049. "What's the difference?",
Hankyung/Hankyung"this," eeteuk would say sometimes, with a smile and a hand gesture towards you, "is hankyung. he's from china."
and this would be your cue to smile as well, bow a little bit, and say in accented and foreign korean, "hello. it's nice to meet you."
what's the difference? - - -
"super junior china man!" the game show announcers would laugh and joke, smiling. you'd smile too because it was funny, you guess, and it wasn't like it was replacing your name, it was - as heechul had said when you two had first met - your nickname for your nickname.
it was your nickname that everybody knew, ''super junior china man'' , and you had laughed that day with the announcers, smiled and laughed along with them as their ''super junior china man'' until the end of the day when the producers had stopped and thanked you, thanked ''super junior hankyung from china'' and that's when you stopped smiling and laughing, when you realized you weren't
hankyung or even
hangeng, you were
super junior hankyung from china.
what's the difference? - - -
"super junior hankyung from china," the articles would say about you, and what was once was a part of you that you enjoyed having around had become a part of you that was
everywhere, that you couldn't leave behind no matter how you tried.
"hankyungshii," the reporter would smile and you'd smile honestly back to her, and she'd say, "do you miss china ? how is your korean ? could you speak some chinese for us ?" and you'd frown and say, "i do miss china, i really do, but i like it here and - my korean is just fine now, i think and - and . . . " and a pause and you'd bite your lip,
do i have to ?, and whisper something in chinese just loud enough for the microphone to catch and make the crowd to scream because
ohmygod super junior hankyung from china just spoke chinese! what did he say, what did he say ?what's the difference? - - -
the realization of how much you hate yourself, how much you hate
super junior hankyung from china only, hits you when you are standing in the bathroom, staring down at all the little toothbrushes scattered in front of the sink.
eeteuk, heechul, yehsung, kangin, shindong, sungmin, eunhyuk, donghae, shiwon, ryeowook, kibum, and kyuhyun it says, labeled on each toothbrush in sloppy korean, and then yours to the left.
it's labeled
hangeng in Shiwon's neat chinese, neat and clean, slightly off the to the side moreso than the rest - different.
and you realize then that you just want to destroy it, want to take it into your fist and snap it, want to scratch it out and replace it with
hankyung - in sloppy korean - and place it down scattered to the right like the rest of them. yet you can't because that wouldn't be right, even though hankyung wants to do so, it would be uncharacteristic of super junior hankyung from china.
it's then that you break down, fall to the floor crouching and sobbing to yourself, wishing
oh so desperately that hankyung would die, or
super junior hankyung from china would die, or that somebody would because this was getting too hard to live with. getting too hard to deal with these ideas of double personalities, this was hankyung - or was it super junior hankyung from china ?
what's the difference? the difference between you, between you and
you, was
you - but the only one who seemed to understand was
you (or maybe even you).
- - -
i love
jangmi <3