Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Renjun held the viewfinder to his eye.

From up in the branches of the broad oak tree, he was able to trace the line of the horizon. He liked Seoul, because it was so different from Jilin, and he’d rarely had any opportunity to leave Jilin growing up. The furthest away he’d been before was Shenyang, when he and his parents had gone there on a family vacation, but he’d only been eight at the time, so he could hardly remember it now, and certainly didn’t have any of it recorded on video. Only fuzzy photos his mom had taken on her flip phone, and those were not good enough. It didn’t mean anything to Renjun unless he had it in motion, in perfect detail.

His uncle’s house was actually situated just outside the city to the northwest. It was better that way, Renjun thought, because it meant he would not be staying in one of those cramped little city houses where there would be no room between him and his neighbors. His uncle had a yard, and a very pretty yard at that, one full of trees and shade and a little garden that grew vegetables. He’d plucked a few snap peas and shoved them into his pocket, and ate them while he sat on his branch. And though he was not in Seoul, he was close enough that he thought he could see it, ghosts of skyscrapers that faded at their tops so he couldn’t tell where they ended and the clouds began.

The sun was sinking on his first day in Korea. He held his camcorder steady. He wanted to keep that image forever.

“What are you doing?”

Renjun looked down through the dense green leaves. At the edge of his uncle’s yard was a gate, and standing behind that gate was a boy.

“Who are you?” Renjun asked. He spoke loudly to make his voice carry all the way down, though he found he hadn’t really needed to; the air was calm and easy to fill.

“Lee Jeno,” the boy said. “I live next door. Who are you?”

“Huang Renjun.”

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“I’m visiting my uncle for the summer.”

“You’re Mr. Huang’s nephew?” Jeno leaned against the gate, fingers curled around the black bars, making its hinges squeak. “Are you from China?”

“Yes.” Renjun’s uncle was a professor of Chinese language and literature at a university in Seoul. He’d lived in Korea for as long as Renjun had been alive, though he came back to Jilin once a year to visit the rest of the family. “My mom wanted me to come here so I can practice my Korean.”

“That’s neat,” Jeno responded. “Why are you in that tree?”

“I’m taking a video.”

“What for?”

“Because I like to. I want to be a director someday.” He’d wanted it for practically as long as he could remember. He loved the movies. When he was little, he would beg his mother to take him nearly every weekend, and if she said yes, he would skip all the way down to the moviehouse, and then inside the theater, claim the exact middle seat for the best possible movie-going experience. Once he got older, old enough to go by himself, he would save his allowance specifically for that purpose. He didn’t mind going alone like some people did, but he would drag his friends along, too, if he could. It was always more fun when there was someone to talk the ear off of once the showing was over.

“You mean you want to make movies?” Jeno asked.

“Yes.”

Jeno whistled, impressed. “Have you ever made a movie before?”

“Not really.” Renjun said, frowning. He had, technically, thought they weren’t anything to be proud of. They were short, choppily edited on the family computer, with his not-quite-actor-material friends cast in the main roles. He’d also shot them all on his dinky camcorder, a cheap model his parents had bought him for his twelfth birthday after he’d begged for a camera. He’d never told them before that he wanted to be a director, at least not explicitly, though he was sure they’d figured it out themselves. He knew they didn’t approve of it. They wanted him to be something practical, like a doctor or a lawyer or a businessman. He could not think of something more likely to put him to sleep than having to comb through a medical textbook or sit through a political science lecture.

“Well,” Jeno said. “If you’re getting bored up there, you can come over to my house. We’re having a barbecue. Invite your uncle, too.” He pushed off from the gate, making it rattle again on its hinges, and walked back to his yard.

Renjun lowered his camcorder. In the distance, he could see the flicker of yellow fire and wispy smoke rising above it. He could not smell it from so far, but he could imagine the tantalizing aroma of beef as it hit the grill. Carefully, he scrambled down the side of the tree, finding the correct footholds he’d used on the way up, and ran up to his uncle’s back doorstep.

“Uncle,” he called, cracking the door. “The neighbors invited us over for a barbecue.”

His uncle sat beyond the kitchen, through the archway into the living room. He was sitting in his plush purple chair beside his desk lamp, frameless glasses perched near the tip of his nose as he read his students’ papers. His hair was almost fully gray -- he was fifteen years older than Renjun’s father, though the image he projected was even more mature than that, like a man who’d had time to read every book in the world. Renjun liked that about him. It made him feel as if he would learn a lot that summer.

“Excellent,” his uncle responded, setting the papers on his crowded end table and folding his glasses on top. “I believe they have a son your age. Maybe the two of you will get along.”

“I already met him,” Renjun said. “He was the one who invited us.”

“Any possibility of friendship?” His uncle shuffled to the door, bones achy from being curled in his chair, and slipped on his sandals.

“Maybe.” Renjun wasn’t shy exactly, just concerned about making friends with a boy from another country. He was nervous about making mistakes while speaking Korean or committing some great cultural faux pas.

“He’s a good boy.” His uncle stepped out into the yard, and led the way towards the gate. “He helps me take care of my garbage and rakes the lawn for me in the autumn. He weeds the garden sometimes, too, and I let him take back some vegetables.” His uncle smiled, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Though that’ll be your job this summer. And I won’t even have to give you anything for it, since you’re family.”

Renjun snorted, but didn’t argue.

Now he could smell the meat sizzling, and his mouth began to water. A man, Jeno’s father, came over to greet Renjun’s uncle and gestured towards the picnic table, where there was already some food laid out. “And you’re his nephew, right?” he asked Renjun, herding him along to take a seat.

“Yes.” Renjun settled at the table’s end and peered around the Lee family’s yard. It was smaller than his uncle’s, but full of vibrancy. Two bikes were leaned against the house’s wall, well-worn but rugged, bearing baskets at their handles. Tumbling pink roses framed a window with their tendrils spilling like a waterfall. There was a garden swing, set a ways back, made from pale wood with a heart carved at the crest of the backrest. Jeno was sitting on the swing, his feet shifting from heel to toe, making it glide gently. Beside him was an old man, Renjun guessed his grandfather, who gazed vacantly at the ground, but seemed to revive at least partially when Jeno placed a hand on top of his. Renjun turned the other way. Jeno’s mother was coming out from the house, carrying a pot from the stove, and Jeno’s sister, a couple years his senior, trailed behind, preoccupied by her cellphone and nearly bumping into her mother when she stopped suddenly to say hello to Renjun and his uncle.

“How old are you, Renjun?” Jeno’s mother asked as she rearranged the trays on the picnic table, trying to make room for more. They’d cooked enough to feed a small village.

“Fifteen,” he said.

“The same age as Jeno, then.” She smiled and, watching where Jeno’s sister sat at the table’s far end, said, “Joeun here just turned eighteen. She’ll be graduating at the end of the school year.”

Joeun offered Renjun a little wave in acknowledgement.

Renjun’s uncle leaned his arms on the table and caught her gaze. “You know, Joeun, I still think you should consider applying at Hanyang. It’s a great school. I think you’d fit in nicely there.” Hanyang University was where he worked, a private institute on Seoul’s eastside. He’d promised Renjun that he would take him to work with him one day so he could see it for himself.

“I still want to get into Korea or Yonsei,” she said.

“Lofty goals,” he responded lightly.

“Joeun is the top of her class,” Jeno’s mother said. “She got a perfect score on her PCSAT. If anyone could get in, it’s her.”

Joeun blushed. “Mom. Stop bragging about me.”

“It’s true. And I’m not bragging. I’m just stating facts.”

“What did you want to study again, Joeun?” Renjun’s uncle asked.

“Chemical engineering.”

“You know, Hanyang University is actually famous for its engineering program --”

Renjun stopped listening then as Jeno approached the table, picking up two plates and beginning to stack them full of food. He saw Renjun looking at him, gave him a tiny smile, and walked back to the swing. Then he set his own plate to the side, and helped his grandfather to balance the other plate in his lap, guiding his shaky hands and saying, “Here -- are you hungry?” Renjun was struck by the image of it, young and old, the gentleness and patience with which Jeno moved and spoke; and he took his camcorder out, aimed it towards them, and began to record.

“What are you doing?” his uncle whispered. “Don’t be rude, Renjun. Put that away.”

Renjun remembered where he was, and lowered his camcorder. Sometimes, he got so wrapped up in capturing something, he forgot his manners. It was an impulse. He had trouble controlling it.

Jeno seemed to have noticed Renjun’s interest, and gave him a curious, cocked-brow glance, before returning attention to his grandfather.

---

The next day, Renjun woke at what he thought was an especially early time, only to discover that his uncle was already up and active, fixing breakfast in the kitchen. Renjun took a seat at the table. Every inch of his uncle’s house was covered in interesting objects: souvenirs from trips overseas, gifts from coworkers and students, finds from antique stores. In the center of the table was a carved wooden duck. Renjun traced its lacquered feathers with his index finger.

“I’ll be back in the afternoon,” his uncle said. “Will you be alright here until I get back?” He taught one class during the university’s summer session, and so he worked every other weekday.

“I’ll be fine,” Renjun responded.

“If you don’t mind, could you hang the laundry out to dry once it’s finished?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.” His uncle came over and placed several dishes in front of Renjun, rice and kimchi and a steaming bowl of soup. A traditional Korean breakfast. Renjun wondered if his uncle ever still made Chinese dishes, after living away so long. He sniffed the soup, recognized it as soybean paste stew, and took a sip of it. It was rich, salty, stomach-warming. Eagerly, he dug in.

After breakfast, his uncle double-checked the straightness of his tie in the kitchen window, then said, “If you need anything, call me. And if there’s an emergency, go next door.”

“Okay.”

His uncle left. Renjun heard the car’s engine shudder to life, and the rumbling of its wheels over gravel as he pulled out of the driveway. From the other room, the washing machine dinged, announcing its completed cycle, so Renjun gathered the wet clothes into a basket and carried them outside.

The clothesline ran from a hook in the house’s wall to a hook in the trunk of the big tree. Renjun began unfolding a white sheet, draping it over the thin wire and pinning it in place. Beyond the clothesline was the baby blue of the morning sky. Puffy white clouds bloomed amongst it like dandelions in a field of grass. Renjun suspected it would be a warm, but not stifling, summer day. Maybe he would take a walk. He knew that if he followed the road about ten minutes to the right, he would end up downtown. The downtown of his uncle’s village was really just a small grocery, a convenience store, a bank, and an auto shop; but when he’d passed through it on the car ride in the previous afternoon, he’d thought it was rather charming in its simplicity, and interesting in the sense that a place so near the big city could seem so lowkey in comparison, as if there weren’t skyscrapers standing only a mere forty-five minutes away. He wondered what lay in the other direction, further down his uncle’s road, which led windingly through the trees.

He heard a familiar creaking. He looked up to see Jeno, once again propping himself on the gate, this time with his feet stuck through between the rails of it and balanced on the bottom bar. “Hi,” he said. He wore a baseball cap, which cast a pale shadow over his eyes.

“Hi,” Renjun responded.

“Do you want to go for a bike ride?”

“I don’t have a bike.”

“You can borrow my sister’s.” Jeno leaned further forward, elbows on the top of the gate. Its hinges produced a shrieking whine.

Renjun hung up the last of the laundry, his uncle’s pajama shirt, and placed the empty basket just inside the back door. “Alright.”

He followed Jeno through the gate, across the rolling hill of grass, into the Lee family’s yard again. It was emptied of the previous night’s festivities, but not lifeless. A calico cat lay on the stone wall, tail flicking lazily. Jeno pushed up the kickstand of his bicycle and walked it around to the front of the house. Renjun did the same.

“Are you sure Joeun won’t care if I take her bike?”

“Nah. So long as you don’t crash it. You know how to ride one, right?”

“Of course I do,” Renjun said, almost offended at the question.

Jeno, at the street’s edge, looked back and forth both ways before hitching up onto his seat and riding out into the proper lane, headed right towards the shops. Renjun hung close behind him. An old, slow-moving car passed by them, stirring a breeze that lifted Renjun’s bangs. Above them, the telephone wire was buried beneath about a hundred little birds, perched close to each other, making black silhouettes against the blue sky.

“Do you like it here?” Jeno called to Renjun.

Renjun watched the tilt of Jeno’s shoulders as he pushed down against the bike handles. He could see the divot of his spine through the thin white fabric of his t-shirt. “Yeah. When my mom told me I was going to Seoul, I didn’t expect there to be this much nature.”

“We’re not really in Seoul.”

“I know. I was lied to.”

The air was filled by cicada buzz and the rustling of tall grass along the roadside. Renjun leaned further forward on his bike, squinting, like if he peered hard enough, he might be able to see right through Jeno.

“What’s wrong with your grandfather?” he asked. He’d been thinking about it since last evening. It might have been a rude question, but Renjun was bad at knowing when he was being rude, the same way he was bad at telling when he shouldn’t be recording something. His mother always told him he lacked self-awareness. He was not self-aware enough to understand what she meant by it.

Jeno seemed to know that Renjun was only rude out of naivety, not out of intention. “He has Alzheimer's,” he responded.

“What is that?”

“It means he can’t remember things.”

“Ah.” Renjun had not recognized the Korean word for it, but he knew what Jeno was talking about. “It must be hard to take care of him all the time.”

“He’s not a fish or something,” Jeno said flatly. “He’s my grandpa. I don’t mind doing it. It isn’t a chore.” Jeno lifted off his seat, putting more weight on the pedals, pulling further ahead and putting a stretch of black concrete between the two of them.

Renjun had at least enough sense to leave it there. Jeno might be the only friend he made all summer -- he didn’t want to drive him away.

They came upon the little intersection that made up the town center. Jeno veered into the grocery store parking lot and pushed his bicycle into the slot of the bike rack.

When the automatic doors parted, the cold of the A/C hit their faces. It was a tiny market, with too-low ceilings and too-narrow aisles. Jeno stuck only his head in at first, glanced around, and said, “Mr. Cho isn’t in today.”

“Who’s that?”

“He owns the store.”

Renjun thought there was something special about the fact that, in a town so small, everyone seemed to know everyone else. Renjun didn’t even know the name of his across-the-street neighbor back home.

Jeno walked ahead to the flats of vegetables, picking over the cabbages.

“What are you doing?” Renjun asked.

“My mom wants me to get some stuff for dinner.”

He’s always doing something for his family, Renjun thought. He wondered if Jeno ever got sick of it, even though he’d denied it on the way over. It seemed like Jeno was years older than him, a boy with more responsibilities than he should have for his age. Renjun felt like a child in comparison.

He removed his camcorder from the overly large pocket of his cargo shorts.

“You even brought that with you here?” Jeno asked.

“I bring it with me everywhere,” Renjun said. He flipped open the screen and fidgeted with the focus. Jeno emerged from the fuzziness, standing amongst the faded grocery store signs and vibrant vegetables.

“Am I supposed to be doing something?” Jeno shifted awkwardly. “Like, am I supposed to look at the camera, or --”

“No,” Renjun said. “Just do whatever.”

“What’s this even for?”

“It’s like a video diary.” Renjun had had the idea last night, before he fell asleep. He was going to compile all the footage he took on his trip and edit it together. Maybe he could make something interesting out of it. Then he could put it in his reel when he applied for college. He could show his parents, too, and maybe they’d be so blown away by his artistic vision they would wrap him in a hug and tell him he was destined to be a filmmaker and give him their seal of approval to pursue a major in it.

It was a long shot, but Renjun was a daydreamer, and he believed that if he dreamt about it hard enough, it might someday come true.

Jeno quirked his lips up in a lopsided, try-hard smile for the camera, and Renjun laughed.

When they approached the register, Jeno grabbed two cokes from the case and set them onto the belt. After they exited, Jeno handed one to Renjun, and the two of them sat on the curb of the sidewalk beneath the market awning, bodies in the shade aside from their feet and ankles, which stuck out into the bright near-noon sunlight, making their exposed skin look brightly pale.

Renjun cracked the tab on his soda, and sucked up the bubbles that gathered at its lip. The fizz made him shiver. “Thank you,” he told Jeno.

“Whenever I go to the store, my mom gives me extra money to buy a soda,” Jeno explained. “She left more than usual today, so I figured that was a sign.”

“Your mom is nice,” Renjun said.

“Yeah.”

“What does she do?”

“She’s a nurse at the hospital the next town over.”

“What about your dad?”

“He’s a pediatrician.”

“Ah.” The medical types, Renjun thought smartly, as if that meant anything to him. He imagined Jeno as a child running rampant around his father’s clinic -- playing with the toys in the waiting room, asking his father to lift him onto the exam table and, as he did so, stealing the stethoscope from around his shoulders, putting the ends in his ears, and trying to find his father’s heartbeat.

“What about you? What do your parents do?” Jeno asked.

“My mom is a teacher. My dad is an urban planner.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Jeno said.

“Me neither,” Renjun admitted. “He works for the government, I think.”

“What does your mom teach?”

“History,” he responded. “She teaches at the elementary school in my town.”

Jeno grinned. “Did you have her as a teacher? That’s funny.”

Renjun pursed his lips. He did have his mother as a teacher in the sixth grade. It was not very funny to him, because all the other kids had given him a hard time for it. Once, he’d returned to the classroom after recess and his mother had called him to the front board because he had a spot of dirt on his cheek. She had wet her thumb and rubbed it away, while he had attempted to squirm out of her grasp, muttering, “Mom -- not right now --” His mother, unbothered, had said, “Stay still, sweetie, I’ve nearly got it.” The other kids had been snickering at their desks and leaning over the aisles to exchange smirks. He would never live it down. He’d spent the rest of the school year in isolation, and the only times the others spoke with him was to chide “sweetie” at him in the hall, as if he didn’t already get picked on enough for being an airhead and a klutz.

“I don’t like school very much,” Renjun said.

“Because of your mom?”

“No. Just in general.” Renjun pressed his cool coke can to a bruise on his knee, acquired when he’d climbed the tree the previous evening and bumped it on a branch. “What about you? Do you like school?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Renjun wondered if school was much different in Korea than in China. He realized he didn’t know very much about it, about life in Korea in general, outside of his uncle’s little rural town. “What do you like about school?”

“I’m on the soccer team,” Jeno explained. “So that’s fun. And that’s where I get to see all my friends. Most of them live right in the city, since my school is in Seoul, so I don’t get to see them much outside of class, unless my dad wants to drive me forty-five minutes.”

Soccer team. All my friends.

Renjun tilted his head. “Oh. Are you one of the popular kids at your school?”

Jeno’s face reddened. “I don’t know about that --”

“You are. I can tell. Are you the soccer team’s captain?”

“Yes,” Jeno admitted.

“And you get good grades?”

“I… I do.”

“Oh yeah. Definitely a popular kid,” Renjun remarked. He had never really been friends with someone like that before. He only had about three-ish friends back home, except one of them had borrowed his Reservoir Dogs DVD a month ago and never returned it so Renjun was considering cutting him out of the friend group until he got his priorities in order. Then he would only have two-ish friends, though it didn’t bother him much. He couldn’t really imagine what it was like to have a lot of friends. He didn’t see the need for having so many.

He was glad that Jeno didn’t see his friends much during the summer. It meant that he didn’t have to be friends with Jeno the Popular Boy. It meant he could simply be friends with Jeno the Boy Next-Door.

Jeno straightened his legs off the curb and craned his head backwards in a stretch. Renjun imitated him, and when he did, the toes of their sneakers bumped.

---

Renjun’s uncle pulled into a space in the Hanyang University parking lot. Peering out the passenger’s seat window, Renjun could not help but be impressed at the sight of the campus, the mix of white stone, columned facades and full-glass buildings, their lines so clean they seemed to cut squares from the blue cloth of the sky. The only college Renjun had been to before was on a field trip in the fifth grade, to get the students to start thinking about their futures. Naturally, Renjun had gotten distracted by an old-looking book that sat on a library shelf during their tour. He’d swerved to examine it (it was about Greek mythology, a topic he knew little about, but found himself absorbed in the book’s sketchy but evocative illustrations), and then when he’d turned around, the rest of his class was gone. He’d spent the next fifteen minutes wandering through the shelves, not even able to find the door they’d entered through, and he’d become worried about being left behind once his classmates boarded the bus. They probably haven’t even noticed I’m gone, he’d thought. Or, they’ve noticed, and they don’t care. They’re probably all laughing about it right now, about how much of a ditz I am. He’d been so upset over his imagined scenario that he began bawling right there in the middle of the library. Luckily, a college student had noticed him (he’d been difficult to not notice, considering how loudly he’d cried), and had helped him to find the rest of his class, who had moved on to the dining hall for lunch. The other kids could clearly see that he’d been crying, and he’d known they would make fun of him for it. He’d ended up sitting at the table with their teacher, poking silently at his tray of cafeteria food, not at all hungry.

Renjun was still a little wary of college campuses, to say the least.

But he was excited, too. He was much closer now to thinking about college than he had been a few years ago. And now he had something he was passionate about, a dream he wanted to achieve. He did not yet know where he wanted to achieve it, but maybe Hanyang University could give him a better idea, whether that meant drawing him in or chasing him away.

They crossed from the parking lot to a breezeway, which led between two buildings into the campus proper. It was mostly empty during the summer session, but there were a few people who passed by them, as well as a tour group, headed by an overly-cheerful guide in a highlighter blue tee who walked backwards as he spoke. Renjun’s uncle noticed him staring after them, and said, “So? What do you think?”

Renjun tore his eyes away from the tour group and scored the courtyard around them. It was a very pretty campus. Almost utopian -- full hedges lining the pathways, beautiful beds of violet flowers, idyllic greenery amongst crystal buildings that glittered beneath the summer sun. He thought it seemed impossible in its sleekness, its shininess. Like a little model town, totally separate from the rest of the world. It was so immaculate that it was strange to think that people really worked and lived there, because if they did, shouldn’t it be just a bit messier, a bit less ideal?

“I like it,” Renjun said.

His uncle gave a subtle, satisfied smile. “Have you decided what college you want to go to yet?” he asked nonchalantly, as if Renjun might not notice his intent.

“Well… I hadn’t been thinking about going to school outside of China.”

“It might be a new adventure for you. Just like this summer is a new adventure. Plus, you already speak Korean well, so it wouldn’t be difficult for you to fit in.”

“Hmm.” Renjun tried not to be too easily swayed. Though he was impressed, he was sure there were other impressive universities closer to home. Just because it was the first school he liked didn’t mean he had to start making plans, especially when he still had three years of high school left.

“Professor Huang!”

They turned to see a girl bounding up to them from behind, the shadows thrown by the courtyard trees dappling her beneath them.

“Heejung,” Renjun’s uncle called. “How are you?”

“I’m good.” She slowed to a halt, catching her breath through a huge grin. “This is your nephew, right?”

“Yes --” Renjun’s uncle gave him a little push on the back, forcing him to bow. “Renjun, this is Heejung, one of my students. She’s working at the admissions office this summer. I told her you’d be visiting today.” Then, in a clearly predetermined, overacted manner, he made his mouth into a little o and added, “I just had a thought! Heejung, how would you feel about giving Renjun a tour?”

“But I thought I was going with you to your office,” Renjun objected.

“This would be much more exciting, Renjun. You don’t want to watch me organizing class materials all afternoon, do you?”

Renjun understood suddenly that this was all an elaborate set-up. First he'd tried to lure in Joeun, and now his own nephew. His uncle certainly took a lot of pride in Hanyang, if he was trying to attract so many new students.

“Alright,” Renjun conceded grudgingly.

Just a minute later, his uncle was walking away, waving over his shoulder, leaving Renjun in Heejung’s care. She placed her hands on her hips, and smiled so hard it showed her dimples. “Well, then. Let’s get started! I’ve got so many different things to show you -- the residence halls are a must, of course, and the student union -- oh, and we could swing by the university museum…”

Renjun trailed a pace behind her, fascinated by the yellow ribbon in her hair. Its loops were perfectly even in length, and the fabric was shiny like gold foil, especially bright against her black hair. That was the sort of random little thing he got caught up in, the smallest details that seemed like they ought to be preserved on film. His camcorder was in his backpack, but he resisted the urge to take it out. He thought that filming the back of her head might be too weird, even for him.

She led him away from the garden-carpeted courtyard and into another section of the campus. There, she opened the door for him into a long, rectangular building with blue-tinted windows. Inside, Renjun discovered that the many floors above him were cut out in the middle, allowing him to see all the way to the glass roof. Hanging from it were strings of flags from all around the world, their fabric made semi-transparent by the sunlight.

“This is the student union,” Heejung explained. “There’s a flag for every country represented by an international student at Hanyang. Look -- the Chinese flag is right there.” She pointed up and towards the left. Renjun saw it, the little red flag, sitting between Canada and the Czech Republic. He felt a little twinge of belonging when he saw it. This, he knew he had to film. He dropped his backpack from his shoulders and pulled out his camcorder, then zoomed in on his flag.

Heejung detoured into a little coffee shop that branched off from the building’s main lobby, where she told Renun he could choose whatever he wanted as her treat. He picked an iced green tea latte, and while they waited for the barista to make it, he kept peering through his viewfinder, scanning the shop from high to low, trying to capture it. At a table in the corner was a student typing on his laptop, earbuds in, pausing to take a sip of their coffee. Renjun imagined himself in that place, and something about it spoke to him -- being alone but not being uncomfortable, having work to do that meant something, spending his own money on a drink or a snack and knowing he’d earned it himself. Adulthood was seductive in its simplest pleasures. He felt himself falling fast for that kind of future, for what Hanyang offered.

Once they had their drinks, they sipped at them as they climbed the long white steps of one of the campus’s columned buildings, pushing in through the wide front doors. “This is the College of Economics,” she explained. “I’m actually an economics major, so this is where a lot of my classes are. I thought I could show you some of our classrooms --”

Renjun sighed as his perfect college daydream shattered. Economics. That seemed like the kind of thing his parents might like him to study. Something serious and prestigious and guaranteed to get him a job after he graduated.

Heejung poked her head into one of the classroom doors to make sure it wasn’t occupied, then beckoned him after her. It was a big lecture hall, one that descended in rows down to a podium, with a large whiteboard in the back, the remnants of the previous lecture still visible in faded green marker: microeconomics, consumer demand, market structure. Heejung walked down a few rows, and said, “Isn’t it cool? This room can seat three hundred students at once.” Her voice echoed like she was in a cave.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Renjun tried to picture himself, one face among three hundred. It didn’t thrill him. It made him feel insignificant. He tried to film it, but he’d lost his inspiration. He lowered his camcorder, arm dropping to his side.

“What’s wrong?” Heejung asked, smile faltering. “Am I already boring you?”

“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Renjun responded hurriedly, not wanting to hurt her feelings. “I guess I was just expecting it to be kinda different.”

She sat at the edge of one of the rows of seats, knee bumping a chair and making it swivel. “Was there something specific you had in mind? Like, something you really wanted to see?”

Renjun hesitated before answering, “Well… I guess I was wondering if Hanyang had a film program.”

She took a contemplative sip from her smoothie. “I know we have one, but I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. I’m not very familiar with the College of Arts. Is that the kind of thing you want to go to school for?”

Renjun nodded enthusiastically. “I want to make movies. See, I’ve been filming stuff all summer --” He held his camcorder back up and tapped a finger against the plastic of the back of the screen. “-- for my demo reel.”

She was taken aback by the sudden passion in his eyes. But it was the kind of passion she’d been trying to pull out of him all afternoon and, recognizing it, she grinned. “Well -- if it’s that important to you, let’s see if we can find the film department. I think I might kind of know where the facilities are.”

They exited the College of Economics and walked west across campus, back towards the way they’d come. Heejung led him, inexplicably, into the university’s tech institute, where all the flyers on the walls were advertising courses in computer science and cyber security. However, she veered off towards the basement stairway, which spiraled downwards, and as it did, the flyers evolved into movie posters, stuck haphazardly to the walls with gaffer tape. They finally came out into the basement level, and Renjun was breathless at the sight of it, because it wasn’t sleek and and pretty like the rest of the campus; instead, it was messy, the walls brightly painted and covered in a collage of even more posters, some of movies he’d seen, others advertising student films, the Hanyang logo displayed in the bottom corners. Across from him and Heejung was a tall equipment cage, stuffed to bursting with lighting sets, boom poles, shelves of those big fancy cameras Renjun had seen in the movies, but never in person. A TV was mounted on the far wall, playing a reel of student work -- at present, it showed some kind of short action film, a sequence of a man running down a hallway under stark red lights as fog rose around his ankles. Renjun walked a little closer, head tilted back in awe. It looked so real. It looked like something that could play in a theater, like something made by a professional. The kind of film he wanted to create.

Then the credits scrolled. Renjun always sat through the credits when he watched a movie, so he could imagine that his own name was up there among the others, proof that he’d made something. Proof that he’d made art.

“What do you think?” Heejung asked him. “I’ve never been down here before. It looks different than I’d imagined.”

“It’s incredible,” Renjun whispered.

---

The next day, he awoke excited. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the colorful basement where the film students worked when he’d gone to bed last night, and when he finally had fallen asleep, he’d gone on to dream about it -- arriving to class with a green tea latte in hand, approaching his posse of cool new college friends, pitching his film idea in front of all of them (something about a boy trying to choose which college to attend) and being met by enthusiastic offers to be his camera operator, his boom guy, his editor.

He wanted to tell Jeno all about Hanyang. He rolled out of bed, realized he’d slept in until eleven o’clock, and hurriedly pulled open his dresser drawer to find a change of clothes.

Once dressed, he raced downstairs and out the door, offering a mumbled “good morning” to his uncle as he whisked by. He ran all the way to the Lees’ door and knocked more times than typically considered polite.

Jeno answered a moment later. He did not seem as excited to see Renjun as Renjun was to see him. Rather, he was timid, rubbing his lips together, chin tucked in, standing back from the door like trying to shrink into the shadows of his house.

Renjun did not quite pick up on this. “Jeno -- I have so many things to tell you about. I went with my uncle to his work yesterday, and -- do you want to go for a walk? We can go downtown and --”

“I can’t today,” Jeno said. “My parents are at work, and Joeun is at a study group with her friends. I have to watch my grandfather.”

“Oh.” Renjun could not hide the disappointed slump of his shoulders. Quickly, he picked them back up, reassuming his cheer. “We can hang out here, then, if you want.”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea…” Jeno, instinctively, glanced back to where his grandfather sat on the living room sofa, hunched over, staring at the empty space above the TV screen. “I’m busy, Renjun. Maybe tomorrow.”

Renjun was hurt. Jeno was his only friend in Korea, and he’d already talked his uncle’s ears off about Hanyang, so he didn’t have anyone else to blab to. He couldn’t even call his parents and tell them -- they wouldn’t approve of his interest in film school. “Fine, I guess,” he muttered, knowing he was being childish but unable to help it. He backed down from the front step without saying goodbye, and marched all the way back to his uncle’s yard.

He felt too bitter to go inside and have to visit with his uncle, so he opted to climb the tree again, finding the nice firm branch he’d used the last time and curling into the place where it met the trunk, arms crossed and brow furrowed. Why wouldn’t Jeno let him in? He could be well-behaved around old people. In fact, it was the time his manners were the best, instilled into him by his parents who insisted he always bow the deepest to the elderly. He’d be a good helper, too, if only Jeno had let him. He continued to scowl at the thought of his dismissal.

He stayed in the tree a while, plucking leaves from above his head and shredding them into little pieces, then letting them rain down onto the ground below him like confetti. This was not satisfying enough, so instead he started gathering acorns and throwing them at the squirrels that rummaged at the tree trunks, delighting every time he managed to spook one. Their bushy tails would shoot up like exclamation points and they would scamper off under the bushes to hide. The sight of it cooled his frustration.

“Hey.”

Renjun was surprised when he recognized it to be Jeno’s voice. He shifted to look over the other side of the branch, where Jeno stood beneath, grandfather beside him.

“I changed my mind,” Jeno called up. “We can go for a walk, if you want.”

Renjun smiled, then remembered he was supposed to be sulky, so he put his pout back on and took his sweet time descending the oak, making Jeno wait. Once his feet hit the grass, Jeno turned, leading the way to the roadside.

“Nice of you to include me, finally,” Renjun said snidely.

“I thought you looked pathetic in your tree.”

Renjun wished that Jeno was not capable of such formidable sass. It made it difficult to win arguments. “What changed your mind?”

“It’s been a long time since he went for a walk,” Jeno answered, gesturing towards his grandfather. “We used to go a lot, but they aren’t so easy for him these days, especially when it's hot. But it’s mild out today, and I guess he should get some exercise.” Jeno tapped his grandfather’s arm gently. “Grandpa. This is Renjun. He lives next door.”

His grandfather looked up at Renjun through his glasses with squinted eyes, mouth open. He had a square face, its geometry exaggerated by the straight lines of his wrinkles, and wispy white hair that caught in the breeze like downy feathers. “Do I know him?” Jeno’s grandfather asked.

“No, Grandpa. This is your first time meeting him.”

His grandfather mumbled something inaudible under his breath, looked away from Renjun, and continued to hobble forward along the road’s dusty edge.

“I don’t think he likes me,” Renjun said.

“He is neutral on you,” Jeno offered, as if that was reassuring. “And stop walking so fast. He has to go slow, so we have to stay at his pace.”

Renjun reluctantly began to take smaller steps. It made him want to sprint instead.

But as he moved slower, he began to notice finer details, things he wouldn’t have noticed if he were more impatient. Jeno had placed himself to his grandfather’s right, so that he was the one close to the road, and his grandfather closer to the grass. It was a little thing that perhaps he had done subconsciously, but Renjun thought it spoke volumes, that protective instinct showing through.

His hand found the large pocket of his shorts, feeling his camcorder through the flap.

“Can I film you?” he asked Jeno.

Jeno smirked. “You’re asking permission this time?”

Renjun’s face flushed. “I’m trying to be more considerate.”

“I guess that’s fine.”

Renjun took out his camcorder, and slowed even more, so he walked several paces behind. Here, he was able to get both Jeno and his grandfather in the shot. Jeno’s grandfather seemed awfully small beside his grandson, back hunched over as he took tiny, shuffling steps. Renjun’s grandparents were quite a bit younger, so he didn’t often interact with people so old, except for the ancient geezer who lived down his street and threw shoes at the kids who accidentally walked on his grass.

Jeno’s grandfather hooked his hand at Jeno’s elbow to steady himself. His hand was all bone, the skin over it loose and paperthin. The veins bulged underneath, and dark spots trailed from his knuckles to his wrist, borne from age and wear. It looked so unlike Jeno’s hand, only a few inches away, where the prominent bones were a sign of gauky, in-progress adolescence rather than frailty.

“Where are we going?” Jeno’s grandfather asked.

“I told you,” Jeno said. “We’re going to the store.”

“The store?”

“Yeah. You remember. Mr. Cho works there.”

“I don’t remember.”

“That’s okay. He’s a nice man. You’ll like him.”

Renjun kept recording. He was fascinated at Jeno’s patience, at the slight bend of his brows that indicated taking care of his grandfather made him terribly sad, but it was a sadness he was accustomed to.

“So what did you want to talk to me about?”

Renjun did not realize Jeno was talking to him for a second. “What?”

“You said you had something to tell me.”

“Oh!” He’d completely forgotten about it. Hurriedly, he caught up to Jeno’s free side, and said, “I went to Hanyang University with my uncle yesterday. There was a student there who gave me a campus tour.”

“That’s cool. What was it like?”

“It was awesome.” Thinking about it again, Renjun could not help but put a bounce in his step. “I got to see the film department -- they had these huge cameras like the kinds they use on real movie sets! And I saw some bits from their student films -- I couldn’t believe that they were made by college kids, they looked so professional --”

“Are you thinking about applying there?”

“Maybe,” Renjun said. “I’m going to look at other schools, too, but… I really liked it there.” He poked Jeno’s arm (an invasive gesture which Jeno shied away from) and asked, “What about you? Have you thought at all about where you want to go to college?”

“I want to go to an S.K.Y. school. They’re the three most prestigious schools in Korea,” Jeno explained. “I think I want to go to whichever one Joeun goes to -- right now, she likes Korea University best. But if I can’t get into that one, I at least want to get into one of the three.”

Renjun mouthed a voiceless wow. “You really have the grades to get in?”

“Yeah. I’m the top of my class. I think I can do it, if I study hard enough.”

Leave it to two medical professionals to produce two genius kids, Renjun thought. I bet Jeno’s parents were top of their class, too. “What do you want to study?”

“I want to get into their pre-med program. I want to be a pediatrician, like my dad.”

“Oh. You’d have to go to medical school after that, then, too?”

“Yeah.” Jeno laughed. “It’s lucky I like school so much. Otherwise I wouldn’t survive it.”

They entered the store. A man who had not been there the last time saw them enter, left his broom leaning against the counter, and approached.

“You brought your grandfather,” he said to Jeno, voice high and incredulous. “It’s been a long time.”

Jeno glanced around the store -- almost nervously, Renjun thought -- and gave the man a little bow. “Yeah. He needed a little exercise.” He touched his grandfather on the shoulder. “This is Mr. Cho, Grandpa. Do you remember him?”

His grandfather didn’t answer, only squinted at Mr. Cho, puzzlement obvious.

“No problem,” Mr. Cho said. “It’s been a while. How about drinks, for all three of you?” He grinned at Renjun. “It’s on me.”

“That’s okay,” Jeno responded hurriedly. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t mind it.”

“Really, you don’t --”

Renjun jabbed Jeno in the ribs. “Jeno. It’s free drinks.”

Jeno quieted as a blush rose on his neck.

They exited with bottles of tea, which Jeno assisted his grandfather with opening. Renjun gulped half of his down in a single go, and said, “Mr. Cho sure is nice.”

“I think he just wanted us gone,” Jeno murmured.

Renjun eyed him curiously. “What? Why?”

“Hey -- Grandpa,” Jeno scolded, stopping and tugging up the sleeve of his hoodie to wipe his grandfather’s chin. “You’re spilling it. Be careful.”

“Oh… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Let me carry that for you.”

They began to shuffle ahead. Renjun sipped his tea, walking slowly, leaving his unanswered questions to be swept away by the wind.

---

It was a quiet afternoon. Renjun knelt on one of the kitchen chairs, assembling a jigsaw puzzle across the table. He’d begun to run out of other things to do, now that he’d scoped out the entirety of the backyard and the trees beyond it, and his uncle’s computer was so old and slow that it was torture to try and operate with Renjun’s limited patience. However, his uncle’s house was filled with things, including stacks of jigsaws that Renjun had discovered in the upstairs closet. And while he was not really a puzzle person, he found that they were nice to do once in a while. Quiet activities could be a pleasant reset for the brain, a different way to channel his energy.

His uncle was standing beyond the island counter, cleaning the outdated leftovers from the fridge. He raised his head to observe Renjun’s work, and asked, “Why aren’t you doing the outer pieces first?”

“What do you mean?” Renjun looked down at his progress questioningly.

“You should do the pieces on the outside first, then fill the middle in. It’s easier. Have you never done a puzzle before?”

“Of course I’ve --”

There was a knock at the door. Renjun leapt from his chair and bounded over to answer it.

“Hey,” Jeno said. He stood on the front step with hands shoved into his shorts pockets, legs bowed in an awkward stance, eyes downturned. “Can I come hang out here today?”

“Okay,” Renjun said, knowing his uncle would not be bothered by it. He stepped back to let Jeno in. “I’m doing a puzzle right now. Wanna do it with me?”

Jeno settled at the chair beside him, and poked around at the disconnected pieces. “You know, you’re supposed to start with the edge pieces.”

Renjun’s uncle laughed from near the fridge.

“If you’re going to make fun of my puzzle-making process,” Renjun said, “I’ll kick you out.”

Jeno, surprisingly, did not argue. He picked up one piece, turned it over as if examining it, though Renjun could tell he was really barely paying attention. His bottom lip jutted, and he refused to look up from the table. Even his breathing seemed forced, like he was counting every breath he took, performing it with robotic carefulness.

“Are you okay?” Renjun asked him. “You look sad.”

“I’m okay.”

“Did something happen?”

That jutted bottom lip began to tremble, and Jeno pressed his hands over his eyes. His shoulders shook with silent sobs.

Renjun’s uncle noticed and crossed the kitchen, crouching beside Jeno’s chair. “What’s the matter, Jeno?”

“My grandpa had a stroke this morning,” he managed between shaky inhales. “While I was watching him. He’s at the hospital right now.”

“Oh, dear.” Renjun’s uncle stood again and placed a hand on Jeno’s head, holding him in a half-hug, running his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry that happened. Are your parents home right now?”

“They’re are at the hospital with him -- my mom told me I should stay home, ‘cause it might take awhile before they get any news --”

Renjun shuffled his puzzle pieces around uncomfortably. He never knew how to talk to sad people. Ever since his mother told him he lacked self-awareness, he was afraid of saying anything that might make it worse.

Luckily, his uncle seemed to have control of things. He put a guiding arm around Jeno’s shoulder and brought him into the living room. Then he took the blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapped it around him, gesturing for him to sit. Renjun followed a few paces behind, hovering in the archway to the living room.

“Renjun,” his uncle said. “Come on. I’m going to make some hot chocolate for the two of you, so take a seat.”

Renjun did as he was told, and settled beside Jeno on the couch, making sure there were a few inches between them. He wrung his hands, not sure what he was meant to be doing. Jeno sniffled beside him. Renjun reached to retrieve a tissue box from the end stand, and held it out to Jeno, who took it with a blush-muddled frown, as if he was ashamed for Renjun to see him crying. Renjun searched for the remote next, turning on the news on the TV so there was a little noise to fill the quiet.

Jeno said, “I must look really silly right now.”

“What do you mean?” Renjun asked, incredulous. “Silly how? It’s normal to cry when something like that happens.” Renjun decided that Jeno must not be a boy who cried often. He could not relate -- he cried at least once a month, usually when he saw a sad movie or embarrassed himself at school and had to hide in the boys’ bathroom and let the frustrated tears out.

“I don’t know,” Jeno muttered. He crumpled his tissue in his hands, knuckles folding, fingers working anxiously.

“Your grandpa must be pretty wonderful, huh?” Renjun tried, hoping it wouldn’t make Jeno sadder to think of him. Maybe it would be a good thing to talk about it.

He was pleased to see a tiny smile break on Jeno’s lips. “Yeah. I was always close to him, ever since I was little. He wasn’t always like he is now. He was -- is -- so wise and handy and funny.” He lifted his head, gaze flickering as he dredged up a memory. “When I was really small, I remember he used to read this book to me all the time. A picture book, about a puppy. He read it to me so many times that I memorized it. Then I would read it to him, though not properly -- I was too young to read, I just knew all the words by heart, because he taught them to me.”

Renjun found it hard to picture the man he’d met -- small, fragile, eyes vacant -- the way Jeno described him. Alzheimer’s, he thought, must be something transformative, destructive. It was terrifying to consider how it could break a person down into something unrecognizable.

“He used to be a surgeon, too, you know,” Jeno went on. Now that Renjun had invited him to talk, it seemed he couldn’t stop, as if he’d been storing the words up for ages, just waiting for someone to ask him to share them. “A really good one. He used to let me go through all his books where they showed these anatomy diagrams. He taught me all the bones in the human body, and we’d gotten started on the muscles, too, before… before his memory started going bad.”

“You know the names of all the bones?”

“Yup. An adult has two hundred and six bones. Did you know that?”

“No. That seems like too many.”

Jeno laughed, though his eyes were still red from crying. The combination of the two gave Renjun a strange feeling -- something like admiration. It tickled in his stomach, like a feather being tossed about, its soft vane ghosting over his ribs.

“Jeno,” he said. “Do you ever talk to your friends about this kind of thing? About your grandfather?”

Jeno, taken aback at the question, tugged the blanket more tightly around himself, like a turtle retreating into its shell. “I don’t know… no. I guess I don’t. It’d be weird to talk to them about it.”

“Why?”

“It’s just hard to talk about. I don’t even talk to my parents about it much.” He drew his legs up under the blanket, rested his arm on his knees, and pressed his mouth against the back of his hand, making his words muffled. “Especially my mom. She already lost her mother a few years ago. And when my grandpa dies, she won’t have either of her parents. Even mentioning something like that makes her really upset. So I try not to bother her about it.”

Jeno was too conscientious, Renjun realized, to burden others with his troubles. Perhaps that made him a good son. Or perhaps it was a recipe for disaster.

Renjun’s uncle came sweeping in from the kitchen, mismatched mugs in either hand. “Hot cocoa’s done,” he announced, setting them down on the coffee table. “Renjun. Why don’t you run upstairs to the closet and go through those boxes again? I think I have some board games, too. They might make a welcome distraction.” He glanced at Jeno. “Does that sound okay?”

“Yeah. It sounds fun.”

Renjun made his way to the stairs. He watched the back of Jeno’s head and the tension of his blanketed shoulders between the balusters, walking slowly, slowly up the steps, until he disappeared from sight.

---

About halfway through Renjun’s summer vacation, his uncle decided it was time to do some spring cleaning, though spring was long past. He started early in the morning, and Renjun was awoken by the sound of boxes being moved about and stacked in the hallway outside his bedroom. He crawled out of bed and pushed open the door, rubbing his still-sleepy eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’ve decided I have too much stuff,” his uncle had said. “I’m packing it up and tossing it. Or donating it, if it’s worthwhile.”

Renjun could not picture that house minus the clutter. It was an integral part of its personality, and made it so that everyday revealed new surprises. Renjun had only realized just the day before that there was a ceramic owl sitting on top of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, staring at you as you sat on the toilet or stepped out of the shower. He’d nearly had a heart attack at the sight of it.

Still, he got dressed and began to help his uncle to sort through his belongings. It was an arduous process, as those belongings were tucked everywhere, unreachable on high shelves and stashed in corners and hidden beneath tables. Renjun would discover some odd knick knack, hold it up in the air, and ask, “Yes or no?” His uncle would give it an appraising look, scratching his chin, and make a decision. After a while, Renjun realized that his uncle was barely tossing anything, and made it his duty to argue him out of his more pointless keepsakes.

“Yes or no?” he asked, lifting the wooden duck on the kitchen table.

“No,” his uncle responded. “I like that one.”

“It doesn’t even do anything. It’s just a duck. And not even a real one.”

“But it has charm.”

“Can you even remember where you got it?”

His uncle hesitated for too long before answering. Renjun promptly placed the duck in his box.

“You need to be more discerning. Otherwise, you’ll keep everything.”

“Fine,” his uncle conceded. “I suppose it’s a good thing you’re here. I would not be very productive on my own, huh?”

Renjun grinned, and turned the doorknob with his elbow. With some difficulty, he lugged the now-full box down the steps and set it at the side of the house where it would be out of the way.

“What are you doing?”

Renjun looked up to see Jeno at the fence, eyeing the box curiously.

“We’re cleaning all the old weird stuff out of my uncle’s house. Do you wanna help?”

“Okay.” Jeno walked across the lawn and followed Renjun back inside. He ordinarily would have had to watch his grandfather on a day like this one, Renjun thought, but after he’d gotten back from the hospital, his mother had taken the week off to look after him herself. He was doing okay, Jeno had said. He was recovering, slowly but surely, and though he was still bedridden, the doctors said he should be back on his feet soon, as it had been a relatively minor stroke. Renjun was glad to hear it -- he wasn’t sure how Jeno would have coped if the news had been worse.

Renjun’s uncle was sorting through his pots and pans, stacking them on the kitchen counter and evaluating them. When he saw Jeno, he said, “Lovely to have another helper. If you see anything you like, you can have it, okay?”

“Are you sure?” Jeno asked.

“Of course. In fact, you may want to check my office closet. There are a lot of books in there. I know you like that kind of thing.”

Renjun led Jeno upstairs to his uncle’s office. Renjun was not often allowed in there, as it was a minefield of precariously stacked papers which apparently had some kind of organization, though Renjun could not quite figure out how his uncle managed to maintain it. He picked over the mess towards the closet, which was already half-open, heaps of books spilling out across the wood floor, some lying with their pages splayed and spines bent open.

“Whoa,” Jeno said, sitting down cross-legged beside them and picking one up. “Your uncle sure has a lot of stuff.”

“No kidding.” Renjun settled beside him, amazed at the variety -- cookbooks, textbooks, cheesy-looking romance novels from twenty years ago. He could not think of one good reason for a person to own all of these, especially since they seemed as though they had not been touched in an eternity. Dust coated their covers, and Renjun blew on one of them, creating a cloud of flecks.

Jeno cracked open one of the books, tracing a finger down the page, the banded light from the half-blinded window dancing in his eyes. His mouth moved silently as he read, both subtle and distinct -- Renjun could pick out the t as his teeth touched his lip, the flick of his tongue on the l, though it all blurred together so that Renjun could not catch the phrases in whole. It made him want to lean in and turn his ear towards him, as if Jeno were murmuring a beautiful secret, and he desperately needed to know what it was.

Renjun pulled his camcorder from his pocket.

“There you go again,” Jeno said. Renjun had gotten so used to his unspoken reading that that sound of his voice surprised him. “Did inspiration strike you or something?”

“Yes.”

“You know, it’s not very helpful if you’re just filming me. You could be sorting through these with me.”

“Can’t help it,” Renjun said. “It’s my artistic imperative.”

Jeno rolled his eyes, and continued to read.

Renjun kept rolling, finger on the zoom, eyes locked on Jeno’s lips.

---

Renjun finally convinced his uncle to drive him to the movies on a dreary Saturday. The nearest theatre was about twenty minutes away, a little further than his uncle was typically willing to drive, except Renjun had made it a point that morning to express his boredom in the most annoying ways possible.

“Uncle,” he’d whined, lying on the living room floor, his legs in the air, feet propped against the window sill. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself today. I can’t even play outside. Look at the rain. I’d be soaked in five minutes.”

“There’s plenty to do,” his uncle had insisted. “You could read a book. I have shelves full of them.”

“Books are lame,” he’d muttered. “And you don’t even have any movies to watch. You only have old Chinese dramas on VHS. I’ve never even heard of most of them.” Then he’d perked up a little, flipping over onto his stomach and perching his chin on his palms. “I just had an idea! What if you took me to the movies?”

“You asked me that last week. I told you, there aren’t any theaters in town.”

“But there’s one the next town over.” Renjun had put on his puppy-dog eyes. “You’d have two hours to yourself. And I won’t bother you again for the rest of the summer.”

When his uncle had finally broken down and said yes, Renjun had gone and called Jeno on the phone. Movies were always more fun with friends.

Presently, his uncle dropped them off outside the cinema and they went inside. It was a tiny place, with only five theaters and chipping green wall paint in the lobby. Renjun had checked their current screenings online before they’d left, and decided they would see an American film he’d never heard of, because it was the only thing screening right then that wasn’t a cheesy rom-com or a kids movie, and because the trailer had promised “non-stop action and thrills,” which sounded tantalizing after a movie-less summer.

They made their way into their row, exactly in the theater’s center as Renjun preferred. They were the only ones there, aside from a couple in the far back, who Renjun feared would maybe start getting handsy or something during the movie, so he devoted himself to staring straight ahead for the next two hours. Jeno had bought a bucket of popcorn and tilted it in Renjun’s direction. As the lights dimmed and the trailers started, Renjun reached for a handful without looking, only for their fingers to bump clumsily together.

Renjun snapped his hand back, holding it in his lap.

“Sorry,” Jeno said. He nudged the bag closer. “Have some.”

“That’s okay,” Renjun said. He was suddenly nervous, though he couldn’t place why. He shoved that nervousness to the back of his brain where it belonged, and focused instead on the movie as it started. It was a spy thriller, Bond-wannabe type thing, where the main character was a down-and-out thug who was recruited by the US government for his immense skill in deception as a spy. Not exactly an original premise, but Renjun thought cliches could be fun once in a while, so he was sufficiently entertained. He was so sucked in, he’d forgotten Jeno beside him, and went to prop his arm on the rest between them, only to bump elbows this time rather than hands. Then he was nervous again, heart thumping, too aware of his body and the space he took up. Against his better judgment, he turned to look at the couple in the back of the theater.

Only fifteen minutes in, and they were making out, the girl practically in the guy’s lap, looking as if she was trying to chew his face off.

Renjun’s face went vibrant red. He quickly turned back, trying to look anywhere but at Jeno, which should have been easy since there was a movie playing on a huge screen in front of him, though he found it to be an immense struggle.

“What’s up?” Jeno whispered. “Is something wrong?”

Renjun could feel the gentle ghost of his breath on his ear. His heart was no longer thumping, but crashing about, flopping like a fish out of water.

“Shut up,” he hissed, hoping Jeno couldn’t see his blush in the dark. “No talking during movies.”

Jeno obliged with a shrug.

Renjun was on edge until the movie finished. As the lights came up, he texted his uncle that they were ready to be picked up, and slid out of their row as quickly as possible, Jeno trailing behind as they emerged into the sunlight outside.

“So what did you think of the movie?” Jeno asked, leaning against the wall as they waited.

“It was alright,” Renjun answered, though really, he’d barely paid attention to it. It was so unlike him, he thought; usually, when there was a movie on, it was impossible to draw him away from it. Maybe he was simply out of his groove. Maybe it had just been a boring movie, not worth the attention anyway.

Or maybe, he’d been too distracted by the thought that Jeno was only inches away, the shape of his body drawn starkly in the bright light of the movie projector.

“Just alright?” Jeno said teasingly. “Not the response I expected from Director Boy. Was it too lowbrow for your tastes?”

“Maybe,” Renjun responded. He looked at Jeno properly now, letting his eyes slink up his bare arms, across his broadening shoulders, over his Adam’s apple, finally to his face. “I think my tastes are maturing.”

---

Renjun and Jeno strolled through the cool reprieve of shade provided by the forest. It turned out that what lay in the opposite direction to the downtown area was simply more road, and along that road the trees thickened into a pretty mix of oak and pine. Jeno had told Renjun that he’d been playing in those woods his whole life, proven by the worn trails that wove in and out of the patched sunlight. Renjun was thankful again that his uncle lived just far enough away from Seoul to allow that kind of closeness to nature. It was completely different from back home, where Renjun lived in the Jilin City suburbs. There, he was lucky to have immediate access to stores, transport, and other conveniences, but not this kind of untouched beauty.

“We made it so the trail loops back around about a half-mile out,” Jeno was explaining, pointing further down the path with one hand, and in his other holding a popsicle. It was a terribly hot day (Renjun had known it the moment he woke up, sheets stuck to him with sweat, the sun that came through his bedroom window so intense he felt he was frying), so Jeno’s mother had given them popsicles from the freezer to keep them cool as they walked. Renjun licked at his own, which had already half-melted, dripping cherry-red onto his hand. “If you walk far enough past the trail, you’ll hit the creek.”

“The creek?” Renjun asked.

“Yeah. It’s just deep enough to swim in. Shoot, we should’ve brought swimsuits. Maybe tomorrow.” Jeno stepped up onto a rock at the trail’s side, walking with his arms out to maintain his balance, one stone to another.

Renjun liked how it looked, the way Jeno’s posture broadened him, forming a wrinkle in the fabric of his white tee where his shoulder blades parted. Renjun was always attracted to little details, and he found that Jeno was made of them, and Renjun discovered a new one every time he looked at him -- the angular jut of the bone in his thumb, the pronounced bow of his top lip, the slight raise in the bridge of his nose. Renjun took out his camcorder as he’d done a hundred other times that summer, zooming in at the back of Jeno’s neck, where he could see the bump of his vertebrae at its base.

Jeno continued to walk forward, but turned his head so he could glance back at Renjun. “You’re doing that again?”

“I told you,” Renjuns said. “It’s for a project. I’ve got to record everything.”

“I’ve never even seen any of your videos,” Jeno complained. He stopped when he stood upon the tallest rock of the outcropping, and dropped down to sit on its edge, legs dangling above the exposed dirt of the trail. He stuck his hand out, expectant. “Let me look at them.”

Renjun hopped up onto the rock beside Jeno, scooting close so their knees touched, and passed the camcorder into Jeno’s hands. “The menu button is here,” he said between bites of his popsicle, pointing over Jeno’s shoulder. “And you use the arrow buttons --”

“I got it, I got it.” Jeno tapped through the video thumbnails, slowly at first, then more quickly, passing like he was searching for something specific and couldn’t find it. He was quiet for a long time, aside from the clicking of the camcorder buttons. Renjun watched the screen reflecting in Jeno’s eyes, a bright white square against the dark of his irises.

“These are all videos of me,” Jeno murmured.

“What? No they aren’t.” Renjun looked back at the menu, at the rows of thumbnails. Jeno was, in fact, in nearly all of them, the only obvious exceptions being the ones he’d taken at Hanyang. Renjun felt a twinge in his stomach at the realization, embarrassment, as if Jeno was reading his diary. He became aware, too, of the fact that despite the intense summer heat, he had leaned in so that he and Jeno were touching, bodies warm against each other. Self-conscious, he scooted an inch back, while Jeno selected a thumbnail and let a video play. It was one of him from Renjun’s uncle’s house, when they’d been clearing out boxes, shot without Jeno knowing from behind the closet doorway. The next video was another taken in secret, where Jeno had begun reading something aloud to him from a dusty history textbook unburied from the bottom of his uncle’s closet, and Renjun had zoomed in close at Jeno’s lips while he spoke. Then Jeno had noticed the camera on him and offered a peace sign, though it was only half in-frame.

Jeno watched the footage of himself with an unreadable expression. His hands were cradling the camcorder almost reverently, with more caution than Renjun had expected to see in them; but the next second, he was shoving it back into Renjun’s arms, and saying, “You should diversify your portfolio.”

“You’re the only person I ever see this summer,” Renjun muttered, defensive. He shoved his camcorder back into his pocket. “I don’t have many options.”

“Hmm.” Jeno glanced up at the sky. It was completely cloudless, and so blue it was electric. Cicadas buzzed, and in combination with the heat, it was like sitting inside a telephone wire, all drone and zing and intensity. The stone beneath them was half in the shadow of the trees, cool against their thighs, but searing hot where it was exposed to the sun. Renjun held his popsicle out into the light, not caring as it kept melting, observing how the little crystals of ice glimmered, vibrant from the food dye, but also partially translucent, like a thin slice of a ruby beneath a microscope.

“Renjun,” Jeno said. “Have you ever kissed anybody?”

Renjun froze. “No. Why?”

“I don’t know. I was just asking.” Nonchalantly, Jeno swallowed the last bite of his own popsicle, then folded the plastic leftovers in his fist. “You’ve really never kissed anyone?”

Renjun did not like this line of questioning. If he’d felt like his diary was being read before, he felt it doubly so now. “No. Have you ever kissed someone?”

“No.”

“Then we’re even,” Renjun said dismissively. So even Mr. Popular hasn’t had his first kiss. They were only fifteen -- still plenty of time left for it to happen, so he tried not to overthink it. Instead, he sucked at the end of his wrapper, drinking the now completely liquid remainder of his popsicle.

Jeno broke into a sudden laugh and said, “Your mouth is all red, you know.”

“What?”

“From your popsicle. It dyed you red. You’ve got it on your tongue and your lips. And the corners of your mouth, too.”

Renjun lifted a hand to try and wipe it away, then glanced down at his knuckles to see if the pigment had rubbed off at all. “Did I get it?” he asked Jeno, except when he looked back up, Jeno was close to him, really close, and then his mouth was on Renjun’s mouth. Jeno’s lips were soft in their inexperience, but moving with curiosity at the newness of the sensation, trying to feel out what a kiss should be. Renjun did not know what he had expected it to feel like; he’d known from TV and movies that kisses were supposed to feel nice, but he didn’t realize it felt nice everywhere, not just at the lips, but like a pleasant static from head to toe. He kissed Jeno back eagerly, perhaps too eagerly, as their teeth bumped with a stinging click, but neither of them stopped to acknowledge it. Renjun hadn’t known that he’d wanted Jeno’s kisses until just then, and now, he wasn’t sure he could have enough. He wanted Jeno’s lips and hands and heat -- it turned out, Jeno was a million times hotter than summer, enough to make Renjun melt.

They stopped kissing to breathe.

“Your face is red, now, too,” Jeno said. “It matches your mouth.”

Renjun could not think of anything to say in response. He pressed a hand to his cheek, feeling the burn of his blush, brain completely fried.

---

Like Jeno had said, they were going to the creek the next day in an effort to fight the persistent heatwave. That morning, Renjun grabbed a towel from his uncle’s bathroom cabinet, and the very thought of seeing Jeno again in just a few minutes was enough to make his heart beat blisteringly fast, so fast it made it hard to breathe, and he bent over and buried his face in the towel, trying to calm himself.

Jeno likes me.

He could not stop thinking about it. It had followed him around all day yesterday, even after he and Jeno had walked home, hands shyly linked, and said goodbye at the yard fence. He’d thought about it while lying in bed, knowing he would never fall asleep because he was going to see Jeno again tomorrow and Jeno. Liked. Him.

“What are you up to today?” Renjun’s uncle asked him, as Renjun passed through the kitchen with his towel on his arm, doing his best not to look as giddy as he felt.

“Nothing,” he responded lightly.

“Is that so?” His uncle took a sip from his coffee mug, smirking.

“I’m going to go swimming at the creek.”

“With Jeno?”

Renjun hurriedly slipped his sandals on and ran out the door. When it clicked shut, it cut off the end of his uncle’s knowing laugh.

Jeno was waiting for him at the gate, watching Renjun approach with a closed-lip smile, his hand a visor over his eyes to block the sun, and Renjun had to resist the urge to dive over the fence and plant a kiss right on his mouth.

“Ready?” Jeno asked him.

“Yeah.”

Jeno got off the gate and opened it for Renjun, and the two of them walked to the road, following it to the left towards the forest.

Renjun kept looking at Jeno’s hand, hanging at his side, and wondering if he was supposed to take it. He was too nervous to. He thought if he did, he might have a heart attack and collapse there on the side of the road and Jeno would have to carry his limp body all the way back to his uncle’s house and deliver the bad news, and that would be a terribly embarrassing way to die.

Play it cool, he told himself. You do not want to scare your first boyfriend away.

Thankfully, Jeno rescued him from the awkward silence. “Where’s your swimsuit?”

Renjun looked down at himself. He was wearing his usual outfit, an old t-shirt and cargo shorts. “I didn’t bring a swimsuit with me to Korea. I’ll just swim in this.”

Jeno shrugged. “You could have asked to borrow something.”

“It wouldn’t have fit me.”

“You could always skinny dip.”

Renjun punched Jeno in the arm, face luminescent pink.

When they arrived at the creek, Renjun removed his sandals, walked down to the water, and stuck his toes in. It was not very cold, but Renjun preferred it that way, and it would still be a relief from the bright sun. “It’s nice and warm --” he began, but stopped when he turned and saw that Jeno was pulling his shirt off over his head, stripping down to only his trunks. For some reason Renjun had not considered the fact that Jeno would not be swimming fully clothed, and now he had to force himself not to stare.

Jeno, oblivious, joined him at the water’s edge and stepped in. “It is nice,” he said, wading out until the water was around his waist, fingers trailing across the surface and making it ripple in his wake. Renjun followed him, recoiling when the water hit his knees, but continuing anyway. He liked the way the creek smelled, like mud and leaves and algae. The water was a little greenish, but not murky, and the sunlight streamed through it so that he was able to see the bottom. He watched the minnows dart around, avoiding his footsteps, while he avoided sharp twigs and rocks in the riverbed.

“You’re not taking your shirt off?” Jeno observed.

“No thank you.”

“Are you shy?”

“Yes,” Renjun admitted.

“Cute,” Jeno said, and Renjun had half a mind to plunge beneath the water to try and hide the returning blush. “If you come a little further, it’s deep enough to swim.”

“I don’t know how to swim.”

“Really? Do you want me to show you?”

“Okay.”

Jeno came back up into the shallows, taking Renjun’s hands and guiding him to the place where the water rose to their ribs. It was a little humiliating, Renjun thought, for Jeno to teach him to swim as if he were a child. But Jeno did not chide or condescend, and he moved and spoke with the same patience and kindness he always showed to his grandfather. Renjun was comforted by it, and he allowed himself to relax while Jeno helped him onto his back, showing him how easy it was to float.

There were not any underwater kisses, or any of the sort of ridiculous, romantic thing Renjun had seen in movies before; and he might have been disappointed, except he was happy just to be with Jeno, so the imagined kisses that had plagued his mind all morning had dissipated. Maybe that was a good thing. They didn’t have to move fast. Renjun was content for them simply to go where the current took them.

Once they tired of the water, they climbed ashore and laid down on a big, flat rock at the creekside, allowing the sun to dry them off. Renjun shut his eyes, basking in the warmth, completely at peace as he listened to the birds call over his head and the gentle rush of the creek’s current and, even closer, the sound of Jeno’s breathing beside him. Renjun turned his head, watching the rise and fall of Jeno’s bare chest, the way droplets of water clung at his collar bone and throat.

His heartbeat quickened, and he shivered.

“Are you cold?” Jeno asked.

“No. I’m fine.” Renjun shook his head, trying to tear his thoughts away from the pretty glistening of Jeno’s skin. “That was fun. I can swim pretty good now, huh?”

“I mean, you pull off a mean doggy paddle.”

Renjun giggled. “I had a good teacher.”

“You don’t have your camera right now, do you?” Jeno asked.

“No. I wouldn’t bring it to a river. It might get wet.”

Jeno propped himself on an elbow, twisting his lips in a thoughtful, anxious manner. “I want to tell you something.”

Something he doesn’t want recorded, Renjun thought. “What is it?”

“I told you before that I didn’t take my grandpa out for walks much anymore,” Jeno began quietly. “It’s because my mom doesn’t want me to. When we went that time before, I really shouldn’t have done it. I got in trouble for it once. I’m only supposed to watch him at the house.”

“You got in trouble?” Renjun couldn’t imagine it. Jeno was the perfect son. He took such careful, loving care of his grandfather. It seemed impossible.

Jeno traced the surface of the rock with his index finger, pushing around a few stray grains of sand. “I took him for a walk downtown one time, to the grocery store. And there were these other kids -- they live on the other side of town, past the auto shop… I don’t know them very well, but I see them around sometimes, always riding their bikes in the street and yelling and spitting in the dirt and stuff. Anyway, they were at the store too, and they got behind us in line at the checkout. I was helping my grandpa count out his money, because we like to let him do little things like that, because it’s supposed to help his memory. And those kids started acting awful, laughing at him and harassing us for taking too long and saying stuff like how he ought to be in a home if he can’t do things by himself…” Jeno bit down hard on his bottom lip, a touch of fire igniting in his eyes. “So I turned around and I punched one of them right in the face. Except that wasn’t satisfying enough, so I kept pummeling him and Mr. Cho had to tear me off of him. I don’t know if I would have stopped otherwise. That’s how angry I was. And then Mr. Cho called my mom and told her she had to come pick me and Grandpa up. She was shocked… I’d never done anything like that before, never gotten in a fight or anything. She told me that from then on, I couldn’t take him out anymore. But it wasn’t really because of me. She didn’t want us to run into those kids again, or any person who might be mean to him like that.” He paused. “I don’t think Mr. Cho was happy to see me back in his store the other week. Not after all that. Especially ‘cause I’d knocked over a display and broke some bottles when I pummeled that kid. My mom had to pay for them.”

Now Renjun could imagine it. It was just like Jeno, to fight back against someone who disrespected his family. To protect the people he cared about. “You don’t regret it, do you?” Renjun observed. “You’re glad you did it.”

“Yeah,” Jeno said. “I wasn’t gonna let someone talk to him like that. I hate people who aren’t patient with others -- who can’t even have a little bit of empathy. It makes me sick.”

Renjun wondered if the reason Jeno didn’t like to talk to his friends about his grandfather, or have them over to his house, was because he was afraid they might act like the kids at the store. Maybe they would laugh, too. Renjun recalled the sheepish, standoffish way Jeno had acted when he’d had come to his house that time he’d been watching his grandfather, like he expected Renjun might be one of those nasty kids, too. He didn’t want Jeno to think that about him. He wanted Jeno to know he could be patient and empathetic and trustworthy.

“I think you did the right thing,” Renjun said. “Or -- I don’t know if it was the right thing. But I understand why you did it.” He found Jeno’s still absentmindedly busy hand, and held it, despite his nerves. “You’re a good grandson.”

Jeno smiled, like a terrible weight had been lifted off of him, and lay back down on his back, content in the warmth of the sun.

---

When they got back to Jeno’s house, it was late afternoon, the sunlight taking on a golden sheen. Nobody was home, as Jeno’s mother had taken his grandfather to a doctor’s appointment, so they thought they would take the opportunity to raid the kitchen for snacks, as all the swimming had made them famished. However, Jeno stopped Renjun at the door, and said, “We’ve got to wash our feet off before we go in, or my mom will kill us.”

“Oh.” Renjun looked down. Perhaps unwisely, they’d walked back carrying their shoes, and now their feet were covered in dirt and grass, picked up while still wet and now sticking to their heels. Jeno began to uncoil the hose from its hook on the house’s back wall, letting its green, snake-like rubber hit the grass with a smack. He twisted the knob, and water began to stream from the nozzle, weak at first and then collecting pressure until it became strong enough to properly clean them off.

Jeno washed his own feet first, bent over and propping himself up with one hand braced on the wall. Renjun was entranced by the way Jeno’s lashes fanned over his cheeks, long and dark and pretty, and if he wasn’t so distracted by them he might have noticed the devious smirk that was rising on his lips. Quicker than Renjun could react, Jeno whipped the house up, spraying Renjun’s legs and middle.

“Jeno --” Renjun cried, backing up and nearly slipping on the damp grass. “We just spent ages getting dry!”

Jeno clutched his stomach, laughing so hard it seemed to hurt him. “You should have seen your face -- I’m sorry, you were wide open, I couldn’t resist --”

“Jeno,” Renjun said again. “Stop laughing, you jerk.”

The other boy did his best to comply, though a little hiccupy giggle still made its way out before he offered, “Here, you can get me now. If that’ll make you feel better.” He held the hose out.

Renjun snatched it and turned the nozzle on Jeno, wetting his shirt. Then, relishing his revenge, he jerked the stream up higher, splashing Jeno in the chin.

“Hey -- not my face --”

“You started it.”

“Give it back to me if you can’t be responsible --”

Now Renjun was laughing, running in the other direction as Jeno gave chase, clutching the hose to his chest and hunching to hide it. Jeno wrapped his arms around Renjun, trying to pry it from his fingers, and suddenly the water was going everywhere, soaking their clothes, removing the dirt and grass from their feet but making them even more unsuited to going inside. They stumbled into the wall, Renjun back first, and he had a moment’s comprehension of how close to each other they were again before Jeno stopped trying for the hose and took Renjun’s face in his hands instead, kissing him, damp forehead to damp forehead. The hose fell out of Renjun’s grasp, hitting the ground; and, using his last bit of sense before Jeno stole it away from him, Renjun reached along the wall to find the water knob and shut it off before they flooded the backyard.

It started the same as it had the day before, gentle and exploratory. Renjun’s hands settled on Jeno’s chest, and he loved how solid he felt, how strong, like he was the only thing holding Renjun together. He pressed his hands harder, trying to feel for Jeno’s heartbeat to see if it was thumping as rapidly as his own.

Then the kisses were not gentle, but certain and demanding of more. Jeno’s tongue glided over Renjun’s bottom lip. Renjun melted, almost literally this time, sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the ground, and Jeno went with him, kneeling between Renjun’s legs.

Jeno kissed him again, and Renjun felt like summer would last forever.

---

Renjun returned to his uncle’s house with darkly flushed cheeks and the secret of what they’d done stashed under his tongue. Just as he’d been when he’d left that morning, he was giddy, steps light and skitting across the hardwood of the living room floor, almost a dance.

“You’re back,” his uncle said.

Renjun startled, having not noticed him there. He was sitting in his armchair, reading a book under the subtle golden light of his brass-necked, compact desk light.

“Yeah,” Renjun said.

His uncle adjusted his glasses on his nose and squinted at him. “Your face is red, Renjun. Do you feel okay?”

“Oh -- yeah. I’m fine.”

“You look feverish.”

“It’s just ‘cause it’s hot out.”

His uncle shrugged, and flipped a page in his book. “By the way -- could you remind me what day it is that you’re leaving? It’s next week, right?”

Renjun’s body lost its electricity. The heat left his face, and it paled.

“Yeah,” he said. “On Friday.”

It was Sunday now. Five days left.

Renjun had become oblivious to the passage of time. Had he really been there for nearly a whole month? Had he been so caught up in Jeno, that he hadn’t noticed their time ticking away, even though that should have been the most critical, obvious thing?

The switch from elation to misery was so fast, it was like a suckerpunch.

“Well, we’ll need to make sure you have everything packed before then,” his uncle said, having turned attention back to his book. “And you should call your parents to check in and make sure they’ll be there to pick you up from the airport.”

“Yeah.”

“Perfect. I’m going to start dinner in a minute. How does hotpot sound? I picked up some beef at the market today.”

“Sounds great,” Renjun said, knowing it did not matter what they ate, because he would not be able to stomach much of it. He would not even be able to taste it -- his heartbreak would strip it of its flavor.

That night, as he lay in bed, he wondered if he was overreacting. He and Jeno had kissed for the first time just yesterday. They’d only just figured out that they wanted something more than friendship. Why was it so devastating to lose something he’d had for such a short time?

Renjun wondered if he was in love with Jeno. He’d never been in love before -- he’d had crushes, but they had been fleeting. He might see a boy, and wonder vaguely what kissing them might be like, or what it would feel like to have their hand at the small of his back or the nape of his neck. But those boys would never return his wondering, of course. In fact, most of them were boys who would eventually notice him only to poke fun at him. They were the boys who made nasty remarks in the hall, who called him a space case and a nerd and a weirdo.

Jeno was not one of those boys. And maybe Renjun was still high on the sensation of his touch, but he thought it could be love.

He recalled what Jeno told him before he’d left that afternoon, after they’d come to their senses and cleaned up. He’d given Renjun one last kiss, smiled like he could not hold it back, and said, “I can’t wait to see you again tomorrow.”

They were running out of tomorrows. Renjun would make sure to treat them preciously while he still could.

---

Jeno had helped his father to put up a hammock between two trees along the edge of their backyard. A big hammock, big enough for two people, but Renjun had not wanted to get on, because once he’d seen a video on the internet of a girl who got in a hammock and then the whole thing had flipped upside down and she’d fallen onto the ground with a comical smack, and Renjun thought that was the exact kind of thing that might happen to him, given his history of unintentional injury. He was prone to walking directly into telephone poles and street signs, and one time he’d been crossing the street and a cat had run out in front of him on the crosswalk and he’d tripped right over it, face planting in the middle of traffic and taking so long to pull himself together (half due to injury, half due to embarrassment) that people in cars had begun to honk their horns at him. It was the fourth most mortifying experience of his life.

Jeno had to coax him into it by holding the hammock steady for him while he clamored in. Then, once Renjun was situated, Jeno hoisted himself up, rocking the hammock and making Renjun momentarily panic, gripping the woven hammock strings for dear life. However, Jeno settled in beside him without incident, their bodies pressed together, and took Renjun’s hand.

"It's shitty that this summer has to end," Jeno said.

Renjun didn't say anything. He held his camcorder up to film their linked hands, zooming way in to capture the intertwining of their fingers; then, he angled it towards the evening sky, which was vibrant pink-orange between the blackened silhouettes of the trees.

Jeno laughed. "That camera is practically glued to your palm."

"It's important."

"Why?"

Renjun had never described it to someone before. It made him nervous for some reason, like he was making himself vulnerable. "I just see things sometimes, and I think, 'If I don't get it on video, then it's gone forever.' Like there are all these little details in life that can't be reproduced once they're gone. Videos make them last forever. It makes it so you can look at them over and over, and that makes them realer, somehow."

Jeno cocked a brow at Renjun’s logic. "If you don't record it, does that mean it wasn't real? That it didn’t really happen?"

"Not exactly. You have the memory of it to prove it. But memories aren't as permanent. They're unreliable."

Jeno stared at the red light of Renjun's camcorder, the light that meant it was recording. "That reminds me of something I read once. When a woman gives birth, it hurts so badly that no one should ever want to do it again. But because human memory is so faulty, they forget exactly how painful it was, and with time, they start to remember it differently. So that way, they aren't afraid of having another child later on. Because their memory rewrote itself into believing that childbirth isn't as painful as it really is.”

Renjun leaned his head against Jeno's shoulder. "That's weird. I never heard that before."

"Scientists think it's because if we really remembered that kind of pain, it would be traumatizing. So our memory is faulty by design. It's a coping mechanism. That way we can just keep on going -- so the pain doesn't follow us around forever. That's what I read, at least." Jeno was quiet, murmuring, breath soft on Renjun's hair. "So maybe recording everything isn't a good thing. Sometimes, you're supposed to misremember things. It makes life easier."

"Are you thinking about your grandfather?" Renjun asked.

Jeno gave a wobbling sigh. "I just… I look at him, and I think that losing your memory like that is the scariest thing I can imagine. So I try and convince myself that there must be something positive about it. As if God intended it that way. Like, when he had his stroke -- that must have been so painful. But he can't even remember it happening now. So, in that sense, his forgetting is good for him."

Renjun shook his head. “You don’t have to try and find some little bit of good in it, Jeno. It’s an awful thing to have to go through. You can be upset about it.” He knew that Jeno was always trying to pretend it didn’t hurt. Around his family and his friends. Even around Renjun himself. That was the thing about having so many responsibilities at such a young age -- it made Jeno feel like he had to to bear them without complaining, or else everyone would only see him as a child. Renjun wondered why being seen as a child was such a bad thing.

And he wondered what Jeno would do after that week, once they were separated. Maybe he would never tell anyone how he felt about it again. Maybe he would shut himself off and simply smile. It was a foolproof plan -- it was impossible to look at Jeno’s smile, at the crinkling of his eyes and the fullness of his grin, and believe anything was hidden behind it.

“You know, you telling me all that,” Renjun said, “only makes me like filming things more. I think it might be good to preserve painful memories sometimes.” He flipped his camcorder around so that it faced down at the two of them. He turned the screen, too, to make sure he was getting both of them in frame -- their heads, shoulders, the ends of their hair where it caught in the rugged rope of the hammock. “This is going to be a painful memory, once I leave. But I want to keep it.”

Neither of them smiled for the camera. Renjun liked it better that way. It meant they weren't faking it, pretending to be something they weren't. They were just themselves.

“Maybe I can come back next summer,” Renjun said.

“We’re in high school now. We’re going to be too busy to spend summers away.”

Renjun bit his lip. “But -- I don’t really care about school, Jeno. I’ll come back, and we can spend next summer together again.”

Jeno looked away from the camera lens. “Maybe you will. But maybe you won’t. We can’t plan that far ahead.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Renjun turned his head, trying to read the emotion in Jeno’s profile.

“I just think… when you go back to China, you’ll probably meet someone there that you like. And I’ll stay here, and find someone that I like. And it would be silly for us to stay together when we’re hundreds of miles away, when we could each date someone close to us instead. It’s not really a relationship if we can’t even touch each other, is it?” Jeno remained straight-faced, but Renjun could see that each word he said had to be forced out. He didn’t mean any of it. He was trying to be sensible, but sensibleness and love did not mix well. “Maybe we’re just naive, because we were each other’s first loves.”

“You really think that?” Renjun asked.

“I don’t know what I think,” Jeno admitted.

“Well, what I think --” Renjun curled closer at Jeno’s side, making himself impossible to ignore. “-- is that we shouldn’t break up. I’ve seen long distance relationships all the time in movies. They always pan out. They reunite at the end, and they run to each other, and then they live happily ever after.”

“You have seen a movie for every possible occasion,” Jeno remarked.

“I have. But remember?” Renjun tapped the side of his camcorder. “Movies are realer than real life. They always tell the truth.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense.”

Jeno sighed, but finally, he looked at Renjun. “You really want to stay together?”

“I do,” Renjun leaned in close, so their noses touched. “We can even give it a trial run. And if we decide we hate it, we can stop. But I think we should try it.”

“Okay,” Jeno said.

Renjun turned his camcorder off and dropped it into his lap, giving them a moment of privacy as Jeno closed the gap.