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One day Jinyoung says “I love you” and hears nothing in return.
It would be okay if Jaebum needed time to think if he can answer the same or not, but it is quite apparent that this is not the case. No time is needed to decide if he loves Jinyoung because it’s obvious that he does not. He just doesn’t understand what to say at first. Jinyoung feels the same actually, he can’t think how to help Jaebum, how to suggest that it's all Jinyoung's mistake.
It’s the first time since the time they met that silence between them is terribly awkward and uneasy.
“Sorry,” Jaebum looks down at the floor and knows perfectly well how stupid his words sound right now. You can’t tell who is more stupid between the two of them. And all the awkwardness that has befallen on them so suddenly should be promptly squished by the end of the month because Jaebum has tickets to some stupid RnB festival and he knows no one (except Jinyoung) who is kind enough to him to keep him company there. You could say no one loves him enough, but Jinyoung started joining him on these shitty RnB outings (and a couple of times on trips to baseball games which were worse) from the very beginning when he had no special reason to. He doesn’t mind them, and Jaebum felt happy even if you couldn’t always say by the way he looked.
Also, it would be a pity to just stop talking to Jaebum just because of some newfound bullshit. It’s not so new actually if you count down its’ existence, not from the moment Jinyoung said “I love you” to Jaebum, but to himself, but that’s not the point.
“You should cry a little,” Wonpil puts ice cream in front of Jinyoung’s face in a manner of indisputable expertise. “Start now.”
Jinyoung is sincere in his desire to put the bucket of ice cream on Wonpil’s head for such clumsy acts of concern, but it’s mint and too good for Wonpil’s terrible hair.
To be honest, he didn’t expect something like “Me too” from Jaebum, but it’s hard to squish your hopes completely when you say something like that. His teeth ache from how cold the ice cream is, and by the time he manages to chop off a new chunk of it from a solidly frozen bucket the spoon in his hands is ice-cold too. Wonpil probably keeps a storehouse in the Antarctic.
Meanwhile, Wonpil starts a movie on a shabby laptop he puts on an empty chair now that Jinyoung refused to be parted with ice cream and brought the bucket with him on the sofa. It’s a classic recipe for a broken heart from cheap magazine articles, but the scariest part is that Wonpil does it all with absolute sincerity.
500 Days of Summer reads the title.
“It’s about stopping to worry and starting a new life,” says Wonpil.
“Damn, but at least they’ve dated before!” grumps Jinyoung after ten minutes after the movie starts. “That does not apply.”
“Don’t trifle over small details,” Wonpil repeats the same thing he has told Jinyoung every day for over ten years, sometimes even twice. Jaebom never told him anything like that, maybe he doesn’t consider things Jinyoung dawdles over ‘small details’, or he doesn’t mind that stuff the same way Jinyoung feels about RnB festivals.
On the screen pale and tragic Joseph Gordon-Levitt breaks a plate, and then another one, and another, and Jinyoung, who according to their theoretical plan needs to bring himself in a state of teary ennui, wants to do the same - preferably on Wonpil’s head who somehow thinks that plans like this should work for Jinyoung. His throat seems to be frozen for a couple more years at least.
He still loves Jaebum.
“I hate you,” he tells to sleepy Wonpil who leans on his shoulder sometime around the moment Zooey Deschanel agrees to date pale Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
“Now transfer this to Jaebum.”
Actually, Jinyoung doesn’t want to start hating Jaebum. If it happened, he would rather be sad than rejoiced with the rescue. Jaebum is great, and nobody could replace him in Jinyoung’s life anyway. He can’t imagine going to a museum with Wonpil for example. Or with Mark. Or who would discuss Jinyoung’s books with him - even if Jaebum usually winces about them. Only Jaebum agrees with Jinyoung: if you go to a library, you better study up. It would be great to just start feeling about Jaebum the same way he feels about everybody else and stop imagining them kissing during an RnB festival.
They fail to finish watching the movie that night, and Jinyoung practically sees it as a sign that stopping to worry and starting a new life is not an option for him.
On the other hand, early in the morning when he is miserably late for uni and types a panicky message to please tell the prof while simultaneously brushing his teeth and pulling on his sneakers, there are no free slots in his mood to worry if it is okay to write to Jaebum about all this as usual. The moment the toothbrush is clean in a cup on the shelve, Jinyoung is petrified a little.
“Why did you tell him?” Wonpil asks but he also can’t take his eyes off Jinyoung’s phone while Jinyoung finishes tying his laces.
Jinyoung could lie that in his imagination Jaebum kissed him afterward or at least gave him hope that, even if he didn’t love Jinyoung now, there was a chance he could love him in the future. But of course, it’s not true.
“So I would have something to remember when I think that maybe it could work,” he grins. The phone doesn’t buzz with a reply and, considering that Jinyoung has already put on his shoes, he now has time to spend more energy on emoting - about Jaebum and about being late. At least he can be constructive about the second part: Jinyoung rushes to the bus station as a madman, and he reads Wonpil’s reply already in the bus, “But before you were the only one sad, now it’s both of you.”
“Before nobody knew the true state of things, and now we both know,” he writes back. It’s the truth - Jaebum had his illusion of being the bestest of friends and Jinyoung dreamed of stopping being just best friends. So everybody lost something. The question is how much of their friendship was dependent on the existence of those illusions.
Jaebum doesn’t read his message.
“They probably got back together in the movie,” Jinyoung writes to Wonpil. He spends his time in the bus hypnotizing the phone anyways. “It’s a good thing that you don’t write scripts,” comes the reply. Jinyoung sends him a frowning sticker and tries to concentrate on something other than an ordinary scenery in the window. Today it looks a bit more colorful though because all shops are already open, not like when it’s during his regular hours of going to the uni.
In the doorway to the lecture hall he receives a sad cat from Jaebum, then a shy one, then a message, “Just woke up myself.”
“Hyung..................” Jinyoung sends back from under the desk, and it is probably the happiest and the most relieved message he has ever sent in all the history of him using KaTalk.
“Nothing changed,” says Jaebum after a couple of days. They are queuing in a dining hall and Jinyoung half-whispers curses at a noisy group of students who fail to clear the big table even when they finished eating. “I mean… if it is okay with you.”
And what could change, thinks Jinyoung. Something could change if you answered, “Of course, Jinyoung-ah, I like you too, I just was too shy to say it first.” Because if not, why should they change anything? But Wonpil is right of course, Jaebum worries now too, it would be strange if he didn’t. Jinyoung spoke out his part and at least he doesn’t have any unanswered questions now. Jaebum has a lot, Jinyoung should have expected Jaebum to worry if he makes Jinyoung feel better when he acts the same way he’s always been.
“I would be okay if you gave me my textbook you took a month ago back,” answers Jinyoung, “and if this queue would come to an end.”
Jaebum laughs and it sounds just a tiny bit forced, and by the end of the dinner his eyes, half-covered by the fringe, are a little less anguished. So Jinyoung is forced to admit that everything was worth it. What can you do - he is in love, it’s one-sided, it happens.
“Yeah, it’s not that it’s the first time,” Wonpil shrugs his shoulders over the remains of ice cream, and Jinyoung just shakes his head. It is not the first and probably not the last time, but when you are still in love with Jaebum and you already know that you don’t have a single chance to be loved back, it’s very difficult to imagine yourself waking up one day and not feeling rolling thunders in your chest from his every smile - or worse, imagine that you will feel them because of someone else’s.
Wonpil tries to make him promise to finish watching the movie, but Jinyoung stubbornly thinks that the plot is very standard - they date, they break up, realize that missed their True Love and get back together again. It’s so not about him from the very beginning, because with Jaebum they didn’t date and won’t - ever. So they can’t break up, and all they can miss is their True Friendship which is not a small thing, but something else entirely.
“You’re boring,” Wonpil informs him. “That’s why you fail at life.”
“Jackson is the only one who is not boring,” scoffs Jinyoung. “Look at yourself.”
Theoretically, Wonpil’s words are pretty tactless and should hurt, but they don’t. Jinyoung thinks that he hurts just a small bit, he is damned if he knows if it is a good thing. Maybe if it hurt more he would have cried himself out as they discussed at the very beginning and would have already let it go. And at the moment he feels total numbness with a side dish of total inability to let go. So far.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt counted back 500 days from the moment they’ve met, but in his case, Jinyoung passed this point a couple of times already and they haven’t started dating and won’t do even if he passes it ten times more. Which he doesn’t want of course.
Jinyoung clearly remembers the moment he decided he was in love with Jaebum. They were preparing a presentation, and Jaebum wanted to sleep, he leaned on Jinyoung and Jinyoung perplexedly started counting all the moles on his face. And when he finished, he felt the thunder in his chest for the first time and everything became clear. Jackson could fall on him every day, Wonpil did it a hundred of times, and even Mark hang on Jinyoung with a disturbing regularity when he hoped that Jinyoung knew a good place to eat. But Jinyoung would never count their moles and not because they didn’t have them.
It would be great to also memorize the exact moment when he stopped loving Jaebum. So for the first couple of months, Jinyoung closely listens to himself at all times, but Jaebum is right - nothing changes. They are the same way they always were: hundreds of dumb stickers in KaTalk every day, RnB jokes and compassionate taps on Jinyoung’s shoulder from Mark because of that, and when another prof gives them a group assignment, Jinyoung and Jaebum look at each other at once without discussing it beforehand. They are the same as before, and Jinyoung is still in love, except now it’s more difficult for him to imagine that Jaebum doesn’t just touch his shoulder but also places a kiss behind his ear too.
“Maybe I’m dumber than Joseph Gordon-Levitt,” reasons Jinyoung, “and I need 500 days strictly from the confession.”
Sometimes he finds it strange that he continues to discuss Jaebum with Wonpil, because Wonpil doesn’t have anything to add really, just continues his attempts to mock him. For example, now he informs Jinyoung that he is dumb even without Joseph, and then for the hundredth time suggests they finish watching the movie already. If Jinyoung didn’t know Wonpil from the time they were children, he would think that it’s his favourite recipe for all sorrows - ice cream and 500 Days of Summer movie. Although they are older than 20 years now, it’s time for them to switch to alcohol.
He gradually forgets to pay attention every time. He doesn’t remember whether there was a thunder or not, if he was too concentrated on how Jaebum laughs, paid too much attention to their knees touching or not touching when they sat together. Wonpil tells him to stop worrying and start living, but Jinyoung doesn’t think that all those feelings interfere with his life. Maybe it’s because Jaebum is so great in any case, and at the beginning of the movie Joseph Gordon-Levitt honestly said “bitch” thus making that story even less about Jinyoung than it was before.
Jinyoung is not sure if his story exists somewhere except his own life. Sometimes he thinks that his love is too ephemeral - it doesn’t have a standard list of qualities, like, he doesn’t think that every song is about his feelings or his crush, he doesn’t try to find similarities in books or movies. They are not there to be found anyways, even if he’s read a ton of books and watched movies too, some part of them even about love, some - even together with Jaebum. Maybe they just don’t tell those simple and ordinary stories when after “I love you” nothing changes.
In part, it’s for a reason because if the story about Jinyoung existed somewhere, it wouldn’t have an ending. He doesn’t notice the moment the thunder in his chest strikes for the last one. One day Jaebum hugs him after another successful exam and Jinyoung doesn’t feel a thing except for, oh God, how heavy Jaebum is and how happy he is that he can do those group assignments with him. But it doesn’t feel as something alien or foreign. It seems that it’s not the first day Jaebum has simply been his best friend, but he doesn’t remember the new first day it happened.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt breaks the plate anew because Jinyoung also can’t remember the exact unlucky scene Wonpil and him stopped watching that movie.
“He forgot her because his autumn started,” cries Jinyoung. “Are you for real? Seriously?”
“It feels like your heart has been broken right now and not back then,” Wonpil is offended that his amazing movie is not being appreciated. He should be glad Jinyoung took pity on him and listened to his advice to finish the movie. “His autumn started because he forgot about her, idiot.”
“I don’t want that,” Jinyoung is stubborn. “Fuck, I told you it’s not about me.”
In a year during a dumb party thrown for the first-years Jinyoung will beat Yugyeom with a pillow, and at some point, Yugyeom will cover himself with his hands and pitifully drawl “scaaaaary”, and Jinyoung will once again remember the feeling of thunders rolling in his chest. Maybe he is dumber than Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Maybe, Jinyoung will think in a voice that will sound like Wonpil for some reason, somewhere there should be a story specially for Jinyoung and people like him. And it will not say that all songs seem to be about your love, but on the contrary how everything seems to be about anything else but it.