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“We’re leaving, Jongseong-ah!”
It was mandatory at this point, Jongseong knew this. He was waking up to that line since he was five years old and the sun wasn’t even up.
“Jongseong!”
He simply rolls over and taps his phone open. 5:13 am. “I heard you!”
“Then come down!”
He wants to roll his eyes but it was too painful. His body ached, his head throbbed and his room was too cold and messy.
“Just tell appa I said bye,” he tries to murmur once he takes in the sight of his mother preparing cold sandwiches for breakfast. He watches her wrap them in a beige paper towel before a thick ziplock comes into view.
“And we’ll be gone for almost a month.” His mother reasons back with a sharper tone. He bites back a reply and looks at the chilled food knowing that it would probably end up in Sunghoon’s mouth.
They barely hug and Jongseong hates the sadness that comes with it. His father regards him with a warm arm around his shoulder and he feels five again. When the white SUV leaves and he’s left by the foyer, the silence takes him to look at the house beside theirs.
He’s been doing it every time his parents leave for work.
“They just moved yesterday and they have a son around your age.”
Jongseong remembers hearing that for the first time after coming back from school and showing his first grader star patch that his homeroom teacher stamped on his uniform. But he never quite believed it. Not because he was old enough to tell when his parents lied to make him happy but because he never saw the boy.
One year comes a little too fast and not, and not once was he able to hear a child’s voice other than his. And maybe Jongseong was too young to understand his privileges and what it meant to be living in a nearly one acre estate but it still stands, there was no trace of a boy around his age gracing the newly renovated house beside theirs.
Jongseong stares at the familiar dent by the house’s roof and next to it was the attic’s window that remained close for as long as he could remember.
A thought comes to his mind at the silly possibility when the voice of his nana brought him back, asking him if he was having the wrapped sandwich his mother made for breakfast.
“I’ll have eggs!” He quickly responds before taking note of the newly painted draining pipes by the side of the three storey house.
He was always true with the fate of his mother’s sandwiches. Sunghoon would always devour it with ease, his ash blonde hair complimenting the staining mayo that Jongseong finds hard to stomach.
“It’s good,” his cousin would reason when Jongseong would glare at him for a little too long. “Your mother makes them for you, how can you not eat it and pretend it’s good when you’re literally living like you have Bieber’s net worth.”
Jongseong snorts and turns away from Sunghoon as the rasp of their school’s intercom operated in a constant loop inside his head.
All students are restricted from using the main library due to facility maintenance. Studying hubs will be placed around the gymnasium for the time being.
“Bummer,” Jongseong sighs before opening his school iPad to synch his class notes before their period ends. “And how do you know Bieber’s net worth? He’s Canadian, Hoon.”
“And? Being Asian does not limit my capacity to know stuff like this. You’re so…” Sunghoon trails off with a mocking frown. “I’m not surprised why your neighbor hides his existence from you. All your potential conversations would suck.”
Maybe that was his last straw. Jongseong doesn’t know when the idea tickled something close to frustration in him but it was there. He thinks it’s always been there since he’s heard about it.
“What you said would hurt me on other days if only his existence was tangible enough to believe.”
Sunghoon stops midway from his last bite and actually cackles. He was a silent guy for the most part and seeing him bite down his fist to suppress his manly giggles only frustrated Jongseong more.
“You’re genuinely hurt over that?” Sunghoon rasps after his laughing fit. “When you told me about this when we were eight, I wasn’t expecting you to be so heartbroken over it.”
“Cause I’m not—“
“Your eyes are literally watering when you look at that house.”
Jongseong replies with a hard smack that echoed inside their classroom, eventually reaching across their homeroom teacher who looked like he was ready to pay an extra share for his taxes that could free him from a bunch of high schoolers.
The day ended with him and Sunghoon staying half an hour for detention.
On the third day of the week that Jongseong was left alone, he woke up to his nana vacuuming his study table. The sound really was not the problem, it was the opened curtains which directly opened his face to the world’s breeze.
“Nana,” he calls out weakly while the sun stings his bones.
“You’re going to be late if you complain about your curtains, Jongseong-ah.” The tiny woman hums before spraying a disinfectant around his desk. If the old woman spots the crumpled tissues by his nightstand, she pretends with a heavy heart that Jongseong was still five and he was probably making a bunch of toy balls with it.
“I hate looking at the sky when I wake up, nana.”
“It’s good for you to smell fresh air when you barely leave this space.”
Jongseong murmurs that he’s 18 while he speed walks to close half his curtains shut. Contrary to what he feels, the sky was too pleasant to reject appreciating even for a few seconds. The barely there blues were swirls that made him feel like his parents were home.
Then he looks down and he’s reminded of being eight and maybe even Hoon’s words about heartbreaks.
“Your eyes are literally watering when you look at that house.”
He takes time to look at the beige roof that runs bigger than the actual house frame. His room was at the 2nd floor, over to the far right which gives him the angle to look at the entirety of their neighboring estate in a full view starting from the back.
Jongseong memorized the painting dents and how the small pool at the back always remained full.
“You’re late, Jongseong-ah.”
“Can’t be late twice.” He murmurs back while his chest somehow mourns the empty car garage and the closed windows of the house. Everything just looked bare, almost like a ghost town that he wonders if someone was even still breathing inside.
He gets his answer by a swat to his bum. “It’s not too late to tell your father you want a pool too. The new owners probably got it a couple of years after they moved in. The construction didn’t happen until you were in high school.”
Jongseong frowns and shoots his wondering before he could stop his mouth. “It didn’t come with the house?”
“As far as I know. I used to clean the upper veranda before you moved into this room, the original owner had a backyard for grilling. The Yangs probably constructed it for their son.”
There it goes again. The little flicker of something warm, perhaps a grain of hope that Jongseong was starting to feel weird about. Since when did he start feeling so attached to the thought of another human around his age living in proximity? He didn’t care all those years, he only wondered but not this much.
“I don’t think they have a son.” Jongseong whispers, hand cradling the bar of his window slide before he shuts it close.
It became a cycle whether Jongseong liked it or not.
He would wake up to the sun’s glare, his windows open half way and the curtain playfully swings as if it’s inviting him to look. He would fight it for a good minute then he would eventually find himself by his window, half of his body sticking out as he squints his eyes to study the exterior of their neighbor’s house.
The other day, only one car was missing. The next day, both cars were out and today…
“Only one,” Jongseong takes note while he stretches his aching back. It was a ridiculous observation to take note of and he was starting to feel like a creep especially when he looks at his notes app.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: both cars are gone
Tuesdays, Thursdays: only one
Weekends: to be recorded
Something close to bile crawls up his stomach and before Jongseong could further drown himself to a graveyard of self disgust, he quickly turns away when his nana’s familiar knock filtered through his door.
“Sunghoon’s downstairs!”
“Mhm,” Jongseong frantically moves around the lump of his things to get his school notes. He forgets about his opened window or the flowing curtain. “I’ll be down in a sec!”
“You’ve got two minutes!”
And he misses by a few seconds when he crouched down to grab his phone charger how the window by the attic of their neighbor’s house remained opened too.
A month has already passed by and before Jongseong could grieve the silence of their house for a little longer, he was already back to waking up to his mother’s voice.
“What time did you get back?” He squints his aching eyes when he feels a cool palm smoothing the nest that was his hair.
“We just did, your appa barely parked the car. He was in for labor.”
Jongseong only squints harder, mind and his cognitive capacity barely functioning to process any information given at 5 am in the morning.
He still tries though. “Labor? Mhm, sure…sounds really eventful.”
“He ate too much of the quesadillas, was crippling the whole time we were at the airport and farted for more than ten times on the way home.”
“Was he sweating by the forehead?”
“Cold sweat and everything.” He shares a laugh with his mom. Eyes softer and full of sleep, he lets the rare moment go on.
A month wasn’t the longest his parents were gone for work. He’s had holidays, Christmas and new year’s spent alone before. This wasn’t new to him but he takes whatever they decide to give when time lets them.
“We got you something.”
“I’m 18,” Jongseong deadpans, defensive at the thought of his parents still thinking they could comfort him with gifts when they leave for work. Sure it works on some days but at his big age, it’s something he tries to overcome.
Still he finds himself rising from his bed and tugging on the first hoodie that he got his hands on. He continues to sulk casually even if there was a noticeable skip to his steps as he follows his mother down their living room.
He tries to keep a straight face when a medium sized woven bag was carried by his mother over. She was gentle with it but at the same time, she was handling it with pronounced effort.
Jongseong breaks his facade once he was able to hear the soft barks.
“No way…” he trails off with a hand behind his neck. “You—but Europe…”
“Is a continent and you’re our only son who wanted a dog since he was five.”
After too much teenage hesitation, he goes in for a hug that his mother would probably tell her friends over fancy luncheons for the next few months. The unshed tears of happiness are kept at bay as he carefully opens the bag to reveal a brown sleeping Vizsla puppy.
Jongseong falls in love in the middle of their living room while his mother silently films the whole thing.
His first morning with the puppy was something that would alter his brain for the rest of his days. It was a little over a few hours after getting the chocolate Vizsla pup and straying even a second away from it was definitely not on his list. Even his nana was ready to spoon feed him his breakfast because he wanted to hold the puppy against his chest while it sleeps.
“It’s nice outside, I want to take it for a walk.” He says over their first lunch together back as a family. His father tries to hide his fond laugh over a sip of water while his mother plainly gushes at his adoration.
“Give it time to know your scent before you take it for a walk.”
“But appa, it’s Monday a day from now. I’m running out of time.” He reasons back with a slight whine. He was acting so young which was evident from the quivering of his mother’s mouth as she smiles around her steak.
Before his parents could hold him back, he smooches his mother’s cheek which was the most effective trick for her to give in. The poor woman barely had time to indulge the warmness of her only child’s kiss at 18 when she was sweet talked to give the puppy’s body harness over.
“The leash!” She barely gets out as she runs after a giddy Jongseong with the now wide eyed puppy in his arms.
In a span of seconds, Jongseong was already out of their 12 feet gate which was starting to look miserable now that he was older. They lived in a private residential park that required the next house to be at least two lots over.
It was just not the case for the house next to theirs. The Yangs. Or if they really do exist.
Jongseong huffs at the thought before hugging the new puppy against his chest. “I think I won’t be able to name you today.”
It looks at him with eyes a little too big for its face. Everything was a rich color of Mocha now that the puppy was under the sun. Its eyes looked more alive and the breathing pattern told him it was starting to know the world little by little.
He find himself moving to face their house now that he was outside. “That’s your home now, buddy.”
The puppy answers him with a head nudge under his chin. “I know, it looks sad but it’s not so bad.”
After a few more puppy monologues, Jongseong finds himself walking to where his hands seemed to sweat the most. The exterior of the house from outside was a classic cabin. The ones in those horror indie films where a group of friends somehow stupidly makes the wrong turn and ends up staying the night. It was a dark beauty and everyone with an eye for pretty things would probably say the same.
It just looked heartbreakingly sad and empty.
“It’s our neighbor’s house.” Jongseong starts as he studies the red wooden gate. It was a few inches shorter than theirs but the richness of material was sold underneath his nose. Everything looked too taken care of that something in him somehow thrived at the thought that there might really be people living inside.
“It’s just…we never get to see each other since they moved in.” The puppy collapses its little head under his chin and Jongseong drills it in his mind that it was probably comforting him. “They moved when I was in first grade, it’s been 11 years and I don’t think they’re real.”
Right after he says it, a big droplet of rain soothes its way on his arm, followed by another and another until his shirt was damp enough to stick against his skin.
“Shit,” Jongseong whispers when the droplets were now harshly raining them down. The puppy was letting out baby barks as it lightly shivers against his chest. He tries to cup a hand over its frame but regardless of its young age, it was still bigger than his whole palm. The little barks continued and Jongseong curses his way over to their gate.
But something told him it won’t be easy. He reaches the metal frame and pushed a hand against it only to find a neutral impact.
“Shit,” he repeats the overused curse at the realization that their gate locks from the inside. He was supposed to lever the emergency seal down before he stepped out a while ago but since his hands were full from carrying the dog, scenes were just skipped over.
When the rain was barely making him breathe to add with the shivering puppy who was now whimpering against his chest, Jongseong rapidly jogs to the intercom beside their gate. He opens the thick plastic acrylic only to find it unresponsive.
“Fuck, I have a dog not now.” He harshly whispers when he was able to remember his nana’s complaints about the intercom replacement maintenance. Out of desperation, he does not think too carefully when he hushes the shivering puppy down under the little shed of his mother’s shrubs by their gate.
“Just a little while, buddy. We’ll be inside cuddling under warm blankets in no time, just stay still for a bit.” He somehow failed to process the situation they’re in. After all, it was raining and he could barely see. He was soaked from head to toe, his phone was inside his warm room and the only thing he has was his black Calvin’s, a puppy and its harness without a leash.
He pounds at their gate over the stinging rain and hopes it gets through when the thought hits him. His fingers were bare and empty from any form of leash. His pockets remained quite heavy and he pockets it to find the harness still sitting there.
Jongseong’s heart collapses to his stomach when he stared down to find the puppy gone.
“Shit!” He yells or cries and just anything in between because his heart was already breaking under the rain.
He wasn’t even able to name it yet.
“Oh God,” he palm his head on both sides as he ran the soaked streets which looked pretty bare to be housing a puppy. His head was throbbing at the thought that he couldn’t even yell a name to call the puppy out.
But he continues because that little body of warmth was the only thing that made him the most alive at the time being. So he calls whatever sound, a broken whisper and even a ridiculous bark to hail the puppy back.
He ran the cold streets with shivering lips and aching feet as he slips from time to time. He didn’t even know which street he was at, all he knew was that he already ran past the Yangs’ and this part of their residential park was an area he never frequented. He traps in the little fear at the knowledge that the next house was probably two massive streets over.
In the middle of his running, Jongseong ends up slipping his house slippers off because the rain water was soaking him either way. The thick elastic was just restricting his blood to flow freely.
“Buddy, let’s go home!” He yells before the strain ends up hitting him. To add to his mishaps, his left foot somehow hit a moss covered stone which effectively tipped his body mass over the side of the empty road.
“Fuck,” Jongseong mewls and he feels his eyes stinging at the unidentified pain around his left knee. He feels a warm gush of something and the faint smell of metal. It didn’t help that the rain was pouring down like it was meaning to drown him alive.
He only finds out the scraped skin when he breathes a handful of water and air in to grieve the happiest day of his life.
He wasn’t one to believe in miracles but then again, even an undedicated Catholic can hope their false practices could fruit them one.
A set of faint tiny barks penetrated his ears and he was quick to whip his head around only to realize he was at the back of their neighbor’s house.
“Buddy,” his voice was already hoarse but he continues to call out with his whole chest. “I’m here! Where are you?”
It was silly but it was raining, his knee was bleeding and he just wanted his dog back. “Buddy, where are—“
“He’s never going to answer you. You probably know that on better days.” A voice on his left speaks up, scaring the shit out of him that he was sure his guts were rearranged by an inch.
Jongseong whips his head to the side expecting to see only his puppy and a rounding officer from the residential security but he ends up seeing a boy with his hood up, completely soaked just as he is.
In the boy’s arms, his Vizsla puppy was tucked snuggly.
“I found him shivering near our backyard gate when I was about to close it for the night.” The boy continued when all Jongseong could supply was the squinting of his eyes to absorb all the happenings at once.
The boy was rather tall but he knew he was taller. But somehow, his built was wide, his shoulders even more so that the hoodie he was wearing emphasized his upper body well even under the pouring rain.
“I-I…” Jongseong tries to start when the rain trickled a little too hard and the boy ends up lifting his soaked hood to swipe his damp hair up.
And whatever air it was, Jongseong chases to keep in him when he was able to take in the sight of oval shaped eyes.
He was cold, all he wanted was his dog and his warm bed.
But his cheeks were warmer. “I’m Jongseong but you can also call me Ja—“
The stranger nods, if Jongseong squints a little too hard he was able to make out the faint rise of his mouth.
“Jay and sometimes it’s Park Jay around your friends and Jongseong with your parents. We’re neighbors, I know this much.”
Jongseong collapses inside, heart to his stomach while the rain subsides.
“I’m Yang, Yang Jungwon. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
“No way that’s real.” Park Sunghoon was a lot of things but assertive. As his only near cousin, the younger was a peep talker unless their uncles and aunties would wave a hundred dollar bill.
“Start from the very beginning again.” He urges for the third time that day. Jongseong barely had time to groan before a hand clasped itself around his shoulders. “So he’s actually real? Like, how’d you even know he’s the Yang who lives there?”
“It was raining.” Jongseong deadpans like it was a universal code the other would get. Sunghoon remains dotting, eyes bewildered and expecting. “And I was looking for my dog somewhere behind their house. No one was out aside from the two of us.”
This was probably the part where Sunghoon would drawl a long, “And so?” but it actually never came. He watches his cousin remain thinking, eyes boring into his own that he starts feeling cold.
“Hoon, cut it out. You’re not helping.”
It wasn’t until lunch time when Sunghoon’s presence was not the only thing binding him to the living world was Jongseong able to feel normal again. He takes in the sight of Kim Sunoo, one of his juniors who was a little too mouthful for his own good, enthusiastically pouncing a conversation with a shy looking boy who was probably a freshman.
“I feel weird about this, honestly.” Sunghoon tries to subtly tell him again over Jajangmyeon spills.
“What’s weird?” Heeseung butts in after stealing a handful of his fries. No beaming Jake was seen behind the other but Jongseong didn’t miss the crumpled collar and the dried marks of sweat beads by the forehead.
Jongseong traps in a grimace and kicks what he hopes is Sunghoon’s leg under their lunch table. “Nothing, he’s just being weird because Sunoo keeps on pestering the new kid.”
“Iki’s barely of age, stop plotting a jealous case of cold shoulder when you can’t even look at Kim in the eye.” Heeseung laughs, failing to read between the lines of Sunghoon’s passive stare at the mention of Kim Sunoo. He was too busy making Jongseong face him.
“Yeah, stop being weird.” Jongseong adds while his palms sweat around his utensils.
That day, he doesn’t wait for Sunghoon by their school’s main building. Once he was able to see his father’s driver, he raises a hand and swiftly entered the vehicle with a prominent speed. He only murmurs a faint greeting and a line containing phrases of an ‘upset stomach’ and the need to be in a ‘bathroom in the next five minutes’ before they were zooming past the streets of Seoul.
Jongseong arrives in a breathless set of hiccups. He waves his father’s driver away over a polite bow before he rushes inside to throw his school bag under the kitchen bar.
“Jongseong-ah! Why are you—“
“Can I please have some water?” He finds himself gasping over dried lips and the way his nana was staring told him that he probably looked dazed.
After a glass of ice, Jongseong heals his beating chest by walking straight to his room to check on his puppy. The little dog was asleep, the same way he finds it doing earlier this morning. In no time, the pup was lifted from his sleeping bed and over to an 18 year old’s bare chest which reeked of teenage manly perfumes that never seemed to last pleasantly.
“Miss you, buddy.” Jongseong murmurs by the dog’s head. He remembers smelling his own scent on it on its first day but now that he was able to sniff the dog closer, he could trace a milder scent of something that isn’t his.
“I’m Yang, Yang Jungwon. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
Then Sunghoon’s voice somehow blends in.
“This is insane.” Jongseong mutters against the puppy’s head as he gaslights himself that he probably came out too strong on his ridiculous theory about his neighbors not being real that it made Sunghoon feel so weary about all these.
These being harsh rains, a lost puppy, bloody knees and oval shaped eyes.
“I’m Yang, Yang Jungwon.”
“But he’s real.” Jongseong finds himself muttering with a sleepy puppy on his chest. Before he could talk himself out of it, he skips to grab the harness not before making sure the leash was attached to it. He zooms past his nana who was already pushing a plate of sliced apples with a side of peanut butter over.
He only raises the small dog as a silent permission to go out.
By the time he arrives to the street he scraped his knee at, or he thinks it was this street, the sky was already dark courtesy of the winter solstice.
“He was—no, he came over there.” Jongseong murmurs as he faces his left. If the directions matched, all that have transpired that night was really real.
Jongseong watches his feet trace the direction of where he silently calculated this Jungwon’s sudden appearance only to find a cemented wall that went twice his height. There was no trace of hidden gates or any sort of backyard portals you could sneak out like what the boy claimed that night.
“I was probably hallucinating. It must have been the blood.” He knows it’s a little ridiculous to conclude it too but with Sunghoon’s strange pestering, Jongseong thinks it might actually be a dream.
Maybe whatever weird longing he was feeling over the thought of their neighbors’ existence brought him to this weird fixation of proving they were not real until a physical evidence just prettily smacked him that night.
Prettily. Jongseong gulps as he stared hard at the house.
When he feels like a mental therapist is someone he needs to have on speed dial, a perfectly crafted door opens like it was just a part of the wall he was staring at. It was symmetrically measured to match the wall, fitting like flat puzzle until an actual door frame breaks when opened.
And out steps the subject of his mid day palpitations.
Jongseong stares because how can he not? He stares from the way the door just smoothly shuts like it was never there. He stares because he feels like that shouldn’t happen. And he stares because Yang Jungwon under the young night sans the hoodie was a sight that could be an italicized juncture of his youth.
He only looks away when the little dog in his arms barks.
And everything just kind of fell…
Oval shaped eyes turned to his, wide and questioning until it calmly settles on the barking figure in his arms. “You’re back.”
…right into place.
“Yeah,” he drawls out without too much thought process. His puppy continues to bark, eager paws trashing at the sight of the other human.
Jungwon stops at arms length, he could figure. He blames it on the fiery wind or maybe the lack of light that a ridiculous shyness was enveloping him.
“How’s your knee?” There it was. The sudden jerk inside him, a tender urge to look up and look at the boy in front of him to ask why it sound so easy for him to talk like they know each other so well.
He only supplies a nod that even the brief gesture warmed the tips of his ears.
Another bark springs them apart and an odd sound of something close to a laugh weaved inside his ears. Jongseong looks up in an instant to catch a faint ghost of raised lips.
“You’re a lot taller than I expected you to be.” It was out before he sinks another bloody nip inside his mouth.
This Jungwon in front of him barely hides his astonishment. Jongseong only receives a look of wonder before an odd heating at the back of his neck caused him to bow his head suddenly.
“I-I…trust me or not but I know how to talk I just—“ this was breaking him the longer he stands there and twists his tongue over stupid phrases. It didn’t help that Jungwon continues to watch him with the loudest silence. “I’m sorry about the height thing, it was meant to compliment you—“
“If that was meant to be a compliment then thank you, Jongseong.”
Only his parents called him that. He was only Jongseong to his family and not to anyone else. But at the moment with a barking puppy in his arms, he’s Jongseong to someone his age.
His mouth meant to pronounce “you’re welcome” but when he looks up from rubbing his heated neck, Jungwon was just there.
He was there like it was just meant to happen. It reminded him of the first time he watched Peter Pan and his mother told him that he was just a lost boy who also wanted to be hugged at night. Jungwon to him felt like Neverland itself, like the epitome of youth was something he never got to understand.
Jongseong too was a lot of things except being critically conscious of where his life decisions might take him. With a silent intake of the deepest breath, he opens his mouth to a portal of uncertainty.
“Do you want to go to my house?”
There was not a single world where Jongseong can see this happening. Where a single space would give him a human being too enthralled by other people’s smiles or simply the way they look. He would know even if he wasn’t a match to Newton’s calibre that being human was entirely art itself.
And Yang Jungwon makes him understand that.
“Your room’s really cold.” Jungwon notes upon entry. His puppy was yet again tucked snuggly against the other’s chest that he finds himself crumpling his fist to fight the urge of snapping a quick picture.
“Nana never turns it off. She didn’t know I won’t be coming back alone.”
“Nana? The nice woman downstairs?” It was a gentle inquiry that left Jongseong soft. Maybe it was the way Jungwon genuinely looked for clarity as he tilts his head over to his direction, eyes wide.
“Mhm,” it was a pitiful sound out of him. A hum of teenage embarrassment reeking of too much hormonal frustration that Jongseong wanted to burn his mouth.
Jungwon only answers him with a hum as shy fingers started to trace his study desk. He watches from the corner of his eyes how the other diligently studied the lecture books he had left opened.
He wants to ask so much. There was still that part of him truly convinced he was somehow dreaming that any second now, he would either wake up to his mother’s palm against his cheek or his nana’s pestering.
“This is nice.” He hears Jungwon announce before the sight of too much black hair was the only thing he was seeing.
Because Jungwon was suddenly in front of him, mass and all. A slim wrist holding up his Calculus textbook while another holds his school diary in utmost wonder. “Do you write everything here?”
Jongseong blinks once and answers what he can when another human body heats his. “Um, that’s what it is for?”
He watches Jungwon stare at the textbook before he nods for his own. “And the Calculus textbook is pretty self explanatory. If you look closely, you can see tear stains on these derivatives.”
It started as a gentle hum, a weird vibration of some sort and just a human sound he could brush off. Until he can’t. Until Jongseong hears the rich timbre of laughter sailing out of Jungwon’s being.
Between them, his puppy remained asleep while Jungwon’s shoulders dance to the rhythm of a heart’s beat and he finds his eyes following the motion while his own digs his ribs raw.
He should’ve known that single visit was a turning point of something monumental. The funny thing is how he feels satiated, much similar to a vampire’s feeding and he think he’s gained a hundred years when he remembers how some other human he’s been wondering about was in his room.
And how that very human is in his room again, at the very moment.
“Your school ends at four?” Jungwon asks, the sight of his puppy tucked inside the boy’s hoodie was both new and not. This way, Jungwon looked smaller, younger and just so right with the way the garment drowns his frame.
Jongseong feels the back of his neck heating. “It should and if the day lets us go home with easy hearts without pending group works that typically need some intensive settling.”
He watches Jungwon nod against his bed frame. That was another thing he was torn about when his mouth just ran, the moment the both of them stumbled inside his room earlier. He was meaning to tell Jungwon that he could sit on his bed but slip-ups happened and his heart was being weird that he assertively urged the other to sit beside him on his bed.
And Jungwon makes everything so easy and not when he only hums as a response before settling quietly beside him.
The sides of their covered thighs touching and not once did he pull away.
“Yours?” Jongseong get himself to croak out.
“Depends,” Jungwon sighs with eyes closed. “Depends on the day and…”
Jongseong waits, their knees never creating an inch of gap and he forgets about the chapter he was reading for their Physics worksheet.
“The faculty in charge?”
“No, it depends if my sleep is good and I end up attending.” There it was again. Jungwon’s laugh branding its way to his senses.
Jongseong wants the sound drilled in him when yesterday was only the start of warm nights he used to have when he was younger. Back when he thinks he could have the world by the palm of his hand while wearing his dinosaur cape and faded pajamas.
Before he fails his breathing, the cold sweat spreading on his palm brought him back to the living. “Is your school near mine?”
“It’s not, it’s far from here.” Jungwon stops flipping the pages of his school diary, his dainty fingers polishing the space where his signature was. He watches in sickening fascination how the finger traced his printed name by the signatory line of each page.
Then big eyes met his before Jungwon chugs a phrase that would keep his eyes open for the night. “Do you want it to be?”
Stupidity is innate when you’re young and Jongseong thinks he’s able to understand it from the bottom of his heart.
He doesn’t answer because how could he over the tremble between his ribs. His head momentarily pounds while Jungwon sits there so casually as he prettily traces invisible figures on his school diary.
He opens his mouth for a second, closes it the next until he feels like his jaw could somehow bleed.
Then gentle fingers cradled his chin for a millisecond he’d pray to feel again. “I’m kidding, Seong. Can I call you that? You feel like that name to me.”
He was Jay to his friends, Jay Park to most that knew him when he was in middle school.
He was Jongseong to his parents and the Asian part of his family.
And that day, he became Seong to a boy whose eyes made him feel like he was six again, somewhere by the world’s end where he could become anyone he wished to be.
It’s the first Saturday after a week of coming home to warmer sheets of his bed. What used to wake Jongseong up on his Saturdays before his Vizsla puppy came into the picture was his nana’s soft humming as she folds the fresh laundry for the weekend.
He would get up groggily, the strong scent of lavender and detergent became home to him as a fluctuating teenager who had a weird fixation on the existence of their neighbors.
And today, he was not any different when his nana caught him opening his window, willingly. All bed hair and rumpled pajamas he’s already outgrown over the years.
“A miracle at 18?” His nana questions fondly, a veiny hand against her chest. “My Jongseongie opening his windows for cleaner air to come in…oh my goodness. Darling, I might just cry.”
“Nana,” he groans at the woman’s fondness but his stance were light. “I like the sun today.”
“And I wonder.” The old woman only offers that much with a gentle and a much much knowing smile when she spots the opened attic window from across.
“Your parents are sleeping in to count to today’s miracles. Keep your stomach from growling until then, I’ll cook a hearty breakfast for all of you in a bit.” Jongseong dismisses himself with a skip to his steps as he comes downstairs, his puppy in one arm.
He navigates the centralized living room with familiar ease and when he takes in the sight of his reflection upon opening their smart refrigerator, the device reflected a version of him that entirely felt like a Renaissance of life’s worth. He wasn’t smiling but his skin feels like a rebirth of self-exploration.
He remembers how his school days ended this week. How a human additive was able to alter his life in a span of hours.
Instead of his rumpled sheets and equally rumpled pajamas he’d change into, he now comes home to a sleeping Vizsla pup at the end of his bed.
Before, his phone would ring a familiar tune at six in the evening for a healing nap but now, a knock from his nana would wake him up for the next centuries over.
“Jungwon’s downstairs.” She’d only say in a brief phrase like it was just a set of the most normal words for someone to hear. Because it should be but not to him. He’d find himself rushing to his knees, hands smoothing the surface of his bed until a crease is a squint to spot. In the next minutes when he comes back to his room, another body would follow his in the quietest of steps while the young night paints his room darker.
Instead of waking up to the same sound of his phone after his evening naps before, someone’s weight on top of his bed anchors him to stay awake and finish his school works earlier.
His evenings now were no longer bare of human warmth. His evenings became a piece of solidarity and company all rolled into one being.
“Are you home during the weekends?” Jungwon asked him on a Thursday night.
“Probably, if my parents are.”
Jungwon nods before he raises his hoodie over his slightly rumpled hair, courtesy of a quick nap they unconsciously both took after reading his general Chemistry lecture. A sick attempt of his mouth to stretch made him open their gate in a rush.
“I’ll probably be home too.” Jungwon says even when half of his body was already out. “When both cars are in the garage, I’ll be home.”
“Alright.” He barely croaks out, hands stilling by the steel gate. “You should go home, it’s getting late.”
“That’s my favorite time, Seong.” Came Jungwon’s farewell.
Shaking his head, he commits in his consciousness how he was able to wake up to the sight of a full garage that morning when he had it in him to willingly cross the lump of his bed and open his windows to the stream of the sun’s first rays.
Jongseong throws his head back as he chugs a glass of cold water, wiping his mouth and the barely there smile after at the small and silly thought.
Weekends: no cars are gone
Jungwon’s home.
There was a particular shift that happened one evening. It wasn’t an everyday thing both the boys knew this. After all their lives still so much existed without the sudden encounter that one rainy night gave.
Jongseong’s days were still bare of company especially on mornings. Sunghoon still eats half his lunch and his mother’s cold sandwiches. School was still school in a way that would always hurt. Coming home now was just a little different because a certain knock on his door now might mean something else.
But maybe it was unlikely for consistency to happen. That too much goodness was too much to hold captive in his life that Jongseong was already planning around his withdrawal tendencies if ever all that Jungwon is was just a twisted dream he’d have his mother coaxing him out of with an overpriced shirt.
Safe, he still needs to protect his peace come what may. Getting used to something that genuinely feels like a saturated fit of ice that can melt anytime was dangerous. Jungwon was after all just someone he still barely knows. The boy was very much still a stranger he only lives in close proximity with.
He just felt familiar that’s why it was so easy. It was so easy to get lost and know the other human like it was just meant to happen.
“I hate Sunghoon,” he mutters in disintegrated dignity. He knows it too or maybe he’s known it all along that his cousin’s worrying might actually just be valid at this point.
It’s only been a week since he last saw Jungwon and he feels like the world was not capable of holding colors anymore.
A sickening twist inside his chest breaks him to open his Physics textbook to get a head start. Jongseong reads and tries but all he ends up remembering is how Jungwon silently reads an excerpt in Sears and Zemansky’s University Physics the last time he studied the subject. Learning quantum mechanics should make his head hurt but that day, he was able to finish three worksheets in an hour.
He’s not one to cry but the thought of his gradual attachment being so openly destructive makes him fear the thought of never actually seeing the other anymore. He questions if that night he walked Jungwon to their gate was a goodbye.
Was Jungwon’s way of farewell masked under silent stares and calling him by “Seong” until it breaks him into this mess of ridiculous longing? Maybe it was because that’s all he could think about while reading the fundamentals of the physical properties of nature for the fourth time.
Before he ends up calling the mental therapist he googled some days before, a kiss on his puppy’s little head became his existence’s last signatory inside his room before he grabs a random hoodie and the car keys his grandfather gave him at 16 after he vowed to get a business degree.
So Jongseong does not entirely understand why he’s roaming their private neighborhood on a school night. He barely drives and probably never will if it weren’t for the maintenance fee doubling if he doesn’t warm the engine at least once a month. The smooth material of the steering wheel makes his hands ache every time he makes a sharp turn around the nearer streets of family houses.
He sees a pastel colored house by the street’s end with a princess themed playhouse built out the front lawn. The color should remind him of his younger cousin in Seattle but it reminds him of the hoodie Jungwon wore on the third day the boy came in his house.
Making another left turn and this one brings him closer to the clubhouse that made him sight the little playground that looked too big to him before. Then he remembers Jungwon saying the exact same thing.
“It was the same to me. The slides made me feel like they were tubes capable of swallowing me whole when we first drove by that street.”
“How old were you then?”
“I think we’re about the same age, Seong.”
Jungwon was just everywhere even if his presence was physically not. It was only a week they shared and he already finds himself parked outside the back of the other’s house, car window rolled down as he bites around his pointer finger.
“I’m going insane, this is insane.” Jongseong breathes out when his eyes watch the digital clock turn 12.
And if being insane just felt like the right adjective for him at the moment, it can very much so compliment the silent howling of his chest when the make shift invincible door by the wall of the Yang residence opened.
Then out walks Jungwon wearing a hoodie thrice his size, feet bare.
The world does not stop but something in Jongseong wanted it to when their eyes met like a reflex. Then he bears the peculiar aching of his chest as he watches Jungwon’s eyes widen for a fragment of second before the widest smile breaks out and he was able to know how a dimple works.
“Seong!”
He waves a trembling hand out while his fingers go numb around the steering wheel. And before he knows it, he was drowning around Jungwon again when the other crosses the distance and easily bends his head to his window.
Eyes wide and alive, Jungwon faintly smiles at him. “Where are you going? It’s midnight.”
Somewhere in him, Jongseong knows it was a question he should be asking instead. “Can’t sleep and Physics happened.”
Jungwon laughs and this one was too close for him not to adore. “Can I come with?”
He answers Jungwon by opening his car door to usher the other inside. Jungwon doesn’t protest, doesn’t find it a bit weird that he has to climb over Jongseong’s lap to reach the passenger seat.
And what Jungwon does next completely folds him from within.
Situated on top of his spread out thighs, Jungwon mass and all pauses his movement to haul his body to the passenger’s side. Instead, he stops in front of Jongseong, both knees situated on both sides of the other’s body while arms bracketed a safe bubble that only sheltered them.
Jungwon never says hello just raises a hand to brush Jongseong’s hair out of his eyes. His finger lingers against the other’s temple until it taps a beat of two, warm and grounding. “Let this rest for a bit, yeah?”
Jongseong does not have time to grieve the loss of warmth when the sound of the belt buckle triggered what little consciousness he had left.
“Let’s go, Seong. We only have a few hours left until sunrise.” Jungwon lures before his own belt was buckled for him, soft hand brushing against his arm.
The sun wasn’t awake but the warmness was. It started by the arm, traveling to thin wrists until it reaches heated cheeks turned the other way.
“What time do you set your alarm for school?”
“5:30”
“And what time do you get up?”
“6:30”
The heat was back, enveloping him raw when oval shaped eyes turned into crescent moons in a second under the dark skies of 2 am.
Jongseong should probably look away. He’s been doing good so far, only taking glances and barely there stares every time Jungwon would turn to him to ask him the most basic questions he was now taking by heart. He blames it on the timing and his bleeding knees that night that he wasn’t able to give himself time to really stare.
Jungwon under the 2 am mist as they overlooked the sleeping city was a sight Jongseong never thought he’d want to ask someone to paint for him. From the very tip of the other’s black hair, slightly curled in front just perfectly bounces against an unblemished forehead. Every surface of his skin was smooth and soft, and Jongseong was sure it was warm enough to pinch a blush on his own skin.
But his face, Jungwon’s face felt like blisters for the reason that it leaves him looking, prodding and wanting to study every crevice of space.
“What are your school's official colors?”
“White and blue but mostly the latter.”
“What’s the name?”
“It’s my turn to ask, Seong.”
Jongseong turns away again, cheeks heating raw and gradually painful to bear when he hears Jungwon’s entertained chuckles.
“Are you happy now?”
They were sitting on the trunk of his car, the vehicle a little too sleek for them to sit so raggedly on but their masses together just felt right. Jongseong had both his arms supporting his weight as he leans from the back and a much human heat grounds the side of his arm.
Jungwon turns to him, a sight he sneakily watches from the corner of his eye. The boy who seems to seek a jacket out of his body heat, repeats the unanswered question. “Are you happy, Seong?”
Jungwon stops swinging his bare feet as he made way to twist his body to face Jongseong who gulps his answer away when he feels Jungwon’s chest brushing against the material of his thick hoodie.
Their clothes were thick but being human was thicker than any barrier of emotion.
“Happy?” Jongseong starts, voice faltering the slightest at the end. “In what way?”
“This time as we flat our asses down on top of your expensive car that you probably bled your mind for.” Jungwon continues, voice growing much louder now that he was closer and not.
What Jungwon says next breaks Jongseong a little too well that he jumps up from the vehicle, arms bracketing over his chest.
“Right now with me, are you happy?”
“I’m—”
“Because I am,” Jungwon says over his utterance. “I like seeing the world quietly like this. I like watching the world sleep while I’m the most alive.”
“Are you real?” Jongseong, breathless and all stands to say. He was a in front of Jungwon who only looked at him with eyes much too alive for him not to be.
He needed space if he wants his cognitive ability to actually work.
It was Jungwon’s turn to look at him with much questioning, all gentle curiosity and a whole lot of fascination.
“I’ve been wondering about you since my parents told me someone moved in the house next to ours. I was in first grade that time. I’ve been thinking about you since then.” Jongseong knows what his mouth lets out were words he would simply not tell someone he just met on other days of his life. But this was not some other day, he knows it when Jungwon never wavers from where he sat. His eyes remained on his, drawing him to raw honesty.
“How can I not be happy when you’re literally one of my childhood dreams.”
And just like that Jongseong is seven, his brown dog huggable snug under the crook of his neck, standing on his tippy toes to sneak a look at the house next to theirs over his window room.
“You’re not supposed to say that to strangers you just met.” It should be a mood changer. The way Jungwon tries to break the unmistakeable bubble of unbreathable longing that has ridiculously bathed them under the young morning.
But even he knows there was a truth to it. The way Jongseong stands there while his eyes glisten, arms shivering against his chest when the cold wind would howl stronger.
“I don’t think we’re strangers, we just met a little too late but I know you.” Jongseong says it in a way that would be remembered. He remains far, making sure Jungwon was not in his space and his chest was not burning from the thought of being able to memorize the faint moles on Jungwon’s face.
“When I saw you under that rain, I knew you already. It was like putting a face on a person I already knew that regardless of the way we met, you didn’t have to say hello for me to recognize you.” He knows he should probably stop but something about the freedom of breathing cold air while the world’s sleeping gave him that much courage.
He ends it with a step forward as he drops his arms by his sides. Jungwon never moves an inch but his hands trembled from the little space of skin his hoodie couldn’t cover.
“Do you think we’re strangers?” Jongseong asks back.
Jungwon answers him with words and more. Jongseong watches him get up with a little tremble, his first steps faltering and a hiss was definitely trapped inside his mouth when his bare feet touched the cold asphalt.
“I know the names people call you.” Jungwon stops when the tip of his bare toes touch sock covered ones. “And I wouldn’t be here on bare feet at 3 am, wanting to watch the sunrise with you if we were.”
Their conversations after that were lighter. Far more normal for two teenagers who just (kind of) met. Jongseong asks about house pets, and Jungwon would answer ’none’ with a type of sadness that was adorable.
Come 4 am, Jungwon asks about Jongseong’s parents and if he has any siblings. It was Jongseong’s turn to reply ‘none’ but with a silly smile to get a thought across that he was happy to take all that love alone.
Come 5 am, the sun was peeking somewhere at the back of two dark clouds and Jungwon’s face prettily absorbed the barely there colors of the dark sky.
Before his chest howls again, Jongseong calls out a spontaneous invitation. “You want to chase after morning school buses?”
“Don’t you have school?” Jungwon looks at him in amusement but he was already walking around the car to get to the passenger side.
“I do, so I hope the world slows down a little bit today.” Jongseong answers back as he waits for Jungwon to settle in before putting the car in reverse.
At 5:30 am, they were zooming past the cold streets of Pyeongchang-dong and after a foggy school bus.
Jungwon clicks his tongue at the Mercedes Benz logo. “That’s a school bus?”
“Hmm,” Jongseong nods as he alternates lanes behind the big vehicle. There was a hanging question he wanted to ask because school buses affiliated to a higher tax bracket was pretty common around where they lived.
“They’re a bit smaller now that I’m able to reflect from behind.”
“You don’t say.” Jungwon settles after. “Can’t believe we’re looking at it this way. It feels foreign like I aged two decades to see a school bus from behind.”
If Jongseong notices the little shake in Jungwon’s voice, he drowns it by blindly opening his phone to start a song.
And of course, Teenage Dirtbag had to play.
Jongseong looks away when he sees Jungwon wiping under his eyes.
“I can’t believe I’m crying at 6 am because we’re driving behind a school bus instead of being in it.” Jungwon croaks and Jongseong laughs his heart out under the rising sun.
Jongseong forgets how time works.
Maybe he does sometimes when he looks at Sunghoon and he’s able to describe familial love that’s too sheltered and before they know it, they’re probably off to college and his cousin would never tell him what’s gotten him so worried.
“You’ve been coming home early these days.” Sunghoon quietly notes as he looks straight at their Chemistry scribbles of faulty equations for balancing.
Jongseong couldn’t help the part of him that soars with kept adoration at his cousin’s subtle persistence. “You miss me?”
“The world’s ending.”
“More reasons to do so,” Jongseong laughs under his breath when their Chemistry teacher starts to call people to answer on the board. It should make him gulp on other days but lately, even the thought of the world ending doesn’t seem to phase him.
He looks at their lecture board and sees the small space reserved for their Calculus class.
“I just want to go home a lot these days.” He turns to look at Sunghoon who only frowned at him. “That dog got me in shambles. It’s insane.”
“Right, the dog.” Sunghoon nods, his slim fingers drilling against their shared desk where he scribbled a drawing of one using a whiteboard marker. “When will you introduce me?”
Jongseong goes home with a wide eyed Sunghoon upon entrance to his room.
Nothing was out of place that was deemed extraordinary if one were to live like Jongseong. There were no childhood monsters popping, no gore exhibition and thrashed bedsheets in trail of a thief case.
There were just two new things added to support the bulging of Park Sunghoon’s eyes as he smacks a subtle hand against his chest by Jongseong’s door: (1) A sleeping puppy was situated on the middle of the bed; (2) The very same bed housing a reading human completely oblivious to two pairs of gawking eyes.
But he feels it after a second more, fueled by Sunghoon’s coughing as his cousin taps his throat to relieve an invincible itch.
“Jungwon,” he breathes out like a constant verbatim.
“Nana ushered me inside,” Jungwon says so casually as he gently flips one of Jongseong’s stashed world almanac. “You’re late today.”
Jongseong follows the little hand movement while Jungwon continues to sit there like he’s not meant to belong anywhere else but his eyes lingered on Sunghoon’s frame—questioning, curious, and waiting.
“You came from class?” Jongseong breaks the loud silence by cradling a hard smack against Sunghoon’s back to push him inside. He tries not to let it get to him when his eyes realize that Jungwon has his blanket sheets wrapped around his lower body.
By the end of the day, his bed would smell like Jungwon. He squeezes Sunghoon’s arm, pressing it to force a sentence out. “This is Sunghoon, we had to settle a group work before leaving. He also wanted to meet the pup.”
Another squeeze around Sunghoon’s arm and Jongseong misses the way Jungwon’s eyes zeroes at the action.
“Ah—yes, that’s me, I’m Sunghoon and the dog…” Sunghoon poorly stumbles as his eyes struggle to look at the small animal nestled at the end of Jungwon’s feet and Jongseong’s carpeted floor.
The cousins wait for a hum of acknowledgement but got none. Sunghoon clips his mouth shut as he breathes through his nose at the lack of words from the other, while Jongseong feels his neck heating up yet again when he catches sight of Jungwon casually going back to whatever it was he was reading.
And maybe the heaven was generously open that day when a small whimper from the waking dog momentarily dissipated whatever tension was brewing inside the room. As the owner, Jongseong ushers the puppy to him, cradling it to his chest as he turns to his eager cousin who looked like he was seven again.
“Does it have a name?”
“No,” two voices answered a fascinated Sunghoon who was gently caressing the puppy’s neck while Jongseong still carried it.
If the pup was not there, Sunghoon would definitely assess the situation at a deeper context but he was too in love at the four legged ball of fur to do so. He fails to notice the edge of tone, the subtle authority and presence of the answers he got from his question.
One ‘no’ was from an equally engrossed Jongseong who was leisurely petting the unnamed puppy, and the other ‘no’ came in the form of sharp feline eyes dismantling the scene in front of him.
It was Sunghoon’s mistake to look again until he spots a timid glare of some sort directed at him. “Do you need to study together, Seong?”
Seong. Sunghoon fights the curving of his mouth when he remembers a particular scene of a seven year old Jongseong punching him when he tried to give him a nickname over family weekend luncheons.
Jongseong laughs while the puppy cutely barks between them. The scene looks warm, could be placed on those family portraits that grandmas of the family would swoon over.
But to Jungwon, it was anything but that. He eyes the arm that Jongseong reflexively placed around a stiffening Sunghoon before he starts closing the thick book to get out of the warm bed.
For as long as he was living, the sight of skin has never made Jongseong any less of a rational person. It was supposed to be just skin, just the biggest muscle of a human body but he finds himself aching at the sight of it. He aches in the way that suppleness was a greed he wants to know if ever his fingers bear the courage of a god and it touches even a patch of it.
“Seong?” The voice prods but a finger has woven its way between his. Jongseong looks alarmed as he shakes his head to look at Jungwon bare feet and all who was now standing directly in front of him with glistening eyes.
Somewhere beside him he can hear Sunghoon’s deep intake of breath before Jungwon closes another more of the barely there space between them; and until soft strands of hair touches his chin. A beat of silence and a soft kiss was heard, followed by a whining puppy who wiggled in his arms.
“I’ll take that as a yes then, I’ll leave you both to be.” Jungwon easily mumbles as he remains bent down to the little dog in his arms, lips pressing against its little head just as soft chin caresses his bare arm in gentle heat. When Jungwon rises to bid his farewell, nothing could’ve prepared Jongseong for the very same mouth to touch his blazing cheek.
The last thing he heard was another suckle of air from Sunghoon before his limbs locked all the way to his core and Jungwon was already making his way out of the room.
“And nice to meet you Sunghoon,” the boy turns to say with a smile—entirely too bright, pretty and mischievous.
When the door closes, Jongseong peels off a trembling hand against his heated cheek.
And the Park cousins mumble over each other while they both break in cold sweat.
“He thinks we’re going to fucking study together.”
“I think Jungwon wants to kill me.”
The shift was even more noticeable now that it wasn’t only Uwon greeting him home.
How the puppy was named after the human himself sitting prettily again on the middle of his bed was an event Jongseong was blessed to have lived. It was just a casual name he thought of when he woke up from a nap, the imprint of his pillow lulling him to rise and test the name itself when Sunghoon came home after meeting the dog the other day.
“Uwon,” he remembers calling out for the little puppy smelling his school bag. And from then on, everything else just seemed to make sense as the little tail wagged its way to grace.
The Vizsla pup then became Uwon and Jongseong absolutely hides the little pride in him to think that it had a part taken from Jungwon himself.
“Since when did that happen?” A small frown but a timid smile greeted him by the foot of his bed. The air condition in his room should calm his warm cheeks but Jongseong feels the opposite when Jungwon hastily closes his Chicken Soup for the Soul book to get on both knees until the boy was kneeling in front of him on the bed.
“What? Uwon?” He tries to croak out with dissipating stability when Jungwon takes it upon himself to unwrap his school tie for him. The dainty fingers he would only look at was now tending to him, skillfully unwrapping the piece of fabric against his trembling chest.
“Uwon,” a light chuckle painted his own lips moist. “It sounds like a name similar to mine.”
After, light presses of pretty fingers worked on his buttons. Jongseong gulps, “It’s yours.”
“Mine?” Jungwon stops by the last button of his polo shirt. His cat eyes zeroing on his and Jongseong was taken back to the strange meeting between his cousin and Jungwon.
Mine. The way Jungwon said it made him revisit all the motions he did with his hands when Sunghoon came over. The reflexes he might’ve done unconsciously that made those crescent eyes present an emotion of something he can’t quite name.
Mine. And he remembers the way Jungwon’s mouth molded over his skin in the briefest of time that day before he left and how the smile he gave after made him feel that exact same word.
Mine.
Jongseong doesn’t entirely understand but he still answers, “Yours.”
The smile Jungwon makes was playful this time but he feels the lightness it was meant to hold. “Well then I’m honored to have your dog’s name taken from mine. Makes me feel like he’s my own too.”
“Is he not? He wails when you leave the bed and smells just like you.”
“Yeah? Does he sleep on the bed with you then?”
“I wake up next to him so yes.”
Another laugh—lighter and much real. “No study dates today, Seong?”
Jongseong pauses his own smile at the question as it opened more doors to a better assessment of the peculiar meeting with Sunghoon. When he looks at Jungwon again who was now climbing back to his little nest on his bed, he was able to catch sight of a heavy curve on the other’s mouth.
Then it clicks as ridiculous as it is.
“It wasn’t a study date, Sunghoon just came here to hang.”
The curve grew even more heavier, eyes casting deeper until they were buried between pages.
“He literally just came to see the dog. He wasn’t able to meet Uwon since I got him.”
The graphic book was only raised higher.
“Jungwon, there isn’t a day where I would want to plan a fucking study date with my cousin.”
Ah, Jongseong’s heart sings a song he doesn’t know. He feels it between his ribs as it sails smoothly over used bones.
“Cousin?” Jungwon repeats.
“Cousin.” Jongseong confirms.
And Jongseong certainly wasn’t expecting a week later for this type of scene to play out:
Warm limbs moved under his over silent readings of their textbooks.
One pretty hand gravels through the words of Malthus and Karl Marx while another absorbs the pain of Thermodynamics.
It should hurt. It should make temples ache and throb if it weren’t for the space between them housing intertwined fingers.
From time to time, Jungwon would shift or crack a bone or two before nestling more against his chest. Without moving away, he’d turn momentarily look over Jongseong’s readings and point out the understandings he’ll make.
“Capitalism sucks.” He mumbles over Jongseong’s shoulder. Soft lips thread along the thin cotton shirt which bared his collarbones more instead of covering it.
Jongseong tries to hum but it died inside his mouth when Jungwon carefully gets up on his knees to settle in between his outstretched legs.
At the back of his mind, the malice of physical touch to a teenage wondering was getting the best of him. He wants to scream, to halt the other from touching him too much when he knows it was plainly just an act of intimacy that was entirely motivated by fascination.
Jongseong for the little part of him he wanted to convince himself to believe that Jungwon was only seeing the world now. Everything was new to him. Every person feels like home if they take him out for car drives at 2 am or when they have a cute dog who sleeps a lot.
Jongseong convinces himself Jungwon was probably just thirsty for the world. Every human he meets and he would meet, he would probably want them to be a Jongseong.
Even if he settles perfectly on his lap, bony arms loosely wrapping themselves around his heated (yet again) neck.
When a finger traces a patch of skin, Jongseong gives in. “This isn’t very friendly for us to do. Capitalism isn’t supposed to end like this.”
“Then I can be a communist, I’d rather a we.”
The smooth hum of the air condition sails clearly, even the gentle breathing of Uwon could be heard no matter how little the body of the owner is.
Jongseong stares and keeps his air in at the lack of words to express the shivering of everything within him. In return, Jungwon only acts upon what he feels when pretty hands cradled a troubled mind.
“We had a debate in class the other day.” Jungwon says between their aligned mouths. “I thought of us.”
The mass of the boy in front of him should ground him to Earth but their proximity salivates a greed for time so Jongseong replies with fisted hands. “What about?”
“It’s about physical touch, about the warmth of another or just the feeling of sharing homeostasis with another human.”
Nothing about it should make him feel a sick rush of excitement but it does. Jungwon says it so delicately yet his solid mass was enough to make Jongseong’s head spin. “What argument is even there?”
“Intimacy, the sensualness of it and how wanting to hold or kiss someone is equated to sexual hunger.” There was a brief pressing of their chest before Jungwon mops a hand through his fringes. “Is it not?”
“Kissing is…” Jongseong was quick to supply as a sick wave hits his stomach. He couldn’t find words because he thinks it’s absurd to reason. How is physical intimacy not affiliated to any sensual feeling when human desire motivates even the slightest meet of eyes? Jongseong ponders over this while soft fingers ghost over his chin.
Jungwon was not playing fair. “Kissing is what, Seong?”
“You don’t kiss someone you don’t like.”
It can probably be a scene of any coming of age movies. Two youthful souls filled with raging wonder and intense theorems of self exploration talking about what the wonder of human lips.
Jungwon breaks the pitiful excuse of air by cradling a palm against Jongseong’s heated cheek. “That’s true.”
That was his last destructive decree before he dips his head to deliver a ghost kiss against a word ridden skin.
They didn’t talk about the kiss but it happened a lot. It happens a lot.
Jungwon blindly turns off the Khan Academy lecture he’s got playing while his other hands settle around Jongseong’s neck to keep him in place.
There’s a swallowed laugh spilling from Jongseong’s mouth while soft lips peppered blowing kisses on his skin. Uwon was somewhere barking by their feet but he got his hands full of human skin to indulge the small creature.
Jungwon’s thighs from either side of him tightens as the last smooch was placed on his chin. “You’ve got to…got to stop if you want me to finish this worksheet before midnight.”
A smiling Jungwon pulls away from him, the small distance allowing a brief space for emptiness to settle. “And what happens by midnight?”
Gentle squeeze on smooth skin hikes them closer. “You know what happens during midnights.”
And he does. Jungwon does with the way he quickly got up from space between Jongseong’s legs to silently settle beside him. No other words were said, just the sound of paper scratches, Jongseong’s mild curses when his scientific calculator displays a syntax error…and the sound of Jungwon’s lips kissing his skin.
Any skin other than his mouth.
At the back of Jongseong’s mind in between aching temples from answering his university physics worksheets, he knows it would be frowned upon. The social constructs of the world are never stable as it either bends to the new generation or stays locked by the older one.
Humans crave physical touch and intimacy much like a stomach growls at the thought of food. It can be explained in a lot of ways but the act of wanting is just there. Sometimes it just happens, it just feels right to do it with empty reasons.
When his neck feels like it’s going to fall off, Jongseong stresses enough to lay his upper body down. It was dark now and he could faintly hear the kitchen pots being used. If this were weeks ago, he would still have taken too much precaution to question the soft hand molding its way between his greasy locks.
He would open his eyes at the feel of something moist touching his forehead.
And most definitely, he would of screamed for his nana upon opening his eyes and he’s to be greeted by moon shaped eyes peering at him in gentle silence.
“Your skin’s warm under my lips, Seong.”
Because it’s you. “Hm, physics and chemistry make my head ache.”
Another kiss on his temple. “Are you almost done? You crumpled your 20th scratch paper.”
“I got one last but I’ll answer it with Hoon tomorrow.”
Another kiss on his right temple but this one was a little harder. “I want a nickname too.”
Jongseong sucks his lips in until he can taste the blood from his cracked lip. “I’ll give you one if you stay up with me for another sunrise.”
It was enough to question. There was always that nagging worrisome bug floating around Jongseong every time he thinks of how this sudden, spontaneous and beautiful alliance even formed from that rainy night. It was sudden in a way that meeting Jungwon felt like an event he was waiting for all his life, and how the other just naturally woven their way into his life just made sense.
Knowing Jungwon felt like years ago but being with him always made him feel like time was not real.
Or if all this is. “How come I never see you out on mornings?”
Jungwon pauses a finger against the screen of his iPad. A little in take of breath comes out next that Jongseong barely takes in. “I have school. We both do.”
“Very much so,” a nod paints the brief silence but Jongseong lingers around. If this touching would prosper, he deserved to know if this attachment won’t leave him in ruins. “But weekends exist.”
“We’re not home.”
“Both cars are parked.”
“Very much so,” Jungwon repeats his words with a hard exhale. Only soft fingers against his arm yet again mixed with words and Jongseong forgets his mid doubts. “Hurry up, I’ll watch the sunrise with you.”
When they arrived at the spot they claimed the first time they watched the sky wake up, the pitter pat of light drizzle was already painting the ground dim. Combined with the morning mist, the wind’s howl was stronger and colder—the exact reason Jungwon said over trembling lips as he unzipped Jongseong’s oversized jacket to squeeze his body in.
“You’re such a cat.” Jongseong says over a mouthful of thick black hair while the purring human only nuzzled his chin more.
“I get that a lot. Your jaw slices my scalp just so you know.”
Jongseong laughs but something in him aches more. Something about how the light rain drops from above made the skies a whole lot darker, contributing to a more gloomy ambiance; and something about feeling Jungwon’s skin against him was making him question time.
How can I make it stop? “You haven’t answered my question.”
Jungwon only hums against him, nose pressing against the column of his neck where his birthmark was probably peeking. A light kiss absorbs the sudden sadness and Jongseong fights the urge to wrap his arm around the body around his.
“What kind of answer do you want? Something that’ll give us a makeshift happy ending when we part ways today or something that will probably…” there was a sudden laughter being whispered—the sound oddly melancholic. “It’ll probably leave us both wishing you never asked in the first place.”
Slim arms tightened around his torso and Jongseong allows his damping clothes to remind him that he was still human. He was still capable of getting hurt no matter how much he conditions himself that emotions are passive events one could overcome with time.
But in the end, we all have ideals. We all have realities we want to run away from.
And Jongseong was still very much human. “The first one sounds like it’ll only bruise. I’d go with that.”
“Nice answer,” Jungwon laughs against his neck. “Nevertheless, I’d kiss you until you end up choosing the first one.”
Cruelty bleeds around Jungwon’s words and Jongseong embraces the rush and pain in silence. “I’m listening.”
A faint “I know,” was whispered before cold fingers crawled between his.
“My parents loved me too much.” Jungwon starts while the drizzle seems to pattern their rhythmic falling with his words. “Loves, still loves me too much that even a mere mosquito bite is enough reason to rush me to any open hospice regardless of the time.”
The same melancholic laugh sprouts back. “My mother told me the world can be mean. She tells it in a way that made me disliked the thought of meeting kids my age, hence, probably the reason why we never met as kids.”
“I’m sorry but that’s mean too.” Jongseong couldn’t help but intervene when he remembers his little heartache growing up.
“It really is but I was barely of age to think otherwise.” Jungwon’s hand comes up to touch his cheek until their eyes met. There was this unsaid apology being sent to him the longer they stared at each other, as if Jungwon was apologizing for not meeting him earlier.
Jongseong knows he was already in hell and there’s no point of walking slowly. As a silent assurance, he turns his head to kiss Jungwon’s soft palm.
He watches the same crescent eyes glisten. “My childhood was sad in a way that the world was not familiar to me. I never knew what the sun feels like on bare skin when it rises past six am or what the rain feels like when it drowns you while standing. It was just my four walled room and the smell of antiseptic reminding me I’m still alive.”
The drizzle was a lot harder but they make no move to shelter away from it. Breathing was never a problem but somehow it is when Jongseong was able to absorb each syllable mending Jungwon’s life in bits of pieces.
“I’m just alive but I’m not living, Seong.” A tremble of fingers enabled him to grieve too. “That’s how much my parents love me.”
Words were not said on Jongseong’s part. He allowed his limbs to talk for him, to make a patch of temporary fillers to heal the gentle human weeping his childhood against his neck.
The rain somehow poured harder than the tickling drizzle, almost like the sky was mourning with them too. No one cries but young hearts do. Inside Jongseong’s arms, whatever ending Jungwon wishes to tell him was already absorbed by young limbs owned by someone who had the same gloomy childhood. The only difference was that Jongseong was free to be sad.
“I wonder if I got Uwon a little earlier when we were seven, do you think that would of changed things?” Jongseong breaks the ache of youthful what ifs. He can feel Jungwon shuddering but a faint curve of what he hopes is a smile hints at his neck.
“Adults are pretty hard to dismantle emotionally, especially parents. I think you know this more than anyone.”
“That I do,” Jongseong laughs as his fingers trace invincible eights against Jungwon’s back. “But my parents are cool. They love me without hiding me from the world.”
When he feels the heaviness of his now soaked hair, Jongseong gathers enough strength to pull away from Jungwon who didn’t bother to hide a faint whine when their skin separated.
“Let’s go,” a few steps farther Jongseong beckons him over to where the rain was washing little pebbles away from how hard it was pouring. “Come here. Hug me here under the rain, Jungwon.”
The rain pours over, harder than ever.
People walking slowly was something Jongseong hated. The time it takes for them to move a muscle and just make a big leap motivates a fill of annoyance. But Jungwon under the pouring rain when the skies are the saddest makes him desire a life where every scene he watches turns to happy memories.
Little steps make its way towards him and the longer time it takes for their distance to close, the more Jongseong wishes the time to stop so he can have Jungwon looking at him like he’s everything he needs to be whole again.
When Jungwon was an arm’s length away, Jongseong steps back with a mischievous smile when Jungwon reaches a hand out to him. A frown was instantly etched on his face as he tries to step closer which only resulted to a smiling Jongseong who also steps farther back.
“You have to catch me.” Jongseong says in a mouthful of rain water when Jungwon starts to widen his eyes at the realization. Before he fully catches on, Jongseong was already turning his body to sprint down the soaked asphalt completely void of any other vehicles.
At 2 am on a school night while the rain pours, Jungwon, bare foot and all runs after a shirtless Jongseong who screeches his way down the empty road. Maybe their lips were nearing a darker shade of red, fingertips resembling pale raisins while Jungwon’s foot bleeds. Maybe a fever would force them to stay home the next day as they wake up with a kool fever patch on burning foreheads.
But at the moment, they’re young, free, and seven again.
When the rain ends up relaxing to tickling drizzles, they’re back to Jongseong’s car sharing an equally moist towel that Jongseong managed to pull from his soccer bag.
Jungwon doesn’t bother to ask if it was used or not because he wants it to smell like him anyway. When they were sure that hypothermia wouldn’t be the cause of their youthful death, silence once again stretches but with a hopeful climax this time.
Jongseong keeps a smile in while he tends to Jungwon’s bleeding feet from the sharp pebbles he ran over on bare skin. The soft skin was picked apart rather nicely like it was the first time a scratch was painted on its surface and Jongseong fights the urge to ask if it hurts. He figures Jungwon would like to feel all the pain that the world has to offer.
At 5 am when the first opening of dark clouds separated to let the sun peek, Jungwon finds a way to deliver his gratitude.
“Seong,” Jongseong hears it on ringing ears until a painful wreck of hard bones and soft flesh wrapped themselves around his body again.
As Jongseong’s car hums a smooth discipline of an engine’s wrath after the rain, no mouths were prepared for their drastic collision. With a bony hand centering his head to meet the softest mouth, Jongseong thinks he could cry at the taste that was entirely Yang Jungwon. It was warm and gentle and untamed all at the same time.
The fabric of his jacket was squeezed to droplets of rainwater as Jungwon pressed himself deeper against him. One hand cradled the back of his neck, the other slung across his shoulder keeping him close like the skies would somehow open and take him away. Jungwon prods his lips open with raw unskilled hunger, deliberately messy as he sips into his mouth.
Jungwon kisses Jongseong with pained beauty of running time.
Jungwon kisses Jongseong like the world is beneath their feet.
In return, Jongseong holds Jungwon with soft hands meant to promise infinite sunrises.
The kiss was messy and disoriented but beautiful as a sheen of wetness gathered beneath their chins. Jongseong feels his lungs burning at the lack of air when Jungwon refused to cease licking into his mouth as both their incisors barricade a kiss meant to make both their lips bleed. Time is non existent with the way Jungwon holds onto him, presses freezing fingertips under his jaw. When Jongseong opens his mouth for the third time as the first taste of metal bursts on his tongue, Jungwon settles a silent cry against his aching mouth.
They pulled away with shining lips, red cheeks and damp cheeks.
The drizzle completely stops. “Thank you for letting me know what the world feels like.”
And thank you for letting me know what holding one feels like. Jongseong only smiles in return.
Jongseong didn’t see Jungwon for a week.
There was no human lump on his bed cradling a sleeping Uwon when he comes home from school. No one opens his kept books leaving mild folds on certain pages. He doesn’t come home to his nana’s small smile as she stirs two glasses of orange juice.
“Thank you for letting me know what the world feels like.”
Jongseong sighs against his palm while their hagwon proctor deliberately explained their ranked mock up exam by the end of the week.
“If you plan to haul your ass into one of the Ivy league universities you talk so highly of then I suggest you start worrying about your SAT score.” It breaks Jongseong out of his misery when Sunghoon decided to place his foot on his ridiculous sulking.
“You don't want me to go there and brief particular gray areas in the National Language section.” A tiny yelp briefs Jongseong back to reality as deep marks of Sunghoon’s perfectly polished nails made their way home on his skin.
Their proctor only gives them the side eye, far too knowledgeable of their surnames to supply a callout.
When it ends and the remnants of college highs leave them to their personal thoughts, Sunghoon does not miss the chance to flick another pinch on his cousin’s side. He accepts Jongseong’s missed punch by his chest before he closes a palm around his fist.
“What’s happening?” Sunghoon watches Jongseong’s eyes soften for a second until it locks over his head. “Seong—“
“Don’t call me that.”
The sound of the smooth engine driving freely on Seoul’s main highway sets the temporary silence to propagate more tension. It doesn’t go unnoticed when Jongseong shifts his body away from the other.
Seong is what Jungwon calls him. “I should’ve known seeing him on your bed that day was an introduction to a lifelong therapy session.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I did and that was my biggest mistake.” Sunghoon finally exclaims, cold hands reaching to turn Jongseong to him. When frantic eyes met solemn ones, Jongseong was the first one to break.
“I couldn’t help it.” Jongseong whispers, eyes glistening. “It was just so easy for him to paint my life so full, to make the creases on my bed so warm and weave his fingers between mine. How can I possibly stop myself, Hoon?”
Sunghoon pursues his lips before cradling a hand through his cousin’s hair. He knew there were no words that could extinguish what Jongseong feels. He knew Jungwon was just not a neighbor he was curious about at the age of seven.
He probably even knew it the first time Jongseong told him back in first grade and his cousin’s eyes were wider than the golf balls their fathers would cradle on weekends.
And he was able to understand it when Jongseong lays his head on his shoulder and he’s able to feel his sleeve sticking to his skin—moist and painfully warm.
When Jongseong made it home, he was grateful for Sunghoon’s indifference despite nana’s very obvious gasp when he hands his bag over. He dodges the warm palm attempting to wipe at his puffy cheeks and blindly made his way to his room with the heaviest footsteps. He couldn’t even bear to take a look at the kitchen, far too wounded to discover the chances of two orange juice glasses being prepared.
It’s been more than a week and the sight of his empty bedroom sings him to the pit of sadness. “Uwon, come here.”
The small dog gets up from the middle of his bed, the exact same spot that Jungwon naturally claimed as his. Jongseong fights the burn in his chest at the thought even his puppy was probably wondering where the other human is.
Uwon probably misses Jungwon’s warmth. “I missed you,” Jongseong mumbles wholeheartedly.
The small dog barks softly, melting under his chin. Suppose if it were any other day and that rainy night didn’t happen, Jongseong was sure that this was just a normal Friday night to him. He won’t have a dog to cuddle to but Sunghoon was enough warmth to suffocate him on the norm.
But this Friday was a day in his life after Jungwon. Normalcy was way out the window, the orbits of time in his world is completely destroyed and functioning the way he used to be before Jungwon was something he was sure he won’t be able to go back to.
Jungwon was now simply part of his solar system and pieces of the boy continues to orbit his rings, near or far.
“It’s Friday,” he suddenly whispers to the puppy in sudden disbelief. “Uwon, it’s Friday.” Jongseong says it again as he scrambled to set the small creature down to get to his window.
It was past five and the sun half dives to pink skies when Jongseong slams his window open in a hurry. His eyes wildly scanned the lonely pool before zeroing on the Yang's garage to confirm his dotting record.
Fridays: both cars are gone
Before Uwon could even nose at his scent, Jongseong was already out of his room after grabbing the used hoodie by the foot of his bed. He zooms past his nana who was a step away from bringing him his pre-evening supply of cashew nuts; and hums a farewell through brief promise to be back before dinner time.
Maybe that was a lie as he runs bare foot to the back of the Yang residence where he first saw Jungwon while his knees bleed. The tall barricade of the house’s cement was pretty strong, a clear implication of good material that a fortunate household is able to afford. While Jongseong is not entirely new to implied luxury, he dislikes the quality of it at the moment.
“What kind of door does he go out to?” Jongseong whispers to himself as he pushes around the surface of the thick wall. He remembers it being oddly deceiving as it camouflages like a normal one.
For a second, Jongseong seeks to palm around the surface to feel even a trace of Jungwon’s warmth. He was being stupid, ridiculous and destructive but he’s young and that was enough reason to be.
He traps a surprised gasp when he’s able to feel a small dent, uneven crack where his palm was pressed upon. His reflexes naturally pushed on it, and it did not disappoint when the crack opens to reveal a well trimmed backyard and the pool that Jongseong’s been eyeing from his room.
He was in. After years of marveling from the outside, he was finally stepping on all his childhood wonderings.
The Yang residence from the inside was truly what he imagined. It looked bare but he knew behind the saddest walls lies a trace of kept youth. Jongseong spots the back door and sees a used basketball for a young child.
Jungwon’s. He kept a smile in as he walked slowly to enter the premise.
It was easy to enter probably because no one other than Jungwon and the people who lived here knew about the secret door. Jongseong easily opens the heavy door, a creak non existent as the rich wood smoothly slides close. He was welcomed by a modern cabin interior that he was sure was the kitchen. Everything was kept like a brochure ad that he was sure the stove and pans were never used in their lifespan.
What Jongseong notices even more is how dark and bare everything is. There were furnitures and the basics but something was just missing with the way package boxes were seen near another double door that he was sure was the pantry. He decided to protect his peace and linger around the spacious living room where the floor to ceiling windows allowed him to see his own reflection. The view was just a couple of canopy leaves that his mother would fawn over and another sign of a living child he’s been determined to seek.
There in the front patio was a small swing set with a little sand pit. A small ‘Jungwon’s’ written on a hanging plank which stands out.
Something in Jongseong stirs heavily, like it was a scene he wanted to read more. To give more depth and demand a story from Jungwon if he so much existed all these years in silence. He knows he’s insane for being so hung up about missing his childhood by not meeting Jungwon but something in him, something far more irrational heaves Jongseong to admit he was grieving Jungwon’s childhood.
“Mom?”
With a heavier heart, Jongseong spins so fast his neck gently cracks. The voice was a sound he both knew and not. He knows the owner and how that timbre could only be produced by that single soul. But Jongseong was not familiar with the way it breaks midway, how it pricks his ears because of how fragile it sounded.
Jongseong for the second time at 18, gets his heart broken by Yang Jungwon.
Dressed in a plain shirt entirely too big for him, a pair of pajamas which perfectly portrayed how soft his skin is, Jungwon stands there with eyes entirely too pretty to be kept inside such a lonely house.
“Seong?”
Jongseong continues to stare because how can he not when his ribs hymn a painful beat of a song he would probably hate. Nevertheless, it continues to play a broken melody when Jungwon walks to him.
Jungwon doesn’t ask how he got inside. He only stares at him in disbelief. “Why?”
Jongseong eyes the plaster of an IV drip on his hand. “Why not?”
Their eyes did the speaking. One pair was seeking for answers while the other masks a heartbreak that was entirely too early for the both of them.
Jongseong does not look back to Jungwon’s hand and instead, he steps forward to cradle a palm against the other’s cheek. Jongseong again does not have it in him to compare the lack of flesh, the thinner skin and the dark bags under the eyes he’s so fond of.
What happened?
“I was looking for you,” Jongseong says so softly only meant for Jungwon to hear. The vulnerability does not go unnoticed when Jungwon responds by sneaking his arms under Jongseong’s thick hoodie he would want to very much drown himself in.
“Me too, Seong.” It was whispered against his neck now that Jungwon was home under his chin again. “God knows and he’ll always do that I was looking for you too.”
Jongseong feels the tightening of fingers around his clothes and his chest howls a painful hymn even more.
“Uwon misses you.”
“I miss you.” Jungwon says straight to his skin.
They stayed weaved as one under the dim lights of the silent house completely void of family pictures. Jongseong chose to close his eyes and inhale Jungwon in for the fear of realizing things a little too early. It only takes a soft kiss on his forehead and then he’s being hauled by a gentle hand upstairs.
And Jongseong wishes he was a little stronger to resist when Jungwon opens a door revealing a window that was too familiar to him.
“Having the attic as my room was the only good thing that came out of this house.”
A cabin themed room faced him, its glory sailing a painful beauty of all his curiosity rolled into one. The window looked too cozy from the inside, contrary to its dark railings from the inside—the very view Jongseong has from his room. Everything was placed so smoothly, arranged in this technical placement that labels became landmarks inside Jungwon’s room.
Jongseong only stops at the lack of light, the lack of source if it weren’t for the attic windows which are completely sealed from the inside.
A black ribbon hangs from every corner of the room.
He turns to look at Jungwon, eyes heavy and heart heavier.
“I told you, my parents love me too much.” Jungwon smiles, the ends corrupting a line of defeat.
No more words were said. Every corner of Jungwon’s room was an answer alone. Every look at Jungwon’s wrist made him understand just how fragile time is.
“I grew up hearing that one out of 50 people would develop it and time taught me that one person every 57 minutes dies because of it.” Jongseong watches Jungwon raise the sleeves of his shirt to reveal dark uneven spots of what he was sure were potential moles for Melanoma courtesy of Sunghoon’s parents being doctors. He could count it with his eyes, could point a finger and logically inspect that it’s not a biological placement.
But his eyes would always end up on the IV drip connected to the back of Jungwon’s palm. “Every mornings, every sunrise spent with you, my body just fucking loathes seeing the world so bright. I just want to be normal, Seong.” Jungwon all but cries as he paces close to Jongseong to wrap his arms around the other. He needed to assure himself that this was real, that this is still real.
“Doctors after doctors until the smell of hospital found its home under my nose. How fragile my body is, created a monster of this living security that became my parents.” Shaking fingers cradled his face until all he could see was Jungwon’s oval shaped eyes brimmed at the corners. “They kept me from the world in hopes of prolonging how long I stay in it.”
Jongseong tries to open his mouth but looking at Jungwon made him realize that the sound he would want to hear the most would be of the boy. He keeps his crippling heart to himself, amidst the fear of what words would come out of the other’s mouth.
It was unfair, so so unfair
“I never had the luxury of time to know people but I knew you in the most interesting way.” Jungwon delicately laughs as shallow tears gathered by the sides of his eyes. “There were nights where I forget to pray for myself and instead, I’d pray for a time where I can meet people I can love, where I can meet you.”
“I...” Jongseong starts as Jungwon starts to meet him halfway. Tired eyes sings him to surrender and he does when soft lips rendered his skin in a gentle bruise. “I would always look at this room from mine. There was never a day when I didn’t wonder who owns this.”
“That sounds dangerous.” It was laughed under his chin where Jungwon was tucked, where he belonged.
“But it feels safe. It feels right.” Jongseong wishes someone in his school taught him courage comes with stupidity and youthful yearning. He wishes someone told him how much strength is needed to hold someone’s face and have them stare at you as you bare your heart out.
Regardless, he does it anyway because it’s Jungwon. “Everything with you feels like a safe space and that’s probably the dangerous thing.”
It was silent for a minute or two. All the silence being filled with Jungwon’s hold around him. Fingers tracing shapes, scribbles and anything until the pattern completely folds him from within.
A heart. “Did you ever wonder how I know all the names people call you when we haven’t even met until that night?”
It feels rhetorical but Jongseong still answers with a forehead kiss.
“I was knowing you through my window. When I would hear your voice from your room when your window is open, I would rush to open mine since I was seven.”
“Jungw—“
“Every year, every voice change, I knew them. I know you so well without actually seeing you.”
“You’re not being fair, Jungwon.”
Jungwon only smiles and takes him with soft hands under his eyes, around his cheeks until it holds him open under the jaw while their dampened cheeks collide.
And every kiss made Jongseong understand how cruel the world is.
Before Jungwon’s parents came home yesterday, they scrambled to climb over to Jongseong’s house by the pool area. Jongseong remembers almost bruising his left shoulder as he hauls a laughing Jungwon up to reach the window pane of his room. Jongseong remembers his aching mouth when Jungwon was able to successfully climb and haul him swiftly against his thin chest before kissing him hard on the mouth while they both panted.
Jongseong thinks he won’t be able to forget nana’s face when his door room suddenly opened revealing the both of them with reddened knees, cheeks and lips.
Jongseong thinks he won't be able to forget how soft Jungwon's fingers were as they thread along his skin and between his hair. How soft the other's mouth was as it maps along his neck with kisses that were meant to break his heart a little too well. How their bruised and numb lips sang a song only the two of them knew as the night progressed and warm limbs find their way home around him.
Jongseong wakes up to Jungwon’s scent and to stained kisses along his neck he won't be erasing.
He wakes up to muffled voices, moving trucks and a heart beneath his racing feet. Even his nana’s wails to seek breakfast first was left unheard when his bare feet carried him out of bed from the horrendous sight.
He reaches the bare house of the Yang residence with tingling skin and an aching heart.
“What’s happening?” Jongseong tries to ask around the people carrying sealed boxes. He tries not to let the fear cripple his mouth numb when he notices that both cars are already gone.
No
It fleets for a second longer until he sees a box with the name Jungwon written on top and then, he’s running past the groaning men who tries to haul boxes after boxes out the double doors. The interior was unfamiliar and cold, something he’s now painfully aware when his feet allowed him to stare. The house was already bare but something told him it would feel the same way even with all the furniture that have been boxed.
And only now does Jongseong fully sees the continuity of the hanging black ribbons by each corner of the house.
His stomach falls deeper as he takes two steps at a time to find Jungwon’s room bare.
Gone were the astronaut paintings, the solar system figurines and all the miniature lego sets Jungwon had, lining his wall. His bed was stripped of the baby blue covers which smelled so much like him that the lingering smell makes Jongseong’s chest howl a melancholic beat.
All the black ribbon remains inside the once dimly lit room where the attic windows were now fully opened.
“You’re not being fair, Jungwon.” Jongseong keeps in a sob as he walks to the windows and traces the written phrase taped on the glass.
I love you, Seong
Seeing his name on the class roster of one of the SKY universities never failed to bring a certain thump inside his chest.
The Ivy league dream remained a dream as he realizes that attending college a few continents over would just make him miss people around him. Even the ones who no longer are.
It falls rhythmically, irons the reality of his human tendencies to celebrate happiness when life lets it. But even then, Jongseong knew a part of him will forever mourn the person whose fingers lingered on the pages of his Calculus and Physics worksheets, and whose scent could somehow still be traced on the hoodies he never ended up washing after waking up to that grim morning.
The lecture hall was big but the dreams Jongseong had were only a corner of it.
The time spent to get to where he is now didn’t even allow Jongseong to forget about the boy. Finishing high school and entering a prestigious tertiary school was not enough to erase the traces of such human emotion.
Jongseong now hates the rain, the sun and waking up to the sound of moving cars.
“Quite a class for this semester,” the sound of their attending faculty indulges the large crowd in the lecture hall where faint murmurs occupied each row.
Sunghoon ended up taking a pre-med course to follow his parents’ medical venture.
While he ended up taking a business degree because he is his father’s son.
Keeping his head down as he tries to list down the rapid reminders that their faculty was briefing them with, he fails to notice the heavy opening of the doors or the faint apology sent upon the sudden intrusion.
Jongseong does not stop writing even when he hears a quiet set of repeated “excuse me, is this seat taken?” being mumbled near his row. He doesn’t look up at the sound of something dropping, effectively halting the few conversations going on from where he sat.
“I’m sorry,” a small voice whispered followed by the motion of someone dropping down to retrieve something by his feet.
Jongseong follows the movement and takes pity when he realizes the sturdy notebook, flew right under his seat. With disinterest and sweating fingers, he scoops down to offer his assistance by carefully retrieving the notebook in a firm grasp.
When equally tender hands gripped the other end of the notebook, Jongseong flips the cover to properly hand the item back.
Then he sees it. A name neatly handwritten right in the middle of the hard page where their university logo resides.
“That’s me,” shaking eyes raised to meet crescent shaped ones with a certain familiarity that even a thousand other after lives won’t be able to erase. “First year freshman, Yang Jungwon.”