Chapter Text
Mingyu rubs his eyes, staring blearily at the sight in front of him.
“Mingyu-yah!”
“It’s three a.m.”
Jeonghan’s smile doesn’t falter, stretched too thin at the edges. He looks a mere breeze away from falling over.
Jeonghan doesn’t normally walk around at three a.m. though, nor does he take the bus at this hour. He’s infamous for hardly stirring from his bed once he gets home. At most, Mingyu knows he’ll sit on the balcony of his abysmally small studio apartment, right off the kitchen. Sometimes, he goes for a walk around the sketchy apartment complex, just to give Mingyu a heart attack when he leaves a voice message for him to listen to during his morning run, complete with the owls hooting in tandem with the sirens in the background.
Mingyu lets him in anyway, leaning against the door and squinting in the dark to see that his hyung is fully dressed and frowns. He’s trimmed his bangs slightly, though the left side looks longer with the way he’s parted his hair to the side. The ends curl beneath his ears and chin, likely from letting the humidity air dry his hair.
Mingyu thinks he might be wearing a hoodie too and frowns. The air outside is hot and humid and generally oppressive. It leaks through the cracks of the ever expanding summer wood, not something that would need a hoodie. Jeonghan might get cold easily but he’s the worst at handling the heat, always the first to complain when the winter clouds are replaced by the sun even if the temperature hardly changes.
“What are you doing here?”
Jeonghan’s smile stiffens, though it doesn’t quite fall. “Aren’t you going to be a good dongsaeng and let your hyung in?”
Mingyu steps aside. “Are you here for Seungcheol hyung again? Because I am not going out now.”
“So mean, Mingyu-yah, maybe I’m here to see you.”
Somehow, that sounds worse.
Mingyu shuts the door as soon as Jeonghan and all his things—a suitcase and a backpack, apparently—are inside, crossing his arms over his chest and waiting for him to explain. When Jeonghan just stares at him, eyes raking over his chest and then sneaking back up to his face, he rolls his eyes and grabs a shirt.
He wouldn’t necessarily admit it, but he does feel the slightest cold with how high he’s running the air conditioning. His bill this month will be a nightmare to pay, but it’s easier to sleep with blankets than without.
“Do you normally answer the door half naked?”
Mingyu hesitates, wondering if he should answer that truthfully. “I don’t usually make a habit of opening doors at three a.m., but we do have a security system, hyung.”
You picked it out, he doesn’t say.
He leans against the side of the wall. “What’s with all the—” He waves his hand around to gesture at what Jeonghan brought with him. He regrets not putting his glasses on before he got up. “—stuff?”
Jeonghan inhales sharply, curling in on himself. Seungcheol kicks the wall in the other room. Mingyu snorts at the sound, tilting his head at Jeonghan and waiting.
When he doesn’t say anything, Mingyu reaches out tentatively. “Everything okay?”
Jeonghan flinches away from his head, eyes wide as he nods and forces that thin smile again. Mingyu hates it. “Sure.”
“Jeonghan hyung?”
“Mingyu-yah,” Jeonghan drawls, slowly pulling an envelope from his pocket. “When was the last time we hung out, hmm?”
Mingyu stares at him. “Is that a trick question? Shua hyung kicked us all out of his apartment when we went over for drinks.”
Jeonghan holds the envelope out, ignoring Mingyu entirely. “The flight leaves in four hours.”
He won’t meet Mingyu’s eyes.
Mingyu blinks twice, staring at the paper in his hands and really wishing he had his glasses on.
“Flight,” he repeats, midnight brain slow to catch up with Jeonghan’s deflections and quiet words. “Flight?”
Jeonghan huffs, running a hand through his hair. “It’s—whatever, this was a mistake.”
Mingyu scowls—or, he thinks he does. With how little sense this is all making, it might’ve been more of a confused pout.
Mingyu blinks some of the sleep away successfully, just enough to process the scene in front of him before he snaps out of it, reaching out and grabbing Jeonghan’s wrist.
“Just—sit down for a second, will you?”
Jeonghan tenses and Mingyu almost lets go, but he relaxes slightly and follows Mingyu into the living room.
“Leave your stuff here.” Mingyu points at the empty corner Seungcheol had been saving for a sandbag before he found out it would likely be too heavy for the apartment and a safety hazard at that, before slipping back into his room to get his glasses. He runs a hand through his hair, splashing his face with water to wake himself up a bit before joining Jeonghan again.
He looks up when Mingyu sits down next to him, tilting slightly to accommodate Mingyu when he slouches to drop his head on his shoulder. “Where are we going?”
Mingyu can feel the surprise in the way Jeonghan tenses again, head shifting against his own when he turns to look at Mingyu.
“To find someone,” Jeonghan finally says quietly, words floating in the heavy summer night air. Mingyu nods, snuggling slightly closer and thinking about when he first met Jeonghan and how he had seemed so tall, despite having always been shorter than Mingyu.
Sitting here on the small sofa, with the faint lights of the bay and the dreaming city blinking in the night, he thinks Jeonghan has never seemed smaller.
He lets the silence linger to give Jeonghan the time he needs to find the words to say whatever it is he needs to say, pulling his elbow to intertwine their hands together while he waits.
“Someone who’s out there,” Jeonghan finally says, his voice lilting up at the end even as his words are sure.
Is he talking about himself?
“Someone real?” Mingyu prompts.
“Someone who exists,” Jeonghan confirms quietly, though that’s not necessarily the same thing. Mingyu waits for Jeonghan to say more but when he stays quiet, lets it be. There’s more to this story, as there often is, but perhaps Jeonghan hasn’t read that chapter yet.
The midnight summer descends, slowly suffocating them. Mingyu sits up just as slowly, squeezing their intertwined hands together before turning to face Jeonghan. “Can you pack my stuff for me? Clothes and all that, and I’ll go shower?”
He blinks twice, eyes wide as he nods. He slips the hoodie off and sets it on top of his suitcase, the sleeve dangling over his backpack.
Mingyu tries not to look at his arms and wonders when Jeonghan managed to hide that from him, but he sees anyway, tilting his head curiously.
He shakes his head, pulling his pajama t-shirt back off as he heads to his room. He bites back a smile when Jeonghan quietly follows, running through the basic organization system of his clothes. He’s normally pickier, but he’s curious to see what Jeonghan will have him wearing.
It would be nice to know how long they’ll be gone, summer vacation or not, but judging by the one way ticket in his hand, Jeonghan doesn’t have a plan either.
“Suitcases are under the bed,” he reminds Jeonghan, tossing his shorts in the laundry bin and snagging his towel from the rack outside the door. Jeonghan nods twice dutifully, not even looking up from where he’s carefully rolling each of Mingyu’s t-shirts. Mingyu closes the door, showering quickly before blow drying his hair, not wanting to get a headache from the pressurized plane air and his wet hair.
Jeonghan doesn’t even look up when he comes out, still sorting his clothes with a kind of laser focus he saves for something special.
The moon light streams golden through the curtains Joshua bought Mingyu for fun—jokes on Shua, anyway, Mingyu didn’t have any other curtains to use, and his room tends to look ethereal in the moonlight when he has to stay up during the school year—the patterns dancing over Jeonghan’s head, bent over an open suitcase.
He dangles his keys in his hand, swinging them back and forth as he waits for Jeonghan to notice, half smiling at him when he does.
“I think that’s enough,” Mingyu points out, sitting down next to him and closing the suitcase, straightening it to weigh it and make sure that it isn’t over the limit. He thinks it might be twenty kilos, but he isn’t quite sure—he’s never traveled so spontaneously like this before.
“Can never be too sure with you,” Jeonghan mutters under his breath.
Mingyu scowls, hefting the suitcase off the scale. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re a hoarder, Mingyu-yah,” Jeonghan says, no qualms about softening the blow. “Don’t worry, Seungcheol is too. It’s why you get along.”
“You have a collection of Calico Critters!”
“So?”
Mingyu throws his hands in the air, stalking out of the room. He leaves a note taped to Seungcheol’s door, oddly aware of how this is most likely the most impulsive thing he’s ever done—barring maybe when he switched his decision to go for medical school rather than law school, but that hardly counts since he had already been considering it before Seungcheol got in—but not uneasy either.
He’ll have to tell Jeonghan one day why he’s here—not that Jeonghan’s dream of getting his MD-PhD at this school influenced his own decision to apply.
Of course, he had graduated a year early and with Seungcheol agreeing to room together, there were other factors too, but Seungcheol gets no credit after getting them accidentally married on Hansol’s twenty-first birthday celebration in Las Vegas and then having to figure out a divorce so they could both apply to different medical programs.
(Only for them to end up in the same school—but he thinks it was more just knowing that he’d be attending the same school as his closest friends again.”
Jeonghan makes a face when he sees Mingyu’s sweatshirt, the familiar logo emblazoned across his chest.
“Mingyu-yah,” he whines, pouting and Mingyu is strong, but in the face of Jeonghan pouting, he is so incredibly weak. He pulls it off, leaving it on the sofa for Seungcheol to find and gripe at him over text when he does wake up. He’ll just steal Jeonghan’s hoodies and bug him about how they’re too small for him like they aren’t only seven inches apart in height—neither of them minds anyway.
It brings a small smile to his face, but it must be out of place for the moment, considering how Jeonghan eyes him. “What?”
The suspicion fades, replaced by something a little more muted. There’s a wall between them and no matter how thin the floors are below them and how tall the ceilings are above them; he can’t see through it.
Jeonghan shakes his head, and the wall is transparent again, the air between them hot from the miserable summer weather, even if there is no breeze. “Nothing.”
When Mingyu first meets Jeonghan, it takes them less than an hour to get into a fight. That never really stops.
Still, he can’t see past how easily Jeonghan hides his emotions. He’s an enigma—flitting from one hobby to another, never truly expressing interest in any of them, never seeming to pursue anything for longer than a month before he finds something new.
When Mingyu first meets Jeonghan, he can’t understand why Jeonghan had bothered to apply to college when he seems to be the type of person no one could ever tie down, let alone a career decided at an age too young to truly know.
He’s wrong, of course. Jeonghan is extremely dedicated to his graduate studies—so much so that he’s accelerated the timeline of his seven year joint MD-PhD program to finish a semester early.
Jeonghan is relentless in his pursuit, even if he fears the emotions that come with it. He never seems to want anything, doing things simply because he believes he must.
Mingyu admires that about him, the dedication that he puts into everything, even if it is fleeting. He knows there’s more to it than suppressing desire altogether. He sees it sometimes when the music is loud and Jeonghan is quiet, so quiet, and his hands tremble at his sides, stars disappearing from his eyes as he smiles, forcing a laugh.
They don’t talk about it, but he thinks Jeonghan knows he sees him.
Or perhaps he hopes.
Mingyu falls asleep with his head against Jeonghan’s shoulder and wakes up half an hour later when Jeonghan gently shakes him awake to eat, but he’s too tired from all the exams of the previous week to care enough for that. He sets the roll of bread on Jeonghan’s tray clumsily, remembering stories of him taking it from his sister when he was younger and his younger sister would sleep through the flight, too tired to look up to see his expression.
Jeonghan doesn’t push and lets him sleep. At some point, Mingyu feels the weight of a hoodie over his shoulders and presses closer to share the warmth, as a thank you.
Another two hours later and Mingyu wakes up to the overly bright cabin lights overhead and the captain’s voice announcing their descent. He runs a hand through his hair, mildly amused at how the plane air has flattened it.
He turns slightly, blinking when he realizes Jeonghan is already looking at him. He offers Mingyu a slight smile, but his bangs hide his eyes.
When they finally disembark from the plane, Jeonghan’s eyes are red and dry, but something about the way he stares blankly is fragile.
Mingyu tugs the sleeves of Jeonghan’s hoodie over his fingers, reaching out to squeeze his hand, pulling it away from where he keeps twisting the ends of a blue and gray survival cord bracelet.
“Our train is in two hours,” Jeonghan reports, clearing his throat twice after, but his voice is still faint as he speaks. “We should probably get something to eat.”
Mingyu nods, vaguely remembering a roll of bread from the flight. “There’s a sandwich place somewhere in the same terminal, is that okay for you?”
Jeonghan nods, pulling on the strap of his backpack with his free hand. Mingyu squeezes their intertwined hands together, waiting until Jeonghan meets his gaze to slide the backpack off his shoulders and onto his own. Mingyu grins, gently tugging Jeonghan in the right direction.
He’s awake enough to not accidentally question Jeonghan asking him to order for him, even though it’s rather irritating when Jeonghan customizes his sandwiches as much as he does. Either tormenting Mingyu isn’t on his mind or he really just wants the simple combination, since he doesn’t ask Mingyu to say much.
The sandwiches are simple enough, tomato and mozzarella with balsamic vinegar and Mingyu is hungry enough for them to taste much better than they likely do. Jeonghan barely manages to finish, eating far slower than he normally does, finishing long after Mingyu has. He keeps staring out of the window in front of them, forearms pressed flat against the cool marble counter.
“You just have a little left,” Mingyu reminds him gently, placing a cool hand on his shoulder. He picks up the last bite and holds it up for Jeonghan, tilting his head and pouting. It takes Jeonghan a little longer to notice, and he turns around just to sigh at Mingyu and shake his head.
“I’m really not hungry,” he mumbles, pressing his head flat against his arms. “Aren’t you sleepy?”
Mingyu takes a sip of water from his bottle.
“Not really,” he admits, following Jeonghan’s gaze to see the early morning rays of light rising over the Tokyo horizon. “Med school has screwed up my sleep schedule entirely. I should be asking you that, honestly. You didn’t even sleep at all.”
Jeonghan shrugs, almost glaring at the plane parked at a gate close to the window. Mingyu catches sight of a purple tailfin and purple tipped wings, but he doesn’t recognize the logo.
“Not really,” he echoes. “I’m tired, but I’m not sleepy.”
He doesn’t say more than that, and Mingyu stops pushing, even if he wants to. He sets the sandwich back down and wipes the pads of his fingers clean, combing a hand through Jeonghan’s hair.
Jeonghan relaxes slightly, but it’s nowhere near how he melts when Mingyu combs through his hair during finals week. And there’s no doubt he’s more worried about the outcome of this, than he was about his undergraduate finals, considering his state.
“Jeonghan-ah,” he starts softly, but Jeonghan shakes his head, hair falling over his eyes.
His voice is unsteady when he speaks, words pried from his lips. “Not—don’t—”
Mingyu shushes him, holding the sandwich back up. “One more bite and you’re done, finish this if you can? If you can't, I can eat it, but it’ll be late by the time we get to the hotel.”
Assuming there is a hotel.
Jeonghan hums quietly, but it’s still too shaky. Mingyu runs his hands through Jeonghan’s hair one more time before standing up, moving his backpack from the stool next to him to the stool he was just sitting on. “I’ll be right back; do you want coffee or something to drink?”
Jeonghan shakes his head, slowly chewing on the sandwich and shrugging. Mingyu grins at the sight, ruffling his hair and biting his lip when Jeonghan lets him, doesn’t even move, or pretend to notice.
He’d normally have picked at least three different fights by now, and then three retaliatory fights when either one of them started sulking over the original ones.
He knows, realistically, that he can’t get Jeonghan to open up just like that, but there’s a part of him that wishes there was more he could do. Jeonghan looks downright miserable, and Mingyu knows this spontaneous trip is about more than just finding this person he is looking for, real or not.
He also knows he’s far from Jeonghan’s first choice, even if they do get along much better than they did when they first met.
“One iced americano and one… lavender milk tea please,” he says, vaguely remembering the purple packets of tea bags on the shelf in Jeonghan’s little studio apartment. They’re more likely to bring him some peace than coffee.
The barista hands him back his card, gesturing vaguely to the end of the counter for him to wait. Mingyu takes a glance at Jeonghan, who has his arms folded on the counter in front of him, with his head resting on them as he continues to look out the window.
The purple tipped plane talks off. Mingyu sets the lavender tea down in front of Jeonghan, taking a sip of his own coffee. “Sorry, I figured you could use a little bit of energy.”
Jeonghan doesn’t call him out for it, forcing a smile but taking a sip anyway, tired lines fading around his eyes as he drinks the tea. The sleeve of his t-shirt falls lower on his shoulder, exposing a tattoo Mingyu knows all too well, having been there when Jeonghan had gotten it for his nineteenth birthday.
A red spider lily. Something about killing your memories to stay alive.
What’s it like when those memories come back to life?
Perhaps it leads you to get on a plane and fly out of the country to find someone you’ve never even met before. Perhaps you are the someone you’re looking for and you don’t know it, but you’ve already met them.
(and they are beautiful, just the way they have always been.)
The dark navy is tinged with indigo near the horizon and his head is full of quiet four a.m. thoughts, but he pushes them aside to pull his backpack back on and stand next to Jeonghan.
Mingyu tugs on the neckline of Jeonghan’s t-shirt, slipping it back entirely over his shoulder and squeezing the tense muscle there lightly. His thumb runs over the tattoo, though it doesn’t seem to help all that much. Jeonghan tenses up under his hand, but he doesn’t say anything.
Their train ride is shorter, but Mingyu still sleeps through it, pushing the hand rest up between them to take advantage of Jeonghan’s shoulder once more. He remembers finals week his junior year, Jeonghan’s senior year—though they both graduated at the end of that year anyway, a semester after everything went down, so maybe the when matters less—when Mingyu had his hardest final and had been struggling to concentrate no matter how hard he had tried and how many study methods he had used.
Minghao had planned on jumping ship—he had texted Seungcheol with the intention of asking if he could study in Jeonghan and Seungcheol’s dorm instead, but when they had driven over to pick him up, Jeonghan stayed back to see if there was anything he could do for Mingyu instead.
What had started out with not wanting to third wheel with Minghao and Seungcheol, turned into Mingyu enjoying Jeonghan’s company, even if he was a bit quiet sometimes and they antagonized each other far too often.
He hadn’t been much help initially, making tea and sitting down next to Mingyu, unsure of what to say. Mingyu had quietly thanked him before going back to studying, but he grew increasingly anxious over it, running a hand through his hair, snagging on every strand with how forcefully he was shoving his hand through it.
Jeonghan sat down in front of Mingyu, setting the laptop and his notebooks aside before gently untangling his hand from his hair. He smoothed Mingyu’s hair back as best as he could with his hand before tugging him forward into a loose hug, running his hand through the tangles in Mingyu’s hair and quietly detangling any knots. Mingyu sat quietly, not quite crying, but simply breathing a little too heavily to be relaxed.
He had moved to pull away, to get Mingyu a glass of water or more tea, but he had only clung tighter to Jeonghan, leaning forward until they were lying down on the soft cream colored carpet, Mingyu’s hands wrapped tightly around Jeonghan’s waist and his face buried in his shoulder. Jeonghan kept his hands with one at his back and the other stroking his hair.
“How are your parents?” Mingyu asks when he wakes up. He’s a little disoriented from the height and the sudden change in temperature, the cabin colder than he remembers it being when he went to sleep. Jeonghan’s shoulder is warm against his cheek, so he just leans closer, waiting for him to continue.
Jeonghan raises an eyebrow. “They’re fine, why?”
If he says it now, Jeonghan won’t talk about it ever. Mingyu hums, lifting a hand to trace patterns against his shoulder, fingers trailing down his arm. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Jeonghan says slowly, suspiciously drawn out. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Mingyu shrugs. “Don’t know. You kind of disappeared.”
“What if my parents never met?” Jeonghan says suddenly, apropos to nothing.
Mingyu frowns. “You wouldn’t exist then.”
Jeonghan shrugs, the movement jostling Mingyu’s head. “I wouldn’t mind all that much, sometimes.”
And the other times, Mingyu wants to ask. Do you mind, during those other times?
He doesn’t.
“I’m glad you exist,” he murmurs, but he knows that Jeonghan hears the words, stilling completely. He’s rarely ever like that, always fidgeting and moving, filled with nervous energy that just overflows.
Still, he lets Mingyu hold his hand, exhaling shakily. A few minutes later, he sniffs, letting his head drop slightly to rest against Mingyu’s.
They reach their station ten minutes late, due to a service delay at an earlier stop. Jeonghan doesn’t let go of his hand at any point, even as he leads them through customs, navigating in a language that Mingyu barely recognizes, but doesn’t know.
Mingyu lets Jeonghan take the lead, like with most things when it comes to the two of them, following Jeonghan through the air conditioned airport with his luggage in hand. Jeonghan haggles with the taxi drivers outside the airport to get them a more favorable rate, sinking back into the back seat with Mingyu as the driver navigates through the traffic.
“Traffic is normally heavier, even this early,” Jeonghan murmurs to Mingyu, quietly so the driver doesn’t increase their rate for being foreigners. He switches languages to ask the driver why there’s so much traffic, but Mingyu doesn’t understand, so he just leans against the side of the car door, the cool air lighter and fresher without all the pollution the sunrise brings with it.
The drive is longer than he expects it to be, watching the dark navy of the skies that never get darker in a city that never sleeps fade into a light blue. Jeonghan’s head is a pleasant weight on his shoulder and Mingyu combs through his hair gently, watching the stray brown strands flutter in the wind as the driver speeds up on the highway.
He wonders if this is familiar, for Jeonghan. If he would take the same roads to visit relatives after half his family moved here, if he fell asleep against his mom’s shoulder, or if he let his sister sleep in his lap instead.
Wonders who gave the driver directions, as he regretfully shakes Jeonghan up when the driver asks a question. He sleepily responds, the words certain but the voice unsure, before leaning back into Mingyu.
His hand shakes when Mingyu holds it.
The house Jeonghan has the taxi driver stop at is taller than most suburban houses, but the neighborhood is different from home anyway. It stands three stories tall, a light gray color with darker gray accents. Mingyu notes the grills on the windows all around them, the contrast from the mesh in the windows back home.
The garage is open to the street, with a gate instead of a door, but it stands empty. Even in the dim light of a single corner lamp, Mingyu can see the faint red of the hexagonal tiles that line its floor.
Jeonghan unlocks the door quietly, pulling a key from his pocket. Mingyu holds his luggage to keep it from sliding off the uneven pavement, looking around and taking in the place where Jeonghan spent most of his summers growing up. It’s not what he expected, but he isn’t sure what he expected either.
A stray dog barks from somewhere down the street. Mingyu jumps, shivering at the suddenly cool breeze that blows.
“This used to be my grandmother’s house,” Jeonghan says, flicking on a switch after locking the front door and gate behind them. He leaves his shoes in a small cupboard under a tall mirror, looking at the empty living room blankly.
The stone is cold against his feet. Unused to it, Mingyu leans closer to Jeonghan, for the warmth he doesn’t seem to realize he always radiates.
The living room isn’t particularly large, with a divan under the window, two end tables on either side of it, and two sofas facing each other, next to an end table each. The furniture frames the room, making it look even smaller.
Jeonghan sighs, lifting his suitcase up and setting it on the first step of a flight of stairs by the tv, next to the sofa under the shelf.
“We can sleep upstairs,” he mutters quietly. “There’s space to put your clothes there too.”
“Wait.” Mingyu takes the suitcases from Jeonghan, leaving him with his carry-on backpack. “You can go and shower first; you didn’t get any sleep on the plane anyway.”
He did fall asleep in the taxi, but Mingyu doubts that an hour or two, interrupted every time the driver needs instructions, is enough sleep after the nearly twenty four hours they have spent traveling. Also, he’s a little more awake after all the sleep he got, so he doesn’t mind waiting a little.
“I don’t mind,” Jeonghan mumbles, running a hand through his hair. His eyes are already closing.
Mingyu shakes his head, turning Jeonghan back in the direction of the stairs, both of their suitcases in his hand.
“I need to stretch a bit anyway,” he insists. “Still stiff from the plane. Seriously, it’s fine, go shower. I can look around or something, if that’s okay?”
Jeonghan stares at him, blinking twice.
“Okay.”
Mingyu nods, smiling slightly. “Okay.”
He waits to hear the water running before he starts carrying the suitcases, one at a time because the cold floor still feels a bit weird against his feet. After setting them down, he takes out the clothes, tossing a pair of pajamas out for Jeonghan to wear. It feels a little humid—and warm—to be wearing long sleeves and pants, but with the fan on, Mingyu thinks it might not be so bad.
And anyway, he trusts Jeonghan to have picked out reasonable clothes for him too. He leaves the clothes on the bed, looking around the room.
There is a small balcony that has been closed off and turned into a mini room. The humidity increases tenfold in the room, so he closes the door, sitting back down on the bed.
From the window next to the bed, he can see the lush green leaves hanging from the tree, the light rain of the previous day still hanging from them, mixed with the early morning dew. The sky isn’t so clear anymore, the light gray haze of the summer monsoon season settling in.
He slips back downstairs when the water stops running, closing the door behind him. Mingyu fills a glass of water for Jeonghan too, remembering the medicine in his carry on, double checking that all the doors and windows are locked before he goes back upstairs to give it to him.
Jeonghan is half asleep, towel draped haphazardly over his head. He’s half dressed, in a long sleeve t-shirt, but his eyes are struggling to stay open. Mingyu bites back a smile, ruffling his hair with the towel to help him dry it. It’s hot enough that his hair will probably dry soon enough, but he doesn’t want Jeonghan to get a headache or anything from the humidity.
“You need pants,” Mingyu reminds him gently. “Mosquitos, remember?”
Jeonghan scrunches his face up at the mention of those pesky bugs.
“No,” he grumbles. “No mosquitos.”
Mingyu huffs a laugh, patting his knees.
“Well, they’re here,” he says. “I turned on the repellant, but they still love you, don’t they?”
Jeonghan whines at the thought, hands resting on his thighs. Mingyu doesn’t say anything about the scars, lifting Jeonghan’s hands up and setting a soft pair of track pants in them. Jeonghan pouts sleepily, pulling them on anyway, despite his muttered curses at the mosquitos.
“I’m going to go take a shower, okay?”
Jeonghan nods slowly, rubbing the towel through his hair.
“It’s easier if you fill up the bucket,” he mumbles, yawning right after. Mingyu swallows the urge to coo at how soft Jeonghan gets when he’s tired and agrees before he can even ask Jeonghan what he means.
It’s only when he’s standing in the bathroom that he thinks he should have asked. It takes him a little longer than a shower back home, but he manages to figure out Jeonghan’s advice and shower quickly from there, changing hurriedly. After all, despite all the sleep he has gotten, the change in time zones and the general exhaustion from traveling still manages to settle in, resting against his skin as he washes the soap off.
His hair takes less time to dry than Jeonghan’s did, considering that significantly shorter, but he’s still tired by the time he hangs his towel up to dry, pajamas loose against his skin. The room is warmer now, the sun faintly glowing at the edge of the leaves, so he pulls the curtains closed, turning back to the bed to find Jeonghan sprawled on top of the sheets, fast asleep.
He turns the fan on before joining him, unsure if the other rooms are okay to sleep in, and pulls the sheets over both of them, sure that Jeonghan will kick them off as soon as he can. It’s nearing nine in the morning now and he knows that this isn’t going to help with his jet lag at all, but when Jeonghan turns slightly, kicking his leg over Mingyu, he thinks he doesn’t mind at all.
He wakes up after Jeonghan, unsurprisingly.
What is surprising is that he’s slept for almost the entire day, with it being almost seven the next day.
Mingyu can hear the sounds of Jeonghan moving around in the kitchen, of the street vendors calling out the prices for vegetables and other miscellaneous goods a few streets down. It isn’t so warm today, but still just as humid. The light gray clouds of yesterday are darker today, the promise of rain suddenly a possibility.
“Isn’t this early for you?”
Jeonghan sets down the water filter, shrugging.
“I mean, yeah,” he agrees casually, as if it doesn’t take one of their friends waking him up around noon so he doesn’t sleep the day away, on days that he doesn’t have lectures or lab work to deal with.
“Jet lag?” Mingyu asks, grabbing two cups from the pantry when Jeonghan opens the door to set the used water filter to the side.
He shakes his head, fluffy morning hair flopping over his eyes. “Just couldn’t sleep well. I don’t really get jet lagged.”
Mingyu slurps at the tea obnoxiously, hiding a smile behind the cup when Jeonghan makes a face at him.
“Must be nice,” he drawls, slurping again. “So—”
“There’s spicy ramen for breakfast,” Jeonghan interrupts, before Mingyu can ask. No doubt, it won’t actually be that spicy, considering that Jeonghan can eat it, and neither of them have a particularly high tolerance for spice, but he remembers seeing the brand and loves the way it tastes too much to even complain about its spicier flavors.
Mingyu scoops the noodles into two bowls while Jeonghan gets two pairs of chopsticks out, taking a seat at the round table to eat.
They eat in silence, with Mingyu just realizing how hungry he is after how long he was asleep.
“How’s your grandma?” he asks, setting the chopsticks into an empty bowl, holding them to the side as he lifts the bowl up to drink the remaining soup.
Jeonghan twirls his chopsticks around aimlessly, shrugging.
“She’s fine,” he says, finally. “Staying at my parents’ house for now. I think they’re all planning on visiting LA to pick up Sooyoung—my sister might meet them at Universal with her friends—and staying in Jeju for a little bit? I don’t know.”
Mingyu nods. “For how long?”
“Don’t know,” he murmurs, taking a bite of his breakfast. He normally eats much faster than this, one of the first to finish. “I think they were thinking about just spending the summer there, since the weather would be about the same and it would give her a chance to spend time with her other grandkids.”
“You didn’t want to go with them?” Mingyu takes Jeonghan’s empty bowl, waving his protests aside when he takes them to the sink to wash.
Mingyu offers to unpack after breakfast, though he immediately remembers how much he hates it. Jeonghan has already thanked him for the offer—he hates it even more, perhaps—and heads up to the third floor. He claims there’s a clue there and that playing detective will be worth it, but Mingyu thinks he’s full of it.
He’s always been allergic to vulnerability in the worst way possible.
He isn’t entirely sure what would be considered helpful, or who they’re looking for, but he tries to keep an eye out for anything that could be deemed helpful.
It takes him the greater part of the morning to unpack everything, but he manages to organize everything easily enough in case their trip—is this a trip? Mingyu isn’t sure—is cut short.
He joins Jeonghan upstairs when he’s done, looking around the room before he sits down. The walls are a pale yellow color, buttery against the gray skies. The accent wall has a unique texture, the green and gold patterns dull under a layer of dust. Jeonghan has opened the windows, letting in the breeze and the whispers of petrichor it carries.
There are cloth covers over all the furniture, likely to keep the dust from spoiling it, so Mingyu sits down on the floor next to Jeonghan, watching as his fingers tap against the pages of an album in his lap. Mingyu points at a particular picture, recognizing the only one in color as Jeonghan and his younger sister.
“This one’s cute,” he murmurs. “What are we looking for?”
Jeonghan jerks upright, eyes flashing when he notices Mingyu for the first time. Music plays from his phone, though it’s too quiet and often drowned out by the larger gusts of wind shaking the trees outside the three tall windows behind them.
“Looking for clues,” Jeonghan repeats, unlocking his phone and showing Mingyu the picture of a little girl, standing between Jeonghan’s mom and aunt. All three of them are young, but the girl is the oldest, a sense of weight around her.
He closes the album in his lap with a sigh. “No one’s heard from her in a while though, so it’s hard to tell if I’m on the right track. And all of these albums are in black and white, so it’s practically useless to try and find someone like that, but—”
“How old were you?” Mingyu interrupts, not unkindly, pointing at a picture of a younger Jeonghan and another girl—a baby, really—standing in front of a garden. It happened to be the first picture the album Mingyu chose opened up to, but he hopes that the memories associated with it are comfortable enough to talk about and serve as a distraction from his frustration.
Jeonghan blinks, opening his mouth to say something before frowning, thinking before he speaks.
“Nine,” he whispers. “The visit before they moved here.”
“Sorry,” Mingyu says, moving to close the album but Jeonghan shakes his head.
“It’s fine.” He looks at the picture closer. “It wasn’t a bad thing, it’s just—I mean, it was bad, but it’s still just one of those things that happen in life.”
“Still sorry,” Mingyu repeats, because what else can he say? “Who’s in the picture with you?”
Jeonghan huffs a laugh, but it’s bittersweet in the way that time turns memories, sweet to the mind but bitter to the tongue. “Sooyoung. Can you believe it?”
Mingyu blinks, eyes widening. He’s only met Jeonghan’s younger sister twice, and never for too long, but he can’t quite associate the girl with the sharp jawline and narrowed eyes with the wide eyed chubby toddler. “Wow.”
Jeonghan nods, sighing. “Back when she adored having a big brother to follow around. She was barely three at the time though, so I can’t really blame her. Guess time changes things.”
“Is that a farm?” Mingyu asks curiously, catching sight of a cow in the background.
“Yeah, my grandpa’s sisters’ farm. They wanted to show us some real animals, like we can’t see cows back home or something.” He snorts. “There were cows literally across the street from the campus during undergrad, remember?”
Mingyu laughs, vividly remembering the night all of their friends had gone out, only for Shua to get chased by one of the cows.
“Poor Shua hyung,” he says, unsympathetically.
Jeonghan snorts.
“They must have really been craving deer that night,” he mutters darkly, grinning when Mingyu shoves him lightly for the remark about Joshua’s innocent eyes. “But yeah, it was a farm. I don’t really remember that much—” He pauses, glancing down at the cover of the album before shaking his head. “—but I only went there twice or something, so they really wanted pictures.”
“’S cute,” Mingyu points out. “It’s nice to have those memories later on though, right?”
He shrugs. “I guess.”
The song changes, the next tune one that Mingyu isn’t too familiar with. It starts off with distorted vocals, almost like the vocal chops he sometimes records for Jihoon and Hansol.
“It’s like she disappeared,” Mingyu murmurs, handing Jeonghan his phone back with one last glance at the black and white picture.
“If I wanted to disappear, I would hope there wouldn’t be anything left behind,” Jeonghan says finally, the wind quivering outside their window.
The song tells it to go.
Go where, Mingyu wonders. He can’t understand the rest of the lyrics, the language unfamiliar despite the years Jeonghan has spent practicing it around him.
Mingyu looks at Jeonghan, takes in his side profile, his fidgeting hands. “Would you want to disappear?”
The clouds can’t hold themselves together anymore. The sky falls apart. Jeonghan sighs.
“I wonder.”
The next afternoon, Jeonghan throws a pair of neater clothes at him—clothes that also look like they wouldn’t fit him—and tells him to get ready.
“I want to show you around,” he says, when Mingyu just blinks at him. “You’re too pretty to keep to myself, Mingyu-yah.”
The world is cruel for making Jeonghan immune to blushing—he gets flustered, of course, laughing hysterically, though it’s hard to tell if that’s from him being flustered or panicking. Mingyu feels his ears heat up at Jeonghan’s words anyway. He knows they’re pink now and hates it, hates how easily his emotions show.
Jeonghan laughs when he notices, throwing his head back and cackling when Mingyu covers his face with his hands.
As it turns out, the clothes are actually his and not Jeonghan’s—the pair of loose jeans he and Shua painted on a date and a long sleeve henley that might actually be Seungcheol’s, now that he’s wearing it.
“We never really went out to see much,” Jeonghan explains, reaching down to loosely hold Mingyu’s wrist. “Over the summers, I mean. We did go to get food though, so I still remember a few places. Any preferences?”
Mingyu shrugs, shifting to hold Jeonghan’s hand instead. “Whatever you’re craving works for me. I’ve never been here before, remember?”
Jeonghan picks a sandwich place instead of somewhere with more traditional food, wanting to give Mingyu the proper street food experience. Cheese sandwiches with a green mint sauce that Mingyu can’t get enough of, the grilled cottage cheese crispy on the outside but soft on the inside.
Jeonghan orders the same, but with a tangier tomato sauce that ends up being spicier than he remembers it being. Mingyu laughs easily when the spice hits him, grinning when Jeonghan pouts at him.
They sit on the bar stools at the edge of the intersection, watching the cars rush by. It’s a different experience, like sitting directly in the street and eating, not separated by the etiquette of glass windows and closed buildings, but Mingyu can’t say he minds. After all, the food is good and the company… He glances over at Jeonghan, cheeks round with a bite of his sandwich and eyes wide as he nods at Mingyu questioningly.
Well, there isn’t anyone, he thinks, that could be better company for this moment.
“So, you used to come here a lot when you visited?”
Jeonghan shakes his head. “Not really? We usually came once per visit and took the food home, because the older relatives preferred to eat home cooked food instead, dietary restrictions and personal preferences and all that. And if we came with my grandma, then it just made more sense to bring it home because there was never enough space for all of us to sit.”
Mingyu hums, chewing thoughtfully. “It tastes good though.”
“Yeah, it tastes the same.”
It’s still early for both of them to be eating, earlier than Mingyu and Seungcheol would get home from their practicals, and definitely earlier than Jeonghan would get back from him lab, so they end up walking around, Jeonghan leading Mingyu through all the street vendors to see how it is here.
The colorful patterns draw him in and it’s delightful to see the contrast between the pale beige and monochrome aesthetics of their campus in comparison to how bright everything is here, despite the pollution. Mingyu thinks he wouldn’t mind staying a little longer, or visiting another time, to show Jeonghan the scenery and do all the touristy things he never got to do.
“Did you ever try any of these?” Mingyu points at the intricate navy patterns pictured on a sign hanging above a single young lady with graying hair that betrays her youthful features and a squeeze tube of red ink.
“I literally have normal tattoos,” Jeonghan says, deadpan.
Mingyu blinks, lips parting as he remembers. The ones he has seen—a spider lily on his shoulder. The universe on his back. The quote on his ribs. The infinity sign on his wrist and the compass behind his ear.
“Oh. Right.”
Jeonghan half smiles, shaking his head, his expression something soft that fills Mingyu with an inexplicable warmth when the monsoon wind blows gently.
“I had a few done when I was younger,” he admits. “It was fun to pretend I was getting a sleeve or something, but it took too long and I kept peeling it off too early, so it always faded super fast. And the ink was never super dark either.”
“It looks cool though,” Mingyu points out, still looking at the sign. He misses the way Jeonghan’s gaze focuses on him, soft around the edges.
The artist finally notices them, rattling off something too quickly for Mingyu to even recognize any words. Jeonghan startles a little, but recovers quickly, responding easily enough. When Mingyu looks at him inquisitively, he just grins that stupid mischievous grin that Mingyu would say yes to every time.
“They say you have good skin,” Jeonghan summarizes, quickly translating. “They’re also offering to do one for you for only five thousand won.”
Mingyu’s eyes widen. “Only five thousand?”
“Yeah, if you convert it, it makes sense, but they’re definitely giving you a discount.” Jeonghan pauses to ask the artist something, nodding at the response.
“It’s because you’re pretty,” he sings, winking at Mingyu, who flushes to the tips of his ears, looking away. “You want to try it?”
The jagua tattoo designs do look impressive, and as a future doctor, he—and Seungcheol, when they were both miserably tired after finals last semester and agreed to go together—doesn’t have the freedom to get tattoos the way Jeonghan does. Actually, he isn’t sure if tattoos are frowned upon in Jeonghan’s line of research, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen him conform to societal norms for the sake of conforming.
After all, Jeonghan’s hair was a denim blue color when he applied to his first research internship—and he got in, easily beating out the other applicants with his achievements.
Truth be told, he doesn’t even have a design in mind for his and Seungcheol’s tattoo when they finish their residency—and they haven’t even graduated from medical school yet, so it isn’t like he doesn't have time to think of it. He’s a little more inclined to just ask Minghao to come up with something for him, but the idea of a spur of the moment tattoo isn’t something he can just pass up so easily.
Jeonghan looks at him expectantly, eyes round and innocent.
“Sure, I’ll try,” Mingyu finally says, giggling a little as he sits down on the blue plastic stool, sleeves rolled up slightly so the artist has room to work.
Undeterred by the fact that he doesn’t understand the language, they manage to use pictures to figure out what Mingyu wants, a design that’s all too familiar.
Jeonghan doesn’t say anything when he picks it, but he isn’t even looking, so Mingyu doesn’t know if he’s gone too far or not.
“It tickles,” he giggles, hand seeking out Jeonghan’s when the tip of the ink pen touches his skin. Jeonghan smiles softly, squeezing his hand and laughing when Mingyu keeps complaining about how it tickles. He squirms on the stool but doesn’t regret it, though it’s a miracle the design turns out as neatly as it does, with how much he moves around.
The artist thanks him for his time and he manages to thank them for their design with a little help from Jeonghan’s translating skills. They explain the proper way to take care of it to Jeonghan, while Mingyu looks around, appreciating the sunset in the dusty streets.
The walk back to Jeonghan’s grandma’s house is quieter, slower in the cooling night air. Jeonghan’s hand is just as warm as it always is against his own, even if he lingers a little further away to avoid smudging the design the artist just painstakingly traced onto his skin.
Jeonghan gets quieter when he’s tired, but there’s a light in his eyes that Mingyu doesn’t remember there being when he showed up at his apartment at one in the morning.
“Would you ever make it permanent?”
Mingyu blinks, turning to look at Jeonghan, but he just keeps looking ahead. His side profile is highlighted by the blues and pinks of the sunset, a purple hue over his brown hair.
The warmth fills him easily, even if the colors are colder than the humid wind that sticks to his skin. An inexplicable fondness, swimming in honey, or something golden.
These moments are blue.
Mingyu hums in thought.
“I want to.” He pauses when they stop at the crosswalk. “It’s a little harder when people won’t take you seriously just because you have a tattoo, but Seungcheol hyung’s coming with me to get one after our residencies anyway.”
Jeonghan nods, free hand running through his hair. “What would you get?”
“Don’t know,” he admits freely. “Is it weird that I keep thinking about it but still can’t decide? How did you figure out what you wanted?”
Jeonghan laughs, but it’s a little muted at the edges. “I just knew. Which I’m sure isn’t helpful at all, but. I don’t know, when you know, you’ll know. And if not, I’m sure Minghao wouldn’t mind designing one for both of you.”
Mingyu makes a face. “Ew, you’ll have me matching with Seungcheol hyung?”
Jeonghan’s laughter this time is lighter, dancing along the horizon where the sky falls apart. “Don’t say it like you’re not his favorite. You’re best friends, Mingyu-yah.”
“We’re not!” But Mingyu is laughing just as hard, under the amber streetlights and the dark blue skies.
Jeonghan shakes his head, running his hand through his hair.
“You’re both terrible,” he murmurs fondly, words too soft for the early night. Midnight colors bleeding through his sparkling eyes.
He doesn’t let go of Mingyu’s hand even as he opens the garage gate or the front door, letting go only when they have to shower.
He doesn’t talk about the only other room on the second floor, across the landing where the stairs meet, its door always closed. There’s a single picture, a man with kind gray eyes and whispers of hair, displayed at the top of a desk he can see from the doorway when Jeonghan says he’ll use that room’s shower.
Ah.
Mingyu squeezes Jeonghan’s hand once before he lets go, their outing—was it an outing? It feels an awful lot like something else if he thinks too hard about it—oddly incomplete without it. He doesn’t want to ask, because he knows what it’s like when it comes to the two of them.
Jeonghan has always been too fond of ambiguity for his own good. Mingyu doesn’t mind all that much.
Not when it ends with Jeonghan’s cheek pressed on the same pillow, legs tangled together even if he’s sleeping on his stomach and Mingyu on his side.
“I wish there was more to show you,” he mumbles, eyelids falling too easily.
Mingyu shakes his head and smiles softly to himself. He reaches over to run a finger over Jeonghan’s long eyelashes, the sky nearly dark in the window behind him. He leans a little closer than he means to, their noses nearly touching, but Jeonghan doesn’t realize, his eyes already closed.
He must be experiencing some level of jet lag if he isn’t fighting Mingyu to close the curtains. Though, Mingyu plans on closing them later himself.
“Today was nice,” he says instead, fingers now tracing over his hairline, dipping down to flick his ear lobes.
Jeonghan presses his lips together with a slight pout. “Still. It’s supposed to be a pretty place, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything pretty here.”
I’ve seen you, Mingyu thinks. I’ve seen you, and perhaps people hold the same beauty that people do.
“The city and candid life can be enticing too,” He points out, dropping his hand from Jeonghan’s eyelashes. “Perspectives, remember?”
Jeonghan blinks, wide eyes meeting his own. “And what did you see?”
You.
“The people,” Mingyu says instead, pulling the bed sheets over his shoulder when the hum of electricity quiets throughout the rest of the house and the speed of the overhead fan picks up. “A place, for what it is, and not what the pictures want it to be.”
Jeonghan laughs, half into the pillow as he curls forward, nudging their foreheads together with the movement.
“You should’ve taken photography,” he murmurs, sleepy eyes sparkling mischievously. “Not to take the pictures, but to justify them, hmm?”
Mingyu whacks him with the throw pillow he had set aside instead. “You’re a menace, Yoon Jeonghan.”
Jeonghan giggles, pushing the pillow away easily, back to where Mingyu had set it on the floor by his side of the bed. He leaves his arm draped across Mingyu’s waist, fingers holding onto Mingyu’s sheet.
“M’not,” he whines sleepily, miming biting Mingyu’s arm. Mingyu bats him away, intertwining their fingers instead and nudging his hair slightly. “You’re just pretentious. Sound like Myungho.”
Mingyu scoffs, but it’s far from serious. “Good to see you’re still not self aware. I was trying to respond the way you do.”
“M’not pretentious,” Jeonghan mumbles. “I just think like that. You don’t, so you’re pretentious.”
Mingyu scowls at Jeonghan’s pout, knowing fully well his hyung is doing it just to get a rise out of him. It’s working, of course, so he settles for pulling Jeonghan a little closer. He stays adamantly on his stomach just to be annoying, though he does press their legs together.
“You’re annoying,” he grumbles, squishing Jeonghan’s cheeks slightly. “I think the way you talk is interesting. You have strange thoughts.”
Jeonghan tries to squirm away, but Mingyu holds on.
“I’m cold,” he lies when Jeonghan tries prying him off. “You always keep the fan on like we’re in the desert or something; some of us aren’t furnaces, Jeonghan.”
Jeonghan snorts, but he lets Mingyu curl up next to him, an arm and a leg thrown over his back. “You’re the furnace. I’m cold.”
“That’s what happens when you get old,” Mingyu crows, squirming when Jeonghan drags his toes up Mingyu’s leg. “I’m right, you know I’m right. You’re old.”
“An absolute menace,” Jeonghan grouches. “The disrespect really, someone would think we’re two decades apart, the way you talk.”
“Mentally we might be,” Mingyu grumbles, words drooping as his energy drops too. “You’re so loud, hyung.” He manhandles Jeonghan into a position more comfortable for him. “Shhh. Sleep.”
Jeonghan laughs quietly, letting Mingyu do as he pleases. Mingyu isn’t awake enough to appreciate it. “You’re just a big baby, aren’t you?”
Mingyu pretends to snore.
“Ya, Kim Mingyu, you sleep at four in the morning and wake up some time in the afternoon, isn’t this early for you?”
He fakes another snore.
“And you call me old for sleeping early, huh?”
Mingyu grins, burying his smile in Jeonghan’s hair as he properly hugs him. The hand not under his pillow comes up to rest around Jeonghan’s waist, fingers sitting at the hem to tap against his skin.
“Good night, hyung.”
Jeonghan sighs. “Good night.”
Mingyu hums. “Sweet dreams.”
“Who are we looking for?”
Jeonghan doesn’t startle, but it’s a near thing. The newspaper slips from his hands, falling over his phone and muffling the song it plays. “Huh?”
Mingyu sighs, sitting down next to Jeonghan, pulling his legs over his lap, and tapping Jeonghan’s hipbone. “The person that we’re looking for. Who are they?”
Jeonghan exhales slowly, gaze dropping to Mingyu’s hand, the fingers resting on the waistband of his track pants. “Someone who suffered a lot.”
Mingyu hums to show that he’s listening.
“It’s just—sad circumstances.” He bites nail nervously, but Mingyu pulls his hand away from his mouth gently, intertwining their fingers together instead. “She’s someone I’d like to find and listen to for a bit.”
Mingyu nods, resting his head back against the back of the sofa, angling himself so he can see Jeonghan’s side profile. “I hope you find her. I hope she finds you? I hope you find each other.”
Jeonghan smiles wanly, resting his head against the back of the sofa too, meeting Mingyu’s eyes.
“She’s not looking for me.” He brushes Mingyu’s bangs away from his eyes easily, unblinkingly. Mingyu’s ears blossom, shades of pink like the sunset outside the window behind Jeonghan’s back. He burns, but he’s always run cold. “I doubt she even knows I was born, honestly.”
Mingyu could never deny Jeonghan’s warmth.
Jeonghan’s words are familiar, in the way that three a.m. conversations and gentle music is familiar, the colors Jeonghan describes to him sometimes.
If I could paint…, he always says and Mingyu thinks he would always paint for him, to paint those colorful dreams that haunt his eyes.
“Do you know anything about where she might be?”
Jeonghan shakes his head, long hair falling over his right eye, and pressing against the sofa on his left side.
“Not really,” he admits, sighing, his breath lifting his bangs. “She calls my grandma sometimes, from a different phone number every time.”
Mingyu frowns, pushing aside his hair and tucking the long strands behind his ear as best as he can. “Is she safe?”
He shrugs. “It’s not a legal thing or a safety thing, as far as I know. She just—went through a lot, I guess. I don’t really know the details.”
“What about other relatives?”
Jeonghan sighs, finger tangling with his earring. “No one knows where she is. And I guess there aren’t that many people left to look for her anymore either.”
“You are?”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess. But we don’t even know each other.”
“You’re trying to get to know her though.”
He is, isn’t he?
“It doesn’t feel like it’s enough though. I mean, I have so many relatives, what difference is one person going to make? It’s a whole country to look through.”
One person.
“One person can change things too, you know,” Mingyu reminds him. “Remember when Seungcheol and I spent a month straight just holed up in mine and Minghao’s studying for the medical school entrance exam?”
Jeonghan nods.
“You kept us fed, made sure that we were still functioning, and that we were taking breaks. Even while you were handling two research internships, an honors thesis, and still on track to graduate magna cum laude.”
And, Jeonghan had just taken the entrance exam a month before, so he’d spent extra time going over concepts with them.
He sighs. “Yeah, but that’s—we’re friends. Anyone in my position would do that.”
“Sure,” Mingyu agrees easily, though he isn’t really agreeing at all. “Anyone definitely could, but the fact that you did all that still found time to be a good friend says more than you think.”
He bites his lip, blinking when he looks at Mingyu. It isn’t quite a smile, but the light in his eyes is brighter, a window slowly opening to the universe in his mind.
“One person can make a difference,” Mingyu points calmly. “Doctors, right? That can be one person. A single author. A single song writer. There are people who helped you get there, but you’ll be able to do it, on your own, in the end.”
He holds a photo album out to Jeonghan, who frowns at it, lips parting from their pout to question it.
“It’s just your thing, Jeonghan.”
He freezes, pressing his lips back together.
His thing, huh?
Maybe he doesn’t have to change the world. Maybe that’s not what it’s about at all. Maybe, all he has to do is the thing he’s always wanted to do.
To listen.
Jeonghan reaches out and takes the album from him.