Heart and Soul
The doctor shone a light at Jinyoung's eyes and instructed him to keep his eye on his finger.
As Jisoo was climbing down from the door shed, she lost her grip and fell. Jinyoung was fast enough to catch her, but the suddenness of the action had made him lose his balance. He managed to break Jisoo's fall, but there was nothing but concrete to break his. He hit his head against the ground and passed out.
Jisoo had been frantic. She shook him and held his face and called out his name until he started regaining consciousness. He'd only been out for about thirty seconds, and the sharp pain in the back of his head had started to subside by the time Jisoo led him back to the gym and told Minji what happen.
He told them that he felt fine, but both girls insisted that he see a doctor in case he had a concussion.
So now he was sitting on the examination table while Dr. Kwon did a few tests.
"Do you know what day it is today?" the doctor asked.
"It's Friday," Jinyoung answered.
"What year is it?"
"2017," he looked left as the doctor moved his finger.
"Do you know where you are?"
"Doctor's office," Jinyoung said. "Kwon Jung Ho, M.D."
He turned the flashlight off. Jinyoung blinked, getting his sight accustomed to the white lighting in the doctor's office once more. Minji was sitting in a chair by the sink, patiently waiting for news about his condition. Jisoo was on leaning on the other end of the examination table, doing the same.
"Well?" Jisoo asked. "Yea or nay on the concussion?"
The doctor discarded his rubber gloves. "I don't think you have a concussion, Jinyoung," said the doctor. Jinyoung let out a sigh of relief, as did Jisoo and Minji.
"And you said your head doesn't hurt too much, right?" asked the doctor. Jinyoung nodded. "That's a good sign. Again, I don't think the injury is very serious, and you definitely don't need to stay overnight. Although..."
The doctor turned to Jisoo. "You should probably wake him up a couple times tonight," Dr. Kwon said to her. "Every couple of hours. Ask him a few questions, make sure he's lucid. Just to be safe."
Jisoo gave the doctor a slightly horrified look. Did the doctor think that she was going to—?
"Oh, no no no," Jisoo said, waving her hands frantically. "We're not—I'm not—actually, Minji is his girlfriend."
She gestured over to Minji, the girl who was actually going to be sleeping with him tonight and, therefore, should probably be in charge of the waking every couple hours, too. The doctor, flustered, looked between the two girls.
"Oh," he said, turning to Minji. "My apologies. Well, you heard what I said, didn't you? Every couple of hours."
Minji nodded. There was a strained, polite smile on her face. Jinyoung jumped down from the examination table.
"So am I free to go?" he asked.
After being given the go-ahead to leave, the three of them made their way over to their respective cars. Minji helped Jinyoung into the passenger seat of his Lexus and Jisoo went back to her mother's sedan. She had offered to see them back safely to the Parks' house, but Minji and Jinyoung insisted that they'd be fine. So they bid their goodbyes there.
By the time Jisoo made it back to her house, her parents and her grandfather were already abed. She went into her own bedroom, changed into comfortable clothing, and immediately texted Jennie to find out if she was able to recruit someone's help to dismantle the decorations in the gym.
The excitement of the evening had wiped out Jisoo's energy, but she couldn't bring herself to fall asleep. She lay on her mattress and stared up at the exposed wooden beams of her house's ceiling, started counting the lines along the wood.
If she'd had two or three shots of espresso, her heart couldn't pound any harder.
Her mind took her back a few hours, back to that moment Jinyoung hit his head and lost consciousness. At first, she was going to chew him out for touching her ass, but then she saw that he was unresponsive, and she couldn't breathe. The stark terror of that moment could have stopped her heart.
Jisoo sat up in bed. She checked the clock on the floor beside her pillow and saw that it was two in the morning.
She guessed that Jinyoung and Minji must have made it back around eleven and probably went straight to bed. Jisoo wondered what the possibility was that Minji had already woken him up and asked him what the date was. A few hours would have passed by now.
Jisoo fell back against her pillow. She's probably already woken him, she thought. He'll be fine, the doctor said it wasn't that bad.
With that thought, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Not two minutes later, she jumped back out of bed, grabbed her phone from its charging station, and then left her bedroom. Jisoo tiptoed down the hall and slid open the door leading to the backyard.
Jinyoung's window was dark, which didn't surprise her. It was nearly 3 am after all. Still, she reached over to the light switch, signaled twice, and then waited.
No response. She unlocked her phone and dialed his number.
Jinyoung was pulled out of the deep recesses of slumber when his phone started vibrating. His eyes flung open and he hurried reached for the device, which was charging on his nightstand. Beside him, Minji was still asleep, and he didn't want to wake her. He was about to ignore the call altogether, but he saw that it was from Jisoo.
He contemplated declining the call for now and calling her back in the morning. But before he could make the more sensible decision, his thumb was already instinctively reaching to answer. He picked up and then swung his legs over the bed to take the call in the corridor outside his room.
"Hello?" he said, his voice groggy.
"Hey," said Jisoo on the other line. Compared to his, her voice sounded clear. "Are you up?"
Jinyoung closed the door to his room, not wanting to disturb Minji. "Well, I am now."
He heard her sigh. With relief?
"I'm sorry," she said. He could hear crickets in the background of her call. "Minji's probably woken you up like a dozen times by now, I was just worried."
Minji hadn't woken him yet, actually. He supposed she was going to do it a little later, but Jisoo's phone call happened to beat her to it.
"Don't be," Jinyoung said, closing his eyes and leaning against the wall. "The doctor said it was wasn't serious."
"Yeah, I know, but..." she paused for a breath. "You...you really scared me back there. Losing consciousness like that."
He did remember the look of panic on her face when he finally started waking again up on the roof. He was still a little too hazy back then to give it much thought, but now he supposed that that must have given her quite a fright. He would have been, too, had the roles been reversed.
"I'm... sorry," he said carefully, then decided to inject a bit of humor, to lighten things up, make her feel more at ease: "I didn't do it on purpose."
She gave a weak laugh in response.
"Anyway, I just called because I wanted to—oh, I should ask you questions to make sure you're lucid. Do you know where you are right now?"
"I'm home," he looked up and down the hallway again, as if to make sure.
"Okay, good," Jisoo said. "Yeah, so I just called because—well, you know how I am, I overthink things and I don't do well when I let bad thoughts sit and fester and I was—"
"Let me guess: festering?"
"Yeah."
Despite his 3 am grogginess, he felt touched by her concern.
"I'm fine, Jisoo," he said confidently, reassuring her. "It's a minor injury."
"I know," Jisoo said. "But it was a hard fall, and I know what a weakling you are."
He snorted. "Ye of little faith."
She responded with another weak laugh. "Go back to bed. Sorry I woke you."
"Goodnight."
Jinyoung ended the call and then went back into his bedroom. Minji hadn't stirred through the whole conversation, and he tried his best to get back into bed as quietly as he could. His eyes closed easily and his heart found its steady rhythm once more. Jisoo's voice was the last thing he heard before falling back asleep, and the sound of it echoed in his dreams.
"Is it too much to ask," Jisoo's mother said. "For one decent rehearsal?" She was sitting, defeated, at the piano in the hall, crossing her arms and addressing the third-grade cast of the summer program.
Opening night was in just a few weeks, but the children weren't learning their lines and nobody knew their cues. Musical numbers? Forget it.
Jisoo stood by, arms crossed and chewing on her bottom lip. She hadn't been as active in helping the children (she mostly stayed out of the way while her domineering mother handled things), but she, too, was starting to feel nervous.
The kids exchanged glances, their blank expressions standing in for conversations they couldn't have in front of the director.
"Mrs. Kim?" said one little girl. "Can we take a break?"
"No, we can't," said Jisoo's mother. "We're running out of time and we haven't gone through the entire thing at least once without problems."
"Mom," Jisoo said. "They are just kids, and they've been doing this for like an hour now. Maybe a break will do them some good?"
Her mother looked a little horrified at the suggestion, but before she had the chance to argue, her phone started to ring. "Oh goodness, it's your father," Mrs. Kim said. She sighed. "Alright, we'll take a forty-minute break. How's that? Forty-minute break everyone! Go get some snacks or some water, use the bathroom, we'll pick up on Act 2 when we get back!"
She stood from the piano as she took the call. "Hello? Honey? No, the TV needs to be on HDMI 3 if you want to watch Hulu."
As soon as she was out of the hall, the children all let out a collective sigh. They started coming down from the stage, heading out to the patio or stepping out in groups of two or three to go off in search of snacks. Jisoo swung her arms around, not quite sure what to do with the group of ten or so who decided to stay behind.
"I hate this," said one of the boys to another. Jisoo crinkled her brow at him.
"Why?" she asked.
The boys looked at each other, probably not anticipating that she was going hear them, let alone answer them. Jisoo stopped pacing and stood in front of the children.
"Sorry," the boy whispered.
"No," Jisoo said. "Tell me why you hate it?"
They looked like they weren't expecting that, either. They were used to Mrs. Kim barking directions at them and getting frustrated when they didn't do something right. It occurred to them that they eventually just stopped having things to say.
"Because I have to sing and dance," said the little boy. "I'm not even good at singing or dancing."
Jisoo looked unfazed. "That's okay," she said. "You don't have to be."
The boy snorted. "But this is a musical," he said. "So, you kind of have to be good at singing and dancing. I'm a fail."
He did have a point there, but Jisoo wasn't much good at singing nor dancing at their age, either, but it never stopped her from being excited to be in the summer program. It pained her that these kids hated the very thing that led her to love acting in the first place. She crossed her arms.
"I'm not good at singing or dancing," Jisoo said. "But I still do it. Anyway, being good at it isn't the point, that's not the point of theater. You know what the point of theater is?"
The kids all exchanged confused looks again. Jisoo took a step closer.
"The point of theater," Jisoo said. "Is to make the audience feel what you're feeling. You guys are all kids and I'm more grown up than you, so let me tell you something about adults. We all have a ton of repressed emotions."
"What's 'repressed'?"
"It means you keep your emotions bottled up," Jisoo said. "People bottle up their emotions all the time, and they come to the theater or they go to the movies or they read books or make music or whatever it is they do—they make art because it helps them express themselves. Their real selves. And it doesn't matter if it's good or bad, what matters is it's out there."
"But..." stuttered the young girl playing Dorothy. "If we're pretending to be a character, how is that expressing your real self?"
Jisoo smirked, giddy at the opportunity to talk about acting.
"As the great Konstantin Stanislavsky said," Jisoo said with a grand sweeping of her voice. "All action in theater needs to have inner justification. It needs to be logical. It needs to be coherent. And most importantly, it needs to be real."
The children leaned forward, if not intrigued by Jisoo's quoting of Stanislavsky, then intrigued by the way her persona seemed to change at the mere mention of him.
"You guys heard of method acting?" she asked. They shook their heads. "Stanislavsky is the guy who came up with it. Basically, what it means is that when you're playing a character on stage, you let that character's feelings and actions become your own, but you can't do that unless you've felt or done those things, too."
"Great," said one of the boys sarcastically. "Where the hell are we supposed to find a Wizard of Oz to be able to play him?"
"No," Jisoo said, kneeling so that she was at their level. "That doesn't mean you have to have killed a witch or been to Oz. It just means that you have to take this role, which could be completely different from you, and find something similar. For example..."
Jisoo turned to the boy playing the Cowardly Lion.
"You're obviously not a lion," she said. "But lions are known for being brave, yet this lion is not brave. How do you think that makes him feel?"
He widened his eyes, shocked to have been called out. "Uhh," he said. "I don't know. Maybe, like, embarrassed? 'Cause he's a lion but he's not brave like lions are supposed to?"
"Okay," Jisoo said. "Now think of a time that you felt embarrassed because you didn't meet somebody's expectations."
His eyes started darting around the room.
"It's okay, you can tell us," Jisoo said, glaring at the other boys and girls as if to swear them into secrecy. They all exchanged looks and tacitly agreed. The boy shrugged.
"Well," he began, sheepishly. "I'm on the basketball team, so my friend said I should play NBA 2K17 on XBOX 'cause I might be good at it, but I was really bad at it."
"Okay! Great!" Jisoo said. "So, then you have some idea how the Cowardly Lion feels, right? So, you take that experience and when you're playing the Lion on stage, just remember how being bad at NBA 2K17 made you feel and let that feeling guide your acting. So, you see..."
Jisoo stood again. "You can't be a character unless you can be yourself, first."
"But what about me?" asked the girl who played the Wicked Witch. "I'm not a witch. I can't fly or do magic."
Jisoo smirked.
"You," she said. "Are the most complicated, complex character in the entire show. Seriously, your character is so deep that she has a whole other musical dedicated entirely to her. It was nominated for 63 awards, including ten Tonys and one Grammy. You're kind of a big deal, sis."
Her eyes grew wide. Jisoo thought maybe that was the wrong thing to say. It might have put an undue amount of pressure on the poor girl. Other kids started speaking up, wondering how they, too, could get more connected to their roles. It would be tricky. Some of them didn't have speaking roles at all, just dancing munchkins or talking trees. But it gave Jisoo the idea to let the kids do a few acting exercises and theater games, as a more fun, interactive way to approach theater and acting.
She had each of them choose a character, not necessarily one that was in the program. Then she had them act out a certain scene or situation, but they had to react as if they were the character. They weren't always good, and a lot of times, the kids became frustrated. But Jisoo decided to treat it as progress. They were connecting with the theater in their own, new way. And so was she.
"Officer, I am a citizen of this country, and I know my rights!" Jisoo said. One of the munchkin boys had called her out into the scene. The situation was: woman gets pulled over by cop. Jisoo was the woman, he was the cop.
"Your reckless maneuvering has endangered the galaxy," the boy said in an exaggeratedly deep, breathy voice. "I have no choice but to issue you a citation."
"I'm not paying for this ticket!" Jisoo said, scoffing. "In fact, you should be the one paying me! You made me skid off the road, and look! You cracked my iPhone 6 Plus!"
"You dare defy the Empire?" said munchkin boy in that same breathy voice. "You'll face the consequences." Then munchkin boy lifted his hand and made a squeezing gesture with his hand, directing it at Jisoo's face.
It was at this point that Jinyoung walked in. He'd heard from people around town that Jisoo's mother had been charged with directing the third grade summer program this year and that Jisoo was acting as assistant director. The summer days were passing by, and he was eager to spend as much time with his friend as he could.
He pushed the door to the hall open and walked in undetected, and apparently in the middle of some excitement. Jisoo was sitting on the ground with her hands positioned like she was driving a car, surrounded by a circle of children. There was a little boy in the circle too, and he was squeezing a ball of air in front of Jisoo's face.
"What are you doing?" Jisoo said in a heady voice.
"You will pay this speeding ticket and not defy me," the boy said, his voice airy and throaty.
"I'm pressing charges!" Jisoo said.
"No, you will pay this speeding ticket and not defy me," he squeezed the air again. Jisoo's face took on a blank expression.
"I will pay this speeding ticket and not defy you," she said in a robotic, monotone voice. The little boy laughed.
"And you will pay me $20," he said in his normal voice.
"Ha!" Jisoo said, pointing at him. "You broke character!"
"Damn it!" the boy said, and the children started clapping. Jisoo had a triumphant grin on her face as she stood and took a bow. When she straightened back up, she saw Jinyoung standing in the doorway, clapping along with the kids.
"Uh, guys?" Jisoo said, turning and addressing the kids again. "Okay, that's enough for today. Good job, everyone! Break time, go actually get snacks and stuff."
"Aww but it was almost the Joker and Pikachu to face off!"
Jisoo apologized again and dismissed the kids. She took their disappointment as a sign that they were actually enjoying the exercise, which was good news. She stepped around a couple of the kids and met Jinyoung about halfway, near her mother's piano. His hair wasn't styled like it usually was these days. It looked more like the way he wore it back then: tousled with an especially untamed fringe.
"Hey," Jisoo said cheerfully.
"What was that all about?" he asked.
"Acting exercise," Jisoo said, wiping the knees of her jeans. "I had them pick a character and play that role in an improvised scene."
He smiled. "So what scene was that?"
"Woman gets stopped by cop," Jisoo said. "I was the woman, Sanghyun was the cop. And I think the character he chose was Anakin Skywalker. The voice, you know."
"So, that was him using the Force to make you pay your speeding ticket?" Jinyoung laughed. "Who were you supposed to be?"
Jisoo raised her brows and laughed nervously. "What are you doing here?" she asked. Jinyoung produced a notebook that he was holding under his arm. Jisoo hadn't noticed. The pages were slightly yellow and the cover was beaten and worn.
"I found this while I was digging around my room," he said.
"What is it?"
In response, Jinyoung sat down on the bench in front of the piano. He opened the notebook up on the music rack, and Jisoo saw that it was full of musical bars and Jinyoung's scribbling.
"It's my old composition notebook," he said, smiling mischievously. "Look at this one."
He pointed to the top of the page, and Jisoo read the title: "Mr. Baek's Cactus Head?"
"You don't remember it?" he lifted the cover off the keys. For a minute, Jinyoung stared at the ivories and felt overwhelmed. It had been a solid four years since he last sat at a piano. He wasn't able to bring one with him when he went away for college, and after he started working, there was no time to practice at all. It was hard to imagine that at one point, all he could think of doing with his life was playing the piano and making music.
"Oh my god," Jisoo covered her mouth with her hand. "Is this the song we made up during finals week freshman year?"
It was their first year of high school, and the week of final exams was kicking their butt. In the middle of all the stress and overwhelming feelings, for some reason, they decided it was a good idea to not study and write a nonsense song venting their frustrations instead. Mr. Baek was their strict homeroom teacher whose hair was shaved so close to his head that the stiff little hairs made him look like a cactus. Jisoo came up with the lyrics, and Jinyoung set them to music.
"I don't even remember how it goes anymore," Jisoo said.
"Hang on, I'm trying to figure it out," Jinyoung said, squinting at the music sheet, trying to remember all those sight reading lessons he had. Hesitantly, he started playing a slightly ragtime-y tune on his right hand. The chorus essentially repeated "Mr. Baek has a cactus head" over and over again.
"This is such a stupid song, wow," Jisoo said, snorting. "Why did we write this? This is not even good music."
"It's actually pretty complex," Jinyoung said, taking his fingers from the keys. "For two fourteen-year-olds. At least the music is. Lyrically, though—"
"Hey!" Jisoo said, protesting. "Don't knock my lyrics. I was running on caffeine and Adderall at the time of writing that."
Jinyoung laughed gently. Then he looked back down at the piano and ran his index finger over the keys. She could see that he missed it. Missed playing. It was in his eyes. It was in the way he touched the instrument.
"Do you remember how to play anything?" Jisoo asked.
He was quiet for a little bit, but when he looked up at her, he had a light smirk on his face. Jinyoung put both his hands on the piano, and he started playing the opening tune of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'."
Jisoo half laughed and half groaned.
Back when he was still coming over twice a week to receive lessons from her mother, this song was always on repeat. It was the first song he ever brought to Mrs. Kim, asking her to teach it to him. It was the first song he ever learned to play. Even after he had mastered it in three or four weeks, Mrs. Kim always made him play through his repertoire to start off each session, so the song was always playing in the house. By the time Jinyoung graduated from lessons to independent study, Jisoo had grown sick of it.
Right now, though, she was just amused.
"Of course," she said. "I should have known."
"Just a small town girl," he started singing in a low voice. "Livin' in a lonely world."
"This song will never not remind me of you," Jisoo said.
Of course, Jisoo had had lessons, too. As the daughter of a piano virtuoso, it would have been impossible to grow up and not be taught a little of her mother's instrument. She was never as dedicated as Jinyoung, though, and she hated practicing, so she never got to his level. There was at least one piece, though, that she still remembered.
"Move over," Jisoo said, walking around the side of the piano. Jinyoung scooted to the right on the bench, and Jisoo took the left side of the instrument. "Do you remember this one?"
There were a lot of pieces Jinyoung didn't remember, but the piece that Jisoo started playing was one that he did.
Heart and Soul. A piano duet.
Jisoo played the left hand section. Jinyoung put his right hand on the keys and waited to come in with the melody. He counted down the beats in his head, and then pushed down on one key—
"You came in too late!" Jisoo said. Jinyoung shook his head, embarrassed. He sped up his playing, trying to catch up with the beat.
Jisoo's part was somewhat easier, being just a repetitive chord progression. She watched his hands in the corner of her eye, holding back her laughter every time he tripped up. It took him a couple of tries before he could get it right. Jinyoung let his brain take a back seat and let his body remind him what he forgot. His hands remembered the music even if he didn't.
Jinyoung flashed his teeth when he smiled. A detail that didn't escape Jisoo's notice. Jinyoung had a number of different smiles, and she knew them all.
That one was his real one.