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“Tell me a secret.”
“I’m scared of being alone. Any time I can, I find someone to keep me company. I always need a distraction from myself, and only other people distract me enough. I get too caught up in other people’s problems to avoid dealing with my own head. It’s just easier to feel someone else’s emotions than my own. Your turn.”
“Every day I wake up and think if this is gonna be the day everyone discovers I’m not who they think I am. That my parents notice I’m not as kind and smart as they think, that my friends see how selfish and unreliable I am. That everyone finally leaves me, because I’m someone else from who they know.”
***
Wai didn’t know how it started. Somewhere between them growing more mature, working on the bus stop together, being on the same rugby team and their friends dating, they found themselves spending more time together, first with their other friends, then alone, sitting on the floor of Korn’s room, drinking cheap wine and smoking cheap cigarettes, talking about everything no one else knew about.
It was different with Korn. He had never experienced something like this before.
When they were in public, they were just regular friends - joking around, teasing each other, eating lunch together and walking each other to class. But when they were alone, it was as if their souls needed to connect, and the words were flowing from their throats without any inhibitions, as if being known by others wasn’t as terrifying anymore, as if the other knowing them so intimately was just like an extension of self-awareness.
There was no one who knew Wai the way Korn did, on a level much deeper than he would be willing to admit. Besides their long conversations, there was an underlying understanding between them. Korn knew Wai didn’t need reassurance. He knew Wai didn’t want him to come up with reasons why his thoughts were unreasonable. He knew Wai was aware of that and only needed to voice them sometimes.
And Wai knew that Korn sometimes got too caught up in his own thoughts and needed to be distracted before sending himself into a downward spiral of panic. He knew Korn only said half of what he wanted to, and needed Wai’s push to say more. He knew Korn didn’t want coddling, but a silence he could throw all his thoughts into.
“What do you usually dream about?”
Korn’s husky voice reached Wai’s mind, dispersing all other thoughts. He looked at Korn, and as always he felt as if there was something new about him. He had the same innate fatigue hidden behind sparkly eyes, the same eyebrows that furrowed as an expression of almost all emotions, the same lips that dried out too quickly and were always chapped, but every time Wai saw him in the cold light of the only lamp in the room, warmed only by the candles they sometimes lit, it was as if he looked at a stranger.
“Everyday things,” he replied finally, matching his tone to Korn’s. “Making a sandwich. Drinking coffee. Walking to uni. But it’s always so vibrant it feels unreal. People never have faces. The background is blurred, like I don’t have my contacts on. And sometimes there’s something that makes me wake up in cold sweat. Someone gets killed. I kill someone. I’m being chased. I’m being held captive. I’m buried alive and can’t climb out. And they’re not exactly nightmares, but I can never fall asleep right after.”
He took the bottle with wine out of Korn’s palm, their fingers brushing against each other. Korn’s hand was cold, as always.
A few sips later, his head spun around a little before settling down again. He wasn’t drunk, but as they were about to finish the bottle, he was finally starting to feel the presence of the wine inside him. There was something in the way the alcohol made him feel that was similar to Korn’s company in those late night hours, but not quite the same. Korn being next to him shook his head, but gently, as if a steady boat in a calm sea, as if a mother trying to calm down her child. The wine was harsh, its effect sudden, and the consequences never pleasant.
Wai lit a cigarette, and took a single puff before handing it to Korn. It was only the second, but the room was full of smoke, making it troublesome for his eyes to focus, so he just gave up on it and closed them, breathing in deeply.
“What’s your biggest regret?” he asked only when the silence started getting irksome.
Korn didn’t take long, as if he’s already known the answer and the right words for a long time. Maybe he has, but Wai wasn’t going to ask.
“In senior year of high school, I got to know this girl. We met at a train station, we were going the same way home every week. We started talking, then meeting on other occasions. I fell in love with her. I wasn’t going to say anything, but she confessed first. I was so damn happy…” He paused, and from what Wai could hear, took a few puffs of the cigarette. “But then it got hard. She had depression, I was an idiot and had no idea how to help her. In the end, I broke up with her. A few days later, she killed herself.” Another pause, this time to take a sip from the bottle. A tap on his knee made Wai open his eyes to Korn handing him the cigarette. “What I’m getting at is, I wish I never talked to her.” Silence again, a heavy one, almost as the breath he took in. “Maybe she would have killed herself still, maybe she wouldn’t, but at least I wouldn’t have to live with this feeling that it’s all my fault. It feels awful just to say it.”
It may have felt awful, but it was the truth. Wai knew that. There were no lies between them, there was no place to put them. Their sincerity already filled all the spaces, and spilled out in a tidal wave, taking them both with it.
Wai put out the cigarette before speaking. “I don’t usually say anything, but it’s not your fault, no matter what.” He sighed and the breath he took somehow didn’t taste of the smoke, but something unexplainable in words, something translated directly into his heart. “Coming from a person who tried to commit, it’s not someone else’s fault. It’s me who takes the razor to my wrist, it’s me who swallows the pills, it’s me putting the noose on my neck. I would love to find the blame in others, but it’s me who kills someone at the end of the day.”
Korn finished the bottle in one sip and put it away. Wai could feel his careful gaze on him, studying something between his expression and his posture.
“You tried to kill yourself?” Korn asked finally, probably unsatisfied with what he could find on the surface. He needed to get deeper, somewhere under Wai’s skin and into his bones, to understand it.
“That’s your question?”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
With no bottle of wine nor lit cigarette between them, Wai finally decided to lay his head in Korn’s lap. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, Korn’s thighs were firm, but the feeling under his head was nothing compared to the one inside. His heart was content with the closeness, and that was enough for him to never want to get up.
“I was fifteen and stupid,” Wai finally started. “School was hard, friends were assholes, parents never seemed to care. One day I’ve had enough, I guess. I didn’t take enough pills, my dad saved me. I will never forgive myself for putting him in that position, you know?” In the growing silence, Korn put his hand in Wai’s hair, not to stroke it, but to steady his thinking and show he was still listening. Wai smiled a little. “I’m all good now, but the thought to end it all stayed somewhere in the back of my mind. It’s never loud, but sometimes, when it gets worse, I can still hear it. I would never try again, but the idea will never leave me alone.”
Wai looked into Korn’s eyes, scared to find pity there. He didn’t. Between the darkness of the room and the slowly disappearing smoke, the only thing he could see was understanding. It was never pity.
“If you could tell her anything, what would you say?” Wai asked, maybe trying to bring more comfort to Korn, maybe to learn more about him.
“I’ve thought about it before,” he admitted immediately. “And I could never come up with anything worth saying. Maybe I’m sorry, that I couldn’t help you. Maybe I’ll always be grateful for the time we had together. I wouldn’t tell her the truth, anyway.” There was a small smile on Korn’s face, but a pensive one, somewhere on the verge of sourness. “What’s the thing that made you the most happy that you stayed alive past fifteen?”
You , Wai wanted to say. But it would be too straightforward, too raw and unfiltered. It didn’t fit into the sharp atmosphere of long confessions under a cold light.
“A lot of things,” he said instead. “Going to uni.” Meeting you, was the underlying message. “Founding true friends, finally.” Founding you. “Being able to talk about it with a smile on my face.” To you.
Wai knew that Korn was aware of what he was trying to convey, but he didn’t have the courage to say it all out loud. But it was enough for him, the awareness of being understood in between words and intentions.
“Tell me a secret.”
Tell me a secret was a secret in itself. It meant that they didn’t have any questions on their minds anymore, it meant tell me something you didn’t before , but something they would never know how to ask about.
“Sometimes I feel like a supporting character. Like I’m here just to be someone’s friend or enemy, to show up once in a while just to say something suitable, and disappear again. Just to break someone’s heart, and be their tragic backstory that they will reveal to a future partner in a deep talk at three in the morning, and never to be on their mind again.” Korn looked away from Wai’s steady gaze. “Only with you do I feel like a main character.”
Wai sensed his heartbeat speed up. It was exciting, to know that someone’s words could make him feel like that. His head was light, but not from the alcohol or nicotine. His innate desire to be needed spoke up, making itself relevant, and made his lips form a smile of content.
“Tell me a secret.”
“I want to eat lunch with you tomorrow.”
Wai saw Korn smile despite him still not looking back down. There was something different about this type of grin, it was the one only Wai could see, and only on one of those evenings. There was meaning behind it, but Wai still couldn’t get it.
“Then, I’ll wait for you after your classes, and we’ll go somewhere together, how does that sound?”
“Delightful.”
***
Wai wasn’t lying when he said there weren’t any lies between him and Korn, but it wasn’t also the whole truth. There was one secret he wouldn’t tell.
It was actually a few secrets stacked on top of each other. It was the way his heart beat harder when he was with Korn, not in the physical way, but metaphorical, making him dizzy with the untraceable feeling. It was the emptiness he felt when Korn wasn’t around, or when he was, but wasn’t paying attention to him, the type he needed to fill immediately, but there was nothing he could put inside him that would fit the shape left by Korn. It was a warmth spreading throughout his body whenever Korn touched him, purposefully or not, despite his cold hands on Wai’s skin. It was finally the way Wai couldn’t think of a happy future without Korn, and the shuddering dread of having to live without him someday.
It was how Korn made Wai fall and want to get stuck. That was the one secret he could never reveal.
***
“Tell me a secret.”
“I really liked the sushi today. Your turn.”
“I liked the one last time better. Your turn.”
“Pran asked me today what’s going on between us, and I had no idea what to tell him.”
“Tell him we’re friends.”
“I did. But somehow it feels incomplete.”
Wai saw in Korn’s eyes the invitation to say more, but his mind didn’t tell him the appropriate words. He instead put another cigarette in his mouth and lit it without haste. It was almost finished before Korn reached out and snatched it from Wai, putting it between his own lips.
They weren’t drinking this time, but Wai’s head was still dizzy, as if he was already pissed.
“I know that we’re friends, technically. But if I had to call us that, I would feel that there’s something missing from the meaning,” he said finally. “You feel like more than a friend to me, so much more that I don’t even know if there’s a word to explain that.”
“Soulmate,” Korn half-suggested, half-declared.
“Yeah. But it feels too cheesy to say to anyone else.”
It was still early, the softly warm afternoon sunshine lighting up Korn’s face from behind the almost see-through linen curtains. The delicate shadows cast by his own features made him look more like a painting than human. But maybe to Wai, he always seemed like that, similarly unavailable yet unable not to be loved. There were many things about Korn that were too otherworldly to make him feel human. And even as Wai learned so many of his failures and vices, he still was more of a character in a piece of art than another person. He was perfect with all of his imperfections, and if Wai could write, he would be the muse behind his every poem.
Wai suddenly thought of a question. “Tell me about your first love.”
Korn’s smile shook alongside his head. He put out the cigarette and threw the butt into an old jar that they used as an ashtray. Its lid got lost a long time ago already, and there were many scratches on the glass from the continuous use. Wai liked sliding his finger along them sometimes, when he was nervous or deeply in thought.
“It was messy. As usual, actually, love and I aren’t really on good terms.” Korn glanced to the side to search for reaction on Wai’s face. Only when Wai smiled back, a bit ironically, Korn turned back, satisfied. “She was my classmate. She was genuinely awesome, she played football with us, she liked video games, she was funny and so, so pretty. I think all of us had at least a bit of a crush on her. But she always liked me the best. She even told me, that I was the most mature of the boys in our grade, and that she could really talk only to me about anything more than school. It was so easy to fall in love with her.” Korn paused, as if collecting thoughts. He leaned his head back, and stared at the ceiling in silence. “Until she started dating someone else. I was so jealous, I couldn’t understand how she liked me so much, but dated someone other. And I lost her because of that. I was too annoying with my envy, and she’s finally had enough. Now I get her, but back then I was so angry…”
A bitter smile painted Korn’s face, and despite everything, Wai thought he looked beautiful.
“Your turn,” Korn said, casting his gaze at Wai, but with his head still leaned back. “What about your first love?”
Wai shrugged, almost automatically. “Nothing interesting. I fell for a friend, but he was straight and in a relationship for most of the time I liked him. Never had the guts to even confess. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I should have, I lost him over the time anyway. At least I wouldn’t have been left with this feeling alone.”
“Maybe he liked you back, and you never knew,” Korn wondered, but there was something in the shape of a certainty in his voice that almost took Wai’s breath away.
“I don’t think so,” Wai replied. His throat was tight suddenly, but he had no idea why.
“You’ll never know for sure. You would have if you had confessed.”
“What about the time you liked a boy for the first time?” Wai said quickly, changing the topic to something a bit farther from him, not sure that if the other path of the conversation continued, he would have still been able to answer. Something was building in his chest, and it tasted like rust.
“Nothing interesting, either.” Korn finally sat up, stretching his neck. He then turned his back to Wai, and leaned back again, his head ending in Wai’s lap this time. “I didn’t really have any trouble accepting that I liked boys too, you know? It felt as if I always knew somewhere inside. He was a friend too, not a really close one, but still I would call him a friend. I never managed to confess, because he moved away during the summer I spent in Korea. I haven’t seen him again.”
Wai’s fingers shook as he moved them closer to Korn’s head, but as soon as he touched him, everything inside calmed down. He traced irregular shapes on the top of Korn’s head, before pulling the hair tie off it, and letting Korn’s hair flow down his legs. It’s got long again, he noticed, but stayed silent, not wanting to interrupt what seemed like Korn thinking deeply about something. His eyes were closed, eyebrows tight-knit, lips puckered.
Wai’s fingertips almost trembled with the need to touch Korn’s mouth, but he settled for drawing shapes along his temples, then cheekbones, and jawline, before returning to his hair.
Korn didn’t open his eyes as he spoke. “What about your first time? How was it?”
Wai was glad Korn wasn’t looking, as his cheeks felt burning hot. “It wasn’t,” he replied shortly, unintentionally making Korn take a glance at him, before closing his eyes again. “I’ve never been into the idea of sex,” Wai said truthfully, hoping his tone carried the intention. His face scrunched. “Not even in my mind does it sound appealing. I don’t need it and I don’t want it.”
He somehow felt Korn getting tense, even if the parts of their bodies that were touching didn’t move. But in the soft light of the sunset and behind a wall of smoke, it didn’t feel anxious or panicked.
“I never thought it was possible,” he whispered finally.
“Tell me about it,” Wai said at once, his eyebrows furrowing, but his fingers relentlessly drawing circles in Korn’s hair, this time maybe more for comfort than anything else. “Count it as my question.”
Korn’s eyes opened to stare at Wai. “I’ve always thought of sex as something that must be done in a relationship, because that’s just how relationships are. I never realised there’s a possibility of simply not wanting it.”
“Idiot.” Wai smiled softly, letting his hand drop to his lap. There was no animosity in his voice, only admiration for the bravery it must have taken to admit what Korn just had said.
“Yeah. I am an idiot.” Korn smiled only a little, but his eyes sparkled even more than usually. “I guess that’s why I never seemed to enjoy it, no matter how hard I tried to.”
Korn’s whole face lit up at the sudden realisation, and it took everything in Wai not to simply kiss him at that moment. Instead, he reached out his hand and grabbed Korn’s, interlacing their fingers. It, too, was good enough for Wai. It was enough to be able to hold Korn’s hand, and have his head in his lap, and hear him talk about all the things he never told to anyone else.
***
Sometime later, in the quiet darkness of the night, Wai’s mind has gone back to Korn’s words from much earlier.
Maybe he liked you back, and you never knew. You’ll never know for sure. You would have if you confessed.
He knew damn well why these words made him shudder. Maybe he was delusional for even thinking so, but some part of his brain couldn’t stop suggesting that perhaps it meant something more than it would seem on the surface.
It was right then and there, well after midnight, in Korn’s bed, with him sleeping soundly right next to Wai, that Wai thought for the first time that his biggest secret shouldn’t stay as a secret forever.
***
“Tell me a secret.”
“I feel like there’s no real way to cure pain. You can only add more pain, because everything new distracts from the old. You can either distract yourself or forget about it, but it’s always there. It’s not leaving. You?”
“I’ve always been so scared of growing up to be just like my mother that I didn’t notice when I became my father. I never wanted to be aggressive, so I became passive. I hated when she started arguments for no reason, so I started avoiding any confrontations. Her overconfidence scared me, so I became shy and silent. And I never noticed it was everything that my father is. I listen to the same music as him now, and I yell all the songs I remember him singing in the car when I was younger.”
Wai didn’t look at Korn while talking, something holding him back as if there were chains at his neck, holding it one place. But Korn knew, or felt, that. His hands reached to Wai’s nape, pulling him to rest his head on Korn’s shoulder, then wrapping his arm around his shoulder to bring him even closer. And just like that, the heaviness in Wai’s heart was gone.
“Tell me a secret,” Wai whispered again.
The whole room was dark. The light bulb in the only lamp in the room burned out some time before, and none of them bothered to find another light source. Their eyes already got used to the pervasive shadow, not interrupted even by the glow of the city outside the window. Their hands rested right next to each other, an open bottle of wine right in front of them, but neither was drinking.
There was something different in the atmosphere that night. The darkness was heavy on their chests, as if it was hiding all their unsaid secrets, the ones they were most ashamed of, the ones forgotten, the ones hidden so deep that they weren’t sure if they weren’t just a fleeting dream.
Korn’s hand pulled Wai’s into its tight embrace.
“I feel like I’m always missing you, even when you’re next to me. And when you leave, it’s like you’re leaving a hole in my heart in the shape of you. I just know that I need you with me all the time, and time without you feels like a dream. And only when I have you like this do I feel awake.”
Wai’s breath halted. His chest was so tight, he felt faint. It was as if the whole room was spinning, but everything stayed in place, unmoving. The only thing that was shifting was Korn’s thumb, drawing circles on top of Wai’s palm, keeping him in the reality.
“Tell me a secret,” Korn muttered.
Wai knew what he was going to say, and that knowledge made his heart beat faster. He wasn’t sure if from excitement or anxiety.
“I’m in love with you.”
A short huff escaped Korn’s mouth, something resembling a laugh, or maybe an expression of relief. “That’s not a secret.”
“Since when?” was all Wai could say before his throat tightened as if there was something stuck in it. There was a wave of heat spreading right from his heart to every nook of his body, making his every cell tremble as if he was on fire.
“I don’t know,” Korn replied. “Just somewhere along the way.” He paused, and only after a moment Wai noticed it was to place a small kiss on the top of his head. “Now, the secret.”
Wai was dizzy, but his mind suggested word after word, even if he needed more time to make sense of them than to say them out loud. “Then, I’m not sure if I even want to be in a relationship with you. There’s something about this thing we have, that I’m scared to lose it, if we ever broke up.”
“Friends stop being friends, too.”
“But it’s always different with ex-friends than ex-lovers,” Wai replied shortly, finally regaining a bit of his consciousness.
He wasn’t sure what was happening. His head was spinning, but it was also clear like a pond in the middle of a summer day. His chest was tight, but he also felt like he could breathe freely for the first time in years, maybe his whole life. He was hot all over, but every part of his body felt like trembling.
He told his biggest secret out loud. And still wasn’t sure what was the answer.
“Tell me a secret,” he whispered finally, not able to speak louder. A part of him was hoping for a reply in the shape of something similarly bittersweet.
“I’m not sure if I want to be in a relationship with you, too,” Korn answered, no consideration beforehand needed, as if he knew exactly what he was about to say. “Most of the time I feel either unlovable, or like I ruin everything I love. I don’t want to subject you to it. I don’t want to destroy you, or whatever we already have. I’m scared, Wai. I don’t know if we’re better off as friends, or as lovers, and I’m terrified to choose the wrong option.”
Wai squeezed Korn’s hand tighter, but his head lifted from Korn’s shoulder to search for his gaze. And when their eyes met, it wasn’t like explosions. It was like an ocean wave, pulling them under with its impact, drowning both of them slowly but surely. Yet, Wai didn’t feel like suffocating. He finally could breathe, and in Korn’s eyes he could see the same.
His stare didn’t leave Korn as he spoke. “I would pull every star from the sky, if only you said you wanted them, and I would name each and every one of the stars after these sparks in your eyes,” he whispered, breaking into a small smile. He wasn’t sure if Korn could even see it, but he surely could hear it in his voice. “And I hope you wouldn’t get mad when we ran out of stars.” He waited a moment for Korn’s reaction, but when it didn’t come, he just kept on talking. “All I want is to be next to you. I don’t need anything else.”
Only then did Wai notice why he couldn’t see Korn’s reaction. The tears that welled up in Korn’s eyes were unnoticeable as long as they stayed inside, but soon they started flowing down his cheeks, leaving long traces along the soft curves of his face. Korn’s lips formed a little smile, and suddenly the dark room seemed so much lighter to Wai.
“Then, let’s stay like this?” Korn asked, his voice breaking into a whisper in the middle of the sentence.
Wai nodded immediately. He knew what like this meant.
It meant everything they had up until that point, but also so much more. It meant the friendship that bound them, the late night conversations, the wine and the cigarettes, but also their interlocked fingers, their softened stares, their love for each other that didn’t need saying.
It meant that they weren’t friends, but not lovers either. If Wai had to name what like this meant, he would only say one word: soulmates.
And so they stayed like that, somewhere between everything they were not, but as if they were everything at once.