Chapter Text
1.
Kihyun leans back in his chair, eyes half closed, listening intently to the song spilling out of the bar’s shitty speakers. He can’t quite make out the melody over the noise of conversation, but it’s familiar and it bothers him that he cannot place it. Just as he can almost feel the name of the song finally float up from the murky pond of his mind, Minhyuk, seated right next to him, elbows him in the ribs. The name sinks back down and Kihyun straightens his posture as he shoots Minhyuk an annoyed glance.
“What?” Kihyun barks, Minhyuk remaining blissfully unaware of his prickly tone.
“What about you?” Minhyuk’s asking, his beer sloshing in the glass he’s holding. Kihyun stares, face blank, and Minhyuk swallows a mouthful before adding, “have you ever been in love?”
Kihyun’s gaze shifts to Hoseok sitting opposite him with Hyungwon wedged against his side, half sprawling on the table, his sleeve drinking up spilled beer. Hyungwon doesn’t seem to mind, his gaze cloudy and unfocused; yet he is smiling, chewing absently on the squid jerky they ordered.
“I haven’t,” Kihyun says, and Minhyuk pouts, looking down into his drink.
“You are lying,” Hyungwon drawls, pulling on the squid’s leg sticking out of his mouth to cut it with his teeth. He points the broken end at Kihyun, trying unsuccessfully to straighten his posture. “There was this guy,” he says, and slumps back against Hoseok without elaborating any further.
“Which guy?” Minhyuk asks at the same time Kihyun says that there never was any guy. The music has switched to another song, one he doesn’t know and there’s an itch in his brain; he’ll never remember what the previous song was, and he cannot quite pinpoint why this annoys him so much. Minhyuk’s inane questioning and Hyungwon’s sly grin do not help in any way and Kihyun sighs, resigned.
“Im something,” Hyungwon is saying. “During your last year.”
“I wasn’t in love with him,” Kihyun drawls, Minhyuk’s sharp intake of breath putting his teeth on edge.
“And yet you know who I mean,” Hyungwon says smugly and Kihyun shrugs, looking down at his drink. Of course he knows who Hyungwon means, university wasn’t that long ago, really, even if it does feel like a millennia has passed since then. There’s a precise memory that comes back to him unbidden; Im Changkyun standing on a rooftop, sun-kissed, long hair lashing his face in the wind. He was looking straight ahead, and Kihyun remembers how it had felt like Changkyun’s heart had made a sound as it broke.
“Wasn’t he your, you know, special buddy?” Minhyuk is asking with wiggling eyebrows and Hyungwon rolls his eyes, tilting even more acutely towards the table. Hoseok wordlessly pulls on his shoulder, bringing him back towards him.
“You can say the words, you know,” Hyungwon says, still pointing at Kihyun with the squid leg. “They were fucking, and then Kihyun caught feelings.”
“I didn’t catch feelings,” Kihyun says slowly, “it was the other way around.”
And he remembers Changkyun’s dark eyes and the fierce hurt in them, how tight his lips were, how his profile had looked, back-lit by the setting sun. There was no one quite as sharp as him, no one quite as beautiful.
“Was it really,” Hyungwon is drawling, “how could someone fall in love with you?”
Kihyun rolls his eyes, kicking him under the table and Hyungwon lets out a scandalized yelp, gesturing as if this just proved his entire point. Maybe it did, though; Kihyun had never quite understood what Changkyun had seen in him. They had nothing in common. They were just lonely, that’s all there had been to it.
“What happened to him?” Hoseok asks, and Kihyun shrugs.
“I don’t know,” he says, and that’s true. That day on the rooftop had been the last time he’d seen him. For a fleeting moment Kihyun wonders whether he would have done things differently, had he known this was to be the last. If he would have been gentler, if he would have chosen different words, if he would have stayed when Changkyun had asked him not to go. But there was no way to know. And this is what is unbearable about life, really, Kihyun thinks then. Everything you do is forever done, and there is no way to go back, to try things differently. There is no way to know if any of your decisions is the right one, since you can never roll them back, try another path. Everything is definite and absolute.
He will always have said those words. Changkyun’s eyes will always have looked the way they did, his voice will always sound so heartrendingly sad and there is no way to change that; it is forever done. Just like that song will forever be lost to him, just like he will forever have sat in this bar, listening to his friends say words that will forever be there in the air, hanging between them.
And Kihyun feels a familiar barrier descend on him, wedging him in so that he can barely move; something that separates him from his friends, from the things before him on the table, from the sound of the speakers. Something that he cannot breach on his own and he feels himself spiraling down like a slowly falling leaf, a darkness opening up below him that he cannot escape. Yet right as he’s about to touch down Hoseok nudges his leg with his foot, his eyebrows raised, and he’s mouthing words at him Kihyun cannot quite catch. But the contact is sufficient; the barrier breaks soundlessly and he is back within the moment, sounds and smells rushing back to him almost overwhelmingly so.
“Imma ask Jooheon,” Minhyuk is saying, his voice strangely loud and Kihyun turns to him, not quite understanding.
“Jooheon? What for?” he asks, sounding way too raw and he forces down a mouthful of the stale beer in his glass, grimacing as the soju mixed in it stings his throat.
“Yeah,” Minhyuk answers, eyes fixed on his phone’s screen as he types a quick message. “He’s still friends with the guys from his music club, isn’t that where you met that Im dude?”
Kihyun stares at Minhyuk's phone as the message appears in his Kakao chat with Jooheon, eyes going slightly out of focus. He had forgotten that Jooheon and Changkyun had been sort-of-friends, acquaintances from the same university club, one that wasn’t much more than an excuse to get a room to hang out in. That’s where he’d seen Changkyun the first time; he’d been wedged against the armrest of the sunken couch someone had dragged in to furnish the room, gaze fixed on the lecture notes in his hands and Kihyun had known that he wasn’t reading, merely staring.
He’d looked out of place in this dusty room; his face too sophisticated, his clothes too neat, the strands of long dark hair wedged behind his ear caressing his cheek as he’d looked down. Kihyun had peered at him from the threshold, somehow not daring to cross, as if his intrusion would make him disappear. But Jooheon had greeted him loudly and at the sound of his voice Changkyun’s gaze had snapped up to him; they’d locked eyes, and somehow Kihyun had known then and there how they would end up.
“Ah, that’s boring,” Minhyuk is saying, dropping his phone on the table and Kihyun drags his gaze back to the screen where Jooheon’s answer appears. “By ‘Kihyun’s naughty buddy’ you mean Im Changkyun?” Jooheon wrote. “He works as a freelance producer I think, and he helps at Hyunwoo’s bar on weekends. Why you asking me that all of a sudden? Did you even know the guy?”
“That sounds like the opposite of boring,” Hoseok says, craning his neck to read the message sideways. “We’re way more boring than that.”
“That’s what I mean,” Minhyuk is saying, sitting against the backrest, arms crossed over his chest. “Now I feel terrible about myself. Why am I not a cool freelance producer?”
“I could answer that but you wouldn’t like it,” Hoseok says and Minhyuk heaves a sigh, going for the fries wedged next to the squid.
“Man,” he says, “some people are just born different.”
“You’re just saying that to make yourself feel better about how much you suck,” Hyungwon drawls, finally shoving what remains of his squid leg in his mouth. But for once, Kihyun agrees with Minhyuk. There had always been something different about Changkyun. Something a little remote, as if he didn’t quite operate on the same wavelengths. As if he had some secret knowledge, as if unlike everbody else he’d had the opportunity to rehearse his life and knew exactly what to do to get where he meant to be.
There had only been one time where Kihyun had seen him falter. That day on the rooftop, when Kihyun had heard Changkyun’s heart break. Something had wavered in his eyes, flickered over his face; the small tremors of a vast sundering. At the time Kihyun could tell Changkyun hadn’t expected it. He knew that in the rehearsal Changkyun had been privy to, his own role had been to smile, to nod, to take his hand; to kiss him maybe. And Kihyun had been angry, suddenly. He had felt it then, that invisible barrier between him and the rest of the world; between him and Changkyun. They were much too different. And so he had done it on purpose. He had hurt him on purpose; it had been the only way that he could breathe again.
“We should go see him,” Hyungwon says, going for his beer, Hoseok grabbing his wrist to put his hand back where it was resting in Hyungwon’s lap. Hyungwon doesn’t even fight it.
“What?” Kihyun barks, Hyungwon turning to him with a sly smile. This hadn’t been a possibility he had envisioned. Changkyun had disappeared from his life and the reality of him had slowly faded as time passed by. He was nothing more than a remote memory Kihyun only thought of in the darkest hours of the night, when he still wasn’t sleeping, tossing and turning in his too warm bed.
Yet "we should go see him", Hyungwon had said, and these words drag Changkyun back to the forefront of Kihyun’s reality, give him back his flesh and his smell and the feel of his hands. Changkyun exists in the same moment as Kihyun does; he is walking the same streets, eating the same food, speaking the same language in that voice that seemed to come from deep within him, lending a weight to words that rang with too much honesty.
“No we shouldn’t,” Kihyun manages to push out and beside him Minhyuk makes a disappointed little noise but Hyungwon isn’t listening, fishing out his own phone to check the time.
“It’s Saturday, do you think he’s working now? It’s not too late yet, we could go for 3-cha at Hyunwoo’s place. It’s been a while too.”
“You know why it’s been a while?” Hoseok is saying in his placating voice and Hyungwon turns to him, his shoulders sagging as his burst of sudden energy reaches its end much too quickly. “Because we’re broke, and Hyunwoo’s place is way expensive.”
“We’re not broke,” Minhyuk says sullenly, “we just have principles. I’m not paying twenty-five thousand won for a cocktail.”
“We could stand outside and watch him through the windows,” Hyungwon tries and both Hoseok and Minhyuk turn to him for a fleeting moment.
“Dude, that sounds way desperate,” Minhyuk finally says and Hyungwon sighs, sort of crumbling back into himself.
“I’m not going anyway,” Kihyun remarks and that puts an end to it, the conversation drifting to university memories, quietly dwindling away and Kihyun can tell their evening is coming to its natural end.
On the table Minhyuk’s phone lights up with a notification, Kihyun leaning in to read it before the screen goes back to black.
I asked Changkyun if he remembers you guys, he said no lmao
2.
Kihyun doesn’t turn on the lights when he gets into his one-room apartment, removing his shoes and waiting motionless until the sensor lights of the entrance turn off. The wall opposite him is almost entirely taken up by windows and he stares at the sprawling night view living on the 16th floor affords him. He steps in, the sensor lights turning on again and for a brief moment he sees himself reflected in the windows, his silhouette like a ghost, blurred edges and faded colors. He raises a hand and the ghost in the window raises one too; this is me, Kihyun thinks absently. For a brief moment it feels like the real him isn’t the one standing inside the room, but the blurry figure trapped in the window, imitating what it would be like to have limbs of flesh and bones and the will to move them.
And then the lights turn off again and the little ghost disappears, swallowed by the night that suddenly spills into the room. Kihyun walks up to the windows, staring down at the school across the street, its empty sports field and the huge digital clock above the door displaying the red numbers of the passing hour. It is much later than he thought and Kihyun sits on the big bed shoved against the windowsill, the cloudy bedspread dipping softly under his weight.
He is immensely tired yet he knows this is the kind of night where sleep won’t come. It is not everyday, but sometimes he knows. There is something restless inside of him and it won’t let him sleep. Thoughts whir in his head and he can only listen to their comings and goings, sometimes counting the breaths that comes out of his chest and he tries to picture the tiny shapes of his worries carried away in them like the sleep therapist told him to; but it is rarely working. There are the pills in the bathroom’s cabinet but he wants to save them for when it has been too long, for when it is too hard. Tomorrow is a day off, it is fine to waste it.
So Kihyun gets up sluggishly, tries for a hot shower if maybe it could mellow him out but his muscles are still knotted when he gets out and so he lays down on his bed, trying to picture a point at the top of his head like his therapist told him to. It spreads slowly down his scalp, his face, his arms and his hips like a net, scanning each line and knot, smoothing out the tensions, grazing each of his cells until his breathing evens out, until he feels himself sink into the soft mattress. Like this it is almost fine if he does not sleep, like this it is peaceful, almost soothing. He has to allow the thoughts to come and go, he remembers his doctor saying, without lingering on any of them.
It is easier said than done, though, and when it is Changkyun’s face that comes to the forefront of his mind Kihyun knows lingering is the only thing he can do. Changkyun’s face and his big hands which nails he sometimes painted; the jet black hair he never dyed and the silver bracelets on his wrist. How he had changed over the course of a year; his face sharpening as his cheeks lost the childish roundness they still had when they first met.
How he had looked when he’d said that it wasn’t meaningless for him anymore, how sure of himself despite the uneasiness in his gaze. He had known what Kihyun was supposed to say, and Kihyun himself had felt compelled to say it. But Kihyun had wanted to hurt him then, he had wanted to derail that perfect script. And there had been something beautiful in the way Changkyun had wavered when Kihyun had told him that for him it still was. All the hurt had been contained in his eyes, barely perceptible ripples flitting over his perfect face. Yet the pain was deep and wide and the chasm of it was inside him; Kihyun had heard it, a sound like breaking glass in that sublime summer night.
The invisible barrier Kihyun felt had shattered at the same time, bringing his anger down with it, but it had been too late by then. There had been no way to turn back; the words had already been said and they forever would be, etched there on that rooftop. And so Kihyun had turned and left him. For the longest time it had felt like were he to go back to the rooftop he would find a ghost there, an imprint of Changkyun still waiting. It had hurt too much for nothing to remain.
Yet there are words on a shining screen saying Changkyun does not remember him. Maybe all this had only happened in Kihyun’s mind, then. The sound and the ripples and the sundering. Maybe he had so much wanted to hurt him, to leave a scar, something of himself that would forever remain on this flawless skin that he had imagined it entirely. Maybe in Changkyun’s rehearsed life it had only been a slight mishap, maybe he had already corrected course as he had come down the stairs.
And this is a terrible thought; for if Kihyun had failed to leave even the smallest of scratches, if Changkyun did not remember him, then had this really happened? Had he really been on that roof, had he really heard that heartbreaking voice ask him to stay? Maybe he had only seen what he’d wanted to see, maybe he had only heard what he’d wanted to hear. He had failed to assert his own existence, he had failed to make this perfect man a little less perfect, a little more like him. And suddenly Kihyun feels a little less real, as if he really was that ghost in the window; and maybe the next time that transparent barrier will fall down on him it won’t lift again.
Kihyun feels like screaming, but the terrifying thought that it is already too late, that no one will hear him anymore keeps him quiet and he remains motionless on the bedspread, his breathing coming out in panicked little spurts. There is no imagining little shapes, there is no counting his breaths, there is no letting his thoughts come and go. And so Kihyun forces himself up, struggling towards the bathroom where he retrieves the pills his doctor gave him. He needs to stop the whirlwind in his mind and this is one way to do it.
He slips back under the covers with the acrid taste of the sleeping pill lingering on his tongue – he’d put it in his mouth before getting water and it had already started to melt by the time he swallowed it. Knowing that blissful oblivion is upon him already calms him. Turning towards the windows which blinds he left open, Kihyun stares at the high rises behind the school. He counts each lighted window, trying to picture what might go on in the apartments as a way to distract himself until the pill takes effect. He never feels it kick in – one minute he is lying awake, the other he is waking with his alarm clock.
Tonight isn’t any different, except that he didn’t set an alarm. He wakes at noon and again at four yet he is still tired. Tiredness never seems to leave him these days, and he tallies how many hours of sleep each night has given him this past week – he should be fine really, yet he isn’t, and Kihyun turns on his side, bringing his knees up as he coils under the warm covers. There is nothing to do today; he might as well lie there until hunger forces him out.
There is one thing the sleeping pill hasn’t accomplished, though. Changkyun is still there in Kihyun’s mind, just like he had looked that last time on the rooftop. The scene replays over and over in Kihyun’s thoughts, and questions arise that he had never asked himself. If Changkyun had loved him that much, why hadn’t he come after him? Why had he let him leave, why hadn’t he tried to talk to him? He had let him disappear, as if this chapter of his life was already done with as Kihyun had stepped beyond the door of the staircase. And it had been so easy to erase him; Kihyun’s colors weren’t as intense as he had thought.
Kihyun can feel that familiar darkness opening below him again, and he knows that there is no escaping it this time. He can almost see the shimmering edges of a hard veil descend upon him, watering down the colors on the wall, dulling the light. He wishes he could go back to sleep, and it is tempting to go and take another of those little white pills but he cannot sleep away his entire life, as much as he would want to. He forces himself to sit up, rubs his face in his hands as a heavy sigh escapes him. He feels buried, ten fathoms deep in an element denser than air, his own flesh weighted down with a wistful sorrow he cannot quite breath through.
What would have happened, had he stayed? Had he loved Changkyun, too? Sometimes it had felt like he did. In a languorous, drowsy way that felt like velvet, and it had been easy not to think about it. He had loved to watch him, the perfect angles of his face, that sunken voice, the feel of his smooth hands against his own skin and it had felt like Changkyun knew how fragile Kihyun’s edges were, how he would so easily scatter under too strong a wind. And Changkyun would hold him together, pressing a little too hard against the seams of Kihyun’s being. Theirs had been a quiet sort of happiness, Kihyun knew now, something light and soft; and when Kihyun couldn’t sleep, when the air felt more fit for gills than lungs, he would call him and Changkyun would come, and his words and his hands would lift off the worst of his illness.
Kihyun doesn’t remember what did it. If he’d been scared, or angry, or jealous. If the barrier had been too strong to reach through, his weariness too heavy for him to move from under its weight. If maybe he just hadn’t believed him, for why would someone so perfect choose someone so weak? There was no way to know, now. The words had been said, definite and absolute. He had left, and Changkyun hadn’t chased after him. It was best, really, if Changkyun didn’t remember him. At this thought Kihyun feels something fall off him in shimmering flakes and he raises his hand in front of his face, staring at his wrist where the blood beats the skin green and blue. It is almost see-through, and the unhinged thought that were he to touch it his fingers would find no resistance and go right through flares at the front of his mind.
Kihyun drops his hand on his chest, a weary laugh spilling from his lips. He needs to move, do something, speak words so that he feels real again and so he forces himself up, gathering his scattered clothes, going to wash his grim face. All the while he speaks to himself, sing-songs a childish song – there needs to be some noise coming out of him, the silence in his room bearing down on him like a proof of his own disintegration.
As he comes out of the bathroom his phone lights up with a notification – Hoseok, asking him out for coffee. Sometimes it feels like Hoseok just knows when Kihyun is turning paper thin, that he sees a pattern Kihyun hasn’t yet grasped. Kihyun should ask, but he feels uneasy. For what if this, too, he has made up? Hoseok might not have noticed anything; it is too easy to imagine meaning where there isn’t any.
The elevator dings as its door opens and the woman inside scoots to the side to leave room for him, mouthing a greeting. Kihyun greets her back, his heart hammering against his ribs. He is still here, then, not yet swallowed by the murkiness he feels sticking to his feet.
3.
Hoseok is already seated when Kihyun arrives at the coffee shop they usually meet at, the one halfway between their two buildings. It’s small, tucked away at the end of a narrow gravel courtyard that crunches underfoot. Hoseok chose the table farthest away from the counter behind which the owner is seated, looking down at an opened book. The owner raises his head only long enough to utter a greeting, his long hair hiding half his face when he looks back down. Kihyun stares a little longer this time, at the way the strands softly curl against his cheek, how it looks like he is mostly staring rather than reading. But Hoseok is calling out to him and Kihyun snaps out of it, making his way to the small table where his usual order is already waiting for him.
“How long have you been here?” Kihyun asks as he sits down and Hoseok shrugs, pushing towards him a cold glass of café latte.
“Not long enough for the ice cubes to melt,” Hoseok says as Kihyun's gaze travels around the room. There is only one other customer, a girl seated near the tall windows, turning her back to them as she taps away on a computer.
“You alright?” Hoseok asks and Kihyun’s gaze falls back to him, considering how neat Hoseok always looks and for a second it seems that he too is on another plane of existence, that he too understands something Kihyun does not.
“Why wouldn’t I be alright?” Kihyun asks in answer and Hoseok shrugs, taking a sip of his americano.
“You tell me,” he says and Kihyun rolls his eyes, grabbing at his drink.
“I’m fine,” he says, but he can feel all the words stuck in his throat, the ones that say I’m really not and I’m scared when the day ends, that I still won’t sleep and one day I’m sure I’ll wake and I’ll be a ghost. But he cannot speak them, for there is no way to know what would happen if he did. There is no way to know what Hoseok would say, how he would look at him, what would come next. And there is no second try; he won’t be able to swallow them back, once they have been said. There is a weight in his stomach that pulls them back down, a cinder block tied to their end so they won’t float up unbidden. So Kihyun smiles and he says he is fine, and he watches how Hoseok’s face dims slightly, how his broad shoulders drop under an unseen weight.
“I’m just asking cause you seemed a bit out of it yesterday,” he says, “you know, how you sometimes are.”
“Yeah,” Kihyun says, and it is the only thing that he will allow. “I was tired. But I’m good now.”
“Was it because of Changkyun?” Hoseok asks and it is strange to hear this name said out loud here in such a familiar place while the daylight beats down on them, as if everything Changkyun is should stay confined to sticky bars in the night time.
“Why would it be about him?” Kihyun says, taking a sip of his coffee to give himself countenance. Hoseok sighs, stretching before he plants his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his hands. His expression looks faraway, as if he was looking at another Kihyun, a younger one that remained only in his memories. Kihyun frets, slightly uneasy.
“I don’t know if you remember,” Hoseok starts slowly, and it is obvious that he is hesitating, carefully choosing his words, his voice lower than usual. Kihyun understands he is about to break a tacit rule, the one that forbids him to pry, the one that tells him to remain at a safe distance.
“It was a bit after graduation,” Hoseok continues, Kihyun staring down into his drink so he doesn’t have to look at him. “We were waiting for Jooheon at the cafeteria, it was only you and me. You were quiet, and then you asked me if I ever regretted anything. I don’t remember what I answered, but you looked annoyed, like I hadn’t understood what you meant, or like my answer wasn’t what you wanted to hear. I remember that so well because it was the first time where it felt like you were genuine. Like there weren’t any walls between you and me, and I could just see how you felt in the moment. You know you’re difficult to reach, right?”
Kihyun offers a slight nod, still not looking up. This feels dangerous, his heart hammering against his ribs, his head stuffed with broken glass. Hoseok is coming too close, and Kihyun feels like a cornered animal, the urge to flee making him jittery. He feels the distinctive oppressiveness of shame, too; these abhorrent feelings should have remained hidden, but he had expressed his weakness like showing a foul wound that should have stayed under wrap.
“And then you said you hated how hard it was to know what to do,” Hoseok keeps going, oblivious to Kihyun’s growing malaise. “You said you’d rather not do anything at all, since everything you did felt wrong anyway. That since there was no way to know whether you were doing it right, it wasn't really worth it, all this. This I remember because it felt so sad to me.”
Hoseok pauses as if waiting for Kihyun to say something but Kihyun remains quiet, staring at the ice cubes slowly melting in his drink.
“Was it Changkyun who brought this all on?” Hoseok asks then. “Now that I think about it, after graduation I never saw him again.”
There is nothing Kihyun can say, and he hears Hoseok shift on his chair, feels him leaning closer. He hears him sigh, hears him swallow, and his voice sounds remote when he speaks again.
“Do you still feel like this?”
Kihyun’s hands fall from the table where they rested, hanging limp at his side and his raises his gaze to Hoseok, leaning back in his chair. He cannot look at him for too long, though; Hoseok’s face is so full of worry it puts him on edge and so he tilts his head back, staring at the ceiling. There is a darker stain where the plaster has been patched up and Kihyun stares at it, quiet for a moment. Hoseok is so silent he might as well not be here and maybe this is what does it. He already knows, anyway. Hoseok already knows there is something twisted and wrong within him.
“I feel like I’m disappearing,” Kihyun says softly. “I feel like I don’t know how to be human. I don’t know how people stand it. How it doesn’t feel like drowning all the time. It’s so noisy.”
He pauses and Hoseok remains perfectly silent, as if making sure there is nothing more to come. And suddenly it doesn’t feel so terrible to let this weight go; it is too late anyway, Kihyun thinks, the wound has already been shown. And maybe it’s fine to leave his words hang forever from this patched-up ceiling, maybe this is the right place.
“I do not have the energy,” he adds with a sigh. “I am so tired, and yet I do not sleep. I feel wired all the time. As for Changkyun… Yeah, I guess that day it was about him. He told me he loved me, and I told him I didn’t.”
“Was it true?” Hoseok asks and Kihyun shrugs, closing his eyes.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I can’t hear my own feelings under all the noise,” he says and Hoseok makes a strange sound, one that has Kihyun open his eyes and when he looks at him Hoseok is so crestfallen Kihyun almost laughs.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says lightly, reaching for his cold drink. “He didn’t really know me. In truth there is nothing much to love.”
He takes a sip and Hoseok is staring at him, a faraway look on his face. He looks pretty in this light, Kihyun absently remarks; boyish and soft, and Kihyun wonders what it would be like to go through life as him.
“Isn’t that for other people to decide?” Hoseok says then and Kihyun stares, putting down the glass he was lifting to his lips. “People might see you differently than you see yourself but just because you don’t agree doesn’t mean they’re wrong.”
Kihyun keeps on staring silently, the words slowly worming their way into his brain, until Hoseok starts looking uncomfortable and leans in to speak again.
“Are you getting help?” he asks and Kihyun nods, finally taking a sip of his drink.
“Uh,” Hoseok says smartly. “Maybe you should get more.”
Kihyun guffaws, half choking on his drink and he starts laughing just as Hoseok straightens up to reach for the tissues, waving his hands as if to erase what he’d just said.
“I mean!” He tries, a smile creeping on his lips as Kihyun tries to breath through his laughter. “I’m sorry. I meant like better help.”
This doesn’t really make it any better and Hoseok must realize this as his smile widens and he tries to stifle a laugh, Kihyun waving him off with the tissues he handed him.
“It’s fine,” Kihyun says, laughter still evident in his voice. “I know what you mean.”
He takes a deep calming breath, but Hoseok catches his eye right then and they both start snickering again, turning to full-on laughter when Hoseok tries to speak but chokes on his own spit. There is something light in the air Kihyun hadn’t noticed, as if a habitual weight had lifted from him if only for a second. Relief may feel like this, he thinks, or this is something else entirely – camaraderie, something reflected in Hoseok’s eyes that feels too much like comfort, like acceptance. Hoseok had looked beyond the wall and hadn’t been entirely put-off by the weaknesses he’d found hiding there, his smile still as warm, his voice still as soft as it always had been.
“Have you eaten anything today?” Hoseok ends up asking and Kihyun shakes his head, drinking the last of his coffee.
“Let’s go for early dinner then, I’m starving," Hoseok continues, already standing up. Kihyun follows him out the door, the bell tingling softly as it closes behind them, the owner barely looking up from his book. Every sound feels muffled to Kihyun’s ears, the wind on his skin barely felt; only Hoseok’s voice in his ear sounds real, only his footsteps on the gravel and the laughter he lets out. Hoseok's presence cradles him in comforting echoes and Kihyun wonders for how long this light feeling will last, for how long his breaths will come this easy.
They wander through the streets, the air still warm, the sun still high despite the afternoon slowly crawling to an end. Later Kihyun wouldn’t be able to remember what they’d talked about but he’d remember how nice it had felt, how easy; and he’d look for this feeling in his too warm bed, when overhead the night stretched its sleepless wings.
Hoseok stops in front of a small Japanese place they know well, its front made up of wood paneling, the interior already glowing a warm orange from the overhead lights. Several tables are occupied and Hoseok pauses, peering through the windows.
“Wait here,” he says, “I’ll see if they’ve got a table.”
Kihyun nods, watching Hoseok’s back as he disappears inside. He turns towards the street, leaning against the storefront. In his pocket his phone vibrates with an incoming text and Kihyun fishes it out absently, staring at the lighted screen. The message’s from an unknown number. Are you sleeping?, it reads, and Kihyun stares at the words until they blur. He doesn’t hear Hoseok coming back, doesn’t hear the jingle of the restaurant’s bell nor Hoseok’s voice in his ear.
Are you sleeping these days?, and Kihyun knows who sent it. He would send things like these, sometimes, late at night. Are you sleeping? Are you still awake? And Kihyun always knew what it meant. Can I come? Do you want to see me?
And yes, Kihyun would answer every time. Yes, I always want to see you.