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It’s a picturesque view - the sky is swallowed in a light pink hue as the last remains of the day’s azure blue disappear over the horizon. In the distance, the echoes of birds squawking and cars driving up and down the hill accompany their quiet.
They’re sitting next to each other on the edge of the pavement, knees and elbows touching. Jongseong’s mouth is filled with bites of his half-eaten corn dog, the corners of his lips dusted with sugar. Jungwon can’t stomach even a single bite of his own lamb skewers - but he smiles at the sight of his hyung munching away happily. The glee quickly evaporates when his stomach churns again.
Oh right. I have to tell him.
“Yah,” Jongseong chastises. “Are you not going to eat it? Your skewers cost more than my corn dog, you know.”
Jungwon’s laugh sounds strangled, like someone had snipped his lungs away from his body and left him bare on that pavement. The lump in his throat only grows bigger.
“Hyung,” Jungwon winces at the way his voice cracks.
Jongseong’s playful smile drops and the mirth in his eyes trembles away. The nagging anxieties at the back of his head crawl all the way back up to Jongseong’s reality, and he doesn’t even have to hear Jungwon out. He knows what’s happening - Jungwon looks like he’s going to start crying and that’s all Jongseong needs to see to know.
Still, he entertains Jungwon. Jongseong tilts his head, his heart thumping dangerously in his ear.
“What is it?”
Jungwon inhales deeply through his nose as he looks down at his feet, uneaten sticks of meat hanging uselessly around his fingers. The air is so thick that Jongseong thinks he might suffocate and just die on that pavement.
Then, the words Jongseong dreads.
“Stanford called me back.”
Jongseong blinks.
“They want me.”
Now, Jongseong remembers watching college acceptance videos with Jungwon while cuddled in the corner of his twin sized bed. They had been researching Stanford - since they couldn’t actually visit the historic campus from Seoul, they settled for YouTube clips of other hopeful applicants giving tours and sharing advice. Somehow, they ended up watching videos of overjoyed applicants screaming and crying, clutching the acceptance letters close to their chests or hugging the people around them as they gawked at their computer screens. Jungwon laughed as he watched a foreigner wail in gibberish, her French accent piercing through the screen. He looked at Jongseong then and just sighed dreamily. “She must be so relieved, right?”
Perhaps she was. Perhaps that French girl felt like she could just crush the world at her fingertips - she had gotten into Stanford, for God’s sake! Relief should be the second emotion that overwhelms her, just seconds after the landslide of happiness.
Except, Jungwon doesn’t feel the relief at all. Instead, he gets a stomachful of dread.
Dread. The feeling stays with Jungwon for days until he realizes that he can’t hide it anymore, that there’s only so much intense fear he can pool in his own being until it threatens to eat him alive. Before he knows it, two weeks pass after that fateful phone call.
Jungwon is sitting here, on the pavement in front of their favourite playground, lamb skewers in his hands as his entire world falls apart at its seams.
Jongseong visibly gulps. His eyes are wide and his lips are parted ever so slightly. Jungwon lifts his head just in time to notice the sugar crystals dotted around the split between his lips. Jungwon aches to brush it off, but he knows he shouldn’t. Not when Jongseong is staring at him with all the colour drained from his sun-kissed skin.
“What?” is Jongseong’s mumbled reply.
Don’t say it. Please.
“Someone rejected the offer, so there’s another empty slot for the scholarship. I-” Jungwon closes his eyes and sighs, “If I accept, I leave in two months.”
Jongseong’s face goes through a hilarious range of emotions, it’s almost laughable. He goes from his eyebrows furrowed in confusion to an awkward, stiff smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Jungwon knows Jongseong like the back of his hand. He knows how Jongseong looks when he’s genuinely happy and he definitely knows how Jongseong looks when he’s devastated. It should hurt him - the apparent unhappiness swirling in his eagle-like eyes. But it doesn’t, because Jungwon feels the same nauseating unease prickling at his skin.
Jongseong blinks frantically and his eyebrows quirk up sharply.
“I knew you could do it,” he shakily says, the smile hurting the edge of his lips. “Jungwon-ah, I knew you’d get in. What did I say, huh?”
It’s the conviction Jongseong so desperately tries to convey in his smile that finally breaks Jungwon. He snaps, just like a rubber band that’s been pulled on beyond its limit.
His bottom lip wobbles and Jongseong’s entire facade drops.
“Hyung,” Jungwon’s voice is so small and so shaky. “I don’t want to go.”
“Nonsense,” Jongseong says sternly, the grip on his corn dog stick tightening so much that his knuckles go white. “You’re going to go. That’s it, end of discussion.”
Jungwon shakes his head. “No. I can tell them that SNU offered me a spot and I took it already. I don’t have to go.”
“What are you saying?” Jongseong frowns. “You worked your ass off on your applications and you only considered SNU after you thought you got rejected from Stanford. You.. You can’t say no to them!”
“Who says I can’t?” Jungwon presses. “SNU is closer anyways, it’s not like I have to travel to a whole other country just to do the same thing that I’d be doing at Stanford.”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Hyung, I-”
“This has been your dream since we were kids, Jungwon-ah. You can’t say no!”
“I know but-”
“You’ll learn so much more there than here, what is it even about Seoul that makes you want to stay?”
Jungwon snaps again - this time, he tosses the lamb skewers in his hand harshly on the ground. It bounces off the road with a squelch, startling Jongseong. The younger boy’s glare is piercingly sharp as his body trembles.
“So you want me to leave you?”
The question escapes out of Jungwon before he can stop it, his voice laced with insecurity and hurt. It’s a tone Jongseong realizes he’s never heard in his ten years of knowing him. He pauses and peers down at the younger boy, his eyes softening.
Jongseong rests the palm of his right hand gently on Jungwon’s arm, before sliding it down to his wrist. His thumb caresses the milky skin as it continues to move down slowly, until their hands are intertwined and Jungwon’s fingers shake against his own.
“Who said you were leaving me?” Jongseong softly whispers.
Jungwon tears his eyes away from the ground - they’re glassy from the unshed tears collecting slowly. “You’ll come with me?”
A sad smile and a shake of his head. “No, of course not. I can’t, Won-ah. I didn’t apply for any American universities.”
“Then I’m leaving you here. Alone. I don’t want to do that. I can’t.”
“What - you think continents could separate me from you? Physically, maybe. But I’m never leaving your side for the rest of your life, Jungwon. I thought we already established this.”
Jongseong’s gazing down at him with tender eyes, a heartbreakingly surrendered smile gracing his pretty features. He reaches his hand out to brush away some of Jungwon’s fringe away from his eyes. Pinching gently at his dimpled cheeks, Jongseong lets out a breathy chuckle as he grins deeper.
“Zoom is a thing, you know. So is Kakaotalk. And Facetime.”
Jungwon still seems unconvinced. He opens his mouth to argue but Jongseong just taps the younger boy’s cheek gently. “And yeah - I know long distance relationships are hard and I know some of our friends have tried. But we’re not like other people, remember? We’re different.”
“Besides,” Jongseong shrugs as light-heartedly as he can. “Three years is nothing. Hell, ten years have just passed by like that. We can do this, we’ll be fine, okay? You trust me, right?”
And maybe that was the problem.
Jungwon knows what will happen, he’s seen it happen to others around him. He knows that the hope that’s clinging onto Jongseong’s heart so tightly would only lose its grip sooner or later. He knows that the excitement from seeing each other only on screens and catching each other at the right time would wear off once the exhaustion pricks at their hearts. He knows that Jongseong would get lonely, no matter how much he’ll try to hide it. He’s never been any good at that - lying.
But the determination that etches on Jongseong’s face deludes Jungwon a little.
Like a fool, he lets him.
They’re quiet as Jungwon holds onto Jongseong’s hand tightly.
He’ll have to let go soon, but Jungwon wants to stay like this just for a little longer.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
If Jungwon tries hard enough, they can stay in this moment forever. Maybe a time loop would present itself right at this very second and they don’t ever have to get up from this pavement. Maybe they’ll be sitting together forever like this - knees and elbows pressed against each other with the chilling wind howling around them.
Maybe.
Just maybe.
Jungwon glances up at the sky. There are two lonely stars twinkling above them. How long have they been sitting here?
Still, Jungwon breathes out a sigh. He gives in.
“I trust you.”