Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Yeonjun’s dreams taste like apples.

When he blinks them off his tongue, the light streaming in through the curtains he forgot to pull shut is blinding. But maybe the visions of that apple tree were worse. He sighs, putting his hands over his face and wishing he’ll just… dissolve. Leave no trace behind. Restart. 

He kicks off the comforter and lays there, in the steadily increasing capacities of aches and pops all over his body. He’s never fucking going to sleep again, how is that for his stupid body? His mouth tastes like a rotten fruit and he wrinkles his nose, reaching for the water bottle on the bedside table. It’s nearly a war, sitting up. Against his own soul. 

The block of rose gold morning sun is something soft on the duvet when he finally swings his feet over the edge. Sweet chirping sounds from the window by the bed. There’s the sparrow he loves, perched on the narrow windowsill, pecking at the grains of rice he left there last night. It makes him smile, and maybe that’s enough. 

Autopilot. Tuesday, the third one this month. Brush his teeth, water that damn succulent he regrets ever getting. Watching the water trickle into the pot reminds him of those sunny marigolds they used to water, his mother and him. That stupid blue watering-can. 

Yeonjun looks away from the window, drawing in a breath. He feels some way he hasn’t felt in years, not since— 

Irrelevant. But today is inauspicious. He just knows it. There’s an unease in his gut he rarely ignores, the one that makes his eyes shifty. 

Tuesday, man. Rough. 

Shovelling leftovers in his mouth, he thinks it’s strange, how much this one short life has led him to regret. Or maybe not, maybe he’s being self-centred again. God knows he’s heard that enough times. 

People come and go, he’s learnt. He’s walked out himself, he’s been left before, and there’s nothing he can do about it. But it’s… things that never leave. Words, the carcasses of empty lipbalms. Touch. That one balled-up sock under the couch, its half somewhere unreachable now. 

(Is that melodramatic? Oh Lord, is he doing it again?)

It isn’t that long a commute, and it’s Tuesday. The one day of the week that he’s sad. So he takes his seat by the spotty window of the bus and lets his thoughts spread like wildfire. 

The other day he found long strands of dark hair still stuck to his comb. He remembers staring, in his ribcage a dark star spinning. He remembers staring, in his ribcage a dark star spinning. He remembers being there, watching her in front of the mirror. Quiet, the sounds of the city muted in the wake of her and her tsunami. She’d turned to look at him, but he can’t quite remember if he looked away or not. He supposes it’s a testament to how numb he’s grown, when he couldn’t even bring to feel a single thing. 

(How has he grown into this, when there were times he couldn’t even—) 

—shut up. But she’s gone now. 

It’s for the better, he knows. It was unfair of him, to both the names he wanted to say when he held her against his bones and found she didn’t quite fit. Not quite like pulling teeth, the sharp tang he’d grown used to. Not quite like watching love tear itself apart on its own skeleton. 

She’s gone now. For the better. 

But now—

—now Yeonjun smells like him again. Jasmine, incense. A home burnt to ash. 

(In perpetuity, in blows to bruises. To standing on the sidewalk, his heart crushed in an endless blue. He will sometimes have one but always want the other.) 

/

Kibum has a weird smile. 

It’s been, what?—ten, eleven years of knowing him and that odd grin still sometimes catches Yeonjun off-guard. Especially when it’s directed at him. 

Two thousand watts. A noise half-joy, half-amusement. “Yeonjun-ah!” 

Yeonjun sets his bag down with an unamused huff, shaking his hair out of his eyes. Tch. It’s getting long again. “Why do you always act like I don’t literally work here.” 

And damn, his poker face must love Kibum’s teeth when his infectious little grin bites down. “Aw, I can’t help that you’re my favourite.” 

Yeonjun rolls his eyes. “I’m your only employee.” 

Kibum gasps. Not a normal people gasp, no—his sarcastic full-bodied inhale of pure glittery pink wonder, the one he uses to be annoying. “How lucky I must be!” 

“Damn right you are, hyung.” Yeonjun’s lips curl up despite themselves. Figures. They’ve always been traitors, running three-and-a-half marathons ahead of his brain and pressing themselves to the first salvation his little old heart deems familiar enough. “I left my hotshot nine to five corporate job for you and your damn boyfriend.” 

That frown, that one that almost looks like— It makes him look constipated, Yeonjun’s tried telling him many a time. “I most certainly remember an entirely different sequence of events.” 

“Yeah, yeah, shit memory, we know.” Yeonjun flips open the counter and settles in the spinny chair behind it, cracking a grin as he lets the thing flop back down with a loud crack. “So you’re old. What’s new?” 

Kibum glares, pointing a crooked finger at his forehead. “I’ll fire you.” 

Empty threats; he’s threatened to walk out more times than he can count on his fingers and even that number pales to how many times Kibum has tried to ‘fire’ him. Yeonjun wrinkles his nose. “Go back to firing your stone oven or whatever it is you two do up there.” 

It gets the job done. Kibum’s lips purse into a reluctant smile. “Shut up. You’re far more of an old man than I am.”  

Yeonjun doesn’t rise to the bait. Just stares blankly with ‘cat-like unctuousness’ (not his words). 

Kibum stares back for a few seconds. He gives up soon enough. “All right, don’t have too much fun down here.” 

“Unlike you, I do not have a stationery fetish. I think I’ll be fine.” 

“Bastard,” Kibum mutters, swiping at his head. Yeonjun dodges, laughing.

Watching him go is almost familiar. Forwards, relentless. No looking back. 

He scrubs a hand down his face, checking the clock hanging on the ill-placed pillar. 10 AM. Way too early to be thinking about him. 

Fuck, the Tuesday must be getting to him. 

/

It’s almost a nice dream. In his head, he is always kinder than he actually was.

“Hey, mister,” a high-pitched voice says. 

“Eunchaenie, that’s rude,” a decidedly older voice hisses.

Yeonjun’s eyes snap open, pitching forward in his spinny chair. “Hi, oh my God, I’m so sorry. Have you been here long? Crap, I’m sorry.” 

A round face stares up at him, barely able to look over the counter. Big eyes fixed on his face in a glare, reflecting the LED behind Yeonjun, warped, distorted. “Yes. You should be.” 

“Eunchae!” A woman who seems to be her mother shoots Yeonjun a mortified look. “I am so sorry, she’s not normally like this.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Yeonjun huffs a laugh, toying with his earring. He follows Eunchae’s gaze towards it. “She’s correct, I shouldn’t be slacking on the job. Now what would you like to buy?” 

The mother opens her mouth. “She—” 

“Did you make those?” Eunchae interrupts bluntly, pointing at the paper roses inside a vase on the counter. Red, yellow, pink. A sunset made of all the things Yeonjun wants to outrun. 

Her mother puts her face in her hands, groaning.

Yeonjun clears his throat, awkwardness creeping up his spine. “Uh— yeah. Yeah. Do you like them?” 

Eunchae sizes him up, her wide dark eyes oddly scary. “Hmph. They’re pretty, I guess.” 

“O…kay. I’m glad you like them.” He hesitates. “Uh, have you decided on—”

“I didn’t say I liked them,” she says, and Yeonjun’s jaw snaps shut. She continues, unperturbed, pointing at something behind his head. “Can I have that pencil case, please?” 

“Of course,” Yeonjun says, robotic. He tugs it out, checks that it’s tagged, and gives it to her. He smiles at the top of her head, almost involuntarily. “That’ll be—” 

“Why aren’t there any cranes here?” Eunchae asks, frowning, her head turning a 360° around the shop, eyes tracking the origami strewn along every surface. The spin takes her whole body with it. “Those are the best.” 

Her mother is hissing apologies, though Yeonjun doesn’t hear them. He’s completely still, an iron fist clenching around his heart. “I… I don’t know how to make them,” he lies. 

Eunchae pouts, for once looking like a child. “Learn, then.” 

Her mother has evidently given up. She’s hastily pushing money into Yeonjun’s hand, her face apologetic. Their eyes are the same, Yeonjun realises with an odd sense of detachment. 

“I will,” he lies again, forcing a smile. He feels a little ridiculous. Single-minded kids tend to have that effect, he reasons with himself. 

Eunchae cracks a shark-like grin, so sudden that Yeonjun has to blink. “I’ll be back!” she promises, tugging her mother out of the shop. She makes it sound like a threat. 

Yeonjun, quite concerningly, can’t breathe. “Have a good day,” he whispers to empty air.

/ 

They never had a name. 

Yeonjun realises that with an absent discomfort. For all their bravado, they never even gave themselves a name. It makes him smile, an odd, fond thing clawing its way through his chest. Christ. They had a band but the fucking band didn’t have a name. 

It isn’t that funny. It isn’t funny at all. In fact, it’s kind of sad. But he still snorts.

There’s a lot he could learn, he knows. 

Because it’s never going to be enough. None of it is. 

Yeonjun wrinkles his nose, a habit he developed over his entire academic career’s worth of despairing thoughts. Happiness is nebulous. He’s never quite pinned it down. Sadness is that specific smell of art museums. Dusty, treading light. Forgotten by the ones who matter. Anger. Hmm. Maybe… No, wait, he’s got it. CDs exposed to microwave radiation. Sparking little etiologies of sunbursts. Guilt always just smells—off. Like overburnt sugar, sticky to the bones. Perpetually attracting the bright little bees of unsaid words. 

(Of course, all of these have smelled like jasmine, one-by-one. Dropping like targets.) 

His leg’s fallen asleep. He shakes it with a groan, pins and needles forever a bitch. 

Gosh, Tuesdays suck. 

He’s been staring at empty space for the last thirty-five minutes; too afraid to fall asleep and make an ass out of himself again, but all-too-tired to not be thinking about pulling a Mr Bean and taping matchsticks to his eyes to keep them open. But now his fucking leg is asleep. 

The clock ticks to 5. One, two, three. 

Yep, that’s it. He’s going. He stands, cursing up a storm when his leg betrays him. 

He’s flipping up the counter and sidling out, when he hears it. 

The steady tread of Minho’s footsteps is somehow something Yeonjun has memorised. Or maybe he’s mixing up memories again, too accustomed to believing anyone to approach him while he had his back turned was—him. Yeah. Just… him.

Him—the be all and end all of teenage fuckery. Yeonjun nearly laughs. 

“Like clockwork, aren’t you?” Minho teases, smiling at him. His big eyes briefly call Eunchae to Yeonjun’s mind, the same bulldozer-y intensity in their blankness. “5 on the dot, and you’re leaving.”  

“Time waits for no man,” Yeonjun mutters, snatching his bag. “Besides, 5 on the dot, and you’re here. Did Kibum-hyung send you?” 

“No, I came of my own accord.” Minho sounds amused, an easy lightness to his voice that Yeonjun has never quite wrapped his head around. “Is that so hard to believe? That I care about you, hah?” 

Yeonjun grimaces, pivoting on his heel to face him. “You know it’s not that, hyung,” he groans. “I just—” 

“Have very important things to get to?” The classic Christopher Lee eyebrow raise of condescension. “Like staring at your ceiling until you fall asleep?” 

Yeonjun rolls his eyes, any previous guilt evaporating. “Now, that’s just mean.” 

“What can I say, the truth is bitter to swallow,” Minho mocks, his too-mild voice making it sound like some horrifically serial killerish innuendo. “Stay for dinner, yeah?” 

Yeonjun worries the corner of his lip between his teeth, hesitant. “It’s Tuesday.” 

“So?” 

“It’s grocery day.” 

Now Minho just looks confused. “You’re aware all the gross little greens you buy end up in Kibum’s hands sooner or later, yes?” 

“Well, yeah. Who’s gonna keep supplying them to him?” 

Now he looks vaguely concerned, stepping closer. “Why… why are you making it sound like a drug deal?” 

“Surprise,” Yeonjun deadpans, raising up his palms. “I’ve been hyung’s drug dealer all along. I am the drug lord. I run a trading ring composed entirely of goddamned stationery shop owners. I’m so sorry you had to find out this way. I just want you to know, hyung, that every word I said to you was—” 

Now he simply looks fond. “Yeonjun-ah. Shut up and go upstairs. He’s waiting.” 

Yeonjun shuts up and watches the evening sun reflect off of all the glass showcases in the cramped shop. He takes it in for a second, the golden star and the pink of the sky. Minho in front of him, still waiting patiently. In this place that feels terrifyingly like home. 

Everywhere Yeonjun has called home has burnt down. 

“I can’t, hyung,” he whispers. “I—” 

There are no words he can say. He’s terrified that there’s nothing left inside him at all. 

A beat. Then—

“Okay,” Minho says easily, his hand squeezing Yeonjun’s shoulder. Either he isn’t aware of it, or is simply choosing to ignore the wavering tone of Yeonjun’s voice. “Some other day, then?” 

Yeonjun stares at the hand, everything dialled up to a max. Every stuttery feeling in his heart, suddenly regressed down to someone sixteen years old and playing God. “Yeah. Some other day. I’m sorry. Tell hyung I’m sorry, too.” 

Minho clicks his tongue, shoving him to turn him around, back towards the street. “You are one silly, silly fool, you know that? There’s nothing to be sorry about.” 

Yeonjun turns away. “Right. Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

He gets five steps away from the shop, knuckles white on the strap of his bag. Not looking back is easier when you’ve left a place countless times. It’s easier when it’s rush hour, people jostling by on the sidewalk, cursing or apologising, stuck in the buzzing conundrum of existing. When you think that perhaps, just this once, there are things that you cannot lay to ruin. 

Minho calls out again, his voice carrying through the crowd. “You know we’ll always save you a seat, right?” 

Yeonjun pauses. He considers turning around and running back, stepping on people’s toes and maybe they’ll both end up laughing about it. He knows Kibum would, that man delights on other people’s suffering.

But of course he doesn’t. He silently walks to the square, listening to strangers chatter. 

But he did consider it. When he’s braver, he’ll do it. And maybe that’s what counts. 

/ 

The sun is taking an awfully long time to set today. 

Yeonjun walks by a man with his face hidden by a newspaper. He’s sitting on a bench by the pink river, his left ankle perched on his right knee. With his face unseeable, he nearly looks like someone Yeonjun knew. 

But of course he puts the newspaper down and of course Yeonjun looks away, unsure of what he was hoping to see. Possibilities and hypotheticals knock around his ribs and organs as he hurries away, hazing up his brain like secondhand smoke.

And, see. He can’t quite remember when he got here, but he did and his consciousness has generously decided to flicker back on. 

Standing completely still in the grocery aisle is one thing. 

Trying to catch ghosts out of the corner of his eyes is another. 

He shakes his head, beelining towards the counter. The stark lights of the store remind him of hospitals. Sterile, white lines, tiny insects crowding around the LEDs. 

God, he’s always hated hospitals. Ever since he lied his way out of one. 

He bites down on his bottom lip hard enough that he winces. He’s been out of it this whole day, it’s getting worse. 

(Leaves breaking up the sunlight, a bedroom window looking into another.) 

Even the cashier has a little furrow between her eyebrows as she takes him in, eyebags and earrings and somehow still carrying the heavy shit. Like, the cabbages and the goddamn Citronella.  

Can she tell, he wonders? Can she tell the story behind the tight smile and the clinically steady hands? Does she know about the guilt stacking up behind his skull everytime he dreams, every time he turns down another offer to stay? Maybe she knows he’s a fucking coward who won’t ever go looking for a meteor strike ever again. 

He lets out a breath once he’s walked out the store, the sky a rich, dark blue. He’s always loved Pluto’s time. How closed-in everything seems, how strangely intimate. Writers in the dark always work wonders, anonymity the catalyst for catharsis. He’s just being melodramatic again. Customer service smiles don’t mean squat.

He’s being silly, he tells himself again. Strangers can’t know everything about you. 

(But of course he also knows that that’s a lie.) 

/ 

Coming home is… well, coming home. 

Walking in through the door, for one. Locking it behind him, toeing off his shoes balancing on one foot. There’s some stupid pop song stuck in his head and he hates himself when he taps the walls to the beat as he moves along the hallway. 

Home sweet home. And maybe it’s a little weird, but it makes him laugh, this place with its leaky ceilings and flickering lamps. The fact that his apartment could potentially be haunted by a petty ghost is something he’s come to terms with over the years. 

He puts his bags down, beelines to the bathroom. He washes his face because it hasn’t rained yet this year and the fucking dust particles must be unionising or some shit because good God. The day it rains is the day he… 

He has no idea what he could even do on a rainy day anymore so he locks that thought away. 

He stills when he meets his own eyes in the mirror. Tch. Ever since he got over being scared of his own shadow under the stuttering lights, he’s honestly been kind of excited over would-be paranormal activity. 

He read once that if you turn off all the bathroom lights, close your eyes and chant the name of your ghost or spirit or whatever three times, and then turn the lights on again, you’ll summon the ghost in the mirror. He screamed at his own reflection the first time, but he’s been trying for four fucking years now and has long since accepted that maybe he is alone here. 

(Loneliness is just an excuse he prefers over that seven-year-old boy inside him; I can’t be alone, I’m scared of the dark.) 

He considers it, then shrugs. Doesn’t hurt to try again. It only has to work once. 

He turns off the lights, closes his eyes. Feels his way around. Faces the mirror, and completely seriously, says, “asshat, asshat, asshat.” 

He waits a few seconds, scolds himself for being weird but does it anyway. Flips on the lights, sighs, opens his eyes. 

The only ghostly thing in the mirror are his eyebags. 

Damn. Tuesdays really do suck. 

On the way out of the bathroom, he knows he’s definitely gone insane. 

(Insanity is just an excuse he prefers over loneliness.)

He considers the kitchen with his hands on his hips, a carbon copy of his mother. He bites the inside of his cheek—God knows when they last talked. Three, four months ago, on her birthday? Running away leads to a lot of tears and faults in this endless street of time, he’s found. Running away because of one person means you lose a thousand, thousand more. 

And suddenly Yeonjun feels too tired to do anything. Like this unending ache has surpassed his body. 

He puts the groceries in the fridge below the tangerines and sits down. His back aches in the spot it always does, the two stumps below his shoulders. Right where maybe wings would’ve grown if he hadn’t failed. If he hadn’t fucking left. 

Even here he is haunted. Yeonjun’s just graffiti on the goddamn cinderblock and maybe Soobin’s always been anonymous. 

/ 

He has nothing to do anymore. And that’s the most terrifying realisation he’s ever come to. 

He takes out his phone to curb the pit of despair he’s just started digging himself. He snorts. Since when did doomscrolling calm him down? Since when did he pretend he didn’t care? No, no. Is it cool when he pretends not to care, when he tells himself he’s fine?

Yeonjun swallows, stares at the photo Kibum sent him of Minho screwing up his face while chopping onions, eyes slits of sheer will. One of these days I’ll make you chop the onions, his text reads. One of these days, neither of them will say, one of these days you might be gone. One of these days, he won’t say, I’ll be alone again. 

He met Kibum first, as sick as it sounds. Through the grapevine of shady uni ‘friends’, maybe this is the only good thing Yeonjun has ever been dealt. Eight years older and fabulously famous for not giving two shits, Yeonjun stuck himself to that oddly comforting presence. Comforting in the sense that Kibum didn’t quite care. Or, no. He cared. (He did, proof is sitting in his camera roll and all over the unconscious mannerisms he’s picked up. A hand on a shoulder, a shove sometimes, a look here and there.) Kibum cared, but he knew not to ask. 

He didn’t ask when Yeonjun lashed out at him that first time. He didn’t ask why Yeonjun’s fingers trembled when he twisted them together, standing there apologising like a figure carved of wood. He didn’t ask when many years later, Yeonjun showed up at his doorstep. 

All Yeonjun has been trying to do is repay him. But he knows he isn’t. 

He’s staring at the photo again. The fridge door peeks out at an angle, the cats-wearing-aprons magnets Yeonjun got them as a housewarming gift still stuck there. 

There’s something sharp in his throat. He clicks out of the photo before he does something stupid like, cry, or something. 

Ping. A drop-down notification shows up. 

· @hyukardios sent you a message! 

Yeonjun frowns down at his phone screen. Who in hell? 

He taps on the notification, and is taken to the app. Then he sees the icon. 

The breath zaps out of his lungs. He goes to his inbox and opens the only unread message sitting there innocuously. Like a thorn in a rose. 

holy shit i finally found you ヽ⁠(⁠｡⁠◕⁠o⁠◕⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠.
um sorry im just excited hhuuuuhhuhuuuu
it’s kai!!! huening kai!!!! 
HELLO HYUNG OH MY GOD IT’S YOU 
hyuka  18:10

Yeonjun stares. He thinks that his vision is tunneling, his periphery narrowing. Is that a ghost he sees? And then he stares some more. “Huh?”

He taps the icon again, goes to the profile. Maybe his heart is shaking, maybe it’s just his trembling hands causing earthquakes all over him. But that’s… that’s Kai. 

Blonde now, grinning, oh, he has a crooked tooth at the back of his mouth. Yeonjun didn’t know. Striking a silly pose with his blocky sunglasses pushing his hair out of his face.

He blinks a couple times, rubs his eyes like a cartoon character for good measure. Nothing changes. The user ID is the same, Hyuka, fuck, how’d he not know from the start? He’s the one who coined that nickname. It’s still him. It’s him. 

kai?
yeonjun  18:12

the one and only!! ᕙ⁠ ⁠(⁠°⁠ ⁠~⁠ ⁠°⁠ ⁠~⁠)
holy shit 
sorry i keep saying that im just 
god it’s you 
i’ve finally found you 
hyuka  18:12 

you’ve been looking for me?
yeonjun  18:12 

im insulted ur even asking
OFC WE HAVE 
hyuka  18:12 

we? 
yeonjun  18:13

yeah
me and the others 
holy shit holy mackerel IT’S YOU 
how have you been? 
hyuka  18:13 

Yeonjun swallows past the lump in his throat, half-convinced he ate funny mushrooms for lunch. There’s just no way this is happening. The ghost beside him agrees. 

good
wbu
yeonjun  18:14

never been better!!! 
now that ive found you (⁠ ⁠՞⁠ਊ⁠ ⁠՞⁠）⁠→
hehe did i make u blush 
ok hyung i should probably stop goofing 
i have something to ask
hyuka  18:14

And there it is. Yeonjun takes a breath. 

Why did you leave? Why did you stop answering texts, why did calls go straight to voicemail? Why did you change your number? Why did you never reach out? Why did you leave?

Not a single one of them something he can answer. 

ill try to answer then 
as long as its smth i can haha 
yeonjun  18:15

can we call? 
hyuka  18:15 

He hesitates, fingers pausing over his keyboard. 

But Yeonjun is sorry. If there’s one person he wants to apologise to, it’s them. All of his youth. 

so it’s one of those convos 
sure
yeonjun  18:15

His ringtone has never seemed grating to him before, but it does now. Hollows out his ears like a whistling wind, capsizes the blue lanterns floating in his ear-canal. Yeonjun stares, unmoving, for a second before he realises he’s supposed to answer it. 

The call connects. Static. “... Hyung?” 

A gasp, maybe it’s him, fuck, of course it was him. There’s no ghost next to him, it’s just him and little old loneliness. Yeonjun drops his phone, his hand spasming involuntarily. 

The sound of it thudding against the floor echoes like his heartbeat beating through his belly, his limbs, his bones. 

/

“Hyung?” Kai repeats. 

Yeonjun knows he’s frowning. Knows the way around his unconscious liar’s inflection, steeped up in concern. Are you okay? After all these years. Are you okay? 

He fumbles to pick his phone back up. “Uh, yeah. Yep. Just—yeah. Hi.” 

“Hi,” Kai repeats. You don’t even need familiarity to know that he’s smiling. “It’s you.” 

Now it’s just kind of awkward. “Yeah. It’s me. Did you think you’d seen the last of me?” 

The rustle of clothes, muffled noises that seem to echo. “Yeah,” he replies, stilted. “We did.”

Somehow, Yeonjun is surprised. “Oh.” 

“All of us just. Yeah. It kinda—screwed us over for a while.” 

“But you’re okay,” Yeonjun says quietly, holding the speaker up to his mouth like the words will mean more that way. “You’re all right without. Uh. Me.” 

Kai exhales through his nose. Yeonjun only knows that sound from stuffy rooms with people in suits dripping in condescension. But no. That’s not it. Kai just sounds blank, like he’s staunched the bleeding but the pain still sears through his teeth. “Why did we have to be?” 

Silence. Yeonjun cannot answer, there goes his heart, up his throat. Riddled with cigarette burns and taped-up posters of hotshots with their eyes crossed out. There, right there. Look closer. Maybe you’ll see a star. 

“I said I’d answer what I could,” he hedges, seedy guilt accumulating under his nails. 

“No!” Kai bursts out, a strangled laugh following. “I didn’t—I wasn’t putting you on the spot or anything. You had your reasons, and it’s okay. I won’t pry.” 

Yeonjun doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s never been more sure of this. The lamp is flickering again, if he focuses hard enough, the wispy outlines of that ghost start to form in his periphery. This is a dream, because Kai is here. “Just like that?” 

A short laugh. “Yeah. Just… keep in touch, maybe? Don’t disappear again.” 

“I see how it is.” Yeonjun wonders why his voice sounds the way it does. Then realises it’s been distorted by a smile. “Keep me close until I let my guard down. Then you’ll ask me why. Smart.” 

Kai laughs again. Strange, how that sound settles against his bones, as if it never left. “Actually, no. Only your twisted brain could come up with things like that.” 

“Yeah,” he sighs, feeling the melodrama slink away with its tail between its legs. “I forget sometimes.” 

“Would… would that be so bad?” Kai asks, quiet again. As his old heart in its stone house, the hearth cold, the flowers forgotten. “I mean. Would it be so bad if you told us of your own volition?” 

“That’s a big word.” Deflection, breath hollowed out. “I don’t know, honestly. If I can ever be what—”

Yeonjun gets stuck there. He has no clue how that sentence might have finished. Ribs of nacre and heart of calcite. What river it might have meandered down, what ocean it might have gotten lost in. What colour of seaglass it might have tugged into a palm. 

“Just tell me this. I won’t make it a big deal, I promise. Just—was it us? Was it our fault?” 

Yeonjun’s chest splinters into two. “No. You know I left for college.” 

“I doubt college work could have made you change your number.” 

It stings. Scaly scorpion rind down to the artery. “It wasn’t your fault. Okay? It wasn’t.” 

“Okay,” Kai says faintly. “Does that mean you’d be okay with… God, um—” 

A nervous Kai is never a good sign. Yeonjun fiddles with his earring, a nervous tick. “Spit it out, you’re making me anxious—” 

Kai takes a deep breath, then lets it go. “I’m thinking of restarting the band.” 

Yeonjun blinks. “You’re what?” 

“I’m thinking about—”

“No, I heard you the first time. … Kai, what?” 

“Beomgyu-hyung and Taehyun already agreed!” Kai says in a rush, determined to make Yeonjun hear him through. Then, like an afterthought: “Soobin-hyung agreed too.” 

Yeonjun’s heart locks still. “Kai…” 

“I know what I’m asking. I know it’s absurd to ask you to pack up and somehow stuff us back into your life when— Shit, do you even play the guitar anymore?” 

“It’s there. I just haven’t touched it in years.” 

A pause. “It’s there, isn’t it?” 

“Be realistic here.” Somehow, Yeonjun never imagined he’d one day play the role of the unmoving parent. “Okay, fine, we’re all in a band again. We’re there, jam sessions, what-have-you. Then what? I, I don’t know, some of us will have obligations or other priorities or some shit and then we’ll be right back to where we were. We’d have gotten nowhere and—” 

—the heartbreak would be worse, he doesn’t say. 

“... I thought music was your first love, hyung.” Kai sounds stunned. Not even irritated, just… disbelieving. “What is this?” 

Yeonjun laughs. There goes that little old heart shard. Stabbing through what it loves the most. “My first love let me down, then.” 

“Fine, okay. Maybe music let you down.” Yeonjun knows Kai’s just grasping at straws. He’s scared this is the last contact they’ll ever have. Nothing’s happening the way he wanted, probably. “But we didn’t, did we?” 

“What are you getting at here?” Yeonjun asks warily. 

“For old times’ sake.” 

The laughter, when it comes, is as quiet as he was when he left. “Aren’t you persistent.” 

Kai grins. Yeonjun can hear it in his voice. “And you’ve never refused me a single thing a day in our lives.” 

Sundowns crawling up his ribs. Lithe fingers running over the keys of the school piano reverently. The swings back home, the roads all leading to the same house. The apple tree. Downtimes spent with his best friend. God, all that Yeonjun ran from.

He twists his fingers, cracks his knuckles. “Would it even be a good idea for me to be there?” 

“Yes,” a different voice says from the speaker. “Yes it fucking would you little bitch. You’re coming. I don’t care what guilt complex you’ve built up over the years, you will be there.” 

Yeonjun gapes. “... Beomgyu?” 

“No, your fucking drug dealer.” 

The name falls from his mouth like a star. “Beomgyu.” 

“Hyung. You know, you—you’d said you’d be there when I graduated. And then you weren’t. So you’re coming this time.”

Yeonjun’s mouth hinges open further. “That’s not fair,” he argues weakly. 

An inhale. They never hear an exhale. “... Yeah, ‘m sorry.” 

“Don’t apologise. Never apologise, okay? You’re right, that was an absolute asshole move. … Hey, is Taehyun there?”

“No.” It’s Kai again. “It’s just us. He’s been here the whole time, sorry.” 

“What did I just say about apologising?” 

“So— oops.” 

A burst of Beomgyu’s window-cleaner laugh, crackly through Yeonjun’s shitty speaker. 

Yeonjun sighs, dragging a hand down his face. “You two do realise you’re asking me to face my ex after ten years of no contact. After I ran away.” 

“... We kind of forgot about that.” 

The disbelief settles down like dew. “Eh?” 

“Yeah,” Beomgyu comments, “nevermind, don’t come—” 

“—hyung! Shut up!” 

“I…” Yeonjun sucks on his teeth, his gaze straying to the bedroom door. Somewhere in his closet, he’s stashed his guitar. “Listen, give me a few days to think about it?” 

“Of course,” Kai readily agrees. “I’ll send you my number, wait. Even if you don’t come, we can just… talk.” 

“Yeah,” Yeonjun lies. “I’d—like that.” 

“Think about it. Please.” 

“I will. I will.” 

Kai’s voice catches. “I missed you.” 

Yeonjun has to close his eyes. “I’m sorry.” 

No one says goodbye. But one of them hangs up; Yeonjun isn’t sure who.

/ 

Yeonjun orders Chinese takeout with numb hands. Eats it with a numb tongue. Stashes the container away with the numb decision to take out the trash later. 

The only thing of feeling left inside him is the bottom of his spine, a backroom inside his abdominal cavity. That little cave, twisting with blistering burnishing anxiety. Did that happen? Did that actually happen? 

He bundles himself up in his blankets, and tucks up his knees, crosses his arms over his heart. It’s something he hasn’t done in a long time. 

The logical explanation would be to say no. They’ll be okay without him and if he’s been anything all these endless days, then he’ll be all right too. He’ll have to face him, for one, which should immediately make it a no. But—   

I miss you, I’m sorry. The shake in Kai’s voice. The measured, and however fleeting, anger in Beomgyu’s. You weren’t there. 

You weren’t there when you’d promised to be. You weren’t there when I wanted you to be. 

Yeonjun rolls over, turns off the light. There will be no dreams, he knows. 

/ 

If Kibum has a weird smile, Minho’s eyes are downright creepy. 

(They look the slightest bit like Taehyun’s, Yeonjun realises. So that’s why.) 

“Something’s up with you,” he states, no hello, no how are you. 

Yeonjun looks at him from the counter with the most unimpressed stare he can imagine. “Good morning to you too.” 

“It’s 3 PM. Please get a working consciousness.”     

“Yeah, I’m working right now. That means my consciousness is working as well.” 

“Your eyes are red, you look like you didn’t sleep. Your face looks smaller.” 

Something in Yeonjun breaks at the concern. “Dust allergies,” he dismisses, waving a hand. “This place is musty as hell, what can I say.” 

Minho leans back against the fucking pillar in the middle of the shop, his eyesbrows rising in the quintessential expression of Really, now? “This shop has always been musty as hell. Why would your allergies kick in now?” 

“Oh, I don’t know.” Yeonjun shrugs. “Everything in me is late.” 

“And has that ever bothered you to the point of making you cry?” 

Yeonjun has been holding Minho’s stare the whole time, but now he has to look away. “Hyung.” 

“Don’t hyung me,” he says, his booming voice quiet now. “We’ve been worried about you.” 

Yeonjun’s jaw clenches, gripping the arms of his chair. “I’ll be fine. I’m not a kid.” 

“I know you will be, and I know you aren’t. Why are you so against any form of help?” 

“Help?” Yeonjun snaps, and there it is. That singing anger. “For what. No, no, don’t flinch back now. Tell me. What you and hyung have been so worried about.” 

Minho winces. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“Then what did you mean?” 

There’s that look in his eyes that Yeonjun hates on anybody. The pinched pain, the bottomless concern. Just that quiet Please be okay. 

“You’re so lonely.” He says it quietly, as if he knows if he speaks it louder Yeonjun will run. Yeonjun’s eyes widen, mouth already parting to speak, but Minho talks over him. “You think no one notices but we always do. You’re scared of any form of intimacy and you push people away and—I’ve been witness to this for years.”

Yeonjun can’t breathe. “When have I ever pushed you away?” 

“You’re doing it right now. You do it every time you refuse another offer to dinner.” 

Yeonjun isn’t even moving anymore. “I’m not—it’s not. I’m not scared of intimacy, I, I let her in—” 

“You did,” Minho agrees. “You’re not scared of love. You’re scared of ruining it.” 

The last of it, just this side of smoke. He’s fucking terrified and his lips have always been three-and-a-half marathons ahead of his brain. “Who said anything about love?” 

“You won’t even call it what it is,” Minho points out softly, always softly. 

“... You don’t know,” Yeonjun mutters to the flowers on the counter. “You don’t know what happened.” 

There are hands reaching over the counter for his. Yeonjun lets him hold one of his hands in both of his, squeezing it between them like a promise. “I don’t, Jun-ah. I’m asking you to tell me.”

But Yeonjun has been living with this inside him for years.  

“It was me,” he whispers finally, his heart shard in his own throat now. He curls his fingers around Minho’s tighter, then lets go. “I ran away.” 

Minho keeps his hands palm-down on the counter. He smiles, which isn’t what Yeonjun thought he’d do. “You’re terrified of the thing, but you love so freely. I know you left for a reason.” 

“Everyone keeps saying that. That I must have left for a reason.” He blinks rapidly. God, he isn’t a child, he can say this. “What—what if I didn’t? Would you hate me then?”

Minho clicks his tongue. “Reason or no reason, you’re punishing yourself for it every day. I could never hate you, okay? Never have, don’t, and never will.” 

The sincerity behind that hits Yeonjun like a brassknuckle in the ribs. His face crumples. 

“Okay,” he repeats. “Okay. Then listen. I became a guardian angel right after I turned sixteen.”

“Sixteen?” Minho says, frowning. “I thought you had to be an adult.” 

“That law is new. It wasn’t there twelve years ago.” Yeonjun shrugs helplessly. “They… the Ministry assigned me to my best friend. Fuck, they gave me a choice to back out, you know? But I never wanted to see him hurt so I accepted. You—wait, you know what a key is, right?” 

Minho’s face turns confused. He points up, towards where Kibum is probably watching this CCTV footage with interest. “As in… his nickname? Or—” 

“Stop thinking about Kibum-hyung every moment of your life, you disgust me. No, I mean the key in a bond. It’s this object that, that essentially cements an angel and their human together. The link, I guess.” 

“Okay,” Minho says slowly, nodding. “And your key was…?” 

“Paper cranes,” he replies wryly. “Dozens of them.” 

“I swear I’m not judging, I swear I’m not. But those are so… destroyable.”   

Yeonjun has to laugh. “Oh, I’m aware. I burnt them all the day I turned eighteen.”  

“... All right.” Minho nods, his lips pursing in thought. “Will you tell me why?” 

There it is again. That trust. Or perhaps that denial, that he’d never do anything without reason. “What if there’s no why?” 

Minho holds his eyes, steady in places Yeonjun is not. “There is. You always have a reason. Teenage impulsiveness must never have touched you.” 

Yeonjun snorts at the irony. “Teenage impulsiveness got me into this mess.” 

“I don’t think so. That was just you.” Yeonjun isn’t sure where Minho is getting all this surety from. “You would have made the same choice ten years down the line.” 

“I might’ve, yeah,” Yeonjun exhales, the slant of his mouth crooked around the syllables. “If they’d given that letter to me now, maybe— Well. They didn’t. Anyway. There was—this incident.” 

When he doesn’t continue, Minho takes his hand and squeezes it. “Incident?” 

Yeonjun swallows. “Yeah. I— He could’ve died. My. Friend. I mean, he didn’t. I stepped in, I was his angel. But that… broke something, I think. It got to me. That his life was so fragile, that he could be taken away from me. That was when he started getting busier, cancelling plans more often than not. There’s only so much weight a thread can carry. It snapped. I got into college some eight, nine hours away. I was terrified because I wouldn’t be able to protect him. So I asked him—fuck, I asked him to come with me. And broke down on him when he refused.” 

“... He didn’t know? That you were—” 

“No,” Yeonjun replies. “I never told him because I thought we’d have more time.” 

Minho is silent. There’s just his hand, resting absently over Yeonjun’s. “Okay. He refused, and then?” 

Yeonjun takes a deep breath, trying to will his rioting heart down. “I told him to go home, that I’d sleep it off, never worry. Then I went upstairs and burnt all the cranes so that our link would break. So that someone else could take my place, if push came to shove.” 

Minho’s eyes are somewhere Yeonjun can’t see. “And then you ghosted them.” 

Inhale, ignore that staggering tremor in your chest. It’ll pass. “Yeah.” 

“Thank you for telling me,” Minho says, completely sincerely. He must realise one of their hands is getting clammy, because he lets go again. “I won’t blab if you don’t want me to.” 

Yeonjun bites the tender inside of his bottom lip. “Could you—not tell Kibum-hyung? Please. Make up some bullshit if he asks. I… I’ll tell him myself. One day.” 

“Of course. I—” Minho exhales a noisy breath through his nose. “It feels weird to say now that you’re not, like, nineteen anymore but. I’m proud of you.” 

Yeonjun cracks a half-smile. “Don’t patronise me.” 

“I’m quite literally your father. Kibum doesn’t allow milk in the house solely because you’re our son.” 

“Seeing as I’m proverbially confessing my sins to you right now, well.” 

There’s the lapse, the liminal space. Minho stares at the sides of his face like he’s trying to find the cracks. “You’re calmer than you were before.” 

“I’m not.” He swallows, blinks rapidly. “I’m really, really not.” 

“And that’s okay.” His smile is kind. Yeonjun never gave that enough credit. “Is this the part where I fuck off or the part where we sit in silence for a while?”

Yeonjun blinks, confused. “You haven’t heard it all, though.” 

Minho tilts his head. “I got the feeling you’d reached your emotional quota for the week.” 

“Oh.” He considers it. The choice is his. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have. But you’re not being weird about it. It’s actually—not that hard to tell you.” 

The smile he gets is blinding, if a little touched. “Oh wow. I. I’m glad.” 

“Hm. We were in a band,” Yeonjun says, twisting his fingers again. “There were five of us. Kinda fell apart when I left, but uh. I got into contact with one of them the other day. He wants to restart. Start over, or however you wanna put it.” 

“So he asked you if you wanted to?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Is it… guilt? That’s holding you back?” 

“A large part of it is, I think,” says Yeonjun slowly, piecing the words together in his head. Passive weir, deadly drowning machine. Round and round. “I didn’t even give them an explanation.” 

Minho drags out a chair from some crevice of the shop as he considers this. He sits down, staring at him, spacing out. “Are they asking for one?” 

“... No. He said he’d never pry, but that’s just him. I know B—one of them will want an explanation, and I mean,” a frustrated sigh the words are not, they’re not, “—they deserve one. I know they do, they know they do. I’m. God, I’m terrified of having to tell him.” 

“And you haven’t thought of just… lying?” Blunt, but Yeonjun appreciates it more than he’ll ever say. “For the time being?” 

“No.” Yeonjun shakes his head. “That’d make things worse.” 

Minho smiles slightly. “That’s what I knew you’d say.” 

They lapse into silence, there’s nothing more Yeonjun can say. He watches the world outside the shop, the murky blue of the sky. The pigeons on the electricity wires, the distant sun on the river. 

“Forget this push-and-pull of guilt for a second, okay?” Minho says abruptly. “I think you should try and look at it a different way. Do you want to go or do you not?” 

Yeonjun startles. “Hyung.” 

That stare is actually bottomless. “Plain and simple. If you really want to go and consider all the shit that that entails—rebuilding friendships and all that—then your choice is clear. This entire dilemma over telling them the truth depends on your answer, instead of vice versa.”

“That is a horrible way to look at it.” Heart, heart, stop being the willow that drowns the lovers. “Clouds the rational mind or something.” 

This time, it’s the Christopher Lee eyebrow raise of utter unimpressedness. “So running away from your problems was an act of complete rationality?” 

Yeonjun flinches. Minho at least has the decency to look a little apologetic. 

“... I don’t know,” he says. He finds the reason tucked away behind his ribs like a knife, tugs it out of place. “I want to make things right but I just—never have the courage.” 

It isn’t just about this youth of his either. It’s about Minho and Kibum, too. All the things he’s been too afraid to do. 

The look Minho gives him tells Yeonjun that he knows. He’s likely known all along. 

“Is this the part where I try to pry the answer out of you,” he pauses for dramatic effect, “or the part where we sit in silence for a while?” 

Yeonjun looks at that stupid antique clock. Just shy of ticking down to 4 PM. “This is the part where you leave me alone and ask me again when I’m leaving.” 

Minho puts the chair back in its place and is gone, a last smile left in his place.

/ 

It’d been comfortingly easy to forget her. 

But Eunchae’s face is staring at him expectantly at him over the counter. Her mother just shrugs defeatedly at Yeonjun when he looks at her, alarmed. 

“Did you learn?” she demands, crossing her arms. 

Yeonjun’s eyebrows climb higher up his forehead. “Uh.” 

The disappointment in her eyes makes him pause. “So you didn’t.” 

“I… no, I didn’t. I’m sorry.” 

Her lips twist. “Mh. Why didn’t you?” 

(“I’m so sorry, she kicked up such a fuss about coming here, please forgive her—”) 

“I didn’t quite find the time,” he says awkwardly, shooting what he hopes is a reassuring look to her mother. “You know how it is. Things come up.” 

Eunchae’s furious pout softens. “Hey, did you just not find a tutorial?” 

Yeonjun can’t help but smile. That’s an out she’s giving him, though he doesn’t know why. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll try again later, okay?” 

When she grins, shark-like and completely terrifying, he finds he means it. It’ll be fine. The prototype isn’t the copy, or whatever. Nothing will ever compare.

“You know, in school today, we had to search for this little flower hidden somewhere in the sandpit,” she tells him, her attention on the display case behind him, “and it was really tough. But I found it. By accident. Maybe you’ll find it that way.” 

He crooks a knuckle under his chin. “As opposed to just searching for it?” 

“Oh.” Her brows furrow. “Yeah. I don’t know. You pick.” 

It feels a little like hope. 

“... Hey, can I have those erasers?” 

Her mother sighs. “That wasn’t part of the deal, honey.” 

/ 

5 PM. The sky streaked with pink. 

“Do you have an answer?” Minho asks. 

“Yes,” says Yeonjun, “I do.”

/

Searching for his pick is a horror that Yeonjun can’t even bring himself to recount. 

When he finds it at last—on the dusty top of the cupboard, a place he can barely reach, hah—everything somehow feels more daunting. Oh, so no more excuses. He finds his guitar case by groping around the back of his closet, hauling it out. 

No more excuses. He’s holding the proof of his failure in his hands. 

Opening it feels strangely grotesque, smelling like that mix of chemical disinfectant and harrowed indifferences so characteristic of embalming. Twitching fingers not meant to move, a trepidation reserved for roulette. From a dark place to a darker self. Yeonjun stares at it, trying to stop his limbs from locking in place. 

How typical. Fight or flight or freeze. 

He shifts to sit cross-legged, crumpling the sheets underneath his jittery fingers. 

At first, he just touches the strings. He winces when his nail catches and the note rings out, out of tune and sounding of forgetfulness. Whistling, echoing, staying in his ears long after it’s run its course. That haunting echo of the cry of something abandoned. 

(Melodrama, melodrama. Is he seeking it out or has it merged itself with him?) 

He tunes it mechanically. Autopsical, cold metal turning at the will of his fingers. He still knows what to listen for. After all this time, he still remembers. 

Absence makes the heart grow fanatical, or whatever. 

(Fanaticism is just an excuse he prefers over insanity.) 

Loop his arm around the neck, gingerly, jittery. Some part of him feels like he’s touching an old lover. Elbow over the lower base, hold the pick the way you’d hold up a coin to toss. The other three fingers touching the rosette like old sentinels guarding something precious. 

Even in waking, he’s found that he dreams. Submarine blips in time where he’ll be somewhere entirely else, sharing immensities with the glare of the sun during that final summer when perhaps everything was good and right and real, staring down the barrel of that tangible scent of apples cold in the air. Screech goes his heart. Pedal to the metal, an amnesiac playing God. 

He’s wide awake now. Opioids destroyed, blinking in the bleak and the warm. 

The Beomgyu in his head is insisting that he play Wonderwall. He tells him to shut up, strumming absent-mindedly, unsure if this is real or not. Is he doing this? Is he really, truly? 

He speeds up, slows down. F major, don’t think about constellations. Spin right on down to the cold hard ground. He’s playing something or other before he realises what it even is, pure instinct. Then he fumbles, the mistake amateurish at best. Rip van Winkle clutching at a headache a hundred years too late—oh God, where am I? 

(Bury me softly in this womb. Sand rains down and here I sit. Holding rare—) 

He only gets that far before he curses everything to high hell. He feels like he might cry, and that’s not happening for the second time in two days, so he screws his eyes shut tight and thinks about a dream he had a long time ago, nestled somewhere up in pink clouds and short mountains. He was alone there and he was free. 

Forcing his eyes open is jarring. Bleak. 

But fuck, it’s real, isn’t it? His lights are warmtoned because he couldn’t bear the clinical coolness of sterile white light, and everything looks softer. Almost, nearly—kinder. 

And maybe it’ll take longer to refamiliarise himself with it than it took to learn the first time, maybe someone will call him out on being sorely out of practice, maybe he’ll go bleeding to sleep all over again, not enough care in himself to bother searching for band-aids. Maybe nothing will ever be enough. Maybe they’ll try and misunderstand and Yeonjun will be left signing shadows on the wall again. Misfits, kids playing charades. Maybe he’ll be alone all over again.

But there’s something growing inside him. That undead hope that comes after waking from a nightmare and realising oh, here is your body and here is your heart, still safe. The flicker. 

Because he’s here and he tried to forget but he still remembers. And fuck melodrama, that’s for a reason, right? 

He still fucking remembers. 

Yeonjun plays Yankee Doodle just to make sure. 

/ 

me
name a time and place
23:14