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—RED—
The battlefield is quiet. There’s no one left here alive, just grass stained redder than the setting sun. A hundred bodies, or maybe a thousand, and not a single breath taken. The air is heavy, still, not even a breeze to blow away the thick haze that hangs over the entire clearing, a reminder of what had happened there today. Helmets, shields, and shields lay littered everywhere, all repainted and rebranded with the color of the side every soldier had now joined in solidarity: death.
The swing of steel swords, like the blow of a stone club or the shot of a sleek glock, it all sprays red the same. It squeezes the blood from flesh, forcing it to burst from the fragile vessel of the human body, to mix in the air like nothing else. It’s always the same, from the small skirmishes of early human tribes to the clashes of empires of foot soldiers to the cross-continental machine gun fire of world wars. Dozens or hundreds or thousands of breaths taken one day, gone the next.
It’s all the same to Donghyuck. He doesn’t care anymore. When you see the same thing a thousand times, it’s hard to keep caring. Donghyuck’s life may be infinite but his empathy certainly has a limit.
That day was the beginning.
Laying in the mosh of blood waiting to be reabsorbed into the earth, Donghyuck woke up, took the singular breath in a field full of unmoving people, and wondered why he was still alive. The dried blood on his palms pressed into the still-wet blood in the ground where he sat, and he raised a hand up, hesitantly, to touch gently on the healing wound on his neck.
He had sobbed that day, a lone figure shedding tears for a hundred dead as he sat among them, but with every battle he had witnessed since, he’d cried a little less every time, before there was nothing left in him. Turns out, the only thing that can match the endless stretch of a never-ending life, is apathy.
Apathy doesn’t seize the same way wrath or misery does; it doesn’t try to burst from your body like other negative emotions, it doesn’t burn at your skin or corrode the back of your throat. Apathy is absence, a drying well running out of water to give. Donghyuck stabs another spear, tugs another sword, and it’s like he’s sinking a shovel into the walls of his heart, ever-widening the well. Another arrow fired, just add it to the pile. Another body beside him, just haul it into the grave…
It’s about fifty years before Donghyuck cuts all remaining ties and decides to start walking.
— ORANGE —
Donghyuck had always hated deserts, the way they stretched like oceans between civilizations. At least in real oceans, you could die quickly, a minute of suffering at most, before being pulled beneath the waves; in an ocean of sand, one usually suffers for at least a few days as the sun sucks every remaining drop of water from their skin and organs, very slowly cooking the soul out of them.
At this point, Donghyuck had grown tired of the wars and disputes of the Asian dynasties, had wanted to maybe see the rest of the world. Maybe there was something else out there in the world, that might give his life meaning and purpose. But stumbling in the scorching orange sands of the desert, Donghyuck had suddenly been seized with an angry, boiling frustration.
“What’s the point of all of this?!” He had screamed into the vast expanse of nothingness around him. “Why am I still here? It’s been a thousand goddamn years and I’m still here! Goddamnit, I hate this!”
He kicks at the sand, satisfied in the little spray it makes, even if it burns his foot a bit.
“God, I hate this! I hate sand, I hate camels!” He turns to the sky, eyes squinting at the empty blue. “Hello? Helloooo! God, are you there? Hey, I’m that one mortal you forgot to kill! I’m still here!”
Nothing answered him, not even his own echo. The dunes, like frozen waves of goldenrod and umber and bronze, swallowed his words the way time swallowed his desires and motivations. Donghyuck had slumped down into the sand, picking at it, letting the grains fall from his dried and cracked fingers, pretending every particle was another year in his life, and some part of him wondered if maybe his life was truly like the desert: a lot of tiny little moments piled together to ultimately form… nothing. Just a huge expanse of emptiness where nothing would ever grow, and no one would ever live. It felt like that, like he was just a traveler cursing at his own years like he did the sand, as it slowly sucked everything out of him, no end in sight in any direction.
After a few minutes, or maybe a few hours, Donghyuck got back up.
If he was going to sit and do nothing, he might as well find somewhere nicer to wallow.
— YELLOW —
Honestly, Donghyuck didn’t really understand why he was so negative back then. It was easy to make money in the Roman Empire when you’ve lived this long, and it was easy to make money when the whole nation was rich. Something about gold was quite nice--hedonism given physical form, pleasure and the means to pleasure in a convenient and compact form. Maybe this was the meaning of life — perhaps that guy Aristipus did get it all right, and now that Donghyuck could afford to live this way, enjoying the finer things this era could offer.
It was around then that Donghyuck met another immortal for the first time.
It was hard to say what had tipped him off, but as soon as he laid eyes on the man, he could tell.
“Hello?” He had asked tentatively. The man glanced at him, and an expression of knowing recognition settled on his face before he turned back to his scrolls.
“Hello.”
For some reason, Donghyuck was nervous. He stood awkwardly, unsure of what to say. This man, he was the same, he would understand. Relief, gratefulness— Donghyuck opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
“Are you— I mean, Do you—”
“Yes, I’m like you. Yes, there are more of us, maybe fifty or so, around the globe. No, there are no more here in Alexandria.” The man doesn’t lift his eyes from the cream papyrus before him. He sighs, like he’d been asked the same thing too many times. “No, I don’t know why we are like this, and I don’t care. Anything I missed?”
Donghyuck blinks, taken aback by the bluntness. It was a lot of information. Some part of him is relieved that there were more people like him around, but this just confuses him further.
“Um… I’m Lee Donghyuck. I was born 2573 years ago. I mean, according to the current calendar. I think I calculated correctly. I was in Asia, on a peninsula and—”
“Alright, Donghyuck.” The man cuts him off. “I’m going to say this as nicely as possible, but I don’t really care. We are not going to be friends, we met today, and now I’m going to go back to reading, you are going to go back to whatever you were doing, and if fortune permits, we’ll never meet again.”
He rolls up the scroll purposefully, making to stand. A wall of yellow scrolls lines the edges of the library, each beige paper inscribed with so many words of so many authors waiting to be picked up by a scholar one day.
“Wait, but we— why can’t we be friends? Doesn’t it— I don’t know, get lonely for you? We are both immortals, we could, keep each other company or something.” Donghyuck swallows, something like desperation suddenly causing him to reach out and place a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You’re the first other immortal I’ve met my whole life, you know?”
The man glances from Donghyuck’s hand touching him, then at Donghyuck. He raises his eyebrow incredulously.
“Clearly. I know you’re new to this, but most of us are like this. It gets boring talking to the same people for eons. I would rather spend my time on my own, learning and absorbing the knowledge the world has to offer. Now that is something ever-changing and eternal.”
At the sight of Donghyuck’s crestfallen face, he relents, just a little bit.
“Oh, don’t pout. Maybe the next immortal you meet will be a little more… extroverted than I am. It was nice meeting you, Donghyuck.”
Donghyuck gives up, withdrawing his hand.
“At least tell me your name.”
“It’s Doyoung.”
“See you later then, Doyoung-ssi.”
Doyoung smiles for the first time in their entire exchange.
“Maybe in a thousand years, Donghyuck.”
— GREEN —
Donghyuck had figured out pretty early that growing too attached to mortals would be a bad idea; it’s a no-brainer, honestly. He didn’t need another immortal to tell him that forming a dependency on something with no more time than an ant would only hurt him when their time ran out. If he were a desert of endless sand, the people around him as he strolls through the pretty villages of rural China, could be more or less equated to hourglasses, each holding a fraction of the sand within its glass confines. Slowly running out, with nothing there to flip them over, to keep the motion going.
He would pine occasionally, history is graced with many a pretty face, after all; from the courts of Japan to the ports off the Mediterranean to the cities of Egypt, there were plenty of people he would meet and enjoy a fleeting moment with, but the reality of his own life is ever-present.
But everyone makes mistakes.
Donghyuck’s first mistake was not meeting Renjun, it was not handing him a flower (a pretty white blossom with leaves of crisp green), or even bedding him that night. Donghyuck’s first mistake was finding him again, and again, and again.
Every time, he sank a little deeper and cared a little more — he repeated that mistake over and over until he was too deep in love with this small hourglass of a being, watching the sand in his soul fall slowly and too quickly through the pinch. And yet, even though it reminded him constantly of that insistent issue of time, he still placed his hands on the hourglass waist of Renjun’s body, felt the press of his lips against his own, over and over again, as if he just tried hard enough, maybe he could flip that timer sideways, stop the leaking sand and let this last forever.
On grassy hills outside of the town’s limits, they sat wrapped in each others’ arms, pulled close as the green grass, dotted with yellow dandelions and white daisies, so full of life, swayed in the warm spring breeze. Evergreen, ever the same forever, Donghyuck looked down at Renjun’s pretty face, ran his fingers through his hair as he lay in the grass, their days endless as the blades of grass that covered the beautiful slopes all around. He kisses Renjun, because Renjun makes him forget everything, pulls him down from sky high apathy onto the ground, makes him feel something meaningful for the first time in a long, long time.
But the thing about living… it always ends.
A million blades of bright green grass die in an instant under the kiss of the first snowfall of winter.
A million people crumble with the gentle, cruel touch of plague.
Donghyuck doesn’t care about those millions of people, he only cares about one. He tries, he really does, kneeling in the snow, hands desperately cupped around a single blade of grass as the air cuts and the soil freezes, trying tirelessly — hopelessly— to keep it alive. He holds Renjun close, to keep him warm, to do whatever to keep him alive, but—
In the final hours of Renjun’s life, Donghyuck no longer holds him close to warm him as much as he does to try and catch the plague and maybe, with some stroke of merciful fate, die at his side with him.
It doesn’t work, of course.
Donghyuck sits in the snow alone, the wilted blade of grass in his hands, every last bit of green in its tiny body gone forever.
— BLUE —
For a while, Donghyuck simply let himself float away, mentally and physically. He dipped into the ocean, letting it carry him away, not to any particular destination, just away . Like white noise, the ocean lapped at itself constantly, shifting and rolling and pushing as it moved Donghyuck along, from nowhere to nowhere. When the skies cracked with lightning and moaned with wind, that was best. The water roared in anger, it tossed him around like a ragdoll and found its way into his mouth and nose, but it was nice the way the noise and taste of salt pushed all thought out of Donghyuck’s mind except for soothing white static.
It was the worst on days where the ocean lay dead calm.
These days weren’t often, but once in a while, it would happen, and suddenly there was nothing to cover up the thoughts in Donghyuck’s brain anymore, and — curse this mind — he would be forced to think. It’s days like these that he would squeeze his eyes tighter and dive deeper into the ocean, as if the basic instinct of fear would preoccupy his mind instead of the overwhelming listlessness that swallowed him even when the ocean refused to, always spitting him back up to the surface eventually.
It’s okay though. The next day, the wind would blow those thoughts from his brain again.
It was a particularly stormy day when the ocean had rudely tossed Donghyuck onto a small island. Donghyuck had sat up, annoyed, and resolved to jump back in, if not for the arrangement of rocks on the ground beside him. SOS, they spelled out.
That was how he found Jisung.
Soaked to the bone, shivering, looking like death, Jisung sat huddled near a tree, face in his arms. The remains of a shipwreck lay a little further down the beach.
“Hey,” Donghyuck had called, his voice scratchy from God knows how long of disuse. He tries again, over the sound of the howling wind. “Hey! Kid! Are you alive?”
He watches as the boy lifts his head, face covered in water and grime, lips chapped and eyes blank. He reaches out to… Donghyuck’s not sure what, but he wanted to give the boy some comfort, and maybe he wanted some comfort too, having not seen another soul for so, so long. He had almost forgotten the touch of another being, but the instant the boy reached back desperately for him, shivering against his skin, Donghyuck remembered that he, like all other humans, is a pack creature. Despite both of them being completely drenched, skin rough from wear and clothes incredibly filthy, just being in contact with another human being brought a crushing amount of relief as the sky raged around them.
When everything had calmed, and Jisung was finally in a state to speak, Donghyuck learned that the boy was the sole survivor of the shipwreck, and had waited with no avail for a week already on the island.
“I— I shouldn’t be alive. I don’t know how I’m still alive. I thought the water would kill me, and when it didn’t I thought infection would, and then starvation. But I’m still alive. I don’t know how it’s possible.”
Donghyuck had paused munching on his fish, had stared at Jisung, the young man before him, and thought to himself, how truly amusing the universe could be. He wasn’t a hundred percent certain then, but now he was.
“You’re like me then. You’re immortal, like me.”
“I’m… what?”
It took some convincing, but the surest proof was that Jisung was still alive, even though death had surely claimed even the luckiest mortals in his situation. He had stopped, processing it all, fingers pressed against the gash on his leg that even now was closing up, despite the fact that infection had every chance to take hold. Donghyuck watched him, watched the wonder and confusion swirling on his face, and suddenly he was transported a few thousand years back, looking at himself as he processed Doyoung’s words all that time ago. It was the same look, he’s sure, that kind of disbelief and the threads of thought on the innumerable consequences from this massive revelation. Suddenly, the hourglass of Jisung’s life had broken its perceived glass walls, only to leak into the expanding desert of sand that was the true nature of his life.
Donghyuck waited patiently, chewing on his fish. He wondered where Doyoung might be now, and sitting in front of Jisung reminded him of that old man.
“So, there are more of us out there?”
“Yes, about fifty or so. Well, I suppose there will be more now, actually.”
“Why are we like this?”
“I… don’t know. I don’t think any of us know. None of the other immortals I’ve met, at least.” It was like deja vu, and Donghyuck, bemused, thought to himself he ought to send Doyoung a message or maybe a fruit basket at some point, just for fun. “It’s just a thing, and you live with it.”
Then, Donghyuck remembers the next thing he himself had said to Doyoung so long ago.
“I’m Donghyuck, by the way. I was born on a peninsula in Asia, Korea now, I suppose, two thousand— wait no, maybe three thousand? —a long time ago,” Donghyuck chuckles. “Wow, I am old .”
That had gotten a laugh out of Jisung, and Donghyuck felt better.
“I’m twenty.”
Jisung fell quiet again, lost in a haze of thought.
“What are you doing out here?” Donghyuck is curious, despite himself. He hadn’t really talked to anyone in a while.
“I was on a trip with my friends.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jisung swallows, then shrugs.
“I think I’m in shock or something. I don’t feel sad?” His eyes shake a little. “But I was on a trip…traveling before we have to attend school again. We wanted to take a ship, see some islands, and now here I am. I don’t know if they’ll be able to find anything, I mean… it’s been weeks already.”
Maybe it’s because he’d been out at sea for so long, or maybe it's the millennium of fleeting human interaction, but Donghyuck doesn’t know what to say, or do. He just watches Jisung, the feeling of long-lost sympathy stirring awake in his chest after a long dormancy. It had been a while…
But they’ve got time.
“What did you study in school?”
The question seems to take Jisung aback in its normalcy. He fidgets with the edges of his shirt, before answering, “Biology.”
“In Korea?”
“Yeah. I was born in Korea and I’ve lived there all my life. I want to emigrate though, I want to leave when I get my career going and then…”
Jisung stops abruptly, eyes squeezing shut.
“It doesn’t matter anymore, I guess.”
“Yes it does,” Donghyuck presses. He had been listening motionlessly up until then, and now his fingers dig into the beachhead, burrowing into the salty sand. “We can still hurt from hunger, you know. What did you want to do?”
“I wanted to be a doctor,” He hesitates. “But–”
“If you want to be a doctor, you can still be one. I’ll pull strings for you, get you into a different university. I still know a few people, and they know a few people – it’s not impossible! There are things we can do.”
“But what do immortals normally do?” Jisung peers up at him from under long lashes, eyes wide and questioning. “What do you do?”
The waves lap against the shore, crashing against the wet sand, pulling a little more of it into the blue depths with each roll. Donghyuck suddenly can’t look at Jisung, gazing out instead over the sapphire blue waves. He watches the little crests form, the white foam and the reflection of the bluebird sky on its surface, before the momentum picks up and the waves rush forward, crashing against the sand. He thinks about himself, floating on the surface for countless days, letting it wash over him and pull him wherever it wanted; he thinks of Doyoung, holding scrolls, and of the other immortals he had met. The ones who mingle with people, the ones who reject it altogether; the farmers and the daredevils; the ones who gathered immense power and influence, and the ones like him, who had done nothing.
“Donghyuck-ssi?”
He turns back to Jisung, Doyoung’s words ringing in his ears for some reason. “I don’t really care,” Doyoung had said to him. “We aren’t going to be friends.” It had been a few centuries, but now Donghyuck wonders, again…
“Jisung, let’s get you back to civilization first,” he declares resolutely. “There will be plenty of time to talk about all that later. There will be plenty of time for everything, from now on.”
He smiles at Jisung, giving him a reassuring pat on the arm. Jisung watches him with skepticism for a beat more, but then nods.
“Alright. I trust you.”
“But first,” Donghyuck pauses to take a swig of water. “You get to decide whether you’re dead to your family or not. Honestly I would recommend the former…”
— PURPLE —
“Hmm, it’s quite interesting all right.” Donghyuck squints.
“What do you mean ‘quite’ interesting?! That tower is massive! It’s a feat of human engineering!” Jisung prods at his side, eliciting a giggle and a smack. “I can’t believe you just called the Eiffel Tower ‘quite interesting’. It’s amazing! Oh, Felix is going to hear about this for sure.”
“Okay okay, it’s quite a big tower, I’ll give you that.”
They stand in the square under the soaring tower, craning their necks at the metallic structure that rises up, up, up into the sky. Two figures in a sea of muttering tourists, unnoticeable in their mediocrity. The afternoon light is starting to wane, weakening as the two ascend the tower, after a long, long line.
“I’m just saying, I have seen a lot of big things in my life, kiddo. The pyramids, the colosseum…”
“Jaehyun-ssi’s d–” A swift smack on the back cuts Jisung off, and he laughs, shoving Donghyuck back and drawing a few eyes from around. “Old man can’t be impressed anymore?”
“I simply have higher expectations now. Also, we have to go see the pyramids again, now that was insane.”
Finally, the elevator reaches the top of the tower, and they walk out onto the patio. The sky is a lovely shade of red, melting into purple opposite the setting sun; stray clouds dotting the sky seem to burn with the remaining embers of daylight, a last fiery orange before inevitably mellowing out to gray. With an electric BZZT , the tower lights up around the observers, wires coming alive with power.
“So beautiful,” Jisung murmurs, and Donghyuck has to agree. The yellow lights tinge the structure, transforming steel into gold – it contrasts with the dimming sky, a vivid violet brought out so well it looks like blackberry jam to him. They gaze out onto the buildings below, then up at the lit spire, then out towards the wide, wide sky.
“Hyung?”
“Yah?”
“Have you ever loved someone before?”
The question hangs in the air for a little bit, and Donghyuck breathes in, letting the sharp evening air bring back the memories. It’s… a loaded question.
“Why are you asking?”
“Well I mean…” Jisung turns a fraction, tipping his head subtly at the couple next to them, sucking each other’s faces off. “We are on the iconic tower of love.”
“Oh yeah, right.”
His name. Donghyuck hasn’t forgotten.
“Renjun…”
Jisung must’ve felt the shift, seeing the way his eyes unfocus. He stands silently, staring at that invisible point off in the distance too, patient. The elevator behind them comes up, more people chatter around them at the edge of the tower, but they don’t move, content to take their time, until Donghyuck finally sighs, his breath puffing out in the cool night air.
“It was a long time ago. But it was also a long time after I had become immortal too. The first rule of being immortal is to not get too attached to mortals, and I failed,” Donghyuck lets out a soft laugh. “I thought I had time with him, but I just didn’t.”
“What was he like?”
“He was…” Closing his eyes, he wills the image to appear again. He sees the green rolling meadow, remembers the feeling of scratchy fabric… he remembers the soft hair beneath his fingers, and the melody of the voice… but Renjun’s face–
Donghyuck’s breath catches. One thousand years and his heart still hurts when all his mind can recall is a fuzzy outline. He should’ve commissioned a painting, or even just scratched down a few lines on paper, but Renjun was so young, they couldn’t have known. They didn’t know anything.
“He was beautiful.”
Warm arms wrap around his hunched shoulders, a light touch, before awkwardly moving away.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
Shaking his head lightly, Donghyuck flashes Jisung a quick smile.
“It’s alright, like I said, it was a long time ago. Uh, I’ve met plenty of immortals since then, but it seems like either they weren’t interested or I wasn’t. But it’s possible, I’ve heard of couples that settle down after finding each other.”
“Ah, okay.”
“Yeah,” Donghyuck pats Jisung jokingly on the back, an attempt to shake the heavy mood that had settled on the boy. “That’s probably what I would recommend, if you are looking. But there’s no rush. Sample the options first, am I right?”
Jisung laughs, a smirk creeping onto his lips. “I already know that, hyung.”
“Good! I wonder who’s been teaching you!”
The sky had dipped from lavender to a deep aubergine by the time they were descending the tower, the horizon line brightened by the twinkling lights of the town. Each tiny speck on the ground is mirrored in the never ending sky.
But even stars fade eventually. Donghyuck had watched them fade from the night sky, the light from each faraway speck overtaken by new light. He’d read somewhere recently that the universe was expanding, and accelerating in its expansion, reaching a point where it became physically impossible to reach, leaving faster than the speed of light. Donghyuck had sat back, pondering this idea, wondering if, at some point, his memories of the past would cross over a similar threshold, leaving him completely as he moved forward with time. Or maybe they would still remain, simply looking duller compared to the new things happening in his life.
Amused, he had picked up a pen: Dear Doyoung hyung… He’d definitely find this interesting.
A particularly loud creak brings him back to the present, and he turns to his companion.
“I don’t regret falling in love. I never will. But Jisung?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t ever do what I did.”
“Okay.”
The lift reaches solid ground once more, and the duo turn to look back up at the tower one more time.
— GRAY —
For some time, Donghyuck doesn’t see Jisung again. It doesn’t worry him — the kid had come into his own, learned the tips and tricks, and was doing well in Korea, where he had seen him last. Occasionally, they wrote to each other, then that turned into calling with these new phone things, and nowadays, they would send each other emails, every year or so.
Well, Jisung would send an email, and Donghyuck would call him back.
“Hyung, you know all you have to do is hit reply right? And then you can type back your answer?” Jisung sighs into the phone.
“It’s just so much easier to call, Jisungie. I can just talk to you like this, instead of finding letters on a keyboard for ten minutes.”
“Donghyuck hyung… you’ll have to learn how to use all this technology at some point…”
“Hey,” Donghyuck chuckles into the receiver. “At least I’m not still sending real paper letters like Doyoung hyung is. Be grateful for that.”
For all his gripes, Donghyuck appreciated the advent of technology, something that progresses shockingly quickly before his eyes, transforming in a matter of decades into something unlike anything he’d seen in the past few centuries. It’s a lot, but suddenly, the world really does feel more connected, and he revels in the ability to pick up the phone and talk to bother Jisung whenever he wants to. A notebook sits on his desk in his room, the phone numbers of the immortal beings he meets once in a while handwritten in, along with descriptions:
> Park Jisung (Andy) - Born in Korea 1561 CE, we met on an island out in the middle of nowhere, likes tteokbokki and cute animals, currently in Korea, phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx, email: —[email protected]
> Kim Doyoung - Born in Northeast Asia around 4000 BCE, we met in Alexandria before the fall of the Roman Empire, likes to read, currently somewhere in North America, postal address: xxxxx
> Jung Jaehyun- Born in England around 1000 CE, we met in Europe like Magna Carta era, nice guy, currently in South Dakota, phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
> Uchinaga Aeri (Giselle) - Born in Japan around 20 CE, we met in Japan during her reign, really chill, mega rich now, currently in Japan, postal address: xxxxx
> Lee Felix (Yongbok) - Born in Australia around 1826 CE, we met in Singapore during the First Balkan War, adorable, chatty af, phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx, Instagram:, Facebook:, Snapchat:, Twitter:.....
> Keanu Reeves…
It’s because of all this convenience that he’s completely taken by surprise when Jisung shows up at his doorstep one day, suitcase in hand, and nothing else, not even an explanation. He simply asks if he could stay with Donghyuck for a bit, as if he hadn’t flown all the way across the world to America with no notice.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
Donghyuck had given Jisung a day to settle in, watching him mope around the house eating junk food and staring at the TV, before he had marched in front of the screen, arms crossed.
Jisung takes a sip of his beer. “Nothing,” he replies.
Donghyuck scoffs lightly.
“Nothing is wrong? So you just love me this much. Fly all the way over here just see your hyung, and nothing else.”
“Is that unbelievable?” Jisung counters, but he doesn’t even put his heart into it. “Maybe I just wanted to see an old friend.”
“Right.”
Jisung doesn’t look like he’s going to move, and embarrassingly, Donghyuck knows he can’t push that oaf off the couch, so he settles to plop down next to him, swiping his beer.
The TV spews nonsense; Donghyuck speaks up after a while, tired of the ads.
“Who is it?”
He doesn’t turn as he senses Jisung look over in alarm, then attempt, futilely, to recompose himself.
“What makes you think–”
“Please.” Donghyuck sets down his bottle on the glass coffee table. “You haven’t touched your phone all day. You haven’t shown me any pictures of Korea, and you’ve moped around like a sad sack. I believe you, nothing is wrong, but something still isn’t right. It’s so obvious you’re running away from something.”
“So, who is it?”
Jisung fidgets, the corners of his mouth twitching like he’s trying to find a loophole. Finally, he gives in.
“Just some new guy who moved near me.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. It’s just some guy.”
“Uh huh.”
Jisung picks up the remote, starts flicking at the channels, until Donghyuck swipes that away from him too, not before the channel changes to a white noise. Jisung stares at it all the same, and Donghyuck stares at Jisung, watching the way the static on the screen reflects into his pupils.
“I… I talked to him a couple of times… and I wanted to stay in Korea. I really did.” Jisung murmurs, eyes unmoving. Unable to look at Donghyuck. “But then I thought about… what you told me, back when we first met. I thought about the man you loved, and I–”
His head dips, chin touching his chest, as he deflates into himself.
“I didn’t want to go through that like you did.”
Jisung isn’t crying, but Donghyuck sees the way his Adam’s apple bobs, like a man who wants to but had the entirety of a 15 hour flight to practice holding the tears in. Like someone who had sobbed their eyes dry not too long ago.
He reaches out, moves over, folding Jisung into his chest tenderly, pressing his hair under his chin and brushing it soothingly. Jisung collapses into him, the true reason why he’d come to Donghyuck’s doorstep finally fulfilled. Comfort.
“I ran away hyung. I ran away from my home, from– from Mark.” He’s so quiet now, words meant only for the two souls there. “Mark… I’m sorry…”
Renjun, that pretty man from so, so long ago – he’s in Donghyuck’s mind again, like a dream. Fainter, more of a feeling than a face after half a millennium… He thought of that line in the book again, about the threshold beyond which everything is unreachable forever…
Holding Jisung against his heart, feeling the silent tears finally start soaking through his shirt, he shakes Renjun out of his mind. He pulls the boy’s chin up to look into his teary eyes, watches as salt water drips from his lashes to trace down his cheeks. He pulls his sleeve down his arm and wipes it gently away.
“Yah, Jisungie, I’ll hold you as long as you need me too. I’ll hold you forever, if that’s what it takes to hurt a little less.” Another tear escapes, and he catches it. “I mean it. Just stay here with me.”
The TV shimmers, static abyss flickering with no rhyme or reason, continuing as long as the power remains on. Donghyuck clicks it off, leaving nothing but two people in its dark reflection.
“Hyung will take care of you.”
— PINK —
Donghyuck tries to haggle with the vendor for all of twenty seconds before Jisung pulls him away from the towering rack of candied fruit, yanking at his collar forcefully.
“Hyung! You already ate two of those in the last hour!” Jisung huffs, crunching into his first one, still half-uneaten. “You’ll have a heart attack or something.”
“I will not! It’ll be fineeee.” He barely makes it two steps towards a yakisoba stand when Jisung snaps the parasol shut, bringing it down in front of him like a gate.
“No more snacks until after we walk through the garden, like we came here for!”
“You’re never like this to Doyoung hyung!” Donghyuck protests, pointing an angry finger at the man beside him, who is currently stuffing a shocking amount of cotton candy into his mouth.
“Hey, hey,” Doyoung glares over his specs. A little bit of cotton candy sticks to the edge of his mouth, unnoticed. “I don’t have to be here, Hyuck. I’m only here because you lot begged me.”
Felix grins from the other side of Jisung, poking his blond head around to smirk at his elders, sensing drama.
Donghyuck fires back. “I did not beg you! We both know you would be here anyway, since Aeri practically commanded us to be here.”
Right on queue, the crowd parts like an ocean around a woman in a kimono of pink silk and golden flower embroidery. She arches an eyebrow at the bickering men, tapping a delicate shoe.
“You’re late.”
“Sorry, Giselle!” Felix chirps back cheerfully. He runs up to give her a hug, while the rest of them awkwardly half-wave, half-bow in the face of a former empress.
The cherry blossoms are spectacular, as usual. Tree boughs, almost a deep magenta hue, are speckled by the buds, each faint pink petal thinner than paper, so delicate that the barest kiss of wind sends them floating gently down to land on Jisung’s umbrella. He takes another bite as they stroll, pointedly ignoring Donghyuck’s puppy eyes.
“My dearest dongsaeng… you’re eating so slowly…”
“Hyung, look at the flowers, jeez, and stop drooling!”
He feels Donghyuck link their arms, looping a silk sleeve over his own, but it’s a trap. Donghyuck tugs, and he lunges at the apple like a hungry carp; only by virtue of Jisung’s extra inches on him is he able to save his snack.
“Come on!”
The falling blossoms frame Donghyuck’s face beautifully, sticking to his soft hair and rolling off of his shoulders. He clasps his hands together, and pouts, lower lip almost catching another floating petal, and it makes Jisung laugh.
“Oh, alright. Fine. But I’m your favorite dongsaeng, you said it already.”
“Thank you thank you, of course, I’m a man of my word,” Donghyuck talks fast, barely getting the words out before sinking his teeth into the candied fruit, cleaning it up in seconds. His cheeks bulge as he munches happily.
“It’s nice being here with everyone,” Jisung says, glancing up ahead to their friends, led by Aeri and her friends, Felix listening intently to whatever Doyoung is preaching about. “We should do this more often, go to more places…”
“It’s nice being here with you.”
“Hyung, you are with me every day, it’s been y–”
Donghyuck lunges again, and this time Jisung is too slow to avoid the peck that lands square on his cheek. He turns, scandalized, face already reddening.
“Hyung we are in public! ” He whisper-shouts, eyes flicking towards a smug Felix catching his gaze.
“Jisung!” Donghyuck mimics, clinging to his arm even tighter. “So what! ”
“You don’t remember if this country has legalized gay people or if we will get arrested, you don’t even remember what year it is!”
“What’s a little jail for a kiss from you?”
Jisung’s face reddens even deeper, but this time, when Donghyuck leans in, he doesn’t move away. He hides their faces behind the parasol, and kisses Donghyuck back.