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1.
cats have 9 lives, and there must be a reason why cats (and not any other animal) have 9 lives. are cats here to save the day, 8 lives they can sacrifice to save others? oh, but cats are self-centered, selfish things. they won't give someone or something else the time of day. save their own skins before others'. if cats' destinies and reason for their 9 lives were to spend 8 being heroes, you'd think they'd be built bigger. anyway, sunggyu thinks if cats were meant for heroics, they'd need more than 9 lives.
1 life is already difficult enough to live, let alone 9. it's not like cats asked to be blessed with agile limbs, dexterity, grace, intelligence, et cetera, et cetera. they didn't ask to be treated like Gods. they just happen to be born with good fortune. no one should condescend the lazy lifestyles cats prefer to lead.
there's this saying by humans – you only live once. and sunggyu remembers that, takes that into account, and uses it to justify his way of lazing about on a soft bed within a high-rise apartment.
you only live once, so he throws away his shame and lets his keepers scratch him between his ears, so he purrs for them and nuzzles their knees.
you only live once, so he overturns baskets full of dirty laundry, and bites the socks till there are holes, and scratches the leather sofa till the stuffing leaks.
you only live once, and his keepers aren't home, so he lunges himself on an unfamiliar person wearing a ski mask and black clothes and looking tacky-as-hell, as if he learned how to be a robber from a 60s cartoon, and he scratches the man's face, till the man is bleeding and screaming and throwing sunggyu to the floor and beating him to death with a softball bat.
you only live once, thank God that only applies to humans. because – remember – cats have 9 lives.
2.
in sunggyu's 2nd life, he's a human boy. he remembers he was a cat, though – he remembers his cat life, but at the same time he knows he shouldn't lick himself whenever he wants, and he shouldn't purr when people pat his head. he knows he's 3 years old, and the people sitting in front of him in this powder-blue car are his parents. and 'parents' are kind of like his keepers. he knows he's a young boy and yet believes he has lived a four-legged, yellow-eyed, pointy-eared life before. he doesn't just believe it- he knows it, feels itchy with feline tendencies.
sunggyu's mother turns around in her seat to smile at him, tells him his ice cream is going to melt, which he registers faintly. he's expected to lick the ice cream cone in his hand, which he does with familiarity, and then he beams at his mother. her smile widens and she turns back around to face the road. sunggyu's father starts singing a song, the theme song to sunggyu's favourite cartoon. sunggyu doesn't know the lyrics so he sings 'la la la' along.
it's a good life. it's not a cat's life, but it's a good life. sunggyu's parents love him and he loves them back. his father gives him piggy-back rides, and his mother cooks delicious food. he doesn't have to do much, just obeying his parents seems to make them delighted.
and later in sunggyu's life, he gets to make friends at school. and his friends are fun. they play baseball, they play cards, they ride around in their bikes and laugh at fart jokes together. a cat's life could get lonely sometimes, but a human life is never lonely. and slowly, sunggyu loses touch of his cat life, forgetting he was a cat but retaining his memories as one till it starts to feel weird that he knows what it's like to be a cat.
they're 9 years old when they first meet. sunggyu immediately knows he wants woohyun to be his best friend. they meet at the bike park, and a boy pushes sunggyu off his bike. another boy comes over and tells the bully to back off. sunggyu's knees are scraped and his helmet is askew from falling off his bike. but he's grinning, a gap in his teeth, and he tells woohyun, “it's okay.”
woohyun has messy hair and brown skin and and a dirt-streaked t-shirt. his knuckles tighten around the handlebars of sunggyu's bike when sunggyu smiles at him, and he starts to feel bad for pushing him off his bike when sunggyu teaches him how to ride it. the other boy hovers next to them, piping in helpful tips but woohyun only wants sunggyu to stick around.
“what if i fall?” woohyun asks.
sunggyu takes his helmet off and puts it on woohyun's head, helps woohyun buckle it under his chin. “you've just got to get back on your feet. you know, like a cat.” and he points to the lion cartoon on woohyun's t-shirt.
woohyun laughs. “lions aren't cats.”
“sure they are.” sunggyu insists. “we're from the same family.”
and woohyun doesn't know what that means. he starts riding, but falls over in the next 9 seconds. the boy with them laughs, and both him and sunggyu help woohyun up. then woohyun gives him a great big grin, like he enjoyed the fall. and sunggyu resists the urge to nuzzle his cheek, and touch his nose to woohyun's.
they're 10 years old, they're best friends, and they're inseparable. they drive their bikes out on the city streets, wind whipping their faces, eager about the upcoming softball game with the neighbouring school, eager about getting popsicles from 7-11, eager about everything because they're young and energetic and know no matter what, they're going to be standing side-by-side even 90 years from now.
their 90-year-dreams were crushed by a car speeding at 90 miles per hour.
3.
third time's the charm, sunggyu is a 10-year-old boy living in an apartment complex in the run-down part of town. he compares it to the neighbourhood in his last life, and he feels like crying. there's no park, no ice cream, and no woohyun. his father comes back at 5 in the morning, and his mother goes out when his father comes back. when they have even a second together, they're either shouting or his father is yanking at his mother's hair. sunggyu has a brother 2 years younger than him, and they stick together. they go to the (only) swing set downstairs and he pushes sungjong on it until it breaks one day. the manager of the apartment complex uses repair fees to extort some money from their family, and their father beat them for it.
when sunggyu goes to bed at night, he lays there and thinks about the family in his last life. his tears wet the blanket he hides under, and his brother can hear him cry. sungjong reaches out for sunggyu's hand under the blanket and sunggyu thinks, my brother makes all of this worth it.
this carries on for 3 years, until sunggyu's mother finally decides she's had enough. she grabs their things and shoves them in bags. she drags sunggyu and sungjong into a taxi and they drive to another city. when the door of their new apartment opens, a lady wearing just her bra and underwear, cigarette between her lips, saggy skin and smudged mascara greets them. she smells like roses and smiles at the children before giving their mother a hug. she carries sungjong in and holds sunggyu's hand, and introduces them to a boy sunggyu hasn't forgotten.
“this is woohyun.” she says. “woohyun, be nice to them.”
woohyun's hair has been recently buzzed, he has a faint scar above his left eyebrow, he has all his teeth and he has dirt under his fingernails. he's wearing a t-shirt with a biker on it, and takes sunggyu's hand immediately.
“i know you.” woohyun mumbles through a mouth full of foam from the toothpaste when they're brushing their teeth that night. only the thudding footsteps can be heard throughout the apartment as sunggyu stares at woohyun. and then woohyun rinses his mouth and says, “i said, i like you.” he grins and helps sunggyu fill his cup with water.
at 17-years-old, sunggyu kisses woohyun for the first time. they're both shy and giggly, and sunggyu keeps touching his nose to woohyun's nose. they don't know what they're doing, so they kiss one more time and then part when they hear footsteps coming towards their row of lockers. it's sungjong and sungyeol (who was the extra boy from sunggyu's last life, the boy who was with them when he met woohyun for the first time), and they all go for ice cream together.
sunggyu can't stop thinking about the kiss, about how in love he is with woohyun, this must be love, and this must be it. this must be why he had 9 lives, he’s meant to meet and love woohyun, keep crossing worlds and universes and life lines to be with woohyun. he's complete now. this is it, and this will be the life he's going to keep.
and later when they reach home, sunggyu kisses him one more time.
and even later into the night, the father sunggyu hasn't seen for 4 years finds them and tries to take sunggyu and sungjong away. sungjong's hand clasps tight around sunggyu's, and their father tries to yank them apart. sunggyu tries to punch his father, but his father's fist is faster. and then woohyun is in the room, woohyun is in front of him, woohyun is throwing himself at sunggyu's father. and then woohyun is flying backwards, woohyun is next to him, and woohyun's head is bleeding from hitting the wall. his eyes are closed and he doesn't ever wake up.
at 18-years-old, sunggyu and his brother are safe from his father after the latter got convicted for assaulting woohyun. sunggyu had insisted it was murder, but his tears wasn't enough evidence that there was an intention behind the assault. it's a stupid case. and his mother weeps for him, sungjong weeps for him, sungyeol is there trying to hold tears in, as woohyun's body is burned to ashes. woohyun's mother, the lady who smelled like roses, can't even stand up right, and yet all of them are more sympathetic towards sunggyu, who cries like he's using tears from all his lifetimes.
i'll get over it, i'm only 19, is what sunggyu tells everyone, including himself, a year later. he tries to smile at them, comforts woohyun's mother and she tells him, “you and woohyun- you two were really- you know?” something sunggyu will get over it, he's sure. he goes to school, he hangs out with friends, he comes home to sungjong, he kisses his mother on the forehead, he goes into the bathroom.
and he never comes back out.
4.
for someone who had been a cat his past life, it's rather ironic that sunggyu is now a dog. a 19-year-old dog is a dog on his deathbed. he's not a big dog, he's a tiny dog with long white hair and floppy ears and eyes that can barely open any more. woohyun's hand keeps going through his hair and he loves it, makes a small satisfied growling sound every time woohyun's warm hand touches him. he's saying something, but sunggyu can't make it out. it doesn't matter.
“you okay, boy?” is what woohyun is saying. “you okay?”
sunggyu doesn't register. he's thinking it's nice, it's warm, and he doesn't mind being a dog if it means having woohyun's hand in his hair every day.
“we'll see each other again.” is the last thing sunggyu hears.
5.
sunggyu is a 19-year-old boy currently not in college. he's a- he's a- he's a rockstar. yeah, he plays gigs at clubs and screams into microphones a lot and he makes people dance and head-bang and make out. it's not a career his mother is proud of, she wouldn't even call it a career; and he sleeps in the clubs he played at, but it's a livable lifestyle. he makes uh, enough. and- and he gets to see woohyun. woohyun, who's at every one of sunggyu's show; woohyun, who buys sunggyu and his band drinks every time; woohyun, who has a boyfriend named sungyeol.
sunggyu's younger brother in this life is also sungjong. they're destined, sunggyu thinks, to be brothers, just like how he and woohyun are destined to be together. they're not together-together right at the moment, but they will be, someday, if sunggyu is meant to live out this life.
sungyeol is great, he's a friend to both sunggyu and sungjong, and he treats woohyun really nice. he'd be perfect if he didn't have all these gangster-ties. he makes money in some dirty way, doesn't tell but he doesn't need to for sunggyu to know. anyway, it's not good, the people sungyeol hangs out with. the only consolation is that he doesn't bring woohyun into any of his shit. woohyun knows, of course, he's not stupid. whenever he tries to bring it up, sungyeol shushes him. but sungyeol isn't a bad guy, he's a good guy.
so it's like that – they meet up the clubs, sunggyu plays the show with his band, they all go for drinks, sunggyu takes sungjong home and he watches sungyeol take woohyun home. it's like this – woohyun's gaze never lingers, woohyun's touch never lingers, woohyun's grin shines the brightest for sungyeol. in this life line, he doesn't love sunggyu. the person he loves is sungyeol. but keeping to the spirit of his past lives, sunggyu is completely can't-take-my-eyes-off-you in love with woohyun still.
it's after 3 months of living that sunggyu realises that maybe this is how it should be instead. in his past lives, he kept losing woohyun because he had woohyun. in this universe, the dynamics are different, but he still gets to be by woohyun's side. that's all he ever wants, isn't it? just to be by his side, they're still together. and if woohyun loving sungyeol instead of sunggyu is how sunggyu doesn't die, then this is it. it's set – it doesn't matter who woohyun is in love with. and sunggyu can deal with that.
sunggyu deals with it by writing songs, painful songs about one-sided love, about heartbreak and fate. he deals with it by agreeing to let woohyun sing for the band a couple of shows when woohyun asked, till woohyun kind of sort of becomes a fixed member of the band. he deals with it by watching the back of woohyun's head, memorizing the color of woohyun's brown hair in every change of the strobe lights, and remembering how woohyun's hair was once buzzed, or how woohyun had run his hand through sunggyu's hair. um, he's dealing with it.
sunggyu deals with it until he's 23-years-old, and his band just got signed on to a label, and woohyun is officially the front man and lead singer of the band. they celebrate till they get drunk, and sungyeol is kissing woohyun, woohyun is kissing back, sunggyu is not in the mood to watch. sungjong is drunk, so sunggyu says we're going to go now. and woohyun tries to help sunggyu with sungjong. they're outside the club, each of sungjong's arms over their shoulders as they try to hold him up. and sunggyu meets woohyun under sungjong's chin, their backs bent, cheeks red, breaths warm.
i love you, sunggyu almost says. he would've said it if he wasn't hit in the back of his head by a softball bat. and he thinks about his first life, as a cat and the stupid robber that broke in to his master's house. he's on his knees, sungjong is flat on his face, woohyun is also flat on his face and the back of his head is bleeding. sunggyu is on his feet, fists at the ready, and he remembers he had an abusive father once whose arms were longer and fists were faster. sunggyu is faster now, taller and older. his fist meets their attacker's jaw. sungyeol is out now, and the one they want is sungyeol. he's shouting at them, screaming at woohyun to run. woohyun is trying to get sungjong up. and sunggyu – sunggyu dives in front of the knife for sungyeol.
because if he doesn't get to live this life, he hopes at least woohyun gets to live it happily.
6.
it's sunggyu's sixth life and he's not sure it matters any more. it seems hopeless to hope for a long life with woohyun. and this life – his sixth one – well, this is complete bullshit.
there's a loud “fuck ants!” and a hand comes flying, and sunggyu is dead within seconds.
7.
sunggyu missed this, being a cat. he's too old to jump around and climb walls any more. but he's not too old to like being patted and scratched behind the ears. his keeper is a lady almost as old as he is. she sits in a wheelchair, smokes cigarettes when no one is looking, has a blanket over her knees, and smells like roses. sunggyu will climb into her lap, over her blanket, and she'll wheel them out to the park and she'll smoke her cigarettes slowly, hand patting his head. sunggyu will sleep for as long as he wants, until the lady's son comes and picks him up from her lap.
the son has warm hands, secure under his arm pits. sunggyu never struggles with the boy, lets himself get carried readily. he's cradled in the pair of arms, rocked like a baby. he makes croaking mewls, nuzzles the arms holding him.
“he's gonna die before you.” the boy says.
sunggyu's keeper replies, “haven't you heard? cats have nine lives.”
8.
at this point, does age even matter? sunggyu is old enough to want to kiss woohyun all the damn time, and young enough to be reckless about it. they're public figures, young idols always visible in the public eye. young girls love them, some boys like them, and their juniors look up to them. their music is always good, choreography always on point, live performances always flawless. they're at the top, the peak of their career, nothing can touch infinite, nothing can break them apart.
and sunggyu loves it. he goes to sleep praying that this is the one, the very last life. he's going to live this one to the fullest, till he's happy and when he dies, he'll enter nirvana. this is the life.
sunggyu's team is great, sungjong (still a brother, just without blood relations) is part of the team, sungyeol is part of the team, and 3 more boys who are all fun and loyal and great. they get along well, they laugh at the same jokes, they tease one another and cook for one another and love one another.
and the best part is woohyun. woohyun, woohyun, woohyun. all the 9-lives business has always been about woohyun. and finally, sunggyu is in a team called infinite with woohyun. their time together is infinite, they'll be together till sunggyu dies, which hopefully won't be soon. and in this timeline, this universe, this lifeline, the stars are all aligned, woohyun loves sunggyu back.
they hug on stage, they giggle on stage, they kiss on stage. infinite makes jokes that the two of them should just go off and get married and the team will still function well as a 5-member machine. infinite makes grossed-out faces when sunggyu and woohyun flirt with each other during radio programmes or tv programmes. infinite is in love with the way sunggyu and woohyun are in love. and the best part – so does everyone else. literally, tv stations are clamouring to invite infinite to their shows just so they can be the first to hear about sunggyu and woohyun's 'fresh, hot romance'; publicists keep praising them about their 'publicity stunt' and fans? fans fucking love it, have been begging for infinite f since 2010.
it's honestly a fucking paradise. this is the life sunggyu wants to keep forever. and in the van, heading back to the house, sunggyu and woohyun at the back with howon leaned away and sleeping next to them, sunggyu takes woohyun's hand, laces their fingers together. and he's about to ask woohyun to marry him, when the driver suddenly cusses and the van screeches a sharp turn, overturns- woohyun's hand squeezes sunggyu's tighter, there's screaming in the van, their eyes meet and woohyun says, “yes.”
then it goes to black.
9.
the van rolls over a pothole and jolts sunggyu awake. woohyun is next to him, their arms are pressed skin-tight against each other, he checks on sunggyu, giving him a small comforting smile. the rest of the team is sleeping soundly, howon's head is leaning against the window for support.
the crash was a dream, sunggyu thinks in relief as he laces his fingers back together with woohyun's. woohyun's smile widens and sunggyu remembers the first time he saw that smile on 9-year-old woohyun's face. the woohyun who pushed him off a bike. the woohyun who he kissed for the first time. the woohyun he loved and didn't love him back. he thinks about all of them and- they're all the same woohyun, always smiling, always there, always holding his hand.
“i traveled universes for you,” sunggyu whispers as their foreheads touch. he touches his nose to woohyun's cheek. “i crossed worlds, timelines and lifetimes just to find you.”
sunggyu turns his head to kiss woohyun, but woohyun turns away so his lips brush woohyun's cheek.
“not here. the rest could be awake, and manager-hyung is watching.”
oh. sunggyu knew it was too good to be true. this is the timeline that should exist, he knows now. they have to sneak around, and only touch fingertips, and flirt for the sake of fanservice. their only private moments are in secrecy, in a shared room, in shared whispers. oh. this is it.
and then woohyun's lips touch sunggyu's neck, and he's warm. “i hope this is the best universe so far.”
and it is.
- fin -