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Minho takes and takes and takes.
The last time he acknowledged his own reflection was a long time ago. At least, the last time he saw something he liked. Concepts of self are too delicate to be thrown around into one frame, Minho thinks. He read it somewhere, in a quote a friend taped to their graphing calculator.
Anyways.
Minho can't keep track of himself, much less the people around him. What a waste of a life.
The swell of a sunrise shakes the boy out of his stupor. When he looks down at his hands he sees the tears of his own doing, and burns the vessel connecting his heart to his soul.
After packing a small bag and bringing an empty backpack with him, Minho steps away from his childhood home. He lives in the suburbs. Every house is the same: half acre property, colonial architecture, and loads and loads of rich residential side projects. His friend once said that he hoped they wouldn't gain any traction, because what about the grass? Minho thinks it's a little fucked up that random kids were concerned about the longevity of their immediate vegetation.
It doesn’t matter now, anyways, because Lee Minho is a walking rhubarb reduction gone wrong. Festering mistakes and shoving problems away from the mind are the enzymes in his ruin.
Way to go.
Because he lives in the suburbs, there's no public transportation. The nearest bus stop is in the city, northeastern bound, more than 12 miles away. Minho walks to Hyunjin’s.
Fist raised, he knocks the 11 step pattern he’s known his entire life. The shortest night of the year has passed, and Minho welcomes in June 21st.
Except, Hyunjin isn’t opening the door to welcome in Minho. Fuck.
Minho leaves the front, and stands patiently under Hyunjin’s window. He blinks, and mentally corrects himself. Windows. Hyunjin has 4, all facing the east. He brags about them quite a bit. Minho remembers a night, however many hours ago, encased in the frost of bitter winters and midterm exams, where the only thing stopping his best friend from following a careful trail of stars up, up into the sky off of a cracked sill was his pubescent words and a disobedient plea.
Anyways.
나는 가수가 되고 싶어요
ここに
(。ˇ 3ˇ）
what im
나는 가수가 되고 싶어요
bro
Please let me take your car
(。ˇ ⊖ˇ）
omg hyung you said please
to what do i owe this pleasure ?
omg do you have like real news
나는 가수가 되고 싶어요
if you dont shut up rn theres gonna be Real news of a mutilated vaguely korean body at the bottom of the seine
just give me the damn keys hyun e
Minho groans. Dropping his phone, he rests his back on the molded siding of the Hwang family residence. Slowly he slides into a wall sit, facing the sun.
He’s never really liked sunrises. They’re underwhelming, and a sad reminder of the expectation of grace and the weariness of existence. The sky, instead of being dyed the magnificent purple of the sunset, washes into a bland gray, and the sunlight percolates through a hole in his vision. How garish. How futile.
He fumbles in his jacket pocket looking for something to occupy his hands. A tissue, and a franc he found at the bottom of an acquaintance's pool. Cool. He rips them both up. Where the fuck is Hyunjin.
He sits there for another while, heaving in the sweet summer smell of morning humidity. There’s always a chance he actually doesn't have to leave, where he can stay here with his family and travel to university and get a job and come visit his old, childhood house in the suburbs freely and joyfully. But Lee Minho doesn’t actually exist in that reality, so he waits under Hyunjin’s window, staring at the horizon however far away.
He feels something wet drop onto his cheek. He knows it’s sweat, but pretends it’s a tear. This is his moment. How sad- the boy who isn’t allowed to be happy in his home and can’t stick around to think about why. What a classic coming of age story. Maybe he’ll come back, years later, successful and decorated, and put his twisted upbringing into the dirt where it belongs. Or, maybe he’ll travel to a distant cemetery and drop a single bouquet on the graves of his long deceased parentage, whose demise he only recently heard of through an office friend.
Another drop falls on him. Instinctively he looks up. It's Hwang Hyunjin.
Hwang Hyunjin leaning too far out of his window, gripping a bottle of water.
“Minho hyung~” he taunts. “Why do you need my precious baby’s turn on device??” He dangles the bottle dangerously from the middle, daring to let a few more drops slip out and onto Minho’s freshly washed face.
“First of all, gross,” Minho starts. “And second of all, don’t ever say it like that again. Its a fucking ‘04 Highlander hybrid.”
Hyunjin scoffs, and in a motion of courage drops the rest of the contents of the bottle onto Minho.
It’s barely past 5 am.
Minho is tired.
Soaking in the fresh sunlight, he glares at Hyunjin, waiting for his apology. It comes quick.
“Oh-- shit, shit, shit, hyung, I am so fucking sorry-- holy fuck, uh, come up here right now.. I’ll dry you off and--” His voice gets cut off as he ducks back inside his room. Minho sighs again, and walks back to the front of the house.
He’s never going to get those fucking keys, is he?
He barely makes it to the front door before Hyunjin bursts through the threshold. He grabs Minho’s wrist, and in a disgustingly endearing manner, frantically escorts him into his room. He drags Minho onto the bed.
Sitting there, Minho only hears the vague noise of cabinet doors opening and closing in Hyujin’s attempt at finding a towel. He falls backwards onto the bed and his back jumps up and down as he lands, arms splayed horizontally in tandem.
Lee Minho only exists in the places he creates, provided by the space of mind and the clock of time.
Hwang Hyunjin exists in a floating memory. The haphazardly strewn glow in the dark stars on his ceiling and the crooked sketches adorning his walls say so. The joyful recognition in the eyes of a friend and the jaded yearning in that of a stranger say so. A characteristically long midterm essay and the hurried staple bent into it say so. The dew of a sleepless night filtered onto his glass window pane say so, too.
Minho knows he shouldn’t have left the bruise of a comment encourage his anger. And yet, and still, it did. He’s given a home where he failed to carve a secret. So, he goes. There is no perception without inherent deception. That’s a good one, Minho thinks. Very original. He sighs.
Hyunjin guns back into the room and trips on his old, old tufted rug curled from age. The nauseatingly childish blue and orange towel intended for Minho ends up on the floor, and Hyunjin follows swiftly. Minho ignores the noise he makes as he lands, just because he’s nice like that.
“Hyung, here.” Hyunjin says, arm extended up from the floor he hasn’t stood up from. Minho watches as he attempts to bow while laying spread eagle. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s whatever, Hyunjin-ah.”
Hyunjin sits up, and observes approvingly as Minho accepts and wraps the towel around his head. It drapes over his shoulders, and slowly does its work, collecting the water distributed throughout the collar of Minho’s favorite t-shirt.
“So hyung,” Hyunjin begins. “Again, I’m super really sorry about the water.”
“I said it’s whatever.”
“Yeah, yeah.” 'Minho looks up. He finds Hyunjin’s eyes. He knows Hyunjin expects something of him. Someone always does. “I need your keys, love,” he says instead.
Hyunjin shifts. “I know.”
“Can I have them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you trust me?”
Hyunjin breaks their eye contact. “Of course.”
“Then you have to believe me when I say this is what’s best for all of us.” Minho sighs. “I really tried to avoid it too.”
Hyunjin crosses his legs, and fiddles with the beaded bracelets on his arm. “You know hyung, I don’t think you did.” He offers a shaky smile. “You never really held back for anyone’s sake. Not that I don’t appreciate it!” He leans forward in apology, hands splayed straight ahead. “You always set up a barrier for us. Now we’re all a lot better off. I’m grateful. But,”
He pauses to collect his thoughts, and Minho crosses his arms to cut him off. “There’s no but.”
“But,” Hyunjin insists. “Now you don’t know your own worth. You spend hours and hours putting other people before yourself that you don’t even know what it’s like to feel normal. To be treated normal. Don’t forget about Seungmin-“
“Shut up Hyunjin-ssi, or you’ll regret it.” Minho hisses out.
Hyunjin smiles slow, in a depreciating way. “Do you think running away is going to fix everything for us here?” He wags his finger and Minho ignores the overwhelming, suffocatingly large urge to bend it into directions it doesn’t belong. “No one likes a martyr, hyung.”
Minho grits his teeth. “I don’t think we need to cross these boundaries, Hyunjinnie.” He states passively at Hyunjin’s wrung hands, and the bruise flowering on his knee from when he fell. Minho stands.
“I’ll be off then.” He pats his pockets looking for something that was never there. “I’ll call Jisung. Or, maybe Channie-hyung. Tell him about why I have to leave home and about how my childhood best friend won’t treat me with kindness. You know,” he smiles. “the type of thing Channie-hyung adores to hear about.”
Hyunjin blows out through his teeth, long and slow. Minho feels like he’s not going to say anything more, but then Hyunjin moves. “I know you won’t bother Channie-hyung, hyung, but I also know when I’ve lost.” He stands up without making eye contact.
Minho watches as he rummages through his drawers, stacked with memories of primary and secondary, looking for the spare key to his car. There is no nostalgic photo found, no red ribbon strung taught to Minho’s finger in that bedside table. When Hyunjin holds his hand out and balances the key on his pointer finger, ring dangling on his fingertip while his (Chan’s) Sanji keychain stares at him from its metallically plastic pendulum, Minho almost wishes he had an excuse to stay and bicker.
Minho takes the key. This is the weird part. When you’ve never said goodbye, it’s harder to get it right, like most things. “Well,” he begins. “Thank you.”
“Mm.” Ah. That’s the attitude Minho knows so well. At least Hyunjin can be consistent.
There’s really no point in elongating something so straining. Minho plans on the normal- turning to leave and just. Going.
But he’s with Hyunjin. And Hyunjin is Minho’s best medicine.
“Go put on your shoes,” Hyunjin says. “I need to check if those are the right keys.”
Minho wordlessly obeys. There’s a weird tension that he’s not used to, even with awkward strangers. He slowly, slowly ties on his sneakers and hoists his bag over his shoulder, fiddling with the (maybe) car key Hyunjin handed him. It’s always been frustrating that he can’t keep his hands still.
Hyunjin returns after a minute, holding Minho’s empty backpack. “Those are the right keys, hyung. Also you left this on my floor.”
He reaches for the center handle and Hyunjin watches him sling the backpack over his bagless shoulder without using the straps with tangible disdain. Minho’s heart does a little dance.
“Ah, thank you, Hyunjinnie.”
“You’re so gross.”
“Sure.”
Anyways.
Minho steps back outside, away from the wooden tables and plastic cups of Hyunjin’s house, and makes his way to the car.
Hyunjin immediately calls after him. “Oh-- Jagi-ah!”
Minho tilts his head to the side and stares from the corner of his eye. “What?”
“I set your location to indefinitely sharing!” Hyunjin yells.
And then slams his front door.
Ah, Minho thinks. He keeps walking.
He approaches the car and puts his bags in the passenger seat. His backpack is no longer empty- Hyunjin had thrown in sticky notes and command strips and granola and a bionicle.
Ah, Minho thinks.
When he steps to the driver's side, his hands shake. This is some drama bullshit. Lee Minho does not get sentimental when he’s getting his shit done, much less at the last second. The act of waking up is the hardest step, so he climbs into the car, buckles his seatbelt, and starts the engine. As he reverses out of Hyunjin’s parking spot, he feels the air around him warm in greeting. Summer breathes and exists differently than any other season.
Not because of the joy and serenity it builds with each day after the solstice, but because Hwang Hyunjin can do random shit like run into his fucking back wheel with a bicycle and that could be considered normal.
“Fuck!!” Minho screams into the wheel. His hands are held fucking taught around the wheel and blossom white. He stares ahead for a couple seconds, then unbuckles his belt and runs out of the car.
“Oh my god, Hyunjin-ah, what the fuck. What in fucks name. You fucking dumbass.” He curses and curses as Hyunin dramatically lies half toppled, half crumpled on the children’s seat of the bike.
“Hyung,” Minho hears Hyunjin groan.
“Oh my god, the dumbass is alive.”
“Hey, hyung. Did I stop you?”
“Obviously. Do you have a concussion?”
“How would I know?”
Minho groans. “Hyunjinnie. I can’t stand you.” He reaches to pull Hyunjin off the bike.
“No!” Hyunjin yells right into his ear. Minho winces and wishes he was dead.
“No what?!” He yanks Minho into a massive hug.
“Listen, hyung. Minho-hyung--,”
“No, shut up. I shouldn’t have stopped.”
“No-- I just--“ Hyunjin groans into his arms that encircle Minho’s neck. Then, in a rapid change of pace, he uses his entire body weight to wrestle them both to the ground. Minho’s elbow scrapes on the pavement of the driveway in a way that reminds him of hangnails on top of hangnails.
“Hyung.”
Minho pauses his brain after that. Not because he wants to listen to Hyunjin- diseased, damaged, dying Hyunjin- but because he knows that Hyunjin will not stop pestering till he gets his deepest unfathomable worry out from under his tongue and into the air.
“Hyung,” He starts again. “You’re happy, I guess. If I asked you, you probably wouldn’t respond to me, based on some, ‘It’s not your business, Hyunjin-ah’ bullshit.”
Well. Yeah.
“Yeah,” he says.
Hyunjin shushes him, eyes squeezed tight in annoyance and pain as he moves his paired scraped arm.
“But! Shh, hyung, shh- listen to me- you don’t have to hide if you’re not fine. If you’re tired or upset or losing I don’t care- you don’t have to talk about it for ages or anything. Just be in agony. I don’t care. Seungmin doesn’t care.”
Hyunjin pauses. Minho stops listening.
Because, yeah. Minho knows he should be content just existing, so he tries to just be. Minho tries, and exhausts his abilities. So he then sets up a system where his friends can live as themselves, regardless of their identity, the way he could not, at the mistake of his own existence. It’s fine. Really. It’s fine even if Kim Seungmin yells and screams and forces Minho to get out of his own head. He already said it’s fine, why are you pushing, Seungmin-ah! Don't you know this is better for you too? If you let it go, and be free, Seungminnie, just go, it’s fine, it’s okay.
“But it’s not.” Hyunjin cuts in. “You don’t have to uphold an image for anyone. At all.”
But therein lies another issue. The idea of an identity to uphold frustrates Minho. No one needs to know the weak resolve of existence, or that the pillar has fallen. Identity also leaves a lot of uncomfortably large wiggle room. Like sized up Crocs.
It seems Hyunjin’s taking a break from trying to be profound. “I would say thank you, Hyunjinnie, but I just don’t have anything to thank you for.” He laughs dryly, still pinned to the ground. Can Hyunjin move, please.
“I don’t know what you’re doing right now. If I was a martyr I wouldn’t tell you where I’m going. And- before you get your hopes up- I won’t be. I don’t think it matters where a leaf blows, as long as someone doesn’t notice it enough to step on it and break it and,” Minho cuts himself off.
What was he saying? None of this makes sense anymore, not in the moment. “Just get out of my business.”
“You’re driving my fucking car, hyung.”
“I won’t break the damn thing, Jesus christ.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
Minho stares at him. What the fuck is going on. Why is nothing progressing. Where is the loop coming from, why can't he get out?
“You’re too precious.” Minho hears in a whisper above his head.
He scoffs immediately. “Oh, okay, thank you. I feel so precious right now Hyunjin-ssi. If you would so please,” move, Minho thinks.
“Can you be a little more understanding, hyung? I’m basically hearing my whole heart out here for you and you just. Won’t listen.”
“Won’t? I already have. I know what you’re saying to me. I know it, and I can’t do shit about it, Hyunjinnie, ok?”
Hyunjin starts. “What, did I surprise you?”
“I just don’t believe you.”
Minho raises his eyebrows. “Oh my god, do you think I don’t get the complexity of my decisions? Oh my god, Hyunjin. For fucks sake.
Listen,” He holds Hyunjin’s gaze. “you fucker, the only reason I keep suffering is because I keep maintaining the smallest sliver of hope that things will work out for me the way they worked out for all of you. And yeah, I can take the credit for building that world for you. But I can’t have that the same.”
Hyunjin opens his mouth. “Ah! Ah! Wait. I can’t have that world. I can’t wait for it. It does not exist. It’s plain. And, waiting is sorrow, Hyunjin-ah. Waiting is sorrow laced into washing your bedsheets twotimes a month and watching the cycle stutter.
I can’t really bear it anymore, love.” He pauses. “Can you let me grow somewhere else?”
Hyunjin won’t meet his eyes anymore. He releases Minho from the ground and as they both shuffle into sitting positions, he wrings his hands, again.
“I just needed you to know, that you’re worth as much to us as we are to you. That was all.” Minho sighs.
Thank you?”
“Don’t use that tone, say it like you believe it, hyu~ng~” Hyunjin whines. Minho smiles to himself. Hyunjin’s too easy.
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, dumbass.”
“I’m going inside.”
“Okay.”
“Bye, hyung, I guess. Call Seungmin.”
Minho heats up. “Shut up, you were already so much work, imagine him and his whole psychoanalytic complex.”
Hyunjin just smiles like a collection of sea glass. “Bye, hyung.”
Minho smiles like a rope of waxed sugar. He says his final goodbye, just to himself. A belated and private “Love you.” He turns back to the car.
He sits down and plugs in the aux. Nothing plays.
Maybe he should call someone.
Maybe he should call Seungmin.
He picks up his phone, and scrolls to the letter 'S' in his contacts.