Chapter Text
Kwon Soonyoung stared down at his laptop and the email in his business inbox. Over the years he had seen a lot of strange emails, some downright disgusting, but he had figured that that was the price you pay for running a dating and relationship column in the local newspaper. He had done his best to give good advice, even when his friends laughed at him for what he called a ‘career’. They had long since pointed out that he didn’t need to work, that the company he had inherited from his parents had made him one of the richest men in Seoul.
The problem was… the problem was. See, the problem was that he couldn’t abide being bored, and even though he had passed his business degrees in Data Analytics and Finance, he didn’t love it. Not with the same burning passion he loved his little dance studio in Gangnam, or the advice column he ran in one of the newspapers under his company’s umbrella. He didn’t love it like he loved the feeling when someone wrote in to say that his advice had really helped the situation, or when they invited him to weddings, reconfirmation ceremonies, first year ceremonies and the like.
He never went. He couldn’t break his anonymity, but the letters still touched his too-vulnerable heart, just like this one did.
The outlines of it were sparse and business-like. If he had to concentrate on the language he’d say the person had had a good education, but it was the content that touched him. The person, who simply wished to be known as Woozi, had written about how tired he felt of society’s expectations of him as a man, and how increasingly tired he was of the idea of romance. How it was down to a couple of badly-matched algorithms these days, and how much he disliked the transactional nature of it. How, despite abhorring it, he still made profile upon profile, only to cancel them immediately. He hadn’t asked for a reply; in fact, he hadn’t said anything in his letter that was even a clear question.
Kwon Soonyoung stared down at the letter and wondered what about it resonated so much with him. Inspired in that moment, he set his cup of coffee a little further away and typed out a reply directly, something he had rarely done before.
Dear Woozi,
Your letter sounds as if you’re tired of the very idea of romance, let alone the mechanics behind it. Sometimes I am too. You find someone, you date, and it goes well for a while and then… and then it does not. You’re also right in that the world today treats the business of love like it’s a mathematical quantity: attraction + time spent minus the weight of indifference. You’d be correct, as the many dating sites out there can attest. The equations behind them aren’t quite that simple, but that’s what they boil down to.
I’m tired too. Isn’t that such a bad confession for a romance columnist? Being vulnerable in today’s society is a bad idea, and the scars it often leaves is something to struggle with for years. The only advice I can give you, and I know you didn’t ask for any, is this: not every day is a good day, live anyway. Not all you love will love you back, love anyway. Not everyone will tell you the truth, be honest anyway. Not all deals are fair, play fair anyways.
I have a degree in finance and data analytics. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that whilst you might find what you want on a dating site, it’s rather like winning a lottery. The odds of real love are as astronomical as you wish to make them, and not improved by advanced matching of interests or kinks. People dream of winning the lottery as much as they dream of winning real love. I wish I could chart a smooth course towards it for you, but that is beyond my talents as a columnist or a human being.
The only person in the world that can make things simple again is the person with a practical time machine. That is the burden we have to bear as adults, and that is the one burden I hate.
Thank you for writing this beautiful letter. It provoked me to think and confront some dark patches in myself.
With great respect,
Hoshi.
He closed the laptop, feeling both drained and encouraged, and turned to struggle through the company’s books again. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for a fantastic VP in the form of Choi Seungcheol, he would long since have lost control of the company. He made a mental note to increase his bonus again this year and left his glittering apartment.
Two days later, when he once again went through the flood of e-mails to pick out a few ones that he wanted, he came across a name that looked familiar. His cursor hesitated above the ‘Woozi’ in the name field and he swallowed as he opened it.
Dear Hoshi,
I never expected to get a letter back from you. Isn’t that odd? Surely you must think it strange to send such a letter off into the virtual stratosphere like a mediocre prayer. It seems as if bizarrely, the universe is in my favour this time. Where this luck is when I’m scrabbling to pay rent I don’t know.
You are quite correct in that ‘simple’ isn’t an adult concept but humanity as a whole always longs for a simpler time. I think the man with the time machine would make a great deal of money, or at least be able to offer some pretty spectacular tours to fans of history. Who are we to say that the Hwarang really were as flower-like as people portrayed them? There might be an opportunity here.
I digress. Your letter wasn’t what I’d expect from a columnist. No pat advice, no wordless assurance that there’s love waiting somewhere beyond the rainbow. I appreciate that. I can only hope that your dark patches leave you soon enough, though the chances of that are slim – astronomical even? I would insert a joke here about your pen-name, but my humour runs as dry as any number of well-known deserts.
I am unable to thank you for the letter, and I am not a young girl showering money and presents on her idol. Instead, attached is a link to a song I wrote about the concept of simplicity.
With respect
Woozi
Soonyoung looked at the link at the bottom of the e-mail. There was enough fraud these day to choke on, so he carefully copied it out instead of just clicking on it, relieved when it took him to a private Google Drive account. He didn’t know what to expect, just stared at the buffering as it completed and hoped it didn’t wreck him.
He was wrong, so wrong. The singer was a young man with a light and somewhat breathy tenor, but his voice had an aching purity he couldn’t recall in many other singers, and where the letter had been mere sparks of emotions ruthlessly pinned down, the emotion in the song came through clearly. It sounded professionally arranged, perfectly composed, and it rent his heart in two. He had tears in his eyes before he understood that he had them, and at the end he caught himself dashing away water at a frantic page. He had always considered himself cheerful, but this hit him like a two-by-four.
Here was someone that had the courage to share a piece of his soul with a total stranger, something Soonyoung hadn’t been able to do in a long long time. Firming his jaw, he closed his laptop and went to grab his keys, suddenly desperate to get to the studio and dance.
Across town, a lonely young man sat down at a PC-bang, sipping a cup of convenience store coffee as he scrolled through his mails. They were the usual: ads he didn’t want, carefully worded decline letters for music he felt compelled to try and sell, the very rare message from a friend. He almost closed out of the program before he saw it and sat back to read.
Dear Woozi,
I find myself uncomfortable relaying to you the depths of my experience when I played that song. I am no musician to wax knowledgeably about pitch and timbre, or to even guess at the key this is in. Equally, I find myself incapable of stringing together words to let you know what I wish to say, so I’ve decided to respond in kind. I hope this finds you well, and I hope that it pleases you.
With profound respect
Hoshi
Confused, he clicked on the link at the bottom and watched the video that played. A small dance studio appeared, with the lights dimmed down. There was a man’s form silhouetted against the mirrors, though his face was in darkness. He noted the details of the body: slim but powerful, taller than himself by some measure. Graceful, though the way the man stood made him think there was hidden fire in his soul somewhere.
He nearly choked on his coffee when ‘Simple’ began rippling through the studio and the man danced. His movements reminded Woozi of coloured inks in water, ceaseless and alluring. It pulled him in, provided a unique lens on his song through another’s mind, and what he saw was beautiful. Each movement was precisely calculated and strong but filled with the kind of passion he only injected into his music, and briefly he wondered whether it was possible to hear a heart breaking. His was aching as if dealt some mortal blow, and suddenly the coffee tasted like dirt in his mouth.
He had shared a part of his soul and received another piece in return, and the warmth of it made him want to cry.