Page 78 of Damian & Jun: Episodes 1-4
His hand went to his neck where the weight of his mother’s jade Buddha was missing. His hand rose to write her name.
The character didn’t leave the pen. They couldn’t have her. They couldn’t find her. She was his. They could touch him and take him, but she was grafted deep inside—his secret. The one who had planted doubt, the memory of pink before he fell into the world of gray.
The ? man appeared on the path. Jun stared past him at the falling snow. The man held a long traditional coat trimmed in fur in one hand and boots in the other.
“Mr. Gang.”
His voice didn’t matter. Jun held out his hand with the black marker. He didn’t want to speak anymore.
“I thought it was a ruse, that you were losing your mind.”
Jun blinked back a tear that tried to escape. Tears were words. He was done giving them words. It wouldn’t matter if he were a man or a butterfly once they had pinned his wings to the back of the case and mounted him to the wall. He’d seen an image once of a man staring up at another man or elf, pins shoved through his hands and feet, gossamer wings slowly bleeding, hung up like art on the wall behind glass. They had been dressed in fantastic silks and armor, like characters from a wushu danmei. Was that what he was going to become?
“Mr. Gang. You’re going to freeze.”
Jun turned slowly as if breaking ice to find motion. A hint of worry had broken through the man’s professional distance. He flung the cloak around Jun’s shoulders and knelt down, forcing Jun’s feet into the fur lined boots. The bottoms were soft, useless for running.
He drew the cloak around himself. The man grunted and stepped away, putting a phone to his ear and speaking in hushed tones.
Let them worry. He did not owe them their version of sanity, what he knew was insanity. They were the ones who had broken the contract of behavior. It didn’t matter how graceful or beautiful the prison, how polite the violation.
He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. Fragments of song flitted through his thoughts, catching and pooling. They weren’t lyrics Bak would be able to sell for a summer bop.
They were dark, laced with red, streaked with blue truths and soft lips. Orange strands of life threaded through their centers, wrapped in green roots, breaking through stones. Cold leached color from his cheeks as he meditated, leaving the sense of empty tingling behind. Like his blood, the color was all inward. His black and red lips were cold and sealed. Madness lay on his tongue, and it tasted like Damian’s kisses. It burned like Yohei’s firm grip. It looked like Su-jin’s tears and the angry blood in Mi Hi’s cheeks. It smelled like the calming oil in Gigi’s hair. It sounded like the rumble of Richard Reevesworth’s soft questions, words that set his world on fire.
Was this madness? Was he waking or sleeping?
The beat of a new song was in his blood now. It drilled across his bones with the pulse in his veins. The dark sighs of cellos floated beneath the staccato of a gayageum—a Korean twelve-string zither. The vocals would rise from a spoken rap. And then the band would fill in the full range of harmonization and deepen the beat. If sound could be a color, then this would be a dark tree spreading out over this white prison, sucking water from the death shroud and revealing the secrets beneath.
Hands were on his arms. There were more people now besides the man. He didn’t resist. His body walked over new paths and between the ponds, upstairs, and into the long formal room.
“He will be here soon.”
Attendants took their places. Jun stayed, swathed in the cloak.
“What do we do about him?”
“Nothing.”
“The chief will be angry.”
“He wanted an artist.”
“But a mad one?”
He wanted paper. And a keyboard. A computer. The music and words were filling him up inside. He needed to put them down, to capture the essence rushing through him.
But he’d surrendered his stylus. No words for them. And no music either. Music was the same as words. He focused inside, memorizing the melody as it was created, storing it inside his mind in images of Yohei, Geung, Jaewoong, and Su-jin singing and dancing the parts beside him. The stage was alive. He could see the light play and feel their feet keeping time.
“Mr. Gang.”
A new voice.
Jun opened his eyes. The sun was lower now. How long had he drifted? His tongue was dry. His stomach was empty. Hours. It had been hours.
“He’s coming.”
Jun stood slowly. He kept the robe. The man in black stepped in front of him, tying the hanbok shirt closed and tucking it in. Jun stared past him.
