Hyun-ki felt the moment she cracked into Second Seoul; it was a sharp, splitting thing inside him, and he pressed his fingers to his forehead and bowed his head. He could not let them see his eyes. He had watched himself in the mirror once when this happened, and he knew his pupils diluted an odd shade of red; that for a suspended moment, he looked all the world like some mythical villain. He had his future on the line: if people knew the cracks he saw in Reality then something inside him might crack too. He was not his brother. He was better than that, smarter, and people liked him.
"Could you close your eyes and tilt your head up a little bit?"
He lifted his chin silently; the stylist's warm feminine breath was in his face and he sucked his cheeks so he didn't cough. The eyeliner went on like silk, then the eyeshadow: a very light purple, as had been decided to fit their comeback image. As had been decided to match his hair color, recently dyed sky blue. They were going for some sort of edgy, youthful look; a rebellious type of bohemianism, supposedly a unique concept, though he was not pleased with their new volley of songs. Jung-hwa was doing most of the writing now, per the agency's request, but nothing sounded unique; the rap lines were weak, the hooks unoriginal and horribly catchy. We are going to crash and burn, he thought, unless I set us straight. And then as the woman's hands were smoothing something pastel over his lips, he had another flash of the cracking: an imploding nightclub, with human hands and bleeding eyes arcing out of the rubble; a siren witch rearing up through the pavement to scratch at his neck and his unnaturally dark irises. Chemical danger, the voices whispered, chemical danger and chemical savings. A girl: skinny to the point of repulsion, her too-sharp shoulder blades twisting awkwardly as she dragged a man out to a taxi. The man like a death cloud. The girl's mind cutting through Second Seoul and into the city.
"Bloody hell," he said.
"Excuse me?" the stylist said.
"English," he said, smiling slightly. "Something I learned on the last reality show."
"Ah, say it again! Say it for the fans--Hyung, look at the camera and say it again. Do your accent." It was Sung-jin, dancing into the room with his face made up and his hair a new dark red; he had a deathly playful look: a sort of paradox that he carried as an accessory to his presence, so that everyone always felt the weight of his expectancy. "Hyung," he whined. "Do your accent."
"Don't you need to get ready?" Hyun-ki said.
"I am ready!" Sung-jin said, sticking out his hip in a ridiculous pose that was sure to make some girl lose herself online. "I'm wearing this."
"You're wearing all black. You don't fit the concept--"
"This is my personal concept. I am the concept. I am the visual. I am everything in this group."
"Aish--" He reached out and slapped the phone out of Sung-jin's hands. It shivered through the cracks of Second Seoul as it made contact with his hand, but this was not something they would notice. No one noticed the glittering differences he saw all around him, the weak links in what was supposed to be sustainable. "Go get ready," he said. "At least put on some red sneakers or something. Or our manager'll have a fit."
"Don't make us go on strike," the stylist said, shaking a brush in Sung-jin's face. "You're the most troublesome maknae I've ever had the misfortune to work with."
"Oh, thank you Noona," Sung-jin said, his hands cupped lightly around his face. He was giving the woman just enough of his signature aegyo to make her blink and turn away; he was too self-aware of his own odd male beauty, and he smirked triumphantly as he left the room.
"That one--" the stylist said.
"Am I finished?"
"Oh," she said, almost startled by his curtness. "Almost, sorry."
He sat in silence, his face slowly stolen and made conventional, his body tense and hot with the things that kept running in his mind. His brother. That strange siren girl. The taxi, whizzing through the greying wet streets of their city into the other darker city; the strange nightmarish world of his brother's that ran through him like a waking dream.
"I'm going to rewrite the alblum," he said suddenly.
"Oh?" she said.
"Yes," he said. "I'm going to rewrite everything."
---
a/n: If anyone is actually reading this, THANK YOU. And I have a question with the Korean names? I have seen them written both hyphenated and as two separate words (i.e. Sung-jin vs. Sung Jin), so if anyone could point me in the right direction, I'd be extremely grateful.
Let's see how far this completely random pantser project of mine goes, shall we? V__V