Chapter Text
daniel and jihoon first had to hunt for a picnic mat. since it rained earlier in the day and jihoon will not dirty his favourite sweater.
after much scavenging, they do find one, miraculously, and then they hop onto a cab en route to han river.
***
somewhere along the way, jihoon’s phone rings. and he knew who was calling and for what reason before he even fished it out of his pocket.
“hi mom”
“jihoon. when will you be back? we have to leave for the airport in a few hours.”
jihoon pouts, although he knows his mom won’t see it, “it’s my last day here, i’m out with a friend. at least let me have a memorable last day, i grew up here after all.”
there’s a pause, and jihoon thinks she hung up on him, when the voice on the other end replies. “alright. be at the airport by eight. we’ll bring your stuff for you.”
jihoon’s mouth curves into a small satisfied smile, “thanks mom.” he says, and he hangs up.
jihoon feels daniel’s stare, as if anticipating him to talk about it. but jihoon stays quiet for a few moments before humming to spring day, then tipping his head so it rests on daniel’s shoulder. he grabs daniel’s hand and puts it on his lap, playing around with his fingers until daniel mumbles something that sounded like ”what a kid.”
jihoon lifts his head and sticks his tongue out at daniel before returning it onto his shoulder.
***
the parks of han river were filled with tourists—and locals—just like any other day. the homeliness and familiarity of it all was making it hard for jihoon to breathe.
they head to the northern bank which seemed the least crowded, and set up. daniel laying out the mat and jihoon on the phone ordering three buckets of chicken which he insists he can finish (at least) two on his own.
the sun slowly dips in the horizon and paints the sky shades of a glowing yellow, orange and pink. the city’s illumination flicker on one by one, creating a hazy light above the buildings.
“city light pollution is awful, i’ve always wanted to visit the countryside.” jihoon says, lying on his back once daniel set the mat down.
“will you?” daniel asks, lying down next to him and hooking their ankles together.
jihoon shakes his head, “i’ll be living in los angeles, and i doubt the skies will be any clearer.”
“we’ll still be looking up at the same sky, though, even on the opposite ends of the globe.”
jihoon smiles, “yeah, i’ll think of you every time i look at the sky.”
“as will i”
they’re quiet for a while, enjoying each other’s presence. they watch the sun drift down toward the water and the ever changing colours of the sky.
the two talk about miscellaneous things, their schools, their friends, their family. right until the deliveryman arrives with their buckets of chicken. jihoon’s eyes shine as he takes in the bucket of chicken in front of him, correction: his two buckets of chicken. daniel shakes his head and smiles, “if that’s how much you eat on a daily basis i’m surprised you’re not bigger than me.”
jihoon throws a glare at him, which would seem menacing if his cheeks weren’t stuffed with his large bites of chicken.
daniel pokes his cheek, smiling, “it’s okay, you’re perfect as you are.” and jihoon quickly averts his gaze.
they eat in silence for a few minutes until jihoon breaks it. “what will you do about your interview tomorrow?” he asks as he takes a bite of chicken, “have you decided what you’re going to do with your life?”
“you sound like my mom,” daniel replies, though he doesn’t think of it as an insult, not any longer. “but let’s say i have a rough idea. probably not a doctor though, i hope my mom would be alright with it.”
jihoon quietens for a moment as he takes it in, chewing with consideration and forming a reply, “i think she’ll be alright.” he says finally, slowly, and daniel thinks maybe it would work out in the end.
***
“i’m so full.” jihoon groans as he takes his last bite and swallows. daniel finished his a couple minutes earlier and the bucket lay discarded on the grass. he grabs the green tea cans and passes one to jihoon, before popping his own open and gulping down the contents.
the sun had fully set, casting the sky into a purple-tinged grey of night. jihoon tries not to think how fast the day has gone, and how much longer until it ends.
he shakes his head to clear the thought.
“hey,” daniel says, getting jihoon’s attention back and turning to face him. “don’t make that face”
jihoon forces a weak smile, “i can’t help it.”
daniel reaches a hand up to cup his cheek, and jihoon’s hands find his waist, his touch light. jihoon’s eyes flutter close when daniel’s thumb grazes his cheekbones, and he’s leaning in. closing in the distance and it’s making daniel weak because it’s an invitation he can’t resist. he closes his eyes.
every time they kiss it sends a warm fuzzy feeling around jihoon, from his lips down to the tips of his toes, like the flutter of butterflies, like the tickle of feathers. one that leaves him feeling both giddy and giggly afterwards.
this kiss is gentler than their last ones, which were filled desperation and longing. this time they’re slowing down, because you never know how little time you have left until it’s slipping through your fingers and you’re running out. their foreheads are pressed together and they take turns pressing their lips onto the other’s and smiling in between.
daniel leaves a trail of kisses from the corner of jihoon’s lips to his temple and down to his jaw and back.
jihoon presses his lips onto daniel’s but instead of pulling away he murmurs into his mouth, something indistinct. daniel separates their lips but keeps them close, their foreheads still touch. he wants to hear it properly.
“say it again.” he coaxes.
jihoon’s cheeks are a glowing red, so if what he says next would make him blush, well, who knows?
“i”
smooch.
“wuv”
smooch.
“you”
their foreheads still touch, and the lights from the distant city reflects in jihoon’s eyes. they’re twinkling and daniel can’t help but think so that’s where all the stars in seoul went.
***
when jihoon’s phone vibrates they know time is up.
jihoon takes one last long look at the lighted city, the bridge stretching across the river, the hazy night obscuring the stars from view. he climbs into the cab after daniel and presses himself against him, as if to seek some sort of comfort. they hook their legs together and jihoon rests his forehead on daniel’s shoulder, daniel’s on his head. there was a weight in his chest like a breath held too long.
too soon. he still had things to do, he doesn’t want to rebuild his life somewhere else.
and so he looks for a distraction. “your dumb experiment, where did we stop?” jihoon asks.
daniel looked dumbfounded, amazed that jihoon would bring it up now, but he doesn’t question it. he kind of lost track on where they stopped, with so much cutting down of the full experiment...
“i don’t know,” he replies, “but there’s the last part where we look into each other’s eyes for, four minutes?”
“okay.” jihoon replies as he takes his phone out and sets the timer to four minutes. he grabs daniel’s hand. “go.”
the first ten seconds were, awkward, no doubt. embarrassed smiles took over their faces, and jihoon accidentally averts his eyes only to be brought back by daniel squeezing his hand. stay with me.
second minute goes by, and the awkwardness fades away as they catalogue each others’ faces, as if committing them to memory. jihoon’s mind drifts to what he learnt about the human eye. optical images to his retina, retina converts them to signals, signals to visual cortex, and planted into his memory. this is a sight he won’t be forgetting, he won’t forget how daniel smiles, how it lights up his whole face.
daniel focuses on his eyes too. he observes how they sparkle, and wonders how he would describe them. the store of all the stars in seoul skies? and his smile, brightening his face like the sun. enough about the ordinary stars, the world needs more poems about the sun. it is a star after all? he’ll keep it in mind. he wonders why people ever thought dark eyes were dull.
third minute. jihoon relives the day in his head. the decision to leave home, cat cafe, meeting daniel, coffee shop, norebang, kisses, office, separation. kisses. and then cat cafe, more kisses, daniel’s house, han river. this moment right now.
daniel doesn’t think about the past, he thinks about the future. all the little things that happened earlier brought him here. surely, everyone enters your life for a purpose? has jihoon finished his purpose? to take his heart and bring it far far away?
the last minute is painful, hurting. jihoon wonders, what if they hadn’t met? would he have had a perfectly ordinary—last—day, and not know he was missing something? soon the phone buzzes, signalling the end for the second time.
they whisper promises, phone calls, text messages, skype calls, emails, international flights. promises they wonder if they’ll be able to keep.
and then they kiss
again and
again and
again.
one day can’t possibly be all that they have.
but meant to be doesn’t mean forever.
two weeks
for two weeks, they kept their promise. they message each other daily, they skype each other when it’s night for one and day for the other. but days get full, and time and distance are love’s natural enemies.
as jihoon’s first day of school draws nearer, their calls shorten and his replies more spaced apart. daniel got into the course he desired, though it meant he too would be busy.
jihoon easily makes new friends in his new school, and formed a close bond with samuel and justin, who coincidentally had lived in korea too at some point in their lives. he is likeable after all, in more ways than one. daniel on the other hand, enrols into the same university as his best friends seongwoo and jaehwan. different majors, but still together.
both their days were filled with happiness, all their worries—scrapped. maybe they were overthinking after all, maybe they just needed time.
two months
it wasn’t that jihoon wanted to let daniel go, it was that he had to. he can’t live in two places simultaneously, body in one place, heart in another.
and so he lets go—reluctantly—to avoid being ripped apart.
”jihoon the believer now, huh?” he still hears daniel’s voice in his head sometimes. but jihoon’s moving on, slowly.
he’s sitting on one of the benches in his school, a book about space open on his lap. when he hears someone calling his name, and turns to see samuel waving to him, “hey ji! wanna get some coffee after class? we could go to that new cafe down the road.” samuel suggests, and jihoon tries not to notice the somewhat familiar feeling in his chest, a feeling that has been steadily growing over the span of a few weeks. “just the two of us since justin has a project meeting.”
jihoon hopes whatever he’s feeling then—is not showing on his face when he smiles at samuel shyly.
“sure! that sounds nice.”
jihoon’s moving on, slowly.
daniel chose to take up nursing in the end, and he found that he enjoyed it a lot.
and since he does what he enjoys, he does it well.
he still finds time to write.
long happy poems, short sad poems. and the ones not about him are somehow still about him.
it’s not that he wanted to let jihoon go, he tries to hold on as long as he can. but he hears the strain in jihoon’s voice across the distance.
letting go was a lot harder than it sounded.
a year passes,
jihoon’s memories of that day in seoul were held together by a thin thread, the magical feeling he felt by being with daniel was fading from his memories. he wonders if he had imagined that first love.
he and samuel hadn’t worked out in the end, and they agreed they were better off as best friends.
***
on some nights in that helpless moment before sleep overrides him, jihoon recalls that familiar flutter in his chest he felt when he was with daniel. whether it was simply a figment of his imagination, or over-romanticisation, it was an impulsive and passionate feeling.
a small part of him wants to think maybe it was real.
even daniel no longer knows what that day meant, that day that once meant everything. the coincidences that led them to find each other and the circumstances that pulled them apart.
he recalls how they found each other again after they split up, how everything in the universe had to align perfectly to make it happen.
he wonders when, or if their universes would align like that again.
or maybe their universe is just taking longer to form.
epilogue
two years later
“daniel!” he hears seongwoo call from the living room. “get your ass out of your room or ill haul it out myself!”
daniel scoffs in his room, though seongwoo can’t see it, and picks out a simple maroon red tee shirt and slips it on. see, jihoon? colour! daniel smiles at the thought until he hears jaehwan’s voice calling, “godammit daniel no one’s gonna care what you wear, everyone will be looking at the fireworks! except us if we don’t make it in time since you’ve been deciding on a shirt for the past ten minutes!”
daniel barges out of the room, “okay, okay I’m ready” he says, “jeez guys.”
his two best friends are lounging on the sofa, and they grin at him when he finally comes out.
“finally,” they both sigh exasperatedly in unison. daniel rolls his eyes in response.
next stop: han river annual fireworks festival
***
the trio reach minutes before the sun begins to set, and there are already people lining along the bridge looking out over the water. there’s upbeat music blasting from the speakers, thrumming though daniel’s veins and contributing to the liveliness of the atmosphere. its a magical feeling, daniel wants to think something will happen tonight.
somewhere amongst the crowd, there is a certain boy donning a bright orange sweater and mismatching shoelaces. he’s with his group of friends, who he hasn’t seen in around.. three years? they’re catching up on their lives and are at one of the food stalls. the boy in the orange sweater is on his third box of chicken, much to the amazement (and expectation) of his group of friends. the boy reminiscences on the last time he had been to han river. the scenery hadn’t changed much, just a little more crowded.
he’s suddenly conscious of the weight of the phone in his pocket. he wonders if he changed his number, whether he’s still in seoul. he wants to see him, but it’s been so, so long without words being exchanged between them.
“jihoonie hyung hurry up! we have to go claim a spot on the bank before the crowd gets worse.” he hears daehwi call to him.
park jihoon sets his thoughts aside and catches up to his friends.
daniel pauses mid step, wondering if his ears are playing tricks on him. and jaehwan crashes into him from behind. “ya! daniel don’t suddenly stop like that.” he cries, but daniel’s head is whipping left and right, as if searching for something, someone.
“daniel?’” jaehwan asks, “you alright?”
“a-ah yeah” daniel replies, taking one last look around him, “sorry, just thought it was someone i knew.”
jaehwan raises a brow, but doesn’t push further. “if you say so,” he says and walks ahead, “c’mon, seongwoo’s waiting.” he calls back.
maybe daniel’s being delusional tonight,
maybe he hasn’t completely moved on yet.
he shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts, then brisk walks to catch up to jaehwan.
it’s probably not him daniel thinks to himself, though he hopes he’s wrong. there are other jihoons in korea
woojin and jinyoung have set up their mat, laying out the spread of food they bought from the festival. the wafting aroma of warm food was irresistible and daehwi and guanlin sit and dig in, much to the protests of the older two.
some things don’t change jihoon thinks as he takes his place on the mat, sipping a can of soda when woojin suddenly nudges his side frantically and almost causing the older to choke on his straw.
“ah woojinie stop it! what was that for?” jihoon whines but woojin wasn’t looking at him. jihoon follows his gaze but couldn’t find what had caught the younger’s attention other then a growing crowd of people.
“go up there.” woojin commands him, pointing a finger up at the bridge. jihoon scrunches his face in confusion, what is this kid on about “if you want more food go buy some yourself.” he protests and continues sipping his soda.
woojin makes a sound between a scoff and a sigh, before grabbing onto jihoon’s shoulders so the latter faces him. “park jihoon, i command you in the name of your first, oldest and bestest best friend that you go onto that stupid bridge or it will be what you will regret the most in your twenty years of being alive.” woojin says with such an intensity that jihoon is gaping at him in bewilderedness.
“why?” jihoon asks, voice coming out smaller than what he would have liked, but woojin heard it over the sound of the festival nonetheless.
he gives jihoon a final push, and the latter finds himself kneeling on the mat as if some part of him is actually willing to follow one of woojin’s weird requests.
“there’s a better view up there.” is all woojin says before jihoon finds himself standing up uncertainly. he takes a final glance back and sees woojin flashing a thumbs up while the rest look between them in confusion.
jihoon heads toward the bridge.
seongwoo and jaehwan left to find the washroom, and so daniel’s leaning out and eyeing the dark waters below, as if something was going to appear out of nowhere. but all he saw was the reflection of the colourful lights of the bridge, the city, the full moon, though there isn’t a star in the darkening skies.
daniel looks over at the banks of han river and recalls when he too were sitting there with the most beautiful starry-eyed boy, years ago.
he looks back up at the sky, as if the missing stars would magically appear there. he thinks of jihoon with his twinkling eyes, sparkling so brightly one would think he were the thief who stole all the stars and hid them in his eyes.
daniel wonders how he’s doing, and he finds memories of that distant day flooding his mind. something in his heart clenches, and daniel tells himself he can’t suddenly start missing a boy he spent barely a day with, three years ago.
move on, daniel he thinks.
then out loud, as if to reaffirm himself, “move on—“
“—daniel?”
he freezes when he hears a voice calling him like a distant memory, soft and breathless and familiar. daniel finds it suddenly hard to breathe.
he turns toward his left, slowly, hesitantly, as if had he moved too fast he would wake up from this dream. this can’t be a dream, right?
and, there.
he’s here, looking as bright and radiant as ever.
and the smile that lights up his entire face would make the brightest star in the solar system seem pale in comparison.
jihoon breaks into a run and jumps into his arms, and daniel reacts just in time to catch him, arms supporting jihoon’s weight as he hooks his ankles around daniel’s back.
jihoon brings their faces closer together, and daniel feels his heart about to hammer out of his chest,
“hey” jihoon greets softly
“jihoon,” daniel replies breathlessly, he notices how the younger’s hair seems longer, and his cheeks are losing their baby fat. “you’re really here? I’m not dreaming?”
jihoon chuckles and uses his free hand around daniel’s neck to tug at the strands of hair at his nape and crashing their lips together. falling back into a familiar rhythm and tingling both their senses.
when they pull apart, red lips and cheeks, daniel finds the missing stars in jihoon’s eyes again.
“still think you’re dreaming?” jihoon asks, pressing their foreheads together.
daniel’s about to say something when he hears a screech coming from somewhere behind them. he lets go of jihoon out of surprise and the latter scurries to hide behind the older.
“pda! pda!”
“we leave you alone for five minutes—“ jaehwan and seongwoo start in unison before daniel shushes them.
feeling mildy embarrassed by both the public’s attention and being caught by seongwoo and jaehwan, who probably thought he had been kissing a random stranger, he quickly explains,
“no! its not like that,” he starts, “this.. is jihoon, i told you guys about him.” he adds softly. he doesn’t see jihoon’s reaction (and he’s somewhat scared to)
seongwoo and jaehwan’s brows shoot up so high they disappear under their bangs.
“oh”
“oh”
“wow”
jihoon peeks out from behind daniel and flashes them both a shy smile.
“he’s cute” jaehwan says before he can stop himself.
“thank you” jihoon smiles at him, reaching for daniel’s hand and tugging it.
“okay okay, ill see you guys later! enjoy the festival!” daniel says before pulling jihoon away from the pair.
***
“you won’t leave again, right?” daniel asks. the two find a quiet space, tucked away behind some trees. “i can’t move on if you keep leaving and coming back like this, it’ll kill me.”
jihoon squeezes his hand, but he’s smiling. “nope, I’m staying. my parents are letting me stay in a university dorm.”
“really?”
jihoon’s smile grows bigger, “i missed you.” he says, and the fireworks go off in the distance, lighting up the night sky.
“i missed you too.” daniel replies as he leans forward and kisses his forehead. “are we in a relationship yet?”
jihoon giggles, "yes, bring me out on a date tomorrow, i wanna see how much this place has changed."
daniel interlaces their fingers together and kisses the back of jihoon's hand, "sure, cupcake."
this really is a better view jihoon thinks, resting his head on daniel's shoulder and daniel's head on top of his.