Chapter Text
We have not yet touched the stars, / nor are we forgiven
—R. S. / Crush
i.
When Wooseok was twenty-five and in university still, Jinhyuk would bring him flowers every time he would finish a paper, pass an exam, give a presentation. “You worked hard,” he would say, and every time Wooseok would feel like his throat was filling up. “Let’s go out to eat, to celebrate?” Every time Jinhyuk would take them both to the same place across from his apartment building, with the loud ahjumma and the plastic covering on the table and the red awning out in front. Every time Jinhyuk would smile at him like he was the sun and Wooseok would want to kick him for it, as if Jinhyuk could help it, as if Jinhyuk knew how Wooseok felt.
“You won’t have to do this, soon,” Wooseok would always say after dinner, despite biting back his own smile. “I’ll finish my degree soon, and you can go someplace nicer,” and Jinhyuk would laugh, shake his head.
“We,” he would correct without fail, every time. “We can go someplace nicer.”
“Okay,” Wooseok would say, looking at Jinhyuk’s gentle smile, his chest tight like it hurt. “Soon, I’ll find us something better than this.”
ii.
In summertime Wooseok wakes up early, goes to work early, gets off early before the sun sets. He eats out alone most days, save for when he has work dinners. Each night he goes home to the empty apartment across the street from the restaurant with the red awning. Once a week, he folds laundry on the unused dining table. Once a month, he sits down on the sofa by the window to count rent. For the most part, it’s a routine: home at eight-thirty, the lights off at nine, lie in bed with phone until midnight.
Most nights he scrolls through his media feed in the flickering dark, the sound always off, the brightness always turned low, as if the dark were sentient and it wanted to be left undisturbed. It’s like he’s holding his breath, Wooseok thinks, for something, as if he’s waiting, as if he can’t bear anything but silence. As if he can’t bear silence either.
Sometimes he listens to voicemails, watches videos he can’t bear to delete. Wooseok-ah, today I walked to see Hangang Bridge over Han River and there were flowers by the water and I thought of you. Wooseok-ah, today I took the bus out to see Incheon and I saw the ocean, so so blue… does it look the same when you see it too? Wooseok-ah, today I came by but you weren’t home. Wooseok-ah, call me soon?
All of them are old, now. He swipes through his camera roll one last time.
When, he realizes, was the last time I took a photo?
Regardless, he already knows the answer.
None since.
iii.
Do you know, Wooseok thinks, what it’s like to be lonely?
Not the kind of lonely after a party’s over, or after you see off your best friend at the airport. Not the kind of lonely when there’s nobody in the store with you or when you’re eating alone in an empty restaurant.
I mean lonely like when you’re walking down the street and it’s so filled with people you could choke, you could get carried away, and you’re still empty inside. I mean lonely like when the sun is out and the sky is bluer than anything you’ve seen before and everyone smiles at you as you pass by and you feel like you could cry. I mean lonely like when you’re at a barbecue restaurant with all your friends in the world and they’re laughing but your chest is a vacuum and you’ll cave in from your own gravity at any second.
Lonely like when you go home every night and sit at your dining table with the lights off. Lonely like even when you cry you’ll think that it’s okay to sob because no one will hear it. Lonely like how you start to believe no one can touch you until your coworker brushes up against you and you jump so bad you drop your laptop and you can’t even listen to his apology. Like that, like that lonely.
So lonely it doesn’t hurt. So lonely it doesn’t do anything anymore.
Like this you would do anything. Like this you will do anything.