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The first time he remembers him, Renjun has known Donghyuck for his entire life.
They fight over crayons at kindergarten. They play in their rainboots together in the puddles on the street. On his first day of school, Renjun makes Donghyuck cry. Donghyuck pushes him into his cake at his sixth birthday party (he never knows if it’s revenge). He breaks Donghyuck’s Xbox when he’s nine. When he’s thirteen he sits in Donghyuck’s room and listens to him pluck away at his guitar.
“I’m gonna be famous,” Donghyuck says to him. He smiles, and it’s like the world stops. “Just you wait and see.”
They’re always together. Late night gaming session, passing out at the PC cafe. Steam from boiling hot ramen fogging up Donghyuck’s glasses. Riding their bikes around the crooked streets of their hillside town. Donghyuck grows and Renjun grows with him, and every day Renjun falls more in love.
It’s like this in every life.
It doesn’t matter who Renjun is, or who Donghyuck is. It doesn’t matter how they know each other or what they look like or where they’re from.
It doesn’t matter if Donghyuck is dead.
Renjun will always love him.
It takes him a while to realise that Donghyuck won’t always love him back.
It’s certainly not in this life, because in this life it’s so easy. Renjun falls in love and he follows Donghyuck everywhere — across the country, across the world. When they’re seventeen they go on a school trip to Spain. They sleep in the same room in an old house with a grand piano in the lounge, eat fruit from the orchard and swim in the pond, strings of algae clinging to their skin. Donghyuck is sunkissed and covered in freckles, and he shimmers with the bright white refractions of the sunbeams passing through the water. He grins at Renjun like he's going to take on the world.
They're only seventeen, but for Renjun loving Donghyuck is as easy as breathing. It’s all he does. Breathe in, breathe out. Pitter patter of his heartbeat as they sit on the piano stool together. Donghyuck holds Renjun's fingers over the keys and presses down. A long, bright chord rings through the air, and Donghyuck’s voice is in his ear.
"Here, like this."
Creak of the old wood. The cicadas sing clutched to the tree bark. There’s water on their skin and his hair is still damp. Donghyuck makes music with Renjun's hands, and with his heart.
In this life he kisses Donghyuck for the first time in a sun soaked conservatory. Donghyuck’s lips tremble and they’re stained with orange juice, a splash of something tart amongst the sweetness. He kisses him under the warm sun and the pale moon, in the still pond and the mountain springs. He kisses him in the orchard and in the old mill, amongst dirty old farm equipment and a dusty floor they write their names on together. They eat coca sitting at the seaside and lick the cream from each other's fingers.
In this life they die together.
Neither of them see it coming. They're crossing the road. Renjun is clutching a late night snack and he's looking at Donghyuck — and Donghyuck is looking at the blossom petals swirling down. He raises his arm to point — and then the car hits them.
For Donghyuck it’s instant. He goes flying, hits the pavement with a sickening thud. Renjun isn’t afforded such a mercy. He's left screaming for help, midnight blackness swallowing him up, blood bubbling in his mouth. He sees the light die from the eyes of the boy he promised his heart to, and it hurts more than his ribs splintering through his lungs.
It's the first of many inevitabilities.
The second time he remembers him, Donghyuck has dyed his hair red. He looks like a blood moon in the sunset light, standing on the edge of the pier with the wind curling around him and the gulls wheeling in the cloudless sky. The ocean roars and the waves crash around him, and he turns back to look at Renjun, sunlight gold on his skin.
The video stops there.
In this life, Donghyuck is dead.
Renjun presses play again.
It’s the third time he remembers that Renjun begins to understand. He changes faces as easily as he changes clothes, wears masks of porcelain and makeup that melts on his hot skin. The bells attached to his costume ring as he flops into his chair backstage and he tips the pre-poured glass of plum wine to his lips, tasting the waxy lipstick that smears itself against the crystal rim.
Donghyuck has honeyed hair, struck through with lightning strikes of brown and silver, precious metals that glimmer. He ducks his head through the crimson curtain of the dressing room and grins at Renjun.
"You were perfect," he says.
Of course Renjun was perfect. He's trained his whole life for this. If he wasn’t perfect he’d find himself on the end of a cane, whipped and beaten in the name of the art.
What does Donghyuck know of this, anyway? He probably thinks Renjun is perfect for the love of the craft. He probably thinks there’s something noble behind it, like the opera is his passion.
It is, but it is also all he’s ever known.
Donghyuck is a wealthy man — one of those lucky enough to cross the border into Jilin before the Japanese annexed Korea. He ran away from his country, to somewhere safer. He's twenty seven — six years older than Renjun.
He talks about wanting to return home.
Renjun has no home except the theatre. He leans back in his seat and sighs, skin sticky. Most of his costume is on the floor, but he's still in his underclothes, a long cream robe draped over his shoulders.
Renjun is a whore. He's Donghyuck's whore. He's beginning to understand this. The director sells him to their patrons, and Donghyuck has chosen him.
At least he’s nice. At least he’s rich enough that no-one else can touch Renjun. Donghyuck pays only for him.
His home in Peking is not lavish, but it’s rich. His bedsheets are soft silk and he drapes Renjun in his clothes, shows him the parts of Korea he'd brought with him. Wooden statues. Pottery. Gold. He's not the only Korean who's run, but he's the only one who talks to Renjun.
"This was my eomma's favourite," he says, holding up a jade ring. "I want you to have it."
Renjun has never had anything nice in his life. His mother was a whore, too — he, her only child. The company took everything he had. But this. This is something that's his. Donghyuck presses it into his palm and closes Renjun's fingers around it, watching him for any reaction.
The stone is cold in his palm. He opens his hand and slides it onto his finger, holds it up to the light before pressing a kiss to Donghyuck’s lips.
He still feels dirty, in a way. Donghyuck is buying him. Buying his body, his company. The ability to sit in a VIP box in the theatre and say ‘that’s my boy.’
What must they think of him? A stupid poor whore who only knows how to sing and act. His skin is bruised and uneven and there’s lumps on his sides — broken ribs that never healed right. The only luxury he’s ever known is from other people. He’s the lowest rung of society — if that.
The oil in the lantern burns low and Donghyuck cups his cheeks, running his thumbs across Renjun’s cheekbones. It progresses from here. Donghyuck touches him with reverence and Renjun reminds himself over and over again that Donghyuck wants his body and nothing else. That he only wants him for this — for pleasure and a pretty trophy to show off.
It's what the theatre head has told him — what he knows is fact.
And yet Renjun can't help but fall in love. It's like the last life and the life before. These echoes of the Donghyuck he knew then, rippling out with every press of his lips on Renjun's. With every touch of his fingertips on his body, shaking the robe from his shoulders, tracing the scars of a broken broom handle’s brushwork. Wet kisses and short breaths, heartbeat thudding beneath his ribcage.
Donghyuck rests his head on Renjun’s chest, tracing patterns against his skin. His nails are neat and smooth and he smells good, though there’s traces of other lives on him. Scars between his shoulder blades. His nose was broken — once, maybe. Twice. It’s crooked and flat, like a path winding up a mountainside. Different. His skin is tan, not porcelain like the nobles.
Who is Lee Donghyuck?
“What was Korea like?” Renjun asks. Donghyuck presses a kiss to his skin, only the corner of his mouth making contact.
"It was beautiful."
"Was?"
"They're destroying us."
"Are you going to go back?"
"One day," Donghyuck says, and the words feel like stones in his pockets, like he's stepping off into the raging current of the river. So much lingering in so little said, so much sorrow for something lost. "It still belongs to us."
"When?"
Donghyuck smiles, heavy as iron, and presses another kiss to Renjun's cheek. "I don't know." He huffs a joyless laugh. "I could tell you so much, Renjun," he says.
"Then tell me?"
Donghyuck shakes his head. "I'll show you, one day."
Renjun swallows, harsh, and Donghyuck doesn't talk after that. He rises to capture Renjun’s mouth and pours himself into it. He covers Renjun’s body with his, and when morning light comes he’s asleep at his side, murmuring words in Korean that Renjun doesn’t understand, naked skin soft beneath his touch.
(In this life they die together, too. A foreigner and his whore, killed in a riot.)
(Renjun never gets the chance to ask if Donghyuck loves him back.)
In one life he’s Huang Renjun, CID. Born in Jilin City. Living in Pyongyang.
It's a high rise apartment. The building is pink, the insides carpeted. Cream wallpaper. No smoke stains on the walls, despite the fact everyone he knows seems to always be holding a cigarette in their hand. It's quite nice. There's a spa bath and he exercises in the square every morning. His Korean is perfect, his Russian without accent, his Mandarin flawless. Nothing to betray his origin. Nothing to betray that Beijing has sent him here. He works a government job overseeing the reconstruction of the outskirts of the city. He’s someone who chose the right side of the war.
That’s it.
His handler relays messages through a man his age with a wonky leg who meets him at a cafe down the road. The umbrellas are pinstriped and the tables are solid steel, marked with coffee stains and spilled grains of sugar. Jin-Rak nods to him and tells him the weather’s been good. Keep an eye for the thunder, In-Joon. We wouldn’t want you to get wet.
Renjun understands.
He eats dinner with his neighbours — an old woman who's husband is stuck in the South. A young couple. The wife of a military sergeant.
He jogs along the river’s edge. It’s flat and shimmering, a mirror of the overcast sky. The wind is mild and the air is clean. There's a Russian delegate living on the floor below. Sometimes he drinks with him.
It's a nice life. Comfortable. His only job is to live as he would normally. He’s planting his roots. There is no danger here.
He's trained and cold blooded. He is patient. He will wait.
He spends two years in Pyongyang. He picks up painting. He has a steady relationship with a party member's daughter who he has absolutely no interest in.
He is a chameleon.
He wonders if, after this, his Korean will ever lose it's northern accent. It doesn't really matter, because they can't send him south now. A better bet would be the States — less cross country correspondence, less chance of getting caught. Beijing will fake a death when he withdraws, but Pyongyang will remember him.
Still, that’s the future. In the present he has a task.
On a spring morning he picks up the paper from his post box, wearing his fuzzy slippers and robe. He carries it back up to his apartment, humming the morning news tune under his breath. In the elevator, Kim Il-sung stares back at him from behind the glass of his photo frame.
Renjun can't stare too long. The photos always give him the creeps. Like the ones of Mao back home — he can’t help but feel like he's being watched by them.
The Russian gets into the elevator with him on the third floor. He nods.
“Comrade.”
“Comrade,” Renjun replies, a tilt of his head.
The Russian doesn’t leave on his floor. He watches Renjun exit, black eyes trained on him.
The Kremlin has eyes on Pyongyang, just as they do. He wonders after this is all over, if he’ll see him again. He wonders if he might sell him out — or if he even suspects. He makes a note to tell Jin-Rak, and unlocks the door of his apartment.
A card falls out of the newspaper. It's on a thick creamy stock, printed in red ink, the edges of the stamp dug into the card. He runs a finger over it, feeling out the edges of the hanja.
Thunderstorm.
Renjun turns the card over in his hands, and sets it back down on the table. He makes coffee for himself, and then: he waits.
He waits, and the storm comes. Security clearances and background checks, his fingers pressed into ink and placed on record. A new home, a new office. Board meetings and a newfound appreciation for the intensive Korean lessons he went through in China. Information, beautiful information. This is what he was born to do.
They assign him a bodyguard. Two. One in the office, another in the home. The one in his office is a middle aged man with silver streaks growing at his temples. It’s quickly apparent they’re not guarding him, but more guarding the country. He greets them cordially, acts the model citizen. He’s trained for this his whole life, and he revels in the pressure. It makes him work better, makes him shine. Information is his lifeblood, his trade and his love, and now he’s up to his neck in it things couldn’t be better.
“Hwang In-Joon.”
Donghyuck has a crooked tooth and a cluster of moles on the side of his neck, and when he says Renjun’s name it’s like velvet on his tongue. He hangs his hat on the rack beside the door and runs a hand through his hair — a slick, short military cut buzzed close to the skull.
Renjun’s heart thuds as he tips his head in a bow, barely able to conceal the smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
He’s more beautiful than ever before. Lee Dong-Hyuck, Supreme Guard Command.
Renjun’s downfall.
Down the wrong end of a gun, blood in his mouth. He’s pretty sure Donghyuck broke a rib in the struggle. Renjun’s lying on the floor in the middle of his trashed living room, shards of a shattered porcelain vase spread around him like plucked feathers, but he’s not afraid. Somehow he’s not afraid. He’s tasted Donghyuck’s lips and known the shape of his body. He’s stared into those beautiful eyes — cold as ice — and seen the blue fire behind them.
Perhaps it’s here that he truly knows that he will never stop loving Donghyuck. He won’t leave this room alive, and that’s his own choice. Donghyuck is the enemy — both of them sworn to their country in blood and bone. He knew this from the minute they met.
He knows he could kill Donghyuck right now, too. There’s a gun under the sofa, a revolver hidden in a rip in the fabric. He could kill Donghyuck, or he could run, though both were really the same fate. Worse, probably. To leave him alive would mean torture for weeks. An example to be made.
“Three years, Hwang. All for it to end like this,” Donghyuck says. A tilt of the head. A trickle of blood from the cut on his cheek. “How would China feel to know you failed them?”
He knows all this, and he doesn’t regret it. China is nothing. His life is nothing. It doesn’t matter.
He’ll die at Donghyuck’s hands. See the way his fingers twitch when he pulls Renjun up by the collar to bring their faces close. Renjun’s ears ring and his eyes roll and he feels like his entire mouth is stuffed with lit steel wool. It doesn’t matter. The blood on Donghyuck’s fingers is another beautiful reminder that he has been alive.
“Thank you,” Renjun says. It spills from his mouth with a bubbling laugh, and Donghyuck shakes his head.
“Say hello to the devil for me, Hwang.”
Cold metal presses against his chin, and everything goes black.
He gives up trying to understand what Donghyuck’s hair colour means. What anything means. Sometimes Donghyuck loves him. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he marries Renjun’s best friend. Sometimes they’re ships in the night, strangers at a concert who link arms and sing a ballad together, never to meet again.
Sometimes he misses Donghyuck by an inch. A red coat slipping through the sliding door of a coffee shop. A boarding call for a flight halfway across the world. A ferry leaving port and a boy leaning against the railing, wind whipping his silver hair around his face as the sun sets over the waves.
Sometimes he dies without ever meeting Donghyuck. Sometimes Donghyuck dies without ever meeting him.
Yet when they collide again it’s like all this is forgiven. It’s like when Renjun sees Donghyuck’s face — changed as it may be by the years and the lifetimes they’ve been apart — he can’t ever hold anything against him.
Sometimes it’s like there’s a part of Donghyuck that knows Renjun has been through so much to be here, and he forgives Renjun, too. Like he knows Renjun would do this forever. Die by the hand of fate just to have the chance to live his life out with Donghyuck again.
Or at least Renjun hopes so. Why die over and over for someone who doesn’t even remember him? It’s an act of madness, a cruelty.
But then again, maybe Renjun is mad.
Love makes you do strange things.
Blood and sand, the deafening roar of the crowd. Leather armour ripped by the trident Donghyuck swings. Renjun is smaller but he’s faster. He dances out of Donghyuck’s reach, brings his shield up to block the sharp points of his weapon. There’s blood trickling down his face and it mingles with his sweat — salt and iron on his tongue.
Last night Donghyuck was in his bed. Today, they fight for their lives.
He doesn’t know why he tries, because he knows what the outcome will be. Renjun is a better fighter than Donghyuck, but he will let him win every single time. He will always surrender to him — in the arena or on the stage, on the battlefield or in their bed. He’ll fall to his knees on the hot sand and throw his helmet to the ground, look into the eyes of the man he loves more than life, and understand how lucky he was to know Donghyuck in this life.
He learns it is better to die by his hand than to have never known him at all.
Sometimes he wonders if it’s cruel to be like this. To allow Donghyuck to live with the guilt of killing him. But he thinks it is better to give him life than to take it for himself. He would die a hundred times if it meant Donghyuck could live forever.
Death is nothing to the man who has given himself up over and over. It’s another form of surrender. Another inevitability.
He doesn’t remember every Donghyuck fondly. Some of them are bitter, some of them are cruel. Sometimes he’s caught in his madness. Following him into hell and back, because Donghyuck is a part of him, carved into his ribcage and played in the morse code of his heartbeat.
There's a wedding band on Donghyuck's finger and a photo of him and someone else on the bedside table that gets flipped face down by a blindly groping hand.
Renjun hates Donghyuck, but he hates himself even more. The saving grace is he doesn’t know Donghyuck’s husband — he’s never met him, though he wonders what he must be like. He alternates between pretending he doesn’t exist and pretending he’s terrible — like it will make up for what they’re doing.
They're in love, of course. God, Donghyuck is in love — he kisses Renjun and tells him he's his world, over and over. His eyes burn and Renjun feels like he’s been punched clean through this chest — all his internal organs knocked out of him and splattered against the wall. Sickening. Dizzying.
Donghyuck in this life is reckless. He's cruel. Renjun would think he was some shell of the man he's always loved, but he knows it’s wishful thinking, because this is still his Donghyuck. He’s still full of life and laughter, sharp as a blade’s edge. He teases Renjun and jabs his fingers into his ribcage, still knows all his favourite songs and sings them to him while they’re curled up in bed together. His kisses have an edge of desperation, but it’s still Donghyuck.
It's not his job to find him, though. He’s not the saviour he wishes he was, and some messes are things that he can’t clean up. It's only his job to do the right thing. He loves Donghyuck more than anything — but this. This is not the right thing. He knows the answer to the ultimatum, and he wants to make it right, but he can’t bear himself to drive the final wedge between two people who must have once been in love.
He’s seen Donghyuck love people who aren’t him. He stood beside him on his wedding day and made speeches at the reception, told a hundred people that he would follow Donghyuck down every path he walked.
But this is different. Renjun can’t put his finger on it.
He cries at night, feels the dread pushing on his chest like an iron weight. Renjun is a good person — or he likes to think he is, anyway. He’s killed people — killed for Donghyuck, killed for his country and for himself, but this is different. This is poison. He’s trading someone else’s happiness for brief fistfuls of his own.
Donghyuck is laid out in his bed, drenched in sweat, naked skin a shimmer. He looks up at him with those beautiful, beautiful liquid brown eyes, and Renjun’s heart shatters.
He runs to the bathroom and barely makes it to the toilet before he’s throwing up the dinner Donghyuck had fed to him off the end of his chopsticks. He sobs and sobs, and Donghyuck holds him, arms wrapped loosely around his waist, face pressed between his shoulder blades.
He wishes he didn’t have a conscience — he wishes he could take this for what it is. He loves Donghyuck so fucking much. He loves him, he loves him, and the horrible truth of it is that it doesn’t matter how fucked up things are — he will always want Donghyuck.
Each time he sees Donghyuck, he wonders if it will be the last.
Summer camp, seventeen years old. Echoes of the first time he remembers him, except here his hair is brown, not black. Except here they row out into the middle of the lake in the nighttime, crickets singing and fireflies swarming, and that’s where Donghyuck kisses him.
It’s like stepping off a cliff each time. His favourite lives are always the ones where they grow up together. It's like falling in love all over again, truly like the first time. He gets to see Donghyuck unfurl like a blooming flower, piece by piece.
In other lives they collide in strange ways. In hotel rooms and down the scope of a rifle. Where they both have blood on their hands and a list of sins a mile long. Where Donghyuck grins like the devil himself and Renjun draws blood with his nails. He sticks a pocket knife into the headboard an inch from his head and Donghyuck cackles, manic and wild. Renjun is always a step ahead of him, and it drives Donghyuck insane, causes him to spit and curse every time they meet. Their kisses are vicious — the sex like an orchestrated tragedy. There should be sirens wherever they go, earthquakes and tsunamis, reflections of the countless lives lost at the hands of two people who were made to kill.
Two people who were made to be together. The truth is that Renjun is only a step ahead of Donghyuck because he has thousands of years of knowing him. Because he’s seen how Donghyuck is, knows his weaknesses. Lee Donghyuck might be a killer, might profess to have no heart and a rational brain, but Renjun knows the truth. It’s a mirror of his own. They are each other’s weak spots.
It’s like Pyongyang all over again, but it’s better this time. It’s sweeter. It’s Donghyuck shaking with his gun trained on him. It’s Renjun knowing, somehow, that he won’t fire.
Poetry comes from the strangest places.
In this life he remembers Donghyuck as a killer, and the two of them grow old together, bathed in blood and impossibilities.
He remembers Donghyuck with magic in his veins. Long robes and a hat too big for him. He wears dragon skin gloves and smells like singed grass. He fumbles the cap of his Butterbeer and Renjun rolls his eyes and uncaps it with a flick of his wand.
Donghyuck has dragon fire in his heart. Renjun has the sky in his soul. When he’s not with Donghyuck and the dragons, he’s in the air. It’s like he was born to sit on a broomstick. He spins past the American keeper and slams the quaffle through the hoop and the crowd screams, waves of sound that bounce off the edges of the pitch and come back to him at different angles. Chenle races up beside him and claps him on the shoulder and the commentators yell his name — though through it all it’s Donghyuck he looks for in the crowd.
With mud on his robes and his hair blasted back from flying for three straight hours, he finds Donghyuck for real. Lifts him from his feet and kisses him, spinning him round and round. It’s the strange lives like these — that seem to exist in worlds entirely separate from their own — it’s these that make him wonder. How far does this stretch?
How far will he go?
He remembers a Donghyuck with absent parents.
They both have terrible ideas, like it’s a race to see who can sustain grievous bodily injury the quickest. Donghyuck, drunk, fourteen, balancing on top of a brick wall. He tumbles and Renjun catches him, and his laughter is so loud he’s sure he’s woken the neighbours. He’s dizzy and delirious and Renjun throws him onto the grass, crashes down beside him and tries to wrestle with him, limbs slow and uncoordinated.
“You look at me so funny,” he says. Lying on his chest in Renjun’s bed, feet in the air, hair down the back of his neck. Renjun tugs at the back of his shirt and digs a finger into the knob of his spine.
“What do you mean?”
“Just...”
The room stinks of marijuana and the stereo hums, electro-pop that Donghyuck will sing along to only when he isn’t sober. He’s soft and dishevelled, hair messy, cigarette burns on his arms, single piercing in his lobe done by Renjun last spring. Donghyuck rolls over and laces his fingers across his chest, staring up at a ceiling. Renjun pokes him in the ribs.
“Just?”
“I dunno dude. Something poetic. Like you don’t believe I’m real.”
Renjun digs his fingers in deeper and Donghyuck squirms, kneeing Renjun and curling in on himself, trying to protect all his squishy points from the impending barrage of pokes.
“Will you stop that?” he squeals, voice cracking.
“Never,” Renjun says. He pins Donghyuck down and breathes in his face, laughing when Donghyuck tries to buck him off. “You feel pretty real to me.”
“Get lost,” Donghyuck says. The front door slams.
Donghyuck fists his hands in his hair and kisses him.
There are other worlds. Like the one with magic, there’s another so removed from the lives he’s known he’s not even sure it’s real. Here Renjun is a girl. She gets an injection every month, and there’s always boots stomping on the road outside.
She could forgo the injection. There’s an implant that does what it does, but Donghyuck doesn’t trust it. Donghyuck doesn’t trust anything the government does — and it’s for good reason. She’s been burned, hand over an open flame too long. In their home — two rooms, almost all server space, hot even in the dead of winter — Donghyuck draws up a needle full of estrogen and tells Renjun to breathe in as she plunges it into her muscle.
Too skinny to do it in the thigh, she says, changing up the needle and doing her own.
Renjun hates needles. She’ll do it all the same. She has piercings heavy on her ears, a ring through her nose, two dermals flush to her collarbones. There’s a tattoo of a snake slumbering on her shoulders and on her right thigh is a pink circle, crossed through with three slashes of black. Donghyuck sports the same mark, alongside flames, faceless bodies, mythological creatures that run across her abdomen. Renjun dances her fingers across their heads, traces the turn of their bodies with her touch. With her tongue.
She remembers who she is. Donghyuck reclaims the skin that should have belonged to her in the first place, and Renjun reclaims her.
At home Renjun wears hoodies and slippers, but outside she wears a helmet and bullet proof vests. There's pink paint smeared across the edge of her helmet, charcoal rubbed under her eyes.
She remembers this Donghyuck fondly because in this life, they resist.
Donghyuck helps Renjun tie her mask around her face, her fingers gentle. She cups her cheek and presses a kiss to her mouth through the cloth, another to her forehead. A thousand years of love shines behind her eyes, and it’s here for the first time that Renjun wonders — just for a heartbeat, for a breath exchanged between them — if Donghyuck remembers.
If she recognises that Renjun has crossed lifetimes to be here with her.
It’s gone in an instant. Donghyuck slings her pack over her shoulder, holds out her hand for Renjun to take and helps lift her to her feet.
They’re under no illusion of peace. There’s a very real possibility that one day both of them might not come back. The city is a pressure cooker, and they are the spark of rebellion. A spark that won’t be silent for much longer.
In this life they sit on the shoulders of the statues of the founders. Renjun plants a flag through its brass skull and the muzzle of Donghyuck’s rifle sparks, ratta-tat-tat flashes of light. The air is thick with smoke and the iron scent of blood and everywhere there’s screams — noise, busted plaster crumbling onto the square, tattered flags on fire.
They live together. They die together.
Renjun tears the mask from her face and pushes Donghyuck against the alley wall. There’s stripes of white on her face from the gaps between her goggles and her mask, and she tastes like gasoline and smoke. Renjun’s hands are coated in blood, but it’s not her own, and she smears it across Donghyuck’s cheeks as she kisses her, as she pushes their bodies together, body armour against body armour, clatter of Donghyuck’s vest buckles against the bricks. There’s gunfire far off and a plume of smoke rises to the heavens, a declaration of new order.
Not in this riot, or another. Not in the insurrection. But they will die together. They’ve promised it.
“We should get home,” Donghyuck says, even as Renjun’s shoving her thigh between her legs, even as she’s clutching her hair with her sticky hands. Donghyuck gasps, and she’s so beautiful that Renjun doesn’t want to move. The world is falling apart. The enforcers will be coming soon — the police, the guard, squad after squad of leather boots made to sweep people like them from the streets. They might recognise them and persecute them, but when it comes to Donghyuck, Renjun is reckless. She wants to have her here, where she’s most beautiful. Where she shines with the light of a new order, with the steel of someone who will never bow.
She is fire. She is an icon, a goddess cast in bronze come to life. Blood of tyranny spread across her skin, alight beneath Renjun’s fingers. Renjun would follow her to the end of the Earth and beyond. Into the new age and the jaws of hell. Hiccuping gasps and kisses that taste like the furnace. A bomb goes off somewhere far away and the world trembles before them.
It’s how it should be. It’s how she wants to be remembered.
Renjun tells her she’ll be remembered forever.
Renjun remembers the third son of a third son. Unlikely to rule — but unlikely circumstances bred unlikely emperors. A crown of mud was the same as a crown of gold to a plague, and Donghyuck’s entire family had found themselves in the ground.
He was Renjun’s best friend — a ward of his family, who he’d played with in the palace grounds when he was just a child — and he ascended the throne aged seventeen.
Renjun followed him a year later — taking control of a world on fire. He was a good ruler — or he liked to think he was. His father was benevolent, and Renjun tried to follow in his footsteps. But where his father was cool and tempered, Renjun was stubborn. Where his father would ponder matters, Renjun acted on impulse.
“I will marry for love, or I won’t at all,” Renjun says. Arms folded, robe falling from his shoulders. The embers in the hearth burn low and war hangs over his head like a guillotine blade. He glances to Kun, who purses his lips.
“With all respect, your divine grace, if you don’t marry, then we might not be able to withstand any attack from the northern kingdoms. It’s only a matter of time before they declare war. They know the plague has weakened us greatly.”
Renjun wrinkles his nose. He knows it’s true. Their army is crippled. It was already small, but things have taken a turn for the worse. Only the winter and the mountains protect them. “I could abdicate.”
There’s a pause. There’s only four of them in the room right now. The plague has taken almost everyone — the people he grew up with, the teachers he knew so well. His parents. His sister.
Less to hear the emperor talk about doing the unthinkable.
“That would give you the throne, right?” Renjun continues, turning to where Chenle is sitting in the corner, face lit by the blaze of a candle. The scratch of his quill on the parchment ceases and he nods, slowly.
“I believe so.”
“Would you take it? Would you marry him?”
“You can’t leave, Renjun,” Kun cuts in.
“I’m the emperor,” Renjun says. “I can do what I want.”
“Chenle is sixteen . Your divine grace, I am sorry, but this is not the time for the kingdom to have yet another boy emperor.”
“You’d be his regent, right, though?”
Kun’s mouth opens and shuts.
“Renjun.”
“You would?”
“If that’s what you asked of me, yes.”
“Chenle?”
“I don’t want to be emperor.”
Renjun presses his fingers against the wood of the table, spreads them out and watches the way the reflection of the fire flickers in the varnish.
“But,” Chenle continues, “I would marry Jisung, yes. I would take the throne, if that’s what you wanted.”
“This is selfish,” Kun says.
Renjun sighs. He knows. “Leave us. Both of you. You stay, Chenle.”
He can practically sense Kun’s frustration, though he doesn’t say anything. He just nods and leaves with their other advisor. The murmur of conversation starts up just before the door thuds in its frame, and then it’s just the two of them. The emperor and his heir.
“Chenle —”
“Yes.”
Renjun’s mouth snaps shut when Chenle talks over him.
“Forgive me,” Chenle adds. “Your divine grace. I did not mean to interrupt.”
He waves a hand and turns away, crossing the room to stoke the fire. “It’s fine. I know I’m being selfish.”
“I’d do the same in your place.”
Renjun picks through the wood in the chest, gathering branches and feeding them into the dying flames. “Would you?”
"Sure. If you abdicate, then we both marry for love."
Renjun stops. The flames catch the logs and start to lick slowly up the bark, and he turns to stare at Chenle.
"How."
"Call it intuition."
Hidden in the dark as he is, there's no mistaking the grin on Chenle's face. Those sharp canines, those eyes that seem to know him. He's smart. He'll make a good ruler.
"Then you would take it?"
"I would."
The fire spits and crackles. "It's yours."
Chenle marries for love. Yellow robes of an emperor, gold and jade like firework bursts on his porcelain skin. Two kingdoms, united. A prince of the sea and a grandchild of the Great Crane. Jisung is in turquoise and silver, and he smiles like starshine, hands shaking when he lifts a goblet to Chenle’s lips and pours the wine into his new husband’s mouth. There’s a kiss shared over a meager feast, a prayer for peace to last.
Renjun is his only living relative, and so he carries Chenle to his wedding bed alone. He leaves him amongst the blossom petals and silk and tells him he did a good thing
"I did a selfish thing," Chenle replies. There's a jade dragon pinned in his hair, and it seems to swim in the light. "Thank you for allowing me to."
Renjun marries for love. He wears cream and silver, and they thread sunshine coloured feathers through his hair. Donghyuck wears the colour of blood. He is beautiful. They are both beautiful. His lips taste candied, and Donghyuck has been in love with him ever since they were boys running through the palace halls, hiding amongst the flour sacks in the kitchen and begging the guards to carry them around on their shoulders.
Renjun's been in love with him for far longer, of course. But it's not a competition. He's lucky, again, that Donghyuck has returned to him. That the universe has given him another try.
Chenle isn't strong enough to carry Renjun to his bed, and Renjun teases him for it. He pinches the emperor's cheek like he did when they were boys, and when he sits amongst the blossoms there's a solemnity in Chenle's eyes. He looks older than he is — not a teenager, but someone who has seen so much more.
"Love makes us do strange things, doesn't it?" Renjun says.
The sound of the wedding party floats back from the hall, flickering candles dancing on the walls. Chenle nods. He wears purple. His hair is tied back in a ponytail and there’s adornments of gold all through it, streaks like precious metals in a riverbed.
"And we'll do stranger yet," he says.
Renjun remembers this Donghyuck well, the king of a crumbling empire.
But it's the first time he remembers Chenle, too.
The second time he remembers Chenle, Donghyuck is a star. Sun and Moon aren’t a big group — not yet — but they’re rising. Last comeback he only had to buy three albums to get into their fansign. This time it’s seven.
It’s a brisk winter afternoon and he’s sitting in a line outside Coex mall. There’s a heat pack on the back of his neck and his breath is candy floss, the only relief from the bite of the cold thin sunshine breaking through the clouds.
"Can you hold this?"
The boy sitting next to him is Continuum — Park Jisung's biggest fansite. He and Renjun have been talking for the months online, but it’s the first time he’s met him for real. They’re in line together, puffer jackets and frosty breath, cameras clutched close to their chests. Stella Ursa — aka Huang Renjun — is on the smaller side for fansites, but Continuum has taken him under his wing.
Continuum is blonde, though the bleach has left his hair frizzy at the ends. He has a wide nose and high cheekbones, a wicked cackle and the spark of youth in his eyes.
Renjun knows him. He was a CID intelligence agent with a wonky leg. He took a lashing for Renjun when he fucked up his lines and was too ashamed to admit it. He has led a rebellion. He was martyred for their cause.
He was an emperor, once.
He grins at Renjun with sharp canines and a mask covering his chin, and Renjun holds his equipment while he swaps lenses on his camera. On a cold winter’s day, in the middle of Gangnam-gu with his ass frozen to his seat — Renjun realises he’s not alone.
Continuum is Zhong Chenle.
Chenle looks at Renjun, and something passes between them. Recognition, a lightning bolt. A hundred lives shared and lived, timelines jumped and battles fought. They’re two boys in line for a fansign with cameras that cost as much as their university tuition, but they’ve been so much more.
They’re irrefutable proof that the two of them are not insane.
He finishes screwing in a lens the size of a cannon barrel and Renjun hands the smaller one back to him. He’s not sure what to say. How does he encompass all this? This rollercoaster ride he’s been thrown around on for so long. How does he ask him if he’s lived a hundred lives before this? Would he think Renjun mad, or would he understand? Is he chasing someone, too?
Are they both doomed to live out their lives, over and over?
Chenle hands him his coffee with a twinkling smile and Renjun murmurs a thank you. It’s well too warm for him to drink right now, and he sets it down on the table. He’s never liked his drinks hot— or been able to handle the summer for that matter.
“I was wondering when you were gonna remember me,” Chenle says. He blows the steam off the top of his mug and takes a sip. “Or if you ever would. I thought you might be like him, too.”
“Like Jisung?”
It’s not hard to guess. Chenle the prince, who had wanted to marry someone he had barely met. Chenle the fansite, here, who glowed with every smile Jisung shot his way.
“Yeah.” Chenle gives him a tight smile. Pursed lips, eyebrows raised. “Like Jisung.”
They both take a drink of their coffee. Chenle’s is black, but Renjun likes his milky and sweet. Generic Christmas music pipes through the speakers, and Chenle’s camera is sitting on the table beside them, still switched on from where he’s been uploading previews onto Twitter.
“You should post some previews,” Chenle says, taking a sharp left turn, like he’s reading Renjun’s thoughts. “If you post fast people follow you. It’s even better when you post while you’re still in the hall.”
“People like you because Jisung only ever looks at you,” Renjun says. Chenle laughs.
“Yeah. He does. But it helps if you’re quick, too. If you want people to notice you. Trust me.”
Renjun sighs and flicks on his camera. He’s not sure if he’s ready to talk about all this quite yet. His ears are ringing, his heartbeat thudding, and he almost welcomes Chenle’s diversion.
The first picture that shows up is Donghyuck staring at the ceiling, his entire face lit up by someone else’s flash.
“What’re the best ones, then?”
Chenle pats the seat beside him and Renjun gets the hint. He shuffles beside him on the bench, thigh to thigh as he sets his camera on the table.
“Here,” Chenle says. “Let me see.”
“What’s the first time you remembered him?”
Chenle tips a shot into his mouth and lets out a long burp, bursting into laughter at the end.
“Oh fuck,” he says. “Fuck.”
There’s half empty dishes all over the table, spilled shots and candy wrappers. Renjun’s laid out on the couch, the walls swimming before him, and on the TV a raunchy drama plays on mute. There's no fansign tomorrow, thank god, because they're both insanely drunk. Coffee had turned to dinner to drinking to coming back to Renjun's apartment and drinking even more, and now they're both zoning out, babbling to each other, limbs melting off the furniture, Chenle’s high pitched laugh cutting through the hazy air.
"God. He had brown hair," he starts.
"You remember the hair colour, too?"
"It’s weird, isn’t it? It should be black. I mean, when he isn't an idol, anyway. But it wasn't."
"It doesn't mean anything."
"I know,” Chenle says, drawing out the syllables. “But I wished it did. One time he had bright pink hair. It was two hundred years in the future and we all lived on a spaceship. Donghyuck was there, and I kept expecting you to show up, but you never did.”
“What?”
“Huh?”
“You expected me to show up?”
“Yeah? I knew if I met Donghyuck, I’d meet you, right? But you never showed up. I missed you, Renjun.”
Renjun’s brain isn’t quick enough to draw a connection, but it makes him feel warm all the same. “You really missed me?”
“Shut up, okay. Yeah. A little.” He hiccups. “It doesn’t matter. Jisung, right? God. It was so long ago, Renjun. I shouldn’t remember, I don’t think. He had brown hair and it was the middle of the night. I was walking home and he was on his bike and he almost ran me over. I was wearing all black, maybe it was my fault. He crashed into a ditch and wrecked his bike and I had to help him wheel it home. He was…”
Chenle trails off with a sigh. His arm drops off the side of the couch and he stares at the ceiling, a fond smile on his face.
“He was what?”
“Magic. I wanted to spend forever with him."
“Yeah,” Renjun says. “I know the feeling.”
The second time he remembers Chenle, Donghyuck doesn’t love him back.
Jisung doesn’t love Chenle, either. Not in the way he wants. It doesn’t matter how many finger hearts he sends him or photos he takes, Jisung won’t ever think of him as more than a fan. One who’s supported him his entire career, but a fan all the same. It’s heartbreaking, and Renjun holds Chenle through a hundred rainy nights, clutches him close to his chest and promises it will be better next time. It's just a rite of passage for them both — a reminder that love comes in all forms.
The second time he remembers Chenle, he kisses him. They're both drunk, sitting on the river's edge in Saitama. Jisung is on his first solo tour, and Chenle climbs into Renjun's bed every night, hands balled into fists, body pressed against Renjun’s.
They're older now. The two boys in line for a fansign have graduated university, and being a fansite is a full time job. They've seen the world together. They're both in love with people who will never return it, and Renjun is tired. He hates losing the things he wants. He hates pulling the lever of the slot machine of life. It's unfair. It's so fucking unfair.
At least he can have this. Someone else who might remember this madness. Chenle kicks over his drink as he climbs into his lap, and Renjun has to remind him he's in public — like it matters. He fists his hands in his hair and kisses him until he's dizzy, the air in his lungs replaced by a red hot desperation.
They're two best friends holding hands in the typhoon. The only people who understand what exactly is happening. It seems right that they would find themselves in the same bed.
Morning light dawns on the two of them — Chenle pulling open the curtains, sheets wrapped around his shoulders dragging on the carpet of their hotel room as he wanders around and chews on convenience store sushi. Renjun finds he feels okay. Not gross. Not like he’s betraying Donghyuck. Just okay.
He yawns and rolls over, splaying his arms out across the bed. The sky is grey and Chenle is belting out one of Donghyuck’s ballads, his voice still scratchy with sleep.
“Hey,” Renjun says. Louder. “Hey!”
Chenle jumps, hands gripping tight at the edge of the sheets, covering up the patches of bare skin that had been showing. His smile is shy.
“Hey,” he says.
“It’s okay, right?” Renjun asks.
Pause. Both of them collecting their thoughts.
“Yeah. If it’s okay with you, it’s okay with me.”
Renjun laughs. Yeah, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. They’re both mad, but they’ll be mad together.
“Come back to bed,” Renjun says. “Let me get a second opinion.”
“Is it okay?” Chenle asks, again. Tourists swarm around them and his palm is sticky against Renjun’s.
“It’s okay.”
Renjun holds up his ice cream for Chenle to taste, yanking it away before Chenle can get a second lick. Laughter, pure and sweet. Chenle forces a kiss onto his cheek and then fixes Renjun’s hair, brushing it away from his eyes. They walk through the autumn leaves together, world on fire, and Chenle smiles at him, lips pink, eyes twinkling despite the dull sunlight that barely breaks through the clouds.
Renjun fishes a hundred yen coin from his pocket and throws it in the fountain.
He hopes Donghyuck is happy. He hopes Jisung is, too.
Renjun carves out lives alone. Now he knows Chenle exists, he looks out for him too, and sometimes they carve out lives together. He’s another constant, a welcome anchor for Renjun to hold onto.
Renjun learns Donghyuck is often a star — like music is something intrinsically a part of him. He looks for him on the charts, for the warbling warmth of his voice on the radio. More often than not, he finds him.
The door of the studio always catches in the frame, and the June morning where Renjun first records with FullSun is no exception. It jangles and clatters, and he apologises as he gets up from his seat, lifting the door handle up and pulling it inwards.
Donghyuck is beautiful. Renjun is a professional, but he will never not be struck by the first time he sees Donghyuck in any life. That moment of recognition that lights him up. The thought of ‘is it really him?’ that’s followed by Donghyuck doing something — saying something — that’s so utterly him that Renjun’s doubts are washed away.
He’s come back to him again, just as he always does.
Donghyuck raises an eyebrow at him before he snaps on his headphones. He’s wearing a facemask pulled over his chin and his hair is dyed caramel brown and Renjun could love him like this a thousand times. The way he moves when he sings, how his whole body responds. Eyes shut, voice blinding. He belts a high note, then laughs into the microphone and asks Renjun if he thinks that was good.
Renjun kisses him in a soundproof room three weeks later, trampling on the lyric sheet he'd spent an hour annotating that morning. Donghyuck gasps his name like a prayer and Renjun presses him against the wall, touches him until he's shuddering and whimpering and his eyes are ablaze with the same spark of wildfire Renjun knows now he will never tame.
In this life, producer Porcelain Fox and former idol FullSun cause a scandal when they elope, flying out from South Korea to get married on a beach. It’s a relief amongst so much death and war, amongst all the lives where Donghyuck doesn’t love him back. They see their children grow up and fall in love just as they did. They grow old together. They get a happy ending.
The universe is kind sometimes.
Rain pattering on the window. Renjun’s lying upside down on his couch in his studio, listening to Donghyuck ramble about his work. Here he’d found him in college, on the late night radio, talking to his ten listeners about his days. About his cat, about life back home. His accent is thick, southern drawl rolling through his sentences like a storm on the prairie and he’s so unashamed and free. Renjun thinks even if he didn’t know Donghyuck he’d have fallen in love with him, because this Donghyuck is so unapologetically himself it’s magnetic.
“I gotta go, hey,” Donghyuck says.
“See ya,” Renjun replies. Thunder booms, deep and heavy.
Donghyuck chuckles. “See you in another life.”
The line goes dead.
“Wait!”
Renjun runs.
Maybe it’s a stroke of madness, maybe he’s just tired. Maybe Donghyuck’s words mean nothing, but he doesn’t think. He runs, just like he’s always done.
Just like his soul does, across lifetimes, across timelines, across the tangled threads of these parallel universes. He runs through shattering raindrops, through gridlocked traffic and pedestrians under clear-webbed umbrellas. City lights blurring around him, exhaust smoke and oil run off in his nostrils, honk of taxis and buzz of the crosswalks. He runs through thousands of other lives to make it to the only one that’s ever mattered.
This inevitability. The only thing Renjun is ever sure of. It's Donghyuck, every single time. He'll love him until his heart stops, until his soul dies. Until the universe collapses in on itself. He'll chase him forever and ever, if only for the chance that one day Donghyuck will recognise him. That one day the arrow through the heart, the first meeting, the moment of recognition — it won't just be Renjun.
One day, it might be Donghyuck chasing him, too.
He sprints up the steps, taking them two at time, and knocks on the door. There’s mud splattered all over the cuffs of his jeans and his hair is sopping wet, dripping all over his face. He spits a strand out and stares at Donghyuck — at this beautiful beautiful man. Brown eyes, tan skin, hair falling across his face. He’s in his pajamas — an old hoodie with a wide stretched out neck and pair of track pants — and he’s wearing his glasses.
He looks like home.
How does Renjun say he’s been through lives? Hundreds of them. Over and over. How does he say he both does and doesn’t want to see Donghyuck in another life ever again? He wants to see him here. He wants to see him forever.
He doesn’t want to gamble anymore, to hope that this world is one where Donghyuck loves him — to hope that he’ll realise. He wants to take fate into his own hands, just for once. Fight back.
“Donghyuck,” Renjun says. The rain crashes down on the awning and Renjun doesn’t care that he’s soaking wet, he doesn’t care that he’s mad. “I want to see you in this life.”
He fists his hands in the lapels of Donghyuck’s shirt and kisses him. He kisses him with the love of a hundred lives before him, with everything he has, pours his heart and soul into it. Thunder breaks on the horizon, and Donghyuck — Donghyuck kisses him back.
“Do you believe in reincarnation, Donghyuck?”
There’s no light in the room. The rain pounds on the window. Someone honks their horn outside. It’s warm under the blankets, and Donghyuck’s hand finds his and squeezes.
“I want to.”
It’s been hundreds of years. Thousands. Life after life that plays across his memory like a flipbook if he closes his eyes. He still remembers the first time. He still remembers all the lifetimes they’ve spent together, though they’re fuzzy around the edges.
An immortal soul, tasked with finding his twin.
Chenle kicks a soccer ball and Jeno sticks his foot out to catch it, misses and almost falls over himself. He’s caught by Jaemin, who in turn falls over onto the couch, squealing as if Jeno is crushing him. As if it wasn’t his own damn fault.
In this life they’re all stars. There’s seven of them, sitting in the back room at Inkigayo. They’ve worked tirelessly to make it here, but by god they’ve made it. Renjun had searched for Donghyuck and he’d found him where he’d learned to find him. Look for the music, and follow. A tiny Donghyuck — only a few months younger than him, smiling in a video from SM Entertainment. There were three boys he didn’t recognise with him — and one he did.
It was like an electric shock to the heart, seeing not only Donghyuck again but Jisung too. There was something about this life. Maybe Renjun’s soul was too old for this, maybe he was starting to go mad. But it felt different. When he first saw Chenle sitting on the practice room floor, chubby cheeked and wide eyed — something struck him. The stars aligning. The four of them, together.
Chenle, sixteen years old, his hair silver-blonde. Renjun stays up late at night with him and helps him with his Korean. He’s determined — a fighter — and it doesn’t matter how much he flubs his words he’ll keep trying. He rests his head against Renjun’s shoulder, eyes dropping, voice low.
“He remembers me, Renjun,” he says. “The first time we met, when we were just kids. He looked across the room and recognised me. All those past lives — he knew who I was.”
Donghyuck still doesn’t remember. Sometimes Renjun will catch him staring at him, looking straight through him, but there’s no spark of recognition. Just confusion. They’re all bone tired, anyway. Mark swears he keeps falling asleep standing up. It’s nothing, but Renjun at least can be happy for Chenle. The way Jisung stares at him like he swallowed a shooting star, like there’s no-one else in the room.
He’s used to waiting, anyway. What’s one more life?
The two of them in a hotel bed. Donghyuck’s leg thrown over his, their arms tangled together. Breathing in sync. Heartbeat in sync. His forehead against Renjun’s back.
“Renjun.”
Donghyuck's voice is low. He doesn’t speak like this often — only when he’s sleepy and unguarded.
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever dream about me?”
"Yeah, and sometimes I have a happy accident if I’m not careful."
Donghyuck smacks Renjun’s chest. “I’m being serious.”
Oh.
“Yeah,” Renjun says. “All the time.”
He doesn't know how much more to tell. Sometimes they're dreams, but mostly they're memories. All the Donghyuck's he's known blurring into one. Sinking into another world, just for the night.
Donghyuck presses a kiss against the knob of his spine. “Me too,” he says. His voice shakes. “Every night.”
Renjun’s heartbeat seems to slow, his breath suddenly trapped.
“In them, you’re always in love with me. And I don’t know how I know that, but I do. You’re always in love with me. You look at me like you were born loving me. It’s — it’s terrifying, Renjun.”
Thud, thud. Blood rushing through his veins, Donghyuck’s breath against his shirt. He squeezes his hands so tight he’s worried he’s hurting him, and he realises Donghyuck is trembling. This beautiful boy, lying in his bed and shaking like a leaf in the wind.
“It’s okay,” Renjun says. He turns his head and reaches back, rolling his whole body around so he’s facing Donghyuck. Donghyuck wraps his arms around him and pulls him close, chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, buries his face in Renjun’s shoulder and shivers. “What is it?”
“It scares me. You always love me so much that I feel like I don’t deserve it. It’s like you’re the sun and I’m just a spark.”
Renjun wants to laugh, but he can't. It seems ridiculous that Donghyuck — Donghyuck who burns brighter than a collapsing star, Donghyuck who he has chased across the fabric of reality itself — would ever see himself as less than the most brilliant light in the universe. “Lee Donghyuck. Good god.”
How can he explain how brilliantly he sees Donghyuck? How he’s seen him take on the world and win. How everything just seems better when he’s there. How he’s been to the end of the Earth for him, and then beyond. Died for him, killed for him, done terrible things.
And then it turns out he doesn’t need to.
“They’re memories, aren’t they?” Donghyuck says. Like he’s always known. “The one where you and Chenle are fansites. Or where you’re a producer. All the ones where we’re kids together… even the magic one. It’s real, isn’t it? We lived that.”
Wet tears climb up Renjun’s throat and he chokes out a ‘yes’, soft and strangled.
He remembers.
He remembers Renjun — all of him.
“How long?”
“I don’t remember,” Renjun says. “It’s been a long time, Donghyuck. Thousands of years.”
“Holy shit, Renjun.” He sobs, lifts his face and cups Renjun’s cheek. It’s awkward with the way they’re crammed into the bed, but it doesn’t matter. His lips are salty and wet, and Donghyuck remembers . Not only Renjun, but himself — all the people he’s been, all the lives he’s lived. “You waited for me?”
“Of course I did. I always will”
It’s the truth — the honest truth, naked as it could be. He would run the gauntlet, die a hundred more times, just to have this Donghyuck back. Just to have Donghyuck remember. He’s surrendered himself to him over and over — and now Donghyuck has come back to him.
Back to where he belongs.
For someone with lives worth of knowledge, Renjun’s still pretty stupid. He’s clumsy and makes mistakes, speaks before he thinks. He fucks up on the daily and forgets the simple things, but he’ll never forget this. He’ll never forget how to love Donghyuck. It’s what he was made to do.
They’re a part of each other, and more. Immortal souls. No longer chasing each other, but burning together — forever.
“Do you think I’ll see you again?” Donghyuck asks. The Saitama sunset is burning orange, skyscrapers awash with amber like they’re in the eye of a great glass giant. Renjun rests his chin on his hand and stares out the window, watching the pedestrians scuttle across the road.
“Well, we’re in the same group, so you’ll probably have to see a lot of me, yes.”
“I think I might genuinely hate you.”
Renjun smacks him on the shoulder.
“Ow! What the fuck?” Donghyuck’s voice pitches up. “I was being serious, you asshole.”
“I was being serious too.”
“You’re a piece of fucking work, Huang Renjun.”
Renjun smirks. “And you love me for it.”
“Asshole,” Donghyuck repeats. Renjun picks through his food with his chopsticks, chewing slowly as he mulls Donghyuck’s question over.
It worries him a lot. Donghyuck has found him — he’s returned to him, and carried with him all his memories, but there’s always the nagging thought this might go away. That next life Renjun might have to do this all over. It’s terrifying.
“You’ll see me again,” he says. He knows that for sure. “If you’ll remember me? That’s a different question. But I think you will.”
“Yeah? What if I don’t?”
Renjun picks up another mouthful, lifts his bowl up and fills his cheeks. He chews slowly, watching the neon lights rotate around the billboards. Watching the clouds drift between the gaps in the buildings and the children press their faces against the glass of the mall opposite. Millions of lives. Billions. They’re just stardust, just microscopic flashes in the history of everything. There’s no reason for this to happen — but it does. The rare gift of life — to be able to live again and again with someone he loves so much. Someone out there has chosen them — some cosmic force that said these two were meant to be together.
The universe chose them. And it’s given him this — a Donghyuck who remembers him. Who remembers all his flaws and ways he’s broken himself, and who loves him anyway.
It’s as much of a sign as anything.
“I’d do it all again, if I had to. Die until I found the life where you remembered me. Even if it’s one in a hundred, it’s worth it, right?”
Donghyuck stares at him, mouth slightly open. There’s juice flecked across his lips and Renjun reaches up to wipe it off with his thumb.
“I don’t think I have to though," he continues. "I think this is it. I think we’re home, Donghyuck.”
“Home,” Donghyuck repeats. He’s bathed in gold, the most beautiful thing in the universe, an outward reflection of his shining soul. He’s a beacon, and Renjun knows he will always find him.