Archive of Our Own ^beta

A life in the kitchen meant a lifetime of dysfunctional relationships. You either find a convenient fuck among your colleagues or find it somewhere else. But no love. Yeah, that's right. Your fate is to die resented and resentful because that’s how it is. You die alone.

Unfortunately, Jay has the terrible fucking habit of trying.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were into guys,” Heeseung says, wide-eyed and floundering. “Or, wow, into me.” 

“I’m remembering why I wish I wasn’t,” Jay grumbles.

“You know you’re my close friend, right? In the kitchen, at least. You’re reliable. You’re funny. You’re hard working. I mean, not that it would’ve changed anything if I did know from the start! I’m not prejudiced, I promise, but you can do a lot better than me.” 

“Because you’re not into guys or into me?”

Heeseung scratches the back of his head with a slight wince. “Maybe?” He laughs uncomfortably. Still doesn’t answer Jay’s question. “If we were to try things out, I don’t know if I’d be able to be a good partner. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Let it be known that I’m not begging for a chance, but it’d be nice if you could see me—and yourself—as an emotionally intelligent adult capable of conflict resolution and communication.”

“Yeah, but… I like us being friends, you know? I thought we were good as friends. I thought we were on the same page.”

“Page? What page?” What fucking book were they reading?

Heeseung straight up ignores him. “Hey, you won’t find a soulmate in me, but there’s definitely somebody else out there who’s going to see how—how, uh, how amazing you are, and who’s going to love you and cherish you and possibly but unlikely be more good-looking than I am, and…”  

Jay has heard this bullshit before. And frankly, he’s heard enough. He doesn’t care about soulmates. He used to, probably, when he was more sensitive and sheltered. And it isn’t that Jay has become disillusioned—he’s just become more realistic. It comes with age. It comes from trying to get his shit together and it just so happened today was the day everything decided to spill over. He doesn’t need Heeseung to ‘soften the blow’; there’s no need to offer empty consolation. Just be upfront about it. That’s all Jay wants. Just be honest.

Resigned, Jay stands up from the crate and downs the quart container of cooking wine he brought out with him during their break, and finishes it all with a sigh. He stands tall and proud even though his dignity is less than whole right now. “Okay, thanks. I still admire you as a chef. Don’t worry. A year of friendship can’t be ruined by my lapse in judgment.”

Heeseung looks like he doesn’t know whether to smile or frown at that.

“I will, however, be quitting now,” Jay declares.

“What?”

Jay unties his apron and tosses it over to a very baffled Heeseung. “We can still keep in touch if you want, but I won’t be the one calling first. Not anymore. It’s your turn.”

Heeseung’s mouth is flailing. “Wait a—can’t you wait until after dinner service? We have to be back in five.”

“Nope,” Jay says, stepping away from the apron Heeseung was trying to give back. “Fuck the quails. I’m done.”

“Are you quitting because of me?”

“Don’t be conceited. Of course not.” Yes. Maybe. Kind of. “I hate this place anyway. I’m underpaid, underestimated, overworked, and the line cooks are assholes.”

“But aren’t you also a—”

Jay gives him a two-fingered salute. “Peace out.”

Then he turns around and books it.

—

Some period drama is playing on the television but Jay isn’t watching. He can give less than two shits about the fate of the world inside the screen when it feels like he’s dead, when he looks in the mirror and sees the way the light sits in his face like a barreleye. He’s a piece of fabric tossed through the wind. He’s nothing. Time fizzles at his fingertips and his brain is missing the right tenons. He’s never gotten over anything normally in this entire life. He’s also never given up on anything in his entire life. 

Yet here he is, chugging lemon seltzers and lamenting over the sunk cost fallacy. 

The front door opens, followed by the clamor of shoes hitting the rack and keys being tossed somewhere. Sunghoon hobbles into sight, a single trail of snot dripping down a nostril. His morose look is quickly replaced by surprise. “The fuck?”

Jay grunts.

“You’re never home at this time of the day.” It’s 11 PM. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“I quit. I quit my job. I quit my life. I’m done. I give you permission to use your retirement funds to buy a better apartment for us and take care of all the utilities. And groceries. And everything. Because I sure as hell am not contributing to our survival anymore.”

The screen changes seasons. Sunghoon puts down his bag and walks over to take a seat at the end of the couch, leaving an empty spot between them. He’s always been like that, deliberately distant in his attempt to care. “Should I call Jaeyun? Start an emergency Discord meeting?”

“No. He’s a hater. I don’t need haters around me right now.”

“But I’m a hater.”

“A tolerable one, at least.”

“Thanks?” Sunghoon says dubiously. “Are you going to tell me what happened yet?”

“No.” 

“Yes you are, so tell me what happened.”

Jay tells him.

“Okay, so you’ve been working doubles everyday, putting over 50 hours per week into that restaurant and trying to surpass Lee Heeseung, only to quit because Lee Heeseung also doesn’t like you back?” Sunghoon sums it all up in gross simplicity, peering at him with judgment so intense it’s almost palpable. “Isn’t that pathetic?”

Jay groans. “First of all, I would’ve been fired anyway. I was determined to quit before that could happen and the rejection just sped things up for me. Second of all, I’m actually retiring.”

Sunghoon looks at him for a second long. Then he bursts out laughing. 

“Hey, I’m serious. If I work any more, I’m just going to die. I’m already dying. I have the cough, a fucked up digestive system and possible sciatica to prove it. Cooks live dysfunctional lives, okay? Have I told you about this one guy I worked with in San Francisco who hid a bong in the toilet?”

“You’re not retiring,” Sunghoon says, wiping his eyes. “You’re totally not.”

“I am. I’m going to live out my childhood dream of selling watermelon because I’ve always wanted to be a watermelon vendor. You know why that never happened? Capitalism.”

“You’re not retiring.”

He says it like a statement, like an absolute truth, like if he repeats himself enough times it’ll influence Jay to think the same. And that kind of pisses Jay off. “What makes you so sure of what I’m not going to do?”

“I just do,” Sunghoon says easily. “I know you.”

He waits for some kind of segue into a joke at Jay’s expense but it never comes. Still, he can’t tell if Sunghoon is being serious or just messing with him. Usually it’s the latter, but he’s been an enigma these days—especially when he's got that blank look on his face. Jay doesn’t really like seeing that expression outside of interviews. 

He looks at the empty cans that aren't enough to tranquilize him, yet he realizes with a start that he shouldn't have brought up the topic of retirement at all. Fuck. Everything is a sore subject these days. And though he’s retained a degree of self-awareness, he’s unfortunately loose-lipped from the beer enough that he brings up the sorest subject of them all. 

“My career isn’t as decorated as yours,” he blurts. “There’s no use trying to save it.”

Sunghoon falls quiet. He turns away, eyes focused on the television where an exorcism was happening. “You’re passionate.”

“When did passion ever get me anywhere? It’s useless.” 

He can’t sleep properly. He has nightmares about burning his mise en place. He dreams about garde-mangers assembling the beef tartare salad, mixing it with pickled pear, soy and sesame, shallot, chives, sugar, lotus root and topped with pecorino cheese, only to be destroyed by Jay’s burnt fucking quail. 

Jay can’t even remember his tenderfoot beginnings. It’s been rusted away by chrome-plated pristineness and militant heights of perfection, by a barebones career that lost fuel as fast as it consumed all hemispheres of his brain and left him with nothing but a phlegmatic cough. There’s no love in the labour. He’s well on his way to despising the craft. If he has to look at quail one last time, he might just lose it. 

“You’re wrong.”

Jay scoffs. “Again, what the hell do you even know?”

“That it means something to you. Everything always means something to you.”

“You make me sound so corny, dude.” 

“Anything that has heart in it is infinitely worth more.” Sunghoon shifts in his seat, finding a more comfortable position. But it never really helps the pain. He’s always in pain now. “Figure skating meant nothing to me.”

Silence. Three beats, four. He loses count. Jay doesn’t really know what to say. 

But Sunghoon does. A rarity. “Go to sleep.” He pushes himself up to stand, somewhat lopsidedly. “It’s a new day tomorrow. You’ll be better.” 

Jay stares at the back of his head. “You mean we.”

“Sure.”

And Jay doesn’t watch him leave, because Sunghoon doesn’t like being watched anymore. 

Jay didn’t watch his retirement announcement on purpose. 

To preface: nobody knew Jay was back in Seoul. And he wanted it to stay that way until he could make a name for himself to justify years of no contact. But the first time he came across the announcement, he was dragging his ass back home after drinks with the team when he stopped before a storefront of LG televisions replaying KBS press conference highlights. Sunghoon was on the screen, pushing left and right on the ice in feathered black and sequined silver before his takeoff was cut to him speaking into the microphone. Stiff and stoic. Inordinately put-together. Hands intertwined on the table—pale, knobbly, not very slender. Unlike the small and clammy ones that used to tremble too much for Jay to grab onto.  

His face was everywhere. Not that it wasn’t already in the first place, with his brand deals and him modeling for athleisure clothing lines and advertising questionably expensive protein powders, but this was different. Everybody was talking about Sunghoon. Even his neurotic coworkers. Jay couldn’t escape the tragic edits, the movie-like montages that felt more like a funeral tribute, the ridiculous rumour baits of him knocking up a secret girlfriend or the KSU pulling strings, the resurfacing clip of Sunghoon hitting the ice hard two years ago and being unable to get up that led to inconsistent hiatuses speculated as the cause of his career ending.

Jay watched it enough times to have gotten sick of Sunghoon’s face. Jay hadn’t seen his face in person in years. He wasn’t sure if it was from a place of pity or disbelief that made him reach out. But he did. 

And now they’re here, unbearably perpendicular. 

“What a drag,” Jay mutters, falling onto his side. 

With his face pressed against the armrest, he closes his eyes. The couch underneath him tilts, spins, somersaults. It swallows him whole. 

—

Items clipped to the fridge: grocery lists, business cards, invoices. Below was a paper scrawled with phone numbers for rehabilitation centers, physiotherapists, orthopedists. Another paper for psychologists. Apparently most mornings, Sunghoon’s dad comes over to help around the apartment, deal with paperwork, cook breakfast, then take his son back and forth between appointments. The consistent cleanliness explains it. 

Jay looks at the hangover soup made specifically for him, as well as a cup of pine needle tea gone cold. 

When they moved in together, Jay promised to give Sunghoon as much privacy as possible to make up for a whole childhood without it. They rarely saw each other anyway since Jay was slaving away for 15 hours in the kitchen. But now that he’s been given back an unduly amount of time, he’s not used to waking up without the stomach-sinking dread. He’s not used to the bright skylight on a Saturday morning or the cast irons in the drying rack. He’s not used to being in his own apartment, his own home, noticing signs of another life inhabiting the same place, touching and cleaning and putting away the same things.

He realizes he doesn’t really know how Sunghoon is doing. 

If he still lashes out through silence when he’s overwhelmed. If he still thinks it’s self-preservation to block the world out under his blanket when he comes home in a mood too terrible for company. If he grips his right knee like the self-inflicted violence could heal it. 

Jay sighs. He opens the microwave and heats up the food. 

—

Jay calls Jaeyun later on since he’s Jay’s first choice of a drinking buddy, but Jaeyun was unfortunately busy suffering at his company’s hoesik of the week. 

“Get me out of here,” he pleads, followed by the distinct flush of a toilet. “I’d rather shit on your decisions than drink with a bunch of boomers. I don’t even understand their conversations. What the hell is a NPS?”

“That’s a sign you should see a financial advisor. Should I call back later?”

Jaeyun makes a pained, indecisive noise. “Hold on.”

He actually puts Jay on hold. 

In the meantime, he reluctantly digs around his room and finally puts away three months’ worth of laundry consisting of white t-shirts. He’s been bored out of his mind without work. As much as he didn’t like overworking himself to the bone, he also doesn’t like being idle enough to think himself to death either. Because that’s all he’s been doing—thinking. And doing his strengthening exercises. Retirement can’t stop routine. He has a long ingrained habit of maintaining his physical constitution since he’d be considered useless in the kitchen, especially with his knee wearing down a lot quicker than the rest of his body.

His phone crackles to life again. “Okay. Back.”

“What, did you leave?”

“No, I put an out of order sign on the door so nobody can come in and disturb me,” Jaeyun says, voice somewhat tinny.

“I seriously could’ve just called you back later.”

“Well, I don’t want you to call me back later. I want to call right now and tell you how much of an idiot you are for letting unrequited love dictate your future like that.”

Jay rolls his eyes to the ceiling. Here we go. “For the last time, I was already intent on quitting because I hated that place, okay? And it just so happened that the last shred of light in my life dimmed into eternal darkness.” 

“You’re so dramatic. Has he called you?”

“Of course not.”

Does it sting? Yes. But Jay expected it, so he blocked the guy. Done and over with. It’s whatever. He’s used to it—rejection, failure, the constant reminder that he will never close the canyon-wide gap of skill between him and his peers. Because when you’re not born with talent, you have to work harder, shout louder, endure longer. When your personality is far from magnetic, you have to bury the repelling parts of yourself. He even brainstormed, for the longest time, the most efficient way of hanging himself. So this was nothing new—his dead end career, his one-sided friendship with someone he idolized. This was nothing in comparison. 

He’ll get over it. He always does. 

Jaeyun sighs. “The guy’s a celebrity. You know how it is with celebrities.”

“Heeseung hyung isn’t a celebrity,” Jay grumbles.

“Right. Programs are just pitched to him because he’s a young, handsome and hot sous chef of a restaurant that just so happens to have a Michelin star that also just so happens to be owned by an actual celebrity chef whose prominence soared after that Netflix show. Yeah, okay. Keep telling yourself that. At least he didn’t call you a slur.”

“Thank fucking god for that, huh.”

“Have you started looking for other jobs?”

“Why would I? I’m retired.”

Jaeyun stutters over an unintelligible sentence, then starts cackling. “Jay-ah! You’re adorable. Anyway, I heard Shake Shack was hiring.”

The rest of their phone call isn’t very productive and consists mostly of Jaeyun calling him an idiot and Jay calling him even worse names, followed by long-winded volleys of crushing nihilism. When Jay glances out the window, he notices Sunghoon’s dad’s car. They must be home from wherever or whatever they were mysteriously doing. 

“I have to go. We’ll finish this conversation later,” Jay says. “Sunghoon just got back. Are you going to be okay?”

Jaeyun whines. “Yeah, but my liver? No.”

“Pretend you have an emergency. Your wife’s dying from sepsis or something.”

“If I told these geezers I have a wife, they’re gonna hound me for details. They’re wolves! And I’m like a little wet puppy.”

“I can’t believe you just shamelessly called yourself a little wet puppy.”

“Shut up. Keep me updated. Bye.”

When Jay goes out into the living room, it’s only Sunghoon, his dad nowhere in sight. Jay hovers in the corner while he watches Sunghoon rummage through the fridge before he says, “I ordered chicken. We can share. I mean, I don’t know if you’re still dieting, but…” 

“I’m not on a diet,” Sunghoon says, looking at Jay like it was absurd of him to think so. “I haven’t been for a while now.”

“But you barely eat.”

“I haven’t had an appetite. I’m getting it back though, so. Yeah, I’ll eat some chicken.”

Chicken arrives. They eat at the marble island. God bless Sunghoon’s money. Neither of them have the attention span or interest to talk about one thing consistently. Jay tries to discreetly watch Sunghoon eat to make sure he doesn’t try to toss the drumstick he graciously offered, because food is expensive and Jay will gladly eat up somebody else’s saliva to get his money’s worth. And if Sunghoon notices the hovering, then he’s in a good enough mood to not bring it up.

Jay tries to bring something else up instead.

“So,” he says, a little louder than he intended, and Sunghoon looks at him warily. “So, uh… So. How’s it going?”

“Seriously?”

“What? I’m just asking how you are. I don’t even know what you do everyday or what your schedule is—like, do you come home late all the time or do you have a girlfriend now that you’re not cockblocked by your career anymore, or…? I mean, I don’t believe in rumours, but you were in a lot of them with that idol.”

Sunghoon takes a big bite out of his drumstick and stares at Jay, deliberately chewing with his mouth open and speaking with it full. What an animal. “If you’re talking about Wonyoung, the only reason those rumours started is because we looked good standing next to each other in a public campaign, so our sponsors had us endorse a bunch of brands together.”

“Right.”

“We’re friends. She visits. The hair mask you’ve been stealing was gifted by her.”  

“What? I don’t steal. I borrow, sometimes without permission.”

“That’s literally stealing.”

“No it isn’t.”

Sunghoon narrows his eyes. “Is this why you’ve been walking on eggshells around me? Because you want to know if I’m actually doing rehab or just fooling around?”

“Hey, I’ve never walked on eggshells around you.”

“You have. Many times.”

“Okay, maybe once or twice,” Jay concedes. “However, this time is necessary because I am currently learning how to reintegrate back into society as a regular functioning human being, which also means relearning how to engage in conversations that don't require me to defer or swear.” 

“You’re cute.”

“Why do you guys keep saying that?”

Sunghoon shakes his head. He seems to find amusement in Jay’s responses, seeing as he doesn’t reach over to backhand his skull, but he falls quiet for a while. It looks like he’s thinking. Out of the two of them, Sunghoon has always been the overthinker. 

“For most of my life,” he says slowly, thoughtfully, “I spent every waking minute of it training and competing. Never had time for anything else. My life now, and the rest of it? I’m going to spend every waking minute trying to recover from all of that. Still no time for anything else. Still no time for anyone.”

Jay gets it, to some extent. No one’s ever free from their first love. But he’s pretty sure that while Sunghoon was podiuming for medals and sweeping up bouquets off the ice, Jay had been getting torn a new one by his asshole manager in some dingy diner in San Francisco and relying on food scraps as sustenance for a good year. 

So to some extent, Jay also doesn’t get it. All these wins, all this prestige—at least Sunghoon made it big. At least he didn’t go down nameless and forgotten. At least he can retire comfortably even if it means going to rehab for the rest of his life to manage chronic pain. If he were in Sunghoon’s position, Jay would gladly trade a limb.

“At least that knee got you exempted from conscription,” Jay says, then immediately regrets it. 

To his surprise, Sunghoon doesn’t look offended. His eyes actually light up. In fact, he laughs, and Jay feels his face tingle with pride. “Would’ve been better if I won an Olympic medal.”

“Hey. Leave some talent for the rest of us.” 

“You’re plenty talented.”

“I don’t like that tone of yours. Are you making fun of me?”

There it is again, that loud laugh. It’s obnoxious enough for his dimples to pop out. That’s good. Sunghoon is so cloudy nowadays. Jay doesn’t like it when Sunghoon goes too long without laughing. It’s like the whole world freezes along with him. 

At least Jay can get him to thaw, even just for a little bit. 

—

He’s in the middle of lighting his cigarette outside a CU when he gets a phone call from an unknown number. Probably spam.

“Hello?” Jay answers gruffly. 

There’s no response besides the rustling of fabric. Jay frowns. Just when he’s about to hang up on what sounds like a misdial—

“I heard you go by Jay now, but this is Jongseong, isn’t it? Park Jongseong. From Woosong High School?” 

Jay opens his mouth, closes it. He brings his phone down to look at the number. He changed his own a few years back and hadn’t bothered to transfer his contacts because he found it too inconvenient. Life had become too narrow, too small, to fit anybody else from the past. 

He committed this number to memory, once.

“What the hell,” Jay says. “Yang Jungwon?” 

“Nice, you remember me!” 

“Of course I—how could I forget?”

Jungwon laughs. His voice is deeper, rounder. Still kind of nasally. “You sound like a different person.”

“So I’ve been told. Uh, why are you—how did you even get my number?”

“Right.” Jungwon hesitates for a beat. “I… asked around?”

“Who? I don’t know a lot of people here.”

“Oh! Jaeyun hyung gave it to me.”

Jay frowns. Jaeyun hardly even has the time to meet friends on his days off. He wouldn’t waste a morsel of it talking about Jay, of all people. “You guys kept in touch?”

“Occasionally. He mentioned you were out of work and gave me your number, so I’m calling to ask if you’d be interested in checking my place out—”

“Your place?”

“My grandmother’s place to be exact, but I’m in charge of it now. Our other cook quit and nobody seems to want to work in family restaurants these days. We could use the extra hand.”

Jay is still trying to let everything sink in. “Wait, your grandmother—wait. You want me to work for you?”

“With me,” Jungwon corrects. “I want you to work with me.” 

“But I’m retired—”

“From fine dining, right? You don’t have to worry about bringing your CV. Jaeyun hyung kept me updated about you and it sounds like you’ve been working in impressive places. You even worked with Lee Heeseung! He's big on social media. I guess we’re kind of a downgrade.”

“What? No, I don’t think I’m above anything at all.”

“Even though you’re a pro now?” 

“That’s a glorification. I’m not a pro at anything.”

“I don’t know if it’s sad or comforting that you still can’t tell the difference between self-deprecation and humility.”

Jay runs a hand over his face. So much is happening. This is not happening. “Are you being serious right now?”

“Yes. But again, you should come in first and see for yourself if you want to accept my offer.”

“But—why?”

“Why what?”

“Why offer it to me?”

“Oh. Why not?”

Because it’s been years of desertion only for Jay to resurface as a failure. He’s a joke.

He let so much unravel through his fingers. Jay doesn’t think he deserves a chance with these familiar faces of the past after slimming his life down into the shape of what he thought success was supposed to look like: a room only big enough to fit the best. To fit himself.

Jay squeezes his eyes shut. Fuck. 

“I need to think about it,” he says. 

“No, you don’t,” Sunghoon tells him the next morning after prodding for the reason of Jay’s evident stress, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall once he was done stretching. “What’s there to think about? Call him back. Or even better, show up there instead.”

Jay shakes his head, lifting a finger. “First of all, our friendship fizzled out the moment I packed my bags and left. I can’t just show up assuming we’re on good terms when I didn’t even—god, I’m going to punch Jaeyun in the face for this.”

“Dude,” Sunghoon says incredulously. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Stop making me feel worse.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“It’s weird, okay?” Jay continues pacing around in the living room. “I—and I was an overbearing ass back then, so—” 

“Like a tiger parent? Or tiger friend, in that case.”

“I don’t like that analogy,” he grumbles.

“If it makes you feel any better, you’re less of an overbearing ass now.”

“I don’t even know why I’m bothering to explain. You wouldn’t understand.” 

Sunghoon scoffs. “Just because I wasn’t there to witness your raging dumpster fire of a high school life doesn’t mean I don’t understand that this could be a chance for you to fix things.”

“I can’t—”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“What’s easier in the world than coming back to your friends?”

Jay pauses. He looks at Sunghoon who looks back unrelentingly, unnervingly—almost rehearsed like he’s prepared for all this unnecessary fanfare to happen because he knows, at the very end, Jay’s answer will be obvious and is merely hidden away underneath all this self-sabotaging obstinacy. 

He wonders if Sunghoon predicted Jay would read into things a little too much, though. Because out of the two of them, Jay has always been the overreader.

“Did it feel like… I was abandoning you,” Jay says, gauging Sunghoon’s reaction which is fringing on pure disbelief, “when I left for the States?” 

“That’s not even what we’re talking about right now.”

“Yeah, but the—it kind of is, isn’t it?”

Sunghoon groans, getting up to his feet. “Don’t think you can get out of talking about Jungwon by talking about me. I wasn’t even thinking about that.” 

“I left and didn’t call or show my face for like, seven years or something,” Jay insists. “I wasn’t here. I wasn’t here when Jungwon’s grandmother passed away. I wasn’t here when Jaeyun graduated. I wasn’t here when you… when you got injured and—”

“But you watched. The whole world did. Big deal. Why are you bringing this up all of a sudden?”

“Not all of a sudden. Even though you let me back in, it feels like I’m hurting you still by being back. By being here as Jay, not Jongseong.”

Sunghoon stares at him, puzzled. His laugh is short and shallow and he runs a hand over his face. “You don’t hurt me.”

“But I did.”

“You don’t.”

“I have,” Jay says incredulously. “I left.”

“You’re here now. And you haven’t been here in a long time. That’s enough.”

The Sunghoon back then, or the Sunghoon he used to know at the mercy of his memory, was heedful. He was honest in a way that was almost shameless if it wasn’t for his delivery. His polished self-discipline prevented wishful thinking and unrealistic ideals—that is, except for figure skating. When it came to that damned sport, he was a tunnel-visioned perfectionist to a pathological degree that it gradually bled into other aspects of his life. 

But the Sunghoon right now, who can barely maintain eye contact without a weighted hurt flashing across his face, prefers the unspoken to stay unspoken in favour of pretense. And that isn’t Sunghoon. That’s an impostor. Because when did pretense ever help anybody? 

Sure as hell didn’t help Jay. 

“What if I leave again?” 

“Then you leave and I won’t stop you.”

“Simple as that?”

Sunghoon, this downtrodden and three-legged dog unable to chase a bone. Sunghoon, haggard and clearly not doing very well, with the glacial sun shining over his head and making him glow like an angel. “You’ve never been the type to stay. It’s in your nature. I’ve known since we were kids. That’s why you don’t hurt me, Jay. You can’t.”

Then he’s gone, soft without a sound. 

Alone, Jay sits in his own regret and looks out the window. Sunghoon didn’t go to the training center today. He rarely goes anywhere but the training center. That’s always been the key difference between them: Sunghoon runs head-on towards the things that hurt him, and Jay hesitates.

—

The restaurant is still as shabby as Jay remembers it with old smoke damage on the outside. It’s tucked in an alley behind Ssamziegil that makes it seem virtually out of place. Inside, daily specials are written on a whiteboard plastered to the walls. There’s wooden upholstery, steel tables with eerie talismans stuck to the undersides, a tiny television dangling from the ceiling, and what’s even more impressively uncomfortable is the addition of a large portrait of Jungwon’s grandmother propped up on a table in the corner. Very panoptical. Somewhat of a spiritual hazard.

A person Jay assumes is the server comes over to greet him. His eyes are bright, reddish-brown. “Jongseong-ssi?”

“Yes, but it’s Jay now.”

“Like… Jay Park?” 

“Uh, sure. Though I’m taller.”

He laughs. It’s a charming sound. “I’m Sunoo, one of the servers here. It's nice to meet you.”

“I,” Jay starts, then stops, then points at the baseboard. “Is that mold?”

“Huh? No, I think it’s water damage.”

“Water damage looks nothing like this.”

“Then it’s probably harmless mildew—”

“Nothing about mildew is harmless.”

Sunoo shrugs helplessly. “There’s a reason Jungwon was generous enough to let you see the place before you blindly agreed to work here.”

That’s far from heartening.

He takes Jay through the kitchen, which is fortunately a lot cleaner. The office that Sunoo steers him to, however, is not. Stacks of papers and crumpled coffee cups are strewn everywhere and Jay can barely see the floor. The only upright object is the computer. Sunoo bangs a fist against the door left open, startling the figure idly spinning around in a chair with a manila folder over their face. 

“We have an esteemed guest in our presence,” Sunoo announces. 

“Who’s more esteemed than me?” Jungwon asks, tossing the folder aside, and does a big stretch before standing.

Jungwon looks the same but just older, matured, the baby fat of his cheeks gone—something Jay used to jokingly vow to preserve. A ratty baseball cap keeps his hair out of his face. Jay remembers Jungwon used to be scared of piercings or anything remotely sharp. Now, he has a safety pin hanging from an earlobe.

Jungwon is grinning at him. “Are you going to cry?”

“I’m not going to cry,” Jay says, face growing hot when his voice cracks. 

“But I’d be really touched if you cried.”

“I’m still not going to cry.”

“That’s a shame. I guess I’ll hug you anyway.”

Jay does not cry. But he comes close to it when Jungwon skips over and engulfs him in a brief but warm hug. Jay can feel how much Jungwon has grown. He has at least a centimeter on Jay now. When they step apart, Jay aggressively rubs the top of Jungwon’s head and Jungwon karate chops his arm away. 

“You look awful,” Jungwon says, gesturing at Jay’s entire being. “Was America not what you expected?”

Jay is literally American. He also wore his laundered clothes today and washed his hair the night before. He thought he looked decent enough to leave the apartment. “I tried to clean up.”

“Well, you need to take more supplements or something. Sunoo hyung is a pro at that. You should ask him later.”

“Shall we move along?” Sunoo pipes in politely.

“Right.” Jungwon fixes his bandana and stands alert. “Jongseong—”

“Jay.”

“Jay hyung, if we had an earlier heads up I would’ve cleaned the office but honestly, I don’t think it’s that bad here.”

“No, it’s pretty bad,” Jay says.

“It’s an absolute pigsty,” Sunoo agrees. “Jungwon always says he’s doing paperwork but the only thing he seems to be doing is generating more paper.”

“I’m a busy person! I’m catching up on a backlog of a year’s worth of stuff.” 

Jay picks up a crumpled sheet of paper. Make that two years. “Don’t you have a CPA or something?”

The look Jungwon gives him is nonplussed. “You think I can afford to hire a bookkeeper when it’s obvious I've fallen victim to the corporate pressure of cutting down on labour costs by understaffing the restaurant?” 

“We did have one,” Sunoo answers. “He was stealing money behind our backs so he was fired.”

“And we’ve been fine without.” 

“The longer you keep telling yourself that, the more business will tank,” Sunoo mutters under his breath.

Jungwon grabs the apron draped over the chair and gives Jay an intense onceover. “Are you hungry?”

Jay is ushered back into the seating area. He chooses the least wobbly table and skims through the menu. It hasn’t changed much from its affordable selection of lunch sets besides new additions like the cream cheese garlic bread and macaroni salad. Jungwon’s grandmother’s restaurant was mostly known for its comforting curry aside from the basic staples of Korean food. Jay used to come here every weekday to eat and study instead of attending cram school. It was how he met Jungwon.

Sunoo gives him water and cola. He looks over his shoulder before sitting down across from Jay, the friendly smile seemingly fixed on his face now dropping as he leans forward to whisper, “He’s not going to tell you, so I will. The restaurant is in hot fucking waters.” 

“Uh, yeah,” Jay says. “I gathered that.” 

“Obviously the food isn’t the problem—we’re just not trendy. Jungwon doesn’t want to modernize anything but it doesn’t help that this place looks like a murder shed compared to that mazesoba place down the street. We get student rushes sometimes, but it’s not enough. The landlord’s chasing rent, this contractor asshole wants to replace us with Lotteria, and Jungwon is going to overwork himself to death trying to manage everything.” Sunoo claws a hand through his perfectly shiny hair and sighs. “Sometimes I think it might be best to close the restaurant down, but how? Jungwon loves this place too much. He gave up taekwondo for this.”

Jongseong swallows past the tightness in his throat and glances at the portrait. “You’ve kept her spirit alive, at least.”

“Just not her business,” Sunoo says glumly. 

After a few minutes of waiting, Sunoo brings the food to him: a tray with a plate of golden cutlets seated over a bed of freshly cooked rice and vegetable curry, along with a salad side dish. Once Jungwon appears shortly to join Jay at the table, Sunoo leaves them be and continues refilling the condiments.

Jay scarfs down a big bite, face prickling from Jungwon’s wide-eyed anticipation. It tastes just like how he remembers it—garlicky and spicy, accompanied by the crispy bite of the vegetables and the slight sweetness from the pumpkin that thickened the curry into the perfect consistency. There was a hint of umami Jay never noticed in the past. The cutlets melt in his mouth, filling his belly with the warmth of his youth. 

“Is there fish sauce in this?” 

“That’s a secret. Unless you work here, of course.”

The answer is easy. It’s obvious. But it’s like Jongseong’s body developed a separate mind of its own and was physically denying the words from leaving his mouth. It doesn’t make sense to want to be in their lives again when Jay inadvertently pushed them out of his. 

“I don’t know if I really like it,” he blurts out of guilt. “The culinary world, I mean. Maybe it’s a hate-love relationship. And it’s ironic considering I gave up everything here to work my ass off overseas but I never got anywhere there. I came back and never got anywhere here either. Jungwon, that’s the thing. All these years and I never got anywhere.”

Jungwon shrugs. “I failed the college entrance exam twice and never bothered to try again.” 

“That’s different—”

“How? Because you had direction and I didn’t? Because you went to a fancy school and did a bunch of fancy jobs, you should be at the top of the ladder and I should be a bottom feeder?”

Jay splutters, “No!”

“Good. I didn’t think you were pretentious about that stuff anyway.” Jungwon smiles, tapping his bandaged fingers against the table. “But I do think you’re taking your fear out on me. You want me to justify changing my mind because you don’t want the burden of turning me down. You want to assume that I think the absolute worst of you to make it easier for yourself to back out.” 

Jay is remembering why he never tried to pick a fight. And if they ever did fight, he remembers why Jungwon always won. “That’s not what I’m—”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said this place is a downgrade. There’s no designation system. We do all jobs equally and have to be willing to fulfill any role at any time, so yes, that includes washing the dishes. You won’t earn anywhere near the amount you were getting paid in your previous job. I’m not doing favours. I’m not being generous. I just really need a fucking cook. So I don’t care if you have a thousand achievements to your name or none. You could be the second coming of Anthony Bourdain and I’d still get you to scrub every inch of the floor.” 

Jungwon leans back in his seat and crosses his arms. “I’m a simple guy, Jay hyung. If you really want to make it up to me, then just let us cook together again.”

For some reason, Jay thinks about Oakland. 

Not just the city, but the Korean-Italian fusion restaurant he’d been working at that had a television replaying some international championship Sunghoon coincidentally appeared in. It was the one where he came out of it as a silver medalist. So while Sunghoon was clearly off doing better things, Jay was wiping up sloppy gizzards off tables when he should’ve been shucking mollusks and prepping marbled meats in a nicer area of the Bay. Hell, even in New York. 

But bitter and beaten down, he still couldn’t take his eyes off the screen—Sunghoon in that black, ornate costume and pristinely styled hair, the damasked death of the sun. How he was so much brighter and bigger than him. How super fucking cool he was. How regrettably handsome he’d become. 

How lonely he looked on the ice. 

“I have to ask first,” Jay says after a length of silence. “Did Jaeyun really give you my number?”

“You’re surrounded by good people,” Jungwon hedges, which is probably a no.

Jay looks at his hand and curls it into a fist. Whatever. He endured the hardest parts of his life already. He can endure this. “I guess I wouldn’t mind a retirement job.”

The corner of Jungwon’s mouth sharpens. A cat that ate the canary. “Then you start on Monday, bright and early.”

—

Jay doesn’t mean to eavesdrop. 

He can’t help that he crawls out to the couch in the middle of the night to get some shut eye because his room is fucking cursed. And as long as he has a sleep mask, he can fall asleep anywhere even if it amounts to lower back pain in the morning. So it’s not his fault he wakes up to something warm and soft being draped over his shoulders, to voices blotted out by the ventilation fan and the low hum of a bubbling pot, to the earthy and pungent smell of soybeans.

It reminds him of Seattle, how the summers there were long and sunny. 

He travelled a lot as a kid because of his father’s work—mostly America, occasionally Japan. But he liked Seattle the most. So did his mom. A younger version of himself would watch his father sit in a low-folding chair out on the lawn through the kitchen window, sunbathing with a book in hand while his mother skinned a big, beautiful honeycrisp. Her garden was full of summer flora and perilla leaves, and Jay would help her pick them to bring inside to ferment or pickle. Every meal, he would mix sauces, keep pots from boiling over, wash the dishes and patiently wait for the next step in their precious ritual. 

It was always them in the kitchen, together, his small hands hooked over the pockets of her apron as he watched her assemble the most delicious kongguksu with ground tofu instead of ground soybeans. A kiss on his forehead as the finishing garnish. 

Jay wakes up sometimes, convinced she’s still alive. Her recipe book continues to collect dust in his father’s house and he wishes he’d taken it with him when he left. 

“Yerim tells me she’s planning on flying back during her winter break,” says Sunghoon’s dad. “It’d be nice if we could spend the holidays together.”

The fan is turned off. There’s the clamour of utensils, the pouring of liquid. Sunghoon’s voice, weary and quiet. “With mom?”

“I suppose it’s up to her if she wants to be in the same room as me. If not, we can always arrange something else.”

“No, it’s fine, but I think I should spend it alone. It's better for Yerim if I’m not there.”

“You have to know she doesn’t hate you, she just… misses her older brother.” 

“She tells people all the time that she doesn’t have a brother,” Sunghoon says matter-of-factly in between bites, “and I don’t blame her. It’s fine.”

His dad sighs. Then he clears his throat. “Well, it’s good to see you smiling more these days.”

“I’m always smiling.”

“Sure, but not as true. I haven’t seen you this relaxed in a long time.”

Sunghoon hums noncommittally. 

Silence. Chewing. An unintelligible video plays out loudly on accident before it’s muted at the speed of light. Then Mr. Park says, “I’m grateful Jongseong—”

“Jay.”

“Ah, yes. I’m glad Jay agreed to be your roommate despite how long it’s been. Seeing you together brings me back. You two were inseparable as kids.”

Jay pulls down his sleep mask to the sky still dark, the streetlamps on. The summer after his mother died, they moved to Seoul to be closer to his father’s flagship business. The same summer they moved to Seoul, his father signed him up for hockey classes that never lasted but was where he met his brilliant best friend. The summer after that, it was all a blur. Palms scorched by ice, ankles purpled into plums. Sunghoon laughing wetly at Jay’s ugly faces intended to cheer him up. Sunghoon shoving Jay away hard enough to leave bruises. 

When it’s clear Sunghoon isn’t going to respond, Jay takes the opportunity to announce he’s awake by stretching his arms out and groaning.

“My back,” he complains. 

“That’s what you get for sleeping on the couch,” Sunghoon says. “Why are you on the couch anyway?”

“Nightmares. There’s something about my room that makes it literally impossible to fall asleep in. I swear a receipt printer is haunting me. Should we contact a shaman?”

“You actually believe in that stuff?”

“Good morning, Jay. You woke up just in time for some ground soybean stew,” Mr. Park says, amused. “Come eat while it’s still fresh.”

Jay rolls off the couch.

While he brushes his teeth in the bathroom, Sunghoon pops by and holds up his hands. Jay steps aside and lets him use the sink. In the mirror, he watches Sunghoon meticulously scrub his hands with soap before rinsing them. Once he’s done, Jay steps forward and spits out the toothpaste foaming in his mouth. 

“Are you guys leaving already?” Jay asks over his toothbrush. 

“No,” Sunghoon says. “I’m just going out for a walk.”

“Oh. Let me come with you.”

“You’re not going to eat?”

“I’ll eat after I come back. Give me a minute.”

He meets Sunghoon at the door, who was finishing kinesio-taping his knee under his pants. In their thick, winter coats, they take the elevator down and head outside. It looks like it’s about to snow. Or rain. All gloom and doom in the clouds. They’re leaving the neighbourhood, aimlessly going somewhere north—quiet for the most part. Sunghoon is geared up in his anti-paparazzi armour (mask, sunglasses, hat) and was surely trying for a nondescript disguise, but the way he acts makes him appear suspicious instead, frequently scanning his surroundings and flinching or freezing whenever a stranger walks past them. Almost like a lamb. A tall, skittish lamb. 

Jay doesn’t miss Sunghoon oscillating his weight between each foot either, but tries his best to act normal and not like he is very aware of the way Sunghoon is trying to hide his discomfort. He looks at their breaths fogging up the sky and longs for warmer weather.

“Excited for work tomorrow?”

Jay grimaces. “More like terrified. What if I fuck up a macaroni salad?”

“I don’t think you can fuck up a macaroni salad.”

“You can fuck that shit up so many ways, man. Then retirement wouldn’t be enough. I’d need to jump out the window.”

“I’m sure you can’t fuck up more than you did with Heeseung.”

“Wow. Thanks a lot. You know, I haven’t thought about that guy in ages until you had to bring him up just now.”

Behind that mask and those opaque sunglasses, Jay can tell Sunghoon is grinning ear to ear. Evil incarnate. 

After a few minutes of mindless small talk, Sunghoon suddenly comes to a halt in front of a lot of land blocked off by construction barriers. He lingers too long for Jay not to make a comment about it.

“Looks like they’re building a villa.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know what was here before?”

“A playground. It was small, kind of crappy, torn down months ago.”

“Oh,” Jay says. “Was it special?”

Sunghoon flicks him a glance. “Not really, but—you don’t remember?”

Jay shrugs and knocks his head to prove a point. “This brain has shriveled up from unethical long hours. What was I supposed to remember?”

“I guess it really has been that long.” Sunghoon continues walking. “There used to be street vendors that sold dalgona here before the nearby elementary school shut down. We actually came here once with… your dad. He bought us the star-shaped ones and we competed to see who could trim the outline the fastest. I won, of course, since you sucked. Then he let us walk around in circles until we finished eating so my mom wouldn’t find out. She was strict with what I ate.”

Jay rubs the back of his neck. Shit. That really was a lifetime ago. “Oh.”

“It was my first time ever meeting him.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“I’m not. I always thought he was a myth.”

“He wasn’t that bad,” Jay says without thinking—compelled, almost. As if he and his father haven’t been estranged for years. “He was still around.”

“And that was enough for you?”

Jay stares after Sunghoon, realizing he’s stopped following. Against the cold carapace of the world, Sunghoon grows small. But then he turns around, waiting, like he’s used to being ahead but never far enough to leave someone behind.  

Did Jay turn around when he left? 

He tries to remember them being boys. He tries to remember them still heavy in their innocence. He tries to remember Sunghoon as someone he adored, not someone he couldn’t decide between resenting and admiring most days.

Compartmentalization was imperative for success. That’s what he believed. His father wanting nothing to do with him, with whom he loved, set a precedent that it was really just that easy to cut ties and rebrand himself.

So Jay did.

He aimed to be recognized for his skill that would put him on the same pedestal as the prodigies. He aimed to prove that hard work was paramount to what one was born with, that it wasn’t just the brilliant who could go far. He aimed to be the underdog that climbed out of the subterranean. He aimed to make a world where there would be no more grief attached to his new name.

But look where that got him: a cycle of inferiority and lifelong deference on the clock. The trajectory of his career never soared higher than the deep end. He’s just back at the start. He’s back at the very beginning, trying to recall how his mother got rid of the fishy smell in her stir-fried gosari. 

“Were we really inseparable as kids?” 

The tense slope of Sunghoon’s shoulders lowers in surprise. He stands there, thinking, and steps towards Jay with the tentative tact of a stray and hesitates for what feels like the longest minute. Then he grabs Jongseong's hand and holds it tight against his chest. 

Cold, clammy, trembling. 

“Like this,” Sunghoon says.

They never talked about the hard things even though they knew too much about each other’s lives to feign ignorance. Jay’s memory is spotty at best, but this is the clearest thing he remembers about their formative years: Sunghoon struggled with change. 

A lot of change.

Couldn’t keep up with the new routines, the new coaches that funneled potential into self-destruction, the way his mother smothered him more than his sister and the way his sister’s good-natured pettiness snowballed into resentment. Couldn’t handle the popularity he was subjected to after the documentary; amidst the turbulent tides of puberty, suddenly everybody wanted to know him, be near him, overestimating and undermining him. Saying he’d be the next national pride. Saying he doesn’t even have to try with that face. 

Who wouldn’t buckle under all that pressure? All that scrutiny? Sunghoon was a landmine when he was under a mountain load of stress, and he’s been under that mountain since he was old enough to forfeit his agency. He’ll never be old enough to reclaim it. And Jay didn’t know how to handle all that shrapnel, how to stomach the sight of his best friend being flattened by the world but to accept this distorted evolution as part and parcel of a child star.

Jay realizes, then, that he might’ve done more to hurt Sunghoon than by just leaving.

He squeezes Sunghoon’s hand. Nothing has ever been enough. He pulls Sunghoon into a hug, knocking off his hat in the process. Their first hug in seven years. No, more than that. They haven’t hugged since Sunghoon flinched away from Jay like their closeness could set him on fire.

“This is really awkward.”

“You think this isn’t awkward for me too?”

“You’re pitying me again.”

“This isn’t me pitying you, dumbass. This is…” Jay doesn’t know either. An apology? “This is me remembering you.”

Sunghoon doesn’t say anything. When it begins to snow, he finally hugs Jay back. 

—

Jungwon brandishes a premium bottle of fish sauce from Thailand. “Ta-dah.”

“Nampia?” Jay reads, fixing a headband over his hair. “This is the secret ingredient?”

“Obviously not. This just elevates the flavour. Don’t you know that the roux is the most important part?”

“I don’t make curry often.”

Jungwon snorts. “Right. Probably not fancy enough for your kind of people.”

Jay saves his breath at defending himself when Jungwon turns around. At least this hasn’t changed: Jungwon still casually makes fun of him like he is no one significant in the world.  

His hours at the restaurant are uncomfortably consistent. No more waking up at 5 AM and working until 1 AM. It’s a solid 9-6 with an actual meal break and not just a mouthful of whatever scraps are left to eat over a trash can within three minutes. Even when Jay arrives 20 minutes early out of anxiety, Jungwon has already finished half of the prep work. It feels strange to not go in at the crack of dawn to help with the bulk of it. But with Jay here, at least Jungwon gets to delegate some of his time into other duties in desperate need of attention. 

Jay isn’t used to it, though—the lack of proper stations, the absence of disorder and tension and shit dying at the pass. He was used to his colleagues turning up or off the stove when Jay wasn’t looking enough times to put him in the weeds. Every service was unforgiving and all about perfection. There was a minimum of three cooks threatening to quit on a daily basis and more often than not, Jay was one of them. So it was also kind of traumatic. 

Here, the restaurant never gets slammed with too many orders. He gets the hang of how Jungwon runs things in the kitchen, which is lax compared to all the other places Jay has worked in but also firm. Here, Jungwon doesn’t point out the controlled panic Jay has over double frying the pork covered in some kind of homemade panko, and actually gives him space to shake the nerves off. Here, Jungwon is either in the back rubbing mentholatum balm over his arm under the guise of doing paperwork, poking fun at Sunoo out of boredom, or starting a hyperactive conversation during small rushes. And he weirdly seems to enjoy Jay’s company.

It’s fucking disconcerting. 

“I feel like I should be stressed,” Jay says after two hours with no customers, looking out into the empty restaurant where Sunoo is fixing his bangs with the mirror in his phone case. “I should be stressed, right? Because I’ve seen the inventory.”

Sunoo flicks him a glance. “Hyung should see the financial reports.”

Jay doesn’t even want to think about that. “It’s better if he transitioned those paper records to digital. I don’t understand why he’s so stubborn.”

“The same reason why everyone’s so dead in this city.”

“Capitalism?”

“Yes, but nobody wants to ask for help with anything. Not even for the smallest of things. I’m talking about extreme lowkey neuroticism. I’m talking about hyper independence and serious trust issues.” 

“And capitalism.”

“Okay, and capitalism.” 

“Well, I don’t think there’s much career development to be found here. What’s making you stay?”

“Loyalty?” He shrugs, the answer sounding like a suggestion. “This was supposed to be a part-time job while I was still attending cosmetics school, but I guess I grew attached. After Jungwon completed his military service, his grandma passed away and there was a lot for him to sort out with the lawyers and… Yeah. Just a lot. The opportunity to leave passed and I ended up staying. It’s not so bad. Possible bankruptcy aside, I like it here.” Sunoo smiles ruefully. “I’ve done my fair share of trying to persuade him. Jungwon might listen to you, considering you two have history.”

There’s way too much history these days. 

Jay laments up at the ceiling. He’s only been here for over a week. He’s not sure he wants to risk termination for bringing up a sore subject, but Jungwon doesn’t seem to realize his operational rigidity is what’s keeping business from thriving. Then again, what does Jay know? He hates quails. And numbers. He was just another platform for his peers to step on to the top. 

Meanwhile, Heeseung’s face keeps popping up in his YouTube feed and Jay is well on his way to deleting his account. Jay doesn’t need to be reminded of how the intensity of his commitment scares people off. He still hasn’t learned his lesson. 

Jay clocks out on time and puts on his jacket at the pace of a snail. Jungwon comes in from the backdoor while rubbing his wrist, looking at the state of the kitchen kept pristine. He’s been doing that all day. No, he’s been doing that since Jay started working, smearing pain reliever over his arm and then scrubbing it all away when he’s back in the kitchen. And Jay has seen it with the older cooks he worked with overseas—knee replacements, worn ankles, nerve damage, steroid injections, you name it. All from overuse. All from pride. Never a day of rest.

“Are you sure you don’t need my help closing?” Jay asks. 

“I’ve been doing this since I turned an adult,” Jungwon says, dismissing him with a wave. “Don’t worry about me. Go home already. You still look awful.”

“Insulting me won’t deter me from helping you.”

“If you really want to help me, then get eight hours of sleep first so you can stop scaring me with those eye bags.”

Jay can’t believe this kid. He sighs in resignation. “Fine. Take it easy.”

“Yes, sir.”

When he arrives home, only the kitchen is illuminated. Sunghoon is folded over on the island with a bottle of wine and a half-drunk glass, the left side of his face glued to the marble. He’s still in his compression outfit; it's skin-tight, clinging to the blades of his shoulders, to his concave waist. He’s been less of a hermit these days but seeing him in the shadows is strange. Sunghoon was a towering talent on television but here, he’s all bones and contour. No longer whippet-strong. Just a trim body systematically cared for. 

Jay averts his gaze, uncomfortably aware of his staring, and kicks off his shoes.

He potters to the seat next to Sunghoon, mirroring him—arm above his head, the marble cold against his cheek. They stare at each other. Sunghoon’s throat is bright red. Jay wonders, unbidden, if he can cool it down with his palm. 

“Your tolerance is worse than mine,” says Jay.

Sunghoon squints at him. “I can drink you under the fucking table.”

“You’re a table. What’s with the Merlot? Are we celebrating or are we mourning?”

“Neither. It was a gift from a past sponsor. Got sick of staring at it,” he says sullenly. “Figured I’d get rid of it one way or another. Beats your terrible whiskey.”

His choice of whiskey is not terrible for the record, but he thinks twice of arguing. “Did PT not go well?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Call it a hunch.”

Sunghoon gives him a droll smile that doesn’t last long. “It went fine, the usual.”

“What’s the usual?”

“Tedious.” 

“And?”

That dead-eyed fish look comes back, which is a telltale sign he’s dithering over carrying something to his grave. Sunghoon is the type to play detective in private to solve his own problems. As Sunoo said about half of the world’s population, Sunghoon also would definitely rather cram himself into a paper shredder and get his guts everywhere than talk about his burdens. And Jay can’t really blame the guy, because he’s the same.

He’s learned the hard way that he can’t bulldoze through Sunghoon’s walls like an ox. He has to be sensitive. He has to be patient. He has to put on his armchair therapist hat and tactfully fish the answers out without making him feel like a spectacle. And if Sunghoon just so happens to be miraculously a little tipsy, then even better. 

“We’re screening for joint disease next week,” Sunghoon says eventually. “That’s all.”

Jay lets out a low whistle. “Fun.”

“So naturally, my mom showed up afterwards to make my day even more fun.”

“As your parent or as your manager?” 

“The lines blurred a long time ago. She wanted me to appear in an interview about athletes opening up about their post-retirement struggles.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad, is it?”

The furrow between his brows deepens. He squeezes his eyes shut briefly as if to get rid of a painful memory. “They want to record me in the rink. On the ice. I can’t. I told her no.”

“How did she react?”

“The same when I was first diagnosed with patellar tendinopathy, when I agreed to ACL reconstruction surgery, when she realized I could never go back to pre-injury levels.” There’s something about Sunghoon’s voice, the alchemy of his sentences, that makes him sound equal parts disdainful and self-deprecating. “Just… fucking unhappy.”

His mother was a force of nature. It’s hard to forget. The juxtaposition of Sunghoon on and off-camera was antipodal, even more so when Jay had a ringside seat to the switch. He doesn’t remember when it got so bad, when ambivalence ruptured the ease of their friendship and filled their throats with tact. Before the documentary, the commercialization, the long hours of training, the spotlight, Sunghoon was—happy. He was insufferably bright. He was the kid who helped Jay across the ice despite laughing at him at the same time. He was embarrassingly shy around the girls in his figure skating classes when it was his shyness that successfully endeared himself to them. He was uncaged, unscathed.

Uncapitalized. 

“I remember she was super pissed when we secretly dyed your hair in the 6th grade,” says Jay, for lack of better consolation. “She sounded like she was about to have an aneurysm when she came home to me waterboarding you in the shower.”

That earns him a small smile, at least. “She was livid,” he agrees. “But my coach at the time thought it suited me.”

“Right. The Little Ice Prince and his terrible piss-wheat bleach.” Jay snorts. “I don’t think your mom ever forgave me for that. I don’t think she’s ever liked me at all.”

“No, she… It’s not your fault.”

“What, that I’m unlikable to her? A pothole in the roadmap she’s planned for your life?”

Sunghoon sighs. He smells like burnt flowers. “It’s just not your fault.” 

“Okay,” says Jay. “I don’t believe that, but okay.”

Sunghoon doesn’t bother to dignify that with a response and closes his eyes.

They fall quiet. Jay stares at the glow of Sunghoon’s face, his moles, the new ones. If he stares hard enough, it feels like their weightless youth can come back. Like time is malleable to travel through, suspended and sticky. He looks at Sunghoon’s hand resting in between their heads. Jay moves his hand closer until their fingers are a hairsbreadth apart. There is always distance. He thinks of Busan’s jellyfish. Clams. Crabs. Oysters. Sunfish. Skate. His mother was from the Jeolla province. Her openness to all kinds of foods inspired Jay to try everything even if it didn’t smell or look palatable. Like bugs. He wanted to experience her joy and adventurous spirit and make her proud to have a fearless son. 

It takes a lot of love to eat the food you don’t like, she had said to console his upset stomach after he threw up the bugs. This means my Jongseongie is full of love. 

“I’ve always wondered what you were doing,” Sunghoon suddenly murmurs, “and where you were in the world.” 

Jay blinks. He swallows tightly. “No. You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You couldn’t have.”

“You were my best friend,” he says—sad or sleepy, Jay can’t tell. “Of course I did.”

It’s ridiculous to imagine Park Sunghoon, three-time consecutive South Korean national champion and other titles Jay couldn’t bring himself to read on his Wiki page, wondering about the guy who had struggled to make ends meet in cities that never answered his calling and was too naive to think he could find glory in urban sprawls. And it should frustrate Jay—make him feel small and belittled, even. Because he’s convinced this is Sunghoon’s subconscious and underhanded way of messing with him, of making a joke out of his lack of merits, because there’s no way this could be anything else. 

But Jay feels it. He feels it in the squeeze of his chest. He feels it in the warmth radiating off of Sunghoon’s body, a star that can’t change its nature. 

“You can ask me now,” Jay offers in a thin voice. “I’ll tell you anything.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

Sunghoon peeks an eye open. “Do you know how to make marinated crab?“

Jay blinks. Of all questions to ask, he wasn’t expecting something as off the mark as that. But marinated crab? Well, of course Jay can make marinated crab. He makes it better than the marketplaces. He can do it in his sleep. “Nah.”

“Bummer. That’s all I wanted to know.”

“What?”

“That’s all.”

Jay watches Sunghoon close his eyes again, effectively putting an end to the conversation by appearing asleep. Not much has changed, at least; Park Sunghoon is still capable of being a conundrum. And an annoying one, at that. 

He doesn’t take Sunghoon’s hand. But he does mess up Sunghoon’s hair until it springs a laughing complaint from his belly. And there, in the lowlight with his palm curled over the back of a hot neck, Jay thinks there is nothing more heartening than this.

—

Today, he arrives an hour early.

“You don’t start until nine,” Jungwon says at the door, nonplussed. “Go away.”

“I want to help.”

“You’re not getting paid for the extra hour—”

“I don’t care. I’m helping,” Jay insists. “It’s freezing. Let me in already.”

Jungwon seems displeased and crosses his arms, looking over Jay in thought. He reeks strongly of menthol. “Fine. Wait here. I was about to head to the bakery up the street. You can come with me.” 

He doesn’t make Jay wait long when he reappears with his coat and fluffy bucket hat. It’s a short walk, especially at their brisk pace.

“Why are we going to the bakery?” 

“I get bread from them. Since I haven't been able to find a place that sells nama panko, one of their bakers personally recommended we just make it fresh with the white parts of their bread,” Jungwon explains. “I do a decent volume considering we need it for the garlic bread as well, and I get a good discount compared to how much it would cost me at a typical supplier. It pays to be chummy.” 

When they arrive, the name of the Japanese bakery strikes him as familiar until Jay realizes it’s the one in a food vlog he saw in passing. In a lot of food vlogs, actually. The place is popular among the young folk, which isn’t a surprise considering they’re at the skirts of a cultural complex.

To avoid the long lineup that’s beginning to bottleneck the sidewalk, they head to the back where Jungwon gives the door a few knocks before a young man opens it, balancing a box of collapsed cardboard under an arm. He’s tall, has the facial structure of a cold warrior, and looks like a metal detector’s worst nightmare from all the piercings.

“Hello,” he says politely, kicking the door stopper in place. “You’re later than usual today.”

Jungwon grins sheepishly. “I missed my alarm. I’m also showing my new cook around. This is Jay.”

“Oh. Foreigner?”

“Not really, but also, I guess?” Jay answers. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

Jungwon looks between them, then gets impatient at the unnecessarily long silence. “Okay, and this is Riki.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jay says. 

Riki nods in acknowledgement and makes a rowing gesture. “Come inside. It’s cold.”

Jay doesn’t expect the kitchen in all its stainless steel austerity to be designed as an open one, allowing customers to see the baking process behind the service counter. It’s busy out there too, a contained kind of cacophony, trays of viennoiseries and fusion pastries being replaced with the empty ones up front. Jungwon gets whisked aside by whom Jay assumes is some type of manager, considering he was in a different outfit and on his ass.

He stands there awkwardly in the middle of the corridor, hoping he’s not getting in the way by observing. Riki reappears with loaves of milk bread and hands the bags over.

“We put it on his tab,” he says.

Jay raises his eyebrows. “You guys still do that?”

“My stepmother makes an exception. She likes honest work.” 

“You work alongside your family?”

“I have to. She owns this place.”

“Cool. Cool, cool. Your Korean is really good, by the way. You’re like a native.”

“Thank you. Um… You too?”

Another awkward silence. Jay’s never been great at socially acceptable small talk. 

“Do you like sweets?” Riki asks out of the blue.

“Sure, as long as it doesn't rot my teeth.”

“Are you allergic to anything?”

“No. Maybe wool.” 

Riki nods. Then he turns around and walks back into the crossfire.

A few minutes later, Jungwon sidles back to Jay’s side and flashes him a thumbs up. “Riki’s dad said they’re coming in for a meal next week, so that’s something to look forward to. In fact, they’re the only regulars I recognize now. The former regulars are either dead or in another province.”

“You guys are on good terms, then.”

“I guess there’s camaraderie in being family-owned businesses. I wish I could say we’re doing a stellar job like they are, though.” 

Riki returns with a box and wordlessly holds it out for Jungwon to take, which he beams at.

“Thanks for always spoiling us,” he says. 

“It’s nothing.” Riki averts his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck. “There was too much anyway, so.” Then seemingly embarrassed at himself, he forgoes all politeness and starts shooing them away as though remaining in their vicinity any longer was going to make him explode. “Leave. Please. We’re busy. Bye.” 

Outside, Jay looks at the door shut in their faces, then down at the box in Jungwon’s hands. Jungwon opens it briefly to reveal fruit tartlets, shiny and decadent, along with a few chocolate religieuses and a generous slice of basque kurogoma cheesecake.

“There’s no way there was too much,” says Jay.

“He probably packed more this time as a welcoming gift for you. Riki is a sweet kid. You could learn a thing or two from him.” 

“Kid? How much of a kid are we talking about here? Because he looks older than Sunoo and Sunoo looks like he’s still wet behind the ears.”

Jungwon side-steps a particularly dense pile of rock salt and nearly shoulders Jay into the road in the process. “Fine. He’s only a year younger than I am.”

“Then I’m definitely not letting a literal child get didactic on me.”

“What are you? A boomer? And you’d probably get mistaken less as an uncle if you stopped smoking. And stopped drinking. And slept more.”

“You’re not the one being haunted by a recipe printer,” Jay mutters.

Back in the restaurant, Jungwon reluctantly shares his tasks with Jay. Since the vegetables are already prepped, Jay cuts and portions the protein while Jungwon is on curry duty. Apparently, he makes the roux all from scratch with a custom spice blend and freezes them in batches to use over the week.

The foundation of the taste relies on how the onions are cooked, according to Jungwon’s impromptu commentary; he cooks them in butter until they’re browned, translucent and a touch of fond is left. Then there are apples to deglaze and pumpkin to ground into a paste. Then everything, along with the roux and vegetables, are tossed into the pot to simmer. 

It's a rhythmic muscle memory, the present blotted out by sounds and scents of his youth—of the age Jay began to see Sunghoon less and less. When Sunghoon dropped out of school to be home tutored and was too busy, Jay had spent his time here to be with Jungwon and sometimes Jaeyun. A tangential thread of friendship. And it feels like if he opened his mouth and disturbed the very air with his words right now, he’d ruin the grace Jungwon has given him. 

Jay is washing his hands, clenching them into fists under hot water. But he’s never been the type to second guess his principles and his stubborn hold onto what he thinks is right. It’s why he never gave up on his dreams even if it entailed humiliating himself all the time. It’s why he never needed his father to synthesize something as complex and nebulous as grief into bite-sized pieces. Jay was capable of standing his ground. He still is. He can still be. 

“Jungwon-ah.”

“Yes?”

“Let me start this off with: I’m not telling you how to run your restaurant.”

“That’s always a reassuring way to preface things.”

He takes a deep, steadying breath. “I’m aware you’re against it but I think you’ll really benefit from hiring an accountant. Or even a project manager. It’ll take a lot of workload off of your shoulders and reduce liability and… If you keep carrying these burdens alone, you’ll crash and burn along with the restaurant. And I know it's hypocritical of me to say this when I disappeared from your life for a long time, but I care too much to let that happen.”

Jungwon doesn’t respond immediately. When Jay hears him sigh, he finally takes a look and finds Jungwon rolling his wrist, far from agitated like Jay anticipated him to be. 

“It’s not hypocritical,” says Jungwon. “It’s natural to drift apart from people when you leave behind your old life to start a new one.”

“Oh. Thank you. Not the point, though.”

“I know. No person is an island. I’ve heard the same thing from Sunoo hyung a million times, but the work here is inferior. That’s why our last guy stole from me. Even if I offered somewhat decent pay, they’re not going to have the morale to work at a dying business that has no security.”

“Hey, the job market sucks. Anyone would be willing to work anywhere.”

“Which is an inevitable segue into labour exploitation,” Jungwon says wryly. “If we haven’t closed down yet, it means I’ve been doing a pretty good job without outsourcing help.” 

“Good is fine,” says Jay, “but don’t you want to be doing better?”

Jungwon purses his lips. He looks down at his wrist he's been gently massaging. Jay has seen that look before.

“What is it? Tendonitis?”

“Beats me. I still have to see a doctor.”

“Are you doing deep tissue massages? And wrist exercises? And using warm compresses? And wearing a brace on your off time?” 

“Of course,” Jungwon says plainly. “I know how to take care of myself.”

Jay leans a hip against the sink crossing his arms. “Listen, I’m serious. I know a really smart guy we can trust. I can negotiate something. And if that works out, we can move onto other things in desperate need of attention and get you some rest. Let me do more to make it up to you.”

Jungwon stares at him without a word. The silence is unnerving.

“You talked down on yourself a lot back then.”

Jay’s mouth flails. It feels like he just rolled over, face down, into an arctic lake. “Uh, sorry?”

“Yeah, your self-deprecation was awful. You were always scowling so I thought you were scary, but my grandmother thought you were just lonely. And she was right. You wouldn’t let me console you or compliment you. Everything was deflected into this deep, black hole, and—I don’t know. It was confusing. You overwhelmed me with affection but you also rejected it from me. I couldn’t tell if you really wanted to be friends or not.” 

“Of course I did,” Jay says quickly.

Jungwon glances at him with a boyish tug to his mouth. “Would’ve saved me a lot of turmoil if I knew that sooner.”

He goes back to giving the pot a check and stir, all casual and calm as if Jay hasn’t been uselessly scrabbling for words since he was blindsided by the change in topic. 

“But you’re a little better now, I think, so please stop going on about making it up to me. I feel even more burdened when you do that. I really don’t care. How about this? Let me forgive you and I’ll think about your idea over the weekend.”

Jay blinks. He looks down at his hand, at the phantom weight wrapped around his palm. A callused pulse, telling him through distance that this is the forward march, that the shame piling up on the backburner he’s been trying to scrub off can be repurposed into brittle resolve. 

“Okay,” Jay croaks, then clears his throat. “Yeah, okay. I like the sound of that.”

—

Jay can’t really get used to Jaeyun in a suit. He looks like a total fool in it.

“This really couldn’t have been a text message?” Jaeyun laments over the cigarette between his teeth, begrudgingly offering his lighter. “I have 10 minutes left until my break ends.”

Jay scowls. “As if you ever read your texts.”

When Jaeyun isn’t working, he’s sleeping. He’s on the grind six days a week and lives in an officetel and has the social capacity to handle one physical, personal interaction per day. And if he isn’t sleeping, he’s probably drinking or jerking off. But the dark circles under his eyes are telling a different story. Jay has only seen Jaeyun a total of three times since he returned to Seoul, and each time Jaeyun had looked like he was hanging onto life by a thread. 

Jay doesn’t take the lighter. Instead, he reaches over and presses the end of his cigarette with the tip of Jaeyun’s lit one until he sees the glow, then brings it to his mouth. Jaeyun looks disgusted.

“You know,” says Jay, “some people call that buttfucking.”

Jaeyun chokes on an inhale. Jay wildly beats him on the back.

“Got any plans for the holidays?” 

Jaeyun holds up a hand. He coughs and wheezes for a few more seconds before he finally recovers from almost losing a lung. “Uh, I’m going to spend it with my mom, obviously. Fly out and visit my dad. Same old, same old.” 

“And your brother?”

Jaeyun shrugs. Another sore subject. Jay knows to back off this time.

“That isn’t why you’re here though, are you?” Jaeyun asks, eyeing Jay suspiciously. 

“What, I can’t care?”

“No, you’re a big carer. A super serious carer, but not like this. Stop buttering me up with small talk and come out with it already. You have seven minutes.”

The evening’s electricity is settling into the raw cracks of his skin. Jay takes a deep drag and prepares himself. “We need an accountant-slash-project manager for Jungwon’s restaurant. And, you know, you’re an accountant. And you're also technologically proficient. Considering I’ve never heard you utter a single positive thing about your workplace, I was wondering if you’d be interested in making the switch.”

Jaeyun gapes. “That’s not a switch, that’s a career change.”

“How is it a career change? It still deals with numbers and systems and whatever.”

“Fine, it’s a career suicide. Yes, I hate my job and the people and the culture, but it’s stable. It has benefits!”

Jay was banking on Jaeyun’s redeeming sense of compassion to circumvent the benefits issue, but looks like capitalism is a real bitch. “You don’t have to leave your current job. You can help us part-time.”

“You want me to work two jobs when I barely have time to do laundry on my single day off?”

“Then help us remotely.”

The sound Jaeyun makes is of utter disappointment. He takes off his glasses and rubs the lenses with the end of his tie, then puts them back on. Still foggy. “Jay-ah, I understand the restaurant means a lot to you and that you want to restore it to its former semi-glory. I get it. But I can’t just leave everything I’ve worked for to—no offense to Jungwon—work at a hopelessly declining business with no future.”

“Then why did you give Jungwon my number if you knew it was a lost cause?”

Jaeyun scrunches up his face. “Huh?”

“You gave Jungwon my number,” Jay says, confused at Jaeyun’s confusion, “so he could call me about the job.” 

“What are you even talking about? I…” Jaeyun trails off, face going through a conflicting array of emotions at the speed of a camera shutter before he slaps his forehead. “Oh, shit. Yes! I did. I did that.” 

Jay looks at him for a second long, then sighs. There’s no saving Jaeyun from that blunder. He knew it. “Of course it wasn’t you.”

“No, it was me!”

“I may be an idiot but I’m not that much of an idiot.”

Jaeyun’s shoulders slump. “Can you at least pretend it was me? I made a promise.”

Jay doesn’t even know what to do with that information anyway. He doesn’t want to start imagining Sunghoon making calls to a guy he’s heard about but never talked to before behind Jay’s back in that aggravatingly depressing slouch of his, when he could barely talk to the laundromat clerk without blanching. And he especially doesn’t know what to do knowing that was all probably for Jay’s sake. “Sure, but only because it’s not what we’re talking about right now. Look, I—don’t you think there’s more to life than this?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about being more than corporate livestock for the rest of your life. I don’t know how you ended up sitting in a 6x6 box that’s beginning to look more like your grave than a cubicle and—I don’t know. There’s just so much more to life than this, dude. And you’re going to overwork yourself to death before you can even discover it.”

“And you think I can find it by working at a shabby restaurant?”

“Well, yes.”

Jaeyun laughs. Or scoffs. The noise that leaves his mouth sounds like both. But he quickly sobers and his hand comes up to his hair as if to run his fingers through it before he remembers it’s been sealed with gel. His hand falls back to his side. 

“I’m not like you guys,” he says weakly. “I’m not obsessed about success and recognition like the rest of the world is.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“Some people would be lucky to even have a job like mine, okay, and I still have to take care of my mom. I can’t afford any risks, so—I’ve accepted this being my life a long time ago. This is all I got.”

“No,” Jay says resolutely. “Not all.”

Jaeyun opens his mouth, latches it shut, then looks down at his watch. “I have to go.” He fixes his loosened tie. “Give me some time to think about it, at least.”

When he’s gone, Jay lingers in the alley, watching his cigarette burn to the size of a thumbtack. Not everyone shares the same, oppressive ambition as him, and it rests on his shoulders heavy like wet blankets on a clothesline. 

—

He wakes up to the tail end of his father’s voice. He rubs his ear. Jay rips off his sleep mask and checks the time on his phone, holding back a groan at it being 2 AM. Can’t catch a fucking break.

Jay grabs his pillow and leaves his room for the couch like every night—only this time, he runs into Sunghoon on his way out. Which is a surprise. Sunghoon is usually asleep at this hour. But he’s here, standing outside of the lit bathroom, startled with a hand over his mouth while carrying a bag of ice in the other. Jay didn’t see him when he came home from work and figured it was just one of those days Sunghoon needed to be alone. If he was staying over at his dad’s, he would’ve left a message. 

The frustration of another shitty, sleepless night dwindles at a closer look of Sunghoon’s face. Against the light, his complexion is wan. He seems sick. 

“What’s wrong?” Jay asks. “Did you throw up?”

“No,” Sunghoon says roughly. He clears his throat and shuts the light. “No, I woke up to take a piss.” 

“Why the ice, then?"

"Uh—"

"And you smell like vomit.”

“I do?”

“No, I was lying, but with that response I’m totally sure you did vomit.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“Huh? What do you think I’m thinking?”

Sunghoon rubs his forehead. “Nothing, I was just—I had a bad dream.” He gestures vaguely behind him. “My stomach reacted.”

“You and I both," Jay says dubiously. He stares at the bag of ice like it was a particular puzzle, before Sunghoon chucks it into the bathtub to rid himself of it. Okay. Weird. 

As he awkwardly side-steps away, Jay notices a wince peeking through his carefully controlled expression. Jay may not know a lot about sports injuries, but he knows an adequate enough amount about knee ones.

“Let’s sleep together.”

Sunghoon freezes. “What?”

“What?”

“What the—what do you mean?”

“Er, I mean like, in the living room.” Jay doesn’t think he said anything ridiculous to warrant that kind of reaction.

Sunghoon slowly relaxes. “Oh.”

“I’m serious. Our rooms are cursed. I genuinely think we should sage this place down. Anyway, you can take the couch. I don’t mind the floor.”

“The floor is better for me than the couch.”

“Alright.”

Jay carries out a floor mattress and situates it close to the couch, but instead of letting Sunghoon settle in, he blocks his way and throws aside the blanket. Jay plops down with his back against the couch and invitingly pats the space in front of him. Sunghoon looks equally alarmed and confused.

“I’m giving you a massage first,” Jay says.

“No, what? No, it’s fine. Move.”

“Listen, you have nothing to worry about. I do my fair share of massages when my knee pain flares up, and I won’t do anything that’ll set your progress back. After this,” Jay says, wiggling his fingers, “you’re gonna sleep like a baby. Trust me.”

Sunghoon looks far from convinced, but after what seemed to be a fierce mental debate, he eventually acquiesces. He lowers himself to the mattress and rests his right leg parallel to Jay, tensing when Jay slides up his pants. 

“Dude, relax.”

“I’m plenty relaxed,” he grumbles.

Unconvinced, Jay pats his knee as a welcoming gesture, then looks at his palm incredulously. "What the fuck? You have a thick knee cap, dude. That is one girthy bone. Seriously, I could massage my back on it."

"Don't," Sunghoon says through gritted teeth. "And stop groping my knee like a pervert."

Jay is not a pervert, for the record.

Focusing, he places his middle and index finger from both hands on either side of Sunghoon’s kneecap, around an inch below it, and starts to gently rub the area in small, circular motions. It’s a strange, tactile combination—the rough calluses of his fingertips scratching against softer skin. There’s a bit of stagger in Sunghoon’s breathing and Jay reduces the already delicate pressure to something feather-light.

When Sunghoon lets out a slow, long breath, Jay asks him, “Painful?”  

“No, it’s just—it’s always like that. Can’t be stationary or active too long. Wake up in pain, go to sleep in pain. It’s how it is. This,” he says, gesturing at Jay’s ministrations, “is nice.”

He tries to make out Sunghoon’s expression in the dark. “Doesn’t the doctor prescribe you painkillers?”

“She does. They’re with my dad.”

“Why? Is that normal?”

Sunghoon shifts uneasily. “I apparently went through them like candy last time during post-op recovery, so she wanted to monitor my usage. But don’t take it the wrong way. Her concern is just misplaced.”

Jay wonders if that’s the reason why Sunghoon’s dad didn’t want him to live alone and insisted on a roommate as a compromise for his independence. He feels Sunghoon jolt underneath his fingers again and is about to ask if he’s comfortable with the pressure, but thinks twice about it. There’s a thin line between concern and pity these days, and Sunghoon habitually conflates them both. Besides, it’d be a stupid question. There’s probably never going to be a day where Sunghoon will ever feel comfortable again.

“Alright,” says Jay. “Wrong way not taken.”

His hands being occupied—it helps with the overthinking, the dreariness. It slows his mind down. Over time, he feels Sunghoon relax beneath his hands. His skin grows warmer too. 

Jay moves on to another technique, getting Sunghoon to pull his knee up toward his chest and keep his foot flat on the floor. Jay places all four fingers of each hand on either side of Sunghoon’s knee, and puts both thumbs under the front of his kneecap. Jay keeps the pressure moderate as he simultaneously moves his thumbs from side to side, remaining mindful of Sunghoon’s breathing. 

“Why couldn’t you sleep?” Sunghoon disturbs the peace, leaning back on his palms. “Because of the restaurant?”

“That’s one of the reasons, sure.”

“I thought it’d be less tortuous for you.”

You’d know all about that, huh. “It’s been three days since I talked to Jaeyun and he still hasn’t gotten back to me. We’re screwed.”

“Give him some time.”

“By the time he’s made up his mind, the restaurant is probably torn down.” 

“I liked it better when you had that toxic positivity going on instead of this pessimistic echo chamber. This is Jaeyun we’re talking about. You’re asking a lot from him. He needs time. He has executive dysfunction. He’s probably already adjusting his budget spreadsheet from when he does accept the job, so hop off his dick a little.”

“His dick is already little,” Jay mutters.

That startles a laugh out of Sunghoon. His laughter snowballs until he’s falling sideways, and Jay has to smack his thigh to get him to stop moving. 

Once he recovers from his fit, he asks, “But you enjoy it, right? Working there.”

Jay shrugs noncommittally. “If feeling less like I’m crawling into a tunnel everyday counts as enjoyment.” 

“Why is that?”

“The restaurant industry is harsh as it is. In fine dining, you’re being constantly reminded that you’re competing to keep your elite position in the kitchen because everyone is easily replaceable. And because everyone is replaceable, you have to be the best. I mean, it’s the same with figure skating or any kind of sport, isn’t it?”

Sunghoon is quiet for a moment. “You have to be the best,” he agrees. “But… you like it, don’t you? When you don’t have to be.”

Jay opens his mouth, breath caught in his throat. He’s never thought about that before. “I—guess,” he says, sounding unconvinced of his own answer. “I don’t know. But I do know I want to do everything I can to keep the restaurant alive.”

“Well, as long as you’re there, it’ll work out in the end.” 

And he sounds so sure of himself like he’d been so sure Jay wouldn’t quit in the beginning. Where does he even get that confidence? He doesn’t understand why Sunghoon believes in him so much. He doesn’t understand why anyone would care this much about him in the first place. Is Jay a placeholder for all the idle time Sunghoon has in his hands now? Is this some kind of compensation for the past? Or does he really think Jay will vanish a second time and is trying to cram years of a complicated, dusty friendship into a concise kind of atonement? Because Sunghoon doesn’t stop people from coming and leaving in his life; it is his invincibility as much as it is his underbelly.

Jay realizes his hands have stopped moving, his right hand curled over the inside of Sunghoon’s knee, fingertips grazing the sacred site of his inner thigh. He feels the jump of muscle beneath his palm, the centrifugal heat rising, and Jay has to look away—to escape its gravity. He swallows hard. Too much saliva sits in his mouth. Sunghoon doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything either. He’s breathing weird. 

It takes a while for his voice to crawl out.

“Sunghoon-ah,” Jay says. “Should we dye your hair again?”

His throat is dry. The back of his neck is sweaty. That’s not what he wanted to ask. 

Sunghoon doesn’t answer for a long time. When he does, it’s annoyingly fond: “As long as it isn’t piss-wheat bleach again.”

—

Jaeyun shows up at the restaurant unannounced, uninvited, and Jay doesn’t waste time swinging an arm around Jaeyun’s neck and knuckling the hell out of his head.

“You little shit,” Jay says, unable to contain his affection normally. “I knew you wouldn’t betray me, asshole!”

“Get off of me!”

Jungwon is watching them from behind the counter with his arms crossed. He looks far from impressed—and says as much, too. “This is a bummer. And here I got my hopes up thinking the trustworthy and super smart guy you were talking about might’ve worked in the National Assembly, hyung. Not him." 

“Hey, don’t sound so disappointed,” Jay says. “I was trying to be objective and neutral.”

“There’s nothing objective or neutral about this whatsoever.”

“Stop underestimating me in plain earshot.” Jaeyun ducks out from underneath Jay’s arm and holds him off with a hand. “And to be clear, I haven’t actually quit my job. I’m here to canvas how much of a—uh, how much work needs to be done first. And then I’ll decide.”

“Why would I show you any of our financially sensitive information if you’re not going to commit to us?” Jungwon asks. 

“Well, it’s not like I can do anything with your information nor is it coveting enough for me to want to do anything with it in the first place.”

“I don’t remember you being so snakey.” 

Jay knowingly looks between them with a raised brow. “I thought you guys kept in contact regularly.”

“We did—do,” Jaeyun says, telegraphing a meaningful look towards Jungwon who receives it with a shrug. “Can you please just consider this a friendly visit and show me around? Your grandma’s staring into my soul and it’s making me deeply uncomfortable. I’m sensitive to spiritual stuff.”

Jungwon uncrosses his arms. “Follow me.”

An hour later, Jaeyun comes out looking like he’s really seen Jungwon’s grandmother’s ghost. “That shit is a logistical nightmare.”

“Yeah,” Jay says. “Tell me about it.”

Long story short, Jaeyun accepts the job.

He quits his position as some analyst team leader through email the same evening Jay is treating him to meat after consuming enough alcohol to fuel his courage. It was surprising that Jaeyun gave up stability for—well, instability. Because Jay had no hope for a positive response. Ironically enough, Jaeyun tells him it was his mom who encouraged him to leave the company. She could see how unhappy he was with corporate life and missed seeing his happy smile, which was the only reason she was able to get through treatment in the first place. 

Jaeyun starts getting a little teary-eyed, which prompts Jay to pile more meat onto his plate to stop him from crying. Because Jay can’t do crying. Because crying means shit is on a catastrophic scale of fucked, and that’s beyond Jay’s expertise. 

“She said she was proud of me for moving forward,” Jaeyun mumbles dejectedly, staring at the grill like it personally hurt his feelings. “But what’s there to be proud of? It’s not like I ever made enough to give her a comfortable life.”

“Come on. Don’t think like that.”

“She still works at the market four times a week. She should be retired, man. How can she be proud of me? Do all moms just lie?”

Jay slows down his chewing and looks at his chopsticks. His father’s dry as wheat voice comes back to sand at his ear. What would your mother say? 

Whether he meant it in regards to Jay pursuing his mother’s dream or to him fucking men—he still doesn’t know. That’s the worst part. Somehow from that question alone, his father had instilled this fear of rejection from his dead mother in him. And Jay is well aware of how ridiculous that sounds but he can’t help but freeze at the very thought of it anyway. It’s why he can fantasize all he wants about his funeral but never about the afterlife, because who else in the world would accept him if not even a spirit? 

It's going to be a lonely life for you. 

Jay swallows the food in his mouth that was marinating in saliva. He moves Jaeyun’s cup aside and replaces it with water. He wishes he was good at consoling people. Maybe then he’d be able to do it to himself. “You’re her son. What’s there not to be proud of?”

Jaeyun looks at him. His eyes are big and shiny. Jay reaches over and smacks a napkin against his wet cheek, and it sticks. 

Jay runs into Sunghoon’s mother at the door. He’s confused. He’s terrified. He may be drunk.

Behind her, Sunghoon blanches and squeezes his eyes shut in a silent curse. Great. Either Jay manifested this from all the mom talk with Jaeyun or he has some serious bad luck.

“Oh—hello,” Jay stammers out politely, shrinking away from her eyes locked on him. “Hello, it’s been a while, ma’am.”

“She was just leaving,” Sunghoon says, putting a hand on her shoulder to steer her outside, but she stops him with a hand around his wrist. 

“You lied to me,” she says, voice soft with disbelief. “You had your father lie to me.”

“Mom—”

“He told me you were living alone.”

“Now isn’t a good time to talk about this.”

“No hour of the day is ever a good time for you to talk about anything,” she retorts, voice strung tight. “Have you been living with this person this whole time? When I made myself clear that—”

“Can’t we talk about this tomorrow? It’s late. I’m tired.”

Wrong thing to say. “You’re tired? You think you’re the only one tired here? Oh, so now you think the way you’ve lived your life hasn’t affected everyone around you? Where did you learn to think so selfishly? Is it from him?”

Jay tiptoes around them and hurries to his room. When he checks his phone that was left on DND and disables it, he finds several messages from Sunghoon asking him to come home after 8 PM. It’s 7:47 PM right now. Jay runs a hand over his face and tosses his phone aside. He sits on the edge of his bed. The walls are thin. He’s an idiot. 

It isn’t until he hears the door slam does the apartment finally quiet down. Jay counts to 100, then gets up to his feet and goes outside. 

Sunghoon is standing there, motionless, fists at his sides. He doesn’t turn around at Jay’s presence but he does let out a sheepish laugh. Jay can’t help but join in, if not out of awkwardness.

“Sorry about that.”

“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t turn off DND on the way home. But wow, she fucking hates my guts. What did I do?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, so I must’ve done something. I know she doesn’t like me but this just proves, yet again, that she’s never liked me at all. It’s definitely my fault somehow.” 

“That’s not—you didn’t do anything.” His voice is muffled by the hard press of his knuckles to his mouth. “It’s not you.”

Jay frowns. He stares at the back of Sunghoon’s trembling head. “What’s wrong?"

"Nothing. I’m just tired."

"Don't give me that."

"You should go shower first. You stink of meat."

"And don't deflect. I'm sure by now both of us are aware that you have a really bad habit of thinking the world will end if you so much as share what’s wrong, and it’s annoying.”

“That’s not true.”

“No, it kind of is. Seriously, talk to me. Just—why don’t you ever talk to me?” Jay crosses his arms when something reasonable occurs to him. “Does she know? Does she think I’m trying to indoctrinate you or something?” 

Sunghoon turns around with a withered expression. “What?”

That’s enough of a confirmation. Jay isn’t fazed by it. This kind of situation is pedestrian. He recognized the way Sunghoon’s mother looked at him because it was the same way his father looked at him too. It’s not the first time he’s been on the receiving end of this bullshit and it surely isn’t the last. “Oh, of course. Yeah, she probably thinks it won’t be good if word got out that a famous athlete has been living with a gay man. I can imagine the headlines: Renowned Figure Skater Park Sunghoon’s Secret Homosexual Double Life and… I don’t know. But your mom would lose her head, right? And you would lose—well, everything you haven’t lost already, I guess.”

“Stop.”

“It’s fine. I would’ve preferred it if you didn't tell her, but it is what it is. Can't take it back now, obviously."

“That’s not—Jay, I didn’t tell her.”

“You don’t have to lie.”

“I’m not.”

“Really, you can just—”

“I didn’t fucking tell her,” Sunghoon snaps. “She doesn’t fucking know because it’s not you, okay? It’s not you she—it’s not you she…” he falters, nerves eroding, and turns away. “It’s not you.”

He’s so tense it’s like somebody grabbed his neck and pulled his spine tight. It’s like he wants to fold his tall body away to keep everything from bruising to the surface. Jay shuts his mouth and steps back. He’s been on the receiving end of these outbursts before, but nothing so fiercely… contained. 

A long, unsettling silence stretches indefinitely between them, until it’s softened by Sunghoon speaking again.

“It’s not your fault. It’s never been your fault. It’s misplaced—everything is. I don’t remember how old I was when I told her about the girls in my figure skating class, and how I had a hard time talking to them. She said I should stop being silly and try to get along. Who knows, right? Let them paint my nails and one of them might just end up as someone special—maybe even someone I’d get married to in the future. Typical stuff. And I think she was joking. I could never tell. But I guess the idea of it bothered me so much I told her I didn’t want to marry any of the girls.” His laugh is a defeated, subsonic sound. “Not when I already had you.”

It feels like Jay has been dunked underwater. The world becomes warbled, slow, suspended. He’s knocked off-center and doesn’t know how to realign himself.

“But…” Jay stammers. “But, I mean, you were just a kid.” 

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. You didn’t even know what you were talking about. She can’t keep punishing you for that.”

“Nothing’s really changed since then,” he says, "so I guess she can.”

Jay doesn’t have a single fucking clue as to how to reply to that.

His molars ache from how hard he’s gritting his teeth. They’re stewing in an uncomfortable silence, chewing at the admission with crushing effort. Something bitter scratches his chest and pinballs up to his throat, but nothing comes out. He feels sick.

“This is why,” Sunghoon says, scathingly quiet.

When he briskly walks past him to his room, Jay doesn’t stop him, even though his eyes are shining. 

—

Jay doesn’t sleep. He lies in bed and stares aimlessly in the dark until he starts seeing trapezoids in the corner of the ceiling. Sunghoon’s words keep looping around in his head; it may as well start tumbling out of his ears. 

There’s probably more to the story that Sunghoon didn’t disclose. But it explains a lot, if Jay thinks back to it—Sunghoon, bratty and affectionate, whose shyness was just an act before he starts playing pranks, who knew how to tease without crossing the line and didn’t make Jay feel bad, sticking to him like glue one day and then abruptly severing their closeness the next. Avoiding Jay’s touch like a battered puppy, the waning of his toothy grins, the anxiety that permanently engraved itself onto his forehead. The loneliness that seemed to expand tenfold in Jay’s company. 

He remembers thinking of Sunghoon as one of those figures in snow globes trapped under glass because it always seemed like he was a NPC unable to step out of his wax-like predisposition—sidelined in his own life. And it’s still like that now. The fate of a child stuck in their mother’s arms since birth: it’s equivalent to a cage. A basement existence.

It occurs to Jay, then, that he’s done nothing but watch the world squash the light out of his best friend again. 

This is why.

He throws an arm over his eyes when they start to sting. Shit.

—

Sunghoon avoids him. Or Jay avoids him. They’re both avoiding each other. 

It’s not like Jay wants to. He’s just—it's a lot to process. A part of him wants to pretend the conversation never happened because he knows Sunghoon would want an exit out of what was most likely an undignifying situation, and then they can go back to being semi-normal. Another part of him is stuck underneath the consternation and loses sleep over it. He stands outside of Sunghoon's door every night, chickens out, and slinks back into his own room. He returns home to an empty apartment because Sunghoon starts staying over at his dad's. His brain is mush and he can't extrapolate a solid thought out of all the clutter. 

If Jungwon notices his exhaustion, he’s generous enough to not point it out. He makes it clear whenever Jay shows up an hour early that he’s not getting paid for it, but unlike Jaeyun, Jay isn’t a capitalistic scoundrel. He wants to help. He needs to help. The rhythm of a routine is what's keeping him sane, which is ironic considering he would've never found solace in it at his last job. He throws himself into work and hopes it’s enough to postpone an epiphanous meltdown. 

“I guess they come by a lot,” Jay remarks, watching Jungwon animatedly talk to Riki’s family at their table. From all the hand gestures, he assumes they’re discussing the food, but Jay wishes he can march over there and tell Jungwon to stop moving his arm around so much. It’s in a brace, for fuck’s sake. 

Hyunseo, the part-timer in place of Sunoo for when he can’t come in—also known for a maypole of charms dangling from her phone and reading webtoons under her apron all day—nods sagely. “They do. They’ve grown pretty close. One time, he even made sukiyaki for them after hours.”

“Why? There’s a bunch of nabemono places all over the city.”

She shrugs. “Oppa is nice like that.” 

“And… they’ve never talked about partnering up?”

“Not that I know of. We had a student promo go on last year but he decided it wasn’t worth continuing. Maybe he thinks they wouldn’t be interested in us.”

Jay hums and stares at Riki, who’s been avoiding eye contact with Jungwon the entire time. Either the kid is rude or in love. It definitely has to be the latter.  

With Jaeyun here to fix the nightmare that is their finances, now it’s a matter of attracting more customers. Sunoo says they can start up an Instagram page again and make consistent content, but that’s not going to cut it. They can’t aim for a self-made title. They need to ride off the coattails of other people’s successes to get anywhere in today’s world of mass consumption and rolodex of trends, and the bakery is a good start.

Jay is thinking of a way to approach Riki without inserting himself into the conversation and becoming the center of attention, but Riki ends up being the one to find him while he’s flattening cardboard boxes and smoking out in the back. 

“Sorry,” says Jay, batting away the smell.

“It’s okay. I’m used to it. A lot of my employees are smokers too.” 

“And you’re not?”

Riki blinks. “No. Why do you think that?”

“Er, no reason.” Jay clears his throat. “Are you guys done?”

“Yes. My parents are paying.” 

“How was the food? Jungwon went on an impromptu errand run and left me stranded first thing in the morning, so if it tastes weird today it's on him, not me."

“That’s why I wanted to find you,” he says. "He must have told you to put in extra apples."

Jay narrows his eyes. "What? No. Maybe. Yes. Why?”

Riki scrubs the side of his neck, doing an uncomfortable wiggly thing with his eyebrows as he stares at the brick wall. “He makes it sweeter when he knows we’re coming in. I like it that way since it reminds me of the curry my mom used to make. And she put in apples too, so—um, it’s really nice of Jungwon hyung to do that even though he doesn’t have to. And it’s really nice of you too. So thank you. It tasted delicious today as well.” 

It’s not the first time anyone has complimented his food before but—it’s been a long time, admittedly. Jay hardly cooked outside of work, and if he did, it was for himself as a means of sustenance. It stirs up conflicting emotions that he doesn’t have the time or mind to deal with right now. “You’re… welcome.”

Riki nods, smoothing down his jacket to appear calm, though he seems unaware of how transparent he is because anyone can tell he’s embarrassed. “Goodbye.”

“Wait, you came all the way out here just to thank me for that?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you don’t have to in the future.” Jay frowns. “It’s just curry. Anyone can cook it.”

Riki goes from embarrassed to nonplussed in a split second. “Not really.”

Then he turns around and leaves the scene as quickly as he arrived. Jay stares after him, mouth open. He didn’t even get the chance to wheedle a partnership out of the kid. Now he has to relay the idea to Jungwon himself, which has less of a success rate, but if it’s about the longevity of the restaurant—well, surely he’ll accept.

“Why would they ever want to partner up with us?” Jungwon asks later that night as they’re closing together, dumbfounded at the proposition. “They’re doing well on their own. They don’t need us.”

“Exactly my point. Their business will remain stable either way. It’s us who needs them,” Jay says. “You already have incredible rapport with the family. You cook off-menu items for them, source bread from them, and you adjust an entire day’s worth of curry for their son—which I’ve been meaning to bring up, by the way, because why would you do that?”

“It’s not like we have regulars to notice the difference in flavour.”

“Still, all that extra work for a single person?”

Jungwon pauses in the middle of wiping down the countertops and looks at him like he’s asked him a terribly absurd question. “Everything we do here is out of love. All the vegetables we wash and peel and cut, all the meat we bread and fry, all the food we painstakingly put together, everything—it’s all out of love. I cook for people because it makes their lives a little bit better, even for a minute. Isn’t it the same for you?” He looks away from Jay’s flailing mouth. “So yes, I do all that extra work just for a single person, and it makes it all the more worth it when they come up to you and tell you how much the food reminds you of a good memory.”

That hits a corner in his heart. Jay closes his mouth and swallows what feels like fish bones in his throat. 

Jungwon glances at him, looking deviously content at rendering him speechless. His smile is much kinder, though. “I’ll get Riki’s perspective about potentially partnering up,” he says. “Thanks.” 

There are a lot of things on Jay’s mind.

Sunghoon. His purpose in the kitchen. Mom. But mostly work, because he won’t let anything else occupy his mind. He pleads to stay after his shift and close the restaurant to avoid going home to an empty apartment, and Jungwon reluctantly gives Jay closing duty for the rest of the month. Jungwon is in dire need of rest anyway, according to his doctor. 

But there’s only so much to distract himself with. While the restaurant is finally put on the right track, working alongside Jaeyun has its downsides. Having him around an environment where Jay’s output is known to be in the negatives means he’s a lot more susceptible to being psychoanalyzed or called out by his biggest hater. He can bottle shit up all he wants but he’ll always be prone to an overflow. 

So when the topic of Sunghoon suddenly comes up in the middle of work one day, he almost boils over. 

“What?”

“I just asked if you saw this,” Sunoo says, showing Jay the screen of his phone open to some gossiping outlet primarily dedicated on washed up stars. “It’s been almost a year since he retired but they’re still trying to dig up dirt. It’s so obvious the girl in the picture is his sister.” 

Jay turns his head away and scrubs the plates he’s washing extra hard. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a fan of the sport.”

“You don’t have to be a fan of the sport to know about Park Sunghoon. He’s like the Adonis of figure skating. He even appeared in Kim Yuna’s skating show and is known for his super clean Ina Bauer.”

Jay almost bursts out laughing. Adonis? What the hell are his fans on? “I didn’t understand a single thing you just said to me.”

Sunoo shakes his head and leans against the wall. “I kind of miss seeing him compete. Did you at least see his fall at the Grand Prix two years ago?”

Many times. Against his will. “No.”

“I can show you—”

“Not interested.”

Sunoo gives him a look at the curt tone, but continues on. “I still remember how heartbreaking it was. A lot of people were looking forward to him coming back strong but it just never happened, especially with all the stuff going on with his health. Apparently his medical team weren’t looking out for him properly his whole career. Did you know they made him compete back when he still had jumper’s knee? Awful.” 

Jungwon pops into the kitchen, back from chasing off the contractor that was loitering around outside. “What are we gossiping about?”

“Park Sunghoon,” Sunoo says. 

“The actor?”

“Figure skater. Did you see his fall two years ago?”

“Oh.” Jungwon pauses. “Yeah. It was hard to watch.”

“I guess you could empathize with him since you were an athlete.”

“Barely. It’s not like I ever went to the Olympics," says Jungwon. Jay can feel the kid staring at the back of his head. “I didn’t think it’d be bad enough for him to retire. He was fine during warmups.”

“I suppose that’s the thing with injuries—you never know if you can go back to how you were at your prime. A lot of skaters retire early for a reason,” Sunoo says with a wistful sigh, looking down at his phone. “He’s so handsome, it’s unfair. Seriously, he could’ve gone far especially with that face.”

Jay slams the sink shut. He flings off his gloves. “I need to pee.”

“We have a bathroom right there,” Jungwon calls after him incredulously, when Jay passes by it to kick open the back door to escape. 

The alley is frosted over by thin sheets of ice. The cold atomizes his skin, tightening the muscles of his face. Pressure. There’s pressure underneath his sternum. It feels like his veins are about to burst. Does everyone think you can just wake up one day and pull off a triplet axel splits or whatever out of your ass? Does everyone think you don’t have to give up the majority, if not all, of your childhood to even get anywhere in a sport that’s more exploitative than it’s forgiven to be? Actually, does everyone think Sunghoon is a robot made to shit glitter and gold to rocket himself to the top? Because that’s how it always fucking sounds like. 

They don’t know that Park Sunghoon rearranged brilliant parts of himself to get to where he was. They don’t know that he’s lived dishonestly out of internalized obligation when it's against his nature. They don’t know that the snotty bastard works harder than anyone else in the whole world, so no, it’s not just because of his stupidly beautiful face. They don’t fucking know anything. And Jay wishes they did, so they can keep his name out of their mouths.

The sound of a sneeze startles Jay into looking up. He finds Jaeyun standing near the door, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his plaid shirt. 

“Heeeey,” Jaeyun drawls when he’s finally acknowledged. “Are you done being angry?”

“I’m not angry.”

“So you’re brooding?”

“I’m not brooding,” Jay mumbles. “Leave me alone.”

“Can’t. Your expression is practically begging me to pry about what’s set you off, though I already know. I overheard the conversation back there and you get all sensitive at any mention of Sunghoon’s career.”

“I don’t get sensitive.”

“Right. You just always are.”

Jay rolls his eyes and rubs his face dry. “I’m not jealous.”

“Uh, I never said you were?”

“I’m not… I’m not—I can’t.”

“What bone are you choking on? Spit it out already.”

“Dude,” Jay says miserably, dragging his nails down his bandana as he’s hit with the full force of the overspill. “Sunghoon is in love with me.”

Jaeyun folds over and laughs for a long time. Then when he stands up and looks at Jay’s expression, his face immediately drops. “You’re serious?”

“He didn’t exactly say ‘I love you’ out loud but it was heavily implied. What else could he have meant? He’s been in love with me since we were kids! He loves me. Me. He—”

“I got it,” Jaeyun interrupts, massaging his temples. “And? You obviously love him back, right?”

Jay gapes at him. He can’t believe Jaeyun would assume something like that so casually. Is it a loaded question? No. Yes. Maybe. But is it a fucking tough one? Absolutely. No doubt about it. 

Love was simply out of the question when a subset of the population thinks he shouldn’t exist. But after enough shit from his father, Jay decided to try anyway as soon as he left the country. He put in quadruple the effort despite the demands of his career. And he wondered if it was always supposed to make him feel like shit for even attempting to bear his soul. That’s why he resigned to impossible romances to fill the gap—a subconscious precursor to hurt his own feelings before others would have the satisfaction of dealing the blow. That’s why it was so easy to confess to Heeseung, because he knew the world would explode first before Heeseung would ever reciprocate his feelings, and it was better to suppress hope than to let it kindle.

Which is why this makes Sunghoon’s despondent and inadvertent confession all the more… baffling. 

“Shit,” Jay rasps. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Stop being a drama queen. I’m failing to see an issue here.”

“There are so many issues here.”

“What’s the main issue?”

“I don’t know! He’s Park Sunghoon. And I’m”—Jay vehemently gestures at himself—“who I am, and who I am has complicated feelings for Park Sunghoon because—well, fuck. Because maybe I really was jealous. All that talent, all that love and attention, all that love and attention to fund that talent? Who wouldn’t be jealous? Then it took me seven years to reach out and worm my way back into his life brimming with gold, and it wasn’t even out of a genuine desire to reconnect. I was just… I just saw him on the screen and—and thought he might’ve needed me. Which is self-centered, I know. So how could I let him do that to himself? It’s Sunghoon we’re talking about. He looks good next to girls, not me. He’s never looked good next to me. In fact, whenever we stood next to each other, people looked at him, not me!”

Jaeyun has a blank look on his face. He reaches into his back pocket and fishes out a pack of cigarettes, stares at it as if reconsidering, and puts it away again with a defeated sigh. “Don’t be a dick. There are queer athletes, you know.”

“Not the fucking point right now. Listen, he’s confused. He doesn’t love me like that. He thinks he does because I was his only friend as a kid. I was all he had as a kid. And he was a really lonely kid. The both of us were.” 

“Yeah, because you guys were kids,” Jaeyun says, the maddening calm to Jay’s increasing hysteria. “Don’t you think you’re still treating him like one?”

“What? I’m fucking offended you would even think I would do that.”

“I mean, you talk about him like he’s incapable of making his own decisions and following through the consequences. Sunghoon really isn’t as emotionally repressed or fragile as you think he is. He’s misunderstood as that because he’s awkward, but he’s honestly a lot better with feelings than the both of us combined.”

“Are we talking about the same person right now? I’m so much better than him, what the fuck.”

Jaeyun runs a hand through his mildly messy hair. “You give me a headache every time we talk,” he bemoans. “Look. It was really weird when you left. I didn’t see a reason to keep in contact with Sunghoon anymore, but I guess he needed a friend because he kept calling me. Whenever we met up, we only talked about you, and I realized he’s a lot more down-to-earth than the media made him out to be. He’s super uncool. Pretty funny. He’s like a crab—tough on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside. Huh, I guess that makes you a crab too, but he’s those fuzzy hairy ones and you’re not.”

“...Mitten crabs?” Jay asks, failing to follow the trajectory of the conversation.

“Yeah!”

“What the hell are you even trying to say?”

The son of a bitch takes his pack of cigarettes back out and throws it at Jay’s head. “What I’m trying to say, dumbass, is that you need to reevaluate just how much you really know him. Sure, you guys kind of grew up together, but in my defense, I was here with him when shit hit the fan, okay? Actually, if you were to ask him who his favourite bro is, I’d be the top contender.” 

“This isn’t about favourites or who knows who for how long,” Jay replies, picking the cigarettes up from the ground and pocketing them. Jaeyun looks at him in disgust for stealing in broad daylight. “This is—I know how he gets, alright? Seriously. I know this isn’t—”

“Are you sure? Because seven years is a lot of time for people to change. He learned to live without you during that gap. You don’t think he’s learned to grow up and understand himself better than you do either?”

Jay opens his mouth, closes it, then stares at him. What the fuck. 

Jaeyun shrugs, indifferent to the mental carnage he’s caused Jay. “Yeah. Exactly. If I hit a nerve, then maybe reflect about this more before another seven years pass by again. It’s not that hard, moron.” Then, like a child, sticks his tongue out.

—

Jay reaches over the bed to grab his charger, plugging it in his phone at the warning of a low battery. He’s been on a spree of watching old interviews and he’s not sure if it was out of longing or punishment that he dug up one where Sunghoon was a kid with that clunky haircut. His cheeks were red and he looked happy—all smiles and awkward staring and a delayed punch in the air to convey his fighting spirit. 

How’s it going? Are you achieving your dream?

…Yes.

He wonders what the Sunghoon now would say. He’s never thought of asking. He just assumed Sunghoon was still the same, that he couldn’t have changed much under the pressure from everyone in his life. There was a selfish comfort in unilaterally believing Jay wasn’t the only one upholding these bad habits they were complacent of as kids. But it’s not Sunghoon who’s been living behind pretense, who’s given up on reality for familiarity, because Sunghoon is an idiot who apparently cares too much about Jay’s feelings to disturb the delicate equation of a truce between them. 

No more innocence, none of those green summers. Jay doesn't know Sunghoon anymore—the way he talks and carries himself, the way he’s still shaken but no longer stagnated, his mastery in self-care rather than self-preservation. He’s already closed up wounds unlike Jay, who’s still bleeding all over from the things he should’ve moved on from. Jay can reminisce about the past and repeat what had hurt him over and over as much as he wants, but it’ll never bring him closer to where he wants to be. It’ll just push him further away as it always has.

Sunghoon’s kid self is smiling at him through the screen—a boy Jay remembered cheering on. A boy anyone can tell, from that bright flash of teeth, loved figure skating more than life itself. 

The screen goes dark and he stares at his own reflection. It’s silent. He thinks he hears the repetitive thud of a blade against the cutting board, like he’s been transported back to the kitchen of their Seattle home where his mother was still alive, still teaching him how to hold a knife.

Jay closes his eyes. A goldfish swims in his chest.

—

On the bright side, business picks up. 

Somewhat. Thanks to the vouchers they decided on (along with Riki’s unintentional and perhaps piteous charm on his female customers while promoting it), it’s been bringing more customers in from the bakery for a 12% deal off their meal—a number Jaeyun had suggested based on their financial health. Jay hopes their food makes enough of a good impression to get the customers spreading the word or coming back regularly. Community is what they’re banking on, after all. Or at the very least, Jungwon’s ability to endear himself to the customers can rake them in judging by how seamlessly he starts up conversations with them. Jay wonders where the performance begins and ends.

During a short break, Jungwon walks in to shoot Jay a thumbs up. “Can you believe we have customers?” 

Jay is more convinced that Jungwon’s professional beguiling is what’s gathering the crowd, but he’ll take it. 

“Our lovely accountant says if we keep this up, we’ll most likely reach one of our goals, though the rest is still an issue."

As if on cue, Jaeyun emerges from the office with an empty mug. He stops by the counter where the box of misugaru canelés are—courtesy of Riki who had personally brought them over in the morning and then dashed off without a word—and grabs one. “You guys talking shit about me behind my back?”

“We don’t need to talk shit about you behind your back when we already do it to your face,” Jay says.

“Isn’t this grounds for workplace harassment?”

Jungwon taps his chin. “Not really.”

Jaeyun pouts. Any means to argue is replaced by bright-eyed enthusiasm as he passionately points at the box, speaking with a mouthful. “Guys, holy shit. This is amazing. Have you tried these?”

“Not yet,” Jay says, walking over to peek inside the box. “I thought you didn’t like sweet stuff.”

“I don’t, but this is amazing. Does Riki bring you free stuff every day?”

“Only on bread days.”

“Woah. Must be nice having a baker boyfriend, Jungwon.”

Jungwon smiles. At first glance it may appear innocent, but Jay knows it was the predatory curl of a shark. “Who said anything about a boyfriend?”

“I mean, no judgment here. Dating that goth kid means getting free unlimited goodies. It’s a perk.”

“He’s not even goth,” Jay mutters under his breath. 

Jungwon’s smile doesn’t budge, but he does brandish a ladle like a weapon. “Not everyone is as exploitative as you are, Jaeyun-ssi, so I suggest you drop the subject.”

“I only brought it up because free bread could help with our budget,” Jaeyun mumbles, looking like a kicked puppy. 

Jay discreetly mimes zipping up his mouth and gestures at Jaeyun to escape while he still had the appendages for it. Jaeyun swallows, grabs the entire box, and slinks back into the office. 

“He does have a point,” Jay says, letting curiosity win over. “Surely you’ve noticed how Riki acts around you.”

Jungwon shrugs. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Jay isn’t sure what benefits there are to playing dumb, but Jungwon’s personality has always been a little too slippery for him to grasp. 

That night, Sunoo stays after his shift to help with closing duties, and Jungwon is keen on staying behind even longer judging by his lack of urgency to leave. Jay used to think he was doing more work behind their backs when he stayed, but it turns out that he actually waits for a volunteer to come by and pick up their surplus food to deliver to shelters. Jungwon failed to mention, like he does with many other important things, that this arrangement was made possible because the restaurant is partnered with a social welfare organization. 

The forecast says it’s going to snow tomorrow; Jay can tell from the colour of the sky and the scorching wind. During these days, his mother made Seoul style kalguksu with the most vibrant, winter root vegetables and had him help with the dough, and they’d dust each other with flour until the kitchen looked like it had been snowed on. Her laugh, as she rubbed the flour out of his hair, still linger in his ears. 

He stares at the clean counters. He’s been thinking about her a lot these days.

“Are you guys hungry?”

“Starving!” Sunoo answers from where he’s hauling out the trash at the same time Jungwon tells him, “I have cup noodles.”

“No, I’ll make something.”

Jungwon looks confused. “Huh?”

“Wait half an hour, Sunoo-ya,” Jay says over the running water of the sink, scrubbing his hands clean. 

“Okay!”

He tunes Jungwon out who’s firing questions at him like a gatling gun because he hardly ever picks up on social cues. The broth won’t be an issue since Jungwon practically lived here and made his own meals out of it, resulting in cubes of dried anchovy and kelp bouillon being kept in the freezer, and there were plenty of leftover vegetables to spare for two servings. Jay has made the dough from scratch enough times to know that starch is the key to chewy noodles. Plus, the drier the dough, the better. 

Jay gets the broth going on medium heat with the added condiments while the dough sets. He fries a whisked, double-yolked egg and cuts it into strips to set aside for later, and slices up green onions and a zucchini. His mother preferred cucumber as a topping, but knowing he was never able to eat them, rarely had them in their fridge. She also used beef broth, littleneck clams, and prepared a spicy sesame oil sauce, but he works with what he has. Sunoo has been trying to avoid spice lately and Jungwon isn’t too picky, so he decides on a garlic paste instead.  

Not long after, he adds the green onions into the boiling broth where the thinly cut noodles have been cooking along with it. He turns off the heat and transfers everything equally into nice, stoneware bowls, before neatly layering down the toppings. Simple and clean. His customers stand there in varying expressions of hunger. 

“You didn’t make any for yourself?” asks Jungwon.

Jay shrugs. “I’m not the one who hasn’t eaten yet.”

“Wow. Your accountant friend is always talking about how you have a stick up your ass, but I think this just proves that you’re super nice,” Sunoo says, touched. 

“You should never listen to anything Jaeyun says in the first place. Your beef with him is warranted for a reason.”

Jungwon is already stuffing his face. Jay tries not to blatantly watch them eat and busies himself with the dishes. He can’t remember the last time he personally cooked for somebody outside of work. Most of the time he avoids it. Years of fine dining at the wrong places at the wrong time will ruin the joy of the act. But with the hearty slurps behind his back and the unintelligible happy noises, he assumes he didn’t fail. 

“This,” Sunoo says once his mouth is no longer full, “is really good. Like, really.”

Jungwon nods. “Tasty and refreshing. It’s like I’ve been cured of all the ailments the world has plagued me with. My arm has now returned to its pristine condition.”

“Your arm is breaking down and isn’t going to get any better if you keep exerting it,” says Jay. 

“Boo.”

“Um, you know, my grandma made it garlicky for me too since I’ve always had a bit of a sensitive stomach.” At Sunoo’s tone of voice, Jay looks over his shoulder and finds him mixing the contents with a fond look on his face. “Her kalguksu was my favourite, so… Thank you. I’m gently reminded of her tonight. Hyung, I’ll be sure to enjoy your efforts to the fullest!”

Jungwon looks between them with a little smile. Then he turns to Sunoo and tells him how it’d be really nice if serendipity dropped a celebrity on their doorstep to make them famous overnight. Sunoo gravely agrees. In the backdrop of their conversation, Jay stares at the sink in contemplative silence. 

He doesn’t hate it, being here. 

It’s chaotic and dysfunctional, sure, with Jaeyun and Sunoo doing the opposite of getting along behind the scenes and with the restaurant being run by a calculative 25-year old who’s more self-sacrificing than he wants to admit, and with external forces trying to shut them down everyday to the point they had to devise tactical scare protocols, and it’s not a place Jay has ever imagined himself working in after all these years of chasing esteem, but… he’s able to see people enjoy his food. He is surrounded by people who are unapologetically passionate in their little spots of purpose. And he thinks he is starting to rediscover worth in the things he forgot had mattered. 

Nothing his kid self ate had consoled him when he started setting the dinner table for two instead of three. Bland, ashy, dull—the scent of the charnel house had ruined his taste buds. But it was his kid self who decided, early on, to follow in his mom’s footsteps and one day make food taste as comforting as hers, because that’s what he thought it was all about—comfort. And in his family, comfort was synonymous to love. 

He wanted to be like her. He wanted to share her special understanding of the human connection. She made sure everyone was well fed, even those who could care less about the world around them, because she loved the craft. The care. If they were nourished with her food, then that was enough to keep going. That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it?

That’s what it was always supposed to be about. 

“I’ll cook for you guys whenever you’re hungry,” Jay cuts in the middle of them listing off their favourite celebrities, affecting nonchalance as best as he can despite the slight quiver in his voice. 

Jungwon raises his hand. “Bokguk!”

“Don’t push it.”

Sunoo frowns as Jungwon snickers impishly. “Why would you want to eat super toxic pufferfish?”

“I’ve heard it tastes like really good chicken. The downside is that it’s just capable of killing you within 10 minutes of eating it if it’s not prepared properly, but doesn’t that make it sound more delicious?”

Sunoo tilts his head in thought. Then he shoots up a hand. “Bokguk!” 

“Yeah! Bokguk next!”

Jay rolls his eyes, turning away to clean up and maybe hide the smile on his face. They don’t need to know he likes them that much.

—

The world runs out of patience for him at some point. 

Jay hasn’t reached out beyond asking Sunghoon’s dad if he’s eating well. He hates dragging out ambivalence as much as the next guy but he can’t just show up in front of Sunghoon and bungle around with his words, or else he’ll give up halfway again. He has to streamline his emotions. He has to prepare for whatever can happen to their relationship that’s been teetering on a fault line because anything concerning Sunghoon is basically a life or death situation, and Jay kind of wants to live. 

But one day after work, he comes home to the lights turned on. He hears incoming footsteps, steady and purposeful, before Sunghoon emerges from the hall with a duffel bag. He pauses at the sight of Jay standing there most likely mirroring his expression.

“You’re home early,” says Sunghoon. 

“Uh, yeah. The mold guys came in to, you know, get rid of the mold.” Jay puts his backpack down by the shoe rack. “What’re you doing?”

“Grabbing more clothes.”

“Why? You don’t need to do that.”

Sunghoon selectively ignores that. “The only shirts my dad kept were from when I was a kid.”

“Why did he keep shirts from when you were a kid?”

“He thought I was going to come back,” he answers plainly. “I didn’t, so.” 

“Oh.”

Sunghoon shifts uncomfortably. He looks over Jay’s shoulder like he was mentally planning his escape route when he can literally just walk past him. 

Jay supposes this is a sign he can’t keep postponing the hard thing. So what if he isn’t ready? Nobody is ever ready. He might never be ready for his whole life.  “Are you hungry?”

“I already ate.”

“Are you full?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, then let’s go to the beach.”

“What? Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just go.”

Sunghoon looks perturbed. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I missed your ugly face,” Jay says, point blank. Sunghoon steps away from him like he’s gone mad. “So let’s go to the beach.”

They look up the nearest one and make the tenuous journey to the terminal station, then call a taxi. The ride there is silent. Once they arrive, the sky has darkened into a day-old bruise and the tide has pulled back, revealing a mudflat. Behind them, shadows fell onto the skeletal remains of a pine forest and the smell of brine ricocheted off their clothes. 

Sunghoon’s hair is blacker than water. His long bangs flutter in the wind, half of his face buried in his patterned scarf. He takes a tissue out of his pocket and wipes his nose with it. 

“You can take off your sunglasses,” Jay says. “It’s quiet during the off-season. Nobody’s here.” 

“I’m not taking any chances.”

“It’s also dark as shit. Even I can’t recognize you. Come on, it’s fine.” Jay lowers himself to his haunches. “Help me look for seashells.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

Sunghoon stands there, hesitating, before he sighs and tucks his sunglasses away. He bends forward and sifts through the wet sand with a twig. 

Jay stays in his spot and digs a hole in the mud. Sunghoon inches forward in his search for shells. His coat, too boxy and stiff for his size, is superimposed by the few memories of him in his summer middle school uniform before he dropped out—briefly tanning under all that oily sunshine, sneaking out once to Chuncheon for the makguksu made with vibrant vegetables and the tangy fresh fruit punch that would’ve given Sunghoon’s mom a heart attack if she knew what her son was indulging in, all the forgettable in-between moments that hadn’t mattered in their unmoored youth. It’s true Sunghoon belongs to the cold, but Jay thinks he’s never looked lovelier than when he stood against that specific shade of summer light, sweaty and gross and uncouth. Free.

He plops down onto the sand and takes a shaky breath. Years of ambivalence is enough reason to try one, last time before they grow many arms-length apart again.

“I didn’t always want to be a cook,” Jay says. “Or a watermelon vendor.”

Sunghoon hums. 

“My very first dream was to actually be a superhero.” 

“...Like the Marvel kind?”

“Any kind as long as they had a cape and powers.”

“You must’ve really wanted to save the world.”

“Not really. I only wanted to save my mom.” He rubs the back of his neck. Words he’s never spoken out loud before scorches his throat. “Thought I could save you too.”

In the corner of Jay’s eye, he sees Sunghoon fidgeting with something in his hand before he turns away, reorienting his focus on the sand. “You made me laugh a lot, so. I guess you did.” 

Jay swallows hard. “Sunghoon—”

“I don’t understand why you brought me all the way out here to reject me, though. I’d literally be fine indoors.”

“Wait, that’s what you’re getting from this?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to explain but you’re not explaining.”

“The answer is literally right in front of you.”

“I’m too old to play guessing games,” Sunghoon retorts. “And you don’t even care about seashells. The only shells you care about are shellfish. If you wanted shellfish, we could’ve gone for marinated crab instead of the beach.” 

Jay watches him halfheartedly toe at the sand still looking for shells anyway. “Do you really think I’ll leave again?”

“I think, like every other human being on earth, you have free will to do whatever you want.”

“Then I want you to tell me you don’t want me to leave.”

“What kind of nonsense is that? I can’t tell you what to do. It’s your life.”

“Hey. You said it was in my nature to leave, but since when were you the type to believe in the four pillars of destiny? You’re not that passive. You’re a control freak. You’re ridiculously simplistic with an overcomplicated way of thinking. Listen,” Jay barrels over Sunghoon’s affronted attempts to argue, “I didn’t leave because I was always meant to. I left because—because you were this great heron on ice and I was just an ant in your world. I thought I’d remain an ant forever if I stayed by your side. I didn’t think we could be big together.”

Jay looks down and draws a leaf in the sand, face burning with agony. “The older we got, the more it felt like standing beside you only emphasized what I lacked. But I also—I missed you: my best friend who was never afraid to lose, or cry, or throw tantrums, or admit he loved figure skating more than anything even though it was gradually tarnished by the world. And—I mean, shit, dude. I figured you were just putting up with me for old time’s sake when I came back, but I could never have guessed you—” he cuts off, words snagged in his throat. It feels fucking awkward to say it out loud. “I didn’t know how you felt.”

“I didn’t want you to.”  

Jay compresses his lips. He can’t deny he’s had a shit time on his own the past years. But despite all the grief, all this remorse, he doesn’t regret leaving. He saw the world. He tasted it. He’s met the worst people who were too absorbed in their own pain to spare everyone else the fallout, but he’s also met the ones—rare as they came by—who suggested the best way to remedy it, which was to put more good into the world than give up on it. And sometimes, that looked like the food you put on the table.  

“I’m not sorry I left,” Jay says. “But, I’m sorry for the way I did.”

At the protracted silence, Jay peeks a glance. Sunghoon has stopped in the middle of his pursuit of treasure. He’s illuminated by the cold glare of the moon. There’s a weird look on his face—awkward, distressed, uncomfortable. Tender. 

Then he takes his sunglasses back out and puts them on. 

Bewildered, Jay watches Sunghoon walk over and sit down next to him, carefully folding his good leg to his chest. Now that his face is obscured, he appears more emboldened, though he seems to still be figuring out a response. 

“Dude, what—take off your sunglasses.”

“No.”

“This is unfair. I bear my heart and soul out to you barefaced but you get to hide behind those Prada knockoffs?”

“They’re not knockoffs. Yours are knockoffs.”

“Not true. I stole mine from my dad—”

“Which means they could be fake.”

“You know what’s really fake? Your tax bracket. Come on, I'd rather look at your eyes than these rectangular black holes.” Jay reaches for the sunglasses and gets a slap on the hand in response, but that doesn’t deter him. “I want to see your face, you heartless bastard. Show me your face!”

They engage in a childish smackdown. Jay seizes the sides of Sunghoon’s head and Sunghoon grabs his wrists, their push-and-pull resulting in a deadlock, then all of a sudden, Sunghoon—laughs. And it’s not a very kind laugh; Jay recognizes the exact tremor, the exact trill at the tapering end of it, and attributes it to the one time Sunghoon had laughed off an insult from a classmate in hockey only for Jay to end up finding him crying in the corner of the ice rink’s restroom under the guise of pollen allergies. He doesn’t even have pollen allergies. He has vitamin deficiencies. It’d also been in the middle of November.

The upturned corners of Sunghoon’s mouth drops into a tightly latched line that quivers every so often. He’s stronger than Jay, always has been, and can easily overpower Jay if he tries hard enough, but he doesn’t. Sunghoon just faces him like he was a particularly inconvenient house chore to get done and over with instead. 

“I never wanted you to leave,” Sunghoon says hoarsely. “I’ve had big feelings for you since we were kids, asshole. Of course I didn’t.”

“Then why—”

“But I would’ve hated it more if you stayed. You would’ve hated me for keeping you here and I would’ve hated you for seeing the state I was in.”

Jay blinks. His hold weakens and Sunghoon slips out of his hands, but neither of them move away. “I wouldn’t have hated you.”

“You would. I know you. Even if you didn’t, I would’ve hated you into hating me, and because loyalty is hardwired in you like a dog, you would’ve stayed behind to rot with my sorry ass. And I couldn’t let that happen—I wasn’t going to. You had the opportunity to take control of your life and I’d rather burn our bridges than let you miss it because of me. You were supposed to leave and start over and—I don’t know. Have a nice fucking life? All you had to do was look forward. Why the fuck didn’t you keep looking forward? What made you think it was smart to come back and shake everything up?” 

“What are you… But that’s the thing, you can’t expect me to do all of that without you—”

“You can,” Sunghoon snaps. “Fuck all of that ant bullshit, Jay. You were never small. You were always a phoenix to me.”

Sunghoon turns his head away with a deep, ragged inhale, like it was taking everything in him to not combust in Jay’s face. Or punch him, really. But then he rummages through his pocket and takes out a small, white shell that resembles a spinning top, and places it on Jay’s knee.

Jay stares at it. He picks up the shell and dusts off the sand. He looks at Sunghoon, misremembered and mischerished, blurring into a single entity in front of him. The formal rigidity had sloughed off Sunghoon’s shoulders, revealing a rawness that had become so rare, so historical, that it made him blister like summer again. 

Out of the two of them, it’s Sunghoon the light has always been magnetized to. 

Words eluding him, Jay settles on this: a palm brushing against the cold nape of Sunghoon’s neck, fingers slipping up to the back of his hair and gently tugging him down so that their heads touch. The sunglasses knock against Jay’s cheek and he angles his face away. They are the type of people to pull their teeth out when it comes to expressing these sorts of things, but they have never been immune to it. 

“And now we’re both shitty knee-havers,” he murmurs. 

Sunghoon snorts thickly. “No argument there.”

“Can’t run. Can’t jump. Can’t even crawl.”

“Knowing you, you’d probably still try anyway.”

“Uh, you would, not me.”

“This isn't even something to celebrate.” 

“It is if it’s together. Ride or die, right?”

“That’s really fucking corny—”

“You are the most beautiful thing in my life, Park Sunghoon,” Jay says. "Always have been. Let's be bigger together.”

Sunghoon lifts his head. Even behind those stupid sunglasses, Jay can tell the exact moment he goes from staring at him in equal parts disbelief and frustration, to sour resignation of the fact that there was no use arguing for the sake of arguing. It’s a losing battle for him either way. For once in Jay’s life, he takes the gold.

Mouth shut tight, Sunghoon ducks his head and rams it forward to hide his whole face against Jay’s neck. His hair smells like salt, like the once cool shade amidst the heat-charred sidewalks that had been a balm to Jay’s sun-raw skin. 

And he thinks this is Sunghoon, in all his versions, telling him to stay.

—

“You have to soak it overnight and then blanch it again,” his mom said, stirring the gosari that had been cooking in the pot. “That’s how you get rid of the fishy smell and bring out its natural aroma. Now, we turn off the heat and let it sit in the hot water for three hours—oh, I know. It’s a long wait. Let’s be patient. Why don’t you finish that up first?”

Acacia honey misugaru now warm in his tummy, she took him out into the garden. Everything was bathed in a dreamy glow, white butterflies suspended in the air. She looked at her rows of perilla leaves where some were growing on the fence. With their endless supply, she had resorted to making pesto out of them.  

“They really do grow like weeds,” she mused to him. “I’m starting to run out of ideas on what we can use them for. Maybe on pizza? In mille feuille nabe? How about we juice them?”

“Juice?” 

“Don’t say no until you’ve tried, Jongseong-ah. Besides, have I ever made something that wasn’t good?”

He quickly shook his head. 

“That’s right.”

“I wanna cook good food too,” he said with the unblemished pride of a child, “so mom can be happy like mom makes me happy.”

She smiled. He believed she did, at least. When he looked up at her face, it was distorted by a bright, wonderous blur. Not even the afterlife remembered what she looked like.

“What did I do in my past life to have a child like you? I must have won the lottery,” she said fondly, pulling his cheek. “Well, Chef Jongseong! Don't keep me waiting, then. I look forward to the day I get to taste your food.” 

—

His father always said it was going to be a lonely life.

Jay wasn’t sure when he subconsciously started to carry out that prophecy of isolation despite trying to undo what was written in his fate. But it was why every attempt to prove his father wrong only accumulated hurt. No matter how hard he tried to hide these parts of himself that were perceived as shameful while subliminally hoping this sanitized projection of himself would also be accepted by others, it was nothing but a Sisyphean black hole of doubt. An ouroboros of self-loathing. 

Because Jay believed him. He really did. 

“What are you doing?”

The lights above the island flicker on. Jay opens his eyes, cheek pressed against the cold surface of the counter. Sunghoon stands in the shadows. 

“I couldn't sleep,” he replies groggily.

“So you decided to migrate to the kitchen?”

“Well, I went to grab water first and—here I am. What time is it right now?”

“3:17 AM.”

“Gross.”

Sunghoon takes the seat beside Jay and mirrors him, folding an arm over the counter and resting the side of his face on it. Jay hooks an ankle over the footrest of Sunghoon’s chair. Sunghoon lightly knocks their knees together. His hair is messy. It doesn’t seem like he’s slept either. “You looked deep in thought.” 

“I’m always deep in thought.”

“You can afford to shut your brain down sometimes.”

“Says the empty-headed one, of course.”

“Screw you. What were you thinking about?”

Jay shrugs. Everything, anything. The tail end of a bad dream, the voice of his father worming in his ear. The blurred pain in his chest. And—

He hesitates, then trusts Sunghoon will know he isn’t asking to be hurtful. 

“Were you ever going to tell anyone?”

Sunghoon blinks. It takes a moment for him to understand what Jay is talking about, and another to find a response. “No,” he says. “No. I decided I would take it to my grave.” 

“Really?”

“Yeah. I made peace with it. Kind of.”

“So you were just going to settle on a lavender marriage? Find a nice wife, start a nuclear family, own a Bichon Frisé?”

A vague skeleton of a smile reaches Sunghoon’s lips, like there was amusement to be found in such a suffocating, fake life. “I don't know. To be honest, I couldn’t imagine myself that far into the future yet. I didn’t think I could want one.“

The honesty sits heavy on Jay’s chest, yet Sunghoon sounded at ease.

Jay takes a deep breath. He stares at the very first face to have reminded him of the summer snowflakes in his mother’s backyard. He could hardly let himself think about her back then, but that small memory hadn’t hurt—not when it was soothed by an unexpectedly toothy grin and a clammy hand helping Jay up from the ice. The same, clammy hand Jay reaches for and squeezes.

“You should’ve won.”

“What?”

“In the ICP—ICS—shit, what’s it called, ICU—”

“Wait, you mean ISU?”

“Yeah, sure, sounds right. It was years ago. You won silver but you deserved gold, not the other guy. It didn’t make sense. You didn’t even fall.” 

Sunghoon’s mouth softens with surprise. “You watched me compete?”

“Um, I tuned in occasionally.” There isn’t a single thing he hasn’t watched. “Against my will.”

“Oh. Oh, this is weird. What the hell, are you a fan of mine?”

“Hey, you think I wanted to watch you?”

“Of course. I’m a boon from the gods! My real fans would think so.”

Jay impassively watches Sunghoon laugh like he thought himself the funniest person in the universe, eyes shining. Heart swelling, world healing. “It doesn’t have to be lonely.”

“Huh?”

“It doesn’t have to be lonely,” he quietly affirms—to himself, to his father, to his brilliant best friend from many summers ago. “Our life.”

Sunghoon snorts. The sentiment clearly flies over his head. “Jay-ah, you don’t have to worry about that. You’re somebody who looks scary when you’re actually quite defenseless, and you think romance and hope are essential in life but are too embarrassed to admit it. All of that together makes it pretty hard to leave you alone.” 

Sunghoon doesn’t seem to know how much of the things he says makes Jay want to simultaneously punch him in the face and kiss him on the mouth. But his breath stinks right now and the enormity of his feelings can’t simply be reduced to words. Jay can learn all the languages in the world and still remain speechless like a fool. The superpower of Park Sunghoon. 

So instead, he brings their intertwined hands in to press a poorly suppressed smile against the inside of Sunghoon’s wrist. And like clockwork, like tessellation, Sunghoon kicks him in the shin.

—

Work is slow during the post-holiday week. Jungwon tries to send them all home, but Jay takes the liberty to schedule himself in. So does Jaeyun. Sunoo is apparently in Okinawa with his mom and promised to bring back a considerable amount of matcha, as if the rest of the world aren’t to blame for the shortage, and Hyunseo requested time off to be with her sisters.  

It’s quiet. Though for Jungwon, it must be the unnerving kind. 

“I mean, there’s only so much we can do,” Jaeyun says while Jay stands sentry by the office door, attentively watching Jungwon bustle around in the kitchen. The goddamn kid won’t even sit down during his lunch break. “We just have to hope the pace will pick up after the New Year. I have my doubts, though.”

Jay frowns at Jake over his shoulder, but ends up staring at the column of rainbow stickers on the wall he hasn’t noticed before. “What’s up with that?”

“With what?”

“With that,” he says, pointing at the stickers. 

“Oh, Hyunseo slapped those on—something about adding zhuzh to the place. It’s nice, right? You know, love. Happiness. Gay. Hey, I’m kind of like cupid, aren’t I? The heralder of wisdom? The god of romance? Shouldn’t you be thanking me?”

Jay groans. “Please don’t start.”

“Why?” Jaeyun puffs up his chest, arms akimbo. “Just admit it’s all because of me that you and Sunghoon aren’t spending the next decade acting like miserable pieces of shit—again.” 

“Can you keep your fucking voice down?”

“You have nothing to worry about, Jay-ah. We’re so chill here. Sunoo literally goes to a neighborhood named after you in Itaewon. Hyunseo clearly loves you and reads webtoons about disproportionate gay people. And the little boss met Sunghoon a few times to talk about the super secretive hiring process he was involved in, and is clever enough to put two and two together, so he already knows the basics of your relationship anyway. He only acts clueless out of consideration.” 

Jay’s face burns. He closes the door behind him regardless.  

“Speaking of Sunoo, he kept talking about trying to manifest Moon Ga-young on our doorstep before he left, and it got me thinking,” Jaeyun says, cushioning his cheek with a palm as he leans on the desk, wiggling his eyebrows. “Don’t we already know a celebrity?”

“No.”

“Listen, I’m just thinking we can get a single photo and post it everywhere—”

“No, what the fuck? We’re not doing that to him.”

“Again, I’m only thinking—”

“Stop thinking, then.” Sunghoon’s presence on social media is purposely next to nonexistent; he hasn’t gone anywhere near it since high school after a forced detox, and Jay wasn’t going to let him start again out of sacrificial duty when it quite literally almost killed him. 

Jaeyun pouts. “Don’t know why I bothered to work here if I was gonna keep getting silenced,” he gripes.

Jay shakes his head and leans against the wall with his arms crossed. They’ve basically used up everything at their disposal. He doubts a miracle will happen any time soon. What kind of celebrity would want to be caught dining at some rundown family restaurant? Appearances are deceiving, sure, but it’s also what promises success. They look more like a front for a money laundering scheme than a humble business.

But as he stares at the rainbow stickers, a cog in his brain suddenly clicks into place. He stands alert, eyes wide, hands coming to clutch his head. Everything clears. 

Of fucking course. 

Why didn’t Jay think of this sooner? He’s a genius. He’s a genius full of fucking dread. 

“What?” Jaeyun asks, noticing the shift in the atmosphere, though it must’ve been obvious enough from the beleaguered groan Jay lets out. “What is it? Why do you look like you want to crawl into a hole?”

“Who else do you think is the next closest thing to a celebrity that I know?”

Jaeyun’s mouth drops open. He jumps up from his chair. “No way! You’re gonna unblock him?”

“I have to,” he says solemnly. “For the restaurant.”

Jaeyun clutches his chest. “Bro.”

Jay reluctantly takes out his phone. It’s obviously not that Jay has residual feelings for the guy. Or residual anything. It’s just—awkward. And cringey, now that he reflects back on how he used to constantly vie for Heeseung’s approval as if his acknowledgement was an attestation to success. Approval is invigorating, sure, like all kinds of recognition are, and maybe he would’ve been over the moon had he received any if he was still the same person. But he’s not. What Heeseung thinks now wouldn’t make a difference nor dent to the steady, belly-full pride Jay already has for his work. For everything. Because he knows. Thoroughly, intimately, privately—his purpose. He knows. 

Fine dining never worked out despite years of cruel effort and a fucky knee, and yeah, it sucks. It makes him angry when he sits too long ruminating. But he can’t take those years back. He doesn’t think he wants to. Maybe he'll never be an executive chef, a head chef, or a chef of any kind, really. But family restaurants, fast food places, charity kitchens—there is no lesser service, and he’s realized it’s where you find your calling that’s most important. 

Jay makes weary locals feel better with the food he cooks for them. Not everyone can do that. But he can. It’s fucking awesome, and he knows it. 

He can feel Jaeyun breathing down his neck as they stare down at Heeseung’s contact page. Jay takes a deep breath to steel himself. For the restaurant.

When he slams his thumb down on the unblock button, Jaeyun screams in his ear.

“The fuck was that for?” Jay exclaims, pushing him away.

“It felt fitting!” Jaeyun springs back to Jay’s side to nosily poke at his phone. “Quick, go look at your blocked messages. Maybe he sent you something.” 

“What? I can check?”

“Yeah, with Samsung you can. It stores them. It’s the reason I switched to an iPhone. I don’t need to see the shit my brother sends. Anyway, go to Settings.” 

Jaeyun shows him the blocked messages inbox where there is, indeed, Heeseung’s name with a (3) attached to it. Jay did not anticipate that. Heeseung wasn’t a first texter. Or a serial texter. Or a reader, really. The preview isn’t encouraging but surprisingly enough, it was also sent two weeks after Jay had quit. 

Curious, he presses on it. 

Hi I still don’t know what to say I’ve never had someone confess to me then immediately quit in my face and then blame me for it all at the same time

But you’re right 

Fuck the quails 

Jay blinks. He looks at Jaeyun, who gawks back.

“Doesn’t that sound like solidarity?” Jaeyun asks. “Wasn’t he literally extending an olive branch? He’s—oh my god, dude.”

“Wow.” Jay scratches his head. “Damn.” 

“Damn? That’s all you have to say? You couldn’t have given him two weeks first before you overreacted?” 

“Telling me that now isn’t gonna help, dumbass. And I was trying to move on!”

Jaeyun rolls his eyes and opens the door at the sound of a knock. Jungwon warily looks between them, arms crossed.

“I heard screaming.”

“It was me,” Jaeyun answers. 

“Oh. I don’t care, then.”

With newfound determination, Jay shoves Jaeyun aside and presents Jungwon his phone. Jungwon, in response, looks very confused as he squints at his bright screen. 

“What am I looking at?” 

“Lee Heeseung,” Jay says gravely, but confidently. “Our trump card.” 

Jungwon’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. “You guys still keep in contact?”

“Er, no. But now I will, for the restaurant.”

“For the restaurant!” Jaeyun pumps a fist in the air. 

Jungwon has many smiles. Evil, strange, nefarious. But the one that curves across his mouth at this moment seems to fall more on the side of pride.

“That’s what I like to hear,” he enthuses, clapping Jay on the shoulder. “For the restaurant!”

—

Jay leans over the counter and shoves his phone into Sunghoon’s face. “Look at this,” he says, jabbing a finger into the screen. “Over 90,000 likes on this photo with more than 100 comments. It’s ridiculous. Since when was Heeseung this big of a deal? The restaurant's been busier than ever. I mean, we could be busier, but this is more than any of us could have hoped for. Sunoo even cried during lunch yesterday. Cried.”

“First you hover over me, and now you disturb me?” Sunghoon petulantly bats Jay’s hand aside. “You told me this eight times already.”

He can’t help it. He’s a hoverer. Not to mention that’s Jay’s expensive Sekikanetsugu Saiun paring knife being used by a guy who can barely hold a sharp object correctly. Sunghoon’s attempts at peeling chestnuts with the grip of a feeble newborn has instilled nothing but fear so far. 

Jay sighs and pulls his phone away to squint at the comments. Most of them are about how handsome Heeseung is but also Jungwon too. The last photo in the post—which Jay had skillfully taken—was of the two of them smiling together in front of the restaurant with enough distance between them to fit a moped. Jungwon looked particularly frazzled that day, but Jay supposes good genes are unyielding for a reason. Lucky brat. 

Then he sees something that makes him scramble for his glasses.

Justcomeoverandnyangme   1d          ♡78
Wait… isn’t that restaurant oppa usually at Umai Bakery..??         
Reply

> View 13 replies

“What the fuck,” Jay mutters, expanding the reply section. 

progenitorstar   1d
@Justcomeoverandnyangme I’m a regular at Umai and I've seen him there too!! He’s always talking to the owner's son… They’re so tall and handsome lololol it’s like heaven when i walk in lolol
Reply

nebunlae  1d
@Justcomeoverandnyangme I'm also a regular.. The baker’s son always seem shy around him hehe their smiles are cute..
Reply

duh_zzz   1d
@progenitorstar Does this mean they’re all friends?? Awesome
Reply

eeseooes   1d
@nebunlae @progenitorstar @duh_zzz You dummies aren’t real regulars if you don’t even know they have a deal going on right now!!! Grab a meal voucher after you buy from Umai and go support the restaurant if you want to see them smile at each other more!!!!!!!!
Reply

> View 9 more replies

Jay is surprised, and grateful, to see Hyunseo in the comments aggressively promoting the restaurant. She really deserves a raise. But also, since when did Riki have some trail of fame? The bakery’s popular, sure, but the amount of people knowing him by name? By description? He doesn't even have his own Instagram account. But doesn’t this mean they should weaponize this? Underscore the restaurant’s closeness with the bakery? Should Jungwon and Riki take pictures with each other everyday then, if this is what it’ll take to garner attention and make a corner of the social media world explode? Should the three of them take pictures? 

“Shit,” Jay says, firing off a text to Jaeyun about his next plan. “I think I really am a genius.”

Sunghoon is talented at sounding cloyingly sarcastic. “Yes. You’re absolutely brilliant.” Asshole. 

“Why’re you holding the knife like that?”

“What?”

Jay puts his phone aside and starts fretting over Sunghoon’s hand placement. “Fix your thumb. No, like—actually, can’t you just let me do this? You’ve been at this for over an hour and only made it through three chestnuts.”

“I’m fine,” Sunghoon says, putting the knife down to lift the warm compress from his knee. “I need to stand.”

Jay tosses the compress into the sink. Sunghoon pushes aside the bar stool and kicks the anti-fatigue mat over to stand on again. His orthopedist recommended it to help reduce knee pain among everything else, something about it minimizing discomfort from degenerative arthritis—a small but certain effort, if not unnecessarily expensive. Jay can’t complain, though; it helps his crickley old knees too. 

Sunghoon picks up the knife to resume. “Let me get through one more,” he says, determined. “I’m getting the hang of this.” 

You actually suck, Jay wants to say, then decides against it. He begrudgingly goes back to his phone, loses patience with Jaeyun, and puts away his glasses to start shelling gingko nuts. Though most of the time, he’s watching Sunghoon with the focus of a turret. 

Jungwon gave him the Sunday off after allegedly getting sick of seeing Jay’s face everyday, which Jay likes to interpret as an indirect display of gratitude, so he decided to organize their home pantry and replenish their stocks in their nearly empty fridge, save for the leftovers Mr. Park brings over. For lunch, he was thinking of caramelised pork belly in a garlic and glutinous starch syrup marinade, topped with chili sauce if he was feeling adventurous. Or maybe bibimbap, since they have beansprouts they needed to get rid of and a load of sesame oil to spare. Then Sunghoon came home from PT announcing he was craving galbi-jjim. It’s been a while since he craved anything in particular at all. So obviously, Jay wasn’t going to say no. 

They have the ingredients, the time, the right pair of hands. After successfully wheedling Sunghoon into helping, Jay firmly believed they were going to make the best galbi-jjim in the whole fucking world. 

It’s nice, cooking alongside each other even if the way Sunghoon trims off the dark skin of the chestnut is physically painful to watch. Sometimes it’s quiet, sometimes Sunghoon lets Jay talk at length about anything—the restaurant’s optics now that it’s been steered towards a hopeful trajectory; Jay’s awfully overdue and conciliatory conversation with Heeseung that he omits details of because it’s still too embarrassing to share; and the new bain marie he may or may not have already placed an order for despite Sunghoon giving him shit for overspending. 

“I’m going to the rink next Sunday.”

Jay pauses momentarily, slanting him a glance. “What for?”

“Nothing,” Sunghoon says calmly, and Jay goes along with the no-big-deal affect even though it’s obvious it's an act. Nothing about this guy is ever calm for good reason. “Just to sit, I guess. And be there. To be okay with being there.”

“Your dad told me you threw up the last time you guys tried to go.”

"Yeah, which is why I need to relearn how to be okay with being there.”

“More training,” Jay says wryly, though he never stints in concern. “You’re sure?”

Sunghoon shrugs. “I… want to revisit the ice, you know. Eventually. For fun, or for—closure. For something. And I can’t do any of that when apparently, trauma manifests through muscle memory for me. Or whatever the doctor said.” His gaze flickers to the window, the black of his eyes peppered by light. “It’s not like I’m putting myself back into the public eye as anything. Time has passed. I think I’m okay. I’ve moved on enough, and my… No, it doesn’t matter. She’ll have to deal with it. I know what I want. And this is something I want to do.”

Jay expected nothing less of Park Sunghoon, the trailblazer of mental fortitude. And the occasional mental anguish. Of course he would try to reconcile with a place that stored a complex identity and sent a bad instinctual reaction to the rest of his body. Sunghoon would stick his arm in a blazing bonfire if it meant becoming better and repossessing a glimmer of himself. Jay envisions it—a subtle kind of resurgence, the upcycling of a past life. 

He thinks it’d be nice to make Sunghoon laugh on the ice again, one day.

Jay feels proud. Maybe emotional. “You’re totally asking me to slap that chestnut out of your hand right now so I can gobble your face up.”

Sunghoon looks perturbed. Definitely intrigued. “What the fuck?” 

Jay laughs, and inches away when Sunghoon begins brandishing the paring knife as a playful threat. “Want me to come sit with you?" 

Sunghoon lets out an aggrieved sigh. “Since you’re insisting…”

“I wasn’t insisting. I was asking. Learn the difference.”

“Uh-huh, yeah. Whatever you say. God, you’re so clingy.”

“I’m going to shell your eyeballs if you keep talking.”

The sunlight from the window runs through him like a ribbon, warm and tingly, transforming the brutal ache in his chest into a rueful bite. In this microcosm of dust motes, skin and shells, the sulfurous scent of soaked shiitake mushrooms, Jay realizes he’s never imagined himself doing this with anybody else again—not when the kitchen has always been a space too sacred, too tender, to simply share with a stranger. Not when it’s always been equivalent to baring a major part of his soul, if not the very foundation of his existence. It feels like Sunghoon is standing right at his heart, adjusting to its nature with clumsy but diligent care. 

Jay hopes he never leaves. 

“She would’ve loved you,” he says. “My mom.”

Sunghoon’s deliberately neutral expression is somehow inviting. “What makes you think that?”

And it’s surprising, almost, how his answer sounds as certain as it feels. “Because she loved me.”

Sunghoon peels off the rest of the shell and reveals the chestnut in all its glory on his palm, cratered and uneven like a moon. Jay picks it up to appraise. 

“Everyone loved her food, but I loved it the most. She’s the reason why I wanted to make a career of some kind out of cooking. She also ate bugs.”

“Wow. She sounded cool as fuck.”

“Yeah,” Jongseong easily agrees, laughing, as he places the chestnut down in the small pile of Sunghoon’s precious, hard work. “She was the best.”