PR15M: Mirror Image (Ice and Ink)

PR15M: Mirror Image

By Ice and Ink

Ice

Morocco. It had taken me months to get there. Months of challenge and repeated near-disasters and close calls. I had no identification and no money and no experience of living on my own. I lived on my wits and I winged it and, eventually, I entered Morocco after talking my way onto a fishing boat far from where I’d left Master, and Tae, behind. I had no idea where I was going or why. I was simply following what I guess you might call a combination of blind instinct and faith.

Morocco. I couldn’t even recall whether Tae and I had ever been there with Master previously, though I had a vague recollection that maybe we had been. I could only pray Master didn’t have anyone there now who might recognize me and therefore I did my best to keep my head down and my profile even lower than I’d already been keeping it. I was little more than a rat on the streets, foraging what I could and doing my best to survive.

It was the music that drew me. It was the music that ended up saving me. It was the music that became the true catalyst for the direction my life ended up taking. Music, literally, became the beacon in the darkness.

There were two things I’d carried with me from my enslavement, aside from my memories. The first was a jade pendant I’d been gifted by our music and dance instructor; a yin/yang encircled by a dragon representing, according to Master Liu, life, power, and renewal. The second was the Dizi, the Chinese flute, Master Liu had gifted to Tae. The pendant hung on a leather cord around my neck and the flute I wore strapped to my back. No matter how difficult things got, I refused to even consider trading either of these items, even if it might very well mean the difference between life and death. In the end, I’d rather die than part with them for losing them, to me, represented death anyway.

I was sitting on a rock in the red haze of sunset somewhere above the ruins of an old fortress of some kind, playing the Dizi, though not half as well as I recall Tae having been able to play, when I heard it. Music, and of a kind I’d never heard before. I stopped playing and listened, one hand reaching instinctively for the pendant. It was beautiful, wild and free and with an unexpected tempo and beat, and I had to know what it was.

It wasn’t too difficult to find the source because it was only just the other side of the ruins; a gathered assortment of vehicles and people, all focused on a group of young men in designer clothing, dancing in a style I was completely unfamiliar with but which I found instantly mesmerizing. I had no knowledge, then, of pop music, let alone what I was witnessing here, and neither did I know, specifically, that this group was filming a music video. I was entranced by their synchronicity, no matter how many times they stopped and started, and by the activity seemingly entirely dedicated to them.

It was my very first introduction to what I later discovered to be the world of K-pop and K-idols, and I was sold.

Their hypnotism of me led to my mistake, if that was what it was. I wanted to get closer. I wanted to see more. Slinging the Dizi to my back, beneath the robe I’d acquired somewhere along the way for a day’s labor, I slipped through the shadows beside the ruins to get closer.

And then a sweeping spotlight caught me, just for a moment.

It startled me. Instead of diving for cover, as I should have, I stood there, my hood thrown back because I’d been enraptured by the music, and frozen into place by my surprise. Literally, caught by the light. I was blinded but, when the light moved on and my star-struck vision returned, I still hadn’t moved and I found myself staring across the emptiness between where I stood and where a group of spectators stood opposite and… froze again.

I was looking into a mirror. I blinked and opened my eyes to look again to find nothing had changed. I was still staring into the same mirror. A face just like mine, except in reverse: dark eyes beneath dark hair whereas I knew both my eyes and my hair to be pale. The face I saw was admittedly better kept than mine. It was fuller, the cheeks not as gaunt and hollow as I fully expected mine to be, but the eyes were equally wide in shock, the mouth open as I knew mine was, too. I shut my mouth and pulled back, my breath coming hard and fast, my heart hammering behind my ribs.

Was it possible? Had Fate somehow led me here to find my missing brother? Had I finally found what I’d set out to find all along? I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t get my head around the possibility and I had no idea what to do next. This was one of those moments where I was left with choices and what happened next would be entirely up to me.

It was too much to process all at once and, instead of daring to take yet another peek, which I dearly wanted to do, I bolted. If there was one thing I’d learned in my months on the run, it was how to disappear, and I did. But I couldn’t get the image out of my head. Before morning, I’d already decided I really had no choice at all but to confirm what I thought I’d seen. I had to know for sure. Had I truly seen my brother in the half-light amidst the crowd or had starvation and stress finally caught up on me so that what I’d seen had been no more than an illusion? Risk or no risk, I was determined to get to the truth.

Ink

Morocco. When I heard Casper’s team had been given the Moroccan assignment, security for an idol MV shoot, I immediately asked for permission to tag along. It was a golden opportunity, never mind that the group shooting the video was one I’d followed since prior to debut and had a huge level of respect for. I often imagined myself as a member of the group, maybe the lead vocalist or the rapper, in my imaginings, after I’d found my brother. On some days, when I really allowed myself to get lost in dreaming, my brother would be right there alongside me and we’d be in a group together, on stage, or shooting MV’s: together.

This is the curse and the benediction of identical twins; we are irrevocably linked. If one of us hurts, the other feels the pain equally. No matter the distance between us, we are never truly alone. Ice might have vanished, seemingly out of existence in the blink of an uncaring celestial eye, but I knew, absolutely, completely, utterly, without any kind of doubt, that he was alive. Somewhere. It was my unwavering faith and insistence which had kept my parents searching for ten seemingly interminable years. And it was this faith that fired my imagination to include him in my dreams of a future re-united.

He would return to my side. I knew it.

That said, life went on regardless. In my mind, wallowing in despair at the absence of Ice, and what I barely recalled of our childhood friend, Taehyun, who had disappeared alongside him, would resolve nothing and offer Ice even less upon his return. I was the older one (by a whole ten minutes) and he would be looking to me to reconnect him with the world from which he’d been taken. I wanted to ensure he could rely on me, count on me, lean on me in whatever manner he might need. I studied hard. I worked diligently. Every moment of every day was spent with the thought in mind that one day, somehow, I would share those moments with Ice.

Which brings me back to Morocco.

It started with the most peculiar headache, more a buzzing or humming than an actual ache, and a tingling sensation radiating right out to my fingertips. It was disorienting and more than a little disconcerting. I’d made the mistake of indulging in alcohol once, and it felt not unlike how I’d felt that night; hazy and displaced. I didn’t like it and yet it felt oddly reassuring. Stopping to think about it, it was how I’d felt on the flight home at fifteen after three years studying abroad. Homecoming. Which made little sense in Morocco, a place to which I’d never been.

We’d been working with the group for three days already, and the sensations I was experiencing had been growing gradually, at first imperceptibly, from the day of our arrival. Now, at sunset of the last day and on the last shoot, I was completely consumed by it. I was trembling so badly I could barely stand and I had the distinct feeling my face must appear both pasty and strained. I felt sick even though, at the same time, it was as no fever I’d ever experienced. Casper came by and dropped a hand to my shoulder.

“You all right, Ink? You don’t look so good. Want me to find someone to take you back to the hotel?”

Did I? No. It wasn’t like that and, besides, it was more a sense of expectation than of illness. I shook my head and managed a smile.

“No, it’s ok. I’m fine. Just excited, I guess. And a little sad it’ll be over soon.”

Casper scanned the crowd gathered around the idol group immersed in yet another take of their performance.

“You’re looking for him, aren’t you? I get it. I guess we all do, you know, somehow hope this might, miraculously, be the day he turns up.” He shrugged. “It won’t be here, Ink. I’m sorry, but don’t bog yourself down with it. You’ll only end up being disappointed again. Just enjoy the moment, ok?”

He turned away and disappeared among the film crew and extras and that was when it happened. The moment I could neither have anticipated nor ever forget.

It was a large group, by K-idol standards. Eleven. They took up a lot of space, their synchronized choreography sweeping across the carefully prepared dance space directly in front of the ruins of an old fortress and they were moving in a graceful cascading formation followed by both spotlights and cameras when I saw him.

It was fleetingly brief and yet an image to be frozen permanently into my shocked mind. I was staring at myself. A distorted dystopian version of myself. Wild pale hair and wide pale eyes. Shadows beneath the sharply defined features of a face both familiar and horrifyingly alien. We locked eyes, each reaction of my mirror-self perfectly echoing mine, and I took a hesitant half-step forward, uncertain, caught between hope and disbelief, and…

I hadn’t even blinked and my alternate self was gone.

Time continued. What had felt like minutes turned out to have been barely two steps of the fluid, effortless dance of the performing artists and they continued without missing a beat. My heart missed several. Had I been dreaming? Had it been an illusion? I couldn’t be certain but I had my doubts. How could I conjure up such a perfect and yet distorted version of myself here, in Morocco of all places? It was him. It was Ice, I was certain of it.

I had no hope of pursuing him, the performance winding up between me and where I’d last seen him, but there was no way I’d let it go. I had to find Casper and convince him of what I’d seen. I had to stay. I most definitely had to find my brother, here and now, once and for all. I would not be taking no for an answer.

I took out my phone and made a call.