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Seok June’s never been one for festivals, but if there is one thing he can’t resist, it’s Jang Yonghoon’s eloquence paired with his dazzling smile. Well, technically, those are two different things. Can’t you help me out for once? Yonghoon had said, tone teasing but impossibly warm, and that had been all it had taken for June to say yes . Or well, June had agreed with his lips. He’d intended to make up some last-minute excuse when the day came, but Minjae just had to ask to meet with him to pick up some clothes today, so June, cursing his soft heart, had taken it as a divine sign that there was no escaping his fate. Damn Jang Yonghoon and his amicable way with words and his playfulness that makes everyone on campus want to be his girlfriend, men included.
“I’m almost done, Junnie,” says Minjae, looking disproportionately excited to be collecting a preordered package. “Give me three minutes and we can go find what you need.”
“Take your time,” June mumbles, glancing at the overhead sign with the words WOMEN’S SECTION on it. Gaggles of girls drift through the aisles, surrounding them like petals from the same flower. June sticks out like a sore thumb. Girls are short and all smiles, animated expressions and exaggerated gestures. June is lumbering and overgrown and had almost knocked over a stand of clothes ten seconds ago.
As if to prove a point, a mannequin taunts him in the distance, sporting a blonde wig that reminds June of his English language course teacher at his university. A sundress printed with a floral pattern hugs her slim hourglass body. She clutches a salmon-coloured purse in her hand, about to lob it at June to chase him out of her territory. Her weight is resting on one leg, just like June’s. It must be nice to be her, smooth polyester and hard plastic, unbound by the messiness of wet flesh and blood. Dolls like her will never rot in the way that June will—is doing now—wither away from their core, cell by cell.
“What are you looking at, Junnie?” Minjae’s voice tickles his shoulder. June hurriedly shuffles his weight onto both legs and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, hunching. He pretends to stare at the farthest aisle through his overgrown mop of hair, only to cringe away when he realises it’s a row of heels.
“Nothing much,” he says.
Minjae’s gaze flicks towards the heels. “Okay,” he says, the corner of his lip curling up. “I’m all done. Do you want to go that way?”
“Anywhere’s fine.” June waves vaguely in another direction. “Maybe…”
“Sure thing,” Minjae agrees. He sticks to June’s side, leaving open a pathway of consumerist doom that June sincerely hopes does not lead to women’s underwear.
Here are a few things about Yonghoon, okay? He’s an absolute gentleman to all women. He believes in giving back to society by helping out at orphanages and animal shelters. He has a strong sense of justice that allows him to do stuff that would mollify most men, like fundraising for charity through novelty dance performances with the dance crew he’s in with June. And by novelty, June means novelty. Stuff that would get you in deep trouble if you performed it at a Protestant church service.
Caveat: stuff that would mollify most straight men, because Yonghoon is undeniably, irrefutably straight, a good brother to his hyungdeul and dongsaengdeul. His warm voice and gentle gestures are transplanted from the male lead of a trite K-drama in a way that makes June giddy inside. June had once made a heart with Yonghoon when posing for a university newspaper, one of the performances they had without costumes, which was one of the reasons June had agreed to be there the first place. Yonghoon had mouthed an endearing compliment, June had been jittery for a good minute afterwards, and freshman Lee Junseo had laughed at the way he physically shook. You’re hopeless, Lee Junseo had said. He’s right, because June can never be the predestined female love interest for Yonghoon’s male lead role.
The point is, though, that Yonghoon makes braving the women’s section worth it.
Dresses of all shapes and sizes bombard June’s vision, which makes his chest half-giddy and his hair stand on end. He resists the urge to run his hands through soft silks and rub lace fabric with the pads of his fingers. He wouldn’t be able to explain it. He could say it’s for his non-existent girlfriend, it would be a pathetic excuse, and the department store clerks would throw him out for what they see as inappropriate deeds. Such are the rules, even if they aren’t written in the customer policy.
“So,” says Minjae. His battered trainers squeak against the floors, masking their conversation. “What’s all this with Yonghoonie that you talked about?”
“I’m helping out with the performance at his university’s festival.” June eyes a pleated skirt. Too short. The choreography is too dignified for that, and he doesn’t want to show off his stick legs. The real answer to Minjae’s question is a lump of lead sitting on his tongue, so he ignores it. “So I have to buy some… stuff.”
In the back of his head, he can see Yonghoon raise an eyebrow at the word stuff. Unlike Yonghoon, though, Minjae is no star student of Yonsei University, scrutinising every white lie with an academically-minded brain. As such, he only hums in acknowledgement. “Well, let me know how I can help.”
June had met Minjae on the banks of the Han River in his first year of university. A heavy rain soaked June’s clothes as he stared at the foaming waves, contemplating how long it would take for the current to drag a human under when a bright voice asked June if he wanted an umbrella. June had said whatever illness he got from the cold wouldn’t kill him anyway. Before he knew it, the stranger had coaxed June into his room and towelled him off.
It was only when June was walking to his own room three doors down that he realised the stranger lived in the same hasuk boarding house as he did. Minjae was two years older and he attended Chugye University for the Arts, which was practically neighbours with June’s own university. He had moved in this year after his old hasuk had closed. He was also family friends with Jeong Semin, one of the high-schoolers in June and Yonghoon’s dance crew, who happened to have an impressive collection of dresses curated just for Instagram. With the world being so small, it’s unsurprising that Minjae had firmly embedded himself into June’s life, pestering him to eat together or to meet new people on a regular basis. June reasons that he’s killing two birds with one stone by hanging out with Minjae while helping Yonghoon, fulfilling the obligations of two friendships. It’s just that the stone’s about to boomerang back towards his head and give him a concussion.
They pass a navy dress with a white collar, reminding June of his impending misery. It has a modest cut, but flares around the legs a little, fitting for June’s—well, Yonghoon’s—purposes. June would have gone for a closer look if not for a trio of young women clustered around it, one of them wearing a letterman jacket from Ewha Women’s University. 2026, it says, labelling her freshman status for all to see. Her eyes meet June’s, and she flushes, elbowing her friends. June catches the whisper of oppa through their giggles. His chest constricts. He holds his breath, wants so badly for his skin to split and to crawl out of it, for all his useless muscle and height to slough off his bones. It takes all his willpower not to bolt, but to trudge deeper into a section with full-length dresses.
“Can you, uh…” he mutters to Minjae. “Keep an eye out for other people?”
Minjae gets a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Ah, is this a heist?”
“Something like that,” says June. How Minjae still hasn’t asked why they’re in this section of the department store is a mystery, one that June’s grateful for. He takes a deep breath as the women slowly disappear from view. No time to waste. “Cover me.”
“On it.” Minjae gives him a mock salute and turns to stand guard. He probably finds this fun. June wishes fun was all there was to it.
June stoops a little to get level with the clothing stands and starts rifling through the racks. The flimsy short dresses he vetoes without a second thought. He can’t bring himself to touch the ones with frills on top, and he doesn’t have the guts to try anything with patterns. Yonghoon will be seeing this in a couple of weeks, dissecting every bit of the fabric, shape, and drape. June can’t afford to make a fool of himself. He holds up a denim one-piece, finds it too small, and drops it back on the rack like a hot coal. Countless adequate dresses are disqualified in the same way.
One rack yields nothing, then two, then three. June is losing hope as he dives from aisle to aisle, his pulse hammering against his ribs as he tries to shut out the hubbub of the store, the low chatter, the discerning gazes of other patrons. Any moment now, a high-pitched scream will disrupt him as a woman happens upon June groping dresses. A little voice at the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like Yonghoon says, maybe you should have ordered online.
Then, in his haste to get to the next aisle, he nearly trips over it—a dark hem pooling on the floor.
June skids back. The dress feels slim, but the tag indicates it is extra, extra large. He lifts the hanger from the rack, careful to keep his head down, and the rest of the dress spills into the open: a shimmering black body with sheer sleeves from the chest up. June brings the hanger to his shoulders, heart beating in his throat. The tail of the dress falls, perfectly, to his ankles.
“Minjae-hyung,” he whispers. His hands bundle up the clothing on autopilot, turning it from dress into something vaguer, less clockable. “Which way is the fitting room?”
Minjae’s head pops out from the other side of the rack, scanning the store with a hand to his forehead. “Over there.” He points. “The coast’s clear for now.”
As soon as Minjae stops speaking, peals of high-pitched laughter reach them, turning June’s blood to ice. A strangled noise leaves his lips, failing to form the warning: girls. He would have been rooted to the spot forever if not for an insistent tug on his wrist.
“Run, Junnie!” Minjae yells, clearly having no inhibitions about causing a public ruckus. His grin stretches from ear to ear as they dash for the fitting room, June lurching to keep up with Minjae’s fleet-footed grace. Before June can string together a sentence of protest, they’ve gone through the curtains and barrelled straight into a cubicle. Thankfully, it’s unoccupied. June would have passed out from the lightheadedness of running and the embarrassment of running into a scene of undress.
“Please never do that again,” he says, chest burning as he gasps for air. Minjae bites back a laugh and pats him on the back. In the cramped space, they barely fit together sideways.
“I got you where you wanted to be, didn’t I?” he says.
“Yeah, I guess.” Not that June wanted to face the music. It’s too crowded here. It makes June’s head spin.
There’s a moment of silence. Minjae’s smile remains brightly painted on his face, as if at a loss for another expression to put on. “Well,” he says. “Aren’t you going to try it?”
“Try what?” says June. Don’t say it, he wants to scream, don’t even think about it.
“Those clothes.” Minjae points to the black lump June is cradling. “Why else would we be here?”
June’s dry mouth tastes like bile. The fact that Minjae hasn’t reacted badly is absurd. The fact that he isn’t reacting at all is incomprehensible. “Are you serious?” Minjae must understand the unspoken rules. Everyone does. Everyone knows what it means to transgress them, knows that June is—“Did you even see what I—?”
He can’t bring himself to say it.
Minjae shrugs, a helpless gesture of you caught me. “It can’t be that bad, Junnie.” He’s still smiling, like that’s enough to right all of June’s rotten wrongs.
“You haven’t seen it.” Of course that’s why. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.
“Look—”
“No, you look!” June shakes out the dress in its twisted glory. “Do you see what I mean now? Do you understand?”
Silence, save for the drone of the air-con. June lets the skimpy sleeves dangle between his fingers and watches Minjae’s smile fade with vicious satisfaction. The burning sensation in his chest has migrated to his cheeks, ruddy and brazen.
“Nothing to say?” His voice comes out harsh, as if the world needed more proof of his wrongness.
“I didn’t expect this,” says Minjae, trying to reason with him. But of course. June’s challenge is one Minjae can’t answer, will never be able to, because he’s not the one taking to the women’s section to find dresses and skirts and leggings. “But that doesn’t mean anything—”
“Liar.” June thrusts the dress closer.
“No, I see what you mean,” says Minjae. He’s scrambling to correct course, hasn’t even objected to June slipping into informal speech, hasn’t corrected June’s rudeness. “I won’t—I can’t judge you, Junnie. But Yonghoon knows all about this, right? You can ask him. You should have asked Yonghoonie, why didn’t you—”
“I can’t!” Not Yonghoon, whose charm cannot be diminished by a cheap wig, who slips into dresses like they are just costumes, who gets compliments for it, because Yonghoon gets compliments even for his transgressions. Because everything Yonghoon does becomes legitimate. Because, at the bottom of it all, Yonghoon does not delight in wearing dresses, not in the way June would—his actions untainted by desire.
“Junnie—”
“Stop it.” The name grates on his ears. Jun written with the hanja for "handsome", Jun meaning noble, a lode-bearing steed, who towers over other men and lets himself stand tall, “Who has heard of a Jun who wears dresses? You and I both know—”
The grain of his voice catches in his throat, dark and flat, like barbed hooks sinking into wet flesh. The drone of the air-con crackles, like static. His ears do a funny pop.
“Seok Junnie—”
He goes under.
The first time his voice had cracked in conversation, his classmates had laughed, and he was left with their mockery ringing in his ears. He’d spent nights hoping the thorns in his voice would fade, that it could climb back up to childish lightness like it always did after a cold. They told him the drop was natural, a part of growing up. They didn’t know he was made wrong, a weed mutated by some chemical, and the untamed growth that was natural to weeds was agony to him. Worse, the cultivated environment weeds like him yearned for was inhospitable. Weeds were neatly segregated from the flowers, which belonged in pots and gardens. Weeds were squashed and plucked and rent apart for wanting to be flowers—dumped into compost and left to rot. They were the dregs unworthy of life.
So, as nature progressed, he had fallen to the bedrock of low and brusque pitches. He would never be able to root his way out alive, so he had resigned himself to it and fibbed that he was fine, pretending not to care for well-groomed appearances or dressing up. After all, that performs the role of a man so well. Everyone’s first impression of him is this baritone creature now. It makes him want to rip out his own throat. He hates it. Clenches his fists. Hates hates hates it.
“Hey, Seok June-shi.”
His fists don’t close, resisting his will. The dress falls to the floor and he’s vaguely aware his arms are twitching. His mouth opens, closes, struggles to form words. “’S hard.” Slurs it. White noise in his head, a hollow ache. His voice is rumbling through his chest with as much subtlety as a freight train, and he half-wishes his skeleton could crumble on the spot from the sonic force. Earth to earth. Minjae makes a noise June registers as concern.
“Your lips are shaking.”
June looks out through his curtain of hair. An earnest face looks up at him, small and anxious. He’s worried a hyung. (Even the word hyung sits wrong in his brain, like a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit into its slot, but using the word oppa would be offensive.) Even worse, he’s shouted at that hyung, demanded unreasonable answers from someone not at fault. It’s unforgivable. He’s unforgivable. He’s the one at fault.
“Sorry,” he blubbers. It comes out choked up as spit wells in his throat. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay.” Minjae opens his arms, wide with expectation. June shuffles closer. The arms do not retract, enveloping him. June lets himself breathe. In. Out. Smells salt and wetness in his nose. Minjae rubs his back in soft circles. “You’re okay.”
Minjae always did this. He’d come knocking too when June got a nosebleed from pulling three all-nighters to study for mid-terms. It had been the belly of the night. A lamp was on, and June was trying to talk himself out of his panic. June had opened the door to find Minjae with a bedhead and bleary eyes, asking if he was okay, and June had given up staunching his nose and tried very hard not to cry.
Maybe June should be angrier. He had never wanted this to happen again. He’d even texted Yonghoon the next morning to ask him for study tips, to stop this from happening again. But here he is, in the same situation, unable to raise his head in the softness of his shame.
“Sorry,” June says again, eyes fixed on Minjae’s sneakers. They’re ugly and worn, a mirror image of himself. Even a thousand sorries would not make up for his meanness in the face of Minjae’s tolerance.
“Don’t apologise,” says Minjae. “You don’t get angry for no reason.”
“I’m not angry at you,” June is quick to say.
“Ah.” Minjae exhales. June hears relief—Minjae hadn’t wanted to hurt him. The white noise in June’s head fades a little.
“I don’t know.” June leans into his shoulder, grateful that Minjae let him rest there. He searches for the next words carefully, weighing the strength of each one in his mind. Minjae gives him a reassuring squeeze. “I think… this is just really important to me.”
“The festival?”
“Yeah. And Yonghoon-hyung. What he thinks. What everyone thinks, including you.”
Come on, Yonghoon had said. It’s just a bit of make-believe. No one will judge you for it. He’d always asked June to perform with him, only for June to decline. It’s not Yonghoon’s fault, either. He couldn’t have known how much it would mean to June to don an article of recognition, a debutante’s first steps into mature society—a debut he had given up on for fear of being trampled on.
“You’re risking a lot for this, huh?” says Minjae.
June nods.
“It must not be easy for you.”
“It’s not easy at all,” June says, voice cracking at the acknowledgement. “It’s so hard.”
“You’ll make it.” Minjae pats his back, right over June’s rotten core. June hears the phantom squelch of Minjae’s fingers sinking into the mulch, staying there. “You have control.”
June lets out a long, long breath. If he imagines it hard enough, he can see the decay drying out in a rising sun, dirt closing over the wound. “Thank you,” he says.
“Don’t mention it.”
It’s deceptively simple how the dust can settle. June kind of wants to stay in this embrace, but that’s too embarrassing, so he disentangles himself, clasping Minjae’s arms briefly. It’s not really a hug, but it’s the best June can manage without collapsing on the spot from gratefulness.
Minjae’s mouth curls back into its full-fledged grin. “Well,” he says, “isn’t there something you need to do?”
The past hour comes flooding back to June: sneaking around the women’s section of the clothing department, the frantic search. Yonghoon’s request, his invitation, and a deferred promise.
“Yeah,” he says, steeling himself. It’s for Yonghoon, and for himself. He has to remind himself that it’s for himself, too.
“Hey,” Minjae says softly. “No matter what happens, you’ll always be my dongsaeng, okay?”
“Oh,” says June.
Isn’t that something to consider—a statement so cleanly not a lie? Younger people were younger people no matter what they were, someone to look out for. Most people would never have extended June such a kindness, but that’s Minjae for you, who doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. Who doesn’t care that June is breaking so many rules, real or imagined. Who doesn’t care that June has been made wrong.
June’s lucky. He’s so lucky it chokes him up again, and he has to close his eyes so tears don’t threaten to ruin his reply: “Always.”
One last fleeting touch skims his shoulder. He hears the curtains rattle open, then shut.
Now it’s just him. He and the dress, lying on the ground. It’s all crumpled, a castaway flower.
A strange twang hits June in his chest. It’s not fair that the dress has to suffer June’s moods. He gingerly picks it up, his thumb and forefinger finding its shoulders. It feels revealing to feel his skin through the sheer fabric, but the rest of the dress feels substantial with weight. Promise. He looks in the mirror again, holding the dress up to his shoulders. It’s wide enough to fit. What a miracle.
No way around it, he reasons to himself. The Yonghoon at the back of his mind smiles encouragingly, and he holds onto that thought.
June wrestles his ungainly limbs out of the hoodie. His t-shirt rides up by accident at first, but he decides it’s better to chuck it after all. He drops it in an unceremonious pile and starts peeling off his jeans straight away. Shoes—kick them off. Hurry hurry hurry, now the dress. There’s a zipper at the back, which nearly slips through his fingers. He yanks it open, steps into it, pulls it up. If he stops, he’ll start hating how bony his legs are. Don’t tear the seams, he doesn’t want to pay for the damages. Up up up. Arms into the sleeves, it’s scratchy and the air-con hits his skin all weird—
He catches sight of himself in the mirror, hair a mess, cheeks flushed. The fabric draws around his hips in a slight taper and falls gracefully against his legs, and a slit in the dress parts to reveal a calf as he lifts his foot. He pretends that his threadbare socks aren’t there, imagining the curve of his ankle in—tights, tights would be nice. He turns his hips this way and that, trying to staunch his growing giddiness as the dress swishes.
His English teacher wears a skirt to class regularly. It makes the same swishing noise when she walks. He had stared at it for the entirety of his first class, mesmerised, until he realised he probably looked like a pervert. Months of the year, she had written on the board, her skirt flowing as she moved from left to right and spoke each word into being. June, she had said, pronouncing it like the Korean jun, only the middle of the word was longer, a savoured decision. The sixth month of the year. It’s when young spring comes into full bloom in the summer, when the season refuses to hide. Sometimes it’s used as a name for women.
If June meant the swish of skirts and fierce fields of flowers, June was not such a bad name after all. That name would make June feel full and whole. His back creaks with relief as he straightens, and he can’t help his growing smile as he raises his arms above his head, marvelling at how the sheer sleeves connect to the low-cut neckline.
It’s also way too roomy where his chest is.
The shoulders are too loose.
Panic strikes him lightning-fast at the thought that the dress doesn’t fit, but then it hits him—he hasn’t done up the back yet. He scrambles for the zip. His hands can’t reach his upper back. A chill floods through him, and he’s suddenly drowning in a sea of fabric, never meant for him, that will never be. He was an idiot to think otherwise. Idiot idiot idiot—
“Seok June?” says Minjae on the other side of the curtain. “Are you dressed?”
June’s answer comes out a jumbled mess. “Yes—not really, I am, but—”
Minjae shoves the curtain open unceremoniously before June can explain. He stares for a moment, gaping. Then he has the good grace to hurry in and close it.
“You’re pretty,” are the first words he says. June shakes his head on instinct. “Really, I mean it.”
“Not right now,” says June. “I can’t go out like this.” He jerks a head towards his back, and Minjae’s hands reach for him in sympathy.
“Stuck?”
Stuck is all June ever is. Stuck between two worlds, stuck between knowing and doing. He would have been stuck for Yonghoon’s task if not for Minjae, is still stuck liking Yonghoon and knowing he will never kiss him, at least not now, not like this. If he admits the last bit out loud, though, he might explode into petals of gore and gristle, so what escapes him instead is a whine of frustration. He needs to be unstuck, now. And then maybe, he can finally see if he’s fit for a flowerbed or fated to be fertiliser.
(He’s not against gay people, to be clear. It just doesn’t feel right to him.)
Thankfully, Minjae catches the drift and beckons for him to turn. The teeth join together against June’s spine.
“There we go.” Minjae takes a step back, his eyes wide and warm. “Seriously, you’re beautiful right now.”
June looks down. Even with the zip up, the dress doesn’t sit flush against his chest. It makes him want to tear his ribs out, except he can hear Yonghoon’s voice saying at the back of his mind, matter-of-factly, It’s nothing that can’t be fixed with some padding. This much is true—June has seen him do it many times before for performances, and suddenly, he doesn’t have the heart to hate the space between his ribs and his skin. Irrefutable facts, like the memory of Yonghoon stuffing his chest, hold more water than June’s paranoia anyway. “Do you mean it?”
“With that silhouette, you could be an idol.”
“Not with my voice,” says June, even as the corners of his mouth lift hopefully.
“It’s a nice contralto,” is Minjae’s playful riposte. “Very unique, very marketable.”
“Who said so?”
“My music degree.”
June swats at his arm, but the protest is half-hearted. He moves to fix his hair, but Minjae holds onto him, motioning for him to stay still.
“I got you something,” he says. “I thought you could keep your hair out of your eyes with more style.” A wavy black headband sits small in Minjae’s broad palm. June’s face must have done something complicated, because Minjae hurries to add, “Seminnie probably knows better than me, but—”
June shakes his head. “I trust you.” Semin is not the one who had stuck to June in dress-hunting, not that a high-schooler should bear the burden of June’s madness. June reaches for the headband. He’s halfway there before he shrinks away. Glistening in the hard light of the department store, it looks like a crown, something that June isn’t worthy of. “Is it really for me?” he says quietly.
“Who else would it be for?” Minjae says. “Come closer.” He smooths out June’s hair, his fingers gentle. June doesn’t dare breathe. He bows his head as Minjae fits the headband on, securing it around his ears. “You look right,” whispers Minjae. He turns June around again for the moment of truth.
June finds a shy pair of eyes in the mirror, brimming with lightness. Beneath, a full pair of lips. Then, beneath the dip of the neck, exposed collarbones and a slender waist. The woman in the mirror smiles, and June stands on tiptoes, light as a feather, to smile back.
“June.” He points at himself. To his delight, the breathiness in his voice quells its usual dark grain. He clarifies, “That’s me. June. Like the English name.”
“June,” Minjae echoes, the English way. “I like it, June-ah. ”
A shiver runs through June. “Say it again?”
“Juuune,” says Minjae, pulling out the vowel like a piece of chewing gum.
“Juuune,” June copies him, arms flapping in excitement. Minjae’s body shakes in harmony, his grin matching June’s.
“You know, June-ah, there’s this English nickname for June. Junebug.”
Suddenly, the fitting room is a vast, meadowy expanse. June’s arms stretch out as she twirls, revelling in the feeling of being June. Minjae laughs, catches June’s arm with ease and lets June twirl around him, and isn’t that wonderful? This June wears a wavy headband to keep her short hair out of her eyes. June wears slenderness like a glove and takes comfort in its silken ripple. Maybe June isn’t a real girl, not yet, never will be, but June is in a dress and dancing on the balls of her feet with a man who calls her Junebug, and for now, that’s girl enough.
Minjae squeezes June’s hand, pride shining plain on his face.
“How do you feel, June-ah?” he says.
June decides he likes his name just fine after all. He spins one last time on his heel and feels the air against his skin, like a cool breeze past a wildflower.
“As good as I’ll get.”
He’s floating towards a dazzling smile and a warm voice and this time, maybe, he won’t feel the need to lie anymore.