Archive of Our Own

The library’s air is almost always fragmented in its illustrious drawls. On the surface, it was always any student’s first pick for a study spot, especially as their university funded most of its treasury into furnishings and the artificially planted, floral displays lining campus grounds. 

God forbid any of that money went to meaningful incentives or proper equipment for their plethora of studio rooms and theatre displays. He guesses they’re just satisfied enough with their unending range of marketing ploys and faux schemes.

It won over his parents, that was for sure. There was no room to complain thereafter, not when he’d been the one to beg for an art school to be added on to their lists of strong potentials, and had ultimately gotten that spot. 

But hey! You get a gym with astoundingly spotless machinery and a range of activity plans that no one ever joined. Given that it’s one of the university’s best facets, as mercilessly sorrowful as that is, Jisung has even gained the incentive to work out.

Today, he’s on the precipice of an alright day. Jisung thinks he should fare pretty well through this elusive study session he’s only offhandedly agreed to be a part of. It was an event he was briefly proposed to just the week before; by Chan, whose fingers were tapping against his desk like he was attempting to find a beat to groove to. When Jisung questionably finds his eyes, it’s to a stretched-out grin that he doesn’t understand the exact implications of. 

It was almost always either the insufferable amount of survival-based knowledge he held to his chest like a guard, or the random spurts of time he adjusted his gaze to read ‘I appreciate you’ and moved on with his day like he didn’t always brandish his multicolored heart to the world, if only to show his loved ones off.

Jisung knows the look well, and he doesn’t make much sense of why it would've been worn on his face with such obstinate determination, until Changbin mentions something in seemingly fleeting motion. 

‘I don’t know, people you’ve seen before. Obviously, you know Chan and Iyen-ie will be there, but there’s also Hyunjin…his roommate, Seungmin, you know him?’

Jisung’s movements ice, his skin bluing. Changbin moves on before he can even answer back, because God , does he know Seungmin. 

He knows him, but not like someone who’d simply describe their relationship with someone who has only remained to be an acquaintance thus far. Jisung would sooner let himself drown in the multitudinous range of colors on a radioactive spectrum before he would admit that he’d been a hearty, secret admirer of the boy.

Secret admirer was a weird sort of phrase to equip. Perhaps too vague, teetering too close to the mythical interpretations of stalkers that pretended to be bashful and adorable because of it. No, in Jisung’s eyes, he means it in the gentlest of his sincerities. 

He means it in the way that hearing Seungmin stretch his vocal chords out and allow them the space to reverberate against a seemingly empty practice room, is an experience not quite like any of the mundanities souring his life.

He also means it in the way that he just happens to be the epitome of forthright beauty. The kind that threw him back to the middle-school feeling of tattling sparks and sketching down broken-hearted emo bunnies — that was one hell of a phase to have gotten stuck in.

Except, now, there aren’t any niche bunnies to keep his hands busy while his friends form circles by the shielded intersection separating Campus A from Campus B. From here, Jisung has an exemplary bird’s eye view of either side. 

He can catch easy sight of students as they trek out of their on-campus coffee shop branch, Daydream Brews, or of the ones set up by the shaded seating area, a cornucopia of bedded crops a mere few feet away. They may appear resolutely vibrant with life, but the opposite is true. Plants bred through means of artificial cloning were too easy to spot; you’d just have to smell them.

There’s not much to the campuses than can be said for any university, but Jisung enjoys how quaint it manages to remain despite the horrendousness of finding parking spaces here. This school housed too many students and ran off of too high a budget to be neglecting the misuse of their parking lot. 

Jisung has been through the worst of it. Including nearly getting crashed by the same person he finds showing up to his morning lecture just minutes after him. If you were going to end up this late anyways, why’d you have to go and almost wreck my car?

All that being said, this very day starts out just alright, even if he’s entirely acknowledged the fact that Kim Seungmin would be seated within his vicinity. Of course, they’ve had the odd number of interactions here and there, but they’re inevitably faint to him. Again, they are just mere acquaintances. But Jisung wholly doubts Seungmin, too, has covered the edges of multiple notebook pages with his face .

Jisung has heard of the common artist drawing inspiration from passing faces, of varying shapes and structures. It’s normal to want to find ways to harness the ability of diversifying one’s artistic dexterity. What wasn’t entirely normal on the basis of his insistent denial, is drawing the same face, the same curved edges, rounded arcs, and true eyes. 

It starts with a quick sketch at the bottom half of a page overtaken with scribbled-on notes about some aged artisan he honestly did not like the work of. Back then, it was a mechanism he used to practice the construction of side profiles as owner of said profile sat but a ways away, hair fiddling with the passing wind, his posture straight and evocative of practiced patience. 

But then, Seungmin sits at that spot more often, and Jisung happens to be there when he does, and it’s too easy to re-immerse himself in working to perfect every dip of light struck against his eyes and every width of discoloration trickling a plethoric complexity into his character. 

Jisung isn’t too sure how or when the intention grows further past casual admiration to the first iota of infatuation. He thinks himself too easily swayed, too close to a metaphorical depiction of the sun’s strongest of rays too often . It took as much as a series of kind gestures and the blatant realization that the boy two forms above his was incredibly attractive, to develop an explosive gay awakening. 

Thank you, Lee Minho , he imagines himself offering if they’re ever to cross paths again. You unknowingly served me well.

But the pile of conundrums that lumped every facet of his emotionally-oriented experiences was never enough to solidify the displacancy he feels for himself. He thinks he could look to lower his standards and benefit from such. 

It wasn’t like he didn’t think himself to be someone that could get around well, it was just that he could not find it in him to accept that anyone’s heart could possibly weigh heavily enough to hold him in it.

That being said, restless hookups and stringless conjoinments were his general forté in congruence with a life led by some amount of complacency. Just enough to neglect the part of him that craved for more and satisfy the part that took what it could reach. Took what it couldn’t possibly be hurt by. 

Lee Minho might’ve been a figure of the past, but the kind of ache their one-sided relationship had provoked was too substantial for his interests to coalesce with his reality. And this library-meetup is not going to set him back in that routine. 

Seungmin was admirable in his scholarly dedication and effortlessly attractive in multiple senses of the matter, but Jisung can withstand a passing crush. It wasn’t like Seungmin sat in his head for long intervals of time as endlessly as some of his worst cases of non-mutual pining (Lee Minho, seriously ). He only ever really found a place within his rock-solid head when they happened to inhabit the same space. A little crush was all it was, and Jisung was reliably sure that it would dissipate with time. 

Except, as figurative lacerations go, Jisung is struck with the looming grip of an awful gut feeling as he’s pushing himself up the darkwood steps towards their library’s second floor. Although, the title library doesn’t do this part of the building much justice. It’s stemmed right from their ‘entertainment spaces’ which attempts to amalgamate a fun slew of non-complementary colors in the form of putridly blue couches paired with stinging red pillows, minecraft themed rugs, and one worn Playstation 4. He appreciates their unending effort, but students rarely visit the spaces. 

Instead, you’ll usually find them littered across the library’s expansive space, within private study rooms or lounge corners or the very small amount of bookshelves carrying university-acquainted books. Although it depends most on which of their three colleges you’re stuck with, the students are given more theoretical work than they usually expect upon signing up for the treacherous devil-instigated contract offered to them. 

You could easily drop-out and switch to another school , a voice echoes in Jisung’s head. Until, of course, he’s reminded that this singular statement holds no basis, seeing as he’d been the one to beg for a place within it and allowed his father’s savings to dwindle drastically as a result. At least he’s making some of that money back. Very little , but it’s progress. 

And besides, he reminds himself as his arms fling over his head in a wide, stretching motion before a yawn pools past him just as easily, today has been a relatively quiet one. There was no need to let himself delve too deeply into the matter of his past mistakes. 

There would always be upsides, he adds on in his head. And then, coincidentally, is greeted with a face so unsightly that he almost thinks he’s imagined it. Then, of course, he remembers again; Seungmin is joining them. Yes, Seungmin is to be a participating member of this impromptu study group plan. 

And it would be fine. He’s only a few ways away, inspecting a book from one of the cornered shelves. It’s an electric blue and a stark white hardback. Jisung squints until he can make out the title: ‘The Structure of Singing: Systemic and Artistic Values’. He’s biting into the flesh of his bottom lip, the miniscule ebbings of a frown evident through the droop of his eyes. 

He’s not too sure what it is about Seungmin and the ease with which his eyes could convey a multitudinous range of emotions alone. He knows of the philosophical approaches to the conveyal of strong emotions being emitted best when out of our line of control, whether it be a tonal shift or an uncontrollable waver in one’s stare. 

But Seungmin is another story. He doesn’t end up overcompensating by stressing the veracity of his emotions like Jisung and his own range of too-obvious expressions. 

He looks somewhat bent out of emotional shape when he should look indifferent, and when his head lifts to where his line of sight falls over Jisung’s awkward stance — He can only do so much with these flat feet —, he looks surprised. Again, nothing drastically indicative like how Jisung’s wide eyes grow ten times their size and mouth stretches so far in length that it forms a perfectly oval shape.

Jisung realises he probably looks some variation of visibly and obviously frazzled, but Seungmin doesn’t consider it any more of a tension-evoking feature. Or at least Jisung would think so, seeing as he moves forward until he’s standing in front of Jisung and awaiting a greeting back. 

‘Uh, hey,’ Jisung finally manages to offer forth. He nearly readies his sweaty palm for a handshake until he realises this is not a formal meeting. ‘What’s up?’

‘I was waiting for the others.’ Seungmin offers a quick smile before pointing to the room closest to them. ‘Chan mentioned we’d be meeting up by Room B20, and yet no one’s arrived yet.’

Jisung blinks a few times, his metaphorical lacerations having landed enough hits to leave him fending for himself in an equally metaphorical concussion. It’s 20 past 3, which is exactly the time they’d set. He doesn’t know if Seungmin is one to show up extremely early, but he seems like the type to.

‘Oh. How long have you been here?’

Seungmin screws his face in thought before glancing at his watch, a hardened puff lifting out of his chest. As if the motion alone wouldn’t have resonated in Jisung’s heart enough, it lifts a tuft of hair out of place and over the bed of eyelashes on his right eye. He abashedly brushes it away before muttering, ‘30 minutes.’

So, Jisung’s assumptions are correct. He wonders if any of the other ones he’s made up hold any substance as well. If he likes his eggs sunny side up, or if his favorite color is the most particular shade of soft blue, or if he’d not know what to do with himself if presented with a vibrant compliment. 

Anyways.

‘Oh, man, I’m so sorry,’ Jisung finally lands, wishing he’d had enough gall to show up on time. He honestly did not find any issue in taking his precious time when invited to certain, group outings. If it concerned Chan or Changbin or Hyunjin. But having Seungmin wait so long feels like the toughest punch to his concussed head. Metaphorically. 

‘Don’t worry about it! At least you actually showed up.’ Seungmin smiles sincerely. Poor dude. Jisung wishes he could pull him in for a sympathetic hug and translate some amount of comfort through it, except he’s well aware of how strange that would be. 

A temptation has never been so hard to deny. 

Somehow, however, he manages to place it aside well enough for the pieces of a politely woven sentence to pass through both of his ears with great resonance. 

‘So, shall we get started without them?’

Jisung blinks, his head in somewhat of a tailspin. Really, Seungmin could’ve just started and gotten done on his own. Only a few of them could say they were going off of the same material, but Jisung was going to be spending his time sifting through a multitude of credible websites for the sake of his art history research project, and he assumes Seungmin’s work as a vocal performance major is going to vastly differ. 

According to Chan, the point of the study group was merely to give and be given the kind of support and stipulation one can easily miss when working alone. 

So, when Jisung trickles along with him towards study room B20, and the door is promptly swung open, he catches quick sight of some scattered sheets and pencils splayed out on one side of the long table, an open backpack slumped against one of the chairs.

The private study rooms feature an interactive monitor, of which has been on standby for some time, the black screen showcasing a looped animation of multicolored bubbles bouncing against the corners.

He almost lets himself get distracted until his attention is already transferred elsewhere. Seungmin’s already firmly settling back into his spot while Jisung chooses to sit across from him. The hardback textbook from earlier is piled over three thinner guide books and a notebook. 

Once Jisung notices the vibrant glint of blue that almost strikes him in the chest with profound fear, he quickly realises that it’s Seungmin’s notebook and not his. It’s the same model and color as his own, which he quickly confirms with himself, is still in his arms, along with an HP laptop and a sketchbook.

He wouldn’t have been as close to freaking out if it weren’t for the fact that the notebook happens to be the one he uses for just about any last-minute annotations or doodles, as can be easily seen from the slew of Kim-Seungmin-specific studies. Some entire pages are dedicated to them, although most of them are accompanying other denotations or scribbles.

He’s got his fucking hands in there for God’s sake. Because he’s a guitar player with long, hardened fingers and Jisung needed to practice, and that was that. Seungmin just so happened to be the perfect muse.

He has to calm himself down again, somehow a lot more on edge than he thinks he should be as he quickly works to set everything up. His sketchbook — specific to anything and everything to do with art history — is to his right, so he can look back to earlier references and project-specific arrangements. His laptop is propped open before he can find any other excuse to avoid the touch of that crisp blue notebook. 

Alas, he knows he’ll have to consult his additional notes from a private meeting with his professor, eventually. The only problem bordering him from carrying out the simple task being that he’s almost certain there’s something on that page he doesn’t need being aired out. 

When he does get to finally skimming through the pages, warily and with heightened shoulders, he’s relieved to find nothing but notes in barely comprehensible writing. He’s still left in a heavy sludge of red through the mere fact that he’d caught sight of the certain pages that did include rough sketches mapping out the details of Seungmin’s features (or hands, or stance, or lips, or…). 

Practice, he does it for practice. Anatomy was hard to get down, and Seungmin’s was….quite nice.

Ahem.

Maybe if he stopped pairing cropped sweaters with high-waisted mom jeans, then—

‘Hyunjin just texted me,’ Seungmin airily chuckles, an amused glower in his eyes as they peer down at the, now, alight screen of his phone. ‘he says he can’t make it.’

Jisung heaves out a heavy set sigh, one that’d likely been working an appetite from the moment he’d stepped out of his house today. So, all of Chan, Changbin, Jeongin, and Hyunjin have yet to make a show, and one of them has already confirmed that he wouldn’t be, at all.

All things considered, he wouldn’t find the notion of Changbin and Jeongin collectively ditching them to be one reigning as all too surprising.  After all, when they’re not objectively arguing, maybe teasingly and maybe for the show-off that gets them to ‘sneak’ away together, they’re hiding away in whatever vague pretend hangout they assume people don’t realise is some secret lover’s getaway. 

Everyone’s simply awaiting the day they admit they’re either obliviously infatuated with one another or have already figured it out long ago.

‘I haven’t gotten word from anyone else.’ Seungmin concludes, sliding his phone away.

They’re probably not showing up , Jisung echoes in his head. After all, the meagre possibility that this could’ve very well been set up by Bang Chan is all too high.

He is, after all, the only one of the pack obstinately aware of Jisung’s crush. He’s a general, far-off admirer. Unless anyone has seen him attempt to interact with the taller boy, there’s no way they’d know of it. If it hadn’t been for the time he’d mindlessly lent Chan his notebook, only to be met with a too-knowledgeable grin whenever he returns it, he likely wouldn't know of it either.

Still, Jisung shakes off the possibility, filing it away for an interrogative opportunity later on, and quietly opens up a new tab.

‘So, I guess it’ll just be us?’ Seungmin questions. Jisung halts, his fingers hovering over the keys of his laptop.

‘Uhm, yeah, I suppose.’ Jisung attempts to placate himself, a light chuckle allowing some amount of mirth to be detected in his tone. He’s afraid the mere spike in his nerves would make him come off extremely off-putting. He’s not sure if he’d like to see more of Seungmin; he’s much too intriguing to miss an opportunity to get to know him better, but Jisung is merely fearful for his heart. 

Thankfully, there isn’t enough time for proper chatter to be woven between them, as they place their heads down and get to silently working. Eventually, maybe 10, maybe 15 minutes in, Jisung is too in tune with his own work to leave space for any intrusive thoughts. After the first few minutes had passed in complete, shuddering silence — if you choose to ignore the tapping of keys and the flipping of aged pages —, Seungmin asks if he could put some study music on, and Jisung agrees quickly. 

He assumes, initially, that it’s any normal lofi mix, but the winding instrumentals and occasional rings sound too familiar, like he’s heard the same sequence somewhere before. Given that he doesn’t usually consult lofi playlists to study, he doesn’t understand what could be eliciting such a feeling. 

That is, until he catches a peek at Seungmin’s screen when curiosity gets to him.

‘This is the Oneshot soundtrack?’ He audibly asks, lips stretched out into an oval and eyes bewilderedly wild. 

‘Yeah,’ Seungmin nods, suddenly alert. His eyes squint with the rise of a kindred smile, and Jisung mentally denotes how one squeezes into a deeper, slanted crescent than the other. He thinks it might be because of his asymmetrical eyes. 

Maybe he takes a mental screenshot to preserve for later. Just Maybe.

‘I put it on one day because it showed up in my recommended tab. I’ve never actually played the game.’ Seungmin admits, a coy giggle following his words.

‘What?!’ Jisung practically shrieks. His eyes must’ve grown to be the width of saucers by now, but it seems his reluctance to address it is enough to get him to continue. ‘Dude, you have to, it’s amazing!’

‘I sensed it would be,’ Seungmin nods affirmatively, the plaster of that same smile even wider now, ‘but hearing it from you just affirms my assumptions.’

They have the room reserved for just around 20 minutes more, Jisung tells himself as he physically shrinks back into solitary focus. He can handle 20 more.

・❥・

And, evidently so, those 20 minutes pass him by like a river’s steady course. He’s just about managing the rhythm of things, clicking into a new tab when Seungmin reports that it’s just shy of 4:15pm. They’d have gotten a good hour and 15 minutes of ‘inter-group motivation’ if the others had ever bothered to show up. 

By that point, Jisung had well accepted that the work had to have been the fault of his very own friend, after a short text exchange. 

[To Jisung]: Hey Sung !!!! Am extremely sorry but I got sidetracked today and forgot about the whole thing. Maybe we could set up another one sometime soon? 

He merely rolls his eyes before swiftly responding.

[From Jisung] : ha-ha, very clever, Hyung. sleep with one eye open >:(

Not even 20 seconds pass him by until he’s gotten another reply.

[To Jisung]: Hehehe but aren’t you having fun ? 

Jisung looks up for those few moments, debating whether to truly indulge him and fortify his question with a genuine response. Seungmin is subconsciously humming the tune spilling liquid merriment into their shared space, his eyes skimming along several lines of a music-based language he doesn’t think he could ever try understanding. 

He decides to pocket his real answer to himself and sends another passive-aggressive one back to Chan. 

So, really, it’s a given that he feels somewhat of a disappointment at having eased into their timed session so well and yet didn’t manage to get much of a word in. 

Even then, he has not the gall nor the gumption to ask if he’d like to accompany him for coffee, or anything of the sort. 

But he doesn’t expect it at all when Seungmin himself is the one to turn back around as they’re scurrying to organize their work back into neat piles. 

Jisung has to hold everything he’s brought to his chest because he’d, like an idiot, forgotten that bags were very much an invention to have existed for centuries. 

‘Are you doing anything now?’ 

Jisung almost assumes Seungmin is directing the question elsewhere. Then, again, he reminds himself that they are still completely alone. 

He feels like his reserved yet resoundingly chaotic, middle-school self with the way he’s clutching his items to his chest. He’s looking up at Seungmin like he’s the owl he caught sight of from his window just a few nights ago, rendering him a blanketed wakefulness two nights in a row. 

‘N-no, sorry,’ Jisung freezes. He’d been somewhere between wanting to say yes to evade further contact and the potential expansion of his heart, and saying no because he most certainly wanted nothing more than to prolong their time together.

‘Oh, why are you apologizing?’

Jisung stares mindlessly. ‘Uh, I don’t understand why you’d want my company.’

Seungmin’s listless smile depicts the day’s piled tire this far, and his shoulders slag at having to carry extra weight. Jisung would have expected him to scurry away as quickly as he possibly could as soon as they didn’t have to face one another anymore.

‘I want to get to know you better.’

Jisung knows by then that he’ll have fallen too far forward to pick himself back up. He accepts Seungmin’s request and they choose to find someplace to eat after Seungmin mumbles that he’s gone too long without food. 

He almost wishes, for some inconceivable reason, that this will give him a justification so as to not continue to pursue Seungmin’s interests, or imprint his face on any paged surface he could get to. 

Maybe he’ll find him ruthlessly aggravating, a twinge too defensive, any kind of personality that could rub the wrong way. But as soon as Jisung tries to implement the possibility, it’s gone. Of course Kim Seungmin is perfect through and through.

As he’s piling vegetables and dipped pork cuttings into a new ssam wrap, he listens with helpless admiration as Seungmin topples in laughter after hearing a story about how he, Changbin, and Chan first met. 

It was one people rarely got to hear.

And then, after they’ve downed enough of a main course and have resorted to washing it down with individual requests for tea, Seungmin is telling him about how he initially started volunteering at a shelter some few years ago for mandatory service work, but had gotten so attached to the place that he tries to visit and work with the animals as often as he can. He names a few of the ones that have stuck for all the years he’s spent there, a few of the ones that had left and the ones he misses and the ones they’ve just gotten in and—

And Jisung knows, by the time they’re trekking along a sidewalk, towards the direction of the nearest public bus stop, that he’s landed in troubled waters.

・❥・

With that certain time of year edging closer, it’s to everyone’s knowledge that the College Council should be midway through preparations for the school year’s conclusive themed-event. They’d announced it officially, through the school’s social media, just around two weeks back. 

Hollow Fluorescence , Jisung recalls reading the theme’s name, eyes squinted so severely he’s sure his contacts almost fall off. It’s acquainted with pretty graphics and a logo featuring a skull with sunflowers for eyes, both of which were clearly made by one of the Web Design students. 

A skull with sunflowers for eyes; Jisung finds the juxtaposed duplicity to be fascinating. If only he knew what the hell they were trying to convey with such a vague name. Usually, their themes were more forthright, easier to decipher. 

Last year, it was themed around mythical folklore. Jisung had shown up dressed as Peter Pan, to which he’d received a slew of ‘You can’t just dress as a fictional character and call it a day.’ from his friends. To which he’d responded with ‘They say we direct hate towards what we cannot have.’

(Part of his joke was that his English name happens to be Peter Han. The other part of his joke is that he’s pansexual and found hilarity in the coincidence.)

That being said, they’d eventually gotten their answer in the form of what can only be described as a notes app confirmation. Apparently it should’ve been ‘obvious’ that they’d be combining the rise of the undead with pretty florals. 

Completely obvious, yeah. 

So, essentially that meant that students could come dressed up as zombies, skeletons, stitched franken-versions of themselves, vampires, and anything else that could pass by the criterion. It was encouraged to include any piece of a floristic element, big or small. Some people had been discussing bringing whole bouquets of long-dead floral arrangements, some were planning on integrating it into their makeup looks, some leaning towards dresses and suits and veils with floral detailing. 

Jisung was sure he’d try, yet again, to find a loophole through this. He’s already considering the possibility of dressing up as Misfits’ Nathan Young. Rather, Misfits’ Nathan Young but with a single rose, or something.

Yeah, he’s just some ordinary dude, but he’s also immortal, so technically…

 Midway through this arguably ingenious plan, however, he receives an email that damn near sends him spiralling into insanity. A professor of his, who works alongside the College Council for means of guidance and stipulation, has selected him as one of the students recommended to assist with event preparations. 

Except, the word recommended would’ve elicited no actual effect, because Jisung knows he’ll be forced into it one way or another. Their council was never large enough, and volunteers were almost always required to make up for this. The only evident issue, as of now, is the fact that he happens to be one of those lucky stars. 

He reluctantly responds with a confirmation, acknowledging that it’s already out of his hands, and accepting the request for a meeting next Monday, whence he’d be given a particular art-oriented task. Seeing as his expertise remained mostly in the hands of traditional, physical work, he’d likely be stuck somewhere with the prop-painting committee, or what have you.

He expects the course of the day to feel miserably horrid from the start of it, and the dullness in his eyes as he props his professor’s office door open is enough indication of this. He’s, coincidentally, rubbing at them with one, scrunched up hand, while the other grips onto an iced coffee. Because of this, he nearly misses the third face in the room. The one Professor Choi seemed to be in the midst of conversing with. 

And by the one , Jisung means Seungmin, because really, who else could that be.

Professor Choi is a well-substantiated individual. He wears the same combination of a sweater vest and beige-brown pants everyday, save for the few occasions he decides to be a bit wilder and pulls out a patterned tie. All in all, he’s a great guy, even if his teaching methods are a bit unorthodox — like, say, making up a jingle for his students in the middle of a lecture and spending a good 10 minutes attempting to create new lines on the spot. He’s special and Jisung appreciates that. 

Plus, Jisung has never noticed, but he isn’t that tall. He just happens to stand taller than Jisung, who is so accustomed to the notion that he doesn’t think of it much when someone can easily be deemed of average height rather than within the ‘tall’ label. His skewed vision is almost immediately righted at that moment. Seungmin looks so tall in this singular, freeze-framed second, and Jisung has to stop himself from thinking about how much longer his legs look in those shorts and—

He’s getting ahead of himself, really. 

‘Ah, Jisung, you’re here! I was just versing Seungmin on the details of our event plans going forth.’

Jisung looks between the two of them, as confused as he is too tired for this. Given that his only lecture of the day had gotten canceled, he hasn’t had a reason to wake up at a reasonable time — i.e. while daylight would’ve just risen and the birds by his window would still be decidedly chirpy with too much delight for the sun’s shine. 

There was no real reason to feel elated while their numbered days were allowing humidity and heat to intermingle like the combination wasn’t the most suffocating set of conditions to be stuck against. 

Once he’s allowed the fact of his evident tire to subside, he remains stuck on the one objective he’s seemingly been missing out on a chance to ask about while his professor continues to sift through his desk for a specific sheet. Seungmin, as far as he’s aware, is not part of the College Council, which only further petrifies the situation.

Well, the answer should be obvious, but again, Jisung is entirely too slow to have allowed himself to join this impromptu meeting on this detrimentally hot day.

‘Ah, I’ve found it!’ Their professor whoops. His eyes scan down the sheet until he’s humming contentedly.

‘Just as I suspected, you two have been placed into the same group. Along with Lee Felix, from the College of Performing arts.’ 

Jisung’s stuck between bewilderment and the barely-wakeful torpor elevating figurative, hazy spots from his blinking eyes.

‘What…?’ His tire must translate because he’s met with a seemingly amused, short but heart-wrenching chuckle from Seungmin.

His professor halts, placing his glasses back on as he peers down at something on his computer before looking back up. ‘I’ll need to get some papers from the copier room. Seungmin, will you relay everything I’ve told you, please?’

The boy politely nods before the professor is speedily walking past. Jisung almost thinks himself to still be dreaming with how much deftness clouds and surrounds him. It’s so much thicker now that they’re the only two in the room.

‘They’re grouping volunteers up, just to ensure things are organized properly.’ 

Jisung squints, then. If he were to be grouped in with anyone of any format for the sake of this event, he’d think it to be with individuals residing within the art college. Unless Seungmin was secretly a triple threat, as Jisung would not be surprised to learn. 

‘Based on what?’

‘Not sure. But our group is in charge of floral arrangements. ’

Jisung’s eyebrows furrow until his vision completely blurs. What the hell does that have to do with him?

Seungmin senses his disdain — as it is obviously displayed in the form of Jisung’s face and its implications.

‘Yeah, I don’t get it either,’ His smile is mirthful despite his own dismay over the situation ‘I think they just want us to do whatever the council does not want to do. Like arranging orders with a florist.’

Jisung grunts. He slumps forward like two boulders have fallen over his shoulders. At this point, he doesn’t care too much that he looks like a whiny child in front of his much-taller and super attractive admirant. 

‘Yeah, me too.’ Seungmin responds, patting his back softly. Jisung practically surges back up, like this is the only motivation he’ll ever need to maintain a fixed posture. 

‘But I’m glad we’ve been given the opportunity to work together.’ Seungmin’s emulating that same grin Jisung’s been mentally scrapping for. He hasn’t had any time to sit down and doodle away, and he’s not sure if that should feel as remorseful as it does. 

At least it sits in his head pretty well. The same head that isn’t better for anything else — speaking, reminding him to blink, etcetera.

‘Ah, me too.’ Jisung shouldn’t feel as palpably scorched as he does, considering he’s in a T-shirt that leaves a substantial amount of space for air. 

‘I’m glad the sentiment is shared,’ Seungmin nips at the skin of his bottom lip. He’s grinning and staring like he knows something, and Jisung doesn’t appreciate how easily he can shrink under the presumption. ‘but I can’t say I’m too surprised.’

As if Jisung doesn’t know exactly what he means, he chuckles, each subsequent ha-ha incredibly patchy. He’s mentally sweating up a storm. 

‘Wh-what do you mean?’

Seungmin slugs his backpack down one side, his hands brushing against something stark blue sitting within a compendium of other things. 

‘Haven’t you noticed?’ He says, brandishing a notebook his way. 

At first, empty headed and not doused in enough caffeine, Jisung wonders why Seungmin is showing him a notebook that he happens to share the same model of. It’s only the folded edge at one corner of the flimsy covering that tells him it’s most definitely his .

Not Seungmin’s. 

Who is holding a notebook littered with so many iterations of his face that you’d think Jisung had to keep drawing it out just to remind himself of how he looked.

Jisung’s frame goes completely frigid. His gaze is as immobile as any possible motion to move that he cannot possibly make in this state. He’s practically awaiting the second Seungmin would simply slam the book back into his hands and claim that he would never want to be associated with the likes of him again. 

Beyond the possibility that he would be exposed for his big fat admiration , he can only imagine how creepy the behavior would come off. At least, that’s how the behavior was always painted whenever young girls in teen movies drew little hearts with them and their crush’s initials encased within each one. 

At least Jisung never jotted down a quick H+S. Or worse, various scribblings of Kim Jisung or Han Seungmin. 

Still, is it any better to find out he drew him as often as he did?

‘Here you go,’ Seungmin holds it out wordlessly. His smile never twitches, and Jisung cannot for the life of him find a twinge of malice in him. ‘you can return mine whenever we next see each other.’

Jisung mumbles a tiny thank you before holding the notebook so close to his chest you’d think he was offering it a hug. He really thinks he needs one right now. 

But if Seungmin still appears nonchalant, maybe he hadn’t flipped through enough of the notebook’s contents to find any trace of Jisung’s odd fanart.

‘You know, I’m actually really flattered by the cute drawings.’ 

There goes that theory.

Jisung reminds himself that words would be a very important necessity this time around. The more he tries to scramble for an appropriate response, the more terrible suggestions are hurtled back towards him. 

‘I-I…yeah, the… those . Ha. Yeah, uhm…you’ve seen…those…that I made,’

Amazing work, brain. You’ve really done it this time. 

Seungmin tilts his head. That same bite to his lip, that same slanted gaze. It’s like he wants to be the personal culprit of Jisung’s eventual demise, or something. With the way he feels his heart practically skipping certain beats as it rocks from speedy to slow, it really does feel like he’ll pass out any second soon.

‘I really do, you don’t have to feel embarrassed! In fact, I actually wanted to ask if I could keep one?’ 

Jisung gulps. If he’d merely been sweating up a storm before, he can imagine the figurative tsunami now. 

‘K-keep one?’

‘Yeah! Like, one of the pages.’

The blatant reminder that Jisung has entire pages dedicated to literal Seungmin studies adds on an astounding amount of further embarrassment. 

‘Sure…yeah, of course.’ He manages out. Then, he’s not sure what to do with himself. Whether to pass the notebook back or open it himself or perhaps fall to the ground.

Seungmin, once again, acts first. But this is somewhat of an unfortunate outcome, seeing as he steps so close that an inflammatory desire to run away for a seeming eternity clings to him like another layer of skin. 

He smiles, sly and seemingly acknowledging of the static it undoubtedly evokes. Gently, his fingers graze along the notebook’s ratty cover until Jisung’s mind-fog gets his grip to loosen and Seungmin’s hands to gain refuge back against its covering. 

Jisung’s eyes would ordinarily prefer to strain against any hazy limelight his mind could conjure up for itself, but this isn’t a situation he’s accustomed to. 

He’s far too domineeringly attractive for his own good; a face of devilish pomposity, yet angelic entraption.

And Jisung’s eyes simply respond to the neural response they’re signaled to. If a certain number of synaptic transmissions decided that his heart could stand to pump blood quicker in the face of a man with remarkable beauty, then who was he to argue with biology?  

But perhaps allowing his eyes to glue to Seungmin’s was an assured preference. At least, in the case that it was compared to a sturdy competitor: his lips. The bottom half of which is sunk under his teeth, pinkened by cloudy tint and fluffed by the Gods, probably. 

Ah, there goes his heartbeats and his nerve responses and his muscle knottings and his amplified distractibility and everything else that ensured his panic was always as evident as it could possibly be.

‘Trying to memorize my features before the next creative rush?’ 

Jisung gulps. He hates how clearly he’s being seen right now. Enduring the brunt of his own erratic fears could’ve never prepared him for this moment; the reckoning within this shameless transparency. He never expected anything to come out of his and Seungmin’s conjoinment, but he could do without this .

In fact, he’d hoped, most of all, that with how fleeting the nature of his heart was, that it would soon be rid of that distinct fluttery glint it saved for Seungmin.

Seungmin, thankfully, didn't seem to be awaiting a response — with how fragmented Jisung’s speech had become, not much could have been expected of him — as he soon thereafter pointed to a page from the notebook.

His smile is mirthful, teasing. An upturned line.

‘Would my artisan be alright with losing this page?’

Jisung knows , beyond inconceivable doubt, that Seungmin has chosen to brandish this page before his very eyes to make this interaction, somehow, distill his clogged senses for even longer. He wants to see him bleed by his blade. 

What other possible explanation exists to justify why Seungmin would want to keep a page-long study of his stupendously long fingers. Which Jisung owns for the sake of his own skill-set enhancement’s best interest at heart. 

There are a few scattered along the page of his hands gripping onto the strap of his book-bag. A few make up variations of one hand strumming a guitar and the other playing the chords. One is of his hands clasped together, an evident ruggedness to their sculpted lines.

Why would he want this if not just to watch the way his eyes bulge out or his cheeks inflame almost instantaneously. One simply does not seek out the worst of one’s shame without intent. 

‘I would—, I…that’s ok. Y-yeah, you can have, ahem , you can have this one.’ 

Seungmin returns the scrambled response with a wider smile and a complacent hum. Equal mirth, but a substantially higher level of snark.

‘Yes, well, I didn’t think you’d miss it, what with how many iterations of my own hands I could locate in just the span of a few minutes.’

‘Oh, I—,’

‘Yes, you have a fascination, I’m merely flattered. Next time, let me know. We could try out a different slew of poses.’ 

・❥・

When Jisung wakes up everyday, a groggy husk of himself, it’s to the display of a time-bitten crow, painted over a spot on his bedroom’s ceiling. His mother, ever the superstitious sustainer, told him it would act as a portentous move for change. 

Initially, whenever he would've only been 6 years of age, it was for him to turn bad dreams into better foresight. The solemn image of a precarious crow perched on a branch in the gloom of dusk. It’s made with the aim of evoking fear, yet all the crow looks towards is the shining husk of a moon and its adjoined splatterings of light and sinew. 

When Jisung thinks about it from the surface of fresh eyes, he believes it sounds clichéd and overzealous. When he bases his end-of-term project on it, he hopes to keep the prospect between him and his professor. Hopes to shield it because of how too-precious this token is, and how heart-twisting it would be to hear any infliction of an eye roll or two over it.

After all, one expects for an artisan to birth new life into conceptualizations that disway current ideologies. That challenge stances, that leave an impact.

Jisung feels incredibly small when he compares his work to any of the others roaming along his level. 

And yet, that security and that hold and that grit does not hold him back from eventually driving himself into that Seungmin-constrained hole he’s finding himself down these days.

Only once it’s past his lips, and Seungmin has already leaned over his shoulder to examine the digitized sculpture, does he acknowledge the fact that he’s broken his own rule.

Was he really down that badly?

(The answer will always be a firm yes .)

Seungmin blisters his heart, raving about how elated he’d be to see the structure whenever it’s finalized. Then, he nearly sends it bursting with overcompression when purposely neglecting to lean back into his chair, choosing to bleed his gaze right into Jisung’s face while within too close of a proximity for his own good. 

‘It’s amazing, you know? Everything you make is streamlined with gold.’

Jisung stutters past a choked chortle, each Ha-Ha somehow more deranged than the last. Somehow, this does not make Seungmin move away. Instead, he’s met back with that same, signature smile. 

Irritatingly resilient, really.

‘U-uh, that’s, um…I mean, thank you.’ 

Seungmin hums in response, choosing now was a better time than ever to poke his right cheek with one, pronounced nudge. 

‘Are you allergic?’

‘Sorry?’ Jisung manages, iced to one spot, and that was exactly where he’d remain until Seungmin regained enough sensibility to quit peeking into his soul. 

‘To the flowers.’ He gestures around them, where bunches of flowers sit in displays, or set out in vases and bouquets. As one would find. At any ordinary flower shop. 

‘No?’

‘Oh, that’s good. Both for the nature of our job here, and because I was afraid there was cause for concern with how red your cheeks are.’ 

Jisung wishes he actually was allergic to flowers. 

Alas, he isn’t, and Felix serves him the stark reminder in the form of a card scented with something floral and a murmur about how he thinks this might be the right place.

Felix, who Seungmin only kind of knows through his roommate, Hyunjin, is someone Jisung has only ever known through word of mouth. It almost feels like he intersects well with everyone in his friend group except for him. 

It’s odd, but he was still stuck on the hope that they could use this time as a trio to connect over the fact that they’d all been forced into their current, flowery predicament. 

Going into things, however, he’d been brashly awakened by the reality of things. Either Seungmin was a witch and had been purposefully placing him under a spellbound haze over the past two years or so, or Jisung is down bad.

(Haven't we already gone over this? He certainly is .)

So, all in all, bonding with Felix didn't come as naturally with Seungmin’s close presence in equal tow. So much so that Felix expresses that he feels like somewhat of a third-wheel around the pair. Jisung owes most of the blame to Seungmin. He’s sure he’s made it a mission to torment him for as long as he probably knows how far he’s fallen for him.

Or maybe there’s hope to be found beyond the simple fact that he’d basically exposed his middle-school-dream-notebook 

It had only seemed as simple as a small crush.  A fleeting flight of fancy. Jisung was surer than sure of that, but he presumes it doesn’t help his case much to have the taller hovering over his shoulder every time he starts to feel his soul reach his body again. 

Of course, there were moments of clarity. Points in time where tension dissolved and a crack in his shell grew longer and larger. Shards of himself aching to slip past, drizzling all over the ground at their feet.

And when that happened, Jisung rambled. And when that happened, he edged closer to being a little too comfortable with befriending a face that has unearthed a possibly lethal stretch of affection out of him. 

It was also through this pettish ramble-fest that he both inadvertently invited Seungmin to observe his work personally, and shared a variety of personal stories that he did not need to hear, yet listened to with ample focus.

Jisung’s chest aches, but he’s not allergic to these flowers. So, he keeps his eyes off of fluffy conversationals and finally asks Felix what he thinks of the shop.

・❥・

Although they loiter around a slew of other flower shops in the area thereafter, the trio are synchronously inclined to that one. Noir Florals, who offer categorized arrangements fit for a range of events and occasions, including one seemingly sectioned off for Halloween’s ghastly beautiful trademarks; tufts of dully-tinctured arrangements, black roses, dramatically long and winding, petaled pots. 

Speaking of ghastly beauty… 

For whatever reason — apart from one that aims to crush the sharded remnants of Jisung’s corporeal soul —, Seungmin has shuffled into the shop today, where they’d planned to meet for the sake of finalizing a concrete schedule, just a tad late.

His hair is tousled and evergreen , the dusting of temporary coloring clear in how shadows of green settle over his black strands and weave into diverging lines. It’s obviously messy, done on a whim, and without the intention of a clean finish, but it still manages to make Jisung’s heart rattle against his rib cage. 

Of course, because of course , it's worse once he’s looked up and Jisung can see him with so much more clarity than he’d ever asked for. His eyes are dusted with hazes of glimmery lilac, fairy-light against the sun-stricken displays. There are stripes of violet run across each under-eye, only slightly overshadowed by the three, pristine gems stuck to the height of each cheek. 

Plus, Jisung is more than sure — as can be transcribed from his own experience — that he has his hoodie on, inside-out. 

‘A friend of mine who’s a Theatrical Arts major claims to have come up with the finest premise for an end-of-year project,’ Seungmin explains, once he’s situated himself between Jisung and Felix, following the latter’s comment on his appearance. 

‘I don’t really get the entire gist of it, but he’s essentially spending the week attending my classes for me. Apparently, theatre students like to dress up before impromptu play-throughs.’ He finishes off, holding tufts of greened hair between his fingers before grimacing.

‘So you’re…swapping lives for a week?’ Felix attempts to affirm, his fingers picking at the tiny daisies he’d been generously gifted by a shop employee.

‘Just on the academic side of things. Hyunjin, the friend, says it’s his conceptualization of method acting, or whatever.’ Seungmin shivers like he’s had a rake slide against his bones. ‘His scene partner asked me to practice some runs with him later. I tried to respectfully deny the offer, but I somehow ended up accepting it instead.’ 

Seungmin’s eyes fall over Jisung’s icy form, thereafter, Felix having already busied himself with weaving the tiny flowers into his own hair.

He smiles. An amicable greeting, swift in its delivery yet stupendously heavy on its lingering factor. When his eyes squint, the velvet stripes meld into the browns of his irises, the gems glinting along with them. 

He’s an enigmatic beauty. Paradoxical in the way he slashed a double-edged sword deep into Jisung’s chest, watching strings of petaled flowers spill over. 

He smiles back, an amicable greeting returned. 

‘So you’re technically a theatre student for the week?’ 

Seungmin gruffly sighs, glossy lips stretched out until his cheeks are apple-round. 

‘Yes. That does give you the free pass to make as many theatre-related picks at me for the next few days.’ 

Jisung’s grin extends so much he feels its stretch as it nips against his chapped lips and hazes his vision with each wistful, eyelash flutter. 

‘You’ve read my mind.’ 

・❥・

With every fit of flurried weather, comes the intruding anomaly. As much a virtue as it is a vice. This morning, Jisung’s mother takes notice of the greying tumult hanging along the sky, darkening with the absence of light. She tells him she’s sure it’ll rain and forces an umbrella into his hand as he’s stumbling out the door, already around 5 minutes late for his lecture. 

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t purposefully prolonging his drive there, but it’s an inconsequential attempt anyways, seeing as he walks in on his professor attempting to rearrange the wire connecting his projector to its screen. Jisung spends the next 15 minutes adjusting the screen’s image clarity. 

Lugging the umbrella around, especially as he’s attempting to slip past seated students into his own, proves to be a truthfully unneeded hassle. Thankfully, he gets the pleasure of tuning his professor’s voice out for a quick twenty minutes whilst he busies his hands with the task of scribbling in a sketch of possible order arrangements before forwarding the non-distinct florals to Seungmin and Felix.

Seungmin writes back quickly, thanking him for ‘a wonderful grace of his artistic magic’ . Felix responds that he must really have it ‘bad for him’ to be claiming Jisung’s nondescript flowers looked like anything but baskets of cotton mush — they did , as a matter of fact, Jisung had placed zero effort in recalling how some of the flowers even looked like. Magnolias are just orbs of yellow, right?

Jisung shoves his phone back into his pocket before placing his palms over his cheeks, unpleasantly expectant when it permeates heat back onto them. 

The insinuation that Seungmin, in all of his magnificence, could have it bad for him is laughable. Maybe if it were Opposite Day. But it’s not, because the clouds are still a dusky meld of greys when Jisung’s swinging out of Daydream café with a coffee in his hand and a drizzle tickling the strands of his hair.

The light trickle is nice for a while, and Jisung rounds the grounds with a hand in his pocket and no discernible objective. It should be a quiet day, relatively absent of traffic or strenuous teeth-pulling due to the mere presence of a certain person, and he almost thinks the rain won’t grow anywhere past its light trickle. 

Of course, he ends up being entirely wrong, and when his theory is disproved in the form of a heavier shower that substantially grows by the minute, every other theory is, as well. 

He’s throwing a now-empty cup of coffee out when he spots him. Seungmin, drenched in low spirits and rainwater, sat against that shaded intersection. He’s sporting a white T-shirt, his arms wound tightly around his chest, where a tuft of flowers are clutched to his chest like they’ll scurry away, otherwise. They, too, are soaked in rainwater. 

It’s funny. Jisung has joked before that he’s grossly addicted to that black-white windbreaker he sported so often. And yet, on the only day that it would’ve served its rightful purpose, he’s opted for a white t-shirt and the lightest shade of blue for his jeans. 

Jisung almost lets himself linger for too long, glued to his spot where he quickly realises, is exactly the position from which Seungmin would be placatingly seated while Jisung scribbled away. He hasn’t drawn Seungmin in some time. It all feels too embarrassing, even if he never lets himself address it directly. Even as he’s selfishly glad for Seungmin’s dreadfully calm exterior. 

Does Seungmin think he still draws him from time to time? Did he actually save that page for himself, or throw it out in a bitter flurry of rage for having been in direct contact with the loser that spent all his time drawing his crush instead of attempting to redeem his helplessness? 

Who knows, really. Jisung’s attempts at distancing his heart from Seungmin’s concealed trove are usually futile, anyways. He might as well drop his own inhibitions to help the poor boy out.

The walk is short, and Seungmin spots him quickly as he’s hurriedly shuffling along his line of direction, umbrella handle clutched tightly under his palms. 

They’ve never stood that far apart. Seungmin was never that far from him. Why couldn’t he just approach him to talk?

He’s barely able to construct what would remain of the thought, as he watches Seungmin’s face tilt upwards, a bashfulness to his demeanor that so commonly besmirches Jisung’s attempts at being nonchalant. The taller’s ravenous hair is soaking in the dunks of water shrewdly blocking Jisung’s capacity to think. 

Beads of water dot his face from where they carefully collectivize against strands of his hair and trickle past. He’s helplessly attempting to get them off whilst also keeping his flowers secure in his grip. 

He nervously chuckles, smoothing the hefty strands away from his eyes before squinting against the watery dots clouding his vision.

‘Hey, Jisung.’

His bunched-up flowers are all of one kind. The droopy petals are rooted into globes of glum yellow. He’s seen them, knows they’ve placed an order for them along with numerous other names, but he can’t attach any of them to their holders. 

All he knows is that Seungmin’s flowers are soaked through, and he certainly doesn’t know enough to distinguish if they would fend off of it or wilt with time from overexposure.

It’s a tuft of flowers, picked out of their roots. Of course, they’ll wilt. They all do, eventually. 

Jisung returns the greeting as he’s holding a hand out, thankful that his assumption of there being no one awaiting Seungmin’s floral offer, is proven right. For his own selfish reasons, and so that he wouldn’t be awkwardly denied.

Seungmin secures his palm against his, and Jisung hesitates under the new rim of shade, watching remnants of water splatter over the gravelly ground. They synchronously fidget for a bit, finding what best way to position themselves under an umbrella intended for one. 

Seungmin eventually heaves past an airily-winded chuckle, releasing his small clasp from Jisung’s pruned palm before gently grabbing for the handle himself. He looks down at his bouquet before asking for Jisung to clutch to his side while they settle for his place at the dorm building, given its closer proximity.

Jisung feels like he’s the one soaked through, shivering against an empty cloak. He sends Seungmin one last look before gaining enough sensibility to slide the smooth fabric of his hefty jacket off — faux shearling — and gradually holds it out like he’s wordlessly asking to be rid of it.

Seungmin smiles. As always, it’s mirthful, ordained. Teasing.

‘You’re not gonna put it on me, yourself?’

Jisung gulps, the wake of its falling lump stinging his throat. ‘O-oh, of course, I will! Yes, most definitely,’

He fumbles with it like he’s the one with his hands full. Again, Seungmin is absolutely drenched, several sinkholes under where his feet stand. And yet Jisung remains to be the shivering scoundrel, as has become customary.

Thankfully, the absolute mind-maze of having to shift from helping him get it on and temporarily switching Seungmin’s belongings over to him whilst their breaths remain too closely intertwined, is speedily over in the matter of a few short instances.

Not as well a matter to be celebrated, however, is the fact that Jisung becomes first-hand witness to the way his loosely fitted jacket looks on Seungmin’s frame. 

Seungmin is slim, and while it does loosen around his torso and against his arms, the material visibly stretches out at his shoulders. Plus, the sleeves only manage to reach his wrists, when they would easily slip past Jisung’s palms.

At least, Jisung thinks, it’s worth the lashes to his heart, if he gets to see the way Seungmin merrily sighs at the fresh encasement of warmth.

He’s patting Jisung’s arm before he can revel in that relief for too long, holding the umbrella between them and pointing to his side. Jisung reluctantly loops an arm around Seungmin’s, yelping when he feels himself pulled closer. 

Once they’re trekking away, and that shaded area grows minisculely distant, he feels a patch of his hair grow colder, sticking to his neck with the passing movement. He could ask for Seungmin to tug him closer, but he’s too afraid, so he doesn’t say anything.

・❥・

Although it’s somewhat swallowed by the distinction of a clear-cut and emotionally reclined infatuation, Jisung is alarmingly endeared by Seungmin’s dorm room. It’s always difficult to make good, personable use out of such a limited space, and yet he manages to draw vibrancy out of these four, dully colored walls. 

Of course, there’s not much to be seen from the dull walls, seeing as he has his side of the room packed with decorated posters and an assignment wall that acts as an accessory for sticker packs and simple reminders scribbled over Pompompurin-themed sticky notes.

There’s room for one set of desk space, which is where he finds an amusing clash of divergences. He doesn’t know an awful lot about Hyunjin, other than that he happens to be the famed theatre student, but he seems to mesh with Seungmin pretty well, if the latter’s stories are anything to remain faithful to.

Jisung isn’t entirely sure why, but it evokes a deluge of comfort. Seungmin has a good roommate. Dorm conditions are never ideal, but he has a good roommate, and Jisung doesn’t even realise he’s feeling relieved by the notion.

Of course, while he has all this time for contemplation, Seungmin has ensured his stay would be prolonged, promising he’ll be quick when he heads for the showers. He is , after all, or maybe Jisung just sits in a limboed state of daydreams long enough for it to feel like he’s finished quickly. 

Seungmin’s hair is still damp when he twists the strands against his fingers, planting an oil-based serum of sorts in before reaching for the hairdryer. His skin looks tremendously soft to the touch once Jisung catches a good sight of it, a chocolate chip mole planted against the lower half of his right cheek, pinked from the heat. 

Jisung, ever the heart-bending idiot, almost forgets that he’s planted on Seungmin’s bed, having made himself far too comfortable against the pillows for a visitor. Seungmin eyes him gleefully once he’s deemed himself ready. Jisung isn’t sure, for what, at first, until Seungmin snidely climbs onto the bed, too.

He doesn’t tell him to get off, but Jisung thinks it customary when he attempts to slide out of his way, until he feels a gentle grasp halt him from progression. He hears the ghost of a murmuring heart and an airy chuckle before he hears him: ‘You can stay. Hyunjin can sense when someone’s using his bed.’

He sounds tired. Gruff with the desire to slip under the sheets, soft with the tumult of warmth. Rendering yet sweet, like the wrathful bite of pineapple once you’ve had a little too much in one sitting. 

Jisung clings onto one pillow, wrapped sullenly in silk Seungmin’s probably bought for himself. It’s a patterned sea of blues and whites splattered across an array of flowers worked in a slurry of waves. Jisung solemnly wonders what carries them. 

‘How’s Project Raven going?’ Seungmin asks. He hasn’t situated under his sheets like Jisung assumed he would. He merely sits between the precipice of dreams and day-led lingering, like Jisung is.

He hums for a moment, wondering for himself how best to word a coherent response. It’s not in shambles or anything; things are moving according to plan, but the veracity of said plan is currently…being questioned.

‘It’s…ok. I’m not sure, honestly, it feels a bit empty.’ 

‘How so?’

Jisung thinks about it. Seungmin’s already turned himself over, his hands supporting his head and his heart inflated tenfold, as if ready to take in any of what Jisung will give him.

Why does it feel so empty? The question rings its stuttered tune against the walls of his skull, echoing against the husked body until it’s collectivized enough serenity for Jisung to be honest with himself. 

‘It’s my thing, you know? To any onlooker, it’s a simple premise with symbolic support, but I’ve been staring back at the same picture of a little crow, every single day for the past 10 years. And it’s so hard to get across that, to me, all of its original value has been lost to my own perception of it.’ Jisung pauses. His eyes are to the ceiling, zealously filling in the customary painting, chipped and worn. Steady on its branch, still.

He turns, then. Seungmin’s eyes are perilously gentle in their pressurized stare. Glimmering a spark into that good night. Jisung is hit by condensed wafts of fresh peach, the scent woven between Seungmin’s fuzzy strands of hair. 

‘When I look up at it, I don’t think about how the crow represents change, or new beginnings, or a desire to drift away from normalcy. I think about the night I watched my mother paint it on before tattling its secrets. I think about how the paint has chipped and faded with time, but the crow is always perfectly perched up on that sturdy branch. The colors are dull and the wood it’s painted on has evidently aged but it’s…,’

Jisung pauses again. Not as much a loss for words as it is the needed break-point. His eyes desperately draw a rake against Seungmin’s features, quaintly splayed out for him to melt in the expansive warmth of. 

‘It’s still there.’ Seungmin finishes for him.

Jisung’s lips quirk, doubly enamored in the picturesque image of perfection staring back at him. 

‘Yeah. Sometimes…when you’ve looked back at something for so long, and you’ve memorized every trace…it starts to feel like your own little secret.’

Seungmin mirrors his smile, his bottom lip caught between his teeth and his cheeks ballooned shell-pink. Jisung doesn’t forego the proximity of their flushed figures, or the rosy garden binding into his chest. 

He feels it before he sees it, the scintillate brush of cold skin against his toasty palm. Seungmin’s fingers draw shapes against it, tickling the balmy skin before placating its desire for affection by snaking it against a significantly larger palm. 

‘Does that make me your little secret?’ Seungmin asks. Jisung makes a noise that sounds somewhat like a quiet yelp, his face hoping to find solace in being smushed against Seungmin’s pillow. 

‘I-I…no, of course not!’

Seungmin’s smile is so radiant that Jisung wouldn’t be able to look away from it if he tried. He chuckles again, before tightening his grip against his hand.

‘Maybe not when I word it like that, but, in some ways…the way you look at me…that’s your little secret, isn’t it?’ 

Jisung could deny these brash claims, maybe even force himself to fall too drowsy to provide coherency in faithful answers. But…well, this hole he’s dug up…it’s so incredibly snug and only mildly at the hands of a higher threat.

‘Maybe.’ 

Maybe Jisung likes to pocket the quirks of his distinctive kind of beauty for himself, watching the thorny vines bound against his reserve unclasp at the first strum of his solitary guitar. Maybe Jisung likes to keep his admiration under confinement because he’s too afraid of bursting his inconspicuous bubble. 

Maybe’s are too dangerous to dwell on. What Jisung knows to be verifiably true is that he’s laying under a dream-speckled ceiling, the commencing sparks of endless warmth relayed from the rigid hand taking his own. 

‘Stars shining bright above you, night breezes seem to whisper “I love you”.’

What he knows to be verifiably true is the beauty in this singular moment. There are no speculations, no maybe’s. 

Just his heart alight with undoubted merriment and the solemn promise of better days from where Seungmin sings him off to sleep. 

‘Birds singing in the sycamore tree,’ Seungmin wistfully croons, planting the sliver of a kiss against Jisung’s hair-mussed forehead. ‘Dream a little dream of me.’

・❥・

Hollow Fluorescence. 

Jisung sneers at the name every single time his eyes bypass the ruddy work put into every invitation poster the committee has plastered on every corner they can get to. It feels like an intentional slap in the face of his floral handiwork. Of course, he thinks his team have done a splendid job, and even as it’s already reached its conclusive mark, is satisfied with the extra credit raise it promises. 

After all, it wasn’t like Jisung had much club participation or extra-curricular aid to fill that space. For students like Felix, this doesn’t present itself as much of an issue. 

‘Well, when I joined the debate club, I imagined it would be a lot like the few classroom debates we got to engage in back in Australia,’ Felix recalls while they’re signing off on the last of their joint, contractual forms. ‘but then I guess my assumptions were unsubstantiated because most of our in-class debates involved a lot of baseless facts and grotesque takes.’ 

‘Right…,’

‘Yeah, and then I tried for the chess club, because the person handing out the flyers was really attractive,’

‘Of course,’

‘But I’d never played chess before in my life, so that kind of backfired.’

‘Felix, have you ever…joined a club and then…stayed for longer than two weeks?’ 

He quickly scribbles his signature in before deplorably pressing the pen in his hand to his chin, thinking over the simple question.

‘Hm…I don’t think so.’

‘Never change, Lix.’ Seungmin pats at the boy’s back. He’s a good sport. For enduring the brunt of Jisung’s longing gazes, and effectively indulging his stupid stories with lively reactions. It’s no wonder that the boy behind Noir Floral’s counter seems so insanely infatuated with him. 

Speaking of…

‘Can’t believe you guys have already concluded your little university venture,’ Soobin grins, a glow pooling into the depths of his dimples before springing back up to meet his eyes. ‘I’ll miss seeing you…fight over flowers.’

Jisung nods along. He’ll miss it too. Even if spending hours in a debilitating argument over Magnolias not looking like he would’ve imagined them to based on the grandeur of their names, is soul-sucking. 

‘You sure you won’t be…missing something else a tad bit more?’ Seungmin snidely directs. Soobin’s smile twitches, his eyes sparklingly wide.

‘Uh…no?’

‘No? You won’t be missing a certain someone just a little more than the rest of us?’

Soobin and Seungmin practically fill out three hours of strong argumentation with a simple, 5-second staredown. Felix, ever the confounded angel, looks to be genuinely doused in the naïveté of a sun-snug soul.

‘Lix, could you help me unload something from the back?’ 

Jisung almost makes a very inappropriate proclamation, only to have his breath swiped out of him when Seungmin brushes a hand along the curve of his waist. He hates how thin his shirt is, and how grotesquely (in the best way) long Seungmin’s fingers are. They arrive slowly, but visibly press closely enough for the feeling to linger. Like a warning.

Jisung bites back the response before he can ever consider going through with it, and Felix politely agrees to helping Soobin as Seungmin mutters that they’ll wait up. 

Jisung assumes they’ll simply resume their pleasant standby, but Seungmin seems to have already secured his own plan of action, as he pulls Jisung along — by the fastened hand-on-waist method, which definitely does not tighten a knot against everything making up Jisung’s congenial dread. 

Seungmin moves past the displays and settles them down against a backdrop of hanging plants and terrariums. He directs a curt smile his way, picturesque in its distinctive slant, its accompaniment with dolly-kempt hair, and in the way it’s set against a scenery so vibrantly enamorable. 

Jisung barely has any time to acknowledge time’s trepidation before Seungmin is reaching for something from the corner on a large windowsill and firmly presenting it to him with both hands. It’s one of the same flowers Seungmin had taken to draw away from the rain those few days ago. The last Jisung had seen of the small display was when it was placed against the taller’s bedpost; its petaled layers were still substantially droopy, sensitive to the touch whenever he’d curiously raised a finger to pick at its dewy surface. 

The one in Seungmin’s hand now is significantly livelier, spherical and vivacious against its befitted setting. It’s stem is dotted with remnants of water, and when Jisung looks back at where it had been retrieved, he sees a thin, crystalline vaze. 

‘Oh! It’s…,’ Jisung short-circuits. He attempts to reimburse himself back into the lengthy lists they’d spent days constructing for the betterment of Hollow Fluorescence’s stupid night of jolification. They’d ordered a slew of these in numerous colors, he couldn’t have missed the very sight of their large-headed buds. Daisies? No. Dandelions? No. 

‘A dahlia.’ Seungmin does wait for Jisung to guess, but between his wide-eyed stupor and equally wide-mouthed stun, it didn’t seem like the answer would find him anytime soon.

‘Yes, yeah! I was just... thinking that, but I didn’t want to sound stupid, so... Ha-ha, yeah.’ Jisung’s hand finally reaches back for the flower. At first, there’s only a kiss of a touch from Seungmin’s time-bitten hand, the nudge petal-light, so gentle it could be damaged if gripped too roughly. Handled with too little of a regard for how valuable these fleeting moments can be. The temporal nature of its existence only makes time’s arrow that much more difficult to appreciate.

‘W-why are you…?’ 

But this graze isn’t fleeting. Seungmin reaches back, each finger dancing along Jisung’s own set of worn, time-bitten digits. His touch, although petal-light, feels as heavy as stuffy air emanations. But when he prompts Jisung to stretch his palm out, until his fingers can slip between their designated cracks and fill every desolate feature, the dahlia sits between either of their palms. 

As if it had peeked its head from the space between and grew with every casted vat of sunlight, as if they had surreptitiously soaked it in warring spurts of vitality with every quirk of a shared grin or abundantly rosy cheeks. It’s as still as it would be if it were held up by a dirt-buried stake, unwavered by the heat burning Jisung’s skin like it’d been set in front of a pit of fire.

But there was that thing about pits of fire. They, in their most barren, are merely offerings of warmth where they wouldn’t be found otherwise. Infernal strings of red against a jarring sea of crashing, icy blue. It was as much a symbol for protection as it was for hope.

‘I’m…I have a story for this. And it’s gonna feel long, and you’ll probably be wondering why I’m telling it midway through, but I promise it’ll amount to something by the end.’

Jisung finds it hilarious that Seungmin is seemingly unaware that he promptly holds onto every word that spills past his lips like each one connects back to a verifiable truth that only few can find. 

‘Go ahead, I love elaborate analogies!’ Jisung practically leaps into forward-facing attentiveness. Then, a second later, he thinks he’s overdone his enthusiasm. ‘That sounded sarcastic, but I promise it wasn’t.’

Seungmin firmly smooths his thumb along their facing palms, tracing the lines that make up their unique, patchy patterns. 

‘When I was around 7 or 8, my parents started taking us out to the countryside whenever summer rolled around, where my grandmother lived with her caretaker and a really old cat. We’d usually spend a solid 2 weeks there, but it always felt so much longer for the fact that most of our days were spent under terribly stuffy heat and maintaining her pristine crop yields. Thing was, the well dried out easily and most of her land got easily raided by pests and…more often than not, we’d come back to rotten vegetables and herbs that never grew all the way through.’ 

Jisung, as engrossed in the story as a toddler during bedtime, licks his dry lips before hesitantly asking, ‘What was the cat’s name?’

Seungmin chuckles, face twisting distastefully at the meager memory of the grumpy feline. 

‘Soonja. Little demon. Of course you clung onto that minute detail.’ 

Jisung pouts, clasped hand limping with his evidently exaggerated demeanor. ‘I’m listening to the other parts, too! But if you’re gonna bring up a cat, you can’t just move on without telling me about said cat.’ 

‘That cat was the bane of my existence for those annually mandated two weeks.’ Seungmin scoffs, amusement latent in its tone. ‘Of course, she loved my sister, but whenever I so much as approached, her claws would be barren like my existence personally offends her.’

‘Well, you know what they say,’ Jisung’s tooth-shone grin returns, ‘puppies just can’t get along well with cats.’

It takes for a visible shift in Seungmin’s expression and a short instant of astonishment from him, for Jisung to panic. 

‘I mean, uh—,’

‘This puppy wishes he could inherit the skills to get along with cats.’ Seungmin directs him with a seemingly serious stare before sneaking in a spontaneous wink and moving on with his story like nothing had happened.

‘But anyways, as you can imagine, I was always baffled over her resilience, you know? Her indifference for how half of her crops’ worth was so often swiped from her hands. When I confronted her about this, probably in the height of my growing pains, she responded as candidly as she did everything else. Through her actions.’ 

Jisung’s wholly doused under the hearth of the story now, his attention resolute.

‘She took me to this…clearing of sorts, adjacent to pond water congested with waterlogged soil and low-growing greens. There was this thick growth of shrubbery that kept her little secret shielded from eyes that didn’t wander too far. It was just…her own little secret garden. Just hers, for some time, but then it was mine, and she’d ask for me to help her get some of the pond water into a bucket, so we could water the budding flowers and the tinier sprouts. And it was just…different, you know?’

Jisung nods. Somehow, it’s both too enthusiastic but too sluggish. It’s a heavy daze he’s under, but vivacity never dies.

‘One day…it rained, this terrible shower, showed up out of nowhere. One of those anomalies; a stormy day amidst summer’s peak. My first instinct was to run out, crumpled shorts, ruddy sneakers and soggy socks following suit. I don’t know, I guess I just thought it’d become my mission to protect those flowers. And when all you can feel is that erratic shower, her secret garden really looked like it was drowning in its sorrows. But it didn’t. It picked itself right back up, grew with so much more vivacity and love, and I remember hearing my grandmother mutter that I could’ve used the chance to collect the rainwater for later use.’ 

Seungmin wistfully sighs, the gusto dense with remembrance, with impenetrable love. A person’s memories; precious spirits that no one could ever swipe from you. Mental scrapbooks could etch open undetachable scars, but some scars carried interesting motifs and imperative anecdotes.

‘I’ve gotten to the last bit, and I know I told you that story would make sense, but I’m not even entirely sure how else to explain to you that I saw this dahlia sitting against a thin vase of filtered rainwater, and thought you needed to have it. I needed to give it to you.’

Jisung blinks, the blurry outline of his eyelashes temporarily drawing him back to a day he’ll love to trace the outline of, several moons from now. 

‘Was it because I caught you in the rain that other day?’ 

Seungmin brings his attention back to their entwined hands. He raises them until his fingers are slipping past the gaps, leaving them unconcealed. Open. His palm presses to Jisung’s again, his fingers spread out against his this time. Seungmin’s time-bitten digits. They’re substantially bigger than Jisung’s. 

He curls the inch of each finger that stretches taller than Jisung’s. The frazzled latter forms a line with his lips, both devastatingly embarrassed by the difference, yet resoundingly gratified.

‘It’s because of a lot of things. It’s because you’re Han Jisung, and I think I’d be foolish enough to withstand a storm just to keep you safe from it.’

・❥・

Jisung keeps his dahlia in the same vase Noir Flowers offers for him to keep. Soobin accidentally admits that they hadn’t really been lending it, seeing as Seungmin had paid for it himself. He doesn’t have any window sills in his room, so he keeps it on his desk, next ro Project Raven. The first few nights, he steadily hopes that its eventual withering — unavoidable, really, even if he tried to sustain its life for as long as he could manage — will help solidify an important lesson in his mind.

And then, he gives it a longer think. The flower, for as time-bound as it is, limited against an internal clock, could be repurposed. He could cut three nodes along the stalky stem, mark them here, here, and here. He could splurge out on gardening tools and plant hormones and regrow a batch of these dahlias on his own, where he’ll learn to care and love for them for as long as they’ll allow it. 

He could, in all pretenses of the matter, reset this simple plant’s internal clock, reverse the arrow. But why would he do that? There’s a project that demands his attention, and no distractions should be getting in his way now that he’s given this assignment all the perceptiveness it needs.

But then, Seungmin makes a call. Sometime into a long night, when he’s sure his mother has already dozed off and his busy hands are spotted with bronze coloring and old paint. 

Jisung answers relatively quickly, leaving no room to dwell on it. Seungmin’s voice cuts through his silence like paper against rippling shards of air. He asks him what he’s up to, and Jisung, in all his confusability, goes on an unending spiel that stretches over every useless fact of his sudden desire to start a personal propagation project.

‘You want to make your own mini dahlia garden?’ Seungmin asks, gleefully enough for Jisung to feel his smile through the receiver. 

‘I mean…I’ve just…briefly thought about it.’

‘You said you’ve already splurged on all the required tools, online.’

‘Ok…yeah…but in the meantime, I’m going to work on my stupid, academically-required Project Raven.’

Seungmin hums, seemingly content with having triggered the last few minutes of Jisung’s pattering monologue on the sanctity of plucked flowers.

‘Maybe you could merge the two, somehow?’

Jisung pauses mid line-work, his sloppiness nearly catching up to him. ‘Merge…my art project with my improbably successful propagation project?’

‘You don’t know how your plant-cloning venture could end up performing.’

‘But…I can barely care for live plants.’ Jisung reasons, thinking back to the leaves shriveled under his pestering touch. It’s a recipe for disaster.

‘I can,’ Seungmin reminds. ‘I’ll help out, if you’d like.’

Jisung would like that. He would also like to keep his sanity levels in check. Despite this, he steadfastly agrees, and his order for a slew of gardening supplies arrives much too soon.

・❥・

‘Jisung, it’s ok, the flower will understand. It’s already been cut through once before.’ Seungmin uses one hand to gently brush against Jisung’s hair, the knots of which are surprisingly absent today, while his other soothingly runs along the smooth cleft of Jisung’s biceps.

‘But it feels so terrible,’ Jisung’s frown is deep enough for the twinges at each corner to insinuate a prickling drainage of melodramatic tears. 

‘Remember when you’d sing to the flowers? You said that it would encourage them to grow just as well as positive affirmations did. And now…it’ll think of my snipping as a grand betrayal.’

‘Oh, Sungie,’ Seungmin smooths over the hand running along his faded hair until it’s just cradling the side of his face. Jisung isn’t sure what it is exactly — maybe a little bit of everything —, but he’s perfectly attuned to Seungmin’s every word. 

This happens often now, doesn’t it? Seungmin should be well aware that he has Jisung coiled around his coronary veins.

‘Those flowers were still rooted and potted. Dahlia’s not gonna feel bad because she’s looking forward to being replanted. Snipping off her pretty bud isn’t going to make a difference. Those petals are destined to wither now that they’ve lost their nutritional supply.’ 

‘I know.’ Jisung conclusively sighs, his grip shaking a tad more erratically before he finally manages to make the first snip. Seungmin’s hand is still rubbing against his upper arm, the apparent friction enough of an encouraging agent for him to make the next snip, and then the next. They’re left with three, perfect leaf nodes by the end. 

Working along Seungmin is like carrying his heart between your palms and listening to a string of beats that sound like a mellowed melody echoing along a dewy, drawn street. There’s no rain, just remnants of its shower against the thick air. It patters against leaves and seeps into healthy soil and feels vindictively refreshing against warming skin.

Whenever there’s a stretch of silence, it’s solitudinous, considerate. Seungmin offers his support in routine check-overs, even as he frequently retreats to offer his theatre major friend — whose name he knows is Hyunjin, but whose title doesn’t change in his mind — pickets of advice based on the vast amount of knowledge he’d obtained on Theatrical Arts after their two-week swap. 

Apparently, another student named Hyunjin frequently fell into squabbles with Seungmin’s Hyunjin for the fact that the latter Hyunjin spent a lot of his time referring to himself in the third person, and — It’s this whole thing.

And it’s a bit stupid, mostly prettily-driven fueding, and Seungmin is clearly rammed in the middle for having befriended both Hyunjin’s, but it somehow lends Jisung an idea.

His unfinished crow model sits on its crumbled pedestal, overlooking the drowning sun as it sets and splatters an extension of tinctures and wobbly lines against a distant horizon. Jisung nearly leaps out of his seat at the revelation, feverishly scurrying for the figurine and eyeing its stilted gaze with his own. 

Seungmin looks up from his phone quizzingly. For so long, Jisung has felt like the taller could so easily bare him of his own skin, peeking past layers to pry into his own feelings. For once, he thinks his erratically-steadfast thinking might just best Seungmin. 

He doesn’t say anything, just plops his crow down, right next to where he expects his cuttings to be taking well to their new, temporary home. He tells Seungmin he’s found his saving grace, to which his lanky friend does not object the logistics behind, claiming he’ll leave him to work with ceaseless zeal while he finds a good spot for their cuttings. 

Leaving them in his room, surely, would kill them off sooner than he can get the first phase of his plans underway. 

When Seungmin, almost soundlessly, twists his door knob again, he’s carrying a plate of cut fruit. Jisung, enlightened by the sight, tears his eyes away from his work and stretches his arms out in needy motions. 

Seungmin settles down again, placing the plate down before swatting Jisung’s hand away, shushing his impending complaint away before grabbing for a strawberry half himself and holding it up for Jisung to bite into. 

Jisung hesitates at first, nearly grabbing for it himself until his mind presses him forth and his lips are outstretched for Seungmin to happily plop the ripe berry past them. 

‘Good?’ Seungmin asks. Jisung nods, wondering passingly if it’s the citric acid burning his cheeks or the familiar brush of bashfulness. ‘A hard worker has to be fed well, after all.’

Then, he taps Jisung’s flushed cheek. Just like he’d done that time at the flower shop. ‘Go on ahead, I know you’re in a creative space. I’ll feed you in between.’ 

As much of a merciless ache as it would be for Seungmin to do this, Jisung really cherishes his share of cut fruit, and it didn’t sound like Seungmin was asking .

‘Yeah, sure. Cool, cool, cool.’ Jisung raises two undoubtful thumbs up, steadily stretching his hands out before retreating back to firm work.

As per Seungmin’s promise, he persistently feeds him his honey-glazed slices of fruit along the next 15 minutes or so. Once the plate is empty, Seungmin leans his head against Jisung’s shoulder, who’s grown numb enough to his friend’s tactlessness to carry on working without any heed for destruction. 

‘He has a friend now,’ Seungmin croons at some point or another. He sounds tired. Jisung can feel his breath with every slow shake. ‘How nice.’

Jisung laughs. He’s tired, too, he thinks. Or maybe it’s easy to find humor in the situation. His half-constructed white crow clearly presents as his fully polished black crow’s immediate foe. Not much a symbiotic interrelation as they are two, clashing gems.  Two extremes, both bombastic in their own, bolstered ways. Jisung is going to need to do some major re-editing on his personal essay. 

‘I wouldn’t call them friends .’ 

‘Why not…? Everyone deserves a friend. I don’t think you’re sending out a good,’ Seungmin pauses to yawn ‘message.’ 

‘Go to sleep, Minnie.’

‘Not tired.’ He says, grip tightening and eyes lidded an assumed three-quarters. 

‘But, I’d rather you see it once it’s finished.’ Jisung tilts his head downwards, his bangs following him, casting either of them in its brolly-shaped shade. ‘Can you do that for me, please? Can you take a nap while I work?’

Jisung is sure he’s running off of delirium, the force of which is running his tongue along, as well. Somehow, it gets to Seungmin, because he slumps forward before shuffling to his bed and tangling himself in his dinosaur-printed sheets (a classic essential he’ll never be rid of). He bunches up some of the fabric, hugging it to his chest before cozily relenting to his tire.

Jisung smiles, tearing his eyes away from the scene. Lest it warm the ice-cold determination pumping his desire for cathartic expression. 

・❥・

Jisung is compiling a group of scanned documents into a zip file when Seungmin calls him again. For both his perceptive wit in the realm of digital masking, and fear of verbal communication, they’ve maintained a steady stream of text message back-and-forths for the past few weeks. 

minni ^_^: Happy sunday :D !!! [image attached]

minni ^_^: For your daily briefing: the Hyunjin-Hyunjin feud has yet to be quelled TT, but !!! The boba shop I used to frequent finally re-opened!! And they have a bunch of new flavors !!! 

Jisun: that’s great baby !!!!

minni ^_^: Hm? :O

Jisun: wait no,

minni ^_^: Don’t worry, baby <3 I like pet names

Jisun: fujvk me

minni ^_^: You know I follow you on twitter ?? I can see when you quote-on-quote “lose your connection for a bit” when you’re actually freaking out via live tweeting?

Jisun: damn uh  .,  stalker much 

Suffice to say, Jisung isn’t strong on the front of verbal communication. But it’s edging midnight, and he doubts Seungmin will have anything to reprimand him with at this hour. So, he answers.

‘Jisung, hey! No time for pleasantries, sorry, I just wanted to let you know…I get it now.’

‘Get what?’ Jisung leans back against his poorly-supported swivel chair. He wonders where Seungmin might be. There’s the surrounding shrivel of air batting against his speakers, so he must be outside, and he’s slightly breathy, like he’s just hiked along a tall, mountainous range. 

‘The crows. I know it’s not finished yet, but I think I somewhat get what you’re attempting to convey. I got curious, wanted to see if white crows actually existed, and they do — obviously, you know that. Anyways, I looked into it, and found out that they’re commonly seen as a symbol for justice. They remind you that your fate is ultimately dependent on the weight of your actions, whether morally good or bad. Black crows, on the other hand, like you said, open doors for change. They’re meant to remind someone that they are not entirely made up of their actions, and that grit moves us along. It’s funny how easily the two concepts combat each other.’

Jisung’s tries to hide the joviality in his tone, biting down a wider smile as if Seungmin would detect its magnitude. ‘Good job. Did you have to run a marathon to get to that conclusion?’

‘ No ,’ Seungmin concedes. He pauses for some time, Jisung hears some shuffling, a huddle of passing voices, car honks. ‘It’s just... I missed the bus, and there isn’t another stop for another few miles, so I’ve made the executive decision to use my legs.’

‘They are quite long. Constructed for walking, one might say.’

‘Walking is one thing, but I don’t usually run for anyone,’ Seungmin grunst again. Jisung hears a slew of beeps, boops, and the like, before Seungmin is sighing in relief. The sound of paper rippling against quiet air translates quickly. ‘Plus, I was rushing to find an ATM machine. Most of the ones in your district are either extremely shady or out of order.’

‘Haha, yeah, I once fed my card to a machine where the buttons looked a bit misshapen, but I didn’t think much of it. Then, I realised it never asked me how much I needed to withdraw. Easy mistake.’

‘Jisung…,’ Seungmin intones disappointedly, ‘the screen glitches every few seconds, the overhead label is written in white-out, and the screen is sticky with an unknown substance.’

Jisung meekly shrugs, the cogs making up every bundle in his brain finally returning to patterned turning. ‘Wait, why are you in my district?’

‘Well, in about 5 minutes, you’ll have to open your door for me because I desperately need the bathroom—,’

‘Number one or number two?’

White silence follows the question. Jisung hears the distant sound of squealing car tires. 

‘Why would you ever need to know this?’

‘Our toilet’s kind of clogged.’

‘Fine, make it 10. I’ll use a public bathroom. Get ready to be swept outside, I have something to show you.’ 

Seungmin hangs up thereafter. The silence that follows is thicker, but Jisung merely gets himself up and calms the severe intrusion of his worst irrationalities far enough for him to pull something decent on. Of course, his sweatpants are merely displaced by baggy, ripped jeans, and his frayed, aged hoodie stays on, but he deems it appropriate enough.

Somehow, Seungmin holds up to his word, not a second off from his scheduled time when Jisung hears a distinctive set of raps from the front door.

‘Did you really just get here, or did you wait out for a bit until it struck 1:00am, exactly ?’

Seungmin doesn’t answer, but Jisung assumes it’s a wordless confirmation when he’s, as was also foretold, swept into the dusk. The streets of his district never die, as lively in the sunny mornings as they are under the moon’s supervision. It’s a network of busybodies, every corner alight with life, every cranny runny with conspicuous scents. 

Admittedly so, he doesn’t think it to be the dream destination for any impromptu hangouts, despite his own, impartial adoration for its idiosyncrasies. Still, he’s a bit stunned once affronted with the realization that Seungmin is pulling him into an alleyway. It’s lined with garbage bins and litter, only slightly illuminated by a nearby light-up sign for a tattoo shop. 

Jisung almost voices his apprehension for the choice of location, but a whiny mewl catches his attention instead. Seungmin smiles, letting Jisung’s hand go before crouching down, peering past piles of rubble. Jisung follows suit, curiosity successfully won. Between the mess, there’s a bell-shaped cardboard hideout, accompanied by blanketed flooring, a half-emptied bowl of water, and a freshly swiped canister of cat food. 

‘I fed her again before I got to you, so she’d be in a good mood.’ Seungmin gently calls for the hesitant feline. She takes two cautious steps forward, gently patting the pavement with her paws before stretching her limbs out properly and tumbling out. Her coat is orange-black, but certain tufts of hair along her ears, tail, and paws are a stark white. 

She doesn’t look terribly afraid, only understandably cautious as she curiously tilts her head Jisung’s direction. Familiarity gets the better of her attention, however, and she quickly bounds to Seungmin instead, nuzzling into his hand once it’s raking through her freshly groomed hair. Her eyes slit and she preens delightfully, leaning into his touch. 

‘I did it!’ Seungmin gaily exclaims. ‘I got a cat to like me.’

Jisung gasps, holding a hand to his chest, definite pride swelling him whole. ‘You’ve achieved the impossible! Good job, baby.’

Seungmin pauses, then. His pet-infested crusade halts, his new friend’s eyes pried open over the sudden stop. She pats at his hand a few times, satisfied when Seungmin detaches his eyes from Jisung’s and returns to caressing her tiny head.

‘Uh, sorry,’ Jisung helpfully provides, astonished over his own words, yet again. Despite his habitual petname-drops in the occasional text exchange, he’s never dared for them to be used aloud. It’s hard to pass it off as casual when not behind a digital screen.

Thankfully, Seungmin doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, he seems intent on finalizing his initial plans. He tells Jisung to slowly hold his palm out once ‘Cherry’ seems to grow tired of Seungmin’s presence and decides to investigate Jisung’s, instead. 

Jisung complies. She’s still relatively close to Seungmin’s side, pressing the better half of her body against his leg in hopes of seeking his comfort in case Jisung poses a threat. Of course, he doesn’t. Jisung rounds himself into such a resoundingly small crouch that Seungmin thinks, he too, could live out in Cherry’s tiny house.

‘Why’d you name her Cherry?’ Jisung asks, voice hushed, patient. 

‘She was trying to get into the remnants of a discarded cherry popsicle when I found her. She didn’t get many licks in, but mouth was lined with red. I honestly thought she’d feebly resort to blindly attacking me the second we locked eyes, but I guess she decided to give me a chance. I rushed over to a market shop nearby, and got her some food, and she sat with me a while after. It’s just become a habitual stop for me, now.’

Jisung hums, holding back any too-loud, prolific expressions of joy when Cherry edges nearer, moving to sniff along his pants before rubbing her chin against the material. 

‘She’s giving you the green light.’ Seungmin informs, lovely still in his offer of soft glances, even against the dull backdrop. 

Jisung, although ever-slightly held back by the peril of his fears, slowly holds a hand over the new friend’s little head. Her eyes follow his palm, and when she doesn’t move away, he allows it to sink into her fluffed hair. She responds positively, mewing delightfully and squinting dazedly as he starts scratching along her chin when Seungmin confirms that she’d like that. 

When they do have to depart from Cherry’s lovely company, Seungmin has to drag Jisung away. He’s only pouty for the first three minutes, for it’s in that amount of time that Seungmin stops them by the local Mcdonald’s, the small building proudly brandishing its 24-hour sign and affirming how deep into the moonlit-drive they are. 

The moon offers a sticky, dewy type of surrounding warmth at night. It’s not necessarily a calming agent, but it suits the atmosphere; the streetlights blur the scenery, Jisung and Seungmin each equip their own servings of vanilla ice cream, and the air feels frigid but they couldn’t be happier. 

When Seungmin drops Jisung back home, where his porch light still flickers at random intervals and its painted wood has aged terribly, they officiate a sacred promise. Whenever Seungmin isn’t in the area, Cherry is Jisung’s obligation. They have shared custody, if you will.

Then, Seungmin plants a peck against Jisung’s cheek. 

Seungmin plants a peck against Jisung’s cheek. 

Jisung has to remind himself, once he’s already back in his sweats, watered his cuttings, curled into his sheets: Seungmin planted a kiss against Jisung’s (that’s me) cheek. 

He could’ve sworn he’d dreamt up the scenario; a vivid enacting of his innate desires. But Jisung’s cheek is sticky with vanilla ice cream, and so were Seungmin’s lips. 

・❥・

minni ^_^: Cherry check up please !!

Jisun: you never trust me :((

minni ^_^: No no !! I only do these because I want to know how she’s doing :( Shes like a baby to me now. She is my child 

Jisun: cherry’s doing great !

Jisun: she let me rub her belly

minni ^_^: Amazing :0 

minni ^_^: Hannie check up ?

Jisun: who what

Jisun: 9ioh. me ?? o. ,  ime i’m fine in good thank 

minni ^_^: Great :D Are you free today?

Jisun: umm nn, yeah !

minni ^_^: Could you come over, please? Need your help with something

Jisun: sure, of course :]

minni ^_^: Oh! and could you bring your notebook 

minni ^_^: The one we accidentally swapped that one time 

Jisun: uhh sure ., yeah cool cool cool totally 👍🏼👍🏼 no problem no probs at all 😊

minni ^_^: Ok haha 

Each step Jisung takes to progress forward feels progressively weightier, the imaginary dumbbells set against the smalls of his back digging deeper into its ridges. Walks around their campuses are as much a deplorable drab as they are animatedly opulent. Every single facet of distinction held two faces, and while the dramatic improv-show being played out by a group of friends by the water fountain does not draw him in, it definitely catches his attention. 

He sees Hyunjin, Seungmin’s roommate. He seems to be instructing the ‘actors’ through their show, stopping them at short intervals to offer pointers. He sees Felix, too, hand in Choi Soobin’s and enthusiastically pointing to a red flower amongst a vivacious bunch set out in the primed hedges.

The trek calms him, even as those figurative dumbbells creep up the length of his back to sit on his shoulders, emulating cheap epaulettes.  He’s not sure if this mind-melded analogy is meant to be invigorating, but he certainly knows the height of his own blur once it’s batting against him at the foot of Seungmin’s door. 

He also isn’t sure what he’s anticipating, what he’s particularly afraid of. His notebook is the only thing on his person, and all he can direct his focus to is the feeling of its metallic rings against his fingers; the filament chill is enough to leave him scathed with groundless agitation. The kind that wedges between bedrock, unknowingly forming stuttered blockades.

He raises a hand, places three consecutive knocks, and waits by the borderline of anticipation while Seungmin audibly meanders over to his door. Once he’s propped it open, it’s almost as if Jisung hasn’t spent nearly enough time preparing himself for the very source of his distress. Seungmin pulls him in quickly, leaving him with barely any time to ground in on the fact that his oversized, knit cardigan has been worn alone. Scarce of his usually accompanying plain t-shirt or airy blouse. 

Completely alone. And Jisung doesn’t mean for his eyes to wander boyishly, but his height disadvantages him and his viewspan perfectly levels the site of Seungmin’s broad chest. Or, more accurately, where it begins, seeping into a distinctive curve only torn from his sights for the baby blue cloth shielding it. 

Jisung clears his throat, or makes a poor attempt at doing so with how cotton-clogged his airways feel. Seungmin’s already turned himself around, seemingly paying no mind to the visible ogling being made — or maybe he’s become sorrowfully accustomed to it. He fishes a wooden pencil from a cluttered drawer and faithfully holds it out for Jisung to take. Jisung accepts it, albeit resoundingly confuddled — for both having received an iota of the time he’d usually require to process where his mind was heading, and to understand what Seungmin was beginning to insinuate. 

‘How long has it been since you’ve last drawn me into that little notebook?’ Seungmin innocently queries. His tone insinuates that he’s asking for something as feeble as the time; fleeting, ever-changing, momentary. And as Jisung amicably acknowledges: Time’s arrow neither stills nor turns anti-clockwise. And Seungmin is waiting for an answer.

‘I-I...not sure. Maybe…,’ Truthfully, Jisung has felt too ashamed to even envision the man in his mind, let alone set himself against any non-visible corner for the sake of observing him when he’d become obstinately aware of his habit. If he calls it a habit, he thinks it’ll become easier to get rid of it. To let it fizzle out.

‘Not since I found out, right?’ Seungmin’s accompanying smile is so hauntingly prolific in Jisung’s muted irises. He’s afraid of how omnipresent that smile could become, if his eyes stopped looking at things from the lens of recalcitrance.

‘No.’ Jisung finally admits. It seems like just what Seungmin had been waiting for, because he’s pulling him along again. This time, he’s slower, moving with gradual accord until he’s propped up on his own bed, leaning against the wall it’s supported by.

‘Could you come here? Get a blank page open for me, please.’ For these few, confounding instants, Seungmin doesn’t sound as sure of himself as he did when he first ripped through Jisung’s reserve with his bare teeth, upon leaving him with no prior prefacing. He sounds nervous, even as it’s attempting to be held back for zeal. Seungmin was good at holding things back.

Nevertheless, Jisung abides by his words, flipping his book for the nearest blank before slowly propping both legs up, as well. Every pump against his chest stands out above the last, each an archaic plight to his salient doubts. His curtains are only half-drawn, flickers of light sunk under patches of Seungmin’s honey-glazed skin. Whenever an impasse of clouds shield the light, there’s a smooth flutter that quivers against the walls, casting louring shapes against his face. One passes them by just now. It grazes against his lips, and then bounces against his eyes, dotting the brown of his irises with a gleam unmatched. 

When Seungmin speaks up again, it’s a whisper that quivers against the air the same way the suncast light show does. ‘Have you ever drawn someone in...any slightly unorthodox ways?’ 

Jisung’s eyebrows furrow, his nose crinkling in distaste upon recollecting distant memories of being assigned certain muses from the theatre department. The only scenarios he can recall involve his acrylics splattering on the ground and a deeply buried instance where someone attempted to rework his painting by placing their own contributions. 

He’s not sure what Seungmin may be referring to when he says unorthodox , but he’s certainly never worked with a good, proficient model before. He didn’t like to count Seungmin, seeing as the arrangement was dreadfully one-sided.

‘What would you consider unorthodox?’

Seungmin hugs his knees to his chest, his cheeks ballooning against the height of a nervous laugh and the brush of red they’re visibly consumed by. 

‘I don’t know...um, have you ever,’ He lifts his cardigan’s sleeves further down, thumbing the fabric apprehensively ‘Sorry. Have you ever sat on top of someone in order to draw them?’

Jisung’s cotton-infused throat feels the snake of something electric gather against its walls. His eyes grow so wide he’s afraid the surrounding air will dry them out. ‘I... uh, what?’

‘You know, like,’ Seungmin hesitates. It seems like he decides, rather quickly, that he might as well evade from sugar-coating his words. ‘That picture of the two girls.’

‘What two girls?’

‘You know... where one was applying makeup on their friend whilst simultaneously sat on top of them.’

‘Ah,’ Jisung briefly acknowledges. His airways clog up again, before he can offer anything else.

‘If you... I mean, it’s stupid, you can definitely... we don’t have to do it. I’ve just briefly thought about it.’

‘I don’t mind.’ Jisung rushes out. He’s selfish, he knows. He does want to try Seungmin’s unorthodox idea out, and he feels like it’s for all the wrong reasons. Then again, he’s not brightly aware of why Seungmin, himself, would have wanted to try it out. 

‘Oh?’ 

‘Yeah, we can...do that.’

Jisung feels so terribly selfish. Seungmin slowly adjusts his pillows before laying himself out for Jisung, hair splayed out beneath him in uneven patterns. They fumble for a bit, Jisung resting his readied book and pencil by Seungmin’s side whilst he attempts to hike either leg against his friend’s hips without potentially obstructing several boundaries. Eventually, he manages to settle himself down, tense as a freshly-hatched chick with how peculiar his placement feels. 

Seungmin seems to assess the source of his tension well, gently guiding Jisung down to a more comfortable position with the glide of his fingers against the curve of his waist. They briefly share a similar sentiment through an eyeful exchange. Seungmin’s breath feels just as heavy as his. The only gossamer difference is how Seungmin’s smells distinctively like sweetened coffee. If he leans close enough, he thinks he’d be able to taste it.

Jisung swipes his internal monologue aside, his hands fidgeting to be occupied with something else. Before he can grab for the notebook, however, his entitlement gets the better of him.

‘Can I...adjust your…?’ He motions to Seungmin’s hair, swallowing his monologue away again when Seungmin nods in confirmation. 

He gently smooths along the strands laid flat against the pillow, gradually moving to reposition his bangs, the task of which feels a lot more nerve-inducing. Seungmin’s eyes don’t leave him, and he hates how he’ll have no reason to look away. Hates how pretty he looks, squinting when Jisung accidentally lands a strand against his eyes, how he’ll probably look like a mindless lunatic from Seungmin’s view.

Once he’s finally done, and his hands can finally find the familiar grip of his worn notebook again, Seungmin raises a hand to his, briefly halting his movement. ‘Actually, could you, uh…,’

He blindly motions to his cardigan’s topmost buttons. Jisung cannot hide the wildness in his gape, this time around.

‘Y-you want me to unbutton it?’

‘Just the first two will do,’ Seungmin grins, again . He’s somehow evoking mounds of nervousness whilst also maintaining a heavy stream of cockiness. ‘I’d do it myself, but you’ve just adjusted my hair. I don’t want to mess it up.’

Jisung swells his internal monologue back down, hoping to find it dissipating for good this time around. He attempts to hide the obvious gulp cascading past the shriveled cotton in his throat, before sinking back down to gently lift the material of Seungmin’s cardigan in both hands, as if his skin were made of paper — and his bones, of glass. He wonders if Seungmin can feel how heavy his breath is, if it’s begun quivering against his skin. 

After some fidgeting, he gets the first of two unclasped. The second unclasps much more smoothly, and when he meets Seungmin’s eyes again, he thinks his own might have betrayed him. Under the curve of Seungmin’s right collarbone, there’s the faint tracing of colored linework. It's mostly obscured by the material of his cardigan, but when he looks back into Seungmin’s eyes, his awaiting grin tells him he’s not seeing things.

‘You can lift the sleeves further down. An inch or two.’ Seungmin encourages. 

Jisung obliges, his hands only a smidgen less cautious now that his mind is clinging onto the possibility that Seungmin could’ve been sporting a secret—

‘You have a tattoo?’ Jisung breathes out, aghast enough to leave his transgressions behind and trace along the lengthy display of inkwork trailing down Seungmin’s right chest, down to his ribs. It’s absolutely beguiling, detailing a floral and fana wound against each lilting plant, bound into one, thick crocheted patch. The linework is sublime, a multitude of colors highlighted along each distinctive shrub. It’s drawn in the distinctively exaggerated style of old cartoons. Jisung can almost see them bobbing along to a wind-swept chase. 

‘This is absolutely beautiful.’ Jisung grazes along every single line, uncaring for how deeply he thinks he should be regretting the slide of his inquisitive touch. ‘Whoever gave you this must’ve been an ink God .’

‘ Jisung ,’ 

Jisung hums, finding Seungmin’s eyes again, unwittingly greeting the gape of leering promiscuity. His irises swim in murky streaks of water, translucent beauty latent along their opaque depths. Short gusts of his patchy breathing elevate past the cleft between his nipped lips. 

Jisung’s offer for an apology is swept from his tongue as soon as Seungmin’s hand finds the collar of his shirt, his lips brashly struck against a saccharine pair in one, grand motion. 

Scurrying to keep against his coppered veracity, Jisung melts under Seungmin’s embrace, their ravenous lips departing until Jisung is lifting himself by the elbows to lay his forehead against Seungmin’s, his splattered bangs meshing with his.

‘Y-your hair.’ Jisung manages to get out, his breath stuttered against the electrifying shuddering in his chest.

Seungmin’s incoherent murmur and replanted hands are just about enough for Jisung to push his notebook aside, far too enraptured in Seungmin’s allure by the time he’s fervently attached his lips back against his.

Perhaps, he’s too enraptured. Hyunjin bursts in about 2 minutes thereafter. 

・❥・

‘Jisung, baby , it’s ok.’ Seungmin eases the shorter’s grip, patting his head before attempting to get him back to focusing on the task at large.

‘No, it’s not . You told me the dahlias knew before that we would be saving them, but this time, I’d just be plucking them out for no reason.’ 

‘For good reason. For a good cause! For your grades, baby,’  Seungmin manages to unwound Jisung’s arms from around him, guiding him back to his work desk with one hand smoothing over the lapels on his one clean blazer. ‘Go ahead, now, you can do it.’

Jisung grunts, its scratchy tumult nearly enough to have Seungmin’s defenses weakened. Except, it ultimately doesn’t. Seungmin sighs, heavy but determined.

‘The sooner you get this to your professor, the sooner we get Cherry home.’ He reminds. You can almost see how a fresh memory flits across his eyes from how wide and reflective the surface is. Cherry did not take well to the vet, and the creeping edge of having left her to foreign hands feels more worrying the more time passes him by. 

‘The sooner we get Cherry home.’ Jisung repeats, grappling onto the statement with full propriety before turning to his desk, one hand lifting a pair of gardening scissors. He pats along the nearest dahlia’s glassy arrangement. Although it’s deplorably small, houses petals that are significantly duller, and appears droopier along its thinner edges, these are his only surviving soldiers. To yield the hand that would take its life away as soon as it got but a taste of its assumed longevity; it might just be Jisung’s deepest remorse. 

‘I’m sorry, my babies.’ He whispers, offering each plant its own personalized kiss goodbye, a gentle pat for safe take-off, and then the snip that, to him, sounds like a stream of miniscule cries. 

By the time he’s hacked at all three, Seungmin is readily awaiting his graceless fall back into his hearty arms. He, almost instantaneously, meets him exactly where he’s expected, head pressed against the thin collar of Seungmin’s new blouse — he knows it’s new, because it smells like it’s yet to have truly grounded itself in a long-held spot within Seungmin’s abyss for a closet. 

Jisung finds Seungmin’s embraces like it’ll shatter time’s arrow, or turn a cog in its search for an unturned leaf. He holds onto him like doing so will cast rivulets of gushing petals over their heads. To place it in the simplest of terms: To Jisung, Seungmin is what omnipotent forces are to regular citizens that happen to house extraordinary abilities. Impossibly fascinating, but just perfectly normal enough for Jisung to quit dwelling on his habitual idiosyncrasies for too long. 

Seungmin’s patience barely withers, but he presses an encouraging kiss to Jisung’s temple before murmuring that they should head out soon. 

Jisung meekly nods against the sheer material of his blouse, nose briefly brushing against the length of its lacy detailing before he’s moving himself away. If he envisions it hard enough, maybe the loss of his grasp doesn’t fault him as much as he’d initially thought.

Sure, there’s no metaphorical flower-shower, but there’s a delicate acknowledgment of care that translates faster than any graze or imaginative complexity. 

No one can take Jisung’s imagination away. But, perhaps, people exist that can make the momentous pockets of his reality feel that much more thrilling. 

‘I love you.’ Jisung softens the blow of his own episode. Seungmin hasn’t hung the stars or the moon or the clouds, nor the lowlights of dusk. But he’s taught Jisung how best to live outside of his own head. It’s a treasure he’ll cherish over star-speckled skies, any night.

‘I love you too, Hannie.’