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The key dangles from Mrs. Lee’s hand in the thin plumes of incense, just catching the gleam of the yellow bulb as its sickly light filters through the smoke. Disrupting the wispy tendrils of smoke, two elegant fingers reach through and snap it up.
Mingi blinks and the key is gone.
“Thanks Mrs. Lee,” Yunho says. Oh. There it is, gripped tight in Yunho’s hand. “We’ll make sure not to lose this.”
The hostel they managed to book is quiet and folksy, if a bit cramped. More importantly in the frenzy of their last-minute booking plans, it was a good margin cheaper than any of their other options.
The lobby's walls are slathered with newspaper clippings: proud blocks of text and snapshots of strangers, corners peeling off of the forest green wallpaper like unfurling ferns. Behind Mrs. Lee, the hostel owner, there is a big cork board filled with rows of silver keys. Just like the one Yunho’s holding.
“Is the hostel always this empty?” Mingi wonders, eyes stinging a bit from the incense burning on the counter, filling the small room with smoke.
Mrs. Lee shakes her head, frowning up at them through thick-rimmed glasses. “It’s seasonal. This late in August, only half the rooms are available to rent.”
“Oh,” says Yunho, curious. “Really? Guess tourist season must end just a bit later then what we’re used to on the West coast.”
“No, not tourists.” says Mrs. Lee. “It's the season of ghosts. We rent out half the rooms because they need space to eat and breathe, just like you.”
For a long moment, all Mingi can hear is the hum of the overhead fan and the quiet tick of the clock on the counter. Then, Yunho, who has never been scared of anything, not ghosts nor grad school prospects nor generational humor apparently, breaks the silence with his big, rolling laugh. Mingi follows his lead, if slightly less genuine.
“That wasn’t a joke,” says Mrs. Lee, even as the corners of her mouth twitch up. Understandable: the Yunho Effect (the kind, warm laugh of a benevolent giant) notoriously captures all hearts and leaves no survivors. Except for Mingi, of course. With the tenure of a ten-year best friend, he supposes he’s suffered enough of Yunho’s farts to develop an immunity to his otherwise angelic bearings.
“Is there anything we should hit up while we’re here?” Mingi asks Mrs. Lee. “Apart from the beaches?”
“If you’d like, there’s a young man around your age who can show you which places you can”-- Mrs. Lee pauses--“hit up. If he’s not too busy lazing around, that is. Would you like me to contact him?”
Yunho perks up. “Like a tour guide? Cool! We’re always down to make new friends,” he says. “Right, Mingi?”
If Mingi had been able to summon the slightest dash of bravery, he might have chosen that moment to speak his mind.
Maybe he might have laughed, said something along the lines of: Come on, remember how tiny this town was on the map we saw this morning? We can figure it out on our own, just like the old times.
Or maybe, accompanied with a casual bro slap to the shoulder of his BFF: Bro, we haven’t seen each other in a year, during which we’ve barely traded more than memes and music recs. We talked less than last year, which was even less than the year before that. Not to be corny but I'd really appreciate some one-on-one with your dumb face, y’know? Just like the old times.
Or perhaps, if Mingi wasn’t cursed with a fool’s heart and a coward’s tongue, he might have finally said: “No, Yunho. Sometimes I just don’t know how to say that to you because anything you ask of me, I don’t think I could ever refuse. But here I am now, asking for you to show that you still hear me. Sometimes I feel like you're going too fast for me, like I'm trailing behind watching your back grow further and further away and by the time I call out it's too late, you're too far away to hear. I'm scared that I might be getting left behind by the most important person in my life and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts”--
“Yeah,” Mingi says instead, plastering on a smile. Both his heart and tongue feel heavy, and oh, there’s that funny feeling in his gut again. A decade’s-worth simmer, coupled with a recent addition: a bright, panicked twist, like one that precedes the plummet from a diving board or a precipice. “Sure,” he adds, brushing off warning signs like fruit flies. Surely it’s the stuffy lobby and Mrs. Lee's overpowering incense that's making him feel this weird and woozy. “Let's make a new friend.”
Yunho smiles, delighted, which is how Mingi realizes that he might not be so immune to the Yunho Effect after all.
---
"It should be here," Yunho says, pinching his screen.
Mingi hums noncommittally--he’s a true child of the internet after all, and asking him to navigate sans the little Google Maps auto-orient arrow might as well be a federal crime. Even back in highschool PE, when they did orienteering in the spring months, it was always Yunho who’d read the maps and shouted out directions, leading the way. And it was Mingi, at the time still a little taller instead of the other way around, who would rush past classmates and through prickly branches to grab the most valuable flags. With their flawless teamwork, they always placed well, emerging from the undergrowth in record time with their heads held high, with matching grins and scraped knees and armfuls of red plastic flags hoarded like treasure.
"I mean, where else would it be?" Yunho's muttering, like a lost dad.
Mingi sighs, sticky. In the sweaty hollow of his knee, the cluster of mosquito bites itches. It’s too early in the day to be this hot, not a single cloud in the sky to offer a slip of shady relief. Scratching at the back of his knee, Mingi wishes he had brought along a canteen of water. Or a beer. Or six.
Or he could just drink Yunho, just slurp him right up, comes the delirious thought, appearing like an mirage in an oasis. Yunho’s so unaffected by the muggy weather that it’s refreshing just to watch him. In his crisp white tee and long-sleeve, unbuttoned but rolled neatly at the elbows and artfully counterbalanced by his flame-print boardshorts, Yunho’s the definition of picture-cool adult competence. Per Mingi’s standards, anyway.
Back in highschool, Yunho was already cool and handsome. And while Mingi’s undergrad has steamrolled him into an empty shell of a human being, Yunho has exited his business degree at a gentle trot, smoothed out into an even smarter, cooler and more handsome version of himself. Taller, even. Somehow. Certainly not through his eating habits--Mingi’s seen the shaky Instagram stories Yunho uploads of the meals he whips up with his roommates and god knows they’re more nutrient-barren than the Sahara.
They’re in Cape Cove this summer, a pretty town in the Maritimes, just off of some of the bigger, more expensive tourist sites along the coast. Three nights in a hostel, four at the camping site of a nearby national park before Yunho goes back to school for the fall.
Why? Because it's Big Bad Dawgs Summer. The ultimate summer ritual dates back to their high school days, back when 21 Jump Street references were still socially acceptable. Back when their summer Bad Dawgs used to be an excuse to smoke up and chug 12-packs at some Okanagan campsite without their parents breathing down their necks. Back before university, before Mingi fled home for film school in Toronto, leaving Yunho alone in Vancouver. Before Bad Dawgs was burdened with the impossible task of fitting an entire year's worth of friendship into a single, sunny week.
Oblivious to Mingi's staring, Yunho hunches further over the colorful lines on his phone. "At least this is the intersection Mrs. Lee said Wooyoung would meet us at. I think. I still don't have any signal, or I'd check again."
“Maybe he won’t show up,” Mingi mumbles hopefully.
The streets are empty, even by Cape Cove’s small-town standards. If a tumbleweed rolled down the cobble-stone road, it wouldn’t be out of place. The theme of the town seems to be purposefully retro, incidentally deteriorating. The sidewalks are decorated with vintage street lights and hanging lanterns that scream Here is Where You Take The Picture! We Want You To Take a Picture of this Quaint Old Town Right Now! Despite the net of telephone wires that looms over the shingled low-rise shops and nautical store-fronts, they've had trouble getting signal. They’ve had to screenshot their itineraries and orient manually, like Yunho is attempting now.
Someone shrieks.
Mingi gasps as he stumbles to place the noise. A kid with a huge mouth seems to be the source of the disruption, not halfway down the street. He's also waving with vigor, and Mingi reflexively turns back around, like he would should someone try to talk to him on the metro back home. But in sleepy Cape Cove, that strategy doesn't work.
"I said hey!!" calls the kid. "Hello? Calling the two loitering giraffes?"
Oh, Mingi thinks guiltily. Obliging, he turns to the boy, Yunho finally looking up from his screen to follow suit.
“Yeah!” yells the boy. “That’s right, I’m talking to you!”
Upon closer inspection, Wooyoung doesn't look that young. He’s just small. Like Mrs. Lee had said, he's probably around their age. With his loose red cut-off tank that shows off his toned arms, his black board shorts and dirty Vans, he kind of looks like a lifeguard. Baywatch, even, with his straight-sloped nose, clean smile and his dark flop of hair pulled into a tiny ponytail at his nape that Mingi only notices once he draws closer.
"Are you Wooyoung?" Yunho asks. "We're--"
"Mingi and Yunho, I know. Mrs. Lee said you city boys needed a tour guide," he says, loud in the empty street. Wooyoung lifts a handful of freezies in one hand. “Sorry I was late, I was picking up snacks. Here,” he says, pushing them into their hands. Red for Mingi, blue for Yunho. Wooyoung keeps a grape-flavored tube for himself and expertly rips it open with his teeth, before plopping down on the sidewalk. "So what's your deal?"
“Well," says Yunho, bending to sit too. "We're in Cape Cove until Wednesday."
"A bit sweaty," says Mingi. "So we were thinking of going to the beach later." He rips his freezie open with his teeth, immediately grateful for the ice flakes on his tongue, the frosty sugar that cuts through the heat. He lowers himself down to the space between Wooyoung and Yunho, nudging his stick thigh against Yunho's along the way. Yunho leans his weight back immediately, like he's not even aware he's doing it.
"Why else would you be in Cape if not for the beach, hm?" Wooyoung says. He takes in their knees, knocked together. "Siblings? Dating?"
"Both," says Mingi, slurping at his artificial strawberry. "Kidding."
Yunho laughs and shakes a reassuring hand. "We grew up together, super inseparable. Same elementary school, same high school, different colleges."
Mingi nods solemnly. "And now, it's a good thing we're telepathic."
Wooyoung giggles and Mingi relaxes a touch. "Long-distance, huh. Like some sort of frathouse Romeo and Juliet over here." He rolls the empty plastic of his freezie around his pinkie and leans back, lowering his elbows to the hot concrete, basking like a pleased cat. “So you’re college kids, huh?”
“Just graduated,” says Mingi. “Yunho too, he’s starting a Master’s this fall.”
Wooyoung whistles. “For what?”
“Management and Business Analytics,” says Yunho. In the stifling, breezeless heat of late-summer, Mingi feels like he can almost see his words still hanging in the air.
It wasn’t necessarily the choice of degree that had surprised Mingi, nor the fact that Yunho was jumping into a new degree right after graduation. It was the fact that Mingi had no idea about it until Yunho texted him out of the blue sometime in April, something quick and sterile like starting an MBA next semester! :), when Mingi hadn’t even been aware that Yunho had been considering applying to anything at all. In the past, Yunho would have--Mingi takes a breath and stops himself there. Yunho doesn’t owe him any information he doesn’t want to share, after all. They’re both adults, after all.
But in the past--
"So, like, management?" Wooyoung is asking, head tilted towards Yunho. "You wanna be a manager?"
Yunho's mouth flops open a bit, clearly uneasy with his abruptness, with both Mingi and Wooyoung’s full attention on him. "I--Yeah. I mean, it’s not that simple but...That’s what that degree would lead to."
Wooyoung’s already turned to Mingi. "Cool. And what are you studying?"
"Cryptozoology," says Mingi, "just kidding. I think I’m done with school for now, actually. My parents want me to go to grad school too so I told them that I’m doing--” he makes finger quotes--“a gap year.”
“Work or play?”
Mingi shrugs. “ I’ll get some work, eventually. And finish a couple of my photography projects, collect enough material to start applying to residencies the year after. I’m not too worried, though. I’ll figure that out later, right now I'm just enjoying not being in undergrad hell.”
"Mingi's really creative," says Yunho. “And now that you have that film degree under your belt,” he says, addressing Mingi, “you can do whatever you want. You don't have to worry.”
“Yunho’s smart,” Mingi shoots back honestly. “He’s always been the smart one out of the two of us, got it all figured out. Even if the only reason he’s doing the MBA thing is because his brother has a nice product dev job in the Bay and he doesn’t want to be the Jeong family’s black sheep,” he jokes.
Yunho's hand stills around his empty freezie skin. "That's not the only reason why."
"You guys are both cool," says Wooyoung, before Mingi can say that he was just kidding. "Similar but different. Kinda making me wish I went to college, I’m feeling a bit left out." Wooyoung's arms flex, tanned skin covered in a light, healthy sheen of sweat, sticky enough for his shirt to cling to his stomach in a few spots. Then Wooyoung’s face creases into a smile, and he sticks out a purple tongue. "Just kidding. Not my style."
"What’s your style, then?" Mingi asks. “Small-town story?”
"Well, twenty-three ago I emerged from my mother's womb and blessed this town with my existence." He’s kidding but as he looks at them both, his eyes are dark and confident. Now that he’s not laughing, Mingi notices the beauty mark beneath an eye. It’s charming, a provocative pinprick on smooth skin. Mingi catches himself and swallows.
"In other words,” Wooyoung finishes, “I grew up here and never left. Cape Cove forever, baby."
Yunho nods solemnly, sucked-out freezie flopping in his mouth like a plastic tongue. He removes it to speak. "D'you like it here?"
"Do I like it?" Wooyoung repeats. "Do I like my life here in Cape? Yeah, sure, guess it's like a never-ending vacation. Except it's not, since I live here."Wooyoung launches into a tale about how many times he'd had to help Mrs. Lee chase down stray cats with a silly earnestness, immediately hooking them in with a ‘stray cat’ impression that sounds more like a feral raccoon.
Mingi believes him a thousand times over when he says he grew up in Cape Cove. Wooyoung has a carefree, easy cadence that could only come from growing up against candy blue skies and the smell of ocean salt in the air. It just makes sense. When Wooyoung finishes, Yunho jumps in with a related story about rats and dorm rooms, waving his big hands in excitement as he makes his points. Mingi’s heard this story before, and he follows along loosely, smiling when appropriate, all while somewhat guiltily confronting the fact that he came out today expecting to be jealous of Wooyoung, an emotion now so distant. At the climax of the story, Wooyoung bursts into peals of laughter at Yunho’s expression and collapses against Mingi, hands gripping at the bone of his shoulder. Despite the fact that it’s too hot for skinship, or that they’ve barely known Wooyoung for more than a conversation, Mingi finds that he doesn’t mind at all, even if it's just the Yunho effect at play. Wooyoung’s cheerful and funny and yeah. Yeah, Wooyoung’s cute.
Mingi looks at Yunho to find him already look back. Besides, Mingi tells himself. Yunho likes Wooyoung and maybe that’s because Yunho likes everyone, but still. Wooyong can’t be half-bad.
---
Once they peel themselves off the pavement, Wooyoung takes them on a guided tour of the Cove.
“Do you skate?” he asks.
They don’t anymore, because once Yunho snapped his ankle on a quarterpipe during his high school X-treme Sports Phase and the broken bone had traumatized Mingi, and by extension himself, forever.
Wooyoung yawns, stretches his arms lazily towards the sun. Mingi averts his gaze, but not before he catches glimpse of the smooth flex of Wooyoung's stomach, graced with light trail of hair. “That’s too bad. We could've, like, skated around town.”
Cape Cove isn't large, and curiously, many of the shops seem to be closed, even on the main streets. With Wooyoung’s colorful narration, it only takes them a few hours to complete the tour, (That couple never waters their plants, that’s why they look so terrible. That house is where Mrs. Lee’s beau lives. The last kid in that house just left home and it’s all his family talks about. Oh, the smell? Drunk kids love pissing in that alley. Oh hey should we stop for ice cream? ). Despite its tranquility, Cape Cove is bursting with life when they're done.
Eventually, they get hungry, and Wooyoung pulls them to the market in the town center. It's busier, with other tourists hovering like seagulls around various stalls and tents, and vendors yelling greetings like they're throwing breadcrumbs. Wooyoung flits through the squawking mobs, skips lines to chit-chat with his favorite vendors, stuffing fresh bread and produce, cold cuts, and IPAs into his backpack along the way. Then he dumps it onto Yunho.
"Okay," he says with a wink. "Now we're ready."
Pulling out of the main streets leads them to a pretty, peaceful creek, with a few other late lunch picnickers scattered amongst the rocks. The beer is cool and rewarding as it slides down their throats, washing down their sandwiches they’ve assembled with their bounty of fresh, yeasty bread, slices of breaded chicken and juicy tomato.
“So you city boys don’t skate, but you can swim, right?” Wooyoung asks. He pulls off his tank, revealing a toned chest, tanned chest. Mingi licks the last of the tomato off his lips. “If you do, do that now, yeah? I’m taking a nap.”
After being under the sun for so long, the creek is a cool haven. The water isn’t deep, coming up to Mingi’s shoulders, so he lowers himself to float on his back. A splash and familiar laugh announces Yunho’s presence as Mingi lets himself doze off, face warmed by the sun and cradled in the buoy of gentle currents. Self-care, hell yeah.
When enough time has passed for Mingi’s fingertips to get all pruney, he feels the drag of skin against his ribs, the tapping of fingers tempered by the water, stirring him out of drowsy drifting.
"Hm?"
Yunho speaks, low voice distorted through the water. “Should we head back?”
Mingi turns his head towards the shore. Wooyoung, now wearing Yunho’s Ray-Bans, waves lazily. Mingi shrugs, even though he knows that Yunho won’t see the movement, half-submerged as he is. “What’s the rush? Let’s stay a bit longer.”
By the time the sun is setting and they’ve made their way back to dry land, Mingi feels drowsily sated from all their swimming and walking and eating and laughing. Sitting against large pieces of driftwood, wrapped in towels, feet against the still-warm sand, for once, his head feels pleasantly empty. Maybe he should buy a waterbed when he gets home.
"I can’t believe I’m starting school in a week," says Yunho to Mingi, while Wooyoung roots through his backpack to find the last of their food and beer. Yunho's hair is messy and wet, cheeks pink with exertion. Like a gecko, his tongue is still blue from the freezie he had that morning when he pokes it between his teeth, counting on his fingers. "In like, nine days. Nine days."
"Summer flies by, man."
"Yeah," Yunho says. "It always does. I just don't know if I'm ready for it to end this year."
"You don't have to be," Mingi suggests. Don't they have frosh in grad school?
"Maybe I do," Yunho says. His tone is so serious that Mingi glances up. Yunho's eyes are are dark and sharp, watching Mingi carefully like he’s asked a question, like Mingi should be providing an answer. Mingi opens his mouth.
"Aha!" But before he can explain himself, Wooyoung interrupts, triumphantly balancing three bottles of beer between his fingers. "Thirsty?" he asks, beaming, and Yunho turns his entire body to face him, very obviously signalling an end to their previous conversation. They grab a honey-blackberry beer each, the glass bottles still dripping with condensation and pick out strips of leftover chicken that they drop straight into their mouths and gobble up like they're kids.
Wooyoung sighs loudly, still chewing. "Should've brought a grill. Next time." He turns to them, licking his fingers. "Hey, did you know this is where they shot Pirates of the Caribbean?"
Mingi perks up, cheeks full of food. "Really?"
Wooyoung snorts. "No way! Dude, you're kind of gullible!"
Yunho guffaws. "Wuh ehwhu jwhach--" he says, spewing chicken bits.
“We used to watch those movies on loop though,” Mingi translates. “For Halloween, we dressed up as Jack and Elizabeh for like, four years straight. Traded the costumes back and forth every year.”
"It’s the perfect trilogy," Wooyoung sighs. “I used to like Will the best. What a swell fellow.”
"Trilogy?" Yunho chimes in after having finally swallowed his chicken. “Did you also start living in denial after the third film?”
"What do you mean, after the third film?" Wooyoung frowns. Which leads them to gleefully recount the decline of one of the most popular American film franchises of the 21st century to Wooyoung, who has somehow never heard of the existence of the fourth and fifth Pirates films, vehemently insisting they never played at the local theatre. Their playful bickering shifts from film to TV to sports to back to film again. Wooyoung has the cursed taste of someone who's been living under a rock for a decade, fed off of Seinfield and Simpsons reruns. Which makes him the polar opposite of Yunho, whose top ten film list only consists of MCU and other, similarly spandexed titles.
Sometime after they’ve begun ranking the Batmans in order of sexiness, Mingi looks up to find the sky long darkened and the air long chilled. It’s just that they hadn't realized, pressed together as they are in their tight, tactile circle. It’s difficult to imagine that they’ve only met Wooyoung today and yet feel so comfortable already, but Mingi attributes the rapprochement to the sedative effect of the sunny creek, the beer and the floaty giddiness that comes with having so much free time on their hands. It’s all perfectly normal, he tells himself, one of Yunho’s hands rubbing circles on his knee, Wooyoung practically cuddling into him on the other side. It’s normal. Just guys being dudes, nothing more. He re-integrates the conversation just in time to hear what Yunho thinks about George Clooney’s nipples.
"All right," Wooyoung says eventually, stifling a yawn. "I'm gonna head out. But you guys seem pretty cool for two tourists, so tomorrow, why don't I take you to a secret beach? Actually," he laughs. "It's not too far, and you could get there by yourselves. But it's been nice hanging out with people your age for once. Or just anyone under the age of sixty, really. So if you’ll have me I'll make the most of it while I can."
“Of course!” Yunho answers immediately, and Mingi can’t find it in himself to disagree.
“Hey, can we take a picture?” is what he adds, pulling out his phone. He takes more than one--Yunho and Wooyoung, Wooyoung’s arms looped around Yunho’s neck, one of Yunho falling over as Wooyoung tries to pull off a tipsy piggy-back ride, and finally, he sets a timer and they get a few shots as a full group, draped over each other like it's the most natural thing in the world. Right as the red blight blinks and flashes, Wooyoung sticks a hand under Mingi's armpit to make him flinch and Yunho drops to make obnoxious kissy faces near his ear, and Mingi, well Mingi just can't seem to stop smiling.
They make plans to hang out the next day. Wooyoung doesn’t have social media, because of course he wouldn't, but he saves his name in their phones with a series of sun and a yellow heart emojis.
---
Wooyoung was right: from the hostel, the beach is close, barely a half hour away by foot. With the unrushed pace of three explorers and their beer cooler at the start of an epic adventure, Mingi and Yunho follow their guide through the market again, out of the main streets and then off-road, down the coast. Humming the Pirates of the Carribean theme, Wooyoung leads them through an overgrown wooded area, has them stumbling over roots and slapping branches out of the way until they finally make it out of the grove, scaling down a face of large, flat rocks.
"Here we are," says Wooyoung, when they finally reach horizontal ground, dusting off his hands as Mingi and Yunho let the cooler drop onto warm sand. “My best-kept secret.”
"Oh wow," gasps Yunho. “Wow.”
Mingi can’t blame him for repeating himself. Unlike the open, shallow creek they swam in the day before, Wooyoung’s beach is a precious crevice, probably only stumbled upon through the most fortunate of accidents. The beach is shaped like a horse-shoe, filled with pale sand leading into gently rippling water, clear as blue glass. Lodged between cliffed juts of stone that conceal them from any peering eyes, it almost feels like the beach belongs to them. Like they’re the very first to feel the fine sand between their toes, to shield their faces from the brilliant sun and to look out into the sparkling water with awe.
"Not even the locals come here," Wooyoung says, more than a little proudly. "There used to be a direct trail leading down the cliff about a decade ago, but they stopped maintaining it, which has warded off tourists since. And locals prefer swimming in the creeks, since the shore is kind of deceptively deep here and the currents are strong, so you can't really bring kids. But it's my favorite spot in this entire town. I can't seem to stay away from it." He beams. “Pretty, right?”
“Not to be that person,” says Mingi, taking a picture even if he knows photos won’t be able to do his memory justice, “but this could be a screensaver.”
With a mad whoop, Yunho cuts across his vision then, peeling off his shirt and discarding it haphazardly in one smooth motion, sprinting into the water.
“Watch out!” Wooyoung yells. “It’s deep!”
But Yunho doesn’t hear him and trips momentuously on the lack of sandbed, spluttering as he face-plants into the water, to Mingi and Wooyoung’s great cackling. He’s laughing with them as he emerges, just his head and neck bobbing out of the water like a pool toy.
“Come on!” he calls, shaking his now-wet hair like a big dog, “Mingi, get in here!”
“I was just waiting for you to finish making a fool of yourself,“ Mingi shouts back, but he’s giddy too as he whips off his flip-flops and pulls his shirt off. He wobbles as he wades in, the prickly transition from sand to sharper pebbles stinging the soles of his feet. Like Wooyoung had mentioned, the water is deceptively shallow, and within a few steps, Mingi is submerged half-way up his torso.
When Mingi turns to look for their guide, he finds Wooyoung still at the very edge of the shore, fixated on the water lapping at his ankles, calm, for once. The cove is pretty, and fittingly, Wooyoung is too.
It’s too easy to look at him while he’s distracted. Mingi can’t help it.
Everything about Wooyoung is generous. From his dolphin laugh, to the way he takes such good care of them, or the way the simple act of his presence glosses over the stubborn gaps of whatever unspeakable thing Mingi and Yunho are working out. The way Wooyoung’s boardshorts slope low on his hips is generous too, gifting a kind expanse of lean, honeyed muscle. Looking at Wooyoung is easy, smooth, and safe, like the faded memory of the camp counsellors Mingi used to fall in love with every summer and then never see again. Mingi wonders if Yunho thinks Wooyoung is handsome.
And, once more, that jumbled feeling lurches in Mingi's stomach. Anything he feels for Wooyoung is instantly eclipsed by the sheer space he's devoted to Yunho in his head, proof that any thought becomes an inevitable catalyst for the loop of What does Yunho think? What is Yunho doing? What is Yunho-- that seems to run through Mingi like a nervous reflex or a Pavlovian chant. Mingi's not an idiot. He knows he should dig further. But he is perhaps a fool, and most certainly a coward, and so he doesn't. He can't. The truth is, Mingi’s scared like a sour dog, panting at the jumbled enormity of the feelings he harbours for Yunho.
If he’s scared to untangle a decade’s worth of thread, it's because he already knows what he’s going to find. Surely, a lifetime’s friendship is too much to put on the line. So Mingi uses his brain and not his heart, and he makes a calculated retreat. He lets all that messy, tangeled yarn crash into fuzzy, achy unknowingness, an echo of the waves that slap against his ribs. The solution will surface when the time is right, and in the meantime, Mingi looks at Wooyoung and it is much less complicated.
Of course, it's then that Wooyoung decides to look up. Mingi snaps his gaze away. But not quickly enough.
“What is it?” Wooyoung asks. He smiles with his eyes, dark and warm.
Mingi sinks back until his shoulders are submerged in the water, feet still, careful not to let the current pull him away. “Nothing,” he replies much too late.
“You know,” says Wooyoung. “You do this a lot.”
“What?” says Mingi.
“You stare,” says Wooyoung. “Like, constantly. Did you know that?”
“At you?”
Wooyoung tilts his head. “Not just at me.”
“Huh,” says Mingi. He feels like he’s slipping in the conversation like he’s slipping against the rocks underfoot. “I have a lot on my mind,” says Mingi. “I’m not just...” he trails off, not even sure what exactly he’s trying to defend. Not his pride, surely, at this point.
“Yeah, seems like you both do,” Wooyoung says, not ungenerously. “I wonder what’ll happen when you're done with all your thinking. You can go ahead, catch up to Yunho. I just wanted to dip my toes in the water before I set up our stuff.”
That’s all Mingi was waiting for, and he scrambles to escape the hot burn of confused embarrassment. He swims to Yunho where he's bobbing on his back some distance away, eyes closed like he's trapped in a peaceful, corpse-like spell. Mingi makes a splash as he approaches, and the illusion breaks--Yunho flips onto his front as he hears Mingi draw near.
“Hey,” says Yunho. “Did you see that there are fish in the water? I tried to catch one but they’re super fast.” He mimes pincers with his hands, makes some funny noises.
Mingi’s heart grows three sizes, as it always does when he’s with Yunho. “Damn, what are we gonna do about dinner, then?”
“You’re my dinner,” Yunho retorts.
“No, you are!"
Yunho grins. His hair is slicked back, rivulets of water squinting one eye shut, flushed rosy at the cheeks and the tip of his nose. He’s pretty, like a mermaid. And then, Mingi averts his gaze, reminded of Wooyoung’s comment.
“Whoever can hold his breath the longest gets treated?” Yunho suggests.
“3-2..”
Mingi clenches his eyes shut and drops underwater, welcoming the cool rush of submersion. They last about a half a minute before they decide fucking with each other is more fun then their breath-holding contest. A mess of bubbling laughter and choking water and caught limbs, and they rise to the surface again. The cold of the water curls up Mingi’s spine as he swims, makes it twice as delicious when he emerges to breathe, rewarded with the sun plastering across his face like a blessing. One of them has lost the contest, but it doesn’t really matter who, not really.
Mingi and Yunho dog-paddle in tandem into the late afternoon, looking for fish.
"Wanna stay here forever,” sighs Yunho, jerking Mingi out of his thoughts. “No school, no family, no responsibilities, just doing nothing until the end of time."
"You know," Mingi remarks. "You never talk to me about stuff like that."
"Hm?" Yunho's eyelashes flutter dark against his cheek and suddenly he's looking at Mingi much more attentively.
"About stuff that burdens you," says Mingi, surpressing a shiver, “I guess.” It's colder now, he realizes, and they've been in the water a while. When he looks up again, the sun has disappeared above mottled clouds, fat and thick, teasing a downpour.
"I'm not burdened," says Yunho, and Mingi almost believes him, except he’s been Yunho’s friend for the better part of his life and can recognize Yunho's lies better than his own.
"You used to tell me," says Mingi, opting to push. "And now you don’t anymore. You know you can talk to me about this stuff, right?"
"It's not that interesting. And everything I handle, I handle well. Everyone says so, so you don't have to worry."
"I--" Mingi says. "It’s interesting because I care about you. It’s important. Like, dude, I can't believe you barely told me about the grad school thing. I didn't even know you were applyin to anything until you told me you had gotten in."
"Is it?" Yunho says. “Important?”
Mingi stares, incredulous. "Yeah, dude."
Yunho hesitates before answering. “I didn’t even know you were applying. I’m not keeping you out of the loop on purpose or anything. It's just that things used to be simpler, and now they're not.”
And what the fuck is that supposed to mean? “Still,” says Mingi. “You should tell me about this kind of thing. I want to know about your life, Yunho.”
"Sorry. I will, next time." And Yunho smiles, big and honest and just how Mingi remembers, and Mingi just almost barely believes him. "Look, I know you think I've changed. But I haven't, not really. Not more than you have anyway. But you'll always be my best friend, no matter what."
"No matter what? Then why"-- starts Mingi. Then why is this happening to us? he wants to ask. But it's still not even close to the right question, if it’s really even a question he should be asking Yunho, anyway. My chest feels like it’s been carved out with a melon scooper is closer to what he means.
"Never mind," Mingi says, letting the thought blow out of him with an exhale.
Yunho's still staring, unknowable. "You looked like you wanted to say something."
Mingi gives him a little kick, softened by the drag of water, and sticks out his tongue. "You looked like you wanted to say something."
"Me? Alright, well--" and Mingi catches the playful glint in Yunho's eye before he even moves, but he succumbs anyway, lets himself be dunked and dragged underwater in Yunho’s eel-like chokehold. In revenge he reaches back to tickle Yunho’s ribs, makes him wriggle and choke. Mingi finds his movements and thoughts slowed by the drag of water, the rush of water in his ears and Yunho's warm body against his.
By the time they return to the shore, Wooyoung's fully set up--parasol and beach towels and he’s cracked open a beer. Yunho sits down on the towel beside him and Mingi on the next one over. He’s got too much to mull over to tune into Yunho and Wooyoung’s conversation, so he just curls up in Yunho's shadow, and closes his eyes.
When he wakes up, it still feels like he’s in a dream. His head is in Yunho's cross-legged lap, Yunho's hand scratching through his hair as he chats with Wooyoung, the crash of waves and chirr of cicadas a soft accent to the gentle back and forth of their voices.
"What about you? What do you have going on?" Yunho is saying. “Any big life goals we should watch out for?”
"Nope," says Wooyoung. "I did at some point, I suppose. But then I blinked, and well, whoosh! Here I am, still."
"But what do you do all day?" Mingi yawns from Yunho’s lap.
Wooyoung shrugs. "This and that. I help Mrs. Lee and some of the other shop-owners. I go to the beach. I dick around. I coast by. You’d be surprised at how quickly time passes when you’re doing absolutely fuck-all."
"But don't you want to leave Cape Cove one day? Aren’t you curious to see what’s out there?" asks Mingi. "That’s why I ended up going to college in the first place. I just needed to get out of the place I spent my entire childhood in, to start something new."
Wooyoung shrugs. “Not really. I've been living like this for so long that I can’t really imagine anything else.”
Mingi’s stomach churns. “I understand. It’s like growing pains, but when you’re already grown.”
“At that point, I think they just call it a quarter-life crisis," Yunho comments.
“At that point, I’d just rather not think about it all,” says Wooyoung. “I’m busy, anyway. If I don’t enjoy this beach, who will? Not you two city boys, always thinking about the future.”
A grumble interrupts their conversation, a pained cry from Mingi’s stomach. They unwrap popsicles, sticky, and sweet, pull out cans of beer and a bag of Tostitos, with the goal of getting trashed and filling their stomachs with junk.
"I wonder why Mrs. Lee told us to watch for ghosts yesterday," wonders Yunho, crunching on chips.
Wooyoung laughs. "Good for business, no? Keeps you curious?"
"It's low season, right? The town seemed pretty empty as well, and the hostel’s half-booked."
Wooyoung shrugs. "This is actually the busiest time of the year, believe it or not. I mean come on, it's the end of August."
"Oh, then why...”
"They're closed permanently," Wooyoung says lightly. "Can't help it, the town's being bought out by the same company that owns half this coast. Rumor is they want to build a resort here eventually, return the town to its touristic heyday. They're snapping up property like crabcakes. The locals are too old, and their kids leave for the city and don't come back, so it's not like there's anyone to pass on businesses to. So the land is cheap, and the streets are empty, because they’re basically waiting to be razed and filled again. But don’t tell Mrs. Lee I told you.” He puts the popsicle between his plump lips. “She’ll be upset. She hates the idea of this town changing more than it already has.”
“So there aren’t any ghosts,” says Mingi, “just landlords.”
Wooyoung shrugs and taps the sticky red of his popsicle against his lips. “Don't worry. If we do find any ghosts, I’ll take good care of the both of you.”
When they finish eating, Yunho dives back into the water. Mingi pulls out his phone to take a picture of him in the sparkling waves, scintillating. And then, because he can, because Wooyoung's lying there, lips red, long lashes against his cheek, he takes one of Wooyoung as well.
Yunho comes bopping back towards them eventually, tall and drenched and with a devious smile.
"Oh dude, no, no..." Mingi says, scrambling away, while Wooyoung has already succumbed to his fate, dissolving into a peal of laughter as Yunho shakes like a dog and splatters them with salt water. They tussle and drink and mess around. When the sky starts to melt into tropical colors, ushering in the evening, they're all laid across each other, like they've been doing so for years.
Mingi tips his beer back and swallows the last of the foam, looking up at the sky. It's quiet, which is unusual considering that he’s with Yunho and Wooyoung. He sits up. Yunho is watching him. He turns, and Wooyoung is watching them both.
A heartbeat passes, pulling them one step closer to the inevitable.
"Hey," says Wooyoung, who's got a hand on each of their knees now, close enough to kiss. "I already asked. But I just wanted to make sure. You’re really not..."
“What?” says Yunho at the same time that Mingi says “no, we're not.”
"Okay," says Wooyoung. "So if I. If I just try..." He doesn’t finish his sentence before he's leaning up, eyelids fluttering shut.
Wooyoung kisses Mingi first. Wooyoung tastes like the fizz of beer, the salt of sand, thick, and real and all boy--pushing into the kiss all assertive and sure. When he wraps an form hand around the back of Mingi's neck to pull him down, Mingi is unable to stifle a gasp. Is Yunho watching? goes the litany, the Pavlovian chant. What does Yunho think? Wooyoung's fringe tickles against Mingi's nose and he stops thinking, pressing back into Wooyoung’s lips more firmly. Wooyoung makes a soft noise of approval when their tongues slide together, the softest pressure. And then, so smoothly, like the ebb and flow of a wave, Wooyoung unwraps from Mingi and twists gracefully up to kiss Yunho.
It's hot. Obviously, it's hot, because Wooyoung is hot and Yunho is hot and they’re kissing, just like in one of Mingi’s daydreams or perhaps a nightmare. Mingi's stomach burns as he watches the back of Wooyoung's head, both of their faces obscured. Yunho places a big hand on Wooyoung's shoulder, and one of them makes a noise like a sigh, and Mingi envies them both. Mingi remembers the insistence of Wooyoung’s mouth against his own, can still feel his lips like a brand. Is that how Yunho likes to be kissed?
And then, Wooyoung pulls away.
Yunho blinks slowly, dazed. He looks wrecked. Shiny eyes, cheeks apple-flushed, lips heart-pink and slightly damp with spit, and the sight burns right through Mingi’s heart, travels all the way down to his dick like straight lead.
“Yunho,” Mingi rumbles, and he’s very aware that it comes out tinged like a whine. Somewhere to the side, Wooyoung, their generous Mercutio, laughs.
He doesn't know which one of them leans in. But one second he’s looking at Yunho and the pink heart of his lips. In the next, those lips are pressed tenderly against his own, and Mingi’s heart might explode out of his chest, because his best friend’s lips are so, so soft. Everything’s soft, like Mingi’s brain has been completely replaced with durian, crushed under the ruthless prongs of a steel fork. So soft that Mingi might even faint or topple over if it weren’t for Yunho’s big, heavy hand wrapping around his nape, covering over the same spot as Wooyoung’s was placed earlier.
Yunho’s being so careful with him, Mingi can tell from the lack of pressure at his neck and the petal-light pecks to his lips. And Mingi’s being careful with it too, knows he's toying with a hair trigger. How does Yunho like to be kissed? He pictures Wooyoung, with his toned arms, the seductive mole under his eye, pictures the back of Wooyoung’s head, the noise Yunho made, the power behind Wooyoung’s kiss against his own mouth. Spurred, Mingi is the one who licks Yunho’s mouth open, who greedily collects the sigh Yunho lets out, who slots them together like puzzle pieces and bites at his bottom lip. Yunho’s hands grasp his face desperately, even as Mingi pulls away. Too soon. And yet, another second would have surely been unbearable.
And just like that, the kiss like a soft catastrophe is over, leaving Mingi exhilarated and destroyed. They stare at each other like castaways, lips a raw color that matches Mingi’s pounding heart, full of ten years’ worth of unidentifiable feelings and one last, pinging arrival, letting him know that nothing will ever be the same again. Because now, Mingi knows exactly just how soft Yunho’s mouth feels against his. His cock twitches anxiously, in his wet shorts.
A raindrop hits his cheek and slowly Mingi looks up at the dark sky, filled with thick clouds. He’s just kissed Yunho. The adrenaline is weaning off into horror. He’s just kissed Yunho.
Yunho has lifted an embarassed hand to cover his face, like he’s protecting a secret. But Mingi can see through the gaps in his fingers, can see how deeply flushed his cheeks are, deep pink just like the tips of his ears. He meets Yunho’s gaze, finds him similarly disoriented, confused. Yunho looks like he might say something. Mingi waits. He doesn’t.
“Well,” says Wooyoung.
It starts to rain, drops paving small, pattering indents like fingerprints in the sand.
“Well,” says Wooyoung, again, after another long minute of statue-stillness. He raises a towel over his head to protect himself from the rain. “Well. There’s a Saw movie playing at the two-dollar cinema tonight.” His eyes flicker back and forth between the two of them, uncertain and torn, like he’s tempted to cancel the plan he’s just proposed out of awkward malaise, but feels entrenched by the responsibility for whatever might happen when he leaves. “If you guys aren’t sick of me yet."
Mingi has to crack his lips open to speak. “What do you think?” he asks Yunho, who makes an aborted motion of his head.
“That sounds good,” he mumbles to Wooyoung, wanting to do anything but think and feel. “Let’s go watch some dudes get their hearts ripped out.”
---
Amidst the bustling of market vendors rushing to close their stalls under the pouring rain, they plan to meet in the same spot in an hour so they can walk to the theatre together.
“Sure you guys will be able to find your way back without me?” Wooyoung teases. It comes out flat and worried, so they reassure him politely. They're both adults after all, not to worry. But as soon as Wooyoung disappears in the opposite direction, the mood plummets even further. Mingi blinks rain out of his eyes as they begin to trudge back to the hostel, waiting for Yunho to formulate his thoughts.
“Why did you say that?” Yunho finally asks, as they weave into a back alley, walk past big wet plants and rickety plastic chairs, all collecting rain.
“Say what?”
“Yes,” says Yunho. Abruptly, he comes to a stop, and Mingi skids, narrowly avoiding collision with Yunho’s back. When he turns, Yunho's face is neutral, carefully restrained in a way that could mean any number of things.
“Why did you say yes to Wooyoung?” Yunho specifies.
A wet slash of confusion cuts through Mingi’s stomach. “To the movie?”
“I don’t understand you,” Yunho cuts in. His voice is layered with frustration, but Mingi can’t even tell who the frustration is directed towards. “And when you said all that earlier, yesterday. I don’t understand you.”
“What,” says Mingi. “Yunho, I’m not following, what did I say?”
“You’re always saying things like that. Yunho’s so bright, Yunho’s so smart. How am I supposed to take that?”
“I mean them!”
“I know!” Yunho spits. He sounds hurt, and lost. “I know you meant it. That’s why...” He runs his hands through his drenched hair, sending drops splattering across Mingi’s face. “That’s why I’m so confused. You look at me sometimes--You look at me sometimes and I--”
Yunho pauses, swallows. The thing about Yunho is that he never gets angry. But when he does, it’s slow-building, an unstoppable all-consuming wave that Mingi knows he can't fight against, just ride out until it ebbs out. Mingi tilts his head up to meet Yunho’s gaze, like he’s had to since their last year of high school. Yunho’s eyes are dark, roiling with storm clouds, like the pit in Mingi's stomach when he realizes that the friendship he'd been trying so hard to protect had already been on the line for Yunho this whole time.
“Like what,” says Mingi, with no intention of riding out the wave this time. How does that song go, the one about betting on losing dogs? “I look at you like what, Yunho?”
“Like I’m so far from you. You look at me like I’m some kind of angel,” Yunho swallows. “Like I’m so different now. I don’t know who you see when you look at me, but that’s not me. I--I'm just me, and I have no clue what I’m doing.”
“Should we just--” Mingi starts. His head throbs, the rain hammering into his skull. Should we just forget we kissed, he wants to say. “I don’t know what I’m doing either,” he settles on.
“Well I don’t know how you deal with that,” says Yunho. “Because I feel like I’m drowning. And then when I reach for you, you’re already looking up at me like I’m some kind of martyr. What do you want from me?”
“You don't need to be so hard on yourself,” is all Mingi comes up with, and even as the words leave his lips, he knows it isn’t what Yunho wants to hear, isn’t even what he wants to say, the angle and rhythm of vowels and consonants skewed all wrong.
“Yeah? Well, I wish I could be like you. Just doing whatever you please and everything still falling into place. Like the world revolves around you. It’s not just me, you know. You’ve been building a life without me in it too. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be. Maybe this is just growing up.”
Mingi closes his mouth and opens it again and closes it and stews in feelings he should have tried to untangle much, much earlier. Anything he could say would just make this worse so he needs to be very--
“Why’d you kiss him, anyway?” Yunho asks, voice laced with anger.
Mingi snaps, because of course it would come to this. “You kissed him too!”
“Because you did first!”
“That’s unfair, and you know it,” Mingi snaps, and he digs into the messy wreckage of his chest cavity, digs into the open wound, pulls out the weapon that’s meant to hurt. “Since when do you even like boys, anyway,” he fires.
Then, he immediately regrets it when a thunderous flash of hurt and fear cross Yunho’s face, before he completely wipes it of emotion.
“Since always. I’m staying at the hostel tonight,” Yunho says. “I’m too tired to go out.”
“I’m sorry,” says Mingi. “I really am. I’ll text Wooyoung to cancel.”
“Do what you want,” says Yunho. And of course, the gods above spit on Mingi once more and there’s no reception, and he has to resolve to text Wooyoung back at the hostel. A crackle of lightning lights up the sky, a delayed flash, the smell of ozone and of wet earth. They walk wordlessly, drenched to the bone.
---
They don’t have any signal back at the hostel either, and so they reluctantly decide to meet Wooyoung back at the market as planned, unwilling to leave their guide hanging in the storm. They’ve calmed down a bit after another round of mutual apologies, nursing their wounds in prolonged silence, too tired to be angry. Yunho takes first shower, and Mingi scrolls through his camera roll while he waits his turn. He flicks through the images he’s taken since Monday, heart-tapping the ones he wants to send to his friends and family. Mingi swipes through photos of the hostel, of Yunho smiling in his bunk-bed, of the cross-hatch of telephone wires, of Yunho’s hand holding a blue freezie, of the little crabs they saw at the creek, of Yunho holding a beer.
He can’t find any photos of Wooyoung.
Mingi frowns, swipes backwards until he hits the itinerary screenshots from before their trip. Then he swipes forward, again.
“Yunho,” Mingi calls, voice breaking. Yunho cuts the water and emerges almost instantly, towel draped around his hips, rivulets still dripping down his chest.
“What?” asks Yunho, sounding as agitated as Mingi feels, all tensions between them temporarily forgotten. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s not in any of the photos.”
Yunho’s brow creases.
“Wooyoung. I checked, like, twenty times. He’s not in any of the photos. None of them--not the group shots, it’s just you and me. And the photos I took of him are empty. They’re landscape shots.”
“That’s impossible,” says Yunho.
“Well, check, then,” says Mingi, pushing his phone into Yunho’s hands. “He’s not in any of them.”
“Are you...” Yunho asks, but he aborts his question when he sees how scared Mingi looks.
“There has to be a good reason for this.”
“Yunho...” Mingi says, small and scared. “I know it’s… What if...”
“What?”
“What if Wooyoung’s a ghost?”
“Wooyoung can’t be a ghost,” Yunho falters. He raises the pads of two fingers to his lips. “He can’t be a ghost. I--you--we kissed him!” The rain pouring rattles the window of their room, the echoing boom of thunder of a summer storm punctuating. The dim bulb above the hanging fan flickers. “And besides,” whispers Yunho, “ghosts don’t exist.”
But deep inside, Mingi already knows he’s right. “Oh my god,” he whispers. “Oh, fuck. Yunho, we kissed a ghost.”
Lightning floods the room with cold light again, like the storm is getting closer. Mingi’s phone rattles, making them jump as it chimes with a thousand notifications.
“I’ve got signal. Should I…” Mingi cringes. “Should I text him?”
“Dude and what, uh hey Wooyoung are you perhaps not of the living? Don’t… Don’t text him. If he’s a ghost, then we’ve got to be able to find like, I don’t know. A death report. An article. I don’t….”
“Okay so just.” Mingi swallows. “Google it?”
Yunho nods. “Google it.”
The light flickers again, like morse code, throwing shadows over Yunho’s face, already lit with the bright white of his phone screen as he scrolls and taps through results with gamer speed.
“Oh...” says Yunho, covering his mouth with one hand, as Mingi’s barely typed cape cove ghost into his browser, and Mingi knows he’s found something.
“What,” he whispers.
“Jung Wooyoung,” Yunho reads. “Found deceased on Cape Cove beaches, August 24th, 2011. Unconscious, drowned. Oh my god, it’s him. It’s Wooyoung.”
Yunho flips his phone and sure enough, there’s a picture of Wooyoung, smiling like the sun, in his red tank top, dark swoop of hair pulled into a tiny ponytail, familiar mole creased under his eye.
May he rest in peace, reads the printed caption under the photo.
Mingi crushes the phone to his chest. “Yunho, what do we do?”
“I don’t know,” answers Yunho, helpless. They’re silent for a while, listening to the boom of summer thunder.
Then, there are three even knocks at the door.
Mingi and Yunho jump. Mingi looks at Yunho, Yunho looks at Mingi.
“It’s probably Mrs. Lee, right?” whispers Yunho.
“Hey guys,” Wooyoung’s voice comes through the door, muffled. With a squeak, Mingi grips Yunho’s arm and covers his mouth. “Are you guys ready? Mrs. Lee said you were still up here. We’re already late if you guys still wanna do the movie!”
“What do we do? Do we tell him?” whispers Mingi.
“Should we?” questions Yunho.
“Yes? Maybe?”
Yunho takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Yunho,” Mingi whispers furiously. “No, Yunho. What if he’s trying to kill us?”
“He won’t hurt us,” Yunho frowns, making his way towards the door. “He won’t hurt us,” Yunho repeats, as if reassuring himself.
Then, he opens the door and lets Wooyoung inside.
“Oh what’s this?” laughs Wooyoung, when he sees Mingi cowering on the bottom bunk. “Are you telling scary stories?”
“Hey Wooyoung,” Yunho starts. “How old are you?”
“Don’t, Yunho, he doesn’t need to know,” hisses Mingi.
“Know what?” laughs Wooyoung, but already sounding more confused. “What’s up with you guys, why are you acting so weird?”
“How old are you, Wooyoung?” Yunho repeats.
“I’m--” says Wooyoung, clearly perplexed. “The same age as you guys.”
“What year were you born?” Yunho asks.
“Are you guys fucking with me?” says Wooyoung. “I was born in 1989, just like you.”
Mingi whimpers.
“What’s up with you guys?” Wooyoung asks. “What’s going on?”
“Wooyoung,” says Yunho, gentler. “Mingi and I were born in 1999. We’re both 22. The year is 2021.”
“No,” starts Wooyoung. “That’s not right.”
“Jung Wooyoung,” Mingi reads from Yunho’s phone. He pushes past the tremble in his voice. “Deceased August 24th, 2011.” Wooyoung makes a broken noise. “Drowned after unsupervised, intoxicated swim in Cape Cove.”
“That’s not me,” says Wooyoung, voice stained with panic. He’s flickering, Mingi realizes with horror, like static, like he’s dialed into the same morse code rhythm as their broken light bulb.
“Look, I’m here, aren’t I?” Wooyoung insists, voice rising into a shriek. “Aren’t I here? Haven’t I been here with you this whole time? What more could you want?”
Mingi turns the phone, so Wooyoung can see his image. “It’s you,” Mingi whispers. “You’re dead.”
“No,” Wooyoung blanches, glowing around the edges like a leaking lightbulb, translucent as sliced onion skins. “No, I’m here, and I don’t want to leave. You can’t make me leave again, you can’t, you can’t leave me behind, it hurts--”
“Wooyoung,” Yunho murmurs. “We’re so so--”
Wooyoung lets out an inhuman scream that rattles the walls, their lights. His whole body seems to convulse, jagged and diaphanous and once. Then in a ragged gust of cold air, like an implosion of particles, like an impossible snow in the middle of summer, Wooyoung disappears.
“Fuck,” whispers Mingi, shaking like a leaf.
---
Still reeling, they burst downstairs, into Mrs. Lee’s lobby.
“Wooyoung’s a ghost,” Yunho says faintly, like if he repeats the statement for a seventh time, he’ll finally wake up from the terrible dream unfolding around him.
“Yes, he is.” Mrs. Lee’s calm, reedy voice comes from behind the counter, where she’s closing her till.
“You knew this whole time, didn’t you?”
“Of course I knew,” says Mrs. Lee. “How could I not?”
It’s only now that Mingi notices--Wooyoung is there too, behind her counter. Between the rows of keys that hang like solemn wards, the newspaper clippings that testify to a cumulative memory of Cape Cove surpassed only by the one in her own head, there’s a cut-out of Wooyoung, smiling and long-faded. He’s far from the only photograph immortalized on Mrs. Lee’s wall, but he’s the only one no longer a stranger to Mingi and Yunho.
“Then why didn’t you tell us?” Mingi asks.
“He doesn’t mean any harm. Wooyoung’s still just a scared boy at heart, stuck in a place where he no longer belongs.”
“He's gone now. He just disappeared,” croaks Yunho. “He exploded, right in front of our eyes.”
Mrs. Lee looks at the keys on the wall behind her and tilts her nose up, like she’s sniffing the air. When Mingi does the same, all he can smell is the smog of her incense. “No,” says Mrs. Lee. “No, Wooyoung’s still around. It’s just that with time, his form becomes more difficult from him to hold. The longer he clings onto our world, the more painful it becomes.”
“What should we do?” asks Yunho.
Mrs. Lee’s face is like stone, unyielding. Mingi swallows down the panic lodged in his throat. They can’t leave things off with Wooyoung like this, they owe him at least that much.
“We need to find him,” he tells Yunho. “We should--I don’t know. We should apologize. Return the favor he granted us, and help him find his way out of Cape Cove.”
“But how are we meant to find a ghost?”
Mingi turns to the smiling image of Wooyoung behind the counter, the same one the reporters used in the article.
“I think I know where he might be,” Mingi whispers. “There’s one place Wooyoung would go if we wanted to be alone. We should...” It’s only then that Mingi notices that the sound of rain has stopped. Cape Cove is sleepy during the day, and usually even quieter with the blanket of night pulled around it like a tight cowl. So Mingi doesn’t understand why he can hear the distant yet clear pound of drums. “Wait. What’s that noise? Is that… a parade?”
Mrs. Lee keeps her silence.
“I can hear it too,” says Yunho, meeting his gaze firmly. “Come on, let’s go. We need to go find Wooyoung.”
“One last thing,” says Mrs. Lee finally, eyes burning. She looks old, feels even older, articulating the words like she's already said them a thousand of times over. “Be careful. When they all arrive, don’t look. Keep your eyes closed, cover your ears. The boundary between our worlds is thinner than you’d expect, and the last thing you want is to find yourself on the wrong side of the living and the dead.” Mingi and Yunho stare, open-mouthed. Every beat of the drum draws nearer.
Mrs. Lee’s face curves into a smile. “And enjoy the festival.”
---
As soon as they cross the swinging doors of the hostel, it’s like they’ve peeled a protective film off of the Cape Cove they’ve become familiar with--everything is simultaneously the same and yet so different--brighter, fuller, louder.
“It’s getting closer,” says Yunho, eyes so big and wide that they reflect the moon, slippery and full, rimmed with stars. “Whatever it is, we’ve got to hurry.”
Outside, the pounding drum-beat is so much louder. It rocks Mingi’s rib cage and makes his throat quiver with sheer intensity. The skeletal base of the marching drums has swollen with a moaning chant of a chorus, the ceremonial clang of cowbells. As they listen, a haunting refrain emerges, composed of notes so organic they could only come from within the earth itself, as if produced by a harpsichord moulded for some ancient beast of the past.
Mingi shivers. It sounds like a funeral procession for a world on the brink of change.
The streetlights and lanterns at this time of night are usually cold with pale LEDs. Tonight, they cast a broad, orange light, bobbing with sickly sweet warmth, throwing up stark black shadows thick as curtains where their light does not reach. It’s hot, too. Not the sunny swelter of a summer day but rather the searing heat of brushing past by a campfire, all smoke and burning lungs and watery eyes. Mingi feels reckless and dizzy as they scramble down the paved cobblestone road. His heart beats in time with the procession, full of the end and beginning of everything he’s ever known.
The back of his neck prickles.
“Yunho,” he calls, “We’re being watched.”
“Look up,” Yunho answers. There are inky figures slipping like shadows through the windows of the closed storefronts, mingling together as they move from store to store, pausing to fixate on Mingi and Yunho, small blinking eyes as reflective as a cat’s.
“I don’t think they’re trying to hurt us,” Yunho says cautiously. “Whatever they are. I think they’re just watching.”
“Hurry,” Mingi repeats, who feels a little like he's going insane. “Let’s just hurry. Let’s find Wooyoung.”
But as they advance through the empty streets, they are slowed by an invisible layer of resistance, like molasses poured in the shapes of bodies that Mingi can't seem to pass through. Around him a chattering fills the streets, insect-like but softer, and layered. Yunho's making his way around the shades, somehow, looking like he's swimming or performing a graceful dance through the street, flickering under the warm amber light. Mingi collides with yet another layer of buoyancy and Yunho's back draws further and further away.
“Yunho,” Mingi calls desperately. “Don’t leave me behind!”
Yunho turns and then his hand is there, open, extended, and solid against Mingi's as he grabs it. Like a lifeline, like a promise.
“I won’t,” says Yunho, tinted by the orange glow of the witching hour, eyes focused and serious, and this time, Mingi hears nothing but the truth.
Together, they pull through the invisible mass of bodies, running until they arrive at the forest underpass Wooyoung had led them through so easily just earlier that day. They only have one phone between them, and even with the bleached glare of the flashlight Mingi’s shining through the trees, it’s difficult to navigate.
“Let’s turn left,” Yunho suggests, like it’s high school orienteering again, like they’re not being trailed by a marching band of ancient spirits. With the flash of the phone, the branches look like skeletal limbs, fractured and hanging as Mingi pushes them out of the way, Yunho following closely behind. They reach the stones next, close enough that they can hear the calm crash of waves now, a new layer of melody to the rhythm of drums and chanting.
“Be careful,” says Yunho, as Mingi passes him the phone. “Don’t slip.”
So Mingi’s careful as he places one foot, and then the next, the stones dripping from the recent rain. His flip flop squeals and Mingi yelps, but he manages to catch himself, nails digging into a sharp edge.
“Mingi!”
“I’m fine,” he laughs, shaking like a dog from nails to toes. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” Yunho throws him the phone when he reaches the bottom, and then it’s his turn to watch as Yunho climbs down, careful, and efficient.
At the end of the beach, there is a lonely figure, watching as the water laps softly at his ankles. From afar, nothing seems distinctly wrong.
“Wooyoung,” Yunho calls cautiously, drawing the ghost’s attention to them.
“Who are you?” asks Wooyoung, his voice is thin and high, unfamiliar. He shields his eyes as they approach, body flickering like a sheet in the wind. They can see right through him, especially with the flash of the phone, can see the cliffs, and sand and the dark night through his body. But it seems like Wooyoung is looking right through them too, eyes empty and vapid, like he doesn’t recognize them at all. “I’m so scared,” he rambles, loosely directed at the cold, empty sky. “I don’t want to leave, I’m scared, I don’t want to leave--”
“But you can’t stay here,” Mingi says softly. The drum melody is right on their heels, hot and loud and foreboding.
“It hurts,” Wooyoung repeats desperately, flickering like a memory in a hollow shell, like a broken television set. “It hurts to stay, and it hurts to leave. Everything hurts, I just don’t want to be alone.”
Yunho grabs one of his hands and pulls Wooyoung against his chest, like he would a crying child. The result is grotesque, Wooyoung’s body half-sinking into Yunho’s, resisting the act of disappearance but steadily losing detail in his overall corporeal form, dripping like melting candle wax.
“Show me where it hurts,” soothes Yunho, pulling the shape of Wooyoung against him as tight as he possibly can.
''Everywhere, everywhere,” wails Wooyoung. Mingi watches them for a moment, transfixed. Then he wraps himself around Wooyoung from the opposite side, shivering from the cold shock of touching Wooyoung, who feels like a cross between jelly and dry ice.
“It’s going to be okay,” says Mingi, even though he isn’t sure Wooyoung can even really hear them.
Around them the temperature is rising, so hot Mingi can practically feel his skin blister. The procession has caught up, the terrible, ceremonial rhythm louder than ever drowning out the ebb and flow of the waves.
“Mingi, close your eyes,” Yunho reminds him softly. And he does.
“I don’t want to disappear,” Wooyoung nestled between them, “I don’t want to be alone.”
“You won’t be,” says Mingi. “Can’t you hear everyone that’s here with us? Everyone’s waiting for you, Wooyoung. It’s your party, and you’re the last one to arrive.”
“But... But I’m just a little scared,” Wooyoung warbles, nearing incoherence.
“It’s okay to be a little scared,” says Yunho. “As long as you do what you need to do in the end.”
And they hold him tight while Wooyoung wails and wails and wails, while the procession swirls around them as he melts. Until it all stops: the wailing, the symphony, the heat, and the light, all over at once. Wooyoung is gone too, no trace of him. All that’s left is the easy rock of waves, the cold light of the moon. And Yunho.
"Christ," says Yunho, and Mingi's heart hurts so badly he can't even bring himself to answer. They collapse onto each other’s arms and sink into the sand, shivering like babies.
“If I told you something terrible,” says Mingi, because he might as well be out with it, now that nothing will ever be the same again. “Would you still love me?”
He feels Yunho frown against his shoulder. “Of course, Mingi. You’ll always be my best friend.”
Mingi takes the jump. “And what if I didn’t want to be your best friend anymore?”
“I--”
Mingi laughs. “I like you, Jeong Yunho. As more than just a friend.” He wipes his nose. “I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you. Seems like this past day has really put things into perspective, right?”
Yunho’s answer is so low that it’s a mumble. But from this close, Mingi hears it all, can even feel the blush radiate from Yunho’s apple cheeks. “And what would be so terrible about that?” Mingi can’t help it. He bursts into tears, covering his face with his hands. Yunho’s voice trembles and gets gradually more nasally, like it does when he's also about to cry. “What if I liked you back, Song Mingi?”
“Idiot,” says Mingi, bawling. Once he’s started, the tears rush out on their own. He doesn’t even know why exactly he’s crying. He’s crying because he’s bone tired, because of Wooyoung, because of Yunho, because he misses his mom and his roommates and dry clothes and the mosquito bites on his knee itch. He's crying because he can hear Yunho’s sniffling too.
“We’re idiots,” says Mingi, trying to wipe his nose on Yunho’s shirt. Yunho bats him away, before pulling him in again, wrapping around him like an octopus. “What the hell are we going to do? Our first date, nearly visiting the ghost dimension. We’ll never be able to top that. No one will ever believe us,” he says, looking for Yunho’s hand to hold.
“I’ll believe us,” says Yunho, pressing a kiss to the top of Mingi’s head as they watch the new day rise across the cove, watching the sunrise pinks and oranges splash across the still water, crying like kids.
“You don’t count,” Mingi sniffs. “You were here.”
---
They return to the hostel and sleep all day.
When Mingi blinks awake, he feels hungover. He’s uncomfortably hot as well, like he’s being squeezed against another body in a twin-bed made for one person half his size. Mingi twists, only to run up against one long, skinny arm he would have no problem recognizing anywhere.
Oh, right.
Yunho’s already awake, squeezed like a narrow log between Mingi and the wall. His hand that isn’t grazing Mingi’s is propped up awkwardly, holding his phone over his face. Yunho turns when he hears Mingi shift.
“Good morning,” he says, with his best Yunho smile, deceptively guileless, “guess what I just did.”
“What,” Mingi croaks out.
“I deferred it, my MBA,” says Yunho. “What do you want to do for breakfast today?”
“You what?” Mingi repeats.
“I deferred it until next year,” Yunho says so lightly, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Dude, I’m surprised my grumbling stomach didn’t wake you up earlier. Honestly, I’d be down for a giant plate of pancakes.”
“Yeah,” Mingi says faintly. “Yeah, pancakes sound good. Yunho, what?”
"What, what?"
"What are you gonna do?"
Yunho lifts his shoulder a smidge, the closest he can come to a shrug without rolling Mingi off the bed. “Guess I have a year to figure that out, don't I? Well, I did have an idea.”
“Join Ghostbusters?"
“Close. I was gonna ask you if you wanted to hang out for a little while longer.”
Mingi breaks into a big smile and a tension that he wasn’t even aware he was holding melts through his body. He rolls over to drape himself onto Yunho, close enough to count his eyelashes, close enough to peck him on the lips. Which he does. “Yeah, I needed someone to carry my camera anyway. You can be like my unpaid intern,” he jokes. “I mean, we’ll both be unpaid.”
Yunho is so pretty, even with sticky eyes and messy hair. Mingi’s heart beats so fast, trembling with anticipation, with how much he wants to lean down and--
“What if I was your unpaid boyfriend?”
Mingi leans down and kisses him again, and again.
They meet Mrs. Lee at the lobby at noon for checkout. She does not ask them about Wooyoung, and neither do they.
“It’s hotter this summer. So hot. But I say that every year,” says Mrs. Lee, swiping at the neck of her blouse, flickering too as she replaces their key on her wall. “Maybe I’ll see you next summer. Things have a strange way of returning to Cape Cove, especially during the summer festival.”
As they wait for the bus, everything has changed, except nothing has changed at all. The streets are as empty as usual, the stores closed. The hollow of Mingi’s knee is itchy and his shirt sticks to his back with sweat. But his heart beats in time with some phantom rhythm, and his chest feels lighter than it has in a long time.
Hand in hand, Mingi and Yunho wait for the next bus arrive, not in any particular sort of hurry.