Archive of Our Own

His mother's friends had once come over to their apartment to talk to her. They were sitting in the kitchen, their long legs bumping against each other underneath the small table, the fruit knife in their hands as they cut their way through apple hearts and split them into eighths. Jaekwan had been sitting in the corner of the room, lap on the floor, a book spread between his knees, the pages open to a colorful depiction of superheroes, the off-brand kind; his father had bought it for him half-off at a roadside stall.

He had never been a particularly demanding person, even as a child. His parents had liked that, the way that any parent would like what was described as an easy child — though by now even Jaekwan knew that there was no such thing as an easy child the same way that there was no such thing as an easy life — and would brag about him to their friends and acquaintances whenever they came by.

"No, seriously," his mother had said just then, proving the point. She was this close to laughing; he had heard it in her voice. She'd leaned forward, conspirational, just bursting at the seams with pride: called Jaekwan over with her other hand, pinching his cheek, and smoothed her hand down the back of his shirt, fussing over the wrinkles. Jaekwan, unbothered, had leaned into her touch, the book held to his chest as he blinked owlishly at their guest. "Jaekwan is really good at listening to his parents. I bet there's no other kid in Seoul that listens as well as he does."

"They're all like that when they're young, unnie," her friend had remarked playfully, probably thinking of her own son, a boy five years Jaekwan's senior. She'd had children young. That's what his mother had said. "Just wait until he hits his teenage years."

The communal bathroom was empty save for two people. Choi was slouching in the doorway, his hair still sleep-mussed. The neckline of the oversized shirt that he was wearing slipped low and exposed the rounded edge of his collarbone as he watched Jaekwan bend over to wash his face in the sink.

"You're going to make us late," said Jaekwan. He turned off the tap. Water ran down the curve of his hand, collecting in the divots between his fingers. The light turned them pale over his skin.

Choi's voice: you worry too much. He liked saying that to him. He was saying it now, only phrased a different way, laughter hanging in his voice: "I'm not going to make us late."

Jaekwan's answering silence was skeptical, but he didn't argue with him. Instead he reached for a bottle and opened the cap with a click to gather the foam in his hands, beginning to apply it generously to his face. In his peripheral vision he saw Choi start to amble closer to the sink to his right, coerced at last into movement, and as he drew close he slipped his arms around Jaekwan's shoulders.

Jaekwan met his eyes in the mirror. Choi had long, pale lashes, the type that turned almost translucent in the sunlight. They were drooping downwards now, his head nestled in the slope between Jaekwan's neck and shoulder. His mouth pressed against the side of Jaekwan's throat.

"You're going to make me cut myself," Jaekwan said.

"Mm," Choi responded indulgently. He was using the type of voice that he used to coax small children and particularly stubborn senior citizens. Jaekwan wasn't sure which category he was supposed to fall under. "I'll let you go in a minute."

Jaekwan briefly considered counting to sixty. "I need to shave."

Choi made a noise. "It's not that bad."

It wasn't. But Jaekwan's hair grew straight and dark, stubbornly poking out of the skin instead of falling down in the docile manner the way that Choi's did, and it was always obvious when he skipped a day in front of the mirror; he'd been told before, by his coworkers, that he could always do something else with it — laser, they'd said, referring him to some clinic with a slick-looking, smooth-faced woman on the business card — but he preferred doing it by hand. He would be doing it now, if Choi would just let him.

He elbowed Choi. His skin was beginning to dry. "Let me go."

Choi didn't let him go. He pulled Jaekwan into him tighter instead, his forearms against Jaekwan's chest, and held him there like he was trying to pin Jaekwan down. The scent of Jaekwan's body wash and shampoo vaguely clung to him. He must have been using them. No wonder Jaekwan had thought it was emptying at an unusual speed.

"Have you been using my shampoo?" Jaekwan asked directly.

"Hey," Choi said into his skin, muffled. His voice dripped with a touch of pity. "You use the cheapest shampoo that you can buy in the bulk size at the store. I'm just helping you get through it until you can replace it with something else."

"What's wrong with my shampoo?"

"Nothing," said Choi, clearly untruthful. He rubbed his cheek against Jaekwan's shoulder needily. "Nothing's wrong with it."

Jaekwan stared long-sufferingly at his own reflection. "If you don't like it, you shouldn't use it."

"I just said that nothing was wrong with it."

"Do you not have any of your own shampoo?"

"What happened to shaving," said Choi plaintively, letting him go at last. He was looking for a way out: he leaned over and let his hand reach over Jaekwan's arm to pluck the razor off of the counter, stepping neatly to his side. "Here, I'll do it for you."

The change of topic was uncharacteristically clumsy for someone like Choi, but Jaekwan did want to shave, so he allowed it. They had to make it to their reservation on time, and Choi would want to look around the outside of their lodging as Jaekwan looked around the inside of their lodging, and there was the matter of dinner to settle because meals weren't provided on their trip; Jaekwan preferred to eat his meals early.

Choi drew closer again, face-to-face, and made a noise softly at the back of his throat that had Jaekwan unconsciously leaning in, his face angled towards Choi's own. They'd done this before, although they'd only started out of necessity. Jaekwan had broken his arm. Choi had come to visit him. He'd said—

Choi touched the side of Jaekwan's ear. Jaekwan let him move his head with the thumb on his helix as their anchoring point, turning to face him. He could feel the featherlight press of the razor as it brushed against his skin, the vague sensory stimulus of the foam parting. His hair wasn't long enough for Choi's fingers to knot in, but he could feel the warmth of Choi's hand against the base of his nape, the rough palm and long fingers.

Those thumbs dragged downward against the crown of his head. Jaekwan's skin shivered. He tipped his head up obligingly, exposing the underside of his jawline.

"You know," said Choi conversationally, "You're starting to develop white hairs. Right here."

He tapped his knuckle against the side of Jaekwan's head. Jaekwan's mouth flickered. His eyes cracked open by a sliver, revealing Choi's grinning eyes curved into crescent moons, the skin at the corners beginning to wrinkle.

He'd always found signs of Jaekwan getting older impossibly amusing; he'd made that face at him when Jaekwan had completed his college education, and he'd made that face when Jaekwan had finished his military service. He'd made that face when Jaekwan had been accepted into the bureau over twin bottles of soju, both Choi's, his face flushed red as he'd batted Jaekwan's hand away from the tongs and said, I'm your hyung — no — I'm your sunbae, now, I'm your sunbae, so I'll grill the meat, you just enjoy, are you arguing with your sunbaenim, you punk? All the way to Jaekwan's award ceremonies and honors, all the way to Jaekwan becoming a senior in his own right, all the way to their first-year anniversaries and second-year anniversaries and years following that, Choi: impossibly amused.

"Our Jaekwan," said Choi affectionately. Cool metal ghosted over his cheekbone. He could make out the faint echo of Choi's voice in the empty bathroom, the sing-song tease that accompanied it. "You're getting old."

The staff waved at them as they left the building. Jaekwan put on his sunglasses before long as they stepped outside, which made Choi grimace; he'd never particularly liked Jaekwan's sense of style. Jaekwan offered him the second pair that he was carrying. "Want them?"

"No," said Choi. He frowned down at them like they had personally offended him. "Why do you have two pairs?"

"They were having a buy-one get-one-free sale," said Jaekwan.

"I can't imagine why," said Choi meaningfully. "When do you think Grapes will get here?"

At ten being an orphan had been devastating. At sixteen he'd understood that it was nothing, after all, and that it was frankly somewhat embarrassing to have made such a big deal of it, although he acknowledged — in the impersonal, objective sense — the necessity of grieving, and the difficulties of childhood development in the absence of reliable parental figures. It wasn't that he was ignorant or unaware of his own struggles, but it was hard to be resentful of them after so many years at the orphanage; it was harder still to not understand how common his pain was, too, when he went to visit his parents, and he was reminded that death, like sickness and aging, were natural parts of life that everyone experienced, not just him; that he, like the others at the orphanage said, had just become an orphan earlier than the rest.

Everyone's parents would die some day: it didn't make them special. It didn't even make them different. In the mornings he still had to get ready and go to school, brushing his teeth in the bathroom that he shared with a handful of other kids, and in class he was just one of many students frowning at their notebooks and trying desperately to keep up with the teacher's scrawl on the board at the front of the class, and during his breaks he talked to those he was friendly with, and after school he went home and studied when he didn't have to show up for his part-time job.

It was the way everyone lived. Getting angry, getting sad. Feeling nothing at all. Feeling happy. Feeling hungry. Feeling sleepy, feeling confused.

In the early years, the staff at the orphanage had been confused at how well he adapted to the circumstances; he's still young, they'd say, whispering to each other as chubby-faced Jaekwan sat at the table, methodically eating his vegetables with the grim resignation of someone facing down a death sentence. He probably hasn't realized what it means yet. When the grief settles in—

It had been there; it had settled. He didn't know how much more settled it could be.

Conversation in the car had been largely dictated by Choi. He was the most extroverted out of all of them, and the one most familiar with their preferences: where Jaekwan had made sure to give Soleum space outside of work, vaguely concerned that he would be making him uncomfortable otherwise, Choi had actively gone out of his way to make Soleum uncomfortable, looking for something that would reassure the flickering suspicion within him. He'd stopped — or seemed like he'd stopped — for a while, now, but it was hard to tell, with Choi; he kept so much to himself.

He'd used to call out Jaekwan for doing the same. They'd fought over it, before, although the memory seemed distant now — he'd asked Choi why he treated Jaekwan like he couldn't trust him. Why do you trust me with your life, but not anything else? Sharp-tongued, unhappy: he couldn't conceal the way that he felt, not easily.

Choi had turned it back on him. What about you, he'd said. Aren't you also guilty of keeping things to yourself?

It wasn't; he hadn't thought that it was the case. People often made the mistake of thinking that Jaekwan was repressed. The doctors and psychologists that he'd met over the course of his life had thought it was because of his family circumstances, and then, later on, because of his work; there was no one around him who could tell them that he'd always been this way. 

He'd inherited it from his father, his mother had often said: the even keel that he operated on, the way that he lived in moderation, feeling in moderation, acting in moderation. He lacked attachment to things, unlike other children — wouldn't cry or fuss or yell even if someone took his snacks or food, although he wasn't fine with it, he wasn't some kind of bodhisattva — and he thought that it made sense, later, when he was the age where he could take his memories and parse through them with a finer eye. That he had inherited it from his father, who had looked at Jaekwan during their separation and decided that he didn't want him, after all, that he didn't want Jaekwan enough to take care of him: something that Jaekwan had never resented him for and instead understood, though he didn't know how to articulate it in a way that wouldn't make people look upon him with pity or the misguided impression that he was fishing for their sympathies in a roundabout way.

Jaekwan wasn't. He just had nothing to hide: if he had already done something he had decided to do it, and if he didn't talk about something it wasn't that he couldn't, but rather that he felt no need to. It must have been inconceivable to Choi that he felt so little. That there were so few things that could make Jaekwan feel deeply, after all. 

"Is there anything that you want to eat?" Choi asked Jaekwan now, leaning forward. He was scrolling on his phone, tapping through something rapidly. "Of course we'll have seafood, but if you want to eat out, there's a few places we can go… Grapes, what about you?"

"Anything is fine," said Jaekwan.

"Jaekwan-ah," said Choi. His voice was grave. "Don't you know that the hardest person to eat with is the one that says they can eat everything? Grapes, you better not be taking cues from his answer. Pick something, okay? What do you like? Doenjang jjigae? Jeonbokjuk? Heuk dwaeji? Gogi guksu?"

"...Anything is fine," said Soleum.

Choi made a groaning noise and slumped over the back of the center console, dragging his palm over his face. "I can't believe there's two of them now."

Jaekwan's gaze was fixed on the road, but in his peripheral vision he could see Soleum smiling, hiding the shape of it underneath the back of his hand as he turned away; over the edge of his shoulder the light jacket he was wearing slid until it hung loosely at the edge, slipping down and then nearly over. 

"Don't lean like that," said Jaekwan. He reached over with one hand, pushing Choi back with his palm without looking. HIs fingers covered the shape of Choi's nose, the contours of his chin. "It's dangerous."

"You're heartless," said Choi, but he could feel him smiling. He sat back properly like Jaekwan had told him to, his skin warm where sunlight had sluiced over him like water. "Aren't you two hungry? Aren't you craving anything?"

The leather of the wheel was firm underneath Jaekwan's hands. Soleum was saying something in response. He caught Choi's gaze in the rearview mirror.

You make me hungry, Jaekwan thought. The sun shifted in the sky.

The lodging was neither impressively large or oppressively small. Jaekwan had ended up being the one that handled most of the unloading, even though Soleum protested on the basis of being their junior (which he had shot down). Choi had excused himself to observe the perimeter of their surroundings ostensibly just to see what else there was out there: a garden, maybe, he'd said jokingly, his hands in the pockets of what had once been Jaekwan's jacket. Who knows? Anything could be out there, but he'd asked if Jaekwan had wanted his help before he left; Jaekwan hadn't.

He was used to unpacking for the both of them. They'd gone on trips like this before, although most of their travels were far from recreational and it was inadvisable for groups to split up when actively immersed in a supernatural disaster; not all disasters could be entered immediately. They'd spent a good portion of their careers holed up in ratty motels and questionable lodges with no company save for each other: Bronze and Choi, familiar shadows.

Choi sorted his items by order of priority — he left his bureau-sanctioned weaponry at the top of his case, vertical, where it'd be easy to grab as soon as he opened it if he needed it when he was traveling, and an array of various tools and mirrors — while Jaekwan's organization was categorical: toiletries, electronics, tools, clothing, each of them stuffed inside of their individual packing cube.

There was a knock on the door as Jaekwan rifled through Choi's belongings. He looked up. It sounded like Soleum. "Come in."

Soleum opened the door and peeked inside hesitantly. He took in the sight of Jaekwan elbow-deep in Choi's luggage as he knelt on the ground, the singular bed for the two of them, and Jaekwan's leaning tower of neatly-stacked packing cubes. There was a garishly-patterned Hawaiian t-shirt in Jaekwan's hands that he expressionlessly folded and set aside. "Are you busy?"

"No," said Jaekwan. He stood up. "Did you need something?"

"It wasn't that I needed anything," said Soleum. There was an unspoken but to his words. He paused. "Are you sure you want this room?"

Soleum was the only one that had a room to himself. It was smaller than theirs, and it faced away from the (admittedly somewhat distant) waterfront, unlike the one that Jaekwan and Choi were to occupy, which provided some semblance of a view. To Jaekwan, it made sense that they'd share while their junior stayed by himself — Choi had been the one to invite Soleum in the first place, which meant that he was responsible for making Soleum comfortable, and Jaekwan had joined their trip late, so he couldn't inconvenience Soleum for his own sake.

"It's big enough for two people," said Jaekwan. It seemed impolite to just stay kneeling when they were talking like this. He stood up, approaching the door; Soleum stepped back, apparently startled by Jaekwan's decisive approach. "Don't worry about it."

"Still," said Soleum. Jaekwan had seen him in casual clothing before, but the lack of a uniform still surprised him. He'd gotten used to the sight of Soleum in the bureau's blue. It suited him well. He'd thought so the first time he saw him wear it. "It doesn't feel right to be the only one with a room to myself…"

"You're the guest," said Jaekwan firmly. "We should be the ones taking care of you."

Something went through his expression too fast for Jaekwan to catch. The corners of his eyes tightened. He opened his mouth to respond, was cut off by the sound of footsteps approaching. Choi entered with a requisite amount of noise, toeing his shoes off at the door, and he poked his head into the hallway with his brown hair slightly disheveled.

"Grapes, you're here. We'll go fishing after you unpack, alright?"

"Right now?"

"There's no time like the present," said Choi. He flashed a brilliant smile at him as he padded closer to the two of them, dusting off his palms as he went. "And there's no point in wasting daylight, is there? We might as well get started now that we're already here."

Jaekwan privately thought that it just seemed like Choi enjoyed it when Soleum looked like he wanted to argue but was holding himself back. Soleum looked at Jaekwan. Jaekwan looked back. Soleum, bravely prevaricating: "What about Agent Bronze?"

"He doesn't like the water," said Choi, waving it off. "It'll just be the two of us out there."

"Oh, is that right…" came the lackluster response, colored through with an underlying, so why did he come to Jeju Island on a fishing trip if he doesn't like the water?

"He gets lonely," said Choi. He was beginning to get mischievous. "Our Jaekwan. You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but he gets lonely easily, even though he looks so aloof; every time that we go on a mission without him, he just looks at our empty desks and sighs to himself, counting the minutes until we return. In fact, there was this one time when he was still a rookie — way before you joined the team, Grapes — when he—"

Jaekwan threw something at him. "Stop talking nonsense and take your keys."

Choi caught it before it could connect with his face, undeterred, and beamed. He tossed them back. "Why? Just keep them. You'll be the one driving us back."

Jaekwan gave him a look. Choi's expression turned sly. He reached out and patted Jaekwan's shoulder.

"Don't sulk in front of the rookie," he said, and rapidly pulled the door shut before Jaekwan could step through and hit him.

"You should say something," Choi had said. Years ago: they were sitting in a fried chicken shop in the dead of winter at four in the evening. No one else was there — just the two of them — and all because Jaekwan had said, fried chicken and beer, the kind that they make at the store near the goshiwon I used to stay at, when Choi had asked him what he wanted to eat to celebrate his discharge. He hadn't expected that Choi would take him all the way there. 

"Your hands are red," Jaekwan had answered obligingly. He'd been staring at them as they waited for their food. Choi's tanned palms were bleached white from the cold, the edges of his fingers and knuckles a ruddy red. He hadn't brought gloves. He'd told Jaekwan before, absentminded, that he didn't like the way that they made his hands clumsy.

Choi clicked his tongue, putting his hands back into his pockets. He was wearing a long coat instead of a puffer, the stylish wool kind. "I was stuck outside waiting for you for so long — of course they were cold. Can't you say something else?"

"I didn't know you were coming," said Jaekwan. It wasn't accusatory. The laminated menu was cradled carefully in his hands. "You didn't tell me."

"I didn't know if I could make it," Choi said, easygoing. His neck was hidden underneath the winding fabric of a scarf that he'd received as a gift from a rescuee. "They had me on a job in Gangwon-do, but it ended up falling through. The civilian managed to escape on their own."

Jaekwan hummed. "That's good."

"Yeah," said Choi. His eyes softened. Jaekwan watched him carefully. "Thanks to that, I was able to come here and buy you a meal. Aren't you grateful?"

"I'm grateful."

"You don't look grateful. You look like an angry caterpillar."

Jaekwan frowned. "A caterpillar?"

Choi had laughed. "Because of your hair."

He'd cut it short for his military service. Some of the others had complained about having to shave, but he'd never really minded; he'd liked it, actually, because of how easy it was to take care of. Jaekwan touched the top of it now, vaguely self-conscious. "Does it look strange?"

"No, it suits you," said Choi, shaking his head. He was smiling. "You look nice and neat with it short like this."

"You look nice, too," Jaekwan had said. It had been a while since they saw each other last, which Jaekwan thought made him see the other more clearly; he'd known that he'd grown taller than Choi before, in the abstract sense, when other people had pointed it out, but he'd never felt it until today. Choi had let his hair grow out slightly. He'd styled it today. There were new scars pockmarking the edge of his skin underneath the sleeves of his long coat that Jaekwan saw glimpses of whenever he lifted his hands. "I haven't seen you wear that coat before."

"Ah, this?" Choi touched the edge of his lapel. A trace of good humor overcame him. "I wore it to make a good impression. You haven't seen me since you started your service even though I told you to visit me on your days off. Now that you've seen me, what do you think? Aren't I even more handsome than you remembered?"

He let his face rest on one palm and leaned forward over the table as if to appeal to Jaekwan, puppylike; his bangs brushed into his eyes, making him blink, and then, exaggeratedly, Choi blinked again, twice, as if batting his eyelashes. Jaekwan's mouth curved up.

"You look about the same," Jaekwan had said. And then, adding on: "Maybe a little thinner."

There were shadows underneath Choi's eyes, faint bruises that he hadn't managed to conceal. He'd never been particularly scrawny, but he became ropelike in the absence of time: he didn't eat well, Choi, even though he was always on Jaekwan's case about how Jaekwan only had one life, and one body, and he couldn't save anyone if he couldn't even take care of himself.

Choi grimaced. "Didn't your superiors teach you how to flatter people? I'm on a diet. A diet, Jaekwan-ah. I'm supposed to be losing weight."

"We're eating fried chicken," said Jaekwan.

"Hey," Choi had said. He had seemed incongruous with the setting: a handsome civil servant in an expensive long wool coat and elegantly-parted hair sitting in a dingy fold-up chair in an even dingier fried chicken restaurant, the fluorescent lights overhead flickering once. He pointed at Jaekwan. "It's a special occasion. Of course I'll make exceptions."

Jaekwan had ordered in for them. The delivery was on the table — he'd eaten first, texting them beforehand — and he heard them coming back before long, the sound of Choi's voice and the lower murmur of Soleum responding, as he sat on the floor of their shared room, meditating; they put their things down noisily, clattering here and there, and Choi said, I'll just eat first and wash up later, you should do the same before the food gets cold, which must have been accompanied by Soleum's agreement by the sound of the water turning on in the kitchen. They pulled out their chairs.

"Do you style your hair?" asked Choi. There was the sound of snapping chopsticks. A bag rustling. Someone opened a container. Another scrape of the chairs, as if someone had pulled theirs closer to someone else's. "Or do you do some kind of treatment? 

"No, not really."

"Really?" said Choi, drawing out the word — really? Until it tilted in his mouth. "You know, Jaekwan's hair is the total opposite. Your hair is so well-behaved, but his is so unruly — he takes after his mother," he added. The sound of a metal tab being pulled open echoed against the walls. "With his looks, although you'd never know it, looking at him. His visuals are so fierce. The other agents used to say that he looked intimidating."

Soleum was quiet for a moment. "I never thought that."

"It's his looks," Choi said again with a grand sigh. Jaekwan envisioned him shaking his head mournfully. "And his personality. They think he's rigid and in a lot of ways, he is; but they think he's — you know, indifferent. Cold, like one of those chaebol male leads… you don't watch dramas? Grapes-ie. What do you even do when you get home?" A muffled response. "But Bronze, it's because he's so constant."

"Yes," said Soleum. His voice was soft. "I can see that."

"People think it means he's slow," Choi said idly. He drummed his fingers against the table. Jaekwan recognized the rhythm, which he had heard many times before: had felt, during the darker hours of the day, pattering against the leather of his bare skin. "Or that he's less aware of other people. But he's observant. He's clever, just as much as any other agent. He just doesn't let other people affect him, and he doesn't like changing himself for others either. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Just," Wry: "You and I, we're different from him, aren't we?"

There was a silence that stretched between them, punctuated only by the faint sounds of people eating. The clatter of chopsticks. Plastic against more plastic. Choi said absently, it's good, right? And Soleum said yes again; Choi said, do you want some more of the— and Soleum answered, no thank you, I'm fine. The sky outside darkened in color, deepening, and Jaekwan counted the seconds between his breathing to the accompaniment of the autumn wind.

"Agent Choi," said Soleum. A pause.

Choi's voice lilted. "Hm?"

"...I don't know if it's my place to say this."

"Just say it," said Choi. His voice was mild. He usually kept a slightly higher pitch when he was talking to other people, a tone that made him sound more conversational, easier to approach: he wasn't using it now. "I don't mind."

"I thought…" Soleum's words came slowly. "You and Agent Bronze. You seem alike to me."

Jaekwan's eyes cracked open. He hadn't turned the lights on. The evening had crawled over the slope of the room and painted it blue in degrees, the edge of the bed paneled gray, and his own limbs seemed fuzzy and indistinct in the veiled shadows.

Choi was surprised. He could hear it clearly, although he didn't know if Soleum could see it — the sound of Choi's disbelief, barely audible from this distance, and then the sudden good humor, as if Soleum had made a joke; impressed and disbelieving at once. "Is that so? I guess when you've been partners for so long, you're bound to pick up each other's habits…"

"That might be it," said Soleum, agreeable. But Jaekwan had made a habit of listening to Soleum, too, and he knew him well enough here; unspoken was another phrase, hidden: but I don't think so.

Late at night, in the kitchen — Choi had vanished into their bedroom, mentioning that he wanted to finish something, and left Jaekwan and Soleum together, each of them occupying different sides of the table, until Jaekwan had invited Soleum to drink with him. He'd poured himself a glass, but he didn't move to finish it yet: just held the cup in his hands, the surface of the wood grain visible around it. Soleum, having finished his own, just sat there. They'd been talking — talking, Choi might have said, was stretching it; Jaekwan had been talking at him, and Soleum had been responding accordingly. He'd asked Soleum if he was uncomfortable being here with them, and Soleum had said, no, you two have treated me very well, thank you, and Jaekwan, awkward, had said, I didn't bring it up to be thanked, it's nothing, and failed, in the end, to communicate what he had wanted to say.

The conversation had shifted; it had turned. They'd discussed the food that Jaekwan had bought for them (delicious) and how the fishing had went (unsuccessful on both of their parts) and the weather (getting colder) and the bureau (more comfortable now that Soleum had gotten used to how things operated). He'd gotten better to talking about Soleum, now that he'd practiced at it more, and it helped that Soleum had always been good at talking to Jaekwan; he had a manner that instinctively put Jaekwan at ease.

Nothing. Conversation. Nothing again. It came and went, the sound of their voices: Soleum, over the course of their discussion, had relaxed minutely into his chair. He smiled at Jaekwan when he caught his gaze. Outside there was the vague buzzing of birds and nighttime creatures, the vague awareness of existence that couldn't be quantified as a distinguishable sound so much as it could as the absence of silence. 

Jaekwan's thumb traced over the edge of his glass. The reflective lens of the alcohol painted him in warm tones.

To the empty air: "I was concerned," said Jaekwan, solemn, his voice cutting through the space between them, "That you would find this trip difficult."

A beat. Two.

Jaekwan continued on. "I didn't want you to come if you didn't want to."

"I've said it before," said Soleum. "Both to you and Agent Choi. It's really not that."

"I know he's hard on you," Jaekwan said bluntly. There was no avoiding it. He looked up. "Both him and I, we're hard on you."

Soleum's hand was on the table, pale and pale-knuckled. He had a callus on his finger from where he'd gripped his pen too tightly writing reports. "I don't think so."

"You could," said Jaekwan. He wouldn't tell him that he should, but this much was the truth; he had no reservations saying so. "I knew that he was making you uncomfortable. Don't tell me he wasn't," he added, noticing him begin to open his mouth. Soleum closed it. Faint amusement curled in Jaekwan's stomach, quick to dissipate. "I should have done something. I don't mean to excuse myself."

Soleum said nothing. He didn't seem to know what else to say, which would mark a first for their conversations; usually it was Jaekwan who would find himself at a loss for words after Soleum had said something. It was possible that he sensed that Jaekwan had no particular interest in the niceties that they usually indulged in — no thank you, senior, I wouldn't want to impose, you're too hard on yourself, it wasn't that bad, although Jaekwan — as it was — had always possessed a preference for the truth.

This time, the silence that fell upon them was Jaekwan's fault. He carried on anyway.

He said: "When I was younger, someone came to tell me that my mother had died."

Soleum's head jerked up in shock. Almost immediately it looked like he regretted it: there was a self-consciousness to his expression that hadn't been there before. The ease in his posture had entirely evaporated.

It was only to be expected. It must have seemed like a non-sequitur to him, the change of one topic to the next, especially after Jaekwan had just said that he didn't mean to excuse himself; what else would bringing up the topic of your dead parent do except seem like an excuse? But it had a connection to what he wanted to express; he thought it had a connection to what he wanted to express, and the night made Jaekwan talkative, or the setting in Jeju, far away from the offices of Seoul: it was easier to talk frankly about himself in this context. 

"I was upset," Jaekwan continued. It was easy to recall the memories, which had come when he was old enough to remember the events for the rest of his life, and young enough for them to still be foundational. By now he had forgotten the face of that shadowy, tall figure who had spoken to him, kneeling on one knee, but the impressions still lingered. "I lashed out. I told them to go away, that I didn't want to see them." I hate you! He'd yelled: he remembered that. When his mother had still been alive, he'd assumed that his love was something that was important to everyone: that everyone would be grievously wounded if he said that he hated them. "Back then, I didn't think that they would really leave. I thought that they, like my mom used to, would come back after a little bit, after I'd calmed down. That they'd coax me and patiently explain to me why my behavior earlier was unacceptable, even though I was upset."

He'd waited for a while. He'd cried first — wailing and sobbing, half of it done with the expectation that someone would hear him and come in to see what the problem was — but the room had only been occupied by himself. His tears had subdued. He'd come closer to the wall, pressed his ear against the door, and listened for footsteps. For breathing.

Someone had to be out there, he'd thought. Someone had to be out there, waiting for him.

"But they weren't responsible for me," said Jaekwan matter-of-factly. "They were only responsible for telling me what happened. They didn't come back."

Soleum's eyes focused on him.

"No matter how I acted out or broke the rules after that, no one ever yelled at me or scolded me."

They had all been kind to him. They said: you must be dealing with a heavy burden. I can't imagine the difficulties that you're experiencing. When he said he was an orphan, people always imagined a lifetime of bullying and impoverishment, but his life had been ordinary: even when he'd rebelled, he hadn't rebelled much.

The Jaekwan of his memories seemed like a stranger now, the more that he thought about him. It must have been impossible to believe for others, too, that Jaekwan had once flouted school rules and skipped class to wander around the streets, ducking away from people who called him student once they'd spotted his uniform. He'd tried to dye his hair, breaking dress code, but he hadn't realized that he'd needed to bleach it first. His homeroom teacher had noticed regardless. She'd called him into the teacher's room. His heart had pounded, wondering if she'd ask him: is anything going on? What's wrong with you? Hey, do you think you can get away with this?

In the end, she hadn't said anything. She'd looked at his name tag, and she'd let him go.

"I realized that there was no longer anyone who would hold themselves accountable to me," said Jaekwan plainly. At that point no one had to explain themselves to him — not the adults at the orphanage, who he would say goodbye to once he came of age, and not his teachers, who he would only see for less than a handful of years at most. "That no one would take responsibility for me except for myself. Of course," he said, lifting his glass to his mouth, "Everyone experiences it when they grow up. But the bureau isn't like that."

He'd been young when he first encountered the agents at the bureau: entrapped in a supernatural disaster, unaware of how to get out, or the fact that he could even get out; he'd asked them, immediately after, what was that? Who made that? And then, outlining his fate— How do I become an agent like you?

They'd laughed at him, not unkindly. One of them had ruffled his hair. Go home, kid.

He had gone home, eventually. He'd found his way there.

"No person is responsible for supernatural phenomena, but there still has to be someone who takes responsibility for them. That's what it's like. That's why I'm sorry," Jaekwan said. He looked at Soleum steadily. "That's why it was hard on you, with Agent Choi and I. We don't know how to live without being responsible for other people."

Choi had described it as the perils of public service. They were always at the service of the public — disasters didn't operate within the constraints of business hours or city limits — and there was, their superior had once remarked, an inflated sense of self-importance that came with it — the presumption of superior capability, which, to be fair to the other agents, generally reflected their actual capability, but the idea that you could somehow protect other people from whatever dangers that befell them, including the dangers that they imposed upon themselves. That was a common affliction among the members of the bureau. Their seniors used to joke around, calling it an occupational hazard: Atlasian hubris.

Choi walked on the outside of the street. He clung to the parts of the concrete that sat near street gutters and stepped over cracks, looking over mirrors and pools with what seemed like a casual once-over; he didn't like closed doors, so he always left the one to their office half-open, slightly ajar, and when he dozed off he always kept one ear unobstructed instead of letting his head bury into his arms. He picked up four-leaf clovers when he saw them and had a golden pig charm tucked into the lining of his suitcase.

Soleum's face was peculiarly blank, but his eyes were clear and transparent. He was wearing that expression that Jaekwan often saw him wear when he thought no one was looking, that expression that Jaekwan suspected he didn't know he was making himself: a look that seemed as if he wanted something that he knew he would never be able to obtain. It was a peculiar forbearance — like that of someone who had resigned themselves to never getting something that should have been within reach. He'd taken his hand back at some point to put it on top of the other, letting them rest in a pair in his lap.

"Even so, you can yell at Agent Choi if you want to," said Jaekwan, straightforward. He smiled a little. "Me too."

"...I don't want to," said Soleum. He looked down at his hands, and then, belated, as if he had needed to remind himself to look up again, and said again, "I'm fine. Really."

His dark eyes seemed even darker in the low light. He'd thought, for a while now, that the irises were an unusual deep shade of brown. It was hard to distinguish where the pupil ended and the iris began unless you were looking at him in direct sunlight, and even then the lens flare could obscure them.

"It's alright if you do," said Jaekwan, tilting his head slightly to the side; he set down his glass, watching the melted condensation trickle down the side. "It's true that I'm not good at being considerate of other people. There were never many people to be considerate of."

"That's not true," said Soleum. His voice was still. "You take care of everyone well. Better than you think."

"That's different," said Jaekwan, and here his humor leaked out; he laughed just once. He shook his head and tapped his nail against the side of his drink once, the white edge against the transparent wall. "Being considerate and taking care of other people. Don't you think so?"

In the past Jaekwan had gone to the hospital for an injury that wasn't supernatural-related — caught up in a reckless driver's accident — but his visitors had still all been from the bureau. The majority of them had come to see Jaekwan during the specifically-designated visiting hours, but Choi, they'd said, was on a mission, and probably couldn't make it that day, and they didn't know when he'd be finished, and they'd give Jaekwan his regards on his behalf… that sort of thing.

Choi had come anyway. The hospital had gone dark and quiet, the staff obligated to turn away visitors at the door, so it was only later (when Jaekwan was more awake and had more clarity of mind) that he'd wondered how Choi had managed to get in at all.

Jaekwan had roused from his sleep to see Choi sitting at his bedside, having pulled up a chair that he must have procured somewhere, still in his bureau-blue jacket with his hair unflatteringly unstyled and windswept: Jaekwan must have looked at it for too long, because Choi's fingers went up to it and tugged through it a few times, smoothing out the worst of the stray hairs. There was blood on his collar. Not mine, he'd said, catching Jaekwan looking at that, too, as if he'd known Jaekwan would ask; Jaekwan had just been about to.

"Are you upset?" Choi had asked lightly. He was restless. His leg had been shaking the entire time, sending faint tremors vibrating through the bed.

Jaekwan rolled over to face him, half of his face flattened into the pillow as they talked. "Why should I be upset?"

"You got injured," Choi said. He raised his eyebrows and made a face at Jaekwan, light-hearted, as if to say: obviously.

"It hurts," said Jaekwan, baffled, "But I'm not upset."

"I should've known you'd say that," Choi had said. He'd given him another look, this one still playful, somewhat weary; his eyebrows had drawn together, and he'd given him one of those grandiose sighs that he often employed when he made that hand gesture, the one he had been doing right then, where he spread his hands and sank into the chair, tipping his head back at the ceiling as if seeking answers from an imaginary god.

"Are you upset?"

"I'm upset," said Choi truthfully. He'd tapped his fingers against the side of Jaekwan's sheets, and then, catching Jaekwan looking at him, traced the outline of a heart to go with it.

The honesty of his answer had surprised Jaekwan. "Why?"

"Shouldn't I be upset?" asked Choi. Not having received the response that he wanted, he leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms, and inclined his head to the side the way he sometimes did when talking to witnesses. His mouth was curved up, his eyes inquiring. "My adorable junior got hurt."

"I suppose," said Jaekwan. Choi could have been upset that he was injured. He had a soft heart, much like others at the bureau; he'd mentioned to Jaekwan off-handedly before that he couldn't get a pet because he'd be inconsolable if anything happened to them, and he was the type of person who was moved by the sad scenes in movies, even if he could see them coming: there had been a period of time where Choi had grandly announced the status of the scraggly-looking flowers near their office every time he walked into work. It'd eventually flourished, even after the winter had eaten away at it; Choi had rapped his knuckles on his desk and told him to pay up, even though Jaekwan hadn't participated in its workplace betting ring.

"Good people shouldn't get hurt," Choi had said lightly. He ducked his head, obscuring the slope of his gaze, but he kept his voice casual. "If I went through everything you did, I would be angry all the time."

"Because you think I've lived a hard life? I haven't," said Jaekwan. He blinked slowly. His eyelashes brushed against the pillowcase. If anyone had lived a hard life it should have been Choi, whose hands were rougher than even the other agents' from labor that Jaekwan had never witnessed, whose records were blotted out even to Jaekwan, even when he looked them up, who'd joined the bureau early, and used to talk — almost bitterly nostalgic — about the old days at the agency, and what it'd been like, back then. On the other hand, Jaekwan — he'd never felt as if he'd struggled, not really. Every challenge that he'd been given was something that he'd felt like he could face, if not with strength then with talent, and if not with talent then with character. "It wasn't hard at all."

"It was a little hard, wasn't it?" asked Choi. He reached out, smoothing the blankets over Jaekwan as if tucking him in. "If it wasn't, you wouldn't have grown up like this."

"What's wrong with the way I am?"

"Nothing," Choi had said, rueful. He'd pinched Jaekwan's cheek, and as he drew close for the first time Jaekwan thought that his gaze seemed foreign: something unknown and unfamiliar. "That's the problem. Can't you be a little more spoiled, Jaekwan-ah?" He leaned in, one hand up, palm to the side, as if in prayer; his head tilted, eyes wide and pleading. It sounded like a joke — it didn't feel like one. "Just cling to me once. Be unreasonable with me. Shouldn't there be at least one person who you can act unreasonable with?"

Soleum had gone to bed, leaving Jaekwan and Choi alone in their room. Choi was sitting on the bed, his back to the headboard as he ran his hand through his loose, unstyled hair, tapping at something that involved brightly-colored fruit and flashy animations on his phone; his weight was halfway supported by Jaekwan, head on his shoulder, as Jaekwan sat next to him, side-by-side; he was also going through his phone. He'd missed someone's call when he was showering. His hair was still slightly damp, his glasses slipping off his nose.

Choi blatantly looked at his screen, not even bothering to conceal that he was staring. His fingers still flew busily over his own screen. COMBO! It announced. "Who was it?"

"My old university classmate," said Jaekwan. He'd saved him as Phys Ed Department Kim Taejin-sunbae, which recalled vague fragments of bottle-blond hair, overenthusiastic invitations to party, and long lamentations about South Korea's capitalistic society at 2 AM. "You remember him."

"Him?" Choi said, his attention refocused on his game. He clicked his tongue in disdain. "That bastard. He only calls you when he needs something."

"I've lived off of public welfare and taxes for my whole life," said Jaekwan solemnly, flicking through his messages. He checked Salmon Market first, seeing if there was anyone willing to sell him anything — he had even posted today, unwilling to let the opportunity slip by him even if he was on vacation — but there was nothing except a few hate comments, someone asking him if he was rich, and a DM that prominently displayed someone's middle finger. He expressionlessly closed it. "Knowing that, I should be generous to other South Korean citizens."

Choi put his phone down, lifting his head off of Jaekwan's shoulder, and turned to face him. A watermelon sadly announced, You Died! He opened his mouth incredulously, about to say something, then looked at Jaekwan's grave expression. He deflated like a balloon, settling back down while grumbling. "Ah, seriously. Stop joking like that. You're not funny."

"You are," said Jaekwan. His chest felt warm. "Your reactions."

"Hey," said Choi.

Jaekwan half-smiled. "I heard you talking about me earlier," he said. "With Agent Grapes."

"Did it bother you?"

"No," said Jaekwan. It hadn't. "You're the only one that says that I look like her."

"The resemblance is obvious," Choi said lazily. From this angle, Jaekwan could see the details of his jagged scar, the way that it cut across the softened skin of his neck, the fluffy curve of his hair as it draped over his head. "But families who resemble each other can't see the resemblance for themselves. Like siblings — they'll always deny it, no matter how obvious it is, and say that they look nothing alike. It's because people are too used to their own faces. All they can see is the ways that they're different."

There's no one else but you, Jaekwan thought. No one else knows both of our faces.

His hand rose up. He pressed his thumb into the lines between Choi's browbones and pressed, lightly, until they flattened, and traced the side of his head down, curling over the rounded shape of his ear, tracing until he reached the corner of his mouth.

There was a faint breeze that blew through the room. The night had grown dark.

"It's obvious to you," said Jaekwan, and smiled.