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“A pill. You give up your chance to live beyond the 24 hours it gives you, but it gives you the chance to feel alive again.”
They knew the stakes. It would wind them back fifty years to the late summer of 2017, bring Jae back to 25 and Younghyun back to 23. One more chance to make up for the years of youth they took for granted, to say the words they should have. It would cost them the rest of their lives, but in their early seventies, there was little left to live for.
Wrinkled hands, two glasses of water, two little green pills. And so begins the last day of their lives.
Seoul, South Korea. Time left: 23:59
Jae wakes up first. Next to him is Younghyun bathed in the early morning sun. He kisses the top of his lover’s head gently causing him to start to stir. Soon enough Younghyun is awake and they have their first stop planned out.
Jae goes home first. Two years from now, his dad will take his sister on a road trip. His father will lose control of the wheel sending their car deep underwater. Neither of them will make it out alive. Two years from now, Jae and Younghyun will already have moved to Toronto and made a life there. Storms and cancelled flights will take them over a week to get to Korea, and only after finally getting there will they find out that Jae’s mother committed suicide following the news of her late husband and daughter.
Jae goes home first, not because he intends to change the future, but to say everything he should have. He spends a little over four of his twenty-four hours with his family who are delighted by the surprise visit. They spend a slow morning together and before Jae leaves he gives them all warm hugs and tells them that he loves them.
Younghyun goes to his grandmother. She was one of the people that never made it to their wedding, Younghyun held that as a stone in his heart all the way to his seventies. As a child she was the one that first taught him love, told him about soulmates and how one day he would find a person that fit into his life like the last piece of an intricate puzzle. There was no one that Younghyun wanted to introduce Jae more to than his grandmother, to show her that he had found his puzzle piece. She died before he ever got to.
She is in the middle of having her late morning tea when he arrives at her doorstop. He greets his grandpa then makes his way over to her, he tells her about how much he’s in love with a beautiful boy named Jaehyung and how he wants to marry him. She gushes over their pictures together and finally, finally, Younghyun feels the stone in his heart start to disintegrate into nothing.
Seoul, South Korea. Time left: 19:38
“Hey, are you on your way back?” Younghyun’s voice, despite being over the phone, still has the melodic softness that Jae had fallen in love with all those years ago.
“Yeah, did you do it?”
“Of course I did. Cowards handed it over barely six minutes in.”
Jae chuckles, “how much?”
“80,000 dollars.”
“Perfect. Come find me, babe.” Jae hangs up. He finds himself the first Armani store he can and walks in like he owns the place. Younghyun pulls up outside the store in a snazzy new (very much stolen) car about fourteen minutes later to find him in a new suit, perched on a glass watch display, sunglasses on, twirling around a glass of champagne in his hand.
Tokyo, Japan. Time left: 15:48
Time doesn’t make a lot of sense and somehow, they’ve ended up in Tokyo in twenty minutes after a (frankly ridiculous) shopping spree. On any normal day, that isn’t possible, but it isn’t the weirdest thing about this entire experience so neither of them bother to question it.
The first thing they do is take a trip to the beach. They end up in Kamakura city at a Beach named Yuigahama where the party never seems to die. Jae goes and buys Younghyun a leather jacket, his favorite article of clothing on his lover. He strips everything off of Younghyun’s top half and helps him get into the jacket with nothing underneath, just how he likes it.
His hair is pushed up into an almost ridiculous quiff by Jae’s nimble fingers and a fuck ton of hair gel they buy from a random corner store. They make quite the sight: Younghyun looking like he belongs as the leader of a punk rock band with the hair and jacket, and Jae donned head to toe in Armani with random scatters of color in his hair carrying the very colorful briefcase (Jae had taken it upon himself to decorate it with stickers on their way to Japan) that contains all of their stolen money.
Tokyo, Japan. Time left: 11:27
They go back to Tokyo with six other people from the party who decided to join them. Jae at one point tried to explain to them that they had taken a pill to take them back fifty years in time and that this was their last 24 hours on earth, they all laughed and blew it off as drunk storytelling with no foundation to it. Jae giggles to himself at the thought.
It’s under the bright flashing lights of a club where Jae and Younghyun are tucked into a couch in the corner that Jae finally gets around to asking where the hell Younghyun managed to steal a whopping 80,000 dollars from.
“Some dumb kid who’s famous online. Shit security. Pointed a gun at her face and she started crying. Probably could’ve gotten more out of her considering the amount of designer shit lying around on the floor, but her voice was annoying, and my ears were starting to hurt so I took the eighty and her car and got the hell out of there.”
Jae laughs against Brian’s cheek, curls himself into him a little more. He feels floaty but warm and safe. Feels like he could take on the whole world if Brian was at his side.
Eventually, after everyone has had their fill of dancing and far too much alcohol, they make their way out to wreak havoc on the streets of Tokyo. The sun is starting to rise, the city slowly coming back to life.
Younghyun turns to tell Jae about his next reckless idea but the words never make their way out of his throat because his eyes are met with the sigh of the soft colors of the sunrise bouncing off of Jae, and oh my what a sight it is.
The hair chalk has mostly faded from his hair leaving it to be the beautiful golden that he knows, loves. Blues, pinks, oranges, purples dance along his skin. He looks beyond ethereal. A boy made of stars that glows under the first rays of dawn, he holds the vast universe in his eyes and Younghyun’s fragile heart encased in long, pale fingers.
Younghyun is Icarus and he’s flying closer and closer to the sun, but alas, his wings do not melt, and he does not fall to his death. For his wings are not of wax, but of flames. The sun does not burn him but gives him a comfortable warmth. They coexist, content in each other’s presence.
Younghyun wants to tell him that he would fight every war for him, would set the world and all in it aflame at a flick of Jae’s wrist, would do it all, and then do it again if it meant Jae would continue to smile at him. Instead, he just continues starting at him, the rest of the world fades out until he’s the only thing that remains visible.
Younghyun has been far and wide. He’s seen so much of the world that has stunned him, yet none of it comes close to the way Jae steals the breath from his lungs. Younghyun has seen so much of the world yet he would find the same happiness if he had lived in a small room with Jae his entire life. He doesn’t need to see the world, not when it stands right in front of him.
Jae rests gentle fingers on Younghyun’s cheek to snap him out of his daze. His voice is low when he says, “so tell me, lover, what chaos should we cause next?”
He’s so in love it hurts.
Tokyo, Japan. Time left: 07:05
The needle against his skin is painful, but he can’t stop looking at how beautifully the ink settles into his skin slowly bringing the picture to life. Younghyun is leaning over his shoulder, lips split into a huge grin. The permanence of body art was what scared Jae into never getting a tattoo before, leave it to him to wait till he only had about eight hours left to live to finally get one.
The little astronaut surrounded by little stars is done in about twenty minutes. It’s just below his wrist on his right hand, Jae’s a little bit in love with it.
Younghyun had gone off to add another one to his ever-growing collection. He wouldn’t tell Jae what he was getting no matter how much he pestered him. He catches up with Jae after he’s done and only winks in response to Jae’s inquiries about the new drawing etched into his skin.
They get back into their car and put the top down. Younghyun drives with no destination in mind, with Jae, engrossed in the task of finding the perfect playlist, sitting next to him.
The streets start to get emptier as they make their way into less populated areas. It’s risky to drive not knowing where they’re going, but it doesn’t matter to either of them. The sun is out, and the air is just a little chilly, Jae feels like the wind is going straight through him. He eventually ends up sitting on the head of his seat with his arms thrown up yelling along to whatever song is blaring through the speakers. Younghyun is right there next to him singing, and every once in a while, screaming along to match his excitement.
The wind is in their hair and their heartbeats sync with the music, it feels almost like a cruel joke that they feel the most alive right before death comes to steal them away.
Somewhere, Japan. Time left: 03:47
They hadn’t eaten in hours and that eventually ended up catching up to them. They stop to eat while planning out what the hell to do with all the money they had left over.
They eventually decide on an anonymous donation to an LGBT shelter. It’s an almost obnoxious amount to donate without anyone to trace it back to, but it feels right. They mail the stacks of cash off, attached is a little piece of paper with just a heart drawn on it.
They end up spending their last hour lost in Japan. There’s a field of flowers that catch Jae’s eye and he runs towards it, allergies be damned. They run amongst the flowers giggling, lost in each other. Younghyun plucks flowers and tucks them behind Jae’s ear, Jae sneezes in response causing his lover to double over in laughter.
That’s where they lay till the last seconds of their life. Bodies tangled up into each other, surrounded by a bed of flowers. Their last minutes are spent silently admiring the other, there is little left to say after spending fifty years together. Younghyun strokes Jae’s cheek as Jae smiles at him one last time. Their eyes start to close as the darkness starts to slowly take over. Their heartbeats slow down until they beat for the very last time. And there they lay, two angels among a field of flowers, beautiful and content.
Time left: 00:00
Perhaps in their next life they will find each other, perhaps they will find each other in every life to come. Younghyun likes the idea that they are binary stars, orbiting around the other for eternity. A cycle of sharing and growing together, dancing among the vast galaxies, yet still caught up in each other. A perfect balance.
(On Younghyun’s hip, covered to let it heal, is a fresh new tattoo. Outlines of two ovals slightly overlapping each other with two small spheres on the edges, meeting in the middle.
Binary stars.)