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Truth be told, the place was never rationed, evenly or otherwise, because it was easier to just take shifts.
The restaurant opens at 9 so Minho is there at 6 to prep. Seonghwa’s train leaves at 7:15 so he wakes up when Minho is already putting on his apron. In the evenings, Seonghwa is back before Minho is done cleaning up.
All rooms are used as intended. That was important to Minho, especially after the uncomfortable realisation that Seonghwa’s eyes were as large as his were long. Sometimes he walked around smelling like nothing and Minho had to drop everything to ask him what soap he used just for kicks.
“It’s organic,” Seonghwa had replied earnestly and Minho had shut down on instinct. Later that night, he had gone and smelled the bar. It smelled like nothing. And that was that.
—
Evenings usually find them on the couch with food on the coffee table, whatever new reality show/drama they’re into these days, and the ringers on their phones turned off, although neither of them acknowledges that last bit.
Today, however, Seonghwa is nowhere to be seen. Minho makes popcorn chicken and carries the container to the couch, turns on the TV and sits back.
Seonghwa arrives halfway through episode 2. Minho hears him down the hall, then in his room, and finally in the bathroom. Another 20 minutes later, he is dropping on to the other end of the couch.
“Hey,” he says and reaches for the final few pieces of chicken.
Minho shoves his fist into the container and pops it all into his mouth. “Hey.”
“That was rude.”
“You’re late. Get your own food.”
“Can you not?” Seonghwa groans, “We had to look around 3 places, I’ve been on my feet all day.”
It slides by like water off a scaled back at first. The girl is torn between who to eliminate for the episode and Minho is firmly on the side of one of the contestants who’s been nothing but kind but has had jack shit to show for it, landing in the elimination zone near the climax of the season. Minho has a personal stake in this elimination. He wants the good guy to win. So he responds to Seonghwa with merely a grunt.
However, it sets in after the good guy is miraculously saved. Minho frowns belatedly and turns to look at Seonghwa, who is halfway to dreamland.
“What did you say?”
Seonghwa glances at him. “Hm? I’m tired—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Minho snaps, “before that. What was that about 3 places?”
“Uh,” Seonghwa sits up and rubs a hand on his cheek, “Yeah, we had to squeeze it all in one day. The agent didn’t have much time—”
“You’re moving out?”
It comes out accusatory. It was intended that way, Minho supposes, but god knows he’d walk into the Han-gang before he admits it. Seonghwa blinks at him, a little dazed, mouth parting in slow motion.
“I told you last week,” he says, which not only confuses Minho but also angers him, “They’re transferring me to the Busan branch and the commute is too long.” Seonghwa frowns, “We were making dinner? It was Single’s Inferno finale night?”
Which was ridiculous of Seonghwa to do, first of all, informing Minho of such a momentous decision on a night of such supreme importance. They’d been trying to rush dinner in time for the episode that day, which resulted in Seonghwa burning the bottom on the pajeon and Minho accidentally splashing oil on his arm. Either of them would be hard-pressed to remember anything the other had said that day. Minho cannot understand how Seonghwa expects this from him.
He keeps his face neutral and crosses his arms. “Right. Yeah.”
Seonghwa nods, none the wiser, and goes back to slumping on the arm of the couch. Minho turns back to watch the rest of the episode, a stale, cottony taste in his mouth.
—
The thing about dust bunnies is that you need to do something about them fast before they grow too much.
Before you know it, you’re sneezing and hacking all over the place. You don’t want to touch the dust bunny with your hand. You need a vacuum. But vacuums are expensive and the founding principle of this analogy is that you’re helpless when faced with the dusty might of the dust bunny. So what do you do? You can’t afford the vacuum, you don’t want to touch the bunny with your bare hands, and you want to stop coughing your lungs out. In that moment, you realise that if you only had another pair of hands on deck, someone who helped you keep the place clean, the dust bunny wouldn’t have accumulated to begin with.
Rent is like a dust bunny.
When a place in the University of Melbourne’s early childhood education programme called Felix back to Australia, Minho was left roommate-less in the concrete jungle of Seoul. Felix started school after summer and had agreed to stay until Minho found a roommate. They’d put up ads on Roomi, Craigslist, and even Erasmusu. Minho was rather desperate, and if a temporary arrangement with a student took the weight off one knee for a little bit, he’d take it.
What ended up happening was Felix receiving a message from someone in his Facebook baking group. It was nearing the end of July and he really needed to book a flight. Minho asked for the guy’s info, freed Felix of all obligations, gave him a grand send-off dinner, and promised to keep in touch.
—
He glances up to see Seonghwa moving rather quickly toward the kitchen, a thief in his own home. It’s a great sight, part of why Minho now spends his free time lounging on the couch facing the kitchen doorway.
“What are you doing?”
Seonghwa halts abruptly and turns to him. “Going to cook,” he says archly. His hands are balled into fists. Minho puts his phone down and raises an eyebrow.
“I’m the cook here,” he says.
He is aware he is once again staring Seonghwa down for kitchen rights but Minho never considered himself above a petty turf war for kicks, much less if it involved a hostile takeover from his very legally resident roommate. It bothered Seonghwa each time. Minho likes consistency.
“I’m not gonna starve waiting for you to get in the mood to cook,” Seonghwa replies evenly. The line of his shoulders, however, is still adequately tense.
Minho snorts and waves a hand. “Whatever.”
—
Their arrangement is comfortable as long as neither of them thinks too much about it.
It’s like moving back in with family during a time of ennui, one’s body a splinter in a balanced ecosystem, moving from room to room with foul bachelor-dust in the wake of one’s knees, headphones in, grabbing milk, grabbing juice, holding the fridge open too long, withering under the muted glare of one’s mother, and scurrying back into one’s old room that is both too large and too small depending on the speed of the metal comb perpetually dragging through one’s nerves.
Except there is no mother here, no room that shrinks and grows at will, only another body that Minho religiously avoids outside of their designated time together. The only way to avoid a sandy standoff is to never exit the saloon at all. Live there, make a home of it, and remember that there is no shame in self-preservation.
And it’s good that Seonghwa understands that. The one thing Minho likes about him is that once perfunctory conversation fell by the wayside, he eschewed talk as easily as Minho flipped pancakes. Sometimes, however, in the specific light of a weekend sun pouring in through the kitchen window, Minho sees Seonghwa’s body tense like an arrow, peach fuzz on his cheeks swaying like fine cilia in the still air of the apartment, mouth swollen with the weight of his tongue.
They are not friends, not in the way Seonghwa is friends with Wooyoung and Yunho, or Minho is friends with Felix and Jisung. There’s a contract folded up somewhere in the tidal-pool-heart of the laundry room that says something like the rules of engagement are thus: transposition is a grave sin, the subordinate clause to which states: I know.
—
One time, he had tried to make baklava from scratch to pack up and send to Felix.
The logistics had bothered him. Minho wasn’t sure any airtight container would be able to keep the pastry crisp but Felix’s fudge had made it unharmed to Seoul, and his bright eyes on FaceTime were all the faith Minho needed to pick his ass up and go buy ingredients.
Seonghwa found him in the kitchen, frowning at a recipe card.
“Why don’t you Google it?” He said.
Minho frowned at him and went back to glaring at his mother’s recipe.
It came out nice. The smell dragged Seonghwa back out of his room, nose twitching at the prospect of food. Minho removed one piece from the spring pan and handed it to him. Seonghwa chewed with a knit brow, as if trying to separate each molecule on the bed of his tongue. Minho stood there, growing apprehensive the longer he chewed and withheld the compliment Minho knew he deserved.
Finally, Seonghwa swallowed and said. “It’s really good. Is it for your girlfriend?”
It puzzled Minho until he remembered it was Valentine’s day in a few days. He made a face, thinking of how to answer that.
“It’s for us to eat,” he found himself saying. “Who else would it be for?”
The entire pan’s worth of pastry was gone by the next morning. Minho went to buy more ingredients on the weekend, looked up a recipe on a blog, and shipped the baklava to Sydney.
—
The most intimate act of connection, Minho’s mother used to say, is to break bread at the same table. Greater still, the act of rending meat from bone and allowing oneself to be seen partaking of it. They have eaten many a meal on the kitchen table, the coffee table in the living room, the fire escape on the nights Seoul was boiling like fowl in broth. The worst is already behind them.
—
It has occurred to Minho, over the course of the past few days, that he’s seething.
Seonghwa has noticed and takes extra care to stay out of his way. At work, Minho burns the back of his hand flambeing a steak that didn’t really need to be flambed and returns home with his skull vibrating against the backs of his eyes. Seonghwa is home. The shower is running. Minho marches toward the door and bangs both his hands on it.
“I need to pee.”
“I’m busy ,” Seonghwa hisses over the patter of water and Minho’s headache blooms into a mushroom cloud of death.
He bangs on the door again. There is a curse, the squeak of the shower knob turning, and then the door opens a crack. Minho pushes in before Seonghwa can say anything and plants himself in front of the toilet.
“Minho,” Seonghwa snaps.
Minho unzips himself. “This’ll take a second.”
There is a strangled noise behind him and then Seonghwa is stepping back behind the curtain. Minho glances at the silhouette as it stands in the bathtub for a moment before folding to its knees. Seonghwa sighs. Minho pulls out his cock and stands there with it in his hand.
Seonghwa’s flat voice floats over the damp bathroom air. “You’re not pissing.”
“You sound eager to hear me piss.”
Minho idly strokes himself, tonguing the inside of his cheek. The silhouette behind the curtain bangs the back of his head against the wall.
“Minho,” Seonghwa says tiredly, “what’s going on?”
“I’m trying to take a piss,” Minho says. It’s not a lie. His thumb glides over the head and he sighs, “This is my bathroom too, you know.”
A low sound, thin air fluttering the curtain. Seonghwa’s hand drifts into his hair, pushes it back. Minho follows the shadowy line of his bent arm, squeezes his cock in his fist. Seonghwa’s hand moves toward the curtain.
“Don’t,” Minho says sharply.
The hand falters. For a few moments, everything is still. The shower drips water until it too, quietens. Minho lets go of himself and brings his hand to his mouth to spit in it. Seonghwa inhales sharply. His long back moves like a water plant in a current. He sighs again. His thighs squeak against the tub, an arm moving up behind him, reaching for the shampoo rack.
Minho huffs a laugh, throws his head back and rolls his shoulders. The spit dries and his hand tugs at his cock. He glances at the curtain again, the gossamer-thin faultline of their undivided space. It was a mistake to room with Seonghwa. He knows Seonghwa feels the same.
“Isn’t it a bit late,” Seonghwa says quietly, “to be doing this?”
Truthfully, Minho doesn’t give a fuck. The rules of engagement did not account for this. Minho took his contracts seriously. He tugs at his cock again, growing frustrated. The curtain rings clatter on the rod and a large, dark eye peeks out, wet as a peach. It trains itself on Minho’s face. Minho breathes out, his nostrils flaring with the effort. His clothes are sticking uncomfortably to his skin.
Seonghwa pushes the curtain the rest of the way and Minho immediately squeezes his eyes shut. Seonghwa laughs, low tide, no current. He smells like nothing, like organic hoo-ha. The next month he will be gone and there will be nothing left of him, no sounds or smells.
They’re quiet people, him and Minho. Or at least, quiet around each other. No talk to evaporate. No talk to begin with.
Minho tucks himself back in and leaves the bathroom.
—
The geological theory of tectonic activity details four types of plate boundaries, of which the most relevant in this case is a strike-slip boundary. Consider:
A = Plate 1
B = Plate 2
Contractual cohabitation = transform fault
Moving out = slip-slide-crash-oh-no-is-that-resentment-I-smell?
Note: Plates grinding past each other are neither created nor destroyed. Conservation and self-preservation! Have you been paying attention?
—
He sees Seonghwa walking around, putting things in boxes, taping the mouths shut, patting the flaps, no more no more I’ve eaten my fill and feel the bodies of those I have eaten lodged in the meat of my chest. He has a lot of things. That means a lot of boxes. Minho watches from the doorway to Seonghwa’s bedroom as he bends over a suitcase and places neatly rolled clothes like placing teeth in a mouth.
“I’ll leave my address,” he is saying over the moving blades of his shoulders, “and you have my number.”
Minho intends to never call him once Seonghwa is out of a 50-metre radius of this building but they both know that. Seonghwa will call, they know that also. Minho will pick up, is known only to one of them.
Seonghwa shuts the lid of the suitcase and sits down on the bed next to it. Minho takes it as his cue to walk in and loom above him. Seonghwa stares up at him with his big eyes and big mouth and big nose, too much resting on the gentle ledge of his small face. His hands hover above the jut of Minho’s hip bones.
The most intimate act, Minho reminds himself as he moves in between Seonghwa’s thighs, is to break bread at the same table.
His hand drags from the crown of Seonghwa’s head to his chin, lower until it wraps around his throat. Seonghwa breathes out. He is relaxed, Minho notes, before he bends his neck to kiss him. The noose around Seonghwa’s neck tugs until he is standing and Minho walks them backwards until his spine collides with the door of Seonghwa’s closet.
Above him, Seonghwa’s breathing is still even. Minho grips tighter, lets one of Seonghwa’s knees nudge his legs apart until they’re propped up against each other, thigh-seam to thigh-seam. Seonghwa kisses him again. The permeable wall of his jeans brushes against Minho’s sweatpants. Minho is only half-aware of the fact that they’re panting like animals, rubbing their restrained cocks together like palms seeking heat in winter.
His thumb digs into the soft swell of Seonghwa’s throat and Seonghwa comes with a shudder. Minho grabs his thigh and pushes himself on it. Forwards and back, once, twice, a grunt or two. And then he’s pushing Seonghwa away.
—
Minho’s hands are covered in celery juice when he picks up his phone. It is a little past 6:30am.