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THE SUMMER IS WORSE THAN THE WINTER. Yeosang will take blue fingers and perpetually damp kindling over the smell of rotting flesh. In the winter months, the bodies freeze. Captain America style. Perfectly preserved in the icy air, the frost gives immorality. Death is meaningless. Until the late spring, when the bodies begin to break their torpor. The golden touch of the evening sun brings little romance to the stench of decomposing flesh.
Yeosang’s always been a bit sentimental. Wet, his uncle used to call him. The remains of his friends are impossible to get rid of. Unlike the aforementioned uncle, who when dead, was promptly thrown in the river. But Yeosang’s dearest friends—he carries them with him. In his heart, and in his memory, and in his garden. And San’s skull is in the house, holding open the door to his and Jongho’s bedroom.
Jongho had been squeamish about the skull doorstopper initially. Which, fair. Alive-San never would’ve stayed still for so long. But the sun shone, and the snow fell, and Jongho acclimatised, and the white shine of San became a comfort of sorts. Yeosang is sentimental.
The trouble with being sentimental however, is that sentiment isn’t a very good means of protection. And neither were Yeosang’s vanity muscles. The first few months had been horrific, but armed with a gun and Jongho, Yeosang has learnt how to keep strangers away from their house. And dogs away from the bodies in the garden.
They used to say that the seasons would disappear completely. Yeosang remembers broadcasts from his childhood, scientists warning how humankind spent years ignoring the rising threat of global warming and that it was too late to fix anything, anymore, and that the planet was doomed. Yeosang could be wrong, but he’s pretty sure nobody ever predicted the doom looking like this .
This being a house and a garden and no electricity but plenty of firewood. Two seasons—sun and snow, although the snow seems to be lessening every year—and an influx of various airborne illnesses having killed off more and most of the population. But not Yeosang.
And not Jongho.
He’s in the garden when Yeosang gets home. Their vegetable patch is relatively new, and not really theirs, Yeosang has the green fingers of a carrion bird, which is to say he has no green fingers at all. Jongho however, does. It’s a little ironic, the way bean shoots and snap peas spring to life under his once-heavy hands but it’s welcome. Gardening, Yeosang thinks, is good for Jongho. His boyfriend has grown more distant over the years, worn out by the strain of summer, and the end of the world, and having so many people die around him. The garden is the beginning of new life. Their new world. The vegetable patch springs with life under Jongho’s tender care, tomato vines curling in the wind, the wave of beetroot stems, a treasure trove of amber toned cucurbits. Nasturtiums, and orange peppers, and golden marigolds that Yeosang makes essential oil from, and uses to massage out the aches and knots Jongho gets in his back.
Their cottagecore fantasy is not one Yeosang ever saw coming. The-End-Of-The-World-As-You-Knew-It meant many people had to go back to their traditional roots, living in small communities and eating from the earth, and navigating a world with no electricity. It’s a lot less romantic than TikTok had suggested it would be, back when the world Was-As-You-Knew-It and pastoral living had been a trend, a choice .
Now, fishing isn’t a choice but a way of living. There’s a large pond that snakes around the back of the house. Yeosang’s not as good at fishing as Jongho is—a trend of its own at this point, to be less good at things than Jongho—but he doesn’t mind watching the water and waiting for the nets to fill. He puts his basket of yellow perch on the step. Jongho knows he’s there, he looked up when Yeosang opened the gate, but there’s a methodological nature to how Jongho approaches tasks, and he won’t let Yeosang shake his concentration. Yeosang is easily shaken. Too many times, has he pulled his fishing rod up to discover his catch has escaped.
The lack of choice in their world is why the happiness Jongho has in gardening is so important. Not that he’s verbalised his feelings to Yeosang. But they’ve been together long enough they don’t need words to read each other, and Yeosang can stand at the front step of their house and watch his lover pick out weeds, eagle-eyed.
“What do you want for dinner tonight?” Yeosang asks. “We have yellow perch or yellow perch.”
Jongho laughs. “Choices.” His laugh is warm and rounded and missed.
There aren’t 52 weeks in the year anymore. Or, well, there might be if you lived with people in a place that kept track of the weeks of the year, but Yeosang and Jongho had stopped long ago. Not even on purpose, time just has a funny way of slipping through the gaps in your fingers, like trying to grasp bathwater.
The strange odds and ends market cropped up a year or so ago probably. Jongho hadn’t trusted it at first, wary after continuous days of strangers with ill intentions that had flooded their valley. But eventually, they needed things to trade or barter with—there was only so many fish one could eat before they’d go crazy.
Yeosang has no idea what day of the week it would be, only that people are there every five or six. Jongho had accompanied Yeosang at first, the two of them taking turns to push their wheelbarrow-turned-cart contraption up the hill, but slowly it became solely Yeosang’s job. Not that he minds, it’s a fair division of labour when it’s Jongho who does most of the fishing and Yeosang’s muscles aren’t just vanity anymore.
The hill path was a road once, tarmac now cracked with ragwort and herb robert pushing through up through it. Brambles snatch your ankles if you’re not careful. Yeosang’s always careful. The cart is steady, and there’s something peaceful about walking up into the sun.
Several ragged carts and stalls are already there. Yoon Eunjin, with the bread she makes that she swears she doesn’t cut with chalk. The Kim brothers, standoffish and a little surely, but always with eggs. Wooyoung.
“Sang-ah,” he calls out, jogging over to see him. Wooyoung brings birds to the market. Chicken and grouse and peafowl. They’re normally dead. He lives with his mother and younger brother in the next valley.
Yeosang stops the cart and approximates a smile. There are no mirrors in their house, he’s not too sure what it looks like anymore. “Hello.”
“Sang-ah,” Wooyoung repeats. His own smile is lovely. “How are you? How’s Jongho?”
Wooyoung and Yeosang and Jongho know each other. A friend, Yeosang, thinks he can call him. Wooyoung was a friend of Yunho’s, and Yunho was Yeosang’s friend, and Yunho introduced them. He’s dead now, lying in Yeosang’s garden, and Wooyoung is still alive and not. It’s a little bit awkward. But not too much. “We’re good, thank you. Getting on. Fishing.” He pulls out a brown trout to punctuate his point. Makes a sound that could be a laugh. “Uh, catch of the day?”
Wooyoung ignores Yeosang’s awkwardness. He’s always been kind like that. “I’m glad. I did see you last week, but you seemed too busy to talk, you were right out of here.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Yeosang laughs again. It doesn’t sound right. He speaks to Jongho everyday but somehow, he’s suddenly lost all his conversation skills. “Yeah. Uh. I don’t know. Market vibes, you know?”
“I get you,” Wooyoung soothes. “It’s weird. And you don’t have to always want a talk. I’m just glad you’re well. And Jongho—I feel like it’s been months since I’ve seen him.”
“He’s picked up gardening,” Yeosang says softly. Can see Jongho and his tomatoes when he closes his eyes. Lemon verbena curling around his ankles. “It’s sweet. Good for him I think—something else to do. He’s been shyer lately. Market days are not really his thing.”
“It’s funny how you two have changed,” Wooyoung says. “He used to be the outgoing one. And you were so shy when we first met.”
“I think we’ve both rubbed off on each other,” Yeosang says, and then feels his ears turn red as Wooyoung bursts into peals of laughter. “Ew. Not like that. Stop it.”
“You’re still such an easy tease,” Wooyoung grins. “So, you haven’t changed that much.”
Yeosang crosses his arms, cheeks still hot. “Do you want any fish or not?”
“I’ll take two please. Assuming you want your pigeon?”
Yeosang wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know how you kill them.”
Wooyoung lifts up his pair of trout. “You literally kill fish. You literally have half a dozen fish here.”
“I don’t know,” Yeosang grouses, following Wooyoung back to his basket of plucked birds. They look weird, grey, beige flesh pressed together. Fresh flesh. No smell of rot. “I kind of don’t. The fish just stop breathing. I’m not like, actually killing anything.”
“But you have no qualms eating the pigeon then,” Wooyoung replies, handing over one pigeon by a string from its neck. It spins the air between the two of them, plucked skin emphasising its lumpy, uncomfortable shape. Yeosang takes the string, unable to keep his eyes from the bird's own. Tiny and coal black and cold.
“It’s for Jongho,” Yeosang wrinkles his nose. He spends too much time with dead things to want to eat them.
Wooyoung asks to see them more often. Offers to come over, if Jongho doesn’t like leaving the house these days. Yeosang smiles, and nods, and says maybe. And thinks Wooyoung wouldn’t want to be their friend if he comes to their house and sees the bodies in the garden.
Not like his pigeons. Far from fresh. But Yeosang’s sentimental.
He tells Jongho as much, the two of them slung over the bed. It’s late evening. Yeosang lies on his back and stares at the ceiling and pretends he’s looking at the stars. “I know we should get rid of them. A proper funeral. Is it too late for a funeral? I don’t think it’s nice having them in the garden, I know it’s not nice just leaving them to the rats and the rot.”
Jongho hums, letting Yeosang continue.
“But I—we can’t say goodbye. Because like, what if I can help them? Just because I haven’t yet doesn’t mean I couldn’t ever. I’m trying. I’ve been trying so hard. I know—I know I’m not very good. But the fish. It works on the fish.”
Occasionally it works on the fish.
“Would they want to come back though?” Jongho says softly, voicing Yeosang’s secret stubborn most thoughts. “San doesn’t even have a body anymore. Is there anything even to come back?” They both look over at open door. Yeosang’s developed a mild claustrophobia at some point, and can’t fall asleep with the door shut ever. San guards it open.
“I’m trying,” Yeosang promises. Ignores Jongho’s question. He is trying, with Yunho and Chaeyoung and Seonghwa. “With the garden trio. I have been trying for so long.”
“Maybe that means it’s time to give up,” Jongho stretches his arm around Yeosang, who shivers because Jongho always runs cold. “The fish you bring back—they’re always kind of weird. That pike’s always in the same place in the pond. I don’t see it swim.”
“It’s alive though.” When Yeosang closes his eyes he sees Jongho and his smile and his tomato seeds and his warmth. He also sees Seonghwa, sickly ill and dying, and Yunho collapsed on the floor, and his uncle crying tears of blood and rot, rot, rot. “The snow’s stopped now. This is my last chance to fix them, really. Before they defrost too much.”
“I don’t think they can defrost anymore,” Jongho continues to say, which Yeosang staunchly ignores.
Just because it’s said aloud doesn’t mean Yeosang can’t staunchly ignore it though. And his boyfriend. He turns over, back to Jongho. Stares at the starless wall. The couple who lived in this house before them had painted the bedroom a soggy pink. It reminds him of the plucked pigeon, spinning from its string. He closes his eyes.
Yeosang doesn’t know when he learnt he could do things . He could do it before The End-Of-The-World-As-You-Knew-It, he thinks. Has vague memories of crying over beetles his sister would stomp dead, and then them clambering back out of his clasped hands. It was just a thing. He didn’t ever think about it that much. Couldn’t even do it that much. And then humans started dropping like flies—or flies started dropping like humans—and a strange, hesitant part of his head thought back to those shiny brown beetles and the green innards of woodlice.
The trouble with not doing something very often is that you don’t practice enough and so, don’t really know how to do it. And when you do manage, it doesn’t always work that well. The beetles, yes. The fish, mostly. Anything bigger is a struggle. And it’s hard to look at what you’ve done and not see the struggle. Only Jongho fishes now. Even though Yeosang’s always been better at death.
“Happy anniversary!” Yeosang calls out, awkwardly fumbling a bottle of champagne from the shelf. It was the same green as a squashed woodlouse, sticky with dust, some relic left behind from their house’s previous tenants that Jongho had found months ago. They’d been saving it for a special occasion. Yeosang would’ve once been shy about their relationship, and found it awkward to acknowledge their anniversary. Not anymore. There are bonuses to The-End-Of-The-World-As-You-Knew-It. Not just for the fact that it got them on the property ladder, which never would’ve happened before, but that with most of South Korea’s population dead nobody really cared if you were gay anymore. Add in everything the two of them have gone through together in the last two or three years, and loudly comfortably being in love was the only option left.
Jongho is quiet as he comes into the kitchen, eyes bright as he embraces Yeosang tightly. “I’m not going anywhere,” Yeosang laughs, wiggling against Jongho’s strong arms. Jongho chuckles, burrowing his head into Yeosang’s neck, breath tickling. They hold each other for a minute, limbs entwined, pearl oysters on a line until Yeosang pulls back with a yelp. “Ouch, did you bite me?”
“Not hard,” Jongho protests.
Yeosang mock-shoves him. “We’re too old for hickeys.”
“Not what you said last night,” Jongho mutters.
Yeosang shoves him again. A bold-faced lie. There were no hickies amongst the events of the last night. “Do you want a glass?”
“Those are mugs,” Jongho looks at the mugs Yeosang has readied on the counter. A pink one and a green one.
“Everything tastes better from a mug,” Yeosang retorts, turning the bottle round to look at the cork. “Do we have a corkscrew?”
Jongho takes the bottle from Yeosang, pulling a knife out from the drawer. He closes it with his hip. He brings the knife to the top of the bottle, hesitates and then puts the bottle on the counter. “Don’t laugh,” he warns Yeosang, raising the knife to the cork again. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”
Jongho’s not lying. Yeosang watches him chip the cork out. Not that he’d be able to do any better. “I didn’t know you could carve.”
“Should we say something?” Yeosang asks. “Like. When it opens. You know?”
“I don’t know,” Jongho looks up at Yeosang. Both of them miss the moment the cork is pushed into the bottle. A sad fizz of champagne bubbles over Jongho’s hands and the counter. “Oh, shit.”
“Oh, shit it's the perfect thing to say,” Yeosang nods approvingly.
Jongho snorts, shaking his hand off before pouring the champagne into each mug. He gives Yeosang the first one, the pink one. “Cheers baby”
“Cheers,” Yeosang takes a sip. Frowns. Slowly lets the champagne in this mouth trickle back into the mug.
“Ew,” Jongho laughs. “You don’t like it?”
“You do?” Yeosang picks the bottle up. Examines the date. “It’s so sour. Surely that’s out of date? Is it meant to taste like that?”
“I don’t think it can go out of date,” Jongho takes another sip of his. Swishes it around his mouth pretend-seriously. “Tastes fine to me.”
“You’re crazy.” Yeosang shakes his head. Debates rinsing his mouth out. “That was awful. Seriously, how can your tastebuds take it?”
Jongho laughs. “More for me. Do you want something else? Sorry, that was anticlimactic Sang-ah.”
Yeosang sighs. “That’s okay. More for you. Happy anniversary lovely. I mean. It’s probably not our actual anniversary but we got together in the summer so. Close enough, right?”
“Right,” Jongho agrees, pouring Yeosang’s abandoned champagne in his empty mug. “The weathers good for it. Happy anniversary.” He’s looking at Yeosang with big, earnest eyes. “If I had to be in the end of the world with anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”
“Sannie,” Yeosang hisses. He’s sat on the floor in front of San, cross legged and unsure of when he got out of bed. “San, I think I made a mistake.”
San and Yeosang met at a local student cheerleading group. San had been godawful. Yeosang had been okay. The friendship that blossomed between them was an easy one. Shared jokes, and similar interests, and there’s nothing like a team sport to bring you closer together. Yeosang grew out of the cheerleading, but he didn’t grow out of San. His closest confidant, his greatest friend. It was San who’d buy Yeosang his favourite snacks, it was San who’d wait for Yeosang to get out of his hagwon, it was San who would comfort Yeosang after he’d had another fight with his uncle.
It was San who introduced him to Jongho. They played football together. Jongho was a year younger but no shyer because of it. Jongho and Yeosang started dating around eighteen-nineteen-twenty. Their anniversary was mostly an estimate. Technically, they’d been going on dates since San introduced them. Actually, they became boyfriends when Jongho asked, one night with the two of them squashed into Yeosang’s childhood bed. That was also when Yeosang realised they’d been going on dates for the last year.
San was delighted for them. And teased Yeosang mercilessly for not realising they’d been dating, citing it was something from a kdrama and not like, real life Sang-ah.
Then the end of the world started, and then it continued, and then San got ill, and then Yeosang held his dead body and had a chance to show San something that was not like, real life.
Except it didn’t work. And he tried again, and again, and again. And San didn’t come back. He stayed dead, body laid out across the settee.
“I tried,” Yeosang whispers. Promises San. Jongho’s asleep in the bed. Yeosang picks up San’s skull, smooth and cold in his hands. Dead. “I tried so much.” It’s why he can’t let the others go. Not yet. Not when the winter frost kept them preserved enough that there might still be a chance. Seonghwa and Yunho and Chaeyoung. They haunt him. “It worked once, I don’t know why—I don’t know why I couldn’t again.”
San died first. His body went before the winter came. Yeosang hates summer. He’s lucky to still have San, guarding their room, cradled in his lap.
“Yeosang?” Jongho mutters, half-asleep. He’s pushed himself up, blearily looking at him. Pale moonlight streams through their half-closed curtains. It washes Jongho out, casts deep shadows across his face. For a split second he looks like the skull in Yeosang’s hands.
Yeosang’s chattering must’ve woken him up. Jongho doesn’t sleep very well anymore, and Yeosang kicks himself for it. “I’m coming back to bed.”
“Mmkay. Please.”
Yeosang watches Jongho curl back down. Listens to the gentle exhales of his chest. Summer is when Jongho is most alive. Jongho and his plants and his soft hands. Yeosang misses his boyfriend. It feels too trivial of a word to describe their relationship. Partner. Lover. Everything. If San could talk, he’d ask when Yeosang became a sap. However, San has no tongue and therefore cannot contribute anything to this conversation.
Yeosang loves Jongho so much, sometimes it feels like it's eating him. It’s hard seeing Jongho withdraw. Sleep less, and eat less, and talk less. Stare aimlessly, silently. Yeosang should encourage Jongho to come with him to the market more. He should let them burn the bodies so they can have Wooyoung round. He should get better at fishing, allow Jongho to spend more time with his seedlings or books or whatever he wants to do.
Selfishly, Yeosang wishes he were enough. Sometimes it feels like they’ve speedrun to their fifties and are a straight couple who’ve been together thirty years and don’t have anything to share. Just mindless questions about what’s for dinner and who's picking the kids up and did you see the weather this morning. But that’s just The-End-Of-The-World-As-You-Knew-it. There’s not a lot going on anymore. Jongho would talk to Yeosang if they had things going on. Gently, he places San back down. Stands and crawls back into the bed. It’s cold under the covers. Jongho’s fallen back asleep, curled on his side. His eyelashes make whispery shadows across his face. There’s a patch of dry skin on his neck. Yeosang wants to give him the world.
Yeosang cuddles into Jongho. Asleep, Jongho pulls back. Yeosang closes his eyes and thinks about the bodies in the garden. He’ll try again tomorrow.
Yeosang’s been in the garden all day when it starts raining. It’s not rained for days. But he can’t bring himself to go back inside, he’s on his knees in front of Seonghwa, and his hands buzz with anticipation. The rain threw his concentration, but Yeosang had it, he could feel it. It’s the feeling of picking up squashed bugs, and his uncle yelling at him, and Jongho coughing, and San dead. A disembodied grief. A sign. A friction, something on the edge of bursting.
Jongho pulls him away, inside.
“I had it!” Yeosang swears. Protests against Jongho, and the sound of the door shutting. He’s pulled through into their kitchen. “No, let me go. I had it, I really had it! He was about to open his eyes, I swear. I could feel it.”
Jongho hums, running a towel over Yeosang’s hair. “I had it!” Yeosang waves his hands. He feels like a child with Jongho ignoring him. “Why aren’t you listening? I was fixing him!”
“Seonghwa has no eyes, hyung. It’s barely Seonghwa anymore. There’s nothing to bring back.”
“Don’t you believe me?” Yeosang pulls out of Jongho’s hold. Stares his boyfriend in the face. Jongho stares back. He was barely in the rain, yet he’s sodden too. Rain drips off the edges of his hair like tears. “I can do it, Jjong. I’ve done it before.”
Jongho pulls Yeosang’s sodden shirt off him. “I know.”
Yeosang ignores Jongho for the rest of the day. Not that it’s hard, Jongho barely speaks to him. The fury Yeosang feels is a new one. The end of the world has made him sad, of course, and tired, and bored and lonely. But the anger that courses through him is new, and not enjoyable. He wants to shout, or scream, or rip something apart, but he sits on the window seat and stares out at the rainy remains of his friends.
As a child Yeosang never got angry. His uncle did. Spit flying as he shouted. Raised fists. Yeosang’s sister would shut the two of them in her wardrobe. She was nice when she wasn’t squashing bugs. She’d sing songs she learnt in school and show him her maths books. Yeosang liked maths. There was an answer to everything.
There was no answer to his uncle’s rage. Little cause, either. Yeosang promised to himself he’d never be anything like him. The bodies in the garden aren’t visible, really, through the rain. Blurred kind of lumps. They’re not that visible without the rain either. Yeosang’s running out of time.
Grief is a strange one. Yeosang carries ghosts with him, but they’re not real. Not in the way Jongho or Wooyoung’s ghosts are. They mourn the dead, and Yeosang mourns the fact his friend’s bodies are rotting before he can save them. It’s San all over again.
The rain continues. Yeosang loses his anger with Jongho at some point, he only notices when it’s gone. Slipped away like silt in wet soil. The water brings life to Jongho’s garden, orange tomatoes waving in the wind through the window. It brings decomposition to the bodies. Yeosang can’t go outside for long without getting soaked, and without crying, and without Jongho dragging him back in.
“I’m losing time,” he says, the third time Jongho’s retrieved him. He’s been watching Yeosang carefully, following him from room to room. Yeosang spent weeks wanting Jongho to pay him attention again, and now he is but it feels wrong. Like he’s only doing it to say no. “I’ve got to do it now.”
“You’ve had months,” Jongho says bluntly. Or honestly. Is there a difference between the two? Once, maybe. Jongho had spoken in soft truths. Had understood the pain-guilt-purpose that kept Yeosang up at night. “Before the winter. And then over the winter. And now. I’m not being mean, but do you honestly think you can bring them back? And-” he interrupts Yeosang opening his mouth, looks at him knowingly. “Do you think they’d want to come back mouldy? Chaeyoung’s been half eaten by dogs. Wouldn’t she just die again?”
There’s a point there, maybe. “People can live without legs,” Yeosang says stubbornly. Ignoring the point. He needs to fix them. He’s capable of it, so why wouldn’t he do it?
Jongho sighs. “Yeosang, you need to let them go. Burn them when it’s dry enough. Put them in the lake. I don’t know. But enough’s enough.”
“I just don’t get why I can’t do it anymore,” Yeosang deflates. Flops down across the floor. His heart hurts. “I don’t know what’s missing.” He did it before. He did it when it mattered most. But now—nothing. Every moment of anticipation, every buzz of his fingers. It’s all false hope. Every night he lies in bed and looks at San and thinks about Yunho’s face. Chaeyoung’s laugh. Seonghwa and his nagging tendencies that Yeosang used to hate, and now misses the most. Is Yeosang greedy? Maybe he can only have one. Maybe he traded, unknowingly, everything for Jongho. Loving your friends and being in love with someone—there’s a difference. But it feels cruel to quantify.
“There doesn’t have to be an answer Yeosang,” Jongho says. Once upon a time he would’ve come and lay next to Yeosang. But he stands in the doorway, overlord. Even now they’re speaking they’ve forgotten how to talk. “It’s okay to not know.”
“There’s so many things I don’t know,” Yeosang thunks his head on the floor. It makes a hollow sound. Because there’s nothing under the floorboards or because his head is empty? “Do you not miss them Jjong? Don’t you want them back?”
“I barely remember them alive,” Jongho says honestly. Quietly. “You know this. Everything’s so foggy. I barely remember any of before, us or our friends.”
“We were happy,” Yeosang promises. Sits up, cradles his ankles. Looks up at Jongho, worn, tired, crumpled Jongho. “We were so happy.”
The rain continues continuing. Days upon days of it. The vegetable patch floods. Tender roots rot. It’s Yeosang’s turn to drag Jongho back inside. Mud covers his overalls, black slivers imprisoned beneath his nails. “We can replant it,” Yeosang promises. “When the rain stops. Put a drainage system in so it doesn’t happen again. We can fix it, Jjong.”
Jongho stares, empty eyed, at the drowned tomatoes. Caved in courgettes, sweet peas torn up by the wind. There are raspberry stains all over his hands. Red and bitty, like blood. Yeosang draws him in for a hug, ignoring the mud and grief and raspberry blood that smudges between the two of them. “It will be okay,” he promises. “The rain will stop, and we can rebuild it.” As if it heard him, outside, the rain falls even more furiously.
He dries Jongho. Helps him change his clothes. Does everything Jongho did for him, not so long ago. The role reversal is shocking, and Yeosang can’t bear to think of how he acted, and his anger at Jongho. His cruelty? Was he cruel? Jongho is mostly unresponsive. It hurts, a little, that he has more grief for the loss of his garden than he has for the bodies that inhabit it. But then, that’s Yeosang being cruel again. The plants were bodies of a kind. And they brought warmth to Jongho, a life that he had not seen for so long.
His boyfriend is solemn. Cold-eyed, like one of the fish in the basket. Yeosang thinks maybe he won’t see that life in Jongho again for a while.
Jongho gets quieter again. The storm leaves, and he ignores the garden. Yeosang’s torn between tending his bodies, and tending Jongho’s vegetable patch. It had overjoyed Yeosang, the life that Jongho’s plants had given him. At the same time, the life that Yeosang could give his friends—he can’t not try.
It’s not only the cucurbits that the storm macerated. While before the rain the bodies were rotting, they were still bodies. Mostly recognisable. Organs in the right place. Days of relentless weather has torn them apart. Smushed them. Yeosang can’t tell if the shin visible was Seonghwa’s or Yunho’s. He tries, just like he promised San. He tries, tries, tries.
The bodies do not change.
Yeosang tries to fix the vegetable patch too. Rakes the wet soil together. Ties stakes around the pathetic remains of a broad bean, in hopes to prop it up again. Brushes off battered marigolds, replants them against the house. But Yeosang has the green fingers of a carrion bird, and for all his tries, nothing seems to grow better.
Yeosang wakes up in the middle of the night. His arm is bloody. Jongho, curled around it, is fast asleep. Drool on the corners of his open mouth. Pike.
Life skills in school taught Yeosang about teen pregnancies and the dangers of gateway drugs. Not how to do dentistry.
“Jongho?”
Jongho continues to cradle his jaw and ignore his boyfriend slash emergency dentist. Which, fair because nobody likes having their teeth out even before The End-Of-The-World-As-You-Knew-It, let alone after but still, Yeosang didn’t think he’d done that bad of a job. But then Jongho, despite all his muscles, had always been a bit of a scaredy cat. He used to scream at the spiders in the bathroom. Yeosang would have to come in with a plastic beaker and a piece of card to scoop them out of the window.
Jongho’s not scared of spiders anymore. Not that there are many spiders around to be scared of. Before the humans started dying it was the bugs.
“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” Yeosang offers. Comes to stand before his boyfriend, who’s purposefully turned away from him. “It had got so bad though, they had to come out. We have some willow bark somewhere. I can get something for you?”
Jongho huffs, but leans into Yeosang. Delighted, Yeosang cards his fingers through his hair. The strands have lost some of the silkiness they used to have, and come loose around his fingers. Which, fair. Their diets are hardly stellar. Oily fish are meant to be good for hair health though.
The bites on Yeosang’s arm do scar. He forgets they’re there most of the time, hidden under long sleeves as he goes about his daily tasks. It’s as he changes for bed, he notices them, faded red crescents one, two and three. It’s funny, kind of, because Yeosang never realised human teeth were so pointy.
Yeosang goes to the market. He has less fish than normal. The storm scared them away, maybe, or Jongho had. Although he was usually the better fisherman. But he’d been restless since the storm. Yeosang had hoped he’d want to rebuild his garden, but Jongho’s been listless. He’s still following Yeosang from room to room but doesn’t say much. The impromptu dentistry probably didn’t help in that regard. Yeosang’s had to make sure to cook their food super soft.
The road is covered in gigantic puddles still, parts flooded. Yeosang pushes the cart, which is lighter but feels heavier than usual. Brambles reach out to snare his ankles, and he’s not quick enough to dodge them. There’s a small round bloodstain on his sock. The normal people are around the market. Yoon Eujin. Mrs Park. The Kim brothers. Yeosang trades two yellow perch for some eggs, and a bluegill for some soap.
“Have you seen Wooyoung?” he asks Eujin, turning around the glade. The trees are so green they seem to sing with it. Her cart is full of flour-based goods, noodles, dumplings and bread.
“Not recently,” Eujin offers. It means nothing. Wooyoung could be held up by the storm. He could have nothing to sell today, the weather making his usual bird hunting impossible. He could be looking after his brother. Or he could be ill, or he could be dead. Yeosang shouldn’t have asked.
He worries, as he pushes the cart back home. Worries that Wooyoung is dead.
He tells Jongho as much when he gets in.
Jongho’s in the garden. On the front step, staring at the bones of his vegetable patch. Behind that, lie the amorphous bodily remains of Yeosang’s friends.
“Wooyoung wasn’t there today,” Yeosang says, sitting down next to Jongho. He’s kept his shoes on, while Jongho’s feet are bare. “I’m scared, a bit. He might be ill.”
“Don’t be scared!” Jongho snaps, “If he dies you can add him to your never-ending pile of corpses!” Yeosang jumps, not having expected the vehemence in his voice. Jongho looks just as startled. “I—I didn’t mean to shout then. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Yeosang says carefully. He shuffles closer to Jongho, willing his heart to slow down.
“It’s not,” Jongho sighs. “I—I can feel myself becoming more aggressive lately. But it’s foggy. It’s like I’m watching myself change.”
“There’s a lot going on,” Yeosang soothes. “It’s the end of the world, Jjong, we’ve all changed.” It’s not even the end anymore, it’s the aftermath. The what’s-left. Yeosang and Jongho and their house and their garden and their love. That’s all that’s left. Summer’s drawing to an end, the hedgerows around the house are telling more yellow everyday. Yeosang prefers winter, but he doesn’t think Jongho’s marigolds will make it.
“No.” Soft but stern. Jongho’s looking at Yeosang with big, big eyes. The flaky patch of skin on his cheek has grown. He picks up Yeosang’s hand, traces his fingers up his sleeve and along the bite scars. Yeosang pulls his hand away, pushes his sleeve back down but the action is feeble. They both know what’s happening. It wasn't a toothache that made Yeosang take out Jongho’s front teeth. “It’s not the same.”
“I love you,” Yeosang offers. A promise that has never wavered. He tries to match Jongho’s softness. Tries to keep the tears out of his voice. “I would do anything for you, I love you so much.”
“I know Sang-ah” Jongho’s icy fingers squeeze Yeosang’s. His eyes glimmer, a promise of his own tears maybe, or just the reflection of the setting sun. “I know.