Chapter Text
Being the ex-boyfriend of one of the biggest idols on the planet is not for the weak. If anyone has any inquiries, they can come straight to Kim Sunoo—oh wait! No they can’t, since he spends his time wallowing in self pity and Biodance skincare masks and having dinner with himself. Narcissism can only take him so far, though, and so eventually he has to wander out of his two room apartment and search for some human interaction with Riki and that right there is when his little bubble pops.
Because why on earth is Park Sunghoon’s face everywhere?
It’s kind of a cosmic joke, at this point. God has to be pointing and laughing, because Sunoo’s luck couldn’t be worse. Everywhere he looks, he sees his ex’s stupid fucking face staring back at him with that cheap, plastic smile Sunoo despises. Maybe he was a serial killer in his past life, because that’s the only thing that could explain the level of emotional turmoil he has to put up with every time he needs to participate in society. It’s not a very funny joke, if it is one. Their breakup was loud and messy and Sunoo was quite glad to be rid of that idiotic troll, but of course instead of being depressed about it like a normal person Park Sunghoon just had to truly embody the true Mr. Genius Idol and use his pain as fuel.
It’s the trait Sunoo used to admire, but now the one he hates. Because why is it that when he was sitting swaddled in various blankets and crying whole tears with his nose running quite unattractively, he opens TikTok to try and scroll the despair away and first thing he sees is the damned fool himself, doing a stupid dance to the group’s stupid music and looking fine and dandy as ever.
Sunoo might be a bottom, but he still has masculine pride, damn it! How is he supposed to be okay when his ex is fine?!
Riki had said before that Sunoo’s overreacting, and logically, he knows it’s true. He kind of dated a guy who was in the soul-crushing business that is the idol industry, and what’s online is not going on behind the scenes. But if he’s being honest with himself, why would Sunghoon spend time bathing in his own misery? Idols have to be incredibly selfish to succeed. And Sunoo has never been able to accept that.
It’s kind of sad in its own dogged way. Sunoo and Sunghoon have been a thing, a pair, two peas in a pod, soul mates, since high school. Since Sunghoon was the cool senior and Sunoo was his idiot junior.
And now, as an adult man, it’s quite hard to reconcile their relationship (or lack thereof) to the sweet, pure and innocent teenage romance they had back in the day. The one where Sunoo would bake Sunghoon treats and Sunghoon would buy him boba, the way Sunoo would massage his feet after dance practice and Sunghoon would shower him in kisses. It was perfect until it wasn’t. And shit, now Sunoo is going to spend the rest of his life looking for someone that will love him as much as Sunghoon. As much as Sunghoon used to.
It’s whatever. Sunoo’s accepted that he’ll be single for the rest of his life. Maybe he’ll get a cat or something, to take the edge off the loneliness. For some reason, he can’t shake it—no matter how much time he spends with Riki, or his sister, or how many times he walks the worn path down to his old high school to visit his teachers. The sweeter the time spent with someone, the more his empty apartment chills him down to his bones.
Yes, a cat would be nice. Maybe he’ll go down to the shelter after work. His job takes years off his life, and leaves Sunoo with designer bags under his eyes. Sleeping doesn’t help at all, for some reason. It’s like Sunghoon took his vitality with him back to his dumb idol group, his perky little bottom twitching as he walked away like how Sunoo used to adore.
“Er, Professor Kim?” a timid voice yanks him out of his miniature pity party.
“What?” he snaps at his student, too tired to try and muster up the energy to regret it. She should have known better than to ask her professor a question when he’s clearly in the middle of an internal monologue.
“I just, um, had a question about the reading we were assigned?” She shuffles in place, looking at him sheepishly through her bangs.
He waits a second, and when she doesn’t continue, sighs. It’s so heavy that she flinches. “Spit it out. I don’t have all day.”
“Sorry, Professor Kim…um, if the reading is chapters one to seven, are we supposed to read them? Like, do we read chapters one to seven?” She looks at him earnestly with her large, slightly spooky dark eyes.
…Sunoo’s going to drown himself.
“Yes. Yes, you do. Anything else?” He sighs again. He can feel slivers of his soul escaping through his lips. He drums his fingers against his desk impatiently. He’s been sitting here for so long the bones in his ass hurt.
“Um, do we annotate?” She glances towards the door nervously, as if he’s going to pick up the heavy tome on the corner of his desk and start chasing her around with it. Did this girl pay no attention when he assigned the damn homework? He said annotations were needed three times.
“Yes.”
“Oh. Okay. Um, bye.”
“Goodbye, child,” he mutters. Ah, youth. What he wouldn’t give to be eighteen again. He could break up with Sunghoon and save them both the trouble. Sunoo might only be twenty-eight (which was pretty young for a PhD—he finished his dissertation in a year) but he has the spirit of the 60 year old uncles that have been working the same jobs since their twenties: tired, burnt out, and slightly clammy.
He should probably head home. He’s been at SNU starting only this year, graduating a year ago from Yonsei, then immediately pivoting to somehow getting a job at the school. How he’d gotten burnt out in one year is beyond him—no, it’s not. The reason for his chronic burnout and also eye pain starts with P and ends with ark Sunghoon.
He hates crying over this so much. It’s been a month since their breakup, and he’s still a mess. Riki says he’s valid because the relationship had stretched for twelve years—really, he should’ve predicted a breakup after being together for that long without even a promise ring. Actually, they probably would have married straight out of high school if same sex marriage wasn’t illegal in Korea, but that’s besides the point.
Some couples chose to have a symbolic joining of union rather than a legal one, since the latter wasn’t an option, and his friends Ryujin and Yeji had done it as well, with a wedding venue and everything. They had looked absolutely stunning in their dresses, and Sunoo couldn’t help but feel incredibly envious of their privilege to be able to openly profess their love for each other when (back when Sunghoon and him had been together) they couldn’t since the paparazzi would have found out some way. And then there would have been “Park Sunghoon is Secretly With a Man?!” titles all over the tabloids.
To set the record straight, Sunghoon is gay, yes. Sunoo used to be very proud that he himself was Sunghoon’s awakening, but now he’s just sad about it.
It seeps into his work, too. His students tiptoe around him because he looks like death. Half of them are afraid to ask him questions. His RateMyProfessor score is probably a zero. Well, Sunoo tries to make it up to them in his own way. He doesn’t grade harshly, he offers retakes and extra credit, they get three days to finish their readings instead of one, he gives extensions and breaks freely. Also, he gives anyone who scores above a ninety percent a smiley-face sticker and has never made any of his students read those musty dusty old books that even he can’t stand. That has to count for something, right?
He’s not as notorious as Riki is, though, and he’s glad for it. He and Riki are friends, but he would rather hang himself than be one of the man’s students. Sunoo is a bitch because of Sunghoon, but Riki is a bitch because he finds it funny. He’ll bet real money that Riki’s RateMyProfessor score is also in the dumpster.
He sighs, stretching out at his desk before getting up and starting to pack up his things. It’s just about seven in the evening, and Sunoo has a dinner date with ice cream, pizza, and probably some random youtube video essay. There’s just something about modern television that’s a complete scam. Nothing is interesting enough to capture his attention in the first ten seconds and it’s pissing him off.
His apartment is so cold and lonesome nowadays. He wasn’t joking about the cat—it would be an investment into his mental wellbeing, if you will. Perhaps a warm furry companion that will love him unconditionally is the cure to Sunoo’s slog of feeling, although he’s perfectly aware that it’s only a temporary bandage on a much larger wound.
Marinating on how Sunghoon just…left him after a sizable chunk of their lives has been doing nothing for his skin, and since his beauty regime is skincare and applying BB cream to his tired face, he’s been looking worse for wear. Sunghoon is glowing, obviously. Clearly he’s fine; he no longer has Sunoo holding him back from achieving Pure Idolatry. Maybe he’s even glad that they broke up. Maybe he’s never even loved Sunoo, and all those years were just a lie.
No, Sunghoon loved Sunoo once. Perhaps that’s why it stings so badly now that he no longer does.
~*~
Riki sits across from him in the cafe’s outdoor seating. He looks perfectly well-fed, and his skin and hair is lustrous. Sunoo, on the other hand, has lost seven pounds in one month and can currently count every single rib through his skin. He was already slender, but this is kind of pushing it into ‘concerning’ territory, where Riki (blunt as he is) is careful to measure his words carefully before speaking. He shifts in his seat, trying to wave away the guilt for making his friend worry.
It’s cold outside, being mid-December, and the only reason they’d sat outside was because neither Sunoo nor Riki felt like waiting for one of the inside tables to clear. Sunoo was seriously regretting that now, of course, but it’s whatever.
“Before you say anything, I know,” Sunoo tells him. He plays with his Pandora charm bracelet. Despite all the charms being acquired through Sunghoon’s credit card, he hasn’t been able to bring himself to throw it out.
Riki pauses. He’s been gearing up for a speech their entire lunch date, eyeing Sunoo’s prominent collarbones in his loose shirt. “What do you know?”
Sunoo shrugs. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say. You think you know what I’m going to say, but you don’t.” Riki takes a deep breath, his eyebrows furrowed. It’s clear he’s taking great pains to keep himself level-headed and not lash out at Sunoo in worried anger, and Sunoo can’t help but wince at the shame sloshing around in his heart.
“You’re going to say I need to eat—and I know, I’ve been trying—”
“I was going to say you’re letting him kill you and it needs to stop,” Riki interrupts him. He glares at him over the rim of his coffee cup. “I understand. I really do. But just because your boyfriend broke up with you doesn’t give you the right to neglect yourself!”
Sunoo blinks. “What? I’m not.” It’s a cheap denial, and he knows it, but what else is he supposed to say? That he’s so down bad for Sunghoon still, knowing that he doesn’t feel the same, that he’s actively harming himself in hopes that his physical pain will ease his emotional pain?
That he hopes his condition will be a burden on Sunghoon’s consciousness? He wouldn’t admit that thought if someone held a gun to his head. He wouldn’t admit that thought if someone held a gun to Riki’s head.
Food was something he’d always enjoyed with Sunghoon, with Sunghoon, with Sunghoon. He’d learned to bake the sweetest treats to feed Sunghoon from his hand. He’d learned, painstakingly, to cook the most delicious meals to offer Sunghoon pleasure from his creation. It had been almost erotic to him, the domesticity, the intimacy. It had made him tingle with desire to see Sunghoon eat the things he’d make and praise him and his cooking until Sunoo squirmed with glee. And now…
There’s no one to eat with. Eating with Riki is lovely, but Sunoo can’t ask him to stop by his apartment for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It isn’t possible for their schedules, and Riki has his own life and commitments. He’d staged this intervention out of brotherly concern, but he isn’t Sunoo’s blood brother. He doesn’t have an obligation to drop everything to care for Sunoo’s shattering mind, and Sunoo isn’t audacious enough to ask him to.
Riki sighs deeply. “Sunoo, I love you so much.” He looks like the words pain him, and Sunoo tries not to giggle. “We all love you so much. Me, Yeji, Yuna…we all adore you. We’re all here for you.”
It isn’t Riki’s personality to say such sappy things, and so Sunoo appreciates it all the more. “Thank you. Truly. You all mean so much to me as well.”
Riki waves him off. “Yeah, yeah. Please eat. Even if you don’t like it, you should eat. Okay? Your wrists are so little I could snap them.”
Sunoo examines his own wrists. “I don’t think they’re that small.”
“They’re dainty. It’s cute.” Riki yawns. “It’s concerning, too. You used to be pretty healthy. A good layer of fat on you.”
“Yeah,” Sunoo agrees. His stomach was so soft and tender, and he remembers how Sunghoon used to rest his head on it, using it as a pillow, after a long day of being Park Sunghoon the Untouchable Idol. He hadn’t been chubby or even ample then either—still objectively slender—but he had been soft. Now, he’s not hard in a muscular way, but he is sharper and almost jagged, like his bones are trying to escape his skin. Like his skeleton is trying to dance away from him. He thinks back to the movie Coco and its skeletal visuals. Exactly like that. His bones are trying to dance away from him like that. It’s funny in his head, but he knows if he voiced it to Riki the conversation would turn serious again. But since the world has a vendetta against pretty men and Sunoo is the prettiest of them all, Riki puts on his big boy pants again and opens his eyes wide like he’s trying to beam his point straight from his brain to Sunoo’s.
“Sunoo, you can come to us for help at any time,” he says. “You know that, right? Tell me you’ll talk to me if you need help.”
“I will,” Sunoo lies. He picks at a hangnail. It’s been bothering him for two days, and has yet to go away.
He won’t go to anyone for help. He’s just not going to. This is something he has to carry on his own. The knowledge that he was…well, whatever he was, Sunghoon didn’t want it, is knowledge that he’s going to carry for the rest of his life. Why was it so hard to get over? Why was it so hard to forget? Why couldn’t he just move on? They aren’t questions he can bring to Riki, to Yeji, or to Yuna. They’re questions he has to grapple with on his own.
“You have to eat,” Riki says again. He sits up straighter in his seat. “You have to.”
“Okay,” Sunoo says amiably. He fiddles with the typewriter charm on his bracelet—the one Sunghoon had picked out when Sunoo had successfully defended his dissertation and became Dr. Kim in his own right at twenty-six, just a month before his twenty-seventh birthday. Immediately he had been offered a spot right there in his current job to fill in for the literature professor that had left two weeks before his graduation, and he’d taken it with a condition of a deferred start date and had been a professor at SNU after a nine months break.
“Promise it,” Riki presses. He leans forward, and Sunoo can smell his cologne and see how serious he is glinting in his dark irises. He naturally has a very intense countenance that intimidates everyone before they even speak with him, but now it’s Sunoo experiencing the full conviction of his gaze rather than the students he’s so fond of terrorizing.
Sunoo opens his mouth, and closes it. Because how can he promise that?
Twelve years of feeding Sunghoon his sugar and butter and flour. Twelve years of feeding Sunghoon with his baking and his cooking and his effort. How is he supposed to promise to eat? He doesn’t want to eat if he can’t eat with someone. That’s not how food is supposed to work. Food is something that Sunoo makes to bring Sunghoon pleasure, which in turn pleases him. What else is there to use for it?
‘Nourishing the body’, ‘eating to fuel yourself’, all these things were lies told by influencers to try and get you to buy their course. There was no use for food if not to use it to build a connection to somebody.
“I’ll try,” he says instead of what he wants to. Riki’s face shutters like he knows what Sunoo is thinking, but he doesn’t press further. They’re both adults, and he knows Riki is aware that he can’t force Sunoo to get better no matter how much he wants to give it a go.
Riki finally concedes with a nod, and Sunoo looks down at his salad and pita bread without an appetite. It’s nothing like what he likes—liked—to give Sunghoon. He thinks of the oysters he had prepared for their twelfth anniversary and smiles down at his food. It’s not a happy smile.
Quietly, they finish their meals.