Work Text:
i don't know what to do without you
i don't know where to put my hands
— mitski, francis forever
The air conditioning is still broken.
Taehyung leans low, from his spot behind the counter. Sticks his face into the path of all seven portable mini fans he’s arranged around him in a half-circle. His hair blows back from his forehead. Needs a wash. He closes his eyes against the rush of cool air.
Ring of the bell on the door. Taehyung cracks open an eye. Yoongi, back from a smoke break. He grunts at Taehyung in acknowledgment. Taehyung nods back, then sneaks a glance at the clock on the wall. His shift’s almost over. He looks back at Yoongi, now wiping sweat from the back of his neck. He catches Taehyung looking, and raises a questioning eyebrow.
Taehyung puts on a smile, wide and lazy. A wink. “You got any plans for the night, good-lookin’?” It’s been a while since he last spoke; his voice comes out a low rasp. “Anywhere exciting to be?”
Yoongi snorts. That’s the trouble: he’s too used to Taehyung’s antics, by now. Lets him get away with too much.
“Get outta here already,” Yoongi says, swatting at him like an ineffectual fly. “Go home.”
Taehyung salutes him on his way out. Ring of the bell. Slam of the door.
Outside, the night is young. The sound of cicadas eating the air alive. Not even a breeze.
Go home, echoes Yoongi’s voice in his ear.
He starts walking.
The bus terminal is moderately crowded. Mostly departures. Old men reading newspapers; small children crawling over each other as their parents slump in the hard plastic chairs of the waiting room. Taehyung smiles at one of them, a toddler with pigtails sticking straight up. She squints at him, sucking her thumb, before tottering away.
The bus is late.
Taehyung scratches at the back of his neck. Dull heat pressing into him, weighing him down, thick on his skin. As though the gravity’s stronger on this side of the globe. He read an article about Antarctica a few days ago, lying on his belly in bed, mindlessly scrolling late at night. A sheet of ice millions of years old, only now starting to melt. As though one morning it’d just had enough of lasting, and decided to embark on the next big adventure. Also because of global warming, Namjoon would say, if he were here. But Taehyung likes to imagine it: the first touch of heat, the breaking point at which everything just lets go. The slow surrender back to the earth. After all that time, it must feel like being freed.
The bus pulls into the station, putters to a stop with a lurching shudder. The engine is still running, though. This is only a temporary stop on the way to other towns, to further destinations. When the doors open, only a few travellers get off. A businessman still in his suit. An older woman with streaks of grey in her hair, dragging her oversized luggage. And behind her—a head of faded blond hair, dark roots growing in.
Taehyung’s mouth is already opening. “Jimin,” he calls, startling the woman sitting beside him. He unfolds himself from his seat, stretching out his cramped legs. “Jimin-ah. Over here.”
Jimin glances up. He’s wearing his glasses, and his face mask is tucked under his chin. He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. That’s all Taehyung sees of him before he wraps him up in a hug, squeezing him tight. After a beat, Jimin’s arms come up to receive him, hands settling on the small of his back.
“Missed you,” Taehyung says, muffled, into Jimin’s hair, and he feels rather than hears him huff a laugh, a breath against his ear.
“Missed you, too,” Jimin says. His voice slightly hoarse. He pats Taehyung once on the back, and then once more, as though for good measure.
Though swaddled in an oversized T-shirt and sweats, Jimin’s frame is thinner than when Taehyung’d sent him off at this very terminal last fall. Taehyung frowns, pulling away. “Have you lost weight?”
The smile wipes itself from Jimin’s face. “Not much, really,” he says, light. “Probably just the stress from end-of-year-exams. You know how those are.” A pause, as he bites his lip, clearly wanting to take it back. “Well, anyway. You know what I mean.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Taehyung says. “We’ll get you fed. Have you eaten, yet? I’m sure Seokjin hyung’s place is still open—”
“I’m not hungry,” Jimin cuts in, and then blinks, like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “I mean, I don’t have much of an appetite right now. It’s been a long day.” He scrubs at his face. “Can we just get out of here?”
“Yeah, sure,” Taehyung says. In his pictures on SNS Jimin always greeted the camera with a warm smile, but here and now under the fluorescent lighting of the station he looks pale, his skin washed out. His exams must’ve been tougher on him than he’d let on. “Of course.”
“Sorry,” Jimin says. His mouth is turned down, and as though sensing it, he tugs his mask back up over his face, covering it from view. “I’m just tired.”
“’Course you are,” Taehyung says. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
He tugs on Jimin’s bag, but Jimin seems reluctant to part with it. Did he get any sleep on the bus, Taehyung wonders. It’s a five hour ride, and it seems to have taken a lot out of him. He’d ask, but Jimin does look tired, plodding after Taehyung with his eyes on the ground. They’ve got time to talk, anyway. Tomorrow. Taehyung can wait for Jimin to come back to himself. To come back to him.
It’s just that—he’s already been waiting so long, it seems.
It’s a half-hour walk back to Taehyung’s place, down a dusty road, close enough to the seaside to hear the waves. There are no streetlamps in this part of town, but Taehyung knows the path like the back of his hand, by now. Once upon a time Jimin did, too, but Taehyung grips his hand tight anyway as he leads him forward, not wanting to find out how much that has changed.
“Must be a change of pace,” Taehyung says after a while, if just to break the silence.
“Hmm?” Jimin’s voice comes not from beside him, but a bit behind him. He’s lagging slightly, though their hands are still joined.
Taehyung nods at the road before them, though he knows Jimin can’t see the gesture. “Coming back to this. After living in the big city.” He cracks an old, familiar grin. “You’re probably not used to it, right? It must be so different for you, now, after a year.”
“No,” Jimin says. “Everything here’s still exactly the same.”
Then why do you sound so sad, Taehyung thinks.
After that, they lapse back into silence. The only sound the gentle crash of the waves in the distance, following them all the way home.
He wakes up to the ceiling fan.
He lies there for a while, staring up at the slow turn of the blades. He’d kicked off his blanket sometime during the night. Outside the window, the cicadas are buzzing.
On the other side of the room, Jimin lies still on his sleeping mat, rolled over to face the wall. He must not be awake yet, Taehyung thinks, and he tiptoes very quietly on his way out.
The morning is a brief respite from humidity, sun not yet sunk in deep enough. He brushes his teeth, spits into the sink. Splashes cool water on his face.
He’d leave out a few packs of kimbap on the table, but they’d probably spoil by the time Jimin wakes up. Instead he sticks a note on the fridge: OPEN ME—BREAKFAST INSIDE!
When he leaves the heat is only just beginning to set in. Jimin still hasn’t moved on his mat.
“Heard Jimin’s back in town,” Jungkook says by way of greeting, over the whir of the mini fans.
Taehyung rings up his purchases. A stick of gum, a pack of band-aids. “That’s Jimin hyung to you.”
A bottle of banana milk. A lollipop. Jungkook shrugs, still dressed in his school uniform. “Is he here?”
“Here?” Taehyung repeats, staring at him. “Why would he be here?”
Jungkook shrugs, again. There’s a small cut on his forehead, over his eye. He takes the lollipop, unwraps it and sticks it into his mouth. “Haven’t seen him in a while,” he says around it, like that explains everything.
“He’s still catching up on rest,” Taehyung says. “He just got back late last night. That’ll be six thousand four hundred won. Do you want a bag?”
Jungkook wrinkles his nose. “Nah.” He tosses a crumpled-up bill on the counter. Taehyung slides open the drawer of the cash register, starts counting his change.
The bell chimes. Yoongi, looking like he’s just rolled out of bed. His eyes zero in on Jungkook.
“What, you skipping?” Yoongi says. His hair’s fallen flat over his eyes.
Jungkook makes a face. “It’s almost summer. What does it matter?”
Yoongi looks unimpressed. “Everything matters,” he says. “Go on, get out of here.”
Jungkook turns back to Taehyung. “Tell Jimin I said hi,” he says. Then he gathers up his purchases, lollipop hanging out of his mouth, and gets out of there. The door slamming behind him.
“Jimin?” Yoongi says. “He’s back?”
Taehyung yawns. The day’s passing almost too slow to bear. He’d texted Jimin a couple hours ago, asking where he wants to eat dinner. Anywhere is fine, Jimin had replied. It’s up to you. Are you out, Taehyung’d sent back, but Jimin hasn’t replied to it yet.
“Just arrived last night,” Taehyung says.
Yoongi’s hands disappear into his pockets. Searching for his cigarettes. “They been treating him good up there?”
“He’s fine.”
“Hmm,” Yoongi says. “How long’s he staying for? The whole summer?”
“A week.” Taehyung scratches under the collar of his shirt. The air conditioning’s still broken. “He can’t stay away too long, you know. He’s got to find a job. Keep up rent.”
“Sure, I know,” Yoongi says easily. As though he hadn’t been asking for his own benefit. “Good for him.” His hand emerges from his pocket, closed around his lighter. “I’ll be right back. You good?”
Taehyung doesn’t know why he still waits for an answer. He must know Taehyung’ll still always be right here, sitting on the stool behind the counter, jiggling his knee. “Sure, hyung,” Taehyung says anyway. “Go ahead.”
Yoongi nods, once, and exits the store. The bell ringing. Taehyung slides his phone out. No new messages.
He pulls up an article about whales in the Arctic, his foot tapping a rhythm against the floor. He hums a song, low, to himself. The fans stirring wind through his hair.
“What was it like?”
Jimin chews, slowly. His plate is still mostly full. Taehyung’s been placing pieces of eel on it all night, fresh from the grill, and they’re starting to pile up. They’d ordered soju, but so far Taehyung’s the only one who’s been drinking.
“What was what like?”
“You know. Your year.” Taehyung gestures vaguely with his arm. It only makes his head spin a little bit. “Everything. All of it.”
Jimin looks down at his bowl of fish cake stew like he’s unsure of what to do with it. “It was fine. Just—fast, mostly.” He scrunches up his face. “Time passed so fast. Didn’t it?”
“Huh.” Funny—Taehyung thought the opposite. All this time. But of course it’s different there, he reminds himself, though what it is, exactly, he isn’t quite sure.
“It was really busy, and loud, and I wasn’t sure I could keep up, but I guess I did. And there’s so many people, and so many of them you never see again, even if you wanted, or if you thought you would, and...” Jimin trails off, shakes his head as though to clear his thoughts. “It’s different.”
It’s the most Jimin’s spoken all day, from when Taehyung’d come home after his shift and picked him up to go nowhere in particular. Just walking the streets, mostly, greeting the same old folks around town, and ending up at Seokjin’s stall for dinner. Now it’s night, and it’s just the two of them in the tent, the smoke of the grill clinging to their clothes. The lateness of the hour, the plastic tarp of the walls all seem to blur their surroundings, everything thick and languid, warm air flowing like water. Also the alcohol, probably, Namjoon would say, if he were here.
“Anyway,” Jimin says. He brings a spoonful of soup up to his mouth. Taehyung watches the swallow of his throat. “It just takes getting used to, that’s all. Everything does.”
“And did you?”
“What?”
“Get used to it?”
Jimin sets down his spoon. Darts out his tongue, wetting his lips. “I think... I am,” he says, looking down at his palms in his lap. “Sooner or later, I will.”
Taehyung smiles. He can feel the flush of his cheeks, pinking in the heat. “That’s good,” he says, and he maybe means it. He drains the rest of his glass. What’s left of the eel is charring black on the grill. What a waste, he thinks, and signals over Seokjin to switch it off.
“Hey, big city hotshot,” Seokjin says when he ambles over, nodding at Jimin with a grin on his face. “You grow any taller at college?”
Jimin rolls his eyes at him. “Good to see you too, hyung.”
“That’s a no, then,” Seokjin says cheerfully. “Any new girlfriends?” He winks. “Boyfriends?”
Taehyung chucks a wadded-up ball of napkin at him. Seokjin clucks his tongue.
“Manners,” Seokjin says, waving a chopstick at him, but he must take the hint, because he shuffles back away.
“He hasn’t changed at all,” Jimin says. His voice is fond with endearment, but weighed a little heavier, turning it wistful.
Taehyung takes another mouthful from his glass. “Why would he have?”
Jimin looks surprised by the question. “I don’t know,” he says after a while. “You’re right.”
Taehyung nods at his plate. “Hey. Are you finished?”
“Yeah,” Jimin says. “Sorry. I’m not really hungry, I guess.” He looks down at his plate, and the corner of his mouth tugs in what should be a smile, but isn’t. “Y’know—I missed this, so much, when I was gone. I thought, I just have to get through this year, this time right now, and then I can go home and eat everything I want.”
“Good logic,” Taehyung agrees.
“And I guess it worked. But now that I’m here... it doesn’t feel like it’s over. Doesn’t feel like I’ve made it through yet.” Jimin shrugs. It’s funny. He’s sitting right there, but for some reason Taehyung gets the feeling he isn’t very close at all. Punch-drunk confusion of the senses, or else clarity. “Don’t know if it’ll ever feel like I have.”
When they get up to pay, Seokjin clears his throat. “Hey. You ever see Namjoonie around, up there?”
“Ah... a few months ago, maybe.” Jimin avoids his gaze. “He’s busy.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Seokjin says, voice light. He rings up their bill. “Here—a ten percent discount.” He smiles. “For returning friends.”
“He’s leaving in a week,” Taehyung tells him.
Seokjin claps him on the back. “That’s the spirit. Try not to trip over on your way home, will you?”
“I’ve got him,” Jimin says.
Even now Jimin’s taking care of him. Taehyung wishes he hadn’t drank so much. But Jimin sure wasn’t doing it, and it was the only way—to get the lights hazy like this, dancing before his vision and leaking into everything, softening Jimin’s edges, alighting gold in his hair. Blurry like he’s already seeing it through the lens of recollection, years from now. The fixed kindness of memory, immovable, unchanging. Merciful. To make up for it, he pushes forward, pulls out his wallet. “I’ve got it.”
“What? No. I can pay.”
“My treat,” Taehyung insists.
But it only seems to make Jimin unhappier, the line of his mouth tightening. He’s quiet for the whole walk home, subdued, as Taehyung points out fireflies, funny-shaped pebbles in their path, stray dogs by the side of the road. Look, Jimin, stars. But Jimin doesn’t look. Propping Taehyung up by the shoulder and keeping them moving, forward.
It’s okay, Taehyung thinks, or slurs, so drunk it aches a little bit, pricking inside his ribs, where all the soft tissue is. Jimin-ah. It’s okay. It might take some time, but you’ll settle back into it, into this. You’ll see.
He doesn’t.
The next few days pass in the same way. Taehyung wakes up to the ceiling fan. He goes to work. Rings up cheap coffee for the early-morning workers, ice cream for the after-school crush of teenagers, cans of beer for the grizzled fishermen with crow’s feet and calloused hands. Yoongi there more often than not, stinking of smoke. A look in his eyes, sometimes, like he’s ready to bolt, but he still clocks in, clocks out. On the nights when Taehyung locks up he makes his rounds through all the aisles, straightening out every shelf, tucking in the wayward corners of plastic chip bags. Goes home, through the standstill of early summer air, to Jimin.
Goes home to Jimin, because Jimin is always there. Because Jimin doesn’t really ever go out. Stays inside, mostly. On his phone or watching videos on his laptop. Once, Taehyung opens the front door to the sound of voices from the bedroom. Jimin’s low, scratchy laughter, and someone else, louder, bubbly. Taehyung putters around the kitchen, unloading groceries into the fridge, listening to a conversation that doesn’t belong to him, names and places he doesn’t know. Should he know them, he wonders. Should he have looked harder, through the photos and the updates, the messages that became more sporadic through the seasons. Should he have asked.
Hadn’t he asked—?
When Jimin eventually emerges from the bedroom, he looks surprised at the sight of Taehyung, as though he wasn’t expecting him. “When’d you get back?”
Taehyung shrugs. He’s sitting at the table, one knee pulled up on his chair, watching a documentary about polar bears. “Just a few minutes ago. Didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jimin says. “It’s your house. If anything, I’m the one disturbing you.” A pause. “I was on a video call with a friend I made from school. Hoseokie-hyung.”
“He sounds very nice,” Taehyung says.
“He helped me a lot. With everything.” Jimin scratches the back of his head, then adds: “You should’ve come in. I’d have introduced you two. You’d like him a lot.”
“It wouldn’t have been a good first impression,” Taehyung says seriously. “The camera takes away at least seventy percent of my charm, you know that. I’m only cute in person.”
Jimin narrows his eyes, but he’s smiling. “Kim Taehyung, you big liar,” he accuses, hands coming up to pinch his cheeks. “You know no one’s immune to you. If I took you back with me everyone would fall in love with you and your stupid face and your small-town satoori. You know that.”
“Is that a threat or a promise,” Taehyung says with a laugh, but for some reason it makes the smile fade from Jimin’s face, eyes lowering down to the floor, and when had it become like this, Taehyung wonders; when had it become difficult. Like navigating a minefield, or even just the sea. Didn’t reaching the shore mean that there was no distance left to cross?
“Ah, sorry,” Jimin says, already moved on. “I was going to cook us dinner tonight, but I lost track of time.” He purses his lips, annoyed with himself. “It was going to be a surprise.”
“That’s okay,” Taehyung says. “We can do it together. That way, it’ll be even better.”
“What’s that supposed to mean!” Jimin thwacks his arm. “My cooking’s not good enough for you?”
“We’ll see how much your skills have deteriorated in a year, Park Jimin,” Taehyung says gravely, earning himself another thwack.
They make too much food, overestimating their hunger. Elbows knocking against each other in the cramped kitchen space, laughter interspersing with steam. It’s almost enough.
“Saw Jimin down at the beach today,” Jungkook says.
Taehyung blinks at him. “What?”
Jungkook rips open his bag of grape candy with his teeth. “At the beach,” he repeats, as though Taehyung hadn’t heard him the first time. “He was just sitting there, in the sand. I saw him there yesterday, too. I waved to him, but I don’t think he saw me. You didn’t tell me he dyed his hair.”
Taehyung stares at him blankly. Jungkook just keeps eyeing him, chewing on his candy, waiting for a response. Eventually he huffs in annoyance, shakes his head.
“Thought you knew,” he says. “He looked kinda like he was waiting for someone. Like you.”
“I thought,” Taehyung begins, but doesn’t know how to finish it. He shakes his head. “Do you need a bag?”
“Sure, actually,” Jungkook says, and when Taehyung’s preoccupied with packaging up his purchases he spots him surreptitiously reaching for a box of cigarettes behind the counter, out of the corner of his eye. Taehyung shoots out his arm, closes his grip around Jungkook’s wrist. Jungkook freezes, eyes going wide.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing,” Taehyung says.
Guilt blooms fast over Jungkook’s face, bright and obvious. Taehyung follows his gaze, through the glass of the window to Yoongi, back turned to the store, smoke hanging over his head like a storm cloud, or a sign.
“You’re lucky it was me and not him,” Taehyung says, voice low. “He’d kill you.”
“You can’t tell him,” Jungkook pleads. “He’d never forgive me.”
Taehyung snorts. “I won’t. But only because he’d never forgive himself.”
They regard each other for a moment, across the counter. Jungkook, the last of them all. The jut of his lower lip is petulant. He doesn’t even have the good grace to look ashamed. Growing pains.
“You’re almost out of here, Jungkook,” Taehyung says. “Don’t do anything stupid. Not now.”
“I just wanted to try it,” Jungkook mutters. “Just once.”
Taehyung shakes his head. “You’ve got the whole rest of your life ahead of you, stupid. What, you can’t wait just a bit longer?”
“I just wanted to see,” Jungkook repeats, and his eyes slide back to Taehyung, then narrow. “Don’t you?”
Taehyung lets go of Jungkook’s wrist, slowly, carefully. Like releasing a stray from a bear trap.
The ring of the bell on the door.
“You’re here again? Don’t you have better places to be?” Yoongi chuckles a little as though he’s gone and said something funny.
Jungkook darts another look at Taehyung. Taehyung raises his eyebrows at him.
“I’m going,” Jungkook says. “Don’t worry. I’m going.”
He takes his bag and does just that.
“Yeah, go on, get outta here,” Yoongi calls after him. “Scram.”
He glances at Taehyung, then, as though sensing his stare. “What?”
Does he even realize how much he’s going to miss him when he’s gone, Taehyung wonders. “Nothing.”
Yoongi squints at him, like he isn’t convinced. “Whatever. I gotta run to the bathroom. You good, kid?”
Real rich, calling Taehyung kid. “You don’t have to ask, hyung. I’ll still be here. You know that.”
“I know,” Yoongi says. A rueful twist of his mouth. “But sometimes—I wish you won’t be.”
In the middle of the night Taehyung is startled awake. He doesn’t know why, for a moment; doesn’t even know where he is. Then it sinks back in. His blanket dragged over his limbs, the ceiling fan over his head. The night like a fever on his skin. Where else could he be?
From the other side of the room comes a noise. Taehyung falls still. Listens past the pounding of his own heartbeat in his chest, ears straining. A sort of snuffling sound, thick and wet and quiet, so quiet. Like an animal moving in the dark.
Jimin is crying.
Taehyung stares at a spot on the wall. Through childhood and even adolescence, Jimin was always a contagious crier, couldn’t keep his eyes dry if someone else’s were wet. And since Taehyung was the crybaby out of the two of them, it meant Jimin had to cry just as much, tears welling up as he blotted Taehyung’s eyes with his sleeves. What are you crying for! Taehyung would wail. I don’t know! Jimin would wail right back. Which would just send Taehyung off again, the sight of him blotchy-faced in distress, the two of them entwined in a cycle of their own feeling, feeding right back into each other.
If the roles were reversed, Taehyung wonders if he could have handled it with as much care as Jimin tried, always tried. How had they managed it, back then? The baby fat on their hands making them clumsy, sloppy with grief, unused to the real thing. If he could, he would walk over to Jimin’s side of the room, lean down like a sloping shadow over him. Shh, he would whisper, into his ear. It was just a bad dream, Jimin-ah. You had a bad dream. The press of his palm over his eyes, closing them, sweeping the wet away like rain.
He wakes up with the blanket clenched in his fists. His eyes are dry, if crusted from sleep. The slow turn of the ceiling fan.
Jimin is still and silent on his mat. His body, turned on his side, rises up and down. He’s asleep.
Yoongi doesn’t show up to work in the morning.
Taehyung waits the better part of an hour before he realizes he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.
He turns off the fans, the lights. Flips the OPEN sign on the door to CLOSED. The air conditioning is still broken.
The bell rings on his way out.
On his way he greets the old women with their green apples and fish laid out on mats in the street market, the children playing tag by the side of the road. He loses a few minutes to a stray cat, baring the soft fur of its belly for him, purr like the hum of a radiator. Eventually he arrives.
The sea greets him like it would anyone else: a stranger, an old friend. Waves washing up on the shore. The ocean’s beautiful, but you can’t live on it, Namjoon used to tell him. It’s all salt water. It’ll only make you thirstier.
Taehyung plops down on the sand next to Jimin. His hair’s tangling in the hint of breeze. Jimin doesn’t look up at him. As though he expected him to come.
“A few months ago, I went with some friends to the pool,” Jimin says, after a minute or two of silence. “And you won’t believe this, but facing down the deep end, I was suddenly seized by a fear—that I’d forgotten how to swim.” He laughs, shakes his head. “Stupid, right? I grew up with the ocean in my backyard and now I thought I was gonna drown in a square of water six meters deep. I was full-on having a panic attack over the side. Eventually someone had to push me in.”
Taehyung runs his fingers through the sand. “And had you forgotten? How to swim?”
“Of course not.” Jimin snorts. “The first jolt of water and my body was already moving, even if my brain was still stuck in fear. Like it was beyond my control. I couldn’t even help it. Things like that, you don’t forget.” He stares out over the water, a furrow in his brow. “But you think you have. And the further away you get, the more real that belief becomes, until it takes you over. Until it’s all there is.”
If this is an explanation, Taehyung doesn’t want to hear it. Namjoon used to explain things to him, too. The way of the world. How things were. But Namjoon isn’t here anymore.
“Jungkook saw you here,” Taehyung says. “Sitting here for the past couple of days. By yourself.”
Jimin startles. “Jungkookie? That kid. He’s still in high school, isn’t he?”
“Graduating this year.”
“No way. I remember when he was no more than—” Jimin lifts his hand, waves it in an approximation of a child’s height “—this tall, and he would always follow us around, begging to be included in our games. Remember?”
Jungkook’s leaving, too, Taehyung thinks, with more than a hint of resentment. “Why didn’t you tell me you were out here? I could have kept you company.”
Jimin’s smile stills on his face. “What? No. You’ve got your job. I couldn’t have imposed.”
“Hey, Park Jimin,” Taehyung says, voice low, like the name will bring his best friend back to him, the one who swears like a sailor and laughs until he hiccups and doesn’t speak with his syllables clipped and neat, doesn’t act like a guest in Taehyung’s home, in Taehyung’s life. “What’s with you? What is there you can’t say to me? What is there to be afraid of? It’s me. I’m still me.”
Jimin looks at him, face pinched and tired, full of regret. “But maybe I’m not,” he says quietly.
Taehyung feels like he’s been struck in the ribs. “What?”
Jimin scrubs a hand over his face, his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, barely a whisper. “I didn’t mean—I just—It was hard.” His face crumples, but he doesn’t cry. “It was so hard, and everything felt so far away, and coming back to it now—it’s. I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“Weird?” Taehyung repeats.
“Sometimes I didn’t know if I would even make it, through that awful year. I kept telling myself, just a little longer. Just a little further. Well, I made it, that much further. And now that it’s time to come home...” Jimin shakes his head, something bitter to the twist of his mouth, thin and tired. “I can’t undo it, Taehyung, I can’t undo all that distance, all that work, not now, or I’ll never be able to reach it again. Not when I’ve already come this far. Do you understand—it’s all different, now.”
“What’s different, Jimin?” Taehyung says it steadily, though his hands are shaking in his lap. “What is it, exactly, that’s changed?”
“Nothing,” Jimin murmurs. A pause. “Just me, I guess.”
The cresting of waves on the shore.
“Just you,” Taehyung echoes.
“Look, they say the first year’s the hardest,” Jimin says, and he’s talking faster now, as though buoyed by his own urgency. Who it is he’s trying to convince, Taehyung can’t tell. “But if you can make it through that, you can make it through anything. It’ll be easier—it’ll be better, now. I’ll be better. And you could come too, Taehyung. C’mon. Save up for the bus ticket, pack up your things and come with me. We’ll find a place together, and we’ll find work, and we’ll find a way, Taehyung, we’ll do it together.” His hand moves in the sand, finds Taehyung’s, clasps it tight. “What do you think?”
Taehyung stares out over the sea. Thinks about the glaciers, the frozen side of the world he’s never seen, all gorgeous white hollowed through with blue, like the underside of a glass. Inside, the depths of ice that have never been touched by warmth, that have forgotten what it feels like. Giants, caved in with yearning. So colossal that when they begin to thaw, no one will notice anything for a long time, their true capacity hidden by the surface of the water. By the millions of years it would take for the melt to reach them.
After a while, Jimin’s shoulders slump back down, next to him. But he doesn’t let go of his hand.
Taehyung holds onto him, too. That last sweet remnant of longing.
The bus terminal is almost empty in this hour of morning. A bus has just pulled in. A family is reuniting with their son, fresh from university or work or vacation. He pushes away his mother’s attempts to kiss his cheek, embarrassment burning up on his face. Taehyung scratches at the back of his neck. Slides his gaze away.
“I’ll text you when I arrive,” Jimin says. He still looks exhausted, but his eyes are a little clearer. It had taken Taehyung a while to notice, but Jimin’s lost the soft roundness of his childhood, no longer the puffy-cheeked face Taehyung knew and loved as intimately as the shadow by his side. Now leaner, thinner. Something half-formed, almost, in the process of reconstruction, of being remade. Something that’ll survive the winter, the weather of the years, and emerge stronger for it, anew.
He hesitates, and that’s new, too. The signs are easier to spot, once you know what to look for. Taehyung bridges the gap for him, steps forward and slings his arm around his shoulders. Jimin sags a little, in relief. Hugs him back.
“Miss you,” Taehyung says, into Jimin’s hair. And while he’s got him there, he leans in close, presses a kiss to the top of his head. For good measure.
“What are you talking about?” Jimin laughs. “I haven’t even left yet.”
“Right,” Taehyung says, clinging onto him harder.
“Get some sleep, on the bus,” Taehyung says, after they pull apart. “I mean it. I’ll be messaging you to make sure you’re not wasting all your data on watching dramas or scrolling SNS.”
“That’ll just wake me up again!” Jimin protests. “I can’t win!”
When Jimin’s clambering up the steps of the bus, he stops to look back. As though making sure Taehyung’s still there. Taehyung waves at him. It takes a moment, but Jimin breaks into a smile, a small, soft one. Eyes crinkling up into crescents.
“Take care,” Jimin calls.
Taehyung nods. “You, too,” he says, and imagines it stretching on, far past sound, following Jimin across the country like a string. That it would echo, when plucked, connecting the two of them. That it could reach him, there.
He watches long after the bus is gone, out of sight. Until he’s left alone with the slow sunrise, the waking call of the cicadas in the air. The dust-beaten road.
Then he turns around, and heads for home.
Someone once
told me gannets, those voracious sea birds
of the North Atlantic chill, go blind from the height
and speed of their dives. But that, too, is a lie.
Gannets never go blind and they certainly never die.
— Ada Limón, Lies About Sea Creatures