Sight Unseen

Chapter 2

"Yeonjun, why isn't the costume fitting?" Ms. Lee complained. As the costume director, Ms. Lee was the one who made TXT look good. She had a stellar eye for fashion and a sharp tongue. "Have you been eating ramen again?" she griped as she pulled the fabric tighter.

"No," Yeonjun replied. "You know I don't eat that stuff. Honestly, I don't know what happened. But it was a little tight at the last fitting if you remember," he added.

"It was tight, but I got it on you. Today, I can't get it ---," she stopped midsentence as they heard the sound of the zipper ripping. She pulled the outfit off him and stared at it while Yeonjun covered himself the best he could with his arms.

"Ugh," Ms. Lee sighed. "Well, so much for that jumpsuit," she said, tossing the glossy red material aside. "It's like your ass got bigger in a week," she scolded.

After Ms. Lee left, Yeonjun slumped down on a chair and put his face in his hands. It seemed like no matter what he did, it was always a struggle to maintain his weight. Of course, it didn't help that the outfits he was required to wear left no room for the occasional pound gained from water retention.

Later that evening, Yeonjun was sitting on the couch at the dorm. He was thinking of ways to drop a few pounds before their next video shoot. He flipped through diet ideas on his phone. Paleo, Keto, Low-fat, South Beach, vegan, The Grapefruit Diet, The Cabbage Diet. He let out a long exhale. He had to admit that he felt tired. Even contemplating another diet plan made him feel exhausted.

Yeonjun continued to scroll, trying to muster up the energy to care. He went back to the thing that had worked in the past to motivate him --- shame. If he shamed himself long enough, he could convince himself to change, he pondered inwardly.

You're disgusting, he told himself. How can you stand yourself? Your ass is getting so big, he inwardly scolded himself. The more he berated himself, the emptier he felt. In the throws of this emptiness, he felt he had two choices --- to fill it with food or to fill it with porn. Since food was what got him into this mess, he decided to go with the latter.

As he clicked on a site, he felt a twinge of guilt. He knew the whole thing about how the porn industry chews and spits up young people, but his shame was too intense to bear. It would stand to reason that an asshole like me with no willpower to eat less would have no ability to resist porn either, he berated himself.

He put in his Air Pods and started a video. He was all alone in the dorm because the others had gone out to dinner. With the ear buds in, he never heard Beomgyu and Luna coming in the front door.

"Make yourself at home," Beomgyu told Luna. "I'm just going to take a quick shower, and I'll be out in a minute, and we can watch, 'The Intern'," he said. "That's Yeonjun's favorite film. He'll be psyched," he said as he left Luna alone in the foyer. She set down her bag on the table at the entrance and walked into the living room. She saw Yeonjun watching something on his phone. She thought it would be fun to sneak up behind him and give him a jump scare. So, she crept up behind him silently and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. Yeonjun jumped higher than Luna had expected and held his phone against his chest.

"God, you shouldn't scare people like that!" Yeonjun exclaimed, trying to catch his breath.

"So, I gave you a bit of a jump scare. What's wrong? Were you watching porn or something?" Luna teased.

"Why would you even ask that?" Yeonjun replied with evident irritation.

"Ah, so, you were watching porn," Luna concluded.

Yeonjun hung his head in defeat. She had found him out. There was no point in denying it now. All he could do now was to try to mitigate the effect it would have on Luna's opinion of him.

"It was a pop-up. I swear! I didn't click on it!" he defended. "I'm not like that. I mean, I'm not a pervert or something," he continued.

Luna saw the panic in his eyes as he attempted to explain himself. She wondered, for a moment, why it even mattered to him what she thought. She was just Beomgyu's quirky friend. What possible interest could he have in her? Still, he seemed distressed.

"Lemme tell ya a story," she said, feeling herself code-switching immediately upon beginning her story. "This is a story my grandpa used to tell. He grew up on a farm. So, most of his stories have farm animals in them," she explained.

"Okay," Yeonjun replied cautiously. He wasn't sure where she was going with this. All he wanted to hear was that she believed him about not being a pervert. And yet, she had not mentioned that at all before launching into one of her homespun stories that Beomgyu had told him she was famous for.

Luna went back into her story. "So, there was this pigsty with a whole bunch of muddy pigs. They would roll around and get caked in mud. They ate pig food and did pig things. They were pigs," she concluded.

"Okay," Yeonjun repeated hesitantly. He hoped he was not one of the pigs in this story.

"So, along comes this eagle flying high over the pigsty. He sees the pigs down there eating pig food and doing pig things. And he thinks to himself, 'Imma go down there with those pigs to find out what it's like to live like them.'," she said.

Yeonjun began to massage his hands nervously. He had a bad feeling that this story was not going to turn out well for him. He definitely resonated with the pigs in the story.

Luna pressed on. "So, the eagle landed by the pigsty, and he went in. He ate some pig food and did some pig things. He rolled in mud until he was caked in it. Now, my question to you, Yeonjun, is this? Is the eagle a pig?"

"What?" Yeonjun asked, confused.

"Well, he ate pig food and rolled in pig mud. So, is the eagle a pig?" she asked again.

"Uh ---," Yeonjun hesitated.

"Okay, Imma answer that for you. No, the eagle is not a pig. He's just a very dirty eagle," Luna said emphatically. "He can wash off, and under all that mud, you'll still find an eagle." Luna paused for a moment to let him process. "So, what I'm saying to you is that you are an eagle. An eagle can never be a pig because it's true nature is that of an eagle. It can never be anything but an eagle. Even if it gets dirty in the pigsty, it's still an eagle," she reiterated.

She placed her tan hand against his cheek. He could feel the coldness of her various silver rings against his cheek. "You, my dear Yeonjun, are an eagle. You are a fucking eagle," she assured him with conviction.

"How can you know for sure?" he asked, too afraid to believe he could be an eagle. He was still pretty convinced he was one of the pigs in the story.

"We're all eagles, baby," she told him. "We were all created in the image of the Divine. We are all fucking eagles!" she said with emphatically. "Some people just don't know it yet. Or some people knew it and just forgot." She stroked Yeonjun's soft cheek. "No matter what we do, underneath it all, we are all still eagles. Nothing can change the nature of who we are."

"But I feel really bad because I know porn isn't good and all that. It's just sometimes, I feel so much shame inside. I just need something to quiet the voices, but then, when I'm done the voices come back stronger and condemn me," he admitted.

"Did it ever occur to you that the porn actors are eagles too?" Luna asked.

Yeonjun made no reply, so, Luna continued, "Look, it's not about the porn. It's about the fact that these eagles are walking around thinking they are pigs, and no one is telling them that they are eagles. No one treats them like eagles. I mean, there are porn stars who have agency, but there are lots of others who don't. And for them, I would say that they submit to abuse, or they abuse others precisely because they don't know that they are eagles," Luna concluded. "The more you believe that your true nature is that of an eagle, the less time you'll spend rolling in mud," she concluded.