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At the time if you’d asked him, very casually, what it was like, and he trusted you not to laugh, judge, or kill him, he might’ve said—if I could compare it to anything—and he’d stop and think about it, resting his chin on his thumb, absurdly—well I guess if I had to compare it to anything, it’d be like, like you know babies? When they’re sleeping, and you touch them with your hand which is four times the size of theirs, and you poke at their little fists?—and you nod, I mean, what else is there?—you know how if you touch your finger to their little hand, they instantly wrap theirs around yours, it’s like a gut instinct or something. The moment you reach out to them, even if it’s experimentally, they reach out back to you, and the difference is, it’s so intuitive to them, and they won’t let you go now; you literally have to sit there for hours until they wake up, or you’re an insensitive baby-hating bastard. You know that?
That’s what it’s like, I guess, to be in love.
________________________________________
DESSERT OR DISASTER?
Foundation: crumbling. Mascara: possibly staining the skin under her lower lashes—raccoon effect most definitely in progress. Shoes? Let’s not even go there. Even the little white buzzer that’s supposed to signal her arrival feels just out of reaching range of her arm cramped under the Louis Vuitton handbag—borrowed from Victoria, who subsists on ramen but owns an entire closet full of designer items—but the reception sees her at the door, smiles, and rings her in. She looks like she’s never had a bad hair day in her life. Well, part and parcel of the job, Amber thinks wistfully. That’s the entertainment industry for you.
“The one o’clock? Ms. Liu?”
“Yes,” Amber nods, but she left her windpipe outside the door so it sounds unintelligible and entirely unprofessional. The girl keeps up the knowing smile, though.
“Go right in, third door to your left.”
Amber gives her a look of unadulterated gratitude.
Third, left, Amber recites to herself as she pushes the glass door leading into the office, still trying to catch her breath and ignoring the parade of chicken legs belonging to equally thin girls who stop to stare at her in just the right way to inspire self-doubt. She recognizes the bright patterns wrapped around one with the body of a fifth grader and gratefully cites Victoria as the reason she even knows Diane von Furstenburg isn’t just an old lady with a stylish haircut.
Third to your left, which means this one—she thinks as she trips on her own heel and into the room.
“I’m so sorry I’m late—the train was stopped for ten minutes—you know how the subway workers get when they’re looking to get a raise? We can expect a strike any one of these days, I mean, that’s just my theory. . . um, I’m Amber, and I’m, here is my resume.”
She fidgets with the zipper on the bag, something she should’ve learned to work before leaving the house, perhaps, but it’s too late for regrets now. The manila folder comes out with a tug, and she’s in the process of wrestling her resume with as little physical contact as possible, because her hand’s way too sweaty already and there’s nothing that screams Don’t hire this nervous wreck like moist fingerprints on recycled rice paper. . . which, speaking of, whose idea was this anyway? “It’ll give your credentials some personality! You need that if you’re gonna go into entertainment,” Krystal had said, and Amber had, unsuspecting fool that she was, believed her. Rice paper! She could eat it if he didn’t give her the job—
“Amber Liu?” the guy asks incredulously. “Like Amber Liu who used to hang out with Song Qian and—no, it can’t be, right? Tell me I’ve got the wrong person.”
He’s looking at her with an open curiosity, and she’s afraid to look back, before she processes what he just said. It takes a while, because the first thing that clicked was his saying “like.” And then Victoria’s Chinese name, and then, wait.
Slowly she raises her head.
There was no doubt now. The guy who always looked too old for his age. The one who smoked with the other one and always wore the most generic-looking fashionable t-shirts and sometimes drove them to malls because he had a license. That guy. “Oh my God!” Amber says, dropping pretenses. “It’s you.”
It takes his grin faltering a bit for her to realize how bad that sounded. “I mean, I remember you!” She revises quickly. “You were, like, always attached to that Korean dude, Jin Xi Ch—”
“Ah, yeah. And you were, what, thirteen?” He laughs. “I can’t believe it’s been that long.”
“Me neither,” she agrees, backing into a swivel chair. “You don’t mind if I sit, right? Um . . .” She glances towards the nameplate. “Mr. Han?”
He laughs harder. “Of course not. And just call me Han Geng. I feel old enough as it is.”
Sinking into the cushy chair is pure bliss. But then she remembers where she is and straightens her spine. “You’re not old,” she protests belatedly, half out of a need to get on his good side now that she’s got one foot in the door. (“Connections can go a long way,” Krystal had advised. To which Amber had lamented, “But I don’t have any!”) “You’re like, okay, I’m twenty-one, and you were . . . twenty-one when I was thirteen, so eight plus twenty-one . . . Oh, you’re not even thirty yet. I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” she finishes triumphantly.
He’s smiling. In fact he hasn’t stopped smiling since she looked at him earlier for the first time in eight years. “You’re lucky your job doesn’t require math,” he ahems. “Now let’s talk business. Your resume . . .”
Right. She’s had this speech rehearsed for a month now, from before someone even responded to her ad. She’s got it down to an art: her aspirations, desire to help kids live out their dreams of becoming a somebody, the whole spiel that summarizes exactly what she wants to do with her life at the moment even if it sounds like thinly-veiled bullshit to anyone else. Thing is, it’s all true. Someone’s got to believe in it if you’re earnest enough, right?
“Is this . . . edible?”
He’s pointing at the paper. She looks at him, and he looks at her—it’s a moment—and then she just cannot stop laughing.
- - -
“So tell me about the boss.” Victoria settles on the bean bag.
Amber thinks. “He’s nice. Charming? He remembers you.”
“‘Remembers’ as in, I know him? Why didn’t you—”
“I didn’t want to freak you out—” Amber says, and it’s true. Victoria’s been on edge all week about her next audition on Thursday because she isn’t the best at interpretive dance. It’s never been her forte, though she still likes it better than swing. “Or maybe I forgot. I can’t remember anymore. I’m tired and old.” She flops down onto Victoria’s lap without warning and ignores the squirming that ensues.
“Don’t say the word ‘old’ around me,” Victoria warns after she resumes breathing. She’d officially passed the 25 mark and begun her ascent towards the much-feared three-oh.
“Anyway. His name is Han Geng. He’s nice.”
“I think I remember him. Was he the one who always hung out with the showy guy—”
“Yeah. That was my first thought, too.”
Victoria frowns. “I can’t recall much beyond that, to be honest.”
“Me neither,” Amber admits. “He’s nice though,” she adds as an afterthought.
Victoria crosses her arms over her chest. “You’ve said that three times. Do I suspect . . .”
“No! He’s got . . . he’s just got kind eyes or something.”
“Like bedroom eyes . . .”
“Tori! Think of the children!”
The children are scattered over the living room floor—Christian, Stuart, Manolo One, Manolo Two, Manolo . . .
“Right, right, I won’t say any more,” Victoria promises, hugging her shoes to her chest. There’s an ominous glint in her eye that Amber chooses to ignore.
- - -
For the first week they make her man the phones and fax machine. Meng Jia, the girl Amber mistook for a fifth grader the first day, gives her a tutorial of the usual spiel they deal out to all their callers, usually asking if they’ll accept demo CDs and when auditions are held. Paper always gets stuck in the fax, so you have to press down the tray and hold it there when you hear the ring. Amber flies back and forth between collecting faxes and refilling the machine and delivering cheery Hi! You have reached HG Entertainment’s Hotline. My name is Amber Liu; how may I help you today?s, the rehearsed lines stretching her cheeks apart.
“My son loves to sing, but I want to tell him to concentrate on his studies . . . If a boy named Li Hong with a high-pitched voice that sounds like a little girl—he is a late bloomer, but his voice really is very sweet—really, I’m not saying this just because I am his mother, please believe me— anyway, if he calls in, could you please discourage him from auditioning?”
“I am twelve years old from Nanjing I love old school Zhou Jie Lun and Fei Lun Hai and Four Heavenly Kings and Disney I love singing in the shower please let me show you thank you, Can you feel the looooveee toniiiightttt.”
“Hey, I’d like a small with pepperoni and extra cheese—wait, no cheese—oh yeah, are you still giving away those Toy Story 5 figurines or is that promotion over?”
“Uh,” Amber says.
She eats lunch alone for the first three days. On the fourth, she’s on her way to the park again with a soggy bento she tried to make the night before from an online bento addicts site and failed. At the red light she stops, and is one of the few to stop, and spies her boss on the other side of the street. She briefly considers walking the other way, but realizes it’s not high school anymore, and also, that that was a totally irrational impulse. She looks blankly in his direction like she isn’t looking at anything in particular, but he notices and waves. They meet halfway crossing the street, and he says cheerfully, “What’d you get?”
“Um, I brought a sucky lunch box,” she says, gesturing towards the plastic bag in her other hand.
He squints. “Is that one of those bags you buy for five yuan in the supermarket? When you forget to bring your own shopping bag?”
It takes her by surprise, and then she nods, embarrassed. “Hey, I’m still paying off some student loans.”
He blinks. “Oh, right, you just got out of school. I keep forgetting.”
“C’mon, you’re really not that old,” she grins, nudging him, a bad habit. She needs to remember not to be so chummy with guys.
He dodges it instinctively. “Not that old, huh.”
“Yup.”
“We really shouldn’t be having this conversation in the middle of the street,” he says, pulling her close as a car veers by, just about scraping the skin on her nose. She gets a whiff of his cologne, something she doesn’t recognize. Not Calvin Klein.
“Right,” she says, a little dazed. “I usually eat at the park.”
He doesn’t raise an eyebrow or anything, and she kind of adores him for not thinking that’s really pathetic.
They don’t really have anything to talk about, so he asks her about Victoria, about school days she hasn’t given thought to in ages, but they come back to her with increasing clarity the more she talks, and soon she’s relating stories about people he’s never even met.
“So then Krystal said, you won’t believe this, ‘I didn’t think it’d stain!’ Like puking on someone else’s bedsheets is ever a good idea, God, and she’d had spinach for dinner . . .” She stops upon seeing his eyes in the process of glazing over. “Uh, I mean. Tell me about you?”
“Me?” He asks, like she just woke him up. Not even glazing. Glazed.
“I’m a pretty boring guy,” he half-yawns. A little teardrop forms at the corner of his eye. “What do you want to know?”
How about everything, she doesn’t say. “Hm,” she thinks aloud. “How about . . . favorite Korean cuss word?” Something they can bond over.
Ten seconds later, she’s still staring at him in horror. “Oh my God, you’re . . . you’re dirty!”
“I learned from the best,” he confides with an enigmatic smile.
It’s practically a hundred degrees out today, and even sitting under the shade of a thousand elm trees Amber’s still sweating bullets. Her bra is uncomfortably damp, and her thighs keep chafing against each other underneath her new skirt. They’ll sting later when she tries to take a shower and then Victoria will scold her for not wearing those secret nude leggings she advertises every chance she gets, the tummy-shrinking ones that stop right above the knee. “Infomercials,” Victoria’d said once, “are the one pleasure I must have in my life. Do not take them from me.” It was a bad sign when she waxed hyperbolic, so Amber’d said nothing and pulled up the spandex over her stomach obediently.
But she’s not the only one suffering from a heat stroke. A fresh sheen of sweat paints Han Geng’s collarbone slippery under his stiff suit collar. His neck, his forehead. His jaw clenches and relaxes with every bite of his lunch. She chews idly, watching perspiration trickle down the side of his face over his ear.
There’s something about the male body that renders her momentarily awed and speechless. Even then—it’s not every body. She has standards, too.
“Fridays are themed.” Apparently he’s explaining a company tradition or something. “ You have to wear an article of clothing that incorporates the theme somehow.”
Her brain makes a click as she tunes back into the conversation. “What’s this week’s?”
“Goth.”
The half-chewed octopus ball in her mouth just barely stops short of launching itself into his face.
- - -
Friday morning starts with a small feel-good seed: she doesn’t forget her keys, her shoes aren’t killing her, and her face is not drenched in sweat by the time she reaches the door.
And then it takes all of five seconds for Amber to realize she’s the only one in the office wearing a spiked collar.
- - -
“Forget EVERYTHING I said about him. He’s the most dishonest, vulgar, disgusting—”
Victoria’s mouth forms the shape of a perfect O. “Oh no, did he squeeze your butt?”
“No—”
“Did he leer?”
“Well, not really, but he was definitely checking me out when I walked out of the office after yelling at him. I saw his reflection in the glass. And by the way? He totally laughed at me! I can’t believe the bastard—” She stuffs a fry into her mouth and chews violently.
Victoria watches her closely. It’s neither encouraging nor discouraging, so Amber continues.
“And it’s not like being dressed as Marilyn Manson is the most dignifying thing to a woman ever, you know?” She trips over the word “woman” because she still feels like a girl, like all the time, but it’s the principle of the matter— “Like I’m having a hard enough time trying to make myself the modern female model or whatever, steamrolling down the path towards my dream career, and he’s just sitting there laughing at me and telling me that he didn’t think I’d actually believe him—like who was I supposed to believe? The girls in the cubicles who walk like their legs might give out under them at any moment? Ugh, and, ugh.” She pauses, takes a breath. “The worst part is—oh God—he said I looked good.”
It comes out whinier than she’d planned, and that look on Victoria’s face is awfully familiar. Like she’s about to break out the confetti and streamers and start singing the Wedding March. Oh no.
“No, no, no—good,” she stammers in a panic. “Like how condescending is that?”
“He said you looked good! YOU DO LOOK GOOD.”
“Oh my GOD, what is wrong with you? This guy, my BOSS, played a prank on me my first week at work, and you’re stuck on that one word, which I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned because—”
“Amber!!!”
Amber sinks deeper into the beanbag. Even as that sentence had spilled out of her mouth, she could hear herself saying the words in slow motion, and this voice in her head had bellowed NOOOO because it was just like Victoria to dwell on pointless details and blow things out of proportion. Sure, Amber had felt something like a tingle up the nape of her neck as Han Geng had said that, and her cheeks had gotten really hot, predictably, but that doesn’t mean she’ll forgive him for essentially making an ass out of her.
It also doesn’t change the fact that she remembers with startling lucidity his reflection in the glass window as she stomped out. The way his eyes clouded over, like he wanted to hold in the sight of her and keep it there.
- - -
“I’m not usually a jerk, I swear.”
Amber busies herself with a notepad. A couple of the girls slide discreetly out of their cubicles to watch, resting their chins on the plastic dividers. Actually, their audience consists of basically everyone in the office except Henry, the tech guy, who inhabits his own corner by the water cooler.
Han Geng clears his throat. “It’s an initiation sort of thing. I should’ve explained that to you on Friday but you’d looked so—enraged,” clearly holding back a smirk, which isn’t helping his case.
“What is this, like a frat?”
He pulls at his tie, pale baby blue with silver polka dots. Like he’s going on an Easter egg hunt or something. Maybe that’s this week’s theme. Maybe he should wear a furry bunny costume with ears or something. And a fluffy tail. Yeah, that’s about right.
She indulges the thought for a second and smiles to herself.
Which he catches. “It’s something left over from my high school days, yeah. An idea a friend had about—” he cuts himself short before his eyes take on that dreamy faraway quality people get when they embark on an epic storytelling adventure. “You probably don’t care.”
She shrugs, her notes blooming flower petals, which she tries to shield from his eyes. It’s not like she doesn’t have work to do. She just can’t do it with him . . . hanging around.
“We put all our employees through this when they first join,” he continues with an earnest touch. “People laugh, and then we’re closer for it afterwards.” She catches herself staring at the way his eyes light up when he talks about the employees. The ballpoint pen falls from her hand—gone limp—and rolls across the desk, stops precariously over the edge.
Han Geng peeks over to her notes. “Tulips, huh.”
“My favorite,” she admits, blushing furiously. So much for keeping the upper hand.
“C’mon. Don’t be mad. At least you didn’t join in March.”
She vaguely remembers hearing that that was when Henry joined. “What was March’s?”
“Hello Kitty.”
- - -
“I’m shit at bowling,” she admits over the counter while they’re waiting for the teenager to find their shoes. “I mean, I’m really bad at it,” she corrects. Bad words just kind of spill out of her mouth sometimes. She forgets that he’s not just anybody.
“You swear like a Chinese person.” Han Geng unfolds the sunglasses hooked onto the V-shaped collar of his t-shirt and rubs the lenses with the hem.
“Well, I kinda am!” She protests, then adds. “Taiwanese if that makes a difference.” She cocks her head, thinking. “Does it?”
He laughs nervously. “I’m not too well-versed in politics.”
“Oh, me neither. I just fake it sometimes back home.”
The teenager comes back with a pair of 35s for Amber. She’s 37 in the winter—summer feet expand with the heat. His nametag reads Xiao Ji, like “little chicken.” That’s gotta be a joke.
“Those are definitely not gonna fit, sorry,” she says, and Little Chicken grunts like this is so not worth thirty yuan an hour and disappears back into the little storage room behind the reception desk.
Han Geng taps his knuckles against the countertop. The sunglasses sit perched on his nose, right above a faint smirk. “I’ll go easy on you.”
“Are you good?”
“You’ll see,” he nods enigmatically with something of a hand flourish.
She laughs, feeling awkward. Then she remembers. “But you know, I meant to say earlier—”
Like weeks ago, she thinks but doesn’t say because that’s just pathetic, waiting until the company’s monthly bowling outing to say something you’d noticed the first day you met is like—like telling someone years later that they’ve had your name wrong this whole time. It’s embarrassing that you waited because waiting implies deliberation and caring, both of which are unattractive options for, well, obvious reasons.
“—You sound way different in Chinese. Like there’s a lilt to your voice.”
“Oh yeah?” He leans forward, interested. “Like I know what I’m talking about, right? I get that a lot.”
“Yeah.” She wets her lips unconsciously. And you sound douchier, too, she doesn’t say. But that must be a natural consequence of confidence. He’s in his element here. His company—and his country. With its poverty and problems, but still. His.
Maybe hers in a few. How long?
She opens her mouth just as Xiao Ji comes back with the right sizes—for both of them. Han Geng pushes her pair towards her and says, “Talk later. Tonight—we bowl.”
Oh man, she thinks, but bends down to put on the smelly shoes.
- - -
Two hours later: stalemate. Whoever loses is going to pay for karaoke, but at this point Amber isn’t sure she can make it there. She sits on the floor and watches one of the Wang sisters blow on her fingers dramatically before she rolls the ball down the aisle. Her knees are shot from all the bending.
Wang bowls a hook, Amber learns from Henry’s urgent whispering. Proof of his urgency can be found in the form of spit on her left ear. Amber wipes it away as discreetly as she can, careful not to hurt his feelings, but his eyes are steady on the ball in Wang’s hand. Through the luck of straws they both ended up on Team Blue. Henry takes bowling very seriously, she found out earlier, from the string of curses he’d let loose after Meng Jia’s had gone down the gutter. Not to mention the pounding against the floor was a bit dramatic. He’d apologized profusely afterwards, but Meng Jia had clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes at him, then turned around to mutter something to Fei Fei.
A couple aisles down, Han Geng’s standing with arms crossed over his chest. Smug, like he knows Wang’s going to unleash a dragon down the lane.
Henry’s up. He winks at Amber, but one of his fingers slips out of a hole and . . . it’s a gutter ball.
“I think Henry was a trucker in his past life,” Fei Fei whispers to Amber over the ensuing swears. It’s the first time they’ve spoken, really, so it takes her by surprise.
“Game over, Blue,” Han Geng yells over Henry’s prostrate body. “Get ready to sing.”
- - -
Xing Xing is probably the seediest karaoke place this side of Beijing, but somehow all twenty of them that are left manage to fit into their biggest room, and it’s sheer luck and not at all sly maneuvering that gets Amber stuck elbow-to-elbow with her boss. Even their thighs are touching.
One thing Amber’s never understood is how every Chinese person manages to rock karaoke even if they sound perpetually phlegmy in everyday conversation. Han Geng, it turns out, doesn’t suck as badly as he looks like he should. In fact, he’s pretty good at the songs that don’t require much vocal acrobatics, like Savage Garden’s “Truly Madly Deeply” and Wu Yue Tian’s “Wen Rou.”
Everyone from Team Red orders cocktails and finger foods but by midnight everyone on Blue is too drunk to groan. The glow-in-the-dark patterns in the wallpaper start resembling neon chicken scratch and Amber gurgles into her maybe-Moscow Mule—it’s hard to tell at this point. Also whether or not it’s even hers is up for debate—something about cavemen paintings when Han Geng thrusts the microphone in her hand and says, “Your song.”
“Wha?” She blinks at him just as Meng Jia’s head lands with a thud on her shoulder. Ouch. Amber giggles.
Han Geng holds his liquor awfully well for someone who’s not gigantic. “Hollaback Girl. You entered it, right?”
Across the room Henry jumps up and fistpumps the air. “Fuck yeah! My girl Amber Liu!” Suddenly he’s Fred Durst. Wait, nineties reference in the wrong country.
Her head hurts.
After about a thousand Oooh, this my shit this my shits she collapses onto the couch and conks out.
- - -
She wakes up three times. Once in a taxi, with street lights blaring by fantasy mist-like, and then she falls back—her head vaguely thumping against a ribcage—asleep, dimming orange behind her eyelids.
Second time she’s in the middle of a Justin Bieber—who knew the kid had longevity in him? well, no longer a kid, really—fanmeeting, bumps into Alanis Morrisette, whose longass hair falls strategically over her nipples—oh yeah, she’s naked—and before this dream can get even more Canadian, Henry shows up with a maple leaf and starts belting Avril Lavigne—and then a toilet flushes. Amber blinks an eye open as the truth settles in, that she is not really a Justin Bieber fan and this is just the stuff that nightmares are made of, and thinks if she squints she might be able to see a penis in the distant glow of the bathroom light but instead she turns on her other side and falls asleep again.
The next time she wakes up, it’s morning. The bed is hard, which is a sign it’s not hers. She sleeps with a futon on the floor. The futon’s got Amber-shaped dents in it. It takes a minute for her to remember her last functioning memory—B-A-N-A-N-A-S!—and she shakes the mortification away only to uncover the jackhammer pounding away at her forehead. “Fuck,” she says, and rolls over to find a familiar lump sprawled across an air mattress on the floor.
Han Geng looks good sleeping. His normally stiff-gelled hair falls flat over his forehead, a few tendrils scraping his eyelashes, and he’s resting on his back, one arm bent over the head, the other draped across his stomach. Amber examines his hands, the fingernails cut neatly to the quick, and the small threads of hair under the knuckles. Crow’s feet dragging his eyes downwards. A face born sad, she thinks, smiling through the hangover.
And that’s when it hits her what she’s doing.
- - -
He calls later that night and it takes Victoria threatening to answer the phone in her place for Amber to pick up. “Um, hello?”
The first noise he makes sounds a lot like a snort, so the warmth from her stomach immediately creeps up her back. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah . . . thanks,” she mumbles into her sleeve.
“What?”
“I’m so embarrassed,” she blurts out. “I’m so sorry. I think—I think I fell asleep?”
His laugh is even subtler over the phone than in real life. She can visualize the magical eye crinkle with such clarity she could puke.
Or maybe she actually needs to puke. It’s hard to tell.
“Wastebasket,” she mouths to Victoria, who’s been resting her face in her hands on the kitchen table, listening intently.
“You fell asleep, yeah. At first you were walking—” he laughs like he just remembered something funny. “—oh yeah, you told me to leave you alone because you could walk fine by yourself, okay? You didn’t need a man to hold you up—inflection’s yours, not mine, to be clear—even if he is pretty fucking attractive—once again, your words, not mine—and then you said oops, I didn’t mean that, and burped.”
Amber is silent for five seconds and then mouths to Victoria, “I want to die.” Victoria doesn’t understand.
“I’ve got really weak knees from doing cross-country in high school,” Amber says calmly. “And I think everyone’s hot when I drink. You know how people get beer goggles? Like that but times infinity.”
“I’m heart-broken,” he says. “You’ve got a cute snore, too.”
She winces. “Don’t plan on hearing it again.”
“Aw. Wish I’d recorded it then.”
“Creeper!” she gasps into the phone, and he starts wheezing in delight. It’s sadistic, really, how much he enjoys teasing her in her pathetic hung-over state. She tells him so and he just keeps laughing.
“Eggs. They work miracles,” he tells her seriously.
“I’d rather have morphine.” She pauses. “Or like, a really big hug.”
Victoria stretches her arms wide apart and makes embarrassing kissy faces. If there were a way to headdesk subtly while holding a cell phone, Amber would be doing it right now.
There’s a brief silence, and then he says, “Hey, did you get that?”
“What?”
“My air hug.”
Amber screams for ten seconds after hanging up. Victoria pretends she has no idea what just happened and smugly eats her banana.
- - -
Ask Amber about her childhood, about high school, about growing up skinny and gangly—bandaid-ed scraped knees from climbing the tree in the backyard and falling down halfway every single goddamn time—and she’ll tell you that she’s always gotten along with the boys fine, but that, weirdly, she actually spent most of her life surrounded by girls.
Third grade, for instance. It’s recess; she and Rahul Choudhary are clawing at the courtyard ground. She finds a pearly white rock that she convinces Rahul is a snail. Rahul runs around screaming that Amber Liu eats snails and Chinese people are weird, and Amber decides he is no longer cool enough to be her best friend.
Then just before Spanish, Francesca, the tallest and prettiest girl in class notices the shiny stone on Amber’s desk and says loudly, “Oh my God, that looks like something I saw at Claire’s!” Claire’s is a big deal among all the girls that year. Francesca grabs the rock without asking and starts passing it around. It takes a minute for her to remember the owner, so she turns back to Amber and tells her in her sweetest voice, “That’s awesome. Where did you get it?”
“I found it on the ground,” Amber says, and kicks the back of her chair. Francesca’s got really curly brown hair that frizzes up in the summer, but her freckles remind Amber of constellations.
Francesca shares her lunch with Amber for the rest of the school year. She’s invited to slumber parties and hair-brushing get-togethers. The girls who used to laugh at her overalls start asking her where she shops. (She doesn’t. Her mom buys everything, or receives them from family friends whose children have already grown up.) She’s inducted into a brand new world, in which giggling is a mode of communication and bimonthly trips to the mall are not only coordinated but compulsory.
Rahul Choudhary never gets a second look.
Years later, Amber thinks maybe Rahul was her first real crush, and Francesca, maybe her second.
- - -
She figures she’s got a plan; in two words, Act Normal. Just because you’ve seen him in a Snoopy t-shirt and wrinkled boxers and how pale the skin on his wrist looks when he isn’t wearing a watch, and just because you felt something when you did, doesn’t mean—well, it doesn’t mean anything. So Amber slips into her desk, chirps a round of hellos to the girls, and acts normal.
Problem is, it takes two for this to work. He emails her within five minutes. Lunch? My bento is better than yours, promise. From where she sits she can peek over the cubicle divider and catch his silhouette through the window. He’s resting his chin against the knuckles on one hand, keeping the other on the laptop touchpad. And then, with the inaudible ding of incoming mail, he jolts and leans toward the screen, smiles.
You’re on, Charlie Brown.
- - -
“So I hate to be all, ‘I’mma put my foot down now’ but—well, that’s kind of what I’m doing. But the question is, where are we going?”
Three weeks later, they’ve hit every restaurant within a ten-block radius of the office. Amber can honestly say she’s memorized at least twenty types of curry. Han Geng never gets sick of curry. He is a curry fanatic. There is something wrong with this man.
They’ve arrived at a corner. It’s a green light, but he’s stopped walking. They’ve been walking for ten minutes and still haven’t decided on a place. She probably should’ve cooked last night. All this spending-money-before-you have-it isn’t really working in her favor, although half the time he secretly pays for both of them while she’s in the bathroom. Because half the time they’re eating curry that burns its way down her throat. She suspects it might figure into his grand plan of chivalry, to lure her into the bathroom with the power of spice while he sneaks off to the cashier and gives them his credit card to swipe. Point is—that’s not what she wants, either.
“Where do you want to go?” he asks slowly.
She laughs, sort of frustrated because this question got old maybe five minutes ago, and then opens her mouth to say, “I don’t know,” but he stops and goes, “No, I mean. Go on a date with me.”
It catches her by surprise.
“Uh,” she says, panicking. “I thought we were talking about food.”
“I mean,” he says, apparently flustered, like she just broke the mood. (Fuck.) “I want to get to know you better.”
Finally, she thinks, but her mind is racing. “I’m pretty sure this is it, but okay,” she says, holding the grin steady until he turns away.
- - -
It’s a tossup between his gigantic forehead when it isn’t covered by hair and those awful passé aviators he won’t stop wearing, sometimes even indoors. “I’ve got sensitive eyes,” he says, but she knows he actually thinks they look good. “It’s the first sign of old-man syndrome,” she warns, “when you stop being able to tell what’s cool.” It comes out more ominous-sounding than she intended, and she feels a little apologetic, but that’s how they have their first kiss, him letting her know, hey, here’s one thing I still fucking own.
His thumb strokes against her cheek, and she realizes it’s also the fact that they’ve both been in the same position, fish out of water, except she’s doing it again and he’s finally found his niche. Does it count as using if hanging out with him makes her feel like she’ll get there too, eventually?
And is this really just hanging out if she’s trying to take his belt off with her teeth?
Afterwards they lie facing the ceiling, breathing hard, and an eternity passes before Hankyung says, “That was wonderful.”
He squeezes her hand over the bed covers, and she can smell him without turning her head, like they share a part of each other now. It frightens her.
“Duh,” she says to him with the most convincing act of nonchalance she can muster up in the moment. Reaches over to tickle an earlobe.
- - -
He doesn’t fall asleep instantly, like so many of her exes that she’s come to expect it: the heavy snoring, all the works. He waits for her to doze off first. It’s sweet but makes her paranoid. What does this mean? Is he not tired? Is he holding himself back? Why is he trying so hard? Why does he have to try? Shouldn’t they be natural? Shouldn’t they—?
“He’s a gentleman,” Vic says. “Accept that there are a few good guys left in the world, and he’s one of them.”
“How do you know?” Amber asks seriously.
Victoria looks at her in a way that betrays their age difference. “I mean, there’s no way you really know. But you find out.”
She knows Vic did. They never talk about her past lovers, especially not the ones that mattered. She changes the channel when there’s news about Thailand. It’s been a year since she’s had her heart broken, but Vic’s a slow healer. She smiles a lot, though. There was a psych study about fake happiness inducing real happiness—Victoria just eats those articles up. She’s got them bookmarked under her “Health & Wellness” tab, right between “Love & Marriage” and “Money, Celebrity, & the Dangers of Fame.” Lindsay Lohan makes frequent cameos in the latter.
“I need to get drunk,” Amber decides.
They put on Joan Jett and that Tibetan singer Victoria really likes whose name Amber always gets wrong, pop a bottle of really cheap funny-tasting red wine, and gurgle through A girl can do what she wants to do and that’s what I’m gonna do! Amber pulls Victoria’s hair up to the top of her head, biting on an elastic as she combs in a couple loose strands before sweeping it all together into a gigantic bun. Vic takes one look in the bathroom mirror and doubles over the sink cracking up. “I look like I’m six and waiting for my mom to take me to school.”
Amber balances the wine glass on her head. “You’re too beautiful to age, okay?”
They do the frug, because Rilo Kiley deems it so. Victoria never recognizes any of Amber’s music, but she always dances along. “Showoff,” Amber sticks out her tongue, and the wine-red on Victoria’s teeth resembles lipstick stains.
Two hours and three soundtracks later, Amber feels sentimental enough to kiss her best friend, and drunk enough to do it unabashedly on the mouth. Victoria’s eyes turn dark, but then the cloud passes. She tastes nothing like Han Geng.
“Amber—”
“Fuck,” Amber hiccups, because she’s crying a little. “I think I really like him.”
- - -
“He’s old,” is the first thing Krystal says, before they’ve even been seated.
“No, listen to me, Amber,” she continues in English. The little “er” syllable bends in her mouth like it’s overcompensating for a mostly Korean tongue. “Men die earlier, and this guy is old.”
“He’s not even thirty!”
“For what? Another couple months?” Krystal pulls her arm to shake her. “Listen to me. Momma knows best.”
“That’s Vic,” Amber says, laughing. The waiter motions for them to follow him up the stairs. Krystal looks wistfully towards the window seats. They’re halfway up the steps when she stops him.
“We’ll wait for those people to leave,” she says, gesturing towards the couple in the corner. Their faces glow under the light, and the white tablecloth nearly blinds. The girl is clearly a fan of bb cream. So in love, Amber thinks with a tinge of yearning. But for what? It’s too early to be daydreaming.
“Are you always so picky when you go to restaurants?”
They’ve been relegated back to the doorway. Krystal is careful not to lean on the greasy hinges, only the glass, which appears immaculate. It’s a well-kept “French” restaurant run by mixed Chinese-Koreans.
Krystal crosses her arms smugly. “When I know my company will tolerate it, yeah. And you, company, are the definition of easygoing.” She reaches over and ruffles Amber’s hair, despite the fact that it is no longer just a couple inches from her scalp and therefore not of rufflable length. Not to mention that Amber is in fact the older of the two and deserves to be treated with respect. Like the . . . respectable woman that she has become.
“Hey!” she tries frowning. “I won’t stand for that anymore.” She pinches Krystal’s cheek and gets a brief touch of skin as the other dodges. Krystal sticks out her tongue, and they’re back in middle school, their desks adjacent to one another—
“Jung? Take a seat by Liu”—
matching brown melting loafers—
Krystal pickpocketing tourists at the planetarium and only getting a toy watch and some lint—
—Krystal’s braids, parted with a comb down the middle so cleanly you could’ve walked a line on it. She dressed up as Wednesday for Halloween that year and Amber as Cousin Itt. She suffered a bad case of hair-in-the-mouth for the next twenty-four hours, but it was so worth seeing those little kids jump, Tootsie Rolls spilling out of their jack-o-lantern baskets.
Oh man, she hadn’t wanted to grow up. How did this happen?
“Don’t ever change,” Amber says, playing with the salt shaker.
“Don’t date a man who was smoking before you even got your period.”
“You don’t even know that he smokes.”
Krystal waves off the question with a knowledgeable shrug. “Guys always smoke. Even if they say they don’t—kiss them, and you can tell. They don’t make Camel-flavored Wrigleys.” She’s reverted back to Korean.
“He used to dance,” Amber thinks aloud. “Do dancers smoke?”
“The reckless ones,” Krystal says absentmindedly, thumbing the menu. “Do you want duck? We can split it.”
“I can probably eat one by myself right now. I’m starved.” Amber casts her an accusing look, and Krystal immediately turns apologetic.
“I swear I left the hotel on time! But then I saw this really cute hat on display while I was walking down, um, that road, and—”
“Yeah, it’s okay. I’ve gotten used to waiting for you. It’d be weird if you showed up on time.”
Krystal grins, and it’s as dazzling as Amber remembers. Lee Taemin in Krystal’s class with the regally good looks (even Amber admitted it, even though he was too young and skinny to be her type) fell for this grin, despite how they only lasted until Christmas, and then Krystal got bored and started watching Prince of Tennis instead of chasing after boys. That only lasted another three months, but not before Amber got dragged to an anime convention dressed up in a bandana and an obviously poached jersey. She had to wear shorts while there was still snow on the ground. “Why do you get to wear pants?” She’d whined, and Krystal had explained, exasperatedly, like this was the hundredth time she’d asked, “Because we’re trying to stay true to the characters. Kaidoh never wears pants.”
Amber had shivered through the convention, posed for some pictures, gotten groped by a couple different hairy-legged Sailor Scouts, and snored the way home on Krystal’s shoulder, just as bony then as it is now, peeking out from under the thin material of her graphic t-shirt. Looks plucked from Urban Outfitters. Love me when I’m GONE. Everlasting teenage angst; that’s her style. Amber digs it. She’s pretty fucking square in comparison.
“Okay, so tell me about the geezer.”
“He’s not old. Well, hairline aside, he’s really—”
Krystal looks at her expectantly.
“I don’t know.” Amber exhales, defeated. “I like him. He has a gentle aura, but there’s a sexiness to it. And he makes me feel safe, if that makes any sense.”
She realizes she’s been talking with her eyes on the tablecloth, so she turns them back to Krystal, who’s now sitting there sort of dazed.
“Wow. Vic wasn’t kidding when she said you were in trouble.”
Amber’s about to protest when the waiter comes over and asks if they’re done deciding.
STARE DOWN THE SUN
“When I was little, I thought sprinkles looked like worms from far away. Funny, how that can turn someone off them for life. I fucking hate sprinkles,” she says to him while they’re waiting in line. The expletive rolls off her tongue naturally, like she’s never had to censor herself. He feels vicariously American through her sometimes. It’s not only in her speech patterns, the rushed Mandarin. Her bangs fall in pieces before her eyes and she tosses her head to the side without moving them away. She’s the kind of person who’d survive in the desert. She’d talk enthusiastically with sand in her mouth even as it filled the grooves of her teeth.
He drags his mind away from her mouth to say something about worms and regeneration.
She places her order—“Um, the shiny ones? How do you say ‘glazed,’ Han Geng? Yeah, one of those. To go. Thanks!”—and turns to him. “Wouldn’t it be great if people could do that, too? Regrow an arm or leg. So many people get into accidents these days, but if we could just heal that easily, wouldn’t that be amazing?”
“Yeah,” he says. “That would.” He moves his arm around her waist and places the slightest pressure there. It’s instinctive to him; his body naturally behaves like that of an overprotective boyfriend. It requires less thought than saying the words, or trying to figuring out her favorite type of flower without asking.
Tulips.
The best part is she leans into him now. Her eyes don’t go wide like before. This is all smooth—paved road. Highway for their taking. Easy as.
“And this is going to sound totally corny, and you’re going to laugh at me—don’t laugh—but wouldn’t it be great if, if people could do that with, like, heartbreak? Hey, I said don’t laugh.”
He wasn’t laughing. “What? Okay, go on.”
“Like, you break up with someone, and you’re, you know, sad for a while. You go finish your roommate’s carton of Haagen Daz in the freezer (she hid it behind the frozen mixed veggies or something, Vic did that once)”—she stops, dazed at the memory, and he feels something twist in his chest: jealousy?—”so you eat your ice cream and watch, I don’t know, whatever people watch when they’re sad. I Love Lucy, or Friends, or—”
“I don’t know any of these shows.”
“You’re kidding me.” She lets out a gasp full of drama. “So no one told you life was gonna be this way? Your job’s a joke you’re broke your love life’s DOA?”
“Okay. Okay, Amber. Confession time.” He takes both of her hands in his, but it’s unfortunately the most inopportune moment ever because they’re handing her her donut on a tray, so he releases them, and she kind of side-squints at him in this irritatingly cocky way, like she just knows he needs every excuse to touch her.
Oh God, she knows.
“What were you going to say?” she asks when they’re sitting. She’s looking the donut head-on, calculating the angle of attack.
He clears his throat. “It’s not funny anymore.”
“C’mon!”
“No, it’s really lame. I don’t know what possessed me to even think it’d be funny. It’s a good thing that guy interrupted me in time. You would’ve been horrified. This would’ve been our last date.”
She’s got her mouth hanging open, ready for the first bite, but now just staring at him dumbfounded. “That’s like the longest preface to a non-joke ever. And how is this a real date? Do you take all your foreign lovers to Dunkin Donuts? Is that how they do it here?”
Here is Beijing, and Amber talks like they aren’t already sleeping together, like she doesn’t already belong to this city and its smog and dust and vibrancy. But once upon a time he did the same, only elsewhere. It made people soften their voices and treat him more kindly, like it was okay to be different if you acknowledged it self-deprecatingly.
“Are you a foreigner? I didn’t notice,” he says, conjuring up a twinkle in his eye.
“You were too distracted by the boobs,” she returns the twinkle effortlessly. Her hand brushes his over the table. He can’t stop looking at her mouth. A part of him would like to press her up against the plastic decor and feel her warm and irreverent underneath him. He’d cup her face with one hand and deftly unbutton her jeans with the other, slide under the thin elastic of her panties, over the coarse patch of hair, and watch her face contort with a shade of violence, seesawing between pleasure and restraint, as she let him touch her there, and there, and there.
Fuck, he is hard under the table, and she is—still licking away at that donut.
“What can I say? I’ve always wanted a pair of my own—” he starts off cheekily, but is interrupted by a rustle, and a corner of today’s paper held up by the guy one table over catches his eye.
Young writer—
New novel—
Beijing—
Landed yesterday—
‘Gold’ ‘Hope’—
Oh.
It’s like the air suddenly constricts and expands at the same time. It feels like a joke, a cruel one of cosmic proportions, but one that surprises nobody, like something that shows up at your doorstep to say, I’m back.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to Geng-tits,” Amber continues, with the kind of squinty gaze that just five seconds ago would’ve brought him to his knees, but now.
“Oh God,” he says without thinking.
She frowns, but it hasn’t hit her. She won’t know—she can’t know. “Oh God what?”
It’s okay. That was years and years ago. Let’s just forget it. Focus. Look, an interesting stain in the shape of Africa on the wall. Look, the beautiful woman sitting across from you. The one who’s pretty much yours, if you asked.
He blinks everything into place. A strand of her hair is stuck to crumbs of donut glaze collecting at the corner of her mouth, which hangs slightly open to show him exactly what stage of chewed-up the former donut now inhabits. Pleasantly Mauled.
“I’m just—visualizing them,” he finishes and forces a laugh up his throat. She pauses for a minute, and then her eyes roll over, and she’s, he knows it, charmed. It’s easy with her.
He files the ache away and watches her ravage the entire pastry in two bites.
- - -
The first thing he’d noticed, when she’d tripped into the room, was her hair, too dark to be natural. She had dyed it—and redyed it black. It glinted in the light. She found her balance and smiled at him.
And then, the second piercing, and the third. A tiny cross in the hole. A tinier hole in the cartilage, when she turned her head to ponder over a question he asked. He wondered what usually filled it. A black stone, maybe.
There was something sexy about the way she moved. Awkward grace. Then the name struck a chord, and he remembered Song Qian and her little tomboy friend.
“Amber Liu?”
She’d looked surprised, then laughed, yep, that was her, and they’d chatted for the sake of old times, and the whole while he thought, Has it really been that long?
So much could change in eight years. His gaze stopped on the swell of her upper lip, the curve of her cheek, the smooth slope of her neck. She vibrated nerves and thrumming tension, the way you did on a new conquest. China—the open frontier. She was used to foreign lands. She’d survived Korea, too. She was familiar.
He looked away, ashamed.
- - -
“That’s it?” The credits roll by lazily over an indie song. Amber kneels over the arm of the couch, reaching up to turn on the light, but her hand stops above the switch. She cocks her head at him in question.
“What?” she says.
“The movie’s over? She kisses the old man and they . . . go their separate ways? Is she going to tell her husband?”
The light remains off. “I don’t know? I mean, it doesn’t matter! Two strangers find each other in a strange land—okay, well, Japan, but strange to white people—and,” she pauses, thinking. “Stuff happens. Basically the entire movie.”
He hooks his arm around her leg to help with balance. “I don’t get it. Nothing happened.”
“Sure, stuff happened. There was a prostitute. You saw those nipples, right?”
She says it with a straight face. He has no idea how. “Yes . . . but what does it mean?”
She gets off the couch, knocking his hand aside. Her feet find the ground, cold from having the AC on all day, and she crosses her arms. Shifts her weight from one leg to the other as she thinks. “It doesn’t mean anything. That’s the point. You’re not supposed to get it.”
“How can that be the point?” He laughs.
“That’s how American movies work. I mean, there’re the really cheesy ones that’re all up in your face about morals, you know, Disney and that whole enterprise, but even they’ve become more subtle about it—I think. I haven’t watched a proper Disney movie in ages. But that’s not the point—”
“Family means no one gets left behind,” he quotes, perfectly Stitch. She gapes at him and then cracks up, clapping her hands together and throwing her head back. Such a display of happiness. He could watch her for hours, he thinks, and feel invigorated. There’s a hunger in him when she’s involved.
“I love your uncanny talent for always finding the lamest thing possible to say in the moment—” she starts, wiping at her eye, and he leans over to kiss her. Her lower lip curls under his before relaxing. She lets him do it like it’s a favor.
Moments pass before they break apart. Her eyelids flutter before lifting.
“I’m not lame,” he clears his throat. “You laugh at my jokes.”
She touches the ends of her hair absentmindedly. “That’s because it’s contagious. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”
He knows she’s kidding, but the words carry a mournful quality. If anything, he doesn’t ever want to become a burden. He treads carefully.
“I thought we were talking about movies,” he says lightly. Kicks at her foot. She kicks back, harder.
“We were,” she agrees, flopping back on the sofa. So she doesn’t want to go there, either. “And now I’m hungry.” Makes puppy eyes at him.
She knows him too well, he thinks, grudgingly walking into the bathroom to grab the apron off the hook on the back of the door.
- - -
“You gotta let me go, man.”
The wind outside cuts along the side of the building. His head stills for a moment, reacting to the whistle, sharp as a knife across stone. He pulls the covers up. His hand fists and locates the shapes of feathers filling the sheets. The patterns print themselves dark over his mind.
“You gotta let me go.”
The voice is disembodied, traveling through his body, the empty vessel. He watches and hears himself as someone else.
“Let me go,” he whispers again. It isn’t clear what he expects.
- - -
“I’m ridiculously hungry.” A hand on his hip, the other slipping under his shirt.
“Again?”
“Mmhm.” Teasing at his belly button, then trailing lower. Fingers doing pirouettes over his jean zipper before pulling the snap down.
“Oh God, Heechul.”
Cold contact. Crisp and Technicolor.
He tilts his head back and wakes up again. Beside him, Amber stirs and digs her nails into the inside of his arm.
- - -
He could say a lot about the airport, with its wide open ceiling filtering light in through diamond-patterned glass, with the middle-aged woman dragging a mop across the floor, dirtying the marble she’d just cleaned with her own footprints. He thought of his mother then, and then the woman’s child, if she had one, and then he took out the red bean bun he bought from the kiosk and bit into it, filling himself with thoughts of nothing but food. A little girl sitting across from him dangled her feet over the black fake leather upholstery of the waiting area seats and complained loudly about being hungry, so he offered her the two buns he had left from the pack of three. Her grandmother said thank you and scolded the girl, who fell sullen.
Inside the plane, he sat by the window and looked at the tip of the wing before a flight attendant told him they had to roll down the window covers for a reason he couldn’t catch. Her Chinese was rich and flawed, and she’d known instantly what he was.
They didn’t serve food; it was only a two-hour flight.
They didn’t check him at customs. It was obvious, with one look, that he had nothing to smuggle in. The floppy hair, the loose jeans, topped with a belt that his father had left behind.
He wasn’t tired. He arrived in Korea on a Saturday. He begins school on Monday.
- - -
The second week of school, Han Geng sits on gum. Or rather, gum appears on his chair after lunchtime, and he doesn’t notice until it’s already attached itself to the back of his pants. It’s a tiny lump with impressive adhesive power. When he tries to stand up, the chair follows.
The culprit, however, turns himself in without much of a fight.
“You’re Chinese,” Heechul says, gliding into the seat in front of Han Geng’s. “I’m Kim Heechul.”
Han Geng knows who he is. The teacher called on him to solve a math problem on the board earlier, and Heechul had taken forever in scribbling something ambiguous that cracked the class up.
“I’m Hankyung.”
“I like Chinese people,” Heechul says. “They’re going to take over the world soon, that’s what I keep hearing.”
He looks at Hankyung expectantly. Hankyung doesn’t know what to say. At first he thinks maybe Heechul is mocking him and it’s the start of yet another not-really-funny joke about his people, but his face is unmistakably earnest.
“I don’t know about that.”
“Well,” Heechul says, unfazed. “I do. And I want to have as many Chinese friends as possible so that when they do rule the world, I’ll be right there with them.”
Hankyung takes a second to think it through. “That . . . makes sense.”
Heechul grins, and it’s almost impossibly coincidental that a cloud passes and the sun chooses that moment in time to stream in through the window and frame him in a halo of light. “You can be the first one. I’ll help you scrape off the gum after school if you want.”
Hankyung stares at him. “So you—”
“I had to make sure you’d hear me out!” Heechul says loudly. “You always run out the door after class and before lunch. My friendship proposal is very important, you know.”
It takes an hour, and the little pink blotch never quite fades entirely.
Hankyung spends a lot of time watching Heechul in class. The school may be nominally international but Koreans dominate the population. The cafeteria’s divided into sections by country; the Chinese people generally sit on the right, closest to the food, the Americans in the back left, the Japanese in their corner by the bathrooms. Et cetera. There’s no real mixing of races outside of class, as far as he can tell. But granted, he just got here. He has a lot to learn.
He thinks, maybe, he can learn it from this long-haired boy who seems inexplicably interested in befriending him.
“So, first thing you need to know, is that food is really important here. I don’t know what it’s like in China but we eat here, all the time,” Heechul explains to him while they’re waiting in the lunch line.
“It’s important to me, too,” Hankyung jokes lightly.
“Okay, well, that’s not the only thing. See, it’s also about . . . about respect, right? So when you eat, you can’t just eat,” Heechul pulls him by the collar. “You listening?”
“Yeah,” Hankyung says, eyeing the strips of beef the lunch lady is laying over a mat of rice.
“What’s the last thing I said?”
“Uh. . . . respect. Food, respect.”
Heechul smacks him upside the head. “I’m trying to teach you something, Hankyung.”
They move a step forward in line. The kid in front of Hankyung pays and moves his tray off the ledge. “I can’t even focus, I’m so hungry,” he admits before placing his order. “I’ll have . . . that one.” He points at the A set.
She rattles something off in rapidfire Korean, and he stares at her dully before nodding. “Yes, ma’am.”
“She asked if you wanted ginger on top of the rice,” Heechul translates, snickering.
“Oh. Uh, yes, please?”
Heechul pokes him with his elbow. “What would you do without me?”
“I have no idea,” Hankyung replies honestly. “I thought I did okay for the past sixteen years, but now that you’ve . . .” he pauses, looking for the right word. “—entered my life, things haven’t been the same.”
Without warning Heechul starts cackling. “I’ve heard that song before.”
“That wasn’t a song!”
“No, no,” Heechul explains, calming down. “What you just said? That’s what we call ‘really cheesy’ in Korean. When someone asks, ‘What would you do without me?’—say it with me, Hankyung!— ”
“. . . What would you do without me?”
“Oh, you gonna eat that egg?” Heechul dangles a pair of chopsticks over Hankyung’s bowl, eyes gleaming.
“What?” Hankyung is utterly lost.
Heechul lowers his weapon of choice. “It was an example. It’s a rhetorical question—something you’re not supposed to answer, really. You took it way too seriously and gave me a response you’d maybe hear in a drama or a sappy ballad.”
“Uh, okay,” Hankyung says, zoning out a little. He’s distracted by the way Heechul spits his words. Something about the shape of his mouth, or something.
“Whatever,” Heechul says. “Anyway, as I was saying earlier. We have this tradition in Korea that you can’t eat by yourself, especially in the presence of someone older than you. You have to, it sounds embarrassing but I’m serious! You really need to do this if you want to turn Korean! You have to feed them.”
“What?” Hankyung laughs, snapping out of it. “What did you just say?”
“Feed me,” Heechul summarizes. He opens his mouth wide. “Ahhhh.”
Hankyung looks down at his bowl. Those strips of beef are his. His mother has to work night shifts at the restaurant to pay for them.
Who’s this kid he just met? Literally became friends with a week ago? And his stomach is growling bad enough as is.
But he’s taken too much time to think, because Heechul’s chopsticks swipe over the top of his bowl and have made way with a piece of simmering meat.
“What?” Heechul asks, mouth full, spitting rice in the direction of Hankyung’s face. “You took too long!”
Hankyung looks at him, thoughtful, and then steals his egg.
- - -
“Are you healthy? Are you eating well?”
“Yes, ma.”
“Are they working you hard? How are your feet?”
“They’re great.”
“What about the school? You’re attending school properly? They paid for everything?”
“Ma, you cashed the scholarship check yourself.”
“I’m just making sure. I’m not familiar with how Koreans do things. How about the weather? How is it there?”
He glances out the window. It’s dark already. “It’s okay. Still kind of hot. Beijing is muggier.”
“How hot?”
“Ma,” he says.
“I’m just wondering.” Her voice is tiny on the phone. He wonders if she’s been crying.
“Not that hot.”
“How about the people? Are they treating you well? Do you have friends?”
He remembers the notes that were passed around in class that never reached his hands. He remembers the look on Heechul’s face afterwards as he pummeled his fist into a boy’s skull. Heechul earned himself a warning and detention for a month, because his father had a fairly influential presence in the town, Hankyung learned, and because Heechul’s strongest punch is still hardly enough to wound.
“They’re really nice,” he says. “It was kind of awkward at first, but I think I’m winning them over.”
- - -
“This doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
“No, trust me, it’s a great idea.” Heechul fishes out one last thousand-won bill and slaps it on the counter. The cashier looks roughly their age, maybe even younger, and he’s gotten both sides of his head shaved—a delinquent. Makes their rebellions seem pitiful in return. Heechul grabs the box and Hankyung’s arm, then tosses a nod over his shoulder. “Thanks Seungho.” The cashier grins back, showing crooked teeth.
“You know him?”
“He caught me shoplifting a while ago and told me, ‘You’re doing it wrong.’” Heechul’s working on the transparent film sheathing the box.
“Give it to me,” Hankyung makes a Bruce Lee motion with his hand. “You have to find the little tab—”
Heechul keeps fumbling. “Aha!” as the plastic comes undone in strips. “Didn’t need your help, did I?”
The binoculars are a sleek black. “Perfect,” Heechul says, pretending to check his reflection in the shiny finish. He brushes aside his bangs with the nail of his pinky, and Hankyung can hardly resist laughing.
“I’m so excited. Do you think he’ll float?”
Hankyung pictures the kid’s bony body bobbing up and down in the pool. “He’s too light to sink,” he says slowly. “But—he can swim, right?”
“That’s what he said,” Heechul reminds him. “I’m not out to kill anyone. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.”
They walk faster, because Heechul’s eager to make it back in time for lunch. They cut English class together, Heechul feigning a stomachache and Hankyung trailing mournfully behind. Ms. Ahn knows they’re best friends, and best friends see each other through thick and thin. Well, truth is, she likes Hankyung a lot. Hankyung knows this. He thanks his naturally mild disposition.
Mild compared to Heechul, maybe.
Heechul unfolds the binoculars and wastes no time in tearing the sticky film off the lenses. “You think we’ll be able to see from the roof?”
“It’s only like two stories high. I don’t think we even need these . . . Heechul, this really . . . isn’t a good idea.” But Heechul looks at him like he’s being a bad sport and all the fun in the world is to be had at Lee Hyukjae’s expense.
“Look,” Heechul says, smile dimming. They’re almost at the gate of the courtyard. Hankyung kicks a rock to the fence and misses. “This is a great way to make friends! He said he wanted to join our group, right? Well, this is a way for him to prove it. How badly he wants to hang out with us. It’s like, like an initiation. Being inducted into a fraternity, something like that? The American way!”
“But what if his head hits the bottom of the pool or something?”
“Oh man. You’re ruining my high. Look,” Heechul places a hand on his shoulder, and Hankyung twitches involuntarily at the touch. “You’re always running off to dance practice when I get one of my great ideas. This is the one time you can be around for something, Hankyung. Live a little, okay?”
He ruffles his carefully gelled hair and runs before Hankyung can chase after him.
They’re waiting at the top of the science building, the shortest one on campus, overlooking the outdoor swimming pool. Heechul bribed Youngwoon to fill it up, even though it’s February and the swim team practices indoors these days. Youngwoon works at the Phys Ed department during free periods and all the gym teachers love him, especially Mr. Kanganis, the soccer coach who used to be a drill sergeant in the States. His head is shaved and shiny, and Heechul jokes about rubbing it for good luck. He tells Youngwoon to, every time he sees him, and Youngwoon pretends not to hear him but grins through the act. Heechul is very charming when he’s up for it.
Hyukjae is a bony thing shivering under a towel. Donghae’s got his arm wrapped around him, their heads knocking together, when Heechul announces his arrival with a nod towards Hyukjae. “You ready?”
Skinny but not helpless, Hankyung decides, watching Hyukjae’s chin jut in defiance with something akin to pride. “Yeah,” Hyukjae says. “I jump from here right?”
“Unless you want to climb to the top of the chapel,” Heechul’s eyes are shining.
Donghae flashes him a helpless grin. “Fighting, Hyukjae!”
“F-fighting!” Hyukjae stutters back through chattering teeth. Heechul’s already clutching his stomach, enjoying this way too much.
When he takes the towel off, his flesh is goosepimply and bespeckled with raised hairs. Hankyung can count his ribs like piano keys. Hyukjae’s chest swells, filling itself with air, as he steps carefully onto the ledge overlooking the pool. Hankyung holds his breath, and then Hyukjae jumps.
The binoculars lie forgotten in Heechul’s backpack. He pushes himself over the edge of the roof to watch the boy fall. The water breaks and parts, making way for a new friend.
The air ripples around them eagerly as they wait for him to surface. He’ll sputter up water and blow his nose and cast Heechul a victorious look. Donghae will run down with the towel and say, “You did good,” letting the cold press into him as well. Heechul will grudgingly admit that he went down more gracefully than he imagined and then shake his hand, formally allow him into their small and exclusive group. Hyukjae will wonder, is this it? Is that what I nearly got pneumonia for? But it’ll be something to talk about tomorrow, and the day after, and for years to come. How stupid they were.
When it occurs to Hankyung that they’re waiting an awfully long time, Donghae makes a choking sound in his throat, and a breeze on Hankyung’s arm signals that Heechul has disappeared. He emerges on the tiling surrounding the pool fifteen seconds later, barefoot, and throws his school jacket and pants aside before diving into the water and swimming down toward the dark, flickering shadow.
By the time Hankyung and Donghae have thought to run down to join them, Heechul has carried Hyukjae out of the pool and laid him flat on the ground. Donghae covers his body with the towel. His shoulders are pale and glistening. Heechul doesn’t say anything as he presses the space below Hyukjae’s diaphragm, waits five seconds, presses again, again, again. It almost looks like he’s hurting him.
Hyukjae convulses once and water spurts forth from his mouth. Donghae breathes a sharp sigh of relief and hugs Hyukjae’s head to his chest before Hyukjae has opened his eyes, and Heechul falls back on his palms, spent.
“Whoa,” is the first thing Hyukjae says, blinking aside a drop of water that’s slid off his eyelid.
Donghae starts sobbing, a broken dam. Heechul doesn’t say anything as he picks up his jacket and wraps it around the boy he almost killed.
- - -
“He should’ve told me he couldn’t swim,” Heechul says, exhaling a lungful of smoke. The sun falls in his eyes, colors his hair blood orange. “I can’t stand liars.”
Hankyung is quiet. He doesn’t know where to place the blame, or whether his opinion, if he had one, is necessary.
“Just tell me, you know? I don’t want to find out the hard way.” Heechul squints at him, takes another drag.
He blows the smoke in the other direction, away from Hankyung. Lets the wind carry it.
“You know?” He touches Hankyung on the cheek in one of those insignificant gestures that Hankyung knows mean nothing but still stir up a tightness in his chest, conjures up a quickening of his heartbeat.
Hankyung presses his hand there, because he can play this game, too. “I won’t lie to you.”
“I’m serious, Hankyung. Don’t lie to me. Or,” Heechul knits his brow together. “I’d kill you.”
“I won’t,” Hankyung promises, fully holding his hand now because Heechul hasn’t said anything about it.
- - -
Hankyung’s a lover, but Heechul’s a fighter. Unfortunately he’s got terrible aim and can’t throw a decent punch for his life. Hankyung, on the other hand, is pretty sure he would be able to cripple if he wanted to. But he doesn’t. Leave the violent tendencies to Heechul.
This way the universe balances out and not too many annoying little seventh-graders end up with broken noses.
“It’s so unfair. Sometimes someone says something really stupid, and I just want to throttle them. But I can’t.”
“You don’t want to end up in jail,” Hankyung reminds him. “Gladiator?”
“Exactly what I was looking for.” Heechul snatches the DVD and scans the back cover. “Russell Crowe, man. I wish I were a foreigner like him.”
“Not like me?”
“You’re easy! ‘Auntie, another bowl of rice for this fella here’—”
Hankyung elbows him in the side. Hard. Heechul takes it like a girl.
“How do you do that?”
Hankyung shrugs. “I descended from the ancestors of Bruce Lee.”
They shuffle through the aisle of the video rental store, narrowly dodging a high school girl. Heechul throws an arm around him and says enthusiastically, “Your place tonight? Did you clean?”
“Yes,” Hankyung lies. He just needs to kick the dirty underwear under the bed. Heechul, once transfixed by something—in this case, Russell Crowe—won’t notice anything else anyway.
Hankyung lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment, bathroom and kitchen all crammed into a small living space. He can get into one from the other; they’re all connected. Like a maze, he tells himself. That way it seems more glamorous than it really is. He sleeps on a tatami mat on the floor, rolling up blankets every morning before he goes to school, and unrolling them when he feels sufficiently tired. At first he hesitated to invite anyone over, but Heechul persisted for a year, bringing up the fact that it was obviously a better idea to hang out just the two of them, without parental supervision, than in a much larger, luxurious apartment with actual beds and couches. And, like, a full surround-sound system.
Point is, Hankyung is dirt poor and his room reflects that, but Heechul is stupid enough to not mind.
At some point over the years Heechul had decided it’d be a good idea to smuggle one of his DVD players over to Hankyung’s so that at the very least, they could watch movies together instead of reading manga and—as time wore on, as pants grew shorter and body hair grew thicker—porn all the time. Or flicking rocks at passersby below from the window.
“Something stinks,” Heechul says from behind. Hankyung pushes the door open wider to find that something does in fact stink. Like day-old noodles.
“Oh, geez. When’s the last time you did the dishes?”
“Want to do them for me?”
Hankyung flips the bowl over the sink, and the putrid smell rises to his nostrils. Heechul’s face has entered a permanent state of scrunched-up, but instead of complaining he reaches into his—now Hankyung notices—abnormally large knapsack. Knapsack?
“Air freshener? You brought air freshener?”
“Your place is always full of weird smells,” Heechul releases a cursory spray in Hankyung’s direction. “Oh, it works.”
Hankyung wheezes. “Of course it works. But how long are you planning on staying?”
“A week or so, until they beg me to come back.”
Every three months, Heechul argues with his sister and his parents, who always take her side, and seeks refuge in Hankyung’s flat until he forgets why he was mad in the first place. Hankyung reminded himself a long time ago to start marking calendars, because Heechul’s timing is eerily consistent. It’s about once every ninety days now.
“You might as well leave stuff over,” he starts, and Heechul grins unnaturally bright at that. “What else did you bring?”
“PJs, slippers, tissues—”
“I’m not that poor. I’ve got tissues!”
“I know but—just in case we run out!”
“Why would we—oh.”
He lets his hands fall limp under the faucet. His skin is pruning already. “Right,” he says, because lately they have been doing that together, too, and . . . it’s been nice.
Heechul slaps his back, signaling a return to normality. “We should have a contest. I bet I could do it faster.”
The thing about Heechul is, sometimes it’s hard to tell when he’s joking. Because if he isn’t joking and you laugh, then he’ll narrow his eyes and be like, “What?” But if he is joking and you didn’t get it, then, well, that might’ve been your last chance to get it. Hankyung’s gotten better at reading him, but there are these times, times like this, when he has no idea.
So Hankyung says stupidly, “Did I not mention my kung-fu fingers?”
“You’re on, punk.”
“But we’re watching Gladiator?”
“C’mon! Russell Crowe ain’t good enough for you?” Heechul says with his dialect, which often sounds like countryside gibberish, but Hankyung is able to decipher it this time.
“Uh . . .”
Usually they do it to a girly magazine, facing the wall, neither looking at the other because that’s just weird and uncomfortable. But they can still hear each other, and Hankyung always does, without meaning to—Heechul breathing, the slick slapping sound of his hand moving frantically, and then Hankyung closes his eyes and pictures Heechul open-mouthed and panting and imagines putting his own hand where Heechul’s is and moving it up and down; imagines making him feel good. And sometimes that’s what does the trick, instead of the big tits and carefully shaved girls waiting with glossy eyes, propped up against the wall.
It’s probably not natural to be having these thoughts, but between dance practice and school Hankyung doesn’t have much time to spend thinking. What they’re doing, they do because it feels fucking awesome.
And it’s awesome to be able to share that with who’s pretty much his only friend in Korea.
“I’m kidding,” Heechul says quickly, gauging from the look of horror on Hankyung’s face. “Russell’s not my type, anyway.” He grins. “I could go for Kaneshiro Takeshi, though.”
He’s half-Chinese, Hankyung doesn’t say, because there’s no point in indulging Heechul when he makes these jokes that aren’t really funny. “I approve.”
“Jealous?”
“Who said you’re my type?” Hankyung laughs, flicking water in Heechul’s face.
“Hey!”
The movie’s confusing, because the subtitles are in Korean, and Hankyung isn’t that good at reading words flying across the screen so he focuses on the images instead. Russell Crowe’s really manly, he thinks, transfixed by the ripples of muscle building under his armor. He’s like, almost Arnold Schwartzenegger-level scary-buff. Or something. He doesn’t really know. Hankyung hasn’t actually seen that many movies. In fact, he’s seen more since he came to Korea than he had his entire life before. Mostly because of Heechul.
“I want to be famous,” Heechul says, a lazy whisper. He scratches the back of his neck, making a tiny hole in the curtain of his hair. Hankyung reaches over and does it for him. “That tickles,” Heechul says, squirming away, which makes Hankyung grin and trail his fingers down his shoulder and under his armpit.
“Noooo,” Heechul begs, shielding himself with his stick-thin arms, and Hankyung pounces, aiming for a sliver of neck that he knows is Heechul’s weakest of weak spots. Heechul can usually hold a straight face for five seconds, but one second longer and he breaks—instantly. And then the giggling comes, the pleading is nonstop, and it’s one of the few moments Hankyung can honestly say he’s in control, with Heechul writhing and squealing under him.
“No—hahahaha—stop!!—oh my GODhahaha—stoooppp—”
Hankyung stops. He’s got Heechul pinned on the tatami mat. Heechul’s alternately convulsing and laughing, head turned to the side, eyes shut tight, a knee in Hankyung’s groin, toes on his thigh. Hankyung feels suddenly transparent and—dirty.
“What’s wrong,” Heechul blinks up at him. They’re eyelashes away from touching.
“Nothing,” Hankyung says casually, releasing him. “You looked like you were enjoying it too much.”
Heechul coughs. “Just like you to deny me my pleasure.”
“I thought you hated being tickled!”
“I mean, it feels awful and really good at the same time.” His face is still a flushed red, and he sidles close to Hankyung. “You know?”
“No,” Hankyung lies.
They’ve missed an important scene, and now people are yelling. The vein on the side of Russell Crowe’s forehead is protruding like crazy and his face is partly bloody—and the screen goes black with a click.
“Ugh, now I’m horny,” Heechul complains, dropping the remote on the floor. “You weren’t really watching, were you?”
“Not really,” Hankyung admits. “Um. I . . . recycled those other magazines.”
“Aw, you did what?”
“Sorry.”
“Whatever.” Heechul rolls over. “We’ll just use our imagination.”
“You go ahead,” Hankyung agrees, pretending to get up. “I’m going to start my homework.”
Heechul pulls on the hem of his shirt with his toes. Hankyung recoils. “Gross, man. Get off!”
“Don’t forget we’re competing, Hankyung.”
“Why?”
Heechul sits up straight. Hankyung sits back down.
“Why not?” Heechul asks blankly. “Afraid of losing?”
Then, of course, it’s on.
They claim adjacent pieces of wall. No looking until one of them wins, and then they have to look in order to acknowledge the other’s victory. No staining the wall, because Hankyung’s lazy enough about cleaning as is, and also, that’s just gross. Tissue boxes stationed at their sides. “Hm. . . something really, really dirty,” he hears Heechul hum, laughing a little. His voice goes low. Hankyung gulps.
He thinks of Zhang Ziyi. He thinks of her collarbone and the way it jutted out cleanly under the robe she wore during that sex scene. Her hair is mussed, cheeks rouged, and—okay, he’s not really a fan. No one at home really likes her anyway.
Heechul’s quiet, but he’s breathing harder.
Heechul’s fingers are long and slim. Heavy at the knuckles and tapering down on the sides. He plays the piano, he’d once told Hankyung, but not well. If he tries really hard, he can put enough emotion in it, maybe even sway a little, but then he’ll mess up a note, clank down on the wrong key, and the vision tears a hole. “I’m like that with a lot of stuff,” he’d said. “I just don’t have the patience? There’s too much I want to do, you know.”
“Like travel?”
“Sure. I want to go to Europe. I want to go to China. Visit your hometown.”
“I want that, too.”
They’d looked at each other, unembarrassed. Maybe it’d been obvious then.
“Oh,” Heechul says softly, fidgeting. Hankyung sneaks a peek at him and finds that his eyes are closed.
So Hankyung gives in and thinks of him.
- - -
Their last year of college, they decide to visit their high school alma mater. Hankyung’s mother tells him she’s friends with someone whose daughter is attending school there now—“Take care of her, Han Geng. Be an older brother.”
Song Qian is bright-eyed and cheerful. She can kick up to her head. They do an impromptu dance-off and find they have entirely polar styles. She’s good, though. He isn’t sure what to do, so he pats her on the back.
“Dong Hai and He Zai have told us so much about you,” she says.
“About me? Are you sure?”
“Of course,” she says. “You and Xi Che.”
“Xi Che,” repeats the tiny girl beside her. She has her hair cut short, and her eyes are set apart like a doe’s. She looks to be about twelve.
Heechul perks up at the sound of his name, one of the few Chinese words he’s managed to remember. “What about me?”
Hankyung makes a show of ignoring him. “Your little sister?”
“No, no!” Song Qian laughs. “She’s in the junior high school—I’m teaching her Chinese. Mr. Lim told me to.”
“Mr. Lim is a tough one. Watch out for his ruler.”
Heechul is bored. He’s taken to playing with the little girl, hand games with rules that he makes up as they go along. After he claps once instead of twice, he tells her that’s the exception, between fives and sixes you have to clap once, and she says, “This is retarded.” Heechul looks a mixture of cross and amused.
“Hey,” Song Qian says suddenly. “Can you drive?”
The nearest mall is half an hour away. It’s a good day for driving, so he rolls down the windows. Song Qian and Amber stick their arms out the windows, and Heechul flicks the radio console again and again, until it stops on the fuzz of an electric guitar, something in Japanese, and then he starts singing.
It’s not the best voice in the choir. He rasps along scales and you can taste cancer on your tongue. And the way he sings it, it still sounds like Korean. But it travels up Hankyung’s spine and lingers. The thin, scratchy timbre. The shudder of his throat. Heechul’s always been good at things without meaning to.
This periodic lack of self-awareness throws Hankyung off-guard every time. Like when he turns to look at Heechul and he’s totally oblivious, mouth ajar and watching the television; or when Heechul scratches at his neck until it reddens in a small patch, and folds his arms behind his head and his elbows are so sharp they threaten to break skin; or the soft sigh he exhales when he’s satisfied that itch. Little things.
Little things that make Hankyung want to kiss him, right now, over the steering wheel. But they aren’t alone.
But it’s okay, because they have time.
The wind blusters and Song Qian sings along, although it’s pretty clear she doesn’t know the words. Hankyung represses a smile against the back of his hand.
- - -
For him, there are vignettes, immobile in their clarity. Heechul had grown his hair long a couple times in his life, once for at least a year until it grazed the small of his back. That one time they visited the beach with Donghae, Hyukjae, and Jungsu, who’d always been more of Heechul’s friend than his. . . well, they all had been—but that time. The three of them, Jungsu and him and Heechul, were in college now, but the younger ones were in their last year of high school, still worrying about entrance exams and a slightly less imminent future, and it’d been—springtime? Maybe. Yes. It’d been April, and Heechul had said, “I miss the water,” one morning, and it’d been only a year after that car hit him and kept going, so for the past twelve months Hankyung hadn’t once been able to say the word “no”; everything was “sure,” “okay,” “you want fries with that?” The last one with a wink and a sliding of his lips into a shape that no longer felt familiar; Hankyung had to have the strength to carry another person now, and sometimes he envied the others for their faith that at the end of the day, someone up there could do it for you. Someone was watching out for you. But that was his job, watching out for Heechul, spying out the corner of his eye even when he pretended to be asleep, because at that point he couldn’t leave him alone without feeling sick. Even after Heechul came off the crutches, he still couldn’t. So when Heechul said, “Hey,” and mentioned something about the beach, Hankyung’s head ticked and spun with road maps—Google didn’t own the world back then—and they outlined plans and packed sandwiches and in the end headed for the one just half an hour away—anticlimactic, like Heechul would say, but at least he never said Well, what’s the point? because the answer to that was clear.
When they got there, it looked like it was going to rain, but it didn’t, so they walked along the beach and sand filled their sandals and the gaps between their toes where webbing would’ve been, centuries ago, Hyukjae said, and Heechul’s cough sounded like laughter, but then it was. Hankyung put his arm around Heechul’s waist because no one else was there besides the boys and Jungsu, and he suspected they knew, or vice versa, he knew they suspected, and also because at that point he had already decided—without being aware of it consciously, there would be time for that later—he was going home and there was no harm in letting people know the truth before you leave them.
They walked close to the beach and when the tide pulled in the water ran up to their knees and Heechul fell back on the inside of his arm but Hankyung could tell he was using all his strength to not lean, to keep his spine straight and pride intact. All he wanted was to say, “I’ll be more reliable than your pride” even if it was a promise he couldn’t keep, but the thought whispered away when Heechul opened his arms to a gust of wind and smiled like it was okay even if he died at that moment, like he had all he needed and it was okay.
- - -
But most of the time, Hankyung doesn’t think. Life’s too short to spend time regretting and wondering. And the thing is, he didn’t think all those years back either. It was or it wasn’t. There was no might’ve been. Heechul used to say, “I never know what you’re thinking about,” and he’d reply, “I’m not thinking about anything.” It was the truth. He didn’t have a mental breakdown the first time he thought of kissing his best friend, or the first time he stuck his hand down his pants, or the first time he stuck his hand down Heechul’s. All that stuff, that unimportant stuff, he let it wash over him. He felt what he felt, and knew it was irrational—because honestly, how could you really love another boy and still want children with both your blood coursing through their veins and for your mother to have a daughter-in-law to brag to the neighbors about?—but he didn’t do anything about it, either. Maybe he’d just fed it. That was messed up of him. But this is all realized in hindsight, which is, despite popular belief, not to be trusted. What he’s thinking now is affected by how crabby Amber gets in the mornings, her hair sticking up and the ghost-face she makes before groaning and shutting the bathroom door. He’s rationalizing. But really, at the time, everything had felt temporary. That was something he’d known from the beginning, from the moment he made contact with the small unassuming wad of gum, and had quelled because as realistic as he was, and here is where it breaks down, it didn’t work completely. He hadn’t been able to separate himself from what he wanted and knew he needed to become. He couldn’t stop himself from touching Heechul, just because he could. That was his big mistake, and that was, essentially, how he fell.
It’s like what they say about a person only getting one big love. A love like that only comes once in your life, and that’s if you’re lucky. But that’s like saying that all that’s worth remembering already happened ten years ago. Hankyung won’t forget but he won’t dwell, either. It’s unfair, and he doesn’t think it’s selfish of him to not want someone to have that grasp over him his whole life, even if it isn’t just anyone. They were young. It wasn’t a love born of necessity but it could’ve only happened then. He tells himself these self-reassurances and on a good day he believes them. But that’s casting aside memories of the really good stuff like waking up before his alarm rang, slow and easy seven a.m. lovemaking, in exactly those words, yeah. Lovemaking. And the teasing that wouldn’t end. How delicate they were. Thoughts like these hover over the periphery of his mind always, always.
YOU HELD YOUR BREATH AND THE DOOR FOR ME
A: I love receiving fanmail in languages I don’t understand. [Laughs.] No, really, I’m ecstatic. You can’t tell right now but my legs are shaking under the table.
Q: What inspired you to write a novel centered around the lives of victims of physical trauma?
A: It’s something I’d been working on for a couple years. Since after college, and throughout the army training. I think one’s mental health is deeply tied to the physical condition . . . I could go on, but mostly I guess you could say I was channeling the frustrations of my youth into that work, and it wrote itself, for the most part. It was surprisingly easy.
Q: Is this the famous self-praise that Kim Heechul is known for? [Laughs.]
A: You’re lucky to have witnessed it firsthand! Most people don’t get that honor their whole lives. [Laughs.]
Q: So tell me about your next novel.
A: It’s a work in progress. I really can’t say much, sorry.
Q: I hear you’re flying to China next month to do some research.
A: [Bursts into laughter.] Your sources would be correct, yes.
Q: Is it your first time? How do you feel?
A: Terrified. No, excited. Really, I am. I’ve been meaning to go for a long time.
- - -
At some point in the past three years Heechul has learned to negotiate. This ability comes into play when he’s in the middle of a difficult scene, oftentimes one close to his heart.
“Come on. Talk to me.”
When that doesn’t work, he raises his voice, takes another angle.
“I created you. You have to tell me things.”
Silence is a very forbidding thing.
“How else am I supposed to know? If you don’t talk . . .”
He is loneliest at these moments, when his mind lies wide open and fatigued and the screen glowers apathetically back at him. The cursor won’t stop for him, either. It waits.
The block starts in December. It doesn’t snow that winter, but Hyukjae builds a sled and they slide down a hilly road they sprinkled with salt. Hyukjae’s arms bulged as he carried the large bag of salt from their apartment to the quiet street where he parked his car. A kid skateboarded down his driveway and over his garbage can. The wheels made a scraping sound over the lid and he turned back to wink at them, his private audience of two. For Heechul it feels like looking into a backwards mirror.
He slides a finger along the tar as they go, the grains, the dirt. Hyukjae sits in front and flings his arms up, his jacket puffing with the wind, but Heechul hugs his waist and is unable to let go.
February marks the second consecutive month in which he hasn’t written anything, but he still gets invited to interviews. Book readings. Magazine shoots. They’ve never known someone like him, who looks like he could be living off his face but is instead striving for something just as volatile. They ask the same questions, but he gives different answers. He loses track of them.
The millionth time he’s asked, “So where do you think you’re going with your next novel?” he’s staring at the clock on the wall and idly scratching his arm.
“China,” he says without thinking. “I hear they deal out inspiration by the buckets there.”
- - -
The doorbell rings on a Friday afternoon. Heechul peels himself off the living room floor to look through the peephole.
“Moscato?” Hyukjae holds up the bottle when Heechul opens the door. He must have just gotten out of work; his collar is wilting in the heat. His pants are pressed with a crease down the center, and his hair combed cleanly to the side. He fills out the suit jacket better than he would’ve in Heechul’s memory.
“Wow. It’s really been a while.”
“Hasn’t it?”
When they’re both seated in the kitchen, Hyukjae looks like he isn’t sure what to do with his hands. He nudges the bottle toward Heechul, thumbs the label. Heechul laughs, because it’s funny how years of ambiguous friendship can’t predict the awkwardness that comes after a lull.
Hyukjae clears his throat. “How was the army?”
“Is that when we last talked? It was good. I don’t think I’m any more of a man now than I was.”
“Oh. I have to enlist soon.”
Heechul threads his fingers together. “I see.” He touches the bottle, frowns. “You don’t drink, right?” The frown turns into a suggestive grin. “Or have you . . .”
“No, no,” Hyukjae scratches the back of his head, sending a couple hairs bent astray. His eyes raise to meet Heechul’s. “But you do. I passed by a liquor store on the way here and thought, ‘hmm.’”
“Hmm.”
Hyukjae laughs, but stops abruptly, suddenly looking worried. “Do you not like this? The guy at the store recommended this but I don’t know anything about alcohol.”
Heechul skims the label. “This is really girly. Just kidding—I drink anything and everything.”
Hyukjae relaxes visibly.
“It’s not fun to drink alone, though. Then you’re just on a downward spiraling path to alcoholism.”
“You’re not alone, hyung.”
“Drink with me.”
Hyukjae’s eyes dart around nervously. “No,” he says slowly, “but I’ll keep you company.”
“Even if I start puking?”
“Especially if you start—where do you keep the sanitary gloves, by the way?” Hyukjae grins.
“Under the bathroom sink, on the left,” Heechul says automatically. “Actually, I have no idea.”
Hyukjae’s brought food, too, greasy chicken fingers and microwavable kettle corn. They watch the bag spin and pop, and Heechul twirls his glass of wine, listening to Hyukjae talk about his day, about traffic, about Donghae. Heechul has been exceptionally awful at keeping in touch, but Donghae, he deduces, must have heard from Jungsu and then told Hyukjae.
“Donghae says he misses you,” Hyukjae says, as though reading his mind. “He sends his love from Australia.”
“Still working at that orphanage?”
“This way he plays father to about a hundred kids.”
“Our Donghae,” Heechul smiles wistfully. The wine has settled pleasantly at the bottom of his stomach, and his throat is warm.
“Our Donghae,” Hyukjae echoes.
“When is he getting married to that American?”
“He won’t tell me, but I’m thinking next spring.”
“If she doesn’t get wanderlust or something.” Heechul closes his eyes.
When he comes to, Hyukjae is watching him intently. He blinks into focus. The top two buttons on Hyukjae’s collar have come undone, and his lips are slightly parted, as always. Making him look sort of stupid.
“What?”
“Nothing—for a second I thought you’d fallen asleep.”
Hyukjae leans forward and rests his chin on the back of his chair. Heechul scrapes his thumb across Hyukjae’s cheek without thinking. It’s only when Hyukjae jerks that he realizes what he’s done.
Play it off as a consequence of exhaustion. It’s the truth.
“Aren’t you the one that’s tired?”
Hyukjae takes his cell phone from his pocket and presses a button to light up the cover. “It’s past midnight. I should go.”
“No, stay,” Heechul says. “I’ve been sleeping on the floor anyway.”
“No, I’ll call a cab—”
“C’mon. How much will that cost you? And then I’d feel guilty, and owe you money, and I hate owing people anything—so I’d start having to be nicer to you, and it’s just a vicious cycle of masochism from there—”
“You should be nice to me. You almost got me killed, remember?”
Heechul freezes, but Hyukjae’s voice is soft. Nothing resembling an accusation.
“I wanted to die,” Heechul says. “I doubted everything in that moment. How cocky I’d been. God—” his head is suddenly dizzy.
Hyukjae takes his hand in an act of uncharacteristic bravery. “Don’t hurt me, hyung, when you hear what I have to say next.”
Heechul tilts his head.
“To be honest, I just wanted to scare you.”
“What?”
“You were so—” Hyukjae runs a hand through his hair, grasping. “When you first saw me, you looked like you hated me already. I could tell. You were Donghae’s hyung, and so I respected you, but you hated me—and I wondered. I thought about it for days, how to gain your trust, or at the very least, your respect. And I came up with this stupid idea . . .” he trails off, looking at the floor.
“You pretended to drown.”
“It was just going to be for a minute or so! I’m actually a great swimmer,” Hyukjae admits. “But then I choked on a gulp of water, and somehow, I don’t know, that’s when I lost control.”
They sit in silence. Heechul, disbelieving. He wants to hit him a little.
“I just thought if I got you to laugh, you’d like me more—or something.”
There’s a desperation in his eyes that Heechul doesn’t recognize.
“I would’ve hated you more,” Heechul says at last. “And that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Do you know I spent the last ten years feeling guilty, thinking that you were on the cusp of death and I’d been the one to bring you there? I questioned everything—some say I was never the same after that. It’ll be written in my biography—last year of high school. Stupid punk feigns drowning; friend of punk Kim Heechul distraught and forever changed.”
The moment has passed, he’s saying to Hyukjae. It’s okay now.
“I’m sorry,” Hyukjae says.
“Me, too,” Heechul says.
“I guess we’re even now.”
Emotional vs. physical trauma, Heechul thinks. Which one weighs heavier? “C’mon. I’ll lend you my old Tom & Jerry pajamas for the night.”
Hyukjae is too sleepy to protest this time. His shoulders are less bony than Heechul remembers. They feel firm now, under his arm. Like one of them has grown up.
- - -
He enlisted to the army willing to be changed. People say that a man isn’t a man until he’s served his two years, and he was ready to become one.
He’s done a handstand in the snow for fifteen minutes. His hands froze. He couldn’t feel them, so that was fine.
He’s loaded a gun in five seconds.
He’s subsisted on corn for a week. By the seventh day his shit was yellow and piecey, just missing the stalks.
At night some of them would pass out before their heads hit the pillows, but sleep came to Heechul grudgingly. At least he wasn’t an insomniac like Jungsu. Jungsu stayed awake for hours, and Heechul felt, through the thin film of slumber, his tossing and turning through the night. Jungsu would say, “Hey, are you still awake?” and Heechul would grunt, “Sure,” and let his eyelids burn open again. Sometimes they talked until light crept into the room, slanted through the partitioned windows. Its shadow on the blankets took the form of asymmetrical crosses. Jungsu talked about girls, the ones he wanted to marry and the ones he wanted plainly, to hold and press his face into their breasts. His breath hung coarsely over the wool blanket. “Momma’s boy,” Heechul said. Jungsu’s laugh cut through the dark. It didn’t matter how tired he was. His laugh was always the same. It bordered on maniacal, misplaced in an otherwise calm and grounded personality. But Jungsu wasn’t the enigma.
He didn’t have much time or energy to think. His body did everything for him. He felt his muscles growing, like trees extending their roots. His arms pulled taut when he did the morning stretches, careful to keep his back straight. They made him run laps up and down the mountain last time. He maintained a respectful and blank expression. This way they couldn’t beat the Kim Heechul out of him. He buried himself deep inside. A time capsule to recover after the two years went by.
He wouldn’t grow hard, he told himself. He didn’t want to be like the splintered veterans, long-winded about their traumatizing stories of “what really happened back then” at every family gathering, who went on for hours once they had some soju in them. The uncles you nodded politely at and then avoided for the rest of the night. He was here to serve his country, and to learn. He met all types of other men, and it was a bit like looking through a peephole into the wider world. People he’d never have talked to otherwise. People he’d laughed at in high school. Some of them could’ve been replacements for those he already knew. The Hyukjaes, the Donghaes. Not exactly, because something was always off, but they’d pick up their chopsticks, quirk their mouths, whatever it was, and it would all be so startlingly familiar and warm. The illusion passed quickly. In those moments he knew how badly he missed them.
Jungsu kept a journal that he wrote in every day. The others made fun of him for it, jostling his shoulders, calling it a diary. Jungsu grinned and kept writing. His handwriting was long and leaned to the left; his vocabulary, rudimentary. He wrote about the weather and what he ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Some days he wrote by himself and others he asked Heechul for help. They came up with stories together. “You got a blister today,” Heechul reminded him. “Oh, right.” Jungsu drew cartoons in the margin. His art was better than the words surrounding them. Kim Heechul, my former classmate and now fellow soldier. Cartoon-Heechul had large sparkling eyes and an embarrassing patch of stubble. “You didn’t have to draw that in,” Heechul complained. “Then shave,” Jungsu said. Heechul didn’t want to shave. He was going through a phase.
By Christmas he had a legitimate beard. They asked him to play Santa Claus for the regiment and he put on the suit and filled it up with half-empty bags of rice. He went from door to door dealing spoonfuls to his comrades. They held out their hands like it was gold. The Sergeant caught him and made him spin somersaults in the snow. But he was laughing when he announced the punishment. He gave Heechul farmer’s gloves, the ones red at the palms. After the twentieth, he said, “Alright, Santa,” and slapped him on the back. Heechul was out of breath. His eyelashes dangled heavy with icicles. But he had been giddy then, falling into the act.
In the last months before he was released, he bought a notebook and started writing his own journal. Bits and pieces before going to bed. Found a stone in my soup today. Almost broke a tooth. Eternal beauty a thing of the past. He hadn’t done this since elementary school, before video games, computers, and distracting friendships.
- - -
The kettle’s whistling on the stove. “Hyukjae,” Heechul calls, tucking in the tail of his tie. He glances at his reflection over the dresser. There’s something like an alfalfa popping out from the back of his head.
“Hyukjae,” he yells this time.
“Yeah?” Hyukjae’s voice is dim. Probably in the bathroom right now.
“Water.”
“Washing my hands—hold on.”
The whistling dies down to a bubble. Heechul notices his tie is crooked, and it takes two deep breaths to calm down. Everything is irritating today. He got out of bed to pee this morning and nearly stepped on Hyukjae’s face, pillow-smashed and unrecognizable. He had to step around him with the balance he lacked at that hour and then later, when he reached for the soap he noticed it wasn’t the perfumed one he liked. Right, because they’d used it up a while ago. This one didn’t have a smell. It was probably one of those antibacterial soaps that were really good for you or something. But Heechul likes nice smells.
And then at breakfast he burnt his porridge and Hyukjae had forgotten to buy milk the day before so they drank orange juice instead. Except it was the pulpy kind and he’d let it sit for too long while he watched the morning news so all the pulp gathered at the bottom and he just got a bunch of shit in his throat. He made a choking sound and then Hyukjae laughed at him, although he immediately looked apologetic afterwards, because, without really meaning to, Heechul must have glowered.
His job interview at the restaurant is in half an hour, and it only takes about ten minutes by foot to get there, but he still hasn’t washed his face or remembered how to tie a tie. It’s not like he really needs the money but he needs something to do. “You know we’ll support you in any shape or form,” his mother had said over the phone. But her tone was delicate. She doesn’t understand the reason for her son’s whims, but she thinks she does. He lets her think it’s about the accident.
Ten minutes later he turns the knob to the front door before remembering, “Shit, my phone.” Hyukjae stands up abruptly to look around the room. “You seen it?”
“It started beeping halfway through the night so I plugged it into the charger.” Hyukjae scratches the back of his head. “Check your bedroom?”
That’s when he gets it. The thing that doesn’t feel right.
“My bedroom?” Heechul repeats.
“Yeah—”
“No,” Heechul says. “I mean. My bedroom? The one whose floor you’ve been sleeping on for three months?”
“Yeah,” Hyukjae says, confused. “The outlet by the door.”
Heechul is careful about the words he chooses to say next. “Listen. This morning I almost stepped on you.”
Hyukjae looks at him blankly. “Was I drooling again?”
“Well, yeah, but,” Heechul waves his hand. “Then I went into the bathroom and—my hands don’t smell like flowers right now. Also, did you rearrange my hair products?”
“You left everything out last night, so I just put them back!”
“In alphabetical order?” Heechul gapes. But this isn’t what he wanted to say. “That’s not what I wanted to say.”
Hyukjae’s hand stops in midair. He is holding a spoon.
Heechul continues. “I don’t even recognize this place anymore. Your underwear mixed in with mine in the laundry basket. Waking up some mornings and finding Heebum on your face. It makes me think, that should be me he’s suffocating, but it isn’t.”
“Yesterday I choked on a hairball,” Hyukjae nods somberly.
Heechul tries not to think about the imagery there, because then he might snort, and snorting will undermine the gravity of what he wants to say. Which he still hasn’t said. Because he doesn’t really—he hasn’t been in this situation in a while, and it feels awfully foreign and new. New isn’t bad.
Maybe he’s scared. But he doesn’t get scared.
“Hyung, do you want me to leave?” Hyukjae says suddenly. “Just tell me. I’ve been thinking about it, too, lately, that this is kind of wei—”
“No,” Heechul interrupts. “I meant, it’s ours. That’s what I wanted to say, okay? It’s ours now.” He avoids looking at Hyukjae’s shell-shocked expression, like a gigantic extinct bird just hit him in the face.
“Everything,” he adds in case there is any confusion.
“Oh,” Hyukjae says with the same face.
“What? Stop looking at me like that. I have to go now. You just made me late for my first interview in three years. Kung Pao chicken is going to be very upset.”
“Wait,” Hyukjae says, grinning now. “You’ve got an alfalfa back there.”
He makes his way around the table. When he reaches Heechul, they look at each other like it’s the first time. Heechul wonders if there’s some rule against this, this unspoken staring contest, because it’s making his palms clammy. But then Hyukjae spits on his hand and smoothes the piece of hair sticking up in the back of his head.
“That’s gross,” Heechul makes a face. He opens the door before adding, “Thanks.”
- - -
“Hyung, you want half of this sandwich?” Donghae asks.
“No. Why?”
“You look sick. Your face—”
“Me? No way. I’m perfection always. Worry about yourself, okay?”
Donghae leans closer, frowning. He wants to play it off like he’s not really concerned, because he knows that being too serious will only make Heechul less willing to listen—but unfortunately for him, Heechul knows all this, too. He can read Donghae like a lunch menu.
“I wouldn’t have noticed, but Hyukjae brought up how you’d been skipping meals, and—”
“Hyukjae?” Heechul repeats. The kid doesn’t even look at him. They joke around sometimes, eyes darting everywhere but at each other. Heechul’s never been as uncomfortable around another human being as with Lee Hyukjae.
“Yeah.” Donghae seems vaguely aware of the fact that he just said something he maybe shouldn’t have. “Is there something wrong with Hankyung-hyung?”
“Nope.” He isn’t going to tell him.
“What are we talking about?” Hyukjae joins them on the roof. He’s swinging a plastic bag branded with the logo of the college convenience store. He glances at the open space next to Heechul on the bench and then slides onto the floor next to Donghae.
“Gimme your pudding,” Heechul says, holding out his hand. “You bought some, right?”
Hyukjae freezes, staring at him. “Um, yeah.”
“Give it to me. I could eat a horse right now.”
Hyukjae stares up at him with his mouth open, maybe a little pissed off, but then it registers. When he hands the small cup to Heechul a moment later, he looks mildly relieved.
Heechul smokes behind the courtyard later, thinking of Hyukjae’s mouth pressed into a wobbly line, not thinking of Hankyung and how he stays quiet after they do what they do.
- - -
“So tell me the truth. Is that when it started?”
“No,” Hyukjae says. His ears are red, so that was probably half a lie.
“Then when?” Heechul presses, dangling his legs over the couch. “When did you realize how irresistible I was?”
Hyukjae cracks up at that one. His eyes go wide and his mouth goes long and it’s like American football on his face. “Irresistible? Then how did I resist for so long?”
“I have no idea,” Heechul says, eyes bright.
Hyukjae laughs again and then clears his throat. He opens his mouth. Closes it. “This is so awkward for me.”
“It’s not awkward for me at all,” Heechul swings his legs some more.
“What about you then? When did you—ah—realize you . . . um,” he looks at Heechul. “Do I have to say it?”
“To be honest, I don’t think I’ve realized it yet.”
Hyukjae opens his mouth. He places a hand over the general vicinity of his heart. “I’m deeply hurt, hyung.”
“Fine. Last weekend, when you turned the cold water knob instead of the hot water and shrieked in the shower. That’s when I thought, hey.”
“‘Hey’?”
“Hey, this kid might be good for something after all. You’ve got an awesome sense of comic timing.”
Hyukjae covers his mouth with his hand when he laughs sometimes. And sometimes he covers his face. Heechul doesn’t know what to make of it, but he wants to pry his hands away. They’re not really there yet; they still have this instinctive desire to hide.
“You can’t bring yourself to say it, hyung. I see how it is. You don’t really—about me—like that.”
“About you? Like what?”
“You know, that.”
Heechul grins. “I have no idea what you’re talking about unless you tell me.”
“You know I’m not good with words. I’m not writing the next great Korean novel.”
“I need some inspiration for that, and you’re the only person who lives with me.”
“Get new friends.” Hyukjae kicks his side of the couch.
A lifetime ago, Heechul would’ve left the room. He would’ve thought Hyukjae was terribly ordinary. Nothing special in that face or body or brain. He was like every other Korean, except with the uncanny knack for falling over whenever he laughed really hard. The kind of person whose laughter shook his shoulders. Heechul wouldn’t have tolerated this kind of familiar wink-nudge humor at his expense.
A lifetime later, though, he wants to lace their fingers together when Hyukjae starts fidgeting. He thinks about the slope of his jawline, the way it curves against his lips when he leans over to kiss him in bed.
“But I only want you,” Heechul says seriously. Well, for a moment. Then they look away, because it’s still a little uncomfortable, to be that earnest. They are better when they don’t talk about these things. These things should only be felt, anyway, not spoken.
- - -
“Are you awake?”
Heechul rolls over. Now he is.
“At first I hated you. Not hated, but I knew you didn’t like me. So I didn’t like you back.”
Hyukjae breathes a puff of warm wind on Heechul’s cheek.
“I didn’t like you, but I always noticed you. Your moods—I mean, those are kind of hard to miss.”
He’s grinning. Heechul can feel it in the dark.
“And I wondered, why did I notice you if I hated you? And what was that—weird sensation—whenever you were with Hankyung-hyung—I mean, back then it wasn’t like now. I accepted that you were, the two of you were really close. Not accepted. It was a given. Everyone thought of you two as . . . inseparable.”
Hyukjae turns to the other side, away from Heechul, thinking. His voice is further away when he continues.
“I think I felt. . . I never felt good enough. Like you were this faraway star or something . . . wow, this sounds really stupid. I mean, you could call it denial. I liked you for years. I just, you never, I never had the chance.”
There is a familiar knot in Heechul’s throat. It comes and goes. These days it’s mostly away, on vacation.
He presses a kiss into Hyukjae’s hair. The guy is sweating. “You moron,” Heechul says, and the words shake like bones. “Go to sleep.”
- - -
“How you doin’, hyung?” Donghae’s accent is back.
“Fine,” Heechul says. “When are you coming back home?”
“That depends on how much you miss me.” Something whines in the background. “Oh, Jess says hi.”
Heechul twirls the charm on his cell phone strap. “Tell her I asked if she’s pregnant yet.”
A loud static sound muffles against the speaker. Donghae coughs, further from the receiver now. “Hyung!”
“I want to be an uncle. Imagine the things I could teach your children.”
Donghae is quiet, imagining. His voice goes low. “I’ve been trying to talk to her about it, but she’s working, too, and I don’t know. . . . she doesn’t seem to like kids that much.” I adore kids, Heechul hears Jessica protest in the background.
“You two make me sick. Go back to your fiancé. Why did you even call?”
“Aw, don’t be like that,” Donghae laughs. “Put Hyukjae on the phone?”
“He’s not—wait, how do you even—”
“He writes me daily reports. Heechul-hyung hugged me for two seconds today. My fingers tingled, and then we parted. It’s nice that he keeps me updated, but I throw up a little afterwards. Even Sica says I’ve been losing weight.”
Heechul is too stunned to talk, but he really shouldn’t be. Hyukjae has always told Donghae everything.
“How long have you known?” Heechul asks.
“Since forever. I was sorta jealous for a while, too. Not like that! But you know. Boys are stupid.” They really are, Jessica adds, probably leaning into the receiver because her voice is louder now. C’mon baby, Donghae says, probably pulling her in against the inside of his arm. Heechul closes his eyes.
“You’re such a gossip,” Heechul says. “I can’t believe you never told me.”
Donghae sounds a little sad when he says, “I would’ve, but it wasn’t for me to tell.”
- - -
He’s smoking a cigarette in the kitchen overlooking the back alley behind the apartment building. If he looks up, there are skyscrapers in the distance, punctured by yellow pinpricks of light and strung together under the darkening skyline. A storm is coming, he muses, but the honest-to-God truth is he has no idea how to read a fucking cloud. It’s just, you know, idle thinking. The cigarette burns low. He puts it out on the floor of the sink and then sticks it in the plastic bag hanging from the handle of one of the cabinets that Hyukjae has reserved for garbage. He doesn’t toss it out the window, and he thinks he deserves a gold medal for that.
Earlier Hyukjae took a shower and walked out in a shirt that wasn’t his. Heechul said “Hey” like he was complaining but he was really admiring how something that belonged to him looked on somebody else. Hyukjae stopped in the middle of the living room like he’d done something wrong. Heechul stood up and said, “Let me dry your hair.”
His fingers brushed over Hyukjae’s ear, and he felt a shudder through his jaw. “Sorry,” Hyukjae said, “It’s a sensitive spot.” Heechul pulled the towel and Hyukjae leaned into the kiss.
Hyukjae wasn’t moving, and Heechul wondered if he was afraid. It encouraged him to know he wasn’t the only one. Hyukjae had just brushed his teeth. The taste of fluoride filled the corners of his mouth. Heechul pulled away to breathe and their foreheads knocked.
“Sorry.”
“No,” Heechul said, and pressed their lips together again.
Hyukjae’s shoulders tensed and relaxed. He moved his hand around Heechul’s neck, pressing at the back. He radiated fear, but Heechul sensed desire buried in the restraint. He closed his eyes like hailing a white flag. Suggestions of surrender.
It drove Heechul insane. Hyukjae’s hand lingered at the back of his neck and then trailed down to slide under his shirt.
Hyukjae kept his head lowered as he fumbled with Heechul’s shirt. “Take yours off,” Heechul said. It sounded like a butterfly got caught in his throat. “Or I’ll do it for you.” Hyukjae slowly raised his arms. Heechul kissed the left one, fingertip to shoulder, licking over the soft hairs, before pulling the t-shirt over his head.
Hyukjae was darker, not sun-kissed but with a glow of health. His chest broadened under the span of Heechul’s palm. Heechul was already hard under his sweatpants. Hyukjae said, “Hyung,” with a gasp and grimace, but his eyes were still closed, and Heechul thought he could probably fuck him into the couch right now if Hyukjae let him. Rationally he knew he wouldn’t.
They took turns jerking each other off. “Just touching,” Heechul said during, and Hyukjae made the most uncomfortable face like he was about to laugh except he ended up coming instead. All over Heechul’s hand and his sleeve, and Heechul brought his thumb to his lips and licked, just to let him know it wasn’t a big deal. Hyukjae said, embarrassed, exhausted and naked over the couch, “You don’t have to,” and Heechul said, “Yeah, I know, but.” He didn’t want to make Hyukjae do anything, so he just stroked himself leisurely, but Hyukjae said, “No, let me,” and put his hand over Heechul’s. They stopped talking.
It was dark when Hyukjae put his shirt back on. Heechul heard him dress and then walk over to the bathroom. The door cast a slant of shadow over the floor before it closed. Hyukjae spent half an hour inside. Heechul let his head fall against the arm of the couch and then he slept. The breeze from the window raised the hair below his navel, above the waistband of his boxers. He slept until he heard Hyukjae open the bathroom door, and then he pulled over his shirt. Hyukjae smiled at him, glowing from his second shower, and Heechul asked lightly, “Is it normal to be bathing that often?”
“I didn’t want to dirty your bed.”
“You don’t smell that bad,” Heechul said, and palmed the curve of Hyukjae’s ass just to hear him yelp.
He jerked off again later, under the shower spray, thinking about how the night could’ve ended. The bathroom smelled like Hyukjae and their new scentless soap. It smelled like Hyukjae doing what Heechul was doing now.
“Fucking,” he starts, itching for another cigarette. But Hyukjae doesn’t like the odor lingering in the air. Heechul doesn’t want to go back to bed yet because he’s afraid of what it’ll make him want to do. They can’t, not yet. He doesn’t even know if the boy’s been with someone—like him. He doesn’t know when he can ask, either.
So he pulls a pen from the dispenser on the kitchen table and starts writing. A crack of thunder shakes the building. So he was right. His hand moves across the notepad they use for shopping lists with a speed that takes him by surprise. He writes the things he wants to do to the boy lying in his bed, how he wants to do them, and the way the boy will react—arching up, as he slides in—and then he crosses everything out and crumples the piece of paper.
It sits in the plastic bag next to the cigarette stub. But the next night he writes again, and the night after.
- - -
The first one is bald. Well, sort of. Tufts of hair on the side like rosebushes flanking a driveway. Paraplegic. From the waist down. Bitter? Likes his morning coffee that way. But no, not bitter otherwise. Or maybe so at first, but changes. Yes, because development is necessary. Psychological evolution.
“What’s his favorite color?” Hyukjae asks, sprawled on his belly on the bed. “Does he have a pet?”
“Gold,” Heechul says without thinking. “A gold . . . fish.”
“What was his accident?”
A window cleaner who plummeted in a scaffolding collapse. The SK Building. Twenty-third floor. A number that doesn’t divide doesn’t go anywhere.
“What happens to him?”
Heechul stops his pen. He hasn’t thought that far.
“He falls for this girl. She’s . . . younger. Wears her hair in a thick braid, like a librarian.”
“What was her accident?”
“Hit-and-run,” Heechul says. “The car was white.”
- - -
Once Hyukjae takes him to that same beach from all those years ago, and in an instant he feels the old pain in his leg, sharp and pure like a good memory, and then it dissipates just as easily. Hyukjae spreads a blanket over the sand, and Heechul leans against the umbrella wondering why he’s been brought here, because Hyukjae’s intention isn’t to wound. Sunlight is plentiful and there are children today, couples walking with arms around each other like laces crisscrossing, and Heechul sits under the wide shade of their Wonderbread umbrella and squints into the sky pondering how it ever got to be that blue while he wasn’t looking. Hyukjae convinces him to play tag like the immature child he is, and Heechul can’t even explain how pointless the game of tag is with just two people, because you’re forever running or chasing, and Heechul’s not too good at either, but there’s a thin pearl of spit shining from Hyukjae’s gums when he smiles like he’s expecting the answer to be yes, so Heechul goes with it.
Enough running and the land spreads wider and people grow fewer and now they’re running hand-in-hand, Hyukjae a few paces ahead, and Heechul is laughing breathlessly, salt heaving in his throat. “Stop, stop,” he says, when Hyukjae turns to look back and releases his hand, and asks,
“When’s the last time you closed your eyes and stretched your arms out like this?
“When’s the last time you ran against the wind with your arms like this, with your eyes closed? When’s the last time, hyung?
“I want to be that for you,” Hyukjae says, “or at least. I want you to be like that again.”
- - -
One of the last times:
They visit the park. It’s almost Christmas, and Heechul wears a pair of sky blue mittens with marshmallows knitted into the back. This way they can’t hold hands, and if they can’t then he won’t want to. The snow burns a crisp white under their shoes. “Two hours,” Heechul estimates, “before it all turns brown.”
Hankyung’s hands weigh down in his pockets. His fingers are crooked and blue because bum gloves do nothing to ward against frostbite even if they look cool. “Why do you gotta be like that.” He nudges Heechul with a padded elbow. Heechul goes “oof” and grins like it really hurts.
On the park bench it’s okay to huddle close because winter breeds in people the need to rub shoulders and touch thighs, anything to steal some warmth. Pigeons sit on the telephone wires, and every breath Hankyung emits looks like a wispy cloud. Heechul raises a finger to pop it but it disperses anticlimactically. “It’s not ‘bang!’ but a quiet ‘ . . .oh,’” Heechul says. He thinks he might be laughing if he could feel his teeth.
“Hm?” This time Hankyung exhales white tracks from his nostrils.
Heechul twirls a finger around them. “This. They don’t pop when I—” He makes a poking motion. “See?”
Hankyung’s mind is dull, but Heechul can see him chasing the train down, the wheels turning with his own brand of desperation. “Huh.”
“Aish, never mind.”
“No, no, I get it.”
“Don’t overexert yourself.”
“It fades away. Like the ending to some Western movies.” Hankyung creases his brow, but he is pleased with himself. “I’m right, right?”
“Something like that,” Heechul says, drifting away as he watches the frozen lake.
“I know you, Heechul.” Hankyung is smiling. Heechul can tell without looking. He is nuzzling Hankyung’s shoulder, but the jacket collar, connected to the big hood, intercepts, which is all the better because they aren’t supposed to touch in public, even if no one is looking. But someone could always be looking. It doesn’t hurt to be careful.
“You think so?” Heechul squints, going for a comical effect. He turns into a caricature for this man.
“I’ve got a good idea, yeah,” Hankyung says, lifting his chin.
“What am I thinking right now?”
Hankyung mulls it over. His face is pink and pensive.
“You’re . . . cold.”
If this were a cartoon, Heechul would fall off the bench.
“You’re a jackass, you know that? Certified and everything,” Heechul raises his voice, making a big show. “Like a lifeguard. Only, you’d watch the little girls flail in the water and chuckle to yoursel—”
Hankyung puts an arm around him and says “Hush” the way you’d chastise a disobedient puppy. Heechul squirms for a good five seconds and then falls limp inside the warmth. This is good. This is a way they can be close and not conspicuous.
They’ve grown coy over the years.
A jogging path stretches out in front of the lake. A woman in a sleek jumpsuit floats by with her huskies, one galloping on each side of her, big and forbidding. She has her hair pulled back into a taut ponytail and kept in place with a navy terrycloth headband. “She’s actually sweating,” Heechul marvels, and Hankyung squeezes his hand through the mitten. He’s not thinking anymore.
When they get up to hit the market or someplace warm, Hankyung’s knuckles are white and brittle. He stuffs his hand in Heechul’s coat pocket and tickles him through the down lining. Heechul complains that the feathers are poking into his skin, and Hankyung apologizes even though Heechul was joking. They walk until the first red light emerging from the park and then Hankyung’s hand disappears back into his own pocket, and they are just best friends again.
There’s an old lady in front of them with a cane who keeps an impressively brisk pace for her age, and Heechul’s just about to whisper something into Hankyung’s ear while they follow behind leisurely, when he notices the old man beside her, the matching canes, black with a gold finish, and the fact that they walk apart but together. Her hair is cut neatly just above the neck and a brimming corrugated silver under the pink beret, something he’s seen in 1920s movies. When he and Hankyung walk past the elderly couple he catches a glimpse of her face, pale and loose-fleshed, riddled with the lines of her past. She smiles thin-lipped at her companion, betraying no other sign that they are walking in unison. He quells the urge to speak to her and ask—
“That’s great, isn’t it?” Hankyung says after they’ve found shelter in a Starbucks. He peels off the gloves and sets them on the table by his cinnamon latte. “The old couple, I mean.”
“I want to be like that when I get old,” Heechul says, carefully omitting the “us.”
- - -
The tea is getting cold.
“I hear that you’re a writer now. It’s good, that you get to do what you’ve always wanted.”
“I hear you’re an entertainment mogul. Want to make me famous?”
“You’re already famous, last time I checked the paper.”
And then there is nothing to say.
“How’ve—”
“How’re—”
“You go first.”
“I’m alright.”
“Doing some soul-searching out here?” Hankyung smiles. “I mean, that’s what the interviews make it sound like. They love you.”
“Oh yeah? I kept my promise, didn’t I?”
In the back of the store, where they’re making the drinks, a blender rages while Heechul waits for Hankyung to remember. Someone slaps change onto the counter. A girl hugs her boyfriend’s arm and points at something on the menu.
“‘When China rules the world, I want to be sitting on top’—something like that, right?”
“You bet.”
“Think this is the top now? It doesn’t get any better than this?”
Heechul takes out his lighter. “Can we smoke here?”
“Sure, yeah, go ahead. You can smoke anywhere in this country.”
But will the conversation last longer than the cigarette? He puts it back in his pocket. “I shouldn’t. I quit.”
Hankyung laughs at the obvious lie. “Don’t hold back.”
“Nah.” He fixes the lining of his blazer. “But yeah. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
“That’s good. I’m happy for you.”
“How about you?” Heechul clears his throat, takes a sip of his tea.
“Still hustlin’.”
It’s a word Heechul taught him many, many years ago. No one says it anymore, especially not today’s youth, but it’s crushing and familiar.
Hankyung doesn’t remember, most likely. He lets it slip like he’s said it for years, even in his absence.
Because once you release something into the world, it’s no longer only yours. No. It’s not yours at all.
Heechul puts his cup down.
“Exploiting those kids? Make sure they’ve got health insurance at the very least, alright? Pay for their hospital visits.”
“I’m taking care of them. Of course. I remember being that age.”
“Do you?” Heechul cocks his head.
He doesn’t mean for every word to be a loaded gun, but shooting bullets comes naturally to him.
“Yeah,” Hankyung says, his mouth turning up. “I do.”
“Are you thinking of expanding into Korea?”
“Not at the moment. China’s big enough. We can—we can go far.”
“The future and all that.”
Hankyung laughs. “Your words, not mine.”
It is painful, to sit and share a pot of tea in a quaint Beijing café that looks plucked from a postcard off the streets of Hongdae, and talk civilly like two men who have settled a war, when the war was never fought, never declared, there’d been no casualties, only one lone misfired cannon, the ring in their ears as it popped, but no one felt the burn, nothing set aflame, nothing as the land shifted beneath them and evolved into a body of water and the water transformed into time and time took them and shook them and set them upright again. Heechul’s knees are still wobbly. He’s not an actor. He wasn’t made for this. He’s never been good at this. Give him sulking, fistfights, teeth-gritting, cursing, sitting in front of the computer for hours on end until his ass is numb and his stomach can’t remember the last time it held food because hunger comes in waves and eventually dissipates and even his body knows to stop expecting something that won’t come. Give him the cold living room floor that slowly warms against his back as he lies there and Heebum trailing over the concourse of his ribcage tenderly like he knows; give him the pen he holds and the things he remembers when he holds it and the things he struggles to not talk about despite how they permeate every waking moment of his every day, from the mundane sleepy morning haze of mussed hair and turning to the pillow left of his to remember, this is not who I wanted, to falling asleep in messed up sheets ashamed and at the same time angry because he deserves this much, right? Another person to want him, because once is hardly enough even if once was the best, because once has forsaken you, and you can’t forget even if you’ve forgiven. And he’s not sure he’s done that, either.
Give him Hyukjae’s sympathy and compassion, which is okay for once, because although it is pity, it is pity dressed in love, and he can do with love, he was born to do it.
He was not born to do this. Hankyung knows that.
Knew.
Heechul stands up. “It was great seeing you.”
I BELIEVE THAT WE ARE LUCKY, WE ARE GOLDEN, WE HAVE STOLEN
Henry would go check, but he’s not exactly welcome there. Although there was that one time a girl went down on him in the ladies’ room, but that was back in college. They were playing Lady Gaga out of a jukebox, like old meets new, and the girl—busty, brunette, sorority chick with an Asian fetish that he figured he’d exploit while he was wasted because he’d never have the guts to sober—pulled him into the bathroom and pinned him against the wall while he sipped Bud Lite off her tongue. The next morning he woke up on someone else’s living room floor, naked. Of course. That’s how it happens in movies, too. Someone’s always naked. Then he bought two Red Bulls and went to study econometrics in the library.
He wonders if Amber’s naked right now. Maybe she’s doing the boss there. But no, Han Geng’s spinning in his big cushy swivel chair in the office.
The phone’s ringing off the hook today. Meng Jia looks pissed, because she’s got her own work to do. Contracts and shit. “You answer,” she tells Henry when he points out that someone’s dialing in again.
“But—” he says, but the phone’s already pressed against his ear. “Hello?”
“Herro?” It’s a dude.
“Hello?” Henry says again, because he can’t remember the set phrases Amber’s got memorized.
“Herro, uh,” some confusing stuff he can’t catch, “rooking for hang on?”
“Um,” Henry says, sweating already. The little things still get to him. “Can you speak in English?”
There’s a pause on the other end before the guy breaks out into, “Yeah, man! I love China! Alright! Okay?”
“Haha,” Henry says, just as something gets flicked into his eye. Water. Amber’s back.
She doesn’t look happy. “Gimme that.”
She takes the phone without waiting, so what was the point in asking for it anyway?
“Hi! You have reached HG Entertainment’s Hotline. My name is Amber Liu; how may I—” She stops, confusion creasing her forehead.
“The dude speaks gibberish,” Henry explains but then, miraculously, Amber starts doing it, too. Amber knows how to speak gibberish.
This is probably why they hired her.
“Blahblahblah Hankyung? Blahblahblah—oh you’re—”
The last part is in English so Henry catches it. It’s this thing they both do when they’re flustered about something. Bits and phrases come out in their mother tongue. “Oh shit” or “oops.” Stupid things like that.
Henry laughs when he hears it, and he looks over at Amber to see if she’s embarrassed, but she isn’t laughing. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think she’d just been informed of a death in the family or something. Her face is that intense.
He doesn’t really know what’s going on, but he thinks it might be a good time to return to his desk.
- - -
Amber writes the post-it in painstakingly clear hand. The pen is digging against the bump on her middle finger just under her nail. Six o’clock appointment on Thursday. And then the three characters that have been engraved in her mind since that night.
She’d tried to surprise him. “Hey! Your old friend is in town,” she’d shouted kind of excitedly. Threw the paper at him, even. “He’s apparently a bigshot writer now.”
“Hm?” Han Geng briefly tore his eyes from the television to look at her. “Oh, him? We’re not really friends anymore.”
“Oh-kay,” she said. “You’re seriously not going to try and contact him? I thought you were bffs back then.”
Han Geng pulled her onto the couch beside him. She snuggled against his shoulder, smelling in the scent of after-work sweat and, just him. She liked it. Likes. She likes it a lot.
“Amber,” he said seriously. “No one says bffs anymore.”
She threw one of the pillows at him, and he ducked.
The next morning, though. She was feeling good until she saw yesterday’s paper under a traveller’s guide on the coffee table. It was still open to the page it’d been on when she threw it at him.
There was something like a smudge on the headline. She leaned in to look, eyes still foggy. But there it was, odd. “Jin Xi Che” circled carefully in pencil, and then erased.
Meeting with your old bff. Wear something nice, and don’t be late. Think of the airfare from Korea.
She slaps the post-it on his desk while he’s gone for the afternoon meeting. Her hand stings from the wood for moments afterwards.
- - -
So they’re still at that restaurant, and the waiter is taking forever with their food, just like he took forever to seat them. Service is sucky here, as always, so Krystal’s glad she’s only here for spring break. In reality, she’s only here to see one person.
About that person. Amber looks the same but not. More grownup? She’s accessorizing. Are those bangles around her wrist? But that’s not it either. Krystal’s trying to figure out what’s different, and all the while Amber’s going on about that new dude in her life, and that’s when she remembers.
Back when she was in junior high, and Amber was entering high school, Amber suddenly turned cool. She went through this phase where she’d watch anything and everything American, really passé shows from the nineties, like she was possessed. Like her spirit could be found inside the monitor, spinning in little bytes in an avi file. Like it could be torrented and distributed online for free across miles and miles of wires.
And God, her music.
“I hate this song,” Krystal said when Amber sang along to that one Limp Bizkit single for the four thousandth time.
“Oh, go back to your Korean shit,” Amber said, bopping her head angrily.
That pissed Krystal off, because she didn’t like having those two words in the same sentence. “So now everything Korean is shit? Bitch.”
Krystal never cursed before. Cursing was for boys who played too much Pokémon on the school bus.
“What? That’s not what I said—” Amber started, but Krystal pushed her hand aside.
“Go back to your own country then. No one likes you here anyway.”
She wasn’t one to get emotional, but this was Amber. As if dealing with her insufferable sister, currently “studying abroad” (traipsing/sleeping her way through) Europe with her newly dyed “chocolate brown” hair, wasn’t enough. She didn’t need her best friend to get on her case, too.
Being thirteen was fucking hard. Again, the expletive was Amber’s fault.
“Krystal,” Amber said, touching her shoulder, and instantly she already wanted to forgive her. “I’m sorry.”
When Krystal was ten, Jessica was the one who told her to just be quiet and eventually you’ll get what you want. But then Jess kissed the boy next door first, and Krystal was the one left in the dust when they rode off on his scooter together to get popsicles from the grocery down the street. As if it was even that far.
Still, Krystal stayed quiet.
Amber’s fingers pressed lightly on the bone, and then they fell away. Krystal turned to look at her.
“I guess I’m just kind of homesick,” Amber admitted. “Trying to catch up on all the shit I missed while I was here.”
“Fred Durst is fucking ancient,” Krystal had said.
“Well,” Krystal says now, tapping her plate. “You’ve always had a thing for older men.”
- - -
Jungsu’s on his cig break, even though he hasn’t touched tobacco since the army days. Even then, they hadn’t been allowed to smoke; he’d just bum them off the sergeants who liked him. There were a lot of those. He was good at making friends.
Speaking of. “Hey, what time is it in Beijing right now?”
Youngwoon flicks some ash on the ground. He’s the one who smokes. “Hell if I know.”
“Don’t get your suit dirty,” Jungsu reminds him.
“Hey, who got you this job in the first place?” Youngwoon growls all friendly-like. His teeth are adorable when he grins like that.
“I’m grateful everyday, sunbaenim,” Jungsu grins. No, Leeteuk. That’s his new name.
They’re quite the pair, Leeteuk and Kangin. The consensus for most pervy older women seems to be that two hosts are better than one. Leeteuk is awfully good with pervy older women, though. He could’ve done it alone, but the customers like their bickering. They make them drink more, then do funny girlish things together. The tables are always full, littered with wine bottles.
Youngwoon drops the cigarette and grinds it under his boot. Flashy leather with jangles and complicated lacing. His hair’s something unspeakable right now, straight out of a Japanese cartoon. He looks fucking fantastic.
“Break over, Teukie.” Youngwoon slaps a hand over his back. Jungsu watches a plane leave a white trail across the sky before following him back into the bar.
- - -
It takes twenty steps and turning around a corner for his legs to give in. Forty for him to stop and realize he needs a wall to lean against. He tumbles against the window of a women’s clothing store. Someone screams from the inside. His head hits the glass too soon. His heart pulses in his ears before he lets himself fall.
- - -
“When are you planning on going home?” he asks, arm still hooked in Hankyung’s.
“I don’t know,” Hankyung says, and then smiles belatedly. “Not right now.”
“You sure? ‘Cause no one wants you to stay.”
“Oh, in that case—”
“Bye!”
“Hey, can I take your artsy-fartsy Galliano tee with me?”
“Buy your own. . . . No, on second thought, take it.”
“Why the change of heart?”
Heechul plants a juicy kiss on his cheek. “Gives you a reason to come back.”
- - -
Victoria’s trying her best not to yell. It takes every ounce of strength in her to hold back—and she’s strong enough, contrary to popular belief—but she does it because it’s Amber. Because Amber’s delicate, even if she doesn’t realize it herself.
“Chase after him,” she says, and it’s as much of a command as she can manage. “I know you want to. If you don’t, I swear I will. I’ll—” she whips out her cellphone, but Amber thrashes her arm out and yells, “No.”
“Why?” Victoria pleads. She doesn’t understand. “He’s a, a good guy. Do you know how rare that is? Don’t let this slip.” Like I did.
“Vic,” Amber says suddenly, places a hand on her arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Amber knows. She’s always known.
“This isn’t about me,” Victoria says.
“I know,” Amber says quietly. She taps her fingers once, twice against the table. “I just don’t want something that isn’t mine, you know?”
- - -
“Come with me,” Heechul says. “I’ll get so bored by myself.”
“I’ll take pictures of Baengshin and Heebum and send them to you,” Hyukjae turns around to dangle soapy hands in front of his face.
“C’mooon.” Heechul wraps his arms around him, tickling his navel.
But Hyukjae will bear it. “Who’s going to take care of them? Who’s going to water the plants? What if someone breaks into this place? What if—” Heechul interrupts him at this point, which is all the better because he was running out of scenarios.
“My mom can take care of them. The plants can die. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. There’s nothing in here worth stealing. Stop coming up with excuses.”
Heechul is beginning to sound cross. This is good.
“I hate China. After Donghae went he wouldn’t stop talking about it for a month. He’d go up to random people on the street he thought were Chinese and start conversations with them. Sometimes they were Korean, Japanese, he didn’t care. I was so embarrassed. I swore never to walk down the street with him again.”
“You’ve never even been there, how can you hate it?”
“Watch me,” Hyukjae grins.
Heechul releases his arms. “Whatever.”
“I’m not going. You’re going on your own. Enjoy your trip, hyung!” He calls after Heechul’s retreating figure. The bedroom door slams, but Hyukjae knows he isn’t really angry.
There is a knot in his throat after he speaks. Heechul leaves in a month. If he looks at it positively, it’s a test of sorts. Will he come back? Am I worth coming back for? Like Heechul said, if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. The knot, though, it tells him other things. Like, this is the last month; treasure it well.
And you’re going to miss him a whole ridiculous lot.
And be good;
Let him go.
- - -
When he comes to, Hankyung is breathing hard, arms limp over his knees. One hand pulls behind to rub at his back. “Why do you walk so fast,” he pants, laughing.
“I was running away from you,” Heechul says. He’s still leaning against the glass window, but a bump is forming where his head hit.
This doesn’t make sense.
“I’m old now. I can’t catch up to you like before,” Hankyung says, taking a seat beside him on the sidewalk. “Just so you know, these jeans were four thousand yuan.”
“You know, I’m pretty sure I’ll always be older,” Heechul says. “And when did you ever have to catch up to me?”
“Always,” Hankyung says.
“You gotta be kidding me. So that’s why you set sail for home without telling me? Without a note, an email? Even a fucking Post-It, I would’ve taken that. Because you had to win for once, right?” Heechul laughs. “That’s it, isn’t it? I can’t believe I wondered for three years—”
“That’s not it.”
Heechul knows it’s all over if he looks, so he doesn’t. So he keeps going.
“You know, at first I thought you’d come back. I told myself I’d never say this when—if I saw you, because I know how pathetic this sounds, but Hankyung. I waited. I thought, oh, maybe—” his voice breaks, and he wipes snot away with the sleeve of his blazer.
“Heechul,” Hankyung begins quietly. “I never—”
“But you did. And that’s why we’re here.”
“Don’t cry.”
“You think I want to?” That just makes it worse. “I hate looking this stupid, in front of you of all people.”
Hankyung touches his hand. It feels the same as always. It’s funny, how the body remembers instinctively what the mind tries and tries to forget.
“I’m sorry,” Hankyung says. “But I waited, too.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not. Does this look like a lying face to you? Look at me.”
Hankyung’s changed. The lines by his eyes run deeper now. Heechul wonders what’s happened, what his life has been like, what he’s been eating, how he goes through his everyday.
“You aren’t the only one who hurt.”
- - -
“I didn’t plan it. And I know you didn’t, either. We just happened, one day. I was looking at you, and I felt it. We collided, and it felt right. Don’t snort. Hear me out first.
“You were wearing the pink sweater, you know that one. I thought before, I’d die first and you’d come visit my grave in it. I didn’t picture you in black or white, just that sweater. I know how stupid this sounds now, but that was my favorite thing of yours.
“Taking it off was another favorite thing.
“I shouldn’t have said that.
“You were watching something on TV, a game show, and you laughed with your mouth open, and you held my hand on the sofa without thinking, like it came intuitively to you by now. I drifted in and out of sleep—it’d been a busy day at the restaurant, my feet felt like lead, I hadn’t danced for a week. You pressed my hand during the funny bits, and I could count your teeth from where I was sitting. I kissed you and unbuttoned the first button on your sweater, and then we made love.
“When I came to, I realized I was having a panic attack. To this day I’m not sure what it was. I woke up and it was like, you were sleeping next to me, facing the other way. I wanted to reach over and stroke your hair, but I stopped myself. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. The immensity of the situation—what we were doing—it all weighed down on me suddenly.
“I was in Korea.
“I was working at a shit restaurant.
“I wasn’t really dancing anymore.
“I was in bed with a man.
“I mean, I loved you.
“But there were things, you know? I guess not. I didn’t—I should’ve—ah, well.
“It was reassessing. When my breathing returned to normal, that’s what I started doing. Reassessing. The future. Where I was headed. Where we were, too.
“Because, you know, that was home territory for you. Always will be. Just like this is for me. Don’t you feel a little uncomfortable here? Like this will never be it. Like you can try and try but people will always cock their head at your accent, always laugh at you behind your back if they’re kind. If not, then. That’s not an excuse. I’m just saying. Remembering, too.
“I’ve thought about it a lot. At first I didn’t think at all. But I’ve thought about it since reading that article in the paper—you coming, Heechul coming, it all came back in pounding waves and I tried to hold them off, barricade them away, but, you know, it’s not easy when it’s—you.
“The next morning, after you left for work, I went through my closet and took things randomly off the shelves. I don’t know what I packed. I remember thinking, I had to leave. Because if I didn’t then, I wouldn’t. A part of me knew that. Because I would get stuck, and I’d be happy for it, but I’d be miserable later. I would be bitter, and I didn’t want you to see me like that.
“That’s an excuse, too.
“I wasn’t thinking anything. I had to leave.
“I kept my cell phone. It wasn’t a model that worked in China, but I kept it on. To tell the time, and just.
“I don’t think I was that hard to find, Heechul.”
- - -
“You were scared,” Heechul says finally.
“Yeah,” Hankyung says.
“You thought I didn’t care enough. You thought I wouldn’t come after you.”
“But I waited.”
“I didn’t come after you,” Heechul says.
“I stopped waiting after a while. A couple of months.”
“You left. You were scared. It wasn’t because—because I wasn’t worth it.”
“You are always worth it.”
Heechul takes a moment to let the words sink in. He pulls Hankyung toward him but stops before they touch. He wants, needs to keep the distance. They brush noses, accidentally. They shouldn’t be doing this on the street.
“Look at me, Hankyung,” he says.
Hankyung looks.
Heechul hopes he’s able to see what he should.
“I’m here now,” Heechul says.