Work Text:
A list of things Park Wonbin fears, in no particular order other than what comes to mind first, and in no way comprehensive:
( Dogs )
Wonbin wants to be their friend, but he hasn't figured out their language yet.
He doesn't understand how others ask to pet a dog out on the street, don't flinch when one of them passes right next to them without prior warning, don't bat an eye when they bark and jump and bear their teeth in ways that could mean play with me, friend or don't come closer and what if Wonbin misreads their signs—
( Roller coasters )
The worst part is when everyone around him screams while his own voice lodges uncomfortably into his windpipe, right beneath his Adam's Apple. His heartbeat builds and builds and builds in his chest and when the karts plunge down the steep slope the air hits him where his voice claws at his throat, trapped, trapped, trapped—
( Bugs )
They always fly too close to his ears somehow and the buzzing of their wings drives him mad, sending his skin crawling and they somehow are after Wonbin's dessert and—
( Horror Movies )
He's seen Bly Manor, squished between Eunseok and Sungchan who either were disconcertingly stone-faced and calm about all of it — the former — or just as terrified as Wonbin, making it very hard to remain calm.
"Bly Manor isn't even scary," Eunseok deadpanned when they called a break which Sungchan spent delaying the inevitable (finishing the episode) by going to the toilet, making more popcorn than the three of them combined could eat and probably texting Anton with instructions on how to water the one plant his clumsiness hadn't killed off yet in case he didn't make it through the night.
"You're the worst," Wonbin informs him, not quite meaning it.
He still spends weeks afterwards dreaming of rooms digesting its inhabitants, the ghosts of the future haunting the present with the truth—
( Haunted Houses )
Self-explanatory, he'd think, considering his lack of chill with horror flicks.
( Fire )
He flinches when Seunghan tosses the matchbook at him, fingers suddenly clumsy and sticky and feeling a lot thicker than they actually are, like they no longer belong with his body the moment he's supposed to light the candle on Eunseok's birthday cupcake.
Shotaro takes the matches with a natural grace that almost makes Wonbin believe he'd always been the one supposed to do so instead.
It looks easy when he does it, runs the head of the match along the igniting surface. The fire sparks, lights and then the candle is alive. The flame dances a jolly jig over the ugly icing job on the cupcake, decorated with the joint effort of six young men in their early twenties with hands a little too big for the cupcake and a lot too much enthusiasm.
It's alright, it makes Eunseok laugh. He blows the candle out;
"This is the world's ugliest cupcake," he says, and Wonbin hears the I love you guys loud and clear from where he stands in the back.
His fingers still feel stiff and thick and like they're not properly attached to the palm of his hands.
Shotaro's shoulder presses gently against his own in place of a reassuring squeeze.
( The darkness after he turns off the light )
Wonbin is so used to sharing his room in the cramped university dorm, first with Sungchan, then with Sohee, when he first turns off the light in his living room after moving into his own place the fear catches him with an iron grip around his throat.
His breath hitches in his throat and his knees buckle with shock for a moment, then his hand finds the light switch and his eyes shutter closed — darkness all the same — because the lamps are too bright after the suffocating blanket of night and nothing.
The space between the light switch by the entryway and the hallway leading to his bedroom looks insurmountable for a very long heartbeat.
Your phone flashlight, his brain reminds him after an embarrassing long moment spent in paralysis, calculating how quickly he can sprint across the room and whether his socked feet will thump too loudly against the wooden floors for the hour (one in the morning is not an respectable hour to be running in an apartment building, his parents raised him better than that).
He's glad he no longer lives with Sungchan or Sohee. Wonbin isn't sure he could look them in the eye again if they caught him like that.
He lifts his phone to a notification for a text.
It's not socially acceptable to bother your friends at one AM, Wonbin replies, laughing at the meme Shotaro sent him that he knows for a fact no one but the two of them will think is funny.
For a moment his voice fills the still-too-empty living room, fifty percent floor space, fifty percent cardboard boxes.
Wonbin turns on his phone's flashlight, careful not to look up from the screen as he turns off the light again and walks towards the hallway.
At the bottom of the chat window KaTalk informs him that Shotaro is typing. It makes the dark a little more bearable.
( Thunder )
The rain throws itself over the street like a dense curtain, drenching the world, flushing the traffic smog out of the air for a few blessed hours. Wonbin shuffles a little closer to the entrance of the convenience store, ignores the spike of anxiety when the door behind him opens and a blast of artificially cooled air hits him — I'm not actually going in, he thinks fervently, please don't.
It's a warm, humid day, the kind that makes Wonbin's shirt stick to his back and pastes his hair to the back of his neck.
The office hasn't asked him to cut it yet, so he won't. He likes the way it is now, long enough to tie up in a messy imitation of a ponytail. Wonbin feels a little more like himself when he looks at his reflection like that in the mirror before heading out. The long hair and the collection of colourful ties he cycles through (and never ties until last minute) make the dress shirt and slacks combo feel a little less constricting after a youth spent in dancing gear.
The summer storm is fine with him until lightning starts skittering across the clouds overhead.
The neon sign of the bar he's meeting his friends at for their weekly after work drinks taunts him from the other end of the street. He could run, maybe he should, really, the buildings around him are so tall, surely there's no way he'll get struck—
The roaring thunderclap deafens him for a moment and he takes another step backward. Behind him the convenience store sliding doors open with a cheerful jingle and the air-conditioned breeze makes the hairs at the nape of his neck stand up.
"Talk about shit weather, huh?"
Wonbin yells, nearly hits the newspaper stand and Shotaro with his work bag.
Shotaro, to his credit, looks a little surprised but to be in otherwise good spirits. The perfect 'o' shape of his lips pulls into his signature bright grin and Wonbin feels his shoulders sag with such relief, the next wave of thunder sounds already so much further away.
"Fuck, Shotaro," he hisses. Wonbin's laugh is a few notes higher than where his voice usually sits, wavering with the spike in his heart rate that has yet to fully settle again.
"Sorry," comes the easy response. Shotaro holds up the bar of Melona in his hand in reconciliation. It's already starting to melt a little.
Wonbin takes him up on the offer without thinking much about it.
"Realized I ran out of ramen when I was leaving the company," Shotaro explains. His hand remains still while Wonbin digs his teeth into the cold ice cream. The sensation stings so he bites down harder in defiance, dragging a big chunk of cold off the popsicle stick.
"Thish ish not–" He pauses, closes his mouth and waits for the mouthful of melon and milk to melt enough to swallow. "This is not ramen," he repeats once he does.
The way Shotaro rolls his eyes is friendly, it holds no disdain or mockery.
"The ice cream aisle is a dangerous place, Park Wonbin."
It is, Wonbin agrees.
They finish up the Melona together and wait for the lightning to stop before Shotaro fishes an umbrella out of his bag and motions for Wonbin to join him underneath it.
They arrive at the bar with soaked socks and wet shirts and slacks along their sides where the rain got them anyway. Their friends don't look much better, so they laugh, order their drinks and dry together in a corner by the window that overlooks the street.
In the distance thunder growls, faint and inconsequential.
( Needles )
"It doesn't look like a needle," Anton says with an anxious kind of fascination that sounds cute on him. His new tattoo is wrapped in cling film already, the plastic obscuring the rocket they'll have in common — once the artist, a heavily tattooed Japanese woman with a serene voice and a permanent ghost of a smile in the corner of her mouth, is done with Wonbin's, that is.
Anton is industriously undoing his shoelaces as if that, combined with his astute observation, will make Wonbin feel more at ease.
(It does, even if he doesn't like admitting it.)
On his other side, the right, Shotaro sits and holds his hand like it isn't Wonbin who's hanging onto him for dear life.
"It doesn't," he agrees, "which is probably for the best, or Princess here wouldn't have—"
Wonbin squeezes extra hard. He doesn't have it in him to laugh when Shotaro squawks, the scraping of the tattoo gun against his skin keeps him stiff and glued to the spot.
"I'm sorry," he distantly hears Shotaro. He hadn't realised he'd been holding his breath for so long, "You're being very brave."
Anton snorts, tugs at Wonbin's laces. Once Wonbin is out of this chair he's going to get his revenge.
"Damn right I am," he breathes. He doesn't feel very brave.
The tattoo artist says nothing. Wonbin can barely see her expression where she's bent over his forearm, though he catches the hint of a smile when he looks over and then, immediately, away before he can catch a glimpse of what sorcery exactly she's working.
"Damn right you are," Shotaro echoes the way he used to parrot everything Wonbin used to say when they first met and he still wrangled the Korean language on a daily basis. He's smiling, it shows in his voice.
Wonbin closes his eyes. On his arm the inked rocket slowly comes to life.
( To be left behind )
"Do you ever think about going back?"
Wonbin doesn't know why he asks. If he doesn't get the exact answer he's looking for he's not going to like it, he knows that. He also knows Shotaro, sprawled across the old couch they thrifted together and hauled up five flights of stairs because the lift was broken that day, won't lie to make him feel better.
("Will it really make you feel better, though?" he'd asked once when Wonbin had complained, asking him to at least pretend. It wouldn't, Wonbin figured. Ever since, every time Shotaro's honesty hurts he reminds himself that he could be lied to instead.
It stings less, he finds.)
Shotaro takes his time answering, turning the low hum around in his mouth like a cough drop. Maybe he doesn't quite know his answer either, though that doesn't do much to ease the flutter of anxiety at the base of Wonbin's throat, wings beating so quickly they threaten to suffocate him already, before even getting what he asked for.
He knows Shotaro sent out job applications in Japan as well when he graduated three years ago. He's good, if he wanted a life back home where his family and childhood friends remain he could have it.
Shotaro could leave and never look back and he'd still have the world in the palm of his hands when he'd be tearing out Wonbin's heart out of his chest—
It's an awfully dramatic way of looking at it, he knows. Friendships can survive distances. Shotaro has gone home for the holidays before and Wonbin's heart has remained in his chest just fine, ticking away at a steady metronome pace. Shotaro could leave and the world would move on. Wonbin's hair and nails would grow and his heart would continue pumping blood while his mind's heart ached and quaked and split at the seams.
He'd be so easy to leave behind—
"You're somewhere very far away right now."
On his spot on the couch Shotaro turns just enough to get a better look at his face. It lights a fire under Wonbin's skin, the flush that follows is hot and cold at the same time and it makes him feel a little nauseous with embarrassment. He doesn't really wish Shotaro couldn't read him that well, except for he does a little bit. For all that his friend has seen him at his worst — worse than now, would you believe it — he doesn't like cracking himself open like that.
It makes looking into the mirror worse afterwards.
"I'm right here," Wonbin shoots back and shifts, curls a little further into himself.
Shotaro's eyes are hard to read past their steadfast warmth.
"No, you're not."
He doesn't push but he doesn't have to. The cracks are already beginning to show. Wonbin walks through life covered in hair-thin fissures, spiderwebbing away from his heart. It's not Shotaro's fault, it's him who's been made faulty like that.
"No, I'm not," Wonbin concedes. He wishes he knew what else to say, anything that isn't a lie and also isn't a blatant admission of the outlandish places his mind goes when left unchecked.
"Take me with you, then?"
Shotaro's hand finds his. The touch burns but Wonbin can't pull away. He feels a little sick.
Being in love is fun in concept, but where Wonbin is concerned the reality of it is that it makes his stomach churn and his heart beat too fast and it leaves him winded in a way that is embarrassing for someone who's danced for years and years.
He can't rationalise his jitters away, can't breathe through them for long, cough syrup won't work and neither will painkillers.
Wonbin wants it all gone. He wants his best friend back, without love clinging to Shotaro's smile like a stomach bug.
"It's not a fun place," Wonbin tries to brush it off.
"That hasn't stopped me before." Of course Shotaro has a smart reply to that.
He's right too, he's been here for the panic attacks and the sleepless nights and the time Wonbin tore a ligament in his knee and thought for a few months that his world would truly end.
Park Wonbin lives from doomsday to doomsday, at least that's what it feels like sometimes.
It stands to reason that as a consequence, Shotaro too has faced countless apocalypses.
It wasn't always this easy. No one at fifteen knows what to make of a friend whose skin is as fragile as tissue paper. Shotaro doesn't like letting him see, but Wonbin knows the doomsdays have left scars on him too. It's a little unfair he's so much better at hiding them when Shotaro isn't the only one who can give.
("You give me plenty already, Wonbin-ah."
But not like that.)
But they've grown and changed and if you layer enough tissue paper on top of itself even that can become strong enough of a barrier to weather the end of the world as it is happening today.
It's been almost fifteen years since. Wonbin has learnt how to layer.
"I was thinking about you leaving. How it'd hurt."
Shotaro laughs and leans over into Wonbin's space, drapes himself over his body.
He's warm and alive and bright. Doomsday is sunny today.
"Don't be stupid, I'm not leaving. I have a life here now. I get paid too well to think about going back right now."
"Right now."
"Wonbin-ah."
"Fine. You're not leaving."
Shotaro shuffles a little. His arm remains on Wonbin's shoulder, a steady weight anchoring the first layer of tissue paper so it can be built on top of again.
"Unless you want me to."
"I just told you it'd hurt!"
Wonbin gasps at his laughter but can't find it in him to push Shotaro away. They stay like this for a while. In the pit of Wonbin's stomach something tightens painfully.
"I'll have to go home eventually, you know?"
Wonbin's eyebrows knit together as he tries to parse the words.
"To Japan?"
"No, stupid. To my flat. I don't live in Japan anymore, do I?"
"No."
"You hurt yourself over things that can't even touch you. I wish you wouldn't."
Shotaro's cheek is soft where it squishes against Wonbin's shoulder.
"I've gotten better about it."
Their fingers slot together so perfectly, it's like they were made for it. Wonbin tries not to think about it. It makes him feel a little ill.
"You have," Shotaro agrees, "And I'm proud of you. I hope you know that."
Quiet stretches back over the little thrifted sofa. On the wall across the little living room the projector has moved on from the FIFA starting screen and instead throws colourful shapes across the space.
"You could just stay."
"Hm?"
"You could stay. Here."
Wonbin's flat has two bedrooms because it's the only thing he'd been able to find close enough to his office. Rent costs an arm and a leg and both kidneys but it's worth it to him because the less time he spends on the packed subway in the mornings, the slower his cycle of doomsdays repeats.
"It'd be cheaper, and it's closer to where you work too. And you said your lease is almost up."
"I'd still have to leave, though. For work, for dance practice. Spend time with other friends."
Wonbin feels Shotaro's apologetic smile against the strip of skin right past his collar. His heart feels like it's about to give in, implode with a tired sigh.
It only feels like that, Wonbin-ah, teenage Shotaro's voice reminds him from somewhere he can no longer reach, the world isn't actually ending. You're stronger than that.
"Yeah. But you'd come back."
This time, when the silence spills between them Wonbin wishes there were still something to fill it with; music, birds chirping, cicadas humming, the FIFA 2032 title screen theme.
"But I'd come back."
Shotaro sounds like he's considering it. Wonbin wraps his hands around his heart, begs it to temper its hopes. He's not very good at begging, it seems.
"But I'd come back," Shotaro repeats.
There's certainty in his voice.
( Interlude: Snowmen )
"I don't understand you," Koyuki proclaims from where she's sitting across from Wonbin. Her chopsticks are pointed at his lunch box where three wonky rice ball snowmen sit next to each other and smile goofily up at him with seaweed eyes and ketchup mouths.
Wonbin asked about the snowmen when Shotaro handed him his first lunchbox ever, June felt a little early, but his best friend only shrugged. His smile was apologetic, as if he was worrying Wonbin would say no to a painstakingly prepared homemade lunch.
"That's all I can do. Trust me, I've tried kitty-shaped rice balls because Seunghan suggested it but they looked…" Shotaro picked his words carefully, "Interesting. A little too interesting for your everyday office lunch setting, you know?"
Wonbin had laughed and stashed the lunch box very carefully in his bag, noting the one Shotaro was finishing up for himself looked a lot less decorated.
"Sounds powerful. You'll have to make these kitty rice balls at home someday."
"I will. You won't know what hit you."
"There isn't much to not understand," present day Wonbin retorts and resolutely decapitates the first snowman. He only feels a faint stab of guilt these days.
("It's only rice, Wonbin-ah. It's fine."
"But you put effort into it!"
"No one's keeping me at gunpoint to make you silly character lunch boxes. Food's meant to be eaten.")
"Oh, but there is." Koyuki raises an eyebrow. She knows Shotaro too — she was Wonbin's first friend at the company because Shotaro asked her to look after him, actually — so it feels like there's weight behind it. Wonbin pointedly chooses to ignore her expression and chews.
"If I was living with a pretty girl making me lunch boxes twice a week and putting in extra hours to make them look cute–"
"This is hardly cute, Yuki." (That's a lie, Wonbin thinks the snowmen are oddly charming in their own, wonky, ugly little ways)
"— to make them look cute I'd be putting that relationship on lock."
Wonbin sets his chopsticks aside. The rice, perfectly fluffy, if cold, suddenly feels like it's starting to clump at the bottom of his stomach, heavy and dense.
"We're not like that."
"Oh?" The pickled radish Koyuki bites down on crunches sharply as if in support of her disbelief.
"What's that to mean? You're not into men? Because I can assure you I know from the man himself that—"
"Shhh, not that!" Wonbin feels his cheeks heat up. The office cubbies are empty at this time of the day and Koyuki isn't talking particularly loudly but he's still not used to discussing his sexuality out in the open like that.
He knows Shotaro likes men too. While he doesn't bring it up unless prompted, it's never been a secret for any of Wonbin's adult life. Wonbin has met every partner Shotaro has had between eighteen (Jimin from his high school's dance club) and thirty-one (Yuta, the personal trainer at the gym their friend circle frequents with the unnerving but very handsome feral grin).
"We're friends, is all I'm saying."
Koyuki's eyebrow remains firmly where it is pinned just below her hairline. Wonbin wants to wither under her probing look.
"I sure hope you are."
"What's that to mean?!"
"You live together," She starts counting on her fingers, "you do his laundry, he makes you lunch boxes. You show up to ninety percent of events together and the last ten percent you only go to separately because your friend circles don't overlap perfectly."
Koyuki inhales and pauses to take another bite of her own lunch. Wonbin is glad for the brief moment of reprieve.
"You don't even call him hyung when I'm around anymore."
"Yeah, because that's not a thing in the same way in Japanese," Wonbin argues. When he's out with Shotaro and his Japanese friends here in Seoul they wildly oscillate between Korean and Japanese anyway. It'd be weird, Wonbin tells himself.
"You learned Japanese for him," Koyuki fires back instead.
"Yeah. So I could talk to his parents," Wonbin defends himself petulantly.
"So you could talk to his parents."
Groaning Wonbin puts the lid back on his lunch box. His appetite is starting to get weird. The clump in his stomach grows.
"Other people do these things too, and they're just friends."
"What other people are we speaking of?"
Koyuki has no mercy and keeps munching on her meal. Wonbin watches her with a bit of envy.
"I don't know. People."
Other people. Sungchan and Anton live together and the only reason Wonbin suspects they don't cook for each other is that they're both kind of a menace to society in the kitchen. But Anton takes care of Sungchan's plants and Sungchan fought with the landlord so Anton could practise his cello for longer in the evenings and—
Well, to be fair, Sungchan and Anton are the worst example for other people because Wonbin knows for a fact they've been circling each other like lovestruck wolves for years now.
So maybe they're not other people the way his argument needs them to be.
Sohee and Seunghan never even qualified for other people. Sohee and Seunghan are positively abnormal about each other, that's part of how they are. He's not going to try. Koyuki knows them and has seen them be disgusting with each other in public, citing them would only kill his argument in its baby shoes.
Wonbin doesn't know how Eunseok puts up with them on the daily sharing a flat with them but that alone should probably be enough to take him off the other people list as well.
The only example on Koyuki's side he can think of is how close she and Yeonhee are, but that's a dead end too because Koyuki and Yeonhee are engaged.
Wonbin's phone vibrates.
He exchanges a long glance with his friend, scowling in the effort to keep her from saying anything just in case it is who her smug expression clearly says she thinks it is and—
Shotaro asks what they should have for dinner.
Wonbin has no idea, but it doesn't really matter. Koyuki doesn't need to see the chat to know who he's talking to.
"Other people aren't you and Shotaro," Wonbin hears her say, her voice a little softer, almost apologetic. Good, she should be. This conversation is ruining his lunch break.
But she's right, other people aren't. Which is good, because if Wonbin had to deal with another version of himself he'd probably scream. He's not sure he'd like the Other Wonbin very much.
Shotaro's KaTalk message is still open, a few millimetres from Wonbin's thumb. He doesn't know what to say. He can barely think about his lunch right now.
"Dinner suggestions, now," he instructs Koyuki instead of replying to what she just said.
She complies and starts naming dishes until Wonbin hears something he likes and texts Shotaro back.
"All I'm saying is… think about it?"
Lunch break is coming to an end. Shotaro's stomach growls in spite of the anxiety burning under his fingertips. Koyuki cleans up her spot at Wonbin's desk and tears into a packet of Pepero, getting ready to go back to her cubicle a few metres down the office.
"I think about it a lot more than I should," he admits quietly.
At that, his friend pauses and gives him another long, hard to read look. Then, a smile spreads across Koyuki's face.
"Go figure. Then I correct myself, maybe don't just think about it. Before anything else you two are friends, Wonbin."
She reaches across the desk and hands him a Pepero stick.
"You're supposed to be honest with each other."
Wonbin doesn't like that she's right. The biscuit crunch under his teeth feels a little like it's mocking him.
( Uncertainties )
The thing with the future is that everything can change. It's the beauty and the bane of it.
Wonbin's life isn't predestined to be a row of minor world-ending events and recovering from them, chained into one horrifying loop. It's hard to believe sometimes, but he has to if he wants to make it through the next rough patch — if he wants to make it through this rough patch.
They have a few days off for Chuseok. Wonbin loves his family, but going home for more than an afternoon feels like an insurmountable task. The living room will be too full, grandmother will ask about his marriage plans and grandfather will want the details on how things at work are going.
Shotaro makes plans with him for a solid alibi, an escape route to not stay overnight. They buy enough food for a small feast that will feed them throughout the coming week and grocery shopping is less scary when it's the two of them, rather than just Wonbin by himself.
If it's the two of them he'd wager he even likes their grocery runs. They're silly and not all that serious and Shotaro is both responsible enough to know how much they need of what and spontaneous enough to still give into the wish for impulse purchasing the limited edition instant noodles Wonbin wants to try but can't justify buying without a plan.
He picks up Wonbin from the train station too, even though he arrives almost at midnight because construction work on the rails delayed the train from Ulsan for almost an entire hour.
They only eat a little bit, set the rest aside for possibly the most extravagant breakfast Wonbin will ever have come morning.
This is how this moment finds them, Shotaro up to his elbows in suds as he washes up the pans and pots he used to heat up their Chuseok feast (it's all pre-made because he spent the day with his family too, just got off his flight from Narita today at noon and Wonbin would never stand for him staying home and doing all of the work by himself) and Wonbin next to him wielding the dishcloth.
They make a good team like this.
They've made a good team like this for years now.
Wonbin feels his chest clench around his heart. It hurts. It's hard to breathe.
Koyuki's voice bounces around his head even though it's been weeks since they've had their conversation over lunch. She's had the courtesy not to touch on it again but she didn't really need to. Her words have been looped into the eternal radio of Park Wonbin's stressed thoughts that fill every bit of silence he can't fill with his words.
"You're brooding," Shotaro points out.
Wonbin doesn't know if he flinches because he's surprised or because the truth just burns a bit like that. He doesn't know what to say.
"Long day?" The question evolves when Shotaro doesn't get an answer.
"Yeah." It's not a lie, Wonbin is tired and weary and while he's glad he went to see his parents he feels like he's been sucked dry of all life. He'll be okay, but he'll need three days straight in bed he won't get to have to recover. Capitalism is a disease, a voice that sounds a lot like Eunseok says in the back of his mind. He and Koyuki should consider starting a choir, their timbres match nicely.
But it's not just that. It hasn't been just that in months, in years.
"I'm sorry."
"Hm?"
"I'm sorry. For cutting Chuseok with your family short. For always needing so much help."
Wonbin's knuckles whiten as he grasps the dishcloth like a lifeline.
"It's okay. I've had plenty of Otsukimi with my family growing up. They understand. They'll have me back for New Year's."
"What did you tell them?"
They both pause. Wonbin eyes Shotaro from the corner of his eyes, catching a rare glance of his best friend unsure about what to say or do. It feels comforting, in a way. Like he's not the only one who doesn't know where the next step leads.
Shotaro is so much better at freestyling, so it feels like they're figuring out the steps together. They haven't choreographed with each other in so long, ever since their office hours made sustaining a hobby a suffocating task. It's one of Wonbin's biggest adulthood woes.
"The truth. That I wanted to spend the rest of Chuseok with you."
Wonbin swallows. The guilt weighs heavily on him. His dinner feels like a noose.
"I'm sorry," he repeats.
"Don't. I chose this myself. When my parents moved back to Japan they told me they'd support me building my own life here. This was me building my own life here."
If he weren't holding onto the dishcloth Wonbin is certain his fingers would be trembling.
His heart beats in his chest like a drunk hummingbird, quickly and uncontrollably. His lungs feel like they'll collapse. He should say something, has to say something.
"I love you. And I'm scared to death of what you'll say, I just know that if I don't say anything at all—" Not that. He can't say that, but the words are out now. Wonbin tries to swallow. His mouth is dry and his throat itches. Tears form in the corners of his eyes.
"All it'll ever be is uncertain. And that's worse."
It's not a proper reply. It feels selfish, he's so used to bouncing meanings back and forth between him and Shotaro. He doesn't like steering the conversation off the predicted path like this.
It's not I'm sorry, at least.
Then, Shotaro laughs. It's a warm, gentle sound. Wonbin tries to hear disgust or disbelief or anything else out of it that will make the coming blow hurt less, that's sweet, Wonbin-ah, but I don't like you like that or don't joke like that, Wonbin-ah, it'll hurt our friendship.
All he hears is relief.
"I figured," Shotaro hums. His voice is brittle. It squeezes Wonbin's heart.
He cries because it's all he knows how to do in this instant.
"I was hoping you did," Shotaro continues and bumps their shoulders together with the gentlest of motions. Wonbin clings harder to the dishcloth because if he doesn't, it's Shotaro he'll cling to.
"I didn't want to be all by myself with my feelings."
Wonbin sobs.
Shotaro laughs, but it's teary. Like the dam is breaking for real.
The rubber dish gloves make a gross sound when he pulls them off and then they're sitting on the kitchen floor in front of the sink, Wonbin in Shotaro's arms and they're both crying away the relief of a decade of fear melting off of their bodies.
"Thank you for being brave, my Wonbin-ah," Shotaro murmurs into his shoulder. It makes Wonbin cry harder. He doesn't feel brave. He feels like a burden, like a child that needs consoling over making an honest mistake. If he lets himself feel like anything else he's scared that he will wake up in the morning to find that none of this is real and now that the words are out in the open, that his feelings have been acknowledged like this, they feel like an open, gaping wound.
"I always thought I'd say it first. Because you're a bit of a scaredy cat and a crybaby and you can do things but you prefer not to, because you're our little princess."
That finally gets a wet laugh out of Wonbin too. Words he can't manage yet, but it seems Shotaro doesn't really mind for now.
"I'm sorry I underestimated you."
"Don't. I always make you do things first. I ask you to turn off the lights and check for burglars when we hear weird sounds at night. You have to come shopping for food with me because I hate supermarkets. I couldn't even get a tattoo without you holding my hand through it. I gave you no reason to think that I'm brave."
"Oh, but you do. Every day you go to work by subway even though you're scared of strangers touching you and you hate how loud the train gets. You watched a ghost movie with me and Seunghan because we wanted to see it. You're brave in so many small ways that you don't see because you think they don't count."
Shotaro noses at Wonbin's jaw.
"You told me that you love me first. That's not a small way to be brave at all."
Breathing gets easier when they're like this. Shotaro's arms are just tight enough around Wonbin's body to keep him in place, stop him from splintering his body into its individual atoms and sublimating away. Crying feels less humiliating like this.
"I didn't think about it. I wouldn't have done it if I had. I would've been too scared."
"But you did it anyway. Doesn't matter how."
Wonbin laughs. The sound is pretty pathetic and uncool and he's glad that Shotaro loves him and has seen him be a loser over and over and over already.
"Wonbin-ah, can I kiss you?"
Shotaro lifts his head by his chin. His eyes are big and still rimmed red and they're so full of affection Wonbin can barely comprehend that this is all for him.
"I want to kiss you so bad, but I need to hear you say you want it too."
Words are hard and uncomfortable and unwieldy. Wonbin wrangles them for far too long, but Shotaro lets him.
Wonbin loves him so much his lungs hurt.
"Please kiss me. I want it too."
Two men kiss in the fluorescent kitchen light under the sink.
The mid-autumn moon by the window is their lone witness.
Doomsday is close at hand and Park Wonbin watches it draw nearer and nearer with Shotaro's hand in his. The world will end, and then morning will come and it will be reborn.
Doomsday is close at hand, but so is a new beginning.