faced worse things than being forgotten
Isolation became its own kind of odd curse the September of 2003, though. While home, Junhui wandered off from one of his mother's shoots. They were out in nature that day, trying to catch some of the natural beauty in the gloom of the city for a model or some fashion magazine. Junhui doesn't remember, really. He was young and exhausted of the constant shuffles. So, he began to walk, winding up along the Sham Chun River as the sun began to set. The blue hour. He remembered that as he lost his footing on the dirt and fell into the water. The cold temperatures pierced his skin first before the rush of it began to flood his lungs, water rising through him until Junhui couldn't remember how to breathe properly. It hurt, like spikes running through his chest, and then it began to spread. A burning through his heart that flooded into his fingertips before suddenly Junhui was looking out at the land from a hovering height.
And every breath he exhaled had a sound, instead of his own.
By the time the locals got to the area where they swore they saw a dragon rise and fall, Junhui was what was left in the mud. Dirty, naked and drenched, he was a mess of a boy with no explanations. When he woke up hours later Junhui tried to explain what happened to his mother who told him the only thing she could thing of: keep quiet and don't tell anyone. He did, for a few weeks. The rain made it difficult though; every time the sky opened up Junhui's body itched with something wanting to grow until he stood out in it one day in the cold and the change came again. When he shifted back to being a boy again he ran to hide, hide away from being caught or found or understood. He dealt with it quietly, never alerting his mother or anyone else he had awareness of. So when the strangers knocked for him, Junhui felt his heart drop into his stomach. But they explained things slowly and, though he was a child, Junhui sort of understood. When his mother got home he tried to explain it to her, too, and only got a simple question in response.
"Are you packed for Paris yet?"
Over the years, it ran like that. Junhui managing his requite himself and visiting Safe Havens wherever they were living for a few weeks at a time. He took a lot of online courses once high school came and that helped of course. It helped more that Jun was growing into someone who wandered without worry no matter where they were. It was the start of things for him, really, taking control of life and creating lines. It wasn't that his mother was a mess, really, but she hardly understood the function of a mother. Beyond carrying Junhui in her belly for nine months she was never made to really do anything else. And so she didn't, as soon as she could. Junhui was given a proper allowance, made and adjusted by whatever he wrote down for her, and he made sure to remind her regulrly of what bills or travels were upcoming. That way, he could keep his own schedule well aligned, adjusted to a budget properly. If he was the son of a sporadic photographer he would avoid losing himself in gazing at life and actually marginalize ways to live it.
Trouble was, you can't really outrun having a unique look at the world. Trends would come and they would go and Junhui always had a kind of knack for figuring which were going to rise up. It made him fashionable enough to seem like he was a trendsetter and smart enough to know what things were going to be flash in the pan fads; no awkward hair switches for him, no sudden shifts in piercings and style. Instead, Junhui lived on an edge, a wise dragon aging through the years in an awkward process of learning to use his hand and heart in gestures together. Conjuring streams as easily as he conjured numbers, Junhui spent the nine years after his stumble and fall making a solid little place to stand all for himself in the world.
Then he hit eighteen and things shifted. His dragon grew and the strength he had to control became something in the realm of other worlds. Junhui took some time to focus on it: after school he would train instead of working, train until he couldn't anymore just so things worked their way into something that managed to be normal again. It took two years of rather constant training to get back to being in absolute control of himself. The difficulty of it was unsettling and a kind of trouble that Junhui didn't really want to cope himself around. But it had to happen; even if it'd made him slack a little in university he knew that it was better than allowing himself to exist as the shell of a thing that could explode under the smallest bits of stress overwhelming.
On one of the last trips with work Junhui accompanied his mother on, the delay became a little more of a burden though. Because he had university to finish for his undergraduate degree but there he was in Seoul doing some training when in walked a captivating sight. Junhui's still not completely sure what it was that dragged him out to say yes to the idea of a night out together but he did. Then, suddenly, he was finding calm while pressed into Yijeong's arms and saying yes to more. But going back home to finish school was obnoxious and difficult with a hunger and need for the stupid frog boy left back in Seoul. It wasn't the hardest thing in the world to get to one another through things but, well, it wasn't exactly easy.
Which is why as soon as the offer for an internship came up in Seoul, Junhui bit at it. China was a great market and a constantly shifting economy but Seoul had this focus of love that even a cold blooded river dragon couldn't actually ignore. So Morgan Stanley it was, and Yijeong the fool who he couldn't shake off and didn't want to, and the idea that life had to shift and change and fall apart became something like a far off worry again. A nightmare, really, that he was actually able to wake up from.
time jump — through 2021
Gently, we howl at the stars together. Gently, we swallow each other whole.