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3:42
“I feel like we’re in Victorian era England.” Yeonjun can see the empty look that Soobin stares at him with for a few moments even in the dim light, and understands that he doesn’t particularly appreciate his comment. He doesn’t even know what he intended to achieve with this, he wasn’t even trying to be funny, it was just the first thing that came to his mind, so he said it.
He actually prefers to listen to his own voice rather than the thunder, which occurs every two to five seconds, and which woke Soobin up at half past three in the morning, and he couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. Yeonjun honestly feels like he could fall asleep standing, and there’s actually nothing stopping him from going back to their bedroom (they share a bed; they say a two room apartment with one bed was cheaper than having their own rooms) and zonking out in a matter of seconds, but his conscience; the fact that he knows Soobin straight up hates thunderstorms, he’s scared of them, and Yeonjun would feel like the worst person in the world if he’d let him sit here on their tiny, stone hard sofa in the small living room, his arms crossed, staring at his knees in complete silence, while the candles that they lit as sources of light after the power went out, flicker around him.
“Why don’t we use our phones as flashlights by the way?” Yeonjun asks the question that has been bothering him since they started lighting the candles, but Soobin doesn’t even look at him this time. He sits down by his side, and due to the lack of space, their thighs rub up against each other through their pyjama pants.
Compared to the drought last year, this is way preferable, but this comes with pretty much no days without rain since January, especially since it’s been Spring. Soobin doesn’t take this very well, especially on nights like these.
“Should I make some tea?” Yeonjun asks softly, to which Soobin feebly nods a few times. Yeonjun knows he’s also tired, and he really hopes the storm will stop soon because neither of them is sleeping until then. Soobin gets off the sofa with a big jump in the same moment as Yeonjun stands up, following a big flash, and great noise right after. He follows tightly behind Yeonjun into the kitchen.
They just stare at each other as they wait for the water to boil in the saucepan – they never had money for a kettle –, Yeonjun in front of the stove, and Soobin leaned against their dining table, which is originally a small, plastic garden table.
They rented the apartment furnished, but following an unfortunate incident, Beomgyu and Kai fell onto their old dining table – which actually was one – and successfully broke it in two.
Soobin looks out the window hopefully, looking for signs that he might be able to go back to sleep soon, but, as if on cue, it just starts raining harder, then even lightning strikes, way too close to their apartment, and he instinctively covers his ears to the following rumble.
Meanwhile, Yeonjun has poured some of the steaming, boiling water into cups, and put the bags of mint flavored tea into them. He holds one out towards Soobin, and their skin touches for a nanosecond, as he takes the one meant for him.
“I hate thunderstorms.”
“I know.”
Yeonjun is tired.
22:34
The flat is full of the smell and smoke of cigarettes; if somebody set foot in there, they would probably suffocate on the spot, or at the very least get an unbearable coughing fit, but Soobin and Yeonjun don’t seem to be bothered. The light of the TV is glinting on two empty cigarette boxes on the TV stand, also lighting their faces, a third cigarette box is resting on Yeonjun’s thigh with the support of his big hand, but that one is also bound to become empty pretty soon.
The frames of Money Heist are flashing on the screen, the second season, to be exact. They watched the first episode months ago and haven’t been able to continue watching since. When they realized that Saturday is free for both of them, they decided on the plans unanimously.
They often can’t speak to each other for days because they both have classes, or are studying, or working, or have some kind of similar plan, and when they’re free from time to time and decide on spending time together, smoking like they’re being paid for it is a crucial part of that; as if that’s how they wanted to make up for all the cigarettes they didn’t have time to smoke over the years.
Soobin is holding the cigarette in his right hand, just not above the armrest, but the old, worn-out wooden floor.
Yeonjun carefully tips the box, a few cigarettes slide further out of it, and his hand finds comfort on Soobin’s thigh. He doesn’t react.
It’s after around the fifth or sixth box that they get bored of the show, they finally opened a window but it’s not much help, especially with Yeonjun sitting on the sill. They can hear the deafening noise of the city, the cool, early July wind is beating at his back, ruffling the hem of his Moomin pyjama shirt, exposing his naked back.
“Get out of the window and come to bed!” Soobin leans on his arm on the mattress, the blanket pulled up to his neck.
Yeonjun stares at him for a few seconds, then pushes himself off the ledge and lies down next to Soobin. He puts an arm around his waist almost instinctively.
00:07
The door opens with a creak, and slams shut loudly. Yeonjun flinches; that’s not exactly how he planned that.
He’s navigating in the flat with quiet, soft steps, being careful not to make too much noise from now on. He gets to their bedroom with only about five steps, and reaches to grab the handle when the door opens, revealing Soobin.
“Did I wake you?” he whispers, but Soobin just rubs his eye sleepily while shaking his head.
Yeonjun reeks of a strong musky smell, and in the weak light of the bedside lamp, Soobin notices the hickeys on his neck, drawing conclusions very easily from these two, seemingly minute things, even half-asleep.
“Do you have a new boyfriend?” he asks in a monotone, raspy voice, testing his hypothesis, though he already knows the answer.
“He’s not. But he might be, in the future. I haven’t decided yet. But if I had a new boyfriend, you would know,” he adds, and then they stand facing each other for seconds, not saying anything up until Soobin does:
“Will you let me go pee now?”
“Sure, sorry.” Yeonjun stands out of the way, giving him space to pass, and watches as Soobin walks into their almost microscopic bathroom.
20:34
Soobin has been planning to dispose of some of his old things for months now, but neither was he in the mood to, nor did he have the time; but now he’s looking through the contents of a very distressed shoebox, ranging from ancient jewelry to expired perfumes. He discovers a photograph; it’s not even that old.
Soobin and Yeonjun definitely look younger in it, less tired too.
Soobin is clutching at the picture, taking a careful look at it. A bunch of familiar faces that don’t mean anything to him anymore. They’re all wearing their black uniforms, their hair a similar color, except the two of them.
Yeonjun’s hair was pink at the time.
Soobin still remembers the day he saw Yeonjun walk into the classroom with his long, pink hair and inordinately worn uniform, as he strode jauntily to his desk, dropping his backpack carelessly, then himself too, in the second column from the door, in the first row of seats, where Soobin could get a perfect look at him.
He was like, the coolest person ever to quiet top student Soobin.
He didn’t dare speak to him for a long time; he couldn’t even stand next to him. His knees were always shaking, so much so that he thought he would collapse, so he decided to stand further away.
“Teach me!” That was the first thing Soobin mustered up the courage to tell him after two months of going to school.
“Teach you what?” Yeonjun frowned with his nicely shaped eyebrows. Soobin remembers that he was eating a sandwich, and there was mayo in the corner of his mouth.
“How to be like you.”
He said to meet him after school, and after thirty minutes of waiting, Soobin started to suspect that he had been stood up.
Yeonjun eventually arrived in his usual easygoing manner, pushing a bike by his side. Soobin jumped up from the stairs of the school where he had been sitting and opened his mouth to cuss Yeonjun out, but he didn’t even get the chance to speak. Yeonjun told him to “put his little butt” on the carrier rack. Soobin obeyed, partially because he was still a bit scared of Yeonjun, and he wasn’t sure he could say no, even if he wanted to. He didn’t understand what had possessed him just now that he wanted to swear at him, maybe it was better that he had been stopped.
“How far are we?” The bars were pressing into Soobin’s butt, and he was honestly getting bored of biking, on the other hand though, Yeonjun had a pleasant smell and his arms fit just right around his waist, so he accepted that as compensation and didn’t whine.
“Not far.”
They didn’t speak to each other after that.
Soobin was a bit disappointed when they had reached their destination.
“A clearing on the edge of the city?” he turned to Yeonjun, confused, who just shrugged.
“I didn’t know what you meant by teaching you how to be like me. But then I realized I don’t even know what I was supposed to work with. I don’t know who you are. So now we have the chance to get to know each other, without any distractions.”
Soobin gazed at the grass, the distant trees, the dark sky spreading behind them. He didn’t know what to make of the situation, and he was expecting a different “date spot” from a guy like Yeonjun, but thinking about it, he was glad he hadn’t taken him to some party that reeked from weed.
It was only at midnight that they decided to go home. Soobin was at the handles on the way back, Yeonjun laying his head in the crook of his neck half-asleep, and Soobin would have thought he had dozed off if not for him giggling from time to time.
It was one of the best days of Soobin’s life, but he can’t recall the details: only Yeonjun’s laugh becoming one with his, torturing that poor bike to death with all kinds of idiotic tricks they had come up with, the heart-shaped blister on Yeonjun’s palm, his wrist that the few mosquitoes that still remained kept biting, which caused him to not want to navigate the bike back home, both of their sweat dripping from the handlebars.
Soobin spent his fourteenth birthday in Yeonjun’s huge bathroom. Soobin found it very amusing how Yeonjun applied the bleach on his hair all over-nicety, then they went to the kitchen where Yeonjun devoured an entire box of mint chocolate, but Soobin didn’t want any.
“I’m gay.”
They didn’t know what led up to this, but Soobin just nodded and honestly, he wasn’t surprised.
A few years later he found out that he was the first person Yeonjun told.
It was time to wash off the bleach.
On Monday, Soobin went to school with his hair blue.
His parents weren’t exactly thrilled, and he got some weird looks in the hallways which made him quite uncomfortable. When he set foot in the classroom, Yeonjun was already there. He smiled at Soobin smugly, and he felt as if all his doubts regarding his hair had never even existed.
Taking the class photo took longer than it should have. Yeonjun was fighting tooth and nail to sit beside Soobin and put an arm around his shoulder while the photo was being taken. Their homeroom teacher then agreed to have a picture like this taken, if they sat normally afterwards.
Yeonjun was embracing him firmly, Soobin still remembers vividly. It was their first hug. He pulled him closer. The photographer pushed the button.
Soobin giggles. He puts the picture back.
06:04
Soobin stopped counting how many boxes of cigarettes he has smoked in the kitchen, the spate of smoke doesn’t bother him either.
He’s waiting. He’s been waiting for hours.
He glances at the tiny window with the curtains drawn. The yellow light of the rising Sun is shining through, it’s a bit like it was burning. He glances at the clock on the wall, it says six hours eleven minutes, but Soobin knows it’s seven minutes fast. It has been this way since they moved in, but neither of them was ever in the mood to make it right.
Yeonjun is partying. Actually, probably not anymore, he’s most likely lying under some guy, or was lying and is now resting, he might already be on his way home, but that is the least likely.
The cigarette butts are towering up in the ashtray, some have already fallen from the top, Soobin coughs and the door opens.
He stumps the half-smoked cigarette in the blink of an eye, he doesn’t even bother with putting it where it belongs, it won’t stay there anyway, he jumps from the chair and with only two steps, he’s standing in the living room. Yeonjun’s hair is messy, tangled, his eyes glassy. His movements are shaky and uncoordinated, his clothes disheveled. He’s obviously not thirsty anymore.
“Let some air in.” That’s all he says, and Soobin watches as he goes into their bedroom with unsteady steps.
19:56
Yeonjun starts waving excitedly with a big smile as he sees Soobin get off the train. Soobin hurries towards him grinning, he jumps in his arms, and though he was only away for a day, they greet each other like lovers meeting for the first time after a war. Yeonjun would ask how the trip went, but there wouldn’t really be a point. He used to always ask, and Soobin used to give the exact same answer. This short conversation has been substituted by all-knowing looks and gentle touches which are just as meaningful and substantial.
They don’t talk on the way home. They don’t say anything to each other a lot of the time, and that’s the way it should be. They don’t always have to be talking, and after having spent almost a decade together, they understand each other perfectly from the most delicate nods, the most unnoticeable eye rolls, the vaguest hand movements.
The rest of the evening goes pleasantly, too pleasantly, which is nice, and they don’t know what the incentive was, maybe Soobin dropping his mug, which didn’t break because it’s made of plastic but he got tea everywhere, or Yeonjun doing the dishes too loudly, or that the TV is on when no one is watching it, but the relaxed atmosphere became unbearably strained in a split second.
“I leave for one day, every week at that and you can’t take care of yourself?!” Soobin’s deep voice demanding authority basically rips through the apartment, right to Yeonjun’s ear, currently angry at him because he forgot to vacuum the floor. That’s like the fiftieth thing that's bothering him this evening.
“Okay, well fuck me for not keeping in mind every single little fucking thing you say! Besides, if you hadn’t left, you could have easily done it yourself, just saying.”
“You know damn well I’m visiting mom!”
“I don’t know why you don’t send her to an institute already,” he replies immediately without thinking, which makes Soobin go silent, he can’t find his voice for seconds after that. They’ve argued before, not even only once or twice, they had nights like these too, since both of them are very tense all the time so it’s inevitable that they sometimes take it out on each other; they’re at arm's distance after all. They’ve said inconsiderate things to each other that weren’t nice to hear, but there were boundaries to everything, and Yeonjun just crossed all of them.
“You can’t be serious.” Soobin is in disbelief, disappointed, and though he manages to utter this sentence with great effort, his voice is weak, completely different from a second ago.
“Yes, I can, it would be better for everyone, including her!”
“Are you out of your mind?!” He finally manages to raise his voice, but he doesn’t feel like he can adequately express his frustration. He would like to scream, from the top of his lungs, he doesn’t even care if the neighbors will scold them, but he holds back. He doesn’t want to lose his head. “It’s my mom we’re talking about! Would you do the same to your mom in a similar situation?!”
“No hesitation!” he answers quickly, carelessly dropping the plate in his hand into the water, smacking the edge of the sink. Lukewarm spots form on his shirt, but currently, he has bigger things to worry about. He doesn’t even notice. “She didn’t think twice about removing me from her will! From her life !” Soobin clenches his jaw and swallows.
“Of course, nothing ever matters to you!”
“Look, I just don’t understand why she’s only your responsibility. How old is your sister?”
“Thirty-two,” he musters, much more calmly, quietly, faintly.
“And your brother?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“See?” he exclaims, in a sort of “what did I tell you?” tone. “And why can’t they help then? Is she not their mother too? Do you think it’s fair for their college student brother to do everything?” Soobin doesn’t answer. “I don’t understand why you can’t make sacrifices for yourself.”
“I’ve done nothing my entire life but make sacrifices!”
“Exactly, and how many of those made life better for you? How many of those made you happier?” Again, Soobin can’t find the inclination to answer. Why does Yeonjun have to ask him such hard questions? “You have to make hard choices sometimes to be happy.
“Your sister’s wedding too! Don’t you remember how excited you were? And how depressed you became when they kept postponing it? I often started thinking it’s you marrying, not her. Do you really want to miss out on it?” Soobin fails to make sound again, and eventually turns his back to Yeonjun. If he has to keep on with this discussion, tears are going to fall.
“Go away!” he orders. His voice is already shaky.
“Where?”
“I don’t know! I don’t care! Just don’t be here!” Yeonjun stands in one place, he takes a deep, slow breath staring at Soobin’s back. He takes off towards their bedroom abruptly, grabs a backpack and starts throwing clothes into it at lightning speed, he doesn’t even check whose. His next destination is the bathroom.
“Goodbye,” he stands in the living room, toothbrush in hand. Soobin is sitting in the kitchen at the dining table, fiddling with his hands, but he doesn’t look at him, he doesn’t even say his goodbyes.
Yeonjun slams the door with such strength that it’s a miracle it doesn’t fall out of its frame.
Soobin flinches, and that’s his breaking point.
He considers it infinitely pathetic that Choi Yeonjun can make him cry.
Yeonjun moves through the hallway at double-time, he takes the stairs two steps at a time, he almost falls on his face a few times, but he doesn’t even care about that. He just wants to get out of here as fast as he can. (He can’t use the elevator, it hasn’t worked for a single day ever since they moved in. They’ve heard scary stories from their neighbors that say somebody was murdered in it. These were quite reassuring when they heard them for the first time, especially paired with the tale of the previous resident of their apartment who apparently killed himself, and the hallway smelled like death for weeks before somebody called the police.)
He slows down a bit on the landings while he’s trying to find the phone number in his contacts, but it rings out, it always rings out, and he’s constantly muttering curse words to himself, then in the very moment he steps out of the reception, he finally, finally picks up.
○
“You’re such a primitive fuckhead!” Beomgyu expresses his opinion in this incredibly sophisticated, short but poignant sentence after Yeonjun explains the situation to him.
Yeonjun feels like he’s ought to defend himself, and he opens his mouth to speak, he’ll tell Beomgyu where to get off, he’s at least good at this if nothing else, but he’s simply incapable of speaking. Maybe he knows there isn’t a point. What’s another dent in his pride?
“You’re lucky I’m too generous for my own good, otherwise you can be sure I would defenestrate you like you’ve never been! I don’t understand how Soobin could put up with you for so long.” Yeonjun is only half-listening to his scolding. He peers behind Beomgyu, that way he can see into the kitchen. Taehyun is cooking, some kind of meat judging from the smell, then he talks to someone behind him, he’s asking something, Yeonjun doesn’t understand what, but he recognizes the voice answering as Huening Kai.
When Taehyun and Beomgyu started sharing a bed, they decided it was more practical to get a new flatmate rather than having an empty room or moving out; So Huening Kai, who, similarly to Taehyun was in his first year, and who was looking for a place to stay after getting kicked out of his dorm – for reasons undisclosed –, came right in handy.
And that’s the story of how Taehyun and Beomgyu got the privilege of listening to how Huening Kai, majoring in German Studies, was getting screwed by the German language, every single day.
Yeonjun gazes at the beige colored walls, they’re nicely decorated, mostly with pictures of the two or three of them, and there are no questionable stains everywhere, the ceiling is also lacking a huge leak in the corner. Beomgyu’s apartment is arguably nicer and more spacious than theirs.
Yeonjun spends the night on the couch, it’s way more comfortable than their sofa, or even their bed.
And it doesn’t matter if Soobin closes the window, if he cranks up the heating to the max, if he pulls the blanket up to his nose, the apartment without Yeonjun is empty, lonely, quiet and cold.
6:22
Beomgyu’s breakfast consists of a combination of a cigarette and a coffee most of the time, but when he’s feeling wild, he replaces the coffee with an energy drink.
In the cold and fogged up dark of the early November morning, Beomgyu is standing languidly against the banister of the balcony with a coat worn over his pyjamas, keeping up his tradition, this time with coffee and in Yeonjun’s company, who respects his friend’s habits.
“Why are you studying to be a flutist?” Yeonjun asks suddenly when he members that he’s always wanted to know, but never inquired. Beomgyu jerks his head in his direction, and he has to think about the answer for a bit, and of course comprehend what he has to answer to at all. He shrugs.
“My parents wanted me to get a diploma but I didn’t want to study.” Yeonjun giggles. “And how did you decide on Communication and Media?”
“Well, my parents didn’t want me to become a liberal artist and I do whatever they don’t like.” They both laugh this time.
His entire life, Yeonjun made every decision by asking himself first: Would this anger my parents? If the answer was yes, he did it.
That’s how he dyed his hair pink or got his ears pierced.
He doesn’t talk to his parents anymore – or his parents don’t talk to him more like – but he still feels a lot of anger towards them for trying to force him into a box he never fit into. He never wanted to be the perfect child they had dreamed of, and everything he did, he did not to fit into that box, no matter what it took. He went to public school, he was acting like a cocky show-off, he even repeated a grade once – out of spite.
“Look, I still think that’s a better case than my brother’s: they wanted him to be a doctor, but he became an alcoholic.” They laugh together again.
Then they smoke their cigarettes and drink their coffees in silence, Beomgyu’s full of milk and brown sugar, but Yeonjun’s black.
He thinks about Soobin, which bothers him. He’s had a lot of time to think in the last few days, and he had to come to the realization that his brain is basically empty other than him, and now he doesn’t like how much he occupies his mind.
But what can he do when they’ve been friends for nine years? He loves his (one-sided) rivalry with Beomgyu, going to the gym with Taehyun, and the dolphin noises Kai regularly makes, he feels indescribably lonely without Soobin; as if he was completely alone in the world.
Soobin was the first person he ever really trusted and called his friend. The rest of the people his age he had met, or his parents made him meet, to be more exact, came from a similar background to his, they were insufferable, and they all had similar opinions about him.
Soobin was simple. Reserved. Humble. Their exact opposite, he didn’t even resemble him in any way, and that’s exactly why Yeonjun liked him, and that’s exactly why he realized he didn’t want to make him like himself. It was nice to imagine a life with him, but at the time, as teenagers, their expectations were a bit different from their current situation.
But nobody expected that Soobin’s father – that fucker, as Yeonjun likes to call him to this day – will leave with all their money, then his mother gets sick, as well as that Yeonjun's parents finding out about his little secret and telling him that he’s not welcome in their family anymore. Which meant they had to start basically from scratch.
Yeonjun’s current situation isn’t much better than his old one, but he enjoys Soobin’s company at least.
Soobin is down-to-earth, but Yeonjun has always known that despite living a simple life right now, he will never be anything more than a spoiled little kid.
“I’m starting to get cold, can we go in?” Beomgyu’s voice stops his train of thought, and he’s kind of grateful for that. He had to come to the realization that he doesn’t like to think.
“Sure,” he answers, to which they both stump their cigarettes, and he chugs the rest of his coffee.
Yeonjun’s problem is, he doesn’t know when to shut up. Maybe it’s time for him to learn, and after Soobin made it clear that he doesn’t want to hear from him for a while, he won’t bother him exactly because of that. The time of making up will come, but it hasn’t yet.
01:34
Soobin is angry at Yeonjun, or at least he’s supposed to be, and he hates that he misses him, every minute ever since he’s slammed the door behind him.
He’s drinking his tea, looking out the window, and even then he can only think of how it’s only Yeonjun who can make his tea perfectly for him. When he makes it for himself, it’s either too sweet or not sweet enough, and when he realizes, he gets so angry that he pours his now cold drink in the kitchen sink. He leans against the counter, and tries to fight the urge to call him and beg him in the most pathetic way possible to come home, make him a proper tea, and sleep with him. He hates that he has to constantly remind himself that he’s angry, and in order to stay angry at him, he has to think about him, bt what he hates most is that Yeonjun still hasn’t tried to crawl back to him, so that he can pretend like he’s not sure he wants to forgive him, and then, when Yeonjun is already on his knees, he would take him back by the skin of his teeth and and smirk.
He just goes to lie in bed instead, it being nearly two in the morning, but even though he shuts his eyes stubbornly closed, Yeonjun won’t leave his thoughts.
Soobin recalls their teenage years, and he doesn’t even remember what they were talking about back then, just that they could always laugh at something, that one of them would always trip and fall and get blood all over his jeans, that he had bike oil in his hair unreasonably often, and that they constantly romanticized the future, their shared life.
Because it didn’t matter that they had only known each other for two months, they were absolutely convinced that the bond that was created between them can never be quashed, and that they would forever be integral parts of each other's lives.
And Soobin is still convinced of that.
11:41
Yeonjun’s class has just ended, and he’s preparing to leave campus with big strides, his scarf pulled to his face, his hands in his pockets – it’s the end of November, it’s cold, and he would like to enjoy the pleasant warmth of Beomgyu’s apartment. Nothing is actually stopping him from that, except for the familiar, tall figure who stops only inches from him and stares straight at him.
Yeonjun only peers at him from the corner of his eye at first, then turns his full body towards him. They stand in silence for a long time, Yeonjun is waiting for Soobin to say something and Soobin is preparing to say something. He exhales through his mouth, his breath freezes in the frosty temperature, then looking into Yeonjun’s questioning, awaiting eyes for a moment, he says:
“Come home.”
00:00
“How does it feel to be twenty-two years old?” Yeonjun asks the question quietly but excitedly, as he turns towards Soobin, grinning ear to ear.
“I’ll tell you when I’ve slept enough.” Soobin is still half-asleep when he says that, and he turns away from Yeonjun, he doesn’t even comprehend his questions, but he knows he still wants to sleep.
A few moments later he finds himself on the floor which feels harder than usual, he has to protect his eyes from the sudden brightness, and before he could take anything in, a figure is standing in front of him intently with his legs wide apart, his hands on his hips. It takes him a little while to identify him as Yeonjun.
Ignoring Soobin’s every protest, Yeonjun drags him into the kitchen, where he sings The Birthday Song to him, Soobin blows out the one candle on the store-bought doughnut titled a birthday cake, then they half it. Nobody talks while they’re eating, and when there’s nothing left on their plates but crumbs, they’re staring into nothing, still in silence. The lamp in the kitchen is flickering. It’s a more and more common occurrence, it bothers both of them, but they don’t change a light bulb until it’s completely dead. Not even then sometimes.
“I’m sorry for saying that about your mom,” Yeonjun starts guiltily. Soobin is surprised; he always had to pull teeth to get an apology out of him. “I was – am an idiot and I shouldn’t speak on your family’s business.”
Soobin is playing with the crumbs on his plate, and the strawberry flavored glazing – strawberries used to be their favorite fruit, they were always eating them, and though the glazing didn’t make their hands red as if they were bloody, the artificial flavor still gave them immense nostalgia – is accompanied by the flavor of Yeonjun’s words as he’s trying to digest them. It’s easy to tell that Yeonjun is being serious. He doesn’t look at him, but he can feel the awaiting gaze on him, and it’s difficult, but he finally groans out what he’s wanted to say for a while now.
“No, you were right. I can’t take care of mom all on my own. I’ll find a good place for her and talk to my siblings. I want to go to my sister’s wedding.”
Silence.
“Will you be my plus one?” Soobin asks eventually. Yeonjun laughs, and he looks at him questioningly, not understanding the reaction.
“You’ve already asked me that five years ago, and my answer is still yes.”
And Beomgyu’s apartment might be nicer, but to them, only their worn-down, not-quite-dream apartment is really home.