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Two glasses of Taittinger and he's at his limit.
His aunts had spared no expense: palm trees, celebrity chefs, neon fountains that danced like the northern lights. A pianist poached from the Vienna Philharmonic who is, in Soobin's biased opinion, nothing special.
The combined cream of the guests in attendance is enough to purchase a small country with ease—excluding offshore accounts—and yet, it’s Soobin who’s the hot commodity of the evening. He can barely move for being buried under diamond-crusted talons; Tell us about yourself, Soobin-ssi. Are the rumors true?
He catches his breath against a seahorse-shaped centerpiece, the giant koi at its heart winking red and gold. Its chill is welcome on his fevered skin.
The whole ball of wax might have been bearable if Kai were by his side. He'd affect incomprehension with the steel magnates from Seoul, apologetically shaking his head at some socialite's French—never mind that he spoke six languages. It worked, too, because who wouldn't believe a face like that? Afterwards, they'd laugh about it in the greenhouse with pockets full of hors d'oeuvres until the sun came up, or Soobin was summoned to play dutiful host once again.
Most things were bearable when Kai was by his side.
The band starts a new refrain, and that’s Soobin’s cue to slip around the seahorse to the staircase behind. They’ll come to look for him soon enough, but with only an hour and twenty to midnight, he figures, at the very least, he has the rest of the year to himself.
And there’s only one person he wants to spend it with.
When Soobin was a child, the frames adorning the stairwell used to house famous pieces, pieces he recognised in books. Now, most of it is his own work. The art grows more polished the further he ascends — a Friesian in a field; a snake swallowing a pomegranate whole; two songbirds in gilded cages. A sandy-haired boy on a sandy beach, smiling wide as green waves kissed his feet.
Soobin has always abhorred parties, the noise and the posturing, but this one leaves a worse taste in his mouth than usual. Because he doesn’t know the details of their finances, but he knows the Chois are in decline—that these days, the family name outstrips their means. Besides the disappearing paintings, he’s noticed gaps in the orchard; the serving staff getting cut back; their other properties, where he'd spent summers in his youth, being sold off one by one. Which isn't to say he's surprised. It's been a long time coming, after all.
Appearances, however, had to be maintained at all cost. At any cost.
Soobin’s aunts (vineyards and shipping respectively) said his parents had been reckless people. Too trusting, too trigger-happy with their money. When they died, the stocks started to freefall, board members smelling blood in the water. The Choi group is done for, they said. The first son is dead and the second is but a boy. Dig the grave, make it deep.
And a couple of years after that, there had been an incident: some bad business decisions on his brother-in-law's part, oil not being where it should have. His sister filed for divorce to save face, if nothing else, of which their youngest aunt—owner of a prominent nationwide masthead—made no secret her disdain. I warned that girl to sign a prenup. Only fools gamble on things fickle as love.
So that left Soobin, an heir with no inheritance. He sees the night for what it really is: a desperate, last-ditch attempt to secure one.
Kai is where he guessed he'd be—at the grand piano on the third floor balcony. It's smaller than the one in their ballroom, but his friend preferred playing in the open air, said there was no better audience than the moon herself. Romantic, Soobin would laugh, pinching his cheek just to be a shit. It was getting harder to do that, of late. Kai’s cheeks, once soft and aplenty, had given way to sharp angles that bent light like a prism. When he wasn’t smiling, he could almost pass for one of the statues in the garden.
He smiles now at Soobin’s arrival, wordlessly making room on the duet bench without missing a note. His hair is in soft curls for the evening, burnt caramel on cream. The reason Soobin's palette is always running out of ochres. He resists the urge to touch.
Kai's family was what his aunts called new money, their lips curling ever-so-slightly in distaste.
The Huenings, to the quiet outrage of the silver-spoon circuit, had made their fortune from scratch. They'd done this by patenting revolutionary menstrual health science, and hung bold, emphatically fallopian art on every square inch of wall to honour it. They weren't affiliated with any clubs, rotary or country. They served interesting (Aunty Vineyard said the word like it was sacrilegious) "root-based" wines as if it were running out of style. The opposite of class, a far cry from cultured.
Soobin doesn't tell them that if given the choice, he'd take Kai's gaudy mansion with its mosaic windows and collection of leis in the foyer over their own refined marble estate any day.
The tune lifting from the ivory sounds like an old friend, but he can't place any of the classics. Knowing Kai, it could very well be a new idol group number that he'd heard and then transcribed by ear.
Soobin watches his beautiful hands fly across the keys, feeling that familiar calm settle in his stomach. It gives him the courage to say what he'd come here for.
"My aunts want me to marry."
Kai's fingers falter, depressing too many keys at once. The resulting cacophony is hard to distinguish from the yawning in Soobin’s chest.
"They've invited a catalogue of poor girls tonight with the potential to be Mrs. Choi Soobin," he continues, before biting his lip, wry. "Well, not poor."
They wished to wash their hands of Soobin and his family tragedy once and for all, and honestly, who could blame them? The country's best shamans had been consulted, drums and smoke filling the halls of his home, but still, what if it was contagious? Better to get it all over and done with before the year is up—fix a match tonight, have him married by Seollal. There are few people more superstitious than the obscenely rich.
When Kai finally speaks, it’s soft and measured, like he’s counting each word. "What, now? That’s ridiculous. I mean, you're only—"
"I'm twenty-one, Kai-yah. Tomorrow I'll be twenty-two.” Already more than what he would've got as a daughter.
On his lap, his mother’s watch catches the moon, each stone on the clock-face reflecting tiny stars onto the inside of his wrist. He still slides it on every morning even though it’d long since stopped telling the time.
"But hyung—"
"Kai-yah, I'm tired," Soobin sighs, the champagne making him honest. He turns just enough to rest his forehead on Kai’s shoulder, broader and steadier than he remembers. "It's been a long, long night. Can you just—play for me?"
Kai has more to say that he doesn’t, and Soobin keeps his eyes closed to put off reading it on his face. This time, the sound the piano makes is forlorn, like things had and lost.
Most people know that Soobin is the third child, second son, in line to take over the Choi group. Fewer know that he's gay. And after Aunty Newspaper had done her work, only a handful are aware that when Soobin was a boy, he'd come very close to getting kicked out of his prestigious private school in Tokyo.
"Becoming an orphan overnight can be a terrible shock," his aunts had appealed to the school board, smoothing over any displeasure with a generous donation. "Kids will do whatever it takes to assuage grief."
They said it was grief, but Soobin isn’t so sure. This is who he's always been. All it had taken was a little push—nails in coffins, proverbial and not. By day, he plays the role that's expected of him: equable, agreeable, the perfect nephew, the perfect heir; but at night he is his parents' son. Reckless.
Soobin had been discovered at an illegal den in Kabukicho with two hours to sunrise, wagering away what was left of his inheritance.
It was right after another investor had pulled out, his sister's marriage very publicly being investigated by the press. The phrase gold digger had been thrown about. He wasn’t thinking straight. He wasn’t thinking at all, really.
Drunk on liquid courage and foolish hope, he'd bribed a sunbae into making a large withdrawal from his trust. If he could just triple what he'd brought tonight, it might be enough to appease the aunts and leave him free forever. To start over in the countryside, perhaps, with postcard views wherever he looked and enough hours in the day to paint...
But he just lost, and lost again. Soon Soobin was staring down an empty case, the dealer asking him if he was in for another round. Play or give up your seat, kid. We can't wait forever.
His eyes strayed to the rocks on his wrist.
The music stops.
"You could marry my noona," Kai blurts out. His voice goes up, sounding fourteen instead of nineteen. "She wouldn’t mind.”
It almost makes him laugh, the thought of what the aunts might say to that. They acted like someone had died when Kai’s sisters' skirts so much as ended too far above their knees. Lately, Lea had traded in skirts altogether for avant garde pantsuits by promising young designers—one of whom she was seeing, intimately.
"You could go down to the registry and get a divorce once things have settled down—"
“I think she would mind, Huening,” Soobin says gently, squeezing his shoulder. “As would her girlfriend.”
Kai’s lips flatten to a line. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, blinking slow. “They’d do it for you. We'd do it for you."
And there lies the problem, doesn't it? He can't drag Kai into this because—because he's young and naive and while Soobin can feign ignorance all he wants, he understands only too well what it means when Kai looks at him like that. The Huenings have always felt more like family than his own blood. Which is why he can't take advantage of their goodwill for his champagne problems. Not his parents, not his sisters, and of all people, not Huening Kai.
"Or…" Kai starts again, his eyes glazing over. Ah, he's going to say it.
"You could marry me."
Soobin snorts. "That's definitely illegal."
Kai's brows furrow, a pair of tildes. "It won't be tomorrow. In less than an hour I'll be twenty, and no one can say a thing."
Maybe telling him was a mistake. Kai, bless his heart, lived in a rags-to-riches fairytale that saw splendid sunsets every day, gave away love and trust like pittance because he had so much to spare. Soobin lives in the real world. He knows how this will go.
He'll sign some papers, wed a nice girl, move to Cannes or Shanghai or San Jose with the blessing of his aunts and wealthy in-laws; and try not to end up like his older brother, who’d lost his balance on Mapo bridge and tumbled headfirst into the Han.
They said it was an accident, but Soobin isn’t so sure. One could get tired of this life. Lose more than just balance.
His hand slides up to Kai's soft curls. When they were twelve and fourteen, and Kai—still too small for his suits—first started showing up around this side of town, Soobin had taken him along to the silkworm farm his family used to own. Wet face pressed up against the glass, Kai had been inconsolable after learning how many creatures died for a single yard of silk. It’s why Soobin doesn’t wear any to this day. The texture, for him, is preserved in the pages of that time, along with his mother’s scarves, her deep, layered voice. The imitation stuff was good enough, but it didn’t hold a candle to this. Burnt caramel on cream.
Kai's eyelashes flutter at the touch, a butterfly beating its wings—and Soobin glimpses another life, a different life, one that is theirs and theirs alone. If only he's brave enough to reach for it.
But he isn't.
"Don't worry about me, Kai-yah," he says, tucking a lock behind his ear. "It’ll be alright."
Kai holds out his hand.
(Are these real, said the dealer in Japanese.
Yes, said Soobin.)
"Dance?" Soobin blinks. He’d prepped for resistance, maybe tears. Not this. "On the balcony? With no music?"
"If Soobinie-hyung keeps his big mouth shut, we should be able to hear Philharmonic from below," says Kai. His extended arm doesn't budge. "I've been looking forward to it all evening."
"Cheeky," Soobin says. "But spare yourself the disappointment. He's got nothing on you."
Kai just laughs. "You’re the only one in the whole world who’d think that. Come on, hyung."
Soobin allows himself to be pulled to his feet, embracing the strangeness. Kai is right—if he stays perfectly silent, he can make out the faint strains of a piano on the wind. The music is punctuated with cicadas and what he can only assume is the sound of several tons of priceless jewellery clinking together in the distance. Hell, why not.
It’s the warmest winter the country has seen in decades. He rests a hand on Kai's shoulder, trying to commit the soft blues and greys of moonlight on him to memory. One last dance, and then Soobin will go back downstairs and be the person they want him to.
Kai is far better than he expected. He steps and turns with grace, leading with the practice of someone socially trained. His breath tickles the shaft of skin below Soobin’s ear.
"Our Hueningie is all grown up," Soobin teases, trying to keep up, keep his voice even. "I didn't know you could waltz."
This seems to amuse Kai. "There's a lot hyung doesn't know about me," he says, and spins Soobin around.
Kai was the one who'd found him.
"Hyung, you said you wouldn't come around here anymore." His arrival had drawn the attention of the den's other patrons, none of it welcome. In the right light, or lack thereof, Soobin could pass for twenty. Kai most certainly could not. No one had an issue with minors where they had no business being, but they didn't want trouble either. And Kai's crumpled elite uniform and pearl cufflinks smelled like millions of won in trouble.
Not yet, Soobin had told him. He was on the brink of a breakthrough, he was going to change the tide. He could feel it. Just a little more. How much did Kai have in his wallet?
Kai's hand closed around the watch, around his wrist. The tremor in his voice betrayed his age but his grip held fast, an anchor in a storm. "Come back to school, alright? Whatever it is, we'll deal with it. The two of us."
Not yet, said Soobin. Hyuka, please. For hyung?
The look on Kai's face haunted Soobin for days after.
We're leaving, he'd said. Let's go back together. I'll play for you.
A lot had changed since. Soobin had lost prestige, liberty, his sense of self, even, but Kai remained the same. A steady anchor when everything else was up in the air. He still had the same wide eyes, the same ridged nose, the same disarming smile, and it strikes Soobin, belatedly, devastatingly, that no painting will ever do it justice.
Soobin used to believe that as long as they were together, the rest of the world was white noise. Bromides like hell and high water; harsh words, addiction, or grief—he could bear it all as long as Kai was by his side. It's only just hitting him that that will no longer be an option.
A gong sounds from down below, signalling that there's less than an hour until midnight. Suddenly there doesn't seem to be enough time in the year. For them, for Soobin to say all he'd wanted to say. How, on most days, his throat burns up from inside with the acid of keeping it in. No, he can't just leave like this.
"Kai-yah," he says, seven years of amber resin cracking in his throat, "I need to tell you—"
The smile that softens Kai's face gives away nothing. "Don't worry, hyung. Save it for tomorrow."
(It wasn't the first time, and it wasn't the last. But Kai always came to find him, stayed until the end.)
"You're leaving," says Kai.
Soobin isn't sure he heard right. "What?"
"You're going to run, hyung." The urgency in his voice makes the hair on Soobin's knuckles stand straight. "Everyone is celebrating, they won't ask after you for another couple of hours, at least. Go now, now's the best time. I— I'll cover."
"Huening Kai," Soobin drops his arm, incredulous. "You're not serious?"
Kai was young, he was naive, but Soobin had never pinned him for a fool. But these were a fool’s words. Run? Where would he go? For how long? Ever since the incident of his school days, he's had a sneaking suspicion his aunts have him tailed. And his face was hardly a stranger to the news—he’d be found in minutes.
"I am," says Kai, with the same surety with which he'd said we'd do it for you. He has his phone in his hand, typing and swiping. "Here."
Their Line chat lights up with coordinates.
"What—what’s this?"
In the moonlight, Kai turns a hue Soobin's never seen on him before. Seashell pink. "A little minbak just off Incheon,” he coughs. “Found it on a fishing trip with my sisters. I go there sometimes with… men."
Oh. There’s a lot he doesn't know about Kai.
"It's remote and they don't ask questions. You should be safe there until—"
"Until what?" Soobin feels like he’s ten years old, deep-diving in the Maldives. Despite his best attempts, his body is rising fast, too fast to be safe, those little nitrogen bubbles the instructor had warned him about building in his veins. But he can't stop. The sun is so close, splitting the water surface into a thousand shades of green. Hope is a futile, fanciful thing, he knows. For children, the heartbroken, the terminally ill, Kai. And yet.
"Until I can come and find you," Kai grips his arm tight enough to cut circulation. "After that we'll go somewhere. Anywhere. Okay? Okay, hyung?"
"Kai, too?" Soobin asks. His legs melt at the knees, drip-drip-dripping liquid gold. It's a relief that Kai is there to hold him up.
Instead of responding, Kai just knocks their foreheads together. Soobin blinks a mutinous tear away and inhales, the sharp scents of peppermint under cologne piercing his senses. It doesn't need to be said. Kai too.
By the time they get back inside, the firework display has begun. Stars—red, blue, and green, explode in the night sky to cheers and applause from the guests. Soobin pays them no notice, busy throwing shirts into a rucksack by the fistful. Nylon, linen, thousand-thread Egyptian cotton. No silk. Don’t forget your charger, says Kai. Don’t forget your powerbank.
Don't forget my watch, says Soobin.
He'd pressed it into Kai's chest earlier, cutting his protests short. For safekeeping, he'd said, and meant more than just the watch. You can give it back when we meet again.
The plan is that Soobin will drive out during the commotion at twelve and spend the rest of the night at the B&B. Shortly before dawn, one of Kai’s close contacts, Kang, will be at Seohaean toll booth to let him through without triggering the hi-pass. At 5:53 AM exactly, so don’t be late, says Kai.
Contact? Soobin raises an eyebrow. Kai blushes seashell again. A friend.
And after that? After that Kai will come and find him and they'll fly away to a place so obscure that no one has ever heard of Soobin, the Chois, or their tragedy. Somewhere. Anywhere. It hardly mattered as long as Kai was by his side.
Soobin passes the paintings along the stairs, not sparing them a second glance. He wonders if it's illegal to be this happy. He feels like he's floating, far, far above sea level. Maybe they’d go someplace near the sea—
"Hyung, wait!" Kai cries, and there is a tremor in his voice. A tremor that solidifies all the gold in Soobin's feet, their weight dragging him back to Earth.
There it is. He knew it was too good to be true.
Kai bounds down the steps, two at a time. He was coming to return the watch, to tell Soobin to forget about the whole thing. Because he couldn't trust himself to show up tomorrow. Because he was scared.
Soobin isn't disappointed. He can't fault Kai for reconsidering being an accomplice to this ridiculous getaway plan. It was a long shot, a fairytale notion doomed to fail from the start. Still—still. His chest burns. It was nice to imagine what freedom might taste like, just for a little while.
Kai jumps the last few stairs, landing just short of him. His cheeks are flushed. From remorse, Soobin thinks. From shame.
"Take this," Kai says, shoving cold metal into his palm.
Soobin stares, bewildered, at the automatic key to Kai's car.
Then the quarter hour gong strikes, and Soobin is acutely aware of three things:
The first is that Kai isn't all that young; and he is far from naive. He doesn't need Soobin to protect him. In fact, somewhere along the years, the lines had blurred and their roles reversed. Soobin has had someone looking out for him longer than he's been aware.
Second, Kai has grown up well. Once upon a time, Soobin could rest his head on top of Kai's without any strain to his neck, but not anymore. Kai is tall like his father and beautiful like his mother.
Third, this was no small risk. If they followed through and were discovered, it would be the end of their friendship as he knew it. The aunts may have tolerated his whims and vices when they could be easily explained away, but no longer. Soobin would go from the second son to the not-so-secret shame. What would become of his sister? The press would have a field day.
Headlines flash in his mind's eye. History Repeats: Choi Group Heir found at Mapo Bridge.
He might never see Kai again.
Maybe that's why he does it.
The kiss is chaste, cold. Soobin hopes it's enough. He swallows Kai's aborted gasp, the sound warming him down to his toes.
(it tastes like this)
Kai is still for six seconds (Soobin counts, the whole world holds its breath) and then he's sliding an arm around his waist, responding with such enthusiasm that they nearly lose their footing. His teeth graze skin, and sharp, metallic euphoria fills Soobin's mouth.
The Kai he knows is too small for his suits, playing Bach and girl group songs with equal finesse, or lullabies when the nightmares are keeping Soobin awake. Crying over silkworms, covering Soobin's palm with his in a dark room far from home and saying I'll stay with you tonight. This is the same Kai, and yet, it's—not. The Kai he knows can't kiss like this.
(there's a lot he doesn't know about Kai)
When he makes to pull away, Kai follows, his pianist fingers grabbing the wool of Soobin's suit. "Hyung," he whispers, a soft, broken sound.
"Not now, Hyuka-yah," says Soobin, dredging up self-control he didn’t know he possessed. "Save it for tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Kai promises. His silk-soft hair is spun gold in Soobin's fist, and his eyes shine to match.
It wasn't going to be easy. They might get caught. At the minbak, at the tollbooth, four months later in the tabloids, Kai's name disgraced along with his own. Maybe he'd be caught even before he made it out the wrought iron gates of his family's estate.
And who knows (Soobin swallows, his throat resin-tight): one or both of them might change their mind.
Only fools gamble on things fickle as love.
As he waits for midnight in the driver's seat of Kai's vintage Mercedes, heat rising off the wheel, Soobin weighs the stakes. His standard of living. His family's approval. A safe, secure future. Peppermint under cologne, waves on a sandy beach, the lingering warmth of Kai's lips. His voice when he'd said hyung and tomorrow.
The last gong sounds. Soobin floors the accelerator.
It wasn't going to be easy. He must be a fool, then, because to him, it's worth the risk.