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“He seems to have become a part of my life and I'm disappointed if I don't see him. If I get to the end of the day without seeing someone who reminds me of him, I feel as if a dull shadow has fallen over me.”
― Dorothy Koomson, The Woman He Loved Before
Mingi had known Yunho for years now. And in all these years, an unknown, unusual feeling grew in Mingi's stomach area. At first he had thought it was a tumor, possibly even cancer. Something that explained why his insides twisted together every time he saw Yunho and choked him off. He begged his mother to take him to the hospital, fearful that he was terminally ill and might die soon, but the doctor had looked at him with a grin and leaned back in his leather chair.
Mingi could still remember exactly how the doctor's rough hands tapped against the wooden table in front of him and played restlessly with a ballpoint pen while he looked at Mingi inquiringly.
"And this feeling only occurs when you see this particular person?" He asked, adjusting the thin wire-rimmed glasses on his nose. Mingi swallowed hard and nodded as he clawed his hands into the blue fabric of his jeans. Here it comes, Mingi thought. Now he's telling me I'm terminally ill. The doctor told him that he was perfectly healthy. When Mingi asked him the reason for this unnameable feeling, he laughed and said he would find out for himself.
It took Mingi years to find a name that matched the feeling. Love.
After this earth-shattering realization, it was almost painful to be around Yunho, but also unavoidable considering their job. Mingi noticed things and details about Yunho that he hadn't been able to see in all the years before. The cute dimples when Yunho smiled. How soft the inside of his hands were when they stroked Mingi's shoulders, upper arms or thighs. How almost godlike beautiful Yunho was, illuminated by the spotlights above the stage, which gave him the glow of a god's child and demanded Mingi's full attention. Yunho gave Mingi his space when he noticed his behavior, and Mingi almost wished Yunho was a little less selfless.
Sometimes Yunho would reach out his hand for Mingi's, only to stop at the last moment and drop his hand again. By now, Mingi was used to the stabbing pain in his heart region that twitched through his chest every time Yunho turned and walked away.
"I have to go away," Mingi confessed one evening, wrapped in a fluffy red blanket.
The flickering light of the television lit up the room and Mingi could feel the puzzled looks of his friends on his face. Yunho's eyes grew wide and his lower lip began to quiver.
"How long?" Yunho croaked.
"I don't know. I'm going to move in with my parents for a while." Mingi closed his eyes as he noticed the pain flash through Yunho's eyes.
When he stood on the street the next day with his bags packed, the sky was overcast and the air was cool. His friends waited for him to get into the van and waved to him sadly until the car disappeared around a bend. Yunho had not come to say goodbye.
Mingi used the free time to sort out his feelings. He had always been able to express himself best through his music, so he opened his notebook and applied a freshly sharpened pencil to the blank paper. The words flowed through his veins directly into the book and formed themselves into a poem, a confession, a song, filled with sadness, friendship, love.
Yunho contacted him on day 10 and Mingi allowed himself to be swallowed up by his longing for Yunho.
Something had changed in the time Mingi had been away. Yunho smiled less, had become stricter and more withdrawn. Mingi felt guilty, so he took Yunho's hand and led him to his room.
"What's wrong?" Mingi asked, leaning his forehead against Yunho's in a comforting gesture. He was surprised when his counterpart burst into tears and clawed his hands into the bright pink of his sweater.
"Why did you leave me alone?" Yunho sobbed into the soft wool on Mingi's shoulder. Guilt rolled over Mingi like a wave, pulling him under, holding him there. Mingi's throat burned with unspoken words.
"I'm sorry," Mingi whispered and pulled Yunho onto his bed with him, allowing his friend to snuggle against his chest.
As the moon rose outside and poured its milky light over the city, the love of his life rested beside him, his full lips slightly parted and tears dried on his flawless cheek. Mingi looked at Yunho in the moonlight and felt his heart break a little again. Sighing, Mingi placed his left hand on Yunho's cheek and ran his right hand through the wild brown mop of hair on Yunho's head. He allowed himself one thing for a long time: to feel. No one could see it in the moonlight. In the moonlight, Mingi was allowed to love Yunho.
Mingi named his song 'Youth'.
KQ asked him who he wanted to record the song with.
Mingi said Yunho's name without hesitation, convinced that it would never come to that.
Yunho sang his song. The song that Mingi had written in his longing for him. Mingi sat outside the recording studio and watched with a wildly beating heart as Yunho gave his words a melody.
"This song is for you," Mingi confessed as he wiped the make-up from the video shoot off his face. Yunho stood next to him and smiled gently.
"I know. I felt it." He replied and leaned against the bathroom wall. Yunho looked so incredibly cozy that Mingi just wanted to sink into his arms.
"What do you say?" Mingi asked, drying his hands as if the two of them were talking about something casual like the weather and not the obvious love letter Mingi had written to Yunho.
"You're an idiot," Yunho finally replied, "to think I don't feel the same way about you."
The world seemed to stand still as Mingi processed the words. His stomach rumbled, his synapses fired incessantly. Yunho's hand came to rest on his, intertwining their fingers together. Mingi slowly lifted his head and looked into the warm, brown eyes he loved so much. Yunho's smile was more beautiful than the sun in the blue sky over Seoul. The ice in Mingi's chest where his feelings for Yunho had been frozen for so long melted and he realized that the tips of their noses were touching. Yunho's thumb ran over the soft skin of Mingi's neck, traveled over his shoulders, down his neck, came to rest on his chest, right where his heart was beating wildly like a drum.
The kiss felt like a warm summer's day, like the sweetness of a watermelon, like honey, like ice cream. Mingi's body flashed with an electricity that made his brain stop and focused all his attention on the boy in his arms, on the lips he had stared at so often but never touched.
How do you react when you experience your first kiss with your soulmate?
Mingi let any tension leave his body, leaning against Yunho's body, trusting that he would hold him. Yunho would never let him fall, even if this kiss felt uncontrollably like jumping out of an airplane. Mingi didn't regret letting himself fall, even if he didn't know where he would land again, whether it was an ocean, a soft field of flowers, or the hard asphalt of Seoul's streets.
Whatever awaited him at the end of the journey, everything was worth the feeling of kissing Yunho.