Archive of Our Own

Jongseong tries to find beauty or hope in this. He thinks of that saying: when one door closes, many others open. Something like that; something meant to inspire when the world is bleak, when the first thing you think of as everything comes crashing down is what now?

He’s married to his routines. His morning walk is his favorite. He always showers in the mornings because he hates the groggy feeling of waking up and he needs a cold shower to perk. He heads to the bakery a block away from his apartment to pick up his breakfast (a loaf of banana bread or a blueberry muffin pairs amazingly with coffee, in his opinion,) and he makes sure to avoid the baker’s son while he’s there (although he’s off at college, but still, still, there’s that nagging anxiety that one day he’ll swing the door open and he’ll be standing at the counter with his perfect hair and his smug smile.) After the bakery, he takes the long route down a winding road that’s just a little less populated than Main Street, cramped full of little but beautiful shops (a family-owned grocery store with flowers out front, a café with the prettiest interior decor that he’d frequent more often if their drinks weren’t overpriced and disgustingly sweet, a perfumist that he’s honestly a little intimidated by.)

And then, he’d arrive at work: a timid building strewn together by plywood, tired adhesives, five maintenance visits, and a dream. It’s been mistaken for several things before—an oversized chicken coop, an abandoned low-rate factory of some sort, some office for a businessman who doesn’t get much work—but it’s none of those things. For him, it’s his home.

Well, was.

Because when he gets there, quietly announcing his arrival as he pushes open the door at 6:59am and heading toward his desk, his boss stops him—rather theatrically in fact, by grabbing his arm. Jongseong thinks, briefly, that it’s a joke of some sort. This thought persisted as he’s sat down, as his boss takes off his glasses (he never takes off his glasses) and lays them down on his desk, puts away his book in one of his drawers, folds his hands on top of each other, and grimaces. He isn’t angry; Jongseong has seen him angry before. He’s seen him with his face flushed red and flinging stacks of papers onto the floor and barraging his keyboard to the point where it needed replacing. He isn’t angry, Jongseong thinks, as his suit crinkles and he informs him that he’s no longer due to work here anymore. He isn’t angry. He frowns; the tone of his voice is like brick. Nothing simmers, nothing moves. He isn’t angry, not at all.

He’s still for a moment. Again, he thinks it’s a joke, but he doesn’t dare smile. Neither of them move. Neither of them move until the tension grips at his throat, and Jongseong does first: slinks out of his chair, leaves the building even though he needs to clean out his desk space and probably do some last-minute wrapping up for the day’s segment or file some paperwork. He can’t just walk out, it’s unprofessional and it’s irresponsible. But it’s a little hard for him now, the reality of it turning his coffee unreasonably bitter to taste and his muffin mushy and grainy. He does walk out—pulls open the door calmly and walks down the street to a nearby bench—and his boss does not call out for him. He’ll return in a bit, he thinks.

He does. His boss is a few minutes into the segment as he walks in. He spots him in the recording booth, running the show on his own as he usually does. He doesn’t interrupt him—he doesn’t kick over the desks and send the rolling chairs colliding with the walls to bring the entire rickety building down even though there’s a violent side of him that wants to—he’s not an ass. He tenses his jaw as they make eye contact; his boss seems sorry, his rapid and lively speech betraying the way his eyes soften. He tries to understand why. He reaches his desk, cleans everything out—crumpled up sticky notes of segment ideas in blue ink, forgotten chocolate wrappers and empty honey packets, useless trinkets he’s picked up on his way to work—shoves them into a garbage bag. The tabletop needs dusting, the chair needs its wheels replaced or fixed. It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care.

He doesn’t say goodbye to his boss when he leaves, doesn’t even wave.

The walk back home is different. It always is. The afternoon walk home pales in comparison to his morning walk to work—it’s too busy and too loud, the stores and restaurants are often too full for him to see in through the ceiling-to-floor glass windows and admire the interior design and ogle the pretty workers, he has to cross the street when he sees a gaggle of feisty schoolchildren because they scare him—but this isn’t really an afternoon walk home. It’s a morning walk home because he’d been fired.

He says it in his head for the first time and it finally feels real; the word spells itself out as floating block letters but it looks more like an anchor tugging him deeper and deeper into an undertow.

It’s morning, just after eight. It’s a little bit livelier because people are up and getting ready for work: normal jobs in offices or restaurants or stores, not a gig as an assistant writer for a morning radio show. He wonders, as he watches people file like ants into a glitzy, silvery, stainless-windowed office building, if he’s going to be one of those people, too. If he would become a cog in a corporate machine. He’d take the grocery store over that any day. Those buildings, those people—straight-laced, secure, ground solid beneath their feet, standing like there’s a steel rod in their back instead of a spine—are his front-running theory of what doom could be like, Jongseong thinks. Daily life something metallic on the tongue; inspiration and creativity a crumpled paper ball in the trash. He doesn’t want this.

He doesn’t want to think of what he’d become; he doesn’t want to think about anything. He’ll afford himself—for a little while, at least—some breathing room. He’ll have time to think. He’ll have time to go down to the beach (he hasn’t been in months,) or to visit his parents (a little less appealing,) or to visit Riki (who insists, in their intermittent phone calls, that he has invented the world’s first flying bicycle.) Time, he thinks, will be good for him. Clearly, his performance was subpar. He was lacking in creativity, his scripts read like cardboard; he could afford himself as much overtime as he wanted and still find himself at a road that led nowhere and that’s why he got fired.

He shakes his head. Again, he does not want to think about it.

When he’s passing the grocery store, he stops. He stops because the floral arrangement out front is different from an hour ago, and he wonders why the last minute change. Usually, the florist arranges the bouquets in the mornings before they open and it remains the whole day. That isn’t the only thing that’s off though—a set of daffodils replacing the hydrangeas from before—because there was a boy now, the only customer on the patio, on his tippy-toes with his nose brushing into the petals of the daffodils. He’s pretty; he’s really, really pretty. He blinks cartoonishly, he eyes the daffodils like he has a problem with them.

He leans in close, Jongseong catches what he says, even though he whispers: “You’re being rude,” he spits. Jongseong’s caught off-guard. His curiosity grows exponentially—palpably, viscerally, blows up as a visual representation like in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, all red and pulsing and hammering through his body—because why why why is this pretty boy talking to flowers?

Jongseong, now figuring he’s on a stealth mission, steps out of the way of pedestrian traffic. He camouflages himself behind a wall of plants—cacti and vines and things that are all green without colorful flowers to attract the eye—and watches. The boy’s face is still somewhat sour—glaring at the daffodils, nose scrunched and hands clenching and unclenching—and Jongseong thinks, momentarily, that he’s going to punch them. He thinks he’s going to explode in a grand show of anger and fury and insanity and punch the daffodils til they wilt because they’re being so rude. It’s always the pretty ones, he thinks, that are the craziest.

He doesn’t do that. There’s no violence, no big explosion; and Jongseong is slightly disappointed, though he’s sure he shouldn’t have been expecting that. Instead, he looks around suspiciously. He looks paranoid. Jongseong ducks further into the greenery to make sure he isn’t caught. Then, he leans forward, grabs one of the flowers by their stems, and whispers: “I’ll be back for you.”

And he storms off, disappears into the crowd parading down the street. Jongseong doesn’t know what to make of it. He considers buying the daffodils—both to protect them from the boy that may very well be their mortal enemy, and also because they look pretty and a little shaken up from that encounter. He thinks over it twice, but walks past them. Instead, he goes inside and buys himself ingredients to make a proper dinner later that night (and he grabs a bottle of soju before he gets to checkout.)

The next day, he wakes up with a bitter taste in his mouth.

The first thing he sees as he rises—props himself up on his elbow and blocks the morning sunlight with his hand—is a half-empty bottle of soju. Oh, he thinks. Oh.

He’s a lightweight. It’s been proven over and over again every time his boss would take him out for drinks after a particularly successful show that he wrote. The night would end with somebody’s clothes being tattered or a prized personal belonging being ejected into a pool of water or, Jongseong’s most shameful act of drunken stupidity, him attempting to crowdsurf on a dance floor sparse with approximately five people. He doesn’t like the way he gets when he’s drunk, and he doesn’t like how easy it is for him to get there.

The damage doesn’t seem to be anything too worrisome, though. He’s in the confines of his own apartment, and even if he was blacked out, he likely kept his rampage inside. The fact that he doesn’t have to get up early is both a relief and a cruel reminder—a subtle forcing inward of a knife into his gut—that he’s now unemployed. He reaches out to grab the soju bottle and hold it in the light to gauge exactly how much is left. He’s unemployed and drunk himself to sleep by himself, and he’s keen to wallow for a few more days until he gets tired of wallowing; and he gets tired of wallowing quickly, but still, it’s his current mission to wallow. He’s proud in his wallowing. If he’s going to wallow, and he will, it will be a statement, it will be a beautiful wallowing.

So he wallows as he forces himself up from his sheets to return the soju to the kitchen and the random pieces of clothes around his apartment to the hamper. He finds himself in the corner—his bare feet cold against the hardwood of his living room floor—as he’s standing by the lamp, tugs the light on and off even though there’s a good amount of sunlight streaming in through the window. He plays with the cord absentmindedly. He feels the slightest bit empty, and he doesn’t like it.

He goes to reach for the remote and stops, gets distracted by a box beneath his television. Curious, he pulls it out, finds that it's chock-full of papers, segment ideas and comedy skits and entertaining twists of recent news laid out in his own recognizable chicken scratch. Much of it is nonsensical—”Ocean waves are in combat with pollution!”; “Young business-owner reveals secret to enterprising is a healthy, balanced breakfast!”; “If you’ve never seen a shark, then they don’t actually exist!”—and he realizes that these are all things that he scribbled while he was blackout drunk. He doesn’t remember any of this; he doesn’t know what business owner he’s talking about and he has seen a shark before in real life so why the fuck would he insinuate they don’t exist? He scratches his head. He’s starting to think maybe his boss was right to fire him.

Speaking of healthy balanced breakfasts, he stands, all of a sudden itching for food. He could cook himself something, but the routine of the bakery is something that he cherishes too deeply to let go too soon. He cooks for himself on off-days, but today is Tuesday, a day he’d usually have work. It’s past the normal time he’d be there, but there’s that dullness inside of him that itches for some semblance of that precious normalcy he’s established for himself; there was a certain small, intimate wonder with being a regular, with having everybody light up when you walk in because you’ve made a name for yourself as the young writer guy from down the block.

Most of all, he’s craving that banana bread.

It’s a quick change this morning. He doesn’t shower and he doesn’t make himself feel sorry about it. He slips out of sweat-sticky tee and into something more respectable—a brown crew-neck and jeans with a snapback to protect himself from the sun—and he’s flying down the stairs and down the block. He thanks God that he opted for a hat since it was deeper into morning than he’s used to; the sun is brighter, and thus, less merciful with his hangover.

“Jongseong, you’re late!”

The bell announcing his arrival dings and he goes sour. He’d already expected this, that Mrs. Park would notice the particular timing of his entrance because it was definitely past ten, rapidly approaching lunch time. And it was definitely, definitely not 6:30 in the morning. And he was punctual above all else—he was only late to work once in the entire two year span he’d been there and that was when the apartment building literally caught on fire—so it had to have raised some red flags, especially for someone as meticulous with her everything (time, money) as her.

He puts on a smile, though, as he approaches the counter. He’s charming, he knows he is.

“Boss said I could have a late day today.” The lie rolls out of his mouth easily, a little too easily. He’s almost suspicious of himself. It feels natural. He thinks he’s mind-tricked himself into believing he’s still employed, that the conversation he’d been forced to sit through never happened to begin with. Honestly, if he tries to recall it, he doesn’t remember most of what he said. He remembers his boss’s mouth moving, but there was no sound, like someone had pressed the mute button on a movie.

She looks at him skeptically. “Odd,” is all she says, with a shrug. “What’s it today, then?”

Before he gets a word out, the door swings open, and the boy from before is stumbling through. The bakery isn’t busy; in fact, they’re the only customers. He’s out of breath as he clamors up next to Jongseong and places his hands on the counter. Jongseong can’t help himself, he stares at him—both like he’s an alien (because he totally might be,) and also like he’s a model or an idol (also totally plausible, because jeez)—but the boy doesn’t seem to catch on. He’s too frazzled, too distraught.

“Does anybody have a broom I can borrow?” He grits his teeth, his eyes are pleading.

Mrs. Park is just as taken aback as Jongseong. “Um, I have one in the back. Why?”

“I—” He stops himself short, he casts his eyes toward the ground. “I spilled something outside. Need to clean it,” he says.

“Okay,” Mrs. Park replies, draws out the last syllable, her skepticism of the situation skyrocketing. First, it was Jongseong’s untimely arrival for his morning bread; second, it was this random boy’s apparently desperate need for a broom. Desperate because he’s clutching the counter so hard that the wood might splinter, because his eyes are crazed and his breathing is seriously labored.

When Mrs. Park disappears into the back for a bit, Jongseong thinks this is his chance. There’s some dregs of confidence building up within him, despite the fact that he’s unshowered and newly unemployed and probably not looking very impressive right now. It’s all about confidence—he’s learned over the years—it’s about confidence and charm and how well you can talk to people, and Jongseong is the smoothest talker he knows.

“You seem stressed.” Jongseong does not know a lot of people.

The boy turns to him. “I’m fine, thanks for your concern,” he spits. Jongseong wonders why he’s so wound up, why all of his words are edged with thorns. Does he walk around with such prerogative all the time? Is it just a bad day? A string of really bad luck? Sure, the flowers may have offended him, but did he really deserve the same scorn after inquiring about his well-being?

His curiosity ekes out his natural inclination for self-preservation. He doesn’t know if this boy has the capacity to hurt him, or what his deal is, but he really wants his questions answered. “Did you ever, uh, go back for those flowers?”

From the way that time stills—the fan in the corner ringing in a dry hum, the shuffling in the back of the bakery quickening—he thinks he may have misstepped. Misstepped because the boy tenses, then narrows his eyes at him—accusatory, menacing—although it pains Jongseong the slightest bit because he looks so cute when he’s like this; when he’s some amalgam of angry and frustrated and suspicious. He crooks one brow up; his nose scrunches. He looks like a pissed off little mouse.

“You saw that?” He whispers, again with that same edge from last time; he speaks low like he’s trying to not be caught, like there’s some hidden camera in the corner waiting for him to slip up, words coming out quickly because he means business.

Jongseong simply nods. In response, the boy presses closer—impossibly close, Jongseong thinks, his breath hitching in his throat—and grabs him by his collar. Jongseong thinks this is catastrophic. It’s catastrophic not because he’s scared, but because wow he’s pretty, and wow he looks adorable when he’s angry, when he’s trying to intimidate him. And wow they’re really, really close. He’s gotten himself entangled in a movie moment.

“Listen,” he growls. “Those sons of bitches got what was fucking coming to them.”

The daffodils?

Jongseong doesn’t have time to inquire or ask for clarification. Mrs. Park emerges from the back—looking scandalized when she catches them chest-to-chest, staring each other down—and hands him the broom. Suddenly, he shifts, appreciation overtaking his sharper features as he speeds to the exit.

“Thank you!” He shouts, “I’ll be back in an hour!”

“An hour? Wait!” She shouts after him, but he’s gone. The door swings closed. Mrs. Park, exasperated, slumps against the counter. “What a peculiar young man. I’ve never seen him before, have you?”

Jongseong stares at the door, waiting for him to reemerge, even though he knows he won’t. He wonders how ridiculous it would be for him to lounge here for the next hour, waiting for him to return the broom so he can catch him again, go for a second try, be a little smoother this time. If he’s going to be seeing him around, he needs to work on his game, honestly.

But then he remembers that he already told that condemning line, that he was in fact on the way to work. He breathes out a sigh, looks back at Mrs. Park. “Yeah, never seen him around.”

He’s been utterly unable to get the boy out of his head, and it’s starting to become a real problem.

It’s a problem because he’s unemployed and bored, a horrific combination of attributes that can only birth dreadful things like robbing banks or obsessing over unimportant things (or people.) And he’s only been in this situation before—the sour in-between of unemployment and boredom—and it was just after he moved out of his parents’ house to relocate an hour away and he spent his savings on vapid things like designer clothes he’d see on Main Street and consequentially, he ended up residing in an only slightly shittier apartment complex than he would’ve wanted for himself. That, and the process of finding a job was expedited because he didn’t realize how credit worked and he was swiping his parents’ card carelessly and he found himself eating ramen every other night. Needless to say, he doesn’t want to reach that point again.

He’s always been a work-oriented person—pragmatic and level-headed and grounded—and he used his six-day workweek as a means to keep himself from going insane. It helped that it also doubled as his creative outlet. It was the best of both worlds for a while, it was the best job he could’ve asked for, honestly. He loves to write; he loves to work. He loved what he did for those two years.

He watches the ceiling fan spin, wonders how he’ll try to live his life again.

There’s still a few drafts of unused, unfinished scripts sitting in a drawer of his. They’re fine, they’re good; Jongseong thinks he could polish them up a bit, finish them, and they’d be in working order. He wonders if it’s possible for his boss to take him back if he shows a little bit of promise; promise that he could be the bright, effortlessly productive Jongseong from two years ago. The same Jongseong that drafted scripts that propelled them toward being one of the premier daytime radio shows of the city, that had them topping the charts week after week. It was him, the brilliant mind behind the madness, as his boss put it.

But now, he aches for an ounce of what he had before. It isn’t easy for words to flow from his fingertips now—black ink etching relentlessly onto the page with quips wedged in between excerpts of news articles and callbacks to past events and the like—it’s hard. It’s hard, but not impossible. He’s a small speck staring up at a large wall of cinder block gating him from greener grass, like a prisoner trying to get a glimpse of the land beyond the fences. He doesn’t want to feel this lost, but he does. He doesn’t want to feel this useless, and still.

It’s another day. He tugs the bill of his cap down as he closes the door to his apartment behind him and he’s hit with a strong gust of wind as he steps onto the sidewalk. It’s only a few days into April and he feels it—the wind is howling against his windows every other night whether it’s raining or not, the air is chock-full of pollen to the point where it gets hard to breathe and his seasonal allergies are activated—and he’s not quite sure whether he likes it or not. He’s always had a hard time when it comes to his birth month for several reasons. He hates the air of April, hates the way his birthday lies toward the end of the month like an omen. Maybe this year, he’ll go back home for his birthday. Maybe, even, he’ll move back home.

For now, he ambles down a way he hasn’t been in a while. It’s in the opposite direction from the bakery and the grocery store and his place of work; it’s the beach.

He’s never really been a big beachgoer. For the brief moments in which he’s not absorbed in his work (he gets a week off during the winter holidays and that’s about it), he usually spends his time in the overpriced café or at libraries or going to see art exhibitions or going shopping. But really, he lives in a coastal city; it’s famous for its ports and for its beaches, and the tourists that flock in every summer make that very apparent. So no, he’s usually not keen for a beach trip, especially without a date; the shoreline breeze blows saltwater into his face and he doesn’t like the feeling, sun lotion is always greasy and unable to sink in properly on his own skin. But maybe, maybe, there would be some spark of inspiration. He’d always heard from good artists that a change of scenery is due when experiencing a creative block.

So, he’d try it out.

The beach is moderately populated. It’s probably a little too early for the summer tourists, thankfully. He passes by the beachgoers looking natural in their bikinis and board shorts, sunscreen lathered over their tan bodies and gleaming like their skin and the sun are meant to be together. He thinks he’s a little too pale. The sun should do him some good.

He finds an empty spot near the ice cream stand, somehow. He hums in approval, looking around. It isn’t too noisy. The people set up closest to him are minding their own business—reading books under the shade of their umbrellas, napping (how could anyone ever!), massaging lotion onto their significant other’s back—and as long as nobody sets up a volleyball net near him, this would be perfect. He could get some reading done, or maybe even some writing, though he doesn’t want to force himself.

So yes, it is perfect, he thinks, rolling out his towel, as he watches a figure come barrelling out of the sky and hurtling into the sand, yelling fuck fuck fuck all the while.

The audience reaction is minimal—the audience being the people around him, the people who aren’t deaf and obviously heard somebody become a human meteorite—and he’s dumbfounded more at the fact that nobody gets up to help than the fact that somebody actually just plummeted from the sky. A few feet away, the projectile causes an explosion in the sand. They throw concerned looks over at the crater it carved out—the impact created a mini-sandstorm, so it’s a little blurry and he has to shield his face as he trudges forward—and some of them start little conversations, but nobody actually looks too perturbed. It’s strange. He wonders if these strange happenings have been going on for a while and he’s out of the loop because he’s been so absorbed in his work.

He reaches what seems to be the rung of the crater, the furthest he can go before he himself slides down into it.

“Hey!” He calls out, makes sure he doesn’t get any sand in his mouth. “Are you okay?”

“There’s fucking sand in my mouth,” a boy sputters back. And yeah, Jongseong thinks, that’s exactly the problem he was trying to avoid having.

He takes a chance, takes a careful step and slides down as slowly and carefully as possible so he doesn’t collide with the person. They’re both coughing because Jongseong also failed to keep sand out of his mouth during his descent—let alone his eyes—and he wonders how badly the person must be hurt if the impact caused a fucking crater to form in the sand. A crater and a sandstorm. It’s a little concerning, but he doesn’t hear any cries or screams; moreso, it’s coughing and annoyed groaning. Perhaps they aren’t injured.

Once he makes his way all the way down, he sees him. Him being the boy from the grocery store and the bakery—the boy who had a bouquet of flowers in a chokehold and robbed a broom from Mrs. Park and is now laying down with aforementioned broom in the sand, in the trough of a sand crater, hacking up a lung. Jongseong stops, dumbfounded. He’s a complete enigma now, the boy before him. He went from being a weird, quirky boy he’d never seen before to an absolute puzzle of a person; everything from his attitude to the things he says to the things he talks to. And now, he flies on a broomstick, apparently?

The sand clears. Jongseong points a finger at him. “You’re…”

“A witch,” he says, his figure appearing with more clarity as the sand starts to clear up. He’s done with coughing, for the most part. His face is red—Jongseong can’t tell whether it’s from embarrassment or from the coughing (probably the coughing, maybe he doesn’t even feel embarrassment)—and he’s sitting up now, hair sticking up in every direction like he’d just been hit by a lightning bolt, like Albert Einstein. He’s all dazed, sleepy almost, with the way he’s leaning forward and backward and moving essentially like an inflatable tube man. “I’m a witch, nice to meet you,” he says flatly.

“No, I mean you’re the boy from the bakery.” And the grocery store, but it would be a little creepy to bring up that one, even if he does know that he’d seen him.

To this, he cocks his head to the side. “Oh, you’re that guy.” He still looks pissed; Jongseong doesn’t know what he looks like when he’s not pissed. He has his eyebrows knitted together, his mouth pulled taut into a mix of a pout and a frown—although it might just be a frown that naturally looks like a pout because of how cute he is.

Jongseong comes to his senses once the magic (ha) of it starts to wear off. “Do you need help?” He fumbles forward, but the boy stops him by raising a hand.

“I’m fine,” he rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry about me. Just a flying accident. Happens all the time. You wouldn’t know.” He says it all through a scoff, in staccato.

It feels strange. It feels like he’s made numerous attempts to shoo him away, brush him off; like he’s took to red paint and outlined it on his forehead, a big fuck off signal flashing and blaring like a fire alarm. Jongseong doesn’t feel anything, though. He doesn’t feel any reservations in his movements when he pulls forward to try to help him up (to which he, surprisingly, does not try to shrug him off, instead accepts the help and stands,) and he doesn’t feel any more sorry that when he stands, he turns away from him, juts his chin upward all prim and classy. He moves and acts and struts like a domesticated cat trying to regain his independence. He’s fascinated mainly; he’s fascinated, intrigued, the curiosity of an artist growing more and more as he’s keen to simply watch him move.

“What’s your name?” He asks.

“Jungwon,” he replies quickly. He gives him a look. “I suppose the people of this town should know the name of their resident witch,” he says dramatically with a scalding drawl, another eye roll. Jongseong thinks it’s all dramatic, very dramatic.

“Oh,” he says dumbly, thinks on that name for a while; Jungwon, the garden who’s waged war on the flowers. It’s ironic. He doesn’t say so. “Cool. Nice to meet you, I’m Jay.”

“Jay,” he echoes through a smirk. “What? You think you’re cool with that name or something?”

He coughs, frowns, a little bit of embarrassment starting to color his cheeks because he hates that it’s remarkably easy for Jungwon to make him feel small. “Uh, well my real name is Jongseong. Usually people just call me Jongseong, but I was trying to get the Jay thing rolling for a while…um…” He idles a little longer, scratches the back of his head. “I would say I’m pretty cool though, yeah.”

Jungwon just stares at him, like he’s the strange one. Like he’s the one who just crash-landed on the beach and proclaimed himself a witch; actually, not just a witch, but the designated witch of the town, apparently. He looks unimpressed, a little snide, but Jongseong’s tries to empower himself, tries to not let his grip loosen on the situation because he wants to be cool. He decides to shoot back. He crosses his arms. “What qualifications do you have to be this town’s witch, anyway? You look way too young.”

“First of all—” and Jongseong quickly finds that he gets a kick out of pissing him off with the way his face flushes red and he wags a finger at him, “—I’m eighteen. Second of all, this is literally my training period, okay? And I’m more than capable of being this town’s witch. You guys definitely look like you need it.” He finishes with an exasperated sigh, blows some air up to fix his bangs.

“Jeez,” Jongseong steps back. “Didn’t mean to get you so worked up.”

Jungwon shakes his head and rolls his eyes again, and Jongseong briefly worries that one day they’ll be stuck in the back of his head. “Whatever, I have to go anyway. I have real business to attend to.” And Jongseong begins to suspect he may be a mind reader, because maybe he knows he’s just recently been fired and so he has to place extra emphasis on the business part to spite him.

When Jungwon stands, he picks up his broom, and reflecting on everything that has happened, he thinks he’s an idiot. He doesn’t know how he didn’t put two and two together: Jungwon wanted a broom, Jungwon was flying in the sky and came crashing down into the beach. Of course he was a witch, he shouldn’t have needed Jungwon himself to say that to figure it out. He thought that the myths about witches were obscene and comical and exaggerated and contrived; he didn’t actually think that they rode brooms. It seemed so mundane. It would’ve been cooler if they were able to fly by themselves.

Now that the sand had cleared—and Jongseong is still floored that no one else came to look to help or at least to peek in out of curiosity—Jungwon starts to trudge upward, mounting the slide of the crater and slipping a few times. Jongseong feels laughter bubble up in his throat but he represses it because at this point, yes, he is a little afraid he’ll throw a fireball at him, or something. Instead, he follows after him silently, shamelessly staring at his ass the whole time.

They climb out; life was going on as normal at the beach. Jungwon turns to him.

“You were staring at my ass.”

“Yes,” Jongseong admits, jaw locked. “Safe trip, then?” He assumes he’s preparing for flight.

Jungwon scoffs, doesn’t say anything as he trudges over to a small clearing and mounts the broom. It looks a little funny, the squat he does.

“Bye,” he finally says as he closes his eyes. “Hope to never see you again.” Jongseong laughs, because he doesn’t think he means it.

Evidently, it takes a lot of focus to fly a broom; focus, or willpower, or strength, he isn’t sure. There must be some magical reserve within a witch to power the metaphysical engine—like the endurance it takes to run a mile or the muscle needed to lift a heavy dumbbell—because Jungwon looks like he’s completely in the zone. He’s deep in a meditative trance—eyes closed, face resolved of any frustration or tension—and he’s so honed in that Jongseong isn’t sure he’d respond if he said something, maybe not even if he went over and nudged him.

The sand around him starts to shift; it moves outward like ripples in a pond. His hair lifts up like there’s a wind turbine beneath him. Honestly, Jongseong is rapt; he’s utterly enamored watching real magic in action for the first time. He’s heard of witches before; everybody either knows or has heard stories of them: that they live in cottages in the countryside, that they regularly fly out and visit cities and towns to preside over them and offer special services, that they’ve turned their neighbor into a frog or told them when they’re going to meet the love of their life. But really, he never thought he of all people would have an encounter like this.

“Shit.”

Suddenly, the sand stills, and his bangs fall back into place. He feels the magic in the air evaporate. Jungwon stands again on his own two feet, looks down at his broom and puffs out his cheeks.

Jongseong can’t help it. “Cute.”

Jungwon glares at him. “Shut up.”

Everything mellowed out—the breeze coming in from the sea, the chatter around them because people were watching now, the shivering particles in the air that he could only ascribe to magic, the frustration act Jungwon was putting on—and he idles. Jungwon is still gripping his broomstick, leans down close to whisper something to it that Jongseong doesn’t catch, and knocks on it three times. Then, he tries again. And he fails again. He doesn’t go anywhere. The sand moves slowly this time; there isn’t much thrust.

Jongseong cocks up an eyebrow. “You know, if that doesn’t work out, I have something else you could ride on.”

“Now is not the time for jokes,” Jungwon groans, lets out an animalistic noise from the back of his throat as he kicks into the sand. He tries once more; this time, the sand doesn’t move at all, his hair stays still, the wind is calm. “Fuck,” he curses. “I can’t fucking fly.”

And they reach an impasse—or Jongseong does, at least—because he doesn’t really know what to say here. He isn’t sure how grave the situation is; if he can make another joke or not. He opts to, a little bit of payback for the way he’s been so devastatingly mistreated.

“Uh,” he drones, “aren’t you…isn’t that like, your whole thing?”

Jungwon cocks his head up and looks at him, deadpan. “Yes, that is my whole thing. Thanks for reminding me.”

He’s frustrated as he pulls the broom up, dismounts it and holds it beside him with a grip so hard it turns his knuckles red. Clearly, he’s angry. But honestly, it’s hard for Jongseong to distinguish this type of anger from the previous type of anger, or the type of anger from the bakery, or the type of anger from the grocery store where he was yelling at flowers. He thinks, maybe, he should tread carefully this time. Again, fireballs and all that.

“Damn,” he says. “That sucks.” And again, Jongseong thinks himself a great conversationalist.

Jungwon flashes him the most thin-lipped, half-baked smile ever, and turns to walk away.

“Wait!” He doesn’t wait, he keeps going, but Jongseong catches up to him. “Is there any way I can help?”

“It would help if you’d fuck off,” Jungwon says, the tail-end of his broom kicking sand up.

“How far do you live? Do you need a place to stay? Just for the night?”

“I do not need a place to stay,” Jungwon stops walking and turns to face him—puts his hands on his hips so he knows he means business—and stares Jongseong in the eye. “I don’t need a place to stay, and I’m definitely not staying with you.”

He does need a place to stay. He currently resides with a married couple that own a jewelry making business. He doesn’t have a particular knack for jewelry, but he may have crash landed into their backyard and, upon discovering that they’re huge fans of witches, offered to let him work the shop in exchange for free housing in the upstairs spare bedroom. That place, however, is on the other side of the city, and it’s only an hour ride by train but he doesn’t have any money and Jongseong was being stingy (and he also really wanted to take him home.)

He also learns that his full name is Yang Jungwon. The Yangs, apparently, are a long-spanning empire of witches—empire, Jungwon emphasized, the burden of prodigy already visible on his shoulders—that live hours away in a remote piece of the forest surrounded by a protective illusory magic that renders them untraceable and invisible to the human eye. If anybody ever crossed into their territory, they’d see what looked like a bunch of mystical raccoon-like creatures prancing around a large, archaic house.

“Seems cool.”

They’ve set themselves up on the couch of his apartment. It’s messy; it’s well beyond the parameters of what he’d allow himself to bring home a date to—and yes, Jungwon is definitely a date, for the evening at least—but his shame is whisked away with the exhilaration of it all. He didn’t have time to clean up anyway; he couldn’t have possibly known he’d encounter Yang Jungwon the witch on his beach trip, and he couldn’t have possibly known he’d bring him home the same day. But sometimes, life just works itself out that way.

He’d thrown Jungwon a blanket that he’s now swaddled himself in, nursing a cup of tea as whatever on the television wasn’t exciting enough to keep the attention of either of them. Jungwon looked so unbearably cute like this that it caught Jongseong off guard—his face all mousey and miniscule within the confines of the blanket around his head, his body contorted and scrunched to buried in the cushions—and he thinks he could melt, watching him from the other side of the couch.

“Yea, seems like it, doesn’t it? But it isn’t,” he takes another sip of his tea. “I’m a useless witch.”

“Don’t say that.” Jongseong isn’t sure when he turned into a motivational speaker. “I think you’re very talented.”

“You haven’t even seen me do anything,” Jungwon shoots back, that familiar sharp temper shouldering to the forefront. “You saw me try and fail at flying, which is the only thing I do. And I fucking…I can’t now. I’m useless.”

“Hey,” and Jongseong dares to move closer; previously, he’d been aiming to try and give him some distance and keep him comfortable because he definitely was fuming as they mounted the stairs to his apartment, practically blowing steam from his nose behind him as he unlocked his door and let him in. But now, he's softened up. Now, he fancied himself adventurous, fancied himself willing to scoot closer to him and not touch him, but simply face him. There was always the desire to be close to people, right? “So you used to fly, at least. I’m not sure how witch powers work, but it’s not like you lost it forever, right?”

Jungwon doesn’t answer, but he assumes the answer is no, he hasn’t lost his powers forever. He’d never heard stories of witches permanently losing their powers; witchy powers were described in the same way that famous celebrities had beautiful voices—a natural talent from birth that could never be stripped away.

Finally, Jungwon shakes his head. “I don’t think so, but it just feels…weird. It feels like I never knew how to do it in the first place. Everything I know about flying just evaporated from my head.”

“I—” Jongseong stutters. “I feel the same way.”

He glances over at the box of chicken scratch he’d drafted when he was drunk, thinks back on the last few scripts he’d turned in at work—”Dud after dud after dud,” his boss had said, “why is it all so dull and uninspired?”—and he remembers how dull and uninspired he felt on the inside. How he couldn’t find humor in many things anymore; the daily news was too grim to make light of, the most petty of events too beneath him to even make a joke about. Even then, even if it wasn’t about humor or something equally lighthearted, he couldn’t find anything within himself to put it from pen to paper and draft something that flowed, that was coherent even.

He relaxes back into the couch, watches the monotonous romcom playing on the television. “It must’ve been hard, when you realized you couldn’t fly.” And he really thinks it must’ve been; a subtle heartbreak tempered because his exterior is a steeled armor with thorns, a disappointment laden in the way he walked, in the way he gripped his broomstick with longing. He knows it deeply, intimately; that sinking feeling of being rendered useless, of being an impostor in your own art, an art you’ve grown familiar with like a lover.

Jungwon stares into his cup of tea. “It’s cold,” he says, handing him the mug. “Could you warm it up for me, please?”

Jongseong complies, floats over to the kitchen and places it in the microwave and watches Jungwon out of the corner of his eye. He shifts, covering himself with more of the blanket and sinking into the couch. He doesn’t seem keen to speak at lengths about it, any of it. Jongseong doesn’t really blame him. He himself was holed up in his apartment all alone for the first few days—reeling in the aftermath, toiling over unfinished scripts, stuck in a perpetual cycle of sitting down to write and giving up and ordering food delivery instead—and he understands. He needed time alone; maybe Jungwon also needs that time, to exist, to float free and wade without caution.

The microwave dings, he returns to the couch and sets his cup on the table. He doesn’t touch it.

“It’s getting late,” Jongseong says. When they first arrived back, it was late afternoon; but now, moonlight was flitting through the blinds, and it was a cloudless night. “You can take my bed.”

Jungwon stands without question, keeps his blanket wrapped tight around his form as he waddles toward the bedroom door. Jongseong stops him, though, grabs his arm.

“This is the part where you’re supposed to say no, come on, I’ll take the couch.”

Jungwon stares at him blankly. “Why would I do that? I’m definitely taking your bed.”

Jongseong pulls a Jungwon, rolls his eyes. “Whatever, brat,” he says half-heartedly, kicks him lightly as he huddles into the threshold of his bedroom and clutches the door handle. “Good night, Jungwon.”

“Sweet dreams, Jongseong.”

And he closes the door. Jongseong throws himself onto the couch; the television is white noise, the traffic of cars on the street outside is a metronome, his heart beats rhythmically in time with the swinging of the ceiling fan. Jongseong wonders—as he’s lulled to sleep by the drowsiness of the city and the aching of his bones—what sprawling story he could draft from this.

He thought they’d talk about it in the morning. He’d been anticipating it.

He’d opened the blinds before he fell asleep, so now that he’s awake and padding into the kitchen, the sunlight plastered onto the floor keeps the hardwood warm against his feet. He prepares two cups of coffee, gets to work on cooking some eggs—scrambled, because that’s always the safer choice—and glances at his bedroom door every few seconds. Given that he hasn’t shapeshifted into a mouse or a bird and scampered out through the window, he should be emerging any minute now. He wonders if he would run away; he wonders if he’s scared him off, lost his chance.

He doesn’t want that to happen. Disregarding the fact that he’s a pretty boy and the most interesting person he’s ever met, he enjoys the company. There’s no one else in this sorry town whose company he thinks he’d enjoy more, and that means a lot considering just how shut off from him he’s been in their first few conversations. Last night was different though, he swears there was that familiar electricity in the air from when he first attempted to fly on his broom; he’s emboldened by the promise of something deeper, wants to explore how deep the valleys he’s carved within himself really are. If he could just get him to sit down and speak to him a little longer, if he can just root something out to get him to stir from under his shell, then maybe, maybe.

The door opens, finally. Jongseong pivots from settling the overcooked eggs into two separate plates, slides them over the counter before Jungwon even sits down. He looks a little bit of a mess—his hair sticking up in the same way as when he formed a crater in the beach, fine lines on the side of his face from his favorite pillow, that fluffy blanket still wrapped around him protectively—as he marches over, sniffling with glazed eyes. Jongseong stares at him from across the counter as he takes a seat.

“Stop looking at me like I’m some zoo animal.” He sits down and begins to eat without a thank you.

“You stink,” Jongseong says, turning to fetch something from the fridge.

“Thanks, I know,” he mumbles. “These are overcooked.”

“Thanks, I know,” he parrots back. He returns and slides over a bottle of orange juice; Jungwon takes it and downs a sip, also without a thank you.

Jongseong doesn’t obey his silent order—to not stare at him, ogle him like a zoo animal—because he does. He watches him with amusement, despite the clear frustration on his face. He doesn’t care; he’s feeding him and housing him, the least he can do is let him stare down his pretty face.

“You’re weird,” is all Jungwon says in response after finishing his eggs. He sets his fork down and submerges himself in his blanket again.

“I’m weird?” Jongseong echoes, scandalized, points his index finger toward himself. “You’re the guy who was arguing with flowers.”

“They were being rude,” he spits back.

Suspicion springs up within Jongseong. Now he remembers that curiosity he held previously begin to swamp over him again like a tidal wave; that itch he felt in the bakery to pursue him, hunt him down and badger him with questions because he had so many. He takes his opportunity.

“What do you mean by that, exactly?” He asks, the theatrics from earlier diluting to make way for something more palpable, his voice a droning strum of a guitar. “Is it a witchy power I don’t know about?”

Jungwon sighs. “I can talk to things,” he says in defeat, pushing his empty plate away. “Well—yeah. I can hear things. Plants, animals, things. If they’re inanimate, they’re usually quieter. Plants and animals are more rowdy.” And Jungwon looks at him gently—for the first time, Jongseong thinks, with genuine concern—with something watery and turbid mooring behind his eyes; he’s not on the precipice of crying, but he is pliable instead of rigid. This must be, Jongseong thinks, what he’s normally like when he doesn’t have that suit of armor on, that tactical form of self-defense he uses in the form of jabs and insults.

“Oh.”

He doesn’t want to misstep. Suddenly, he’s overly concerned with the witch sitting at his kitchenette; he doesn’t want him to leave and he doesn’t want him to think bad about him and he wants him to feel safe and he wants him to know he understands. He hadn’t felt this before—not down at the beach, where he was compelled to make a joke out of his inability to fly and thought it another passing comment to bring forth a bit of levity—but he feels it now; witch wrapped up in his blanket, witch eating his cooking, witch with pearls for eyes and porcelain for skin and a beating heart that beats just like his and a dark moon for a soul that waxes and wanes just like his.

He takes a breath, and he’s never been the best at encouraging or comforting, but he tries. “I think that’s a beautiful talent to have,” and he says this because he thinks it’s true. “It’s beautiful to be able to connect with everything like that, right? So intimately, to know things nobody else knows.”

Jungwon’s touched; he knows this because of the way he doesn’t pull back when Jongseong steps closer. He only hangs his head down, taps his fingers on the marble of the countertop. He shakes his head dismissively.

“Yeah,” he says, passive. “It’s not very useful, though. I can’t make a business out of it. I can’t really help people with it.

“Of course you can, are you serious?” Jongseong pushes forward again; Jungwon doesn’t move, again. They’re closer now, still separated by the counter. Jongseong thinks, as he looks down, fuck it, and crosses around it to huddle at Jungwon’s side—he props an elbow against the counter to fully face him. “I mean, I haven’t put much thought into it, but I can, and I will. There must be something you can do with it. That’s incredible, Jungwon.”

Jungwon shakes his head again; he’s always doing that, dismissing things. He rolls his eyes or shakes his head or turns away or shrugs it off.

“It’s not—”

“It is,” Jongseong immediately counters, knowing it was coming.

“All it does is drive me insane,” he faces forward, and he’s somewhere else—reliving the past, shackles around his feet pulling him backward—and winds his hands into his bird’s nest of a hairdo. “I always hear complaining and it’s a complete sensory overload—a set of keys whining because they’ve been lost, a stuffed teddy bear crying because it’s been mistreated, and the fucking birds are always so loud and talking about useless shit that it makes even flying something Olympian because half the battle is putting up with their bullshit.”

It’s the first time that Jongseong touches him, clutches him at his shoulder. Jungwon doesn’t stir or shift or move away, and it feels comfortable, it feels natural; he moves closer, hopes his warmth rolls off of him in waves, hopes he can comfort somebody the same way he was trying to comfort himself.

“You know, there’s very powerful people who also have their own burden to bear,” he says calmly. “Like Spiderman, because he can’t let anyone figure out who he is.”

“Awful example.”

“Sorry,” Jongseong shrugs. “But it’s true.”

He’s glad he left the blinds open; from this angle, Jungwon’s face is limned prettily in the sunlight; it dips into the slight curve of where a dimple would be, nestles gently across his brow and jawline. He wants to lean forward and kiss him.

“There’s so many other witches that are better than me,” Jungwon says, his voice still scratchy with sleep, any lightness drowned out with self-pity. “Jang Wonyoung is a witch my age residing in the next town. She can see the future. She actually helps people. Everybody calls her a prodigy.”

Jongseong doesn’t think he should ask this, but he does: “What does everybody call you?”

Jungwon turns to face him for what feels like the first time this morning—his eyes a bit more watery, deep enough to be completely submerged in, twinkling—and he has a look on his face that reads like he’s given up, a silent surrender as he relaxes into something comfortable; comfortable because it’s his real self, reality plastered onto his face and onto his body, pearls for eyes with dulled luster, porcelain skin threatens to crack and let everything spill out gracelessly.

“They call me a failure,” he doesn’t cry when he says it, although Jongseong can tell—voice like sandpaper now, blinking eyes refusing to make eye contact—that he wants to. “My mom called me that before I left. She said she hoped the training period would help me—would help me not be such a failure anymore.”

Mirrored hearts beating; they slow down, fall in step with each other. He understands it a bit more now—the callousness, the haughtiness, the unprompted self-defense—because he’s been there before. He’s been ridiculed because he’d told everybody that he’s moving away to follow his dream of becoming a writer; he’d been ridiculed even more when he told them that he didn’t have a plan, that he didn’t even know exactly what kind of writer he wanted to be. He’d considered novels and screenwriting for television and film and journalism and practically everything there was; and when he went job hunting and came upon a run-down building with a recording studio haphazardly attached in need of a script writer for an up-and-coming daytime talk show, something, something, it was that something that he thought was meant for him, his calling.

He knew what it felt like to be a failure, even in the briefest of moments, even when they wouldn’t say it so brashly; when he was just figuring out how to grow wings and leave his hometown, when he was beginning to figure out how to fly.

Jongseong reaches down to hold Jungwon’s hand; he doesn’t object to this, either. He’s warm. They both are. He thinks insulting his family is the wrong course of action—even though he wants to, wants to tell him that it's definitely a form of abuse and trauma, although he isn’t a psychologist—so he doesn’t. Instead of opening his mouth to say something, he lets his body do the talking; he reaches up and gently cups his chin with his hand, beckons him in.

“Hey, look at me?”

He does; he turns slowly, solemnly, looks up at him like he’s some god who can reach in and scoop out his reservations, his loneliness, his hurt, his pain, read his mind for him. His eyes are glassy and chock-full of some alien kind of wonder as they roam over every pore on Jongseong’s face—he breathes him in slowly, as if too much could make him heady with something toxic, something that may make him fall too deep—and his breathing grows erratic, anticipatory, in-out-in-out.

“We can figure this out together, okay? If you’ll let me. I want to help you. Is that okay?” Jongseong says, his voice deeper than he ever thought possible. It was probably because he was whispering, their close proximity prompting some kind of intimacy, some wistfulness in his speech.

Jungwon nods.

Spellbound are the both of them; they study each other like they’re foreign, like they’re learning everything about each other with one scan of the eyes, with one once-over. They bore into each other until there’s nothing left; until there’s no piece of the soul left untouched by the other’s vision and the only thing they have left to gaze at is each other’s lips—Jungwon’s more pert and round, Jongseong’s chapped and slightly agape—and Jongseong thinks the exact same thought as before, that he wants to lean forward and kiss him.

So, he does.

He leans forward first, a silent request. Jungwon responds with a silent yes, presses in and meets Jongseong’s lips first.

It’s weird for Jongseong, thinking that kissing a witch would be different—that he’d feel electricity or maybe reality would shake or the air around him would buzz like it did down at the beach—but none of those sensations were apt to describe it, as he exhales through his nose and finds comfort as he ducks forward, wants more and more and more of Jungwon’s lips against his, wants it so bad, wants it from the way he croons from the back of his throat as he keeps his hand on his chin, rubs it gently to say good, good, good.

Kissing Jungwon feels like a resolution, like this is what he’s been waiting for, the golden ticket. Every time Jungwon shifts slightly under his touch—rearranges himself on the chair so he can lean in better, groans when Jongseong rubs his chin, dives in a nudge more when Jongseong swipes his tongue along the length of his lips—there’s a loose string in his heart that finds something to attach to, a heart that’s pulling itself back together again. Not only that, but it’s his soul, too; it’s the brightest of moons coming alive when that realization sinks in—that Jungwon is kissing him, leaning into him, begging for it as much as he is, finding as much comfort within this embrace as he is, arriving at the same conclusion that he is: a desperate, aching want resolved; two half-moons converging to become one. The truest of magic that two people can share with one another.

When they break off, they’re completely out of breath. They had no idea how hungry they were for that until it was over, until they’re both reeling from it, wiping saliva from their lips and trying to drag as much air into their lungs as possible. Jongseong wouldn’t have expected this from himself—being so overwhelmingly and wholly drawn into someone as much as he is now—but he is. He watches him, seated beneath him, gaze still watery and warm but that brokenness is gone—a little, at least—porcelain skin unchipped, pearl eyes as precious as the treasure they were before.

“You’re so beautiful,” Jongseong says, dumbly; he can’t say anything else, physically, he can’t. He’s compelled to. “Are you sure you don’t have me under some charm I’m unaware of?”

Jungwon laughs. “No, that’s kinda looked down upon. I don’t even know how to do those charms, anyway.” He laughs again, like the idea of it is funny to him, or the fact that that idea even came into Jongseong’s head in the first place; that he’s so insanely attracted to him, normal little Jungwon, that he had to be under some insidious spell. “But really, I’m not…I’m not all that.” He shrugs.

“You keep doing that,” Jongseong points a finger at him accusatory, and it seems that pointing fingers is their new thing. “You keep putting yourself down. Why do you keep doing that? Is that what the flowers were telling you?”

Jungwon’s jaw drops momentarily. He blinks up at him. “H-how’d you…” He shakes the confusion from his head, and answers plainly. “Flowers tend to be catty, yes. They said I was too ugly to be strutting around town the way I was.” He scratches the side of his face. “Daffodils suck.”

The absurdity of it doesn’t even pass through Jongseong’s mind—not even fleeting—it’s anger first. It’s frustration building up that someone, something, would insult Jungwon—this Jungwon, this pretty Jungwon—and his face twists into something perplexed and irritable and territorial, as if someone had broken into his apartment and stolen something right in front of his face.

“Are you serious? Those shitty daffodils were saying that about you? You’re fucking gorgeous; they’re nothing,” he rambles, all of the words coming out of his mouth a jumbled mess because he’s blinded by wrath. “I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them dead. I’ll torch them. I’ll burn them. I’ll set fire to the entire flowerbed and they’ll never say shit to you again.”

Jungwon laughs again. He rears back into his seat and his eyes form into small arches and his teeth show but Jongseong’s face is still stone, still seething, brows knit together with the purest anger he’s felt in a while.

“You’d do that? Really? You’d do commit an act of environmental terrorism for me?”

“Hell yeah, I would.”

It goes without question; they move together like yin and yang, like koi fish in a pond. They settle themselves on the couch, but they speak intermittently about useless things—where to get breakfast, where to get dinner, where they’re going to get money because Jongseong is still unemployed and Jungwon’s want to return home was definitely diminished by now—but there’s the more serious, more intimate things curdling underneath: that they want to keep kissing each other until there’s no light left, that they want to know what art and writing and magic they could accomplish together, that the daffodils at the grocery store would never, ever, sit out front again.