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The oranges of the afternoon sun tint Seungmin’s cheeks the loveliest peachy color when he bites his lips, an ugly grimace of something he won’t say out loud.
It’s not like he has to, Jisung knows.
Jisung leans down to kiss him before he leaves the bed to open the window. Carefully so as not to knock down the collection of cactuses in colorful pots.
Soft breeze airing out the sweaty sheets.
He reaches for the long glass of cold agua de Jamaica from the desk. He takes a sip and then offers it to Seungmin, who just shakes his head. He put down the glass with a brassy clank. Seungmin flinches.
Jisung sighs loudly, way too heavy for someone his age. He comes back to bed and climbs on Seungmin’s lap. He takes his face between his hands, squeezing lightly. Gentle. That’s all he can be around him. Not because Seungmin needs that, that’s for sure, but Jisung doesn’t know how to be something else. With the feelings so strong, so severe, he is afraid to crush him. He is afraid that Seungmin's thin bones will crack under the pressure, the soft flesh of his insides will melt into dump, sticky liquid if Jisung will pour it all on him.
Sometimes he thinks he could. To let go and show him how big it is, maybe Seungmin would understand. Maybe he would agree to turn into Jisung’s own little puddle that he could dig his fingers in and then lick them clean from all of the bittersweetness that Seungmin is. Maybe he would like to do the same to Jisung, so they could fuse together in the high temperature of their affection, become one inseparable body, mixed in the atom scale.
But it’s too early, too soon and Jisung has to go in a few hours, leaving Seungmin with the pot of chocolate cosmos flowers and supplication to wait.
🌵🌵🌵
Seungmin. Kim Seungmin was a friend of a friend. Not making too much fuss or taking a lot of space when the friend group gathered together. Jisung would only pay attention to him when he made exceptionally snarky jokes, quick-witted and unexpected, making everybody laugh until they couldn’t catch their breath.
Only then he could catch his proud smile, a glimpse of silver on his teeth, and smart eyes. Seungmin was smart, probably smarter than Jisung, and so put together. Always dressed nicely in rather basic clothes, good-quality oversized hoodies that covered most of his hands, washed blue jeans, and always clean sneakers. Always prepared for school and lending his neatly written notes to whoever asked. Seungmin was Seungmin and Jisung was Jisung so it was hard to imagine these too being close. They just quietly coexisted together, sharing classes and friends.
Until one day when Jisung heard Seungmin singing. It was the last day of school, some official assembly that his friends made him attend so the teachers wouldn’t roll their eyes at his absence again.
The assembly took place on the school sports ground and it was way too hot to stand there dressed in his uniform. A few students fainted and Jisung was sure he was going to be next. He remembers standing on his tiptoes to try a inhale a little colder air and leaning on Hyunjin's arm when he failed asking him to catch him if he blacked out.
“Just wait for Seungminnie to sing and we will leave,” the taller whispered, taking his weight on himself. “It will be worthy, I promise.”
And Hyunjin was right. When Seungmin started singing, the whole school felt silent, absorbing every little drop of sweetness in his voice.
It wasn’t enough, Jisung wanted to taste it. The refreshing cold of coconut water on his tongue. He wanted to drink and drink until he couldn’t anymore, until it would spill out of his mouth, streaming down under the collar of the ugly yellow uniform right on his hot chest, trailing the pattern of notes of the song between his muscles.
Hyunjin patted his head when he gripped his arm tightly. “I knew you would like it.”
Jisung was prepared to fall on his knees and beg Seungmin to sing a chorus of the song he had been working on for months, not being able to pinpoint the missing piece, not until he heard him. He was prepared to ask for hours, to bribe him with all he could, but Seungmin agreed instantly.
Just like that, Jisung asked and Seungmin said yes. For some reason, it was hard to believe. Maybe it was a lack of confidence or it was the fact that he put him on a pedestal so high it could reach the ben of Aconcagua.
It happened naturally then, from the dusty studio to convenience stores and PC cafes, and before Jisung could comprehend, the breathing around Seungmin became as hard as during the school assembly. His presence lingered on Jisung when they weren’t together, a faint smell of opuntia flower and warm, warm air.
The prolonged looks, the gentle touches, the softness of his hair. He tried to find meaning in that, the hidden agenda, but it wasn’t enough. He needed something firm to hold on to. Preferably something sharp so he could pound it in his chest and rip it open to bleed the champurrado out of his body, giving Seungmin the choice to take whatever he wanted.
“What is that?” He asked when he entered Seungmin’s room for the first time, pointing at the postcards pinned to the corkboard over his desk. All of them presented different views, he only recognized Machu Picchu.
“Latin America.” Seungmin’s finger tenderly caressed one of them that presented the angular mountains cocooned in clouds in the background of turquoise water. Fitz Roy, the postcard said. “I really want to go there one day.”
For the first time, Jisung noticed that they may have more in common than he thought.
“That’s why you took an extra Spanish class?”
Seungmin noded.
Seungmin was a dreamer too.
“What’s stopping you?” he asked later, when the sun set, long forgotten. The only light in the room coming from streetlights outside and the screen of a laptop, some document about the Isthmus of Panama playing in the background. “From traveling there?”
Seungmin sighed “I am not sure.”
They sat on the bed, glued to each other. Jisung’s head on Seungmin's shoulder, Seungmin’s hand on Jisung’s waist. Their t-shirts were damp from the high humidity in the room, sticking to their skin uncomfortable, but they refused to move.
“Money, school,” he laughed. “Life in general.”
“You could take a gap year after high school.”
“I probably could, but I won’t. I want to go to university, to study. That’s the only thing that I know.”
And Jisung understood. He would keep making music because that’s the only thing he will ever know.
This summer was the first one when Jisung wrote a song about love.
🌵🌵🌵
The last year of high school was crazy hectic. Like most good things in life, it happened so unexpectedly. 3racha was called an overnight success.
It wasn’t true for them, they’ve been producing for years, facing laughs and critics, because what were they thinking. They were just a bunch of losers wasting their time in a homemade studio creating cringy tracks.
It changed at some point and people from school started to approach them to say that they liked their music, but it was nothing compared to the fame they got when a popular influencer posted a TikTok with their song.
Everything then happened so fast. Chan wasted no time starting to post a lot of music and creating more personal content so people could fall in love with their personalities as well. A true marketing master. Before Jisung could blink they were signed to agency and released an album. Their first, precious, real album. It was ecstatic, everything finally fell in the right place. Jisung was in his element, creating, performing, standing in the full glare, and having people willing to listen.
It made him dizzy, overcame with joy, it also made him exhausted.
He almost failed the last year. Not that he cared much about it, he never was interested in academics, but his parents demanded him to at least graduate high school, he wasn’t sure what would happen if he didn’t, probably nothing, but he still didn’t want to disappoint them. He only passed because of Seungmin who would quietly keep him on track with mandatory assignments and important tests, the bare necessities not to fail.
They didn’t have that much time to spend together anymore, the summer heatwaves looked like a chimera blurred in between with Patagonian highlands, something that happens only once in a lifetime, yet Jisung’s heart couldn’t forget.
Not after Seungmin’s lips touched his cheek on the last day of the holidays. Briefly, a shade of all the things that couldn’t happen. Lips on his cheek to say goodbye because they knew things would change irrevocably when the school year started.
So Jisung did his best to focus on his life, on his career, only sometimes mutilating his fingers on cactus spines just so he could feel the pain in other places than his heart.
He did that until he couldn’t anymore, until he spent the whole night crying and writing about the sun so warm it burnt his skin, about sticky t-shirts and coconut water. He wrote about wanting to drown in the Amazon River.
He published the song in the middle of their Korean tour, a few days before the concert in Daegu, which their friends attended to support them, Seungmin was there too.
Fans asked him to sing a fragment of the song, so he did, but he had to close his eyes, afraid that if he find those damn puppy eyes in the crowd, he will mess up the words and tune and he will mess the whole concert because he would become a mess himself. His bandmates didn’t deserve it.
The night after the concert Seungmin sneaked into his hotel room and Jisung got his final confirmation.
It was as firm as Seungmin’s bare tights that he sank his teeth into, as sharp as their breaths when Jisung finally found his rhythm. It was warm and sticky like the ropes of white that covered his soft stomach and as loud as Seungmin screaming Jisung’s name.
The next day it was announced that 3racha would go to the United States at the beginning of September.
“Until New Year at least”, Chan said.
It was their chance to promote worldwide. Their dream finally took some actual shape they could grab. For Jisung, it was the shape of the route of the plane from Seul to New York, ten thousand kilometers long.
He knew he would go, music was the only thing he knew, and Seungmin would start his university. That’s who they are.
🌵🌵🌵
It's dark and cool outside when the taxi drives under Seungmin’s house. The driver helps putting his heavily packed luggage in the truck and comes back to the front seat to give them some privacy.
Jisung looks at Seungmin’s lips knowing he will remember their shape exactly.
He is good with words, he writes after all, but this time he diagrams every sentence he can think of until there is nothing but naked words without any meaning.
Perhaps, there is something he could say that would make sense and maybe it would convince Seungmin to wait for him, but there is a chance that Seungmin will wait anyway. Jisung would.
He knows he could say that and that Seungmin could say it too, but this would probably make the separation so much harder, so they hold their peace.
Maybe they will have time to say it as many times as they wish later, maybe suffused with Mexican sunlight or lost in the ruins of the Inca empire. He promised Seungmin he would take him there. The money is not a problem now, only school and life in general.
Seungmin will finish school one day and then they will figure out life together, step by step. He hopes so.
“I will text you when we get there.” He takes Seungmin’s hands between his and kisses the cold knuckles one by one. One kiss for every week he will be overseas.
“I know you will.”
He looks at him for the last time, wishing they had more time, wishing he had written his song sooner, wishing he had been bolder since the beginning and Seungmin shakes his head like he can read his mind, he probably can to a certain extent, and smiles. Smiles so warmly and honestly, without the slightest bitterness in it, that make Jisung know they will be okay.
The pricks on his fingertips will fade sooner or later and it will leave a soft skin, worthy of touching Seungmin’s lips.
“I am so fucking proud of you Jisung.” He says that for the first time and Jisung thinks he doesn’t care about fame anymore, he doesn’t need his management or his fan approval anymore, not when Seungmin is proud of him.
Jisung is ready to get back his luggage out of the car and to call Chan to say that he is sorry, but he can’t go, to wish them luck and ask to send pictures. He is ready to take Seungmin back to his house and throw him into the matters and make love so hard, that he will forget about his college and dreams and he will only see Jisung.
Somehow he stays in place and Seungmin leans closer to kiss his cheek, the same place as last year, but the kiss is different in every aspect possible. In the best way possible. It’s confident and firm and sure.
“Now go and conquer the world, my superstar.”