❝you don't have a garden just for yourself,
you have it to share.❞
┊x. five
Clary took advantage of all the tricks that she kept, like a sailor touches the skin of the river when they finally found the channel that would take them to the coast.
For as long as she could remember, she had always enjoyed the feeling of being seen. Dancing was a rewarding way to be proud of herself, of her roots, but singing was another level of joy. She hadn't been born blessed with a heavenly voice, she hadn't been able to tell that she had a spring in the strings, but now when she sang she could see the judges' suppressed smile.
Her problem was that she was not very humble. She decided to look the judges in the face when they gave her the monthly score. She didn't see anything wrong with it, she liked to see their reactions from beginning to end because it made her feel good, but that was disrespectful here, it was a signal of power. And although it made her feel bad that they scolded her, she continued looking them in the eyes because that's who she is.
Maybe if the system wasn't so stark as a stick, Clary would just hug everyone all the time. While she was involved with them, she caught herself in sonder—when they scolded her she liked to question the idea of if there was another person like her doing the same thing at the same time, and if that was why it was so inevitable and therefore blameless.
Like soft sand, or rough silver, her eyes examined the surroundings as she saw the rows becoming more and more isolated, weighing down hopes more, and other times not allowing a grain of it to enter.
Beside her, was an anxious Jisoo, solicitous like someone who has to say her full name for the first time. Whenever she felt like this, Clary liked to have her hand held, to have something to hold on to. Clary took her hand, which was smooth and creamy with sweat—since it didn't bother her, she cradled it.
Jisoo breathed, "You actually enjoy this intensity," the comment made Clary scoff.
"Well, I usually concentrate on transporting myself to another place, while imagining the people here in it, along with thousands of others," she couldn't contain the smile, "So, all I see are the twinkling bubbles of light below the stage. The lipsticks in my mind moving to the rhythm of the track, the screams, me removing the hearing aid that doesn't let me hear," her hands waved helplessly, "they excite me."
Jisoo hummed, as she grabbed a lock of her dark hair to untangle a small nest, a grotto similar to Jennie's when she needed to move her hands. "Is that why you're in the industry, then?"
Clary felt her breath light up, she moved her head to the side, trying vigorously not to ramble, but she didn't really care about being a nightingale, "I just want to sing. Actually. Making music everywhere, lyrics that touch entire continents, enjoy the lights of the stage looking at the reflection of a lipstick in the audience. I want to laugh on a red carpet. I don't know. It's like, there is nothing more that I like. That I can do without thinking that when I get old if I look back I'll feel empty."
Jisoo looked up and the light from the incandescent bulb crossed her brown irises, like a canopy of coffee beans. "That's beautiful, Clary."
Chewy?
Clary raised her eyebrow, smiling as she bumped her shoulder, "So Chewy is it?"
Jisoo shrugged with mischievous eyes, "My bad, I was just throwing out every syllable I learned for today's lesson."
Clary was about to spell the name when she realized she had gotten off topic, and she was still too curious, she could use the spelling for later with Lisa too. Maybe a couple of bread crackers and the tender taste of a young soju...
Clary nodded, bringing her knees closer to her chest. "And you tell me, why are you here?"
Jisoo looked around her, the same sedative-seeking look that Clary had seen on her mom's patients when they were in the waiting room, "That's, like, a tough question," she said, scratching the bridge of her nose as she smiled, because Jisoo always wanted to lighten everything up, unlike Clary or even Lisa.
She didn't need an answer as to why her tone had become remote. It was delicate, but, in the lab, Clary always liked to look through the stethoscope. She wanted to see who Jisoo was, her authentic, beautiful self. Whether it is a comedian, an officer, a journalist, a jester, or a firefighter...
Clary placed her hands on her dongsaeng's again, "Why?"
Jisoo sighed, her whispers swirling, "With respect to this company, which is not much, but to music in general," she pursed her lips, "It's not that I really like it."
Clary didn't know where to look now, Jisoo continued: "I mean, when they gave me the admission card, the first thing I thought about was signing up for the actress list. Then I found out that to be one you have to be an idol first here."
Clary opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, comical as a fish out of water, she hadn't expected that response, and it made her a little uncomfortable, suspending her in the realm of disbelief, where she didn't think so, but she wasn't going to question her. She was Jisoo, she wanted the older to trust her.
How had I not thought of that? She asked herself, as she smoothed out the folds of her gray, pleated skirt without noticing.
However, she tilted her head when she was able to regain some of her voice, "Oh, so your real dream is to be an actress?"
Jisoo let out an indiscreet laugh, as if she was never bothered by the demarcation between the iris of the stage and the sclerotid of the screen. As if she had found the balance of her cornea. It was her aria. And it was strange for Clary to listen to her saying those things, she didn't agreed that she was training for something that wasn't drawing the outskirts of her great design. She wanted to understand her better, so she decided to talk to her more.
Still, Jisoo's hands moved in the breath of her excitement, "Well, we can say yes. Maybe," contagious, Clary returned the warm smile, "Although I'm not going to pretend that when they called me for this project I wasn't excited."
Clary blithely agreed, as they shook their palms, "Yes, it's was cathartic."
"And we're not even in the middle of it, Tae-ah," she murmured, as she stood up and stroked her hair, Clary liked her touch, her palms were as warm as a blessing, a starry orange blossom shawl. "It's good to have us."
The chords were eclectic, chosen by Jennie's preference, purling across the creeping, heavy bass synth, an euphoric guitar to contrast and melt the voices of the girls, especially Jisoo's, so deep and harmonious. The boldness of the choreography Lisa and Clary orchestrated was highlighted with their colors, red and black, signature YG Ent. vessel. They had already assigned positions, but as was customary, they placed a row of well-organized plastic bottles in case they needed to confirm the lines behind them. The giant mirror in front of the judges was their rearview mirror.
Clary had been dying of excitement and deep down with nerves. But they had presented well, no one had fallen out of the formations, just a variation of energy between them, a step executed moderately before the others or after, even so it was cruelly pointed out to them, it was the way in which they improved people in the industry.
However, Teddy and Sohee had bobbed their heads to the rhythm of the performance.
"Lisa, if you want to debut, you better fix that voice. I couldn't stand the bridge just because of you."
"Jennie, you go to the cafeteria a lot but you dance like you just got up."
"Tae-hara, keep watching us when we target you and I'll have your contract terminated. I can't tell if you're saying a tongue twister from if you're rapping."
"Chaeyoung, how many times have I told you already? You're the problem, you don't even know how to smile."
"Jisoo, you think that because you are pretty you will become an idol?"
"You did well, girls," he turned his gaze to the judges with a chuckle, but when he looked at them his face froze.
"Yes but that," she almost pinpointed with her fingertips, "hurts our feelings," Clary whispered, Jennie nudged her.
Teddy shook his head, "People on the internet can be worse. Just look at some comments on the BIGBANG forum and you'll know."
He was right.
"No matter what, you all must practice."
They got a 7.2 out of 10. Barely above average, as expected for the very first performance.
The other girls, especially Jisoo, seemed comfortable with it, but Clary bit off all of her nails when it was being announced. She didn't felt like she did her best, that was why the next time she decided she would do more than her vigor gave.
They had to be the girls. She didn't knew a lot of things of the future, wanting to flow around it, but she knew that.
Her gaze walked in the evening lights, sowing the shadows of the horizon, the letters of the clouds that were carried by the wind far behind the waltz of the trees. She remembered sunsets in cinematography, A Space Odyssey and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai dancing like dots in her mind.
She was not going to let herself be influenced by the results, those of etiquette and rap that seemed not to improve with time, she always procrastinated. She had to invent new ways to delve into other languages, so that, for extra credits, she would be doing something that made her happy.
They were melodies that she had to tune, she knew, but once in the industry, perhaps she could—no, she wanted—to do without them. She wanted to break limits, destroy barriers. Print on the horizon like the Sun, with a Moon always behind, nestled in the arms of its sky, in the lines of a stage ready for the stars.
Clary sighed. She had to get there.
Meanwhile, Lisa snorted as she played with a thread that came loose from one of her stockings, "Who thinks I could fit fifteen marshmellows in my mouth?"
"Nobody," came the response from Jennie, who was lying, with one arm over her eyes, on the couch in the living room.
Jisoo, for her part, was knitting with Rosé a couple of scarves for this spring, predicted to be colder than usual, Clary's skin almost turned into dust when she remembered the time she went out in shorts to buy banana milk for Jisoo because Lisa had served it all in her cereal.
Rosé seemed calm as she sank her fingers into the embroidery and quickened her hand on the Russian punch needle. In the last few minutes, Clary had looked out several times to see how she was building the green colors into a forest of polyester.
The oldest didn't look up when she said, "nobody thinks of fifteen, Lisa-ya. Add twenty."
Rosé snorted, perhaps the snorting was the rudest she had ever seen her be, she could be so benevolent that Clary could have mistaken her for a Yu-gyo-girl ¹, even when she was in YG Ent., perhaps it was that something that called her attention from her.
"We should be worrying about the hurricane that's coming from the west," she pronounced, in a fairly stiff voice.
Lisa cocked her head, "Hurricane?"
Jennie moved her arms away from her face as she questions, "Now?"
Clary was scared when she heard Lisa's palms clatteringly hit the ground, "Tae-unnie, Chae-ssi, we better run before the shorties ask us for a ride because their tiny legs make them useless!"
Clary's laugh at the comments Lisa made all the time came from deep in her throat, she knew the others would sometimes be shocked, but she thought it was cute and funny, "Lisa, she was talking about us." "
"That's way more disappointing, honestly."
If smiles could write poems, Clary might as well write a three-page dramatic narrative right now. Lisa's inherent enthusiasm and her ability to deliver words mocking innocence were what she needed.
Jisoo exhaled, dreamily, "Just like the time when I told her to put pressure in the cut and I wasn't expecting her to give the thumb a whole sermon about being kicked out of the hand."
Clary, now just huffs in response.
She cranes her neck to turn on her phone and check the time. The internet in the dormitory was not free and they had been made to pay a considerable fee to access it at certain times of the day.
Supposedly, the reason for leaving them incommunicado was that they would be forced to live together and tolerate each other. Clary couldn't imagine how they could deduce that they would get along badly after they literally cried together the day they met. For the record, they were granted instead recreational spaces for biking, skating and even bars for yoga and pilates.
Clary began to tap her feet on the floor. She wanted to go out with Jackson but the poor boy would probably have enough on his shoulders this weekend with all the anticipated photoshoots.
She finished her thoughts as she sucked the inside of her cheeks, consumed, "Girls."
Jennie drawled as she slid off the couch like a baby sloth, "What."
"I was thinking about the Judgment Day."
Clary could see Lisa's head peeking over the shelves, where, she was sure, she was looking for the last of the Dasik ² that Rose had bought the other day. What she didn't know was that the dessert was now hidden in Clary's bedroom.
Jennie said as she walked into the kitchen with a soft posture, "The movie?"
Rosé smiled at the older as she asked: "What?"
"You know, why would I hook up with a demon? As simple as getting snacks," Lisa settled on one of the stools that had good wheels. "Imagine being able to eat marshmallows while everyone cries between bags of sulfur and shit—"
Clary was barely registering all those possibilities when Jennie decided to cover Lisa's mouth with both hands.
Jisoo frowns as she paws, "What are you doing? Let it go on."
Clary interrupts their little deluge to rain more chances, "Then you wouldn't have to be so scared either, you'd be sleeping in a suite, something like a penthouse. A kiss would pay the rent, the antonym of the world Marilyn talks about!"
Jennie retracts her hands wordlessly.
"You see Jennie," Lisa chides, "it's a world of status."
Jennie pouts. "Oh, Rose," chanting, she goes to where the girl was in the oblivion of her world. "Imagine if we could just end people like we kill mosquitoes when they annoy us. Lisa and Clary would've been years dead right now."
Rose chokes on her laughter, "It seems to me that they would reincarnate just to come back."
Clary intercedes, offended, "For the record, I would reincarnate just for you," she complains slightly when she sees Jennie approaching the counter again.
At this point, she looked like a spinning top, her body more here than there.
"You know, Jennie?"
"No, Lisa. I don't know."
Lisa turned for a better view, Jennie walked around her. "I would reincarnate in a hyena. It's illegal to kill a hyena. So you would be in jail and I would be laughing my ass off!"
"In hell's jail," Rose corrects.
The Jailhouse Rock, Clary vaguely thinks.
Jisoo only continues her work, ducking when the coil of thread extends too far or reaching for another copy, "I can invoke Jennie's spirit for all I care. It'd take little effort to get to you."
Clary squeezes her eyes closed as she giggles, a few small seconds swallowing the moment that feels good, something in her mind screams Percocet! —And it is after she looks at Rosé, she realizes that everyone is looking at her in expectation that she would add something of her own.
Rosé tries, "I like the taste of this apple?"
Smooth.
Jennie grouses, "I really can't stand you all."
Clary is quick to rebuke her, "You are literally massaging Lisa's shoulders."
The sound of the doorbell echoed through the room, in time with Rosé's grunting at the scarves, fundamentally she had sewn some part wrong. Clary gave her a quick glance and stood up to see who it was, whisperingly praying that it wasn't some executive.
When the door opens, the clouds and the bridge to Peter surrounded it. She quickly signed the receipt and took the three milkshakes one of the girls had ordered from the delivery man's calm hands. She barely flinched to say, "You're welcome," and Clary, in the colorful painting of her mind, foolishly replied, "Thanks, too."
She almost patted her forehead in embarrassment.
The current crashes against the mountain as Clary nearly crashes into the dining room in a whirlwind of excitement. "Girls, who ordered this?"
Clary watched as Jisoo got up from her seat at the sweet aroma, but Jennie sank deeper into the screen of her cell phone. Clary raised an eyebrow, her question still fresh in the air, her hands itching, she wanted to take it but she needed to know if they were from someone first.
She comes to her senses when Rosé responds, "I asked for them," Clary felt herself breathe.
"Thank god," Jennie walks over and is glowing.
"Well!" she said with a sweet smile as she remembered her nana, "it's time to share!"
Somewhat strangely, Rosé stood up from her position, rolling up the half-made scarves on the coffee table and grabbing an elastic to tie her brown locks into a high ponytail. Clary wondered why she was so quiet today, but from the circles lining her eyes she could tell it was fatigue.
Lisa started to protest when she saw the amount of drinks.
Rosé just leans her head against the couch as she murmurs like a stretching cat, "How am I supposed to know that if you literally said yesterday that you would never order a milkshake?"
Lisa complains in a rather loud voice, "I was meaning that I would order an ice cream instead, not that I didn't like milkshakes!"
Laughter fills the four walls, Clary addresses them both while balancing the straw in the glass, "You know, you guys remind me of Jackson and me," she lets her words leave a trail for the minors to look at, "just like Tom and Jerry. Sometimes."
Jennie stepped back, half indignant, pushing her shoulders back, "And who am I?"
"You're Quaker. It's adorable."
"It's not."
"It's pretty sweet."
As the argument proceeded, Clary realized that Lisa had left the room and that Jisoo was now reading the comics she kept in the third drawer of the cupboard, 'for sleepless nights' she had declared.
Curiosity got the better of her, from experience, and she headed to the long main hallway where the first three rooms were located, Lisa's was the middle one. Clary rubbed her hands against her forearms, the heater was not cozy enough in the hallways and isolated areas of the house, such as the washing machine and the small closet that they adapted as storage.
If this were one of her family's hotels, they could afford to put guaranteed humidity-free heaters in every room. But it was what it was.
"Come in!" ordered a cheerful voice from inside the room, "I heard footsteps."
Well caught red-handed, Clary thought. Next time she would go barefoot, it had to be tennis shoes.
The ceiling was engulfed of tapestries with star signs, the white walls were streaked with tiles, earrings hung from screws near the full-length mirror. She touched some twin dream catchers that were swinging on the dresser, as well as some posters of Hyuna and Kehlani, noticing that there were sketches with the name "THE LITTLE PRINCE" in capital letters to fill the abyss of the abacus. Lisa was definitely sensitive to the arts enough to make all those elements come together pleasantly.
The carved wooden standing grandfather clock particularly surprised Clary enough to ask, "Where did you get this?" Fascinated, she continued to search with her gaze.
When she turned around, she was surprised to see a camera pointed at her, Lisa pressed the button and a light winked kindly, soon, a photo was born from it. Clary cocked her head, so was this how she filled all the walls with polaroids? Lisa was quite resourceful because she knew how to spot good moments for nice shots.
"Is it recording or can I move?" Clary asked, wanting to see more of the room. Maybe the closet or the bathroom, she wasn't familiar with all the structures yet. And Jennie's room was particularly different from hers, and this one even more so. As if the architects had wanted to mark an acrostic.
"Wait!" Lisa warned. It took a few more seconds and finally, "now."
Clary said as she approached, "I want to take one of you."
"Let's both have one," she put her arms over Clary's shoulders while the older girl leaned her weight and veered closer to her, she turned the camera and a flash immortalized their countenances.
Clary caressed her forearms affectionately, then let her go and continued snooping, "Do you always do this?"
"Always," Lisa expressed her firmness with a nod, "I love making moments look good. I've been doing this for as long as I can remember. What's more," she left the instant camera over the dresser, "I plan to do this until I have my own apartment, and cover many walls with photos and moments."
Clary understood then. Lisa was to see, manipulate, her alaria for the dance as it was for the potters. Clary took the olive oil mill out of her writing, as in symbolism it represented glory, she wanted to innovate in her writing. She liked that contrast.
She let her fingertips trace over black and white photographs, with transparent plastic wallpaper, that stood out because they were framed. The amber sunset illuminated the sleeping colors.
She asked softly. "Is this your family?"
Lisa sighed, "Yes."
Should she ask more? Because of Clary's situation with her own family, she would understand not talking about those matters, she remembered the movie, like the corpse bride, but Lisa continued:
"When something bothers me, I usually write words that rhyme," she said, opening a notebook.
Clary exhaled, feeling like a fog lamp between Lisa and Rose, "Did the milkshakes thing bother you?"
Lisa rolled her eyes, "Well, maybe a little," she conceded, "What I mean is that while I was writing, I was hit by a sudden wave of missing my family. I'm extra loud for that."
Clary sat next to her, she knew what it was like to pretend to be happier than everyone else. She didn't follow that advice, but she sensed that she had to say it, "Well, learn to pick your battles," the words slipped coldly into her voice, she shook her head while Lisa looked at her as if she were being judged.
"You know what?" the oldest got up. "Let's do something to burn off that energy."
Each stanza was like a cascade of words, she drank from them, lived to feel them. Life imitated art after all. She was looking for one of the many compositions that, during the low hours, woke her up in search of a dream.
After biking, she imagined rolling the plaza like a stone under the hills, which would remind her of those on the coast, where she had once greeted a lamb and a baby deer, a couple of flowers like the plants she let wither because she had forgotten she had them, damn it, there would also be the spring rain wetting the sidewalks, the snow dissolving first like sand and then like the pulp of a grape—
When she got to where she was supposed to want to go, she had forgotten where she was coming from. Thank God, Lisa was already ready on one of the bikes.
Seoul was magical, without a doubt.
Lisa's hand was surrounding the seat, accompanying her at a slow pace, until Clary made four revolutions that she began to loosen her grip. Should she let herself go? She asked herself as she gripped the handlebars.
She might fall, the gravelly, almost arctic ground digging into the skin of her knees instead of her fears ten feet underground, but it would be funny to get up and survey the perimeter like an eagle leaving its young, just to see if anyone saw her fall.
"언니 (Unnie)," she pauses, as if considering something, "you have to stop thinking so much. Just focus on the road!"
"I'm on it!" she replied boisterously.
They were driving the first block when they realized that the streets were full. "We'll have to go around the same avenue over and over again," Clary said, her pedaling nearly stopping abruptly as she scanned the crowd.
"How complicated this is cities-related stuff," Lisa shook her head as she clenched her jaw, the whisper of a rebellious laugh leaving her lips.
They stopped half a block away, her freezing breaths drawing the air like aquarelle each time she exhaled. Clary brought her hands to her neck in search of any part of her body that still retained heat.
"They should install spokes in the brakes."
"I'm still confused about how you can only cycle with training wheels," Lisa's giggle quickly evaporates the dreamy moment.
Clary nudges her and Lisa responds by wrapping her arms around her, strong and conscious, squeezing her cheeks against the older one's. Clary grabs her hair to help the wind whip through her locks and ruffle her hair.
Lisa stands tall on the sidewalk, "I want to take those casters off, they're too worn out," but Clary doesn't respond, just suppresses a laugh as she uses the sidewalk to support one foot while the other works on the pedals and finds sporadic balance.
The ringing of a bell suddenly distracts Clary, it was distinctly coming from clothes because the sound was swallowed, her phone doesn't have that sound, it would have to be Lisa's.
"We really have the best unnie ever," Lisa sighs dramatically, as she scratches the bridge of her nose.
Clary walked over to watch the chat, noticing that Jisoo had sent Lisa a photo of her nostrils. She pauses to process it, frowning, why? But thinking of a reason only made her push Lisa playfully.
"You're going to let me beat you if you keep getting distracted," she crooned as she ran away from her.
"I'll have you pull out those training wheels for me!"
Jisoo really had something. She thought, unconsciously.
"You're lucky I like going out, Lisa-ya!"
She didn't knew how, neither what.
reference section!
¹ 유교걸 (yugyogeol). A yu-gyo girl is young woman who is unusually prudish or traditional for her age
² 다식; Dasik or Korean Tea Cookies is a bite-size hangwa that is normally accompanied by tea.
³ Alaria (in pottery) is a free flowing work sculpture allowing the wood to dictate the path.
a/n
this is just mostly fluff and comfort. can be looked like a filler, but i need to establish the relationships between the girls before the crazy things happen. hope you enjoyed!
alexa plays training wheels from melanie martinez.***