Archive of Our Own ^beta

               By the sea, the water is cold. Its flow is constant, the waves hitting the shore in a repetitive manner, though the water is slow, almost frozen under the bright rays of the winter sun. Under it, surely, life is going on, no matter the below temperature, the particles of ice slowly sinking into nothing as they fall from the sky one after the other in what could be a storm, was the sun not so adamant on being present. Its rays are bright through the many clouds and so, what should be freezing ends up being nothing more than a normal winter day by the seashore.

               Again, the waves hit. Again, the white foam comes strong and opaque before it melts, phasing out in indiscernible bubbles. The sound of it could be described, too, if Jimin weren’t so tired of its repetitive motion. Forward, backward, and then forward again, backward again. When he tries to relive the many feelings he has had when he first came here, he cannot, and instead a great boredom has taken over every kind of emotion deep in his heart. His core is cold, surely colder than the sea in winter, and Jimin wonders if it is from boredom or from his fever. The thermostat is high and so, putting back the blankest over his cold body, he walks away from the wide window. Despite the sun not hitting his skin anymore, he doesn’t feel any colder. The sun is bright but its core is cold, winter is nothing more than the end of another year, and the end of something more. What it is, Jimin doesn’t dare to put a name on it.

               With the sea’s constant song behind him, he walks out to the kitchen. The hallways are wide, so are the rooms, he has all the place in the world to tumble and move. Behind him, the blanket trails in a train and adding to that the ancient decorations, Jimin feels like a king.

               The king of the sea, with no crown to wear, no people to converse with, and loneliness as his sole advisor. He has yet to follow on any of its advice, and Jimin feels weak, when the darkest of words fall into his ears. One day he will break, take its many advices into consideration, and he wonders if the sea is really as deep and cold as it seems, from his window by the beach. But for now, he will stay there and wait for a time that may never come.

               In the end, the sea is no conciliation.

               The light is dim in the kitchen despite the windows widely opened to the outside world on almost every wall. On this side of the mansion, the street outside is visible, and the world is grey, colored only by the wandering city folks and the joyful tourists. At this time of the year though, no one dares even approach the cold waters and so, colored with nothing, the streets remain grey. Far away from here the city stands tall, but Jimin can hear and feel none of it. If there is the buzzing of life, then Jimin has forgotten its sounds. In a mansion by the sea, the loudest noises there can be are the waves, and nothing else.

               On the wooden and humid table, the pills await. They contrast greatly against the darkened material, rotten by moisture and time. If he could, he would buy a new table, he has the money for it. He would have bought many others things, too, mainly pieces of furniture, colorful decorations, maybe even a remedy for whatever pollutes his inside, but he doesn’t dare dream too much. And so, with his fingers grating against the table, moist splinters going under his nails, he fetches the pills, puts them in his pocket, and walks out of the kitchen. He goes through the same hallway, goes back into the living room, opens the backdoor leading to the closed veranda, and seats there, facing the sea, with nothing else as company but the pills rattling in his pocket and loneliness whispering old marine tales in his ears.

               The water is cold, yet blue. He squints his eyes a little, sees much better already, thinks of his glasses up in his room, but doesn’t move. The blanket on his shoulders is heavy and warm and stops his frail body from shuddering too much. So he simply looks out in the horizon, observes the water with no care, imagines the millions of lives living right under the surface, and he does so for hours on end. He has imagined them before, a thousand times more, and the thrill of the unknown has become dull, the wonders of the sea becoming nothing more than an afterthought he can’t rejoice in. He breathes in, sighs, takes out the pills from his pocket and swallows them dry, one after the other, careful as to not choke on them. For a second the feeling of powder dries his tongue and engulfs the back of his throat. He swallows his own saliva, licks his palate, his teeth, then he bites on nothing, yawns, and crosses his arms, lets the rocking chair lull his mind. Though beyond boring, the sea, at least, tires him down. For a while he stays there until his mind tires out of the view.  Then, he stands up, doesn’t stretch despite the itching in his limbs, simply turns away from the sea and goes back inside.

               On the terrace of the cottage right by the side of his house, there is a cardboard box carefully placed by the backdoor. Jimin doesn’t think much of it. He doesn’t think much of anything else, really. He will simply sleep.

               And so he sleeps, like on any other night, with no difference to make of it. The lack of light is the same, the wind picks up again, and the moon slowly shows up until it goes away. Like any other night, everything is the same.

               But then, in the morning, the loud sound of a truck right under his window wakes him up. There’s chatting, loud, almost yelling, orders and commands, people moving around, the sound of boxes being dropped, heavy objects being moved, what with the grunting and groaning and the heavy atmosphere of men running right outside his house. There’s no smell -there’s never been any of that, yet he guesses that alphas are the very source of all this noise. He rolls off his bed and, suddenly agitated, he goes to the sole window of his room, right above the streets.

               He tries to look without opening the window, sticks his forehand and crushes his nose against the cold glass until it almost becomes painful, pushing enough to allow him to peer outside and below him. The truck is right under and, like ants going at work, alphas move one after the other, all heaving heavy pieces of furniture. Couches, chairs, tables, a TV, a computer, shelves, and then carefully and meticulously sealed cardboard boxes one after the other, sometimes two at a time in a pathetic display of strength. He observes, hidden behind his window, and stays perched as curious as a seagull until the truck is emptied. After that, the alphas, all buffs and proud, walk back into the truck, close the doors, and drive away. Jimin leans forward a little more and watches as the truck disappears into the distance, but his eyes fall on something else.

               A man, seemingly younger than him, lifts a box off the ground and goes inside. An alpha, too, surely, no one else than an alpha would come and live alone by the beach when so many visitors come in this area. Jimin is an exception. Jimin may as well not be an omega. And in any case, his doors are locked, and so are his windows. He leans away from his as proof, though there is no one to prove anything to, and walks back to his bed. There, he takes the blanket, wraps himself in it, and climbs down the stairs.

               He takes his time, sneezes more than once as the dust that has settled on the corners of each step flies under the blanket. When he coughs he fatigues, feels his body tire. But it is morning, he thinks, and so he will not go back up in his room until the sun has set on the sea. He will not let his situation steal his time away, no matter the boredom he feels, no matter the loneliness of it. And so, when he finally climbs down the stairs, he walks to his kitchen, fetches the box of pills, prepares them for the day, and thinks of the sea that he will observe today again. He takes the pills he needs, then, leaves the others on the old table, and puts them in his pocket once more. The motion is the same, the pills have yet to change. What has changed, though, is the soft knocking on his front door.

               Jimin’s eyes widen. He wonders if he has dreamed it, if the loneliness he feels has found a new way to make him despair more than yesterday and any other day before that. He waits, waits some more, until the knocking is back. Jimin doesn’t move, breathes out his surprise. The knock is insistent for a second before it stops, waits, knocks again, stops once more. When it doesn’t knock anymore, Jimin sighs out his relief, until a man walks by his window and, by an unfortunate trick of loneliness itself, Jimin seeks out the eyes of the person passing by.

               The person he saw just sooner this morning is right there, looking at him through one of the many kitchen windows. It’s a male, definitely, he wasn’t wrong, but Jimin wonders if he is truly an alpha. Though his stature could pose as one, his traits are softer, not as sharp as an alpha’s would be. Jimin sniffs, though nothing would come from it. An alpha, a beta, or a lucky omega, Jimin doesn’t know, but the person in front of him, right by his window, has the beauty of every wolf ‘s class scientists know of. The strength of an alpha, the poise of a beta, the smoothness of an omega. And his eyes, Jimin sees, looking right at him, smile at the same time his mouth does. He smiles with his whole face, with every muscle on his visage. For a moment, his whole being shines, and Jimin forgets all about the cold of the sun. The stranger waves, mouths ‘hello’. Jimin tentatively waves back but quickly hides his hands under the blanket. Instead, he bows, and scurries away from the kitchen, ignoring the stranger’s confused frown.

               He runs through the hallway, ignores the way his blanket bothers his steps as he steps on it more than once. He throws open the backdoor to the veranda and sits heavily on the rocking chair. He rocks, rocks and rocks again, his breath heavy and fast, gripping the pills tight, looking out at the sea. He coughs, then, wheezing, and swears under his breath. What a pathetic first impression. He kicks at nothing, mad at his own existence, for a second.

               But then, watching as the waves are still the same, rocking along with them, he rationalizes his thoughts. Cute or not, hot or not, kind or not, this stranger will stay just that: a stranger. Jimin will never unlock the front door to anyone but his doctor. He puffs out a resigned sigh, and rocks himself some more. At some point he forgets, thinks of something else, and his life becomes monotone once again. He gulps his pills down, coughs and looks out at the sea for the remaining of the morning. Then, he goes to the kitchen, eats, goes back out to the veranda, and dully stares at the sun coming down from its high.

               The sun is cold, so is the water, for it is winter and nothing is warm. At some point he wonders how cold the water would be on his skin, how his muscles would seize under the pressure of a whole ocean, how his lungs would finally have a reason to cough, until they could cough no more.

               If the sea doesn’t drown him, he thinks, then loneliness will do so.

               At some point he stands up, goes to the kitchen, takes his remaining pills for the day, goes back to the veranda, sits down, swallows them whole, waits. When the sunset passes the surface, he stands up again, exits the veranda, passes through the living room and the hallway, walks up the stairs, lays on his bed, and goes to sleep. He is lulled by the waves, and nothing else matters. And if, in the morning, he feels fatigued, then nothing has changed, and so he doesn’t wonder.

               The days pass quickly, as they’ve always done, and his routine stays the same. Yet, subtle changes have happened, certain sceneries have been misshapen, and the only source of all this mess is none other than his new neighbor. He hasn’t seen him since the day he has moved in, hasn’t really paid much attention to him anyway, and yet his presence gets easily noticed, right by the sea shore, where in winter nothing truly lives.

               His existence comes in the sound of music getting played throughout the day, never the same song. Through the thick walls of both houses, Jimin can only hear the subtle shake of the beat yet when Jimin goes out in the veranda and sits on the rocking chair, he hears the music with more clarity, can guess the instruments being played and sometimes, can hear the voices over them. They disrupt the peace and quiet he has gotten used to, at first, and he finds himself feeling a new kind of emotion, one he couldn’t ever feel on his own: irritation. It’s his heart that palpates and shakes faster than the waves yet it’s his mouth that stays shut and his voice that never leaves passed his throat. It’s his desire to scream at this neighbor to turn the music off, yet it’s his whole being that does nothing, just passively listens. And then, along with irritation, comes a new range of emotions, such as frustration, confusion, intrigue, and so many more he has yet to name.

               More than that though, there are visual clues of his presence. The cardboard box on the terrace he hadn’t paid much attention to turns into a small tray full of painting equipment. The terrace, too, gets covered in stained and colored bashes, easels, blank canvas of different sizes, bottles of paint, stools and small tables. It’s messy, it’s everywhere, it’s full of life. In front of the door, too, there’s a small car, a cheap and old one, with stickers on the doors and dirty eyelashes on the headlights. Jimin finds it cheeky and extremely ridiculous, thinks of this neighbor as a really, really stupid omega, because only an omega could think of something such as eyelashes on a car as cute. And he generalizes, too, because Jimin isn’t really an omega, so Jimin has all the right to say that. He scoffs at himself for all those kinds of thoughts but at least, he doesn’t have eyelashes on his car. He doesn’t even own a car.

              The last change this new neighbor has brought to Jimin’s little routine is the sound of the mail truck just before noon. The sound of tires rolling slowly on the concrete just in front of his house, stopping by his neighbor’s cottage, knocking loudly. Then, the sound of the door opening, two people chatting for a minute or two, and then the door closing, the mailman walking back to his truck before driving away. The sound of the tires fading into the distance, and then nothing. No one ever knocks at his door, he has yet to receive any kind of letter, and it has been so since the very beginning of his stay here. It used to bother him, so much so that he would cry at night and then during the day, but then again, routine has taken over. If the mail truck comes and goes, it’s for his new neighbor, and no one else.

                So the days pass by relatively fast and yet, every day, something new happens. A new music, a new piece of equipment added to the terrace, a new parcel or letter delivered. They add to the waves, sometimes agitate his lonely thoughts until they dissipate like foam on sand. When this happens, he shakes his head, goes to the kitchen, makes sure his pills are prepared. He forgets, sometimes, he has new things to think about, and as days become weeks, he finds it difficult to really focus on anything for long hours on end. Watching the waves morph one into the other until the sun sets becomes more complicated when, on the terrace by his right, everything always changes. His head turns slightly, his eyes are drawn to the new pieces of equipment and furniture, his ears get soothed by the music coming from the open windows. On the rarest of days, when the wind blows just the right way, it’s the smell of something nicely cooked and seasoned that reaches his nose, the smell seeping through the cracks of the veranda’s windows. Jimin becomes annoyed, then, or maybe paranoid, and tapes the corners of the veranda. If the smell of cooking can reach him, then he fears the many bacteria that have been able to attack his body.

             On a day like this, when his focus is short, when his eyes wander to the side, he finally spots something moving. His neighbor is there, standing in the middle of the mess on the terrace, rearranging canvases, easels and equipment, rolling the tray around, moving the tables, adjusting the tool. Jimin observes quietly for minutes, minutes that turn into hours, the new neighbor never taking a break. If Jimin squints his eyes, because his glasses are elsewhere, he can see his new neighbor thinking, posing, reflecting on where everything should be, before going back into it with a new idea that becomes multiple until everything is a mess again, just like it was before. He organizes everything, cleans the tables more than once, adjusts the tool, make it high then low, does the same for the easels, makes them face different horizon, one directly in front of the sea, one facing the beach as it elongates into ports and boats, and one facing his veranda. Not really, it’s slightly off, and this one, his new neighbor moves the most, never truly looking up. It’s almost endearing, Jimin would scoff, were he not so tired.

               Finally, the sun sets. Jimin searches his pocket, takes out the pills in them, swallows them dry one after the other. He bites back a cough, puts the blanket back on his shoulders, balances his weight as best as he can, and stands up. He observes the waters one last time, it hasn’t changed, hasn’t moved much, and so he blinks and turns around. Yet when he is halfway through his slow turn, his eyes meet something he hasn’t looked into in a while, it seems.

               The eyes he watches blink slowly, they are wide, almost infantile, and they hold a character he hadn’t recognized when he had looked into them the first them. He is drawn, wishes he weren’t, as the blackness of those very eyes reminds him of the bottom of the sea he has dreamed of so many times. He squints, looks more into them – They’re too far away to see anything. The new neighbor blinks, breaks the spell. Then he smiles, wide and bright, his eyes disappearing into smallest versions of their initial shape, and Jimin hurries inside right as the new neighbor starts waving at him. It was kind, warm, welcoming. Jimin tightens the blankets around his shoulders, walks up the stairs, falls on the bed, and calms his heart down.

              This very night, he forces himself into a dream he hadn’t dreamed of in a while. Under his feet is the bottom of the sea, where no light can reach through the heavy waters, where no warmth can seep through the calm flows, where no breath can be taken as water has filled the only pair of lungs he has. Nothing happens, in this dream; nothing is there to disrupt it. It’s just him, not sinking, he has already done so, his feet at the bottom of the sea, his eyes facing the blackness that is the ocean, far beyond the frontiers of the sea. He likes it, thinks he does. In it he has drowned, in it he remains, the wreck of a crownless king’s vessel.

                He wakes up, blanket around his neck, heavy like the pressure of the sea, and he chokes.

               His day, then, starts the same, and he walks away from his bed. He covers himself in his blanket, walks down the stairs, coughs as dust flies around him. He walks down the hallway, prepares in the kitchen his pills for the day. He drinks a glass of water, clears his salty throat, coughs some more, then walks away to the living room. He looks out the window before opening the doors of the veranda. He closes them behind him, sits on the rocking chair, and waits.

              There is no music, today, and Jimin feels relieved. He rocks himself to the waves’ constant rhythm, squints at the horizon, pictures the white foam dissipating on his toes, entering right under his nails just like the splinters of the old wooden table. Then he imagines himself moving, walking forward into the sea, the water engulfing his ankles, then his calves, his knees, his thighs, his hips, his stomach, his chest, his shoulders, then grasping at his neck, licking up his chin, his lips, his nose, his eyes, his forehead up to the very tip of his head, and finally swallowing his existence whole. He imagines himself walking and walking, reaching depths no human has reached before, where loneliness cannot even reach itself. His teeth ache under the pressure, his nose bleed and the blood mixes with the water, melts away in beautiful swirls of red and blue. His ears ring, then they pop, and the same happens in his veins as bubbles form and then burst. He doesn’t feel pain – he cannot imagine such a painful experience if he hasn’t lived it yet – and so he walks and walks, slow and paced, the water rendering his movements weak and almost childlike. Above him the light fades, the warmth goes, and soon, there is nothing else. He cannot imagine life around him, he has yet to see it with his own two eyes, so he imagines nothing but himself as he sinks deeper and deeper into the sea, until the sea turns ocean, until the ocean turns abyss, until the abyss turns into something no one knows of. He doesn’t know when to stop, doesn’t know where the end is, doesn’t know when his heart will burst under the pressure. He is ignorant, and so he keeps on walking, endlessly, until, through the waters, a knock reverberates.

              A knock and then another, pulling him right back to the surface. It’s violent, he feels like a fish having bitten into the point of a hook, the barb sinking into his flesh, the bend penetrating his palate, as the line is drawn tight. The light comes back fast and bright, burns his eyes as he opens them wide, and he jolts off the rocking chair. The blanket falls off his shoulders as he runs to the veranda’s door, throws it open before hurrying to the hallway. There he stops midway, standing still right in the middle of the path, watching the door. He squints at it, waits. Another knock, soft. Then, nothing. Jimin almost breathes out his relief before the sound of a piece of paper folding can be heard through the wood. It’s quiet, almost imperceptible, but it’s there. He waits.

               Then, a piece of paper slips from under the door right inside his house. It slips on the floor before coming to a stop. Steps are heard outside; they fade away until a door is shut.

              He walks to the letter, feeling cold, his shoulders light, his steps strangely featherlike. When he comes up to the piece of paper he bends down, takes it between his hands. He should clean it, he thinks. It has been outside. It has touched the ground. Someone else has touched it, too, he should clean it, and so he does. He walks into his kitchen, takes the disinfectant on the counter and sprays it on every surface of the letter. When the paper becomes soggy, he tears the envelop open, takes the letter inside. He unfolds it with shaking fingers, feels an emotion he hadn’t felt in a while, so much so that he doesn’t have a name for it.

               Dear neighbor,

               I just recently moved in, in the cottage right next door, and so I felt I needed to introduce myself, but I couldn’t talk to you last time. I completely understand if you didn’t want to talk to me, some people said I could look intimidating at first glance. I wouldn’t really agree with them but oh well, you know. So, no hard feeling between us, except if you want there to be, then hard feelings, I completely get it, don’t worry.

               So, introducing myself. I’m Jeon Jeongguk, I come from Seoul. I was in Busan first but I moved away and then I moved back, kind of complicated, I won’t really go into details in a letter I can’t even write properly. I don’t know what else to say, there’s nothing really interesting about me.

               I also want to apologize in advance, if I get too noisy during the night, or even during the day, just knock on my door and I’ll turn the volume down. I’m not a big fan of silence but if you are, then that’s alright. If ever you need anything, don’t be scared of bothering me, I don’t bite. I swear, I’m not intimidating, okay?

               Sincerely,

               Jeon Jeongguk.

               Jimin scoffs, folding the letter in half. The writing makes him cringe a little but then again, he understands. Having not written a single letter in years, Jimin thinks he wouldn’t do better in that field. So he folds the letter in more than half, then, goes to the trash can, putting his foot on the pedal. But he hesitates, shamefully squints at the letter, before bringing it to his nose. He sniffs it once, twice, before giving up and throwing it away without a second glance at it. Just as he thought, he can’t smell anything, and so he simply ignores the piece of paper.

               Then, strangely enough, he doesn’t know what to do. His routine has been changed once again, he realizes, not remembering what he was doing before that. This new neighbor of his, this Jeon Jeongguk, has stolen his precious time of doing nothing. Jimin tilts his head in frustration. He thinks for a second before simply walking back to the veranda. He opens the door, closes it behind himself, sits on the rocking chair, and looks out to the sea. The windows are getting dirty, he realizes. Dust of sand on the glass, traces of paws and scratches from various wandering animals on the outside, grey markings of rain and sea water, the saltiness staining the glass. He sighs. He doesn’t have any mask left, no combination either. The windows will have to stay dirty until the next heavy rain. He just hopes this one will be clean, not coming from the big cities.

               He curses when a loud commotion comes from outside. Turning his head to the side, he observes the terrace of his neighbor warily. There Jeon Jeongguk stands, sheepishly looking at the canvases on the ground. The man seemingly tilts his head in frustration, the movement he himself does, and Jimin wonders if everyone else does it, too. Jeon Jeongguk bends down, picks up the canvases, struggles for a bit, before steadying them against the walls of his house. When he stands up he looks at Jimin, then, his eyes falling right on Jimin’s, and while Jimin doesn’t know how to react, Jeon Jeongguk simply waves at him with a smile, waiting for an answer. When none comes he lowers his head, confused and shy. He looks away, and Jimin feels a pang of guilt building up in his chest. It quickly disappears when Jeon Jeongguk walks to one of the canvases on the ground, puts it heavily on an easel, and rolls up his sleeves. If Jeon Jeongguk isn’t an alpha, then Jeon Jeongguk is nothing, and Jimin suddenly finds him intimidating.

               His face and his whole demeanor really aren’t on par with his stance. The man has muscles, his forearms well-defined, and when Jimin squints, he sees drawings all over them. Tattoos by the dozens, all of various sizes, yet all in black and grey. Writings he cannot decipher, drawings he cannot make out, going up his forearms, under his sleeves, and Jimin wonders how far they go. To his shoulders, maybe, up his back, drawing along his spine. Maybe he has some on his thighs, his lower back, decorating places Jimin hasn’t wondered about in a while, all alone in his house. Jimin shakes his thoughts, then, refocuses his wandering eyes, and zeroes in on the canvas Jeon Jeongguk is currently painting on. He’s putting white on white, and Jimin wonders if there’s any use in that. He loses interest when Jeon Jeongguk keeps on applying white paint on the white canvas, layer after layer, it seems, and he turns around, looks out to the sea.

               Far away in the distance, a cloud draws near. A small one moved by the wind. It’s alone, floating right above the endless surface of the sea. Around it, there is nothing but the cold sky of winter and the far away sun. It draws a single shadow, almost inexistent, on the wide expense of just blue and more blue. It has no use, and Jimin believes it has no meaning either. So he forgets about the single cloud, blinks once at the sea, and closes his eyes. He lets himself be rocked by the movement, lets his muscles relax, lets his tired back bend comfortably until his mind shuts down. Then, it’s just the sound of the wind against the dirty windows of the veranda, the sea hitting the shore, moving the sand around, and the sound of heavy strokes on canvas. It’s new, adds depth to the many sounds he repeatedly hears every single day of his life here.

               Minutes turn into hours, rocking and listening, his thoughts quiet and still. When he opens his eyes it’s to the sky being emptied of any cloud, the sun lowered, almost drowning under the surface, coloring the blues into richer tones. Reds, purples, yellows, with hints of lighter pinks, though they fade into blacks and deeper blues quickly. Jimin knows them by heart, and so he doesn’t look at them for long. Instead, he turns his head to the side, his eyes following the shore’s line until they fall on his neighbor’s terrace. Then, he squints, before his eyes widen in surprise.

               On the canvas that used to be white, there’s the sea, during the day, with a single cloud. It’s an exact replica of what he has seen today, the details deep and precise, and Jimin searches in his memory if only to find a single flaw on the painting, to get rid of his surprise. There is none, and the surprise quickly turns into a feeling of admiration. Then, admiration becomes curiousness, and Jimin wishes he could step out of the veranda, walk up to the terrace, observe the painting from up close, trail his fingers along the many details in the waves, the far away sun, the single cloud. Jeon Jeongguk isn’t there but his painting is left to dry, his equipment still on the tray yet perfectly clean and taken care of.

               He shakes his head, gets rid of those new emotions, and stands up. Suddenly, the pills in his pocket feel strangely heavy. He fetches them one after the other, swallows them dry. He settles the heavy blanket on his shoulders, walks away from the veranda, closes the door behind himself, locks it tight, makes sure it’s locked correctly, putting as much weight as he can on the doorknob. It’s not much but the door doesn’t open, and so Jimin allows himself to slip away.

               He passes by the living room, traverses the hallway, climbs up the stairs, falls on his bed. He hasn’t eaten today, hasn’t really taken care of himself. It’s no matter, he thinks, as he readjusts the blanket on his cold body. It’s no matter, and it won’t ever matter, he thinks again. Those thoughts hurt and yet, he pushes the knife deeper into the open wound as he thinks that, no matter what he does, it won’t ever matter. It never will.

               He moves around, forces his eyes close. He thinks of a single cloud, perfectly painted on an expanse of sea and sky, the wind felt yet unseeable. He thinks of the day, then, the day that has passed in the blink of an eye, the day that has passed without a care, without a trace left behind, except for a painting Jeon Jeongguk has created, alone, on his messy terrace. He thinks of all of that and then more, his thoughts wandering farther away. He thinks of the paintings on the man’s forearms, imagines an ocean on his back, pictures the wide expanse of just water and air, sea and sky, and all the lives that inhabit it.

               He falls asleep after that, finds himself under the surface, finds his lungs emptied of air. Nothing has changed, he realizes in the morning, and one small disturbance cannot change what has been happening since the very beginning.

               Yet, outside, there’s the sound of music playing loudly from opened windows, and Jimin grunts as he rolls off the bed.

               He goes down the stairs, blanket on his shoulders, dust in his lungs. He coughs a little, less than yesterday, he realizes, he’s climbed off the stairs faster than he usually does. His legs are weak as he walks down the hallway to the kitchen, but he pays it no mind. He has felt like that before, weak in the knees, wobbly, his stance unsure and his muscles pathetically unable to bear the weight that they should. He sighs, enters the kitchen, prepares the meds for the day, swallows the ones he needs now, puts the others in his pocket. He drinks a glass of cold water to free his throat, eats a piece of bread to full his cheeks, cleans the counters and old wooden table, just to be sure. He cleans a second time, because he can never be sure enough that nothing will make his body stop responding.

               Winded, he walks to the living room, crosses it, ignores all the books he hasn’t read, all the gadgets he hasn’t used, walking up instead to the veranda. He opens the door, closes it behind himself, sits on the rocking chair, blanket still heavy on his shoulders. When he looks at the sea, there are more clouds above it, a sign of future rain maybe, as they look greyer, darker, a morbid replacement of yesterday’s cold yet clear sky, save for one little cloud. Maybe it has a use, he thinks, maybe it has paved the way for the rest, a battering ram slicing the skies open for other clouds to barge in and make the sky theirs and theirs only. He thinks about it some more, tries to keep his curiousness at bay, keeps his head straight, facing forward, far into the sea.

               By his side, music is loudly playing, and he knows Jeon Jeongguk is there. He knows it because from the side, by the corner of his eyes, he sees movement, a silhouette dressed in black. He keeps his memories inside, tries not to ponder over tattooed forearms and single clouds, blank canvases painted in white and then in all the shades of the sea and the sky. But his curiousness burns deep within and so, with a great deal of shame burning his cheeks all kinds of reds, he turns his head, lets the rocking chair still.

               Jeon Jeongguk is painting, sleeves rolled up, brushes of different sides in between each finger of his right hand, a painter’s palette in the other. Between his thumb and his index, he holds the smallest of brush, drawing fine details into an already vibrant painting, and Jimin recognizes a land he has never before seen. A nature he has never pictured, a dream he has never escaped to. He squints, but doesn’t see all of it. He has left his glasses in his bedroom once more, like it was another day amongst many others, yet he regrets doing what he usually does because on the terrace, right at the tip of Jeon Jeongguk’s fingers, a masterpiece is being painted on what used to be a blank canvas.

               His movements are slow and precise though, sometimes, when the detail calls for it, he strokes powerfully up or down, even sideways, and seems to be stopping the line just when he needs it. In his movements Jimin sees professionalism and in his eyes, brilliant as they focus solely on the canvas, Jimin sees a passion he had yet to see in his life. It’s burning yet slow, a fire warm yet tamed, just enough to let its light glow and shimmer in the night without any danger. Facing the sea, this fire contrasts perfectly, and Jimin marvels at the many wonders in the painting.

               It isn’t the sea, this time. It’s more detailed than that, more careful yet free. It’s a forest, alive and clear, and though Jimin cannot see correctly from where he is sitting, without his glasses, he can sense the humidity of a fresh rain as the lighting reflects off of every branch, every leaf, down to the tip of the smallest pine tree’s needles. If Jimin could be present, right in this painting, he would smell the wet grass following a rainstorm, he would smell the pine trees in all their natural beauty, he would smell life and freedom, would smell everything at once, and then maybe his body would work, there, far away from all the miseries of loud loneliness and repetitive waves. Maybe he would smell a wolf, too. Maybe he would finally become one.

               However, what truly takes his breath away are the many out of place details in the landscape Jeon Jeongguk is painting. In the sky covered by pine trees, behind the many needles and branches, Jimin spots the far-away tail of a blue whale. Between the trees, behind the shadowed trunks, Jimin can see the tentacles of a jellyfish, the fins of fish he has never seen, colors of the sea in the middle of a forest. The sun, too, seems to be shining right on a simmer of water, a wet mist all over the forest, a silent wave in the sky, where it shouldn’t be. The places mix up perfectly, in a beautiful range of colors and details, and as Jeon Jeongguk puts the final dots of colors in this already vibrant painting, Jimin sees it, the abstract taken from what is real, the genre and style of painting he has never before seen. In the unreal there is reality, in the impossible there is possibility, and Jimin thinks of a forest right at the bottom of the sea, where the sun shouldn’t shine yet where it is the brightest.

               His breath is taken away, not painful, not frightening. And when Jeon Jeongguk, proud of himself, puts his palette and his many brushes down, Jimin swallows an acclamation, throat raw. The sun hits the painting with a warmth it shouldn’t have in the middle of winter. The sun should be the coldest and yet, it strangely looks warm. Jimin wishes he could feel it on his skin, and feel the painting under his fingertips.

Jeon Jeongguk turns around, his eyes meet Jimin’s once more. This time, too, he smiles, waves, though there is a hesitance in the action that Jimin regrets. In the end, right as Jeon Jeongguk’s hand lowers to grip at the apron attached around his waist, Jimin lifts a small hand, waves timidly. Jeon Jeongguk beams with happiness, then, smiles so wide his eyes close, and Jimin wonders what illuminates the painting behind him the most: the sun or his smile, both equally as bright.

               Following this, a moment of awkwardness takes over the both of them, but Jimin escapes, cowardice taking over. He stands up, tightening the blanket around his shoulders, and exits the veranda without a sound. When he enters the living room he doesn’t know what to do. The sun hasn’t set yet, still high, just reaching its highest point. It’s noon, maybe almost, maybe past, yet Jimin finds himself alone again. It shouldn’t change his habits, it really shouldn’t. It does.

               In his mind, right on his retinas, Jeon Jeongguk’s smile is burning against the skin, and no matter how much he blinks, Jimin can’t get rid of it. So, at a loss on what to do, he settles on the couch right by the shelf, facing a TV covered clean of dust yet untouched. He hesitates a second but finally turns it on and just like that, he finds himself watching documentary after documentary, half of a series he has never seen, and a rundown of old cartoons too loud and colorful for his liking. When he turns his head to the side, the sun has set and, finally, his habits take back their rightful place.

               He switches off the TV, adjusts the blanket, swallows the pills, walks down the hallway and climbs up the stairs. He sinks into his mattress, engulfs himself in the blanket, and sleeps.

               In his dream, the bottom of the sea is warm, the sun is bright and strangely enough, his lungs are full of air, his shoulders are light. A bird swims above his head, a shark flies by his side. The world is upside down yet his heart is in the right place. He closes his eyes, hears the thousands strokes of a brush, smells the fresh paint all around him, feels warm fingers caressing his skin, painting a million of details into his flesh.

               When he wakes up his skin is tingling, and Jimin fears, for a moment, that has caught something, a sickness that would likely kill him. But then he rationalizes with himself, thinks he has never been scared of death before, and stands up. Blanket around his shoulders, he goes down the stairs slowly, lets the dust settle once more in his lungs until he coughs all the fresh air out.

               When he puts a foot down the last step, he stops. In his field of vision, something stands out of the usually dull browns and beiges. A single hue of white, right by the door, a piece of paper that has surely been slipped from under it, that has been so forced under the narrow gap that its corners are dog-eared and stained. Jimin feels a rush through his veins, hurries through the hallway to the door. He stops once more.

               There’s no hesitation in his eyes, but there is in his movements. As his fingers catch the envelop, they twitch, because on this single piece of paper, there are a thousand bacteria he has no name for. He can almost feel them rush and live under his fingertips and so, running to the kitchen, he bypasses his meds on the counter and catches the disinfectant spray. It’s habit and a bit of paranoia that force him to spray the envelop until the black letters can be seen through the white of the envelop and just then, he opens it, almost tears it apart in his haste. Once more, the letters are shaky and a bit hesitant yet in them, in the circles and the lines, Jimin sees details he had not bothered to observe last time. With careful and attentive eyes he reads the letter, a smile forcing its way on his lips, straining his cheeks.

               Dear neighbor,

               I apologize once again for the bother but I couldn’t help but see your interest in my paintings. They’re not much but they do the trick, and I’m trying to improve, I’m trying to do the best that I can and so, if it’s not too much for you, I’d like to ask you a favor.

               I specialize in landscape paintings. I’ve learned a lot throughout my education, read the endless theories on colors and genres, yet I find myself lacking in many different aspects, notably portraits. So, if it’s not too much, I’d like to draw you, with your consent of course. That’s why I’m asking. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound like a creep, I just find you really beautiful and your traits are perfect for a beautiful portrait.

              If it’s too much then just tell me and I won’t bother you again. I swear, I’m not trying to scare you away. I’m merely trying to paint.

               Cordially,

               Jeon Jeongguk.

               Jimin should feel something displeasing deep in his guts. Who he thinks is an alpha, an alpha he doesn’t know, is asking him to paint him within the second letter he has sent to him. Yet – maybe it’s the painting and the smile still burning in his mind, maybe it’s the awkwardly written letter switching from formal to badly phrased sentences – he finds himself smiling at the request, folding the letter neatly and putting it on the counter. For a second he thinks of an answer, rushes to the living room to fetch a blank piece of paper and a pen, blanket fallen on the kitchen ground, yet when he runs back, sitting on the sole chair right by the old wooden table, he finds himself stopping in his tracks.

               There are many questions rushing through his mind, notably how he could send a letter when he doesn’t ever go out. The single idea of opening the front door terrifies him, let alone the idea of walking to his neighbor’s house. Then, he doesn’t know what to write, how to phrase his answer. He doesn’t want to seem desperate, he doesn’t want to sound easy, there are many other things he doesn’t to appear as. He hasn’t written any letter in a while, can’t even remember having written and sent one in his twenty plus years of life, can’t recall the last time he had taken a pen in hand in any other way than to write the expiration date of his pills on the prescription put on the fridge. So he hesitates, goes to write at least a greeting on top of the page, but the pen goes right through the paper, pierces the old wooden table, and Jimin curses. Taking the paper away, ignoring the humid splinters lodged under his nails, shivering as the driest ones dig into his skin, he runs to the living room, takes a pile of papers and sits on the ground by the couch. Then, he starts to write, tries twice and then more, frustration taking over him as he tries and tries again.

               In the end he writes a quick letter, one he feels is good enough, folds it, and places it on the ground by his side. He sighs, breathes heavily, his heart rushing as he eyes it warily. In a fit of awkwardness he takes it back, reads it once more; he can never be sure enough.

               Dear Jeon Jeongguk,

               I should have introduced myself sooner and for that, I apologize. I am Park Jimin, 28, and I have lived in Busan for as long as I can remember. Welcome to the neighborhood, you will appreciate the sea, it is never quite boring to observe it. The sunset is particularly beautiful and the winter sky is always covered in many different stars.

               As for your question, I have seen your paintings, yes, and I find them absolutely beautiful. Your sea was a perfect replica of what I see every day and your painting of the abstract forest made me travel to places I have never been to before. For that I congratulate you. So, if you have not changed your mind, I will allow you to paint me I will gladly consent to you painting my portrait. I hope it will help you in achieving your goals of painting better, though I think you are already an amazing painter.

               Cordially,

               Park Jimin.

               He grimaces at the letter, finds himself cringing in embarrassment, yet he folds it in three equal parts, tapes it shut as he doesn’t have an envelope, and stands up from the ground. His steps are hesitant, his knees weak, his hold and grasp of reality become distant, untightened. As he passes through the living room, through the hallway, his limbs are fragile, Jimin feels undone, so weak a wave could take him away from land, far into the sea, where the barriers between worlds become blurred by the vastitude of everything. So weak, merely a thing more than a body, as his thoughts go to the outside world, behind the walls he has come to know by heart, every bump, every fissure. It’s more than simple fear he feels, it’s more than anything he has ever felt in a while now. It’s nothing he can name, fed by the tales of those before him that have died of sicknesses so simple, so uncared for. A cold could make him disappear, Jimin realizes, a cold could make his heart stop. That’s why he’s here. That’s why he has never gone outside in so many years. Yet, as his toes touch the front door of the cottage, he feels something new. A tug that had never been present before. It’s frightening how torn apart he is, how suddenly, the air all around him, the oxygen seeping through the gaps of the windows, the doors, in between the walls and the roof, seem oh so menacing.

               His hand on the doorknob, his fingers trembling around the lock, his whole self in disarray. His nails scratching against the metal, a bone-chilling screeching reverberating all around the house, penetrating his ears, making his bones cringe and shake. His whole skin erupts in goosebumps as he sweats his horror away. His fingers tighten around the lock. They turn it slowly.

               Outside, the world is bright despite the winter temperature. Outside, the waves can be heard in all their beauty. Outside, there’s existence, the buzzing of something more.

               Jimin locks the door back, doesn’t open it. He falls on his weakened knees, hands slipping against the old door, splinters digging into every centimeter of his skin. There’s the fear of infection, then, of dying from something he could never control, something he has not even caught while going against his parents’ orders. He runs on barely awake muscles, snatches the disinfectant spray from the kitchen counter, and coats his hands until the splinters drown. In his mind, he sees himself at the bottom of the sea, stuck between the very ground no one has ever walked on and the pressure of the heaviest of waters.

               In the end, after struggling for breath for what seems like hours, he slips the crumpled letter under the door like Jeon Jeongguk has done before, hoping the wind picks it up far away where no one will have to read it. Exhausted, he walks up the stairs, picks the splinters still in his hand one after the other, and falls on his bed.

This night, there’s nothing more to dream about than his feet wrinkled by water, and the ticking of time.

The next morning, when he wakes up utterly drained, his mind is slow and his blood is cold. He stands up from the bed, goes back to lay on it immediately. The sole light he has comes from the window facing his bed, and there are clouds outside, so the light stays grey and shy. There’s a storm brewing, he thinks. There’s a storm coming and it will fill up the sea once more, get it ready for when the time comes.

He takes in a breath, waits for it to fade out of existence. Even his breath is cold. He has never felt so empty before, despite the water chilling him whole down to the bones. So he waits for it to pass, waits for his heart to pump the warmth it needs to keep beating. He waits and waits, until the fading sound of a paper falling on the ground comes from downstairs. Then, his heart beats once more, and he stands up.

It’s slow, it’s almost nothing, the way he moves and exists at this very moment. But it’s deliberate and it’s slowly becoming more than what it is right now, and that’s what counts. It’s a step after the other, with the fear of the forgotten – not the unknown, he has known what being outside felt like before – still lingering in his mind. It’s feeling every bacterium slowly creeping up his arms, yet it’s shaking his hands until they fall on the ground. And then, it’s taking a step forward, watching his own self walking from above; it’s detaching himself until slowly, he gains his surroundings back. Then, it’s ascending the stairs, each step seeming higher than the other, but it’s believing that he won’t fall when one of his knees folds while one of his feet hangs in the air until it touches the next step. And when it’s done, it’s walking up the hallway until he reaches the door, it’s bending down and taking the dog-eared letter, it’s seeing that there’s a drawn smiley on it, nicely colored, with a wide smile and closed eyes. After that, it’s gaining his eyes back, seeing the letter as it is, and opening it without waiting.

It’s a hesitant smile, awkward tears falling from his now-seeing eyes. It’s an achievement, he thinks, that the disinfectant he had relied on yesterday is still on the kitchen floor right now, and though his thoughts are slowly creeping up his spine to his brain, though they slowly are becoming louder, telling him to panic at the sight of something coming from the dirty outside, he lets his fingers tremble a little before calming them down.

He breathes in, ignores the fear overtaking his mind, and instead focuses on the letter in his hand, now opened.

                Dear Park Jimin,

               Thank you for your warm welcome! I feared that no one would be there and I’d feel lonely but knowing that you’re here makes me feel more at ease. The other cottages are empty right now. I tried knocking at a few of them but no one answered, and I’m guessing they might be secondary houses for vacationers. At least, with you only, I can do as much of a mess of my terrace as I like, you don’t seem bothered by it. Tell me if you are! I don’t want to impose myself on you, or something like that.

              Anyway, thank you so much for allowing me to paint you! You don’t know how happy it makes me. You really are pretty. Your traits are perfect for a portrait. I find you immensely beautiful and if it’s no bother, I would really like to talk to you some more. By letters if it makes you feel more at ease! I really don’t want to make you uncomfortable so if you don’t want to talk to me, just say it, and I’ll just paint you from afar, if it’s not too creepy, I mean.

               Again, thank you immensely.

               Sincerely,

               Jeon Jeongguk.

               Jimin smiles. It’s shy and somewhat unseeable but it’s there, tugging at the side of his mouth, straining his cheeks, pulling at his lips. It’s there and, in a way, it’s new. There’s something warm in the letter, be it the way Jeon Jeongguk chooses his words, awkward yet kind, or the blatant flirting Jimin can read in the last paragraph. His heart pumps faster as he reads over the letter once more. Then he folds the letter, walking to the kitchen, his steps sure, this time, until he puts the letter down on the old wooden table, until his eyes fall on the kitchen counter.

               His bottle of pills is left untouched and suddenly, his heart pumps for another reason. When his hand falls in the pocket of his pants the pills rattle against one another, untouched, yet to be swallowed. His eyes widen when he takes them out, some crushed, the powder slipping in between his small fingers. As he looks at them, he feels the air scratching at his skin, and though his mind screams at him to take the double of the usual dose, to make up for yesterday’s mistake, he chooses not to fall into panic, lets his heart slow and his blood cool down. It takes a long time, enough that there is more powder on the ground than in his hands, yet when he finally feels like he is in a safe place, he throws the pills away, washes his hands, prepares the new ones.

               For anyone else it would have seemed like nothing but for Jimin, and just for Jimin only, it feels like a step taken forward, away from the bottom of the sea, where his feet are wrinkled and his lungs are full. He breathes in, breathes out, swallows the pills, eats a piece of bread, drinks a glass of orange juice, and walks away from the kitchen, taking Jeon Jeongguk’s letter in his hand.

               He walks down the hallway, crosses the living room where he takes a stack of papers, a pen and his blanket. Then he walks to the veranda, opens it wide, closes it behind him, and sits on the rocking chair. He rocks and rocks, watches the sky outside. It’s close to noon, he realizes. He rocks anyway, lets his body follow the constant movement.

               When he turns his head Jeon Jeongguk is watching him, waving quickly when their eyes meet. Jimin waves back with a small hand. When he squints, he sees Jeon Jeongguk mouthing something he doesn’t quite get. He frowns. Then, taking him by surprise, Jeon Jeongguk jumps down the terrace, walks up to the veranda. For a moment Jimin panics before he himself standing up in a flurry of uncoordinated limbs. He stumbles, the rocking chair falls back, rocks wild until it stops. Jimin tightens the blanket around his tensed shoulders, walks to where Jeon Jeongguk is approaching. He doesn’t quite near the glass. He doesn’t want to touch it. His knuckles turn white.

“Hello, neighbor!” Jeon Jeongguk yells from outside, waving wildly. He smiles bright when he sees Jimin approaching. “How are you?”

For a moment, Jimin searches his voice at the back of his throat. He clears it, opens his mouth. “Hello,” it comes out weak and airy, yet it comes out as something, at least, and Jimin feels a hint of pride taking over him, “I’m good, and- and you…?”

“Oh, sorry, you can just call me Jeongguk!” He comes closer to the veranda, Jimin discreetly backs away. Jeongguk stops there, then, confusion taking over him before he smiles once again. It’s maybe a bit more hesitant, but it’s wide enough that his eyes become but a shadow of what they really are. It hits Jimin, then, that he can finally get a good picture of his neighbor, and his theories are thrown out the window.

               Jeongguk is tall and broad, has the charisma of an alpha, yet his eyes are wide and kind, his lips sharp yet soft, his cheeks full and his stare warm. He’s a mix of everything. Of alpha, of beta, of omega, and Jimin wishes he could smell, wishes he could have what the other omegas have, so that he could finally put his mind to rest, finally see if this man in front of him, with his wavy hair tied in a small bun and his skin tanned and smooth, is someone he could trust without fearing the beat of his own heart and the cries of his own thoughts.

               He wonders, too, for how long he has just stood there, looking at Jeongguk through the window, without saying a single word. He embarrassingly coughs and looks away, tightens the blanket around his shoulder, and Jeongguk has the audacity to look amused.

“I was wondering if it was still okay for me to paint you?” He asks out of the blue and Jimin almost jumps out of his own skin. He looks up, nods quickly, before looking away once more. In this conversation there’s a proximity that shouldn’t be there, and Jimin wonders about how deprived of human touch he is. “Good, didn’t want to just creep you away. I’m glad,” he, too, looks away for a second, suddenly timid, and Jimin finds it endearing, “I won’t bother you anymore now, I’m sorry,” he blushes, a beautiful shade of pink on his honey skin, “is it okay if we still talk? I’ll send you letters, it’s easier. I’ll leave them in your mailbox this time, won’t force them under the door,” he laughs, waves, and walks away back to his terrace, his steps happy and light. Jimin waves, too, before going back to his rocking chair, sitting on it, trying to calm himself down.

               But he’s suddenly embarrassed, more than he ever was. He thinks the words over and over, thinks even about how he has almost said nothing, how his words were so short and useless in their own way. He bites his lips, sucks his cheeks in, stressing over what he has said and what he hasn’t. There’s lingering regret and a deep feeling of humiliation, though Jeongguk hadn’t seemed to mind. He seemed to be a pleasure to be around, a real ray of sunlight on a cold winter day, and Jimin wishes he had said more.

               Then, there’s a different kind of embarrassment taking over him. He feels a pair of eyes on him, sharp and precise, almost too intense for him to really deal with it the way he should: stay put, maybe smile a little, look into the sea with a hopeful and lingering gaze, maybe adding volume and movement to his hair, he remembers all the models in the magazines he used to read when he was just a kid. He doesn’t do any of that though, stiff beyond compare on his unmoving rocking chair, lips bitten raw, tearing the chapped skin and munching on it with his front teeth, suddenly aware of the way he looks. He hasn’t properly showered in… He cannot even remember, and he can feel the bacteria crawling all over him, waiting for him to forget his pills once more.

               His pills. He looks up sharply, observe the sky and the sun shining bright in it. A little bit past noon, the sun still high and pride in the middle of a clear winter sky. He still has time, as much as he desires, though it isn’t as much as he would need in order for his fast-beating heart to slow down and fall into a quiet lull. So he breathes in, breathes out, seems to be doing it more than he used to, what with Jeongguk still looking at him, and slowly sinks into his rocking chair. The stack of papers and the pen by his side are useless now but he leaves them there, choosing instead to push backward, letting the slow momentum bring him somewhere else.

               The sun comes up and down in his file of vision. Up and down, up and down, and when it slows down its constant back and forth, Jimin plants his feet on the ground and pushes backward again, bringing back the repetitive motion. It’s soothing, almost perfectly so, how the sun burns his eyes despite its winter coldness. It’s soothing and then more, adding to the movement the sound of waves hitting the shore, brushing through the thousands of grains of sand, moving them around, constantly redrawing the beach he knows by heart. When he closes his eyes, the sun is still there, just a remnant of its true form, an engraving in his pupils, changing colors as it slowly fades, yet behind it the very cadaver of the sun burns right through his eyelids, making them translucent, and Jimin sees blood and skin, vessels and veins, through the thin layer of his eyelids.

               When the sun finally fades, he closes his eyes tighter, and the landscape in his eyes changes. Instead of a sea of red and markings, it’s an exploration of a kaleidoscope explosion, of varying and constantly changing shapes and colors, of waves and aquatic snakes dancing right on and in his eyes. It moves and flows, comes and goes. He puts his fists on his eyes, presses down lightly against them, and the shapes deepen, the colors get more vivid, and Jimin finds it mesmerizing, how he can see familiarity in all those abstract paintings.

               He stops when the pain of pressing his hands on his eyes becomes too much. He unfolds his fists, lets his hands fall on the armchairs, and ever so slowly opens his eyes. His eyelids are heavy, almost stuck together, yet they unfold to reveal a different kind of sky, one painted by the very shapes Jimin has contemplated, one of waltzing colors and bright waves. He blinks, the colors fade and dull, the shapes dissipate, and instead is left an even colder sky, an even lower sun, and an army of clouds. This time, he thinks, the storm is really coming. This time he won’t get it wrong. The winds are slowly coming and when he turns his gaze to the side, lets his neck push his head, lets it fall limp on the back of the rocking chair, Jeongguk is rearranging his equipment, putting inside what he cannot afford to let outside during the night and, maybe, during the next day. He doesn’t look once at Jimin, too preoccupied with his affairs, yet Jimin squints, and he sees the painting still on the easel, left there. He cannot see if it’s finished or not, doesn’t know if his face is even on there, yet a sudden flash of curiosity bursts through his whole being.

               He hesitates for a second, doesn’t know what will come of it, yet he finally stands, lets his feet bring him to the veranda’s edge, the closest to Jeongguk’s house. He stops dead on his tracks, then, stands stiff and hunched over from the heavy blanket, observes Jeongguk as he runs along. He giggles when Jeongguk trips on the tray, chuckles when his equipment gets scattered around, and laughs when Jeongguk slips on a brush, falling hands and knees on the ground. Jeongguk throws him a discreet glance, seems to be blushing as he stays kneeling on the terrace. For a second, Jimin stops, fearing the outburst of an alpha whose pride has been hurt, yet Jeongguk simply brushes it off with a timid smile, gathering his brushes and paints and putting them back on the tray. Jimin hesitates, then, wonders about what Jeongguk really is, as he backs away from the window, finally turning around when he walks on the tip of the blanket and risks falling over.

               He walks up to the door, opens it, turns around one last time, waves first. Jeongguk waves back with a beaming smile on his face, and Jimin closes the door behind himself. He is left alone, then, with the low sound of the waves behind him, the dim sunrays on his back as the sun slowly trickles down to nothing, with his sole thoughts as companions. His loneliness becomes apparent, then, it comes back to bite him in all its harshness and unfairness, and the void of his living room seems unbearable to him. When he looks back outside, the sun is still there, though weak and almost nothing, waves slowly engulfing it, and Jimin wants to taste it, too, the sun on his lips, the waves on his skin.

               He wants to. To feel the sand under his feet, the world surrounding him. The buzzing of life, the echo of someone talking. He wants to taste it all, wants to make it his, wants to bare his being to a world he has forgotten to admire and love. Yet loneliness creeps up on him, leaves him dry and wheezing, the weight of his blanket like a reminder of his incapacity to do anything, because this world he wants to visit has only given him the weakest of body and nothing of what he should be, a shell of an omega, a remnant of a human being.

               He runs out of the living room, pockets his pills and swallows them dry, coughing on it and coughing on dust, as he runs to his bathroom, blanket falling off his shoulder on the way. There he throws his clothes on the ground, opens the valves and lets his bath fill to the brim. He waits until the tub overflows before turning the faucet off. His skin is clammy in a strange layer of sweat and fluff coming from his blanket; it’s covered in goosebumps as he shivers. He bends down, lets his fingers run over the surface of the water, and suddenly, he slaps it. The water falls over the edge, cascades down in wave after wave, and Jimin submerges his fingers halfway into the water, closes his eyes, imagines the sea’s waves licking his fingers. He waits until the waves stop, until the water stills, and then, he hits it once more. This time, he puts one of his feet on the surface yet with no way to imagine the sand under the sole of his foot, he stands up again and, instead, firmly grabs the edge of the tub and bends down until his face is underwater. Then, he closes his eyes, and imagines.

               There is no depiction of drowning. Not yet. For now, he imagines himself floating, back to the sky, looking down at the abyss he creates for himself every night. The water is cold enough, he thinks, that the winter sun couldn’t make it even colder, that his skin erupts in even more goosebumps, that his whole being shivers up and down and up again, shockwaves after shockwaves, and he waits for the skin of his face to go numb before he finally takes a breath. It’s a loud and long one, he pants as he feels his cold lungs filling up again. He breathes once, twice, before putting a foot in the tub, then another. He breathes a little more before kneeling on the bottom of the tub, breathes even more before sitting completely down, ignoring all the water cascading down the tub. Then, he takes one last breath, the longest, the deepest, before bending down until his nose touches his knees, way down under the surface, not feeling any air on his skin. He keeps his eyes open for a moment, feels bubbles coming out of his tear ducts, feels them crawling up his pupils, then his eyelids, before sliding up his forehead and when more come, when even more bubbles pop and pop again, Jimin realizes he is crying, weeping underwater, where his tears are nothing more than another particle amongst many others. He blinks them away, feels the bubbles float up his cold skin, and finally, he closes his eyes.

               Then, the abyss comes, and all images of drowning resurface. His knees on the bottom of the sea, his feet planted on the dark sand, his fingers digging into the ground, his hair floating and waltzing around him under the pressure of a whole sea, his back hunched over. And then his lips, trembling. His eyes, blinking away the fear, looking through the darkness of the abysmal sea. His lungs, getting rid of their last bubbles of air, feeling them crawl up and away until, instead, they fill up with water, again and again, until they burst and nothing is left of them. Finally, he waits for his heart to stop, but before that, he wonders what he looks like.

               Are his eyes red from the salty water? Are his lips blue from the frozen torrents? Is his skin marked by the weight of an ocean? Is his hair stiff and painted over by ice? And, more exactly, what does he look like? How would Jeongguk paint him, at the bottom of the sea, where his lungs have burst and his feet are planted? And then, a moment, before, what does he look like on Jeongguk’s painting?

               He hasn’t seen himself yet, and wishes he could. Has he been rightfully embarrassed? Has he been wrongfully so? So many questions that his thoughts cannot answer, as they suddenly yell at him that, in fact, he is drowning.

               His lungs burn, a pain so vivid he feels like dying, and he desperately claws his way up until he breaches through the surface. There he struggles for breath, fights his way back to reality, and suddenly, the weight of what he has done pressures him until he sobs, until he cries through his lack of air. He hyperventilates, desperately breathes in and out and in again. In the frozen water he stays, grasping at what he can, gasping as he cries. His eyes are wide and searching for something, something to get him out of here, and he pushes himself out of the tub on weak arms, his legs shaking from the cold and the fear. He slips over the edge, falls loudly on the ground. He lays there, breathing heavily, letting the cold of the ground eat at his skin, looking up at the white ceiling dimly illuminated by an old and dusty lightbulb. Goosebumps erupt on his whole body, he shivers and cries, his breath hazardous, clumsy. In the end he stays on the ground, defeated, ashamed, frightened, a leg still hanging off the edge right above the water, his arms moving to cover his eyes.

               Then, his cries change, and the weight of a thousand oceans falls from his shoulders, the fog in his mind getting clearer. After years of loneliness, a single feeling of fear, one he didn’t have before, comes and stays. Suddenly, he fears death. Suddenly, drowning loses its appeal. Cold and naked, he stays still, until his skin is dry, until the cold slides off of him. Then he stands, walks out to his room, still naked.

               He passes by the hallway where the blanket lays on the ground in disarray. He stumbles over it, picks it up, lets it trail behind his naked form as he walks up the stairs. Then, he throws it on the bed, walks up to the closet, takes new clothes, dresses up, and throws himself on the bed. He waits for sleep to come steal him away from everything he has done, waits for his dreams to put him back in his place, wishing for his somber mind to finally allow him to come up to the surface, just this once.

              He closes his eyes, rolls himself over, buries his face under the blanket smelling like dust. Under it he suffocates, enough that sleep comes easily in a matter of minutes. Then, his mind wanders off to a greater unknown and, just for this once, Jimin gets what he wants.

                He’s in the middle of walking. Above him the water trails and the sun dances, drawings of light hitting his skin in rivulets of white and azure, silver and gold. On his pale skin they draw the sky and in his eyes they reflect life as it should always have been. Though his body is still underwater, he feels warmth seeping into his soaked flesh, he feels the wind caressing his wrinkled skin. Slowly he walks up the ocean, traverses the deepest of abyss, only to find his way up and up again, nearing the surface. His eyes shine in blue and white, his pupils dilate for the first time and, finally, he breaks through the surface.

                It feels like a new birth. Breathing for the first time as his skin feels air for what it truly is, his lips opening for his lungs to fill with oxygen. Breaking his way through the surface, feeling the water cascade down his body as he walks up to the shore. First, the warmth embraces his face, warm hands of the sun stroking the apple of his cheeks, turning them rosy, dusting them with pink and red. Then, they trail down his neck, the warm fingers lightly trace his chest, then his waist, tickle his hips, his thighs, then just graze his calves, his ankles, finally caressing his feet and his toes. And he stops there, sea behind him, the waves still licking at his heels, begging for him to come back. Jimin likes the sun. Jimin likes the wind. Jimin likes the sand under the sole of his feet and lodged in between his toes. Jimin likes the buzzing of life coming from afar, Jimin likes it more as it echoes against the waves. Then, Jimin looks sideways, looks to his cottage then to the one just by its side, where the terrace is full of beautiful paintings his mind has conjured. There is his portrait, Jimin doesn’t need to squint to see it, and then Jimin sees tattoos and a bright smile, wide eyes and wavy hair, tanned skin and dark pupils. Everything is warm and perfectly quiet around him, everything is welcoming, everything is what he needs.

                He waves, Jeongguk waves back, and Jimin wakes up to the loudest of thunder.

               He jolts away from his bed, rolls around until he stumbles on the ground. He shivers from the cold yet stays still, standing right by his bed, eyes drawn to the sole window in his room. He sees the sky outside, covered in the darkest of clouds, rain falling endlessly, loud and obnoxious, and then the thunder, the lightnings hitting the world in all their wrath. Jimin calms his heart down as he readjusts his clothes. He walks to the closet, takes out a heavy sweater, puts it on, before walking out the room. He stops, fetches his glasses, puts them quickly on his nose. Then he scurries away, still shivering.

              As he walks down the stairs, he doesn’t cough. It’s new to him yet it’s welcomed, and he doesn’t bother asking himself why. Instead, he walks lightly to the kitchen where he prepares his pills and prepares breakfast at the same time. He eats lightly yet he feels full. Again, he doesn’t wonder too much, he will have all the time later on to ask himself the many questions wandering his mind. Instead, he savors the sweet hot chocolate on his tongue, lets it almost burn the back of his throat as he swallows it down. With it he swallows the pills, he finds it easier to do, thinks he will do that every morning, now. It’s new to him yet, again, it’s welcomed, doesn’t feel that unfamiliar to begin with.

              For today, he thinks he will clean his house. Going to the bathroom, he decides to start there. It takes time, cleaning off all the moisture and residue. Yet he doesn’t give up and, by the end of the morning, the bathroom almost shines. There’s a pride he hadn’t felt in a while that slowly takes over his heart. There’s pride and then there’s more, a kind of self-love, brought by the fact that he has finally done what everyone else does on the daily. Pumped up, he washes his hands, goes back to the kitchen, prepares himself a meal. He doesn’t finish it all of it yet it’s something, the rest he puts in the fridge. Then, he cleans the kitchen, finishes right when the end of afternoon comes around. It’s overwhelming, how pride has taken over him, and he bursts into tears. He wishes he could brag about it to someone. He thinks of Jeongguk. He wonders if he could tell him about it. If Jeongguk won’t find it repulsive. For now he keeps it to himself, decides to eat the rest of his meal. It’s done, he does the dishes, swallows his pills down with another hot chocolate. Then, he brushes his teeth, cleans himself, and goes to bed.

              To anyone else it would seem boring, a life so uneventful, a narrative so linear. To Jimin it’s a story of progress, one of evolution, and Jimin smiles as he drifts off to sleep. He hopes for more, the sound of the storm passing by lulls him.

             When he opens his eyes, he is still naked. He is still standing by the shore, sea behind him, waves hitting his heels. He doesn’t move. He can’t, right now. It doesn’t bother him. Instead he savors the many flavors life has, imagines Jeongguk painting away on his terrace, listens to the noises of cars and people coming from that blur of a city, far away from the shore. He stays there and waits. With patience, there will be no water on his skin left. With patience, there will be something more, something he has desired more than death itself; he knows. But for now, he takes what he can have and does with it, gladly, serene.

               He’s satisfied, he realizes. It warms his heart just like the sun warms his skin.

             The next morning, he wakes up calm and finally rested. He does like yesterday, cleans the living room and his bedroom, even finds the time to clean the hallway. He just has the veranda left, and maybe the closet, yet the veranda is the most pressing. He hasn’t been in it since two days ago, and he needs to clean the windows, from the inside and the outside. It pulls at his heart, yet Jimin tries to quiet the rhythmical beatings of it. With time he will learn, too, to not be afraid of the outside. For now he will stay inside, even if there is only a light rain today, and no harsher storm in sight.

             The cycle repeats itself for a weak, and then some more days. After cleaning he reads, learns to cook with what he has left, writes letters he never sends. He waits inside until the rain finally stops. Then, he thinks, he will go outside, if only just to open his mailbox. He finds the idea of reading one of Jeongguk’s letters appealing, finds himself attracted to his words, feels impatience eating at his bones. It’s thrilling, how new this all is, and even though, in his dreams, he still stays right by the shore, it’s better than anything he has ever felt before.

              Once again, he goes to bed satisfied and satiated, happy with what he has achieved. This night he dreams of the same dream, where the sound of the brush sliding on the canvas becomes even more harmonious.

                Yet, in the morning, there is a change. Something so new it wakes him up. Something so different his heart sets alight. He opens his eyes, throws himself off the bed, eyes wide.

                A scent of something, light yet present. A scent he has never smelled before. He walks down the stairs in pajamas, walks up the hallway to the front door, and stops.

             The scent permits in the air, and Jimin feels like crying. The smell is delicate, gives off an air of greenery, a sweet and soft fragrance of freshly-cut flowers, flowers Jimin cannot name. It’s subtle, has a citrusy after taste, the spike of freshness, the overall scent airy and smooth, floating freely and delicately. It comes from behind the door and suddenly, Jimin feels torn apart.

                His dread of the outside and paranoia of bacteria scream at him to go back while his curiosity and desire to know more harmoniously sing him to just open the door. To take a breath of fresh air.

                A breath of fresh air, the smell of an unknown flower, the clear sound of waves, the warmth of the sun, it all seems so, so appealing.

                Jimin puts his fingers on the doorknob, unlocks the door, his every limb trembling until his stance is crooked. He slowly, ever so slowly opens the old wooden door.

               It screeches on its edges, the wood creaking, the door pushing around dust and sand, yet it opens more and more as Jimin pushes it. Slowly, his world turns on its axis and Jimin feels it on his skin; the sun. The sun and the air, the smell of so many different things all at once and yet, above all, the smell of a flower he has yet to name. Like the waltz of a fallen leaf, it follows the breeze, ascends the air, dances beautifully in front of his very eyes.

                It comes from his mailbox.

               He doesn’t dare taking a step outside. He thinks he has done enough. He thinks he has lived enough for a lifetime. He thinks so much he cries. Jimin thinks he cries too much. He leans to the side, strains his muscles and stretches his arm if only to reach for the mailbox nailed to the cracked wall. Finally, he slides the mailbox open, takes the single letter inside. Then he closes the mailbox, opens the envelop from where he stands, not wanting to run away from the sun, not wanting to immediately forget what everything feels like, how new it all is.

              The letter smells of that very scent he finds himself falling for. It’s vibrant on the letter, hits him just right, makes him dream and dream some more of a plain full of this unknown flower. Fresh grass, delicate atmosphere, elegant flowers, he imagines brushing his fingers along the petals, watching a raindrop fall form them, and then the wind, picking it all up, making it waltz around him, the sun young and the light soft. In the middle of this very plain he brings the letter close to his nose, takes his time taking in all the different aspects and fragrances.

               It’s Jeongguk’s smell, he realizes. For the first time in his life, Jimin can smell something, can smell someone’s scent and Jimin, without knowing, associates it with what Jeongguk is. Finally, his mind is put to a rest.

                Jeongguk is an omega. Jeongguk is an omega, and so Jimin is, now that Jimin can smell. He still isn’t whole yet, will surely never be, and yet he has never felt so whole in his life before. It’s a gift he never had, to smell someone, to feel their scent, to know what they are, who they are, to love them unconditionally without the barrier of the unknown, the doubts and the questions.

               In the middle of this plain, deeply rooted in his mind as he keeps his eyes firmly close around the piece of paper, Jeongguk stands, his scent mixing with the natural beauty of the landscape his imagination has conjured. And then Jimin, facing him, feeling whole, an almost entire existence of who he is. Not a ghost, not a shell, but Jimin, with his deficient immune system, his lack of fertility, yet with, finally, his sense of smell. Slowly becoming a wolf like any other.

              In the middle of this plain, Jimin smiles, wide, picking the fragrances one after the other, taking them in, never forgetting. Then he opens his eyes, takes in the world outside, encloses the envelop in a tight fist, folding the paper. Finally, he has had enough warmth, enough sun on his skin, enough buzz in his head, and he turns back around, closes the door behind himself. He will take his time, he says. He will take his time and venture outside when he is ready. For now he will take one step at a time and for him, that will be enough.

              Already, he feels like someone else, a better version of himself, and he smiles. His thoughts are slowly coming back and yet, he doesn’t feel threatened. Loneliness is but a mere ghost, a passing of the time, a detail in the old wood and the humid air. He is more and tomorrow, he will be more again, he will always be more than what he was yesterday. And though he fears he will never be enough, though there are still lingering doubts and a layer of skeptical and fearful thoughts, he knows he will always be more. Jeongguk will be his companion and one day, Jimin will watch him paint right by his side, not from behind the veranda’s windows.

                 Not now. For now, Jimin will do with what he has, with what he can do. He won’t push and force himself into doing more. Small yet certain steps, he tells himself. Slow yet always advancing.

               And so, Jimin becomes more. From a shell he becomes a human and then, from there, he slowly becomes what he was always supposed to be. It comes in the forms of letters, first put down right in front of his own door, under a small rock or a heavy layer of humid sand. It comes in a waving hand from behind a window, then a small exchange of words from one window to another. Then, it’s an opened window, a dialogue through a small gap. After that, it comes in the forms of longer letters with more details, more secrets, more shame and heavy feelings, delivered on Jeongguk’s doorstep, then in his mailbox. It’s a dozen of steps taken outside, small feet walking around, feeling the paved road under his skin, feeling the sun on his back, feeling the wind in his hair and maybe the rain on his swollen eyes. It becomes more and more, but never becomes contact. Not now. One day, Jimin will be ready. For now, it’s the glimpse of what could be, the paintings shown from a terrace to a veranda, the words neatly and comfortably written on white paper, then drawings, then sweeter words, from a friend to another, and it’s Jeongguk to Jimin, then Jeonggukie to Jiminie, then Ggukie to Minie and one day, Jimin hopes it will be more than just an exchange of nicknames.

               And then, like the season, it all changes. When winter ends, spring is anew, born once again. Slowly, the sea receives new visitors, from tourists to vacationers. Sometimes, Jimin sees Jeongguk swimming when no one else is around. He paints a bit less, is careful with his equipment, and despite the days during which Jimin would watch Jeongguk paint from afar becoming scarcer, they become more enjoyable, rarer yet more beautiful, more intimate. Jeongguk paints him, then the sea, then a land Jimin has never seen, then something so abstract there cannot be a name put to it, then something romantic, and then it all comes back around, never the same yet all familiar. As the season changes, so do they, becoming more, slowly.

               Spring becomes summer, the sun finally loses its cold, the winds finally lessen, the sea finally becomes fuller. It scares Jimin a bit, how there are so many people outside, how there are so many chances of him catching something from which he will never come back, yet he explores when no one else is around, he walks around, he discovers the world outside from a different angle and then, one day, another letter comes with a proposition he had desperately waited for.

               He doesn’t know how many letters he has, now, maybe more than a hundred, all signed with Jeongguk’s beautiful handwriting and delightful scent, yet this one is special, this one is more than the others.

               It’s almost the beginning of night. The sun hasn’t been engulfed by the waters yet, the temperatures are still warm, summer finally getting to its high. When Jimin hears a knock on his door he rushes outside. There is no Jeongguk and yet, there is a small painting on the ground with a letter tucked in between the wooden frame and the canvas. He takes it eagerly, sits on the porch, shaking on his knees. There he observes the painting, a beautiful recreation of the sunset on the sea, what they observe together every day, from a terrace and a veranda, seemingly so far apart yet synchronized. It’s almost real, Jimin points out, so much so that, if he were to caress the oil on the canvas, he would feel the waves under his fingertips. He has yet to touch the water, still conjuring the courage to do so, still taking everything in stride, all with time and patience, Jeongguk helping him in doing so though he doesn’t fully know everything. It’s sweet, no bitterness to it, Jimin finds it perfect. From the many colorations of the sunset to the smallest details of the sun’s reflection, the majestic sea, Jimin finds it mesmerizing and, finally, he can hold it in his hands, feel it on his fingers, each stroke of a brush, each drop of oil paint, the love Jeongguk has put into it. On the bottom right corner of the painting, Jeongguk’s signature stands in all black, small yet noticeable. A simple ‘J’ and a simple ‘K’ linked together, yet the curve of the letters remind Jimin of the movement of the waves; they gracefully glide over the painting. Jimin loves it.

               It sends his heart in something loving, something loud and bright. It beats fast as Jimin puts the painting down, he already pictures all the places where it could hang. Now, he focuses on the letter tucked behind the frame. Like any letter he has read, it smells of an unknown flower he has learned to love and appreciate, of the many fragrances he has yet to fully describe. He jubilates as he opens the envelop, slips the letter out. Then, he unfolds the paper and reads it with a smile.

               Dearest Minie,

              I hope you like the painting. You seem to love the sunset, you always observe it with such intense love and patience, painting you in those moments is what truly gives my paintings a meaning. You are like the sun, Minie, like the sun on the sea, painting the sky with such a beauty not even the most mesmerizing of landscape could compare. A magnificence beyond imagination.

              And, Minie, like the sunset, you stay beautiful. Despite the seasons passing by, despite the Earth turning, the sunset remains the same, always an inspiration to the most dreaming of minds. Th sunset is never the same, the colors always so vivid and brilliant, always so changing and yet it is a constant, the promise of something more to come. So, Minie, like the sunset, I would like for you to be just that in my life. A constant and a promise for something greater, a beauty I could never get tired of, a man I would, if you allow me, love.

              I would like to court you, Jimin. If you want me to, that is.

               Lovingly,

               Jeongguk.

               His heart beats fast and loud and yet, there is nothing terrifying to it. Its beats and resonance are made of affection and admiration, it’s overwhelming, so much so that Jimin doesn’t breathe. Instead, his lungs expend on nothing and Jimin feels his muscles seizing. He stands up, closes the door behind him, and implodes right before exploding.

               He yells in happiness and, by the end of it, he is winded. He runs around, finds the perfect place to hang the beautiful painting, puts the letter with all the others, all the while smiling like a fool blinded by adoration. And blinded he is, his eyes falling on the still burning sunset, the shadow of the sun getting engraved to his retina and wherever he looks, it is there.

               He laughs, then, feels a joy he is sure no one has ever felt before. It’s beautiful, he thinks, it feels so good, he sings, before finally getting tired. Then he breathes, takes his time to quiet his painfully fast heart and, suddenly, it all comes back to him.

               The doubts. He will see Jeongguk, truly, for the first time. Not from behind the veranda’s windows, not from behind an opened window. No, it will be face to face, almost skin to skin, and they will breathe the same air, love the same way. For a moment Jimin thinks of the bacteria that will invade his space. The thought quickly goes away though it lingers at the back of his mind.

               No, now, Jimin has new fears, though the oldest ones aren’t yet faded away. No, Jimin fears, now, that he isn’t enough. In the span of a few seasons, Jimin has become more. More of a wolf, more of an omega. He smells Jeongguk and, sometimes, he smells other people as they pass by his cottage to go to the beach. He knows, too, what a heat feels like, though it is still just the ghost of a fever in the back of his mind and the hint of a cramp in his lower belly, nothing more, and it never stays. He isn’t something full and whole yet, hasn’t become the omega he was always supposed to be and, until now, he hadn’t been bothered.

               Yet, now, the stakes are higher. Now, Jeongguk is the one he wants, the one he desires, the one he burns for. Jeongguk is his key to true happiness, to the life he should always have had, to the life he has always wanted. Jeongguk is love, his love, and Jimin wants him, he is sure of that. And yet…

               And yet, there is lingering fear. The shadows of doubts, like the abyss of the sea, like the murmurs of loneliness. They have made a home of the back of his mind and, maybe, they will never leave.

               Jimin observes the painting where it hangs. It’s beautiful. Jimin wishes he could get rid of his doubts. Maybe he will not. Maybe he will. But for now, he only dreams of one thing. And as he observes the painting Jeongguk has gifted him, Jimin knows what it is, no matter what his doubts and fears are telling him.

               He wants Jeongguk.

               And with Jeongguk, there is the promise of more. Despite the unanswered doubts and fears, Jimin knows that with Jeongguk, he will have more, and he will be more. More than a rotting shell, and he will become someone he will be proud of, even more than how proud he is of himself right now. He thinks of his feet on the pavement in front of his cottage and he thinks of the sand in between his toes. He knows them now, those sensations. The burning of his skin when the concrete is too hot under the summer sun, the itch of sand stuck in between his toes, rolling under his toenails, scratching at his heels. Yet he wants to know more and if he cannot do it by himself, then Jeongguk will help him.

               And then he will know love, maybe, and it will all be brought up by the feeling of the sea on his skin and the feeling of Jeongguk’s hand in his. He will know love, contentment, and everything in between.

               He already has a packet of letters pre-written, yet none seems really fitting, so instead he goes to write another one. This one, he will pour his sentiments in, as small as they may be. In this one he will show who he really is, who he really can be, and he will show Jeongguk that, now, he is ready.

               The pen trembles in his grip, from anticipation as much as apprehension, both clashing one against the other, yet Jimin doesn’t let them overwhelm him. So he breathes in once, twice, follows the rhythm of the sea as the waves never end. Then, he puts the pen down on the paper, observes it as it rolls smoothly on the surface. The trace of the ink, the shape of the curves. Jimin writes.

               Dear Ggukie,

             Did I ever tell you how much I love your paintings? The details, the colors, the shapes and forms, and then there is so much more, I never seem to find my words when it comes to your art, Ggukie. But today, I want to find them, just for you.

             I am not as poetic as you. I am not as creative as you. Truly, I am not an individual of much interest, simply put. And yet I find myself becoming selfish when it comes to you. I haven’t truly lived, haven’t done so for years, I’ve lost track of time. The waves seem majestic, at first, and the sea resembles an opening to a greater land, yet everything quickly becomes monotonous when known by heart. The waves, despite the passing days, seemed to have the same shapes and the same rhythm, and from the sea I only saw the abyss hiding under its bright surface. Jeongguk, for years now, I haven’t truly gone outside. And to tell you the truth, I have never even touched the waves with my own fingers.

              To make it simple, my immune system does not work as it should. A simple cold could make my life harder, and I’ve feared going outside for years now. I was moved here so that the sea could entertain me while receiving all the help I needed from my parents and their doctor. But I’ve grown tired of it. You’ve made me want more, Jeongguk, and, if after that, you still are willing to give me a chance, then I will selfishly cling to it. I will court you as you will court me. I will love you, Jeongguk.

               With all my heart,

               Jimin.

               There. It sounds cliché, Jimin wonders how bad it truly is, yet his heart is full and in a hurry for him to step outside. He rushes to fetch the tape, tapes the paper close, folded in three unequal parts; he does not care for any of that. His smile is wide and his cheeks are burning under the strain as he hurries outside. He throws the door open, climbs down the little porch, walks down the road. The concrete is still warm from the long summer day, yet the sky is already dark, the sun swallowed down completely by the far away ocean. It’s beautiful, Jimin thinks. It’s perfect.

               Finally, he arrives at Jeongguk’s door. He’s never gone that far before, not on this side at least. He has never dared, has still been too scared of too many things, and then too shy when his worries had changed as time had gone by. So, even now, his heart beats fast with something thrilling and Jimin feels young. No extreme fatigue, no soreness, no loneliness, no boredom. Nothing to make him feel older than he is. No, Jimin feels young, and Jimin feels perfect.

               He climbs the small stairs. The naked skin of his feet scrapes against the stone steps, the toes hitting the corner. He climbs the first one, then the second and finally, he reaches the porch. Then, he stops. He hesitates. He doesn’t know what to do, he has never gone that far before, has never thought he would. So he shakes his head in a moment of blinding courage, and knocks.

               The knocks are small and shy. His knuckles hurt against the wooden door. It’s definitely newer than his, is at least taken care of. There’s no splinter under his skin as he knocks once more. Then, he waits, backs away a little, the heels of his feet right by the edge of the porch.

               Jimin doesn’t feel like falling, so he stays put.

               First, he smells it, the fragrance he loves so much. The unknown flower, the citrusy undertone, the lightness of the petals after a slow and warm summer rain, the freshness of high and green grass. He smells it as it comes closer and closer. Then, he hears footsteps, light, somewhat hesitant, Jeongguk might wonder who is visiting him at this hour. As the footsteps come, so does a voice, one he has heard rarely yet has always appreciated. One he has learned to associate to the many letters he has received throughout winter, spring and now summer. One he wants to hear through autumn and then another winter, and then all the seasons that will come after. An endless cycle he feels he will never get tired of. A wave that will always come back yet never be the same.

“Coming!”

               Jeongguk yells. The door is still closed yet the doorknob moves. There is the sound of the door unlocking and then slowly opening. It’s slow, hesitant, yet Jimin slowly gets to see Jeongguk’s defined silhouette through the gap.

               His heart bursts open, his mind never stops working. The flow in his veins burns and boils against the walls of his flesh, against the very limits of his body. When their eyes meet without any barrier, Jimin feels like dying.

               Dying only to live again, to go through the very abyss in order to relive this very moment once more, in all its beauty.

               Jeongguk seems to feel the same, his eyes wide, his mouth agape in a silent greeting, the words suffocated in his throat before they could brace his tongue. He stands there, watching. Jimin does the same.

               It’s only when the letter in Jimin’s hand falls, lighter than a feather, to their feet, that time finally starts ticking again. They both blink.

“Hi,” Jeongguk greets him, his voice airy and light, and Jeongguk seems overwhelmed, “Hi, Jimin…” something gets stuck at the back of his throat, he clears it lightly, covers his mouth with his hand. Jimin flinches for a second then remembers that he isn’t scared, not as much as he used to be.

“Hi,” Jimin greets him back. He doesn’t know what to say, hasn’t truly spoken to anyone in a while, only Jeongguk, when they would exchange the shortest of words form a terrace to a veranda and the sweetest of dialogues from an opened window to another. There was always a barrier back then, a seemingly unsurmountable obstacle.

               Now, a simple window seems feeble enough to be shattered by the weakest of breeze.

“I didn’t think I would see you, Jimin,” Jeongguk says. He finally lets go of the doorknob, pushes it fully open.

“Your letter…” Jimin finds his words, they fall short of everything he wishes to tell him. Instead, he bends down, takes the letter, silently wincing as his nails scrape against the stone. He hands Jeongguk the letter, then, smiles shy and small, “It’s the answer,” he timidly says. Jeongguk seems to understand as he smiles back at him, takes the letter in Jimin’s hands. His fingers caress Jimin’s and Jimin wants to cry. He isn’t scared of Jeongguk’s hands. “I hope… I hope it’s enough,” he murmurs.

“I’m sure it will be,” Jeongguk whispers back. Then, “you’ll always be enough, Minie,” and Jimin lets himself smile the widest he has ever smiled before.

               For now, it is enough. It is more than he has ever had. It’s so much more that he can’t get enough of it, but it is enough, and he feels he will burst if he asks for more than he can take. So, he waves and Jeongguk waves back, and he climbs down the porch. The first step then the second. Then he walks down the still warm concrete, though it is colder than before. Then, he opens his door and enters his own home and, all throughout, he has felt Jeongguk’s eyes on him.

               When the old wooden door closes behind him, he burst into tears, his smile so wide he forgets where his lips begin and where they end. He slips against the door, feels the billions of little splinters tear through his shirt and then his skin. He slides down until he touches the ground and then, he rests, his fatigue suddenly coming back full force, yet this time he feels relieved of all the weight he has had to bear for all his life.

               He covers his face with his shaking ends, sighs loud and slow. His cheeks are warmer than the summer sun, his tears warmer than the summer sea, his heart warmer than everything warm in the warmest of summer. He feels he is boiling with relief, with anticipation, with happiness and with so much more, with words he doesn’t have that Jeongguk does, and he will ask Jeongguk to teach him. The words, the paintings, the beauty of things. He will ask him everything but before that, Jimin will ask him to bring him to the seashore, where the sand and the waves blur together.

               He will feel the waves on his skin. He will, and then, he will never be scared anymore, he will forget all his doubts about the world around him and all his doubts about himself.

               Jimin feels whole. When he goes to sleep, he feels whole. And when he wakes up the next morning, he still feels whole, like nothing is truly missing.

               And there are some things that aren’t there, yet Jimin doesn’t find it in himself to care. Not when it’s a knock on his door that wakes him from his repetitive dream in which slowly, he is exploring the world beyond the limits he has set to himself. He doesn’t care, especially not when it’s the scent of Jeongguk that welcomes him back to reality.

               Jimin rushes downstairs.

               He jumps down over the steps, stumbles until he almost drops down to his knees, yet he readjusts his self. Then, out of breath, he walks his way over to the door. Slowly, savoring Jeongguk’s scent seeping through the old wooden door, mixing in with the smell of everything old in this house eaten alive by the water that doesn’t even reach it. Jimin lets this smell of familiarity melt with the new smell of Jeongguk, a scent he intends on getting used to, one day.

               He stops in front of the door. There he unlocks it, opens it wide. Jeongguk stands there, perfectly dressed and properly presentable, and Jimin feels himself blushing as he, himself, is severely underdressed for such a situation. Jeongguk doesn’t seem to mind the casual display, simply smiling as wide as he can on such a bright summer morning.

               The time is right, the weather is right, Jeongguk is right, alright, everything is right. Jimin smiles back at him.

“Hello,” he greets Jeongguk.

“Hello, Jimin,” he greets him back. Then, for a second, there is silence before Jimin walks off to the side, inviting Jeongguk inside.

“Do you want to come in?” He asks. He suddenly feels naked, apprehensively thinking of the inside of his home, decorated by only one painting, otherwise empty of any memorable and sentimental furniture or decorations. He knows it, the entire house is devoid of life. When Jeongguk nods, smiling, before entering, Jimin feels something akin to shame. “I can offer you… Orange juice, coffee? Do you want anything? I haven’t had breakfast yet, we could… We could…”

“Have one together? That would be lovely, Jimin,” Jeongguk eagerly says, turning around to face Jimin after having put his shoes by the entrance. Seeing his smile, Jimin feels his worries quieting. For now, he thinks, he will enjoy what he has.

               In the end, they settle for a simple breakfast, Jimin offering the little he has. A vegetable omelet and a small bowl of rice, Jimin does with what he finds, feeling a bit of shame yet a bit of pride at the idea of cooking for Jeongguk. It’s small yet it’s enough and, around the old, humid wooden table, they sit and talk for what seems to be a short amount of time yet ends up being more than an hour.

               They talk about nothing and everything and when the subject becomes too heavy or shameful for Jimin, Jeongguk finds a way to change it, smooth and discreet, always with a kind or playful smile. Jeongguk smiles a lot, Jimin quickly finds out, wearing a small and tentative smile even when the subject turns to something darker than intended, for a moment. There’s always a small quirk of his lips, a curve perfectly marked, and Jimin always feels at ease around him, his heart beating along his words. He wonders if it isn’t all too fast, but then recounts the many letters he has read, the hours he has spent trying to come up with words half as good as Jeongguk’s, and then he thinks of everything else, the little interactions they had, the smiles he was left with after every single one of them. He thinks, in the end, that nothing is too fast for Jimin to like Jeongguk and though he fears the moment he will have to be frank with Jeongguk, Jimin doesn’t find himself worrying too much about it, for now, especially when the taste of fresh food submerges his mouth, melts on his tongue, and the smell of the most exquisite of fragrance constantly caresses his nose.

               Jeongguk talks to him a lot, too, doesn’t hesitate to tell him some of his own truths. In the matter of one morning, Jimin learns as much as he had learned in the matter of months talking by letters. Jeongguk is a painter, not a professional one, yet it is his dream to one day open his own exhibit, to live off his many paintings and drawings. Jeongguk, as of now, is just a new artist with a diploma and no experience to display on his résumé and so, with nowhere to truly go. So, with the many his parents had given him, he had settled by the sea in search of something more, something that could awake in him the deepest of imagination. He tells Jimin, then, that he might have found it and as overly romantic as it may sound, Jimin loves it, finds himself melting like the warm honey on his tongue. And Jeongguk tells and tells, from his favorite color to his deepest apprehensions, and Jimin listens, finds himself intensely participating. By the end of it, Jimin’s voice is raw, not used to be used this much yet. He will get used to it, he tells himself. He will.

               Jimin speaks, too, and while he tells a bit less and keeps to himself what is too intimate to say out loud, he still talks freely, with almost no shame and embarrassment overclouding his mind. No, instead, Jimin becomes honest, tells Jeongguk about the sole reason for his existence. It’s dramatic, and Jimin tells him as much, and yet he has ended here, alone, fearing the outside world, fearing for his own body and life. Jeongguk tells him he has gone far. Jimin tells him he has many things to learn, still. When he tells him he hasn’t gone to the sea, when he confesses that he has simply put foot on the beach and hasn’t gone farther than that, still too paranoid, Jeongguk tells him, with a voice full of love and pride,

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of that. You’re taking it one step at a time and though it may seem small, though, sometimes, it may feel like you’re doing nothing more than walking backwards, you’re still moving and that’s what counts, in the end.” Then, “if you want, when night comes and no one is around, I can bring you to the sea,” he says, his voice full of warm love, his scent getting sweeter by the second.

               Jimin thinks, then, that love at first sight must exist. He thinks, too, that if his omega is asleep, then Jimin will act out for him, and Jimin smiles wide, wishing for this man to be his mate. He wonders if two omegas can be mate. He thinks that, yes, even if one of them isn’t really an omega. He will make it work, if Jeongguk desires it as much as he does. Jimin will work through it and, if Jeongguk wants it, they will do so together. So Jimin, with a heart full, nods.

“I would love that,” he says, voice small yet full of excitement, a small sigh in his words. Jeongguk smiles wide and bright, then.

“Then, while waiting for that, why don’t you show me around? You can visit my house too, if you want,” Jimin nods once more, and Jeongguk stands up.

“It’s not much,” he tells him , a bit of shame in his tone.

“It’s enough,” Jeongguk whispers, looking at him softly. Jimin looks down, hiding his smile, feels his warm heart beating behind his small ribcage.

               For now, everything is just enough.

               They talk more and more as the time goes by. Jimin shows him around and it’s small, there are many rooms he doesn’t use, like the office, the spare rooms, the empty library, and then other rooms that are completely empty, with their doors closed and some even locked, the keys nowhere to be found, yet Jeongguk follows and listens with a spring in his steps, and Jimin wonders if it’s not just the idea of being by his side that makes Jeongguk so eager. It makes Jimin wonder and then it makes him happy, happier and happier. Jimin feels he might finally feel content. Not now, but he will. It’s slow, it’s building, and one day, it will come. Jimin knows it.

               After that, Jimin shows him the veranda. Jeongguk recognizes it and in his eyes, there is a small, childlike innocence that shines when he enters it. The rocking chair, the stack of papers and pen, the dusty blanket. The tape on the corners is still there, Jeongguk doesn’t ask about it, Jimin is grateful. Jeongguk politely asks if he can sit, Jimin agrees. Jimin’s eyes follow him as Jeongguk goes to sit on the rocking chair, as he pushes the ground and rocks, slowly. Jimin smiles. It’s all familiar despite how different it is, now.

“Looking at the sea, how do you see it?” Jeongguk asks after a while. He stops the rocking chair, turns around.

“What do you mean?” Jimin asks.

“I’ve painted you countless times sitting at this very place, Jimin, and yet, your expression never seems to be the same. You would always look at the sea and even I find the sea becoming the same,” his voice is low as he turns back towards the sea, his eyes traveling across the horizon. “Even I find myself getting bored of the picture and yet, when I paint you, you always seem to see something that I don’t. What do you see?” He says, and Jimin doesn’t really hear a question. It’s more of a passing thought, a wonder, his voice just above a whisper. Jimin smiles, sees himself in Jeongguk.

“I see exactly what you see,” he says, “and for a long time I had been bored of it beyond compare. By the end of it I would not even see the surface but just the abyss,” his voice falls and Jeongguk turns towards him, concern in his eyes. Jimin simply shakes his head, walks towards the rocking chair, leans on it, makes it rock. Jeongguk settles back, feels Jimin’s fingers ever so lightly gracing his shoulders. “There was no light, at one point. I would myself there, too, at the bottom of the sea, and the dreams I had would be nightmares. The sea had become a constant in my many fears and though, at first, I had come here to find beauty and solace in the sea despite my condition, I started hating it more than I would hate my body. It was strange but it was…” He thinks for a moment, ponders over his words, still rocking the chair. His eyes fall on Jeongguk, observes as the other omega has closed his eyes, feeling the movement, listening quietly to Jimin’s words. “It was strange, but it was something. By then I had no interest in anything, even the sky had become nothing more than a reflection of this haunting sea. It was all the same,” his lets his words trail away like seafoam on sand, feeling the wave wash away, only to be replaced by another one, almost the same, yet never truly equal.

“Then, what changed?” Jeongguk asks him, bringing his hands up, taking Jimin’s own hands with a soft, almost non-existent grip. He brings them down to his chest, hugs them carefully. Jimin leans down, lets his cheek fall on Jeongguk’s head, feeling his hair tickle his skin. The rocking has stopped yet the both of them still feel it. Like a constant. Like a new wave taking another’s place, the never-ending sea.

“You came, Jeongguk. You made it change, and it was slow but it was something. When your first letter came, I remember, I could only think of the bottom of the sea. I had forgotten even the surface existed. I thought… I thought it was where I was supposed to be. Just, where no one could reach me, where no one had ever gone to. There was no light and there was no life, only the endless pressure of the cold and heartless sea always weighting down on my shoulders. Then there was your other letter and then, you sent others, and I sent some back, and you made me… You made me less terrified,” he feels Jeongguk’s grip tighten around his fingers, bringing them closer to his heart, if only they could be. “It was all new. Walking through the door, I thought even the wind would kill me. My parents kept on telling me I would die, because the world has brought me life yet it wanted it back. My body is weak and I don’t have… I don’t have what an omega should have. I’m missing parts of what makes an omega whole. And sometimes, I still feel like something is missing. I know something is missing, but it’s not as haunting as it used to be. Every worry I had has faded away to the back of my mind, since you came.”

               A time. He breathes.

“It’s nice,” he tells Jeongguk, “to not think about the bottom of the sea, to not think of the abyss when I look out to the horizon. Now, when I look into the distance, I think of something new. I think of the steps I haven’t reached yet, and I think back on the ones I have already achieved. I have walked outside. I have felt the sand under my feet, the concrete burning my skin, the wind blowing me away, the sun warming my flesh. And then, I have heard the buzz of the city, the sound of music coming from your house, the sound of the radio coming from a passing car. And then, I have felt and heard so much more. And, Jeongguk, and… And I have discovered your scent. I’ve never done it before. I’ve never smelled anything. Not an alpha, not a beta, not an omega. Not my parents, not my doctor. You’re the first one. For that and for everything else, I am thankful, Jeongguk.”

               For a moment, there is no word that is said. It’s just the sea’s constant song, the wind’s constant blow, and the ticking of time. Sometimes, the rocking of the chair, the caress of a thumb. And then, Jeongguk asks, without moving,

“What do I smell like?”

               Jimin thinks, takes his time, though he already knows his scent by heart.

“Like a flower I don’t know, in the middle of a meadow, its beautiful petals painted over by the morning dew. With a hint of citrus and softer flowers, fresh grass. It’s a natural fragrance I love so much.”

“A tiger flower,” Jeongguk whispers.

“Is that the flower’s name?” Jimin asks with a tentative voice.

“It is,” Jeongguk answers, “it’s the smell of my birth flower.”

“What does it look like?”

               Jeongguk thinks for a moment, his eyes trained to the horizon, hands still warmly gripping at Jimin’s fingers on his chest. When he moves his head a little, turning ever so slightly towards Jimin, eyes never leaving the bright waters, his hair caresses Jimin’s nose. He nuzzles into it, smells Jeongguk’s shampoo and scent. He smells paint, too, the slight scent of acrylic.

“When you search for them, you find out they have three large petals, but mines have six. They curl outward on themselves and form a sort of… Chandelier as they hang, quite heavy, on their stem. When they aren’t blooming, they’re just straight, a sort of… colored stick or… I don’t really know how to correctly describe it but when they’re not blooming, they’re quite plain. But once they bloom, they become magnificent. They have these orange and red hues, yellow on the inside, slowly turning orange and red along the curled petals. They have spots, too, that might be why they call them tiger flowers. Red spots, darker than the rest of the colors on the flowers. They stand out. And finally, they have filaments and anthers, six of them, I think. I’m not too sure, you don’t see these kinds of flowers every day,” he trails off for a second, his eyes blurring on the horizon, following the perfect border between oceans and skies. Then, he blinks, looks back at Jimin, and smiles, “I haven’t smelled them personally but if you tell me I smell good, then I’ll believe you. They’re beautiful, you know, I wish I could show you,” he turns back towards the sea, settles his back on the rocking chair. Jimin lets his head slip down Jeongguk’s own, follows the curve of his neck until his forehead falls on Jeongguk’s shoulder. It’s an awkward position, quite painful, a position he’s not used to, straining the muscles of his back and neck, and yet he feels warm and comfortable like this, close to Jeongguk’s scent. “I’ll buy you a bouquet of them, one day,” Jeongguk whispers.

               They stay like this for quite a while. It isn’t hours, Jimin’s back becoming more and more painful as time goes by, yet it is enough time for the silence between them to settle completely. It’s all so new, so different, yet it already feels right, almost perfectly so, so they stay like this for a bit more, until the sea’s song repeats once again, the music always the same.

               Then, when Jeongguk moves and when Jimin straightens his back, keeping his hands in Jeongguk’s, he asks,

“Do I have a scent?”

               His voice is low, almost a mere murmur, a bubble of foam popping when a new wave drowns it. For a second, Jimin wonders if Jeongguk has heard it. He is about to ask again when Jeongguk answers.

“Not much. From you, I only smell the slightest hint of something natural. It’s almost nothing, but… It’s there. I don’t really know what it is.”

               Jimin doesn’t know how to feel, torn between relief and disappointment. He has never smelled like anything before, his parents and doctor have told him so. First, smelling like a simple pup, unpresented, the smell of fresh milk, then nothing, a human without its fur, a wolf without its skin. An omega lacking of everything that made him an omega. Yet, after Jeongguk’s words, he isn’t sure anymore of smelling like nothing. There’s something, something brewing, slowly becoming more, finally emerging, grass growing on a desert after decades of drought, when the rain has finally poured, a long and overdue relief. It’s not much, but it’s something, and Jimin decides on feeling relieved.

               Again, it’s something more. It’s enough, he thinks. He’s becoming enough. He’s already become enough. He’s relieved.

“Can you scent me, Jimin?”

               Jimin stands up away from the chair, something overwhelming taking over his whole core. For a moment, he doesn’t know what it really is, until his widened eyes fall on Jeongguk’s loving ones and suddenly, he feels it, the slightest hint of pride. He feels like an omega and then, he feels love warming his insides.

“Really?” Jeongguk nods. “But I don’t smell like much, you’ve just told me so,” he’s already walking around the rocking chair though, watching as, without his weight on the back, it rocks, following Jeongguk’s breathing.

“It’s okay, I just want you close,” he says and for Jimin, it’s enough. He bends down, hands on Jeongguk’s shoulders, a knee on the edge of the chair, right between Jeongguk’s legs. He comes closer, his nose first brushing against Jeongguk’s cheek, following his jaw, until it falls right on the border between his jaw and his neck where his scent is the strongest. Jeongguk’s hands fall on Jimin’s shoulders as he lifts and turns his head and then, Jimin scents him.

               The flower, now that he has an image of it, blooms perfectly in his being. It grows and grows again, a perfect addition of color, a contrasting beauty, vibrant and burning love in a field of green respect and blue adoration. The rain, and the grass, and the air, and the sky, a field turning wide and bright, a flower becoming another, and then another, until tiger flowers bloom and bloom again, until each petal trembles under the weight of a single drop of morning dew, until they fall in a splatter of minuscule droplets, until it all becomes more and more and more, until the overwhelming feeling becomes love, and then more than love.

               Until, finally, around the field of tiger flowers, bushes full of white and small flowers bloom and bloom again, too, until, finally, the smell becomes something Jimin has never smelled. Until, he knows, Jimin will have his own scent, one day. But for now, with the promise of something more, he is enough, and so he backs away.

               His heart settles and Jeongguk smiles, a lovely blush on his tanned skin, a lovely turn to his smile.

“Stay with me for a while. Just there. And then, I’ll bring you to the sea.”

               Jimin stays right by his side, waiting for the sun to fall, settling on the rocking chair right on Jeongguk’s thighs. Jeongguk scents him, sometime during the afternoon, and the sleepy sun warms their skins.

               It’s love that Jimin feels. And it’s love that Jeongguk feels, too. It’s fast, but it’s more than they ever had. It’s fast, but it’s welcomed. It’s fast, but they take it in as it comes, and they will keep on taking it until there isn’t any love left for them to share. Jimin hopes he will never get enough of it.

               When the sky turns black, when only the reflection of the stars and the moon makes the water blue, then and only then do they stand up. Jeongguk takes Jimin’s hand in a telling silence, and Jimin’s heart beats faster than it ever has. He follows him through the veranda, through the hallway, through the open door and, strangely enough, it feels like something he has never done before. It feels like the first time he has ever opened the old front door, like the first time his naked feet have touched the concrete, like the first time his toes have dipped into the sand. But then, it’s really becoming something new, and Jimin takes it all with a beating heart and a shaky smile.

               It’s the first time he walks down the beach. It’s the first time he feels wet rocks piercing the sole of his feet. It’s the first time he feels algae right by his heels, the first time he leaves his footprints on the sand. It’s the first time he takes a step more. And then another. And then another, until finally, he can see the sea right in front of him, until finally, he can smell it correctly, in all its salty and fresh odor.

               The waves are low, so low that, behind them, Jimin can see two sets of footprints digging into the wet sand, perfectly symmetrical. They are so low, in fact, that Jimin feels like he has almost touched the center of the sea, like the abyss is nothing, now. It isn’t that deep, he thinks, it isn’t that deep, and he isn’t scared. He isn’t terrified of it and it isn’t calling for him. He isn’t scared.

               He breathes in the fresh air. He isn’t scared.

               When he looks at Jeongguk right by his side, his skin is tainted blue and black, the stars reflected on the water reflecting back on his skin, a projection of a sky that has been filtered through the waves. It’s distorted. It’s beautiful. It gives him an allure of something mystical, something surreal. It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful. And when he smiles at Jimin, applies the slightest of pressure on his hand, never letting go of it, Jimin feels his heart beat in rhythm with the waves and with Jeongguk’s heart, too.

               Jeongguk takes two steps forward until the next wave engulfs his feet. He looks at his feet then looks back at Jimin, silently encourages him. He nods towards the sea. Jimin gets it.

               Once more, he breathes in. He waits for a wave to come, to go, before he takes two steps forward, too. When the wave comes, time stops, and something in him finally blooms.

               By the sea, the water is cold. The water is cold, even though it is summer. Its flow is constant. Its waves are repetitive. Yet Jimin, with his two feet now sinking into the sand, can never get tired of it. When he closes his eyes, he imagines the marine life, and he imagines himself. He imagines Jeongguk’s paintings, the abstract arts, the landscapes and the portraits he has yet to fully see for himself. He imagines the dreams that have been replaying in his head for days, the ones he has yet to see the end of. He imagines the abyss, the very place he has wished to drown in, the very place he has been dreading for years, a place he has never seen, and a place he knows he will never see. He imagines more. A field. A sky. A sea. A forest. A city. An entire world. He imagines everything, he imagines himself everywhere.

               And no matter where he imagines himself, he sees Jeongguk there. With a bit of paint on his eyelashes, with the smell of tiger flowers and a hint of Jimin’s own flowers that have yet to bloom but will, soon. Jimin imagines himself everywhere and with each new step he takes, he is becoming something more.

               But for now, Jimin is enough. And finally, he feels content.