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The first time they meet, Sunjae doesn’t catch his name, too busy sweating bullets because they’re lining up for roll call and he forgot his tie at home, on his third day at a new school to boot and now he’s wracked with visions of his shitty luck snowballing until he becomes a social pariah.
“Hey, new kid.” Someone elbows him in the ribs and there’s a flash of hands looping a tie around his neck. “Stop looking so pitiful, huh? You’re making my stomach ache.”
He blinks slowly at a too-long fringe, a wide, full mouth, eyes gleaming like river stones.
“What?”
“Ryu Sunjae, negative marks for being sloppy,” he hears the teacher intone, soulless, like he’s been hollowed out by the moral decay of Korea’s youth. “Next time you’ll be running laps.”
By the time Sunjae mumbles yes, sir, straightens his borrowed tie, and turns around, the guy is jogging backwards towards the track, a guitar case strapped to his back, smirking at Sunjae as if saying, we’re in this together now.
*
Strictly speaking, they have nothing in common. Inhyuk grew up by the sea, the son of a fishmonger and a homemaker, in a town with one traffic light and a rumor mill fed by poker-playing ajummas who still coo at him and pinch his cheeks when he goes home on holidays. Sunjae was a city kid, brought up by a twitchy dad trying to cope with solo parenting, who taught him to nurture a deep skepticism towards all strangers before he could count to ten.
Inhyuk never tries the same thing twice, still has the attention span of a hyperactive six year old, and wears metal band shirts under his school uniform so the monotony doesn’t send him to an early grave. Sunjae’s eaten the same brand of spicy ramen since the seventh grade, watched Shaolin Soccer enough times to have an elementary grasp of Cantonese, and doesn’t have a rebellious bone in his body.
The way Sunjae insists it went down is: Inhyuk is a sly, obstinate little shit who could wear down a brick wall and besides, Sunjae didn’t want to be lonely anymore. The way Inhyuk will tell it later is: unmyeong is a tide that never ceases.
Regardless, Sunjae’s dad loves Inhyuk, possibly more than he loves his own child, and immediately adopts Inhyuk into the family because he’s too skinny and too far from home, so there’s no take backs after that. It occurs to Sunjae that as an only child he should feel territorial, threatened, or at least mildly offended by how cramped the house feels with Inhyuk in it, who takes up space the way he does everything else: with abandon. What Sunjae actually feels is disoriented, nervous at how easily Inhyuk slots into their lives, falls into step beside him walking home from the bus stop, stretches out on the bleachers during swim practice even though Sunjae never asked him to, pulls weeds from their garden because his mom taught him well. What Sunjae won’t own up to until later, when he finally accepts this is a sure thing, is he’s immeasurably grateful that Inhyuk is an obstinate little shit, that the tide brought him in.
*
“What do you think you’ll do when you can’t swim anymore?” The question is soft and mellow against the backdrop of twilight, the sky still flushed pink. They’re sprawled on their backs side by side on the roof, shoes kicked off, trying to make out the stars.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Sunjae shrugs. He doesn’t admit it’s because he knows he’ll run up against a terrifying white space he can’t punch through, that practicing avoidance is a coping mechanism he’s latched onto like a lifeboat since his mom died, when he was old enough to understand that death isn’t a place you come back from.
“You can join my band,” Inhyuk says, jostling his shoulder. “You hum sometimes when you’re studying, you know. You’re pretty good. But we’ll be super famous by then so you’ll have to audition. As leader, I can’t have our good name smeared by accusations of nepotism.”
“What ever would I do without you,” Sunjae deadpans, even though he’s touched that Inhyuk is unraveling their joint futures this far out, that Inhyuk’s dreams are widening to make space for him.
“It’ll be a train that keeps on rolling, my friend, I’m not quitting until I’m 80,” Inhyuk says with an utter lack of fear because, as far as Sunjae’s been able to piece together, he was absolutely the kid who broke a few bones and was still hellbent on scrambling up that tree. “I have this dream sometimes. I’m out by my dad’s fishing boat and there’s a piano sitting on the edge of the dock. It looks a little beat up but it’s beautiful. Something about it makes my chest hurt, like I know it’s not just misplaced, it’s been thrown away. I go towards it but I can’t get any closer. I’m walking faster and faster trying to reach it, and then there’s this deafening crack and all of a sudden the dock starts collapsing, crumbling like wet sand, and I just - I have to stand there and watch this beautiful, discarded piano sink into the sea. It’s drowning and I can’t save it, and the loss feels so damn unbearable that I’m sobbing, bawling my eyes out and screaming. And then I wake up. It’s weird to call it a nightmare but it takes me days to shake off.”
Objectively it sounds completely insane, the way most dreams do when you’re wide awake and remember the laws of physics. But the way Inhyuk tells it, so candid he burns up all the oxygen between them, leaves Sunjae stunned breathless and then a little panicked at being inexplicably handed the responsibility of knowing this part of Inhyuk, this heartbreak that feels both small and profound.
“Why are you telling me this?” He blurts out before he can stop himself.
Inhyuk turns towards him, fringe forever falling into his eyes, and instead of looking wounded he just looks incredibly content.
“Because you’re my best friend, dummy.”
*
At sixteen, Sunjae has learned this much: grief doesn’t get better with age. It doesn’t ease or fade, it only grows with you, reshapes to fit your bones. This year he stays in bed with the covers sealed around him, remembering the way his mom shook him gently awake for school, combed fingers through his hair, the way she smelled, like the first bloom after a bitter winter.
He keeps his eyes squeezed shut, breathing shallow, and slips in and out of consciousness until the door bursts open and he hears, in a muffled voice that sounds like Inhyuk totally unconcerned about getting punched in the face, “announcing the inaugural year of Inhyuk Summer Camp, where we embark on a journey of healing and self-discovery! There’s no adventure we won’t seek, no food we won’t eat! Our courage will be tested, our taste buds ignited! Our first stop, the home of yours truly, Goseong!”
When Sunjae relents twenty minutes later, it’s only to stop Inhyuk from clambering onto the bed to sit on him, and not at all because Inhyuk’s brightness, cranked up irresponsibly high today, is already drawing him out of his dark places. By noon they’re on the train, Inhyuk rattling off a itinerary he’s scribbled meticulously onto notecards and Sun Jae tilting his head back, embarrassed to be choked up at the sight of Inhyuk so stupidly sincere.
They head straight to the beach, sun scorching their cheeks, shirts starting to stick to their backs as Inhyuk leads them to a stretch that’s all but deserted, where a couple of kids are gleefully demolishing a sand castle, laughter floating downwind.
“Loser has to do the winner’s bidding for a month,” Inhyuk says in a rush of breath as he throws his backpack down and then, because under those bright Bambi eyes is a ruthless cheating cheater, sprints towards the water, already ankle deep by the time Sunjae kicks into first gear.
“You asshole!” Sunjae tackles him from behind and hears him whoop as they go down, plunging with zero finesse into the foaming tide.
The temperature drop is a shock on impact and then it’s bliss: the silky embrace of the water as his body goes limp on instinct, the lazy drag of the undertow. When he finally breaks through the surface, Inhyuk is laughing, pushing sopping wet hair out of his eyes.
“Where do I even begin?” He muses, looking so delighted Sunjae fears he might pull something trying not to smile. “Doing my laundry, definitely. The thing I hate most in this world. Actually, no, that’s math homewor - ”
Sunjae cuts off Inhyuk’s campaign of tyranny with a face full of seawater, and then all bets are off. A splashing war turns into a wrestling match that rapidly devolves into Sunjae chasing after Inhyuk trying to shove fistfuls of wet sand down the back of his shirt, which is ten times harder than it should be when they’re doubling over laughing and stumbling, breathless. They end up flat on their backs, water lapping at their heels, Inhyuk groaning about the stitch in his side and Sunjae feeling his ribs pried open, the elation of breathing without the deadweight of grief crushing his chest.
For while they just stare up at the canopy of summer sky, a cloudless, dreamy blue, until Inhyuk, without preamble, starts singing.
“I’m ready to run, run with you by my side. Run, run even if we fall.”
Two years into their friendship Sunjae knows all the ways Inhyuk is wired differently, has secretly sorted them into (a) gives off quirky rom-com vibes and (b) provokes reflexive burning embarrassment. Singing loudly in public places falls squarely into a gray area because Inhyuk’s legitimate musical talent just about edges out his obnoxious disregard for being normal. But today, this song Sunjae doesn’t recognize, probably by some subversive underground band Inhyuk discovered wandering Itaewon pretending to be of legal drinking age, comforts him more than anything.
“Start again, fly forever over the endless sky, I’ll keep running like this.”
Then something occurs to Sunjae.
“Did you just make this up?”
Inhyuk lets out a hum of contemplation. “I’ve been toying with the music for a few days but couldn’t think of the words until now. I suddenly want - I want to listen to this in twenty years and see this sky when I close my eyes, taste the sea in my mouth, hear you gasping for breath behind me you’re laughing so hard, and feel like this again - weightless. You know?”
Sunjae doesn’t care for nostalgia, finds there’s something about it that’s both cloying and deeply depressing, but Inhyuk sells it so earnestly, like it’s a dream he’s been running towards his whole life, that Sunjae can’t help saying, “yea. I know.”
*
“I didn’t think it would taste so sweet.”
Inhyuk looks extremely pleased, chin resting on the table as he stares a little cross-eyed at the empty soju bottles lined up in a row, starting to exhibit all the hallmarks of someone on his merry way to getting shitfaced. Sunjae hazards he’s not far behind, feeling that heady effervescence he still remembers from a year ago when his sunbae slipped him a beer after the swim meet, only tonight it’s an order of magnitude punchier.
“The sweeter your life, the sweeter your soju,” Sunjae says, hands remarkably steady as he pours them each another shot.
Inhyuk blinks at him, owlish, and then says, “huh.”
“What?”
“You’re a poet, Ryu Sunjae.” A shit-eating grin blooms uninhibited on Inhyuk’s face as he crows, “I knew getting you drunk was a good idea.”
Sunjae should’ve guessed that Inhyuk treating him to “birthday soju” was actually a long con to extract embarrassingly private details from him he wouldn’t normally hand over under threat of torture and death. He tells Inhyuk as much.
“Can’t it be both?” Inhyuk counters as he sticks out his lower lip, practiced in the art of asking for forgiveness instead of permission since probably the age of five.
“Definitely not, nope, never,” Sunjae says as he drains his glass. “While your soju is sweet, mine only tastes of bitterness and betrayal.”
He estimates he needs at least another half bottle before he’s sufficiently lubricated to say what he really thinks. That Inhyuk puts up with a lot of his shit, most of it having to do with his chronic inability to let people in. That he harbors the most guilt when Inhyuk looks so personally affronted and childishly happy discovering completely dumb things about him, like his fucking shellfish allergy or his weird aversion to rain. That he wants to tell Inhyuk everything, trusts Inhyuk with everything, and that alone feels miraculous.
So a good twenty minutes tick by before he has the guts to say, “I’ve never been in love.”
There’s a long pause where his heart sounds too loud and Inhyuk looks dumbstruck, as if he just won the lottery with the odds stacked at one in a billion.
Unlike Sunjae, Inhyuk is an open book, his face almost comically expressive in fraught situations, so Sunjae runs a thumb nervously along the rim of his glass and watches Inhyuk cycle rapidly through his panoply of feelings, eyes getting wider and ever more damp.
“If you cry and cause a scene, you will never hear from me again,” Sunjae threatens but only lightly because Inhyuk, being the inconsiderate asshole he is, manages to make Sunjae’s heart grow two sizes just by existing.
Inhyuk laughs then, sounding waterlogged, cheeks flushed from soju and happiness. “You love me too much to leave me. And for the record, I haven’t either.”
Frankly it all goes to show how laughable it is that they ended up friends: the way Sunjae’s admission feels like a near death experience and Inhyuk’s sounds like it didn’t cost him a thing, Sunjae’s instinct to retreat from emotional honesty and Inhyuk’s to grab it by the throat.
Sunjae’s silent for so long that Inhyuk leans over the table, far too comfortable with encroaching on his personal space, and grabs his face with both hands.
“It’s not a moral failing, you know that right?” Inhyuk lectures, terrifyingly perceptive, and makes Sunjae nod his head before letting him go. “But whenever it does happen, I am here for you, my friend. I’ll be the backing vocals of your love confession, I’ll sleep in your bed when you sneak out past curfew, I’ll be your shoulder to cry on when you get dumped - ”
“Fuck you,” Sunjae laughs, swatting at Inhyuk’s head. “Why am I the one getting dumped in this scenario?”
“Because you’re too soft and good to break someone else’s heart,” Inhyuk says without missing a beat.
“You have a real talent for backhanded compliments,” Sunjae grumbles, even though it’s actually the nicest thing anyone’s said about him and what he feels is a relief that aches - because he’s only ever thought of himself as lacking, flawed at best, because what he’s come to hate more than disappointing his coach, his dad, even the fragile shade of his mother, is disappointing Inhyuk. “What about you? You tear up watching videos of puppies riding skateboards.”
“I guess we’re both screwed then,” Inhyuk grins, wholly unconcerned, and reaches for the last bottle of soju. “I’ll pick up the shattered pieces of your broken heart if you pick up mine.”
The truth is, the collection of things Sunjae would do for Inhyuk within reason, and without, is deep and vast, but for now he just says as they clink their glasses, “I’ll even glue it back together.”