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maayacolabackupJongdae finishes chapter two of his ‘Mandarin for Beginners’ book just as the leaves start to change color. It’s convenient, because chapter two had gone over the colors, and walking around the temple grounds in the late afternoon with Tao allows him to practice with his amused but helpful companion.
Tao picks up a leaf and sticks it behind his ear, pointing to it with his index finger.
“Yellow,” Jongdae says, confidently, the huang coming out easy, and Tao nods enthusiastically.
Tao picks up another leaf and sticks it behind Jongdae’s ear, and Jongdae shivers. He’s mostly sure it’s from the slight wind. “And?”
“Orange,” Jongdae says, and Tao doubles over in laughter. “What?”
Tao holds up a finger, asking Jongdae to wait, and then when he calms, he shakes his head. “You are Chen, not the leaf,” Tao says. “Wrong word. The color is cheng.” He pretends to peel and take a bite of something. “Chengzi.”
“Oh,” Jongdae says, and scrunches his nose. “I see.” And Tao laughs again and continues his quiz.
The slightly cooler air is a relief from the constant, unrelenting heat and humidity. Jongdae hadn’t realized how terrible the summer had been until it had ended. The rains slow, and Jongdae’s able to venture outside more without get soaked. It still rains a lot, and it’s still hot, but it’s slightly more manageable now. It’s nothing like Korean autumn, but it’s still beautiful in its own way. Jongdae particularly likes the ginko trees; the way the leaves turn greenish yellow in the changing weather.
He proudly lists all the colors over dinner, and Yixing pokes him in the forehead with a chopstick. “Good,” Yixing says. “Now count up to a hundred.”
Jongdae sputters, and Yixing shoves a piece of steamed broccoli into his mouth.
“You must train harder, grasshopper,” Kris says, with a completely straight face, and when everyone turns to look at him, Lu Han shoves broccoli into his mouth, too. Kris chokes, and Tao pats Jongdae gently on the knee.
“Jia yo,” he says, which Jongdae has learned is how you wish someone luck. Then Tao looks up at Lu Han, and starts a conversation with him. Jongdae tries his best to keep up with it, and hears his name come up a few times.
At the end of Tao’s story, whatever the punchline is has Lu Han spitting rice out of his mouth. Xiumin looks at Lu Han judgingly, and Yixing seems terribly entertained by the look on Xiumin’s face. Kris just looks mildly disgusted, staring down at the half chewed rice.
“What?” Jongdae asks, and Yixing dimples at him.
“Now everyone will call you Chengzi, maybe,” Yixing says. “But that’s okay. You can match.” He takes his middle and index finger and points at Tao and Jongdae both. “Chengzi and Taozi.”
“What’s taozi?” Jongdae asks, and Kris hands Lu Han a napkin.
“Peach,” Kris explains. “That makes you guys ‘orange’ and ‘peach’.” Tao is chuckling again, face glowing with delight, and Jongdae likes the way Tao sounds; the way Tao’s laughter sort of curls up in Jongdae’s stomach and makes him feel warm.
“I think Jongdae is more red than orange right now,” Lu Han sing-songs in Korean, batting his eyelashes innocently, and Jongdae bites his lower lip and looks down at the table.
Tao’s hand tightens on his knee, and Jongdae really doesn’t think that helps the color of his face.
“What is this?” Tao asks, as Jongdae tapes the list onto his wall. Tao’s all ready to leave, dressed in his training clothes, a thick staff by the door instead of his sword.
“Things I want to do,” Jongdae replies. He’s written it in simple Chinese, for practice, and because it feels more ‘thematic’ that way. Chanyeol would laugh at him, if he were here, because in first year of university, when they’d taken Intro to Computer Graphics together, they’d been assigned as partners on the first project, and Jongdae’s need for ”a cohesive theme; goddamnit, Chanyeol, stop putting random shit all over our project” had driven them both insane.
If it were Chanyeol’s list, it would be written in multiple colors of glitter pen, and Baekhyun would have drawn egregious amounts of oversized pink highlighter hearts around the border. But this is Jongdae’s list, and thick, bold characters written straight and even with the aid of a ruler is the presentation of choice.
It looks nice and neat. There are five items. Jongdae has a fat red marker to cross things out.
“See more China?” Tao asks, looking at the fourth thing on the list, and Jongdae nods.
“More than just here,” Jongdae says, and Tao laughs. “When you go to Hainan for wushu. Maybe then.”
Tao seems thoughtful. He runs his finger down the whole list, before tapping the last item with a flourish. “These are good,” he says, and Jongdae beams at him. Tao looks down from the list, to Jongdae, and seems taken aback by Jongdae’s smile, eyes widening before returning to normal, soft grin gracing his features. “I’ll help.”
“You don’t have to,” Jongdae says, but Tao is already gone, off to train in his clearing alone in the pleasant autumn morning.
Yixing sprains his wrist at the beginning of Jongdae’s third month. It doesn’t slow him down, much, but there’s a tightness around his eyes as he does certain movements. Jongdae doesn’t get why he doesn’t just rest.
“Tell me about wushu,” Jongdae says.
“Tell you what?” Yixing replies. “You have the internet.”
“Not that,” Jongdae says. “Why do you do wushu?”
“I never wanted to do anything else,” Yixing says. “Since I was child. This is my dream.”
“But why?” Jongdae asks. “I liked kung fu movies as much as the next guy, but I never wanted-“
“Wushu changed my life. No focus, before. Now,” Yixing struggles for the word. “Now, centered.”
“That’s growing up,” Jongdae says. He’d been whimsical, as a child, too, cutting pictures out of magazines and books and pasting them on the walls of the family’s apartment. ”Places I want to go,” he’d told his mother solemnly, and she’d told him to stop destroying things before she’d had the chance to read them. “Not learning how to kill someone with your bare hands.”
“Wushu,” Yixing says, as Jongdae scrawls snippets into his notebook with his blue ballpoint pen, “is not just your body.”
“What?”
“Wushu is also your mind. Concentration.”
Jongdae sets his pen down beside him, and crosses his legs. “Spiritual?”
Yixing tilts his head. “You’re a writer,” Yixing says. “When you write…” He pauses, stretching his hands above his head. He moves them down, slowly. This is one of his forms. Jongdae’s seen this one before, in the early morning. “What do you think about?”
“Grammar,” Jongdae says. “How it sounds, when it’s read aloud, and-“
“Yes, yes,” Yixing says. “But… deeper. What do you think about?” Yixing fixes him with one eye.
“What the reader might like,” Jongdae says, and Yixing laughs.
“You must not be a very good writer,” he says, and Jongdae throws his notebook at him.
Jongdae wonders if he’s ever been that passionate about something. A part of him thinks he’d like to know what it feels like.
“I haven’t really gotten the chance to write like this before,” Jongdae says. “It’s always been checking other people’s work.”
“Why?” Yixing asks.
“Because I was supposed to,” Jongdae says. “It was fine.”
“No one wants their life to be ‘fine’,” Yixing says. “Don’t you want to be happy?”
“Happy is harder than it looks,” Jongdae says, but sometimes, when he thinks about the weeks that have passed, he thinks he can taste it, a little.
Whenever Xiumin cooks, dinner is good. They all take turns, even Jongdae and Kris, but Xiumin is definitely the best at most culinary endeavors. He’s kind of like Kyungsoo in the kitchen, calm and in control, only without the dubious kimchi spaghetti that Jongdae has yet to be brave enough to try.
Tao always tries to help. Tao, Jongdae thinks, is like an overeager puppy, wanting to please everyone as much as possible. Xiumin keeps shooing Tao from his side, and Tao finds his way back underfoot just as quickly as Xiumin gets him away.
“Cut these, then,” Xiumin says, and Jongdae just sits at the table and watches as Tao takes the knife and follows instructions. Every once in a while, Tao will look over his shoulder and grin at Jongdae, and Jongdae just runs his tongue over his teeth and ignores his accelerated heartbeat.
Tao says something to Xiumin, and Xiumin laughs. “Tao wants to know how your work is going,” Xiumin says, and Tao kicks him. “He’s curious.”
Jongdae’s gaze moves back to Tao, who is staring down with more concentration than necessary at the onion. “Hen hao,” he says. Good.
Tao doesn’t look up, but he smiles.
One morning, as Jongdae is transferring some notes to his laptop from his panda notebook, Tao puts his hands on Jongdae’s shoulders.
“Busy?” Tao asks, and Jongdae considers. Time for him, here, is rather fluid, so he can afford to stop for whatever Tao wants to do. He ignores the inkling of thought that tells him he’d stop for whatever Tao wanted to do anyway, and closes his notebook.
“No,” Jongdae says, turning in his seat, and Lu Han, who’s sitting across from Jongdae and filling out competition registration paperwork that Jongdae doesn’t understand, coughs.
“Go,” Tao says. “Let’s go.”
“Go… where?” Jongdae says, and Lu Han coughs again, which makes Jongdae wonder if he’s said it wrong. Tao bites down on his lip and lets his hands fall from Jongdae’s shoulders. One hand catches on Jongdae’s wrist. Jongdae can feel the calluses from the sword hilt on the inside of Tao’s thumb. “Where do you want to go?”
“With Chen,” Tao says, and then he says a word Jongdae can’t figure out. It doesn’t sound familiar, and he searches through his brain for an instance he might have heard it before, and comes up with nothing. “Mountain.”
“Mountain?” Jongdae feels lost.
“You don’t understand?” Lu Han asks, and Jongdae turns away from Tao, who is looking at him imploringly, to glare at Lu Han.
“Obviously, I don’t,” Jongdae says, and Tao is still holding onto his wrist, which is distracting.
“He wants to go hiking,” Lu Han says. “It’s the same in Korean as it is in Mandarin. Deng san.”
“It sounds different with tones,” Jongdae says despairingly. “This is impossible!”
“What would you have done if I weren’t here to translate?” Lu Han asks. “Learn faster.”
“Don’t pick on me.” Jongdae taps his foot on the ground. “I would have just gone with him,” Jongdae says, and blushes against his will when Lu Han gives him a weird, knowing smile. “Tao’s not a serial killer.” Lu Han’s smile grows. “Right?”
“No,” Lu Han says. “Despite all the deadly skills, Zitao is more of the… ‘crying type’ than the ‘killing type’.”
“Crying?”
“I’m sure you’ll see,” Lu Han says, and Jongdae realizes Tao’s still got a hold on his wrist, and is still looking at him steadily, waiting for an answer.
“Yes,” Jongdae says. “Let’s go.”
And that’s how Jongdae finds himself in the passenger seat of the white van with a dragon painted on the side, Tao in the driver’s seat as Kris offers far too many instructions for Jongdae’s comfort.
“If Kris is telling Tao how to drive,” Jongdae says to Lu Han, who’s leaning in the passenger side window with a smirk, “I’m not going to make it back alive.”
“He’s giving him directions. Tao doesn’t want to get lost.”
“Where are we even going?” Jongdae says more than asks, frustratedly moving his backpack to give his feet more room. He’s careful not to treat it too roughly, though, because his camera’s in there. “I mean, hiking, but where?”
“You’ll see,” Lu Han says. He looks so self-satisfied with all the secrecy that Jongdae’s kind of worried he’s going to get dropped in a pit of snakes or something. “You’ll love it.”
“Wow, I feel so encouraged,” Jongdae says. “Not weirded out at all.”
“It’s not me or Yixing taking you on this trip,” Lu Han says. “So you can relax. Tao would never let anything happen to his chengzi.”
“I hope Xiumin is busy and you have to eat Kris’s cooking tonight,” Jongdae says. “I can think of no greater punishment.”
“You’re really starting to fit in around here,” Lu Han says, slapping the side of the passenger door with a weird little love-tap and then stepping back. “Have a nice trip.”
“I hope I will?” Jongdae replies, as Tao puts the car in reverse.
Tao is a much better driver than Kris, so Jongdae can actually enjoy the scenery of their one-lane drive down from the mountains without his stomach threatening to empty itself with every bump in the road. It’s as beautiful as Jongdae remembered.
“Where are we going?” Jongdae tries again, but Tao only clicks his tongue and slants his eyes at Jongdae mysteriously, and Jongdae leans back in his seat and figures he’ll find out eventually.
It turns out to be a national park. “Wulingyuan,” Tao says. “This place is called Wulingyuan.”
There are brochures in Korean, and Jongdae snags one as Tao buys a map in Chinese. Tao doesn’t give him time to look at it, though, quickly taking them toward the entrance, paying the fee and dragging them inside the park.
Wulinyuan, Jongdae reads as Tao studies the map with a concentration that makes him almost too adorable to look away from, is a pretty famous place to hike. There’s a bit in there about an Emperor hiding away in seclusion, and about relics in a nearby city, but Jongdae doesn’t get to read the whole blurb before Tao is lightly tugging on the strap of his backpack.
“Let’s go,” Tao says. “This way. The easy way.”
Jongdae laughs. “Easy is good,” he says, and Tao shines with happiness. Jongdae tugs on his own shirt, suddenly feeling a bit warmer.
They walk along a stream for a long while, and Jongdae takes pictures, of streams and gorges and monkeys and flora, as Tao shoves his hands in his pockets and walks a little ahead. He’s never impatient, though; it’s almost like he’s just happy watching Jongdae snap photographs and exclaim over how beautiful everything is.
It’s really, really beautiful. There are these massive sandstone pillars shooting up from the grounds all around them; tall, nature-made obelisks to the sky that are more amazing than anything Jongdae’s ever seen. Vines and other foliage crawl up the sides of them, and when Jongdae looks all the way up, there’s a thick, obfuscating fog that makes the whole place feel a whole lot like a dream.
When they reach the end of the flat path, Tao takes him up a trail that has significantly fewer people. “This is the Yaozizai,” Tao says. “Less people, here.”
They climb for hours, passing only three couples on the way up. The trees are flowerless, because it’s early fall, which lets Jongdae see down the way they’ve come as far as the fog allows. They’re so high now that the air is getting thin, but each glance Jongdae takes is more breathtaking than the last.
“Almost,” Tao says, and his face is pink with exertion. “Are you okay?”
“I’m great,” Jongdae huffs, because he is. A bit of sunlight peeks through the branches of the trees, and catches perfectly on Tao’s upturned lips, and Jongdae’s knees feel strangely weak. He makes himself look away, back out at the snatches of a view he can see though the plants, but they hold a little less magic than what he just looked away from.
At the top of the mountain, Tao waits for him patiently to catch up, holding out his hand and pulling him up the last bit. The sun is setting. Jongdae takes a deep breath, and slowly exhales as he rests his hands on his knees. “It’s all so beautiful,” he says, in Korean, and Tao clumsily copies him.
“Close enough,” Jongdae says to himself, and nods at Tao, and Tao wraps a sweaty arm around Jongdae’s shoulders as Jongdae straightens. “Why here?”
Tao squeezes Jongdae’s arm, which pulls Jongdae closer into his side. Jongdae feels so small, under Tao’s arm, but he doesn’t mind, because Tao’s not the intimidating sort of tall. He seems it at first, but Jongdae knows that Tao is soft, and sweet, and that makes his height feel protective instead of scary.
“Look,” Tao says, and Jongdae does. Below him, he can see hills and valleys and scattered trees. He can see the endless rainforest filled with those giant sandstone and quartz cliffs, a jagged skyline that climbs out of the fog as the sky fades from red to orange to purple. “Chen, look.”
“I’m looking,” Jongdae says, and Tao’s arm slips down, to his waist, and Jongdae finds it difficult to concentrate, even on a view this awe-inspiring, when Tao’s thumb is rubbing tiny circles against the skin of his hip that peeks from his jeans.
“Number four,” Tao says, and there’s a gust of wind. It ruffles Jongdae’s hair, and he looks up at Tao, who is looking straight back. Jongdae’s heart is racing, and his breath seems trapped in his lungs as Tao smiles, skin turned golden in the setting sun. “See more of China.”
Jongdae swallows around the lump that’s found it’s way into his throat. His list of things to do. Jongdae thinks about the notebook in his backpack and the landscape in front of him, and wonders how a person like Tao even exists.
“It’s beautiful,” Jongdae says again, and he’s not sure if he’s talking about the view or Huang Zitao.
They take the bright yellow cable car down, and that’s why Jongdae’s stomach is still jittery and upset.
They stay the night at an inn, after splitting a whole chicken cooked in a style Jongdae’s never had before. Tao had ordered, and Jongdae’s not completely sure what he ate, but it was delicious.
They’re both exhausted, but Jongdae can’t seem to find slumber. Jongdae sleeps with his back toward Tao, because he’s afraid if he faces the other direction, he’ll never fall asleep. His thoughts are racing, and his palms are sweating, and he feels completely out of sorts.
Maybe, he thinks, as he drifts off, he’s still just dizzy from the thin mountain air.
They drive back to the temple the next day, windows rolled down and wind carding through their hair, Tao cheerfully humming along with the radio, which plays really old songs that remind Jongdae of the sort of stuff his grandmother listens to while she cooks, but in Chinese. Jongdae steals glances at him, out of the corner of his eye, and every time he does he feels a tremor in his chest.
Halfway through the ride, Tao rests his hand on Jongdae’s thigh. Jongdae jumps, but then he quickly settles again, feeling stupid. “Did you like Wulingyuan?” Tao asks, and the heat of his palm is sinking through Jongdae’s jeans.
“I loved it,” Jongdae says, perfectly honest, and Tao looks like he’s won an award.
“How was your romantic getaway?” Lu Han teases, when they get back to the temple. “You were blissfully happy, weren’t you?”
“It was a gorgeous place,” Jongdae replies, purposefully not rising to the bait. “We did a lot of hiking.” He doesn’t meet Lu Han’s demanding stare. Lu Han’s silent for a minute, and Jongdae wonders if he’s choosing another angle of attack, but then he just hums and pokes Jongdae’s cheek.
“By the way, Baozi cooked dinner last night,” Lu Han says, changing the subject. “It’s duizhang’s turn tonight.”
“Damn,” Jongdae says, and the tension of the car ride eases out of his shoulders with the banter, even if he can still feel the ghost of Tao’s touch on his thigh as he shuts the van door.
“Jongin has a girlfriend,” Sehun says, consonants too thick, after Jongdae finally manages to get the stubborn internet to work. “He’s never home. I miss being able to come eat all your food when I get bored, and you not even notice. Kyungsoo always notices because he’s got everything partitioned and labeled.”
“Who the hell would date Jongin?” Jongdae says. “How’d he even manage to talk to a girl? Did he charm her by making terrible misshapen hearts with his elbows and shriveling up in shame afterwards?”
“Oh, oops, did I say girlfriend?” Sehun answers. “I meant Taemin. Taemin finally wore him down.”
“Oh,” Jongdae says. “Well, that’s… unexpected.”
“Not really,” Sehun says. “People are so dumb. It’ll be completely obvious that Person A has a crush on Person B, and Person A will just ignore all of those signs.”
“What do you mean, completely obvious?”
Sehun snorts, moving his long bangs out of his face with an impatient hand. “I mean, the constant blushing, the rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, butterflies in your stomach… if that’s happening, you’re either giving a speech, or you’ve got a crush.” Sehun clicks his teeth. “Jongin is so stupid. He’d say ‘I feel weird around that guy’, and it was just… Obvious.”
Jongdae taps his fingers on his knees, and tries not to think about how any of what Sehun’s saying could apply to his own life. “Yeah,” Jongdae says. “Jongin’s pretty dumb.”
It’s almost as if Mother Nature has been waiting for Tao and Jongdae to get home before opening up the sky and letting it pour. Two days after they get back to the temple, it starts to rain. It rains for four days, and everyone but Tao stays inside.
“But what if he gets sick?” Jongdae asks, and Yixing frowns.
“He missed two days before,” Yixing says. “Zitao must train.”
Jongdae guiltily twists his ballpoint in his hand. He’s almost done with his article; he’s writing about the history of the Wulingyuan National Park, and his photos all came out really well. “Maybe we shouldn’t have gone,” Jongdae says, and Xiumin rolls his eyes.
“Tao is a grown man,” Xiumin says, and Lu Han chokes on the bun he’s eating. “He wanted to take you there, so he did. Now he trains.”
“I don’t want me being here to distract him too much,” Jongdae says. “Any of you,” he adds. “This competition is a really big deal, right?”
Yixing leans forward across the table as Jongdae scribbles tiny cartoon pandas in the margins of his notebook. “If we let you distract us too much,” Yixing says, “then our…” he stops. “Our energy? Is too weak.”
“In other words,” Lu Han says. “We’re all adults here,” and this time it’s Xiumin who is disguising a snort, “so let us decide that sort of thing.” Lu Han glares at Xiumin as Yixing scoots his chair closer to Jongdae, looking over his shoulder.
“Zitao,” he says, and Xiumin and Lu Han break their staring contest, eyes shifting to Yixing. “Chen is drawing Zitao.”
Xiumin stares down at Jongdae’s notebook, taking in the little pandas carrying armfuls of peaches that he’s drawn in lieu of serious words about Chinese geographical history, and looks back at Lu Han.
“Well,” Lu Han says. “Most of us are adults. One of us is clearly a middle school girl.”
“You should work on that, Lu Han,” Jongdae replies, fighting back his blush and refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “I’m not sure if middle school girls are old enough to compete in international wushu competitions.”
“Right,” Lu Han says, and Jongdae turns the page in his notebook to a clean one.
Wulingyuan Peak Forest, for the top of a mountain, is sort of like looking down on what the world would be like without people. When one of my housemates and I looked out across the vast unexplored, untouched expanse of rainforest, I felt sort of like I was at the top of the world. It’s the sort of view of China you don’t see on the evening news, where the topic of discussion is usually the escalation of industry, and the swell of people spilling out of the cities as the population grows and grows. Looking out on all of that… It makes me want to see more and more of the China I never imagined. More of the world, in general.
The rain stops, finally, and Jongdae is relieved to be able to venture back outside. He sits down on the edge of a wooden walkway, letting his shoes sink slightly into the too damp earth as he reads from his Mandarin book.
“What are you studying?” Tao asks, sitting down next to Jongdae. The black fabric of his pants stretches across his thighs, and his shirt is soaked with sweat. His earrings glint in the afternoon sun.
“Family,” Jongdae says. He pronounces the tones carefully, determined to get them right.
Tao nods, and picks up a stick. He pulls the stray bits of leaves and offshoots from the main branch, and holds it in his hand.
He digs the stick into the soft ground, and soon Jongdae realizes he’s drawing stick figures. He draws three circles for the heads, and then bodies. The figure in the middle is tall, and there’s a short man on the left and a short woman on the right. “Mom, dad, and Zitao.” Jongdae pronounces each word after Tao does; memorizes the feel of it on his tongue. Zitao, he thinks, is particularly sweet. “My family,” Tao says, and Jongdae looks again at the three figures. Tao erases them with his palm on his other hand, and then gives the stick to Jongdae as he wipes the mud on his trousers.
Jongdae starts drawing. “Mom,” Jongdae says. “Dad.” He pays attention to the tones, and scribbles the characters on top of the stick figures as he draws. “Sister. Grandmother. Me.” He draws the rest of his family, too, adding silly hair for himself and for his father and his awful cousin that everyone hates, too. “My family.”
“That’s all?”
“More than you!” Jongdae says. “I have nine.” Tao presses his lips into a line, before he takes the stick back. Tao draws a woman next to Jongdae’s stick figure family, and writes the character for woman above it. The stick figure is slightly apart from Jongdae’s family, and its stick figure arm is held out like it’s reaching for Jongdae-figure’s hand. “Nu pengyou?”
Oh, Jongdae thinks. A girlfriend.
“Mei you,” Jongdae says. I don’t have one. Jongdae digs his fingers into the mud, dragging some over Tao’s drawing, half-erasing her.
Jongdae’s tongue licks at the corner of his mouth. Tao catches his gaze, and Jongdae looks back at him.
He wonders, briefly, if I don’t like girls like that is written in his eyes as clearly as he’s thinking it, but after a moment, Tao turns away without acknowledging Jongdae’s expression. “Okay,” Tao says. “No girlfriend.”
“Right,” Jongdae says, feeling a bit sick with anxiousness, and then he hastily erases his whole picture.
“The hit counts on your articles are pretty high,” Junmyeon says. “For some reason, people are interested in what you have to say.”
“Most people are,” Jongdae says, with pretend arrogance. “Further proof that I need better friends.”
“We’re all just here to keep your ego in check,” Junmyeon says. “Chanyeol, Jongin, and I are like the first assault, and Kyungsoo and Sehun are the back up artillery.” Junmyeon scratches at his hair, which is looking more like ramen noodles than actual hair these days. “Poor Baekhyun just picks up the pieces of you that we leave behind.”
“Whatever, Baekhyun’s got all of you on a leash and you know it,” Jongdae says. Junmyeon sticks his tongue out, filling the camera with the terrible zoom image of his taste buds.
“Anyway,” Junmyeon says. “The boss seems pretty pleased with you.”
Jongdae had gotten that impression from the email Kim Kibeom had sent on behalf of President Lee that had basically said ’keep up the good work, slave’. It still makes him swell a bit with pride. “And you? What do you think?”
“They’re good,” Junmyeon says. “I liked when you talked about how it felt, when you were up on that mountain in that place with the name I can’t say. More emotion.”
“Wulingyuan,” Jongdae says, and Junmyeon raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, we speak the language now, do we?” Junmyeon rests his chin on his upward facing palm.
“Who is this ‘we’?” Jongdae retorts, and Junmyeon chuckles. “I don’t see you reading ‘Mandarin for Beginners’ every single day.”
“I liked when you talked about your ninja, too,” Junmyeon says, and he almost manages to keep a straight face, but his voice cracks on the word ‘ninja’.
“I don’t have a ninja,” Jongdae growls. “Don’t make me strangle you through the laptop screen.”
“Look at all that emotion you have to share!” Junmyeon leans back and sighs, and then musses his noodle hair even more. “I’m just saying, the more you can share what you feel, the more people will want to read. If they wanted dry facts, they could look that up themselves. Readers of SM Geographic want to share an experience.”
“Right,” Jongdae says, and his hand smoothes over the cover of his notebook, fingers catching on the panda sticker that’s starting to peel up. “I remember.”
Talking about feelings, Jongdae thinks, would be easier if he could make sense of all the different ones battling inside him.
“You’ll get it,” Junmyeon says. “I’m sure of it.”
“At least one of us is,” Jongdae replies.
“Is it okay?” Jongdae asks, as Tao peels off his soaked shirt and puts on a soft gray long-sleeved tee.
“What?” Tao asks, and Jongdae sets his laptop aside so he can concentrate on Tao, who has turned to stare at him with confused eyes.
“Your…” He searches for the word, and surprisingly, he finds it. “Your back,” Jongdae says, and Tao’s hands drop to his waist, where he’s wrapped bandages. He hadn’t said anything but Jongdae had noticed them last night, and he’s finally worked up the nerve to ask.
“Yes,” Tao says. “No time to stop.”
Jongdae stands and walks over to Tao, hesitantly lifting his shirt to examine the bandage. Jongdae doesn’t know how to say hurt, but he gently runs his fingers along the white dressing. Tao’s skin, where his fingers brush, breaks into goosebumps.
Jongdae looks up, and Tao swallows, adam’s apple shifting, and Tao’s eyes are steady. His lips are parted, ever so slightly, and Jongdae is close enough that he picks up Tao’s signature cedar scent, comforting and warm.
“Is it okay?”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Tao says, or at least that’s what Jongdae thinks he says. He rolls the word around in his mouth, and Tao grabs his wrist, stopping his hand. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“All right,” Jongdae says, and he wants to move away, but he’s frozen in place, one hand held in place by Tao’s while his other hand has flimsy hold on Tao’s shirt.
“Don’t worry, Chen,” Tao says, and Jongdae clears his throat and steps back. Tao immediately lets go of him, and Jongdae suddenly realizes just how close he’d been standing. “I’m okay. Practice is more important than small pain.”
“All right,” Jongdae says, and his voice comes out as a whisper, and he doesn’t meet Tao’s eyes again for the rest of the night.
“Wushu is a tradition in my family,” Kris says. “Even though I have never been particularly good at it, I grew up with it.”
“So you ended up…”
“I make sure that other people can do it, in the best possible conditions. That’s why they call me duizhang, I guess. This temple was my dad’s. He rebuilt it from what was basically ruins to be a retreat.”
“Your dad was a martial artist?”
“He was really good,” Kris replies. “Yixing was his student, for a long time.”
“I see,” Jongdae says. “So you live here, and-“
“And I write books,” Kris says, and Jongdae blinks in surprise.
“Really?” His voice squeaks a little, so he clears his throat. “So why do you…”
“I write about the history of martial arts. I visit archives and special collections and stuff when I’m not taking care of registrations and such.”
“That’s so cool,” Jongdae says. “I never thought I’d say that about you.” He softens it with a grin as Kris reaches into the fruit bowl and pulls out an orange, glowering at him.
“I’ve got to keep you away from Yixing and Lu Han,” Kris says. “They’re ruining you. More time with Tao, I think.” Kris smirks. “But you’d like that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jongdae replies, gnawing on his lower lip. He shifts uncomfortably on his chair, and studies the grain of the table.
“I’ll take you with me sometime, if you want to see some really old texts,” Kris says, after a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“I’d like that,” Jongdae says quietly, he traces the lines in the wood with anxious fingertips.
“Wushu has a fascinating history,” Kris says. “So many styles and traditions all combined under one title.” Kris tosses the orange in the air and catches it. “The earliest martial arts came to us from Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, during he Xia Dynasty.”
“The what?”
“It’s half-myth, half-history,” Kris says. “But Huangdi gave us the first martial arts, and Li Bai, during the Tang Dynasty, wrote poetry about the sword dancers with unbeatable skill. There are so many different types of martial arts that you could spend your life just learning the differences.”
“So how can you have a winner? How can you judge who is best when no one is doing the same thing?”
“Well,” Kris says, hesitantly setting the orange down on the table. “China’s different, now. There aren’t so many independent schools, anymore. That’s not really encouraged.” Kris sighs. “Wushu isn’t really fighting, now. It’s a sport. But you’re right. To say someone is the best is… difficult, when the judging isn’t even sparring half the time, but forms.”
“So why is it such a big deal?” Jongdae is scrawling things in his notebook, the Hangeul letters sloppy and large as he writes outside the line.
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say you didn’t play sports in high school.” Kris’s blond hair falls into his eyes.
“Are you kidding?” Jongdae says. “High school kids are too aggressive.” Kris laughs at him. “You probably played basketball.”
Jongdae had almost tried out for the football team. But even though Jongdae’s always been fast, he’s also small, and it would have taken time away from his studies, and he wouldn’t have been that good at it, anyway. That’s what he tells himself, anyway.
“I was team captain, obviously,” Kris replies, and Jongdae rolls his eyes.
“Duizhang for life, huh?” Jongdae says, and then he scratched the side face. “I never really understood the motivation.”
“Because it’s a test of what you’ve learned, to face others in competition,” Kris says. “Everyone has their own reasons. I can’t speak for anyone else.” Kris chuckles.
“That makes sense,” Jongdae says. “Like a progress report.”
“Not just that,” Kris says. “But it’s not me you should be asking about that.”
“I wish I could ask Tao about this sort of stuff,” Jongdae says. “He seems the most, I dunno, focused.” Not that Lu Han and Yixing and Xiumin aren’t focused, but Tao has a single-minded dedication to practice that Jongdae is so impressed by.
He goes to watch him train, sometimes. Not often enough to bother him, because Jongdae’s still not sure if Tao minds or if Tao is just so nice that he wouldn’t say anything even if it did bother him.
“It’s a really big deal for Zitao,” Kris says, cracking his knuckles before he starts peeling the orange. “Because he was so close.”
Jongdae thinks about the bandage around Tao’s waist, and the backflip he’d seen him do this morning in spite of it. ”Practice is more important than small pain.”
“What do you mean, so close?”
Kris’s hands dwarf the small orange as he separates a piece off and hands it to Jongdae. Jongdae takes a bite, and the juice is tart. “Last year,” Kris says, taking his own bite, “Zitao ranked really high. He lost by a margin of .05. Second place.”
“Wow,” Jongdae says. “In the world?” Jongdae can’t imagine being the world’s best at something.
“He thinks,” Kris says, “that he’s got something to prove. I don’t know what the judge said to him, but there’s a fire in him.” Kris shrugs. “I don’t know; maybe he does have something to prove. At least to himself.”
That, Jongdae thinks, is something that he can understand.
Dear Junmyeon,
I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation. It’s something you’ve always told me, but I think I’ve only just now started to understand it… I’m talking about the feelings thing, of course. Anyway, thanks for being a good upperclassman… The guys here called Kris duizhang, and I feel like I should call you something similar.
Your mentee,
Jongdae
