Work Text:
⅋
All stories are the same story, broken up into pieces. Someone lives. Someone dies. Someone loves. Someone loses. The universe starts in an explosion, something that was nothing becoming everything, and ends in the opposite way— in cold, in stillness, and in black. That is the only story there is. The only beginning and the only end. Everything else is just parts. Even this.
This is not a big part, not the birth of stars or the collision of galaxies. It is not even a big part of a small part, not the fall of an empire or the first steps on the moon. There is no rage, or violence, or terror. It will not go recorded in the histories of men, and will not be mourned when those histories crumble, becoming dust alongside the systems that created them. It is not an important part, not in the grand scheme of everything else.
But maybe, somewhere, in the heart of it, there is love. The smallest piece there is. A fraction of a story that is too big to tell, cut down to one corner of the universe, and two sets of hands.
It goes a little something like this:
⅋
“Hyung, tell me a story.”
“What?”
“I’m bored. Tell me a story.”
“Once upon a time there was a brat. And his name was— ”
“No— Not like that. Tell me a real story. Something true.”
“All stories are true stories.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I do?”
“Please?”
”Okay. Listen close.”
⅋
Once upon a time there was a bookstore.
It was an ordinary bookstore, tucked into a side street and bracketed on both sides by restaurants. One of a hundred stores just like it in that city of a thousand times ten thousand souls.
On one side of the bookstore there was a barbeque place that served until late at night, and on the other a fried chicken joint that was one of a handful of fronts for a popular chain. That meant, inside the bookstore, it always smelled a little like oil, and meat, and paper.
The grease didn’t permeate the bookstore, though. Didn’t sink into its pages or stain its careful displays. It was more of a reminder, while you were inside, that this place was still connected to the outside world. Not a figment of your imagination. Fragile, and faulty, and real.
The bookstore wasn’t a modern establishment, no cool white furniture or glossy paperbacks shining under fluorescent light. It was an older store, all dust and secondhand shelves painted a hundred different shades. There was a carpet on the floor, stretching wall-to-wall, but nobody was quite sure of its colour, under the pattern of feet, and mud, and time. It was a small space, almost claustrophobic, unless you knew where to stand.
Somehow, everyone who came inside managed to avoid the worst of the cramped corners, and the looming stacks. That was the kind of place that the bookstore was. Almost dangerous, but not at all.
And at the heart of the bookstore was the bookseller. He wasn’t the only one who worked in the bookstore, not even close, but for the purposes of this story, he was the only one that mattered.
⅋
“Ow, hey, stop, don't pinch me.”
“Hyung is going to hate that you said that. I’m gonna tell him.”
“Go ahead, he loves me more.”
“No way.”
“Do you want to hear the story, or not?”
“Sorry.”
⅋
There were other employees, and all of them mattered, in their own way.
One of them worked exclusively in the back room, stocking and unstocking shelves. Only on days when the trucks came in, packed to the brim with boxes and fairytales. Sometimes, he would leave a recommendation of his own, on the cramped desk where the computer was, an answer to a question that the bookseller never asked.
The other worked whenever the bookseller didn’t, late nights and weekends. Customers were always disappointed to see him, and he knew it as well as he knew anything else. It’s not that this other employee wasn’t good at his job, because he was knowledgeable and kind, and had a softness, especially with children, that spoke of a gentle heart. In any other bookstore, in any other city, at any other moment in time, the second employee would be beloved.
But this wasn’t any other bookstore, so customers got annoyed when the bookseller was away from the shop too long, and always took it out on the other employee.
This was because the bookseller had a bit of a reputation. Not a large one, no, nor a popular one. But a reputation enough that people would come to the bookstore just to talk to the bookseller. You see, people believed that the bookseller could tell the future, or the past. That the bookseller could answer any question you had, give you a book as the answer. The other employee had no such gift.
That meant, for the most part, it was just the bookseller, and the books, and the thickness of garlic in the air. Things were easier that way.
The most common question was Why? Asked by a thousand different kinds of people, all of them the same. The bookseller would smile at them, contemplate them for a moment, and then, judging by the colour of their shoes, hand them a bible, or the collected works of Stephen Hawking, or The Little Prince.
One afternoon, he recommended Pride and Prejudice to a young woman who needed to lose herself, for a while, and Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982, to another who was ready to tear the whole world down with nothing but her fingernails, but just needed a little push.
And even though they arrived separately, the two young women left together, fingers laced and smiling, comparing the cover art on the books in their hands.
As the door softly latched shut behind them, another customer stepped into the bookstore. The customer was a boy, but didn’t look like a boy, not until the bookseller looked very closely at the way he held his shoulders.
⅋
“I looked like what now?”
“Like a lost little puppy you were so cute.”
“I was literally like twenty-two.”
“The biggest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t like this story anymore, tell me a different one.”
“How about an interlude instead?”
“Fine.”
⅋
One evening, just as the bookseller was pulling down the curtains over the front window, the streetlights outside making them glow, an old woman walked into the bookstore. She had caverns under her eyes and when she approached the bookseller, she asked if he had anything that he could recommend on the subject of grief.
The bookseller nodded, and led the old woman to the back of the store, where there were three comfortable chairs, angled just right to be private, but not so much as to be unfriendly. He asked her to wait, for just a moment, to give him some time to dig out the right volumes. These things take time, you see.
The old woman with the stone face agreed, and settled herself into the furthest of the comfortable chairs, the one whose angle was easiest to make unfriendly. She did not change the angle, but simply sat in it and stared into the dark stacks of books lining the shelves of the bookstore.
There wasn’t much light in the bookstore, just the glow of the side lamps on the tables beside the chairs, and the puddles on the floor from the streetlamps outside, slipping in through half-closed curtains. The bookseller had been getting ready to lock up, of course, and had already turned off everything else. But it didn’t feel right to banish the shadows, so the bookseller kept it as it was.
When he returned to the corner with the chairs, the bookseller held the appropriate book in one hand, and a delicate china cup of tea in the other. He offered them both to the old woman with mountains as memories and she reached for the teacup first.
Placing the book onto the table between them, the bookseller moved the closest chair so that its angle was no longer private but rather present. He sat and grabbed one of her dust-paper hands. They were silent for a long time, the old woman sipping her tea as the light from the lamp refracted unimaginable colours through its stained-glass shade, until, eventually, cup empty, she started to speak.
Later, the old woman with canyons as tear tracks left the store with a small smile on her face and a copy of The White Book under her arm. The bookseller watched her go, a damp handkerchief tucked into the teacup on the table beside him.
Outside the store she paused, silhouetted through the curtains and a shadow in the puddles on the floor. To this day, the bookseller likes to think that she said thank you, in her own way, to the sign in the window and all the shelves inside. But, he doesn’t know, because he couldn’t hear her. Maybe she didn’t say anything at all.
She didn’t linger for long, and soon she was out of sight completely.
After locking the door, the bookseller turned off all the lights, even the ones on the tables, fully closed the curtains, and sat in one of the comfortable chairs at the back of the room, angled just right to be private, but not so much as to be unfriendly, for a very, very, long time.
⅋
“You never told me about that.”
“Was never the right time, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She was lovely and she needed it. I didn’t mind.”
“Did she ever come back?”
“No.”
⅋
The bookstore didn’t get a lot of repeat customers. Most people only had one question, in their heart of hearts, and most of those were easily answered. Even people who came into the bookstore without knowing what it was only came once. Almost like the bookstore was a place out of time, or out of reality, that was only remembered when needed.
Unless you had to turn up for a shift, of course.
But still, somehow, the boy who wasn’t a boy kept coming back. His question was simple, different but not unique, and somehow, the bookseller found it impossible to answer. Still, he tried.
“Back again?” The bookseller would say, to the boy who was a man, but didn’t know it yet. He would nod, eyes downcast, and ask for another recommendation. Another answer to a question, always the same.
Who am I?
The bookseller had already tried all the classics, the stalwart bastions of coming-of-age and finding yourself. Brontë and Salinger, Hesse and Ishiguro. None of them seemed to work because the boy kept coming back into the bookstore and shaking his head and saying, “No, that’s not right. Not the one.”
So, the bookseller kept pulling books, and the boy kept coming back. Sometimes it was days between visits, sometimes weeks. On one particular occasion, it was barely an hour before the boy stormed back into the bookstore and slammed his new purchase down on the store’s counter, demanding an immediate refund. As the bookseller processed the return, the boy had alternated between cursing and laughing a high, lilting laugh, looking the bookseller directly in the face like he expected the bookseller to be in on the joke, too.
The bookseller didn’t recommend any more self-help books after that.
⅋
“Wait, you really weren’t joking?”
“Not exactly my finest hour, I’ll admit.”
“I read every single stupid book you gave me, which you should know by now is saying something, and you thought I needed help forming effective habits?”
“I was really out of ideas.”
“I can’t believe you thought ‘hey this guy needs self-help that’s the answer’ before you thought ‘hey maybe this guy is gay and also in love with me.’”
“We’re getting to that bit. Shush.”
“Unreal.”
⅋
One afternoon, the boy who wanted so desperately to keep being a boy, but was already a man, came into the bookstore with a friend. The friend was a man, only sometimes, but never a boy. As he watched them wander around the store, appearing and disappearing behind the stacks, something clicked in the bookseller’s head. There was a new release, something making waves in local circles, set on a hill only a few blocks down from the bookstore. That was going to be the next recommendation. A different kind of answer.
By the time the boy and his friend finally made their way to the front of the bookstore, the bookseller already had the newest answer all wrapped up. At the boy’s questioning look, all the bookseller said was, “It’s called Love in the Big City . You might like it.”
The boy took it with a nod and a small smile as his friend slid a slim volume of locally written poetry across the counter and said, “I pick my own books, thanks.”
The next time the boy returned to the bookstore he looked somehow smaller than he ever had, and at the same time infinitely tall. He didn’t bother to pause and look at the new releases, like he normally did, just walked straight up to the bookseller and said, “Another one like that. Do you have anything else like that?”
And the bookseller, who had had a feeling that this was going to happen, pulled out the next recommendation from the drawer under the register and slid it towards the boy. “This one is a little sad,” warned the bookseller as the boy’s hands reached to grab it. “But the descriptions of Italy are beautiful.”
The boy had smiled, and murmured something that the bookseller didn’t hear before he paid and made his careful way out of the bookstore, still tall but somehow faded, like he had come to accept something he hadn’t wanted to be true. The bookseller tried not to think about what that could mean.
On another day, weeks later, the boy who dreamed of staying a boy forever, but lacked the magic, came into the bookstore with two friends. Rather, the friend who was a woman, only sometimes, but never a girl, was with him as she often was, but hand-in-hand with hers was a new face. The new face was a man, who was a man, except for when he laughed. When he laughed, really laughed, and the bookseller only saw it happen once, he was a boy and as free as the sky.
And on that day, the boy’s question changed.
Who am I when I am alone?
“They’re in love,” the boy said, one elbow on the counter as he leaned back to watch them turn another corner. Their voices whispered through the shelves, too soft to be clear under the hum of the overhead fan but loud enough that the entire bookstore rang with the joy of them. Even the dust had seemed to sparkle, just a little, in their wake.
The boy had a new book in his hands, something he had chosen for himself from a section of the bookstore that the bookseller rarely visited. It was a newer release with a fresh cover, a cartoon-flat young woman holding out a hand to a similarly styled man as he walked away. One of the boy’s thumbs, and the bookseller was certain that he was doing it on purpose, was rubbing back and forth over the blurb under the title that promised fairytale romance.
“I didn’t think that was allowed,” the boy said suddenly and when the bookseller looked up to meet his eyes, he seemed to be the oldest person in the room. His eyes darted away, back towards the shelves and his friends as he continued, saying, “Happy endings. I didn’t think that was allowed, for people like me. None of the books you’ve given me had them. But I think they will be— happy. I didn’t know that was an option.”
“People like us,” the bookseller replied in a mirrored small voice. “You’re right, they don’t write very many stories with happy endings about people like us.”
The bookstore shifted again, in that moment. Not that anything actually changed, but it was like all the colours in the room had gotten just slightly brighter, the private chairs more friendly. The customer, who had seemed to finally be tipping over the edge into realization, smiled and echoed, “People like us.”
They fell into silence, or the closest thing to silence under the beat of the fan and the windchime lilt of the woman’s laugh. But it was warm and not uncomfortable, the quiet of being known and still welcome. A moment of peace in that endlessly moving city where things were sometimes impossible.
It didn’t last very long, the bookseller moving around the counter until he stood directly in front of the customer, paused, and eventually opened his mouth to speak.
“Hey— ” The bookseller asked, to the man who was a man but only just starting to figure out how, “Would you like to get coffee with me?
⅋
“Oh my God, you’re such a liar!”
“I thought this was my story.”
“You didn’t ask me out, I asked you out!”
“So?”
“So I had such a huge crush on you that was why I was always stopping by, not some self-discovery mission! I just wanted to get in your pants!”
“I seem to remember an awful lot of queer literature for someone who wasn’t having a crisis.”
“I needed you to know I was gay! And you were the one who gave me all the recommendations! I thought we were flirting!”
“What— Don’t just hum at me! We were flirting!”
“If you say so.”
“I can’t believe you’re trying to turn our cute dating story into some kind of circlejerk about identity.”
“That is not what I’m doing.”
“That is exactly what you’re doing, and you’re lying about who made the first move. You’re the worst.”
“You’re still here though.”
“Every single day I ask myself why.”
⅋
Things changed after that. A vase of fresh flowers on the counter beside the cash register, a new display by the door, all bright colours and promises. The bookseller changed too, and even the customers noticed it, remarking on his grin and the way he had taken to singing under his breath as he swept between the aisles.
Not that that did much to help with the carpet, but still, the bookseller sang.
At the end of every day, as the bookseller pulled the curtains closed and turned off all the lights, the bell above the door would chime. With the chairs in their right places and the lampshades sparkling, the bookseller would pull on his coat, grab a book from the display, and remind the person at the door that if he’s going to hover there, the customers are going to think that the store was still open for business.
And the man who was a man, and could finally look into a mirror and say it, would laugh, and take the bookseller’s hand, and together they would lock the front door, turn, and step into the barbeque place that served until late at night.
Inside the restaurant, feet knocking and between bright smiles, they would talk about the world outside the bookstore, and every precious thing it held, all of their questions answered.
⅋
“You’re so cheesy.”
“You love it.”
“I do. Guess what else I love.”
“No. Oh my God stop. If you say what I think you’re about to say I will break up with you.”
“I love you, hyung.”
“And I’m the cheesy one?”
“Say it back.”
“Love you too, Jungkook-ah. So much.”
“Thank you.”
“...Brat.”