Chapter Text
-- Act I --
‘Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.’
- Nietzsche
It does not look like a prison.
The bedroom is dressed up like an expensive hotel room. On the plain white wall there hangs an original painting of black and grey in an ornate silver frame, and opposite is a wide window that overlooks the city. Silk sheets swathe the unmade bed. The closet stands open, revealing black satin robes through to a woollen coat with the back cut out. From the ceiling, a dazzling chandelier spirals soft yellow light over every surface. At the window the white curtains are thrown wide despite the midnight sky outside, and the glow of office windows gives way to the spattering of stars that litter the world above almost without seam.
Nothing in the room suggests bars at the window or guards beyond the walls, but for the fact that the door is locked from the outside.
Taehyung paces the length of the window, floor-to-ceiling glass, and watches the flashing lights of a plane as it passes over the horizon. His back aches. Practice was long today. Dinner was delivered more than six hours ago, a basic low-calorie, low carbohydrate meal of fish and salad, and hunger makes him close his eyes for a moment but he does not allow his eyes to stray to the phone on the nightstand. Asking for extra food is no way to curry favour, and with his back aching and his knee injury nagging him again, favour is what he needs.
First class starts in six hours.
There is no practical need for class at this level, but it is a way to clear his head and keep him focussed – any time spent down in the studio amongst the students and the other dancers is preferable to hours wiled away on nothing in this room. It also warms up his body for rehearsals later in the day.
Taehyung watches the stars and wishes that he could see the moon. One hand brushes the stray strands of hair that have fallen over his eyes, unwashed and splitting into clusters. In the morning, after first class, he is expected to meet with their new choreographer, and he ought to wash his hair but it is difficult to find the energy to care. His appearance off the stage is of little importance to anyone.
He rolls his shoulders back.
The upper back pain worsens as he shuffles his wings. The rustle of feathers breaks the silence of night and he stretches the joints once before lowering his arms. His black wings flex out, for a second extending to their full span before drawing to rest against his back once more. Dancing at this level for so long with the weight of his wings deviating his centre of gravity has drained his spine of its strength.
‘Wash your hair,’ he says aloud to himself.
As he crosses to the bathroom, his bare feet absorb the cold of the marbled floor. There is dried blood between his toes.
-
‘Clean up!’ snaps Miss Han, who has only ever been known by that name. In his years here, Taehyung has never learned her given name and nor has she ever demanded a title or stricter manner of address. Her black hair is flecked with grey now and drawn into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Even though her eyes were focussed on Taehyung, it is the girls who scurry away first. They still fear her. The two other male dancers in class follow soon after.
Taehyung takes his time. Dabbing the sweat from his forehead, he collects his bag and wipes down the barre.
‘Master Kim has been very specific,’ she says, on his tail, ‘the meeting with the new choreographer begins no later than eleven.’
The clock over the mirror-wall of the studio reads 10:45, but Taehyung does not question why it would take him more than fifteen minutes to walk down the hall. He knows that she means for him to wash his face and change his damp shirt, but it was exhausting enough to drag himself into the shower in the middle of the night. Now, sleep-deprived and body aching from the class, he feels even less inclined to care for his appearance.
‘Kim Taehyung,’ she says in a louder voice when he does not look up, and then she slams down the rod that she carries everywhere onto the barre with a clang that echoes around the studio. He has never seen her beat a student with the rod but it gives her the appearance of an austere school teacher and he thinks the intimidation does the job. ‘Swan. Do you hear me?’
‘I hear you,’ he says quietly. ‘May I collect my water bottle?’
It’s a mild provocation. He nods to the floor behind where she stands. ‘He’ll be expecting you to give a good impression,’ she says as he sidesteps around her and picks up the stainless steel flask.
‘Have I ever given a bad impression?’
‘Jeon Jeongguk is the most esteemed choreographer to work at the company. He has been choreographing in Paris for the last two years, don’t you know?’
Jeon Jeongguk. He has heard the name a thousand times during the last few days. ‘I do know,’ he answers, because people will not stop telling him as much. He slides his bottle into his bag and turns away. ‘Thank you for class today.’ His voice is mechanical, but polite nonetheless.
‘I expect you here at eight, tomorrow.’
‘Class does not start until eight-thirty,’ he says, without looking up.
‘We must run stretches for your back. Those wings will be the death of you and the death of us all.’
Those wings. Taehyung imagines spreading them wide and flying far, far away from here. If he could go for walks anywhere other than the inner courtyard of the company then he would try it, even though he is sure that his anatomy is not built for such a pursuit. The death of us all. They will not be saying that when he spreads them wide during the first performance of their new production. He knows what is in the works, and he knows where he will star.
‘I will be here,’ he says in his calm, muted tone. ‘You’ll need to ask them to send my breakfast early.’
-
Jeongguk tries not to look around the office too much as he suspects it would be rude. In this sacred space, Jeongguk cannot help but think that he’s been invited inside an inner sanctum of royalty. That means he ought to behave himself as if in the presence of an emperor. Bookshelves line one wall, while the other is dressed up with photographs in silver frames of some of the most acclaimed principal dancers across the long, illustrious history of the company.
‘Do sit down,’ says Kim Beomsoo, with a wave of his hand towards the seat opposite his desk. The artistic director of the company arrives in any room and any conversation with his reputation first, and here in his office Jeongguk feels that weight of esteem press heavily on his shoulders.
Not for the first time since he entered the room, Jeongguk bows. ‘Thank you, sir. It’s an honour just to enter these hallowed halls. When I first started choreographing, I always dreamed of being invited here to work.’
‘We earn our invitations in this life,’ says Beomsoo. ‘I attended the opening night of your last run in Paris.’
Jeongguk half-bows again in his seat. His bangs flop over his eyes and he brushes them away with irritation. No amount of styling can keep his unruly waves under control after the first two hours out of his hotel room. ‘I was told,’ he says. ‘Thank you for making the journey.’
‘I’m sorry that I could not meet you after the performance. I had to take a late plane back here to Seoul for meetings. I’m glad that we can sit across from one another at last, to discuss our shared vision.’
Jeongguk knows what a late plane means in Beomsoo’s world. It means a chartered jet plane leaving in the dead of night from a private airfield. The man in front of him is starting to age, hair greying at his temples and skin mottling with marks of years gone by, but Jeongguk knows that most of his extraordinary wealth has been earned in the last five to ten years. Before then, he was rich as any ballet director, but now he is filthy rich. His name appears on lists.
‘Thank you for taking a chance on this project,’ exhales Jeongguk. It has been over a year since he first started threading together his ideas for the all-male production of Swan Lake. The concept would have been easy to pitch in Paris or London, but returning here to his own nation to produce his finest work is not something he ever could have compromised on. Besides, Seoul is the only place in the world that has The Swan. And his vision of this production requires The Swan.
‘As I said, a shared vision,’ says Beomsoo with a wave of his hand. ‘We have been waiting for the right production of Swan Lake to come to us for many years. You can imagine why. I have not wanted to waste our most valuable asset on disappointment. Imagine if it were a failure. We could stand to lose everything.’
Jeongguk swallows. He knows the pressure that comes with this contract. This is no ordinary ballet, no ordinary ballet company and no ordinary dancer. The valuable asset that Beomsoo refers to is no object, either, though it could be from the way that the director speaks of it. ‘Is he here?’ asks Jeongguk, and his mouth is dry. It might be the wrong question to ask, but for the first time during his communications with Beomsoo he loses a little composure. He can’t help himself.
Apart from mentioning the natural role of the asset in his potential production, Jeongguk has been careful not to mention the subject too often. The last thing that he wants is for Beomsoo to think that he’s just another chancer trying to get close to The Swan. That is only one part of the project. He has spent the last two months convincing Beomsoo that the intrinsic connection in their artistry and vision is the motivation for his desire to work here.
It’s true.
It would be a lie, though, to suggest that he isn’t excited.
‘Yes, he’s here.’ Beomsoo glances up at the antique clock over his desk. ‘I told him to come to the office at eleven.’
Jeongguk prevents that sharp inhale of breath that his lungs requests and instead displays only a steady nod. He’s careful to regulate his breathing by keeping his mouth closed. There are no photographs of The Swan. Everybody knows that the penalty for bringing a camera into the theatre is worse than death: a lifetime ban from the company and all of its productions. The wealthy members, the elites of the elite, that frequent these shows would never take that chance. The damage to their reputations would be grievous.
However, he has heard accounts.
They talk about a boy with swan wings bursting from his back. Some people say that the wings are black and others white. One critic described them as having a twenty-foot wingspan, but others made more reserved suggestions. When Jeongguk scoured the internet and the papers for rare reviews, he found that there are few descriptions of the boy’s face. It can be difficult, he supposes, to make out features under the bright lights and the make-up. More-so, though, he expects they are too distracted by the wings to take any notice.
He jerks around in his seat when a gentle tap rings around the room.
‘Come,’ says Beomsoo, and Jeongguk thinks that his voice hardens.
The door nudges open with hesitance. Jeongguk jumps up from his seat and smooths down his hair as best he can again. For this occasion, he dressed well. The white shirt is pressed into clean lines beneath the Italian jacket, a suit he had tailored while working in Milan. He picked up shoe-polish from a store at the airport in order to try to get a shine worthy of this magnificent colosseum of dance. If Beomsoo notices the way that he tries to straighten his clothes, he does not laugh or comment.
All of the weeks that he has spent working towards this moment, the months of daydreams and sleeping dreams, fade into dust as he drops into another bow. His heart pounds with vehemence against his chest as if he owes it some unpaid debt. In an instant, his hands turn clammy.
‘You need not bow to him, Jeongguk,’ says Beomsoo, in a cool tone.
Feeling chastised, Jeongguk straightens bolt upright. A weight settles in his throat. Oxygen is drained from the air in the room, he assumes, because it is suddenly difficult to breathe.
The Swan stands before him in a form never mentioned by those few whisperers.
He is tall, slender in form but sinewy like any dancer, and clothed not for performance as others describe him. Here, in the office, The Swan looks almost human in loose cotton pants that stretch around the muscles of his thighs, and a sweat-dampened grey tee. His hair is pushed back from his face by a delicate black band. The posture is recognisably balletic, graceful and poised.
As human as the principals at any of Jeongguk’s previous productions, except there is nothing human about the wings that follow him like a dark shadow. They’re jet black, though the light overhead catches with glimmers of silver one each individual feather. It is difficult to estimate the span, as they close up to his back as if forming a protective shield, but Jeongguk runs through a thousand images in his mind of how they must look stretched out to their full range.
They do call him The Swan. Jeongguk has heard stories of animal-like hybrids across the world, a circus performer with a cat’s tail in the southern states of the US, and a faith healer with skin like a snake in the mountains, but he has not believed so many of them. In a world of fakery and surgery, there’s easy money to be made off people’s desire to see something special. Stood in this room today, though, he knows that his suspicions on this case were true.
There is nothing fake about the Seoul Sky-Theatre Ballet Company’s own unique asset.
Jeongguk, though, does not think that the name that they have given him betrays anything close to the truth.
If he were to have named this creature, he would have called it an Angel, not a Swan.
A creature.
An ‘it.’
Something other.
Jeongguk’s stomach turns at the dialogue that has slipped into his own mind, because the man before him is just that: a man. A man different from any other. But a man nonetheless. Breathlessness turns to bile in his throat and he’s overcome by a wave of nausea. He makes an oath in his own heart to never again allow those words to cross his mind or his lips ever again.
‘Did you come straight from practice?’ says Beomsoo in that same cold tone.
‘Yes,’ answers The Swan, and his voice is far lower than Jeongguk expected. A certain vibrating timbre textures the sound, deep and rich. It buzzes with energy, like electricity confined to thin wires. Then, his eyes turn to Jeongguk’s and Jeongguk thinks that his legs might collapse from under him. The eyes are glittering and black, darker even than his wings, and they penetrate a layer of Jeongguk’s aura that makes him feel his space has been invaded without a single step.
‘H-hello,’ says Jeongguk shakily, the stupidest thing that he could have said.
To his surprise, The Swan inclines his body in something resembling a bow. He has to take a step back, one-foot stepping into a balance in an extended fourth position. Every movement must be measured, to cope with the weight of those wings. ‘Forgive me, Jeongguk-ssi,’ The Swan’s voice wraps around his name like he’s never heard it before. He makes it sound like music. ‘I cannot bow with grace today. My back is stiff.’
Jeongguk’s eyes flit to Beomsoo in sudden panic. Injury could cost them everything. The production will run for weeks, and it will demand an unimaginable degree of perfection from this special dancer.
‘Minor things, minor things,’ says Beomsoo, and his response is rushed. ‘He has an excellent physiotherapist, a specialist. The wings bring their own challenges, I’m sure you can understand.’
‘Cool,’ nods Jeongguk. His voice sounds like it doesn’t belong to him. ‘Cool, cool.’
‘You’ll address him as sir, Swan,’ Beomsoo adds in a cutting tone as his eyes drag back to the dancer.
‘Then I must beg your forgiveness a second time,’ says The Swan, and his eyes have not shifted from Jeongguk’s.
‘It’s fine. Call me Jeongguk, please,’ he scrambles quickly. He’s lost in those eyes. All of his thoughts and his words and his life are consumed in a second by that gaze. ‘What should I call you?’
‘They gave me the name Taehyung,’ he says.
Taehyung.
Without those wings, if he were a human man with nothing extraordinary about his body, Taehyung would still look like nobody else on this earth. His features are chiselled without the need for make-up, cheekbones prominent and jaw sharp enough to cleave through diamond. His strong brow is exposed by the pulled-back hair, shadowing those gleaming eyes. And Jeongguk notices that his skin is porcelain-smooth. No break-outs from the sweat of practice, and no dimples from childhood scars. Not a single line from laughter or frowning. Jeongguk has only ever seen skin like this on a doll.
‘Taehyung-ssi, I’m very honoured to make your acquaintance,’ he breathes. ‘May I ask who gave you that name?’
‘Miss Han, and Mr Kim,’ says Taehyung, ‘when they found me.’
‘Actually it was an associate of mine who first found him,’ Beomsoo jumps into the story as if relishing a chance to tell it. Especially, Jeongguk thinks, to someone who has already had to sign the most restrictive non-disclosure agreement that any country could offer. ‘He was just a little boy when we picked him up in the woods. My friend was out shooting when he found him. Just a little boy with tiny black wings nestled against his back. There are swans in those woods. I think perhaps that he was cursed in some way and rejected by them, cast amongst humans. Don’t you think there is always something enchanted about woods?’
‘I’ve always thought so,’ nods Jeongguk. It’s easy to imagine the folds of reality shifting deep amongst the trees. ‘So you had no parents, Taehyung?’ he asks.
‘Taehyung remembers nothing of his childhood prior to his rescue,’ cuts in Beomsoo, in a tone that suggests he’s irritated at the attention being diverted from his story. ‘He’s very lucky that we picked him up. If he had been found by somebody else, I dread to think what terrible abuses he may have suffered. We can only imagine what others would do to get their hands on a creature such as this. My associate knew immediately that the best place for him was here. There is no sanctuary quite as protected as the ballet.’
‘So you learned all your dance here?’ asks Jeongguk. He keeps speaking to Taehyung, not least because looking away from him would be a fundamental impossibility.
‘We taught him everything he knows,’ Beomsoo answers for him.
Taehyung, though, holds Jeongguk’s gaze before responding for himself. ‘Yes. They tell me that I took to it like a swan to water.’
‘I’d like to see you perform,’ says Jeongguk, ‘just in practice. I’m going to spend a week observing all of the dancers here before starting my work.’
‘I have my physiotherapy to attend this afternoon.’
‘Any time is good. Tomorrow. Can I watch you tomorrow?’ Jeongguk hopes that his voice isn’t shaking audibly, but it is hard to tell when it trembles lower down in his throat. ‘If that is okay with Mr Kim, too.’
‘Of course. Taehyung will dance a showcase for you tonight, won’t you Swan?’
‘My back - ’ Taehyung begins. His beautiful forehead creases.
‘There’s no need,’ interjects Jeongguk. Anxiety for Taehyung’s stiff back creeps up inside him, and not because they have a production to make. He feels his own shoulders ache at the mere thought of carrying those wings every day, dancing with those heavy structures of bone and feather. ‘In fact, I’d prefer to watch you in practice. It’s useful for me to imagine how we’ll work together over these coming weeks.’
‘Fine,’ Beomsoo says as he crosses the office to stand between the two of them. One of his hands lifts to brush the ruffled feathers at the folded elbow joint of Taehyung’s right wing. It must be a routine action, because he does not even seem to notice that he is doing it while he talks, but Jeongguk sees Taehyung flinch violently. ‘Taehyung lives here at the company, like many of our dancers who choose to board with us, so he will be available for you to see him whenever you need. He’ll be just down the hall, night or day.’
‘I’m staying at The Plaza Hotel,’ says Jeongguk. ‘What time would it be appropriate for me to arrive in the mornings?’
‘A hotel?’ Beomsoo laughs out loud, a booming laugh that’s too loud for the enclosed room. ‘You need not stay at a hotel. We have already arranged quarters for you here during your work. You cannot possibly travel back and forth.’
‘There’s no need - ’
‘You’ll stay here, Jeongguk. Please accept our hospitality.’
‘Sure. Okay,’ he says. There is no way that he’s going to jeopardise an inch of his position here by arguing. It would be rude to refuse. ‘Thank you so much.’
When his eyes drag back to Taehyung’s, drawn by magnetism, he sees a guarded but dark expression that suggests Jeongguk has agreed to enter into an arrangement beyond any expectation. The hair on the back of Jeongguk’s neck stands up. He finds himself drawing his jacket closer around him. A chill drifts not to his skin but through his bones.
‘Delightful. One of our attendants will show you around,’ beams Beomsoo.
The chill fades as quickly as he noticed it, but the darkness in the eyes of The Swan remains dauntless as night.