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Looking at someone he should recognise but doesn’t returns Minghao to a maze room he once visited with his parents as a child. Funhouse mirrors had twisted everything together, turning the shape of strangers into the shadows of his parents. Back then, Minghao wasn’t afraid – he could hear his parents always, calling his name as he sprinted onwards, chasing the path ahead.
There is no sure path today though, hidden or not. It’s unsettling, and Minghao feels suddenly further from home than he’s felt since arriving in Korea four months ago, body clumsy as his words, tongue fumbling on a language he could hear but couldn’t understand.
Still, feeling lost isn’t the same as feeling afraid. Xu Minghao is not afraid.
Neither is the Minghao of this timeline, apparently. More than anything else, the Minghao of this timeline seems at ease faced by his own self, five years younger. “Ah,” he had told Minghao, “is this where you are today? Well, take your time.”
“Where I am,” Minghao repeated slowly, re-arranging statement into query: “Where am I?”
“This is my room. It’s yours too, if you want.”
Minghao considers this, his future self with a face he doesn’t know but a voice he wouldn’t forget. This Minghao’s syllables are gentler on the ears than Minghao is familiar with, spoken more patiently than Minghao has ever heard from himself. This Minghao is comfortably crosslegged on the bed across Minghao, who is perched against the wall with his legs tucked up, close to his chest.
Self-awareness pricks at the chinks between Minghao’s thoughts, a jumble of puzzle pieces waiting to be fit together.
“Did you know,” Minghao eventually asks. “That I would be here.”
The other Minghao hums.
“I don’t think anyone could know? It’s fine, though. Not knowing.”
Minghao disagrees but doesn’t say it. Doesn’t know how he would, anyway.
So he observes, taking in the flowers arranged in wine bottles by the bed with fairy lights, slivers of light reflected on several pairs of sunglasses on a shelf, the multiple shelves with books Minghao can only read half the titles of. Theres an easel by the door, canvas covered by cloth splattered with paint. Minghao thinks back to his own bunk. The dorm that felt so foreign months prior feels near unbearably friendly now, somewhere to return between practice and more practice and dreaming, always, always dreaming.
Nothing about this room suggests anything about dreaming, or how this Minghao lives beyond the surface suggestion of time to spare beyond – beyond –
“What are you looking for? I can help,” Junhui asked, two weeks into Minghao’s arrival.
Junhui speaks slowly, Southern accent carefully pruned into textbook Korean. The care Junhui places in his words comes across as overbearingly earnest, probably even charming. Whereas Minghao’s Korean is a textbook’s portrayal of authenticity – something rote, learned out of necessity.
Rapidly treading amidst strange waters, Minghao finds himself speaking the way he feels, and he envies Junhui’s ability to feel the way he speaks, bending easily with every new current as though it’s simply par for the course.
But Minghao’s only heading back to the practice rooms. He doesn’t need anyone’s help for that.
“No.” Minghao forgets the formal suffix attached at the end of thank you and stops, closing too abruptly.
“Alright,” Junhui offers. Then, in Mandarin, overly cheery: “Hui-g ē is here to help, however mighty the task! Just say the word.”
“No,” Minghao repeats in Mandarin this time, the rejection kinder now that it’s deliberate, smothering back a laugh.
Junhui laughs freely at that. This, at least, Minghao can understand.
“Xiao Hao, what a strong child you are, really.”
“I try,” Minghao mumbles, shrugging away from the one-armed hug Junhui tried to loop him into.
Slipping back into Korean, Minghao raises his voice, “Junhwi-hyung, I’ll work hard.”
Scrunching his nose, Junhui keeps smiling. Unable to stopper the wish before it forms, Minghao wishes Junhui wouldn’t.
Minghao has never been very good at hiding what he wants. But Junhui – for all his kindness, happily shared – Minghao can’t figure out what Junhui wants at all.
The door opens.
“Minghao,” Junhui says, “I want to make tea.”
“There should be pu’er left in the drawer,” replies the other Minghao without looking up from his phone.
Minghao hadn’t realised Junhui was asking a question, stuck on the way Junhui referred to him by name, tone exactly the same as the way he’d smother Minghao with cutesy nicknames Minghao couldn’t stand. Yet this isn’t the Junhui Minghao knows. There’s a difference in Junhui’s delivery that Minghao can’t name but feels bothered by anyway.
Only just noticing two people in the room, Junhui pauses at the door and squints.
This Junhui’s hair is shorter than Minghao was expecting, and Minghao is surprised to find he was expecting anything of this unknown future to begin with. He looks older, too, and seems less tired. But Minghao doesn’t want to cling to someone just because they’re familiar, so he tries not to. This is something Minghao will tell his Junhui later, in his own time.
Junhui nods once, then again, more firmly.
Minghao is unsure what verdict Junhui managed to make, but all Junhui says is, “Let’s order in for lunch, too.”
Across the room, the other Minghao rolls his eyes and fishes a wallet from the pockets of his jacket. He throws the wallet at Junhui.
“Great!” Junhui chirps. “I have the best menu for days like these.”
“If you order lamb skewers on my card again,” other Minghao warns, but his eyes are bright.
Turning to face him, other Minghao says, “You shouldn’t indulge him if you want to eat something else.”
“I don’t mind,” Minghao says. Minghao hasn’t had lamb skewers in almost half a year and says so.
Junhui grins, wide with all his teeth showing. He doesn’t have braces anymore, but he’s always been good at learning things about others without trying too hard about it. He says Minghao is too, but that seems the kind of thing Junhui says that gets people to talk about themselves in the first place. Minghao has a feeling this much, at least, wouldn’t change.
“Lamb skewers are the best for any day,” Junhui sings, spinning neatly on his heels before marching out of sight down the hallway.
“Do you know where Junnie-hyung went,” Mingyu asks, in between practice sessions.
Minghao hurries through the mental acrobatics the question spirals him through: Why should I know – wasn’t I with you all this time – haven’t you known him longer than me, why does everyone keep pushing him to me –
“Bathroom?” Minghao tilts his head, willing visible but unclear confusion at Mingyu’s question before heading towards the door himself.
Mingyu calls after him. “What? – oh! Take the next set of stairs, on your second left!”
It isn’t what Minghao was trying to tell him, but it isn’t as if Minghao had answered Mingyu’s question either.
He never does ask Junhui where he went when Junhui re-appears, but he leaves the small jar of herbal ointment by Junhui’s bunk later, less apology as it is a misplaced attempt at soothing something close to guilt curling heavy in his stomach.
Which is ridiculous, because Minghao hasn’t actually done anything wrong.
Junhui is exactly the way he always is the next day, too, and it shouldn’t mean anything so neither does Minghao sitting next to him when they take a break for dinner. Across the room, Mingyu waves at them both, mouth full. Minghao scoops a second serving of rice into his bowl even after they run out of side dishes to eat with it.
Minghao doesn’t forget about the ointment, but he also doesn’t ask for it back.
Lunch brings Mingyu into the dorm with them, several packs of instant ramyeon with him. Mingyu, apparently, doesn’t even live in the same dorm as Minghao and Junhui, but neither of them seem surprised by his presence there.
“So, what,” says Mingyu. “Do we get both Hao Hao’s for keeps? ‘Cause I dunno if we have enough ramyeon to bribe manager hyungs for that.”
Hao Hao, Minghao considers, eyes flicking across to other Minghao for a reaction.
Other Minghao is eyeing the unhealthily large bowl in front of Mingyu. “I thought that was obvious.”
Mingyu slings himself across Junhui, who lifts his free hand to steady where Mingyu’s leaning over his back, trying to shove the ramyeon dangling from his chopsticks at other Minghao, who is back on his phone, a photo feed faintly visible from his screen.
“You don’t even hate ramyeon,” Mingyu accuses.
Primly, other Minghao says, “Stop. I haven’t replaced my screen protector yet.”
Junhui snaps his head up at this, mouth closing around the unclaimed ramyeon.
“Nobody should hate ramyeon,” Junhui says as he chews. “Ramyeon is really delicious.”
“Close your mouth when you chew,” other Minghao says, without looking up.
“Don’t tell Jun-hyung what to do,” Mingyu counters, stumbling slightly around his lisp on hyung, and it dawns on Minghao that all of them had been speaking Mandarin the entire time.
“Your Mandarin is pretty good,” Minghao says slowly, in Korean, proving a point he couldn’t name if he tried.
Mingyu hums. “I mean, my teacher was pretty good.”
Beside Mingyu, Junhui preens, biting into a lamb skewer before stealing more of Mingyu’s ramyeon. Other Minghao glances at them, smiling faintly.
Something snaps into place in Minghao’s mind at the scene, like peering into a room after the lights go on after fumbling through the dark. Whatever roots he had managed to plant in his own time seemed suddenly arbitrary, lost within the canopy of, of – two whole years before he found his way into the fold. It seems almost insurmountable for Minghao to consider wanting someone close enough, badly enough, to teach them to the point of conversational fluency.
Whatever face Minghao made throughout must’ve caught Junhui’s attention, because reaches over, hand poised to karate chop the top of Minghao’s head. Minghao forces his eyes to stay open, expression still, but the impact never lands, Junhui’s wrist turning to pat his head instead.
“What are you thinking,” Junhui says. “Of course you taught him well. You’re his best friend.”
Minghao mumbles, “You –,” and doesn’t follow through.
“You’re my best friend,” Junhui clarifies, “and your best friend is Mingyu.”
“Where does that leave you?”
Junhui looks to the side and smiles. “It’s nice to be included.”
There’s a soft click.
“It’s not a candid if you pose for it,” other Minghao points out, phone directed at Junhui.
“I thought you were taking pictures of you,” Junhui lies, reaching for other Minghao’s phone to send what is unarguably a photo of himself to his phone.
“Why would I take photos of…” trails off other Minghao, reaching for Mingyu’s phone, resting on the table.
Mingyu stands up, grabbing everyone’s bowls and cutlery before heading to the sink.
“I don’t agree with this discussion,” Mingyu yells, “so you can return my phone where you found it, Pallie.”
“It’s for your own benefit,” argues other Minghao, who doesn’t return the phone.
Mingyu walks back at that, arms sudsy with dish soap as he leans over other Minghao’s shoulder and asks, “What are you even doing.”
“You don’t know the word in Mandarin, and I don’t know it in Korean,” explains other Minghao, holding up Mingyu’s phone. The word clone is inputted into Google Translate.
Minghao frowns. “I’m not a clone.”
Other Minghao and Junhui, simultaneously: “That’s what clones would say.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a clone,” Junhui adds. “Minghao had a dream like this once, I think–”
Other Minghao says, “That was one time, Fei Fei, and you said you wouldn’t tell.”
Minghao unexpectedly realises he remembers what dream Junhui is referencing, and feels his cheeks burn, instantly regretting getting his bangs cut at his last haircut.
“Oh my god,” Mingyu says slowly, grinning, “Did you dream about yourself–”
Standing up, Minghao says, “Thank you for the meal,” and walks promptly towards other Minghao’s room.
“I forgot how cute you used to be,” Mingyu says, before Minghao is too far to hear.
Still, he isn’t walking fast enough that he can’t hear someone else’s footsteps trailing after him.
The footsteps stop outside the closed door, and Minghao waits but no one comes in. Minghao hears footsteps start up again, trailing back down the hallway.
Then, from the other side of the door, Minghao hears himself.
“You should believe whatever you believe, but I don’t think we’re the same person. Not yet, anyway. I changed quite a bit since I first came here. But… ah, never mind.” There’s a pause. “Junnie thinks about others a lot. I can’t remember when exactly I realised that. People aren’t as good at being lonely as they try to be.”
Minutes later, Minghao opens the door to a polaroid of a skeleton flower in the rain. The shot is blurry around the edges, as if the photographer was in a rush as they did, the shot a spur of the moment on the way to someplace else.
On the other side of the polaroid is a note, characters narrowly and messily strung together: this place is good for lamb skewers!!!!!! food makes you feel better when its tough!!!!!!!
In his own time, Minghao takes Junhui to a restaurant near the station.
“Oh, have you been exploring?” Junhui is rambling a little. “I haven’t been here yet.”
“A friend suggested this place to me before,” Minghao explains.
“Friend suggestions are the nicest suggestions,” Junhui agrees.
Minghao tips his head down into a muffler Mingyu loaned him. He’s never been one to prefer the cold.
“They have really good lamb skewers,” Minghao mumbles, “and those are best to eat with friends, so…”
“Really? Really? Ah, I’ve been craving those lately, Xiao Hao, you’re really blessed with a good heart – let’s go, and take a picture, and then you can show it to your friend as proof of their goodwill.”
Humming along, Minghao is happy enough to just listen as they walk, occasionally glancing at Junhui, who is speaking too quickly to manage more than brief but frequent grins, and upwards to the sky, where clouds are gathering as the two of them pass a neighbourhood park, steps gradually gaining speed, hoping to reach where they’re going before the coming rain.
Like moon’s reflection sitting on water
You reside in my heart
Yet distances remain between us
– Fazil Narari