Archive of Our Own

Kim Seokjin—

You are the face of a losing rebellion.

Kim Namjoon doesn’t know how to drive.

He would take the subway where the railcar is lined with a long LED screen of Kim Seokjin’s newest rom-com that is set to hit the cinemas in a week or so. Sometimes, the bus would be a more pragmatic option where Kim Seokjin’s ramen advertisements are plastered behind every seat, a perfect set of teeth with a red noodle packet hoisted beside a small face. Sometimes he would walk along the great intersections of Seoul and hear Kim Seokjin waxing poetry about a lemon-flavored cider.

Today, the streets of Seoul seem to be unable to stomach the sheer sight of Kim Seokjin holding a perfume brand beside the bus stop benches.

“Actor Kim Seokjin has reportedly passed away at 28 in a tragic car accident,” the bold headline inside a teenage boy’s phone glares at Namjoon from his periphery.

Kim Seokjin does.

“My client has died and he wants you to write him an obituary.”

The man’s suit was now crinkled, aligning with the exhausted contortion of his face. He stared down at Namjoon once more as if analyzing every single little shift in the latter’s expression.

Namjoon attempted to retain the intensity of his gaze, reveling in the dark undereyes of the deceased actor’s agent who looked so consumed by stress that it would not be a surprise should he follow Kim Seokjin. Suddenly, Namjoon’s apartment felt eerie and uncomfortable when the agent sat back down across from him on his dining table.

Phones buzzed with all manner of gossip and homage to Kim Seokjin who recently died a haunting death by pummeling his SUV into the steel rails of a coastal road and ultimately drowning himself. It had been two days since the news broke out that rescue teams were unable to find his body, subsequently pronouncing him dead after his vehicle was recovered after an explosion that scorched its machinery. Some theorized that Kim Seokjin’s death was under his own hands, some say it was a tragic accident brought by a severe stroke of misfortune.

Not that Namjoon’s input was any important but there was nothing more baseless than the conspiracy theory that Kim Seokjin had died wielding the autonomy to his own life. He was a prolific actor who had everything, a charming young man who had never once appeared unkempt in front of rolling cameras. Nobody knew what went on behind closed doors but that did not mean Kim Seokjin’s death meant rewarding the general public with an attempt at emulating these doors’ keys. He was a spectacle of a human; Namjoon thought he did not deserve to be a sensational unfound corpse.

“I’ll make this simple for you.” The agent adjusted his glasses that were full of fingerprints and slid another photocopied page of Kim Seokjin’s will in front of Namjoon. “He wants you to write an obituary. I can arrange a space for you in the next issue of The Korea Herald and—”

A few years ago, a smudged citation of Namjoon’s name—the smallest byline that attributed an article to one Kim Namjoon—would have been a distant dream to an aspiring writer like him. The Korea Herald clutched in his rough palms as he read through his own piece on, say, the shrinking non-urbanized land area and the steam from his freshly brewed espresso would still be rising. He would read a particularly strong indictment of the local government unit’s complacency with the declining ratio of natural atmospheric purifiers and he would give himself a pat on the back for his bravery.

That was, as mentioned, a few years ago. Namjoon did not know when that distant dream of writing lost its ignition and died into a small ghost of his audacity to think that the vast world had any space for his insignificance.

“What do you mean space at The Korea Herald?” Namjoon interrupted. “Print media is dead and tons of publications are going to make tributes for Kim Seokjin. Won’t this be a waste of your money? I don’t see how hiring me to write an obituary will honor your client’s memory.”

The agent groaned when Namjoon’s stubborn adamance only led to another scan at a page of Kim Seokjin’s last will. It was doctored to only show fragments that were relevant to him but it did not discredit its legitimacy.

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF KIM SEOKJIN

I, Kim Seokjin, presently residing at Yongsan District, and a resident of Seoul City, Gyeonggi Province, declare this to be my Will.

 

ARTICLE I

REVOCATION OF PRIOR WILLS

I revoke all Wills and Codicils previously made by me.

 

ARTICLE IV

FINAL ARRANGEMENT

A. Writing of my obituary. I delegate the following to the Will Executor:

a. To entail the services of an obituary writer to briefly chronicle my life on paper.

b. To imprint my death in a reputable newspaper’s issue under my own terms.

c. To ensure that the writer hired is a man relative to my age.

“Why does it matter?” Kim Seokjin’s agent was exasperated as he tried composing himself to avoid lashing out at Namjoon. The unscrewed cap of his pen encircled the words obituary and pointed at Namjoon. “It’s a part of my client’s will and I’m fulfilling my end of the bargain as his executor. My client knows it’s a waste of money when he wrote his will and I doubt he’s hiring an obituary writer to honor his memory.”

“Why should I take this offer, then?”

“I’m in no place to persuade you, Namjoon-ssi. I do admit that there’s not a lot of advertised obituary writers around but this job can easily be referred to a biographer. If you have no plans to take my client up on this then we have no more pending business.”

The unmoving resolve in Namjoon’s voice didn’t waver. Knowing that he still had the upper hand of the negotiation, he repeated, “Why should I take this offer?”

With a sigh, Kim Seokjin’s agent yielded. “I’ll be frank with you, it’s stipulated in my client’s will that the hired writer becomes a beneficiary in his estate. This entire thing will be easier on my end if the one writing the obituary isn’t affiliated with a publication and there’s not many independent obituary writers. Hell, there’s barely anyone who writes obituaries nowadays in the first place. I have no idea what my client is thinking, I never have even when he was still alive, so I’m just carrying out what he can’t.”

The prospect of being a beneficiary in Kim Seokjin’s estate piqued Namjoon’s attention. Materialistic as it sounded, he did not have any other reason to pay tribute to a dead stranger if the turnout was not unequivocally in his favor.

“I see,” Namjoon said. “I’ll think about it.”

While seemingly annoyed that Namjoon was playing ball, the agent extended an arm to initiate a handshake. His navy lapel fluttered gently against the weak ventilation of Namjoon’s apartment as he stood up and made a beeline for the front door.

“Do give me a call or a message with your decision. You’re not running on a deadline here but I’d want to get this over and done with.” The oakwood door’s hinges cried as the creaks rubbed against each other until Kim Seokjin’s agent had finally slammed the door shut.

The sofa’s backrest cushioned Namjoon as he leaned against the scale of his decisions. 

Writing obituaries was a dead art—if it was ever art in the first place. Newspapers broadcasting the death of a person in a mechanical string of words, a factual testimony to what this person was and not who this person was, always instigated a distinct streak of absurdity in Namjoon. Why must an unsuspecting seeker of news be subjected to the awareness of someone’s death? If one was to read an obituary, would they be obligated to grieve?

Surely, Kim Seokjin the revered actor who was adored by the masses did not need to incite his own avenue for grief. Namjoon knew that Kim Seokjin had given enough love in his lifetime to receive an identical magnitude back once he was headed to his next.

Kim Seokjin didn’t need an obituary but Namjoon was set to exit the bargain as a beneficiary of a fragment of his massive financial assets. The actor may not need one but Namjoon needed to write him one.

Not that he had ever been a vehement fan of Kim Seokjin before. He knew that Kim Seokjin was two years older than he was, that he graduated the same university Kim Seokjin studied at before dropping out, that Kim Seokjin’s first acting accolade was a bronze medal from his college theater guild, that Kim Seokjin’s final acting accolade was a Palme d'Or for a feature film he had starred in.

Namjoon knew nothing about Kim Seokjin once the curtains were draped shut, nor was he ever particularly interested about Kim Seokjin once the cameras had ceased rolling.

“This is fine,” Namjoon assured himself as he rested his back on the armrest of his couch. Sleep latched on his body like a leech and just before the sun had set, Namjoon’s eyelids had ushered him into a nap. The fatigue caught up to his body and the sheer weight of his role in Kim Seokjin’s will finally detonated inside his chest. He shrugged when he decided to call Kim Seokjin’s agent the moment he had woken up.

That afternoon, Namjoon dreamt of Kim Seokjin.

Plump lips cower behind a facemask whose little crevices served as frugal gaps for the marmalade sun. “Kim Seokjin” was driving and “Namjoon” was beside him. They were silently traversing an endless asphalt road elevated over an infinite stretch of ocean waters. Neither of them seemed to notice each other’s presence in “Namjoon’s” dream but “Kim Seokjin” held the steering wheel with a turbulent tension colonizing his grip like there was a veil of vulnerability that “Namjoon” was more than welcome to unearth. Enclosed in one SUV were two separate existences who did not appear to be in the same dimension.

The roads refused to end and the ocean seemed bluer as it grew. Turquoise skies sliced through the water and gentle waves flew to the edges of the road “Namjoon” and “Kim Seokjin” were driving on. The waves materialized into steel guard rails just as “Kim Seokjin” ripped the mask from his face and shoved it violently on the center console. He remained deluded that he was alone in his car until he faced “Namjoon”—no, not “Namjoon"—his eyes darted past “Namjoon” and to the groundless depths of the oceans hiding behind the guard rail.

At that point, “Namjoon” had caught wind of “Kim Seokjin’s” existence. Only this time, bright eyes that reflect childlike luminance were mere sockets with red exposed muscles. “Kim Seokjin” had spooned his eyes away from his face and shattered irises were swirling at the heart of his discarded mask. “Namjoon” backed away in fear but as he leaned on the car’s door, the coastal road seemed to have tilted along with his movement. The car swayed along water-like asphalt until the road completely dissipated and he could see “Kim Seokjin’s” corpse afloat the ocean.

“Namjoon” attempted to propel himself closer to “Kim Seokjin” to turn over the corpse to rescue teams. However, just as he grabbed the actor’s pallid torso, “Kim Seokjin” detonated until what “Namjoon” was holding was a mere part of the actor’s chest. “Kim Seokjin” had exploded into pieces and there were fragments of his body surrounding “Namjoon” in an intimidating whirlpool of severed body parts.

Namjoon woke up with freezing sweat drenching his back and trickling down his forehead. 

The sun no longer seeped from beyond the cold glass separating his living room from his small veranda yet Kim Seokjin had still died from drowning.

He finally dialed Kim Seokjin’s agent. A barrage of cautious yet incessant knocking tapped on his front door as his phone rang in wait for Kim Seokjin’s agent to pick up. He padded through his floors to get to the door and the dial tone finally stopped. Came along the muddled static before a man’s voice took over the line.

“Namjoon-ssi? Have you thought about the obitua—”

The call dropped the moment Namjoon fixed his gaze on the person on the other side of the door.

It was oddly similar to his dream. Plump lips cowering behind a mask, empty distant eyes staring back at his dumbfounded gaze, and an incarnated epitome of disarray. Kim Seokjin, recently deceased Kim Seokjin, stood before him with damp clothes and grayish skin.

Pretty, Namjoon thought. Just like in the movies.

But the thing was, Kim Seokjin didn’t look pretty the way everyone, including Namjoon, was used to. His dark circles were warping into an abyss, the sodium-laden moisture in his hair chained the clumped strands together, and he was wearing a tracksuit impossibly larger than his body.

Namjoon abided by his first appraisal of how Kim Seokjin looked. He found it outrageous how someone’s vibrance couldn’t even get offset by death.

The actor didn’t let Namjoon process his resurrection before barging into the apartment and shutting the door softly. Kim Seokjin wordlessly stared at Namjoon before taking a few steps to the dining table, sitting on the exact chair his agent was on only a few hours ago.

“Hey,” the actor said.

Ghosts were never a large part of Namjoon’s interests. Sure, as a marketing correspondent of a publishing house, his work entailed battling with the paranormal facet of literature: houses haunted by a vengeful spirit, coming-of-age road trips derailed by a wandering soul, the disgusting distortion of sharks as apex predators when they’re really just silly little sea creatures. However, Namjoon would never pick up a book with an eerie gate as a cover.

So when the ghost of Kim Seokjin snapped his oddly opaque fingers in front of Namjoon’s face, the latter was blank.

“Kim Namjoon, talk to me,” The ghost of Kim Seokjin called as he shook Namjoon’s shoulders.

Upon the mention of his name, the numb stupor dissipated from Namjoon’s eyes as it was replaced with authentic shock with specks of fear. 

“You know me?”

“Huh?” The ghost of Kim Seokjin scoffed, followed by melodious laughter. 

Actors had always been expected to convey a certain array of emotions. To be able to impart paralyzing grief with a mere flick of their gaze, or to display blinding wrath just by the rise and fall of their Adam’s apple, or to emulate the likeness of a person in love by a single collusion of skins—Kim Seokjin had epitomized artistry in a way that the meaningful cadence he would use to incarnate a screenplay extended to even the mundanity of his persona.

He was that good.

So when the ghost of Kim Seokjin laughed, when a sweet progression of giggles boomed against the cramped four walls of Namjoon’s apartment, it was hard to miss the fascinated undertones.

“What’s funny?”

“No, no,” Kim Seokjin deferred as he used his index finger to wipe off thin floods of tears welling in the side of his right eye. “I was just surprised is all. I thought that you’d be more concerned about, well, me being alive instead of whether or not I know you.”

“I just assumed that you’re, I don’t know, so loved by the gods that they rewarded you two lives in one lifetime. Or that you’re so insanely eager that I write your obituary that you’d rather haunt my house instead of visiting those mourning you.”

“I faked my damn death, Namjoon, at least be logical when you let someone in your house.”

Weird, Namjoon thought.

Kim Seokjin’s first big break was a supporting role as the wayward yet soft spoken son of the drama’s main couple. All his past gigs as a quintessential high school kid never gave justice to his capacity to act, no one truly expected a lot from him when the news revealed that he was part of the roster alongside the biggest and greatest names of South Korean television.

When the name Kim Seokjin was inscribed with Song Hye-kyo, Kim Nam-gil, and Kim Tae-hee, it was difficult not to feel for the newbie whose filmography at that time was merely composed of looking dolled up for the camera in a gakuran.

However, Namjoon witnessed the show-stopping renaissance that followed after Kim Seokjin had taken the gears of the drama and forced its viewers to drink in the unprompted leap of a pretty face to a force to be reckoned with. Along with his portrayal of a kind-hearted drug addict who led his family to ultimate ruin—the taunt shivering of his eyeballs, the husky voice that begged for dysfunction, and the erratic nature of his intoxicated view of the world—it was then did Kim Seokjin become an actor.

He was only bound for greatness from that point forward and that meant more appearances where he was detached from a character. When he was playing Kim Seokjin in interviews, he was a mischievous young man who loved singing almost as much as acting, had a dog named Jjangu, and whose most beloved Coldplay song was Viva La Vida.

Kim Seokjin didn’t have the face of a man who would stage his own death and break into the home of an obituary writer looking like this was the only place in the vastness of the universe he could go to.

“You faked your death,” Namjoon repeated mindlessly. “Can I ask why?”

“You can but on one condition.”

“What is it?” He asked as he turned on his electric kettle.

“Write my obituary,” Kim Seokjin answered, “and let me live here for a little while.”

Namjoon wasn’t given so much as grace to process anything before the kettle’s switch emits a loud click indicating the water was hot. The actor rose from his seat and helped himself to the bag of instant cappuccino Namjoon was supposedly using the boiled water for.

“…Why?” Namjoon followed, succumbing to Kim Seokjin’s condition.

“Ah. I haven’t eaten properly in, like, two days and my stomach feels a little cold so I want some hot drinks to warm it up.”

“I meant why did you fake your death and why would you rather impose here than telling the truth?”

Kim Seokjin’s lips rose in a curt grin. “I faked my death because I don’t like my life. That enough reason for you?”

“What’s not to like?” The insensitivity of Namjoon’s question only fell upon him after a beat. He immediately withdrew his words in a babbling string of concession. “No—shit—I didn’t mean it that way. I get that we all have hidden battles and all. I’m sorry.”

“Stop that. You’re good.” Seokjin hoisted his palm up to end Namjoon’s yammering. “I didn’t fake my death for some small-time obituary writer to patronize me. I’m a dead man, not a charity case.”

“If anything, I’m the one you’re treating like a charity case. Financial assets just for an obituary that would get buried under tributes and biographies for you is an insane offer. It doesn’t feel ethical to accept.”

There went an explosion of melodic laughter once more. This time, it was ridiculing Namjoon in leering arrogance.

“I don’t like people with strong moral fibers. They feel superficial and condescending.”

“That’s more of a you problem, I think.”

“Nothing in this world is a me problem.”

“Okay, let’s recap. Two days ago, South Korea erupted with the news that you died in a car crash. Further publicized investigation revealed that you drove your car off the road to plunge into the ocean. Everyone’s speculating that you either killed yourself or this was predetermined by someone else. Ten minutes ago, you show up at my front door completely alive and you start gabbing about how you hate your life and morality. Sounds like a you problem.”

Slow, tedious applause filled the room and Kim Seokjin had an inscrutable face full of amusement. “You surprisingly know a lot about my case. Are you a fan, Namjoon?”

“No,” Namjoon denied. “I’m in marketing. Someone has to keep up with what the kids like these days.”

At that, Seokjin’s face seemed to drop. The amusement faded away in an instant and there was a vague yet insulting sense of solidarity painted across his face. “You’re in marketing?”

Or maybe it was only the ghost of Namjoon in the halls of his college dorm, the world sprawled out in front of him, brochures plastered with the intoxicating scam of dreaming.

“Mm-hm,” Namjoon hummed as he opened the bathroom door and checked if the shower heater was plugged. He placed a towel and some of his clothes on his dining table. “You seem surprised. Why?”

“Don’t you remember me?” Kim Seokjin pouted, his whine meeting lips that gave justice to its jest. “We were in the same first-year Anglo-Saxon Literature class and when all freshmen had to write their dreams directly on the wall, you wrote that you wanted to be a novelist.”

“Oh,” Namjoon deadpanned, remembering vividly how much vigor he had with every stroke of ink he wrote on the wall. “It was a stupid activity to break the ice. I didn’t really think of my answer.”

“Okay.” Kim Seokjin only shrugged, disregarding Namjoon’s answer he wasn’t even taking seriously. “Why a novelist though?”

“Why about you then? Did you write ‘actor’ since you were already acting that time?”

“No. God, no.” Bitter laughter escaped Kim Seokjin’s tongue. “I didn’t put anything.”

“You don’t have dreams?”

Seokjin shook his head as a response and exited the conversation before Namjoon had the liberty to throw him the same questions.

That night, Namjoon learned that the actor Kim Seokjin did not have dreams. 

Not when their class was asked to write on a beige wall a sordid wish to the universe, not when he let Kim Seokjin sleep on his bed after two days of scampering around the country trying to reach his house undetected.

Kim Seokjin had shallow breathing. He didn’t snore and his chest didn’t rise or fall as he slept. Lying alone on Namjoon’s bed, he resembled an untouched corpse with his hands dropped to his sides. Namjoon watched the actor melt into his bed from his doorway, only leaving when he took a glimpse of the clock above the bed.

The short hand pointed at nine at the long hand overlapped with four.

Nine was a symbol of mortal happiness. It was the highest single number in base ten, representing a higher susceptibility to joy and luck. The number nine had become a pole humans latched on to articulate what happiness constitutes. Nine—jiu— shared the same sound as eternity, it was the universe’s promise of bliss and fate’s promise of selectivity.

Four, on the other hand, had coined death as its muse. It was an ominous insignia that signaled misfortune working in great lengths to offset nine in order to retain the sensitive equilibrium on which the universe hung. Fate had delegated four to the task of ensuring that no human was brazen enough to evade grief. Four—si— served as a warning that humanistic eternity was transient, that death will always be more certain than eternity will ever be.

Where there was nine, there would be a looming four.

Where there was eternity, there would be death.

The clock ticked, its long hand leaving four in favor of the empty space bridging it from five. The analog clock nailed on the wall above Kim Seokjin was pointing at nine with one of its hands, at a small numberless void with the other.

Namjoon thought it was hilarious how the shorter hand would stay unmoved for at least another forty minutes while the longer hand would revolve around the circular clock until its way meets four again. 

Kim Seokjin stirred in his sleep. That was Namjoon’s signal to pick himself up from his daze and contact Kim Seokjin’s agent.

“Good evening,” he typed on his phone. “Concerning the obituary job you pitched earlier, I’d like to take it.”

He pressed “send” without proofreading the text, throwing his phone on the dining table before settling on the couch to sleep. He shut his eyes as he deprived himself of the chance to even second-guess his decision, forcing sleep on him like a busted lock.

Alas, he couldn’t. Not when his afternoon nap altered his circadian rhythm with a damned nightmare where Kim Seokjin’s eyes were gouged and scooped out of the sockets when the actor’s live flesh was sound asleep in his bedroom.

If eternity and death battled for dominance in the grander scheme of humanity, Namjoon wondered if whichever one Kim Seokjin was fostering in his soul right now was a silver of eternity or if he was merely delaying his impending death by setting an elaborate illusion that he, too, was in charge of his own demise. 

When Kim Seokjin faked his own death, what could have been his thoughts as he swam to the shore? 

Did the sand begin looking like the grains of his liberty? Did Kim Seokjin worry about the aftermath of his death on his supporters? Did it ever occur to Kim Seokjin that his skin got all pruny when he emerged from the sea? Did the shore look farther than it really was? Did Kim Seokjin feel lonely? Did Kim Seokjin feel so confident that his elaborate plan of staging his own death was enough with the sole help of his ability to act?

A soft chuckle in the dead of the night escaped Namjoon’s lips because, he thought, how tragic it was for an actor to escape acting by acting.

By the time it was morning, Namjoon appeared to have fallen asleep while sitting upright and Kim Seokjin was on his far left rummaging through his refrigerator. 

“Damn, you live like this?” was the first thing Kim Seokjin said to him when he approached the actor. “I was about to apologize for intruding on your fridge but there’s literally nothing to intrude on. How do you survive?”

Namjoon shut the door of his fridge, leaving merely a fragment of a second for Kim Seokjin to remove his fingers from being smashed. “I can ask the same to you, swimming to the shore and acting dead like a lunatic, how did you survive?”

“All I hear is that you think I’d make a great stuntman.”

“I also said you’re a lunatic.”

“Ah! But what is art without a little bit of lunacy?” Kim Seokjin clapped. “That doesn’t bother me any more than your alarming lack of pantry.”

“It’s not always like that. I just haven’t got the time to do some shopping, I can’t cook a lot of things anyway.”

The merry jubilance in Kim Seokjin’s voice wasn’t befitting of a corpse, nor was the spring in his heel when he pulled a chair from the dining table, spun it around, and straddled the seat. “See, I have a proposition. Quit your job.”

“Whoa.” His two hands shot up in adamant refusal. “I get that you’re rich and all, but not everyone is. You’re freeloading off my house and as much as I appreciate the obituary gig, I didn’t really think you’ll be staying here.”

“Me neither.” Kim Seokjin traced invisible circles on Namjoon’s table as he tried avoiding eye contact. “I didn’t think I’d be here but I guess when I was planning this whole thing, I just thought that I’ll stay here with you so I made sure my agent hires you.”

“And how did you make sure of that?”

“It wasn’t that hard. You’d think there would be more self-proclaimed professional obituary writers today with how condensed journalism circles are in Seoul but it’s really only you and a fifty-year-old reporter. I wrote that I needed someone relatively my age and I guess twenty-six is closer to twenty-eight than fifty.”

“Yeah, I kinda pieced that together mid-sentence.”

“Look at you, you little math genius.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you can come across as a little irritating?” Namjoon asked matter-of-factly, innocent curiosity shielding his sentiments from offending Kim Seokjin.

“No, people revere me actually.”

“Oh, for sure.” He grinned. “So much that they’d rather speculate that you committed suicide instead of letting you rest in peace.”

“But I don’t want to rest in peace,” Kim Seokjin replied like he had actually died. “And it’s not like they can. If the people could let me rest in peace, they would have done so while I was alive.”

“You do realize that ‘resting in peace’ is reserved for, like actual deaths, right?”

“Yet the point stands.” Namjoon followed Kim Seokjin’s gaze when the phone on the dining table lit up, his agent’s email occupying the byline. Surprisingly, it was ignored. “Did you ever wonder why I keep so much of my life hidden from the public?”

“No. I don’t really think of you, to be frank.”

“Hah! You should, maybe you’d actually show your dimples without being such a sissy bitch. Though I gotta say you were cute last night, all deep in thought like your brain was trying to make me explode while I slept.”

As it turned out, Kim Seokjin was awake while Namjoon’s convoluted attempt at empathizing with him coursed through his brain.

Heat rose to Namjoon’s face as he averted his gaze and swiped his phone from the table. That was, at least, before Kim Seokjin beat him to it and read the notification that opened the screen just a few minutes ago. The banner was anything but large, his agent could not have sent something so long that it warranted Kim Seokjin staring at it for as long as he was doing so.

When Namjoon was about to snatch his phone away, perhaps on Kim Seokjin’s seventh reread of the notification, he picked up a sense of relief in the actor’s expression. The vague rigidity that marred his soft features gradually went away and Namjoon could see one of the many wrenches prancing around his chest dissipate.

He wasn’t so cruel as to deprive Kim Seokjin of that small clearing of peace.

“You accepted the job,” Kim Seokjin reiterated, a little dazed. “You accepted it.”

“Why do you look so surprised? You’re the one who planned your staged death to obituary pipeline so intricately.”

“Yeah, but you’ve always been an unknown variable.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. Maybe when we were in college, I just never seemed to understand you even then. You loved to write but you never cared what medium, you always ate at the courtyard with different people, you had a lot of orgs, and you kind of just… ah, how do I say this without sounding weird—you were so normal but I don’t know what made me think you were extraordinary.”

At that point, the heat imbued in Namjoon’s forehead only worsened. And, no, he didn’t want to dignify the warmth in his cheeks.

“You were paying attention to me back then?”

“Well, it wasn’t like I was stalking you or anything. It’s just that whenever I was somewhere, it just so happens that you’re there which is crazy because we only had one class together. I guess it’s a chance thing.”

“Mm-hm, I never really particularly noticed you. Never even talked to you, I think.”

“Why not?” Kim Seokjin pursed his lips, playful mischief swirling amidst his words. “Are you the type of guy who has, like, one-sided vendettas against famous people?”

“What, no,” Namjoon was quick to deny. “I guess I would’ve known you better if you didn’t withdraw from the university so quickly.”

There was a pained look veiling Kim Seokjin’s face after Namjoon mentioned his withdrawal from the university. It was never Namjoon’s place to dig into Kim Seokjin’s life further, no, it wasn’t even his place to touch the shovel—but what could possibly be locked in his time in the university that it warranted someone like Kim Seokjin who was brazen enough to publicly fake his death to emit the kind of face so disfigured by regret and rage?

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Don’t apologize, you did nothing wrong. It wasn’t you.”

“Yeah.” Namjoon sighed. “We probably wouldn't even be friends back then, withdrawn or not.”

“Are we friends now?” Kim Seokjin grinned.

Namjoon had known the actor for barely a day at most and the one observation he would always make was that Kim Seokjin would only wear half his heart on his sleeve and the other half would be rotting somewhere safe inside its cage.

“I’m in your will. It’d be weird if we weren’t friends at the very least.”

Feigning a look of disgust, Kim Seokjin mused, “We can be business partners.”

“By partners, that would mean we’re equal. I’m more like a commissioned scribe at your service.”

“At my service,” the actor echoed. “Then can you go to my funeral later and tell me about how people mourn me? In intricate detail, I’m not paying you to be lousy.”

At times, Namjoon would wonder how Kim Seokjin’s sanity remained intact with years of dramatized media following one life. It didn’t take long for him to realize that Kim Seokjin expended all the gaps his heart had to stay sane and replaced them with calculated pleasantries. 

“I thought your service was for family and friends only.”

“My agent was the one who told you that the service is later, security would know to let you in.” Kim Seokjin circled around the flat to look for clothes Namjoon could wear for his funeral service. “Besides, if I were alive, I’d want you there.”

“You are alive.”

This. It was the deceased actor Kim Seokjin’s overdue renaissance.

“Yeah,” Kim Seokjin sent Namjoon a smile without peeling his gaze off the rubber hangers that had a black double-breasted suit suspended. “I guess I am.”

And the tiny fragment of Seokjin's heart that held on to his sleeve for dear life seemed to grow in the smallest fraction.

The bejeweled funeral service was adorned with gems from only one walk of life.

In front of them was a gilded altar with a framed picture of Seokjin. His teeth were seen, not the bottom set though because they shied away behind his lower lip, and his eyes were dull. If Namjoon could be so bold as to take a wild guess, this was an ID shot from Seokjin’s first breakout role. The one where he had finally won over the general public by the stark refusal to eternally be a pretty flower boy archetypal, mechanical performer.

Because Seokjin was an actor and he knew how to be human about it.

And what, pray tell, was more human than death?

Namjoon spotted Seokjin’s agent from a distance and the alienating barrier separating him from the polo club courtyard’s mourning guests dissipated. 

Before he could circle around the central gazebo and rendezvous with the agent, he could see the same faces that decorate the buses, streets, and trains he was always in. There was an actress he recalled that was nominated for a BAFTA. One of the guests was a model that walked for Maison Valentino during the last Paris Fashion Week. Namjoon thought he also saw the rapper who performed at the BBMAs.

Stars punctured the life Seokjin had led and ended. It wasn’t so surprising that his fall from grace was cruel when the very ground he walked on was heaven itself.

“Thanks for coming and for taking the job.” Seokjin’s agent greeted Namjoon. He paused as he gave himself a beat to take in the service, “Not so bad for a non-traditional funeral, huh.”

It was actually too good for a non-traditional funeral. Namjoon knew that Seokjin had quite the enigmatic vision for a funeral service when they were deciding on his clothes. That morning, the black suit Seokjin fixed his gaze on was met with harsh criticism for not being appropriate for his funeral.

“What do you mean ‘too sad for a funeral.’ Somebody died!” Namjoon recalled him violently rejecting the thought of wearing anything other than a black suit for Seokjin’s funeral.

“Yeah but I said I wanted it non-traditional. You’re not mourning me, you’re celebrating my life,” Seokjin explained, like nothing in the world made greater sense than the plain white t-shirt and red lapelless embroidered wool cardigan he held in his hands being funeral wear. “Come on, come on. Listen to the dead man.”

“A couple of thoughts. I’m not mourning you, you’re not dead; not celebrating your life, not dead; and you’re not a dead man.”

“Semantics, Kim Namjoon!” Seokjin half-screamed as he shoved Namjoon to the bathroom using hands that haven’t even let go of the white shirt-red punk cardigan. “Go get dressed and make sure you record everything.”

The small lectern near Seokjin’s empty urn was all Namjoon needed to deduce that there would be small eulogies that Seokjin wanted to hear. He made sure that his phone’s voice recorder was on as Seokjin’s agent personally ushered him to his seat. To his surprise, the chair beside him remained empty because Seokjin’s agent stepped on the platform and stared blankly at the surface of the lectern.

The man cleared his throat, ultimately dissipating amidst the open courtyard until he was given a microphone.

“Hello—ah, I don’t know how this should go. I’ve never given a eulogy before.”

Of course he hadn’t. Who, in their right mind, wakes up and goes shit when I die. I want a non-traditional funeral and I’ll coerce a random guy into wearing a red cardigan with ‘punk’ embroidered on the back if not Seokjin?

“Ever since he died, I’ve been out and about trying to distract myself by using my being his will executor as an excuse. I keep on calling him ‘my client’ like it’s going to cushion anything. It’s weird not to wake up every single day with a text from hyung: a crude indictment of people cooking japchae wrong or just an insane thread of cat videos. I vividly remember him sending a ragdoll holding a toy gun and saying, ‘Yoongi, it’s you when you turn to a life of crime’ like it’s a normal thing to say.”

Yoongi pursed his lips for a second, pausing like the sheer premise of Seokjin likening him to a ragdoll cat incited greater pain than warranted. From a few seats away, a slender man in a vibrant blue jacket was stifling sobs while Namjoon was wondering if Seokjin had burned his apartment out of boredom.

There was grief imprinted on the very ground they walk on but not under Namjoon’s soles.

“Sorry,” Yoongi collected himself with a difficult gulp, “to him, it’s a very normal thing to say. I guess a lot of seemingly bizarre things for us make up a lot of Seokjin-hyung’s identity. He’s just the type of person who’s scared of conventions. Hell, even this funeral doesn’t feel like a funeral.

“...Or maybe that’s because it doesn’t feel like hyung is gone. It still feels like he’d be there to pester me for his schedule to be decorated with Pompompurin stickers because he impulsively bought a ton online. It still feels like my birthday would come around and he’d be more ecstatic between the two of us because I’d finally be the same age as him for nine months. Even now, I know the urn is empty but I’m still hoping for some twisted stroke of luck that will bring hyung back.”

Guilt washed over Namjoon because he was seated amidst twelve friends and family who mourn Seokjin knowing that the actor barged inside his house without fair warning.

He didn’t know why Seokjin staged his death, nor did he think it was his business. But there was authentic pain clenching the hearts of the people who loved him and Namjoon wondered what Seokjin would feel after hearing the recording.

“Hyung… he—he taught me a lot of things. He taught me the best way to flip pajeon, taught me how to make the food that made Holly like him more than me, taught me how to be confident in my own skin, god, he taught me his technique on how to cry on command because he said that it would be useful if I wanted a higher salary. The funny thing is he’s the one who pays me.”

Came a meek eruption of laughter that preceded Yoongi’s nth pause in the entire duration he was behind the lectern.

“Sick bastard forgot to teach me how to carry on with life without him.”

Another pang of guilt gnawed at Namjoon.

Of all the people around him, how come he was the only one who had the privilege of knowing Seokjin was alright? How come no one could save Seokjin from himself?

The seat beside him had finally been occupied by Yoongi who didn’t shed a single tear. There was something a great deal more painful in the dull void polluting his eyes that only time could heal.

Time. 

He recalled the analog clock overhead while Seokjin was asleep. How the hour hand will linger at nine a lot longer than it will graze four.

Where there was eternity, there would be death.

Namjoon silently wished that everyone’s grief, much like everything else, was transient.

The next set of eulogies went by tearfully. Every little pained hitch of someone’s breath was recorded in Namjoon’s phone and before he could worry that Seokjin would meet the same gravity of guilt he was currently feeling, Yoongi leaned in and told Namjoon to meet him at the bridge over the large koi pond after Seokjin’s brother wrapped up his eulogy.

Empathetic silence befell the funeral service as everyone was glued back to their seats, wordlessly staring at Seokjin’s smiling photograph.

Orange swirls tinted the water and the koi fish, as always, looked restless.

“Carp sounded like hyung’s name,” Yoongi began as he leaned on the wooden railing. “Jinnie, Jin li—he said that there’s phonetic resemblance.”

“Oh,” Namjoon replied dumbly as he accepted the lager can handed to him. The alcohol content was on the low side, day drinking with eight percent alcohol clasped against his palm.

He stopped himself just before saying that Seokjin did seem the type to connect himself to fish. Namjoon wasn’t supposed to know Seokjin beyond his name and Seokjin was supposed to be dead.

“You know, I’ve heard of you. He mentioned you before when he was in university. Some guy who wanted to be a novelist or something.”

“I didn’t think I was that notable in college.”

“You weren’t.” Yoongi's tone was frank and brash. “But Seokjin-hyung was new there and everything was making an impression on him. In between acting and university, I guess the first thing his eyes would land on, he would remember.”

Namjoon understood the innate curiosity adhered to novelty. He, too, was fascinated by irrelevant stimuli just because the area it was etched on was unfamiliar. It was probably the same for Seokjin.

“Mm-hm, yeah, I get that. It’s a shame he had to withdraw so fast. Wasn’t he filming that big series then? His first breakout role, was it?”

Yoongi looked spiteful when Namjoon mentioned Seokjin’s withdrawal. It wasn’t directed to anything other than the past, it didn’t seem so.

“Have you started on his obituary?” The agent changed the subject. 

“I will later.”

“Try not to make it too rigid. I sent you where hyung’s funeral is so you’d have an idea what he’s like up close. Obituaries are factual, I get that, but I guess he’d feel at peace if it was more human.”

He was right. Namjoon had no idea what Seokjin was like up close, what little screws loosened by insanity constitutes the human Seokjin.

In all honesty, it was frightening to discover the human Seokjin because that meant something impossibly larger than Namjoon. If the human Seokjin who had devoted his entire life to art still fell victim under his craft’s blade, trodding against cold water to imitate a grand death, then art could kill just about anyone. This time, maybe no longer under their own autonomy.

“More human,” Namjoon repeated, “yeah, I guess I can work around that.”

Silence promptly forced itself in between Namjoon and Yoongi who had nothing in common beyond their connection to Seokjin. Sounds of beer cans crinkling and throats ingesting light alcohol. On the other side of the emerald grass, none of the guests had gone home as they wordlessly mourned Seokjin.

It was weird how they were fixated on a large framed photograph of one of the worst pictures of Seokjin beside an urn that didn’t even have his body.

The picture was shot relatively close to Seokjin’s face, its finder stopping halfway through his torso. It was taken years ago, when Seokjin was barely into his short-lived twenties. His smile was full yet the ends of his lips seemed like they abhorred the thought of reaching his ears. His eyes were stagnant, they were not enlarged for a whimsical pose using his facial expression nor were they reduced to overjoyed crescents. The apples of his cheeks matched the color of his forehead and his ears weren’t bleeding red like he had difficulty catching his breath out of his familiar windshield wiper laughter.

Seokjin is alive, Namjoon reminded himself when he felt sorry for Seokjin the longer he stared at the photograph.

It was absurd that he felt the need to grieve a man’s fraudulent death so he brushed it off.

No. Taking over him was a sense of pity and it was cruel that he thought he had the right to let that sort of corrupted patronage enter his heart.

“So.” Namjoon cleared his throat to reframe his thoughts. “What’s next for you?”

“No idea. Should I know?”

“Nah. No plan is good.”

“Yeah,” Yoongi said. “For now, I’ll probably keep on funding rescue teams to try to find him. Maybe I’ll stop when he’s been dead for a month or so. I don’t know.”

Before Namjoon could hold back his tongue, an ignorant fragment of his heart allowed himself to ask, “Anything you wanna tell Seokjin?”

He had grown two heads if the way Yoongi stared at him was any indication. The question was a little cheesy, sure, but Yoongi was on the record. Namjoon couldn’t say it out loud but whatever Yoongi wanted to say to Seokjin would reach Seokjin.

It was the least Namjoon could do because he was trespassing in a beautiful courtyard filled with friends and family who were hurting knowing that he was bound by secrecy in exchange for whatever was waiting for him in Seokjin’s will.

“What kind of question is that?” Yoongi scoffed, unimpressed. “That’s the kind of shit my shrink tells me.”

“Get a better shrink.”

“Yeah. I probably should.”

“Anything you wanna tell Seokjin?” Namjoon repeated the same exact question.

To that, Yoongi just conceded. His sight bounced from one carp to another until he finally had the courage to open his mouth. “I got nothing. Maybe I just want him to know I’ll be fine. He always worries about me and I guess he’d be worrying a lot now if hyung were alive.”

“If Seokjin were alive, you wouldn't be mourning and he wouldn’t have anything to worry about”

The two of them snicker. “Yeah, I guess he won’t.”

That’s the thing. Seokjin was alive and Namjoon came home to him freshly out of the shower, eyes glued to the living room television lionizing his name.

Even with the doorknob clicking open, Seokjin didn’t take his eyes off the minute of silence dedicated to himself. The news anchors were in pensive thought, lips pursed in respect, as a montage of Seokjin’s best acting performances played in the background. The television’s light got swallowed by Seokjin’s eyes and the spectacle started to seem like nothing mattered beyond the few feet bridging him from it.

Namjoon watched from the angle from his kitchen, slowly understanding how easy it is for anyone to get engrossed in something like that.

The montage slowly transitioned from Seokjin’s critically-acclaimed dialogue in one of his films. Eyes battered by tears, Seokjin’s character was on his knees begging Ignatius of Antioch’s statue in a hospital chapel. His figure trembled against the floor as his hands used the statue’s base as a crutch. “Escort me to hell for all I care. Siphon what’s left of me to extend what you’re taking from her,” his words reverberated against the chapel’s compact walls and the scene had gradually faded away into another. Namjoon recalled the collective pride this film had brought to the South Korean community upon winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

It was also his last acting project before faking his death.

This time, the setting was brighter. The sunlight was suspended overhead, a bright reflection was glaring at the shot and causing vignettes of iridescence. This scene was from one of his lighter, romantic comedy series. Seokjin’s character was walking listlessly at a park, a velvet box clutched in one hand, and a tattered piece of paper in another. “It’s an honor—no, no, that makes you sound like a mid-century warrior—it would be my pleasure—no! you’re asking her to be your wife, not your business partner—please let me be your husband, it’s okay to say no… yes, that’s good. I like it. Pathetic and defeatist, this will do.” The dialogue faded away just as Seokjin’s character’s overcoat was caught in a low tree branch and ultimately caused him to wear a single pullover with a pitifully ripped layer over it.

The music intensified and another role was shown. Seokjin’s dark circles were unbelievably abyssal and his body was obviously too thin for his height. His cheeks looked deflated and his skin was a few shades away from being gray. Plump lips that were known to be red and full were pallid and chapped, speckles of white powder lining his bottom lip. With how his irises trembled almost in harmony with his staggering knees, Namjoon had recognized this character. It was his first breakout role, one that opened the doors for him and pushed him into the unforgiving limelight. A kind-hearted drug addict worn down by his own demons, a mere supporting character that steered his own acclaim.

Seokjin looked so young in that specific part of the montage. Namjoon recalled it was around this time when the actor withdrew from university.

The montage had finally wrapped up just as Namjoon landed a lager can on the coffee table in front of Seokjin.

“Hey,” he said softly, garnering the actor’s attention. “You okay?”

Seokjin started slightly but he nodded nonetheless, a little dazed. “What’s this?” He picked up the lager, causing his hand to flinch from the cold temperature of the can’s metal surface. 

“From your funeral. Well, not your funeral. Yoongi brought a few on his own then told me to bring one home.”

A small laugh stretched Seokjin’s lips as the key broke open the can and made a low ah sound. He brought the can near his lips but decided against it, shaking his head in self-imposed dismay.

“I can’t drink right now. I haven’t eaten.”

“Does it matter? Some people have alcohol for breakfast.”

“‘Some people’ are raging alcoholics and I’m not like that.” He shook his again, this time a little more adamant and animated. “Don’t wanna drink on an empty stomach.”

After that, the news segment was switched from a recent spike in the value of U.S. dollars and what this meant to the economy to a rolling byline reading, “Fans of Kim Seokjin publicly grieve for the deceased actor on the streets of Gwacheon, Ilsan, and more cities.”

A reporter was holding up a microphone to one of Seokjin’s mourning fans. “What are your thoughts on actor Kim Seokjin’s recent passing?”

To which the middle-aged woman replied, “I feel broken and drained. I wish I could have seen a new movie one last time. It’s a shame that he killed himself at the height of his career.”

Namjoon took a brief side glance at Seokjin and snatched the can of beer before Seokjin’s stretched hand could beat him to it.

“No drinking on an empty stomach,” Namjoon declared, briskly walking to the refrigerator to keep the lager. He opened one of his cupboards to scoop a teacup of rice into his pot, washing with water repeatedly before leaving it to boil.

“You said some people have alcohol for breakfast,” Seokjin retaliated through his gritted teeth, unbothered to leave the sofa.

“And you said you don’t want to drink on an empty stomach.” Namjoon stirred the pot until the rice was a little more sticky and added a teaspoon of fish sauce as he glided the ladle around. “I don’t know what you saw in the news. Drink all you want for all I care, but don’t drink on an empty stomach if you’ve never done that. You’ll regret it.”

“You don’t know that,” Seokjin accused from behind Namjoon, still sitting on the sofa. “There’s always a first time.”

“People say there’s always a first time because they’re feeling adventurous, not because they got pissed off at something on the news.”

Seokjin didn’t answer anything after that and opted to sulk as he sank further into the sofa. The television was still on and the news had moved on to a headline about a politician hinting at gunning for a seat as an assemblyman, Seokjin’s death still present by how the politician’s background was a street with a makeshift memorial and a giant portrait of Seokjin smiling.

The rice porridge scalded Namjoon when he transferred some into a bowl, burned his fingers when he brought it over to Seokjin, and placed it on the coffee table. He left the living room to grab one of his glasses at random and filled it with distilled water to give Seokjin as he sat on the floor, using the sofa as a backrest.

“Strawberry cups.”

Namjoon heard Seokjin thoughtlessly holding the glass of water before downing it in one sip. The actor probably meant the printed strawberry patterns lining the rim of the glass that Namjoon received from a Secret Santa a few years back, when the office still bothered to make holidays bearable. He never particularly liked nor disliked the gift, it was tacky but useful nonetheless. 

Seokjin lined one of the printed strawberries with his thumb, tracing the faded red outline of the design as he amused himself with what little discoveries Namjoon’s house had in store for him. 

The two of them shared an uncomfortable silence, the sound of the television filling the space. A burst of red filled the screen and a berry-flavored lip mask emerged. The commercial transitioned to a close-up of Seokjin, his cherry-like lips color picked to be the same color as the lip mask’s container. And then he just smiled before the screen was off to a different commercial for a different product with a different endorser.

Minutes had passed before Seokjin silently spoke up.

“I didn’t kill myself, you know that right?”

“Mm-hm,” Namjoon hummed, eyes not leaving the empty space on the coffee table. He slightly twisted his torso to hand Seokjin the rice porridge that was a lot more bearable in warmth. He placed the bowl on Seokjin’s lap and didn’t let go of it until Seokjin’s hand replaced his. “Eat something.”

“I made it look like an engine failure and I—I swam to the shore then I found my way here. I don’t want to look like I was goi—”

“Seokjin.” Namjoon cut him off. “I know you didn’t kill yourself because you’re right in front of me.”

The tension coursing through Seokjin’s shoulder seemed to have lessened when he finally picked up the spoon.

“In front of you. Right,” Seokjin said after swallowing a spoonful of rice porridge. “Also this is so bland. How do you live?”

“You’re here using my clothes, food, and house for free. I don’t think you should criticize.”

“No, but how do you screw up rice porridge? That’s real talent right there.”

“I made do with what I have, I haven’t gone to the grocery store in ages.”

“Well, you should at one point.”

Namjoon dismissed Seokjin’s unsolicited commentary on how he lived and fished out his phone from his pocket to redirect the conversation. Okay, sure, putting off grocery shopping made him a suboptimal steward of his body and he ought to take care of himself better lately. But the Earth felt like it was rotating on its axis in the wrong direction or the degree in which it was tilted was incorrect. His coffee either tasted too sweet or too bitter, never just right. The ride to the office was always bumpy and he noticed that the amount of times he hit his head on the cold windows of buses was more frequent.

Nothing was feeling right. Namjoon knew it was all in his head. It was unfair that it was.

And when the world felt like it was revolving wrong, Namjoon did not have it in him to go goddamn grocery shopping.

He extended his phone upward, fully expecting Seokjin to take it off his palm but Seokjin leaned down instead. Namjoon could feel Seokjin’s presence behind him as the latter pressed play on Namjoon’s opened voice notes application. Seokjin’s breath was hitting his nape and he could feel the nervous tapping the actor was doing on the throw pillow as they waited for Yoongi’s recorded eulogy to begin.

They heard Yoongi clearing his throat and Seokjin retreated himself. 

“Namjoon, turn it off please,” he asked. “I’ll listen to it some other time.”

“You feel guilty.”

“No. I—It’s m—”

“I wasn’t asking,” Namjoon clarified as he placed his phone beside Seokjin’s empty rice porridge bowl “You’re guilty.”

Seokjin leaned against the sofa and trained his gaze on Namjoon’s ceiling, eyes fixated on nothing but a plain spread of cement.

“I am guilty,” he finally said. “But when I was planning how I was going to stage my death, I knew I was going to be guilty. I just didn’t know it was this bad.”

Namjoon feared this when he was at the funeral service. “It’s not too late to go back. Yoongi said he was funding rescue teams to look for you until next month or so.”

“That guy,” Seokjin scoffed, somewhere in his mocking tone was something breaking. “I can’t go back now. I don’t want to.”

“Don’t you have a plan? You’re dead, then what? What’s next for you?”

“I don’t know,” Seokjin admitted.

“You can’t stay here forever, you do realize that, right?” Namjoon could feel Seokjin’s right leg occasionally bumping into his left shoulder but the last time it did, the latter flinched at the contact as though water was poured over his head. A sense of empathy took over Namjoon and before his better judgment could stop his big mouth, he said, “But you can stay here for as long as you need.”

In turn, Seokjin looked at him like he had grown two heads. “But why? You barely know me.”

“Quid pro quo,” Namjoon answered vaguely. “I’ll let you live here in exchange for something else.”

Seokjin paused for a second and cautiously replied. “...Not with my body please.”

“What.”

It took Namjoon a few beats to process Seokjin's request and when he did, he immediately shook his head and waved his arms in refusal. He made sure he added a little repulsed facial expression, too, to get the point across. Along the process, he swore he heard a light laughter of relief from Seokjin and maybe—maybe— the disgusted face he was feigning waned just a little bit.

“No!” He exclaimed. “Oh, god, no. Seokjin, I’m not attracted to you. No, not in that way.”

“Good,” Seokjin heaved in relief. “Me, too. Not in that way.”

“Yeah,” Namjoon said to wrap up the little misdirection in their topic, letting the high from their small misunderstanding wear off.

And when it did, he maneuvered his words in a way that would least catch Seokjin off-guard. “So,” he began, “why’d you die?”

Still, Seokjin looked like he was being held at gunpoint in the split second he was laughing and stopped.

“You don’t have to answer right now, you know.”

“I feel like I owe it to you.” Seokjin cleared his throat, a vague sense of fear being expelled from his body. “And to myself.”

“I’ll get you your beer, then.”

Namjoon rose from the carpeted floor and made his way to his refrigerator, the even colder can of lager clutched in his right hand and a small bottle of pilsner in another. He gave Seokjin the can as he sat back on the floor, he tilted his bottle toward the latter.

Before he completed tapping their drinks together, Seokjin asked, “What’s the toast for?”

“To you,” Namjoon answered. “That’s it.”

The metal can and glass bottle didn’t make the most elegant of sounds but they made do with what they had.

The beer was cold against the roofs of their mouths, even colder sloshing in their throats. 

“Where do you want me to start?” Seokjin started after a few sips from his drink.

“Wherever you can.”

“Ah, shit. Where the hell is ‘wherever’?” Seokjin complained, stretching his torso to loudly drop the beer on the coffee table. “I guess I started planning this on my flight from Cannes to Seoul. Like, I was riding on this insane high from winning one of the most coveted awards in the film industry and I got so scared of feeling that way.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing? Representation and everything, and people get to see you for your skills and not for your looks.”

“These ‘skills’ are all I have going for me. I don’t know how to do anything else and I know there would be a gaping hole once that high was gone.”

“But you love acting, don’t you? What stopped you from making something better? Recreate the high and all,” Namjoon asked, downing his drink halfway.

“I hate what I do.” Seokjin’s eyes widened after hearing his own words. It was obvious that it was the first time that he was brazen enough to verbalize it. The apologetic haze would settle in at first in honor of all the opportunities acting had given him. “I hate acting.” Then the shameless spite would arrive.

“And dying was the only way out of it?”

“I can’t quit acting, Namjoon. I’d rather die an actor than live quietly in some boonies. I don’t want that. Neither acting or living quietly would give me peace and at one point, I just got tired of suffocating myself.”

“What about now?” Namjoon asked, the final remnants of his pilsner sloshing in a circular motion as he played with the bottle. “You still don’t wanna live far away or something?”

“Actually, I don’t even know what I want right now, I thought staging my death would solve everything but I was wrong. It’s like I’m riding a weird high again with the attention and fake reverence. People mourning me, crying now that I’m gone, I’m the heart of the conversation, and maybe that’s why I’ll never find peace in running away even when I was still alive. I fell in love with being on this high horse but the thought of staying on it forever makes me want to vomit.

“But—Jesus Christ—it sounds so complicated to say out loud but… I wanted to make something of myself and when I’m finally something I want to break it down. I want to demolish myself because I can’t stomach the thought that time would wear me down,” Seokjin confessed. “And time will wear me down, Namjoon.”

“Well, you can’t stay a star forever.”

“That’s the damn thing.” Seokjin laughed, his pathetic presence loomed all over the living room and all he could do was take up Namjoon’s unspoken offer when his palm met the cold, cold metal surface of his beer again. “I can’t stay a star forever but this acting thing is the only thing I can do. I might as well die a star.”

“Like a supernova.”

“That's just sad.”

“No, it’s not,” Namjoon corrected, looking up to meet Seokjin’s eyes. “They’re explosions a billion times brighter than the sun with an insurmountable energy that galaxies pale in comparison to. You can’t always be a star, yeah, and this place is nothing like that extravagant polo club you held your funeral at nor is it like red carpets or whatnot, but there’s nowhere else in the world where you can be a supernova but here.”

“You’re saying that I’m mere debris of something whole, that doesn’t sound sad to you?”

Namjoon pursed his lips and mulled over what Seokjin had said.

A supernova, no matter how bright, was a remnant of something whole. Supernovas are bygone fragments of something infinitely more loved and how dare he liken Seokjin to anything of the sort?

"Ancient astronomy believed that the stars were fixed and unmoving, that the planets revolved around them. So, if you think about it like that," Namjoon started, a little cautious as he treaded his words through glass. "At one point in history, you will always be here."

Ancient astronomy aside, Namjoon had come to terms with Seokjin’s aversion to being called a supernova. He considered putting that into reconsideration.

It had been more than a week since Seokjin barged into his life and, by extension, his house. The actor insisted on laying down a futon beside Namjoon’s bed and sleeping on the floor because, Namjoon would quote, he had slept on a bed tailor made for the gods his entire life and Seokjin’s self-inflicted resurrection was all about new experiences.

Apparently, that meant cooking for someone else, too. The minute the weekend kicked in, Seokjin had successfully shamed him into buying groceries.

“Namjoon, I’ve been cooking rice porridge for the two of us for a whole week. Please don’t tell me you have a Goldilocks fantasy going on.” That was how Seokjin welcomed him into his own home yesterday the minute his front door revealed him in disheveled drainage after a long day at work. “It’s either rice porridge or week-old leftovers. How do you live?”

“Hyung—”

Ah, that was one more thing. Seokjin had allowed himself to be addressed as hyung because it was either that fast-tracked coin of familiarity or Namjoon decimating him without honorifics. With a begrudged grit of his teeth, Seokjin painstakingly lorded his only avenue of seniority in the house and forced Namjoon into calling him hyung, well, because he was older. 

Or “Seokjin-hyung, you forgot to unplug the shower drain. You’re a grown man, get a grip” sounded a little more dignified than, “Seokjin, either you unplug the shower drain or I’m unplugging your life support when the time comes.”

“Hyung, I told you I just can’t get around buying groceries. I’d let you do it if you hate my rice porridge so much but, you know, you’re dead.”

One can only guess what sort of joy Seokjin felt when Namjoon told him that he usually did his grocery shopping at a small family retail store a block away. It was a generational heirloom for the owners and Namjoon had made casual conversations with whoever manned the store. Sometimes it would be their matriarch, a kind old lady in her eighties who was impressively strong for age; sometimes it was her kids; sometimes it was her grandchildren. It was a convenient grocery store near Namjoon’s apartment that did not require him to take public transport.

Seokjin concluded that it was safe for him to accompany Namjoon—and maybe critique every household decision Namjoon was about to make—to the small and relatively unknown family store. The closet, which was now a collection of clothes that had been shamelessly declared as shared by Seokjin, was reduced to unruly piles of clothes while Seokjin was searching for clothes that would hide his silhouette.

“You can wear anything and it would hide your silhouette,” Namjoon said impatiently as he leaned against the doorway, his eyes following the excited yet frantic adrenaline Seokjin was on. “I don’t wear your fancy tight-fitting stuff.”

“I have no idea which of these clothes are sleepwear and which ones aren’t. They all look too comfortable.”

“I’m going to ignore how backhanded that is. Just wear whatever, you’re fine either way.”

“You’re calling me hot?” Seokjin teased. “Oh, Namjoon.”

“I’m calling you difficult.”

“Sure, sure.” Seokjin’s insincere quips reached Namjoon just before the bedroom door was shut to give way for the actor’s change of clothes. He emerged as a man unrecognizable with the least form-fitting clothes in the history of couture and a power duo comprised of a face mask and tinted eyeglasses Namjoon owned.

The streets were barely gilded with people by the time they had taken the first and only turn. Luckily, Seokjin and Namjoon didn’t draw attention with how they had blended with what little crowd their part of the city had but Namjoon could feel Seokjin looking for him every time he would walk a little faster and their shoulders would cease bumping for a few seconds.

He thought he reassured Seokjin with, “Don’t worry, no one cares here,” at one point just to ease the latter of how weary he looked during the first time in a week when he was somewhere else other than the four walls of Namjoon’s apartment.

“That’s harsh.” Seokjin could jokingly complain all he wanted but Namjoon saw his shoulders releasing tension.

The small bell rang when Namjoon pushed open the glass doors, gaining the attention of the elderly woman manning the store today. The two of them exchanged perfunctory smiles and small bows, Seokjin following along what Namjoon was doing until he was asked to push the cart.

“What?!” Seokjin was quick to protest, face contorted with tarnished pride. “Why should I push the damn cart? That’s a sidekick’s job.”

“If you were pushing the cart, you’d have less tendency to run your mouth.”

“You don’t think I can run my mouth while pushing a cart?” He loudly whispered when he had rolled the cart to the produce section, putting in all kinds of meat. “Sounds like a challenge. I feel like you gravely underestimate how talented I am.”

“No, hyung,” Namjoon corrected, unfazed by how Seokjin would occasionally put his feet on the steel bar supporting the hind wheels of the cart and slide down the store in little distances like a child. He placed a head of garlic beside the dishwashing liquid and Seokjin slapped his hand before he could even drop the vegetable.

The horror in Seokjin’s eyes was so exaggerated that Namjoon couldn’t help but laugh.

“Monster,” Seokjin hissed as he slightly bent over the cart’s handle to separate the cleaning products from the ingredients. “Don’t ever do that in my presence again.”

“I’m not planning to ever do anything in your presence again.”

“Nonsense! You enjoy my company.”

Namjoon remained silent when he couldn’t refute.

Seokjin was a fun, bright person. At times, he was lost in thought, likely mourning a death he himself imposed but he was the life of what little space Namjoon’s apartment occupied. His laugh was vibrant and animated, he would use his entire body to narrate his stories, and his smile—god, his smile—was blinding not because it was bright from all the happiness the world had in store for him. 

The way Seokjin smiled was dull. His lips would tilt upward in a heartbreaking stunt to convince himself that he was in a better place after staging his own demise but the looming fear was always evident. Namjoon knew that Seokjin was terrified of what his future was holding for him, that reining his autonomy over his own grand death was still not enough to live the way he truly wanted.

So, Seokjin would smile so beautifully, like he wasn’t watching his world crumble in front of him in one fell swoop.

His smile was bright the same way the sun was bright. It would slash one’s vision to a point of no return and no amount of romanticization can save Seokjin from flying too close to it.

Seokjin was a supernova. Mere debris of something whole, a fragment of the universe broken down by the same gravity it upheld.

Supernovas were too bright in nature, its energy far too great for galaxies to withhold. Life was a far-fetched dream when supernovas were involved and they granted themselves a few hundred million years of peace for life’s capacity to materialize.

Where there was eternity, there would be death.

Seokjin had finally detonated. Now, it was his turn to get his million years of peace.

“You dick, you just left me hanging. What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.” Namjoon shook his head. “Just worried about you.”

It was Seokjin’s turn to grow meek and lost in thought. Namjoon had grown quite accustomed to this: their silence in exchange of introspection. 

“What’s there to worry about?”

“A lot, actually. I don’t know how well you actually cook and—”

“Better than you definitely.”

“And,” Namjoon solidified his enunciation after being rudely interrupted, “how you can have spaces where you don’t have to worry about being sniffed out by the media and all.”

“I’ll be fine even if I’m just inside your house,” Seokjin reassured Namjoon, looking a little touched by the way his newfound ally was going through unnecessary lengths to cater to whatever turmoil he must be having.

Even then, Namjoon knew that Seokjin was never going to be fine trapped inside of his house. He knew what isolation could do to a person, the excruciatingly long silence that never seemed to end, and how every amplified tick of the analog clock above his bed seemed like it was ushering him to this deranging fit of losing oneself.

Namjoon knew what it was like to sit in his lonesome in his miserable apartment and wait for his days to feel like his house had the slightest makings of a home just to console himself that it was an utterly desolate waste of space. He knew that hugging his knees for hours on end trying to make sense of the world was useless, he knew that it would only make his back ache.

What Namjoon didn’t know was that Seokjin didn’t find his place all that miserable.

“I don’t care if you’ll be fine, I care that you’ll be better.”

“Why?” Seokjin bit his tongue too late. “Why care either way?”

“Camaraderie,” Namjoon answered. “We’re friends, hyung, you can question my help all you want. Take it or leave it but it’s going to be here if you come back for it.”

A dumbfounded stare was fixed on Namjoon for a few seconds before the elderly lady manning the cashier cleared her throat and showed Namjoon a calculator with their total bill flashed.

Uttering a quick apology, Namjoon handed her the cash.

The register cried a rusty ring when the lady was rummaging through it for Namjoon’s change. Just as she was handing a few coins to him, she began making conversation. “Namjoon-ssi, I see you have someone with you today,” she pointed her chin at Seokjin who bowed in turn.

“Yes, ma’am. He’s a friend visiting town.” Namjoon scratched his nape in humiliation. He didn’t know what was making him shy because, in some ways, Seokjin was a friend visiting town.

“Then you should run along now, the nights come a little earlier these days so make sure to show him great spots in the city, huh?”

He threw one look at Seokjin who was ready to leave, hugging two tote bags of groceries in his arms before he answered the lady.

“Yeah, we’ll have a good time.”

They exited the family store before the elder lady had the opportunity to ask Seokjin’s name.

The two of them simultaneously shuddered when a cold breeze swept over the street and a beat of silence passed before they shared a bout of laughter.

No one knew what was funny, neither Namjoon nor Seokjin, but the split second of sonorous laughter they shared before looking at each other after their bodies trembled briefly incited it. Their shoulders transitioned from shaking because of the cold to shaking because of how hard they were laughing. Seokjin’s eyes were closed and his nose was scrunched. Just before he decompressed from the baseless laughter, Namjoon caught a small glimpse of Seokjin’s gentler brightness. The kind that wasn’t hard to look at.

Like the moon’s elusive illumination that you can stare at for as long as you like until the sunrise took over the sky as a testament of your survival.

“Hyung, are you tired?” Namjoon asked Seokjin as they slowly walked away from the retail store with the former taking the lead.

“No.” Seokjin shook his head. “Why?”

“Since you’re out, let’s go somewhere quickly.”

Seokjin shrugged, not asking where.

There was a little sheen of astonishment when Namjoon resumed walking. When Seokjin insisted on tagging along to buy groceries, he knew that the family store was a place barren of people once dawn was imminent. Namjoon had told him about the roads outside they were walking on and how Seokjin’s privacy was safe in each one. The family store was one thing, Seokjin knew what he was getting into, but the ambiguity of let’s go somewhere should have rung alarm bells.

“You ought to take care of yourself better,” Namjoon scolded Seokjin as he fixed the straps of the tote bag that had fallen on Seokjin’s arm, gently draping them over Seokjin’s shoulder. 

“Maybe,” Seokjin answered, “but why bother if you could do that for me, right?”

Shit, Namjoon thought.

That was not a declaration of confidence. That was Seokjin beseeching Namjoon to be the one to take care of him because he didn’t have anyone else.

A wry smile contorted Namjoon’s face. “Hyung,” he replied lowly but before he could continue what he was going to say, Seokjin cut him off.

“Ah, shut up. Don’t wanna hear it. You don’t have to take care of me, we can just stay like this for as long as time permits,” he mumbled. “This much care is enough, Namjoon, it’s more than I can demand of anyone.”

Another gust of wind embraced the pair but neither of them laughed.

A stone bench overlooking the city came into view after eleven minutes of walking in silence. It was guarded by a broken wire mesh gate, its rustic chains worn down by time. Namjoon opened the decrepit barrier for Seokjin and ushered him to the cold bench under an acacia tree. 

The hillside seemed so far away from reality with the city below its level. They could feel the breeze but not the hastened pace of the life below. They could watch the sun threatening to dive into the horizon but not the people scrambling to catch a train home. They could see the clouds blanketing the city but not the smoke from the cars and cigarettes on the street.

They were somewhere detached from the world yet at the same time unequivocally one with it.

The sky felt like a ceiling, like Namjoon could extend his arm in the air and he could harvest sun rays to give Seokjin. At that point, in the convoluted ties that constitute the orbit they moved on, the two of them were at their closest to the sun. 

“What’s this place?” Seokjin asked while he gently dropped the grocery bags on the hardened but underdeveloped cement.

“It’s my third space,” Namjoon replied as he sat next to Seokjin on the stone bench, leaving a foot of distance separating them even if it meant one of his legs was in discomfort. “When I’m overwhelmed with work or when I don’t want to spend time in my house, I go here.”

“Just you?”

“Mm-hm. It used to be a redevelopment site for an outlet mall but the company got a better place in Gangnam District. This has been in the market for, what, over four years but no one’s buying until it just got abandoned over time. I found it by accident during one of the lowest points of my life.”

“I see,” Seokjin quietly said as he traced the cracked portion of the cement with his shoe. “Why did you bring me here? This is supposed to be your own space.”

“It’s yours.” Namjoon offered the cliff to Seokjin even though he wasn’t the one who legally owned it but Seokjin was taking his words with utmost gravity that Namjoon was so close to believing that he did. “Go here whenever you want. Just make sure to take the route that we did so no one sees you, yeah?”

Seokjin nodded, dazed like he was only absorbing half of Namjoon’s words.

A few minutes had passed, silence squeezing itself in the foot of distance separating them, until Seokjin broke it.

“Hey,” said Seokjin, “why do you do all of this for me?”

In all honesty, Namjoon had no idea.

He could take the easy way out and pretend like he didn’t hear Seokjin. He could lie and say that he was doing it for whatever financial gain was waiting for him in Seokjin’s will once he forwarded a half-assed obituary to Yoongi. He could tell Seokjin half his truth and say that he just wanted to help.

Ah, but Seokjin deserved none of those.

“I don’t know,” Namjoon blurted out because truth be told, he really had no idea.

“Hm.” It was just as easy for Seokjin to accept such a lousy answer, too. 

The bigger question was never why Namjoon was helping Seokjin, it had always been why Seokjin was letting Namjoon help him in the first place. 

Vulnerability was awarded to Namjoon far too easily and he wondered if—at one point in the whole week Seokjin was within his arm’s reach—the actor ever felt like he was at the mercy of Namjoon. He wondered if each time Seokjin closed his eyes to sleep on the floor with a thin futon separating him from its cold tile, Seokjin was ever afraid of waking up in fear of finding out that the last person he could afford to trust sold him out for a quick buck.

Namjoon didn’t have any reason to sell Seokjin out to the media just as much as he didn’t have a reason to help him but he still did because coming home to a house with a man who the public thought was dead was infinitely better than coming home to no one at all.

Maybe, at the end of the day, they were just lonely and that was enough of a reason to bet blindly on each other.

“You take care of me, too,” Namjoon suddenly said before his better judgment could stop his mouth. “You fixed the gas leak, tightened the pipes, and you—”

Seokjin’s sonorous chuckle was lost in the open air. “You think I’m your personal free plumber or something?”

“What?” Namjoon’s eyes widened. “No! No, no. God, no. All I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to sell yourself short. You take care of me just fine.”

“Yeah, you can be a pain in the ass.”

They both share a brief and light laughter, one that dispelled whatever weight was in the air in the first place.

“So, the next time you think that I’ve cared for you enough, that means I haven’t. It’s okay to demand for more,” Namjoon said. “It’s okay if it's you.”

Seokjin was silent for a few seconds and when he finally spoke, his voice was slightly hoarse.

“Okay.”

The walk home was uneventful but the wrench weighing on their chest seemed to fade into thin air.

As Seokjin and Namjoon cooked their dinner, with Namjoon in charge of staying still and not setting the fire alarm off and Seokjin in charge of literally everything else, the two of them had the sense that their loneliness was desperate. 

Loneliness would latch on the first pole that it saw and it would hold on to that pole until it was beaten and battered to the point of no return. The thing about loneliness, Namjoon thought, is that its greatest fear is itself.

When Seokjin playfully stabbed his garlic bread with Namjoon’s butter knife because the latter passionately debated the disproportionate adorability of otters over foxes, Namjoon wondered if the intrusive tremors in his stomach was loneliness dissipating.

And by the time they reached the conclusion that quokkas were, point-blank, the greatest creatures known to man, Namjoon was sure it was loneliness dissipating.

“Namjoon, do you have dreams?”

The next time they found themselves idling on the stone bench, it was an hour before the sunrise. The gray sky loomed overhead and the dictatorial sieve that separated them from the stars blanketed over the city.

Seokjin’s death no longer dominated the national news but there remained faint traces of his absence across the country. All his commercials have started losing airtime because his likeness was no longer eligible for paid production and Yoongi, his estate, ensured that the name Kim Seokjin had stopped making money the minute he died. The last time Seokjin was prevalent on the news was when Yoongi sued a tabloid magazine for reducing his hyung’s death to the epicenter of junk blog gossip.

“Like, serious ones I want to act on?”

“Yes,” Seokjin hummed as he spread the blanket and draped it over his broad shoulders. It was cold and unforgiving, cicadas were screaming behind them, and the city below was mostly unlit. It was peaceful. Seokjin liked peaceful.

Time seemed like it was unmoving.

“Then I don’t.”

Namjoon heard Seokjin whistle as their gaze followed a lone crow flying within their eye level. He handed the latter a can of beer, the same one he took home from Seokjin’s funeral, and he had a bottle of pilsner he didn’t even like all that much. The drinks stay though, ignoring Namjoon’s own preferences, because it reminded him of Seokjin’s first day at his house.

“Do you ever feel like you have to have one or that you ever wish that you had a job other than a junior marketing officer at some bigwig publishing house?” Seokjin asked.

“Every single day,” Namjoon muttered without elaborating, tilting his head to drink.

“I get that.”

This time, Namjoon trained his sight on Seokjin.

There was much left to be desired in Seokjin’s ostentatious life but Namjoon never imagined that Seokjin would want it in any other way. Seokjin loved acting for the same reasons he hated it yet Namjoon never truly wondered about to what extent Seokjin would give up such a life if given a choice to rewrite it from the start.

Passions are truly funny because there would come a time when they become too easy to surrender and a time when one would be far too lost in it to a point of no return. The privilege of surrendering and the privilege of running without looking back were mutually exclusive and the two of them were the greatest testament of how loving a craft had the horrifying capacity to kill and unhinge.

Namjoon surrendered and Seokjin ran without looking back.

Yet at the end of the day, they were two wayward souls watching the full cityscape, beer neither of them particularly liked clutched in their palms at a random four a.m. with no one but themselves to sate their loneliness. Truly how different was surrendering from gambling one’s entire life if its polarization still led Namjoon and Seokjin to each other?

“You know, I keep rewriting your obituary,” Namjoon started. “I keep starting over and over and over, it’s like your life doesn’t want to be written.”

“A life that refuses to be lived doesn’t want to be written. Maybe tell the story about how I withdrew from college or just add in a stupid character analysis that doesn’t really matter. It’s your piece.”

“I don’t know. Obituaries are so uncomfortable to write.”

Seokjin adjusted the plaid blanket covering his thighs so it was protecting Namjoon from the cold, too. When the latter refused, Seokjin threw him a pointed look, to which Namjoon let himself feel his share of the thick wool.

“Get comfortable,” Seokjin joked and Namjoon wondered if it had something to do with the blanket or the obituary. “You can invent stuff about me and pretend like you saw it in one of my diaries then we can, like, forge one in my handwriting and you auction it off. We can make a few millions off of that, think about it.”

“Huh.” Namjoon winced at the thought of a mere diary written by another human would reach that point of exorbitant cost and the saddest part of it was that it was true, that they could forge a fake diary and brandish it as Seokjin’s and someone will purchase it at the price of a house in a heartbeat.

Because Namjoon knew that the world was swarming with invaders. Humanity thrived on spectating from a distance and rejoiced upon breaching it.

Seokjin was beautiful, he had the exact mold of the invader’s most coveted. He ran, and ran, and ran toward what his passion wanted in fruition but he inched closer to the invaders along the way. The more his dreams were in reach, so was he. So was his personal life, so was the autonomy he had over himself.

If Namjoon’s miserable home would keep Seokjin safe from what lies beyond, let it, for there was no stronger sense of camaraderie than that shared by two lonely people.

“Why not write something about university?” Seokijn suggested. “Write about how I dropped out and everything.”

“Isn’t that an open-and-close?” Namjoon questioned.

“Nah, I was expelled.” The nonchalance in Seokjin’s tone must have concerned Namjoon more than it should have because Seokjin’s mocking brows met in the middle. Came along an animated chuckle, one so light and bright that Namjoon swore he forgot how to breathe for a fraction of a second. “Don’t give me that look.”

That was an unfair request because how could Namjoon not?

He didn’t know if he felt out of breath from the light, carefree chuckle that escaped Seokjin’s lips; how Namjoon heard those a thousand times less than the loud, obnoxious chortles Seokjin would force himself to make just to emulate what vestiges of happiness he barely knew while alive. Still, both of them held great importance in Namjoon’s chest because Seokjin’s happiness, no matter how fabricated, was happiness nonetheless.

“University screwed me up a lot,” Seokjin continued. “It’s a different kind of screw up from acting though, I can’t say which is worse. I worked around my schedule for my classes, missed a lot because I was filming a drama at the time. But even then, when it felt like the fatigue was forcing me to choose between acting and college, I just—I just refused to yield to it, you know? College was me making something out of myself outside of acting and, well, acting was making me something.”

Namjoon unknowingly shifted his posture and the stone bench, once wide enough for a relatively small third person, was suddenly so narrow that their shoulders had fleetingly brushed against each other. He hastily distanced himself from Seokjin upon regaining composure.

That he felt Seokjin’s warmth from a few inches away was enough of a reminder that he was there. Perhaps merely touching shoulders was a bolder part of him that Namjoon had no bravery to meet, unchartered waters he will never have the courage to breach.

Because Namjoon didn’t have the privilege to touch Seokjin with the faintest static, not when the smallest inch of Seokjin’s body was evangelion itself.

When Namjoon caught himself in this thought, he shook it off and asked Seokjin, “Why do you want to make something out of yourself beyond acting? Isn’t that what you’re really good at?”

“Yeah but—” Seokjin clicked his tongue, a sense of fear looming over him. “But that’s it. I’m nothing without it and I know that the time I’m without it is imminent. Public opinion is an easy thing to sway, it’s easy to have just as it’s easy to lose, and I’m always on the brink of losing at any given day.”

“Then what offense was so bad that you were expelled?”

Seokjin sighed. There was a pause, a small scab in time’s skin where Namjoon was able to see how it would only grow if he pried.

“Hyung, you don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to. It’s fine with me.”

When Namjoon was growing up, he lived northwest of Seoul where development lots were scattered all over the city. Barbed wire fences with a bold red sign warning the residents of its hazards adorned his hometown and his narrow neighborhood had one nearby. Namjoon was nine, he was naive and curious, and the piece of off-limits land seemed peaceful.

Seokjin’s past was one of those off-limits pieces of the Earth. Namjoon wasn’t nine anymore, he knew better than to breach Seokjin’s defenses.

Still, as any impulsive and stupid kid would have done, nine-year-old Namjoon scaled the mesh aluminum fences and the barbed wire welcomed him at the top. His then little feet fit snugly between the gaps of the fences and he thought that he could jump over to evade the sharp edges of the protective spikes. It didn't work, of course, he fell back on the ground mid-flight and he went home to his mother, wailing with a bleeding leg.

His mother scolded Namjoon for putting himself in danger as she cleaned the disgusting patches of ripped skin that stretched from the entirety of his calf to his knee. “Joon-ah,” Namjoon recalled her chiding when he winced in pain upon contact with hydrogen peroxide, “I’m cleaning your wounds so they don’t get infested”

“It’s okay,” Seokjin swore. “It’s you.”

It was then did Namjoon realize that Seokjin’s wounds were his to infest. They weren’t his to heal, but they were his to aggravate. Seokjin was letting Namjoon dig through his wounds, to scrape off the band-aid, and act like the pain would disappear overnight.

For pain bestowed by Namjoon wielded greater power than that inflicted by the sharpest of swords.

Seokjin’s grim was Namjoon’s to unearth.

They were his to discard, his to hurt.

“It’s not really a long story. I was filming for a drama, it was the first serious role I got. Don’t get me wrong, though, the flower boy bullshit brought me places but I never saw myself doing that for the rest of my career. When my agent, you’ve met him, got the offer to play something a lot heavier than what the general public expected of me, I told him to bite the damn bullet.”

“Yeah, you were great in that role.”

“Mm-hm.” Seokjin downed what’s left of his can of lager and swiped the bottle of pilsner from Namjoon’s grip. Namjoon, in turn, didn’t protest. “At that point, all I did was high school rom-coms. How was I supposed to portray a kind son who’s a victim of substance abuse?” He laughed.

“But you did. You did so beautifully.”

“I know.”

On the contrary, Seokjin’s confidence in his career-defining performance didn’t match the pride he should revel in it.

“Do you remember that sociology professor who got arrested for dealing heroin to students?”

In spite of not seeing the relevance, Namjoon answered, “Yes. Who doesn’t? It turned into this whole big thing.”

“Apparently, the administration rolled out a university buy-bust to sniff out which students were using. I guess I just got caught up in it when someone from my block offered. Yoongi and I had to settle with the disciplinary board—either I let myself get expelled and make it look like I withdrew from college, or I stay and get probation.”

“So, you didn’t actually withdraw?”

There was an empty beat before Seokjin could bring himself to answer and it was merely a short fraction of a second, barely noticeable as it fled the wind through a quicker demise. But, to Namjoon at least, that fraction of a second was long enough for him to see Seokjin’s pained expression—how Seokjin’s eyes momentarily narrowed, how his irises briefly shrank, how he shifted his posture, how his fingers slightly quivered.

Time was a disgusting avenue, a pungent street that was always rearing to hurt Seokjin, and Namjoon disliked that.

“You don’t have to answer,” Namjoon followed. “I—You don’t owe me anything. Not an answer if it will make you uncomfortable remembering it.”

“Stop saying that,” Seokjin said softly. “I owe you the world.”

Ah, but that’s not a beautiful thing to owe Namjoon.

“I didn’t actually withdraw, yeah. Probation meant infractions, and I sort of just feared that the media could catch wind of that before my career even took off. I can’t afford that so I just gave up on college altogether, thinking that maybe it was the world’s sign that acting is really the only thing I could do to lessen the blow.”

“Why were you even roped in that buy-bust in the first place?”

“I wanted to try some just to see what it’s like to be high. It was a desperate move but I had no idea how I’ll perform a role like that when I’ve been doing something diametrically different since I started acting. I didn’t have the luxury to screw that series up and—I don’t know—I didn’t trust myself enough to think otherwise.”

“How did you pull it off?”

“I have no idea.” Seokjin laughed. “I felt like, at that time, I was living on such a thin string. I was always afraid that the disciplinary board would rat me out even with the settlement and I’d lose everything. I was afraid that I won’t give justice to the role and I’ll forever be stuck to an archetype until I’m too old to fit in it. It’s just… I was presented with a chance that would make or break me and if not great, I— I wanted to be nothing.”

“And you’re so great,” Namjoon accidentally blurted out but he didn’t bother taking it back.

“Yeah,” Seokjin replied, Namjoon could make out Seokjin’s repressed smile even without turning his head to look at Seokjin. “You, too.”

“Nah.” There was a begrudged scoff. “I’m nothing. It’s okay, though, I’m fine with being nothing.”

Seokjin shrugged. “You’re something to me.”

Where there was eternity, there was death.

“Okay,” Namjoon said. “You are, too, to me.”

Their little eternity was punctuated when the dawn started commanding the sky. Streaks of ocean blue took over the noir black and scattered clouds began to emerge. A faint hue of gold started peeking from the horizon and their proximity to the heavens only proved its scenery breathtaking. The dawn was short-lived, to take their eyes off its captivating image was unthinkable as the clouds were never kind enough to show its majesty the second time around. The clouds would never hover the same way and the sun would never gleam the same shade again—the sun was at the epicenter of a fleeting memory and it was always at the critical brink of slipping away from the horizon.

Such a sky Seokjin was to Namjoon.

Still, Namjoon knew that he could adore the moon for all he wanted and when it started to look like it’s waning, its surface slowly growing fatigued from illuminating the lightless night, its shape remained unchanged.

He could fear Seokjin slipping away from his grasp but, at one point, his fingerprints coalesced with Seokjin’s and history will always record how they, too, existed.

The sun was fully suspended over them and Seokjin suggested to go back home before more people flood the streets and he gets recognized, although unlikely.

They walked side-by-side, a safe distance bridging their shoulders like a simple bump would terminate the two of them. Their conversations flowed with ease, Namjoon found Seokjin easy to talk to and he liked it whenever Seokjin would get too heated up that his words start spewing out of his mouth rapidly. 

Their topics jumped from the kind of food they liked where Namjoon so valiantly crowned Seokjin as his mint-chocolate-hating ally, to the kinds of workouts they would do where Seokjin threatened Namjoon by saying that he would rig a bench press just to mess with Namjoon’s self esteem which Namjoon countered by saying that his self esteem didn’t revolve around a gym equipment, to animals where Namjoon found out that Seokjin lost his Maltese the same year he dropped out of college and that he used that as an outlet of grief.

Conversations like those brought Namjoon closer to Seokjin who was infinitely bolted to the pedestal he feared leaving. So, by the constant barrage of vitriol against an unsuspecting ice cream flavor, Namjoon hoped that it would usher him to that pedestal and guide Seokjin down.

Because loneliness craved company.

And Namjoon’s loneliness craved Seokjin’s company.

They arrive at Namjoon’s apartment after a little less than twenty minutes and the first thing they did was clean themselves up and make a wordless beeline to their room to sleep through the day after an all-nighter to catch the sunrise at their abandoned undeveloped viewdeck stone bench. Seokjin unrolled his futon and before the final part of the mattress hit the floor, he asked Namjoon if he could take the bed.

“Sure, I’ll nap on the couch,” Namjoon offered as he propped himself up with his elbow, preparing to head to the living room.

“No!” Seokjin protested almost immediately. “No— it’s okay. It’s a weird request. The floor is a little cold. and I get cold easily, and I don’t want to catch a cold because you’ll have to be the one to go to the drugstore for cold medicine, and it’s cold outs— am I saying cold too much? Shit, I said it again. But, yeah, I’m cold but…! It’s okay! I can take the sofa because you have work tomorrow and you, uh, you have to get good sleep. Yup. Yes. For the workforce. The economy needs you.”

“Hyung, you’re rambling.”

He knew Seokjin was lying through his teeth. The two of them had colder nights—in this case, days—but Seokjin never complained. If the fragments of Seokjin’s heart clinging on his sleeve weren’t enough to say that it was solitude on the floor he was fearing, then Namjoon shall not comment on it.

“Sorry, I’ll see myself out,” Seokjin said before giving a stiff bow and wincing as he did.

“We can take the bed,” Namjoon offered awkwardly. “It’s okay with me.”

Seokjin lit up and wasted no time placing one of the pillows on top of his futon in the space beside Namjoon to mark a boundary he was swearing not to cross. Namjoon let him do whatever he had to: a one-pillow boundary; a pledge that encompassed how he, Kim Seokjin, swears to never breach the pillow and failure to do so warrants eviction, and slightly glossing over how he may tend to hog the duvet quickly, depriving Namjoon of the time to process his sleeping behaviors and the latitudes to kick him back to the floor.

But Namjoon won’t. Not even if he tried. Not even if he trained for decades.

“You should rest, hyung,” Namjoon said when Seokjin had settled under his sheets. He could feel Seokjin’s warmth trapped under the thickness of the blanket, it was almost deranging. “You had a long day.”

“It’s barely seven,” Seokjin spat but he closed his eyes nonetheless, letting his head sink into the pillow. “Speak for yourself, you have a long day tomorrow.”

“I do,” Namjoon heaved a sigh that encompassed the stress he buried when he was sitting beside Seokjin on their stone bench. “Shit, working sucks.”

The bed creaked when Seokjin laid down on his side to face Namjoon. There was a shameless pit being drilled mercilessly in Namjoon’s stomach the minute Seokjin laid snugly under the white duvet, the material weighing up to his neck, and he looked at home. Namjoon felt so.

At home.

Namjoon had lived there for nearly five years and it was the first time he felt like he was home.

God forbid he knew why.

“I told you to quit,” Seokjin half-joked, extending an arm over the pillow boundary to adjust the blanket, making sure that the duvet was covering Namjoon’s shoulder who was mirroring him, facing him by laying on the side. Their eyes were droopy as they had not slept for nineteen hours and the fatigue of staying up was finally catching up on them.

When Seokjin unknowingly hugged the pillow boundary closer to him, Namjoon knew where it could go but he stayed mum.

“You’re sleepy?”

“We stayed up for the sunrise, Namjoon, of course I am,” Seokjin said under his breath that smelled like Namjoon’s charcoal toothpaste. “Stop changing the subject. Quit your job.”

“That’s not very convincing with your eyes only half opened.”

“Shut up.”

“Go to sleep, hyung.”

“I’m trying,” Seokjin mumbled. “Talk to me while I try.”

Lately, Namjoon was finding it harder and harder to say no to Seokjin.

So, Namjoon shifted a little to take a better look at Seokjin’s drowsy face. “I can’t quit my job.”

“But you don’t like it.”

Namjoon used to like it, sure. Working at a publishing house could give him connections. His chamber could expand, he could finally publish his manuscript after getting rejected by twenty-six, he could be a writer. He could be a really good writer.

He didn’t, of course. It was a bygone dream that intoxicated his youth. While Seokjin ran the endless road in pursuit of his passions, Namjoon stopped when his dreams began costing money and if he were to choose what expense he would risk, he would always throw himself under the bus.

Ah, but Seokjin was close to falling asleep and Namjoon didn’t have to tell him all that.

Instead, he whispered. “It pays the bills.”

“What if you didn’t need it to pay the bills? If you’re suddenly rich?”

Namjoon never really thought about what he would do if money bought him the world and placed it gently on the palms of his hands. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe I’ll establish my own publishing house, or dream small first with a self-published book, I’ll get a waffle maker, too.”

“Okay,” Seokjin said, “let’s get a waffle maker. You should also install a hot tub in the bathroom.”

“No,” Namjoon mulled it over before rejecting Seokjin’s pitch as if the two of them were in any way serious. “That’s too much of a commitment, I don’t wanna live here forever.”

“Why not?” Seokjin dragged his words, inflection showing more of his fatigue. “It’s a nice place.”

“Doesn’t feel right to stop here.”

“It doesn't feel right to stop anywhere,” Seokjin preached, “but it feels right to pause here. Maybe you feel that way because you think pauses are periods instead of ellipses.”

Perhaps Namjoon was too tired to try making sense of what Seokjin was saying because ellipses were a set of dots just as much a period was a lone stopper. They were transitory punctuations but they denote an ending nonetheless, except ellipses delude people with a detour.

“You feel right pausing here because you have nowhere else to go.”

To some in-depth degree, Namjoon was right. Seokjin was staying out of necessity and desperation. In the eyes of the public, he was a man whose death was trivialized as a conspiracist’s episode. But Namjoon liked being needed, being a crutch for Seokjin’s advantage was enough an honor his small, insignificant life could ever afford him.

“You’re right.” Seokjin rested his head against the pillow boundary. “I’m glad though, that I have nowhere else to go.”

“If you managed to sneak in here without anyone seeing you, I’m pretty sure you can have somewhere else.”

“I don’t want to go somewhere else.”

The clock ticked above them just in time for Namjoon to ignore the wrench weighing on his heart. I don’t want to go somewhere else, his head echoed. When Seokjin felt far away, when the vestiges of Seokjin’s past life loomed over their heads like a bounty, Namjoon let himself come to terms with the fact that Seokjin himself was ephemeral.

That he never belonged in Namjoon's cramped apartment, that there were people who longed to know he was still alive, that his company was easy to lose just as easy it was to have, that the house was far too small for one man’s broken dreams, let alone two. But Namjoon wasn’t so selfish as to tell Seokjin that there was a void in his heart filled by the latter’s presence, that would be too cruel.

Namjoon merely wished he was a tool whose greatest work was relinquishing Seokjin’s autonomy.

He let out a shallow chuckle to defuse the ticking time bomb strapped in his rib cage. “Sure. If you want,” Namjon replied. “Stay.”

Where there was death, there was eternity.

“You won’t drive me away?” asked Seokjin, eyes finally shut, who was in his final moments before falling into deep sleep, barely slurring his words. “It’s fine if you do, it’s your house.”

“Just go to sleep, hyung, stop worrying about nothing.”

“Okay,” Seokjin obliged. “Good night, Namjoon.”

There was silence after that. Namjoon waited for a few seconds for Seokjin’s light snores to fill the room. He would hear the back and forth of Seokjin’s breath when he would still sleep in the futon, harmonious snoring that would rise and fall like music itself was modeled after Seokjin’s sheer breath. Seokjin’s eyes were shut and he was still lying on his side facing Namjoon, the pillow boundary effectively reduced to a makeshift plushie. No one would ever know that Namjoon and the fond smile on his face were inseparable.

When Seokjin, asleep and unconscious, leaned into his touch as Namjoon reached out to tuck strands of hair behind his ear, Namjoon wondered—and how shameless for him to do so— if loneliness was still craving company.

Namjoon wondered if Seokjin’s loneliness craved Namjoon’s company.