Work Text:
“Isn’t this supposed to be your farewell party or something?” Seungmin points his chin towards the students crowding the rec room, singing karaoke at the top of their lungs. The combined volume of thirty-something people and off-key singing grates against Hyunjin’s ears, the warm, stuffy air and pressure to socialize felt suffocating, and all Hyunjin wanted was to return to his dorm, his quiet, comfy sanctuary (until he was reminded that even his dorm wasn’t his anymore after today).
“Yes and no.” Hyunjin smiles weakly, “A ton of people are leaving next year. It's just that I’m the only junior amongst them.” Their school had a tradition of throwing year-end parties, functioning both as a formal goodbye to leaving students and an official end of the school year.
Hyunjin surveys the packed room for familiar faces. He catches the gaze of Jeongin, a sophomore in his math class, and waves. Jeongin’s face lights up as he returns the wave enthusiastically, grinning ear to ear.
“You should probably tell him you’re leaving next year.” Seungmin says.
“I can’t.” Hyunjin shakes his head. Just the thought of Jeongin’s face drooping in dismay made Hyunjin’s throat close up.
They slip through the crowd towards the back of the rec room, taking a detour around the pool table to avoid the couples making out passionately.
Seungmin slumps onto an old green sofa in relief,“I can’t believe we’re required to be here.”
Hyunjin nods in agreement, sitting criss-crossed on the floor next to the sofa, remembering how the dorm parents had forced him to leave his dorm and “enjoy his last party here” during room checks. A flurry of thoughts raced through his mind when suddenly, it struck him.
“Technically, we’re only required to not be in our dorms.”
Seungmin’s face lights up,"Piano studio?”
“Piano studio.”
“So, what song next?” Seungmin’s question echoes throughout the cramped studio.
Hyunjin takes his time to mull over his choices, watching the tiny bugs scurry under the lamplight around his sneakers, navigating the loosened threads and dirt-filled crevices of the old musty carpet. If Hyunjin squinted, he could make out the faint outlines of flowers of red and blue and gold that once adorned the carpet.
During the three-year timespan of their friendship, Seungmin had played many pieces for him, from classical sonatas to piano covers of pop songs, from christmas carols to movie soundtracks. But, of course, there was one Hyunjin had desperately wanted to hear for one last time before he left (blame it on how he was too sentimental and craved the nostalgia, or perhaps it evoked such strong emotions in him he had mustered up the courage to face them before it was too late).
“The one you were playing when we first met. You know, the one you never got to finish.” The summer three years ago, when the air conditioning systems in the hallways were broken, Hyunjin and his nonexistent sense of direction have lost their way in the sprawling labyrinth of the school building, and had to barge into this very studio, the only unlocked room he could find, in order to not die from heatstroke. Seungmin was nice enough to let him stay afterwards.
Seungmin grins,“I’m surprised you still remember it.”
“I wouldn’t dare forget.” Hyunjin returns the smile,“Wait, do you still remember it?”
“I think it was a piano cover of That’s Why I Gave Up On Music by Yorushika. My memory’s a bit rusty, but I could try.”
And try Seungmin does. The delivery most definitely isn’t polished, with an occasional wrong note or misplaced chord. But it means the entire world to Hyunjin when Seungmin doesn’t stop at the mistakes, and keeps going.
Seungmin plays it with such a raw, heated passion, fiery flames erupting from him, burning down his usual calm and level-headed composure into ashes, sparks flying everywhere in his vicinity. Hyunjin imagines a spark landing onto his own arm and charring his flesh. It was a fire Hyunjin never saw him wear. A fire visible even in the dim, warm-hued lamplight, the only source of light in the otherwise dark studio.
The notes rain on Hyunjin like a gentle drizzle on a chilly autumn morning, the precisely-tuned vibrations rippling through his aching heart. His world, on the tip of Seungmin’s fingers.
If only. If only he could have Seungmin to himself.
The thought startles him, and Hyunjin’s heart lurches in the wrongest way possible.
No, no, no.
The suppressed longing gushes out from his shadow cast onto the carpet, a dam broken loose, thoughts he had sworn to bury in the deepest, darkest pit of his heart resurfacing in distorted bubbles and flooding his mind in all-consuming waves. The tickling feeling in his chest gradually intensifies until it gets overwhelming. It felt almost painful.
Hyunjin fiddles with his hair tie, a white elastic band with its edges already frayed from overuse, hoping that it’d help channel his nervous energy and disguise the tumultuous flood raging inside him. He’d gone so long without a haircut he needed to tie his hair up in a loose ponytail during the school day.
Hyunjin twists the rubber band mindlessly, stretching it and forming crosses and loops. When he does finally look down, the hair tie is twisted once, resembling an infinity sign.
Seungmin hums softly as his hands traverse the piano keys skillfully, his voice light and feathery, and 16-year-old Hyunjin looks at the twisted hair tie he’d absentmindedly slipped onto his finger, and thinks that this is what infinity feels like.
It was as if the abstract, fickle concept of infinity, the eon-old stars billions of light years away and sprawling systems of gas and dark matter, the circular specks of floating dust and elliptical galaxies all churned together and materialized into this one infinity sign, into the white hair tie with already-fraying edges wrapped loosely around his index finger.
Hyunjin doesn’t want to let it go.
Just as Hyunjin was about to close his eyes and drink in as much of this small infinity as the universe allowed, a loud, excited whoop came from the hallway, followed by hasty, uneven footsteps that inched closer by the second.
Hyunjin catches Seungmin’s bewildered gaze, the panic evident in the younger’s expression as he retracted his hands from the piano. They both knew the consequences of getting caught sneaking out without permission—Hyunjin from experience, and Seungmin from knowing the student handbook by heart. Hyunjin frantically reaches for the lamp, turning it off in a click. The sudden movement sends the loosely-fitted hair tie flying off from his fingertips due to inertia, falling into the crack between the sofa and the wall.
Just out of reach.
Hyunjin holds his breath until the uneven footsteps rush past the door and fade out completely.
He turns to face Seungmin,"False alert, probably some drunk kids playing tag."
“Drunk tag?” Seungmin quirks his eyebrows, grinning again.
The moonlight casts a thin glow on Seungmin’s soft features, his ruffled black hair, a faint moonshine in his eyes, his smile so genuine and warm and unmistakably Seungmin.
Hyunjin wants to burn the scene before him into his mind, to secretly smuggle away a piece of tinder of Seungmin’s fire as some sort of souvenir, so that the warmth would always remain, and the flames could fill up the Seungmin-shaped hole in his heart.
The infinity between them shatters when Seungmin glances at his watch and reminds him that it’s 9 already, their parents are probably waiting, and they should head outside. Hyunjin, snapped out of his trance, swallows the expanding lump in his throat and follows Seungmin out, his eyes still burning—though he knew well enough there was no fire in them anymore
Hyunjin never ends up retrieving the white hair tie from where it fell.
(Hyunjin wonders if it was the universe’s idea of a joke, how he couldn’t even enjoy this small infinity with Seungmin, a mere stroke in the grand canvas of their lives, in peace.
He later realizes that it’s most definitely not.
Because nobody ever uses the same joke twice.)