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Life with Saeran was never boring. It had a lazy quality to it, yes, a lived-in warmth like a favourite sweater, but that wasn’t the same. Boring was a monotonous droning, it was stasis – stillborn and stunted – but your relationship with Saeran moved and breathed with an inner life of its own. It was the strange time dilation of a Sunday morning, when things always seemed to have an inner glow and an unreal quality to them. It was the smell of dust settling at noon on a summer’s day and the viscous texture of a heat wave as seen from the shade. It was Saeran with a ridiculous sunhat, buried to his elbows in dirt, hissing small curses at the snails ruining his plants and sneaking shy glances in your direction to check if you’d heard him (you had, and thought it was hilarious).
This particular Sunday, you opened your eyes to the steady pitter-patter of rain and the shape of someone outlined against the early morning light. Saeran had woken up early, as he tended to do, but instead of tending to the garden, you had found him leaning with one arm thrown dramatically between the window and his forehead, staring into the void.
‘Saeran?’ you said, stretching and relishing in the satisfying sound of your spine cracking into place. You didn’t miss the fond flicker of affection in his reflection. ‘What’s going on?’
He shushed you gently.
‘Nothing. Go back to sleep, it’s still early.’
You frowned a little, rolling over on your side to get a better look at him. He looked comfortably disheveled and not particularly ill, but there was something about his stiff shoulders that told you he was irritated with something.
‘Are you sure you’re okay? How come you’re not gardening?’
‘The rain makes difficult,’ he said with a one shouldered shrug. ‘I could go pull out some of the weeds, I guess, but…’ Saeran paused for a bit, looking unsure of himself, before charging forward with renewed conviction, ‘I’ll be honest, I don’t want to. I like the idea of a lazy day.’
You plopped back into the tangled mass of sheets with a muffled grunt and beckoned him to join you.
‘I don’t understand, then. What’s bothering you?’
Saeran whipped back around to face you with a note of desperation creeping into his voice.
‘It’s just…those slimy animals,’ he said, with a tone that suggested he was struggling not to use harsher words, ‘those ravenous creatures! How do I get them to leave? They’ve been going into my vegetable patch and I’m pretty sure I can see the damage from here!’
It took you a while to convince him to go back to sleep in the face of the ruthless advance of the snails, but the nap had considerably improved his mood by the time you were both fully rested and ready to get breakfast. Later, when you were washing dishes together and making a mess of lukewarm water around you, Saeran suddenly turned around and stared at you with determination. You were half expecting him to go back to the topic of the snails when he blurted out:
‘What’s a Hufflepuff?’
You blinked.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘What’s a Hufflepuff?’ He was blushing, you noticed. Both him and Saeyoung had a tendency to go red all over, from the tips of the ears and down their shoulders, at the slightest hint of a provocation. This particular redness had claimed the back of his neck for itself. ‘Is it…is it a good thing?’
You bit your lip thoughtfully.
‘It’s not bad, no. Sorry, but what made you ask? I know what it is, but I’m not sure how to explain it if I don’t know the context to this.’
Saeran’s eyes darted to the side in a panicky arc.
‘Saeyoung and Yoosung were talking in the chatroom last night and they both said I’d make a good Hufflepuff.’ The plate in his hands had been clean for a while now, but Saeran was attempting to make it the world’s most reflective surface judging by how long he’d been scrubbing at it. He was nervous, you realised.
‘Well, it’s…,’ you trailed off. How to explain this? ‘It’s a type of person. From a series of books. There’s movies, too, but I always felt they were a bit off from the spirit of the –‘you cut yourself when you noticed his increasingly confused expression. ‘There’s this school for magic and they use a hat that can read your mind to decide what kind of person you are. And a Hufflepuff is one of types. They’re kind and hardworking people and their, uh, head? Chief witch? Teaches them about plants.’ Your hands were still wet, so you nudged him with your elbow. ‘It’s a compliment.’
‘Oh.’
You worked in silence for a little while, enjoying each other’s presence, up until Saeran spoke up again.
‘How does the hat know?’
‘What?’
‘How does the hat know what kind of a person you are?’
You opened your mouth once or twice, trying to come up with something that didn’t sound completely stupid.
‘It’s…it’s magic.’
‘Yes,’ Saeran said, a picture of patience, ‘but how does the hat’s Hufflepuff magic work?’
You giggled at that and he looked crestfallen, like he sometimes did when he became convinced he’d made some unforgivable faux pas that would exclude him from civilised society forever. Quickly realizing your mistake, you wiped your hands on your jeans and opened your arms in an invitation. It was always better if you let him initiate contact first. He took to it instantly, melting into the hug.
‘Sorry,’ you said, voice slightly muffled from the armful of Saeran you were currently holding, ‘I just thought you sounded cute.’ He made a strangled noise somewhere in the crook of your neck. ‘I don’t know how the magic works. The hat just looks into your head, I guess.’
‘That makes no sense. How can the hat see your personality in your head?’
‘It’s…it’s magic, Saeran. It makes sense in context.’
He groaned again. You patted his back understandingly.
‘Listen, I promise it makes a bit more sense if you know what’s going on. Actually…we could watch it. Now. Together. There’s books are more detailed, but the movies are pretty fun and easy to digest, if you want to join me?’
You found yourself faltering along the way, not sure how to ease him into it. Saeran devoured pop cultured with the speed and ferocity of a ravenous wolf, but sometimes he’d get intimidated by things that other people had grown up with and just give up in the face of what he believed to be experiences that were now permanently locked out to him. He had to be coaxed out of those moods and that normally entailed a lot more ice cream than you currently had on hand. And there was something else that was worrying you.
‘Well, there’s some parts that might upset you, but they’re at the very beginning and you don’t spend too much time on them, really. Ah,’ you could feel him stiffen under your touch, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not really selling this to you, am I?’
He didn’t respond for a long time.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Hm?’
‘This movie. Do you like it?’
‘I have good memories of watching it, yes. It was a big part of my childhood.’ You gave his back a reassuring pat. ‘I was thinking it could be fun to rewatch it as an adult. With you. Make some new memories, that kind of thing.’
When Saeran spoke again, his voice was small.
‘How upsetting?’
‘They’re not explicit or anything, but this kid is treated horribly by his family.’
‘That sounds awful.’ Even muffled by your hoodie, he sounded revolted. ‘Why would people watch this their families?’
‘It’s okay, he’s not there for long. He gets told he can do magic and is taken away to school for nine months every year and he gets some autonomy and a lot of money of his own.’
‘And then a hat looks into his brain and tells him who he is.’
‘Well, when you put it like that, it does sound a bit silly,’ you conceded. ‘It’s a fun movie, though. And then you can read the books and find out what a Hufflepuff actually is.’
Saeran disentangled himself from the hug and came up for air. His hair was all over the place and the material in your hoodie had left an imprint on his cheek. It struck you how mesmerising he could look like this, unguarded and digging his heels in on a topic that didn’t really matter in the long run.
‘Okay.’
Well, that was surprising.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Let’s watch the magic movie.’ He looked a bit sly for a moment before he quickly rearranged his features into grumpy and reluctant. ‘You’ll have to hold my hand through the upsetting bits, though.’
‘Hey, I’ll hold your hand for the whole movie if you want me to,’ you laughed and moved to get your laptop from the bedroom. Saeran looked positively ecstatic at that.
‘Really? I didn’t know that was an option.’
‘It’s a bonus package for boyfriends dealing with snail infestations.’ Your brain stirred into motion, bringing up something from the depths of memory. ‘Hey, you know what, I think that getting rid of snails might be an actual plot point in one of them.’
The last thing you heard before reaching the upstairs landing and opening the door to the bedroom was Saeran chortling.
‘You should’ve just told me that from the beginning.’