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Doyoung does not remember the first time he met Taeyong. Instead, Doyoung’s early memories with Taeyong bleed into one another like a tide into sand. Doyoung remembers him as the boy next door with soft cheeks, thin-rimmed glasses, and big, sensitive eyes. He’s sure that if Taeyong were to describe him, he would say Doyoung was cute, if a little naggy. Doyoung would rather describe himself as “organized.” Doyoung thinks he has always been this way: grabbing an extra snack for Taeyong, helping him study for music theory, texting him to go to sleep early. Thinking of Taeyong comes to Doyoung softer than a reflex, less knee-jerk and more second-nature.
This morning, Doyoung arrives at the bus stop and knows immediately that Taeyong is late. It’s early spring and the sun hasn’t risen fully yet, meaning the light hasn’t reached Taeyong’s bedroom. He calls Taeyong who, surprisingly, picks up on the third ring.
“Hey! Wake up, we’re going to be late.” Doyoung says, pacing under the bus shelter.
“Urghh,” Taeyong groans.
“Don’t go back to sleep, we have to go! We have a music theory quiz today.”
“I didn’t even have time to study for it,” Taeyong mumbles.
“I’ll test you on the bus,” Doyoung says, gentler this time, trying and failing to lessen the sting of urgency. “See you outside in five.” He hangs up before Taeyong can respond.
~
They score two seats at the back of the bus. The bus route is lined with cherry blossom trees, white with puffy new buds. Taeyong peers out the window as Doyoung shuffles his flashcards.
“Ohh, look, we’re passing the park for the spring festival. They set up the stage!” Taeyong points, where there’s a black stage hung with streamers and flanked by large speakers. “Remember the first time I performed there, when we were in middle school? God, I was so nervous that day,” he smiles to himself, still staring out the window though the park has flown past.
Doyoung remembers, of course. He and Taeyong had performed together before for school plays, but that was the first time Taeyong had ever performed solo—a song he had written and produced and hidden from Doyoung. Doyoung remembers feeling frustrated that, unlike Taeyong’s other songs, this was one Doyoung had to wait to hear in its final form. It was worth it; Doyoung had relished being able to stare openly at Taeyong just like everyone else in the crowd, to bask in watching his mouth brush the mic with each phrase: “Pull me in, lock me in lest my obsession flares up / Stand by my side even as / another day passes.” Doyoung had thought Taeyong was impossibly cool.
“Do you want to hear what I worked on last night?” Taeyong pulls his phone out of his pocket and Doyoung puts in the earbuds offered to him. “I think I’m going to submit this one to companies after I graduate,” he says, scrolling through his playlist. They are only a year apart, and though Taeyong has never made it a big deal and their closeness makes it easy to forget, reminders like graduation make their age difference yawn open with a feeling that makes Doyoung ache.
This new song has a sensuous lethargy that Doyoung finds hard to resist: “I'm jumping through that ro-ro-rose / Even your thorny way of talking can't stop me / One step at a time.” It feels so intimate that Doyoung finds himself blushing all the way to his ears.
“What do you think?” Taeyong asks, playing anxiously with the headphone cord.
Doyoung looks at Taeyong—his eyes are puffy and underlined with faint purple smudges, a shallow imprint of his pillow lines his cheekbone. He knows Taeyong’s been staying up late to work on his mixtape, but Doyoung also knows that Taeyong’s perfectionism has kept him from eating, kept him awake beyond the reach of Doyoung’s goodnight texts. He dreads Taeyong’s graduation, the loom of it growing too great to bear alongside the weight of his feelings for Taeyong, feelings that sometimes feel older and steadier than Doyoung himself.
“I think it’s great,” he finds himself saying. He’s never dared ask who the songs are about, has never wanted to know even as the lyrics burn through him every time he listens.
~
The walk from the bus stop to school is unusually quiet between them. Taeyong knows better than to chat when Doyoung is brooding. They can see the school gates at the top of the hill when Doyoung stops. It takes Taeyong a few paces to realize before he stops too.
Doyoung feels like he’s carrying a tray of hot drinks that has become unwieldy. Sooner or later, something was going to slip from his grasp. “Who is the song about?” Doyoung blurts. He stares at the ground and wishes it would swallow him.
He hears Taeyong cough out a laugh. He braces himself, feeling like he’s dangling on the edge of a cliff.
“Well,” he hears Taeyong say. He watches his shoes inch closer until the tips are touching Doyoung’s own. “It’s about you," he says slowly, with an exquisite earnestness that sows something new in Doyoung's chest.
“Really?” Doyoung sneaks a glance at Taeyong. His face is so fond and open and Doyoung tries to quell the relief blooming in his stomach.
“Yes!” Taeyong replies insistently, before folding Doyoung into a hug. He rests his forehead against Doyoung’s collarbone. His next words are murmured against the patch on his school blazer, over Doyoung’s heart—“They’re all about you.”
Doyoung hugs him back. Every song, he thinks wildly, as he flips through his memories with joyous delirium. It’s as if Taeyong has handed him a kaleidoscope to align everything and hold it up to the light: at seven when they first met, at seventeen in the arms of a boy who remembers the same way—true as a tide, or a song.