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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
He sees him in the library, that first time. Black plastic rimmed glasses, pink hair. Jeongguk blinks, glances down at the page in the book he's reading, black letters set carefully on creamy paper.
“What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.”
He runs the words by Kobayashi Issa around in his mouth, swallows and tastes them on the way down, the flavour lingering sweetly on his tongue.
Jeongguk wonders what he's reading, the student with the pink hair like cherry blossoms. It's a thick book, the binding old, the pages thick beneath fingers. Jeongguk watches, fascinated, as the student sighs, running fingers through the strands of his hair, the pink parting gracefully and meeting again, falling forward into his face.
I could go over, Jeongguk thinks. I could say hello.
He doesn't though, just watches from across the library, empty tables stretching between them. Another student wanders out from between bookshelves, a pile of hardbacks in her arms. She crosses Jeongguk's line of site, a flash of shadow.
What am I doing? Jeongguk asks himself, glancing down at the book he's reading, his notebook, the blank screen of his phone, the time only a button-press away. I'm going to be late. He doesn't stand though, just keeps watching, as the student flips another page the book, peers closer at the page, then sits back and stretches his arms out towards the ceiling, the faintest play of muscles visible beneath his black long-sleeved shirt, before he leans back over the book and turns another page.
"Ouch!" Jeongguk, watching so intently, jumps as crimson wells over the student's finger, notices the wrinkle in his brow before he sticks the finger in his mouth, mumbling under his breath.
Jeongguk wonders what he's saying.
I have a plaster in my bag, he remembers suddenly, and has it in his hands, propelling himself up and forward before he has time to think better of it, arriving at the student's table with his heart racing.
"Do you need a plaster?" he asks, wincing at the breathiness of his voice, but the student doesn't seem to notice, smiling up at Jeongguk.
"Thank you," he says, reaching for the plaster, which Jeongguk, too late, notices is one of Taehyung's old Hello Kitty ones that he'd gotten as a joke and then promptly pawned off on his friends. The student doesn't even look twice at it though, peeling the paper off the sticky ends and wrapping it over the paper cut.
"I'm Namjoon," he says, extending his right hand. It's such a formal thing to do in a university library that Jeongguk blinks, reaching out his own right hand.
"I'm Jeongguk," he says, allowing Namjoon to shake his hand. His hand is cold, but Namjoon's skin is warm.
The book is fascinating in a complicated and yet simple way that's less boring than just difficult. Namjoon sighs, running his eyes along the text. Gödel, Escher, Bach is brilliant, the way everything fits together, the building blocks of thought, Achilles and the tortoise.
It's maddening, thinking about it. If Achilles always travels half the distance towards the tortoise, he'll never reach the tortoise. It's illogical and yet perfectly logical and Namjoon feels like he read it a long time ago, even as his eyes skip over the letters for the first time, as he admires Escher's Waterfall. It reminds him of a game he still has lurking somewhere in the depths of his phone, Monument Valley. When's the last time I played a game?
Namjoon's head feels so full though, the way it does when he knows it's time to take a deep breath, stretch and breath a moment. When he sits back and reaches towards the ceiling, he catches sight of a student across the room, watching him. Do I know you?
He doesn't look familiar. Maybe a first year I say during tour or something. Namjoon leans back over his book, reaches out a hand to turn the page.
"Ouch!" He surprised himself with the volume of his exclamation, the red welling up instantly as he snatches his finger back and sticks it in his mouth, the sharp pain tempered by the pain.
It's funny, how the little cuts hurt the most. His mouth tastes rusty, the blood metallic on his tongue, and he thinks about Yoongi shaking his head at him, "you're so clumsy." It's true, but still relatively unimportant. What's more important, as he sits there, finger still in his mouth, is that he used the last plaster in his plaster stash yesterday, so there's nothing to stick on the paper cut.
A shadow crosses the desk; Namjoon looks up to see the student from across the room, looking down at him with a strange expression on his face, eager and yet hesitant.
"Do you need a plaster?" he asks, and winces. Namjoon doesn't know why.
"Thank you," he says, reaching for the plaster in the student's hands. It's Hello Kitty, and Namjoon smiles, taking the paper bits off the plaster and wrapping it carefully around his finger. Once he's no longer in danger of bleeding onto the table or the library book, he looks up again, reaching out a hand. Might as well make a proper introduction.
"I'm Namjoon," he says, wrapping his hand around the other student's and shaking it politely.
"I'm Jeongguk," he says, and his smile reaches his eyes.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Jeongguk lies in bed, thoughts running like waterfalls through his head. He can't sleep, and he's not sure why.
He's thinking about the student in the library, the student with pink hair. Namjoon. What if I hadn't said hello? he wonders. What if I didn't know his name? It's a pointless exercise, and Taehyung would roll his eyes at him and tell him to sleep, but Taehyung isn't in their shared dorm room right now, he's out somewhere wreaking havoc, probably with Jae and the gang. Jeongguk's mouth twitches into a smile, in spite of himself and his spiralling thoughts.
Enough of that, he tells himself firmly. You said hello and got his name.
"But I didn't get his number," Jeongguk tells the ceiling, the water stain in the shape of Antarctica. The water stain doesn't answer back, which is probably a good thing. He sighs, and rolls out of bed, bare feet landing flat on the cold floor, a shiver crawling up his spine as he lets it pass.
There's a book on his desk when he flicks on the light, probably something Taehyung's supposed to read for his English elective and will end up bribing Jeongguk to read instead and tell him about over breakfast in the cafeteria, as Taehyung doses himself up on caffeine and plans more destruction to effect between classes.
A touch, a tear, a tempest by Sanober Khan. Jeongguk opens the book to a random page, his eyes trailing over the words before he stops, mind creaking to a halt.
“I wouldn't mind
if life left me...
wingless
burnt to cinders
ripped by storms
scattered...like weeds
celestially wounded
without cherry blossoms
to perish with
but I would cry
with head held in my hands
if it left me...
unfulfilled.”
The image of Namjoon in the library, head bent over the table, pink hair hanging in his face, flashes into Jeongguk's mind. It's strange, but it feels like what happened was a dream.
Was it just my imagination?
Jeongguk can't help thinking that he wanted to know the pink-haired student's name so badly but chickened out in the end, and that everything else is his imagination. The thought feels so real that he scrambles for his bag to check.
The Hello Kitty plaster is gone.
"Do you ever think about what-ifs?" Namjoon asks when he walks through the door of his dorm room. Yoongi looks up from his desk, lifting one ear of his headphones.
"What did you say?" Yoongi looks stretched, yet somehow too bright, and Namjoon wonders when's the last time he slept. He doesn't say anything though, because it'll only end in a fight, maybe with Yoongi storming out of the room, and at least if he's here he might drift to sleep and Namjoon can drag him into bed.
"Doesn't matter," Namjoon says, shrugging, as he pulls a box out of his back and tosses it at Yoongi. There's a sandwich inside, that he'll pretend are leftovers and Yoongi will pretend to believe him and they'll keep up the charade another day.
Namjoon is used to what-ifs. Every day is a series of what-ifs, what if I do this? What if I do that? He's not sure why he's thinking about it now, as he sets the paper cup of coffee down on his desk and and pulls out his laptop.
Yoongi flicks his eyes towards him, then away, his mouth full of sandwich as he listens to the song he's working on, pinky finger tapping with the beat. Namjoon wonders what he's working on, but Yoongi never shares anything until it's completely, exhaustively done, and often he deletes things instead.
His eyes catch a flicker of pink, and Namjoon looks down at the plaster on his finger. Jeongguk. He wonders what he's like, if he's a perfectionist or more relaxed, if he likes to read or would rather be outside.
"What's that?" Yoongi's voice is a little too loud, but Namjoon's used to his roommate forgetting that he's wearing headphones.
"I cut my finger in the library today," he says, watching Yoongi wipe his fingers with a napkin and then crumple the empty sandwich box into the garbage.
"Hello Kitty," Yoongi says, and Namjoon wonders if he's thinking about his boyfriend, half a continent away.
"Hmm," he agrees, but Yoongi's attention is already directed back towards his screen, headphones back over his ears.
Namjoon wonders about what make Jeongguk walk over him in the library, and offer him a plaster. The he shrugs. There are too many what-ifs to get worked up over it. He's still thinking about it though, as he starts working on his essay.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
He sees a familiar pink head a few days later, coming out of a coffee shop, two sandwich boxes in Namjoon's hand that he slips into his bag.
I wonder if he has a boyfriend, Jeongguk wonders, and is surprised at the cold feeling in his chest at the thought.
"You fall in love too easily," he can remember Taehyung saying, and it's true. Instead of crossing the street, shouting hello, or even waving, Jeongguk just stands under the shade of the cherry trees that border the street and watches Namjoon hitch the straps of his bag higher up on his shoulder, hand reaching into a pocket and slipping out with a phone that he swipes to answer.
It's too far away for Jeongguk to hear what Namjoon is saying, but he can see Namjoon's finger now, his hand holding the phone up to his ear as he looks both ways. The Hello Kitty plaster is gone. It's illogical, but Jeongguk can't help the disappointment that floods his chest as he turns away and heads in the opposite direction, as a car passes him on the road, speakers blasting.
"Only fools fall for you," a voice sings, the words worming their way into Jeongguk's head. He wipes his face with his hand, and ignores the burning behind his eyes. Unbidden, a poem from today's class slips into his head.
“Come see the cherry trees of a water constellation
and the round key of the rapid universe,
come touch the fire of instantaneous blue,
come before its petals are consumed.”
100 Love Sonnets, he thinks, the words turned bitter on his tongue, but Pablo Neruda's words linger, swirling round and round as the wind blows across the road, lifting the heaps of pink blossoms piled in the gutters that swirl up like soft pink snow. The cherry blossoms are falling, and soon the branches will be bare. Jeongguk sticks his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and keeps walking down the sidewalk.
It feels like he's making a mistake, but the mistake is already made, and he's not turning back.
Namjoon is walking out the coffee shop when his phone rings in his pocket; quickly slipping the sandwich boxes into the bag on his shoulder he reaches for the buzzing phone, almost fumbling it out of his fingers before he manages to lift it to his ear. At least the paper cut is gone, he thinks.
"Hi?"
It's Yoongi, and Namjoon wonders what's up. Yoongi isn't big on calling. "I everything okay?" he asks, stepping to the curb and checking both ways. There's a car coming, a ways off but he's on the phone so he waits for it to pass.
"Seokjin wants me to fly over for spring break." Yoongi sounds like he's already made up his mind, but just needs a push in the right direction.
"You said yes of course," Namjoon says, even though he knows that Yoongi told his boyfriend he had to think about it.
"Do you think it's a good idea?" Yoongi says. I want to go,Namjoon hears, between the lines. I want to go.
"Definitely," Namjoon says. "Now get off the phone and call him right away and tell him of course. If you don't by the time I get back I'll kick your ass." It's an idle threat they both know, but Yoongi laughs and hangs up.
The car is gone by now, but Namjoon remembers a familiar face, all of a sudden, and he rewinds his thoughts. Oh, he thinks. Jeongguk. He thinks about the two sandwiches in his bag, and the fact that Yoongi will probably be on his phone in their dorm room. Before stopping to let himself think, Namjoon is crossing the street, jogging in the direction he'd seen Jeongguk take, before the car had passed by.
He seems him, a tall figure walking away under the canopy of the cherry trees, pink blossoms fluttering to the ground.
"Hey!" he calls, and Jeongguk turns, hands slipping out of his pockets. He looks surprised, a surprised pink flush colouring his cheeks. Namjoon smiles.
"Wait up!" he says, jogging forward until he's walking beside Jeongguk. "I forgot to ask you for your number the other day."
Jeongguk looks at him for a moment, and then smiles, like he did in the library, a smile that reaches his eyes, crinkling them up in the corners. Watching him, Namjoon feels happy, smiling back as they fall into step.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken