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I.
Got a memory of waitin’ in your bed wearin’ only my earrings
21st March, 2021
Jeongin knows he isn’t the first and, certainly, won’t be the last one.
He knows it’s because of the early morning, that gentle happiness caressing his skin. He knows he should toss and turn a few times until he falls asleep again, but the feeble yellow light coming from the bedroom looks as strong as the one of a lighthouse.
The sheets are gnarled up, there are still some traces of warmth on the other side of the bed. Jeongin looks at it amazed, as special as it is. There must be some truth about what he sees, after all. No, he knows he isn’t the first and, certainly, won’t be the last one.
His red earrings shine, touched by the rays of the sun. Those hitting in the morning are always the most powerful and the coldest. Last night, Jeongin decided to wear these earrings because he has always thought they bring luck. Scarlet red, elliptical, a thin gold embroidery around their shape. He brings a hand to his ears, to check if they’re still there. If there’s any trace of Hyunjin’s kisses left; in the confusion of that new and weird happiness, he must have accidentally pecked the earrings, too.
In the middle of these reminiscences, he hears a squeak coming from the bathroom door. Hyunjin sits down at the edge of the mattress, without even looking at the younger one. Even through the t-shirt he’s wearing, Jeongin can glimpse his muscles tensing while he stretches his neck. As Hyunjin always does when he understands he has made a mistake.
Jeongin knows he isn’t the first and, certainly, won’t be the last one. He just hoped the thrill of alcohol would last a bit longer, until he would be back at his own apartment and wash everything away. Nothing ends at twenty, he repeats to himself, you got no dirt to wash away from your skin.
“Let’s just forget about it. It’s the best for both of us.” the other one whispers at that point, “Isn’t it?”
Jeongin lets a little laugh escape his mouth. It can’t be happening again. Not to him. And not when the other person is his best friend. What a horrible cliché.
Meanwhile, he gets his back up from his comfortable position to grab his clothes, scattered at the end of the bed.
“What?” Hyunjin asks again in a faint voice, underneath the sound of Jeongin getting dressed rapidly.
“I’m too asleep for this, Hyunjin.” he sighs, “And I need a shower.”
“You can use my bathroom.”
They glance at each other for the first time since it happened. And… And Jeongin can’t stand the way Hyunjin’s visage is knotted in concern. Hyunjin is pitying him ― his damn habit to take the whole fall for something the both of them did.
“That’s not ruining our friendship, okay? I get out of your door and this never happened.” Hyunjin nods with his gaze fixed on the floor, his own fingertips intertwined with each other.
Yes, Jeongin hates the way he fell for him; it has him wanting to hug Hyunjin as close as ever, as though he hasn’t just stepped on his beating heart. As though Jeongin could read his mind, and understand him better. Still, he laces his shoes and heads towards the exit. No, he doesn’t even dare to greet.
The air is fresh outside. The streets are still empty and enlightened by the streetlights. Jeongin walks through the avenue, the one near the seaboard he is so keen on. The clothes he’s wearing makes him feel dirtier than needed and reminds him of a night he shouldn’t have lived. He cannot reverse this kind of thing. He can’t force someone to reciprocate his feelings.
Yet, when he’s sitting on a discolored bench, Jeongin wonders how many loves have to fade out this way and how many times he has to find himself sitting alone at six in the morning with his heart a little more closed and scared to find someone who would mistakenly kiss his earrings not once, but twice?
Slowly, he pulls out the latch from the back of the earrings and gets them off. They remain in his hands for a while, unconscious of what happened. If he stared at the earrings too long, he might cry. Not even they had been able to save him, this time. He hides the pieces of jewelry in the pocket of his jeans.
So close, it was. So close to happiness. A breath away.
On that bench, Jeongin comes to the conclusion that he won’t be losing Hyunjin. No matter how much sorrow might carry this decision. Now he feels rather sick, as when you eat something indigestible. Same pain, same turmoil. Luckily, it becomes more bearable every time it comes back around.
Jeongin knows all he has to do is take a deep breath, and let it start all over again.
(He wishes it was as easy as it sounds).
II.
I love this life that I have, the vine hangin’ over the door / and the dog who comes when I call, but I wonder sometimes what I’m missing
29th January, 2022
As soon as Jeongin was out of high school and took his first steps into adulthood, he already knew who he would be roommates with: Lee Felix. Not only because he had a spare room and looked for someone to fill it exactly when Jeongin needed a house, Felix’s name ringed beautifully in his ears right away.
Turns out that Lee Felix, or Snoopy-icon-guy-on-Facebook before they met in person, is an extremely messy History major. But kind. That’s for sure.
In his second week, for instance, Felix walked him around the new city and followed Jeongin in all the minor just-moved-into-a-new-house stuff he had to purchase because “you don’t know the cheap shops”. They got on really well from the start, in other words.
However, living together always brings some kind of issues: first and foremost, the household chores. Felix’s messiness, Jeongin discovered, didn’t match his sense of order. They would even fight about it, though always trying to get to a compromise ― until one day Jeongin noticed Felix turning everything upside down in his room in its most positive meaning, and when he asked rhetorically what he was doing Felix shrugged and answered he needed to clear his mind after a bad grade. Jeongin nodded, although he didn’t understand what his roommate wanted to say.
Of course, it had been Felix to welcome Jeongin after the night he spent at Hyunjin’s. Jeongin stammered out that he was feeling a bit low; he showered to feel slightly more alive and even felt disappointed when he realized it wasn’t helping at all.
“You look like someone who’s in need of a cup of cereal and a good early-morning movie.” Felix had stated, staring at a melancholic and sleep-deprived Jeongin through the door frame. “Or a good chat after you sleep a little.”
At that moment, maybe due to all the bitterness he still tasted within his mouth, Jeongin thought that Felix’s voice was honey. And thanked his past-self for turning down Hyunjin’s idea of living together during college. That morning would have hurt quite too much, otherwise.
Instead, at ten in the morning and in front of the sweetest cup of tea he’s ever prepared, Jeongin lets some steam off. And Felix listens. And pats his back when tears fall into his cup and ruin his beverage. Jeongin is not fully able to put into words the way it hurts to love someone more than they love you, and see the pity stuck on their face. Among those twisted feelings and watery tea, Jeongin realizes what Felix actually meant when he said he needed to clear his mind. It is his way to put order into his life: he needs chaos in order to have something to adjust whenever he feels down.
Then it could also be Felix’s fault if Hyunjin is still around his orbit as best friend, even almost a year after that night. At the end of the day, it had been Jeongin’s instinct to shield their friendship. The whole process ends up being easier than expected, as nothing had really to change between them. In fact, Hyunjin would still break into Jeongin and Felix’s apartment for breakfast, or for a long study session, or for… Whatever excuse he could come up with.
Not even the snow stops Hyunjin from getting some quality time with his best friend, that is why he shows up as far afield as at Jeongin’s door on a freezing and snowy morning of January.
“So, uhm,” Jeongin mutters, once they’re by the table and his wrists are hidden in his warm fleece pajamas, “Calculus today?”
“Yeah, I got a midterm in a week and well… My brain doesn’t math.” he opens the manual, thereafter picks up some notebooks and a gray scientific calculator, “How are you doing, though?”
“I’m dealing with this big boy called Linguistics.” Jeongin only sees Hyunjin humming, already lost in whatever calculation he’s supposed to solve. The younger one pretends he wouldn’t do anything to reassure Hyunjin. “You didn’t have breakfast, did you?”
The silence that follows brings Jeongin to prepare two cups of hot chocolate.
As he waits for the hot chocolates to be ready, he realizes the floor is way too cold for his bare feet and wonders when the heating is going to be turned on. Every now and then, moving around the kitchen not to turn his feet into a state of hypothermia, Jeongin glimpses at his friend studying.
Jeongin can’t really help feeling the usual heart pang whenever he’s around Hyunjin; it’s a mixture of unsolved tensions, unrequited affection and sorrow. In his empty house, Hyunjin must be lonely. And in his irrelevance, Jeongin hopes a smoking-hot chocolate is a valid temporary solution.
“Everything’s alright at home? Your mum hasn’t called me for ages.” he asks, while he plops down in front of Hyunjin and in his hands are two burning white mugs.
“As usual” the elder one unfolds his lips in a smile, “I suppose she’s busy with work and other projects for her students, I don’t talk to her often as well.”
“I see” he taps his fingers against the mug, but immediately bursts into a shrill laugh at the sight of Hyunjin dirtying his sweater with the chocolate, “The chocolate distracted you from calculating, uh?”
Hyunjin laughs as well, looking pathetically at his own disaster, “It’s that you love me and trust me too much with delicate stuff.”
Jeongin leaves the cup in a free space on the table. He’s concerned; how could Hyunjin possibly know? Since that happened, he’s been even more careful than before not to let his feelings stupidly slip out. His gaze darts away from Hyunjin’s, suddenly looking for something far more interesting than this statement.
“What’s the matter? You don’t love me?” he asks, still laughing slightly.
“No, of course I love you, it’s just that- Not that-”
“That’d be the bare minimum as my best friend.”
“Yeah” Jeongin agrees, relieved even if somewhat disappointed ― cheeks blushing unexpectedly, “It really is. I’ll keep on preparing you hot chocolates to dirt yourself with, you idiot.”
And then Hyunjin does something Jeongin doesn’t quite process forthwith: he holds both his hands, caressing with the hand any bone he can touch and the rings Jeongin never puts off. This time, he glances at him and Hyunjin’s gaze is somber, profound ― Jeongin mirrors himself into them.
It’s somewhat frightening.
“Thank you for being here for me. I do mean it.”
Jeongin, right at that moment, would have told Hyunjin everything he had learnt so well to keep inside his mind. Every tiny bit of it. Loving someone must be like that: something that has to slip out, sooner or later, as natural as it is. And Jeongin would love to tell Hyunjin, as in a fairytale, that if only he asked he would be ready to bring him the moon, crater after crater.
Conversely, in a cold January afternoon, Jeongin finds himself sitting on the couch; Felix repeating dates and names of historical characters and the other one, all covered in a blanket, watching an old sit-com being displayed on tv. His mind, however, is fixed solely on the mere, miserable epiphany that the love he and Hyunjin could ever give to each other is no more than that: a gentle, temporary solution.
Not even close to enough.
III.
‘Cause all the music you loved at sixteen you’ll grow out of
20th March, 2021
“Shall we put on some music?”
By now, the night has covered the city with its dark mantle. A cold breeze swarms the messy studio apartment; a bottle of red wine placed, forgotten and intimidating, on the cotton green sofa. The dishes that still need to be washed and the smell of alcohol filling Jeongin’s nose.
“What do you think about Prey ?” Hyunjin is sitting cross-legged on the bed, his face backlit. He’s wearing a pair of comfortable shorts and a semi-opened flowery shirt; he looks like a different person compared to just a few hours before, fancy in his birthday clothes.
The other guests left long before.
They filled up the house celebrating and drinking the whole day, but at the end Jeongin preferred to remain a bit longer to help his friend clean up. It’s almost a new day, already. Hyunjin’s twenty-first birthday was as good as it always is, always playing card games and sharing two pepperoni pizzas.
“ Prey ? What are you? Sixteen again?” Jeongin stutters as he throws in the bin some scrap paper.
Jeongin has known Hyunjin for forever. When they would attend school, their names couldn’t stand alone: it was simply Jeongin and Hyunjin, as though they were one. They speeded down the streets of their town with their bicycles, took all the wrong trains on their first holiday without their families and found each other a few blocks away when they went out for college. Their friendship never faded, and it looks like nothing could ever make it fall apart.
Hyunjin would put plasters on Jeongin’s bleeding heart from all his wrong loves, and Jeongin would hug Hyunjin tighter when loneliness was a cruel place to live.
At the age of sixteen, they went in with listening to music laying in the garden. They would spend most of their summer days with their back on the grass, almost falling asleep with a song playing in the background. If he squinted his eyes, Jeongin would probably be able to picture those fragments of time even now. Everything seemed possible. Nothing looked hurtful at all.
Hyunjin shrugs, “I quite miss when we would listen to it.”
Jeongin doesn’t say anything; his friend is scrolling through his phone, whereas he tries to elaborate a decent answer. “I miss it, too.” it’s all that comes out from his mouth.
“Come here” Hyunjin invites him on the bed, patting on the duvet.
So Jeongin sits next to him, knee against knee. The certainty of always being able to be this close to someone feels comfortable, is safe. Yet, for some reason, that night is electrifying; Jeongin shivers at the touch of their skin.
Only a few seconds later Prey starts playing.
As they would do in the garden, they lay down on the mattress telling one another anecdotes from those years. They laugh at their younger selves and Hyunjin's eyes just shine so bright under the moonlight. Jeongin wishes life could be stuck at that moment for the rest of time, with Hyunjin smiling at their past under a starry sky that tastes like future.
“Hey, Hyunjin” he calls the other one, now facing each other, “Promise you won’t make fun of me.”
“Why should I?” the latter frowns, somehow curious about where this is going.
“It’s quite embarrassing. Close your eyes.” immediately, Hyunjin follows his instructions, “Okay. I was thinking that… You’re twenty-one now. And, Gosh, we’ve known since we were babies so you should know that if you keep your heart open for me, I’m keeping mine open as well.”
“A lyrics reference? For real?” he giggles. Jeongin adores when he smiles a little too much.
“You promised you wouldn’t make fun of me. I thought it fitted the moment.” Jeongin says, before rolling his eyes.
Hyunjin opens his eyes. They stare at each other. Whatever that means. It’s been long enough that they could pretend they didn’t understand the intrinsic weight of their own words.
Jeongin fell for Hyunjin at the age of eighteen. But even before, looking back, signs had always been there ― Hyunjin would put plasters on Jeongin’s bleeding heart from all his wrong loves, and Jeongin would hug Hyunjin tighter when loneliness was a cruel place to live.
They adjust themselves better on the bed. For a moment, the only hearable sound is the sheets moving.
Hyunjin smiles once more, touching slightly and delicately the earrings Jeongin is wearing, “I’ve always loved these earrings on you. They make your eyes stand out.”
“It was your mum’s gift for my fifteenth birthday. You know, when I believed they would make me one of the cool kids.”
“And when you had your first biggest crush on someone.” Hyunjin points out, jokingly.
“I hoped so much she would come to my birthday party! I was planning on kissing her that evening, but she never showed up.”
“Oh, how did the plan go?”
“For sure I didn’t think about bringing her to bed with me to listen to Prey by The Neighbourhood.”
Hyunjin doesn’t laugh.
There had been many silences like that one before, between them. Jeongin likes to think he could go on hiding his feelings in the word friendship forever. But there isn’t enough space. And something would always miss.
Jeongin would always miss something; he might shiver in happiness at the way Hyunjin cares about him, though knowing it is the blind alley. He can’t possibly ask for more.
However, maybe it is the alcohol softening his thoughts or it is the song they loved so much when they were kids still ringing in his ears, at that moment Jeongin wants to try to ask for a little more. Usually they use silences to dissolve all the tension, but this time is just different.
Hyunjin is the same Hyunjin Jeongin has grown older with. He’s the guy who would shower him with compliments and mock him a second later, he’s the one that everyone wanted ― Hyunjin is the one who knows better how to put plasters on his heart and how, how Jeongin was supposed not to fall for him afterwards?
It’s a sad love song.
But Hyunjin is still caressing his ears and Jeongin thinks it must be luck. It must be the right time, even though friendships growing into romance fall apart. Even though friendships growing into romance need someone to be reckless, who would stick his neck out to try and Jeongin never considered himself such.
But Hyunjin is still caressing his ears and Jeongin thinks it must be luck. It must be the signal he was waiting for. Therefore, he slowly leans in and touches the other’s one cheek. He closes his eyes and leans in again, slowly again, to give Hyunjin the time to push back if he wanted to.
Too soon, their lips meet each other. And it’s new. And Jeongin has never imagined Hyunjin’s lips could be this warm, this sweet.
Right when the kiss seems to be ending, Hyunjin kisses him back. Moreover Jeongin can’t help his goosebumps rising when Hyunjn’s hands are under his t-shirt, craving his skin. Subconsciously, all Jeongin has ever wished was to be desired. Craved for. To put plasters on Hyunjin’s heart, too. To probe new terrain and feel the thrill of the unknown. To let the night cover their body and the alcohol inhibit their thoughts, just enough to err.
Hence, he slides his legs around Hyunjin’s waist and goes even deeper with the kiss, feeling joy slipping out of his hands ― for the very first time, he doesn’t care if Hyunjin saw it.
Jeongin only ever asked to be loved until the sunrise.
He will think about the consequences tomorrow.
IV.
I’d ride and I’d ride on the carousel / ‘round and ‘round forever if I could / but it’s time to cool it down / whatever that means
08th February, 2022
At a young age, Hyunjin learns that love is that thing between his mum and her students.
He would see her talking about them during meals and on the car rides between the football field and their home, when Hyunjin was a kid and a muddy ball was his favourite thing in life. She would turn off even familiar commitments to attend an ex-student’s graduation because, in her words, it was just like family. Hyunjin just wished it hadn’t been right before their vacation.
If the unbiased adoration her mum has for her students has brought something positive into his life, it must be Jeongin. Hyunjin first met him at eleven, when he was having lunch with a cold soup and Jeongin was taking extra classes of French. Little did he know, Hyunjin still loves to remind him, that it was going to be his major in college. But that’s another story.
In a few years, they couldn’t manage without each other and Hyunjin was the happiest knowing that his mum was proud of him. That she loved Jeongin as much as he did. It was at that time that Hyunjin discovered Maths. Because, well, Jeongin could soothe his scratches but he wasn’t able to heal them completely.
Hyunjin’s parents got divorced before he could figure out what love meant, and his dad moved out leaving to his only child, as a gift, a calculator. He never understood why it was so dear to his father. Truthfully, at some point he forgot he had even been given it until high school.
During high school, his house was empty. His mum ended up getting together with one of her ex-students, who was fifteen years younger, brought her to fancy restaurants and called Hyunjin his step-son. Between her work and her new boyfriend-commitment, there wasn’t any space left for her son.
Most of the time, the house was ghostly quiet. Hyunjin would spend entire afternoons looking through old stuff from his childhood and, somehow, managed to find that last gift from his father and decided that Maths would be his future.
Hyunjin started to fill up his days only with numbers ― he loved the fact that they were rational, and regular, and safe, and that from them he could receive validation. They were stable and wouldn’t wake up someday to replace him for someone else. In this mess, Jeongin never swayed away; he would bring chocolate and talk endlessly about whatever thing crossed his mind. Jeongin meant a moment of freedom, Hyunjin realizes looking back at those years.
Then, at barely twenty-one, Hyunjin screwed up. And he tries to come to terms with the fact that he can’t erase what he did. What he hates the most, however, is that he can’t erase the turmoil in his stomach every time his eyes lay on Jeongin either.
Just like right now, with the snow falling copiously down and Jeongin sitting in front of him by the plastic table of a fast food on the highway.
“That’s a curious way to celebrate turning twenty-one, isn’t it?” Jeongin chimes in, he’s looking outside at the car running by, “I like the snow.”
“The same snow that stopped my car.” Hyunjin points out, taking another bite of his sandwich, “I wanted to take you to that place with the panoramic view.”
“It’s okay. We can go another day, the mountains don’t move.”
“But it was your birthday!”
“Technically, it still is. Plus, I love adventures and Burgers Fairy. See? My burger even has a surprise!” Jeongin brightens up, showing him a plastic miniature of a dog, “Hyunjin, for real, it’s not your fault.” he repeats, while he slides a hand towards the young man.
Jeongin understands him. That’s the thing about him, Hyunjin thinks. Jeongin reads his mind and looks like the most stable person he has ever come across in almost twenty-two years.
Hyunjin giggles, as soon as their fingertips are laced together, “This makes us look like a couple.”
“Yeah. It kind of does.” the younger one reflects, inspectionating both of their hands. But then, his face darkens and his mind dims in sorrow — Hyunjin notices he read Jeongin well, too, “I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable.”
“No, it doesn’t.” he whispers slowly, hands together and a worried frown.
It doesn’t. That's the truth he's been trying to hide for so long.
“What’s up?” Jeongin asks, faking a calm tone of voice.
“It’s that you love me.” Hyunjin states. Sure like never before. Suddenly, he feels again like that kid who learnt that love just didn’t include him.
It's thrilling. “You love me, Jeongin.”
“Again? We’ve already discussed it.”
“No, I’m serious. You- You kissed me that night. And the morning after you settled for forgetting everything. And you never complained. You settled for it and- It must have hurt. And… I can’t forget about it. Like, “ he takes a deep breath, “when we were in the car and I had to come back because the street was closed due to the snow and you looked at me. And there was me, in your irides. I just know it, because you could feel that I was sorry. Even before we reached this place. You- You were looking for something that night, didn’t you?”
Hyunjin doesn’t know how all of that came out, all at once and out of the blue. It just did. Maybe love is that: sudden pouring rain. Everything else, it was a lie.
“I- I don’t know. We had drunk and I thought that… You could love me someday, but then you asked me to forget everything and I did.” Jeongin’s eyes are back, this time much more watery, on the window, “It’s so hard, knowing you’ll never love me as I do. That we can’t give each other what we want. Love must be that as well, right?” he forces a smile. Hyunjin feels his body burn.
“No, of course not.” he stutters, taken aback.
“Hyunjin, you don’t have to stick with me. You realized I have feelings, that’s okay. We can go on as friends.”
“What if I want to stick with you?”
The air is tense. It reminds him of the night when everything changed between them. Now, they can’t take their eyes off each other. Jeongin sighs, intertwining their hands again, “I’ll wake up every morning waiting for you, then.”