posted by Teddy Mertola (verified),posted two hours ago
Rehearsal hits with @CoBolT (verified). Special request.
Tuwing Umuulan - Eraserheads
TEN
FALLING - JIN
“And you’re okay,seeing each other again in two months?”
“Sounds good.” Lia nodded, feeling more confident as she smiled at her therapist through the screen. “I don’t know how forthcoming I’ll be, though. The SixJays event will be after that, and depending on how things go…”
“We’ll take it when it comes, you know that.”
Lia did. And she appreciated her therapist’s patience as much as she appreciated the view outside of her window. The street was awash with the yellow whirls of the gingko trees, and it was surreal and otherworldly.
“Two months.” She nodded, confirming.
“You’ll be back in Manila by then,” her therapist pointed out.
“Yeah. I should be,” she said, and didn’t like that the answer wasn’t as clear cut as it should have been. Of course, she would be in Manila. Where else would she be? She knew when she came here, that she and Teddy were flying home in November, 90 days after they first arrived in Seoul. She’d told government officials at the airport that she was going to stick to that, and she would. Shewould.
The date still felt like a world away to her though, as hazy and dreamlike as the yellow trees outside her window. And she liked being in this dreamlike state, where she was adored and loved, where she broke beds and learned what a “wet sound” meant.
“Are we really opening a second pre-order for the Dawn vinyl?” Teddy asked her as she emerged from her bedroom, finding her brother at the kitchen island with a yogurt cup and coffee. He was squinting at his laptop beside him, and his early-morning wake-up told Lia he was probably catching up on Triptych work. “That’s amazing, Ate.”
“I think even the company making the vinyls was surprised that we needed more than their MOQ.” Lia chuckled. “But we found this company that makes 3d printed frames for vinyl and made a custom one. The sales went wild after that,andso did the ones for the digital code to download the music in case someone bought the vinyl just for the vibe.”
“People do that?”
“You underestimate the things a fan will do for the vibes.” Lia smiled.
“That sounds like a lot of work.” Teddy’s frown deepened, although Lia wasn’t sure if it was because it was eight am—the crack of dawn for him—or because he wasn’t thrilled about the idea. “And well beyond what we hired you for.”
“Actually I was thinking…” Lia started, but was interrupted by Cal’s front door opening to a very determined-looking Soobin, holding a piece of paper in one hand and a puppy in the other.
“I did it,” he announced, handing Teddy a sheet of paper. “Lyrics. Translation.”
Teddy’s eyes widened as he went over to Soobin and looked at the paper. His eyes widened even more when he read the lyrics. Lia would find out later that the song wasdefinitelyaboutsex, about having a person staying over and not going home. There was melting into someone’s body, a longing to meet.
Lia ran away because she did not want to get spoilers. She needed to shower, anyhow.
When she emerged from her room again, there was music coming from the living room. It was four chords, played slowly and tenderly with an acoustic guitar. Then the sound of a percussion shaker over a metronome, just to keep the timing. Cal started singing seemingly random words, clearly words thrown together just so he could figure out the melody of this song. A song that Lia definitely didn’t know.
She’d walked out into the hallway after, in her pambahay clothes, where she could see Cal sitting on his couch, his back to her as he whistled, his feet tapping to the beat. Maybe he was hearing it differently in his head, but Lia could tell something had changed in him, like he could hear drum fills, a piano, a bass line where she couldn’t.
“I’d like to be
The place where you lay your head
The one who knows how to make you
Happy, and see the one I see.”
There was a pen and paper on the table, words scribbled and crossed out, rewritten. Cal slowed the song down, the sounds in his head seeming to fade away. His playing changed to a single strum and a few notes plucked. He hummed a tune over that, too.
