Cv
Grammar of the Absurd
The rule had been established on Thursday evening over a shared pot of stew.
Park Seonghwa’s ears were exhausted. To the hearing world, digital hearing aids seemed like a miracle fix, a tiny pair of molded plastic shells tucked behind sculpted ears that magically bridged the gap between silence and speech. In reality, they were grueling little amplifiers that shoved high-gain, tinny frequencies straight into delicate ear canals, pinching the cartilage after twelve hours and turning every scrape of a chair into an abrasive treble spike. By Friday night, Seonghwa usually had a dull ache throbbing behind his temples, his jaw tense from the constant cognitive strain of parsing distorted waveforms alongside visual lip-reading.
So, Hongjoong had proposed it, and Yunho and Mingi had instantly backed him into a corner until he agreed: Sunday was a zero-decibel day. No molds in his ears, no screeching frequency compressors, no straining to guess consonants. Just absolute, undisturbed quiet.
The only flaw in their master plan arrived at nine-fifteen on Sunday morning.
"He's still completely out," Mingi whispered, looming over the foot of Seonghwa’s bed like a giant, cautious gargoyle. He held a grease-stained paper bag full of fresh bakery twists in one hand, his long frame draped in a plush green hoodie. "Are we sure he's alive? He hasn't twitched in four minutes."
Sitting at the shared desk with his headphones resting around his neck, Hongjoong didn't even look up from peeling the foil wrapper off a triangle kimbap. His thick black-rimmed glasses were pushed firmly up his nose.
"He's alive, Mingi. He just sleeps like he's been clinically sedated whenever his ears are out," Hongjoong said dryly. "When you spend your entire week processing visual noise at three hundred percent capacity, shutting off means shutting off."
Yunho, holding four paper cups of iced tea in a cardboard tray, stepped carefully around a towering stack of fashion pattern drafting paper. "Well, how do we wake him without scaring him? The coordinator’s handbook said never startle someone who is profoundly deaf awake. It triggers a fight-or-flight spike."
"Just don't jump on him," Hongjoong remarked, taking a bite of his rice. "And whatever you do, don't blow on his face unless you want to get punched. I learned that the hard way during freshman year."
Mingi shifted his weight, glancing between Yunho and the sleeping beauty under the down duvet. Seonghwa was curled gracefully on his side, dark hair fanning over a silk pillowcase, his breathing slow and untroubled, an island of total serenity in a room full of clumsy giants.
"What if I stomp on the floor?" Mingi offered, hovering one heavy sneaker. "He feels floorboards, right?"
"Mingi, you weigh nearly eighty kilos," Yunho pointed out with a quiet chuckle, setting the drink carrier down on the low table. "If you stomp, you're going to shake the light fixtures loose in the room downstairs. Let's try the light switch first."
Yunho walked to the wall by the door and flicked the overhead room lights twice. *Click, click.*
Seonghwa didn't even flutter an eyelash. His face was half-buried in the duvet, his arm draped languidly over the edge of the mattress.
"He's facing the wall," Hongjoong noted, his sharp ears picking up the distinct sound of the toggle switch. "Visual light won't penetrate his eyelids unless he's angled toward the fixture. Honestly, you're overthinking it. Just go touch his foot."
Mingi swallowed hard. "His foot?"
"His ankle," Hongjoong corrected, sounding like a world-weary professor supervising preschool interns. "Firm, steady pressure. Don't poke him like he's a landmine. A light, hesitant poke feels like a bug. Just take his ankle, give it two firm squeezes, and hold on until his brain catches up."
Mingi looked at Yunho for moral support. Yunho offered an encouraging, dimpled smile and gave him a gentle shove forward.
Creeping around the foot of the bed with exaggerated, comic stealth, Mingi reached out his large, warm hand. He carefully reached under the hem of the duvet, found the slender swell of Seonghwa’s ankle through his cotton pajama bottoms, and applied two deliberate, steady squeezes.
For a beat, nothing happened.
Then, Seonghwa stirred. The long line of his back shifted, his shoulders rolling as he took a deep, luxuriant breath through his nose. His dark eyes fluttered open—not with panic, but with the slow, drowsy curiosity of someone surfacing from a deep ocean.
He rolled onto his back, blinking against the morning light. When he saw Mingi looming awkwardly over the edge of his bed, holding a bag of pastries like an offering to an ancient deity, a slow, radiant smile spread across Seonghwa’s sculpted features.
Without the hearing aids hooked over his ears, Seonghwa looked remarkably soft, younger, the usual tension around his temples completely smoothed away.
Seonghwa lifted both hands out of the warm covers, stretching his arms high over his head until his knuckles popped. He brought his hands down, tapped his chin with the flat of his hand, and threw his palm open toward Mingi with a bright, sleepy tilt of his head.
*Good morning.*
Mingi let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for five minutes. His broad face lit up with an enormous grin. He immediately brought his own hands up, fingers fumbling through the gesture he had spent forty minutes memorizing on the subway ride over.
Mingi tapped his own chin, flicked his wrist outward, and then pointed enthusiastically at the brown paper bag.
*Good morning. Bread.*
Seonghwa let out a sound—a breathy, delighted hum that resonated softly in his chest—and nodded vigorously. He sat up, pushing his messy dark fringe off his forehead, clearly thrilled by Mingi’s clumsy attempt.
Hongjoong swiveled his desk chair toward the bed, the wheels squeaking on the linoleum. "Is he awake?"
"Wide awake," Yunho reported, his voice bright as he carried over a steaming mug of tea. "And Mingi successfully avoided giving him a heart attack."
"I am a master of tactile diplomacy," Mingi declared proudly.
Seonghwa swung his long legs over the side of the mattress, his bare feet meeting the cool floor. He caught Hongjoong’s gaze—or rather, positioned himself directly in front of the blond boy's tilted face—and reached out, gently tapping Hongjoong’s knee three times.
Hongjoong reached down instinctively, letting his fingertips graze Seonghwa's knuckles.
"Ears feeling better?" Hongjoong asked, speaking at normal volume. He knew Seonghwa couldn't hear the sound at all, but the movement of Hongjoong's throat and the steady rhythm of their proximity carried the meaning just as well.
Seonghwa took Hongjoong’s hand, turning it palm-up. With his index finger, he traced a smooth circle, then pressed down with a gentle, firm pat.
*Empty. Good.*
"Good," Hongjoong murmured, the protective tightness in his own shoulders softening. "Yunho brought tea. Mingi bought enough carbohydrates to feed a small rugby team."
Seonghwa laughed silently, the corners of his eyes crinkling into deep crescents. He stood up, adjusted his silk pajamas, and moved toward the low table where Yunho had laid out the spread of pastries, napkins, and drinks.
The four of them settled onto the floor cushions, forming an intimate circle around the low wooden table.
This was the rhythm they were building: an unconventional, bilingual, multi-sensory puzzle where spoken words, tactile cues, and visual grammar had to be shuffled like cards. For Hongjoong, who lived in sound, having a friend who lived in silence had always required creative engineering. But adding two hearing, sighted, six-foot-tall business majors into the mix was turning out to be an exercise in utter, joyful absurdity.
Yunho pulled out his smartphone, propping it against the tea carrier with a sign language dictionary app clearly open on the screen.
"Okay," Yunho said, articulating each word deliberately so Seonghwa could track his lips without strain. "Mingi has been studying all weekend. He insisted on ordering breakfast entirely in sign."
Seonghwa’s eyebrows shot up with genuine intrigue. He leaned forward on his elbows, dark eyes sparkling with anticipation, nodding encouragingly at Mingi.
"Don't put pressure on me, Yunho!" Mingi hissed, though his ears were already turning bright red. He sat up tall on his cushion, shaking out his long fingers like a concert pianist preparing for a concerto. "I practiced this. I'm ready."
Hongjoong leaned back against the base of the bed, crossing his arms and grinning. "This is going to be a disaster. I can feel the chaotic energy in the air."
"Have faith in my linguistic genius, Hongjoong," Mingi huffed.
Mingi turned his full attention to Seonghwa. He took a deep breath, gathered his concentration, and raised his hands.
His goal, as he had explained to Yunho on the walk over, was simple: *Do you want to eat the sweet red bean pastry, or do you want the savory sausage pastry?*
Mingi pointed at Seonghwa. Then he formed the sign for *want*—pulling his open hands toward his chest while curving his fingers into claws. That part was clumsy, but passable.
Seonghwa nodded, his lips parting in an encouraging *Yes?*
Then came the food choice.
Mingi tried to sign *sausage*. In Korean Sign Language, a common depiction involves indicating a casing or a specific linked shape with two fingers. But Mingi’s spatial awareness was slightly off, his thumb slipped between his fingers, and instead of holding his hands horizontally at chest level, he dropped his right hand down near his lap, curled his fingers into a tight, upward-pumping cylinder, and thrust it rhythmically forward toward Seonghwa’s face with intense, solemn concentration.
Seonghwa froze.
The encouraging smile on Seonghwa’s face shattered into a look of sheer, paralyzed disbelief. His eyes widened to the size of saucers. His mouth fell open, his gaze dropping to Mingi’s enthusiastically pumping fist, then snapping back up to Mingi’s earnest, furrowed brow.
Mingi, entirely oblivious to the catastrophe unfolding before him, then attempted to sign *sweet or savory*. He meant to stroke his cheek for *sweet*, but instead, he dragged his open palm aggressively down his own chest, pulled his collar open, and gave Seonghwa an intense, inquiring wink.
The silence in the room stretched for two horrifying, glorious seconds.
Seonghwa suddenly choked on his own spit.
He threw both hands over his face, collapsing sideways onto the floor cushions with his shoulders shaking violently. A muffled, high-pitched squeak escaped his throat—a sound of pure, hysterical, unadulterated shock. He kicked his long legs against the carpet, burying his crimson face into a throw pillow, unable to breathe from laughing so hard.
Mingi froze with his hands still suspended in the air. "What? What did I do? Yunho, did I do it wrong?"
Yunho was staring at the sign language app on his phone, then looked at Mingi’s frozen hands. The realization hit him like a freight train.
Yunho clamped a hand over his mouth, his own eyes watering as a strangled wheeze ripped through his chest. "Mingi—*oh my God*—Mingi, put your hands down!"
"What did I sign?!" Mingi pleaded, his voice cracking into a panicked register that shook the room. "I asked if he wanted sausage!"
Hongjoong, entirely blind to the visual gestures, sat up straighter, his ears twitching wildly as he tracked the chaotic sounds: Seonghwa sobbing silently into a cushion, Yunho wheezing for air, and Mingi melting down in sheer mortification.
"What happened?" Hongjoong demanded, a wicked grin spreading across his face. "What did he sign? Someone narrate this to me right now!"
"He—" Yunho couldn't finish the sentence. He doubled over, resting his forehead against the edge of the table, his shoulders heaving with helpless laughter. "He didn't sign sausage, Hongjoong. He—he signed a very specific, very aggressive act involving male anatomy!"
"Mingi!" Hongjoong barked, throwing his head back in absolute delight. "You sexually harassed my roommate before ten in the morning!"
"I didn't mean to!" Mingi wailed, his face burning an apocalyptic shade of crimson as he hid his head in his oversized hoodie. "The diagram had arrows! The arrows were pointing in a circle! How was I supposed to know the angle mattered that much?!"
Seonghwa finally managed to push himself up from the floor, his face flushed a brilliant, radiant pink, tears of laughter clinging to his dark eyelashes. His dark hair was a disheveled mess, but the absolute joy radiating from him was luminous.
He looked at Mingi, who was currently curled into a miserable, embarrassed ball of regret.
Seonghwa reached out, gently nudging Mingi’s knee with his foot to get him to uncover his face. When Mingi peeked out through the strings of his hood, looking like a chastised golden retriever, Seonghwa smiled—a soft, incredibly fond expression that immediately banished all the embarrassment from the air.
Seonghwa raised his hands, moving slowly and deliberately.
He took his left index finger and extended it horizontally. Then, with his right hand, he made a gentle, neat clamping motion along the length of the finger, mimicking the links of a breakfast sausage. Clean, polite, completely devoid of pelvic thrusting.
Then he pointed at the brown pastry bag, tilted his head, and gave Mingi an approving, exaggerated thumbs-up.
*Sausage,* Seonghwa signed again, repeating the motion twice so Mingi could see the exact placement.
Mingi peeked over his hood, sniffing defensively. "See? It’s almost what I did."
"It was nowhere near what you did," Yunho wheezed, wiping a tear from his cheek. "You looked like you were auditioning for an adult film in the middle of our living room."
Hongjoong reached out across the table, his hand searching until his fingers brushed against Seonghwa’s arm.
"Seonghwa," Hongjoong said clearly, turning his sightless face toward his roommate. "Show me what the idiot did."
Seonghwa let out another breathy, melodic chuckle. He took Hongjoong’s hands in his own, guiding the blind boy’s fingers. First, he shaped Hongjoong's hands into the correct sign for *sausage*—letting him feel the neat, horizontal bar and the gentle pinch of the links.
"Okay, that makes sense," Hongjoong murmured, feeling the structure. "Very logical. Now show me what Mingi did."
Seonghwa, with pure mischief sparkling in his eyes, took Hongjoong’s right hand, clamped it into a tight fist, brought it down near Hongjoong’s lap, and gave it one sharp, unmistakable upward pump.
Hongjoong’s jaw dropped. He snatched his hand back as if he had touched a hot stove.
"Song Mingi!" Hongjoong roared, though his lips were twitching with uncontrollable laughter. "You are banned from using sign language forever! I am confiscating your hands!"
"It was an honest grammatical error!" Mingi protested loudly, though the tension had completely shattered, replaced by the warm, easy rhythm of four friends laughing together on a sunlit floor.
Seonghwa reached over and picked up a warm, sugar-dusted pastry from the box, breaking it cleanly in half. He pressed one half into Mingi’s hands, then reached across and tapped Hongjoong’s wrist, offering him the other piece.
When Hongjoong took it, the sweet scent of cinnamon and red bean filling the space between them, Seonghwa tapped Hongjoong’s knuckles once—the silent, familiar code for *eat*.
For the next hour, breakfast continued in a comfortable, fluid dance of adaptation.
Without his hearing aids, Seonghwa was entirely unburdened. He didn't have to strain against the acoustic clatter of the room, didn't have to wince when Mingi accidentally dropped a ceramic fork against the table. Instead, he relied completely on the visual landscape: watching Yunho’s lips move with clear, patient diction; watching Mingi’s animated, oversized gestures; and reaching out every few minutes to tap Hongjoong’s arm, keeping the blind boy tethered to the conversation.
And Hongjoong, who spent his entire life analyzing acoustic input, found himself relaxing into the rare, peaceful cadence of the morning. With Yunho and Mingi narrating what was happening with casual, unforced ease, Hongjoong didn't have to burn energy trying to calculate the visual geometry of the room.
"Yunho is stealing your napkin," Hongjoong noted casually, taking a sip of his tea.
Yunho paused, his hand hovering over Seonghwa’s corner of the table. He stared at Hongjoong in utter shock. "How could you possibly know that? The paper barely made a sound!"
"The draft changed," Hongjoong replied with a smug little smirk, tapping the side of his own temple. "Your sleeve brushed the table leg, and the frequency of the tea mug shifted when you reached past it. You're loud, Jeong Yunho. You have heavy elbows."
Seonghwa watched Hongjoong’s mouth, caught the gist of the accusation, and immediately slapped Yunho’s wrist with playful indignity, pulling his napkin back against his chest.
Yunho sighed dramatically, slumping against the low table. "I'm being outmaneuvered by a guy who can't see and a guy who can't hear. I thought business majors were supposed to have the strategic advantage."
"You have zero advantages here," Mingi said happily, his mouth full of red bean pastry. "We are in their domain now."
Seonghwa set his tea down, his dark eyes sweeping over the three of them. The morning sun had climbed higher, casting warm rectangles of gold across the carpet, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the quiet air.
He didn't need sound to know that this space was entirely safe. For twenty-one years, navigating the hearing world had felt like walking through a foreign country without a map, constantly apologizing for missing words, constantly carrying the heavy weight of other people's impatience.
He reached out and placed his hands flat against the wooden surface of the table.
Through the wood, he could feel the distinct, rhythmic signatures of his friends: the high, quick flutter of Hongjoong tapping his fingers to an internal beat; the deep, resonant vibrations of Mingi’s booming laugh shaking the table legs; the solid, steady anchor of Yunho leaning his forearms against the frame.
It was a physical symphony, composed not of decibels, but of warmth, pressure, and pulse.
Seonghwa raised his hands, catching everyone's attention. He looked at Mingi first, then Yunho, and finally touched Hongjoong’s sleeve so the blond boy turned his face toward him.
Slowly, gracefully, Seonghwa signed a phrase.
He touched his heart with the flat of his palm, drew both hands outward in a wide, sweeping arc that gathered all three of them into the space, and then clasped his hands together tightly, resting his chin above them with a soft, breathtaking smile.
*I am comfortable here. Thank you.*
Yunho understood the gesture instantly, a gentle, tender warmth softening his dark eyes. He didn't say a word aloud; he simply rested his hand over Seonghwa’s clasped fingers, giving them a firm, reassuring squeeze.
Mingi, still wary of making another anatomical error, carefully brought his flat palm to his chin and dropped it downward in the universal, clean sign for *thank you*, his face entirely earnest.
Hongjoong felt the shift in the air, the collective, quiet stillness that settled over the small circle. He reached across the small divide of the table, his fingers lightly finding the collar of Seonghwa’s silk pajama top, tugging it gently.
"Eat your pastry, Seonghwa," Hongjoong murmured, his voice soft, affectionate, and thoroughly grounded. "Before Mingi mistakes it for something else and eats it for you."
Seonghwa’s silent, breathy laugh brushed against Hongjoong’s hand, a warm, fluttering breeze in a world that needed no sound to be entirely, beautifully understood.