ANTARA 002 // Dokkaebi

Loosely inspired by the Korean folktale, 'Dokkaebi Bangmangi'

Read more stories from ANTARA here.

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DANCE SHEET

• SONG: ‘DOKKAEBI (도깨비 )’™¹

• WRITER(S): PCW Entertainment™ Park Bong-gil, Bryan Mandagi

• CHOREOGRAPHER(S): PCW Entertainment™ Jia Yìzé

• PERFORMER(S): LIMINAL (Park Bong-gil, Bryan Mandagi, Jia Yìzé, Kunimura Aiko)

• NOTES:

  • ‘DOKKAEBI’ will be the first single off of LIMINAL’s forthcoming third studio album, ‘Perfect Blues.’

  • ‘Neon Demons,’ the second studio album, failed to meet PCW’s financial projection. We hoped to sell at least 3.3 million copies, but poor critical reception quickly dashed all hope of that.

  • Do you any of you know how embarrassing that is? To spend 150,000,00 A$D (marketing + music video production + photoshoot + CD production + sponsorships) to barely break-even?

  • You boys will need to lift yourselves by your Coach and Chanel bootstraps, dust yourselves off, and work on a song to stop all summers stone-cold. Time to go back to basics. Which means:

    • No international features

    • No late-night talkshow appearances

    • No slacking, no crying, no smoking, no drinking

    • We’re talking more blood, sweat, and tears than a genocide

    • A blunt-force multicultural extravaganza²

  • It’s important we nail the details. If any of you are so much as a millimetre off from your mark, if your eye-lines don’t match, if your make-up dries and it turns you porcelain pretties into anaemic pumpkins—this song won’t work.

  • PCW strives for excellence in the arts, for enterprise in our sectors, for effervescence in public consciousness. We wring diamonds out of roughs, grind starlight from dross, and we will be damned to a ninth circle of poor cash flow and poorer revenue if LIMINAL cannot claw out of its rut.

  • Just remember, the ‘bad boys’ build-up to this was your fault. Not ours.

    • Bryan—why didn’t you wear make-up on live? You looked like a ghost. And why did you make a joke about a rope and stepping off a chair? Do you want the world to get the wrong idea?

    • Aiko—we didn’t say you could wear a crop-top with a golden ‘Nezha 2’ logo and show off your ringed belly button. Unhook the silver, and don’t show skin like that again.

    • Bong-gil—did you know there are cameras at Heaven’s Date? Sure, everyone enjoys some sodomy every now and then. Girlfriend, boyfriend—it’s none of our business, really. But on camera? Without warning nor apprehension? Make no mistake, you made it everyone’s business. You’re supposed to be single. You’re an idol, for Christ’s sake. What happened to your standards, your morality!

    • Yìzé—we didn’t tell you to voice an opinion on the South China Sea dispute. We’re your managers, not politicians. We stand nothing to gain from shadowboxing with the Antaran Parliament, let alone the CCP.

  ⓒ 2025 PCW Entertainment Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized copying, lending, public performance, broadcasting, and making transmittable of this record or choreography are strictly prohibited. Manufactured and distributed by PCW Entertainment. Made in Antara. PCW30052025.

[INTRO]

Oh-la-oh-la-oh-la-lok³

Oh-la-oh-la-oh-la-lok

Woods, woods, woods

STEP-BY-STEP:

Bong-gil, step to the dance floor. Don’t scrunch your face, we paid good Antaran dollars to double those eyelids. Curl your fingers into fists then extend out like a full-bloom bistorta incanica. Step, step, step, then stop under amber light. Wait on five. Flash a smile.

Bleach-bone spotlight tracks away, lands on Bryan. Get behind Bong-gil. Curl your fingers and smile the same as him. Why’re you sweating, Bryan? Tie that white headband tighter, the one with Chinese characters on it. What’s it say? ‘Heaven?’ Look for it tomorrow. Today, you sweat. Now both of you walk five paces, wait, wait. Now turn, heel twists, bend your knees, shuffle left, shuffle right, blades of your feet, angle them high like you’re about to cut the sky. Now stop, windmill your arms, punch left, punch right.

Yìzé, match them. But your outfit…god! Where’s your baggy denim, your royal blue letterman, your Ken doll smile? Smile, kid, come on, don’t look so sad, eyes up, shuffle left, shuffle right, now bolt forward, somersault, then land like a superhero. Not like that! Toes first, not heel! Now look at you, fallen on your hind. Put those puppy Chinese eyes away, we won’t toss you treats.⁴

Aiko, follow suit. Tie your black dendrite hair into a samurai man-bun. Line up to Yìzé, line up to the rhythm in a studio where glass panels stand tall to reflect you, where the coruscating neon and barking crowds of Antara pour through the transoms like uninvited ghosts. Don’t listen to the bartering, selling, commercialising, commodification coming from the outside. Don’t let the city’s miseries and romances resonate. Focus on yourself. Focus on your formations. We’re a team!

[VERSE 1]

Nuttier than gingko, party ‘till you bleed

Riding on tuktuks, souls gotta feed

Break your knees, break your legs, don’t break your spirit

You won’t ever break the limit ‘till you hit it (hit it)

Bite it like the dust

Go big or go bust

Nighttime running to make a

STEP-BY-STEP:

Bong-gil, aim your invisible gun. Widen those eyes. Now wait, three, two, one, BANG! Step backwards, always look ahead. Spread-eagle your arms, bow up, bow down. Now place palms to chest, ball them into fists, before swimming arms around. Not so weakly, idiot. Make it look killer, make it seem sexy. Don’t make it look like zen yoga repackaged for a seventeen-something Antarapop head. What would your mother think if she saw you struggling? Think about her.

Bryan, follow Bong-Gil. Following’s what you’re best at, after all. You’ve never grown an original bone in your body, and you’re too old to start now. Copy Bong-gil’s invisible gun and his invisible trigger, aim, steady, then pull. Same advice applies for you here. Don’t look like an instructor, stand proud, sing until your lungs burn and your chest singes, an Indonesian Acintya come to endow us with divinity.

Yìzé, they’re cueing you. Rush behind, jump, tuck your legs, land in the splits. Kip-up off the ground, Jackie Chan-style, but remember to maintain your timbre, your tone must be clear, you got it, right, you definitely do, don’t get stressed, this isn’t worrisome, this is normal, if anything there aren’t enough china plates for you to spin, so calm, jive, vibe, and go, ignore the jeers and leers and do every single thing at every single time. Easy.

Aiko, leap over Yìzé. The lime green limelight’s fallen to you now. As magistrate of this verse, you must entrap the audience’s attention. Think about a fawning Laotian swaying in the front row, her rigor mortis mouth, her high school skirt, a witness to electro-pop glossolalia, brown hands together in pious admiration. Think of the love in her pre-teen chest, threatening to burst her like a blister. Sing!

[CHORUS]

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Dream wishing, greed killing

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Rain pouring, deeds doing

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Copy a copy, family feud

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Dream and dream ‘till your self gets chewed

STEP-BY-STEP:

Bong-gil? You’re done for today? Strip-mined of parts? Fine, take a break, take the elevator, cycle along Antara’s snakeskin roads with your Randonneur, past Ocean Boulevard populated with gargantuan multiplexes and workaholics and salarymen and Antarapop stans. Yes, the stans. Can’t forget the stans crowding your driveway with their biases and anti’s⁵. But they could never love you like we do, you know this. It’s why you lock the deadbolt and chain before heading deeper into your KonMari⁶ penthouse on Macinto Hill. It’s why you lunge for the bronze barcalounger’s arm rest with your left hand, and a sparkling off-white makgeolli with your right. You shoot the shots as they come, slumping deeper into leathery slumber. One shot, two, three, four, five, six. A wheelgun cylinder’s worth of self-medication searing down your esophagus. Imagine if the fans knew what you did in the dark. Can’t know what comes for you at night. Can’t have that at all.⁷

Of course you follow him, Bryan. If you can’t beat Bong-gil, be Bong-gil, am I right? Flag a yellow cab adorned in ads, slipstream under brassy cumuli, take the scenic route smelling of sea salt through He-Ong with its gabled Japanese roofs, its spidery blossom trees, before you’re home in House Eighty-Eight, Jakartatown, an ivory tower for ivory people. There’s servants here. Skirt-wearing domestic helpers from Vietnam and the Philippines and Malaysia and wherever. But mom and dad aren’t here, nor is your little Lululemon⁸ sister ever since she fucked off for a Russell Group uni. Home’s not where your heart is anymore. So you lounge smoothly in your silky king-size. Head back, chin tucked, you thumb through algorithmic dreck, faceless messages poking through your soft skin, saying how far you’ve fallen. Calling you an industry plant seeking to uproot. Saying you’ll never be like the rest. You’re their least favourite, haven’t you heard? You sip and scroll through a day and age where to be a hater is to be a bodhisattva, where fear-mongering is democratised, where Bryan Mandagi’s life is so numbing he might as well be walking anaesthetic. Boring Bryan. Bad Bryan. One-hit-wonder Bryan. Ungrateful Bryan. Dry your eyes. Quit whining. Smile a little. Even if you never know yourself, you’ll always have LIMINAL.

Et tu, Yìzé? Tired? No? Good. We knew you were different. Everyone else goes home, but you always stay late. Always so dedicated to the craft. That’s why you’re always praxising pirouettes, body rolls, two-steps, ten toes down, rodeos, breaking, bounces, stomps. Even as you sweat buckets through your oversized red Hellstar shirt, you can’t help but praxis. When midnight spills into pre-dawn, dim chromatic LEDs swinging overhead, you’re still here, kicking off the vinyl floor, no one on the other end of the line except you, the music, the movement. But when you walk to the wraith white landline at the end of the dance studio, will you leave a message after the tone? Do you have anything to say? Anyone to call? Will you tell Bong-gil how you really feel about his cherubim cheeks and marrow smooth arms? How much you care? Will you finally be honest? No? Didn’t think so. Put the phone down, return to the vinyl. Return to work. It’s not like you’ve got anything else going on. It’s not like you’re worth anything more. So praxis, praxis, praxis makes perfect. Whatever heals that human-sized exit wound in your heart. Whatever keeps the demons down.

Kunimura Aiko, what a Dickensian thing you are. Unlike the others, you’ve never had that silver spoon safety net. Never known the comfort a nepotistic hand. You look at your Maynila Green warehouse conversion, restored like the Meiji period, but you don’t see beauty. You don’t feel the bristle of tatami, the sweet easterly wind playing through your balcony. You don’t see Spanish-style furniture. You just see who you used to be. Those aren’t your five-thousand-dollar sneakers—they’re the fragile sandals you used to share with your siblings (all gone now) because there was only so much cash to go around. That isn’t a wall-recessed 4K HDR, 7.14 Dolby—it’s the jerry-rigged boxhead TV with an antenna needing reset after every Rashomon rerun, colourful until it’s monochrome, smooth until it’s static.

You invite the boys over, gesticulate towards your property. Everything’s state of the art, bleeding edge, tabletops, cow leather pillows, lava lamps, East-West decor. It’s what you always wanted it to be, you say, even as you secretly seethe because you don’t can’t won’t forget who you used to be, what you used to do. All those people you hurt. All that violence you caused. Being an idol’s no different from being a criminal—only difference is where revenue comes from. So you do more. And take more. And drain more. Do you recognise the vampire in the broth reflection, Aiko? When’s the last time you felt welcome? When’s the last time you looked at a lower rung with appreciation instead of disdain? When did you last feel proud of the you you’ve become?

You all smile like hostages before diving into the Antaran hotpot set atop a teak table—crimson bubbling, spicy, sweet, and sour. Chopsticks pinching flaky pork cutlets, fish balls, beef strips, tofu, gyoza, sludges of MSG drowning plates. You each take turns chatting about nothing in chartreuse ambiance, but never about the elephants in the room. The beast weighing on all your minds like a Fuseli painting.

Yìzé and Bong-gil stare at each other with the eyes of desperate animals, but we don’t call it out—it’d be rude. Bryan’s own eyes are astronauts, drifting a million planets away. We don’t call it out, either. And your jealousy of the other boys, Aiko? It may be your cross to bear, but we don’t judge you for it. So extend the same courtesy we have shown you all.

We just want what’s best for you.

[VERSE 2]

Eyes on you ‘till you’re thin like me

Eyes on you ‘till you’re glass like me

Home’s not sweet when the going gets tough

Love lies weeping when you’ve had enough

Goblin green teeth, rending you

Daylight’s gone, whatcha gonna do

STEP-BY-STEP:

In a pretty house of shadows, beneath a shingled roof, sat on a plastic chair, Bong-gil takes a drink, the drink takes a drink, and the drink takes Bong-gil. Which is fine. If you wanna do it to death, go ahead. Just don’t get caught on camera.

Then there’s boring Bryan. Bastard Bryan. Bellyaching Bryan. Always on that damn phone Bryan. Following Bong-gil on the same downward path. Lying, napping, tired, clawing for the next day, the next minute, the next second. Twenty-four but you feel eighty. Skeleton weighing like a lodestone, you try standing. That’s all you need, just make your bed, just stand right up and flip the pan and flip some eggs and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step—

—but you won’t take it. Because of an imaginary feeling you’ve conjured in your head, an evanescence lashed into thin air. A singularity kaleidoscoping in your heart, a profoundly terrible bass, paralysing you. DSM-5 says the word begins with ‘d’. You call it the bass.

Whatever. Are you dead? No? Then get over yourself. Be proud! Words are just words. Get off that chair. Unravel that clovehitch in your hand. Who do you think you are, huh?

Kids these days.

Look at Yìzé. See how he conducts himself. He never lets fake, short-form content, short-form people, culture war, cyber warfare bullshit get to him. He never lets something illusory like ‘mental illness’ affect him, either. What a doll, and with that real-life sunflower BL manhwa⁹ face too. You’d never rebel, would you, Yìzé? You’ve been home only twice this week, both times at midnight, surrounded by bodyguards who look like gangsters. Rest of the time, you’re at work, an action figure prancing off the floor, dancing so hard you don’t even dare think of biting back, of getting up and

Yìzé’s breaths are black with ice, and his feet are lead-footed. They’ve been like that ever since he got the call from Bryan’s mom.

He sweats, but it isn’t from exhaustion. He shouldn’t, he can’t. What does it even matter? What will they do to me? Will Bong-gil even respond? Yìzé carries each question the way we think god carries the stars (stumbling, clumsily), praying for any light to guide him, all the way through fetching it off the hook, dialling a number, and the long, pained wait afterwards.

“Bong-gil here. Leave a mess—”

“I know it’s a fake. I know you’re there, and I know what you’re doing,” Yìzé says, fists clutched and shaking around the handle, “let me come over.”

Static chirping. Then, “okay,” says Bong-gil from the other end.

—what?

Strange.

Anyways.

Aiko, you want to know where ‘dokkaebi bangmangi’ comes from? Alright. You scour hands over your keyboard, barely paying attention to the light and night leaking past your house curtains, thinking about how stuck-up and thickheaded your peers are, wondering what makes this song work. Then you find where we based it off of.

The folktale’s a moral one, contrasting a kindhearted, filially pious son with his avaricious brother. Both children make wishes on two separate nights, when goblins come uninvited to their driveway to play tricks. One brother makes a wish, but there is evil in his heart, and so he is desecrated by the dokkaebi. The other has his wishes granted, and the love and respect of his parents.

Tale as old as time. Greed is bad. Love wins. Respect your elders.

You’re the latter brother, obviously. You’ve never been selfish. Of course you’ve never sold anyone out. Totally. Your parents were just overreacting, same as all your exes and record labels and business partners and blood brothers. It was just gun-fu. Just some light threatening, some light assault and battery. And your yakuza connection was only slight, of course.

You’re such a good, good boy.

How are your parents, by the way? Oh, really? How awful. Over the phone? A thousand thousand miles away? Tumours? Bills? We’re so sorry. But you want a break. Right. Well, now you’re just asking for too much. Like we said, you’re a good boy, and if you wanna keep being good, you better tread the beaten path. It’s been bruised purple for you. Follow it out the house, through slated sidewalks, down sleepless Antara, beside strip malls, jutting shafts of steel and rebar, minibuses, family noodle shops opposite fancy French fusions, numerous people caught up in the rigour of their lives. Make your way back to the dance studio in Goryeotown, where we wait with open arms.

Chin up, handsome—you’ve got practice.

[CHORUS]

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Dream wishing, greed killing

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Rain pouring, deeds doing

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Copy a copy, family fe

Yìzé leaves his Fear of God bomber on the coat stand. He rushes deeper into the home, into a living room where a languid man falls into leather-bound. A shot glass hangs halfway between his lips and his hand. Bong-gil sinks into his seat, an embryo cradled within the egg of his agony.

“It’s me,” Yìzé whispers, outstretching his arms like an animal handle.

Bong-gil’s glass is still in precarious carrion suspension. “Did you hear about Bryan?”

Yìzé nods, face ashen, cheeks slick with rain and tears. “They found him in his living room. His arms were,” but his head shirks away, "I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. It’s not like you did it to him, right?” Bong-gil wears the expression of someone tired of wearing expressions. Redness has fled his cheeks in place of a dark bloodlessness as he says, ”you don’t need to be here, Yìzé.”

Yìzé looks up again, offended. “You invited me.”

“Yeah, well, now I want you out.” But he senses no venom in the voice, only halfhearted frostbite. Bong-gil puts his glass on the table before climbing up. When he stands, it takes everything in his power not to shatter right then and there.

“We can’t.” Yìzé’s clicks his tongue and pounds his head, punishing himself for self-same sins. “He was my friend, too.”

Bong-gil doesn’t blink. Barely even breathes. “It was bound to happen. One way or another. And now I’m next, don’t you see?”

Before long, both boys are close, two eyes against two eyes, shadow against shadow, optically illusive, like an action movie poster, like Rubin’s vase—a sacred spot where what’s shared here will fly once, then never escape again.

“No,” Yìzé grasps Bong-gil’s cheek with an honest softness. “You’re not what they say you are. We can talk freely here. We’re safe. You’re safe. This is our spot. So talk to me. Please, please, please talk to me.”

To look at Yìzé is to stare at the sun. But though Bong-gil dodges this boy’s light, he cannot hide from the hot-white afterimages. Cannot ignore the swelling of emotion in his guts, or the direction—the person—his emotions point towards.

The embrace comes rough and fast like the last thing either will ever feel. Neither notices the salty tears streaming down their faces, their small sobs in a big dark. There is only a synchronisation of heartbeats, and a sacredness of space.

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Dream and dream ‘till your self gets chewed

STEP-BY-STEP:

Okay. What’s going on? What are you raconteurs doing inside those boxes of yours? In case you’ve both forgotten, this is PCW™’s sheet, which means PCW™ measures, PCW™ bars, PCW™ beats. Like we said, you’ve got practice afternoon, so that’s where you’re going, don’t fuck with our schedule.

Oh, I see. You’re both going to walk to Goryeotown together, two mirages slicing swaths through teeming masses, through a bleak midsummer’s day, beating out a brooding sun, two pairs of feet over oiled passageways and bumpy asphalt roads, next to Toyotas and Hyundais and Peroduas violating traffic laws, two hands together finding their path through the greatest party city there ever was. That’s the game we’re playing then, huh? What do you two think you are, lovers?

Stupid, stupid, stupid. So much beauty between you two, yet absolutely nothing behind it. Haven’t you learned?

There is no love in Antara. No love at all.

But sure. Gotta hold onto what you can in this kamikaze life. Better to sizzle out as two supernovas than simply one. It’s why you two latch onto each other in fleshy symbiosis, backs against the corrugated steel of the elevator, sweat dripping, hands clammy, each floor icon lighting as you both fail further and further upwards our Goryeotown building, where our studio beckons with its pristine lighting and varnished panelling.

Let’s check on Bryan in his quaint little home.

Oh, he’s just hanging out—all veins, limp wrists, bloodless, dangling and dangling from a revolving ceiling fan like a dreamcatcher. Sunburnt officers glide around the scene like ancient spirits with mackintoshes and permanent scowls. They survey the appliance clutter and quiet destruction. Then they see the boy, at which point they turn their heads down. Just another common sight in our great city. The news will break soon. Princess Diana and Leslie Cheung will have nothing on Bryan Mandagi.

Oops.

Yes, we know. We know. Come on, boys. Don’t look at us like that from where you’re standing in the studio, alright? Don’t perceive us callous. You’d have responded the exact same in our position. Of course with this loss, we’ve lost our key to the Southeast Asian market. Indonesians were always such big customers of ours, but alas. There are no words to purify the tragedy. A lighthouse we thought permanent amidst the roiling oceans of the world has been suddenly, and irrevocably closed. We understand how it’s far from ideal, that it’s quite the bloodied blow to our operations.

But it’s not our fault boys are made of porcelain.

Ah, there you are Aiko, panting and braying by the door jamb. You heard the news? Go on, walk over to where Yìzé and Bong-gil are standing. Ask that they show their phone, slide through manic text messages. Read their faces like a stargazer reads the skies. See their fear.

When we nursed you boys from nothing after sifting between hundreds of potential candidates, there was an agreed covenant. Unspoken and underlying, but ratified nevertheless. In return for your silences and bound feet, we fashioned your hair, fit you under the wing of the greatest dancers, vocalists, producers, and artists in all the world, and made spectacles of your fractal selves. Ten years of becoming light beams fed into the PCW™ prism, and now you want out? Who would bear sight of your radiances then? Where would all the talent go, if not to waste? We paid court, and this is what we get?

You’re ungrateful, is what you are.

We see you three as you three see us. We see each of you in your readied stances, in your fast fashion e-boy fits, clenched fists, pacing anxiously ever forwards along rubber jigsaw mats, faces in puffed thrombosis, terror on your tongues, anticipating our rebuttal.

Good. Keep that energy up. It’s practice time.

[BRIDGE]

Oh-la-oh-la-oh-la-lok

Woods, woods, woods

Oh-la-oh-la-oh-la-lok

Woods, woods, woods

STEP-BY-STEP:

Bong-gil, step to the dance floor under our glittering limelights. Your face is still scrunched, so un-scrunch it. Run through the routine again, same as last time. No, what’s that you’re retrieving from your front pocket? A balisong with a scarlet handle? Wow, real classy, Bong-gil. Definitely not overdramatic, especially as you lurch like a stray pet and aim its serrated end at us, inching closer and closer with espionage steps. What’s your goal here? To make us afraid? Achieve payback for all those years we helped GPT generate your career? Your boyfriend looks pretty damn scared of you too, with his jazz hands and nervous chinky smile and bent knees. As if your drunk dumbass could actually do anything to impede or injure our institution. But we don’t need a battle, let alone a war. Let’s settle how we always do—clinically white conference rooms, paperwork on glass tables, ballpoints in hopeful suspension.

Last chance, Bong-gil. And you, Yìzé. Put it away. Make amends, and thou shalt be forgiven.

No?

Right. Uh-huh. You want to exercise your exit clause. And a severance package to boot.

Blood for blood.

Well, don’t get too excited. I think Aiko’s been craving for some blood of his own. There’s only so much pie in the sky to go around, after all.

Yeah, that’s it. Get at it. Eye each other carefully. Two-versus-one tracing expeditious circles along rubber mats, tracking the dirt and scum and grief of Antara under your NBs and Air Forces. Prey analysing prey. Crabs understanding the choke of their barrel. Can you see how hungry they are for your spot, Aiko? The only reason Bong-gil and Yìzé are even together is because they want to reduce your role, rendering you a nameless, numberless thing. An ant in an afterbirth. A naked emperor. They’ll throw you back in state penitentiary along with every other tattooed and slicked-back sumo-looking motherfucker you’ve thrown under a thousand different buses. They want what you have, Jap boy.

Question is—what’re you gonna do about it?

[CHORUS]

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Dream wishing, greed killing

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Rain pouring, deeds doing

STEP-BY-STEP:

No one can deny the old fierce pull of blood, the burn and boil of it under skin. That’s what you’re feeling, Bong-gil, as you slash and weave and duck beneath Aiko’s jabs. No formal training, instinct and adrenaline’s good enough. Grip his jacket, massage the polyester, then lunge for his eyes so that he can’t see what you’ve become.

Ah, but he’s too quick. Slippery. So slippery you trip and watch the balisong fly out of arm’s reach and land a humbug’s length away from our plastic table.

Now Aiko guns for you, Yìzé. No training with you either, so you’ve got to deck it out like it’s the streets, like your purse is being stolen, like your entire manhood is being ruined. Yeah, get it! Elbows like daggers, knees like javelins. Tony Jaa type beat, Scott Adkins side kick, Donnie Yen roundhouse. One, two, three. Oh, but Aiko’s speedier than you reckon for, he’s got a yakuza limbic system, violent heuristics he can recall, so that’s why he can overcome you and bash your head in like this, just so, and then again, and then again, against a radiator shaped like a maw, heat steaming, cooking the sides of your skin. Come on, Yìzé, we trained you better than that! Just like we’ve always been saying before, match him! Match the others! Where’s your work ethic now?

Take out his eyes, Aiko. Grip the chink’s face like a steering wheel. Track the boy’s softness, seek out his eyelids with your nails. Pretend there’s front row purchasers watching, spending their currencies in attention and coin and blood. Think of the showmanship, think of coliseums. Think of how crazy of a cock you are, of your fluttering feathers, of stacks upon stacks being betted upon your namesake. See his fear, swirl it along your tongue, smell it until the only one in LIMINAL’s space is you. It’s just business, Aiko. Don’t cry. Friendships are just friendships, you know. They come and they go, same way your fists come and go, denigrating viscera. They’re beautiful while they last, but that’s all. Don’t worry, don’t squirm, just feel his face and the unfurling of his face, smell the musk of red and oldness, there’s insurance, it’s all simony, absit iniura, canis canem edit.

But Bong-gil’s scrappy, isn’t he?

So scrappy you don’t ever see him coming from behind, not until he grasps you and digs that serrated ending over and over, recursively, and the moment is a broken reel of film that keeps replaying long after the orchestra’s stopped and the audience has exited the multiplex. Sticky pools leak and lie underneath. The someone you used to be disembowels out in long gushing goodness like a series of decanted failed births. Deltas run from the exit spaces, canvassing the mats, filling darknesses between them. The jigsaws are more secure now.

Sayonara.

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Copy a copy, family feud

Dokkaebi bangmangi (도깨비 방망이)

Dream and dream ‘till your self gets chewed

STEP-BY-STEP:

Congratulations, you two. It’s the end of the number, when everyone’s expended their breaths, when the crowd winds down before driving back to unknown places and unknown lives, when we all thank you for the show because we have to, because you like it, because you’ll take it, and take it good. Step over the broken and bowed. Watch an outsider sun try and split the diffusive grey morning only to find its god-rays made into murky scattershot. Brightened spokes jut through the glass, coming for your pairs of feet.

Sheathe the balisong. Smile for us, Bong-gil, Yìzé. Put a hand in a hand, widen your expressions, we’ll lead you to our back room where this whole ordeal will be awash, blackboxed, redacted and red-taped. You’ll get Aiko’s share, a slice of his wardrobe (you could pick it off from him right now, if you’d like), and any time spent overlooking him will now be spent ensuring you boys are as prim and proper as you’ve ever been. Do you want to apologise? We’ll gladly accept one (preferably in written format to be disseminated internally), but we don’t mind the scornful frown, shaking fists, and an unsteady quiet.

Listen to that, the quiet and its momentariness. Feel how we are entombed by it. Everything’s so fiery and foul in this city, it’s such a wonder to come across stillness.

Alright. We’re standing up now from behind this draped table, levelling with you both. Let’s shake on it. See our hands groping from the dark and into your sight? This is for your sake, and for ours. LIMINAL forever. PCW Entertainment™ forever.

Come on.

Don’t leave us hanging.

Shake on—

Hey, respect our space. What are you doing?

Stand back, boys. Stay porcelain. Come on, this isn’t funny.

Get away, now.

I said, get awa

World’s a party of deafening metal clashes, rubber pig squeals, thumbs on phones, analog dying to make way for digital. Out here is the kind of summer only the Equator could nurture, steaming the corner of 45th and Cure where Bong-gil and Yìzé rush steadfast along its stone. They get far, far, far away from the glass panelled studio, that cloying, maddening, limbo-esque place. In the wake of noon, they are two among many, flies within a horde. But these flies have faces. And they feel their faces with hands that follow, feeling eyes, lips, tongue, static electricity, lightning bottled between two boys bound.

There is something strange and sickly on their hands. It smells metallic.

In weeks to come, a million candles will burn, then fade. The smoke will never clear. Shareholders will enact a changing of the directorial guard, citing irreconcilable differences. A story will be passed from keyboard to screen, cable to cable, link to link. But for now, people pass by, pick noses, scroll mindlessly, thump feet, and lose themselves in transaction. They do not recognise their b-boy gods, not with all the smears and sweat and stink upon them.

Knowing this, our porcelain boys smile in the light, each one’s face in each one’s hand.

There are no cameras.

Read more stories from ANTARA here.

1. ‘Dokkaebi’, AKA ‘Korean goblins’ are creatures of the spirit world, often defined by their mischevious (sometimes malevolent) behaviour. They like playing tricks on people. In Goryeotown—Antara’s biggest Korean community—’dokkaebi’ are often referenced idiomatically. Slip on a banana peel? Dokkaebi. Lose your job? Dokkaebi. Family member dies? Gets kidnapped? Mauled, mutilated? Dokkaebi.

2. For ‘Perfect Blues’, the eponymous next lead single, we’ll sample polyrhythms from Drum Boy, a black rapper from America. You think we could squeeze in a lyric, call it ‘from Atlanta to Antara?’ Will it sidestep the whinging about cultural appropriation?

3. ‘Lok’ is a particle used in Antaran English (colloquially referred to as Anatarlish) to emphasise sentences, to soften their meaning, to show acceptance, to persuade someone else, to make fun. Similar to ‘lah’ from Singaporean English and Hong Kong Cantonese, ‘lok’ is another Swiss Army knife of ASEAN English.

4. PCW™ would like to apologise in advance for any number of the racially denigrative remarks made over the course of this work. We have made severe and continuous lapses in our judgement, and we will do our best to rectify this in subsequent paragraphs.

5. Bias refers to someone’s favourite member of an idol group. The one they’d go screaming through the fires of hell for. Anti refers to someone’s least favourite member. They’d endure similar lengths to ensure this idol suffers a death worse than death.

6. Marie Kondo.

7. Drink all you like in Antara, unless you’re a pop idol, in which case, God help you.

8. Google how Chip Wilson, the founder of the brand, came up with the name ‘Lululemon.’

9. Boys’ love is a genre of media with a focus on romantic homosexual relationships, with a focus on homoerotic and sexual literary themes. Here at PCW Entertainment™, we foster an inclusive environment to properly reflect our diverse community.