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In his dreams, he’s kissing Hao. Over and over again.
Some nights Hao is a stranger.
They meet in an empty park where Yujin is playing hooky, kicking a soccer ball around idly with his scuffed-up school shoes, counting down the minutes until someone figures out he’s missing and starts to get mad.
Can you help me, a boy looking to be around his age with unkempt brown hair and a hoodie too big for his skinny frame asks him, and Yujin follows with nothing better to do, gets in an unfamiliar car like his mom told him to never do, and drives to an unfamiliar part of the city.
You need to count these frogs, the boy tells him when they arrive at their destination, an uncannily nondescript plain office building. The room is stark and empty save for two big plastic buckets, scuffed up and caked with mud along the bottom edges. Everyone else is too scared. We needed you.
So Yujin plunges his hands into the first bucket, tens upon tens of slippery pond frogs wiggling to escape his grasp as he carries them one by one into the second bucket, except he’s not keeping count—they all look the same, and they keep hopping away before he can tally them up, and the numbers aren’t making sense in his head anyway, and the boy is so warm behind him it seems to numb his brain, clinging to the back of Yujin’s uniform vest, thanking him for being so brave and for trusting so blindly.
What school do you go to?
Just Hongcheon High, Yujin says, but I don’t like studying.
You could come work for me instead of going to school.
That sounds really, really nice. If Yujin could forget about grades and homework and girls lining up to ask him for his Instagram at lunchtime, if he had enough time to ask the boy a million and one questions about who he was and where they were and what any of this is, if he could feel this boy’s hands around his waist like this every day. Can I do that?
I’ve been waiting for you, the boy says, entering Yujin’s orbit, making him tingle all over, putting his lips to Yujin’s so gently they might not have even touched, and for once, Yujin doesn’t act like the frogs and slip away.
Some nights Yujin is a lonely princess locked up in a tower, waiting and waiting and waiting.
He’s a princess, a girl, but still himself when he peers into the mirror—Han Yujin, short ginger-brunette-dyed idol hair, soft baby powder earlobes, puffy philtrum, dimples in the corners of his mouth that only appear when he’s really trying. In all honesty, he never used to think he was particularly good-looking until everyone around him started telling him that was the greatest gift he had.
You’re beautiful, all these princes say over the phone that sits on his bedside table, one of those with the twirly cord and real buttons and honeycombs of tiny holes at both ends, something he miraculously knows how to use in this dream despite barely remembering if he’s ever even touched one in real life. Let me be the one to rescue you.
But none of them ever follow up on their promise. Yujin isn’t sure if he needs rescuing or if he just needs a friend. After all, the tower is quiet and peaceful, with food and water and pretty clothes and a big soft bed with every plushy he’s ever wanted squished together to fit on the blanket. And a pet frog in a terrarium—his Haohao—that listens to his occasional rambling even if it can’t understand a word he says.
He picks up Haohao and places it on his bed, and it tracks slime across his duvet.
Did you know you’re my only friend? he asks.
Yes, Haohao croaks. The logic in the dream shifts and Yujin pays it no attention.
Could you tell me how to get out of here?
I know how. Ribbit. But I can’t grip the door handle with these. He holds up a sticky webbed foot. Yujin looks down at his own hands, and they’re flat, featureless mittens.
If you’re really a princess, you can try kissing me.
Yujin has nothing to lose. He squeezes his eyes shut and pecks Haohao on his fat frog lips, and then all of a sudden Zhang Hao from ZB1 is kissing him on his tiny dorm room bed, breathing hot down his throat and sliding hands up his thighs while poor Charmander and Yunini are unwillingly subjected to being voyeurs.
Hey, that’s weird, Hao murmurs, it worked.
Some nights there’s no beginning and no end—
—just the two of them running as fast as their legs will carry them, clutching each other’s hands so tightly their knuckles turn white while brick and plaster collapse around them, shoving dust deep into their lungs with every ragged breath. Hao pulls Yujin along like a ragdoll when his legs give out and he’s stumbling over himself to keep up.
Only Hao knows the way out of this place where the bizarrely identical rooms and hallways connect endlessly in ways that should be physically impossible—or at least Yujin assumes Hao knows, because he’s been following Hao as long as he can remember.
Something in the distance falls with a deafening thud and the ground heaves beneath them, throwing both Yujin and Hao to their knees.
Help, Yujin chokes out, suddenly crying, his tears carving wet streaks down his dirty cheeks. He can’t move, all his limbs are so excruciatingly heavy all of a sudden, and another thud shudders through the earth, and another, getting louder and louder and closer and closer until—
Ribbit, a deep voice booms from everywhere.
Hao’s hand stretches out to him across the rocks and dust, and he clutches on for dear life as they’re enveloped in shadow by a monstrous two-storey-tall frog looming menacingly over them.
Is this it? he whispers, trembling, and Hao squeezes his hand harder.
I don’t know.
I love you.
I love you too. If this is it, at least we never have to live apart.
I don’t think I could, and he kisses Hao against the crumbling earth, and it tastes like salt and dirt and decomposing leaves.
But of course, none of these Haos are really Hao.
The real Hao rubs the gunk from his eyes and boils himself a kettle while he massages the morning bloat out of his cheeks with some jade thingy he keeps telling Yujin he’s so jealous Yujin doesn’t have to use. He makes a dumb pouty face at Yujin when the youngest slinks into the kitchen for breakfast.
“Sleep okay? Want some hot chocolate?”
“Mm.”
Hao growls playfully at the non-response. “No grumpy. We’re flying today.”
Flying. Slow blink. “Where are we going again?”
“Tokyo. Sit with me.” He bonks his forehead into Yujin’s shoulder.
The dorm lights are still off, save for the oven’s overhead bulb, illuminating only as much counter as is strictly needed to prepare two mugs of different brown powders. All the soft curves and folds of Hao’s pyjamas blend into each other in the shadows and he looks like one big lumpy mass, hunched over and throwing his weight toward Yujin like he’s readying himself in case sleep tries to take him down with a blitzkrieg.
“Okay, okay,” Yujin placates his 24-year-old baby, ruffling a hand through Hao’s bedhead, “I’ll sit with you. Just don’t get sick this time.”
“I meant noooow. Sit with me. Keep hyung company.”
It’s not really ever a choice with Hao, anyway, but he takes a chair as quietly as he can and sits with his leftover pork bone soup from last last night, ice cold from the fridge, peeling back the plastic lid. Hao wrinkles his nose at the sight.
“Let me warm that up for you, Yujin-ah. It’s not gonna taste good cold.”
“I don’t mind,” he mumbles, already tipping the bowl up to his mouth.
Hao is right, because Hao is usually right—it tastes like shit and feels like a mouthful of soup-flavoured konjac jelly—but the only things he can think of saying to the person in front of him right now are I love you and if we die right now, at least we never have to live apart. He fills his mouth so he doesn’t accidentally say something he’ll regret. Because he’s still sleepy, like he has been this whole year and every year since he started training, and because just a couple minutes ago he was confessing his love to Hao and feeling Hao’s lips against his own. And now here Real Hao is in their stupid cramped kitchen, a lopsided silhouette with barely 3 hours of sleep in his body stirring the wrong mug while pushing his own cutesy Cinnamoroll one across the table to Yujin.
“Ah! Don’t drink that! It’s coffee!”
“Maybe I should start,” Yujin remarks offhand, wiping away the coffee droplets that splashed all over his hand when Hao snatched the mug back too quickly. Maybe it’d get everyone to treat him like less of a kid, if he could stomach something bitter for no reason other than to prove he can, and pretend to like how it floods his mouth with the taste of burnt soil and sends waves of acid splashing up his esophagus. “Can I try a sip?”
Hao furrows his brow. “You’re acting so weird. And no, you’re gonna spit it back into the mug and pretend nothing happened and then I’m gonna drink that.”
INDIRECT KISS?!?!?! screams the crazy guy in Yujin’s brain that he usually gets his other, more reasonable brain guys to beat the shit out of at times like this. Fortunately he can at least keep his facial expression perfectly still.
“Why are you so red all of a sudden. Yujin, is everything okay? Did you not get enough sleep? Did you have a bad dream?” Hao reaches out across the table, takes Yujin’s cold hand in his. “Talk to me.”
His tone is gentle, not teasing, and so deeply caring and nagging that Yujin has to struggle to not conjure up images of his mom.
“...It was kind of a bad dream. More like a weird dream. There was this old building that was getting attacked by a giant frog and I had to escape really fast... you were there too, hyung.”
“Yeah?” Hao snorts. “If we’re lucky that’ll be the Wakeone building.” He strokes his thumb against Yujin’s bony knuckles, softly, like he’s petting a small animal. Maybe Yujin’s body is feeling like this because of all the dreams—it could be that, but Yujin’s felt like he could solve all his worldly problems by melting into Hao-hyung for much longer than these dreams have been going on.
But when his problem is Hao, then...?
“You were there, and... um...”
“Was I chasing you with a big rusty knife? And blood dripping out of my eye sockets?”
Yujin swallows. He can’t tell the truth or he’ll have to jump off a cliff before he looks Hao in the eyes again, never mind get on an enclosed plane with him. But at the same time, it’s not like he’s actually in love with Hao in real life—obviously—so it’s not like Hao will start thinking weird things about Yujin based on just his dreams. Hao is rational and smart and understands him so, so well.
And it’s dead quiet. The day hasn’t started for real yet—maybe whatever he says now won’t count, like The Purge.
He scoots his chair over close enough for him to bury his face in Hao’s pyjama hoodie and muffle whatever words end up coming out next.
“It’s weird.”
“Mmhm.” Something soft and warm envelops Yujin’s head. He’s nudging Yujin, the same way he got Yujin to open up to him in the first place, slowly, back when Yujin barely spoke to anyone at the company. “We all have weird dreams.”
“It was weird because you were. We were. A couple. Or something like that. It was one of those kind of weird dreams.”
“Aaah.” Hao makes a sound of understanding. “I must have been a pretty shitty dream boyfriend for you to be this distraught over it. I mean, I don’t take responsibility for whatever he did. That’s on your subconscious.”
He pauses, waiting to see if Yujin wants him to keep talking.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I promise, no matter what it is, I won’t think you’re weird for it. Dreams are just like that—sometimes they show us shit our brains would never approve of. I can’t even tell you how many times during the show I dreamt about, like, sleeping with the master-nims and staff so they’d rig the voting for me. And I’ve dreamt about killing people. Like just taking out a baseball bat at a fansign and going crazy. Let’s see, what else... ah, one time I dreamt that I was in a long-term relationship with that guy who does the camerawork for our variety shows—the ugly one, not even the kinda cute younger guy. And the world didn’t approve of our love so we eloped in Finland and I lived off royalty checks for the rest of my life. Do you want me to keep going, because they get a lot worse.”
Yujin laughs into Hao’s sweater. “I guess mine wasn’t as bad as that.”
“See, hyung knows. It’s easy to feel crazy until you realize everyone else is crazy too.”
On the plane, Yujin dreams again.
This time, he’s the frog, and Hao is the princess, dressed in a soft pink slip with lace-kissed edges, doing his makeup in the mirror, humming some classical tune Yujin wishes he was sophisticated enough to recognize. But they’re not in a tower or a castle or faraway land, they’re at Yujin’s house in Yongin, sitting on the floor of his bedroom, and Hao isn’t really a princess, he just looks more beautiful than any other boy—or girl, for that matter—Yujin’s ever seen in his seventeen years on Earth.
What are you gonna do to me? Yujin hears himself croak out, and when Hao turns around, his slip rides up his thighs in a way that makes Yujin wish a frog’s eyes were a little freaking smaller and more discreet.
I’ll probably kill you, Hao suggests loftily. You are a pest, after all . And then turns back to the vanity mirror to continue blending his contour like he didn’t just imply Yujin doesn’t deserve to live.
By the way, if you have any setting powder in here, that’d be great.
No... I didn’t do my makeup. Before this.
What, before you became a frog? I thought you’d always been like that.
No, don’t you... Yujin trails off. Doesn’t Hao remember? They used to go to school together, or maybe they were neighbours—it’s all fuzzy dream-fabricated memories—but they’ve known each other so long, this Yujin and this Hao. Yujin remembers growing up with Hao, chasing each other through the fields behind their subdivision, listening to him practice violin for hours and then dressing up in stuffy button-downs and ties to go watch his recitals. He remembers playing ridiculous losing games of Jenga with Hao and falling over themselves laughing when the tower collapsed, he remembers late nights in his living room fighting sleep while Hao tutored him through endless pages of procrastinated math homework, he remembers holding each other through Hao’s teary first breakup and deciding he would probably be capable of murder if he ever happened to meet that guy in a dark alley.
Don’t you remember me? croaks Yujin, and suddenly feels very sad about it. Like he wants to scream at Hao to recognize him and pick him up with Hao’s big soft hands and hold him until he has no tears left to cry.
Don’t you remember? We kissed, something makes him say, and it breaks through the final gate in his mind, flooding down images of him and Hao out of breath from running, fingers interlocked as Hao pulls them against a tree so they’re chest to chest, face to face, something intoxicating in Hao’s gaze, bumping noses and closing eyes before their lips meet so naturally it’s like they’ve done it a million times. He remembers kissing until his mouth was numb, soaking up every little breathy sound he could pull out of Hao, pretending he had magic powers that could make time stop so the two of them could stay like this forever and nobody could tell Yujin not to want his hyung so bad it makes buildings collapse and frogs rain down from the sky.
Then it stops, and all he can remember is sprigs of dry grass in his mouth—bruises on his legs—and a mega close up view of Hao’s sneakers.
God, kiss a frog? Doesn’t sound like something I’d do. I think you have me confused with someone else. Hao grimaces, as if even imagining the slimy, disease-ridden lips of an amphibian has him sick to his stomach.
Who are you? Yujin asks.
Hao turns to look at him again, this time with a distinct, peppery malice. Who are you ?
When Yujin’s bleary eyes blink open, he’s watching Love Next Door. Or, rather, Hao is watching Love Next Door and his phone screen happens to be right in front of Yujin, snuggled against Hao’s shoulder, his hoodie bundled up into a makeshift pillow.
“Who am I,” he mumbles through a yawn and stretch, and it makes Hao pluck his airpods out and tap pause on the screen.
“Sorry?”
“Who am I.”
“Aw... sounds like you had a good nap, baby?” Hao smiles and cups a hand around Yujin’s cheek where it’s pink and imprinted with fabric creases, smoothing out the proof of his sleep with one gentle touch. “My Yujinie.” (My—not just Yujin—my Yujin. That’s who he is.)
“S’ok,” he replies. “How much longer?”
“About a half hour. Close your eyes again if you’re still tired.”
Hao puts one airpod back in—right ear, so he can still hear Yujin—and resumes his drama.
“Hao-hyung,” Yujin interrupts.
“Uh-huh?”
“What would you do if I became a frog?”
“Mm... I’d probably cook you up nice in some wine and eat you for dinner.”
The loud whirring of the plane engine is like a buffer between them and silence. If Yujin doesn’t say anything, Hao’s words will just bounce off the white noise instead. If he goes back to sleep now, he’ll never have to reply, and a random question can just be a random question.
Hao holds a finger under Yujin’s nose; it’s a stupid habit between them, like he’s making sure Yujin’s still alive and breathing.
“I used to like catching frogs when I was little,” Yujin says with his eyes still closed. “I’ve never eaten one. But I heard they taste like chicken.”
“They taste like frogs,” Hao says, matter-of-factly. “When we get home I’ll take you out for some. I think you’d like it, you have such a good palate.”
“What if I became a frog that needed a kiss to turn back into a human. Would you do it?”
“ Kiss a live frog?” Hao laughs and sticks his tongue out. “Ew, gross. But if I had to do it to rescue you, I might. Depends on what you’d promise to treat me to after.”
“Boiled frog. No, one hundred durians.”
“Then I’d kiss absolutely anything .”