Chapter Text
The afternoon refuses to slip away. Jisung can hear it, the way time ticks by slowly, the hands of the clock hung on the wall behind the counter moving almost lazily. Even here, inside the air conditioned shop, Jisung feels overcome by summer. The heat of July is relentless, and there’s not much for him to do but lie there and feel himself melt away.
Beside him, a body is sprawled over the counter. Jisung looks over his shoulder every now and then to make sure Minho hasn’t fallen asleep; it wouldn’t be the first time, but he’s been told it’s not good to take naps in the middle of a shift, so Jisung has taken on the mission of keeping him conscious.
He’s putting as little effort into said mission as he possibly can. Keeping himself from liquifying into a puddle on the floor is difficult enough.
Minho flips through a magazine in silence, unfocused. Jisung looks at him just as he stops at a particular page, studying it for a few moments longer. He runs a finger over the page and turns to show it to Jisung, his lips curled into a pout.
It’s a picture of a red haired model. Jisung looks at it and frowns.
“I want that,” Minho says.
“What?”
With a sigh, Minho sits up, his legs crossed over the counter. The back of his hair is a mess, like it usually is when it’s this hot and humid. He looks down at the magazine again, and Jisung follows his gaze. He feels like he’s missing something.
“D’ya think I could pull it off?”
Jisung looks at the model. She looks older, surely older than Jisung, at least. She’s tall and beautiful, her tight leather outfit showcasing her figure. Jisung feels an urge to look down at himself, but he fights it. He knows what he will find; an awkward mess of skinny limbs and not much of anything else.
Minho is looking at him, now, expectant for an answer. Jisung shrugs.
“Sure,” he says, and it sounds like a question.
Most likely seeing through Jisung’s uncertainty, Minho scoffs, but if he has anything to say about it, he keeps it to himself. All he does instead is sigh again, lying back down and looking at the ceiling.
“Doesn’t matter. My grandma would never allow something like that.”
Jisung purses his lips. Sure, he thinks. He would say he knows Minho’s grandmother pretty well, and she’s not much different from Jisung’s own parents. She’s chill, and she more or less leaves them to their devices when he’s over at their place. She never has an issue with Jisung sleeping over as long as they behave and don’t disturb the neighbors. She’s even cooler than Jisung’s parents in that she let Minho get his ears pierced, and for his most recent birthday she even got him a new board after his old one had broken, worn down by too many years of use.
But—sure. Jisung can only imagine that Minho’s grandmother wouldn’t fancy the idea of him being enamored by an older woman, especially when he’s only nineteen.
“Makes sense,” Jisung says.
It doesn’t serve as any comfort for Minho, who sulks for a few moments longer. His lament is, however, quickly interrupted by a customer walking into the shop. Minho perks up quickly, almost falling off the counter but managing to land on his feet, ever so stealthy. He brushes and smoothens his clothes with his hands, and by the time the customer is in front of him he’s sporting his best smile.
His professional smile, as he calls it. It’s nice, Jisung thinks, the type that makes you feel good when you’re at the receiving end of it, but Jisung thinks Minho’s real smile is better. Warmer, sweeter. Minho’s real smiles are reserved for his friends, and Jisung likes to pride himself on holding the record for them.
It’s relatively easy to make Minho smile, he thinks. Minho smiles at Jisung for almost anything; when he shares one of his fun facts, when he tells a joke, when they’re out skating and Jisung tries to copy one of Minho’s tricks—even if he almost never gets them right.
Not wanting to stare so much at Minho’s face that the customer might notice, Jisung looks away, his eyes pulled back towards the magazine. The model is still there, posing still, almost mocking him. She truly is beautiful, so much so that the shiny motorcycle she’s on almost doesn’t catch his eye. Her hair color reminds him of velvet; elegant, smooth to the touch.
He never knew Minho liked redheads. As a matter of fact, Jisung never knew there was any specific thing Minho could like about a person—but that must be it, he thinks, since the hair seems to be the one defining characteristic about this model, the reason he stopped at this picture out of all the other ones—unless Minho knows more about her, unless he’s a fan.
Jisung would like to think that he would be the first to know if Minho was a fan of anyone, and Minho has never said anything about her until today. So, it must be the red hair. It’s the only reasonable explanation.
Unaware that the customer has long since left, Jisung leans over the counter, slides the magazine closer, gets one last look at the picture. But then Minho is nudging him and Jisung startles and jumps back, breathing in sharply.
When he looks up, Minho is already looking at him. He seems confused, his eyebrows pinched slightly, but Jisung speaks up before he can say anything.
“I’ll get going now,” he says. The words come out strangled, and he clears his throat before adding, “Promised my mom I’d help with dinner.”
Minho looks at him like he knows he’s lying. Still, he smiles, nods.
“Alright, Sung-ah. See you tomorrow?”
Jisung is out the door before he can think of a response.
Being home is of little solace to him. The walk back was hot and left him sweating and panting, even with the sun already on its way to set. His mother made him shower before stepping foot into the kitchen, and by the time he was finally clean and in a fresh change of clothes, he was starving.
He eats silently, his gaze unfocused, sat between his sister and his brother. Conversation around the dinner table is rare in his family; after his older brother moved away for college, Jisung took on the role of filling in the awkward silence, being the loudest out of the remaining five, and so it’s quiet now that he doesn’t have anything to say—not to them, at least.
He had been hoping to be excused quickly, but even when there’s nothing to talk about his mother doesn’t let him leave, not even after he’s finished his food. Family dinner is an important tradition, she explains.
Never mind that they do it every single day, never mind that it’s boring.
After they’re all done and he’s finally spared, Jisung rushes up the stairs to his room and locks the door behind him. He lets himself fall on his bed, a groan escaping him as soon as his back hits the mattress. He looks up at the ceiling, at his walls. Posters fill up three out of the four walls, all in different sizes, all with different contents. Bands, movies, comic book characters.
Jisung thinks of Minho’s room. He wonders if Minho would have posters of pretty red-haired girls on his walls, if he was allowed. Not that they would much fit in with his anime posters and skating event flyers, but what does Jisung know.
He tries closing his eyes and letting sleep find him, but it’s no use. His mind keeps drifting to the same image, to the way Minho’s eyes glimmered as he looked at it. Jisung knows that he won’t be able to get any sleep in this state, and so he chooses to do the next best thing that isn’t to sleep this off.
He needs to speak to an expert.
For a few moments, Jisung waits by his door, pressing an ear against it and trying to determine the best moment to set in motion. He’s fairly sure that his siblings have gone to their rooms by now, and the faint chatter he hears must indicate that his parents are having a cup of tea in the dining room as they do every night before bed.
With careful movements, Jisung opens the door and exits his room, his steps sock-padded and almost imperceptible against the wooden floor. He sneaks downstairs as quickly and as silently as he can, and he heads straight for the landline hung on the wall of the hallway. It’s a risky move, with the door to the dining room being right there, but it’s his best shot.
He checks one last time that his parents are well distracted. When he turns around to face the phone, there’s something in the way.
There’s someone in the way.
“Noona,” Jisung breathes, bringing a hand to his chest. “How the hell—”
Jinsol, dressed in light blue pajamas that make her look as pale as a ghost, is looking at him, seemingly unimpressed. Jisung feels exposed. It must be the way Jinsol uses the few inches she has on him to her advantage.
“What are you doing?” Jinsol asks, like she doesn’t know.
Jisung bites the inside of his cheek. “I need to make a call.”
“Who are you calling?”
“No one,” he says, then backtracks quickly. “Just Felix.”
“This late at night? Did you ask mom and dad?”
No. “Yes.”
Jinsol squints at him then turns towards the dining room door. Jisung yelps before he can stop himself, grabbing her by the arm. When she turns back to look at him, she’s smiling. Jisung closes his eyes. He’s blown what little was left of his cover.
For a moment, he keeps his eyes closed and just listens. His parents are still talking quietly. They don’t seem to have heard anything.
“Noona,” he says, almost whispers. “It’s just one quick phone call. Please.”
When he opens his eyes, Jinsol’s grin has only grown wider. She has her palm open and stretched out in front of Jisung. He sighs, head falling forward in defeat as he pats his pockets, fishing out a crumpled five-thousand won bill and pressing it into his sister’s hand.
He was saving that change to buy some additions to his candy stash. He mourns the sweets that could have been as Jinsol smoothens the creases on the bill and puts it away promptly.
Evil incarnate. Jisung has tried to warn people, but no one ever listens.
Sweetly, she says, “You can use my phone. Five minutes.”
Jisung stares at her for a moment, blinking, trying to see if she means it, then quickly bows and turns on his heels to run off. He’s half-way up the stairs when he remembers to exclaim thank you over his shoulder before Jinsol can demand it out of him or, what’s worse, change her mind.
Having lived here for the better part of the last ten years, Jisung has memorized this hallway down to perfection; its blueprint is permanently etched in his brain, and so he barely has to look to know where to go. Closest to the staircase is Jiyeon’s room; he’s the youngest, and so for many years that room served as an office instead. Then there’s his own room, then the bathroom. On the other side is Jinsol’s room, then Jinhyuk’s—now unused and a little ghostly, since he hasn’t been home for months.
While all the rooms are technically off limits, Jinsol’s is the one Jisung has found least reasons to try and sneak into throughout the years. Jiyeon’s room is his go-to hiding spot for things he doesn’t want anyone finding, as it’s the room his parents least inspect and his brother is too short to get his grubby hands on anything from the top shelves. Jinhyuk’s room was where his brother would keep all sorts of cool stuff, when he was still around, from his extensive collection of figurines to signed American rock magazines.
The first time Minho came over, Jisung had taken him to Jinhyuk’s room and tried to pretend it was his own. Minho was not fooled; he knew Jinhyuk, after all, being only one year his junior and going to the same school. But he let Jisung pretend and even played along, and the awestruck look on his face as Jisung let him peruse the magazines was enough to consider himself successful.
He had been so desperate, at the time, to impress Minho. To convince him to want to stick around.
Jisung never had any reason to show Minho Jinsol’s room, and he rarely had excuses to go in by himself. Jinsol wasn’t very interesting in Jisung’s eyes. She was the only girl, and she was the one Jisung found least things in common with. She talked about things he didn’t understand, used words he didn’t know the meaning of, and didn’t seem to like any of the things Jisung was interested in.
And—sure. It’s not like Jisung was ever too popular with his siblings to begin with. They all had people they preferred to hang out with—Jinhyuk had his cooler, older friends, and Jiyeon had whatever blue speaking animal he was into at the time. They were all very different, but Jinsol was a different type of different.
Still, after Jinhyuk left and Jinsol became the oldest sibling in the house, she and Jisung’s dynamic tilted out of balance; where she once would have been distant, not caring much about what Jisung was up to, she now seems keen to butt her head into his business with newfound insistence. She teases him, she corrects him, she holds enough power over his head to determine when to let Jisung off the hook if she’s caught him doing something their parents would not approve of.
A lot of his friends, like Felix, like Minho, seem to think that Jinsol is pretty cool. Jisung just thinks she’s a bother.
Because Jinsol is the only one in the house who has an extension to the landline, something she’d saved up multiple allowances for and finally bought last year as a coming-of-age gift to herself, she’s the only one who could make calls without having to stand in the middle of the hallway and have her entire business aired out to whoever is home. As he got older and came to wish for a sense of privacy, Jisung grew a little envious of this privilege his sister had, and while Jinsol isn’t happy to have him snuffing around her room for any reasons, she’s merciful enough to let him use her landline whenever she doesn’t need it.
This, of course, does not come without a cost.
Shaking off any lingering thoughts of his precious little allowance, now lost to the hands of greed, Jisung lets the door shut behind him and beelines towards the phone. He crouches down until he’s sitting on the floor with his back pressed against Jinsol’s hot-pink bed.
Time is of the essence. He dials Felix’s number out of memory and chews on his lip as the line rings.
It only now crosses Jisung’s mind that, at this time, Felix and his family might very well be having supper, and that there’s too big of a chance that he’s rudely interrupting them. He has to tell himself that it will probably be just fine—that this is Felix, and he surely won’t mind. After all, his family is the most lax Jisung has ever met, and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard Felix complain about getting into trouble for being on the phone after sundown. He doesn’t even have a curfew.
The line rings, rings, rings, and finally, it connects.
On the other side, a chirpy voice says, “Yellow?”
Jisung feels his shoulders relax. He smiles.
“Hi, Chan-hyung,” he says, relieved that it’s Felix’s brother who picked up the phone and not either of his parents. “Sorry to bother you so late, is—”
“Nonsense,” Chan exclaims. He’s always exclaiming things, the guy. Jisung hears a lot of him in Felix, his words, his cool accent. He wonders, absently, if they got all the coolness from Australia. He wonders if he would have been any cooler had he been born anywhere else—had he ever been anywhere else, his travel experiences few and far between, always within the confines of the Korean Peninsula. “We’ve just finished clearing the table. How are you, kid?”
“I’m—uh.” This is a lot more conversation than Jisung had been expecting. He clears his throat. “Good, yeah. You know, enjoying summer break. Getting tan,” he says, far too quickly to be intelligible. He hears the way his voice gets all pitchy, his nerves ever so transparent. He slaps himself mentally for it.
Chan is Felix’s older brother, which means that he is someone Jisung has been around more than enough times to make the fact that he still gets like this around him frankly embarrassing. Chan is just—great. He’s a great guy. He’s smart, and he’s fun, and he’s possibly cooler than anyone Jisung has ever met. Surely cooler than Jinhyuk and all his friends. Maybe even as cool as Minho.
No. No one is as cool as Minho. But Chan comes close, and that’s remarkable enough.
“That’s good,” Chan says. He always sounds so adult-like, as if he’s old and wise and not just three years Jisung’s senior. Before Jisung can say anything else, or do the polite thing and ask him how he’s been, there’s shuffling on the line and Chan’s voice, now further away. “Yah, Yongbok-ah, come down! Han Jisungie is on the line. I’ve bored him already.”
“You haven’t—!”
It’s no use; Chan has already gone. Jisung is still reeling from being called Han Jisungie out loud for the entire Lee household to hear, and Felix is on his ear before he can get himself together.
“Earth to Jisung,” Felix says. “You there?”
Jisung shakes his head, then his entire body. He nods, like Felix can see him.
“Hi,” he says. “Is this a bad time?”
Felix hums. “Nah. We just had dinner, my folks are watching TV. What’s up?”
It’s not that Jisung feels shy. He’s just too aware, suddenly, that he’s gone through all this trouble just because of some picture Minho was looking at. He feels silly, having lost his money, snuck behind his parents' backs, hid in his sister’s room surrounded by glitter and posters of some idol band she’s very into these days—all for this.
But this is Felix, and Jisung can be a little silly with Felix. It’s not like he would judge him.
“You’ve, um. You have experience with hair dye and all that stuff, right?”
“I mean, yeah,” Felix says. “I’ve dyed my hair a couple times—remember last fall?”
Jisung does remember. Felix had just shown up at school one day with his hair an electric blue. It wasn’t something one could just miss. It was bold, and it drew a lot of attention, but then Felix was always catching people’s eyes one way or another. With his hair, with his clothes, with his bright laughter and his peculiar accent. He’s always been more open than Jisung to doing whatever the hell he wants.
He faintly remembers Minho standing next to him on the hallway, eyes wide. How he leaned closer and whispered into Jisung’s ear just how cool he thought Felix was for that.
“Jisung-ah? Everything okay?” Felix asks after a moment of silence. “Why’d you ask?”
“No reason,” he says, and there’s that pitch in his voice again. Ridiculous. “Follow-up question. What are your thoughts on red hair?”
This is how a warm Saturday morning finds him breathless and sweat-drenched, jumping off his bike on the prettier side of the road, and making his way up to Lee Felix’s front door. The sun beats down on him, and Jisung has to press his hands under the straps of his backpack to stop himself from ringing the doorbell twice.
It’s a shame that Chan is nowhere to be seen, though it serves as comfort that he doesn’t have to show his so-red-it’s-almost-purple face to him this early in the morning.
Who is home is Felix’s mother, whom Jisung likes nearly just as much. Felix’s mother is as tall and bright as both her sons, and even kinder. She’s beaming when she opens the door, beaming when she invites Jisung in, beaming when she announces that Felix is in his room upstairs (“Setting everything up,” as she puts it, which most definitely does not make Jisung’s stomach twist). She even tells Jisung to please pour himself a glass of lemonade before heading up.
He is more than happy to oblige. The drink is sweet and cold and welcome.
While Jisung is fairly sure that Felix’s family is “better off”, as his parents often say, than his own, his house is surely smaller. If Jisung is one to talk, he would say that he backyard and the pool and the fancy car Mr. Lee drives more than make up for it. Felix, however, though never ungrateful or remotely envious, is always talking about it. He’s seventeen, after all, and has shared a room with his older brother for most of his life. Jisung can’t imagine that. The closest he’s ever been to having to give up his precious personal space was when they went to visit a distant relative in Jeju for the holidays a handful of years back, and Jisung had to sleep on the same bed as Jinhyuk for five harrowing nights.
He shudders just thinking about it.
Jisung imagines that Chan must be a much better roommate than Jinhyuk could ever be. He probably talks about interesting stuff all the time, like music and movies and books. He’s probably never too loud or annoying. He’s never pestered Felix for taking up too much space in the room whenever Jisung is around, either by himself or as part of a larger group of guests.
He doesn’t say any of this to Felix, who—Jisung guesses—would not agree with this predicament. The siblings get along considerably better than Jisung ever has with anyone in his family, but they’re still siblings, by the end of the day. Jisung can understand that, even if he’d exchange his entire bloodline for a chance to share a room with Chan.
He digresses.
Felix hadn’t asked many questions when they talked over the phone, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He had been begging Jisung to let him cut and dye his hair for years, and now that he finally gets the chance, he’s not going to protest or risk having Jisung change his mind.
This, at least, is what Jisung had been hoping for.
With the grounding sensation of a pair of strong hands kneading some sort of substance deep into his hair, Jisung lets himself relax. Felix has the AC on and the artificial cold is soothing as it fans against his sunburnt face, the hum of the engine blending easily with the record Jisung had picked out from the siblings’ joint vinyl collection.
He’s let his guard down. Like this, Felix attacks with ease.
“So,” he says, dragging out his vowels in a way that is so distinctively Felix. “Kind of a big transformation, no?”
Jisung tenses up, his shoulders curving upward. He can tell Felix is trying to sound casual, mostly because he’s terrible at it. He must have been sitting on his curiosity for hours—the big gossip. Jisung figures he has to give him something; it’s only Felix, after all, and he is doing him a big favor, taking out of his own supplies and dedicating a whole day to being Jisung’s unpaid hairdresser.
After a long process of making up his mind, telling himself that it was time for a change, that hair grows back and dye washes out with enough time under a hot shower, Jisung had thought he was over feeling weird for what he was doing. Still, whenever he’s asked why he’s doing it, why now, why this, he feels sheepish. Like he’s been caught doing something wrong.
Like everyone else can see right through him, can see—something. Something he can’t even explain to himself.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice thready.
Felix’s massaging doesn’t stop, but Jisung can almost feel him vibrating out of his skin where he sits cross-legged behind him. Briefly, Jisung wonders if red hair dye stains would be too difficult to get out of the carpeted floor, but Felix seems to know what he’s doing.
He clears his throat.
“Just—got the idea, I dunno. Thought it might look cool.”
“Oh, it’s gonna look so cool,” Felix says with enough confidence to serve them both. Jisung lets the words calm him. “Gonna suit your skin tone so well, you’ll see.”
“Right”, Jisung says, even though he has no idea what the hell that means. “You don’t think it’s gonna look weird?”
Immediately, the hands on his hair stop moving, and Jisung can see Felix frowning like he’s got eyes in the back of his skull. He is the most expressive person Jisung has ever met. After a moment in silence, he resumes his work.
“Nah,” he says. “It won’t look weird. It’s a big change, though. I’m surprised I didn’t have to force it on you after all,” he jokes, and Jisung has to laugh along at the lack of any response. “I’m just curious, you know, ‘bout how you got the idea. Did’ya see it on TV or something?”
Jisung’s mouth goes dry.
“Or something,” he forces out, squeaky. He clears his throat. “Saw it on a magazine.”
“One of Jinhyuk-hyung’s?”
“No—no, not hyung,” he says, then curses himself silently, because he very well could have lied. It’s like he only sees these easy ways out once he’s too far past them. He goes on, “At the shop. Minho-hyung was lookin' at it the other day—looked like one of those motorbike zines he likes so much.”
Once more, Felix falls silent. A beat passes before he hums, and Jisung frowns.
“What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Felix says. His voice is almost teasing. Jisung goes over what he said, tries to find what’s funny about it. He comes up empty. “What’s red hair gotta do with motorbikes?”
Jisung shrugs. The room grows a little smaller.
“One of the—the models, y’know. On the page hyung was looking at. And he said—doesn’t matter. And she had red hair, right, and I just hadn’t thought of red hair before, like, on me. So.”
“So?”
“So then I thought about it, and I thought, sure. Since you always bother me for it,” Felix nudges him, but it’s gentle. Jisung sways with the motion anyway. “I thought I’d give it a go. Try something new for a change.”
Felix is quiet again, which is three times too many. Jisung pouts and goes to turn around, but Felix ah-bah-bah’s him, fixing him in place. Jisung’s scalp tingles a little, and the smell of the dye hurts his nose, but he can only assume that means it’s working.
“It’s good,” Felix decides, after a minute. “That you’re trying something new. I think it’ll look cool.”
Jisung bites his tongue, focuses on breathing steadily. The record spins into the second-to-last song, and Freddie Mercury sings about something that Jisung doesn’t quite understand. Felix sings every word with precision, like he does get it.
He leans forward and whispers against Jisung’s ear, like they’re not alone, like he’s saying something secret.
He says, “I bet hyung’ll think it’s cool, too.”
Jisung feels his face grow hot. He hopes he’s not having an allergic reaction to the dye.
He doesn’t say anything more.
The way his hair feels when he cards his hands through it now is a lot different than it was before, not as soft and not as silky, but Jisung figures he’ll get used to it. He looks at himself in the mirror of Felix’s bathroom, towel still around his bare shoulders now that he’s done with all the washing and drying.
It’s weird, he thinks, that it’s just red now. That that can happen. It feels permanent, though Jisung knows it won’t be. It makes him nervous for—something. What others will think, probably.
Felix’s reassurances that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks play in his head over and over again like a mantra, and he whispers them to himself a few times before entering the shop the following Monday.
He hasn’t seen Minho all weekend. After he left Felix’s house he found his nerves crashing into him tenfold, and when the time came to go pick Minho up at the shop for their weekly ice-cream-at-the-rink summer tradition, he just couldn’t do it. He made up some excuse he’s sure Minho wouldn’t believe—but he’d be hearing it from his grandmother and not Jisung directly, so it’s not like he could fight. Not unless he hunted Jisung down at his own house for answers, which he’s done more than enough times in the past to be an actual possibility.
Minho doesn’t show up at Jisung’s house on Saturday, which is a relief, and he also leaves him be on Sunday. It’s not uncommon for Jisung to retreat like this every now and then. He needs time to recharge, needs a few days to himself. It’s understandable that Minho, of all people, would be used to this.
It’s not any less of a disappointment when he prepares himself to have Minho banging on his door, demanding to be let in and have his deserved share of fun with Jisung, and yet Sunday passes, and no one comes. He tells himself that that’s fine, because it is.
If anything, it gives Jisung time to prepare. If he doesn’t feel even half ready to be scrutinized by Minho after such a radical change, then that’s just too bad. It’s not like he can run away forever. It’s not like he would want that.
For a fleeting moment Jisung wonders if Minho would be able to take one look at him and put the pieces together—the magazine, the model, Jisung’s change of look. He knows, logically, that it would be a fantastic mental exercise if Minho was able to figure him out like that. It’s not like him, he’s been told, to make changes like that so impulsively. He hopes that this will mean Minho won’t assume anything, because even after days of thinking, he hasn’t come up with any excuses for doing this that don’t make him seem like a terrible loser, one Minho most definitely should not want to hang out with.
Minho’s question from the other day comes back to his mind, and Jisung wants to laugh. Of course, to Minho, the only impediment from getting with such a beautiful, older woman would be whether his grandmother would allow it. Jisung is yet to see Minho’s famous flirting skills in action, but he guesses that he could probably pursue anyone he set his mind on. He’s just one of those people who could do whatever they wanted if they tried.
Unlike Jisung, of course.
The bell chimes loudly as Jisung enters the shop. He takes a deep breath, tells himself to be brave, and when he looks around he finds—no one. The shop is empty, which is unthinkable for a weekday in the early afternoon.
He’s about to call out when he hears shuffling and a voice, and then Minho is springing up from behind the counter.
“Welcome to—oh, it’s just—oh.”
Minho’s face changes too many times for such a short amount of time. He goes from recognition to surprise to something Jisung can’t quite identify, and then he goes back to normal, like he’s processed all the information he needed and now he’s up to speed. He tilts his head, his smile lopsided.
“Hey, stranger,” he says.
“Hi,” Jisung says back.
For a moment that stretches thin before him, all he can do is stand there. He feels flimsy, all of a sudden, exposed to Minho’s judgment of his foolish, careless decisions. Trying to postpone the moment when his eyes inevitably have to meet Minho’s, Jisung looks pretty much everywhere, trying to find something, anything that can anchor him.
And there it is, spread open on the counter. The magazine.
His face feels hot. Oh, it’s going to be so obvious. He has always been transparent before Minho, has always been something like a drawer he can open as he pleases and pull anything out of, but this is a different level. Jisung going to these lengths, Jisung daring to go through such a change, all because of some redhead Minho was looking at.
What a loser.
He wonders if a thing like this is easy to revert. Vaguely, he recalls Felix saying that the color will probably fade out after a month’s worth of showers, but that’s much too long. If he has to feel like this every single time he sees Minho for the remainder of summer, there is not a chance in the world that he is going to make it. They’ll have to bury him like this, with artificial cherry-red hair. This is how the world will remember him. They might as well mention that model on his tombstone.
Jisung doesn’t know how long they stand there, Minho looking at him with his mouth slightly parted like his words just forgot how to come out. The shop is still as if it’s been frozen in time, not a movement, not a sound—until the bell chimes again and the door is opening behind Jisung, shoving him out of the way.
He manages to catch himself before crashing into one of the boards on display. He looks at it, winded, his eyes scanning the careful paint job in hot-pink and green. This is one of Minho’s favorite boards, the one he’s talked about buying for months and months, ever since he first got hired at the shop. Jisung has come to associate these colors with him. He can see Minho cruising down the empty coast roads, hands in his pockets because he’s never been able to grow out of that habit in the years that he’s been skating.
And Jisung would follow after him on his own board, the one Minho got for his sixteenth birthday, bright red and gorgeous. Custom-made, unique in the whole world—and Jisung’s.
The customer walks out after a few minutes, the interaction between them and Minho having gone completely unnoticed to Jisung, who was still busy catching his breath. But the scarce moments he was allowed to get himself together seem to have worked, because the next time he stands up straight and finds Minho’s eyes, he doesn’t waver.
“Hi,” he says again. It still sounds a little silly. He lets it pass.
Minho smiles. “Hi yourself. Busy weekend?”
Jisung walks up to the counter as Minho finishes working some bills into the register. He takes a look at the things on display; pins and patches with the shop’s logo, the little skateboard with a lighting bolt that he has long since committed to memory.
Everything is exactly as it was the last time Jisung was here, exactly as it was all the other times he’s been here. He uses this—the fact that the Earth has not split in half after his weekend—to fuel his fake confidence, and as Minho continues to work he prompts himself up and jumps on the counter, sitting in one swift movement and letting his legs sway where they hover a few inches over the floor.
He lets himself sit quietly by Minho as he works. Just as they’ve always done.
The purr of the old, direly-in-need-of-repair air conditioning system fills the silence. It does the job; outside it’s hot and sticky, the summer humidity unforgiving and relentless, but here, it’s nice. The air feels breathable. Jisung lets his eyes close for a moment, letting himself calm all the way down.
This is Minho, after all. Jisung could have walked in with his hair green, or blue, or completely shaved off, and it still would have been fine, because this is just Minho.
Just Minho, he says to himself, and lets that fill him with something like peace.
He thinks that if Felix was here, he would laugh. He would wiggle his eyebrows in that way that makes his face look weird, he would poke at his ribs and say things Jisung doesn’t understand, things he doesn’t want to understand.
But Felix isn’t here. It’s just—
“Alright, that’s that,” Minho says, finally pushing the register closed. He leans forward on the register and Jisung swings his legs to the other side, facing him. And Minho is grinning. “New look, eh?”
Jisung shrugs.
Minho looks at him for a moment longer; at his hair, yes, but also his face. Jisung lets him, like he always does. He doesn’t choke under Minho’s examining eyes, but he does feel himself heat up. He sits very still until Minho deems his inspection over.
“I like it,” he decides.
Jisung lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and Minho laughs, elbows him.
“What, did you think I was going to say something horrible? You think so lowly of your hyung,” he says, fake-lamenting, but his smile remains. Jisung smiles back. He doesn’t know how not to.
“No, no. I’m just glad you like it,” he says. Then, quieter, “That you don’t, like, think it’s dumb or something. It was pretty spur-of-the-moment. The ahjumma at the drugstore gave me the stink eye, and I think my mom is still coming down from a heart attack.”
Minho hums.
“Well, I like it.”
Jisung says, “Good.”
And Minho says, “Good.”
The sunlight glares in through the windows of the shop and reflects against the glossy cover of the magazine, catching Jisung’s attention. He looks at it, squints. Minho sure must like this girl if he’s kept this issue instead of running out to buy the newest one like he does every monday morning.
Maybe it’s not the red hair at all. Maybe he’s actually—“Hyung,” Jisung says.
Turning away from whatever spreadsheet he was scribbling numbers into (Jisung has actually not the slightest idea how Minho manages to run this shop essentially by himself; the owner is rarely there, mostly just on weekends, so to Jisung he’s more of an urban legend), Minho looks up, eyes finding Jisung, then following his gaze all the way down to the magazine.
If Jisung thinks he catches Minho turning red, he doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t think he could.
“Oh.” Minho laughs, shy, bringing one hand up to tug at his ear. “You know, things were a little boring ‘round here without you bothering me.”
Jisung pouts. Minho doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes still on the magazine as he leans closer and grabs it, skimming through it. He’s flushed all over. Jisung would find it endearing if he wasn’t so busy trying to get rid of the sudden, uncomfortable pressure on his chest.
“Luckily I had this,” Minho says, finally stopping at a page. “You know, I kept thinking about it. Looking at it. Man, I’d look so cool, don’t you think, Sung-ah? But it’s a shame. Grandma would never let me ride one of these things.”
Minho sighs, looking at the picture before him—the one of the red-haired model on the motorbike. And Jisung can only look at him, blinking once, blinking twice.
Wait. What?
“Hyung,” Jisung says again, maybe because that’s one of the few words he still knows how to say. He opens his mouth once, twice, and on the third time a sentence comes out. “You’re—you want the bike?”
“What are you talking about,” Minho says, almost mumbles, gaze still lost on the magazine. He looks up, clearly not following. “Of course I want the bike. Have you seen it? Have you—”
Jisung dodges Minho’s arms as they shove the magazine forward, the pages facing his way. He hadn’t actually looked at the motorcycle. It hadn’t even caught his eye. But with the way Minho is looking at him, a little frantic—he wonders how he missed it. Of course, that’s what Minho was looking at. There are very few things in the world Minho believes to be as cool as motorcycles.
He wasn’t looking at the model. He wasn’t looking at the red hair.
Oh, no.
“What’s wrong with you,” Minho asks, bringing the magazine close to his chest and cradling it carefully. Jisung wonders if he even notices he’s doing that, but Minho is far too busy looking at him like he’s crazy. “Did you hit your head on the way here? What’d you even think I was talking about, the other day?”
Jisung is so, so stupid.
“Nothing,” he shrugs.
It’s no use. Minho has barged right into his space, looking at him closely.
“You’re being weird,” he says. Jisung laughs, bright and nervous.
“You’re weird,” he says back, eloquently. He tries to push Minho away, but he stands his ground. He’s not going to budge, not going to leave Jisung be until he gives him something, not now that he’s realized there’s something for Jisung to give. “I thought—I don’t know. Please, just drop it.”
Jisung’s eyes are anchored on the magazine, still pressed against Minho’s chest. Minho brings it to his eye level to scan it again, like he will find the answers there.
It seems that he does, because a few moments later he lowers the magazine slowly, and he’s looking at Jisung strangely. He smiles, but it looks strange. Like there’s something else blending with the amusement, something Jisung can’t decode while he’s busy thinking of ways he can die spontaneously.
“Han Jisung,” Minho says, each syllable pointed. “Did you think I was looking at her?”
“No—I mean, you could’ve! Guys at school do that all the time. And you like all the same things they do, so, you know, it’s not like it would’ve been weird. When you asked if you could pull it off I thought—I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, just—ugh.”
He brings his hands up to his face. He’s had enough of this conversation. He’s hit his limit for the day, and he would very much like for none of this to have ever happened; the misunderstanding, the magazine, the hair. Jisung doesn’t think he’s ever been this embarrassed.
For a long beat, silence is the only response to his rambling. But then Jisung senses movement, something that sounds like Minho finally putting the magazine down before he’s back in Jisung’s proximity.
Two hands grab his and move them down, away from his face. Minho’s eyes are glimmering the way they do when he’s thought of a good joke, one he thinks Jisung will like.
What he says doesn’t sound like a joke at all. It sounds sincere. Frail.
“I don’t like all the same things they do,” Minho says.
He looks at Jisung for a moment longer, then away, and he doesn’t meet his eyes again.
Jisung wants to ask, wants to get Minho to explain. He does that, sometimes; he says things in a language Jisung doesn’t understand, like he doesn’t know that Jisung won’t understand, like he expects them to always be on the same page. Jisung hates it when they aren’t.
Before he can say anything, however, the familiar sound of the door opening bursts right through the delicate bubble around them, and Minho steps back, shakes his head like he’s ridding himself of the conversation.
And as he puts on his best, brightest professional smile, Jisung can only look at him, turning Minho’s words over and over in his head, letting the tightness of his chest be replaced by something warm.