, or demand answers that Jiyong doesn’t want to give, but instead she takes a sip of her own water. Jiyong realizes, all of a sudden, that he’s leaning forward, half out of his seat with his hands gripped too tight on his thighs. He consciously relaxes, loosening his grip on his legs, and crossing one over the other. There’s uneven hair, he notices, around his knees. He shouldn’t be wearing shorts until he has a chance to get waxed. Before promotions start. There will be time for that later, after sleep.
“Okay,” Chaerin says, and when Jiyong opens his eyes again, she’s looking down at the lyrics.
It’s a breakup song. Jiyong’s been writing a lot of those lately. Art imitates life, Jiyong supposes.
“Besides,” Jiyong adds. “It can’t be Seungri’s voice missing from a song that I’ve written.” It’s too hot for a hat, really, but Jiyong’s hair is too short for a ponytail and too long to stay out of his eyes today. A headband would have been better. “After all, I’ve never known what to do with Seungri’s voice.”
That’s what the fans say. In a lot of ways, they’re right. In some ways they’re wrong, too, but Jiyong’s not going to call them all up and explain the situation to them. He’s not going to call Seungri up and explain it to him, either. Seungri wouldn’t answer the phone, anyway.
Jiyong’s made sure of that in so many ways.
Chaerin opens her mouth to speak, but the door cracks, and Youngbae peeks his head around it. He immediately reads the atmosphere, and Jiyong can see the gears turning in his head as he tries to figure out what sort of thing he’s interrupting. Jiyong raises an eyebrow at him, but realizes it’s useless because his hat is pulled so low on his face that Youngbae can probably barely see his eyes.
“Everything all right?” Youngbae asks, his baseball cap turned sideways. “I’m going to take the fact that Jiyong isn’t laughing hysterically to himself and shouting as a good sign…”
“I’m recording the hook for Jiyong-oppa’s song, but my voice is all wrong for it,” Chaerin says carefully. “I think he’s looking for something softer. I don’t want him to pull a Bom on me.”
“A Bom?” Youngbae asks, and Jiyong swallows, licking his lips. He pushes his hat back out of his eyes.
“She means she doesn’t want to record the same line eighty times and then, in the end, have it be replaced it with my voice.” Jiyong smirks, a little, because it did end up seeming a little ridiculous, when he saw the clip of it on 2NE1 TV. But Jiyong is serious about songwriting, and serious about every song sounding as good in real life as it sounds in his head. Teddy is the same way, and it’s why they make a good team.
“Oh,” Youngbae says, and he stretches his arms above his head. “Then why don’t you just get another singer, Jiyong?”
Jiyong frowns at Youngbae, blinking at him slowly, and Youngbae grimaces.
“Sorry, that’s probably what you guys were discussing, right?”
“Yes,” Chaerin says. “But Jiyong-oppa is being particularly stubborn.”
“Stubborn? Jiyong? Really?” Youngbae smiles, in that way that hasn’t changed since they were sixth graders, and his eyes turn into crescents. It’s nice, Jiyong thinks, that some things never change, considering that over the past three years, everything else has. “Are we talking about the same man? My friend Jiyong? Why, I thought he was the king of compromise.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jiyong says, and he begins clicking the remains of his nails against the tabletop again, unable to hold in his nervous energy, even as Chaerin laughs and Youngbae tugs on the brim of his hat, pleased with the broken tension. He wants to be working on this song right now. Jiyong likes working on songs. It makes perfect sense, all the time. Songs are like puzzles, and Jiyong has all the pieces; he just has to put them in the right places.
It’s not like doing presscons or variety shows. Jiyong’s not in charge of any of that, and he’s only one of the puzzle pieces. It’s not his thing. That whole ‘not being in control’ thing.
“So what kind of voice are you looking for? I’m free,” Youngbae says. “At least for the next two hours. I was actually coming to ask if you wanted to get lunch.”
“This isn’t the time to discuss lunch,” Jiyong says heatedly, because he’s tired, and every second they spend talking is a second longer Jiyong is not working. “Who has time for lunch?”
“Not you, I’m guessing,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong bites back his sarcastic response.
“He wants something light, and sweet. I suggested Dara, but he said that wasn’t right either, so I suggested Seungri-“ Chaerin puts her hands on her hips, and sighs like she’s talking about something Minzy’s dog Dougie has done, and not a grown man who is her senior.
“Ah,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong can hear the frown in his voice, and feel the air being sucked out of the room. Jiyong chances a look at Youngbae, but Youngbae isn’t looking back at him.
Seungri is… well, the only time Youngbae has ever been disappointed in him. The only time Youngbae has looked at him as less. Jiyong hates that feeling, and the way is weighs in the pit of his stomach like lead. Youngbae has always been Jiyong’s best friend. His teammate. Jiyong hates letting him down, though he pretends he doesn’t care.
Jiyong wonders, sometimes, if Youngbae knows what happened, between himself and Seungri. Jiyong thinks he does, at least a little, because sometimes he’ll pat Jiyong’s arm sympathetically when there’s yet another ‘What happened to BIGBANG?’ special on television, or change the subject when Jiyong accidentally mentions Seungri’s name when he’s telling a story and then loses track of his thoughts, remembering the way Seungri used to belong so completely in his life, and the way he’s not there at all anymore.
But whether Youngbae knows what happened or not, in the end, Seungri won’t come to record a song with Jiyong, and Jiyong is totally fine with that because it means he and Seungri don’t have to see each other quite yet.
He knows they will soon, when the band reunites at the beginning of next year for an album, but until then, Jiyong assumes they’re both relieved at the distance.
“Well, that’s a little complicated,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong realizes there’s been a long silence. “Anyway, Jiyong probably wants to work with people who aren’t in BIGBANG. He sings with us all the time!”
“That’s true,” Chaerin says, and Jiyong ignores the lilt of curiosity in her tone. It’s none of her business, anyway. “But it’s sort of the ‘YG way’, isn’t it?”
“Not Seungri,” Jiyong says, and to his surprise, his voice stumbles a little. He feels a little like he’s choking. “I can’t work with Seungri.”
“You’re in the same band,” Chaerin says incredulously. “You guys are supposed to come back next year.” She shrugs. “I thought you’d be over whatever random fight you had, before. It’s not like you could keep fighting while he did two years in the military.”
It’s been two years since Jiyong’s said anything to Seungri. It’s been two years since he’d looked him in the eye. Seungri’s been gone, and Jiyong’s tried to forget.
Jiyong isn’t over it, and neither is Seungri, he’s sure.
It’s too hot in here, in this studio, and Jiyong might be slowly going insane. It’s fine; Jiyong does his best work when he’s way past his limit, running on absolute empty. Hell, Jiyong wrote Fantastic Baby after five days without sleeping or eating, surviving on convenience store potato chips while TOP-hyung slept on the sofa of the recording studio and Youngbae and Kush valiantly tried to supply him with enough coffee and cigarettes that he wouldn’t collapse.
It’s become one of the top 20 downloaded ringtones in Korea of all time, and it’s only been four years. Yang Hyun Suk still ‘jokes’ that sleep deprivation looks good on him, but Jiyong’s getting grey hair, and that doesn’t look good on anyone.
“Worry about your own band,” Jiyong snaps, and Chaerin snorts, moving away from Jiyong and walking past Youngbae. Youngbae narrows his eyes a bit at Jiyong, like he’s debating whether or not Jiyong wants comfort or to be left alone.
Jiyong wants to be left alone. Youngbae’s always been good at reading him, and he figures it out. “Chaerin, you up for lunch upstairs?”
“Sure,” she says, and Chaerin looks at Jiyong. Jiyong’s hair is sticking with sweat to the back of his neck under his hat, and it’s annoying. Everything is annoying. “Unless you need me?”
“I’ll do something else,” Jiyong says, and he links his hands together and leans forward in his seat. “It’s fine.”
“I really think-“ Chaerin stops again, but this time, Jiyong doesn’t ask her to finish, because he already knows what she’s going to say.
Jiyong anxiously twists his wedding ring around and around on his finger, and like always, it seems to burn his skin.
Jiyong’s wife is in Japan right now. He doesn’t know when, or if, she’s coming back.
He’s also not sure if he cares.
“I’ll figure something out,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae tilts his cap again, fidgeting (or maybe dancing) in place, offering Chaerin a gentle grin.
“Let’s go then,” Youngbae said, and he moves toward the door, and Chaerin follows.
It’s always been the carrot and the whip, and Jiyong supposes Youngbae is destined to soften his blows, inside or outside the band.
Chaerin leaves, and Youngbae lingers in the doorway for a moment too long to be coincidence.
“Maybe you should consider it,” Youngbae says quietly. “We all have to work together soon, you know?”
“Go away and let me think,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae does. When he’s alone, Jiyong leans forward and rests his forehead on the table, letting the tension ease out of his body. He can hear his phone vibrating, and he ignores it. He doesn’t really have time to talk, and if anyone wants to find him for work reasons, they know where he is. He’s reserved this studio for the next five days.
He grabs the lyrics sheet and stares at it, the words he’s written blurring in front of his eyes.
Seungri’s voice.
It’s a song about letting go. Perhaps this song was meant for Jiyong and Seungri after all.
Still, Jiyong’s not going to ask him. He’ll have Dara do the song, maybe, and pretend, to himself, that her voice is what he’d intended all along, and no one but Jiyong will know the difference.
Jiyong growls, and throws the lyrics sheet across the room.
He’ll work on a different song today, then.
When Jiyong was eleven years old, he decided his entire future over the course of a single meal.
It was his first meeting with Yang Hyun Suk, and Jiyong was intimidated and nervous and unsure. His mother left the room, and Yang Hyun Suk looked down at him with heavy eyes. “You belong with YG,” he said, and Jiyong had looked up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“Really?” Jiyong had asked, because he was too fucking young and everything seemed to be moving so fast. Jiyong had done bit parts on kid shows and commercials, and he’d been let go from two record companies already; not pretty enough to be in SM and not really wanted elsewhere, and that was all so very different from this, where Jiyong was the one being chased. Jiyong had told his mother he didn’t want to be a singer anymore, but he’d never seen a dotted line that looked so inviting.
“Yes,” President Yang had said. “Do whatever you have to do to make her let you sign. Cry, beg, whine. But you belong at YG. You belong with me.”
At the end of the meal, he signed the contract, and the world shifted.
Jiyong can’t specifically pinpoint the changes in himself since then. There have been so many that Jiyong has lost count; lost sight of them all. All he knows is that he’s irrevocably lost the innocence that had him looking into Yang Hyun Suk’s serious eyes and wanting more than anything to sign his life away.
He’s lost that, and it’s made him ugly.
Sometimes, Jiyong thinks he is too ugly to be seen. Not on the outside, where he’s learned just how to line his eyes and paint his face to maximize the sort of androgyny that sells, but on the inside. He looks in the mirror and sees the reflections of all his worst thoughts in his eyes and it makes him want to break the glass.
Jiyong lives all alone in a castle made of platinum selling records that have his heart spilled all over them, and sometimes, he looks down from his tower and wonders if all the happiness is out there.
At this point, Jiyong’s not even sure he’d recognize happiness if he saw it. Jiyong often thinks he might just be too arrogant to admit that he isn’t happy now.
There was a time when Jiyong had been made of hopes and dreams and work ethic and ambition. Now Jiyong is made of loneliness and words he has to say, and a future that’s as empty as his past.
He used to dream about lots of things, in vivid color and music notes and ideas, but now Jiyong slumbers in monochrome, like cigarette ash across his imagination.
Jiyong will go home tonight, to the same comforter he’s had for years and years, freshly unpacked from storage where he’d kept it, and let Tom and Laura lie on either side of him, and Jiyong will be alone.
He’d like to blame fame, or maybe everyone else in the world for misunderstanding him, or maybe he should blame the music industry or everything else that’s shaped his path through life.
But the truth is, Jiyong has no one to blame but himself, because Jiyong is a monster, and he can try and try to hide it behind smiles and jokes, but eventually everyone sees that inside he’s nothing but teeth and claws and wretched misery, and they leave.
There has been no witch’s spell; just Jiyong’s ambition and arrogance and selfishness all combined to make him a Beast.
There was a time when Jiyong had felt almost happy, but Jiyong had ruined that the same way he ruins everything else he touches, because Jiyong tests and tests people, but his tests are always unfair.
“How’s progress on the album going?” Yang Hyun Suk leans forward in his seat, hands folded together on his desk. Teddy is sitting next to Jiyong, reclining back in his chair and watching the conversation quietly.
“I’ve got one song left,” Jiyong says. “I haven’t picked a vocalist.”
“Which one?”
“Shut the Door.”
“I thought you were using CL,” Yang Hyun Suk says, and Jiyong can’t see his eyes underneath the brim of his cap. Still, he can see the downturned edges of his lips. “You’re not?”
“No,” Jiyong says. “Her voice doesn’t sound right.”
“Let us listen,” he says, and Jiyong pulls out his netbook and queues the unfinished song.
When it’s done playing, Yang Hyun Suk licks his lips, frog-like, and Teddy makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat.
“Have you considered Seungri?” Teddy asks, and Jiyong holds back his immediate response of ‘no’, and tilts his head in askance.
“I agree,” Yang Hyun Suk says, steepling his fingers and scribbling notes into the notepad he keeps by his desk. “Seungri’s sweet voice would be perfect.”
“It’s a part written for a woman,” Jiyong says, but it feels like a feeble excuse to his own ears, so it must sound even worse to the two others.
Teddy shifts in his seat, and his hood falls down. He quickly pulls it back up, adjusting it around the baseball cap as he looks over at Jiyong. “You know that doesn’t really matter.” Teddy taps his hands on his knees. “The fans would eat that up.”
Jiyong knows that.
“Yeah,” Jiyong says.
“Whatever is going on with you and Seungri, fix it.” Yang Hyun Suk’s voice is hard like steel, and Jiyong winces, because that voice hasn’t been used on him since the time he’d told Yang Hyun Suk he was going to get married. “BIGBANG will come back in six months. We will promote the album, and then the rest of you will follow in Seungri and Seunghyun’s footsteps and do your military service. I won’t have two of the members refusing to talk to each other. Your fans must remember you positively.”
“Yes, sir,” Jiyong says, and he looks down at his lap, twisting his wedding band around, and around, and around. “Of course, sir.” He’s possibly never felt this uncomfortable, except maybe when he and Daesung went on 'Healing Camp' to talk about their scandals in 2012, and he'd had to watch Daesung try to keep from crying on national television. Jiyong had felt, then, like he was in a shark tank and bleeding from the gut. It’s like that now, too, except Jiyong knows these sharks; they aren’t faceless, nameless people who want to watch him fail, but people he knows want him to succeed. That makes the pressure higher, because disappointing people is not something Jiyong is used to doing professionally, even if it’s a trademark of his personal life.
“Good,” Yang Hyun Suk says. “I want a finished album by tomorrow. Are the concepts finished? Cover designs?”
“Yes,” Jiyong says. “I sent back my final choices last night or this morning… It’s all blurring together.”
“Have them forwarded to me within the next hour,” is the reply, and Jiyong nods.
“Yes,” Jiyong says, and he twirls a piece of his light purple hair around his finger. It’s long. His fans won’t be surprised that his hair is wild, but hopefully they’ll be surprised by what he’s done.
Jiyong will just focus on everything but this last song and he’ll get through today.
“I will call Seungri,” Teddy says. “Tell him we need his voice for Jiyong’s album.”
“Thank you,” Jiyong manages, and his chest is tight. “I’m going to head back to the studio and keep mixing.”
“Right,” Yang Hyun Suk says, and Jiyong stands, and bows at the waist, low the way he’s known for, and exits, Teddy at his heels.
“I’m sorry,” Teddy says, when they’re both waiting for the elevator. “If I thought any other voice would be as good of a fit, I would have suggested that instead.”
“It’s about the music,” Jiyong says firmly. “It’s always been about the music. This is what I have to do.”
“Maybe you guys can bury whatever hatchet there is between you,” Teddy says optimistically. “I know it would set Youngbae’s mind at ease.”
“Maybe,” Jiyong says, but he’s not sure Seungri will ever forgive him, and he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to look at Seungri and not want to take.
The first time Jiyong meets Seungri, the younger boy doesn’t meet his eyes. He stares at the ground as Yang Hyun Suk tells them Lee Seunghyun is going to be joining them from now on, as a fellow trainee. It’s just Jiyong and Youngbae in the room, and they’re already sticky from the heat and from dance instruction.
Jiyong’s still put-out that he and Youngbae aren’t going to be debuting as a duo, as GDYB, like they’d both thought they’d be doing since… well, since forever. Jiyong doesn’t have time for little kids who can’t even look him in the face when he’s talking to them, so Jiyong definitely doesn’t have time for this tiny Seunghyun, with his messy hair and puffy eyes.
“What are you good at?” Jiyong says gruffly, when they’re left alone. Youngbae elbows him, silently telling him to curb his tone, and Jiyong ignores him, fixing his gaze on the newcomer, whose hands are fisted in the material of his sweatshirt, and is quickly developing a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“Dancing,” Seunghyun says, and his voice cracks, because he’s still a kid.
Jiyong’s never been a kid. Jiyong’s been an adult since he was ten, and he’d never stand there tugging at the string of his hood, because he’s never felt that lost.
“Dancing, eh? Are you actually good?”
Seunghyun finally looks up, and Jiyong gets a good view of his face for the first time. He’s got a perfect bow to his upper lip, and there’s puppy fat on his cheeks that makes him look impossibly young. Jiyong’s got it too, but Jiyong’s got a hard look in his eyes that ensures that no one ever actually treats him like a child. This kid looks soft, like Jiyong could break him as easily with a cross word as with a punch.
“I heard, from President Yang, that you’re good at everything,” Seunghyun says, and he talks funny, quick releasing on words and truncating his vowels in a way that makes him sound nasal and country. But his eyes, Jiyong notices, sparkle, and he’s looking at Jiyong like Jiyong is… special. Like Jiyong is important. It gives Jiyong a warm feeling in his chest, because Jiyong sometimes feels like he’s been waiting his whole life to have someone look at him just like that.
“No,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae snorts, and this new Seunghyun, this little Seunghyun, offers a tentative smile. “But you’ll listen to me, because I'm better at everything than you are.”
“Yes, of course,” he says, and Jiyong feels a tingle, right where his heart is, at the way this boy looks so eager to please.
And maybe Jiyong has time for this new kid, after all.
The concept for the album is ‘Greed’. It’s something Jiyong is intimately familiar with, even if Jiyong has not always been honest with himself about it.
Jiyong is greedy about praise. He’s absolutely avaricious about seeing his name in the newspaper with producer and lyricist written beside it. He loves when people hate him and still can’t help but buy his music, because it’s just that good. He loves it when the music critics talk about what a genius he is, because Jiyong loves to be told how good he is, over and over and over again.
Jiyong is greedy about admiration, too. He likes it when his juniors look at him with stars in their eyes and tell him they want to be just like him when they grow up. Jiyong likes putting his hand on their shoulders and telling them if they practice hard, they will succeed, and watching them nod with the same enthusiasm he’d loved in Seungri, back when Seungri was still eager and hungry for love-crumbs. Jiyong loves that he’s an ideal, and it eggs him on, the desire to be deserving of that admiration.
So he makes his album cover designs in different shades of green, darks and lights, and paints his mouth in green lipstick and uses a green apple to link his themes, and tells the world just how greedy he is, because Jiyong’s brand of sharp and hideous truth has always sold.
Green, Jiyong knows, is also the color of envy, and Jiyong knows what that feels like too, whenever he sees Sean and his wife curled up together on a sofa looking like they could spend forever just looking at each other. But Jiyong doesn’t have time for that kind of regret.
Jiyong thanks his wife and his YG Family in the liner notes, and doesn’t write what he really wants to write, which is that more than anything, his greatest greed is for the happiness that’s eluded him. He doesn’t write anything about Lee Seunghyun, either, even if half of these songs were written about him.
“Are you doing well?” Jiyong’s wife asks, and Jiyong can barely hear her through the static. She’s in Japan, doing a shoot for NYLON. She sounds happy.
“The album’s coming along,” Jiyong replies, because he’s not exactly doing well, and Jiyong’s never bothered to lie to her.
“I’m not coming back, Jiyong,” she says, after a moment, and Jiyong looks down at his hands and wonders what his ring finger will look like bare; he’s forgotten. He’ll probably have a tan line there, and everyone will stare. That’s fine; Jiyong is used to the staring.
He wonders what the news will have to say about his divorce. He’s not sure he cares, as long as it doesn’t affect his album sales.
“I didn’t think you were,” Jiyong says honestly. “I don’t have time right now to deal with lawyers.”
“It can wait,” she says calmly. “Until later. When you have time to breathe.”
“Are you happy?” Jiyong asks her, and she exhales, and Jiyong can hear the smile in it. He thinks about the locket she’s always worn around her neck, and he closes his eyes. His sweatpants are sticking to his thighs. It’s a hot July. Tomorrow it will be August. Jiyong should wash these sweatpants before he wears them again.
“Yes,” she says, after a long pause, and Jiyong swallows the spit that’s somehow gathered in his mouth. He’s so damn tired he can barely think.
“I’m jealous,” Jiyong says, and she laughs, and it’s husky and deep and sexy, and Jiyong has always liked her so much.
“I want you to be happy too,” she says, and Jiyong’s nails, he realizes, are digging painfully into his palms, maybe hard enough to break the skin.
“I don’t know how to be happy,” Jiyong says, and Jiyong hates when things are out of his control. “I only know how to be selfish.”
“Don’t you think it’s about time you start learning?”
Two days until deadline.
Jiyong decides, one day, out of the blue, that he likes Seungri more than he’s ever liked anyone.
It’s not that Seungri isn’t annoying, because he is. His laugh is too obnoxious, and he’s always talking, demanding the spotlight without remorse or dignity with his loud, whiny voice and even louder stories; anecdotes they all would rather he didn’t share, and jokes that are weird and sometimes fall completely, embarrassingly flat. Sometimes Jiyong wants to press his fingers over Seungri’s mouth just to keep him from talking.
And then sometimes, Seungri can’t take what he dishes out, and goes eerily quiet when Jiyong fires back, showing his mortification with silences and effusive blushes.
It’s just that Seungri is so honest. Jiyong knows everything Seungri is thinking, all the time, because it’s written in his eyes and in the set of his mouth and in the way he grasps at Jiyong’s t-shirt at night, when Jiyong hears him crying in his room and goes in to investigate, letting Seungri press his wet face to Jiyong’s neck and remembering not to taunt him about it in the morning. He can see Seungri’s heart whenever he looks at him, and Jiyong likes knowing what Seungri’s thinking.
Jiyong likes seeing admiration and affection thick and heavy in that hopeful gaze, and Jiyong likes seeing hurt there too, when he carefully cuts him with his words, because Jiyong likes knowing that his words have that power over Seungri.
Seungri is the perfect friend for Jiyong, because Jiyong can reveal all the terrible, cruel sides of himself, and Seungri just takes it and comes back for more, because Jiyong means so much to him.
“Hyung,” Seungri says, with eager hands and eager eyes and a need to please that calls to Jiyong deep inside. “Hyung, did I do something wrong?”
“No,” Jiyong says, and he wraps his hand a little too tight around Seungri’s upper arm and tugs him near, catching him in a one-armed hug that Seungri will half-heartedly try and worm his way out of if there are cameras near. “Of course not, maknae.” He’ll whisper it in Seungri’s ear, and Seungri will giggle and blush, and it’s all perfect, just like that.
Jiyong doesn’t want Seungri to grow up and grow away. Jiyong doesn’t want Seungri to leave him.
Jiyong likes Seungri more than he’s ever liked anyone, but something about Seungri brings out the worst in him, because Jiyong doesn’t want to share; not with Seunghyun, not with Youngbae, not with Daesung, not with anyone. Seungri is good at making friends, and Jiyong hates it. Hates the way Seungri isn’t all his, all the time.
There’s a sickness in it, the way Jiyong wants to break every arm that slips around Seungri’s shoulders, and put Seungri’s laugh in a glass jar so only he can listen to it. There’s a sickness in it, and Jiyong knows that, but he can’t really help it.
Jiyong likes Seungri more than he likes anyone, and it might drive him insane.
It’s been four years since Jiyong’s last solo album. It should have been two, but then Jiyong had gone and gotten married, and the media had been a circus, and Jiyong hadn’t put out an album. Jiyong hadn’t even wanted to write the songs for an album.
“Normally weddings are happy things,” Jiyong’s older sister told him, and Jiyong laughed a little hollowly. He hoped it sounded more natural on the other end of the phone line.
“When you’re famous, sometimes they’re a career death sentence.”
“Then why’d you do it?” She’d asked, and Jiyong had taken a deep breath.
“It’s hard to explain,” Jiyong had said, and his sister had chuckled.
“Everything about you is excessively complicated,” she replied. “Just try your best.”
“Have you ever wanted something so bad you couldn’t do anything but think about it? Like, you sometimes feel like you want it so much you’re crawling out of your actual skin, reaching as far as you can but it’ll never be far enough?”
“I think we’ve all wanted something in life, Jiyong. If that’s how you feel about your wife-“
“No,” Jiyong said, and his hand held on to the phone too tight. “Getting married is my way of making it impossible for me to ever have what I want.” Jiyong looks down at the floor. “Maybe if it’s impossible, I’ll stop wanting it.”
Seungri’s skin had tasted like ambrosia, and Jiyong had felt like a god feasting upon it.
“Life doesn’t work like that,” Dami said, and Jiyong refused to believe her.
Instead, Jiyong had hid in his newly bought home and declined to answer anyone’s calls until Daesung had showed up at his door unexpectedly, and his wife had let him in, raising a sardonic eyebrow when Jiyong had looked at her accusingly.
“You’re being melodramatic,” Daesung had said, and Jiyong had licked his lips and tightened his hands around his water cup, and looked up at his friend. “It’ll get better.”
“Will it?”
“It will,” Daesung said. “Trust me. It’s not like you killed someone.” Daesung said it with a smile, but there was something terrible lurking underneath the words, and Jiyong felt so stupid.
“Why do you act so much older than me? Are you the hyung?”
“Because you’ve always thought you were an adult,” Daesung said, and Jiyong remembers slipping his glasses down the bridge of his nose to look at Daesung over the top edge of them.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you never thought to yourself ‘I have to grow up.’ You thought you were already there.”
“So I’m still a child?” Jiyong asked, and Daesung had shrugged, and as usual, his face had been unreadable.
“It means in a lot of ways, you still act like a child.” Daesung sighed and leaned forward, and Jiyong can see the weariness in his shoulders. “We all knew the consequences of you getting married… all of us except for you, apparently.”
“Except for me.” Jiyong swallowed, and he can recall the way Daesung’s words had seemed so novel and new, at the time.
“Youngbae wanted to come see you last week, but he’s in crunch time for his album, since President Yang is pushing the release date up to fill the gap created by yours.”
“Right. And TOP-hyung is filming, of course.” Jiyong took his glasses off, and folded them up in his hand. “And Seungri?”
Daesung tilted his head to the side and looked straight on at Jiyong, and Jiyong thought, briefly, that Daesung looked kind of angry.
“Seungri refuses to talk about you,” Daesung said. “He’s being a child, too.” Daesung scratches his neck. “Seungri’s going into the army in three weeks.”
“What?” Jiyong asks, and then he rests his face in his hands as the word solidify into a truth in his head. “I’ve messed up, Daesung.”
Daesung looks at him. “Then how are you going to fix it?”
“I don’t know,” Jiyong had said, and he’d buried both hands in his hair. He had wanted to scream.
“You can’t do it sitting in here feeling sorry for yourself.” That’s what Jiyong had said to Daesung, two and a half years ago. It’s almost funny to hear the same words coming out of Daesung’s mouth.
“Maybe you should be leader,” Jiyong jokes, and his voice sounds a little thick.
“No,” Daesung had said, patting Jiyong on the back. “I think you’ve had it under control.” Daesung coughs into his hand, and smiles. “So pull yourself back together.”
Jiyong had been thankful.
And now time has passed, and things have calmed down, and the time has been crammed with BIGBANG members releasing solo albums… Youngbae’s had been followed by Daesung’s long awaited one, and Jiyong had filled his time writing music for Daesung, and for his own solo album.
And now G-Dragon is making a comeback, and Jiyong isn’t nervous. Mostly just excited, because making music has never been work for him. Sometimes it’s been painful and stressful, and Jiyong felt like ripping himself or his band members limb from limb, but it’s always been his passion to create.
And now he’s one song away from a long-anticipated finish line, and Jiyong’s got an obstacle in front of him he doesn’t know how to cross.
His phone rings.
“Hello?” he says quickly, and Teddy coughs over the line.
“Yo,” Teddy says. “Seungri will be over in about four hours. Make sure you’re ready for him.”
“He agreed to come?” Jiyong blurts out, then seals his mouth closed.
“He seemed surprised that you wanted him,” Teddy says. “Probably because you were always so uncertain with his voice."
“I wasn’t,” Jiyong says. “It’s just Seungri’s voice is so…” Jiyong lets the sentence drag off, and Teddy isn’t like Jiyong, and he doesn’t pry.
“Well, four hours. The song’s got to be finished tonight. I’ll be by to listen to it later, cool? I’m going to work with Minzy tonight on a new dance track, but after that I’ll be by.”
“Great,” Jiyong says. “And thanks.”
“Good luck,” Teddy says. “Play nice.”
“I always play nice.”
“You’re a dick,” Teddy says, laughing. “But Seungri already know that.” Jiyong picks at his nails as they talk, and the cuticles are raw where he’s worn them down. “Jiyong… You gotta fix it, man.”
“I know,” Jiyong says, and he thinks a little bit of his urgency slips into his voice because Teddy sighs loudly in his ear. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“Yeah,” Teddy says. “Like I said: good luck.”
“Thanks,” Jiyong says, and then he starts to wait.
In the beginning, Seungri is almost shy. Not shy about his wants or needs… more that he’s afraid of being rejected and does anything he can to prevent that. He puts on an act that no one but Jiyong seems to see through, and pretends to be bold and confident and strong, and the audience laps it up, and Jiyong feels like no one is looking hard enough.
Seungri’s only the soft boy that had first won Jiyong over in the late night. Jiyong has his own room, but he doesn’t often sleep there. Seungri pretends to be bright and untouchable during the day, shrugging off Jiyong’s playful touches and grinning for the camera. But when the day ends, and it’s just Seungri, alone in his bed, that’s when the fear and the insecurities set in, and Jiyong takes it upon himself to be there when that happens, and soothe Seungri’s hair back from his face and calm his gentle sobs with a steady palm against Seungri’s warm back.
Seungri usually falls asleep to Jiyong’s whispered reassurances, and Jiyong loves the way Seungri’s hands are tangled up in his t-shirt, and the way Seungri looks settled into the curve of his side. Jiyong loves the way Seungri is like a puppy, warm and noisy and clumsy in his sleep.
Jiyong always pulls Seungri in tight, and as he does, he starts to wonder when Seungri became someone Jiyong would sacrifice sleep for. When Seungri, lying just like this, became something precious.
Jiyong wants to wrap Seungri in the circle of his arms, and for the first time, he thinks to himself that he never wants to let Seungri go. That he’d like to keep Seungri forever in his embrace, and never share this side of Seungri with anyone else.
When Seungri wakes up in the morning, he always stretches out, pressing into Jiyong with kicking legs and wayward elbows, and waking him up too. Then he always, always curls back up, fitting into the space Jiyong has created for him with his body, like a nest.
“It’s time to get up?” Jiyong cracks, before he swallows and repeats the question.
“Yes,” Seungri says. “Bu I don’t want to get up.”
“Why not?” Jiyong asks, because Seungri usually doesn’t have trouble waking up; not like Jiyong who could probably sleep through nuclear war.
“It’s safer in here,” Seungri whispers. “I feel safe.”
“In your room?” Jiyong laughs a little, because maknae is silly.
“In your arms,” Seungri replies, and his face is beet red and he’s staring at anything but Jiyong, eyebrows knitted together.
“Don’t be stupid,” Jiyong says, but he likes it.
“Sorry,” Seungri mumbles, and his flush grows deeper, to this satisfying color that makes Jiyong want Seungri to stay right where he is so Jiyong can devour him with delighted eyes.
And maybe Seungri, Jiyong thinks, wouldn’t mind, so much, being Jiyong’s, and Jiyong likes that most of all.
“You’re special, maknae,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s mouth parts slightly. He looks like a doll.
The look in his eyes is one that Jiyong doesn’t understand, but he sees the admiration mixed into it, and it’s good enough. “Really?”
“Yes,” Jiyong says, and he drags his fingertips across Seungri’s adam’s apple, and wishes his fingers would leave a mark.
“Don’t break him,” Yang Hyun Suk says to Jiyong one day, when they’re standing next to each other, watching Seungri do the choreography alone. “Don’t you dare.”
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Date: 2012-06-12 10:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-13 07:27 pm (UTC)Seriously, I came here everyday to look if you have updated yet and now... now I'm going to read it *muahahaha*